24452	----	None 
20086	----	Note: This is a sketchbook, the text consists only of the transcribed captions and the list of Illustrations. This book was meant to be looked at not read. Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 20086-h.htm or 20086-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/0/0/4/20086/20086-h/20086-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/0/0/4/20086/20086-h.zip) Where differences between the list of illustrations and the caption text existed in the original the most comprehensive description was used for both. ROME [Illustration: REMAINS OF THE TEMPLE OF VESPASIAN] A Sketch-Book by FRED RICHARDS. ADAM & CHARLES BLACK, LONDON, W. 1914. 1. THE REMAINS OF THE TEMPLE OF VESPASIAN (TITLE PAGE). 2. 'S. MARIA DI LORETO' FROM THE PIAZZA VENEZIA. 3. THE PANTHEON. 4. IN THE FORUM OF TRAJAN. 5. 'HADRIAN'S TOMB'--NOW THE CASTLE OF S. ANGELO. 6. FROM THE STEPS OF THE VITTORIO EMANUELE MONUMENT. 7. 'S. PETER'S'--FROM THE TIBER. 8. 'S. PETER'S' FROM THE STRADA DELLA MURA. 9. 'THE UNKNOWN TEMPLE'--NEAR THE TIBER. 10. 'SANTA MARIA IN ARACOELI'. 11. 'THE FORUM' LOOKING TOWARDS THE COLOSSEUM. 12. THE REMAINS OF THE 'TEMPLE OF CASTOR AND POLLUX'. 13. 'THE TEMPLE OF ROMULUS'. 14. 'S. FRANCESCA ROMANA' FROM THE BASILICA OF CONSTANTINE. 15. 'THE ARCH OF TITUS'. 16. LOOKING TOWARDS THE CAPITAL FROM THE PALATINE. 17. THE REMAINS OF THE 'THEATRE OF MARCELLUS'. 18. THE PALATINE FROM THE AVENTINE. 19. 'THE CHURCH OF S. SABA'--ON THE AVENTINE. 20. 'MEDIAEVAL HOUSE' OPPOSITE S. CECILIA. 21. 'ROCCA DI PAPA'. 22. 'NEMI'--IN THE ALBAN MOUNTAINS. 23. IN THE GARDEN OF THE 'VILLA D'ESTE'--TIVOLI. 24. 'TEMPLE OF THE SIBYL'--FROM THE RAVINE--TIVOLI. [Illustration: 'S. MARIA DI LORETO' FROM THE PIAZZA VENEZIA.] [Illustration: THE PANTHEON.] [Illustration: IN THE FORUM OF TRAJAN.] [Illustration: 'HADRIAN'S TOMB'--NOW THE CASTLE OF S. ANGELO.] [Illustration: FROM THE STEPS OF THE VITTORIO EMANUELE MONUMENT.] [Illustration: 'S. PETER'S'--FROM THE TIBER.] [Illustration: 'S. PETER'S' FROM THE STRADA DELLA MURA.] [Illustration: 'THE UNKNOWN TEMPLE'--NEAR THE TIBER.] [Illustration: 'SANTA MARIA IN ARACOELI'.] [Illustration: 'THE FORUM' LOOKING TOWARDS THE COLOSSEUM.] [Illustration: THE REMAINS OF THE 'TEMPLE OF CASTOR AND POLLUX'.] [Illustration: 'THE TEMPLE OF ROMULUS'.] [Illustration: 'S. FRANCESCA ROMANA' FROM THE BASILICA OF CONSTANTINE.] [Illustration: 'THE ARCH OF TITUS'.] [Illustration: LOOKING TOWARDS THE CAPITAL FROM THE PALATINE.] [Illustration: THE REMAINS OF THE 'THEATRE OF MARCELLUS'.] [Illustration: THE PALATINE FROM THE AVENTINE.] [Illustration: 'THE CHURCH OF S. SABA'--ON THE AVENTINE.] [Illustration: 'MEDIAEVAL HOUSE' OPPOSITE S. CECILIA.] [Illustration: 'ROCCA DI PAPA'.] [Illustration: 'NEMI'--IN THE ALBAN MOUNTAINS.] [Illustration: IN THE GARDEN OF THE 'VILLA D'ESTE'--TIVOLI.] [Illustration: 'TEMPLE OF THE SIBYL'--FROM THE RAVINE--TIVOLI.] A NEW SERIES OF BOOKS ILLUSTRATED IN COLOUR EACH 1/6 NET [Illustration: BEAUTIFUL BRITAIN] ABBOTSFORD LONDON ARRAN, ISLE OF OXFORD CAMBRIDGE PEAK COUNTRY CANTERBURY STRATFORD-ON-AVON with LEAMINGTON & WARWICK CHANNEL ISLANDS THAMES COTSWOLDS TROSSACHS ENLISH LAKES WALES, NORTH FIRTH OF CLYDE WESSEX GIRTON COLLEGE WESTMINSTER ABBEY ISLE OF MAN WINCHESTER ISLE OF WIGHT WINDSOR & ETON ALSO IN "BEAUTIFUL EUROPE" SERIES NORWEGIAN FJORDS PUBLISHED BY A. & C. BLACK * SOHO SQUARE * LONDON W. KILLARNEY 
17284	----	Transcribed by from the 1861 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk ROME IN 1860. By EDWARD DICEY. Cambridge: MACMILLAN AND CO. AND 23, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, London. 1861. [The right of Translation is reserved.] * * * * * Cambridge: PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS * * * * * TO MR. AND MRS ROBERT BROWNING CHAPTER I. THE ROME OF REAL LIFE. My first recollections of Rome date from too long ago, and from too early an age, for me to be able to recall with ease the impression caused by its first aspect. It is hard indeed for any one at any time to judge of Rome fairly. Whatever may be the object of our pilgrimage, we Roman travellers are all under some guise or other pilgrims to the Eternal City, and gaze around us with something of a pilgrim's reverence for the shrine of his worship. The ground we tread on is enchanted ground, we breathe a charmed air, and are spellbound with a strange witchery. A kind of glamour steals over us, a thousand memories rise up and chase each other. Heroes and martyrs, sages and saints and sinners, consuls and popes and emperors, people the weird pageant which to our mind's eye hovers ever mistily amidst the scenes around us. Here above all places in God's earth it is hard to forget the past and think only of the present. This, however, is what I now want to do. Laying aside all memory of what Rome has been, I would again describe what Rome is now. And thus, in my solitary wanderings about the city, I have often sought to picture to myself what would be the feelings of a stranger who, caring nothing and knowing nothing of the past, should enter Rome with only that listless curiosity which all travellers feel perforce, when for the first time they approach a great capital. Let me fancy that such a traveller--a very Gallio among travellers--is standing by my side. Let me try and tell him what, under my mentorship, he would mark and see. It shall not be on a bright, cloudless day that we enter Rome. To our northern eyes the rich Italian sun-light gives to everything, even to ruins and rags and squalor, a deceptive grandeur, and a beauty which is not due. No, the day shall be such a day as that on which I write; such a day in fact as the days are oftener than not at this dead season of the year, sunless and damp and dull. The sky above is covered with colourless, unbroken clouds, and the outline of the Alban and the Sabine hills stands dimly out against the grey distance. It matters little by what gate or from what quarter we enter. On every side the scene is much the same. The Campagna surrounds the city. A wide, waste, broken, hillock-covered plain, half common, half pasture land, and altogether desolate; a few stunted trees, a deserted house or two, here and there a crumbling mass of shapeless brickwork: such is the foreground through which you travel for many a weary mile. As you approach the city there is no change in the desolation, no sign of life. Every now and then a string of some half-dozen peasant-carts, laden with wine-barrels or wood faggots, comes jingling by. The carts so-called, rather by courtesy than right, consist of three rough planks and two high ricketty wheels. The broken-kneed horses sway to and fro beneath their unwieldy load, and the drivers, clad in their heavy sheepskin jackets, crouch sleepily beneath the clumsy, hide-bound framework, placed so as to shelter them from the chill Tramontana blasts. A solitary cart is rare, for the neighbourhood of Rome is not the safest of places, and those small piles of stone, with the wooden cross surmounting them, bear witness to the fact that a murder took place not long ago on the very spot you are passing now. Then, perhaps, you come across a drove of wild, shaggy buffaloes, or a travelling carriage rattling and jilting along, or a stray priest or so, trudging homewards from some outlying chapel. That red-bodied funereal- looking two-horse-coach, crawling at a snail's pace, belongs to his Excellency the Cardinal, whom Papal etiquette forbids to walk on foot within the city, and whom you can see a little further on pottering feebly along the road in his violet stockings, supported by his clerical secretary, and followed at a respectful distance by his two attendant footmen with their threadbare liveries. At last, out of the dreary waste, at the end of the interminable ill-paved sloughy road, the long line of the grey tumble-down walls rises gloomily. A few cannon-shot would batter a breach anywhere, as the events of 1849 proved only too well. However, at Rome there is neither commerce to be impeded nor building extension of any kind to be checked; the city has shrunk up until its precincts are a world too wide; and the walls, if they are useless, are harmless also; more, by the way, than you can say for most things here. There is no stir or bustle at the gates. Two French soldiers, striding across a bench, are playing at picquet with a pack of greasy cards. A pack-horse or two nibble the blades of grass between the stones, while their owners haggle with the solitary guard about the "octroi" duties. A sentinel on duty stares listlessly at you as you pass,--and you have entered Rome. You are coming, I will suppose, from Ostia, and enter therefore by the "Porta San Paolo;" the gate where legends tell that Belisarius sat and begged. I have chosen this out of the dozen entrances as recalling fewest of past memories and leading most directly to the heart of the living, working city. You stand then within Rome, and look round in vain for the signs of a city. Hard by a knot of dark cypress-trees waves above the lonely burial-ground where Shelley lies at rest. A long, straight, pollard-lined road stretches before you between high walls far away; low hills or mounds rise on either side, covered by stunted, straggling vineyards. You pass on. A beggar, squatting by the roadside, calls on you for charity; and long after you have passed you can hear the mumbling, droning cry, "Per l'amore di Dio e della Santa Vergine," dying in your ears. On the wall, from time to time, you see a rude painting of Christ upon the cross, and an inscription above the slit beneath bids you contribute alms for the souls in purgatory. A peasant-woman it may be is kneeling before the shrine, and a troop of priests pass by on the other side. A string of carts again, drawn by bullocks, another shrine, and another troop of priests, and you are come to the river's banks. The dull, muddy Tiber rolls beneath you, and in front, that shapeless mass of dingy, weather-stained, discoloured, plaster-covered, tile-roofed buildings, crowded and jammed together on either side the river, is Rome itself. You are at the city's port, the "Ripetta" or quay of Rome. In the stream there are a dozen vessels, something between barges and coasting smacks, the largest possibly of fifty tons' burden, which have brought marble from Carrara for the sculptors' studios. There is a Gravesend-looking steamer too, lying off the quay, but she belongs to the French government, and is employed to carry troops to and from Civita Vecchia. This is all, and at this point all traffic on the Tiber ceases. Though the river is navigable for a long distance above Rome, yet beyond the bridge, now in sight, not a boat is to be seen except at rare intervals. It is the Tiber surely, and not the Thames, which should be called the "silent highway." A few steps more and the walls on either side are replaced by houses, and the city has begun. The houses do not improve on a closer acquaintance; one and all look as if commenced on too grand a scale, they had ruined their builders before their completion, had been left standing empty for years, and were now occupied by tenants too poor to keep them from decay. There are holes in the wall where the scaffolding was fixed, large blotches where the plaster has peeled away; stones and cornices which have been left unused lie in the mud before the doors. From the window- sills and from ropes fastened across the streets flutter half-washed rags and strange apparel. The height of the houses makes the narrow streets gloomy even at midday. At night, save in a few main thoroughfares, there is no light of any kind; but then, after dark at Rome, nobody cares much about walking in out-of-the-way places. The streets are paved with the most angular and slippery of stones, placed herringbone fashion, with ups and downs in every direction. Foot-pavement there is none; and the ricketty carriages drawn by the tottering horses come swaying round the endless corners with an utter disregard for the limbs and lives of the foot-folk. You are out of luck if you come to Rome on a "Festa" day, for then all the shops are shut, and the town looks drearier than ever. However, even here the chances are two to one, or somewhat more, in favour of the day of your arrival being a working-day. When the shops are open there is at any rate life enough of one kind or other. In most parts the shops have no window-fronts. Glass, indeed, there is little of anywhere, and the very name of plate-glass is unknown. The dark, gloomy shops varying in size between a coach-house and a wine-vault, have their wide shutter-doors flung open to the streets. A feeble lamp hung at the back of every shop you pass, before a painted Madonna shrine, makes the darkness of their interiors visible. The trades of Rome are primitive and few in number. Those dismembered, disembowelled carcases, suspended in every variety of posture, denote the butchers' shops; not the pleasantest of sights at any time, least of all in Rome, where the custom of washing the meat after killing it seems never to have been introduced. Next door too is an open stable, crowded with mules and horses. Those black, mouldy loaves, exposed in a wire-work cage, to protect them from the clutches of the hungry street vagabonds, stand in front of the bakers, where the price of bread is regulated by the pontifical tariff. Then comes the "Spaccio di Vino," that gloomiest among the shrines of Bacchus, where the sour red wine is drunk at dirty tables by the grimiest of tipplers. Hard by is the "Stannaro," or hardware tinker, who is always re-bottoming dilapidated pans, and drives a brisk trade in those clumsy, murderous-looking knives. Further on is the greengrocer, with the long strings of greens, and sausages, and flabby balls of cheese, and straw-covered oil-flasks dangling in festoons before his door. Over the way is the Government depot, where the coarsest of salt and the rankest of tobacco are sold at monopoly prices. Those gay, parti-coloured stripes of paper, inscribed with the cabalistic figures, flaunting at the street corner, proclaim the "Prenditoria di Lotti," or office of the Papal lottery, where gambling receives the sanction of the Church, and prospers under clerical auspices to such an extent that in the city of Rome alone, with a population under two hundred thousand, fifty-five millions of lottery tickets are said to be taken annually. Cobblers and carpenters, barbers and old clothes-men, seem to me to carry on their trades much in the same way all the world over. The peculiarity about Rome is, that all these trades seem stunted in their development. The cobbler never emerges as the shoemaker, and the carpenter fails to rise into the upholstery line of business. Bookselling too is a trade which does not thrive on Roman soil. Altogether there is a wonderful sameness about the streets. Time after time, turn after turn, the same scene is reproduced. So having got used to the first strangeness of the sight you move on more quickly. There is no lack of life about you now, at the shop-doors whole families sit working at their trades, or carrying on the most private occupations of domestic life; at every corner groups of men stand loitering about, with hungry looks and ragged garments, reminding one only too forcibly of the "Seven Dials" on a summer Sunday; French soldiers and beggars, women and children and priests swarm around you. Indeed, there are priests everywhere. There with their long black coats and broad-brimmed shovel hats, come a score of young priests, walking two and two together, with downcast eyes. How, without looking up, they manage to wend their way among the crowd, is a constant miracle; the carriages, however, stop to let them pass, for a Roman driver would sooner run over a dozen children than knock down a priest. A sturdy, bare-headed, bare-footed monk, not over clean, nor over savoury, hustles along with his brown robe fastened round his waist by the knotted scourge of cord; a ghastly-looking figure, covered in a grey shroud from head to foot, with slits for his mouth and eyes, shakes a money-box in your face, with scowling importunity; a fat sleek abbe comes sauntering along, peeping into the open shops or (so scandal whispers) at the faces of the shop-girls. If you look right or left, behind or in front, you see priests on every side,--Franciscan friars and Dominicans, Carmelites and Capuchins, priests in brown cloth and priests in serge, priests in red and white and grey, priests in purple and priests in rags, standing on the church-steps, stopping at the doorways, coming down the bye-streets, looking out of the windows--you see priests everywhere and always. Their faces are, as a rule, not pleasant to look upon; and I think, at first, with something of the "old bogey" belief of childhood, you feel more comfortable when they are not too close to you; but, ere long, this feeling wears away, and you gaze at the priests and at the beggars with the same stolid indifference. You are getting, by this time, into the heart of the city, ever and anon the streets pass through some square or piazza, each like the other. In the centre stands a broken fountain, moss-grown and weedy, whence the water spouts languidly; on the one side is a church, on the other some grim old palace, which from its general aspect, and the iron bars before its windows, bears a striking resemblance to Newgate gone to ruin. Grass grows between the flag-stones, and the piazza is emptier, quieter, and cleaner than the street, but that is all. You stop and enter the first church or two, but your curiosity is soon satisfied. Dull and bare outside, the churches are gaudy and dull within. When you have seen one, you have seen all. A crippled beggar crouching at the door, a few common people kneeling before the candle-lighted shrines, a priest or two mumbling at a side-altar, half-a-dozen indifferent pictures and a great deal of gilt and marble everywhere, an odour of stale incense and mouldy cloth, and, over all, a dim dust-discoloured light. Fancy all this, and you will have before you a Roman church. On your way you pass no fine buildings, for to tell the honest truth, there are no fine buildings in Rome, except St Peter's and the Colosseum, both of which lie away from the town. Fragments indeed of old ruins, porticoes built into the wall, bricked-up archways and old cornice-stones, catch your eye from time to time; and so, on and on, over broken pavements, up and down endless hills, through narrow streets and gloomy piazzas, by churches innumerable, amidst an ever-shifting motley crowd of peasants, soldiers, priests, and beggars, you journey onwards for two miles or so; you have got at last to the modern quarter, where hotels are found, and where the English congregate. There in the "Corso," and in one or two streets leading out of it, there are foot-pavements, lamps at night, and windows to the shops. A fair sprinkling of second-rate equipages roll by you, bearing the Roman ladies, with their gaudy dresses, ill-assorted colours, and their heavy, handsome, sensual features. The young Italian nobles, with their English-cut attire, saunter past you listlessly. The peasants are few in number now, but the soldiers and priests and beggars are never wanting. These streets and shops, brilliant though they seem by contrast with the rest of the city, would, after all, only be third-rate ones in any other European capital, and will not detain you long. On again by the fountain of Treves, where the water-stream flows day and night through the defaced and broken statue-work; a few steps more, and then you fall again into the narrow streets and the decayed piazzas; on again, between high walls, along roads leading through desolate ruin-covered vineyards, and you are come to another gate. The French sentinels are changing guard. The dreary Campagna lies before you, and you have passed through Rome. And when our stroll was over, that sceptic and incurious fellow-traveller of mine would surely turn to take a last look at the dark heap of roofs and chimney-pots and domes, which lies mouldering in the valley at his feet. If I were then to tell him, that in that city of some hundred and seventy thousand souls, there were ten thousand persons in holy orders, and between three and four hundred churches, of which nearly half had convents and schools attached; if I were to add, that taking in novices, scholars, choristers, servitors, beadles, and whole tribes of clerical attendants, there were probably not far short of forty thousand persons, who in some form or other lived upon and by the church, that is, in plainer words, doing no labour themselves, lived on the labour of others, he, I think, would answer then, that a city so priest-infested, priest- ruled and priest-ridden, would be much such a city as he had seen with me; such a city as Rome is now. CHAPTER II. THE COST OF THE PAPACY. In foreign discussions on the Papal question it is always assumed, as an undisputed fact, that the maintenance of the Papal court at Rome is, in a material point of view, an immense advantage to the city, whatever it may be in a moral one. Now my own observations have led me to doubt the correctness of this assumption, which, if true, forms an important item in the whole matter under consideration. It is no good saying, as my "Papalini" friends are wont to do, Rome gains everything and indeed only exists by the Papacy. The real questions are, What class at Rome gain by it, and what is it that they gain? There are four classes at Rome: the priests, the nobles, the bourgeoisie, and the poor. Of course if anybody gains it is the priesthood. If the Pope were removed from Rome, or if a lay government were established (the two hypotheses are practically identical), the number of the Clergy would undoubtedly be much diminished. A large portion of the convents and clerical endowments would be suppressed, and the present generation of priests would be heavy sufferers. This result is inevitable. Under no free government would or could a city of 170,000 inhabitants support 10,000 unproductive persons out of the common funds; for this is substantially the case at Rome in the present day. Every sixteen lay citizens, men, women, and children, support out of their labour a priest between them. The Papal question with the Roman priesthood is thus a question of daily bread, and it is surely no want of charity to suppose that the material aspect influences their minds quite as much as the spiritual. Still even with regard to the priests there are two sides to the question. The system of political and social government inseparable from the Papacy, which closes up almost every trade and profession, drives vast numbers into the priesthood for want of any other occupation. The supply of priests is, in consequence, far greater than the demand, and, as the laws of political economy hold good even in the Papal States, priest labour is miserably underpaid. It is a Protestant delusion that the priests in Rome live upon the fat of the land. What fat there is is certainly theirs, but then there are too many mouths to eat it. The Roman priests are relatively poorer than those in any other part of Italy. It is one of the great mysteries in Rome how all the priests who swarm about the streets manage to live. The clue to the mystery is to be found inside the churches. In every church here, and there are 366 of them, some score or two of masses are said daily at the different altars. The pay for performing a mass varies from a "Paul" to a "Scudo;" that is, in round numbers, from sixpence to a crown. The "good" masses, those paid for by private persons for the souls of their relatives, are naturally reserved for the priests connected with the particular church; while the poor ones, which are paid for out of the funds of the church, are given to any priest who happens to apply for them. So somehow or other, what with a mass or two a day, or by private tuition, or by charitable assistance, or in some cases by small handicrafts conducted secretly, the large floating population of unemployed priests rub on from day to day, in the hope of getting ultimately some piece of ecclesiastical patronage. Yet the distress and want amongst them are often pitiable, and, in fact, amongst the many sufferers from the artificial preponderance given to the priesthood by the Papal system, the poorer class of priests are not among the least or lightest. The nobility as a body are sure to be more or less supporters of the established order of things. Their interests too are very much mixed up with those of the Papacy. There is not a noble Roman family which has not one or more of its members among the higher ranks of the priesthood, and to a considerable degree their distinctions, such as they are, and their temporal prospects are bound up with the Popedom. Moreover, in this rank of the social scale the private and personal influence of the priests, through the women of the family, is very powerful. The more active, however, and ambitious amongst the aristocracy feel deeply the exclusion from public life, the absence of any opening for ambition, and the gradual impoverishment of their property, which are the necessary evils of an absolute ecclesiastical government. The "Bourgeoisie" stand on a very different footing. They have neither the moral influence of the priesthood nor the material wealth of the nobility to console them for the loss of liberty; they form indeed the "Pariahs" of Roman society. "In other countries," a Roman once said to me, "you have one man who lives in wealth and a thousand who live in comfort. Here the one man lives in comfort, and the thousand live in misery." I believe this picture is only too true. The middle classes, who live by trade or mental labour, must have a hard time of it. The professions of Rome are overstocked and underpaid. The large class of government officials or "impiegati," to whom admirers of the Papacy point with such pride as evidence of the secular character of the administration, are paid on the most niggardly scale; while all the lucrative and influential posts are reserved for the priestly administrators. The avowed venality of the courts of justice is a proof that lawyers are too poorly remunerated to find honesty their best policy, while the extent to which barbers are still employed as surgeons shows that the medical profession is not of sufficient repute to be prosperous. There is no native patronage for art, no public for literature. The very theatres, which flourish in other despotic states, are here but losing speculations, owing to the interference of clerical regulations. There are no commerce and no manufactures in the Eternal city. In a back street near the Capitol, over a gloomy, stable-looking door, you may see written up "Borsa di Roma," but I never could discover any credible evidence of business being transacted on the Roman change. There is but one private factory in Rome, the Anglo-Roman Gas Company. What trade there is is huckstering, not commerce. In fact, so Romans have told me, you may safely conclude that every native you meet walking in the streets here, in a broadcloth coat, lives from hand to mouth, and you may pretty surely guess that his next month's salary is already overdrawn. The crowds of respectably-dressed persons, clerks and shopkeepers and artizans, whom you see in the lottery offices the night before the drawing, prove the general existence not only of improvidence but of distress. The favourite argument in support of the Papal rule in Rome, is that the poor gain immensely by it. I quite admit that the argument contains a certain amount of truth. The priests, the churches, and the convents give a great deal of employment to the working classes. There are probably some 30,000 persons who live on the priests, or rather out of the funds which support them. Then, too, the system of clerical charity operates favourably for the very poor. Any Roman in distress can get from his priest a "buono," or certificate, that he is in want of food, and on presenting this at one of the convents belonging to the mendicant orders, he will obtain a wholesome meal. No man in Rome therefore need be reduced to absolute starvation as long as he stands well with his priest; that is, as long as he goes to confession, never talks of politics, and kneels down when the Pope passes. Now the evil moral effects of such a system, its tendency to destroy independent self-respect and to promote improvidence are obvious enough, and I doubt whether even the positive gain to the poor is unmixed. The wages paid to the servants of the Church, and the amount given away in charity, must come out of somebody's pockets. In fact, the whole country and the poor themselves indirectly, if not directly, are impoverished by supporting these unproductive classes out of the produce of labour. If prevention is better than cure, work is any day better than charity. After all, too, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and nowhere are the poor more poverty-stricken and needy than in Rome. The swarms of beggars which infest the town are almost the first objects that strike a stranger here, though strangers have no notion of the distress of Rome. The winter, when visitors are here, is the harvest-time of the Roman poor. It is the summer, when the strangers are gone and the streets deserted, which is their season of want and misery. The truth is, that Rome, at the present day, lives upon her visitors, as much or more than Ramsgate or Margate, for I should be disposed to consider the native commerce of either of these bathing-places quite as remunerative as that of the Papal capital. The Vatican is the quietest and the least showy of European courts; and of itself, whatever it may do by others, causes little money to be spent in the town. Even if the Pope were removed from Rome, I much doubt, and I know the Romans doubt, whether travellers would cease to come, or even come in diminished numbers. Rome was famous centuries before Popes were heard of, and will be equally famous centuries after they have passed away. The churches, the museums, the galleries, the ruins, the climate, and the recollections of Rome, would still remain equally attractive, whether the Pope were at hand or not. Under a secular government the city would be far more lively and, in many respects, more pleasant for strangers. An enterprising vigorous rule could probably do much to check the malaria, to bring the Campagna into cultivation, to render the Tiber navigable, to promote roads and railways, and to develop the internal resources of the Roman States. The gain accruing from these reforms and improvements would, in Roman estimation, far outweigh any possible loss in the number of visitors, or from the absence of the Papal court. Moreover, whether rightly or wrongly, all Romans entertain an unshakeable conviction that in an united Italian kingdom, Rome must ultimately be the chief, if not the sole capital of Italy. These reasons, which rest on abstract considerations, naturally affect only the educated classes who are also biassed by their political predilections. The small trading and commercial classes are, on somewhat different grounds, equally dissatisfied with the present state of things. The one boon they desire, is a settled government and the end of this ruinous uncertainty. Now a priestly government supported by French bayonets can never give Rome either order or prosperity. For the sake of quiet itself, they wish for change. With respect to the poor, it is very difficult to judge what their feelings or wishes may be. From what I have seen, I doubt, whether in any part of Italy, with the exception of the provinces subject to Austrian oppression, the revolution is, strictly speaking, a popular one. I suspect that the populace of Rome have no strong desire for Italian unity or, still less for annexation to Sardinia, but I am still more convinced that they have no affection or regard whatever for the existing government; not even the sort of attachment, valueless though it be, which the lazzaroni of Naples have for their Bourbon princes. It is incredible, if any such a feeling did exist, that it should refuse to give any sign of its existence at such a time as the present. With respect to the actual pecuniary cost of the Papal government, it is not easy to arrive at any positive information; I have little faith in statistics generally, and in Roman statistics in particular; I have, however, before me the official Government Budget for the year 1858. Like all Papal documents, it is confused and meagre, but yet some curious conclusions may be arrived at from it. The year 1858 was as quiet a year, be it remembered, as there has been in Italy for ten years past. It was only on new year's day, in 1859, that Napoleon dropped the first hint of the Italian war. The year 1858 may therefore be fairly regarded as a normal year under the present Papal system. For this year the net receipts of the Government were, Scudi. Direct Taxes . . . . 3,011571 Customs . . . . . . 5,444729 Stamps . . . . . . . 947184 Post . . . . . . . . 111848 Lottery . . . . . . 392813 Licences for Trade . . 174525 Total 10,082670 Now the census, taken at the end of 1857, showed a little over 600,000 families in the Papal States. The head therefore of every family had, on an average, to pay about 16 sc. and a half, or 3 pounds. 7_s_. 9_d_. annually for the expenses of the Government, which for so poor a country is pretty well. Let us now see how that money is professed to have been spent, The net expenses are, Scudi. Army . . . . . . . . 2,014047 Public Debt . . . . 4,217708 Interior . . . . . . 1,507235 Currency . . . . . . 15115 Public Works . . . . 681932 Census . . . . . . . 88151 Grant for special purposes to Minister of Finance . . . 1,415404 Total 9,949592 Now the Pontifical army is kept up avowedly not for purposes of defence, but to support the Government. The public debt of 66 millions of scudi has been incurred for the sake of keeping up this army. The expenses of the Interior mean the expenses of the police and spies, which infest every town in the Papal dominions, and the grant for Special Purposes, whatever else it may mean, which is not clear, means certainly some job, which the Government does not like to avow. The only parts, therefore, of the expenditure which can be fairly said to be for the benefit of the nation, are the expenses of the Currency, Census and Public Works, amounting altogether to 785198 scudi, or not a twelfth of the net income raised by taxation. Commercially speaking, whatever may be the case theologically, I am afraid the Papal system can hardly be said to pay. CHAPTER III. THE MORALITY OF ROME. We all know the story of "Boccaccio's" Jew, who went to Rome an unbeliever, and came back a Christian. There is no need for alarm; it is not my intention to repeat the story. Indeed the only reason for my alluding to it, is to introduce the remark that, at the present day, the Jew would have returned from Rome hardened in heart and unconverted. The flagrant profligacy, the open immorality, which in the Hebrew's judgment supplied the strongest testimony to the truth of a religion that survived such scandals, exist no longer. Rome is, externally, the most moral and decorous of European cities. In reality, she may be only a whited sepulchre, but at any rate, the whitewash is laid on very thick, and the plaster looks uncommonly like stone. From various motives, this feature is, I think, but seldom brought prominently forward in descriptions of the Papal city. Protestant and liberal writers slur over the facts, because, however erroneously, they are deemed inconsistent with the assumed iniquity of the Government and the corruptions of the Papacy. Catholic narrators know perhaps too much of what goes on behind the scenes to relish calling too close an attention to the apparent proprieties of Rome. Be the cause what it may, the moral aspect of the Papal city seems to me to be but little dwelt upon, and yet on many accounts it is a very curious one. As far as Sabbatarianism is concerned, Rome is the Glasgow of Italy. All shops, except druggists', tobacconists', and places of refreshment, are hermetically closed on Sundays. Even the barbers have to close at half- past ten in the morning under a heavy fine, and during the Sundays in Lent cafes and eating-houses are shut throughout the afternoon, because the waiters are supposed to go to catechism. The English reading-rooms are locked up; there is no delivery of letters, and no mails go out. A French band plays on the Pincian at sunset, and the Borghese gardens are thrown open; but these, till evening, are the only public amusements. At night, it is true, the theatres are open, but then in Roman Catholic countries, Sunday evening is universally accounted a feast. To make up for this, the theatres are closed on every Friday in the year, as they are too throughout Lent and Advent; and once a week or more there is sure to be a Saint's day as well, on which shops and all are closed, to the great trial of a traveller's patience. All the amusements of the Papal subjects are regulated with the strictest regard to their morals. Private or public gambling of any kind, excepting always the Papal Lottery, is strictly suppressed. There are no public dancing-places of any kind, no casinos or "cafes chantants." No public masked balls are allowed, except one or two on the last nights of the Carnival. The theatres themselves are kept under the most rigid "surveillance." Every thing, from the titles of the plays to the petticoats of the ballet-girls, undergoes clerical inspection. The censorship is as unsparing of "double entendres" as of political allusions, and "Palais Royal" farces are 'Bowdlerized' down till they emerge from the process innocuous and dull; compared with one at the "Apollo," a ballet at the Princess's was a wild and voluptuous orgy. The same system of repression prevails in everything. In the print-shops one never sees a picture which even verges on impropriety. The few female portraits exhibited in their windows are robed with an amount of drapery which would satisfy the most prudish "sensibilities." All books, which have the slightest amorous tendency, are scrupulously interdicted without reference to their political views. The number of wine-shops seems to me small in proportion to the size of the city, and in none of them, as far as I could learn, are spirits sold. There is another subject, which will suggest itself at once to any one acquainted with the life of towns, but on which it is obviously difficult to enter fully. It is enough to say, that what the author of "Friends in Council" styles, with more sentiment than truth, "the sin of great cities," does not "apparently" exist in Rome. Not only is public vice kept out of sight, as in some other Italian cities, but its private haunts and resorts are absolutely and literally suppressed. In fact, if priest rule were deposed, and our own Sabbatarians and total-abstinence men and societies for the suppression of vice, reigned in its stead, I doubt if Rome could be made more outwardly decorous than it is at present. This then is the fair side of the picture. What is the aspect of the reverse? In the first place, the system requires for its working an amount of constant clerical interference in all private affairs, which, to say the least, is a great positive evil. Confession is the great weapon by means of which morality is enforced. Servants are instructed to report about their employers, wives about their husbands, children about their parents, and girls about their lovers. Every act of your life is thus known to, and interfered with, by the priests. I might quote a hundred instances of petty interference: let me quote the first few that come to my memory. No bookseller can have a sale of books without submitting each volume to clerical supervision. An Italian gentleman, resident here, had to my own knowledge to obtain a special permission in order to retain a copy of Rousseau's works in his private library. The Roman nobles are not allowed to hunt because the Pope considers the amusement dangerous. Profane swearing is a criminal offence. Every Lent all restaurateurs are warned by a solemn edict not to supply meat on fast days, and then told that "whenever on the forbidden days they are obliged to supply rich meats, they must do so in a separate room, in order that scandal may be avoided, and that all may know they are in the capital of the catholic world." Forced marriages are matters of constant occurrence, and even strangers against whom a charge of affiliation is brought are obliged either to marry their accuser, or make provision for the illegitimate offspring. In the provinces the system of interference is naturally carried to yet greater lengths. Nine years ago certain Christians at Bologna, who had opened shops in the Jewish quarter of the town, were ordered to leave at once, because such a practice was in "open opposition to the Apostolic laws and institutions." Again, Cardinal Cagiano, Bishop of Senigaglia, published a decree in the year 1844, which has never been repealed, to promote morality in his diocese. In that decree the following articles occur: "All young men and women are strictly forbidden, under any pretext whatever, to give or receive presents from each other before marriage. All persons who have received such presents before the publication of this decree, are required to make restitution of them within three months, or to become betrothed to the donor within the said period. Any one who contravenes these regulations is to be punished by fifteen days imprisonment, during which he is to support himself at his own expense, and the presents will be devoted to some pious purpose to be determined on hereafter." I could multiply instances of this sort indefinitely, but I know of none more striking than the last. So much for the mode in which the system is worked, and now as to its practical result. To judge fully, it is necessary to get behind the scenes, a thing not easy for a stranger anywhere, least of all here. There is too the further difficulty, that when you have got behind the scenes, it is not very easy to narrate your esoteric experiences to the public. Even if there were no other objection, it would be useless to quote individual stories and facts which have come privately to my knowledge, and which would show Rome, in spite of its external propriety, to be one of the most corrupt, debauched, and demoralized of cities. Each separate story can be disputed or explained away, but the weight of the general evidence is overpowering. In these matters it is best to keep to the old Latin rule, "Experto crede." I have talked with many persons, Romans, Italians, and foreign residents, on the subject, and from one and all I have heard similar accounts. Every traveller I have ever met with, who has made like inquiries, has come to a like conviction. In a country where there is practically neither press nor public courts, nor responsible government, where even no classified census is allowed to be taken, statistics are hard to obtain, and of little value when obtained. Personal evidence, unsatisfactory as it is, is after all the best you can arrive at. With regard then to what, in its strictest sense, is termed the "morality" of Rome, I must dismiss the subject with the remarks, that the absence of recognized public resorts and agents of vice may be dearly purchased when parents make a traffic in their own houses of their children's shame, and that perhaps as far as the state is concerned the debauchery of a few is a less evil than the dissoluteness of the whole population. More I cannot and need not say. With respect to other sins against the Decalogue, it is an easier task to speak. There is very little drunkenness in Rome I freely admit, but then the Italians, like most natives of warm countries, are naturally sober. Rome is certainly not superior in this respect to other Italian cities; since the introduction of the French soldiery probably the contrary. At the street corners you constantly see exhortations against profane swearing, headed "Bestemmiatore orrendo nome," but in spite of this, the amount of blasphemies that any common Roman will pour forth on the slightest provocation, is really appalling. Beggars too are universal. Everybody begs; if you ask a common person your way along the street, the chances are that he asks you for a "buono mano." Now, even if you doubt the truth of Sheridan's dictum, that no man could be honest without being rich, it is hard to believe in a virtuous beggar. The abundance, also, of lotteries shakes one's faith in Roman morality. A population amongst whom gambling and beggary are encouraged by their spiritual and temporal rulers is not likely in other respects to be a virtuous or a moral one. The frequency of violent crimes is in itself a startling fact. To my eyes, indeed, the very look of the city and its inhabitants, is a strong _prima facie_ ground of suspicion. There is vice on those worn, wretched faces--vice in those dilapidated hovel-palaces--vice in those streets, teeming with priests and dirt and misery. In fact, if you only fancy to yourself a city, where there are no manufactures, no commerce, no public life of any kind; where the rich are condemned to involuntary idleness, and the poor to enforced misery; where there is a population of some ten thousand ecclesiastics in the prime of life, without adequate occupation for the most part, and all vowed to celibacy; where priests and priest-rule are omnipotent, and where every outlet for the natural desires and passions of men is carefully cut off--if you take in fully all these conditions and their inevitable consequences, you will not be surprised if to me, as to any one who knows the truth, the outward morality of Rome seems but the saddest of its many mockeries. CHAPTER IV. THE ROMAN PEOPLE. "Senatus Populusque Romanus." The phrase sounds strangely, in my ears, like the accents of an unknown language or the burden of a half-forgotten melody. In those four initial letters there seems to me always to lie embodied an epitome of the world's history--the rise and decline and fall of Rome. On the escutcheons of the Roman nobles, the S.P.Q.R. are still blazoned forth conspicuously, but where shall we look for the realities expressed by that world-famed symbol? It is true, the Senate is still represented by a single Senator, nominated by the Pope, who drives in a Lord Mayor's state coach on solemn occasions; and regularly, on the first night of the opera season, sends round ices, as a present to the favoured occupants of the second and third tiers of boxes at the "Apollo." This gentleman, by all the laws of senatorial succession, is the undoubted heir and representative of the old Roman Senate, who sat with their togas wrapped around them, waiting for the Gaul to strike; but alas, the "Populus Romanus" has left behind him neither heir nor descendant. Yet surely, if anything of dead Rome be still left in the living city, it should be found in the Roman people. In the _Mysteres du Peuple_ of Eugene Sue, there is a story, that to the Proletarian people, the sons of toil and labour, belong genealogies of their own, pedigrees of families, who from remote times have lived and died among the ranks of industry. These fabulous families, I have often thought, should have had their home in the Eternal City. Amongst the peasants that you meet, praying in the churches, or basking in the sun-light, or toiling in the deadly Campagna plains, there must be some, who, if they knew it, descend in direct lineage from the ancient "Plebs." It may be so, or rather it must be so; but of the fact there is little outward evidence. You look in vain for the characteristic features of the old Roman face, such as you behold them when portrayed in ancient statues. The broad low brow, the depressed skull, the protruding under-jaw, and the thin compressed lips, are to be seen no longer. Indeed, though I make the remark with the fear of the artist-world before my eyes, I should hardly say myself, that the Romans of the present day were a very handsome race; and of their own type they are certainly inferior both to Tuscans and Neapolitans. The men are well formed and of good height, but not powerful in build or make, and their features are rather marked than regular. As for the women, when you have once perceived that hair may be black as coal and yet coarse as string, that bright sparkling eyes may be utterly devoid of expression, and that an olive complexion may be deepened by the absence of washing, you grow somewhat sceptical as to the reality of their vaunted beauty. All this, however, is a matter of personal taste, about which it is useless to express a decided opinion. I must content myself with the remark, that the Roman peasantry as depicted, year after year, on the walls of our academy, bear about the same resemblance to the article provided for home consumption, as the ladies in an ordinary London ball-room bear to the portraits in the "Book of Beauty." The peasants' costumes too, like the smock-frocks and scarlet cloaks of Old England, are dying out fast. On the steps in the "Piazza di Spagna," and in the artists' quarter above, you see some score or so of models with the braided boddices, and the head-dresses of folded linen, standing about for hire. The braid, it is true, is torn; the snow-white linen dirt-besmeared, and the brigand looks feeble and inoffensive, while the hoary patriarch plays at pitch and toss: but still they are the same figures that we know so well, the traditional Roman peasantry of the "Grecian" and the "Old Adelphi." Unfortunately, they are the last of the Romans. In other parts of the city the peasants' dresses are few and far between; the costume has become so uncommon, as to be now a fashionable dress for the Roman ladies at Carnival time and other holiday festivals. On Sundays and "Festas" in the mountain districts you can still find real peasants with real peasants' dresses; but even there Manchester stuffs and cottons are making their way fast, and every year the old-fashioned costumes grow rarer and rarer. A grey serge jacket, coarse nondescript- coloured cloth trousers, and a brown felt hat, all more or less ragged and dusty, compose the ordinary dress of the Roman working man. Female dress, in any part of the world, is one of those mysteries which a wise man will avoid any attempt to explain; I can only say, therefore, that the dress of the common Roman women is much like that of other European countries, except that the colours used are somewhat gayer and gaudier than is common in the north. Provisions are dear in Rome. Bread of the coarsest and mouldiest quality costs, according to the Government tariff, by which its price is regulated, from a penny to three halfpence for the English pound. Meat is about a third dearer than in London, and clothing, even of the poorest sort, is very high in price. On the other hand, lodgings, of the class used by the poor, are cheap enough. There is no outlay for firing, as even in the coldest weather (and I have known the temperature in Rome as low as eight degrees below freezing-point), even well-to-do Romans never think of lighting a fire; and then, in this climate, the actual quantity of victuals required by an able-bodied labourer is far smaller than in our northern countries, while, from the same cause, the use of strong liquors is almost unknown. Tobacco too, which is all made up in the Papal factories and chiefly grown in the country, is reasonable in price, though poor in quality. In the country and the poorer parts of the city, the dearest cigar you can buy is only a baioccho, or under one halfpenny; and from this fact you may conclude what the price of the common cheap cigars is to a native. From all these causes, I feel no doubt that the cost of living for the poor is comparatively small, though of course the rate of wages is small in proportion. For ordinary unskilled labour, the day-wages, at the winter season, are about three pauls to three pauls and a half; in summer about five pauls; and in the height of the vintage as much as six or seven pauls, though this is only for a very few weeks. I should suppose, therefore, that from 1_s_. 6_d_. to 1_s_. 9_d_. a day, taking the paul at 5_d_., were the average wages of a good workman at Rome. From these wages, small as they are, there are several deductions to be made. In the first place, the immense number of "festas" tells heavily on the workman's receipts. On the more solemn feast-days all work is strictly forbidden by the priests; and either employer or labourer, who was detected in an infraction of the law, would be subject to heavy fines. Even on the minor festivals, about the observance of which the Church is not so strict, labour is almost equally out of the question. The people have got so used to holiday keeping, that nothing but absolute necessity can induce them to work, except on working days. All over Italy this is too much the case. I was told by a large manufacturer in Florence, that having a great number of orders on hand, and knowing extreme distress to prevail among his workmen's families, he offered double wages to any one who came to work on a "festa" day, but that only two out of a hundred responded to his offer. I merely mention this fact, as one out of many such I have heard, to show how this abuse must prevail in Rome, where every moral influence is exerted in favour of idleness against industry, and where the observance of holy days is practised most religiously. Then, too, the higher rate of wages paid in summer is counterbalanced by the extra risk to which the labourer is exposed. The ravages created by the malaria fevers amongst the ill-bred, ill-clothed, and ill-cared-for labourers, are really fearful. Indeed it is hardly an exaggeration to say, that the whole working population of Rome is eaten up with malaria. I feel myself convinced that the misery and degradation of the Papal States are to be attributed to two causes, the enormous burden of the priesthood, and the ravages of the malaria. How far these two causes are in any way connected with each other, I have never been able to determine. It is one of the rhetorical exaggerations which have impaired the utility of the _Question Romaine_, that M. About, in his remarkable work, always treats the malaria as if it was solely due to the inefficiency of the Papal Government, and would disappear with the deposition of the Pope. This unphilosophical view is generally adopted by liberal opponents of the Papacy, who lay the malaria to its doors, while Papal advocates, on the contrary, always treat the malaria as a mysterious scourge which can never be removed or even palliated; a view almost as unphilosophical as the other. For my own part, I have only been able to arrive at three isolated conclusions on the subject. First, that mere cultivation of the Campagna, as shown by Prince Borghese's unsuccessful experiments, does not at any rate immediately affect the virulence of the miasma, or whatever the malaria may be. Secondly, that the malaria can actually be built out, or, in other words, if the Campagna was covered with a stone pavement, the disease would disappear--a remedy obviously impracticable; and lastly, that though the existence of the malaria cannot be removed, as far I can see, yet that its evil effects might be immensely lessened by warm clothing, good food, and prompt medical aid at the commencement of the malady. Whatever tends to improve the general condition of the Roman peasantry will put these remedies more and more within their reach, and will therefore tend to check the ravages of the malaria. Thus, the inefficient and obstructive Government of the Vatican, which checks all material as well as all moral progress, increases indirectly the virulence of the fever-plague; but this, I think, is the most that can fairly be stated. I trust that, considering the importance of the subject, this digression, unsatisfactory as it is, may be pardoned; and I now turn to the third curse, which eats up the wages of the working man at Rome--a curse even greater, I think, than the "festas" or the malaria--I mean, the universality of the middle-man system. If you require any work done, from stone carving to digging, you seldom or never deal with the actual workman. If you are a farmer and want your harvest got in, you contract months beforehand with an agent, who agrees to supply you with harvest- men in certain numbers, at a certain price, out of which price he pockets as large a percentage as he can, and has probably commissions to pay himself to some sub-contractor. If you are a sculptor and wish a block of marble chiselled in the rough, the man you contract with to hew the block at certain day-wages brings a boy to do the work at half the above amount or less, and only looks in from time to time to see how the work is proceeding. It is the same in every branch of trade or business. If you wish to make a purchase, or effect a sale, or hire a servant, you have a whole series of commissions or brokerages to pay before you come into contact with the principal. If you inquire why this system is not broken through, why the employer does not deal directly with his workmen, you are told that the custom of the country is against any other method; that amongst the workmen themselves there is so much terrorism and intimidation and _espionnage_, that any single employer or labourer, who contracted for work independently, would run a risk of annoyance or actual injury; of having, for example, his block of marble split "by a slip of the hand," or his tools destroyed, or a knife stuck into him as he went home at night, and, more than all, that, without the supervision of the actual overseer, your workmen would cheat you right and left, no matter what wages you paid. After all it is better to be cheated by one man than by a dozen, and being at Rome you must do as the Romans do. It may possibly have been observed that, in the foregoing paragraph, I have spoken of the "workmen at Rome," not of the Roman workmen. The difference, though slight verbally, is an all-important one. The workmen in Rome are not Romans, for the Romans proper never work. The Campagna is tilled in winter by groups of peasants, who come from the Marches, in long straggling files, headed by the "Pifferari," those most inharmonious of pipers. In summer-time the harvest is reaped and the vintage gathered in by labourers, whose homes lie far away in the Abruzzi mountains. In many ways these mountaineers bear a decided resemblance to the swarms of Irish labourers who come across to England in harvest-time. They are frugal, good-humoured, and, compared to the native Romans, honest and hard-working. A very small proportion too of the working-men in Rome itself are Romans. Certain trades, as that of the cooks for instance, are almost confined to the inhabitants of particular outlying districts. The masons, carpenters, carvers, and other mechanical trades, are filled by men who do not belong to the city, and who are called and considered foreigners. Of course the rule is not without exceptions, and you will find genuine Romans amongst the common workmen, but amongst the skilled workmen hardly ever. There is a very large, poor, I might almost say, pauper population in Rome, and in some form or other these poor must work for their living, but their principle is to do as little work as possible. There still exists amongst the Romans a sort of debased, imperial pride, a belief that a Roman is _per se_ superior to all other Italians. For manual work, or labour under others, they have an equal contempt and dislike. All the semi-independent trades, like those of cab- drivers, street-vendors, petty shopkeepers, &c. are eagerly sought after and monopolized by Romans. The extent to which small trades are carried on by persons utterly without capital and inevitably embarrassed with debt, is one of the chief evils in the social system which prevails here. If the Romans also, like the unjust steward, are too proud to dig, unlike that worthy, to beg they are _not_ ashamed. Begging is a recognized and a respected profession, and if other trades fail there is always this left. The cardinal principle of Papal rule is to teach its subjects to rely on charity rather than industry. In order to relieve in some measure the fearful distress that existed among the poor of Rome in the early spring, the Government took some thousand persons into their employment, and set them to work on excavating the Forum. The sight of these men working, or, more correctly speaking, idling at work, used to be reckoned one of the stock jokes of the season. Six men were regularly employed in conveying a wheelbarrow filled with two spadefuls of soil. There was one man to each handle, two in front to pull when the road rose, and one on each side to give a helping hand and keep the barrow steady. You could see any day long files of such barrows, so escorted, creeping to and from the Forum. It is hardly necessary to say that little progress was ever made in the excavations, or, for that matter, intended to be made. Yet the majority of these workmen were able-bodied fellows, who received tenpence a day for doing nothing. Much less injury would have been inflicted on their self-respect by giving them the money outright than in return for this mockery of labour. Moreover the poor in Rome, as I have mentioned elsewhere, are not afraid of actual starvation. "Well-disposed" persons, with a good word from the priests, can obtain food at the convents of the mendicant friars. I am not saying there is no good in this custom; in fact, it is almost the one good feature I know of connected with the priestly system of government; but still, on an indolent and demoralised population like that of Rome, the benefit of this sort of charity, which destroys the last and the strongest motive for exertion, is by no means an unmixed one. The amusements of the people are much what might be expected from their occupations. To do them justice, they drink but moderately; but whenever they can spare the time and money, they crowd out into the roadside "Osterias," and spend hours, smoking and sipping the red wine lazily. Walking is especially distasteful to them; and on a Sunday and festa-day you will see hundreds of carriages filled with working people, though the fares are by no means cheap. Whole families will starve themselves for weeks before the Carnival, and leave themselves penniless at the end, to get costumes and carriages to drive down the "Corso" with on the gala days. The Romans, too, are a nation of gamblers. Their chief amusement, not to say their chief occupation, is gambling. In the middle of the day, at street-corners and in sunny spots, you see groups of working-men playing at pitch halfpenny, or gesticulating wildly over the mysterious game of "Moro." Skittles and stone-throwing are the only popular amusements which require any bodily exertion; and both of these, as played here, are as much chance as skill. The lottery, too, is the great national pastime. This picture of the Roman people may not seem a very favourable or a very promising one. I quite admit, that many persons, who have come much into contact with them, speak highly of their general good humour, their affectionate feelings and their sharpness of intellect. At the same time, I have observed that these eulogists of the Roman populace are either Papal partizans who, believing that "this is the best of all possible worlds," wish to prove also that "everything here is for the best," or else they are vehement friends of Italy, who are afraid of damaging their beloved cause by an admission of the plain truth, that the Romans are not as a people either honest, truthful or industrious. For my own part, my faith is different. A bad government produces bad subjects, and I am not surprised to find in the debasement and degradation of a priest-ruled people the strongest condemnation of the Papal system. CHAPTER V. TRIALS FOR MURDER. The idler about the streets of Rome may, from time to time, catch sight, on blank walls and dead corners, of long white strips of paper, covered with close-printed lines of most uninviting looking type, and headed with the Papal arms--the cross-keys and tiara. If, being like myself afflicted with an inquisitive turn of mind, he takes the trouble of deciphering these hieroglyphic documents, his labour would not be altogether thrown away. Those straggling strips, stuck up in out-of-the- way places, glanced at by a few idle passers-by, and torn down by the prowling vagabonds of the streets after a day or two for the sake of the paper, are the sole public records of justice issued, or allowed to be issued, under the Pontifical government. Trials are carried on here with closed doors; no spectators are admitted; no reports of the proceedings are published. In capital cases, however, _after_ the execution of the criminal has taken place a sort of _Proces verbal_ of the case and of the trial is placarded on the walls of the chief towns. During the period of my stay at Rome there were three executions in different parts of the Papal territory. Whether by accident or by design I cannot say, but all these executions occurred within a short period of each other, and, in consequence, three such statements were issued almost at the same time by the Government. With considerable difficulty I succeeded in obtaining copies of these statements, not, I am bound to say, because there seemed to be any reluctance in furnishing them, but because the fact of anybody wishing to obtain copies was so unusual, that there was no preparation made for supplying them; and, at last, I only succeeded in procuring them from a printer's devil to the Stanperia Apostolica. The facts narrated in them, and the circumstances alluded to, seem to me to throw a strange light on the administration of justice, and the daily life of this priest-ruled country. It is as such that I wish to comment on them. In these statements, be it remembered, there is no question of political or clerical bias. The facts stated are all facts, admitted by the authorities of their own free will and pleasure; and if, as I think, these facts tell most unfavourably on the judicial system of our clerical rulers, it is, at any rate, out of their own mouths they are convicted. All, therefore, that I propose to do is, having these official statements before me, to tell the stories that they contain, as shortly and as clearly as I can, adding no comment of my own but what is necessary to explain the facts in question. Let me take first the case, which is entitled "Cannara contro Luigi Bonci;" the township of Cannara, where the crime was committed, being what we should call in a civil suit the plaintiff, and the accused Bonci the defendant. CHAPTER V.--continued. THE "BONCI" MURDER. Some three years ago, then, there lived in the hamlet of Cannara, near Perugia, a family called Bonci. They belonged to the peasant class, and were poor, even among the Papal peasantry. The family consisted of the father and mother, and of their son and daughter, both grown up. Between the father and son there had long been ill-blood. The cause of this want of family harmony is but indistinctly stated, but apparently it was due to the irregular habits of the son, and to the severity of the father; while all this domestic misery was rendered doubly bitter by the almost abject want of the household. On the night of November the 9th, 1856, Venanzio Bonci, the father, Maria Rosa, his wife, and their daughter, Caterina, were at supper in the miserable room, which formed the whole of their dwelling, waiting for the return of the son, Luigi, who had been absent ever since the morning. There had been frequent quarrels before between father and son about Luigi's stopping out late, and now it was past midnight. There was no light in the room except a faint flicker from the embers, and the feeble glimmering of the starlight which entered through the open windows. A noise was heard in the stable underneath the room, and the father, thinking it was the son, called out three or four times, but got no answer. A few minutes after Luigi entered without the lantern, which he had left below in the stable, and although his sister bade him good night he made no reply. As he entered the room his father called to him, "A fine time of night to come home." "What then?" was the only answer given by Luigi. "You have never been home since morning," went on the father. "What then?" was still the only answer. The father then told the son to hold his tongue, and again received the same reply. At last Venanzio, losing his temper, called out, "Be quiet, or I'll break your head;" or, according to the story, "I'll murder you:" to which Luigi only answered, "I may as well die to-day as to-morrow." After that there was a short scuffle heard, and Venanzio suddenly cried out as if in pain, "My God! my God!" The mother and daughter screamed for help, but by the time the neighbours had come in with lights, Luigi had run off. Venanzio was found reeling to and fro, with blood pouring from several wounds, and, in spite of medical aid, he died in the course of a few hours. Almost immediately after the commission of the crime Luigi was found by the gendarmes in the cottage of an uncle, and arrested on the spot. These, as far as I can learn from the very confused documents before me, are all the facts admitted without question; or, more strictly speaking, which the Government states to have been unquestioned. Luigi was arrested on the night of the murder. Such small evidence as there was could have been ascertained in twenty-four hours, and yet the prisoner was never brought to trial till the 3rd of May, 1858; that is, eighteen months afterwards. On that day Luigi Bonci was arraigned before the civil and criminal court of Perugia, on the two counts of parricide, and of having illegal arms in his possession. The Court was composed of the President, Judge, Assistant Judge, and Deputy Judge of the district. These gentlemen (all, I should state, lay officials) were assisted by the public prosecutor and the Government counsel for the defence. The course of proceedings is stated to have been as follows: prayers were first offered up for the Divine guidance, the prisoner was introduced and identified, the written depositions were read over, a narrative of the facts was given by the president, the prisoner was called upon to reply to the charges alleged against him, the witnesses for the crown and for the prisoner were heard respectively, the counsel for the prosecution called upon the court to condemn the prisoner, and was replied to by the counsel for the defence; the discussion was then declared closed, and after the judges had retired and deliberated, their sentence was given. All the facts I have been able to put together about the case are gathered from this sentence and from those of the courts of appeal. These sentences, however, are extremely lengthy, very indistinct, and encumbered with a great deal of legal phraseology. As they are all alike I may as well give an abstract of this one as a specimen of all. The sentence begins with the following moral remarks: "Frequent paternal admonitions, alleged scarcity of daily food, and the evil counsels of others, had alienated the heart of the prisoner to such an extent, that feelings of affection and reverence towards his own father, Venanzio, had given place to contempt, disobedience, ill-will, and even worse." No one, however, would have supposed that he "was capable of becoming a parricide, as was too clearly proved on the fatal night in question." After these preliminary reflections comes a narration of the facts much in the words in which I have given them. This is followed by a statement of the arguments for the prosecution and for the defence, consisting of a number of verbose paragraphs, each beginning, "considering that," &c. The case of the prosecution was clear enough. The medical evidence proved that the father died of the wounds received on the above-named night. The fact that the wounds were inflicted by the prisoner, was established by the evidence of his mother and sister, who overheard the quarrel between him and his father, by the flight after commission of the crime, by the discovery of a blood-stained knife dropped on the threshold, by the deposition of the father before death, and lastly, by the confession of the prisoner himself, who admitted the crime, though under extenuating circumstances. The fact that the sister never heard the knife open, although it had three clasps, was asserted to be evidence that the prisoner entered the room with his knife open and intending to commit the crime. This charge of _malice prepense_ was supported by the son's refusal to answer his father, by the insolence of his language, and by the number and vehemence of the stabs he inflicted. The prisoner's defence was also very simple. According to his own story, he was half drunk on his return home. His father not only taunted and threatened him, but at last seized the door-bar and began knocking him about the head; and then, at last, maddened with pain and passion, he drew out a knife he had picked up on the road, and stabbed his father, hardly knowing what he did. On the bare statement of facts, I should deem this version of the story the more probable of the two, but as no details whatever are given of the evidence on either side, it is impossible to judge. The court at any rate decided that there was no proof of the prisoner having been drunk, and that the evidence of his father having struck him was of a suspicious character, "while," they add, "it would be absurd and immoral to maintain, that a father, whose right and duty it is to correct his children (and indeed on this occasion correction was abundantly deserved by the insolent demeanour of Luigi) could be considered to provoke his son by a slight personal chastisement." The son, by the way, was over one and twenty, a fact to which no allusion is made. As "a forlorn hope," in the words of the sentence, the counsel for the defence asserted, that whatever the crime of the prisoner might be, it was not parricide, from the simple fact that Luigi was not Venanzio's son. The facts of the case appear to have been, that Maria Rosa Battistoni being then unmarried, gave birth in July 1835 to a son, who was the prisoner at the bar; that shortly afterwards the vicar of Cannara gave information to the Episcopal court of Assisi, that Maria Rosa had been seduced by Venanzio Bonci and had had an illegitimate child by him; that, in consequence, a formal requisition was addressed by the above court to Venanzio, and that he thereupon acknowledged the paternity of the child, and expressed his readiness to marry the mother. The marriage was therefore solemnized, and the child entered in the church-books as the legitimized son of Venanzio and Maria Bonci, in June, 1836. Against this strong presumptive evidence of paternity, and the natural inference to be drawn from the child having been brought up and educated as Venanzio's son, there were only, we are told, to be set, alleged expressions of doubt on the father's part, when in a passion, as to his being really the father, and also certain confessions of the mother to different parties, that Luigi was not the child of her husband. All these confessions however, so it is asserted, were proved to be subsequent in date to the son's arrest, and therefore, probably, made with a view to save his life. The plea is in consequence rejected. No defence was attempted to the second count. Both charges are therefore declared fully proved; and as the punishment for parricide is public execution, and the penalty for having in one's possession (a lighter offence by the way, than using) any weapon without special license, consists of imprisonment from two to twelve months, and of a fine from five to sixty scudi, therefore the court "condemns Luigi Bonci for the first count, to be publicly executed in Cannara, and to make compensation to the heirs of the murdered man, according to the valuation of the civil tribunals, and to pay the cost of the trial; and on the second count, the court" (with a pedantic mockery of mercy) "considers the first three months of the incarceration the prisoner has already undergone to be sufficient punishment, coupled with a fine of five scudi and the loss of the weapon." This summary will, I fear, give the reader too favourable an opinion of the original sentence. In order to make the story at all intelligible, I have had to pick out my facts, from a perfect labyrinth of sentences and parentheses. All I, or any one else can state is, that these seem to be the facts, which seem to have been proved by the witnesses. What the character of the evidence was, or what was the relative credibility of the witnesses, whose very names I know not, or how far their assertions were borne out or contradicted by circumstantial proof, are all matters on which (though the whole character of the crime depends on them) I can form no opinion whatever. The trial occupied but one day, and yet the above sentence, it appears, was not communicated to the prisoner till the 15th of October, 1858, that is, over five months afterwards. When the official announcement of the sentence was made, the prisoner declared his intention of appealing against its justice. By the Papal law, every person condemned for a criminal offence, by the lay tribunals, has the right of appealing to the Supreme Pontifical Court. It is, therefore, needless to say, that in all cases where sentence of death is passed, an appeal is made on any ground, however trivial, as the condemned culprit cannot lose by this step, and may gain. The practical and obvious objection to this unqualified power of appeal, is that the supreme ecclesiastical court is the real judge, not the nominal lay court, which does little more than register the fact, that the crime is proved _prima facie_. On the 15th of February, 1859, after a delay of four months more from the time of appeal, the court of the supreme tribunal of the Consulta Sacra, assembled at the Monte Citorio in Rome, to try the appeal. The court was composed of six "most illustrious and reverend Judges," all "Monsignori" and all dignitaries of the Church, assisted by a public prosecutor and counsel for the defence, attached to the Papal exchequer. The course of proceedings appears to be much the same as in the inferior courts, except that no witnesses, save the prisoner, were examined orally, and the whole evidence was taken from written depositions. At last, after "invoking the most sacred name of God," the court pronounce their sentence. This sentence is in a great measure a recapitulation of the preceding one. Either no new facts were adduced, or none are alluded to. The grounds for the defence are the same as on the previous occasion, namely, the provocation given by the father, and the doubt as to the son's paternity. There were, in fact, two questions before the court. First, whether the crime committed was murder or manslaughter; and, if it was murder, whether the murderer was or was not the son of the murdered man. Instead, however, of facing either of these questions of fact, the court seems to enter upon abstract considerations, which to our notions are quite irrelevant. The degree to which paternal corrections can be carried without abuse, and the problem whether a man who kills a person, whom he believes and has reason to believe to be his father, but who is not so in fact, is guilty or not of the sin of parricide, seem rather questions for clerical casuistry than considerations which bear upon facts. The final conclusion drawn from these various reflections is, that the court confirms the judgment of the Perugian tribunal, in every respect. The rejection of the appeal is not communicated for two months more, that is, not till the 22nd of April, to the prisoner, who at once appeals again against the execution of the verdict to the Upper Court of the Supreme Tribunal. On the 13th of May the case comes on for its third and last trial. The court is again composed of six ecclesiastics of high rank, assisted by the same official counsel as before; the same course of proceeding is adopted, except that the prisoner is not brought into court or examined. Again, after "invoking the most holy name of God," the tribunal pronounces, not its sentence this time, but its judgment. This judgment alludes only to the two grounds on which the appeal is based. The first is the question of paternity, which is at once dismissed, as being a matter of evidence that has been already decided. The second ground of appeal is a technical and a legal one. The defence appears to have pleaded, that the original arrest was illegal, and that, by this fact, the whole trial was vitiated. On both sides it was admitted that the prisoner was arrested without a warrant, and not in "flagrante delicto," and that therefore the arrest was, strictly speaking, illegal. The court, however, decides, that though the prisoner was not taken in the act, yet his guilt was so manifest, that the gendarmes were justified in acting as if they had caught him perpetrating the crime, while in offences of great atrocity the police have also a discretionary power to arrest offenders, even without warrants. Though in this particular instance the result is not much to be regretted, yet it is obvious, that the admission of such a principle, and such an interpretation of the law, gives the police unlimited power of arrest, subject to the approval of their superiors: whether right or wrong, therefore, the appeal is dismissed, and the final sentence of death pronounced. It seems that this verdict was submitted on the 24th of May by the President of the Supreme Court to the consideration of his Holiness the Pope, who offered no objection to its execution. The prisoner's last chance was now gone, but, with a cruel mercy, he was left to linger on for eight months more in uncertainty. It was only on the 3rd of January, 1860, that orders were sent from Rome to Perugia, for the execution to take place there instead of at Cannara, on the 13th. On that day the verdict of the court is conveyed to the unhappy wretch. On the 14th, so the last paragraph informs us, "The condemned" Luigi Bonci "was beheaded by the public executioner, in the market-place of Perugia, and his head was there exposed for an hour to the gaze of the assembled multitude." On the 18th the report, from which these facts are taken, was placarded on the walls of Rome. The murder is committed in November, 1856; the murderer is arrested on the night of the crime; for that crime he is not tried at all till May, 1858; his final trial does not come off till May, 1859, and his execution is deferred till January, 1860. For three years and a quarter after the commission of the murder no report is published. These facts need no comment. CHAPTER V.--continued. THE "UGOLINI" MURDER. Of late years, round and about Viterbo, there was a well-known character, Giovanni Ugolini by name, a sort of itinerant "Jack-of-all-trades," who wandered about from place to place, picking up any odd job he could find, and begging when he could turn his hand to nothing else. He is described in the legal reports as a Tinker and Umbrella-mender, but his especial line of industry, novel to us at any rate, seems to have been that of a scraper and cleaner of old tombstones. By these various pursuits, he scraped together a good bit of money for a man in his position, and at the end of his winter circuit, in the year 1857, he had saved up by common report as much as 70 scudi, or about 14 pounds odd. On the 4th of May in that year, Ugolini left the little town of Castel Giorgio, with the avowed intention of going to Viterbo, to change his monies into Tuscan coin. Being belated on his road, he resolved to stop over the night at the house of a certain Andrea Volpi which lay on his road, and where he had often slept before. On the following morning, about eight o'clock, he left Volpi's house and went on his journey towards Viterbo. Nothing more is positively known about him, except that on the same day his body was found on a bye-path, a little off the direct Viterbo road, covered with wounds. No money was discovered about his person, while there was every indication of his clothes and pack having been rummaged and rifled. Assuming, as one must, the correctness of these facts, there can be no doubt that a very brutal murder and robbery had been committed. For some reasons, what, we are not told, the suspicions of the police fell at once on one of Volpi's sons, called Serafino, a lad of about 22, and on a friend of his, Bonaventura Starna, about two years older than himself. Both of these persons, who were common labourers, were, in consequence, arrested on the 7th of May. They were not tried, however, till the 27th of April, in the year following, when they were arraigned for the murder before the lay criminal and civil court of Viterbo. The two prisoners, nevertheless, are not tried on the same charge. Volpi is arraigned by the public prosecutor on a charge of wilful murder, accompanied with treachery and robbery, while Starna is only brought to trial as an accomplice to the crime, not as a principal. Before the actual guilt of either prisoner is ascertained, the public prosecutor, that is, the Government, decides the relative degree of their respective hypothetical guilt. The justice of this proceeding may be questioned, but its motive is palpable enough. There was little or no direct evidence against the prisoners, and to convict either of them, it was necessary to rely upon the testimony of the other. "With both the prisoners," so runs the sentence of the court, "a criminal motive could be established in the fact of their avowed poverty, as they each clearly admitted, that neither they nor their families possessed anything in the world, and that they derived the means of their miserable sustenance from their daily labour alone." A very close intimacy was proved to have existed between the prisoners, so much so, indeed, that Starna had frequently been reproved by his parents for his friendship with a man who stood in such ill repute as Volpi. The fact that the murdered man was, or was believed to be in possession of money, was shown to be well known amongst the Volpi family. Two of Serafino Volpi's brothers were reported to have spoken to third parties of Ugolini's savings, and one of them expressed a wish to rob him. Why this brother was neither arrested nor apparently examined, is one of the many mysteries, by the way, you come across in perusing these Papal reports. Serafino too had mentioned himself, to a neighbour, his suspicion of the tinker's having saved money. On the morning of the murder, Starna was known to have come to the Volpi's cottage, to have talked with Serafino, and to have left again in his company, shortly after Ugolini's departure. After about an hour's absence, Serafino Volpi returned home, and therefore had time enough to commit the murder. He was shown, moreover, to have been in possession of a knife, about which he could give no satisfactory account, and which might have inflicted the wounds found on the corpse. These appear to have been all the facts which could be established against either Volpi or Starna by positive evidence, and, at the worst, such facts could only be said to constitute a case for suspicion. Previously, however, to the trial, Starna turned, what we should call, "King's evidence," and, in contradiction to his foregoing statements, made a confession, on which the prosecution practically rested the whole of its case. According to this confession of Starna's, on the morning of the murder he called by accident at the Volpi's, and stopped there, till after the tinker, who was an entire stranger to him, had left the house. Serafino Volpi then offered to accompany him to his (Starna's) house, on the pretence of borrowing some tool or other. They walked quickly to avoid the rain, which was falling heavily, and shortly overtook Ugolini, who exchanged a few words with Volpi about the weather, and then turned off along a bye-road. Thereupon Volpi proposed that they should follow the old man and rob him, adding, "he has got a whole lot of coppers." Starna, according to his own story, refused to have anything to do with the matter; on which Volpi said, in that case he should do it alone, and asked Starna to go and fetch the tool he wanted, and bring it to him where they were standing. Starna then left Volpi running across the fields to overtake the tinker, and went home to find the tool. In a very short time afterwards, as he was coming back to the appointed meeting- place, he met Volpi in a great state of agitation, who told him that the job was finished, and Ugolini's throat cut, but that only 20 pauls' worth of copper money, about eight shillings, were found upon him. Starna admitted that he then took eight pauls as his own share in the booty, and told Volpi to wash off some spots of blood visible on his sleeve. He also added, that later on the same day he met Volpi again, and then expressed his alarm at what had happened; on which he received the answer, "If you had been with me, you would not be alive now." One can hardly conceive a more suspicious story, or one more clearly concocted to give the best colour to the witness's own conduct, at the expense of his fellow-prisoner. No evidence whatever appears to have been brought in support of this confession. The court, notwithstanding, decides that the truth of this statement is fully established by internal and external testimony, and therefore declares that the alleged crimes are clearly proved against both the prisoners. "Considering," nevertheless, "that though Starna was an accomplice in the crime, from his having assisted Volpi, and from having, by his own confession, shared in the booty, yet that his guilt was less, both in the conception and in the perpetration of the crime, there being no proof that he had taken any active part in the murder of Ugolini," therefore, "in the most holy name of God," the court sentences Volpi to public execution, and Starna to twenty years at the galleys. Of course, both the prisoners resorted to their invariable right of appeal, but their case did not come on before the lower court of the Supreme Clerical Tribunal at Rome for upwards of a year, namely, on the 17th of May, 1859. At this trial, no new facts whatever appear to have been adduced. I gather indistinctly, that Volpi's defence was that he had not left his father's house at all on the morning of the murder, but that his attempt to prove an "alibi" was unsuccessful. The chief object indeed of the very lengthy sentence of the court, recapitulating the evidence already stated, is to establish the comparative innocence of Starna, who, for some cause or other, seems to have been favourably regarded. We are told, that "the confession of Starna is confirmed by a thousand proofs;" that "it is clearly shown" that Starna "in this confession did not deny his own responsibility; a fact which gives his statement the character of an incriminative and not of an exonerative confession; and that though he might possibly have wished, in his statement of the facts, to modify and extenuate his own share in the crime, yet there was no reason to suspect that he wished gratuitously to aggravate the guilt of his comrade;" and that also taking into consideration the villainous character of Volpi, it cannot be doubted, that he was the principal in the crime. The court at Viterbo had decided that the crime of the prisoners was murder, coupled with robbery and treachery. The Court of Appeal decides, on what seem sufficient grounds, that there is no proof of treachery, and therefore, the crime not being of so heinous a character, reduces the period of Starna's punishment from twenty to fifteen years, while it simply confirms the sentence of death on Volpi. Again, as a matter of course, there is an appeal from this sentence to the upper court of the Supreme Tribunal, which appeal comes off after four months' delay, on the 9th of September, 1859. The only ground of appeal brought forward is one which, according to our notions of law, should have been brought forward from the first, namely, that the guilt of Volpi is not adequately proved by the unsupported statement of his accomplice Starna, and "that the evidence which corroborates this statement, only constitutes an _a priori_ probability of his guilt." The court, however, dismisses this plea at once, on the ground that it is not competent to take cognizance of an argument based on the abstract merits of the case, and therefore confirms the verdict. On the 25th of November the sentence is submitted to, and approved by, the Pope. On the 3rd of January, 1860, orders are issued from Rome for the execution to take place. On the 17th the authorities of Viterbo notify to the prisoner that his last appeal has been dismissed, and "call on the military to lend their support to the execution of the sentence," and on the following day, two years and eight months after his arrest, Volpi is executed for the murder of Ugolini on the Piazza della Rocca at Viterbo. On that day, too, appears the first report of his crime and trial. CHAPTER V.--continued. THE "AVANZI" MURDER. In July, 1859, there were in the Bagnio of Civita Vecchia two galley slaves, Antonio Simonetti and Domenico Avanzi. Simonetti was a man of thirty, whose life, short as it was, seemed to have been one long career of crime. He had enlisted at an early age in the Pontifical dragoons, and served for seven years; on leaving the army, he became a porter, and within a few months was guilty of a highway robbery, and sentenced to the galleys for life, then to five years' hard labour for theft, and again to seven years at the galleys for an attempt to escape, though how the last punishment could be super-added to the first, is a fact I cannot hope to explain. Of Avanzi nothing is mentioned, except that he was an elderly man condemned to a lengthened term of imprisonment for heavy crimes. Prisoners, it seems, condemned for long periods, are not sent out of doors to labour at the public works, but are employed within the prison. Both Simonetti and Avanzi were set to work in the canvas factory, and according to a system adopted in many foreign gaols, they received a certain amount of pay for their labour. An agreement had been made between the pair, that one should twist and the other spin the hemp; and the price paid for their joint work was to be divided between them in certain proportions. About a fortnight before the murder this sort of partnership was dissolved at the proposal of Simonetti, and some days after Avanzi made a claim on his late partner for the price of two pounds of hemp not accounted for. There seems to have been no particular dispute about this, but on the morning of the murder, Simonetti was summoned before the overseer of the factory, on the ground of his refusal to pay the sum claimed by Avanzi of fifteen baiocchi, or seven pence halfpenny. Simonetti did not deny that Avanzi had some claim upon him, but disputed the amount. At last, the overseer proposed, as an amicable compromise, that Simonetti should pay down seven baiocchi as a settlement in full, sooner than have a formal investigation. Both parties adopted the suggestion readily, and returned to their work apparently satisfied. An hour and a half after, while Avanzi was sitting at his frame, with his face to the wall, Simonetti entered the room with an axe he had picked up in the carpenter's store, and walking deliberately up to Avanzi, struck him with the axe across the neck, as he was stooping down. Almost immediate death ensued, and on the arrival of the guard, Simonetti was arrested at once, and placed in irons. Probably, as a matter of policy, so daring a crime required summary punishment; at any rate, Papal justice seems to have been executed with unexampled promptitude. With what the report justly calls "laudable celerity," the case was got ready for trial in a week, and on the 30th of July, the civil and criminal court of Civita Vecchia met to try the prisoner. There could be no conceivable question about the case. The murder had been committed during broad daylight, in a crowded room, and indeed, the prisoner confessed his guilt, and only pleaded gross provocation as an excuse. There was no proof, however, that Avanzi had used irritating language; and even if he had, too long a time had elapsed between the supposed offence and the revenge taken, for the excuse of provocation to hold good. Indeed, as the sentence of the court argues, in somewhat pompous language, "Woe to civil intercourse and human society, if, contrary to every principle of reason and justice, an attempt to enforce one's just and legal rights by honest means, were once admitted as an extenuating circumstance in the darkest crimes, or as a sufficient cause for exciting pardonable provocation in the hearts of criminals." The tribunal too considers, that the crime of the prisoner was aggravated by the fact, that his mind remained unimpressed "by the horrors of his residence, or the dreadful aspect and sad fellowship of his thousand unfortunate companions in guilt, or by the flagrant penalties imposed upon him, for so many crimes." On all these grounds, whether abstract or matter-of-fact, the court declares the prisoner guilty of the wilful murder of Avanzi, and sentences him to death. On the morrow this sentence is conveyed to Simonetti, who appeals. With considerable expedition the Supreme Tribunal meet to hear the case on the 23rd of September. The prisoner alleged before this court that his indignation had been excited by improper proposals made to him by the murdered man, and it was on this account their partnership had been dissolved. Besides certain inherent improbabilities in this story, the court decides that it was incredible that, if true, Simonetti should not have made the statement at his previous trial. The appeal was therefore dismissed, and the sentence of death confirmed. This decision was notified to the prisoner on the 18th of November, who again appeals to the higher Court, which meets to try the appeal on the 29th of the same month. This court at once decided that there was no ground for supposing the crime was not committed with "malice prepense," or for modifying the verdict. It is not stated when the sentence was submitted to the Pope, but on the 20th of January, 1860, the rejection of his final appeal is communicated to the prisoner, and on the 21st the execution takes place, and the report is published. Now, if I had wished solely to decry the Papal system of justice, I should not have given the report of the last trial, which seems to me far the most favourable specimen of the set I have come across. I am inclined to believe, from the meagre narratives before me, that all the criminals whose cases I have narrated were guilty of the crimes alleged against them, and fully deserved the fate they met with. My object, however, has been to point out certain features which must, I think, force themselves on any one who has read these cases carefully. The disregard for human life, the abject poverty, the wide-spread demoralization in the rural districts indicated by these stories, are startling facts in a country which has been for centuries ruled by the vicegerents of Christ on earth. At the same time, the great protraction of the trials and the utter uncertainty about the date of their occurrence, the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence, the want of any cross-examination, the manner in which strict law is disregarded from a clerical view of justice, and the identity between the court and the prosecution, the abuse of the unlimited power of appeal, and the extent to which this appeal from a lay to a clerical court places justice virtually in the hands of the priesthood; and finally, the secret and private character of the whole investigation, coupled with the utter absence of any check on injustice through publicity, are all matters patent even to a casual observer. If such, I ask, is Papal justice, when it has no reason for concealment and has right upon its side, what would it be in a case where injustice was sought to be perpetrated and concealed? CHAPTER V.--continued. THE "SANTURRI" MURDER. Some months after I had written the question which closes the last chapter, I was fortunate enough to obtain a partial answer to it. During the present year the Cavaliere Gennarelli, a Roman barrister, and a member of the Roman parliament in 1848, has published a series of official documents issued by the Papal authorities during the last ten years; the most damning indictment, by the way, that was ever recorded against a Government. Amongst those documents there appears the official sentence which, as usual, was published after the execution of a certain Romulo Salvatori in 1851. The trial possesses a peculiar momentary interest from the fact that Garibaldi is one of the persons implicated in the charge, and that the gallant general, if captured on Roman territory, would be liable to the judgment passed on him in default. It is, however, rather with a view to show how the Papal system of justice works, when political bias comes into play, that I propose to narrate this story as a sequel to the others. The words between inverted commas are, as before, verbal translations from the sentence. From that sentence I have endeavoured to extract first the modicum of facts which seem to have been admitted without dispute. During the death-struggle of the Roman Republic, when the Neapolitan troops had entered the Papal territory on their fruitless crusade, the country round Velletri was occupied by Garibaldi's soldiery. Near Velletri there is a little town called Giulianello, of which a certain Don Dominico Santurri was the head priest. Justly or unjustly, this priest, and two inhabitants of the town, named De Angelis and Latini, were accused of plotting against the Republic; arrested by order of one of Garibaldi's officers; imprisoned for a couple of days, and, after a military examination (though of what nature is a matter of dispute) found guilty of treason against the state. The priest was sentenced to death and shot at once; the other two prisoners were dismissed with a reproof. Subsequently orders were issued for their re-arrest. One of them, Latini, had made his escape meanwhile; the other, De Angelis, being less fortunate, was arrested again and executed. Now, how far these persons were really guilty or not of the offence for which they suffered, I of course have no means of knowing. Common sense tells one that a nation, fighting for dear life against foes abroad and traitors within, is obliged to deal out very rough and summary justice, and can hardly be expected to waste much time in deliberation. At any rate, when the Papal authority was restored, the Pope, on the demand of the French, declared a general amnesty for all political offences. This promise, however, of an amnesty, like many other promises of Pius the Ninth, was made with a mental reservation. The Pope pardoned all political offenders, but then the Pope alone was the judge of what constituted a political offence. In accordance with this system the execution of Santurri and De Angelis was decided not to have been a political offence, but a case of private vengeance, and "the indignation of the public was so strong," that Government could not refuse the imperative call for justice. Within a few weeks, therefore, of the Papal restoration, seven inhabitants of Giulianello were arrested on the charge of being concerned in the murders of Santurri and De Angelis. On the 4th of April, 1851, the Supreme Court of the Sacra Consulta met to try the prisoners--nearly two years after the date of their arrest. The court, as usual, was composed of six high dignitaries of the Church, and throughout the mode of procedure differed in nothing that I can learn from what I have described in the former trials, except that there is no allusion to any preliminary trial before the ordinary lay courts. Whether this omission is accidental, or whether, as in other instances during the Papal "Vendetta" after '49, the ordinary forms of justice were dispensed with, I cannot say. Garibaldi, De Pasqualis, and David, "self-styled" General, Colonel, and auditor respectively of the Roman army, were summoned to appear and answer to the charge against them, or else to allow judgment to go by default. The prisoners actually before the bar were Romolo Salvatori, Vincenzo Fenili, Luigi Grassi, Francesco Fanella, Dominico Federici, Angelo Gabrielli, Teresa Fenili. It is curious, to say the least, that all the prisoners appear to have been leading members of the liberal party at Giulianello. Salvatori was elected Mayor of the town during the Republic, and the next four prisoners held the office there of "Anziani" at the same period, an office which corresponds somewhat to that of Alderman in our old civic days. The chief witnesses for the prosecution were Latini, who so narrowly escaped execution, and the widow of De Angelis, persons not likely to be the most impartial of witnesses. The whole sentence is in fact one long "ex parte" indictment against Salvatori. The very language of the sentence confesses openly the partizanship of the court. I am told that, in May 1849, "The Republican hordes commanded by the adventurer Garibaldi, after the battle with" (defeat of?) "the Royal Neapolitan troops at Velletri, had occupied a precarious position in the neighbouring towns," and a good number of these troops were stationed at Valmontone, under the command of the so- called Colonel De Pasqualis; that at this period, when "an accusation sent to the commanders of these freebooters was sufficient to ruin every honest citizen," Salvatori, in order to gratify his private animosity against Santurri, De Angelis, and Latini, forwarded to De Pasqualis an unfounded accusation against them of intriguing for the overthrow of the Republic; and in order to give it a "colour of probability," induced the above-named Anziani to sign it; and that, in order to accomplish his impious design, he wrote a private letter to De Pasqualis, telling him how the arrest of the accused might be effected. Again, I learn that a search, instituted by Salvatori into the priest Santurri's papers, produced no "evidence favourable to his infamous purpose," that the accused were never examined, though "a certain David, who pretended to be a military auditor, made a few vague inquiries of Santurri, and noted the answers down on paper with a pencil." Then we have a queer story how, when Santurri implored for mercy, David replied, "Priests may pardon, but Garibaldi never," though the very next minute David is represented as announcing to De Angelis and Latini, that Garibaldi had granted them their pardon. Then I am informed that Salvatori used insulting language to Santurri on his arrest; that it was solely owing to Salvatori's remonstrances that orders were issued for the re-arrest of Latini and De Angelis; and that though Salvatori ultimately, at the prayer of De Angelis' wife, gave her a letter to De Pasqualis interceding for her husband, yet he purposely delayed granting it till he knew it would be too late. Such are the heads of the long string of accusations against Salvatori, of which practically the sentence is composed. The evidence, as far as it is given in the sentence on which the accusations rest, is vague in the extreme. The proof of any personal ill-will against the three victims of the Republic, on the part of any of the prisoners, is most insufficient. Salvatori is said to have had an old grudge against Santurri, about some wood belonging to the Church, to which he had made an unjust claim. De Angelis was stated to have once threatened to shoot Salvatori; but this, even in Ireland, could hardly be construed into evidence that therefore Salvatori was resolved to murder De Angelis. The only ground of ill-will that can be suggested, as far as Latini is concerned, is that he was a partizan of the priesthood. The act of accusation against Santurri and his fellow-victims, forwarded by the authorities of Giulianello, though essential to the due comprehension of the story, is not forthcoming; and no explanation even is offered of the motives which induced the four "Anziani" to sign a charge which, by the Papal hypothesis, they knew to be utterly unfounded. The bare idea, that Santurri or the others were really guilty of any intrigues against the Republic, is treated as absurd; the fact that any trial or investigation ever took place is slurred over; and yet, with a marvellous inconsistency, Salvatori is accused of being in reality the guilty author of these executions, because some witness--name not given--reports that he heard a report from a servant of Garibaldi, that Santurri was only executed, in opposition to Garibaldi's own wish, in consequence of Salvatori's representations. What was the nature of Salvatori's defence cannot be gathered from the sentence. From another source, however, I learn that it was such as one might naturally expect. During 1849, the mayors of the small country towns were entrusted with political authority by the Government. In the exercise of his duty, as mayor, Salvatori discovered that Santurri and the others were in correspondence with the Neapolitans, who were then invading the country, and reported the charge to the officer in command. The result of a military perquisition was to establish convincing proof of the charge of treason. Santurri was tried by a court martial, and sentenced at once to execution; as were also his colleagues, on further evidence of guilt being discovered. Salvatori, therefore, pleaded, that his sole offence, if offence there was, consisted in having discharged his duty as an official of the Republican Government, and that this offence was condoned by the Papal amnesty. This defence, as being somewhat difficult to answer, is purposely ignored; and a printed notice, published on the day of Santurri's execution, and giving an account of his trial and conviction, is rejected as evidence, because it is not official! Considering the tone of the sentence it will not be matter of surprise, that the court sums up with the conclusion, that "Not the slightest doubt can be entertained that the wilful calumnies and solicitations of the prisoner Salvatori were the sole and the too efficacious causes of the result he had deliberately purposed to himself" (namely, the murder of Santurri); and therefore unanimously condemns him to public execution at Anagni. Vincenzo Fenili and Grassi, who had co-operated in the arrest of Santurri, are sentenced to 20 years' labour on the hulks. There not being sufficient evidence to convict Fanella, Federici, and Teresa Fenili, they are to be--not acquitted, but kept in prison for six months more, while Gabrielli, whose only offence was, that he told Salvatori where the priest Santurri was to be found, though without any evil motive, is to be released provisionally, having been, by the way, imprisoned already for 18 months, while Garibaldi and De Pasqualis are to be proceeded against in default. Salvatori was executed on the 10th of September, 1851; Fenili and Grassi are probably, being both men in the prime of life, still alive and labouring in the Bagnio of Civita Vecchia, where, at their leisure, they can appreciate the mercies of a Papal amnesty. It seems to me that I should have called this chapter the Salvatori rather than the Santurri murder, and then the question asked at the end of the last would have required no answer. CHAPTER VI. THE PAPAL PRESS. At Rome there is no public life. There are no public events to narrate, no party politics to comment on. Events indeed will occur, and politics will exist even in this best regulated of countries; but as all narration of the one, and all manifestation of the other, are equally interdicted for press purposes, neither events nor politics have any existence. To one, who knows the wear and tear of the London press, to whom the very name of a newspaper recalls late hours and interminable reports, despatches and telegrams, proof-sheets, parliamentary debates and police intelligence, leading articles and correspondents' letters; a very series of Sisyphean labours, without rest or end; to such an one the position of the Roman journalist seems a haven of rest, the most delightful of all sinecures. There are many mysteries indeed about the Papal Press. Who writes or composes the papers is a mystery; who reads or purchases them is perhaps a greater mystery; but the bare fact of their existence is the greatest mystery of all. Even the genius of Mr Dickens was never able to explain satisfactorily to the readers of _Nicholas Nickleby_, why Squeers, who never taught anything at Dotheboys Hall, and never intended anything to be taught there, should have thought it necessary to engage an usher to teach nothing; and exactly in the same way, it is an insoluble problem why the Pontifical Government, which never tells anything and never intends anything to be told, should publish papers, in order to tell nothing. The greatest minds, however, are not exempt from error; and it must be to some hidden flaw in the otherwise perfect Papal system, that the existence of newspapers in the sacred city is to be ascribed. The marvel of his own being must be to the Roman journalist a subject of constant contemplation. The Press of Rome boasts of three papers. There is the _Giornale di Roma_, the _Diario Romano_, and, last and least, the _Vero Amico del Popolo_. The three organs of Papal opinion bear a suspicious resemblance to each other. The _Diary_ is a feeble reproduction of the _Journal_, and the _Peoples True Friend_, which I never met with, save in one obscure cafe, is a yet feebler compound of the two; in fact, the _Giornale di Roma_ is the only one of the lot that has the least pretence to the name of a newspaper; it is, indeed, the official paper, the London Gazette of Rome. It consists of four pages, a little larger in size than those of the _Examiner_, and with about as much matter as is contained in two pages of the English journal. The type is delightfully large, and the spaces between the lines are really pleasant to look at; next to a Roman editor, the position of a Roman compositor must be one of the easiest berths in the newspaper-world. Things are taken very easily here, and the _Giornale_ never appears till six o'clock at night, so that writers and printers can take their pleasure and be in bed betimes. There is no issue on Sundays and Feast-days, which occur with delightful frequency. This ideal journal, too, has no fixed price. The case of any one being impatient enough about news to buy a single number seems hardly to be contemplated. The yearly subscription is seven scudi, which comes to between a penny and five farthings a number; but for a single copy you are asked half a paul, or twopence halfpenny. This however must be regarded as a fancy price, as single copies are not an article on demand; they can only be obtained, by the way, at the office of the Gazette in the Via della Stamperia, and this office is closed from noon, I think, to sunset. Suppose, for the sake of argument, there was an English newspaper at Rome. Let us consider what would be its summary of contents, this day on which I write. Putting aside foreign topics altogether, what might one naturally suppose would be the Roman news? There is the revolution in the Romagna; if private reports are not altogether false, there have been disturbances in the Marches; there is the question of the Congress, the rumoured departure of the French troops, the state of the adjoining kingdoms, the movements of the Pontifical army, and the promised Papal reforms. Add to all this, there is the recent mysterious attempt at murder in the Minerva hotel, about which all kinds of strange rumours are in circulation. Suppose too, which heaven forbid, that I was a Roman citizen, and had no means of catching sight of foreign newspapers, which is extremely probable, or understood no foreign language, which is more probable still; what in this case should I learn from my sole source of information, my _Giornale di Roma_, about my own city and my own country, on this 19th of January, in the year of grace 1860? The first fact brought before my eager gaze on taking up the paper, would be that yesterday was the feast of St Peter's chair. Solemn mass was, I learn, performed in the cathedral, in the presence of "our Lord's Holiness," and a Latin oration pronounced in honour of the Sacred Chair. After the ceremony was over, it seems that the Senator of Rome, Marquis Mattei, presented an address to the Pope, with a copy of which I am kindly favoured. The Senator, in his own name and in that of his colleagues in the magistracy, declares, that "if at all times devotion to the Pontiff and loyalty to the Sovereign was the intense desire of his heart, it is more ardent to-day than ever, since he only re-echoes the sentiment of the whole Catholic world, which with wonderful unanimity proclaims its veneration for the august Father of the faithful, and offers itself, as a shield, to the Sovereign of Rome." He adds, that "his mind revolts from those fallacious maxims, which some persons try to insinuate into the feeble minds of the people, throwing doubts on the incontestable rights of the Church, and that he looks with contempt on such intrigues." As however both the Senator and his colleagues are nominees of the Pope, and as a brother of the Marquis is a Cardinal, I feel sceptical as to the value of their opinion. The next paragraph tells me, that in order to testify their devotion to the Papacy the inhabitants of Rome illuminated their houses last night in honour of the feast. Unfortunately, I happened to walk out yesterday evening, and observed that the lamps were very few and far between, while in the only illuminated house I entered I found the proprietor grumbling at the expense which the priests had insisted on his incurring. I have then a whole column about the proceedings at the "Propaganda" on the festival of the Epiphany, now some days ago. The Archbishop of Thebes, I rejoice to learn, excited the pupils of the Academy to imitate the virtues manifested in the "Magi," by an appropriate homily, drawing a striking parallel between the simplicity, the faith and honesty of the three kings, and the disbelief and hypocrisy of the wicked king Herod. I wonder if I have ever heard of Herod under a more modern name, and pass on to a passage, written in italics, in order to attract my special attention. The "Propaganda" meeting is, I am informed, "a noble spectacle, which Rome alone can offer to the world; that Rome, which God has made the capital of His everlasting kingdom." This concludes the whole of my domestic intelligence; all that I know, or am to know, about the state of my own country. Then follows the foreign intelligence, under the heading of "Varieties." Seventy pro-papal works have, I read, been published in France; indeed, the zeal in behalf of the Pontifical cause gains, day by day, so rapidly in that country, that "every one," so some provincial paper says, "who can hold a pen in hand uses it in favour of justice and religion, upon the question of the Papacy." So much for France. All I learn about Italy is that all writings in defence of the Pope are eagerly sought after and perused. Spanish affairs meet with more attention. An English vessel has been captured, it seems, freighted with 14,000 bayonets for Tangiers; and the shipwrecked crew of a French brig were all but massacred by the Moors, or rather, if they were not massacred, it was from no want of malignity on the part of the infidels. I have next an account of the opening of the Victoria Bridge, Canada, interesting certainly, though I confess that some account, when the sewers in the Piazza di Spagna are likely to be closed, would possess more practical interest for myself. This paragraph is followed by two columns long of the American President's letter to Congress; a subject on which, as a Roman citizen, I do not feel keenly excited. The next heading is the "Morning's News." This news is made up of small short extracts from, or more correctly speaking, small paragraphs about--extracts from--the foreign newspapers. If I have not heard any rumours at my cafe, these paragraphs are commonly unintelligible; if I have heard any such reports of agitation or excitement abroad in reference to the Papacy I always find from the paragraphs, that these reports were utterly erroneous. There is a good deal about the new French free-trade tariff, and the pacific intentions of the emperor. There are grave discussions, it appears, in the cabinets of London and Turin; and the return of the conservative Count Walewski to office is confidently expected in Paris. Lord Cowley's journey to London is now known to have no political signification, and the idea that any accord between France and England betokened a desertion of the Villa-Franca stipulations, is asserted, on the best authority, to be an entire delusion. This concludes my budget of news. A whole page is covered with quotations from Villemain's pamphlet, _La France, l'Empire et la Papaute_; but as my own personal experience must of course be the best evidence as to the blessings of a Papal government, this seems to me to be carrying coals to Newcastle. I have then a list of the strangers arrived at Rome, one advertisement of some religious work, _The Devotions of Saint Alphonso Maria de Liguori_, a few meteorological observations from the Pontifical observatory, and half-a-dozen official notices of legal judgments, in cases about which, till now, I have never been allowed to hear a single allusion. I have, however, the final satisfaction of observing that my paper was printed at the office of the Holy Apostolic Chamber. "Ex uno," my Roman friend might truly say, "disce omnes." The number I have taken as a sample is one of more than average interest. I know, indeed, no greater proof of the anxiety and alarm of the Papal government than that so much intelligence should be allowed to ooze out through the Roman press. I know also of no greater proof of its weakness. A strong despotic government may ignore the press altogether; but a despotism which tries to defend itself by the press, and such a press, must be weak indeed. None but a government of priests, half terrified out of their senses, would dream of feeding strong men with such babes' meat as this. There are Signs of the Times even in the _Giornale di Roma_. CHAPTER VII. THE POPE'S TRACT. If it has ever been the fortune of my readers to mix in tract-distributing circles, they will, doubtless, have become acquainted with a peculiar style of literature which, for lack of a more appropriate appellation, I should call the "candid inquirer" and "intelligent operative" style. The mysteries of religion, the problems of social existence, the intricate casuistries of contending duties, are all explained, in a short and simple dialogue between a maid-servant and her mistress; or a young, a very young man, and his parochial pastor, or a ne'er-do-weel sot and a sober, industrious artisan. The price is only a penny (a reduction made on ordering a quantity), and the logic is worthy of the price. In its dire distress and need the Papacy has resorted, as a forlorn hope, to the controversial tract system. As an abstract matter this is only fair play. The Pope has had so many millions of tracts published against him, that it is hard if he may not produce one little one in his own defence. His Holiness may say with truth, in the words of Juvenal, Semper ego auditor tantum? nunquamne reponam, Vexatus toties? But, as a matter of policy, if he has got so very little to say for himself, it would be perhaps wiser if he held his tongue. Be that as it may, the Vatican has thought fit to bring out a small brown paper tract, in answer to the celebrated, too-celebrated, pamphlet, _Le Pape et le Congres_. The tract is of the smallest bulk, the clearest type, the best paper, and the cheapest price. Mindful of the Horatian dictum, it plunges at once "in medias res," and starts, out of breath, with the following interjections: "The end of the world has come. Some want a Pope and not a King; others half a Pope and half a King; and others again, no Pope and no King. And who are these persons--Catholics or Protestants, Jews or Phalansterians, believers or unbelievers? Men who have once believed, and believe no longer, or men who have never believed at all? Which are the most sincere of these classes? The last, who say, 'God and the people,' and who mean to say, 'No more Popes, and no more Kings.' Which are the most hypocritical? The second, the men of half measures, who wish for half a Pope and half a King, trusting the while, that either Pope or King may die of inanition, or at any rate that the King will. Which are the greatest dupes? The first, who, Pharisee-like, offering up their prayers, and going to church once a year, deceive themselves with the idea, that the Pope will be more powerful and more free in the vestry of St Peter's than in the palace of the Vatican." The above view of the devotional habits prevalent amongst the Pharisees may appear somewhat novel, but let that pass. Meanwhile, any one experienced in tract lore will feel certain that this outburst will be followed by the appearance of the "candid inquirer," who comes upon the boards at once, in obedience to the call, and addresses the eloquent controversialist with the stereotyped phrases. "These three classes of persons, who raise an outcry against the temporal power of the Pope, are of different stamps; for I understand well whom you allude to; you mean the sincere, the moderate and the devout opponents of the Papacy. I have, however, one or two questions, I should like to ask you; would you be kind enough to answer me?" X of course replies, that nothing in the world would give him so much pleasure; and during the first dialogue the candid inquirer appears in the character of D, the devout opponent. The pamphlet is much too long and too tedious to give in full. Happily the arguments are few in number; and such as they are, I shall be able to pick them out without much difficulty, quoting the exact words of the dialogue, wherever it rises to peculiar grandeur. X opens the discussion by carrying an assault at once into the enemy's weak places: "You devout believers say that a Court is not fitting for a priest. Everybody, however, knows that, at the Papal Court, the time and money of the public are not frittered away in parties and fetes and dances. Everybody knows too that women are not admitted to the Vatican, and therefore the habits of the court are not effeminate, while the whole of its time is spent in transacting state affairs; and the due course of justice is not disturbed by certain feminine passions." After this statement, startling to any one with a knowledge of the past, and still more to an inhabitant of Rome at the present day, the devout inquirer wisely deserts the domain of stern facts, and betakes himself to abstract considerations. His first position, that the Vicar of Christ ought to follow the example of his master, who had neither court nor kingdom, nor where to lay his head, is upset at once by the _argumentum ad hominem_, that, according to the same rule, every believer ought to get crucified. No escape from this dilemma presenting itself to our friend D's devout but feeble mind, X follows up the assault, by asking him, as a _deductio ad absurdum_, whether he should like to see the Pope in sandals like St Peter. The catechumen falls into the trap at once; flares up at the idea of such degradation being inflicted on the "Master of kings and Father of the faithful;" and asks indignantly if, for a "touch of Italianita," he is to be suspected of having "washed away his baptism from his brow." Henceforth great D, after "Charles Reade's" style, becomes little d. Logically speaking, it is all over with him. If the Pope be the master of kings, he must by analogy have the rights of a master, liberty to instruct and power to correct. The old parallel of a schoolmaster and his scholars is adduced. D feels he is caught; states, in the stock formula, "that this parallel between the master of kings and the master of scholars puzzles me, because it is unimpeachable; and yet I don't want to concede everything, and cannot deny everything." As a last effort, he suggests with hesitation, that "after all, a law which secured the Pope perfect liberty of speech, action and judgment, would fulfil all the necessities of the case; and that in other respects the Pope might be a subject like anybody else." On this suggestion X tramples brutally. D is asked, how the observance of this law is to be enforced, and can give no answer, on which X bursts into the most virulent abuse of all liberal governments in terms commensurate with the offence. "Praised be God, the days of Henry the VIIIth are passed, and Catholics and Bishops, and all men of great and free intellects need no longer lose their heads beneath the British axe. But are you ignorant that the 'most catholic France' has had proclaimed from her tribunes, that the law is of no creed? Are you ignorant of the Josephian laws of Austria? Glory be now to her young and most devout of catholic sovereigns! but are you not aware, that in the reign of Joseph the bishops in that empire were not allowed to write to, or correspond freely with, the Pope? . . . I suppose, forsooth, you expect observance of the law from those liberal governments of yours, which make the first use of their liberty to destroy liberty itself; who exile bishops, and who, in the face of all the world, break the plighted faith of treaties and concordats--oh yes, those governments, who spy into the most secret recesses of family life, and create the monstrous and tyrannical _Loi des suspects_, oh yes, _they_ are sure to respect the liberty and the independence of the Bishop of Rome! and are you baby enough to believe or imagine it?" D cowers beneath the moral lash; and hints rather than proposes, that if one country did not respect the Pope's freedom, he could move into another, though he admits at the same time, he can see grave difficulties in the project. Even this admission is unavailing to protect him from X's savage onslaught, who winds up another torrent of vituperation with these words: "Yes! This is no question of the Pope and the Pope's person, but of the liberty of all the Church, and of all the Episcopate, of your liberty and mine, of the liberty of princes, peoples, and all Christian souls. Miserable man, have you lost all common sense, all catholic sense, even the ordinary sense of language?" In vain D confesses his errors, owns that he is converted, and implores mercy. "No," X replies in conclusion, "this is not enough; your tongue has spread scandal; and even, if innocent itself, has sown discord. The good seed is obedience and reverence to the Pope our father and the Church our mother. Woe to the tares of the new creed! Woe to the proud and impious men, who under the cloak of piety raise their hands and tongues against their father and mother! The crows and birds of prey shall feed upon their tongues, and the wrath of God shall wither up their hands." The demolition of D, the devout, only whets X's appetite; and heedless of his coming doom, M, the moderate, enters the lists. As a specimen of Papal mild facetiousness, I quote the commencement of the second dialogue. M. "Great news! a great book!" X. "Where from?" M. "From Paris." X. "A dapper-dandy then, I suppose?" M. "No, a political pamphlet." X. "Well, that is the same as a political dandy." M. "A pamphlet explaining the policy of the Moderates." X. "You mean, of the Moderate intellects?" M. "No, I mean the policy of the Moderates, a policy of compromise, between the Holy Father and, and--" X. "Say what you really mean,--between the Holy Father and the Holy Revolution." After this test of M's intellectual calibre, I am not surprised to learn that he is treated throughout with the most contemptuous playfulness. He is horror-struck at learning that, in fact, he is nothing better "than a mediator between Christ and Beelzebub." He is joked about the _fait accompli_; and asked whether he would consider a box on his ears was excused and accounted for by a similar denomination of the occurrence; questioned, whether he would like himself to be deprived of all his property; and at last dumbfounded by the inquiry, whether the reasoning of his beloved pamphlet is anything but rank communism. M, in fact, after this tirade ceases any attempt at argument, and contents himself with feeble suggestions, which afford to X fertile openings for the exercise of his vituperative abilities. For instance, M drops a hint that the Pope might be placed under the guarantee and protection of the Catholic powers; on which X retorts: "The Catholic powers indeed! First of all, you ought to be sure whether the Catholic powers will not co-operate with the Jew, in the disgraceful act of plundering Christ through his Vicar, in order to guarantee him afterwards the last shreds of his garment." (Another somewhat novel view, by the way, of Gospel history.) "Secondly, you should learn whether any tribunal in the world, in the name of common justice, would place the victim under the protection and guarantee of his spoiler." When M expresses a doubt whether there is any career for a soldier or statesman under the Papal Government, his doubts are removed by the reflection that the Roman statesmen are no worse off than the French, and that, if Roman soldiers don't fight, and Roman orators don't speak, it is because the exertion of their faculties would not prove beneficial to themselves or others. Then follows one of those ejaculatory paragraphs, which tract-controversialists generally, and X especially, delight in. "You! yes, you! applaud that Parisian insult-monger, who after having robbed Rome of the provinces, that give her power and splendour, and having left her a city maimed of hands and feet, with a frontier two fingers'-length from the Vatican, then speaks of Rome thus degraded; he, I say, this author of yours--this legislator of yours--this Parisian of yours, speaks in the words of _Le Pape et le Congres_,"--and so on, through a labyrinth of exclamatory parentheses. "Moderate" is overwhelmed by all this; becomes convinced and converted; and, after the fashion of Papal converts, out-Herods Herod in the ardour of his zeal. He volunteers to X the following original view of French politics: "I can understand the anger of the (French) journals because France has been so unfortunate in her Italian enterprise. She promised, she advised, she threatened; and promises, advice, and threats are alike dispersed in air. She promised and placarded on all the walls the independence of Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic. Where is her promise now? She promised and published through all the Churches the freedom and integrity of the Papal dominions. Where is her promise now? She advised Piedmont, she advised the Duchies, she advised the Romagna, and her advice was neither received nor accepted. Where is her advice now? Then came the threats of the 31st of December last, and, with profound respect, she threatened the Pope to sacrifice the Romagna; and her prayers or her threats, as you like, where are they now?" Again, of his own accord, M asserts, as a self-evident fact, that "morality and justice have no better sanctuary and no purer inspirations than are to be found in the Court of the Vatican." What slight difficulties he still entertains are removed at once. He asks X candidly to tell him whether the Papal government is really a bad one or not, and is satisfied with the quotation "Sunt bona mixta malis;" he then inquires, in all simplicity, why there are so many complaints and outbreaks against the Papal rule? and is told, in explanation, that the Pope is persecuted because he is weak. X, emboldened by his easy triumph, ridicules the notion of any reforms being granted by the Papacy, states that what is wanted is a reform in the Papal subjects, not in the Papal rulers, and finally falls foul of poor M, in such language as this:--"What good can we ever expect from this race of Moderates, who in all revolutions are sent out as pioneers, who have ruined every state in turn by shutting their eyes to every danger, and parleying with every revolution, and who would propose a compromise even with fire or fever, or plague itself." After this, X repeats the old fable of the horse and the man, and then launches into a tirade against France: "You refused to believe that Italy replaced foreign influence by foreign dominion on the day on which France crossed the Alps. Do you still disbelieve in the treason which is plotting against Italy, by depriving her of her natural bulwarks, Savoy, Nice, and the maritime Alps? Do you not see, that while you are lulled to sleep by the syren song of Italian independence, Italy is weakened, dismembered and enslaved?" A last suggestion of M, that possibly the language of the encyclical letter was a little too strong, brings forth the following retort: "It was strong, and tasted bitter to diseased and vitiated palates, but to the lips of justice the taste was sweet and satisfying. Poor nations! What have politics become? What filth we are obliged to swallow! What scandal to the people; what a lesson of immorality is this fashion of outraging every principle of right, with sword, tongue and pen! In this chaos, blessed be Providence, there is one free voice left, the voice of St Peter, which is raised in defence of justice, despised and disregarded." Hereupon M confesses, "on the faith of a Moderate," that the refusal of the Pope to accept the advice of the Emperor was "an act worthy of him, both as Pope and Italian sovereign," and then retires in shame and confusion. S, the sincere opponent, then enters and announces with foolish pride, that "Italy shall be free, and the gates of hell shall prevail." Pride cometh before a fall, and S is shortly convinced that his remark was profane, and that, by his own shewing, liberty was a gift of hell. S then repeats a number of common-places about the rights of men, the voice of the people, and the will of the majority; and as, in every case, he quotes these common-places incorrectly and inappropriately, X upsets him without effort. As a specimen of the style of logic adopted, I will take one case at hazard. S states that "his reason of all reasons is, that Italy belongs to the Italians, and that the Italians have the right of dividing it, uniting it, and governing it, as seems good in their own sight." To this X answers, "I adopt and apply your own principle. Turin, with its houses, belongs to the Turinese; therefore the Turinese have the right to divide or unite the houses of Turin, or drive out their possessors, as seems good in their own sight." The gross disingenuousness, the palpable quibble in this argument, need no exposure. Logically, however, the argument is rather above the usual range. X then proceeds to frighten S with the old bugbears;--the impossibility of real union between the Italian races; the absorption of the local small capitals in the event of a great kingdom, and the certainty that the European powers will never consent to an Italian monarchy. This conclusion is a short _resume_ of Papal history, which will somewhat surprise the readers of Ranke and Gibbon. "After the death of Constantine, the almost regal authority of the Popes in reality commenced. Gregory the Great, created Pope 440 A.D. was compelled for the safety of Italy to exercise this authority against the Lombards on one hand, and the rapacious Exarchs on the other. About 726 A.D. Gregory II. declined the offer of Ravenna, Venice, and the other Italian States, who conferred upon him, in name as well as in fact, the sovereignty of Italy. At last, in 741 A.D. when Italy was not only deserted in her need, but threatened from Byzantium with desolation and heresy, Gregory III. called in the aid of Charles Martel, that Italy might not perish; and by this law, a law of life and preservation, and through the decree of Providence, the Popes became Italian sovereigns, both in right and fact." On this very lucid and satisfactory account of the origin of the Papal power, S is convinced at once, and is finally dismissed shamefaced, with the unanswerable interrogation, "whether the real object of the Revolution is not to create new men, new nations, new reason, new humanity, and a new God?" The three abstractions, S, M, D, then re-assemble to recant their errors. One and all avow themselves confuted, and convicted of folly or worse. X gives them absolution with the qualified approval, that "he rejoices in their moral amendment, and trusts the change may be a permanent one," and then asks them, as an elementary question in their new creed, "What is the true and traditional liberty of Italy, the only one worthy to be sought and loved by all Italians?" To this question with one voice S and M and D make answer, "Liberty with law, law with religion, and religion with the Pope." The course of instruction is completed, and if anybody is still unconvinced by the arguments of the all-wise X, I am afraid that his initial letter must be a Z. So much for the _Independenza e Papa_, as the pamphlet is styled. I have given, I fear, a somewhat lengthy account of it; not for its literary merits, which are small, but as being the best native defence of the Papacy I have come across. The dull dead _vis inertiae_ which formed the real strength of the Papacy has been of late exchanged for a petty useless fussiness. Ever since Guerroniere's pamphlet fell like a bomb upon the Vatican there has been a perfect array of paper-champions, sent forth to do battle for the Papal cause. They are mostly, it is true, of foreign growth. Extracts from Montalembert, De Falloux, and Berryer's speeches, patched together and re-garnished; reprints of the Episcopal charges in France; editions of Count Sola della Margherita's much be-praised work; and, I regret to say, translations of Lord Normanby's speeches in the House of Lords, are advertised daily on the walls of Rome. Of native and original productions there have been but few. Literary talent does not flourish in Rome, and what little there is, is all retained against the Government. The _Eye-glance at the Encyclical_, the _Widow's Mite_, and the _Tears of St Peter_, are the titles of some of the anonymous pro-Papal tracts published under Government patronage; of these the _Independenza e Papa_, which is sold at the printing-office of the _Giornale di Roma_, is decidedly the ablest and most respectable. CHAPTER VIII. PAPAL LOTTERIES. If ever anybody had cause to regret the suppression of lotteries, it is the whole tribe of play-writers and authors. Never will there be found again a "Deus ex Machina," so serviceable or so unfailing as the lottery. If your plot wanted a solution, or your intrigue a _denoument_, or your novel a termination, you could always cut through all your difficulties by the medium of a lottery-ticket. The virtuous but impoverished hero became at once a very Croesus, and the worldly-minded parent bestowed his daughter and his blessing on the successful gambler, who, by the way, never purchased his own ticket, but always had it bequeathed to him as a legacy. Alas, lottery-tickets, like wealthy uncles and places under government, have gone out of date. The fond glance of memory turns in vain towards the good old times, when the lottery was in its glory. It is, however, some comfort to reflect, that if, as devout Catholics assert, the Papacy is eternal, then in Rome, at least, lotteries are eternal also. In truth, the lottery is a great, I might almost say _the_ great Pontifical institution. It is a trade not only sanctioned, but actively supported, by the Government. Partly, therefore, as a matter of literary interest, and partly as a curious feature in the economics of the Papal States, I have made various personal researches into the working of the lottery-system, and shall endeavour to give the theoretical not the practical result of my investigations; the latter result being, I am afraid, of a negative description. Murray, who knows everything, states that in Rome alone fifty-five millions of lottery-tickets are taken annually. Now though I would much sooner doubt the infallibility of the Pope than that of the author of the most invaluable of hand-books, I cannot help thinking there is some strange error in this calculation. The whole population of Rome is under 180,000, and therefore, according to this statement, every living soul in the city, man, woman, priest and child, must, on an average, take one ticket a day, to make up the amount stated. If, however, without examining the strict arithmetical correctness of this statement, you take it, just as the old Romans used "sex centi" for an indefinite number, as an expression of the fact, that the number of the lottery-tickets taken annually in Rome is quite incredible, you will not be far wrong. During the year 1858 the receipts of the lottery (by which I suppose are meant the net, not the gross receipts) are officially stated to have been 1,181,000 scudi, or about an eleventh of the whole Pontifical revenue. It is true the expenses of the Lottery are charged amidst the state expenditure for the year at 788,987 scudi, but then a large portion of this expense is directly repaid to the Government, and the remainder is paid to the lottery-holders, who all have to pay heavily for the privilege of keeping a lottery-office, and who form also the most devoted of the Papal adherents, more especially since the liberal party have set their faces against the lottery. Common estimation too assigns a far larger profit to the lotteries than Papal returns give it credit for, and, I own that, from the system on which they are conducted, of which I shall speak presently, I suspect the profit must be very much beyond the sum mentioned; anyhow, this source of income is a very important one, and is guarded jealously as a Government monopoly. Private gambling tables of any kind are rigidly suppressed. If you want to gamble, you must gamble at the tables and on the terms of the Government. The very sale of foreign lottery-tickets is, I believe, forbidden. To this rule there is one exception, and that is in favour of Tuscany. Between the Grand Ducal and the Papal Governments there long existed an _entente cordiale_ on the subject of lotteries. There is no bond, cynics say, so powerful as that of common interest; and this saying seems to be justified in the present instance. Though the Court of Rome is at variance on every point of politics and faith with the present revolutionary Government of Tuscany, yet in matters of money they are not divided; and so the joint lottery-system flourishes, as of old. The lottery is drawn once a fortnight at Rome, and once every alternate fortnight at Florence or Leghorn; and as far as the speculator is concerned, it makes no difference whether his ticket is drawn for in Rome or in Tuscany, though the gains and losses of each branch are, I understand, kept separate. These lotteries are not of the plain, good old English stamp, in which there were, say, ten thousand tickets, and ten prizes of different value allotted to the holders of the ten first numbers drawn, while the remaining nine thousand nine hundred and ninety ticket-holders drew blanks. The system of speculation in vogue here is far more hazardous and complicated. To any one acquainted with the German gambling-places it is enough to say, that the Papal lottery-system is exactly like that of a _roulette_ table, with the one important exception, that the chances in the bank's favour, instead of being about thirty-seven to thirty-six, as they are at Baden or Hamburgh, are in the proportion of three to one. For the benefit of those to whom these words convey no definite meaning, I will endeavour to explain the system as simply as I can. In a Papal or Tuscan lottery there are ninety numbers, from one up to ninety, and of these numbers, five are drawn at each drawing. You may, therefore, stake your money on any one or two or three or four or five of the ninety numbers being drawn, which is termed playing at the "eletto," "ambo," "terno," "quaterno," and "tombola" respectively, or you may finally play "al estratto," that is, you may not only speculate on the particular numbers drawn, but on the order in which they may happen to be drawn. Practically, people rarely play upon any except the three first- named chances, and they will be sufficient for my explanation. Now a very simple arithmetical calculation will show you, that the chances against your naming one number out of the five drawn is eighteen to one; against your predicting two, four hundred to one; and against your hitting on three, nearly twelve thousand to one. Supposing, therefore, the game was played with ordinary fairness, and even as much as 25 per cent. were deducted for profit and working expenses off the winnings, you ought, if you staked a scudo, for instance, and won an "eletto," "ambo" or "terno," to win in round numbers 14, 300, and 9000 scudi respectively. If in reality you did win (a very great "if" indeed), you would not be paid in these instances more than 4, 25 and 3600 scudi. In fact, if ever there was invented in this world a game, of which the old saying, "Heads I win, and tails you lose" held true, it would be of the Papal Lottery. If the numbers you back do not happen to turn up, you lose the whole of your stake; if they do, you are docked of more than seventy-five per cent. of your winnings. For my part, I would sooner play at thimble-rig on Epsom Downs, or dominoes with Greek merchants, or at "three-cards" with a casual and communicative fellow-passenger of sporting cast: I should infallibly be legged, but I should hardly be plundered so ruthlessly or remorselessly. Still the Vatican, like all gentlemen who play with loaded dice or marked cards, may have a run of luck against it. Spiritual infallibility itself cannot determine whether a halfpenny tossed into the air will come down man or woman, and the law of chances cannot be regulated by a _motu proprio_. It is possible, though not probable, that on any one occasion the majority of the gamblers might stake their money fortuitously on one series of numbers, and if that series did happen to be drawn, then the loss to the Lottery, even with all deductions, would be a heavy one, and the Roman exchequer is by no means in a position to bear a heavy drain. In consequence, measures are taken to avert this calamity; each office reports daily what sums have been staked on what numbers; and, if any numbers are regarded with undue partiality, orders are issued from the head department to receive no more money on these numbers or series. I have assumed all along that the numbers are drawn fairly, and, without a very high opinion of the integrity of our Papal rulers, I am disposed to think they are. In the first place, any general impression of unfairness would greatly damage the future profits of the speculation; and, secondly, by the usual rule of averages it will be found that, on the whole, people stake pretty equally on one combination as another, and therefore the question, which particular numbers are drawn, is of less practical importance to the lottery management than might at first be supposed. In spite, however, of these abstract considerations, the virtue of the Papal Lotteries, unlike that of Caesar's wife, is not above suspicion; and I have often heard Romans remark, that the only possible explanation of there being one blank day between the closing the lottery-offices and the drawing was the obvious one, that time was required to calculate, from the state of the stakes, what combination of winning numbers will be most beneficial, or least hurtful, to the Papal pockets. Whatever mathematicians may assert, your regular gamblers always believe in luck, and therefore it is not surprising that a nation, whose great excitement is the lottery, should be devout worshippers of the blind goddess. It may be that some memories of the Pythagorean doctrines still exist in the land of their birth, but be the cause what it may, it is certain that in the southern Peninsula a belief in the symbolism of numbers is a received article of faith. Every thing, name, or event, has its numerical interpretation. Suppose, for instance, a robbery occurs; forthwith the numbers or sequences of numbers corresponding to the name of the robber or the robbed, the day or hour of the crime, the articles stolen, or a dozen other coincident circumstances, are eagerly sought after and staked upon in the ensuing lottery. Then there are the _numeri simpatici_, or the numbers in each month or year which are supposed to be fortunate, and lists of which are published in the popular almanacs. The "sympathetic number for instance for the month of March is 88," why or wherefore I have never been able to discover. Let me assume now, that having dreamt a dream, or heard of a death, or I care not what, you wish to stake your money on the arithmetical signification of the occurrence. You will have no difficulty in discovering a lottery-office; in well nigh every street there are one or more "Prenditoria di Lotti." In fact, begging and gambling are the only two trades that thrive in Rome, or are pushed with enterprise or energy. When the drawing takes place in Tuscany, the result is communicated at once by the electric telegraph, a fact unparalleled in any other branch of Roman business. Over each office are placed the Papal arms, the cross keys of St Peter and the tiara. Outside their aspects differ, according to the quarter of the city. In the well-to-do streets, if such an appellation applied to any street here be not an absurdity, the exterior of the lottery-offices are neat but not gaudy. A notice, printed in large black letters on a white placard, that this week the lottery will be drawn for in Rome, or where- ever it may be, and a simple glass frame over the door, in which are slid the winning numbers of last week, form the whole outward adornment. In the poor and populous parts the lotteries flaunt out in all kinds of shabby finery: the walls about the door are pasted over with puffing inscriptions; from stands in front of the shop flutter long stripes of parti-coloured paper, inscribed with all sorts of cabalistic figures. If you like you may try the "Terno della fortuna," which is certain, morally, to turn up this week or next. If you are of a philosophical disposition, you may stake your luck on the numbers 19 and 42, which have not been drawn for ever so long a time, and must therefore be drawn sooner--or later; or if you like to cast in your lot with others, you may back that "ambo" which has "sold" marked against it; at any rate, you will not be the only fool who stands to lose or win on that chance, which, after all, is some slight consolation. If none of these inducements are sufficient, you may fix on your choice by spinning round the index on the painted dial-plate, and choosing the numbers opposite to which the spin stops, thus making chance determine chance. Having, at last, selected your combination somehow or other, you enter the office with something of that shamefaced feeling which, I suppose, a man must be conscious of the first time that he ever enters the back-door of a pawnbroker's establishment. The interior of these offices is the same throughout. A low, dark room, with a long ink-stained desk at one side, behind which, pen in ear, is seated an official, more grimy even, and more snuffy than the run of his tribe. Opposite the desk there is sure to be a picture of the Madonna with a small glass lamp before it, wherein a feeble wick floats and flickers in a pool of rancid oil. On the wall you may read a list of the virtuous maidens who are to receive marriage portions of from 5 pounds downwards, on the occasion of the lottery being drawn at some religious festival. Indeed, throughout, the lottery is conducted on a strictly religious footing. The _impiegati_, or officials who keep them, are all men of sound principles and devotional habits, fervent adherents of the Pope, and habitual communicants. Lotteries too can be defended on abstract religious grounds, as encouraging a simple faith in providence, and dispelling any overwhelming confidence in your own unsanctified exertions. When you have made these reflections, you have only got to tell the clerk what sum of money you want to stake, and on what numbers. The smallest contribution (from eleven baiocchi or about sixpence upwards) will be thankfully received. A long whity-brown slip of paper is given you, with the numbers written on it, and the sum you may win marked opposite. No questions whatever, about name or residence or papers, are asked, as they are whenever you want to transact any other piece of business in Rome; and all you have to do, is to keep your slip of paper, and come back on the Saturday to learn whether your numbers have been drawn or not. There is, in truth, a ludicrous side to the Papal Lotteries; but there is also a very sad one. It is sad to see the offices on a Thursday night, when they are kept open till midnight, hours after every other shop is closed, and to watch the crowds of common humble people who hurry in, one after the other; servants and cabmen and clerks and beggars, and, above all, women of the poorer class, to stake their small savings--too often their small pilferings--on the hoped-for numbers. When one speaks of the disgrace and shame that this authorized system of gambling confers on the Papal Government; of the improvidence and dishonesty and misery it creates too certainly among the poor, one is always told, by the advocates of the Papacy, that the people are so passionately attached to the lottery, that no Government could run the risk of abolishing it. If this be true, which I do not believe, I can only say--shame upon the rulers, who have so demoralized their subjects! CHAPTER IX. THE STUDENTS OF THE SAPIENZA. There is no University properly speaking in Rome. The constant and minute interference of the priests in the course of study; the rigid censorship extended over all books of learning, and the arbitrary restrictions with which free thought and inquiry are hampered, would of themselves be sufficient to stop the growth of any great school of learning at Rome, even if there existed a demand for such an institution, which there does not. Still in these days, even at Rome, young men must receive some kind of education, and to meet this want the Sapienza College is provided. Both in the age of the scholars and the nature of the studies it bears a much closer resemblance to a Scotch high school than to an University, but still, such as it is, it forms the great lay- place of education in the Papal States. There is a separate theological faculty; the head of the college is a Cardinal, and the whole course of study is under the control and supervision of the priests. Many, however, of the professors are laymen, the majority of the pupils are educated for secular pursuits, and the families from whom the students come, form as a body the _elite_ in point of education and intelligence amongst the mercantile and professional classes in the Papal States. At the commencement of the year a great attempt was made by the Government to get up addresses of loyalty and devotion to the Pope. Not even Pius the Ninth himself believed one single word in any of these purchased testimonials. Indeed, on one occasion, when an address was presented by the officers of the army, he informed the deputation with more candour than prudence, that he knew perfectly well not one of them would raise his hand to save the Papacy. But abroad, and more especially in France, it was conceived that such addresses would be accepted as genuine testimonials to the contentment of the Roman people with their rulers. In obedience to these tactics, it was resolved to have an address from the students of the Sapienza. Such an address, containing the stock terms of fulsome adulation and unreasoning reverence, was drawn up by the authorities. Only a dozen students out of the 400 to 500 of whom the college consists volunteered to sign it. The students were then summoned in a body before the rector, and requested to add their signatures. For this purpose the address was left in their hands, but instead of being signed it was torn to pieces, and the fragments scattered about the lecture-room, amidst a chorus of shouts and groans. With the sort of senile folly which characterized all the proceedings of the Vatican at this period, the affair, instead of being passed unnoticed, was taken up seriously, and assumed in consequence an utterly uncalled-for notoriety. The college was closed for the day, several of the pupils were summoned before the police, an official inquiry was instituted into the demonstration, and the matter became the talk of Rome. Of course at once a dozen contradictory rumours were in circulation, and it was with considerable difficulty that I obtained the above narrative of the occurrence, which I know to be substantially correct. As a curious instance of how facts are perverted at Rome by theological bias, I would mention here that when I made some inquiries on the subject from an English gentleman, a recent convert, and I need hardly add a most virulent partizan of the Papal rule, who was in a position to know the truth about the matter, I was told by him, that there had undoubtedly been a demonstration at the Sapienza, but that the truth was, the students were so indignant at the outrages committed against his Holiness, that they drew up an address of their own accord, expressive of their devotion to the Pope, and that upon the rector refusing his consent to the presentation of the address, on the ground that they were too young to take any part in political matters, they vented by tumultuous shouts their dissatisfation at this somewhat ill-timed interference. Now, not only was there such an inherent improbability about this story, to any one at all acquainted with Roman feelings or Papal policy, that it scarcely needed refutation, but subsequent events proved it to be entirely devoid of foundation in fact, and yet it was told me in good faith by a person who had every means of knowing the truth if he had chosen. The anecdote thus forms a curious illustration of the manner in which stories are got up and circulated in Rome. The result of the inquiry was that seven or eight of the students, who whether justly or unjustly were regarded as ringleaders in the demonstration, were either expelled or suspended from prosecuting their studies. Amongst the expelled students was the son of the medical Professor, Dr Maturani, who, considering his son unjustly used, resigned, or rather was obliged to resign his post. The Pope then made a state visit to the college, but was very coldly received, and held out no hopes of the offenders being pardoned. The partizans of the Government talked much about the good effect produced by the Papal visit, but within a day or two the students assembled in a body at the Sapienza, and demanded of the rector that the medical professor should be reinstated in his office, and that the sentences of expulsion should be rescinded, as all were equally guilty or equally guiltless. On receiving these demands the rector requested the students, as a personal favour, to make no further demonstration till he had had time to lay their sentiments before Cardinal Roberti, the president of the Congregation of Studies, which he promised to do at once. The students thereupon retired, but on their return next morning received no reply whatever. The following day was Sunday, when the college is closed, and on Monday the new medical professor was to deliver his inaugural lecture. It was expected that the students would take this opportunity of venting their dissatisfaction, and the government actually resolved to send the Roman gendarmes into the lecture-room in order to suppress any expression of feeling by force. At the time this act was considered only a piece of almost incredible folly, but the events of St Joseph's day shewed clearly enough that the Vatican was anxious to bring about a collision between the troops and the malcontents. A little blood-letting, after Lord Sidmouth's dictum, was considered wholesome for the Pope's subjects. Fortunately the intention came to the knowledge of the French authorities, who interfered at once, and said if troops were required they must be French and not Papal ones, as otherwise it was impossible to answer for the result. On the Monday therefore a detachment of French troops was sent down to the college. The lecture-room was crowded with students, who greeted the new Professor on his entry with a volley of hisses, and then left the room in a body. The French officer in command was appealed to by the authorities to interfere, but refused doing so, and equally declined receiving an address which the students wished to force upon him. His orders he stated were solely to suppress any actual riot, but nothing further. Some 400 of the students then proceeded to the residences of Cardinal Antonelli, of General Goyon, and the Duc de Gramont, and presented an address, a copy of which they requested might be forwarded to the Emperor. These were the words of the address; "Your Excellency--Some of our comrades have been removed from us. United to them in our studies, united, too, in our sentiments, we protest against a punishment so unjust and so partial. When adulation and servility suggested to some amongst us the utterance of a falsehood which insulted the Pontiff, while it did no service to the Sovereign, we all rose in union to denounce those who, without our consent, constituted themselves the interpreters of our wishes. This act was not the caprice of a section. It was the vast majority amongst us who thus spoke out the truth. The punishment, if punishment there is to be for speaking the truth, should not fall upon a few alone. "We confess it openly, the act was the act of all; the measure of our conduct was the same for all. We therefore demand from your Excellency that the expelled students should be allowed to return, or else that we should all be united with them in one common punishment, as we are proud of being united with them in a common love of truth and of our country. "The presence of our 400 students supplies the place of signatures." The last clause is open to question. The plain fact is, that the students could not get their courage up to signing point. A government of priests never forgives or forgets, and their vengeance though slow is very sure. Any student who had actually affixed his signature to the address would have been a marked man for life; and instead of wondering that the whole body had not sufficient moral resolution to express their sentiments in writing, I am surprised that they had the courage to protest at all, even anonymously. This hesitation, however, afforded the government a loop-hole, which they were wise enough to take advantage of; Cardinal Antonelli declined at once to give any reply to the address, on the ground that he could take no notice of an unsigned and unauthentic document; so the matter rested. Logically, the Cardinal had the best of the dispute; but, practically, the remonstrants triumphed. The students kept away from the classes, and after a short time the Sapienza college had to be closed, in order, if possible, to weed out the liberal faction amongst the pupils. Numbers of the students were arrested or exiled. As instances of Papal notions of justice and law, I may mention two instances connected with the government inquiry, which came to my knowledge. One student was sent for to the police-office and asked if he was one of those who presented the address; on his replying in the negative, he was asked further, whether, if he had been on the spot, he would have joined in the presentation. To this question, he replied, that the police had no right to question him as to a matter of hypothesis, but only as to facts. The magistrate's sole answer to this objection consisted in an order to leave Rome within twenty-four hours. Another student was arrested by a gendarme in the street, and brought to the police-office; it was past five o'clock, and the magistrate informed him it was too late to enter on the charge that day, and therefore he must remain in the custody of the police for the night. In vain the student requested to be informed of the charge against him, and protested against the illegality of detaining a person in custody without there being any charge even alleged; but to all this the magistrate remained obdurate, and the student was sent home under the care of the gendarme. Happily for himself, he managed to give his guardian the slip in the streets, and left the Papal States that night without awaiting the result of an inquiry which had commenced under such auspices. It is true that the political opinions of a parcel of boys may have very little intrinsic value; but straws shew which way the wind blows, and so this exhibition of the students' sentiments shews how deep-rooted is the disaffection to the Papacy throughout Roman society, and also how strong the conviction is, that the days of priest-rule are numbered. CHAPTER X. A PAPAL PAGEANT. The Papacy is too old and too feeble even to die with dignity. Of itself the sight of a falling power, of a dynasy _in extremis_, commands something of respect if not of regret; but the conduct of the Papacy deprives it of the sympathy that is due to its misfortunes. There is a kind of silliness, I know of no better word to use, about the whole Papal policy at the present day, which is really aggravating. It is silly to rave about the martyr's crown and the cruel stake, when nobody has the slightest intention of hurting a hair of your head; silly to talk of your paternal love when your provinces are in arms against your "cruel mercies;" silly to boast of your independence when you are guarded in your own capital against your own subjects by foreign troops; silly, in fact, to bark when you cannot bite, to lie when you cannot deceive. No power on earth could make the position of the Pope a dignified one at this present moment, and if anything could make it less dignified than before, it is the system of pompous pretensions and querulous complaints and fulsome adulation which now prevails at the Vatican. I know not how better to give an idea of the extent to which this system is carried, than by describing a Papal pageant which occurred early in the year. To enter fully into the painful absurdity of the whole scene, one should bear in mind what were the prospects of Papal politics at the commencement of February. The provinces of the Romagna were about to take the first step towards their final separation, by electing members for the Sardinian Parliament. The question, whether the French troops could remain in Rome, or in other words, whether the Pope must retire from Rome, was still undecided; the streets of the city were thronged with Pontifical Sbirri and French patrols, to suppress the excitement caused by a score of lads, who raised a shout of _Viva l'Italia_ a week before. The misery and discontent of the Roman populace was so great that the coming Carnival time was viewed with the gravest apprehensions, and anxious doubts were entertained whether it was least dangerous to permit or forbid the celebration of the festival. Bear all this in mind; fancy some _Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin_, is written on all around, telling of disaffection and despair, and revolt and ruin; and then listen to what was said and done to and by the Pope on that Sunday before Septuagesima. Some months ago a college was founded at Rome for the education of American youths destined to the priesthood; there were already an English, an Irish, and a Scotch college, not to speak of the Propaganda. However, in addition to all these, a college reserved for the United States, was projected and established by the present Pontiff. Indeed, this American college, the raised Boulevard, which now disfigures the Forum, and the column erected in the Piazza di Spagna to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, appear to be the only material products of the Pontificate of Pius the Ninth. For some reason or other, which I am not learned enough in theological lore to determine, the feast of St Francis de Sales was celebrated as a sort of inauguration festival by the pupils of the new college. The Pope honoured the ceremony with his presence; and, for a wonder, a very full account of the proceedings was published in the _Giornale di Roma_; the quotations I make are literal translations from the official reports. "The day," so writes the _Giornale_, "was in very truth a blessed and a fortunate one, not only for the pupils themselves, who yearned for an opportunity of bearing solemn witness to their gratitude and devotion towards their best and highest father and most munificent benefactor, but also for all those who have it upon their hearts to share in those great works which form the most striking proof of the perpetual growth and spread of our most sacred religion." Apparently the number of the latter class is not extensive, as the visit of the Pope attracted but little crowd, and the lines of French soldiers who were drawn up on his way to salute him as he passed, were certainly not collected in the first instance by a spirit of religious zeal. The _Giornale_, however, views everything with the eyes of faith, not of "pure reason." Mass was performed at the Holy Church of Humility, and "from early dawn, as soon as the news of the holy father's visit was circulated, an immense crowd assembled there which filled not only the church, but the adjoining rooms and corridors. The crowd was composed of the flower of Roman rank and beauty, and the _elite_ of the strangers residing in Rome, both French, English, and American, who desired the blessing of assisting at the bloodless sacrifice celebrated by the Vicar of Christ, and who longed to receive from his hands the angels' food." I am sorry truth compels me to state, that the whole of this immense crowd consisted of some two hundred people in all, and that the only illustrious personages of special note amongst the crowd not being priests, were General Goyon, the American Minister and Consul, and the Senator of Rome. The Pope arrived at eight o'clock, and then proceeded to celebrate the communion, assisted by Monsignors Bacon, bishop of Portland, U.S., and Goro, bishop of Liverpool. "The rapt contemplation, the contrition of heart, the spirit of ardent faith which penetrated the whole assembly, more especially while the holy father distributed the sacred bread, were all things so sublime that they are easier to conceive than to describe." After mass was over the Pope entered the college. Above the door the following inscription was written in Latin, composed, I can safely say, by an Hiberno-Yankee pen: "Approach, O mighty Pius, O thou the parent of the old world and the new, approach these sanctuaries, which thou hast founded for thine American children devoted to the science of the church! To thee, the whole company of pupils; to thee, all America, wild with exultation, offer up praise! For thee, they implore all things peaceful and blessed." In the hall prepared for his holiness' reception there was hung up, "beneath a gorgeous canopy, a marvellous full-length likeness of the august person of the holy Pontiff, destined to recall his revered features. Around the picture a number of appropriate Latin mottos were arranged, of which I give one or two as specimens of the style of adulation adopted: "Come, O youth, raise up the glad voice, behold, the supreme shepherd is present, blessing his children with the light of his countenance. Hail, O day, shining with a glorious light, on which his glad children receive within their arms the best of parents! "As the earth beams forth covered with the sparkling sun-light, so the youths rejoice with gladness, while thou, O father, kindly gladdenest them with thy most pleasant presence!" Refreshments were then presented to the guests, which I am glad to say were much better than the mottos. The pupils of the Propaganda, who were all present, sang a hymn; addresses were made to the Pope by the pro-rector of the college in the name of the pupils, by Bishop Bacon on behalf of catholic America, and by Cardinal Barnabo, the superior of the Propaganda, all of them in terms of the most fervent adoration. Each of the American pupils then advanced with a short poem which he had composed, or was supposed to have composed, in expression of the emotions of his heart on this joyful occasion, and requested permission to recite it. At such a time the best feature in the Pope's character, a sort of feeble kindliness of nature, was sure to show itself. I cannot but think indeed that the sight of the young boyish faces, whose words of reverence might possibly be those of truth and honesty, must have given an unwonted pleasure to the worn out, harassed, disappointed old man. "The holy father," I read, "receiving with agitated feelings so many tokens of homage, was delighted beyond measure." When the English poems were recited to him, he called out, "can't understand a word, but it seems good, very good." He spoke to each of the lads in turn, and, when he was shown the statue of Washington, told them to give a cheer for their country, to cry _Viva la Patria_ (the very offence, by the way, for which ten days before he had put his own Roman fellow-countrymen into prison), and then when the boys cheered, he raised his hands to his ears, and told them laughingly, they would drive him deaf. Now all this is very pleasant, or in young-lady parlance, very nice, and I wish, truly, I had nothing more to tell. I trust, indeed, that the long abstinence from food (as a priest who is about to celebrate the communion is not allowed to touch food from midnight till the time when Mass is over, and in these matters of observance Pius IX. is reputed to be strictly conscientious) or else the excitement of the scene had been too much for the not very powerful mind of the Pontiff; otherwise I know not how you can excuse an aged man, on the brink of the grave, to say nothing of the Vicegerent of Christ, using such language as he employed. "After much affectionate demonstration, the Holy Father could no longer restrain his lips from speaking, and, turning his penetrating glance around, spoke as follows," in the words of the _Giornale_: "One of the chief objects of the most high Pontiffs has ever been, the propagation and maintenance of the faith throughout the world. Their efforts therefore have always been directed towards the establishment of colleges in this sovereign city, in order that the youth of all nations, who would have to preach the faith in the different Catholic countries, might receive their education here. In the foundation then of this new college, he had only followed in the steps of his illustrious predecessors. It thus seemed to him that he had rather performed a simple duty, than an act deserving praise. After his Holiness had pointed out, what a great blessing the faith was, how indeed it was a true gift of Heaven, the sole solace and comfort vouchsafed to us throughout the vicissitudes of fortune, he then expressed his extreme distress, that in these days, this very faith should be made an especial object of attack, and added that this fact alone was the cause of his deep and profound dejection. There is no need, he stated, to refer now, to the prisons and tortures and persecutions of old, when we are all witnesses to the onslaught which is now being made against the Catholic faith and against whosoever seeks to maintain its purity and integrity. There was no cause however for wonder: such from the cradle had been the heritage of the faith, which was born and bred amidst persecution and adversity, and which under the same lot still continues its glorious progress. The Gospel of the day recalled this truth only too appropriately; although his Holiness continued in the midst of persecution, it was his duty only to arm himself with greater courage, yet the grief of his heart was nevertheless rendered more bitter still, by beholding that in this very peninsula--so highly privileged by God, not only endowed with the faith, and with possessing the most august throne on earth,--that even here, the minds and hearts of men were hopelessly perverted. No, his fears were not caused by the arms or armies, or the forces of any power, be it what it might. No, it was not the loss of temporal dominion, which created in his heart the bitterest of afflictions. Those who have caused this loss must, alas! bear the censure of the Church, and must henceforth be given over to the wrath of God, as long as they refuse to repent, and cast themselves on His loving mercy. What afflicted and terrified him far more than all this, was the perversion of all ideas, this fearful evil, the corrupting of all notions; vice, in truth, is taken for virtue, virtue counted for vice. At last, in some cities of this unhappy Italy, men have come to make in truth an apotheosis of the cut-throat and the assassin. Praise and honour are lavished on the most villainous of men and actions, while at the same time endurance in the faith and even episcopal resolution in maintaining the holy rights of that faith, and its provident blessings, are stigmatized with a strange audacity, by the names of hypocrisy, fanaticism, and perversion of religion. He then went on to say, that now, more than ever, it was high time to take vengeance in the name of God, and that the vengeance of the priesthood and the Vicariate of Christ Jesus consisted solely in prayer and supplication, that all might be converted and live. That, moreover, the chief of all these evils was only too truly the corruption of the heart and the perversion of the intellect, and that this evil could only be overcome by the greatest of miracles, which must be wrought by God and interceded from him by prayer. After this, the Holy Father, in language which seemed inspired, as though he were raised out of himself, exhorted all present, and especially the young men destined to carry the faith to their distant countries." Even amongst the audience, who all belonged more or less to the Papal faction, the intemperate and injudicious character of this speech, delivered in the presence of the French commander-in-chief, and the allusions which could not but be intended for the Emperor Napoleon, Cavour, and Victor Emmanuel, created great consternation, and was but coldly received. The _Giornale_ however reports, that "where his Holiness, with agitated voice, bestowed his apostolic benediction, awe and admiration could be read on every countenance; all hearts beat aloud; and no eyelid was left dry. The whole assembly pressing forward, bent in turn before the august personage, touching, some his hands and some his dress, while others again cast themselves at his feet, in order to impress thereon a reverent and affectionate kiss." After having examined the building, the Pope went on foot to the neighbouring convent of the Augustine nuns, called "The Convent of the Virgins," the whole of the religious community were "permitted to kiss the sacred foot," and then "having comforted the virgins with paternal and loving words," he returned to the Vatican, past the files of French troops, through the beggar-crowded streets, amidst cold, sullen glances and averted obeisances, back to his dreary palace, there to wait wearily for orders from Paris. CHAPTER XI. THE CARNIVAL SENZA MOCCOLO. There are things in the world which allow of no description, and of such things a true Roman carnival is one. You might as well seek to analyze champagne, or expound the mystery of melody, or tell why a woman pleases you. The strange web of colour, beauty, mirth, wit, and folly, is tangled so together that common hands cannot unravel it. To paint a carnival without blotching, to touch it without destroying, is an art given unto few, I almost might say to none, save to our own wondrous word- wizard, who dreamt the "dream of Venice," and told it waking. For my own part, the only branch of art to which, even as a child, I ever took kindly, was the humble one of tracing upon gritting glass, with a grating pencil, hard outlines of coarse sketches squeezed tight against the window-pane. After the manner in which I used to draw, I have since sought to write; for such a picture-frame then as mine, the airy, baseless fabric of an Italian revel is no fitting subject, and had the Roman Carnival for 1860 been even as other carnivals are, I should have left it unrecorded. It has been my lot, however, to witness such a carnival as has not been seen at Rome before, and is not likely to be seen again. In the decay of creeds and the decline of dynasties there appear from time to time signs which, like the writing on the wall, proclaim the coming change, and amongst these signs our past Carnival is, if I err not, no unimportant one. While then the memory of the scene is fresh upon me, let me seek to tell what I have seen and heard. The question whether we were to have a Carnival at all, remained long doubtful; the usual time for issuing the regulations had long passed, and no edict had appeared; strange reports were spread and odd stories circulated. Our rulers were, it seems, equally afraid of having a carnival and not having it; and with their wonted wisdom decided on the middle course, of having a carnival which was not a carnival at all. One week before the first of the eight fete-days, the long-delayed edict was posted on the walls; the festival was to be celebrated as usual, except that no masks were to be allowed; false beards and moustaches, or any attempt to disguise the features, were strictly forbidden. Political allusions, or cries of any kind, were placed under the same ban; crowds were to disperse at a moment's notice, and prompt obedience was to be rendered to any injunction of the police. Subject to these slight restraints, the wild revel and the joyous licence of the Carnival was to rule unbridled. In the words of a Papal writer in the government gazette of Venice: "The festival is to be celebrated in full vigour, except that no masks are allowed, as the fashion for them has lately gone out. There will be, however, disguises and fancy dresses, confetti, bouquets, races, moccoletti, public and private balls, and, in short, every amusement of the Carnival time." What more could be required by a happy and contented people? Somehow, the news does not seem to be received with any extraordinary rejoicing; a group of idlers gaze at the decree and pass on, shrugging their shoulders listlessly. Along the Corso notice-boards are hung out of balconies to let, but the notices grow mildewed, and the balconies remain untaken. The carriage-drivers don't pester you, as in former years, to engage them for the Carnival; and the fancy dresses exposed in the shop-windows are shabby and few in number. There is no appearance of unnecessary excitement; but "still waters run deep;" and in order to restrain any possible exuberance of feeling, on the very night before the Carnival the French general issues a manifesto. "To prevent painful occurrences," so run General Guyon's orders, "the officer commanding each detachment of troops which may have to act against a crowd, shall himself, or through a police-officer, make it a summons to disperse. After this warning the crowd must disperse instantly, without noise or cries, if it does not wish to see force employed." Still no doubts are entertained of the brilliancy of the Carnival; the Romans (so at least their rulers say, and who should know them better?) will enjoy themselves notwithstanding; the Carnival is their great holiday, the one week of pleasure counted on the long, dull year through, and no power on earth, still less no abstract consideration, will keep them from the Corso revels. From old time, all that they have ever cared for are the _panem et circenses_; and the Carnival gives them both. It is the Roman harvest-time, when the poor gather in their gleanings. Flower-sellers, vendors of confetti, hawkers of papers, letters-out of chairs and benches, itinerant minstrels, perambulating cigar-merchants, pedlars, beggars, errand-boys, and a hundred other obscure traders, pick up, heaven knows how! enough in Carnival time to tide them over the dead summer-season. So both necessity and pleasure, want and luxury, will combine to swell the crowd; and the pageant will be gay enough for the Vatican to say that its faithful subjects are loyal and satisfied. The day opens drearily, chilly, and damp and raw, with a feeble sun breaking through the lowering clouds; soon after noon the streets begin to fill with soldiers. Till this year the Corso used to be guarded, and the files of carriages kept in order, by the Italian pontifical dragoons, the most warlike-looking of parade regiments I have ever seen. Last spring, however, when the war broke out, these bold dragoons grew ashamed of their police duties, and began to ride across the frontier without leave or license, to fight in behalf of Italy. The whole regiment, in fact, was found to be so disaffected that it was disbanded without delay, and at present there are only some score or so left, who ride close behind the Pope when he goes out "unattended," as his partisans profess. So the dragoons having disappeared, the duty of keeping order is given to the French soldiers. There are soldiers ranged everywhere: along the street pavements there is one long line of blue overcoats and red trousers and oil-skin flowerpot hats covering the short, squat, small- made soldiers of the 40th Foot regiment, whose fixed bayonets gleam brightly in the rare sun-light intervals. At every piazza there are detachments stationed; their muskets are stacked in rows on the ground, and the men stand ready to march at the word of order. In every side- street sentinels are posted. From time to time orderlies gallop past. Ever and anon you hear the rub-a-dub of the drums, as new detachments pass on towards the Corso. The head-quarters at the Piazza Colonna are crowded with officers coming and going, and the whole French troops off duty seem to have received orders to crowd the Corso, where they stroll along in knots of three or four, alone and unnoticed by the crowd around them. The heavy guns boom forth from the Castle of St Angelo, and the Carnival has begun. Gradually and slowly the street fills. One day is so like another that to see one is to have seen all. The length of the Corso there saunters listlessly an idle, cloak-wrapt, hands-in-pocket-wearing, cigar-smoking, shivering crowd, composed of French soldiers and the rif-raff of Rome, the proportion being one of the former to every two or three of the latter. The balconies, which grow like mushrooms on the fronts of every house, in all out-of-the-way places and positions, are every now and then adorned with red hangings. These balconies and the windows are scantily filled with shabbily-dressed persons, who look on the scene below as spectators, not as actors. At rare intervals a carriage passes. The chances are that its occupants are English or Americans. On the most crowded day there are, perhaps, at one time, fifty carriages in all, of which more than half belong to the _forestieri_. Indeed, if it were not for our Anglo-Saxon countrymen, there would be no carnival at all. We don't contribute much, it is true, to the brilliancy of the _coup d'oeil_. Our gentlemen are in the shabbiest of coats and seediest of hats, while our ladies wear grey cloaks, and round, soup-plate bonnets. However, if we are not ornamental, we are useful. We pelt each other with a hearty vigour, and discharge volleys of _confetti_ at every window where a fair English face appears. The poor luckless nosegay or sugar-plum boys look upon us as their best friends, and follow our carriages with importunate pertinacity. Fancy dresses of any kind are few. There are one or two very young men--English, I suspect,--dressed as Turks, or Greeks, or pirates, after Highbury Barn traditions, looking cold and uncomfortable. Half a dozen tumble-down carriages represent the Roman element. They are filled with men disguised as peasant-women, and _vice versa_; but, whether justly or unjustly, they are supposed to be chartered for the show by the Government, and attract small comment or notice. Amongst the foot-crowd, with the exception of a stray foreigner, there is not a well- dressed person to be seen. The fun is of the most dismal character. Boys with bladders whack each other on the back, and jump upon each other's shoulders. Harlequins and clowns--shabby, spiritless, and unmasked--grin inanely in your face, and seem to be hunting after a joke they can never find. A quack doctor, or a man in crinoline, followed by a nigger holding an umbrella over his head, or a swell with pasteboard collars, and a chimney-pot on his head, pass from time to time and shout to the bystanders, but receive no answer. Give them a wide berth, for they are spies, and bad company. The one great amusement is pelting a black hat, the glossier the better. After a short time even this pleasure palls, and, moreover, victims grow scarce, for the crowd, contrary to the run of Italian crowds, is an ill-bred, ill-conditioned one, and take to throw nosegays weighted with stones, which hurt and cut. So the long three hours, from two to five, pass drearily. Up and down the Corso, in a broken, straggling line, amidst feeble showers of chalk (not sugar) plums, and a drizzle of penny posies to the sound of one solitary band, the crowd sways to and fro. At last the guns boom again. Then the score of dragoons--of whom one may truly say, in the words of Tennyson's "Balaclava Charge," that they are "all that are left of--not the 'twelve' hundred"--come trotting down the Corso from the Piazza del Popolo. With a quick shuffling march the French troops pass along the street, and form in file, pushing back the crowd to the pavements. With drawn swords and at full gallop the dragoons ride back through the double line. Then there is a shout, or rather a long murmur. All faces are turned up the street, and half a dozen broken-kneed, riderless, terror-struck shaggy ponies with numbers chalked on them, and fluttering trappings of pins and paper stuck into their backs, run past in straggling order. Where they started you see a crowd standing round one of the grooms who held them, and who is lying maimed and stunned upon the ground, and you wonder at the unconcern with which the accident is treated. Another gun sounds. The troops form to clear the street, the crowd disperses, and the Carnival is over for the day. A message is sent to the Vatican, to inform the Pope that the festival has been most brilliant, and along the telegraphic wires the truth is flashed to Paris that the day has passed without an outbreak. On the last day of the Carnival the Porto Pia road was full as usual, and the Corso filled as usual with soldiers, and spies, and rabble. An order was published, that any person appearing out of the Corso with lighted tapers would be arrested, and therefore the idea of an evening demonstration outside the gates was dropped. Not all the efforts, however, of the police could light the Moccoletti in the Corso. House after house, window after window, were left unlighted. The crowd in the streets carried no candles, and there were only sixteen carriages or so, all filled with strangers. Of all the dreary sights I have ever witnessed that Moccoletti illumination was the dreariest. At rare intervals, and in English accents, you heard the cry of "Senza Moccolo," which used to burst from every mouth as the tiny flames flickered, and glared, and fell. Before the sight was half over the spectators began to leave, and while I pushed my way through the dispersing crowds, I could still hear the faint cry of "Senza Moccolo." As the sound still died away, the cry still haunted me; and in my recollection, the Carnival of 1860 will ever remain as the dullest and dismalest of Carnivals--the Carnival without mirth, or sun, or gaiety--the Carnival Senza Moccolo. CHAPTER XII. ROMAN DEMONSTRATIONS. THE PIAZZA COLONNA CROWDS. THE PORTA PIA MEETINGS. THE ANTI-SMOKE MOVEMENT. Straws show which way the wind blows, and so, though the straws themselves are valueless, yet as indications of what is coming, their motions are worth noting. It is thus that I judge of the series of demonstrations which marked the spring of this year in Rome, and which ended in the outrage of St Joseph's day. Of themselves they were less than worthless, but as tokens of the future they possess a value of their own. In recent Papal history they form a strange page. Let me note their features briefly, as I wrote of them at the time. January 28. At last there is a break in the dull uniformity of Roman life.--There is a ripple on the waters, whether the precursor of a tempest, or to be followed by a dead calm, it is hard to tell. Meanwhile it is some gain at any rate, that the old corpse-like city should show signs of life, however transient. Feeble as those symptoms are, let us make the most of them. Since the Imperial occupation of Rome, the building in the Piazza Colonna, which old Roman travellers remember as the abode of the Post Office, has been confiscated to the service of the French army. It forms, in fact, a sort of military head-quarter. All the bureaux of the different departments of the service are to be found here. The office of the electric telegraph is contained under the same roof, and the front windows of the town-hall-looking building, lit up so brightly and so late at night, are those of the French military "circle." The Piazza Colonna, where stands the column of Mark Antony, opens out of the Corso, and is perhaps the most central position in all Rome. At the corner is the cafe, monopolized by the French non-commissioned officers; and next door is the great French bookseller's. Altogether the Piazza and its vicinity is the French _quartier_ of Rome. At seven o'clock every evening, the detachments who are to be on guard, during the night, at the different military posts, are drawn up in front of the said building, receive the pass-word, and then, headed by the drums and fifes, march off to their respective stations. Every Sunday and Thursday evening too, at this hour, the French band plays for a short time in the Piazza. Generally, this ceremony passes off in perfect quiet, and in truth attracts as little attention from bystanders as our file of guardsmen passing on their daily round from Charing Cross to the Tower. On Sunday evening last, a considerable crowd, numbering, as far as I can learn, some two or three thousand persons, chiefly men and boys, assembled round the band, and as the patrols marched off down the Corso, and towards the Castle of Saint Angelo, followed them with shouts of "Viva l'Italia," "Viva Napoleone," and, most ominous of all, "Viva Cavour." As soon as the patrols had passed the crowd dispersed, and there was, apparently, an end of the matter. The next night poured with rain, with such a rain as only Rome can supply; and yet, in spite of the rain, a good number of people collected to see the guard march off, and again a few seditious or patriotic cries (the two terms are here synonymous) were heard. Such things in Italy, and in Rome especially, are matters of grave importance, and the Government was evidently alarmed. Contrary to general expectation, and I suspect to the hopes of the clerical party, the French general has issued no notice, as he did last year, forbidding these demonstrations. However, the patrols have been much increased, and great numbers of the Pontifical gendarmes have been brought into the city. On Tuesday night the Papal police made several arrests, and a report was spread by the priests that the French troops had orders to fire at once, if any attempt was made to create disturbance. On the same night, too, there was a demonstration at the Apollo. I have heard, from several quarters, that on some of the Pontifical soldiers entering the house, the whole audience left the theatre, with very few exceptions. However, in this city one gets to have a cordial sympathy with the unbelieving Thomas, and not having been present at the theatre myself, I cannot endorse the story. Last night I strolled down the Corso to see the guard pass. The street was very full, at least full for Rome, where the streets seem empty at their fullest, and numerous groups of men were standing on the door-steps and at the shop windows. Mounted patrols passed up and down the street, and wherever there seemed the nucleus of a crowd forming, knots of the Papal _sbirri_, with their long cloaks and cocked hats pressed over their eyes, and furtive hang-dog looking countenances, elbowed their way unopposed and apparently unnoticed. In the square itself there were a hundred men or so, chiefly, I should judge, strangers or artists, a group of young ragamuffins, who had climbed upon the pedestals of the columns, and seemed actuated only by the curiosity natural to the boy genus, and a very large number of French soldiers, who, at first sight, looked merely loiterers. The patrol, of perhaps four hundred men, stood drawn up under arms, waiting for the word to march. Gradually one perceived that the crowds of soldiers who loitered about without muskets were not mere spectators. Almost imperceptibly they closed round the patrol, pushed back by the bystanders not in uniform, and then retreated, forming a clear ring for the guard to move in. There was no pushing, no hustling, no cries of any kind. After a few minutes the drums and fifes struck up, the drum-major whirled his staff round in the air, the ring of soldier- spectators parted, driving the crowd back on either side, and through the clear space thus formed the patrol marched up the square, divided into two columns, one going to the right, and the other to the left, and so passed down the length of the Corso. The crowd made no sign, and raised no shout as the troops went by, and only looked on in sullen silence. In fact, the sole opinion I heard uttered was that of a French private, who formed one of the ring, and who remarked to his comrade that this duty of theirs was _sacre nom de chien de metier_, a remark in which I could not but coincide. As soon as the patrol had passed, the crowd retreated into the cafes or the back-streets, and in half-an-hour the Corso was as empty as usual, and was left to the _sbirri_, who passed up and down slowly and silently. Even in the small side-streets, which lead from the Corso to the English quarters, I met knots of the Papal police accompanied by French soldiers, and the suspicious scrutinizing glance they cast upon you as you passed showed clearly enough they were out on business. 18 February. The present has been a week of demonstrations, both Papal and anti-Papal. Last Thursday was the Giovedi Grasso, the great people's day of the carnival. In other years, from an early hour in the afternoon, there is a constant stream of carriages and foot-passengers setting from all parts of Rome towards the Corso. The back-streets and the ordinary promenades are almost deserted. The delight of the Romans in the carnival is so notorious, that persons long resident in Rome possessed the strongest conviction beforehand, that no human power could ever keep the natives from the Corso upon Thursday. The day, unlike its predecessors, was brilliantly bright. The Corso was decked out as gaily as hangings and awnings could make it. The sellers of bouquets and "confetti" were at their posts. A number of carriages were sent down filled with adherents of the Government, dressed in carnival attire, to act as decoy-ducks. All officials were required to take part in the festivities. The influence of the priests was exerted to beat up carnival recruits amongst their flocks, and yet the people obstinately declined coming. The revel was ready, but the revellers were wanting. The stiff-necked Romans were not content with stopping away, but insisted on going elsewhere. By one of those tacit understandings, which are always the characteristic of a country without public life or liberty, a place of rendezvous was fixed upon. Without notice or proclamation of any kind, everybody knew somehow, though how, nobody could tell, that the road beyond the Porta Pia was the place where people were to meet on the day in question. The spot was appropriate on various grounds. Along the Via Nomentana, which leaves Rome through this gate, lies the Mons Sacer, whither the Plebs of old seceded from the city, to escape from the tyranny of their rulers. The gate too, which was commenced by Michael Angelo, was completed by the present Pontiff, and there is an irony dear to an Italian's mind in the idea of choosing the Porta Pia for the egress of a demonstration against the Pope Pius. Perhaps, after all, the fact that the road is one of the sunniest and pleasantest near Rome may have had more to do with its selection than any abstract considerations. Be the cause what it may, one fact is certain, that from the time when the Corso ought to have been filling, a multitude of carriages and holiday-dressed people set out towards the Porta Pia. The Giovedi Grasso is a feast-day in Rome, and all the shops are shut, and their owners at liberty. All Rome, in consequence, seemed to be wending towards the Porta Pia. From the gate to the convent of St Agnese, a distance of about a mile, there was a long string of carriages, chiefly hired vehicles, but filled with well-dressed persons. As far as I could judge, the number of private and aristocratic conveyances was small. The prince of Piombino, who is married to one of the half-English Borghese princesses, was the only Roman nobleman I heard of, as being amongst the crowd. But if the nobility were not present on the Via Nomentana, they were equally absent from the Corso. The footpaths were thronged with a dense file of orderly respectable people. There were, perhaps, half-a-dozen carriages, the owners of which had some sort of carnival-dress on, but that was all. There were no cries, no throwing of confetti, no demonstration of feeling, except in the very fact of the assemblage. As far as I could guess from my own observation, there were about 6000 people present, and from 400 to 500 carriages; though persons who ought to be well informed have told me that there were double these numbers. No attempt at interference was made on the part of the French. There were but few French soldiers about, and what there were, were evidently mere spectators. Pontifical gendarmes passed along the road at frequent intervals, and, not being able to arrest a multitude, consoled themselves with the small piece of tyranny of closing the _osterias_, which, both in look and character, bear a strong resemblance to our London tea-gardens, and are a favourite resort of thirsty and dusty pedestrians. The crowd, nevertheless, remained perfectly orderly and peaceful, and as soon as the carnival-time was over, returned quietly to the city. As I came back from the gate I passed through the Corso just before the course was cleared for the races. I have never seen in Italy a rabble like that collected in the street. The crowd was much such a one as you will sometimes meet, and avoid, in the low purlieus of London on Guy Faux day. Carriages there were, some forty in all, chiefly English. One hardly met a single respectable-looking person, except foreigners, in the crowd; and I own I was not sorry when I reached my destination, and got clear of the mob. Yet the report of the police of the Pope was, that the carnival was _brilliante, e brilliantissimo_. On the following day (Friday) much the same sort of demonstration took place in the Corso. There being no carnival, the whole street, from the Piazza del Popolo to the Capitol, was filled with a line of carriages, going and returning at a foot's pace. The balconies and windows were filled with spectators, and the rabble of the previous day was replaced by the same quiet, decent crowd I had seen at the Porta Pia. The carriages, from some cause or other, were more aristocratic in appearance; while the number of spectators was much smaller--probably because it was a working day, and not a "festa." By seven o'clock the assemblage dispersed, and the street was empty. Meanwhile, Friday afternoon was chosen for the time of a counter-demonstration at the Vatican. All the English Roman Catholics sojourning in Rome received notice that it was proposed to present an address to the Pope, condoling with him in his afflictions. Cardinal Wiseman was the chief promoter, and framed the address. Many Roman Catholics, I understand, abstained from going, because they were not aware what the terms of the address might be, and how far the sentiments expressed in it might be consistent with their position as English subjects. The demonstration outwardly was not a very imposing one; about fifty cabs and one-horse vehicles drove up at three o'clock to the Vatican, and altogether some 150 persons, men, women, and children, of English extraction, mustered together as representatives of Catholic England. The address was read by Cardinal Wiseman, expressing in temperate terms enough the sympathy of the meeting for the tribulations which had befallen his Holiness. The bearing of the Pope, so his admirers state, was calm, dignified, and resolute. As however, I have heard this statement made on every occasion of his appearance in public, I am disposed to think it was much what it usually is--the bearing of a good-natured, not over-wise, and somewhat shaky old man. In reply to the address, he stated that "if it was the will of God that chastisement should be inflicted upon his Church, he, as His vicar, however unworthy, must taste of the chalice;" and that, "as becomes all Christians, knowing that though we cannot penetrate the motives of God, yet that He in his wisdom permits nothing without an ulterior object, we may safely trust that this object must be good." All persons present then advanced and kissed the Pope's hand, or foot, if the ardour of their devotion was not contented by kissing the hand alone. When this presentation was over, the Pope requested the company to kneel, and then prayed in Italian for the spiritual welfare of England, calling her the land of the saints, and alluding to the famous _Non Angli, sed angeli_. He exhorted all present "to look forward to the good time when justice and mercy should meet and embrace each other as brothers;" and finally, with faltering voice, and tears rolling down his cheeks, gave his apostolical benediction. Of course, if you can shut your eyes to facts, all this is very pretty and sentimental. If the Romans could be happy enough to possess the constitution of Thibet, and have a spiritual and a temporal Grand Llama, they could not have fixed on a more efficient candidate for the former post than the present Pope; but the crowds of French soldiers which lined the streets to coerce the chosen people, formed a strange comment on the value of pontifical piety. It is too true that the better the Pope the worse the ruler. Probably the thousands of Romans who thronged the Corso knew more about the blessings of the Papal sway than the few score strangers, who volunteered to pay the homage to the Sovereign of Rome which the Romans refuse to render. To-day the demonstration was repeated on the Porta Pia; and the Vatican, indignant at its powerlessness to suppress these symptoms of disaffection, is anxious to stir up the crowd to some overt act of insurrection, which may justify or, at any rate, palliate the employment of violent measures. So in order to incense the crowd, the public executioner was sent out in a cart guarded by gendarmes to excite some active expression of anger on the part of the mob. It is hard for us to understand the feeling with which the Italians, and especially the Romans, regard the _carnefice_. He is always a condemned murderer, whose life is spared on condition of his assuming the hated office, and, except on duty, he is never allowed to leave the quarter of St Angelo, where he dwells, as otherwise his life would be sacrificed to the indignation of the crowd, who regard his presence as a contamination. The poor fellow looked sheepish and frightened enough, as he patrolled slowly with his escort up and down the crowded Porta Pia thoroughfare; but even this insult failed to effect its object. The device was too transparent for an Italian crowd not to detect it, and the ill-omened _cortege_ of the "Pope's representative," as the Romans styled the executioner, passed by without any comment. MARCH 7. The system of silent legal opposition which was carried on formerly at Milan, and now at Venice, is being organised here against the Papal rule. By one of those mystical compacts to which I have before alluded, it has been resolved to suppress smoking and lottery-gambling. Our anti-tobacconists, or our moral reformers, must not suppose that the Romans have suddenly become alive to the iniquity of either of these pursuits. I wish, indeed, with regard to the latter, I could conscientiously assert that the Liberal faction had decreed its extinction from any conviction of the degradation and corruption inflicted by it upon their country. I fear, however, from the extent to which lotteries are still encouraged by the Tuscan Government, that such is not the case. The reason of the movement is, indeed, a very simple and material one. From the lotteries and the tobacco monopoly the government derives a very large part of its revenues, and a part, too, which does not excite unpopularity in the same way as direct taxation. Any extinction, therefore, or indeed any serious diminution of these sources of revenue, would place the Holy See in great difficulties. The profits on the lottery go directly into the pockets of the Government, who are also supplied with very extensive and important patronage by the vast number of petty posts which the system employed for collecting tickets places at their disposal. The tobacco monopoly is farmed out to a company, on whom any loss would fall in the first instance; but if the abstention from tobacco were continued long, the Government would soon feel the effects, through the inability of the company to keep up their present rate of payment. Whether rightly or wrongly, an attempt to cut off the funds of the Papal exchequer in this manner is certainly being made. Strangers, of course, are not interfered with; but Italians are warned at the doors of the cigar-shops and the lottery-offices not to enter and buy. The sudden diminution in the number of people you meet smoking in the streets is quite remarkable, and, I am sure, would strike any observer who had never heard of the movement. There have been already several disturbances between smokers and non-smokers. The story goes, that in a quarrel arising out of this subject, a man was stabbed in the street the night before last; but in Rome it is almost impossible to make out the truth in a matter of this kind. At several lottery-offices gendarmes have been placed to hinder purchasers of tickets from being molested; and a bitter feeling seems growing up on every side. How long the Romans may have strength of mind enough to abstain from their favourite amusements of smoking and gambling, it is impossible to say; but since I witnessed their resolute abstention from the delights of the Carnival, I think better of their courage than I did before. On Sunday evening, when the great promenade takes place along the Corso, where, a week ago, there was hardly a male mouth without a cigar or cheroot or cigarette inserted in it, I only noticed four smokers in the Corso crowd, and they were all foreigners. The practice is suppressed not only in the streets but in the cafes. For the benefit of the weaker brethren, who cannot screw up their patriotism to total abstinence, pipes are allowed, as the Government profit on tobacco is very small compared with that on cigars. The Italians, however, are not much of pipe-smokers, and the tobacconists are in despair at the total absence of customers. Of course, the partisans of the Government prophesy that the movement will end in smoke, but at present the laugh is on the other side. March 10. The Society for the Suppression of Smoking, who by the way send their tracts to the reading-rooms here, of all places in the world, will regret to learn that the Roman Anti-Tobacco Crusade is to expire on and after Sunday next. The leaders of the liberal party have, I think, acted wisely in contenting themselves with an exhibition of their union and power and then withdrawing from the contest. The loss to the Government by the discontinuance of smoking was only an indirect and eventual one; on the other hand, the company, who farm the Tobacco monopoly, would have been ruined by the progress of the movement, and had already been obliged to dismiss a large proportion of their work-people. The tobacconists and street-hawkers of cigars were deprived of their livelihood, and the misery and consequent ill-will created amongst the poor of Rome by keeping up the prohibition would have been serious. Then, too, perhaps it was thought advisable not to impose too heavy a trial on patriotic ardour. Smoke is meat and drink to a Roman, his first care in the morning, his occupation by day, and his last thought at night. Yet you may truly say, that during the time of its prohibition the whole city willingly gave up smoking. If, in order to testify political dissatisfaction, the whole of London were to leave off beer-drinking by private agreement, the expression of feeling would be hardly a more remarkable one. CHAPTER XIII. THE EMEUTE OF ST JOSEPH'S DAY. The feast of San Giuseppe is the only _festa_ day in Lent, when the Romans eat fried fish in honour of the occasion,--St Joseph alone knows why. Henceforth the day will have other and less pleasing associations. The garland-wreathed stalls, with the open ovens and the frizzling fritters, were reared as usual at every corner; the shops were closed; the _osterias_ were full; the streets were crowded with holiday-people in holiday-attire, and the day was warm and bright like an early summer-day in England, though it was only the 19th of March. The news of the Romagna elections, with their overwhelming majority in favour of annexation to Sardinia, had been just received in Rome with general exultation. No doubt the festive appearance which marked the city throughout the day was not altogether accidental, but was meant for, and regarded as, an expression of public sympathy with the revolted provinces. St Joseph happens to be the patron saint of the two great Italian popular heroes, Garibaldi and Mazzini, and a demonstration on this day was therefore considered to be in honour of the Three Josephs, the Saint and his two proteges. It was known generally that the adherents of the Liberal party would muster, as usual, on the Porta Pia road, and that the more courageous partizans of the popular cause would be distinguished by wearing a violet in their button-holes. The Government had, it seems, decided that even these tacit expressions of disaffection must be suppressed at all costs. With a happy irony of cruelty which appears to distinguish a priestly despotism above every other, the holiday of St Joseph was chosen as the opportunity for striking terror into the hearts of the disloyal Romans; and as the policy which sent out the executioner to excite the populace had not been crowned with its coveted success, it was resolved to create a collision between the police and the people. In the morning, five Roman gentlemen of position and fortune, suspected of sympathy with the liberal cause, received notice that they were exiled from the Papal States, and must leave the city within twenty-four hours. Amongst these gentlemen was St Angeli, who, not long ago, was arrested and imprisoned without charge or trial, and who was but lately released on the remonstrance of the French authorities. There was also Count Silverstrelli, a brother of the gentleman of that name so well known to English sportsmen at Rome. The news of these arrests did not check the proposed demonstration. Towards four o'clock a considerable number of carriages and persons on foot assembled outside the gates on the Via Nomentana; some patrols, however, of French soldiers were found to be stationed along the road; and as it is the great object of the liberal leaders at Rome to avoid any possibility even of collision between the people and the French troops, it was resolved to adjourn the place of assemblage to the Corso. Whether this was a thought suggested on the moment, or whether it was the result of a preconcerted plan, is a mooted question not likely to be decided; the resolution, however come to, was acted on at once. Neither here, nor elsewhere, I may observe, was there anything of a tumultuous crowd, or the slightest apparent approach to agitation on the part of the multitude. All a spectator could observe was, that the carriages turned homewards somewhat nearer to the gates than usual, and that the stream of people who sauntered idly along the footpath, as on any other _festa_ day, set out earlier than they are wont to do on their return to the city. About six o'clock the crowd from the Porta Pia had reassembled in the Corso. Six o'clock is always the fullest time in that street; private carriages are coming back from the Pincio promenade, and strangers are driving back to their hotels from the rounds of sight-seeing. The Corso, without doubt, was unusually and densely crowded; the footpaths swarmed with passengers, and, what was peculiarly galling to the Government, after the failure of the Carnival, there was a double line of aristocratic carriages passing up and down; still everything was perfectly peaceable and orderly. At the hour of the _Ave Maria_ the crowd was at its fullest, and this was the time selected for the outrage. In a scene of general terror and confusion it is impossible to ascertain exact details of the order in which events occurred, but I believe the following account is fairly exact. There were a great number of the Pontifical police, or _sbirri_, as the Romans call them, scattered in knots of two or three about the Corso; there were also several mounted patrols of the Papal gendarmes. The police did everything in their power to excite the people, hustled the crowd in every direction, used the most opprobrious epithets, and pushed their way along with insulting gestures. There are various stories afloat as to the immediate cause of the outbreak; one, that as a patrol passed the crowd hissed; another, that a cry was heard of "Viva Vittorio Emmanuele!" and a third, the Papal version, that on a young man of the name of Barberi being asked by a gendarme why he wore a violet flower on his coat, he answered rudely, and, on the officer trying to arrest him, his comrades pulled him away. All stories agree, that the provocation to the police was given in the Piazza Colonna; and the disturbance, if any, was so trivial, that a friend of mine, who was on the spot at the time, perceived nothing of it, and only fancies he heard a murmur as the police rode by. The provocation, whatever it was, was sufficient as a pretext for the premeditated outrage. The _sbirri_ drew their swords, and slashing right and left, charged the dense crowds of men, women and children. The word was given, and a band of some twenty Papal dragoons, who had been drawn up hard by at the Monte Citorio, waiting under arms for the signal, galloped down the Corso, clearing their way with drawn swords. The _sbirri_ along the street pulled out their cutlass-knives; the dragoons rode on the footway, and struck out at the carriages filled with ladies as they passed by, while the police ran a-muck (I can use no other word) amongst the terror-stricken crowd. The cries of the crushed and wounded, the terror of the women, and the savage, brutal fury of the police, added to the panic and confusion of the scene. Not the slightest attempt at resistance was made by the unarmed crowd; in a few minutes the Corso was cleared as if by magic, and order reigned in Rome. Short as the time was, the havoc wrought was very considerable. Nearer two than one hundred persons were injured in all. Of course the greater number of these persons were not actually wounded, but crushed, or stunned, or thrown down. There was no respect of persons in the use made of their swords by the police. Three French officers of the 40th, who were in plain clothes amongst the crowd, were cut down and severely wounded. An Irish gentleman, the brother of the member for Fermanagh, narrowly escaped a sabre-cut by dodging behind a pillar. The son of Prince Piombino was pursued by a gendarme beneath the gateway of his own palace, and only got off with his hat slit right in two. Persons were hunted down by the soldiery even out of the Corso. One gentleman, an Italian, was chased up the Via Condotti by a dragoon with his sword drawn, and saved himself from a sabre-cut by taking refuge in a passage. Some of the dragoons rode down the Via Ripetta, when they had come to the top of the Corso, and cut down a woman who was passing by. As soon as the Corso was cleared, the gendarmes went into the different cafes along the street, and ordered all persons, who were found in them, to go home at once. In one case an infirm old man, who could not make off fast enough, had his face cut open by a sabre-blow; while the backs of the gendarmes' swords were used plentifully to expedite the departure of the cafe frequenters. The exact number of wounded it is of course impossible to ascertain. Persons who received injuries were afraid to show themselves, and still more to call attention to their injuries, for fear of being arrested for disaffection and immured in prison. If I believed the stories I heard on good authority and on most positive assurance, I should put down the number of persons who died from wounds or injuries received during the melee at from twelve to fifteen. Still, long experience has led me to place very little reliance on any Roman story I cannot test; and I am bound to say, I could not sift any one of these stories to the bottom. On the other hand, this fact by no means causes me to disbelieve that fatal injuries may have been received. The extreme difficulty, if not impossibility, of obtaining true information on such a point may be realized from the circumstance, that a government official was, within my knowledge, dismissed from his post for merely visiting one of the victims who had been wounded by the police. By all accounts, even by that of the Papal partizans, the number of severe injuries inflicted was very considerable; indeed it is impossible it should have been otherwise, when one considers that along a street so crowded that the carriages could only move at a foot's pace, the gendarmes on horse and foot charged recklessly, cutting at every one they could reach. In my statement, however, of the casualties, I have sought to assert, not what I believe, but only what (as far as one can speak with certainty of what one did not actually see) I know to be the truth. The worst part of the whole story, in my opinion, was the subsequent conduct of the Government. These outrages, which might have been excused as the result of an unforeseen disturbance, obtained in cold blood the deliberate sanction of the Vatican. The Papal gendarmes received the personal acknowledgments of the Pope for their conduct. The six horsemen who distinguished themselves by clearing the Piazza Colonna were promoted for their services, and all the police on duty that day received extra pay. With unusual promptitude, in fact not more than a week after the event, the _Giornale di Roma_ contained an official statement of the occurrence. After alleging that hitherto they had considered the unpleasant event of too small importance to deserve notice, they proceed to give the following narrative. "On Monday, the 19th instant, in the course of the afternoon, the revolutionary faction proposed to make a demonstration in the Corso against the Pontifical Government, by an assemblage of persons hired for the express purpose. On the discovery of these designs, fitting arrangements were made in concert with the French police; and the French troops, as well as the Papal gendarmes, were drawn up, so that in case of need they might suppress any disturbance whatever. "In fact, about five o'clock in the afternoon crowds were formed in the streets, directed by leaders, and amongst these leaders were two hide-tanners, whom the gendarmes arrested with promptitude. The crowd, thus raked together, then began to hoot at and insult the gendarmes, and at last attempted to rescue the prisoners. Not succeeding in this attempt, the rioters, whose numbers had now been swollen by a lot of idle fellows from the vilest rabble, crowded together into the Piazza Colonna, and continued to outrage the officers of public justice with every kind of insult. Thereupon a handful of police advanced courageously against the rioters, and proved quite sufficient to disperse and rout them. "The friends of order applauded the gallant gendarmes in the execution of their duty. In less than an hour the most perfect quiet reigned around, and in the affray a very few persons were injured, whose injuries have proved to be of slight consequence." Throughout the whole of this document the _suppressio veri_ reigns supreme. It is ludicrous describing the _emeute_ as an event unworthy of special mention, when rewards and praises have been heaped by the Government on the heroes who distinguished themselves in the suppression of this contemptible fracas. In a city like Rome a crowd which filled the whole Corso's length cannot be described as a faction, while the occupants of the aristocratic carriages which lined both sides of the street are not likely to have had two hide-tanners for their leaders. The size of the crowd disposes at once of the idea that the persons who composed it were bribed to be present; and the attempt to identify the action of the French troops with that of the Papal gendarmes, is upset by the plain and simple fact, that the French patrols were on the Porta Pia road, and not in the Corso at all. Indeed, if the whole matter was not too serious to laugh at, there would be something actually comical in the notion of the friends of order, or any person in their senses, stopping to applaud the gendarmes as they trampled their way through the helpless, screaming, terror-stricken crowd, striking indiscriminately at friend or foe. The statement has this value, and this value only, that it gives the formal approval of the Government to the brutal outrages of the Papal police. For a time the Pro-Papal party were in a state of high exultation. A popular demonstration had been suppressed by a score or so of Pontifical troops. The stock stories about the cowardice of the Italians were revived, and the more intemperate partizans of the Government asserted that the support of the French army was no longer needed, and that the Pope would shortly be able to rely for protection on his own troops alone. There was in these exultations a certain sad amount of truth. I am no blind admirer of the Romans, and I freely admit that no high-spirited crowd would have submitted to be cut down by a mere handful of gendarmes. I admit, too, that this blood-letting stopped for the time the fashion of demonstrations. It is however at best a doubtful compliment to a government that it has succeeded in crushing the spirit and energy of a nation; but to this compliment, I fear, the Papal rule is only too well entitled. "The lesson given on St Joseph's day," so wrote the organ of the Papacy in Paris, "has profited;" how, and to whom, time will show. Hardly, I think; at any rate, to the religion of love and mercy, or to those who preach its doctrines, and enforce its teachings by lessons such as this. CHAPTER XIV. A COUNTRY FAIR. Far away among the Sabine hills, right up the valley of the Teverone, as the Romans now-a-days call the stream which once bore the name of Anio, hard by the mountain frontier-land of Naples, lies the little town of Subiaco. I am not aware that of itself this out-of-the-world nook possesses much claim to notice. Antiquarians, indeed, visit it to search after the traces of a palace, where Nero may or may not have dwelt. Students of ecclesiastical lore make pilgrimages thereto, to behold the famous convent of the Santo Speco, the home of the Benedictine order. In summer-time the artists in Rome wander out here to take shelter from the burning heat of the flat Campagna land, and to sketch the wild Salvator Rosa scenery which hems in the town on every side. I cannot say, however, that it was love of antiquities or divinity, or even scenery, which led my steps Subiaco-wards. The motive of my journey was of a less elevated and more matter-of-fact character. Some few days beforehand a yellow play-bill-looking placard caught my eye as I strolled down the Corso. A perusal of its contents informed me, that on the approaching feast-day of St Benedict there was to be held at Subiaco the great annual _Festa e fiera_. Many and various were the attractions offered. There was to be a horse-race, a _tombola_, or open lottery, an illumination, display of fire-works, high mass, and, more than all, a public procession, in which the sacred image of San Benedetto was to be carried from the convent to the town. Such a bill of fare was irresistible, even had there not been added to it the desire to escape from the close muggy climate of Rome into the fresh mountain-air,--a desire whose intensity nothing but a long residence here can enable one to appreciate. Subiaco is some forty odd miles from Rome, and amongst the petty towns of the Papal States is a place of some small importance. The means, however, of communication with the metropolis are of the scantiest. Two or three times a week a sort of Italian _eil-wagen_, a funereal and tumble-down, flea-ridden coach, with windows boarded up so high that, when seated, you cannot see out of them, and closed hermetically, after Italian fashion, shambles along at jog-trot pace between the two towns, and takes a livelong day, from early morning to late at night, to perform the journey. Other public mode of transit there is none; and therefore, not having patience for the diligence, I had to travel in a private conveyance, and if there had been any one else going from the fair to Rome, which there was not, they must perforce have done the same. As to the details of the journey, and the scenery through which you pass, are they not written in the book of Murray, wherein whoso likes may read them? It is enough for me to note one or two facts which tell their own story. Throughout the forty and odd miles of the road I traversed, I never passed through a single village or town, with the exception of Tivoli; and between that town and Rome, a distance of some twenty miles, never even caught sight of one. After Tivoli, when the road enters the mountains, there are a dozen small towns or so, all perched on the summits of high hills, under which the road winds in passing. Detached houses or cottages there are, as a rule, none--certainly not half a dozen in all--the whole way along. There was little appearance of traffic anywhere. A few rough carts, loaded with charcoal or wood for the Roman markets; strings of mules, almost buried beneath high piles of brushwood, which were swung pannier-wise across their backs; and a score of peasant- farmers mounted on shaggy cart-horses, and jogging towards the fair, constituted the way-bill of the road. The mountain slopes were apparently altogether barren, or at any rate uncultivated. In the plain of the valley, bearing traces of recent inundation from the brook-torrent which ran alongside the road in strange zig-zag windings, were a number of poorly tilled fields, half covered with stones. The season was backward, and I could see no trace of anything but hard, fruitless labour; and the peasants, who were working listlessly, seemed unequal to the labour of cultivating such unprofitable lands. Personally the men were a vigorous race enough, but the traces of the malaria fever, the sunken features and livid complexion, were painfully common; their dress too was worn ragged and meagre, while the boys working in the fields constantly left their work to beg as I passed by, a fact which, considering how little frequented this district is by travellers, struck me unpleasantly. With my English recollections of what going to the fair used to be, I looked but in vain for farmers' carts or holiday-dressed foot-folk going towards Subiaco. I did not meet one carriage of any description, except the diligence without a passenger, and could not have guessed, from the few knots of peasants I passed, that there was anything unusual going on in what I suppose I might call the county town of the district. By the time I reached Subiaco, the first day of the fair was at its height. The topography of the place is of the simplest description,--a narrow street running up a steep hill, with a small market-place; on the summit stands a church; half a dozen _cul-de-sac_ alleys on the right, terminated by the wall that hems in the river at their feet; a long series of broken steps on the left, leading to a dilapidated castle, where the Legate ought to reside, but does not; such are the main features of the town. In fact, if you fancy Snow Hill, Holborn, shrunk to about a quarter of its width, all its houses reduced to much such a condition as that gaunt corner-building which for years past has excited my ungratified curiosity; Newgate gaol replaced by the facade of a dingy Italian church; the dimensions of the locale considerably diminished; and a small section of the dark alleys between the prison and Farringdon Street, bounded by the Fleet-ditch uncovered; you will have a very fair impression of the town of Subiaco. The fair, such as it was, was confined to this High Street and to the little square at its head. The street was filled with people, chiefly men, bartering at the doors of the un-windowed shops. A very small crowd would fill so small a place, but I think there could hardly have been less than a thousand persons. Cutlery and hosiery of the rudest kind seemed to be the great articles of commerce. There were, of course, an office of the Pontifical Lottery, which was always crammed, an itinerant vendor of quack medicines and a few scattered stalls (not a single booth by the way), where shoes and caps and pots and pans and the "wonderful adventures of St Balaam" were sold by hucksters of Jewish physiognomy. Lean, black-bristled pigs ran at every step between your legs, and young kids, slung across their owners' shoulders with their heads downwards, bleated piteously. The only sights of a private description were a series of deformed beggars, drawn in go-carts, and wriggling with the most hideous contortions; but the fat woman, and the infant with two heads, and the learned dog, whom I had seen in all parts of Europe, were nowhere to be found. There was not even an organ boy or a hurdy-gurdy. Music, alas! like prophecy, has no honour in its own country. The crowd was of a very humble description; the number of bonnets or hats visible might be counted on one's fingers, and the fancy peasant costumes of which Subiaco is said to be the great rendezvous, were scarcely more in number. There was very little animation apparent of any kind, very little of gesticulation, or still less of shouting; indeed the crowd, to do them justice, were perfectly quiet and orderly, for a holiday crowd almost painfully so. The party to which I belonged, and which consisted of four Englishmen, all more or less attired in those outlandish costumes which none but Englishmen ever wear, and no Englishman ever dreams of wearing in his own country, excited no comment whatever, and scarcely attracted a passing glance. Fancy what the effect would be of four bloused and bearded Frenchmen strolling arm-in-arm through a village wake in an out-of-the-way English county? By the time I had strolled through the fair, the guns, or rather two most dilapidated old fowling-pieces, were firing as a signal for the race. The horses were the same as those run at the Carnival races in Rome, and as the only difference was, that the course, besides being over hard slippery stones, was also up a steep hill-street, and the race therefore somewhat more cruel, I did not wait to see the end, but wandered up the valley to hear the vespers at the convent of the Santo Speco. I should have been sorry to have missed the service. Through a number of winding passages, up flights of narrow steps, and by terrace-ledges cut from the rock, over which I passed, and overhanging the river-side, I came to a vault-like chapel with low Saracenic arches and quaint old, dark recesses, and a dim shadowy air of mystery. Round the candle-lighted altar, standing out brightly from amidst the darkness, knelt in every posture some seventy monks; and ever and anon the dreary nasal chanting ceased, and a strain of real music burst from out the hidden choir, rising and dying fitfully. The whole scene was beautiful enough; but,--what a pity there should be a "but" in everything,--when you came to look on the scene in the light of a service, the charm passed away. There were plenty of performers but no audience; the congregation consisted of four peasant-women, two men, and a child in arms. The town below was crowded. The service was one of the chief ones in the year, but somehow or other the people stopped away. When the music was over, I was shown through the convent. There were, as usual, the stock marvels: a hole through which you looked and beheld a--shall I call it sacred?--picture of Satan with horns and hoof complete; a small plot of ground, where used to grow the thorns on which St Benedict was wont to roll himself in order to quench the desires of manhood, and where now grow the roses into which St Francis transformed the said thorns, in honour of his brother saint. The monk who showed me the building talked much about the misery of the surrounding poor. At the convent's foot lies a little wood of dark green ilexes, of almost unknown age, valued on account of some tradition about St Benedict, and perhaps still more as forming a kind of oasis on the barren, bare mountain-side. Armed guards have to be placed at night around this wood, to save it from the depredations of the peasantry; every tree belonging to the convent and not guarded was sure to be cut down. No one, so my informant told me, would believe the sums of money the convent had spent of late on charity, and how for this purpose even their daily supplies of food had been curtailed; but alas! it was only like pouring water into a sieve, for the people were poorer than ever. I own that when the old priest pointed out the number of churches and convents you could see in the valley below, and spoke, with regret, of the time when there were twelve convents round Subiaco alone, I felt that the cause of this hopeless misery was not far to seek, though hard to remedy. On my way homewards to the town I beheld the half dozen sky-rockets which composed the display of fire-works, and also the two rows of oil-lamps on the cornices over the church-door, which formed the brilliant illuminations. Neither sight seemed to collect much crowd or create much excitement. As the dusk came on the streets emptied fast, and by night- time the town was almost deserted; and, except that the wine-shops were still filled with a few hardened topers, every sign of the fair had vanished. There was not even a trace of drunkenness apparent. The next morning the same scene was repeated with little difference, save that the crowd was rather greater, and a band of military music played in the market-place. About noon the holy procession was seen coming down the winding road which leads from the convent to the town. I had taken up my position on a roadside bank, and enjoyed a perfect view. There were a number of shabby flags and banners preceded by a hundred able-bodied men dressed in dirty-white surplices, rather dirtier than the colour of their faces. A crowd of ragged choristers followed swinging incense-pots, droning an unintelligible chant, and fighting with each other. Then came a troop of monks and scholars with bare heads and downcast eyes. All these walked in twos and twos, and carried a few crucifixes raised aloft. The monks were succeeded by a pewter-looking bust, which, I suppose, was a likeness of St Benedict, and the bust was followed by a mule, on which, in a snuff-coloured coat, black tights, white neckcloth, and a beef-eater's hat, the whole sheltered beneath a green carriage umbrella, rode His Excellency the Governor of the district. Behind him walked his secretary, the Syndic of Subiaco, four gendarmes, and three broken-down, old livery-clad beadles, who carried the umbrellas of these high dignitaries. In truth, had it not been for the unutterable shabbiness of the whole affair, I could have fancied I saw the market scene in "Martha," and "The Last Rose of Summer" seemed to ring unbidden in my ears. Not a score of un-official spectators accompanied the procession from the convent, and the interest caused by it appeared but small; the devotion absolutely none. The fact which struck me most throughout was the utter apathy of the people. Not a person in the place I spoke to--and I asked several--had any notion who the governor was. The nearest approach that I got to an answer was from one of the old beadles, who replied to my question, "Chi sa?" "E una roba da lontano;" and with this explanation that the governor was "a thing that came from a distance," I was obliged to rest satisfied. When the procession reached the town the band joined in, the governor got off his mule, room was made for our party in the rank behind him, I suppose, as "distinguished foreigners;" and so with banners flying, crosses nodding, drums beating, priests and choristers chanting, we marched in a body into the church, where the female portion of the crowd and all the beggars followed us. I had now, however, had enough of the "humours of the fair," and left the town without waiting to try my luck at the _tombola_, which was to come off directly High Mass was over. CHAPTER XV. THE HOLY WEEK. The _nil admirari_ school are out of favour. In our earnest working age, it is the fashion to treat everything seriously, to find in every thing a deep hidden meaning, in fact, to admire everything. Since the days of Wordsworth and Peter Bell, every petty poet and romantic writer has had his sneer at the shallow sceptic to whom a cowslip was a cowslip only, and who called a spade a spade. I feel, therefore, painfully that I am not of my own day when I express my deliberate conviction, that the ceremonies of Holy Week at Rome are--the word must come out sooner or later--an imposture. This is not the place to enter into the religious aspect of the Catholic question, nor if it were, should I have any wish to enter the lists of controversy as a champion of either side. I can understand that for some minds the ideas of Church unity, of a mystic communion of the faithful, and of an infallible head of a spiritual body have a strange attraction, nay, even a real existence. I can understand too, that for such persons all the pomps and pageantry of the Papal services present themselves under an aspect to me unintelligible. Whether these ideas be right or wrong, I am not able, nor do I care, to argue. The Pontifical ceremonies, however, have not only a spiritual aspect, but a material and very matter-of-fact one. They are after all great spectacles got up with the aid of music and upholstery and dramatic mechanism. Now, how far in this latter point of view the ceremonies are successful or not, I think from some small experience I am pretty well qualified to judge; and if I am asked whether, as ceremonies, the services of the Church of Rome are imposing and effective, I answer most unhesitatingly, No. I know that this assertion upsets a received article of faith in Protestant England as to the seductive character of the Papal ceremonies. I remember well the time when I too believed that the shrines of the old faith were the haunts of sense-enthralling grandeur, of wild enchantment and bewitching beauty; when I too dreamt how amidst crowds of rapt worshippers, while unearthly music pealed around you and the fragrant incense floated heavenwards, your soul became lost to everything, save to a feeling of unreasoning ecstasy. In fact, I believed in the enchantments of Papal pageantry, as firmly as I believed that a Lord Mayor's feast was a repast in which Apicius would have revelled, or that an opera ball was a scene of oriental and voluptuous delight. Alas! I have seen all, and known all, and have found all three to be but vanity. Now the question as to the real aspect of the Papal pageantry, and the effects produced by it upon the minds, not of controversialists, but of ordinary spectators, is by no means an unimportant one with reference to the future prospects of Italy and the Papacy. Let me try then, not irreverently or depreciatingly, but as speaking of plain matters of fact, to tell you what you really do see and hear at the greatest and grandest of the Roman ceremonies. Of all the Holy Week services none have a more European fame, or have been more written or sung about, than the Misereres in the Sistine Chapel. Now to be present at these services you have to start at about one o'clock, or midday, in full evening costume, dress-coat and black trowsers. Any man who has ever had to walk out in evening attire in the broad daylight, will agree with me that the sensation of the general shabbiness and duskiness of your whole appearance is so strong as to overcome all other considerations, not to mention your devotional feelings. In this attire you have to stand for a couple of hours amongst a perspiring and ill-tempered crowd, composed of tourists and priests, for the Italians are too wise to trouble themselves for such an object. During these two mortal hours you are pushed forward constantly by energetic ladies bent on being placed, and pushed back by the Swedish guards, who defend the entrance. The conversation you hear around you, and perforce engage in, is equally unedifying, both religiously and intellectually, a sort of _rechauffe_ of Murray's handbook, flavoured with discussions on last Sunday's sermon. When you are reduced to such a frame of mind and body as is the natural result of time so employed, the doors of the chapel are opened, and you have literally to fight your way in amidst a crowd of ladies hustling, screaming, and fainting. If you are lucky, you get standing room in a sort of open pen, whence, if you are tall, you can catch a sight of the Pope's tiara in the distance; or, if you belong to the softer sex, you get a place behind the screen, where you cannot see, but, what is much better, can sit. The atmosphere of the candle-lighted, crammed chapel is overpowering, and occupation you have none, except trying in the dim light to decipher the frescoes on the roof, with your head turned backwards. For three long hours you have a succession of dreary monotonous strains, forming portions of a chant, to you unintelligible, broken at intervals by a passage of intonation. There is no organ or instrumental music, and the absence of contralto voices is poorly compensated for by the unnatural accents of the Papal substitutes for female vocalists. The music itself may be very fine,--competent critics declare it is, and I have no doubt they are right; but I say, unhesitatingly, it is not music that addresses itself to popular tastes, or produces any feeling save that of weariness on nine-tenths of its hearers. You can mark clearly the expression of satisfaction which steals over every face as candle after candle of the stack of wax-lights before the altar is put out successively, at intervals of some twenty minutes. If the ceremony were reduced to one-tenth of its length, it might be impressive, but a dirge which goes on for three hours, and a chandelier which takes the same time to have its lights snuffed out, become an intolerable nuisance. The dying cadence of the Miserere is undoubtedly grand; but, in the first place, it comes when your patience is exhausted; and, in the second, it lasts so long, that you begin to wonder whether it will ever end. The slavery to conventional rules in England, which causes one to shrink from the charge of not caring about music as zealously as one could, and from pleading guilty to personal cowardice, makes Englishmen, and still more Englishwomen, profess to be delighted with the Miserere; but, in their heart of hearts, their feeling is much such as I have given utterance to. The ceremonies in St Peter's itself are, as sights, much better; but yet I often think that the very size and grandeur of the giant edifice increases the _mesquin-ness_ (for want of an English word I must manufacture a French one) of the whole ceremony. At the exposition of the relics, for instance, you see in a very lofty gallery two small figures, holding up something--what, you cannot tell--set up in a rich framework of gold and jewels; it may be a piece of the cross, or a martyr's finger-bone, or a horse's tooth--what it is neither you nor any one else can guess at that distance. If the whole congregation knelt down in adoration, the artistic effect would unquestionably be fine, but then not one person in seven does kneel, and therefore the effect is lost. So it is with the washing of the high altar. If one priest alone went up and poured the wine and oil over the sacred stone, and then cleansed the shrine from any spot or stain, the grandeur of the idea would not be marred by the monotony of the performance; but when some four hundred priests and choristers defile past, each armed with a chip besom, like those of the buy-a-broom girls of our childhood, and each gives a dab to the altar as he passes, the whole scene becomes tiresome, if not absurd. The same fatal objection applies to the famous washing of the feet at the Trinita dei Pellegrini. As a mere matter of simple fact, there is nothing very interesting in seeing a number of old women's feet washed, or in beholding a number of peasants who would be much better if the washing extended above their feet, engaged in gulping down an unsavoury repast. The whole charm of the thing rests in the idea, and this idea is quite extinguished by the extreme length and tediousness of the whole proceeding. The feet have too evidently been washed before, and the pilgrims are too palpably got up for the occasion. The finest ceremony I have ever witnessed in Rome is the High Mass at St Peter's on Easter-day; but as a theatrical spectacle, in which light alone I am now speaking of it, it is marred by many palpable defects. Whenever I have seen the Pope carried in his chair in state, I can never help thinking of the story of the Irishman, who, when the bottom and seat of his sedan-chair fell out, remarked to his bearers, that "he might as well walk, but for the honour of the thing." One feels so strongly that the Pope might every bit as well walk as ride in that ricketty, top-heavy chair, in which he sits, or rather sways to and fro, with a sea-sick expression. Then the ostrich feathers are so very shabby, and the whole get-up of the procession is so painfully "not" regardless of expense. You see Cardinals with dirty robes, under the most gorgeous stoles, while the surplices are as yellow as the stained gold-worked bands which hang across them. There is, indeed, no sense of congruity or the inherent fitness of things about the Italian ceremonials. A priest performs mass and elevates the host with muddy boots on, while the Pope himself, in the midst of the grandest service, blows his nose on a common red pocket-handkerchief. The absence of the organ detracts much from the impressiveness of the music in English ears, while the constant bowings and genuflexions, the drawling intonations, and the endless monotonous psalms, all utterly devoid of meaning for a lay-worshipper, added to the utter listlessness of the congregation, and even of the priests engaged in celebration of the service, destroy the impression the gorgeousness of the scene would otherwise produce. The insuperable objection, however, to the impressiveness of the whole scene is the same as mars all Papal pageants,--I mean the length and monotony of the performance. One chant may be fine, one prostration before the altar may be striking, one burst of the choral litany may act upon your senses; but, when you have chant after chant, prostration after prostration, chorus after chorus, each the twin brother to the other, and going on for hours, without apparent rhyme or reason, you cease to take thought of anything, in order to speculate idly when, if ever, there is likely to be an end. There is no variety, and little change, too, about the ceremonies. When you have seen one you have seen all; and when you have seen them once, you can understand how to the Romans themselves these sights have become stale and dull, till they look upon them much as I fancy the musician in the orchestra of the old Princess's must have looked upon one of Kean's Shaksperian revivals when the season was far spent. CHAPTER XVI. ISOLATION OF ROME. There is, I think, no city in the world where Pilate's question, "What is truth?" would be so hard to answer as in Rome. In addition to the ordinary difficulties which everywhere beset the path of the foreigner in search of knowledge, there are a number of obstacles peculiar and special to Rome alone. The whole policy of the government is directed towards maintaining the country in a state of isolation, towards drawing, in fact, a moral _cordon sanitaire_ round the Papal dominions. Indeed, if one lived long in Rome, one would get to doubt the reality of anything. When I last came to Rome straight from Tuscany, seething in the turmoil of its new- bought liberties, I could hardly believe that only six months ago there had been war in Italy within two hundred miles from the Papal city, that the fate of Italy still hung trembling in the balance, and that the chief province of the country was still in open revolt against its rulers. There was no sign, no trace, scarce a symptom even of what had passed or was passing in the world without. We all seemed spellbound in a dull, dead, dreary circle. There were no advertisements in the streets, except of devotional works for the coming season of Lent; no pamphlets or books placed in the booksellers' windows, which by their titles even implied the existence of the war and the revolution; no prints for sale of the scenes of the campaign, or the popular heroes of the day. This was the normal state of Rome, such as I had seen it in former years. Later on, indeed, either the force of events, or a change in the counsels of the Vatican, induced the Papacy to drop the defensive passive attitude which constituted its real strength, and to adopt an active offensive policy, which served rather to show the greatness of the dreaded danger than to avert its occurrence. Still the increased animation, though perceptible enough to a Roman, appeared to a stranger but a step above absolute stagnation. I never could get over my astonishment at our utter ignorance of what went on around and amongst us. About the state of affairs in our two neighbouring countries, whether in free Tuscany or in despotic Naples, we were entirely in the dark. What little news we got was derived from chance reports of stray travellers, or from the French and English newspapers. The _Giornale di Roma_ gave us now and then a damnatory paragraph about the Tuscan Government, from which, out of a mass of vituperation, we could pick up an odd fact or so; but during the first four months of this year, throughout which period I perused the _Giornale_ pretty carefully, I do not remember to have seen a single allusion, good, bad or indifferent, to the kingdom of Naples. The Tuscan papers were naturally enough forbidden, as are almost all the journals of the free Italian states, and could only be obtained by private hands. The Neapolitan Gazette, the _Monitore del Regno delle Due Sicilie_, was never seen by any chance, though I cannot suppose its circulation was directly interdicted. The communication between Rome and Naples was, and is, scanty in the extreme. During the last ten years, about ten miles of the Pio-Centrale Railroad, the Neapolitan line, have been opened. At present beyond Albano the works are entirely at a stand-still, and there are still some thirty miles of line, between Rome and the frontier, of which hardly a sod has been turned. The Civita Vecchia line has only been completed in consequence of the pressure of the French authorities, and the Ancona-Florence line is still in _statu quo_. Three times a week there are diligences between Rome and Naples. The local steam-boats, which used to run along the coast from Porto d'Anzio to the Neapolitan capital have been given up, and in fact there is no ready means of transit, save by the foreign steamers, which touch at Civita Vecchia. Whether purposely or not, everything has been done to check free communication between the Papal and Neapolitan States, and in this respect the Government has been eminently successful. The two countries are totally distinct. A Neapolitan is a _forestiere_ in Rome, and _vice versa_. The _divide et impera_ has been the motto of all the petty Italian despots and of the Papacy in particular, and hitherto has proved successful. Even now, as far as I could see and learn, the desire for Italian unity does not penetrate very low down. It is the desire, I freely grant, of all the best and wisest Italians, but scarcely, I suspect, the wish of the Italian people. In truth, Italy at this moment is very much what Great Britain would be, if Scotland, Ireland, Wales and the States of the Saxon Heptarchy had remained to this day separate petty kingdoms, ruled by governments who fostered and developed every local and sectional jealousy. The broad fact, that for some weeks at Rome we were in utter ignorance whether there had been a revolution or not in the capital of the frontier kingdom, not thirty miles away, and should have been quite surprised if we had learnt anything about the matter, is a sufficient commentary on our state of isolation. This artificial isolation too is increased by a sort of general apathy and almost universal ignorance, which are characteristic of all classes in Rome. How far this intellectual apathy is caused by, or causes, the material isolation of the city, would be a curious question to determine. The existence, however, of this fact, which none acquainted with Rome will question, constitutes one of the chief difficulties in ascertaining accurate information about facts. The most intelligent and the most liberal amongst the Romans (the two terms are there synonymous) never seem to know the value of positive facts, and even in matters susceptible of proof prefer general statements. Then, too, the absence of social meetings, or means of intercourse, is one of the most striking features about Roman society. There is no public life, no current literature, little even of free conversation. Of course, among the English and foreign residents there are plenty of parties and gaieties of every kind. At these parties you meet a few Anglicised Italians, who have picked up a little of our English language and a good deal of our English dress. The nobility of Rome who come into contact with the higher class of English travellers give a good number of formal receptions, but amongst the middle and professional classes there is very little society at all. The summer is the season for what society there is, but even then there is but little. There are no saloons in the Roman theatres, and the miserable refreshment-rooms, with their bars even more shabby and worse provided than our English ones, are, as you may suppose, not places of meeting. Even at the Opera there seemed to be little visiting in the boxes. With the exception of the strangers' rooms, there are no reading- rooms or clubs in Rome, if I may exclude from this category a miserable _Gabinetto di Lettura_, chiefly frequented by priests, and whose current _lettura_ consisted of the _Tablet_, the _Univers_, the _Armonia_, and the _Courier des Alpes_. The only real places of meeting, or focuses of news, are the cafes. At best, however, they are _triste_, uncomfortable places. There is no cafe in all Rome equal to a second-rate one in an ordinary French provincial town. There are few newspapers, little domino playing, and not much conversation. The spy system is carried to such an extent here, that even in private circles the speakers are on their guard as to what they say, and still more as to what they repeat. As an instance of this, I may mention a case that happened to me personally. On the morning before the demonstrations at the Porta Pia a Roman gentleman, with whom I was well acquainted, wished to give me information of the proposed meeting, of which, it happened, I was well aware; but though we were alone in a room together, the nearest approach on which my friend ventured to a direct information, which might be considered of a seditious character, was to tell me that I should find the Porta Pia road a pleasant walk on an afternoon. In fact, paradoxical as the assertion may appear, you learn more about Rome from foreigners than from natives. Unfortunately, such information as you may acquire in this way is almost always of a suspicious character. Almost every one in Rome judges of what he sees or hears according, in German phrase, to some stand-point of his own, either political or artistic or theological, as the case may be. As to the foreign converts, it is only natural that, as in most cases they have sacrificed everything for the Papal faith, they should therefore look at everything from the Papal point of view. If, however, they abuse and despise the Romans on every occasion, it is some satisfaction to reflect that the Romans lose no opportunity of despising or abusing them in turn. English Liberals who see a good deal of Roman society, see it, I think, under too favourable circumstances, and also attach undue importance to the wonderful habit all Italians have of saying as their own opinion whatever they think will be pleasing to their listener. On the other hand, the persons who are best qualified to judge of Rome, the ordinary residents of long standing, who care little about Italy and less about the Pope, are, I fancy, unduly influenced by the advantages of their exceptional position. There are few places in the world where a stranger, especially an English stranger, is better off than in Rome. As a rule, he has perfect liberty to do and say and write what he likes, and almost inevitably he gets to think that a government which is so lenient a one for him cannot be a very bad one for its own subjects. The cause, however, of this exceptional lenity is not hard to discover. Much as we laugh at home about the _Civis Romanus_ doctrine, abroad it is a very powerful reality. Whether rightly or wrongly, foreign governments are afraid of meddling with English subjects, and act accordingly. Then, too, Englishmen as a body care very little about foreign politics, and are known to live almost entirely among themselves abroad, and seldom to interfere in the concerns of foreigners; and lastly, I am afraid that the moral influence of England, of which our papers are so fond of boasting, is very small indeed on the continent generally, and especially in Italy. All the articles the _Times_ ever wrote on Italian affairs did not produce half the effect of About's pamphlet or Cavour's speeches. I am convinced that the influence of English newspapers in Italy is most limited. The very scanty knowledge of the English language, and the utter want of comprehension of our English modes of thought and feeling, render an English journal even more uninteresting to the bulk of Italians than an Italian one is to an Englishman; and the Roman rulers are well aware of this important fact. Hard words break no bones, and the Vatican cares little for what English papers say of it, and looks upon the introduction of English Anti-Papal journals as part of the necessary price to be paid for the residence of the wealthy heretics who refuse to stop anywhere where they cannot have clubs and churches and papers of their own. The expulsion of M. Gallenga, the _Times_ correspondent, was in reality no exception to this policy. It was not as the correspondent of an English newspaper, but as an ex-Mazzinian revolutionist and the author of _Fra Dolcino_, that this gentleman was obnoxious to the Papal authorities. Though a naturalized English subject, he had not ceased to be an Italian, and his personal influence amongst Roman society might have been considerable, though the effect of his English correspondence, however able, would have been next to nothing. From all these causes it is very hard to learn anything at Rome, and harder yet to learn anything with accuracy. It is only by a process of elimination you ever arrive at the truth. Out of a dozen stories and reports you have to take one, or rather part of one, and to reject the eleven and odd remaining. It has been my object, therefore, in the following descriptions of the scenes which marked the period of my residence in Rome, to give as much as possible of what I have known and seen myself, and as little of what I heard and learnt from others. What my narrative may lose in vividness, it will, I trust, gain in accuracy. CHAPTER XVII. THE PAPAL QUESTION SOLVED BY NAPOLEON I. About half a century ago the Papal question was the order of the day. Another Napoleon was seated on the throne of France, in the full tide of success and triumph of victory; another Pius was Pontiff at the Vatican, under the patronage of French legions, and, strange to say, another Antonelli was the leading adviser of the Pope. The city of Rome, too, and the Papal States were in a condition of general discontent and disaffection; but, unfortunately, this latter circumstance is one of too constant occurrence to afford any clue as to the date of the period in question. In the year of grace 1806, the enemies of Napoleon were _ipso facto_ our friends; and in consequence the Pope, who was known to be hostile to France, became somewhat of a popular character amongst us. Indeed Pius VII. was looked on at home rather in the light of a martyr and a hero. It is only of late years that this feeling has worn off, and that we, as a nation, have begun to doubt whether, in his struggle with the Papacy, the Corsican usurper, as it was the fashion then to style him, may not have been in the right after all. Considerable light has been thrown upon this question by the recent publications of certain private State papers, which remained in the possession of Count Aldini, the minister of Italian affairs under the great Emperor. There had long been subjects of dissension between the Papal and the Imperial Governments. At last, in 1806, these dissensions came to an open rupture. On the 1st of June in that year, Count Aldini wrote a despatch, by order of the Emperor, to complain of the avowed hostility displayed by the Papal Court against the system of legislation introduced into the Kingdom of Italy, and of the private intrigues carried on by Cardinal Antonelli. In this despatch occur these words, which at the present day read strangely appropriate:-- "His Majesty cannot behold without indignation, how that authority, which was appointed by God to maintain order and obedience on earth, employs the most perilous weapons to spread disorder and discord." This appeal to the conscience of the Vatican remained of course without effect, and things only grew worse. At the end of the same year Napoleon published at Berlin his famous decrees for the blockade of England, and the exclusion of all English merchandise. Whether justly or unjustly, the Court of Rome was suspected by Buonaparte of not keeping up the blockade (the most unpardonable of all political offences in his eyes). At last, by a decree of the 2nd of April 1808, he removed the Marches from the Papal Government, and annexed them to the Kingdom of Italy. The legations, by the way, had formed part of that kingdom since the treaty of Tolentino. This experiment proved unsuccessful. Napoleon soon discovered, what his successor is also likely to learn, that the real evil of the Papal Government consisted not in its territorial extent, but in the admixture of temporal and spiritual authority; that, in fact, its power of working mischief was, if anything, in inverse proportion to its size. With that rapidity of resolution which formed half his power, he resolved at once to suppress the temporal power of the Popes, and gave instructions to Count Aldini to draw up the necessary decrees. The Emperor was then on the eve of departure for the Spanish peninsula; and it was during the harassing reverses of his fortunes in Spain, that the following report of Aldini was perused by him:-- "Sire,--Your Imperial and Royal Majesty has considered that the time is come to fix the destinies of Rome. "You have directed me to examine which, amidst the diverse governments that Rome has had during modern times, is most adapted for her actual circumstances, while retaining the character of a free government. It appears from history, that Crescenzius governed Rome for many years with the title of Patrician and Consul. "Pope John XV. having appealed against him to the Emperor Otho, the appeal was dismissed, and Crescenzius was confirmed in his office, and caused to swear allegiance to the Emperor. "The supreme dominion of the Emperors over Rome was exercised without contradiction throughout all the dynasty of the Othos and Conrads, and only became assailed under Frederick I. "Afterwards, amidst the multitude of Italian republics, the Roman republic was restored for a time; and, in the 13th century, had for the head of its government a Matteo of the Orsini family with the title of Senator, in honour of whose memory a medal was struck. "For a long period the Kings of Naples, of the Anjou race, were Senators of Rome. "Pope Nicholas III. retained the senatorial dignity for himself; and, by a bull of 1268, forbade the election of any Senator, without the sanction of the Pope. "From this date all the Senators of Rome have been nominated by the Popes, and were never permitted to be foreigners. "Besides the Senator, there was a council, called the Conservatori. The members of this council were chosen from amongst the first families of Rome; proposed by the Senator, and approved by the Pope. "From time to time the Pontiffs have endeavoured to diminish the jurisdiction and the prerogatives of the Senators, so that in latter times their office has been reduced to a mere honorary charge. "It has appeared to me that the restoration of this form of government, replacing the Senator in his old authority, would be a step at once adapted to the circumstances of the present day, and acceptable to the Roman people. "To declare Rome a free Imperial city, and to reserve a palace there for your Majesty and your court, cannot but produce the most favourable effect on the minds of the Romans. "In the other dispositions of the proposed statute I have confined myself to following the precedents adopted by your Majesty on former occasions, under similar circumstances." This report was accompanied by the minutes of three decrees. The first referred to the future government of the Eternal City, and was sketched out in the following articles:-- "Art. 1. Rome is a free Imperial city. "Art. 2. The Palace of the Quirinal, with its dependencies, is declared to be an Imperial Palace. "Art. 3. The confines between the territory of Rome and the Kingdom of Italy are to be determined by a line, which, starting from Arteveri, passes through Baccano, Palestrina, Marino, Albano, Monterotondo, Palombara, Tivoli, and thence, keeping always at a distance of two miles inland from the sea, returns to Arteveri. "Art. 4. The lands of all communes intersected by the above line form the territory of Rome, excepting all lands that lie between the line and the sea coast. "Art. 5. A Senator and a Magistracy of forty Conservators are to form the Government of the City and its territory. "Art. 6. The executive power resides in the Senator; the legislative with the Magistracy of the Conservators. The Senator has the initiative in all projects of law. "Art. 7. The office of the Senator is for life; that of the Conservators for four years. The Magistracy is to be renewed every year for one-fourth of its members. In the first three years, lot is to decide who go out; afterwards, the members shall retire by rotation. "Art. 8. Ten Conservators, at least, shall be chosen from the different communes which compose the territory of Rome. "Art. 9. The Senator is always to be nominated by us and our successors. For the first election alone we reserve to ourselves the right of nominating the Magistracy of the Conservators. Hereafter, as vacancies occur, the Senator shall nominate the Conservators from a double list presented to him by the Magistracy. "Art. 10. The judicial functions are to be exercised in the name of the Senator, by judges nominated by him. Their appointment shall be for life. They cannot be removed except for fraud or neglect of duty, recognised as such by the Magistracy, or on being sentenced to any disgraceful or penal punishment. "Art. 11. Five AEdiles, nominated after the same fashion as the Conservators, shall superintend the preservation of the ancient monuments and the repairs of the public buildings. For this purpose a special fund (the amount to be determined by the Government) shall be placed yearly at their disposal. "Art. 12. Between the kingdom of Italy and the Roman State, there shall be no intermediate line of customs or duties. The Government of Rome may, however, impose an _octroi_ duty on victuals at the gates of the city. "Art. 13. For . . . years no ecclesiastic can hold a civil office in Rome or its territory." The second decree declares that the Papal States, with the exception of the Roman territories above described, are irrevocably and in perpetuity annexed to the Kingdom of Italy, and that the _Code Napoleon_ is to be the law of the land. The third is headed, "Dispositions with regard to his Holiness," and disposes of the Papal question in this somewhat summary manner. "We Napoleon, by the grace of God, and by the Constitution, Emperor of the French, King of Italy, Protector of the Rhenish Confederation, "Having regard to our first decree concerning Rome, have decreed, and decree as follows:-- "Art. 1. The Church and the Piazza of St Peter, the palace of the Vatican and that of the Holy Office, with their dependencies, are a free possession of his Holiness the Pope. "Art. 2. All the property of the Capitol and the Basilica of St Peter are preserved to those institutions under whatever administration the Pope may please to appoint. "Art. 3. His Holiness shall receive a yearly income of one million Italian francs, and shall retain all the honorary privileges he has enjoyed in past times. "Given at our Imperial Palace of St Cloud, this --- day of Sept. 1808." In the midst of the Spanish campaigns, these documents were perused and approved by the Emperor, who wrote to Aldini, at that time in Italy, and told him to make private inquiries as to whether the time was opportune for the promulgation of these decrees, and whether it was expedient to require the clergy to take an oath of allegiance to the new constitution. Aldini's reply contains the following remarkable passage:-- "The Pope, who has never enjoyed the good opinion of the Roman public, has succeeded in these latter days in winning the sympathy of a few fanatics, who call his obstinacy heroic constancy, and wait every day for a miracle to be worked by God in his defence. "Except these bigots and a few wealthy persons who dread the possibility, that, under a change of government, their privileges might be destroyed, and the taxes on property increased, all classes are of one mind in desiring a new order of things, and all alike long for its establishment. "I must not, however, conceal from you that this universal sentiment is chiefly due to two causes:--Firstly, to the idea that the payment of the interest on the public debt will be resumed; as, in truth, a great number of Roman families depend on these payments for their income; and secondly, to the hope that Rome will become the capital of a great state, a hope which the Romans know not how to renounce." Under these circumstances, Count Aldini goes on to recommend that hopes should be held out of an early resumption of payments on the national debt, and that a provisional air should be given to the proposed arrangement, so as to keep alive the prospect of a great kingdom, of which Rome should be the centre. He deprecates enforcing an oath of allegiance on the clergy, on the ground that "all priests will consent to obey the civil government; but all will not consent to swear allegiance to it, because they consider obedience an involuntary act, and an oath a voluntary act which might compromise their conscience." He finally recommends delay, under present circumstances, till some decisive victory has crushed the hopes of the priest party. This delay was fatal to the scheme. After the battle of Wagram, Napoleon resumed the project, and resolved to encrease the Pope's income to two millions of francs. Then, however, there came unfortunately the protests of Pius VII. the bull of excommunication hurled against the Emperor, and a whole series of petty insults and annoyances on the part of the Pope; such, for instance, as walling up the doors of his palace, and declaring, like his successor and namesake, his anxiety to be made a martyr. Passion seems to have prevailed over Napoleon's cooler and better judgment. The Pope was carried off to Savona, Rome was made part of the French empire, and Aldini's project slumbered till, in after years, it has been revived, though without acknowledgement, by M. Guerroniere, in his pamphlet of _Le Pape et le Congres_. Now this project I have quoted not for its intrinsic value, but because I think it one likely to be realized. Napoleon III. (the fact both for good and bad is worth minding) and not the Italians has to decide on Rome's future, and any one who has watched the Emperor's career will be aware how carefully he follows out the cooler and wiser ideas of his great predecessor. The Papal question is not one to be settled by the sword, and I know not whether amongst all the plans that I have seen, the solution of Napoleon I. does not present the fewest difficulties. CHAPTER XVIII. TWO PICTURES. Within the space of a few days, some three weeks in all, it was my fortune to be present at two demonstrations forming two pictures of Italian story, or rather two aspects of one picture. In both the subject- matter was the feelings of Italians towards their rulers; in both that feeling was expressed legibly, though in diverse fashions; and from both one and the same lesson--that lesson, which I have sought to express in these loose sketches of mine--may be learned easily. Let me first, then, write of these pictures as I saw them at the time, so that my moral may speak for itself to those who care to learn it. The 12th of April is the anniversary of Pio Nono's return to Rome from Gaeta, that refuge of destitute sovereigns. It is also, by a strange coincidence, the anniversary of the day on which his Holiness and General Goyon narrowly escaped being killed by the falling of a scaffold, from which they were inspecting the repairs at the church of St Agnese. On that day, in honour of the doubly joyful event, the Pope went to celebrate mass at the convent of St Agnese. The time was one when a popular demonstration in favour of the Pope was urgently required. It was in fact the beginning of the end. Victor Emmanuel was about to enter Bologna as king; the news of the Sicilian insurrection had just reached Rome; the Imperial Government had sent one of its periodical intimations, that the French occupation could not be prolonged indefinitely; and General De La Moriciere had assumed the command of the Papal army, on his ill-fated and Quixotic crusade. At such a time it was deemed necessary to show Europe, that the Pope still reigned in the hearts of his people, and every effort was made to secure a demonstration. Government clerks and official personages received orders to be present at the ceremony; and all persons, over whom the Priests had influence, were urged to attend and swell the crowd. And yet what came of it all? Along the road between the Convent of Santa Agnese and the Porta Pia, where the great demonstrations took place some weeks ago, there was little sign of crowd or excitement. The day was chilly and cheerless; but the chilliness of the wind itself precluded the idea of rain, so that it was not the weather which deterred the concourse of the faithful. The Patrizzi Villa, just outside the gate, had a few festoons hung over the garden wall, which fronts the road; but one of the Patrizzi family, I should mention, is a Cardinal. The villas on the road exhibited no decorations or signs of festivity whatever. Indeed, I only observed three houses in all which had placed hangings before their windows, or made any preparations in honour of the event. There were not many persons outside the gates. Every few steps you met patrols of six French soldiers headed by a gendarme. These patrols had been sent by General Goyon to keep the crowd in order; but, unfortunately, there was no crowd to keep in order; so that the soldiers looked and seemed to feel as if they were sent on a fool's errand. At St Agnese there were some 150 carriages collected, almost all hired ones, of the poorer sort. The private vehicles were very few indeed; not a quarter of the muster at most. The church itself was gaily filled, but not crowded in any part. Priests, monks, and women formed nine-tenths of the congregation. The sacrament was administered by the Pope himself to a number of communicants, amongst whom the English converts visiting Rome were as usual conspicuous. After mass was over the Pope had breakfast at the Convent, and returned about noon to the city. Meanwhile, something approaching to a crowd, that is about 600 people, half of whom were priests and the rest _impiegati_, were collected at the gates; and as the Pope passed to his coach and four, each of this crowd, with somewhat suspicious unanimity, drew a handkerchief from his pocket, and raised a feeble cheer. Inside the gates, and along the streets through which the Papal procession passed, there was no appearance of any unusual concourse of people. By the corner of the Gualtro Fontane street, near the new palace of Queen Christina, a large body of nuns and school-children, decked out in white, were drawn up on the pavement, who waved their hats, and threw flowers as the Pope went by; but this was all; and even the Pope himself could hardly have supposed what demonstration there was to be spontaneous. It is true the _Giornale_ made the most of it. Their narrative ran thus: "About half-past eleven in the morning his Holiness, accompanied by the applause of all who had joined to escort him, entered his carriage, and took the road towards his residence at the Vatican. Words are insufficient to express the enthusiastic affection, the joyous demonstrations, which, for the length of three miles from St Agnese to the Quirinal, were manifested towards him by the good people of this Sovereign City, who had crowded to behold his passage; and who, by any means in their power, expressed the tender affection which they could not but entertain for his sacred person. Infinite, too, was the number of carriages which followed the Royal cortege to the Pontifical palace of St Peter's." To this I can only say, that many things are visible to the eye of faith, and hidden to the common world. To my unenlightened vision, the crowd of three miles in length was composed of a thousand persons in all; and the infinite number of carriages looked uncommonly like sixty. And now for the converse picture. The "Promised Land." Out of chill clouds and dull gloom, I passed into summer sunshine. Across barren moor-land and more barren mountains, by the side of marshy lakes, deserted and malaria-haunted, through squalid villages and decayed cities, my journey brought me into a rich garden-country, studded with thriving towns swarming with life, and watered with endless streams. I came into a land such as children of Israel never looked upon from over Jordan, after their weary wanderings in the wilderness; a land rich in oil and corn, and vineyards and cattle; a very "land of promise." This, indeed, is the true Italy, the Italy of which all poets of all time have sung; and whose likeness all artists have sought to draw, and sought in vain. The sight, however, of this wondrous beauty was not new to me who write; still less is its record new to you who read. With this much of tribute let it pass unnoticed. Fortunately, it was my lot to see the promised land of Italy as for centuries past she has not been seen. I saw her free, and rejoicing in her freedom. Then let me seek to recall such of the epochs in that right royal progress--when the chosen King came to take possession of his promised land--as stand most clearly forth. I remember once seeing a collection of Indian portraits. There were rajahs and dervishes, jugglers and dancing-girls, depicted in every variety of garb and posture. For the whole set, however, there was but one face. Each portrait had a hole where the face should have been, and the picture was completed by placing the one head beneath the blank opening. In fact, you had one face beneath a hundred different draperies. So also, in my wanderings, I saw but one picture in a dozen frames; one sight in many cities. At some, the flags may have waved more gaily; at some again the lamps may have sparkled more brilliantly, and at others the crowd may have cheered more lustily; but the substance of the sight was the same throughout. Everywhere, some half-dozen of dusty open carriages, filled with officers in uniform, passing through crowded streets festooned with flowers, dressed out with banners--everywhere, the one figure of a plain, rough Soldier-king, bowing stiffly and slowly from time to time--everywhere, a surging, heaving, shouting crowd. Such is the one subject of my picture-gallery. I am in the Duomo of Florence. Around and about me there is a great crowd. Every niche and cornice where foot can stand is occupied. A deep gloom hangs around the darkened church, and from out the lofty vaulted roof thousands of lamps hang glimmering like stars upon a moonless sky. Ever and anon the organ peals forth triumphantly, and the clouds of incense rise fitfully; and as the bell rings, and the host is raised on high, you see above the bowed heads of the swaying crowd the figure of the excommunicated King, kneeling on the altar-steps. Then, when the service is over, and the royal procession passes down the nave, through the double line of soldiers, who keep the passage clear, I am carried onwards to the front of the grand cathedral, which for centuries has stood bare and unfinished, and which is to date its completion from the time when the city of Dante and Michael Angelo is to date her freedom, too long delayed. The next scene present to my memory is a dark gloomy night. I am at Pisa, in the city of the Campo Santo, where hang the chains of the ancient port which the Genoese carried off in triumph centuries ago, in the days of the old Republic, and have brought back to day, in honour of the new brotherhood. The great festival of the Luminara is to be held to- night, in the presence of the King. I have come from Florence through the pleasant Arno valley, shining in the glory of an Italian sunset, and the night has come on, and dark, rain-laden clouds are rolling up from the sea; but neither wind nor rain are heeded now. Through narrow streets, which a year ago were silent and deserted, I follow a great multitude pressing towards the river-side. A sudden turn brings me to the quay, and an illuminated city rises before me across the Arno. The glare is so strong that at first I can scarcely distinguish anything save the one grand blaze of light. Then, by degrees, I see that every house and palace-front along those mile-long quays is lit up by rows on rows of lamps, scattered everywhere. Arches and parapets and bridges are all marked out against the dark back-ground of the sky by the long lines of light, and in the depths of the dull stream that rolls at my feet a second inverted city sparkles brightly. Along either quay a great, countless multitude keeps moving to and fro, casting a dark hem of shadow at the foot of the houses which line the river. Then of a sudden the low, ceaseless hum of ten thousand voices is exchanged for a loud cheer, and the bands begin to play, and the royal carriages, escorted by a running crowd, pass along the quays; and wherever the throng is thickest, you can tell that Victor Emmanuel is to be found, with Ricasoli by his side. Then, as the King and his party pass out of sight, the storm comes on in its fury, and the gusts of wind blow out the lamps, as if after doing honour to the King their work was ended. Another scene which I remember well was on a long day's journey through the Val di Chiana, a day's journey by fertile fields and smiling villages, and on pleasant country roads. The King was coming in the course of the day along the same route. At every corner, at every bridge and roadside house, there were groups of peasants standing waiting to see _Il padrone nuovo_, the new sovereign and master. The children had flags in their little hands, and the cottagers had hung out their coloured bed- quilts, and the roadside crosses were decked out with flowers. The church-bells were ringing, country bands were playing lustily, and the national guard of every little town I passed stood under arms, to the admiration of all beholders. It was a holiday everywhere; the fields were left untilled, the carts were taken up to carry whole peasant families to the market-town of Arezzo, where the King was to spend the night. Man, woman, and child wore the national colours in some part of their Sunday dress; and about everything and everybody there was a look of happiness, hard indeed to describe, but one not often seen nor easily forgotten. Let us turn northwards. The old streets of Bologna, with their endless rows of colonnades, are filled with people. The dead Papal city is alive again. The priests have disappeared; friars, monks, Jesuits, and nuns have vanished from their old haunts. St Patrick did not clear the land of Erin more thoroughly and more suddenly of the genus reptile than the presence of Victor Emmanuel has cleared Bologna of the genus priest. It is whispered that out of top windows, and from behind blinds and shutters, priests are peeping out at the strange sight of a glad and a free people, with glances the reverse of friendly; but neither the black robe nor the brown serge cowl, nor the three-cornered, low-crowned hat, are to be seen amongst the crowd. Well, perhaps the scene looks none the less gay for their absence. The flags and flowers glitter beneath the blue, cloudless sky, and the burning sun of a hot summer day gives an unwonted brightness to the grey colours of the grim, gaunt houses. Down the steep, winding road leading from the old monastery of St Michael, where the King is lodged, through the dark, narrow, crowded streets, a brilliant cavalcade comes riding slowly; half a horse's length in front rides Victor Emmanuel. Amongst the order-covered staff who follow, there is scarcely one of not more royal presence than their leader; there are many whose names may stand before his in the world's judgment, but the crowd has its eye fixed on the King, and the King alone. For three days this selfsame crowd has followed him, and stared at him, and cheered him, but their ardour remains undiminished. All the school-children of the city, down to little mites of things who can scarcely toddle, have been brought out to see him. Boy-soldiers, with Lilliputian muskets, salute him as he passes. A mob of men, heedless of the gendarmes or of the horses' hoofs, run before the cavalcade, in the burning heat, and cheer hoarsely. Every window is lined with ladies in the gayest of gay dresses, who cast glances before the King, and try, like true daughters of Eve, to catch a smile from that plain, good-humoured face. So amidst flowers and smiles and cheers the procession passes on. There is no pause, indeed, in the ceaseless cheering, save where the band of exiles stands with the flags of Rome, and Naples, and Venice, covered with the black veil; or when the regiments defile past with the tattered colours which were rent to shreds at San Martino and at Solferino, and then the cry of "Viva Vittorio Emmanuele" is changed for that of "Viva l'Italia!" It is a Sunday afternoon, and at three o'clock I have turned out of the broiling streets into the vast, crowded theatre of Reggio. Every place is occupied, every box is crammed; rows of lights sparkle around the darkened house, and the heat is a thing to be remembered afterwards. There is a gorgeous ballet being acted on the stage, and Caesar is being tempted by every variety of female art and posture, in a way which never happens except to ballet heroes, and to Saint Anthony of Padua. The dancing girls, however, dance in vain, and the orchestra plays to deaf ears, for all voices are raised at once, and all eyes are turned from the stage. The King has entered the royal box, and every lady in the long tiers of boxes unfurls the tricolor-flag she bears in her hands and waves it bravely. The whole house keeps rising, shouting, cheering. The musicians lay down their instruments, and the ballet-girls drop their postures and Caesar forgets his dignity, and one and all crowd forward on the stage and join in the general cheering; and when the king leaves, the curtain drops upon the unfinished ballet, and the whole house rush into the piazza to see Victor Emmanuel again as he drives away. The last time that my path comes across the kingly progress is at a railway station. The long street of Parma, leading to the station, is lined with a dense crowd; and the flowers and flags and triumphal arches are to be seen in greater profusion here than even I have been accustomed to before. The royal carriages have to move at a foot's pace, on account of the multitude which presses round them. Amidst playing of bands and throwing of flowers, the King, accompanied by his vast escort, has reached the station, and enters it with his suite, but the eager enthusiasm of the multitude is not sated yet. Regardless of all railway rules and penalties, they clamber over palings and run up embankments, and manage to force their way at last to the platform itself, as the royal train is moving on. Even the iron nerve of Victor Emmanuel seems affected by this last greeting of farewell; and while the train remains in sight I can see the King bowing kindly to the crowd on either side. Never, I think, in the world's history was the promised land entered with more of promise. When, in the old fairy tale, the sleeping princess of the slumber-bound palace awoke to light and life; when of a sudden the horses began to neigh, and the clocks to tick, and the spits to turn, the brightness and suddenness of the change could scarcely have been more complete than that through which I passed. From chill, cheerless, ceaseless rain into bright warm sun-light; from a country fever-haunted, barren, and desolate, into a land swarming with life, rich and fertile as a garden; from a gloomy priest-ridden people, kept down by force of arms, hating their rulers and hated by them, into the presence of a free people rejoicing in their freedom: such has been my change as I passed from the States of the Church into those of Victor Emmanuel. Surely the moral of these two pictures speaks for itself. Put aside abstract political considerations, put aside, too, theological questions, and look at broad facts patent to all. If anybody can see Rome and the Papal States, and still believe that the people are happy or prosperous or faring with good prospects either for this world or the next, I can say nothing more. His eyes are not my eyes, nor his judgment mine. For those to whom this ocular testimony is denied, I have written these papers. I have sought to make present to them the utter dreariness, the hopeless discontent, the abject demoralization, which strike a resident in Rome, unless he refuses wilfully to see the truth. In the dead Rome of real life; in the universal spiritless immorality of Roman society; in the decay of what once was the Roman people; in the squalid misery of the country towns, miserable even in their merriment; in the utter isolation of the Papal States, a moral lazaretto amongst European kingdoms, you see only too plainly the permanent condition of the country. As to the present misery, you can read its signs in those pageants which impose on no one; in the Carnivals, where there are no revellers; in the solemn ceremonies, where the worshippers are sought in vain; and in the sad, sullen, hopeless demonstrations, whereby a people protest constantly that they are weary of their fate. If you look for causes, you may find them perhaps in those trials without law or justice; in that Press without liberty or truth; in those Church-sanctioned lotteries; in the presence of that multitude of priests, and in the policy which dictated the outrage of St Joseph's day, and the Bull of excommunication. How far these causes are sufficient to explain the fact, is a matter of opinion. I can understand a fervent believer in the Catholic Faith saying, that the people of the Papal States ought to be happy and prosperous under Papal rule. It may be so, but the fact is they are not; and that they are both prosperous and happy under the rule of Victor Emmanuel ever since the great Lombard campaign, when the French armies at Solferino destroyed the Austrian power, the key-stone of the whole priest-despot rule in Italy. I have been living, with but short intervals, in different parts of this Italian land. Wherever the free national government has spread, I can see the growth of prosperity and happiness. There have been, there are, and there will be partial reactions, petty disturbances; but they are but eddies in the great, deep, resistless current. Go to Bologna, or Ferrara, or Ancona, and you will find them, as I have, passed from dead desolation into active life. Commerce is flourishing, order prevails, and the people are free and full of life. These are facts on which both Protestant and Catholic can judge; and Catholics, as well as Protestants, will tell you the same thing. Then if this be so, and that it is so I assert fearlessly, in what right, human or divine, are a number of God's creatures to be forced to live out that one short life of ours in dull, abject misery? If you tell me that their misery is necessary to the maintenance of a religious creed, be that creed Protestant or Catholic, I reply that the sooner then that creed disappears, the better for mankind and for faith in God. And now, a few words in parting about the future. The end I believe is coming on so rapidly, has indeed advanced so far, since first I began to write these letters, little more than a year ago, that I hesitate to make prophecies which to-morrow may render vain. The whole Italian revolution is eminently a political one, not a religious one. It is possible a religious change, whether reformation-like or otherwise, may follow in its steps, but that time is not come. There is no wish in the Italian people, unless I err much, to alter the national faith, or to dispense with the Pope, as a spiritual potentate. Before long Pius IX., having caused as much misery as one man can well cause in one lifetime, must depart from this world; and then, if not sooner, some arrangement must be come to between the Pope and the Italian people, if the Papacy is to last at all. In some form or other I hold that the compromise will be of the nature of the "Napoleonic Solution," to which I have therefore given a place amongst these papers. Whether it is possible for a Pope to remain permanently at Rome as a spiritual prince in a free city, time alone can show, but ere long the experiment will be made. If in these letters I have said aught to wound the faith of either Protestant or Catholic, I have said it unwillingly, and regret that it should be so. This however I believe, and would have others believe it too, that the misery of the Roman people is a real misery, be its cause what it may, and like all real misery in this world, calls to God for justice, and not in vain. 
5310	----	The Author's Press Series of the Works of Elinor Glyn THE POINT OF VIEW ELINOR GLYN CHAPTER I The restaurant of the Grand Hotel in Rome was filling up. People were dining rather late--it was the end of May and the entertainments were lessening, so they could dawdle over their repasts and smoke their cigarettes in peace. Stella Rawson came in with her uncle and aunt, Canon and the Honorable Mrs. Ebley, and they took their seats in a secluded corner. They looked a little out of place--and felt it--amid this more or less gay company. But the drains of the Grand Hotel were known to be beyond question, and, coming to Rome so late in the season, the Reverend Canon Ebley felt it was wiser to risk the contamination of the over-worldly-minded than a possible attack of typhoid fever. The belief in a divine protection did not give him or his lady wife that serenity it might have done, and they traveled fearfully, taking with them their own jaeger sheets among other precautions. They realized they must put up with the restaurant for meals, but at least the women folk should not pander to the customs of the place and wear evening dress. Their subdued black gowns were fastened to the throat. Stella Rawson felt absolutely excited--she was twenty-one years old, but this was the first time she had ever dined in a fashionable restaurant, and it almost seemed like something deliciously wrong. Life in the Cathedral Close where they lived in England was not highly exhilarating, and when its duties were over it contained only mild gossip and endless tea-parties and garden-parties by way of recreation. Canon and the Honorable Mrs. Ebley were fairly rich people. The Uncle Erasmus' call to the church had been answered from inclination--not necessity. His heart was in his work. He was a good man and did his duty according to the width of the lights in which he had been brought up. Mrs. Ebley did more than her duty--and had often too much momentum, which now and then upset other people's apple carts. She had, in fact, been the moving spirit in the bringing about of her niece Stella's engagement to the Bishop's junior chaplain, a young gentleman of aesthetic aspirations and eight hundred a year of his own. Stella herself had never been enthusiastic about the affair. As a man, Eustace Medlicott said absolutely nothing at all to her--though to be sure she was quite unaware that he was inadequate in this respect. No man had meant anything different up to this period of her life. She had seen so few of them she was no judge. Eustace Medlicott had higher collars than the other curates, and intoned in a wonderfully melodious voice in the cathedral. And quite a number of the young ladies of Exminster, including the Bishop's second daughter, had been setting their caps at him from the moment of his arrival, so that when, by the maneuvers of Aunt Caroline Ebley, Stella found him proposing to her, she somehow allowed herself to murmur some sort of consent. Then it seemed quite stimulating to have a ring and to be congratulated upon being engaged. And the few weeks that followed while the thing was fresh and new had passed quite pleasantly. It was only when about a month had gone by that a gradual and growing weariness seemed to be falling upon her. To be the wife of an aesthetic high church curate, who fasted severely during Lent and had rigid views upon most subjects, began to grow into a picture which held out less and less charm for her. But Aunt Caroline was firm--and the habit of twenty-one years of obedience held. Perhaps Fate was looking on in sympathy with her unrest. In any case, it appeared like the jade's hand and not chance which made Uncle Erasmus decide to take his holiday early in the year and to decide to spend it abroad--not in Scotland or Wales as was his custom. Stella, he said, should see the eternal city and Florence before settling down in the autumn to her new existence. Miss Rawson actually jumped with joy--and the knowledge that Eustace Medlicott would be unable to accompany them, but might join them later on, did not damp her enthusiasm. Every bit of the journey was a pleasure, from the moment they landed on French soil. They had come straight through to Rome from Paris, where they had spent a week at a small hotel; because of the lateness of the year they must get to their southern point first of all and return northward in a more leisurely manner. And now anyone who is reading this story can picture this respectable English family and understand their status and antecedents, so we can very well get back to them seated in the agreeable restaurant of the Grand Hotel at Rome--beginning to partake of a modest dinner. Mrs. Ebley (I had almost written the Reverend Mrs. Ebley!) was secretly enjoying herself--she had that feeling that she was in a place where she ought not to be--through no fault of her own--and so was free to make the most of it, and certainly these well-dressed people were very interesting to glance at between mouthfuls of a particularly well-cooked fish. Stella was thrilling all over and her soft brown eyes were sparkling and her dazzlingly pink and white complexion glowing with health and excitement, so that even in the Exminster confection of black grenadine she was an agreeable morsel for the male eye to dwell upon. There were the usual company there: the younger diplomats from the Embassies; a sprinkling of trim Italian officers in their pretty uniforms; French and Austrian ladies; as well as the attractive-looking native and American representatives of the elite of Roman society. The tables began to fill up before the Ebleys had finished their fish, and numbers of the parties seemed to know one another and nod and exchange words en passant. But there was one table laid for a single person which remained empty until the entrees were being handed, and Stella, with her fresh interest in the whole scene, wondered for whom it was reserved. He came in presently--and he really merits a descriptive paragraph all to himself. He was a very tall man and well made, with broad shoulders and a small head. His evening clothes, though beautifully pressed, with that look which only a thoroughly good valet knows how to stamp upon his master's habiliments as a daily occurrence, were of foreign cut and hand, and his shirt, unstarched, was of the finest pleated cambric. These trifles, however, were not what rendered him remarkable, but that his light brown hair was worn parted in the middle and waved back a la vierge with a rather saintly expression, and was apparently just cut off in a straight line at the back. This was quite peculiar-looking enough--and in conjunction with a young, silky beard, trimmed into a sharp point with the look of an archaic Greek statue, he presented a type not easily forgotten. The features were regular and his eyes were singularly calm and wise and blue. It seemed incredible that such an almost grotesque arrangement of coiffure should adorn the head of a man in modern evening dress. It should have been on some Byzantine saint. However, there he was, and entirely unconcerned at the effect he was producing. The waiters, who probably knew his name and station, precipitated themselves forward to serve him, and with leisurely mien he ordered a recherche dinner and a pint of champagne. Stella Rawson was much interested and so were her uncle and aunt. "What a very strange-looking person," Mrs. Ebley said. "Of what nation can he be? Erasmus, have you observed him?" Canon Ebley put on his pince-nez and gave the newcomer the benefit of a keen scrutiny. "I could not say with certainty, my dear. A northerner evidently--but whether Swedish or Danish it would be difficult to determine," he announced. "He does not appear to know he is funny-looking," Stella Rawson said, timidly. "Do you notice, Aunt Caroline, he does not look about him at all, he has never glanced in any direction; it is as if he were alone in the room." "A very proper behavior," the Aunt Caroline replied severely, "but he cannot be an Englishman--no Englishman would enter a public place, having made himself remarkable like that, and then be able to sit there unaware of it; I am glad to say our young men have some sense of convention. You cannot imagine Eustace Medlicott perfectly indifferent to the remarks he would provoke if he were tricked out so." Stella felt a sudden sympathy for the foreigner. She had heard so ceaselessly of her fiance's perfections! "Perhaps they wear the hair like that in his country," she returned, with as much spirit as she dared to show. "And he may think we all look funny, as we think he does. Only he seems to be much better mannered than we are, because he is quite sure of himself and quite unconscious or indifferent about our opinion." Both her aunt and uncle looked at her with slightly shocked surprise--and she saw it at once and reddened a little. But this incident caused the remarkable looking foreigner to crystallize in interest for her, especially when, in raising his glass of champagne, she saw that on his wrist there was a bracelet of platinum with a small watch set with very fine diamonds. She could hardly have been more surprised if he had worn a ring in his nose, so unaccustomed was she to any type but that of the curates and young gentlemen of Exminster. Canon and Mrs. Ebley finished their dinner in disdainful silence and sailed from the room with chilling glances, but as Stella Rawson followed them demurely she raised her soft eyes when she came to the object of her relatives' contempt, and met his serene blue ones--and for some reason thrilled wildly. There was a remarkable and powerful magnetism in his glance; it was as if a breath of some other world touched her, she seemed to see into possibilities she had never dreamed about. She resented being drawn into a far corner on the right hand of the hall, and there handed an English paper to read for half an hour before being told to go to bed. She was perfectly conscious that she was longing for the stranger to come out of the restaurant, that she might see him again. But it was not until she was obediently following her aunt's black broche train to the lift up the steps again that the tall man passed them in the corridor. He never even glanced in their direction, and went on as though the space were untenanted--but had hardly got beyond, when he turned suddenly, and walked rapidly to the lift door, passing them again. So that the four entered it presently, and were taken up together. Stella Rawson was very close to the remarkable looking creature. And again a wild nameless attraction crept over her. She noticed his skin was faintly browned with the sun, but was otherwise as fine as a child's--finer than most children's. And now she could see that three most wonderful pearls were his shirt-studs. He got out on the second floor, one beneath them, and said, "Pardon," as he passed, but not as a French word, nor yet as if it were English. During these few seconds Stella was quite aware that he had never apparently looked at her. "I call such an appearance sacrilegious," Mrs. Ebley said. "A man has no right to imitate one of the blessed apostles in these modern days; it is very bad taste." CHAPTER II Stella Rawson woke the next day with some sense of rebellion. There came with the rest of her post a letter from her betrothed. And although it was just such a letter as any nice girl engaged of her own free will to the Bishop's junior chaplain ought to have been glad to receive, Stella found herself pouting and criticizing every sentence. "I do wish Eustace would not talk such cant," she said to herself. "Even in this he is unable to be natural--and I am sure I shall not feel a thing like he describes when I stand in St. Peter's. I believe I would rather go into the Pantheon. I seem to be tired of everything I ought to like to-day!" And still rebellious she got up and was taken by her uncle and aunt to the Vatican--and was allowed to linger only in the parts which interested them. "I never have had a taste for sculpture," Mrs. Ebley said. "People may call it what names they please, but I consider it immoral and indecent." "A wonder to me," the Uncle Erasmus joined in, "that a prelate--even a prelate of Rome--should have countenanced the housing of all these unclothed marbles in his own private palace." Stella Rawson stopped for a second in front of an archaic Apollo of no great merit--because it reminded her of the unknown; and she wished with all her might something new and swift and rushing might come into her humdrum life. After luncheon, for which they returned to the hotel, she wearily went over to the writing-table in the corner of the hall to answer her lover's chaste effusion--and saw that the low armchair beside the escritoire was tenanted by a pair of long legs with singularly fine silk socks showing upon singularly fine ankles--and a pair of strong slender hands held a newspaper in front of the rest of the body, concealing it all and the face. It was the English TIMES, which, as everybody knows, could hide Gargantua himself. She began her letter--and not a rustle disturbed her peace. "Dearest Eustace," she had written, "we have arrived in Rome--" and then she stopped, and fixed her eyes blankly upon the column of births, marriages, and deaths. She was staring at it with sightless eyes, when the paper was slowly lowered and over its top the blue orbs of the stranger looked into hers. Her pretty color became the hue of a bright pink rose. "Mademoiselle," a very deep voice said in English, "is not this world full of bores and tiresome duties; have you the courage to defy them all for a few minutes--and talk to me instead?" "Monsieur!" Miss Rawson burst out, and half rose from her seat. Then she sat down again--the unknown had not stirred a muscle. "Good," he murmured. "One has to be courageous to do what is unconventional, even if it is not wrong. I am not desirous of hurting or insulting you--I felt we might have something to say to each other--is it so--tell me, am I right?" "I do not know," whispered Stella lamely. She was so taken aback at the preposterous fact that a stranger should have addressed her at all, even in a manner of indifference and respect, that she knew not what to do. "I observed you last night," he went on. "I am accustomed to judge of character rapidly--it is a habit I have acquired during my travels in foreign lands--when I cannot use the standard of my own. You are weary of a number of things, and you do not know anything at all about life, and you are hedged round with those who will see that you never learn its meaning. Tell me--what do you think of Rome--it contains things and aspects which afford food for reflection, is it not so?" "We have only been to the Vatican as yet," Stella answered timidly--she was still much perturbed at the whole incident, but now that she had begun she determined she might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and she was conscious that there was a strong attraction in the mild blue eyes of the stranger. His manner had a complete repose and absence of self-consciousness, which usually is only to be found in the people of race--in any nation. "You were taken to the Sistine Chapel, of course," he went on, "and to the loggia and Bramant's staircase? You saw some statues, too, perhaps?" "My uncle and aunt do not care much for sculpture," Miss Rawson said, now regaining her composure, "but I like it--even better than pictures." The stranger kept his steady eyes fixed upon her face all the time. "I have a nymph in my house at home," he returned. "She came originally from Rome; she is not Greek and she is very like you, the same droop of head--I remarked it immediately--I am superstitious--I suppose you would call what I mean by that word--and I knew directly that some day you, too, would mean things to me. That is why I spoke--do you feel it, too?" Stella Rawson quivered. The incredible situation paralyzed her. She--the Aunt Caroline's niece, and engaged to Eustace Medlicott, the Bishop's junior chaplain, to be listening to a grotesque-looking foreigner making subtle speeches of an insinuating character, and, far from feeling scandalized and repulsed, to be conscious that she was thrilled and interested--it was hardly to be believed! "Will you tell me from where you come?" she asked with sweet bashfulness, raising two eyes as soft as brown velvet. "You speak English so very well--one cannot guess." "I am a Russian," he said simply. "I come from near Moscow--and my name is Sasha Roumovski, Count Roumovski. Yours, I am aware, is Rawson, but I would like to know how you are called--Mary, perhaps? That is English." "No, my name is not Mary," she answered, and froze a little--but the Russian's eyes continued to gaze at her with the same mild frankness which disarmed any resentment. She felt they were as calm as deep pools of blue water--they filled her with a sense of confidence and security--which she could not account for in any way. Her color deepened--something in his peaceful expectancy seemed to compel her to answer his late question. "My Christian name is Stella," she said, rather quickly, then added nervously: "I am engaged to Mr. Eustace Medlicott, an English clergyman--we are going to be married in September next." "And this is May," was all Count Roumovski replied; then, for the first time since he had addressed her, he turned his eyes from her face, while the faintest smile played round his well-cut mouth. "A number of things can happen in four months. Are you looking forward to your life as the wife of a priest--but I understand it is different in England to in my country--there I could not recommend the situation to you." Stella found absolutely no answer to this. She only felt a sudden, wild longing to cry out that the idea of being a curate's wife--even the Bishop's junior young gentleman with eight hundred a year of his own--had never appeared a thrilling picture, and was now causing her a feeling of loathing. She thought she ought to talk no longer to this stranger, and half rose from her seat. He put out a protesting hand, both had been clasped idly over the Times until then without a movement. "No--do--not go--I have disturbed you--I am sorry," he pleaded. "Listen, there is a great reception at your Embassy to-morrow night--for one of our Royal Family who is here. You will go, perhaps. If so, I will do so also, although I dislike parties--and there I will be presented to you with ceremony--it will appease that English convention in you, and after that I shall say to you a number of things--but I prefer to sit here and speak behind the Times." At this instant he raised the paper, and appeared again the stranger almost entirely hidden from view. And Stella saw that her Uncle Erasmus was rapidly approaching her with an envelope in his hand. She seized her pen again and continued her broken sentence to Eustace--her betrothed. Canon Ebley viewed the Times and its holder with suspicion for an instant, but its stillness reassured him, and he addressed his niece. "Very civil of the Embassy to send us a card for the reception to-morrow night, Stella; I am glad we wrote names when we arrived. Your Aunt Caroline bids you accept, as her spectacles are upstairs." Miss Rawson did as she was bid, and her uncle waited, fidgeting with his feet. He wished the stranger to put down the Times, which he wanted himself--or, at all events, remove his long legs and hidden body from such a near proximity to his niece; they could not say a word that he could not overhear, Canon Ebley mused. However, the unknown remained where he was, and turned a page of the paper with great deliberation. "Your aunt will be ready to go out again now," the Uncle Erasmus announced, as Stella placed her acceptance in the envelope. "You had better go up and put your hat on, my dear." The Times rustled slightly--and Stella replied a little hurriedly: "I was just finishing a letter, uncle, then I will come." "Very well," said Canon Ebley, not altogether pleased, as he walked away with the note. The newspaper was lowered a few inches again, and the wise blue eyes beneath the saintly parted hair twinkled with irresistible laughter, and the deep voice said: "He would greatly disapprove of our having conversed--the uncle--is it not so? How long are you going to stay in Rome?" Stella smiled, too--she could not help it. "A week--ten days, perhaps," she answered, and then rapidly addressed an envelope to the Rev. Eustace Medlicott. "Perhaps, in that case, I can afford to wait until to-morrow night; unless it amuses you, as it does me, to circumvent people," Count Roumovski said. "We are all masters of our own lives, you know, once we have ceased to be children--it is only convention which persuades us to submit to others' authority." Stella looked up startled. Was this indeed true? And was it simply convention which had forced her into an engagement with Eustace Medlicott, and now forced her to go up and put on her hat and accompany her uncle and aunt to see the Lateran, when she would have preferred to remain where she was and discuss abstract matters with this remarkable stranger. "The notion surprises you, one sees," Count Roumovski went on, "but it is true--" "I suppose it is," said Stella lamely. "I submit to no authority--I mean, as to the controlling of my actions and wishes. We must all submit to the laws of our country, to do so is the only way to obtain complete personal freedom." "That sounds like a paradox," said Stella. "I have just been thinking," he went on, without noticing the interruption, "it would be most agreeable to take a drive in my automobile late this after-noon, when your guardians have returned and are resting. If you feel you would care to come I will wait in this hall from five to six. You need not take the least notice of me, you can walk past, out of the hotel, then turn to the left, and there in the square, where there are a few trees, you will see a large blue motor waiting. You will get straight in, and I will come and join you. Not anyone will see or notice you--because of the trees, one cannot observe from the windows. My chauffeur will be prepared, and I will return you safely to the same place in an hour." Stella's brown eyes grew larger and larger. Some magnetic spell seemed to be dominating her, the idea was preposterous, and yet to agree to it was the strongest temptation she had ever had in all her life. She was filled with a wild longing to live, to do what she pleased, to be free to enjoy this excitement before her wings should be clipped, and her outlook all gray and humdrum. "I do not know if they will rest--I cannot say--I--" she blurted out tremblingly. The stranger had put down the Times, and was gazing into her face with a look almost of tenderness. "There is no need to answer now," he said softly. "If fate means us to be happy, she will arrange it--I think you will come." Miss Rawson started to her feet, and absently put her letter to her fiance--which contained merely the sentence that they had arrived in Rome--into its envelope and fastened it up. "I must go now--good-bye," she said. "It is not good-bye," the Russian answered gravely. "By six o'clock, we shall be driving in the Borghese Gardens and hearing the nightingales sing." As Stella walked to the lift with a tumultuously beating heart, she asked herself what all this could possibly mean, and why she was not angry--and why this stranger--whose appearance outraged all her ideas as to what an English gentleman should look like--had yet the power to fascinate her completely. Of course, she would not go for a drive with him--and yet, what would be the harm? After September she would never have a chance like this again. There would be only Eustace Medlicott and parish duties--yes--if fate made it possible, she would go! And she went on to her room with exhilarating sense of adventure coursing through her veins. "I have found out the name of the peculiar-looking foreigner who sat near us last night," Canon Ebley said, as they drove to the Lateran in a little Roman Victoria, "it is Count Roumovski; I asked the hall porter--reprehensible curiosity I fear you will think, my dear Caroline, but there is something unaccountably interesting about him, as you must admit, although you disapprove of his appearance." "I think it is quite dreadful," Mrs. Ebley sniffed, "and I hear from Martha that he has no less than two valets, and a suite of princely rooms and motor cars, and the whole passage on the second floor is filled with his trunks." Martha had been Mrs. Ebley's maid for twenty-five years, and as Stella well knew was fairly accurate in her recounting of the information she picked up. This luridly extravagant picture, however, did not appal her. And she found herself constantly dwelling upon it and the stranger all the time she followed her relations about in the gorgeous church. Fate did not seem to be going to smile upon the drive project, however--for Mrs. Ebley, far from appearing tired, actually proposed tea in the hall when they got in--and there sat for at least half an hour, while Stella saw Count Roumovski come in and sit down and leisurely begin a cigarette, as he glanced at an Italian paper. He was so intensely still, always peace seemed to breathe from his atmosphere, but the very sight of him appeared to exasperate the Aunt Caroline more and more. "I wonder that man is not ashamed to be seen in a respectable place," she snapped, "with his long hair and his bracelet--such effeminacy is perfectly disgusting, Erasmus." "I really cannot help it, my dear," Canon Ebley replied, irritably, "and I rather like his face." "Erasmus!" was all Mrs. Ebley could say, and prepared to return to her room. Dinner would be at a quarter to eight, she told Stella at her door, and recommended an hour's quiet reading up of the guide-book while resting to her niece. It was quarter after six before Miss Rawson descended the stairs to the hall again. She had deliberately made up her mind--she would go and drive with the count. She would live and amuse herself, if it was only for this once in her life, come what might of it! And since he would be presented with all respectable ceremony at the English Embassy the following night, it could not matter a bit--and if it did--! Well, she did not care! He was sitting there as immovable as before, and she thrilled as she crossed the hall. She was so excited and frightened that she could almost have turned back when she reached the street, but there, standing by the trees, was a large blue motor car, and as she advanced the chauffeur stepped forward and opened the door, and she got in--and before she had time to realize what she had done, Count Roumovski had joined her and sat down by her side. "You have no wrap," he said. "I thought you would not have, so I had prepared this," and he indicated a man's gray Russian, unremarkable-looking cloak, which, however, proved to be lined with fine sable, "and here, also, is a veil. If you will please me by putting them on, we can then have the auto open and no one will recognize you--even should we meet your uncle and aunt; that is fun, is it not?" Stella had thrown every consideration to the winds, except the determination to enjoy herself. Years of rebellion at the boredom of her existence seemed to be urging her on. So she meekly slipped into the cloak, and wrapped the veil right over her hat, and they started. Her heart was thumping so with excitement she could not have spoken for a moment. But as they went rapidly on through the crowded streets, her companion's respectful silence reassured her. There seemed to be some rapport between them, she was conscious of a feeling that he understood her thoughts, and was not misjudging her. "You are like a little frightened bird," he said presently. "And there is nothing to cause you the least fear. We shall soon come to the lovely gardens, and watch the lowering sun make its beautiful effects in the trees, and we shall hear the nightingales throbbing out love songs--the world is full of rest and peace--when we have had enough passion and strife and want its change--but you do not know anything of it, and this simple drive is causing you tumults and emotions--is it not so?" "Yes," said Stella, with a feeling that she had burnt all her ships. "It is because you have never been allowed to be YOU, I suppose," he went on softly. "So doing a natural and simple thing seems frightful--because it would seem so to the rigid aunt. Now, I have been ME ever since I was born--I have done just what seemed best to me. Do you suppose I am not aware that the way my hair is cut is a shock to most civilized persons; and that you English would strongly disapprove of my watch and my many other things. But I like them myself--it is no trouble for one of my valets to draw a straight line with a pair of scissors--and if I must look at the time, I prefer to look at something beautiful. I am entirely uninfluenced by the thoughts or opinions of any people--they do not exist for me except in so far as they interest me and are instructive or amusing. I never permit myself to be bored for an instant." "How good that must be," Stella ventured to say--her courage was returning. "Civilized human beings turn existence into a prison," he went on, meditatively, "and loaded themselves with shackles, because some convention prevents their doing what would give them innocent pleasure. If I had been under the dominion of these things we should not now be enjoying this delightful drive--at least, it is delightful to me--to be thus near you and alone out of doors." Stella did not speak, she was altogether too full of emotion to trust herself to words just yet. They had turned into the Corso by now, and, as ever, it appeared as though it were a holiday, so thronged with pedestrians was the whole thoroughfare. Count Roumovski seemed quite unconcerned, but Miss Rawson shrank back into her corner, a new fear in her heart. "Do not be so nervous," her companion said gently. "I always calculate the chances before I suggest another person's risking anything for me. They are a million to one that anyone could recognize you in that veil and that cloak; believe me, although I am not of your country, I am at least a gentleman, and would not have persuaded you to come if there had been any danger of complications for you." Stella clasped her hands convulsively--and he drew a little nearer her. "Do put all agitating ideas out of your mind," he said, his blue eyes, with their benign expression, seeking hers and compelling them at last to look at him. "Do you understand that it is foolish to spoil what we have by useless tremors. You are here with me--for the next hour--shall we not try to be happy?" "Yes," murmured Miss Rawson, and allowed herself to be magnetized into calmness. "When we have passed the Piazza del Popolo and the entrance to the Pincio, I will have the car opened; then we can see all the charming young green, and I will tell you of what these gardens were long ago, and you shall see them with new eyes." Stella, by some sort of magic, seemed to have recovered her self-possession as his eyes looked into hers, and she chatted to him naturally, and the next half hour passed like some fairy tale. His deep, quiet voice took her into realms of fancy that her imagination had never even dreamed about. His cultivation was immense, and the Rome of the Caesars appeared to be as familiar to him as that of 1911. The great beauty of the Borghese Gardens was at its height at the end of the day, the nightingales throbbed from the bushes, and the air was full of the fresh, exquisite scents of the late spring, as the day grew toward evening and all nature seemed full of beauty and peace. It can easily be imagined what this drive meant, then, to a fine, sensitive young woman, whose every instinct of youth and freedom and life had been crushed into undeveloped nothingness by years of gray convention in an old-fashioned English cathedral town. Stella Rawson forgot that she and this Russian were strangers, and she talked to him unrestrainedly, showing glimpses of her inner self that she had not known she possessed. It was certainly heaven, she thought, this drive, and worth all the Aunt Caroline's frowns. Count Roumovski never said a word of love to her: he treated her with perfect courtesy and infinite respect, but when at last they were turning back again, he permitted himself once more to gaze deeply into her eyes, and Stella knew for the first time in her existence that some silences are more dangerous than words. "You do not care at all now for the good clergy-man you are affianced to," he said. "No--do not be angry-I am not asking a question, I am stating a fact--when lives have been hedged and controlled and retenu like yours has been, even the feelings lose character, and you cannot be sure of them--but the day is approaching when you will see clearly and--feel much." "I am sure it is getting very late," said Stella Rawson, and with difficulty she turned her eyes away and looked over the green world. Count Roumovski laughed softly, as if to himself. And they were silent until they came to the entrance gates again, when the chauffeur stopped and shut the car. "We have at least snatched some moments of pleasure, have we not?" the owner whispered, "and we have hurt no one. Will you trust me again when I propose something which sounds to you wild?" "Perhaps I will," Stella murmured rather low. "When I was hunting lions in Africa I learned to keep my intelligence awake," he said calmly, "it is an advantage to me now in civilization--nothing is impossible if one only keeps cool. If one becomes agitated one instantly connects oneself with all other currents of agitation, and one can no longer act with prudence or sense." "I think I have always been very foolish," admitted Stella, looking down. "I seem to see everything differently now." "What we are all striving after is happiness," Count Roumovski said. "Only we will not admit it, and nearly always spoil our own chances by drifting, and allowing outside things to influence us. If you could see the vast plains of snow in my country and the deep forests--with never a human being for miles and miles, you would understand how nature grows to talk to one--and how small the littlenesses of the world appear." Then they were silent again, and it was not until they were rushing up the Via Nazionale and in a moment or two would have reached their destination, that Count Roumovski said: "Stella--that means star--it is a beautiful name--I can believe you could be a star to shine upon any man's dark night--because you have a pure spirit, although it has been muffled by circumstances for all these years." Then the automobile drew up by the trees, at perhaps two hundred yards from the hotel, near the baths of Diocletian. "If you will get out here, it will be best," Count Roumovski told her respectfully, "and walk along on the inner side. I will then drive to the door of the hotel, as usual." "Thank you, and good-bye," said Stella, and began untying the veil--he helped her at once, and in doing so his hand touched her soft pink cheek. She thrilled with a new kind of mad enjoyment, the like of which she had never felt, and then controlled herself and stamped it out. "It has been a very great pleasure to me," he said, and nothing more; no "good-bye" or "au revoir" or anything, and he drew into the far corner as she got out of the car, letting the chauffeur help her. Nor did he look her way as he drove on. And Stella walked leisurely back to the hotel, wondering in her heart at the meaning of things. No one noticed her entrance, and she was able to begin to dress for dinner without even Martha being aware that she had been absent. But as she descended in the lift with her uncle and aunt it seemed as if the whole world and life itself were changed since the same time the night before. And when they were entering the restaurant a telegram was put into Canon Ebley's hand--it was from the Rev. Eustace Medlicott, sent from Turin, saying he would join them in Rome the following evening. "Eustace has been preparing this delightful surprise--I knew of it," the Aunt Caroline said, with conscious pride, "but I would not tell you, Stella, dear, in case something might prevent it. I feared to disappoint you." "Thank you, aunt," Miss Rawson said without too much enthusiasm, and took her seat where she could see the solitary occupant of a small table, surrounded by the obsequious waiters, already sipping his champagne. He had not looked up as they passed. Nor did he appear once to glance in their direction. His whole manner was full of the same reflective calm as the night before. And, for some unaccountable reason, Stella Rawson's heart sank down lower and lower, until at the end of the repast she looked pale and tired out. Eustace, her betrothed, would be there on the morrow, and such things as drives in motor cars with strange Russian counts were only dreams and not realities, she now felt. CHAPTER III Next morning it fell about that Stella Rawson was allowed to go into the Musso Nazionale in the Diocletian baths, accompanied only by Martha, her uncle and aunt having decided they would take a rest and write their English letters. The museum was so near, a mere hundred yards, there could be no impropriety in their niece's going there with Martha, even in an exhibition year in Rome. Stella was still suffering from a nameless sense of depression. Eustace's train would get in at about five o'clock, and he would accompany them to the Embassy. A cousin of her own and Aunt Caroline's was one of the secretaries, and had already been written to about the invitation. So that even if Count Roumovski should be presented to her, and make the whole thing proper and correct, she would have no chance of any conversation. The brilliant sunlight felt incongruous and hurt her, and she was glad to enter the shady ancient baths. She had glanced furtively to right and left in the hotel as she came through the hall, but saw no one who resembled the Russian, and they had walked so quickly through the vestibule she had not remarked a tall figure coming from the staircase, nor had seen him give some rapid order to a respectful servant who was waiting about, and who instantly followed them: but if she had looked up as she paid for the two tickets at the barrier of the museum, she would have seen this same lean man turn swiftly round and retreat in the direction of the hotel. Martha was sulky and comatose on this very warm morning; she took no interest in sculpture. "Them naked creatures," she called any masterpiece undraped--and she resented being dragged out by Miss Stella, who always had fancies for art. They walked round the cloisters first, a voyage of discovery to Miss Rawson, who looked a slim enough nymph herself in her lilac cambric frock and demure gray hat shading her big brown eyes. Then suddenly, from across the garden in the center, she became aware that an archaic Apollo clad in modern dress had entered upon the scene, and the blood rushed to her cheeks, and her heart beat. Martha puffed with the heat and exercise, and glanced with longing eyes at a comfortable stone bench in the shade. "Would you like to rest here, Martha, you old dear?" Miss Rawson said. "There is not a creature about, and I will walk round and join you from the other side." The Aunt Caroline's elderly maid easily agreed to this. It was true there did not seem to be anyone adventurous-looking, and Miss Stella would be more or less under her eye--and she was thoroughly tired with traveling and what not. So Stella found herself happily unchaperoned, except by Baedecker, as she strolled on. The Russian had disappeared from view, the bushes and vases in the center of the garden plot gave only occasional chances to see people at a distance. But when Stella had entered the Ludovici collection she perceived him to the right, gazing at the statue of the beautiful Mars. He turned instantly, as though some one told him she was near--and his calm eyes took in the fact that she was alone. The small room was empty but for the two, and he addressed her as he removed his hat. "Good morning, mademoiselle," he said gravely. "Mars is a strong attraction. I knew I should presently find you here--so when I caught sight of your spiritual outline across the garden, I came and--waited." "He is most splendid-looking, is he not," Stella returned, trying to suppress the sudden tingle of pleasure that was thrilling her, "and look how much character there is in his hands." "Shall we go and study the others, or shall we find a bench in the garden and sit down and talk?" Count Roumovski asked serenely, and then smiled to himself as he noticed his companion's apprehensive glance in the direction where, far away, Martha dozed in peace. "It would be nice out of doors--but--" and Stella faltered. "Do not let us be deprived of pleasure by any buts--there is one out there who will warn us when your maid wakes. See--" and he advanced toward the entrance door, "there is a bench by that rose tree where we can be comparatively alone." Stella struggled no more with herself. After all, it was her last chance--Eustace Medlicott's train got in at five o'clock! She had a sense of security, too, the complete serenity of her companion inspired confidence. She almost felt she would not care if Aunt Caroline herself slept instead of the elderly maid. There was some slight change in Count Roumovski's manner to-day--he kept his eyes fixed upon her face, and the things he said were less abstract and more personal. After an entrancing half hour she felt she had seen vivid pictures of his land and his home. But he was a great traveler it appeared, and had not been there often in later years. "It is so agreeable to let the body move from place to place, and remain in a peaceful aloofness of the spirit all the time," he said at last. "To watch all the rushing currents which dominate human beings when they do not know how to manipulate them. If they did, the millennium would come,--but, meanwhile, it is reserved for the few who have learned them to enjoy this present plane we are on." "You mean you can control events and shape your life as you please, then?" Stella asked surprised, while she raised her sweet shy eyes to his inquiringly. "I wish I knew how!" "Shall I try to teach you, mademoiselle?" he said. "Yes, indeed." "Then you must not look down all the time, even though the contemplation of your long eyelashes gives me a pleasure--I would prefer the eyes themselves--the eyes are the indication of what is passing in the soul, and I would study this moving panorama." Stella's color deepened, but she met his blue orbs without flinching--so he went on: "I had the fortune to be born a Russian, which has given me time to study these things. My country does not require my work beyond my being a faithful servant of my Emperor. Since I am not a soldier, I can do as I choose. But you in England are now in a seething caldron, and it would be difficult, no doubt, for you to spend the hours required--although the national temperament would lend itself to all things calm if it were directed." "But for myself," Stella demanded, "I am not a man, and need not interest myself in the nation's affairs--how can I grow to guide my own--as you seem to do?" "Never permit yourself to be ruffled by anything to commence with," Count Roumovski began gravely, while the pupils of his eyes appeared to grow larger. "Whatever mood you are in, you connect yourself with the cosmic current of that mood--you become in touch, so to speak, with all the other people who are under its dominion, and so it gains strength because unity is strength. If you can understand that as a basic principle, you can see that it is only a question of controlling yourself and directing your moods with those currents whose augmentation can bring you good. You must never be negative and drift. You can be drawn in any adverse way if you do." "I think I understand," said Stella, greatly interested. "Then you must use your critical faculties and make selections of what is best--and you must encourage common sense and distrust altruism. Sanity is the thing to aim at." "Yes." "The view of the world has become so distorted upon almost every point which started in good, that nothing but a cultivation of our individual critical faculties can enable us to see the truth--and nine-tenths of civilized humanity have no real opinion of their own at all--they simply echo those of others." "I feel that is true," said Stella, thinking of her own case. "It is not because a thing is bad or good that it succeeds--merely how much strength we put into the desire for it," he went on. "But surely we must believe that good will win over evil," and the brown eyes looked almost troubled, and his softened as he looked at her. "The very fact of believing that would make it come to pass by all these psychic laws. Whatever we really believe we draw," he said almost tenderly. "Then, if I were to believe all the difficulties and uncertainties would be made straight and just go on calmly, I should be happy, should I?" she asked, and there was an unconscious pathos in her voice which touched him deeply. "Certainly," he answered. "You have not had a fair chance--probably you have never been allowed to do a single thing of your own accord--have you?" "N--no," said Stella. "In the beginning, were you engaged to this good clergyman of your own wish?" and his eyes searched her face. She stiffened immediately, the training of years took offense, and she answered rather stiffly: "I do not think you have the right to ask me such a question, Count Roumovski." He was entirely unabashed--he stroked his pointed silky beard for a moment, then he said calmly: "Yes--I have, you agreed that I should teach you how to shape your life as you pleased, you must remember. It is rather essential that I should know the truth of this matter before I can go further--you must see that." "We can avoid the subject." "It would be Hamlet without Hamlet, then," he smiled. "One could draw up no scheme of rules and exercises, unless one has some idea of how far the individual was responsible for the present state of things. If it was your wish in the beginning, or if you were coerced makes all the difference." Stella was silent--only she nervously plucked an offending rose which grew upon a bush beside them: she pulled its petals off and kept her eyes lowered, and Sasha Roumovski smiled a wise smile. "You have unconsciously answered me," he said, "and your agitation proves that not only are you aware that you did not become engaged of your own wish, but that you are afraid to face the fact and admit that its aspect appals you. You must remember, in your country, where, I understand, divorce is not tres bien vu, especially among the clergy, the affair is for life, and the joy or the gall of it could be infinite." She raised two beseeching eyes to his face at last. "Oh, do not let us talk about it," she pleaded. "It is so warm and pleasant here--I want to be happy." He looked at her for a while with penetrating eyes, then he said gently: "It is a man's province to take care of a woman," and his attractive voice filled with a new cadence. "I see you are in need of direction. Leave all to me--and forget there is any one else in the world for the moment but our two selves. Did you know that I thought you looked particularly sweet last night, but rather pale?" "You never looked at me at all," said Stella before she was aware of it, and then blushed crimson at the inference of her speech. He would be able to understand perfectly that she must have been observing him all the time to be conscious of this. A gleam of gladness came into his eyes. "I would like to watch you always openly, if I might," he whispered. "Your little face is like a flower in its delicate tints, and your eyes are true and tender and asking so many questions of life,--and sometimes they are veiled and misty, and then they look wise and courageous. I am beginning to know all their changes." "Then, in that case, monotony will set in," Stella was almost arch--the day was so glorious! "I am not afraid of that," he said. "I always know what I want and what is worth while. I do not value my three matchless pearls the less because I know their every iridescence--on the contrary, I grow more fond of them and wear them every night in preference to any others." They were silent for a moment after this. He was examining her minutely with his wise, calm eyes. He was noting the sensitive curve of the pretty full lips, the tender droop of the set of her head, the gracious charm of her little regular features, and the intelligence of her broad brow. With all her simplicity, she looked no fool or weakling. And to think that the narrow code of those who surrounded her should force this sweet young creature into the gray walls of a prison house, when she became the English clergyman's wife; it was too revolting to him. Count Roumovski suddenly made up his mind, trained to instantaneous decision by his bent of studies, and sure and decided in its action. And if Stella had looked up then she would have seen a keen gleam in the peaceful blue of his eyes. He drew her on to talk of her home and her tastes--she loved many things he did, he found--and she was so eager to hear and to learn their meaning. He grew to feel a sort of pride and the pleasure of a teacher when directing an extremely intelligent child. There were no barriers of stupidity into whatever regions the subjects might wander. They spent an hour of pure joy investigating each other's thoughts. And both knew they were growing more than friends. Then Stella rose suddenly to her feet. A clock struck twelve. "You said one must not be negative and drift," she announced demurely, "so I am being decided and must now go to Martha again." "Ivan has not warned us that she is thinking of stirring," Count Roumovski said. "I told him to, and he will let us know in plenty of time; you surely do not breakfast until half-past twelve, do you?" "Ivan?--who is Ivan?" Stella asked. "He is a servant of mine who does what he is bid," her companion answered. "To have peace to enjoy oneself one must calculate and arrange for events. Had we only trusted to the probability of your maid's sleeping, I should have had to be on the lookout, and my uneasiness would have communicated itself to you, and we should have had no happy hour--but I made a certainty of safety--and unconsciously you trusted me to know, and so we have been content." Stella was thrilled. So he had taken all this trouble. He must be a good deal interested in her, then; and feeling sure of this, womanlike, she immediately took advantage of it to insist upon leaving him. "Very well," he said, when he could not dissuade her. "To-night the wheel of fortune will revolve for us all, and it remains to be seen who will draw a prize and who a blank." Then he walked by her side to where they saw the quiet servant standing, a motionless sentinel, and here Count Roumovski bowed and turned on his heel, while Stella advanced to the bench on which the comfortable Martha slept. This latter was full of defence when she awoke. She had not closed an eye, but thought Miss Stella was enjoying "them statues" better without her, which was indeed true, if she had guessed! Miss Rawson ate very little luncheon--the Russian did not appear--and immediately after it she was taken as a treat to see the Borghese Gardens by her uncle and aunt! It behooved her not to be tired by more sightseeing, since her betrothed would arrive when they returned for tea, and would expect her to be bright and on the alert to please him, Aunt Caroline felt. As for Stella, as that moment approached it seemed to her that the end of all joy had come. CHAPTER IV The Rev. Eustace Medlicott, when the stains of travel had been removed from his thin person, came down to tea in the hall of the Grand Hotel with a distinct misgiving in his heart. He did not approve of it as a place of residence for his betrothed. Another and equally well-drained hostelry might have been found for the party he thought, where such evidences of worldly occupations and amusements would not so forcibly strike the eye. Music with one's meals savored of paganism. He was still very emaciated with his Lenten fast. It took him until July, generally, to pick up again; and he was tired with his journey. Stella was not there to greet him, only the Aunt Caroline, and he felt a sense of injury creeping over him. She might have been in time. Nancy Ruggles, the Bishop's second daughter, had given him tea and ministered to his wants in a spirit of solicitous devotion every day since the Ebleys had left Exminster, but Nancy's hair was not full of sunlight, nor did her complexion suggest cream and roses. Things which, to be sure, the Rev. Eustace Medlicott felt he ought not to dwell upon; they were fleshly lusts and should be discouraged. He had been convinced that celibacy was the only road to salvation for a priest, until Stella Rawson's fair young charms had unconsciously undermined this conviction. But even if he had been able to arrange his conscience to his liking upon the vital point, he felt he must fight bravely against allowing himself or his betrothed to get any pleasure out of the affair. It was better to marry than to burn, he had St. Paul's authority for this--but when he felt emotion toward Stella because of her loveliness, he was afterward very uncomfortable in his thoughts, and it took him at least an hour to throw dust in his own eyes in regard to the nature of his desire for her, which he determined to think was only of the spirit. Love, for him, was no god to be exalted, but a too strong beast to be resisted, and every one of his rites were to be succumbed to shamefacedly and under protest. Thus did he criticize the scheme of his Creator like many another before him. He sat now in the hall of the Grand Hotel at Rome feeling ill at ease and expressed some mild disapproval of the surroundings to Mrs. Ebley, who fired up at once. She was secretly enjoying herself extremely, and allowed the drains to assume gigantic proportions in her reasons for their choice of abode. So there was nothing more to be said, and Stella, looking rather pale, presently came down the steps from the corridor where their lift was situated, and joined the group in the far corner of the large hall. She was so slender and fresh and graceful, and, even in the week's sight-seeing in Paris, she seemed to have picked up a new air, though she wore the same gray Sunday dress her fiance was accustomed to see at home--it appeared to be put on differently, and she had altered the doing of her hair. There was no doubt about it, his future wife was a most delectable-looking creature, but these tendencies toward adornment of the person which he observed must be checked at once. They shook hands with decorous cordiality, and Stella sat down demurely in the vacant chair. She felt as cold as ice toward him, and looked it more or less. It made Mr. Medlicott nervous, although she answered gently enough when he addressed her. Inwardly she was trying to overcome the growing revulsion she was experiencing. Tricks of speech, movements of hands--even the way Eustace's hair grew--were all irritating her. She only longed to contradict every word the poor man said, and she felt wretched and unjust and at war with herself and fate. At last things almost came to a point when he moved his chair so that he should be close to her and a little apart from the others, and whispered with an air of absolute proprietorship: "My little Stella has changed her sweetly modest way of hairdressing. I hardly think the new style is suitable to my retiring dove." "Why, it is only parted in the middle and brushed back into a simple knot," Miss Rawson retorted, with sparkling eyes. "How can you be so ridiculous, Eustace--it is merely because it is becoming and more in the fashion that you object, there is nothing the least remarkable in the style itself." Mr. Medlicott's thin lips grew into a straight line. "It is that very point--the suggestion of fashion that I object to--the wife of a clergyman cannot be too careful not to make herself attractive or remarkable in any way," he said sententiously, his obstinate chin a little forward. "But I am not a clergyman's wife yet," said Stella with some feeling, "and can surely enjoy a few things of my age until I am--and doing my hair how I please is one of them." Mr. Medlicott shrugged his shoulders, he refused to continue this unseemly altercation with his betrothed. He would force her to see reason when once she should be his wife, until then he might have to waive his authority, but should show her by his manner that she had offended him, and judging from the attitudes of the adoring spinsters he had left at Exminster that should be punishment enough. He turned to the Aunt Caroline now and addressed her exclusively and Stella rebelliously moved her seat back a few inches and looked across the room; and at that moment the tall, odd-looking Russian came in, and retired to a seat far on the other side, exactly opposite them. Here he ordered a hock and seltzer with perfect unconcern, and smoked his cigarette. Miss Rawson could hardly bear it. "There is that extraordinary man again, Stella," Mrs. Ebley turned to her and said. "I thought he had gone as he was not at luncheon to-day. I am sure your fiance will agree with me that such an appearance is sacrilegious--he must know he looks like a saint--and I am quite sure, from what I have heard from Martha, he is not one at all. He lives in the greatest luxury, Eustace," she continued, turning to the Rev. Mr. Medlicott, "and probably does no good to anyone in the world." "How can you suppose that, Aunt Caroline," Stella answered with some spirit, "it is surely very uncharitable to judge of people by their appearances and--and what Martha repeats to you." Mrs. Ebley gasped--never in her whole life had her niece spoken to her in this tone. She to be rebuked! It was unspeakable. She could only glare behind her glasses. What had come to the girl in the last two days--if this manner was the result of travel, far better to have stayed at home! Here Canon Ebley joined in, hoping to bring peace: "You have told Eustace what is in store for him to-night, have you not, Caroline, my dear?" he asked. "We have to put on our best and take our ladies to the Embassy to a rout, Eustace," he went on, genially. "There are a Russian Grand Duke and Duchess passing through, it appears, who are going to be entertained." "There will be no dancing, I suppose," said Mr. Medlicott primly, "because, if so, I am sorry, but I cannot accompany you--it is not that I disapprove of dancing for others," he hastened to add, "but I do not care to watch it myself. And I do not think it wise for Stella to grow to care for it, either." "It is merely a reception," Mrs. Ebley said, "and it will be a very interesting sight." Stella sat silent; she was overcome with the whole situation; and her fiance grew more distasteful to her every moment--how had she ever been persuaded to be engaged to such a person!--while the attraction of the strange-looking Russian seemed to increase. In spite of the grotesque hair and unusual beard, there was an air of great distinction about him. His complete unconsciousness and calm were so remarkable. You might take him for an eccentric person, but certainly a gentleman, and with an extraordinary magnetism, she felt. When once you had talked to him, he seemed to cast a spell over you. But, beyond this, she only knew that she was growing more unhappy every moment, and that by her side one man represented everything that was tied and bound in sentiment and feeling and existence, and that across the hall another opened the windows of her reason and imagination, and exhorted her to be free, and herself. Presently she could bear it no more. She got up rather suddenly, and, saying she was very tired and had letters to write, she left them and went toward the lift. "Stella is not at all like herself," Mr. Medlicott said, when she had disappeared from view. "I trust she is not sickening with Roman fever." Meanwhile, Miss Rawson had reached her room and pulled her writing case in front of her. There were one or two girl friends who ought to be written to, but the sheets remained blank--and in about ten minutes there was a gentle knock at the door, and, on opening it, she saw Count Roumovski's discreet-looking servant, who handed her a note respectfully, and then went on his way without a word. How agreeable it must be to have well-trained servants to do one's bidding like that! she thought, and then went back eagerly to her window to read the missive. It had no beginning or date, and was just a few lines. I have observed the whole situation, and judged of the character of your fiance. I know how you feel. Do not be depressed--remain calm and trust me, circumstances can always be directed in the hands of a strong man. I will have the honor to be presented to you and to your family soon after you arrive at the Embassy to-night. All is well. There was no signature, and the writing was rather large and unlike any she had seen before. Suddenly her feeling of unrest left her, and a lightness of heart took its place. She was living, at all events, and the horizon was not all gray. It seemed almost delightful to be putting on a real evening dress presently, even though it was a rather homely white thing with a pink sash, and to be going down to the restaurant in it with Aunt Caroline in front in her best black velvet and point lace. That lady's desire to be in time at the party alone determined her to this breach of the rules--and there were Eustace and Uncle Erasmus in their stiff clerical evening coats awaiting them in the corridor--while, as luck would have it, the lift stopped at the second floor to admit the Russian. He got in with his usual air of being unaware that he was not alone--though Stella could feel that he was touching her hand--perhaps unconsciously. He seemed to radiate some kind of joy for her always, and the pink grew to that of a June rose in her cheeks, and her brown eyes shone like two stars. "That was the man you spoke of in the hall, Mrs. Ebley, was it not?" Eustace Medlicott's intoning voice said, as they went along to the restaurant. "He certainly is a most remarkable person to look at close--but I do not dislike his face, it has noble lines." "Really, how condescending of you!" Stella almost said aloud. But the Aunt Caroline answered serenely: "Perhaps I am prejudiced, Eustace, but want of convention always shocks me to such a degree that I cannot appreciate anything else." Stella almost enjoyed her dinner, she was so excited with the prospect of some unknown coming events, and she had the satisfaction of observing that once Count Roumovski actually turned his head in their direction and met her eyes. His were full of a whimsical smile for the instant he looked, and then he relapsed into his habitual indifference. The crowd had begun to thicken when they got to the Embassy, and they waited among them for the Royalties' arrival; Stella looking at everything with fresh, interested eyes. When this ceremony was over people began to disperse about the large rooms, and Miss Rawson was conscious that her strange secret acquaintance was in conversation with the Grand Duke and Duchess; she had not seen him come in. The Aunt Caroline noticed this, too, and drew her attention to the fact. "Look, Stella, that dreadful man is talking to Royalty!" she said. "I suppose he must be a gentleman, after all--one never can tell with foreigners, as their titles mean nothing, and half of them are assumed. Your Uncle Carford had a valet once who afterward was arrested for posing as a Polish count." "I should think anyone could see this man was a gentleman, Aunt Caroline," Stella answered, "even without his talking to Royalties." They were soon joined by the secretary cousin, who was charmed to welcome so pretty a relation to Rome, and was profuse in his apologies for not having been able to do more than leave cards upon them as yet. "We should so like to know the names of the celebrities," Mrs. Ebley said, "especially can you tell us about the very curious-looking person now conversing with her Imperial Highness; he is at our hotel." "That--Oh! that is by far the most interesting man here--it is the famous Count Roumovski. He is a most celebrated traveler; he has been all over the world and Africa and Asia in unaccessible places. He is a fabulously rich Russian--a real Muscovite from near Moscow, and he does everything and anything he pleases; he gives enormous sums for the encouragement of science. He is immensely intelligent--he lunched at the Embassy to-day." "Really!" said the Aunt Caroline, somewhat impressed. "His appearance is greatly against him." "Oh, do you think so?" said the cousin. "I think it adds to his attraction, it is such superlative audacity. No Englishman would have the nerve to cut his hair like that." "I should hope not," said Mrs. Ebley severely, and dropped the subject. "To think of this charming rosebud of a girl going to marry Eustace Medlicott--insufferable, conceited prig, I remember him at Oxford," the cousin was musing to himself. "Lord Carford is an old stick-in-the-mud, or he would have prevented that. She is his own niece, and one can see by her frock that the poor child never even goes to London." At this moment they saw the Russian Count putting his heels together and bowing himself out of the circle of his Royalties; and straight as a dart he came over to where their group was standing, and whispered in the cousin's--Mr. Deanwood's ear--who then asked if he might present Count Roumovski to the Aunt Caroline and the rest. When this ceremony was over Mrs. Ebley found herself conversing with her whilom object of contempt, and coming gradually under the influence of his wonderful charm, while Stella stood there trembling with the wildest excitement she had yet known. The words of Eustace, her betrothed, talking to her, carried no meaning to her brain, her whole intelligence was strung up to catch what the others were saying. With great dexterity the Russian presently made the conversation general, and drew her into it, and then he said with composure that the Gardens were illuminated--and, as it was such a very hot night, would mademoiselle like to take a turn that way, to have some refreshment? At the same moment, Mr. Deanwood gave Mrs. Ebley his arm, and they all moved forward--followed by Canon Ebley and the Rev. Eustace Medlicott, with no great joy upon his face. Stella, meanwhile, felt herself being drawn rapidly ahead, and so maneuvered that in a moment or two they had completely lost sight of the rest of the relations, and were practically alone in a crowd. "At last!" Count Roumovski whispered, "even I, who am generally calm, was beginning to feel I should rush over, throw prudence to the winds and--" then he stopped abruptly, and Stella felt her heart thump in her throat, while her little hand on his arm was pressed against his side. They made the pretense of taking some refreshment at the buffet, and then went toward the open doors of the garden. The part all round the house was illuminated, and numbers of people strolled about, the night was deliciously warm. Count Roumovski seemed to know the paths, for he drew his companion to a seat just beyond the radius of the lights, and they sat down upon a bench under a giant tree. He had not spoken a word, but now he leaned back and deliberately looked into her eyes, while his voice, with vibrations of feeling in it which thrilled Stella, whispered in her ear: "It cannot go on, of course--you agree with me about that, do you not?" "What cannot go on?" she asked, to gain time to recover her composure. "This situation," he answered. "I am sure now that I love you--and I want to teach you a number of things, first in importance being that you shall love me." "Oh, you must not say this," Stella protested feebly. "Yes, I must, and you will listen to me, little star." He drew nearer to her, and the amazing power of propinquity began to assert itself. She felt as if the force to resist him were leaving her, she was trembling all over with delicious thrills. "I made up my mind almost immediately I saw you, sweet child," he went on, "that you were what I have been waiting for all my life. You are good and true--and balanced--or you will be that when I have made your love education. Stella, look at me with those soft eyes, and tell me that I mean something to you already, and that the worthy Mr. Medlicott does not exist any more." "I--I--but I have only known you for two days," Stella answered confusedly: she was so full of emotion that she dared not trust herself further. "Does time count, then, so much with conventional people?" he demanded. "For me it has no significance in relation to feeling. If you would only look at me instead of down at those small hands, then you would not be able to tell me these foolish things!" This was so true that Stella could not deny it, her breath came rather fast; it was the supreme moment her life had yet known. "You are frightened because the training of your education still holds you and not nature. Your acquired opinion tells you you are engaged to another man, and ought not to listen to me." "Of course I ought not to," she murmured. "Of course you ought--how else can you come to any conclusion if you do not hear my arguments--sweet, foolish one!" She did look at him now with two startled eyes. "Listen attentively, darling pupil, and sweet love," he said. He was leaning with one arm on the back of the bench supporting his head on his hand, turned quite toward her, who sat with clasped nervous fingers clutching her fan. His other hand lay idly on his knee, his whole attitude was very still. The soft lights were just enough for him to see distinctly her small face and shining hair; his own face was in shadow, but she could feel the magnetism of his eyes penetrating through her very being. "You were coerced by those in charge of you," he went on in a level voice of argument, which yet broke into notes of tenderness, "you were influenced into becoming engaged to this man who is ridiculously unsuited to you. You, so full of life and boundless joy! You, who will learn all of love's meaning presently, and what it makes of existence, and what God meant by giving it to us mortals. You are intended by nature to be a complete woman if you did but know it--but such a life, tied to that half fish man, would atrophy all that is finest in your character. You would grow really into what they are trying to make you appear--after years of hopelessness and suffering. Do you not feel all this, little star, tell me?" "Yes," Stella answered, "it is true--I have seemed to feel the cords and the shackles pulling at me often, but never that they were unbearable until I--spoke with you--and you put new thoughts into my head." "I did well, then. And because of a silly convention you would ruin all your life by going on with these ways--it is unthinkable!" and his deep voice vibrated with feeling. "It is a mistake, that is all, and can be rectified,--if you were already married to this man I would not plead so, because then you would have crossed the Rubicon, and assumed responsibilities which you would have to accept or suffer the consequences. But this preliminary bond can be broken without hurt to either side. A man of the good clergyman's type will not suffer in his emotions at the loss of you--he suffices unto himself for those; his vanity will be wounded--that is all. And surely it is better that should gall for a little than that you should spoil your life. Sweet flower, realize yourself these things--that sunny hair and that beautiful skin and those velvet eyes were made for the joy and glory of a man--not for temptations to a strict priest, who would resent their power as a sin every time he felt himself influenced by their charm. Gods above! he would not know what to do with you, heart of me!" Stella was thrilling with exquisite emotion, but the influence of her strict and narrow bringing up could not be quite overcome in these few moments. She longed to be convinced, and yet some altruistic sentiment made her feel still some qualms and misgivings. If she should be causing Eustace great pain by breaking her engagement; if it were very wrong to go against her uncle and aunt--especially her Aunt Caroline, her own mother's sister. She clasped her little hands nervously, and looked up in this strong man's face with pathetic, pleading intensity. "Oh, please tell me, what ought I to do, then--what is right?" she implored. "And because I want so much to believe you, I fear it must be wrong to do so." He leaned nearer to her and spoke earnestly. His stillness was almost ominous, it gave the impression of such immense self-control, and his voice was as those bass notes of the priests of St. Isaac's in his own northern land. "Dear, honest little girl," he said tenderly, "I worship your goodness. And I know you will presently see the truth. Love is of God and is imperious, and because she loves him is the only reason why a woman should give her life to a man. Quite apart from the law, which proclaims that each individual must be the arbiter of his own fate, and not succumb to the wishes of others, it would be an ethical sin for you to marry the worthy Mr. Medlicott--not loving him. Surely, you can see this." "Yes--yes, it would be dreadful," she murmured, "but Aunt Caroline--she caused me to accept him--I mean, she wanted me to so much. I never really felt anything for him myself, and lately--ever since the beginning, in fact, I have been getting more and more indifferent to him." "Then, surely, it is plain that you must be free of him, darling. Throw all the responsibility upon me, if you will. I promise to take every care of you. And I want you only to promise you will follow each step that I explain to you--" then he broke off, and the seriousness of his tone changed to one of caressing tenderness. "But first I must know for certain, little star, shall I be able to teach you to love me--as I shall love you?" "Yes," was all Stella could utter, and then, gaining more voice, she went on, "I did not know--I could not guess what that would mean--to love--but--" He answered her with fond triumph: "Now you are beginning to understand, darling child--that is enough for me to know for the present. In your country, a man asks a woman to marry him: he says, 'Will you marry me?'--is it not so? of course, I need not say that to you, because you know that is what I mean. When these wearisome thongs are off your wrists you will belong to me, and come with me into my country and be part of my life." "Ah!" whispered Stella, the picture seemed one of heaven, that was all. "You must have freedom to assert your individuality, Stella," he continued. "I can but show you the way and give you a new point of view, but I will never try to rule you and drag you to mine. I will never put any chains upon you but those of love. Do they sound as if they would be too heavy, dearest?" "I think not," she said very low. "I feel as though I were looking into a beautiful garden from the top of an ugly, barren, cold mountain. I shall like to come down and go in among the unknown flowers." "It will be so glorious for us," he said exultantly, "because we have still all the interesting things to find out about each other,--" And then, her sweet face so very near him, the temptation to caress her became too intense; he quivered and changed his position, clasping his hands. "Darling," he said hoarsely, "we must soon go back to the company, because, although I count always upon my will to make my actions obey it, still I can hardly prevent myself from seizing you in my arms and kissing your tender lips--and that I must not do--as yet." Stella drew herself together, the temptation was convulsing her also, though she did not guess it. She looked up into his blue eyes there in the shadow, and saw the deep reverence in them, and she understood and loved him with her soul. He did not so much as touch her dress; indeed, now that he had won his fight, he moved a little further from her--and resumed his calm voice: "The first thing we shall do is to stroll back through the people and find the aunt--I will then leave you with her, and soon it will be time to go home. Do not make much conversation with any of them to-night--leave everything to me. I will see the Rev. Mr. Medlicott when we return to the hotel. Whatever they say to you to-morrow, remain firm in your simple determination to break your engagement. Argue with them not at all. I will see your uncle in the morning and demand your hand; they will be shocked, horrified, scandalized--we will make no explanations. If they refuse their consent, then you must be brave, and the day after to-morrow you must come to my sister. She will have arrived by then; she was in Paris, and I telegraphed for her to join me immediately; the Princess Urazov she is called. She will receive you with affection, and you will stay with her until the formalities can be arranged, when we shall be married, and--but I cannot permit myself to think of the joy of that--for the moment." Stella's eyes, with trust and love, were now gazing into his, and he rose abruptly to his feet. "You may, when you are alone, again think that it is heartless to go quite contrary to your relations like this, because they have brought you up, but remember that marriage is an act which can mean almost life or death to a woman, and that no human beings have any right to coerce you in this matter. You are of age and so am I, and we are only answerable to God and to the laws of our countries, not to individuals." "I will try to think of it like that," said Stella, greatly moved, and then, with almost childish irrelevance, which touched him deeply, she asked, "What must I call you, please?" "Oh, you sweetest star!" he exclaimed, "do not tempt me too strongly--I love you wildly and I want to fold you in my arms--and explain everything with your little head here on my breast--but I must not--must not yet. Call me Sasha--say it now that I may hear its sound in your tender voice--and we must fly, fly back to the lights--or I cannot answer for myself." She whispered it softly, and a shiver ran through all his tall frame--and he said, with tender masterfulness: "Say, 'Sasha, I love,'" and this she did, also--and then he almost brusquely placed her hand upon his arm, and led her among the people, and so to her frowning relations, and then he bowed a correct good-night. CHAPTER V No one could have been more surprised than the Reverend Eustace Medlicott at the behavior of his betrothed. Far from showing any contrition for her unseemly absence upon the arm of a perfect stranger, and a foreigner to boot, Stella had returned to the fold of her relations' group with a demure and radiant face, and when Eustace had ventured some querulous reproaches, she had cut him short by saying she had done as she wished and did not intend to listen to any remarks about it. "You will have to learn more humbleness of mind, my dear child," he retorted sternly. "I cannot allow you to reply to your future husband in this independent tone." "I shall just answer as I please," said Stella, and felt almost inclined to laugh, he looked so cross and amazed. Then she turned and talked to the cousin, Mr. Deanwood, and took no further notice of him. Mr. Medlicott burned with annoyance. Stella would really have to be careful or he would not go on with the match--he had no intention of taking to wife a woman who would defy him--there was Nancy Ruggles ready to be his slave--and others besides her. And his career could be just as well assisted by the Bishop's daughter as by Canon Ebley's niece, even though her uncle was a crotchety and unknown Lord, patron of two fat livings. But Stella, with a rebellious little curl loosened on her snowy neck and a rebellious pout upon her cherry lips, was so very alluring a creature to call one's own, the desire of the flesh, which he called by any other name, fought hard with his insulted spirit, though to give in would be too ignominious; she must say she was sorry first, and then he could find it in his heart to forgive her. But the opportunity to show this magnanimity was not vouchsafed to him by fate--for other people were introduced to the party by Mr. Deanwood, and he did not exchange a word alone with his erring fiancee until she said a cold good-night in the hall of the Grand Hotel. "Stella, remain for a moment, I wish to speak to you," he said in the voice in which he was accustomed to read the burial service. But she feigned not to hear and followed her Aunt Caroline's black velvet train on to the lift and at that same moment a discreet-looking foreign servant came up and handed him a note. He read it in surprise--who could be sending him a note at a quarter past twelve at night? Dear Sir [it ran], I shall be greatly obliged if you can spare to me half an hour before retiring to your rest to converse upon a matter of importance. I had the honor of making your acquaintance to-night at your Embassy. If you will grant me this favor I will wait upon you immediately in the hall, or, if you prefer, my sitting-room; my servant could conduct you here, and we shall have the advantage of being entirely undisturbed. I remain, sir, Yours truly. SASHA ROUMOVSKI. Eustace Medlicott gasped with astonishment. This Russian gentleman was evidently in need of his ministrations and perhaps advice. He would go to his room, certainly, there were still some people in the hall having late coffee and refreshment after the theater. He indicated by a condescending movement that he was ready to follow the waiting servant, and soon found himself being shown into Count Roumovski's sitting-room. It was luxuriously appointed and represented every appearance of manly comfort. There were quantities of books and papers about and the smell of excellent cigars, and put carelessly aside were various objets d'art which antique dealers had evidently sent for his grand seigneur's approval. Count Roumovski was standing by the mantelpiece and looked very tall and commanding in his evening dress. "It is most good of you to come," he said, while he indicated a big arm-chair for his visitor to sit in--he did not offer to shake hands. "It was certainly my duty to have called upon you, my only apology for getting you to ascend here is that the subject I wish to converse with you is too serious for both of us to admit of interruptions." "Indeed," said Mr. Medlicott, pompously--growing more surprised each moment. "And may I ask the nature of your trouble?" Count Roumovski did not change his position by the mantelpiece and he kept still as a bronze statue as he spoke in a courteous tone: "It is not a trouble at all," he began, gravely, "on the contrary, it is a great joy and honor for me. I will state the facts immediately. I understand that for a short while you have been engaged to be married to Miss Stella Rawson, the niece of the respected English clergyman, the Reverend Ebley--" "Pardon me," interrupted Mr. Medlicott acidly, "but I do not see how my private affairs can interest you, sir, I cannot--" But the host in turn interrupted him. "If you will be so good as to listen patiently, you will find that this matter is of vital importance--may I proceed?" Mr. Medlicott bowed; what more could he do? Count Roumovski went on: "I understand that Miss Rawson never showed very strong affection for you or great desire for this union--so what I have to ask now is, if you, as a gentleman, will release her from her promise to you and set her free." "Upon my word, sir, this is too much," Mr. Medlicott exclaimed, starting to his feet, "by what authority do you say these preposterous things? You were only introduced to Miss Rawson and myself to-night. You must be mad!" "No, I am quite sane. And I say them upon the best authority," Count Roumovski continued, "because I love Miss Rawson myself, and I am deeply honored by believing that in return she loves me--not you at all. Therefore, it is common sense to ask you to release her, and let her be happy with the person she prefers--is it not so?" Eustace Medlicott had grown white with anger and astonishment as he listened, and now broke in hotly, forgetful of his intoning voice or anything but his outraged dignity. "When have you had the opportunity to try and undermine the faith of my betrothed, may I ask? Supposing you are saying this seriously and not as some ill-timed jest." Count Roumovski lifted his eyebrows a little and looked almost with pity at his adversary. "We are not talking in the heroic manner," he replied, unmoved by the other's taunt, "we are, I presume, two fairly intelligent men discussing this affair together--there has been no question of undermining. Miss Rawson and myself found we understood each other very soon after we first met. Surely, you must realize, sir, that love cannot be commanded, it will not come or go at one's bidding. These ridiculous bonds of convention, holding to a promise given when the spirit to keep it is no longer there, can ruin people's lives." Mr. Medlicott drew himself up, he was not quite so tall as the Russian, but of no mean height, and his intense, ascetic face, emaciated to extreme leanness, now reddened with passion, while the veins stood out upon his high, narrow forehead. He was always very irritable when crossed, and his obstinate nature was strongly combative. "You forget, sir," he said angrily, "you are insulting my honor." "Not the least in the world--you do not understand the point," Count Roumovski returned calmly. "Listen for a minute--and I will explain. If Miss Rawson were already your wife I should be, and you would have the right to try and kill me, did your calling permit of that satisfaction of gentlemen, because there is a psychological and physiological reason involved in that case, producing the instinct in man which he is not perhaps conscious of, that he wishes to be sure his wife's legitimate offspring are his own--out of this instinct, civilization has built up the idea of a man's honor--which you can see has a basic principle of sense and justice." Mr. Medlicott with difficulty restrained himself from interrupting and the Russian went on. "The situation of betrothed is altogether different: in it there have merely been promises exchanged, promises, for the most part, which no man or woman can honestly engage with any certainty to keep, because feeling toward the other is not within his or her control--both are promising upon a sentiment, not a reality." "I totally disagree with you," Eustace Medlicott answered angrily, "when men and women make promises to one another they should have wills strong enough to keep them." "For what sensible reason?" Count Roumovski asked. "In a case where the happiness of both is involved, and where no damage has been incurred by either--" Mr. Medlicott clasped his hands convulsively but he did not reply--so the Russian went on: "Surely, you must see that a woman should be free to marry--that is, to give herself and her power to become a mother where she loves--not to be forced to bestow these sacred gifts when her spirit is unwilling--just because she has made the initial mistake of affiancing herself to a man, often through others' influence, who she discovers afterward is distasteful to her. Cannot you realize that it is wise for himself as well as for her that this man release her, before a life of long misery begins for them both?" Mr. Medlicott never analyzed reasons, and never listened to other people's logic, and if he had any of his own he was too angry to use it. He was simply conscious now that a foreigner had insulted him and appeared to have stolen the affections of his betrothed, and his sacred calling precluded all physical retaliation--which, at the moment, was the only kind that would have given him any satisfaction. He prepared to stalk furiously from the room after he should receive an answer to an all-important question. "The whole thing is disgraceful," he said, "and I shall inform Miss Rawson's uncle and aunt of your highly insulting words to me, that they may guard her from further importunity upon your part. But I should like to know, in fairness, how far you are stating you have been able to persuade my fiancee to agree to your view?" "I am sorry you should have become so heated and angry," Count Roumovski returned, "because it stops all sensible discussion. I deeply regret having been forced to inflict pain upon you, but if you would give yourself time to think calmly you would see that, however unfortunate the fact may be for you of Miss Rawson's affections having become fixed on me--these things are no one's fault and beyond human control--Miss Rawson has left the breaking off of her engagement to you in my hands, and has decided that she desires to marry me, as I desire to marry her, as soon as she is free." "I refuse to listen to another word," Mr. Medlicott flashed, "and I warn you, sir, that I will give no such freedom at your bidding--on the contrary, I shall have my marriage with Miss Rawson solemnized immediately, and try, if there is a word of truth in your preposterous assertion that she loves you, to bring her back to a proper sense of her duty to me and to God, repressing her earthly longings by discipline and self-denial, the only true methods for the saving of her soul. And I and her natural guardians, her uncle and her aunt, will take care that you never see her again." Count Roumovski raised his eyebrows once more and prepared to light a cigar. "It is a pity you will not discuss this peacefully, sir," he said, "or apparently even think about it yourself with common sense. If you would do so, you would begin by asking yourself what God gave certain human beings certain attributes for," he blew a few whiffs of smoke, "whether to be wasted and crushed out by the intolerance of others,--or whether to be tended and grow to the highest, as flowers grow with light and air and water." "What has that got to do with the case?" asked Mr. Medlicott, tapping his foot uneasily. "Everything," went on the Russian, mildly, "you, I believe, are a priest, and therefore should be better able to expound your Deity's meaning than I, a layman--but you have evidently not the same point of view--mine is always to look at the facts of a case denuded of prejudice--because the truth is the thing to aim at--" "You would suggest that I am not aiming at the truth," the clergyman interrupted, trembling now with anger, so that he fiercely grasped the back of a high chair, "your words are preposterous, sir." "Not at all," Count Roumovski continued. "Look frankly at things; you have just announced that you would constitute yourself judge of what is for Miss Rawson's salvation." "Leave her name out, I insist," the other put in hotly. "To be concrete, unfortunately, I cannot do so," the Russian said. "I must speak of this lady we are both interested in--pray, try to listen to me calmly, sir, for we are here for the settling of a matter which concerns the happiness of our three lives." "I do not admit for a moment that you have the right to speak at all," Mr. Medlicott returned, but his adversary went on quietly. "You must have remarked that Miss Rawson possesses beauty of form, sweet and tender flesh, soft coloring, and a look of health and warmth and life. All these charms tend to create in man a passionate physical love. That is cause and effect. For the sake of the present argument we will, for the moment, leave out all more important questions of the soul and things mental and spiritual. Well, who gave her these attributes? Did you or I--or even her parents, consciously? Or did the Supreme Being, whom you call God, endow her so? Admitted that He did--have you, then, or anyone else, the right to crush out the result of His endowment in a woman; crush her joy of them, force her into a life where their possession is looked upon as a temptation? Seek to marry her--remember that marriage physically means being certainly actuated to do so by their attraction--and yet believing that you sin each time you allow them to influence you." Count Roumovski's level voice took on a note of deep emotion and his blue eyes gleamed. "Why, the degradation is horrible to think of, sir, if you will face the truth--and this is the fate to which you would condemn this young and tender girl for your own selfishness, knowing she does not love you." Eustace Medlicott walked up and down rapidly for a moment; he then picked up a book and threw it aside again in agitation. He was very pale now. "I refuse to have the woman I have decided to marry snatched from me by any of your sophistries," he said breathlessly. "I am better able than you to save her soul, and she owes me honor and obedience--it is most unseemly to even mention the aspects you have done in a bond which is a sacrament of holy church and should be only approached in a spiritual frame of mind, not a carnal one." "You are talking pure nonsense, sir," returned Count Roumovski sternly. "If that were the case the wording of your English marriage service would be different. First and foremost, marriage is a contract between two people to live together in union of body and to procreate children, which is the law of God and nature. Men added arrangement and endowment of property, and the church added spiritual sacrament. But God and nature invented the vital thing. If it were not so, it would have been possible for the spiritually minded, of which company you infer yourself to be, to live with a woman on terms of brother and sister, and never let the senses speak at all. There would then have been no necessity for the ceremony of marriage for priests with your views." Eustace Medlicott shook with passion and emotion as he answered furiously: "You would turn the question into one of whether a priest should marry or not. It is a question which has agitated me all my life, and which I have only lately been able to come to a conclusion upon. I refuse to let you disturb me in it." "I had not thought of doing so," Count Roumovski returned tranquilly. "You and your views and your destiny do not interest me, I must own, except in so far as they interfere with myself and the woman I love. You have proved yourself to be just a warped atom of the great creation, incapable of anything but ignoble narrowness. You cannot even examine your own emotions honestly and probe their meaning or you would realize no man should marry, be he priest or layman, if he looks upon the joys of physical love as base and his succumbing to them a proof of the power of the beast in himself. Because he then lives under continual degradation of soul by acting against his conscience." Mr. Medlicott was now silent, almost choking with perturbation. So Count Roumovski went on: "The wise man faces the facts of nature. Looks straight to find God's meaning in them, and then tries to exalt and ennoble them to their loftiest good. He does not, in his puny impotence, quarrel with the all-powerful Creator and try to stamp out that with which He thought fit to endow human beings." "Your words convey a flagrant denial of original sin, and I cannot listen to such an argument," Mr. Medlicott flashed, his anger now at white heat. "You would do away with a whole principle of the Christian religion." "No; I would only do away with a faulty interpretation which man grafted upon it," Count Roumovski answered. Then the two men glared straight into each other's eyes for a moment, and Eustace Medlicott quailed beneath the magnetic force of the Russian's blue ones--he turned away abruptly. He was too intolerant of character and too disturbed now to permit himself to hear more of these reasonings. He could but resort to protest and let his wrath rise to assist him. "It cannot benefit either Miss Rawson or ourselves to continue this unseemly controversy over her," he said in a raucous voice. "I have told you I will give no freedom upon your request--and I have warned you of my action. Now I shall go," and he took three steps toward the door. But Count Roumovski's next words arrested him a moment; his tone was no longer one of suave, detached calmness, but sharp and decisive, and his bearing was instinct with strength and determination. "Since we are coming to warnings," he said, "we drop the velvet glove. The discourtesy to a lady conveyed in your words obliges me to use my own way without further consulting you for assisting her wishes. I will again thank you for coming up here and will have the honor to wish you goodnight." With which he opened the door politely and bowed his visitor out. And when he was alone Count Roumovski sat down by the open window and puffed his cigar meditatively for some minutes, smiling quietly to himself as he mused: "Poor, stupid fellow! If people could only be honest enough with themselves to have a sensible point of view! It is all so simple if they would get down to the reason of things without all this false sentiment. Of what use to chain the body of a woman to one man if her spirit is with another? Of what use to talk of offended honor with high-sounding words when, if one were truthful, one would own it was offended vanity? Of what use for this narrow, foolish clergyman to protest and bombast and rave, underneath he is actuated by mostly human motives in his desire to marry my Stella? When will the world learn to be natural and see the truth? Love of the soul is the divine part of the business, but it cannot exist without love of the body. As well ask a man to live upon bread without water." Then he moved to his writing table and composed rapidly a letter to his beloved in which he recounted to her the result of the interview and the threats of her late fiance, and the humor in which he had quitted the room, and from that she might judge of what she must reasonably expect. He advised her, as he was unaware of how far the English authority of a guardian might go, to feign some fatigue and keep her room next day and on no account whatever to be persuaded to leave Rome or the hotel. He told her that in the morning he would endeavor to see her uncle and aunt, but if they refused this interview, he would write and ask formally for her hand, and if his request were treated with scorn, then she must be prepared to slip away with him to the Excelsior Hotel and be consigned to the care of the Princess Urazov, his sister, who would have arrived from Paris. The business part of the epistle over, he allowed himself half a page of love sentences--which caused Miss Rawson exquisite delight when she read them some moments later. She had not gone to bed directly, she was too excited and full of new emotions to be thinking of sleep, and when she heard Ivan's gentle tap at her door she crept to it and whispered without opening it: "Who is there?" A low voice answered: "Une lettre pour mademoiselle." And the epistle was slipped into the little box for letters on the door. She went back to her wide window and looked out on the darkness after she had read it. She saw there would be trouble ahead, she knew Eustace Medlicott's obstinate spirit very well, and also the rigid convention of Aunt Caroline--but to what lengths they would go she formulated no guess. It all seemed so secure and happy and calm now with such a man to lean upon as Sasha Roumovski. Nothing need ruffle or frighten her ever any more. And then she read the love sentences again and thrilled and quivered there in the warm, soft night. Sasha Roumovski's influence over her had grown so strong that not a questioning speculation as to the step she meant to take any longer entered her head. She felt she knew at last what love's meaning truly was, and nothing else mattered in the world--which, indeed, was the truth! Meanwhile, the Reverend Eustace Medlicott, burning with fury, had stalked to his room, and there tried to think of what he had better do. He feared it was too late to communicate with Canon and Mrs. Ebley--they would have retired to bed, and Stella, also. Here his thoughts were brought up with violent suddenness. Was she quite safe? Heavens above! and he turned quite cold--foreigners might be capable of any outrage--but presently he dismissed this fear. People always locked their doors in hotels, and Stella, though she had apparently shown herself sadly unworthy of his regard, was a thoroughly well brought-up young woman, and would not be likely to bandy words in the night with any young man. But on the morrow he would insist upon their all leaving the hotel and Rome itself--no more chances of her communicating with this hateful Russian count should be risked. As the Ebley party had only arrived three days ago in the city, it was clearly impossible that the affair could have gone far, and as he had heard of their sightseeing and knew Mrs. Ebley would be extremely unlikely to allow Stella out of her sight in any case, he could not imagine how his fiancee and the Russian could have found a chance to speak--and even a foreigner could not persuade a woman into this course of action in half an hour's talk at the Embassy! The whole thing must be the ravings of a madman, nothing more, and Stella herself would be the first to explain that point on the morrow. But even this comforting thought could not quite calm him--there remained disquieting recollections of certain forcible arguments he had been obliged to listen to against his will which had hit some part of his inner consciousness usually impregnably protected by his self-conceit. And it was an hour or two before he was able to drink his barley water and retire to rest, which he felt he badly needed after his long journey and uncomfortably exciting evening. CHAPTER VI The sun was blazing gloriously next day, the whole air was full of freshness and spring and youth. An ideal one for lovers, and not at all the atmosphere for anger and strife. But these facts did not enter into the consideration of three of the people, at least, connected with our little comedy. Eustace Medlicott woke more full of wrath than he had been the night before, and, the moment he was dressed, proceeded to make havoc with the peace of the Reverend Canon and Mrs. Ebley. He sent up an urgent summons that they would see him immediately. Having no sitting-room, he suggested the reading-room, which would be empty at this hour. The Aunt Caroline had experienced some misgivings herself at the Embassy about her niece's absence with the foreign count, who had risen to this distinctive appellation in her mind from "that dreadful man," but she had felt it more prudent not to comment upon her apprehensions to her niece. Eustace evidently had discovered further cause of resentment and feminine curiosity assisted her to dress with greater rapidity than usual. The pair entered the room with grave faces and took two uncomfortable chairs. The Reverend Mr. Medlicott remained standing, and soon, from his commanding position, let them hear his version of the hated foreigner's communications. They were duly horrified and surprised and then Mrs. Ebley bridled a little--after all, it was the behavior of her own niece upon which aspersion was being cast. "I am certain, Eustace, the man must be mad--I assure you, Stella has not been for an instant absent from me, except yesterday morning she went to the Thermes Museum with Martha, whom you know has proved by twenty-five years of faithful service that she can be completely trusted, therefore the girl cannot have had any opportunity of conversing with this stranger until last night. It would be only fair to question her first--" "My wife is quite right," Canon Ebley agreed. "We should listen to no more until Stella is here to defend herself. Let us send a message for her to descend at once." He went and rang the bell as he spoke, and the summons to Miss Rawson was dispatched. Then the three somewhat uncomfortably tried to exchange platitudes upon indifferent subjects until the waiter returned. Mademoiselle was very fatigued and was not yet up! Such an unheard of thing petrified them all with astonishment. Stella to be still in bed, at half past nine in the morning! The child must be ill!--or it was distinct rebellion. Mrs. Ebley prepared to go and investigate matters when another waiter entered with a note for Canon Ebley, and stood aside to receive the answer. "Dear, dear!" said that gentleman to his wife, "I have not my glasses with me, I came down in such a hurry. Will you read it to me?" But Mrs. Ebley was in a like plight, so they were obliged to enlist the services of Eustace Medlicott. He knew the writing directly he glanced at it and every move of his body stiffened with renewed anger. And it is to be feared he said to himself, "it is from that cursed man." He read it aloud, and it was the briefest and most courteous note asking for the honor of an interview at whatever time would be most agreeable to Canon Ebley. The nature of the business to be discussed at it was not stated. "I strongly advise you not to see the scoundrel," Mr. Medlicott said vehemently. "It is far better that we should all leave Rome immediately and avoid any chance of scandal." "Before we can decide anything," Mrs. Ebley said decisively, "I must speak with my niece. If she is quite ignorant of this foreigner's ravings, then there will be no necessity to alter our trip--we can merely move to another hotel. The whole thing is most unpleasant and irritating and has quite upset me." Stella, upstairs in her cosy bed, had meanwhile received another note from her lover. Full of tenderness and encouragement, it made her feel as bold as a young lioness and ready to brave any attack. That her aunt had not been to see why she was not dressed already was filling her with surprise, and after the waiter had brought the message she guessed the reason why. A firm tap to the door presently and her Aunt Caroline's voice saying sternly. "It is I, Stella, please let me in at once." Miss Rawson got out of bed, unlocked the door and bounded back again, and a figure of dignified displeasure sailed into the room. "Are you ill, my dear?" Mrs. Ebley asked, in a stern voice. "It is otherwise very strange that you should not be dressed at this hour--it is a quarter to ten o'clock." "No, I am not exactly ill, Aunt Caroline," Stella answered gently, "but I was very tired, and as I was making up my mind what I should say in my letter to Eustace to break off my engagement--I preferred not to come down until I had done so." The Aunt Caroline could not believe her ears. She was obliged to sit down. Her emotion made her knees tremble. It was true then--something had been going on under her very eyes and she had not perceived it--the deceit and perfidy of human nature had always been a shock to her-- "You wish to break your engagement, Stella," she said, as soon as she could steady her voice. "But you cannot possibly do so scandalous a thing--and for what reason, pray?" "I find I do not love Eustace," Stella answered calmly, although her heart now began to beat rapidly. "I know I never have loved him; it was only because I thought it would please you and Uncle Erasmus that I ever became engaged to him, and now that I know what love is--I mean now that the time is getting nearer, I feel that I cannot go through with it." "There is something underneath all this, Stella," Mrs. Ebley said icily. "You cannot deceive me. You have been led astray, girl--it is wiser to confess at once and I will try to pardon you." Stella's spirit rose--she raised her head proudly, then she remembered her lover's counsel to have no arguments whatsoever, and so she curbed her heated words and continued gently: "I have not been led astray, Aunt Caroline, and there is nothing to pardon. I am twenty-one years old now and surely can judge for myself whether or no I wish to marry a man--and I have decided I do not intend to marry Eustace Medlicott. I almost feel I detest him." Mrs. Ebley was petrified with anger and astonishment. "I am sorry to tell you I cannot believe you, Stella," she said, "your fiance had a most unpleasant shock last night. The foreign person, Count Roumovski, who was presented to us at the Embassy, insulted him greatly, and told him that you had agreed to marry him as soon as Eustace should set you free! I almost blush to repeat to you this shocking story which we had considered the ravings of a madman, but the time has come when we must have some plain speaking." "It has indeed," Stella agreed, her wrath rising, then went on respectfully, "but I must refuse to discuss anything about Count Roumovski at present. Please believe me that I do not wish to annoy you, dear Aunt Caroline. I only wish to do what is right, and I know it is right to break off my engagement with Eustace Medlicott." Mrs. Ebley felt her anger augmenting to boiling point, but nothing, she could say had any effect upon her niece, who remained extremely respectful and gentle, but perfectly firm. Mrs. Ebley could not get her to tell her anything about her acquaintance with this dreadful foreigner. She became silent after she had refused point blank to discuss him. At last the baffled and exasperated older lady got up and fired her last shot. "Words cannot express my pain and disgust at your conduct, Stella," she said. "Putting aside all the awful suspicions I have about this Russian, you will lay up for yourself a lifelong regret in outraging all decency by refusing to marry that good and pure young clergyman, Eustace Medlicott." "I have done nothing wrong, Aunt Caroline, please do not go away angry with me," Stella pleaded. "When Count Roumovski asks Uncle Erasmus' and your consent to his marrying me--then I will tell you everything about him,--but now I do not wish to. Please forgive me for causing you pain--we shall all be very happy soon, and surely I have a right to my life like any other person." Mrs. Ebley would not bandy further words; their points of view were too different. "I regret that I am obliged to request you to keep your room and have no communication with anyone whatever until I can consult with your uncle and Eustace as to what is the best thing to do with you. That we shall leave Rome immediately you may be prepared for." Stella here burst into tears. She had an affection for her aunt, who had always been kind to her in a hard, cold way, and she was deeply grieved at their estrangement, but there were forces in life which she knew now mattered more than any aunts in the world. Mrs. Ebley did not relent at the sound of the sobbing, but left the room, closing the door firmly after her. And a few minutes afterward Martha was let in by the chambermaid without knocking and sat down grimly by the window and began to knit. Then Stella's tears turned to resentment. To be insulted so! To have a servant sent to watch her was more than she would bear. But as she turned in bed she felt her lover's note touch her and like a magic wand a thrill of comfort rushed through her. After all, he would settle things for her--and meanwhile she would close her eyes and pretend to sleep. So with her precious love letter clasped tight in her hand under the clothes she turned her face to the wall and shut her eyes. Meanwhile, Canon Ebley and the Reverend Eustace Medlicott were spending a very disagreeable time in the reading-room. Relieved of Mrs. Ebley's presence, Eustace had recounted more fully the interview he had had with Sasha Roumovski the night before. He was not a very accurate person and apt to color everything with his own prejudice, so Canon Ebley did not obtain a very clear idea of the Russian's arguments. They seemed to him to be very unorthodox and carnal and reprehensible from all points. But it was evident they were dealing with a clever and dangerous character and Stella must be rescued from such a person's influence and married off to her lawful fiance at once. "We could have the ceremony here, Eustace, in three weeks' time, or we could go back to England immediately, for until our niece is your wife I am sure her aunt and myself will not feel easy about her." "Nor I either," Mr. Medlicott returned, and at that moment the Aunt Caroline entered the room and gradually disclosed the awful truth she had arrived at from Miss Rawson's admissions. "That dreadful foreigner must be told at once we refuse to have any communication with him and Stella shall be kept locked in her room until we can leave Rome," Mrs. Ebley said sternly. "I could not have believed my own sister's child could have behaved so disgracefully." "Dear, dear," said Canon Ebley, "but we must get at the facts of when she has been able to see this Russian. It is impossible that the present state of things could have arisen from merely last night at the Embassy." At this stage of the proceedings, it being a public room, Count Roumovski entered it serenely and, coming toward the group, made a stiff bow to each in turn. "I believe you have received my letter, sir," he said, addressing Canon Ebley, "but, as I have had no reply, I ventured to present myself without further delay--" "We do not wish for any communication from you," Eustace Medlicott hastened to announce before either of the others could speak. "I have informed Canon and Mrs. Ebley of your disgraceful conduct and that is sufficient. We shall discuss nothing further." "I was not addressing you, sir," Count Roumovski returned mildly. "My business with you terminated last night." And he turned his shoulders to the irate junior chaplain and looked Canon Ebley straight in the face. "I am here to ask for the hand of your niece, Miss Rawson, as she is now free from other engagements, and with her full consent I desire to make her my wife." "Come, Erasmus," Mrs. Ebley said with icy dignity. "Let us go up to our apartment and if this person annoys us further we can complain to the manager of the hotel," then, with an annihilating glance, she took her husband's arm and drew him toward the door. "As you will, madame," and the Russian gentleman bowed with respectful serenity. "It would have been more sensible to have taken my request otherwise, but it is, after all, quite immaterial. I will wish you a good-day," and he bowed again as Canon Ebley and his outraged spouse sailed from the room--and, with an exclamation of suppressed fury, Eustace Medlicott followed in their wake. Then Count Roumovski laughed softly to himself and, sitting down at a writing-table, wrote a letter to his beloved. His whole plan of life was simple and direct. He had done what he considered was necessary in the affair, he had behaved with perfect openness and honor in his demand, and if these people could not see the thing from a common sense point of view, they were no longer to be considered. He would take the law into his own hands. When he had finished his note he went straight up in the lift to the corridor where Stella's room was and there saw in the distance her raging and discomfited late betrothed evidently keeping watch and ward. Count Roumovski did not hesitate a second; he advanced to the door and knocked firmly on the panel, slipping his letter through the little slide for such things before Mr. Medlicott could bound forward and prevent him. "A letter for you, mademoiselle, from me, Sasha Roumovski," he said in French in a loud enough voice for the occupant of the room to hear, and then he stood still for a second, as both men heard Stella jump from her bed and rush to the door to take the missive before Martha from the place at the window could intercept it. "Do not dare to touch that, Martha," they heard her voice say haughtily, and then she called out, "Sasha, I have it safe and I will do exactly as you direct." Count Roumovski looked at Eustace Medlicott, who stood as a spread-eagle in front of the door--and then, smiling, went calmly on his way. The Reverend Mr. Medlicott shook with burning rage. He was being made to look ridiculous and he was absolutely impotent to retaliate in any way. He would bring scandal upon them all if waiters and other guests saw him guarding Miss Rawson's actual door, and he could not sit outside like a valet; the whole thing was unspeakably maddening, and murderous thoughts flooded his brain. "Give me that letter this minute, Stella," he said in an almost inarticulate voice through the keyhole, he was so shaken with passion. "Open the door and let Martha hand it to me. You are disgracing us all." "It is you who are doing that, Eustace," Stella said from beyond the panel, lifting the slide that her voice might be heard distinctly. "You have no authority over me at all. I told Aunt Caroline I did not intend to continue my engagement with you--but even if I had not decided to break it off, this conduct of yours would now be sufficient reason. How dare you all treat me as though I were a naughty child or insane!" "Because you are both," Mr. Medlicott returned, "and must be controlled and compelled into a proper behavior." Stella was silent--she would not be so undignified as to parley further. She got back into bed, taking not the slightest notice of the maid, and then proceeded to read her letter. Her lover had explained in it the situation and advised her to dress at once, and then if menaced in any way to ring the bell. Ivan would be waiting outside to obey her slightest orders, and to warn his master if any fresh moves were made, so that when the waiter or chambermaid came in answer to her summons she might be sure of extra help at hand. Then she was to walk out and down into the hall, where he, Sasha, would be watching for her and ready to take her to the Excelsior Hotel, where that same evening would arrive the Princess Urazov. "But if they do not molest you, dearest," he wrote, "do not leave your room until seven o'clock, because I wish my sister to be in the hall ready to receive you that your family can see that I only desire to do everything right." And as she finished reading, Stella got up and told Martha to prepare her things. "I have no orders from Mrs. Ebley for that, Miss Stella," the woman answered sullenly. "I do wonder what has come over everybody. I never was in such an uncomfortable position in my life." Stella made no answer, but proceeded to dress herself, and then sat down to read again the letters she had received in the last twenty-four hours. If her family, who knew her, could treat her in this abominable way, when she had committed no fault except the very human one of desiring to be the arbiter of her own fate, she surely owed no further obedience to them. So she waited calmly for a fresh turn of events. Her luncheon was brought up on a tray by the waiter, and some for Martha also, and the two ate in silence, until Stella suddenly burst into a merry peal of laughter, it was so grotesquely comic! A grown up English girl in these days locked in her room with a dragon duenna gaoler! "Martha, isn't it too funny, the whole thing!" she said, between her gurgles. "Can't you laugh, you old goose! and to think how sorry you will be, you were so horrid, when I am gone, because, of course, you know you cannot keep me once I make up my mind to go." "Mrs. Ebley said I was to have no conversation with you, Miss," Martha said, glumly, at which Stella laughed afresh. Meanwhile Count Roumovski had made all arrangements at the Excelsior Hotel, and after lunch sat quietly in the hall awaiting his beloved. Mrs. Ebley had felt too upset to go down to the restaurant, so the two clergymen were there alone, and glanced wrathfully at the imperturbable face of Count Roumovski seated at his usual table, with his air of detached aloofness and perfect calm. They, on the contrary, were so boiling with rage that they knew not what they ate. After lunch it had been decided that the party should leave the Grand and take the five o'clock train to Florence, and their preparations were made. Mrs. Ebley had herself been laboriously packing so as not to take Martha from her post, and orders were whispered to that faithful Abigail through Stella's letter slide to pack Miss Rawson's things at once. Stella watched these preparations serenely, and gave Martha directions as to what to put on the top. Then when all was finished and she had donned her hat, she rang the electric bell for the waiter, and when he knocked at the door she calmly bade him enter, which, of course, he was able to do with his key, and she told him in French, which Martha did not understand, to send the porters there immediately, and have her luggage consigned to the care of the servant who would be waiting in the passage. This person would give orders for its destination. The waiter bowed obsequiously. Had he not been already heavily tipped by this intelligent Ivan, and instructed instantly to obey the orders of mademoiselle? "It is much better I am before them," Stella thought to herself, while Martha looked on in rageful bafflement. "The porters will come up and take the trunks outside, Martha," Miss Rawson said. "You can give them what orders aunt told you to." Such was her supreme confidence in the methods of her lover that she felt sure once Ivan was apprised of the fact by the waiter that the trunks would be consigned to him it would not matter what Martha said to the porters! So she calmly sat down by the window and folded her hands, while the elderly maid fumed with the uncertainty of what she ought to do. And in a few moments the men appeared, and smilingly seemed to understand the gestures and English orders of Martha to take the trunks to the door of Madam Ebley, number 325, round the corner of the passage and on the opposite side. They nodded their heads wisely and carried the box out, shutting the door after them, and then there was silence for a while; and Stella half-dozed in her chair, it was so warm and peaceful by the window and she had had so little sleep in the night. An hour passed, and at four o'clock the Aunt Caroline appeared. Her face was grim. Had Stella been an outcast in deed and word she could not have looked more disdainful. "You must come down with me now, Stella," she said, "we are ready to go to the station. I will remain with you here until Martha gets her hat." Stella rose to her feet and before the astonished lady could speak more, she had swiftly passed her and gained the door, which she threw open, and, like a fawn, rushed down the passage toward the staircase entrance side of the hotel, and by the time her slowly moving aunt had emerged from the room she had turned the corner and was out of sight. Fortunately, she met no one on the stairs except one astonished page, and arrived in the outer corridor breathless with excitement and emotion. Count Roumovski saw her through the door of the hall, and hastened to meet her. "There is not a moment to be lost," she said, as he got to her side. "Go to the place you went before under the trees," he whispered hurriedly in return. "The automobile is there, and I will follow presently." So she went. Her knees would hardly support her, she trembled so, until she was safe in the big blue motor, which moved off at once. For an awful moment a hideous sense of terror overcame her, making her cold. What lay in front of her? What new fate?--and then joy and life came back. She was going to freedom and love-away from Exminster and dreary duties--away from Eustace Medlicott, for ever! For, of course, her uncle and aunt would come round in time, and they could be happy again with her some day. When Mrs. Ebley had collected her scattered senses and followed down the passage only to find Stella out of sight, she was obliged to retrace her steps and rejoin her husband and Mr. Medlicott, who were awaiting her at the lift on the other side, the restaurant end, which was the one they were accustomed to descend by. "She ran away from me, Erasmus!" the agitated lady cried, "passed me without a word, and I suppose has gone down the stairs--if we hasten in the lift we shall catch her yet." But as they frantically rang the bell and the lift boy did not come, Eustace Medlicott, with a most unsaintly exclamation, hastened off by that staircase and arrived in the hall to see the hated Russian calmly smoking his cigarette and reading an English paper. He advanced upon him regardless of the numbers of people beginning to assemble for tea. "What have you done with Miss Rawson?" he asked furiously. "She has this moment run away from her aunt." "I have nothing to converse with you about," Count Roumovski returned, with mild surprise. "And, as I see it is four o'clock, I must wish you a good-day, as I have an appointment," with which he rose quietly before the other could prevent him, and crossed the broad path of carpet which separates the groups of chairs, and there was seen to enter into earnest conversation with a Russian-looking individual who had just entered. The Reverend Mr. Medlicott was nonplussed, and hurried into the front vestibule, where he made rapid inquiries of the hall-porter. Yes--the young lady, he believed, had walked out of the hotel not two minutes before. Monsieur would overtake her certainly, if he hastened. And the frantic young man rushed from the door, through the porte cochere, and so to the street, but all he saw in the far distance was a retreating large, blue automobile--and this conveyed among all the rest of the traffic no impression whatever. To search for Stella was hopeless; the only thing to do was to return to the Ebleys, and with them go to the Embassy. There they could, perhaps, get advice and help how to communicate with the police. But what an ignominious position for a Bishop's junior chaplain to be placed in, a humiliation in every way! CHAPTER VII When Stella found the automobile drawing up at a strange hotel's doors her tremors broke out afresh, until she saw the face of Ivan, who, with the porter, came forward to meet her, saying respectfully in French, would mademoiselle be pleased to mount directly to the rooms reserved for the Princess Urazov? And soon, without anyone questioning her, she found herself being taken up in the lift, and finally ushered into a charming sitting-room full of flowers. Here she sat down and trembled again. The wildest excitement filled her veins. Would Sasha never come! She could not sit still, she walked from bouquet to bouquet of roses and carnations, sniffing the scent, and at last subsided into a big armchair, as the waiters brought in some tea. He thought of everything for her, then--her lover. But oh, why did he not come! She had finished her tea and had begun her restless pacing again, when, with a gentle tap, the door opened, and Count Roumovski appeared. "Sasha!" she cried, and advanced toward him like a frightened child. His usually calm blue eyes were blazing with some emotion which disturbed her greatly, she knew not why, and his voice seemed to have taken a tone of extra deepness, as he said: "Stella! My little star! And so you are really here--and my own!" He put his strong hands down and held on to the back of a chair, and simple as she was she knew very well that otherwise he would have taken her into his arms, which was where she was longing to be, if she had known. "Yes, I have come," she whispered, "I have left them all--for you. Oh! when will your sister be here?" "Not until six o'clock, darling," he answered, while his eyes melted upon her with passionate love. "There is an hour yet to wait. I had hoped you would not have been forced to leave your aunt's care until then." "Oh! I am delighted to have come away," Stella answered, regaining some of her composure. "I was shut into my room and watched by a servant. It was awful! But do--you know what has happened now? since I left? Are they tearing about after me, or what?" Count Roumovski still held on to the back of the chair, and his voice was still deep, as he said: "I believe they have gone to your Embassy in a band--and much good may they get there. You are of age, you see. Besides, I have taken care that no one at the Grand Hotel knows where we have gone, and it will take them quite an hour or two to telephone about and find out--and by that time my sister will have arrived, and we can defy them." "Yes," said Stella, and then, nervously, "won't you have some tea?" He sat down, still constrainedly and clasped his hands, and womanlike, when she saw his agitation, her own lessened, and she assumed command, while she asked almost archly if he took cream and sugar. He liked neither, he said, and with the air of a little hostess she handed him the cup. Then she smiled softly and stood quite near him. He drew himself together and his face looked almost stern as he took the tea, and over Stella there crept a chill--and the gay little speech that had been bubbling to her lips died there, and a silence fell upon them for a few moments. Then he put down his cup and crossed to the stiff sofa where she was, and sat down beside her. "Sweetheart," he said, looking deeply into her eyes, "it is a colossal temptation, you know, to me to make love to you. But I am not going to permit myself that happiness yet. I want to tell you all about what we shall do presently, and see if it pleases you." He did not even take her hand, and Stella felt rather aggrieved and wounded. "I propose that as soon as the formalities can be got through, and the wedding can take place, that we go straight to Paris--because you will want to get all kinds of clothes. And it will be such a delight to me to give you everything you wish for." Stella smiled shyly. It seemed suddenly to bring realities of things before her with keen force. He would have the right to give her everything in the world--this man whom she did not really know, but whom she felt she loved very much. She clasped her hands and a thrill ran through her. What, what did it all mean? The idea of her marriage with Eustace Medlicott had always appeared as an ugly vision, an end to everything, a curtain which was yet drawn over a view which could only be all dusk and gray shadows, and which she would rather not contemplate. But now the thought of going away and beginning a new existence with Sasha Roumovski was something so glorious and delicious that she quivered with joy at any reference to it. Her little movement and the clasping of her hands affected him profoundly. He, too, quivered, but with the stern effort to control himself. It was part of his code of honor. Not the slightest advantage must be taken of the situation while Stella was alone and unchaperoned, although the very fact of their propinquity and the knowledge of their solitude were extremely exciting to him, who knew the meaning of every emotion. He drew a little away from her, and said in a voice that sounded cold: "I have seen the consul this afternoon. It will take three weeks, I am afraid, before we can be legally married here in Rome. It seems an eternity to me." "Yes," agreed Stella, and suddenly looked down. She wished intensely that he would caress her a little--although she was unaware of the desire. She wondered vaguely--was it then very wicked to make love, since Sasha, too, like Eustace, seemed as if he were resisting something with all his strength? And unconsciously she pouted her red underlip, and Count Roumovski moved convulsively. "My sister's room is next to this," he said, "and yours is beyond. I have had only roses put there, because you are like a sweet June rose." "Am I?" said Miss Rawson, and raised her head. She had grown extremely excited and disappointed, and, she knew not what, only that she did not like this new lover of hers to be sitting there constrained and aloof, talking in a stiff voice unlike his usual easy grace. It was perfectly ridiculous to have run away with some one with whom she was passionately in love, if he were going to remain as cold as ice! She got up and took a rose from a vase and fastened it in her dress. The whole movement and action had the unconscious coquetry of a woman's methods to gain her end. Totally unaccustomed as Stella was to all artifices, instinct was her teacher. Sasha Roumovski rose suddenly. "Come and sit here beside me again, heart of mine," he commanded with imperious love, and indicated the stiff Louis XIV sofa. "I must explain everything to you, it would seem." Stella had never heard this tone in his voice before; it caused her strange delight, and she shyly took her seat at one end of the sofa, and then, as he flung himself down beside her, she looked up at him. "What must you explain?" she asked. "First, that I love you madly, that it is sickening temptation to be with you now every instant without holding you in my arms," and his voice trembled, while his blue eyes glowed. "That I do not know how to resist the wild passion which is overcoming me. I want to kiss you so terribly, more than I have ever wanted anything in my life." "We-ll?" said Stella, with a quiver of exquisite joy. "And--" she had almost spoken her thought of, "Why do you not do so, then?"--but the burning passion she read in his made her drop her eyes. This was too much for him. He understood perfectly, and, with a little cry, he drew her to him, and his lips had almost touched her red, young, pouting lips when he suddenly controlled himself and put her from him. "No, sweetheart," he said hoarsely, "you would never respect me any more if I took advantage of your tenderness now. As soon--as soon as I really may, I will teach you every shade of love and its meanings. I will kiss those lips and unloosen that hair; I will suffocate you with caresses and make you thrill as I shall thrill until we both forget everything in the intoxication of bliss," and he half-closed his eyes, and his face grew pale again with suppressed emotion. "Oh, I do not understand at all," Stella said, in a disappointed and perplexed voice. "Since we are going to be married, why would it be so very wrong for you to kiss me? I--I--" her small rueful face, with its sweet childlike irregular curves, looked almost pathetically comic, and Sasha leaned forward and covered his eyes with his hands. And then he mastered himself and laughed softly. "Oh, you adorable one!" he said. "It is not wrong--not the least wrong. Only presently, when you do understand, you will realize how very much I loved you to-day." But Stella was still pouting--and got up restlessly and went to the window. "What can they do when they get to the Embassy?" she asked. "Could they really take me back if they found me by telephoning round?" "I do not think so--if you are past twenty-one." "I was twenty-one in April. I am not a bit afraid of them, but I do not want to have any row." "When my sister has arrived you must write to your aunt, and tell where you are and what are your intentions, then all will be finished." "Oh, I wish she would come, don't you?" Stella said. "More than I can say, darling," he answered, fervently. "You will not, I hope, find me so incomprehensible then." He walked about the room once or twice, and at last paused in front of her. "Stella," he whispered, while his eyes blazed again, "I cannot bear it, little sweetheart, to stay all alone with you here. Will you forgive me, if I leave you until Anastasia has arrived? Go and rest in your room, darling, and I will go to the station to meet her. Ivan will remain outside your door and you will be quite safe." But Stella put out her hands like a frightened baby. "Oh. must you leave me?" she cried, pettishly. "You are very cruel! You make me almost wish I had not come." From having swum with love and passion his eyes suddenly gave forth a flash of steel, and his voice was like ice as he answered: "If that is so, mademoiselle, it is not too late. I would not exact any unwilling sacrifice. Shall I take you back again?" And then Stella's childishness melted and fell from her, and she became a real woman as she looked into his stern face. "No--" she said, "I will not go back. I am sorry I was so uncontrolled, but I am nervous--and I do not know exactly what I am--Sasha, please take care of me," and she held out her hands with a piteous gesture of asking for his protection, and moved beyond all power of further control he folded her in his arms. "My darling, my darling!" he murmured, frantically kissing her hair. But his iron will reasserted itself in a few seconds, and while he still held her he said with more calm: "Little star, you must never speak to me like that again, as you did just now, I mean. It was unreasonable and not kind, if you but knew! And I have a very arrogant temper, I fear, although I am nearly master of it, and shall be quite in time, I hope. We might have parted then and spoilt both our lives. Won't you believe me that I love--I adore you!" he went on tenderly. "I am madly longing to be for you the most passionate lover a woman ever had. It is only for your sake and for honor and our future happiness that I restrain myself now. You see I am not an Englishman who can accept half-measures. Do not make it impossible for me, sweet love!" His voice was almost a sob in its deep notes of pleading, and Stella was touched. "Oh! you are so dear and great," she answered fondly. "I am perhaps very wicked to have tempted you. If it would be wrong for you to kiss me, which I cannot understand, it is--oh, it is because I love you like that, too!" At this ingenuous admission, passion nearly overcame him again, and he held her so tightly it seemed as if he must crush out her very breath. Then he put her from him and walked toward the door. "I dare not stay another second," he said, in a strangled voice. "Ivan will guard your room, and my sister will come to you soon. Do as I tell you, beloved one, and then all will be well." With which he opened the door, and left her standing by the sofa quivering with a strange joy and perplexity--and some other wild emotion of which she had not dreamed. CHAPTER VIII It seemed an endless time the hour that she waited in her room, and then a knock came to the door, and Ivan's voice saying his master desired her presence in the sitting-room at once, and she hurriedly went there to find Count Roumovski standing by the mantelpiece looking very grave. "Stella," he said, "there has been an accident to the train my sister was to have arrived by--it is not serious, but she cannot be here now until the early morning perhaps--unless I send the automobile to Viterbo for her. The line is blocked by a broken-down goods train which caused the disaster," he paused a moment, and Stella said, "Well?" rather anxiously. "It will be impossible for us to remain here," he continued, "because it may be that your relations, aided by the Embassy, will have traced us before then, and if they should come upon us alone together, nothing that I could say or prove could keep the situation from looking compromising,"--he now spoke with his old calm, and Stella felt her confidence reviving. He would certainly arrange what was best for them, she could rely upon that. "What must we do then?" she asked gently, while she put her head on the sleeve of his coat. "I will wrap you up in the fur cloak, darling," he said, "and you must come in the automobile with me to meet Anastasia. Your family must not find you again until your are in my sister's company. We ought to start at once." It spoke eloquently for the impression which he had been able to create in Stella's imagination of his integrity and reliability, for the thought never entered her brain that it was a most unusual and even hazardous undertaking to start out into the night in a foreign land with a stranger she had not yet known for a week. But that was the remarkable thing about his personality; it conveyed always an atmosphere of trust and confidence. It was not long before Miss Rawson was ready, wrapped in the long gray cloak she had worn before, and with the veil tied over her hat, and was descending in the lift alone with Ivan--her lover having gone on by the stairs. Their departure was managed with intelligence. Stella and the servant simply walking out of the hotel and down the street to where the car waited, and then presently Count Roumovski joined them, and they started. "Ivan will remain behind to answer any questions if the reverend clergyman and your aunt do come," he said, when they were seated in the car in the settling sunlight. "And now, sweetheart, we can enjoy our drive." Stella felt deliciously excited, all the exultation of adventure thrilling her, and the joy of her lover's presence. She cared not where they were going, it was all heaven. "We shall stop at a little restaurant for some dinner," he said, "it will be rather bad, but we must not mind, it would not have been wise to risk any well-known place," and soon they drew up at a small cafe on the outskirts of Rome, where there were a few people already seated at little tables under the trees. They were all Italians, and took no notice of the Russian and his lady. It was the greatest amusement to them both, this primitive place, and to be all alone ordering their first meal together, and Sasha Roumovski exerted himself to charm and please her. He had recovered complete mastery of himself, it would seem, and his manner, while tenderly devoted, had an air of proprietorship which affected Stella exceedingly. They spent an enchanting half hour, as gay as two children, with all the exquisite under-current of love in their talk; and then they got into the motor again. "Let us have it open," Count Roumovski said. "The evening drive will be divine." And Stella agreed. The road to Viterbo is far from good, one of those splendid routes which lead from Rome which ought to be so perfect and in reality are a mass of ruts and pitfalls for the unwary. The jolting of the car constantly threw Stella almost into her lover's arms, who was sitting as aloof as possible. He had gradually become nearly silent, and sat there holding her hand under the rug, using the whole of his strong will to suppress his rising emotion. The beautiful colors of the lights of evening over the Campagna; the sense of the spring time and the knowledge that she belonged to him heart and body and soul were madly intoxicating as they rushed through the air. He dared not let himself caress her gently, which he might have permitted himself to do, and he held her little hand so tightly it was almost pain to her. As for Stella, she was profoundly in love. Her whole nature seemed to be awaking and blooming with a new grace and meaning. Her soft eyes, which glanced at him in the glowing dusk, swam with tenderness and unconscious passion, and once she let her head rest upon his shoulder, when a violent jerk threw her toward him, and at last he encircled her with his arm and there they sat trembling together, she with she knew not what, and he very well knowing, and fighting with temptation. Thus they spent an hour in a bliss that was growing to agony for him, and then it grew perfectly dark, and the stars came out in myriads in the deep blue sky, and on in front of them the headlights of the motor made a flaming path in the night. And all this while he had resisted his strong desires, and never even kissed her. At last human endurance came to an end, and he said to her almost fiercely: "Stella, my beloved one, I cannot bear this, I can no longer answer for myself. I shall settle you comfortably among the furs where you must try to sleep, and I shall go outside with the chauffeur. If I were to stay--" And something in the tone of his voice and in his eyes made her at last have some dim, incomprehensible fear, and yet exaltation, and so she did not try to dissuade him, and soon was alone endeavoring to collect her thoughts and understand the situation. Thus eventually they reached Viterbo, and drew up at the station door, when Count Roumovski seemed to have regained his usual calm as he helped her out with tender solicitude. The passengers, they learned, were still in the train, half a mile up the line, waiting until it was cleared to go on to Rome. At last, after generous greasing of palms, permission was given for Count Roumovski to walk on and find his sister. And Stella was put back into the motor to await their coming. Her heart began to beat violently. What would she be like, this future sister-in-law? She must be very fond of Sasha to have come from Paris at a moment's notice like this, to do his bidding. It seemed a long time before she heard voices, and saw in the dim light two figures advancing from the station entrance, and then Count Roumovski opened the door of the automobile, and Stella started forward to get out. "Anastasia, this is my Stella," he said, in his deep voice. "You cannot see her plainly, but I tell you she is the sweetest little lady in the world, and you are to hasten to love each other as much as I love you both." Then in the half dark Stella stepped down and found herself embraced by a tall woman, while a voice as deep for a feminine one as Count Roumovski's was for a man whispered kind, nice things in the fluent English which brother and sister both used. And a feeling of warmth and security and happiness came over the poor child, to be in a haven of rest at last. "Now we shall all pack in and get to Rome before dawn," the princess said. "Sasha assures me the automobile will be faster than the train." So it was arranged, and, with Stella between them, the two Russians sat in the commodious back seat, and this time Count Roumovski allowed himself to encircle his beloved with his arm--and very often surreptitiously kissed her little ear and that delicious little curl of hair in her neck. She had taken off her hat, that its brim might not hit the princess, and had only the soft veil wound round her head, which loosened itself conveniently. This drive back to Rome was a time of pure enchantment to them both. And when the first streaks of dawn were coloring the sky they arrived at the door of the Excelsior Hotel, where Ivan had supper ordered and awaiting them. The princess proved to be a handsome woman when they got into the light, with the same short face and wide eyes as her brother. Stella and she made immediate friends, and before they parted to try and sleep the princess said: "Stella, that my brother loves you proves that you must be a very dear girl, that is what made me come from Paris at his instantaneous bidding. He is the most splendid character in the world, only don't cross his wishes. You will find it is no use, for one thing," and she laughed her deep laugh. "He always knows best." "I am sure he does," said Stella shyly. "I felt that at once, and so I did not hesitate." Next morning, when the three were seated at a merry early breakfast in the sitting-room discussing what should be said in Stella's letter to her Aunt Caroline, a loud knock came to the door, and, without waiting for a response, Canon Ebley and Stella's cousin, Mr. Deanwood, entered the room. The princess rose with dignity, draping her silk morning wrapper round her like a statue, and Stella stepped forward with outstretched hand. "Oh, Uncle Erasmus," she said gaily, before any of the party could speak, "I am so glad to see you. I was just going to write to Aunt Caroline to tell her where I am, quite safe, in case she was worried about me. Let me introduce you to my future sister-in-law, Princess Urazov, with whom I am staying. My fiance, Count Roumovski, you have met before." Afterwards she often wondered how this emancipated spirit of daring had ever come to her. But she felt so joyous, so full of love and happiness, that it seemed that she could not be afraid or annoyed with anyone in the world. "Stella, you are a shameless girl," Canon Ebley retorted in a horrified voice. "I refuse to admit that you are engaged to this gentleman. Your whole conduct has been a scandalous series of deceptions and you must be ready to return at once with your aunt and your affianced husband. They are following us here now." Then Stella used a weapon that she had more than once found effectual with her uncle. She flung herself into his arms and clasped him round the neck. He was a short, portly man, and from this position she began to cajole him--while Count Roumovski looked on with amused calm, and his sister, following his lead, remained unmoved also. Mr. Deanwood was the only restless person; he felt thoroughly uncomfortable and bored to death. He hated having been dragged into this family quarrel, and secretly sympathized with his cousin in her revolt at the thought of being Eustace Medlicott's wife. "Oh, dear Uncle Erasmus!" Stella purred, from the highly perturbed clergyman's neck, where she was burrowing her sweet head, rubbing her peach-like cheek against his whiskered cheek. "Don't say those dreadful things, I have not deceived anybody, I have known Count Roumovski since the day after we came to Rome, and--and--I love him very much, and you know I always thought Eustace a bore, and you must agree it is wicked to marry and not to love, so it must be good to, oh!--well, to marry the person you do love. What have you to say against it?" Canon Ebley tried to unclasp her arms from round his neck. He was terribly upset. To be sure, the girl was very dear to him, and had always been so sweet a niece, a truthful, obedient child from early infancy. Caroline had perhaps been a little hard--he had better hear the facts. "Dear me, dear me," he blurted out. "Well, well, tell me everything about the case, and, though I cannot consent to anything, I must do you the justice of hearing your side." "Won't you sit down here, sir?" Princess Urazov said, "and let my brother and your niece tell you their story. Mr. Deanwood, we met at Buda-Pesth two years ago--" and she turned to the young man and indicated that he should join her in the far window embrasure, which he did with alacrity, and from there they heard, interpolated in their personal conversation, scraps of the arguments going on between the three. Stella, assisted by her lover, told of her first talk and her drive, and their rapidly ripening affection for each other, and the girl looked so happy and so pleading. Then Count Roumovski took up the thread. He explained his position, and how his view of life had always been direct in its endeavor to see the truth and the meaning of things, and how to him love was the only possible reason in ethical morality for any marriage between two people. "It is merely a great degradation, otherwise, sir," he said earnestly. But here Canon Ebley was heard to protest that he could not understand a love which had sprung into being with such violence in the space of three days, and he felt very suspicious of its durability. "Oh, Uncle Erasmus, how can you say that!" Stella interrupted him. "Why, you have often said that you yourself fell in love with Aunt Caroline from the moment your eye lighted upon her in church--in church, remember, you old darling!" and she nestled up against his shoulder again. Caresses like these she was always obliged to suppress in her austere aunt's presence; they were only to be indulged in upon great occasions, and to gain an important end, she knew! So the rogue smiled archly as she went on. "You could hardly wait until you were introduced at the garden party the next day, and Aunt Caroline said you proposed to her before the end of the week!" "Come, come," the cornered uncle growled, bridling, but a smile grew in his kindly eyes. "There!" exclaimed Miss Rawson, triumphantly. "You cannot have another thing to say, except that you consent and wish us happiness." "It is true you are of age, Stella," Canon Ebley allowed, "and if you like to take the law into your own hands, we cannot legally prevent you, as I have tried to explain this morning to your aunt and Eustace, but it is all very shocking and unusual, and very disturbing. You must remember, Count Roumovski is a foreigner, and we English people are prejudiced. I--fear for your happiness, my dear child!" "You do not pay me a high compliment, sir," Count Roumovski said, but without resentment. "Time, however, will prove whether I can take care of your niece or no. Do you feel any fear for yourself, Stella?" "Not in the least," Miss Rawson said, and they clasped fond hands. "I would go away with you, Sasha, to the ends of the earth now at once, and never ask you a single question. And I should certainly die if I were forced to go back to Eustace Medlicott." "Then I suppose there is nothing more to be said," Canon Ebley stammered, upon which Stella again flung herself into his arms. "Indeed, sir--I give you my word that you will not regret this decision," Count Roumovski said gravely. "I believe your niece and I were made for one another." "We will hope so," returned Canon Ebley, who could no longer keep up a stern resistance in the face of perfectly logical arguments and a witch of a girl purring over him and patting his cheek. He would have given in with a fair grace but for the awful knowledge that his stern spouse and the irate late fiance would arrive at any moment, and reproach him for his want of strength. At this juncture of the affair, Princess Urazov came forward, and said with a gracious smile: "Now I think you and I should agree with each other, sir; I had just as great cause for surprise as you had at the news of my brother's engagement to your niece, but I know and love him so well that I did not question the wisdom of his choice. And as you know and love your niece, can we not agree to try and make them happy together by giving them our blessing? After all, it is no crime for two young people to love each other!" and she put out her hands, which Canon Ebley, who was, after all, longing for peace, was obliged to take. Then with a charm and dignity that he was forced to admire, she drew him to the pair and placed his hand on their clasped hands, and her own over it. "See," she said, "Sasha and Stella, we both wish you all happiness and joy--is it not so?" And Canon Ebley was constrained to murmur, "Yes." At this instant the door was opened violently, and the Aunt Caroline followed by the Reverend Eustace Medlicott burst into the room, brushing aside the frightened waiter, who would have prevented them; then they stopped dead short, petrified with astonishment, and before she could prevent herself, Stella had pealed a silvery laugh, while she rushed forward and affectionately kissed her aunt. "Dear Aunt Caroline," she said. "Uncle Erasmus understands quite, and has given us his blessing, so won't you, too?" But Mrs. Ebley was made of sterner stuff--she was horribly shocked, her feelings had been bruised in their tenderest parts, the laws of convention had been ruthlessly broken by her niece, and forgiveness was not for her. She drew herself up with disgusted hauteur, while the Rev. Mr. Medlicott stood there glaring at the party too speechless with humiliation and pain to utter a word. "Erasmus," Mrs. Ebley said with scathing contempt. "I do not know how you have let yourself countenance this disgraceful scene, but I shall not do so. And if my niece still persists in bringing shame upon us all I must beg you to conduct me back to our hotel--I wash my hands of her and shall no longer own her as my sister's child, come." At this, Stella gave a pitiful little cry and turned tender, beseeching eyes to her lover, and the sound of her voice touched that chord which was fine in Eustace Medlicott's heart. He seemed suddenly to see things as they were, and to realize that love had indeed come to his betrothed, though not for him, so he rose above the pain this conviction caused him and let justice have sway. He strode forward and joined the group. "You must not say that, Mrs. Ebley," he said, "since your husband seems satisfied, there must have been some proper explanation made. You should hear them first. But I, for my part, wish to state now, in the presence of everyone, that if Miss Rawson can assure me she has made this choice of her own free will, and because she loves this gentleman--" here there was a break in the tones--"I can have nothing further to say and will give her back her freedom and make my retreat." "Oh, Eustace, thank you," said Stella, gratefully holding out her hand. "I knew I could eventually count upon your goodness. I do indeed love Count Roumovski, and why should not we all be happy together? You will feel with me, I am sure, that our engagement was always a mistake and now won't you be friends?" She still held out her timid hand, and Mr. Medlicott took it at last and wringing it silently turned and drew toward the door, making his exit. Silence fell upon the company until he had gone and then Count Roumovski whispered in his harassed little fiancee's ear: "Never mind his point of view, darling--yonder goes an English gentleman, and since I have gained my star and he has lost his, he has my deepest sympathy." Then everyone seemed to talk at once, and the Princess Urazov at last appeared to be in some degree appeasing Mrs. Ebley. There is very little more to tell of this comedy of a spring holiday in Rome. It ended with a quiet wedding and two young people going off together in the blue automobile. And when Count Roumovski clasped his newly made bride in his arms, he whispered with a tenderly sly smile: "At last, sweetheart, there are no barriers, and I can show you that I am at least not as cold as ice!" THE END 
8724	----	and David Widger [widger@cecomet.net] THE THREE CITIES ROME BY EMILE ZOLA TRANSLATED BY ERNEST A. VIZETELLY PART IV X IN his anxiety to bring things to a finish, Pierre wished to begin his campaign on the very next day. But on whom should he first call if he were to steer clear of blunders in that intricate and conceited ecclesiastical world? The question greatly perplexed him; however, on opening his door that morning he luckily perceived Don Vigilio in the passage, and with a sudden inspiration asked him to step inside. He realised that this thin little man with the saffron face, who always trembled with fever and displayed such exaggerated, timorous discretion, was in reality well informed, mixed up in everything. At one period it had seemed to Pierre that the secretary purposely avoided him, doubtless for fear of compromising himself; but recently Don Vigilio had proved less unsociable, as though he were not far from sharing the impatience which must be consuming the young Frenchman amidst his long enforced inactivity. And so, on this occasion, he did not seek to avoid the chat on which Pierre was bent. "I must apologise," said the latter, "for asking you in here when things are in such disorder. But I have just received some more linen and some winter clothing from Paris. I came, you know, with just a little valise, meaning to stay for a fortnight, and yet I've now been here for nearly three months, and am no more advanced than I was on the morning of my arrival." Don Vigilio nodded. "Yes, yes, I know," said he. Thereupon Pierre explained to him that Monsignor Nani had informed him, through the Contessina, that he now ought to act and see everybody for the defence of his book. But he was much embarrassed, as he did not know in what order to make his visits so that they might benefit him. For instance, ought he to call in the first place on Monsignor Fornaro, the /consultore/ selected to report on his book, and whose name had been given him? "Ah!" exclaimed Don Vigilio, quivering; "has Monsignor Nani gone as far as that--given you the reporter's name? That's even more than I expected." Then, forgetting his prudence, yielding to his secret interest in the affair, he resumed: "No, no; don't begin with Monsignor Fornaro. Your first visit should be a very humble one to the Prefect of the Congregation of the Index--his Eminence Cardinal Sanguinetti; for he would never forgive you for having offered your first homage to another should he some day hear of it." And, after a pause, Don Vigilio added, in a low voice, amidst a faint, feverish shiver: "And he /would/ hear of it; everything becomes known." Again he hesitated, and then, as if yielding to sudden, sympathetic courage, he took hold of the young Frenchman's hands. "I swear to you, my dear Monsieur Froment," he said, "that I should be very happy to help you, for you are a man of simple soul, and I really begin to feel worried for you. But you must not ask me for impossibilities. Ah! if you only knew--if I could only tell you of all the perils which surround us! However, I think I can repeat to you that you must in no wise rely on my patron, his Eminence Cardinal Boccanera. He has expressed absolute disapproval of your book in my presence on several occasions. Only he is a saint, a most worthy, honourable man; and, though he won't defend you, he won't attack you--he will remain neutral out of regard for his niece, whom he loves so dearly, and who protects you. So, when you see him, don't plead your cause; it would be of no avail, and might even irritate him." Pierre was not particularly distressed by this news, for at his first interview with the Cardinal, and on the few subsequent occasions when he had respectfully visited him, he had fully understood that his Eminence would never be other than an adversary. "Well," said he, "I will wait on him to thank him for his neutrality." But at this all Don Vigilio's terrors returned. "No, no, don't do that; he would perhaps realise that I have spoken to you, and then what a disaster--my position would be compromised. I've said nothing, nothing! See the cardinals to begin with, see all the cardinals. Let it be understood between us that I've said nothing more." And, on that occasion at any rate, Don Vigilio would speak no further, but left the room shuddering and darting fiery, suspicious glances on either side of the corridor. Pierre at once went out to call on Cardinal Sanguinetti. It was ten o'clock, and there was a chance that he might find him at home. This cardinal resided on the first floor of a little palazzo in a dark, narrow street near San Luigi dei Francesi.* There was here none of the giant ruin full of princely and melancholy grandeur amidst which Cardinal Boccanera so stubbornly remained. The old regulation gala suite of rooms had been cut down just like the number of servants. There was no throne-room, no red hat hanging under a /baldacchino/, no arm-chair turned to the wall pending a visit from the Pope. A couple of apartments served as ante-rooms, and then came a /salon/ where the Cardinal received; and there was no luxury, indeed scarcely any comfort; the furniture was of mahogany, dating from the empire period, and the hangings and carpets were dusty and faded by long use. Moreover, Pierre had to wait a long time for admittance, and when a servant, leisurely putting on his jacket, at last set the door ajar, it was only to say that his Eminence had been away at Frascati since the previous day. * This is the French church of Rome, and is under the protection of the French Government.--Trans. Pierre then remembered that Cardinal Sanguinetti was one of the suburban bishops. At his see of Frascati he had a villa where he occasionally spent a few days whenever a desire for rest or some political motive impelled him to do so. "And will his Eminence soon return?" Pierre inquired. "Ah! we don't know. His Eminence is poorly, and expressly desired us to send nobody to worry him." When Pierre reached the street again he felt quite bewildered by this disappointment. At first he wondered whether he had not better call on Monsignor Fornaro without more ado, but he recollected Don Vigilio's advice to see the cardinals first of all, and, an inspiration coming to him, he resolved that his next visit should be for Cardinal Sarno, whose acquaintance he had eventually made at Donna Serafina's Mondays. In spite of Cardinal Sarno's voluntary self-effacement, people looked upon him as one of the most powerful and redoubtable members of the Sacred College, albeit his nephew Narcisse Habert declared that he knew no man who showed more obtuseness in matters which did not pertain to his habitual occupations. At all events, Pierre thought that the Cardinal, although not a member of the Congregation of the Index, might well give him some good advice, and possibly bring his great influence to bear on his colleagues. The young man straightway betook himself to the Palace of the Propaganda, where he knew he would find the Cardinal. This palace, which is seen from the Piazza di Spagna, is a bare, massive corner pile between two streets. And Pierre, hampered by his faulty Italian, quite lost himself in it, climbing to floors whence he had to descend again, and finding himself in a perfect labyrinth of stairs, passages, and halls. At last he luckily came across the Cardinal's secretary, an amiable young priest, whom he had already seen at the Boccanera mansion. "Why, yes," said the secretary, "I think that his Eminence will receive you. You did well to come at this hour, for he is always here of a morning. Kindly follow me, if you please." Then came a fresh journey. Cardinal Sarno, long a Secretary of the Propaganda, now presided over the commission which controlled the organisation of worship in those countries of Europe, Africa, America, and Oceanica where Catholicism had lately gained a footing; and he thus had a private room of his own with special officers and assistants, reigning there with the ultra-methodical habits of a functionary who had grown old in his arm-chair, closely surrounded by nests of drawers, and knowing nothing of the world save the usual sights of the street below his window. The secretary left Pierre on a bench at the end of a dark passage, which was lighted by gas even in full daylight. And quite a quarter of an hour went by before he returned with his eager, affable air. "His Eminence is conferring with some missionaries who are about to leave Rome," he said; "but it will soon be over, and he told me to take you to his room, where you can wait for him." As soon as Pierre was alone in the Cardinal's sanctum he examined it with curiosity. Fairly spacious, but in no wise luxurious, it had green paper on its walls, and its furniture was of black wood and green damask. From two windows overlooking a narrow side street a mournful light reached the dark wall-paper and faded carpets. There were a couple of pier tables and a plain black writing-table, which stood near one window, its worn mole-skin covering littered with all sorts of papers. Pierre drew near to it for a moment, and glanced at the arm-chair with damaged, sunken seat, the screen which sheltered it from draughts, and the old inkstand splotched with ink. And then, in the lifeless and oppressive atmosphere, the disquieting silence, which only the low rumbles from the street disturbed, he began to grow impatient. However, whilst he was softly walking up and down he suddenly espied a map affixed to one wall, and the sight of it filled him with such absorbing thoughts that he soon forgot everything else. It was a coloured map of the world, the different tints indicating whether the territories belonged to victorious Catholicism or whether Catholicism was still warring there against unbelief; these last countries being classified as vicariates or prefectures, according to the general principles of organisation. And the whole was a graphic presentment of the long efforts of Catholicism in striving for the universal dominion which it has sought so unremittingly since its earliest hour. God has given the world to His Church, but it is needful that she should secure possession of it since error so stubbornly abides. From this has sprung the eternal battle, the fight which is carried on, even in our days, to win nations over from other religions, as it was in the days when the Apostles quitted Judaea to spread abroad the tidings of the Gospel. During the middle ages the great task was to organise conquered Europe, and this was too absorbing an enterprise to allow of any attempt at reconciliation with the dissident churches of the East. Then the Reformation burst forth, schism was added to schism, and the Protestant half of Europe had to be reconquered as well as all the orthodox East. War-like ardour, however, awoke at the discovery of the New World. Rome was ambitious of securing that other side of the earth, and missions were organised for the subjection of races of which nobody had known anything the day before, but which God had, nevertheless, given to His Church, like all the others. And by degrees the two great divisions of Christianity were formed, on one hand the Catholic nations, those where the faith simply had to be kept up, and which the Secretariate of State installed at the Vatican guided with sovereign authority, and on the other the schismatical or pagan nations which were to be brought back to the fold or converted, and over which the Congregation of the Propaganda sought to reign. Then this Congregation had been obliged to divide itself into two branches in order to facilitate its work--the Oriental branch, which dealt with the dissident sects of the East, and the Latin branch, whose authority extended over all the other lands of mission: the two forming a vast organisation--a huge, strong, closely meshed net cast over the whole world in order that not a single soul might escape. It was in presence of that map that Pierre for the first time became clearly conscious of the mechanism which for centuries had been working to bring about the absorption of humanity. The Propaganda, richly dowered by the popes, and disposing of a considerable revenue, appeared to him like a separate force, a papacy within the papacy, and he well understood that the Prefect of the Congregation should be called the "Red Pope," for how limitless were the powers of that man of conquest and domination, whose hands stretched from one to the other end of the earth. Allowing that the Cardinal Secretary held Europe, that diminutive portion of the globe, did not he, the Prefect, hold all the rest--the infinity of space, the distant countries as yet almost unknown? Besides, statistics showed that Rome's uncontested dominion was limited to 200 millions of Apostolic and Roman Catholics; whereas the schismatics of the East and the Reformation, if added together, already exceeded that number, and how small became the minority of the true believers when, besides the schismatics, one brought into line the 1000 millions of infidels who yet remained to be converted. The figures struck Pierre with a force which made him shudder. What! there were 5 million Jews, nearly 200 million Mahommedans, more than 700 million Brahmanists and Buddhists, without counting another 100 million pagans of divers creeds, the whole making 1000 millions, and against these the Christians could marshal barely more than 400 millions, who were divided among themselves, ever in conflict, one half with Rome and the other half against her?* Was it possible that in 1800 years Christianity had not proved victorious over even one-third of mankind, and that Rome, the eternal and all-powerful, only counted a sixth part of the nations among her subjects? Only one soul saved out of every six--how fearful was the disproportion! However, the map spoke with brutal eloquence: the red-tinted empire of Rome was but a speck when compared with the yellow-hued empire of the other gods--the endless countries which the Propaganda still had to conquer. And the question arose: How many centuries must elapse before the promises of the Christ were realised, before the whole world were gained to Christianity, before religious society spread over secular society, and there remained but one kingdom and one belief? And in presence of this question, in presence of the prodigious labour yet to be accomplished, how great was one's astonishment when one thought of Rome's tranquil serenity, her patient stubbornness, which has never known doubt or weariness, her bishops and ministers toiling without cessation in the conviction that she alone will some day be the mistress of the world! * Some readers may question certain of the figures given by M. Zola, but it must be remembered that all such calculations (even those of the best "authorities") are largely guesswork. I myself think that there are more than 5 million Jews, and more than 200 millions of Mahommedans, but I regard the alleged number of Brahmanists and Buddhists as exaggerated. On the other hand, some statistical tables specify 80 millions of Confucianists, of whom M. Zola makes no separate mention. However, as regards the number of Christians in the world, the figures given above are, within a few millions, probably accurate.--Trans. Narcisse had told Pierre how carefully the embassies at Rome watched the doings of the Propaganda, for the missions were often the instruments of one or another nation, and exercised decisive influence in far-away lands. And so there was a continual struggle, in which the Congregation did all it could to favour the missionaries of Italy and her allies. It had always been jealous of its French rival, "L'Oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi," installed at Lyons, which is as wealthy in money as itself, and richer in men of energy and courage. However, not content with levelling tribute on this French association, the Propaganda thwarted it, sacrificed it on every occasion when it had reason to think it might achieve a victory. Not once or twice, but over and over again had the French missionaries, the French orders, been driven from the scenes of their labours to make way for Italians or Germans. And Pierre, standing in that mournful, dusty room, which the sunlight never brightened, pictured the secret hot-bed of political intrigue masked by the civilising ardour of faith. Again he shuddered as one shudders when monstrous, terrifying things are brought home to one. And might not the most sensible be overcome? Might not the bravest be dismayed by the thought of that universal engine of conquest and domination, which worked with the stubbornness of eternity, not merely content with the gain of souls, but ever seeking to ensure its future sovereignty over the whole of corporeal humanity, and--pending the time when it might rule the nations itself--disposing of them, handing them over to the charge of this or that temporary master, in accordance with its good pleasure. And then, too, what a prodigious dream! Rome smiling and tranquilly awaiting the day when she will have united Christians, Mahommedans, Brahmanists, and Buddhists into one sole nation, of whom she will be both the spiritual and the temporal queen! However, a sound of coughing made Pierre turn, and he started on perceiving Cardinal Sarno, whom he had not heard enter. Standing in front of that map, he felt like one caught in the act of prying into a secret, and a deep flush overspread his face. The Cardinal, however, after looking at him fixedly with his dim eyes, went to his writing-table, and let himself drop into the arm-chair without saying a word. With a gesture he dispensed Pierre of the duty of kissing his ring. "I desired to offer my homage to your Eminence," said the young man. "Is your Eminence unwell?" "No, no, it's nothing but a dreadful cold which I can't get rid of. And then, too, I have so many things to attend to just now." Pierre looked at the Cardinal as he appeared in the livid light from the window, puny, lopsided, with the left shoulder higher than the right, and not a sign of life on his worn and ashen countenance. The young priest was reminded of one of his uncles, who, after thirty years spent in the offices of a French public department, displayed the same lifeless glance, parchment-like skin, and weary hebetation. Was it possible that this withered old man, so lost in his black cassock with red edging, was really one of the masters of the world, with the map of Christendom so deeply stamped on his mind, albeit he had never left Rome, that the Prefect of the Propaganda did not take a decision without asking his opinion? "Sit down, Monsieur l'Abbe," said the Cardinal. "So you have come to see me--you have something to ask of me!" And, whilst disposing himself to listen, he stretched out his thin bony hands to finger the documents heaped up before him, glancing at each of them like some general, some strategist, profoundly versed in the science of his profession, who, although his army is far away, nevertheless directs it to victory from his private room, never for a moment allowing it to escape his mind. Pierre was somewhat embarrassed by such a plain enunciation of the interested object of his visit; still, he decided to go to the point. "Yes, indeed," he answered, "it is a liberty I have taken to come and appeal to your Eminence's wisdom for advice. Your Eminence is aware that I am in Rome for the purpose of defending a book of mine, and I should be grateful if your Eminence would help and guide me." Then he gave a brief account of the present position of the affair, and began to plead his cause; but as he continued speaking he noticed that the Cardinal gave him very little attention, as though indeed he were thinking of something else, and failed to understand. "Ah! yes," the great man at last muttered, "you have written a book. There was some question of it at Donna Serafina's one evening. But a priest ought not to write; it is a mistake for him to do so. What is the good of it? And the Congregation of the Index must certainly be in the right if it is prosecuting your book. At all events, what can I do? I don't belong to the Congregation, and I know nothing, nothing about the matter." Pierre, pained at finding him so listless and indifferent, went on trying to enlighten and move him. But he realised that this man's mind, so far-reaching and penetrating in the field in which it had worked for forty years, closed up as soon as one sought to divert it from its specialty. It was neither an inquisitive nor a supple mind. All trace of life faded from the Cardinal's eyes, and his entire countenance assumed an expression of mournful imbecility. "I know nothing, nothing," he repeated, "and I never recommend anybody." However, at last he made an effort: "But Nani is mixed up in this," said he. "What does Nani advise you to do?" "Monsignor Nani has been kind enough to reveal to me that the reporter is Monsignor Fornaro, and advises me to see him." At this Cardinal Sarno seemed surprised and somewhat roused. A little light returned to his eyes. "Ah! really," he rejoined, "ah! really-- Well, if Nani has done that he must have some idea. Go and see Monsignor Fornaro." Then, after rising and dismissing his visitor, who was compelled to thank him, bowing deeply, he resumed his seat, and a moment later the only sound in the lifeless room was that of his bony fingers turning over the documents before him. Pierre, in all docility, followed the advice given him, and immediately betook himself to the Piazza Navona, where, however, he learnt from one of Monsignor Fornaro's servants that the prelate had just gone out, and that to find him at home it was necessary to call in the morning at ten o'clock. Accordingly it was only on the following day that Pierre was able to obtain an interview. He had previously made inquiries and knew what was necessary concerning Monsignor Fornaro. Born at Naples, he had there begun his studies under the Barnabites, had finished them at the Seminario Romano, and had subsequently, for many years, been a professor at the University Gregoriana. Nowadays Consultor to several Congregations and a Canon of Santa Maria Maggiore, he placed his immediate ambition in a Canonry at St. Peter's, and harboured the dream of some day becoming Secretary of the Consistorial Congregation, a post conducting to the cardinalate. A theologian of remarkable ability, Monsignor Fornaro incurred no other reproach than that of occasionally sacrificing to literature by contributing articles, which he carefully abstained from signing, to certain religious reviews. He was also said to be very worldly. Pierre was received as soon as he had sent in his card, and perhaps he would have fancied that his visit was expected had not an appearance of sincere surprise, blended with a little anxiety, marked his reception. "Monsieur l'Abbe Froment, Monsieur l'Abbe Froment," repeated the prelate, looking at the card which he still held. "Kindly step in--I was about to forbid my door, for I have some urgent work to attend to. But no matter, sit down." Pierre, however, remained standing, quite charmed by the blooming appearance of this tall, strong, handsome man who, although five and forty years of age, was quite fresh and rosy, with moist lips, caressing eyes, and scarcely a grey hair among his curly locks. Nobody more fascinating and decorative could be found among the whole Roman prelacy. Careful of his person undoubtedly, and aiming at a simple elegance, he looked really superb in his black cassock with violet collar. And around him the spacious room where he received his visitors, gaily lighted as it was by two large windows facing the Piazza Navona, and furnished with a taste nowadays seldom met with among the Roman clergy, diffused a pleasant odour and formed a setting instinct with kindly cheerfulness. "Pray sit down, Monsieur l'Abbe Froment," he resumed, "and tell me to what I am indebted for the honour of your visit." He had already recovered his self-possession and assumed a /naif/, purely obliging air; and Pierre, though the question was only natural, and he ought to have foreseen it, suddenly felt greatly embarrassed, more embarrassed indeed than in Cardinal Sarno's presence. Should he go to the point at once, confess the delicate motive of his visit? A moment's reflection showed him that this would be the best and worthier course. "Dear me, Monseigneur," he replied, "I know very well that the step I have taken in calling on you is not usually taken, but it has been advised me, and it has seemed to me that among honest folks there can never be any harm in seeking in all good faith to elucidate the truth." "What is it, what is it, then?" asked the prelate with an expression of perfect candour, and still continuing to smile. "Well, simply this. I have learnt that the Congregation of the Index has handed you my book 'New Rome,' and appointed you to examine it; and I have ventured to present myself before you in case you should have any explanations to ask of me." But Monsignor Fornaro seemed unwilling to hear any more. He had carried both hands to his head and drawn back, albeit still courteous. "No, no," said he, "don't tell me that, don't continue, you would grieve me dreadfully. Let us say, if you like, that you have been deceived, for nothing ought to be known, in fact nothing is known, either by others or myself. I pray you, do not let us talk of such matters." Pierre, however, had fortunately remarked what a decisive effect was produced when he had occasion to mention the name of the Assessor of the Holy Office. So it occurred to him to reply: "I most certainly do not desire to give you the slightest cause for embarrassment, Monseigneur, and I repeat to you that I would never have ventured to importune you if Monsignor Nani himself had not acquainted me with your name and address." This time the effect was immediate, though Monsignor Fornaro, with that easy grace which he introduced into all things, made some ceremony about surrendering. He began by a demurrer, speaking archly with subtle shades of expression. "What! is Monsignor Nani the tattler! But I shall scold him, I shall get angry with him! And what does he know? He doesn't belong to the Congregation; he may have been led into error. You must tell him that he has made a mistake, and that I have nothing at all to do with your affair. That will teach him not to reveal needful secrets which everybody respects!" Then, in a pleasant way, with winning glance and flowery lips, he went on: "Come, since Monsignor Nani desires it, I am willing to chat with you for a moment, my dear Monsieur Froment, but on condition that you shall know nothing of my report or of what may have been said or done at the Congregation." Pierre in his turn smiled, admiring how easy things became when forms were respected and appearances saved. And once again he began to explain his case, the profound astonishment into which the prosecution of his book had thrown him, and his ignorance of the objections which were taken to it, and for which he had vainly sought a cause. "Really, really," repeated the prelate, quite amazed at so much innocence. "The Congregation is a tribunal, and can only act when a case is brought before it. Proceedings have been taken against your book simply because it has been denounced." "Yes, I know, denounced." "Of course. Complaint was laid by three French bishops, whose names you will allow me to keep secret, and it consequently became necessary for the Congregation to examine the incriminated work." Pierre looked at him quite scared. Denounced by three bishops? Why? With what object? Then he thought of his protector. "But Cardinal Bergerot," said he, "wrote me a letter of approval, which I placed at the beginning of my work as a preface. Ought not a guarantee like that to have been sufficient for the French episcopacy?" Monsignor Fornaro wagged his head in a knowing way before making up his mind to reply: "Ah! yes, no doubt, his Eminence's letter, a very beautiful letter. I think, however, that it would have been much better if he had not written it, both for himself and for you especially." Then as the priest, whose surprise was increasing, opened his mouth to urge him to explain himself, he went on: "No, no, I know nothing, I say nothing. His Eminence Cardinal Bergerot is a saintly man whom everybody venerates, and if it were possible for him to sin it would only be through pure goodness of heart." Silence fell. Pierre could divine that an abyss was opening, and dared not insist. However, he at last resumed with some violence: "But, after all, why should my book be prosecuted, and the books of others be left untouched? I have no intention of acting as a denouncer myself, but how many books there are to which Rome closes her eyes, and which are far more dangerous than mine can be!" This time Monsignor Fornaro seemed glad to be able to support Pierre's views. "You are right," said he, "we cannot deal with every bad book, and it greatly distresses us. But you must remember what an incalculable number of works we should be compelled to read. And so we have to content ourselves with condemning the worst /en bloc/." Then he complacently entered into explanations. In principle, no printer ought to send any work to press without having previously submitted the manuscript to the approval of the bishop of the diocese. Nowadays, however, with the enormous output of the printing trade, one could understand how terribly embarrassed the bishops would be if the printers were suddenly to conform to the Church's regulation. There was neither the time nor the money, nor were there the men necessary for such colossal labour. And so the Congregation of the Index condemned /en masse/, without examination, all works of certain categories: first, books which were dangerous for morals, all erotic writings, and all novels; next the various bibles in the vulgar tongue, for the perusal of Holy Writ without discretion was not allowable; then the books on magic and sorcery, and all works on science, history, or philosophy that were in any way contrary to dogma, as well as the writings of heresiarchs or mere ecclesiastics discussing religion, which should never be discussed. All these were wise laws made by different popes, and were set forth in the preface to the catalogue of forbidden books which the Congregation published, and without them this catalogue, to have been complete, would in itself have formed a large library. On turning it over one found that the works singled out for interdiction were chiefly those of priests, the task being so vast and difficult that Rome's concern extended but little beyond the observance of good order within the Church. And Pierre and his book came within the limit. "You will understand," continued Monsignor Fornaro, "that we have no desire to advertise a heap of unwholesome writings by honouring them with special condemnation. Their name is legion in every country, and we should have neither enough paper nor enough ink to deal with them all. So we content ourselves with condemning one from time to time, when it bears a famous name and makes too much noise, or contains disquieting attacks on the faith. This suffices to remind the world that we exist and defend ourselves without abandoning aught of our rights or duties." "But my book, my book," exclaimed Pierre, "why these proceedings against my book?" "I am explaining that to you as far as it is allowable for me to do, my dear Monsieur Froment. You are a priest, your book is a success, you have published a cheap edition of it which sells very readily; and I don't speak of its literary merit, which is remarkable, for it contains a breath of real poetry which transported me, and on which I must really compliment you. However, under the circumstances which I have enumerated, how could we close our eyes to such a work as yours, in which the conclusion arrived at is the annihilation of our holy religion and the destruction of Rome?" Pierre remained open-mouthed, suffocating with surprise. "The destruction of Rome!" he at last exclaimed; "but I desire to see Rome rejuvenated, eternal, again the queen of the world." And, once more mastered by his glowing enthusiasm, he defended himself and confessed his faith: Catholicism reverting to the principles and practices of the primitive Church, drawing the blood of regeneration from the fraternal Christianity of Jesus; the Pope, freed from all terrestrial royalty, governing the whole of humanity with charity and love, and saving the world from the frightful social cataclysm that threatens it by leading it to the real Kingdom of God: the Christian communion of all nations united in one nation only. "And can the Holy Father disavow me?" he continued. "Are not these his secret ideas, which people are beginning to divine, and does not my only offence lie in having expressed them perhaps too soon and too freely? And if I were allowed to see him should I not at once obtain from him an order to stop these proceedings?" Monsignor Fornaro no longer spoke, but wagged his head without appearing offended by the priest's juvenile ardour. On the contrary, he smiled with increasing amiability, as though highly amused by so much innocence and imagination. At last he gaily responded, "Oh! speak on, speak on; it isn't I who will stop you. I'm forbidden to say anything. But the temporal power, the temporal power." "Well, what of the temporal power?" asked Pierre. The prelate had again become silent, raising his amiable face to heaven and waving his white hands with a pretty gesture. And when he once more opened his mouth it was to say: "Then there's your new religion--for the expression occurs twice: the new religion, the new religion--ah, /Dio/!" Again he became restless, going off into an ecstasy of wonderment, at sight of which Pierre impatiently exclaimed: "I do not know what your report will be, Monseigneur, but I declare to you that I have had no desire to attack dogma. And, candidly now, my whole book shows that I only sought to write a work of pity and salvation. It is only justice that some account should be taken of one's intentions." Monsignor Fornaro had become very calm and paternal again. "Oh! intentions! intentions!" he said as he rose to dismiss his visitor. "You may be sure, my dear Monsieur Froment, that I feel much honoured by your visit. Naturally I cannot tell you what my report will be; as it is, we have talked too much about it, and, in fact, I ought to have refused to listen to your defence. At the same time, you will always find me ready to be of service to you in anything that does not go against my duty. But I greatly fear that your book will be condemned." And then, as Pierre again started, he added: "Well, yes. It is facts that are judged, you know, not intentions. So all defence is useless; the book is there, and we take it such as it is. However much you may try to explain it, you cannot alter it. And this is why the Congregation never calls the accused parties before it, and never accepts from them aught but retraction pure and simple. And, indeed, the wisest course would be for you to withdraw your book and make your submission. No? You won't? Ah! how young you are, my friend!" He laughed yet more loudly at the gesture of revolt, of indomitable pride which had just escaped his young friend, as he called him. Then, on reaching the door, he again threw off some of his reserve, and said in a low voice, "Come, my dear Abbe, there is something I will do for you. I will give you some good advice. At bottom, I myself am nothing. I deliver my report, and it is printed, and the members of the Congregation read it, but are quite free to pay no attention to it. However, the Secretary of the Congregation, Father Dangelis, can accomplish everything, even impossibilities. Go to see him; you will find him at the Dominican convent behind the Piazza di Spagna. Don't name me. And for the present good-bye, my dear fellow, good-bye." Pierre once more found himself on the Piazza Navona, quite dazed, no longer knowing what to believe or hope. A cowardly idea was coming over him; why should he continue this struggle, in which his adversaries remained unknown and indiscernible? Why carry obstinacy any further, why linger any longer in that impassionating but deceptive Rome? He would flee that very evening, return to Paris, disappear there, and forget his bitter disillusion in the practice of humble charity. He was traversing one of those hours of weakness when the long-dreamt-of task suddenly seems to be an impossibility. However, amidst his great confusion he was nevertheless walking on, going towards his destination. And when he found himself in the Corso, then in the Via dei Condotti, and finally in the Piazza di Spagna, he resolved that he would at any rate see Father Dangelis. The Dominican convent is there, just below the Trinity de' Monti. Ah! those Dominicans! Pierre had never thought of them without a feeling of respect with which mingled a little fear. What vigorous pillars of the principle of authority and theocracy they had for centuries proved themselves to be! To them the Church had been indebted for its greatest measure of authority; they were the glorious soldiers of its triumph. Whilst St. Francis won the souls of the humble over to Rome, St. Dominic, on Rome's behalf, subjected all the superior souls--those of the intelligent and powerful. And this he did with passion, amidst a blaze of faith and determination, making use of all possible means, preachings, writings, and police and judicial pressure. Though he did not found the Inquisition, its principles were his, and it was with fire and sword that his fraternal, loving heart waged war on schism. Living like his monks, in poverty, chastity, and obedience--the great virtues of those times of pride and licentiousness--he went from city to city, exhorting the impious, striving to bring them back to the Church and arraigning them before the ecclesiastical courts when his preachings did not suffice. He also laid siege to science, sought to make it his own, dreamt of defending God with the weapons of reason and human knowledge like a true forerunner of the angelic St. Thomas, that light of the middle ages, who joined the Dominican order and set everything in his "Summa Theologiae," psychology, logic, policy, and morals. And thus it was that the Dominicans filled the world, upholding the doctrines of Rome in the most famous pulpits of every nation, and contending almost everywhere against the free sprit of the Universities, like the vigilant guardians of dogma that they were, the unwearying artisans of the fortunes of the popes, the most powerful amongst all the artistic, scientific, and literary workers who raised the huge edifice of Catholicism such as it exists to-day. However, Pierre, who could feel that this edifice was even now tottering, though it had been built, people fancied, so substantially as to last through all eternity, asked himself what could be the present use of the Dominicans, those toilers of another age, whose police system and whose tribunals had perished beneath universal execration, whose voices were no longer listened to, whose books were but seldom read, and whose /role/ as /savants/ and civilisers had come to an end in presence of latter-day science, the truths of which were rending dogma on all sides. Certainly the Dominicans still form an influential and prosperous order; but how far one is from the times when their general reigned in Rome, Master of the Holy Palace, with convents and schools, and subjects throughout Europe! Of all their vast inheritance, so far as the Roman curia is concerned, only a few posts now remain to them, and among others the Secretaryship of the Congregation of the Index, a former dependency of the Holy Office where they once despotically ruled. Pierre was immediately ushered into the presence of Father Dangelis. The convent parlour was vast, bare, and white, flooded with bright sunshine. The only furniture was a table and some stools; and a large brass crucifix hung from the wall. Near the table stood the Father, a very thin man of about fifty, severely draped in his ample white habit and black mantle. From his long ascetic face, with thin lips, thin nose, and pointed, obstinate chin, his grey eyes shone out with a fixity that embarrassed one. And, moreover, he showed himself very plain and simple of speech, and frigidly polite in manner. "Monsieur l'Abbe Froment--the author of 'New Rome,' I suppose?" Then seating himself on one stool and pointing to another, he added: "Pray acquaint me with the object of your visit, Monsieur l'Abbe." Thereupon Pierre had to begin his explanation, his defence, all over again; and the task soon became the more painful as his words fell from his lips amidst death-like silence and frigidity. Father Dangelis did not stir; with his hands crossed upon his knees he kept his sharp, penetrating eyes fixed upon those of the priest. And when the latter had at last ceased speaking, he slowly said: "I did not like to interrupt you, Monsieur l'Abbe, but it was not for me to hear all this. Process against your book has begun, and no power in the world can stay or impede its course. I do not therefore realise what it is that you apparently expect of me." In a quivering voice Pierre was bold enough to answer: "I look for some kindness and justice." A pale smile, instinct with proud humility, arose to the Dominican's lips. "Be without fear," he replied, "God has ever deigned to enlighten me in the discharge of my modest duties. Personally, be it said, I have no justice to render; I am but an employee whose duty is to classify matters and draw up documents concerning them. Their Eminences, the members of the Congregation, will alone pronounce judgment on your book. And assuredly they will do so with the help of the Holy Spirit. You will only have to bow to their sentence when it shall have been ratified by his Holiness." Then he broke off the interview by rising, and Pierre was obliged to do the same. The Dominican's words were virtually identical with those that had fallen from Monsignor Fornaro, but they were spoken with cutting frankness, a sort of tranquil bravery. On all sides Pierre came into collision with the same anonymous force, the same powerful engine whose component parts sought to ignore one another. For a long time yet, no doubt, he would be sent from one to the other, without ever finding the volitional element which reasoned and acted. And the only thing that he could do was to bow to it all. However, before going off, it occurred to him once more to mention the name of Monsignor Nani, the powerful effect of which he had begun to realise. "I ask your pardon," he said, "for having disturbed you to no purpose, but I simply deferred to the kind advice of Monsignor Nani, who has condescended to show me some interest." The effect of these words was unexpected. Again did Father Dangelis's thin face brighten into a smile, but with a twist of the lips, sharp with ironical contempt. He had become yet paler, and his keen intelligent eyes were flaming. "Ah! it was Monsignor Nani who sent you!" he said. "Well, if you think you need a protector, it is useless for you to apply to any other than himself. He is all-powerful. Go to see him; go to see him!" And that was the only encouragement Pierre derived from his visit: the advice to go back to the man who had sent him. At this he felt that he was losing ground, and he resolved to return home in order to reflect on things and try to understand them before taking any further steps. The idea of questioning Don Vigilio at once occurred to him, and that same evening after supper he luckily met the secretary in the corridor, just as, candle in hand, he was on his way to bed. "I have so many things that I should like to say to you," Pierre said to him. "Can you kindly come to my rooms for a moment?" But the other promptly silenced him with a gesture, and then whispered: "Didn't you see Abbe Paparelli on the first floor? He was following us, I'm sure." Pierre often saw the train-bearer roaming about the house, and greatly disliked his stealthy, prying ways. However, he had hitherto attached no importance to him, and was therefore much surprised by Don Vigilio's question. The other, without awaiting his reply, had returned to the end of the corridor, where for a long while he remained listening. Then he came back on tip-toe, blew out his candle, and darted into Pierre's sitting-room. "There--that's done," he murmured directly the door was shut. "But if it is all the same to you, we won't stop in this sitting-room. Let us go into your bed-room. Two walls are better than one." When the lamp had been placed on the table and they found themselves seated face to face in that bare, faded bed-chamber, Pierre noticed that the secretary was suffering from a more violent attack of fever than usual. His thin puny figure was shivering from head to foot, and his ardent eyes had never before blazed so blackly in his ravaged, yellow face. "Are you poorly?" asked Pierre. "I don't want to tire you." "Poorly, yes, I am on fire--but I want to talk. I can't bear it any longer. One always has to relieve oneself some day or other." Was it his complaint that he desired to relieve; or was he anxious to break his long silence in order that it might not stifle him? This at first remained uncertain. He immediately asked for an account of the steps that Pierre had lately taken, and became yet more restless when he heard how the other had been received by Cardinal Sarno, Monsignor Fornaro, and Father Dangelis. "Yes, that's quite it," he repeated, "nothing astonishes me nowadays, and yet I feel indignant on your account. Yes, it doesn't concern me, but all the same it makes me ill, for it reminds me of all my own troubles. You must not rely on Cardinal Sarno, remember, for he is always elsewhere, with his mind far away, and has never helped anybody. But that Fornaro, that Fornaro!" "He seemed to me very amiable, even kindly disposed," replied Pierre; "and I really think that after our interview, he will considerably soften his report." "He! Why, the gentler he was with you the more grievously he will saddle you! He will devour you, fatten himself with such easy prey. Ah! you don't know him, /dilizioso/ that he is, ever on the watch to rear his own fortune on the troubles of poor devils whose defeat is bound to please the powerful. I prefer the other one, Father Dangelis, a terrible man, no doubt, but frank and brave and of superior mind. I must admit, however, that he would burn you like a handful of straw if he were the master. And ah! if I could tell you everything, if I could show you the frightful under-side of this world of ours, the monstrous, ravenous ambition, the abominable network of intrigues, venality, cowardice, treachery, and even crime!" On seeing Don Vigilio so excited, in such a blaze of spite, Pierre thought of extracting from him some of the many items of information which he had hitherto sought in vain. "Well, tell me merely what is the position of my affair," he responded. "When I questioned you on my arrival here you said that nothing had yet reached Cardinal Boccanera. But all information must now have been collected, and you must know of it. And, by the way, Monsignor Fornaro told me that three French bishops had asked that my book should be prosecuted. Three bishops, is it possible?" Don Vigilio shrugged his shoulders. "Ah!" said he, "yours is an innocent soul! I'm surprised that there were /only/ three! Yes, several documents relating to your affair are in our hands; and, moreover, things have turned out much as I suspected. The three bishops are first the Bishop of Tarbes, who evidently carries out the vengeance of the Fathers of Lourdes; and then the Bishops of Poitiers and Evreux, who are both known as uncompromising Ultramontanists and passionate adversaries of Cardinal Bergerot. The Cardinal, you know, is regarded with disfavour at the Vatican, where his Gallican ideas and broad liberal mind provoke perfect anger. And don't seek for anything else. The whole affair lies in that: an execution which the powerful Fathers of Lourdes demand of his Holiness, and a desire to reach and strike Cardinal Bergerot through your book, by means of the letter of approval which he imprudently wrote to you and which you published by way of preface. For a long time past the condemnations of the Index have largely been secret knock-down blows levelled at Churchmen. Denunciation reigns supreme, and the law applied is that of good pleasure. I could tell you some almost incredible things, how perfectly innocent books have been selected among a hundred for the sole object of killing an idea or a man; for the blow is almost always levelled at some one behind the author, some one higher than he is. And there is such a hot-bed of intrigue, such a source of abuses in this institution of the Index, that it is tottering, and even among those who surround the Pope it is felt that it must soon be freshly regulated if it is not to fall into complete discredit. I well understand that the Church should endeavour to retain universal power, and govern by every fit weapon, but the weapons must be such as one can use without their injustice leading to revolt, or their antique childishness provoking merriment!" Pierre listened with dolorous astonishment in his heart. Since he had been at Rome and had seen the Fathers of the Grotto saluted and feared there, holding an authoritative position, thanks to the large alms which they contributed to the Peter's Pence, he had felt that they were behind the proceedings instituted against him, and realised that he would have to pay for a certain page of his book in which he had called attention to an iniquitous displacement of fortune at Lourdes, a frightful spectacle which made one doubt the very existence of the Divinity, a continual cause of battle and conflict which would disappear in the truly Christian society of to-morrow. And he could also now understand that his delight at the loss of the temporal power must have caused a scandal, and especially that the unfortunate expression "a new religion" had alone been sufficient to arm /delatores/ against him. But that which amazed and grieved him was to learn that Cardinal Bergerot's letter was looked upon as a crime, and that his (Pierre's) book was denounced and condemned in order that adversaries who dared not attack the venerable pastor face to face might, deal him a cowardly blow from behind. The thought of afflicting that saintly man, of serving as the implement to strike him in his ardent charity, cruelly grieved Pierre. And how bitter and disheartening it was to find the most hideous questions of pride and money, ambition and appetite, running riot with the most ferocious egotism, beneath the quarrels of those leaders of the Church who ought only to have contended together in love for the poor! And then Pierre's mind revolted against that supremely odious and idiotic Index. He now understood how it worked, from the arrival of the denunciations to the public posting of the titles of the condemned works. He had just seen the Secretary of the Congregation, Father Dangelis, to whom the denunciations came, and who then investigated the affair, collecting all documents and information concerning it with the passion of a cultivated authoritarian monk, who dreamt of ruling minds and consciences as in the heroic days of the Inquisition. Then, too, Pierre had visited one of the consultive prelates, Monsignor Fornaro, who was so ambitious and affable, and so subtle a theologian that he would have discovered attacks against the faith in a treatise on algebra, had his interests required it. Next there were the infrequent meetings of the cardinals, who at long intervals voted for the interdiction of some hostile book, deeply regretting that they could not suppress them all; and finally came the Pope, approving and signing the decrees, which was a mere formality, for were not all books guilty? But what an extraordinary wretched Bastille of the past was that aged Index, that senile institution now sunk into second childhood. One realised that it must have been a formidable power when books were rare and the Church had tribunals of blood and fire to enforce her edicts. But books had so greatly multiplied, the written, printed thoughts of mankind had swollen into such a deep broad river, that they had swept all opposition away, and now the Index was swamped and reduced to powerlessness, compelled more and more to limit its field of action, to confine itself to the examination of the writings of ecclesiastics, and even in this respect it was becoming corrupt, fouled by the worst passions and changed into an instrument of intrigue, hatred, and vengeance. Ah! that confession of decay, of paralysis which grew more and more complete amidst the scornful indifference of the nations. To think that Catholicism, the once glorious agent of civilisation, had come to such a pass that it cast books into hell-fire by the heap; and what books they were, almost the entire literature, history, philosophy, and science of the past and the present! Few works, indeed, are published nowadays that would not fall under the ban of the Church. If she seems to close her eyes, it is in order to avoid the impossible task of hunting out and destroying everything. Yet she stubbornly insists on retaining a semblance of sovereign authority over human intelligence, just as some very aged queen, dispossessed of her states and henceforth without judges or executioners, might continue to deliver vain sentences to which only an infinitesimal minority would pay heed. But imagine the Church momentarily victorious, miraculously mastering the modern world, and ask yourself what she, with her tribunals to condemn and her gendarmes to enforce, would do with human thought. Imagine a strict application of the Index regulations: no printer able to put anything whatever to press without the approval of his bishop, and even then every book laid before the Congregation, the past expunged, the present throttled, subjected to an intellectual Reign of Terror! Would not the closing of every library perforce ensue, would not the long heritage of written thought be cast into prison, would not the future be barred, would not all progress, all conquest of knowledge, be totally arrested? Rome herself is nowadays a terrible example of such a disastrous experiment--Rome with her congealed soil, her dead sap, killed by centuries of papal government, Rome which has become so barren that not a man, not a work has sprung from her midst even after five and twenty years of awakening and liberty! And who would accept such a state of things, not among people of revolutionary mind, but among those of religious mind that might possess any culture and breadth of view? Plainly enough it was all mere childishness and absurdity. Deep silence reigned, and Pierre, quite upset by his reflections, made a gesture of despair whilst glancing at Don Vigilio, who sat speechless in front of him. For a moment longer, amidst the death-like quiescence of that old sleeping mansion, both continued silent, seated face to face in the closed chamber which the lamp illumined with a peaceful glow. But at last Don Vigilio leant forward, his eyes sparkling, and with a feverish shiver murmured: "It is they, you know, always they, at the bottom of everything." Pierre, who did not understand, felt astonished, indeed somewhat anxious at such a strange remark coming without any apparent transition. "Who are /they/?" he asked. "The Jesuits!" In this reply the little, withered, yellow priest had set all the concentrated rage of his exploding passion. Ah! so much the worse if he had perpetrated a fresh act of folly. The cat was out of the bag at last! Nevertheless, he cast a final suspicious glance around the walls. And then he relieved his mind at length, with a flow of words which gushed forth the more irresistibly since he had so long held them in check. "Ah! the Jesuits, the Jesuits! You fancy that you know them, but you haven't even an idea of their abominable actions and incalculable power. They it is whom one always comes upon, everywhere, in every circumstance. Remember /that/ whenever you fail to understand anything, if you wish to understand it. Whenever grief or trouble comes upon you, whenever you suffer, whenever you weep, say to yourself at once: 'It is they; they are there!' Why, for all I know, there may be one of them under that bed, inside that cupboard. Ah! the Jesuits, the Jesuits! They have devoured me, they are devouring me still, they will leave nothing of me at last, neither flesh nor bone." Then, in a halting voice, he related the story of his life, beginning with his youth, which had opened so hopefully. He belonged to the petty provincial nobility, and had been dowered with a fairly large income, besides a keen, supple intelligence, which looked smilingly towards the future. Nowadays, he would assuredly have been a prelate, on the road to high dignities, but he had been foolish enough to speak ill of the Jesuits and to thwart them in two or three circumstances. And from that moment, if he were to be believed, they had caused every imaginable misfortune to rain upon him: his father and mother had died, his banker had robbed him and fled, good positions had escaped him at the very moment when he was about to occupy them, the most awful misadventures had pursued him amidst the duties of his ministry to such a point indeed, that he had narrowly escaped interdiction. It was only since Cardinal Boccanera, compassionating his bad luck, had taken him into his house and attached him to his person, that he had enjoyed a little repose. "Here I have a refuge, an asylum," he continued. "They execrate his Eminence, who has never been on their side, but they haven't yet dared to attack him or his servants. Oh! I have no illusions, they will end by catching me again, all the same. Perhaps they will even hear of our conversation this evening, and make me pay dearly for it; for I do wrong to speak, I speak in spite of myself. They have stolen all my happiness, and brought all possible misfortune on me, everything that was possible, everything--you hear me!" Increasing discomfort was taking possession of Pierre, who, seeking to relieve himself by a jest, exclaimed: "Come, come, at any rate it wasn't the Jesuits who gave you the fever." "Yes, yes, it was!" Don Vigilio violently declared. "I caught it on the bank of the Tiber one evening, when I went to weep there in my grief at having been driven from the little church where I officiated." Pierre, hitherto, had never believed in the terrible legend of the Jesuits. He belonged to a generation which laughed at the idea of wehr-wolves, and considered the /bourgeois/ fear of the famous black men, who hid themselves in walls and terrorised families, to be a trifle ridiculous. To him all such things seemed to be nursery tales, exaggerated by religious and political passion. And so it was with amazement that he examined Don Vigilio, suddenly fearing that he might have to deal with a maniac. Nevertheless he could not help recalling the extraordinary story of the Jesuits. If St. Francis of Assisi and St. Dominic are the very soul and spirit of the middle ages, its masters and teachers, the former a living expression of all the ardent, charitable faith of the humble, and the other defending dogma and fixing doctrines for the intelligent and the powerful, on the other hand Ignatius de Loyola appeared on the threshold of modern times to save the tottering heritage by accommodating religion to the new developments of society, thereby ensuring it the empire of the world which was about to appear. At the advent of the modern era it seemed as if the Deity were to be vanquished in the uncompromising struggle with sin, for it was certain that the old determination to suppress Nature, to kill the man within man, with his appetites, passions, heart, and blood, could only result in a disastrous defeat, in which, indeed, the Church found herself on the very eve of sinking; and it was the Jesuits who came to extricate her from this peril and reinvigorate her by deciding that it was she who now ought to go to the world, since the world seemed unwilling to go any longer to her. All lay in that; you find the Jesuits declaring that one can enter into arrangements with heaven; they bend and adjust themselves to the customs, prejudices, and even vices of the times; they smile, all condescension, cast rigourism aside, and practice the diplomacy of amiability, ever ready to turn the most awful abominations "to the greater glory of God." That is their motto, their battle-cry, and thence springs the moral principle which many regard as their crime: that all means are good to attain one's end, especially when that end is the furtherance of the Deity's interests as represented by those of the Church. And what overwhelming success attends the efforts of the Jesuits! they swarm and before long cover the earth, on all sides becoming uncontested masters. They shrive kings, they acquire immense wealth, they display such victorious power of invasion that, however humbly they may set foot in any country, they soon wholly possess it: souls, bodies, power, and fortune alike falling to them. And they are particularly zealous in founding schools, they show themselves to be incomparable moulders of the human brain, well understanding that power always belongs to the morrow, to the generations which are growing up and whose master one must be if one desire to reign eternally. So great is their power, based on the necessity of compromise with sin, that, on the morrow of the Council of Trent, they transform the very spirit of Catholicism, penetrate it, identify it with themselves and become the indispensable soldiers of the papacy which lives by them and for them. And from that moment Rome is theirs, Rome where their general so long commands, whence so long go forth the directions for the obscure tactics which are blindly followed by their innumerable army, whose skilful organisation covers the globe as with an iron network hidden by the velvet of hands expert in dealing gently with poor suffering humanity. But, after all, the most prodigious feature is the stupefying vitality of the Jesuits who are incessantly tracked, condemned, executed, and yet still and ever erect. As soon as their power asserts itself, their unpopularity begins and gradually becomes universal. Hoots of execration arise around them, abominable accusations, scandalous law cases in which they appear as corruptors and felons. Pascal devotes them to public contempt, parliaments condemn their books to be burnt, universities denounce their system of morals and their teaching as poisonous. They foment such disturbances, such struggles in every kingdom, that organised persecution sets in, and they are soon driven from everywhere. During more than a century they become wanderers, expelled, then recalled, passing and repassing frontiers, leaving a country amidst cries of hatred to return to it as soon as quiet has been restored. Finally, for supreme disaster, they are suppressed by one pope, but another re-establishes them, and since then they have been virtually tolerated everywhere. And in the diplomatic self-effacement, the shade in which they have the prudence to sequester themselves, they are none the less triumphant, quietly confident of their victory like soldiers who have once and for ever subdued the earth. Pierre was aware that, judging by mere appearances, the Jesuits were nowadays dispossessed of all influence in Rome. They no longer officiated at the Gesu, they no longer directed the Collegio Romano, where they formerly fashioned so many souls; and with no abode of their own, reduced to accept foreign hospitality, they had modestly sought a refuge at the Collegio Germanico, where there is a little chapel. There they taught and there they still confessed, but without the slightest bustle or display. Was one to believe, however, that this effacement was but masterly cunning, a feigned disappearance in order that they might really remain secret, all-powerful masters, the hidden hand which directs and guides everything? People certainly said that the proclamation of papal Infallibility had been their work, a weapon with which they had armed themselves whilst feigning to bestow it on the papacy, in readiness for the coming decisive task which their genius foresaw in the approaching social upheavals. And thus there might perhaps be some truth in what Don Vigilio, with a shiver of mystery, related about their occult sovereignty, a seizin, as it were, of the government of the Church, a royalty ignored but nevertheless complete. As this idea occurred to Pierre, a dim connection between certain of his experiences arose in his mind and he all at once inquired: "Is Monsignor Nani a Jesuit, then?" These words seemed to revive all Don Vigilio's anxious passion. He waved his trembling hand, and replied: "He? Oh, he's too clever, too skilful by far to have taken the robe. But he comes from that Collegio Romano where his generation grew up, and he there imbibed that Jesuit genius which adapted itself so well to his own. Whilst fully realising the danger of wearing an unpopular and embarrassing livery, and wishing to be free, he is none the less a Jesuit in his flesh, in his bones, in his very soul. He is evidently convinced that the Church can only triumph by utilising the passions of mankind, and withal he is very fond of the Church, very pious at bottom, a very good priest, serving God without weakness in gratitude for the absolute power which God gives to His ministers. And besides, he is so charming, incapable of any brutal action, full of the good breeding of his noble Venetian ancestors, and deeply versed in knowledge of the world, thanks to his experiences at the nunciatures of Paris, Vienna, and other places, without mentioning that he knows everything that goes on by reason of the delicate functions which he has discharged for ten years past as Assessor of the Holy Office. Yes, he is powerful, all-powerful, and in him you do not have the furtive Jesuit whose robe glides past amidst suspicion, but the head, the brain, the leader whom no uniform designates." This reply made Pierre grave, for he was quite willing to admit that an opportunist code of morals, like that of the Jesuits, was inoculable and now predominated throughout the Church. Indeed, the Jesuits might disappear, but their doctrine would survive them, since it was the one weapon of combat, the one system of strategy which might again place the nations under the dominion of Rome. And in reality the struggle which continued lay precisely in the attempts to accommodate religion to the century, and the century to religion. Such being the case, Pierre realised that such men as Monsignor Nani might acquire vast and even decisive importance. "Ah! if you knew, if you knew," continued Don Vigilio, "he's everywhere, he has his hand in everything. For instance, nothing has ever happened here, among the Boccaneras, but I've found him at the bottom of it, tangling or untangling the threads according to necessities with which he alone is acquainted." Then, in the unquenchable fever for confiding things which was now consuming him, the secretary related how Monsignor Nani had most certainly brought on Benedetta's divorce case. The Jesuits, in spite of their conciliatory spirit, have always taken up a hostile position with regard to Italy, either because they do not despair of reconquering Rome, or because they wait to treat in due season with the ultimate and real victor, whether King or Pope. And so Nani, who had long been one of Donna Serafina's intimates, had helped to precipitate the rupture with Prada as soon as Benedetta's mother was dead. Again, it was he who, to prevent any interference on the part of the patriotic Abbe Pisoni, the young woman's confessor and the artisan of her marriage, had urged her to take the same spiritual director as her aunt, Father Lorenza, a handsome Jesuit with clear and kindly eyes, whose confessional in the chapel of the Collegio Germanico was incessantly besieged by penitents. And it seemed certain that this manoeuvre had brought about everything; what one cleric working for Italy had done, was to be undone by another working against Italy. Why was it, however, that Nani, after bringing about the rupture, had momentarily ceased to show all interest in the affair to the point even of jeopardising the suit for the dissolution of the marriage? And why was he now again busying himself with it, setting Donna Serafina in action, prompting her to buy Monsignor Palma's support, and bringing his own influence to bear on the cardinals of the Congregation? There was mystery in all this, as there was in everything he did, for his schemes were always complicated and distant in their effects. However, one might suppose that he now wished to hasten the marriage of Benedetta and Dario, in order to stop all the abominable rumours which were circulating in the white world; unless, indeed, this divorce secured by pecuniary payments and the pressure of notorious influences were an intentional scandal at first spun out and now hastened, in order to harm Cardinal Boccanera, whom the Jesuits might desire to brush aside in certain eventualities which were possibly near at hand. "To tell the truth, I rather incline to the latter view," said Don Vigilio, "the more so indeed as I learnt this evening that the Pope is not well. With an old man of eighty-four the end may come at any moment, and so the Pope can never catch cold but what the Sacred College and the prelacies are all agog, stirred by sudden ambitious rivalries. Now, the Jesuits have always opposed Cardinal Boccanera's candidature. They ought to be on his side, on account of his rank, and his uncompromising attitude towards Italy, but the idea of giving themselves such a master disquiets them, for they consider him unseasonably rough and stern, too violent in his faith, which unbending as it is would prove dangerous in these diplomatic times through which the Church is passing. And so I should in no wise be astonished if there were an attempt to discredit him and render his candidature impossible, by employing the most underhand and shameful means." A little quiver of fear was coming over Pierre. The contagion of the unknown, of the black intrigues plotted in the dark, was spreading amidst the silence of the night in the depths of that palace, near that Tiber, in that Rome so full of legendary tragedies. But all at once the young man's mind reverted to himself, to his own affair. "But what is my part in all this?" he asked: "why does Monsignor Nani seem to take an interest in me? Why is he mixed up in the proceedings against my book?" "Oh! one never knows, one never knows exactly!" replied Don Vigilio, waving his arms. "One thing I can say, that he only knew of the affair when the denunciations of the three bishops were already in the hands of Father Dangelis; and I have also learnt that he then tried to stop the proceedings, which he no doubt thought both useless and impolitic. But when a matter is once before the Congregation it is almost impossible for it to be withdrawn, and Monsignor Nani must also have come into collision with Father Dangelis who, like a faithful Dominican, is the passionate adversary of the Jesuits. It was then that he caused the Contessina to write to Monsieur de la Choue, requesting him to tell you to hasten here in order to defend yourself, and to arrange for your acceptance of hospitality in this mansion, during your stay." This revelation brought Pierre's emotion to a climax. "You are sure of that?" he asked. "Oh! quite sure. I heard Nani speak of you one Monday, and some time ago I told you that he seemed to know all about you, as if he had made most minute inquiries. My belief is that he had already read your book, and was extremely preoccupied about it." "Do you think that he shares my ideas, then? Is he sincere, is he defending himself while striving to defend me?" "Oh! no, no, not at all. Your ideas, why he certainly hates them, and your book and yourself as well. You have no idea what contempt for the weak, what hatred of the poor, and love of authority and domination he conceals under his caressing amiability. Lourdes he might abandon to you, though it embodies a marvellous weapon of government; but he will never forgive you for being on the side of the little ones of the world, and for pronouncing against the temporal power. If you only heard with what gentle ferocity he derides Monsieur de la Choue, whom he calls the weeping willow of Neo-Catholicism!" Pierre carried his hands to his temples and pressed his head despairingly. "Then why, why, tell me I beg of you, why has he brought me here and kept me here in this house at his disposal? Why has he promenaded me up and down Rome for three long months, throwing me against obstacles and wearying me, when it was so easy for him to let the Index condemn my book if it embarrassed him? It's true, of course, that things would not have gone quietly, for I was disposed to refuse submission and openly confess my new faith, even against the decisions of Rome." Don Vigilio's black eyes flared in his yellow face: "Perhaps it was that which he wished to prevent. He knows you to be very intelligent and enthusiastic, and I have often heard him say that intelligence and enthusiasm should not be fought openly." Pierre, however, had risen to his feet, and instead of listening, was striding up and down the room as though carried away by the whirlwind of his thoughts. "Come, come," he said at last, "it is necessary that I should know and understand things if I am to continue the struggle. You must be kind enough to give me some detailed particulars about each of the persons mixed up in my affair. Jesuits, Jesuits everywhere? /Mon Dieu/, it may be so, you are perhaps right! But all the same you must point out the different shades to me. Now, for instance, what of that Fornaro?" "Monsignor Fornaro, oh! he's whatever you like. Still he also was brought up at the Collegio Romano, so you may be certain that he is a Jesuit, a Jesuit by education, position, and ambition. He is longing to become a cardinal, and if he some day becomes one, he'll long to be the next pope. Besides, you know, every one here is a candidate to the papacy as soon as he enters the seminary." "And Cardinal Sanguinetti?" "A Jesuit, a Jesuit! To speak plainly, he was one, then ceased to be one, and is now undoubtedly one again. Sanguinetti has flirted with every influence. It was long thought that he was in favour of conciliation between the Holy See and Italy; but things drifted into a bad way, and he violently took part against the usurpers. In the same style he has frequently fallen out with Leo XIII and then made his peace. To-day at the Vatican, he keeps on a footing of diplomatic reserve. Briefly he only has one object, the tiara, and even shows it too plainly, which is a mistake, for it uses up a candidate. Still, just at present the struggle seems to be between him and Cardinal Boccanera. And that's why he has gone over to the Jesuits again, utilising their hatred of his rival, and anticipating that they will be forced to support /him/ in order to defeat the other. But I doubt it, they are too shrewd, they will hesitate to patronise a candidate who is already so compromised. He, blunder-head, passionate and proud as he is, doubts nothing, and since you say that he is now at Frascati, I'm certain that he made all haste to shut himself up there with some grand strategical object in view, as soon as he heard of the Pope's illness." "Well, and the Pope himself, Leo XIII?" asked Pierre. This time Don Vigilio slightly hesitated, his eyes blinking. Then he said: "Leo XIII? He is a Jesuit, a Jesuit! Oh! I know it is said that he sides with the Dominicans, and this is in a measure true, for he fancies that he is animated with their spirit and he has brought St. Thomas into favour again, and has restored all the ecclesiastical teaching of doctrine. But there is also the Jesuit, remember, who is one involuntarily and without knowing it, and of this category the present Pope will prove the most famous example. Study his acts, investigate his policy, and you will find that everything in it emanates from the Jesuit spirit. The fact is that he has unwittingly become impregnated with that spirit, and that all the influence, directly or indirectly brought to bear on him comes from a Jesuit centre. Ah! why don't you believe me? I repeat that the Jesuits have conquered and absorbed everything, that all Rome belongs to them from the most insignificant cleric to his Holiness in person." Then he continued, replying to each fresh name that Pierre gave with the same obstinate, maniacal cry: "Jesuit, Jesuit!" It seemed as if a Churchman could be nothing else, as if each answer were a confirmation of the proposition that the clergy must compound with the modern world if it desired to preserve its Deity. The heroic age of Catholicism was accomplished, henceforth it could only live by dint of diplomacy and ruses, concessions and arrangements. "And that Paparelli, he's a Jesuit too, a Jesuit!" Don Vigilio went on, instinctively lowering his voice. "Yes, the humble but terrible Jesuit, the Jesuit in his most abominable /role/ as a spy and a perverter! I could swear that he has merely been placed here in order to keep watch on his Eminence! And you should see with what supple talent and craft he has performed his task, to such a point indeed that it is now he alone who wills and orders things. He opens the door to whomsoever he pleases, uses his master like something belonging to him, weighs on each of his resolutions, and holds him in his power by dint of his stealthy unremitting efforts. Yes! it's the lion conquered by the insect; the infinitesimally small disposing of the infinitely great; the train-bearer--whose proper part is to sit at his cardinal's feet like a faithful hound--in reality reigning over him, and impelling him in whatsoever direction he chooses. Ah! the Jesuit! the Jesuit! Mistrust him when you see him gliding by in his shabby old cassock, with the flabby wrinkled face of a devout old maid. And make sure that he isn't behind the doors, or in the cupboards, or under the beds. Ah! I tell you that they'll devour you as they've devoured me; and they'll give you the fever too, perhaps even the plague if you are not careful!" Pierre suddenly halted in front of his companion. He was losing all assurance, both fear and rage were penetrating him. And, after all, why not? These extraordinary stories must be true. "But in that case give me some advice," he exclaimed, "I asked you to come in here this evening precisely because I no longer know what to do, and need to be set in the right path--" Then he broke off and again paced to and fro, as if urged into motion by his exploding passion. "Or rather no, tell me nothing!" he abruptly resumed. "It's all over; I prefer to go away. The thought occurred to me before, but it was in a moment of cowardice and with the idea of disappearing and of returning to live in peace in my little nook: whereas now, if I go off, it will be as an avenger, a judge, to cry aloud to all the world from Paris, to proclaim what I have seen in Rome, what men have done there with the Christianity of Jesus, the Vatican falling into dust, the corpse-like odour which comes from it, the idiotic illusions of those who hope that they will one day see a renascence of the modern soul arise from a sepulchre where the remnants of dead centuries rot and slumber. Oh! I will not yield, I will not make my submission, I will defend my book by a fresh one. And that book, I promise you, will make some noise in the world, for it will sound the last agony of a dying religion, which one must make all haste to bury lest its remains should poison the nations!" All this was beyond Don Vigilio's mind. The Italian priest, with narrow belief and ignorant terror of the new ideas, awoke within him. He clasped his hands, affrighted. "Be quiet, be quiet! You are blaspheming! And, besides, you cannot go off like that without again trying to see his Holiness. He alone is sovereign. And I know that I shall surprise you; but Father Dangelis has given you in jest the only good advice that can be given: Go back to see Monsignor Nani, for he alone will open the door of the Vatican for you." Again did Pierre give a start of anger: "What! It was with Monsignor Nani that I began, from him that I set out; and I am to go back to him? What game is that? Can I consent to be a shuttlecock sent flying hither and thither by every battledore? People are having a game with me!" Then, harassed and distracted, the young man fell on his chair in front of Don Vigilio, who with his face drawn by his prolonged vigil, and his hands still and ever faintly trembling, remained for some time silent. At last he explained that he had another idea. He was slightly acquainted with the Pope's confessor, a Franciscan father, a man of great simplicity, to whom he might recommend Pierre. This Franciscan, despite his self-effacement, would perhaps prove of service to him. At all events he might be tried. Then, once more, silence fell, and Pierre, whose dreamy eyes were turned towards the wall, ended by distinguishing the old picture which had touched him so deeply on the day of his arrival. In the pale glow of the lamp it gradually showed forth and lived, like an incarnation of his own case, his own futile despair before the sternly closed portal of truth and justice. Ah! that outcast woman, that stubborn victim of love, weeping amidst her streaming hair, her visage hidden whilst with pain and grief she sank upon the steps of that palace whose door was so pitilessly shut--how she resembled him! Draped with a mere strip of linen, she was shivering, and amidst the overpowering distress of her abandonment she did not reveal her secret, misfortune, or transgression, whichever it might be. But he, behind her close-pressed hands, endowed her with a face akin to his own: she became his sister, as were all the poor creatures without roof or certainty who weep because they are naked and alone, and wear out their strength in seeking to force the wicked thresholds of men. He could never gaze at her without pitying her, and it stirred him so much that evening to find her ever so unknown, nameless and visageless, yet steeped in the most bitter tears, that he suddenly began to question his companion. "Tell me," said he, "do you know who painted that old picture? It stirs me to the soul like a masterpiece." Stupefied by this unexpected question, the secretary raised his head and looked, feeling yet more astonished when he had examined the blackened, forsaken panel in its sorry frame. "Where did it come from?" resumed Pierre; "why has it been stowed away in this room?" "Oh!" replied Don Vigilio, with a gesture of indifference, "it's nothing. There are heaps of valueless old paintings everywhere. That one, no doubt, has always been here. But I don't know; I never noticed it before." Whilst speaking he had at last risen to his feet, and this simple action had brought on such a fit of shivering that he could scarcely take leave, so violently did his teeth chatter with fever. "No, no, don't show me out," he stammered, "keep the lamp here. And to conclude: the best course is for you to leave yourself in the hands of Monsignor Nani, for he, at all events, is a superior man. I told you on your arrival that, whether you would or not, you would end by doing as he desired. And so what's the use of struggling? And mind, not a word of our conversation to-night; it would mean my death." Then he noiselessly opened the doors, glanced distrustfully into the darkness of the passage, and at last ventured out and disappeared, regaining his own room with such soft steps that not the faintest footfall was heard amidst the tomb-like slumber of the old mansion. On the morrow, Pierre, again mastered by a desire to fight on to the very end, got Don Vigilio to recommend him to the Pope's confessor, the Franciscan friar with whom the secretary was slightly acquainted. However, this friar proved to be an extremely timid if worthy man, selected precisely on account of his great modesty, simplicity, and absolute lack of influence in order that he might not abuse his position with respect to the Holy Father. And doubtless there was an affectation of humility on the latter's part in taking for confessor a member of the humblest of the regular orders, a friend of the poor, a holy beggar of the roads. At the same time the friar certainly enjoyed a reputation for oratory; and hidden by a veil the Pope at times listened to his sermons; for although as infallible Sovereign Pontiff Leo XIII could not receive lessons from any priest, it was admitted that as a man he might reap profit by listening to good discourse. Nevertheless apart from his natural eloquence, the worthy friar was really a mere washer of souls, a confessor who listens and absolves without even remembering the impurities which he removes in the waters of penitence. And Pierre, finding him really so poor and such a cipher, did not insist on an intervention which he realised would be futile. All that day the young priest was haunted by the figure of that ingenuous lover of poverty, that delicious St. Francis, as Narcisse Habert was wont to say. Pierre had often wondered how such an apostle, so gentle towards both animate and inanimate creation, and so full of ardent charity for the wretched, could have arisen in a country of egotism and enjoyment like Italy, where the love of beauty alone has remained queen. Doubtless the times have changed; yet what a strong sap of love must have been needed in the old days, during the great sufferings of the middle ages, for such a consoler of the humble to spring from the popular soil and preach the gift of self to others, the renunciation of wealth, the horror of brutal force, the equality and obedience which would ensure the peace of the world. St. Francis trod the roads clad as one of the poorest, a rope girdling his grey gown and his bare feet shod with sandals, and he carried with him neither purse nor staff. And he and his brethren spoke aloud and freely, with sovereign florescence of poetry and boldness of truth, attacking the rich and the powerful, and daring even to denounce the priests of evil life, the debauched, simoniacal, and perjured bishops. A long cry of relief greeted the Franciscans, the people followed them in crowds--they were the friends, the liberators of all the humble ones who suffered. And thus, like revolutionaries, they at first so alarmed Rome, that the popes hesitated to authorise their Order. When they at last gave way it was assuredly with the hope of using this new force for their own profit, by conquering the whole vague mass of the lowly whose covert threats have ever growled through the ages, even in the most despotic times. And thenceforward in the sons of St. Francis the Church possessed an ever victorious army--a wandering army which spread over the roads, in the villages and through the towns, penetrating to the firesides of artisan and peasant, and gaining possession of all simple hearts. How great the democratic power of such an Order which had sprung from the very entrails of the people! And thence its rapid prosperity, its teeming growth in a few years, friaries arising upon all sides, and the third Order* so invading the secular population as to impregnate and absorb it. And that there was here a genuine growth of the soil, a vigorous vegetation of the plebeian stock was shown by an entire national art arising from it--the precursors of the Renascence in painting and even Dante himself, the soul of Italia's genius. * The Franciscans, like the Dominicans and others, admit, in addition to the two Orders of friars and nuns, a third Order comprising devout persons of either sex who have neither the vocation nor the opportunity for cloistered life, but live in the world, privately observing the chief principles of the fraternity with which they are connected. In central and southern Europe members of these third Orders are still numerous.--Trans. For some days now, in the Rome of the present time, Pierre had been coming into contact with those great Orders of the past. The Franciscans and the Dominicans were there face to face in their vast convents of prosperous aspect. But it seemed as if the humility of the Franciscans had in the long run deprived them of influence. Perhaps, too, their /role/ as friends and liberators of the people was ended since the people now undertook to liberate itself. And so the only real remaining battle was between the Dominicans and the Jesuits, both of whom still claimed to mould the world according to their particular views. Warfare between them was incessant, and Rome--the supreme power at the Vatican--was ever the prize for which they contended. But, although the Dominicans had St. Thomas on their side, they must have felt that their old dogmatic science was crumbling, compelled as they were each day to surrender a little ground to the Jesuits whose principles accorded better with the spirit of the century. And, in addition to these, there were the white-robed Carthusians, those very holy, pure, and silent meditators who fled from the world into quiet cells and cloisters, those despairing and consoled ones whose numbers may decrease but whose Order will live for ever, even as grief and desire for solitude will live. And then there were the Benedictines whose admirable rules have sanctified labour, passionate toilers in literature and science, once powerful instruments of civilisation, enlarging universal knowledge by their immense historical and critical works. These Pierre loved, and with them would have sought a refuge two centuries earlier, yet he was astonished to find them building on the Aventine a huge dwelling, for which Leo XIII has already given millions, as if the science of to-day and to-morrow were yet a field where they might garner harvests. But /cui bono/, when the workmen have changed, and dogmas are there to bar the road--dogmas which totter, no doubt, but which believers may not fling aside in order to pass onward? And finally came the swarm of less important Orders, hundreds in number; there were the Carmelites, the Trappists, the Minims, the Barnabites, the Lazzarists, the Eudists, the Mission Fathers, the Servites, the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine; there were the Bernadines, the Augustinians, the Theatines, the Observants, the Passionists, the Celestines, and the Capuchins, without counting the corresponding Orders of women or the Poor Clares, or the innumerable nuns like those of the Visitation and the Calvary. Each community had its modest or sumptuous dwelling, certain districts of Rome were entirely composed of convents, and behind the silent lifeless facades all those people buzzed, intrigued, and waged the everlasting warfare of rival interests and passions. The social evolution which produced them had long since ceased, still they obstinately sought to prolong their life, growing weaker and more useless day by day, destined to a slow agony until the time shall come when the new development of society will leave them neither foothold nor breathing space. And it was not only with the regulars that Pierre came in contact during his peregrinations through Rome; indeed, he more particularly had to deal with the secular clergy, and learnt to know them well. A hierarchical system which was still vigorously enforced maintained them in various ranks and classes. Up above, around the Pope, reigned the pontifical family, the high and noble cardinals and prelates whose conceit was great in spite of their apparent familiarity. Below them the parish clergy formed a very worthy middle class of wise and moderate minds; and here patriot priests were not rare. Moreover, the Italian occupation of a quarter of a century, by installing in the city a world of functionaries who saw everything that went on, had, curiously enough, greatly purified the private life of the Roman priesthood, in which under the popes women, beyond all question, played a supreme part. And finally one came to the plebeian clergy whom Pierre studied with curiosity, a collection of wretched, grimy, half-naked priests who like famished animals prowled around in search of masses, and drifted into disreputable taverns in the company of beggars and thieves. However, he was more interested by the floating population of foreign priests from all parts of Christendom--the adventurers, the ambitious ones, the believers, the madmen whom Rome attracted just as a lamp at night time attracts the insects of the gloom. Among these were men of every nationality, position, and age, all lashed on by their appetites and scrambling from morn till eve around the Vatican, in order to snap at the prey which they hoped to secure. He found them everywhere, and told himself with some shame that he was one of them, that the unit of his own personality served to increase the incredible number of cassocks that one encountered in the streets. Ah! that ebb and flow, that ceaseless tide of black gowns and frocks of every hue! With their processions of students ever walking abroad, the seminaries of the different nations would alone have sufficed to drape and decorate the streets, for there were the French and the English all in black, the South Americans in black with blue sashes, the North Americans in black with red sashes, the Poles in black with green sashes, the Greeks in blue, the Germans in red, the Scots in violet, the Romans in black or violet or purple, the Bohemians with chocolate sashes, the Irish with red lappets, the Spaniards with blue cords, to say nothing of all the others with broidery and bindings and buttons in a hundred different styles. And in addition there were the confraternities, the penitents, white, black, blue, and grey, with sleeveless frocks and capes of different hue, grey, blue, black, or white. And thus even nowadays Papal Rome at times seemed to resuscitate, and one could realise how tenaciously and vivaciously she struggled on in order that she might not disappear in the cosmopolitan Rome of the new era. However, Pierre, whilst running about from one prelate to another, frequenting priests and crossing churches, could not accustom himself to the worship, the Roman piety which astonished him when it did not wound him. One rainy Sunday morning, on entering Santa Maria Maggiore, he fancied himself in some waiting-room, a very splendid one, no doubt, but where God seemed to have no habitation. There was not a bench, not a chair in the nave, across which people passed, as they might pass through a railway station, wetting and soiling the precious mosaic pavement with their muddy shoes; and tired women and children sat round the bases of the columns, even as in railway stations one sees people sitting and waiting for their trains during the great crushes of the holiday season. And for this tramping throng of folks of small degree, who had looked in /en passant/, a priest was saying a low mass in a side chapel, before which a narrow file of standing people had gathered, extending across the nave, and recalling the crowds which wait in front of theatres for the opening of the doors. At the elevation of the host one and all inclined themselves devoutly, but almost immediately afterwards the gathering dispersed. And indeed why linger? The mass was said. Pierre everywhere found the same form of attendance, peculiar to the countries of the sun; the worshippers were in a hurry and only favoured the Deity with short familiar visits, unless it were a question of some gala scene at San Paolo or San Giovanni in Laterano or some other of the old basilicas. It was only at the Gesu, on another Sunday morning, that the young priest came upon a high-mass congregation, which reminded him of the devout throngs of the North. Here there were benches and women seated, a worldly warmth and cosiness under the luxurious, gilded, carved, and painted roof, whose tawny splendour is very fine now that time has toned down the eccentricities of the decoration. But how many of the churches were empty, among them some of the most ancient and venerable, San Clemente, Sant' Agnese, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, where during the offices one saw but a few believers of the neighbourhood. Four hundred churches were a good many for even Rome to people; and, indeed, some were merely attended on fixed ceremonial occasions, and a good many merely opened their doors once every year--on the feast day, that is, of their patron saint. Some also subsisted on the lucky possession of a fetish, an idol compassionate to human sufferings. Santa Maria in Ara Coeli possessed the miraculous little Jesus, the "Bambino," who healed sick children, and Sant' Agostino had the "Madonna del Parto," who grants a happy delivery to mothers. Then others were renowned for the holy water of their fonts, the oil of their lamps, the power of some wooden saint or marble virgin. Others again seemed forsaken, given up to tourists and the perquisites of beadles, like mere museums peopled with dead gods: Finally others disturbed one's faith by the suggestiveness of their aspects, as, for instance, that Santa Maria Rotonda, which is located in the Pantheon, a circular hall recalling a circus, where the Virgin remains the evident tenant of the Olympian deities. Pierre took no little interest in the churches of the poor districts, but did not find there the keen faith and the throngs he had hoped for. One afternoon, at Santa Maria in Trastevere, he heard the choir in full song, but the church was quite empty, and the chant had a most lugubrious sound in such a desert. Then, another day, on entering San Crisogono, he found it draped, probably in readiness for some festival on the morrow. The columns were cased with red damask, and between them were hangings and curtains alternately yellow and blue, white and red; and the young man fled from such a fearful decoration as gaudy as that of a fair booth. Ah! how far he was from the cathedrals where in childhood he had believed and prayed! On all sides he found the same type of church, the antique basilica accommodated to the taste of eighteenth-century Rome. Though the style of San Luigi dei Francesi is better, more soberly elegant, the only thing that touched him even there was the thought of the heroic or saintly Frenchmen, who sleep in foreign soil beneath the flags. And as he sought for something Gothic, he ended by going to see Santa Maria sopra Minerva,* which, he was told, was the only example of the Gothic style in Rome. Here his stupefaction attained a climax at sight of the clustering columns cased in stucco imitating marble, the ogives which dared not soar, the rounded vaults condemned to the heavy majesty of the dome style. No, no, thought he, the faith whose cooling cinders lingered there was no longer that whose brazier had invaded and set all Christendom aglow! However, Monsignor Fornaro whom he chanced to meet as he was leaving the church, inveighed against the Gothic style as rank heresy. The first Christian church, said the prelate, had been the basilica, which had sprung from the temple, and it was blasphemy to assert that the Gothic cathedral was the real Christian house of prayer, for Gothic embodied the hateful Anglo-Saxon spirit, the rebellious genius of Luther. At this a passionate reply rose to Pierre's lips, but he said nothing for fear that he might say too much. However, he asked himself whether in all this there was not a decisive proof that Catholicism was the very vegetation of Rome, Paganism modified by Christianity. Elsewhere Christianity has grown up in quite a different spirit, to such a point that it has risen in rebellion and schismatically turned against the mother-city. And the breach has ever gone on widening, the dissemblance has become more and more marked; and amidst the evolution of new societies, yet a fresh schism appears inevitable and proximate in spite of all the despairing efforts to maintain union. * So called because it occupies the site of a temple to Minerva.--Trans. While Pierre thus visited the Roman churches, he also continued his efforts to gain support in the matter of his book, his irritation tending to such stubbornness, that if in the first instance he failed to obtain an interview, he went back again and again to secure one, steadfastly keeping his promise to call in turn upon each cardinal of the Congregation of the Index. And as a cardinal may belong to several Congregations, it resulted that he gradually found himself roaming through those former ministries of the old pontifical government which, if less numerous than formerly, are still very intricate institutions, each with its cardinal-prefect, its cardinal-members, its consultative prelates, and its numerous employees. Pierre repeatedly had to return to the Cancelleria, where the Congregation of the Index meets, and lost himself in its world of staircases, corridors, and halls. From the moment he passed under the porticus he was overcome by the icy shiver which fell from the old walls, and was quite unable to appreciate the bare, frigid beauty of the palace, Bramante's masterpiece though it be, so purely typical of the Roman Renascence. He also knew the Propaganda where he had seen Cardinal Sarno; and, sent as he was hither and thither, in his efforts to gain over influential prelates, chance made him acquainted with the other Congregations, that of the Bishops and Regulars, that of the Rites and that of the Council. He even obtained a glimpse of the Consistorial, the Dataria,* and the sacred Penitentiary. All these formed part of the administrative mechanism of the Church under its several aspects--the government of the Catholic world, the enlargement of the Church's conquests, the administration of its affairs in conquered countries, the decision of all questions touching faith, morals, and individuals, the investigation and punishment of offences, the grant of dispensations and the sale of favours. One can scarcely imagine what a fearful number of affairs are each morning submitted to the Vatican, questions of the greatest gravity, delicacy, and intricacy, the solution of which gives rise to endless study and research. It is necessary to reply to the innumerable visitors who flock to Rome from all parts, and to the letters, the petitions, and the batches of documents which are submitted and require to be distributed among the various offices. And Pierre was struck by the deep and discreet silence in which all this colossal labour was accomplished; not a sound reaching the streets from the tribunals, parliaments, and factories for the manufacture of saints and nobles, whose mechanism was so well greased, that in spite of the rust of centuries and the deep and irremediable wear and tear, the whole continued working without clank or creak to denote its presence behind the walls. And did not that silence embody the whole policy of the Church, which is to remain mute and await developments? Nevertheless what a prodigious mechanism it was, antiquated no doubt, but still so powerful! And amidst those Congregations how keenly Pierre felt himself to be in the grip of the most absolute power ever devised for the domination of mankind. However much he might notice signs of decay and coming ruin he was none the less seized, crushed, and carried off by that huge engine made up of vanity and venality, corruption and ambition, meanness and greatness. And how far, too, he now was from the Rome that he had dreamt of, and what anger at times filled him amidst his weariness, as he persevered in his resolve to defend himself! * It is from the Dataria that bulls, rescripts, letters of appointment to benefices, and dispensations of marriage, are issued, after the affixture of the date and formula /Datum Romae/, "Given at Rome."--Trans. All at once certain things which he had never understood were explained to him. One day, when he returned to the Propaganda, Cardinal Sarno spoke to him of Freemasonry with such icy rage that he was abruptly enlightened. Freemasonry had hitherto made him smile; he had believed in it no more than he had believed in the Jesuits. Indeed, he had looked upon the ridiculous stories which were current--the stories of mysterious, shadowy men who governed the world with secret incalculable power--as mere childish legends. In particular he had been amazed by the blind hatred which maddened certain people as soon as Freemasonry was mentioned. However, a very distinguished and intelligent prelate had declared to him, with an air of profound conviction, that at least on one occasion every year each masonic Lodge was presided over by the Devil in person, incarnate in a visible shape! And now, by Cardinal Sarno's remarks, he understood the rivalry, the furious struggle of the Roman Catholic Church against that other Church, the Church of over the way.* Although the former counted on her own triumph, she none the less felt that the other, the Church of Freemasonry, was a competitor, a very ancient enemy, who indeed claimed to be more ancient than herself, and whose victory always remained a possibility. And the friction between them was largely due to the circumstance that they both aimed at universal sovereignty, and had a similar international organisation, a similar net thrown over the nations, and in a like way mysteries, dogmas, and rites. It was deity against deity, faith against faith, conquest against conquest: and so, like competing tradesmen in the same street, they were a source of mutual embarrassment, and one of them was bound to kill the other. But if Roman Catholicism seemed to Pierre to be worn out and threatened with ruin, he remained quite as sceptical with regard to the power of Freemasonry. He had made inquiries as to the reality of that power in Rome, where both Grand Master and Pope were enthroned, one in front of the other. He was certainly told that the last Roman princes had thought themselves compelled to become Freemasons in order to render their own difficult position somewhat easier and facilitate the future of their sons. But was this true? had they not simply yielded to the force of the present social evolution? And would not Freemasonry eventually be submerged by its own triumph--that of the ideas of justice, reason, and truth, which it had defended through the dark and violent ages of history? It is a thing which constantly happens; the victory of an idea kills the sect which has propagated it, and renders the apparatus with which the members of the sect surrounded themselves, in order to fire imaginations, both useless and somewhat ridiculous. Carbonarism did not survive the conquest of the political liberties which it demanded; and on the day when the Catholic Church crumbles, having accomplished its work of civilisation, the other Church, the Freemasons' Church of across the road, will in a like way disappear, its task of liberation ended. Nowadays the famous power of the Lodges, hampered by traditions, weakened by a ceremonial which provokes laughter, and reduced to a simple bond of brotherly agreement and mutual assistance, would be but a sorry weapon of conquest for humanity, were it not that the vigorous breath of science impels the nations onwards and helps to destroy the old religions. * Some readers may think the above passages an exaggeration, but such is not the case. The hatred with which the Catholic priesthood, especially in Italy, Spain, and France, regards Freemasonry is remarkable. At the moment of writing these lines I have before me several French clerical newspapers, which contain the most abusive articles levelled against President Faure solely because he is a Freemason. One of these prints, a leading journal of Lyons, tells the French President that he cannot serve both God and the Devil; and that if he cannot give up Freemasonry he would do well to cease desecrating the abode of the Deity by his attendance at divine service.--Trans. However, all Pierre's journeyings and applications brought him no certainty; and, while stubbornly clinging to Rome, intent on fighting to the very end, like a soldier who will not believe in the possibility of defeat, he remained as anxious as ever. He had seen all the cardinals whose influence could be of use to him. He had seen the Cardinal Vicar, entrusted with the diocese of Rome, who, like the man of letters he was, had spoken to him of Horace, and, like a somewhat blundering politician, had questioned him about France, the Republic, the Army, and the Navy Estimates, without dealing in the slightest degree with the incriminated book. He had also seen the Grand Penitentiary, that tall old man, with fleshless, ascetic face, of whom he had previously caught a glimpse at the Boccanera mansion, and from whom he now only drew a long and severe sermon on the wickedness of young priests, whom the century had perverted and who wrote most abominable books. Finally, at the Vatican, he had seen the Cardinal Secretary, in some wise his Holiness's Minister of Foreign Affairs, the great power of the Holy See, whom he had hitherto been prevented from approaching by terrifying warnings as to the possible result of an unfavourable reception. However, whilst apologising for calling at such a late stage, he had found himself in presence of a most amiable man, whose somewhat rough appearance was softened by diplomatic affability, and who, after making him sit down, questioned him with an air of interest, listened to him, and even spoke some words of comfort. Nevertheless, on again reaching the Piazza of St. Peter's, Pierre well understood that his affair had not made the slightest progress, and that if he ever managed to force the Pope's door, it would not be by way of the Secretariate of State. And that evening he returned home quite exhausted by so many visits, in such distraction at feeling that little by little he had been wholly caught in that huge mechanism with its hundred wheels, that he asked himself in terror what he should do on the morrow now that there remained nothing for him to do--unless, indeed, it were to go mad. However, meeting Don Vigilio in a passage of the house, he again wished to ask him for some good advice. But the secretary, who had a gleam of terror in his eyes, silenced him, he knew not why, with an anxious gesture. And then in a whisper, in Pierre's ear, he said: "Have you seen Monsignor Nani? No! Well, go to see him, go to see him. I repeat that you have nothing else to do!" Pierre yielded. And indeed why should he have resisted? Apart from the motives of ardent charity which had brought him to Rome to defend his book, was he not there for a self-educating, experimental purpose? It was necessary that he should carry his attempts to the very end. On the morrow, when he reached the colonnade of St. Peter's, the hour was so early that he had to wait there awhile. He had never better realised the enormity of those four curving rows of columns, forming a forest of gigantic stone trunks among which nobody ever promenades. In fact, the spot is a grandiose and dreary desert, and one asks oneself the why and wherefore of such a majestic porticus. Doubtless, however, it was for its sole majesty, for the mere pomp of decoration, that this colonnade was reared; and therein, again, one finds the whole Roman spirit. However, Pierre at last turned into the Via di Sant' Offizio, and passing the sacristy of St. Peter's, found himself before the Palace of the Holy Office in a solitary silent district, which the footfall of pedestrians or the rumble of wheels but seldom disturbs. The sun alone lives there, in sheets of light which spread slowly over the small, white paving. You divine the vicinity of the Basilica, for there is a smell as of incense, a cloisteral quiescence as of the slumber of centuries. And at one corner the Palace of the Holy Office rises up with heavy, disquieting bareness, only a single row of windows piercing its lofty, yellow front. The wall which skirts a side street looks yet more suspicious with its row of even smaller casements, mere peep-holes with glaucous panes. In the bright sunlight this huge cube of mud-coloured masonry ever seems asleep, mysterious, and closed like a prison, with scarcely an aperture for communication with the outer world. Pierre shivered, but then smiled as at an act of childishness, for he reflected that the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition, nowadays the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, was no longer the institution it had been, the purveyor of heretics for the stake, the occult tribunal beyond appeal which had right of life and death over all mankind. True, it still laboured in secrecy, meeting every Wednesday, and judging and condemning without a sound issuing from within its walls. But on the other hand if it still continued to strike at the crime of heresy, if it smote men as well as their works, it no longer possessed either weapons or dungeons, steel or fire to do its bidding, but was reduced to a mere /role/ of protest, unable to inflict aught but disciplinary penalties even upon the ecclesiastics of its own Church. When Pierre on entering was ushered into the reception-room of Monsignor Nani who, as assessor, lived in the palace, he experienced an agreeable surprise. The apartment faced the south, and was spacious and flooded with sunshine. And stiff as was the furniture, dark as were the hangings, an exquisite sweetness pervaded the room, as though a woman had lived in it and accomplished the prodigy of imparting some of her own grace to all those stern-looking things. There were no flowers, yet there was a pleasant smell. A charm expanded and conquered every heart from the very threshold. Monsignor Nani at once came forward, with a smile on his rosy face, his blue eyes keenly glittering, and his fine light hair powdered by age. With hands outstretched, he exclaimed: "Ah! how kind of you to have come to see me, my dear son! Come, sit down, let us have a friendly chat." Then with an extraordinary display of affection, he began to question Pierre: "How are you getting on? Tell me all about it, exactly what you have done." Touched in spite of Don Vigilio's revelations, won over by the sympathy which he fancied he could detect, Pierre thereupon confessed himself, relating his visits to Cardinal Sarno, Monsignor Fornaro and Father Dangelis, his applications to all the influential cardinals, those of the Index, the Grand Penitentiary, the Cardinal Vicar, and the Cardinal Secretary; and dwelling on his endless journeys from door to door through all the Congregations and all the clergy, that huge, active, silent bee-hive amidst which he had wearied his feet, exhausted his limbs, and bewildered his poor brain. And at each successive Station of this Calvary of entreaty, Monsignor Nani, who seemed to listen with an air of rapture, exclaimed: "But that's very good, that's capital! Oh! your affair is progressing. Yes, yes, it's progressing marvellously well." He was exultant, though he allowed no unseemly irony to appear, while his pleasant, penetrating eyes fathomed the young priest, to ascertain if he had been brought to the requisite degree of obedience. Had he been sufficiently wearied, disillusioned and instructed in the reality of things, for one to finish with him? Had three months' sojourn in Rome sufficed to turn the somewhat mad enthusiast of the first days into an unimpassioned or at least resigned being? However, all at once Monsignor Nani remarked: "But, my dear son, you tell me nothing of his Eminence Cardinal Sanguinetti." "The fact is, Monseigneur, that his Eminence is at Frascati, so I have been unable to see him." Thereupon the prelate, as if once more postponing the /denouement/ with the secret enjoyment of an artistic /diplomate/, began to protest, raising his little plump hands with the anxious air of a man who considers everything lost: "Oh! but you must see his Eminence; it is absolutely necessary! Think of it! The Prefect of the Index! We can only act after your visit to him, for as you have not seen /him/ it is as if you had seen nobody. Go, go to Frascati, my dear son." And thereupon Pierre could only bow and reply: "I will go, Monseigneur." XI ALTHOUGH Pierre knew that he would be unable to see Cardinal Sanguinetti before eleven o'clock, he nevertheless availed himself of an early train, so that it was barely nine when he alighted at the little station of Frascati. He had already visited the place during his enforced idleness, when he had made the classical excursion to the Roman castles which extend from Frascati to Rocco di Papa, and from Rocco di Papa to Monte Cavo, and he was now delighted with the prospect of strolling for a couple of hours along those first slopes of the Alban hills, where, amidst rushes, olives, and vines, Frascati, like a promontory, overlooks the immense ruddy sea of the Campagna even as far as Rome, which, six full leagues away, wears the whitish aspect of a marble isle. Ah! that charming Frascati, on its greeny knoll at the foot of the wooded Tusculan heights, with its famous terrace whence one enjoys the finest view in the world, its old patrician villas with proud and elegant Renascence facades and magnificent parks, which, planted with cypress, pine, and ilex, are for ever green! There was a sweetness, a delight, a fascination about the spot, of which Pierre would have never wearied. And for more than an hour he had wandered blissfully along roads edged with ancient, knotty olive-trees, along dingle ways shaded by the spreading foliage of neighbouring estates, and along perfumed paths, at each turn of which the Campagna was seen stretching far away, when all at once he was accosted by a person whom he was both surprised and annoyed to meet. He had strolled down to some low ground near the railway station, some old vineyards where a number of new houses had been built of recent years, and suddenly saw a stylish pair-horse victoria, coming from the direction of Rome, draw up close by, whilst its occupant called to him: "What! Monsieur l'Abbe Froment, are you taking a walk here, at this early hour?" Thereupon Pierre recognised Count Luigi Prada, who alighted, shook hands with him and began to walk beside him, whilst the empty carriage went on in advance. And forthwith the Count explained his tastes: "I seldom take the train," he said, "I drive over. It gives my horses an outing. I have interests over here as you may know, a big building enterprise which is unfortunately not progressing very well. And so, although the season is advanced, I'm obliged to come rather more frequently than I care to do." As Prada suggested, Pierre was acquainted with the story. The Boccaneras had been obliged to sell a sumptuous villa which a cardinal of their family had built at Frascati in accordance with the plans of Giacomo della Porta, during the latter part of the sixteenth century: a regal summer-residence it had been, finely wooded, with groves and basins and cascades, and in particular a famous terrace projecting like a cape above the Roman Campagna whose expanse stretches from the Sabine mountains to the Mediterranean sands. Through the division of the property, Benedetta had inherited from her mother some very extensive vineyards below Frascati, and these she had brought as dowry to Prada at the very moment when the building mania was extending from Rome into the provinces. And thereupon Prada had conceived the idea of erecting on the spot a number of middle-class villas like those which litter the suburbs of Paris. Few purchasers, however, had come forward, the financial crash had supervened, and he was now with difficulty liquidating this unlucky business, having indemnified his wife at the time of their separation. "And then," he continued, addressing Pierre, "one can come and go as one likes with a carriage, whereas, on taking the train, one is at the mercy of the time table. This morning, for instance, I have appointments with contractors, experts, and lawyers, and I have no notion how long they will keep me. It's a wonderful country, isn't it? And we are quite right to be proud of it in Rome. Although I may have some worries just now, I can never set foot here without my heart beating with delight." A circumstance which he did not mention, was that his /amica/, Lisbeth Kauffmann, had spent the summer in one of the newly erected villas, where she had installed her studio and had been visited by all the foreign colony, which tolerated her irregular position on account of her gay spirits and artistic talent. Indeed, people had even ended by accepting the outcome of her connection with Prada, and a fortnight previously she had returned to Rome, and there given birth to a son--an event which had again revived all the scandalous tittle-tattle respecting Benedetta's divorce suit. And Prada's attachment to Frascati doubtless sprang from the recollection of the happy hours he had spent there, and the joyful pride with which the birth of the boy inspired him. Pierre, for his part, felt ill at ease in the young Count's presence, for he had an instinctive hatred of money-mongers and men of prey. Nevertheless, he desired to respond to his amiability, and so inquired after his father, old Orlando, the hero of the Liberation. "Oh!" replied Prada, "excepting for his legs he's in wonderfully good health. He'll live a hundred years. Poor father! I should so much have liked to install him in one of these little houses, last summer. But I could not get him to consent; he's determined not to leave Rome; he's afraid, perhaps, that it might be taken away from him during his absence." Then the young Count burst into a laugh, quite merry at the thought of jeering at the heroic but no longer fashionable age of independence. And afterwards he said, "My father was speaking of you again only yesterday, Monsieur l'Abbe. He is astonished that he has not seen you lately." This distressed Pierre, for he had begun to regard Orlando with respectful affection. Since his first visit, he had twice called on the old hero, but the latter had refused to broach the subject of Rome so long as his young friend should not have seen, felt, and understood everything. There would be time for a talk later on, said he, when they were both in a position to formulate their conclusions. "Pray tell Count Orlando," responded Pierre, "that I have not forgotten him, and that, if I have deferred a fresh visit, it is because I desire to satisfy him. However, I certainly will not leave Rome without going to tell him how deeply his kind greeting has touched me." Whilst talking, the two men slowly followed the ascending road past the newly erected villas, several of which were not yet finished. And when Prada learned that the priest had come to call on Cardinal Sanguinetti, he again laughed, with the laugh of a good-natured wolf, showing his white fangs. "True," he exclaimed, "the Cardinal has been here since the Pope has been laid up. Ah! you'll find him in a pretty fever." "Why?" "Why, because there's bad news about the Holy Father this morning. When I left Rome it was rumoured that he had spent a fearful night." So speaking, Prada halted at a bend of the road, not far from an antique chapel, a little church of solitary, mournful grace of aspect, on the verge of an olive grove. Beside it stood a ruinous building, the old parsonage, no doubt, whence there suddenly emerged a tall, knotty priest with coarse and earthy face, who, after roughly locking the door, went off in the direction of the town. "Ah!" resumed the Count in a tone of raillery, "that fellow's heart also must be beating violently; he's surely gone to your Cardinal in search of news." Pierre had looked at the priest. "I know him," he replied; "I saw him, I remember, on the day after my arrival at Cardinal Boccanera's. He brought the Cardinal a basket of figs and asked him for a certificate in favour of his young brother, who had been sent to prison for some deed of violence--a knife thrust if I recollect rightly. However, the Cardinal absolutely refused him the certificate." "It's the same man," said Prada, "you may depend on it. He was often at the Villa Boccanera formerly; for his young brother was gardener there. But he's now the client, the creature of Cardinal Sanguinetti. Santobono his name is, and he's a curious character, such as you wouldn't find in France, I fancy. He lives all alone in that falling hovel, and officiates at that old chapel of St. Mary in the Fields, where people don't go to hear mass three times in a year. Yes, it's a perfect sinecure, which with its stipend of a thousand francs enables him to live there like a peasant philosopher, cultivating the somewhat extensive garden whose big walls you see yonder." The close to which he called attention stretched down the slope behind the parsonage, without an aperture, like some savage place of refuge into which not even the eye could penetrate. And all that could be seen above the left-hand wall was a superb, gigantic fig-tree, whose big leaves showed blackly against the clear sky. Prada had moved on again, and continued to speak of Santobono, who evidently interested him. Fancy, a patriot priest, a Garibaldian! Born at Nemi, in that yet savage nook among the Alban hills, he belonged to the people and was still near to the soil. However, he had studied, and knew sufficient history to realise the past greatness of Rome, and dream of the re-establishment of Roman dominion as represented by young Italy. And he had come to believe, with passionate fervour, that only a great pope could realise his dream by seizing upon power, and then conquering all the other nations. And what could be easier, since the Pope commanded millions of Catholics? Did not half Europe belong to him? France, Spain, and Austria would give way as soon as they should see him powerful, dictating laws to the world. Germany and Great Britain, indeed all the Protestant countries, would also inevitably be conquered, for the papacy was the only dike that could be opposed to error, which must some day fatally succumb in its efforts against such a barrier. Politically, however, Santobono had declared himself for Germany, for he considered that France needed to be crushed before she would throw herself into the arms of the Holy Father. And thus contradictions and fancies clashed in his foggy brain, whose burning ideas swiftly turned to violence under the influence of primitive, racial fierceness. Briefly, the priest was a barbarian upholder of the Gospel, a friend of the humble and woeful, a sectarian of that school which is capable alike of great virtues and great crimes. "Yes," concluded Prada, "he is now devoted to Cardinal Sanguinetti because he believes that the latter will prove the great pope of to-morrow, who is to make Rome the one capital of the nations. At the same time he doubtless harbours a lower personal ambition, that of attaining to a canonry or of gaining assistance in the little worries of life, as when he wished to extricate his brother from trouble. Here, you know, people stake their luck on a cardinal just as they nurse a 'trey' in the lottery, and if their cardinal proves the winning number and becomes pope they gain a fortune. And that's why you now see Santobono striding along yonder, all anxiety to know if Leo XIII will die and Sanguinetti don the tiara." "Do you think the Pope so very ill, then?" asked Pierre, both anxious and interested. The Count smiled and raised both arms: "Ah!" said he, "can one ever tell? They all get ill when their interest lies that way. However, I believe that the Pope is this time really indisposed; a complaint of the bowels, it is said; and at his age, you know, the slightest indisposition may prove fatal." The two men took a few steps in silence, then the priest again asked a question: "Would Cardinal Sanguinetti have a great chance if the Holy See were vacant?" "A great chance! Ah! that's another of those things which one never knows. The truth is people class Sanguinetti among the acceptable candidates, and if personal desire sufficed he would certainly be the next pope, for ambition consumes him to the marrow, and he displays extraordinary passion and determination in his efforts to succeed. But therein lies his very weakness; he is using himself up, and he knows it. And so he must be resolved to every step during the last days of battle. You may be quite sure that if he has shut himself up here at this critical time, it is in order that he may the better direct his operations from a distance, whilst at the same time feigning a retreat, a disinterestedness which is bound to have a good effect." Then Prada began to expatiate on Sanguinetti with no little complacency, for he liked the man's spirit of intrigue, his keen, conquering appetite, his excessive, and even somewhat blundering activity. He had become acquainted with him on his return from the nunciature at Vienna, when he had already resolved to win the tiara. That ambition explained everything, his quarrels and reconciliations with the reigning pope, his affection for Germany, followed by a sudden evolution in the direction of France, his varying attitude with regard to Italy, at first a desire for agreement, and then absolute rejection of all compromises, a refusal to grant any concession, so long as Rome should not be evacuated. This, indeed, seemed to be Sanguinetti's definite position; he made a show of disliking the wavering sway of Leo XIII, and of retaining a fervent admiration for Pius IX, the great, heroic pope of the days of resistance, whose goodness of heart had proved no impediment to unshakable firmness. And all this was equivalent to a promise that he, Sanguinetti, would again make kindliness exempt from weakness, the rule of the Church, and would steer clear of the dangerous compounding of politics. At bottom, however, politics were his only dream, and he had even formulated a complete programme of intentional vagueness, which his clients and creatures spread abroad with an air of rapturous mystery. However, since a previous indisposition of the Pope's, during the spring, he had been living in mortal disquietude, for it had then been rumoured that the Jesuits would resign themselves to support Cardinal Pio Boccanera, although the latter scarcely favoured them. He was rough and stern, no doubt, and his extreme bigotry might be a source of danger in this tolerant age; but, on the other hand, was he not a patrician, and would not his election imply that the papacy would never cease to claim the temporal power? From that moment Boccanera had been the one man whom Sanguinetti feared, for he beheld himself despoiled of his prize, and spent his time in devising plans to rid himself of such a powerful rival, repeating abominable stories of Cardinal Pio's alleged complaisance with regard to Benedetta and Dario, and incessantly representing him as Antichrist, the man of sin, whose reign would consummate the ruin of the papacy. Finally, to regain the support of the Jesuits, Sanguinetti's last idea was to repeat through his familiars that for his part he would not merely maintain the principle of the temporal power intact, but would even undertake to regain that power. And he had a full plan on the subject, which folks confided to one another in whispers, a plan which, in spite of its apparent concessions, would lead to the overwhelming victory of the Church. It was to raise the prohibition which prevented Catholics from voting or becoming candidates at the Italian elections; to send a hundred, then two hundred, and then three hundred deputies to the Chamber, and in that wise to overthrow the House of Savoy, and establish a Federation of the Italian provinces, whereof the Holy Father, once more placed in possession of Rome, would become the august and sovereign President. As Prada finished he again laughed, showing his white teeth--teeth which would never readily relinquish the prey they held. "So you see," he added, "we need to defend ourselves, since it's a question of turning us out. Fortunately, there are some little obstacles in the way of that. Nevertheless, such dreams naturally have great influence on excited minds, such as that of Santobono, for instance. He's a man whom one word from Sanguinetti would lead far indeed. Ah! he has good legs. Look at him up yonder, he has already reached the Cardinal's little palace--that white villa with the sculptured balconies." Pierre raised his eyes and perceived the episcopal residence, which was one of the first houses of Frascati. Of modern construction and Renascence style, it overlooked the immensity of the Roman Campagna. It was now eleven o'clock, and as the young priest, before going up to pay his own visit, bade the Count good-bye, the latter for a moment kept hold of his hand. "Do you know," said he, "it would be very kind of you to lunch with me--will you? Come and join me at that restaurant yonder with the pink front as soon as you are at liberty. I shall have settled my own business in an hour's time, and I shall be delighted to have your company at table." Pierre began by declining, but he could offer no possible excuse, and at last surrendered, won over, despite himself, by Prada's real charm of manner. When they had parted, the young priest only had to climb a street in order to reach the Cardinal's door. With his natural expansiveness and craving for popularity, Sanguinetti was easy of access, and at Frascati in particular his doors were flung open even to the most humble cassocks. So Pierre was at once ushered in, a circumstance which somewhat surprised him, for he remembered the bad humour of the servant whom he had seen on calling at the Cardinal's residence in Rome, when he had been advised to forego the journey, as his Eminence did not like to be disturbed when he was ill. However, nothing spoke of illness in that pleasant villa, flooded with sunshine. True, the waiting-room, where he was momentarily left alone, displayed neither luxury nor comfort; but it was brightened by the finest light in the world, and overlooked that extraordinary Campagna, so flat, so bare, and so unique in its beauty, for in front of it one ever dreams and sees the past arise. And so, whilst waiting, Pierre stationed himself at an open window, conducting on to a balcony, and his eyes roamed over the endless sea of herbage to the far-away whiteness of Rome, above which rose the dome of St. Peter's, at that distance a mere sparkling speck, barely as large as the nail of one's little finger. However, the young man had scarcely taken up this position when he was surprised to hear some people talking, their words reaching him with great distinctness. And on leaning forward he realised that his Eminence in person was standing on another balcony close by, and conversing with a priest, only a portion of whose cassock could be seen. Still, this sufficed for Pierre to recognise Santobono. His first impulse, dictated by natural discretion, was to withdraw from the window, but the words he next heard riveted him to the spot. "We shall know in a moment," his Eminence was saying in his full voice. "I sent Eufemio to Rome, for he is the only person in whom I've any confidence. And see, there is the train bringing him back." A train, still as small as a plaything, could in fact be seen approaching over the vast plain, and doubtless it was to watch for its arrival that Sanguinetti had stationed himself on the balcony. And there he lingered, with his eyes fixed on distant Rome. Then Santobono, in a passionate voice, spoke some words which Pierre imperfectly understood, but the Cardinal with clear articulation rejoined, "Yes, yes, my dear fellow, a catastrophe would be a great misfortune. Ah! may his Holiness long be preserved to us." Then he paused, and as he was no hypocrite, gave full expression to the thoughts which were in his mind: "At least, I hope that he will be preserved just now, for the times are bad, and I am in frightful anguish. The partisans of Antichrist have lately gained much ground." A cry escaped Santobono: "Oh! your Eminence will act and triumph." "I, my dear fellow? What would you have me do? I am simply at the disposal of my friends, those who are willing to believe in me, with the sole object of ensuring the victory of the Holy See. It is they who ought to act, it is they--each according to the measure of his means--who ought to bar the road to the wicked in order that the righteous may succeed. Ah! if Antichrist should reign--" The recurrence of this word Antichrist greatly disturbed Pierre; but he suddenly remembered what the Count had told him: Antichrist was Cardinal Boccanera. "Think of that, my dear fellow," continued Sanguinetti. "Picture Antichrist at the Vatican, consummating the ruin of religion by his implacable pride, his iron will, his gloomy passion for nihility; for there can be no doubt of it, he is the Beast of Death announced by the prophecies, the Beast who will expose one and all to the danger of being swallowed up with him in his furious rush into abysmal darkness. I know him; he only dreams of obstinacy and destruction, he will seize the pillars of the temple and shake them in order that he may sink beneath the ruins, he and the whole Catholic world! In less than six months he will be driven from Rome, at strife with all the nations, execrated by Italy, and roaming the world like the phantom of the last pope!" It was with a low growl, suggestive of a stifled oath, that Santobono responded to this frightful prediction. But the train had now reached the station, and among the few passengers who had alighted, Pierre could distinguish a little Abbe, who was walking so fast that his cassock flapped against his hips. It was Abbe Eufemio, the Cardinal's secretary, and when he had perceived his Eminence on the balcony he lost all self-respect, and broke into a run, in order that he might the sooner ascend the sloping street. "Ah! here's Eufemio," exclaimed the Cardinal, quivering with anxiety. "We shall know now, we shall know now." The secretary had plunged into the doorway below, and he climbed the stairs with such rapidity that almost immediately afterwards Pierre saw him rush breathlessly across the waiting-room, and vanish into the Cardinal's sanctum. Sanguinetti had quitted the balcony to meet his messenger, but soon afterwards he returned to it asking questions, venting exclamations, raising, in fact, quite a tumult over the news which he had received. "And so it's really true, the night was a bad one. His Holiness scarcely slept! Colic, you were told? But nothing could be worse at his age; it might carry him off in a couple of hours. And the doctors, what do they say?" The answer did not reach Pierre, but he understood its purport as the Cardinal in his naturally loud voice resumed: "Oh! the doctors never know. Besides, when they refuse to speak death is never far off. /Dio/! what a misfortune if the catastrophe cannot be deferred for a few days!" Then he became silent, and Pierre realised that his eyes were once more travelling towards Rome, gazing with ambitious anguish at the dome of St. Peter's, that little, sparkling speck above the vast, ruddy plain. What a commotion, what agitation if the Pope were dead! And he wished that it had merely been necessary for him to stretch forth his arm in order to take and hold the Eternal City, the Holy City, which, yonder on the horizon, occupied no more space than a heap of gravel cast there by a child's spade. And he was already dreaming of the coming Conclave, when the canopy of each other cardinal would fall, and his own, motionless and sovereign, would crown him with purple. "But you are right, my friend!" he suddenly exclaimed, addressing Santobono, "one must act, the salvation of the Church is at stake. And, besides, it is impossible that Heaven should not be with us, since our sole desire is its triumph. If necessary, at the supreme moment, Heaven will know how to crush Antichrist." Then, for the first time, Pierre distinctly heard the voice of Santobono, who, gruffly, with a sort of savage decision, responded: "Oh! if Heaven is tardy it shall be helped." That was all; the young man heard nothing further save a confused murmur of voices. The speakers quitted the balcony, and his spell of waiting began afresh in the sunlit /salon/ so peaceful and delightful in its brightness. But all at once the door of his Eminence's private room was thrown wide open and a servant ushered him in; and he was surprised to find the Cardinal alone, for he had not witnessed the departure of the two priests, who had gone off by another door. The Cardinal, with his highly coloured face, big nose, thick lips, square-set, vigorous figure, which still looked young despite his sixty years, was standing near a window in the bright golden light. He had put on the paternal smile with which he greeted even the humblest from motives of good policy, and as soon as Pierre had knelt and kissed his ring, he motioned him to a chair. "Sit down, dear son, sit down. You have come of course about that unfortunate affair of your book. I am very pleased indeed to be able to speak with you about it." He himself then took a chair in front of that window overlooking Rome whence he seemed unable to drag himself. And the young priest, whilst apologising for coming to disturb his rest, perceived that he scarcely listened, for his eyes again sought the prey which he so ardently coveted. Yet the semblance of good-natured attention was perfect, and Pierre marvelled at the force of will which this man must possess to appear so calm, so interested in the affairs of others, when such a tempest was raging in him. "Your Eminence will, I hope, kindly forgive me," continued the young priest. "But you have done right to come, since I am kept here by my failing health," said the Cardinal. "Besides, I am somewhat better, and it is only natural that you should wish to give me some explanations and defend your work and enlighten my judgment. In fact, I was astonished at not yet having seen you, for I know that your faith in your cause is great and that you spare no steps to convert your judges. So speak, my dear son, I am listening and shall be pleased indeed if I can absolve you." Pierre was caught by these kind words, and a hope returned to him, that of winning the support of the all-powerful Prefect of the Index. He already regarded this ex-nuncio--who at Brussels and Vienna had acquired the worldly art of sending people away satisfied with indefinite promises though he meant to grant them nothing--as a man of rare intelligence and exquisite cordiality. And so once more he regained the fervour of his apostolate to express his views respecting the future Rome, the Rome he dreamt of, which was destined yet again to become the mistress of the world if she would return to the Christianity of Jesus, to an ardent love for the weak and the humble. Sanguinetti smiled, wagged his head, and raised exclamations of rapture: "Very good, very good indeed, perfect! Oh! I agree with you, dear son. One cannot put things better. It is quite evident; all good minds must agree with you." And then, said he, the poetic side deeply touched him. Like Leo XIII--and doubtless in a spirit of rivalry--he courted the reputation of being a very distinguished Latinist, and professed a special and boundless affection for Virgil. "I know, I know," he exclaimed, "I remember your page on the return of spring, which consoles the poor whom winter has frozen. Oh! I read it three times over! And are you aware that your writing is full of Latin turns of style. I noticed more than fifty expressions which could be found in the 'Bucolics.' Your book is a charm, a perfect charm!" As he was no fool, and realised that the little priest before him was a man of high intelligence, he ended by interesting himself, not in Pierre personally, but in the profit which he might possibly derive from him. Amidst his feverish intrigues, he unceasingly sought to utilise all the qualities possessed by those whom God sent to him that might in any way be conducive to his own triumph. So, for a moment, he turned away from Rome and looked his companion in the face, listening to him and asking himself in what way he might employ him--either at once in the crisis through which he was passing, or later on when he should be pope. But the young priest again made the mistake of attacking the temporal power, and of employing that unfortunate expression, "a new religion." Thereupon the Cardinal stopped him with a gesture, still smiling, still retaining all his amiability, although the resolution which he had long since formed became from that moment definitive. "You are certainly in the right on many points, my dear son," he said, "and I often share your views--share them completely. But come, you are doubtless not aware that I am the protector of Lourdes here at Rome. And so, after the page which you have written about the Grotto, how can I possibly pronounce in your favour and against the Fathers?" Pierre was utterly overcome by this announcement, for he was indeed unaware of the Cardinal's position with respect to Lourdes, nobody having taken the precaution to warn him. However, each of the Catholic enterprises distributed throughout the world has a protector at Rome, a cardinal who is designated by the Pope to represent it and, if need be, to defend it. "Those good Fathers!" Sanguinetti continued in a gentle voice, "you have caused them great grief, and really our hands are tied, we cannot add to their sorrow. If you only knew what a number of masses they send us! I know more than one of our poor priests who would die of hunger if it were not for them." Pierre could only bow beneath the blow. Once more he found himself in presence of the pecuniary question, the necessity in which the Holy See is placed to secure the revenue it requires one year with another. And thus the Pope was ever in servitude, for if the loss of Rome had freed him of the cares of state, his enforced gratitude for the alms he received still riveted him to earth. So great, indeed, were the requirements, that money was the ruler, the sovereign power, before which all bowed at the Court of Rome. And now Sanguinetti rose to dismiss his visitor. "You must not despair, dear son," he said effusively. "I have only my own vote, you know, and I promise you that I will take into account the excellent explanations which you have just given me. And who can tell? If God be with you, He will save you even in spite of all!" This speech formed part of the Cardinal's usual tactics; for one of his principles was never to drive people to extremes by sending them away hopeless. What good, indeed, would it do to tell this one that the condemnation of his book was a foregone conclusion, and that his only prudent course would be to disavow it? Only a savage like Boccanera breathed anger upon fiery souls and plunged them into rebellion. "You must hope, hope!" repeated Sanguinetti with a smile, as if implying a multitude of fortunate things which he could not plainly express. Thereupon Pierre, who was deeply touched, felt born anew. He even forgot the conversation he had surprised, the Cardinal's keen ambition and covert rage with his redoubtable rival. Besides, might not intelligence take the place of heart among the powerful? If this man should some day become pope, and had understood him, might he not prove the pope who was awaited, the pope who would accept the task of reorganising the Church of the United States of Europe, and making it the spiritual sovereign of the world? So he thanked him with emotion, bowed, and left him to his dream, standing before that widely open window whence Rome appeared to him, glittering like a jewel, even indeed as the tiara of gold and gems, in the splendour of the autumn sun. It was nearly one o'clock when Pierre and Count Prada were at last able to sit down to /dejeuner/ in the little restaurant where they had agreed to meet. They had both been delayed by their affairs. However, the Count, having settled some worrying matters to his own advantage, was very lively, whilst the priest on his side was again hopeful, and yielded to the delightful charm of that last fine day. And so the meal proved a very pleasant one in the large, bright room, which, as usual at that season of the year, was quite deserted. Pink and blue predominated in the decoration, but Cupids fluttered on the ceiling, and landscapes, vaguely recalling the Roman castles, adorned the walls. The things they ate were fresh, and they drank the wine of Frascati, to which the soil imparts a kind of burnt flavour as if the old volcanoes of the region had left some little of their fire behind. For a long while the conversation ranged over those wild and graceful Alban hills, which, fortunately for the pleasure of the eye, overlook the flat Roman Campagna. Pierre, who had made the customary carriage excursion from Frascati to Nemi, still felt its charm and spoke of it in glowing language. First came the lovely road from Frascati to Albano, ascending and descending hillsides planted with reeds, vines, and olive-trees, amongst which one obtained frequent glimpses of the Campagna's wavy immensity. On the right-hand the village of Rocca di Papa arose in amphitheatrical fashion, showing whitely on a knoll below Monte Cavo, which was crowned by lofty and ancient trees. And from this point of the road, on looking back towards Frascati, one saw high up, on the verge of a pine wood the ruins of Tusculum, large ruddy ruins, baked by centuries of sunshine, and whence the boundless panorama must have been superb. Next one passed through Marino, with its sloping streets, its large cathedral, and its black decaying palace belonging to the Colonnas. Then, beyond a wood of ilex-trees, the lake of Albano was skirted with scenery which has no parallel in the world. In front, beyond the clear mirror of motionless water, were the ruins of Alba Longa; on the left rose Monte Cavo with Rocca di Papa and Palazzuolo; whilst on the right Castel Gandolfo overlooked the lake as from the summit of a cliff. Down below in the extinct crater, as in the depths of a gigantic cup of verdure, the lake slept heavy and lifeless: a sheet of molten metal, which the sun on one side streaked with gold, whilst the other was black with shade. And the road then ascended all the way to Castel Gandolfo, which was perched on its rock, like a white bird betwixt the lake and the sea. Ever refreshed by breezes, even in the most burning hours of summer, the little place was once famous for its papal villa, where Pius IX loved to spend hours of indolence, and whither Leo XIII has never come. And next the road dipped down, and the ilex-trees appeared again, ilex-trees famous for their size, a double row of monsters with twisted limbs, two and three hundred years old. Then one at last reached Albano, a small town less modernised and less cleansed than Frascati, a patch of the old land which has retained some of its ancient wildness; and afterwards there was Ariccia with the Palazzo Chigi, and hills covered with forests and viaducts spanning ravines which overflowed with foliage; and there was yet Genzano, and yet Nemi, growing still wilder and more remote, lost in the midst of rocks and trees. Ah! how ineffaceable was the recollection which Pierre had retained of Nemi, Nemi on the shore of its lake, Nemi so delicious and fascinating from afar, conjuring up all the ancient legends of fairy towns springing from amidst the greenery of mysterious waters, but so repulsively filthy when one at last reaches it, crumbling on all sides but yet dominated by the Orsini tower, as by the evil genius of the middle ages, which there seems to perpetuate the ferocious habits, the violent passions, the knife thrusts of the past! Thence came that Santobono whose brother had killed, and who himself, with his eyes of crime glittering like live embers, seemed to be consumed by a murderous flame. And the lake, that lake round like an extinguished moon fallen into the depths of a former crater, a deeper and less open cup than that of the lake of Albano, a cup rimmed with trees of wondrous vigour and density! Pines, elms, and willows descend to the very margin, with a green mass of tangled branches which weigh each other down. This formidable fecundity springs from the vapour which constantly arises from the water under the parching action of the sun, whose rays accumulate in this hollow till it becomes like a furnace. There is a warm, heavy dampness, the paths of the adjacent gardens grow green with moss, and in the morning dense mists often fill the large cup with white vapour, as with the steaming milk of some sorceress of malevolent craft. And Pierre well remembered how uncomfortable he had felt before that lake where ancient atrocities, a mysterious religion with abominable rites, seemed to slumber amidst the superb scenery. He had seen it at the approach of evening, looking, in the shade of its forest girdle, like a plate of dull metal, black and silver, motionless by reason of its weight. And that water, clear and yet so deep, that water deserted, without a bark upon its surface, that water august, lifeless, and sepulchral, had left him a feeling of inexpressible sadness, of mortal melancholy, the hopelessness of great solitary passion, earth and water alike swollen by the mute spasms of germs, troublous in their fecundity. Ah! those black and plunging banks, and that black mournful lake prone at the bottom!* * Some literary interest attaches to M. Zola's account of Nemi, whose praises have been sung by a hundred poets. It will be observed that he makes no mention of Egeria. The religion distinguished by abominable practices to which he alludes, may perhaps be the worship of the Egyptian Diana, who had a famous temple near Nemi, which was excavated by Lord Savile some ten years ago, when all the smaller objects discovered were presented to the town of Nottingham. At this temple, according to some classical writers, the chief priest was required to murder his predecessor, and there were other abominable usages.--Trans. Count Prada began to laugh when Pierre told him of these impressions. "Yes, yes," said he, "it's true, Nemi isn't always gay. In dull weather I have seen the lake looking like lead, and even the full sunshine scarcely animates it. For my part, I know I should die of /ennui/ if I had to live face to face with that bare water. But it is admired by poets and romantic women, those who adore great tragedies of passion." Then, as he and Pierre rose from the table to go and take coffee on the terrace of the restaurant, the conversation changed: "Do you mean to attend Prince Buongiovanni's reception this evening?" the Count inquired. "It will be a curious sight, especially for a foreigner, and I advise you not to miss it." "Yes, I have an invitation," Pierre replied. "A friend of mine, Monsieur Narcisse Habert, an /attache/ at our embassy, procured it for me, and I am going with him." That evening, indeed, there was to be a /fete/ at the Palazzo Buongiovanni on the Corso, one of the few galas that take place in Rome each winter. People said that this one would surpass all others in magnificence, for it was to be given in honour of the betrothal of little Princess Celia. The Prince, her father, after boxing her ears, it was rumoured, and narrowly escaping an attack of apoplexy as the result of a frightful fit of anger, had, all at once, yielded to her quiet, gentle stubbornness, and consented to her marriage with Lieutenant Attilio, the son of Minister Sacco. And all the drawing-rooms of Rome, those of the white world quite as much as those of the black, were thoroughly upset by the tidings. Count Prada made merry over the affair. "Ah! you'll see a fine sight!" he exclaimed. "Personally, I'm delighted with it all for the sake of my good cousin Attilio, who is really a very nice and worthy fellow. And nothing in the world would keep me from going to see my dear uncle Sacco make his entry into the ancient /salons/ of the Buongiovanni. It will be something extraordinary and superb. He has at last become Minister of Agriculture, you know. My father, who always takes things so seriously, told me this morning that the affair so worried him he hadn't closed his eyes all night." The Count paused, but almost immediately added: "I say, it is half-past two and you won't have a train before five o'clock. Do you know what you ought to do? Why, drive back to Rome with me in my carriage." "No, no," rejoined Pierre, "I'm deeply obliged to you but I'm to dine with my friend Narcisse this evening, and I mustn't be late." "But you won't be late--on the contrary! We shall start at three and reach Rome before five o'clock. There can't be a more pleasant promenade when the light falls; and, come, I promise you a splendid sunset." He was so pressing that the young priest had to accept, quite subjugated by so much amiability and good humour. They spent another half-hour very pleasantly in chatting about Rome, Italy, and France. Then, for a moment, they went up into Frascati where the Count wished to say a few words to a contractor, and just as three o'clock was striking they started off, seated side by side on the soft cushions and gently rocked by the motion of the victoria as the two horses broke into a light trot. As Prada had predicted, that return to Rome across the bare Campagna under the vast limpid heavens at the close of such a mild autumn day proved most delightful. First of all, however, the victoria had to descend the slopes of Frascati between vineyards and olive-trees. The paved road snaked, and was but little frequented; they merely saw a few peasants in old felt hats, a white mule, and a cart drawn by a donkey, for it is only upon Sundays that the /osterie/ or wine-shops are filled and that artisans in easy circumstances come to eat a dish of kid at the surrounding /bastides/. However, at one turn of the road they passed a monumental fountain. Then a flock of sheep momentarily barred the way before defiling past. And beyond the gentle undulations of the ruddy Campagna Rome appeared amidst the violet vapours of evening, sinking by degrees as the carriage itself descended to a lower and lower level. There came a moment when the city was a mere thin grey streak, speckled whitely here and there by a few sunlit house-fronts. And then it seemed to plunge below the ground--to be submerged by the swell of the far-spreading fields. The victoria was now rolling over the plain, leaving the Alban hills behind, whilst before it and on either hand came the expanse of meadows and stubbles. And then it was that the Count, after leaning forward, exclaimed: "Just look ahead, yonder, there's our man of this morning, Santobono in person--what a strapping fellow he is, and how fast he walks! My horses can scarcely overtake him." Pierre in his turn leant forward and likewise perceived the priest of St. Mary in the Fields, looking tall and knotty, fashioned as it were with a bill-hook. Robed in a long black cassock, he showed like a vigorous splotch of ink amidst the bright sunshine streaming around him; and he was walking on at such a fast, stern, regular pace that he suggested Destiny on the march. Something, which could not be well distinguished, was hanging from his right arm. When the carriage had at last overtaken him Prada told the coachman to slacken speed, and then entered into conversation. "Good-day, Abbe; you are well, I hope?" he asked. "Very well, Signor Conte, I thank you." "And where are you going so bravely?" "Signor Conte, I am going to Rome." "What! to Rome, at this late hour?" "Oh! I shall be there nearly as soon as yourself. The distance doesn't frighten me, and money's quickly earned by walking." Scarcely turning his head to reply, stepping out beside the wheels, Santobono did not miss a stride. And Prada, diverted by the meeting, whispered to Pierre: "Wait a bit, he'll amuse us." Then he added aloud: "Since you are going to Rome, Abbe, you had better get in here; there's room for you." Santobono required no pressing, but at once accepted the offer. "Willingly; a thousand thanks," he said. "It's still better to save one's shoe leather." Then he got in and installed himself on the bracket-seat, declining with abrupt humility the place which Pierre politely offered him beside the Count. The young priest and the latter now saw that the object he was carrying was a little basket of fresh figs, nicely arranged and covered with leaves. The horses set off again at a faster trot, and the carriage rolled on and on over the superb, flat plain. "So you are going to Rome?" the Count resumed in order to make Santobono talk. "Yes," the other replied, "I am taking his Eminence Cardinal Boccanera these few figs, the last of the season: a little present which I had promised him." He had placed the basket on his knees and was holding it between his big knotty hands as if it were something rare and fragile. "Ah! some of the famous figs of your garden," said Prada. "It's quite true, they are like honey. But why don't you rid yourself of them. You surely don't mean to keep them on your knees all the way to Rome. Give them to me, I'll put them in the hood." However, Santobono became quite agitated, and vigorously declined the offer. "No, no, a thousand thanks! They don't embarrass me in the least; they are very well here; and in this way I shall be sure that no accident will befall them." His passion for the fruit he grew quite amused Prada, who nudged Pierre, and then inquired: "Is the Cardinal fond of your figs?" "Oh! his Eminence condescends to adore them. In former years, when he spent the summer at the villa, he would never touch the figs from other trees. And so, you see, knowing his tastes, it costs me very little to gratify him." Whilst making this reply Santobono had shot such a keen glance in the direction of Pierre that the Count felt it necessary to introduce them to one another. This he did saying: "As it happens, Monsieur l'Abbe Froment is stopping at the Palazzo Boccanera; he has been there for three months or so." "Yes, I'm aware of it," Santobono quietly replied; "I found Monsieur l'Abbe with his Eminence one day when I took some figs to the Palazzo. Those were less ripe, but these are perfect." So speaking he gave the little basket a complacent glance, and seemed to press it yet more closely between his huge and hairy fingers. Then came a spell of silence, whilst on either hand the Campagna spread out as far as the eye could reach. All houses had long since disappeared; there was not a wall, not a tree, nothing but the undulating expanse whose sparse, short herbage was, with the approach of winter, beginning to turn green once more. A tower, a half-fallen ruin which came into sight on the left, rising in solitude into the limpid sky above the flat, boundless line of the horizon, suddenly assumed extraordinary importance. Then, on the right, the distant silhouettes of cattle and horses were seen in a large enclosure with wooden rails. Urged on by the goad, oxen, still yoked, were slowly coming back from ploughing; whilst a farmer, cantering beside the ploughed land on a little sorrel nag, gave a final look round for the night. Now and again the road became peopled. A /biroccino/, an extremely light vehicle with two huge wheels and a small seat perched upon the springs, whisked by like a gust of wind. From time to time also the victoria passed a /carrotino/, one of the low carts in which peasants, sheltered by a kind of bright-hued tent, bring the wine, vegetables, and fruit of the castle-lands to Rome. The shrill tinkling of horses' bells was heard afar off as the animals followed the well-known road of their own accord, their peasant drivers usually being sound asleep. Women with bare, black hair, scarlet neckerchiefs, and skirts caught up, were seen going home in groups of three and four. And then the road again emptied, and the solitude became more and more complete, without a wayfarer or an animal appearing for miles and miles, whilst yonder, at the far end of the lifeless sea, so grandiose and mournful in its monotony, the sun continued to descend from the infinite vault of heaven. "And the Pope, Abbe, is he dead?" Prada suddenly inquired. Santobono did not even start. "I trust," he replied in all simplicity, "that his Holiness still has many long years to live for the triumph of the Church." "So you had good news this morning when you called on your bishop, Cardinal Sanguinetti?" This time the priest was unable to restrain a slight start. Had he been seen, then? In his haste he had failed to notice the two men following the road behind him. However, he at once regained self-possession, and replied: "Oh! one can never tell exactly whether news is good or bad. It seems that his Holiness passed a somewhat painful night, but I devoutly hope that the next will be a better one." Then he seemed to meditate for a moment, and added: "Moreover, if God should have deemed it time to call his Holiness to Himself, He would not leave His flock without a shepherd. He would have already chosen and designated the Sovereign Pontiff of to-morrow." This superb answer increased Prada's gaiety. "You are really extraordinary, Abbe," he said. "So you think that popes are solely created by the grace of the Divinity! The pope of to-morrow is chosen up in heaven, eh, and simply waits? Well, I fancied that men had something to do with the matter. But perhaps you already know which cardinal it is that the divine favour has thus elected in advance?" Then, like the unbeliever he was, he went on with his facile jests, which left the priest unruffled. In fact, the latter also ended by laughing when the Count, after alluding to the gambling passion which at each fresh Conclave sets wellnigh the whole population of Rome betting for or against this or that candidate, told him that he might easily make his fortune if he were in the divine secret. Next the talk turned on the three white cassocks of different sizes which are always kept in readiness in a cupboard at the Vatican. Which of them would be required on this occasion?--the short one, the long one, or the one of medium size? Each time that the reigning pope falls somewhat seriously ill there is in this wise an extraordinary outburst of emotion, a keen awakening of all ambitions and intrigues, to such a point that not merely in the black world, but throughout the city, people have no other subject of curiosity, conversation, and occupation than that of discussing the relative claims of the cardinals and predicting which of them will be elected. "Come, come," Prada resumed, "since you know the truth, I'm determined that you shall tell me. Will it be Cardinal Moretta?" Santobono, in spite of his evident desire to remain dignified and disinterested, like a good, pious priest, was gradually growing impassioned, yielding to the hidden fire which consumed him. And this interrogatory finished him off; he could no longer restrain himself, but replied: "Moretta! What an idea! Why, he is sold to all Europe!" "Well, will it be Cardinal Bartolini?" "Oh! you can't think that. Bartolini has used himself up in striving for everything and getting nothing." "Will it be Cardinal Dozio, then?" "Dozio, Dozio! Why, if Dozio were to win one might altogether despair of our Holy Church, for no man can have a baser mind than he!" Prada raised his hands, as if he had exhausted the serious candidates. In order to increase the priest's exasperation he maliciously refrained from naming Cardinal Sanguinetti, who was certainly Santobono's nominee. All at once, however, he pretended to make a good guess, and gaily exclaimed: "Ah! I have it; I know your man--Cardinal Boccanera!" The blow struck Santobono full in the heart, wounding him both in his rancour and his patriotic faith. His terrible mouth was already opening, and he was about to shout "No! no!" with all his strength, but he managed to restrain the cry, compelled as he was to silence by the present on his knees--that little basket of figs which he pressed so convulsively with both hands; and the effort which he was obliged to make left him quivering to such a point that he had to wait some time before he could reply in a calm voice: "His most reverend Eminence Cardinal Boccanera is a saintly man, well worthy of the throne, and my only fear is that, with his hatred of new Italy, he might bring us warfare." Prada, however, desired to enlarge the wound. "At all events," said he, "you accept him and love him too much not to rejoice over his chances of success. And I really think that we have arrived at the truth, for everybody is convinced that the Conclave's choice cannot fall elsewhere. Come, come; Boccanera is a very tall man, so it's the long white cassock which will be required." "The long cassock, the long cassock," growled Santobono, despite himself; "that's all very well, but--" Then he stopped short, and, again overcoming his passion, left his sentence unfinished. Pierre, listening in silence, marvelled at the man's self-restraint, for he remembered the conversation which he had overheard at Cardinal Sanguinetti's. Those figs were evidently a mere pretext for gaining admission to the Boccanera mansion, where some friend--Abbe Paparelli, no doubt--could alone supply certain positive information which was needed. But how great was the command which the hot-blooded priest exercised over himself amidst the riotous impulses of his soul! On either side of the road the Campagna still and ever spread its expanse of verdure, and Prada, who had become grave and dreamy, gazed before him without seeing anything. At last, however, he gave expression to his thoughts. "You know, Abbe, what will be said if the Pope should die this time. That sudden illness, those colics, those refusals to make any information public, mean nothing good--Yes, yes, poison, just as for the others!" Pierre gave a start of stupefaction. The Pope poisoned! "What! Poison? Again?" he exclaimed as he gazed at his companions with dilated eyes. Poison at the end of the nineteenth century, as in the days of the Borgias, as on the stage in a romanticist melodrama! To him the idea appeared both monstrous and ridiculous. Santobono, whose features had become motionless and impenetrable, made no reply. But Prada nodded, and the conversation was henceforth confined to him and the young priest. "Why, yes, poison," he replied. "The fear of it has remained very great in Rome. Whenever a death seems inexplicable, either by reason of its suddenness or the tragic circumstances which attend it, the unanimous thought is poison. And remark this: in no city, I believe, are sudden deaths so frequent. The causes I don't exactly know, but some doctors put everything down to the fevers. Among the people, however, the one thought is poison, poison with all its legends, poison which kills like lightning and leaves no trace, the famous recipe bequeathed from age to age, through the emperors and the popes, down to these present times of middle-class democracy." As he spoke he ended by smiling, for he was inclined to be somewhat sceptical on the point, despite the covert terror with which he was inspired by racial and educational causes. However, he quoted instances. The Roman matrons had rid themselves of their husbands and lovers by employing the venom of red toads. Locusta, in a more practical spirit, sought poison in plants, one of which, probably aconite, she was wont to boil. Then, long afterwards, came the age of the Borgias, and subsequently, at Naples, La Toffana sold a famous water, doubtless some preparation of arsenic, in phials decorated with a representation of St. Nicholas of Bari. There were also extraordinary stories of pins, a prick from which killed one like lightning, of cups of wine poisoned by the infusion of rose petals, of woodcocks cut in half with prepared knives, which poisoned but one-half of the bird, so that he who partook of that half was killed. "I myself, in my younger days," continued Prada, "had a friend whose bride fell dead in church during the marriage service through simply inhaling a bouquet of flowers. And so isn't it possible that the famous recipe may really have been handed down, and have remained known to a few adepts?" "But chemistry has made too much progress," Pierre replied. "If mysterious poisons were believed in by the ancients and remained undetected in their time it was because there were no means of analysis. But the drug of the Borgias would now lead the simpleton who might employ it straight to the Assizes. Such stories are mere nonsense, and at the present day people scarcely tolerate them in newspaper serials and shockers." "Perhaps so," resumed the Count with his uneasy smile. "You are right, no doubt--only go and tell that to your host, for instance, Cardinal Boccanera, who last summer held in his arms an old and deeply-loved friend, Monsignor Gallo, who died after a seizure of a couple of hours." "But apoplexy may kill one in two hours, and aneurism only takes two minutes." "True, but ask the Cardinal what he thought of his friend's prolonged shudders, the leaden hue which overcame his face, the sinking of his eyes, and the expression of terror which made him quite unrecognisable. The Cardinal is convinced that Monsignor Gallo was poisoned, because he was his dearest confidant, the counsellor to whom he always listened, and whose wise advice was a guarantee of success." Pierre's bewilderment was increasing, and, irritated by the impassibility of Santobono, he addressed him direct. "It's idiotic, it's awful! Does your reverence also believe in these frightful stories?" But the priest of Frascati gave no sign. His thick, passionate lips remained closed while his black glowing eyes never ceased to gaze at Prada. The latter, moreover, was quoting other instances. There was the case of Monsignor Nazzarelli, who had been found in bed, shrunken and calcined like carbon. And there was that of Monsignor Brando, struck down in his sacerdotal vestments at St. Peter's itself, in the very sacristy, during vespers! "Ah! /Mon Dieu/!" sighed Pierre, "you will tell me so much that I myself shall end by trembling, and sha'n't dare to eat anything but boiled eggs as long as I stay in this terrible Rome of yours." For a moment this whimsical reply enlivened both the Count and Pierre. But it was quite true that their conversation showed Rome under a terrible aspect, for it conjured up the Eternal City of Crime, the city of poison and the knife, where for more than two thousand years, ever since the raising of the first bit of wall, the lust of power, the frantic hunger for possession and enjoyment, had armed men's hands, ensanguined the pavements, and cast victims into the river and the ground. Assassinations and poisonings under the emperors, poisonings and assassinations under the popes, ever did the same torrent of abominations strew that tragic soil with death amidst the sovereign glory of the sun. "All the same," said the Count, "those who take precautions are perhaps not ill advised. It is said that more than one cardinal shudders and mistrusts people. One whom I know will never eat anything that has not been bought and prepared by his own cook. And as for the Pope, if he is anxious--" Pierre again raised a cry of stupefaction. "What, the Pope himself! The Pope afraid of being poisoned!" "Well, my dear Abbe, people commonly assert it. There are certainly days when he considers himself more menaced than anybody else. And are you not aware of the old Roman view that a pope ought never to live till too great an age, and that when he is so obstinate as not to die at the right time he ought to be assisted? As soon as a pope begins to fall into second childhood, and by reason of his senility becomes a source of embarrassment, and possibly even danger, to the Church, his right place is heaven. Moreover, matters are managed in a discreet manner; a slight cold becomes a decent pretext to prevent him from tarrying any longer on the throne of St. Peter." Prada then gave some curious details. One prelate, it was said, wishing to dispel his Holiness's fears, had devised an elaborate precautionary system which, among other things, was to comprise a little padlocked vehicle, in which the food destined for the frugal pontifical table was to be securely placed before leaving the kitchen, so that it might not be tampered with on its way to the Pope's apartments. However, this project had not yet been carried into effect. "After all," the Count concluded with a laugh, "every pope has to die some day, especially when his death is needful for the welfare of the Church. Isn't that so, Abbe?" Santobono, whom he addressed, had a moment previously lowered his eyes as if to contemplate the little basket of figs which he held on his lap with as much care as if it had been the Blessed Sacrament. On being questioned in such a direct, sharp fashion he could not do otherwise than look up. However, he did not depart from his prolonged silence, but limited his answer to a slow nod. "And it is God alone, and not poison, who causes one to die. Is that not so, Abbe?" repeated Prada. "It is said that those were the last words of poor Monsignor Gallo before he expired in the arms of his friend Cardinal Boccanera." For the second time Santobono nodded without speaking. And then silence fell, all three sinking into a dreamy mood. Meantime, without a pause, the carriage rolled on across the immensity of the Campagna. The road, straight as an arrow, seemed to extend into the infinite. As the sun descended towards the horizon the play of light and shade became more marked on the broad undulations of the ground which stretched away, alternately of a pinky green and a violet grey, till they reached the distant fringe of the sky. At the roadside on either hand there were still and ever tall withered thistles and giant fennel with yellow umbels. Then, after a time, came a team of four oxen, that had been kept ploughing until late, and stood forth black and huge in the pale atmosphere and mournful solitude. Farther on some flocks of sheep, whence the breeze wafted a tallowy odour, set patches of brown amidst the herbage, which once more was becoming verdant; whilst at intervals a dog was heard to bark, his voice the only distinct sound amidst the low quivering of that silent desert where the sovereign peacefulness of death seemed to reign. But all at once a light melody arose and some larks flew up, one of them soaring into the limpid golden heavens. And ahead, at the far extremity of the pure sky, Rome, with her towers and domes, grew larger and larger, like a city of white marble springing from a mirage amidst the greenery of some enchanted garden. "Matteo!" Prada called to his coachman, "pull up at the Osteria Romana." And to his companions he added: "Pray excuse me, but I want to see if I can get some new-laid eggs for my father. He is so fond of them." A few minutes afterwards the carriage stopped. At the very edge of the road stood a primitive sort of inn, bearing the proud and sonorous name of "Antica Osteria Romana." It had now become a mere house of call for carters and chance sportsmen, who ventured to drink a flagon of white wine whilst eating an omelet and a slice of ham. Occasionally, on Sundays, some of the humble classes would walk over from Rome and make merry there; but the week days often went by without a soul entering the place, such was its isolation amidst the bare Campagna. The Count was already springing from the carriage. "I shall only be a minute," said he as he turned away. The /osteria/ was a long, low pile with a ground floor and one upper storey, the last being reached by an outdoor stairway built of large blocks of stone which had been scorched by the hot suns. The entire place, indeed, was corroded, tinged with the hue of old gold. On the ground floor one found a common room, a cart-house, and a stable with adjoining sheds. At one side, near a cluster of parasol pines--the only trees that could grow in that ungrateful soil--there was an arbour of reeds where five or six rough wooden tables were set out. And, as a background to this sorry, mournful nook of life, there arose a fragment of an ancient aqueduct whose arches, half fallen and opening on to space, alone interrupted the flat line of the horizon. All at once, however, the Count retraced his steps, and, addressing Santobono, exclaimed: "I say, Abbe, you'll surely accept a glass of white wine. I know that you are a bit of a vine grower, and they have a little white wine here which you ought to make acquaintance with." Santobono again required no pressing, but quietly alighted. "Oh! I know it," said he; "it's a wine from Marino; it's grown in a lighter soil than ours at Frascati." Then, as he would not relax his hold on his basket of figs, but even now carried it along with him, the Count lost patience. "Come, you don't want that basket," said he; "leave it in the carriage." The priest gave no reply, but walked ahead, whilst Pierre also made up his mind to descend from the carriage in order to see what a suburban /osteria/ was like. Prada was known at this place, and an old woman, tall, withered, but looking quite queenly in her wretched garments, had at once presented herself. On the last occasion when the Count had called she had managed to find half a dozen eggs. This time she said she would go to see, but could promise nothing, for the hens laid here and there all over the place, and she could never tell what eggs there might be. "All right!" Prada answered, "go and look; and meantime we will have a /caraffa/ of white wine." The three men entered the common room, which was already quite dark. Although the hot weather was now over, one heard the buzzing of innumerable flies immediately one reached the threshold, and a pungent odour of acidulous wine and rancid oil caught one at the throat. As soon as their eyes became accustomed to the dimness they were able to distinguish the spacious, blackened, malodorous chamber, whose only furniture consisted of some roughly made tables and benches. It seemed to be quite empty, so complete was the silence, apart from the buzz of the flies. However, two men were seated there, two wayfarers who remained mute and motionless before their untouched, brimming glasses. Moreover, on a low chair near the door, in the little light which penetrated from without, a thin, sallow girl, the daughter of the house, sat idle, trembling with fever, her hands close pressed between her knees. Realising that Pierre felt uncomfortable there, the Count proposed that they should drink their wine outside. "We shall be better out of doors," said he, "it's so very in mild this evening." Accordingly, whilst the mother looked for the eggs, and the father mended a wheel in an adjacent shed, the daughter was obliged to get up shivering to carry the flagon of wine and the three glasses to the arbour, where she placed them on one of the tables. And, having pocketed the price of the wine--threepence--in silence, she went back to her seat with a sullen look, as if annoyed at having been compelled to make such a long journey. Meanwhile the three men had sat down, and Prada gaily filled each of the glasses, although Pierre declared that he was quite unable to drink wine between his meals. "Pooh, pooh," said the Count, "you can always clink glasses with us. And now, Abbe, isn't this little wine droll? Come, here's to the Pope's better health, since he's unwell!" Santobono at one gulp emptied his glass and clacked his tongue. With gentle, paternal care he had deposited his basket on the ground beside him: and, taking off his hat, he drew a long breath. The evening was really delightful. A superb sky of a soft golden hue stretched over that endless sea of the Campagna which was soon to fall asleep with sovereign quiescence. And the light breeze which went by amidst the deep silence brought with it an exquisite odour of wild herbs and flowers. "How pleasant it is!" muttered Pierre, affected by the surrounding charm. "And what a desert for eternal rest, forgetfulness of all the world!" Prada, who had emptied the flagon by filling Santobono's glass a second time, made no reply; he was silently amusing himself with an occurrence which at first he was the only one to observe. However, with a merry expression of complicity, he gave the young priest a wink, and then they both watched the dramatic incidents of the affair. Some scraggy fowls were wandering round them searching the yellow turf for grasshoppers; and one of these birds, a little shiny black hen with an impudent manner, had caught sight of the basket of figs and was boldly approaching it. When she got near, however, she took fright, and retreated somewhat, with neck stiffened and head turned, so as to cast suspicious glances at the basket with her round sparkling eye. But at last covetousness gained the victory, for she could see one of the figs between the leaves, and so she slowly advanced, lifting her feet very high at each step; and, all at once, stretching out her neck, she gave the fig a formidable peck, which ripped it open and made the juice exude. Prada, who felt as happy as a child, was then able to give vent to the laughter which he had scarcely been able to restrain: "Look out, Abbe," he called, "mind your figs!" At that very moment Santobono was finishing his second glass of wine with his head thrown back and his eyes blissfully raised to heaven. He gave a start, looked round, and on seeing the hen at once understood the position. And then came a terrible outburst of anger, with sweeping gestures and terrible invectives. But the hen, who was again pecking, would not be denied; she dug her beak into the fig and carried it off, flapping her wings, so quick and so comical that Prada, and Pierre as well, laughed till tears came into their eyes, their merriment increasing at sight of the impotent fury of Santobono, who, for a moment, pursued the thief, threatening her with his fist. "Ah!" said the Count, "that's what comes of not leaving the basket in the carriage. If I hadn't warned you the hen would have eaten all the figs." The priest did not reply, but, growling out vague imprecations, placed the basket on the table, where he raised the leaves and artistically rearranged the fruit so as to fill up the void. Then, the harm having been repaired as far as was possible, he at last calmed down. It was now time for them to resume their journey, for the sun was sinking towards the horizon, and night would soon fall. Thus the Count ended by getting impatient. "Well, and those eggs?" he called. Then, as the woman did not return, he went to seek her. He entered the stable, and afterwards the cart-house, but she was neither here nor there. Next he went towards the rear of the /osteria/ in order to look in the sheds. But all at once an unexpected spectacle made him stop short. The little black hen was lying on the ground, dead, killed as by lightning. She showed no sign of hurt; there was nothing but a little streamlet of violet blood still trickling from her beak. Prada was at first merely astonished. He stooped and touched the hen. She was still warm and soft like a rag. Doubtless some apoplectic stroke had killed her. But immediately afterwards he became fearfully pale; the truth appeared to him, and turned him as cold as ice. In a moment he conjured up everything: Leo XIII attacked by illness, Santobono hurrying to Cardinal Sanguinetti for tidings, and then starting for Rome to present a basket of figs to Cardinal Boccanera. And Prada also remembered the conversation in the carriage: the possibility of the Pope's demise, the candidates for the tiara, the legendary stories of poison which still fostered terror in and around the Vatican; and he once more saw the priest, with his little basket on his knees, lavishing paternal attention on it, and he saw the little black hen pecking at the fruit and fleeing with a fig on her beak. And now that little black hen lay there, suddenly struck down, dead! His conviction was immediate and absolute. But he did not have time to decide what course he should take, for a voice behind him exclaimed: "Why, it's the little hen; what's the matter with her?" The voice was that of Pierre, who, letting Santobono climb into the carriage alone, had in his turn come round to the rear of the house in order to obtain a better view of the ruined aqueduct among the parasol pines. Prada, who shuddered as if he himself were the culprit, answered him with a lie, a lie which he did not premeditate, but to which he was impelled by a sort of instinct. "But she's dead," he said. . . . "Just fancy, there was a fight. At the moment when I got here that other hen, which you see yonder, sprang upon this one to get the fig, which she was still holding, and with a thrust of the beak split her head open. . . . The blood's flowing, as you can see yourself." Why did he say these things? He himself was astonished at them whilst he went on inventing them. Was it then that he wished to remain master of the situation, keep the abominable secret entirely to himself, in order that he might afterwards act in accordance with his own desires? Certainly his feelings partook of shame and embarrassment in presence of that foreigner, whilst his personal inclination for violence set some admiration amidst the revolt of his conscience, and a covert desire arose within him to examine the matter from the standpoint of his interests before he came to a decision. But, on the other hand, he claimed to be a man of integrity, and would assuredly not allow people to be poisoned. Pierre, who was compassionately inclined towards all creation, looked at the hen with the emotion which he always felt at the sudden severance of life. However, he at once accepted Prada's story. "Ah! those fowls!" said he. "They treat one another with an idiotic ferocity which even men can scarcely equal. I kept fowls at home at one time, and one of the hens no sooner hurt her leg than all the others, on seeing the blood oozing, would flock round and peck at the limb till they stripped it to the bone." Prada, however, did not listen, but at once went off; and it so happened that the woman was, on her side, looking for him in order to hand him four eggs which, after a deal of searching, she had discovered in odd corners about the house. The Count made haste to pay for them, and called to Pierre, who was lingering behind: "We must look sharp! We sha'n't reach Rome now until it is quite dark." They found Santobono quietly waiting in the carriage, where he had again installed himself on the bracket with his spine resting against the box-seat and his long legs drawn back under him, and he again had the little basket of figs on his knees, and clasped it with his big knotty hands as though it were something fragile and rare which the slightest jolting might damage. His cassock showed like a huge blot, and in his coarse ashen face, that of a peasant yet near to the wild soil and but slightly polished by a few years of theological studies, his eyes alone seemed to live, glowing with the dark flame of a devouring passion. On seeing him seated there in such composure Prada could not restrain a slight shudder. Then, as soon as the victoria was again rolling along the road, he exclaimed: "Well, Abbe, that glass of wine will guarantee us against the malaria. The Pope would soon be cured if he could imitate our example." Santobono's only reply was a growl. He was in no mood for conversation, but wrapped himself in perfect silence, as in the night which was slowly falling. And Prada in his turn ceased to speak, and, with his eyes still fixed upon the other, reflected on the course that he should follow. The road turned, and then the carriage rolled on and on over another interminable straight highway with white paving, whose brilliancy made the road look like a ribbon of snow stretching across the Campagna, where delicate shadows were slowly falling. Gloom gathered in the hollows of the broad undulations whence a tide of violet hue seemed to spread over the short herbage until all mingled and the expanse became an indistinct swell of neutral hue from one to the other horizon. And the solitude was now yet more complete; a last indolent cart had gone by and a last tinkling of horses' bells had subsided in the distance. There was no longer a passer-by, no longer a beast of the fields to be seen, colour and sound died away, all forms of life sank into slumber, into the serene stillness of nihility. Some fragments of an aqueduct were still to be seen at intervals on the right hand, where they looked like portions of gigantic millepeds severed by the scythe of time; next, on the left, came another tower, whose dark and ruined pile barred the sky as with a huge black stake; and then the remains of another aqueduct spanned the road, assuming yet greater dimensions against the sunset glow. Ah! that unique hour, the hour of twilight in the Campagna, when all is blotted out and simplified, the hour of bare immensity, of the infinite in its simplest expression! There is nothing, nothing all around you, but the flat line of the horizon with the one splotch of an isolated tower, and yet that nothing is instinct with sovereign majesty. However, on the left, towards the sea, the sun was setting, descending in the limpid sky like a globe of fire of blinding redness. It slowly plunged beneath the horizon, and the only sign of cloud was some fiery vapour, as if indeed the distant sea had seethed at contact with that royal and flaming visit. And directly the sun had disappeared the heavens above it purpled and became a lake of blood, whilst the Campagna turned to grey. At the far end of the fading plain there remained only that purple lake whose brasier slowly died out behind the black arches of the aqueduct, while in the opposite direction the scattered arches remained bright and rosy against a pewter-like sky. Then the fiery vapour was dissipated, and the sunset ended by fading away. One by one the stars came out in the pacified vault, now of an ashen blue, while the lights of Rome, still far away on the verge of the horizon, scintillated like the lamps of light-houses. And Prada, amidst the dreamy silence of his companions and the infinite melancholy of the evening and the inexpressible distress which even he experienced, continued to ask himself what course he should adopt. Again and again he mentally repeated that he could not allow people to be poisoned. The figs were certainly intended for Cardinal Boccanera, and on the whole it mattered little to him whether there were a cardinal the more or the fewer in the world. Moreover, it had always seemed to him best to let Destiny follow its course; and, infidel that he was, he saw no harm in one priest devouring another. Again, it might be dangerous for him to intervene in that abominable affair, to mix himself up in the base, fathomless intrigues of the black world. But on the other hand the Cardinal was not the only person who lived in the Boccanera mansion, and might not the figs go to others, might they not be eaten by people to whom no harm was intended? This idea of a treacherous chance haunted him, and in spite of every effort the figures of Benedetta and Dario rose up before him, returned and imposed themselves on him though he again and again sought to banish them from his mind. What if Benedetta, what if Dario should partake of that fruit? For Benedetta he felt no fear, for he knew that she and her aunt ate their meals by themselves, and that their cuisine and the Cardinal's had nothing in common. But Dario sat at his uncle's table every day, and for a moment Prada, pictured the young Prince suddenly seized with a spasm, then falling, like poor Monsignor Gallo, into the Cardinal's arms with livid face and receding eyes, and dying within two hours. But no, no! That would be frightful, he could not suffer such an abomination. And thereupon he made up his mind. He would wait till the night had completely gathered round and would then simply take the basket from Santobono's lap and fling it into some dark hollow without saying a word. The priest would understand him. The other one, the young Frenchman, would perhaps not even notice the incident. Besides, that mattered little, for he would not even attempt to explain his action. And he felt quite calm again when the idea occurred to him to throw the basket away while the carriage passed through the Porta Furba, a couple of miles or so before reaching Rome. That would suit him exactly; in the darkness of the gateway nothing whatever would be seen. "We stopped too long at that /osteria/," he suddenly exclaimed aloud, turning towards Pierre. "We sha'n't reach Rome much before six o'clock. Still you will have time to dress and join your friend." And then without awaiting the young man's reply he said to Santobono: "Your figs will arrive very late, Abbe." "Oh!" answered the priest, "his Eminence receives until eight o'clock. And, besides, the figs are not for this evening. People don't eat figs in the evening. They will be for to-morrow morning." And thereupon he again relapsed into silence. "For to-morrow morning--yes, yes, no doubt," repeated Prada. "And the Cardinal will be able to thoroughly regale himself if nobody helps him to eat the fruit." Thereupon Pierre, without pausing to reflect, exclaimed: "He will no doubt eat it by himself, for his nephew, Prince Dario, must have started to-day for Naples on a little convalescence trip to rid himself of the effects of the accident which laid him up during the last month." Then, having got so far, the young priest remembered to whom he was speaking, and abruptly stopped short. The Count noticed his embarrassment. "Oh! speak on, my dear Monsieur Froment," said he, "you don't offend me. It's an old affair now. So that young man has left, you say?" "Yes, unless he has postponed his departure. However, I don't expect to find him at the palazzo when I get there." For a moment the only sound was that of the continuous rumble of the wheels. Prada again felt worried, a prey to the discomfort of uncertainty. Why should he mix himself up in the affair if Dario were really absent? All the ideas which came to him tired his brain, and he ended by thinking aloud: "If he has gone away it must be for propriety's sake, so as to avoid attending the Buongiovanni reception, for the Congregation of the Council met this morning to give its decision in the suit which the Countess has brought against me. Yes, I shall know by and by whether our marriage is to be dissolved." It was in a somewhat hoarse voice that he spoke these words, and one could realise that the old wound was again bleeding within him. Although Lisbeth had borne him a son, the charge levelled against him in his wife's petition for divorce still filled him with blind fury each time that he thought of it. And all at once he shuddered violently, as if an icy blast had darted through his frame. Then, turning the conversation, he added: "It's not at all warm this evening. This is the dangerous hour of the Roman climate, the twilight hour when it's easy to catch a terrible fever if one isn't prudent. Here, pull the rug over your legs, wrap it round you as carefully as you can." Then, as they drew near the Porta Furba, silence again fell, more profound, like the slumber which was invincibly spreading over the Campagna, now steeped in night. And at last, in the bright starlight, appeared the gate, an arch of the Acqua Felice, under which the road passed. From a distance, this fragment seemed to bar the way with its mass of ancient half-fallen walls. But afterwards the gigantic arch where all was black opened like a gaping porch. And the carriage passed under it in darkness whilst the wheels rumbled with increased sonority. When the victoria emerged on the other side, Santobono still had the little basket of figs upon his knees and Prada looked at it, quite overcome, asking himself what sudden paralysis of the hands had prevented him from seizing it and throwing it into the darkness. Such had still been his intention but a few seconds before they passed under the arch. He had even given the basket a final glance in order that he might the better realise what movements he should make. What had taken place within him then? At present he was yielding to increasing irresolution, henceforth incapable of decisive action, feeling a need of delay in order that he might, before everything else, fully satisfy himself as to what was likely to happen. And as Dario had doubtless gone away and the figs would certainly not be eaten until the following morning, what reason was there for him to hurry? He would know that evening if the Congregation of the Council had annulled his marriage, he would know how far the so-called "Justice of God" was venal and mendacious! Certainly he would suffer nobody to be poisoned, not even Cardinal Boccanera, though the latter's life was of little account to him personally. But had not that little basket, ever since leaving Frascati, been like Destiny on the march? And was it not enjoyment, the enjoyment of omnipotence, to be able to say to himself that he was the master who could stay that basket's course, or allow it to go onward and accomplish its deadly purpose? Moreover, he yielded to the dimmest of mental struggles, ceasing to reason, unable to raise his hand, and yet convinced that he would drop a warning note into the letter-box at the palazzo before he went to bed, though at the same time he felt happy in the thought that if his interest directed otherwise he would not do so. And the remainder of the journey was accomplished in silent weariness, amidst the shiver of evening which seemed to have chilled all three men. In vain did the Count endeavour to escape from the battle of his thoughts, by reverting to the Buongiovanni reception, and giving particulars of the splendours which would be witnessed at it: his words fell sparsely in an embarrassed and absent-minded way. Then he sought to inspirit Pierre by speaking to him of Cardinal Sanguinetti's amiable manner and fair words, but although the young priest was returning home well pleased with his journey, in the idea that with a little help he might yet triumph, he scarcely answered the Count, so wrapt he was in his reverie. And Santobono, on his side, neither spoke nor moved. Black like the night itself, he seemed to have vanished. However, the lights of Rome were increasing in number, and houses again appeared on either hand, at first at long intervals, and then in close succession. They were suburban houses, and there were yet more fields of reeds, quickset hedges, olive-trees overtopping long walls, and big gateways with vase-surmounted pillars; but at last came the city with its rows of small grey houses, its petty shops and its dingy taverns, whence at times came shouts and rumours of battle. Prada insisted on setting his companions down in the Via Giulia, at fifty paces from the palazzo. "It doesn't inconvenience me at all," said he to Pierre. "Besides, with the little time you have before you, it would never do for you to go on foot." The Via Giulia was already steeped in slumber, and wore a melancholy aspect of abandonment in the dreary light of the gas lamps standing on either hand. And as soon as Santobono had alighted from the carriage, he took himself off without waiting for Pierre, who, moreover, always went in by the little door in the side lane. "Good-bye, Abbe," exclaimed Prada. "Good-bye, Count, a thousand thanks," was Santobono's response. Then the two others stood watching him as he went towards the Boccanera mansion, whose old, monumental entrance, full of gloom, was still wide open. For a moment they saw his tall, rugged figure erect against that gloom. Then in he plunged, he and his little basket, bearing Destiny. XII IT was ten o'clock when Pierre and Narcisse, after dining at the Caffe di Roma, where they had long lingered chatting, at last walked down the Corso towards the Palazzo Buongiovanni. They had the greatest difficulty to reach its entrance, for carriages were coming up in serried files, and the inquisitive crowd of on-lookers, who pressed even into the roadway, in spite of the injunctions of the police, was growing so compact that even the horses could no longer approach. The ten lofty windows on the first floor of the long monumental facade shone with an intense white radiance, the radiance of electric lamps, which illumined the street like sunshine, spreading over the equipages aground in that human sea, whose billows of eager, excited faces rolled to and fro amidst an extraordinary tumult. And in all this there was not merely the usual curiosity to see uniforms go by and ladies in rich attire alight from their carriages, for Pierre soon gathered from what he heard that the crowd had come to witness the arrival of the King and Queen, who had promised to appear at the ball given by Prince Buongiovanni, in celebration of the betrothal of his daughter Celia to Lieutenant Attilio Sacco, the son of one of his Majesty's ministers. Moreover, people were enraptured with this marriage, the happy ending of a love story which had impassioned the whole city: to begin with, love at first sight, with the suddenness of a lightning-flash, and then stubborn fidelity triumphing over all obstacles, amidst romantic circumstances whose story sped from lip to lip, moistening every eye and stirring every heart. It was this story that Narcisse had related at dessert to Pierre, who already knew some portion of it. People asserted that if the Prince had ended by yielding after a final terrible scene, it was only from fear of seeing Celia elope from the palace with her lover. She did not threaten to do so, but, amidst her virginal calmness, there was so much contempt for everything foreign to her love, that her father felt her to be capable of acting with the greatest folly in all ingenuousness. Only indifference was manifested by the Prince's wife, a phlegmatic and still beautiful Englishwoman, who considered that she had done quite enough for the household by bringing her husband a dowry of five millions, and bearing him five children. The Prince, anxious and weak despite his violence, in which one found a trace of the old Roman blood, already spoilt by mixture with that of a foreign race, was nowadays ever influenced in his actions by the fear that his house and fortune--which hitherto had remained intact amidst the accumulated ruins of the /patriziato/--might suddenly collapse. And in finally yielding to Celia, he must have been guided by the idea of rallying to the new /regime/ through his daughter, so as to have one foot firmly set at the Quirinal, without withdrawing the other from the Vatican. It was galling, no doubt; his pride must have bled at the idea of allying his name with that of such low folks as the Saccos. But then Sacco was a minister, and had sped so quickly from success to success that it seemed likely he would rise yet higher, and, after the portfolio of Agriculture, secure that of Finances, which he had long coveted. And an alliance with Sacco meant the certain favour of the King, an assured retreat in that direction should the papacy some day collapse. Then, too, the Prince had made inquiries respecting the son, and was somewhat disarmed by the good looks, bravery, and rectitude of young Attilio, who represented the future, and possibly the glorious Italy of to-morrow. He was a soldier, and could be helped forward to the highest rank. And people spitefully added that the last reason which had influenced the Prince, who was very avaricious, and greatly worried by the thought that his fortune must be divided among his five children,* was that an opportunity presented itself for him to bestow a ridiculously small dowry on Celia. However, having consented to the marriage, he resolved to give a splendid /fete/, such as was now seldom witnessed in Rome, throwing his doors open to all the rival sections of society, inviting the sovereigns, and setting the palazzo ablaze as in the grand days of old. In doing this he would necessarily have to expend some of the money to which he clung, but a boastful spirit incited him to show the world that he at any rate had not been vanquished by the financial crisis, and that the Buongiovannis had nothing to hide and nothing to blush for. To tell the truth, some people asserted that this bravado had not originated with himself, but had been instilled into him without his knowledge by the quiet and innocent Celia, who wished to exhibit her happiness to all applauding Rome. * The Italian succession law is similar to the French. Children cannot be disinherited. All property is divided among them, and thus the piling up of large hereditary fortunes is prevented.--Trans. "Dear me!" said Narcisse, whom the throng prevented from advancing. "We shall never get in. Why, they seem to have invited the whole city." And then, as Pierre seemed surprised to see a prelate drive up in his carriage, the /attache/ added: "Oh! you will elbow more than one of them upstairs. The cardinals won't like to come on account of the presence of the King and Queen, but the prelates are sure to be here. This, you know, is a neutral drawing-room where the black and the white worlds can fraternise. And then too, there are so few /fetes/ that people rush on them." He went on to explain that there were two grand balls at Court every winter, but that it was only under exceptional circumstances that the /patriziato/ gave similar /galas/. Two or three of the black /salons/ were opened once in a way towards the close of the Carnival, but little dances among intimates replaced the pompous entertainments of former times. Some princesses moreover merely had their day. And as for the few white /salons/ that existed, these likewise retained the same character of intimacy, more or less mixed, for no lady had yet become the undisputed queen of the new society. "Well, here we are at last," resumed Narcisse as they eventually climbed the stairs. "Let us keep together," Pierre somewhat anxiously replied. "My only acquaintance is with the /fiancee/, and I want you to introduce me." However, a considerable effort was needed even to climb the monumental staircase, so great was the crush of arriving guests. Never, in the old days of wax candles and oil lamps, had this staircase offered such a blaze of light. Electric lamps, burning in clusters in superb bronze candelabra on the landings, steeped everything in a white radiance. The cold stucco of the walls was hidden by a series of lofty tapestries depicting the story of Cupid and Psyche, marvels which had remained in the family since the days of the Renascence. And a thick carpet covered the worn marble steps, whilst clumps of evergreens and tall spreading palms decorated every corner. An affluence of new blood warmed the antique mansion that evening; there was a resurrection of life, so to say, as the women surged up the staircase, smiling and perfumed, bare-shouldered, and sparkling with diamonds. At the entrance of the first reception-room Pierre at once perceived Prince and Princess Buongiovanni, standing side by side and receiving their guests. The Prince, a tall, slim man with fair complexion and hair turning grey, had the pale northern eyes of his American mother in an energetic face such as became a former captain of the popes. The Princess, with small, delicate, and rounded features, looked barely thirty, though she had really passed her fortieth year. And still pretty, displaying a smiling serenity which nothing could disconcert, she purely and simply basked in self-adoration. Her gown was of pink satin, and a marvellous parure of large rubies set flamelets about her dainty neck and in her fine, fair hair. Of her five children, her son, the eldest, was travelling, and three of the girls, mere children, were still at school, so that only Celia was present, Celia in a modest gown of white muslin, fair like her mother, quite bewitching with her large innocent eyes and her candid lips, and retaining to the very end of her love story the semblance of a closed lily of impenetrable, virginal mysteriousness. The Saccos had but just arrived, and Attilio, in his simple lieutenant's uniform, had remained near his betrothed, so naively and openly delighted with his great happiness that his handsome face, with its caressing mouth and brave eyes, was quite resplendent with youth and strength. Standing there, near one another, in the triumph of their passion they appeared like life's very joy and health, like the personification of hope in the morrow's promises; and the entering guests who saw them could not refrain from smiling and feeling moved, momentarily forgetting their loquacious and malicious curiosity to give their hearts to those chosen ones of love who looked so handsome and so enraptured. Narcisse stepped forward in order to present Pierre, but Celia anticipated him. Going to meet the young priest she led him to her father and mother, saying: "Monsieur l'Abbe Pierre Froment, a friend of my dear Benedetta." Ceremonious salutations followed. Then the young girl, whose graciousness greatly touched Pierre, said to him: "Benedetta is coming with her aunt and Dario. She must be very happy this evening! And you will also see how beautiful she will be." Pierre and Narcisse next began to congratulate her, but they could not remain there, the throng was ever jostling them; and the Prince and Princess, quite lost in the crush, had barely time to answer the many salutations with amiable, continuous nods. And Celia, after conducting the two friends to Attilio, was obliged to return to her parents so as to take her place beside them as the little queen of the /fete/. Narcisse was already slightly acquainted with Attilio, and so fresh congratulations ensued. Then the two friends manoeuvred to find a spot where they might momentarily tarry and contemplate the spectacle which this first /salon/ presented. It was a vast hall, hung with green velvet broidered with golden flowers, and contained a very remarkable collection of weapons and armour, breast-plates, battle-axes, and swords, almost all of which had belonged to the Buongiovannis of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. And amidst those stern implements of war there was a lovely sedan-chair of the last century, gilded and decorated with delicate paintings. It was in this chair that the Prince's great-grandmother, the celebrated Bettina, whose beauty was historical, had usually been carried to mass. On the walls, moreover, there were numerous historical paintings: battles, peace congresses, and royal receptions in which the Buongiovannis had taken part, without counting the many family portraits, tall and proud figures of sea-captains, commanders in the field, great dignitaries of the Church, prelates and cardinals, amongst whom, in the place of honour, appeared the family pope, the white-robed Buongiovanni whose accession to the pontifical throne had enriched a long line of descendants. And it was among those armours, near that coquettish sedan, and below those antique portraits, that the Saccos, husband and wife, had in their turn just halted, at a few steps from the master and mistress of the house, in order to secure their share of congratulations and bows. "Look over there!" Narcisse whispered to Pierre, "those are the Saccos in front of us, that dark little fellow and the lady in mauve silk." Pierre promptly recognised the bright face and pleasant smile of Stefana, whom he had already met at old Orlando's. But he was more interested in her husband, a dark dry man, with big eyes, sallow complexion, prominent chin, and vulturine nose. Like some gay Neapolitan "Pulcinello," he was dancing, shouting, and displaying such infectious good humour that it spread to all around him. He possessed a wonderful gift of speech, with a voice that was unrivalled as an instrument of fascination and conquest; and on seeing how easily he ingratiated himself with the people in that drawing-room, one could understand his lightning-like successes in the political world. He had manoeuvered with rare skill in the matter of his son's marriage, affecting such exaggerated delicacy of feeling as to set himself against the lovers, and declare that he would never consent to their union, as he had no desire to be accused of stealing a dowry and a title. As a matter of fact, he had only yielded after the Buongiovannis had given their consent, and even then he had desired to take the opinion of old Orlando, whose lofty integrity was proverbial. However, he knew right well that he would secure the old hero's approval in this particular affair, for Orlando made no secret of his opinion that the Buongiovannis ought to be glad to admit his grand-nephew into their family, as that handsome young fellow, with brave and healthy heart, would help to regenerate their impoverished blood. And throughout the whole affair, Sacco had shrewdly availed himself of Orlando's famous name, for ever talking of the relationship between them, and displaying filial veneration for this glorious founder of the country, as if indeed he had no suspicion that the latter despised and execrated him and mourned his accession to power in the conviction that he would lead Italy to shame and ruin. "Ah!" resumed Narcisse addressing Pierre, "he's one of those supple, practical men who care nothing for a smack in the face. It seems that unscrupulous individuals like himself become necessary when states get into trouble and have to pass through political, financial, and moral crises. It is said that Sacco with his imperturbable assurance and ingenious and resourceful mind has quite won the King's favour. Just look at him! Why, with that crowd of courtiers round him, one might think him the master of this palace!" And indeed the guests, after passing the Prince and Princess with a bow, at once congregated around Sacco, for he represented power, emoluments, pensions, and crosses; and if folks still smiled at seeing his dark, turbulent, and scraggy figure amidst that framework of family portraits which proclaimed the mighty ancestry of the Buongiovannis, they none the less worshipped him as the personification of the new power, the democratic force which was confusedly rising even from the old Roman soil where the /patriziato/ lay in ruins. "What a crowd!" muttered Pierre. "Who are all these people?" "Oh!" replied Narcisse, "it is a regular mixture. These people belong neither to the black nor the white world; they form a grey world as it were. The evolution was certain; a man like Cardinal Boccanera may retain an uncompromising attitude, but a whole city, a nation can't. The Pope alone will always say no and remain immutable. But everything around him progresses and undergoes transformation, so that in spite of all resistance, Rome will become Italian in a few years' time. Even now, whenever a prince has two sons only one of them remains on the side of the Vatican, the other goes over to the Quirinal. People must live, you see; and the great families threatened with annihilation have not sufficient heroism to carry obstinacy to the point of suicide. And I have already told you that we are here on neutral ground, for Prince Buongiovanni was one of the first to realise the necessity of conciliation. He feels that his fortune is perishing, he does not care to risk it either in industry or in speculation, and already sees it portioned out among his five children, by whose descendants it will be yet further divided; and this is why he prudently makes advances to the King without, however, breaking with the Pope. In this /salon/, therefore, you see a perfect picture of the /debacle/, the confusion which reigns in the Prince's ideas and opinions." Narcisse paused, and then began to name some of the persons who were coming in. "There's a general," said he, "who has become very popular since his last campaign in Africa. There will be a great many military men here this evening, for all Attilio's superiors have been invited, so as to give the young man an /entourage/ of glory. Ah! and there's the German ambassador. I fancy that nearly all the Corps Diplomatique will come on account of their Majesties' presence. But, by way of contrast, just look at that stout fellow yonder. He's a very influential deputy, a /parvenu/ of the new middle class. Thirty years ago he was merely one of Prince Albertini's farmers, one of those /mercanti di campagna/ who go about the environs of Rome in stout boots and a soft felt hat. And now look at that prelate coming in--" "Oh! I know him," Pierre interrupted. "He's Monsignor Fornaro." "Exactly, Monsignor Fornaro, a personage of some importance. You told me, I remember, that he is the reporter of the Congregation in that affair of your book. A most delightful man! Did you see how he bowed to the Princess? And what a noble and graceful bearing he has in his little mantle of violet silk!" Then Narcisse went on enumerating the princes and princesses, the dukes and duchesses, the politicians and functionaries, the diplomatists and ministers, and the officers and well-to-do middle-class people, who of themselves made up a most wonderful medley of guests, to say nothing of the representatives of the various foreign colonies, English people, Americans, Germans, Spaniards, and Russians, in a word, all ancient Europe, and both Americas. And afterwards the young man reverted to the Saccos, to the little Signora Sacco in particular, in order to tell Pierre of the heroic efforts which she had made to open a /salon/ for the purpose of assisting her husband's ambition. Gentle and modest as she seemed, she was also very shrewd, endowed with genuine qualities, Piedmontese patience and strength of resistance, orderly habits and thriftiness. And thus it was she who re-established the equilibrium in household affairs which her husband by his exuberance so often disturbed. He was indeed greatly indebted to her, though nobody suspected it. At the same time, however, she had so far failed in her attempts to establish a white /salon/ which should take the lead in influencing opinion. Only the people of her own set visited her, not a single prince ever came, and her Monday dances were the same as in a score of other middle-class homes, having no brilliancy and no importance. In fact, the real white /salon/, which should guide men and things and sway all Rome was still in dreamland. "Just notice her keen smile as she examines everything here," resumed Narcisse. "She's teaching herself and forming plans, I'm sure of it. Now that she is about to be connected with a princely family she probably hopes to receive some of the best society." Large as was the room, the crowd in it had by this time grown so dense that the two friends were pressed back to a wall, and felt almost stifled. The /attache/ therefore decided to lead the priest elsewhere, and as they walked along he gave him some particulars concerning the palace, which was one of the most sumptuous in Rome, and renowned for the magnificence of its reception-rooms. Dancing took place in the picture gallery, a superb apartment more than sixty feet long, with eight windows overlooking the Corso; while the buffet was installed in the Hall of the Antiques, a marble hall, which among other precious things contained a statue of Venus, rivalling the one at the Capitol. Then there was a suite of marvellous /salons/, still resplendent with ancient luxury, hung with the rarest stuffs, and retaining some unique specimens of old-time furniture, on which covetous antiquaries kept their eyes fixed, whilst waiting and hoping for the inevitable future ruin. And one of these apartments, the little Saloon of the Mirrors, was particularly famous. Of circular shape and Louis XV style, it was surrounded by mirrors in /rococo/ frames, extremely rich, and most exquisitely carved. "You will see all that by and by," continued Narcisse. "At present we had better go in here if we want to breathe a little. It is here that the arm-chairs from the adjacent gallery have been brought for the accommodation of the ladies who desire to sit down and be seen and admired." The apartment they entered was a spacious one, draped with the most superb Genoese velvet, that antique /jardiniere/ velvet with pale satin ground, and flowers once of dazzling brightness, whose greens and blues and reds had now become exquisitely soft, with the subdued, faded tones of old floral love-tokens. On the pier tables and in the cabinets all around were some of the most precious curios in the palace, ivory caskets, gilt and painted wood carvings, pieces of antique plate--briefly, a collection of marvels. And several ladies, fleeing the crush, had already taken refuge on the numerous seats, clustering in little groups, and laughing and chatting with the few gentlemen who had discovered this retreat of grace and /galanterie/. In the bright glow of the lamps nothing could be more delightful than the sight of all those bare, sheeny shoulders, and those supple necks, above whose napes were coiled tresses of fair or raven hair. Bare arms emerged like living flowers of flesh from amidst the mingling lace and silk of soft-hued bodices. The fans played slowly, as if to heighten the fires of the precious stones, and at each beat wafted around an /odore di femina/ blended with a predominating perfume of violets. "Hallo!" exclaimed Narcisse, "there's our good friend Monsignor Nani bowing to the Austrian ambassadress." As soon as Nani perceived the young priest and his companion he came towards them, and the trio then withdrew into the embrasure of a window in order that they might chat for a moment at their ease. The prelate was smiling like one enchanted with the beauty of the /fete/, but at the same time he retained all the serenity of innocence, as if he had not even noticed the exhibition of bare shoulders by which he was surrounded. "Ah, my dear son!" he said to Pierre, "I am very pleased to see you! Well, and what do you think of our Rome when she makes up her mind to give /fetes/?" "Why, it is superb, Monseigneur." Then, in an emotional manner, Nani spoke of Celia's lofty piety; and, in order to give the Vatican the credit of this sumptuous /gala/, affected to regard the Prince and Princess as staunch adherents of the Church, as if he were altogether unaware that the King and Queen were presently coming. And afterwards he abruptly exclaimed: "I have been thinking of you all day, my dear son. Yes, I heard that you had gone to see his Eminence Cardinal Sanguinetti. Well, and how did he receive you?" "Oh! in a most paternal manner," Pierre replied. "At first he made me understand the embarrassment in which he was placed by his position as protector of Lourdes; but just as I was going off he showed himself charming, and promised me his help with a delicacy which deeply touched me." "Did he indeed, my dear son? But it doesn't surprise me, his Eminence is so good-hearted!" "And I must add, Monseigneur, that I came back with a light and hopeful heart. It now seems to me as if my suit were half gained." "Naturally, I understand it," replied Nani, who was still smiling with that keen, intelligent smile of his, sharpened by a touch of almost imperceptible irony. And after a short pause he added in a very simple way: "The misfortune is that on the day before yesterday your book was condemned by the Congregation of the Index, which was convoked by its Secretary expressly for that purpose. And the judgment will be laid before his Holiness, for him to sign it, on the day after to-morrow." Pierre looked at the prelate in bewilderment. Had the old mansion fallen on his head he would not have felt more overcome. What! was it all over? His journey to Rome, the experiment he had come to attempt there, had resulted in that defeat, of which he was thus suddenly apprised amidst that betrothal /fete/. And he had not even been able to defend himself, he had sacrificed his time without finding any one to whom he might speak, before whom he might plead his cause! Anger was rising within him, and he could not prevent himself from muttering bitterly: "Ah! how I have been duped! And that Cardinal who said to me only this morning: 'If God be with you he will save you in spite of everything.' Yes, yes, I now understand him; he was juggling with words, he only desired a disaster in order that submission might lead me to Heaven! Submit, indeed, ah! I cannot, I cannot yet! My heart is too full of indignation and grief." Nani examined and studied him with curiosity. "But my dear son," he said, "nothing is final so long as the Holy Father has not signed the judgment. You have all to-morrow and even the morning of the day after before you. A miracle is always possible." Then, lowering his voice and drawing Pierre on one side whilst Narcisse in an aesthetical spirit examined the ladies, he added: "Listen, I have a communication to make to you in great secrecy. Come and join me in the little Saloon of the Mirrors by and by, during the Cotillon. We shall be able to talk there at our ease." Pierre nodded, and thereupon the prelate discreetly withdrew and disappeared in the crowd. However, the young man's ears were buzzing; he could no longer hope; what indeed could he accomplish in one day since he had lost three months without even being able to secure an audience with the Pope? And his bewilderment increased as he suddenly heard Narcisse speaking to him of art. "It's astonishing how the feminine figure has deteriorated in these dreadful democratic days. It's all fat and horribly common. Not one of those women yonder shows the Florentine contour, with small bosom and slender, elegant neck. Ah! that one yonder isn't so bad perhaps, the fair one with her hair coiled up, whom Monsignor Fornaro has just approached." For a few minutes indeed Monsignor Fornaro had been fluttering from beauty to beauty, with an amiable air of conquest. He looked superb that evening with his lofty decorative figure, blooming cheeks, and victorious affability. No unpleasant scandal was associated with his name; he was simply regarded as a prelate of gallant ways who took pleasure in the society of ladies. And he paused and chatted, and leant over their bare shoulders with laughing eyes and humid lips as if experiencing a sort of devout rapture. However, on perceiving Narcisse whom he occasionally met, he at once came forward and the /attache/ had to bow to him. "You have been in good health I hope, Monseigneur, since I had the honour of seeing you at the embassy." "Oh! yes, I am very well, very well indeed. What a delightful /fete/, is it not?" Pierre also had bowed. This was the man whose report had brought about the condemnation of his book; and it was with resentment that he recalled his caressing air and charming greeting, instinct with such lying promise. However, the prelate, who was very shrewd, must have guessed that the young priest was already acquainted with the decision of the Congregation, and have thought it more dignified to abstain from open recognition; for on his side he merely nodded and smiled at him. "What a number of people!" he went on, "and how many charming persons there are! It will soon be impossible for one to move in this room." All the seats in fact were now occupied by ladies, and what with the strong perfume of violets and the exhalations of warm necks and shoulders the atmosphere was becoming most oppressive. The fans flapped more briskly, and clear laughter rang out amidst a growing hubbub of conversation in which the same words constantly recurred. Some news, doubtless, had just arrived, some rumour was being whispered from group to group, throwing them all into feverish excitement. As it happened, Monsignor Fornaro, who was always well informed, desired to be the proclaimer of this news, which nobody as yet had ventured to announce aloud. "Do you know what is exciting them all?" he inquired. "Is it the Holy Father's illness?" asked Pierre in his anxiety. "Is he worse this evening?" The prelate looked at him in astonishment, and then somewhat impatiently replied: "Oh, no, no. His Holiness is much better, thank Heaven. A person belonging to the Vatican was telling me just now that he was able to get up this afternoon and receive his intimates as usual." "All the same, people have been alarmed," interrupted Narcisse. "I must confess that we did not feel easy at the embassy, for a Conclave at the present time would be a great worry for France. She would exercise no influence at it. It is a great mistake on the part of our Republican Government to treat the Holy See as of no importance! However, can one ever tell whether the Pope is ill or not? I know for a certainty that he was nearly carried off last winter when nobody breathed a word about any illness, whereas on the last occasion when the newspapers killed him and talked about a dreadful attack of bronchitis, I myself saw him quite strong and in the best of spirits! His reported illnesses are mere matters of policy, I fancy."* * There is much truth in this; but the reader must not imagine that the Pope is never ill. At his great age, indispositions are only natural.--Trans. With a hasty gesture, however, Monsignor Fornaro brushed this importunate subject aside. "No, no," said he, "people are tranquillised and no longer talk of it. What excites all those ladies is that the Congregation of the Council to-day voted the dissolution of the Prada marriage by a great majority." Again did Pierre feel moved. However, not having had time to see any members of the Boccanera family on his return from Frascati he feared that the news might be false and said so. Thereupon the prelate gave his word of honour that things were as he stated. "The news is certain," he declared. "I had it from a member of the Congregation." And then, all at once, he apologised and hurried off: "Excuse me but I see a lady whom I had not yet caught sight of, and desire to pay my respects to her." He at once hastened to the lady in question, and, being unable to sit down, inclined his lofty figure as if to envelop her with his gallant courtesy; whilst she, young, fresh, and bare-shouldered, laughed with a pearly laugh as his cape of violet silk lightly brushed her sheeny skin. "You know that person, don't you?" Narcisse inquired of Pierre. "No! Really? Why, that is Count Prada's /inamorata/, the charming Lisbeth Kauffmann, by whom he has just had a son. It's her first appearance in society since that event. She's a German, you know, and lost her husband here. She paints a little; in fact, rather nicely. A great deal is forgiven to the ladies of the foreign colony, and this one is particularly popular on account of the very affable manner in which she receives people at her little palazzo in the Via Principe Amedeo. As you may imagine, the news of the dissolution of that marriage must amuse her!" She looked really exquisite, that Lisbeth, very fair, rosy, and gay, with satiny skin, soft blue eyes, and lips wreathed in an amiable smile, which was renowned for its grace. And that evening, in her gown of white silk spangled with gold, she showed herself so delighted with life, so securely happy in the thought that she was free, that she loved and was loved in return, that the whispered tidings, the malicious remarks exchanged behind the fans of those around her, seemed to turn to her personal triumph. For a moment all eyes had sought her, and people talked of the outcome of her connection with Prada, the man whose manhood the Church solemnly denied by its decision of that very day! And there came stifled laughter and whispered jests, whilst she, radiant in her insolent serenity, accepted with a rapturous air the gallantry of Monsignor Fornaro, who congratulated her on a painting of the Virgin with the lily, which she had lately sent to a fine-art show. Ah! that matrimonial nullity suit, which for a year had supplied Rome with scandal, what a final hubbub it occasioned as the tidings of its termination burst forth amidst that ball! The black and white worlds had long chosen it as a battlefield for the exchange of incredible slander, endless gossip, the most nonsensical tittle-tattle. And now it was over; the Vatican with imperturbable impudence had pronounced the marriage null and void on the ground that the husband was no man, and all Rome would laugh over the affair, with that free scepticism which it displayed as soon as the pecuniary affairs of the Church came into question. The incidents of the struggle were already common property: Prada's feelings revolting to such a point that he had withdrawn from the contest, the Boccaneras moving heaven and earth in their feverish anxiety, the money which they had distributed among the creatures of the various cardinals in order to gain their influence, and the large sum which they had indirectly paid for the second and favourable report of Monsignor Palma. People said that, altogether, more than a hundred thousand francs had been expended, but this was not thought over-much, as a well-known French countess had been obliged to disburse nearly ten times that amount to secure the dissolution of her marriage. But then the Holy Father's need was so great! And, moreover, nobody was angered by this venality; it merely gave rise to malicious witticisms; and the fans continued waving in the increasing heat, and the ladies quivered with contentment as the whispered pleasantries took wing and fluttered over their bare shoulders. "Oh! how pleased the Contessina must be!" Pierre resumed. "I did not understand what her little friend, Princess Celia, meant by saying when we came in that she would be so happy and beautiful this evening. It is doubtless on that account that she is coming here, after cloistering herself all the time the affair lasted, as if she were in mourning." However, Lisbeth's eyes had chanced to meet those of Narcisse, and as she smiled at him he was, in his turn, obliged to pay his respects to her, for, like everybody else of the foreign colony, he knew her through having visited her studio. He was again returning to Pierre when a fresh outburst of emotion stirred the diamond aigrettes and the flowers adorning the ladies' hair. People turned to see what was the matter, and again did the hubbub increase. "Ah! it's Count Prada in person!" murmured Narcisse, with an admiring glance. "He has a fine bearing, whatever folks may say. Dress him up in velvet and gold, and what a splendid, unscrupulous, fifteenth-century adventurer he would make!" Prada entered the room, looking quite gay, in fact, almost triumphant. And above his large, white shirtfront, edged by the black of his coat, he really had a commanding, predacious expression, with his frank, stern eyes, and his energetic features barred by a large black moustache. Never had a more rapturous smile of sensuality revealed the wolfish teeth of his voracious mouth. With rapid glances he took stock of the women, dived into their very souls. Then, on seeing Lisbeth, who looked so pink, and fair, and girlish, his expression softened, and he frankly went up to her, without troubling in the slightest degree about the ardent, inquisitive eyes which were turned upon him. As soon as Monsignor Fornaro had made room, he stooped and conversed with the young woman in a low tone. And she no doubt confirmed the news which was circulating, for as he again drew himself erect, he laughed a somewhat forced laugh, and made an involuntary gesture. However, he then caught sight of Pierre, and joined him in the embrasure of the window; and when he had also shaken hands with Narcisse, he said to the young priest with all his wonted /bravura/: "You recollect what I told you as we were coming back from Frascati? Well, it's done, it seems, they've annulled my marriage. It's such an impudent, such an imbecile decision, that I still doubted it a moment ago!" "Oh! the news is certain," Pierre made bold to reply. "It has just been confirmed to us by Monsignor Fornaro, who had it from a member of the Congregation. And it is said that the majority was very large." Prada again shook with laughter. "No, no," said he, "such a farce is beyond belief! It's the finest smack given to justice and common-sense that I know of. Ah! if the marriage can also be annulled by the civil courts, and if my friend whom you see yonder be only willing, we shall amuse ourselves in Rome! Yes, indeed, I'd marry her at Santa Maria Maggiore with all possible pomp. And there's a dear little being in the world who would take part in the /fete/ in his nurse's arms!" He laughed too loud as he spoke, alluded in too brutal a fashion to his child, that living proof of his manhood. Was it suffering that made his lips curve upwards and reveal his white teeth? It could be divined that he was quivering, fighting against an awakening of covert, tumultuous passion, which he would not acknowledge even to himself. "And you, my dear Abbe?" he hastily resumed. "Do you know the other report? Do you know that the Countess is coming here?" It was thus, by force of habit, that he designated Benedetta, forgetting that she was no longer his wife. "Yes, I have just been told so," Pierre replied; and then he hesitated for a moment before adding, with a desire to prevent any disagreeable surprise: "And we shall no doubt see Prince Dario also, for he has not started for Naples as I told you. Something prevented his departure at the last moment, I believe. At least so I gathered from a servant." Prada no longer laughed. His face suddenly became grave, and he contented himself with murmuring: "Ah! so the cousin is to be of the party. Well, we shall see them, we shall see them both!" Then, whilst the two friends went on chatting, he became silent, as if serious considerations impelled him to reflect. And suddenly making a gesture of apology he withdrew yet farther into the embrasure in which he stood, pulled a note-book out of his pocket, and tore from it a leaf on which, without modifying his handwriting otherwise than by slightly enlarging it, he pencilled these four lines: "A legend avers that the fig tree of Judas now grows at Frascati, and that its fruit is deadly for him who may desire to become Pope. Eat not the poisoned figs, nor give them either to your servants or your fowls." Then he folded the paper, fastened it with a postage stamp, and wrote on it the address: "To his most Reverend and most Illustrious Eminence, Cardinal Boccanera." And when he had placed everything in his pocket again, he drew a long breath and once more called back his laugh. A kind of invincible discomfort, a far-away terror had momentarily frozen him. Without being guided by any clear train of reasoning, he had felt the need of protecting himself against any cowardly temptation, any possible abomination. He could not have told what course of ideas had induced him to write those four lines without a moment's delay, on the very spot where he stood, under penalty of contributing to a great catastrophe. But one thought was firmly fixed in his brain, that on leaving the ball he would go to the Via Giulia and throw that note into the letter-box at the Palazzo Boccanera. And that decided, he was once more easy in mind. "Why, what is the matter with you, my dear Abbe?" he inquired on again joining in the conversation of the two friends. "You are quite gloomy." And on Pierre telling him of the bad news which he had received, the condemnation of his book, and the single day which remained to him for action if he did not wish his journey to Rome to result in defeat, he began to protest as if he himself needed agitation and diversion in order to continue hopeful and bear the ills of life. "Never mind, never mind, don't worry yourself," said he, "one loses all one's strength by worrying. A day is a great deal, one can do ever so many things in a day. An hour, a minute suffices for Destiny to intervene and turn defeat into victory!" He grew feverish as he spoke, and all at once added, "Come, let's go to the ball-room. It seems that the scene there is something prodigious." Then he exchanged a last loving glance with Lisbeth whilst Pierre and Narcisse followed him, the three of them extricating themselves from their corner with the greatest difficulty, and then wending their way towards the adjoining gallery through a sea of serried skirts, a billowy expanse of necks and shoulders whence ascended the passion which makes life, the odour alike of love and of death. With its eight windows overlooking the Corso, their panes uncurtained and throwing a blaze of light upon the houses across the road, the picture gallery, sixty-five feet in length and more than thirty in breadth, spread out with incomparable splendour. The illumination was dazzling. Clusters of electric lamps had changed seven pairs of huge marble candelabra into gigantic /torcheres/, akin to constellations; and all along the cornice up above, other lamps set in bright-hued floral glasses formed a marvellous garland of flaming flowers: tulips, paeonies, and roses. The antique red velvet worked with gold, which draped the walls, glowed like a furnace fire. About the doors and windows there were hangings of old lace broidered with flowers in coloured silk whose hues had the very intensity of life. But the sight of sights beneath the sumptuous panelled ceiling adorned with golden roses, the unique spectacle of a richness not to be equalled, was the collection of masterpieces such as no museum could excel. There were works of Raffaelle and Titian, Rembrandt and Rubens, Velasquez and Ribera, famous works which in this unexpected illumination suddenly showed forth, triumphant with youth regained, as if awakened to the immortal life of genius. And, as their Majesties would not arrive before midnight, the ball had just been opened, and flights of soft-hued gowns were whirling in a waltz past all the pompous throng, the glittering jewels and decorations, the gold-broidered uniforms and the pearl-broidered robes, whilst silk and satin and velvet spread and overflowed upon every side. "It is prodigious, really!" declared Prada with his excited air; "let us go this way and place ourselves in a window recess again. There is no better spot for getting a good view without being too much jostled." They lost Narcisse somehow or other, and on reaching the desired recess found themselves but two, Pierre and the Count. The orchestra, installed on a little platform at the far end of the gallery, had just finished the waltz, and the dancers, with an air of giddy rapture, were slowly walking through the crowd when a fresh arrival caused every head to turn. Donna Serafina, arrayed in a robe of purple silk as if she had worn the colours of her brother the Cardinal, was making a royal entry on the arm of Consistorial-Advocate Morano. And never before had she laced herself so tightly, never had her waist looked so slim and girlish; and never had her stern, wrinkled face, which her white hair scarcely softened, expressed such stubborn and victorious domination. A discreet murmur of approval ran round, a murmur of public relief as it were, for all Roman society had condemned the unworthy conduct of Morano in severing a connection of thirty years to which the drawing-rooms had grown as accustomed as if it had been a legal marriage. The rupture had lasted for two months, to the great scandal of Rome where the cult of long and faithful affections still abides. And so the reconciliation touched every heart and was regarded as one of the happiest consequences of the victory which the Boccaneras had that day gained in the affair of Benedetta's marriage. Morano repentant and Donna Serafina reappearing on his arm, nothing could have been more satisfactory; love had conquered, decorum was preserved and good order re-established. But there was a deeper sensation as soon as Benedetta and Dario were seen to enter, side by side, behind the others. This tranquil indifference for the ordinary forms of propriety, on the very day when the marriage with Prada had been annulled, this victory of love, confessed and celebrated before one and all, seemed so charming in its audacity, so full of the bravery of youth and hope, that the pair were at once forgiven amidst a murmur of universal admiration. And as in the case of Celia and Attilio, all hearts flew to them, to their radiant beauty, to the wondrous happiness that made their faces so resplendent. Dario, still pale after his long convalescence, somewhat slight and delicate of build, with the fine clear eyes of a big child, and the dark curly beard of a young god, bore himself with a light pride, in which all the old princely blood of the Boccaneras could be traced. And Benedetta, she so white under her casque of jetty hair, she so calm and so sensible, wore her lovely smile, that smile so seldom seen on her face but which was irresistibly fascinating, transfiguring her, imparting the charm of a flower to her somewhat full mouth, and filling the infinite of her dark and fathomless eyes with a radiance as of heaven. And in this gay return of youth and happiness, an exquisite instinct had prompted her to put on a white gown, a plain girlish gown which symbolised her maidenhood, which told that she had remained through all a pure untarnished lily for the husband of her choice. And nothing of her form was to be seen, not a glimpse of bosom or shoulder. It was as if the impenetrable, redoubtable mystery of love, the sovereign beauty of woman slumbered there, all powerful, but veiled with white. Again, not a jewel appeared on her fingers or in her ears. There was simply a necklace falling about her /corsage/, but a necklace fit for royalty, the famous pearl necklace of the Boccaneras, which she had inherited from her mother, and which was known to all Rome--pearls of fabulous size cast negligently about her neck, and sufficing, simply as she was gowned, to make her queen of all. "Oh!" murmured Pierre in ecstasy, "how happy and how beautiful she is!" But he at once regretted that he had expressed his thoughts aloud, for beside him he heard a low plaint, an involuntary growl which reminded him of the Count's presence. However, Prada promptly stifled this cry of returning anguish, and found strength enough to affect a brutish gaiety: "The devil!" said he, "they have plenty of impudence. I hope we shall see them married and bedded at once!" Then regretting this coarse jest which had been prompted by the revolt of passion, he sought to appear indifferent: "She looks very nice this evening," he said; "she has the finest shoulders in the world, you know, and its a real success for her to hide them and yet appear more beautiful than ever." He went on speaking, contriving to assume an easy tone, and giving various little particulars about the Countess as he still obstinately called the young woman. However, he had drawn rather further into the recess, for fear, no doubt, that people might remark his pallor, and the painful twitch which contracted his mouth. He was in no state to fight, to show himself gay and insolent in presence of the joy which the lovers so openly and naively expressed. And he was glad of the respite which the arrival of the King and Queen at this moment offered him. "Ah! here are their Majesties!" he exclaimed, turning towards the window. "Look at the scramble in the street!" Although the windows were closed, a tumult could be heard rising from the footways. And Pierre on looking down saw, by the light of the electric lamps, a sea of human heads pour over the road and encompass the carriages. He had several times already seen the King during the latter's daily drives to the grounds of the Villa Borghese, whither he came like any private gentleman--unguarded, unescorted, with merely an aide-de-camp accompanying him in his victoria. At other times he drove a light phaeton with only a footman in black livery to attend him. And on one occasion Pierre had seen him with the Queen, the pair of them seated side by side like worthy middle-class folks driving abroad for pleasure. And, as the royal couple went by, the busy people in the streets and the promenaders in the public gardens contented themselves with wafting them an affectionate wave of the hand, the most expansive simply approaching to smile at them, and no one importuning them with acclamations. Pierre, who harboured the traditional idea of kings closely guarded and passing processionally with all the accompaniment of military pomp, was therefore greatly surprised and touched by the amiable /bonhomie/ of this royal pair, who went wherever they listed in full security amidst the smiling affection of their people. Everybody, moreover, had told him of the King's kindliness and simplicity, his desire for peace, and his passion for sport, solitude, and the open air, which, amidst the worries of power, must often have made him dream of a life of freedom far from the imperious duties of royalty for which he seemed unfitted.* But the Queen was yet more tenderly loved. So naturally and serenely virtuous that she alone remained ignorant of the scandals of Rome, she was also a woman of great culture and great refinement, conversant with every field of literature, and very happy in being so intelligent, so superior to those around her--a pre-eminence which she realised and which she was fond of showing, but in the most natural and most graceful of ways. * King Humbert inherited these tastes from his father Victor Emanuel, who was likewise a great sportsman and had a perfect horror of court life, pageantry, and the exigencies of politics.--Trans. Like Pierre, Prada had remained with his face to the window, and suddenly pointing to the crowd he said: "Now that they have seen the Queen they will go to bed well pleased. And there isn't a single police agent there, I'm sure. Ah! to be loved, to be loved!" Plainly enough his distress of spirit was coming back, and so, turning towards the gallery again, he tried to play the jester. "Attention, my dear Abbe, we mustn't miss their Majesties' entry. That will be the finest part of the /fete/!" A few minutes went by, and then, in the very midst of a polka, the orchestra suddenly ceased playing. But a moment afterwards, with all the blare of its brass instruments, it struck up the Royal March. The dancers fled in confusion, the centre of the gallery was cleared, and the King and Queen entered, escorted by the Prince and Princess Buongiovanni, who had received them at the foot of the staircase. The King was in ordinary evening dress, while the Queen wore a robe of straw-coloured satin, covered with superb white lace; and under the diadem of brilliants which encircled her beautiful fair hair, she looked still young, with a fresh and rounded face, whose expression was all amiability, gentleness, and wit. The music was still sounding with the enthusiastic violence of welcome. Behind her father and mother, Celia appeared amidst the press of people who were following to see the sight; and then came Attilio, the Saccos, and various relatives and official personages. And, pending the termination of the Royal March, only salutations, glances, and smiles were exchanged amidst the sonorous music and dazzling light; whilst all the guests crowded around on tip-toe, with outstretched necks and glittering eyes--a rising tide of heads and shoulders, flashing with the fires of precious stones. At last the march ended and the presentations began. Their Majesties were already acquainted with Celia, and congratulated her with quite affectionate kindliness. However, Sacco, both as minister and father, was particularly desirous of presenting his son Attilio. He bent his supple spine, and summoned to his lips the fine words which were appropriate, in such wise that he contrived to make the young man bow to the King in the capacity of a lieutenant in his Majesty's army, whilst his homage as a handsome young man, so passionately loved by his betrothed was reserved for Queen Margherita. Again did their Majesties show themselves very gracious, even towards the Signora Sacco who, ever modest and prudent, had remained in the background. And then occurred an incident that was destined to give rise to endless gossip. Catching sight of Benedetta, whom Count Prada had presented to her after his marriage, the Queen, who greatly admired her beauty and charm of manner, addressed her a smile in such wise that the young woman was compelled to approach. A conversation of some minutes' duration ensued, and the Contessina was favoured with some extremely amiable expressions which were perfectly audible to all around. Most certainly the Queen was ignorant of the event of the day, the dissolution of Benedetta's marriage with Prada, and her coming union with Dario so publicly announced at this /gala/, which now seemed to have been given to celebrate a double betrothal. Nevertheless that conversation caused a deep impression; the guests talked of nothing but the compliments which Benedetta had received from the most virtuous and intelligent of queens, and her triumph was increased by it all, she became yet more beautiful and more victorious amidst the happiness she felt at being at last able to bestow herself on the spouse of her choice, that happiness which made her look so radiant. But, on the other hand, the torture which Prada experienced now became intense. Whilst the sovereigns continued conversing, the Queen with the ladies who came to pay her their respects, the King with the officers, diplomatists, and other important personages who approached him, Prada saw none but Benedetta--Benedetta congratulated, caressed, exalted by affection and glory. Dario was near her, flushing with pleasure, radiant like herself. It was for them that this ball had been given, for them that the lamps shone out, for them that the music played, for them that the most beautiful women of Rome had bared their bosoms and adorned them with precious stones. It was for them that their Majesties had entered to the strains of the Royal March, for them that the /fete/ was becoming like an apotheosis, for them that a fondly loved queen was smiling, appearing at that betrothal /gala/ like the good fairy of the nursery tales, whose coming betokens life-long happiness. And for Prada, this wondrously brilliant hour when good fortune and joyfulness attained their apogee, was one of defeat. It was fraught with the victory of that woman who had refused to be his wife in aught but name, and of that man who now was about to take her from him: such a public, ostentatious, insulting victory that it struck him like a buffet in the face. And not merely did his pride and passion bleed for that: he felt that the triumph of the Saccos dealt a blow to his fortune. Was it true, then, that the rough conquerors of the North were bound to deteriorate in the delightful climate of Rome, was that the reason why he already experienced such a sensation of weariness and exhaustion? That very morning at Frascati in connection with that disastrous building enterprise he had realised that his millions were menaced, albeit he refused to admit that things were going badly with him, as some people rumoured. And now, that evening, amidst that /fete/ he beheld the South victorious, Sacco winning the day like one who feeds at his ease on the warm prey so gluttonously pounced upon under the flaming sun. And the thought of Sacco being a minister, an intimate of the King, allying himself by marriage to one of the noblest families of the Roman aristocracy, and already laying hands on the people and the national funds with the prospect of some day becoming the master of Rome and Italy--that thought again was a blow for the vanity of this man of prey, for the ever voracious appetite of this enjoyer, who felt as if he were being pushed away from table before the feast was over! All crumbled and escaped him, Sacco stole his millions, and Benedetta tortured his flesh, stirring up that awful wound of unsatisfied passion which never would be healed. Again did Pierre hear that dull plaint, that involuntary despairing growl, which had upset him once before. And he looked at the Count, and asked him: "Are you suffering?" But on seeing how livid was the face of Prada, who only retained his calmness by a superhuman effort, he regretted his indiscreet question, which, moreover, remained unanswered. And then to put the other more at ease, the young priest went on speaking, venting the thoughts which the sight before him inspired: "Your father was right," said he, "we Frenchmen whose education is so full of the Catholic spirit, even in these days of universal doubt, we never think of Rome otherwise than as the old Rome of the popes. We scarcely know, we can scarcely understand the great changes which, year by year, have brought about the Italian Rome of the present day. Why, when I arrived here, the King and his government and the young nation working to make a great capital for itself, seemed to me of no account whatever! Yes, I dismissed all that, thought nothing of it, in my dream of resuscitating a Christian and evangelical Rome, which should assure the happiness of the world." He laughed as he spoke, pitying his own artlessness, and then pointed towards the gallery where Prince Buongiovanni was bowing to the King whilst the Princess listened to the gallant remarks of Sacco: a scene full of symbolism, the old papal aristocracy struck down, the /parvenus/ accepted, the black and white worlds so mixed together that one and all were little else than subjects, on the eve of forming but one united nation. That conciliation between the Quirinal and the Vatican which in principle was regarded as impossible, was it not in practice fatal, in face of the evolution which went on day by day? People must go on living, loving, and creating life throughout the ages. And the marriage of Attilio and Celia would be the symbol of the needful union: youth and love triumphing over ancient hatred, all quarrels forgotten as a handsome lad goes by, wins a lovely girl, and carries her off in his arms in order that the world may last. "Look at them!" resumed Pierre, "how handsome and young and gay both the /fiances/ are, all confidence in the future. Ah! I well understand that your King should have come here to please his minister and win one of the old Roman families over to his throne; it is good, brave, and fatherly policy. But I like to think that he has also realised the touching significance of that marriage--old Rome, in the person of that candid, loving child giving herself to young Italy, that upright, enthusiastic young man who wears his uniform so jauntily. And may their nuptials be definitive and fruitful; from them and from all the others may there arise the great nation which, now that I begin to know you, I trust you will soon become!" Amidst the tottering of his former dream of an evangelical and universal Rome, Pierre expressed these good wishes for the Eternal City's future fortune with such keen and deep emotion that Prada could not help replying: "I thank you; that wish of yours is in the heart of every good Italian." But his voice quavered, for even whilst he was looking at Celia and Attilio, who stood smiling and talking together, he saw Benedetta and Dario approach them, wearing the same joyful expression of perfect happiness. And when the two couples were united, so radiant and so triumphant, so full of superb and happy life, he no longer had strength to stay there, see them, and suffer. "I am frightfully thirsty," he hoarsely exclaimed. "Let's go to the buffet to drink something." And, thereupon, in order to avoid notice, he so manoeuvred as to glide behind the throng, skirting the windows in the direction of the entrance to the Hall of the Antiques, which was beyond the gallery. Whilst Pierre was following him they were parted by an eddy of the crowd, and the young priest found himself carried towards the two loving couples who still stood chatting together. And Celia, on recognising him, beckoned to him in a friendly way. With her passionate cult for beauty, she was enraptured with the appearance of Benedetta, before whom she joined her little lily hands as before the image of the Madonna. "Oh! Monsieur l'Abbe," said she, "to please me now, do tell her how beautiful she is, more beautiful than anything on earth, more beautiful than even the sun, and the moon and stars. If you only knew, my dear, it makes me quiver to see you so beautiful as that, as beautiful as happiness, as beautiful as love itself!" Benedetta began to laugh, while the two young men made merry. "But you are as beautiful as I am, darling," said the Contessina. "And if we are beautiful it is because we are happy." "Yes, yes, happy," Celia gently responded. "Do you remember the evening when you told me that one didn't succeed in marrying the Pope and the King? But Attilio and I are marrying them, and yet we are very happy." "But we don't marry them, Dario and I! On the contrary!" said Benedetta gaily. "No matter; as you answered me that same evening, it is sufficient that we should love one another, love saves the world." When Pierre at last succeeded in reaching the door of the Hall of the Antiques, where the buffet was installed, he found Prada there, motionless, gazing despite himself on the galling spectacle which he desired to flee. A power stronger than his will had kept him there, forcing him to turn round and look, and look again. And thus, with a bleeding heart, he still lingered and witnessed the resumption of the dancing, the first figure of a quadrille which the orchestra began to play with a lively flourish of its brass instruments. Benedetta and Dario, Celia and Attilio were /vis-à-vis/. And so charming and delightful was the sight which the two couples presented dancing in the white blaze, all youth and joy, that the King and Queen drew near to them and became interested. And soon bravos of admiration rang out, while from every heart spread a feeling of infinite tenderness. "I'm dying of thirst, let's go!" repeated Prada, at last managing to wrench himself away from the torturing sight. He called for some iced lemonade and drank the glassful at one draught, gulping it down with the greedy eagerness of a man stricken with fever, who will never more be able to quench the burning fire within him. The Hall of the Antiques was a spacious room with mosaic pavement, and decorations of stucco; and a famous collection of vases, bas-reliefs, and statues, was disposed along its walls. The marbles predominated, but there were a few bronzes, and among them a dying gladiator of extreme beauty. The marvel however was the famous statue of Venus, a companion to that of the Capitol, but with a more elegant and supple figure and with the left arm falling loosely in a gesture of voluptuous surrender. That evening a powerful electric reflector threw a dazzling light upon the statue, which, in its divine and pure nudity, seemed to be endowed with superhuman, immortal life. Against the end-wall was the buffet, a long table covered with an embroidered cloth and laden with fruit, pastry, and cold meats. Sheaves of flowers rose up amidst bottles of champagne, hot punch, and iced /sorbetto/, and here and there were marshalled armies of glasses, tea-cups, and broth-bowls, a perfect wealth of sparkling crystal, porcelain, and silver. And a happy innovation had been to fill half of the hall with rows of little tables, at which the guests, in lieu of being obliged to refresh themselves standing, were able to sit down and order what they desired as in a cafe. At one of these little tables, Pierre perceived Narcisse seated near a young woman, whom Prada, on approaching, recognised to be Lisbeth. "You find me, you see, in delightful company," gallantly exclaimed the /attache/. "As we lost one another, I could think of nothing better than of offering madame my arm to bring her here." "It was, in fact, a good idea," said Lisbeth with her pretty laugh, "for I was feeling very thirsty." They had ordered some iced coffee, which they were slowly sipping out of little silver-gilt spoons. "I have a terrible thirst, too," declared the Count, "and I can't quench it. You will allow us to join you, will you not, my dear sir? Some of that coffee will perhaps calm me." And then to Lisbeth he added, "Ah! my dear, allow me to introduce to you Monsieur l'Abbe Froment, a young French priest of great distinction." Then for a long time they all four remained seated at that table, chatting and making merry over certain of the guests who went by. Prada, however, in spite of his usual gallantry towards Lisbeth, frequently became absent-minded; at times he quite forgot her, being again mastered by his anguish, and, in spite of all his efforts, his eyes ever turned towards the neighbouring gallery whence the sound of music and dancing reached him. "Why, what are you thinking of, /caro mio/?" Lisbeth asked in her pretty way, on seeing him at one moment so pale and lost. "Are you indisposed?" He did not reply, however, but suddenly exclaimed, "Ah! look there, that's the real pair, there's real love and happiness for you!" With a jerk of the hand he designated Dario's mother, the Marchioness Montefiori and her second husband, Jules Laporte--that ex-sergeant of the papal Swiss Guard, her junior by fifteen years, whom she had one day hooked at the Corso with her eyes of fire, which yet had remained superb, and whom she had afterwards triumphantly transformed into a Marquis Montefiori in order to have him entirely to herself. Such was her passion that she never relaxed her hold on him whether at ball or reception, but, despite all usages, kept him beside her, and even made him escort her to the buffet, so much did she delight in being able to exhibit him and say that this handsome man was her own exclusive property. And standing there side by side, the pair of them began to drink champagne and eat sandwiches, she yet a marvel of massive beauty although she was over fifty, and he with long wavy moustaches, and proud bearing, like a fortunate adventurer whose jovial impudence pleased the ladies. "You know that she had to extricate him from a nasty affair," resumed the Count in a lower tone. "Yes, he travelled in relics; he picked up a living by supplying relics on commission to convents in France and Switzerland; and he had launched quite a business in false relics with the help of some Jews here who concocted little ancient reliquaries out of mutton bones, with everything sealed and signed by the most genuine authorities. The affair was hushed up, as three prelates were also compromised in it! Ah! the happy man! Do you see how she devours him with her eyes? And he, doesn't he look quite a /grand seigneur/ by the mere way in which he holds that plate for her whilst she eats the breast of a fowl out of it!" Then, in a rough way and with biting irony, he went on to speak of the /amours/ of Rome. The Roman women, said he, were ignorant, obstinate, and jealous. When a woman had managed to win a man, she kept him for ever, he became her property, and she disposed of him as she pleased. By way of proof, he cited many interminable /liaisons/, such as that of Donna Serafina and Morano which, in time became virtual marriages; and he sneered at such a lack of fancy, such an excess of fidelity whose only ending, when it did end, was some very disagreeable unpleasantness. At this, Lisbeth interrupted him. "But what is the matter with you this evening, my dear?" she asked with a laugh. "What you speak of is on the contrary very nice and pretty! When a man and a woman love one another they ought to do so for ever!" She looked delightful as she spoke, with her fine wavy blonde hair and delicate fair complexion; and Narcisse with a languorous expression in his half-closed eyes compared her to a Botticelli which he had seen at Florence. However, the night was now far advanced, and Pierre had once more sunk into gloomy thoughtfulness when he heard a passing lady remark that they had already begun to dance the Cotillon in the gallery; and thereupon he suddenly remembered that Monsignor Nani had given him an appointment in the little Saloon of the Mirrors. "Are you leaving?" hastily inquired Prada on seeing him rise and bow to Lisbeth. "No, no, not yet," Pierre answered. "Oh! all right. Don't go away without me. I want to walk a little, and I'll see you home. It's agreed, eh? You will find me here." The young priest had to cross two rooms, one hung with yellow and the other with blue, before he at last reached the mirrored /salon/. This was really an exquisite example of the /rococo/ style, a rotunda as it were of pale mirrors framed with superb gilded carvings. Even the ceiling was covered with mirrors disposed slantwise so that on every side things multiplied, mingled, and appeared under all possible aspects. Discreetly enough no electric lights had been placed in the room, the only illumination being that of some pink tapers burning in a pair of candelabra. The hangings and upholstery were of soft blue silk, and the impression on entering was very sweet and charming, as if one had found oneself in the abode of some fairy queen of the rills, a palace of limpid water, illumined to its farthest depths by clusters of stars. Pierre at once perceived Monsignor Nani, who was sitting on a low couch, and, as the prelate had hoped, he was quite alone, for the Cotillon had attracted almost everybody to the picture gallery. And the silence in the little /salon/ was nearly perfect, for at that distance the blare of the orchestra subsided into a faint, flute-like murmur. The young priest at once apologised to the prelate for having kept him waiting. "No, no, my dear son," said Nani, with his inexhaustible amiability. "I was very comfortable in this retreat--when the press of the crowd became over-threatening I took refuge here." He did not speak of the King and Queen, but he allowed it to be understood that he had politely avoided their company. If he had come to the /fete/ it was on account of his sincere affection for Celia and also with a very delicate diplomatic object, for the Church wished to avoid any appearance of having entirely broken with the Buongiovanni family, that ancient house which was so famous in the annals of the papacy. Doubtless the Vatican was unable to subscribe to this marriage which seemed to unite old Rome with the young Kingdom of Italy, but on the other hand it did not desire people to think that it abandoned old and faithful supporters and took no interest in what befell them. "But come, my dear son," the prelate resumed, "it is you who are now in question. I told you that although the Congregation of the Index had pronounced itself for the condemnation of your book, the sentence would only be submitted to the Holy Father and signed by him on the day after to-morrow. So you still have a whole day before you." At this Pierre could not refrain from a dolorous and vivacious interruption. "Alas! Monseigneur, what can I do?" said he; "I have thought it all over, and I see no means, no opportunity of defending myself. How could I even see his Holiness now that he is so ill?" "Oh! ill, ill!" muttered Nani with his shrewd expression. "His Holiness is ever so much better, for this very day, like every other Wednesday, I had the honour to be received by him. When his Holiness is a little tired and people say that he is very ill, he often lets them do so, for it gives him a rest and enables him to judge certain ambitions and manifestations of impatience around him." Pierre, however, was too upset to listen attentively. "No, it's all over," he continued, "I'm in despair. You spoke to me of the possibility of a miracle, but I am no great believer in miracles. Since I am defeated here at Rome, I shall go away, I shall return to Paris, and continue the struggle there. Oh! I cannot resign myself, my hope in salvation by the practice of love cannot die, and I shall answer my denouncers in a new book, in which I shall tell in what new soil the new religion will grow up!" Silence fell. Nani looked at him with his clear eyes in which intelligence shone distinct and sharp like steel. And amidst the deep calm, the warm heavy atmosphere of the little /salon/, whose mirrors were starred with countless reflections of candles, a more sonorous burst of music was suddenly wafted from the gallery, a rhythmical waltz melody, which slowly expanded, then died away. "My dear son," said Nani, "anger is always harmful. You remember that on your arrival here I promised that if your own efforts to obtain an interview with the Holy Father should prove unavailing, I would myself endeavour to secure an audience for you." Then, seeing how agitated the young priest was getting, he went on: "Listen to me and don't excite yourself. His Holiness, unfortunately, is not always prudently advised. Around him are persons whose devotion, however great, is at times deficient in intelligence. I told you that, and warned you against inconsiderate applications. And this is why, already three weeks ago, I myself handed your book to his Holiness in the hope that he would deign to glance at it. I rightly suspected that it had not been allowed to reach him. And this is what I am instructed to tell you: his Holiness, who has had the great kindness to read your book, expressly desires to see you." A cry of joy and gratitude died away in Pierre's throat: "Ah! Monseigneur. Ah! Monseigneur!" But Nani quickly silenced him and glanced around with an expression of keen anxiety as if he feared that some one might hear them. "Hush! Hush!" said he, "it is a secret. His Holiness wishes to see you privately, without taking anybody else into his confidence. Listen attentively. It is now two o'clock in the morning. Well, this very day, at nine in the evening precisely, you must present yourself at the Vatican and at every door ask for Signor Squadra. You will invariably be allowed to pass. Signor Squadra will be waiting for you upstairs, and will introduce you. And not a word, mind; not a soul must have the faintest suspicion of these things." Pierre's happiness and gratitude at last flowed forth. He had caught hold of the prelate's soft, plump hands, and stammered, "Ah! Monseigneur, how can I express my gratitude to you? If you only knew how full my soul was of night and rebellion since I realised that I had been a mere plaything in the hands of those powerful cardinals. But you have saved me, and again I feel sure that I shall win the victory, for I shall at last be able to fling myself at the feet of his Holiness the father of all truth and all justice. He can but absolve me, I who love him, I who admire him, I who have never battled for aught but his own policy and most cherished ideas. No, no, it is impossible; he will not sign that judgment; he will not condemn my book!" Releasing his hands, Nani sought to calm him with a fatherly gesture, whilst retaining a faint smile of contempt for such a useless expenditure of enthusiasm. At last he succeeded, and begged him to retire. The orchestra was again playing more loudly in the distance. And when the young priest at last withdrew, thanking him once more, he said very simply, "Remember, my dear son, that only obedience is great." Pierre, whose one desire now was to take himself off, found Prada almost immediately afterwards in the first reception-room. Their Majesties had just left the ball in grand ceremony, escorted to the threshold by the Buongiovannis and the Saccos. And before departing the Queen had maternally kissed Celia, whilst the King shook hands with Attilio--honours instinct with a charming good nature which made the members of both families quite radiant. However, a good many of the guests were following the example of the sovereigns and disappearing in small batches. And the Count, who seemed strangely nervous, and showed more sternness and bitterness than ever, was, on his side, also eager to be gone. "Ah! it's you at last. I was waiting for you," he said to Pierre. "Well, let's get off at once, eh? Your compatriot Monsieur Narcisse Habert asked me to tell you not to look for him. The fact is, he has gone to see my friend Lisbeth to her carriage. I myself want a breath of fresh air, a stroll, and so I'll go with you as far as the Via Giulia." Then, as they took their things from the cloak-room, he could not help sneering and saying in his brutal way: "I saw your good friends go off, all four together. It's lucky that you prefer to go home on foot, for there was no room for you in the carriage. What superb impudence it was on the part of that Donna Serafina to drag herself here, at her age, with that Morano of hers, so as to triumph over the return of the fickle one! And the two others, the two young ones--ah! I confess that I can hardly speak calmly of /them/, for in parading here together as they did this evening, they have shown an impudence and a cruelty such as is rarely seen!" Prada's hands trembled, and he murmured: "A good journey, a good journey to the young man, since he is going to Naples. Yes, I heard Celia say that he was starting for Naples this evening at six o'clock. Well, my wishes go with him; a good journey!" The two men found the change delightful when they at last emerged from the stifling heat of the reception-rooms into the lovely, cool, and limpid night. It was a night illumined by a superb full moon, one of those matchless Roman nights when the city slumbers in Elysian radiance, steeped in a dream of the Infinite, under the vast vault of heaven. And they took the most agreeable route, going down the Corso proper and then turning into the Corso Vittorio Emanuele. Prada had grown somewhat calmer, but remained full of irony. To divert his mind, no doubt, he talked on in the most voluble manner, reverting to the women of Rome and to that /fete/ which he had at first found splendid, but at which he now began to rail. "Oh! of course they have very fine gowns," said he, speaking of the women; "but gowns which don't fit them, gowns which are sent them from Paris, and which, of course, they can't try on. It's just the same with their jewels; they still have diamonds and pearls, in particular, which are very fine, but they are so wretchedly, so heavily mounted that they look frightful. And if you only knew how ignorant and frivolous these women are, despite all their conceit! Everything is on the surface with them, even religion: there's nothing beneath. I looked at them eating at the buffet. Oh! they at least have fine appetites. This evening some decorum was observed, there wasn't too much gorging. But at one of the Court balls you would see a general pillage, the buffets besieged, and everything swallowed up amidst a scramble of amazing voracity!" To all this talk Pierre only returned monosyllabic responses. He was wrapped in overflowing delight at the thought of that audience with the Pope, which, unable as he was to confide in any one, he strove to arrange and picture in his own mind, even in its pettiest details. And meantime the footsteps of the two men rang out on the dry pavement of the clear, broad, deserted thoroughfare, whose black shadows were sharply outlined by the moonlight. All at once Prada himself became silent. His loquacious /bravura/ was exhausted, the frightful struggle going on in his mind wholly possessed and paralysed him. Twice already he had dipped his hand into his coat pocket and felt the pencilled note whose four lines he mentally repeated: "A legend avers that the fig-tree of Judas now grows at Frascati, and that its fruit is deadly for him who may desire to become pope. Eat not the poisoned figs, nor give them either to your servants or your fowls." The note was there; he could feel it; and if he had desired to accompany Pierre, it was in order that he might drop it into the letter-box at the Palazzo Boccanera. And he continued to step out briskly, so that within another ten minutes that note would surely be in the box, for no power in the world could prevent it, since such was his express determination. Never would he commit such a crime as to allow people to be poisoned. But he was suffering such abominable torture. That Benedetta and that Dario had raised such a tempest of jealous hatred within him! For them he forgot Lisbeth whom he loved, and even that flesh of his flesh, the child of whom he was so proud. All sex as he was, eager to conquer and subdue, he had never cared for facile loves. His passion was to overcome. And now there was a woman in the world who defied him, a woman forsooth whom he had bought, whom he had married, who had been handed over to him, but who would never, never be his. Ah! in the old days, to subdue her, he would if needful have fired Rome like a Nero; but now he asked himself what he could possibly do to prevent her from belonging to another. That galling thought made the blood gush from his gaping wound. How that woman and her lover must deride him! And to think that they had sought to turn him to ridicule by a baseless charge, an arrant lie which still and ever made him smart, all proof of its falsity to the contrary. He, on his side, had accused them in the past without much belief in what he said, but now the charges he had imputed to them must come true, for they were free, freed at all events of the religious bond, and that no doubt was their only care. And then visions of their happiness passed before his eyes, infuriating him. Ah! no, ah! no, it was impossible, he would rather destroy the world! Then, as he and Pierre turned out of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele to thread the old narrow tortuous streets leading to the Via Giulia, he pictured himself dropping the note into the letter-box at the palazzo. And next he conjured up what would follow. The note would lie in the letter-box till morning. At an early hour Don Vigilio, the secretary, who by the Cardinal's express orders kept the key of the box, would come down, find the note, and hand it to his Eminence, who never allowed another to open any communication addressed to him. And then the figs would be thrown away, there would be no further possibility of crime, the black world would in all prudence keep silent. But if the note should not be in the letter-box, what would happen then? And admitting that supposition he pictured the figs placed on the table at the one o'clock meal, in their pretty little leaf-covered basket. Dario would be there as usual, alone with his uncle, since he was not to leave for Naples till the evening. And would both the uncle and the nephew eat the figs, or would only one of them partake of the fruit, and which of them would that be? At this point Prada's clearness of vision failed him; again he conjured up Destiny on the march, that Destiny which he had met on the road from Frascati, going on towards its unknown goal, athwart all obstacles without possibility of stoppage. Aye, the little basket of figs went ever on and on to accomplish its fateful purpose, which no hand in the world had power enough to prevent. And at last, on either hand of Pierre and Prada, the Via Giulia stretched away in a long line white with moonlight, and the priest emerged as if from a dream at sight of the Palazzo Boccanera rising blackly under the silver sky. Three o'clock struck at a neighbouring church. And he felt himself quivering slightly as once again he heard near him the dolorous moan of a lion wounded unto death, that low involuntary growl which the Count, amidst the frightful struggle of his feelings, had for the third time allowed to escape him. But immediately afterwards he burst into a sneering laugh, and pressing the priest's hands, exclaimed: "No, no, I am not going farther. If I were seen here at this hour, people would think that I had fallen in love with my wife again." And thereupon he lighted a cigar, and retraced his steps in the clear night, without once looking round. XIII WHEN Pierre awoke he was much surprised to hear eleven o'clock striking. Fatigued as he was by that ball where he had lingered so long, he had slept like a child in delightful peacefulness, and as soon as he opened his eyes the radiant sunshine filled him with hope. His first thought was that he would see the Pope that evening at nine o'clock. Ten more hours to wait! What would he be able to do with himself during that lovely day, whose radiant sky seemed to him of such happy augury? He rose and opened the windows to admit the warm air which, as he had noticed on the day of his arrival, had a savour of fruit and flowers, a blending, as it were, of the perfume of rose and orange. Could this possibly be December? What a delightful land, that the spring should seem to flower on the very threshold of winter! Then, having dressed, he was leaning out of the window to glance across the golden Tiber at the evergreen slopes of the Janiculum, when he espied Benedetta seated in the abandoned garden of the mansion. And thereupon, unable to keep still, full of a desire for life, gaiety, and beauty, he went down to join her. With radiant visage and outstretched hands, she at once vented the cry he had expected: "Ah! my dear Abbe, how happy I am!" They had often spent their mornings in that quiet, forsaken nook; but what sad mornings those had been, hopeless as they both were! To-day, however, the weed-grown paths, the box-plants growing in the old basin, the orange-trees which alone marked the outline of the beds--all seemed full of charm, instinct with a sweet and dreamy cosiness in which it was very pleasant to lull one's joy. And it was so warm, too, beside the big laurel-bush, in the corner where the streamlet of water ever fell with flute-like music from the gaping, tragic mask. "Ah!" repeated Benedetta, "how happy I am! I was stifling upstairs, and my heart felt such a need of space, and air, and sunlight, that I came down here!" She was seated on the fallen column beside the old marble sarcophagus, and desired the priest to place himself beside her. Never had he seen her looking so beautiful, with her black hair encompassing her pure face, which in the sunshine appeared pinky and delicate as a flower. Her large, fathomless eyes showed in the light like braziers rolling gold, and her childish mouth, all candour and good sense, laughed the laugh of one who was at last free to love as her heart listed, without offending either God or man. And, dreaming aloud, she built up plans for the future. "It's all simple enough," said she; "I have already obtained a separation, and shall easily get that changed into civil divorce now that the Church has annulled my marriage. And I shall marry Dario next spring, perhaps sooner, if the formalities can be hastened. He is going to Naples this evening about the sale of some property which we still possess there, but which must now be sold, for all this business has cost us a lot of money. Still, that doesn't matter since we now belong to one another. And when he comes back in a few days, what a happy time we shall have! I could not sleep when I got back from that splendid ball last night, for my head was so full of plans--oh! splendid plans, as you shall see, for I mean to keep you in Rome until our marriage." Like herself, Pierre began to laugh, so gained upon by this explosion of youth and happiness that he had to make a great effort to refrain from speaking of his own delight, his hopefulness at the thought of his coming interview with the Pope. Of that, however, he had sworn to speak to nobody. Every now and again, amidst the quivering silence of the sunlit garden, the cry of a bird persistently rang out; and Benedetta, raising her head and looking at a cage hanging beside one of the first-floor windows, jestingly exclaimed: "Yes, yes, Tata, make a good noise, show that you are pleased, my dear. Everybody in the house must be pleased now." Then, turning towards Pierre, she added gaily: "You know Tata, don't you? What! No? Why, Tata is my uncle's parrot. I gave her to him last spring; he's very fond of her, and lets her help herself out of his plate. And he himself attends to her, puts her out and takes her in, and keeps her in his dining-room, for fear lest she should take cold, as that is the only room of his which is at all warm." Pierre in his turn looked up and saw the bird, one of those pretty little parrots with soft, silky, dull-green plumage. It was hanging by the beak from a bar of its cage, swinging itself and flapping its wings, all mirth in the bright sunshine. "Does the bird talk?" he asked. "No, she only screams," replied Benedetta, laughing. "Still my uncle pretends that he understands her." And then the young woman abruptly darted to another subject, as if this mention of her uncle the Cardinal had made her think of the uncle by marriage whom she had in Paris. "I suppose you have heard from Viscount de la Choue," said she. "I had a letter from him yesterday, in which he said how grieved he was that you were unable to see the Holy Father, as he had counted on you for the triumph of his ideas." Pierre indeed frequently heard from the Viscount, who was greatly distressed by the importance which his adversary, Baron de Fouras, had acquired since his success with the International Pilgrimage of the Peter's Pence. The old, uncompromising Catholic party would awaken, said the Viscount, and all the conquests of Neo-Catholicism would be threatened, if one could not obtain the Holy Father's formal adhesion to the proposed system of free guilds, in order to overcome the demand for closed guilds which was brought forward by the Conservatives. And the Viscount overwhelmed Pierre with injunctions, and sent him all sorts of complicated plans in his eagerness to see him received at the Vatican. "Yes, yes," muttered the young priest in reply to Benedetta. "I had a letter on Sunday, and found another waiting for me on my return from Frascati yesterday. Ah! it would make me very happy to be able to send the Viscount some good news." Then again Pierre's joy overflowed at the thought that he would that evening see the Pope, and, on opening his loving heart to the Pontiff, receive the supreme encouragement which would strengthen him in his mission to work social salvation in the name of the lowly and the poor. And he could not restrain himself any longer, but let his secret escape him: "It's settled, you know," said he. "My audience is for this evening." Benedetta did not understand at first. "What audience?" she asked. "Oh! Monsignor Nani was good enough to tell me at the ball this morning, that the Holy Father has read my book and desires to see me. I shall be received this evening at nine o'clock." At this the Contessina flushed with pleasure, participating in the delight of the young priest to whom she had grown much attached. And this success of his, coming in the midst of her own felicity, acquired extraordinary importance in her eyes as if it were an augury of complete success for one and all. Superstitious as she was, she raised a cry of rapture and excitement: "Ah! /Dio/, that will bring us good luck. How happy I am, my friend, to see happiness coming to you at the same time as to me! You cannot think how pleased I am! And all will go well now, it's certain, for a house where there is any one whom the Pope welcomes is blessed, the thunder of Heaven falls on it no more!" She laughed yet more loudly as she spoke, and clapped her hands with such exuberant gaiety that Pierre became anxious. "Hush! hush!" said he, "it's a secret. Pray don't mention it to any one, either your aunt or even his Eminence. Monsignor Nani would be much annoyed." She thereupon promised to say nothing, and in a kindly voice spoke of Nani as a benefactor, for was she not indebted to him for the dissolution of her marriage? Then, with a fresh explosion of gaiety, she went on: "But come, my friend, is not happiness the only good thing? You don't ask me to weep over the suffering poor to-day! Ah! the happiness of life, that's everything. People don't suffer or feel cold or hungry when they are happy." He looked at her in stupefaction at the idea of that strange solution of the terrible question of human misery. And suddenly he realised that, with that daughter of the sun who had inherited so many centuries of sovereign aristocracy, all his endeavours at conversion were vain. He had wished to bring her to a Christian love for the lowly and the wretched, win her over to the new, enlightened, and compassionate Italy that he had dreamt of; but if she had been moved by the sufferings of the multitude at the time when she herself had suffered, when grievous wounds had made her own heart bleed, she was no sooner healed than she proclaimed the doctrine of universal felicity like a true daughter of a clime of burning summers, and winters as mild as spring. "But everybody is not happy!" said he. "Yes, yes, they are!" she exclaimed. "You don't know the poor! Give a girl of the Trastevere the lad she loves, and she becomes as radiant as a queen, and finds her dry bread quite sweet. The mothers who save a child from sickness, the men who conquer in a battle, or who win at the lottery, one and all in fact are like that, people only ask for good fortune and pleasure. And despite all your striving to be just and to arrive at a more even distribution of fortune, the only satisfied ones will be those whose hearts sing--often without their knowing the cause--on a fine sunny day like this." Pierre made a gesture of surrender, not wishing to sadden her by again pleading the cause of all the poor ones who at that very moment were somewhere agonising with physical or mental pain. But, all at once, through the luminous mild atmosphere a shadow seemed to fall, tingeing joy with sadness, the sunshine with despair. And the sight of the old sarcophagus, with its bacchanal of satyrs and nymphs, brought back the memory that death lurks even amidst the bliss of passion, the unsatiated kisses of love. For a moment the clear song of the water sounded in Pierre's ears like a long-drawn sob, and all seemed to crumble in the terrible shadow which had fallen from the invisible. Benedetta, however, caught hold of his hands and roused him once more to the delight of being there beside her. "Your pupil is rebellious, is she not, my friend?" said she. "But what would you have? There are ideas which can't enter into our heads. No, you will never get those things into the head of a Roman girl. So be content with loving us as we are, beautiful with all our strength, as beautiful as we can be." She herself, in her resplendent happiness, looked at that moment so beautiful that he trembled as in presence of a divinity whose all-powerfulness swayed the world. "Yes, yes," he stammered, "beauty, beauty, still and ever sovereign. Ah! why can it not suffice to satisfy the eternal longings of poor suffering men?" "Never mind!" she gaily responded. "Do not distress yourself; it is pleasant to live. And now let us go upstairs, my aunt must be waiting." The midday meal was served at one o'clock, and on the few occasions when Pierre did not eat at one or another restaurant a cover was laid for him at the ladies' table in the little dining-room of the second floor, overlooking the courtyard. At the same hour, in the sunlit dining-room of the first floor, whose windows faced the Tiber, the Cardinal likewise sat down to table, happy in the society of his nephew Dario, for his secretary, Don Vigilio, who also was usually present, never opened his mouth unless to reply to some question. And the two services were quite distinct, each having its own kitchen and servants, the only thing at all common to them both being a large room downstairs which served as a pantry and store-place. Although the second-floor dining-room was so gloomy, saddened by the greeny half-light of the courtyard, the meal shared that day by the two ladies and the young priest proved a very gay one. Even Donna Serafina, usually so rigid, seemed to relax under the influence of great internal felicity. She was no doubt still enjoying her triumph of the previous evening, and it was she who first spoke of the ball and sung its praises, though the presence of the King and Queen had much embarrassed her, said she. According to her account, she had only avoided presentation by skilful strategy; however she hoped that her well-known affection for Celia, whose god-mother she was, would explain her presence in that neutral mansion where Vatican and Quirinal had met. At the same time she must have retained certain scruples, for she declared that directly after dinner she was going to the Vatican to see the Cardinal Secretary, to whom she desired to speak about an enterprise of which she was lady-patroness. This visit would compensate for her attendance at the Buongiovanni entertainment. And on the other hand never had Donna Serafina seemed so zealous and hopeful of her brother's speedy accession to the throne of St. Peter: therein lay a supreme triumph, an elevation of her race, which her pride deemed both needful and inevitable; and indeed during Leo XIII's last indisposition she had actually concerned herself about the trousseau which would be needed and which would require to be marked with the new Pontiff's arms. On her side, Benedetta was all gaiety during the repast, laughing at everything, and speaking of Celia and Attilio with the passionate affection of a woman whose own happiness delights in that of her friends. Then, just as the dessert had been served, she turned to the servant with an air of surprise: "Well, and the figs, Giacomo?" she asked. Giacomo, slow and sleepy of notion, looked at her without understanding. However, Victorine was crossing the room, and Benedetta's next question was for her: "Why are the figs not served, Victorine?" she inquired. "What figs, Contessina?" "Why the figs I saw in the pantry as I passed through it this morning on my way to the garden. They were in a little basket and looked superb. I was even astonished to see that there were still some fresh figs left at this season. I'm very fond of them, and felt quite pleased at the thought that I should eat some at dinner." Victorine began to laugh: "Ah! yes, Contessina, I understand," she replied. "They were some figs which that priest of Frascati, whom you know very well, brought yesterday evening as a present for his Eminence. I was there, and I heard him repeat three or four times that they were a present, and were to be put on his Eminence's table without a leaf being touched. And so one did as he said." "Well, that's nice," retorted Benedetta with comical indignation. "What /gourmands/ my uncle and Dario are to regale themselves without us! They might have given us a share!" Donna Serafina thereupon intervened, and asked Victorine: "You are speaking, are you not, of that priest who used to come to the villa at Frascati?" "Yes, yes, Abbe Santobono his name is, he officiates at the little church of St. Mary in the Fields. He always asks for Abbe Paparelli when he calls; I think they were at the seminary together. And it was Abbe Paparelli who brought him to the pantry with his basket last night. To tell the truth, the basket was forgotten there in spite of all the injunctions, so that nobody would have eaten the figs to-day if Abbe Paparelli hadn't run down just now and carried them upstairs as piously as if they were the Blessed Sacrament. It's true though that his Eminence is so fond of them." "My brother won't do them much honour to-day," remarked the Princess. "He is slightly indisposed. He passed a bad night." The repeated mention of Abbe Paparelli had made the old lady somewhat thoughtful. She had regarded the train-bearer with displeasure ever since she had noticed the extraordinary influence he was gaining over the Cardinal, despite all his apparent humility and self-effacement. He was but a servant and apparently a very insignificant one, yet he governed, and she could feel that he combated her own influence, often undoing things which she had done to further her brother's interests. Twice already, moreover, she had suspected him of having urged the Cardinal to courses which she looked upon as absolute blunders. But perhaps she was wrong; she did the train-bearer the justice to admit that he had great merits and displayed exemplary piety. However, Benedetta went on laughing and jesting, and as Victorine had now withdrawn, she called the man-servant: "Listen, Giacomo, I have a commission for you." Then she broke off to say to her aunt and Pierre: "Pray let us assert our rights. I can see them at table almost underneath us. Uncle is taking the leaves off the basket and serving himself with a smile; then he passes the basket to Dario, who passes it on to Don Vigilio. And all three of them eat and enjoy the figs. You can see them, can't you?" She herself could see them well. And it was her desire to be near Dario, the constant flight of her thoughts to him that now made her picture him at table with the others. Her heart was down below, and there was nothing there that she could not see, and hear, and smell, with such keenness of the senses did her love endow her. "Giacomo," she resumed, "you are to go down and tell his Eminence that we are longing to taste his figs, and that it will be very kind of him if he will send us such as he can spare." Again, however, did Donna Serafina intervene, recalling her wonted severity of voice: "Giacomo, you will please stay here." And to her niece she added: "That's enough childishness! I dislike such silly freaks." "Oh! aunt," Benedetta murmured. "But I'm so happy, it's so long since I laughed so good-heartedly." Pierre had hitherto remained listening, enlivened by the sight of her gaiety. But now, as a little chill fell, he raised his voice to say that on the previous day he himself had been astonished to see the famous fig-tree of Frascati still bearing fruit so late in the year. This was doubtless due, however, to the tree's position and the protection of a high wall. "Ah! so you saw the tree?" said Benedetta. "Yes, and I even travelled with those figs which you would so much like to taste." "Why, how was that?" The young man already regretted the reply which had escaped him. However, having gone so far, he preferred to say everything. "I met somebody at Frascati who had come there in a carriage and who insisted on driving me back to Rome," said he. "On the way we picked up Abbe Santobono, who was bravely making the journey on foot with his basket in his hand. And afterwards we stopped at an /osteria/--" Then he went on to describe the drive and relate his impressions whilst crossing the Campagna amidst the falling twilight. But Benedetta gazed at him fixedly, aware as she was of Prada's frequent visits to the land and houses which he owned at Frascati; and suddenly she murmured: "Somebody, somebody, it was the Count, was it not?" "Yes, madame, the Count," Pierre answered. "I saw him again last night; he was overcome, and really deserves to be pitied." The two women took no offence at this charitable remark which fell from the young priest with such deep and natural emotion, full as he was of overflowing love and compassion for one and all. Donna Serafina remained motionless as if she had not even heard him, and Benedetta made a gesture which seemed to imply that she had neither pity nor hatred to express for a man who had become a perfect stranger to her. However, she no longer laughed, but, thinking of the little basket which had travelled in Prada's carriage, she said: "Ah! I don't care for those figs at all now, I am even glad that I haven't eaten any of them." Immediately after the coffee Donna Serafina withdrew, saying that she was at once going to the Vatican; and the others, being left to themselves, lingered at table, again full of gaiety, and chatting like friends. The priest, with his feverish impatience, once more referred to the audience which he was to have that evening. It was now barely two o'clock, and he had seven more hours to wait. How should he employ that endless afternoon? Thereupon Benedetta good-naturedly made him a proposal. "I'll tell you what," said she, "as we are all in such good spirits we mustn't leave one another. Dario has his victoria, you know. He must have finished lunch by now, and I'll ask him to take us for a long drive along the Tiber." This fine project so delighted her that she began to clap her hands; but just then Don Vigilio appeared with a scared look on his face. "Isn't the Princess here?" he inquired. "No, my aunt has gone out. What is the matter?" "His Eminence sent me. The Prince has just felt unwell on rising from table. Oh! it's nothing--nothing serious, no doubt." Benedetta raised a cry of surprise rather than anxiety: "What, Dario! Well, we'll all go down. Come with me, Monsieur l'Abbe. He mustn't get ill if he is to take us for a drive!" Then, meeting Victorine on the stairs, she bade her follow. "Dario isn't well," she said. "You may be wanted." They all four entered the spacious, antiquated, and simply furnished bed-room where the young Prince had lately been laid up for a whole month. It was reached by way of a small /salon/, and from an adjoining dressing-room a passage conducted to the Cardinal's apartments, the relatively small dining-room, bed-room, and study, which had been devised by subdividing one of the huge galleries of former days. In addition, the passage gave access to his Eminence's private chapel, a bare, uncarpeted, chairless room, where there was nothing beyond the painted, wooden altar, and the hard, cold tiles on which to kneel and pray. On entering, Benedetta hastened to the bed where Dario was lying, still fully dressed. Near him, in fatherly fashion, stood Cardinal Boccanera, who, amidst his dawning anxiety, retained his proud and lofty bearing--the calmness of a soul beyond reproach. "Why, what is the matter, Dario /mio/?" asked the young woman. He smiled, eager to reassure her. One only noticed that he was very pale, with a look as of intoxication on his face. "Oh! it's nothing, mere giddiness," he replied. "It's just as if I had drunk too much. All at once things swam before my eyes, and I thought I was going to fall. And then I only had time to come and fling myself on the bed." Then he drew a long breath, as though talking exhausted him, and the Cardinal in his turn gave some details. "We had just finished our meal," said he, "I was giving Don Vigilio some orders for this afternoon, and was about to rise when I saw Dario get up and reel. He wouldn't sit down again, but came in here, staggering like a somnambulist, and fumbling at the doors to open them. We followed him without understanding. And I confess that I don't yet comprehend it." So saying, the Cardinal punctuated his surprise by waving his arm towards the rooms, through which a gust of misfortune seemed to have suddenly swept. All the doors had remained wide open: the dressing-room could be seen, and then the passage, at the end of which appeared the dining-room, in a disorderly state, like an apartment suddenly vacated; the table still laid, the napkins flung here and there, and the chairs pushed back. As yet, however, there was no alarm. Benedetta made the remark which is usually made in such cases: "I hope you haven't eaten anything which has disagreed with you." The Cardinal, smiling, again waved his hand as if to attest the frugality of his table. "Oh!" said he, "there were only some eggs, some lamb cutlets, and a dish of sorrel--they couldn't have overloaded his stomach. I myself only drink water; he takes just a sip of white wine. No, no, the food has nothing to do with it." "Besides, in that case his Eminence and I would also have felt indisposed," Don Vigilio made bold to remark. Dario, after momentarily closing his eyes, opened them again, and once more drew a long breath, whilst endeavouring to laugh. "Oh, it will be nothing;" he said. "I feel more at ease already. I must get up and stir myself." "In that case," said Benedetta, "this is what I had thought of. You will take Monsieur l'Abbe Froment and me for a long drive in the Campagna." "Willingly. It's a nice idea. Victorine, help me." Whilst speaking he had raised himself by means of one arm; but, before the servant could approach, a slight convulsion seized him, and he fell back again as if overcome by a fainting fit. It was the Cardinal, still standing by the bedside, who caught him in his arms, whilst the Contessina this time lost her head: "/Dio, Dio/! It has come on him again. Quick, quick, a doctor!" "Shall I run for one?" asked Pierre, whom the scene was also beginning to upset. "No, no, not you; stay with me. Victorine will go at once. She knows the address. Doctor Giordano, Victorine." The servant hurried away, and a heavy silence fell on the room where the anxiety became more pronounced every moment. Benedetta, now quite pale, had again approached the bed, whilst the Cardinal looked down at Dario, whom he still held in his arms. And a terrible suspicion, vague, indeterminate as yet, had just awoke in the old man's mind: Dario's face seemed to him to be ashen, to wear that mask of terrified anguish which he had already remarked on the countenance of his dearest friend, Monsignor Gallo, when he had held him in his arms, in like manner, two hours before his death. There was also the same swoon and the same sensation of clasping a cold form whose heart ceases to beat. And above everything else there was in Boccanera's mind the same growing thought of poison, poison coming one knew not whence or how, but mysteriously striking down those around him with the suddenness of lightning. And for a long time he remained with his head bent over the face of his nephew, that last scion of his race, seeking, studying, and recognising the signs of the mysterious, implacable disorder which once already had rent his heart atwain. But Benedetta addressed him in a low, entreating voice: "You will tire yourself, uncle. Let me take him a little, I beg you. Have no fear, I'll hold him very gently, he will feel that it is I, and perhaps that will rouse him." At last the Cardinal raised his head and looked at her, and allowed her to take his place after kissing her with distracted passion, his eyes the while full of tears--a sudden burst of emotion in which his great love for the young woman melted the stern frigidity which he usually affected. "Ah! my poor child, my poor child!" he stammered, trembling from head to foot like an oak-tree about to fall. Immediately afterwards, however, he mastered himself, and whilst Pierre and Don Vigilio, mute and motionless, regretted that they could be of no help, he walked slowly to and fro. Soon, moreover, that bed-chamber became too small for all the thoughts revolving in his mind, and he strayed first into the dressing-room and then down the passage as far as the dining-room. And again and again he went to and fro, grave and impassible, his head low, ever lost in the same gloomy reverie. What were the multitudinous thoughts stirring in the brain of that believer, that haughty Prince who had given himself to God and could do naught to stay inevitable Destiny? From time to time he returned to the bedside, observed the progress of the disorder, and then started off again at the same slow regular pace, disappearing and reappearing, carried along as it were by the monotonous alternations of forces which man cannot control. Possibly he was mistaken, possibly this was some mere indisposition at which the doctor would smile. One must hope and wait. And again he went off and again he came back; and amidst the heavy silence nothing more clearly bespoke the torture of anxious fear than the rhythmical footsteps of that tall old man who was thus awaiting Destiny. The door opened, and Victorine came in breathless. "I found the doctor, here he is," she gasped. With his little pink face and white curls, his discreet paternal bearing which gave him the air of an amiable prelate, Doctor Giordano came in smiling; but on seeing that room and all the anxious people waiting in it, he turned very grave, at once assuming the expression of profound respect for all ecclesiastical secrets which he had acquired by long practice among the clergy. And when he had glanced at the sufferer he let but a low murmur escape him: "What, again! Is it beginning again!" He was probably alluding to the knife thrust for which he had recently tended Dario. Who could be thus relentlessly pursuing that poor and inoffensive young prince? However no one heard the doctor unless it were Benedetta, and she was so full of feverish impatience, so eager to be tranquillised, that she did not listen but burst into fresh entreaties: "Oh! doctor, pray look at him, examine him, tell us that it is nothing. It can't be anything serious, since he was so well and gay but a little while ago. It's nothing serious, is it?" "You are right no doubt, Contessina, it can be nothing dangerous. We will see." However, on turning round, Doctor Giordano perceived the Cardinal, who with regular, thoughtful footsteps had come back from the dining-room to place himself at the foot of the bed. And while bowing, the doctor doubtless detected a gleam of mortal anxiety in the dark eyes fixed upon his own, for he added nothing but began to examine Dario like a man who realises that time is precious. And as his examination progressed the affable optimism which usually appeared upon his countenance gave place to ashen gravity, a covert terror which made his lips slightly tremble. It was he who had attended Monsignor Gallo when the latter had been carried off so mysteriously; it was he who for imperative reasons had then delivered a certificate stating the cause of death to be infectious fever; and doubtless he now found the same terrible symptoms as in that case, a leaden hue overspreading the sufferer's features, a stupor as of excessive intoxication; and, old Roman practitioner that he was, accustomed to sudden deaths, he realised that the /malaria/ which kills was passing, that /malaria/ which science does not yet fully understand, which may come from the putrescent exhalations of the Tiber unless it be but a name for the ancient poison of the legends. As the doctor raised his head his glance again encountered the black eyes of the Cardinal, which never left him. "Signor Giordano," said his Eminence, "you are not over-anxious, I hope? It is only some case of indigestion, is it not?" The doctor again bowed. By the slight quiver of the Cardinal's voice he understood how acute was the anxiety of that powerful man, who once more was stricken in his dearest affections. "Your Eminence must be right," he said, "there's a bad digestion certainly. Such accidents sometimes become dangerous when fever supervenes. I need not tell your Eminence how thoroughly you may rely on my prudence and zeal." Then he broke off and added in a clear professional voice: "We must lose no time; the Prince must be undressed. I should prefer to remain alone with him for a moment." Whilst speaking in this way, however, Doctor Giordano detained Victorine, who would be able to help him, said he; should he need any further assistance he would take Giacomo. His evident desire was to get rid of the members of the family in order that he might have more freedom of action. And the Cardinal, who understood him, gently led Benedetta into the dining-room, whither Pierre and Don Vigilio followed. When the doors had been closed, the most mournful and oppressive silence reigned in that dining-room, which the bright sun of winter filled with such delightful warmth and radiance. The table was still laid, its cloth strewn here and there with bread-crumbs; and a coffee cup had remained half full. In the centre stood the basket of figs, whose covering of leaves had been removed. However, only two or three of the figs were missing. And in front of the window was Tata, the female parrot, who had flown out of her cage and perched herself on her stand, where she remained, dazzled and enraptured, amidst the dancing dust of a broad yellow sunray. In her astonishment however, at seeing so many people enter, she had ceased to scream and smooth her feathers, and had turned her head the better to examine the newcomers with her round and scrutinising eye. The minutes went by slowly amidst all the feverish anxiety as to what might be occurring in the neighbouring room. Don Vigilio had taken a corner seat in silence, whilst Benedetta and Pierre, who had remained standing, preserved similar muteness, and immobility. But the Cardinal had reverted to that instinctive, lulling tramp by which he apparently hoped to quiet his impatience and arrive the sooner at the explanation for which he was groping through a tumultuous maze of ideas. And whilst his rhythmical footsteps resounded with mechanical regularity, dark fury was taking possession of his mind, exasperation at being unable to understand the why and wherefore of that sickness. As he passed the table he had twice glanced at the things lying on it in confusion, as if seeking some explanation from them. Perhaps the harm had been done by that unfinished coffee, or by that bread whose crumbs lay here and there, or by those cutlets, a bone of which remained? Then as for the third time he passed by, again glancing, his eyes fell upon the basket of figs, and at once he stopped, as if beneath the shock of a revelation. An idea seized upon him and mastered him, without any plan, however, occurring to him by which he might change his sudden suspicion into certainty. For a moment he remained puzzled with his eyes fixed upon the basket. Then he took a fig and examined it, but, noticing nothing strange, was about to put it back when Tata, the parrot, who was very fond of figs, raised a strident cry. And this was like a ray of light; the means of changing suspicion into certainty was found. Slowly, with grave air and gloomy visage, the Cardinal carried the fig to the parrot and gave it to her without hesitation or regret. She was a very pretty bird, the only being of the lower order of creation to which he had ever really been attached. Stretching out her supple, delicate form, whose silken feathers of dull green here and there assumed a pinky tinge in the sunlight, she took hold of the fig with her claws, then ripped it open with her beak. But when she had raked it she ate but little, and let all the rest fall upon the floor. Still grave and impassible, the Cardinal looked at her and waited. Quite three minutes went by, and then feeling reassured, he began to scratch the bird's poll, whilst she, taking pleasure in the caress, turned her neck and fixed her bright ruby eye upon her master. But all at once she sank back without even a flap of the wings, and fell like a bullet. She was dead, killed as by a thunderbolt. Boccanera made but a gesture, raising both hands to heaven as if in horror at what he now knew. Great God! such a terrible crime, and such a fearful mistake, such an abominable trick of Destiny! No cry of grief came from him, but the gloom upon his face grew black and fierce. Yet there was a cry, a piercing cry from Benedetta, who like Pierre and Don Vigilio had watched the Cardinal with an astonishment which had changed into terror: "Poison! poison! Ah! Dario, my heart, my soul!" But the Cardinal violently caught his niece by the wrist, whilst darting a suspicious glance at the two petty priests, the secretary and the foreigner, who were present: "Be quiet, be quiet!" said he. She shook herself free, rebelling, frantic with rage and hatred: "Why should I be quiet!" she cried. "It is Prada's work, I shall denounce him, he shall die as well! I tell you it is Prada, I know it, for yesterday Abbe Froment came back with him from Frascati in his carriage with that priest Santobono and that basket of figs! Yes, yes, I have witnesses, it is Prada, Prada!" "No, no, you are mad, be quiet!" said the Cardinal, who had again taken hold of the young woman's hands and sought to master her with all his sovereign authority. He, who knew the influence which Cardinal Sanguinetti exercised over Santobono's excitable mind, had just understood the whole affair; no direct complicity but covert propulsion, the animal excited and then let loose upon the troublesome rival at the moment when the pontifical throne seemed likely to be vacant. The probability, the certainty of all this flashed upon Boccanera who, though some points remained obscure, did not seek to penetrate them. It was not necessary indeed that he should know every particular: the thing was as he said, since it was bound to be so. "No, no, it was not Prada," he exclaimed, addressing Benedetta. "That man can bear me no personal grudge, and I alone was aimed at, it was to me that those figs were given. Come, think it out! Only an unforeseen indisposition prevented me from eating the greater part of the fruit, for it is known that I am very fond of figs, and while my poor Dario was tasting them, I jested and told him to leave the finer ones for me to-morrow. Yes, the abominable blow was meant for me, and it is on him that it has fallen by the most atrocious of chances, the most monstrous of the follies of fate. Ah! Lord God, Lord God, have you then forsaken us!" Tears came into the old man's eyes, whilst she still quivered and seemed unconvinced: "But you have no enemies, uncle," she said. "Why should that Santobono try to take your life?" For a moment he found no fitting reply. With supreme grandeur he had already resolved to keep the truth secret. Then a recollection came to him, and he resigned himself to the telling of a lie: "Santobono's mind has always been somewhat unhinged," said he, "and I know that he has hated me ever since I refused to help him to get a brother of his, one of our former gardeners, out of prison. Deadly spite often has no more serious cause. He must have thought that he had reason to be revenged on me." Thereupon Benedetta, exhausted, unable to argue any further, sank upon a chair with a despairing gesture: "Ah! God, God! I no longer know--and what matters it now that my Dario is in such danger? There's only one thing to be done, he must be saved. How long they are over what they are doing in that room--why does not Victorine come for us!" The silence again fell, full of terror. Without speaking the Cardinal took the basket of figs from the table and carried it to a cupboard in which he locked it. Then he put the key in his pocket. No doubt, when night had fallen, he himself would throw the proofs of the crime into the Tiber. However, on coming back from the cupboard he noticed the two priests, who naturally had watched him; and with mingled grandeur and simplicity he said to them: "Gentlemen, I need not ask you to be discreet. There are scandals which we must spare the Church, which is not, cannot be guilty. To deliver one of ourselves, even when he is a criminal, to the civil tribunals, often means a blow for the whole Church, for men of evil mind may lay hold of the affair and seek to impute the responsibility of the crime even to the Church itself. We therefore have but to commit the murderer to the hands of God, who will know more surely how to punish him. Ah! for my part, whether I be struck in my own person or whether the blow be directed against my family, my dearest affections, I declare in the name of the Christ who died upon the cross, that I feel neither anger, nor desire for vengeance, that I efface the murderer's name from my memory and bury his abominable act in the eternal silence of the grave." Tall as he was, he seemed of yet loftier stature whilst with hand upraised he took that oath to leave his enemies to the justice of God alone; for he did not refer merely to Santobono, but to Cardinal Sanguinetti, whose evil influence he had divined. And amidst all the heroism of his pride, he was rent by tragic dolour at thought of the dark battle which was waged around the tiara, all the evil hatred and voracious appetite which stirred in the depths of the gloom. Then, as Pierre and Don Vigilio bowed to him as a sign that they would preserve silence, he almost choked with invincible emotion, a sob of loving grief which he strove to keep down rising to his throat, whilst he stammered: "Ah! my poor child, my poor child, the only scion of our race, the only love and hope of my heart! Ah! to die, to die like this!" But Benedetta, again all violence, sprang up: "Die! Who, Dario? I won't have it! We'll nurse him, we'll go back to him. We will take him in our arms and save him. Come, uncle, come at once! I won't, I won't, I won't have him die!" She was going towards the door, and nothing would have prevented her from re-entering the bed-room, when, as it happened, Victorine appeared with a wild look on her face, for, despite her wonted serenity, all her courage was now exhausted. "The doctor begs madame and his Eminence to come at once, at once," said she. Stupefied by all these things, Pierre did not follow the others, but lingered for a moment in the sunlit dining-room with Don Vigilio. What! poison? Poison as in the time of the Borgias, elegantly hidden away, served up with luscious fruit by a crafty traitor, whom one dared not even denounce! And he recalled the conversation on his way back from Frascati, and his Parisian scepticism with respect to those legendary drugs, which to his mind had no place save in the fifth acts of melodramas. Yet those abominable stories were true, those tales of poisoned knives and flowers, of prelates and even dilatory popes being suppressed by a drop or a grain of something administered to them in their morning chocolate. That passionate tragical Santobono was really a poisoner, Pierre could no longer doubt it, for a lurid light now illumined the whole of the previous day: there were the words of ambition and menace which had been spoken by Cardinal Sanguinetti, the eagerness to act in presence of the probable death of the reigning pope, the suggestion of a crime for the sake of the Church's salvation, then that priest with his little basket of figs encountered on the road, then that basket carried for hours so carefully, so devoutly, on the priest's knees, that basket which now haunted Pierre like a nightmare, and whose colour, and odour, and shape he would ever recall with a shudder. Aye, poison, poison, there was truth in it; it existed and still circulated in the depths of the black world, amidst all the ravenous, rival longings for conquest and sovereignty. And all at once the figure of Prada likewise arose in Pierre's mind. A little while previously, when Benedetta had so violently accused the Count, he, Pierre, had stepped forward to defend him and cry aloud what he knew, whence the poison had come, and what hand had offered it. But a sudden thought had made him shiver: though Prada had not devised the crime, he had allowed it to be perpetrated. Another memory darted keen like steel through the young priest's mind--that of the little black hen lying lifeless beside the shed, amidst the dismal surroundings of the /osteria/, with a tiny streamlet of violet blood trickling from her beak. And here again, Tata, the parrot, lay still soft and warm at the foot of her stand, with her beak stained by oozing blood. Why had Prada told that lie about a battle between two fowls? All the dim intricacy of passion and contention bewildered Pierre, he could not thread his way through it; nor was he better able to follow the frightful combat which must have been waged in that man's mind during the night of the ball. At the same time he could not again picture him by his side during their nocturnal walk towards the Boccanera mansion without shuddering, dimly divining what a frightful decision had been taken before that mansion's door. Moreover, whatever the obscurities, whether Prada had expected that the Cardinal alone would be killed, or had hoped that some chance stroke of fate might avenge him on others, the terrible fact remained--he had known, he had been able to stay Destiny on the march, but had allowed it to go onward and blindly accomplish its work of death. Turning his head Pierre perceived Don Vigilio still seated on the corner chair whence he had not stirred, and looking so pale and haggard that perhaps he also had swallowed some of the poison. "Do you feel unwell?" the young priest asked. At first the secretary could not reply, for terror had gripped him at the throat. Then in a low voice he said: "No, no, I didn't eat any. Ah, Heaven, when I think that I so much wanted to taste them, and that merely deference kept me back on seeing that his Eminence did not take any!" Don Vigilio's whole body shivered at the thought that his humility alone had saved him; and on his face and his hands there remained the icy chill of death which had fallen so near and grazed him as it passed. Then twice he heaved a sigh, and with a gesture of affright sought to brush the horrid thing away while murmuring: "Ah! Paparelli, Paparelli!" Pierre, deeply stirred, and knowing what he thought of the train-bearer, tried to extract some information from him: "What do you mean?" he asked. "Do you accuse him too? Do you think they urged him on, and that it was they at bottom?" The word Jesuits was not even spoken, but a big black shadow passed athwart the gay sunlight of the dining-room, and for a moment seemed to fill it with darkness. "They! ah yes!" exclaimed Don Vigilio, "they are everywhere; it is always they! As soon as one weeps, as soon as one dies, they are mixed up in it. And this is intended for me too; I am quite surprised that I haven't been carried off." Then again he raised a dull moan of fear, hatred, and anger: "Ah! Paparelli, Paparelli!" And he refused to reply any further, but darted scared glances at the walls as if from one or another of them he expected to see the train-bearer emerge, with his wrinkled flabby face like that of an old maid, his furtive mouse-like trot, and his mysterious, invading hands which had gone expressly to bring the forgotten figs from the pantry and deposit them on the table. At last the two priests decided to return to the bedroom, where perhaps they might be required; and Pierre on entering was overcome by the heart-rending scene which the chamber now presented. Doctor Giordano, suspecting poison, had for half an hour been trying the usual remedies, an emetic and then magnesia. Just then, too, he had made Victorine whip some whites of eggs in water. But the disorder was progressing with such lightning-like rapidity that all succour was becoming futile. Undressed and lying on his back, his bust propped up by pillows and his arms lying outstretched over the sheets, Dario looked quite frightful in the sort of painful intoxication which characterised that redoubtable and mysterious disorder to which already Monsignor Gallo and others had succumbed. The young man seemed to be stricken with a sort of dizzy stupor, his eyes receded farther and farther into the depth of their dark sockets, whilst his whole face became withered, aged as it were, and covered with an earthy pallor. A moment previously he had closed his eyes, and the only sign that he still lived was the heaving of his chest induced by painful respiration. And leaning over his poor dying face stood Benedetta, sharing his sufferings, and mastered by such impotent grief that she also was unrecognisable, so white, so distracted by anguish, that it seemed as if death were gradually taking her at the same time as it was taking him. In the recess by the window whither Cardinal Boccanera had led Doctor Giordano, a few words were exchanged in low tones. "He is lost, is he not?" The doctor made the despairing gesture of one who is vanquished: "Alas! yes. I must warn your Eminence that in an hour all will be over." A short interval of silence followed. "And the same malady as Gallo, is it not?" asked the Cardinal; and as the doctor trembling and averting his eyes did not answer he added: "At all events of an infectious fever!" Giordano well understood what the Cardinal thus asked of him: silence, the crime for ever hidden away for the sake of the good renown of his mother, the Church. And there could be no loftier, no more tragical grandeur than that of this old man of seventy, still so erect and sovereign, who would neither suffer a slur to be cast upon his spiritual family, nor consent to his human family being dragged into the inevitable mire of a sensational murder trial. No, no, there must be none of that, there must be silence, the eternal silence in which all becomes forgotten. At last the doctor bowed with his gentle air of discretion. "Evidently, of an infectious fever as your Eminence so well says," he replied. Two big tears then again appeared in Boccanera's eyes. Now that he had screened the Deity from attack in the person of the Church, his heart as a man again bled. He begged the doctor to make a supreme effort, to attempt the impossible; but, pointing to the dying man with trembling hands, Giordano shook his head. For his own father, his own mother he could have done nothing. Death was there. So why weary, why torture a dying man, whose sufferings he would only have increased? And then, as the Cardinal, finding the end so near at hand, thought of his sister Serafina, and lamented that she would not be able to kiss her nephew for the last time if she lingered at the Vatican, the doctor offered to fetch her in his carriage which was waiting below. It would not take him more than twenty minutes, said he, and he would be back in time for the end, should he then be needed. Left to himself in the window recess the Cardinal remained there motionless for another moment. With eyes blurred by tears, he gazed towards heaven. And his quivering arms were suddenly raised in a gesture of ardent entreaty. O God, since the science of man was so limited and vain, since that doctor had gone off happy to escape the embarrassment of his impotence, O God, why not a miracle which should proclaim the splendour of Thy Almighty Power! A miracle, a miracle! that was what the Cardinal asked from the depths of his believing soul, with the insistence, the imperious entreaty of a Prince of the Earth, who deemed that he had rendered considerable services to Heaven by dedicating his whole life to the Church. And he asked for that miracle in order that his race might be perpetuated, in order that its last male scion might not thus miserably perish, but be able to marry that fondly loved cousin, who now stood there all woe and tears. A miracle, a miracle for the sake of those two dear children! A miracle which would endow the family with fresh life: a miracle which would eternise the glorious name of Boccanera by enabling an innumerable posterity of valiant ones and faithful ones to spring from that young couple! When the Cardinal returned to the centre of the room he seemed transfigured. Faith had dried his eyes, his soul had become strong and submissive, exempt from all human weakness. He had placed himself in the hands of God, and had resolved that he himself would administer extreme unction to Dario. With a gesture he summoned Don Vigilio and led him into the little room which served as a chapel, and the key of which he always carried. A cupboard had been contrived behind the altar of painted wood, and the Cardinal went to it to take both stole and surplice. The coffer containing the Holy Oils was likewise there, a very ancient silver coffer bearing the Boccanera arms. And on Don Vigilio following the Cardinal back into the bed-room they in turn pronounced the Latin words: "/Pax huic domui/." "/Et omnibus habitantibus in ea/."* * "Peace unto this house and unto all who dwell in it."--Trans. Death was coming so fast and threatening, that all the usual preparations were perforce dispensed with. Neither the two lighted tapers, nor the little table covered with white cloth had been provided. And, in the same way, Don Vigilio the assistant, having failed to bring the Holy Water basin and sprinkler, the Cardinal, as officiating priest, could merely make the gesture of blessing the room and the dying man, whilst pronouncing the words of the ritual: "/Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor; lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor."* * "Sprinkle me, Lord, with hyssop, and purify me; wash me, and make me whiter than snow."--Trans. Benedetta on seeing the Cardinal appear carrying the Holy Oils, had with a long quiver fallen on her knees at the foot of the bed, whilst, somewhat farther away, Pierre and Victorine likewise knelt, overcome by the dolorous grandeur of the scene. And the dilated eyes of the Contessina, whose face was pale as snow, never quitted her Dario, whom she no longer recognised, so earthy was his face, its skin tanned and wrinkled like that of an old man. And it was not for their marriage which he so much desired that their uncle, the all-powerful Prince of the Church, was bringing the Sacrament, but for the supreme rupture, the end of all pride, Death which finishes off the haughtiest races, and sweeps them away, even as the wind sweeps the dust of the roads. It was needful that there should be no delay, so the Cardinal promptly repeated the Credo in an undertone, "/Credo in unum Deum--/" "/Amen/," responded Don Vigilio, who, after the prayers of the ritual, stammered the Litanies in order that Heaven might take pity on the wretched man who was about to appear before God, if God by a prodigy did not spare him. Then, without taking time to wash his fingers, the Cardinal opened the case containing the Holy Oils, and limiting himself to one anointment, as is permissible in pressing cases, he deposited a single drop of the oil on Dario's parched mouth which was already withered by death. And in doing so he repeated the words of the formula, his heart all aglow with faith as he asked that the divine mercy might efface each and every sin that the young man had committed by either of his five senses, those five portals by which everlasting temptation assails the soul. And the Cardinal's fervour was also instinct with the hope that if God had smitten the poor sufferer for his offences, perhaps He would make His indulgence entire and even restore him to life as soon as He should have forgiven his sins. Life, O Lord, life in order that the ancient line of the Boccaneras might yet multiply and continue to serve Thee in battle and at the altar until the end of time! For a moment the Cardinal remained with quivering hands, gazing at the mute face, the closed eyes of the dying man, and waiting for the miracle. But no sign appeared, not the faintest glimmer brightened that haggard countenance, nor did a sigh of relief come from the withered lips as Don Vigilio wiped them with a little cotton wool. And the last prayer was said, and whilst the frightful silence fell once more the Cardinal, followed by his assistant, returned to the chapel. There they both knelt, the Cardinal plunging into ardent prayer upon the bare tiles. With his eyes raised to the brass crucifix upon the altar he saw nothing, heard nothing, but gave himself wholly to his entreaties, supplicating God to take him in place of his nephew, if a sacrifice were necessary, and yet clinging to the hope that so long as Dario retained a breath of life and he himself thus remained on his knees addressing the Deity, he might succeed in pacifying the wrath of Heaven. He was both so humble and so great. Would not accord surely be established between God and a Boccanera? The old palace might have fallen to the ground, he himself would not even have felt the toppling of its beams. In the bed-room, however, nothing had yet stirred beneath the weight of tragic majesty which the ceremony had left there. It was only now that Dario raised his eyelids, and when on looking at his hands he saw them so aged and wasted the depths of his eyes kindled with an expression of immense regretfulness that life should be departing. Doubtless it was at this moment of lucidity amidst the kind of intoxication with which the poison overwhelmed him, that he for the first time realised his perilous condition. Ah! to die, amidst such pain, such physical degradation, what a revolting horror for that frivolous and egotistical man, that lover of beauty, joy, and light, who knew not how to suffer! In him ferocious fate chastised racial degeneracy with too heavy a hand. He became horrified with himself, seized with childish despair and terror, which lent him strength enough to sit up and gaze wildly about the room, in order to see if every one had not abandoned him. And when his eyes lighted on Benedetta still kneeling at the foot of the bed, a supreme impulse carried him towards her, he stretched forth both arms as passionately as his strength allowed and stammered her name: "O Benedetta, Benedetta!" She, motionless in the stupor of her anxiety, had not taken her eyes from his face. The horrible disorder which was carrying off her lover, seemed also to possess and annihilate her more and more, even as he himself grew weaker and weaker. Her features were assuming an immaterial whiteness; and through the void of her clear eyeballs one began to espy her soul. However, when she perceived him thus resuscitating and calling her with arms outstretched, she in her turn arose and standing beside the bed made answer: "I am coming, my Dario, here I am." And then Pierre and Victorine, still on their knees, beheld a sublime deed of such extraordinary grandeur that they remained rooted to the floor, spell-bound as in the presence of some supra-terrestrial spectacle in which human beings may not intervene. Benedetta herself spoke and acted like one freed from all social and conventional ties, already beyond life, only seeing and addressing beings and things from a great distance, from the depths of the unknown in which she was about to disappear. "Ah! my Dario, so an attempt has been made to part us! It was in order that I might never belong to you--that we might never be happy, that your death was resolved upon, and it was known that with your life my own must cease! And it is that man who is killing you! Yes, he is your murderer, even if the actual blow has been dealt by another. He is the first cause--he who stole me from you when I was about to become yours, he who ravaged our lives, and who breathed around us the hateful poison which is killing us. Ah! how I hate him, how I hate him; how I should like to crush him with my hate before I die with you!" She did not raise her voice, but spoke those terrible words in a deep murmur, simply and passionately. Prada was not even named, and she scarcely turned towards Pierre--who knelt, paralysed, behind her--to add with a commanding air: "You will see his father, I charge you to tell him that I cursed his son! That kind-hearted hero loved me well--I love him even now, and the words you will carry to him from me will rend his heart. But I desire that he should know--he must know, for the sake of truth and justice." Distracted by terror, sobbing amidst a last convulsion, Dario again stretched forth his arms, feeling that she was no longer looking at him, that her clear eyes were no longer fixed upon his own: "Benedetta, Benedetta!" "I am coming, I am coming, my Dario--I am here!" she responded, drawing yet nearer to the bedside and almost touching him. "Ah!" she went on, "that vow which I made to the Madonna to belong to none, not even you, until God should allow it by the blessing of one of his priests! Ah! I set a noble, a divine pride in remaining immaculate for him who should be the one master of my soul and body. And that chastity which I was so proud of, I defended it against the other as one defends oneself against a wolf, and I defended it against you with tears for fear of sacrilege. And if you only knew what terrible struggles I was forced to wage with myself, for I loved you and longed to be yours, like a woman who accepts the whole of love, the love that makes wife and mother! Ah! my vow to the Madonna--with what difficulty did I keep it when the old blood of our race arose in me like a tempest; and now what a disaster!" She drew yet nearer, and her low voice became more ardent: "You remember that evening when you came back with a knife-thrust in your shoulder. I thought you dead, and cried aloud with rage at the idea of losing you like that. I insulted the Madonna and regretted that I had not damned myself with you that we might die together, so tightly clasped that we must needs be buried together also. And to think that such a terrible warning was of no avail! I was blind and foolish; and now you are again stricken, again being taken from my love. Ah! my wretched pride, my idiotic dream!" That which now rang out in her stifled voice was the anger of the practical woman that she had ever been, all superstition notwithstanding. Could the Madonna, who was so maternal, desire the woe of lovers? No, assuredly not. Nor did the angels make the mere absence of a priest a cause for weeping over the transports of true and mutual love. Was not such love holy in itself, and did not the angels rather smile upon it and burst into gladsome song! And ah! how one cheated oneself by not loving to heart's content under the sun, when the blood of life coursed through one's veins! "Benedetta! Benedetta!" repeated the dying man, full of child-like terror at thus going off all alone into the depths of the black and everlasting night. "Here I am, my Dario, I am coming!" Then, as she fancied that the servant, albeit motionless, had stirred, as if to rise and interfere, she added: "Leave me, leave me, Victorine, nothing in the world can henceforth prevent it. A moment ago, when I was on my knees, something roused me and urged me on. I know whither I am going. And besides, did I not swear on the night of the knife thrust? Did I not promise to belong to him alone, even in the earth if it were necessary? I must embrace him, and he will carry me away! We shall be dead, and we shall be wedded in spite of all, and for ever and for ever!" She stepped back to the dying man, and touched him: "Here I am, my Dario, here I am!" Then came the apogee. Amidst growing exaltation, buoyed up by a blaze of love, careless of glances, candid like a lily, she divested herself of her garments and stood forth so white, that neither marble statue, nor dove, nor snow itself was ever whiter. "Here I am, my Dario, here I am!" Recoiling almost to the ground as at sight of an apparition, the glorious flash of a holy vision, Pierre and Victorine gazed at her with dazzled eyes. The servant had not stirred to prevent this extraordinary action, seized as she was with that shrinking reverential terror which comes upon one in presence of the wild, mad deeds of faith and passion. And the priest, whose limbs were paralysed, felt that something so sublime was passing that he could only quiver in distraction. And no thought of impurity came to him on beholding that lily, snowy whiteness. All candour and all nobility as she was, that virgin shocked him no more than some sculptured masterpiece of genius. "Here I am, my Dario, here I am." She had lain herself down beside the spouse whom she had chosen, she had clasped the dying man whose arms only had enough strength left to fold themselves around her. Death was stealing him from her, but she would go with him; and again she murmured: "My Dario, here I am." And at that moment, against the wall at the head of the bed, Pierre perceived the escutcheon of the Boccaneras, embroidered in gold and coloured silks on a groundwork of violet velvet. There was the winged dragon belching flames, there was the fierce and glowing motto "/Bocca nera, Alma rossa/" (black mouth, red soul), the mouth darkened by a roar, the soul flaming like a brazier of faith and love. And behold! all that old race of passion and violence with its tragic legends had reappeared, its blood bubbling up afresh to urge that last and adorable daughter of the line to those terrifying and prodigious nuptials in death. And to Pierre that escutcheon recalled another memory, that of the portrait of Cassia Boccanera the /amorosa/ and avengeress who had flung herself into the Tiber with her brother Ercole and the corpse of her lover Flavio. Was there not here even with Benedetta the same despairing clasp seeking to vanquish death, the same savagery in hurling oneself into the abyss with the corpse of the one's only love? Benedetta and Cassia were as sisters, Cassia, who lived anew in the old painting in the /salon/ overhead, Benedetta who was here dying of her lover's death, as though she were but the other's spirit. Both had the same delicate childish features, the same mouth of passion, the same large dreamy eyes set in the same round, practical, and stubborn head. "My Dario, here I am!" For a second, which seemed an eternity, they clasped one another, she neither repelled nor terrified by the disorder which made him so unrecognisable, but displaying a delirious passion, a holy frenzy as if to pass beyond life, to penetrate with him into the black Unknown. And beneath the shock of the felicity at last offered to him he expired, with his arms yet convulsively wound around her as though indeed to carry her off. Then, whether from grief or from bliss amidst that embrace of death, there came such a rush of blood to her heart that the organ burst: she died on her lover's neck, both tightly and for ever clasped in one another's arms. There was a faint sigh. Victorine understood and drew near, while Pierre, also erect, remained quivering with the tearful admiration of one who has beheld the sublime. "Look, look!" whispered the servant, "she no longer moves, she no longer breathes. Ah! my poor child, my poor child, she is dead!" Then the priest murmured: "Oh! God, how beautiful they are." It was true, never had loftier and more resplendent beauty appeared on the faces of the dead. Dario's countenance, so lately aged and earthen, had assumed the pallor and nobility of marble, its features lengthened and simplified as by a transport of ineffable joy. Benedetta remained very grave, her lips curved by ardent determination, whilst her whole face was expressive of dolorous yet infinite beatitude in a setting of infinite whiteness. Their hair mingled, and their eyes, which had remained open, continued gazing as into one another's souls with eternal, caressing sweetness. They were for ever linked, soaring into immortality amidst the enchantment of their union, vanquishers of death, radiant with the rapturous beauty of love, the conqueror, the immortal. But Victorine's sobs at last burst forth, mingled with such lamentations that great confusion followed. Pierre, now quite beside himself, in some measure failed to understand how it was that the room suddenly became invaded by terrified people. The Cardinal and Don Vigilio, however, must have hastened in from the chapel; and at the same moment, no doubt, Doctor Giordano must have returned with Donna Serafina, for both were now there, she stupefied by the blows which had thus fallen on the house in her absence, whilst he, the doctor, displayed the perturbation and astonishment which comes upon the oldest practitioners when facts seem to give the lie to their experience. However, he sought an explanation of Benedetta's death, and hesitatingly ascribed it to aneurism, or possibly embolism. Thereupon Victorine, like a servant whose grief makes her the equal of her employers, boldly interrupted him: "Ah! Sir," said she, "they loved each other too fondly; did not that suffice for them to die together?" Meantime Donna Serafina, after kissing the poor children on the brow, desired to close their eyes; but she could not succeed in doing so, for the lids lifted directly she removed her finger and once more the eyes began to smile at one another, to exchange in all fixity their loving and eternal glance. And then as she spoke of parting the bodies, Victorine again protested: "Oh! madame, oh! madame," she said, "you would have to break their arms. Cannot you see that their fingers are almost dug into one another's shoulders? No, they can never be parted!" Thereupon Cardinal Boccanera intervened. God had not granted the miracle; and he, His minister, was livid, tearless, and full of icy despair. But he waved his arm with a sovereign gesture of absolution and sanctification, as if, Prince of the Church that he was, disposing of the will of Heaven, he consented that the lovers should appear in that embrace before the supreme tribunal. In presence of such wondrous love, indeed, profoundly stirred by the sufferings of their lives and the beauty of their death, he showed a broad and lofty contempt for mundane proprieties. "Leave them, leave me, my sister," said he, "do not disturb their slumber. Let their eyes remain open since they desire to gaze on one another till the end of time without ever wearying. And let them sleep in one another's arms since in their lives they did not sin, and only locked themselves in that embrace in order that they might be laid together in the ground." And then, again becoming a Roman Prince whose proud blood was yet hot with old-time deeds of battle and passion, he added: "Two Boccaneras may well sleep like that; all Rome will admire them and weep for them. Leave them, leave them together, my sister. God knows them and awaits them!" All knelt, and the Cardinal himself repeated the prayers for the dead. Night was coming, increasing gloom stole into the chamber, where two burning tapers soon shone out like stars. And then, without knowing how, Pierre again found himself in the little deserted garden on the bank of the Tiber. Suffocating with fatigue and grief, he must have come thither for fresh air. Darkness shrouded the charming nook where the streamlet of water falling from the tragic mask into the ancient sarcophagus ever sang its shrill and flute-like song; and the laurel-bush which shaded it, and the bitter box-plants and the orange-trees skirting the paths now formed but vague masses under the blue-black sky. Ah! how gay and sweet had that melancholy garden been in the morning, and what a desolate echo it retained of Benedetta's winsome laughter, all that fine delight in coming happiness which now lay prone upstairs, steeped in the nothingness of things and beings! So dolorous was the pang which came to Pierre's heart that he burst into sobs, seated on the same broken column where she had sat, and encompassed by the same atmosphere that she had breathed, in which still lingered the perfume of her presence. But all at once a distant clock struck six, and the young priest started on remembering that he was to be received by the Pope that very evening at nine. Yet three more hours! He had not thought of that interview during the terrifying catastrophe, and it seemed to him now as if months and months had gone by, as if the appointment were some very old one which a man is only able to keep after years of absence, when he has grown aged and had his heart and brain modified by innumerable experiences. However, he made an effort and rose to his feet. In three hours' time he would go to the Vatican and at last he would see the Pope. 
31723	----	CECILIA A Story of Modern Rome BY F. MARION CRAWFORD AUTHOR OF "SARACINESCA," "MARIETTA," "AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS," ETC. New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 1902 All rights reserved Copyright, 1902, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped October, 1902. Sixteenth Thousand * NORWOOD PRESS * J. S. CUSHING & CO. - BERWICK & SMITH * NORWOOD MASS. U.S.A. * CECILIA A STORY OF MODERN ROME CHAPTER I Two men were sitting side by side on a stone bench in the forgotten garden of the Arcadian Society, in Rome; and it was in early spring, not long ago. Few people, Romans or strangers, ever find their way to that lonely and beautiful spot beyond the Tiber, niched in a hollow of the Janiculum below San Pietro in Montorio, where Beatrice Cenci sleeps. The Arcadians were men and women who loved poetry in an artificial time, took names of shepherds and shepherdesses, rhymed as best they could, met in pleasant places to recite their verses, and played that the world was young, and gentle, and sweet, and unpoisoned, just when it had declined to one of its recurring periods of vicious old age. The Society did not die with its times, and it still exists, less sprightly, less ready to mask in pastorals, but rhyming, meeting, and reciting verses now and then, in the old manner, though rarely in the old haunts. Even now fresh inscriptions in honour of the Arcadians are set into the stuccoed walls of the little terraced garden under the hill. It is very peaceful there. Above, the concave wall of the small house of meeting looks down upon circular tiers of brick seats, and beyond these there are bushes and a little fountain. To the right and left, symmetrical walks lead down in two wide curves to the lower levels, where the water falls again into a basin in a shaded grotto, and rises the third time in another fountain. An ancient stone-pine tree springs straight upwards, spreading out lovely branches. There are bushes again and a magnolia, and a Japanese medlar, and there is moss. The stone mouldings of the fountains are rich with the green tints of time. The air is softly damp, smelling of leaves and flowers; there are corners into which the sunlight never shines, little mysteries of perpetual shade that are full of sadness in winter, but in summer repeat the fanciful confidences of a delicious and imaginary past. The Sister who had let in the two visitors had left them to themselves, and had gone back to the little convent door; for she was the portress, and therefore a small judge of character in her way, and she understood that the two gentlemen were not like the other half-dozen strangers who came every year to see the garden, and went away after ten minutes, dropping half a franc into her hand for the Sisters, and not even lifting their hats to her as she let them out. These two evidently knew the place; they spoke to each other as intimate friends do; they had come to enjoy the peace and silence for an hour, and they would neither carry off the flowers from the magnolia tree, as some did, nor scrawl their names in pencil on the stucco. Therefore they might safely be left to their own leisure and will. The men were friends, as the portress had guessed; they were very unlike, and their unlikeness was in part the reason of their friendship. The one was squarely built, of average height, a man of action at every point, with bold blue eyes that could be piercing, a rugged Roman head, prominent at the brows, short reddish hair and pointed beard, great jaw and cheek-bones, a tanned and freckled skin. He sat leaning back, one leg crossed over the other, the knee that was upper-most pressing against the stout stick he held across it, and the big veins swelled on his hands and wrists. He was a sailor, and a born fighting man; and in ten years of service he had managed to find himself in every affair that had concerned Italy in the remotest degree, in Africa, in China, and elsewhere. He was now at home on leave, expecting immediate promotion. He bore a historical name; he was called Lamberto Lamberti. His companion sat with folded arms and bent head, a rather dark young man with deep-set grey eyes that often looked black, a thoughtful face, a grave mouth that could smile suddenly and almost strangely, with a child's sweet frankness, and yet with a look that was tender and human--the smile of a man who understands the meaning of life and yet does not despise it. Most people would have taken him for a man of leisure, probably given to reading or the cultivation of some artistic taste. Guido d'Este was one of those Italians who are content to survive from a very beautiful past without joining the frantic rush for a very problematic future. But there was more in him than a love of books and a knowledge of pictures; for he was a dreamer, and there are dreams better worth dreaming than many deeds are worth the doing. "I sometimes wonder what would have happened to you and me," he said, after there had been a long pause, "if we had been obliged to live each other's lives." "We should both have been bored to extinction," answered Lamberti, without hesitating. "I suppose so," assented Guido, and relapsed into silence. He was very glad that he was not condemned to the life of a naval officer, to the perpetual motion of active service, to the narrow quarters of a lieutenant on a modern man-of-war, to the daily companionship of a dozen or eighteen other officers with whom he could certainly not have an idea in common. It would be a detestable thing to be sent at a moment's notice from one end of the world to the other, from heat to cold, from cold to heat, through all sorts of weather, only to be a part of an organisation, a wheel in a machine, a pawn in some one's game of chess. He had been on board a line-of-battle ship once to see his friend off, and had mentally noted the discomfort. There was nothing in the cabin but a bunk built over a chest of drawers, a narrow transom, a wash-stand that disappeared into a recess when pushed back, an exiguous table fastened to a bulkhead, and one camp-stool. There was no particular means of ventilation, and the place smelt of cold iron, paint, and soft soap. Yet his friend had been about to live at least six months in this cell, which would have been condemned as too narrow in an ordinarily well-managed prison. Nevertheless, it would be pleasant in itself, no doubt, to be a living part of what most men only read about, to really know what fighting meant, to be one of the few who are invariably chosen first for missions of danger and difficulty. Besides, Guido d'Este was just now in a very difficult situation, which might become dangerous, and from which he saw no immediate means of escape; and, for once in his life, he almost envied his friend his simple career, in which nothing seemed to be required of a man but courage and obedience. "I suppose I should be bored," he said again, after a short and thoughtful pause, "but I would rather be bored than live the life I am living." The sailor looked at him sharply a moment, and instantly understood that Guido had brought him to the little garden in order to tell him something of importance without risk of interruption. "Have you had more trouble with that horrible old woman?" he asked roughly. "Yes. She is draining the life out of me. She will ruin me in the end." Guido did not look up as he spoke, and he slowly tapped the hard earth with the toe of his shoe. He felt very helpless, and he shook his head over his misfortunes, which seemed great. "That comes of being connected with royalty," said Lamberti, in the same rough tone. "Is it my fault?" asked Guido, with a melancholy smile. The sailor snorted discontentedly, and changed his position. "What can I do?" he asked presently. "Tell me." "Nothing." "If I were only rich!" "My dear friend," said Guido, "she demands a million of francs!" "There are men who have fifty. Would a hundred thousand francs be of any use?" "Not the least. Besides, that is all you have." "What would that matter?" asked Lamberti. Guido looked up at last, for he knew that the words were true and earnest. "Thank you," he answered. "I know you would do that for me. But it would not be of any use. Things have gone too far." "Shall I go to her and talk the matter over? I believe I could frighten her into justice. After all, she has no legal claim upon you." Guido shook his head. "That is not the question," he answered. "She never pretends that her right is legal, for it is not. On the contrary, she says it is a question of honour, that I have lost her money for her in speculations, and that I am bound to restore it to her. It is true that I only did with it exactly what she wished, and what she insisted that I should do, against my own judgment. She knows that." "But then, I do not see----" "She also knows that I cannot prove it," interrupted Guido, "and as she is perfectly unscrupulous, she will use everything against me to make out that I have deliberately cheated her out of the money." "But it cannot make so much difference to her, after all," objected Lamberti. "She must have an immense fortune somewhere." "She is a miser, in spite of that sudden attack of the gaming fever. Money is the only passion of her life." "Possibly, though I doubt it. There is Monsieur Leroy, you know." Lamberti spoke the name with contempt, but Guido said nothing, for, after all, the high and mighty lady about whom they were talking was his father's sister, and he preferred not to talk scandal about her, even with his intimate friend. "If matters grow worse," said Lamberti, "there are at least the worthless securities in her name, to prove that you acted for her." "You are mistaken. That is the worst of it. Everything was done in my name, for she would not let her own appear. She used to give me the money in cash, telling me exactly what to do with it, and I brought her the broker's accounts." "I daresay she made you sign receipts for the sums she gave you," laughed Lamberti. "Yes, she did." Lamberti sat up suddenly and stared at his friend. Such folly was hardly to be believed. "She is capable of saying that she lent you the money on your promise!" he cried. "That is exactly what she threatens to do," answered Guido d'Este, dejectedly. "As I cannot possibly pay it, she can force me to do one of two things." "What things?" "Either to disappear from honourable society and begin life somewhere else, or else to make an end of myself. And she will do it. I have felt for more than a year that she means to ruin me." Lamberti set his teeth, and stared at the stone-pine. If Guido had not been just the man he was, sensitive to morbidness where his honour was concerned, the situation might have seemed less desperate. If his aunt, her Serene Highness the Princess Anatolie, had not been a monster of avarice, selfishness, and vindictiveness, there would perhaps have been some hope of moving her. As it was, matters looked ill, and to make them worse there was the well-known fact that Guido had formerly played high and had lost considerable sums at cards. It would be easy to make society believe that he had paid his debts, which had always been promptly settled, with money which the Princess had intrusted to him for investment. "What possible object can she have in ruining you?" asked Lamberti, presently. "I cannot guess," Guido answered after another short pause. "I have little enough left as it is, except the bare chance of inheriting something, some day, from my brother, who likes me about as much as my aunt does, and is not bound to leave me a penny." "But, after all," argued Lamberti, "you are the only heir left to either of them." "I suppose so," assented Guido in an uncertain tone. "What do you mean?" "Nothing--it does not matter. Of course," he continued quietly, "this may go on for some time, but it can only end in one way, sooner or later. I shall be lucky if I am only reduced to starvation." "You might marry an heiress," suggested Lamberti, as a last resource. "And pay my aunt out of my wife's fortune? No. I will not do that." "Of course not. But I should think that if ever an honest man could be tempted to do such a thing, it would be in some such case as yours." "Perhaps to save his father from ruin, or his mother from starvation," said Guido. "I could understand it then; but not to save himself. Besides, no heiress in our world would marry me, for I have nothing to offer." Lamberti smiled incredulously. He was not a cynic, because he believed in action; but his faith in the disinterested simplicity of mankind was not strong. He had also some experience of the world, and was quite ready to admit that a marriageable heiress might fairly expect an equivalent for the fortune she was to bring her husband. Yet he wholly rejected the statement that Guido d'Este had nothing of social value to offer, merely because he was now a poor man and had never been a very rich one. Guido had neither lands nor money, and bore no title, it was true; and could but just live like a gentleman on the small allowance that was paid him yearly according to his father's will. But there was no secret about his birth, and he was closely related to several of the reigning houses of Europe. His father had been one of the minor sovereigns dethroned in the revolutions of the nineteenth century; late in life, a widower, the ex-king had married a beautiful young girl of no great family, who had died in giving birth to Guido. The marriage had of course been morganatic, though perfectly legal, and Guido neither bore the name of his father's royal race, nor could he ever lay claim to the succession, in the utterly improbable event of a restoration. But he was half brother to the childless man, nearly forty years older than himself, whose faithful friends still called him "your Majesty" in private; he was nephew to the extremely authentic Princess Anatolie, and he was first cousin to at least one king who had held his own. In the eyes of an heiress in search of social position as an equivalent for her millions, all this would more than compensate for the fact that his visiting card bore the somewhat romantic and unlikely name, "Guido d'Este," without any title or explanation whatever. But apart from the sordid consideration of values to be given and received, Guido was young, good-looking if not handsome, and rather better gifted than most men; he had reached the age of twenty-seven without having what society is pleased to call a past--in other words without ever having been the chief actor in a social tragedy, comedy, or farce; and finally, though he had once been fond of cards, he had now entirely given up play. If he had been a little richer, he could almost have passed for a model young man in the eyes of the exacting and prudent parent of marriageable daughters. Judging from the Princess Anatolie, it was probable that he resembled his mother's family more than his father's. For all these reasons his friend thought that, if he chose, he might easily find an heiress who would marry him with enthusiasm; but, being his friend, Lamberti was very glad that he rejected the idea. The two were not men who ever talked together of their principles, though they sometimes spoke of their beliefs and differed about them. Belief is usually absolute, but principle is always a matter of conscience, and the conscience is a part of the mixed self in which soul and mind and matter are all involved together. Men born in the same surroundings and brought up in the same way generally hold to the same principles as guides in life, and show the same abhorrence for the sins that are accounted dishonourable, and the same indulgence for those not condemned by the code of honour, not even admitting discussion upon such points. But the same men may have very different opinions about spiritual matters. Eliminating the vulgar average of society, there remain always a certain number who, while possibly holding even more divergent beliefs than most people, agree more precisely, or disagree more essentially, about matters of conscience, either stretching or contracting the code of honour according to their own temper, and especially according to the traditions of their own most immediate surroundings. Other conditions being favourable, it seems as if men whose consciences are most alike should be the best fitted for each other's friendship, no matter what they may think or believe about religion. This was certainly the case with Guido d'Este and Lamberto Lamberti, and they simultaneously dismissed, as detestable, dishonourable, and unworthy, the mere thought that Guido should try to marry an heiress, with a view to satisfying the outrageous claims of his ex-royal aunt, the Princess Anatolie. "In simpler times," observed Lamberti, who liked to recall the middle ages, "we should have poisoned the old woman." Guido did not smile. "Without meaning to do her an injustice," he answered, "I think it much more probable that she would have poisoned me." "With the help of Monsieur Leroy, she might have succeeded." At the thought of the man whom he so cordially detested, Lamberti's blue eyes grew hard, and his upper lip tightened a little, just showing his teeth under his red moustache. Guido looked at him and smiled in his turn. "There are your ferocious instincts again," he said; "you wish you could kill him." "I do," answered Lamberti, simply. He rose from his seat and stretched himself a little, as some big dogs always do after the preliminary growl at an approaching enemy. "I think Monsieur Leroy is the most repulsive human being I ever saw," he said. "I am not exactly a sensitive person, but it makes me very uncomfortable to be near him. He once gave me his hand, and I had to take it. It felt like a live toad. How old is that man?" "He must be forty," said Guido, "but he is wonderfully well preserved. Any one would take him for five-and-thirty." "It is disgusting!" Lamberti kicked a pebble away, as he stood. "He looked just as he does now, when I was seventeen," observed Guido. "The creature paints his face. I am sure of it." "No. I have seen him drenched in a shower, when he had no umbrella. The rain ran down his cheeks, but the colour did not change." "It is all the more disgusting," retorted Lamberti, illogically, but with strong emphasis. Guido rose from his seat rather wearily. As he stood up, he was much taller than his friend, who had seemed the larger man while both were seated. "I am glad that we have talked this over," he said. "Not that talking can help matters, of course. It never does. But I wanted you to know just how things stand, in case anything should happen to me." Lamberti turned rather sharply. "In case what should happen to you?" he asked, his eyes hardening. "I am very tired of it all," Guido answered, "I have nothing to live for, and I am being driven straight to disgrace and ruin without any fault of my own. I daresay that some day I may--well, you know what I mean." "What?" "I should not care to exile myself to South America. I am not fit for that sort of life." "Well?" "There is the other alternative," said Guido, with a tuneless little laugh. "When life is intolerable, what can be simpler than to part with it?" Lamberti's strong hand was already on his friend's arm, and tightened energetically. "Do you believe in God?" he asked abruptly. "No. At least, I think not." "I do," said Lamberti, with conviction, "and I shall not let you make away with yourself if I can help it." He loosed his hold, thrust his hands into his pockets, and looked as if he wished he could fight somebody or something. "A man who kills himself to escape his troubles is a coward," he said. Guido made a gesture of indifference. "You know very well that I am not a coward," he said. "You will be, the day you are afraid to go on living," returned his friend. "If you kill yourself, I shall think you are an arrant coward, and I shall be sorry I ever knew you." Guido looked at him incredulously. "Are you in earnest?" he asked. "Yes." There was no mistaking the look in Lamberti's hard blue eyes. Guido faced him. "Do you think that every man who commits suicide is a coward?" "If it is to escape his own troubles, yes. A man who gives his life for his country, his mother, or his wife, is not a coward, though he may kill himself with his own hand." "The Church would call him a suicide." "I do not know, in all cases," said Lamberti. "I am not a theologian, and as the Church means nothing to you, it would be of no use if I were." "Why do you say that the Church means nothing to me?" Guido asked. "Since you are an atheist, what meaning can it possibly have?" "It means the whole tradition of morality by which we live, and our fathers lived. Even the code of honour, which is a little out of shape nowadays, is based on Christianity, and was once the rule of a good life, the best rule in the days when it grew up." "I daresay. Even the code of honour, degenerate as it is, and twist it how you will, cannot give you an excuse for killing yourself when you have always behaved honourably, or for running away from the enemy simply because you are tired of fighting and will not take the trouble to go on." "Perhaps you are right," Guido answered. "But the whole question is not worth arguing. What is life, after all, that we should attach any importance to it?" "It is all you have, and you only have it once." "Who knows? Perhaps we may come back to it again, hundreds and hundreds of times. There are more people in the world who believe that than there are Christians." "If that is what you believe," retorted Lamberti, "you must believe that the sooner you leave life, the sooner you will come back to it." "Possibly. But there is a chance that it may not be true, and that everything may end here. That one chance may be worth taking." "There is a chance that a man who deserts from his ship may not be caught. That is not an argument in favour of desertion." Guido laughed carelessly. "You have a most unpleasant way of naming things," he said. "Shall we go? It is growing late, and I have promised to see my aunt before dinner." "Will there be any one else there?" asked Lamberti. "Why? Did you think of going with me?" "I might. It is a long time since I have called. I think I shall be a little more assiduous in future." "It is not gay, at my aunt's," observed Guido. "Monsieur Leroy will be there. You may have to shake hands with him!" "You do not seem anxious that I should go with you," laughed Lamberti. Guido said nothing for a moment, and seemed to be weighing the question, as if it might be of some importance. Lamberti afterwards remembered the slight hesitation. "By all means come," Guido said, when he had made up his mind. He glanced once more at the place, for he liked it, and it was pleasant to carry away pictures of what one liked, even of a bit of neglected old garden with a stone-pine in the middle, clearly cut out against the sky. He wondered idly whether he should ever come again--whether, after all, it would be cowardly to go to sleep with the certainty of not waking, and whether he should find anything beyond, or not. The world looked too familiar to him to be interesting, as if he had known it too long, and he vaguely wished that he could change it, and desire to stay in it for its own sake; and just then it occurred to him that every man carries with him the world in which he must live, the stage and the scenery for his own play. It would be absurd to pretend, he thought, that his own material world was the same as Lamberti's, even when the latter was at home. They knew the same people, heard the same talk, ate the same things, looked on the same sights, breathed the same air. There was perhaps no sacrifice worthy of honourable men which either of them would not make for the other. Yet, to Guido d'Este, life seemed miserably indifferent where it did not seem a real calamity, while to Lamberti every second of it was worth fighting for, because it was worth enjoying. Guido looked at his friend's tanned neck and sturdy shoulders, following him to the door, and he realised more clearly than ever before that he was not of the same race. He felt the satiety bred in many generations of destiny's spoilt and flattered sons; the absence of anything like a grasping will, caused by the too easy fulfilment of every careless wish; the over-critical sense that guesses at hidden imperfection, the cruelly unerring instinct of a taste too tired to enjoy and yet too fine to be deceived. Lamberti turned at the door and saw his face. "What are you thinking about?" "I was envying you," Guido murmured. "You are glad to be alive." Lamberti made rather an impatient gesture, but said nothing. The Sister who had admitted the two opened the little iron door for them to go out. She was a small woman, with a worn face and kind brown eyes, one of the half-dozen who live in the little convent and work among the children of the very poor in that quarter. Both men had taken out money. "For the poor children, if you please," said Guido, placing his offering in the nun's hand. "And tell them to pray for a man who is in trouble," added Lamberti, giving her money. She looked at him curiously, thinking, perhaps, that he meant himself. Then she gravely bent her head. "I thank you very much," she said. The small iron door closed with a rusty clang, and the friends began to descend the steep way that leads down from the Porta San Pancrazio to the Via Garibaldi. "Why did you say that to the nun?" asked Guido. "Are you past praying for?" enquired Lamberti, with a careless and good-natured laugh. "It is not like you," said Guido. "I do not pretend to be more consistent than other people, you know. Are you going directly to the Princess's?" "No. I must go home first. The old lady would never forgive me if I went to see her without a silk hat in my hand." "Then I suppose I must dress, too," said Lamberti. "I will leave you at your door, and drive home, and we can meet at your aunt's." "Very well." They walked down the street and found a cab, scarcely speaking again until they parted at Guido's door. He lived alone in a quiet apartment of the Palazzo Farnese, overlooking the Via Giulia and the river beyond. The afternoon sun was still streaming through the open windows of his sitting room, and the warm breeze came with it. "There are two notes, sir," said his servant, who had followed him. "The one from the Princess is urgent. The man wished to wait for you, but I sent him away." "That was right," said Guido, taking the letters from the salver. "Get my things ready. I have visits to make." The man went out and shut the door. He was a Venetian, and had been in the navy, where he had served Lamberti during the affair in China. Lamberti had recommended him to his friend. Guido remained standing while he opened the note. The first was an engraved invitation to a garden party from a lady he scarcely knew. It was the first he had ever received from her, and he was not aware that she ever asked people to her house. The second was from his aunt, begging him to come to tea that afternoon as he had promised, for a very particular reason, and asking him to let her know beforehand if anything made it impossible. It began with "Dearest Guido" and was signed "Your devoted aunt, Anatolie." She was evidently very anxious that he should come, for he was generally her "dear nephew," and she was his "affectionate aunt." The handwriting was fine and hard to read, though it was regular. Some of the letters were quite unlike those of most people, and many of them were what experts call "blind." Guido d'Este read the note through twice, with an expression of dislike, and then tore it up. He threw the invitation upon some others that lay in a chiselled copper dish on his writing table, lit a cigarette, and looked out of the window. His aunt's note was too affectionate and too anxious to bode well, and he was tempted to write that he could not go. It would be pleasant to end the afternoon with a book and a cup of tea, and then to dine alone and dream away the evening in soothing silence. But he had promised to go; and, moreover, nothing was of any real importance at all, nothing whatsoever, from the moment of beginning life to the instant of leaving it. He therefore dressed and went out again. CHAPTER II Lamberto Lamberti never wasted time, whether he was at sea, doing his daily duty as an officer, or ashore in Africa, fighting savages, or on leave, amusing himself in Rome, or Paris, or London. Time was life, and life was far too good to be squandered in dawdling. In ten minutes after he had reached his room he was ready to go out again. As he took his hat and gloves, his eye fell on a note which he had not seen when he had come in. He opened it carelessly and found the same formal invitation which Guido had received at the same time. The Countess Fortiguerra requested the pleasure of his company at the Villa Palladio between four and six, and the date was just a fortnight ahead. Lamberti was a Roman, and though he had only seen the Countess three or four times in his life, he remembered very well that she had been twice married, and that her first husband had been a certain Count Palladio, whose name was vaguely connected in Lamberti's mind with South American railways, the Suez Canal, and a machine gun that had been tried in the Italian navy; but it was not a Roman name, and he could not remember any villa that was called by it. Palladio--it recalled something else, besides a great architect--something connected with Pallas--but Lamberti was no great scholar. Guido would know. Guido knew everything about literature, ancient and modern--or at least Lamberti thought so. He had kept his cab while he dressed, and in a few minutes the little horse had toiled up the long hill that leads to Porta Pinciana, and Lamberti got out at the gate of one of those beautiful villas of which there are still a few within the walls of Rome. It belonged to a foreigner of infinite taste, whose love of roses was proverbial. A legend says that some of them were watered with the most carefully prepared beef tea from the princely kitchen. The rich man had gone back to his own country, and the Princess Anatolie had taken the villa and meant to spend the rest of her life there. She was only seventy years old, and had made up her mind to live to be a hundred, so that it was worth while to make permanent arrangements for her comfort. Lamberti might have driven through the gate and up to the house, but he was not sure whether the Princess liked to see such plebeian vehicles as cabs in her grounds. He had a strong suspicion that, in spite of her royal blood, she had the soul of a snob, and thought much more about appearances than he did; and as for Monsieur Leroy, he was one of the most complete specimens of the snob species in the world. Therefore Lamberti, who now had reasons for wishing to propitiate the dwellers in the villa, left his cab outside and walked up the steep drive to the house. He did not look particularly well in a frock coat and high hat. He was too muscular, his hair was too red, his neck was too sunburnt, and he was more accustomed to wearing a uniform or the rough clothes in which fighting is usually done. The footman looked at him and did not recognise him. "Her Highness is not at home," said the man, coolly. A private carriage was waiting at a little distance from the porch, and the footman who belonged to it was lounging in the vestibule within. "Be good enough to ask whether her Highness will see me," said Lamberti. The fellow looked at him again, and evidently made up his mind that it would be safer to obey a red-haired gentleman who had such a very unusual look in his eyes and spoke so quietly, for he disappeared without making any further objection. When Lamberti entered the drawing-room, he was aware that the Princess was established in a high arm-chair near a tea-table, that Monsieur Leroy was coming towards him, and that an elderly lady in a hat was seated near the Princess in an attitude which may be described as one of respectful importance. He was aware of the presence of these three persons in the room, but he only saw the fourth, a young girl, standing beside the table with a cup in her hand, and just turning her face towards him with a look that was like a surprised recognition after not having seen him for a very long time. He started perceptibly as his eyes met hers, and he almost uttered an exclamation of astonishment. He was checked by feeling Monsieur Leroy's toad-like hand in his. "Her Highness is very glad to see you," said an oily voice in French, but with a thick and rolling pronunciation that was South American unless it was Roumanian. For once Lamberti did not notice the sensual, pink and white face, the hanging lips, the colourless brown hair, the insolent eyes, the effeminate figure and dress of the little man he detested, and whose mere touch was disgusting to him. By a strong effort he went directly up to the Princess without looking again at the young girl whose presence had affected him so oddly. Princess Anatolie was gracious enough to give him her hand to kiss; he bent over it, and his lips touched a few of the cold precious stones in the rings that loaded her fingers. She had not changed in the year that had passed since he had seen her, except that her eyes looked smaller than ever and nearer together. Her hair might or might not be her own, for it was carefully crimped and arranged upon her forehead; it was not certain that her excellent teeth were false; there was about her an air of youth and vitality that was really surprising, and yet it was impossible not to feel that she might be altogether a marvellous sham, on the verge of dissolution. "This is most charming!" she said, in a voice that was not cracked, but rang false. "I expect my nephew, Guido, at any moment. He is your great friend, is he not? Yes, I never forget anything. This is my nephew Guido's great friend," she continued volubly, and turning to the elderly lady on her right, "Prince Lamberti." "Don Lamberto Lamberti," said Monsieur Leroy in a low voice, correcting her. But even this was not quite right. "I have the good fortune to know the Countess Fortiguerra," said Lamberti, bowing, as he suddenly recognised her, but very much surprised that she should be there. "I have just received a very kind invitation from you," he added, as she gave him her hand. "I hope you will come," she said quietly. "I knew your mother very well. We were at the school of the Sacred Heart together." Lamberti bent his head a little, in acknowledgment of the claim upon him possessed by one of his mother's school friends. "I shall do my best to come," he answered. He felt that the young girl was watching him, and he ventured to look at her, with a little movement, as if he wished to be introduced. Again he felt the absolute certainty of having met her before, somewhere, very long ago--so long ago that she could not have been born then, and he must have been a small boy. Therefore what he felt was absurd. "Cecilia," said the Countess, speaking to the girl, "this is Signor Lamberto Lamberti." "My daughter," she explained, as he bowed, "Cecilia Palladio." "Most charming!" cried the Princess, "the son and the daughter of two old friends." "Touching," echoed Monsieur Leroy. "Such a picture! There is true sentiment in it." Lamberti did not hear, but Cecilia Palladio did, and a straight shadow, fine as a hair line, appeared for an instant, perpendicular between her brows, while she looked directly at the man before her. A moment later Lamberti was seated between her and her mother, and Monsieur Leroy had resumed the position he had left to welcome the newcomer, sitting on a very low cushioned stool almost at the Princess's feet. In formal circumstances, a man who has been long in the army or navy can usually trust himself not to show astonishment or emotion, and after the first slight start of surprise, which only Monsieur Leroy had seen, Lamberti had behaved as if nothing out of the common way had happened to him. But he had felt as if he were in a dream, while healthily sure that he was awake; and now that he was more at ease, he began to examine the cause of his inward disturbance. It was not only out of the question to suppose that he had ever before now met Cecilia Palladio, but he was quite certain that he had never seen any one who was at all like her. If extinct types of men could be revived now and then, of those which the world once thought admirable and tried to copy, it would be interesting to see how many persons of taste would acknowledge any beauty in them. Cecilia Palladio had been eighteen years old early in the winter, and in the usual course of things would have made her appearance in society during the carnival season. The garden party for which her mother had now sent out invitations was to take the place of the dance which should have been given in January. Afterwards, when it was over, and everybody had seen her, some people said that she was perfectly beautiful, others declared that she was a freak of nature and would soon be hideous, but, meanwhile, was an interesting study; one young gentleman, addicted to art, said that her face belonged to the type seen in the Elgin marbles; a Sicilian lady said that her head was even more archaic than that, and resembled a fragment from the temples of Selinunte, preserved in the museum at Palermo; and the Russian ambassador, who was of unknown age, said that she was the perfect Psyche of Naples, brought to life, and that he wished he were Eros. In southern Europe what is called the Greek type of beauty is often seen, and does not surprise any one. Many people think it cold and uninteresting. It was a small something in the arch of the brows, it was a very slight upward turn of the point of the nose, it was the small irregularity of the broader and less curving upper lip that gave to Cecilia Palladio's face the force and character that are so utterly wanting in the faces of the best Greek statues. The Greeks, by the time they had gained the perfect knowledge of the human body that produced the Hermes of Olympia, had made a conventional mask of the human face, and rarely ever tried to give it a little of the daring originality that stands out in the features of many a crudely archaic statue. The artist who made the Psyche attempted something of the kind, for the right side of the face differs from the left, as it generally does in living people. The right eyebrow is higher and more curved than the left one, which lends some archness to the expression, but its effect is destroyed by the tiresome perfection of the simpering mouth. Cecilia Palladio was not like a Greek statue, but she looked as if she had come alive from an age in which the individual ranked above the many as a model, and in which nothing accidentally unfit for life could survive and nothing degenerate had begun to be. With the same general proportion, there was less symmetry in her face than in those of modern beauties, and there was more light, more feeling, more understanding. She was very fair, but her eyes were not blue; it would have been hard to define their colour, and sometimes there seemed to be golden lights in them. While she was standing, Lamberti had seen that she was almost as tall as himself, and therefore taller than most women; and she was slender, and moved like a very perfectly proportioned young wild animal, continuously, but without haste, till each motion was completed in rest. Most men and women really move in a succession of very short movements, entirely interrupted at more or less perceptible intervals. If our sight were perfect we should see that people walk, for instance, by a series of jerks so rapid as to be like the vibrations of a humming-bird's wings. Perhaps this is due to the unconscious exercise of the human will in every voluntary motion, for a man who moves in his sleep seems to move continuously like an animal, till he has changed his position and rests again. Lamberti made none of these reflections, and did not analyse the face he could not help watching whenever the chance of conversation allowed him to look at Cecilia without seeming to stare at her. He only tried to discover why her face was so familiar to him. "We have been in Paris all winter," said her mother, in answer to some question of his. "They have been in Paris all winter!" cried the Princess. "Think what that means! The cold, the rain, the solitude! What in the world did you do with yourselves?" "Cecilia wished to continue her studies," answered the Countess Fortiguerra. "What sort of things have you been learning, Mademoiselle?" asked Lamberti. "I followed a course of lectures on philosophy at the Sorbonne, and I read Nietzsche with a man who had known him," answered the young lady, as naturally as if she had said that she had been taking lessons on the piano. A momentary silence followed, and everybody stared at the girl, except her mother, who smiled pleasantly and looked from one to the other with the expression which mothers of prodigies often assume, and which clearly says: "I did it. Is it not perfectly wonderful?" Then Monsieur Leroy laughed, in spite of himself. "Hush, Doudou!" cried the Princess. "You are very rude!" No one present chanced to know that she always called him Doudou when she was in a good humour. Cecilia Palladio turned her head quietly, fixed her eyes on him and laughed, deliberately, long, and very sweetly. Monsieur Leroy met her gaze for a moment, then looked away and moved uneasily on his low seat. "What are you laughing at?" he asked, in a tone of annoyance. "It seems so funny that you should be called Doudou--at your age," answered Cecilia. "Really--" Monsieur Leroy looked at the Princess as if asking for protection. She laughed good-humouredly, somewhat to Lamberti's surprise. "You are very direct with my friends, my dear," she said to Cecilia, still smiling. The Countess Fortiguerra, not knowing exactly what to do, also smiled, but rather foolishly. "I am very sorry," said Cecilia, with contrition, and looking down. "I really beg Monsieur Leroy's pardon. I could not help it." But she had been revenged, for she had made him ridiculous. "Not at all, not at all," he answered, in a tone that did not promise forgiveness. Lamberti wondered what sort of man Palladio had been, since the girl did not at all resemble her mother, who had clearly been pretty and foolish in her youth, and had only lost her looks as she grew older. The obliteration of middle age had set in. There might have been some awkwardness, but it was dispelled by the appearance of Guido, who came in unannounced at that moment, glancing quickly at each of the group as he came forward, to see who was there. "At last!" exclaimed the Princess, with evident satisfaction. "How late you are, my dear," she said as Guido ceremoniously kissed her hand. "I am very sorry," he said. "I was out when your note came. But I should have come in any case." "You know the Countess Fortiguerra, of course," said the Princess. "Certainly," answered Guido, who had not recognised the lady at all, and was glad to be told who she was, and that he knew her. Lamberti watched him closely, for he understood every shade of his friend's expression and manner. Guido shook hands with a pleasant smile, and then glanced at Cecilia. "My nephew, Guido d'Este," said the Princess, introducing him. Cecilia looked at him quietly, and bent her head in acknowledgment of the introduction. "My daughter," murmured the Countess Fortiguerra, with satisfaction. "Mademoiselle Palladio and her mother have just come back from Paris," explained Monsieur Leroy officiously, as Guido nodded to him. Guido caught the name, and was glad of the information it conveyed, and he sat down between the young girl and her mother. Lamberti was now almost sure that his friend was not especially struck by Cecilia's face; but she looked at him with some interest, which was not at all to be wondered at, considering his looks, his romantic name, and his half-royal birth. For the first time Lamberti envied him a little, and was ashamed of it. Barely an hour earlier he had wished that he could make Guido more like himself, and now he wished that he were more like Guido. "The Countess has been kind enough to ask me to her garden party," Guido said, looking at his aunt, for he instinctively connected the latter's anxiety to see him with the invitation. So did Lamberti, and it flashed upon him that this meeting was the first step in an attempt to marry his friend to Cecilia Palladio. The girl was probably an heiress, and Guido's aunt saw a possibility of recovering through her the money she had lost in speculations. This explanation did not occur to Guido, simply because he was bored and was already thinking of an excuse for getting away after staying as short a time as possible. "I hope you will come," said Cecilia, rather unexpectedly. "Of course he will," the Princess answered for him, in an encouraging tone. "The villa is really very pretty," continued the young girl. "Let me see," said Guido, who liked her voice as soon as she spoke, "the Villa Palladio--I do not quite remember where it is." "It used to be the Villa Madama," explained Monsieur Leroy. "I have always wondered who the 'Madama' was, after whom it was called. It seems such a foolish name." The Princess looked displeased, and bit her lip a little. "I think," said Guido, as if suggesting a possibility, rather than stating a fact, "that she was a daughter of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, who was Duchess of Parma." "Of course, of course!" cried Monsieur Leroy, eagerly assenting, "I had forgotten!" "My daughter's guardians bought it for her not long ago," explained the Countess Fortiguerra, "with my approval, and we have of course changed the name." "Naturally," said Guido, gravely, but looking at Lamberti, who almost smiled under his red beard. "And you approved of the change, Mademoiselle," Guido added, turning to Cecilia, and with an interrogation in his voice. "Not at all," she answered, with sudden coldness. "It was Goldbirn--" "Yes," said the Countess, weakly, "it was Baron Goldbirn who insisted upon it, in spite of us." "Goldbirn--Goldbirn," repeated the Princess vaguely. "The name has a familiar sound." "Your Highness has a current account with them in Vienna," observed Monsieur Leroy. "Yes, yes, certainly. Doudou acts as my secretary sometimes, you know." The information seemed necessary, as Monsieur Leroy's position had been far from clear. "Baron Goldbirn was associated with Cecilia's father in some railways in South America," said the Countess, "and is her principal guardian. He will always continue to manage her fortune for her, I hope." Clearly, Cecilia was an heiress, and was to marry Guido d'Este as soon as the matter could be arranged. That was the Princess's plan. Lamberti thought that it remained to be seen whether Guido would agree to the match. "Has Baron Goldbirn made many--improvements--in the Villa Madama?" enquired Guido, hesitating a little, perhaps intentionally. "Oh no!" Cecilia answered. "He lets me do as I please about such things." "And what has been your pleasure?" asked Guido, with a beginning of interest, as well as for the sake of hearing her young voice, which contrasted pleasantly with her mother's satisfied purring and the Princess's disagreeable tone. "I got the best artist I could find to restore the whole place as nearly as possible to what it was meant to be. I am satisfied with the result. So is my mother," she added, with an evident afterthought. "My daughter is very artistic," the Countess explained. Cecilia looked at Guido, and a faint smile illuminated her face for a moment. Guido bent his head almost imperceptibly, as if to say that he knew what she meant, and it seemed to Lamberti that the two already understood each other. He rose to go, moved by an impulse he could not resist. Guido looked at him in surprise, for he had expected his friend to wait for him. "Must you go already?" asked the Princess, in a colourless tone that did not invite Lamberti to stay. "But I suppose you are very busy when you are in Rome. Good-bye." As he took his leave, his eyes met Cecilia's. It might have been only his imagination, after all, but he felt sure that her whole expression changed instantly to a look of deep and sincere understanding, even of profound sympathy. "I hope you will come to the villa," she said gravely, and she seemed to wait for his answer. "Thank you. I shall be there." There was a short silence, as Monsieur Leroy went with him to the door at the other end of the long room, but Cecilia did not watch him; she seemed to be interested in a large portrait that hung opposite the nearest window, and which was suddenly lighted up by the glow of the sunset. It represented a young king, standing on a step, in coronation robes, with a vast ermine mantle spreading behind him and to one side, and an uncomfortable-looking crown on his head; a sceptre lay on a highly polished table at his elbow, beside an open arch, through which the domes and spires of a city were visible. There was no particular reason why he should be standing there, apparently alone, and in a distinctly theatrical attitude, and the portrait was not a good picture; but Cecilia looked at it steadily till she heard the door shut, after Lamberti had gone out. "Your friend is not a very gay person," observed the Princess. "Is he always so silent?" "Yes," Guido answered. "He is not very talkative." "Do you like silent people?" enquired Cecilia. "I like a woman who can talk, and a man who can hold his tongue," replied Guido readily. Cecilia looked at him and smiled carelessly. The Princess rose slowly, but she was so short, and her arm-chair was so high, that she seemed to walk away from it without being any taller than when she had been sitting, rather than really to get up. "Shall we go into the garden?" she suggested. "It is not too cold. Doudou, my cloak!" Monsieur Leroy brought a pretty confusion of mouse-coloured silk and lace, disentangled it skilfully, and held it up behind the Princess's shoulders. It looked like a big butterfly as he spread it in the air, and it had ribands that hung down to the floor. When she had put it on, the Princess led the way to a long window, which Leroy opened, and leaning lightly on the Countess Fortiguerra's arm, she went out into the evening light. She evidently meant to give the young people a chance of talking together by themselves, for as soon as they were outside she sent Monsieur Leroy away. "My dear Doudou!" she cried, as if suddenly remembering something, "we have quite forgotten those invitations for to-morrow! Should you mind writing them now, so that they can be sent before dinner?" Monsieur Leroy disappeared with an alacrity which suggested that the plan had been arranged beforehand. "Take Mademoiselle Palladio round the garden, Guido," said the Princess. "We will walk a little before the house till you come back. It is drier here." Guido must have been dull indeed if he had not at last understood why he had been made to come, and what was expected of him. He was annoyed, and raised his eyebrows a little. "Will you come, Mademoiselle?" he asked coldly. "Yes," answered Cecilia in a constrained tone, for she understood as well as Guido himself. Her mother was often afraid of her, and had not dared to tell her that the whole object of their visit was that she should see Guido and be seen by him. She thought that the Princess was really pushing matters too hastily, considering the time-honoured traditions of Latin etiquette, which forbid that young people should be left alone together for a moment, even when engaged to be married. But the Countess had great faith in the correctness of anything which such a very high-born person as the Princess Anatolie chose to suggest, and as the latter held her by the arm with affectionate condescension, she could not possibly run after her daughter. The two moved away in silence towards the flower garden, and soon disappeared round the corner of the house. "The roses are pretty," said Guido, apologetically. "My aunt likes people to see them." "They are magnificent," answered Cecilia, without enthusiasm, and after a suitable interval. They went on, along a narrow gravel path, and though there was really room enough for Guido to walk by her side, he pretended that there was not, and followed her. She was very graceful, and he would not have thought of denying it. He even looked at her as she went before him, and he noticed the fact; but after he had taken cognisance of it, he was quite as indifferent as before. He no longer thought her voice pleasant, in his resentment at finding that a trap had been laid for him. "You see, there are a good many kinds of roses," he observed, because it would have been rude to say nothing at all. "They are not all in flower yet." "It is only the beginning of May," the young girl answered, without interest. They came to the broader walk on the other side of the plot of roses, and Guido had to walk by her side again. "I like your friend," she said suddenly. "I am very glad," Guido replied, unbending at once and quietly looking at her now. "People do not always like him at first sight." "No, I understand that. He has the look in his eyes that men get who have killed." "Has he?" Guido seemed surprised. "Yes, he killed several men in Africa, when he was alone against many, and they meant to murder him. He is brave. Make him tell you about it, if you can induce him to talk." "Is that so very hard?" Cecilia laughed. "Is he really more silent than you?" "Nobody ever called me silent," answered Guido, smiling. "I suppose you thought so--stopped. "Because I did not know how to begin, and because you would not. Is that what you were going to say?" "It is very near the truth," Guido admitted, very much amused. "I do not blame you," said Cecilia. "How could you suppose that a mere girl like me could possibly have anything to say--a child that has not even been to her first party?" "Perhaps I was afraid that the mere child might talk about philosophy and Nietzsche," suggested Guido. "And that would be dreadful, of course! Why? Is there any reason why a girl should not study such things? If there is, tell me. No one ever tells me what I ought to do." "It is quite unnecessary, I have no doubt," Guido answered promptly, and smiling again. "You mean quite useless, because I should not do it?" "Why should I be supposed to know that you are spoiled--if you are? Besides, you must not take up a man every time he makes you a silly compliment." "Ah, now you are telling me what I ought to do! I like that better. Thank you!" Guido was amused. "Are you really grateful?" he asked, laughing a little. "Do you always speak the truth?" "Yes! Do you?" She asked the question sharply, as if she meant to surprise him. "I never lied to a man in my life," Guido answered. "But you have to women?" "I suppose so," said Guido, considerably diverted. "Most of us do, in moments of enthusiasm." "Really! And--are you often--enthusiastic?" "No. Very rarely. Besides, I do not know whether it is worse in a man to tell fibs to please a woman, than it is in a woman to disbelieve what an honest man tells her on his word. Which is the least wrong, do you think?" "But since you admit that most men do not tell the truth to women----" "I said, on one's word of honour. There is a difference." "In theory," said Cecilia. "Are there theories about lying?" asked Guido. "Oh yes," answered the young girl, without hesitation. "There is Puffendorf's, for instance, in his book on the Law of Nature and Nations----" "Good heavens!" exclaimed Guido. "Certainly. He makes out that there is a sort of unwritten agreement amongst all men that words shall be used in a definite sense which others can understand. That sounds sensible. And then, Saint Augustin, and La Placette, and Noodt----" "My dear young lady, you have led me quite out of my depth! What do those good people say?" "That all lying is absolutely wrong in itself, whether it harms anybody or not." "And what do you think about it? That would be much more interesting to know." "I told you, I always tell the truth," Cecilia answered demurely. "Oh yes, of course! I had forgotten." "And you do not believe it," laughed the young girl. "It is time to go back to the house." "If you will stay a little longer, I will believe everything you tell me." "No, it is late," answered Cecilia, her manner suddenly changing as the laugh died out of her voice. She walked on quickly, and he kept behind her. "I shall certainly go to your garden party," said Guido. "Shall you?" She spoke in a tone of such utter indifference that Guido stared at her in surprise. A moment later they had rejoined her mother and the Princess. CHAPTER III At the beginning of the twentieth century Rome has become even more cosmopolitan than it used to be, for the Romans themselves are turning into cosmopolitans, and the old traditional, serious, gloomy, and sometimes dramatic life of the patriarchal system has almost died out. One meets Romans of historical names everywhere, nowadays, in London, in Paris, and in Vienna, speaking English and French, and sometimes German, with extraordinary correctness, as much at home, to all appearance, in other capitals as they are in their own, and intimately familiar with the ways of many societies in many places. Cecilia Palladio, at eighteen years of age, had probably not spent a third of her life in Rome, and had been educated in different parts of the world and in a variety of ways. Her father, Count Palladio, as has been explained, had been engaged in promoting a number of undertakings, of which several had succeeded, and at his death, which had happened when Cecilia had been eight years old, he had left her part of his considerable fortune in safe guardianship, leaving his wife a life interest in the remainder. His old ally, the banker Solomon Goldbirn of Vienna, had administered the whole inheritance with wisdom and integrity, and at her marriage Cecilia would dispose of several millions of francs, and would ultimately inherit as much more from her mother's share. From a European point of view, she was therefore a notable heiress, and even in the new world of millionnaires she would at least have been considered tolerably well off, though by no means what is there called rich. Two years after Palladio's death her mother had married Count Fortiguerra, who had begun life in the army, then passed to diplomacy, had risen rapidly to the post of ambassador, and had died suddenly at Madrid when barely fifty years old, and when Cecilia was sixteen. The girl had a clear recollection of her own father, though she had never been with him very much, as his occupations constantly took him to distant parts of the world. He had seemed an old man to her, and had indeed been much older than her mother, for he had been a patriot in the later days of the Italian revolutions, and when still young he had been with Garibaldi in 1860. Cecilia remembered him a tall, active, grey-haired man with a pointed beard and big moustaches, and eyes which she now knew had been like her own. She remembered his unbounded energy, his patriotic and sometimes rather boastful talk, his black cigars, the vast heap of papers that always seemed to be in hopeless confusion on his writing table when he was at home, and the numerous eccentric-looking people who used to come and see him. She had been told that he was never to be disturbed, and never to be questioned, and that he was a great man. She had loved him with all her heart when he told her stories, and at other times she had been distinctly afraid of him. These stories had been fairy tales to the child, but she had now discovered that they had been history, or what passes for it. He had told her about King Amulius of Alba Longa, and of the twin founders of Rome, and of all the far-off times and doings, and he had described to her six wonderful maidens who lived in a palace in the Forum and kept a little fire burning day and night, which he compared to the great Roman race over whose destiny the mystic ladies were always watching. It was only quite lately that she had heard any learned men say in earnest some of the things which he had told her with a smile as if he were inventing a tale to amuse her child's fancy. But what he had said had made a deep and abiding impression, and had become a part of her thought. She sometimes dreamed very vividly that she was again a little girl, sitting on his knee and listening to his wonderful stories. In other ways she had not missed him much after his death. Possibly her mother had not missed him either; for though she spoke of him occasionally with a sort of awe, it was never with anything like emotion. Count Fortiguerra had been kind to the child, or it might be truer to say that he had spoilt her by encouraging her without much judgment in her insatiable thirst for knowledge, and in her unnecessary ambition to excel in everything her fancy led her to attempt. Her mother, with a good deal of social foolishness and a very pliable character, possessed nevertheless a fair share of womanly intelligence, and knew by instinct that a young girl who is very different from other girls, no matter how clever she may be, rarely makes what people call a good marriage. There is probably nothing which leads a young woman to think a man a desirable husband so much as some exceptional gift, or even some brilliant eccentricity, which distinguishes him from other people; but there is nothing which frightens away the average desirable husband so much as anything of that sort in the young lady of his affections, and every married woman knows it very well. The excellent Countess used to wish that her daughter would grow up more like other girls, and in the sincere belief that a little womanly vanity must certainly counteract a desire for super-feminine mental cultivation, she honestly tried to interest Cecilia in such frivolities as dress, dancing, and romantic fiction. The result was only very partially successful. Cecilia was dressed to perfection, without seeming to take any trouble about it, and she danced marvellously before she had ever been to a ball; but she cared nothing for the novels she was allowed to read, and she devoured serious books with increasing intellectual voracity. Her stepfather laughed, and said that the girl was a genius and ought not to be hampered by ordinary rules; and his wife, who had at first feared lest he should dislike the child of her first husband, was only too glad that he should, on the contrary, show something like paternal infatuation for Cecilia, since no children of his own were born to him. He was a man, too, of wide reading and experience, and having considerable political insight into his times. Before Cecilia was eleven years old he talked to her about serious matters, as if she had been grown up, and often wished that the child should be at table and in the drawing-room when men who were making history came informally to the embassy. Cecilia had listened to their talk, and had remembered a very large part of what she had heard, understanding more and more as she grew up; and by far the greatest sorrow of her life had been the death of her stepfather. She was a modern Italian girl, and her mother was a Roman who had been brought up in something of the old strictness and narrowness, first in a convent, and afterwards in a rather gloomy home under the shadow of the most rigid parental authority. Exceptional gifts, exceptional surroundings, and exceptional opportunities had made Cecilia Palladio an exception to all types, and as unlike the average modern Italian young girl as could be imagined. The sun had already set as the mother and daughter drove away, but it was still broad day, and a canopy of golden clouds, floating high over the city, reflected rosy lights through the blue shadows in the crowded streets. The Countess Fortiguerra was pleasantly aware that every man under seventy turned to look after her daughter, from the smart old colonel of cavalry in his perfect uniform to the ragged and haggard waifs who sold wax matches at the corners of the streets. She was not in the least jealous of her, as mothers have been before now, and perhaps she was able to enjoy vicariously what she herself had never had, but had often wished for, the gift of nature which instantly fixes the attention of the other sex. "Why did you not tell me?" asked Cecilia, after a silence that had lasted five minutes. The Countess pretended not to understand, coloured a little, and tried to look surprised. "Why did you not tell me that you and the Princess wish me to marry her nephew?" This was direct, and an answer was necessary. The Countess laughed soothingly. "Dear child!" she cried, "it is impossible to deceive you! We only wished that you two might meet, and perhaps like each other." "Well," answered Cecilia, "we have met." The answer was not encouraging, and she did not seem inclined to say more of her own accord, but her mother could not restrain a natural curiosity. "Yes," she said, in a conciliatory tone, "but how do you like him?" Cecilia seemed to be hesitating for a moment. "Very much," she answered, unexpectedly, after the pause. The Countess was so much pleased that she coloured again. She had never been able to hide what she felt, and she secretly envied people who never blushed. "I am so glad!" she said. "I was sure you would like each other." "It does not follow that because I like him, he likes me," answered Cecilia, quietly. "And even if he does, that is not a reason why we should marry. I may never marry at all." "How can you say such things!" cried the Countess, not at all satisfied. Cecilia shrank a little in her corner of the deep phaeton and instinctively drew the edges of her little silk mantle together over her chest, as if to protect herself from something. "You know," she said, almost sharply. "I shall never understand you," her mother sighed. "Give me time to understand myself, mother," answered the young girl, suddenly unbending. "I am only eighteen; I have never been into the world, and the mere idea of marrying----" She stopped short, and her firm lips closed tightly. "No, I do not understand," said the Countess. "The thought of marriage was never disagreeable to me, even when I was quite young. It is the natural object of a woman's life." "There are exceptions, surely! There are nuns, for instance." "Oh, if you wish to go into a convent----" "I have no religious vocation," Cecilia answered gravely. "Or if I have, it is not of that sort." "I am glad to hear it!" The Countess was beginning to lose her temper. "If you thought you had, you would be quite capable of taking the veil." "Yes," the young girl replied. "If I wished to be a nun, and if I were sure that I should be a good nun, I would enter a convent at once. But I am not naturally devout, I suppose." "In my time," said the Countess, with emphasis, "when young girls did not take the veil, they married." As an argument, this was weak and lacked logic, and Cecilia felt rather pitiless just then. "There are only two possible ways of living," she said; "either by religion, if you have any, and that is the easier, or by rule." "And pray what sort of rule can there be to take the place of religion?" "Act so that the reason for your actions may be considered a universal law." "That is nonsense!" cried the Countess. "No," replied Cecilia, unmoved, "it is Kant's Categorical Imperative." "It makes no difference," retorted her mother. "It is nonsense." Cecilia said nothing, and her expression did not change, for she knew that her mother could not understand her, and she was not at all sure that she understood herself, as she had almost confessed. Seeing that she did not answer, the excellent Countess took the opportunity of telling her that her head had been turned by too much reading, though it was all her poor, dear stepfather's fault, since he had filled her head with ideas. What she meant by "ideas" was not clear, except that they were of course dangerous in themselves and utterly subversive of social order, and that the main purpose of all education should be to discourage them in the young. "They should be left to old people," she concluded; "they have nothing else to think of." Cecilia had heard very little, being absorbed in her own reflections, but as her mother often spoke in the same way, the general drift of what she had said was unmistakable. The two were very unlike, but they were not unloving. In her heart the Countess took the most unbounded pride in her only child's beauty and cleverness, except when the latter opposed itself to her social inclinations and ambitions; and the young girl really loved her mother when not irritated by some speech or action that offended her taste. That her mother should not always understand her seemed quite natural. They had almost reached their door, the great pillared porch of the mysterious Palazzo Massimo, in which they had an apartment, for they did not live in the villa where the garden party was to be given. Cecilia's gloved hand went out quietly to the Countess's and gently pressed it. "Let me think my own thoughts, mother," she said; "they shall never hurt you." "Yes, dear, of course," answered the elder woman meekly, her little burst of temper having already subsided. Cecilia left her early that evening and went to her own room to be alone. It was not that she was tired, nor painfully affected by a strange sensation she had felt during the afternoon; but she realised that she had reached the end of the first stage in life, and that another was going to begin, and it was part of her nature to seek for a complete understanding of everything in her existence. It seemed to her unworthy of a thinking being to act or to feel, without clearly defining the cause of every feeling and action. Youth dreams of an impossible completeness in carrying out its self-set rules of perfection, and is swayed and stunned, and often paralysed, when they are broken to pieces by rebellious human nature. The room was very large and dim, for Cecilia had put out the electric light, and had lit two big wax candles, of the sort that are burned in churches. The blinds and shutters of the windows were open, and the moonlight fell in two broad floods upon the pale carpet, half across the floor. The white bed with its high canopy of lace looked ghostly against the furthest wall, like a marble sepulchre under a mist. The light blue damask on the walls was dark in the gloom, and there was not much furniture to break the long surfaces. The dusky air was cool and pure, for Cecilia detested perfumes of all sorts. She sat motionless in a high carved seat, just in the moonlight, one hand upon an arm of the chair, the other on her breast. She had gathered her hair into a knot, low at the back of her head, and the folds of a soft white robe just followed the outlines of her figure. The table on which the candles stood was a little behind her, and away from the window, and the still yellow light only touched her hair in one or two places, sending back dull golden reflections. The strange young face was very quiet, and even the lids rarely moved as she steadily stared into the shadow. There was no look of thought, nor any visible effort of concentration in her features; there was rather an air of patient waiting, of perfect readiness to receive whatever should come to her out of the depths. So, a beautiful marble face on a tomb gazes into the shadows of a dim church, and gazes on, and waits, neither growing nor changing, neither satisfied nor disappointed, but calm and enduring, as if expecting the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. But for the rare drooping of the lids, that rested her sight, the girl would have seemed to be in a trance; she was in a state of almost perfect contemplation that approached to perfect happiness, since she was hardly conscious that her strongest wishes were still unsatisfied. She had been in the same state before now--last week, last month, last year, and again and again, as it seemed to her, very long ago; so long, that the time seemed like ages, and the intervals like centuries, until it all disappeared altogether in the immeasurable, and the past, the present, and the future were around her at once, unbroken, always ending, yet always beginning again. In the midst floated the soul, the self, the undying individuality, a light that shot out long rays, like a star, towards the ever present moments in an ever recurring life of which she had been, and was, and was to be, most keenly conscious. So far, the truth, perhaps; the truth, guessed by the mystics of all ages, sometimes hidden in secret writings, sometimes proclaimed to the light in symbols too plain to be understood, now veiled in the reasoned propositions of philosophers, now sung in sublime verse by inspired seers; present, as truth always is, to the few, misunderstood, as all truths are, by the many. But beside the truth, and outshining it, came the illusion, clear and bright, and appealing to the heart with the music of all the changes that are illusion's life. Sitting very still in the moonlight, Cecilia saw pictures in the shadow, and herself walking in the mazes of many dreams; and she watched them, till even her eyelids no longer drooped from time to time, and her breathing ceased to stir the folds of white upon her bosom. Even then, she knew that she herself was not dreaming, but was calling up dreams which she saw, which could be nothing but visions after all, and would end in a darkness beyond which she could see nothing, and in which she would feel real physical pain, that would be almost unbearable, though she knew that she would gladly bear it again and again, for the sake of again seeing the phantasms of herself drawn in mystic light upon the shadow. They came and followed one upon another, like days of life. There was the beautiful marble court with its deep portico, its pillars, and its overhanging upper story, all gleaming in the low morning sun; she could hear the water softly laughing its way through the square marble-edged basins, level with the ground, she could smell the spring violets that grew in the neatly trimmed borders, she knew the faces of the statues that stood between the columns, and smiled at her. She knew herself, young, golden-haired, all in white, a little pale from the night's vigil before the eternal fire, just entering the court as she came back from the temple, and then standing quite still for a moment, facing the morning sun and drinking in long draughts of the sweet spring air. From far above, the matin song of birds came down out of the gardens of Cæsar's palace, and high over the court the sounds of the Forum began to ring and echo, as they did all day and half the night. It was herself, her very self, that was there, resting one hand upon a fluted column and looking upwards, her eyes, her face, her figure, real and unchanged after ages, as they were hers now; and in her look there was the infinite longing, the readiness to receive, which she felt still and must feel always, to the end of time. Now, the dream would move on, slowly and full of details. The lithe dream figure would rest in the small white room at the upper end of the court, and resting, would dream dreams within that dream; and, looking on, she herself would know what they were. They would be full of a deep desire to be free for ever from earth and body and life, joined for all eternity with something pure and high that could not be seen, but of which her soul was a part, mingled with the changing things for a time, but to be withdrawn from them again, maiden and spotless as it had come amongst them, a true and perfect Vestal. The precious treasures in the secret places of the little temple would pass away, the rudely carved wooden image of Pallas would crumble to dust, the shields that had come down from heaven would fall to pieces in green corrosion, the sacred vessels would be broken or come to a base use, the fire would go out and Vesta's hearth would be cold for ever. At the mere thought, the sleeping face in the vision would tremble and grow pale for a moment, but soon would smile again, for the fire had been faithfully tended all the night long. But it would all pass away, even the place, even Rome herself, and in the sphere of divine joy the sleeper would forget even to dream, and would be quite at rest, until the mid-hour of day, when a companion would come softly to the door and wake her with gentle words and kindly touch, to join the other Vestals at the thrice-purified table in the cool hall. So the warm hours would pass, and later, if she chose, the holy maiden might go out into the city, whithersoever she would, borne in a high, open litter by many slaves, with a stern lictor walking before her, and the people would fall back on either side. If she chanced to meet one of the Prætors, or even the Consul himself, their guards would salute her as no sovereign would be saluted in Rome; and should she see some wretched thieving slave being led to death on the cross upon the Esquiline, her slightest word could reverse all his condemnation, and blot out all his crimes. For she was sacred to the Goddess, and above Consuls and Prætors and judges. But none of those things would touch her heart nor please her vanity, for all her pure young soul was bent on freedom from this earth, divine and eternal, as the end of a sinless life. The eyes in the dream, the eyes of the girl who stood by the column, drinking the morning air, had never met the eyes of a man with the wish that a glance might linger to a look. But she who watched the dream knew that the time was at hand, and that the dark cloud of fear was already gathering which was to darken her sun and break by and by in an unknown fear. She knew it, she, the waking Cecilia Palladio; but the other Cecilia, the Vestal of long ago, guessed nothing of the future, and stood there breathing softly, already refreshed after the night's watching. It would all happen, as it always happened, little by little, detail after detail, till the dreaded moment. But it did not. The dream changed. Instead of crossing the marble court, and lingering a moment by the water, the Vestal stood by the column, against the background of shade cast by the portico. She was listening now, she was expecting some one, she was glancing anxiously about as if to see whether any one were there; but she was alone. Then it came, in the shadow behind her, the face of a man, moving nearer--a rugged Roman head, with deep-set, bold blue eye, big brows, a great jaw, reddish hair. It came nearer, and the girl knew it was coming. In an instant more, she would spring forward across the court, crying out for protection. No, she did not move till the man was close to her, looking over her shoulder, whispering in her ear. Cecilia saw it all, and it was so real that she tried to call out, to shriek, to make any sound that could save her image from destruction, for the kiss that was coming would be death to both, and death with unutterable shame and pain. But her voice was gone, and her lips were frozen. She sat paralysed with a horror she had never known before, while the face of the phantom girl blushed softly, and turned to the strong man, and the two gazed into each other's eyes a moment, knowing that they loved. She felt that it was her other self, and that she had the will to resist, even then, and that the will must still be supreme over the illusion. Never, it seemed to her, had she made such a supreme effort, never had she felt such power concentrated in her strong determination, never in all her life had she been so sure of the result when she had willed anything with all her might. Every fibre of her being, every nerve in her body, every throbbing cell of her brain was strained to breaking. The two faces were quite close, the longing lips had almost met--nothing could hinder, nothing could save; the phantasms did not know that she was watching them. Suddenly something changed. She no longer saw herself in a vision, she was herself there, somewhere, in the dark, in the light--she did not know--and there was no will, nor thought, nor straining resistance any more, for Lamberto Lamberti held her in his arms, her, Cecilia Palladio, her very living self, and his lips were upon hers, and she loved him beyond death, or life, or fear, or torment. Surely she was dying then, for the darkness was whirling with her, spinning itself into myriads of circles of fiery stars, tearing her over the brink of the world to eternity beyond. One second more and it must have ended so. Instead, she was leaning back in her chair, between the moonlight and the steadily burning candles, in her own room, alone. From head to foot she trembled, and now and then drew a short and gasping breath. Her parted lips were moist and very cold. She touched them, and they felt like flowers at night, wet with dew. She pushed the hair from her forehead, and her brow was strangely damp. She sprang to her feet with a cry of terror, and stared at the door, for she was quite sure that she had heard it close softly. It was a heavy door, that turned noiselessly on its hinges and fitted perfectly, and she knew the soft click of the well-made French lock when the spring quietly pushed the bevelled latch-bolt into the socket. In an instant she had crossed the room and had turned the handle to draw it in. But the door was locked, beyond all doubt--she had turned the key before she had sat down in the chair. She felt intensely cold, and an icy wave seemed to lift her hair from her forehead. Her hand instinctively found the white button, close beside the door-frame, which controlled all the electric lamps, and pushed it in, and the room was flooded with light. She must have imagined that she had heard the sound that had frightened her. Half dazed, she moved slowly to the windows, and closed the inner shutters, one by one, shutting out the cold moonlight, then stood by the chair a moment, looked at it, and glanced in the direction whence the vision had come to her out of the shadow. She did not know how it happened, but presently she was lying on her bed, her face buried in the pillows, and she was tearing her heart out in a tearless storm of shame and self-contempt. What right had that man whom she had so often seen in her dreams to be alive in the real world, walking among other men, recognising her, as she had felt that he did that very afternoon? What right had he to come to her again in the vision and to change it all, to take her in his violent arms and kiss her on the mouth, and burn the mark of shame into her soul, and fill her with a pleasure more horrible than any pain? Was this the end of all her girlish meditation, of the Vestal's longing for higher things, of the mystic's perfect way? A man's brutal kiss not even resisted? Was that all? It could not have been worse if on that same day she had been alone with him in the garden, instead of with Guido d'Este, and if he had suddenly put his arms round her, and if she had not even turned her face from his. It was only a dream. Yes, to-morrow she would awake, if she slept at all, and the sunshine would be streaming in where the moonlight had shone, and it would only be a dream, past and to be forgotten. Perhaps. But what were dreams, then? She had not been asleep, she was quite sure. There was not even that poor excuse. The man's phantasm had come to her awake. And Lamberto Lamberti was nothing to her. Beyond the startling recognition of a face long familiar, but never seen among the living, he was to her a man she had met but once, and did not wish to meet again. She had been aware of his presence near her at the Princess's, and when he had gone away she had looked at him once more with a sort of wonder; but she had felt nothing else, she had not touched his hand, the thought that he would ever dare to seize her roughly in his arms brought burning blushes to her cheek and outraged all her maiden senses. She had never seen any man whom she could suffer to touch her; her whole nature revolted at the thought. Yet, just now, there had been neither revolt nor resistance; she felt that she had been herself, awake, alive, and consenting to an unknown but frightfully real contamination, from which her soul could never again be wholly clean. The storm subsided, and sullen waves of self-contempt swelled and sank, as if to overwhelm her drowning soul. She understood at last the ascetic's wrath against the mortal body and his irresistible craving for bodily pain. CHAPTER IV Very early in the morning Cecilia fell into a dreamless sleep at last, and awoke, unrefreshed, after nine o'clock. She felt very tired and listless as she opened the window a little and let in the light and air, with the sounds of the busy thoroughfare below. The weather was suddenly much warmer, and her head was heavy. It had all been a dream, no doubt, and was gone where dreams go; but it had been like a fight, out of which she had come alive by a miracle, bruised and wounded, and offended in her whole being. Never again would she sit alone at night and look for her image in the shadow, since such things could come of playing with visions; and she trusted that she might never again set eyes upon Lamberto Lamberti. She was alone, but at the thought of meeting him she blushed and bit her lip angrily. How was it possible that he should know what she had dreamt? For years, in that dream of the Vestal, a being had played a part, a being too like him in face to be another man, but who had loved her as a goddess, and whom she had loved for his matchless bravery and his glorious strength over himself. It was a long story, that had gradually grown clear in every detail, that had gone far beyond death to a spiritual life in a place of light, though it had always ended in something vaguely fearful that brought her back to the world, and to her present living self, to begin again. She could not go over it now, but she was conscious, and to her shame, that the spell of perfect happiness had always been broken at last by the taint of earthly longing and regret that crept up stealthily from the world below, an evil mist, laden with poison and fever and mortality. That change had been undefined, though it had been horrible and irresistible; it had been evil, but it had not been brutal, and it had thrilled her with the certainty of passion and pain to come, realising neither while dreading and loving both. She had read the writings of men who believe that by long meditation and practised intention the real self of man or woman can be separated from all that darkens it, though not easily, because it is bound up with fragments, as it were, of the selves of others, with all the inheritances of a hundred generations of good and bad, with sleeping instincts and passions any of which may suddenly spring up and overwhelm the rest. She had also read that the real self, when found at last, might be far better and purer than the mixed self of every day, which each of us knows and counts upon; but that it might also be much worse, much coarser, much more violent, when freed from every other influence, and that coming upon it unawares and unprepared, men had lost their reason altogether beyond recovery. She asked herself now whether this was what had happened to her, and no answer came; there was only the very weary blank of a great uncertainty, in which anything might be, or in which there might be nothing; and then, there was the vivid burning fear of meeting Lamberto Lamberti face to face. That was by far the strongest and most clearly defined of her sensations. If the Princess Anatolie could have known what Cecilia felt that morning, she would have been exceedingly well pleased, and Cecilia's own mother would have considered that this was a case in which the powers of evil had been permitted to work for the accomplishment of a good end. Nothing could have distressed the excellent Countess more than that her daughter should accidentally fall in love with Lamberti, who was a younger son in a numerous family, with no prospects beyond those offered by his profession. Nothing could have interfered more directly with the Princess's sensible intentions for her nephew. Perhaps nothing could have caused greater surprise to Lamberti himself. On the other hand, Guido d'Este would have been glad, but not surprised. He rarely was. In the course of the day he left a card at the Palazzo Massimo for the Countess Fortiguerra, and as he turned away he regretted that he could not ask for her, and see her, and possibly see her daughter also. That was evidently out of the question as yet, according to his social laws, but his regret was real. It was long since any woman's face had left him more than a vague impression of good looks, or dulness, but he had thought a good deal about Cecilia Palladio since he had met her, and he knew that he wished to talk with her again, however much he might resent the idea that he was meant to marry her. She was the first young girl he had ever known who had not bored him with platitudes or made conversation impossible by obstinate silence. It was true that he had not talked with her much, and at first it had seemed hard to talk at all, but the ice had been broken suddenly, and for a few minutes he had found it easy. As for the chilling coldness of her last words, he could account for that easily enough. Like himself, she had seen that a marriage had been planned for her without her knowledge, and, like him, she had resented the trap. For a while she had forgotten, as he had done, but had remembered suddenly when they were about to part. She had meant to show him plainly that she had not had any voice in the matter, and he liked her the better for it, now that he understood her meaning. She was like the Psyche, he thought, and it occurred to him that he could buy a cast of the statue. He had always thought it beautiful. He strolled through narrow streets in the late afternoon till he came to the shop of a dealer in casts, of whom he had once bought something, and he went in. The man had what he wanted, and he examined it carefully. She was not like the Psyche after all, and the crude white plaster shocked his taste for the first time. If the marble original had been in Rome, instead of in Naples, he could have gone to see it. He left the shop disappointed, and walked slowly towards the Farnese palace. The day seemed endless, and there was no particular reason why all days should not seem as long. There was nothing to do; nothing amused him, and nobody asked anything of him. It would be very strange and pleasant to be of use in the world. He went home and sat down by the open window that looked across the Tiber. The wide room was flooded with the evening light, and warm with much colour that lingered and floated about beautiful objects here and there. It was not a very luxuriously furnished room, but it was not the habitation of an ascetic or puritanical man either. Guido cared more for rare engravings and etchings than for pictures, and a few very fine framed prints stood on the big writing table; there was Dürer's Melancholia, and the Saint Jerome, and the Little White Horse, and the small Saint Anthony, and Rembrandt's Three Trees, all by itself, as the most wonderful etching in the world deserved to be; and here and there, about the room, were a few good engravings by Martin Schöngauer, and by Mantegna, and by Marcantonio Raimondi. The bold, careless, effective drawing of the Italian engravers contrasted strongly with the profoundly conscientious work of Schöngauer and Lucas van Leyden, and revealed at a glance the incomparable mastery of Dürer's dry point and Rembrandt's etching needle, the deep conviction of the German, and the inexhaustible richness of the Dutchman's imagination. A picture hung over the fireplace, the picture of a woman, at half length and a little smaller than life, holding in exquisite hands a small covered vessel of silver encrusted with gold, and gazing out into the warm light with the gentlest hazel eyes. A veil of olive green covered her head, but the fair hair found its way out, tresses and ringlets, on each side of the face. The woman was perhaps a Magdalen, not like any other Magdalen in all the paintings of the world, and more the great lady of the castle of Magdalon, she of the Golden Legend. When Andrea del Sarto painted that face, he meant something that he never told, and it pleased Guido d'Este to try and guess the secret. As he glanced at the canvas, glowing in the rich light, it struck him that perhaps Cecilia Palladio was more like the woman in the picture than she was like the Psyche. Then he almost laughed, and turned away, for he realised that he was thinking of the girl continually, and saw her face everywhere. He turned away impatiently, in spite of the smile. He was annoyed by the attraction he felt towards Cecilia, because the thought of marrying an heiress, in order that his aunt might recover money she had literally thrown away, was grossly repulsive; and also, no doubt, because he was not docile, though he was good-natured, and he hated to have anything in his life planned for him by others. He was still less pleased now that he found himself searching for reasons which should justify him in marrying Cecilia in spite of all this. Nothing irritates a man more than his own inborn inconsistency, whereas he enjoys diabolical satisfaction in convicting any woman of the same fault. After all, said his Inclination, as if coolly arguing the case, if poor men were only to marry poor girls, and rich men rich ones, something unnatural would happen to the distribution of wealth, which was undesirable for the future of society. Of course, a rich man might marry a poor girl if he chose. That was done, and the men who did it got an extraordinary amount of credit for being disinterested, unless they were laughed at for falling in love with a pretty face. If anything could prove the hopeless inequality of woman with man, it would be that! No one thought much the worse of a penniless girl who married for money, whereas a starving dandy who did the same thing immediately became an object of derision. But then, added the Inclination, with subtlety, the opinions of society were entirely manufactured by women for their own advantage, and that was an excellent reason for not caring what society thought. The all-powerful, impersonal "they," of whom we only know what "they say," what "they wear," and what "they pretend," are feminine and plural; they rule all that region of the world within which women do not work with their hands, and are therefore at full liberty to exercise those gifts of intelligence which it has pleased Providence to bestow upon them so plentifully. They do so to some purpose. Surely, argued Inclination, it was not very dignified of Guido to care much, and to care beforehand, for the opinions of a pack of women, supposing that he should come to like Cecilia enough to wish to marry her for her own sake. And besides, though he was poor, he was not uncomfortably so. Poverty meant not having horses and carriages, nor a yacht, and living in bachelor's rooms, and not giving dinner parties, and not playing cards, and not giving every woman whatever she fancied, if it happened to be a pearl or a pigeon's blood ruby. That was poverty, of course, but it was relative. If his aunt did not drive him to blow out his brains in a fit of impatience, there was no reason why Guido should not go on living, as he lived now, to the far end of a long and sufficiently well-fed life. And if he married Cecilia and her fortune, it would certainly not be because he wished to give other women rubies and pearls, nor for the sake of keeping a couple of hunters, two or three carriages, and a coach; still less, because he could ever wish to lose money again at baccara, or poker, or bridge. He had done all those things, and they had not amused him long. If he ever married Cecilia, it would be because he fell in love with her, which, thank goodness, had not happened yet. Inclination was quite sure of that, but was willing to admit the possibility in the future, merely for the sake of argument. Before it was time to dress for dinner that evening, Guido received a long letter from his aunt, written with her own hand, which probably meant that Monsieur Leroy knew little or nothing of its contents. Guido glanced at the pages, one after another, and saw that the whole letter was in the writer's most affectionate manner. Then he read it carefully. It had been so kind of him to be civil to her friends on the previous day, said the Princess. He reminded her of his poor father, her dear brother, who, in all his many misfortunes, had never once lost his beautiful affability of temper and unfailing courtesy to every one about him. This was very pretty, but Guido had heard that his father's beautiful affability had sometimes been ruffled so far as to allow a certain harmless violence, such as hurling a light chair at the head of a faithful courtier and friend who gave him advice that was too good to be taken, or summarily boxing the ears of his son and heir when the latter was already over thirty years old. Guido sometimes wondered why he had not inherited some of that very unroyal temper, which must have been such a thoroughly satisfactory relief to the ex-king's feelings. He never felt the least desire to dance with rage and throw the furniture about the room. His aunt's letter was evidently meant to please him and flatter his vanity, and she did not once refer to matters of business. She asked his opinion about a new novel he had not read yet, and had he thought of leaving a card on the Countess Fortiguerra? She lived in the Palazzo Massimo. What a strange girl the daughter was, to be sure! so very unlike other girls that it was almost disquieting to talk with her. Of course there was nothing real behind all that superficial talk about lectures at the Sorbonne, and Nietzsche, and all that. Everybody pretended to have read Nietzsche nowadays, and after all the girl might be quite sensible. One could not help wondering what she would make of her life, with her handsome fortune, and her odd ideas, and no one to look after her except that dear, gentle, sweet-tempered, foolish mother, who was in perpetual adoration before her! It would be a brave man who would marry such a girl, the Princess wrote, in spite of her money; but there was this to be said, he would not have any trouble with his mother-in-law. Subtle, very subtle of the Princess, who left the subject there and ended her letter by asking a favour of Guido. It was indeed only for the sake of asking it, she explained, that she was writing to him at all. Would he allow a great friend of hers to see his Andrea del Sarto? It was the celebrated art critic, Doctor Baumgarten, of whom he had heard. Leroy would bring him the next morning about ten o'clock, if Guido had no objection. He need not answer; he must not take any trouble about the matter. If he had an engagement at ten, perhaps he would leave orders that the Doctor should be allowed to see the picture. Guido did not think at once of any good reason for refusing such a request. He was very fond of his Andrea del Sarto; indeed, he liked it much better than a small Raphael of undoubted authenticity which was hung in another part of the room. The German critic was quite welcome to see both, and perhaps knew something about prints which might be worth learning. He was probably writing a book. Germans were always writing books. Guido wrote a line to thank his aunt for her letter, and to say that her friend would be welcome at the appointed hour. He was sealing the note when the door opened and Lamberto Lamberti came in. "Will you come and dine with me?" he asked, standing still before the writing table. "Let us dine here," answered Guido, without looking up, and examining the little seal he had made on the envelope. "I daresay there is something to eat." He held out the note to his servant, who stood in the open doorway. "Send this at once," he said. "Yes," said Lamberti, answering the invitation. "I do not care whether there is anything to eat or not, and it is always quiet here." "What is the matter?" asked Guido, looking at him attentively for the first time since he had entered. "Yes," he added to his man, "Signor Lamberti will dine with me." The servant disappeared and shut the door. Guido repeated his question, but Lamberti only shook his head carelessly and relit his half-smoked cigar. Guido watched him. He was less red than usual, and his eyes glittered in the light of the wax match. His voice had sounded sharp and metallic, as Guido had never heard it before. When two men are intimate friends and really trust each other they do not overwhelm one another with questions. Each knows that each will speak when he is ready, or needs help or sympathy. "I have just been answering a very balmy letter from my aunt," Guido said, rising from the table. "Sweeter than honey in the honeycomb! Read it. It has a distinctly literary and biographical turn. The allusion to my father's gentle disposition is touching." Lamberti looked through the letter carelessly, dropped it on the table, and sucked hard at his cigar. "What did you expect?" he asked, between two puffs. "For the present you are the apple of her eye. She will handle you as tenderly as a new-laid egg, until she gets what she wants!" Lamberti's similes lacked sequence, but not character. "The Romans," observed Guido, "began with the egg and ended with the apple. I have an idea that we are going to do the same thing at dinner, and that there will be nothing between. But we can smoke between the courses." "Yes," answered Lamberti, who had not heard a word. "I daresay." Guido looked at him again, rather furtively. Lamberti never drank and had iron nerves, but he was visibly disturbed. He was what people vaguely call "not quite himself." Guido went to the door of his bedroom. "Where are you going?" asked Lamberti, sharply. "I am going to wash my hands before dinner," Guido answered with a smile. "Do you want to wash yours?" "No, thank you. I have just dressed." He turned his back and went to the open window as Guido left the room. In a few seconds his cigar had gone out again, and he was leaning on the sill with both hands, staring at the twilight sky in the west. The colours had all faded away to the almost neutral tint of straw-tempered steel. The outline of the Janiculum stood out sharp and black in an uneven line. Below, there were the scattered lights of Trastevere, the flowing river, and the silence of the deserted Via Giulia. Lamberti looked steadily out, biting his extinguished cigar, and his features contracted as if he were in pain. He had come to his friend instinctively, as his friend would have come to him, meaning to tell him what had happened. But he hesitated. Besides, it might all have been only his imagination; in part it could have been nothing else, and the rest was a mere coincidence. But he had never been an imaginative man, and it was strange that he should be so much affected by a mere illusion. He started and turned suddenly, sure that some one was close behind him. But there was no one, and a moment later Guido came back. Anxious not to annoy his friend by anything like curiosity, he made a pretence of setting his writing table in order, turned one of the lamps down a little--he hated electric light--and then looked at the picture over the fireplace. "Did you ever hear of that Baumgarten, the German art critic?" he asked, without turning round. "Baumgarten--let me see! I fancy I have seen the name to-day." Lamberti tried to concentrate his attention. "You just read it in my aunt's letter," Guido answered. "You remember--she asks if he may come to-morrow. I wonder why." "To value your property, of course," replied Lamberti, roughly. "Do you think so?" Guido did not seem at all surprised. "I daresay. She is quite capable of it. She is welcome to everything I possess if she will only leave me in peace. But just now, when she has evidently made up her mind to marry me to this new heiress, it does not seem likely that she would take trouble to find out what my pictures are worth, does it?" "It all depends on what she thinks of the chances that you will marry or not." "What do you think of them, yourself?" asked Guido, idly. He was glad of anything to talk about while Lamberti was in his present mood. "What a question!" exclaimed the latter. "How should I know whether you are going to fall in love with the girl or not?" "I am half afraid I am," said Guido, thoughtfully. His man announced dinner, and the two friends crossed the hall to the little dining room, and sat down under the soft light of the old-fashioned olive-oil lamp that hung from the ceiling. Everything on the table was old, worn, and spotless. The silver was all of the style of the first Empire, with an interlaced monogram surmounted by a royal crown. The same device was painted in gold in the middle of the plain white plates, which were more or less chipped at the edges. The glasses and decanters were of that heavy cut glass, ornamented with gold lines, which used to be made in Venice in the eighteenth century. Some of them were chipped, too, like the plates. It had never occurred to Guido to put the whole service away as a somewhat valuable collection, though he sometimes thought that it was growing shabby. But he liked the old things which had come to him from the ex-king, part of the furniture of a small shooting box that had been left to him, and which he had sold to an Austrian Archduke. Lamberti took a little soup and swallowed half a glass of white wine. "I had an odd dream last night," he said, "and I have had a little adventure to-day. I will tell you by-and-by." "Just as you like," Guido answered. "I hope the adventure was not an accident--you look as if you had been badly shaken." "Yes. I did not know that I could be so nervous. You see, I do not often dream. I generally go to sleep when I lay my head upon the pillow and wake when I have slept seven hours. At sea, I always have to be called when it is my watch. Yes, I have solid nerves. But last night----" He stopped, as the man entered, bringing a dish. "Well?" enquired Guido, who did not suppose that Lamberti could have any reason for not telling his dream in the presence of the servant. Lamberti hesitated a moment, and helped himself before he answered. "Do you believe in dreams?" he asked. "What do you mean? Do I believe that dreams come true? No. When they do, it is a coincidence." "Yes. I suppose so. But this is rather more than a coincidence. I do not understand it at all. After all, I am a perfectly healthy man. It never occurred to you that my mind might be unbalanced, did it?" Guido looked at the rugged Roman head, the muscular throat, the broad shoulders. "No," he answered. "It certainly never occurred to me." "Nor to me either," said Lamberti, and he ate slowly and thoughtfully. "My friend," observed Guido, "you are just a little enigmatical this evening." "Not at all, not at all! I tell you that my nerves are good. You know something about archæology, do you not?" The apparently irrelevant question came after a short pause. "Not much," Guido answered, supposing that Lamberti wished to change the subject on account of the servant. "What do you want to know?" "Nothing," said Lamberti. "The question is, whether what I dreamt last night was all imagination or whether it was a memory of something I once knew and had forgotten." "What did you dream?" Guido sipped his wine and leaned back to listen, hoping that his friend was going to speak out at last. "Was the temple of Vesta in the Forum?" enquired Lamberti. "Certainly." "But why did they always say that it was the round one in front of Santa Maria in Cosmedin? I have an old bronze inkstand that is a model of it. My mother used to tell me it was the temple of Vesta." "People thought it was--thirty years ago. There is nothing left of the temple but the round mass of masonry on which it stood. It is between the Fountain of Juturna and the house of the Vestals. I have Signor Boni's plans of it. Should you like to see them?" "Yes--presently," answered Lamberti, with more eagerness than Guido had expected. "Is there anything like a reconstruction of the temple or of the house--a picture of one, I mean?" "I think so," said Guido. "I am sure there is Baldassare Peruzzi's sketch of the temple, as it was in his day." "I dreamt that I saw it last night, the temple and the house, and all the Forum besides, and not in ruins either, but just as everything was in old times. Could the Vestals' house have had an upper story? Is that possible?" "The archæologists are sure that it had," answered Guido, becoming more interested. "Do you mean to say that you dreamt you saw it with an upper story?" "Yes. And the temple was something like the one they used to call Vesta's, only it was more ornamented, and the columns seemed very near together. The round wall, just within the columns, was decorated with curious designs in low relief--something like a wheel, and scallops, and curved lines. It is hard to describe, but I can see it all now." Guido rose from his seat quickly. "I will get the number that has the drawing in it," he said, explaining. During the few moments that passed while he was out of the room Lamberti sat staring at his empty place as fixedly as he had stared at the dark line of the Janiculum a few minutes earlier. The man-servant, who had been with him at sea, watched him with a sort of grave sympathy that is peculiarly Italian. Then, as if an idea of great value had struck him, he changed Lamberti's plate, poured some red wine into the tumbler, and filled it up with water. Then he retired and watched to see whether his old master would drink. But Lamberti did not move. "Here it is," said Guido, entering the room with a large yellow-covered pamphlet open in his hands. "Was it like this?" As he asked the question he laid the pamphlet on the clean plate before his friend. The pages were opened at Baldassare Peruzzi's rough pen-and-ink sketch of the temple of Vesta; and as Lamberti looked at it, his lids slowly contracted, and his features took an expression of mingled curiosity and interest. "The man who drew that had seen what I saw," he said at last. "Did he draw it from some description?" "He drew it on the spot," answered Guido. "The temple was standing then. But as for your dream, it is quite possible that you may have seen this same drawing in a shop window at Spithoever's or Loescher's, for instance, without noticing it, and that the picture seemed quite new to you when you dreamt it. That is a simple explanation." "Very," said Lamberti. "But I saw the whole Forum." "There are big engravings of imaginary reconstructions of the Forum, in the booksellers' windows." "With the people walking about? The two young priests standing in the morning sun on the steps of the temple of Castor and Pollux? The dirty market woman trudging past the corner of the Vestals' house with a basket of vegetables on her head? The door slave sweeping the threshold of the Regia with a green broom?" "I thought you knew nothing about the Forum," said Guido, curiously. "How do you come to know of the Regia?" "Did I say Regia? I daresay--the name came to my lips." "Somebody has hypnotised you," said Guido. "You are repeating things you have heard in your sleep." "No. I am describing things I saw in my sleep. Am I the sort of man who is easily hypnotised? I have let men try it once or twice. We were all interested in hypnotism on my last ship, and the surgeon made some curious experiments with a lad who went to sleep easily. But last night I was at home, alone, in my own room, in bed, and I dreamt." Guido shrugged his shoulders a little indifferently. "There must be some explanation," he said. "What else did you dream?" Lamberti's lids drooped as if he were concentrating his attention on the remembered vision. "I dreamt," he said, "that I saw a veiled woman in white come out of the temple door straight into the sunlight, and though I could not see the face, I knew who she was. She went down the steps and then up the others to the house of the Vestals, and entered in without looking back. I followed her. The door was open, and there was no one to stop me." "That is very improbable," observed Guido. "There must have always been a slave at the door." "I went in," continued Lamberti without heeding the interruption, "and she was standing beside one of the pillars, a little way from the door. She had one hand on the column, and she was facing the sun; her veil was thrown back and the light shone through her hair. I came nearer, very softly. She knew that I was there and was not afraid. When I was close to her she turned her face to mine. Then I took her in my arms and kissed her, and she did not resist." Guido smiled gravely. "And she turned out to be some one you know in real life, I suppose," he said. "Yes," answered Lamberti. "Some one I know--slightly." "Beautiful, of course. Fair or dark?" "You need not try to guess," Lamberti said. "I shall not tell you. My head went round, and I woke." "Very well. But is it this absurd dream that has made you so nervous?" "No. Something happened to me to-day." Lamberti ate a few mouthfuls in silence, before he went on. "I daresay I might have invented some explanation of the dream," he said at last. "But it only made me want to see the place. I never cared for those things, you know. I had never gone down into the Forum in my life--why should I? I went there this morning." "And you could not find anything of what you had seen, of course." "I took one of those guides who hang about the entrance waiting for foreigners. He showed me where the temple had been, and the house, and the temple of Castor and Pollux. I did not believe him implicitly, but the ruins were in the right places. Then I walked up a bridge of boards to the house of the Vestals, and went in." "But there was no lady." "On the contrary," said Lamberti, and his eyes glittered oddly, "the lady was there." "The same one whom you had seen in your dream?" "The same. She was standing facing the sun, for it was still early, and one of her hands was resting against the brick pillar, just as it had rested against the column." "That is certainly very extraordinary," said Guido, his tone changing. Then he seemed about to speak again, but checked himself. Lamberti rested his elbows on the table and his chin on his folded hands, and looked into his friend's eyes in silence. His own face had grown perceptibly paler in the last few minutes. "Guido," he said, after what seemed a long pause, "you were going to ask what happened next. I do not know what you thought, nor what stopped you, for between you and me there is no such thing as indiscretion, and, besides, you will never know who the lady was." "I do not wish to guess. Do not say anything that could help me." "Of course not. Any woman you know might have taken it into her head to go to the Forum this morning." "Certainly." "This is what happened. I stood perfectly still in surprise. She may have heard my footstep or not; she knew some one was behind her. Then she slowly turned her head till we could see each other's faces." He paused again, and passed one hand lightly over his eyes. "Yes," said Guido, "I suppose I can guess what is coming." "No!" Lamberti cried, in such a tone that the other started. "You cannot guess. We looked at each other. It seemed a very long time--two or three minutes at least--as if we were both paralysed. Though we recognised each other perfectly well, we could neither of us speak. Then it seemed to me that something I could not resist was drawing me towards her, but I am sure I did not really move the hundredth part of a step. I shall never forget the look in her face." Another pause, not long, but strangely breathless. "I have seen men badly frightened in battle," Lamberti went on. "The cheeks get hollow all at once, the eyes are wide open, with black rings round them, the face turns a greenish grey, and the sweat runs down the forehead into the eyebrows. Men totter with fear, too, as if their joints were unstrung. But I never saw a woman really terrified before. There was a sort of awful tension of all her features, as though they were suddenly made brittle, like beautiful glass, and were going to shiver into fragments. And her eyes had no visible pupils--her lips turned violet. I remember every detail. Then, without warning, she shrieked and staggered backwards; and she turned as I moved to catch her, and she ran like a deer, straight up the court, past those basins they have excavated, and up two or three steps, to the dark rooms at the other end." "And what did you do?" asked Guido, wondering. "My dear fellow, I turned and went back as fast as I could, without exactly running, and I found the guide looking for me below the temple, for he had not seen me go into the Vestals' house. What else was there to be done?" "Nothing, I suppose. You could not pursue a lady who shrieked with fear and ran away from you. What a strange story! You say you only know her slightly." "Literally, very slightly," answered Lamberti. He had become fluent, telling his story almost excitedly. He now relapsed into his former mood, and stared at the pamphlet before him a moment, before shutting it and putting it away from him. "It is like all those things--perfectly unaccountable, except on a theory of coincidence," said Guido, at last. "Will you have any cheese?" Lamberti roused himself and saw the servant at his elbow. "No, thank you. I forgot one thing. Just as I awoke from that dream last night, I heard the door of my room softly closed." "What has that to do with the matter?" enquired Guido, carelessly. "Nothing, except that the door was locked. I always lock my door. I first fell into the habit when I was travelling, for I sleep so soundly that in a hotel any one might come in and steal my things. I should never wake. So I turn the key before going to bed." "You may have forgotten to do it last night," suggested Guido. "No. I got up at once, and the key was turned. No one could have come in." "A mouse, then," said Guido, rather contemptuously. CHAPTER V Cecilia Palladio was very much ashamed of having uttered a cry of terror at the sight of Lamberti, and still more of having run away from him like a frightened child. To him it seemed as if she had really shrieked with fear, whereas she fancied that she had scarcely found voice enough to utter an incoherent exclamation. The truth lay somewhere between the two impressions, but Cecilia now felt that she could easily have accounted for being startled into crying out, but that it would always be impossible to explain her flight. She had run the whole length of the Court, which must be fifty yards long, before realising what she was doing, and had not paused for breath till she was out of his sight and within the second of the three rooms on the left. There were no gates to the rooms then, as there are now, and she could not have given any reason for her entering the second instead of the first, which was the nearest. The choice was instinctive. She certainly had not gone there to join the elderly woman servant who had come to the Forum with her. That excellent and obedient person was waiting where Cecilia had made her sit down, not far from the entrance to the Forum, and would not move till her mistress returned. The young girl hated to be followed about and protected at every step, especially by a servant, who could have no real understanding of what she saw. "I shall only be seen by foreigners and Cook's Tourists," she had said, "and they do not count as human beings at all!" Therefore the middle-aged Petersen, who was a German, and therefore a species of foreigner herself, had meekly sat down upon the comparatively comfortable stone which Cecilia had selected for her, and which was one of the steps of the Julian Basilica. She was called Frau Petersen, Mrs. Petersen, or Madame Petersen, according to circumstances, by the servants of different nationalities who were successively in the employment of the Countess Fortiguerra, for she was a superior woman and the widow of a paymaster in the Bavarian army, and so eminently respectable and well educated that she had more than once been taken for Cecilia's governess. Petersen was excessively near-sighted, but her nose was not adapted by its nature and position for wearing eyeglasses; for it was not only a flat nose without anything like a prominent bridge to it, but it was placed uncommonly low in her face, so that a pair of eyeglasses pinched upon it would have found themselves in the region of Petersen's cheek-bones. Even when she wore spectacles, they were always slipping down, which was a great nuisance; so she resigned herself to seeing less than other people, except when something interested her enough to make the discomfort of glasses worth enduring. This sufficiently explains why she noticed nothing unusual in Cecilia's looks when the latter came back to her, pale and disturbed; and she had not heard her mistress's faint cry, the distance being too great for that, not to mention the fact that the huge ruins intercepted the sound. Cecilia was glad of that, as she drove home with Petersen. "Signor Lamberti has called," said the Countess Fortiguerra the next day at luncheon. "I see by his card that he is in the Navy. You know he is one of the Marchese Lamberti's sons. Shall we ask him to dinner?" "Did you like him?" enquired Cecilia, evasively. "He is not very good-looking," observed the Countess, whose judgment of unknown people always began with their appearance, and often penetrated no farther. "But he may be intelligent, for all that," she added, as a concession. "Yes," said Cecilia, thoughtfully, "perhaps." "I think we might ask him to dinner, then," answered the Countess, as if she had given an excellent reason for doing so. "Is it not rather early, considering that we have only met him once?" Cecilia ventured to ask. "I used to know his mother very well, though she was older than I. It is pleasant to find that he is so intimate with Signor d'Este. We might ask them together." "After the garden party," suggested Cecilia. "Of course, as you and the Marchesa were great friends, that is a reason for asking the other, but Signor d'Este--really! It would positively be throwing me at his head, mother!" "He expects it, my dear," answered the Countess, with more precision than tact. "I mean," she added hastily, "I mean, that is, I did not mean----" Cecilia laughed. "Oh yes, you did, mother! You meant exactly that, you know. You and that dreadful old Princess have made up your minds that I am to marry him, and nothing else matters, does it?" "Well," said the Countess, without any perceptible hesitation, "I cannot help hoping that you will consent, for I should like the match very much." She knew that it was always better to be quite frank with her daughter; and even if she had thought otherwise, she could never have succeeded in being diplomatic with her. While her second husband had been alive, her position as an ambassadress had obliged her to be tactful in the world, and even occasionally to say things which she had some difficulty in believing, being a very simple soul; but with Cecilia she was quite unable to conceal her thoughts for five minutes. If the girl loved her mother, and she really did, it was largely because her mother was so perfectly truthful. Cynical people called her helplessly honest, and said that her veracity would have amounted to a disease of the mind if she had possessed any; but that since she did not, it was probably a form of degeneration, because all perfectly healthy human beings lied naturally. David had said in his heart that all men were liars, and his experience of men, and of women, too, was worth considering. "Yes," Cecilia said, after a thoughtful pause, "I know that you wish me to marry Signor d'Este, and I have not refused to think of it. But I have not promised anything, either, and I do not like to feel that he expects me to be thrust upon him at every turn, till he is obliged to offer himself as the only way of escaping the persecution." "I wish you would not express it in that way!" The Countess sighed and looked at her daughter with a sort of half-comical and loving hopelessness in her eyes--as a faithful dog might look at his master who, seeming to be hungry, would refuse to steal food that was within reach. The dog would try to lead the man to the bread, the man would gently resist; each would be obeying the dictation of his own conscience--the man would know that he could never explain his moral position to the dog, and the dog would feel that he could never understand the man. Yet the affection between the two would not be in the least diminished. On the next evening Cecilia found herself next to Guido d'Este at dinner. Though she was not supposed to make her formal appearance in society before the garden party, the Countess's many old friends, some of whom had more or less impecunious sons, were anxious to welcome her to Rome, and asked her to small dinners with her mother. Guido had arrived late, and had not been able to speak to her till he was told by their host that he was to take her in. It was quite natural that he should, for, in spite of his birth, he was only plain Signor d'Este, and was not entitled to any sort of precedence in a society which is, if anything, overcareful in such matters. Neither spoke as they walked through the rooms, near the end of the small procession. Guido glanced at the young girl, who knew that he did, but paid no attention. He thought her rather pale, and there was no light in her eyes. Her hand lay like gossamer on his arm, so lightly that he could not feel it; but he was aware of her perfectly graceful motion as she walked. "I suppose this was predestined," he said, as soon as the rest of the guests were talking. She glanced at him quickly now, her head bent rather low, her eyebrows arching higher than usual. He was not sure whether the little irregularity of her upper lip was accentuated by amusement, or by a touch of scorn. "Is it?" she asked. "Do you happen to know that it was arranged?" It was amusement, then, and not scorn. They understood each other, and the ice was in no need of being broken again. "No," Guido answered with a smile. Then his voice grew suddenly low and earnest. "Will you please believe that if I had been told beforehand that I was asked in order to sit next to you, I would not have come?" Cecilia laughed lightly. "I believe you, and I understand," she answered. "But how it sounds! If you had known that you were to sit next to me, nothing would have induced you to come!" From her place next the master of the house, the Countess Fortiguerra looked at them, and was pleased to see that they were already on good terms. "Thank you," Cecilia added in a quiet voice, and gravely. "Besides," she continued, "there is no reason, in the world why we should not be good friends, is there?" She looked full at him now, without a smile, and he realised for the first time how very young she was. A married woman with an instinct for flirtation might have made the speech, but a girl older than Cecilia would have known that it might be misunderstood. Guido answered her look with one in which doubt did not keep the upper hand more than a single second. "There is no reason whatever why we should not be the best of friends," he answered, in a tone as low as her own. "Perhaps I may be of service to you. I hope so. Besides, I am made for friendship!" He laughed rather carelessly as he spoke the last words, and glanced round the table to see whether anybody was watching him. He met the Countess Fortiguerra's approving glance. "Why do you laugh at friendship?" asked Cecilia, not quite pleased. "I do not laugh at friendship at all," Guido answered. "I laugh in order that people may see me and hear me. This is the first service I can render you, to be natural and unconcerned, as I generally am. If I behaved in any unusual way--if I were too grave, or too much interested--you understand!" "Yes. You are thoughtful. Thank you." There was a little pause, during which a luxuriant lady in green, who sat on Guido's other side, determined to attract his attention, and spoke to him; but before he could answer, some one opposite asked her a question about dress, which was intensely interesting to her, because she dressed abominably. She promptly fell into the snare which had been set for her with the evil intention of leading her on to talk foolishly. She followed at once, and Guido was free again. "Now that we are friends," he said to Cecilia, "may I ask you a friendly question?" "Ask me anything you like," she answered, and her innocent eyes promised him the truth. "Were you told anything, before we met at my aunt's the other day?" "Not a word! And you?" "Nothing," he replied. "I remember that on that very afternoon----" he stopped short. "What?" "You may not like what I was going to say." "I shall, if it is true, and if you have a good reason for saying it." "Lamberti and I were together, talking, and I said that nothing would ever induce me to marry an heiress, unless it were to save my father or mother from ruin. As that can never happen, all heiresses are perfectly safe from me! Do you mind my having said that?" "No. I am sure you were in earnest." A shadow had crossed her face at the mention of Lamberti's name. "You do not like my friend," he said, and as he spoke, the shadow came again and deepened. "How can I like him or dislike him? I hardly know him." She felt very uncomfortable, for it would have been quite natural that Lamberti should have spoken to Guido of her strange behaviour in the Forum. Guido answered that one often liked or disliked people at first sight. "I think that you and I liked each other as soon as we met," he concluded. "Yes," Cecilia answered, after a little thought. "I am sure we did. Tell me, what makes you think that I dislike your friend? I should be very sorry if he thought I did." "When I first spoke of him a few moments ago, your expression changed, and when I referred to him again, you frowned." "Is that all? Are you sure that is the only reason for your opinion?" Guido laughed a little. "What other reason could I have?" he asked. "Do not take it so seriously!" "He might have told you that he himself had the impression----" "He has hardly mentioned your name since we both met you," Guido answered. It was a relief to know that Lamberti had not spoken of having met her unexpectedly, and of her cry, and of her flight. Yet somehow she had already been sure that he had kept the matter to himself. As a matter of fact, Guido had never thought of her, even in the most passing way, as the possible heroine of the adventure in the Forum. The story had interested him, but the personality of the lady did not; and, moreover, from the way in which Lamberti had spoken, Guido had very naturally supposed her to be a married woman, for it would not have occurred to him that a young girl could be strolling among the ruins quite alone. Cecilia felt relieved, and yet, at the same time, she felt a little girlish disappointment at the thought that Lamberti had hardly ever spoken of her to his most intimate friend, for she was quite sure that Guido told her the exact truth. She was angry with herself for being disappointed, too. The man's face had haunted her so long in half-waking dreams; or at least, a face exactly like his, which, the last time, had turned into his without doubt. Yet she had evidently made no impression upon him, until she had made a very bad one, the other day. She wondered whether he thought she was a little mad. She was afraid of meeting him wherever she went, and yet she now wished he were at the table, in order that she might prove to him that she was not only sane, but very clever. She knew that she wished it, and for a few moments she did not hear what Guido was saying, but gazed absently at the flowers on the table, unconsciously hoping that she might see them turn into the face she feared; but that did not happen. Guido talked on, till he saw that she was not listening, and then he was silent, and only glanced at her from time to time while he heard in his ears the cackling of the vivid lady in green. There was going to be a change in the destinies of womankind, and everybody was to be perfectly frightful for ever afterwards. To be plain, the sleeves "they" were wearing now were to be altogether given up. "They" had begun to wear the new ones already in Paris. Réjane had worn them in her new piece, and of course that meant an imminent and universal change. And as for the way the skirts were to be made, it was positively indecent. Réjane was far too much of a lady to wear one, of course, but one could see what was coming. Here some one observed that coming events cast their shadows before. "Not at all, not at all!" cried the lady in green. "I mean behind." "How long shall you stay in Rome?" Guido asked, to see whether Cecilia would hear him now. "Always," she answered. "For the rest of my life." "I am glad of that. But I meant to ask how late you intended to stay this year?" "I should like to spend the summer here." "It is the pleasantest time," Guido said. "Is it? Or are you only saying that in order to agree with me? You need not, you know. I like people who have their own opinions, and are full of prejudices, and try to force them upon everybody, whether they are good for every one or not!" "I am afraid I shall not please you, then. I have no prejudices to speak of, and my opinions are worth so little that I never hesitate to change them." "But you do not look at all feeble-minded," said Cecilia, innocently studying his face. "Thank you!" Guido laughed. "You are adorable!" he added rather flippantly. "Is that your opinion?" asked the young girl, smiling, too, as if she were pleased. "Yes. That is my firm opinion. Do you object to it?" "Oh no!" Cecilia answered, still smiling sweetly. "You have just told me that your opinions are worth so little that you never hesitate to change them. So why in the world should I object to any of them?" "Exactly," said Guido, unmoved. "Why should you? Especially as this particular one gives me so much pleasure while it lasts." "It will not last long, I daresay. Do you know that you are not at all dull?" "No one could be in your company." "That is the first dull thing you have said this evening," Cecilia answered, to see what he would say. "Shall it be the last?" he asked. "Yes, please." There was a little wilful command in the tone that Guido liked. He felt her presence in a way he did not remember to have felt that of any woman, and in the atmosphere of her own in which she seemed to live he breathed as one does in some very high places, less easily, perhaps, but with conscious pleasure in drawing breath. He could not have described his sensations in those first meetings with her, and he could have analysed them less. One might as well seek the form and perfume of the flower in the first tender shoot that thrusts up its joy of living out of the mystery of the dull brown earth. Yet he knew well enough that something was beginning to grow in him which had not begun, and grown, and perished before. Many times he had talked with women famous for their beauty, or for their charm, or for their wit, and he himself had said clever things which he had remembered with a little vanity or had forgotten with regret, and had turned compliments in many manners, guessing at the taste of her who sat beside him, wishing to please her, and wishing even more to find some general key to women's thought, some universal explanation of their ways, some logical solution of their seemingly inconsequent actions. His mind was of the sort that is satisfied by suspended judgment, that dreads the chillingly triumphant phrase of reason, "which was to be proved," as much as the despairing tone of a reduction to the impossible. He loved problems that could not be solved easily, if at all, because he could think of them continually in a hundred new and different ways. He hated equally a final affirmation past appeal, and an ultimate negation which might make his thoughts ridiculous in his own eyes. A quiet suspense was his natural state of equilibrium. Anything might be, or might not be, and decision was hateful; it was delicious to float on the calm waters of meditative indifference, between the giant rocks, hope and despair, in the straits that lead the sea of life to the ocean of eternity. He knew that he was the end of a race that had reigned and could never reign again. It was better that the end should be a question than a hope deceived, or a cry of impotent hatred uttered against Something which might not exist after all. If he had a philosophy it was that, and nothing more; and though it was not much, it had helped him to live without much pain and almost always with a certain dreamy, intellectual, wondering pleasure in his own thoughts. Sometimes he was irritated out of that state by the demands and doings of the Princess Anatolie, as on the day when he and his friend had talked in the garden beyond the river; and then he spoke of ending all at a stroke, and almost believed that he might do it; and he envied Lamberti his love of life and action. But such moods soon passed and left him himself again, so that he marvelled how he could ever have been so much moved. It was always the same, in the end, but such as it was the world was not a bad world for him. Here was something different from all the past, and it had begun without warning, and was growing against his will, because it fed on that with which his will had nothing to do. There is no fatalism like that of the indifferent man who believes in nothing, not even in himself, and who admits nothing to be positive except crime and dishonour. Why should he not fall in love with Cecilia Palladio, since he had previously stated to himself, to her, and to his trusted friend, that nothing could induce him to marry her? It was quite clear from the first that she, on her side, would never fall in love with him. He looked upon that as altogether out of the question, and perhaps with reason. On the other hand, he had not the slightest faith in the lasting nature of anything he might feel, and therefore he was not afraid of consequences, which rarely indeed frighten a man who is doing what he likes. It is more generally the woman that thinks of them, and points them out because "there is still time!" She also heaps her scorn upon the man if he is wise enough to agree with her; but that is a detail, and perhaps it ought not to be mentioned. As for the fact that he was beginning to be in love, Guido no longer doubted it. The pleasure he felt in saying to Cecilia things of even less than average conversational merit was proof enough that it was not only what he said that interested him. When a man of ordinary assurance wishes to shine in the eyes of a woman, he generally succeeds at least in shining in his own. Guido was not any more self-conscious than most people, and he was certainly not more diffident of his own gifts, which he could judge impartially because he attached little importance to what they might bring him. But the categorical command to say nothing dull made it quite impossible to say anything witty, and the conversation languished a little and then broke off. It was past ten o'clock when Guido again found a chance of speaking to Cecilia. He had looked at her more often than he knew, after dinner, and had given rather vague answers to one or two people who had spoken to him. He had moved about the great room idly, looking at the familiar old portraits, and at objects he had known in the same places for years. He had smoked a cigarette, standing with his host, while the latter talked to him about the Etruscan tomb he had just discovered on his place, and he had nodded pleasantly to the sound of the old gentleman's voice without hearing a word. Then he had smoked another cigarette at the opposite end of the room with a group of younger men, who talked of nothing but motor cars; and when they asked his opinion about something, he had said that he had none, and preferred walking, which speech caused such a perceptible chill that he turned away and left the young men to their discussion. All the while his eyes followed Cecilia's movements, and lingered upon her when she stood still or sat down. In the course of the evening each of the young men who talked about motor cars managed to try his luck at a conversation with her, and all, by way of being original, talked to her about the same thing. As she had just come from Paris, and was rich, it was to be supposed that she, of course, owned a motor car, had passed her examination as an engineer, and spent most of her time in a mask and broad-visored cap scouring Europe at the rate of fifty miles an hour. "But why do you not get an automobile?" asked each of the young men, as soon as her answer had disappointed him. "Do you play the violin?" she enquired sweetly of each. "No," each answered. "Then why do you not get a violin?" In this way she confounded the young men, and their heads moved uneasily on the tops of their high collars, until they were able to get away from her. Guido saw how they left her, with a discomfited expression, and as if they had suddenly acquired the conviction that their clothes did not fit them, for that is generally the first sensation experienced by a very well-dressed young man when he has been made to feel that he is foolish. Guido saw, and understood, and he was worldly wise enough to know that unless Cecilia would show a little more willingness to seem pleased, she would presently be sitting alone on a sofa, waiting for her mother to go home. As soon as this inevitable result followed, he sat down beside her. She turned her face slowly, when he had settled himself, and she looked at him with slightly bent head, a little upwards, from under her lids. The light that fell from a shaded lamp above her marked the sharp curve of arching brows sharply against the warm shadow over the deep-set and widely opened eyes. For a few seconds Guido returned the steady gaze, before he spoke. "Are you the Sphinx?" he asked suddenly. "Have you come to life again to ask men your riddle?" "I ask it of myself," she answered softly, and then looked away. "I cannot answer it." "Are you good or evil?" Guido asked, speaking again. The questions came to his lips as if some one else were asking them with his voice. "Good--I think," answered the young girl, motionless beside him. "But I might be very bad." "What is the riddle?" Guido enquired, and now he felt that he was speaking out of his own curiosity, and not as the mouthpiece of some one in a dream. "Do you ask yourself what it all means? I suppose so. We all ask that, and we never get any answer." "It is too vague a question. It cannot have a definite answer. No. I ask three questions which I found in a German book of philosophy when I was a little girl. I tried hard to understand what all the rest of the book was about, but I found on one page three questions, printed by themselves. I can see the page now, and the questions were numbered one, two, and three. I have asked them ever since." "What were they?" "They were these: 'What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope?'" "There would be everything in the answers," Guido said, "for they are big questions. I think I have answered them all in the negative in my own life. I know nothing, I do nothing, and I hope nothing." Cecilia looked at him again. "I would not be you," she said gravely. "I can do nothing, perhaps, and I am sure I know nothing worth knowing, but I hope. I have that at least. I hope everything, with all my heart and soul--everything, even things you could not dream of." "Help me to dream of them. Perhaps I might." "Then dream that faith is knowledge, that charity is action, and that hope is heaven itself," answered Cecilia. Her voice was sweet and low, and far away as spirit land, and Guido wondered at the words. "Where did you hear that?" he asked. "Ah, where?" she asked, almost sadly, and very longingly. "If I could tell you that, I should know the great secret, the only secret ever yet worth knowing. Where have we heard the voices that come back to us, not in sleeping dreams only, but when we are waking, too, voices that come back softly like evening bells across the sea, with the touch of hands that lay in ours long ago, and faces that we know better than our own! Where was it all, before the memory of it all was here?" "I have often wondered whether those impressions are memories," said Guido. "What else could they be?" Cecilia asked, her tone growing colder at once. Guido had been happy in listening to her talk, with its suggestion of fantastical extravagance, but he had not known how to answer her, nor how to lead her on. He felt that the spell was broken, because something was lacking in himself. To be a magician one must believe in magic, unless one would be a mere conjurer. Guido at least knew enough not to answer the girl's last question with a string of so-called scientific theories about atavism and transmitted recollections. If he had taken that ground he would have been surprised to find that Cecilia Palladio was quite as familiar with it as himself. "I am afraid," he said, "that I am not fit to talk with you about such things. You start from a point which I can never hope to reach, and instead of coming down to me, you rise higher and higher, almost out of my sight. I am afraid that if our friendship is to be real, it will be a one-sided bond." "How do you mean?" asked the young girl, who had listened. "It will mean much more to me than it ever can to you." "No," Cecilia answered. "I think I shall like you very much." "I like you very much already," said Guido, smiling. "I have an amusing idea." "Have you? What is it? Neither of us has been very amusing this evening." "Suppose that we take advantage of the Princess's conspiracy. Shall we?" "My mother is the other conspirator!" Cecilia laughed. "Is there any harm in letting people see that we like each other?" Guido asked. "None in the least. Every one hopes that we may. Besides----" she stopped short. "What is the other consideration?" Guido enquired. "If I am perfectly frank--brutally frank--shall you be less my friend?" "No. Much more." "I do not wish to marry at all," said Cecilia, and again she reminded him of the Sphinx. "But if I ever should change my mind, since you and I have been picked out to make a match, I suppose I might as well marry you as any one else." "Oh, quite as well!" Then Guido laughed, as he rarely did, not loudly, but with all his heart, and Cecilia did not try to check her amusement either. "I suppose it really is very funny," she said. "The only thing necessary is that no one should ever guess that we have made a compact. That would be fatal." "No one!" cried the young girl, eagerly. "No one! Not even your friend!" "Lamberti? No, least of all, Lamberti!" "Why do you say, least of all?" "Because you do not like him," Guido answered, with perfect sincerity. "Oh! I see. I am not sure, of course, but I am glad you do not mean to tell him. It would make me nervous to think that he might know. I--I am not quite certain why it makes me nervous, but it does." "Have no fear. When shall I see you?" He had noticed that Cecilia's mother was beginning that little comedy of movements, and glances, and uneasy turnings of the head, by which mothers of marriageable daughters signify their intention of going home. The works of a clock probably act in the same way before striking. "I will make my mother ask you to dinner. Are you free to-morrow night?" "Any night." "No--I mean really. Are you?" "Yes, really. Lamberti does not count, for we generally dine together when we have no other engagement." The shadow again flitted across Cecilia's brow, and she said nothing, only nodding quickly. Then she looked across the room at her mother. Young girls are always instantly aware that their mothers are making signs. When Nelson's commander-in-chief signalled to him at the battle of Copenhagen the order to retire, Nelson put his spy-glass to his blind eye and assured his officers that he could see nothing, went on, and won the fight. Every young girl is totally blind of one eye during periods that vary between ten minutes and three hours. Cecilia having recovered her sight, and seen her mother, rose with obedient alacrity. "Good night," she said to Guido. "I am glad we are friends." Their glances met for a moment, and Guido made an imperceptible gesture to put out his hand, but she did not answer it. He thought her refusal a little old-fashioned, since young girls now shake hands in Italy more often than not; but he liked her ways, chiefly because they were hers, and, moreover, he remembered just then that at her age she was supposed to be barely out of the schoolroom or the convent. CHAPTER VI "Spiritualism, your Highness, is the devil, without doubt," said the learned ecclesiastical archæologist, Don Nicola Francesetti, in an apologetic tone, and looking at his knees. "If there is anything more heretical, it is a belief in a possible migration of souls from one body to another, in a series of lives." The Princess Anatolie smiled at the excellent man and exchanged a glance of compassionate intelligence with Monsieur Leroy. She did not care a straw what the Church thought about anything except Protestants and Jews, and she did not believe that Don Nicola cared either. He chanced to be a priest, instead of a professor, and it was of course his duty to protest against heresy when it was thrust under his cogitative observation. Spiritualism was not exactly heresy, therefore he said it was the devil, and no mistake; but as she was sure that he did not believe in the devil, that only proved that he did not believe in spiritualism. In this she was mistaken, however, as people often are in their judgment of priests. Nicola Francesetti had long ago placed his conscience in safety, so to speak, by telling himself that he was not a theologian, but an archæologist, and that as he could not afford to divide his time and his intelligence between two subjects, where one was too vast, it was therefore his plain duty to think about all questions of religion as the Church taught him to think. He admitted that if his life could begin again he would perhaps not again enter the priesthood, but he would never have conceded that he could have been anything but a believing Catholic. He had no vocation whatever for saving souls, whereas he possessed the archæological gift in a high degree; and yet, as a clergyman and a good Christian, he was convinced at heart that a man in holy orders had no right to give his whole life and strength to another profession. He had asked the advice of a wise and good man on this point, however, and the theologian had thought that he should continue to live as he was living. Had he a cure? No, he had none. Had he ever evaded a priest's work? That is, had work been offered to him where a priest was needed, and where he could have done active good, and had he refused because it was distasteful to him? No, never. Was he receiving any stipend for performing a priest's duties, with the tacit understanding that he was at liberty to pay an impecunious substitute a part of the money for taking his place, so that he himself profited by the transaction? No, certainly not. Don Nicola had a sufficient income of his own to live on. Had he ever made a solemn promise to devote his life to missionary labours among the heathen? No. "In that case, my dear friend," concluded the theologian, "you are tormenting yourself with perfectly useless scruples. You are making a mountain of your molehill, and when you have made your mountain you will not be satisfied until you have made another beside it. In the course of time you will, in fact, oppress your innocent conscience with a whole range of mountains; you will be immobilised under the weight, and then you will become hateful to yourself, useless to others, and an object of pity to wise men. Stick to your archæology." "Is pure study a good in itself?" asked Don Nicola. "What is good?" retorted the theologian viciously. "I wish you would define it!" Don Nicola was silent, for though he could think of a number of synonyms for the conception, he remembered no definition corresponding to any of them. He waited. "Good and goodness are not the same thing," observed the theologian; "you might as well say that study and knowledge are the same thing." "But study should lead to knowledge." "And goodness should lead to good; and, compared with ignorance, knowledge is a form of good. Therefore study is a form of goodness. Consequently, as you have a turn for erudition, the best thing you can do is to go on with your studies." "I see," said Don Nicola. "I wish I did," sighed the theologian, when the priest was gone. "How very pleasant it must be, to be an archæologist!" After that, whenever Don Nicola was troubled with uneasiness about his profession, he soothed himself with his friend's little syllogism, which was as full of holes as a sieve, as flimsy as a tissue-paper balloon, and as unstable as a pyramid upside down, but nevertheless perfectly satisfactory. "Of course," says humanity, "I know nothing about it. But I am perfectly sure." And so forth. And moreover, if humanity were not frequently quite sure of things concerning which it knows nothing, the world would soon come to a standstill, and never move again; like the ass in the fable, that died of hunger in its stall between two bundles of hay, unable to decide which to eat first. That also was an instance of stable equilibrium. Don Nicola avoided all questions of religion in general conversation, and tried to make other people avoid them when he was the only clergyman present, because he did not like to be asked his opinion about them. But when the Princess Anatolie and Monsieur Leroy gravely declared their belief in the communications of departed persons by means of rappings, not to say by touch, and by strains of music, and perfumes, and even, on rare occasions, by actual apparition, then Don Nicola felt that it was his duty to protest, and he accordingly protested with considerable energy. He said that spiritualism was the devil. "The chief object of the devil's existence," observed Monsieur Leroy, "is to bear responsibility." The Princess laughed and nodded her approval, as she always did when Monsieur Leroy said anything which she thought clever. Don Nicola was too wise to discuss the matter, if, indeed, it admitted of discussion; for the devil was certainly responsible for a good deal. "Your definition of spiritualism is so very liberal," Monsieur Leroy added, with a fine supercilious smile on his red lips. "It is not mine," answered Don Nicola, modestly. "No. I suppose it is the opinion of the Church. At all events, you do not doubt the possibility of communicating with the spirits of dead persons, do you?" "I have never examined the matter, my dear sir." "It seems to me," said Monsieur Leroy, with airy superiority, "that it is rather rash to attribute to Satan everything which you will not take the trouble to examine." "Hush, Doudou!" cried the Princess. "You are very rude!" "Not at all, not at all, your Highness!" protested Don Nicola, rising. "I should be very much surprised if Monsieur Leroy expressed himself differently." Monsieur Leroy had no retort ready, and tried to smile. "It will give me the greatest pleasure to be your guide to the new excavations in the Forum," added the priest, as he took his leave. The Princess and Monsieur Leroy were left alone. "Shall we?" he asked after a moment's silence, and waited anxiously for the answer. "I am afraid They will not come to-night, Doudou," said the Princess. "You have excited yourself in argument. You know that always has a bad effect." "That man irritates me," answered Monsieur Leroy, peevishly. "Why do you receive him?" He spoke in the tone of a spoilt child--a spoilt child of forty, or thereabouts. "I thought you liked him," replied the Princess, very meekly. "I will give orders that he is not to be received. We will not go to the Forum with him." "No, no! How you exaggerate! You always think that I mean a great deal more than I say. I only said that he irritated me." "Why should you be irritated for nothing? You know it is bad for you." She looked at him with an air of concern, and there was a gentleness in her eyes which few had ever seen in them. "It does not matter," answered Monsieur Leroy, crossly. He had risen, and he brought a very small and light mahogany table from a corner. It was one of those which used to be made during the second Empire in sets of six and of successive sizes, so that each fitted each under the next larger one. He moved awkwardly and yet without noise; there was something very womanish in his figure and gait. He set the little table before the Princess, very close to her, lit a single candle, which he placed on the floor behind an arm-chair, and turned out the electric light. Then he sat down on the opposite side of the table and spread out his hands upon it, side by side, the right thumb resting on the left. The Princess did the same. They glanced at each other once or twice, hardly distinguishing each other's features in the gloom. Then they looked steadily down upon the table, and neither stirred for a long time. "I am sure They will not come," said the Princess at last, in a very low voice. "Hush!" Silence again, for a quarter of an hour. Somewhere in the room a small clock, or a watch, ticked quickly, with a little rhythmical, insisting accent on the fourth beat. "It moved, then!" whispered the Princess, excitedly. "Yes. Hush!" The little table certainly moved, with a queerly soft rocking motion, as if its feet only just touched the carpet and supported no weight. The Princess's hands felt as if they were floating over tiny rippling waves, and between her shoulders came the almost stinging thrill she loved. She wished that the room were quite dark now, in order that she might feel more. There were tiny beads of perspiration on Monsieur Leroy's forehead, and his hands were moist. The candle behind the arm-chair flickered. "Are You there?" asked Monsieur Leroy, in a voice unlike his own. There was no answer. The table moved more uneasily. "Rap once for 'yes,' twice for 'no,'" said Monsieur Leroy. "Is this the first time you have come to us?" One rap answered the question, sharp and clear, as if the butt of a pencil had struck the table underneath it and near the middle. "Are you the spirit of a man?" Two raps very distinct. "Then you are a woman. Tell us----" Several raps came in quick succession, in pairs, as if to repeat the negative energetically. Monsieur Leroy seemed to hesitate what question to ask. "Perhaps it is a child," suggested the Princess, in a tremulous tone. A sharp rap. Yes, it was a child. Was it a little girl? Yes. Had it been dead long? Yes. More than ten years? Yes. More than twenty? Yes. Fifty? No. Forty? Yes. Monsieur Leroy began to count, pausing after each number. "Forty-one--forty-two--forty-three--forty-four----" The sharp rap again. The Princess drew a quick breath. "How old was it when it died?" she managed to ask. Monsieur Leroy began to count again, beginning with one. At the word seven, the rap came. The Princess started violently, almost upsetting the table against her companion. "Adelaide!" She cried in a broken voice. One rap. "Oh, my darling, my darling!" The old woman bent down over the table, and her outspread hands tried frantically to take up the flat surface, and she kissed the polished wood passionately, again and again, not knowing what she did, nor hearing her own incoherent words of mixed joy and agony. "My child! My little thing--my sweet--speak to me----" Her whole being was convulsed. Little storms of rappings seemed to answer her. The perspiration trickled down Monsieur Leroy's temples. He seemed to be making an effort altogether beyond his natural strength. "Speak to me--call me by the little name!" sobbed the Princess, and her tears wet her hands and the table. Monsieur Leroy began to repeat the alphabet. From time to time a rap stopped him at a letter, and then he began over again. In this way the rapping spelt out the word "Mamette." "She says 'Mamette,'" said Monsieur Leroy, in a puzzled tone. "Does that mean anything?" But the Princess burst into passionate weeping. It was the name she had asked for, the child's own pet name for her, its mother; it was the last word the poor little dying lips had tried to form. Never since that moment had the heart-broken woman spoken it, never since the fourth year before Monsieur Leroy had been born. He looked at her, for he seemed to have preserved his self-control, and he saw that if matters went much further the poor sobbing woman would reach a state which might be dangerous. He withdrew his hands from the table and waited. "She is gone, but she will come again now, whenever you call her," he said gently. "No, do not go!" cried the Princess, clutching at the smooth wood frantically. "Come back, come back and speak to me once more!" "She is gone, for to-night," said Monsieur Leroy, in the same gentle tone. "I am very much exhausted." He pressed his handkerchief to his forehead and to his temples, again and again, while the Princess moaned, her cheek upon the table, as she had once let it rest upon the breast of her dead child. Monsieur Leroy rose cautiously, fearing to disturb her. He was trembling now, as men sometimes do who have escaped alive from a great danger. He steadied himself by the back of the arm-chair, behind which the candle was burning steadily. With an effort, he stooped and took up the candlestick and set it on the table. Then he looked at his watch and saw that it was past eleven o'clock. CHAPTER VII It was some time since Guido had seen Lamberti, but the latter had written him a line to say that he was going with a party of men to stop in an old country house near the seashore, not far from Cività Vecchia. The quail were very abundant in May that year, and Lamberti was a good shot. He had left home suddenly on the morning after telling Guido the story of his adventure in the Forum. Guido had at first been mildly surprised that his friend should not have spoken of his intention on that evening; but some one had told him that the party had been made up at the club, late at night, which accounted for everything. Guido was soon too much occupied to miss the daily companionship, and was glad to be alone, when he could not be with Cecilia. He no longer concealed from himself that he was very much in love with her, and that, compared with this fact, nothing in his previous life had been of any importance whatever. Even the circumstances of his position with regard to his aunt sank into insignificance. She might do what she pleased, she might try to ruin him, she might persecute him to the extreme limit of her ingenuity, she might invent calumnies intended to disgrace him; he was confident of victory and sure of himself. One of the first unmistakable signs of genuine love is the certainty of doing the impossible. An hour before meeting Cecilia, Guido had been reduced to the deepest despondency, and had talked gravely of ending a life that was not worth living. A fortnight had passed, and he defied his aunt, Monsieur Leroy, the whole world, an adverse fate, and the powers of evil. They might do their worst, now, for he was full of strength, and ten times more alive than he had ever been before. It was true that he could not see the smallest change in Cecilia's manner towards him since the memorable evening on which she had laughingly agreed to take advantage of what was thrust upon them both. Her colour did not change by the least shade of a blush when she met him; there was not the slightest quivering of the delicate eyelids, there was nothing but the most friendly frankness in the steady look of welcome. But she liked him very much, and was at no pains to conceal it. She liked him better than any one she had ever met in her short life, except her stepfather, and she told Guido so with charming unconcern. As he could not be jealous of the dead ambassador, he was not at all discouraged by the comparison. Sometimes he was rather flattered by it, and he could not but feel that he had already acquired a position from which any future suitor would find it hard to dislodge him. The Countess Fortiguerra looked on with wondering satisfaction. Her daughter had not led her to believe that she would readily accept what must soon be looked upon by society as an engagement, and what would certainly be one before long. When Guido went to see his aunt, she received him with expansive expressions of affection. He noticed a change in the Princess, which he could only explain by the satisfaction he supposed she felt in his conduct. There were times when her artificial face softened with a look of genuine feeling, especially when she was silent and inattentive. Guido knew her well enough, he thought, to impute these signs to her inward contentment at the prospect of his marriage, from which she was sure of extracting notable financial advantage. But in this he was not just, though he judged from long experience. Monsieur Leroy alone knew the secret, and he kept his own counsel. An inquisitive friend asked the Countess Fortiguerra boldly whether she intended to announce the engagement of her daughter at the garden party. "No," she answered, without hesitation, "that would be premature." She was careful, in a way, to do nothing irrevocable--never to take Guido into her carriage, not to ask him to dinner when there were other guests, not to leave him alone with Cecilia when there was a possibility of such a thing being noticed by the servants, except by the discreet Petersen, who could be trusted, and who strongly approved of Guido from the first. But when it was quite safe, the Countess used to go and sit in a little boudoir adjoining the drawing-room, leaving the doors open, of course, and occupying herself with her correspondence; and Guido and Cecilia talked without restraint. The Countess had enough womanly and instinctive wisdom not to ask questions of her daughter at this stage, but on the day before the long-expected garden party she spoke to Guido alone, in a little set speech which she had prepared with more conscientiousness than diplomatic skill. "You have seen," she said, "that I am always glad to receive you here, and that I often leave you and Cecilia together in the drawing-room. Dear Signor d'Este, I am sure you will understand me if I ask you to--to--to tell me something." She had meant to end the sentence differently, rounding it off with "your intentions with regard to my daughter"; but that sounded like something in a letter, so she tried to make it more vague. But Guido understood, which is not surprising. "You have been very kind to me," he said simply. "I love your daughter sincerely, and if she will consent to marry me I shall do my best to make her happy. But, so far, I have no reason to think that she will accept me. Besides, whether you know it already or not, I must tell you that I am a poor man. I have no fortune whatever, though I receive an allowance by my father's will, which is enough for a bachelor. It will cease at my death. Your daughter could make a very much more brilliant marriage." The good Countess had listened in silence. The Princess, for reasons of her own, had explained Guido's position with considerable minuteness, if not with scrupulous accuracy. "Cecilia is rich enough to marry whom she pleases," the Countess answered. "Even without considering her inclinations, your social position would make up for your want of fortune." "My social position is not very exalted," Guido answered, smiling at her frankness. "I am plain 'Signor d'Este,' without any title whatsoever, or without the least prospect of one." "But your royal blood----" protested the Countess. "I am more proud of the fact that my mother was an honest woman," replied Guido, quietly. "Yes--oh--of course!" The Countess was a little abashed. "But you know what I mean," she added, by way of making matters clear. "And as for your fortune--I would say, your allowance, and all that--it really does not matter. It is natural that you should have made debts, too. All young men do, I believe." "No," said Guido. "I have not a debt in the world." "Really?" The single word sounded more like an exclamation of extreme surprise than like an interrogation, and the Countess, who was incapable of concealment, stared at Guido for a moment in undisguised astonishment. "Why are you so much surprised?" he asked, with evident amusement. "My allowance is fifty thousand francs a year. That is not wealth, but it is quite enough for me." "Yes. I should think so. That is--of course, it is not much--is it? I never know anything about money, you know! Baron Goldbirn manages everything for us." "I suppose," Guido said, looking at her curiously, "that some one must have told you that I had made debts." "Yes--yes! Some one did tell me so." "Whoever said it was quite mistaken. I can easily satisfy you on that point, for I am a very orderly person. I used to play high when I was twenty-one, but I got tired of it, and I do not care for cards any longer." "It is very strange, all the same!" The Countess was still wondering, though she believed him. "How people lie!" she exclaimed. "Oh, admirably, and most of the time," Guido answered, with a little laugh. There was a short pause. He also was wondering who could have maligned him. No doubt it must have been some designing mother who had a son to marry. "Forgive me," he said at last. "I have told you exactly what my position is. Have you, on your side, any reason to think that your daughter will consent?" "Oh, I am sure she will!" answered the Countess, promptly. Guido repressed a movement, and for an instant the colour rose faintly in his face, then sank away. "Quite sure?" he asked, controlling his voice. "I mean, in the end, you know. She will marry you in the end. I am convinced of it. But I think I had better not ask her just yet." There were matters in regard to which she was distinctly afraid of her daughter. "May I?" Guido enquired. "Will you let me ask her to marry me, when I think that the time has come?" "Certainly! That is----" The Countess believed that she ought to hesitate. "After all, we have only known you a fortnight. That is not long. Is it?" "No. But, on the other hand, you had never seen me when you and my aunt agreed that your daughter and I should be married." "How did you know that we had talked about it?" "It was rather evident," Guido answered, with a smile. The artlessness which is often a charm in a young girl looks terribly like foolishness if it lasts till a woman is forty. Yet in old age it may seem charming again, as if second childhood brought with it a second innocence. Guido was an Italian only by his mother, and from his father he inherited the profoundly complicated character of races that had ruled the world for a thousand years or more, and not always either wisely or justly. Under his indifference and quiet dislike of all action, as well as of most emotions, he had always felt the conflicting instincts towards good and evil, and the contempt of consequences bordering on folly, if not upon real insanity, which had brought about the decline and fall of his father's kingdom. The perfect simplicity of the real Italian character when in a state of equilibrium always amused him, and often pleased him, and he had a genuine admiration for the splendidly violent contrasts which it develops when roused by passion. He could read it like an open book, and predict what it would do in almost any circumstances. For the first time in his life, he felt something of its directness in himself, moving to a definite aim through the maze of useless complications, hesitations, and turns and returns of thought with which he was familiar in his own character. He smiled at the idea that he might end by resembling Lamberti, with whom to think was to feel, and to feel was to act. Were there two selves in him, of which the one was in love, and the other was not? That was an amusing theory, and a fortnight ago it would have been pleasant to sit in his room at night, among his Dürers, his Rembrandts, and his pictures, with an old book on his knee, dreaming about his two conflicting individualities. But somehow dreaming had lost its charm of late. He thought only of one question, and asked only one of the future. Was Cecilia Palladio's friendship about to turn into anything that could be called love, or not? His intention warned him that if the change had come she herself was not conscious of it. He was authorised to ask her, now that the Countess had spoken--formally authorised, but he was quite sure that if he had believed that she already loved him, he would not have waited for any such permission. His father's blood resented the restraint of all ordinary conventions, and in the most profound inaction he had always morally and inwardly reserved the right to do what he pleased, if he should ever care to do anything at all. He was just going to dress for dinner that evening when Lamberti came in, a little more sunburned than usual, but thinner, and very restless in his manner. Guido explained that he was going to dine with the Countess Fortiguerra. He offered to telephone for permission to bring Lamberti with him. "Do you know them well enough for that already?" Lamberti asked. "Yes. I have seen them a great deal since you left. Shall I ask?" "No, thank you. I shall dine at home with my people." "Shall you go to the garden party to-morrow?" "No." Guido looked at him curiously, and he immediately turned away, unlike himself. "Have you had any more strange dreams since I saw you?" Guido asked. "Yes." Lamberti did not turn round again, but looked attentively at an etching on the table, so that Guido could not see his face. His monosyllabic answers were nervous and sharp. It was clear that he was under some kind of strain that was becoming intolerable, but of which he did not care to speak. "How is it going?" he asked suddenly. "I think everything is going well," answered Guido, who knew what he meant, though neither of them had spoken to the other of Cecilia, except in the most casual way, since they had both met her. "So you are going to marry an heiress after all," said Lamberti, with something like a laugh. "I love her," Guido replied. "I cannot help the fact that she is rich." "It does no harm." "Perhaps not, but I wish she had no more than I. If she had nothing at all, I should be just as anxious to marry her." "You do not suppose that I doubt that, do you?" Lamberti asked quickly. "No. But you spoke at first as if you were reproaching me for changing my mind." "Did I? I am sorry. I did not mean it in that way. I was only thinking that fate generally makes us do just what we do not intend. There is something diabolically ingenious about destiny. It lies in wait for you, it seems to leave everything to your own choice, it makes you think that you are a perfectly free agent, and then, without the least warning, it springs at you from behind a tree, knocks you down, tramples the breath out of you, and drags you off by the heels straight to the very thing you have sworn to avoid. Man a free agent? Nonsense! There is no such thing as free will." "What in the world has happened to you?" Guido asked, by way of answer. "Is anything wrong?" "Everything is wrong. Good night. You ought to be dressing for dinner." "Come with me." "To dine with people whom I hardly know, and who have not asked me? Besides, I told you that I meant to dine at home." "At least, promise me that you will go with me to-morrow to the Villa Madama." "No." "Look here, Lamberti," said Guido, changing his tone, "you and I have known each other since we were boys, and I do not believe there exist two men who are better friends. I am not sure that the Contessina Palladio will marry me, but her mother wishes it, and heaven knows that I do. They are both perfectly well aware that you are my most intimate friend. If you absolutely refuse to go near them they can only suppose that you have something against them. They have already asked me if they are never to see you. Now, what will it cost you to be decently civil to a lady who may be my wife next year, and to her mother, who was your mother's friend long ago? You need not stay half an hour at the villa unless you please. But go with me. Let them see you with me. If I really marry, do you suppose I am going to have any one but you for my best man?" Lamberti listened to this long speech without attempting to interrupt Guido. Then he was silent for a few moments. "If you put it in that light," he said, rising to go, "I cannot refuse. What time shall you start? I will come here for you." "Thank you," said Guido. "I should like to get there early. At four o'clock, I should say. I suppose we ought not to leave here later than half-past three." "Very well. I shall be here in plenty of time. Good night." When Guido pressed his hand, it was icy cold. CHAPTER VIII On the following morning Lamberti went out early, and before nine o'clock he was in the private study of a famous physician, who was a specialist for diseases of the nerves. Lamberti had never seen him and had not asked for an appointment, for the simple reason that his visit was spontaneous and unpremeditated. He had spent a wretched night, and it suddenly struck him that he might be ill. As he had never been ill in his life except from two or three wounds got in fight, he had been slow to admit that anything could be wrong with his physical condition. But it was possible. The strongest men sometimes fell ill unaccountably. A good doctor would see the truth at a glance. The specialist was a young man, squarely built, with a fresh complexion, smooth brown hair, and a well-trimmed chestnut beard. At first sight, no one would have noticed anything remarkable in his appearance, except, perhaps, that he had unusually bright blue eyes, which had a fixed look when he spoke earnestly. "I am a naval officer," said Lamberti, as he took the seat the doctor offered him. "Can you tell me whether I am ill or not? I mean, whether I have any bodily illness. Then I will explain what brings me." The doctor looked at him keenly a few seconds, felt his pulse, pressed one ear on his waistcoat to listen to his heart, and then against his back, made him face the light and gently drew down the lower lids of his eyes, and finally stood off and made a sort of general survey of his appearance. Then he made him stretch out one hand, with the fingers spread out. There was not the least tremor. Last of all, he asked him to shut his eyes tightly and walk slowly across the room, turn round, and walk back. Lamberti did so, steadily and quietly. "There is nothing wrong with your body," said the doctor, sitting down. "Before you tell me why you come here, I should like to know one thing more. Do you come of sound and healthy people?" "Yes. My father is the Marchese Lamberti. My brothers and sisters are all alive and well. So far as I know, there was never any insanity in my family." "Were your father and mother cousins?" enquired the doctor. "No." "Very good. That is all I need to know. I am at your service. What is the matter?" "If we lived in the Middle Ages," said Lamberti, "I should say that I was possessed by the devil, or haunted." He stopped and laughed oddly. "Why not say so now?" asked the doctor. "The names of things do not matter in the least. Let us say that you are haunted, if that describes what troubles you. Very good. What haunts you?" "A young girl," Lamberti answered, after a moment's pause. "Do you mean that you see, or think you see, the apparition of a young girl who is dead?" "She is alive, but I have only met her once. That is the strange thing about it, or, at least, the beginning of the strange thing. Of course it is perfectly absurd, but when I first saw her, the only time we met, I had the sensation of recognising some one I had not seen for many years. As she is only just eighteen, that is impossible." "Excuse me, my dear sir, nothing is impossible. Every one is absent-minded sometimes. You may have seen the young lady in the street, or at the theatre. You may have stared at her quite unconsciously while you were thinking of something else, and her features may have so impressed themselves upon your memory, without your knowing it, that you actually recognised her when you met her in a drawing-room." "I daresay," admitted Lamberti, indifferently. "But that is no reason why I should dream of her every night." "I am not sure. It might be a reason. Such things happen." "And every night when I wake from the dream, I hear some one close the door of my room softly, as if she were just going out. I always lock my door at night." "Perhaps it sometimes shakes a little in the frame." "It began at home. But I have been stopping in the country nearly a fortnight, and the same thing has happened every night." "You dream it. One may get the habit of dreaming the same dream every time one sleeps." "It is not always the same dream, though the door is always closed softly when she goes away. But there is something else. I was wrong in saying that I only met the lady once. I should have said that I have spoken with her only once. This is how it happened." Lamberti told the doctor the story of his meeting Cecilia at the house of the Vestals. The specialist listened attentively, for he was already convinced that Lamberti was a man of solid reason and practical good sense, probably the victim of a series of coincidences that had made a strong impression on his mind. When Lamberti paused, there was a moment's silence. "What do you yourself think was the cause of the lady's fright?" asked the doctor at last. "I believe that she had dreamed the same dream," Lamberti answered without hesitation. "What makes you believe anything so improbable?" "Well--I hardly know. It is an impression. It was all so amazingly real, you see, and when our eyes met, she looked as if she knew exactly what would happen if she did not run away--exactly what had happened in the dream." "That was on the morning after you had first dreamt it, you say. Of course it helped very much to strengthen the impression the dream had made, and it is not at all surprising that the dream should have come again. You know as well as I, that a dream which seems to last hours really passes in a second, perhaps in no time at all. The slightest sound in your room which suggested the closing of a door would be enough to bring it all back before you were awake, and the sound might still be audible to you." "Possibly. Whatever it is, I wish to get rid of it." "It may be merely coincidence," the doctor said. "I think it is. But I do not exclude the theory that two people who have made a very strong impression one on another, may be the subjects of some sort of mutual thought transference. We know very little about those things. Some queer cases come under my observation, but my patients are never sound and sane men like you. What I should like to know is, why did the lady run away?" "That is probably the one thing I can never find out," Lamberti answered. "There is a very simple way. Ask her." The doctor smiled. "Is it so very hard?" he enquired, as Lamberti looked at him in surprise. "I take it for granted that you can find some opportunity of seeing her in a drawing-room, where she cannot fly from you, and will not do anything to attract attention. What could be more natural than that you should ask her quite frankly why she was so frightened the other day? I do not see how she could possibly be offended. Do you? When you ask her, you need not seem too serious, as if you attached a great deal of importance to what she had done." "I certainly could try it," said Lamberti thoughtfully. "I shall see her to-day." "She may try to avoid you, because she is ashamed of what she did. But if I were you, I would not let the chance slip. If you succeed in talking to her for a few minutes, and break the ice, I can almost promise that you will also break the habit of this dream that annoys you. Will you make the attempt? It seems to me by far the wisest and most sensible remedy, for I am nearly sure that it will turn out to be one." "I daresay you are right. Is there any other way of curing such habits of the mind?" "I could hypnotise you and stop your dreaming by suggestion." "Nobody could make me sleep against my will." Lamberti laughed at the mere idea. "No," answered the doctor, "but it would not be against your will, if you submitted to it as a cure. However, try the simpler plan first, and come and see me in a day or two. You seem to hesitate. Perhaps you have some reason for not wishing to make the nearer acquaintance of the lady. That is your affair, but one more interview of a few minutes will not make much difference, as your health is at stake. You are under a mental strain altogether out of proportion with the cause that produces it, and the longer you allow it to last the stronger the reaction will be, when it comes." "I have no good reason for not knowing her better," Lamberti said after a moment's thought, for he was convinced against his previous determination. "I will take your advice, and then I will come and see you again." He took his leave and went out into the bright morning air. It was a relief to feel that he had been brought to a determination at last, and he knew that it was a sensible one, from any ordinary point of view, and that his one great objection to acting upon it had no logical value. But the objection subsisted, though he had made up his mind to override it. It was out of the question that he could really be in love with Cecilia Palladio, who was probably quite unlike what she seemed to be in his dreams. He had fallen in love with a fancy, a shadow, an unreal image that haunted him as soon as he closed his eyes; but when he was wide awake and busy with life the girl was nothing to him but a mere acquaintance. His pulse would not beat as fast when he met her that very afternoon as it had done just now, in the doctor's study, when he had been thinking of the vision. Besides, what Guido had said was quite true. He could not possibly continue not to know Guido's future wife; and as there was no danger of his falling in love with her when his eyes were open, he really could not see why he should be so anxious to avoid her. So the matter was settled. He took a long walk, far out of Porta San Giovanni, and turned to the right by the road that leads through the fields to the tomb of Cecilia Metella. As he passed the great round monument, swinging along steadily, its name naturally came to his mind, and it occurred to him for the first time that Cecilia had been a noble name among the old Romans, that it had come down unchanged, and that there had doubtless been more than one Vestal Virgin who had borne it. The Vestal in his dream was certainly called Cecilia. He was in the humour, now, to smile at what he called his own folly, and as he strode along he almost laughed aloud. Before the sun should set, the whole matter would be definitely at rest, and he would be wondering how he could ever have been foolish enough to attach any importance to it. He followed the Appian Way back to the city, with a light heart. CHAPTER IX The Villa Madama was probably never inhabited, for it was certainly never quite finished, and the grand staircase was not rebuilt after Cardinal Pompeo Colonna set fire to the house. That was in the wild days when Rome was sacked by the Constable of Bourbon's Spaniards and Franzperg's Germans, and Pope Clement the Seventh was shut up in the stronghold of Sant' Angelo; and at nightfall he looked from the windows of the fortress and saw the flames shoot up on the slope of Monte Mario, from the beautiful place which Raphael of Urbino had designed for him, and which Giovanni of Udine had decorated, and he told those who were with him that Cardinal Colonna was revenging himself for his castles sacked and burned by the Pope's orders. That was nearly four hundred years ago, and the great exterior staircase was never rebuilt; but in order to save that part of the little palace from ruin unsightly arches were reared up against the once beautiful wing, and because of Giulio Romano's frescoes and Giovanni of Udine's marvellous stucco work, the roof has been always kept in good repair. Moreover, a good deal has been written about the building, some of which is inaccurate, to say the least; as, for instance, that one may see the dome of Saint Peter's from the windows, whereas the villa stands halfway down the slope of the hill on the side which is away from the church, and looks towards the Sabines and towards Tivoli and Frascati. Those who have taken the trouble to visit the villa in its half-ruinous condition, and who have lingered on the grass-grown terraces and at the noble windows, on spring afternoons, when the sun is behind the hill, can easily guess what it became when it passed into the ownership of the Contessina Cecilia Palladio. Her guardian, the excellent Baron Goldbirn, had bought it for her because it was offered for sale at a low price, and was an excellent investment as well as a treasure of art; and he had purposed to coat the brown stone walls with fresh stucco, to erect a "belvedere" with nice green blinds on the roof, to hang the rooms with rich magenta damask, to carpet them with Brussels carpets, to furnish them with gilt furniture, to warm the house with steam heat, and to light it with electricity. To his surprise, his ward rejected each of these proposals in detail and all of them generally, and declared that since the villa was hers she could deal with it according to her own taste, which, she maintained, was better than Goldbirn's. The latter answered that as he was sixty-five years old and Cecilia was only eighteen, this was impossible; but that under the circumstances he washed his hands of the matter, only warning her that the Italian law would not allow her to cut down the trees more than once in nine years. "As if anything could induce me to cut them down at all!" Cecilia answered indignantly. "There are few enough as it is!" "My dear," the Countess had answered with admirable relevancy, "I hope you are not ungrateful to your guardian." Cecilia was not ungrateful, but she had her own way, for it was preordained that she generally should, and it was well for the Villa Madama that it was so. She only asked her guardian how much he would allow her to spend on the place, and then, to his amazement and satisfaction, she only spent half the sum he named. She easily persuaded a good artist, whom her stepfather had helped at the beginning of his career, to take charge of the work, and it was carried out with loving and reverent taste. The wilderness of sloping land became a garden, the beautiful "court of honour" was so skilfully restored with old stone and brick that the restoration could hardly be detected, the great exterior staircase was rebuilt, the close garden on the other side was made a carpet of flowers; the water that gushed abundantly from a deep spring in the hillside poured into an old fountain bought from the remains of a villa in the Campagna, and then, below, filled the vast square basin that already existed, and thence it was distributed through the lower grounds. There were roses everywhere, already beginning to climb, and the scent of a few young orange trees in blossom mingled delicately with the odour of the flowers. Within the house the floor of the great hall was paved with plain white tiles, and up to the cornice and between the marvellous pilasters the bare walls were hung with coarse linen woven in simple and tasteful patterns and in subdued colours. The little gods and goddesses and the emblematic figures of the seasons in the glorious vaults overhead, smiled down upon such a scene as had not rejoiced the great hall for centuries. The Countess had asked all Rome to come, with an admirable indifference to political parties and social discords; and all Rome came, as it sometimes does, in the best of tempers with itself and with its hostess. Roman society is good to look at, when it is gathered together in such ways; for mere looks, there is perhaps nothing better in all Europe, except in England. The French are more brilliant, no doubt, for their women, and, alas, their men also, affect a greater variety of dress and ornament than any other people. German society is magnificent with military uniforms, Austrians generally have very perfect taste; and so on, to each its own advantage. But the Romans have something of their own, a beauty most distinctly theirs, a sort of distinction that is genuine and unaffected, but which nevertheless seems to belong to more splendid times than ours. When the women are beautiful, and they often are, they are like the pictures in their own galleries; among the men there are heads and faces that remind one of Lionardo da Vinci, of Cæsar Borgia, of Lorenzo de' Medici, of Guidarello Guidarelli, even of Michelangelo. Romans, at their best, have about them a grave suavity, or a suave gravity, that is a charm in itself, with a perfect self-possession which is the very opposite of arrogance; when they laugh, their mirth is real, though a little subdued; when they are grave, they do not look dull; when they are in deep earnest, they are not theatrical. Those who went to the Fortiguerra garden party never quite forgot the impression they received. It was one of those events that are remembered as memorable social successes, and spoken of after many years. It was unlike anything that had ever been done in Rome before, unlike the solemn receptions of the chief of the clericals, when the cardinals come in state and are escorted by torch-bearers from their carriages to the entrance of the great drawing-room, and back again when they go away; unlike the supremely magnificent balls in honour of the foreign sovereigns who occasionally spend a week in Rome, and are amusingly ready to accept the hospitality of Roman princes; most of all, it was unlike an ordinary garden party, because the Villa Madama is quite unlike ordinary villas. Moreover, every one was pleased that such very rich people should not attempt to surprise society by vulgar display. There were no state liveries, there were no ostentatious armorial bearings, there was no overpowering show of silver and gold, there was no Hungarian band brought expressly from Vienna, nor any fashionable pianist paid to play about five thousand notes at about a franc apiece, to the great annoyance of all the people who preferred conversation to music. Everything was simple, everything was good, everything was beautiful, from the entrancing view of Rome beyond the yellow river, and of the undulating Campagna beyond, with the soft hills in the far distance, to the lovely flowers in the garden; from the flowers without, to the stately halls within; from their charming frescoes and exquisite white traceries, to the lovely girl who was the centre, and the reason, and the soul of it all. Her mother received the guests out of doors, in the close garden, and thirty or forty people were already there when Guido d'Este and Lamberti arrived; for every one came early, fearing lest the air might be chilly towards sunset. The Countess introduced the men and the young girls to her daughter, and presented her to the married women. Presently, when the garden became too full, the people would go back through the house and wander away about the grounds, lighting up the shadowed hillside with colour, and filling the air with the sound of their voices. They would stray far out, as far as the little grove on the knoll, planted in old times for the old-fashioned sport of netting birds. Guido had told Cecilia on the previous evening that his friend had returned from the country and was coming to the villa, and he had again seen the very slight contraction of her brows at the mere mention of Lamberti's name. He wondered whether there were not some connection between what he took for her dislike of Lamberti, and the latter's strong disinclination to meet her. Perhaps Lamberti had guessed at a glance that she would not like him. He would of course keep such an opinion to himself. Guido watched Cecilia narrowly from the moment she caught sight of him with Lamberti--so attentively indeed that he did not even glance at the latter's face. It was set like a mask, and under the tanned colour any one could see that the man turned pale. "You know Cecilia already," said the Countess Fortiguerra, pleasantly. "I hope the rest of your family are coming?" "I think they are all coming," Lamberti answered very mechanically. He had resolutely looked at the Countess until now, but he felt the daughter's eyes upon him, and he was obliged to meet them, if only for a single instant. The last time he had met their gaze she had cried aloud and had fled from him in terror. He would have given much to turn from her now, without a glance, and mingle with the other guests. He was perfectly cool and self-possessed, as he afterwards remembered, but he felt that it was the sort of coolness which always came upon him in moments of supreme danger. It was familiar to him, for he had been in many hand-to-hand engagements in wild countries, and he knew that it would not forsake him; but he missed the thrill of rare delight that made him love fighting as he loved no sport he had ever tried. This was more like walking bravely to certain death. Cecilia was all in white, but her face was whiter than the silk she wore, and as motionless as marble; and her fixed eyes shone with an almost dazzling light. Guido saw and wondered. Then he heard Lamberti's voice, steady, precise, and metallic as the notes of a bell striking the hour. "I hope to see something of you by-and-by, Signorina." Cecilia's lips moved, but no sound came from them. Then Guido was sure that they smiled perceptibly, and she bent her head in assent, but so slightly that her eyes were still fixed on Lamberti's. Other guests came up at that moment, and the two friends made way for them. "Come back through the house," said Guido, in a low voice. Lamberti followed him into the great hall, and to the left through the next, where there was no one, and out to a small balcony beyond. Then both stood still and faced each other, and the silence lasted a few seconds. Guido spoke first. "What has there been between you two?" he asked, with something like sternness in his tone. "This is the second time in my life that I have spoken to the Contessina," Lamberti answered. "The first time I ever saw her was at your aunt's house." Guido had never doubted the word of Lamberto Lamberti, but he could not doubt the evidence of his own senses either, and he had watched Cecilia's face. It seemed utterly impossible that she should look as she had looked just now, unless there were some very grave matter between her and Lamberti. All sorts of horrible suspicions clouded Guido's brain, all sorts of reasons why Lamberti should lie to him, this once, this only time. Yet he spoke quietly enough. "It is very strange that two people should behave as you and she do, when you meet, if you have only met twice. It is past my comprehension." "It is very strange," Lamberti repeated. "So strange," said Guido, "that it is very hard to believe. You are asking a great deal of me." "I have asked nothing, my friend. You put a question to me,--a reasonable question, I admit,--and I have answered you with the truth. I have never touched that young lady's hand, I have only spoken with her twice in my life, and not alone on either occasion. I did not wish to come here to-day, but you practically forced me to." "You did not wish to come, because you knew what would happen," Guido answered coldly. "How could I know?" "That is the question. But you did know, and until you are willing to explain to me how you knew it----" He stopped short and looked hard at Lamberti, as if the latter must understand the rest. His usually gentle and thoughtful face was as hard and stern as stone. Until lately his friendship for Lamberti had been by far the strongest and most lasting affection of his life. The thought that it was to be suddenly broken and ended by an atrocious deception was hard to bear. "You mean that if I cannot explain, as you call it, you and I are to be like strangers. Is that what you mean, Guido? Speak out, man! Let us be plain." Guido was silent for a while, leaning over the balcony and looking down, while Lamberti stood upright and waited for his answer. "How can I act otherwise?" asked Guido, at last, without looking up. "You would do the same in my place. So would any man of honour." "I should try to believe you, whatever you said." "And if you could not?" Guido enquired almost fiercely. It was very nearly an insult, but Lamberti answered quietly and firmly. "Before refusing to believe me, merely on apparent evidence, you can ask the Contessina herself." "As if a woman could tell the truth when a man will not!" Guido laughed harshly. "You forget that you love her, and that she probably loves you. That should make a difference." "What do you wish me to do? Ask her the question you will not answer?" "The question I have answered," said Lamberti, correcting him. "Yes. Ask her." "Your mother was an old friend of her mother's," Guido said, with a new thought. "Yes." "Why is it impossible that you two should have met before now?" "Because I tell you that we have not. If we had, I should not have any reason for hiding the fact. It would be much easier to explain, if we had. But I am not going to argue about the matter, for it is quite useless. Before you quarrel with me, go and ask the Contessina to explain, if she will, or can. If she cannot, or if she can and will not, I shall try to make you understand as much as I do, though that is very little." Guido listened without attempting to interrupt. He was not a rash or violent man, and he valued Lamberti's friendship far too highly to forfeit it without the most convincing reasons. Unfortunately, what he had seen would have convinced an even less suspicious man that there was a secret which his friend shared with Cecilia, and which both had an object in concealing from him. Lamberti ceased speaking and a long silence followed, for he had nothing more to say. At last Guido straightened himself with an evident effort, as if he had forced himself to decide the matter, but he did not look at Lamberti. "Very well," he said. "I will speak to her." Lamberti bent his head, silently acknowledging Guido's sensible conclusion. Then Guido turned and went away alone. It was long before Lamberti left the balcony, for he was glad of the solitude and the chance of quietly thinking over his extraordinary situation. Meanwhile Guido found it no easy matter to approach Cecilia at all, and it looked as if it would be quite impossible to speak with her alone. He went back through the great hall where people were beginning to gather about the tea-table, and he stood in the vast door that opens upon the close garden. Cecilia was still standing beside her mother, but they were surrounded by a group of people who all seemed to be trying to talk to them at once. The garden was crowded, and it would be impossible for Guido to get near them without talking his way, so to say, through countless acquaintances. By this time, however, most of the guests had arrived, and those who were in the inner garden would soon begin to go out to the grounds. Cecilia was no longer pale; on the contrary, she had more colour than usual, and delicate though the slight flush in her cheeks was, it looked a little feverish to Guido. As he began to make his way forward he tried to catch her eye, but he thought she purposely avoided an exchange of glances. At last he was beside her, and to his surprise she looked at him quite naturally, and answered him without embarrassment. "You must be tired," he said. "Will you not sit down for a little while?" "I should like to," she answered, smiling. Then she looked at her mother, and seemed to hesitate. "May I go and sit down?" she asked, in a low voice. "I am so tired!" "Of course, child!" answered the Countess, cheerfully. "Signor d'Este will take you to the seat over there by the fountain. I hardly think that any one else will come now." Guido and Cecilia moved away, and the Countess smiled affectionately at their backs. Some one said that they were a very well-matched pair, and another asked if it were true that Signor d'Este would inherit the Princess Anatolie's fortune at her death. A third observed that she would never die; and a fourth, who was going to dine with her that evening, said that she was a very charming woman; whereupon everybody laughed a little, and the Countess changed the subject. Cecilia was really tired, and gave a little sigh of satisfaction as she sat down and leaned back. Guido looked at her and hesitated. "I must have shaken hands with at least two hundred people," she said, "and I am sure I have spoken to as many more!" "Do you like it?" Guido asked, by way of gaining time. "What an idle question!" laughed Cecilia. "I had another to ask you," he answered gravely. "Not an idle one." She looked at him quickly, wondering whether he was going to ask her to be his wife, and wondering, too, what she should answer if he did. For some days past she had understood that what they called their compact of friendship was becoming a mere comedy on his side, if not on hers, and that he loved her with all his heart, though he had not told her so. "It is rather an odd question," he continued, as she said nothing. "You have not formally given me any right to ask it, and yet I feel that I have the right, all the same." "Friendship gives rights, and takes them," Cecilia answered thoughtfully. "Exactly. That is what I feel about it. That is why I think I may ask you something that may seem strange. At all events, I cannot go on living in doubt about the answer." "Is it as important as that?" asked the young girl. "Yes." "What is it?" "Wait a moment. Let these people pass. How in the world did you succeed in getting so many roses to grow in such a short time?" "You must ask the gardener," Cecilia answered, in order to say something while a young couple passed before the bench, evidently very much absorbed in each other's conversation. Guido bent forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and not looking at her, but turning his face a little, so that he could speak in a very low tone with an outward appearance of carelessness. It was very hard to put the question, after all, now that he was so near her, and felt her thrilling presence. "Our agreement is a failure," he began. "At all events, it is one on my side. I really did not think it would turn out as it has." She said nothing, and he knew that she did not move, and was looking at the people in the distance. He knew, also, that she understood him and had expected something of the sort. That made it a little easier to go on. "That is the reason why I am going to ask you this question. What has there ever been between you and Lamberti? Why do you turn deathly pale when you meet him, and why does he try to avoid you?" He heard her move now, and he slowly turned his face till he could see hers. The colour in her cheeks had deepened a little, and there was an angry light in her eyes which he had never seen there. But she said not a word in answer. "Do you love him?" Guido asked in a very low tone, and his voice trembled slightly. "No!" The word came with sharp energy. "How long have you known him?" Guido enquired. "Since I have known you. I met him first on the same day. I have not spoken with him since. I tried to-day, I could not." "Why not?" "Do not ask me. I cannot tell you." "Are you speaking the truth?" Guido asked, suddenly meeting her eyes. She drew back with a quick movement, deeply offended and angry at the brutal question. "How dare you doubt what I tell you!" She seemed about to rise. "I beg your pardon," he said humbly. "I really beg your pardon. It is all so strange. I hardly knew what I was saying. Please forgive me!" "I will try," Cecilia answered. "But I think I would rather go back now. We cannot talk here." She rose to her feet, but Guido tried to detain her, remaining seated and looking up. "Please, please stay a little longer!" he pleaded. "No." "You are still angry with me?" "No. But I cannot talk to you yet. If you do not come with me, I shall go back alone." There was nothing to be done. He rose and walked by her side in silence. The garden was almost empty now, and the Countess herself had gone in to get a cup of tea. "The roses are really marvellous," Guido remarked in a set tone, as they came to the door. Suddenly they were face to face with Lamberti, who was coming out, hat in hand. He had waited for his opportunity, watching them from a distance, and Guido knew it instinctively. He was quite cool and collected, and smiled pleasantly as he spoke to Cecilia. "May I not have the pleasure of talking with you a little, Signorina?" he asked. Guido could not help looking anxiously at the young girl. "Certainly," she answered, without hesitation. "You will find my mother near the tea table, Signor d'Este," she added, to Guido. "It is really time that I should make your friend's acquaintance!" He was as much amazed at her self-possession now as he had been at her evident disturbance before. He drew back as Cecilia turned away from him after speaking, and he stood looking after the pair a few seconds before he went in. At that moment he would have gladly strangled the man who had so long been his best friend. He had never guessed that he could wish to kill any one. Lamberti did not make vague remarks about the roses as Guido had done, on the mere chance that some one might hear him, and indeed there was now hardly anybody to hear. As for Cecilia, her anger against Guido had sustained her at first, but she could not have talked unconcernedly now, as she walked beside Lamberti, waiting for him to speak. She felt just then that she would have walked on and on, whithersoever he chose to lead her, and until it pleased him to stop. "D'Este asked me this afternoon how long I had known you," he said, at last. "I said that I had spoken with you twice, once at the Princess's, and once to-day. Was that right?" "Yes. Did he believe you?" "No." "He did not believe me either." "And of course he asked you what there was between us," said Lamberti. "Yes. I said that I could not tell him. What did you say?" "The same thing." There was a pause, and both realised that they were talking as if they had known each other for years, and that they understood each other almost without words. At the end of the walk they turned towards one another, and their eyes met. "Why did you run away from me?" Lamberti asked. "I was frightened. I was frightened to-day when you spoke to me. Why did you go to the Forum that morning?" "I had dreamt something strange about you. It happened just where I found you." "I dreamt the same dream, the same night. That is, I think it must have been the same." She turned her face away, blushing red. He saw, and understood. "Yes," he said. "What am I to tell d'Este?" he asked, after a short pause. "Nothing!" said Cecilia quickly, and the subsiding blush rose again. "Besides," she continued, speaking rapidly in her embarrassment, "he would not believe us, whatever we told him, and it is of no use to let him know----" she stopped suddenly. "Has he no right to know?" "No. At least--no--I think not. I do not mean----" They were standing still, facing each other. In another moment she would be telling Lamberti what she had never told Guido about her feelings towards him. On a sudden she turned away with a sort of desperate movement, clasping her hands and looking over the low wall. "Oh, what is it all?" she cried, in great distress. "I am in the dream again, talking as if I had known you all my life! What must you think of me?" Lamberti stood beside her, resting his hands upon the wall. "It is exactly what I feel," he said quietly. "Then you dream, too?" she asked. "Every night--of you." "We are both dreaming now! I am sure of it. I shall wake up in the dark and hear the door shut softly, though I always lock it now." "The door? Do you hear that, too?" asked Lamberti. "But I am wide awake when I hear it." "So am I! Sometimes I can manage to turn up the electric light before the sound has quite stopped. Are we both mad? What is it? In the name of Heaven, what is it all?" "I wish I knew. Whatever it is, if you and I meet often, it is quite impossible that we should talk like ordinary acquaintances. Yes, I thought I was going mad, and this morning I went to a great doctor and told him everything. He seemed to think it was all a set of coincidences. He advised me to see you and ask you why you ran away that day, and he thought that if we talked about it, I might perhaps not dream again." "You are not mad, you are not mad!" Cecilia repeated the words in a low voice, almost mechanically. Then there was silence, and presently she turned from the wall and began to walk back along the wide path that passed by the central fountain. The sun, long out of sight behind the hill, was sinking now, the thin violet mist had begun to rise from the Campagna far to south and east, and the mountains had taken the first tinge of evening purple. From the ilex woods above the house, the voice of a nightingale rang out in a long and delicious trill. The garden was deserted, and now and then the sound of women's laughter rippled out through the high, open door. "We must meet soon," Lamberti said, as they reached the fountain. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should say it. She stopped and looked at him, and recognised every feature of the face she had seen in her dreams almost ever since she could remember dreaming. Her fear was all gone now, and she was sure that it would never come back. Had she not heard him say those very words, "We must meet soon," hundreds and hundreds of times, just as he had said them long ago--ever so long ago--in a language that she could not remember when she was awake? And had they not always met soon? "I shall see you to-night," she answered, almost unconsciously. "Tell me," he said, looking into the clear water in the fountain, "does your dreaming make you restless and nervous? Does it wear on you?" "Oh no! I have always dreamt a great deal all my life. I rest just as well." "Yes--but those were ordinary dreams. I mean----" "No, they were always the same. They were always about you. I almost screamed when I recognised you at the Princess's that afternoon." "I had never dreamt of your face," said Lamberti, "but I was sure I had seen you before." They looked down into the moving water, and the music of its fall made it harmonious with the distant song of the nightingale. Lamberti tried to think connectedly, and could not. It was as if he were under a spell. Questions rose to his lips, but he could not speak the words, he could not put them together in the right way. Once, at sea, on the training ship, he had fallen from the foreyard, and though the fall was broken by the gear and he had not been injured, he had been badly stunned, and for more than an hour he had lost all sense of direction, of what was forward and what was aft, so that at one moment the vessel seemed to be sailing backwards, and then forwards, and then sideways. He felt something like that now, and he knew intuitively that Cecilia felt it also. Amazingly absurd thoughts passed through his mind. Was to-morrow going to be yesterday? Would what was coming be just what was long past? Or was there no past, no future, nothing but all time present at once? He was not moved by Cecilia's presence in the same way that Guido was. Guido was merely in love with her; very much in love, no doubt, but that was all. She was to him, first, the being of all others with whom he was most in sympathy, the only being whom he understood, and who, he was sure, understood him, the only being without whom life would be unendurable. And, secondly, she was the one and only creature in the world created to be his natural mate, and when he was near her he was aware of nature's mysterious forces, and felt the thrill of them continually. Lamberti experienced nothing of that sort at present. He was overwhelmed and carried away out of the region of normal thought and volition towards something which he somehow knew was at hand, which he was sure he had reached before, but which he could not distinctly remember. Between it and him in the past there was a wall of darkness; between him and it in the future there was a veil not yet lifted, but on which his dreams already cast strange and beautiful shadows. "I used to see things in the water," Cecilia said softly, "things that were going to happen. That was long, long ago." "I remember," said Lamberti, quite naturally. "You told me once----" He stopped. It was gone back behind the wall of darkness. When he had begun to speak, quite unconsciously, he had known what it was that Cecilia had told him, but he had forgotten it all now. He passed his hand over his forehead, and suddenly everything changed, and he came back out of an immeasurable distance to real life. "I shall be going away in a few days," he said. "May I see you before I go?" "Certainly. Come and see us about three o'clock. We are always at home then." "Thank you." They turned from the fountain while they spoke, and walked slowly towards the house. "Does your mother know about your dreaming?" Lamberti asked. "No. No one knows. And you?" "I have told that doctor. No one else. I wonder whether it will go on when I am far away." "I wonder, too. Where are you going?" "I do not know yet. Perhaps to China again. I shall get my orders in a few days." They reached the threshold of the door. Lamberti had been looking for Guido's face amongst the people he could see as he came up, but Guido was gone. "Good-bye," said Cecilia, softly. "Good night," Lamberti answered, almost in a whisper. "God bless you." He afterwards thought it strange that he should have said that, but at the time it seemed quite natural, and Cecilia was not at all surprised. She smiled and bent her graceful head. Then she joined her mother, and Lamberti disappeared. "My dear," said the Countess, "you remember Monsieur Leroy? You met him at Princess Anatolie's," she added, in a stage whisper. Monsieur Leroy bowed, and Cecilia nodded. She had forgotten his existence, and now remembered that she had not liked him, and that she had said something sharp to him. He spoke first. "The Princess wished me to tell you how very sorry she is that she cannot be here this afternoon. She has one of her attacks." "I am very sorry," Cecilia answered. "Pray tell her how sorry I am." "Thank you. But I daresay Guido brought you the same message." "Who is Guido?" asked Cecilia, raising her eyebrows a little. "Guido d'Este. I thought you knew. You are surprised that I should call him by his Christian name? You see, I have known him ever since he was quite a boy. To all intents and purposes, he was brought up by the Princess." "And you are often at the house, I suppose." "I live there," explained Monsieur Leroy. "To change the subject, my dear young lady, I have an apology to make, which I hope you will accept." Cecilia did not like to be called any one's "dear young lady," and her manner froze instantly. "I cannot imagine why you should apologise to me," she said coldly. "I was rude to you the other day, about your courses of philosophy, or something of that sort. Was not that it?" "Indeed, I had quite forgotten," Cecilia answered, with truth. "It did not matter in the least what you thought of my reading Nietzsche, I assure you." Monsieur Leroy reddened and laughed awkwardly, for he was particularly anxious to win her good grace. "I am not very clever, you know," he said humbly. "You must forgive me." "Oh certainly," replied Cecilia. "Your explanation is more than adequate. In my mind, the matter had already explained itself. Will you have some tea?" "No, thank you. My nerves are rather troublesome. If I take tea in the afternoon I cannot sleep at night. I met Guido going away as I came. He was enthusiastic!" "In what way?" "About the villa, and the house, and the flowers, and about you." He lowered his voice to a confidential tone as he spoke the last words. "About me?" Cecilia was somewhat surprised. "Oh yes! He was overcome by your perfection--like every one else. How could it be otherwise? It is true that Guido has always been very impressionable." "I should not have thought it," Cecilia said, wishing that the man would go away. But he would not, and, to make matters worse, nobody would come and oblige him to move. It was plain to the meanest mind that since Cecilia was to marry Princess Anatolie's nephew, the extraordinary person whom the Princess called her secretary must not be disturbed when he was talking to Cecilia, since he might be the bearer of some important message. Besides, a good many people were afraid of him, in a vague way, as a rather spiteful gossip who had more influence than he should have had. "Yes," he continued, in an apologetic tone, "Guido is always falling in love, poor boy. Of course, it is not to be wondered at. A king's son, and handsome as he is, and so very clever, too--all the pretty ladies fall in love with him at once, and he naturally falls in love with them. You see how simple it is. He has more opportunities than are good for him!" The disagreeable little man giggled, and his loose pink and white cheeks shook unpleasantly. Cecilia thought him horribly vulgar and familiar, and she inwardly wondered how the Princess Anatolie could even tolerate him, not to speak of treating him affectionately and calling him "Doudou." "I supposed that you counted yourself among Signor d'Este's friends," said the young girl, frigidly. "I do, I do! Have I said anything unfriendly? I merely said that all the women fell in love with him." "You said a good deal more than that." "At all events, I wish I were he," said Monsieur Leroy. "And if that is not paying him a compliment I do not know what you would call it. He is handsome, clever, generous, everything!" "And faithless, according to you." "No, no! Not faithless; only fickle, very fickle." "It is the same thing," said the young girl, scornfully. She did not believe Monsieur Leroy in the least, but she wondered what his object could be in speaking against Guido, and whether he were really silly, as he often seemed, or malicious, as she suspected, or possibly both at the same time, since the combination is not uncommon. What he was telling her, if she believed it, was certainly not of a nature to hasten her marriage with Guido; and yet it was the Princess who had first suggested the match, and it could hardly be supposed that Monsieur Leroy would attempt to oppose his protectress. Just then there was a general move to go away, and the conversation was interrupted, much to Cecilia's satisfaction. There was a great stir in the wide hall, for though many people had slipped away without disturbing the Countess by taking leave, there were many of her nearer friends who wished to say a word to her before going, just to tell her that they had enjoyed themselves vastly, that Cecilia was a model of beauty and good behaviour, and of everything charming, and that the villa was the most delightful place they had ever seen. By these means they conveyed the impression that they would all accept any future invitation which the Countess might send them, and they audibly congratulated one another upon her having at last established herself in Rome, adding that Cecilia was a great acquisition to society. More than that it was manifestly impossible to say in a few well-chosen words. Even in a language as rich as Italian, the number of approving adjectives is limited, and each can only have one superlative. The Countess Fortiguerra's guests distributed these useful words amongst them and exhausted the supply. "It has been a great success, my dear," said the Countess, when she and her daughter were left alone in the hall. "Did you see the Duchess of Pallacorda's hat?" "No, mother. At least, I did not notice it." Cecilia was nibbling a cake, thoughtfully. "My dear!" cried the Countess. "It was the most wonderful thing you ever saw. She was in terror lest it should come too late. Monsieur Leroy knew all about it." "I cannot bear that man," Cecilia said, still nibbling, for she was hungry. "I cannot say that I like him, either. But the Duchess's new hat----" Cecilia heard her voice, but was too much occupied with her own thoughts to listen attentively, while the good Countess criticised the hat in question, admired its beauties, corrected its defects, put it a little further back on the Duchess's pretty head, and, indeed, did everything with it which every woman can do, in imagination, with every imaginary hat. Finally, she asked Cecilia if she should not like to have one exactly like it. "No, thank you. Not now, at all events. Mother dear," and she looked affectionately at the Countess, "what a deal of trouble you have taken to make it all beautiful for me to-day. I am so grateful!" She kissed her mother on both cheeks just as she had always done when she was pleased, ever since she had been a child, and suddenly the elder woman's eyes glistened. "It is a pleasure to do anything for you, darling," she said. "I have only you in the world," she added quietly, after a little pause, "but I sometimes think I have more than all the other women." Then Cecilia laid her head on her mother's shoulder for a moment, and gently patted her cheek, and they both felt very happy. They drove home in the warm dusk, and when they reached the high road down by the Tiber they looked up and saw moving lights through the great open windows of the villa, and on the terrace, and in the gardens, like fireflies. For the servants were bringing in the chairs and putting things in order. The nightingale was singing again, far up in the woods, but Cecilia could hear the song distinctly as the carriage swept along. Now the Countess was kind and true, and loved her daughter devotedly, but she would not have been a woman if she had not wished to know what Guido had said to Cecilia that afternoon; and before they had entered Porta Angelica she asked what she considered a leading question, in her own peculiar contradictory way. "Of course, I am not going to ask you anything, my dear," she began, "but did Signor d'Este say anything especial to you when you went off together?" Cecilia remembered how they had driven home from the Princess's a fortnight earlier, almost at the same hour, and how her mother had then first spoken of Guido d'Este. The young girl asked herself in the moment she took before answering, whether she were any nearer to the thought of marrying him than she had been after that first short meeting. "He loves me, mother," she answered softly. "He has made me understand that he does, without quite saying so. I like him very much. That is our position now. I would rather not talk about it much, but you have a right to know." "Yes, dear. But what I mean is--I mean, what I meant was--he has not asked you to marry him, has he?" "No. I am not sure that he will, now." "Yes, he will. He asked me yesterday evening if he might, and of course I gave him my permission." It was a relief to have told Cecilia this, for concealment was intolerable to the Countess. "I see," Cecilia answered. "Yes, of course you do. But when he does ask you, what shall you say, dear? He is sure to ask you to-morrow, and I really want to know what I am to expect. Surely, by this time you must have made up your mind." "I have only known him a fortnight, mother. That is not a long time when one is to decide about one's whole life, is it?" "No. Well--it seems to me that a fortnight--you see, it is so important!" "Precisely," Cecilia answered. "It is very important. That is why I do not mean to do anything in a hurry. Either you must tell Signor d'Este to wait a little while before he asks me, or else, when he does, I must beg him to wait some time for his answer." "But it seems to me, if you like him so much, that is quite enough." "Why are you in such a hurry, mother?" asked Cecilia, with a smile. "Because I am sure you will be perfectly happy if you marry him," answered the Countess, with much conviction. CHAPTER X Guido d'Este walked home from the Villa Madama in a very bad temper with everything. He was not of a dramatic disposition, nor easily inclined to sudden resolutions, and when placed in new and unexpected circumstances his instinct was rather to let them develop as they would than to direct them or oppose them actively. For the first time in his life he now felt that he must do one or the other. To treat Lamberti as if nothing had happened was impossible, and it was equally out of the question to behave towards Cecilia as though she had not done or said anything to check the growth of intimacy and friendship on her side and of genuine love on his. He took the facts as he knew them and tried to state them justly, but he could make nothing of them that did not plainly accuse both Cecilia and Lamberti of deceiving him. Again and again, he recalled the words and behaviour of both, and he could reach no other conclusion. They had a joint secret which they had agreed to keep from him, and rather than reveal it his best friend was ready to break with him, and the woman he loved preferred never to see him again. He reflected that he was not the first man who had been checked by a girl and forsaken by a friend, but that did not make it any easier to bear. It was quite clear that he could not submit to be so treated by them. Lamberti had asked him to speak to Cecilia before quarrelling definitely. He had done so, and he was more fully convinced than before that both were deceiving him. There was no way out of that conviction, there was not the smallest argument on the other side, and nothing that either could ever say could shake his belief. It was plainly his duty to tell them so, and it would be wisest to write to them, for he felt that he might lose his temper if he tried to say what he meant, instead of writing it. He wrote to Lamberti first, because it was easier, though it was quite the hardest thing he had ever done. He began by proving to himself, and therefore to his friend, that he was writing after mature reflection and without the least hastiness, or temper, or unwillingness to be convinced, if Lamberti had anything to say in self-defence. He expressed no suspicion as to the probable nature of the secret that was withheld from him; he even wrote that he no longer wished to know what it was. His argument was that by refusing to reveal it, Lamberti had convicted himself of some unknown deed which he was ashamed to acknowledge, and Guido did not hesitate to add that such unjustifiable reticence might easily be construed in such a way as to cast a slur upon the character of an innocent young girl. Having got so far, Guido immediately tore the whole letter to shreds and rose from his writing table, convinced that it was impossible to write what he meant without saying things which he did not mean. After all, he could simply avoid his old friend in future. The idea of quarrelling with him aggressively had never entered his mind, and it was therefore of no use to write anything at all. Lamberti must have guessed already that all friendship was at an end, and it would consequently be quite useless to tell him so. He must write to Cecilia, however. He could not allow her to think, because he had apologised for rudely doubting her word, that he therefore believed what she had told him. He would write. Here he was confronted by much greater difficulties than he had found in composing his unsuccessful letter to Lamberti. In the first place, he was in love with her, and it seemed to him that he should love her just as much, whatever she did. He wondered what it was that he felt, for at first he hardly thought it was jealousy, and it was assuredly not a mere passing fit of ill-tempered resentment. It must be jealousy, after all. He fancied that she had known Lamberti before, and that she had been girlishly in love with him, and that when she had met him again she had been startled and annoyed. It was not so hard to imagine that this might be possible, though he could not see why they should both make such a secret of having known each other. But perhaps, by some accident, they had become intimate without the knowledge of the Countess, so that Cecilia was now very much afraid lest her mother should find it out. Guido's reflections stopped there. At any other time he would have laughed at their absurdity, and now he resented it. The plain fact stared him in the face, the fact he had known all along and had forgotten--Lamberti could not possibly have met Cecilia since she had been a mere child, because Guido could account for all his friend's movements during the last five years. Five years ago, Cecilia had been thirteen. He was glad that he had torn up his letter to Lamberti, and that he had not even begun the one to Cecilia, after sitting half an hour with his pen in his hand. Yes, he went over those five years, and then took from a drawer the last five of the little pocket diaries he always carried. There was a small space for each day of the year, and he never failed to note at least the name of the place in which he was, while travelling. He also recorded Lamberti's coming and going, the names of the ships to which he was ordered, and the dates of any notable facts in his life. It is tolerably easy to record the exact movements of a sailor in active service who is only at home on very short leave once in a year or two. Guido turned over the pages carefully and set down on a slip of paper what he found. In five years Lamberti's leave had not amounted to eight months in all, and Guido could account for every day of it, for they had spent all of it either in Rome or in travelling together. He laid the little diaries in the drawer again, and leaned back in his chair with a deep sigh of satisfaction. He was too generous not to wish to find his friend at once and acknowledge frankly that he had been wrong. He telephoned to ask whether Lamberti had come back from the Villa Madama. Yes, he had come back, but he had gone out again. No one knew where he was. He had said that he should not dine at home. That was all. If he returned before half-past ten o'clock d'Este should be informed. Guido dined alone and waited, but no message came during the evening. At half-past ten he wrote a few words on a correspondence card, told his man to send the note to Lamberti early in the morning, and went to bed, convinced that everything would explain itself satisfactorily before long. As soon as he was positively sure that Lamberti and Cecilia could not possibly have known each other more than a fortnight, his natural indolence returned. Of course it was very extraordinary that Cecilia should have felt such a strong dislike for Lamberti at first sight, for it could be nothing else, since she seemed displeased whenever his name was mentioned; and it was equally strange that Lamberti should feel the same antipathy for her. But since it was so, she would naturally draw back from telling Guido that his best friend was repulsive to her, and Lamberti would not like to acknowledge that the young girl Guido wished to marry produced a disagreeable impression on him. It was quite natural, too, that after what Guido had said to each of them, each should have been anxious to show him that he was mistaken, and that they should have taken the first opportunity of talking together just when he should most notice it. Everything was accounted for by this ingenious theory. Guido knew a man who turned pale when a cat came near him, though he was a manly man, good at sports and undeniably courageous. Those things could not be explained, but it was much easier to understand that a sensitive young girl might be violently affected by an instinctive antipathy for a man, than that a strong man's teeth should chatter if a cat got under his chair at dinner. That was undoubtedly what happened. How could either of them tell him so, since he was so fond of both? Lamberti had said that as a last resource, he would try to explain what the trouble was. Guido would spare him that. He knew what he had felt almost daily in the presence of Monsieur Leroy, ever since he had been a boy. Lamberti and Cecilia probably acted on each other in the same way. It was a misfortune, of course, that his best friend and his future wife should hate the sight and presence of one another, but it was not their fault, and they would probably get over it. It was wonderful to see how everything that had happened exactly fitted into Guido's simple explanation, the passing shadow on Cecilia's face, the evident embarrassment of both when Guido asked each the same question, the agreement of their answers, the readiness both had shown to try and overcome their mutual dislike--it was simply wonderful! By the time Guido laid his head on his pillow, he was serenely calm and certain of the future. With the words of sincere regret he had written to Lamberti, and with the decision to say much the same thing to Cecilia on the following day, his conscience was at rest; and he went to sleep in the pleasant assurance that after having done something very hasty he had just avoided doing something quite irreparable. Lamberti had spent a less pleasant evening, and was not prepared for the agreeable surprise that awaited him on the following morning in Guido's note. He was neither indolent nor at all given to self-examination, and he had generally found it a good plan to act upon impulse, and do what he wished to do before it occurred to any one else to do the same thing; and when he could not see what he ought to do, and was nevertheless sure that he ought to act at once, he lost his temper with himself and sometimes with other people. He was afraid to go to bed that night, and he went to the club and watched some of his friends playing cards until he could not keep his eyes open; for gambling bored him to extinction. Then he walked the whole length of the Corso and back, in the hope that the exercise might prevent him from dreaming. But it only roused him again; and when he was in his own room he stood nearly two hours at the open window, smoking one cigar after another. At last he lay down without putting out the light and read a French novel till it dropped from his hand, and he fell asleep at four o'clock in the morning. He was not visited by the dream that had disturbed his rest nightly for a full fortnight. Possibly the doctor had been right after all, and the habit was broken. At all events, what he remembered having felt when he awoke was something quite new and not altogether unpleasant after the first beginning, yet so strangely undefined that he would have found it hard to describe it in any words. He had no consciousness of any sort of shape or body belonging to him, nor of motion, nor of sight, after the darkness had closed in upon him. That moment, indeed, was terrible. It reminded him of the approach of a cyclone in the West Indies, which he remembered well--the dreadful stillness in the air; the long, sullen, greenish brown swell of the oily sea; the appalling bank of solid darkness that moved upon the ship over the noiseless waves; the shreds of black cloud torn forwards by an unseen and unheard force, and the vast flashes of lightning that shot upwards like columns of flame. He remembered the awful waiting. Not a storm, then, but an instant change from something to nothing, with consciousness preserved; complete, far-reaching consciousness, that was more perfect than sight, yet was not sight, but a being everywhere at once, a universal understanding, a part of something all pervading, a unification with all things past, present, and to come, with no desire for them, nor vision of them, but perfect knowledge of them all. At the same time, there was the presence of another immeasurable identity in the same space, so that his own being and that other were coexistent and alike, each in the other, everywhere at once, and inseparable from the other, and also, in some unaccountable way, each dear to the other beyond and above all description. And there was perfect peace and a state very far beyond any possible waking happiness, without any conception of time or of motion, but only of infinite space with infinite understanding. Another phase began. There was time again, there were minutes, hours, months, years, ages; and there was a longing for something that could change, a stirring of human memories in the boundless immaterial consciousness, a desire for sight and hearing, a gradual, growing wish to see a face remembered before the wall of darkness had closed in, to hear a voice that had once sounded in ears that had once understood, to touch a hand that had felt his long ago. And the longing became intolerable, for lack of these things, like a burning thirst where there is no water; and the perfect peace was all consumed in that raging wish, and the quiet was disquiet, and the two consciousnesses felt that each was learning to suffer again for want of the other, till what had been heaven was hell, and earth would be better, or total destruction and the extinguishing of all identity, or anything that was not, rather than the least prolonging of what was. The last change now; back to the world, and to a human body. Lamberti was waked by a vigorous knocking at his door, which was locked as usual. It was nine o'clock, and a servant had brought him Guido's note. "My dear friend," it said, "I was altogether in the wrong yesterday. Please forgive me. I quite understand your position with regard to the Contessina, and hers towards you, but I sincerely hope that in the end you may be good friends. I appreciate very much the effort you both made this afternoon to overcome your mutual antipathy. Thank you. G. d'E." Lamberti read the note three times before the truth dawned upon him, and he at last understood what Guido meant. At first the note seemed to have been written in irony, if not in anger, but that would have been very unlike Guido; the second reading convinced Lamberti that his friend was in earnest, whatever his meaning might be, and at the third perusal, Lamberti saw the true state of the case. Guido supposed that he and Cecilia were violently repelled by each other. He did not smile at the absurdity of the idea, for he felt at once that the results of such a misunderstanding must before long place Cecilia and himself in a false position, from which it would be hard to escape. Yet he was well aware that Guido would not believe the truth--that the coincidences were too extraordinary to be readily admitted, while no other rational theory could be found to explain what had happened. If Lamberti saw Cecilia often, Guido would soon perceive that instead of mutual dislike and repulsion the strongest sympathy existed between them, and that they would always understand each other without words. It would be impossible to conceal that very long. Besides, they would love each other, if they met frequently; about that Lamberti had not the smallest doubt. His instincts were direct and unhesitating, and he knew that he had never felt for any living woman what he felt for the fair young girl whose unreal presence visited his dreams, and who, in those long visions, loved him dearly in return, with a spiritual passion that rose far above perishable things and yet was not wholly immaterial. There was that one moment when they stood near together in the early morning, and their lips met as if body, heart, and soul were all meeting at once, and only for once. After that, in his dreams, there was much that Lamberti could not understand in himself, and which seemed very unlike the self he knew, very much higher, very much purer, very much more inclined to sacrifice, constantly in a sort of spiritual tension and always striving towards a perfect life, which was as far as anything could be, he supposed, from his own personality, as he thought he knew it. The story he dreamed was simple enough. He was a Christian, the girl a Vestal Virgin, the youngest of those last six who still guarded the sacred hearth when the Christian Emperor dissolved all that was left of the worship of the old gods. He bade the noble maidens close the doors of the temple and depart in peace to their parents' homes, freed from their vows and service, and from all obligations to the state, but deprived also of all their old honours and lands and privileges. And sadly they buried the things that had been holy, where no man knew, and watched the fire together, one last night, till it burned out to white ashes in the spring dawn; and they embraced one another with tears and went away. Some became Christians, and some afterwards married; but there was one who would not, though she loved as none of them loved, and she withdrew from the world and lived a pure life for the sake of the old faith and of her solemn vows. So, at last, the Christian believed what she told him, that it was better to love in that way, because when he and she were freed at last from all earthly longings, they would be united for ever and ever; and she became a Christian, too, and after the other five Vestals were dead, she also passed away; and the man who had loved her so long, in her own way, died peacefully on the next day, loving her and hoping to join her, and having led a good life. After that there was peace, and they seemed to be together. That was their story as it gradually took shape out of fragments and broken visions, and though the man who dreamt these things could not conceive, when he remembered them, that he could ever become at all a saintly character, yet in the vision he knew that he was always himself, and all that he thought and did seemed natural, though it often seemed hard, and he suffered much in some ways, but in others he found great happiness. It was a simple story and a most improbable one. He was quite sure that no matter in what age he might have lived, instead of in the twentieth century, he would have felt and acted as he now did when he was wide awake. But that did not matter. The important point was that his imagination was making for him a sort of secondary existence in sleep, in which he was desperately in love with some one who exactly resembled Cecilia Palladio and who bore her first name; and this dreaming created such a strong and lasting impression in his mind that, in real life, he could not separate Cecilia Palladio from Cecilia the Vestal, and found himself on the point of saying to her in reality the very things which he had said to her in imagination while sleeping. The worst of it was this identity of the real and the unreal, for he was persuaded that with very small opportunity the two would turn into one. He hated thinking, under all circumstances, as compared with action. It was easier to follow his impulses, and fortunately for him they were brave and honourable. He never analysed his feelings, never troubled himself about his motives, never examined his conscience. It told him well enough whether he was doing right or wrong, and on general principles he always meant to do right. It was not his fault if his imagination made him fall in love in a dream with the young girl who was probably to be his friend's wife. But it would be distinctly his fault if he gave himself the chance of falling in love with her in reality. Moreover, though he did not know how much further Cecilia's dream coincided with his own, and believed it impossible that the coincidence should be nearly as complete as it seemed, he felt that she would love him if he chose that she should. The intuitions of very masculine men about women are far keener and more trustworthy than women guess; and when such a man is not devoured by fatuous vanity he is rarely mistaken if he feels sure that a woman he meets will love him, provided that circumstances favour him ever so little. There is not necessarily the least particle of conceit in that certainty, which depends on the direct attraction between any two beings who are natural complements to each other. Lamberti was a man who had the most profound respect for every woman who deserved to be respected ever so little, and a good-natured contempt for all the rest, together with a careless willingness to be amused by them. And of all the women in the world, next to his own mother, the one whom he would treat with something approaching to veneration would be Guido's wife, if Guido married. Without any reasoning, it was plain that he must see as little as possible of Cecilia Palladio. But as this would not please Guido, the best plan was to go away while there was time. In all probability, when he next returned, say in two years, he would no longer feel the dangerous attraction that was almost driving him out of his senses at present. He had been in Rome some time, expecting his promotion to the rank of lieutenant-commander, which would certainly be accompanied by orders to join another ship, possibly very far away. If he showed himself very anxious to go at once, before his leave expired, the Admiralty would probably oblige him, especially as he just now cared much less for the promised step in the service than for getting away at short notice. The best thing to be done was to go and see the Minister, who had of late been very friendly to him; everything might be settled in half an hour, and next week he would be on his way to China, or South America, or East Africa, which would be perfectly satisfactory to everybody concerned. It was a wise and honourable resolution, and he determined to act on it at once. His hand was on the door to go out, when he stopped suddenly and stood quite still for a few seconds. It was as if something unseen surrounded him on all sides, in the air, invisible but solid as lead, making it impossible for him to move. It did not last long, and he went out, wondering at his nervousness. In half an hour he was in the presence of the Minister, who was speaking to him. "You are promoted to the rank of lieutenant-commander. You are temporarily attached to the ministerial commission which is to study the Somali question, which you understand so well from experience on the spot. His Majesty specially desires it." "How long may this last, sir?" enquired Lamberti, with a look of blank disappointment. "Oh, a year or two, I should say," laughed the Minister. "They do not hurry themselves. You can enjoy a long holiday at home." CHAPTER XI Though it was late in the season, everybody wished to do something to welcome the appearance of Cecilia Palladio in society. It was too warm to give balls, but it did not follow that it was at all too hot to dance informally, with the windows open. We do not know why a ball is hotter than a dance; but it is so. There are things that men do not understand. So dinners were given, to which young people were asked, and afterwards an artistic-looking man appeared from somewhere and played waltzes, and twenty or thirty couples amused themselves to their hearts' delight till one o'clock in the morning. Moreover, people who had villas gave afternoon teas, without any pretence of giving garden parties, and there also the young ones danced, sometimes on marble pavements in great old rooms that smelt slightly of musty furniture, but were cool and pleasant. Besides these things, there were picnic dinners at Frascati and Castel Gandolfo, and everybody drove home across the Campagna by moonlight. Altogether, and chiefly in Cecilia Palladio's honour, there was a very pretty little revival of winter gaiety, which is not always very gay in Rome, nowadays. The young girl accepted it all much more graciously than her mother had expected, and was ready to enjoy everything that people offered her, which is a great secret of social success. The Countess had always feared that Cecilia was too fond of books and of serious talk to care much for what amuses most people. But, instead, she suddenly seemed to have been made for society; she delighted in dancing, she liked to be well dressed, she smiled at well-meaning young men who made compliments to her, and she chatted with young girls about the myriad important nothings that grow like wild flowers just outside life's gate. Every one liked her, and she let almost every one think that she liked them. She never said disagreeable things about them, and she never attracted to herself the young gentleman who was looked upon as the property of another. Every one said that she was going to marry d'Este in the autumn, though the engagement was not yet announced. Wherever she was, he was there also, generally accompanied by his inseparable friend, Lamberto Lamberti. The latter had grown thinner during the last few weeks. When any one spoke of it, he explained that life ashore did not suit him, and that he was obliged to work a good deal over papers and maps for the ministerial commission. But he was evidently not much inclined to talk of himself, and he changed the subject immediately. His life was not easy, for he was not only in serious trouble himself, but he was also becoming anxious about Guido. The one matter about which a man is instinctively reticent with his most intimate man friend is his love affair, if he has one. He would rather tell a woman all about it, though he does not know her nearly so well, than talk about it, even vaguely, with the one man in the world whom he trusts. Where women are concerned, all men are more or less one another's natural enemies, in spite of civilisation and civilised morals; and each knows this of the other, and respects the other's silence as both inevitable and decent. Guido had told Lamberti that he should be the first to know of the engagement as soon as there was any, and Lamberti waited. He did not know whether Guido had spoken yet, nor whether there was any sort of agreement between him and Cecilia by which the latter was to give her answer after a certain time. He could not guess what they talked of during the hour they spent together nearly every day. People made inquiries of him, some openly and some by roundabout means, and he always answered that if his friend were engaged to be married he would assuredly announce the fact at once. Those who received this answer were obliged to be satisfied with it, because Lamberti was not the kind of man to submit to cross-questioning. He wondered whether Cecilia knew that he loved her, since what he had foreseen had happened, and he did not even try to deny the fact to himself. He would not let his thoughts dwell on what she might feel for him, for that would have seemed like the beginning of a betrayal. She never asked him questions nor did anything to make him spend more time near her than was inevitable, and neither had ever gone back to the subject of their dreams. She had asked Lamberti to come to the house at an hour when there would not be other visitors, but he had not come, and neither had ever referred to the matter since. He sometimes felt that she was watching him earnestly, but at those times he would not meet her eyes lest his own should say too much. It was hard, it was quite the hardest thing he had ever done in his life, and he was never quite sure that he could go on with it to the end. But it was the only honourable course he could follow, and it would surely grow easier when he knew definitely that Cecilia meant to marry Guido. It was bitter to feel that if the man had been any one but his friend, there would have been no reason for making any such sacrifice. He inwardly prayed that Cecilia would come to a decision soon, and he was deeply grateful to her for not making his position harder by referring to their first conversation at the Villa Madama. Guido had not the slightest suspicion of the true state of things, but he himself was growing impatient, and daily resolved to put the final question. Every day, however, he put it off again, not from lack of courage, nor even because he was naturally so very indolent, but because he felt sure that the answer would not be the one hoped for. Though Cecilia's manner with him had never changed from the first, it was perfectly clear that, however much she might enjoy his conversation, she was calmly indifferent to his personality. She never blushed with pleasure when he came, nor did her eyes grow sad when he left her; and when she talked with him she spoke exactly as when she was speaking with her mother. He listened in vain for an added earnestness of tone, meant for him only; it never came. She liked him, beyond doubt, from the first, and liking had changed to friendship very fast, but Guido knew how very rarely the friendship a woman feels for a man can ever turn to love. Starting from the same point, it grows steadily in another direction, and its calm intellectual sympathy makes the mere suggestion of any unreasoning impulse of the heart seem almost absurd. But where the man and woman do not feel alike, this state of things cannot last for ever, and when it comes to an end there is generally trouble and often bitterness. Guido knew that very well and hesitated in consequence. Princess Anatolie could not understand the reason for this delay, and was not at all pleased. She said it would be positively not decent if the girl refused to marry Guido after acting in public as if she were engaged to him, and Monsieur Leroy agreed with her. She asked him if he could not do anything to hasten matters, and he said he would try. The old lady had felt quite sure of the marriage, and in imagination she had already extracted from Guido's wife all the money she had made Guido lose for her. It is now hardly necessary to say that she had received spirit messages through Monsieur Leroy, bidding her to invest money in the most improbable schemes, and that she had followed his advice in making her nephew act as her agent in the matter. Monsieur Leroy had pleaded his total ignorance of business as a reason for keeping out of the transaction, by which, however, it may be supposed that he profited indirectly for a time. He never hesitated to say that the unfortunate result was due to Guido's negligence and failure to carry out the instructions given him. But the Princess knew that at least a part of the fault belonged to Monsieur Leroy, though she never had the courage to tell him so; and though it looked as if nothing could sever the mysterious tie that linked their lives together, he had forfeited some of his influence over her with the loss of the money, and had only recently regained it by convincing her that she was in communication with her dead child. So long as he could keep her in this belief he was in no danger of losing his power again. On the contrary, it increased from day to day. "Guido is so very quixotic," he said. "He hesitates because the girl is so rich. But we may be able to bring a little pressure to bear on him. After all, you have his receipts for all the money that passed through his hands." "Unless he marries this girl, they are not worth the paper they are written on." "I am not sure. He is very sensitive about matters of honour. Now a receipt for money given to a lady looks to me very much like a debt of honour. What happened in the eyes of the world? You lent him money which he lost in speculation." "No doubt," answered the Princess, willing to be convinced of any absurdity that could help her to get back her money. "But when a man has no means of paying a debt of honour----" "He shoots himself," said Monsieur Leroy, completing the sentence. "That would not help us. Besides, I should be very sorry if anything happened to Guido." "Of course!" cried Monsieur Leroy. "Not for worlds! But nothing need happen to him. You have only to persuade him that the sole way to save his honour is to marry an heiress, and he will marry at once, as a matter of conscience. Unless something is done to move him, he will not." "But he is in love with the girl!" "Enough to occupy him and amuse him. That is all. By-the-bye, where are those receipts?" "In the small strong-box, in the lower drawer of the writing table." Monsieur Leroy found the papers, and transferred them to his pocket-book, not yet sure how he could best turn them to account, but quite certain that their proper use would reveal itself to him before long. "And besides," he concluded, "we can always make him sell the Andrea del Sarto and the Raphael. Baumgarten thinks they are worth a good sum. You know that he buys for the Berlin gallery, and the British Museum people think everything of his opinion." In this way the Princess and her favourite disposed of Guido and his property; but he would not have been much surprised if he could have heard their conversation. They were only saying what he had expected of them as far back as the day when he had talked with Lamberti in the garden of the Arcadians. CHAPTER XII It is not strange that Cecilia should have been much less disturbed than Lamberti by what he had described to the doctor as a possession of the devil, or a haunting. Men who have never been ailing in their lives sometimes behave like frightened children if they fall ill, though the ailment may not be very serious, whereas a hardened old invalid, determined to make the best of life in spite of his ills, often laughs himself into the belief that he can recover from the two or three mortal diseases that have hold of him. Bearing bodily pain is a mere matter of habit, as every one knows who has had to bear much, or who has tried it as an experiment. In barbarous countries conspirators have practised suffering the tortures likely to be inflicted on them to extract confession. Lamberti had never before been troubled by anything at all resembling what people call the supernatural, nor even by anything unaccountable. It was natural that he should be made nervous and almost ill by the persistence of the dreams that had visited him since he had met Cecilia, and by what he believed to be the closing of a door each time he awoke from them. Cecilia, on the contrary, had practised dreaming all her life and was not permanently disturbed by any vision that presented itself, nor by anything like a "phenomenon" which might accompany it. She felt that her dreams brought her nearer to a truth of some sort, hidden from most of the world, but of vital value, and after which she was groping continually without much sense of direction. The specialist whom Lamberti had consulted would have told her plainly that she had learned to hypnotise herself, and a Japanese Buddhist monk would have told her the same thing, adding that she was doing one of the most dangerous things possible. The western man of science would have assured her that a certain resemblance of the face in the dream to Lamberti was a mere coincidence, and that since she had met him the likeness had perfected itself, so that she now really dreamed of Lamberti; and the doctor would have gone on to say that the rest of her vision was the result of auto-suggestion, because the story of the Vestal Virgins had always had a very great attraction for her. She had read a great deal about them, she had followed Giacomo Boni's astonishing discoveries with breathless interest, she knew more of Roman history than most girls, and probably more than most men, and it was not at all astonishing that she should be able to construct a whole imaginary past life with all its details and even its end, and to dream it all at will, as if she were reading a novel. She would have admitted that the pictured history of Cecilia, the last Vestal, had been at first fragmentary, and had gradually completed itself in her visions, and that even now it was constantly growing, and that it might continue to grow, and even to change, for a long time. Further, if the specialist had known positively that similar fragments of dreams were little by little putting themselves together in Lamberti's imagination, though the latter had only once spoken with Cecilia of one or two coincidences, he would have said, provided that he chose to be frank with a mere girl, that no one knows much about telepathy, and that modern science does not deny what it cannot explain, as the science of the nineteenth century did, but collects and examines facts, only requiring to be persuaded that they are really facts and not fictions. No one, he would have said, would build a theory on one instance; he would write down the best account of the case which he could find, and would then proceed to look for another. Since wireless telegraphy was possible, the specialist would not care to seek a reason why telepathy should not be a possibility, too. If it were, it explained thoroughly what was going on between Cecilia and Lamberti; if it were not, there must be some other equally satisfactory explanation, still to be found. The attitude of science used to be extremely aggressive, but she has advanced to a higher stage; in these days she is serene. Men of science still occasionally come into conflict with the official representatives of different beliefs, but science herself no longer assails religion. Lamberti's specialist professed no form of faith, wherefore he would rather not have been called upon to answer all three of Kant's questions: What can I know? What is it my duty to do? What may I hope? But it by no means followed that his answers, if he gave any, would have been shocking to people who knew less and hoped more than he did. Cecilia thought much, but she followed no such form of reasoning to convince herself that her experiences were all scientifically possible; on the contrary, the illusion she loved best was the one which science and religion alike would have altogether condemned as contrary to faith and revolting to reason, namely, her cherished belief that she had really once lived as a Vestal in old days, and had died, and had come back to earth after a long time, irresistibly drawn towards life after having almost attained to perfect detachment from material things. Her meeting with Lamberti, and, most of all, her one short conversation with him, had greatly strengthened her illusion. He had come back, too, and they understood each other. But that should be all. Then she took up Nietzsche again, not because every one read _Thus spake Zarathushthra_, or was supposed to read the book, and talked about it in a manner that discredited the supposition, but because she wanted to decide once for all whether his theory of the endless return to life at all suited her own case. She turned over the pages, but she knew the main thought by heart. Time is infinite. In space there is matter consisting of elements which, however numerous, are limited in number, and can therefore only combine in a finite number of ways. When those possible combinations are exhausted, they must repeat themselves. And because time is infinite, they must repeat themselves an infinite number of times. Therefore precisely the same combinations have returned always and will return again and again for ever. Therefore in the past, every one of us has lived precisely the same life, in a precisely similar world, an infinite number of times, and will live the same life over again, to the minutest detail, an infinite number of times in the future. In the fewest words, this is Nietzsche's argument to prove what he calls the "Eternal Return." No. That was not at all what she wished to believe, nor could believe, though it was very plausible as a theory. If men lived over again, they did not live the same lives but other lives, worse or better than the first. Nietzsche in this was speaking only of matter which combined and combined again. If it did, each combination might have a new soul of its own. It was conceivable that different souls should be made to suffer and enjoy in precisely the same way. And as for the rest, as for a good deal of _Thus spake Zarathushthra_, including the Over-Man, and the overcoming of Pity, and the Man who had killed God, she thought it merely fantastic, though much of it was very beautiful and some of it was terrible, and she thought she had understood what Nietzsche meant. Tired of reading, she lay back in her deep chair and let the open book fall upon her knees. She was in her own room, late in the morning, and the blinds were drawn together to keep out the glare of the wide street, for it was June and the summer was at hand. Outside, the air was all alive with the coming heat, as it is in Italy at the end of spring, and perhaps nowhere else. The sunshine seems to grow in it, like a living thing, that also fills everything with life. It gets into the people, too, and into their voices, and even the grave Romans unbend a little, and laugh more gaily, and their step is more elastic. By-and-by, when the full warmth of summer fills the city, the white streets will be almost deserted in the middle of the day, and men who have to be abroad will drag themselves along where the walls cast a narrow shade, and everything will grow lazy and sleepy and silently hot. But the first good sunshine in June is to the southern people the elixir of life, the magic gold-mist that floats before the coming gods, the breath of the gods themselves breathed into mortals. Within the girl's room the light was very soft on the pale blue damask hangings, and a gentle air blew now and then from window to window, as if a sweet spirit passed by, bringing a message and taking one away. It stirred Cecilia's golden hair, and fanned her forehead, and somehow, just then, it brought intuitions of beautiful unknown things with it, and inspiration with peace, and clear sight. Maidenhood is blessed with such moments, beyond all other states. In all times and in all countries it has been half divine, and ever mysteriously linked with divine things. The maid was ever the priestess, the prophetess, and the seer, whose eyes looked beyond the veil and whose ears heard the voices of the immortals; and she of Orleans was not the only maiden, though she was the last, that lifted her fallen country up out of despair and led men to fight and victory who would follow no man-leader where all had failed. Maidenhood meets evil, and passes by on the other side, not seeing; maidenhood is whole and perfect in itself and sweetly careless of what it need not know; maidenhood dreams of a world that is not, nor was, nor shall be, hitherwards of heaven; maidenhood is angelhood. In its unconsciousness of evil lies its strength, in its ignorance of itself lies its danger. Cecilia was not trying to call up visions now; she was thinking of her life, and wondering what was to happen, and now and then she was asking herself what she ought to do. Should she marry Guido d'Este, or not? That was the sum of her thoughts and her wonderings and her questions. She knew she was perfectly free, and that her mother would never try to make her marry against her will. But if she married Guido, would she be acting against her will? In her own mind she was well aware that he would speak whenever she chose to let him do so. The most maidenly girl of eighteen knows when a man is waiting for an opportunity to ask her to be his wife, whereas most young men who are much in love do not know exactly when they are going to put the question, and are often surprised when it rises to their lips. Cecilia considered that issue a foregone conclusion. The vital matter was to find out her own answer. She had never known any man, since her stepfather died, whom she liked nearly as much as Guido, and she had met more interesting and gifted men before she was really in society than most women ever know in a lifetime. She liked him so much that if he had any faults she could not see them, and she did not believe that he had any which deserved the name. But that was not the question. No woman likes a man because he has no faults; on the contrary, if he has a few, she thinks it will be her mission to eradicate them, and reform him according to her ideal. She believes that it will be easy, and she knows that it will be delightful to succeed, because no other woman has succeeded before. That is one reason why the wildest rakes are often loved by the best of women. Cecilia liked Guido for his own sake, and felt an intellectual sympathy for him which took the place of what she had sorely missed since her stepfather died; she liked him also, because he was always ready to do whatever she wished; and because, with the exception of that one day at the Villa Madama, his moral attitude before her was one of respectful and chivalrous devotion; and also because he and she were fond of the same things, and because he took her seriously and never told her that she was wasting time in trying to understand Kant and Fichte and Hegel, though he possibly thought so; and she liked the little ways he had, and his modesty, though he knew so much, and his simple manner of dressing, and the colour of his hair, and a sort of very faint atmosphere of Russian leather, good cigarettes, and Cologne water that was always about him. There were a great many reasons why she was fond of him. For instance, she had found that he never repeated to any one, not even to Lamberti, a word of any conversation they had together; and if any one at a dinner party or at a picnic attacked any favourite idea or theory of hers, he defended it, using all her arguments as well as his own; and when he knew she could say something clever in the general talk, he always said something else which made it possible for her to bring out her own speech, and he was always apparently just as much pleased with it as if he had not heard it already, when they had been alone. It would be impossible to enumerate all the reasons why she was sure that there was nobody like him. She knew that what she felt for him was affection, and she was quite willing to believe that it was love. He certainly had no rival with her at that time, and if she hesitated, it was because the thought of marriage itself was repugnant to her. In the secondary life of her imagination she was bound by the most solemn vows, and under the most terrible penalties, to preserve herself intact from the touch of man. In the dream, it was sacrilege for a man to love her, and meant death to love him in return. She knew that it was a dream, but she loved to believe that all the dream was true, and she was too much accustomed to the thought not to be influenced by it. There are great actors who become so used to a favourite part that they go on acting it in real life, and have sometimes gone mad in the end, it is said, believing themselves really to be the heroes or tyrants they have represented. Only great second-rate actors "learn" their parts and attain to a sort of perfection in them by mechanical means. The really great first-rate artists make themselves a secondary existence by self-suggestion, and really have two selves, one that thinks and acts like Othello, or Hamlet, or Louis the Eleventh, the other that goes through life with the opinions, convictions, and principles of Sir Henry Irving, of Tommaso Salvini, or of Madame Sarah Bernhardt. In a higher degree, because she had never learned but one part, and that one proceeded in some way out of her own intelligence, Cecilia was in the same state of dual consciousness, and if her waking life was influenced by her imaginary existence in dreams, her dreams were probably affected also by her waking life. "Thou shalt so act, as to be worthy of happiness," said her favourite philosopher. She could undoubtedly marry Guido, in spite of her imaginary vows, if she chose to shake off the shadowy bond by an act of everyday will. Would that be acting so as to deserve to be happy? What is happiness? The belief that one is happy; nothing else. As Guido's wife, should she believe that she was happy? Yes, if there were happiness to be found in marriage. But she was happy already without it, and would always be so, she was sure. Therefore she would be risking a certainty for a possibility. "Who leaves the old and takes new, knows what he leaves, not what he may find"; so says the old Italian proverb. And again, she had heard a friend of her stepfather's say with a laugh that hope seems cheap food, but is always paid for by those who live on it. To act so as to be worthy of happiness, meant to act in such a way that the reason for each action might be a law for the happiness of all. That was the Categorical Imperative, and Cecilia believed in it. Then, if she married Guido, she ought to be sure that all young girls in her position would marry under the circumstances, and that the majority of them would be happy. With a return of practical sense from the regions of philosophy, she asked herself how she should feel if Guido married some one else, one of the many young girls who were among her friends. Should she be jealous? At the mere thought she felt a little dull sinking that was anticipated disappointment. Yes, she liked him enough, she was fond enough of him to miss him terribly if he were taken away from her. This was undoubtedly love, she thought. She could not be happy without that companionship, though she wished that it might continue all her life, without the necessity of being married to him. Of all the other men she had met during the last month, the only one whom she instinctively understood was Lamberti, but that was different. It was the understanding of a fear that was sometimes almost abject; it was the certainty that if he only would, he could lead her anywhere, make her do anything, direct her as he directed his own hand. When she had met him in the house of the Vestals, she had been sure that if she stood a moment longer where he had come upon her, he would take her in his arms and kiss her, and she would not resist. It was of no use to argue about it, to tell herself that she would have been safe on a desert island with Guido's trusted friend; the conviction was strong. At the Villa Madama, he had made her say what he pleased, go with him where he chose, tell him her secret. It was too horrible for words. She had asked him to come to see her at an hour when there would be no visitors, and she knew that she had meant to see him alone, in spite of her mother, and even by stealth if need were. When he was out of her sight, his influence was gone with him, and she thanked heaven that he had not come, and that he apparently took care never to be alone with her for a moment now. He had only to look at her in a certain way, and she must obey him; if he ever touched her hand she would be his slave, powerless to resist him. Sometimes she could not help looking at him, but then he never turned his eyes towards her, and she was thankful when she could turn hers away. When he was not present, she hoped that she might never see his face again, except in dreams, for there he was not the same. There, but for that one passionate kiss that told all, he was tender, and gentle, and true, and he listened to her, and in the end he lived as she wished him to live. But he had come back to life with the same face, another man--one whom she feared as she feared nothing in the world, and few things beyond it, for he was born her master, and was strong, and had ruthless eyes. Even Guido could not save her from him, she was sure. Yet in spite of all this, she could meet him with outward indifference in the world, before other people. She felt that there was no danger so long as she was not alone with him, because he would not dare to use his power, and the world protected her by its cheerful, careless presence. She did not hate him, she only feared him, with every part of her, body and soul. She was sure that he knew it, but she was not grateful to him for avoiding her. She could not be grateful to any one of whom she was in terror. It was merely his will to avoid her, or perhaps, as Guido seemed to think, he did not like her; or possibly it was for Guido's sake, because Guido trusted him, and he was a man of honour. He was that beyond doubt, for every one said so, and she knew that he was brave; but though he might possess every quality and virtue under the sun, she could never be less afraid of him. Her fear had nothing to do with his character; it was bodily and spiritual, not reasonable. She had found out that he was perfectly truthful, for nothing he said escaped her, and Guido told her that he was kind, but that was hard to believe of any one with those eyes. Yet the man in the dream was gentleness itself, and his eyes never glittered when they looked at her. To think that she could ever love Lamberti was utterly absurd. When she was married to Guido she would tell him that she feared his friend. Now, it was impossible. He would smile quietly and tell her there was nothing to be afraid of; he would smile, too, if she told him that she had a dual existence, and dreamed herself into the other every day. And now she was smiling, too, as she thought of him, for she had thought too long about Lamberti, and it was soothing to go back to Guido's companionship and to all that her real affection for him meant to her. It was like coming home after a dangerous journey. There he was, always the same, his hands stretched out to welcome her back. She would have just that sensation presently when he came to luncheon, and he would have just that look. She and he were made to spend endless days together, sometimes talking, sometimes thoughtful and silent, always happy, and calm, and utterly peaceful. After all, she thought, what more could a woman ask? With each other's society and her fortune, they would have all the world held that was pleasant and beautiful around them, and they would enjoy it together, as long as it lasted, and it would never make the least difference to them that they should grow old, and older, until the end came; and at eighteen it was of no use to think of that. Surely this was love, at its best, and of the kind that must last; and if, after all, in order to get such happiness as that seemed, there was no way except to marry, why then, she must do as others did and be Guido d'Este's wife. What could she know? That she loved him, in a way not at all like what she had supposed to be the way of love, but sincerely and truly. What should she do? She should marry him, since that was necessary. What might she hope? She could hope for a lifetime of happiness. Should she then have acted so as to deserve it? Yes. Why not? Might the reason for her marriage be a rule for others? Yes, for others in exactly the same case. So she smilingly answered the mightiest questions of transcendental philosophy as if they all referred to the pleasant world in which she lived, instead of to the lofty regions of Pure Reason. In that, indeed, she knew that she was playing with them, or applying them empirically, if any one chose to define in those terms what she was doing. After all, why should she not? Of the three questions, the first only was "speculative," and the other two were "practical." The philosopher himself said so. Besides, it did not matter, for Guido d'Este was coming to luncheon, and afterwards her mother would go and write notes, unless she dozed a little in her boudoir, as she sometimes did while the two talked; and then Cecilia would say something quite natural, but quite new, and she would let her look linger in Guido's a little longer than ever before, and then he would ask her to marry him. It was all decided beforehand in her small head. She was glad that it was, and she felt much happier at the prospect of what was coming than she had expected. That must be a sign that she really loved Guido in the right way, and the pleasant little thrill of excitement she felt now and again could only be due to that; it would be outrageous to suppose that it was caused merely by the certainty that for the first time in her life she was going to receive an offer of marriage. Why should any young girl care for such a thing, unless she meant to marry the man, and why in the world should it give her any pleasure to hear a man stammer something that would be unintelligible if it were not expected, and then see him wait with painful anxiety for the answer which every woman likes to hesitate a little in giving, in order that it may have its full value? Such doings are manifestly wicked, unless they are sheer nonsense! Cecilia rose and rang for her maid; for it was twelve o'clock, and Romans lunch at half-past twelve, because they do not begin the day between eight and nine in the morning with ham and eggs, omelets and bacon, beefsteak and onions, fried liver, cold joints, tongue, cold ham and pickles, hot cakes, cold cakes, hot bread, cold bread, butter, jam, honey, fruit of all kinds in season, tea, coffee, chocolate, and a tendency to complain that they have not had enough, which is the unchangeable custom of the conquering races, as everybody knows. It is true that the conquerors do not lunch to any great extent; they go on conquering from breakfast till dinner time without much intermission, because that is their business; but it is believed that their women, who stay at home, have a little something at twelve, luncheon at half-past two, tea between five and six, dinner at eight, and supper about midnight, when they can get it. Cecilia rang for the excellent Petersen, and said that she would wear the new costume which had arrived from Doucet's two days ago. There was certainly no reason why she should not wish to look well on this day of all others, and as she turned and saw herself in the glass, she had not the least thought of making a better impression than usual on Guido. She was far too sure of herself for that. If she chose, he would ask her to marry him though she might be dressed in an old waterproof and overshoes. It was merely because she was happy and was sure that she was going to do the right thing. When a normal woman is very happy, she puts on a perfectly new frock, if she has one, in real life or on the stage, even when she is not going to be seen by any one in particular. In this, therefore, Cecilia only followed the instinct of her kind, and if the pretty new costume had not chanced to have come from Paris, she would not have missed it at all, but would have worn something else. As it happened to be ready, however, it would have been a pity not to put it on, since she expected to remember that particular day all the rest of her life. Petersen said it was perfection, and Cecilia was not far from thinking so, too. CHAPTER XIII Guido d'Este was already in the drawing-room with the Countess when Cecilia entered, but she knew by their faces and voices that they had not been talking of her, and was glad of it; for sometimes, when she was quite sure that they had, she felt a little embarrassment at first, and found Guido a trifle absent-minded for some time afterwards. She took his hand, and perhaps she held it a second longer than usual, and she looked into his eyes as she spoke to her mother. Yesterday she would have very likely looked at her mother while speaking to him. "I hope I am not late," she said, "Have I kept you waiting?" "It was worth while, if you did," Guido said, looking at her with undisguised admiration. "It really is a success, is it not?" Cecilia asked, turning to her mother now, for approval. Then she turned slowly round, raised herself on tiptoe a moment, came back to her original position, and smiled happily. Guido waited for the Countess to speak. "Yes--yes," the latter answered critically, but almost satisfied. "When one has a figure like yours, my dear, one should always have things quite perfect. A woman who has a good figure and is really well dressed, hardly ever needs a pin. Let me see. Does it not draw under the right arm, just the slightest bit? Put your arm down, child, let it hang naturally! So. No, I was mistaken, there is nothing. You really ought to keep your arm in the right position, darling. It makes so much difference! You are not going to play tennis, or ride a bicycle in that costume. No, of course not! Well, then--you understand. Do be careful!" Cecilia looked at Guido and smiled again, and her lips parted just enough to show her two front teeth a little, and then, still parted, grew grave, which gave her an expression Guido had never seen. For a moment there was something between a question and an appeal in her face. "It is very becoming," he said gravely. "It is a pleasure to see anything so faultless." "I am glad you really like it," she answered. "I always want you to like my things." Everything happened exactly as she had expected and wished, and the Countess, when she had sipped her cup of coffee after luncheon, went to the writing table in the boudoir, and though the door was open into the great drawing-room, she was out of sight, and out of hearing too. Cecilia did not sit down again at once, but moved slowly about, went to one of the windows and looked down at the white street through the slats of the closed blinds, turned and met Guido's eyes, for he was watching her, and at last stood still not far from him, but a little further from the open door of the boudoir than he was. At the end of the room a short sofa was placed across the corner; before it stood a low table on which lay a few large books, of the sort that are supposed to amuse people who are waiting for the lady of the house, or who are stranded alone in the evening when every one else is talking. They are always books of the type described as magnificent and not dear; if they were really valuable, they would not be left there. "How you watch me!" Cecilia smiled, as if she did not object to being watched. "Come and sit down," she added, without waiting for an answer. She established herself in one corner of the short sofa behind the table, Guido took his place in the other, and there would not have been room for a third person between them. The two had never sat together in that particular place, and there was a small sensation of novelty about it which was delightful to them both. There was not the least calculation of such a thing in Cecilia's choice of the sofa, but only the unerring instinct of woman which outwits man's deepest schemes at every turn in life. "Yes," Guido said, "I was watching you. I often do, for it is good to look at you. Why should one not get as much aesthetic pleasure as possible out of life?" The speech was far from brilliant, for Guido was beginning to feel the spell, and was not thinking so much of what he was saying as of what he longed to say. Most clever men are dull enough to suppose that they bore women when they suddenly lose their cleverness and say rather foolish things with an air of conviction, instead of very witty things with a studied look of indifference. The hundred and fifty generations of men, more or less, that separate us moderns from the days of Eden, never found out that those are the very moments at which a woman first feels her power, and that it is much less dangerous to bore her just then than before or afterwards. It is a rare delight to her to feel that her mere look can turn careless wit to earnest foolishness. For nothing is ever more in earnest than real folly, except real love. "You always say nice things," Cecilia answered, and Guido was pleasantly surprised, for he had been quite sure that the silly compliment was hardly worth answering. "And you are always kind," he said gratefully. "Always the same," he added after a moment, with a little accent of regret. "Am I? You say it as if you wished I might sometimes change. Is that what you mean?" She looked down at her hands, that lay in her lap motionless and white, one upon the other, on the delicate dove-coloured stuff of her frock; and her voice was rather low. "No," Guido answered. "That is not what I mean." "Then I do not understand," she said, neither moving nor looking up. Guido said nothing. He leaned forwards, his elbows on his knees, and stared down at the Persian rug that lay before the sofa on the smooth matting. It was warm and still in the great room. "Try and make me understand." Still he was silent. Without changing his position he glanced at the open door of the boudoir. The Countess was invisible and inaudible. Guido could hear the young girl's soft and regular breathing, and he felt the pulse in his own throat. He knew that he must say something, and yet the only thing he could think of to say was that he loved her. "Try and make me understand," she repeated. "I think you could." He started and changed his position a little. He had been accustomed so long to the belief that if he spoke out frankly the thread of his intercourse with her would be broken, that he made a strong effort to get back to the ordinary tone of their conversation. "Do you never say absurd things that have no meaning?" he asked, and tried to laugh. "It was not what you said," Cecilia answered quietly. "It was the way you said it, as if you rather regretted saying that I am always the same. I should be sorry if you thought that an absurd speech." "You know that I do not!" cried Guido, with a little indignation. "We understand each other so well, as a rule, but there is something you will never understand, I am afraid." "That is just what I wish you would explain," replied the young girl, unmoved. "Are you in earnest?" Guido asked, suddenly turning his face to her. "Of course. We are such good friends that it is a pity there should ever be the least little bit of misunderstanding between us." "You talk about it very philosophically!" "About what?" She had felt that she must make him lose patience, and she succeeded. "After all, I am a man," he said rather hoarsely. "Do you suppose it is possible for me to see you day after day, to talk with you day after day, to be alone with you day after day, as I am, to hear your voice, to touch your hand--and to be satisfied with friendship?" "How should I know?" Cecilia asked thoughtfully. "I have never known any one as well as I know you. I never liked anyone else well enough," she added after an instant. A very faint colour rose in her cheeks, for she was afraid that she had been too forward. "Yes. I am sure of that," he said. "But you never feel that mere liking is turning into something stronger, and that friendship is changing into love. You never will!" She said nothing, but looked at him steadily while he looked away from her, absorbed in his own thought and expecting no answer. When at last he felt her eyes on him, he turned quickly with a start of surprise, catching his breath, and speaking incoherently. "You do not mean to tell me--you are not----" Again her lips parted and she smiled at his wonder. "Why not?" she asked, at last. "You love me? You?" He could not believe his ears. "Why not?" she asked again, but so low that he could hardly hear the words. He turned half round, as he sat, and covered her crossed hands with his, and for a while neither spoke. He was supremely happy; she was convinced that she ought to be, and that she therefore believed that she was, and that her happiness was consequently real. But when she heard his voice, she knew, in spite of all, that she did not feel what he felt, even in the smallest degree, and there was a doubt which she had not anticipated, and which she at once faced in her heart with every argument she could use. She must have done right, it was absolutely necessary that what she had done should be right, now that it was too late to undo it. The mere suggestion that it might turn out to be a mistake was awful. It would all be her fault if she had deceived him, though ever so unwittingly. His hands shook a little as they lay on hers. Then they took one of hers and held it, drawing it slowly away from the other. "Do you really love me?" Guido asked, still wondering, and not quite convinced. "Yes," she answered faintly, and not trying to withdraw her hand. She had been really happy before she had first answered him. A minute had not passed, and her martyrdom had begun, the martyrdom by the doubt which made that one "yes" possibly a lie. Guido raised her hand to his lips, and she felt that they were cold. Then he began to speak, and she heard his voice far off and as if it came to her through a dense mist. "I have loved you almost since we first met," he said, "but I was sure from the beginning that you would never feel anything but friendship for me." A voice that was neither his nor hers, cried out in her heart: "Nor ever can!" She almost believed that he could hear the words. She would have given all she had to have the strength to speak them, to disappoint him bravely, to tell him that she had meant to do right, but had done wrong. But she could not. He did not pause as he spoke, and his soft, deep voice poured into her ear unceasingly the pent-up thoughts of love that had been gathering in his heart for weeks. She knew that he was looking in her face for some response, and now and then, as her head lay back against the sofa cushion, she turned her eyes to his and smiled, and twice she felt that her fingers pressed his hand a little. It was not out of mere weakness that she did not interrupt him, for she was not weak, nor cowardly. She had been so sure that she loved him, until he had made her say so, that even now, whenever she could think at all, she went back to her reasoning, and could all but persuade herself again. It was when she was obliged to speak that her lips almost refused the word. For she was very fond of him. It would have been pleasant to sit there, and even to press his hand affectionately, and to listen to his words, if only they had been words of friendship and not of love, and spoken in another tone--in his voice of every day. But she had waked in him something she could not understand, and to which nothing in herself responded, nothing thrilled, nothing consented; and the inner voice in her heart cried out perpetually, warning her against something unknown. He was eloquent now, and spoke without doubt or fear, as men do when they have been told at last that they are loved; and her occasional glance and the pressure of her hand were all he wanted in return. He said everything for her, which he wished to hear her say, and it seemed to him that she spoke the words by his lips. They would be happy together always, happy beyond volumes of words to say, beyond thought to think, beyond imagination to imagine. Quick plans for the future, near and far, flashed into words that were pictures, and the pictures showed him a visible earthly paradise, in which they two should live always, in which he should always be speaking as he was speaking now, and she listening, as she now listened. He forgot the time, and forgot to glance at the open door of the boudoir, but at last Cecilia started, and drew back her hand from his, and blushed as she raised her head from the back of the sofa. Her mother was standing in the doorway watching, and hearing, an expression of rapt delight on her face, not daring to move forwards or backwards, lest she should interrupt the scene. Cecilia started, and Guido, following the direction of her eyes, saw the Countess, and felt that small touch of disappointment which a man feels when the woman he is addressing in passionate language is less absent-minded than he is. He rose to his feet instantly, and went forwards, as the Countess came towards him. "My dear lady," he said, "Cecilia has consented to be my wife." Cecilia did not afterwards remember precisely what happened next, for the room swam with her as she left her seat, and she steadied herself against a chair, and saw nothing for a moment; but presently she found herself in her mother's arms, which pressed her very hard, and her mother was kissing her again and again, and was saying incoherent things, and was on the point of crying. Guido stood a few steps away, apparently seeing nothing, but looking the picture of happiness, and very busy with his cigarette case, of which he seemed to think the fastening must be out of order, for he opened it and shut it again several times and tried it in every way. Then Cecilia was quite aware of outward things again, and she kissed her mother once or twice. "Let me go, mother dear," she whispered desperately. "I want to be alone--do let me go!" She slipped away, pale and trembling, and had disappeared almost before Guido was aware that she was going towards the door. She heard her mother's voice just as she reached the threshold. "We will announce it this evening," the Countess said to Guido. Cecilia sped through the long suite of rooms that led to her own. She met no one, not even Petersen, for the servants were all at dinner. She locked the door, stood still a moment, and then went to the tall glass between the windows, and looked at herself as if trying to read the truth in the reflection of her eyes. It seemed to her that her beauty was suddenly gone from her, and that she was utterly changed. She saw a pale, drawn face, eyes that looked weak and frightened, lips that trembled, a figure that had lost all its elasticity and half its grace. She did not throw herself upon her bed and burst into tears. Old Fortiguerra had taught her that it was not really more natural for a woman to cry than it is for a man; and she had overcome even the very slight tendency she had ever had towards such outward weakness. But like other people who train themselves to keep down emotion, she suffered much more than if she had given way to what she felt. She turned from the reflection of herself with a sort of dumb horror, and sat down in the place where she had come to her great decision less than two hours ago. The room looked very differently now; the air was not the same, the June sunshine was still beating on the blinds, but it was cruel now, and pitiless, as all light is that shines on grief. She tried to collect her thoughts, and asked herself whether it was a crime that she had committed against her will, and many other such questions that had no answer. Little by little reason began to assert itself again, as emotion subsided. CHAPTER XIV The news of Cecilia Palladio's engagement to Guido d'Este surprised no one, and was generally received with that satisfaction which society feels when those things happen which are appropriate in themselves and have been long expected. A few mothers of marriageable sons were disappointed, but no mothers of marriageable daughters, because Guido had no fortune and was so much liked as to have been looked upon rather as a danger than a prize. Though it was late in the season, and she was about to leave Rome, the Princess Anatolie gave a dinner party in honour of the betrothed pair, and by way of producing an impression on Cecilia and her mother, invited all the most imposing people who happened to be in Rome at that time; and they were chiefly related to her in some way or other, as all semi-royal personages, and German dukes and grand-dukes and mediatised princes, and princes of the Holy Empire, seemed to be. Now all these great people seemed to know Cecilia's future husband intimately and liked him, and called him "Guido"; and he called some of them by their first names, and was evidently not the least in awe of any of them. They were his relations, as the Princess was, and they acknowledged him; and they were inclined to be affectionate relatives, because he had never asked any of them for anything, and differed from most of them in never having done anything too scandalous to be mentioned. They were his family, for his mother had been an only child; and Princess Anatolie, who was distinctly a snob in soul, in spite of her royal blood, took care that the good Countess Fortiguerra should know exactly how matters stood, and that her daughter ought to be thankful that she was to marry among the exalted ones of the earth--at any price. Now, when she had been an ambassadress, the Countess had met two or three of those people, and had been accustomed to look upon them as personages whom the Embassy entertained in state, one at a time, when they condescended to accept an invitation, but who lived in a region of their own, which was often, and perhaps fortunately so, beyond the experience of ordinary society. She was therefore really pleased and flattered to find herself in their intimacy and to hear what they had to say when they talked without restraint. Her position was certainly very good already, but there was no denying that her daughter's marriage would make it a privileged one. In the first place, Guido and Cecilia were clearly expected to visit some of his relations during their wedding trip and afterwards, and at some future time the Countess would go with them and see wonderful castles and palaces she had heard of from her childhood. That would be delightful, she thought, and the excellent Baron Goldbirn of Vienna would die of envy. Not that she wished him to die of envy, nor of anything else; she merely thought of his feelings. Then--and perhaps that was what gave her the most real satisfaction--Cecilia was to take the place for which her beauty and her talents had destined her, but which her birth had not given her. The mother's heart was filled with affectionate pride when she realised that the marvel she had brought into the world, the most wonderful girl that ever lived, her only child, was to be the mother of kings' and queens' second cousins. It was quite indifferent that she should be called plain Signora d'Este, and not princess, or duchess, or marchioness. The Countess did not care a straw for titles, for she had lived in a world where they are as plentiful as figs in August; but to be the mother of a king's second cousin was something worth living for, and she herself would be the mother-in-law of an ex-King's son, which would have made her the something-in-law of the ex-King himself, if he had been alive. Yet she cared very little for herself in comparison with Cecilia. She was only a vicarious snob, after all, and a very motherly and loving one, with harmless faults and weaknesses which every one forgave. The Princess Anatolie saw that the impression was made, and was satisfied for the present. She meant to have a little serious conversation with the Countess before they parted for the summer, and before the first impression had worn off, but it would have been a great mistake to talk business on such an occasion as the present. The fish was netted, that was the main thing; the next was to hasten the marriage as much as possible, for the Princess saw at once that Cecilia was not really in love with Guido, and as the fortune was hers, the girl had the power to draw back at the last moment; that is to say, that all the mothers of marriageable sons would declare that she was quite right in doing what Italian society never quite pardons in ordinary cases. An Italian girl who has broken off an engagement after it is announced does not easily find a husband at any price. Cecilia noticed that Monsieur Leroy was not present at the dinner, and as she sat next to Guido she asked him the reason in an undertone. "I do not know," he answered. "He is probably dining out. My aunt's relations do not like him much, I believe." The Countess was affectionately intent on everything her daughter said and did, and was possessed of very good hearing; she caught the exchange of question and answer, and it occurred to her that an absent person might always be made a subject of conversation. She was not far from the Princess at table. "By-the-bye," she asked, agreeably, "where is Monsieur Leroy?" Every one heard her speak, and to her amazement and confusion her words produced one of those appalling silences which are remembered through life by those who have accidentally caused them. Cecilia looked at Guido, and he was gravely occupied in digging the little bits of truffle out of some pâté de foie gras on his plate, for he did not like truffles. Not a muscle of his face moved. "I suppose he is at home," the Princess answered after a few seconds, in her most disagreeable and metallic tone. As Monsieur Leroy had told Cecilia that he lived in the house, she opened her eyes. Nobody spoke for several moments, and the Countess got very red, and fanned herself. A stout old gentleman of an apoplectic complexion and a merry turn of mind struggled a moment with an evident desire to laugh, then grasped his glass desperately, tried to drink, choked himself, and coughed and sputtered, just as if he had not been a member of an imperial family, but just a common mortal. "You are a good shot, Guido," said a man who was very much like him, but was older and had iron-grey hair, "you must be sure to come to us for the opening of the season." "I should like to," Guido answered, "but it is always a state function at your place." "The Emperor is not coming this year," explained the first speaker. "Why not?" asked the Princess Anatolie. "I thought he always did." The man with the iron-grey hair proceeded to explain why the Emperor was not coming, and the conversation began again, much to the relief of every one. The Countess listened attentively, for she was not quite sure which Emperor they meant. "Please ask your mother not to talk about Monsieur Leroy," Guido said, almost in a whisper. Cecilia thought that the advice would scarcely be needed after what had just happened, but she promised to convey it, and begged Guido to tell her the reason for what he said when he should have a chance. "I am sorry to say that I cannot," he answered, and at once began to talk about an indifferent subject. Cecilia answered him rather indolently, but not absently. She was at least glad that he did not speak of their future plans, where any one might hear what he said. She was growing used to the idea that she had promised to marry him, and that everybody expected the wedding to take place in a few weeks, though it looked utterly impossible to her. It was as if she had exchanged characters with him. He had become hopeful, enthusiastic, in love with life, actively exerting himself in every way. In a few days she had grown indolent and vacillating, and was willing to let every question decide itself rather than to force her decision upon circumstances. She felt that she was not what she had believed herself to be, and that it therefore mattered little what became of her. If she married Guido she should not live long, but it would be the same if she married any one else, since there was no one whom she liked half as much. On the day after the engagement was announced Lamberti came, with Guido, to offer his congratulations. Cecilia saw that he was thin and looked as if he were living under a strain of some sort, but she did not think that his manner changed in the least when he spoke to her. His words were what she might have expected, few, concise, and well chosen, but his face was expressionless, and his eyes were dull and impenetrable. He stayed twenty minutes, talking most of the time with her mother, and then took his leave. As soon as he had turned to go, Cecilia unconsciously watched him. He went out and shut the door very softly after him, and she started and caught her breath. It was only the shutting of a door, of course, and the door was like any other door, and made the same noise when one shut it--the click of a well-made lock when the spring pushes the bevelled latch-bolt into the socket. But it was exactly the sound she thought she heard each time her dream ended. The impression had passed in a flash, and no one had noticed her nervous movement. Since then, she had not met Lamberti, for after the engagement was made known she went out less, and Guido spent much more of his time at the Palazzo Massimo. Many people were leaving Rome, too, and those who remained were no longer inclined to congregate together, but stayed at home in the evening and only went out in the daytime when it was cool. Some had boys who had to pass their public examinations before the family could go into the country. Others were senators of the Kingdom, obliged to stay in town till the end of the session; some were connected with the ministry and had work to do; and some stayed because they liked it, for though the weather was warm it was not yet what could be called hot. The Countess wished the wedding to take place in July, and Guido agreed to anything that could hasten it. Cecilia said nothing, for she could not believe that she was really to be married. Something must happen to prevent it, even at the last minute, something natural but unexpected, something, above all, by which she should be spared the humiliation of explaining to Guido what she felt, and why she had honestly believed that she loved him. And after all, if she were obliged to marry him, she supposed that she would never be more unhappy than she was already. It was her fate, that was all that could be said, and she must bear it, and perhaps it would not be so hard as it seemed. A character weaker than hers might perhaps have turned against Guido; she might have found her friendly affection suddenly changed into a capricious dislike that would soon lead to positive hatred. But there was no fear of that. She only wished that he would not talk perpetually about the future, with so much absolute confidence, when it seemed to her so terribly problematic. Such conversations were made all the more difficult to sustain by the fact that if they were married, she, as the possessor of the fortune, would be obliged to decide many questions with regard to their manner of life. "For my part," Guido said, "I do not care where we live, so long as you like the place, but you will naturally wish to be near your mother." "Oh yes!" cried Cecilia, with more conviction than she had shown about anything of late. "I could not bear to be separated from her!" Lamberti had once observed to Guido that she was an indulgent daughter; and Guido had smiled and reminded his friend of the younger Dumas, who once said that his father always seemed to him a favourite child that had been born to him before he came into the world. Cecilia was certainly fond of her mother, but it had never occurred to Guido that she could not live without her. He was in a state of mind, however, in which a man in love accepts everything as a matter of course, and he merely answered that in that case they would naturally live in Rome. "We could just live here, for the present," she said. "There is the Palazzo Massimo. I am sure it is big enough. Should you dislike it?" She was thinking that if she could keep her own room, and have Petersen with her, and her mother, the change would not be so great after all. Guido said nothing, and his expression was a blank. "Why not?" Cecilia insisted, and all sorts of practical reasons suggested themselves at once. "It is a very comfortable house, though it is a little ghostly at night. There are dreadful stories about it, you know. But what does that matter? It is big, and in a good part of the city, and we have just furnished it; so of what use in the world is it to go and do the same thing over again, in the next street?" "That is very sensible," Guido was obliged to admit. "But you do not like the idea, I am sure," Cecilia said, in a tone of disappointment. "I had not meant that we should live in the same house with your mother," Guido said, with a smile. "Of course, she is a very charming woman, and I like her very much, but I think that when people marry they had much better go and live by themselves." "Nobody ever used to," objected Cecilia. "It is only of late years that they do it in Rome. Oh, I see!" she cried suddenly. "How dull of me! Yes. I understand. It is quite natural." "What?" asked Guido with some curiosity. "You would feel that you had simply come to live in our house, because you have no house of your own for us to live in. I ought to have thought of that." She seemed distressed, fancying that she had hurt him, but he had no false pride. "Every one knows my position," he answered. "Every one knows that if we live in a palace, in the way you are used to live, it will be with your money." There was a little pause, for Cecilia did not know what to say. Guido continued, following his own thoughts: "If I did not love you as much as I do, I could not possibly live on your fortune," he said. "I used to say that nothing could ever make me marry an heiress, and I meant it. One generally ends by doing what one says one will never do. A cousin of mine detested Germans and had the most extraordinary aversion for people who had any physical defect. She married a German who had lost the use of one leg by a wound in battle, and was extremely lame." "Did she love him?" asked Cecilia. "Devotedly, to his dying day. They were the most perfectly loving couple I ever knew." "Would you rather I were lame than rich?" Cecilia asked, with a little laugh. Guido laughed too. "That is one of those questions that have no answers. How could I wish anything so perfect as you are to have any defect? But I will tell you a story. An Englishman was very much in love with a lady who was lame, and she loved him but would not marry him. She said that he should not be tied to a cripple all his life. He was one of those magnificent Englishmen you see sometimes, bigger and better looking than other men. When he saw that she was in earnest he went away and scoured Europe till he found what he wanted--a starving young surgeon who was willing to cut off one of his legs for a large sum of money. That was before the days of chloroform. When the Englishman had recovered, he went home with his wooden leg, and asked the lady if she would marry him, then. She did, and they were happy." "Is that true?" Cecilia asked. "I have always believed it. That was the real thing." "Yes. That was the real thing." Cecilia's voice trembled a very little, and her eyes glistened. "The truth is," said Guido, "that it is easier to have one's leg cut off than to make a fortune." He was amused at his thought, but Cecilia was wondering what she would be willing to suffer, and able to bear, if any suffering could buy her freedom. At the same time, she knew that she would do a great deal to help him if he were in need or distress. She wondered, too, whether there could be any fixed relation between a sacrifice made for love and one made for friendship's sake. "There must never be any question of money between us," she said, after a pause. "What is mine must be ours, and what is ours must be as much yours as mine." "No," Guido answered gently. "That is not possible. I have quite enough for anything I shall ever need, but you must live in the way you like, and where you like, with your own fortune." "And you will be a sort of perpetual guest in my house!" For the first time there was a little bitterness in her laugh, and he looked at her quickly, for after the way she had spoken he had not thought that what he had said could have offended her. Of the two, he fancied that his own position was the harder to accept, the position of the "perpetual guest" in his wife's palace, just able to pay for his gloves, his cigarettes, and his small luxuries. He did not quite understand why she was hurt, as she seemed to be. On her part she felt as if she had done all she could, and was angry with herself, and not with him, because all her fortune was not worth a tenth of what he was giving her, nor a hundredth part. For an instant she was on the point of speaking out frankly, to tell him that she had made a great mistake. Then she thought of what he would suffer, and once more she resolved to think it all over before finally deciding. So nothing was decided. For when she was alone, all the old reasons came and arrayed themselves before her, with their hopeless little faces, like poor children standing in a row to be inspected, and trying to look their best though their clothes were ragged and their little shoes were out at the toes. But they were the only reasons she had, and she coaxed them into a sort of unreal activity till they brought her back to the listless state in which she had lived of late, and in which it did not matter what became of her, since she must marry Guido in the end. Her mother paid no attention to her moods. Cecilia had always been subject to moods, she said to herself, and it was not at all strange that she should not behave like other girls. Guido seemed satisfied, and that was the main thing, after all. He was not, but he was careful not to say so. The preparations for the wedding went on, and the Countess made up her mind that it should take place at the end of July. It would be so much more convenient to get it over at once, and the sooner Cecilia returned from her honeymoon, the sooner her mother could see her again. The good lady knew that she should be very unhappy when she was separated from the child she had idolised all her life; but she had always looked upon marriage as an absolute necessity, and after being married twice herself, she was inclined to consider it as an absolute good. She would no more have thought of delaying the wedding from selfish considerations than she would have thought of cutting off Cecilia's beautiful hair in order to have it made up into a false braid and wear it herself. So she busied herself with the dressmakers, and only regretted that both Cecilia and Guido flatly refused to go to Paris. It did not matter quite so much, because only three months had elapsed since the last interview with Doucet, and all the new summer things had come; and after all one could write, and some things were very good in Rome, as for instance all the fine needle-work done by the nuns. It would have been easier if Cecilia had shown some little interest in her wedding outfit. The girl tried hard to care about what was being made for her, and was patient in having gowns tried on, and in listening to her mother's advice. The days passed slowly and it grew hotter. After she had become engaged to Guido, she had broken with her dream life by an effort which had cost her more than she cared to remember. She had felt that it was not the part of a faithful woman to go on loving an imaginary man in her dreams, when she was the promised wife of another, even though she loved that other less or not at all. It was a maidenly and an honest conviction, but at the root of it lay also an unacknowledged fear which made it even stronger. The man in the dream might grow more and more like Lamberti, the dream itself might change, the man might have power over her, instead of submitting to her will, and he might begin to lead her whither he would. The mere idea was horrible. It was better to break off, if she could, and to remember the exquisite Vestal, faithful to her vows, living her life of saintly purity to the very end, in a love altogether beyond material things. To let that vision be marred, to suffer that life to be polluted by mortality, to see the Vestal break the old promises and fall to the level of an ordinary woman, would be to lose a part of herself and all that portion of her own existence which had been dearest to her. That would happen if the man's eyes changed ever so little from what they were in the dream to the likeness of those living ones that glittered and were ruthless. For the dream had really changed on the very night after she had met Lamberti; the loving look had been followed by the one fierce kiss she could never forget, and though afterwards the rest of the dream had all come back and had gone on to its end as before, that one kiss came with it again and again, and in that moment the eyes were Lamberti's own. It was no wonder that she dared not look into them when she met him. And worse still, she had begun to long for it in the dream. She blushed at the thought. If by any unheard-of outrage Lamberti should ever touch her lips with his in real life, she knew that she would scream and struggle and escape, unless his eyes forced her to yield. Then she should die. She was sure of it. But she would kill herself rather than be touched by him. She did not understand exactly, that is to say, scientifically, how she put herself into the dream state, for it was not a natural sleep, if it were sleep at all. She did not put out the light and lay her head on the pillow and lose consciousness, as Lamberti did, and then at once see the vision. In real sleep, she rarely dreamed at all, and never of what she always thought of as her other life. To reach that, she had to use her will, being wide awake, with her eyes open, concentrating her thoughts at first, as it seemed to her, to a single point, and then abandoning that point altogether, so that she thought of nothing while she waited. It was in her power not to begin the process, in other words not to hypnotise herself, though she never thought of it by that name; and when she had answered Guido's question, rightly or wrongly, she knew that it must be right to break the old habit. But she did not know what she had resolved to forego till the temptation came, that very night, after she had shut the door, and when she was about to light the candles, by force of habit. She checked herself. There was the high chair she loved to sit in, with the candles behind her, waiting for her in the same place. If she sat in it, the light would cast her shadow before her and the vision would presently rise in it. She had taken the lid off the little Wedgwood match box and the candles were before her. It seemed as if some physical power were going to force her to strike the wax match in spite of herself. If she did, five minutes would not pass before she should see the marble court of the Vestals' house, and then the rest--the kiss, and then the rest. She stiffened her arm, as if to resist the force that tried to move it against her will, and she held her breath and then breathed hard again. She felt her throat growing slowly dry and the blood rising with a strange pressure to the back of her head. If she let her hand move to take the match, she was lost. As the temptation increased she tried to say a prayer. Then, she did not know how, it grew less, as if a sort of crisis were past, and she drew a long breath of relief as her arm relaxed, and she replaced the lid on the box. She turned from the table and took the big chair away from its usual place. It was a heavy thing for a woman to carry, but she did not notice the weight till she had set it against the wall at the further end of the room. She slept little that night, but she slept naturally, and when she awoke there was no sound of the door being softly closed. But she missed something, and felt a dull, inexplicable want all the next day. A habit is not broken by a single interruption. It is hard for a man whose nerves are accustomed to a stimulant or a narcotic to go without it for one day, but that is as nothing compared with giving it up altogether. Specialists can decide whether there is any resemblance between the condition of a person under the influence of morphia or alcohol, and the state of a person hypnotised, whether by himself or by another, when that state is regularly accompanied by the illusion of some strong and agreeable emotion. Probably all means which produce an unnatural condition of the nerves at more or less regular hours may be classed together, and there is not much difference between the kind of craving they produce in those who use them. Moreover it is often said that it is harder for a woman to break a habit of that sort, than for a man. Cecilia was young, fairly strong and very elastic, but she suffered intensely when night came and she had to face the struggle. Bodily pain would have been a relief then, and she knew it, but there was none to bear. The chair looked at her from its distant place against the wall, and seemed to draw her to it, till she had it taken away, pretending that it did not suit the room. But when it was gone, she knew perfectly well that it really made no difference, and that she could dream in any other chair as easily. And then came a wild desire to see the man's face again, and to be sure that it had not changed. She was certain that she only wished to see it; she would have been overwhelmed with shame, all alone in her room, if she had acknowledged that it was the kiss that she craved and the one moment of indescribable intoxication that came with it. Are there not hundreds of men who earn their living by risking their lives every night in feats of danger, and who miss that recurring moment when they cannot have it? They will never admit that what they crave is really the chance of a painful death, yet it is perfectly true. Cecilia could not have been induced to think that she desired no longer the lovely vision of a perfect life; that she could have parted with that easily enough, though with much calm regret; and that, instead, she had a nervous, material, most earthly longing for the single moment in that life which was the contrary of perfect, which she despised, or tried to despise, and which she believed she feared. She struggled hard, and succeeded, and at last she could go to bed quietly, without even glancing at the place where the chair had stood, or at the candles on the table. Then, when it all seemed over, a terrible thing happened. She dreamed of the real Lamberti in her natural sleep, in a dream about real life. CHAPTER XV Cecilia knelt in the church of Santa Croce, near one of the ancient pillars. At a little distance behind her, Petersen sat in a chair reading a queer little German book that told her the stories of the principal Roman churches with the legends of the saints to which they are dedicated. A thin, smooth-shaven lay brother in black and white frock was slowly sweeping the choir behind the high altar. There was no one else in the church. Cecilia was kneeling on the marble floor, resting her folded hands upon the back of a rough chair, and there was no sound in the dim building, but the regular, soft brushing of the monk's broom. The girl's face was still and pale, her eyes were half closed, and her lips did not move; she did not hear the broom. That was the first time she had ever tried to spend an hour in meditation in a church, for her religion had never seemed very real to her. It was compounded of habit and the natural respect of a girl for what her mother practises and has taught her to practise, and it had continued to hold a place in her life because she had quietly exempted it from her own criticism; perhaps, too, because her reading had not really tended to disturb it, since by nature she was strongly inclined to believe in something much higher than the visible world. The Countess Fortiguerra believed with the simplicity of a child. Her first husband, freethinker, Garibaldian, Mazzinian, had at first tried to laugh her out of all belief, and had said that he would baptize her in the name of reason, as Garibaldi is said to have once baptized a new-born infant. But to his surprise his jests had not the slightest effect on the rather foolish, very pretty, perfectly frank young woman with whom he had fallen in love in his older years, and who, in all other matters, thought him a great man. She laughed at his atheism much more good-naturedly than he at her beliefs, and she went to church regularly in spite of anything he could say; so that at last he shrugged his shoulders and said in his heart that all women were half-witted creatures, where priests were concerned, but that fortunately the weakness did not detract from their charm. On her side, she prayed for his conversion every day, with clock-like regularity, but without the slightest result. Fortiguerra had been a man of remarkable gifts, extremely tolerant of other people's opinions. He never laughed at any sort of belief, though his wife never succeeded in finding out what he really thought about spiritual matters. He evidently believed in something, so she did not pray for his conversion, but interceded steadily for his enlightenment. Before he died he made no objection to seeing a priest, but his wife never knew whether he consented because it would have given her pain if he had refused, or whether he really desired spiritual comfort in his last moments. He was always most considerate of others and especially of her; but he was very reticent. So she mourned him and prayed that everything might be well with both her departed husbands, though she doubted whether they were in the same place. She supposed that Fortiguerra had sometimes discussed religion with his step-daughter, but he always seemed to take it for granted that the latter should do what her mother desired of her. It could hardly be expected that the girl should be what is called very devout, and as Petersen turned over the pages of her little book she wondered what had happened that Cecilia should kneel motionless on the marble pavement for more than half an hour in a church to which they had never come before, and on a week-day which was not a saint's day either. It was something like despair that had brought her to Santa Croce, and she had chosen the place because she could think of no other in which she could be quite sure of being alone, and out of the way of all acquaintances. She wanted something which her books could not give her, and which she could not find in herself; she wanted peace and good advice, and she felt that she was dealt with unjustly. Indeed, it was of little profit that she should have forced herself to give up what was dearest to her, unreal though it might be, since she was to be haunted by Lamberti's face and voice whenever she fell asleep. It was more like a possession of the evil one now than anything else. She would have used his own words to describe it, if she had dared to speak of it to any one, but that seemed impossible. She had thought of going to some confessor who did not know her by sight, to tell him the whole story, but her common sense assured her that she had done no wrong. It was advice she needed, and perhaps it was protection too, but it was certainly not forgiveness, so far as she knew. Lamberti pursued her, in her imagination, and she lived in terror of him. If she had been already married to Guido, she would have told her husband everything, and he would have helped her. By a revulsion that was not unnatural, it began to seem much easier to marry him now, and she turned to him in her thoughts, asking him to shield her from a man she feared. Guido loved her, and she was at least a devoted friend to him; there was no one but him to help her. As she knelt by the pillar she went over the past weeks of her life in a concentrated self-examination of which she would never have believed herself capable. "I am a grown woman," she said to herself, "and I have a right to think what grown women think. I know perfectly well which thoughts are good and which are bad, just as I know right from wrong in other ways. It was wrong to put myself into that dream state, because I wanted him to come to me. Yes, I confess it, I wanted him to come and kiss me that once, in the vision every night. It would not have been wrong if I had not said that I would marry Guido, but that made the difference. Therefore I gave it up. I will not do anything wrong with my eyes open. I will not. I would not, if I did not believe in God, because the thing would be wrong just the same. Religion makes it more wrong, that is all. If I were not engaged to Guido, and if I loved the other instead, then I should have a right to wish and dream that the other kissed me." She thought some time about this point, and there was something that disturbed her, in spite of her reasoning. "It would have been unmaidenly," she decided, at last. "I should be ashamed to tell my mother that I had done it. But it would not have been wrong, distinctly not. It would be wrong and abominable to think of two men in that way. "That is what is happening now, against my will. I go to sleep saying my prayers, and yet he comes to me in my dreams, and looks at me, and I cannot help letting him kiss me, and it is only afterwards that I feel how revolting it was. And in the daytime I am engaged to Guido, and I cannot help knowing that when we are married he will want to kiss me like that. It was different before, since I was able to give up seeing the marble court and being the Vestal, and did give it up. This is another thing, and it is bad, but it is not a wrong thing I am doing. Therefore it is something outside of my soul that is trying to do me harm, and may succeed in the end. It is a power of evil. How can I fight against it, since it comes when I am asleep and have no will? What ought I to do? "I am afraid to meet Signor Lamberti now, much more afraid than I was a week ago, before this other trouble began. But when I am dreaming, I am not afraid of him. I do what he makes me do without any resistance, and I am glad to do it. I want to be his slave, then. He makes me sit down and listen to him, and I believe all he says. We always sit on that bench near the fountain in my villa. He tells me that he loves me much better than Guido does, and that he is much better able to protect me than Guido. He says that his heart is breaking because he loves me and is Guido's friend, and he looks thin and worn, just as he does in real life. When I dream of him, I do not mind the glittering in his eyes, but when I meet him it frightens me. Of course, it is quite impossible that he should know how I dream of him now. Yet, I am sure he knew all about the other vision. He said very little, but I am sure of it, though I cannot explain it. This is much worse than the other. But if I go back to the other, I shall be doing wrong, because I shall be consenting; and now I am not doing wrong, because it happens against my will, and I go to sleep praying that it may never happen again, and I am in earnest. God help me! I know that when I sit beside him on the bench I love him! And yet he is the only man in all the world whom I wish never to meet again. God help me!" Her head sank upon her folded hands at last, and her eyes were closely shut. She threw her whole soul into the appeal to heaven for help and strength, till she believed that it must come to her at once in some real shape, with inspired wisdom and the comfort of the Holy Spirit. She had never before in her life prayed as she was praying now, with heart and soul and mind, though not with any form of words. Then came a moment in which she thought of nothing and waited. She knew it well, that blank between one state and the other, that total suspension of all her faculties just before she began to see an unreal world, that breathless stillness of anticipation before the supreme moment of change. She was quite powerless now, for her waking will was already asleep. The instant was over, and the vision had come, but it was not what she had always seen before. It was something strangely familiar, yet beautiful and high and clear. Her consciousness was in the midst of a world of light, at peace; and then, all round her, a brightness stole upwards as out of a clear and soft horizon, more radiant than the light itself that was already in the air. And as when evening creeps up to the sky the stars begin to shine faintly, more guessed at than really seen, so she began to see heavenly beings, growing more and more distinct, and she was lifted up among them, and all her heart cried out in joy and praise. And suddenly the cross shone out in a rosy radiance brighter than all, and from head to foot and from arm to arm of it the light flowed and flashed, and joined and passed and parted, in the holy sign. From itself came forth a melody, in which she was rapt and swept upwards as though she were herself a wave of the glorious sound. But of the words, three only came to her, and they were these: Arise and conquer![1] [1: A free translation of some passages in the fourteenth canto of Dante's _Paradiso_.] Then all was still and calm again, and she was kneeling at her chair, the sight still in her inward eyes, the words still ringing in her heart, but herself awake again. She knew the vision now that it was past; for often, reading the matchless verses of the "Paradise," she had intensely longed to see as the dead poet must have seen before he could write as he wrote. It did not seem strange that her hope should have been fulfilled at last in the church of the Holy Cross. Her lips formed the words, and she spoke them, consciously in her own voice, sweet and low: "Arise and conquer!" It was what she had prayed for--the peace, the strength, the knowledge; it was all in that little sentence. She rose to her feet, and stood still a moment, and her face was calm and radiant, like the faces of the heavenly beings she had looked upon. There was a world before her of which she had not dreamt before, better than that ancient one that had vanished and in which she had been a Vestal Virgin, more real than that mysterious one in which she had floated between two existences, and whence the miserable longing for an earthly body had brought her back to be Cecilia Palladio, and to fight again her battle for freedom and immortality. It mattered little that her prayer should have been answered by the imagined sight of something described by another, and long familiar to her in his lofty verse. The prayer was answered, and she had strength to go on, and she should find wisdom and light to choose the right path. Henceforth, when she was weak and weary, and filled with loathing of what she dreaded most, she could shut her eyes as she had done just now, and pray, and wait, and the transcendent glory of paradise would rise within her, and give her strength to live, and drive away that power of evil that hurt her, and made night frightful, and day but a long waiting for the night. She came out into the summer glare with the patient Petersen, and breathed the summer heat as if she were drawing in new life with every breath; and they drove home, down the long and lonely road that leads to the new quarter, between dust-whitened trees, and then down into the city and through the cooler streets, till at last the cab stopped before the columns of the Palazzo Massimo. Celia ran up the stairs, as if her light feet did not need to touch them to carry her upwards, while Petersen solemnly panted after her, and she went to her own room. She had a vague desire to change everything in it, to get rid of all the objects that reminded her of the miserable nights, and the sad hours of day, which she had spent there; she wanted to move the bed to the other end of the room, the writing table to the other window, the long glass to a different place, to hang the walls with another colour, and to banish the two tall candlesticks for ever. It would be like beginning her life over again. CHAPTER XVI After this Cecilia no longer avoided Lamberti; on the contrary, she sought opportunities of seeing him and of talking with him, for she was sure that she had gained some sort of new strength which could protect her against her imagination, till all her old illusions should vanish in the clear light of daily familiarity. For some time she did not dream of Lamberti, she believed that the spell was broken, and her fear of meeting him diminished quickly. She made her mother ask him to dinner, but he wrote an excuse and did not come. Then she complained to Guido, and Guido reproached his friend. "They really wish to know you better," he said. "If the Contessina ever felt for you quite the same antipathy which you felt for her, she has got over it. I think you ought to try to do as much. Will you?" The invitation was renewed for another day, and Lamberti accepted it. In the evening, in order to give his friend a chance of talking with Cecilia, Guido sat down by the Countess, and began to discuss matters connected with the wedding. It would have been contrary to all established custom that the marriage should take place without a contract, and that alone was a subject about which much could be said. Guido insisted that Cecilia should remain sole mistress of her fortune, and the Countess would naturally have made no objection, but the Princess had told her, and had repeated more than once, that she expected Cecilia to bring her husband a dowry of at least a million of francs. Baron Goldbirn thought this too much, but the Countess was willing to consent, because she feared that the Princess would make trouble at the last minute if she did not. Cecilia had of course never discussed the matter with the Princess, but she was altogether of the latter's opinion, and told her mother so. The obstacle lay in Guido's refusal to accept a penny of his future wife's fortune, and on this point the whole obstinacy of his father's race was roused. The Countess could manifestly not threaten to break off the engagement because Guido would not accept the dowry, but on the other hand she greatly feared Guido's aunt. So there was ample matter for discussion whenever the subject was broached. It was a hot evening, and all the curtains were drawn back before the open windows, only the blinds being closed. Cecilia and Lamberti gravitated, as it were, to the farther end of the room. A piano stood near the window there. "Do you play?" Lamberti asked, looking at the instrument. He thought that she did. All young girls are supposed to have talent for music. "No," Cecilia answered. "I have no accomplishments. Do you play the piano?" "Only by ear. I do not know a note of music." "Play me something. Will you? But I suppose the piano is out of tune, for nobody ever uses it since we stopped dancing." Lamberti touched the keys, standing, and struck a few soft chords. "No," he said. "It is not badly out of tune. But if I play, it will be the end of our acquaintance." "Perhaps it may be the beginning," Cecilia answered, and their eyes met for a moment. "If it amuses you, I will try," said Lamberti, looking away, and sitting down before the keys. "You must be easily pleased if you can listen to me," he added, laughing, as he struck a few chords again. Cecilia sat down in a low chair between him and the window, at the left of the key-board. Her mother glanced at Lamberti with a little surprise, and then went on talking with Guido. Lamberti began to play a favourite waltz, not loud, but with a good deal of spirit and a perfect sense of time. Cecilia had often danced to the tune in the spring, and liked it. He broke off suddenly, and made slow chords again. "Have you forgotten the rest?" Cecilia asked. "No. I was thinking of something else. Did you ever hear this?" He played an old Sicilian melody with one hand, and then took it up in a second part, and then a third, that made strange minor harmonies. "I never heard that," Cecilia said, as he looked at her. "I like it. It must be very ancient. Play it again." By way of answer, he began to sing the old song, accompanying himself with the same old harmonies. He had no particular voice, and it was more like humming than singing, so far as the tone was concerned, but he pronounced every word distinctly, and imitated the peculiar intonation of the southern people to perfection. "Do you understand?" he asked, when he came to the end. "Not a word." Cecilia asked, "Is it Arabic? It sounds like it." "No. It is our own beloved Italian," laughed Lamberti, "only it is the Sicilian dialect. If that sort of thing amuses you, I can go on for hours." Many Italians have the facility he possessed, and the good memory for both words and music, and he had unconsciously developed what talent he had, in places where time was long and there was nothing to do. He changed the key and hummed a little Arab melody from the desert. Cecilia sat quite still and watched the outline of his head against the light. It was an energetic head, but the face was not a cruel one, and this evening she had not seen what she called the ruthless look in his eyes. She was not at all afraid of him now, nor would she have been even if they had been quite alone in the room. She almost wished to tell him so, and then smiled at the thought. So this was the reality of the vision that had haunted her dreams and had caused her such unutterable suffering until she had found strength to break the habit of her imagination. The reality was not at all terrible. She could imagine the man roused to action, fighting for his life, single-handed against many, as she had been told that he had fought. He looked both brave and strong. But she could not imagine that she should ever have cause to be afraid of him again. There he sat, beside her, humming snatches of songs he remembered from his many voyages, his hands moving not at all gracefully over the keys; he was evidently a very simple and good-natured man, willing to do anything that could amuse her, without the slightest affectation. He was just the kind of friend for Guido, and it was her duty to like Guido's friend. It would not be hard, now that she had got out of the labyrinth of absurd illusions that had made it impossible. She resolutely put aside the recollection of that afternoon at the Villa Madama. It belonged to the class of things about which she was determined never to think again. "Arise and conquer!" She had come back to her real self, and had overcome. He stopped singing, but his hands still lay on the keys and he struck occasional chords; and he turned his face half towards her, and spoke in an undertone. "I am very sorry if I offended you by not coming more often to your house," he said. "Guido told me. I thought perhaps you would understand why I did not come." Cecilia looked at him and was silent for a moment, but she felt very strong and sure of herself. "Signor Lamberti," she said presently, "I want to ask you to do something--for me." There was a little emphasis on the last word. He turned quite towards her now, but he still made chords on the instrument, for he knew that the Countess had extraordinary ears. His impulse was to tell her that he would do anything she asked of him, no matter how hard it might be; but he controlled it. "Certainly," he answered. "What is it?" "Forget that we met in the Forum, and forget what we said to each other at the garden party. Will you? It was all a coincidence, of course, but I behaved very foolishly, and I do not like to think that you remember it. Will you try and forget it all?" "I will try," Lamberti answered, looking down at the keys. "At all events, I can promise never to remind you of it, as I did just now." "That is what I meant," Cecilia said. "Let us never remind each other of it. Of course we cannot really forget, in our own selves, but we can begin again from the beginning, this evening, as if it had never happened. We can be real friends, as we ought to be." "Can we?" Lamberti asked the question in a doubtful tone, and glanced uneasily at her. "I can, if you can," she answered courageously, "and I mean to be." "Then I can, too," Lamberti said, but his lips shut tightly as if he regretted the words as soon as they were spoken. "It will be easy, now," Cecilia went on. "It will be much easier because----" She stopped. "Why will it be so much easier?" Lamberti asked, looking down again. "We were not going to speak of those things again," Cecilia said. "We had better not begin." "I only ask that one question. Tell me why it will be easier now. It may help me to forget." "It will be easier--because I do not dream of you any more--I mean of the man who is like you." She was blushing faintly, but she knew that he would not look at her, and she was sitting in the shadow. "On what day did you stop dreaming?" he asked, between two chords. "It was last week. Let me see. It was a Wednesday. On Wednesday night I did not dream." He nodded gravely over the keys, as if he had expected the answer. "Did you ever read anything about telepathy?" he asked. "I did not dream of you on Wednesday night either. It seemed to me that I tried to find you and could not." "Were you trying to find me before?" Cecilia asked, as if it were the most natural question in the world. "Yes. In my dreams I almost always found you. There was a break--I forget when. The old dream about the house of the Vestals stopped suddenly. Then I missed you and tried to find you. You were always sitting on that bench by the fountain in the villa. Last Wednesday I dreamt I was there, but you did not come." Cecilia shuddered, as if the night air from the open window chilled her. "Are you cold?" he asked. "Shall I shut the window?" "No, I was frightened," she answered. "We must never talk about all that again. Do you know, I think it is wrong to talk about them. There is some power of evil----" "I do not deny the existence of the devil at all," Lamberti answered, with a faint smile. "But I think this is only a strange case of telepathy. I will do as you wish; though my own belief is, after this evening, that it is better to talk about it all quite fearlessly, and grow used to it. We shall be much less afraid of it if we look upon it as something not at all supernatural, which could easily be explained if we knew enough about those things." "Perhaps," Cecilia answered doubtfully. "You may be right. I do not know." "You are going to marry my most intimate friend," Lamberti continued, "and I am unfortunately condemned to stay in Rome for some time, for a year, I fancy, and perhaps even longer." "Why do you say that you are 'unfortunately condemned' to stay?" "Because I did my best to get away. You look surprised. I begged the Minister to shorten my leave and send me to sea at once, with or without promotion. Instead, I was named a member of a commission which will sit a long time. Since we are talking frankly, I wanted to get away from you, and not to see you again for years. But now that I must stay here, or leave the service, we cannot help meeting; so I think it is more sensible not to take any solemn oaths never to allude to these strange coincidences, or whatever they are, but to talk them out of existence; all the more so, as they seem to have suddenly come to an end. I only tell you what would be easier for me; but I will do whatever makes it most easy for you." "I prayed that they might stop," said Cecilia, in a very low voice. "I want you to be my friend, and as long as I dreamt of you--in that way--I felt that it was impossible." "Of course," Lamberti answered, without hesitation. Then, with an attempt at a laugh, he corrected himself. "I apologise for all the things I said to you in my dreams." "Please do not laugh about it." Her voice was a little unsteady, and she was looking down, so that he could not see her face. "It is better not to take it too seriously," he replied gravely. "Could anything be more absurd than that two people who were mere acquaintances then should fall in love with each other in their dreams? It is utterly ridiculous. Any sane person would laugh at the idea." "Yes; no doubt. But there is more than that. Call it telepathy, or whatever you please, it cannot be a mere coincidence. Do you know that, until last Wednesday, I met you in my dream, just where you dreamed of meeting me, at the bench in the villa?" He did not seem surprised, but listened attentively while she continued. "I am sure that we really met," she went on gravely. "It may be in some natural way or not. It does not matter. We must never meet again like that--never. Do you understand? We must promise never to try and find each other in our dreams. Will you promise?" "Yes; I promise." Lamberti spoke gravely. "I promise, too," Cecilia said. Then they were both silent for a time. It was like a real parting, and they felt it, and for a few moments each was thinking of the bench by the fountain in the Villa Madama. "We owe it to Guido," Lamberti said at last, almost unconsciously. "Yes," the girl answered; "and to ourselves. Thank you." With an impulse she did not suspect, she held out her hand to him, and waited for him to take it. Neither her mother nor Guido could see the gesture, for Lamberti's seated figure screened her from them; but he could not have taken her hand in his right without changing his position, since she was seated low on his other side; so he took it quietly in his left, and the two met and pressed each the other for a second. In that touch Cecilia felt that all her fear of him ended for ever, and that of all men she could trust him the most, and that he would protect her, if ever he might, even more effectually than Guido. His hand was cool, and steady, and strong, and enfolding--the hand of a brave man. But if she had looked she would have seen that his face was paler than usual, and that his eyes seemed veiled. She rose, and he followed her as she moved slowly forward. "What a charming talent you have!" cried the Countess in an encouraging tone, when Lamberti was near her. "Have you made acquaintance at last?" Guido was asking of Cecilia, in an undertone. "Yes," she answered gravely. "I think we shall be good friends." CHAPTER XVII People said that Guido had ceased to be interesting since he had been engaged to be married. Until that time, there had been an element of romance about him, which many women thought attractive; and most men had been willing to look upon him as a being slightly superior to themselves, who cared only for books and engravings, though he never thrust his tastes upon other people, nor made any show of knowing more than others, and whose opinion on points of honour was the very best that could be had. It was so good, indeed, that he was not often asked to give it. Now, however, they said that he was changed; that he was complacent and pleased with himself; that this was no wonder, because he was marrying a handsome fortune with a pretty and charming wife; that he had done uncommonly well for himself; and much more to the same purpose. Also, the mothers of impecunious marriageable sons of noble lineage said in their maternal hearts that if they had only guessed that Countess Fortiguerra would give her daughter to the first man who asked for her, they would not have let Guido be the one. The judgments of society are rarely quite at fault, but they are almost always relative and liable to change. They are, indeed, appreciations of an existing state of things, rather than verdicts from which there is no appeal. The verdict comes after the state of things has ceased to exist. Guido was happy, and nothing looks duller than the happiness of quiet people. Nobody will go far to look at the sea when it is calm, if he is used to seeing it at all; but those who live near it will walk a mile or two to watch the breakers in a storm. In the first place, Guido was in love, and more in love with Cecilia's face and figure than he guessed. In the early days of their acquaintance he had enjoyed talking with her about the subjects in which she was interested. Such conversation generally brought him to that condition of intellectual suspense which was peculiarly delightful to him, for though she did not persuade him to accept her own points of view, she made him feel more doubtful about his own, so far as any of them were fixed, and doubt meant revery, musing, imaginative argument about questions that might never be answered. But he and she had now advanced to another stage. Unconsciously, all that side of his nature had fallen into abeyance, and he thought only of positive things in the immediate future. When he was with Cecilia, no matter how the conversation began, it soon turned upon their plans for their married life; and he found it so infinitely pleasant to talk of such matters that it did not occur to him to ask whether she regarded them as equally interesting. She did not; she saw the change in him, and regretted it. A woman who is not really in love, generally likes a man less after he has fallen hopelessly in love with her. It is true that she sometimes likes herself the better for her new conquest, and there may be some compensation in that; but there is something tiresome, if not repugnant to her, in the placid, possessive complacency of a future husband, who seems to forget that a woman has any intelligence except in matters concerning furniture and the decoration of a house. Cecilia was not capricious; she really liked Guido as much as ever, and she would not even admit that he bored her when he came back again and again to the same topics. She tried hard to look forward to the time when all the former charm of their intercourse should return, and when, besides being the best of friends, he would again be the most agreeable of companions. It seemed very far off; and yet, in her heart, she hoped that something might happen to hinder her marriage, or at least to put it off another year. Her life seemed very blank after the great struggle was ended, and in the long summer mornings before Guido came to luncheon, she was conscious of longing for something that should take the place of the old dreams, something she could not understand, that awoke under the listlessness which had come upon her. It was a sort of sadness, like a regret for a loss that had not really been suffered, and yet was present; it was a craving for sympathy where she had deserved none, and it made her inclined to pity herself without reason. She sometimes felt it after Guido had come, and it stayed with her, a strange yearning after an unknown happiness that was never to be hers, a half-comforting and infinitely sad conviction that she was to die young and that people would mourn for her, but not those, or not that one, who ought to be most sorry that she was gone. All her books were empty of what she wanted, and for hours she sat still, doing nothing, or stood leaning on the window-sill, gazing down through the slats of the blinds at the glaring street, unconscious of the heat and the strong light, and of the moving figures that passed. Occasionally she drove out to the Villa Madama in the afternoon with her mother, and Guido joined them. Lamberti did not come there, though he often came to the house in the evening, sometimes with his friend, and sometimes later. The two always went away together. At the villa, Cecilia never sat down on the bench by the fountain, but from a distance she looked at it, and it was like looking at a grave. In dreams she had sat there too often with another to go there alone now; she had heard words there that touched her heart too deeply to be so easily forgotten, and there had been silences too happy to forget. She had buried all that by the garden seat, but it was better not to go near the place again. What she had laid out of sight there might not be quite dead yet, and if she sat in the old place she might hear some piteous cry from beneath her feet; or its ghost might rise and stare at her, the ghost of a dream. Then, the yearning and the longing grew stronger and hurt her sharply, and she turned under the great door, into the hall, and was very glad when her mother began to chatter about dress and people. But one day the very thing happened which she had always tried to avert. Guido insisted on walking up and down the path with her, and they passed and repassed the bench, till she was sure that he would make her sit down upon it. She tried to linger at the opposite end, but he was interested in what he was saying and did not notice her reluctance to turn back. Then it came. He stood still by the fountain, and then he sat down quite naturally, and evidently expecting her readiness to do the same. She started slightly and looked about, as if to find some means of escape, but a moment later she had gathered her courage and was sitting beside him. The scene came back with excessive vividness. There was the evening light, the first tinge of violet on the Samnite mountains, the base of Monte Cavo already purple, the glow on Frascati, and nearer, on Marino; Rome was at her feet, in a rising mist beyond the flowing river. Guido talked on, but she did not hear him. She heard another voice and other words, less gentle and less calm. She felt other eyes upon her, waiting for hers to answer them, she felt a hand stealing near to hers as her own lay on the bench at her side. Still Guido talked, needing no reply, perfectly confident and happy. She did not hear what he said, but when he paused she mechanically nodded her head, as if agreeing with him, and instantly lost herself again. She could not help it. She expected the touch, and the look, and then the blinding rush that used to come after it, lifting her from her feet and carrying her whole nature away as the south wind whirls dry leaves up with it and far away. That did not come, and presently she was covering her face with both hands, shaking a little, and Guido was anxiously asking what had happened. "Nothing," she answered rather faintly. "It is nothing. It will be over in a moment." He thought that she had felt the sudden chill of the evening which is sometimes dangerous in Rome in midsummer, and he rose at once. "We had better go in before you catch cold," he said. "Yes. Let us go in." For the first time, his words really jarred on her. For the rest of her life, he would tell her when to go indoors before catching cold. He was possessive, complacent; he already looked upon her as a person in his charge, if not as a part of his property. Unreasoningly, she said to herself it was no concern of his whether she caught cold or not, and besides, there was no question of such a thing. She had covered her eyes with her hands for a very different reason, and was ashamed of having done it, which made matters worse. In anger she told herself boldly that she wished that he were not himself, only that once, but that he were Lamberti, who at least took the trouble to amuse her and never put on paternal airs to enquire about her health. It was the beginning of revolt. Guido dined with them that evening, and she was silent and absent-minded. Before the hour at which he usually went away, she rose and bade him good night, saying that she was a little tired. "I am sure you caught cold to-day," he said, with real anxiety. "We will not go to the villa again," she answered. "Good night." It was late before she really went to bed, for when she was at last rid of the conscientious Petersen, she sat long in her chair at the writing table with a blank sheet of letter paper before her and a pen in her hand. She dipped it into the ink often, and her fingers moved as if she were going to write, but the point never touched the paper. At last the pen lay on the table, and she was resting her chin upon her folded hands, her eyes half closed, her breath drawn in short sighs that came and went between her parted lips. Then, though she was all alone, the blood rose suddenly in her face and she sprang to her feet, angry with herself and frowning, and ashamed of her thoughts. She felt hot, and then cold, and then almost sick with disgust. The vision that had delighted her was far away now; she had forced herself not to see it, but the man in it had come back to her in dreams; she had driven him out of them, and for a time she had found peace, but now he came to her in her waking thoughts and she longed to see his living face and to hear his real voice. With utter self-contempt and scorn of her own heart, she guessed that this was love, or love's beginning, and that nothing could save her now. Her first impulse was to write to him, to beg him to go away at any price, never to see her again as long as she lived. As that was out of the question, she next thought of writing to Guido, to tell him that she could not marry him, and that she had made up her mind to retire from the world and spend her life in a convent. But that was impossible, too. There was no time to be lost. Either she must make one supreme effort to drive Lamberti from her thoughts and to get back to the state in which she had felt that she could marry Guido and be a good wife to him, or else she must tell him frankly that the engagement must end. He would ask why, and she would refuse to tell him, and after that she did not dare to think of what would happen. It might ruin his life, for she knew that he loved her very much. She was honestly and truly much more concerned for him than for herself. It did not matter what became of her, if only she could speak the truth to him without bringing harm to him in the future. The world might say what it pleased. It was right to break off her engagement, beyond question, and she had done very wrong in ever agreeing to it; it was the greatest sin she had ever committed, and with a despairing impulse she sank upon her knees and poured out her heart in full confession of her fault. Never in her life had she confessed as she did now, with such a whole-hearted hatred of her own weakness, such willingness to bear all blame, such earnest desire for forgiveness, such hope for divine guidance in making reparation. She would not plead ignorance, nor even any omission to examine herself, as an excuse for what she had done. It was all her fault, and her eyes had been open from the first, and she was about to see the whole life of a good friend ruined through her miserable weakness. As she went over it all, burying her face in her hands, the conviction that she loved Lamberti grew with amazing quickness to the certainty of a fact long known. This was her crime, that she had been too proud to own that she had loved him at first sight; her punishment should be never to see him again. She would abase herself before Guido and confess everything to him in the very words she was whispering now, and she would implore his forgiveness. Then, since Lamberti could not leave Rome, she and her mother would go away on a long journey, to Russia, perhaps, or to America, or China, and they would never come back. It must be easy enough to avoid one particular person in the whole world. This she would do, but she would not deny that she loved him. All her fault had lain in trying to deny it in spite of what she felt when he was near her, and it must be still more wrong to force the fact out of sight now that it had brought her into such great trouble. There was nothing to be done but to acknowledge it, though it was shame and humiliation to do so. It stared her in the face, now that she had courage to own the truth, and a voice called out that she had lied to herself, to her mother, and to Guido for many weeks, and persistently, rather than admit that she could fall so low. But even then, in the midst of her self-abasement, another voice answered that it was no shame to love a good and true man, and that Lamberto Lamberti was both. CHAPTER XVIII That night seemed the longest in all Cecilia's young life. She was worn out with fatigue, and could have slept ten hours, yet she dreaded to fall asleep lest she should dream of Lamberti, and speak to him in her dream as she meant never to speak to any man now. Just when she was losing consciousness, she roused herself as one does who fears a horrible nightmare that comes back again and again. She was afraid to be alone in the dark with her fear, and she had left one light burning where it could not shine into her eyes. If she did not sleep before daylight, she might not dream after that. When she shut her eyes she saw Lamberti looking at her. She rose and bathed her face and temples. The water was not very cold in July, after standing in the room half the night, but it cooled her brows a little and she lay down again, and tried to repeat things she knew by heart. She knew all the fourteenth canto of the "Paradise," for instance, and said it over, and tried to see what it described as she had seen it all in the church of Santa Croce. While she whispered the words she looked forward to those she loved best, the ones that bade her rise and get the victory, and she went on with intense anticipation. Before she reached them she lost herself, and they formed themselves on her lips unnoticed as she saw Lamberti's face again. It was unbearable. She sat up on the edge of the bed and stared into the shadow, and presently she grasped her left arm above the elbow and tried to force her nails into the flesh, with the instinctive idea that pain must bring peace after it. But she could hardly hurt herself at all in that way. Again she rose, and she went and looked at her reflection in the tall glass. There was not much light in the room, but she could see that she was very pale, and that her eyes had a strange look in them, more like Lamberti's than her own. It was a possession; she found him everywhere. Behind her image in the glass she saw the door of the room, the only one there was, which she had so often heard closed softly just as her dream ended. She shivered, for the Palazzo Massimo is a ghostly place at night, and her nerves were unstrung by what she had suffered. She knew that she was dizzy for a moment, and the glass grew misty and then clear, and reflected nothing to her sight, nothing but the whole door, as if she herself were not standing there, all in white, between it and the mirror. It was going to open, she felt sure. It was going to open softly, though she knew it was locked, and then some one would enter. She shivered again, and felt her loose hair rising on her head, as if lifted by a cool breeze. It was a moment of agony, and her teeth chattered. He was coming, and she was paralysed, helpless to move, rooted to the spot. In one second more she must hear the slipping of the latch bolt, and he would be behind her. No, nothing came. Gradually she began to see herself in the glass again, a faint ashy outline, then a transparent image, like the wraith of her dead self, with staring eyes and dishevelled colourless hair. Her terror was gone; she vaguely wondered where she had been, and looked curiously at her reflected face. "I think I am going mad," she said aloud, but quite quietly, as she turned away from the mirror. She lay down again on her back, her arms straightened by her sides, and she looked at the ceiling. Since she must think of something, she would try to think out what she was to say and do on the morrow. She would telephone to Guido in the morning to come and see her, of course, and in twenty minutes he would be sitting beside her on the little sofa in the drawing-room. Then she would tell him everything, just as she had confessed it all to herself that evening. She would throw herself upon his mercy, she would say that she was irresistibly drawn to his friend; but she would promise never to see Lamberti again, since that was to be the punishment of her fault. There was clearly nothing else to do, if she had any self-respect left, any modesty, any sense of decency. It would be hard in the beginning, but afterwards it would grow easier. Poor Guido! he would not understand at first, and he would look at her as if he were dazed. She would give anything to save him the pain of it all, but he must bear it, and in the end it would be much better. Of course, the cowardly way would be to make her mother tell him. She had not thought of her mother till then, but she had grown used to directing her, and to feeling that she herself was the ruling spirit of the two. Her mother would accept the decision, though she would protest a good deal, and cry a little. That was to be regretted, but it did not really matter since this was a question of absolute right or absolute wrong, in which there was no choice. She would not see Lamberti again, not even to say good-bye. It would be wicked to see him, now that she knew the truth. But it was right to own bravely that she loved him. If she hesitated in that, there would be no sense in what she meant to do. She loved him with all her heart, with everything in her, with every thought and every instinct, as she had loved long ago in her vision. And as she had overcome then, for the sake of a vow from which she was really freed, so she would conquer again for the sake of the promise she had given to Guido d'Este, and was going to revoke to-morrow. A far cry echoed through the silent street, and there was a faint grey light between the slats of the blinds. The darkness was ended at last, and perhaps she might allow herself to sleep now. She tried, but she could not, and she watched the dawn growing to cold daylight in the room, till the single lamp hardly glimmered in the corner. She closed her lids and rested as well as she could till it was time to get up. She was very pale, and there were deep violet shadows under her eyes and below the sharp arches of her brows, but Petersen was very near-sighted, and noticed nothing unusual. Cecilia told her to telephone to Guido, asking him to come at ten o'clock. When the maid returned, Cecilia bade her arrange her hair very low at the back and to make it as smooth as possible. There was not the slightest conscious desire for effect in the order; when a woman has made up her mind to humiliate herself she always makes her hair look as unobtrusive as possible, just as a conscience-stricken dog drops his tail between his legs and hangs down his ears to avert wrath. We men are often very unjust to women about such things, which depend on instincts as old as humanity. Eastern mourners do not strew ashes on their heads because it is becoming to their appearance, and a woman's equivalents for ashes and sackcloth are to do her hair low and wear grey, if she chances to dislike that colour. "Are you going to confession, my dear?" asked the Countess in some surprise when they met. "No," Cecilia answered. "I could not sleep last night. I have telephoned to Guido to come at ten." The Countess looked at her and instantly understood that there was trouble. "You are as white as a sheet," she said, with caution. "You had better let him come after luncheon to-day." "No. I must see him at once." "Something has happened," the Countess said nervously. "I know something has happened." "I will tell you by-and-by. Please do not ask me now." Her mother's look of anxiety turned slowly to an expression of real fear, her eyes opened wide, she grew pale, and her jaw fell as her lips parted. She looked suddenly old and grey. "You are not going to marry him after all," she said, after a breathless little silence. Some seconds passed before Cecilia answered, and then her voice was sad and low. "How can I? I do not love him." The Countess was horror-struck now, for she knew her daughter well. She began to speak rather incoherently, but with real earnestness, imploring Cecilia to think of what she was doing before it was too late, to consider Guido's feelings, her own, everybody's, to reflect upon the view the world would take of such bad faith, and, finally, to give some reason for her sudden decision. It was in vain that she pleaded. Cecilia, grave and suffering, answered that she had taken everything into consideration and knew that she was doing right. The world might call it bad faith to break an engagement, but it would be nothing short of a betrayal to marry Guido since she had become sure that she could never love him. That was reason enough, and she would give no other. It was better that Guido should suffer for a few days than be made to suffer for a lifetime. She had not consulted any one, she said, when her mother questioned her; she would have done so if this had been a matter needing judgment and wisdom, but it was merely one of right and wrong, and she knew what was right, and meant to do it. The Countess began to cry, and when Cecilia tried to soothe her, she pushed the girl aside and left the room in tears. A few minutes later Petersen telephoned for the carriage, and in less than half an hour the Countess was on her way to see Princess Anatolie, entirely forgetful of the fact that Cecilia would be quite alone when Guido came at ten o'clock. Cecilia sat quite still in the drawing-room waiting for him. She was very tired and pale, and her eyes smarted for want of sleep, but her courage was not likely to fail her. She only wished that all might be over soon, as condemned men do when they are waiting for execution. She sat still a long time and she heard the little French clock on her mother's writing table in the boudoir strike its soft chimes at the third quarter, and then ring ten strokes at the full hour. She listened anxiously for the servant's step beyond the door, and now and then she caught her breath a little when she thought she heard a sound. It was twenty minutes past ten when the door opened. She expected the man to stand still, and announce Guido, and she looked away; but the footsteps came nearer and nearer and stopped beside her. The man held out a small salver on which lay a note addressed in Guido's hand. It was like a reprieve after the long tension, for something must have happened to prevent him from coming, something unexpected, but welcome, though she would not own it. In answer to her question, the man said that the messenger had gone away, and he left the room. She tore the envelope with trembling fingers. Guido was ill. That was the substance of the note. He had felt ill when he awoke early in the morning, but had thought it nothing serious, though he was very uncomfortable. Unknown to him, his man had sent for a doctor, who had come half an hour ago, after Cecilia's message had been received and answered. The doctor had found him with high fever, and thought it was a sharp attack of influenza; at all events he had ordered Guido to stay in bed, and gave him little hope of going out for several days. The note dropped on Cecilia's knees before she had read the words of loving regret with which it closed, and she found herself wondering whether Lamberti would have been hindered from coming by a mere touch of fever, under the same circumstances. But she would not allow herself to dwell on that long, for it gave her pleasure to think of Lamberti, and all such pleasure she intended to deny herself. It was quite bad enough to know that she loved him with all her heart. She went back to her own room. There was nothing to be done but to write to Guido at once, for she would not allow the day to pass without telling him what she meant to do. She sat down and wrote as well as she could, weighing each sentence, not out of caution, but in fear lest she should not make it clear that she was altogether to blame for the mistake she had made, and meant to bear all the consequences in the eyes of the world. She was truly and sincerely penitent, and asked his forgiveness with touching humility. She did not mention Lamberti, but she confessed frankly that since she had been in Rome she had begun to love another man, as she ought to have loved Guido, a man whom she rarely saw, and who had never shown the least inclination to make love to her. That was the substance of what she wrote. She read the words over, to be sure that they said what she meant, and she told Petersen to send a man at once with the letter. There was no answer, he was not to wait. She gave the order rather hurriedly, for she wished her decision to become irrevocable as soon as possible. It was a physical relief, but not a mental one, to feel that it was done and that she could never recall the fatal words. After reading such a letter there could be nothing for Guido to do but to accept the situation and tell his friends that she had broken the engagement. As for the immediate effect it might have on him, she did not even take his slight illness into consideration. The fact that he could not come and see her might even make it easier for him to bear the blow. Of course, if he came, she should be obliged to receive him, but she hoped that he would not. It would hurt her to see how much he was hurt, and she was suffering enough already. In time she trusted that he and she might be good friends, as young girls have an unreasonable inclination to hope in such cases. When the Countess came back from her visit to the Princess Anatolie she was a little flushed, and there was a hard look in her face which Cecilia had never seen before, and which made her expect trouble. To her surprise, her mother kissed her affectionately on both cheeks. "That old woman is a harpy," she said, as she left the room. CHAPTER XIX Guido took Cecilia's letter with a smile of pleasure when his man brought it to him, and, as he felt its thickness between his fingers, the delightful anticipation of reading it alone was already a real happiness. She was distressed and anxious for him, he was sure, and perhaps in saying so she had found some expression less formal than those she generally used when she talked with him and assured him that she really liked him very much. "You may go," he said to his servant. "I need nothing more, thank you." He was in bed, propped up by three or four pillows, and his face was unnaturally flushed and already looked thin. A new book of memoirs, half cut, and with the paper-knife between the leaves, lay on the arras counterpane, in the middle of which royal armorial bearings with crown and sceptre were represented in the fat arms of smiling cherubs. The head of the carved bed was towards the windows of the wide room, so that the light fell from behind; for Guido was an indolent man, and often lay reading for an hour before he got up. On the small table beside him stood a heavy Venetian tumbler of the eighteenth century, ornamented with gold designs. A cigarette-case lay beside it. The carpet of the room had been taken up for the summer, and the floor was of dark red tiles, waxed and immaculate. In a modest way, and though he was comparatively a poor man, Guido had always managed to have what he wanted in the way of surroundings. He looked at the address on the note, prolonging his anticipation as much as possible. He recognised the neat French envelope as one of those the Countess always had on her table in a stamped leather paper-rack. He felt it again, and was sure that it contained at least four sheets. It was good of her to write so much, and he had not really expected anything. He forgot that his head was aching, that he had a tiresome pain in his bones, and could feel the fever pulse beating in his temples. He glanced at the door, and then raised the letter to his dry lips, with a look of boyish pleasure. Five minutes later the crumpled pages were crushed in his straining fingers, and he lay twisted to one side, his face to the wall and half buried in the pillow. The grief of his life had come upon him unawares, and he was not able to bear it. Even if he had not been alone, he could not have hidden what he felt then. After a long time he got up and softly locked the door. He felt very dizzy as he came and lay down again. One of the crumpled sheets of Cecilia's letter had fallen to the floor, the rest lay on the bed beside him and under him. He lay still, and when he shut his eyes he saw red waves coming and going, for the fever was high, and the blood beat up under his ears as if the arteries must burst. In an hour his man knocked at the door, and almost at the same instant turned the handle, for he was accustomed to be admitted at once. "Go away!" cried Guido, in a hoarse voice that stuck in his throat. The servant's footsteps echoed in the corridor, and there was silence again, and time passed. Then the knock was repeated, very discreetly and with no attempt to turn the handle. Guido answered with an oath. But his man was not satisfied this time, and he stood still outside, with a puzzled expression. He had never heard Guido swear at any one, in all the years of his service, much less at himself. His master was either in a delirium, or something very grave had happened which he had learned by the letter. The doctor had said that he was not dangerously ill, so it was not likely that he should be already raving with the fever. The man went softly away to his pantry, where the telephone was, shutting each door carefully behind him. There was nothing to be done but to inform Lamberti at once, if he could be found. It was late in the afternoon before he got the message, on coming home from a long day's work at the Ministry of War. He had not breakfasted that day, for he had been unexpectedly sent for in the morning and had been kept at the Ministry without a moment's respite. Without going to his room he ran down the stairs again and hailed the first cab he met as he hurried towards the Palazzo Farnese. The bedroom door was still locked, but he spoke to Guido through it, in answer to the rough order to go away which followed his first knock. There was no reply. "Please let me in," Lamberti said quietly. "I want very much to see you." Something like a growl came from the room, and presently there was a sound of slippers on the smooth tiles, coming nearer. The key turned and the door was opened a little. "What is it?" Guido asked, in a voice unlike his own. "I heard you were ill, and I have come to see you." Lamberti spoke gently and steadily, but he was shocked by Guido's appearance, as the latter stood before him in his loose silk garments, looking gaunt and wild. There were great rings round his eyes, his face was haggard and drawn, and his cheek-bones were flushed with the fever. He looked much more ill than he really was, so far as his body was concerned. "Well, come in," he said, after a moment's hesitation. As soon as Lamberti had entered Guido locked the door again to keep his servant out. "I suppose you had better be the first to know," he said hoarsely, as he recrossed the room with unsteady steps. He sat down upon the edge of his bed, supporting himself with his hands on each side, his head a little bent. "What has happened?" Lamberti asked, sitting on the nearest chair and watching him. "Has your aunt been troubling you again?" "No. It is worse than that." Guido paused, and his head sank lower. "The Contessina has changed her mind," he managed to say clearly enough to be understood. Lamberti started and leaned forward. "Do you mean to say that she has thrown you over?" "Yes." A dead silence followed. Then Guido threw himself on the bed again and turned his face away. "Say something, man," he cried, almost angrily. The afternoon light streamed through the closed blinds and fell on the crumpled sheet of the letter that lay at Lamberti's feet. He did not know what he saw as he stared down at it, and he would have cut off his hand rather than pry into any one's letters, but four words had photographed themselves upon his brain before he had realised their meaning, or even that he had seen them. "I love another man." Those were the words, and he had never seen the handwriting, but he knew that Cecilia had written them. Guido's cry for some sort of consolation was still ringing in his ears. "It is impossible," he said, in a dull voice. "She cannot break off such an engagement." "She has," Guido answered, still looking away. "It is done. She has written to say that she will never marry me." "Why?" Lamberti asked mechanically. "Because----" Guido stopped short. "That is her secret. Unless she chooses to tell you herself." Lamberti knew the secret already, but he would not pain Guido by saying so. The four words he had read had explained enough, though he had not the slightest clew to the name of the man concerned, and his anger was rising quietly, as it did when he was going to be dangerous. He loved Cecilia much and unreasoningly, yet so long as his friend had stood between her and himself he had been strong enough not to be jealous of him; but he was under no obligation to that other man, and now he wished that he had him in his hands. Moreover, his anger was against the girl, too. "It is outrageous," he said, at last, with a conviction that comforted Guido a little. "It is perfectly abominable! What shall you do?" "I can do nothing, of course." Guido tossed on his pillows, turned his head, and stared at Lamberti, hoping to be contradicted. "It is of no use to go to bed because a woman is faithless," answered Lamberti rather savagely. Guido almost laughed. "I am ill," he said. "I can hardly stand. She telephoned to me to go and see her, but I could not, and so she wrote what she had to say. It is just as well. I am glad she cannot see me just now." "I wish she could," answered Lamberti, closing his teeth on the words sharply. "But you will see her, will you not?" he asked, after a pause. "You will not accept such a dismissal without telling her what you think of her?" "Why should I tell her anything? If I have not succeeded in making her love me yet, I shall never succeed at all! It is better to bear it as if I had never expected anything else." "Is there any reason why a woman should be allowed to do with impunity what one man would shoot another for doing?" asked Lamberti, roughly. "She has changed her mind once, she can be made to change it again." The more he thought of what had happened the angrier he grew, and his jealousy against the unknown man who had caused the trouble was boiling up. Guido caught at the straw like a drowning man, and raised himself on his elbow. "Do you really think that she may change her mind? That this is only a caprice?" "I should not wonder. All women have caprices now and then. It is a fit of conscience. She is not quite sure that she likes you enough to marry you, and you have said something that jarred on her, perhaps. If you had been able to go and see her this morning, she would have begun by being very brave, but in five minutes she would have been as ready to marry you as ever. I will wager anything that when she had written that letter she sent it off as soon as possible for fear that she should not send it at all!" "What do you advise me to do?" asked Guido, his hopes rising. "I believe you understand women better than I do, after all!" "They are only human animals, like ourselves," Lamberti answered carelessly. "The chief difference is that they do all the things that we are sometimes inclined to do, but should be ashamed of doing." "I daresay. But I want your advice." "Go and tell her that she has made a mistake, that she cannot possibly be in earnest, but that if she does not feel that she can marry you in a fortnight, she can put off the wedding till the autumn. It is quite simple. It has all been rather sudden, from the first, and it is much better that the engagement should go on a little longer." "That is reasonable," Guido answered, growing calmer every moment. "I wish I could go to her at once." "I suppose you cannot," said Lamberti, looking at him rather curiously. He remembered that he had once dragged himself five miles with a bad spear-wound in his leg, to take news to a handful of men in danger, but he supposed that Guido was differently organised. He did not like him the less. "No!" Guido answered. "The fever makes me so giddy that I can hardly stand." He put out his hand for the tumbler on the table, but it was empty. "Lamberti!" he said. "Yes, I will get you some water at once," the other answered, rising to his feet. "No," Guido said. "Never mind that, I will ring presently. Will you do something for me?" "Of course." "Will you speak to her for me?" Lamberti was standing by the bedside, and he saw the serious and almost timid look in his friend's eyes. But he had not expected the request, and he hesitated a moment. "You would rather not," said Guido, disappointed. "I suppose I must wait till I am well. Only it may be too late then. She will tell every one that she has broken off the engagement." "You misunderstood me," Lamberti said calmly, for he had found time to think while Guido was speaking. "I will see her at once." It had not been easy to say, for he knew what it meant. "Thank you," Guido murmured. "Thank you, thank you!" he repeated with a profound sense of relief, as his head sank back on the pillow. "Will it do you any harm if I smoke?" asked Lamberti, looking at a cigar he had taken from his pocket. "No. I wish you would. I cannot even smoke a cigarette to-day. It tastes like bad hay." There is a hideous triviality about the things people say at important moments in their lives. But Lamberti was not listening, and he lit his cigar thoughtfully, without answering. Then he went to the window and looked down through the blinds in silence, pondering on what was before him. It was certainly the place of a friend in such a case to accept the position Guido was thrusting upon him, and from the first Lamberti had not meant to refuse. He had a strong sense of man's individual right to get what he wanted for himself without great regard for the feelings of others, and he was quite sure that he would not have done for his own brother what he was about to do for Guido. It is even possible that he would not have been so ready to do it for Guido himself if he had not accidentally seen those four words of Cecilia's letter. The knowledge of her secret had at once determined the direction of his impulses. For himself he hoped nothing, but he had made up his mind that if Cecilia would not marry Guido she should by no means marry any other man living, and he was fully determined to make her confess her passing fancy for the unknown one, in order that he might have the right to reproach her with it. He even hoped that he could find out the man's name, and, as he was of a violent disposition, he at once planned vengeance to be wreaked upon him. He turned from the window at last, and blew a cloud of grey smoke into the quiet room. "I will send a message now," he said, "and I will go myself this evening. They can hardly be dining out." "No. They are at home. I was to have dined with them." Guido's voice was faint, but he was calm now. Lamberti unlocked the door and opened it. The man servant was just coming towards it followed by the doctor. The latter found Guido worse than when he had seen him in the morning. He said it was what he had expected, a sharp attack of influenza, and that Guido must not think of leaving his bed till the fever had disappeared. He dilated a little upon the probable consequences of any exposure to the outer air, even in summer. No one could ever tell what the influenza might leave behind it, and it was much safer to be patient. "You see," said Guido to Lamberti, when the physician was gone. "It will be quite impossible for me to go out to-morrow, or for several days." "Quite," Lamberti answered, looking for his straw hat. CHAPTER XX Lamberti dined at home that evening, and soon after nine o'clock he was on his way to the Palazzo Massimo. Though the evening was hot and close he walked there, for it was easier to think on his feet than leaning back in a cab. His normal condition was one of action and not of reflection. His thoughts also took an active dramatic shape. He did not try to bind future events together in a connected sequence leading to a result; on the contrary, he seemed to hear the very words he would soon be speaking, and Cecilia Palladio's answers to them; he saw her face and noted her expression, and the interview grew violent by degrees till he felt the inward coolness stealing through him which he had often known in fight. He had written a note to Countess Fortiguerra which he had left at her door on his way home. He had explained that Guido, being too ill to move, had begged him to speak to the Contessina, and he expressed the hope that he might be allowed to see the young lady for a few minutes alone that evening, in the capacity of the sick man's representative and trusted friend. Such a request could hardly be refused, and the Countess had always felt that Lamberti was one of those exceptional men in whom one may safely believe, even without knowing them well. She said that Cecilia had better see him when he came. She herself had letters to write and would sit in the boudoir. It was the last thing Cecilia had expected, and the mere thought was like breaking the promise she had made to herself, never to see Lamberti again; yet she realised that it was impossible to avoid the meeting. The course she had taken was so extraordinary that she felt bound to give Guido a chance to answer her letter in any way he could. In the afternoon her mother had exhausted every argument in trying to make her revoke her decision. She did not love Guido; that was her only reply; but she felt that it ought to be sufficient, and she bowed her head meekly when the Countess grew angry and told her that she should have found that out long ago. Yes, she answered, it was all her fault, she ought to have known, she would bear all the blame, she would tell her friends that she had broken off the engagement, she would do everything that could be required of her. But she would not marry Guido d'Este. The Countess could say nothing more. On her side she was reticent for once in her life, and told nothing of her own interview with Princess Anatolie. Whether something had been said which the mother thought unfit for her daughter's ears, or whether the Princess's words had been of a nature to hurt Cecilia's pride, the young girl could not guess; and though her maidenly instinct told her to accept her mother's silence without question, if it proceeded from the first cause, she could not help fearing that the Countess had done or said something hopelessly tactless which might produce disagreeable consequences, or might even do some harm to Guido. Her heart was beating so fast when Lamberti entered the drawing-room that she wondered how she should find breath to speak to him, and she did not raise her eyes again after she had seen his face at the door, till he was close to her, and had bowed without holding out his hand. "I hope you got my note," he said to her mother. "D'Este is ill, and has given me a verbal message for your daughter." "Yes," said the Countess. "I will go into the next room and write my letters." She was gone and the two stood opposite each other in momentary silence. Lamberti's voice had been formal, and his face was almost expressionless. "Where will you sit?" he asked. "It will take some time to tell you all that he wishes me to say." Cecilia led the way to the little sofa in the corner farthest from the boudoir. It was there that Guido had asked her to be his wife, and it was there that she had waited for him a few hours ago to tell him that she could not marry him. She took her accustomed place, but Lamberti drew forward a light chair and sat down facing her. He felt that he got an advantage by the position, and that to a small extent it placed him outside of her personal atmosphere. At such a moment he could not afford to neglect the least circumstance which might help him. As for what he should say, he had thought of many speeches while he was in the street, but he did not remember any of them now, nor even that he had seemed to hear himself speaking them. "Why did you write that letter?" he asked, after a moment's pause. Cecilia looked up quickly, surprised by the direct question, and then gazed into his face in silence. She had confessed to herself that she loved him, but she had not known how much, nor what it would mean to sit so near him and hear him asking the question that had only one answer. His eyes were steady and brave, when she looked at them, but not so hard as she had expected. In earlier days she had always felt that they could command her and even send her to sleep if he chose, but she did not feel that now. The question had been asked suddenly and directly, but not harshly. She did not answer it. "Did Guido show you my letter?" she asked in a low voice. But she was sure of the reply before it came. "No. He told me that you broke off your engagement with him very suddenly. I suppose you have done so because you think you do not care for him enough to marry him, but he did not tell me so. Is that it?" Cecilia nodded quickly, folded her hands nervously upon her knees, and looked across the room. "Yes," she said. "That is it. I do not love him." "Yet you like him very much," Lamberti answered. "I have often seen you together, and I am sure you do." "I am very fond of him. If I had not been foolish, he might always have been my best friend." "I do not think you were foolish. You could hardly do better than marry your best friend, I think. He is mine, and I know what his friendship is worth. You will find out, as I have, that if he is sometimes indolent and slow to make up his mind, he never changes afterwards. You may be separated from him for a year or two, but you will find him always the same when you meet him again, always gentle, always true, always the most honourable of men." "He is that, and more," Cecilia said softly. "I like everything about him." "And he loves you," Lamberti continued. "He loves you as men do not often love the women they marry, and as you, with your fortune, may never be loved again." "I know it. I feel it. It makes it all the harder." "But you thought you loved him, I am sure. You would not have accepted him otherwise." "Yes. Thank you for believing that much of me," Cecilia answered humbly. "I thought I loved him." "You sent for him this morning, because you had suddenly persuaded yourself that you had made a great mistake. When you heard that he could not come, you wrote the letter, and when it was written you sent it off as fast as you could, for fear that you would not send it at all. Is that true?" "Yes. That is just what happened. How did you know?" "Listen to me, please, for d'Este's sake. If you had not felt that you were perhaps making another mistake, should you have been in such a hurry to send the letter?" Cecilia hesitated an instant. "It was a hard thing to do. That is why I made haste to get it over. I knew it would hurt him, but I thought it was wrong to deceive him for even a few hours, after I had understood myself." "It would have been kinder to wait until you could see him, and break it gently to him. He was ill when he got your letter, and it made him worse." "How is he?" Cecilia asked quietly, a little ashamed of not having enquired already. "It is nothing very serious, is it? Only a little influenza, he said." "He is not dangerously ill, but he had a good deal of fever this afternoon. You will not see him for a week, I fancy. That is the reason why I am here. I want you to postpone your decision, at least until he is well and you have talked with him." "But I have decided already. I shall take all the blame. I will tell my friends that it is all my fault." "Is that the only answer you can give me for him?" "Yes. What can I say? I do not love him. I never shall." "What if something happens?" "What?" "Suppose that I go to him to-morrow morning, and tell him what you say, and that when I have left him there alone with his servant, as I must in the course of the day, he locks the door, and in a fit of despair puts a bullet through his head? What then?" Cecilia leaned forward, wide-eyed and frightened. "You do not really believe that he would kill himself?" she cried in a low voice. "I think it is more than likely," Lamberti answered quietly enough. "D'Este is the most good-hearted, charitable, honourable fellow in the world, but he believes in nothing beyond death. We differ about those questions, and never talk about them; but he has often spoken of killing himself when he has been depressed. I remember that we had an argument about it on the very afternoon when we both first met you." "Was he so unhappy then?" Cecilia asked with nervous interest. "Perhaps. At all events I know that he has a bad habit of keeping a loaded revolver in the drawer of the table by his bed, in case he should have a fancy to go out of the world, and it is very well known that people who talk of suicide, and think of it a great deal, often end in that way. When I left him this afternoon I gave him some hope that you might at least prolong the engagement for a few months, and give yourself a chance to grow more fond of him. If I have to tell him that you flatly refuse, I am really afraid that it may be the end of him." Cecilia leaned back in the sofa and closed her eyes, confronted by the awful doubt that Lamberti might be right. He was certainly in earnest, for he was not the man to say such a thing merely for the sake of frightening her. She could not reason any more. "Please, please do not say that!" she said piteously, but scarcely above her breath. "What else can I say? It is quite true. You must have some very strong reason for refusing to reconsider your decision, since your refusal may cost as much as that." "But men do not kill themselves for love in real life!" "I am sorry to say they do," Lamberti answered. "A fellow-officer of mine shot himself on board the ship I was last with for exactly the same reason. He left a letter so that there should be no suspicion that he had done it to escape from any dishonour." "How awful!" "I repeat that you must have a very strong reason indeed for not waiting a couple of months. In that time you may learn to like Guido better--or he may learn to love you less." "He may change," Cecilia said, not resenting the rather rough speech; "I never shall." Lamberti fixed his eyes on her. "There is only one reason that could make you so sure about yourself," he said. "If I thought you were like most women, I would tell you that you were heartless, faithless, and cruel, as well as capricious, and that you were risking a man's life and soul for a scruple of conscience, or, worse than that, for a passing fancy." "Oh, please do not say such things of me!" She spoke in great distress. "I do not. I know that you are honest and true, and are trying to do right, but that you have made a mistake which you can mend if you will. Take my advice. There is only one possible reason to account for what you have done. You think that you love some other man better than d'Este." Cecilia started and stared at him. "You said that Guido did not show you my letter!" She was offended as well as distressed now. "No; he did not. But I will not pretend that I have guessed your secret. As Guido lay on his bed talking to me, I was staring at a crumpled sheet of a letter that lay on the floor. Before I knew what I was looking at I had read four words: 'I love another man.' When I realised that I ought not to have seen even that much, I knew, of course, that it was your writing. You see how much I know. All the same, if you were not what I know you are, I would call you a heartless flirt to your face." Again he looked at her steadily, but she said nothing. "If you are not that," he continued, "you never loved Guido at all, but really believed you did, because you did not know what love was, and you are sure that you love this other man with all your heart." Cecilia was still silent, but a delicate colour was rising in her pale face. "Has the other ever made love to you?" Lamberti asked. "No, no--never!" She could not help answering him and forgetting that she might have been offended. She loved him beyond words, he did not know it, and he was unconsciously asking her questions about himself. "Is he younger than Guido? Handsomer? Has he a great name? A great fortune?" "Are those reasons for loving a man?" Cecilia asked the question reproachfully, and as she looked at him and thought of what he was, and how little she cared for the things he had spoken of, but how wholly for the man himself, her love for him rose in her face, against her will. "There must be something about him which makes you prefer him to Guido," he said obstinately. "Yes. But I do not know what it is. Do not ask me about him." "Considering that you are endangering the life of my dearest friend for him, I think I have some right to speak of him." She was silent, and they faced each other for several seconds with very different expressions. She was pale again, now, but her eyes were full of light and softness, and there was a very faint shadow of a smile flickering about her slightly parted lips, as if she saw a wonderful and absorbing sight. Lamberti's gaze, on the contrary, was cold and hard, for he was jealous of the unknown man and angry at not being able to find out who he was. She did not guess his jealousy, indeed, for she did not suspect what he felt; but she knew that his righteous anger on Guido's behalf was unconsciously directed against himself. "You will never know who he is," she said at last, very gently. "We shall all know, when you marry him," Lamberti answered with unnecessary roughness. "No, I shall never marry him," she said. "I mean never to see him again. I would not marry him, even if he should ever love me." "Why not?" "For Guido's sake. I have treated Guido very badly, though I did not mean to do it. If I cannot marry Guido, I will never marry at all." "That is like you," Lamberti answered, and his voice softened. "I believe you are in earnest." "With all my heart. But promise me one thing, please, on your word." "Not till I know whether I may." "For his sake, not for mine. Stay with him. Do not leave him alone for a moment till you are sure that he is safe and will not try to kill himself. Will you promise?" "Not unless you will promise something, too." "Do not ask me to pretend that I love him. I cannot do it." "Very well. You need not pretend anything. Let me tell him that you will let your engagement continue to all appearance, and that you will see him, but that you put off the wedding for the reasons you gave in your letter. Let me tell him that you hope you may yet care for him enough to marry him. You do, do you not?" "No!" "At least let me say that you are willing to wait a few months, in order to be sure of yourself. It is the only thing you can do for him. Perhaps you can accustom him by slow degrees to the idea that you will never marry him." "Perhaps." "In any case, you ought to do your best, and that is the best you can do. See him a few times when he is well enough, and then leave Rome. Tell him that it will be a good thing to be parted for a month or two, and that you will write to him. Do not destroy what hope he may have, but let it die out by degrees, if it will." Cecilia hesitated. After what had passed between them she could hardly refuse to follow such good advice, though it was hard to go back to anything approaching the state of things with which she had broken by her letter. But that was only obstinacy and pride. "Let it be distinctly understood that I do not take back my letter at all," she said. "If I consent to what you ask, it is only for Guido's sake, and I will only admit that I may be more sure of myself in a few months than I am now, though I cannot see how that is possible." "It shall be understood most distinctly," Lamberti answered. "You say, too, that you mean never to see this other man again." "I cannot help seeing him if I stay longer in Rome," Cecilia said. Lamberti wondered who he might be, with growing hatred of him. "If he is an honourable man, and if he had the slightest idea that he had unconsciously come between you and Guido, he would go away at once." "Perhaps he could not," Cecilia suggested. "That is absurd." "No. Take your own case. You told me not long ago that you were unfortunately condemned to stay in Rome, unless you gave up your career. He might be in a very similar position. In fact, he is." There was something so unexpected in the bitter little laugh that followed the last words that Lamberti started. She had kept her secret well, so far, but she had now given him the beginning of a clew. He wished, for once, that he possessed the detective instinct, and could follow the scent. There could not be many men in society who were in a position very similar to his own. "I wish I knew his name," he said, only half aloud. But she heard him, and again she laughed a little harshly. "If I told you who he is, what would you do to him? Go and quarrel with him? Call him out and kill him in a duel? I suppose that is what you would do if you could, for Guido's sake." "I should like to know his name," Lamberti answered. "You never shall. You can never find it out, no matter how ingenious you are." "If I ever see you together, I shall." "How can you be so sure of that?" "You forget something," Lamberti said. "You forget the odd coincidences of our dreams, and that I have seen you in them when you were in earnest--not as you have been with Guido, but as you seem to be about this other man. I know every look in your eyes, every movement of your lips, every tone of your voice. Do you think I should not recognise anything of all that in real life?" "These were only dreams," Cecilia tried to say, avoiding his look. "I asked you not to speak of them." "Do you dream of him now?" Lamberti asked the question suddenly. "Not now--no--that is--please do not ask me such questions. You have no right to." "I beg your pardon. Perhaps I have not." He was not in the least sorry for having spoken, but his anger increased against the unknown man. She had evidently dreamt of him at one time or another, as she used to dream of himself. "You have such an extraordinary talent for dreaming," he said, "that the question seemed quite natural. I daresay you have seen Guido in your visions, too, when you believed that you cared for him!" "Never!" Cecilia could hardly speak just then. "Poor Guido! that was a natural question too. Since you used to see a mere acquaintance, like myself, and fancy that you were----" "Stop!" "----that you were talking familiarly with him," continued Lamberti unmoved, "it would hardly be strange that you should often have seen Guido d'Este in the same way, while you thought you loved him, and it is stranger that you should not now dream about a man you really love--if you do!" "I say that you have no right to talk in this way," said Cecilia. "I have the right to say a great many things," Lamberti answered. "I have the right to reproach you----" "You said that you believed me honest and true." The words checked his angry mood suddenly. He passed his hand over his eyes and changed his position. "I do," he said. "There is no woman alive of whom I believe more good than I do of you." "Then trust me a little, and believe, too, that I am suffering quite as much as Guido. I have agreed to take your advice, to obey you, since it is that and nothing else----" "I have no power to give you orders. I wish I had!" "You have right on your side. That is power, and I obey you. You have told me what to do, and I shall do it, and be glad to do it. But even after what I have done, I have some privileges left. I have a secret, and I am ashamed of it, and it can do no good to Guido to know it, much less to you. Please let me keep it in my own way." "Yes. But if you are afraid that I should hurt the man, if I knew his name, you are mistaken." "I am not in the least afraid of that," Cecilia answered, and the light filled her eyes again as she looked at him. "You are too just to hate an innocent man. It is not his fault that I love him, and he will never know it. He will never guess that I think him the best, and truest, and bravest man alive, and that he is all this world to me, now and for ever!" She spoke quietly enough, but there was a radiant joy in her face which Lamberti never forgot. While keeping her secret, she was telling him at last to his face that she loved him, and it was the first time she had ever spoken such words out of her dreams. In them indeed they had been familiar to her lips, as words like them had been to his. He leaned forward, resting one elbow on his knee, and his chin upon his closed hand, and he looked at her long in silence. He envied her for having been able to say aloud what she felt, under cover of her secret, and he longed to answer her, to tell her that he loved her even better than she loved that unknown man, to hear himself say it to her only once, come what might. But for Guido he would have spoken, for as he gazed at her the instinctive masculine conviction returned stronger than ever, that if he chose he could make her love him. For a moment he was absolutely sure of it, but he only sat still, looking at her. "You believe me now," she said at last, leaning back and turning her eyes away. "Poor Guido!" he exclaimed. He knew indeed that there was no longer any hope for his friend. "Yes," he added thoughtfully. "It was in your eyes just then, when you were speaking, just as if that man had been there before you. I shall know who he is if I ever see you together. It is understood, then," he went on, changing his tone, "I am to tell him that you wish to put off the marriage till you are more sure of yourself--that you wrote that letter under an impulse." "Yes, that is true. And you wish me to try to make him understand by degrees that it is all over, and to go away from Rome in a few days, asking him not to follow me at once." "I think that is the kindest thing you can do. On my part I will give him what hope I can that you may change your mind again." "You know that I never shall." "I may hope what I please. There is always a possibility. We are human, after all. One may hope against conviction. May I see you again to-morrow to tell you how he takes your message?" To his surprise Cecilia hesitated several seconds before she answered. "Of course," she said at last. "Or you can write to me or to my mother, which will save you the trouble of coming here." "It is no trouble," Lamberti answered mechanically. "But of course it is painful for you to talk about it all, so unless something unexpected happens I will write a line to your mother to say that Guido accepts your decision, and to let you know how he is. If there is anything wrong, I will come in the evening." "Thank you. That is the best way." "Good night." He rose as he spoke. "Good night. Thank you." She held out her hand rather timidly. He took it, and she withdrew it precipitately, after the merest touch. She rose quickly and went towards the door of the boudoir, calling to her mother as she walked. "Signor Lamberti is going," she said. There was a little rustle of thin silk in the distance, and the Countess appeared at the door and came forward. "Well?" she asked, as she met Lamberti in the middle of the room. "Your daughter has decided to do what seems best for everybody," Lamberti said. "She will tell you all about it. Let me thank you for having allowed me to talk it over with her. Good night." "Do stay and have some tea!" urged the Countess, and she wondered why Cecilia, standing behind Lamberti, frowned and shook her head. "Of course, if you will not stay," she added hastily, "I will not try to keep you. Pray give my best messages to Signor d'Este, and tell him how distressed I am, and say--but you will know just what to say, I am sure. Good night." Lamberti bowed and shook hands. As he turned, he met Cecilia face to face and bade her good night again. She nodded rather coldly, and then went quickly to ring the bell for the footman. CHAPTER XXI Princess Anatolie was very angry when she learned that Cecilia was breaking her engagement, and she said things to the poor Countess which she did not regret, and which hurt very much, because they were said with such perfect skill and knowledge of the world that it was impossible to answer them and it did not even seem proper to show any outward resentment, considering that Cecilia's conduct was apparently indefensible. As it is needless to say, the Princess appeared to regret the circumstance much more for Cecilia's sake than for Guido's. She said that Guido, of course, would soon get over it, for all men were perfectly heartless in reality, and could turn from one woman to another as carelessly as if women were pictures in a gallery. She really did not think that Guido had much more heart than the rest of his kind, and he would soon be consoled. After all, he could marry whom he pleased, and Cecilia's fortune had never been any object to him. She, his thoughtful and affectionate aunt, would naturally leave him her property, or a large part of it. Guido was not at all to be pitied. But Cecilia, poor Cecilia! What a life she had before her, sighed the Princess, after treating a man in such a way! Of course, she could never live in Rome after this, and as for Paris, she would be no better off there. Guido's friends and relations were everywhere, and none of them would ever forgive her for having jilted him. Perhaps England was the only place for her now. The English were a sordid people, consisting chiefly of shopkeepers, jockeys, tyrants, and professional beauties, and as they thought of nothing but money and their own advantage, Cecilia's fortune would insure her a good reception among them, even though it was not a very large one. Not that the girl was lacking in the most charming qualities and the most exceptional gifts, which would have made her a desirable wife for any man, if only she had not made this fatal mistake. Such things stuck to a woman through life, like a disgrace, though that was a great injustice, because Cecilia was acting under conviction, poor girl, and believed she was doing right! It was most unfortunate. The Princess pitied her very much and would always treat her just as if nothing had happened, if they ever met. Guido would certainly behave in the same way and would always be kind, though he would naturally not seek her society. The Princess was very angry, and it was not strange that the Countess should have come home a little flushed after the interview and very unexpectedly inclined to be glad, after all, that the engagement was at an end. The Princess had not said one rude word to her, but it was quite clear that she was furious at seeing Cecilia's fortune slip from the grasp of her nephew. It almost looked as if she had expected to get a part of it herself, though the Countess supposed that should be out of the question. Nevertheless the past question of the million which was to have constituted Cecilia's dowry began to rankle, and the Countess's instinct told her that the old lady had probably had some interest in the matter. Indeed, the Princess had told her that Guido had considerable debts, and had vaguely hinted that she had herself sometimes helped him in his difficulties. Of the two, Guido was more to be believed than his aunt, but there was a mysterious element in the whole matter. The Princess and Monsieur Leroy consulted the spirits now, and she found some consolation when she was told that she should yet get back most of the money she had lost, if she would only trust herself to her truest friend, who was none other than Monsieur Leroy himself. The forlorn little ghost of the only being she had ever really loved in the world was made to assume the character of a financial adviser, and she herself was led like a lamb by the thread of affection that bound her to her dead child. Monsieur Leroy had not foreseen what was to happen, but he was not altogether at a loss, and the first step was to insure the Princess's obedience to his will. He did not understand the nature of the phenomena he caused, but he knew that in some way certain things that passed in her mind were instantly present in his, and that he could generally produce by rappings the answers he desired her to receive. He at least knew beforehand, in almost every case, what those answers would be, if he did not consciously make the sounds that signified them. If he had ever examined his conscience, supposing that he had any left, he would have found that he himself did not know just where deception ended, and where something else began which he could not explain, which frightened him when he was alone, and which, when he had submitted wholly to it, left him in a state of real physical exhaustion. He was inclined to believe that the mysterious powers were really the spirits of dead persons which possessed him for a short time, and spoke through him. Yet when one of these spirits represented itself as being that of some one whom neither he nor the Princess had ever met in life, he was dimly conscious that it never said anything which had not been already known to her or to him at some time, or which, if unknown, was the spontaneous creation of his own clouded brain. To her, he always gravely asserted his sure belief in the authenticity of the spirits that came, and since he had unexpectedly succeeded in producing messages from her little girl, any doubt she had ever entertained had completely disappeared. She was wholly at his mercy so long as this state of things could be made to last, and he was correspondingly careful in the use he made of his new power. The Princess was therefore told that she must trust him altogether, and that he could get back the most of her money for her. She was consoled, indeed, but she was naturally curious as to the means he meant to use, and she questioned him when the rappings ceased and the lights were turned up. He seemed less tired than usual. "I shall trust to the inspiration of the spirits," he said evasively. "In any case we have the law on our side. Guido cannot deny his signature to those receipts for your money, and he will find it hard to show what became of such large sums. They are a gentleman's promise to pay a lady, but they are also legal documents." "But they are not stamped," objected the Princess, who knew more about such things than she sometimes admitted. "You are mistaken. They are all stamped for their respective values, and the stamps are cancelled by Guido's signature." "That is very strange! I could almost have sworn that there was not a stamp on any of them! How could that be? He used to write them on half sheets of very thick note paper, and I never gave him any stamps." "He probably had some in his pocket-book," said Monsieur Leroy. "At all events, they are there." "So much the better. But it is very strange that I should never have noticed them." Like many of those singular beings whom we commonly call "mediums," Monsieur Leroy was a degenerate in mind and body, and his character was a compound of malign astuteness, blundering vanity, and hysterical sensitiveness, all directed by impulses which he did not try to understand. Without the Princess's protection through life, he must have come to unutterable grief more than once. But she had always excused his mistakes, made apologies for him, and taken infinite pains to make him appear in the best light to her friends. He naturally attributed her solicitude to the value she set upon his devotion to herself, since there could be no other reason for it. Doubtless a charitable impulse had at first impelled her to take in the starving baby that had been found on the doorstep of an inn in the south of France. That was all he knew of his origin. But he knew enough of her character to be sure that if he had not shown some exceptional gifts at an early age, he would soon have been handed over to servants or peasants to be taken care of, and would have been altogether forgotten before long. Instead, he had been spoiled, sent to the best schools, educated as a gentleman, treated as an equal, and protected like a son. The Princess had given him money to spend though she was miserly, and had not checked his fancies in his early youth. She had even tried to marry him to the daughter of a rich manufacturer, but had discovered that it is not easy to marry a young gentleman who has no certificate of birth at all, and whose certificate of baptism describes him as of unknown parents. On one point only she had been inexorable. When she did not wish him to dine with her or to appear in the evening, she insisted that he should stay away. Once or twice he had attempted to disobey these formal orders, but he had regretted it, for he had found himself face to face with one of the most merciless human beings in existence, and his own character was far from strong. He had therefore submitted altogether to the rule, well satisfied with the power he had over her in most other respects, but he felt that he must not lose it. The Princess was old and was growing daily more capricious. She had left him a handsome competence in her will, as much, indeed, as most bachelors would consider a fortune, but she was not dead yet, and she might change her mind at the last moment. He trembled to think what his end must be if she should die and leave him penniless to face the world alone at his age, without a profession and without real friends. For no one liked him, though some people feared his tongue, and he knew it. Perhaps Guido would take pity on him and give him shelter, for Guido was charitable, but the thought was not pleasant. Never having been hungry since he could remember, Monsieur Leroy thought starvation would be preferable to eating Guido d'Este's bread. There was certainly no one else who would throw him a crust, and though he had received a good deal of money from the Princess, and had managed to take a good deal more from her, he had never succeeded in keeping any of it. It was necessary to form some plan at once for extracting money by means of Guido's receipts, since the marriage was not to take place, and as Monsieur Leroy altogether failed to hit upon any satisfactory scheme he consulted a lawyer in confidence, and asked what could be done to recover the value. The lawyer was a man of doubtful reputation but of incontestable skill, and after considering the matter in all its bearings he gave his client some slight hope of success, proportionate to the amount of money Guido could raise by the sale of his effects and by borrowing from his many friends. He was glad to learn that Guido had never borrowed, except, as Monsieur Leroy explained, from his aunt. A man in such a position could raise a round sum if suddenly driven to extremities to save his honour. The lawyer also asked Monsieur Leroy for details concerning Guido's life during the last four or five years, inquiring very particularly about his social relations and as to his having ever been in love with a woman of his own rank, or with one of inferior station. Monsieur Leroy answered all these questions with a conscientious desire to speak the truth, which was new to him, for he realised that only the truth could be of use in such a case, and that the slightest unfounded invention of his own against Guido's character must mislead the man he was consulting. In this he showed himself wiser than he often was. "Above all," the lawyer concluded, "never mention my name to any one, and try to appear surprised at anything unexpected which you may hear about Signor d'Este." Monsieur Leroy promised readily enough, though reticence was not his strong point, and he went away well pleased with himself, after signing a little paper by which it was agreed that the lawyer should receive twenty per cent of any sums obtained from Guido through him. He had not omitted to inform his adviser of the celebrated Doctor Baumgarten's favourable opinion on the Andrea del Sarto and the small Raphael. The lawyer told him not to be impatient, as affairs of this sort required the utmost discretion. But the man saw that he had a good chance of being engaged in one of those cases that make an unnecessary amount of noise and are therefore excellent advertisements for a comparatively unknown practitioner who has more wit than scruples. He did not believe that all of Guido's many high and mighty relations would take the side of Princess Anatolie, and if any of them took the trouble to defend her nephew against her, the newspapers would be full of the case and his own name would be famous in a day. CHAPTER XXII Cecilia told her mother what Lamberti had advised her to do for Guido's sake, and that she had sent her message by him. The Countess was surprised and did not quite like the plan. "Either you love him, or you do not, my dear," she said. "You were sure that you did not, and you told him so. That was sensible, at least, though I think you might have found out earlier what you felt. It is much better to let him understand at once that you will not marry him. Men would always rather know the truth at once and get over it than be kept dangling at a capricious woman's beck and call." Cecilia did not explain that Lamberti feared for his friend's life. In broad daylight that looked dramatic, and her mother would not believe it. She only said that she was sure she was acting for the best and that the engagement was to stand a little longer, adding that she wished to leave Rome, as it was very hot. In her heart she was hurt at being called capricious, but was too penitent to deny the charge. The Countess at once wrote a formal note to Princess Anatolie in which she said that she had been hasty and spoken too soon, that her daughter seemed undecided, and that nothing was to be said at present about breaking the engagement. The marriage, she added, would be put off until the autumn. The Princess showed this communication to Monsieur Leroy when he came in. He did not mean to tell her about his visit to the lawyer, for he had made up his mind to play on her credulity as much as he could and to attribute any advantage she might gain by his manoeuvres to supernatural intervention. The Countess's letter surprised him very much, and as he did not know what to do, it seemed easy to do nothing. He expressed his disgust at Cecilia's vacillation. "She is a flirt and her mother is a fool," he said, and the speech seemed to him pithy and concise. The old Princess raised her aristocratic eyebrows a little. She would have expressed the same idea more delicately. There was a vulgar streak in his character that often jarred on her, but she said nothing, for she was inexplicably fond of him. For her own part, she was glad that Cecilia had apparently changed her mind again. Later in the day she received a few words from Guido, written in an unsteady hand, to say that he was sorry he could not come and see her as he had a bad attack of influenza. At the word she dropped the note as if it burnt her fingers, and called Monsieur Leroy, for she believed that influenza could be communicated in almost any way, and it was the only disease she really feared: she had a presentiment that she was to die of it. "Take that thing away, Doudou!" she cried nervously. "Pick it up with the tongs and burn it. He has the influenza! I am sure I have caught it!" Monsieur Leroy obeyed, while she retired to her own room to spend half an hour in those various measures of disinfection which prophylactic medicine has recently taught timid people. She had caused her maid to telephone to Guido not to send any more notes until he was quite well. "You must not go near him for a week, Doudou," she said when she came back at last, feeling herself comparatively safe. "But you may ask how he is by telephone every morning. I do not believe there can be any danger in that." Electricity was a mysterious power after all, and seemed infinitely harder to understand than the ways of the supernatural beings with whom Monsieur Leroy placed her in daily communication. She had heard a celebrated man of science say that he himself was not quite sure what electricity might or might not do since the discovery of the X-rays. Her precautions had the effect of cutting off communication between her and her nephew until her departure from Rome, which took place in the course of a few days, considerably to the relief of the Countess, who did not wish to meet her after what had passed. Monsieur Leroy could not make up his mind to go and see the lawyer again in order to stop any proceedings which the latter might be already taking. Below his wish to serve the Princess and his hope of profiting by his success, there lay his deep-rooted and unreasoning jealousy of Guido d'Este, which he had never before seen any safe chance of gratifying. It would be a profound satisfaction to see this man, who was the mirror of honour, driven to extremities to escape disgrace. Another element in his decision, if it could be called that, was the hopeless disorder of his degenerate intelligence, which made it far easier for him to allow anything he had done to bear fruit, to the last consequence, than to make a second effort in order to arrest the growth of evil. The lawyer was at work, silently and skilfully, and in a few days Princess Anatolie and Monsieur Leroy were comfortably established in her place in Styria, where the air was delightfully cool. What was left of society in Rome learned with a little surprise, but without much regret, that the wedding was put off, and those who had country places not far from the city, and had already gone out to them for the summer, were delighted to know that they would not be expected to come into town for the marriage during the great heat. No date had ever been really fixed for it, and there was therefore no matter for gossip or discussion. The only persons who knew that Cecilia had made an attempt to break it off altogether were those most nearly concerned. The Countess and Cecilia made preparations for going away, and the dressmakers and other tradespeople breathed more freely when they were told that they need not hurry themselves any longer. But Cecilia had no intention of leaving without having seen Guido more than once again, hard as it might be for her to face him. Lamberti had written to her mother that he accepted Cecilia's decision gladly, and hoped to be out of his room in a few days, but that he did not appear to be recovering fast. He did not seem to be so strong as his friend had thought, and the short illness, together with the mental shock of Cecilia's letter, had made him very weak. The news of him was much the same for three days, and the young girl grew anxious. She knew that Lamberti spent most of his time with Guido, but he had not been to the Palazzo Massimo since his interview with her. She wished she could see him and ask questions, if only he could temporarily be turned into some one else; but since that was impossible, she was glad that he did not come to the house. She spent long hours in reading, while Petersen and the servants made preparations for the journey, and she wrote a line to Guido every day, to tell him how sorry she was for him. She received grateful notes from him, so badly written that she could hardly read them. On the fourth day, no answer came, but Lamberti sent her mother a line an hour later to say that Guido had more fever than usual and could not write that morning, but was in no danger, as far as the doctor could say. "I should like to go and see him," Cecilia said. "He is very ill, and it is my fault." The Countess was horrified at the suggestion. "My dear child," she cried, "you are quite mad! Why, the poor man is in bed, of course!" "I hope so," Cecilia answered unmoved. "But Signor Lamberti could carry him to his sitting room." "Who ever heard of such a thing!" "We could go in a cab, with thick veils," Cecilia continued. "No one would ever know." "Think of Petersen, my dear! Women of our class do not wear thick veils in the street. For heaven's sake put this absurd idea out of your head." "It does not seem absurd to me." "Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself," retorted the Countess, losing her temper. "You do not even mean to marry him, and yet you talk of going to see him when he is ill, as if he were already your husband!" "What if he dies?" Cecilia asked suddenly. "There will be time enough to think about it then," answered the Countess, with insufficient reflection. "Besides he is not going to die of a touch of influenza." "Signor Lamberti says he is very ill. Several people died of it last winter, you know. I suppose you mean that I need not think of trying to see him until we hear that there is no hope for him." "Well?" "That might be too late. He might not know me. It seems to me that it would be better to try and save his life, or if he is not in real danger, to help him to get well." "If you insist upon it," said the Countess, "I will go and see him myself and take a message from you. I suppose that nobody could find anything serious to say against me for it, though, really--I am not so old as that, am I?" "I think every one would think it was very kind of you to go and see him." "Do you? Well--perhaps--I am not sure. I never did such a thing in my life. I am sure I should feel most uncomfortable when I found myself in a young man's rooms. We had better send him some jelly and beef-tea. A bachelor can never get those things." "It would not be the same as if I could see him," said Cecilia, mildly. Her mother did not like to admit this proposition, and disappeared soon afterward. Without telling her daughter, she wrote an urgent note to Lamberti begging him to come and dine and tell them all about Guido's illness, as she and Cecilia were very anxious about him. Cecilia went out alone with Petersen late in the hot afternoon. She wished she could have walked the length of Rome and back, but her companion was not equal to any such effort in the heat, so the two got into a cab. She did not like to drive with her maid in her own carriage, simply because she had never done it. For the first time in her life she wished she were a man, free to go alone where she pleased, and when she pleased. She could be alone in the house, but nowhere out of doors, unless she went to the villa, and she was determined not to go there again before leaving Rome. It had disagreeable associations, since she had been obliged to sit on the bench by the fountain with Guido a few days ago. She remembered, too, that at the very moment when his paternal warning not to catch cold had annoyed her, he had probably caught cold himself, and she did not know why this lowered him a little in her estimation, but it did. She was ashamed to think that such a trifle might have helped to make her write the letter which had hurt him so much. She went to the Forum, for there she could make Petersen sit down, and could walk about a little, and nobody would care, because she should meet no one she knew. As they went down the broad way inside the wicket at which the tickets are sold, she saw a party of tourists on their way to the House of the Vestals. Of late years both Germans and Americans have discovered that Rome is not so hot in summer as the English all say it is, and that fever does not lurk behind every wall to spring upon the defenceless foreigner. The tourists were of the usual class, and Cecilia was annoyed to find them where she had hoped to be alone; but they would soon go away, and she sat down with Petersen to wait for their going, under the shadow of the temple of Castor and Pollux. Petersen began to read her guide-book, and the young girl fell to thinking while she pushed a little stone from side to side with the point of her parasol, trying to bring it each time to the exact spot on which it had lain before. She was thinking of all that had happened to her since she left Petersen in that same place on the May morning that seemed left behind in another existence, and she was wondering whether she would go back to that point, if she could, and live the months over again; or whether, if the return were possible, she would have made the rest different from what it had been. It would have been so much easier to go on loving the man in the dream to the end of her life, meeting him again and again in the old surroundings that were more familiar to her than those in which she lived. It would have been so much better to be always her fancied self, to be the faithful Vestal, leading the man she loved by sure degrees to heights of immaterial blessedness in that cool outer firmament where sight and hearing and feeling, and thinking and loving, were all merged in a universal consciousness. It would have been so much easier not to love a real man, above all not to love one who never could love her, come what might. And besides, if all that had gone on, she would never have brought disappointment and suffering upon Guido d'Este. She decided that it would have been preferable, by far, to have gone on with her life of dreams, and when awake to have been as she had always known herself, in love with everything that made her think and with nothing that made her feel. But in the very moment when the matter seemed decided, she remembered how she had looked into Lamberti's eyes three nights ago, and had felt something more delicious than all thinking while she told him how she loved that other man, who was himself. That one moment had seemed worth an age of dreams and a lifetime of visions, and for it she knew that she would give them all, again and again. The point of the parasol did not move now, but lay against the little stone, just where she was looking, for she was no longer weighing anything in her mind nor answering reasons with reasons. With the realisation of fact, came quickly the infinite regret and longing she knew so well, yet which always consoled her a little. She had a right to love as she did, since she was to suffer by it all her life. If she had thrown over Guido d'Este to marry Lamberti, there would have been something guilty in loving him. But there was not. She was perfectly disinterested, absolutely without one thought for her own happiness, and if she had done wrong she had done it unconsciously and was going to pay the penalty with the fullest consciousness of its keenness. The tourists trooped back, grinding the path with their heavy shoes, hot, dusty, tired, and persevering, as all good tourists are. They stared at her when they thought she was not watching them, for they were simple and discreet souls, bent on improving themselves, and though they despised her a little for not toiling like themselves, they saw that she was beautiful and cool and quiet, sitting there in the shade, in her light summer frock, and her white gloves, and her Paris hat, and the men admired her as a superior being, who might be an angel or a demon, while all the women envied her to the verge of hatred; and because she was accompanied by such an evidently respectable person as Peterson was, they could not even say that she was probably an actress. This distressed them very much. Kant says somewhere that when a man turns from argument and appeals to mankind's common sense, it is a sure sign that his reasoning is worthless. Similarly, when women can find nothing reasonable to say against a fellow-woman who is pretty and well dressed, they generally say that she looks like an actress; and this means according to the customs of a hundred years ago, which women seem to remember though most men have forgotten them, that she is an excommunicated person not fit to be buried like a Christian. Really, they could hardly say more in a single word. When the tourists were at a safe distance Cecilia rose, bidding Petersen sit still, and she went slowly on towards the House of the Vestals, and up the little inclined wooden bridge which at that time led up to it, till she stood within the court, her hand resting almost on the very spot where it had been when Lamberti had come upon her in the spring morning. Her memories rose and her thoughts flashed back with them through ages, giving the ruined house its early beauty again, out of her own youth. She was not dreaming now, but she knew instinctively how it had been in those last days of the Vestals' existence, and wished every pillar, and angle, and cornice, and ornament back, each into its own place and unchanged, and herself, where she was, in full consciousness of life and thought, at the very moment when she had first seen the man's face and had understood that one may vow away the dying body but not the deathless soul. That had been the beginning of her being alive. Before that, she had been as a flower, growing by the universal will, one of those things that are created pure and beautiful and fragrant from the first without thought or merit of their own; and then, as a young bird in the nest, high in air, in a deep forest, in early summer, looking out and wondering, but not knowing yet, its little heart beating fast with only one instinct, to be out and alone on the wing. But afterwards all had changed instantly and knowledge had come without learning, because what was to make it was already present in subtle elements that needed only the first breath of understanding to unite themselves in an ordered and perfect meaning; as the electric spark, striking through invisible mingled gases, makes perfect union of them in crystal drops of water. That had been the beginning, since conscious life begins in the very instant when the soul is first knowingly answerable for the whole being's actions, in the light of good and evil, and first asks the only three questions which human reason has never wholly answered, which are as to knowledge, and duty, and hope. Who shall say that life, in that sense, may not begin in a dream, as well as in what we call reality? What is a dream? Sometimes a wandering through a maze of absurdities, in which we feel as madmen must, believing ourselves to be other beings than ourselves, conceiving the laws of nature to be reversed for our advantage or our ruin, seeing right as wrong and wrong as right, in the pathetic innocence of the idiot or the senseless rage of the maniac, convinced beyond all argument that the absolutely impossible is happening before our eyes, yet never in the least astonished by any wonders, though subject to terrors we never feel when we are awake. Has no one ever understood that confused dreaming must be exactly like the mental state of the insane, and that if we dreamed such dreams with open eyes, we should be raving mad, or hopelessly idiotic? It is true, whether any one has ever said so or not. Inanimate things turn into living creatures, the chair we sit on becomes a horse, the arm-chair is turned into a wild beast; and we ride a-hunting through endless drawing-rooms which are full of trees and undergrowth, till the trees are suddenly people and are all dancing and laughing at us, because we have come to the ball in attire so exceedingly scanty that we wonder how the servants could have let us in. And in the midst of all this, when we are frantically searching for our clothes, and for a railway ticket, which we are sure is in the right-hand pocket of the waistcoat, if only we could find it, and if some one would tell us from which side of the station the train starts, and we wish we had not forgotten to eat something, and had not unpacked all our luggage and scattered everything about the railway refreshment room, and that some kind person would tell us where our money is, and that another would take a few of the fifty things we are trying to hold in our hands without dropping any of them; in the midst of all this, I say, a dead man we knew comes from his grave and stares at us, and asks why we cruelly let him die, long ago, without saying that one word which would have meant joy or despair to him at the last moment. Then our hair stands up and our teeth chatter, because the secret of the soul has risen against us where we least expected it; and we wake alone in the dark with the memory of the dead. Is not that madness? What else can madness be but that disjointing of ordered facts into dim and disorderly fiction, pierced here and there by lingering lights of memory and reason? All of us sometimes go mad in our sleep. But it does not follow that in dreaming we are not sometimes sane, rational, responsible, our own selves, good or bad, doing and saying things which we might say and do in real life, but which we have never said nor done, incurring the consequences of our words and deeds as if they were actual, keeping good faith or breaking it, according to our own natures, accomplishing by effort, or failing through indolence, as the case may be, blushing with genuine shame, laughing with genuine mirth, and burning with genuine anger; and all this may go on from the beginning to the end of the dream, without a single moment of impossibility, without one incident which would surprise us in the waking state. With most people dreams of this kind are rare, but every one who dreams at all must have had them once or twice in life. If we are therefore sometimes sane in dreams we can remember, and act in them as we really should, according to our individual consciences and possessed of our usual intelligence and knowledge, it cannot be denied that a series of such imaginary actions constitutes a real experience, during which we have risen or fallen, according as we have thought or acted. Some dreams of this kind leave impressions as lasting as that made by any reality. The merit or fault is wholly fictitious, no doubt, because although we have fancied that we could exercise our free will, we were powerless to use it; but the experience gained is not imaginary, where the dream has been strictly sane, any more than thought, in the abstract, is fictitious because it is not action. People of some imagination can easily, while wide awake, imagine a series of actions and decide rationally what course they would pursue in each, and such decisions constitute undoubted experience, which may materially affect the conduct of the individual if cases similar to the fancied ones present themselves in life. When there is no time to be lost, the instantaneous recollection of a train of reasoning may often mean instant decision, followed by immediate action, upon which the most important consequences may follow. Will any one venture to maintain that the vivid impressions left by rational dreams do not act in the same way upon the mind, and through the mind upon the will, and by the will upon our actions? And if we could direct our dreams as we pleased, so that they should be always rational, as some persons believe that we can, should we not be continually gaining experience of ourselves while sleeping, as well as when awake? Moreover, it is certain that there are men and women who are particularly endowed with the faculty of dreaming, and who can very often dream of any subject they please. Since this digression is already so long, let one more thing be said, which has not been said before, so far as the writer can find out. Our waking memory is defective; with most men it is so to a lamentable degree. It often happens that people forget that they have read a story, for instance, and begin to read it again, and do not discover that they have already done so till they have turned over many pages. It happens constantly that the taste of something we eat, or the odour of something we smell, recalls a scene we cannot remember at first, but which sometimes comes back after a little while. Almost every one has felt now and then that a fragment of present conversation is not new to him, and that he has performed certain actions already, though he cannot remember when. With some people these broken recollections are so frequent and vivid as to lead to all sorts of theories to explain them, such as the possibility of former existences on earth, or the more materialistic probability that memories are transmitted from parents and ancestors from the direct ascending lines. One theory has been neglected. At such times we may be remembering vaguely, or even with some distinctness, parts of dreams of which we had no recollection on waking, but which, nevertheless, made their impressions on the brain that produced them, while we were asleep. Unconscious ratiocination is certainly not a myth; and if, by it, we can produce our own forgotten actions, and even find objects we have lost, by doing over again exactly what we were doing when the thing we seek was last in our hands, sure that the rest of the action will repeat itself spontaneously, we should not be going much farther if we repeated both actions and words unconsciously remembered out of dreams. Much that seems very mysterious in our sensations may be explained in that way, and the explanation has the advantage of being simpler than that afforded by the theory of atavism, and more orthodox than that offered by the believers in the transmigration of souls. Cecilia Palladio had no need of it, for she did not forget the one dream that pleased her best, and she was never puzzled by uncertain recollections of any other. Her life had begun in it, and had turned upon it always, and after she had parted with it by an act of will, she had retained the fullest remembrance of its details. She left the place where she had paused near the entrance, and slowly walked up the long court, by the dry excavated basins; she ascended the low steps to the raised floor beyond, and stood still before the door of her own room, the second on the left. She had meant to go in and look at it quietly, but since she had taken refuge there when she ran away from Lamberti, iron gates had been placed at the entrances of all the six rooms, and they were locked. In hers a quantity of fragments of sculptured marble and broken earthen vessels were laid side by side on the floor, or were standing against the walls and in the corners. She felt as if she had been shut out by an act of tyranny, just as when she and her five companions had sadly left the House, obedient to the Christian Emperor's decree, long ago. It had always been her room ever since she had first dreamt. The beautiful narrow bronze bedstead used to stand on the left, the carved oak wardrobe inlaid with ivory was on the right, the marble table was just under the window, covered with objects she needed for her toilet, exquisite things of chiselled silver and of polished ivory. The chair, rounded at the back and with cushioned seat, like Agrippina's, was near it. In winter, the large bronze brazier of coals, changed twice daily, was always placed in the middle of the room. The walls were wainscoted with Asian marble, and painted above that with portraits in fresco of great and ancient Vestals who had been holier than the rest, each in her snowy robes, with the white veil drawn up and backwards over her head, and brought forward again over the shoulder, and each holding some sacred vessel or instrument in her one uncovered hand. There were stories about each which the Virgo Maxima used to read to the younger ones from a great rolled manuscript, that was kept in an ancient bronze box, or which she sometimes told in the moonlight on summer nights when the maidens sat together in the court. She closed her eyes, her forehead resting against the iron bars, and she saw it all as it had been; she looked again and the desolation hurt her and shocked her as when in a wilderness an explorer comes suddenly upon the bleached bones of one who had gone before him and had been his friend. She sighed and turned away. The dream was better than the reality, in that and in many other ways. She was overcome by the sense of utter failure, as she sat down on the steps below the raised floor, lonely and forlorn. It was all a comedy now, a miserable petty play to hide a great truth from herself and others. She had begun her part already, writing her wretched little notes to poor Guido. She knew that, ill as he was, the words that seemed lies to her were ten times true to him, and that he exaggerated every enquiry after his condition and each expression of hope for his recovery into signs of loving solicitude, that he had already forgiven what he thought her caprice, and was looking forward to his marriage as more certain than ever, in spite of her message. It was all a vile trick meant to save his feelings and help him to get well, and she hated and despised it. She was playing a part with Lamberti, too, and that was no better. She had fallen low enough to love a man who did not care a straw for her, and it needed all the energy of character she had left to keep him from finding it out. Nothing could be more contemptible. If any one but he had told her that she ought to go back to the appearance of an engagement with Guido, she would have refused to do it. But Lamberti dominated her; he had only to say, "Do this," and she did it, "Say this," and she said it, whether it were true or not. She complained bitterly in her heart that if he had bidden her lie to her mother, she would have lied, because she had no will of her own when she was with him. And this was the end of her inspired visions, of her lofty ideals, of her magnificent rules of life, of her studies of philosophy, her meditations upon religion, and her dream of the last Vestal. She was nothing but a weak girl, under the orders of a man she loved against her will, and ready to do things she despised whenever he chose to give his orders. He cared for no human being except his one friend. He was not to be blamed for that, of course, but he was utterly indifferent to every one else where his friend was concerned; every one must lie, or steal, or do murder, if that could help Guido to get well. She was only one of his instruments, and he probably had others. She was sure that half the women in Rome loved Lamberto Lamberti without daring to say so. It was a satisfaction to have heard from every one that he cared for none of them. People spoke of him as a woman-hater, and one woman had said that he had married a negress in Africa, and was the father of black savages with red hair. That accounted for his going to Somali Land, she said, and for his knowing so much about the habits of the people there. Cecilia would have gladly killed the lady with a hat pin. She was very unhappy, sitting alone on the steps after the sun had sunk out of sight. The comedy was all to begin over again in an hour, for she must go home and defend her conduct when her mother reproached her with not acting fairly, and laughed at the idea that Guido was in danger of his life. To-morrow she would have to write the daily note to him, she would be obliged to compose affectionate phrases which would have come quite naturally if she could have treated him merely as her best friend; and he would translate affection to mean love, and another lie would have been told. There was this, at least, about Guido, that he could not order her about as Lamberti could. There was no authority in his eyes, not even when he told her not to catch cold. Perhaps in all the time she had known him, she had liked him best when he had been angry, at the garden party, and had demanded to know her secret. But she would not acknowledge that. If the situation had been reversed and Lamberti, instead of Guido, had insisted on knowing what she meant to hide, she could not have helped telling him. It was an abominable state of things, but there was nothing to be done, and that was the worst part of it. Lamberti knew Guido much better than she did, and if Lamberti told her gravely that Guido might do something desperate if she broke with him, she was obliged to believe it and to act accordingly. There might not be one chance in a thousand, but the one-thousandth chance was just the one that might have its turn. One might disregard it for oneself, but one had no right to overlook it where another's life was concerned. At all events she must wait till Guido was quite well again, for a man in a fever really might do anything rash. Why did Lamberti not take away the revolver that always lay ready in the drawer? It would be much safer, though Guido probably had plenty of other weapons that would serve the purpose. Guido was just the kind of pacific man who would have a whole armoury of guns and pistols, as if he were always expecting to kill something or somebody. She was sure that Lamberti, who had killed men with his own hand, did not keep any sort of weapon in his room. If he had a revolver of his own, it was probably carefully cleaned, greased, wrapped up and put away with the things he used when he was sent on expeditions. It was a thousand pities that Guido was not exactly like Lamberti! Cecilia rose at last, weary of thinking about it all, disgusted with her own weakness, and decidedly ill-disposed towards her fellow-creatures. The slightly flattened upper lip was compressed rather tightly against the fuller lower one as she went back to find Petersen, and as she held her head very high, her lids drooped somewhat scornfully over her eyes. No one can ever be as supercilious as some people look when they are angry with themselves and are thinking what miserable creatures they really are. It was late when Cecilia reached the Palazzo Massimo and went in on foot under the dark carriageway after Petersen had paid the cab under the watchful gaze of the big liveried porter. The Countess was already dressing for dinner, and Cecilia went to her own room at once. The consequence was that she did not know of her mother's invitation to Lamberti, until she came into the drawing-room and saw the two together, waiting for her. "Did I forget to tell you that Signor Lamberti was coming to dinner?" asked her mother. "There was no particular reason why you should have told me," she answered indifferently, as she held out her hand to Lamberti. "It is not exactly a dinner party! How is he?" she asked, speaking to him. "He is better this evening, thank you." Why should he say "thank you," as if Guido were his brother or his father? She resented it. Surely there was no need for continually accentuating the fact that Guido was the only person living for whom he had the slightest natural affection! This was perhaps exaggerated, but she was glad of it, just then. She, who would have given all for him, wished savagely that some woman would make him fall in love and treat him with merciless barbarity. CHAPTER XXIII Cecilia felt that evening as if she could resist Lamberti's influence at last, for she was out of humour with herself and with every one else. When they had dined, and had said a multitude of uninteresting things about Guido, for they were all under a certain constraint while the meal lasted, they came back to the drawing-room. Lamberti had the inscrutable look Cecilia had lately seen in his face, and which she took for the outward sign of his indifference to anything that did not concern his friend. When he spoke to her, he looked at her as if she were a chair or a table, and when he was not speaking to her he did not look at her at all. In the drawing-room, she waited her opportunity until her mother had sat down. The butler had set the little tray with the coffee and three cups on a small three-legged table. On pretence that the latter was unsteady, Cecilia carried the tray to another place at some distance from her mother. Lamberti followed her to take the Countess's cup, and then came back for his own. Cecilia spoke to him in a low voice while she was putting in the sugar and pouring out the coffee, a duty which in many parts of Italy and France is still assigned to the daughter of the house, and recalls a time when servants did not know how to prepare the beverage. "Come and talk to me presently," she said. "I am sure you have more to tell me about him." "No," said Lamberti, not taking the trouble to lower his voice much, "there is nothing more to tell. I do not think I have forgotten anything." He stirred his coffee slowly, but with evident reluctance to stay near her. She would not have been a human woman if she had not been annoyed by his cool manner, and a shade of displeasure passed over her face. "I have something to say to you," she answered. "I thought you would understand." "That is different." In his turn he showed a little annoyance. They went back together to the Countess's side, carrying their cups. In due time the good lady went to write letters, feeling that it was quite safe to leave her daughter with Lamberti, who seemed to be as cold as ice, and not at all bent on making himself agreeable. Besides, the Countess was tired of the situation, and could hardly conceal the fact that she reproached Guido for not getting well sooner, in order that she might speak to him herself. There was silence for a time after she had gone into the next room, while Cecilia and Lamberti sat side by side on the sofa she had left. Neither seemed inclined to speak first, for both felt that some danger was at hand, which could not be avoided, but which must be approached with caution. She wished that he would say something, for she was not at all sure what she meant to tell him; but he was silent, which was natural enough, as she had asked for the interview. She would have given anything to have seen him somewhere else, in new surroundings, anywhere except in her own drawing-room, where every familiar object oppressed her and reminded her of her mistakes and illusions. She felt that she must say something, but the blood rose in her brain and confused her. He saw her embarrassment, or guessed it. "So far things have gone better than I expected," he said at last, "but that only makes the end more doubtful." She turned to him slowly and with an involuntary look of gratitude for having broken the silence. "I mean," he went on, "that since Guido is so ready to grasp at any straw you throw him, it will be hard to make him understand you, when things have gone a little further." "Is that all you mean?" She asked the question almost sharply. "Yes." "You do not mean that you still wish I would marry him after--after what I told you the other evening?" The interrogation was in her voice, and that was hard, and demanded an answer. Lamberti looked away, and did not reply at once, for he meant to tell the exact truth, and was not quite sure where it lay. He felt, too, that her manner had changed notably since they had last talked, and though he had no intention of taking the upper hand, it was not in his nature to submit to any dictation, even from the woman he loved. "Answer me, please," said Cecilia, rather imperiously. "Yes, I will. I wish it were possible for you to marry him, that is all." "And you know that it is not." "I am almost sure that it is not." "How cautious you are!" "The matter is serious. But you said that you had something to say to me. What is it?" "I wanted to tell you that I am sick of all this deception, of writing notes that are meant to deceive a man for whom I have the most sincere friendship, of letting the whole world think that I will do what I would not do, if I were to die for it." He looked at her, then clasped his hands upon his knees and shook his head. "I must see him," she said, after a pause, "I must see him at once, and you must help me. If I could only speak to him I could make him understand, and he would be glad I had spoken, and we should always be good friends. But I must see him alone, and talk to him. Make it possible, for I know you can. I am not afraid of the consequences. Take me to him. It is the only true and honest thing to do!" Lamberti believed that this was true; he was a man of action and had no respect for society's prejudices, when society was not present to enforce its laws. It would have seemed incredible to Romans that an Italian girl could think of doing what Cecilia proposed, and if it were ever known, her reputation would be gravely damaged. But Cecilia was not like other young girls; society should never know what she had done, and she was quite right in saying that her plan was really the best and most honourable. "I can take you to him," Lamberti said. "I suppose you know what you are risking." "Nothing, if I go with you. You would not let me run any risk." She did not raise her voice, she hardly changed her tone, but nothing she had ever said had given him such a thrilling sensation of pleasure. "Do you trust me as much as that?" he asked. "Yes, as much as that." She smiled, and looked down at her hand, and then glanced at him quickly, and almost happily. If she had studied men for ten years she could not have found word or look more certain to touch him and win him to her way. "Thank you," he said, rather curtly, for he was thinking of another answer. "If I take you to Guido, what shall you say to him?" She drew herself up against the back of the sofa, but the smile still lingered on her lips. "You must trust me, too," she answered. "Do you think I can compose set speeches beforehand? When shall we go? How is it to be managed?" "You often go out with your maid, do you not? What sort of woman is she? A dragon?" "No!" Cecilia laughed. "She is very respectable and nice, and thinks I am perfection. But then, she is terribly near-sighted, and cannot wear spectacles because they fall off her nose." "Then she loses her way easily, I suppose?" said Lamberti, too much intent on his plans to be amused at trifles. "Yes. She is always losing her way." "That might easily happen to her in the Palazzo Farnese. It is a huge place, and you could manage to go up one way while she went up the other. Besides, there is a lift at the back, not to mention the servants' staircases, in which she might be hopelessly lost. Can you trust her not to lose her head and make the porters search the palace for you, if you are separated from her?" "I am not sure. But she will stay wherever I tell her to wait for me. That might be better. You see, my only excuse for going to the Palazzo Farnese would be to see the ambassador's daughter, and she is in the country." "I think she must have come to town for a day or two, for I met her this afternoon. That is a good reason for going to see her. At the door of the embassy send your maid on an errand that will take an hour, and tell her to wait for you in the cab at the gate. If the girl is at home you need not stay ten minutes. Then you can see Guido during the rest of the time. It will be long enough, and besides, the maid will wait." "For ever, if I tell her to! But you, where shall you be?" "You will meet me on the stairs as you come down from the embassy. Wear something simple and dark that people have not seen you wear before, and carry a black parasol and a guide-book. Have one of those brown veils that tourists wear against the sun. Fold it up neatly and put it into the pocket of the guide-book instead of the map, or pin it to the inside of your parasol. You can put it on as soon as you have turned the corner of the stairs, out of sight of the embassy door, for the footman will not go in till you are as far as that. If you cannot put it on yourself, I will do it for you." "Do you know how to put on a woman's veil?" Cecilia asked, with a little laugh. "Of course! It is easy enough. I have often fastened my sister's for her at picnics." "What time shall I come?" "A little before eleven. Guido cannot be ready before that." "But he has a servant," said Cecilia, suddenly remembering the detail. "What will he think?" "He has two, but they shall both be out, and I shall have the key to his door in my pocket. We will manage that." "Shall you be sure to know just when I come?" "I shall see you, but you will not see me till we meet on the landing." "I knew you could manage it, if you only would." "It is simple enough. There is not the slightest risk, if you will do exactly what I have told you." It seemed easy indeed, and Cecilia was almost happy at the thought that she was soon to be freed from the intolerable situation into which she allowed herself to be forced. She was very grateful, too, and beyond her gratitude was the unspeakable satisfaction in the man she loved. Instead of making difficulties, he smoothed them; instead of prating of what society might think, he would help her to defy it, because he knew that she was right. "I should like to thank you," she said simply. "I do not know how." He seemed to say something in answer, in a rather discontented way, but so low that she could not catch the words. "What did you say?" she asked unwisely. "Nothing. I am glad to be of service to you. Say the right things to Guido; for you are going to do rather an eccentric thing in order to say them, and a mistake would be fatal." He spoke almost roughly, but she was not offended. He had a right to be rough, since he was ready to do whatever she asked of him; yet not understanding him, while loving him, her instinct made her wish him really to know how pleased she was. She put out her hand a little timidly and touched his, as a much older woman might have done. To her surprise, he grasped it instantly, and held it so tightly that he hurt her for a moment. He dropped it then, pushing it from him as his hold relaxed, almost throwing it off. "What is the matter?" Cecilia asked, surprised. But at that moment her mother entered the room from the boudoir. CHAPTER XXIV In agreeing to the dangerous scheme, Lamberti had yielded to an impulse founded upon his intuitive knowledge of women, and not at all upon his inborn love of anything in which there was risk. The danger was for Cecilia, not for himself, in any case; and it was real, for, if it should ever be known that she had gone to Guido's rooms, nothing but her marriage with him would silence the gossips. Society cannot be blamed for drawing a line somewhere, considering how very far back it sets the limit. Lamberti, without reasoning about it, knew that no woman ever does well what she does not like doing. If he persisted in making Cecilia attempt to break gradually with Guido, she would soon make mistakes and spoil everything. That was his conviction. She felt, at present, that if she could see Guido face to face, she could persuade him to give her up; and the probability was that she would succeed, or else that she would be moved by real pity for him and thus become genuinely ready to follow Lamberti's original advice. The sensible course to follow was, therefore, to help her in the direction she had chosen. Early in the morning Lamberti was at his friend's bedside. Guido was much better now, and there was no risk in taking him to his sitting room. Lamberti suggested this before saying anything else, and the doctor came soon afterwards and approved of it. By ten o'clock Guido was comfortably installed in a long cane chair, amongst his engravings and pictures, very pale and thin, but cheerful and expectant. As he had no fever, and was quite calm, Lamberti told him frankly that Cecilia had something to say to him which no one could say for her, and was coming herself. He was amazed and delighted at first, and then was angry with Lamberti for allowing her to come; but, as the latter explained in detail how her visit was to be managed, his fears subsided, and he looked at his watch with growing impatience. His man had been sitting up with him at night since his illness had begun, and was easily persuaded to go to bed for the day. The other servant, who cooked what Guido needed, had prepared everything for the day, and had gone out. He always came back a little after twelve o'clock. At twenty minutes to eleven Lamberti took the key of the door and went to watch for Cecilia's coming, and half an hour later he admitted her to the sitting room, shut the door after her, and left the two together. He went and sat down in the outer hall, in case any one should ring the bell, which had been muffled with a bit of soft leather while Guido was ill. Cecilia stood still a moment, after the door was closed; behind her, and she lifted her veil to see her way, for there was not much light in the room. As she caught sight of Guido, a frank smile lighted up her face for an instant, and then died away in a look of genuine concern and anxiety. She had not realised how much he could change in so short a time, in not more than four or five days. She came forward quickly, took his hand, and bent over him, looking into his face. His eyes widened with pleasure and his thin fingers lifted hers to his lips. "You have been very ill," she said, "very, very ill! I had no idea that it was so bad as this!" "I am better," he answered gently. "How good of you! How endlessly good of you to come!" "Nobody saw me," she said, by way of answer. She smoothed the old pink damask cushion under his head, and instinctively looked to see if he had all he needed within reach, before she thought of sitting down in the chair Lamberti had placed ready for her. "Tell me," he said, in a low and somewhat anxious voice, "you did not mean it? You were out of temper, or you were annoyed by something, or--I do not know! Something happened that made you write, and you had sent the letter before you knew what you were doing----" He broke off, quite sure of her answer. He thought she turned pale, though the light was not strong and brought the green colour of the closed blinds into the room. "Hush!" she exclaimed soothingly, and she sat down beside him, still holding his hand. "I have come expressly to talk to you about it all, because letters only make misunderstandings, and there must not be any more misunderstandings between us two." "No, never again!" He looked up with love in his hollow eyes, not suspecting what she meant. "I have forgotten all that was in that letter, and I wish to forget it. You never wrote that you did not love me, nor that you loved another man. It is all gone, quite gone, and I shall never remember it again." Cecilia sighed and gazed into his face sadly. He looked so ill and weak that she wondered how she could be cruel enough to tell him the truth, though she had risked her good name to get a chance of speaking plainly. It seemed like bringing a cup of cold water to the lips of a man dying of thirst, only to take it away again untasted and leave him to his fate. She pitied him with all her heart, but there was nothing in her compassion that at all resembled love. It was the purest and most friendly affection, of the sort that lasts a lifetime and can devote itself in almost any sacrifice; but it was all quite clear and comprehensible, without the smallest element of the inexplicable attraction that is deaf, and dumb, and, above all, blind, and which proceeds from the deep prime cause and mover of nature, and mates lions in the wilderness and birds in the air, and men and women among their fellows, two and two, from generation to generation. "Guido," said Cecilia, after a long silence, "do you not think that two people can be very, very fond of each other all their lives, and trust each other, and like to be together as much as possible, without being married?" She spoke quietly and steadily, trying to make her voice sound more gentle than ever before; but there was no possibility of mistaking her meaning. His thin hand started and shook under her soothing touch, and then drew itself away. The light went out of his eyes and the rings of shadow round them grew visibly darker as he turned his head painfully on the damask cushion. "Is that what you have come to say?" he asked, in a groan. Cecilia leaned back in her chair and folded her hands. She felt as if she had killed an unresisting, loving creature, as a sacrifice for her fault. "God forgive me if I have done wrong," she said, speaking to herself. "I only mean to do right." Guido moved his head on his cushion again, as if suffering unbearable pain, and a sort of harsh laugh answered her words. "Your God will forgive you," he said bitterly, after a moment. "Man made God in his own image, and God must needs obey his creator. When you cannot forgive yourself, you set up an image and ask it to pardon you. I do not wonder." The cruel words hurt her in more ways than one, and she drew her breath between her teeth as if she had struck unawares against something sharp and was repressing a cry of pain. Then there was silence for a long time. "Why do you stay here?" Guido asked, in a low tone, not looking at her. "You cannot have anything more to say. You have done what you came to do. Let me be alone." "Guido!" She touched his shoulder gently as he lay turned from her, but he moved and pushed her away. "It cannot give you pleasure to see me suffer," he said. "Please go away." "How can I leave you like this?" There was despair in her voice, and the sound of tears that would never come to her eyes. He did not answer. She would not go away without trying to appease him, and she made a strong effort to collect her thoughts. "You are angry with me, of course," she began. "You despise me for not having known my own mind, but you cannot say anything that I have not said to myself. I ought to have known long ago. All I can say in self-defence now is that it is better to have told you the truth before we were married than to have been obliged to confess it afterwards, or else to have lied to you all my life if I could not find courage to speak. It is better, is it not? Oh, say that it is better!" "It would have been much better if neither of us had ever been born," Guido answered. "I only ask you to say that you would rather be suffering now than have had me tell you in a year that I was an unfaithful wife at heart. That is all. Will you not say it? It is all I ask." "Why should you ask anything of me, even that? The only kindness you can show me now is to go away." He would not look at her. His throat was parched, and he put out his hand to take the tumbler from the little table on the other side of his long chair. Instantly she rose and tried to help him, but he would not let her. "I am not so weak as that," he said coldly. "My hand is steady enough, thank you." She sighed and drew back. Perhaps it would be better to leave him, as he wished that she should, but his words recalled Lamberti's warning; his hand was steady, he said, and that meant that it was steady enough to take the pistol from the drawer in the little table and use it. He believed in nothing, in no future, in no retribution, in no God, and he was ill, lonely, and in despair through her fault. His friend knew him, and the danger was real. The conviction flashed through her brain that if she left him alone he would probably kill himself, and she fancied him lying there dead, on the red tiles. She fancied, too, Lamberti's face, when he should come to tell her what had happened, for he would surely come, and to the end of her life and his he would never forgive her. She stood still, wavering and unstrung by her thoughts, looking steadily down at Guido's head. "Since you will not go away," he said at last, "answer me one question. Tell me the name of the man who has come between us." Cecilia bit her lip and turned her face from the light. "Then it is true," Guido said, after a silence. "There is a man whom you really love, a man whom you would really marry and to whom you could really be faithful." "Yes. It is true. Everything I wrote you is true." "Who is he?" She was silent again. "Do you hope that I shall ever forgive you for what you have done to me?" "Yes. I pray heaven that you may!" "Leave heaven out of the question. You have turned my life into something like what you call hell. Do I know the man you love?" "Yes," Cecilia answered, after a moment's hesitation. "Do I often meet him? Have I met him often since you have loved him?" She said nothing, but stood still with bent head and clasped hands. "Why do you not answer me?" he asked sternly. "You must never know his name," she said, in a low voice. "Have I no right to know who has ruined my life?" "I have. Blame me. Visit it on me." He laughed, not harshly now, but gently and sarcastically. "You women are fond of offering yourselves as expiatory victims for your own sins, for you know very well that we shall not hurt you! After all, you cannot help yourself if you have fallen in love with some one else. I suppose I ought to be sorry for you. I probably shall be, when I know who he is!" He laughed again, already despising the man she had preferred in his stead. His words had cut her, but she said nothing, for she was in dread lest the slightest word should betray the truth. "You say that I know him," Guido continued, his cheeks beginning to flush feverishly, "and you would not answer me when I asked you if I had often met him since you have loved him. That means that I have, of course. You were too honest to lie, and too much frightened to tell the truth. I meet him often. Then he is one of a score of men whom I know better than all the others. There are not many men whom I meet often. It cannot be very hard to find out which of them it is." Cecilia turned her face away, resting one hand on the back of the chair, and a deep blush rose in her cheeks. But she spoke steadily. "You can never find out," she said. "He does not love me. He does not guess that I love him. But I will not answer any more questions, for you must not know who he is." "Why not? Do you think I shall quarrel with him and make him fight a duel with me?" "Perhaps." "That is absurd," Guido answered quietly. "I do not value my life much, I believe, but I have not the least inclination to risk it in such a ridiculous way. The man has injured me without knowing it. You have taken from me the one thing I treasured and you are keeping it for him; but he does not want it, he does not even know that it is his, he is not responsible for your caprices." "Not caprice, Guido! Do not call it that!" "I do. Forgive me for being frank. Say that I am ill, if you please, as an excuse for me. I call such things by their right name, caprices. If you are going to be subject to them all your life, you had better go into a convent before you throw away your good name." "I have not deserved that!" She turned upon him now, with flashing eyes. He had raised himself upon one elbow and was looking at her with cool contempt. "You have deserved that and more," he answered, "and if you insist upon staying here you must hear what I choose to say. I advised you to go away, but you would not. I have no apology to make for telling you the truth, but you are free to go. Lamberti is in the hall and will see you to your carriage." There was something royal in his anger and in his look now, which she could not help respecting, in spite of his words. She had thought that he would behave very differently; she had looked for some passionate outburst, perhaps for some unmanly weakness, excusable since he was so ill, and more in accordance with his outwardly gentle character. She had thought that because he had made his friend speak to her for him he lacked energy to speak for himself. But now that the moment had come, he showed himself as manly and determined as ever Lamberti could be, and she could not help respecting him for it. Doubtless Lamberti had always known what was in his friend's nature, below the indolent surface. Perhaps he was like his father, the old king. But Cecilia was proud, too. "If I have stayed too long," she said, facing him, "it was because I came here at some risk to confess my fault, and hoped for your forgiveness. I shall always hope for it, as long as we both live, but I shall not ask for it again. I had thought that you would accept my devoted friendship instead of what I cannot give you and never gave you, though I believed that I did. But you will not take what I offer. We had better part on that rather than risk being enemies. You have already said one thing which you will regret and which I shall always remember. Good-bye." She held out her hand frankly, and he took it and kept it a moment, while their eyes met, and he spoke more gently. "I said too much. I am sorry. I shall forgive you when I do not love you any more. Good-bye." He let her hand fall and looked away. "Thank you," she said. She left his side and went towards the door, her head a little bent. As she laid her hand upon the handle, and looked back at Guido once again, it turned in her fingers and was drawn quickly away from them. She started and turned her head to see who was there. Lamberti stood before her, and immediately pushed her back into the room and shut the door, visibly disturbed. "This way!" he said quickly, in an undertone. He led her swiftly to another door, which he opened for her and closed as soon as she had passed. "Wait for me there!" he said, as she went in. "What is the matter?" asked Guido rather faintly, when he realised what his friend had done. "Her mother is in the hall," Lamberti said. "Do not be startled, she knows nothing. She insists on seeing for herself how you are. She says her daughter begged her to come." "Tell her I am too ill to see her, please, and thank her very much. It is all over, Lamberti, we have parted." A dark flush rose in Lamberti's face. "You must see the Countess," he said hurriedly. "I am sorry, but unless she comes here, her daughter cannot get out without being seen. We cannot leave her in your room. I will not do it, for your man may wake up and go there. There is no time to be lost either!" "Bring the Countess in," said Guido, with an effort, and moving uneasily on his couch. He felt that nothing was spared him. In the few seconds that elapsed, he tried to decide what he should say to the Countess, and how he could account for knowing that Cecilia had now definitely broken off the engagement. Before he had come to any conclusion the Countess was ushered in, rosy and smiling, but a little timid at finding herself in a young bachelor's quarters. Meanwhile, Cecilia was in Guido's bedroom. An older woman might have suspected some ignoble treachery, but her perfect innocence protected her from all fear. Lamberti would not have brought her there in such a hurry unless there had been some absolute necessity for getting her out of sight at once. Undoubtedly some visitor had come who could not be turned away. Perhaps it was the doctor. Moreover, she was too much disturbed by what had taken place to pay much attention to what was, after all, a detail. She looked about her and saw that there was another door by which Lamberti would presently enter to let her out. There was the great bed with the coverlet of old arras displaying the royal arms, and beside it stood a small table of mahogany inlaid with brass. It had tall and slender legs that ended below in little brass lions' paws, and it had a single drawer. Without hesitation she went and opened it. Lamberti had been right. There was the revolver, a silver-mounted weapon with an ivory handle, much more for ornament than use, but quite effective enough for the purpose to which Guido might put it. Beside it lay a little pile of notes in their envelopes, and she involuntarily recognised her own handwriting. He had kept all she had written to him within his reach while he had been ill, and the thought pained her. The revolver was a very light one, made with only five chambers. She took it and examined it when she had shut the drawer again, and she saw that it was fully loaded. Old Fortiguerra had taught her to use firearms a little, and she knew how to load and unload them. She slipped the cartridges out quickly and tied them together in her handkerchief, and then dropped them into her parasol and the revolver after them. She went to the tall mirror in the door of the wardrobe and began to arrange her veil, expecting Lamberti every moment. She had hardly finished when he entered and beckoned to her. She caught up her parasol by the middle so as to hold its contents safely, and in a few seconds she was outside the front door of the apartment. Lamberti drew a breath of relief. "Take those!" she said quickly, producing the pistol and the cartridges. "He must not have them." Lamberti took the weapon and put it into his pocket, and held the parasol, while she untied the handkerchief and gave him the contents. Both began to go downstairs. "I had better tell you who came," Lamberti said, as they went. "You will be surprised. It was your mother." "My mother!" Cecilia stopped short on the step she had reached. "I did not think she meant to come!" She went on, and Lamberti kept by her side. "You can seem surprised when she tells you," he said. "You have definitely broken your engagement, then? Guido had time to tell me so." "Yes, I could not lie to him. It was very hard, but I am glad it is all over, though he is very angry now." They reached the last landing before the court without meeting any one, and she paused again. He wondered what expression was on her face while she spoke, for he could scarcely see the outline of her features through the veil. "Thank you again," she said. "We may not meet for a long time, for my mother and I shall go away at once, and I suppose we shall not come back next winter." She spoke rather bitterly now. "My reputation is damaged, I fancy, because I have refused to marry a man I do not love!" "I will take care of your reputation," Lamberti answered, as if he were saying the most natural thing in the world. "It is hardly your place to do that," Cecilia answered, much surprised. "It may not be my right," Lamberti said, "as people consider those things. But it is my place, as Guido's friend and yours, as the only man alive who is devoted to you both." "I am more grateful than I can tell you. But please let people say what they like of me, and do not take my defence. You, of all the men I know, must not." "Why not I, of all men? I, of all men, will." She was standing with her back to the wall on the landing, and he was facing her now. His face looked a little more set and determined than usual, and he was rather pale, and he stood sturdily still before her. She could see his face through her veil, though he could hardly distinguish hers. He felt for a moment as if he were talking to a sort of lay figure that represented her and could not answer him. "I, of all men, will take care that no one says a word against you," he said, as she was silent. "But why? Why you?" "You have definitely given up all idea of marrying Guido? Absolutely? For ever? You are sure, in your own conscience, that he has no sort of claim on you left, and that he knows it?" "Yes, yes! But----" "Then," he said, not heeding her, "as you and I may not meet again for a long time, and as it cannot do you the least harm to know it, and as you will have no right to feel that I shall be lacking in respect to you, if I say it, I am going to give myself the satisfaction of telling you something I have taken great pains to hide since we first met." "What is it?" asked Cecilia, nervously. "It is a very simple matter, and one that will not interest you much." He paused one moment, and fixed his eyes on the brown veil, where he knew that hers were. "I love you." Cecilia started violently, and put out one hand against the wall behind her. "Do not be frightened, Contessina," he said gently. "Many men will say that to you before you are old. But none of them will mean it more truly than I. Shall we go? Your mother may not stay long with Guido." He moved, expecting her to go on, but she leaned against the wall where she stood, and she stared at his face through her veil. For an instant she thought she was going to faint, for her heart stopped beating and the blood left her head. She did not know whether it was happiness, or surprise, or fear that paralysed her, when his simple words revealed the vastness of the mistake in which she had lived, and the immensity of joy she had missed by so little. She pressed her hand flat against the wall beside her, sure that if she moved it she must fall. "Have I offended you, Signorina?" Lamberti asked, and the low tones shook a little. She could not speak yet, but his voice seemed to steady her, and her heart beat again. As if she were making a great effort her hand slowly left the wall, and she stretched it out towards him, silently asking for his. He did not understand, but he took it and held it quietly, coming a little nearer to her. "You have forgiven me," he said. "Thank you. You are kind. Good-bye." But then her fingers closed on his with almost frantic pressure. "No, no!" she cried. "Not yet! One moment more!" Still he did not understand, but he felt the blood rising and singing in his heart like the tide when it is almost high. A strange expectation filled him, as of a great change in his whole being that must come in the most fearful pain, or else in a happiness almost unbearable, something swelling, bursting, overwhelming, and enormous beyond imagination. She did not know that she was drawing him nearer to her, she would have blushed scarlet at the thought; he did not know that his feet moved, that he was quite close to her, that she was clutching his hand and pressing it upon her own heart. They did not see what they were doing. They were standing together by a marble pillar in the Vestals' House. They were out in the firmament beyond worlds, not seeing, not hearing, not touching, but knowing and one in knowledge. The veil touched his cheek and lightly pressed against it. It was the Vestal's veil. He had felt it in dreams, between his face and hers. Then the world broke into visible light, and he heard her whisper in his ear. "That was my secret. You know it now." A distant footfall echoed from far up the stone staircase. Once more as she heard it she pressed his hand to her heart with all her might, and he, with his left round her neck, drew her veiled face against his and held it there an instant in simple pressure, not trying to kiss her. Then those two separated and went down the remaining steps in silence, side by side, and very demurely, as if nothing had happened. The Countess's brougham was in the courtyard, and the porter, just going into his lodge under the archway, touched his big-visored cap to Lamberti and glanced at Cecilia carelessly as they went out. Petersen was sitting in an open cab in the blazing sun, under a large white parasol lined with green cotton, and her mistress was seated beside her before she had time to rise. Cecilia had quickly turned up her veil over the brim of her hat as soon as she had passed the porter's lodge, for he knew her face and she did not wish him to see her go out with Lamberti. "Thank you," she said in a matter-of-fact tone as Lamberti stood hat in hand in the sun by the step of the cab. "Palazzo Massimo," she called out to the coach-man. She nodded to Lamberti indifferently, and the cab drove quickly away to the right, rattling over the white paving-stones of the Piazza Farnese in the direction of San Carlo a Catinari. "Did you see your mother?" Petersen asked. "She stopped the carriage and called me when she saw me, and she said she was going to ask after Signor d'Este. I said you had gone up to the embassy." "No," Cecilia answered, "I did not see her. We shall be at home before she is." She did not speak again on the way. Petersen was too near-sighted and unsuspicious to see that she surreptitiously loosened the brown veil from her hat, got it down beside her on the other side, and rolled it up into a ball with one hand. Somehow, when she reached her own door, it was inside the parasol, just where the revolver had been half an hour earlier. Lamberti put on his straw hat and glanced indifferently at the departing cab as he turned away, quite sure that Cecilia would not look round. He went back into the palace, feeling for a cigar in his outer breast pocket. His hands felt numb with cold under the scorching sun, and he knew that he was taking pains to look indifferent and to move as if nothing extraordinary had happened to him; for in a few minutes he would be face to face with Guido d'Este and the Countess Fortiguerra. He lit his cigar under the archway, and blew a cloud of smoke before him as he turned into the staircase; but on the first landing he stopped, just where he had stood with Cecilia. He paused, his cigar between his teeth, his legs a little apart as if he were on deck in a sea-way, and his hands behind him. He looked curiously at the wall where she had leaned against it, and he smoked vigorously. At last he took out a small pocket knife and with the point of the blade scratched a little cross on the hard surface, looked at it, touched it again and was satisfied, returned the knife to his pocket, and went quietly upstairs. Most seafaring men do absurdly sentimental things sometimes. Lamberti's expression had neither softened nor changed while he was scratching the mark, and when he went on his way he looked precisely as he did when he was going up the steps of the Ministry to attend a meeting of the Commission. He had good nerves, as he had told the specialist whom he had consulted in the spring. But he would have given much not to meet Guido for a day or two, though he did not in the least mind meeting the Countess. Cecilia could keep a secret as well as he himself, almost too well, and there was not the slightest danger that her mother should guess the truth from the behaviour of either of them, even when together. Nor would Guido guess it for that matter; that was not what Lamberti was thinking of just then. He felt that chance, or fate, had made him the instrument of a sort of betrayal for which he was not responsible, and as he had never been in such a position in his life, even by accident, it was almost as bad at first as if he had intentionally taken Cecilia from his friend. He had always been instinctively sure that she would love him some day, but when he had at last spoken he had really not had the least idea that she already loved him. He had acted on an impulse as soon as he was quite sure that she would never marry Guido; perhaps, if he could have analysed his feelings, as Guido could have done, he would have found that he really meant to shock her a little, or frighten her by the point-blank statement that he loved her, in the hope of widening the distance which he supposed to exist between them, and thereby making it much more improbable that she should ever care for him. Even now he did not see how he could ever marry her and remain Guido's friend. He was far too sensible to tell Guido the truth and appeal to his generosity, for the best man living is not inclined to be generous when he has just been jilted, least of all to the man to whom he owes his discomfiture. In the course of time Guido might grow more indifferent. That was the most that could be hoped. Nevertheless, from the instant in which Lamberti had realised the truth, coming back to his senses out of a whirlwind of delight, he had known that he meant to have the woman he loved for himself, since she loved him already, and that he would count nothing that chanced to stand in his way, neither his friend, nor his career, nor his own family, nor neck nor life, either, if any such improbable risk should present itself. He was very glad that he had waited till he was quite sure that she was free, for he knew very well that if the moment had come too soon he should have felt the same reckless desire to win her, though he would have exiled himself to a desert island in the Pacific Ocean rather than yield to it. And more than that. He, who had a rough and strong belief in God, in an ever living soul within him, and in everlasting happiness and suffering hereafter, he, who called suicide the most dastardly and execrable crime against self that it lies in the power of a believing man to commit, would have shot himself without hesitation rather than steal the love of his only friend's wedded wife, content to give his body to instant destruction, and his soul to eternal hell--if that were the only way not to be a traitor. God might forgive him or not; salvation or damnation would matter little compared with escaping such a monstrous evil. He did not think these things. They were instinctive with him and sure as fate, like all the impulses of violent temperaments; just as certain as that if a man should give him the lie he would have struck him in the face before he had realised that he had even raised his hand. Guido d'Este, as brave in a different way, but hating any violent action, would never strike a man at all if he could possibly help it, though he would probably not miss him at the first shot the next morning. A quarter of an hour had not elapsed since Lamberti had left the Countess and Guido together when he let himself in again with his latch-key. He went at once to the bedroom, walking slowly and scrutinising the floor as he went along. He had heard of tragedies brought about by a hairpin, a glove, or a pocket handkerchief, dropped or forgotten in places where they ought not to be. He looked everywhere in the passage and in Guido's room, but Cecilia had not dropped anything. Then he examined his beard in the glass, with an absurd exaggeration of caution. Her loose brown veil had touched his cheek, a single silk thread of it clinging to his beard might tell a tale. He was a man who had more than once lived among savages and knew how slight a trace might lead to a broad trail. Then he got a chair and set it against the side of the tall wardrobe. Standing on it he got hold of the cornice with his hands, drew himself up till he could see over it, remained suspended by one hand and, with the other, laid the revolver and the cartridges on the top. Guido would never find them there. The Countess's unnecessary shyness had disappeared as soon as she saw how ill Guido looked. His head was aching terribly now, and he had a little fever again, but he raised himself as well as he could to greet her, and smiled courteously as she held out her hand. "This is very kind of you, my dear lady," he managed to say, but his own voice sounded far off. "I was really so anxious about you!" the Countess said, with a little laugh. "And--and about it all, you know. Now tell me how you really are!" Guido said that he had felt better in the morning, but now had a bad headache. She sympathised with him and suggested bathing his temples with Eau de Cologne, which seemed simple. She always did it herself when she had a headache, she said. The best was the Forty-Seven Eleven kind. But of course he knew that. He felt that he should probably go mad if she stayed five minutes longer, but his courteous manner did not change, though her face seemed to be jumping up and down at every throb he felt in his head. She was very kind, he repeated. He had some Eau de Cologne of that very sort. He never used any other. This sounded in his own ears so absurdly like the advertisements of patent soap that he smiled in his pain. Yes, she repeated, it was quite the best; and she seemed a little embarrassed, as if she wanted to say something else but could not make up her mind to speak. Could she do anything to make him more comfortable? She could go away, but he could not tell her so. He thanked her. Lamberti and his man had taken most excellent care of him. Why did he not have a nurse? There were the Sisters of Charity, and the French sisters who wore dark blue and were very good; she could not remember the name of the order, but she knew where they lived. Should she send him one? He thanked her again, and the room turned itself upside down before his eyes and then whirled back again at the next throb. Still he tried to smile. She coughed a little and looked at her perfectly fitting gloves, wishing that he would ask after Cecilia. If he had been suffering less he would have known that he was expected to do so, but it was all he could do just then to keep his face from twitching. Then she suddenly said that she had something on her mind to say to him, but that, of course, as he was so very ill, she would not say it now, but as soon as he was quite well they would have a long talk together. Guido was a man more nervous than sanguine, and probably more phlegmatic than either, and his nervous strength asserted itself now, just when he began to believe that he was on the verge of delirium. He felt suddenly much quieter and the pain in his head diminished, or he noticed it less. He said that he was quite able to talk now, and wished to know at once what she had to say to him. She needed no second invitation to pour out her heart about Cecilia, and in a long string of involved and often disjointed sentences she told him just what she felt. Cecilia had done her best to love him, after having really believed that she did love him, but it was of no use, and it was much better that Guido should know the truth now, than find it out by degrees. Cecilia was dreadfully sorry to have made such a mistake, and both Cecilia and she herself would always be the best friends he had in the world; but the engagement had better be broken off at once, and of course, as it would injure Cecilia if everything were known, it would be very generous of him to let it be thought that it had been broken by mutual agreement, and without any quarrel. She stopped at last, rather frightened at having said so much, but quite sure that she had done right, and believing that she knew the whole truth and had told it all. She waited for his answer in some trepidation. "My dear lady," he said at last, "I am very glad you have been so frank. Ever since your daughter wrote me that letter I have felt that it must end in this way. As she does not wish to marry me, I quite agree that our engagement should end at once, so that the agreement is really mutual and friendly, and I shall say so." "How good you are!" cried the Countess, delighted. "There is only one thing I ask of you," Guido said, after pressing his right hand upon his forehead in an attempt to stop the throbbing that now began again. "I do not think I am asking too much, considering what has happened, and I promise not to make any use of what you tell me." "You have a right to ask us anything," the Countess answered, contritely. "Who is the man that has taken my place?" The Countess stared at him blankly a moment, and her mouth opened a little. "What man?" she asked, evidently not understanding him. "I naturally supposed that your daughter felt a strong inclination for some one else," Guido said. "Oh dear, no!" cried the Countess. "You are quite mistaken!" "I beg your pardon, then. Pray forget what I said." He saw that she was speaking the truth, as far as she knew it, and he had long ago discovered that she was quite unable to conceal anything not of the most vital importance. She repeated her assurance several times, and then began to review the whole situation, till Guido was in torment again. At last the door opened and Lamberti entered. He saw at a glance how Guido was suffering, and came to his side. "I am afraid he is not so well to-day," he said. "He looks very tired. If he could sleep more, he would get well sooner." The Countess rose at once, and became repentant for having stayed too long. "I could not help telling him everything," she explained, looking at Lamberti. "And as for Cecilia being in love with some one else," she added, looking down into Guido's face and taking his hand, "you must put that out of your head at once! As if I should not know it! It is perfectly absurd!" Lamberti stared fixedly at the top of her hat while she bent down. "Of course," Guido said, summoning his strength to bid her good-bye courteously, and to show some gratitude for her visit. "I am sorry I spoke of it. Thank you very much for coming to see me, and for being so frank." In a sense he was glad she had come, for her coming had solved the difficulty in which he had been placed. He sank back exhausted and suffering as she left the room, and was hardly aware that Lamberti came back soon afterwards and sat down beside him. Before long his friend carried him back to his bed, for he seemed unable to walk. Lamberti stayed with him till he fell asleep under the influence of a soporific medicine, and then called the man-servant. He told him he had taken the revolver from the drawer, because his master was not to be married after all, and might do something foolish, and ought to be watched continually, and he said that he would come back and stay through the night. The man had been in his own service, and could be trusted now that he had slept. Lamberti left the Palazzo Farnese and walked slowly homeward in the white glare, smoking steadily all the way, and looking straight before him. CHAPTER XXV The Countess wrote that afternoon to Baron Goldbirn, of Vienna, and to the Princess Anatolie, now in Styria, that the engagement between her daughter and Signor Guido d'Este was broken off by mutual agreement. She had told Cecilia that she had been to see Guido and had confessed the plain truth, and that there need be no more comedies, because men never died of that sort of thing after all, and it was much better for them to be told everything outright. Cecilia seemed perfectly satisfied and thanked her. Then the Countess said she would like to go to Brittany, or perhaps to Norway, where she had never been, but that if Cecilia preferred Scotland, she would make no objection. She would go anywhere, provided the place were cool, and on the top of a mountain, or by the sea, but she wished to leave at once. Everything had been ready for their departure several days ago. "You do not really mean to leave Rome till Guido--I mean, till Signor d'Este is out of all danger, do you?" asked the young girl. "My dear, since you are not going to marry him, what difference can it make?" asked the Countess, unconsciously heartless. "The sooner we go, the better. You are as pale as a sheet and as thin as a skeleton. You will lose all your looks if you stay here!" Cecilia was in a loose white silk garment with open sleeves. She looked at the perfect curve of her arm, from the slender wrist to the delicately rounded elbow, and smiled. "I am not a skeleton yet," she said. "You will be in a few days," her mother answered cheerfully. "There is a telegraph to everywhere nowadays, and Signor Lamberti will be here and can send us news all the time. You cannot possibly go and see the poor man, you know. If you could only guess how I felt, my dear, when I found myself there this morning alone with him! I confess, I half expected that the walls would be covered with the most dreadful pictures, those things I do not like you to look at in the Paris Salon, you know. Women apparently waiting for tea on the lawn--before dressing--that sort of thing." The good Countess blushed at the thought. "They are only women!" said Cecilia. "Why should I not look at them?" "Because they are horrid," answered the Countess. "But I must say I saw nothing of the sort in Guido's rooms. Nevertheless, I felt like the wicked ladies in the French novels, who always go out in thick veils and have little gold keys hidden somewhere inside their clothes. It must be very uncomfortable." She prattled on and her daughter scarcely heard her. All sorts of hard questions were presenting themselves to Cecilia's mind together. Had she done wrong, or right? And then, though it might have been quite right to let Lamberti know that she loved him, had her behaviour been modest and maidenly, or over bold? After all, could she have helped putting out her hand to find his just then? And when she had found it, could she possibly have checked herself from drawing him nearer to her? Had she any will of her own left at that moment, or had she been taken unawares and made to do something which she would never have done, if she had been quite calm? Calm! She almost laughed at the word as it came into her thought. Her mother was reading the _Figaro_ now, having given up talking when she saw that Cecilia did not listen. Ever since Cecilia could remember her mother had read the _Figaro_. When it did not come by the usual post she read the number of the preceding day over again. Cecilia was trying to decide where to spend the rest of the summer, tolerably sure that she could make her mother accept any reasonable plan she offered. By a reasonable plan she meant one that should not take her too far from Rome. For her own part she would have been glad not to go away at all. There was Vallombrosa, which was high up and very cool, and there was Viareggio, which was by the sea, but much warmer, and there was Sorrento, which had become fashionable in the summer, and was never very hot and was the prettiest place of all. Something must be decided at once, for she knew her mother well. When the Countess grew restless to leave town, it was impossible to live with her. A startled exclamation interrupted Cecilia's reflections. "My dear! How awful!" "What is it?" asked Cecilia, placidly, expecting her mother to read out some blood-curdling tale of runaway motor cars and mangled nursery maids. "This is too dreadful!" cried the Countess, still buried in the article she had found, and reading on to herself, too much interested to stop a moment. "Is anybody amusing dead?" enquired Cecilia, with calm. "What did you say?" asked the Countess, reaching the end. "This is the most frightful thing I ever heard of! A million of francs--in small sums--extracted on all sorts of pretexts--probably as blackmail--it is perfectly horrible." "Who has extracted a million of francs from whom?" asked Cecilia, quite indifferent. "Guido d'Este, of course! I told you--from the Princess Anatolie----" "Guido?" Cecilia started from her seat. "It is a lie!" she cried, leaning over her mother's shoulder and reading quickly. "It is an infamous lie!" "My dear?" protested the Countess. "They would not dare to print such a thing if it were not true! Poor Guido! Of course, I suppose they take an exaggerated view, but the Princess always gave me to understand that he had large debts. It was a million, you see, just that million they wished us to give for your dowry! Yes, that would have set him straight. But they did not get it! My child, what an escape you have made! Just fancy if you had been already married!" "I do not believe a word of it," said Cecilia, indignantly throwing down the paper she had taken from her mother's hand. "Besides, there is only an initial. It only speaks of a certain Monsieur d'E." "Oh, there is no doubt about it, I am afraid. His aunt, 'a certain Princess,' his father 'one of the great of the earth.' It could not be any one else." "I should like to kill the people who write such things!" Cecilia was righteously angry. The seed sown by Monsieur Leroy was bearing fruit already, and in a much more public place than he had expected, or even wished. The young lawyer cared much less for the money he might make out of the affair than for the advantage of having his name connected with a famous scandal, and he had not found it hard to make the story public. The article appeared in the shape of a letter from an occasional correspondent, and said it was rumoured that since her nephew was to make a rich marriage the Princess would bring suit to recover the sums she had been induced to lend him on divers pretences. Her legal representative in Rome, it was stated, had been interviewed, but had positively refused to give any information, and his name was given in full, whereas all the others were indicated by initials followed by dots. The lawyer flattered himself that this was a remarkably neat way of letting the world know who he was and with what great discretion he was endowed. As Cecilia thought of Guido's face as she had seen it that morning, her heart beat with anger and she clenched her hand and turned away. Her mother believed the story, or a part of it, and others would believe as much. The _Figaro_ had come in the morning, and the article would certainly appear in the Roman papers that very evening. Guido would not hear of it at present, because Lamberti would keep it from him, but he must know it in the end. The girl was powerless, and realised it. If she had been mistress of her own fortune she would readily have satisfied the Princess's demands on Guido, for she suspected that in some way the abominable article had been authorised by his aunt. But she was still Baron Goldbirn's ward, and the sensible financier would have laughed to scorn the idea of ransoming Guido d'Este's reputation. So would her mother, though she was generous; and besides, the Countess could not touch her capital, which was held in trust for Cecilia. "What a mercy that you are not married to him!" she said, reading the article again, while her daughter walked up and down the small boudoir. "You should not say such things!" Cecilia answered hotly. "Why do you read that disgusting paper? You know the story is a vile falsehood, from beginning to end. You know that as well as I do! Signor Lamberti will go to Paris to-night and kill the man who wrote it." Her eyes flashed, and she had visions of the man she loved shaking a miserable creature to death, as a terrier kills a rat. Oddly enough the miserable creature took the shape of Monsieur Leroy in her vivid imagination. "Monsieur Leroy is at the bottom of this," she said with instant conviction. "He hates Guido." "I daresay," answered the Countess. "I never liked Monsieur Leroy. Do you remember, when I asked about him at the Princess's dinner, what an awful silence there was? That was one of the most dreadful moments of my life! I am sure her relations never mention him." "He does what he likes with her. He is a spiritualist." "Who told you that, child?" "That dear old Don Nicola Francesetti, the archæologist who showed us the discoveries in Saint Cecilia's church." "I remember. I had quite forgotten him." "Yes. He told me that Monsieur Leroy makes tables turn and rap, and all that, and persuades the Princess that he is in communication with spirits. Don Nicola said quite gravely that the devil was in all spiritualism." "Of course he is," assented the Countess. "I have heard of dreadful things happening to people who made tables turn. They go mad, and all sorts of things." "All sorts of things," in the Countess's mind represented everything she could not remember or would not take the trouble to say. The expression did not always stand grammatically in the sentence, but that was of no importance whatever compared with the convenience of using it in any language she chanced to be speaking. She belonged to a generation in which a woman was considered to have finished her education when she had learned to play the piano and had forgotten arithmetic, and she had now forgotten both, which did not prevent her from being generally liked, while some people thought her amusing. Just at that moment she seemed hopelessly frivolous to Cecilia, who was in the greatest distress for Guido, and left her to take refuge in solitude. She could remember no day in her life on which so much had happened to change it, and she felt that she must be alone at last. In her old way she sat down to let herself dream with open eyes in the darkened room. There could be no harm in it now, and the old longing came upon her as if she had never tried to resist it. She sat facing the shadows and concentrated all her thoughts on one point with a steady effort, sure that presently she should be thinking of nothing and waiting for the vision to appear, and for the dream-man she had loved so long. He might take her into his arms now, and she would not resist him; she would let his lips meet hers, and for one endless instant she would be lifted up in strong and strange delight, as when to-day her veiled cheek had pressed against his for a second--or an hour--she did not know. He might kiss her in dreams now, for in real life he loved her as she loved him, and some day, far off no doubt, when poor Guido was well and strong again, and Lamberti had silenced all the calumnies invented against him, then it would all surely come true indeed. But now she waited long, patiently, in the certainty that she could go back to the marble court and stand by the pillar in the morning light till she felt him coming up behind her. Yet she saw nothing, and her eyes grew weary of watching the shadows, and closed themselves, for it was afternoon, and very hot, and she was tired. She fell into a sweet sleep in her chair, and presently the refreshing breeze that springs up in Rome towards five o'clock in summer blew through the drawn blinds to fan her delicate cheek, and stir the little golden ringlets at her temples. While she slept her face grew sad by slow degrees, and on her lap her hands moved and lay with their palms turned upwards as if she were appealing piteously to some higher power for mercy and help. Shadows darkened softly under her eyes, as she lay thus, and the young lids swelled and trembled; and she, who never shed tears waking, wept silently in her sleep. The bright drops hung by the lashes and broke, trickling down her cheeks, one by one, till they fell sideways upon her bare white neck. Many they were and long they fell, and when they ceased at last, her face was very white and still, as if she were quite dead, and dead of a sorrow that could be consoled only in heaven. She had dreamed that the Vestal's vow was broken at last, and that she was sitting alone at night on the steps of the closed Temple, leaning back against the base of a pillar, watching the stars that slowly ascended out of the east; and she was thinking of what she had been, and that she should never again stand within the holy place to feed the sacred fire with the consecrated wood, and sweep the precious ashes into the mysterious pit beneath the altar. Never again was she to write down the records of the lordly Roman unions that had kept the stock great and pure and the free blood clean from that of slaves for a thousand years. Never might she sit at the feet of the Chief Virgin in the moonlit court, listening to tales of holy Vestals in old time, while the slow water murmured in the channels between one fountain and another. It was all over, all ended, all behind her in the past for ever. Her vow was broken, because her veiled cheek had touched the cheek of a living, breathing man who had laid a strong hand upon her neck and had pressed her close to him, she consenting, and always to consent. She was not to die for it, since it was no mortal sin, but she was no longer a Vestal now, and the Temple and the house of the pure in heart were shut against her henceforth and would not be opened again. She knew that she had passed the threshold for the last time, and that the man she loved would soon come and take her away to another life. After that there would be no fear in the world, since she would always be with him, and he would make her forget all. But he had not come yet, and while she waited her tears flowed quietly and sadly for all that was no more to be hers, but most of all because she had broken a high and solemn promise which had been the foundation of her life. In the old dream, when the Vestals were dismissed from their office each to her own home, she was the most faithful of them all, to the very end. But now she had been the very first to yield, and they had put her out of their midst, sadly and silently, to wait alone in the night for him she loved. So she waited and wept, and the night wind seemed to freeze the salt tears on her face and neck; yet he did not come. Then she heard his step; but she was wakened by the soft sound of the latch bolt of her door in its socket, and she sprang to her feet, straight and white, with a little sharp cry, for the fancied sound had always frightened her as nothing else could. This time she had not turned the key, and the door opened. "Did I startle you, child?" asked her mother's voice, kindly. "I am sorry. Signor Lamberti is in the drawing-room. I think you had better come. He has heard of the article in the _Figaro_, and is reading it now." "I will come in a minute, mother," Cecilia answered, turning her face away. "Let me slip on my frock." "It is only Signor Lamberti," the Countess observed, rather thoughtlessly. "But I will send you Petersen." The door was shut again, and Cecilia heard her mother's tripping footsteps on the glazed tiles in the corridor. She knew that she had blushed quickly, for she had been taken unawares, but the room was darkened and her mother had noticed nothing. She was suddenly aware that her cheeks and her neck were wet, and she remembered what she had dreamt and wondered that her tears should have been real. She had let in more light now and she looked at herself in the glass with curiosity, for she did not remember to have cried since she had been a little girl. The dried tears gave her face a stained and spotted look she did not like, and she made haste to bathe it in cold water. Even the near-sighted Petersen might see something unusual, and she would not let Lamberti guess that she had been crying on that day of all days. It was all very strange, and while she dressed she wondered still why the real tears had come, and why she had dreamt she had broken her vow. She had never dreamt that before, not even when she used to meet Lamberti in her dreams by the fountain in the Villa Madama. It was stranger still that she should not have been able to call up the waking vision in the old way. It was as if some power she had once possessed had left her very suddenly, a power, or a faculty, or a gift; she could not tell what it was, but it was gone and something told her that it would not return. She made haste, and almost ran along the broad passage. When she went into the drawing-room Lamberti was standing with the _Figaro_ in his hand, before her mother who was sitting down. He bowed rather stiffly, though he smiled a little, and she saw that his blue eyes glittered and his face had the ruthless look she used to dread. She knew what it meant now, and was pleased. She wished she could see him shake the wretch who had written the article; she was glad that he was just what he was, not too tall, strong, active, red-haired and angry, a fighting man from head to foot, roused and ready for a violent deed. She had waited for him so long, outside the closed Temple of Vesta in the cold night wind! "It is not the article that matters," he said, taking it for granted that she knew the contents. "It is what Guido would feel if he read it." "Especially just now," observed the Countess, looking at Cecilia. "What are you going to do?" Cecilia asked as quietly as she could. "Shall you go to Paris?" "No! this was written in Rome. I will wager my life that the lawyer who is mentioned here wrote it all and got some clever Frenchman to translate it for him. I know the fellow by name." "I thought Monsieur Leroy was at the bottom of it," said Cecilia. Lamberti looked at her a moment. "I daresay," he said. "I am sure that the Princess never meant that anything of this sort should be printed. Did Guido ever tell you about her money dealings with him?" Guido had never mentioned them, of course, and Lamberti explained in a few words exactly what had happened, and the nature of the receipts Guido had given to his aunt. "I daresay you are right about Monsieur Leroy," he concluded, "for the old lady is far too clever to have done such an absurd thing as this, and it is just like his blundering hatred of Guido." "I wish he were here," said Cecilia, looking at Lamberti's hands. "I wonder what you would do to him." "The lawyer is here, which is more to the purpose," Lamberti answered. "You cannot fight a lawyer, can you?" asked the young girl. "You cannot shoot him." "One can without doubt," returned Lamberti, smiling. "But it will not be necessary." "My dear child," cried the Countess in a reproachful tone, "I had no idea you could be so bloodthirsty! Your father fought with Garibaldi, but I am sure he never talked like that." "Men have no need of talking, mother. They can fight themselves." "May I take the _Figaro_ with me?" asked Lamberti. "I may not be able to buy a copy. By the bye, Baron Goldbirn is your guardian, is he not? He must have important relations with the financiers in Paris." Cecilia looked at her mother, meaning her to answer the question. "He is always in Paris himself," said the Countess. "I mean when he is not in Vienna." "Can you telegraph to him to use his influence in Paris, so that the _Figaro_ shall correct the article? Newspapers never take back what they say, but it will be enough if a paragraph appears in a prominent part of the paper stating that some ill-disposed people having supposed that the person referred to in a recent letter from a Roman correspondent was Guido d'Este, the editors take the opportunity of stating positively that no reference to him was intended. Will you telegraph that?" "But will it be of any use?" asked the Countess, who was slightly in awe of Baron Goldbirn. "Please write the telegram yourself," Cecilia said. "Then there cannot be any mistake. The address is Kärnthner Ring, Vienna." "You will find writing paper in my boudoir," said the Countess. "Cecilia will show you." The young girl led the way to her mother's table in the next room, and Lamberti sat down before it, while she pulled out a sheet of paper and gave him a pen. Neither looked at the other, and Lamberti wrote slowly in a laboured round hand unlike his own, intended for the telegraph clerk to read easily. "How shall I sign it?" he asked when he had finished. "'Countess Fortiguerra.'" He wrote, blotted the page, and rose. For one moment he stood close beside her. "Shall I tell your mother?" he asked, in a low voice. "Not yet." He bent his head and looked at her, and his face softened wonderfully in that instant. But there was not a touch of their hands, though they were alone in the room, nor a tender word spoken in a whisper to have told any one that they loved each other so well. They were alike, and they understood without speech or touch. Lamberti read the telegram to the Countess, who seemed satisfied, but not very hopeful about the result. "I never could understand what financiers and newspapers have to do with each other," she observed. "They seem to me so different." "There is not often any resemblance between a horse and his rider," said Lamberti, enigmatically. "Will you come this evening and tell us what the lawyer says?" Cecilia asked. "Yes, if I may." "Pray do," said the Countess. "We should so much like to know. Poor Guido! Good-bye!" Lamberti left the room. CHAPTER XXVI When Lamberti reached the Palazzo Farnese at eight o'clock he had all Guido's receipts for the Princess's money in his pocket. He had difficulty in getting the lawyer to see him on business so late in the afternoon, and when he succeeded at last he did not find it easy to carry matters with a high hand; but he had come prepared to go to any length, for he was in no gentle humour, and if he could not get the papers by persuasion, he fully intended to take them by force, though that might be the end of his career as an officer, and might even bring him into court for something very like robbery. The lawyer was obdurate at first. He of course denied all knowledge of the article in the _Figaro_, but he said that he was the Princess's legal representative, that the case had been formally placed in his hands, and that he should use all his professional energy in her interests. "After all," said Lamberti at last, "you have nothing but a few informal bits of writing to base your case upon. They have no legal value." "They are stamped receipts," answered the lawyer. "They are not stamped," Lamberti replied. "They are!" "They are not!" "You are giving me the lie, sir," said the lawyer, angrily. "I say that they are not stamped," retorted Lamberti. "You dare not show them to me." The lawyer was human, after all. He opened his safe, in a rage, found the receipts, and showed one of them to Lamberti triumphantly. "There!" he cried. "Are they stamped or not? Is the signature written across the stamp or not?" Lamberti had the advantage of knowing positively that when Guido had given the acknowledgments to his aunt, there had been no stamps on them. He did not know how they had got them now, but he was sure that some fraud had been committed. It was broad daylight still, and he examined the signature carefully while the lawyer held the half sheet of note paper before his eyes. The paper was certainly the Princess's, and the writing was Guido's beyond doubt. The Princess always used violet ink, and Guido had written with it. It struck Lamberti suddenly that it had turned black where the signature crossed the stamp, but had remained violet everywhere else. Now violet ink sometimes turns black altogether, but it does not change colour in parts. As he looked nearer, he saw that the letters formed on the stamp were a little tremulous. Though he had never heard of such a thing, it now occurred to him that the stamp had been simply stuck upon the middle of the signature, and that the part of the latter that had been covered by it had been cleverly forged over it. "The stamp makes very much less difference in law than you seem to suppose," said the lawyer, enjoying his triumph. "It will make a considerable difference in law," answered Lamberti, "if I prove to you that the stamp was put on over the first writing, and part of the signature forged upon it. It has not even been done with the same ink! The one is black and the other is violet. Do you know that this is forgery, and that you may lose your reputation if you try to found an action at law upon a forged document?" The lawyer was now scrutinising the signatures of the notes one by one in the strong evening light. His anger had disappeared and there were drops of perspiration on his forehead. "There is only one way of proving it to you," Lamberti said quietly. "Moisten one of the stamps and raise it. If the signature runs underneath it in violet ink, I am right, and the wisest thing you can do is to hand me those pieces of paper and say nothing more about them. You can write to Monsieur Leroy that you have done so. I even believe that he would pay a considerable sum for them." It was as he said, and the lawyer was soon convinced that he had been imposed upon, and had narrowly escaped being laughed at as a dupe, or prosecuted as a party accessory to a fraud. He was glad to be out of the whole affair so easily. Therefore, when Lamberti reached his friend's door, he had the receipts in his pocket and he now meant to tell Guido what had happened, after first giving them back to him. Guido would laugh at Monsieur Leroy's stupid attempt to hurt him. But some one had been before Lamberti. "He is very ill," said the servant, gravely, as he admitted him. "The doctor is there and has sent for a nurse. I telephoned for him." Lamberti asked him what had happened, fearing the truth. Guido had felt a little better in the afternoon and had asked for his letters and papers. Half an hour later his servant had gone in with his tea and had found him raving in delirium. That was all, but Lamberti knew what it meant. Guido did not take the _Figaro_, but some one had sent the article to him and he had read it. He had brain fever, and Lamberti was not surprised, for he had suffered as much on that day as would have killed some men, and might have driven some men mad. Lamberti did not wish to frighten Cecilia or her mother, but he sent them word that he would not leave Guido that night, nor till he was better, and that he had seen the lawyer and had recovered a number of forged papers. After that there was nothing to be done but to watch and wait, and hear the broken phrases that fell from the sick man's lips, now high, now low, now laughing, now despairing, as if a host of mad spirits were sporting with his helpless brain and body and mocking each other with his voice. So it went on, hour after hour, and all the next day, till his strength seemed almost spent. Lamberti listened, because he could not help it when he was in the room, and again and again Cecilia's name rang out, and the first passionate words of speeches that ran into incoherent sounds and were drowned in a groan. Lamberti had nursed men who were ill and had seen them die in several ways, but he had never taken care of one who was very near to him. It was bad enough, but it was worse to know that he had an unwilling share in causing his friend's suffering, and to feel that if Guido lived he must some day be told that Lamberti had taken his place. It was strangest of all to hear the name of the woman he loved so constantly on another's lips. When the two men talked of her she had always been "the Contessina," while she had been "Cecilia" in the hearts of both. There was something in the thought of not having told Guido all before the delirium seized him, that still offended Lamberti's scrupulous loyalty. It would be almost horrible if Guido should die without knowing the truth. Somehow, his consent still seemed needful to Lamberti's love, and it seemed so to Cecilia, too, and there was no denying that he was now in danger of his life. If he was to die, there would probably be a lucid hour before death, but what right would his best friend have to embitter those final moments for one who would certainly go out of this world with no hope of the next? Yet, when he was gone at last, would it be no slur on the memory of such true friendship to do what would have hurt him, if he could have known of it? Lamberti was not sure. Like some strong men of rough temperament, he had hidden delicacies of feeling that many a girl would have thought foolish and exaggerated, and they were the more sensitive because they were so secret, and he never suffered outward things to come in contact with them, nor spoke of them, even to Guido. Some people said that Guido was Quixotic, and he was certainly the personification of honour. If the papers Lamberti had safe in his pocket had come into Guido's possession as they had come into Lamberti's own, Guido would have sent them back to Princess Anatolie, quite sure that she had a right to them, whether they were partly forged or not, because he had originally given them to her and nothing could induce him to take them back. The reason why Guido's illness had turned into brain fever was simply that he believed his honourable reputation among men to have been gravely damaged by an article in a newspaper. Honour was his god, his religion, and his rule of life; it was all he had beyond the material world, and it was sacred. He had not that something else, simple but undefinable, and as sensitive as an uncovered nerve, that lay under his friend's rougher character and sturdier heart. Nature would never have chosen him to be one instrument in that mysterious harmony of two sleeping beings which had linked Cecilia and Lamberti in their dreams. It was not the melancholy and intellectual Cassius who trembled before Cæsar's ghost at Philippi; it was rough Brutus, the believer in himself and the man of action. The illness ran its course. While it continued Lamberti went every other day to the Palazzo Massimo and told the two ladies of Guido's state. He and Cecilia looked at each other silently, but she never showed that she wished to be alone with him, and he made no attempt to see her except in her mother's presence. Both felt that Guido was dying, and knew that they had some share in his sufferings. As soon as the Countess learned that the danger was real she gave up all thought of leaving Rome, and there was no discussion about it between her and her daughter. She was worldly and often foolish, but she was not unkind, and she had grown really fond of Guido since the spring. So they waited for the turn of the illness, or for its sudden end, and the days dragged on painfully. Lamberti was as lean as a man trained for a race, and the cords stood out on his throat when he spoke, but nothing seemed to tire him. The good Countess lost her fresh colour and grew listless, but she complained only of the heat and the solitude of Rome in summer, and if she felt any impatience she never showed it. Cecilia was as slender and pale as one of the lilies of the Annunciation, but her eyes were full of light. In the early morning she often used to go with her maid to the distant church of Santa Croce, and late in the afternoons she went for long drives with her mother in the Campagna. Twice Lamberti came to luncheon, and the three were silent and subdued when they were together. Then the news came that Princess Anatolie had died suddenly at her place in Styria, and one of the secretaries of the Austrian embassy, who was obliged to stay in town, came to the Palazzo Massimo the same afternoon and told the Countess some details of the old lady's death. There was certainly something mysterious about it, but no one regretted her translation to a better world, though it put a number of high and mighty persons into mourning for a little while. She died in the drawing-room after dinner, almost with her coffee cup in her hand. It was the heart, of course, said the young secretary. Two or three of her relations were staying in the house, and one of them was the man who had been at her dinner-party given for the engaged couple, and who resembled Guido but was older. The Countess remembered his name very well. It had leaked out that he was exceedingly angry at the article in the _Figaro_ and had said one or two sharp things to the Princess, when Monsieur Leroy had come in unexpectedly, though the Princess had sent him away for a few days. No one knew exactly what followed, but Monsieur Leroy was an insolent person and the Princess's cousin was not patient of impertinence nor of anything like an attack on Guido d'Este. It was said that Monsieur Leroy had left the room hastily and that the other had followed him at once, in a very bad temper, and that the Princess, who thought Monsieur Leroy was going to be badly hurt, if not killed, had died of fright, without uttering a word or a cry. She had always been unaccountably attached to Monsieur Leroy. The secretary glanced at Cecilia, asked for another cup of tea, and discreetly changed the subject, fearing that he had already said a little too much. "I believe Guido may recover, now that she is dead," Lamberti said, when he heard the story. The change in Guido's state came one night about eleven o'clock, when Lamberti and the French nun were standing beside the bed, looking into his face and wondering whether he would open his eyes before he died. He had been lying motionless for many hours, turned a little on one side, and his breathing was very faint. There seemed to be hardly any life left in the wasted body. "I think he will die about midnight," Lamberti whispered to the nurse. The good nun, who thought so too, bent down and spoke gently close to the sick man's ear. She could not bear to let him go out of life without a Christian word, though Lamberti had told her again and again that his friend believed in nothing beyond death. "You are dying," she said, softly and clearly. "Think of God! Try to think of God, Signor d'Este!" That was all she could find to say, for she was a simple soul and not eloquent; but perhaps it might do some good. She knelt down then, by the bedside. "Look!" cried Lamberti in a low voice, bending forwards. Guido had opened his eyes, and they were wide and grave. "Thank you," he said, after a few seconds, faintly but distinctly. "You are very kind. But I am not going to die." The quiet eyes closed, and the mystery of life went on in silence. That was all he had to say. The nun knelt down again and folded her hands, but in less than a minute she rose and busied herself noiselessly, preparing something in a glass. It would be the last time that anything would pass his lips, she thought, and it might be quite useless to give it to him, but it must be ready. Many and many a time she had heard the dying declare quietly that they were out of danger. Lamberti stood motionless by the bedside, thinking much the same things and feeling as if his own heart were slowly turning into lead. He stood there a long time, convinced that it was useless to send for the doctor, who always came about midnight, for Guido would probably be dead before he came. He would stop breathing presently, and that would be the end. The lids would open a little, but the eyes would not see, there would be a little white froth on the parted lips, and that would be the end. Guido would know the great secret then. But the breathing did not cease, and the eyes did not open again; on the contrary, at the end of half an hour Lamberti was almost sure that the lids were more tightly closed than before, and that the breath came and went with a fuller sound. In ten minutes more he was sure that the sick man was peacefully sleeping, and not likely to die that night. He turned away with a deep sigh of relief. The doctor came soon after midnight. He would not disturb Guido; he looked at him a long time and listened to his breathing, and nodded with evident satisfaction. "You may begin to hope now," he said quietly to Lamberti, not even whispering, for he knew how deep such sleep was sure to be. "He may not wake before to-morrow afternoon. Do not be anxious. I will come early in the morning." "Very well," answered Lamberti. "By the bye, a near relation of his has died suddenly while he has been delirious. Shall I tell him if he wakes quite conscious?" "If it will give him great satisfaction to know of his relative's death, tell him of it by all means," answered the doctor, his quiet eye twinkling a little, for he had often heard of the Princess Anatolie, and knew that she was dead. "I do not think the news will cause him pain," said Lamberti, with perfect gravity. The doctor gave the nurse a few directions and went away, evidently convinced that Guido was out of all immediate danger. Then Lamberti rested at last, for the nun slept in the daytime and was fresh for the night's watching. He stretched himself upon Guido's long chair in the drawing-room, leaving the door open, and one light burning, so that the nurse could call him at once. He had earned his rest, and as he shut his eyes his only wish was that he could have let Cecilia know of the change before he went to sleep. A moment later he was sitting beside her on the bench in the Villa Madama, by the fountain, telling her that Guido was safe at last. When he awoke the sun had risen an hour. CHAPTER XXVII "I am like Dante," said Guido to Lamberti, when he was recovering. "I have been in Hell, and now I am in Purgatory. But I shall not reach the earthly Paradise at the top, much less the Heaven beyond." He smiled sadly and looked at his friend. "Who knows?" Lamberti asked, by way of answer. "Beatrice will not lead me further." Guido closed his eyes, and wondered why he had come back to life, out of so much suffering, only to be tormented again in the same way, perhaps when the end really came. His memories of his serious illness were vague and indistinct, but they were all horrible. He only recalled the beginning very clearly, how he had glanced through the newspaper article and had dropped it in sudden and overwhelming despair; and then, how he had roused himself and had felt in the drawer for his revolver; not finding it, he had lost consciousness just as he realised that even that means of escape from life had been taken from him. He remembered having felt as if something broke in his brain, though he knew that he was not dying. After that, fragments of his ravings came back to him with the still vivid recollection of awful pain, of monstrous darkness, of lurid lights, of hideous beings glaring and gnashing their jagged teeth at him, and of a continual discordant noise of voices that had run all through his delirium like the crying out and moaning of many creatures in agony. It was no wonder that he compared what he remembered of his sufferings to hell itself. And now that he was alive, of what use was life to him? His honour was cleared, indeed, for Lamberti had taken care of that. Lamberti had burned the papers before his eyes after telling him how Princess Anatolie had died, and had read him the paragraph which Baron Goldbirn had caused to be inserted in the _Figaro_. The Princess was dead, and Monsieur Leroy would probably never trouble any one again. When he had squandered what she had left him, he would probably get a living as a medium in Vienna. Guido knew the secret of the tie that bound him to the Princess, but was quite sure that the proud old woman had never let him guess it himself, in spite of her doting affection for him. Those of her family who knew it would not tell him, of all people, and if Monsieur Leroy ever begged money of Guido he would not present himself as an unfortunate cousin. Guido foresaw no difficulties in the future, but he anticipated no happiness, and his life stretched before him, colourless, blank, and idle. Since his delirium had ceased, he had not once spoken of Cecilia, and Lamberti began to fear that he would not allude to her for a long time. That did not make it easier to tell him the story he must hear, and the time had come when he must hear it, come what might, lest he should ever think that he had been intentionally kept in ignorance of the truth. Lamberti was glad when he spoke of Cecilia as a Beatrice who would never appear to lead him further, and knew at once that the opportunity must not be lost. It was the hardest moment in Lamberti's life. It had been far easier to hide what he felt, so long as he had not guessed that Cecilia loved him, than it was to speak out now; it had cost him much less to be steadfast in his silence with her while Guido's illness lasted. To make Guido understand all, it would be necessary to tell all from the beginning, even to explaining that what he had taken for mutual aversion at first, had been an attraction so irresistible that it had frightened Cecilia and had made Lamberti compare it with a possession of the devil and a haunting spirit. The two men were sitting on the brick steps of the miniature Roman theatre close to the oak which is still called Tasso's, a few yards from the new road that leads over the Janiculum through what was once the Villa Corsini. It was shady there, and Rome lay at their feet in the still afternoon. The waiting carriage was out of sight, and there was no sound but the rustling of leaves stirred by the summer breeze. It was nearly the middle of August. "They are still in Rome," Lamberti said, after a moment's pause, during which he had decided to speak at last. "Are they?" asked Guido, coldly. "Yes. Neither the Countess nor her daughter would go away till you were well." "I am well now." He was painfully thin and his eyes were hollow. The doctor had ordered mountain air and he was going to stay with one of his relatives in the Austrian Tyrol as soon as he could bear the journey without too much fatigue. "They wish to see you," Lamberti said, glancing sideways at his face. "I cannot refuse, but I would rather not see them. They ought to understand that, I think." He was offended by what seemed very like an intrusion on the privacy of a suffering that was still keen. Why could they not leave him alone? "They would not have gone away in any case till you recovered," Lamberti answered, "but the Contessina would not have the bad taste to wish for a meeting just now, unless there were a reason which you do not know, and which I must explain to you, cost what it may." Guido looked at Lamberti in surprise and then laughed a little scornfully. "Is she going to be married?" he asked. "Perhaps." "Already!" His tone was sad, and pitying, and slightly contemptuous. His lips closed after the single word and he drew his eyelids together, as he looked steadily out over the deep city towards the hills to eastward. "Then it was true that she cared for another man," he said, in a low voice. "Yes. It was quite true." "She wrote me in that letter that he did not know it." "That was true also." "And that he was not in the least in love with her." "She thought so." "But she was mistaken, you mean to say. He loved her, but did not show it." "Precisely. He loved her, but he was careful not to show it because he understood that her mother and the Princess wished to marry her to you, and because he happened to know that you were in earnest." "That was decent of him, at all events," Guido said wearily. "Some men would have behaved differently." "I daresay," Lamberti answered. "Is he a man I know?" "Yes. You know him very well." "And now she has asked you to tell me his name. I suppose that is why you begin this conversation. You are trying to break it gently to me." He smiled contemptuously. "Yes!" The word was spoken as if it cost an effort. Lamberti held his stout stick with both hands over his crossed knee and leaned back, so that it bent a little with the strain. "My dear fellow," said Guido, with a little impatience, "it seems to me that you need not take so much trouble to spare my feelings! If you do not tell me who the man is, some one else will." "No one else can," Lamberti answered, with emphasis. "Why not? I would rather speak of her with you, if I must speak of her at all, of course. But some obliging person is sure to tell me, or write to me about it, as soon as the engagement is announced. 'My dear d'Este, do you remember that girl you were engaged to last spring?' And so on. Remember her!" "There is no engagement," Lamberti said. "No one will write to you about it, and no one knows who the man is, except the Contessina and the man himself." "And you," corrected Guido. "You may as well keep the secret, so far as I am concerned. I have no curiosity about it. There will be time enough to tell me when the engagement is announced." "I do not think that there can be any engagement until you know." "Oh, this is absurd! The Contessina was frank. She did not love me, she told me so, and we agreed that our engagement should end. What possible claim have I to know whom she wishes to marry now?" "You have the strongest claim that any man can have, though not on her. The man is your friend." "Nonsense!" exclaimed Guido, becoming impatient. "A dozen men I like might be called friends of mine, I suppose, but you know very well that you are the only intimate friend I have." "Yes, I know." "Well? I can hardly fancy that you mean yourself, can I?" Lamberti did not move, but as Guido looked at him for an answer, he saw that he could not speak just then, and that he was clenching his teeth. Guido stared at him a moment and then started. "Lamberti!" he cried sharply. Lamberti slowly turned his head and gazed into Guido's eyes without speaking. Then they both looked out at the distant hills in silence for a long time. "The Contessina was very loyal to you, Guido," Lamberti said at last, in a low tone. "She could not tell you that it was I, and I did not know it." Again there was a silence for a time. "When did you know it?" Guido asked slowly. "After she had been to see you. It was my fault, then." "What was your fault?" "When we went downstairs, I thought I should never see her again, and I never meant to. How could I know what she felt? She never betrayed herself by a glance or a tone of her voice. I loved her with all my heart, and when you had both told me that everything was quite over between you, I wanted her to know that I did. Was that disloyal to you, since you had definitely given up the hope of marrying her, and since I did not expect to see her again for years and thought she was quite indifferent?" "No," Guido answered, after a moment's thought. "But you should have told me at once." "When I came upstairs the Countess was still there, and you were quite worn out. I put you to bed, meaning to tell you that same evening, after you had rested. When I came back you had brain fever, and did not know me. So I have had to wait until to-day." "And you have seen each other constantly while I have been ill, of course," said Guido, with some bitterness. "It was natural, I suppose." "Since that day when we spoke on the staircase we have only been alone together once, for a moment. I asked her then if I should tell her mother, and she said 'Not yet.' Excepting that, we have never exchanged a word that you and her mother might not have heard, nor a glance that you might not have seen. We both knew that we were waiting for you to get well, and we have waited." Guido looked at him with a sort of wonder. "That was like you," he said quietly. "You understand, now," Lamberti continued. "You and I met her on the same day at your aunt's, and when I saw her, I felt as if I had always known her and loved her. No one can explain such things. Then by a strange coincidence we dreamt the same dream, on the same night." "Was it she whom you met in the Forum, and who ran away from you?" asked Guido, in astonishment. "Yes. That is the reason why we always avoided each other, and why I would not go to their house till you almost forced me to. We had never spoken alone together till the garden party. It was then that we found out that our dreams were alike, and after that I kept away from her more than ever, but I dreamt of her every night." "So that was your secret, that afternoon!" "Yes. We had dreamt of each other and we had met in the Forum in the place we had dreamt of, and she ran away without speaking to me. That was the whole secret. She was afraid of me, and I loved her, and was beginning to know it. I thought there was something wrong with my head and went to see a doctor. He talked to me about telepathy, but seemed inclined to consider that it might possibly be a mere train of coincidences. I think I have told you everything." For a long time they sat side by side in silence, each thinking his own thoughts. "Is there anything you do not understand?" Lamberti asked at last. "No," Guido answered thoughtfully. "I understand it all. It was rather a shock at first, but I am glad you have told me. Perhaps I do not quite understand why she wishes to see me." "We both wish to be sure that you bear us no ill-will. I am sure she does, and I know that I do." There was a pause again. "Do you think I am that kind of friend?" Guido asked, with a little sadness. "After what you have done, too?" "I am afraid my mere existence has broken up your life, after all," Lamberti answered. "You must not think that. Please do not, my friend. There is only one thing that could hurt me now that it is all over." "What is that?" "I am not afraid that it will happen. You are not the kind of man to break her heart." "No," Lamberti answered very quietly. "I am not." "It was only a dream for me, after all," Guido said, after a little while. "You have the reality. She used to talk of three great questions, and I remember them now as if I heard her asking them: 'What can I know? What is it my duty to do? What may I hope?' Those were the three." "And the answers?" "Nothing, nothing, nothing. Those are my answers. Unless----" He stopped. "Unless--what?" Lamberti asked. Guido smiled a little. "Unless there is really something beyond it all, something essentially true, something absolute by nature." Lamberti had never known his friend to admit such a possibility even under a condition. "At all events," Guido added, "our friendship is true and absolute. Shall we go home? I feel a little tired." Lamberti helped him to the carriage and drew the light cover over his knees before getting in himself. Then they drove down towards the city, by the long and beautiful drive, past the Acqua Paola and San Pietro in Montorio. "You must go and see her this evening," Guido said gently, as they came near the Palazzo Farnese. "Will you tell her something from me? Tell her, please, that it would be a little hard for me to talk with her now, but that she must not think I am not glad that she is going to marry my best friend." "Thank you. I will say that." Lamberti's voice was less steady than Guido's. "And tell her that I will write to her from the Tyrol." "Yes." It was over. The two men knew that their faithful friendship was unshaken still, and that they should meet on the morrow and trust each other more than ever. But on this evening it was better that each should go his own way, the one to his solitude and his thoughts, the other to the happiest hour of his life. CHAPTER XXVIII On the following afternoon Lamberti waited for Cecilia at the Villa Madama, and she came not long after him, with Petersen. He had been to the Palazzo Massimo in the evening, and a glance and a sign had explained to her that all was well. Then they had sat together awhile, talking in a low tone, while the Countess read the newspaper. When Lamberti had given Guido's brave message, they had looked earnestly at each other, and had agreed to tell her mother the truth at once, and to meet on the morrow at the villa, which was Cecilia's own house, after all. For they felt that they must be really alone together, to say the only words that really mattered. The head gardener had admitted Lamberti to the close garden, by the outer steps, but had not let him into the house, as he had received no orders. When Cecilia came, he accompanied her with the keys and opened wide the doors of the great hall. Cecilia and Lamberti did not look at each other while they waited, and when the man was gone away Cecilia told Petersen to sit down in the court of honour on the other side of the little palace. Petersen went meekly away and left the two to themselves. They walked very slowly along the path towards the fountain, and past it, to the parapet at the other end, where they had talked long ago. But as they passed the bench, they glanced at it quietly, and saw that it was still in its place. Cecilia had not been at the villa since the afternoon before Guido fell ill, and Lamberti had never come there since the garden party in May. They stood still before the low wall and looked across the shoulder of the hill. Saving commonplace words at meeting, they had not spoken yet. Cecilia broke the silence at last, looking straight before her, her lids low, her face quiet, almost as if she were in a dream. "Have we done all that we could do, all that we ought to do for him?" she asked. "Are you sure?" "We can do nothing more," Lamberti answered gravely. "Tell me again what he said. I want the very words." "He said, 'Tell her that it would be a little hard for me to talk with her now, but that she must not think I am not glad that she is going to marry my best friend.' He said those words, and he said he would write to you from the Tyrol. He leaves to-morrow night." "He has been very generous," Cecilia said softly. "Yes. He will be your best friend, as he is mine." She knew that it was true. "We have done what we can," Lamberti continued presently. "He has given all he has, and we have given him what we could. The rest is ours." He took her hand and drew her gently, turning back towards the fountain. "It was like this in the dream," she said, scarcely breathing the words as she walked beside him. They stood still before the falling water, quite alone and out of sight of every one, in the softening light, and suddenly the girl's heart beat hard, and the man's face grew pale, and they were facing each other, hands in hands, look in look, thought in thought, soul in soul; and they remembered that day when each had learned the other's secret in the shadowy staircase of the palace, and each dreamt again of a meeting long ago in the House of the Vestals; but only the girl knew what she had felt of mingled joy and regret when she had sat alone at night weeping on the steps of the Temple. There was no veil between them now, as their eyes drew them closer together by slow and delicious degrees. It was the first time, though every instant was full of memories, all ending where this was to begin. Their lips had never met, yet the thrill of life meeting life and the blinding delight of each in the other were long familiar, as from ages, while fresh and untasted still as the bloom on a flower at dawn. Then, when they had kissed once, they sat down in the old place, wondering what words would come, and whether they should ever need words at all after that. And somehow, Cecilia thought of her three questions, and they all were answered as youth answers them, in one way and with one word; and the answer seemed so full of meaning, and of faith and hope and charity, that the questions need never be asked again, nor any others like them, to the end of her life; nor did she believe that she could ever trouble her brain again about _Thus spake Zarathushthra_, and the Man who had killed God, and the overcoming of Pity, and the Eternal Return, and all those terrible and wonderful things that live in Nietzsche's mazy web, waiting to torment and devour the poor human moth that tries to fly upward. But as for Kant's Categorical Imperative, in order to act in such a manner that the reasons for her actions might be considered a universal law, it was only necessary to realise how very much she loved the man she had chosen, and how very much he loved her; for how indeed could it then be possible not to live so as to deserve to be happy? She had thought of these things during the night and had fallen asleep very happy in realising the perfect simplicity of all science, philosophy, and transcendental reasoning, and vaguely wondering why every one could not solve the problems of the universe as she had. "Is it all quite true?" she asked now, with a little fluttering wonder. "Shall I wake and hear the door shutting, and be alone, and frightened as I used to be?" Lamberti smiled. "I should have waked already," he said, "when we were standing there by the fountain. I always did when I dreamt of you." "So did I. Do you think we really met in our dreams?" She blushed faintly. "Do you know that you have not told me once to-day that you care for me, ever so little?" he asked. "I have told you much more than that, a thousand times over, in a thousand ways." "I wonder whether we really met!" MARIETTA A MAID OF VENICE By F. MARION CRAWFORD _Author of "Saracinesca," etc._ Cloth. 12 mo. $1.50 "There are two important departments of the novelist's art in which Marion Crawford is entirely at home. He can tell a love story better than any one now living save the unapproachable George Meredith. And he can describe the artistic temperament and the artistic environment with a security born of infallible instinct."--_The New York Herald._ "This is not the first time that Mr. Crawford's pen has drawn the conscious love of a pure girl for a man whose own heart she believed to be untouched, yet, in the love of Marietta for the Dalmatian, we have something that, while so utterly human, is so delicately revealed that the reader must be a stoic indeed who does not take a delightful interest in the fate of that love."--_New York Times._ "It suggests the bright shimmer of the moon on still waters, the soft gliding of brilliant-hued gondolas, the tuneful voices of the gondoliers keeping rhythmic time to the oar stroke and the faint murmuring of lovers' vows lightly made and lightly broken."--_Richmond Dispatch._ "Furnishes another illustration of the author's remarkable facility in assimilating different atmospheres, and in mastering, in a minute way, as well as sympathetically, very diverse conditions of life.... The plot is intricate, and is handled with the ease and skill of a past-master in the art of story-telling."--_Outlook._ "The workshop, its processes, the ways and thought of the time,--all this is handled in so masterly a manner, not for its own sake, but for that of the story.... It has charm, and the romance which is eternally human, as well as that which was of the Venice of that day. And over it all there is an atmosphere of worldly wisdom, of understanding, sympathy, and tolerance, of intuition and recognition, that makes Marion Crawford the excellent companion he is in his books for mature men and women."--_New York Mail and Express._ THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK WRITINGS OF F. MARION CRAWFORD 12 mo. Cloth Corleone $1.00 Casa Braccio. 2 vols 2.00 Taquisara 1.50 Saracinesca 1.00 Sant' Ilario 1.00 Don Orsino 1.50 Mr. Isaacs 1.00 A Cigarette-Maker's Romance, and Khaled 1.50 Marzio's Crucifix 1.00 An American Politician 1.00 Paul Patoff 1.00 To Leeward 1.00 Dr. Claudius 1.50 Zoroaster 1.50 A Tale of a Lonely Parish 1.00 With the Immortals 1.00 The Witch of Prague 1.00 A Roman Singer 1.50 Greifenstein 1.00 Pietro Ghisleri 1.00 Katherine Lauderdale 1.00 The Ralstons 1.00 Children of the King 1.00 The Three Fates 1.00 Adam Johnstone's Son, and A Rose of Yesterday 1.50 Marion Darche 1.50 Love in Idleness 2.00 Via Crucis 1.50 In the Palace of the King 1.50 Ave Roma Immortalis. 2 v. $6.00 net Rulers of the South: Sicily, Calabria, Malta. 2 vols $6.00 net CORLEONE A TALE OF SICILY The last of the famous Saracinesca Series "It is by far the most stirring and dramatic of all the author's Italian stories.... The plot is a masterly one, bringing at almost every page a fresh surprise, keeping the reader in suspense to the very end."--_The Times_, New York. MR. ISAACS "It is lofty and uplifting. It is strongly, sweetly, tenderly written. It is in all respects an uncommon novel."--_The Literary World._ DR. CLAUDIUS "The characters are strongly marked without any suspicion of caricature, and the author's ideas on social and political subjects are often brilliant and always striking. It is no exaggeration to say that there is not a dull page in the book, which is peculiarly adapted for the recreation of the student or thinker."--_Living Church._ A ROMAN SINGER "A powerful story of art and love in Rome."--_The New York Observer._ AN AMERICAN POLITICIAN "One of the characters is a visiting Englishman. Possibly Mr. Crawford's long residence abroad has made him select such a hero as a safeguard against slips, which does not seem to have been needed. His insight into a phase of politics with which he could hardly be expected to be familiar is remarkable."--_Buffalo Express._ TO LEEWARD "It is an admirable tale of Italian life told in a spirited way and far better than most of the fiction current."--_San Francisco Chronicle._ ZOROASTER "As a matter of literary art solely, we doubt if Mr. Crawford has ever before given us better work than the description of Belshazzar's feast with which the story begins, or the death-scene with which it closes."--_The Christian Union_ (now _The Outlook_). A TALE OF A LONELY PARISH "It is a pleasure to have anything so perfect of its kind as this brief and vivid story. It is doubly a success, being full of human sympathy, as well as thoroughly artistic."--_The Critic._ MARZIO'S CRUCIFIX "We take the liberty of saying that this work belongs to the highest department of character-painting in words."--_The Churchman._ PAUL PATOFF "It need scarcely be said that the story is skilfully and picturesquely written, portraying sharply individual characters in well-defined surroundings."--_New York Commercial Advertiser._ PIETRO GHISLERI "The strength of the story lies not only in the artistic and highly dramatic working out of the plot, but also in the penetrating analysis and understanding of the impulsive and passionate Italian character."--_Public Opinion._ THE CHILDREN OF THE KING "One of the most artistic and exquisitely finished pieces of work that Crawford has produced. The picturesque setting, Calabria and its surroundings, the beautiful Sorrento and the Gulf of Salerno, with the bewitching accessories that climate, sea, and sky afford, give Mr. Crawford rich opportunities to show his rare descriptive powers. As a whole the book is strong and beautiful through its simplicity."--_Public Opinion._ MARION DARCHE "We are disposed to rank 'Marion Darche' as the best of Mr. Crawford's American stories."--_The Literary World._ KATHERINE LAUDERDALE "It need scarcely be said that the story is skilfully and picturesquely written, portraying sharply individual characters in well-defined surroundings."--_New York Commercial Advertiser._ THE RALSTONS "The whole group of character studies is strong and vivid."--_The Literary World._ LOVE IN IDLENESS "The story is told in the author's lightest vein; it is bright and entertaining."--_The Literary World._ CASA BRACCIO "We are grateful when Mr. Crawford keeps to his Italy. The poetry and enchantment of the land are all his own, and 'Casa Braccio' gives promise of being his masterpiece.... He has the life, the beauty, the heart, and the soul of Italy at the tips of his fingers."--_Los Angeles Express._ TAQUISARA "A charming story this is, and one which will certainly be liked by all admirers of Mr. Crawford's work."--_New York Herald._ ADAM JOHNSTONE'S SON and A ROSE OF YESTERDAY "It is not only one of the most enjoyable novels that Mr. Crawford has ever written, but is a novel that will make people think."--_Boston Beacon._ "Don't miss reading Marion Crawford's new novel, 'A Rose of Yesterday.' It is brief, but beautiful and strong. It is as charming a piece of pure idealism as ever came from Mr. Crawford's pen."--_Chicago Tribune._ SARACINESCA "The work has two distinct merits, either of which would serve to make it great: that of telling a perfect story in a perfect way, and of giving a graphic picture of Roman society.... The story is exquisitely told, and is the author's highest achievement, as yet, in the realm of fiction."--_The Boston Traveler._ SANT' ILARIO A SEQUEL TO SARACINESCA "A singularly powerful and beautiful story.... It fulfils every requirement of artistic fiction. It brings out what is most impressive in human action, without owing any of its effectiveness to sensationalism or artifice. It is natural, fluent in evolution, accordant with experience, graphic in description, penetrating in analysis, and absorbing in interest."--_The New York Tribune._ DON ORSINO A SEQUEL TO SARACINESCA AND SANT' ILARIO "Offers exceptional enjoyment in many ways, in the fascinating absorption of good fiction, in the interest of faithful historic accuracy, and in charm of style. The 'New Italy' is strikingly revealed in 'Don Orsino.'"--_Boston Budget._ WITH THE IMMORTALS "The strange central idea of the story could have occurred only to a writer whose mind was very sensitive to the current of modern thought and progress, while its execution, the setting it forth in proper literary clothing, could be successfully attempted only by one whose active literary ability should be fully equalled by his power of assimilative knowledge both literary and scientific, and no less by his courage, and so have a fascination entirely new for the habitual reader of novels. Indeed, Mr. Crawford has succeeded in taking his readers quite above the ordinary plane of novel interest."--_The Boston Advertiser._ GREIFENSTEIN "... Another notable contribution to the literature of the day. Like all Mr. Crawford's work, this novel is crisp, clear, and vigorous, and will be read with a great deal of interest."--_New York Evening Telegram._ A CIGARETTE-MAKER'S ROMANCE and KHALED "It is a touching romance, filled with scenes of great dramatic power."--_Boston Commercial Bulletin._ "It abounds in stirring incidents and barbaric picturesqueness; and the love struggle of the unloved Khaled is manly in its simplicity and noble in its ending."--_The Mail and Express._ THE WITCH OF PRAGUE "The artistic skill with which this extraordinary story is constructed and carried out is admirable and delightful.... Mr. Crawford has scored a decided triumph, for the interest of the tale is sustained throughout.... A very remarkable, powerful, and interesting story."--_New York Tribune._ 
38486	----	RULE OF THE MONK OR, ROME IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. By General Giuseppe Garibaldi 1870. INTRODUCTION. The renowned writer of Caesar's "Commentaries" did not think it necessary to furnish a preface for those notable compositions, and nobody has ever yet attempted to supply the deficiency--if it be one. In truth, the custom is altogether of modern times. The ancient heroes who became authors and wrote a book, left their work to speak for itself--"to sink or swim," we had almost said, but that is not exactly the case. Cæsar carried his "Commentaries" between his teeth when he swam ashore from the sinking galley at Alexandria, but it never occurred to him to supply posterity with a prefatory flourish. He begins those famous chapters with a soldierly abruptness and brevity--"Omnia Gallia in très partes" etc. The world has been contented to begin there also for the last two thousand years; and the fact is a great argument against prefaces--especially since, as a rule, no one ever reads them till the book itself has been perused. The great soldier who has here turned author, entering the literary arena as a novelist, has also given his English translators no preface. But our custom demands one, and the nature of the present work requires that a few words should be written explanatory of the original purpose and character of the Italian MS. from which the subjoined pages are transcribed. It would be unfair to Garibaldi if the extraordinary vivacity and grace of his native style should be thought to be here accurately represented. The renowned champion of freedom possesses an eloquence as peculiar and real as his military genius, with a gift of graphic description and creative fancy which are but very imperfectly presented in this version of his tale, partly from the particular circumstances under which the version was prepared, and partly from the impossibility of rendering into English those subtle touches and personal traits which really make a book, as lines and light shadows make a countenance. Moreover, the Italian MS. itself, written in the autograph of the General, was compiled as the solace of heavy hours at Varignano, where the King of Italy, who owed to Garibaldi's sword the splendid present of the Two Sicilies, was repaying that magnificent dotation with a shameful imprisonment. The time will come when these pages--in their original, at least--will be numbered among the proofs of the poet's statement that-- "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage: Minds innocent and quiet take These for a hermitage." If there be many passages in the narrative where the signs are strong that "the iron has entered into the soul," there are also a hundred where the spirit of the good and brave chieftain goes forth from his insulting incarceration to revel in scenes of natural beauty, to recall incidents of simple human love and kindness, to dwell upon heroic memories, and to aspire towards glorious developments of humanity made free, like the apostle's footsteps when the angel of the Lord struck off his fetters, and he passed forth through the self-opened portals of his prison. It would be manifestly unfair, nevertheless, to contrast a work written under such conditions with those elaborate specimens of modern novel-writing with which our libraries abound. Probably, had General Garibaldi ever read these productions, he would have declined to accept them as a model. He appears to have taken up here the form of the "novella," which belongs by right of prescription to his language and his country, simply as a convenient way of imparting to his readers and to posterity the real condition and inner life of Rome during these last few eventful years, when the evil power of the Papacy has been declining to its fall. Whereas, therefore, most novels consist of fiction founded upon fact, this one may be defined rather as fact founded upon fiction, in the sense that the form alone and the cast of the story is fanciful--the rest being all pure truth lightly disguised. Garibaldi has here recited, with nothing more than a thin veil of incognito thrown over those names which it would have been painful or perilous to make known, that of which he himself has been cognizant as matters of fact in the wicked city of the priests, where the power which has usurped the gentle name of Christ blasphemes Him with greater audacity of word and act as the hour of judgment approaches. Herein the reader may see what goes forward in the demure palaces of the princes of the Church, from which the "Vicegerents of Heaven" are elected. Herein he may comprehend what kind of a system it is which French bayonets still defend--what the private life is of those who denounce humanity and anathematize science, and why Rome appears content with the government of Jesuits, and the liberty of hearing the Pope's mezzo-sopranos at the Sistine Chapel. He who has composed this narrative, at once so idyllic in its pastoral scenes--so tender and poetic in its domestic passages--so Metastasio-like in some of its episodes--and so terribly earnest in its denunciation of the wrongs and degradation of the Eternal City, is no unknown satirist. He is Garibaldi; he has been Triumvir of the Seven-hill-ed City, and Generalissimo of her army; her archives have been within his hands; he has held her keys, and fought behind her walls; and, in four campaigns at least, since those glorious but mournful days, he has waged battle for the ancient city in the open field. Here, then, is his description of "Rome in the Nineteenth Century"--not seen as tourists or dilettanti see her, clothed with the imaginary robes of her historic and classic empire, but seen naked to the stained and scourged skin--affronted, degraded, defamed, bleeding from the hundred wounds where the leech-like priests hang and suck, and, by their vile organization, converted from the Rome which was mistress of the world, to a Rome which is the emporium of solemn farces, miracle-plays, superstitious hypocrisies, the capital of an evil instead of a majestic kingdgom--the metropolis of monks instead of Cæsars. To this discrowned Queen of Nations every page in the present volume testifies the profound and ardent loyalty of Garibaldi's soul. The patriotism which most men feel towards the country of their birth is but a cold virtue compared with the burning devotion which fills the spirit of our warrior-novelist. It is as though the individuality of one of her antique Catos or Fabii was resuscitated, to protest, with deed and word, against the false and cunning tribe which have suborned the imperial city to their purposes, and turned the monuments of Rome, as it were, into one Cloaca Maxima. The end of these things is probably approaching, although His Holiness is parodying the great Councils of past history, and pretending to give laws _urbi et orbi_, while the kingdoms reject his authority, and his palace is only defended by the aid of foreign bayonets. When Rome is freed from the Pope-king, and has been proclaimed the capital of Italy, this book will be one of the memorials of that extraordinary corruption and offense which the nineteenth century endured so long and patiently. The Author's desire to portray the state of society in Rome and around it, during the last years of the Papacy, has been paramount, and the narrative only serves as the form for this design. Accordingly, the reader must not expect an elaborately compiled plot, with artistic developments. He will, nevertheless, be sincerely interested in the fortunes and the fate of the beautiful and virtuous Roman ladies who figure in the tale--of the gallant and dashing brigand of the Campagna, Orazio--the handsome Muzio--the brave and faithful Attilio, and the Author's evident favorite, "English Julia," whose share in the story enables our renowned Author to exhibit his excessive affection for England and the English people. It only remains to commend these varions heroes and heroines to the public, with the remark that the deficiencies of the work are due rather to the translation than to the original; for the vigor and charm of the great Liberator's Italian is such as to show that he might have rivalled Manzoni and Alfieri, if he had not preferred to emulate and equal the Gracchi and Rienzi. THE RULE OF THE MONK. PART THE FIRST. CHAPTER I. CLELIA A celebrated writer has called Rome "the City of the dead", but how can there be death in the heart of Italy? The ruins of Rome, the ashes of her unhappy sons, have, indeed, been entombed, but these remains are so impregnate with life that they may yet accomplish the regeneration of the world. Rome is still capable of arousing the populations, as the tempest raises the waves of the sea; for is she not the mistress of ancient empire, and is not her whole history that of giants? Those who can visit her wonderful monuments in their present desolation, and not feel their souls kindle with love of the beautiful, and ardor for generous designs, will only restore at death base hearts to their original clay. As with the city, so with its people. No degradations have been able to impair the beauty of her daughters--a loveliness often, alas! fatal to themselves--and in the youthful Clelia, the artist's daughter of the Trastevere, Raphael himself would have found the graces of his lofty and pure ideal, united with that force of character which distinguished her illustrious namesake of ancient times. Even at sixteen years of age her carriage possessed a dignity majestic as of a matron of old, albeit youthful; her hair was of a luxurious rich brown; her dark eyes, generally conveying repose and gentleness, could, nevertheless, repress the slightest affront with flashes like lightning. Her father was a sculptor, named Manlio, who had reached his fiftieth year, and possessed a robust constitution, owing to a laborious and sober life. This profession enabled him to support his family in comfort, if not luxury, and he was altogether as independent as it was possible for a citizen to be in a priest-ridden country. Manlio's wife, though naturally healthy, had become delicate from early privation and confinement to the house; she had, however, the disposition of an angel, and besides forming the happiness and pride of her husband, was beloved by the entire neighborhood. Clelia was their only child, and was entitled by the people, "The Pearl of Trastevere." She inherited, in addition to her beauty, the angelic heart of her mother, with that firmness and strength of character which distinguished her father. This happy family resided in the street that ascends from Lungara to Monte Gianicolo, not far from the fountain of Montono, and, unfortunately for them, they lived there in this, the nineteenth century, when the power of the Papacy is, for the time, supreme. Now, the Pope professes to regard the Bible as the word of God, yet the Papal throne is surrounded by cardinals, to whom marriage is forbidden, notwithstanding the Scriptural declaration that "it is not good for man to dwell alone," and that "woman was formed to be a helpmeet for him." Matrimony being thus interdicted, contrary to the law of God and man, the enormous wealth, the irresponsible power, and the state of languid luxury in which, as Princes of the Church, they are compelled to live, have ever combined, in the case of these cardinals, every temptation to corruption and libertinism of the very worst kinds (see Note 2). As the spirit of the master always pervades the household, plenty of willing tools are to be found in these large establishments ready to pander to their employers' vices. The beauty of Clelia had unhappily attracted the eye of Cardinal Procopio, the most powerful of these prelates, and the favorite of his Holiness, whom he flattered to his face, and laughed at as an old dotard behind his back. One day, feeling jaded by his enforced attendance at the Vatican, he summoned Gianni, one of his creatures, to his presence, and informed him of the passion he had conceived for Clelia, ordering him, at whatever cost, and by any means, to obtain possession of the girl, and conduct her to his palace. It was in furtherance of the nefarious plot thereupon concocted that the agent of his Eminence on the evening of the 8th of February, 1866, presented himself at the studio of Signor Manlio, but not without some trepidation, for, like most of his class, he was an arrant coward, and already in fancy trembled at the terrific blows which the strong arm of the sculptor would certainly bestow should the real object of the visit be suspected. He was, however, somewhat reassured by the calm expression of the Roman's face, and, plucking up courage, he entered the studio. "Good-evening, Signor Manlio," he commenced, with a smooth and flattering voice. "Good-evening," replied the artist, not looking up, but continuing an examination of his chisels, for he cared little to encourage the presence of an individual whom he recognized as belonging to the household of the Cardinal, the character of that establishment being well known to him. "Good-evening, Signor," repeated Gianni, in a timid voice; and, observing that at last the other raised his head, he thus continued--"his Eminence, the Cardinal Procopio, desires me to tell you he wishes to have two small statues of saints to adorn the entrance to his oratory." "And of what size does the Cardinal require them?" asked Manlio. "I think it would be better for you, Signor, to call on his Eminence at the palace, to see the position in which he wishes them to be placed, and then consult with him respecting their design." A compression of the sculptor's lips showed that this proposal was but little to his taste; but how can an artist exist in Rome, and maintain his family in comfort, without ecclesiastical protection and employment? One of the most subtle weapons used by the Roman Church has always been its patronage of the fine arts. It has ever employed the time and talent of the first Italian masters to model statues, and execute paintings from subjects calculated to impress upon the people the doctrines inculcated by its teaching (see Note 3), receiving demurely the homage of Christendom for its "protection of genius," and the encouragement it thereby afforded to artists from all nations to settle in Rome. Manlio, therefore, who would have sacrificed his life a hundred times over for his two beloved ones, after a few moments' reflection, bluntly answered, "I will go." Gianni, with a profound salutation, retired. "The first step is taken," he murmured; "and now I must endeavor to find a safe place of observation for Cencio." This fellow was a subordinate of Gianni's, to whom the Cardinal had intrusted the second section of the enterprise; and for whom it was now necessary to hire a room in sight of the studio. This was not difficult to achieve in that quarter, for in Rome, where the priests occupy themselves with the spiritual concerns of the people, and but little with their temporal prosperity (though they never neglect their own), poverty abounds. Were it not for the enforced neglect of its commerce, the ancient activity of Rome might be restored, and might rival even its former palmiest days. After engaging a room suitable for the purpose, Gianni returned home, humming a song, and with a conscience any thing but oppressed, comprehending well that all ruffianism is absolved by the priests when committed for the benefit of mother Church. CHAPTER II. ATTILIO In the same street, and opposite Manlio's house, was another studio, occupied by an artist, named Attilio, already of some celebrity, although he had only attained his twentieth year. In it he worked the greater part of the day; but, studious as he was, he found himself unable to refrain from glancing lovingly, from time to time, at the window on the first floor, where Clelia was generally occupied with her needle, seated by her mother's side. Without her knowledge--almost without his own--she had become for him the star of his sky, the loveliest among the beauties of Rome--his hope, his life, his all. Now, Attilio had watched with a penetrating eye the manner in which the emissary of the Cardinal had come and gone. He saw him looking doubtful and irresolute, and, with the quick instincts of love, a suspicion of the truth entered his mind; a terrible fear for the safety of his beloved took possession of him. When Gianni quitted Manlio's house, Attilio stole forth, following cautiously in his footsteps, but stopping now and then to elude observation by gazing at the curiosities in the shop-windows, or at the monuments which one encounters at every turn in the Eternal City. He clutched involuntarily, now and then, at the dagger carefully concealed in his breast, especially when he saw Gianni enter a house, and heard him bargain for the use of a room. Not until Gianni reached the magnificent Palazzo Corsini, where his employer lived, and had disappeared therein from sight, did Attilio turn aside. "Then it is Cardinal Procopio," muttered he to himself; "Procopio, the Pope's favorite--the vilest and most licentious of the evil band of Church Princes!"--and he continued his gloomy reflections without heeding whither his steps went. CHAPTER III. THE CONSPIRACY It is the privilege of the slave to conspire against his oppressors--for liberty is God's gift, and the birthright of all. Therefore, Italians of past and present days, under various forms of servitude, have constantly conspired, and, as the despotism of tiaraed priests is the most hateful and degrading of all, so the conspiracies of the Romans date thickest from that rule. We are asked to believe that the government of the Pope is mild, that his subjects are contented, and have ever been so. Yet, if this be true, how is it that they who claim to be the representatives of Christ upon earth--of Him who said, "My kingdom is not of this world"--have, since the institution of the temporal power, supplicated French intervention sixteen times, German intervention fifteen times, Austrian intervention seven times, and Spanish intervention three times; while the Pope of our day holds his throne only by force of the intervention of a foreign power? So the night of the 8th of February was a night of conspiracy. The meeting-hall was no other than the ancient Colosseum; and Attilio, instead of returning home, aroused himself to a recollection of this fact, and set out for the Campo Vaccino. The night was obscure, and black clouds were gathering on all sides, impelled by a violent scirocco. The mendicants, wrapped in their rags, sought shelter from the wind in the stately old doorways; others in porches of churches. Indoors, the priests were sitting, refreshing themselves at sumptuous tables loaded with viands and exquisite wines. Beggars and priests--for the population is chiefly composed of these two classes. But these conspirators watch for, and muse upon, the day when priests and beggars shall be consigned alike to the past. By-and-by, in the distance beyond, the ancient forum, that majestic giant of ruins, rose upon young Attilio's eye, dark and alone. It stands there, reminding a city of slaves of a hundred past generations of grandeur; it survives above the ruins of their capital; to tell them that, though she has been shaken down to the dust of shame and death, she is not dead--not lost to the nations which her civilization and her glories created and regenerated. In that sublime ruin our conspirators gather. A stranger chooses, for the most part, a fine moonlight night on which to visit the Colosseum; but it is in darkness and storm that it should be rather seen, illuminated terribly by the torches of lightning, whilst the awful thunder of heaven reverberates through every ragged arch. Such were accompaniments of the scene when the conspirators, on this 8th of February, entered stealthily and one by one the ancient arena of the gladiators. Among its thousand divisions, where the sovereign people were wont to assemble in the days when they were corrupted by the splendors of the conquered world, were several more spacious than others, perhaps destined for the patricians and great officers, but which Time, with its exterminating touch, has reduced to one scarce distinguishable mass of ruin. Neither chairs nor couches now adorn them, but blocks of weatherbeaten stone mark the boundaries, benches, and chambers. In one of these behold our conspirators silently assembling, scanning each other narrowly by the aid of their dark lanterns, as they advance into the space by different routes, their only ceremony being a grasp of the hand upon arriving at the Loggione--a name given by them to the ruinous inclosure. Soon a voice is heard asking the question, "Are the sentries at their posts?" Another voice from the extreme end replies, "All's well." Immediately the flame of a torch, kindled near the first speaker, lighted up hundreds of intelligent faces, all young, and the greater number of those of men, decidedly under thirty years of age. Here and there began now to gleam other torches, vainly struggling to conquer the darkness of the night. The priests are never in want of spies, and adroit spies they themselves too make. Under such circumstances it might appear to a foreigner highly imprudent for a band of conspirators to assemble in any part of Rome; but be it remembered deserts are to be found in this huge city, and the Campo Vaccino covers a space in which all the famous ruins of western Europe might be inclosed. Besides, the mercenaries of the Church love their skins above all things, and render service more for the sake of lucre than zeal. They are by no means willing at any time to risk their cowardly lives. Again, there are not wanting, according to these superstitious knaves, legions of apparitions among these remains. It is related that once on a night like that which we are describing, two spies more daring than their fellows, having perceived a light, proceeded to discover the cause; but, upon penetrating the arches, they were so terrified by the horrible phantoms which appeared, that they fled, one dropping his cap, the other his sword, which they dared not stay to pick up. The phantoms were, however, no other than certain conspirators, who, on quitting their meeting, stumbled over the property of the fugitives, and were not a little amused when the account of the goblins in the Colosseum was related to them by a sentinel, who had overheard the frightened spies. Thus it happened that the haunted ruins became far more secure than the streets of Rome, where, in truth, an honest man seldom cares to venture out after nightfall. CHAPTER IV. THE MEETING OF THE CONSPIRATORS The first voice heard in the midnight council was that of our acquaintance, Attilio, who, notwithstanding his youth, had already been appointed leader by the unanimous election his colleagues, on account of his courage and high moral qualities, although unquestionably the charm and refinement of his manners, joined to his kind disposition, contributed not a little to his popularity among a people who never fail to recognize and appreciate such characteristics. As for his personal appearance, Attilio added the air and vigor of a lion to the masculine loveliness of the Greek Antinous. He first threw a glance around the assembly, to assure himself that all present wore a black ribbon on the left arm, this being the badge of their fraternity. It served them also as a sign of mourning for those degenerate Romans who wish indeed for the liberation of their country, but wait for its accomplishment by any hands rather than their own; and this, although they know full well that her salvation can only be obtained by the blood, the devotion, and the contributions, of their fellow-citizens. Then Attilio spoke-- "Two months have elapsed, my brothers, since we were promised that the foreign soldiery, the sole prop of the Papal rule, should be withdrawn; yet they still continue to crowd our streets, and, under futile pretenses, have even re-occupied the positions which they had previously evacuated, in accordance with the Convention of September, 1864. To us, then, thus betrayed, it remains to accomplish our liberty. We have borne far too patiently for the last eighteen years a doubly execrated rule--that of the stranger, and that of the priest. In these last years we have been ever ready to spring to arms, but we have been withheld by the advice of a hermaphrodite party in the State, styling themselves 'the Moderates,' in whom we can have no longer any confidence, because they have used their power to accumulate wealth for themselves, from the public treasury, which they are sucking dry, and they have invariably proved themselves ready to bargain with the stranger, and to trade in the national honor. Our friends outside are prepared, and blame us for being negligent and tardy. The army, excepting those members of it consecrated to base hopes, is with us. The arms which were expected have arrived, and are lodged in safety. We have also an abundance of ammunition. Further delay, under these circumstances, would be unpardonable. To arms! then, to arms! and to arms!" "To arms!" was the cry re-echoed by the three hundred conspirators assembled in the chamber. Where their ancestors held councils how to subjugate other nations, these modern voices made the old walls ring again while they vowed their resolve to emancipate enslaved Rome or perish in the attempt. Three hundred only! Yes, three hundred; but such was the muster-roll of the companions of Leonidas, and of the liberating family of Fabius. These, too, were equally willing to become liberators, or to accept martyrdom. For this they had high reason, because of what value is the life of a slave, when compared with the sublime conceptions, the imperious conscience, of a soul guided always by noble ideas? God be with all such souls, and those also who despise the power of tyrannizing in turn over their fellow-beings. Of what value can be the life of a despot? His miserable remorse causes him to tremble at the movement of every leaf. No outward grandeur can atone for the mental sufferings he endures, and he finally becomes a sanguinary and brutal coward. May the God of love hereafter extend to them the mercy they have denied to their fellow-men, and pardon them for the rivers of innocent blood they have caused to flow! But Attilio continued, "Happy indeed are we to whom Providence has reserved the redemption of Rome, the ancient mistress of the world, after so many centuries of oppression and priestly tyranny! I have never for a moment, my friends, ceased to confide in your patriotism, which you are proving by the admirable instructions bestowed upon the men committed to your charge in the different sections of the city. In the day of battle, which will soon arrive, you will respectively command your several companies, and to them we shall yet owe our freedom. The priests have changed the first of nations into one of the most abject and unhappy, and our beloved Italy has become the very lowest in the social scale. The lesson given by our Papal rulers has ever been one of servile humility, while they themselves expect emperors to stoop and kiss their feet. This is the method by which they exhibit to the world their own Christian humility; and though they have always preached to us self-denial and austerity of life, these hypocrites surround themselves with a profusion of luxury and voluptuousness. Gymnastic exercises, under proper instruction, are doubtless beneficial to the physical development of the body; but was it for this reason that the Romans are called upon to bow to, and kiss the hand of every priest they meet? to kneel also and go through a series of genuflections, so that it is really no thanks to them if the half of them are not hunch-necked or crook-backed from the absurd performances they have been made to execute for the behoof of these tonsured masters? "The time for the great struggle approaches, and it is a sacred one! Not only do we aim at freeing our beloved Italy, but at freeing the entire world also from the incubus of the Papacy, which everywhere opposes education, protects ignorance, and is the nurse of vice!" The address of Attilio had hitherto been pronounced in profound darkness, but was here suddenly interrupted by a flash of lightning, which illumined the vast _enciente_ of the Colosseum, as if it had 'suddenly been lighted by a thousand lamps. This was succeeded by a darkness even more profound than the first, when a terrific peal of thunder rolled over their heads and shook to its foundations the ancient structure, silencing for a brief space Attilio's voice. The conspirators were not men to tremble, each being prepared to confront death in whatever form it might appear; but, as a scream was heard issuing at this moment from the vestibule, they involuntarily clutched their daggers. Immediately after, a young girl, with dishevelled hair and clothes dripping with water, rushed into their midst. "Camilla!" exclaimed Silvio, a wild boar-hunter of the Campagna, who alone of those present recognized her. "Poor Camilla!" he cried; "to what a fate have the miscreants who rule over us reduced you!" At this instant one of the sentries on guard entered, reporting that they had been discovered by a young woman during the moment of illumination, and that she had fled with such speed no one had been able to capture her. They had not liked to fire upon a female, and all other means of staying her were useless. But, at the words of Silvio, the strange apparition had fixed her eyes upon him as the torches closed about them, and, after one long glance, had uttered a moan so piteous, and sunk down with such a sigh of woe, that all present were moved. We will relate, however, in the following chapter, the history of the unfortunate girl whose cries thus effectually checked our hero's eloquence. CHAPTER V. THE INFANTICIDE Born a peasant, the unhappy Camilla had, like Italy, the fatal gift of beauty. Silvio, who was, by vocation, as we have already said, a wild-boar hunter, used often, in his expeditions to the Pontine Marshes, to rest at the house of the good Marcello, the father of Camilla, whose cottage was situated a short distance from Rome. The young pair became enamored of each other. Silvio demanded her in marriage, and her father, giving a willing consent, they were betrothed. Perfectly happy and fair to look upon were this youthful pair, as they sat, hand in hand, under the shadows of the vine, watching the gorgeous sunsets of their native clime. This happiness, however, was not of long duration, for, during one of his hunting expeditions, Silvio caught the fever so common in the Pontine Marshes, and, as he continued to suffer for some months, the marriage was indefinitely postponed. Meanwhile Camilla, who was too lovely and too innocent to dwell in safety near this most vicious of cities, had been marked as a victim by the emissaries of his Eminence, the Cardinal Procopio. It was her custom to carry fruit for sale to the Piazza Navona. On one occasion she was addressed by an old fruit-woman, previously instructed by Gianni, who plied her with every conceivable allurement and flattery, praised her fruit, and promised her the highest price for it at the palace of the cardinal, if she would take it thither. The rest of the story may be too easily imagined. In Rome this is an oft-told tale. To hide from her father and her lover the consequences of her fall, and to suit the convenience of the prelate, Camilla was persuaded to take up her residence in the palace Corsini, where, soon after its birth, her miserable infant was slaughtered by one of its father's murderous ruffians. This so preyed upon the unhappy mother, that she lost her reason, and was secretly immured in a mad-house. On the very night when she effected her escape this meeting was being held, and, after wandering from place to place, for many hours, without any fixed direction, she entered the Colosseum at the moment it was illumined by the lightning, as we have related. That flash disclosed the sentries at the archway, and she rushed towards them, obeying some instinct of safety, or at least perceiving that they were not clothed in the garb of a priest; but they, taking her for a spy, ran forward to make her prisoner. Thereupon, seemingly possessed of supernatural strength, she glided from their hands, and finally eluded their pursuit by running rapidly into the centre of the building, where she fell exhausted in the midst of the three hundred, at the foot of her outraged and ashamed lover. "It is, indeed, time," said Attilio, when Silvio had related the maniac's story, to purge our city from this priestly ignominy; and drawing forth his dagger, brandished it above his head, as he exclaimed, "Accursed is the Roman who does not feel the degradation of his country, and who is not willing to bathe his sword in the blood of these monsters, who humiliate it, and turn its very soil into a sink." "_Accursed! accursed be they!_" echoed back from the old walls, while the sound of dagger-blades tinkling together made an ominous music dedicated to the corrupt and licentious rulers of Rome. Then Attilio turned to Silvio, and said, "This child is more sinned against than sinning; she requires and deserves protection. You, who are so generous, will not refuse it to her." And Silvio was, indeed, generous, for he still loved his wretched Camilla, who at sight of him had become docile as a lamb. He raised her, and, enveloping her in his mantle, led her out of the Colosseum towards her father's dwelling. "Comrades," shouted Attilio, "meet me on the 15th at the Baths of Caracalla. Be ready to use your arms if need be." "We will be ready! we will be ready!" responded heartily the three hundred, and in a few moments the ruins were left to their former obscure and fearful solitude. What a wild, improbable story, methinks we hear some of our readers remark, as they sit beside their safe coal fires in free England or the United States. But Popery has not been dominant in England since James II.'s time, and they I have forgotten it. Let them hear that in the year 1848, when a Republican government was established in France, which was the signal of a general revolutionary movement throughout Europe, the present Pope was forced to escape in the disguise of a menial, and a national government granted, for the first time in Rome, religious toleration, one of the first orders of the Roman republic was that the nuns should be liberated, and the convents searched. Guiseppe Garibaldi, in 1849, then recently arrived in Rome, visited himself every convent, and was present during the whole of the investigations. In all, without an exception, he found instruments of torture; and in all, without an exception, were vaults, plainly dedicated to the reception of the bones of infants. Statistics prove that in no city is there so great a number of children born out of wedlock as in Rome; and it is in Rome also that the greatest number of infanticides take place. This must ever be the case with a wealthy unmarried priesthood and a poor and _ignorant_ population. CHAPTER VI. THE ARREST We took leave of Manlio at the moment when Gianni had delivered his master's message. The sculptor acceded to the Cardinal's request, and, after an interview with him, proceeded to execute the order for the statuettes. For some days nothing occurred to excite suspicion, and things seemed to be going on smoothly enough. From the room which Gianni had hired Cencio watched the artist incessantly, all the while carefully maturing his plot. At last, one evening, when our sculptor was hard at work, Cencio broke into the studio, exclaiming excitedly, "For the love of God, permit me to remain here a little while! I am pursued by the police, who wish to arrest me. I assure you I am guilty of no crime, except that of being a liberal, and of having declared, in a moment of anger, that the overthrow of the Republic by the French was an assassination." So saying, Cencio made as though to conceal himself behind some statuary. "These are hard times," soliloquized Manlio, "and little confidence can be placed in any body; yet, how can I drive out one compromised by his political opinions only--thereby, perhaps, adding to the number of those unfortunates now lingering in the priests' prisons? He looks a decent fellow, and would have a better chance of effecting his escape if he remained here till nightfall. Yes! he shall stay." Manlio, therefore, rose, and, beckoning to the supposed fugitive, bade him follow to the end of the studio, where he secreted him carefully behind some massive blocks of marble, little dreaming that he harbored a traitor. Manlio had scarcely resumed his occupation before a patrol stopped before the door and demanded permission to make a domiciliary visit, as a suspected person had been seen to enter the house. Poor Manlio endeavored to put aside the suspicions of the officer, so far as he could do so without compromising his veracity, and, little divining the trap into which he had fallen, attempted to lead him in a direction opposite to that in which the crafty Cencio had taken refuge. The patrol, being in league with Cencio, felt, of course, quite certain of his presence on the premises, but some few minutes elapsed before he succeeded in discovering the carefully-chosen hiding-place; and the interval would have been longer had not Cencio stealthily put out his hand and pulled him, the sbirro, gently by the coat as he passed. The functionary paused suddenly, exclaiming with an affected tone of triumph, "Ah! I have you!" then, turning upon Manlio, he seized the artist by the collar, saying, in the sternest of tones, "you must accompany me forthwith to the tribunal, and account for your crime in giving shelter to this miscreant, who is in open rebellion against the government of his Holiness." Manlio, utterly beside himself, in the first burst of indignation, cast his eye around among the chisels, hammers, and other tools for something suitable with which to crack the skull of his insulter; but at this moment his wife, followed by the lovely Clelia, rushed into the apartment to ascertain the cause of so unwonted a disturbance. They trembled at the sight of their beloved one in the grasp of the hated police-officer, who cunningly relaxed his hold, and said, in a very different voice, as soon as he perceived them, "Be of courage, signor, and console these good ladies; your presence will be needed for a short time only. A few questions will be asked, to which undoubtedly you can give satisfactory replies." In vain did the terrified women expostulate. Finding their tears and remonstrances of no avail, they reluctantly let go their hold of the unhappy Manlio, whom they had clasped in their terror. He, disdaining any appeal to the courtesy of such a scoundrel as he knew the patrol to be, waved them an adieu, and departed with a dignified air. CHAPTER VII. THE LEGACY The Roman Republic, established by the unanimous and legitimate votes of the people, elected General Garibaldi, on the 30th June, legal guardian of the rights of the people, and conferred upon him the executive power of the State, which the Triumvirate resigned into his hands. This national government was overthrown by foreign bayonets, after a most heroic struggle for freedom. The first act of General Oudinot was to send a French colonel to lay the keys of the city at the feet of the Pope. Thus was the power of the priests restored, and they returned to all their former tyranny and luxury. These worthy teachers, when preaching to the Roman women about the glory of Heaven, impress upon them that they, and they only, have power to give free entrance into eternal bliss. To liberate these misguided beings from superstition, and rescue them from the deceit of their so-called "reverend fathers," is the question of life or death to Italy; this, in fact, is the only way in which to work out the deliverance of our country. Many will tell you there are good priests. But a priest, to become really good, must discard that wicked livery which he wears. Is it not the uniform of the promoters of brigandage over the half of Italy? Has it not marched as a pioneer-garb before every stranger that ever visited our country? The priests, by their continual impostures and crafty abuse of the ignorance and consequent superstition of the people, have acquired great riches. Those who endeavor to retard our progress make a distinction between the temporal power, which should be combated, and the spiritual power, which should be respected; as if Antonelli, Schiatone, and Crocco, were spiritual ushers, by whom the souls of men should hope to be conducted into the presence of the Eternal. There are two chief sources of their wealth. Firstly, they exact a revenue for repentance, as the vicegerents of God upon earth, as such, claiming power to pardon all sin. A rich but credulous man may thus commit any crime he chooses with impunity, knowing that he has the means of securing absolution, and believing implicitly that, by rendering up a portion of his treasure or profit to the clergy, he will have no difficulty in escaping the wrath to come. The next source of wealth is the tax upon the agonies of death.. At the bedside of the sick, by threats of purgatory and eternal perdition, they frighten their unhappy victims into bequeathing to Mother Church enormous legacies, if, indeed, they do not succeed in getting absolute possession of the whole of their estates, to the detriment of the legal heirs, who are not unfrequently in this manner reduced to beggary. Look, for instance, at the island of Sicily: one-half of that country now belongs to the priesthood, or various orders of monks. But, to our tale. One evening, about nine o'clock, in the month of December, a thing in black might have been seen traversing the Piazza of the Rotunda--that magnificent monument of antiquity--every column a perfect work, worth its weight in silver--which the priests have perverted from sublime memories to their cunning uses. It was a figure which would have made a man shudder involuntarily, though he were one of the thousand of Calatifimi; enveloped in a black sottana--the covering of a heart still blacker, the heart of a demon, and one that contemplated the committal of a crime which only a priest would conceive or execute. A priest it was, and he made his stealthy path to the gateway of the house of Pompeo, where he paused a moment before knocking to gain admittance, casting glances around, to assure himself no one was in sight, as if he feared his guilty secret would betray itself, or as if pausing to add even to ecclesiastical wickedness a sin so cruel as he was meditating. He knocked at last. The door opened, and the porter, recognizing the "Reverend Father Ignazio," saluted him respectfully, and lighted him, as he entered, a few steps up the staircase of one of the richest residences of the city. "Where is Sister Flavia?" demanded the priest of the first servant who came forward to meet him. "At the bedside of my dying mistress," replied Siccio, in a constrained voice, for, being a true Roman, he had little sympathy for "the birds of ill-omen," as he profanely styled the reverend fathers. Father Ignazio, knowing the house well, hurried on to the sick-room, at the door of which he gently tapped, requesting admittance in a peculiar tone. An elderly, sour-looking nun opened the door quickly, and with a significant expression on her evil countenance as her eyes sought those of the priest. "Is all over?" whispered he, as he advanced towards the bed on which the expiring patient lay. "Not yet," was the equally low reply. Ignazio thereupon, without another word, took a small vial from under his sottana, and emptied the contents into a glass. With the assistance of the nun he raised his victim, and poured the deadly fluid down her throat, letting the head fall heavily back upon the pillows, whilst a complacent smile spread itself over his diabolical features as, after one gasp, the jaw fell. He then retired to a small table at the end of the apartment, where he seated himself, followed by Sister Flavia, who stealthily drew a paper from her dress and handed it to him. Father Ignazio seized the paper with a trembling hand, and after perusing it with an anxious air, as if to convince himself that it was indeed the accomplishment of his desires, he thrust it into his breast, muttering, with an emphatic nod, "You shall be rewarded, my good Flavia." That paper was the last will and testament of the Signora Virginia Pompeo, the mother of the brave Emilio Pompeo, who perished fighting on the walls of Rome, whence he fell, mortally wounded by a French bullet. His inconsolable widow did not long survive him, and committed, with her last breath, her infant son to the care of his doting grandmother, La Signora Virginia Pompeo, who tenderly cherished the orphan Muzio, the only remaining scion of the noble house of Pompeo. But, unhappily for him, Father Ignazio was her confessor. When the signora's health began to fail, and her mind to be weakened, the wily Father spared no means to convince her that she ought to make her will, and, as a sacred duty, to leave a large sum to be spent in masses for the release of souls from purgatory. The signora lingering for some time, the covetous priest felt his desires grow, and resolved to destroy this first will, and obtain another, purporting to leave the whole of her immense estates to the corporation of St. Francesco di Paola, and appoint himself as her sole executor. This document he prepared and intrusted to Sister Flavia, whom he had already recommended to the Signora Virginia as a suitable attendant. One morning she dispatched a hurried message to the confessor, reporting that the favorable time for signing the fraudulent document had arrived. He came, attended by witnesses, whom he had had no difficulty in procuring, and, after persuading the sinking and agonized lady that she ought to add a codicil to her will (which he pretended then and there to draw up) leaving a still larger sum to the Church, he guided her feeble hand as she unconsciously signed away the whole of her property, leaving her helpless grandson to beggary. As if to jeopardise his scheme, the signora rallied towards the afternoon, whereupon, fearing she might ask to see the will, and so discover his treachery, Father Ignazio resolved to make such an undesirable occurrence impossible, by administering an effective potion, which he set off to procure, wisely deferring his return till nightfall. The result has been already disclosed; and while the false priest wrought this murder, the unconscious orphan, Muzio, slept peacefully in his little bed, still adorned with hangings wrought by a loving mother's hands, to awake on the morrow ignorant of his injury, but robbed of his guardian and goods together--stripped of all, and forthwith dependent on chance--a friendless and beggared boy. CHAPTER VIII. THE MENDICANT Eighteen years had rolled by since the horrible murder of La Signora Virginia related in the last chapter. On the same piazza which Father Ignazio had traversed that dark night stood a mendicant, leaning moodily, yet not without a certain grace, against a column. It was February, and the beggar lad was apparently watching the setting sun. The lower part of his face was carefully concealed in his cloak, but from the little that could be discerned of it, it seemed decidedly handsome; one of those noble countenances, in fact, that once seen, impresses its features indelibly on the beholder's memory. A well-formed Roman nose was well set between two eyes of dazzling blue; eyes that could look tender or stem, according to the possessor's mood. The shoulders, even under the cloak, showed grandly, and could belong only to a strength which it would be dangerous to insult, or rashly attack. Poor as its garb was, such a figure would be eagerly desired by a sculptor who sought to portray a young Latin athlete. A slight touch upon the shoulder caused the young mendicant to turn sharply; but his brow cleared as he welcomed, with a beaming smile, Attilio's familiar face, and heard him saying, in a lively tone, "Ah! art thou here, brother?" And although no tie of blood was between them, Attilio and Muzio might, indeed, have been mistaken for brothers, their nobility of feature and brave young Roman bearing being so much alike. "Art thou armed?" inquired Attilio. "Armed!" repeated Muzio, somewhat disdainfully. "Assuredly; is not my poniard my inheritance, my only patrimony? I love it as well as thou lov'st thy Clelia, or I mine own. But love, forsooth," continued he, more bitterly; "what right to love has a beggar--an outcast from society? Who would believe that rags could cover a heart bursting with the pangs of a true passion?" "Still," replied Attilio, confidently, "I think that pretty stranger does, in truth, love thee." Muzio remained silent, and his former gloomy expression returned; but Attilio, seeing a storm arising in his friend's soul, and wishing to avert it, took him by the hand, saying gently, "Come." The young outcast followed without proffering a word. Night was rapidly closing in, the foot passengers were gradually decreasing in number, and few footfalls, except those of the foreign patrols, broke the silence that was stealing over the city. The priests are always early to leave the streets--they love to enjoy the goods of this world at home after preaching about the glories of the next, and care little to trust their skins in Rome after dark. May the day soon come when these mercenary cut-throats are dispensed with! "We shall be quit of them, and that before long," answered Attilio hopefully, as they descended the Quirinal, now called Monte Cavallo, the site of the famous horses in stone, _chefs-d'ouvre_ of Grecian art. Pausing between two of these gigantic effigies, the young artist took from his pocket a flint and steel and struck a light, the signal agreed upon between him and the three hundred, some of whom had agreed to help him in a bold attempt to release Manlio from his unlawful imprisonment. The signal was answered immediately from the extreme end of the Piazza; the two young men advanced towards it, and were met by a soldier belonging to a detachment on guard at the palace, who conducted them through a half-concealed doorway near the principal entrance, up a narrow flight of stairs into a small room generally used by the commander of the guard; here he left them, and another soldier stepped forward to receive the pair, who, after placing chairs for them at a table, on which burned an oil-lamp, flanked by two or three bottles and some glasses, seated himself. "Let us drink a glass of Orvieto, my friends," said the soldier; "it will do us more good on a bitter night like this than the Holy Father's blessing," handing them each, as he spoke, a goblet filled to the brim. "Success to your enterprise!" cried Muzio. "Amen," responded Attilio, as he took a deep draught. "So Manlio has been brought here," said he, addressing Dentato, the sergeant of dragoons, for such was the name of their military friend.. "Yes; he was locked up last night in one of our secret cells, as if he had been the most dangerous of criminals, poor innocent! I hear he is to be removed shortly," added Dentato, "to the Castle of St. Angelo." "Do you know by whose order he was arrested?" inquired Attilio. "By the order of ins Eminence the Cardinal Procopio, it is said, who is anxious, doubtless, to remove all impediments likely to frustrate his designs upon the Pearl of Trastevere." As Dentato uttered these words, a sudden tremor shook the frame of Attilio. "And at what hour shall we make the attempt to liberate him?" he hissed, as his hand clenched his dagger. "Liberate him! Why, we are too few," the soldier replied. "Not so," continued Attilio. "Silvio has given his word that he will be here shortly with ten of our own, and then we shall have no difficulty in dealing with these sbirri and monks." After a pause, Dentato responded, "Well, as you are, then, determined to attempt his release to-night, we had better wait a few hours, when jailers and director will be asleep, or under the influence of their liquor. My lieutenant is, fortunately, detained by a delicate affair at a distance, so we will try it if your friend turns up." Before he could well finish his speech, however, Dentato was interrupted by the entrance of the guard left at the gate, announcing the arrival of Silvio. CHAPTER IX. THE LIBERATOR Before continuing my story I must remark upon one of the most striking facts in Rome--viz., the conduct and bravery of the Roman soldiery. Even the Papal troops have a robust and martial air, and retain an individual worth of character to an astonishing degree. In the defense of Rome, all the Roman artillerymen (observe, all) were killed at their guns, and a reserve of the wounded, a thing unheard of before, bleeding though they were, continued to fight manfully until cut down by the sabres of their foes. On the 3d of June the streets were choked with mutilated men, and amongst the many combats after the city was taken, between the Roman soldiery and the foreigners, there did not occur one example where the Romans had the worst of it in any thing like fair fight. Of one point, therefore, the priesthood is certain--that in every case of general insurrection the Roman army will go with the people. This is the reason they are compelled to hire foreign mercenaries, and why the revenues of the "Vicegerent of Heaven" are spent upon Zouaves, Remington rifles, cartridges, and kilos of gunpowder. Silvio was received by the triad with exclamations of joy. After saluting them, he turned to Attilio, saying, "Our men are at hand. I have left them hidden in the shadows cast by the marble horses. They but await our signal." Then Attilio sprang up, saying, "Muzio and I will go at once to the jailer, and secure the keys. You, Dentato, guide Silvia and his men to the door of the cell, and overpower the guard stationed before it." "So be it," replied Dentato; "Scipio (the dragoon who had introduced Silvio) shall lead you to the jailer's room; but beware Signor Pancaldo, he is a devil of a fellow to handle." "Leave me to manage him," replied Attilio, and he hastily left the apartment, preceded by Scipio and Muzio. Such an attempt as they were about to make would be a more difficult, if not an incredible thing, in any other country, where more respect is attached to Government and its officers. In Rome little obedience is due to a Government which, alas, is opposed to all that is pure and true. Dentato, after summoning Silvio's men, led them to the guards stationed at the entrance to the cells. Silvio waited until the sentinel turned his back upon them, then, springing forward with the agility that made him so successful when pursuing the wild boar, he hurled the sentinel to the ground, covering his mouth with his hand to stifle any cry of alarm. The slight scuffle aroused the sleepy questor-guard, but before they could even rub their eyes, Silvio's men had gagged and bound them. As they accomplished this, Attilio appeared with Muzio, convoying the reluctant jailer and his bunch of keys between them. "Open!" commanded Attilio. The jailer obeyed with forced alacrity, whereupon they entered a large vaulted room, out of which opened, on every side, doors leading to separate cells. At sight of them, a soldier, the only inmate visible, approached with a perplexed air. "Where is Signor Manlio?" demanded Antilio; and Pancaldo felt the grip of the young artist clutch his wrist like iron, and noticed his right hand playing terribly with the dagger-hilt. "Manlio is here," said he. "Then release him," cried Attilio. The terrified jailer attempted to turn the key, but some minutes passed before his trembling hands allowed him to effect this. Attilio, pushing him aside as the bolts shot back, dashed open the door, and called to Manlio to come forth. Picture the sculptor's astonishment and joy when he beheld Attilio, and realized that he had come to release him from his cruel and unjust incarceration. Attilio, knowing they ought to lose no time in leaving the palace, after returning his friend's embrace, bade Muzio lock up the guard in the cell. As soon as this was accomplished, they led the jailer between them through the passages, passing on their way the soldiers whom they had previously bound, who glared upon them with impotent rage, till they gained the outer door in silence and safety. Dividing into groups, they set off at a quick pace, in different directions. Attilio, Muzio, and Manlio, however, retained possession a little while of the jailer, whom they made to promenade, gagged and blindfolded, until they thought their companions were at a safe distance. They then left him, and proceeded in the direction of the Porta Salaria, which leads into the open country. CHAPTER X. THE ORPHAN At the hour when Silvio, with despair in his soul, led the unhappy Camilla out of the Colosseum towards her father's house, not a word passed between them. He regarded her with tender pity, having loved her ardently, and feeling that she was comparatively innocent, being, as she was, the victim of deception and violence. Onward they went in silence and sadness. Silvio had abstained from visiting her home since it was so suddenly deserted by Camilla, and as they neared it a presentiment of new sorrowing took possession of him. Turning out of the high road into a lane, their meditations were broken in upon by the barking of a dog. "Fido! Fido!" cried Camilla, with more joyousness than she had experienced for many many months; but, as if remembering suddenly her abasement, she checked her quickened step, and, casting down her eyes, stood motionless, overwhelmed with shame. Silvio had loved her too dearly even to hate her for her guilt. Or if he had ever felt bitterly against her, her sudden appearance that night, wild with remorse and misery, had brought back something of the old feeling, and he would have defended her against a whole army. He had therefore sustained her very tenderly through the walk from the Colosseum, and had been full of generous thoughts, although silent; while she, timidly leaning on his strong arm, had now and then learned by a timid glance, that he was pitying and not abominating her by that silence. But when she stopped and trembled at the sound of the house-dog's bark, Silvio, fearing a return of a paroxysm of madness, touched her arm, saying, for the first time, "Come, Camilla, it is your little Fido welcoming you; he has recognized your footstep." Scarcely had he uttered these words before the dog itself appeared. After pausing a moment in his rush, as if uncertain, he sprang towards Camilla, barking, and jumping, and making frantic efforts to lick her face and hands. Such a reception would have touched a heart of stone. Camilla burst into tears as she stooped to caress the affectionate animal; but nature was exhausted, and she fell senseless on the damp ground. Silvio, after covering her with his mantle, to protect her from the cold morning air--for the dawn had already begun to break--went to seek her father. The barking of the dog had aroused the household, so that the young hunter perceived, as he approached, a boy standing on the threshold, looking cautiously around, as if distrusting so early a visitor. "Marcellino," he shouted; whereat the boy, recognizing the friendly familiar voice, ran to him, and threw his arms around his neck. "Where is your godfather, my boy?" Silvio asked; but receiving no response save tears, he said again, "Where is Marcello?" "He is dead," replied the sobbing child. "Dead!" exclaimed Silvio, sinking upon a stone, overcome with surprise and emotion. Very soon the tears rolled down his masculine cheeks, and mingled with those of the child, who lay upon his bosom. "O God!" he cried aloud; "canst thou permit the desires of a monster to cause such suffering to so many and to such precious human creatures? Did I not feel the hope that the day of my beloved country's release from priestly tyranny is at hand I would plunge my dagger into my breast, and not endure to see this daylight break!" Recovering himself with a violent effort, he returned, accompanied by Marcellino, to Camilla, whom he found in an uneasy sleep. "Poor girl, poor ruined orphan," murmured Silvio, as he gazed upon her pale and wasted beauty; "why should I arouse you? You will but awake too soon to a life of tears, misery, and vain repentance!" CHAPTER XI. THE FLIGHT We left Attilio, Silvio, and Manlio on their way to the suburbs. Attilio had determined that the house lately tenanted by poor Marcello, and still inhabited by Camilla, would be a safe hiding-place for the liberated sculptor, who could scarcely be prevailed upon not to return at once to his own home, so great was his desire to behold his cherished wife and daughter. As they trudged on, each busy with his own thoughts, Attilio turned over in his mind the visit of Gianni to the studio, for the information Sergeant Dentato had given him relative to the arrest confirmed his suspicion that the Cardinal was plotting villainy against his Clelia. After some reflection, he concluded to impart his suspicion to Manlio, who, when he had recovered from his first surprise and horror, declared his belief that Attilio's surmises were correct, and that it was necessary at once to hasten home in order to preserve his darling from infamy. Attilio, however, aided by Muzio, at last prevailed upon him to conceal himself, promising to go and inform the ladies of the designs against them as soon as he had placed the father in safety. Attilio, in truth, though so young, had the talent of influencing and guiding those with whom he came in contact, and the soundness of his judgment was frequently acknowledged, even by men advanced in years. Reluctantly, Manlio felt that he could not do better than to intrust the care of his dear ones to this generous youth. The day was beginning to dawn as they neared the cottage at the end of the lane, and, just as on the occasion of Camilla's return on the night of the meeting, Fido barked furiously at their approach. At Silvio's voice, the dog was quieted instantly, and again Marcellino met him at the door. Silvio, after saluting the lad, asked where Camilla was. "I will show you," was the answer, and leading the way, he took them to an eminence near the cottage, from which they beheld, at a little distance, a cemetery. "She is there," said Marcellino, pointing with his finger; "she passes all her time, from morn till eve, at her father's grave, praying and weeping. You will find her there, at all hours, now." Silvio, without a word to his companions, who followed slowly, strode on towards the spot indicated, which was close by, and soon came in view of Camilla, clad in deep mourning, kneeling beside a mound of newly-turned earth. She was so absorbed, that the approach of the three friends was unperceived. Silvio, deeply moved, watched her, without daring to speak, and neither of the others broke the silence. Presently she rose, and clasping her hands in agony, cried bitterly, "Oh, my father, my father, I was the cause of your death!" "Camilla," whispered Silvio, coming close up. She turned, and gazing at them with a sweet but vacant smile, as if her lover's face brought her sin-comprehended comfort, passed on in the direction of her home, for the poor girl had not yet regained her reason. Silvio touched her on the arm, as he overtook her, saying, "See Camilla, I have brought you a visitor, and if any one should ask who this gentleman is, tell them he is an antiquary who is studying the ruins around Rome." This was the rôle which Attilio had persuaded Manlio to play, until some plan for the future had been formed. After a short consultation, as to the precautions they were to observe, Attilio bade them farewell, and returned to the city alone, leaving behind him, with many a thought of pity and stern indignation, this father's humble household, devastated by the devices of the foul priest. CHAPTER XII. THE PETITION We must return to the sculptor's domicile, where two days had elapsed after the arrest of Manlio, nor had Attilio who was gone in search of him, as yet appeared, so that the family were reduced to the greatest anxiety. "What can they be doing with your good father?" repeated constantly the weeping mother to her daughter. "He has never mixed with any one whose principles would compromise him, although a Liberal. He hates the priests, I know, and they deserve to be hated for their vices, but he has never talked about it to any one but me." Clelia shed no tears, but her grief at her father's detention was almost deeper than that of her mother, and at last, saddened by these plaints, she said, with energy, "Weep no more, mother, tears are of no avail; we must act We must discover where my father is concealed, and, as Monna Aurelia has advised, we must endeavor to procure his release. Besides, Attilio is in search of him, and I know he will not desist until he has helped him and us, if he have not already done so." A knock interrupted Clelia's consolatory words. She ran to the door, and opening it, admitted a neighbor, whose name has been mentioned, Monna Aurelia, and old and tried friend. "Good day," said she, as she entered the sitting-room with a cheerful countenance. "Good day," answered Silvia, with a faint smile, wiping her eyes. "I bring you something, neighbor; our friend Cassio, whom I consulted about your husband's affairs, has drawn up this petition on stamped paper, supplicating the cardinal minister to set Manlio at liberty. He says you must sign it, and had better present it in person to his Eminence." Silvia took the paper, and looked at it doubtfully. She felt a strong aversion to this proposition. Could she throw herself at the feet of a person whom she despised to implore his mercy? Yet perhaps her husband's life was at stake; he might even now be suffering insults, privations, even torture. This thought struck a chill to the heart of the wife, and, rising, she said decidedly, "I will go with it." Aurelia offered to accompany her, and in less than half an hour the three women were on the road to the palace. At nine o'clock that same morning, as it happened, the Cardinal Procopio, Minister of State, had been informed by the questor of the Quirinal of Manlio's escape. Great was the fury of the prelate at the unwelcome news, and he commanded the immediate arrest and confinement of the directors, officers on guard, dragoons, and of all, in fact, who had been in charge of the prison on the previous night. Dispatching the questor with this order, he summoned Gianni to his presence. "Why, in the devil's name, was that accursed sculptor confined in the Quirinal, instead of being sent to the Castle of St. Angelo?" he inquired. "Your Eminence," replied Gianni, conceitedly, "should have intrusted such important affairs to me, and not to a set of idiots and rascals who are open to corruption." "Dost thou come here to annoy me by reflections, sirrah?" blustered the priest. "Search in that turnip head of thine for means to bring the girl to me, or the palace cellars shall hear thee squeak thy self-praise to the tune of the cord or the pincers." Gianni, knowing that these fearful threats were not vain ones, and that, incredible as it may appear to outsiders, tortures too horrible to describe daily take place in the Rome of the present day, meekly submitted to the storm. With downcast head, the mutilated wretch--for he was one of those maimed from their youth to sing falsettos in the choir of St. Peter--pondered how to act. "Lift up thine eyes, knave, if thou darest, and tell me whether or no, after causing me to spend such pains and money in this attempt, thou hast the hope to succeed?" Tremblingly Gianni raised his eyes to his master's face as he articulated with difficulty the words, "I hope to succeed." But just as he spoke, to his considerable relief, a bell rang, announcing the arrival of a visitor. 'A servant in the Cardinal's colors entered, and inquired if his Eminence would be pleased to see three women who wished to present a petition. The Cardinal, waving his dismissal to the still agitated Gianni, gave a nod of assent, and assumed an unctuous expression, as the three women were ushered into his presence. CHAPTER XIII. THE BEAUTIFUL STRANGER Rome is the museum of the fine arts, the curiosity-shop of the world. There are collected the ruins of the ancient societies, temples, columns, statues, the remains of Italian and Grecian genius, _chefs-d'ouvre_ of Praxiteles, Phidias, Raphael, Michael Angelo, and a hundred masters. Fountains, from which arise marine colossi, chiefly, alas, in ruins, meet the eye on all sides. The stranger is struck with amazement and admiration at the sight of these gigantic works of art, upon many of which are engraved the mighty battles of a wonderful by-gone age. It is not the fault of the priest if their beauty is not marred by endless mitres and superstitious signs. But they are still marvellous and beautiful, and it was among them that Julia, the beautiful daughter of Albion, was constantly to be found. She had resided for several years in this city of sublime memorials, and daily passed the greater part of her time in sketching all that to her cultivated taste appeared most worthy of imitation and study. Michael Angelo was her especially favored _maestro_, and she might frequently be seen sitting for hours before his colossal statue of Moses, rapt in the labor of depicting that brow, upon which, to her vivid imagination, sat an air of majestic greatness that appeared almost supernatural. Born and bred in free and noble England, she had separated herself voluntarily from loving and beloved friends, that she might thus wander undisturbed among the objects of her idolatry. Unexpectedly, her pursuits had been interrupted by a stronger feeling than art. She had encountered Muzio many times in the studio of the sculptor Manlio, and, poor and apparently low as he was, Julia had found under the ragged garb of a mendicant her ideal of the proud race of the Quirites. Yes, obscure though he was, Muzio was beloved by this strange English girl. He was poor, but what cared she for his poverty. And Muzio, did he know and return this generous love? Yes, in truth; but, although he would have given his life to save hers, he concealed all consciousness of her interest, and allowed not a single action to betray it, though he longed fervently for occasion to render her some trifling service, and the opportunity came. As Julia was returning from Manlio's studio, some few days before his arrest, accompanied by her faithful old nurse, two drunken soldiers rushed upon her from a by-way, and dragged her between them some little distance, before Muzio, who secretly kept her in view during such transits, could come to her succor. No sooner had he reached them, than he struck one ruffian to the earth, seeing which, his fellow ran away. The terrified Julia thanked him with natural emotion, and besought him not to leave them until they reached their own door. Muzio gladly accepted the delicious honor of the escort, and felt supremely happy when, at their parting, Julia gave him the favor of her hand, and rewarded him with a priceless smile. From this evening Muzio's dagger was consecrated to her safety, and he vowed that never again should she be insulted in the streets of Rome. It befell that the same day upon which Silvia went to the palace Corsini to present her petition, Julia was paying one of her visits to the studio. Arriving there, she was informed by a lad in attendance of all that had occurred. Whilst pondering over the ominous tale, Attilio entered in quest of the ladies, and from him the English girl learned the particulars of Manlio's escape. His narration finished, Julia, in turn, recounted to him the views that the youth had imparted to her concerning the presentation of the petition. Attilio was much distressed, and could with difficulty be restrained from going directly to the palace in search of Silvia and her daughter. This would have been very imprudent, and therefore Julia offered, as she had access at all times to the palace, to go to the Cardinal's house, and ascertain the cause of the now prolonged absence of the mother and daughter, promising to return and tell him the result. Attilio, thoroughly spent with excitement and fatigue, yielded to Spartaco's invitation to take some rest, whilst the boy related to him the particulars of what had passed since he left them to carry out the rescue of his friend. CHAPTER XIV. SICCIO Let us return to the year 1849, to the fatal scene in which the young Muzio was robbed of his patrimony. There was an old retainer named Siccio, already introduced, who had served longer in the house of Pompeo than any other; he had, in fact, been born in it, and had received very many acts of kindness there. These benefits he repaid by faithful love to the orphan Muzio, whom he regarded almost as tenderly as if he had in reality been his own child. He was good, and rather simple, but not so much so as to be blind to the pernicious influence which Father Ignazio had acquired over his indulgent mistress, and which he feared would be used to the injury of her grandchild. But the guardian of souls, the spiritual physician, the confessor of the lady of the house! what servant would dare openly to doubt him, or cross his path? Confession, that terrible arm, of priestcraft, that diabolical device for seduction, that subtle means of piercing the most sacred domestic secrets, and keeping in chains the superstitious sex! Siccio dared not openly fight against such weapons. The confessor was, however, aware of the good servant's mistrust, and therefore caused him to be discharged a few days after the Signora Virginia breathed her last, though not before he had overheard a certain dialogue between Father Ignazio and Sister Flavia. "What is to be done with the child?" the nun had asked. "He must pack off to the Foundling," replied he; "there he will be safe enough from the evil of this perverted century and its heretical doctrines. Besides, we shall have no difficulty in keeping an eye upon him," he continued, with a meaning look, which she returned, causing Siccio, who was unseen, to prick up his ears. He straightway resolved not to leave the innocent and helpless child in the hands of these fiends, and contrived a few nights after his dismissal to obtain an entrance to the house by the excuse that he had left some of his property behind. Watching his opportunity he stole into the nursery, where he found the neglected child huddled in a corner crying with cold and hunger. Siccio, taking him in his arms, soothed him until he fell asleep, when he glided cautiously out of the house into the street, and hired a conveyance to carry them to a lodging he had previously engaged at some distance from the city. To elude suspicion and pursuit he had cunningly concealed the little Muzio in a bundle of clothes, and alighting from the vehicle before he arrived at his dwelling, quietly unwound and aroused the child, who trotted at his side, and was introduced by him to his landlady as his grandson. During the lifetime of Muzio's father, who was an amateur antiquary, Siccio had gained a considerable knowledge of the history of the rains around Rome by attending him in his researches. This knowledge, as he could not take service as a domestic, on account of his unwillingness to part from the child, he determined to avail himself of, and so become a regular cicerone. His pay for services in this capacity was so small, that he could with difficulty provide for himself and his little charge even the bare necessaries of existence. This mode of living he pursued however for some years, until the infirmities of old age creeping upon him, he found it harder than ever to procure food and shelter of the commonest kind. What could he now do? He looked at Muzio's graceful form, and an inspiration broke upon him. Yes, he would brave the danger, and take him to the city, for he felt that the artists and sculptors would rejoice to obtain such a model. The venture was made, and Siccio was elated and gratified beyond measure at the admiration Muzio, now in his fifteenth year, called forth from the patrons of Roman "models." For a while they were enabled to live in comparative comfort. Siccio now dared to reveal to him the secret of his birth, and the manner in which he had been despoiled, as the old man only suspected, of his inheritance. Great was the indignation of the youth, and still greater his gratitude to the good Siccio, who had toiled so uncomplainingly for him, but from this time he steadily refused to sit as a model. Work he would, even menial work he did not despise, and he might have been seen frequently in the different studios moving massive blocks of marble, for his strength far exceeded that of other youths of his own age. He also now and then assumed the duties of a cicerone, when the aged Siccio was unable to leave the house from sickness. His youthful beauty often induced strangers to give him a gratuity; but as he was never seen to hold out his hand, the beggars of Rome called him ironically "Signor." In spite of his efforts, Muzio was unable, as Siccio's feebleness increased, to provide for all their wants, and he became gloomy and morose. One wonderful evening, when Siccio was sitting alone, shortly after Julia's adventure, a woman closely veiled entered his mean little room, and placing a heavy purse upon the table, said-- "Here is something, my worthy friend, which may be useful to you. Scruple not to employ it, and seek not to discover the name of the donor, or should you by chance learn it, let it be your own secret." And thus, without giving the astonished old man time to recover his speech, she went out closing the door behind her. CHAPTER XV. THE CORSINI PALACE. "This is truly an unexpected blessing--a fountain in the desert," thought the Cardinal, as the three women were ushered into the audience-chamber. "Providence serves me better than these knaves by whom I am surrounded." Casting an undisguised look of admiration at Clelia, who stood modestly behind her mother, he said aloud, "Let the petition be brought forward." Monna Aurelia, considerately taking the document from Silvia, advanced with it, and presented it on her knees. After perusing it with apparent attention, the Cardinal addressed Aurelia, saying, "So you are the wife of that Manlio who takes upon himself to shelter and protect the enemies of the State, of his Holiness the Pope?" "It is I who am the wife of Signor Manlio, your Eminence," said Silvia, advancing. "This lady," pointing to Aurelia, "kindly offered to appear before your Eminence, and assure you that neither my husband or I have ever meddled with politics, and are persons of unquestioned honesty." "Unquestioned honesty!" repeated the Cardinal, in simulated anger. "Why, then, as you are so very honest, do you first shelter heretics and enemies of the state, and then assist them to escape in such an unpardonable manner?" "To escape!" exclaimed Clelia, who had hitherto preserved her presence of mind. "Then my father is no longer confined in this dreadful place"--and a flush of joy spread itself over her lovely features. "Yes, he has escaped; but ere long he will be re-taken, and must answer for his double crime," said the Cardinal. These words gave a blow to Silvia's new-born hopes, and, what with surprise, fear, and excitement, she fell back into her daughter's arms in a swoon. The Cardinal, hardened to such scenes, at once determined to take advantage of it, so summoning some servants, he ordered them to convey the fainting woman and her friends to another room, where proper remedies could be applied to restore the stricken wife. As they made their exit, he rubbed his soft hands gleefully, saying to himself, "Ah, my pretty one! you shall not leave the palace until you have paid me a fee." He then sent for Gianni, who, recognizing the trio at their entry, had remained at hand, as he divined his services would be needed. When he presented himself, his master chuckled out-- "Ebben, Signor Gianni! Providence beats your boasted ability out and out." Gianni, knowing that all was sunshine again when he was thus dignified by the title "Signor," answered, "Have I not always said your Eminence was born under a lucky star?" "Well," continued the profane Cardinal, "since Providence favors me, it now only rests with you, Gianni, to finish the matter off." Then he continued, "Follow the women, and see that every respect is paid them; and when they are calmed, direct Father Ignazio to send for the elder woman and the wife of the sculptor, under pretense of questioning them about his escape, that I may have an opportunity of conversing alone with the incomparable Clelia." Bowing profoundly, the scoundrel departed to execute his dissolute master's commands. As he passed out, a lackey entered, announcing that "Una Signora Inglese" wished to see his Eminence on business. "Introduce her," said Procopio, stroking his chin complacently; for he congratulated himself, in spite of the interruption, on his good fortune, as he admired the young Englishwoman excessively. Julia greeted him frankly as an acquaintance, holding ont her hand in the English fashion, which he took, expressing in warm terms, as he led her to a seat, his delight at seeing her. "And to what am I to attribute the felicity of again receiving you so soon under my roof? This room," he continued, "so lately brightened by your presence, has a renewed grace for me now." Julia seated herself, and replied, gravely, for she was slightly discomposed by the Cardinal's flattery, "Your Eminence is too condescending. As you well know, my former object in coming to the palace was to crave leave to copy some of the _chefs-d'ouvre_ with which it is adorned; but today I am here on a different errand." The Cardinal, drawing a chair to her side and seating himself, said, "And may I inquire its nature, beautiful lady?" placing, as he spoke, his hands upon hers with an insinuating pressure. Julia, resenting the Cardinal's familiarity, drew her chair back; but, as he again approached, she stood up, and placed it between them, saying, as he attempted to rise, and with a look that made him flinch, "You surely forget yourself, Monseigneur; be seated, or I must leave you." The prelate, profoundly abashed by the dignity of the English girl, obeyed, and she continued, "My object is to obtain information of the wife and daughter of the sculptor Manlio, who, I am told, came to the palace some hours ago to present a petition to your Eminence." "They came here, but have already left," stammered Procopio, as soon as he had recovered from his surprise. "Is it long since they quitted your Eminence?" asked Julia. "But a few minutes," was the reply. "I presume they have left the palace, then?" "Assuredly," affirmed he, unblushingly. Julia, with a gesture of incredulity, bowed, and took her leave. What is there perfect in the world? This English nation is by no means exempt from imperfection; yet the English are the only people who can be compared with the ancient Romans, for they resemble each other in the splendid selfishness of their virtues and their vices. Egotists and conquerors, the history of both abounds in crime committed either in their own dominions, or in those countries which they invaded and subdued. Many are the nations they have overthrown to satisfy their boundless thirst for gold and power. Yet who dare deny that the Britons, with all their faults, have contributed largely to the civilization and social advancement of mankind? They have laid the grand foundations of a new idea of humanity, erect, inflexible, majestic, free; obeying no masters but the laws which they themselves have made, no kings but those which they themselves control. By untiring patience and indomitable legality, this people has known how to reconcile government and order with the liberty of a self-ruling community. The isle of England has become a sanctuary, an inviolable refuge for the unfortunate of all other nations. Those proscribed by tyrants, and the tyrants who have proscribed them, flee alike to her hospitable shores, and find shelter on the single condition of taking their place as citizens among citizens, and yielding obedience to the sovereign laws. England, too, be it ever remembered first proclaimed to the world the emancipation of the slave, and her people willingly submitted to an increased taxation in order to carry out this glorious act in all her colonies. Her descendants in America have, after a long and bloody struggle between freedom and oligarchy, banished slavery also forever from the New World. Lastly, to England Italy is indebted in part for her reconstruction, by reason of that resolute proclamation of fair play and no intervention in the Straits of Messina in 1860. To France Italy is also, indeed, indebted, since so many of her heroic soldiers fell in the Italian cause in the battles of Solferino and Magenta. She has also profited, like the rest of the world, by the writings of the great minds of France, and by her principles of justice and freedom. To France, moreover, we owe, in a great measure, the abolition of piracy in the Mediterranean. France marched, in truth, for some centuries alone, as the leader in civilization. The time was when she proclaimed and propagated liberty to the world; but she has now, alas! fallen, and is crouching before the image of a fictitious greatness, while her ruler endeavors to defraud the nation which he has exasperated, and employs his troops to deprive Italy of the freedom which he helped to give her. Let us hope that, for the welfare of humanity, she will, ere long, resume her proper position, and, united with England, once again use her sublime power to put down violence and corruption, and raise the standard of universal liberty and progress. CHAPTER XVI. ENGLISH JULIA In Siccio's little room was that same evening gathered a group of three persons who would have gladdened the heart and eyes of any judge of manly and womanly beauty. Is it a mere caprice of chance to be born beautiful? The spirit is not always reflected in the form. I have known many a noble heart enshrined in an unpleasing body. Nevertheless, man is drawn naturally to the beautiful. A fine figure and noble features instinctively call forth not only admiration, but confidence; and every one rejoices in having a handsome father, a beautiful mother, fine children, or a leader resembling Achilles rather than Thersites. On the other hand, how much injustice and mortification are often borne on account of deformity, and how many are the wounds inflicted by thoughtless persons on those thus afflicted by their undisguised contempt or more cruel pity. Julia, for she it is who forms the loveliest of our triad, had just returned from her visit to the palace, and related to her auditors, Attilio and Muzio, what had transpired. "Yes!" she exclaims, "he told me they were gone; but you see how powerful is gold to obtain the truth, even in that den of vice! The ladies are there detained. I bought the truth of one of his people." Attilio, much disturbed, passed his hand over his brow as he paced and repaced the floor. Julia, seeing how perturbed in spirit he was by her discovery, went to him, and, placing her hand with a gentle pressure upon his shoulder, besought him to be calm, saying that he needed all possible self-control and presence of mind to procure his betrothed's release. "You are right, Signora," said Muzio, who until now had remained silent, but watchful; "you are ever right." The triad had already discussed a plan of rescue; and Muzio proposed to let Silvio know, and to engage him to meet them with some of his companions at ten o'clock. Muzio was noble-minded, and though he loved the beautiful stranger with all the force of his passionate southern nature, he felt no thought of jealousy as he thus prepared to leave her alone with his attractive friend. Nor did Julia run any danger from her warm feeling of compassion for Attilio, for her love for Muzio, though as yet unspoken, was pure and inalienable. A love that no change of fortune, time, or even death, could destroy. She had but lately learned the story of his birth and misfortunes, and this, be sure, had not served to lessen it. "No," she replied; "I will bid you both adieu for the present. At ten o'clock I shall await you in a carriage near the Piazza, and will receive the ladies, and cany them, when you have liberated them, to a place of safety." So saying, she beckoned to her nurse to follow, and departed to make the necessary arrangements for the flight of the sculptor's family, whose cause she had magnanimously espoused, ignoring completely the personal danger she was incurring. CHAPTER XVII. RETRIBUTION Justice! sacred word, yet how art thou abused by the powerful upon earth! Was not Christ, the just one, crucified in the name of justice? Was not Galileo put to the torture in the name of justice? And are not the laws of this unjust Babel, falsely called civilized Europe, made and administered in the name of justice? Ay, in Europe, where the would-be industrious man dies of hunger, and the idle and profligate flaunt in luxury and splendor!--in Europe, where a few families govern the nations, and keep them in a chronic state of warfare under the high-sounding names of justice, loyalty, military glory, and the like! There in the palace sit Procopio and Ignazio in the name of justice. Outside are the rabble--Attilio, forsooth, Muzio, and Silvio, with twenty of our three hundred, who mean to have justice after their own fashion. The hearts of these suitors are glad and gay, as on the eve of a feast. It is true they beat, but it is in confident hope, for the hour of their duty is near. They pace the Lungara in parties of twos and threes, to avoid suspicion, awaiting the striking of the clock. Whilst they linger outside, we will enter, and take a retrospect. When Gianni summoned Aurelia and Silvia to attend Father Ignazio, Clelia, suspecting treachery, drew a golden stiletto from her hair and secreted it in her belt, that it might be at hand in the event of her needing it to defend herself. The prelate, meantime, having attired himself in his richest robes, in the hope that their magnificence might have effect upon the simple girl, prepared, as he facetiously termed it, "to summon the fortress." Opening the door of the apartment in which Clelia was anxiously awaiting her mother's return, he entered with a false benignancy upon his face. "You must pardon us," he said, "for having detained you so long, my daughter, but I wished to assure you in person that no harm shall befall your father, as well as," he continued--and here he caught up her hand--"to tell you, most lovely of women, that since I beheld you first my heart has not ceased to burn with the warmest love for you." Clelia, startled by the words and the passionate look which the Cardinal fixed upon her, drew back a little space, so as to place a small table between them. Then ensued a shameful burst of insult and odious entreaty. In vain did he plead, urging that her consent alone could procure her father's' pardon. Clelia continued to preserve her look of horror, and her majestic scorn, contriving by her movements to keep the table between them. Enraged beyond measure, the Cardinal made a sign to his creatures, Ignazio and Gianni, who were near at hand, to enter. Clelia, comprehending her danger, snatched forth her dagger, and exclaimed in an indignant voice, "Touch me at your peril! rather than submit to your infamous desires I will plunge this poniard into my heart!" The libidinous prelate, not understanding such virtue, approached to wrest the weapon from the Roman girl, but received a gash upon his palm, as she snatched it free, and stood upon the defensive, with majestic anger and desperation. He called to his satellites, and they closed like a band of devils about the maiden; nor was it till their blood was drawn by more than one thrust from her despair, that Gianni caught the wrist of Clelia as she strove to plunge the knife into her own heart, while Father Ignazio passed swiftly behind her, and seized her left hand, motioning to Gianni to hold the right fast, and the Cardinal himself threw his arms around her. The heroic girl was thus finally deprived of her weapon. This achieved, they proceeded to drag her towards an alcove, where a couch was placed, behind a curtain of tapestry. At this instant, happily for our heroine, there was a sudden crash in the vestibule, and as her assailants turned their heads in the direction of the sound, two manly forms, terrible in their fiery wrath and grace, rushed forward. The first, Attilio, flew to his beloved, who, from revulsion of feeling, was becoming rapidly insensible, and tore her from the villains, while the prelate and his accomplices yielded their hold with a cry, and endeavored to escape. This Muzio prevented by barring the way; and bidding Silvio, and some of his men, who arrived at this juncture, to surround them, he drew forth a cord, and, after gagging the three scoundrels, he commenced binding the arms of the affrighted priest, his friends similarly treating Ignazio and the trembling tool Gianni Many and abject were the gestures of these miserable men for mercy, but none was shown by their infuriated captors, but the prayers and curses of the Cardinal were choked with his own mantle; and Muzio did not refrain, as Father Ignazio writhed under the pressure of the cord, from reminding him of his villainy in robbing a helpless child of his lawful inheritance. At dawn three bodies, suspended from a window of the Corsini palace, were seen by the awakening people, and a paper was found upon the breast of the Cardinal, with these words, "So perish all those who have polluted the metropolis of the world with falsehood, corruption, and deceit, and turned it into a sewer and a stew." CHAPTER XVIII. THE EXILE The sun of that avenging morning was beginning to shed its rays upon the few stragglers in the Forum who, with pale squalid faces betokening hunger and misery, shook their rags free of dust as they rose unrefreshed from their slumbers, when a carriage containing four women rolled through the suburbs. It passed rapidly along towards those vast uninhabited plains, where little is to be seen except a wooden cross here and there, reminding the traveller unpleasantly that on that spot a murder has been committed. Arriving at the little house already twice mentioned, its occupants alighted; and who shall describe the joy of that meeting. Julia and Aurelia contemplated in silence the reunion of the now happy Manlio with his wife and daughter, for all the prisoners of the wicked palace were free. Camilla also watched their tears of gladness, but without any clear comprehension. Could she have known the fate of her seducer, it might perchance have restored her reason. After a thousand questions had been asked and answered, Manlio addressed Julia, saying- "Exile, alas! is all that remains for us. This atrocious Government can not endure; but until it is annihilated we must absent ourselves from our home and friends." "Yes, yes! you must fly!" Julia said. "But it will not be long, I trust, ere you will be able to return to Rome, and find her cleansed from the slavery under which she now groans. My yacht is lying at Port d'Anzo; we will make all haste to gain it, and I hope to see you embark safely in the course of a few hours." A yacht! I hear some of my Italian readers cry. What part of a woman's belongings can this be? A yacht, then, is a small vessel in which the sea-loving and wealthy British take their pleasure on the ocean, for they fear not the storm, the heat of the torrid zone, or the cold of the frozen ocean. Albion's sons, ay, and her daughters, too, leave their comfortable firesides, and find life, health, strength, and happiness in inhaling the briny air on board their own beautiful craft in pursuit of enjoyment and knowledge. France, Spain, and Italy have not this little word in their dictionaries. Their rich men dare not seek their pleasure upon the waves--they give themselves to the foolish luxuries of great cities, and hence is it that names like Rodney and Nelson are not in their histories. Albion alone has always loved and ruled the waves for centuries. Her wooden walls have been her inviolable defense. May her new iron ramparts protect her hospitable shores from foreign foes! But a yacht is a strange thing for a woman to possess. True, but English Julia in childhood was of delicate constitution; the physicians prescribed a sea-voyage, and her opulent parents equipped a pleasure-vessel for her use. Thus Julia became so devoted to the blue waves that, even when the balmy air of Italy had restored her to robust health, she continued, when inclination disposed her, to make little voyages of romance, discovery, and freedom in the waters of the Mediterranean. Thus it was that she could offer so timely a refuge to the family of the sculptor. CHAPTER XIX. THE BATHS OF CARACALLA Imagine the consternation in Rome on the 15th of February, the day following the tragic death of the Cardinal Procopio and his two abettors. Great, in truth, was the agitation of the city when the three bodies were seen dangling from the upper window of the palace. The panic spread rapidly, and the immense crowd under the façade increased more and more, until a battalion of foreign soldiers, sent for by the terrified priests, appeared in the Lungara, and driving it back, surrounded and entered the palace. To tell the truth, the soldiers laughed sometimes at the jests, coarse but witty, which were flung by the mob at the three corpses as they commenced hauling them up. Many were the bitter things that passed below. "Let them down head over heels," shouted one; "your work will be finished the sooner." "Play the fish steadily, that they may not slip from the hook," hallooed another. By-and-by the cord to which the corpulent body of the prelate was attached broke as the soldiers attempted to hoist it up, and hoarser than ever were the shouts of laughter with which it was greeted as it fell with a heavy shock upon the pavement. Muzio, who was surveying the avenging spectacle, turned to Silvio, saying, with a shudder, "Let us away; this laughter is not to my taste now they have paid their debt. "In truth, Pasquin is almost the only real memorial of ancient Rome. Would that my people possessed the gravity and force of those times, when our forefathers elected the great dictators, or bought and sold, at a high price, the lands upon which Hannibal was at the time attacked. But it must be long before their souls can be freed from the plague of priestly corruption, and before they can once more be worthy of their ancient fame and name." "We must have patience with them," replied Silvio. "Slavery reduces man to the level of the beast These priests have themselves inculcated the rude mockery which we hear. At least, it could have no fitter objects than those dead carcasses. Reproach not the people to-day--mud is good enough for dead dogs." Thus discoursing, the friends made their way through the crowd, and separated, having first appointed to meet at the end of the week in the studio of Attilio. On the day in question they found the young artist at home, and gave him a detailed account of what they had witnessed under the palace windows. It was the time for the reassembling of the Three Hundred, but, before setting out to meet their associates at the Baths of Caracalla, they lay down to rest for a few hours; and while they slumber we will give some account of the place of assignation. Masters of the world, and wealthy beyond compute from its manifold spoils, the ancient Romans gave themselves up, in the later days of the Republic, to fashion, luxuriousness, and excesses of all kinds. The toil of the field--whether of battle or of agriculture--although it had conduced to make them hardy and healthy before their triumphs, had now become distasteful and odious. Their limbs, rendered effeminate by a new and fatal voluptuousness, grew at last unequal even to the weight of their arms, and they chose out the stoutest from among their slaves to serve as soldiers. The foreign people by whom they were surrounded failed not to note the advantage which time and change were preparing for them over their dissolute masters. They rose with Goth and Ostrogoth to free themselves from the heavy yoke. They fell upon the queenly city on all sides, and discrowned her of her imperial diadem. Such was the fate of that gigantic empire, which fell, as all powers ought to fall which are based on violence and injustice. One of the chief imported luxuries of the degenerate Romans were the thermæ, or baths, edifices upon which immense sums were lavished to make them beautiful and commodious in the extreme. Some were private, others public. The emperors vied with each other to render them celebrated and attractive. Caracalla, the unworthy son of Severus, and one of the very vilest of the line of Cæsars, built the vast pile which is still called by his evil name; the ruins of which forcibly illustrate the splendor of the past sovereignty, and the reasons of its swift decay. The greater number of these conspicuous and magnificent buildings in the city of Rome have subterranean passages attached to them, provided by their original possessors as a means of escape in times of danger, or to conceal the results of rapine or violence. In the subterranean passages connected with the Baths of Caracalla it was that the Three Hundred had agreed to meet, and as the darkness of night crept on, the outposts of the conspirators, like gliding shadows, planted themselves silently at the approaches to the wilderness of antique stones, from time to time challenging, in a whisper, other and more numerous shadows, which by-and-by converged to the spot. CHAPTER XX. THE TRAITOR The liberation of Manlio and the execution of the Cardinal gave an unexpected blow to the Pontifical Government, and aroused it from its previous easy lethargy. All the foreign and native soldiers available were put under arms, and the police were everywhere on the _qui vive_, arresting upon the slightest suspicion citizens of all classes, so that the prisons speedily became filled to overflowing. One of the Three Hundred--shameful to say--had been bought over to act as a spy upon the movements of his comrades. Happily he was not one of those select members chosen to assist in the attack upon the Quirinal prison, or the release of Silvia and Clelia. Of the proposed meeting at the Baths of Caracalla he was nevertheless cognizant, and had duly given information of it to the police. Now, Italian conspirators make use of a counter police, at the head of which was Muzio. His garb of lazzarone served him in good stead, and by favor of it he often managed to obtain information from those in the pay of the priests, who commonly employ the poor and wretched people that beg for bread in the streets and market-places of Rome in the capacity of spies. But this time he was ill-informed. The last conspirator had entered the subterranean passage, and Attilio had put the question, "Are the sentinels at their posts?" when a low sound, like the hissing of a snake, resounded through the vault. This was Muzio's signal of alarm, and he himself appeared at the archway. "There is no time to be lost," said he; "we are already hemmed in on one side by an armed force, and at the southern exit another is taking up its position." This imminent danger, instead of making these brave youths tremble, served but to fill them with stern resolve and courage. Attilio looked once on the strong band assembled around him, and then bade Silvio take two men and go to the entrance to reconnoitre. Another sentinel approached at this moment from the south, and corroborated Muzio's statement. The sentinels from the remaining points failing to appear, a fear that they had been arrested fell upon the young men, and their leader was somewhat troubled on this account, until Silvio returned, and reported that upon nearing the mouth of the passage he had seen them. At this moment they heard a few shots, and immediately after the sentinels in question entered, and informed the chief they had witnessed a large number of troops gathering, and had fired upon one file, which had ventured to advance. Attilio, seeing delay would be ruinous, commanded Muzio to charge out with a third of the company, he himself would follow up with his own third, and Silvio was to hurl the rearmost section upon the troops. Attilio briefly said, "It is the moment of deeds, not words. No matter how large the number opposed to us, we must carve a road through them with our daggers." He then directed Muzio to lead on a detachment of twenty men, with a swift rush, upon the enemy, promising to follow quickly. Muzio, quickly forming his twenty men, wrapped his cloak around his left arm, and grasping his weapon firmly in his right, gave the word to charge out. In a few moments the cavernous vault startled those outside by vomiting a torrent of furious men; and as the youths rushed upon the satellites of despotism, the Pope's soldiers heading the division had not even time to level their guns before they were wrenched from their grasp, and many received their death-blow. The others, thoroughly demoralized at the cry of the second and third divisions bursting forth, took to flight, headlong and shameful. The Campo Vaccino and the streets of Rome hard by the Campidoglio were in a short time filled with the fugitives, still pursued by those whom they should have taken prisoners. Helmets, swords, and guns lay scattered in all directions, and more were wounded by the weapons of their own friends in their flight, than by the daggers of their pursuers; in effect the rout was laughable and complete. The brave champions of Roman liberty, satisfied with having so utterly discomfited the mercenaries of his Holiness, dispersed, and returned to their several homes. Amongst the dead bodies discovered next morning near the baths was that of a mere youth, whose beard had scarcely begun to cover his face with down. He was lying on his back, and on his breast was the shameful word "traitor," pinned with a dagger. He had been recognized by the Three Hundred, and swiftly punished. Poor Paolo, alas, had the misfortune--for misfortune it proved--to fall in love with the daughter of a priest, who, enacting the part of a Delilah, betrayed him to her father as soon as she had learned he was connected with a secret conspiracy. To save his life, the wretched youth consented to become a paid spy in the service of the priesthood, and it was thus he drew his pay. The worth of one intrepid man, as Attilio showed, is inestimable; a single man of lion heart can put to flight a whole army. On the other hand, how contagious is fear. I have seen whole armies seized by a terrible panic in open day at a cry of "Escape who can;" "Cavalry;" "The enemy," or even the sound of a few shots--an army that had fought, and would again fight, patiently and gallantly. Fear is shameful and degrading, and I think the southern nations of Europe are more liable to it than the cooler and more serious peoples of the north; but never may I see an Italian army succumb to that sudden ague-fit which kills the man, even though he seems to save his life thereby! CHAPTER XXI. THE TORTURE As the hour of solemn vengeance had not yet struck, fright, and fright alone for the black-robed rulers of Rome was the result of the events we have detailed. The priests were in mortal terror lest the thread by which the sword of popular wrath was suspended should be cut. The hour, however, had not struck; the measure of the cup was not full; the God of justice delayed the day of his retribution. Know you what the lust of priests is to torture? Do you know that by the priests Galileo was tortured? Galileo, the greatest of Italians! Who but priests could have committed him to the torture? Who but an archbishop could have condemned to death by starvation in a walled-up prison Ugolino and his four sons? Where but in Rome have priests hated virtue and learning while they fostered ignorance and patronized vice? Woe to the man who, gifted by God above his fellows, has dared to exhibit his talent in Papal Italy. Has he not been immediately consigned to moral and physical tortures, until he admitted darkness was light? Is it not surprising that in spite of the light of the nineteenth century, a people should be found willing to believe the blasphemous fables called the doctrines of the Church, and the priests permitted to hold or withhold salvation at their pleasure, and to exercise such power in such a continent, that rulers court their alliance as a means of enabling them the more effectually to keep, in subjection their miserable subjects? In England, America, and Switzerland this torture has been abolished. There progress is not a mere word. In Rome the torture exists in all its power, though concealed. Light has yet to penetrate the secrets of those dens of infamy called cloisters, seminaries, convents, where beings, male and female, are immured as long as life lasts, and are bound by terrible vows to resign forever the ties of natural affection and sacred friendship. Fearful are the punishments inflicted upon any hapless member suspected of being lax in his belief, or desirous of being released from his oaths. Redress for them is impossible in a country where despotism is absolute, and the liberty of the press chained. Yes, in Rome, where sits the Vicar of God, the representative of Christ, the man of peace, the torture, I say, still exists as in the times of Saint Dominic and Torquemada. The cord and the pincers are in constant requisition in these present days of political convulsion. Poor Dentato, the sergeant of dragoons who facilitated the escape of Manlio, soon experienced this. He had been unfortunately identified as engaged at the Quirinal Morning, noon, and night means too horrible to divulge were resorted to to compel him to give up the names of those concerned in the attack upon the prison. Failing to gain their point, he had been left by his tormentors a shapeless mass, imploring his persecutors to show mercy by putting him to death. Unhappy man! the executioners falsely declared he had denounced his accomplices, and continued daily to make fresh arrests. Yet the world still tolerates these fiends in human form, and kings moreover impose them upon our unhappy countries. God grant the people of Italy will before long have the will and the courage to break this hateful yoke from off their necks! God set us free, before we are weary of praying, from those who take His holy name in vain, and chase Christ himself out of the Temple to set their money-changing stalls therein! CHAPTER XXII. THE BRIGANDS Let us leave for a time these scenes of horror, and follow our fugitives on the road to Porto d'Anzo. Their hearts are sad, for they are leaving many dear to them behind in the city, and their road is one of danger, until it be the sea; but, as they breathe the pure air of the country, their spirits revive--that country once so populated and fertile, now so barren and deserted. Perhaps it would be difficult to find another spot on earth that presents so many objects of past grandeur and present misery as the Campagna. The ruins, scattered on all sides, give pleasure to the antiquary, and convince him of the prosperity and grandeur of its ancient inhabitants, while the sportsman finds beasts and birds enough to satisfy him; but the lover of mankind mourns, it is a graveyard of past glories, with the priests for sextons. The proprietors of these vast plains are few, and those few, priests, who are too much absorbed by the pleasures and vices of the city, to visit their properties, keeping, at the most, a few flocks of sheep or buffaloes. Brigandage is inseparable from priestly government, which is easy to understand when we remember that it is supported by the aid of cowardly and brutal mercenaries. These, becoming robbers, murderers, and criminal offenders, flee to such places as this desert, where they find undisturbed refuge and shelter. Statistics prove that in Rome murders are of more frequent occurrence in proportion to the population than in any other city. And how, indeed, can it be otherwise, when we consider the corrupt education instilled by the priests? The outlaws are styled brigands, and to these may be added troops of runaway hirelings of the priests, who have committed such dreadful ravages during the last few years. We have a sympathy for the wild spirits who seem to live by plunder, but who retire to the plains, and pass a rambling life, without being guilty of theft or murder, in order to escape the humiliations to which the citizen is daily subjected. The tenacity and courage shown by these in their encounters with the police and national guards, are worthy of a better cause, and prove that such men, if led by a lawful ruler, and inspired with a love for their country, would form an army that would resist triumphantly any foreign invader. All "brigands" are, indeed, not assassins. Orazio, a valorous Roman, though a brigand, was respected and admired by all in Trastevere, particularly by the Roman women, who never fail to recognize and appreciate personal bravery. He was reputed to be descended from the famous Horatius Cocles, who alone defended a bridge against the army of Porsenna, and, like him, curiously enough, had lost an eye. Orazio had served the Roman Republic with honor. While yet a beardless youth he was one of the first who, on the glorious 30th of April, charged and put to flight the foreign invaders. In Palestrina he received an honorable wound in the forehead, and at Velletri, after unhorsing a Neapolitan officer with his arquebuss, deprived him of his arms, and carried him in triumph to Rome. Well would it have been for Julia and her friends had men of this type alone haunted the lonely plain! But when they were not far distant from the coast, a sudden shot, which brought the coachman down from his seat, informed our fugitives that they were about to be attacked by brigands, and were already in range of their muskets. Manlio instantly seized the reins and whipped the hones, but four of the band, armed to the teeth, rushed immediately at the horses' heads. "Do not stir, or you are a dead man," shouted one of the robbers, who appeared to be the leader. Manlio, convinced that resistance was useless, wisely remained immovable. In no very gallant tone, the ladies were bidden to descend, but, at the sight of so much beauty, the robbers became softened at first, for a time, and fixed their admiring looks upon the exquisite features of the youthful Clelia and the fair Englishwoman, with some promise of repentance. But their savage natures soon got the better of such a show of grace. The chief addressed the disconcerted party in a rough tone, saying, "Ladies, if you come with us quietly no harm shall happen to _you_, but if you resist, you will endanger your own lives; while, to show you that we are in earnest, I shall immediately shoot that man," pointing to Manlio, who remained stationary on the box. The effects produced upon the terrified women by this threat were various. Silvia and Aurelia burst into tears, and Clelia turned deadly pale. Julia, better accustomed to encounter dangers, preserved her countenance with that fearlessness so characteristic of her countrywomen. "Will you not," said she, advancing close to the brigand, "take what we possess? we will willingly give you all we have;" putting, at the same time, a heavily-filled parse into his hand, "but spare our lives, and permit us to continue our journey." The wretch, after carefully weighing the money, replied, "Not so, pretty lady," as he gazed with ardent eyes from her to Clelia; "it is by no means every day that we are favored by fortune with such charming plunder. We are in luck with such lovely ones. You must accompany us." Julia remained silent, not realizing the villain's presumption; but Clelia, to whom the chill of despair which struck her when her father's life was menaced was yielding to a deeper horror still at the scoundrel's words, with a spasm of anger and terror, snatching her poniard from her bosom, sprang upon the unprepared bandit. Julia, seeing the heroic resolution of her friend, also attacked him; but alas! they had not the chief alone to struggle with. His comrades came to his assistance, and the English girl was speedily overpowered, whilst Clelia was left vainly to assail him, for, although she succeeded in inflicting several wounds, they were of so slight a nature that, with the aid of a follower, he had no difficulty in wresting her weapon from her and securing her hands. When Julia was dragged off by two of the ruffians towards some bushes, Aurelia and Silvia followed, entreating them not to kill her. Manlio, who had attempted to leap to the ground to aid his daughter, had been instantly beaten to the earth, and was being dragged off in the direction of the same thicket by the band, while the chief brought up the rear with Clelia in his arms. All appeared lost. Death--and worse than death--threatened them. But they had not gone many paces before the knave whose vile arms encircled Julia was felled to the ground by a blow from a sudden hand; and Clelia gave a cry of joy as her deliverer raised her from the ground. CHAPTER XXIII. THE LIBERATOR Clelia's liberator, who had arrived so opportunely on the scene of violence, was by no means a giant, being not more than an inch or two above the ordinary height; but the erectness of his person, the amplitude of his chest, and the squareness of his shoulders, showed him to be a man of extraordinary strength. As soon as this opportune hero who had come to the rescue of the weak, had stricken down the chief by a blow of his gun-butt upon the robber's skull, he levelled the barrel at the brigand who held Manlio in his grasp and shot him dead. Then, without waiting long to see the effect of his bullet--for this hunter of the wild boar had a sure eye--he turned to the direction pointed out by Clelia. She was still much agitated; but when she perceived her champion so far successful, she cried- "Avanti! go after Julia, and rescue her. Oh, go!" With the fleetness of the deer the young man sped away in pursuit of Julia's ravishers, and, to Clelia's instant relief, the English girl soon reappeared with their preserver; Julia's captors having taken to flight upon hearing the shots. Reloading his gun, the stranger handed it to Manlio, and proceeded to appropriate to his own use those arms which he found upon the dead bodies of the brigands. They then returned to the carriage, and found the horses grazing contentedly on the young grass that bordered the road. For a little while no one found a voice. They stood absorbed in thoughts of joy, agitation, and gratitude; the women regarding the figure of the stranger with fervent admiration. How beautiful is valor, particularly when shown in the defense of honor and loveliness in woman, whose appreciation of courage is a deep instinct of her nature. Be a lover bold and fearless, as well as spotless, a despiser of death, as well as graceful in life, and you will not fail to win both praise and love from beauty. This sympathy of the fair sex with lofty qualities in the sex of action has been the chief promoter of human civilization and social happiness. For woman's love alone man has gradually put aside his masculine coarseness, and contempt for outward appearances, becoming docile, refined, and elegant, while his rougher virtue of courage was softened into chivalry. So far from being his "inferior," woman was appointed the instructress of man, and designed by the Creator to mould and educate his moral nature. We have said our fair travellers gazed with admiration at the fine person of the brigand--for "brigand" we must unwillingly confess their deliverer to be--and as they gazed, the younger members of the party, it may be acknowledged, imported into their glance a little more gratitude than the absent lovers, Attilio and Muzio, would perhaps have wished. But admiration gave place to _surprise_, when the brigand, taking Silvia's hand, kissed it, with tears, saying- "You do not remember me, Signora? Look at my left eye: had it not been for your maternal care, the accident to it would have cost me my life." "Orazio! Orazio!" cried the matron, embracing him. "Yes, it is indeed the son of my old friend." "Yes, I am Orazio, whom you received in a dying condition, and nursed back to life; the poor orphan whom you nourished and fed when left in absolute need," he replied, as he returned her embrace tenderly. After exchanging these words of recognition, and receiving others of ardent gratitude from the party, Orazio explained how he had been hunting in the neighborhood, when he saw the attack, and came to do what he could for the ladies. He advised Manlio to put them into the carriage again, and depart with all speed; "for," said he, "two of these bandits have escaped, and may possibly return with several of their band." Then, ascertaining the name of the port from which they intended sailing, he offered to become their charioteer, and, mounting the box, drove off rapidly in the direction of Porto d'Anzo. Arrived there without further adventure, the freshness of the sea air seemed to put new life and spirits into our jaded travellers, and the effect upon the beautiful Julia in particular was perfectly marvellous. A daughter of the Queen of the Ocean, she, like almost all her children, was enamored of the sea, and pined for it when at a distance. The sons of Britain scent the salt air wherever they live; they are islanders with the ocean always near. They can understand the feeling of Xenophon's 1000 Greeks, when they again beheld the ocean after their long and dangerous Anabasis, and how they fell upon their knees, with joyful shouts of "Thalassa! Thalassa!" and saluted the green and silver Amphitrite as their mother, friend, and tutelary divinity. CHAPTER XXIV. THE YACHT The English girl broke out into pretty speeches of gladness when she caught sight of her little ship. "Dance, graceful naiad," ejaculated Julia, when she beheld it upon the blue waters of the Mediterranean, "and spread your wings to bear away my friends to a place of safety. Who says I may not love thee as a friend, when I owe to thee so many glorious and free days? I love thee when the waters are like a mirror and reflect thy beauty upon their glassy bosom, and thou rockest lazily to the sigh of the gentle evening breeze which scarcely swells thy sails. I love thee still more when thou plungest, like a steed of Neptune, through the billows' snorting foam, driven by the storm, making thy way through the waves, and fearing no terror of the tempest. Now stretch thy wings for thy mistress, and bear her friends safe from this wicked shore!" Julia's companions were in the mood to echo this spirit of joy and exultation, and eagerly gazed at the little vessel. Not daring, however, to excite suspicion by conducting the whole of her party at once into Porto d'Anzo, Julia decided upon leaving Silvia and her daughter under the protection of Orazio, who would have been cut in pieces before he would have allowed them to be injured or insulted. They were to wait in a wood a short distance from the port, while Julia, taking with her Manlio, who acted the part of coachman, and Aurelia, as her lady's maid, passed to the ship to make preparations to fetch the others. Capo d'Anzo forms the southern, and Civita Vecchia the northern limits of the dangerous and inhospitable Roman shore. The navigator steers his vessel warily when he puts out to sea in winter on this stormy coast, especially in a south-west wind, which has wrecked many a gallant ship there. The mouth of the Tiber, is only navigable by vessels that do not draw more than four or five feet of water, and this only during spring. On the left bank of the Tiber near Mount Circeli, dwelt of old the war-like Volsci, who gave the Romans no little trouble before those universal conquerors succeeded in subjugating them. The ruins of their ancient capital, Ardea, bear witness to its ancient prosperity. The promontory, Capo d'Anzo, both forms and gives its name to the port in which was stationed our heroine's yacht, awaiting her orders. The arrival of Julia, if not a delight and fete day for the priests, who hate the English, because they are both "heretics" and "liberals," was certainly one for the crew of the _Seagull_, to whom she was always affable and kind. The sailor, exposed to noble risks nearly all his life, is well worthy of woman's esteem, and nowhere will she find a truer devotion to her sex than among the rough but loyal and generous tars. Going on board, the pretty English lady, after returning the affectionate and respectful greeting of her countrymen and servants, descended to the cabin and consulted with her captain, an old sea-dog (Thompson by name), as to the best means of embarking the fugitives. "Aye, aye, Miss," said he, glad to escape his enforced idleness, as soon as he saw how the land lay; "leave the poor creatures to me; I'll find a way of shipping them safe out of this hole!" And in less than an hour the captain, true to his word, weighed anchor, and sailed triumphantly out to sea with our exiles on board, who, though shedding a few natural tears as the coast faded rapidly from their view, were inexpressibly thankful to feel that they were at last out of the clutches of their revengeful persecutors. CHAPTER XXV. THE TEMPEST But our readers will remember that it was now the third week in February--the worst month at sea, at least in the Mediterranean. The Italian sailors have a proverb, that "a short February is worse than a long December." Captain Thompson, in his anxiety to fulfill his young mistress's wishes, had not failed to heed the weather-glass, and he had felt anxious at the way in which the mercury was falling--a sure sign that a strong south-west wind was brewing nigh at hand, the most unfavorable for the safety of our passengers on this rocky coast. The _Seagull_, however, sailed gracefully out of port with all sails set, and impelled by a gentle breeze--gracefully, we say, that is, in the eyes of Captain Thompson and her owner; but not so gracefully in the eyes of Aurelia and Manlio, who, never having intrusted themselves to the deep before, were considerably inconvenienced by the undulating motion. Julia had arranged to cruise down the coast for Silvia and Clelia, under Orazio's protection, bringing to off a small fishing-place a few miles from Porto d'Anzo, where the yacht was to put in and embark them; but, though the captain would have gone through fire and water to obey his mistress's commands, the wind and waves were his superiors. The gentle breeze had given place to strong gusts, and black clouds were rapidly chasing one another athwart the sky. A storm was evidently rising, and every moment the danger of being driven ashore was becoming more and more possible. Night was closing in, and breakers were in sight. The only chance of escape was to cast anchor. Thompson accordingly made Julia, who, wrapped in a shawl, was lying on deck watching every movement, acquainted with his resolution, in which she acquiesced. The sailors were about to obey their captain's orders, when Julia cried out "Hold!" for she had already felt the wind upon her cheek suddenly shift, and felt that to anchor was no longer wise. Now they must stand out to sea, and face the shifts of the tempest. The sails began to fill, and in a short time the _Seagull_ paid off, and began to leave the surf behind her, obedient to the helm. The wind was fitful, and now and again terribly fierce; the sails, cordage, and masts creaked, and swayed to and fro. Captain Thompson ordered his crew, in the energetic, yet self-possessed tone so characteristic of the British seaman, to "stand by" the halliards (ropes to hoist or lower sails), but to take in nothing. Luffing a little more, they were soon free of the immediate peril; but, the wind increasing, they dared not carry so much sail, and three reefs were taken in upon the mainsail, the foresail and jib were shifted, and every thing was made tight and snug against the fierce blasts which dashed the billows over her sides, and occasionally nearly submerged the tiny bark. The Seagull presently put about on the port tack, always beating out from the land, and battled bravely with the storm, which waxed momentarily louder and stronger. One tremendous wave dashed over her, and then the captain, addressing Julia, who had remained on deck, besought her to go below, or he feared she might share the fate of one of the crew who had been washed overboard by it. Poor fellow, no help could save him! Julia saw the sailor go over the side, and threw him a rope herself, but the man was swallowed up in the darkness and foam. The steersmen (for there were two) were now lashed to the helm, the captain to the weather shrouds of the mainmast, and the men held fast under the bulwarks. When Julia descended to the cabin to appease the captain's anxiety, and look after her friends, the scene that met her view was so ludicrous that, in spite of her sorrow for the loss of the poor seaman, she could not repress a smile. When the ship gave a lurch to the wave which had carried the sailor away, Aurelia was precipitated like a bundle of clothes into the same corner in which Manlio had taken refuge. The poor woman, frightened out of her wits, and thinking her last hour had come, clung to the unfortunate sculptor with all her might, as if fancying she could be saved by doing so. In vain Manlio implored her not to choke him: the more he entreated the closer became her grasp. The sculptor, accustomed to move blocks of marble, was powerless to release himself from the agonized matron, but, aided by the motion of the ship, contrived to hold her off a little so as to escape suffocation. In this tragic and yet comic attitude Julia beheld them, and, after giving way for one moment to her irrepressible amusement, she called a servant to assist her, and succeeded in pacifying Aurelia, and in liberating Manlio from his uncomfortable position. All night the _Seagull_ straggled bravely against the storm, and had it not been for her superior construction, and the skill of her commander and the brave blue-jackets in Julia's service, she must have perished. Towards morning the tempest subsided, and the wind having changed to south-south-west, Captain Thompson informed Julia it would be necessary to put in at Porto Ferrajo or Longone to repair the damages the yacht had sustained, which, indeed, were not slight. The two light boats had been carried away, also every article on deck, and the starboard bulwarks from amidships to stem. The foremast, too, was sprung, and Julia, seeing the impossibility of setting the vessel to rights at sea, consented to make the land. Here we will take leave of them for a time. CHAPTER XXVI. THE TOWER It is time to return to Clelia, and see how it fares with her and her companions, Silvia and Orazio. As night approached, Orazio made a large fire, which he had been directed to do by Julia, in order that the smoke might be a guide to her vessel. He then looked out for a boat to hire, in which to convey the women to the yacht; but as the storm rose, he felt there would be no chance of embarking that night, and cast about for a place of shelter until the morning. He found a ruined tower--such towers abound on the coasts of the Mediterranean, and are the remains of places which were erected by the mediaeval pirates, who used them chiefly to signal to their vessels when it would be safe to approach the shore. Here, after making his charges as comfortable as circumstances permitted, he left them, and paced up and down the beach, straining his eyes for a glimpse of the _Seagull_, which, he feared, could scarcely live in such a tempest. Half blinded by the spray, he continued his watch, dreading most of all to see the signs of a wreck. It was after many hours he perceived a dark object tossing about in the water, nearing and then receding, and finally stranded on the beach. Orazio ran towards it, and was horrified to discover that it was a human body, apparently lifeless, but still clinging to a rope and buoy. He snatched it up in his sturdy arms, and carried it into the tower, where he found Silvia and Clelia sitting by the fire which he had kindled for them. The lad whom Orazio had rescued was no other than the young English sailor washed overboard from the _Seagull_. Silvia, aided by her daughter, stripped the inanimate lad, laid him before the fire, and chafed him with their hands for a very long while, until, to their great delight, he slowly returned to consciousness. Then they wrapped him in some of their own dry garments, and hung his wet ones before the fire, Orazio supplying them with fresh fuel. Some of his native "grog" was wanting for poor John, but none was to be had. Fortunately, Orazio had a flask of Orvieto, which he had given to the travellers to warm their chilled bodies during the bitter night; and Silvia wisely administered a liberal dose to the exhausted mariner, who, with a stone for a pillow, and his feet towards the friendly fire, fell by-and-by into a sound sleep--yacht, tempest, shipwreck, and angelic nurses all forgotten together. His slumber could not have been more profound had he been stretched upon a bed of down. The youthful Clelia, also wearied with the fatigue of the past day, soon followed his example, and with her head in her mother's lap, slept the sleep of the innocent. Orazio returned to his lonely post, and after pacing up and down the shore in the fear of seeing some other sign of disaster, returned at dawn to the tower to dry his dripping clothes, and refresh himself after his dreary vigil. Silvia alone could not sleep all that night, but only dozed occasionally, as she thought over the misfortunes that had befallen them. Her delicate and graceful frame had been much shaken by the terrible occurrences of the past few days. Affectionate mother! Though weary, she bore the weight of her precious Clelia, and though her position was a constrained one, remained immovable lest she should awake her. She was tormented with fear, too, for the life of her beloved Manlio, who had escaped the fury of the priests only to be exposed to the merciless waves; and then, as if struck with remorse for thinking only of him, she murmured, in bitter accents, "Ah, my poor Aurelia, to what a fete has your generous kindness brought you also!" Muttering which reflections she then fell into another troubled doze. The Roman outlaw slept not, even after daybreak. He felt he was too near the cunning priests of Porto d'Anzo to be very safe. Seating himself upon a stone which he placed near the fire, he fed it from time to time with the wood he had previously gathered, and dried his garments one by one, with the exception of his cloak, which he had politely insisted upon wrapping around the ladies in the early part of the evening, as they were but-indifferently protected from the cold. Orazio was gayly dressed in a dark velvet suit, ornamented with silver buttons; gaiters buckling at the knee covered a comparatively small and well-shaped foot, and displayed his well-formed leg to advantage; a black cravat was knotted round his handsome throat, and a red satin handkerchief, loosely tied, fell upon his wide shoulders; a black hat, resembling in shape those worn by the Calabrians, nattily inclined a little to the right, crowned his head; a leathern powder-bag, embroidered with silk and silver, slung round his waist, in the band of which were placed two revolvers and a broad-bladed dagger, which served both as a weapon of defense and hunting-knife, gave him a well-prepared air; not to speak of his trusty carbine, which he has taken the precaution to reload, and which he always rests upon his left arm. As the flickering light of the fire fell upon him and lit up his bronzed features, an artist would have given much to have depicted what was truly a type of strength, courage, and manly beauty; while now and then, awakening from her uneasy slumber, Silvia regarded him with admiring eye, and forgot for a moment her anxieties while guarded by that faithful sentinel. It is to be regretted that our hero, Orazio, was a "brigand;" but then he was one of the better sort, and only from the force of circumstances, his sin being that, like all brave and loyal men, he wished Italy to be united, and Rome freed forever from priestly despotism. Towards dawn Orazio approached Silvia, saying respectfully, "Signora, we must not remain here till broad day; as soon as there is sufficient light to show us the path to take we must depart. We are too near our mutual enemies here to be out of danger." "And Manlio, Julia, Aurelia, where are they?" "Probably far out at sea," he replied; "and let us only hope it, for so they will be safe; but it would be well before we strike out into the woods once more to examine the beach. God grant we may not find any more bodies there." "God grant they may not have been cast upon the coast during this fearful storm," ejaculated Silvia, with clasped hands and raised eyes. A mournful silence fell upon them, broken at last by Orazio, who had been looking out for the first streak of light in the leaden sky. "Signora, it is time we were off." Silvia shook her daughter gently to arouse her, and Clelia got up, feeling greatly restored by her peaceful slumber, while Orazio, touching John with the butt-end of his carbine, awoke him. Then, for the first time, the sailor-boy was able to tell how he was washed overboard, and his account gave hopes to the listeners that the _Seagull_ was safe. Our bandit, going first, led his party in the direction of the coast; but, although the rain had ceased, the wind had not subsided, and the women made their way with difficulty along the rough, uneven pathway, the spray from the sea beating in their faces. Orazio and John, who was now nearly recovered, searched for the tokens of a wreck, but, happily, none were found, and they returned to Silvia and Clelia, whom they had left in a sheltered place, with relieved countenances and cheerful voices, saying, "Our friends are out of danger." Orazio added, "And now, ladies, we will begin our own journey," turning at the same time to the right, and taking a narrow footpath through the wood well known to him. His charges, attended by John the English boy, followed in silence. CHAPTER XXVII. THE WITHDRAWAL After the affair at the Baths of Caracalla, the position of Attilio and his companions became very much compromised. The traitor had, indeed, paid for his infamy with his life; but | though the Government's mercenaries had had the worst of it, the police were now on the alert, and, if not quite certain, could make a shrewd guess as to who were the leaders of the conspiracy. If, however, the friends of liberty from outside had been as ready as the Romans, the conspirators might yet have had it all their own way on the 15th of February, or, indeed, at any other time. But the "Moderates," always indissolubly bound to the chariots of selfishness, would not hear the words "To arms!" They preferred waiting, at whatever cost, until the manna of freedom fell from heaven into their mouths, or the foreigner should come to their relief, and set their country free. What cared they for national dignity, or the contemptuous smile of all other European nations at the open buying and selling of provinces! They were thinking first of gain and remunerative employment, and were consequently deaf to all generous propositions likely to set in risk their Eldorado of profits, though they would, if successful, procure national unity and prosperity by energetic action. This middle-class cowardice is the cause of Italy's degradation at the present day, and were it not for that, the kissing of the slipper would be an infamy of the past. It is the reason, too, why Italy's soil is so often vainly wet with the blood of her nobler, braver sons; and why those who escape the sword wander in forests to avoid the vengeance of those robed hyenas; and why the poor remain in abject misery. Such was the condition of Rome at the beginning of the year 1867. She might have been happy, regenerated, and powerful, crowned with glorious liberty and independence, had not the foreigner come to the aid of the falsely-called "father of his people." Now she grovels in bondage, loaded with French chains. One evening, early in March, Attilio, Muzio, and Silvio met at Manlio's house to discuss their future movements. They had remained in Rome in the hope of achieving something, but the labyrinth was far too intricate to allow our youthful and inexperienced heroes to extricate themselves, and the Three Hundred to extricate themselves and their countrymen from it. "There is no use," spoke Attilio, bitterly, "in dedicating one's life to the good of one's country in these days, when the 'Moderates,' check all our efforts, and basely reconcile themselves with the enemies of Italy. _Ohime!_ How can Romans ever do so! How can they ever live in harmony with those who have sold them and theirs so many times! who have precipitated us from the first rank among the nations to the lowest! who have corrupted and polluted our city! who have tortured our fathers and violated our virgins!" In his wrath Attilio's voice had risen until he literally shouted. Silvio, more composed, said, "Speak lower, brother, thou knowest how we are pursued; perchance there may even now be some accursed spy near. Be patient, and for the present let us leave Regola in charge of our affairs, and quit the city. In the country we have true and courageous friends. Let us leave Rome until she is tired of being the laughing stock of these leeches, who live by imposture and tyranny. Let us go. Our generous countrymen will call us brigands, adventurers, as they did the Thousand during the glorious expedition of Marsala, which astonished the world. What matters it to us? Now, as then, we will work and watch for the liberty of this our unhappy country. When she is willing to emancipate herself, we will fly to her rescue." CHAPTER XXVIII. THE FOREST After walking for about two hours through the forest, where to Silvia's and Clelia's inexperienced eyes there appeared to be no path ever trodden by man, Orazio stopped at a clearing, and they beheld a small pleasant-looking glade. Jack, the sailor, had proved of great use in removing fallen branches strewn across the way, which would else have greatly impeded the progress of the ladies. The weather had cleared up, and although the wind still moved the crowns of the trees it fanned but gently the cheeks of the fugitives. "Signora, sit down here with your daughter," said their guide, pointing to a large flat stone, "and take some rest, of which I see you are in need. Jack and I will go in search of some food; but, before we do so, I will spread my cloak upon your hard bench, that you may repose in greater comfort." Orazio was repaid with a graceful bow, and starting into the wood at a rapid pace, accompanied by the sailor-boy, was soon hidden from their view. Silvia was really fatigued, but Clelia, being of a more elastic constitution, and refreshed by her sound sleep during the past night, was not so much fatigued; nevertheless, she found it very welcome to rest in that agreeable place, where no human being save themselves was visible. Yielding presently, however, to the vivacity of her age, the young girl sprang up, and began to gather some pretty wild flowers she had observed, and forming them into a bouquet, presented them with a smile to her mother, and re-seated herself at her side. Just then, the report of a musket re-echoed through the wood. Silvia was greatly startled by the sudden echo in that lonely, silent retreat, which had in it something solemn. Clelia, perceiving the effect upon her mother, embraced her, and in reassuring tones said, "That is only a shot from our friend, _mia madre_; he will soon return with some game." Silvia's color came back again, and very soon afterwards Orazio and Jack rejoined the ladies, carrying between them a young boar, struck down by a ball from the carbine of the Roman. At Orazio's request, Clelia, who had some knowledge of the English language, bade Jack gather some sticks and light a fire, which he did willingly, and in a little time the cheerful pile was blazing before them. Animal food may be necessary to man--in part a carnivorous animal--still the trade of a butcher is a horrid one, while the continual dabbling in the blood of dumb creatures, and cutting up their slaughtered carcasses has something very repulsive in it. For our own part we would gladly give up eating animal food, and as years pass on, we become more and more averse to the destruction of these creatures, and can not even endure to see a bird wounded, though formerly we delighted in the chase. However, habit had made slaying and preparing the boar natural and easy to Orazio, who, compelled to live in the forest, had, indeed, no choice in the matter, being obliged either to kill game or starve. He laid the boar upon the grass, and with his hunting-knife skinned a portion, and cutting some substantial slices, fastened them on a skewer, cut by Jack out of a piece of green wood, and laid them over the fire. When fairly cooked, he presented them to the famished travellers. It was a roast well fitted to appease the cravings of a moderate appetite, and the wild dinner was heartily relished by all the parly. The meal was, indeed, a cheerful one, much merriment being caused by the absurdities uttered by Jack, whom Clelia was laughingly endeavoring to teach Italian. The sailor is always a light-hearted fellow on land, and more particularly after he has been a long time at sea. Jack, forgetting his narrow escape, was now the gayest of the four, and, in the company of the gentle and beautiful Clelia, did not envy his late shipmates, who were tossing on the tempestuous ocean. For Orazio, his preserver, and the Italian ladies, his gratitude knew no bounds, although he had but a vague idea of their position and purposes. When the repast was ended the party continued their journey, resting occasionally by the way, and in this manner arrived, late in the afternoon, in sight of one of those ancient edifices along the Ostian shore which appear to have escaped the destroying touch of Time. It stood away from the sea, on the edge of the forest, and at the entrance to a vast plain; several fine oaks, many centuries old, were growing about it, planted apparently by the original possessors, with some attempt at regularity. Orazio, begging the ladies to recline upon a mossy bank, stepped aside, and drawing a small horn from his pouch, blew a blast, shrill and long. The signal was answered by a similar sound from the ancient building, and an individual, dressed much in Orazio's style, issued from it, who, approaching the brigand with an air of respect, cordially saluted him. Orazio took the new-comer's hand in a friendly manner, and, pointing to his party, held a short conversation with him in an undertone. The man then retired, and Orazio, returning to the ladies, begged them to rise, and permit him to conduct them to this secure place of refuge. CHAPTER XXIX. THE CASTLE The period of highest glory for the ancient capital of the world vanished with the Republic and the majestic simplicity of the republican system; for after the battle of Zama, in which Hannibal was defeated by Scipio, the Romans had no longer any powerful enemies. It therefore became easy to conquer other nations, and, enriched by the spoils of the conquered, the Romans gave themselves up to internal contentions, and to every kind of luxury. In this way they were dragged down to the last stage of degradation, and became the slaves of those whom they had enslaved. And right well it befitted them that God should pay them in the same coin which they counted out. The last generation of the Republic, however, had truly a sunset grandeur about it, and splendid names. Before passing away it presented to history some men at whom one can not but marvel Sartorius, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, and Cæsar, were men of such stature that one alone would suffice to illustrate the valor of a warlike nation. If perfection in a military ruler were possible, Cæsar, with his superb qualities as a general, needed only to possess the abnegation of Sulla to have been a perfect type of the class. Less sanguinary than the Proscriber he possessed more ambition, and desired to decorate his forehead with a crown, for which he fell a victim, stabbed to the heart by the daggers of the Roman republicans. Sulla was also a great general, and a reformer; he struggled hard to wean the Romans from their vices, and even resorted to terrible means, slaying at one time eight thousand persons with this view. Subsequently, wearied with the ineffectual struggle against the tide of the time, he assembled the people in the Forum, and, after reproaching them for their incorrigible vices, declared, that as his power as Dictator had failed to regenerate them, he would no longer retain that dignity, but before he laid it aside he challenged the city to require from him an account of his actions. Silence ensued, no man demanding redress, though there were many present whose relatives and friends he had sacrificed. With an austere mien he then descended from the tribunal, and mingled with the crowd as a simple citizen. The Empire rose on the ruins of the Republic. And here it may be remarked that no Republic can exist unless its citizens are virtuous. This form of government demands moral education and elevation. It was the vice and degradation to which the Romans had sunk that inaugurated the Empire. Among the emperors there were some less deplorable than others--such as Trajan, Antonine, and Marcus Aurelius. The greater part, however, were monsters, who, not satisfied with the enormous wealth they possessed, and with their lofty position, set themselves to plunder the substance of others. They sought every pretext for robbing the wealthy citizens. Many of those, therefore, possessing wealth, retired from Rome--many sought refuge in foreign lands, others in far distant parts of the country, where they were safe from molestation. Among the latter, a descendant of Lucullus, in the reign of Nero, built the original walls of the antique castle where we left Clelia and her companions. Peradventure, some of the enormous oaks by which it was surrounded had sprung in but few removes from the acorns of the trees which shaded the courtier of Nero. However this may be, the architecture of the castle is certainly wonderful, and wonderfully preserved. The outbuildings are covered with ivy, which age has rendered of extraordinary growth. The interior had been completely modernized by mediaeval owners, and although not adorned with all the luxuries of the nineteenth century, it contains several dry-roofed and spacious apartments. Uninhabited for some time, die castle had been almost buried out of sight by the surrounding trees, which circumstance made it all the more suitable for Orazio and his proscribed comrades. Built in dark and troublous times, this castle, like all those of the same kind, possesses immense dungeons and subterranean passages spreading over a large space in the bowels of the earth. Superstition also guarded the lonely tower. Travellers making inquiries about the neighborhood of the shepherds who tend their flocks in the forest openings, had heard, and duly related, that somewhere in this district was an ancient castle haunted by phantoms; that no one ever dared to enter it, and that those unhappy beings who summoned up courage to approach its gateway were never seen again. Moreover, was there not a story told that the beautiful daughter of the wealthy Prince T------, when staying with her family at Porto d'Anzo for the benefit of sea-bathing, had one day wandered with her maids into the woods, where the affrighted and helpless women saw their mistress carried up into the air by spirits, and although every nook of the forest was searched by the command of her distressed father, no traces of the young princess were ever afterwards discovered. To this haunt of marvels Orazio then conducted our travellers, as we have before described. CHAPTER XXX. IRENE Upon the threshold of the castle, as our travellers drew near, stood a young woman, whose appearance betokened the Roman matron, but of greater delicacy perhaps than the ancient type. She numbered some twenty years; and, though a charming smile spread itself over her lovely features, and her eyes and soft abundant hair were extremely beautiful, still it was the majestic natural bearing of Irene which struck the beholder. As if unconscious of the presence of strangers, she ran to Orazio, and folded him in a warm embrace, whilst the blush which glad love can excite suffused both their faces, as they regarded each other with undisguised affection. Then, turning to the two ladies, she bowed gracefully, and welcomed them with a cordial salute, as Orazio said- "Irene, I present to you the wife and daughter of Manlio, our renowned sculptor of Rome." Honest Jack was perfectly astounded at seeing so much beauty and grandeur where he expected to find nothing except solitude and savage desert. But his astonishment was greater still when he was invited along with the rest into the castle, and beheld a table covered with a profusion of modest comforts in a handsome and spacious dining-hall. "You expected me, then, carissima?" observed Orazio, as he entered it, to Irene. "Oh, yes; my heart told me you would not pass another night away," was the reply, and the lovers exchanged another look, which made the thoughts of Clelia, as she beheld it, fly to Attilio, and we do not overstep the bounds of truth if we say that Silvia also remembered her absent Manlio with a sigh. Jack, with the appetite of a boy of twelve after his very long walk, felt nothing of the pangs of love, but much of those of hunger. And now another scene amazed mother and daughter as well as the sailor, who stood, indeed, with wide-open mouth staring at what seemed enchantment, for as Orazio blew his horn again, fifteen new guests, one after another, each fully armed and equipped like their leader, filed into the room. The hour being late, there was little daylight in the apartment, which gave to their entrance a more melodramatic air; but when the room was lit up with a lamp, the open and manly countenances of the new comers were seen, and inspired our party with admiration and confidence. The strangers made obeisance to the ladies and their hostess. Orazio, placing Silvia on his right hand, and Clelia on his left, Irene being seated by her side, called out, "To table." When their chief (to whom they showed great respect) was seated, the men took their places, silently, and Jack found a vacant seat by the side of Syvia, which he took with calm resignation to his good luck. The repast began with a toast "to the liberty of Rome," which each drank in a glass of "vermuth," and then eating commenced, the meal lasting some time. When all had appeased their hunger, Irene rose, with a sweet grace, from the table, and conducted her fair visitors to an upper chamber in the tower; and while a servant prepared, according to her orders, some beds for her guests, exchanged with them, after the universal manner of ladies, a few words about their mutual histories. Silvia's and Clelia's stories you already know, so it only remains for us, who have the privilege of their confidence, to narrate what Irene imparted to them. "You will wonder to hear," said she, "that I am the daughter of Prince T------, whom perhaps you know in Rome, as he is famous for his wealth. My father gave me a liberal education, for I did not care about feminine accomplishments, such as music and dancing, but was attracted by deeper studies. I delighted in histories; and when I commenced that of our Rome, I was thoroughly fascinated by the story of the republic, so full of deeds of heroism and virtue, and my young imagination became exalted and affected to such an extent that I feared I should lose my reason. Comparing those heroic times with the shameful and selfish empire, and more especially with the present state of Rome, under the humiliating and miserable rule of the priest, I became inexpressibly sorry for the loss of that ancient ideal, and conceived an intense hatred and disgust for those who are the true instruments of the abasement and servility of our people. With such a disposition, and such sentiments, you can imagine how distasteful the princely amusements and occupations of my father's house became to me. The effeminate homage of the Roman aristocracy--creatures of the priest--and the presence of the foreigner palled upon me. Balls, feasts, and other dissipations, gave me no gratification; only in the pathetic ruins scattered over our metropolis did I find delight. On horseback or on foot, I passed hours daily examining these relics of Rome's ancient grandeur. "When I attained my fifteenth year I was certainly better acquainted with the edifices of the old architects, and our numerous ruins, than with the needle, embroidery, and the fashions. I used to make very distant excursions on horseback, accompanied by an old and trusty servant of the family. "One evening, when I was returning from an exploration, and crossing Trastevere, some drunken foreign soldiers, who had picked a quarrel at an inn, rushed out, pursuing one another with drawn swords. My horse took fright, and galloped along the road, overleaping and overturning every thing in his way, in spite of all my endeavors to check his speed. I am a good rider, and kept a firm seat, to the admiration of the beholders; but my steed continuing his headlong race, my strength began to fail, and I was about to let myself fall--in which case I should certainly have been dashed to pieces on the pavement had I done so--when a brave youth sprang from the roadside, and, flinging himself before my horse, seized the bridle with his left hand, and, as the animal reared and stumbled, clasped me with the right. The powerful and sudden grasp of my robust preserver caused the poor beast indeed to swerve sharply round, and, striking one foot against the curb, he stumbled and fell, splitting his skull open against the wall of a house. I was saved, but had fainted; and when I returned to consciousness I found myself at home, in my own bed, and surrounded by my servants. "And who was my preserver? Of whom could I make inquiries? I sent for my old groom, but he could tell me little, except that he had followed me as quickly as he well could, and had arrived at the scene of the castastrophe just as I was being carried into a house. All he knew was that my deliverer seemed a young man, who had retired immediately after placing me in the care of the woman of the house, who was very attentive when she learned who I was. "Still my ardent imagination, even in that dangerous moment, had traced more faithfully than they the noble lineaments of the youth. His eyes had but flashed an instantaneous look into mine, but it was indelibly imprinted on my heart. I could never forget that face, which renewed at last, as in my memory, the heroes of the past. I shall know him again, I said to myself. He is certainly a Roman, and if a Roman, he belongs to the race of the Quirites! my ideal people--the objects of my worship! "You know the custom of visiting the Colosseum by moonlight, which then displays its majestic beauty to perfection. Well, I went one night to view it, guarded by the same old servant; and as I was coming back, and had arrived at the turning of the road which leads from the Tarpeian to Campidoglio, my servant was struck down by a blow from a cudgel, and two men, who had concealed themselves in the shadow cast by an immense building, sprang out upon me, and, seizing me by the arms, dragged me in the direction of the Arch of Severus. I was terror-stricken and in despair, when, as Heaven willed it, I heard a cry of anger, and we were quickly overtaken by a man whom I recognized in the dim light as my late preserver. He threw himself upon my assailants, and a fearful struggle began between the three. My young athlete, however, managed to lay the assassins in the dust, and returned to my side; but perceiving that my servant had risen, and was approaching unhurt, he took my hand, and kissing it respectfully, departed before I could recover from the sudden shock of the unexpected attack, or could articulate a single word. "I have no recollection of my mother, but my father, who loved me tenderly, used to take me every year to bathe at Porto d'Anzo, for he knew how much I delighted in the ocean, and how pleased I was to escape from the aristocratic society of Rome, where, had he studied his own inclinations, he would gladly have remained. My father possessed a little villa not far from the sea, to the north of Porto d'Anzo, where we resided during our visits to the Mediterranean, the sight of which I dearly loved. Here I was happier than in Rome; but I felt a void in my existence, a craving in my heart, which made me restless and melancholy. In fact, I was in love with my unknown preserver. Often I passed hours in scrutinizing every passer-by from the balcony of my window, hoping vainly to obtain a glimpse of the man whose image was engraven upon my heart. If I saw a boat or any small craft upon the sea, I searched eagerly, by the aid of my telescope, among crew and passengers for the form of my idol. "I did not dream in vain. Sitting alone in my balcony one evening, wrapped in gloomy thoughts, and contemplating, almost involuntarily, the moon as she rose slowly above the Pontine marshes, I was startled from my reverie by the noise of something dropping to the ground from the wall surrounding the villa. My heart began to beat violently, but not from fear. I fancied I saw by the dim light a figure emerging from the shrubbery towards me. A friendly ray from the moon illumined the face of the intruder as he approached, and when I beheld the features I had sought for so many days in vain I could not repress a cry of surprise and joy, and it required all my womanly modesty to restrain a violent desire to run down the steps leading to my balcony and embrace him. "My love of solitude and disdain for the pleasures of the capital had kept me in comparative ignorance of worldly things, and, with good principles, I had remained an ingenuous, simple daughter of nature. "'Irene,' said a voice which penetrated to the inmost recesses of my soul; 'Irene, may I dare ask for the good fortune to say two words to you either there or here?' "To descend appeared to me to be more convenient than to permit him to enter the rooms; I therefore went down immediately, and, forgetting, for the moment, his fine speeches, in joy, he covered my hands with burning kisses. Conducting me towards some trees, we sat down upon a wooden bench under their shady branches side by side. He might have led me to the end of the world at that strange and sweet moment had he pleased. "For a while we remained silent; but presently my deliverer said, 'May I ask pardon for this boldness--will you not grant it, my loved one?' I made no reply, but allowed him to take possession of my hand, which he kissed fervently. Presently he went on: 'I am only a plebeian, Irene--an orphan. Both my parents perished in the defense of Rome against the foreigner. I possess nothing on this earth but my hands and arms, and my love for you, which has made me follow your footsteps.' "Predisposed to love him even before I had heard his voice, now that his manly yet gentle and impassioned tones fell upon my ear, I felt he might do what he would with me--I was in an Eden. Yes, he belonged to me, and I to him; but I could not find the voice to say so as yet. "'Irene,' he continued, 'I am not only a portionless orphan, but an outlaw, condemned to death, and pursued like a wild beast of the forest by the bloodhounds of the Government. Yet I have presumed to hope that you might be gentle to me for my love, with the strength of your generous nature; and more so, alas! when I saw that you were unhappy, for I have watched you unseen, and noted with sorrow and hope the melancholy expression of your face. I am come, though your sweet kindness flatters roe, Irene, to tell you these things which make it impossible, of course, that you can ever be mine. I have no claim or right; but my ardent love, the small services I have rendered you, have blessed me, and made me proud and happy; therefore you owe me nought of gratitude. If I should ever have the delight of laying down my life for yours, my happiness will then, indeed, be complete. Adieu, Irene, farewell!' he continued, rising and pressing my hand to his heart, while he turned to leave me. "I had remained in an ecstasy of silent joy, forgetful of the world, of myself, of all save him. At the word 'farewell,' I started as if electrified; I ran to him, crying 'Stay, oh, stay!' and, clasping him by the arm, drew him back to the bench, and quite forgetting all reserve myself, exclaimed, 'Thou art mine, and I am thine for life! thine, yes thine forever, my beloved!' "He told me all his story--he pictured to me the hope and aim of his life. His burning words of love for Italy and hatred of her tyrants added to my strength of resolve. I replied that I would share his fortunes forthwith as his wife, and with no regrets, except upon my father's account. It was then arranged that we should live here together. A few days of preparation, and we were privately married. I followed my Orazio to the forest where ever since I have dwelt with him. I will not say I am perfectly happy--no; but my only grief is the remembrance that my disappearance accelerated, I fear, in a measure the death of my aged and affectionate parent." Tired as our poor Silvia was, she could not but listen with interest to the narrative of Irene, down whose beautiful cheeks the tears coursed at the mention of her father's name. Clelia, too, had not lost a single word, and more than one sigh from her fair bosom seemed to say, during her hostess's recital, "Ah, my Attilio! is he not also handsome, valorous, and worthy of love, yes, of my love!" But now, wishing repose to her guests, Irene bade them good-night. CHAPTER XXXI. GASPARO The history of the Papacy is a history of brigands. From the mediæval period robbers have been paid by that weak and demoralizing Government to keep Italy in a state of ferment and internal war; and at this very day it makes use of thieves to hold her in thraldom and hinder her regeneration. I repeat, then, that the history of, the Papacy is a history of brigands. Whoever visited Civita Vecchia in 1849 must have heard of Gasparo, the famous leader of a band of brigands, a relative of the Cardinal A------. Indeed, many persons paid a visit to that city simply for the purpose of beholding so extraordinary a man. Gasparo, at the head of his band, had long defied the Pontifical Government, and sustained many encounters with the gendarmes and regular troops, whom he almost invariably defeated and put to flight. Failing to capture the brigand by force of arms, the Government had recourse to stratagem. As I have already stated, Gasparo was related to a cardinal, one of the most powerful at Court; and as they were both natives of S------, where many of their mutual relations resided, these relations were made use of by the Government to act as mediators between it and the brigand, to whom it made several splendid offers. Gasparo, putting faith in the promises made by his kinspeople at the instance of the Government, disbanded his men, but was then shamefully betrayed, arrested, and taken in chains to the prison in Civita Vecchia, where he was found during the Republican period in 1849. Prince T------, the brother of Irene, having obtained some clue through the shepherds, whose description of a beautiful dweller in the forest left little doubt upon his mind as to her identity, consulted with the Cardinal A------, and determined at any cost to recover his sister. Although backed by the Government, and authorized to make use of the regiment which he commanded, the Prince, from his ignorance of the many hidden recesses in the forest, did not feel at all certain of success, and in his dilemma applied to the Cardinal to secure for him the services of the prisoner Gasparo, his relative, as a guide. "It is a good thought," said the Cardinal. "Gasparo is better acquainted with every inch of the forest than we are with the streets of Rome. Besides, they say that such are his olfactory powers, that by taking a handful of grass, and smelling at it, even at midnight, he could tell you what portion of the forest you were in. He is old now, it is true; but he has courage enough still to face even the devil himself." When Gasparo heard he was to be conducted to Rome he gave himself up for lost, and said to himself, "Better were it to die at once, for I am tired of this miserable existence, only then I should go to my grave unrevenged for the treachery and injury I have suffered at the hands of these villainous priests." Two squads of gendarmes, one on foot and the other mounted, conducted this formidable brigand from Civita Vecchia to Rome. The Government would have preferred moving him at night, but darkness would have facilitated his rescue, which it feared some of his old companions might attempt if they heard of his journey. It was therefore decided Gasparo should travel by day, and the road was thronged by so dense a multitude, who pressed forward to gaze at the celebrated chieftain, that the progress of the Pope could scarcely have attracted greater numbers. Arrived in Rome, Gasparo was afterwards introduced into the presence of his relative, Cardinal A------, and the Prince T------, who, with many words and promises of a large reward in gold, to all appearance prevailed upon him to assist them to destroy the bands of "libertines" by which the forest was infested. Rejoicing in such a chance of escape and opportunity for revenge upon his persecutors, Gasparo affected to be delighted at the proposition, and consented to it with much apparent pleasure. CHAPTER XXXII. THE SURPRISE Silvia, Clelia, and Jack, had passed several days very pleasantly in the Castle of Lucullus, as the guests of Orazio and Irene. Among Orazio's band were several well-connected men, whose friends in the city, unknown to the Government, sent them regularly sums of money, which enabled them to supply the table of their chief. The gallantry of the young Romans to the "Pearl of Trastavere" was profound. Clelia would have been more glad to have had her Attilio at her side; and Silvia, the gentle Silvia, sighed when she remembered the uncertain fate of her Manlio; but the two ladies were nevertheless well pleased. As for Jack, he was the happiest being on earth, for Orazio had presented him with one of the carbines taken from the brigands who had assaulted Manlio and his party; and it was inseparable from him in all his hunting and reconnoitring excursions in the woods. One day Orazio took the sailor with him to seek a stag, and directed Jack to beat, whilst he placed himself in ambush. Their arrangements were so effective, that, in less than half an hour, a hart crossed Orazio's path. He fired, and wounded him, but not mortally; he therefore fired a second time, and, with a cry, the noble animal fell. As he discharged his second shot, Orazio heard a rustling in the bushes near him. Listening for a second, he was convinced some one was approaching from the thickest part of the cover. Jack it could not be; he was too far off to have returned so quickly. A suspicion that he was to be the object of an attack caused him to curse involuntarily as he looked at the empty barrels of his carbine. He was not mistaken; for, hardly had he placed the butt-end of his gun upon the ground in order to reload it, than a head, more like that of some wild creature than a human being, was thrust from between the bushes. To the valorous fear is a stranger, and our Roman, who was truly brave, sprang forward, dagger in hand, to confront the apparition, who, however, exclaimed, "Hold!" in such a tone of authority and _sang-froid_, that Orazio fell back astonished, and paused. The stranger was armed from head to foot, and had, as we have said, a striking appearance. His head, covered with a tangled mass of hair, white as snow, was surmounted by a Calabrian hat; his beard was grizzled, and as bristly as the chine of a wild boar, concealing almost the whole of his face, out of which, nevertheless, glared two fiery eyes. Held erect and placed upon magnificent shoulders, years had not bowed nor persecution subjugated that daring neck. His broad chest was covered by a dark velvet vest; around his waist was buckled the inseparable cartridge-box. A velvet coat, and leather gaiters buttoned at the knee, completed his costume. "I am not your enemy, Orazio," said Gasparo--for it was he--"but am come to warn you of an approaching danger, which might prove your ruin, and that of your friends." "That you are not my enemy, I am assured," replied Orazio; "for you might, had you chosen, have killed me before I found a chance of defending myself. I know well that Gasparo can handle a gun skillfully." "Yes," answered the bandit, "there was a time when I needed not to fire many second shots at deer or wild boar, but now my eyes are beginning to fail me; yet I shall not be behind my companions when the time for attacking the common enemy arrives. But let us talk a while, for I have important news to communicate to you." Seating himself upon the trunk of a fallen tree, Gasparo related to Orazio the projects of the Papal court, aided by Prince T------ at the head of his regiment; and how he himself had been sent for, from confinement, to assist the Prince in discovering the retreat of the "Liberals;" also how, burning to be revenged upon the priestly Government, he had effected his escape, and now offered his services, and those of his adherents, to Orazio, on the simple condition of being accepted among the "Liberals" as one of their band. "But, Gasparo, you have so many serious crimes to answer for, if the reports about you be true, that we could not possibly admit you into our company," observed Orazio. "Crimes!" repeated the friendly brigand; "I own no crimes but those of having purged society from some bloody and powerful villains and their wicked agents. Is that a crime? and is it a crime to have helped the needy and the oppressed? or do you believe that, if I had been a mere paltry criminal, the Government would have been in such awe of me, or that I should have been so beloved by the populace? The Government fears me because I have no sin upon my soul but resentment against its wickedness, and because it is conscious of having betrayed me in a cowardly and deceitful manner, and that, when I return once more to my free life, I shall make it pay dearly for its deceit and treachery. "Yes, I have sometimes," he continued, after a pause, "made use of my carbine as an instrument of justice, in accordance with the laws of humanity, of righteousness. Can the priests say as much of their accursed scaffold?" Jack arriving at this moment, Orazio explained by signs that the stranger was friendly; and, after making preparations to carry off the game, they returned with Gasparo to the castle, to equip themselves against the approaching assault. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE ASSAULT The Prince having ascertained from other spies--who proved more docile than Gasparo--that the band of "Liberals" were occupying the castle of Lucullus, made active arrangements to besiege it, and, after approaching the place, disposed his men in such a manner that it might be surrounded on all sides, so that escape from it in any direction should be impossible. The brother of Irene--like many other generals--committed the error of spreading his men over a large space of ground, and detaching a number of sentinels, pickets, videttes, and scouts, so as to leave himself with too small a body against assailants. Not knowing the exact site of the castle, Prince T------ had sent Gasparo on to explore, who took advantage of his freedom, as the reader is aware, to desert to the threatened little garrison. Impatient at his prolonged absence, the Prince commanded his officers to cause their men--about a thousand strong--to narrow the circle, and to assault the castle when each column arrived in sight of it. As might be expected, so complex a scheme proved unfortunate. The detachment to the north, commanded by the Prince in person, marched in a straight line for the tower; but the others, partly through the ignorance of the officers, and partly through the disinclination of the guides to begin the affray, instead of following the right path, struck out into the wood, and were soon in inextricable confusion, calling hither and thither to each other, and often returning to the point from which they started. In this way several hours were lost. The Prince, with two hundred of his most serviceable men, arrived, however, within sight of the spot, which they only discovered about four o'clock in the afternoon, and then perceived, to their chagrin, that preparations for defense had been made. But reckoning on the numbers of his troops, and on the co-operation of the other detachments, he drew his sword, disposed of half his men as skirmishers, and keeping the other half as a reserve, ordered the signal to be given for attack. Orazio and his young Romans could have avoided the combat by taking refuge in the subterranean passages, but disdaining a retreat before measuring his strength with the Papal mercenaries, he determined to show fight, and upon returning to the castle with Gasparo, hastened to have the doors barricaded and holes made in the walls for the musketeers, while every necessary instrument was put in readiness for the siege. The young leader hod ordered his men not to fire at the enemy so long as they were at a distance, but to wait until they were close under the walls, so that each might shoot down his man. The assailants advanced boldly on the castle, and the front rank of skirmishers had nearly reached the threshold, when a general discharge from the guns of those within laid nearly as many of the Papal troops on the ground as there were shots fired. This sudden discharge disconcerted those behind, who, seeing so many of their comrades fall, turned and fled. The Prince, with his column, was treading sharply on the heels of the skirmishers, and arrived at this juncture. Orazio had taken the precaution to have all the spare fire-arms in the tower loaded and placed ready for use, and now commanded the domestics to help the ladies to reload them as soon as they were discharged. Jack, however, declined to remain with the women, as Orazio had proposed, and seizing his musket placed himself at the side of his preserver, following him like a shadow throughout the attack. When the Prince arrived under cover of the outer mound and saw the slaughter that had taken place, he understood at last the disposition of the enemy with whom he had to deal. Remarking the fear depicted on the countenances of his men, and seeing retreat under such a murderous fire would be disastrous, to say nothing of the disgrace of such a movement, he resolved to storm the wall. He passed the word, accordingly, to his aides-de-camp, by whom he was surrounded, to order the trumpets to sound the charge, and, springing forward himself, he was the first to climb the barricade, striking right and left with his sabre at the few defenders posted there. Orazio, who was among these few, stood without moving at the first sight of the Prince, in whose lineaments he traced so plainly the likeness to his beloved Irene. One of the barrels of his musket was still undischarged, and he could easily have sent the contents through the body of his enemy, but he refrained. Jack, who was standing by his side, not understanding the cause of this hesitation, raised his gun to a level with the Prince's breast and fired; but as he did so Orazio knocked up the muzzle with all the force of his strong arm, and the ball struck one of the Prince's men, who had just appeared above the barricade. The Prince's followers who mounted with him were few in number, and those few were quickly dispatched by the valiant garrison of the castle. An unexpected circumstance finally freed our party from their assailants and made them fly in every direction, scattered like a flock of sheep. As the officers were urging the men crowded under the barricades to follow their Prince, a cry of "Enemies in the rear!" was heard from the east side of the wood. A small band of ten men appearing, sprang like lions on the right flank of the little army. The soldiers, in the panic, thinking the "ten" might be a hundred, dispersed like chaff before the wind. Some few paused, hoping that the new-comers might prove to be some of their own missing allies, but upon a nearer view it was plain that they were dressed in the uniform of the Liberals, and the blows they dealt upon the nearest Papalini were so terribly in earnest, that these last turned and fled in dismay, leaving their opponents masters of the field and the Prince a prisoner. Realizing the generous act of his enemy, and finding out that he was left alone, he delivered up his sword to Orazio, who received it courteously, and conducted him to the presence of Irene. CHAPTER XXXIV. A VALUABLE ACQUISITION The most earnest reformer most confess that immense progress has been made during the present century. We are not speaking of mechanical or physical arts, in which the advance is really wonderful, but we are thinking solely of the political and moral achievements of the age. The emancipation of the nations from the power of the priest is a vast object not yet attained, but towards the accomplishment of which, nevertheless, our generation is making gigantic strides. Above all, this progress seems marvellous and divinely impelled, when one remembers that the gradual destruction of priestcraft is the work of the priesthood itself. What enduring consolidation would not the Papacy have obtained, had Pius IX. continued the system of reform with which he commenced his reign, and sincerely identified himself with the Italian nation! An overruling Providence, however, blinded the eyes of the wavering monk for the good of his unfortunate people, and left him to travel on the perverse and misguided road of his predecessors--that is to say, to trade away Roman honor and Christian spirit for the help of the foreigner, vilely selling the blood of his countrymen. The Italian nation, which might have been so well and long deceived, has now seen these impostors, the priests, walking with cross in hand at the head of the foreign troops pitted against Italian patriots. The writer has with his own eyes more than once witnessed priests leading the Austrians against the Liberals. To serve the Papacy they have excited and maintained brigandage, devastating the southern provinces with horrible crimes, and fomenting by every means in their power the dissolution of national unity, so happily but hardly constituted. Another sign of human progress in our day is the closer tie establishing itself between the aristocracy and the people. There still exist some oligarchs everywhere, more or lest callous, more or less insolent, who affect the arrogance and authority of former times, when the outrageous and intolerable feudal pretensions were in full force. But they are few in number, and the greater part of the nobility (noble not only by birth, but in soul) associate with os, and mingle their aspirations with ours. To this last type belonged the brother of Irene, who undertook the unlucky military affair we related in the last chapter, with the idea of rescuing his beloved sister from the brigands, into whose hands he believed she had fallen an unwilling victim. But when he learned that those he had fought against were Romans of noble and lofty spirit, and very far from the assassins he had pictured, he did not fail to compliment the valor of his countrymen; and when he further learned that Qrazio, to whose generosity he owed his life, was the legal husband of his sister, and that she loved him so tenderly, his maimer and opinion changed entirely. These considerations had pleaded already in favor of Irene, who, upon seeing her brother, threw herself at his feet, clasping his knees in a flood of tears, which flowed the faster at the remembrance of her dead father, whom he represented in face and voice. The Prince, raising her gently, mingled his tears with hers, as he affectionately embraced her. Orazio, touched to the depths of his soul, was also affected, and taking the Prince's sword by the point, handed it back to him, saying, "So noble a soldier ought not to be deprived, even by accident, of his weapon." The Prince accepted it with gratitude, and shook the bronzed hand of this son of the forest amicably. And Clelia! what had made her rush away from this charming scene? what had she heard amid the noise of the conflict? She had recognized the voice of her Attilio during the assault, and for her and him too this was a supreme moment. Yes, during the battle, when the shouts of the new-comers made the arches of the castle ring again, Clelia distinguished her betrothed's voice. She threw down a gun which she was loading, and rushed to a balcony, whence she could survey the scene of action. For one second, through the smoke, she obtained a view of the face engraven upon her heart, but that second was sufficient to make her feel surpassingly happy. Attilio, indeed, it was, who, with Silvio, Muzio, and some other companions, had thus charged and scattered the Papal troops. Silvio, it must be known, was well acquainted with the castle of Lucullus, where he had often been a guest, as well as the associate of Orazio in his hunting and fighting expeditions. Through him a communication was kept up between the Liberals in the city and those in the country. Before quitting Rome he had come to the determination of taking the field, and placing himself under Orazio's flag, and, as we have seen, he happily arrived with his associates just in time to give the last blow to the Papal soldiers. The gentle reader must himself imagine the joy in the castle caused by the arrival of friends who could contribute so powerfully to the safety of the proscribed--what interrogations! what embracings! what inquiries after parents, relatives, and friends! what new and happy hopes! what soft illusions, dreams of peace and rest! "Oh, my own, my own!" whispered Clelia, when Attilio for the first time imprinted a kiss upon her beautiful brow, "thou art mine and I am thine, in spite of the wicked priests, in spite of the world." The smell of the gunpowder had perhaps turned her dear little head, so that we may pass over the slight indiscretion of such confessions. She should have been more coquettish, but she was a Roman girl, and her love was true. And is not true love sublime, heroic, such as these two happy beings bore to one another? Is it not the life of the soul, the incentive of all that is noble, the civilizer of the human race? The Liberals had a glorious acquisition in the person of Prince T------; he was entirely converted by the scenes he had witnessed and the words which he heard; for, generous and brave by nature, he felt the humiliation of his country, and desired to see her liberated from the bad government of the priest and the foreigner. Educated away from Rome, however, and moving in a different sphere from those patriots who held in their hands the plot of the Revolution, he had remained in ignorance of much that was passing, and had even accepted, at his father's desire, a post in the Pontifical army, which removed him farther than ever from the influence of our brave friends. But a film had now passed from his sight, and he saw at last with clearer vision the greatness of Italy's future, and how surely Italy--now divided into so many parts, despised and scorned by the world--should yet be re-united, and become one grand and noble nation, looked up to and respected as in the days of her past glory, as the patriotic Italians of all periods have ever dreamed and prayed she should be. The Prince was enchanted with his new quarters and with his new companions, and vowed to himself to live and die for the sacred cause of his country. Rich, powerful, and generous, he became in future the strongest supporter of the proscribed, and they had reason to congratulate themselves for having put faith and hope in so noble a patriot, and one whom they had thus doubly conquered. CHAPTER XXXV. THE AMELIORATION OF MANKIND Orazio having received and welcomed his friend and brethren, now began to think of their general safety. He therefore called aside Attilio and the Prince (who by this time had become firmly devoted to them and the national cause), and addressed them as follows:- "It is true we have been victorious in our last encounter, and have vanquished you, Prince, whose noble conduct now conquers our hearts; but I fear now this castle has become too notorious for us to remain longer in it in safety. The Government will employ every means in its power to hunt us out of our retreat and to destroy us, and is capable of sending a whole army with artillery to demolish these old walls. I do not, however, advise an immediate retreat, as the Cardinals will require time to form projects and make arrangements; but it behoves us now to use all vigilance, and from this moment to ascertain the movements of the enemy and guard against surprise. As for yourself, Prince, you had better return to Rome; your presence here is not needed for the present, and there you may be of the greatest use to us. Let it be thought that you were set at liberty on parole, on condition that you would not bear arms against us, and then send in your resignation." "Yes," replied the Prince, "I can be of more service to you in Rome, and I pledge my word of honor to be yours until death." Attilio was of the same opinion, and added that Regolo would advise them of the movements of the Pontifical troops. On the Prince desiring some secure means of remaining with them, Attilio presented him with a piece of paper--so small that it might easily be swallowed in case of emergency--containing a line of recommendation for the Prince to Regolo. The rest of the day was devoted to the interment of the dead, of which there were not a few, and to tending the wounded, nearly all of whom were Papalini. Three of the Liberals only were wounded, and those not seriously. This proves that, in the strife of battle, the valorous run the least danger; and if the statistics of the field were referred to, it would be seen that fugitives lose more men than any army which stands its ground. At midnight the Prince started for Rome. And who acted as his guide? Who, but Gasparo, the veteran chief of the bandits in old times, now an affiliated Liberal, as he had proved in the last affray, in which he had done wonders with his unerring carbine. I who write this am well persuaded of the truth of the perpetual amelioration of the human race. I am wholly opposed to the cynic and the pessimist, and believe with all my heart and soul in the law of human progress by various agencies, under many forms, and with many necessary interruptions. Providence has willed that happiness shall be the final end of this sad planet and suffering race; but Its decrees work slowly, and only by the submission of mankind to the higher law of light is happiness attainable. Not by miracles will men become regenerated. Voltaire has well said- "J'en al vaincu plu d'un, Je n'ai forco personne, Et le vrai Dieu, mon fils, Est un Dieu qui pardonne." If humanity does not improve along with the progress of knowledge, as it should do, the fault must lie with the various governments, for with kind treatment and judicious care, even the wild beasts of the forest become domesticated, and their fierce passions are tamed. What, then, may we not accomplish with the very lowest grade of mankind? But can any thing be expected from a people kept purposely in ignorance, and reduced to misery by exaction, imposts, and taxes? We know that these taxes and exactions are not, as it is stated, imposed upon the Romans for the defense of the state, or for the support and maintenance of national honor, but to fatten the Pontifical Government and its multitude of parasites, who are to the people what vermin are to the body, or what the worm is to the corpse, and who exist only to plunder and devour. Who can deny that the people of Southern Italy were more prosperous in 1860 than at the present day, and is not the reason because they were better governed? In those days brigandage was scarcely known; there were no prefects, no gendarmes, no bravos. Now, with the multitude of satellites who ruin Italian finance existing in the South, anarchy, brigandage, and misery prevail. Poor people! They hoped, after so many centuries of tyranny, and after the brilliant revolution of 1860, to obtain in a reformed Government an era of repose, of progress, and of prosperity. Alas, it was but a delusion! "Put not your trust in princes," says Holy Writ. Gasparo had baptized himself a Liberal in the Wood of the oppressors. He was received by the young brigand with indulgence, and even enthusiasm, and intrusted, as already mentioned, with the important mission of conducting Prince T------ out of the forest into the direct road to Rome. The prediction of Orazio respecting the steps that would be taken by the Papal Government fulfilled itself exactly. After the reverse it had sustained at the castle of Lucullus, the bishops decided in council to send a large body of troops, with artillery, against this stronghold of the Liberals; and as it was thought they would not tarry long for such a descent, the resolution was to carry the assault into immediate execution. With this in view, it was determined that not only the Papal, but also the foreign troops at the service of the Pope, should be drawn upon for the expedition. A foreign general of note was called in to direct the enterprise, and every thing was made ready with alacrity, that the critical assault might be delivered on Easter Day, generally so propitious to the priests, who on that occasion, after their long fast, gorge even more than usual their capacious stomachs at the expense of their ignorant and superstitious flocks. Orazio and his companions meanwhile were not sleeping, and received regular information from their friends in Rome of the plans and preparations made by the Pontifical Government, albeit it kept them as secret as possible. The first thing Orazio did was to explore the subterranean passages thoroughly. These were known, even to him, only partially, and a few of his comrades; but Gasparo, who had already returned from his mission, had had better opportunities of examining them, and, with his assistance, a thorough exploration was to be made. CHAPTER XXXVI. THE SUBTERRANEAN PASSAGES Among the wonders of the Metropolis of the World, the catacombs or subterranean vaults and passages are certainly not the least. The first Christians, persecuted with atrocious cruelty by the pagan imperial government of Rome, sought refuge for safety occasionally in the catacombs; and sometimes, also, that they might assemble without incurring suspicion, in larger numbers, to instruct themselves in the doctrines of their new religion. These subterranean passages were also undoubtedly the resort of fugitive slaves and other miserable beings, who sought refuge from the tyrannical government of imperial Rome, over which have presided some of the direst monsters that ever existed--Heliogabalus, Nero, Caligula, and other despots in purple. Among these subterranean passages there are, it appears, different kinds. Some were constructed for the purpose of receiving the dead, others were used as water conduits, and supplied the city with rivers of fresh water for a population of two millions. The cloaca maxima, which led from Rome to the sea, is very famous, as well as many smaller hidden roads, constructed by wealthy private individuals, at an enormous expense, in which they could secrete themselves from the depredations of those greatest of all robbers the emperors, and in later times from the persecution and massacre of the barbarians. The soil on which Rome is built, as well as that in its immediate neighborhood, offers great facilities to the excavator, being composed of volcanic clay, easy to pierce, yet sufficiently solid and impenetrable to damp to form a secure habitation. In fact, to this day many shepherds, with their flocks, lodge in these artificial caverns. Before the exploration of the subterranean passages of the castle, it was thought desirable to send the severely wounded to Rome, attended by those who were only slightly injured, and conducted by some shepherds. Among the Liberals very few were wounded, and none severely so. Many of the Papilini, moreover, requested permission to remain and follow the fortunes of the proscribed, for there are not many Italian soldiers, however debased, who willingly serve the priesthood; and there is no doubt that when the hour for liberating Italy and Rome from their pollution arrives, not a soldier, with the exception of the foreign mercenaries, will remain to protect them. After dispatching the wounded, Orazio and his men removed to the subterranean passages all that the castle contained which was valuable and useful, with provisions of all kinds to last for some time, and then awaited calmly the coming of the enemy. They did not fail to take all military precautions, and that in spite of the notices from Rome of every movement of the enemy, Orazio also sent scouts and placed sentinels in all directions, that he might be apprised at the earliest moment of their approach. The original party had been considerably augmented by the arrival of Attilio and his followers, as well as by those of the Roman soldiers who had resolved to serve the priest no longer, not to mention certain youths from the capital, who, having heard of the victory won by the Liberals, determined forthwith to join them. They now numbered sixty individuals, without counting the women, while Orazio's authority over his band was increased rather than lessened by this addition, and Attilio, although at the head of the Roman party, and commander of the "Three Hundred," showed the greatest fidelity in obeying the orders of his brave and warlike brother in arms. Orazio divided his little army into four companies, under the command of Attilio, Muzio, Silvio, and Emilio the antiquary. The latter had been second in command before the advent of the chief of the Three Hundred, but made it a point of honor to yield this post to him. A generous dispute ensued, which would never have ended, had not Orazio persuaded Attilio to accept the first command, and assigned the second to Emilio. Such was the disinterestedness of these champions of Rome's liberty. "Freedom for Rome or death!" was their motto. Little did they care for grades, distinctions, or decorations, which they indeed held as instruments used by despotism to corrupt one half of the nation, and humiliate and hold in bondage the other half. CHAPTER XXXVII. THE ANTIQUARY It was Easter Eve. Every thing in the antique monument was in readiness for the siege, and those of the band who were not on duty were assembled with Orazio and the ladies in the spacious dining-hall. After a truly Homeric supper, which was enlivened by some patriotic toasts, Emilio the antiquary, who desired to put them on their guard against any contretemps that might arise, asked permission of his commander to speak a few words. Consent being given, Emilio began thus:- "As we shall soon have to take refuge in the subterranean passages, I wish, by way of precaution, to narrate a circumstance that happened to me a few years ago in the vicinity of Rome. You all remember the superb mausoleum of Cecilia Metella, erected by a Roman patrician in honor of his daughter, who died in her twelfth year. "You know, too, that that mausoleum is beautiful among all our ruins, and, like the Pantheon, one of the best preserved. But what you do not, perhaps, know, is that under it is the opening to a subterranean passage, leading no one knows whither. One day I determined to investigate this dark place, and as, in my youthful folly and pride, I thought I should not have so much merit if I were accompanied by any one, I resolved to go alone. Providing myself with an immense ball of twine, so large that I could scarcely grasp it, and a bundle of tapers, some bread, and a flask of wine, I ventured out very early in the morning, descended into the bowels of the earth, having previously secured the end of my twine at the entrance to the tunnel, and commenced my mysterious journey. Onward, onward I went under the gloomy arches, and the farther I went the more my curiosity was excited. It appeared truly astounding to me that any human being destined by God to dwell upon the earth, and enjoy the fruits and blessed light of the sun, should ever have condemned himself to perpetual darkness, or have worked so hard, like the mole, to construct such a secure but fearful habitation. Wretched, and bitterly terrified, although rich, must have been those who, at the cost of so much labor, excavated these gigantic works for hiding-places. "While such thoughts were passing through my mind, I continued to walk, lighted by my taper, unrolling my ball at the same time, and endeavoring to follow in a direction originally indicated by the narrow passage at the entrance; but I discovered that the gloomy lane gradually widened, and was supported by columns of clay, from between which opened various alleys, spreading out in all directions. These were fantastically and unsymmetrically arranged, as if the architect had wished to involve any trespassers in an inextricable labyrinth. The observations I made troubled me somewhat, and I speak frankly when I say that I occasionally felt my courage failing me, and was several times on the point of turning back, but Pride cried, 'Of what use were these preparations if your expedition is to be a failure?' "I felt ashamed of myself for my terror; besides, had I not my guiding thread that would lead me back to security? Onward I went again, unwinding my twine, and lighting, from time to time, a fresh taper, as each became consumed. At last I came to the end of my twine, and, much to my discontent, I had encountered nothing but a profound solitude. I was tired and rather discouraged at having such a long road to retrace. While I stood contemplating my position, and holding the end of the thread firmly, lest I should lose it, and anxiously regarding my last taper, which I feared every moment would be extinguished, I heard a rustling, as of a woman's dress, behind me, and, while turning round to discover the cause, a breath blew out my light, some one tore the thread violently out of my fingers, and my arms were seized with such force that the very bones seemed to crack, while a cloth was thrown over my head, completely blinding me. "A presentiment of danger is oft times harder to bear than the danger itself. I had felt very much terrified when I first heard the footsteps approaching me, but now that I was being led by the hand like a child, my fear fled: I had to do with flesh and blood. I walked boldly along. Although I was blinded, I was conscious another light had been struck, and that the touch and footsteps near me were those of living beings, and not of spirits. In this manner I proceeded for some minutes, and then the veil or bandage was removed from my eyes, and, to my amazement, I found myself in a small room, brilliantly illuminated, with a table in the centre splendidly laid out, around which sat twenty hearty fellows feasting merrily." During the antiquary's narrative, a smile had passed over Gasparo's face from time to time; now he rose, and extending his hand to Emilio, said, with some motion- "Ah, my friend, were you then that incautious explorer? I dwelt in the catacombs in those days with my band; and the emissaries of Rome, before venturing into them, generally made their wills, if prudent. The woman who blew out your light, and who afterwards showed you so much kindness was my Alba, who died a short time since from grief on account of my sufferings and imprisonment." "Oh!" exclaimed the antiquary, "was it you who sat at the head of the table, and received as much homage from your men as if you had been in reality a sovereign?" "Yes, it was I," replied the bandit, somewhat mournfully, noting Emilio's surprise; "years and the irons and cruelties of those wretched men calling themselves ministers of God have wrinkled my forehead and silvered these hairs. But my conscience is pure. I have treated every unhappy creature kindly, and you know whether you received any harm from us, or if even a hair of your head were touched. I wished only to humiliate those proud voluptuaries who live in luxury and vice at the expense of suffering humanity; and with God's help and yours, although I am old, I yet hope to see my country freed from their monstrous yoke." "Yes," answered the antiquary affectionately, "I received the greatest kindness from you and your lady. I shall never forget it as long as I live." And then turning to the company, he continued his recital: "I was much shaken by my solitary exploration, and a little, too, by my unexpected encounter; and was so feverish inconsequence, that I was compelled to remain two days in the subterranean abode; and during that time I received, as you have heard, the greatest care and the most delicate attentions from the amiable Alba, who not only provided me with every necessary, but watched assiduously by my pillow. Having regained my strength at the end of the two days, I requested to be allowed to depart, and was conducted by a new and shorter road into the light of the sun, which I had thought never to see again. Upon giving my word of honor not to betray the secret of their existence, two of the band pointed out the road to Rome, and left me to pursue my way." CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE ROMAN ARMY "Now opens before us," says the great writer on ancient Italy, "that splendid region in which man grew to grander stature than in any other part of the world, and displayed prodigies of energy and moral judgment. We are about to enter that land consecrated by heroic virtues, from which came a light of empire that illumined the universe. To that proud life has since succeeded deep death; and now in many places of ancient majesty you will find nought but ruins--monuments of departed grandeur amidst vast deserts of death--dreary solitude, and the decayed achievements of man. The city of the rulers of the world fell, but the remains of her past glories can not be destroyed. They have for ages sent, and still send forth a mighty voice, which breaks the silence of her grave, proclaiming the greatness of those ancient inhabitants. The country of the Latins is desolate, but grand in its desolation; an austere nature adds solemnity to the vacant sites of the cities, their sepulchres, and relics. In the midst of a wilderness, at every step, one meets with tokens of a bygone power that overawes the imagination. Frequently, in the same spot, on the same stone, the traveller reads the record of the joys and the sorrows of generations divided by prodigious intervals of time. Here, also, are to be seen the columns of those temples in which the priests of old, with their auguries and idols, deceived the people, and reduced them to moral slavery. "In this, however, little is changed; for farther on may be viewed modern temples, in which religion is still made an instrument of infamous tyranny. Sadnesses ancient and sadnesses modern blend together; memories of past dominations, and tokens of dominations ruling down to the present day. "If the far-off cry of the wretched plebeians whom the savage aristocracy of a past age precipitated from the cliff, makes us shudder, shall we not feel something akin to this when we hear the cry of living victims of Popish fury imprisoned in dungeons in our own day? Mingled with the ashes of the leaders of the ancient people, you may here dig up those of the martyrs of our own age, who shed their blood for the new Republic, and fell protesting against the bitter dominion of the priesthood; and pondering over these memories, antique and recent, each true Roman may draw comfort for his afflicted soul, seeing that, in spite of the passage of centuries, and the debasing strength of tyrannies, the children of Rome, far as they are from her heroic days, have never quite lost the energy of their forefathers, and thence, on this soil of auguries each may rightly draw the joyful presage that now, as then, the genius of this sublime country will never long leave her to such shameful vicissitudes." This noble and patriotic piece we have introduced to aid in the difficult task of depicting the Rome of heroic times along with the living but paralyzed virtues of modern Latium. We may thus proceed to discuss that strange and sad heterogeneous band, native and foreign, which forms what is called "the Roman army." What manner of men are those who dedicate themselves to the service of a government like that of "Pio Nono"--a service that can not fail to inspire an honest man with disgust? And here, we may repeat, none but a priesthood could have so degraded a people, and placed them on a level with the basest upon earth--a people, too, born in a region where they have attained to greater perfection of manhood than in any other part of the known world. The "Roman army," so called, is at present composed partly of Romans, under the observation of foreign soldiery, and partly of foreign soldiers under the sway of foreign commanders, while the people themselves are under the protection (or rather subjection) of a set of scoundrels called gendarmes. For what are these hired mercenaries but knaves thirsting for profit, who, without principle and without honor, enter this disgraceful service? The title, therefore, of "Papal soldier" is by no means a martial distinction, but one despised by a true man; while, on the other hand, the foreign interloper, scoundrel though he be in embracing so dishonorable a calling, despises none the less the native soldiery, whom he is called upon to aid and abet. Hence, the native soldier and the foreign hireling (not being in the true sense of the term brothers in arms) frequently come to blows, when the foreigner usually comes off second best, for, in spite of the influence of the priesthood to render the Roman soldiery degenerate and corrupt, some remains at least of their ancient valor still exist. This is the condition of the Roman army of the day, and thus the reason why it was despised by the "proscribed," who informed themselves of its movements, and quietly waited its approach. In the case of the impending assault upon Orazio's castle, time was lost by the quarrels which prevailed as usual in it. The foreigners looking with contempt upon the native soldiers, claimed to have the right wing in the assault assigned them; but the natives, not fearing foreigners, and believing themselves, with reason, to be superior to them in the ait of war, resolutely refused to concede this honor to alien troops. The priests, too, impotent to restore order, begun to gnaw their nails at such junctures with impatience, rage, and fear. Easter day, then--the day destined for the destruction of "the brigands"--would most probably have seen the extermination of these mercenaries had not the "Moderates" raised the cry of "Order and brotherhood!" And thus this fine opportunity for finishing off a set of knaves--the plague and dishonor of Italy--was lost. Regolo, with the greater number of the Three Hundred, seeing they could do nothing of themselves, for some time, towards the liberation of Rome, had enlisted in the ranks of the Pontifical troops, according to the orders received from outside, and were active in influencing the Romans to demand the honor of conducting the right wing in the order of march. This being disputed, they mutinied, and ill-treated their officers. General D------ was sent with a company of foreigners to restore order, but the strife was almost as serious as in a pitched battle, and the foreigners fled discomfited to their barracks. The chief instigator of the mutiny was our old acquaintance, Dentato, the sergeant of dragoons. Being released from the pains and penalties inflicted upon him by the Inquisition, which he had sustained with a stoicism worthy of the olden times, he resolved to be revenged upon his persecutors at the first opportunity, and did not fail to make good use of this occasion. At the head of his dragoons (for he had been restored to his post), sabre in hand, he plunged into the thickest of the fray, and made serious havoc amongst the foreign troops. The affair over, knowing what to expect at the hands of his masters, he set out from Rome without dismounting, accompanied by the better part of his men, sought out the proscribed in the forest, who received him most cordially, and heard with satisfaction the account of his adventures in the capital. CHAPTER XXXIX. MATRIMONY Of a surety, the most holy and closest tie in all the human family is marriage. It binds together two beings of an opposite sex for life, and makes them, if they be but worthy of that condition, supremely happy. I say if they be worthy advisedly, because that solemn rite should only be contracted with the mutual purpose that each is to seek the happiness of the other, and such a union has for its base true love--that is, celestial love, which the ancients rightly distinguished from sensual passion, the former being that love of the soul which no worldly or selfish views can ever influence. Even before the marriage contract its anticipation does much to soften and improve the character of each, from the new feeling that they must not fail to contribute to each other's welfare. The very atmosphere of happiness makes married life nobler than lonely life, while the love of parents for their offspring renders them gentle and forbearing, and indulgent to their own first, and finally to others, whose good-will they wish to win. Unfaithfulness, however, is, unhappily, too frequently an incident of modern marriages, but they of either sex who sin against that loyalty in wedlock which should bind both indissolubly, unless hardened in vice beyond all hope, feel such remorse that they would, if they could, return to their former purity by any sacrifice. But truth, among other things, should suffice to fortify the good against temptation and dishonor, which brings shame and ruin to the soul. Oh, you whom this sacred tie has newly bound, be true as heaven to one another! By your fidelity you will secure your conscience in the future against sharp and stinging reflections. Out of noble and heartfelt constancy will spring a paradise upon earth--the foretaste of a blissful life beyond. But priestly interference in this holy communion of hearts blights and blasphemes the name of love, sowing the seeds of hatred; while more or less all over the globe this plague is felt, by reason of the number of unhappy marriages brought about or directed by these busy tonsured meddlers. What, then, must this baneful influence be in Rome, where the priests are so numerous as to reign almost supreme in society. We have before stated that in the city of Rome the largest number of illegitimate births take place, which arises naturally (or rather unnaturally) from the infamous influences of priests, who traffic in matches, and control the market of men and women for their own profit. But we will draw the veil of silence over these lamentable facts, and ask pardon of refined readers if we have shocked them, even by a hint. Nevertheless, when we remember the degradation and misery to which our beloved but unhappy country has been reduced by the despotism and corruption of her corrupt Government, shame and grief are hard to restrain. Oh, pardon me, you whose chaste eyes have no Rome to weep for! Yes, marriage is a sacred act. By it a man imposes on himself the duty to love, protect, and support his wife, and the children she may bear him. And this act is the first cause of the progress and civilization of mankind. The priest, being no other than a meddler and impostor, is consequently unworthy of celebrating that most important act of life. The municipal authorities, who ought to be cognizant of all that concerns the citizens, and register all acts, should preside at the ceremony of marriage, or, as immediate representatives of these, the parents of the contracting parties, who are their natural and lawful guardians. To these latter authorities Attilio and Clelia referred themselves. "My own! my own!" Clelia had whispered to herself during Irene's narration; and in the hour when her beloved was at her feet, overjoyed by the blissful atmosphere that surrounded her, she resisted his passionate and honest solicitations for some time, but at last gave him permission to demand her in marriage of her mother, adding, "If she consents, I will be thine for life." Although Silvia was of a somewhat hesitating temperament, and would have preferred having her Manlio at hand to consult as to the destiny of her dearly beloved child, still she had sufficient good sense to see that a union between the two ardent lovers was very desirable, and felt that under the peculiar circumstances of their banishment and forest life she might be assured of her husband's sanction, and therefore accorded them hers. Silvia could not endure priests, and civil authorities there were none to consult or employ, except the sylvan jurisdiction of their honest preserver, Orazio, and her own maternal governance. These, she opined, were sufficient for the occasion, and it was not difficult to persuade her bold but gentle and enlightened conscience that this simple, natural, and legal solemnization was all that was requisite. The celebration of the marriage of our young friends, thus determined upon and permitted, was a true feast for all in the castle, and particularly for Irene, who, as the happy example herself of a rural marriage, was thoroughly proud of being priestess to the natural and noble rite. She erected, without their knowledge, an altar at the foot of the most majestic oak in the neighborhood. With the help of her maidens, and the sailor's assistance, who prided himself upon his marine agility--Irene reared above this a small temple, formed of green boughs and garlands of wild flowers, the crown of the oak serving as a cupola illuminated far above by the sun, and at night by beautiful stars and planets, the first-born creations of God. The ceremony was not long, for it was simple, but serious. It took place in the presence of those faithful children of Rome, who stood in a circle around the handsome couple, while Irene joined their right hands, pronounced them to be man and wife, and solemnized the sacred union by the following address:- "Dear and true-hearted friends, the act you have solemnized this day unites you indissolubly body and soul. You must share together henceforward the prosperities and reverses, the joys and sorrows of this life. Remember that in mutual love and faithfulness you will find your only and enduring happiness, while, if affliction descends, it will be diminished and dissipated by your reciprocal love. May God bless your union!" Then Silvia, her eyes bedewed by maternal tears, placed her hands upon the heads of her beloved children, and repeated _che Dio vi benedica!_ More she could not say for her emotion. The marriage contract, which had been previously prepared, was now presented to the united couple by Orazio for their signature, and then to the witnesses, the chief finally signing it himself. In this manner was celebrated, with the great-, est simplicity, in the Almighty's own temple, illuminated by the bright golden lamp of all the world, that solemn act of wedlock, none the less solemn or binding for being so celebrated. Never did human pair feel themselves more sacredly bound one to the other than Clelia and Attilio. From the altar our joyful party directed their steps towards the castle, where a right goodly woodland banquet awaited them. All were rejoiced at the auspicious event, and many joyous toasts were given. Patriot songs were freely sung, and Jack, elated by the general hilarity, treated his friends to his own famous national airs, "God Save the Queen," and "Rule Britannia." CHAPTER XL. THE CHRISTENING The "army of Rome," as already related, gave the proscribed a long time for preparation, and they, knowing the nature of the delay, troubled themselves little about the matter. And now we must return to some of the principal and most cherished personages of our book--namely, Julia and her companions, of whom we took leave when they escaped so narrowly from the storm, and whom we have neglected far too long. Two days after the departure of the _Seagull_ from Porto d'Anzio she entered Porto Longone, with all her sails set and her colors flying. As soon as she anchored, our friends saw a group of persons issuing from Liberi, a small village overlooking the port, who, on reaching the shore, embarked in a boat and rowed out to the yacht. Julia received the party--which was composed of both sexes--gracefully and courteously, and offered them refreshments in her saloon, which they cordially accepted. Seated at table, each with a glass of Marsala in hand, the guests turned towards Manlio, whom they imagined to be the master of the vessel, and addressed him with a Tuscan accent. It is one less manly than the Roman, but sweeter and more sympathetic, and though it be but a dialect of the real Italian, to it Italy owes much of her revival, and in this dialect, dignified by so much genius, must be found the language of Italian national unity. "Sir," said the elder of the visitors, talking Tuscan, "in Liberi there exists a custom that if a vessel comes into port at the same time birth is given to an infant, the captain is requested to stand godfather to the newly-born child. Will you therefore vouchsafe to comply with this custom, and do us the honor of becoming a godfather, and your gracious young lady a godmother, to a little one who has this day entered upon existence." Manlio smiled at this odd request, and all present admired the facility with which the visitor in Elba can form an alliance with the islanders. Manlio replied, "I am simply a guest on board, like yourself, Signor; this young English lady is the owner of the vessel, and must decide what shall be done." Julia--the traveller, the artist, the antiquary, and the friend of Italian liberty--was enchanted to find such simplicity of manners among these good people, and said, "For my part I gladly accede to your proposal, and as I hear the captain of the ship must be godfather, I will send for him, when, if he be agreeable, we will place ourselves at your service." Captain Thompson was immediately summoned, and the English lady explained to her commander what was required. He laughed merrily, and accepted the invitation as she had done, declaring that he should feel immensely honored to stand godfather with his gracious mistress as godmother. Captain Thompson then gave his orders to the mate, and they all embarked in company for Liberi. Here our narrative stumbles again upon the topic of the priesthood, and it is a fatality that, in spite of the invincible antipathy which they excite in us, they are thus continually coming in contact with the progress of our tale. But the curé of Liberi was a man of a different stamp. A modest but hospitable table was spread for the christening party in the house of the islanders, and it was made pleasant by the cordiality and simplicity of these kind islanders. The guests were all delighted, while Captain Thompson, although a little confused, was happy beyond measure at the honor the beautiful Julia did him by leaning on his arm, and still more so at being sponsor to her godchild. So elated was the worthy seaman that he neither heard nor saw as they walked towards the village, and stumbling over some obstacle in the way had well-nigh fallen, and, to use his own phrase, "carried away his bowsprit." Luckily Julia did not perceive the profound confusion of her companion, and walked on with a calm and stately demeanor, in unintentional contrast to the tar's awkward gait, for the excellent Thompson, dreading another stumble, counted every stone on the road as he paced by her side. In this manner they arrived at the church. Captain Thompson here put on a very imposing appearance, and, although a little wearied by the inordinate length of the ceremony, gave no sign of impatience. Having an excellent disposition, the tediousness was relieved by the pleasure of holding his new godson in his strong arm, to which, although a plump and well-formed babe, it appeared but as light as a feather. The ceremony ended, the guests invited to the christening bent their steps to the house of the second godfather, who entertained them at a more formal banquet, the excellent wine of Liberi receiving much favor. Captain Thompson, having to reconduct Julia, and remembering the stumble, partook very moderately of the liquor, contenting himself with passing a disinterested eulogy upon it. The captain had another motive for being temperate and keeping in check his decided predilection for good drink. He was most anxious to please the Signora Aurelia, who, though past the bloom of youth, was extremely amiable, and had a brilliant complexion. She was full of gratitude for the many attentions the captain had lavished upon her during the terrible storm, and by no means repulsed the signs of sympathy, loyal and honest, if not courtly, which the gallant sailor manifested. All went very merrily for our amphibious friends, for, much as one may resemble a seahorse in constitution, land with its pastimes and comforts is always preferable to the tempestuous sea. On leaving, Julia was covered with blessings and thanks by her new acquaintances, after the manner of olden, times. Manlio was meditating over a statue in marble, which he determined to carve when he should return to Rome, representing the beautiful Julia as Amphitrite guiding the stumbling Triton. Aurelia and Thompson, absorbed in thoughts of tenderness, were oblivious of the incidents of the past; and thus our yachting party returned on board, accompanied to the shore by all the villagers, with music and joyful hurrahs. CHAPTER XLI. THE RECLUSE IN the Italian Archipelago, which may be said to begin in the south at Sicily, and to extend northward to Corsica, there may be found a nearly deserted island, composed of pure granite crags, down which delicious streams of pure water flow, that never quite fail even in summer. It is rich in vegetation of low but pretty growth, for the tempestuous winds which rush over it prevent the trees from attaining any great height. This, however, is compensated by the healthiness of this little island, in which one may always enjoy fresh and pure air. The plants that grow out of the crevices in the rocks are chiefly aromatic, and when a fire is made of the leaves and twigs, they send forth a fragrance which perfumes the whole vicinity. The wandering cattle that graze over the promontories of the island, are small in size but very robust. So are, also, the few inhabitants, who live not in affluence but sufficient comfort upon the produce of their tillage, fishing, and shooting, while, moreover, they are supplied with other necessaries from the continent by the generosity or commerce of their friends. The inhabitants being scanty, police and government are superfluous, and the absence of priests is one of the especial blessings of this little spot. There God is worshipped, as he should be, in purity of spirit, without formalism, fee, or mockery, under the canopy of the blue heavens, with the planets for lamps, the sea-winds for music, and the greensward of the island for altars. The head of the principal family on this little island is, like other men, one who has experienced both prosperity and misfortune. Like other men he has his faults, but he has enjoyed the honor of serving the cause of the people. Cosmopolitan, he loves all countries more or less; but Italy and Rome he loves to adoration. He hates the priesthood as a lying and mischievous institution, but is ready, so soon as they divest themselves of their malignity and buffoonery, to welcome them with open arms to a nobler vocation, a new but honest profession, and to urge men to pardon their past offenses, conforming in this, as in other acts, to a spirit of universal tolerance. Though not suffering them as priests, he pities and yearns towards them as men; for priests he regards as the assassins of the soul, and in that light esteems them more culpable than those who slay the body. He has passed his life in the hope of seeing the populations ennobled, and to the extent of his power, has championed always and everywhere their rights, but sadly confesses that he has lived partly in a false hope; for more than one nation, raised to freedom and light by Providence, has paltered again with despotism, whose rulers become perhaps even more unjust and arbitrary than the patrician. Still, this man never despairs of the ultimate amelioration of mankind, albeit he is deeply grieved at the slowness of its coming. He regards as the worst enemies of the liberty of the people those democratic _doctrinnaires_ who have preached and still preach revolution, not as a terrible remedy, a stern Nemesis, but as a trade carried on for their own advancement He believes that these same mercenaries of liberty have ruined many republics, and brought dishonor upon the republican system. Of this there is a striking example in the great and glorious French Republic of 1789, which is held up at the present day as a scarecrow by despots and their crew against those who maintain the excellence of the popular system. He defines a perfect republic to be a government of honest and virtuous people by honesty and virtue, and illustrates his definition by pointing to the downfall of all republics when people have eschewed virtue and turned away towards vice. But he does not believe in a republican government composed of five hundred governors. He considers that the liberty of a nation consists in the people choosing their own government, and that this government should be dictatorial or presidential; that is to say, directed by one man alone. To such an institution the greatest people in the world owed their greatness. But woe be to those who, instead of a Cincinnatus, elect a Cæsar! The Dictatorship should be limited to a fixed period, and prolonged only in extraordinary cases, like that in the authority of Abraham Lincoln in the late war of the United States. It must be guarded by popular rights and public opinion from becoming either excessive or hereditary. The islander whom we are describing, however, is not a dogmatist, and holds that form of government desired or adopted by the majority of the people most beneficial to each nation; and he gives, by way of illustration, the English constitution. He regards the existing European system as utterly immoral, and the governments guilty of the crimes and suffering of the Continent; since, instead of seeking the welfare and prosperity of their peoples, they intrigue only to secure their own despotic positions. Hence that legion of armies, political functionaries, and hangers-on, who devour in idleness the productions of industry; pampering their vicious appetites, and spreading universal corruption. These drones of the hive, not content with what suffices for one man, conspire to appropriate to each of themselves the portion of fifty to maintain their pomp and supply their luxuries. This is just why the working portion of the populace are loaded with taxes, and deprived of the manliest of their sons, who are torn from the plough and the workshop to swell the ranks of the armies, under the pretext that they are necessary to their country's safety, but in reality to sustain a monstrous and fatal form of government. The people are consequently discontented, starving, and wretched. The continual state of warfare in which Europe is kept, too clearly shows how ill-governed it is. Were each nation naturally and nobly governed, war would cease, and the people would learn to understand and to respect one another's rights without a passionate or suicidal recourse to arms. A Federation of European nations must be cemented by the medium of representatives for each country, whose fundamental proclamation should be--"War is declared impossible" and their second basis the law that, "All disputes which may arise between nations shall henceforth be settled by the International Congress." Thus war--that scourge and disgrace of humanity--would be exterminated forever, and with its extermination, the necessity for maintaining a paid army would obviously cease, and the children of the peoples, now led out to slaughter under the fictitious names of patriotism and glory, would be restored to their families, to the field, and to the workshop, once more to contribute to the fruitfulness and general improvement of their native countries. Such, then, are the sentiments upon these topics of the recluse, and we frankly confess them to be also our own. To this island, the abode of the recluse, Julia had arranged to take her friends; but when it became impracticable for Silvia and Clelia to join them, on account of the storm, and the consequent injury to the yacht, she changed her plans, feeling that they would have altered their own, and resolved to touch there only for advice, and then to return to the Continent to gain, if possible, some news of Manlio's family. Picture, courteous reader, one of those Mediterranean daybreaks which, by its glorious beauty of gold and color, makes the watchers forget the miseries of life and ponder only those marvellous marks of the Creator's love with which he has embellished the earth. Dawn is slowly breaking over the horizon, and tinting with all the colors of the rainbow the fleecy clouds. The stars insensibly pale and disappear before the radiance of the rising sun; and the voyager stands enchanted at the sight, as the gentle breath of morning streams from the east, slightly ruffling the blue waters, and fanning his cheek. The small ash-colored island appears in the bright light above the waves, as the _Seagull_, wafted slowly by a slight wind from the eastward, nears its coast. The yacht had sailed from Porto Lon-gone the day before, and had experienced a quick and smooth passage. Her Roman passengers were soon hailed by the inhabitants of the island, as she approached the northern point on this delicious April morning. The sight of the beautiful yacht was always a welcome one to these dwellers in solitude, for she was well known to them, having previously paid them many visits. They hastened to meet their welcome guest, and ran down to the beach, followed slowly by the head of the family, whose step age and other troubles had slackened, making him no longer able to keep pace with his nimble household. Julia, upon landing, was welcomed affectionately by all. She introduced her Roman friends, who met a warm reception, and were conducted by their host to his dwelling. After they had rested some little time, the recluse asked anxiously of Julia, "Well, what news from Rome? Is the foreigner gone yet? Do the priests let the unhappy populace, whom they have tormented so many centuries, breathe free at last?" "Their miseries are not yet ended," answered the lovely Englishwoman; "and who can tell when they will cease? The foreigner is withdrawn, it is true, but others worse than the first are enlisting, and your Government is shamefully preparing to bribe Italian substitutes to enable it to retain the unhappy city in the power of the priests. Moreover I, English by birth, but Italian in heart, am ashamed of telling you that Rome is not to be the capital of Italy. Government renounces it, and Parliament basely sanctions the heinous act, to satisfy the exacting and infamous demands of a Bonaparte. Oh, the sadnesses of modern times! Italy, once the seat of glory, is to-day the sink of all that is base. Italy, the garden of the world, has become a dunghill!" "Oh Julia! a people dishonored is a dead people; I--even I--almost despair of the future of such a nation." Thus exclaimed the chieftain of many patriotic battles, as a tear rolled down his cheek. CHAPTER XLII. THE THIRTIETH OF APRIL. Ok the day prefixed to this chapter, April, 1849, a foreign sergeant was conducted a prisoner into the presence of the commander of the Gianicolo. He had fallen into a Roman ambuscade during the night time and, having been told by the priests that the defenders of Rome were so many assassins, he threw himself upon his knees as soon as he was taken before them, and begged them for the love of God to spare his life. The commander extended his right hand to the suppliant, and raising him, spoke comfortingly to him. "This is a good omen," said the Italian officer to those of his companions present. "A good omen! Behold foreign pride prostrate before Roman right--that is a sure sign of victory." And truly, the foreign army which disembarked at Ci vita Vecchia, and had fraudulently taken possession of the port, under the deceitfully assumed title of friend, advanced on Rome, chuckling at the credulity, as well as at the cowardice of the Roman people. That very army, afterwards defeated by the native soldiers of the metropolis, retrod with shame the road to the sea. The 30th of April was a glorious day for Rome, and was not forgotten among the Seven Hills. But how could it be commemorated amidst such an armed rabble of enemies? In the small city of Viterbo, where there were no troops, the inhabitants had devised a way of celebrating the anniversary of the expulsion of the foreigner, and were making active preparations. But if there were no troops, there were not wanting spies, who informed the Roman Government of all that took place. The Committee had arranged a programme for the feast, which set forth that after mid-day all work should be suspended, and that all the young people, in holiday dress, with a tri-colored ribbon bound round the left arm, should assemble in the cathedral piazza, and walk thence four abreast in procession to the Porta Romana, so as to pay a salutation of good wishes from that point to the ancient mistress of the globe. Frightened at this intelligence, the Roman Government dispatched to Viterbo in hot haste a body of foreign troops which had only served the priesthood a short time, with orders to suppress the demonstration at any cost. Not heeding this measure the little town held its _festa_, almost forgetting for a while, in the enjoyment of the moment, her long period of slavery. The solemn salute at the Porta Romana was delivered in spite of the urban authorities, and the procession was returning in good order, preceded by a band playing the national hymns, while the ladies--always more ardent than men in any generous act--stood in the balconies cheering and waving their tricolored hankerchiefs to the passers-by, when a column of foreign soldiers were seen advancing at the _pas de charge_, with bayonets fixed. Until now the city, albeit under the rule of the priests, had given herself up with peaceful mirth to the remembrance of that joyful day. But joy fled when the soldiers invaded the streets yet filled with youthful Viterbians, and anger and trouble succeeded. A delegate of police, who, with a few assistants, preceded the mercenaries, commanded the people to retire. This intimation was received with hisses of defiance, and a few well-aimed stones put them to flight. Taking refuge among the soldiers, they cried out to the troops to fire upon the populace. This command of the cowardly delegate was given because he wished to glut his vengeance, and also to secure a decoration, which he could do by nothing so surely as killing the people. When this inhuman order was not heeded, he feared the hatred between the two opposing parties might cool, and desired the soldiers to charge the populace with fixed bayonets. The Viterbians, like all Roman citizens, had orders from the Revolutionary Committee not to take active measures of hostility, and were therefore not prepared for the straggle. They dispersed rapidly, and escaped by byways to their homes, favored by the increasing darkness of the evening, as well as by the sudden extinction of all lights, which the women as if by an universal signal caused everywhere. Thus the charge of the mercenaries took effect only upon a few stray dogs and some donkeys on their way home, nor was any thing more tragic heard than the barking of the former and the braying of the latter as they were pursued by the valiant champions of the priesthood. By ten o'clock all was quiet in Viterbo. The troops lay down in the market-place, resting their heads upon their folded arms, preparing to repose upon the laurels won by the fatigues and victory of the day. Not a citizen was to be seen in the streets, all having retired to their houses. At the hotel of the "Full Moon," the bell rang to assemble the guests at a large round table spread with a dinner of about fifty covers. As the bell sounded, a carriage and four drew up to the inn door, and stopping at its gateway, a female clad in travelling costume alighted. From the elasticity of her step and movements it was easy to see she was young. The landlord hastened to receive her, and respectfully inquired whether she would liked to be served with supper in her own apartment, to which she replied that she would sup in the public room, and in the mean time her sleep-ing-room was to be prepared. The dining-room was already filled with visitors, the greater number of whom were officers belonging to the recently arrived detachment. There were also several strangers, both Italian and foreign, but very few Viterbians present. When the traveller entered the room all eyes were turned towards her with looks of admiration; and truly our Julia, for it was she, appeared very lovely that eventful evening. She possessed to perfection that intelligent and high-bred expression which distinguishes her restless race. All made room for her. The Italians assumed an air of polite admiration, and the officers, twirling the ends of their pointed mustaches, straightened their shoulders and adjusted their facial expression with the look of so many conquerors of female admiration. At the head of the table sat the master of the house, elegantly dressed, who prayed the beautiful Englishwoman to place herself by his side. She accepted the seat, and the officers pressing forward to be near the young lady, took possession of all the best places. Observing a Pope's hireling on her right, Julia began to regret having accepted the landlord's invitation, and while glancing round the table with a chagrined air, was electrified by encountering Muzio's eyes fixed upon her. He was seated between Attilio and Orazio at the end of the table. They all three wore silk hats, cravats, and overcoats, like foreign travellers, and Julia had foiled to recognize them at first, having never seen Muzio but when wrapped in his cloak, or Attilio except in the simple garb of an artist, and Orazio once only for a short time in the forest when armed from head to foot. What should she do? Rise and go to them, impulse suggested, and ask a thousand things which she wished to know. But how could she venture to do this, when fifty pairs of eyes were gazing at her, fascinated by her charming face. And Muzio, the outcast, the gentleman, the chief of the counter-police; the man who, like his namesake (Scavola), would have placed at his Julia's sweet bidding not his hand only, but his head also upon burning coals--what joy the meeting brought, and yet what agony to see the star of his life, his goddess, his hope, seated at the side of a foreign soldier, the instrument of a vile tyranny, and compelled to accept civilities from his contaminated hand, perhaps freshly soiled by the blood of Romans. Oh, you young men, who are in love with a noble maiden, have you not felt what splendid new strength her presence gives to you? When unworthy men presume to affront her with attentions, at such a moment do you not feel you have ten hearts to devote to her, ten men's lives to sacrifice for her? If not you are a coward, and a coward, let us tell you, is despised by women. You may sin, and she will pardon you; but cowardice a noble woman will never forgive. Muzio, however, was only too loving and rash; and woe to that fine lady-killer by the British maiden's side! Had the Roman youth yielded to the dictates of his angry breast, it wanted little to have seen a flash of fire in the air, or to have let him feel the cold blade of a dagger in his vitals. But Julia read in her lover's eye the storm that was raging, and her look, perceived by him alone, calmed down the Roman's passionate soul. Between the courses, the foreign officers conversed on the affairs of Rome, or the topics of the day, and, as usual, with but little respect for the Roman people, whom they commonly despised. Julia, disgusted by their indecorous conversation, rose very soon, with a majestic mien, and desired to be conducted to her apartment. Our three friends were burning to kiss her hand, and had even made a move to quit their places, when a sudden burst of laughter from the foreign officers made them resume their seats. The laughter was caused by a coarse jest, uttered by one of the number, of which the following words came to the ears of our indignant trio:--"I thought I was coming to Viterbo to use my arms against men, but find there are only rabbits here, who bolted into their burrows at our very appearance. Diavolo! where are all these Liberals who made such a noise?" Attilio, who had not reseated himself, hastily gathered his own and his friends' gloves, and, making them into a handful, threw them, without a word, full and hard in the face of the slanderer. "Oh!" exclaimed the Papalino, "what bundle is here?" and picking up the missile, he unrolled the gloves, saying, "So, then, I am challenged by three! Here is another sample of Italian valor! Three against one! three against one!" And again the fellow laughed immoderately. The three allowed this fresh burst of merriment to pass, but the hilarity of all the strangers present being aroused by it, Muzio, as soon as the laughter ceased, cried in a loud voice, "Three against as many as dare to insult Italians, gentlemen!" The effect of these few words was very startling, for, as he uttered them, the three friends arose and darted angry glances first at one and then at another of the officers, presenting, with their uncovered and bold young heads, to the assembly three models à la Michael-Angelo. They were three variations of that manly and martial beauty which nature's heroes have; three types of noble anger in the glowing veins of generous courage. Different effects were produced on the two parties present. The Italians at the table were delighted, and regarded the champions of Italian honor with smiling approbation and gratitude. The foreigners remained for a time stupefied, wondering at the personal grace and manly beauty of the trio, and at their nervous and proud bearing. This amazement ended, sarcasm came to the rescue, and one of the youngest exclaimed, "Friends, a toast!" All rose, glass in hand, and he continued: "I drink to the fortune of having at last found enemies worthy of us in this country!" Orazio responded, "I drink to the liberation of Rome from foreign filth." These words seemed to the officers to be too insulting to be overlooked, and they placed their hands menacingly upon their swords; but one of the number, of a maturer age, said gravely, "My friends, it will not answer to make a disturbance here. The peace of the city must not be disturbed, for we came here to restore order. At daybreak we will meet in even numbers these quarrelsome signors. What we have to do is to see that they do not then deprive us of the honor of meeting them. "The opportunity of fighting the enemies of Italy is much too happy a circumstance to let it escape," answered Attilio. "If it please you we will remain together until morning, when we can walk in company to the place of meeting." To this proposition all consented. The foreigners called for writing materials, to inscribe their names, in order to draw lots to decide who should fight. Amongst the Italians three gentlemen offered to be seconds to their countrymen. Then there were the arms to be considered. As there had been such open defiance on both sides, it was decided that they should fight to the death, that the opponents should be placed at a distance of fifteen paces apart, and that at a signal from their seconds they should attack one another with sabre, revolver, and poniard. The three champions of the priests whose names, written upon slips of paper, were drawn out of the hat which served the purpose of an urn, were Foulard, a French Legitimist; Sanchez, a Spanish Carlist; and Haynau, an Austrian. The seconds busied themselves during the remainder of the night in examining the arms, and in endeavoring to match them with absolute equality. CHAPTER XLIII. THE COMBAT The morning of the 1st of May was dawning over the top of the Ciminian wood, now called Monte di Viterbo, when twelve persons, wrapped in their cloaks, traversed the steep road which crosses it, and disappeared among the trees. They proceeded in silence till they reached an eminence which overlooked a part of the wood, when Attilio, addressing the Italians, said, "Here, in this forest, the last advocates of Etruscan independence sought refuge, beaten and pursued by our fathers, the Romans; and here, in one of the last battles, they disappeared from among the Italian tribes--the most ancient, the most famous, and the most gifted people of the peninsula." Captain Foulard, who understood Italian sufficiently to comprehend Attilo's speech, and to whom it was indirectly addressed, replied, "I fancy it was here, or hereabouts, too, that my ancestors, the Gauls, fought those famous battles with your Roman forefathers, who would have disappeared from the face of the earth had it not been for the hissing of their geese." Attilio, though incensed, answered calmly, "When your forefathers crept on all fours in the forests of Gaul, our ancestors dragged them out, and made them stand upon their legs, saying, 'Be human creatures.' Your modern politeness shows but little gratitude to your former civilizers. But we came here not to dispute, but to fight." The place at which they had just arrived was one of those pleasant glades, devoid of trees, which Nature often hides in the heart of an Italian forest, and which she adorns prodigally with lavish though concealed beauties. That tranquil and enchanting spot was, however, now to become the scene of fury and of bloodshed, for, the position being chosen, and the fifteen paces measured, the six seconds retired, after exchanging a few words with their respective companions. The adversaries were standing ready to rush upon each other. The first and second signals had been given, and six angry hearts were impatiently awaiting the third, when a trumpet was heard sounding the advance, and immediately there appeared in sight, marching along the road by which the opponents had come, a company of the Pope's foreign soldiers, followed, by the delegate Sempronio, and a few of his subordinates. And here we must in justice confess that the officers, though mercenaries, were much mortified by this occurrence, and almost on the point of defending their adversaries, and of helping them to escape, when the command was given by the delegate to the troops to surround the Italians with fixed bayonets. To ordinary persons such an order would have sounded like the knell of all hope, and a hasty flight, if flight had yet seemed possible, would have been the one remaining idea; but our Romans were men to sustain any shock or peril, however abrupt, without losing in the least their presence of mind. At the first sound of the trumpet they cast their eyes on their antagonists, and saw with satisfaction, by their unfeigned surprise, that those gentlemen had no previous knowledge of the approaching cowardly attack, and then, facing their assailants, they retired without haste, revolver in hand, towards the forest. The troops, perceiving with wonder, upon their arrival, that some of their own officers were among the persons they had been directed to arrest, paused for a moment, uncertain how to act. Sempronio, who had cautiously placed himself behind them, seeing the untoward result of what he had been pleased to term his plan of battle, became furious, and shouted loudly, "Fire--fire on that side! on that side!" pointing to his own countrymen for whose blood he thirsted, as they slowly retired towards the cover, which having gained, they turned and faced the troops. The soldiers still paused, but the delegate's nearest associates fired immediately upon the six Italians, and, although screened by the wood, two of the seconds were slightly hit. Attilio's revolver speedily avenged his wounded companions. His shot had the fortune to pass directly through the nose of Father Sempronio (for he was a priest disguised as an agent), carrying away the bridge of it. It was a stroke of luck indeed. Sempronio's cries and terrible lamentations aroused more contempt than pity, for the latter is rarely expended upon creatures of his despicable character. Roaring and bleeding, the priest-delegate took to his heels, and ran back to Viterbo, leaving to the others the execution of his "plan of battle." The foreign officers were nearly all ashamed of the ugly position in which they were placed, though the delegate, and not they, had planned the surprise. The discovery of their names had been made by a spy, and the excited Sempronio had trusted in this easy manner to secure a batch of proscribed Italians, and carry them prisoners to Rome, in hopes of helping himself towards a cardinal's hat. Sempronio had men like himself among his force, less scrupulous than the six duellists, especially a certain Captain Tortiglio, the commander of the company, another cold-blooded Carlist, who thought it would be an easy matter to get to the end of it by capturing the proscribed, as they were so few in number. He accordingly resolved to follow them into the forest. Our friends, having prayed the wounded to escape deeper into the thicket, still fronted their enemies as long as they had any shots left, and for a time, being protected by the trees, they managed to hold their assailants at bay. But when their ammunition was nearly gone they were obliged to retire before the soldiers, who were urged on by the Captain's "Voto a Dios," and, "Carambas," as he followed, swearing he would capture "these scoundrels," whose arrest, doubtless, would bring him no small reward from the Papal Government. Fortunately, Orazio had with him his inseparable horn, and drawing it forth, he blew the same blast which was heard on his arrival at the Castle of Lucullus. No sooner had the echo died away, than a sound as of many steps was heard. The footsteps were those of the companions of Orazio--a portion of the three hundred who had re-united in the Ciminian forest, after the occurrences at Rome already described. They had been awaiting the return to the rendezvous of their leaders, who had been absent a few days in Viterbo, upon important business. But who are they who precede the band, appearing so opportunely on the scene of action? Who are these graceful commanders? None other than Clelia and Irene, like the Amazons of old, and at their side is the intrepid Jack, burning to "do his duty" and be of use in such beautiful company. The proscribed, at this welcome accession of strength, did not discharge a single shot, but, fixing their bayonets, charged the foreign mercenaries, with the cry of "Viva l'Italia!" and dispersed them as the torrent disperses twigs and leaves in its headlong course. The soldiers, terrified at the sudden increase of numbers on the side of the enemy, and by the furious onset, turned and fled at full speed, regardless of the threats of their officers, and even the slashes made at them with sabres. Captain Tortiglio, who was not wanting in courage, had rushed in advance of his men, and now stood all alone. He was very much mortified, but disdained to run away. Attilio was the first to come up to him, and summoned him to surrender. "No," cried Tortiglio, "I will not surrender." Attilio, wrapping his cloak around his left arm, put aside the captain's sword, as he dealt a savage blow at him, and sprang upon him, holding his poniard in his right hand. The Spaniard was small of stature, yet very agile in his movements. He struggled for some time, but the young sculptor finally lifted him by main force from the ground, and, provoked by the resistance of the manikin, yet not wishing to kill him, gave him an overturn upon the ground, as a cook serves a pancake. Happily for Tortiglio the soil was covered with turf, or not all the science of Æsclulapius would have sufficed to re-set his broken bones. The proscribed pursued the soldiers only to the farther edge of the meadow, where they contented themselves with a few parting shots, and then turned their attention to the wounded of both sides. Those of the enemy they sent to Viterbo, under the escort of the prisoners, and dispatched their own to the interior of the wood, but retained Captain Tortiglio a little while, more as a hostage than a prisoner. Clelia and Irene were praised and complimented by all for their promptitude and courage. Muzio, after kissing their hands, made them a little speech of victory: "It becomes you well, brave and worthy daughters of Rome," he said, "to set such an example to our companions, but more especially to the slothful among Italy's sons, who appear to expect the manna of freedom to fall from heaven, and basely await their country's liberation at the hand of the foreigner. They are not ashamed to kiss the rod of a foreign tyrant, patron, and master; to renounce their own Rome--the natural and legitimate metropolis of Italy--voted the capital by parliament, and desired by the whole nation. They are not ashamed to let her remain a den of priests, of creatures who are the scourge and the shame of humanity. To women! yes, to women, is descended the task of extirpating this infamy, since men are afraid or incapable of doing it." Muzio at this point in his vehement oration in honor of the fair sex, was suddenly struck dumb by the apparition of another representative of it in the form of a lovely woman, with the face and carriage, as he afterwards said, of an angel of heaven, who appeared to him to have fallen from the clouds, and was standing before him on the road leading to Viterbo. His eloquence vanished, and he remained motionless as a statue, although the very silence of the youth showed that he recognized her to be the adored queen of his heart, English Julia. Muzio's embarrassment was the less noticed because of Jack's headlong demonstration, for the sailor, with a hitch at his waistband, sprang forward towards his beautiful mistress, throwing at the same time even his precious carbine on the ground, which he never would have abandoned under any other circumstances for all the surprises in the universe. When he at last reached Julia, he nearly plucked his forelock out by the root, so perpetually and persistently did he twitch at it, saluting the English lady. Poor fellow! a thousand affections and remembrances of family, friends, and country were centred for him in the person of that beloved mistress. Julia took the English boy's hand gracefully and kindly, and Clelia and Silvia embraced her with transports of friendship, and then presented her to Irene, whose romantic history had been repeated to her, and whom she had much desired to know personally. Even the followers of Orazio forgot for a moment their discipline, and crowded around this charming daughter of Albion, gazing at her with looks of undisguised admiration. Woman as she was, Julia could not but feel a thrill of pride and pleasure at the homage of these bold and honest children of Italy. CHAPTER XLIV. THE OLD OAK After receiving the more formal salutations of Attilio and Orazio, Julia did not forget to turn for a little towards her lover, who had remained during all these demonstrations somewhat eclipsed and confused. Muzio, even when a child of the streets, had always maintained that decorum of person and propriety of manner which the remembrance of his noble birth imposed upon him; and now Julia had reason indeed to admire the change wrought in him by his life in the forest. The position of the last scion of the house of Pompeo had truly improved of late. Scipio, the faithful and devoted servant who had voluntarily taken charge of him when a baby, and tended him with such devoted affection, was dead; but before dying, he imparted, by writing, to Cardinal S------, Muzio s maternal uncle, the history of his young master's life, and a statement of his family property. The prelate gave his solicitor orders to put himself in communication with Muzio, to supply him with all he needed, and to endeavor to bring him back into the sheepfold of respectability. The prelate, moreover, had kindly intentions towards his nephew on his own part, and meditated adding something from his own possessions to the paternal estates which had passed so fraudulently into the hands of Paolotti's vultures, and which he saw the way to recover. This sudden change of fortune happened to Muzio about the end of the year 1866, in which the Italians, in spite of the undesirable means used, gained re-possession of their own soil, and got rid of the foreign friends of the priesthood. It was, therefore, not an untimely thing for Cardinal S------ to be able to say, "I have a nephew who is a Liberal, and one of the first temper, too." It was become of consequence, even to a prelate, to be on friendly terms with such a nephew. Julia contemplated the transformation of Muzio's appearance and apparel with natural pleasure, yet she had loved him so much as a wanderer of the city, that she almost wished him back again in the poor but graceful cloak of a Trastevere model. Muzio made no audible reply to his lady's gentle words of recognition, but kissed her hand with a devotion that needed no speeches to mark its intensity, and which could not be better translated than by his enamored mistress's heart. And Clelia and Irene were, of course, happy at being once more safe in the society of their chosen. Happiness was depicted upon all these youthful faces; and, in truth, it is necessary to; confess that, opposed as all good hearts are to bloodshed, the hour of victory is a glorious one, and we, like many others, have enjoyed that wild and stem delight. At that moment the mind does not much reflect that the field is covered with the wounded and the dying. Their cries and our own exhaustion are alike unheeded. We are victorious; our cause has conquered. We have routed the enemies. All meetings on the field take a joyous tone from that proud thought, and every fresh friend, as he comes up, receives a hearty squeeze of the hand, and is a centre of fresh congratulations. Brothers have killed brothers. Yes, alas! Manzoni is right! but the heart of man forgets that sad verity so long as the flush of victory is cast upon it. Ah! when will the people become brethren indeed, and exchange the savage bliss of triumph for the noble and placid joys of peace? Ere long, let us hope! So, be sure, hoped and prayed that band, under an ancient oak upon the emerald sod of the forest, where the chiefs of the proscribed sat with those noble and tender women whose strange fate had brought them together on the field of conflict. They were so beautiful, so attractive to be in such a place! With faces kindled by pride and love, they spread around them a light of joy and a sense of praise and sanction; an atmosphere of grace mingled with gallant spirit, which almost rendered their companions eager to fight again and again under such glorious eyes. Silvia was the first to break the thread of felicitations, and said to Julia, "But Manlio, where did you leave him?" "Manlio," replied the English woman, "is with the Recluse on the island; I left him in excellent health, and promised to take him news of you." "And what is the General's opinion concerning affairs in Rome?" asked Attilio. "He," replied Julia, "approves of the noble conduct of the few Romans who harass the Papal Government, and who protest by their rebellion to the world that that abomination is no longer compatible with the age; yet he applauds also the endurance with which you have waited for a general movement until now, so as not to trouble the advancement of national unity, thus depriving the foreigner of a pretext to create further obstacles. But at the same time he is of opinion that as long as the Italian Government continues to remain kneeling at the feet of the Master of France, and, to please him, renounces Rome as the capital of our fatherland--while it supports the wicked priesthood, you must be ready to decide these questions by arms, and that every man-in Italy who possesses an Italian heart ought to be prepared to support you." "Yes," said Muzio, who had been muttering the word "endurance" ever since it was spoken by Julia--"yes, but patience is the virtue of the ass. We Romans have had too much of it; we have been, and still are superabundantly asinine. It is a disgrace to us that we still tolerate the roost iniquitous and degrading of human tyrannies, and suffer the priests to be our jailers." "And is this island from which you come far off?" inquired the gentle Silvia, who was thinking most about the dear companion of her life. "Could we not go and pass a few days there?" "Nothing is easier," answered Julia, to whom the question was put. "We are close to the frontier, we have only to cross it, and make our way to Leghorn, where the _Seagull_ is lying, and sail from thence to the island, which is not far distant. But you must also know of the marriage of Captain Thompson and your friend Aurelia, which took place lately in that solitary retreat in the simple patriarchal manner, for there are no priests there." "Per _la grazia di Dio!_" here exclaimed Orazio to himself, rising and stretching his athletic figure to its full height, as he cast a look to the western extremity of the wood. "What are these fresh arrivals?" whereupon they all saw advancing towards them a robust youth, accompanied by a beautiful girl, not much his junior, but upon whose melancholy face the traces of suffering and misfortune were too plainly visible. The new-comers were quickly perceived to be Silvio and Camilla; and here it should be known that our hunter, after the decision of the Liberals to abandon the Roman suburbs, went to bid farewell to his unhappy mistress, whom he could not cease to love, before setting out for the north. Arriving at Marcello's house, he was welcomed as usual by Fido and Marcellino, and found Camilla kneeling, as was her daily habit, beside her father's grave. "Just God! can another's crime plunge a simple and innocent soul into misery and madness for life?" thought Silvio, as he regarded the prostrate girl, and almost unconsciously he prayed aloud, "Oh, heaven! restore her reason, and to me the star of my life!" Camilla turned at these words with a look first of fright, then of a new and wonderful tenderness. It was plain that that compassionate and forgiving prayer had caused the inmost fibres of her heart to vibrate, and, obeying a mighty and impulsive instinct, she sank into the old sweet sanctuary of her lover's arms. With their heads hidden on each other's breasts, they dispensed with explanations--they made no new vows--mighty love was healer and interpreter. Tears fell fast from Camilla's eyes, but not sad tears now. A great sorrow and a bitter sin had dethroned her reason--a great pardon and a noble love set it back again in its happy seat. CHAPTER XLV. THE HONOR OF THE FLAG The new arrivals were received with surprise and pleasure by our forest party. The signoras were all conversant with the history of Camilla's misfortunes, and bestowed upon her gentle and considerate caresses. Something solemn pervaded her whole appearance--a dreamy vestige of the insanity under which she had so long labored. It was a miraculous change which had come over her when she heard that pathetic prayer, and perceived the sudden presence of her lover, and the unutterable feelings of affection and penitence that stirred her soul when she found herself restored to his embrace had transformed her into a new and happy being, but left upon her this air of nameless pathos. "I passed through Viterbo," said Silvio to Orazio, when their salutations were ended, "and saw a great commotion there for which I am scarcely able to account. The citizens were running about the streets, endeavoring to get out of the way of the soldiers. The soldiers, reinforced by strong detachments from Rome, are vowing to spear all Italians on the face of the earth, and, by way of a step towards this warlike project, have begun plundering the wineshops, where they lie for the most part dead drunk. The Papal authorities, who wished to keep the peace, were received by the rascals with the butt-ends of their muskets, and driven to flight. They have gone off with their agents to Rome, and are not likely to return for some time. The reinforcements were exclaiming that 'their flag had been dishonored, and that the stain must be washed out in blood. 'Flag dishonored!' that phrase calls to our mind the villainy of a certain neighboring Government, which, after infamously violating our territory, and taking, by a deceitful act, possession of our principal sea-port, treacherously attacked our capital, and upon receiving some severe blows, cried out, 'Treason! treason! our flag is dishonored!' "But," said Silvio, resuming his narrative, "this confusion gave me a favorable opportunity of making observations, and coming on quietly to you, though I might have been hindered by a curious occurrence which happened. I was passing the 'Full Moon' hotel as a few officers, newly arrived from Rome, alighted from a carriage. Owing to the universal confusion, they could find no attendant to carry in their luggage, and one of them came up to me, crying out, 'Here, you fellow!' and taking me by the breast, attempted to drag me to the carriage. Fortunately I had already signalled to Camilla to go on in advance of me. My first impulse was to use my poniard, but restraining myself, I tore the man's hand from my breast, and aiming a blow with my fist full at his face, sent him flying against the wheels of the carriage without a single word. As you may imagine, I did not remain to gather the laurels of the victory, but turned on my heel, and walked with a quick step in the direction of the wood, and soon overtook my companion." The merriment of his auditors, and the shouts of "Bravo, Silvio!" here interrupted the narrator for a moment. "However," he observed, when the laughter ceased, "we can not remain long here in security, for I have no doubt that to-morrow, at latest, you will have the whole pack of foreigners on your track." "Here in this forest," said Orazio, "we could make head against the whole army of the Pope. Were it not that we are so very few in number, and have these precious ladies to protect." "Ehi! ladies to protect, indeed!" said Irene with some irony; "you have soon forgotten, Signor Rodomonte, that these same 'ladies' protected you to-day." A burst of laughter broke from all; and the courageous chief of the forest stooped and kissed the hand of his beloved wife with pretty submission. Meanwhile, the long dark shadows cast by the giants of the Ciminian wood spreading out to the west, announced the setting of the sun, who, wrapped in a glorious and variegated mantle of clouds, was about to hide himself behind the waves of the Tyrrhenian sea. Clelia, perceiving this, addressed Jack, who, fascinated by her beauty and amiability, was her devoted slave, and to whom she had confided the important care of the viands. "Well, my friend," she said in English, "all these true heroes of romance, it appears, do not trouble themselves about supper; and if you do not see to it, I fear we shall have to go to bed without food to-night." "Aye, aye, ma'am!" was Jack's reply; and, with the invariable hitch to his waistband, he steered for the spot where the assistants had unloaded two mules, which carried the chief's baggage as well as the provisions. But, after such fighting and talk, they must feast at leisure in a fresh chapter. CHAPTER XLVI. THE RURAL SUPPER Who does not prefer civilization to barbarism and the usages of savage life? Who would not choose the comforts of a refined home, cool in summer, warm in winter, well supplied with food, and replete with every comfort and even luxury, to the open country, with its inclemency, inconveniences, and vicissitudes of weather? Yet when one remembers that the few monopolize the advantages of civilization, and that its victims are so many, one can not help doubting whether the world of humanity does reap much benefit from the present highly-developed state of civilization, and whether it might not be desirable to go back to the simple condition of the first inhabitants of the world, amongst whom, if there were no palaces, no cooks, no fine manners, no expensive clothes, no elaborate conventions, no luxuries in the way of food, neither were there any priests, police, prefects, tax-gatherers, or any other of our galling modern innovations; neither was one called upon to give up one's children to serve the caprices of a despot, under the pretense of serving the country and washing out "stains from flags." However all this may be, a frugal supper in the forest on the soft green turf, hitherto untrodden by any foot of man; the guests seated on the trunks of old trees that furnish also a glowing and dancing fire; by the side moreover, of such companions as Julia, Clelia, and Irene--a supper in such circumstances must be a more delightful height of enjoyment than civilization could reach. _Per Dio!_ give us such a forest supper, though it consist only of fruit and the luck of the chase, against any grand in-door entertainment. Many a time have we shared such a repast. But our forest party had more than meagre fare. Gasparo, who was also in charge of the baggage, was commissioned, in company with Jack, to purchase and look after the provisions. He now spread a cold collation before the chiefs, with the sailor-boy's assistance--garnishing it with some green branches--which would have tempted even the palate of a Lucullus. A few flasks of Montepulciano and Orvieto embellished the enamelled table, and, the savory meats, seasoned with the appetite which follows an arduous day's work, disappeared with amazing celerity. Julia was in high spirits. It was the first time she had shared in such a _fete-champetre_, in the society, above all, of those who were her _bello ideale_ of all that was romantic, chivalrous, and gallant. Very near to her was her Muzio, disguised in the garb of a Roman model, and who was now known and proclaimed to be the descendant of an ancient noble family, and one of the richest heirs in Rome, it might yet appear. That resistless principle, which, like the loadstone and the needle, attracts loving souls one to the other, kept him at the side of the woman of his heart, watching her slighest wish, providing her with every thing with proud servility; and all the while humbly glancing at her with that look which art vainly seeks to represent--the look which alone can be given and understood between those who love with a true and perfect love. Julia also, with a little graceful dignity, enjoyed hearing Clelia and Irene converse with Jack in broken Italo-English. They drew him out to relate some of the episodes of his sea-life, the adventures he had met with, and the tempests he had witnessed in his long voyages to India and China, for he had been at sea since he was seven years old. The description he gave of the Chinese who stay at home and employ themselves in different kinds of work performed by women in other countries, while their wives row, and till the land, with their babies slung in a basket on their backs, caused much laughter among his fair hearers, and, indeed, to all present, when translated to them by one of the company. "The nautical profession," said Julia, "is the one to which my country is most indebted for her greatness. My countrymen prize and honor their mariners. With us, not only in the countries bordered by the sea, but wherever there is a river or a lake, boys are to be seen continually taking exercise in boating and rowing, in which practices they run all kinds of danger, and this is the reason there are so many seafaring men to make the name of Britain great upon the ocean. "I have known youths in France and Italy, who were destined to become naval officers, pass the greater part of their boyhood in the technical schools, going on board for the first time when they had attained their fifteenth and even their eighteenth year, when they suffer much, of course, from sea-sickness, and are exposed to the ridicule and contempt of the sailors. "In England it is very different. Youths destined for the sea are put on board at eleven years of age, and frequently take long voyages, during which they are instructed practically in all the routine and details of their profession. This course insures the best naval officers in the world to England. "The wealthy among my people do not hoard up money to look at it, but employ it frequently in purchasing a yacht; and there are, indeed, very few persons living near sea or river who do not own or hire some sort of craft, large or small, in which they take their pleasure, and exercise themselves in the art which constitutes the glory and prosperity of their land. "In Italy you have seamen, I grant, who equal the best of any nation, but your officers will not stand the test of comparison. Your Ministers of Marine have ever been incompetent, and therefore incapable of improving and raising a profession which might yet render Italy one of the most important and prosperous nations of the globe." The subject so treated by Julia was a little foreign to our Romans, who were naturally ignorant of sea affairs. Their priests long ago found the oar and the net of St. Peter too heavy for their effeminate hands, and gave themselves up to merry-making and luxury as the easiest way of promoting the glory of God. A pause ensuing, Julia called for a song or narrative, and Orazio said, "Gasparo, the chief of bandits, could tell us, doubtless, some stirring passages in his adventurous life." Whereupon, with a bow and smile, the old man sat for a moment recalling some circumstance of his past life, and then answered- "Perils on the sea I could not relate, because I have been very little upon it; but on land I have passed through my share of strange adventures: and if it will not weary you to listen to one, I could, perhaps, relate events that would make you shudder." All expressing a wish to hear some portion of his history, Gasparo, settling himself to an easy attitude commenced the following story. CHAPTER XLVII. GASPERO'S STORY "L'uotno naace più grando in quests terra che in qualunque altra--ne sono una prova i grandi deletti che vi si commettono."--Alfieri. "I was born in the small city of S--------, in the States of the Church, not far from the Neapolitan frontier. My parents were honest folk, employed as shepherds in the service of the Cardinal. "Being sent early to the field to tend sheep, cows, and buffaloes, and nearly always on horseback, I grew up with a robust hardy constitution, and became a dexterous horseman. "Up to the age of eighteen, I remained a true son of the Italian desert, knowing no other affection than that which I had for my horse, my lasso, and my weapons. With the latter I had become a formidable enemy to the deer and wild boar of the Roman forests. I was passionately fond of hunting, an exercise suited to my nature: and I was accustomed to pass whole nights lying in ambush, watching for the deer, or the great gray tuskers in the marshes, where they delight to lie rolling in the mud. "I knew the places frequented by the harts and hinds, and very often returned home with one of those graceful animals slung over my saddle. "One day, after having secured my horse at a little distance, I placed myself in hiding, on the watch for a stag. I had been there but a short time, when I heard footsteps on the path behind me--a narrow forest road that led to the village. "At first I thought it might be a wild beast of some description, and kept my carbine in readiness to fire as soon as I perceived it. After listening a few moments, I thought I heard voices, and presently there appeared in sight a young priest whom I had occasionally seen walking in the village, while by his side was a young girl who appeared to accompany him rather unwillingly. "I had time to observe them both; the priest was about twenty years of age, very tall and finely proportioned; in fact, only a carbine and pointed hat were wanting to make a fine hunter or soldier of him." "The young girl! Ah! pardon my memory, still agitated by that sweet face!" and the old man's eyes here dimmed with tears. "The young girl was an angel! I do not know how it was they did not discover me, for her beauty caused me to utter an involuntary exclamation, and my heart was stirred by a new and astonishing emotion. "He had offended her by some proposal, for she was turning to go; but as I regarded them, the priest threw his arm with almost violent force around his companion, and pressing his lips to her cheek, uttered some words that did not reach me, but caused a terrified and indignant look to pass over the girl's face, and she shrank back as if stung by a viper. Again the priest spoke and approached, when, with a cry, the peasant-girl broke from him and fled. "He pursued her, and caught the shrieking damsel, whose hands he bound with her neck-rib-bon, and then forced her upon the ground. I can not tell why I was self-contained enough not to shoot him dead, but I had never drawn trigger against a human life, and I hesitated until he gave these last proofs of his abominable villainy. At this point, however, I sprang from my covert, and with one blow from the butt-end of my gun, felled him to the ground, and then went to the assistance of the young woman, who had fallen fainting at some little distance upon the sod. I raised her gently in my arms, and carried her to the side of a brook, where I bathed her face with the cool, running water, until she opened her lovely eyes and faintly smiled her thanks, for, as she gazed around, a look of relief passed over her features, when she perceived the absence of her persecutor. Then rising, she expressed, in a few words, her gratitude for my intervention, saying she was sufficiently recovered to return to the village, and bade me farewell, but seeing she was still agitated, I begged her to allow me to conduct her to her home. She gave a modest assent, and I walked in happy and respectful silence till we reached the entrance to the village, where she stopped, and pointing to a small but pretty dwelling, said, 'That is my father's house; I have nothing more now to fear, so I will bid you a grateful adieu.' Raising her hand to my lips, I kissed it fervently, saying, I hoped to have the pleasure of meeting her soon again, under calmer circumstances, for I was completely enchanted by her grace and beauty, and felt I could no longer be happy out of her presence. "I remained to watch her enter her abode before I turned to seek my horse, which I found neighing impatiently at my prolonged absence. Through some acquaintances in the village, I learned the name of her whom I had been the means of saving from violence, and learned to my disappointment and horror that she was the priest's niece. Day after day I found some pretext for passing through the village, that I might obtain a glimpse of Alba, for that was her name; and twice I was fortunate enough to meet her and exchange a few words. I did not speak to her of love, but I felt she knew my passion for her, and was learning to return it. "The priest, burning with rage at the thought of his infamy being not only frustrated by me but made known to the father of the maiden, resolved to be revenged. Being reproved by the old man for his brutal conduct, and threatened with public exposure unless he absented himself for a long time, until he should have thoroughly repented of his intended crime, the priest fell upon the old man, and with one blow from a mallet crushed in his skull. Then, fearing the consequences, he carried the dead body into the courtyard, and, placing it upon its back near a ragged stone, left it there, and retired to bed, leaving his neighbors to suppose, when the corpse was discovered in the morning, that the old man had fallen down in a fit, and striking his head against the stone pavement, had thus met with his death." What matters a crime to a priest, if he can cover it? He had committed a gross lie by calling himself the minister of God, and now he took advantage of the easy ignorance of his neighbors to conceal a still grosser crime. Those of his profession use double dealing all their lives.' A priest knows himself to be an impostor, unless he be a fool, or have been taught to lie from his boyhood, so that as he advances in years, he becomes not even able any longer to dissociate the false and the true. Whilst he lives in comfort, he makes the credulous multitude believe he suffers hardships and privations. Poor priest! Well do we remember seeing in America a painting representing one of the cloth seated at a dining-table spread with all kinds of viands and a flagon of wine, in the act of caressing his plump and rosy Perpetua, who was seated at his side; and, meanwhile, outside the door stood a poor Irishman with his wife and baby. All three were wan, emaciated, and miserably clad, yet the husband was dropping a coin into the priest's box, on which was written, "Give of your charity to the poor priest of God." Infamous mockery! On the one hand there was enjoyment, hypocrisy, and lying; on the other, ignorance, credulity, and innocent misery. "One evening," continued Gasparo, "I was sitting in my hut, feeling rather weary after a long day's hunt, thinking of Alba, and dreading, from what she had told me, that some catastrophe might be impending, when the door flew open, and the object of my thoughts rushed in exclaiming, 'Murder! Murder!' and fell insensible upon the floor." CHAPTER XLVIII. GASPARO'S STORY CONTINUED. "The words of Alba revealed to me the horrible crime that had been perpetrated. I raised her fainting form, and laid her upon my pallet, for my parents were both dead, and I dwelt alone. Now I could, for the first time, realize the full and sweet beauty of my heart's love. The sight of this lovely creature almost lessened my aversion to the vile fratricide and his unlawful passion. Alba had never related to me what had passed on that night, and as I did not wish to awaken painful recollections, I had always avoided interrogating her upon the subject, so that I knew nothing of the dispute and murder. But the priest, supposing me aware of his misdeeds, and jealous of my love for Alba, schemed, as only a fiend could, to annihilate me through his own crime, though not daring to accuse me openly. He had hinted to his most intimate friends that I was his brother's murderer, and offered all he possessed to certain bravos if they would undertake to kill me. "You can still perceive, in spite of my age, and the troubles that have weighed me down, that I was agile when a youth, and that I was capable of taking care of myself against ten priests. Well, Alba had come to tell me of her father's death and the priest's calumnies. And this scoundrel had me waylaid, as she warned me, so that I ran a narrow escape of losing my life. He had paid several cut-throats handsomely to destroy me. I was always, however, on my guard, and seldom went out of the house without my carbine; and my faithful little dog Lion could hear the movement of a small bird a hundred paces off, and would wag his tail and prick up his ears at the slightest sound. My poor, poor dog! he was a victim to his love for me." And here the sensitive heart of the old chief, Gasparo, obliged him to pause a moment. "Yes, those devils, daring one of my walks to S------, contrived to poison him. "From S------ to my forest-home several thick places in the cover had to be passed. Here the bravos had hidden themselves once or twice, but, frustrated by my vigilance, and frightened at my carbine, they made their retreat as soon as I appeared, and informed the priest that they should give up the enterprise. Father Giacomo did not understand this, and finally persuaded them, after offering a higher sum, and regaling them abundantly with food and wine, to make another attempt, in which he himself was to accompany them. With his three highwaymen, he took up a position one evening near my little house, concealing themselves behind a large bush that grew by the side of the narrow path which led to it, and which they knew I should be obliged to pass. "My poor Lion was dead, and on this occasion, in spite of all my precautions, I was taken by surprise. Four almost simultaneous shots were fired upon me from the bush, and a furious cry of 'Die' was uttered by the would-be assassins, who rushed upon me expecting to' find me mortally wounded. But not so, for I was saved as by a miracle. All four balls struck me, and three of them slightly wounded me, the most serious hurt being caused by the first shot, which carried off, as you see, a piece of my left ear; the second struck against my leathern belt, smashing only a few of my cartridges; the third pierced my hat, grazing my head; and the fourth grazed my right shoulder, occasioning a slight scratch. "The first person who approached me was the priest, holding a carbine in his left hand and a poniard in the right. He was like a demon to behold, for rage and hatred; but my shot was more effective than his, and in one moment he was rolling at my feet, uttering frightful groans. I knocked over one of the bravos with my second discharge, whereupon the other two, seeing the figure their companions had cut, and noting the pistols still left in my belt, took to their heels and fled. This was the first time I had shed blood, and I felt some remorse as I regarded the dead bodies of the priest and his tool. In any other country I might have escaped unpunished by pleading the law of self-defense; for though I had no witnesses, the case was clear, and the rancor which the priest bore to me was so well known that it would not have been difficult to prove my innocence. But under the priestly government it is another matter, and the destroyer of one of their body would have no chance of escape; so I thought it best to flee the country. "Then began the eventful history of my so-called brigandage; and I swear to you that amongst all the agents sent out of this world by my hand, there has not been one who did not first attempt my life. Many young men, persecuted like me by the clergy, followed me to my place of retreat; and very soon I had organized so formidable a band, that the Papal Government treated with me almost as with an equal power. Assassins or thieves by profession I never would receive into my company. The unfortunate of all grades were aided by me, and if the authorities of the priesthood were sometimes assaulted, it was only to warn them to cease their acts of injustice and infamy. "In this manner I passed many years, in reality more of a ruler over the Roman country than he who sits in the Quirinal, until the creatures of that cunning court, seeing they could do nothing with me by force, had recourse to treachery. That bright jewel of holiness, my relative, Cardinal A--------, whom may God reward! contributed more than any one else to my capture. I had the weakness to trust his specious promises, and remained, in consequence, fourteen years in irons, in a miserable prison. But the justice of God will at last find out those evil doers and punish them, for they are verily the scourge of humanity. "When in the Papal galleys I heard of you, Orazio, and of your courageous resistance to the tools of the Vatican, and I assure you I prayed; Heaven that I might become before I died your assistant and companion. My prayer was heard, and I only desire to devote the short remainder of my life to the cause defended by you and your noble comrades." Julia was interested in the narrative of the famous bandit, and after sympathizing with him, was about to ask Orazio to relate some passages of his career, when, looking around at the company, she perceived from their looks that repose after the fatigues of the day had become necessary; and, as the hour was late, she abandoned the idea, and watched with curiosity the preparations for sleeping in the open air. Fresh branches from the trees were strewn upon the most level portions of the ground, under some of the gigantic oaks of the wood, and thus a magnificent sylvan couch was spread apart for the women, who were to rest together, covered with the cloaks of their beloved ones. Muzio offered his to Julia, with a beseeching look, and paid her with a glance of the deepest gratitude when she graciously accepted it. In the mean time Orazio and his friends placed guards and sentinels around, and gave orders to sound the _reveille_ at dawn. There, under the trees, extended on the turf, slept those upon whom the hopes of all true Romans hung. For Rome, after eighteen centuries of lethargy and shame, was beginning to awake and claim again a place of honor on the earth for her who was once its mistress. CHAPTER XLIX. THE PURSUIT Heaven has apparently willed that the highest pitch of human greatness shall be in its turn contrasted with the lowest depths of national humiliation. Witness that body of cut-throats now called the "_Roman_ army," compared with the "Roman army" which once conquered all the known world. None but priests could have produced such an astounding and monstrous transformation. While the hours had passed as above related, the General placed at the head of the Pope's troops arrived at Viterbo, with all the forces he had been able to gather, and called his superior officers to a council in the municipal palace. Among the number was one martial gentleman with a nose like a small melon, covered with slips of sticking-plaster, and this warrior was he who had received the blow from Silvio at the inn door. His face was flushed besides with wine, of which he had been partaking copiously to drown his chagrin, and he urged the General vehemently to proceed at once to assault the "_brigands_." The General, however, considered that it would be better to wait till daybreak before they made a move, for he was by no means certain that the soldiers could stand to their arms at that late hour, nearly all being more or less drunk; and, after some further discussion, the General's view was applauded by the council and adopted. At daybreak, therefore, the champions of the altar and the tiara obeyed the bugle-call; but it required some little time to get these ornaments of warfare into order. Some were footsore by the rapid march from Rome to Viterbo, others by their flight from the Ciminian hill, others ill with potations, and therefore it was not until the sun rose high above the Apennines that the army was in marching order. Even then many were the delays, for the General was at the mercy of the native guides, who very unwillingly conducted him through the intricacies of the forest, of which he was of course ignorant. The proscribed, who were thoroughly acquainted with it, had begun to move at early dawn, so that when the sun rose they had already reached the summit of the mountain, from whence they could survey the whole country, and were reconnoitring, to see if any troops were advancing from the town. The coming of the troops was thus directly perceived. Orazio--whose assumption of the command no one had disputed--dispersed about a hundred of his men, under Muzio's direction, as skirmishers over the low lands and amongst the underwood bordering upon the road on which the enemy was advancing. The remainder he arranged in column on the rising ground, ordering them to be in readiness to charge at the first signal. Having thus disposed his main force, he summoned Captain Tortiglio, and questioned him about the different officers in command of the enemy, who was still at some distance, ascending the mountain side. "He who commands the vanguard," replied Tortiglio, "is Major Pompone, a brave officer, but a bully of the first order." "If I do not deceive myself," said Silvio, who was watching the enemy's movements through his telescope, "that is the very fellow who wanted me to carry his luggage for him, for his nose is unmistakable." "And who is that on horseback, leading what I suppose to be the principal body?" again asked Ordzio. "Lend me your telescope," said Tortiglio, and, having pointed it at the individual in question, exclaimed, "_Per Dio!_ that is the commander-in-chief of the Papal army; and see, his mounted staff is just appearing!" "What is his name?" "His name is Count de la Roche--de la Roche Haricot. These French Legitimists, representatives of the feudal times, have names nearly all commencing with de, which are very difficult for us, 'of the _Si_,' to pronounce." "You, then, belong to the language of the _Si_, Signor Spaniard?" asked Orazio rather roughly. "_Como no!_" (and why not?) articulated the captain in Spanish; "are you alone the sons of the ancient Latins, and the possessors of that universal language? Leant that there is as much in common between the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese languages as there is between the face of a Calabrian and that of an Andalusian, who indeed resemble each other like brothers." "Bravo, Captain Tortiglio," said Attilio, who had just arrived, having left the division he was in command of for orders; "you are a fortunate scholar! We unlucky Romans are only taught by the priests to kiss hands, kneel, and attend the mass, but are left in ignorance of what goes on in grammars and polite learning outside the walls of Rome." But the Papal army was advancing, and Orazio, like an experienced captain, kept measuring its progress, without being in the least discomposed, yet feeling that anxiety which a leader must experience when in command of a body of troops of any kind, and in the presence of a numerous enemy about to attack. One of the inconveniences a guerrilla band has to sustain in time of battle, and which very much preoccupies the chief, is the necessity of abandoning the wounded in case of retreat, or of leaving them in charge of the terrified inhabitants, who are afraid of being compromised. These considerations, and the unequal number of the opposing forces, impelled Orazio to sound the signal for retiring, and the hunter, with the sagacity that distinguished him, gathered in his fifty men with as much coolness as he would have shown had he been summoning them to a new beat in the chase. Having communicated his intention to Attilio, and enjoined him not to attempt it too precipitately, but to execute the order of retreat in divisions, Orazio went to Muzio, who was prepared to receive the enemy, now marching rapidly upon him. Exchanging a few words with the leader of the vanguard, he ascended to the highest point of the position, from whence he was able to survey every thing, accompanied only by two of his adjutants. General Haricot was not wanting in a certain amount of gallantry, which would have been worthy of a better cause. He was now assailing the unknown position of the Liberals boldly, with his vanguard _en echelon_, being himself in the center of the line. However it may be--whether in an engagement or in a pitched battle--the commander-in-chief ought to place himself in such a manner that he can command a view of as large a portion of the field of battle as the circumstances permit, and this he can usually best accomplish, by being himself at the head of the troops first engaged. As he must receive information of all that passes during the fight, the General, if he places himself at a distance from the scene of action, subjects himself to serious loss of time, inaccurate reports, and, to what is of still greater importance, incapability to discover at a glance that portion of his command which may stand in immediate want of relief, or to note where, if victorious, he ought to send in pursuit of the enemy light bodies of cavalry, infantry, or artillery, to complete the repulse. There was no failing, however, in this respect on the part of the two commanders-in-chief in this action. Haricot, emboldened by the superiority of his numbers, gave the order to attack without any hesitation. Orazio, though decided upon a retreat on account of his inferior force, was determined to give his opponent such a lesson as should make him more guarded and less precipitous in his pursuit. The irregularity of the ground, and the dense masses of trees had enabled Muzio to draw his men under cover into advantageous positions. There he desired them to await till the enemy came into point-blank range, to fire only telling shots, and then retreat behind the lines of the other divisions. This his valorous companions in arms did. Their first discharge covered the ground with the wounded and lifeless bodies of the enemy. The vanguard of the mercenaries was so demoralized as to retreat, and while supports, led on by the intrepid chief, were staying their backward progress, the confusion gave the Italians time to make their retreat in good order. When Cortez disembarked at Mexico he burned his ships. When the Thousand of Marsala disembarked in Sicily they also abandoned their vessels to the enemy, and so deprived themselves of any hope of retreat; and truly these courageous acts conduced much to the success and triumphant conduct of both expeditions. The proximity of friendly frontiers has often been the cause of defection in the ranks of the patriotic Italians. We have witnessed such scandals in Lombardy in 1848, caused by the tempting neighborhood of Switzerland, and also unhappily in the Roman States by the nearness of the royal territory. Such was the case with the Three Hundred after the many adventures here related. Orazio accomplished his retreat from the Ciminian hill without loss, but it was necessary to retire as far as the Italian dominion, and then it happened with his followers just as might have been expected, from their want of supplies and the temptation of safely. Although this band was composed of courageous men, it dissolved like a fog before the sun when it touched the national frontier. The chiefs, after vainly reminding their men that their country was still in bondage, and that it was the duty of all to prepare for another struggle to free her, found themselves nearly alone. The eight or nine firm hearts with whom we are best acquainted, along with Gasparo and Jack, took the road to Tuscany on their way to Leghorn, where they expected to find the fair Julia's yacht, and gain some news of their absent friends. And here we will take leave of them for the present, to meet them later in new and adventurous scenes. PART THE SECOND. CHAPTER L. THE PILGRIMAGE The recluse, at the period where we renew our story, was on the mainland, whither he had been called by his friends. He had left his rocky abode to fulfill a duty towards Italy, to which he had ever dedicated his life. He had forced himself to undertake a pilgrimage, setting out from the Venetian territory, his end being not only to influence the political elections, but to sow the germs of emancipated spirit and conscience, which alone can restore Italy to her first state of manly greatness, and enable her people to throw off their bonds, discountenancing utterly that idolatrous and false church called papal, and living upon the truths of a real and vital religion. For with the priests human brotherhood is impossible, since the papist condemns to everlasting flames every member of the human family who refuses belief in the Pope's supremacy. In like manner the Dervish or Turkish priest condemns eternally every believer in Christianity, and you can not walk safely in the streets of Constantinople or Canton because your life is in danger from these fanatics. In short, priests and bigots are pretty much alike all over the world, while the greatest and most sanguinary of conflicts have always been fomented by them. Take, as an example, the Crimean war, where one hundred and fifty thousand men perished, while enormous treasures were swallowed up by the contest. The commencement of the quarrel was on account of the church named the Holy Sepulchre, and to decide whether a papistical or a Greek priest should take precedence there. This dispute was brought before the Emperors of France and Russia, and the result was war--England and Italy taking part in the enormous butchery consequent thereon. England is at the present day in perpetual anxiety with regard to the state of Ireland, largely caused by the priests; and may God spare the world from an insurrection in the United States, where, in a population of thirty-three millions, nearly half are Roman Catholics, a large proportion of them Irish, who, under the dictatorship of a bishop, divide the country, and are always plotting for political supremacy. In Venice the greater part of the population swore to follow General Garibaldi to the death, yet the day after the same crowd congregated in those shops where religious trinkets and "indulgences" in God's name are sold for money, and where idolatry in the guise of Christianity erects vain and lying images. Such are the Venetians, and such are they likely to remain under priestly superstition and political corruption. With regard to representation, the great body of the Italian people are excluded from the elective franchise. Out of a population of more than twenty-five millions there are only four million five hundred thousand voters. Every voter must be twenty-five years of age, and must be able to read and write. As to the latter, the power of signing his name is deemed sufficient, but he must also contribute an annual sum of not less than forty francs, which must be paid in direct taxation to the state or province (the province answering to the English county); the municipal rates are not taken into account. Graduates of universities, members of learned societies, military and civil _employés_, either upon active service or half-pay, professional men, schoolmasters, notaries, solicitors, druggists, licensed veterinary surgeons, agents of change, and all persons living in a house, or having a shop, magazine, or workshop, are entitled to a vote, provided the rental is, in communes containing a population of less than two thousand five hundred inhabitants, two hundred francs; in communes containing a population of from two thousand five hundred to ten thousand inhabitants, three hundred francs; and in communes containing a population of over ten thousand inhabitants, four hundred francs. But the power which the Government has of unduly influencing such of the voters as are not in its own immediate employ is enormous, by means of the chief officer in every town, called the syndic, who is appointed by the Government, and removable at its pleasure. This officer, under pain of dismissal, recommends to the voters for election any candidate that the Government desires to have elected, and lamentable as is the financial state of the country, millions of francs were placed at the disposal of the syndics for the purpose of corruption in the spring of the year 1867. If a town wants a branch railway to the main line, the election of the Government candidate will always insure the accomplishment of its wishes on this point. The whole host of Government officials, including the police, actively interfere in aid of the ministerial candidate. Schoolmasters and others will be dismissed from their posts if they give a refractory vote; and workmen for the same reason are discharged. Official addresses have been known to be openly published, desiring the people not to vote for the opposition candidates; and there are instances of papers on the day of election being withheld from those voters who might prove to be too independent. Therefore it was with a view to reforming these abuses that General Garibaldi, in addressing the municipality of Palma, said, "Let the new Chambers be impressed with the necessity of reorganizing the administration, and if the Government, to tempt them, returns to its evil ways, then ill betide it." We do not intend following the General's steps as he proceeded from town to town, enthusiastically received by the multitude, who, joyous at the sight of the "man of the people," applauded his doctrine of non-submission to foreign dominion and humiliation, and above all echoed his plain denunciations of that clerical infamy and that immoral understanding which exists between the Papacy and those of the unworthy men who misgovern Italy. As it may be supposed, the priests attacked the General, and accused him far and wide of being an atheist. This false and foolish charge led to his making the following address before twenty thousand people at Padua:- "It is in vain that my enemies try to make me out an atheist. I believe in God. I am of the religion of Christ, not of the religion of the Popes. I do not admit any intermediary between God and man. Priests have merely thrust themselves in, in order to make a trade of religion. They are the enemies of true religion, liberty, and progress; they are the original cause of our slavery and degradation, and in order to subjugate the souls of Italians, they have called in foreigners to enchain their bodies. The foreigners we have expelled, now we must expel those mitred and tonsured traitors who summoned them. The people must be taught that it is not enough to have a free country, but that they must learn to exercise the rights and perform the duties of free men. Duty! duty! that is the word. Our people must learn their duties to their families, their duties to their country, their duties to humanity." Garibaldi proceeded next to the university of Padua; and there, standing before the statue of Galileo, he uncovered his head, saying, "Who, remembering Galileo, his genius and his life, the torture inflicted upon him, the martyrdom he suffered--he, I say, who, remembering this, does not despise the priests of Rome, is not worthy to be called a man or an Italian." The interests of commerce having always had a place in the heart of General Garibaldi, he delivered the following address to the Representatives of the Chambers of Commerce for Vicenza:--"Italy's future depends in great part on you. Our wars against the foreigners are, I hope, nearly at an end. Italy is united, is independent; you can make her prosperous. There is nothing necessary to the maintenance of the human race that we can not produce; and with such raw material as we have, what can we not manufacture? Our people have a mania for foreign goods; they like to wear foreign stuffs, to drink foreign wines, but let them once be persuaded that our own are as good, and they will be glad to adopt them; and foreign nations will receive our' merchandise, our manufactures, as eagerly as we now seek for theirs. But progress of every kind is difficult with the priests, and human brotherhood impossible." CHAPTER LI. THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD Let our tale revert to yet more distant memories, while the name of "Italy" wakes the author's recollections. He is set thinking of the sad times when newly-liberated Rome was again enchained by the hands of European despotism, alarmed at the revival of the Mistress of the World, and at the terrible warning conveyed by the Roman Republic. Alas! it was by the arms of another great Republic that her hopes were blighted. Napoleon, the secret enemy of all liberty, fleshed his weapons upon the Romans when he had committed the crime _lesanazione_, and betrayed the credulous people of Paris, slaying them in their streets without regard to age or sex. May God, in his own time, deal with the assassin of the 2d of December, and of the world's liberty! After the defense of Rome, the Recluse, never despairing of the fete of Italy, although left with but few followers, decided to take the field. But more is required than a handful of brave men when nations intend to liberate themselves, and what can an irregular band of intrepid youths accomplish against four armies? It is true that in the present day national spirit is more awakened, and the handful of brave youths has grown to heroic proportions and historical deeds, but in those unhappy times the populace stood gazing stupefied and in silence at the relics of the defenders of Rome while passing out on their way to the open country, regarding them as irretrievably lost. Not one of those men stood forward to increase our ranks. On the contrary, every morning discovered a quantity of arms upon the ground of bivouac, which deserters had abandoned. Those arms were placed upon the mules and wagons which accompanied the column, so that in time the column possessed more mules and wagons than men, and little by little the hope of arousing that nation of sluggards vanished from the souls of the faithful and courageous survivors. At San Marino, seeing there was no longer any hope or heart to fight, the order of the day was given "to dismiss the men to their homes." That order was couched in the following terms: "Return to your homes, but remember that Italy must not remain a slave." The larger number took the road to their dwellings, but some deserters from the Papal and Austrian troops, who, if taken prisoners would have been shot, remained to accompany their chief in his last attempt to free Venice. And here begins a still sadder and more painful history. Anita, the Recluse's inseparable companion, would not, even under these trying circumstances, leave him. In vain did her husband endeavor to persuade her to remain at San Marino. Though pregnant, faint, and sick, arguments were of no avail: the courageous woman would heed no advice, and answered all by smilingly asking "if he wished to abandon her." Surrounded by the Austrian troops, tracked by the Papal police, that tired remnant of the Roman army outstripped them all during a night march, and arrived at the gates of Cesenatico at one o'clock in the morning, where an Austrian detachment kept guard. "Fall on them and disarm them," exclaimed Garibaldi to the few individuals forming his retinue; and the Austrian soldiers, completely stupefied, allowed themselves to be disarmed. The authorities were then awakened, and requested to supply food and _bragozzi_, or small barges, that the volunteers might embark. It can not be denied that fortune has favored the Recluse in many arduous enterprises, but at this time began for him a series of adversities and misfortunes. A northern cloud had spread itself over the Adriatic on this night, and breaking into wind, had rendered the sea furious. The narrow mouth of the port of Cesenatico was one mass of foam. Great were the efforts made to leave the port in the _bragozzi_, thirteen in number, weighed down as they were with people, and at day-break they succeeded. But at this crisis numerous Austrians entered Cesenatico. Sail was made, for the wind had become favorable, and on the following morning four of the _bragozzi_, in one of which were Garibaldi and Anita, with Cicernachio, his two sons, and Ugo-Bassi, landed in the Foci del Po. Anita, carried in the arms of the man of her heart, was borne to shore in a dying condition. The occupants of the other nine _bragozzi_ had given themselves up to the Austrian squadron, which had discovered the little crafts by the light of a full moon, and had rained bullets and grapeshot upon them until they surrendered. The shores where the four boats put in were swarming with the enemy's explorers, sent to trace the fugitives. Anita was lying a little way off the shore, concealed in a corn-field, her head supported by the Recluse. Leggiero, a valiant major belonging to the island of Maddalena, who had followed the General in South America, and returned to Italy with him, was their only companion. He lay peeping through the stalks, and very soon discovered some of the cursed white curs in search of blood. Cicernachio, Bassi, and nine others, who by our advice had taken a different direction in order to escape the enemy, were all captured, and shot like dogs by the Austrians. When the nine victims were taken, the Austrians compelled nine peasants, by force of blows, to dig nine holes in the sand, after which a discharge from the enemy's picket dispatched the unhappy heroes. The youngest, a son of a Roman tribune, only thirteen years of age, still moved after the fire, but a blow from the butt-end of an Austrian's musket smashed in his skull, and thus brutally ended his young life. Bassi and his brother, Cicernachio, met with the same fate at Bologna. The foreigner and the priest made merry in that hour of slaughter over the purest Italian blood; and the mitred master of Rome remounted his polluted throne, having for a footstool the corpses of his compatriots. Let this cold brutality, this savage butchery of their honest noble-hearted compatriots live in the memory of Italians, and give their consciences no peace while they leave their magnificent city a prey to the foreigner and to the vile priests, who use it as a den of infamy. The Recluse, bearing his precious burden--that dear and faithful wife--wandered sadly, with his companion, Leggiero, through the lagoons of the lower Po, until he had closed her eyes, and wept over her cold corpse tears of desperation. Onward he wandered then, through forests and over mountains, ever pursued by the agents of the Pope and of Austria. Fate, however, spared him, to suffer anew both danger and fatigue, and to reap some triumphs too. The tyrants of Italy again found him upon their tracks--those tracks indelibly stained by them with tears and blood. Ill was it for them that he escaped until the day when they, in turn, took to flight, and, like cowards, left their tables spread for him, while the carpets of their superb palaces bore the imprint of the rough shoes of his Thousand. Meanwhile, however, our tale has brought the Recluse to Venice to witness the liberty for which he had sighed so much. It was then that the lagunes, covered with gondolas, saluted the red shirt as the token of national redemption, and sad memories faded in the light of the joy and freedom of that Queen of the Adriatic. CHAPTER LII. THE SPY IN VENICE It is eleven o'clock at night. The canals of Venice are covered with gondolas, and the Place of St. Mark, illuminated, is so crowded with people that scarcely a stone of the pavement is visible. From the balcony of the Zecchini Palace, on the north side of the Piazza, the Recluse has saluted the people, and the redeemed city ("redeemed," yes, but by a bargain--the ancient bulwark of European civilization was, alas! bought and sold a bargain between courts), and that salutation was frantically responded to by an exulting and affected multitude. And above all was the beholder struck by the aspect of the populace, as he said to himself, "The stigma which despotism imprints upon the human face can even be depicted here." A people, once the ancient rulers of the world, transformed by the foreigner and the priest, whose rod of deception, dipped in the chemistry of superstition, is able to change good into evil, gold to dross, and the most prosperous of nations into one of beggars and sacristans; these have bartered away this noble city of the sea, which calls herself "daughter of Rome"--left her disheartened, dishonored, and defamed! And he who loved the people cried out in the anguish of his soul, "Alas, that it should be so!" But moved as he was by the contemplation of the scene, nevertheless he did not fail to cast a scrutinizing look over the buzzing crowd. After a life of sixty years, into which so many events had been crowded, the man of the people was not wanting in experience that enabled him to analyze fairly the component parts of a densely-packed crowd, among whom were hidden the thief, the assassin, the spy, and the hireling of the priest. And many such were purposely mingled with the good and honest of that population. While thoughtfully gazing, as we have said, upon the assembled people, a slight touch upon his shoulder made him aware of Attilio's presence. "Do you see," said the young Roman to him, "that scoundrel's face, whose head is covered with a cap of the Venetian fashion, standing amongst those simple Venetian souls, but as easy to be distinguished as a viper amongst lizards, or a venomous tarantula amongst ants? When such reptiles wind about in a crowd, it is not without a motive; he is sent from Rome, and there is certainly something new in store for us. That follow is Cencio. I must look to him a little!" Our readers will remember the subaltern agent of Cardinal Procorpio, for whom Gianni had rented a room in sight of Manlio's studio. After his employers had been hanged, he had been promoted to a higher office, that of principal agent to his Eminence Cardinal --------, the Pope's prime minister. Cencio, once a Liberal, afterwards a traitor, had made profitable use of his knowledge of some of the democrats of Rome, and was, therefore, prized as a secret agent by the Cardinal's tribunal. We shall presently see what his mission to Venice had been. Meantime, in a saloon in the Zecchini Palace, closely filled with guests, amongst the brightest of the Venetian beauties, shone our three heroines, Irene, Julia, and Clelia. The Venetian youths, accustomed to contemplate the charms of the daughters of the Queen of the Adriatic, were nevertheless astounded at the enchanting appearance of these three Roman ladies. We say three Romans, because Julia had by this time espoused her Muzio, and, although an affectionate daughter of her own dear native land, she was proud of her adopted country and called herself a Roman. Irene was a little older than her companions, but had preserved so much freshness, that her extremely majestic carriage covered the difference of years, and she had so much the perfection of a matron about her, that she could well have served as a model to an artist wishing to portray one of those grand Roman matrons of Cornelia's time. Marriage had not changed her younger and equally lovely companion; and the trio formed such an ornament to that drawing-room that the Venetian youths fluttered around them perfectly dazzled and amazed. By the side of Clelia were Manlio and the gentle Silvia. Of all our ladies only the Signora Aurelia was missing, and she had ended her unintentionally adventurous career by marrying the good-natured Captain Thompson, to whom she clung like the ivy to the oak; and although the sea was still a little repugnant to her, on account of that storm in which she had suffered so much, yet the billows had lost much of their terror, now her British sea-lion stood by her side to guard her. Orazio and Muzio were standing together in a corner of the room talking over the events of the day, when Attilio, going up to them, made them acquainted with his discovery, and after some consultation they started off in company to the Piazza di San Marco. Not a few vain efforts did the three friends make to break through the crowd before they succeeded in at last reaching the object of their search, and whilst General Garibaldi, recalled by the people to the balcony, was again addressing the crowd, he saw his three young friends surround the fictitious Venetian. The iron hand of Orazio grasped the wrist of the agent like a vice, and Muzio, whose voice the scoundrel had formerly heard, fixing his glittering eyes upon him, said in a low tone, "Cencio, come with us." The tool of the priests, the traitor of the meeting at the Baths of Caracalla, trembled from head to foot, his florid face became pale as that of a corpse, and, without articulating a word, he walked forward in the direction indicated by Muzio, between the other two Romans, who pushed him unresistingly on. CHAPTER LIII. THE "GOVERNMENT" When one thinks upon the hardly accomplished union of this our Italy, and of the rulers who have "led" her over the thorny path she has trodden, one can not but bow before the wisdom of Providence, who has uplifted her until she has constituted herself a nation. Often in meditating upon this--our beautiful, grand, but unhappy native land--we in imagination have pictured her as a chariot drawn with patient toil by the generous portion of the people, having for device the "good of all," preceded by the star of Providence like a shining beacon, with the wicked host of rulers and their immense retinue following behind, disconcerted and fatigued, holding on to and endeavoring to draw back the vehicle of the State, even at the risk of destroying it in their efforts; while the people, impoverished, checked, and humiliated by that heavy rabble tugging in the rear, remain submissive and constant in their labors, clearing away the obstacles that cross their path towards redemption, and proceeding gradually forward without despairing of a future reparation. Reparation, indeed! From whom, my countrymen, do you expect reparation? From the re-assured professors of priestcraft, of Jesuitism, and of imposture, who have been restored to your towns and villages at the expense of your patrimony to maintain you in ignorance and in misery? One of the many means of corruption employed by the powerful to render the populace slaves, is at the present day the "black division"--the priests. Kings who no longer believe in them have begun to use them to control the people, and keep them from justice, light, and liberty, in the name of "religion." This is the "reparation" which thou awaitest, _popolo infelice!_ Reparation--and how shouldst thou demand or deserve it, who kneelest daily and hourly at the feet of a lying and chuckling priesthood? In the mean time, however, one of the agents of this priesthood is walking, with his wicked head held down, in the grasp of Orazio and Attilio; Muzio going before to open the way through the multitude of people, and thus the four arrived finally at a tavern in the Vicola degli Schiavoni. CHAPTER LIV. THE SENTENCE OF DEATH "Let us pass quickly and on tiptoe that mass of corruption and slaughter called the Papacy," says Guerrazzi; or, to quote his own indignant Italian: "_Passiamo presto, e sulla punta dei piedi, quel macchio di fimo e di sangue che si chiama Papato_." The Popes, who call themselves the vicegerents of Christ, slaughter men with chassepôts, play the executioner upon their political enemies, and instruct the world in the science of tortures, Inquisitions, _autos-da fe_, and murder. In former days many unhappy nations had the misfortune to suffer therefrom. Spain, for example, who has recently thrown off the yoke, for centuries groaned under the tortures of Rome. Even now the priest of Christ in the Vatican satiates his sanguinary vengeance in various ways, having recourse to the dagger, poison, brigandage, and murders of all kinds and degrees. In the Roman tribunal the sentence of death had been long pronounced against Prince T------, the brother of our Irene; and Cencio, with eight cut-throats of the Holy See under his command, was under orders to take advantage of the tumult arising upon the arrival of Garibaldi in Venice to execute the atrocious decree. The eight accomplices of the spy had been posted in the immediate neighborhood of the Hôtel Victoria, in all the ways by which he could possibly arrive. Four were to hire a gondola and ply at the steps, with secret instructions to dispatch the gondoliers if necessary, that there might be no witness to lay the charge against them. Cencio had not undertaken to perform the actual deed, but simply the task of following the Prince's movements. Fortunately for the Roman noble the spy failed in his scent, and was now not only in the clutches of our three friends who had captured him, but in those of a fourth personage, who was still more formidable to him--no other, in fact, than our old acquaintance Gasparo. Gasparo, after the events narrated in the preceding chapters, had accompanied his new friends to territory that was not Papal, and had offered his services as attendant to Prince T------. He had therefore accompanied him to Venice. Whilst his master roamed through the saloons of the Zecchini Palace, the watchful follower, who had remained on the threshold to enjoy the sight of that brilliant scene, saw the three Romans whom he loved as sons penetrate into the crowd. He determined to keep near them, and found himself shortly after in the tavern of Vicola dei Schiavoni, at the heels of Cencio. It would be no easy matter to describe the terror and confusion of the clerical Sinon surrounded by our four friends. They led him to an out-of-the-way room on the upper story, and desired the waiter to bring them something to drink, and then leave them, as they had some business to transact. When the waiter had obeyed them, and departed, they locked the door, and ordering the agent to sit against the wall, they moved to the end of the table, and, seating themselves upon a bench, placed their elbows on the table and fixed a look upon the knavish wretch which made him tremble. Under any other circumstances the wretch would have inspired compassion, and might have been forgiven for his treachery, in consideration of his present agony of fear. The four friends, cold, impassive, and relentless, satisfied themselves for some time with fixing their eyes upon the traitor, while he, quite beside himself, with wide-opened mouth and eyes, was doing his best to articulate something; but all he could mutter was, "Signore--I--am--not," and other less intelligible monosyllables. The calmness of the four Romans was somewhat savage, but for their deep cause of hatred; and if any one could have contemplated the scene he would have been reminded forcibly of the fable of the rat under the inexorable gaze of the terrier-dog, which watches every movement, and then pounces out upon it, crunching all the vermin's bones between its teeth. Or could a painter have witnessed that silent assembly, he would have found a subject for a splendid picture of deep-seated wrath and terror. We have already described the persons of the three friends--true types of the ancient Roman--with fine and artistic forms. Gasparo was even more striking--one of those heads which a French photographist would have delighted to "take" as the model of an Italian brigand--and the picture would have been more profitable than the likeness of any European sovereign. He was indeed, in his old age, a superb type of a brigand, but a brigand of the nobler sort. One of those who hate with a deadly hatred the cutthroat rabble; one who never stained himself with any covetous or infamous action, as the paid miscreants of the priests do, who commit acts that would fill even a panther's heart with horror. Even the successor of Gianni would have made a valuable appearance in a _quadro caratteristico_, for certainly no subject could have served better to display panic in all its disgusting repulsiveness. Glued to the wall behind him, he would, if his strength had equalled his wish, have knocked it down, or bored his way through it to get farther from those four terrible countenances, which stared impassively and mercilessly at him, meditating upon his ruin, perhaps upon his death. The austere voice of Muzio, already described as the chief of the Roman contropolizia, was the first to break that painful silence. "Well, then, Cencio," he began, "I will tell you a story which, as you are a Roman, you may perhaps know, but, at all events, you shall know it now. One day our forefathers, tired of the rule of the first king of Rome--who, amongst other amiable things, had killed his brother Remus with a blow because he amused himself with jumping over the walls he had erected around Rome--our fathers, I repeat, by a _senattis consultant_, decided to get rid of their king, who was rather too meddlesome and despotic. _Detto-fatto!_ they rushed upon him with their daggers, and, although he struggled valorously, Romulus fell under their blows. But, now the deed was done, it was necessary to invent a stratagem, for the Roman people were somewhat partial to their warlike king. They accordingly accepted the advice of an old senator, who said, 'We will tell the people that Mars (the father of Romulus) has descended amongst us, and, after reproaching us for thieving a little too much, and being indignant to see the son of a god at our head, has carried him off to heaven.' "'But what are we to do with the body?' asked several of the senators. "'With the body?' repeated the old man; 'nothing is easier.' And drawing forth his dagger, he commenced cutting the corpse in pieces. When this dissection was finished, he said, 'Let each of you take one of these pieces, hide it under your robe, and then go and throw it into the Tiber. It is evening now, and by to-morrow morning the sea-monsters will have given a decent burial to the founder of Rome.' "Now, Cencio, don't you think that, as regards your own end, and not being king of Rome, or son of a god, such a death would be very honorable to you who are nothing more than a miserable traitor?" "For God's sake," screamed the terrified agent, trembling like a child, "I will do whatever you demand of me; but, for the love you bear your friends, your wives, your mothers, do not put me to such a cruel death." "Do you talk of a cruel death? Can there be a death too cruel for a spy--a traitor?" asked Muzio. "Have you already forgotten," he continued, "vile reptile, selling the Roman youths to the priests at the Baths of Caracalla; and that they narrowly escaped being slaughtered by your infamy?" Tears continued to roll from the coward's eyes, as Muzio continued: "What about your arrival in Venice? What does it mean? Who sent you? What did you come here for, dog?" "I will tell all," was the wretched man's reply- "You had better tell all," repeated Muzio, "or we shall see with edge of knife whether you have concealed any thing in that malicious and treacherous carcass of yours." "All, all!" cried Cencio like a maniac; and, as if forgetful of what he had to relate or overpowered by great fright, he appeared not to know how or where to begin. "You are doubtless more prompt in your narration to the Holy Office, stammerer," grumbled Gasparo. "Begin!" shouted Orazio; and Attilio, in a stem voice, also cried "Begin!" not having spoken until then. A moment of death-like silence followed before Cencio commenced thus:- "If the life of Prince T------is dear to you--" "Prince T------, the brother of Irene," exclaimed Orazio, clearing the table at one bound, and grasping the traitor by the throat. Had Cencio been clutched in the claws of a tiger, he would not have felt more helpless than he did now, held by the fingers of the "Prince of the Roman campagna." Attilio said gently, "Brother, have patience--let him speak; if you choke him we shall gain no information." The suggestion made by the chief of the Three Hundred seemed reasonable to Orazio, and he withdrew his impatient grip from Cencio's throat. "If the life of Prince T------ is dear to you," again recommenced the knave, "let us go all together in search of him, and inform him that eight emissaries of the Holy Office are lurking about the Hôtel Victoria, where he is lodging, in order to assassinate him." CHAPTER LV. DEATH TO THE PRIESTS "Death to the priests!" shouted the people. "_Death to no one!_" replied the General to the crowd from the balcony, in answer to their cry. "_Death to no one!_ Yet none are worthier of death than this villainous sect, which for private ends, disguised as religious, has made Italy 'the land of the dead,' a burial-ground of greatness! Beccaria! thy doctrines are true and right. The shedding of blood is impious. But I know not if Italy will ever be able to free herself from those who tyrannize over her soul and body without annihilating them with the sword for pruning-hook, even to the last branch!" These reflections passed through the mind of the man of the people, although he rebuked the populace. Meanwhile, those of them who had not wholly heard the words uttered by Garibaldi from the balcony, but only the cry of "death!" which thousands of excited voices had re-echoed--those of the people, we repeat, who were farthest off from the General and near the palace of the Patriarch, advanced like the flood of a torrent precipitating itself from a mountain, and attacked the prelate's abode, overturning all obstacles opposed to their fury. In a few minutes every saloon, every room in this fine building was invaded, and through the windows all those religious idols with which the priests so unblushingly deceive the people were seen flying in all directions. Many artists and lovers of the beautiful would have lamented and cried, "Scandal! sacrilege!" at the destruction of such works of art. And truly, many very rare and precious master-pieces, under the form of saint or Madonna or Bambino, were broken to pieces and utterly ruined in this work of destruction. Amongst the cunning acts of the priesthood, wealthy as they have been made by the stupidity of the "faithful," has ever been that of employing the most illustrious artists to portray and dignify their legends. Hence the Michael Angelos and the Raphaels of all periods were lavishly supported by them, and the people, who might have become persuaded of the foolishness of their credulity, and of the impostures of the new soothsayers of Rome, continued to respect the idols of their tyrants by reason of Italian instincts, because these were master-pieces of noble work. But is not the first master-piece of a people liberty and national dignity? And all those wonders of art, although wonders, if they perpetuate with an evil charm our servility, our degradation--oh! would it not be better for them to be sent to the infernal regions? However, be they precious or worthless works, the people were overturning them and throwing them out upon the pavement that night. And the Patriarch? Woe to him if he had fallen into the hands of the enraged multitude! But their sacred skin is dear to those descendants of the apostles! Champions of the faith they may be, but not martyrs. Of martyrdom those rosy-faced prelates wish to know nothing themselves if they can avoid it. His Eminence, at the first outbreak of popular indignation, had vanished, gaining, by a secret door, one of his gondolas, in which he escaped in safety. In the mean time, the cry of the Recluse, "_Morte a nessino!_" was taken up by the crowd, and at last reached the ears of the sackers of the Patriarch's palace. That voice, ever trusted and respected by the people, calmed the anger of the passionate multitude, and in a few moments order and tranquillity were again re-established. CHAPTER LVI. PRINCE T------. In the shameful times when the right of the "coscia" existed, princes had little necessity to woo a humble maiden, or to sue for her favor. At the present day things have assumed a different aspect. Although princes exist who possess as much pride of birth, or even more, than those of old days, still we see many obliged to conform to more moderate pretensions in matters of the heart, aspiring humbly to the favor of a plebeian divinity. Such were the thoughts of poor Prince T-. He stood in the vestibule of the Zecchini Palace, admiring the throng of graceful visitors. In the crowded saloons it was difficult to do justice to the faces, and still less to the deportment of the ladies. From that part of the vestibule, on the first step, where the Roman prince had established himself, observation was easier. Suddenly, from the midst of the crowd emerged, as if by destiny, one of those forms which, once seen, are reflected in the soul forever. Golden-brown eyes, hair, and eyelashes adorned a face which would have served Titian as a model of beauty--in a word, he saw the type of the Venetian ideal. The Prince, until then immovable in the crowd hurrying to and fro, was struck by a glance of those wonderful eyes, which seemed to look at every thing and every body, without for a moment fixing their glance on any. As if under a spell, the Prince rushed after the footsteps of the unknown lady, whose light foot seemed to float over the ground. He hurried on after her, but the wish to overtake her was one thing, the capability another. The beautiful and graceful girl, either more active or more accustomed to fashionable throngs in Venice, was already seated in a gondola, and had ordered the gondolier to put off when the Prince reached the edge of the canal. What could he do? throw himself into the water, and seize on the gunwale of the lady's boat, like a madman, begging a word for pity's sake? This was his first impulse; yet a bath in the waters of the lagoon in March would be no joke, while to present himself before the lady of his thoughts in the condition which would result from immersion, would be unpropitious, and an especial trial to the dignity of a man of rank. He decided on taking a more rational course, that of embarking in a gondola and following the incognita. "Row hard," said the Prince to the gondolier, "and if you overtake that black gondola I will reward you well." Having pointed out the boat to be pursued, the gondolier cried "Avanti" to his companion at the prow, and turning up his red shirt sleeves (red shirts being the prevailing fashion just then among the Venetian rowers, in honor of the guest of the day), the gondolier prepared to use the oar with that grace and vigor which is not to be rivalled by any boatmen in the world. "Onward! onward! _gondola mio!_ onward and overtake that too swift boat which bears away my life; and why should not that lovely girl be such to me, the Adriatic beauty of which I have dreamed a thousand times, when Venice was enslaved as my poor Rome still is? Yet why did I only catch a glimpse of her? Why did her dazzling eye thus meet mine, subdue me in a moment, and make me hers forever, only to disappear? and has not her magic glance wounded others as well as me? The very atmosphere around her intoxicated me; must it not have affected all near her? _Ah, Dio!_ is this love at last? Is this that transient passion which men enjoy as they bite at doubtful fruits and throw them away when tasted? or is it that spiritual love which brings the creature near to God, which transforms the miseries of life, its dangers, death itself, into ineffable happiness? Yes! it is that; and now, come ye powerful of the earth, dare but to touch my mistress whom I love with indescribable passion, approach her with an army of ruffians at your back, profane but the hem of her gown, and my sword shall defy all for her sweet sake. Onward! onward!" cried the Prince, interrupting his own soliloquy. "Row hard, and if one crown be not enough, you shall have ten. Onward!" "But suppose she were a plebeian? Well! in the name of heaven what is a plebeian? When God created man did he make patricians and plebeians? Does not the power that awes the vulgar come from tyrants and despots?" "Ah! if that beautiful young creature should prove an impure, a nameless one!" "Oh, blasphemer of love, cease your profanity! How could a guilty woman's face show such pure transcendent loveliness!" Annita _was_ a plebeian. The entrance to her dwelling showed that. There stood no columned porch where the gondola drew up before a simple door-step. The plain little staircase was bare; no rich vases with exotic flowers stood about the threshold. A few flower-pots adorned the window-sills, for Annita loved flowers as well as a princess could love them, but hers were little, simple blossoms--I will not say poor ones, for they were dear to the young girl, a very treasure to her. An aged lady, who by day would have attracted the attention of every one--so great was the anxiety depicted on her face--had awaited until that moment, eleven at night, her beloved Annita, who, with the curiosity of a child, had desired, like others, to have a close view of the man of the people. Mario, her only brother, being absent, the mother had confided her to the care of the family gondolier. When Monna Rosa had ascertained that the newly arrived gondola was that which she expected, she left the balcony, where she had been watching with great misgivings for its arrival, and rapidly descended the stairs, lantern in hand, to receive her beloved child. The two women were clasped in each other's arms, as if after a long separation, when the Prince arrived, and taking advantage of the open door, and of the evident attention of the mother and daughter, he entered the house with the audacity of a soldier on a conquered territory. At length, disengaged from each other's arms, the mother was exclaiming in a tone of gentle reproach, "Why so late, Annita?" when both started on perceiving the presence of a stranger. Having entered on a bold adventure, the Prince felt that he must carry it through with spirit. He therefore advanced towards the young girl, who, when so near, seemed more beautiful than ever. He was about to try to find words to excuse his impetuous and irrepressible admiration, when at that moment an iron grasp from behind seized his wrist, and with a shake that made him stagger, separated him from the women. From a third gondola, which had arrived a short time after the two first, there had sprung out swiftly and resolutely a new and youthful actor on this interesting scene. Tall in stature, vigorous and handsome in person, the last arrival wore the red shirt, and on the left side of his broad breast bore that distinctive mark of the brave, "The Medal of the Thousand." Morosini was Annitas lover. An attentive observer would have read in the young girl's face a world of affectionate emotion at the sight of her beloved, succeeded by an expression of affright, when his manly, sonorous voice, addressed the Prince, "You are mistaken, sir! You will not find here the game you seek; retrace your steps, and make your search elsewhere." The shaking he had received, and the rough words that followed, had aroused the Prince's ire, and as he was not wanting in courage, he answered his interlocutor in the same tone. "Insolent rascal! I came not here to affront, but to offer respectful homage. As for your impertinence, if you are a man of Rome, you will give me satisfaction. Here is my card. I shall be found at the Victoria Hotel, and at your service, until mid-day to-morrow." "I will not keep you waiting," was Morosini's reply, and with this the disconcerted Prince flung away. CHAPTER LVII. THE DUEL The Italian sportsman does not pursue the partridge in the thicket, but after covering up the waters of all the small pools save one, he there awaits his sport with shot, with net, or with bird-lime, at the moment that the innocent creature seeks refuge and refreshment. It is during the sultry hours that the ploughman lies in wait at the watering-place, to restore his rebel oxen to the yoke from which they have escaped. The corsair, who would be in vain sought on the ocean, is trapped at the mouth of his hiding place, to which he conducts his prey. Such was the reasoning of our four Romans as regards Prince T-, for whom they vainly sought in every hole and corner. After they had discovered and sent home the cut-throats of the Holy Office, through the forced assistance of Cencio, they placed themselves on the lookout, in the vicinity of the Victoria Hotel, awaiting the appearance of T-. In fact, about twelve o'clock, he made his appearance, and was followed to his room by his friends, who made him acquainted with the design of the assassin, and other circumstances. The Prince was too reserved to inform his friends of his approaching duel, especially Orazio, whose ardent nature he well knew, and who would not have yielded to any other the office of second; still he needed a second, and taking advantage of a moment's animated discussion among his companions, he summoned Attilio to the balcony by a glance, and asked him to remain with him for that night. Orazio, Muzio, and Gasparo finally took leave, and Attilio remained, under pretext of particular business. At the first dawn of day, a young man in a red shirt knocked at the door of a room marked No. 8 in the Victoria Hotel, and presented to Prince T------ a cartel, signed Morosini, and thus worded:-- "I accept your challenge, and await you at the door of your hotel in my gondola. I have weapons with me, but you had better bring your own, in case mine should not be suitable. The seconds will regulate the conditions of the duel. "Morosini." After the Prince had risen, and summoned Attilio, he introduced him to the second of Morosini, and in a few minutes the conditions were settled as to arms, which were to be pistols; distance, twenty steps, to be walked over, firing _à volonté_. The ground chosen was behind the Murazzi, to which the combatants could immediately repair. And truly, when one has to die, or to kill, it is best over as soon as possible, because even the stoutest hearts are disinclined to either alternative, and wish the time of expectancy abridged. What shall I say of duelling? I have always thought it disgraceful that men can not come to an understanding without killing one another. But, on the other hand, it is not time for us, who are still oppressed by the powerful of the earth, still the despised of Europe, to preach individual or general peace, to advocate the forgiveness of private outrages, when we are often so publicly outraged. We, who are trampled upon in our rights, our consciences, our honor, by the vilest section of our nation--we, who, in order to be allowed life, consideration, and protection, are compelled to debase ourselves, must not quite despoil ourselves of our one protection! Away with duelling, then, when we shall have a constitution, a well-organized government--when we shall enjoy our rights within as well as without; but, in the present dangerous times for honor and right, we can not proclaim peace. Meanwhile, the gondolas carrying the combatants proceeded towards the Murazzi, the rowers for some time coasting the immense rampart constructed by the Venetian republic as a defense against the fury of the Adriatic, and finally disembarking their passengers on the deserted shore, which is dry when the north winds or the siroccos blow. The antagonists leaped on the sand, chose a convenient place, and, after having measured twenty steps, the seconds handed the pistols to the principals, who placed themselves on the two spots marked on the sand. Attilio had to clap his hands three times, and at the third signal the combatants were to walk forward and fire à volonté. Already two signals were given; Attilio's hands were again raised to make the third, when a voice cried, from the spot where the gondolas awaited, "Hold!" The four men all turned in that direction, and saw one of the gondoliers, a venerable, gray-haired man, who was advancing towards them. "Hold!" repeated the old man; and he came forward without stopping until he stood between the two antagonists. Then he spoke, with a somewhat faltering voice, yet still in a manly tone, with such force as could hardly have been expected in one of his breeding and age- "Hold! sons of one mother! The act you are about to accomplish will stain one of you with the blood of a compatriot--blood which might flow for the welfare of this unhappy land, which has still so much to do ere she can attain the independence she has aimed at for so many centuries. The vanquished will pass away without one word of love or blessing from those dear to him; the victor will remain for life with the sting of remorse in his heart. You, by whose bronzed and noble face I recognize a child of this unhappy land, has not Italy still many enemies? does she not need all her offspring to loosen the chains of centuries? Abandon, then, this fraticidal struggle, I beseech you, in the name of our common mother! Why should you gratify the enemies of Italy by the murder of her friends? You came forth antagonists, return companions and brothers!" The waves of the Adriatic were breaking with more effect against the rocks that border Murazzi than the patriotic and humane words of the old man on the obstinate will of the two angry compatriots; and, with a certain aristocratic impulse of pride, the Prince exclaimed to his counsellor "Retire!" The seconds recommenced with the same number of signals as before, and at the third the adversaries marched towards one another, with pistol cocked in the right hand, with eyes unflinchingly fixed on each other, and with the deliberate intention of homicide. About the twelfth step the Prince fired, his ball grazed the side of Morosini's neck, blood flowed, but the wound was slight. The soldier of Calatafimi, cooler than his antagonist, approached closer. At about eight paces he fired, and the brother of Irene sank on the ground--the ball had pierced his heart. The Holy Office of the Vatican laughed at the news, with the infernal joy which it experiences every time that blood shed by private discord reddens the unhappy soil. And who spilt that Italian blood? An Italian hand, alas! consecrated to the redemption of his country. How often it has been thus! CHAPTER LVIII. ROME Ok the second of December, the despot of the Seine, the false Emperor, the enemy of all liberty, and the great ally of all tyrants, after seventeen years of unrighteous rule, pretended, with the same hypocrisy with which he kept her enslaved, to liberate the Niobe of nations, the old metropolis of the world--the ruler, the martyr, the glory of the earth. He carried on the work of Divine vengeance. Attila, at the head of his ferocious tribes, had conquered Rome, destroyed her, and exterminated her people. Was not this God's justice? "Whosoever sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed!" The ancient Romans ruled the world by subjugating the remotest nations, pillaging and breaking them down. Slavery, misery, and ruin, their ministers, compelled the nations of the earth to submit to their tyrants. The successor of the Attilas, not less a robber than they, threw himself on an easy prey, and his false heart beat with joy when he clutched the victim. Yet even this action was but a caricature of the actions of the Attilas who have punished Rome. To accomplish great deeds, even of the evil sort, there must be great hearts, and he has a heart both little and cowardly. In all he does, we can see he intends to imitate his uncle; but the want of genius and energy makes the attempt a failure. Attila conquered, and made a pile of ruins of the proud victress-city. The modern Attila, in a Jesuit guise, did not destroy, did not ruin, because he considered the prey as his own property. Afterwards, enfeebled by advancing years and luxury, his throne shaken to its foundation, he renewed his sinister undertakings in America, where he attempted to deal a death-blow to the sanctuary of the world's liberty--the great Republic--by building an Austrian empire at her gates. And the Italian Government has accepted the bidding of the false Emperor, acting as the _sbirro_ of the Vatican, to hinder the Romans from liberating themselves, obliging them to submit to the government of the Holy Office, to deny to Italy her capital, though proclaimed by her parliament. We firmly believe that a more cowardly Government than the Italian can not be found in ancient or modern history. It must be accepted as the fate of humanity to find ever side by side with so much good so much evil, humiliation, and wickedness. We say side by side, because it can not be denied that the unity of Italy is a marvel of good accomplished, in spite of all the efforts made by rulers and selfish factions to hold back this unfortunate country, by impoverishing and perverting it, and by every means of depredation and deception. But what a Government! Can, indeed, this agency of corruption be called a Government? And the unhappy people! what are they? Half of them bought over to hold the other half in bondage and in misery. Hail, brave Mexicans! We envy your valor and constancy in freeing your land from the mercenaries of despotism! Accept, gallant descendants of Columbus, from your Italian brethren, congratulations on your redeemed liberty! On you was to be imposed a like tyranny, and you swept it away, as a noble and free river sweeps away impurity. We alone--talkative, presumptuous, vain, boasting of glory, liberty, greatness--are yet enchained!--blindfolded, freeing ourselves with words, but unfit to accomplish by deeds that political reconstruction which alone would give us the right to sit down beside the other free nations. Trembling before the despotism of an unrighteous foreign tyrant, we dare not, for fear of him, walk about in our own homes, tell the world we are our own masters, or tear from our wrists the fetters which he has fixed there; and, more humiliating and degrading still, he has left the prey, which the indignation of the world forbade his appropriating, and has said, "Keep her, cowards; become cut-throats in my stead; but beware of meddling with my will!" Oh, Rome! Thou who art truly "the only one!" Rome the eternal! Once above all human greatness! And now--now, how degraded! Thy resurrection must yet be a catastrophe, and a revolution, to shake the rest of the world! CHAPTER LIX. VENICE AND THE BUCENTAUER The stains of slavery are only to be finally washed out with blood. The more intelligent and wealthier classes ought once for all to understand this, and to spare humanity the false solutions which settle nothing. In other days, Venice, following the impetus given by her sister Lombardy, effaced the many years of her humiliation and servility in blood. It is not so now. She emerges from foreign dominion, not through her own acts, but by the courage of others. Oh! if only her liberty had been won by the valor of her brethren! But no, she was redeemed by foreign swords. Sadowa, the glory of Prussia, freed Venice, and the Italian nation asks no veil to hide this dishonor. Nations, like individuals, require dignity to live--require the life of the soul besides mere physical existence, to which our rulers would condemn us. Once the Queen of the Adriatic carried her proud lion into the far east, repressed the victorious Ottoman, and dictated laws to him. The monarchs of Europe, invoked and backed by the jealous Italian States, conspired together against Venice, and were driven off by the amphibious and brave republicans. Who would now recognize those proud compatriots of the Dandoli and the Morosini in the ranks of men who require the foreigner to free them, and, when free, throw themselves among the offscourings of "the Moderates"--a party ready for any abasement, for any infamy. How tyranny alters the noblest beings, and emasculates them! Take comfort, however, Venetians; you do not stand alone, for such as you have I seen the descendants of Leonidas and Cincinnatus. Slavery impressed on the forehead of man such a mark of infamy as to confound him with the beasts of the forest. However, humbled as they have been, and still are, the Italians do not neglect their amusements and their festivals. "Bread and pleasure!" they cry to their tyrants, as of old they cried to their tribunes; and the priest, to please, cheat, and corrupt them, has surrounded himself by a mass of ostentatious ceremonies, surpassing all that the impostors of old furnished, to conceal fraud by magnificent display. Do not talk of politics, do not even think of them, but pay, and despoil yourselves with a good grace, so as to support your masters richly, then they will give you to satiety masses, processions, festas, games, amusements, and sensual pleasures. The sailing of the Bucentaur was one of the ceremonies very dear to the people when Venice was free, when it had its own Government and Doge. On the day fixed for the festival, the Bucentaur, the most splendid galley of the Republic, decked out with as much ornament and as many banners as possible, glittering with gilding and rich hangings, bore the Doge, the Ministers of State, and the most remarkable beauties of the day, all in gala costume. They started from the palace of St. Mark, and rowed towards the Adriatic. Many other galleys formed a procession, following in the wake of the Bucentaur, as well as a large number of gondolas decked for the holiday, and containing the largest part of the population, male and female. Oh, beautiful wert thou in those days, ill-fated Queen! when thy Dandoli, thy Morosini, sought, in the name of Venice, to propitiate the waves on behalf of the bold navigators of the Adriatic. Hail to thee, Republic of nine centuries! true mother of Republics! Yet if in thy greatness thou hadst associated with thine Italian sisters instead of hating them, the foreigner would not have trodden us all down and enslaved us. Hide the wounds that your chains have made, smooth the lines that misery has impressed on your forehead. Do not forget, whether rejoicing or sorrowing, those humiliations through which you have passed, and henceforth remember that only when united can Italy defy the great foreign powers who are jealous of her uprise. General Garibaldi stood leaning against a balcony of St. Mark's Palace, which looked over the lagoon, in the company of our fair Romans, with Muzio, Orazio, and Gasparo. He was listening to an old cicerone, who was dilating on the ancient glories of the Republic, and after having spoken on a variety of subjects, this individual had arrived at the description of the festival of the Bucentaur. He expressed his regret at not being able to see one of them nowadays, and pointed to the spot whence from the mole started the famous craft, when suddenly Muzio's eye was arrested by a well-known face, which appeared at the entrance of the cabin of a gondola drawn up at the gates of the palace. Muzio disappeared like lightning, and stood before Attilio, who descended, pressed his friend's right hand, and could only articulate the melancholy word, "Dead!" "It was fated, then, that this relic of Roman greatness should come here to die," murmured the ex-President, having partly heard, partly guessed the tidings of Attilio. "He died like a brave man," said the chief of the Three Hundred. "And many Italians know how to die so," thought Muzio; "but it is sweeter to die fighting against the oppressors!" "I will return to our party," said Muzio, "and consult with the General, that he may turn our excursion in another direction, so as not to expose Irene and Orazio to the shock of meeting the remains of their beloved one; I will afterwards rejoin you with Gasparo." CHAPTER LX. THE BURIAL Foscolo has these lines-- A stone to mark my bones from the vaut crop That death soirs on the land or in the sea. Admiring the mournful poems of this great singer, we are, like him, advocates for honoring the great dead, and truly we believe that doing homage to departed virtue is an incentive to make the living follow in its path. When one thinks, however, of the gaudy pageants with which the priesthood deck the last journey of the dead, one can not help deploring the useless show and the expenditure. Death that true type of the equality of human beings--death which effectually destroys all worldly superiority, and confounds in one democracy of decay the emperor and the beggar--death, the leveller, must be astonished at so much difference between the funerals of the rich and the poor! He must wonder at so much preparation for the burial of a corpse, and laugh, if death can laugh, at so much mockery of woe, which is frequently the cover for secret joy in the soul of the greedy heir, while in the largest number it is mere indifference. Then the hired weepers--what a pitiful spectacle those are! We have seen in Moldavia, and we believe the custom is adopted in other countries, that at the funeral of a Bojar a number of women are hired to weep, and what tears they shed! what shouts do those miserable beings utter! As to the grief they must have felt, it was measured by their pay. These mourners have sometimes returned to our memory while reading parliamentary debates during which certain hired people, or those who hope for hire, burst out into a profusion of "_bravi" and "bravissimi_" at the insulting speeches, or often at the unprincipled projects, of this or that prime minister. Prince T------'s funeral was largely attended, because it was known that he was a man of mark. Among the crowd of people who followed the remains, most of them with the greatest indifference, there could be distinguished a few really sad faces. Those were the friends of the dead man, Attilio, Muzio, and Gasparo. The latter especially had eyes swollen by weeping. The strong nature of the old Roman chief had been shaken by the loss of his friend and master to whom he had been sincerely attached--a proof at once of the kindly nature of the prince, and of the faithful heart of the exile. Was he weeping for the prince? No; for the friend and benefactor. Oh, how many true friends might the great of the world possess, if they would but open their hearts to generosity--if they would soften the injustice of fate towards those upon whom she lays an unequal hand! Many there are among the higher classes, I know, who are beneficence itself, and some of the women of the noblest houses are distinguished for their amiability and goodness. But these instances are not sufficient for the suffering multitude; and the majority of the favorites of fortune are not only indifferent to the unfortunate--they seem to add voluntarily to their trials. The duty and the care of good government should be to ameliorate the poor man's condition; but, unhappily, that duty is unfulfilled, that care is not undertaken. Government thinks only of its own preservation, and of strengthening its own position; to this end it exercises corruption to obtain satellites and accomplices. The mass of the prosperous might, to a great extent, correct the capital defect of administration by relieving misery and improving the condition of the people. If the rich would thus only deprive themselves of but a small portion of their superfluities! While the poor want the very necessaries of existence, the tables of the wealthy abound with endless varieties of food, and the rarest and most costly wines. Does the rich man never feel the compunction of conscience which such shameless contrasts ought to bring? "Why such grief for the loss of one of our enemies, capitano?" These words were accompanied by a tap on Gasparo's shoulder, both proceeding from an odd-looking man, who was following in the funeral procession. Gasparo turned round, stood for a moment considering his familiar interlocutor, then uttering an exclamation little suited to the solemnity of the scene, and very surprising to those around him--"Evil be to the seventy-two! (a Roman oath), and is it really thee, Marzio?" "Who else should it be, if not your lieutenant, capitano mio?" The acquaintance of Gasparo had the type of the regular Italian brigand. The old man, during the few months of his city life, had somewhat re-polished his appearance; but Marzio, on the contrary, presented the rude aspect of the Roman bandit pure and simple. Tall and squarely-built, it was difficult to meet without a shudder the fierce look darted from those densely black eyes. His hair, black and glossy as a raven, contrasted with his beard, once as dark, now sprinkled with gray. His costume, though somewhat cleaner, differed in other respects very little from that rustic masquerade worn when he had filled the whole country with terror. The famous doublet of dark velvet was not wanting, and if there were not visible externally those indispensable brigand accessories, pistols, dagger, or a two-edged knife, it was a sign that those articles were carefully hidden within. Hats are worn in different fashions, even by brigands, and Marzio wore his a little inclined towards the right side, like a workman's. Leathern gaiters had been abandoned by Marzio, and he wore his pantaloons, loose ones of blue, with ample pockets. The occasion did not offer the two men much opportunity of conversation; but it was evident that they met with mutual pleasure and sympathy. In these times when Italian honor and glory are a mockery, the handful of men called brigands, who have for seven years sustained themselves against one large army, two other armies of carabiniers, a part of another army of national guards, and an entire hostile population--that handful of men, call them what you will, is at least brave. If you rulers, instead of maintaining the disgraceful institution of the priest, had occupied yourselves in securing the instruction of the people, these very brigands, instead of becoming the instruments of priestly reaction, would at this moment have been in our ranks, teaching us how one stout fellow can fight twenty. This, my kind word for the "honest" brigands, is not for the assassins, be it understood. And one little piece of comment upon you who sit in high places. When you assaulted the Roman walls--for religious purposes of course--robbing and slaying the poor people who thought you came as Mends, were you less brigands? No, you were worse than banditti--you were traitors. But you will tell me, "those were republicans and revolutionists, men who trouble the world." And what were you but troublers of the world, and false traitors? This difference exists between your majesties and the bandit: he robs, but seldom kills, while you have not only robbed, but stained your hands for plunder's sake in innocent blood! Pardon, reader, that this digression has left you in the midst of a funeral, and that the writer has too passionately diverged from his path to glance at brigandage on the large as well as the small scale. When the funeral party reached the cemetery, the remains of the dead were lowered into a grave, over which no voice spoke a word of eulogy. With all the will to effect good, the action of this young life had been cut short by a premature and rash death. What could be said of the blossom of noble qualities to which time was denied to bring forth their fruits? CHAPTER LXI. THE NARRATIVE We will leave our friends occupied in consoling the afflicted Irene for the loss of her brother, whom she had sincerely loved. The last of a proud race! This thought would press upon the mind of the fair lady, who, despite her willingness to form a plebeian alliance, still valued, as we have seen, the high rank of her family. Of the personal fortune which came to her through her brother's death she had not thought, for she was of too generous a nature to mingle an idea of interest with the life or death of a beloved object. The prince's family property, besides, which was in the Roman territory, had been confiscated by those worthy servants of God whose possessions are "not of this world." It was not until the friends had returned from the funeral that Attilio and Muzio had consulted with the General about imparting to his sister the knowledge of the fatal catastrophe. The General, calling Orazio and his wife into his room, then first informed them gently of the sad occurrence. Gasparo, who, with the exception of Irene, grieved the most, found some relief to his sorrow in the newly-acquired society of his former lieutenant. He was also full of the desire to hear the adventures of the man whom he had thought lost forever. The two _ci-devant_ banditti closely shut themselves up in Gasparo's room at the Victoria Hotel, at first conversing eagerly in interrogations and answers, nearly all monosyllabic, oratory not being the forte of brigands, who are more accustomed to deeds than words. After a time, the lieutenant began the following consecutive narrative:- "After you had informed me, capitano mio, that you were tired of a forest life, and felt disposed to return to a private one, I continued my usual mode of existence, without ever deviating from the plan of action you had enjoined, which was to despoil the rich and the powerful, and to relieve the needy and wretched. Our companions, formed in your school, gave me little cause to reprove them; but if one failed in duty, I punished him without pity; and thus, by the grace of God, we lived for several years. The charms of womankind were always the rock on which our hearts split; and well you know it, capitano." At these words, Gasparo began pointing to his snow-white mustache, doubtless remembering more than one gallant adventure in his career of peril. The lieutenant continued: "You remember that Nanna, the girl that I adored, and on whose account I was so much persecuted by her parents? Don't for a moment suppose that that dear creature betrayed me; no, her soul was pure as an angel's." And the bold bandit chief put his hand to his eyes. "She is dead, then!" exclaimed Gasparo. "She is dead," repeated his companion; and a long silence followed. Presently Marzio continued, "One day my Nanna, who was not well, had remained to pass the day in Marcello's house, where lived that poor Camilla, who had been violated and driven mad by the Cardinal --------. As I had to accompany my men on an important affair, the dwelling was attacked in the night, and my treasure carried off to Rome. "I was maddened, but not a stone did I leave unturned till I had discovered the place in which they had hidden Nanna. At last I learnt, through friends in that city, that the poor child was in the convent of St. Francis there, and that they had condemned her to serve the nuns, and never to see the light again. "My wife in the service of nuns, in the service of betrayed young women and of old foxes! 'I will give you a servant!' I said to myself; 'and by heaven, the devil shall have the convent and the wretches it holds.' "The night following I entered Rome alone; it seemed to me a cowardly action to have companions in an undertaking which concerned none but myself. "I bought a large bundle of dried branches in the Piazza Navona. I deposited them in a tavern, and waited till it grew late. Towards eleven, o'clock, just before the house closed, I took my burden and hurried off towards 'St. Francis.' Who can prevent a poor wretch from carrying a bundle of wood home? Besides, Rome has one good point, which is that at night no one goes about for fear of the thieves, who are permitted, by the liberality of the priestly government, to do just as they please, as long as they do not interfere in politics. "Having deposited my bundle at the gate of St. Francis, I pressed it closely in, prepared a box of lights to strike, and gave a searching look up and down the road. "As will be easily understood, after the door was burnt, there would still remain the gratings; which would leave me pulling a very long face, and with little done. I was, therefore, obliged to make a noise, to attract the attention of those within. I then crossed the little square, and hid myself in a doorway, awaiting the appearance of some one, or at least a patrol. I had not long to wait, for after a few minutes I heard the measured tread of the patrol. Then, with that swiftness of foot which you know me to possess--" Here Gasparo put in: "I should think I did! I remember that lord bishop who, having seen us at a distance on the road to Civita Vecchia, turned his horses, and set them in a gallop towards Rome, when you, in about the same time which I take to tell it, were already at the horses' heads, and had stopped the carriage." "And what a take that was, captain!" said the lieutenant. "How we did enjoy ourselves! how prodigal we were with our money for some time afterwards--I mean with the proceeds of the poverty of the descendant of the Apostles." But let us return to our story. "I flew to the bundle of wood, set it on fire, and returned to my hiding-place. In a few minutes a great blaze lit the convent gate, and soon afterwards we had a sight equal to that which the crater of a volcano shows. And the police? The sorriest rabble everywhere, but in no place have they reached such scoundrelism as in Rome. The police, naturally cowards and slow of movement, instead of running to the spot to extinguish the flames, began shouting and making a tremendous noise to arouse the neighborhood. Near the fire they never went until a goodly number of people appeared at the doors, and then hurried to the scene of action. "'It is now my turn,' said I to myself, and I rushed into the _mêlée_. The nuns should have been pleased with such a champion to deliver them, surrounded as they were by a company of roughs. "Matters could not, however, have progressed better. At the clamor from without, the nuns were not slow to awake, and the gratings flew open. They flew to the rescue themselves, with tubs, pails, basins of water--in fact, with any utensil they could lay their hands on. After pretending to assist in extinguishing the external flames, but with my eyes fixed on the interior, seeing all parties well occupied, I sprang in to the assistance of the nuns in their sanctuary. No sooner within, than I cast a searching glance npon the crowd of females assembled, and to the oldest, who appeared the Superior, I addressed myself. Grasping her arm, I exclaimed, 'Come with me!' I found more resistance in the old lady than I expected. At first she struggled, and would only walk by compulsion, collecting all her strength to oppose me: then she began to scream, and I was obliged to take her in my arms and to cover her face with a handkerchief. "I was getting away from the crowd all the time, and arriving before the door of a cell which I found open, I entered with my burden. There was a light in the room, and the bed had been occupied. I laid the abbess npon it, and locked the door. "She was astonished but not alarmed. I never saw a demon with such courage. 'Where is Nanna?' I began, in a way to startle her. No answer. 'Where is Nanna?' I repeated in a louder tone still. No answer. 'I will make you find your tongue, witch!' I cried; and drawing this bit of steel from my belt, I made it glitter before her eyes. Still no answer." "By the Virgin," said Gasparo, "these abbesses are all alike, real demoniacs. At the defense of Rome in 1849, when it was needful to pass through the convent of the Sacred Heart to occupy the walls, they kept me waiting with my company at the gate for hours without opening it. When the abbess received the Government order for us to pass, she tore it in pieces. It was only when we began to knock down the doors with our axes that she allowed us to enter." "Such was this one," recommenced Marzio. "I was not in a humor to play; I wanted Nanna, and a hundred lives such as the one before me would certainly not have stopped me from carrying out my object. Seizing her with one hand, clenching my dagger with the other, I was just touching her throat--not with the point of my dagger, for fear it should slip, but with a hairpin from her cap--I could easily see that the lady had no intention to reach martyrdom, as she was already beginning with- "'For God's sake--' "'My Nanna,' I cried, 'or I will send you to keep Satan company.' "'For God's sake let me go!' "'I released her head. She breathed hard, and passed her hand over her forehead. "'You ask for a young girl of a good family, who came from Rome, and who has been a fortnight in the convent?' "'I believe her to be the one I seek,' I replied. "'Then I will lead you to her, on the one condition that you will cause no scandal in this sacred house.' "'I desire nothing but to take my wife with me,' I answered. "When somewhat recovered, she rose from the bed and said, 'Come with me.' I followed her for some time, and arrived at a dark corridor. We descended several staircases, and by the light of a taper which I had lit (I always carried a taper with me), I discovered an iron-barred door. "'Poor Nanna,' I thought; 'what crime has the child committed that she should be thrown in this infernal den?' "Having reached the bolted door, the abbess drew forth a key, and placed it in the lock. She turned it, and motioned to me to pull the door towards me, it being too heavy for her to move. I did what I was desired, without for a moment losing sight of my guide, whose company was too interesting for me to lose. On opening the door, I made the old lady enter first, and then followed. No sooner was I within, than a young dishevelled woman sprang on my neck, and clung to me desperately. "'Oh, Marzio!' she exclaimed; and a flood of tears from my Nanna bathed my face. "I am too much of a brigand not to take my precautions in an emergency. Though beyond myself with joy at the recovery of my darling, I nevertheless did not cease to keep my eyes on the old wretch, who, without a strict watch, would undoubtedly have escaped us. "When the first moment of emotion had passed, clasping my treasure by the hand, I closed the door, and asked if there was another in her cell. She answered 'No.' The abbess, who had heard my question, said- "'There is another door, and you had better leave by that, so as not to meet the sisters, who are doubtless searching for me now.' "Here a fresh incident arose. Another young girl came forward in haste, and interrupted the discourse of the abbess. I had seen something moving in the darkest corner of the prison cell, but pre-occupation and the circumstances of the moment had prevented my thinking of it. All at once I perceived a young girl somewhere about the age of my Nanna. She hastened towards me, saying, with a voice of emotion:-- "'Surely you will not leave me alone in this prison. Oh, sir, I will follow Nanna through life and to death itself!' "'Yes, Marzio,' added Nanna, 'for heaven's sake don't let us leave my unhappy friend in this wretched abode. She was destined by the abbess to seem my companion, and to act as a spy; but instead of that she has been an angel of comfort to me. She was charged to sound me, to gain information about you, to learn all she could of your companions--in fact, every particular, and then to report all to the abbess.' "'So then things are carried on thus,' thought I, 'in these laboratories of falsehood and 'hypocrisy.' "'She was charged to watch me, threaten me, torment me, in fact, in case I refused to divulge your hiding-places, your habitual rendezvous, your projects; but instead of that, she told me every thing, consoled, protected, reassured me, and said that she would rather die than injure me, or cause me any trouble. "'Besides, yesterday, she saved me from the insults and violence of an infamous prelate, who introduced himself into this cell (no doubt by the help of that old wretch), and who even offered me bribes if I would listen to his wicked proposals. She saved me by rushing in and uttering loud cries. "'In vain did they promise her liberty if she would induce me to comply with their wishes, but nothing have they ever been able to obtain. During the day they compel us to do the vilest work of the cloister, and at night they shut us up in this unclean den.' "Tears again flowed on the lovely face of my dear one, while she uttered these words, and I assure you, captain, that my hand instinctively touched my dagger, with a wild wish to revenge Nanna's wrongs. "I don't know how I restrained myself, for I was furious; I could have annihilated the vile being before me, but it was well I did not, for without her I should never again have seen the light of heaven. 'Where is the second door you speak of? whither does it lead?' I demanded. "'It leads outside the convent,' she replied; 'remove that iron bed which stands in the corner, and I will show you.' "I removed it, but saw nothing. "'Try to stir the bricks where the mortar looks damp.' "Taking hold of an iron bar from the bedstead, I began to move the bricks indicated. Finally I discovered a ring in a piece of wood, which showed the existence of a trap-door. I lifted the trap, and was surprised to find a staircase below. 'I must arrange the order of march,' said I to myself, 'and make the old witch the leader.' I then desired my young companions to follow, and giving one taper with little ceremony to the abbess, said to her, 'Forward!' "'This then,' thought I, 'is the secret stair; and how many black deeds have been committed in these labyrinths? Ah! poor deluded people, who fancy you are sending your daughters to be educated in asylums of purity when you place your children in convents!'" CHAPTER LXII. THE NARRATIVE OF MARZIO CONTINUED. Marzio continued: "The old abbess walked in front, I followed, and the young girls brought up the rear. We descended about fifty steps, and entered a rather spacious passage, which soon led us into a large room. I suppose it to have been large, for, with the help of the feeble taper, I could scarcely distinguish the walls. We had gone about ten paces, when I seemed to hear lamentations. I stopped, in order to listen better, but when I recollected myself, and was moving on, looking forward to my guide, behold I was in utter darkness. "My God! I sprang forward with such a leap as a tiger might have taken, when from its hiding-place in the forest it rushes on its prey. Darkness was all I caught. In vain I turned round and round, my arms stretched as far as they could extend, in the hope of meeting that woman-fiend. I darted against the wall, and kept following it, at the risk of taking the skin off my hands, but I found no door. "At length, after feeling about for some time, and being almost reduced to despair, I leaned heavily against the wall, and felt it give way with my weight. "Hope re-awoke; I rubbed my hands over that part of the wall, and found to my surprise that it was wooden, which fact had escaped me in my previous investigation. I pushed hard against the planks, and then felt something move, as if a door on its hinges; at the same time a rush of offensive pestilential air entered by the aperture. I turned my head away to escape the putrid odor. The moans which I had before heard again smote my ear, and calmed my agitation with wonder and pity. "I thought of my companions, and remembered a few matches which I had in my pocket, but which I had forgotten in my excitement. I struck one of them, and looking at what I had supposed to be a door, found that it was a turntable, and, Eureka! at the bottom lay my taper, which the old wretch had dropped in her flight. "When I had rekindled my taper, I found my companions near me, trembling like leaves. "'Courage!' said I, and threw myself into the adjoining apartment, they following, in the hope of overtaking the abbess, who had doubtless escaped this way. I hastened on, but, great God! what was my horror! against the wall of the room through which I was flying, hung several human beings by the neck, the waist, and the arms, all but one dead, and more or less decomposed. The solitary survivor was a young man, once of a fine form, but now an emaciated phantom. He was wildly gazing at me, with deep, dark, open eyes, that seemed ready to burst from their sockets. He had ceased to moan, conscious that I had discovered and was approaching him. Whatever the danger of my own position, I could not leave that victim without making some attempt to liberate him. I approached, and kissed him on the forehead; I always feel drawn towards the suffering. Sorely the Almighty inspires one with this sympathy, which is not imparted by the poisonous breath of the priest!--Well, well, let them call me a brigand! "Yes, I kissed the unhappy creature's forehead, dropping sweat, yet burning like a coal. But what could I do for him? his chains were soldered into the wall, and those walls were massive. I looked among the dead, to see if I could find any iron implement with which to excavate the wall, or to break the chains. Horrible! in every direction were instruments of torture--bedsteads, stretchers, pincers, ropes, gridirons, etc., 'for the mortification of the flesh,' as the priests say, but which fiends alone could have invented, one would think, for the torment of mankind. "Nanna and Maria--such was the name of Nanna's companion--had also drawn near the unhappy youth, and endeavored, but in vain, to help him to escape from his frightful position. Happily for us all, Nanna startled me with the exclamation, 'Oh, a key!' and truly, being very sharp-sighted, she had discovered a key in the loose mortar. "Trying the key in the padlock of the chains, I found it fitted, and while the rusty lock yielded to my hand, my heart dilated. I was at the last chain, it fell, and I was freeing the youth's stiff limbs, when Nanna clasped me by the arm, and timidly pointed to a light in the direction of the wheel-door. "I left my liberated companion, and in an instant stood at the entrance. No sooner was I there than I perceived one of the already-mentioned patrols, who was turning round the door, with his dark lantern in one hand, his pistol in the other. Shrinking into as small a space as possible, I stood back watching him. When his startled eyes were fixed on my face, which did not look pleasant at that moment, I had already grasped him by his right with my left hand, and my dagger was sheathed in his body. He fell dead on the ground. You know, captain, that I am an enemy of blood-shedding, and that I never have spilt any except in self-defense; but in that instance there was no time for consideration. I knew there were others following the first, and I was one alone. The youth I had liberated showed signs of regaining power of exertion, and my brave female companions had succeeded in separating two bars from a torture-bedstead, and stood behind me, ready to help. The situation was altered, yet the dead man, although I had dispatched him noiselessly, had not expired without a cry. His companions, however, were frightened, and effected their escape. By keeping in absolute silence we could hear their steps in the distance. I repeat, there was no time to lose, or to hold councils of war before deciding on our course. To leave by the way we had entered was madness; still what other path remained? We all knew, however, that Roman catacombs have many outlets--this instance was not an exception. "A look at my new companion confirmed me in my opinion that he was not useless to us, and without uttering a word, touching his heart with his hand, he made me understand that I could rely on him to follow me through all dangers. "By this time daybreak must be at hand, and, doubtless, preparations were making in the convent to secure our capture. The likeliest conjecture was, that there were armed men placed at every outlet. "The addition of the rescued man was very valuable to us all. He was not only acquainted with the subterranean path, but at a short distance he gathered up some torches, and distributed one to each of us. This was very useful, because my taper was almost extinguished, and the lantern which I had taken from the dead patrol, had not sufficient oil to last during the underground journey which was about to commence. To the right of the spot where the young man found the torches, he pointed out to me a light, and said, 'That opening leads to the garden of the convent, and once passed, we are out of danger of being intercepted. "On we went, I really think for two hours, although we were in a subterranean road, cut in the hard clay, of which you know, captain, our Roman undersoil is largely composed: and how many of those catacombs have we not visited together! "Young and active, our two companions were always near us. I frequently asked if they were tired, or if they required support. 'Oh, no; go on! We will follow you, if it be to death,' answered both girls. "'There is the light!' finally exclaimed Tito, for such was the name of the youth, and truly before us appeared a bright point in the distance. 'By that gate we shall enter the woods of Guido Castle, whence they dragged me, to conduct me to a seminary in Rome, the focus of all immorality and vileness. Accursed be the hypocrites!' "Arrived at the end of the subterranean road, Tito began to clear away some branches of lentils which obstructed the gate and went out, looking first in all directions. 'Safe!' he at last exclaimed, 'safe, so far--our persecutors have not arrived!' "When I got out with my companions, I wondered how such a narrow and almost imperceptible opening, when covered with branches, could be the passage to such spacious catacombs. 'Guido Castle!' said I to Tito. 'Not far from here must be the dwelling of the shepherd poet!' "'Yes,' he replied, 'it is a few miles off, and I will lead you straight to it; there we can find a little rest, and food to satisfy our hunger.' "The sun of March was high above the horizon when we left the underground gloom, yet the change was not very great, for in the beautiful forest in which we found ourselves, the trees of centuries gave no admission to the sunshine. The paths formed by the passage of animals were delightfully shady, and we should have enjoyed our walk if we had suffered less from fatigue and hunger. At last, on the edge of the wood, appeared to the longing eyes of our wearied travellers the cottage sought for, and fortunately we discovered our friend on the door-step. He seemed awaiting some one. "'Ah, Marzio!' exclaimed he, when we were near him, 'it was not you whom I expected today,' and he shook hands like old friends. "'I expected some of those Government ruffians, because it was rumored that men of your band were about the neighborhood. And,' he added, in a lower voice, drawing me aside, 'at a little distance from here is Emilio, with ten companies.' "'Instead of the hunters, you receive the game then, Lelio,' I said; 'but a truce to talking, give us somewhat to eat and drink, for we are famished.' "'Come in; you will find all you want--ham, cream, cheese, bread, and real Orvieto. Eat and drink, while I keep a look-out for the Papal hounds; no questions now.' "We ate the timely and abundant meal, and, our first cravings satisfied, I asked Tito for the narrative of his adventures, which he gave in a few words. "'I am,' he began, 'the son of Roman parents. My father, steward of the immense possessions of Cardinal M------, by the advice of his Eminence, sent me to a Roman seminary at the age of fifteen, to embrace the ecclesiastical career. For two years, contrary to my inclination, I was compelled to continue that detested life. For at first Father Petrucchio, the director of the seminary, showed me a good deal of sympathy, much to the vexation of my companions, who did not fail to be envious of my good fortune. The Father sometimes took me out with him to walk. These promenades with Petrucchio, in themselves somewhat tedious, appeared less so when I accompanied him to the convent of St. Francis, to visit the nuns. There the lady abbess and the nuns, pleased, I suppose, with my external appearance, used to compliment me and load me with attentions. The abbess, all-powerful over the director, obtained, without difficulty, that I should be employed in the religious service of the convent as assistant to the old priest who officiated for the nuns. I was not long in discovering that the abbess had conceived a passion for me, and I became her too docile favorite. For several months things went on thus. Under one pretense or the other, I was hardly ever seen in the seminary. I had the support of the director, so I could do just what I liked, and he was managed by the abbess, who, on that condition, left him certain licenses in her convent. I myself, inclined to any thing but a seminary, was from boyhood passionately fond of hunting, and any adventure that required boldness; and thus, during my excursions in the neighborhood of Guido Castle, I had become acquainted with the subterranean passage we have just left, and frequently I have explored with torches its most hidden recesses. Thus, indeed, I found a way of communicating with the convent, and made use of it to introduce myself there at all hours, and by no means always at the invitation of the abbess. The history of her jealousy would be too long; cunning as I had been, she had not failed to discover my partiality for certain younger sisters, and many a time I have found her in such a towering rage as to make me tremble at her. The enormities that I witnessed in that den of iniquity can not be recounted now. Many lives in the bud, or just unfolded, were there cut short! Things happened at which any pious soul would shudder, I, ashamed of myself, resolved to leave that pestilential place, never to return to it again. But I was doomed to pay the penalty of my complicity in so much abomination, for that old witch, the promoter of all licentiousness, appeared to have guessed my intention of flying, and did not give me time to accomplish my resolve. She one day said to me, "Tito, go down to the subterranean passage and bring me some torches; I have been asked for some for a midnight procession." I had a presentiment of misfortune; but there flashed across my mind the idea of taking advantage of the opportunity to leave forever the den of impurity. No sooner had I reached the bottom of the staircase than I felt myself overpowered by four strong men, and dragged towards the charnel-house which you know, and from which I was so miraculously saved by you. They were sworn agents, and therefore my supplications, my grief, my promises were useless. I was as good as counted among the victims of vice and infamy when you saved me, brave man!' and Tito finished by kissing the hand of the bandit. "Tito's story being ended, I felt a strong desire to hear something of Nanna's experiences; but, comforted and refreshed as we were by a draught of good Orvieto, and yet fatigued still by the extraordinary adventures we had passed through, we were all growing heavy-eyed, and by mutual consent we dropped asleep on our seats. I do not know how long we remained in that sleeping position, but a sharp whistle resounding through the dwelling made us start up. We were scarcely roused when the shepherd entered and said, 'Do not fear! My son Vezio has placed a sentinel on the top of the Petilia ruins, from whence whoever approaches can be distinguished. Those who are coming are our own people from your band.'" And Marzio, as though he had not been in the presence of his captain, but in the Campagna, here stroked his jet-black mustaches, thinking of those stout fellows. "They were in fact our intrepid comrades," he went on, "the terror of the wretched priests. I leave you to imagine, captain, what our joy was on finding ourselves among those brave hearts. Many were the glad embraces given me by those whom the vulgar think hardened in all cruelties, but who are often in truth the manliest part of the people--those, namely, who will not bear bad rule and injustice: that part of the people who, could they receive something better than the education given by the priests--that is to say, a moral, humanizing, and patriotic training--would furnish heroes to Italy, and to the world the same examples of courage and virtue which our fathers gave. "Having thus so wonderfully saved my Nanna, and finding myself once more among my comrades, I had every reason to be satisfied with my luck; yet I must repeat your favorite saying, captain, 'Happiness on earth only exists in the imagination!' Your words are true; I soon felt that they were so. You remember that rascally priest at San Paolo, who seemed to have become friendly to us, and on whom we lavished so much sympathy and kindness? Well, the wretch was in love with my Nanna, and never did he forgive me for having won her affection. "Don Vantano, with the diabolic cunning which distinguishes his fraternity, had succeeded in ingratiating himself with the family of Nanna, and in poisoning their minds against me. Her four brothers--as I learnt from her--helped by others, devised the plot, and, under the guidance of the priest, succeeded in carrying off my darling from Marcello's house. Such was the brief story of Nanna. Being obliged again to absent myself with my men and my dear one being in a delicate condition, I resolved to leave her in the charge of our host, with Maria as a companion. They had become as sisters, their affection being strengthened and cemented by the dangers and trials they had shared. Still, being ever uneasy as to the fate of my beloved, and well aware of the malice of her persecutor, I kept wandering about Lelio's neighborhood; as the lioness who deposits her young while she goes in search of food, always encircles the hiding-place of her treasure. I felt certain that it would be very difficult for those who had at first carried off Nanna to effect that object a second time. I was well assisted in guarding her by Tito, who knew those parts thoroughly, and who attached himself to me with much gratitude. "Still, what height can not the wickedness of a priest reach! Vantano, knowing how hazardous it would be for him to cany off his prey, determined to destroy it! Being near her confinement, the unhappy child, alone with the inexperienced Maria, followed the advice innocently given her by Lelio, to call in a midwife from Guido Castle--a woman who till then had borne a good character for honesty. But who can reckon on the honesty of a woman where bribery and monkery reign! He who does not believe my words, let him but pass a few months in the nest of those hypocrites, sitting in the places that once held a Scipio and a Cincinnatus. "How many crimes may not a weak woman be induced to commit when she is assured that she is fulfilling God's will, and listening to God's word! God's word!--sacrilege of which a priest alone would be guilty. At every ceremonial the Catholic faithful go to receive God's oracles from the lips of the bride of Christ, the Church. She is no pure bride, but a secret harlot. By one of her ministers poison was administered to my Nanna, and thus was I robbed of wife, child, and every earthly happiness. "I was arrested, torn from her cold body, myself almost unconscious of life. I learned afterwards that my seizure required, to accomplish it, a number of the Papal mercenaries, and that our brave fellows fought desperately in my defense till, overpowered by reinforcements, and nearly all wounded, they retired in bold order. "I was stupefied, and called again and again on death, but in vain; the triumph of my captors was made complete, for I was alive and enchained. From the galleys of Civita Vecchia I was, after several months, sent to Rome, and subsequently liberated, after being compelled to take an oath to obey and maintain the authority of the Pope--an oath to serve faithfully an impostor and a despot, to swear to obey him, even if the command were to murder one's father and mother. And I swore--I tell you the whole truth--but I swore also, along with it, war on themselves, and while this life lasts I am their enemy to the bitter end." PART THE THIRD. CHAPTER LXIII. THE CAIROLIS AND THEIR SEVENTY COMPANIONS. A people well-governed and contented do not rebel. Insurrections and revolutions are the weapons of the oppressed and the slave. The inciting causes of such are tyrannies. The apparent exceptions, originating from different circumstances, are, when closely examined, found to be the offspring of moral or material despotisms. England, Switzerland, and the United States have experienced, and may still experience, insurrections, although these countries are by no means badly governed. Switzerland has had her Sonderbunds, and England her Fenians. These latter are chiefly kept in vigor by the Romish priests, through the moral tyranny exercised by them over the most ignorant of the population in Ireland. The United States have witnessed, in these latter years, a terrible revolution, caused by the material tyranny the rich colonists of the South exercised over their slaves, which they, moreover, desired to extend to the other States of the Union. Moral or material tyranny is always the cause of revolution. And in Rome who can deny that both moral and material tyranny is exercised? Yes, in Rome exists the twofold revolting despotism of the priests who lay Italy at the feet of the stranger; who sell her for their profit! Theirs is the most depraved of all forms of tyranny. Picture a dreary, dark, windy, damp night in October. The rain has ceased to fall on the glistening and foaming surface of the Tiber. The banks of the river are muddy and furrowed, for every ditch has become a torrent, and scarcely a vestige of dry and solid ground is perceptible. In several boats behold seventy men, armed with poniards and revolvers, and a few miscellaneous muskets. Their habiliments were far too thin for that cold rainy night. But the Seventy were warmed by the heat of heroism. Rome on this night was to rise in rebellion. Many of the bravest youths from every Italian province had contrived to enter the city, and our old friends Attilio, Muzio, and Orazio, with their companions, were at their posts, ready to head the Roman rising. In vain did the priesthood endeavor to discover the conspirators, arresting right and left all upon whom the slightest suspicion fell: their efforts were vain, for Rome swarmed with brave men, ready to sacrifice themselves in order to secure her liberation. The Seventy, impelled by the current of the Tiber, were rapidly advancing to the assistance of their brothers. Under cover of Mount St. Giuliano, those valorous youths landed, at the hoar of midnight, on the 22d of October, 1867. Enrico Cairoli led his heroic companions. "We will rest," he said, "our limbs in this Casino della Gloria, until we receive intelligence from our allies in the city, so that our attack may be made on the enemy simultaneously. Meanwhile," went on their leader, "I feel it my duty to remind you that this enterprise is a dangerous one, and therefore the more worthy of you. If, however, any of you are overdone, or feel at all indisposed to the great task, and do not care to follow us, let them return. We shall not think it a crime in him to do so; and all we say to them is, 'Farewell, till we meet in Rome!'" "In life and in death we will follow you," answered, as in one voice, those intrepid youths, not one of whom turned back. "The guide who was to conduct us to Rome is not to be found, and no one has yet returned to give us any news," said Giovanni Cairoli, who had just come back from an exploration, to his brother. Dawn began to appear, and they were now in the wolfs mouth--that is, near the advanced posts of the Papal troops, and in danger of being attacked at any moment. "What does it signify?" said Enrico Cairoli, in reply to his brother's remark. "We came here to fight, and we will not return without having accomplished that duty." At mid-day a messenger arrived from Rome, and announced, "The movement on the previous evening had remained an imperfect one, and the conspirators were waiting for orders to direct them how to act." The messenger was sent back to urge immediate internal agitation, and to assure them of the readiness of the Seventy to co-operate. No answer was returned. At five o'clock in the afternoon, the Seventy being discovered, were attacked by two companies of the Papal troops. The valorous Giovanni Cairoli, who, at the head of twenty-four men, formed the vanguard, posted in a rustic house in the village, was attacked first; and, notwithstanding the inferiority of his numbers, withstood the assault of the enemy. His equally valiant brother Enrico, the commander, seeing him in danger, overcome by force of numbers, charged to the rescue, and drove back the mercenaries, who fled at the sight of these brave and devoted boys. Being reinforced by other companies, the mercenaries entrenched themselves behind the heights of Mount St. Giuliano, from whence they kept up a fearfully destructive fire with their superior arms. The Cairolis, with their intrepid companions, crippled by the inferiority of their fire-arms, many of which would not go off, resolved to charge them at the point of the bayonet, and made one of those assaults that so often decide battles. The mercenaries, completely daunted, left upon the field their wounded and dead. The young soldiers of Liberty lost their heroic chief and friend, and many of them were seriously 'wounded. Night came, and put an end to that unequal but gallant strife. CHAPTER LXIV. CUCCHI AND HIS COMRADES And in Rome, what were Cucchi and his companions doing, and the Roman and provincial patriots consecrated to freedom and death? Cucchi, of Bergamo, was one of the most excellent men the revolution gave to Italy. Handsome, young, and wealthy, he belonged to one of the first families in Lombardy. Guerzoni, Bossi, Adamoli, and many others, despising the tortures of the Inquisition, and all other dangers, directed the Roman insurrection, under the command of that intrepid Bergamasco. The unhappy Roman people received with obedience the directions of those valiant youths, and asked to be supplied with arms. Arms in plenty had been sent down to the Volunteers from all parts of Italy; but the Government of Florence, expert in every form of cunning, took means to stop them, so that there were very few weapons to be dispensed to the Romans. Add to this the treachery prepared for this unhappy people, viz., the tacit promise that a few shots should be fired in the air, and that then the Italian army from the frontier would fly to their assistance. By such false pretenses and underhand proceedings at Florence, the people of Rome, as well as their heroic friends, were deceived. Those shots were fired, but no help came for Italy. Poor Romans! they fought with rude weapons in the streets against an immense number of well-armed soldiery, who were backed by armed priests, monks, and police. They succeeded in mining and blowing up a Zouave barrack, and with the knife alone fought desperately against the new-fashioned carbines of the mercenaries. In Trastevere, our old acquaintances, Attilio, Muzio, Orazio, Silvio, and Gasparo, had re-united with all those remaining of the Three Hundred on whom the police had not laid their hands. The people having thus found capable leaders did their duty. Some of the old carbines that had done execution in the Roman campaign now reappeared in the city in the hands of Orazio and his companions, who made them serve as an efficacious auxiliary to the Trasteverini's naked knife. The city rose in its chains as best it could, and used an armory of despair. Carbineers, Zouaves, dragoons on their patrol, were struck by tiles, kitchen-utensils, and many other objects thrown from the windows by the inhabitants, stabbed by the poniards of the Liberals, and wounded by shots from blunderbuss and firelock. Thus assailed, the troops fled from the Lungara towards St. Angelo's bridge, and passed it, though they were checked by the Papalini. The bridge was guarded by a battery of artillery, supported by an entire regiment of Zouaves. When the people, intermingled with those whom they were pursuing, crowded on the bridge, the commander of the clericali ordered his men to fire, and the six guns of the battery, with the fire of the entire line of infantry, poured out over the bridge, making wholesale slaughter of the people and the mercenaries. What did his Holiness care about the scattered blood of his cut-throats and bought agents? The money of Italy's betrayers was at his service to purchase more. What was of the greatest importance was the destruction of many of his Roman children. Many indeed were the rebels who paid with their lives for their noble gallantly in venturing on that fatal bridge. Many, truly, for in their enthusiasm the people attempted three consecutive times to carry it, and three consecutive times they were repelled by the heavy storms of bullets rained upon them, and the shots from the cannon of the defenders of the priests. It may well be supposed that, among those who were at the head of the people during this assault of the bridge, our five heroes would be found fighting like lions. After having consumed their ammunition, they had broken their arms upon the skulls of the Papal soldiery, and provided themselves with fresh ones by taking those of the killed. It was they who continued the assault at the head of the people, whom they excited to positive heroism. It was, however, too hard a task. The first of the courageous leaders to bite the dust was the senior one, the venerable prince of the forest, Gasparo. He fell with the same stoicism which he had displayed during all his existence--with a smile upon his lips, happy to give his fife for ten thousand patriots, it is said, were arrested in some in this last movement by the paternal Government, for his country's holy cause, and for the cause of humanity. A bursting shell had struck him above the heart, and his glorious death was instantaneous and without pain. Silvio also fell by the side of Gasparo, both his thighs pierced with musket-balls. Orazio had his left ear carried off by a ballet, while another slightly grazed his right leg. Muzio would have been dispatched also by a shot in the breast, had it not been for a strong English watch (a present from the beautiful Julia), which was smashed to atoms, and so saved his life, leaving the mark of a severe contusion. Attilio had his hip grazed, as well as his left cheek, and received from a flying bullet a notch on his skull, resembling in appearance the mark a rope wears on the edge of a wall. The butchery of the people was so great and the fallen were so numerous, that after these three consecutive charges the brave insurrectionists were obliged to retreat. Orazio carried Silvio on his back into the first house near the bridge for safety, but when the soldiery returned, the wounded were massacred and cut in pieces. Women, children, and many unarmed and defenseless persons who fell into the hands of these worthy soldiers of the priesthood shared a similar fate. The good instincts of the working-class are proved in the solemn times of revolution. In such times the noble-minded working-man saves and defends his employer's goods, never robs him; but if he takes arms he spares the lives of defenseless beings, and of those who surrender. He would shudder to kill with the cynicism of the mercenary; he fights like a lion--he who was so patient--one against ten! In the Lungara there is a large woollen manufactory, which employs many workmen. From that woollen factory many had joined the insurgents, the elder ones remaining to guard the establishment. When these good old artisans saw the people and their fellow-workmen thus followed by the Papal bullies and the mercenaries, they threw open the doors and gave shelter to the fugitives, or at any rate to some of them, and levelled bars, axes, and every iron instrument that would serve as a weapon of offense or defense against the hated foreigners and the gendarmerie. There arose in consequence an indescribable tumult at the entrance to the factory, where the advantage was, at first, to the honest people, and where not a few of the Papal soldiers had their skulls smashed in, and their blood let out by the blows received. At length the besiegers took up their position in the opposite houses, and the besieged, having barricaded themselves and collected a few more fire-arms, began afresh, with constant change of fortune, a real battle. Our three surviving friends had entered the factory, and fought there with great determination. The workmen and insurgents, too, encouraged by their chiefs, had also comported themselves valorously. But ammunition was lacking, and detachments of mercenaries were advancing to the succor of their comrades. Night, however, now favored the sons of liberty, who, although without ammunition, still kept up the defense. It was 7 p.m. when the fire of the insurgents ceased, and a division of Papal troops commenced the assault. They began by attacking the large front door of the factory, which the workmen had barricaded but not closed. Orazio and Muzio, after further strengthening the entrance, armed each man with an axe, and, picking out the youngest and boldest Romans, stationed some of them to the right and some to the left of the door to defend it. Thus prepared for a desperate resistance, determining to sell their lives dearly, the assault was received. Attilio had undertaken to defend the other entrance, and keep off the second portion of the assailants. Having secured the back doors in the best manner possible with his appliances, he placed a number of workmen at the windows of the upper floor, from whence they were to cast npon the assailants whatever missiles could be found. As soon as he had completed these arrangements, he placed himself with his friends at the most dangerous post, armed with the sabre of a gendarme whom he had slain during the day. The internal appearance of the factory presented at this moment a sad picture. Many bodies of courageous citizens killed in its defense had been carried to and deposited in an obscure corner of its extensive court-yard. In other corners, lying here and there, were the wounded, and some were also stretched in the rooms upon the ground-floor. But not a groan was heard from these valorous sons of the people. An immense table, with a candelabrum in the centre, occupied the middle of an extensive saloon on the left side of the front entrance to the building, and on that table could be seen heaps of bandages, slings, cotton-wool, and linen of various kinds--the best which the house could furnish for the use of the wounded. A large vessel of water was under the table--perhaps the most useful relief of all to the wounded sufferers, be it to moisten and cool their wounds by bathing, or to quench the thirst which wounds generally occasion. Three women of rare and noble beauty moved about in this improvised hospital superintending the wounded, and we recognize in their gentle yet bold mien our three heroines, Clelia, Julia, and Irene. The poor abandoned Camilla, ignorant of the loss of her Silvio, and with the traces of her past sorrows still lingering on her sweet face, mechanically assisted the three merciful women in their kind attentions to the sufferers. They had awaited their friends in the factory with these preparations as soon as the battle on the bridge commenced, and they received the wounded when the people, driven back, sought refuge in the establishment, and entrenched themselves there. Other women of the people were on the spot also, tending the suffering, and carrying them what relief the circumstances permitted. "Well, Prince of the Campagna," Attilio might be heard saying to Orazio, "we have seen many strifes, but the one we are in to-night is likely to prove the hardest of all. What consoles me is that our Romans seem to remember the olden times. Look at them, not one turns pale--all are ready to confront death in whatever form it may come." "On the contrary," answered Orazio, "they laugh, joke, and are as merry as if they were taking a walk to the Foro to empty a _foglietta_." "We have still some wine. Let us give a draught of Orvieto all round to these our brave comrades," exclaimed Attilio. When all had refreshed themselves with a glass of that strengthening cordial, a unanimous and solemn cry of "_Viva l'Italia!_" rolled forth like thunder from that dense and resolute crowd of Home's desperate defenders. CHAPTER LXV. THE MONTIGIANIS While the conflict in Trastevere was going on, the Montigianis, headed by Cucchi, Guerzoni, Bossi, Adamoli, and other brave men did not remain with their hands folded. The explosion of the mine under the Zouaves' barracks was arranged as the signal for their movement. The mine exploded, and those noble fellows moved with heroic resolution at the head of all the youths that could be assembled. As many of the agents and mercenaries frightened by the explosion as were met running away were disarmed by the people, and killed if they offered resistance. The mine, however, had done little damage, though it made a great uproar. Either the quantity of powder was insufficient, or it was badly placed. The clerical journals, or those of the Italian Government, which are much the same, have stated that only the band of the Zouaves, composed of Italian musicians, had been blown up, and that the foreigners, specially recommended to the efficacious prayers of his Holiness, had been miraculously saved. The Italians, it is true, have not the good fortune to be the objects of modern necromancy's prayers; but the facts are these: A very few mercenaries were killed, and the others, having left the barracks and arranged themselves in order, had opened a sharp fire against the people. Cucchi, with his lieutenants Bossi and Adamoli, had marched to the barracks, and at their command, and animated by their example, the Roman youths had precipitated themselves furiously upon the foreign mercenaries. It was a hand-to-hand struggle of persons who for the greater part were unarmed, and who struggled against trained soldiers, from whom they endeavored to tear away their weapons. But the mercenaries were many. Gold and the help of Bonaparte had been potent. A great number of French soldiers, under the name of Papal Zouaves, had crowded into Civita Vecchia for a long time previous, in readiness to start for Rome. The resources that the Jesuits and _reazionari_ had sent to the Pope from all parts of the world had also been immense. Added to this, a great number of fanatics, priests, and monks,* disguised in the uniform of the mercenaries, mingled with the Papal troops, exciting them to heroism and to slaughter, promising them as a reward the glory of heaven, as well as plenty of gold on earth, and all they could desire. Alas! poor Roman people! But whom should we reckon under this denomination? When one has excepted all the priestly portion, Pope, cardinals, bishops, priests, and friars congregated there from all parts of the globe, with their women, their servants, their cooks, their coachmen, etc., with the relations of their domestics, the servants of their women, and, finally, a mass of the working-classes dependent on this enormously rich rabble, what is left? Those who remain, and are worthy of the name of "people," as not belonging to the necromancers, are some honest middle-class families, a few boatmen, and a few lazzaroni. In the country, where ignorance is fostered by the priesthood, and has struck still deeper root, the people side with the clergy throughout Italy; but particularly in the Roman campagna, where all the landowners are either priests, or powerful friends of the priesthood. To return, however. While Cucchi, at the head of his men, and aided by his brave companions, sustained a heroic but unequal combat outside the Zouaves' barracks, Guerzoni and Castellazzi, leading a company of youths, had assaulted the gate of San Paola, disarmed a few guards, and succeeded in passing the court, inside of which was to be found a dépôt of arms. The arms were there, truly, but guarded by a strong body of Papal troops and police, with whom our valorous friends had to sustain another extremely unequal combat; and, being finally dispersed, were hotly pursued by the furious Papalini. * Some were discovered among Garibaldi's Zouave prisoners at Monte Rotonda. CHAPTER LXVI. THE OVERTHROW The heroic Cairolis and their companions had meanwhile paid, with their blood, for their sublime patriotism and generous constancy to the Roman insurgents. The morn of the 24th of October was tearful, dark, and dreary, the forerunner of fresh Italian misfortunes, and looked down upon the young and noble countenance of Enrico, "the new Leonidas," upon his brother Giovanni, lying in their blood, with many others belonging to that dauntless brigade. The first died with a smile of scorn upon his lips for that paid horde, who had massacred them, ten against one. Giovanni, all but mortally wounded, was lying near the corpse of his beloved brother, surrounded by other sufferers whose glorious names history will register. Few were the survivors of the valorous Seventy, and those few left the field of slaughter to unite themselves to their other brethren, who were combating at the same time against the foreign hordes outside the walls of Rome. Guerzoni's undertaking to seize the arms deposited outside the gate of San Paola was conducted with the same intrepidity he had displayed in a hundred combats, but failed, for the plain reason that the Roman youths under his orders, being poorly armed, were compelled to give way before the blows of the mercenaries, and fly. He and Castellazzi, after many brave endeavors, were dragged off in the scattering of the people, and were forced to conceal themselves whilst they awaited an opportunity to strike for Rome. Cucchi, Bossi, and Adamoli, at the head of their detachments, performed deeds of great valor. They gained possession of a portion of the Zouaves' barracks, with only their revolvers and knives as weapons. Fights between the Papalists and the mob were frequent, and the latter, for want of other arms, beat the former to pieces with their sticks. But here, too, they had to give way before superiority of numbers, discipline, and arms. Here, also, the first rays of daylight on the 24th presented to the view of the horror-struck passerby a heap of corpses, mingled with dying men. In this manner was the tottering throne of the "Vicegerent of Heaven" consolidated--re-established by the butchery of the unhappy Roman people, and this, too, performed for hire by the scum of all nations, supported by the bayonets of Bonaparte's soldiers! CHAPTER LXVII. THE FINAL CATASTROPHE But the details of the fight at the factory must be given. The assault was imminent. "Ready, boys!" exclaimed in one voice Orazio, Attilio, and Muzio; "Ready!" and the summons was scarcely pronounced when the Papalists threw themselves upon the front door of the manufactory. In the interior all the lights had been extinguished. On this account the Government troops, though seen by our side, could not distinguish individually any of the sons of liberty, and the first who attempted to scale the barricade fell back, their skulls split open by the terrible axes of Orazio and Muzio, or the sabre of Attilio, as well as by the different instruments of defense used by their valorous companions. Yet, although they repulsed the enemy, the besieged sustained an important loss in that first assault. A shot from a revolver pierced the heart of the gallant and intrepid Orazio, who, despising cover, had exposed his person at the top of the barricade to the enemy, and fell as he clove one of them with his axe. The "Prince of the Campagna of Rome" fell like an oak of his own forest, and his strong right hand grasped his weapon tightly even in death. "Irene" was his last thought, and the last word that escaped from his lips. Ah! but Irene's soul was pierced by that dying voice! for the three women, although they took no part in the defense, remained at a short distance only from those whose hearts beat in unison with their own. Irene first reached him whose beloved voice had called her, and her two companions soon followed. As Orazio's body remained upon the barricade where he fell, the noble woman, heedless of her danger, had directly scaled it, and her beautiful forehead was struck at that moment by a ball from a musket; for the mercenaries, enraged at their bad success, were firing at random through the open door. It may be imagined with what feelings the two surviving friends and their beloved ones had those precious bodies carried into the interior. The factory had indeed become a charnel-house, it being useless for the chiefs to admonish their men to keep under cover. There are moments when death loses its horror, and when those who would have fled before a single soldier take no heed of a shower of shots falling in every direction. Such was the case now with those poor and courageous working-men. Not counting the large number of troops by whom they were surrounded, nor the multitude firing in the direction of the door, they stood to their defenses without precaution, and allowed themselves to be needlessly wounded. In this way the number of the defenders became lessened, whilst that of the dying and killed was momentarily augmented. Attilio and Muzio saw at a glance how matters stood, and that there was nothing for it but to confront the enemy till death. Yet Clelia and Julia! why should they also die, so young, so beautiful! "Go thou, Muzio," said Attilio, "and persuade them, while there is yet time, to escape by the back entrance, and place themselves in safety. Tell them that we will follow a little later." In this last part of his speech the generous Roman prevaricated. He had already tasted all the glories of martyrdom, and would not have relinquished it even for Clelia's love. But at this juncture who is it that has arrived as by a miracle, climbing like a squirrel in at a window, and appearing in the midst of that great desolation in these last sad moments? It is no other than Jack, our brave sailor Jack, saved from shipwreck by Orazio, to whom he had ever since been much attached! He found himself in Rome during the terrible occurrences which we have related, and at the first occupation of the factory was sent to ascertain the result of the insurrection in various parts of Rome. Jack returned with sad news. He, with his English resolution, and with the agility that characterized him, had assisted at nearly all the fights, and shared in the bad result's. Attilio and Muzio were now fully aware of the fate that was reserved for them, and they also learned that it was impossible for the women to escape by the back premises of the factory. To accomplish this they would have needed the nimbleness and agility of the young sailor. Muzio, therefore, replied thus to his friend's injunctions: "I will tell the ladies what you say; but I believe first, that it is impossible for them to leave; and, secondly, that they would not leave us if they could." CHAPTER LXVIII. THE SUBTERRANEAN PASSAGE. Amongst the surviving workmen who were defending the large front entrance to the manufactory was an old gray-headed man, who listened intently to the above conversation of the two chiefs. When Muzio uttered the last words, he exclaimed, "_Coraggio, signors!_ If you wish to retire from this place, and to save the women, I know of a passage that will lead us out of danger." A ray of hope broke upon the minds of the two friends when they heard there was a way of saving their beloved ones, and they immediately proceeded to avail themselves of it, for there was no time to be lost, as the enemy was preparing for a fresh attack. Muzio approached Julia and Clelia, who were not far off, and obtained a promise, on the condition that he and Attilio would soon follow them, that they would take refuge under the escort of old Dentato and Jack in the subterranean passage. The other women would follow after them, and lastly our friends with all the remaining defenders of the factory. And the wounded? Ah! if there be a circumstance that is harrowing and terrible in those butcheries of men called "battles," it is certainly that of abandoning one's own wounded to the enemy! _Povyri!_ In one moment the faces of your friends--of your brothers, who bewailed your hurt, who tended you with such gentleness, will disappear, to be succeeded by the revolting, horrible, and triumphant faces of the mercenaries. At the best they will be brutal; at the worst, they, infringing every right of war and of people, will steep their base bayonets in your precious blood! Cowards! who fled before you, and to whom you so often generously conceded their lives. Supported by the 20,000 soldiers of the 2d of December, they have regained once more their spirits, and have forgotten that they owe their ignoble existences to you. In St. Antonio (America), Italians fought against the soldiers of despotism, and many, very many were wounded. There, carried on their brothers' backs, or transported on horses, the wounded were removed. Not one was left* alive to be at the mercy of Rosa's cannibals. And are the hirelings of the priests less cruel? At the station at Monte Rotondo, after the glorious assault of the 25th of October, three wounded men were lying awaiting the convoy that was to convey them to Terni, when the Pope's soldiers arrived. Worthy followers of the Inquisitors, they amused themselves with murdering our unhappy companions by stabbing them with their bayonets, and giving them blows with the butt-end of their guns.** Oh, Italians, leave not in your enemy's power your wounded! It is too heart-rending a spectacle. If they be not murdered, they will remain at least to be mocked and jested at by those who are accustomed to outrage Italy. Attilio and Muzio, though tired and wounded themselves, would not abandon their helpless comrades to the insults and the steel of the priests' soldiers. In the lowest part of the factory, at the extremity of an immense room used for washing the wool, was a massive oak door, which appeared at first sight to lead to a channel of water which discharged itself into the Tiber. The canal really existed, but the door we have referred to did not lead to it, but to a subterranean passage, gained by a bridge built across this same canal. Into this underground vault a procession of the devoted women, the wounded, and the workmen, began to defile. But in the priestly city, where education consists in being taught to play the hypocrite and to lie, traitors abound. And a traitor threw from one of the upper windows of the factory a written paper, whilst these brave people were retiring, informing the soldiery of the retreat of the defenders. * It is painful to state it, but one man, hopelessly wounded, was killed so that he should not be in the enemy's power, who usually cut the throats of those they found alive on the field, ** An historical fact. The attack was no longer deferred, and an ever-increasing crowd of mercenaries and police threw themselves upon the barricade at the door, and rushed in. Only a few defenders remained. Had Attilio and Muzio been more careful of themselves, and taken to flight, they might perhaps have saved their lives. But too lavish of their blood were this pair of noble Romans. They did not fly; they remained to fight desperately for some time against that in-pouring stream of slaves. Many were the assailants cut down upon the heap of dying and of dead. But heroes, like cowards, have only one life. The assailants were too numerous, and side by side the valorous champions of Roman liberty fell together, and exhaled their last breath. Dentato, who had assisted in this last struggle, seeing that all hope of a successful resistance was over, favored by the darkness, and his acquaintance with the establishment, gained the washing-house, and thence the subterranean passage, closing the oak door from the outside upon that scene of blood, and barring it as well as he was able. The hired assassins of the priesthood having no other motives than rapine and slaughter, inundated the factory with the hope of securing plunder and wreaking revenge. They never thought of the oaken back-door by which the surviving defenders of Italian liberty had escaped, until too late. Having discovered by-and-by that the building contained only corpses, they were reminded of the subterranean passage. They searched, inquired, and at length discovered the door leading to it. Some time elapsed before they succeeded in forcing open the obstacles which barred it, as well as in organizing an entry into the darkness, and all this gave the fugitives sufficient opportunity of placing themselves in safety. In the first week of November, 1867, three females, an old man, and a lad in the bloom of youth, descended at the Leghorn station. At the head of this party stood one of those daughters of England, from whose pure and lofty countenance, sad though she was, and dressed in mourning, the heart derived new ideas of the dignity and happiness of life. Her lady companion was not less beautiful nor less sad, and displayed in the lovely lineaments of her face a different but exquisite feminine delicacy of the Southern type, such as Raphael portrayed in his Fornarina. The third woman was also comely; but sorrow had furrowed her forehead deeply, and a look of vacancy had settled upon her melancholy features. The old man, Dentato, whom Julia would not leave to misery and want, was occupying himself about the luggage. Jack, with the vivacity of sixteen years, offered his arm to the ladies, to assist them as they alighted from the railway carriage. He quickly discovered Captain Thompson and his wife, the Signora Aurelia, who were awaiting them, and saluted the latter, who had a high regard for our sailor-lad. Jack alone was able to relate what had passed. "Oh!" he said, "I have kissed their corpses," and a tear rolled down his cheek, cheek of Britannia's fair son. He spoke of the dead bodies of Orazio and Irene, who loved him so much, and who had been his preservers. They had been removed for burial along with the other sad relics of our noble friends. The women embraced, weeping on each other's bosoms, but unable to articulate a word. After assisting at this mute scene for some time, and showing himself also much affected, Captain Thompson raised his head, and, approaching his mistress, addressed her, cap in hand, saying- "Madam, the yacht is anchored off the pier, awaiting your orders; do you desire to go on board?" "Yes, Thompson," she replied, "let us go on board, and set sail immediately, so as to get out of Italy; it has become the grave of all its best and most beautiful." Julia sailed for merry England, and took kind care of her adopted family, to whom were added, after a time, Manlio and Silvia. Until they joined her in England, they had remained on the island of the Recluse. Julia vowed she would not return to that unhappy country until Rome, freed from priestly despotism, would permit her to raise a worthy national monument to her heart's beloved, and to his heroic companions. APPENDIX. I. THE FAMILY OF GENERAL GARIBALDI. THE family of General Garibaldi was formerly one of the wealthiest in Nice, and was connected with the following curious annual ceremony. In remote times the Saracen soldiery in the service of Turkey invaded Nice. They were already in the town, when a woman rushed from her house and killed the standard-bearer, seized the standard, and rallied the Nizards, who in the end were victorious. In remembrance of this event, La Place Napoleon, called before the French occupation La Place de la Victoire, was, until the year 1860, the annual scene of a very curious custom. A representative of the woman was placed on one side of the square, while fireworks were let off from the church opposite, one particular firework being aimed so as to reach the hand of the woman. The grandfather of General Garibaldi received from the town of Nice the privilege of being the person to let off this particular firework, and the father and eldest brother of the General succeeded to this privilege, which was declared to be hereditary in their family. He was born at Nice on the 22d of July, 1807. His father, Dominique Garibaldi, was born at Chiavari, about seventy miles from Genoa. His mother was a lady named Rosa Raginndo. He had three brothers, the last of whom died the day of the battle of Biccia, 1866. The General was destined from his birth for the priesthood, and from the age of three years had a private tutor named Father Giovanni, who resided in the house. According to his own account he did not make any very great progress under this gentleman, and he has conceived the idea that it is better for a tutor to come in for a few hours a day, or for a child to go to school, returning home in the evening, as in this manner the benefit of home influence remains, and the benefit of the mothers love (of which he speaks so much) would be secured, and undue familiarity and result of constant intercourse be avoided. From the instructions of M. Arena--whose classes he attended for some hours in the day--he derived great benefit; and whatever fault he may find with his early instruction, the result is that he speaks Italian, the Nizard and Genoese dialects, the Sicilian and Neapolitan dialects, the Milanese and Turinese--all of them differing from the pure Italian, and from each other, as much as Welsh does from English. He speaks and writes Latin, ancient and modern Greek, French, Spanish, English, and Portuguese, and can decipher newspapers published in the various dialects on the banks of the Danube. He is a good mathematician, and possesses a knowledge of both ancient and modern history, whilst his knowledge of music is considerable. There have been many "autobiographies" written of the General with which he has very little acquaintance. Many of the stories related of him are not, however, without foundation. It is true that when he was about eight years old, whilst playing on the banks of the Var, he saw an old washerwoman fall into the river, and instantly threw himself into the water, and from his skill in swimming, which he had acquired in infancy, he was enabled to save her life. At the time of the birth of the General, Nice belonged, as now, to France, and during his childhood the Nizard language was spoken by the servants, and the Genoese by the family. In society and in public French only was spoken. It was the same in the schools, and the General received his education entirely in French; and it was solely in compliance with the entreaties of his elder brother Angelo that he requested M. Arena to teach him Italian; and it is to the instructions of that gentleman that he owes his present facility in both speaking and writing it. The parents of the General were both strict Roman Catholics, and being, as we have before stated, intended for the priesthood, he was educated in every ordinance of the Church of Rome. It was probably the over-severity of this education which gave him his detestation of the priestly career; at any rate, it is certain that he in the most positive terms refused to enter it, and even attempted to run away to Genoa to avoid it. The profession of the law was afterwards proposed, but with ultimately no better success; and finally his parents yielded to his entreaties, and permitted him to go to sea, which he did in a brigantine called "La Costanza," the captain being Angelo Pesanti. The first notice we have in the page of history of the name "Garibaldi" occurs in the annals of the eighth century. According to one of the historians of that time, among the chiefs of Alaric's horde a Garibaldi commanded a "squadra." From this we may infer that the family originally came from the plains of Hungary. The next notice we have of the name occurs in the history of the city of Turin, in the reign of Auberto I. Garibaldi, Duke of Turin, was the chief counsellor of this king. Being a bad, unprincipled, and ambitious man, he conspired against his sovereign, caused his assassination, and seized the regal power. However, the semi-independent princes of Piedmont deposed him, and caused him to be put to death. The next trace we find of this family is among the records of the republic of Genoa. Johannes Garibaldi commanded a fleet of galleys in the wars between the Genoese and Pisans, and greatly distinguished himself in an engagement off the coast of Tuscany. The family after this flourished in Genoa, always taking the popular part, till at last they became so powerful that they were enrolled among the nobility of the republic, and their name is found in the Golden Book. As evidence of their importance, we still find in Genoa the Piazza, Palazzo, and Strado dei Garibaldi. The descendants of the elder branch are represented now by the March ese Garibaldi, member of the Sub-Alpine Parliament. The younger branch transferred itself (time uncertain) to the vicinity of Chiavari, where they formed a colony by themselves in one of the valleys of the mountains of the Ri-vieri, where still may be found the Village dei Garibaldi, and remains of the stronghold which they occupied in those times. An old inscription is still seen on the tower, commemorating its building by one of the earlier Garibaldis. Three generations ago one of the cadets settled in Nice, and his lineal descendant is the present General Garibaldi. Sir Bernard Burke applied to General Garibaldi, through Mr. Chambers, for information respecting his family, with the view of placing it in his work, "The Vicissitudes of Families." "What matter is it," answered the General, "whence I came? Say to Sir Bernard Burke that I represent the people; they are my family." II. THE CAMPAIGN OF MENTANA By Ricciotti Garibaldi. Arriving in Florence, I found the committee in a state of confusion on account of so many volunteers coming forward to be enrolled. We had neither arms nor money, and were, therefore, obliged to limit enlistment. I remained three days in Florence, and then went to Terni, and found the place full of volunteers--in all nearly 2000 men. We received information that the fortress occupied by Menotti was to be attacked. I left to join him, and, the men being unarmed, went alone. He had 1500 men. On the morning of the third day he left N------ with a few men, and went to Monte Calvario, leaving me in command of the fort and of the band, which had been reinforced by nearly 1000 men. About eleven at night, on the same day, my outposts were driven in by the Papal troops. Many of our volunteers not having so much as one cartridge per man, I was obliged to abandon the fortress, and take up position to the left, at a distance of two miles, as it was impossible to hold the post against the Papal artillery. Menotti having rejoined us, we started, at one on the following morning, for Porcile, as the enemy were trying to cut us off from the Italian frontier. After twelve hours' march we arrived at Porcile. We rested there for the remainder of the day and night, when the alarm was given of the approach of the enemy. Being in an unfit state to receive them, with few arms and no ammunition, my brother determined to recross the frontier. After ten hours' march, we arrived at the convent of Santa Maria, where we set to work to re-form our command. Whilst there news came that the General was at Terni, whence he sent orders for us to prepare to march on Passo Corese, he joining us on the road. This is a pass leading to the valley of the Tiber. After waiting several days to reform the bands, the General gave the signal to march. We divided into two columns, and took the road to Monte Rotondo, a strong position occupied by the Papal troops. One column marched along the banks of the Tiber, and the other by the road in the hills. At morning both columns arrived in sight of Monte Rotondo, and at once proceeded to the assault. Colonel Frygisi attacked the east gateway with two battalions, whilst Masto attacked the west gateway also with two battalions; but he being wounded at the first assault, the command of the party devolved upon me. After charging twice up to the gateway, which, for want of artillery, we could not take, we were in turn attacked by the enemy, and forced to seek refuge in a group of houses. We were thus cut off from the rest of our corps for the whole day, daring which time we lost out of 300,107 men and five officers. In the evening we managed to communicate with the General; erected barricades in the inner street, and fought all day. We were thirty-six hours without food. The place was too important to be left, or we might have cut our way out. The General sent a battalion as a reinforcement, and by a desperate charge we got to the gate, piled there a cartload of fascines and a quantity of sulphur, which, being set on fire, burnt it down in about an hour and a half. At half-past twelve at night--the General having come down and taken personal command--we charged through the burning gate, and took possession of the entrance and adjoining houses. The fighting went on until about eight in the morning, they defending themselves step by step till we had driven them into the palace of the Prince of Piombino, a large castellated building, very strong. We first took the court-yard, in which we found their cannon, they defending story after story of the building until driven to the third floor, when, seeing the smoke of a fire which had been lighted on the ground-floor to bam them out, they surrendered, and the fight was over. In the night the greater number of the men escaped towards Rome; only 300 in the palace were taken prisoners, besides forty-two horses and two pieces of cannon, 500 stand of arms, and all their materials of war. The fight had lasted twenty-four hours--from eight one day to eight the next--without a single instant's cessation of firing. It cost us between 400 and 500 men, amongst whom were some of our bravest and best officers. This was the first real struggle under the General. We had one day's rest; but on the following night the enemy returned, and attacked the railway station at about a mile distant from Monte Rotondo, where, finding a number of our wounded, they bayoneted them in their beds, one man having twenty-seven wounds in his body. The General at once sent heavy reinforcements, and the enemy was driven back. Three days after this we marched to the Zecchenella, a large farmhouse about a mile distant from the Ponte de la Mentana, within about four miles and a half from Rome. On our approach the enemy re-crossed the bridge, blowing up one of the two bridges and mining the other. The Papal troops came again on our side of the Teverone--a river which joins the Tiber a few miles from Rome. They extended themselves as sharpshooters all along our line, amusing themselves by firing at us until the evening, we scarcely returning a shot, the General having ordered us not to do so--our aim, since we were so few, being to draw the enemy into the open country. In the night we lighted large fires, to let the people in Rome know that we were near; but the movement which we expected in the city did not take place, and we returned to Monte Rotondo the next day. After staying there for several days, the General resolved to march to Tivoli, which was held by a strong body of our volunteers. The column, consisting of 4700 infantry, two field guns and two smaller guns, and one squadron of cavalry, commenced its march at eleven o'clock. When we had gone a mile beyond Mentana the vanguard was suddenly attacked, and we had to fall back on Mentana, so as to form our battalions in line of battle. Recovered from our first surprise, the General ordered all the troops to advance, and we retook the positions we had lost, when, just as the Papal troops were retreating on the road to Rome, the French regiments, which till now had remained hidden behind the hills, out-flanked us on the left. After some very heavy fighting, especially in the position of the haystacks in the centre, which were taken, lost, and retaken, four or five times, the General, seeing the uselessness of contending against such an overwhelming force, gave the order to retreat. We retreated from the field of battle, passing under the fire of the Chassepôts, leaving between 400 and 500 men on the field, and about the same number of prisoners in their hands, and one piece of cannon. Two battalions, numbering altogether over 400 men, shut themselves up in the old fort of Munturra, where, having exhausted all their ammunition, they surrendered in the morning. When the main body had returned to Monte Rotondo, the General gave orders that every thing should be ready to re-attack in the night; but on examining the state of our army, we found that scarcely a cartridge remained, and not a single round of ammunition for the cannon. Learning this, the General gave the order to retreat to Passo Corese, where we arrived about one in the morning, being again on Italian soil. We then proceeded to the disbandment of our troops. At Mentana, where we had retaken all our positions, and where we thought the day was ours, we saw red-trowsered soldiers out-flanking us on the left, and we took them for the legion of Antibes, but the rapid roll of their firing opened our eyes to the fact that we were face to face with the French, armed with their new weapon, the deadly Chassepot, and from that moment we fought merely to save the honor of the day. There was no hope of winning the battle, though if the ammunition of our guns and rifles had not failed, and the General could have attacked again in the night, as he intended to do, I have no doubt but that we should have driven back the Franco-Papal army, for they did not dare to take possession of the positions which we held during the battle, and of the one gun which we left there, till late next day. Had they dared it, being so numerically superior, they could have cut us off and made us all prisoners, as their left wing almost touched the road running from Monte Rotondo to Passo Corese. Some idea may be formed of the state and appearance of the volunteer army by the fact that it had no proper arms; the muskets were many of them as old as the first Napoleon. When Menotti resolved to recross the frontier, he issued an order of the day in which he said, "I can not march, having no shoes; I can not stand still, because I have nothing to cover my men; and I can not fight, because I have no ammunition." When we started for Monte Rotondo the men had been so long without eating, that in passing along the line with my guides, I actually saw the infantry battalions making themselves soup out of the grass of the field, having nothing else to put into their caldrons. At the battle of Montana we had 4700 men all told; opposed to us were 8000 Papal troops and 3000 French. Battle began at half past eleven in the morning; lasted until half past five in the evening; the weather fine. The 300 who surrendered were allowed to recross the frontier. The General was taken prisoner by the Italian Government. At Mentana the Papal troops thought they had taken me. They took a man like me to Rome, and put him in handsome apartments until the mistake was discovered. When they thought they had me, the Papal officers ordered the prisoner to be shot at once, but the French officers saved him. In a work entitled "Rome and Mentana," surprise has been expressed that General Garibaldi did not enter Rome after the victory of Monte Rotondo, and before the entry of the French. To that we reply:--We could not, for the Papalini held the Mentana bridge, the only one not blown up near Rome, and we should have been obliged to go round by Tivoli and down the other side of the Teverone, two days' march. We tried to take the Mentana bridge, but on nearing it we found it strongly fortified and mined, so that after lying at the Zecchenella (three-quarters of a mile from the bridge) for a day and two nights, we retired to Monte Rotondo. The same work states: "The two plateaux on which we had been walking had been held by the Garibaldini, taken by the Pontificals, and retaken by the Garabaldini, at which period the French advanced, when, finding it hopeless, the Garibaldini retreated into Mentana." This is true; the Papalini were retreating along the road when the French out-flanked our left, and threatened our line of retreat. The retreat commenced at nine o'clock in the evening of the battle, as we expected the Papalini to attack and surround Monte Rotondo. If we had stopped they would have made us all prisoners, as our ammunition failed. We entered Monte Rotondo by the gate coming from Passo Corese; the Tivoli gate was stormed also by Frygisi, but not taken till we opened the gate for him from inside. The attack lasted from 8 a.m. till 7 a.m. next day. We set fire to the gate about 12 o'clock at night, and lost about 250 men, dead and wounded. The church of Monte Rotondo suffered a good deal. The same author writes:- "It was a large and handsome one, with carved oak seats in the choir, and presented a sad scene of devastation. The holy water stoops had been dashed to pieces, the font destroyed, the side chapel, in which the Host was reserved, had its altar all broken by bayonets. The Host had been carried on the point of one, and borne in mock procession, attended, amongst others, by a man holding the sacristan's large three-cornered hat stuck round with candles." It is true our people were so hungry that they ate the holy wafers. III. GARIBALDI AND THE ITALIAN GOVERNMENT Italy, as she exists, is a sad country. Where is there to be found a country more favored by nature, with a lovelier sky, a climate more salubrious, productions more varied and excellent, a population more lively or intelligent? Her soldiers, if well-directed, would undoubtedly equal any of the first soldiers in the world; her sailors are second to none. And yet all these advantages, all these favors of Nature, are neutralized by the connivance and co-operation of priests with an extremely bad government. One finds misery, ignorance, weakness, servility to the stranger, where one should see abundance, knowledge, strength, and haughtiness towards intruders. An unpopular government, which, instead of organizing a national army that might be placed at the head of the first armies of the world, contents itself with accumulating many carbineers, policemen, and custom-house officers, and spending, or rather squandering the money of the nation in immoral "secret expenses." A navy that might compete with the most flourishing, is reduced to a pitiable condition, from its being placed under the direction of incompetent and dishonest persons. Both army and navy, according to their own officers, are not in a condition to make war, but only serve to repress any national aspirations, and to support the spiritless policy of the Government. Two abominable acts of treachery have been perpetrated by the Italian Government. The first act of treachery was ushered in by the arrest of General Garibaldi at Asinalunga. Eighteen years had passed away since the Roman people sent to the Quirinal their elected representatives, who, on the 9th of February, declared with solemn legality that the temporal power of the Pope was abolished. The patriots in public assembly, in the light of day, and from the height of the Quirinal, unfurled the beautiful, the holy, and beloved banner of the tricolor of Italy. Who quenched this patriotic fire? Bonaparte in secret alliance with the fugitives of Gaeta. While the balls of the French canon fell on the citizens posted at the barricades, the representatives of the people replied to these cruel shots by again proclaiming the statute of the Republic, and confiding the future liberties of Rome to the charge of Garibaldi. On September 16th, 1864, was concluded the pernicious convention of September, which the Moderates declared would open the gates of Rome. Its first result was that Turin saw its streets reddened with blood. Why were the arms of their brothers turned upon the people who deserved so well of Italy? Did they wish to overthrow the dynasty? Did they wish to overthrow the form of government, or overturn the Ministers? Did they wish to upset social order? Did they arm themselves against their brethren of the army? Oh, no! they did not arm; they united peaceably, and peaceably cried for justice. Their cry was, "Rome the capital of Italy." They did not wish the nation to betray itself; they did not wish the nation to be dismembered; they did not wish the country any longer to serve the foreigner. Its protest was, therefore, against that convention which destroys the plebiscite of Southern Italy. To the noble cry, to the generous protest, the Government replied by directing its troops upon the peaceful citizens; and the Piazza Castello and the Piazza San Carlo were bathed in blood. Unhappy Turin! the Moderate party stifled thy cries in thine own blood, betrayed thy solemn protests, called upon thee not to disturb the concord of the nation, and to that false concord sacrificed thee and the nation alike. Widows and orphans well remember the impunity given to the assassins of their loved ones in the name of "concord." When will these crimes end? Without Rome, unity is forever menaced. Without Rome, we have neither moral nor political liberty. We have no independence, no right government; but we have anarchy, dilapidation, servitude to the foreigner, and submission to the priests. The Moderates acknowledge Cavour as their leader: hear, then, Cavour. The Italian Parliament, in 1861, when Cavour was Prime Minister, declared Victor Emanuel King of Italy, and declared Rome officially the seat of the new monarchy; and Cavour stated, in his place as Prime Minister, after having bestowed upon the question the utmost deliberation, that "the ideas of a nation were few in number, and that to the common Italian mind the idea of Italy was inseparable from that of Rome. An Italy of which Rome was not the capital would be no Italy for the Italian people. For the existence, then, of a national Italian people, the possession of Rome as a capital was an essential condition." "The choice of a capital," continued Cavour, "must be determined by high moral considerations, on which the instinct of each nation must decide for itself. Rome, gentlemen, unites all the historical, intellectual, and moral qualities which are required to form the capital of a great nation. Convinced, deeply convinced as I am of this truth, I think it my bounden duty to proclaim it as solemnly as I can before you and before the country. I think it my duty also to appeal, under these circumstances, to the patriotism of all the Italian citizens, and of the representatives of our most illustrious cities, when I beg of them to cease all discussion on this question, so that Europe may become aware that the necessity of having Rome for our capital is recognized and proclaimed by the whole nation." How the Moderates followed this advice has been already seen. But statements were circulated in their papers, far and wide, in order to reconcile the Italian people to a convention, that the rights of the Roman people would not be interfered with; and when the French troops had left, the people of Rome would have full liberty to act as they thought proper. It was in this view that General Garibaldi visited Orvieto shortly before his arrest, where he was received with the most unbounded enthusiasm, the entire city being in festive garb, whilst men, women, and children joined in according him an enthusiastic welcome. "Our cry must no longer be 'Rome or death!'" he said; "on the contrary, it is 'Rome and life!' for international right permits the Romans to rise, and will allow them to raise themselves from the mud into which the priests have thrown them." It was at four o'clock on Tuesday morning, on the 5th of September, that General Garibaldi was arrested, by order of Ratazzi, in the little village of Asinalunga. He was sleeping in the house of Professor Aqualucci, and he was, as the map will show, far from the Roman frontier. He had been received with the utmost respect by the syndic and by the secretary of the municipality, and all the usual rejoicings took place, though it is stated that all the time the syndic had the order for the General's arrest in his pocket. General Garibaldi was conveyed to the fortress of Alexandria. In a day or two he was informed that he would be entirely restored to liberty if he would consent to go to Caprera; he had full liberty to return to the mainland whenever he thought proper. Depending upon this ministerial assurance, he returned to Caprera, having previously assured his friends in Genoa that he was in full and perfect liberty. An Italian fleet was sent to guard Caprera, and on his attempting to leave the island to go on board the Rubeatini postal steamers, his boat was fired at. He was taken on board a man-of-war, and conducted back to Caprera. Then it was that, on the evening of the 14th of October, 1867, three individuals came down from the farm at Caprera towards Fontanazia; a fourth passed by way of the wooden porch which joins the small iron cottage to the large Souse, and took the high road to Stagnatia--the latter, by his dark physiognomy and the style of his apparel, appeared to be a Sardinian--the men belonging to the yacht which the munificence and sympathy of the generous English nation had placed at the disposal of the General. The first three men might have been recognized by that famous distinction, the red shirt, had not this garment, in a great measure, been concealed by the outer habiliments of each. They were Barberini and Fruchianti, and the third we need not describe. Barberini, though not strong by nature, had a wiry arm and the heart of a lion; Fruchianti was far more robust. The sirocco, with its melancholy breath, beat down the poor plants of the island, daughter of the volcanoes and of the sea, and dense black clouds, chased by the impetuous winds, eddied on the summit of Veggialone, and then became mingled with dense vapors, which on higher mountains often form the centre of storms. The three silent men descended, and on the way, whenever the unequal ground permitted a view of the port, they gazed with watchful eyes on the three ships which rocked gracefully in the Bay of Stagnabella. The yacht, with a small cannon at her bow, and a boat lashed to the poop, formed a strange contrast (completely deserted as she was) with the meu-of-war, their decks covered and encumbered with men. It was six o'clock in the evening, and the sun had set, and the night promised, if not tempest, that disagreeable and oppressive weather which the sirocco generally brings from the burning plains of the desert. The three men having arrived on the Prato, Fruchianti said, "I leave you; I am going to the left to explore the point of Araccio." The two continued to descend; they passed--opening and shutting them again--the four gates (?) of Fontanazia, and arrived under the dry wall which divides the cultivated part from the deserted shores. Having reached that wall, the elder man threw off his cloak, changed his white hat for a cap, and after having reconnoitred a time beyond the dry wall, got over it with surprising agility. He now seemed to recall the strength of his past life, and was reinvigorated as if by twenty years. Were not his sons and his brothers fighting against the mercenaries of Papal tyranny? and could he remain quiet, murmuring complaints, or give himself up to the shameful life of the indifferent? Having crossed the wall, and turned to Barberini, the General said, "Let us sit down and smoke half a cigar," and drawing from his left pocket a little case, a souvenir from the amiable Lady Shaftesbury, he lit one, which he then handed to his companion, a great amateur of such commodities. Meanwhile the first shadows of darkness began to obscure the atmosphere, but in the east they saw the appearance of a changing color, the first herald of the coming moonlight. "In three-quarters of an hour," said the General, "the moon will rise above the mountains, and there is no time to lose." Thereupon the two men took their way to the port, Giovanni was at his post, and, with the aid of Barberini, in a moment the little skiff was in the water, and the General sat on his cloak as low as possible. After launching the little boat into the sea, Giovanni embarked in the larger one, and having assured himself of the progress of the first, he proceeded towards the yacht, merrily singing. "Halt! who goes there?" twice cried the men-of-war's men, who had become policemen to the Sardinian ruler. But he sang on, and did not seem to care for their cries. Nevertheless, at the third intimation, Giovanni replied, "Going on board!" At this they seemed satisfied. Meanwhile the little skiff pursued her course, coasting Carriano, at the distance of two miles from the shore, partly propelling itself, and partly propelled by a boat-hook used in the American fashion. From Carriano to Barabruciata, and thence to the point of Treviso, near which appeared the form of the faithful Fruchianti. "Nothing new as far as the rocks of Araccio," said Fruchianti. "Then I push on," answered the General. And his little boat dashed among the breakers. He gave a glance to the small island, which appeared at a convenient distance, and the tiny skiff was on the high sea. Garibaldi, seeing the moonlight increase, paddled on with good will, and with the help of the breeze crossed the Straits of Moneta with surprising velocity. In the moonlight, at a certain distance, every reef appeared a boat; and as the squadron of Batazzi, besides so many launches for the ships of war about Caprera, was also augmented by numerous vessels from Maddalena, the sea all around the island was crowded with vessels, to prevent one man from fulfilling his duty. Nearing the coast of the little island of Giardinelli, not far from Maddalena, the skiff plunged among the broken waters, which is there always, and coasted the shore, already illumined by the moon. It is a fact that many people on service in every Government affect a great deal of zeal in daylight, and in the presence, or the supposed presence, of the chief. At the arrival of night, however, after a good supper and copious libations to Bacchus--at night, I say, when commanders are sleeping or diverting themselves--zeal and vigilance die in exact proportion to the discipline and the interest which the motive of the watch inspires. Thus, then, one must not ascribe all the merit to him who managed the boat, but more to the sleeping vigilance of those whose duty it was to have kept a better look-out, that he reached the little island safe and sound, without being molested by one solitary call of "Who goes there?" Having reached land, there were three paths to take: first, to row close to the land; secondly, to leave the island to the left, and coast along to the west; and thirdly, leaving the island to the right and following the coast, to approach the ford which separates it from Maddalena, where probably Basso and Captain Cunio were waiting. The first plan was adopted. After having drawn up the boat on the beach, the General proceeded at midday in the direction of the ford, where, on his arrival, he heard cries from those who guarded the strait, and a few shots fired in the distance. At a short distance from the ford of the island there is a wall covered with creepers, which prevents the escape of the animals that pasture in the island; and at midday he reached a compound. Then also came the ford, and through the wall there was a little passage formed of stones. The General thought he could distinguish along the wall a file of sailors lying down, and he was so much the more disposed to believe it, as Captain Cunio and Basso had seen seamen arrive on the island in the course of the day. This made him lose about half an hour waiting and reconnoitring, and Captain Cunio and Basso, imagining the shots directed at the boat, had concluded him taken or obliged to recede. Under this persuasion the friends returned from the ford towards Maddalena, and were greatly vexed when, towards 2 p.m., they were informed by the confidential servant of Mrs. Collins that he, the General, had reached her house. In fact, about 10 p.m., Garibaldi ventured to pass the little strait which divides the isle from Maddalena, and effected it without hinderance, but was obliged, to his great inconvenience, to ride a long way down a road flooded with water, which had deluged it. He then came in sight of Mrs. Collins's house, sure of a good reception, but drew near cautiously, apprehending that some one might be on the watch; and finally, in a moment in which the moon was veiled by a dark cloud, he approached the dwelling, and with the end of his Scotch walking-stick struck at the window a few slight blows. Mrs. Collins who had strong faith in the fortunes of the General, and who was warned of his attempt, expected him, so that at the first sound she advanced to the front door, opened it, and received her old neighbor with friendly greetings. And pleasant he found it to receive shelter after such a wild night; so that the wanderer was once more safe and indeed happy in his friend's house, where a thousand cares and attentions were lavished on him. After this there was a little difficulty in crossing Sardinia and reaching the main land. While the Government still supposed Garibaldi a prisoner at Caprera, he had arrived in safety at the Hôtel de Florence! Not less atrocious was the treachery used towards the volunteers. They were promised that as soon as the first French soldier disembarked the army should march on Rome, and the Government, to put the country off her guard, occupied several points of the Roman territory, and spread a considerable number of troops over the frontier that they might the more easily disarm the volunteers, as well as close up from them every path, so that no supplies or subsidies could reach them from their brothers and the Committee of Help. Having thus isolated the volunteers and deprived them of succor and supplies--especially the supply of ammunition, of which the Government knew them to be in want--they spread discouragement and demoralization among the young volunteers, and did all they could to betray and destroy them. Rome being occupied by the French, and part of the Roman territory by the Government troops, the Papal army _en masse_ could freely operate against the volunteers. The papal mercenaries, still alarmed by the recent defeats they had sustained, did not dare to confront alone the unarmed soldiers of liberty, and it was therefore determined that the French army should support the Papal troops. The Government of Florence did not think it necessary to take part in the glory of the battle of Mentana, by adding its troops to those of the French allies; or perhaps it believed, and with reason, that the Italian people would not have quite tolerated such an accumulation of villainy, although the Ministry would certainly have executed it of themselves without any remorse. It contented itself, therefore, with depriving the volunteers of their natural aids, with sowing diffidence and discouragement in the hearts of our youthful and impressible soldiers, and with giving the National Army Contingent orders to slaughter the flower of the Italian nation, their brother Italians. Well was it for the soldiers of the Pope that they were backed by those of Bonaparte. The battle of Mentana commenced at 1 p.m. on the 3d of November, between the Papal troops and the volunteers. After two hours' desperate fighting the mercenaries' lines had all fallen back, and our men marched over their corpses in pursuit of the fugitives. But the new line of Imperialists advancing, and finding our youthful volunteers in that disorder incidental under these circumstances to men little disciplined, compelled them to retreat. In this manner was accomplished two most execrable acts of treachery, to which parallels can not be found in any page of the world's history. IV. NOTES. NOTE 1. Among the cardinals nominated by Sixtus IV. was Raffaelle, who, under the direction of his great uncle, Sixtus IV., had acted the principal part in the bloody conspiracy of the Pazza. In assuming his seat among the fathers of the Christian Church, Giovanni de Medici, afterwards Leo X., found himself associated with one who had assisted in the murder of his uncle, and had attempted the life of his father. But the youth and inexperience of Riaro excused the enormity of a crime perpetrated under the sanction of the supreme pontiff. The eldest member of the college at this time was Roderigo Borgia, who had enjoyed for upwards of thirty-five years the dignity of the purple, to which he had for a long time past added that of the vice-chancellor to the holy see. The private life of Roderigo had been a perpetual disgrace to his ecclesiastical functions. In the Papal History by Dr. Beggi (edition 1862, pages 553-556) we are told that this cardinal was at one time sovereign regent of Rome, that he had a ferocious and indomitable ambition, with such a perverse spirit fomented by debauchery, luxury, and riches, that in the contempt of any pretense of virtue, he lived publicly with a barefaced concubine named Rosa Vennozza, by whom he had many children. After his election to the chair of St. Peter, he created his eldest son Duke of Candia. Cæsar Borgia was the second son; Lucretia Borgia was of the same stock, and the eldest of several daughters whom he had by other mistresses. On the death of Innocent VIII., Cardinal Roderigo Borgia, being the most powerful in authority and wealth, with cunning artifices, and corrupt promises to the Roman barons and the most influential cardinals--such as the Sforzas, the Orsini, the Riarii, and others, ascended the papal chair under the title of Alexander VI. NOTE 2. A better illustration of the manner in which the Church of Rome applies her patronage of the fine arts to the inculcation of her doctrines and the increase of her power, can hardly be found than among the frescoes of the Campo Santo, Pisa. Here we have represented the most ghastly cartoons of death, judgment, purgatory, and hell; we behold angels and devils fighting for the souls of the departed, snakes devouring, fiends scorching, red-hot hooks tearing their flesh. Those on earth can, so say the priests, rescue their unfortunate relatives from this melancholy position by giving donations to their spiritual fathers, who will then pray for their escape. We read in the New Testament that the rich enter heaven with difficulty, but it is they, according to the Church of Rome, who enter easily, whilst the poor are virtually excluded. NOTE 3. In foreign discussions on the papal question it is always assumed as an undisputed fact that the maintenance of the papal court at Rome is, in a material point of view, an immense advantage to the city, whatever it may be in a moral one. Now my own observations have led me to doubt the correctness of this assumption. If the Pope were removed from Rome, or if a lay government were established--the two hypotheses are practically identical--the number of the clergy would undoubtedly be much diminished, a large number of the convents and clerical endowments would be suppressed, and the present generation of priests would be heavy sufferers. This result is inevitable. Under no free government would or could a city of 170,000 inhabitants support 10,000 unproductive persons out of the common funds--for this is substantially the case in Rome at the present day. Every sixteen lay citizens--men, women, and children--support out of their labor a priest between them. The papal question with the Roman priesthood is thus a question of daily bread, and it is surely no want of charity to suppose that the material aspect influences their minds quite as much as the spiritual. It is, however, a Protestant delusion that the priests of Rome live upon the fat of the land. What fat there is is certainly theirs. It is one of the mysteries of Rome how the hundreds of priests who swarm about the streets manage to live. The clue to the mystery is to be found inside the churches. In every church--and there arty 866 of them--some score or two of masses are said daily at the different altars. The pay for performing a mass varies from sixpence to five shillings. The good masses--those paid for by private persons for the souls of their relatives--are naturally reserved for the priests connected with a particular church; while the poor ones are given to any priest who happens to apply for them. The nobility, as a body, are sure to be the supporters of an established order of things; their interests, too, are very much mixed up with those of the papacy. There is not a single noble Roman family that has not one or more of its members among the higher ranks of the priesthood. And in a considerable degree their distinctions, such as they are, and their temporal prospects, are bound up with the popedom. Moreover, in this rank of the social scale the private and personal influence of the priests through the women of the family is very powerful. The more active, however, and ambitious amongst the aristocracy feel deeply the exclusion from public life, the absence from any opening for ambition, and the gradual impoverishment of their property, which are the necessary evils of an absolute ecclesiastical government.--_Dicey's "Rome in 1860_." NOTE 4. Many of our readers may have only an indistinct idea of the causes which led to the siege of Rome in 1849; and to understand it we must turn for a moment to the history of France. The revolution of 1848, which dethroned Louis Philippe and the house of Orleans, and established a republican government in France, was the signal for a general revolutionary movement throughout Europe. The Fifth Article of the new French Constitution stated, "The French Republic respects foreign nationalities. She intends to cause her own to be respected. She will never undertake any sin for the purpose of conquest, and will never employ her arms against the liberty of any people." Prince Louis Napoleon was elected a member of the Chambers. He had fought for the Italian liberty in the year 1831, when the Bolognese revolution broke out. Louis Napoleon had taken an active part in the campaign, and, aided by General Sercognani, defeated the Papal forces in several places. His success was of short duration. He was deprived of his command, and banished from Italy, and only escaped the Austrian soldiers by assuming the disguise of a servant.* When the prince landed in France from England, where he had resided several years, he caused a proclamation to be posted on the walls of Boulogne, from which we extract the following:-- "I have come to respond to the appeal which you have made to my patriotism. The mission which you impose on me is a glorious one, and I shall know how to fulfill it. Full of gratitude for the affection you manifest towards me, I bring you my whole life, my whole soul. "Brothers and citizens, it is not a pretender whom you receive into your midst. I have not meditated in exile to no purpose. A pretender is a calamity. I shall never be ungrateful, never a malefactor. It is as a sincere and ardent Democratic Reformer that I come before you. I call to witness the mighty shade of the man of the age, as I solemnly make these promises:- "I will be, as I always have been, the child of France. "In every Frenchman I shall always see a brother. "The rights of everyone shall be my rights. "The Democratic Republic shall be the object of my worship. I will be its priest. "Never will I seek to clothe myself in the imperial purple. "Let my heart be withered within my breast on the day when I forget what I owe to you and to France. "Let my lips be ever closed if I ever pronounce a word, a blasphemy, against the Republican sovereignty of the French people. "Let me be accursed on the day when I allow the propagation, under cover of my name, of doctrines contrary to the democratic principle which ought to direct the government of the Republic. * See "Vicissitudes of Families," by Sir Bernard Burke, pp. 294, 395. See also "The Autobiography of an Italian Rebel," by Riccalde, from p. 5. "Let me be condemned to the pillory on the day when, a criminal and a traitor, I shall dare to lay a sacrilegious hand on the rights of the people--whether by fraud, with its consent, or by force and violence against it."--See Courier de la Sarthe. And on December 2d, 1848, he addressed the following letter to the Editor of the Constitutionnel:- "Monsieur,--Sachant qu'on a remarqué mon absence au vote pour l'expédition de Civita Vecchia, je crois devoir déclarer, que bien que résolu à appuyer toutes les dispositions propres à garantir la liberté et l'autorité du Souverain Pontife, je n'ai pu néanmoins approuver, par mon vote, unie démonstration militaire qui me semblait périlleuse, même pour les intérêts sacrés que Ton veut protéger, et faite pour compromettre la paix européene. (Signé) "L. N. Bonaparte." It must also be borne in mind that the Emperor Napoleon, his uncle, had created his own son King of Rome, and had detained the Pope a prisoner in France; when, therefore, Prince Louis Napoleon was elected President of the French Republic, it was universally supposed that he would rejoice at the formation of a sister Republic in the Roman States. The Roman Constituent Assembly elected by universal suffrage voted by one hundred and forty-three against five votes for the perpetual abolition of the temporal government of the Pope. On the 18th of April, 1849, the Constituent Assembly voted that a manifesto should be addressed to the Governments and Parliaments of England and France. In this document it was stated, "That the Roman people had a right to give themselves the form of government which pleased them; that they had sanctioned the independence and free exercise of the spiritual authority of the Pope; and that they trusted that England and France would not assist in restoring a government irreconcilable by its nature with liberty and civilization, and morally destitute of all authority for many years past, and materially so during the previous five months." Notwithstanding this, the French Government dispatched a French army to Civita Vecchia, where they landed on the 27th of April, 1849. General Oudinot declared that the flag which he had hoisted was that of peace, order, conciliation, and true liberty, and he invited the Roman people to co-operate in the accomplishment of this patriotic and sacred work. He also declared that the French had landed, not to defend the existing Pontifical Government, but to avert great misfortunes from the country. France, he added, did not arrogate to herself the right to regulate interests which belonged to the Roman people and extended to the whole Christian world. The prefect of the province replied, "Force may do much in this world, but I am averse to believe that republican France will employ its troops to overthrow the rights of a republic formed under the same auspices as her own. I am convinced that when you ascertain the truth you will feel assured that in our country the republic is supported by the immense majority of the people." The Roman Government--which was a triumvirate consisting of Mazzini, Armellini, and Aurelio Saffi--resolved to oppose force by force, and the Assembly did not hesitate. The Triumvirate intrusted to General Garibaldi, who arrived the same evening, the defense of the city of Rome. It is impossible to describe the enthusiasm which took possession of the population at the sight of him. The courage of the people increased with their confidence, and it appeared as if the Assembly had not only decreed defense but victory. Garibaldi upheld for three months in the future capital of the nation the national flag, against the forces of France, Austria, Naples, and Spain. Twice were the French troops attacked at the point of the bayonet and repulsed far beyond the walls. It was afterwards stated by French writers, that the French soldiers only intended to make a re-connoissance, and had fallen into a snare. This is not true. The French general had resolved upon a battle, the plan of which was found on the body of a French officer killed in the conflict, and transmitted to the Minister of War. It was after this victory that Garibaldi, seeing all the advantages of his situation, wrote to Avizzana, Minister of War: "Send me fresh troops, and as I promised to beat the French, and have kept my word, I promise you I will prevent any one of them from regaining their vessels." It was then that Mazzini, placing all his hopes on the French democratic party, of which Ledru-Rollin was the chief, interposed his authority. He refused the fresh troops asked for, and ordered Garibaldi not to make a mortal enemy of France by complete defeat. On Monday, 7th May, in the French National Assembly there was an animated discussion on the French expedition to Rome, M. Jules Favre having denounced its proceedings as contrary to the intention avowed by ministers, which was to prevent foreign interference at Rome, and as clearly opposed to the wishes of the Roman people; he also stated, on the authority of private letters, that five unsuccessful assaults had been made, that 150 men had been killed and 600 wounded, and he ended by moving the appointment of a committee. M. Barrot, the President of the Council, declared that the object of the expedition was, really, to prevent another power from interfering in the affairs of Rome, and expressed his belief that General Oudinot had not acted contrary to his instructions, though the army might have fallen into a snare. He opposed the committee as unconstitutional, and called upon the Assembly to reject the motion. General Lamoricière believed that General Oudinot might have been deceived as to the wishes of the people at Rome. Mr. Flocon announced that barricades had been erected at Rome, and that the French residents would fight against the new-comers. After some further discussion, M. Barrot acquiesced in the motion, and the members withdrew to appoint the committee. The sitting was resumed at nine o'clock, when the report of the committee was presented. It stated that as the idea of the Assembly had been that the expedition sent to Civita Vecchia ought to remain there, unless Austria moved on Rome, or a counter revolution in that city rendered an advance necessary, the committee considered that more had been done than had been intended, and it therefore proposed a resolution declaring that the National Assembly requested the Government to take measures that the expedition to Italy be no longer turned aside from its real object. M. Drouyn de Lhuys, on the part of the Government, said he must positively refuse to order the troops to return to Civita Vecchia, their presence being required by events at Rome. The minister further declared that the Government fully supported its agent, the general-in-chief, and the more so that the details of the encounter at Rome were wanting. M. Lenard accused the ministry of wishing to put down the Roman Republic. After various amendments had been proposed and rejected, the resolution of the committee was carried against ministers by a majority of 328 to 241. The result was received with loud cheers, and cries of "Vive la République," and the Chamber adjourned at a quarter past one o'clock. Notwithstanding this vote of the French National Assembly, the President of the Republic, Prince Louis Napoleon, addressed a letter to General Oudinot, in which he says: "I had hoped that the inhabitants of Rome would receive with eagerness an army which had arrived there to accomplish a friendly and disinterested mission. This has not been the case; our soldiers have been received as enemies, our military honor is-engaged. I shall not suffer it to be assailed. Reinforcements shall not be wanting to you." The envoy of the Roman Government in Paris addressed the following letter, in the name of the Roman people, to their brothers in France: "A sanguinary combat has taken place between the inhabitants of Rome and the children of France, whom rigorous orders urged against our homes; the sentiment of military honor commanded them to obey their chiefs, the sentiment of patriotism ordered us to defend our liberties and our country. Honor is saved, but at what a price! may the terrible responsibility be averted from us, who are united by the bonds of charity. May even the culpable be pardoned; they are punished sufficiently by remorse. Health and fraternity.--L. Tarpolei, Colonel, Envoy Extraordinary, of the Roman Republic in Pans." In the next sitting of the French Assembly, the subject of the President's letter to General Oudinot was brought forward by M. Grevy, in reply to whom M. Odillon Barrot stated that though the letter in question was not the act of the Cabinet, he and his colleagues were ready to assume the whole responsibility of it. He declared that the object of the letter was merely to express sympathy with the army, and that it was not intended as the inauguration of a policy contrary to that of the Assembly. General Changamier placed the letter of the President of the Republic to General Oudinot on the orders of the day of every regiment in the French service, although M. Odillon Barrot declared in the Assembly that it was not official. Also General Foret refused to obey the orders of the President of the Assembly by sending two battalions to guard it during its sitting; a breach of orders which was brought under the notice of the Assembly by M. Armand Manest, and apologized for by M. Odillon Barrot. On the 9th of May, M. Ledru-Rollin declaimed the letter of the President to General Oudinot to be on insolent defiance of the National Assembly, and a violation of the Constitution. Ultimately the debate was adjourned on the motion of M. Grevy and M. Favre, in consequence of M. Odillon Barrot having announced that M. Lesseps, the late minister from Paris at Madrid, had been sent by the Government as an envoy to Rome to express to the Roman people the wishes of the Assembly, which showed that the Government did not intend to oppose the Assembly. The Paris correspondent of the _Morning Chronicle_, noticing the stormy debates in the French Assembly, says: "In the last three days troops have been pouring into Paris, and the number of men now garrisoning the capital is upwards of 100,000." We will now return to Rome, and to the day of the first victory over the French. The joy which pervaded Rome in the evening and night which followed this first combat may be easily supposed. The whole city was illuminated, and presented the aspect of a national fête. Songs and bands of music were heard in all directions. The next day, the 1st of May, Garibaldi received from the Minister of War authority to attack the French with his legion. He took up a splendid position on a height on the flank of the French army; but at the moment the Italians were about to charge, a French officer arrived and demanded a parley with Garibaldi. He stated that he was sent by General Oudinot to treat for an armistice, and to be assured that the Roman people really accepted the Republican Government, and were determined to defend their rights. As a proof of his good intentions, the French General offered to give up Garibaldi's favorite chaplain, Ugo Bassi, who (having the evening before refused to leave a dying man whose head he was holding on his knees) had been taken prisoner. The Roman Minister of War ordered Garibaldi to return to Rome, which he did, accompanied by a French officer. The armistice requested by General Oudinot was accorded by the Triumvirs, and the Republican Government granted unconditional liberty to fully 500 French prisoners in their hands. A letter from Garibaldi, after speaking of the bravery displayed by the Roman troops, says: "A quantity of arms, drums, and other matters have remained in our hands. The wounded French, before expiring, expressed their sorrow for having fought against their republican brethren." The King of Naples, at the head of his army, was now marching upon Rome. Seeing this, Garibaldi whom the armistice left unoccupied, demanded permission to employ his leisure in attacking the King of Naples. This permission was granted, and on the evening of the 4th of May, Garibaldi left the city with his legion, now 2500 strong. On May 6th, General Garibaldi gained the battle of Palestrina, completely defeating the Neapolitans, 7000 strong, and taking their artillery. Shortly after, however, the ambassador of the French Republic, Ferdinand de Lesseps, entered Rome with Michael Accrusi, the envoy of the Roman Republic in Paris, and by means of the good offices of the French Ambassador, the armistice, against which General Garibaldi had given a strong opinion, was concluded. The Roman Government resolved to take advantage of this truce to get rid of the Neapolitan army. At the same time Mazzini first created Colonel Roselli a general, and then named him general-in-chief of the forces. The friends of Garibaldi urged upon him not to accept a secondary position under a man who the day before only had been his inferior. The General, however, was utterly inaccessible to personal considerations where the welfare of his country was concerned, and he therefore accepted, he states himself, even with gratitude, the post of general of division. On the 16th May the entire army of the Republic, consisting of 10,000 men and twelve pieces of cannon, marched out of the city of Rome by the San Giovanni gate, General Garibaldi being ordered to proceed in advance. He had received information that the Neapolitan army was encamped at Velletri, with 19,000 to 20,000 men and thirty pieces of cannon. In the end the army of the King of Naples was again entirely defeated by General Garibaldi's division alone. In an early part of the day he sent to the commander-in-chief for reinforcements, and received for answer that soldiers could not be sent, as they had not eaten their soup. He then resolved to do what he could with his own strength, and victory again crowned his efforts. Towards midnight his troops took possession of Velletri itself. At daybreak the General resumed the pursuit of the Neapolitans; but he received orders to return to Rome, which he re-entered on the 24th of May, amidst an immense multitude, who hailed him with the wildest cries of joy. The utter incapacity of General Roselli is now acknowledged by all; however, in those days, he shared the views of the Roman Government regarding the French. In the mean time, General Oudinot, having received the reinforcements which he required, disavowed the treaty entered into by the Roman Government and the envoy extraordinary of his master the President of the French Republic. It would have been thought that the dream of a French alliance would now have faded from the ideas of the Roman Government, but they were only half convinced even yet, and they allowed their commander-in-chief, the newly created General Roselli, to indite a letter, from which the following is an extract:- "General Oudinot, Duke de Reggio: Citizen,--It is my perfect conviction that the army of the Roman Republic will one day fight side by side with the army of the French Republic to maintain the most sacred rights of peoples. This conviction leads me to make you proposals, which I hope you will accept. It is known to me that a treaty has been signed between the Government and plenipotentiary minister of France, a treaty which has not received your approbation." The letter goes on to request an unlimited armistice, with a notification of fifteen days before the resumption of hostilities, asked in the name of the honor of the army and of the French Republic, and concludes, "I have the honor to request a prompt reply, General, begging you to accept the salutation of fraternity. "Roselli." To this the French general replied:- "General,--The orders of my Government are positive. They prescribe to me to enter Rome as soon as possible. * * * I defer the attack of the place until Monday morning at least. Receive, General, the assurance of my high consideration. "OUDINOT, Duc DE REGGIO, "_General-in-chief of the Corps de l'Armee of the Mediterranean._" According to this assurance the attack would not commence till the 4th of June. "It is true," writes General Garibaldi, "what a French author, Foland, has said in his commentaries upon Polybius, 'A general who goes to sleep on the faith of a treaty awakes a dupe.' I was aroused at three o'clock by the sound of cannon: I found every thing on fire. This is what had happened: Our advanced posts were at the Villa Pamphili. At the moment midnight was striking, and we were entering on the day of Sunday, the 3d of June, a French column glided through the darkness towards the Villa Pamphili. "'Who goes there?' cried the sentinel, warned by the sound of footsteps. 'Viva Italia!' cried a voice. The sentinel, thinking he had to do with compatriots, suffered them to approach, and was poniarded. The column rushed into the Villa Pamphili. All they met with were either killed or made prisoners. Some men jumped through the windows into the garden, and, when once in the garden, climbed over the walls. The most forward of them retired behind the convent of St. Pancrazio, shouting 'To arms! to arms!' whilst others ran off in the direction of the Villas Valentini and Corsini. Like the Villa Pamphili, these were carried by surprise, but not without making some resistance. "When I arrived at the St. Pancrazio gate, the Villa Pamphili, the Villa Corsini, and the Villa Valentini alone remained in our hands. Now the Villa Corsini being taken was an enormous loss to us; for as long as we were masters of that, the French could not draw their parallels. At any price, then, that must be retaken: it was for Rome a question of life or death. The firing between the cannoneers of the ramparts, the men of the Vascello, and the French of the Villa Corsini and the Villa Valentini, increased. But it was not a fusillade or a cannonade that was necessary; it was an assault, a terrible but victorious assault, which might restore the Villa Corsini to us. For a moment the Villa Corsini was ours. That moment was short, but it was sublime! The French brought up all their reserve, and fell upon us altogether before I could even repair the disorder inseparable from victory. The fight was renewed more desperately, more bloodily, more fatally than ever. I saw repass before me, repulsed by those irresistible powers of war, fire and steel, those whom I had seen pass on but a minute before, now bearing away their dead. "There could no longer be any idea of saving Rome. From the moment an army of 40,000 men, having thirty-six pieces of siege cannon, can perform their works of approach, the taking of a city is nothing but a question of time; it must one day or other fall. The only hope it has left is to fall gloriously. As long as one of our pieces of cannon remained on its carriage, it replied to the French fire; but on the evening of the 29th the last was dismounted." Garibaldi was summoned before the Assembly, and this is his history of what happened:- "Mazzini had already announced to the Assembly the position we now stood in: there remained, he said, but three parts to take--to treat with the French; to defend the city from barricade to barricade; or to leave the city, assembly, triumvirate, and army, carrying away with them the palladium of Roman liberty. "When I appeared at the door of the chamber all the deputies rose and applauded. I looked about me and upon myself to see what it was that awakened their enthusiasm. I was covered with blood; my clothes were pierced with balls and bayonet thrusts. They cried, 'To the tribune! to the tribune!' and I mounted it. I was interrogated on all sides. "'All defense is henceforth impossible,' replied I, 'unless we are resolved to make Rome another Saragossa.' On the 9th of February I proposed a military dictatorship, that alone was able to place on foot a hundred thousand armed men. The living elements still subsisted; they were to be sought for, and they would have been found in one courageous man. If I had been attended to, the Roman eagle would again have made its eyrie upon the towers of the Capitol; and with my brave men--and my brave men know how to die, it is pretty well seen--I might have changed the face of Italy. But there is no remedy for that which is done. Let us view with head erect the conflagration of which we no longer are the masters. Let us take with us from Rome all of the volunteer army who are willing to follow us. Where we shall be, Rome will be. I pledge myself to nothing; but all that my men can do that I will do; and whilst it takes refuge in us our country shall not die." In the end the following order was issued:- "The Roman Republic, in the name of God and the People. The Roman Constituent Assembly discontinues a defense which has become impossible. It has its post. The Triumvirate are charged with the execution of the present decree." NOTE 5. An attempt has recently been made to give to the so-called Moderate party the merit of planning a United Italy. Mr. Stansfield, one of the Lords of the Admiralty, whose recent efforts to reform his department have already earned for him the gratitude of the English people, says: "Italy has already accomplished of her unity so much that no policy save that of an absolute completion of the task is any longer to be dreamed of or suggested, and considering, too, how predominantly the credit and the practical fruits of that success have, in the opinion of the world and in the possession of power, inured to the benefit of the Moderate party, it would seem natural to imagine that they too must have had the unity of their country long in view, and that they can have differed only from the National party as to the policy best adapted to the attainment of a common object; and yet I believe the acceptance of the idea of Italian unity, as an object of practical statesmanship, by the leaders of the Moderate party, must be admitted to be of a very recent date. I will go back to Gioberti, who was the founder of that party. In the Sardinian Chambers on the 10th of February, 1849, on the eve of the short campaign which ended in the defeat of Novara, Gioberti said: 'I consider the unity of Italy a chimera; we must be content with its union. And if you look to the writings, the speeches, the acts of all the leading men of the Moderate party until a very recent period, you will find them all, without exception, not only not propounding or advocating unity, or directed to its accomplishment, but explicitly directed to a different solution. You will find the proof of what I say in Balbo's 'Hopes of Italy;' in Durando's 'Essay on Italian Nationality,' advocating three Italies, north, centre, and south; in Bianchi Gioviners work entitled 'Mazzini and his Utopias;' and in Gualterio's 'Revolutions of Italy.' Minghetti, Ricasoli, Farini each and all have been the advocates of a confederation of princes rather than of a united Italy. Let me come to Cavour. An attempt has recently been made to claim for him the credit of having since the days of his earliest manhood conceived the idea of making himself the minister of a future united Italy. In an article in the July Quarterly, by a well-known pen, a letter of Cavour, written about 1829 or 1830, is cited in implied justification of this claim. He had been placed under arrest a short time in the Fort de Bard, on account of political opinions expressed with too much freedom. In a letter to a lady who had written condoling with him on his disgrace, he says:--'I thank you, Madame la Marquise, for the interest which you take in my disgrace; but believe me, for all that, I shall work out my career. I have much ambition--an enormous ambition; and when I become minister I hope to justify it, since already in my dreams I see myself Minister of the Kingdom of Italy.' Now this is, I need not say, a most remarkable letter, and of the greatest interest, as showing the confidence in his own future, at so early an age, of one of the greatest statesmen of our times. But no one acquainted with the modern history of Italy, and familiar with its recognized phraseology, could read in this letter the prophecy of that unity which is now coming to pass. The 'Kingdom of Italy,' is a well-known phrase borrowed from the time of Napoleon, and has always meant, until facts have enlarged its significance, that the kingdom of Northern Italy, whose precedent existed under Napoleon, which was the object of Piedmontese policy in '48 and '49, and one of the explicit terms of the contract of Pombier's in '59. It is rather a curious inconsistency in the article in question, that in itself furnishes ample evidence that the unity of Italy was not part of the practical programme of the Moderate party. 'Cavour,' we are told, founded in 1847 with his friends, Cesare Balbo, Santa Rosa, Buoncampagni, Castelli, and other men of moderate constitutional views, the _Risorgimento_, of which he became the editor; and the principles of the new periodical were announced to be 'independence of Italy, union between the princes,' and the people's progress in the path of reform, and a league between the Italian States." Again, after saying that it was Ricasoli and the leaders of the constitutional party who recalled (in '49) the Grand Ducal family to Tuscany, and that Geoberti proposed the return of the Pope to Rome, the writer goes on to say, "It was an immense advantage to the restored princes to have been thus brought back by the most intelligent and moderate of their subjects. All that the wisest and most influential men in Italy asked, was a federal union of the different states in the Peninsula, upon a liberal and constitutional basis, from which even the House of Austria was not to be excluded." I must trouble you with one more quotation. At the Conference of Paris in 1855, after the Crimean war, Piedmont was represented by Cavour, who brought before the assembled statesmen the condition of Italy, but unable to enter fully into the Italian question, he addressed two state papers on it to Lord Clarendon. His plan--at any rate, for the temporary settlement of the question--was a confederation of Italian States with constitutional institutions, and a guaranty of complete independence from the direct interference and influence of Austria; and the secularization of the legations with a lay vicar under the suzerainty of the Pope. At that time he would have been even willing to acquiesce in the occupation of Lombardy by Austria, had she bound herself to keep within the limits of the treaty of 1815. Now you can not, I think, have failed to note the glaring inconsistency of these praises of what is called the moderation of Cavour, with the assumption to him and to his party of the whole credit of Italian unity, and the theory, now too prevalent, that no other party has contributed any thing but follies and excesses, impediments, not aids, to the accomplishment of the great task. I believe such ideas to be as profoundly ungenerous and unjust as they are evidently self-contradictory, and I believe that they will be adjudged by history to be, so far as they are in any degree in good faith, superficial, partial, and utterly incapable of serving as any explanation of the method of the evolution of the great problem of Italian nationality. Now let another witness be called into court, the late Prime Minister of Italy, Farina, on the authority of the Turin Times correspondent, who wrote September 12,1861: "You have not forgotten that in the Jemilia, Farina used, with great bitterness, to complain of the worthlessness of the Moderate party in time of trial and strife."*--_From "Garibaldi and Italian Unity" by Lieut.-Col. Chambers, 1864_. * Count Cavour wrote from Paris In 1866 to M. Rattazzi the following "I have seen Mr. Manin. He is a very good man, but he always talks about the unity of Italy, and such other tomfooleries." Also La Larina, Cavour's agent in Italy in 1860, published in that year the following explanation of his differences with General Garibaldi:--He stated, "I believed, and still believe, that the only salvation for Sicily is the constitutional government of Victor Emanuel." This explanation was published before Garibaldi crossed to the main land; and had Cavour gained his point, and obtained annexation, the kingdom of Naples would now have been under Bourbon rule. END. 
16180	----	ROMAN MOSAICS OR STUDIES IN ROME AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD BY HUGH MACMILLAN D.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E., F.S.A. Scot. AUTHOR OF 'BIBLE TEACHINGS IN NATURE,' 'FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION,' 'HOLIDAYS IN HIGH LANDS,' 'THE RIVIERA,' ETC. London MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1888 PREFACE The title of this book may seem fanciful. It may even be regarded as misleading, creating the idea that it is a treatise like that of Mr. Digby Wyatt on those peculiar works of art which decorate the old palaces and churches of Rome. But notwithstanding these objections, no title can more adequately describe the nature of the book. It is applicable on account of the miscellaneous character of the chapters, which have already appeared in some of our leading magazines and reviews, and are now, with considerable changes and additions, gathered together into a volume. There is a further suitableness in the title, owing to the fact that most of the contents have no claim to originality. As a Roman Mosaic is made up of small coloured cubes joined together in such a manner as to form a picture, so my book may be said to be made up of old facts gathered from many sources and harmonised into a significant unity. So many thousands of volumes have been written about Rome that it is impossible to say anything new regarding it. Every feature of its topography and every incident of its history have been described. Every sentiment appropriate to the subject has been expressed. But Rome can be regarded from countless points of view, and studied for endless objects. Each visitor's mind is a different prism with angles of thought that break up the subject into its own colours. And as is the case in a mosaic, old materials can be brought into new combinations, and a new picture constructed out of them. It is on this ground that I venture to add another book to the bewildering pile of literature on Rome. But I have another reason to offer. While the great mass of the materials of the book is old and familiar, not a few things are introduced that are comparatively novel. The late Dean Alford made the remark how difficult it is to obtain in Rome those details of interest which can be so easily got in other cities. Guide-books contain a vast amount of information, but there are many points interesting to the antiquarian and the historian which they overlook altogether. There is no English book, for instance, like Ruffini's _Dizionario Etimologico-Storico delle Strade, Piazze, Borghi e Vicoli della Città di Roma_, to tell one of the origin of the strange and bizarre names of the streets of Rome, many of which involve most interesting historical facts and most romantic associations of the past. There is no English book on the ancient marbles of Rome like Corsi's _Pietre Antiche_, which describes the mineralogy and source of the building materials of the imperial city, and traces their history from the law courts and temples of which they first formed part to the churches and palaces in which they may now be seen. Every nook in London, with its memories and points of interest, has been chronicled in a form that is accessible to every one. But there is an immense amount of most interesting antiquarian lore regarding out-of-the-way things in Rome which is buried in the transactions of learned societies or in special Italian monographs, and is therefore altogether beyond the reach of the ordinary visitor. Science has lately shed its vivid light upon the physical history of the Roman plain; and the researches of the archæologist have brought into the daylight of modern knowledge, and by a wider comparison and induction have invested with a new significance, the prehistoric objects, customs, and traditions which make primeval Rome and the surrounding sites so fascinating to the imagination. But these results are not to be found in the books which the English visitor usually consults. In the following chapters I have endeavoured to supply some of that curious knowledge; and it is to be hoped that what is given--for it is no more than a slight sample out of an almost boundless store--will create an interest in such subjects, and induce the reader to go in search of fuller information. Many of the points touched upon have provoked endless disputations which are not likely soon to be settled. Indeed there is hardly any line of study one can take up in connection with Rome which does not bristle with controversies; and a feeling of perplexity and uncertainty continually haunts one in regard to most of the subjects. It is not only in the vague field of the early traditions of the city, and of the medieval traditions of the Church, that this feeling oppresses one; it exists everywhere, even in the more solid and assured world of Roman art, literature, and history. Where it is so difficult to arrive at settled convictions, I may be pardoned if I have expressed views that are open to reconsideration. I am aware of the disadvantages connected with thus collecting together a number of separate papers, instead of writing a uniform treatise upon one continuous subject. The picture formed by their union must necessarily have much of the artificiality and clumsiness of the mosaic as compared with the oil or water-colour painting. But only in this form could I have brought together such a great variety of important things. And though I cannot hope that the inherent defect of the mosaic will be compensated by its permanence--for books of this kind do not last--yet it will surely serve some good purpose to have such a collocation of facts regarding a place whose interest is ever varying and never dying. The personal element is almost entirely confined to the first chapter, which deals on that account with more familiar incidents than the others. Twelve years have elapsed since my memorable sojourn in Rome; and many changes have occurred in the Eternal City since then. I have had no opportunity to repeat my visit and to add to or correct my first impressions, desirable as it might be to have had such a revision for the sake of this book. I duly drank of the water of Trevi the night before I left; but the spell has been in abeyance all these years. I live, however, in the hope that it has not altogether lost its mystic power; and that some day, not too far off, I may be privileged to go over the old scenes with other and larger eyes than those with which I first reverently gazed upon them. It needs two visits at least to form any true conception of Rome: a first visit to acquire the personal interest in the city which will lead at home to the eager search for knowledge regarding it from every source; and then the second visit to bring the mind thus quickened and richly stored with information to bear with new comprehension and increased interest upon the study of its antiquities on the spot. HUGH MACMILLAN. CONTENTS CHAPTER I A WALK TO CHURCH IN ROME A Walk to Church in Country--In the Town--Residence in Capo le Case--Church of San Guiseppe--Propaganda--Pillar of Immaculate Conception--Piazza di Spagna--Staircase--Models--Beggars--Church of Trinita dei Monti--Flowers--Via Babuino--Piazza del Popolo--Flaminian Obelisk--Pincian Hill--Porta del Popolo--Church of Santa Maria del Popolo--Monastery of St. Augustine--Presbyterian Church--Villa Borghese--Ponte Molle CHAPTER II THE APPIAN WAY Formation of Appian Way--Tombs on Roman Roads--Loneliness of Country outside Rome--Porta Capena--Restoration of Appian Way--Grove and Fountain of Egeria--Baths of Caracalla--Church of Sts. Nereus and Achilles--Tomb of Scipios--Columbaria--Arch of Drusus--Gate of St. Sebastian--Almo--Tomb of Geta--Plants in Valley of Almo--Catacombs of St. Calixtus--Catacomb of Pretextatus--Catacomb of Sts. Nereus and Achilles--Church of St. Sebastian--Circus of Romulus--Tomb of Cæcilia Metella--Sadness of Appian Way--Imagines Clipeatæ--Profusion of Plant and Animal Life--Solitude--Villa of Seneca--Mounds of Horatii and Curiatii--Villa of Quintilii--Tomb of Atticus--Casale Rotondo--Frattocchie--Bovillæ--Albano--St. Paul's Entrance into Rome by Appian Way CHAPTER III THE CUMÆAN SIBYL Promontory of Carmel--Westmost Point of Italy--Mode of reaching Cumæ--Few Relics of Ancient City--Uncertainty about Sibyl's Cave--Loneliness of Site--Roman Legend of Sibylline Books--Mode of Keeping Them--Sortes Sibyllinæ--Different Sibyls--Apocalyptic Literature--Existing Remains of Sibylline Books--Reverence paid to Sibyl by Christian Writers--Church of Ara Coeli--Roof of Sistine Chapel--Prospective Attitude of Sibyl--Retrospective Characteristic of Greek and Roman Religion--Connection between Hebrew and Pagan Prophecy--Pagan Oracles superseded by Living Oracles of the Gospel CHAPTER IV FOOTPRINTS IN ROME Footprints of our Lord in Church of Domine quo Vadis--Slabs with Footprints in Kircherian Museum--St. Christina's Footprints at Bolsena--Significance of Footmarks--Votive Offerings--Footprint of Mahomet at Jerusalem--Footprint of Christ on Mount of Olives--Footprints of Abraham at Mecca--Drusic Footprints--Phrabat, or Sacred Foot of Buddha--Famous Footprint on Summit of Adam's Peak in Ceylon--Footprints at Gayá--Footprints of Vishnu--Jain Temples--Prehistoric Footprints--Tanist Stones--Dun Add in Argyleshire--Mary's Step in Wales--Footmarks in Ireland, Norway, Denmark, and Brittany--Classical Examples--Footprints in America and Africa--Connection with Primitive Worship CHAPTER V THE ROMAN FORUM Geological History--Volcanic Origin--Early Legends--Cloaca Maxima--Work of Excavation--Ærarium--Capitol--Temple of Concord--Temple of Jupiter--Arch of Septimius Severus--Milliarium Aureum--Mamertine Prison--Pillar of Phocas--Suovetaurilia--Curia Hostilia--Comitium--Curia of Diocletian--Basilica Julia--Vicus Tuscus--Temple of Castor and Pollux--Atrium Vestæ--Temple of Vesta--Temple of Antoninus Pius and Faustina--Church of SS. Cosma e Damiano--Colosseum--Conflagration in Forum CHAPTER VI THE EGYPTIAN OBELISKS Number of Obelisks in Rome--Sun Worship--Symbolism of Obelisk--Obelisk of Nebuchadnezzar--Original position of Obelisks--Egyptian Propylons--Changes connected with Obelisks in Egypt--Transportation of Obelisks to Rome and other places--Obelisk of Heliopolis--Obelisk of Luxor--Karnac--Lateran Obelisk--Obelisk in Square of St. Peter's--Obelisk of Piazza del Popolo--Association of Fountains with Obelisks--Obelisk of Monte Citorio--Esquiline and Quirinal Obelisks--Obelisk of Trinita dei Monti--Pamphilian Obelisk--Obelisks near Pantheon--Superiority of Oldest Obelisks--Obelisk of Paris--Cleopatra's Needles in London and New York--Religious Devotion of Ancient Egyptians CHAPTER VII THE PAINTED TOMB AT VEII Excursions in neighbourhood of Rome--History of Veii--Uncertainty of its Site--Journey to Isola Farnese--Village of Isola--Romantic Scenery--Desolate Downs--Roman Municipium--Old Gateway--Ponte Sodo--Necropolis of Veii--Painted Tomb--Archaic Frescoes--Objects in Inner Chamber--Etruscan Tombs imitative of Homes of the Living--Worship of the Dead--Cellæ Memoriæ--Antiquity of Tomb at Veii--Mysterious character of Etruscan Language and History CHAPTER VIII HOLED STONES AND MARTYR WEIGHTS Bocca della Verita--Primitive Worship of Clefts in Rocks and Holes in Stones--Cromlechs--Passing through beneath Cromlechs and Gates--Tigillum Sororium--Pillars in Aksa Mosque at Jerusalem--"Threading the Needle" in Ripon Cathedral--Standing Stones of Stennis and Oath of Odin--Cremave--Jewish Covenant--Martyr Stones--Originally Roman Measures of Weight--Made of Jade or Nephrite--Remarkable History of Jade--Prehistoric Glimpses--Relics of Stone Age in Rome--Conservation of things connected with Religion CHAPTER IX ST. ONOFRIO AND TASSO Church of St. Onofrio--Monastery--Garden--Tasso's Oak--Grand View of Rome and Neighbourhood--Tasso's Birthplace at Sorrento--Remarkable Epoch--Bernardo Tasso--Prince of Salerno--Youth of Tasso--Visit to Rome--Sojourn at Venice--Student of Law at Padua--First Poem _Rinaldo_--University of Bologna--House of Este--Leonora--Composition of _Gerusalemme Liberata_--Death of Tasso's Father--Visit to France--_Aminta_ and Pastoral Drama--Publication of _Gerusalemme Liberata_--Della Cruscan Academy--Ariosto--Cold Treatment of Tasso by Alfonso--Confinement in Hospital of St. Anne--Story of Hapless Love--Alleged Madness--Hospital of St. Anne--_Torrismondo_--Release of Tasso--Pilgrimage to Loretto--Residence at Naples--Connection with Milton--_Gerusalemme Conquistata_--Universal Recognition of Poet--Better Days--Closing Scenes of Life at St. Onofrio--Proposed Coronation at Capitol--Too Late--Death--Estimate of Life and Work CHAPTER X THE MARBLES OF ANCIENT ROME Pleasures of Marble Hunting in Rome and Neighbourhood--Artistic and Educational Uses of Marble Fragments--Geological Formation of Rome--Building Materials of Ancient Rome--Marbles of Conquered Countries introduced into Rome--Christian Churches made up of Remains of Pagan Temples--Parian Marble--Porine and Pentelic Marbles--Hymettian Marble--Thasian, Lesbian and Tyrian Marbles--Marble of Carrara--Apollo Belvedere--Colouring of Ancient Statues and Buildings--Gibson's Colour-creed--Time's Hues on Dying Gladiator--Cipollino--Giallo Antico--Africano--Porta Santa--Fior di Persico--Pavonazzetto--Rosso Antico--Sedia Forata--Faun--Black Marbles--Lumachella Marbles--Column of Trajan--Breccias--Alabasters--Verde Antique--Subterranean Church of San Clemente--Ophite and Opus Alexandrinum--Jaspers--Murrhine Cups--Lapis Lazuli--Church of Jesuits--Abundance of Marbles in Ancient Rome CHAPTER XI THE VATICAN CODEX Vatican Library--Origin and History--Monastery of Bobbio--Splendour and Charm of Library--Contents of two Principal Cabinets--Letters of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn--Vatican Codex--Freshness of Appearance--Continuity of Writing--Vacant Space at end of St. Mark's Gospel--A Palimpsest--Origin of Vatican Codex--Sinaitic and Alexandrine Codices--History of Vatican Codex--Edition of Cardinal Mai--Edition of Tischendorf--Disappearance of all Previous Manuscripts--Faults and Deficiencies of Vatican Codex--Vatican Codex used in Revised Version of New Testament--Formation of Sacred Canon CHAPTER XII ST. PAUL AT PUTEOLI Landing of St. Paul in Ship _Castor and Pollux_ at Puteoli--Loveliness of Bay of Naples--Crowded Population and Splendour of Villas--Dissoluteness of Inhabitants--Worship of Roman Emperors--St. Paul's Grief and Anxiety--Encouragement from Brethren--Christians in Tyrian Quarter at Puteoli and at Pompeii--Southern Italy Greek in Blood and Language--Quay at Puteoli--Temples of Neptune and Serapis--Changes of Level in Sea and Land--Monte Nuovo--Destruction of Village of Tripergola--Filling up of Leucrine Lake--Lake of Avernus--Sibyl's Cave--Lough Dearg and Purgatory of St. Patrick--Death Quarter among Prehistoric People in the West--Phlegræan Fields--Scene of Wars of Gods and Giants--Elysian Fields--Pagan Heaven and Hell--Via Cumana and St. Paul--Amphitheatre of Nero--Solfatara--Relics of Volcanic Fires and Ancient Civilisation mixed together--Volcanic Fires and Landscape Beauty--Completion of Gospel in St. Paul's Journey from Jerusalem to Rome CHAPTER I A WALK TO CHURCH IN ROME I know nothing more delightful than a walk to a country church on a fine day at the end of summer. All the lovely promises of spring have been fulfilled; the woods are clothed with their darkest foliage, and not another leaflet is to come anywhere. The lingering plumes of the meadow-sweet in the fields, and the golden trumpets of the wild honeysuckle in the hedges, make the warm air a luxury to breathe; and the presence of a few tufts of bluebells by the wayside gives the landscape the last finishing touch of perfection, which is suggestive of decay, and has such an indescribable pathos about it. Nature pauses to admire her own handiwork; she ceases from her labours, and enjoys an interval of rest. It is the sabbath of the year. At such a time every object is associated with its spiritual idea, as it is with its natural shadow. The beauty of nature suggests thoughts of the beauty of holiness; and the calm rest of creation speaks to us of the deeper rest of the soul in God. On the shadowed path that leads up to the house of prayer, with mind and senses quickened to perceive the loveliness and significance of the smallest object, the fern on the bank and the lichen on the wall, we feel indeed that heaven is not so much a yonder, towards which we are to move, as a here and a now, which we are to realise. A walk to church in town is a different thing. Man's works are all around us, and God's excluded; all but the strip of blue sky that looks down between the tall houses, and suggests thoughts of heaven to those who work and weep; all but the stunted trees and the green grass that struggle to grow in the hard streets and squares, and whisper of the far-off scenes of the country, where life is natural and simple. But even in town a walk to church is pleasant, especially when the streets are quiet, before the crowd of worshippers have begun to assemble, and there is nothing to distract the thoughts. If we can say of the country walk, "This is holy ground," seeing that every bush and tree are aflame with God, we can say of the walk through the city, "Surely the Lord hath been here, this is a dreadful place." And as the rude rough stones lying on the mountain top shaped themselves in the patriarch's dream into a staircase leading up to God, so the streets and houses around become to the musing spirit suggestive of the Father's many mansions, and the glories of the City whose streets are of pure gold, in which man's hopes and aspirations after a city of rest, which are baffled here, will be realised. I have many pleasing associations connected with walks to church in town. Many precious thoughts have come to me then, which would not have occurred at other times; glimpses of the wonder of life, and revelations of inscrutable mysteries covered by the dream-woven tissue of this visible world. The subjects with which my mind was filled found new illustrations in the most unexpected quarters; and every familiar sight and sound furnished the most appropriate examples. During that half-hour of meditation, with my blood quickened by the exercise, and my mind inspired by the thoughts of the service in which I was about to engage, I have lived an intenser life and enjoyed a keener happiness than during all the rest of the week. It was the hour of insight that struck the keynote of all the others. But far above even these precious memories, I must rank my walks to church in Rome. What one feels elsewhere is deepened there; and the wonderful associations of the place give a more vivid interest to all one's experiences. I lived in the Capo le Case, a steep street on the slope between the Pincian and Quirinal hills, situated about three-quarters of a mile from the church outside the Porta del Popolo. This distance I had to traverse every Sunday morning; and I love frequently to shut my eyes and picture the streets through which I passed, and the old well-known look of the houses and monuments. There is not a more delightful walk in the world than that; and I know not where within such a narrow compass could be found so many objects of the most thrilling interest. For three months, from the beginning of February to the end of April, twice, and sometimes four times, every Sunday, I passed that way, going to or returning from church, until I became perfectly familiar with every object; and associations of my own moods of mind and heart mingled with the grander associations which every stone recalled, and are now inextricably bound up with them. With one solitary exception, when the weather in its chill winds and gloomy clouds reminded me of my native climate, all the Sundays were beautiful, the sun shining down with genial warmth, and the sky overhead exhibiting the deep violet hue which belongs especially to Italy. The house in which I lived had on either side of the entrance a picture-shop; and this was always closed, as well as most of the other places of business along the route. The streets were remarkably quiet; and all the circumstances were most favourable for a meditative walk amid such magnificent memories. The inhabitants of Rome pay respect to the Sunday so far as abstaining from labour is concerned; but they make up for this by throwing open their museums and places of interest on that day, which indeed is the only day in which they are free to the public; and they take a large amount of recreation for doing a small amount of penance in the interests of religion. Still there is very little bustle or traffic in the streets, especially in the morning; and one meets with no more disagreeable and incongruous interruptions on the way to church in the Eternal City than he does at home. At the head of the Capo le Case is a small church, beside an old ruinous-looking wall of tufa, covered with shaggy pellitory and other plants, which might well have been one of the ramparts of ancient Rome. It is called San Guiseppe, and has a faded fresco painting on the gable, representing the Flight of the Holy Family into Egypt, supposed to be by Frederico Zuccari, whose own house--similarly decorated on the outside with frescoes--was in the immediate vicinity. From the windows of my rooms, I could see at the foot of the street the fantastic cupola and bell-turret of the church of St. Andrea delle Fratte, which belonged to the Scottish Catholics before the Reformation, and is now frequented by our Catholic countrymen during Lent, when sermons are preached to them in English. It is the parish church of the Piazza di Spagna, and the so-called English quarter. The present edifice was only built at the end of the sixteenth century, and, strange to say, with the proceeds of the sale of Cardinal Gonsalvi's valuable collection of snuff-boxes; but its name, derived from the Italian word _Fratta_, "thorn-bush," would seem to imply that the church is of much greater antiquity, going back to a far-off time when the ground on which it stands was an uncultivated waste. A miracle is said to have happened in one of the side chapels in 1842, which received the sanction of the Pope. A young French Jew of the name of Alfonse Ratisbonne was discovered in an ecstasy before the altar; which he accounted for by saying, when he revived, that the Virgin Mary had actually appeared to him, and saluted him in this place, while he was wandering aimlessly, and with a smile of incredulity, through the church. This supernatural vision led to his conversion, and he was publicly baptized and presented to the Pope by his godfather, the general of the Jesuits; receiving on the occasion, in commemoration of the miracle, a crucifix, to which special indulgences were attached. At the foot of the Capo le Case is the College of the Propaganda, whose vast size and plain massive architecture, as well as its historical associations, powerfully impress the imagination. It was begun by Gregory XV., in 1622, and completed by his successor, Urban VIII., and his brother, Cardinal Antonio Barberini, from the plans partly of Bernini and Borromini. On the most prominent parts of the edifice are sculptured bees, which are the well-known armorial bearings of the Barberini family. The Propaganda used to divide with the Vatican the administration of the whole Roman Catholic world. It was compared by the Abbé Raynal to a sword, of which the handle remains in Rome, and the point reaches everywhere. The Vatican takes cognisance of what may be called the domestic affairs of the Church throughout Europe; the College of the Propaganda superintends the foreign policy of the Church, and makes its influence felt in the remotest regions of the earth. It is essentially, as its name implies, a missionary institution, founded for the promotion and guidance of missions throughout the world. Nearly two hundred youths from various countries are constantly educated here, in order that they may go back as ordained priests to their native land, and diffuse the Roman Catholic faith among their countrymen. The average number ordained every year is about fifty. No one is admitted who is over twenty years of age; and they all wear a uniform dress, consisting of a long black cassock, edged with red, and bound with a red girdle, with two bands, representing leading-strings, hanging from the shoulders behind. The cost of their education and support while in Rome, and the expenses of their journey from their native land and back again, are defrayed by the institution. Every visitor to Rome must be familiar with the appearance of the students, as they walk through the streets in groups of three or four, eagerly conversing with each other, with many expressive gesticulations. For the most part they are a fine set of young men, of whom any Church might well be proud, full of zeal and energy, and well fitted to encounter, by their physical as well as their mental training, the hard-ships of an isolated life, frequently among savage races. An annual exhibition is held in a large hall attached to the college in honour of the holy Magi, about the beginning of January, when students deliver speeches in different languages, and take part in musical performances, the score of which is usually composed by the professor of music in the college. The places of honour nearest the stage are occupied by several cardinals, whose scarlet dresses and silver locks contrast strikingly with the black garments of the majority of the assemblage. The strange costumes and countenances of the speakers, coloured with every hue known to the human family, the novel sounds of the different languages, and the personal peculiarities of each speaker in manner and intonation, make the exhibition in the highest degree interesting. Its great popularity is evinced by the crowds that usually attend, filling the hall to overflowing; and though a religious affair, it is pervaded by a lively spirit of fun, in which even the great dignitaries of the Church join heartily. The jurisdiction of the Propaganda is independent. The "congregation" of the college is composed of twenty-five cardinals, sixteen of whom are resident in Rome. One of their number is appointed prefect, and has a prelate for his secretary. They meet statedly, once a month, for the transaction of business, in a magnificent hall in the college. Previous to 1851, the affairs of the Roman Catholic Church in England were administered by the Propaganda; our country being included among heretical or heathen lands to which missionaries were sent. But after that memorable year they were transferred to the ordinary jurisdiction of the See of Rome. This movement was the first distinct act of papal aggression, and provoked fierce hostility among all classes of the Protestant community. However some of us may regret that such powerful and well-organised machinery is employed to propagate to the ends of the earth a faith to which we cannot subscribe, yet no one can read the proud inscription upon the front of the edifice, "Collegio di Propagandâ Fide," and reflect upon the grand way in which the purpose therein defined has been carried out, without a sentiment of admiration. At a time when Protestant Churches were selfishly devoted to their own narrow interests, and utterly unmindful of the Saviour's commission to preach the gospel to every creature, this college was sending forth to different countries, only partially explored, bands of young priests who carried their lives in their hands, and endured untold sufferings so that they might impart to the heathen the blessings of Christian civilisation. There is not a region from China and Japan to Mexico and the South Sea Islands, and from Africa to Siberia, which has not been taken possession of by members of this college, and cultivated for the Church. Names that are as worthy of being canonised as those of any saint in the Roman calendar, on account of their heroic achievements, their holy lives, or their martyr deaths, belong to the rôle of the Propaganda. And while sedulously spreading their faith, they were at the same time adding to the sum of human knowledge; many of the most valuable and important contributions to ethnology, geography, philology, and natural science having been made by the students of this college. Pope Pius IX. in his early days, after he had renounced his military career and become a priest, was sent out by the Propaganda, as secretary to a politico-religious mission which Pius VII. organised and despatched to Chili; and in that country his missionary career of two years exhibited all the devotion of a saint. I had the pleasure of going through the various rooms of this famous institution in the appropriate company of one of the most distinguished Free Church missionaries in India; and was shown by the rector of the college, with the utmost courtesy and kindness, all that was most remarkable about the place. The library is extensive, and contains some rare works on theology and canon law; and in the Borgian Museum annexed to it there is a rich collection of Oriental MSS., heathen idols, and natural curiosities sent by missionaries from various parts of the world. We were especially struck with the magnificent "Codex Mexicanus," a loosely-bound, bulky MS. on white leather, found among the treasures of the royal palace at the conquest of Mexico by Cortes. It is full of coloured hieroglyphics and pictures, and is known in this country through the splendid reproduction of Lord Kingsborough. But the most interesting of all the sights to the visitor is the printing establishment, which at one time was the first in the world, and had the means of publishing books in upwards of thirty different languages. At the present day it is furnished with all the recent appliances; and from this press has issued works distinguished as much for their typographical beauty as for the area they cover in the mission field. Its font of Oriental types is specially rich. We were shown specimens of the Paternoster in all the known languages; and my friend had an opportunity of inspecting some theological works in the obscure dialects of India. The productions of the Propaganda press are very widely diffused. There is a bookseller's shop connected with the establishment, where all the publications of the institution, including the papal bulls, and the principal documents of the State, may be procured. Altogether the college has taken a prominent part in the education of the world. Its influence is specially felt in America, from which a large number of its students come; the young priest who conducted us through the library and the Borgian Museum being an American, very intelligent and affable. The Roman Catholic religion flourishes in that country because it keeps clear of all political questions, and manifests itself, not as a government, in which character it is peculiarly uncompromising and despotic, but as a religion, in which aspect it has a wonderful power of adaptation to the habits and tastes of the people. The Propaganda rules Roman Catholic America very much in the spirit of its own institutions; and one of the most remarkable social phenomena of that country is the absolute subserviency which the political spirit of unbridled democracy yields to its decrees. The bees of the Barberini carved upon its architectural ornaments are no inapt symbol of the spirit and method of working of this busy theological hive, which sends its annual swarms all over the world to gather ecclesiastical honey from every flower of opportunity. Passing beyond the Propaganda, we come to a lofty pillar of the Corinthian order, situated at the commencement of the Piazza di Spagna. It is composed of a kind of gray Carystian marble called _cipollino_, distinguished by veins of pale green rippling through it, like the layers of a vegetable bulb, on account of which it is popularly known as the onion stone. It is one of the largest known monoliths, being forty-two feet in height and nearly five feet in diameter. It looks as fresh as though it were only yesterday carved out of the quarry; but it must be nearly two thousand years old, having been found about a hundred years ago when digging among the ruins of the amphitheatre of Statilius Taurus, constructed in the reign of Cæsar Augustus on the site now called, from a corruption of the old name, Monte Citorio, and occupied by the Houses of Parliament. When discovered the pillar was unfinished, a circumstance which would indicate that it had never been erected. It was left to Pope Pius IX., after all these centuries of neglect and obscurity, to find a use for it. Crowning its capital by a bronze statue of the Virgin Mary, and disfiguring its shaft by a fantastic bronze network extending up two-fifths of its height, he erected it where it now stands in 1854, to commemorate the establishment by papal bull of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. It was during his exile at Gaeta, at a time when Italy was torn with civil dissensions, and his own dominions were afflicted with the most grievous calamities, which he could have easily averted or remedied if he wished, that this dogma engrossed the mind of the holy father and his ecclesiastical court. The constitutionalists at Rome were anxiously expecting some conciliatory manifesto which should precede the Pope's return and restore peace and prosperity; and they were mortified beyond measure by receiving only the letter in which this theological fiction was announced by his Holiness. The people cried for the bread of constitutional liberty, and the holy father gave them the stone of a religious dogma to which they were wholly indifferent; thus demonstrating the incompatibility of the functions of a temporal and spiritual sovereign. The pillar of the Immaculate Conception is embellished by statues of Moses, David, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, with texts from Scripture, and very inferior bronze bas-reliefs of the incidents connected with the publication of the dogma. As a work of art, it is heavy and graceless, with hard mechanical lines; and the figure of the Virgin at the top is utterly destitute of merit. The whole monument is a characteristic specimen of the modern Roman school of sculpture. For ages Rome has been considered the foster mother of art, and residence in it essential to the education of the art-faculty. But this is a delusion. Its atmosphere has never been really favourable to the development of genius. There is a moral malaria of the place as fatal to the versatile life of the imagination as the physical miasma is to health. Roman Catholicism has petrified the heart and the fancy; and a petty round of ceremonies, feasts, and social parties dissipates energy and distracts the powers of those who are not under the influence of the Church. The decadence of art has kept pace with the growing corruption of religion. Descending from the purer spiritual conceptions of former times to grosser and more superstitious ideas, it has given outward expression to these in baser forms. Even St. Peter's, though extravagantly praised by so many visitors, is but the visible embodiment of the vulgar splendour of later Catholicism. The pillar of the Immaculate Conception is not only a monument of religious superstition, but also of what must strike every thoughtful observer in Rome--the decadence of art in modern times as compared with the glorious earlier days of a purer Church. And the art of the sculptor is only in keeping with that of the painter in connection with this dogma. For the large frescoes of Podesti, which occupy a conspicuous place in the great hall of the Vatican, preceding the stanze of Raphael, and depict the persons and incidents connected with the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception, are worthless as works of art, and present a melancholy contrast to the works of the immortal genius in the adjoining halls, who wrought under the inspiration of a nobler faith. No Titian or Raphael, no Michael Angelo or Bramante, was found in the degenerate days of Pio Nono to immortalise what he called the greatest event of his reign. The square in which the pillar of the Immaculate Conception is situated, along with the surrounding streets, is called the "Ghetto Inglese," for here the English and Americans most do congregate. At almost every step one encounters the fresh open countenances, blue eyes, and fair hair, which one is accustomed to associate with darker skies and ruder buildings. The Piazza di Spagna, so called from the palace of the Spanish ambassador situated in a corner of it, is one of the finest squares of Rome, being paved throughout, and surrounded on every side by lofty and picturesque buildings. In the centre is a quaint old boat-shaped fountain, called Fontana della Barcaccia, its brown slippery sides being tinted with mosses, confervæ, and other growths of wet surfaces. It was designed by Bernini to commemorate the stranding of a boat on the spot after the retiring of the great flood of 1598, which overwhelmed most of Rome. On the site of the Piazza di Spagna, there was, in the days of Domitian, an artificial lake, on which naval battles took place, witnessed by immense audiences seated in a kind of amphitheatre on the borders of the lake. As an object of taste the boat-shaped fountain is condemned by many; but Bernini adopted the form not only because of the associations of the spot, but also because the head of water was not sufficient for a jet of any considerable height. Quaint, or even ugly, as some might call it, it was to me an object of peculiar interest. Its water is of the purest and sweetest; and in the stillness of the hot noon its bright sparkle and dreamy murmur were delightfully refreshing. No city in the world is so abundantly supplied with water as Rome. You hear the lulling sound and see the bright gleam of water in almost every square. A river falls in a series of sparkling cascades from the Fountain of Trevi and the Fontana Paolina into deep, immense basins; and even into the marble sarcophagi of ancient kings, with their gracefully sculptured sides, telling some story of Arcadian times, whose nymphs and naiads are in beautiful harmony with the rustic murmur of the stream, is falling a gush of living water in many a palace courtyard. This sound of many waters is, indeed, a luxury in such a climate; and some of the pleasantest moments are those in which the visitor lingers beside one of the fountains, when the blaze and bustle of the day are over, and the balmy softness of the evening produce a dreamy mood, to which the music of the waters is irresistibly fascinating. The most distinguishing feature of the Piazza di Spagna is the wide staircase which leads up from one side of it to the church of the Trinita dei Monti, with its twin towers, through whose belfry arches the blue sky appears. This lofty staircase comprises one hundred and thirty steps, and the ascent is so gradual, and the landing-places so broad and commodious, that it is quite a pleasure, even for the most infirm persons, to mount it. The travertine of which it is composed is polished into the smoothness of marble by constant use. It is the favourite haunt of all the painters' models; and there one meets at certain hours of the day with beautiful peasant girls from the neighbouring mountains, in the picturesque costumes of the contadini, and old men with grizzled beards and locks, dressed in ragged cloaks, the originals of many a saint and Madonna in some sacred pictures, talking and laughing, or basking with half-shut eyes in the full glare of the sun. These models come usually from Cervaro and Saracinesco; the latter an extraordinary Moorish town situated at a great height among the Sabine hills, whose inhabitants have preserved intact since the middle ages their Arabic names and Oriental features and customs. On this staircase used to congregate the largest number of the beggars of Rome, whose hideous deformities were made the excuse for extorting money from the soft-hearted forestieri. Happily this plague has now greatly abated, and one may ascend or descend the magnificent stair without being revolted by the sight of human degradation, or persecuted by the importunate outcries of those who are lost to shame. The Government has done a good thing in diminishing this frightful mendicancy. But it is to be feared that whilst there are many who beg without any necessity, sturdy knaves who are up to all kinds of petty larceny, there are not a few who have no other means of livelihood, and without the alms of the charitable would die of starvation. The visitor sees only the gay side of such a place as Rome; but there are many tragedies behind the scenes. Centuries of misrule under the papal government had pauperised the people; and the sudden transition to the new state of things has deprived many of the old employments, without furnishing any substitutes, while there is no longer the dole at the convent door to provide for their wants. The whole social organisation of Italy, with its frequent saints' days, during which no work is done, and its numerous holy fraternities living on alms, and its sanctification of mendicancy in the name of religion, has tended to pauperise the nation, and give it those unthrifty improvident habits which have destroyed independence and self-respect. Although, therefore, the Government has publicly forbidden begging throughout the country, it has in some measure tacitly connived at it, as a compromise between an inefficient poor-law and the widespread misery arising from the improvidence of so many of its subjects; the amount of the harvest reaped by the beggars from the visitors to Rome being so much saved to the public purse. And though one does not meet so many unscrupulous beggars as formerly in the main thoroughfares of Rome, one is often annoyed by them on the steps of the churches, where they seem to have the right of sanctuary, and to levy toll upon all for whom they needlessly lift the heavy leathern curtain that hangs at the door. We must remember that mendicancy is a very ancient institution in Italy, and that it will die hard, if it ever dies at all. The church of the Trinita dei Monti, built in 1494 by Charles VIII. of France, occupies a most commanding position on the terrace above the Spanish Square, and is seen as a most conspicuous feature in all the views of Rome from the neighbourhood. An Egyptian obelisk with hieroglyphics, of the age of the Ptolemies, which once adorned the so-called circus in the gardens of Sallust on the Quirinal, now elevated on a lofty pedestal, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and surmounted by a cross, stands in front of the church, and gives an air of antiquity to it which its own four hundred years could hardly impart, as well as forms an appropriate termination to the splendid flight of steps which leads up to it. The church is celebrated for the possession of the "Descent from the Cross," a fresco by Ricciarelli, commonly known by the name of Daniel of Volterra, said to be one of the three finest pictures in the world. But the chapel which it adorns is badly lighted, and the painting has been greatly injured by the French, who attempted to remove it in 1817. It does not produce a very pleasing impression, being dark and oily-looking; and the cross-lights in the place interfere with the expression of the figures. We can recognise much of the force and graphic power of Michael Angelo, whom the painter sedulously imitated, in various parts of the composition; but it seems to me greatly inferior as a whole to the better-known picture of Rubens. In another chapel of this church was interred the celebrated painter Claude Lorraine, who lived for many years in a house not far off; but the French transferred the remains of their countryman to the monument raised to him in their native church in the Via della Scrofa. Adjoining the church is the convent of the Sacred Heart, which formerly belonged to French monks, minims of the order of St. Francis. It suffered severely from the wantonness of the French soldiers who were quartered in it during the French occupation of Rome in the first Revolution. Since 1827 the Convent has been in possession of French nuns, who are all ladies of rank. They each endow the Convent at their initiation with a dowry of £1000; the rest of their property going to their nearest relatives as if they were dead. They spend their time in devotional exercises, in superintending the education of a number of young girls in the higher branches, and in giving advice to those who are allowed to visit them for this purpose every afternoon. The Trinita dei Monti is the only church in Rome where female voices are to be heard chanting the religious services; and on account of this peculiarity, and the fresh sweet voices of the nuns and their pupils, many people flock to hear them singing the Ave Maria at sunset, on Sundays and on great festivals, the singers themselves being invisible behind a curtain in the organ gallery. Mendelssohn found their vespers charming, though his critical ear detected many blemishes in the playing and singing. I visited the church one day. As it is shut after matins, I was admitted at a side door by one of the nuns, who previously inspected me through the wicket, and was left alone, the door being locked behind me. The interior is severely simple and grand, preserving the original pointed architecture inclining to Gothic, and is exquisitely clean and white, as women alone could keep it; in this respect forming a remarkable contrast to the grand but dirty church of the Capuchin monks. I had ample leisure to study the very interesting pictures in the chapels. The solitude was only disturbed by a kneeling figure in black, motionless as a statue behind the iron railing in front of the high altar, or by the occasional presence of a nun, who moved across the transept with slow and measured steps, her face hid by a long white veil which gave her a spirit-like appearance. In the heart of one of the busiest parts of the city, no mountain cloister could be more quiet and lonely. One felt the soothing stillness, lifted above the world, while yet retaining the closest connection with it. It is sweet to leave the busy crowd of various nationalities below, intent only upon pleasure, and, climbing up the lofty staircase, enter this secluded shrine, and be alone with God. In the Piazza di Spagna some shops are always open on Sundays, especially those which minister to the wants and luxuries of strangers. Rows of cabs are ranged in the centre, waiting to be hired, and groups of flower-sellers stand near the shops, who thrust their beautiful bouquets almost into the face of every passer-by. If Rome is celebrated for its fountains, it is equally celebrated for its flowers. Whether it is owing to the soil, or the climate, or the mode of cultivation, or all combined, certain it is that nowhere else does one see flowers of such brilliant colours, perfect forms, and delicious fragrance; and the quantities as well as varieties of them are perfectly wonderful. Delicate pink and straw-coloured tea-roses, camellias, and jonquils mingled their high-born beauties with the more homely charms of wild-flowers that grew under the shadow of the great solemn stone-pines on the heights around, or twined their fresh garlands over the sad ruins of the Campagna. In the hand of every little boy and girl were bunches for sale of wild cyclamens, blue anemones, and sweet-scented violets, surrounded by their own leaves, and neatly tied up with thread. They had been gathered in the princely grounds of the Doria Pamphili and Borghese villas in the neighbourhood of Rome, which are freely opened to all, and where for many days in February and March groups of men, women, and children may be seen gathering vast quantities of those first-born children of the sun. The violets, especially in these grounds, are abundant and luxuriant, making every space of sward shadowed by the trees purple with their loveliness, like a reflection of the violet sky that had broken in through the lattice-work of boughs, and scenting all the air with their delicious perfume. They brought into the hot hard streets the witchery of the woodlands; and no one could inhale for a moment, in passing by, the sweet wafture of their fragrance without being transported in imagination to far-off scenes endeared to memory, and without a thrill of nameless tenderness at the heart. Some of the bunches of violets I was asked to buy were of a much paler purple than the others, and I was at no loss to explain this peculiarity. The plants with the deep violet petals and dark crimson eye had single blossoms, whereas those whose petals were lilac, and whose eye was of a paler red colour, were double. Cultivation had increased the number of petals, but it had diminished the richness of the colouring. This is an interesting example of the impartial balancing of nature. No object possesses every endowment. Defect in one direction is made up by excess in another. The rose pays for its mass of beautiful petals by its sterility; and the single violet has a lovelier hue, and is perfectly fertile, whereas the double one is pale and cannot perpetuate itself. And the moral lesson of this parable of nature is not difficult to read. Leanness of soul often accompanies the fulfilment of our earthly desires; and outward abundance often produces selfishness and covetousness. The peculiar evil of prosperity is discontent, dissatisfaction with present gain and a longing for more, and a spirit of repining at the little ills and disappointments of life. Humble, fragrant, useful contentment belongs to the soul that has the single eye, and "the one thing needful;" and the more we seek to double our possessions and enjoyments in the spirit of selfishness, the less beautiful and fragrant are we in the sight of God and man, and the less good we do in the world. From the Piazza di Spagna I passed onward through a long street called the Via Babuino, from an antique statue of a satyr mutilated into the likeness of a baboon, that used to adorn a fountain about the middle of it, now removed. More business is done on Sunday in this street than in any other quarter, with the exception of the Corso. Here a shop full of bright and beautiful flowers, roses, magnolias, hyacinths, and lilies of the valley, perfumed all the air; there a jeweller's shop displayed its tempting imitations of Etruscan ornaments, and beads of Roman pearls, coral, lapis lazuli, and malachite; while yonder a marble-cutter wrought diligently at his laths, converting some fragment of rare marble--picked up by a tourist among the ruins of ancient Rome--into a cup or letter-weight to be carried home as a souvenir. The Via Babuino opens upon the Piazza del Popolo, the finest and largest square in Rome. In the centre is a magnificent Egyptian obelisk of red Syene granite, about eighty feet in height, carved with hieroglyphics, with four marble Egyptian lions at each corner of the platform upon which it stands, pouring from their mouths copious streams of water into large basins, with a refreshing sound. Perhaps the eyes of Abraham rested upon this obelisk when he went down into Egypt, the first recorded traveller who visited the valley of the Nile; and the familiarity of the sight to the Israelites during their bondage in the neighbourhood may have suggested the wonderful vision of the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night which regulated their wanderings in the wilderness. God does not paint His revelations on the empty air, but weaves them into the web of history, or pours them into the mould of common earthly objects and ordinary human experiences. Many of the rites and institutions of the Mosaic economy were borrowed from those of the Egyptian priesthood; the tabernacle and its furniture were composed of the gold and jewels of which the Israelites had spoiled the Egyptians; and its form, a tent moved from place to place, accommodated itself to the wandering camp-life of the Israelites. It is not unreasonable, therefore, to suppose that He who appeared to Moses at Horeb, not in some unknown supernatural blaze of glory altogether detached from earth, but in the common fire of a shepherd in the common dry vegetation of the desert, and who made use of the common shepherd's rod which Moses carried in his hand to perform the wonderful miracles before Pharaoh, would also make use of the obelisk of Heliopolis, one of the most familiar objects which met their eye during their captivity, as the pattern of the Shechinah cloud which guided His people in their journey to the land of Canaan. The symbol of the sun that shone upon their weary toil as slaves in the clay-pits beside the Nile, now protected and illumined them in their march as freemen through the desert. What they had probably joined their oppressors in worshipping as an idol, they now beheld with awe and reverence as the token of the overshadowing and overshining presence of the living and true God. That flame-shaped obelisk was the link between Egypt and the Holy Land. The divine effigy of it in the sky of the desert--like the manna as the link between the corn of Egypt and the corn of Canaan--marked the transition from the false to the true, from the old world of dark pagan thought, to the new world of religious light. I need not say with what profound interest such a thought invested the obelisk in the Piazza del Popolo. I was never weary of looking up at its fair proportions, and trying to decipher its strange hieroglyphics--figures of birds and beasts in intaglio, cut clear and deep into the hard granite, and all as bright in colour and carving as though it had been only yesterday cut out of the quarry instead of four thousand years ago. It was my first glimpse into the mysterious East. It made the wonderful story of Joseph and Moses not a mere narrative in a book, but a living reality standing out from the far past like a view in a stereoscope. Every time I passed it--and I did so at all hours--I paused to enter into this reverie of the olden time. The daylight changed it into a pillar of cloud, casting the shadow of the great thoughts connected with it over my mind; the moonlight shining upon its rosy hue changed it into a pillar of fire, illumining all the inner chambers of my soul. Every Sunday it was the cynosure guiding me on my way to church, and suggesting thoughts and memories in unison with the character of the day and the nature of my work. No other object in Rome remains so indelibly pictured in my mind. From the Piazza del Popolo, three long narrow streets run, like three fingers from the palm of the hand; the Via Babuino, which leads to the English quarter; the famous Corso, which leads to the Capitol and the Forum; and the Ripetta, which leads to St. Peter's and the Vatican. These approaches are guarded by two churches, S. Maria di Monte Santo and S. Maria dei Miracoli, similar in appearance, with oval domes and tetrastyle porticoes that look like ecclesiastical porters' lodges. The name of the Piazza del Popolo is derived, not from the people, as is generally supposed, but from the extensive grove of poplar-trees that surrounded the Mausoleum of Augustus, and long formed the most conspicuous feature in the neighbourhood. The crescent-shaped sides of the square are bounded on the left by a wall, with a bright fountain and appropriate statuary in the middle of it, and a fringe of tall cypress-trees, and on the right by a similar wall, adorned with marble trophies and two columns rough with the projecting prows of ships taken from the ancient temple of Venice and Rome, and rising in a series of terraced walks to the upper platform of the Pincio. At the foot of this _Collis Hortulorum_, "Hill of Gardens," which was a favourite resort of the ancient Romans, Nero was buried; and in earlier republican times it was the site of the famous Villa of Lucullus, who had accumulated an enormous fortune when general of the Roman army in Asia, and spent it on his retirement from active life in the most sumptuous entertainments and the most prodigal luxuries. Here he gave his celebrated feast to Cicero and Pompey. From Lucullus, the magnificent grounds passed into the possession of Valerius Asiaticus; and while his property they became the scene of a tragedy which reminds one of the story of Ahab and Jezebel and the vineyard of Naboth. The infamous Messalina, the wife of the Emperor Claudius, coveted the grounds of Asiaticus. With the unscrupulous spirit of Jezebel, she procured the condemnation to death of the owner for crimes that he had never committed; a fate which he avoided by committing suicide. As soon as this obstacle was removed out of her way, she appropriated the villa; and in the beautiful grounds abandoned herself to the most shameless orgies in the absence of her husband at Ostia. But her pleasure and triumph were short-lived. The emperor was informed of her enormities, and hastened home to take vengeance. Having vainly tried all means of conciliation, and attempted without effect to kill herself, she was slain in a paroxysm of terror and anguish, by a blow of the executioner's falchion; and the death of Asiaticus was avenged on the very spot where it happened. The gardens of the Pincio are small, but a fairer spot it would be hard to find anywhere. The grounds are most beautifully laid out, and so skilfully arranged that they seem of far larger extent than they really are. Splendid palm-trees, aloes, and cactuses give a tropical charm to the walks; rare exotics and bloom-laden trees of genial climes, flashing fountains, and all manner of cultivated beauty, enliven the scene; while the air blows fresh and invigorating from the distant hills. From the lofty parapet of the city-wall which bounds it on one side, you gaze into the green meadows and rich wooded solitudes of the Borghese grounds, that look like some rural retreat a score of miles from the city; and from the stone balustrade on the other side you see all Rome at your feet with its sea of brown houses, and beyond the picturesque roofs and the hidden river rising up the great mass of the Vatican buildings and the mighty dome of St. Peter's, which catches like a mountain peak the last level gold of the sunset, and flashes it back like an illumination, while all the intermediate view is in shadow. No wonder that the Pincian Hill is the favourite promenade of Rome, and that on week-days and Sunday afternoons you see multitudes of people showing every phase of Roman life, and hundreds of carriages containing the flower of the Roman aristocracy, with beautiful horses, and footmen in rich liveries, crowding the piazza below, ascending the winding road, and driving or walking round between the palms and the pines, over the garden-paths, to the sound of band music. And thus they continue to amuse themselves till the sun has set, and the first sound of the bells of Ave Maria is heard from the churches; and then they wind their way homewards. We pass out from the Piazza through the Porta del Popolo, the only way by which strangers used to approach Rome from the north. It was indeed a more suitable entrance into the Eternal City than the present one; for no human being, with a spark of imagination, would care to obtain his first view of the city of his dreams from the outside of a great bustling railway station. But the Porta del Popolo had annoyances of its own that seemed hardly less incongruous. One had to run the gauntlet of the custom-house here, and to practise unheard-of briberies upon the venal douaniers of the Pope before being allowed to pass on to his hotel. And the first glimpse of the city from this point did not come up to one's expectations, being very much like that of any commonplace modern capital, without a ruin visible, or any sign or suggestion of the mistress of the world. The Porta del Popolo almost marks the position of the old Flaminian gate, through which passed the great northern road of Italy, constructed by the Roman censor, C. Flaminius, two hundred and twenty years before Christ, extending as far as Rimini, a distance of two hundred and ten miles. Through that old gate, and along that old road, the Roman cohorts passed to conquer Britain, then a small isle inhabited by savage tribes. Hardly any path save that to Jerusalem has been trodden by so many human feet as this old Flaminian road. The present gate is said to have been designed by Michael Angelo; but it shows no signs of his genius. On the inner side, above the keystone of the arch, is a lofty brick wall in the shape of a horse-shoe, built exclusively for the purpose of displaying in colossal size, emblazoned in stucco, the city arms, the sun rising above three or four pyramidal mountains arranged above each other. The external façade consists of two pairs of Doric columns of granite and marble flanking the arch, whose colour and beauty have entirely disappeared through exposure to the weather. In the spaces between the columns are two statues, one of St. Peter, and the other of St. Paul, of inferior merit, and very much stained and weather-worn. The inscription above the arch, "To a happy and prosperous entrance," seemed a mockery in the old douanier days, when delays and extortions vexed the soul of the visitor, and produced a mood anything but favourable to the enjoyment of the Eternal City. But now the grievances are over. The occupation of the place is gone. The barracks on the left for the papal guards are converted to other purposes; no custom-house officer now meets one at the gate, and all are free to come and go without passport, or bribe, or hindrance. Since I was in Rome this old gateway being found too narrow has been considerably widened by the addition of a wing on each side of the large central arch, containing each a smaller arch in which the same style of architecture is carried out. On the right as you go out is the remarkable church of Santa Maria del Popolo. It is built in the usual Romanesque style; but its external appearance is very unpretending, and owing to its situation in a corner overshadowed by the wall it is apt to be overlooked. It is an old fabric, eight hundred years having passed away since Pope Paschal II. founded it on the spot where Nero was said to have been buried. From the tomb of the infamous tyrant grew a gigantic walnut-tree, the roosting-place of innumerable crows, supposed to be demons that haunted the evil place. The erection of the church completely exorcised these foul spirits, consecrated the locality, and dispelled the superstitious fears of the people. Reconstructed in the reign of Sixtus IV., about the year 1480, this church has not the picturesque antiquity in this dry climate and clear atmosphere which our Gothic churches in moist England present. Not more widely did the external aspect of the tabernacle in the wilderness, with its dark goat-skin coverings, differ from the interior of the Holy of holies, with its golden furniture, than does the commonplace look of the outside of the church of Santa Maria del Popolo differ from its magnificent interior. It is a perfect museum of sculpture and painting. Splendid tombs of eminent cardinals of the best period of the Renaissance, rare marbles and precious stones in lavish profusion adorn the altars and walls of the chapels; while they are further enriched by beautiful frescoes of sacred subjects from the pencils of Penturicchio and Annibale Caracci. Above the high altar is an ancient picture of the Madonna, with an exceedingly swarthy eastern complexion, which is one among several others in Rome attributed to the pencil of St. Luke the Evangelist, and which is supposed to possess the power of working miracles. One especially magnificent chapel arrests the attention, and leaves a lasting impression--that of the Chigi family, built by Fabio Chigi, better known as Pope Alexander VII. The architecture was planned by Raphael. The design of the strange fresco on the ceiling of the dome, representing the creation of the heavenly bodies, was sketched by him; and he modelled the beautiful statue of Jonah, sitting upon a whale--said to have been carved from a block that fell from one of the temples in the Forum--and sculptured the figure of Elijah, which are among the most conspicuous ornaments of the chapel. This is the only place in which Raphael appears in the character of an architect and sculptor. Like Michael Angelo, the genius of this wonderfully-gifted artist was capable of varied expression; and it seemed a mere accident whether his ideals were represented in stone, or colour, or words. On his single head God seemed to have poured all His gifts; beauty of person, and beauty of soul, and the power to perceive and embody the beauty and the wonder of the world; the eye of light and the heart of fire; "the angel nature in the angel name." And yet amid his fadeless art he faded away; and at the deathless shrines which he left behind the admirer of his genius is left to lament his early death. Such thoughts receive a still more mournful hue from a touching tomb--touching even though its taste be execrable--which records a husband's sorrow on account of the death of his young wife--a princess of both the distinguished houses of Chigi and Odescalchi--who passed away at the age of twenty, in the saddest of all ways--in childbirth. It goes to one's heart to think of the desolate home and the bereaved husband left, as he says, "in solitude and grief." And though the weeper has gone with the wept, and the sore wound which death inflicted has been healed by his own hand nearly a hundred years ago, we feel a wondrous sympathy with that old domestic tragedy. It is a touch of nature that affects one more than all the blazonry and sculpture around. In this weird church of Santa Maria del Popolo, which seems more a mausoleum of the dead than a place of worship for the living, the level rays of the afternoon sun come through the richly-painted windows of the choir; and the warm glory rests first upon a strange monument of the sixteenth century at the entrance, where a ghastly human skeleton sculptured in yellow marble looks through a grating, and then upon a medallion on a tomb, representing a butterfly emerging from the chrysalis, illumining the inscription, "Ut Phoenix multicabo dies." And this old expressive symbol speaks to us of death as the Christian's true birth, in which the spirit bursts its earthly shell, and soars on immortal wings to God. And the church straightway to the inner eye becomes full of a transfiguration glory which no darkness of the tomb can quench, and which makes all earthly love immortal. A venerable monastery, tenanted by monks of the order of St. Augustine, is attached to this church, upon whose brown-tiled roofs, covered with gray and yellow lichens, and walls and windows of extreme simplicity, the eye of the visitor gazes with deepest interest. For this was the residence of Luther during his famous visit to Rome. He came to this place in the fervour of youthful enthusiasm; his heart was filled with pious emotions. He knelt down on the pavement when he passed through the Porta del Popolo, and cried, "I salute thee, O holy Rome; Rome venerable through the blood and the tombs of the martyrs!" Immediately on his arrival he went to the convent of his own order, and celebrated mass with feelings of great excitement. But, alas! he was soon to be disenchanted. He had not been many days in Rome when he saw that the city of the saints and martyrs was wholly given up to idolatry and social corruption, and was as different as possible from the city of his dreams. He cared not for the fine arts which covered this pollution with a deceitful iridescence of refinement; and the ruins of pagan Rome had no power to move his heart, preoccupied as it was with horror at the monstrous wickedness which made desolate the very sanctuary of God. When he ascended on his knees the famous Scala Santa, the holy staircase near the Lateran Palace--supposed to have belonged to Pilate's house in Jerusalem, down whose marble steps our Saviour walked, wearing the crown of thorns and the emblems of mock royalty which the soldiers had put upon him--he seemed to hear a voice whispering to him the words, "The just shall live by faith." Instantly the scales fell from his eyes, and he saw the miserable folly of the whole proceeding; and like a man suddenly freed from fetters, he rose from his knees, and walked firm and erect to the foot of the stairs. He could not remain another day in the city. Returning to his monastery, he there celebrated mass for the last time, and departed on the morrow with the bitter words, "Adieu, O city, where everything is permitted but to be a good man!" Ten years later he burnt the Bull of the Pope in the public square of Wittemberg, and all Europe rang with the tocsin of the Reformation. I never passed that venerable monastery without thinking of the austere German monk and his glorious work; and the old well-known motto of the Reformation which had been his battle-cry in many a good fight of faith received new power and meaning from the associations of the place. To the enlightenment received there, paving the way for religious and political liberty throughout Christendom, I owed the privilege of preaching in Rome. The Presbyterian church--I speak of the past, for since my visit the church has been removed to a more suitable site within the walls--is a little distance farther on, on the opposite side of the street. You enter by a gateway, and find yourself in an open space surrounded with luxuriant hedges in full bloom, and large flowering shrubs, and commanding a fine view of Monte Mario and the open country in that direction, including the meadows where the noble Arnold of Brescia was burnt to death, and his ashes cast into the Tiber. The church is a square, flat-roofed eastern-looking building, in the inside tastefully painted in imitation of panels of Cipollino marble; and on the neat pulpit is carved the symbol of the Scotch Church, the burning bush and its motto, nowhere surely more appropriate than in the place where the Christian faith has been subjected to the flames of pagan and papal persecution for eighteen hundred years, and has emerged purer and stronger. In that simple church I had the privilege of preaching to a large but fluctuating congregation, each day differently composed of persons belonging to various nationalities and denominations, but united by one common bond of faith and love. At stated intervals we celebrated together the touching feast that commemorates our Saviour's dying love, and the oneness of Christians in Him. The wonderful associations of the place lent to such occasions a special interest and solemnity. Surrounded by the ruins of man's glory, we felt deeply how unchanging was the word of God. In a city of gorgeous ceremonials that had changed Christianity into a kind of baptized paganism, we felt it indescribably refreshing to partake, in the beautiful simplicity of our own worship, of the symbols of the broken body and shed blood of our Lord. We seemed to be compassed about with a great cloud of witnesses, apostles, martyrs, and saints, who in the early ages of the Church in this city overcame the world by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, and loved not their lives unto the death. More vividly than anywhere else, we seemed in this place to come to the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to realise that we were built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone. On the opposite side of the road is the classic portico that leads to the Borghese Villa. The gate is almost always open; and every person is free to wander at will through the magnificent grounds, upwards of three miles in circuit, and hold picnics in the sunny glades, and pull the wild flowers that star the grass in myriads. On Sunday afternoons multitudes come and go, and a long line of carriages, filled with the Roman nobility and with foreign visitors, in almost endless succession, make the circuit of the drives. The Porta del Popolo becomes too strait for the seething mass of carriages and human beings that pass through it; and it is with difficulty, and some danger to life and limb, that one can force a passage through the gay pleasure-loving crowd. At the Carnival time the ordinary dangers and difficulties are increased tenfold; and the scene presents anything but a Sabbath-like appearance. Nor are the danger and difficulty over when the gate is passed; for the Piazza del Popolo and the streets that lead from it are crowded with carriages and pedestrians going to or returning from the favourite promenade on the Pincian Hill. One runs the gauntlet all the way; meditation is impossible; and the return from church in the afternoon is as different as possible from the morning walk to it. What pleasure can these people derive from the beautiful walks and drives in the Borghese grounds, except perhaps that of seeing and being seen in a crowd? There is no seclusion of nature, no opportunity of quiet thought. On week-days, at certain hours, one may enjoy the place thoroughly without any distraction, and feel amid the lonely vistas of the woods as if buried in the loneliest solitude of the Apennines. And truly on such occasions I know no place so fascinating, so like an earthly Eden! The whole scene thrills one like lovely music. All the charms of nature and art are there focussed in brightest perfection. The grounds are gay with starry anemones, and billowy acacias crested with odorous wreaths of yellow foam, dark and mysterious with tall ilexes, cypresses, and stone-pines, enlivened by graceful palms and tender deciduous trees, musical with falling and glancing waters, and haunted by the statues of Greek divinities that filled men's minds with immortal thoughts in the youth of the world--dimly visible amid the recesses of the foliage. The path leads to a casino in which sculpture and painting have done their utmost to enrich and adorn the apartments. But the result of all this prodigal display of wealth and refinement is exceedingly melancholy. It would be death to inhabit these sumptuous marble rooms when their coolness would be most agreeable; and the witchery of the shadowy wood paths and bowers in their summer perfection can be enjoyed only at the risk of catching fever. Man has made a paradise for himself, but the malaria drives him out of it, and all its costly beauty is almost thrown away. Only during the desolation of winter, or the fair promise and half-developments of spring, can one wander safely through the place. The sting of the serpent is in this Eden. Cursed is the ground for man's sake in the fairest scene that his industry, and genius, and virtue can make for himself; but cursed with a double curse is the ground that he makes a wilderness by his selfishness and wickedness. And this double curse, this fatal Circean spell, has come upon these beautiful grounds in common with all the neighbourhood of Rome because of ages of human waste and wrong-doing. How striking a picture do they present of all earth's beauties and possessions, which promise what they cannot fully accomplish, which give no rest for the head or home for the heart, and in which, when disposed to place our trust, we hear ever and anon the warning cry, "Arise and depart, for this is not your rest, for it is polluted, for it will destroy you with a sore destruction." And not without significance is the circumstance that such a lesson on the vanity of all earthly things should be suggested by what one sees over against the house of prayer. It illustrates and emphasises the precept which bids the worshipper set his affections on things above, so that the house of God may become to him the very gate of heaven. From the entrance of the church, through a long suburb, you trace the old Flaminian road till it crosses the Tiber at the Ponte Molle, the famous Milvian Bridge. It is strange to think of this hoary road of many memories being now laid down with modern tramway rails, along which cars like those in any of our great manufacturing towns continually run. This is one of the many striking instances in which the past and the present are incongruously united in Rome. You see on the right side of the road a picturesque ridge of cliffs clothed with shaggy ilexes and underwood, overhanging at intervals the walls and buildings. It was formed by lava ejected from some ancient volcano in the neighbourhood; and over it was deposited, by the action of acidulated waters rising through the volcanic rock, a stratum of travertine or fresh-water limestone. Not far off is a mineral spring called Acqua Acetosa, much frequented by the inhabitants on summer mornings, which may be considered one of the expiring efforts of volcanic action in the neighbourhood. The Milvian Bridge is associated with most interesting and important historical events. The Roman citizens, two hundred years before Christ, met here the messengers who announced the defeat of Asdrubal on the Metaurus at the end of the second Punic war. Here the ambassadors of the Allobroges implicated in Catiline's conspiracy were arrested by order of Cicero. And from the parapets of the bridge the body of Maxentius, the rival pagan emperor, was hurled into the Tiber, after his defeat by Constantine in the great battle of Saxa Rubra, which took place a little distance off. Visitors to the Vatican will remember the spirited representation of this battle on the walls of Raphael's Stanze, designed by the immortal master, and executed by Giulio Romano, the largest historical subject ever painted. By the tragic details of this battle, men and horses being entangled in the eddies of the river, the Christians were reminded of the destruction of Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea, and the consequent deliverance of Israel. The victory on the side of Constantine led to the total overthrow of paganism, and put an end to the age of religious persecution. On this memorable day the seven-branched golden candlestick which Titus had taken from the temple of Jerusalem, according to tradition, was thrown into the Tiber, where it lies under a vast accumulation of mud in the bed of the river. It would thus seem as if the Jewish religion, too, of which the golden candlestick was the most expressive symbol, had come finally to an end in this triumph of Christianity. Of the monuments by which the great battle was commemorated one still survives near the Colosseum, the well-known triumphal arch of Constantine, which is at once a satire upon the decay of art at the time, and the halting of the new emperor between the two religions, containing, as it does, pagan figures and inscriptions mixed up incongruously with Christian ones. We gaze with deep interest upon the serene violet sky which broods over the Milvian Bridge, and which still seems to the fancy to glow with the consciousness of the ancient legend, when we remember that it was in that sky, while on his march to the battle, Constantine saw, surmounting and outshining the noonday sun, the wondrous vision of the flaming cross, with the words "In this conquer," which assured him not only of victory in the approaching engagement, but of the subsequent universal ascendancy of Christianity throughout the world. This vision, which in all probability was only a parhelion, exaggerated by a superstitious and excited imagination, produced a crisis in the life of Constantine. He adopted the Christian faith immediately afterwards, and introduced the cross as the standard of his army; and in the faith of the visionary cross he marched from victory to victory, until at last he reigned alone as head of the Church and Emperor of the world, and brought about relations between Church and State which seemed to the historian Eusebius to be no less than the fulfilment of the apocalyptic vision of the New Jerusalem. Beyond this scene stretches to the faint far-off horizon the desert Campagna; a dim, misty, homeless land, where the moan of the wind sounds ever like the voice of the past, and the pathos of a vanished people breathes over all the scene; with here and there a gray nameless ruin, a desolate bluff, or a grassy mound, marking the site of some mysterious Etruscan or Sabine city that had perished ages before Romulus had laid the foundations of Rome. From the contemplation of these wide cheerless wastes beyond the confines of history, peopled with shadowy forms, with whose long-buried hopes and sorrows no mortal heart can now sympathise, I turn back to the fresh, warm, human interests that await me in the Rome of to-day; feeling to the full that from home to church I have passed through scenes and associations sufficient to make a Sabbath in Rome a day standing out from all other days, never to be forgotten! CHAPTER II THE APPIAN WAY It was the proud boast of the ancient Romans that all roads led to their city. Rome was the centre and mistress of the world; and as the loneliest rill that rises in the bosom of the far-off mountain leads, if followed, to the ocean, so every path in the remotest corner of the vast empire conducted to the great gilded column in the Roman Forum, upon which all distances without the walls were marked. To the Romans the world is indebted for opening up communications with different countries. They were the great engineers and road-makers of antiquity. This seems to have been the work assigned to them in the household of nations. Rome broke down the barriers that separated one nation from another, and fused all distinctions of race and language and religion into one great commonwealth. And for the cohesion of all the elements of this huge political fabric nothing could have been more effectual than the magnificent roads, by which constant communication was kept up between all parts of the empire, and armies could be transported to quell a rising rebellion in some outlying province with the smallest expenditure of time and strength. In this way the genius of this wonderful people was providentially made subservient to the interests of Christianity. At the very time that our Lord commissioned, with His parting breath, the apostles to preach the gospel to every creature, the way was prepared for the fulfilment of that commission. The crooked places had been made straight, and the rough places smooth. Along the roads which the Romans made throughout the world for the march of their armies and the consolidation of their government, the apostles, the soldiers of the Prince of Peace, marched to grander and more enduring victories. Of all the roads of ancient Rome the Via Appia was the oldest and most renowned. It was called by the Romans themselves the _regina viarum_, the "queen of roads." It was constructed by Appius Claudius the Blind, during the Samnite War, when he was Censor, three hundred and thirteen years before Christ, and led from Rome to Capua, being carried over the Pontine Marshes on an embankment. It was afterwards extended to Brindisi, the ancient seaport of Rome on the Adriatic, and became the great highway for travellers from Rome to Greece and all the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. A curious link of connection may be traced between the modern Italian expression, when drinking to a person's health on leaving home, "far Brindisi," and the distant termination of the Appian Way, suggestive, as of old, of farewell wishes for a prosperous journey and a speedy return to the parting guest. The way was paved throughout with broad hexagonal slabs of hard lava, exactly fitted to each other; and here and there along its course may still be seen important remains of it, which prove its excellent workmanship. This method of constructing roads was borrowed by the Romans from the Carthaginians, and was tried for the first time on the Appian Way, all previous roads having been formed of sand and gravel. The greatest breadth of the road was about twenty-six feet between the curbstones; and on both sides were placed, at intervals of forty feet, low columns, as seats for the travel-worn, and as helps in mounting on horseback. Distances of five thousand feet were marked by milestones, which were in the form of columnar shafts, elevated on pedestals with appropriate inscriptions. The physical wants of the traveller were provided for at inns judiciously disposed along the route; while his religious wants were gratified by frequent statues of Mercury, Apollo, Diana, Ceres, Hercules, and other deities, who presided over highways and journeys, casting their sacred shadow over his path. Some of the stones of the pavement still show the ruts of the old chariot-wheels, and others are a good deal cracked and worn; but they are sound enough, probably, to outlast the modern little cubes which have replaced them in some parts. A road formed in this most substantial manner for about two hundred miles, involving cuttings through rocks, filling up of hollows, bridging of ravines, and embanking of swamps, must have been an arduous and costly feat of engineering. Appius Claudius is said to have exhausted the Roman treasury in defraying the expenses of its construction. It was frequently repaired, owing to the heavy traffic upon it, by Julius, by Augustus, Vespasian, Domitian, Nerva, and very thoroughly by the Emperor Trajan. In some parts, where the soft ground had subsided, a second pavement was laid over the first; and in the Pontine Marshes we observe traces of no less than three pavements superimposed above each other to preserve the proper level. For a considerable distance outside the Porta Capena, where it commenced, the Appian Way was lined on both sides with tombs belonging to patrician families. This was the case, indeed, with all the other roads of Rome that were converted into avenues of death owing to the strenuous law which prohibited all interments within the walls; but the Appian Way was specially distinguished for the number and magnificence of its tombs. The most illustrious names of ancient Rome were interred beside it. At first the sepulchres of the heroes of the early ages were the only ones; but under the Cæsars these were eclipsed by the funereal pomp of the freedmen, the parasites and sycophants of the emperors. At first the tombs were built of volcanic stone, the only building material found in the neighbourhood; but as Rome became mistress of the world, and gathered the marbles and precious stones of the conquered countries into its own bosom, and as wealth and luxury increased, the tombs were constructed altogether of or cased on the outside with these valuable materials. And this circumstance gives us a clue to the age of the different monuments. The custom of bordering the main approaches of the city with sepulchral monuments was, in all likelihood, derived from the Etruscans, to whom the Romans owed many of their institutions. These monuments were usually structures of great beauty and elegance. Some of them were fashioned as conical mounds, on the slopes of which trees and parterres of flowers were planted; others were built after the model of graceful Grecian temples; others were huge circular masses of masonry; and others were simple sarcophagi with lids, resting on square elevated pedestals. Most of them were adorned with busts and statues of the departed, with altars, columns, and carvings. What these tombs were in their prime, it is difficult for us to picture; but even their remains at the present day produce the conviction that no grander mode of approach to a great city could have been devised. It would seem to us altogether incongruous to line our public roads with tombs, and to transact the business and pursue the pleasures of the living among the dead. All our ideas of propriety would be shocked by seeing a circus for athletic games beside a cemetery. But the ancient Romans had no such feeling. They buried their dead, not in lonely spots and obscure churchyards as we do, but where the life of the city was gayest. One of the grandest of their sepulchral monuments was placed beside one of the most frequented of their circuses. The last objects which a Roman beheld when he left the city, and the first that greeted him on his coming back, were the tombs of his ancestors and friends; and their silent admonition did not deepen the sadness of farewell, or cast a shadow upon the joy of return. Many of the marble sarcophagi were ornamented with beautiful bas-reliefs of mythical incidents, utterly inconsistent, we should suppose, with the purpose for which they were designed. Nuptials, bacchanalian fêtes, games, and dances, are crowded upon their sculptured sides, in seeming mockery of the pitiable relics of humanity within. They treated death lightly and playfully, these ancient Romans, and tried to hide his terror with a mask of smiles, and to cover his dart with a wreath of flowers. Why is it that we Christians look upon death with feelings so widely different? Why, when life and immortality have been brought to light in the gospel, are the mementoes of mortality more painful and saddening to us than they were to these pagans who had no hopes of a resurrection? It seems a paradox, but the Christianity which has brought the greatest hope into the world has also brought the greatest fear. By increasing the value of life, our religion has increased the fear of death. By quickening the conscience, it has quickened the imagination; and that death which to the man conscious only of a physical existence is the mere natural termination of life, to the nature convinced of sin is a violent breach of the beautiful order of the world, and the gate to final retribution. The ancient Roman was but a child in spiritual apprehension, and therefore as a child he surrendered his happy pagan life as thoughtlessly as the weary child falls asleep at the end of its play. No terrors of futurity darkened his last hours; he had his own turn at the feast of life, and as a satisfied guest he was content to depart and make room for others. As cheerfully as he had formerly begun his ordinary journeys from Rome through a street of tombs, so now he took the last journey, he knew not whither, through the valley of the shadow of death, and feared no evil; not because a greater Power was with him to defend him, but because for him no evil except the common pangs of dissolution existed. All that he cared for in death was that he should not be altogether separated from the presence and the enjoyments of human life, from the haunts where he had been so happy. He wished to have his tomb on the public thoroughfare, that he might "feel, as it were, the tide of life as it flowed past his monument, and that his mute existence might be prolonged in the remembrance of his friends." I may observe that the Roman custom of bordering the public roads with tombs gives a significance to the inscriptions which some of them bore,--such as, _Siste, viator_--_Aspice, viator_, "Stop, traveller"--"Look, traveller"; a significance which is altogether lost when the same inscriptions are carved, as we have often seen them, on tombstones in secluded country churchyards where no traveller ever passes by, and hardly even friends come to weep. Modern Rome is unlike all other European cities in this respect, that a short distance beyond its gates you plunge at once into a desert. There is no gradual subsidence of the busy life of the gay metropolis, through suburban houses, villages, and farms, into the quiet seclusion of the country. You pass abruptly from the seat of the most refined arts into the most primitive solitude, where the pulse of life hardly beats. The desolation of the Campagna, that green motionless sea of silence, comes up to and almost washes the walls of the city. You know that you are in the immediate neighbourhood of a teeming population; but you might as well be a hundred miles away in the heart of the Apennines, for any signs of human culture or habitation that you perceive within the horizon. There is no traffic on the road; and only at rare intervals do you meet with a solitary peasant, looking like a satyr in shaggy goat-skin breeches, and glaring wildly at you from his great black eyes as he crosses the waste. Far as the eye can see there is nothing but a melancholy plain, studded here and there with a ruin, and populous only with the visionary forms of the past; and its tragic beauty prepares your mind for passing into the solemn shadow of the great Niobe of cities. But it was not thus in the brilliant days of the Empire. For fifteen miles beyond the walls the Appian Way stretched to the beautiful blue Alban hills, through a continuous suburb of the city, adorned with all the charms of nature and art, palatial villas and pleasure-gardens, groves and vineyards, temples and far-extending aqueducts. These homes and fashionable haunts of the living were interspersed in strange association with the tombs of the dead. Through the gate a constant stream of human life passed in and out; and crowds of chariots and horsemen and wayfarers thronged the road from morning to night. It is only seventeen years since the true point of commencement of the Appian Way was discovered. For a long time the Porta Capena by which it left Rome was supposed to be situated outside of the present walls, in the valley of the Almo. But Dr. Parker, at the period indicated, making some excavations in the narrowest part of the valley between the Coelian and Aventine hills, came upon some massive remains of the original wall of Servius Tullius, and in these he found the true site of the Porta Capena. This discovery, confirming the supposition of Ampère and others, cleared up much that was inexplicable in the topography of this part of Rome, and enabled antiquarians to fix the relative position of all the historical spots. The Via Appia is thus shown to have extended upwards of three-quarters of a mile within the present area of the city, over the space between the wall of Servius Tullius and the wall of Aurelian. And this is still further confirmed by the discovery, three hundred years ago, of the first milestone of the Appian Way in a vineyard, a short distance beyond the modern gate of St. Sebastian, marking exactly a Roman mile from that point to the site of Dr. Parker's discovery. This milestone now forms one of the ornaments on the balustrade at the head of the stairs of the Capitol. The Appian Way shared in the vicissitudes of the city. After the fall of the Western Empire, about the beginning of the sixth century, when it was finally repaired by Theodoric, it fell into desuetude. The people, owing to the unsettled state of the country, were afraid to move from home. A grievous apathy took possession of all classes; agriculture was neglected, and the drains being stopped up, the line of route was inundated, and the road, especially on the low levels, became quite impassable. For centuries it continued in this state, until it was overgrown with a marshy vegetation in the wet places, and covered with turf in the dry. About a hundred years ago Pope Pius VI. drained the Pontine Marshes, and restored other parts of the road, and made it available as the ordinary land-route from Rome to Naples. But it was left to Pio Nono to uncover the road between Rome and Albano, which had previously been confounded with the Campagna, and was only indicated by the double line of ruined tombs. After three years of hard work, and an expenditure of £3000, the part most interesting to the archæologist--namely, from the third to the eleventh milestone--was laid bare, its monuments identified as far as possible, and a wall of loose stones built on both sides, to protect it from the encroachments of the neighbouring landowners. And now the modern traveller can walk or ride or drive comfortably over the very pavement which Horace and Virgil, Augustus and Paul traversed, and gaze upon the ruins of the very objects that met their eyes. Taking our departure from the site of the Porta Capena, we are reminded that it was at the Porta Capena that the survivor of the Horatii met his sister, who had been betrothed to one of the Curiatii, and who, when she saw her brother carrying the cloak of her dead lover, which she had wrought with her own hand, upbraided him in a passion of tears for his cruelty. Enraged at the sight of her grief, Horatius drew his sword and stabbed her to the heart, crying, "So perish the Roman maiden that shall weep for her country's enemy!" The tomb of the hapless maiden long stood on the spot. It was at the Porta Capena also that the senate and people of Rome gave to Cicero a splendid ovation on his return from banishment. Numerous historical buildings clustered round this gate--a temple of Mars, of Hercules, of Honour and Virtue, and a fountain dedicated to Mercury, described by Ovid; but not a trace of these now remains. On the left, at the back of the Coelian Hill, is a valley covered with verdure, wonderfully quiet and rural-looking, though within the walls of a city. In this valley once stood the famous grove where Numa Pompilius had his mysterious interviews with the nymph Egeria. A spring still bubbles forth beside a cluster of farm-buildings, which is said to be the veritable Fountain of Egeria. The temple of the Muses, who were Egeria's counsellors, was close by; and the name of the gate of the city, _Porta Capena_, was in all likelihood a corruption of Camena, the Latin name for Muse, and was not derived, as some suppose, from the city of Capua. The spot outside the present walls, formerly visited as the haunt of the fabled nymph, before the discovery of the site of the Capena gate fixed its true position--beautiful and romantic as it is--was only the nymphæum of some Roman villa, used as a place of retirement and coolness in the oppressive heat of summer. Of all the legends of Rome's earliest days, none is more poetical than that which speaks of the visits of Numa to this mysterious being, whose counsels in these sacred shades were of such value to him in the management of his kingdom, and who dictated to him the whole religious institutions and civil legislation of Rome. Whatever historical basis it may have, the legend has at least a core of moral truth. It illustrates the necessity of solitude and communion with Higher Powers as a preparation for the solemn duties of life. All who have influenced men permanently for good have drawn their inspiration from lonely haunts sacred to meditation--ever since Moses saw the burning bush in the desert, and Elijah bowed his strong soul to the majesty of the still small voice at Horeb. The romance of the grove of Egeria was, however, dispelled when the valley was turned into a place of imprisonment for the Jews. Domitian drove them out of the Ghetto, and shut them up here, with only a basket and a wisp of hay for each person, to undergo unheard-of privations and miseries. The Horticultural Gardens, where the shrubs and plants are grown that ornament the public squares and terraces of the city, now occupy the site of the celebrated grove. The shrill scream of the railway whistle outside the gate, and the smell of the gas-works near at hand--these veritable things of the present century--are fatal to all enchantments, and effectually dissipate the spell of the muses and the mystic fragrance of the Egerian solitude. But wonderful is the persistence of a spring in a spot. Continually changing, it is the most changeless of all things. For ever passing away, it is yet the most steadfast and enduring. Derived from the fleeting vapour--the emblem of inconstancy--it outlasts the most solid structure of man, and continues to well up its waters even when the rock beside it has weathered into dust. The Fountain of Egeria flows to-day in the hollow of the Coelian Hill as it flowed nigh three thousand years ago, although the muses have fled, and the deities Picus and Faunus, which Numa entrapped in the wood of the Aventine, have gone back to their native skies with Jupiter; and Mammon and Philosophy have exorcised that unseen world which once presented so many beauties and wonders to the imagination of man. A little farther on to the right, a side path, called the Via Antonina, leads up to the stupendous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, a mile in circumference, and covering a space of 2,625,000 square yards. The walls, arches, and domes of massive brickwork hanging up in the sky,--the fragments of sculpture and splendid mosaic pavements belonging to these baths,--produced a deeper impression upon my mind than even the ruins of the Colosseum. With the form and majesty of the Colosseum, owing to its compactness and unity, pictures and other representations have made us familiar from infancy, so that it excites no surprise when we actually visit it; but the Baths of Caracalla cannot be pictorially represented as a whole, on account of their vast variety and extent, and therefore we come to the spectacle wholly unprepared, and are at once startled into awe and astonishment. Notwithstanding the wholesale pillage of centuries, enough in the way of chambers and baths, marble statues, pillars, and works of art, still remains in this mountainous mass of masonry to witness to the unparalleled luxury by which the strength of the Roman youth was enervated, and the foundations of the empire sapped. Shelley wrote on the summit of one of the arches his "Prometheus Unbound;" and certainly a fitter place in which to seek inspiration for such a theme could not be found. Beyond the Baths, on the same side of the road, is the most interesting little church of the two saints Nereus and Achilles, Christian slaves who suffered martyrdom in the reign of Diocletian. It is supposed that the Nereus whose body reposes in this ancient church is the person referred to by St. Paul in his greetings to the Roman saints at the close of his Epistle--"Salute Nereus, and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints which are with them." Bolland, in his _Acts of the Saints_, mentions that he was a servant in the household of Flavia Domitilla, niece of the celebrated Christian lady of the same name, whose mother was the sister of the Emperor Domitian, and whose two sons were intended to succeed to the imperial throne. This younger Domitilla, although so nearly related to the imperial family, was banished to the island of Pontia, because of her refusal to sacrifice to idols. Her two Christian servants, Nereus and Achilles, accompanied her in her exile, and were afterwards burned alive, along with their mistress, at Terracina, and their ashes deposited in the same resting-place. It is a remarkable circumstance that this church and the catacomb where they were buried at first, should have borne the names of the lowly slaves instead of the name of their illustrious mistress, who was as distinguished by her Christian faith as by her rank. Time brought to these noble martyrs a worthy revenge for their ignoble fate; for when their ashes were taken from the catacomb to this church in the year 524, they were first carried in triumph to the Capitol, and made to pass under the imperial arches, on which was affixed the inscriptions "The Senate and the Roman people to Santa Flavia Domitilla, for having brought more honour to Rome by her death than her illustrious relations by their works." "To Santa Flavia Domitilla, and to the saints Nereus and Achilles, the excellent citizens who gained peace for the Christian republic at the price of their blood." Jeremy Taylor, in his splendid sermon on the "Marriage-ring," has a touching reference to the legendary history of Nereus. The church dedicated to the honour of these Christian slaves has many interesting associations. It stands upon the site of a primitive Christian oratory, called Fasciola, because St. Peter was said to have dropped there one of the bandages of his wounds on the way to execution. And its last reconstruction, retaining all the features of the old architecture with the utmost care, was the pious work of its titular cardinal, Cæsar Baronius, the celebrated librarian of the Vatican, whose Ecclesiastical Annals may be called the earliest systematic work on Church History. The church has an enclosed choir, with two ambones or reading-desks in it, surrounding the altar, as was the custom in the older Christian churches. The mosaics on the tribune representing the "Transfiguration" and "Annunciation" are more than a thousand years old, and are interesting besides as the first embodiments in art of these sacred subjects. Behind the high altar is the pontifical chair, supported by lions, with a Gothic gable, on which Gregory the Great was seated when he delivered his twenty-eighth Homily, a few sentences of which are engraved on the marble. Beyond the church of Sts. Nereus and Achilles, on the opposite side, where the ground rises thirty or forty feet above the level of the road, there is a rude inscription above the door of a vineyard, intimating that the Tomb of the Scipios is here. This is by far the most interesting of all the monuments on the Appian Way. It was the mausoleum of a long line of the most illustrious names in Roman history--patriots and heroes, whose virtues and honours were hereditary. Originally the sepulchre stood above ground, and the entrance to it was by a solid arch of peperino, facing a cross-road leading from the Appian to the Latin Way; but the soil in the course of ages accumulated over it, and buried it out of sight. It was accidentally discovered in 1780, in consequence of a peasant digging in the vineyard to make a cellar, and breaking through a part of the vaulted roof of the tomb. Then was brought suddenly to light the celebrated sarcophagus of plain peperino stone, which contained the remains of the Roman consul, Lucius Scipio Barbatus, after having been undisturbed for nearly twenty-two centuries. Several other sarcophagi belonging to members of the family were found at the same time, along with two busts, one of which is supposed to be that of the poet Ennius, the friend and companion of Scipio Africanus, whose last request on his deathbed was that he might be buried by his side. Pliny remarks that the Scipios had the singular custom of burying instead of burning their dead; and this is confirmed by the discovery of these sarcophagi. I found the mausoleum to consist of a series of chambers and approaches to them, excavated in the solid tufa rock, not unlike the labyrinthine recesses of the catacombs. The darkness was feebly dispelled by the light of wax tapers carried by the guide and myself; and the aspect of the narrow, low-browed passages and chambers was gloomy in the extreme. Here and there were Latin inscriptions attached to the different recesses where the dead had lain; but they were only copies, the originals having been removed to the Vatican, where the sarcophagus of Lucius Scipio Barbatus and the bust of the poet Ennius may now be seen. The very bones of the illustrious dead have been carried off, and after a series of adventures they are now deposited in a beautiful little monument in the grounds of a nobleman near Padua. The gold signet-ring of Scipio Africanus, with a victory in intaglio on a cornelian stone, found in the tomb of his son, who was buried here, is now in the possession of Lord Beverley. It must be remembered, however, that Scipio Africanus, the most illustrious of his family, and the noblest of all the Roman names, was not interred in this mausoleum. A strange mystery hung over the manner of his death and the place of his burial even in Livy's time. Some said that he died at Rome, and others at Liternum. A fragment of an inscription was found near the little lake at the latter place, beside which he resided during the dignified exile of his later years, which contained only the words--"... ta Patria ... ne ..." Antiquarians have filled out this sentence into the touching epigraph recorded by Livy, which Scipio himself wished to be put upon his tomb: "Ingrata Patria, ne ossa quidem, mea habes," "My ungrateful country, thou hast not even my bones." Empty as the tomb of the Scipios looks, no one can behold it without feelings of profound veneration. The history of the most heroic period of ancient Rome is linked with this tomb; and all the romance of the Punic Wars, of Hannibal and Hasdrubal, pass before the mind's eye, as one gazes upon the desecrated chambers where the son and relatives of the great conqueror had reposed in death. Within a short distance of the tomb of the Scipios are the most celebrated of all the Columbaria of Rome. Previous to the fifth century of Rome, the bodies of the dead were buried entire, and deposited in sarcophagi; but after that period cremation became the universal custom. The ashes and calcined bones were preserved in _ollæ_, or little jars like common garden flower-pots, made of the same kind of coarse red earthenware, with a lid attached. These jars were deposited in rows of little niches sunk in the brickwork all round the walls of the tomb, resembling the nests in a pigeon-house; hence the origin of the name. One tomb was thus capable of containing the remains of a large number of persons; no less than six thousand of the freedmen of Augustus being deposited in the Columbarium which bears their name. The entrance to these sepulchral chambers was from the top, descending by an internal stair; and the passages and walls were usually decorated with frescoes and arabesques, illustrating some mythical or historical subject. The names of the dead were carved on marble tablets fixed above the pigeon-holes containing the ashes. Columbaria being only used for dependents and slaves, were generally erected near the tombs of their masters; and hence all along the Appian Way we see numerous traces of them side by side with the gigantic monuments of the patrician families. The Columbaria near the tomb of the Scipios are three in number, and contain the cinerary urns of persons attached to the household of the emperors from the reign of Augustus up to the period of the Antonines, when the system of burying the bodies entire was again introduced. The last discovered Columbarium is the most interesting of the group. Being only thirty-three years exposed, the paintings on the walls and the vases are remarkably well preserved. This tomb contains the ashes of the dependents of Tiberius, the contemporary of our Lord. One pigeon-hole is filled with the calcined bones of the court buffoon, a poor deaf and dumb slave who had wonderful powers of mimicry, and used to amuse his morose master by imitating the gesticulations of the advocates pleading in the Forum. Another pigeon-hole contains the remains of the keeper of the library of Apollo in the imperial palace on the Palatine. A most pathetic lamentation in verse is made by one Julia Prima over the ashes of her husband; and an inscription, along with a portrait of the animal, records that beneath are the remains of a favourite dog that was the pet of the whole household--a little touch of nature that links the ages and the zones, and makes the whole world kin. The whole of this region, called Monte d'Oro, for what reason I know not, seems to have been a vast necropolis, in which not only Columbaria for their slaves and freedmen were built by the great patrician families, but also family vaults for the wealthier middle classes were constructed and sold by speculators, just as in our modern town cemeteries. Very near the modern gate of the city the road passes under the so-called Arch of Drusus. It consists of a single arch, whose keystone projects on each side about two feet and a half beyond the plane of the frontage; and is built of huge solid blocks of travertine, with cornices of white marble, and two composite columns of African marble on each side, much soiled and defaced, which are so inferior in style to the rest of the architecture that they are manifestly later additions. The whole monument is much worn and injured; but it is made exceedingly picturesque by a crown of verdure upon the thick mass of soil accumulated there by small increments blown up from the highway in the course of so many centuries. It was long supposed that Caracalla had barbarously taken advantage of the arch to carry across the highway at this point the aqueduct which supplied his baths with water. But the more recent authorities maintain that the arch itself, so far from being the monument of Drusus, was only one of the arches built by Caracalla in a more ornamental way than the rest, as was commonly done when an aqueduct crossed a public road. This theory does away at one fell stroke with the idea so long fondly cherished that St. Paul must have passed under this very arch on his way to Rome, and that his eye must have rested on these very stones upon which we gaze now. It is hard to give up the belief that the stern old arch, severe in its sturdiness and simplicity as the character of the apostle himself, did actually cast its haunted shadow over him on the memorable day when, a prisoner in chains in charge of a Roman soldier, he passed over this part of the Appian Way, and it signalised a far grander triumph than that for which it was originally erected. We should greatly prefer to retain the old idea that under that arch Christianity, as represented by St. Paul, passed to its conquest of the whole Roman world; and passed too in character, the religion of the cross, joy in sorrow, liberty in bonds, strength in weakness, proclaiming itself best from the midst of the sufferings which it overcame. Immediately beyond the Arch of Drusus is the Gate of St. Sebastian, the Porta Appia of the Aurelian wall, protected on either side by two semicircular towers, which from their great height and massiveness have a most imposing appearance. They are composed of the beautiful glowing brick of the ancient Roman structures, and rest upon a foundation of white marble blocks, evidently taken from the Temple of Mars, which once stood close by, and at which the armies entering Rome in triumph used to halt. The gateway was greatly injured in the sixth century during the Gothic War, but was repaired by Belisarius; or, as some say, by Narses. The most remarkable incident connected with it since that period was the triumphal entry into the city of Marco Antonio Colonna, after the victory of Lepanto over the Turks and African corsairs in 1571. This famous battle, one of the few great decisive battles of the world, belongs equally to civil and ecclesiastical history, having checked the spread of Mohammedanism in Eastern Europe, and thus altered the fortunes of the Church and the world. The famous Spanish poet Cervantes lost an arm in this battle. The ovation given to Colonna by the Romans in connection with it may be said to be the last of the long series of triumphal processions which entered the Eternal City; and in point of splendour and ceremony it vied with the grandest of them,--prisoners and their families, along with the spoil taken from the enemy, figuring in it as of old. A short distance outside the gate, the viaduct of the railway from Civita Vecchia spans the Appian Way, and brings the ancient "queen of roads" and the modern iron-way into strange contrast,--or rather, I should say, into fitting contact; for there is a resemblance between the great works of ancient and modern engineering skill in their mighty enterprise and boundless command of physical resources, which we do not find in the works of the intermediate ages. Beyond the viaduct the road descends into a valley, at the bottom of which runs the classic Almo. It is little better than a ditch, with artificial banks overgrown with weeds, great glossy-leaved arums, and milky-veined thistles, and with a little dirty water in it from the drainings of the surrounding vineyards. And yet this disenchanted brook figures largely in ancient mythical story. Ovid sang of it, and Cicero's letters mention it honourably. It was renowned for its medicinal properties, and diseased cattle were brought to its banks to be healed. The famous _simulacrum_, called the image of Cybele,--a black meteoric stone which fell from the sky at Phrygia, and was brought to Rome during the Second Punic War, according to the Sybilline instructions,--was washed every spring in the waters of the Almo by the priests of the goddess. So persistent was this pagan custom, even amid the altered circumstances of Christianity, that, until the commencement of the nineteenth century, an image of our Saviour was annually brought from the Church of Santa Martina in the Forum and washed in this stream. In the valley of the Almo the poet Terence possessed a little farm of twenty acres, given to him by his friend Scipio Æmilianus. After crossing the Almo, two huge shapeless masses of ruins may be seen above the vineyard walls: that on the left is said to be the tomb of Geta, the son of the Emperor Severus, who was put to death in his mother's arms by order of his unnatural brother. Geta's children and friends, to the number, it is said, of twenty thousand persons, were also put to death on the false accusation of conspiracy; among whom was the celebrated jurist Papinian, who, when required to compose a defence of the murder--as Seneca was asked by Nero to apologise for his crime--nobly replied that "it was easier to commit than to justify fratricide." But so capricious was Caracalla that he soon afterwards executed the accomplices of his unnatural deed, and caused his murdered brother to be placed among the gods, and divine honours to be paid to him. It was in this more humane mood that the tomb whose ruins we see on the Appian Way was ordered to be built. The tomb on the right-hand side of the road is a most incongruous structure as it appears at present, having a circular medieval tower on the top of it, and a common osteria or wine-shop in front; but the old niches in which statues or busts used to stand still remain. It was long supposed to be the mausoleum of the Scipios; but it is now ascertained to be the sepulchre of Priscilla, the wife of Abascantius, the favourite freedman of Domitian, celebrated for his conjugal affection by the poet Statius. Covered with ivy and mural plants, the monument has a very picturesque appearance. The road beyond this rises from the valley of the Almo, and passes over a kind of plateau. It is hemmed in on either side by high ugly walls, shaggy with a profusion of plants which affect such situations. The wild mignonette hangs out its pale yellow spikes of blossoms, but without the fragrance for which its garden sister is so remarkable; and the common pellitory, a near ally of the nettle, which haunts all old ruins, clings in great masses to the crevices, its leaves and ignoble blossoms white with the dust of the road. Here and there a tall straggling plant of purple lithospermum has found a footing, and flourishes aloft its dark violet tiara of blossoms; while bright tufts of wall-flower send up their tongues of flame from an old tomb peering above the wall, as if from a funeral pyre. The St. Mary thistle grows at the foot of the walls in knots of large, spreading, crinkled leaves, beautifully scalloped at the edges; the glazed surface reticulated with lacteal veins, retaining the milk that, according to the legend, flowed from the Virgin's breast, and, forming the Milky Way in mid-heaven, fell down to earth upon this wayside thistle. Huge columns of cactuses and monster aloes may be seen rising above the top of the walls, like relics of a geologic flora contemporaneous with the age of the extinct volcanoes around. But the most curious of all the plants that adorn the walls is a kind of ivy which, instead of the usual dark-greenish or black berries, bears yellow ones. This species is rare, but here it occurs in profusion, and is as beautiful in foliage as it is singular in fruit. The walls themselves, apart from their floral adorning, are very remarkable, and deserving of the most careful and leisurely study. They are built up evidently of the remains of tombs; and numerous fragments of marble sarcophagi, pillars, inscriptions, and rich sculpture are imbedded in them, suggestive of a whole volume of antiquarian lore, so that he who runs may read. On the right of the road, in a vineyard, are several Columbaria belonging to the family of Cæcilius, an obscure Latin poet, who was a predecessor of Terence, and died one hundred and sixty-eight years before Christ; and on the left are the Columbaria of the freedmen of Augustus and Livia, divided into three chambers. These last when discovered excited the utmost interest among antiquarians; but they are now stripped of all their contents and characteristic decorations, and the inscriptions, about three hundred in number, are preserved in the museums of the Capitol and Vatican. On the same side of the road, in a vineyard, a Columbarium was discovered in 1825 belonging to the Volusian family, who flourished in the reign of Nero; one of whose members, Lucius Volusius, who lived to the age of ninety-three, was extolled on account of his exemplary life by Tacitus. On the same plateau is the entrance to the celebrated Catacombs of St. Calixtus. It is on the right-hand side of the road, about a mile and a quarter from the present gate, and near where stood the second milestone on the ancient Appian Way. A marble tablet over the door of a vineyard shaded with cypresses points it out to the visitor. The rock out of which this and all the Roman Catacombs were hewn seems as if created specially for the purpose. Recent geological observations have traced in the Campagna volcanic matter produced at different periods, when the entire area of Rome and its vicinity was the seat of active plutonic agency. This material is of varying degrees of hardness. The lowest and oldest is so firm and compact that it still furnishes, as it used to do, materials for building; the foundations of the city, the wall of Romulus, and the massive blocks on which the Capitol rests, being formed of this substance. Over this a later stratum was deposited called _tufa granolare_, consisting of a similar mechanical conglomerate of scoriæ, ashes, and other volcanic products, but more porous and friable in texture. It is in this last formation, which is so soft that it can be easily hollowed out, and yet so solid that it does not crumble, that the Catacombs are invariably found. There is something that appeals strongly to the imagination in the fact that the early Christians should have formed the homes of their dead and the haunts of their faith in the deposit of the terrible volcano and the stormy sea! The outbursts of the Alban volcanoes were correlated in God's scheme of providence with the outbursts of human fury long ages afterwards; and the one was prepared as a means of defence from the other, by Him who maketh His ministers a flaming fire. The Catacombs were specially excavated for Christian burial,--tombs beneath the tombs of the Appian Way. Unlike the pagans, who burned the bodies of their dead, and deposited, as we have seen, the ashes in cinerary urns which took up but little space, the Christians buried the bodies of their departed friends in rock-hewn sepulchres. They must have derived this custom from the Jewish mode of interment; and they would wish to follow in this the example of their Lord, who was laid in an excavated tomb. Besides, it was abhorrent to their feelings to burn their dead. Their religion had taught them to value the body, which is an integral part of human nature, and has its own share in the redemption of man. Their mode of sepulture therefore required larger space; and as the Christians grew and multiplied, and more burials took place, they extended the subterranean passages and galleries in every direction. It is computed that upwards of six millions of the bodies of the early Christians were deposited in the Catacombs. The name which these rock-hewn sepulchres first received was _cemeteries_, places of sleep; for the Christians looked upon their dead as only asleep, to be awakened by the trump of the archangel at the resurrection. And being used as burial-places, the Catacombs became the inalienable property of the Christians; for, according to Roman law, land which had once been used for interment became _religiosus_, and could not be transferred for any other purpose. It was long supposed that the Catacombs were subsequently made use of as places of abode, when persecution drove the Christians to seek the loneliest spots; but this idea has been dispelled by a more careful examination of them. There can be no doubt, however, that they were employed as places of religious meeting. Numerous inscriptions found in them touchingly record that no Christian worship could be performed in the imperial city without the risk of discovery and death; and therefore the members of the Christian flock were obliged to meet for worship in these dreary vaults. The passages in some places were expanded into large chambers, and there divine service was performed; not only for the benefit of those who came to bury their dead, but also for those who resided in the city, and were Christians in secret. Passing from the roughly-paved road into the vineyard where the Catacombs of St. Calixtus are situated, the first objects that caught my eye were the dark, gaunt ruins of a tomb and a chapel of the third century, now wreathed and garlanded with luxuriant ivy. Beside these ruins I descended into the Catacombs by an ancient staircase, at the foot of which my guide provided me with a long twisted wax taper, calculated to last out my visit. A short distance from the entrance, I came to a vestibule surrounded with loculi or rock-hewn graves. The walls were plastered, and covered with rude inscriptions, scratched with a pointed iron instrument. These were done by pilgrims and devotees in later ages, who had come here--many of them from distant lands--to pay their respects at the graves of the saints and martyrs. Two of these pilgrims, from the diocese of Salzburg, visited these Catacombs in the eighth century, and left behind an account of their visit, which has afforded a valuable clue to Cavaliere de Rossi in his identification of the chambers and graves. Passing from this open space, I soon reached a sepulchral chapel, lined with the graves of the earliest popes--many of them martyrs--who were buried here for about a century, from the year 200 to the year 296 of our era. The gravestones of four of them have been found, with inscriptions in Greek. A beautiful marble tablet by Pope Damasus, who died in 384, stands where the altar of the chapel originally stood, and records the praises of the martyrs whose remains lay in the neighbouring chambers; ending with a wish that he himself might be buried beside them, only he feared that he was unworthy of the honour. This good Pope, like an older "Old Mortality," made it a labour of love, to which he consecrated his life, to rediscover and adorn the tombs which had been hidden under an accumulation of earth and rubbish during the fearful persecution of Diocletian. From this chapel of the Popes I came through a narrow passage to a wider crypt, where the body of St. Cæcilia was laid after her martyrdom in her own house in Rome, in the year 224. There is a rude painting of this saint on the wall, clothed with rich raiment, and adorned with the jewels befitting a Roman lady of high station. And at the back of a niche, where a lamp used to burn before the shrine of the saint, is painted a large head of our Saviour, with rays of glory around it shaped like a Greek cross. This is said to be the oldest representation of our Lord in existence, and from it all our conventional portraits have been taken. Doubts have, however, been thrown upon this by others, who assert that all the paintings in this chamber are not older than the seventh century. After this, I wandered on after my guide through innumerable narrow galleries hewn out of the soft reddish-brown rock, and opening in all directions; all lined with horizontal cavities for corpses, tier above tier, in which once were crowded together old and young,--soldiers, martyrs, rich and poor mingling their dust together, as in life they had shared all things in common. Here social distinctions were abolished; side by side with the obscure and unknown slave were some of the most illustrious names of ancient Rome. These shelves are now empty, for nearly all the bones and relics of the dead have been removed to different churches throughout Europe. Even the inscriptions that were placed above each grave--on marble tablets--have been taken away, and now line the walls of the museums of St. John Lateran and the Vatican. A few, however, remain in their place; and I know nothing more affecting than the study of these. For the most part, they are very short, containing only the name and date; sometimes only an initial letter or a rudely-drawn cross, indicating that it was a time of sore trial, when such hurried obsequies were all that the imminent danger allowed. Sometimes I came upon a larger record--such as, "Thou sleepest sweetly in God;" "In the sleep of peace." But the most touching of all the inscriptions were those which were scratched rudely in a few places on the walls by visitors to the tombs of their fellow-Christians. The survivors came often to weep over the relics of the dead. Here a husband records the virtues of a beloved wife; there, a son invokes the precious memory of a pious father or mother; and all of them express their calm resignation and unshaken hope. One inscription especially struck me. It was very rude, and almost obliterated, for seventeen hundred years had passed over it. It was a husband's lamentation over a dead wife: "O Sophronia! dear Sophronia! thou _mayest_ live?--Thou _shalt_ live!" How eloquently did that rough, faded scrawl, over a long-forgotten grave, speak of the human fear that perhaps his wife was lost to him for ever--"Thou mayest live?" and of the noble faith that triumphed over it--"Thou _shalt_ live!" Nothing affects and astonishes one more in these inscriptions than this calm, assured confidence that death was but a profound sleep,--a rest unspeakably grateful after such a weary life of awful suffering,--and that they should see their beloved ones again. It was a literal realisation of the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews: "And others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection." They surrendered all that life holds dear, and life itself, from loyalty to the God of truth, knowing whom they had believed, and persuaded that He would keep that which they had committed to Him against the great day. They made their family ties so loyal and sacred, that their human love, in the higher love of Christ Jesus, endured for evermore. In many of the crypts, the emblems of martyrdom are roughly denoted by a sword, an axe, or by faggots and fire. What sorrowful scenes must have taken place in these dreary passages, as the mangled forms of parent, child, brother, or friend were stealthily brought in from the bloody games in the Flavian amphitheatre, or from the cruel tortures of the prison-house, to their last dark, narrow home along the very path I was now treading! A number of rude paintings ornament the walls of the chapels, which repeat over and over again the simple symbols of the Christian faith, and the touching stories of the Bible. The ark of Noah; Daniel in the lions' den; the miracle of Cana; the raising of Lazarus--are among the most common of these frescoes. And they are deeply interesting, as showing that down in these dim and dreary vaults, which presented such a remarkable contrast to the lovely violet sky and the grand architectural magnificence above ground, among men who cared little for the things of time and sense, because life itself had not a moment's security, were nevertheless nourished thoughts of ideal beauty and unearthly grandeur, which afterwards yielded such glorious fruit in the Christian art of Italy. The frescoes of the Catacombs are the feeble beginnings of an artistic inspiration which culminated in the "Last Supper" of Leonardo da Vinci, and the "Transfiguration" of Raphael. The anchor of hope, the olive-branch of peace, and the palm-branch as the sign of victory and martyrdom, were seen everywhere. The fish, whose Greek name is formed by the initial letters of the titles of our Lord, was carved on the marble tablets and sarcophagi as the anagram of the Saviour; and an Orante, or female figure praying, was represented as the symbol of the Church. The most common of all the figures, however, was that of the Good Shepherd carrying the lost sheep on His shoulders, or leaning on His staff while the sheep were feeding around Him. And a most touching figure it is, when we think of the circumstances of those who carved or painted it in these gloomy aisles. It was into no green pastures, and beside no still waters, that the Good Shepherd led His flock in those awful days, but into waste and howling wildernesses, where their feet were bruised by the hard stones, and their flesh torn by the sharp thorns, and all the storms of the world beat fiercely upon them. But still He was their Good Shepherd, and in the wilderness He spread a table for them, and in the valley of the shadow of death they feared no evil, for He was with them, and His rod and staff comforted them. I wish I could express adequately the emotions which filled my breast while wandering through these Catacombs. Save for the feeble glimmer of my own and the guide's lamp, I was in total darkness,--a darkness that might be felt. Not a sound broke the awful silence except the echo of our footsteps in the hollow passages. Not a trace or a recollection of life recalled me from the thought of absolute impenetrable death around. Each passage seemed so like the other, and the ramifications were so endless and bewildering, that but for the presence of my guide I should inevitably have lost myself. Horrible stories of persons who had gone astray in the inextricable maze, and wandering about in the empty gloom till they perished of exhaustion and starvation, recurred to my mind; and my imagination, intensified by the silence and darkness, vividly realised their sufferings. There is indeed no chill or damp in these labyrinths, and the atmosphere is mild and pleasant, but still the gloom was most oppressive. And yet a deep gratitude fills the soul; for the light there shone in darkness, and it was this very darkness that preserved our religion, when it ran the risk of being extinguished. These fearful subterranean passages were the furrows in which were planted the first germs of the Christian religion,--in which they were long guarded in persecution as the seed-corn under the frost-bound earth in winter, to spring up afterwards when summer smiled upon the world, and yield a glorious harvest to all nations. On the opposite side of the Appian Way, in a vineyard, is the Catacomb of Pretextatus, which is almost as extensive as that of St. Calixtus, and hardly less interesting. It is especially remarkable for a large square crypt, inlaid with brick and plaster, and covered with very fine frescoes and arabesques of birds and foliage. The bodies of St. Januarius, Agapetus, and Felicissimus, who suffered martyrdom in the year 162, were interred in this Catacomb; and two churches, at a subsequent period, were erected over it in honour of the three saints who suffered martyrdom with St. Cæcilia. Recent explorations have brought to light, in a separate part of this Catacomb, curious paintings and inscriptions which have been referred to the mysteries of Mithras--an Oriental worship of the Sun--introduced into Rome about a century before Christ, and which was celebrated in caves. When Christianity became popular, and was threatening the overthrow of polytheism, an attempt was made to counteract its influence in the reign of Alexander Severus, who himself came from the East, by organising this worship. The two systems of religion became, therefore, mixed up together for a while; and hence it is not uncommon to find in pagan sepulchres symbols and arrangements of a Christian character, and in Christian Catacombs Mithraic features. The funeral monuments of those who were converted to Christianity in the earliest ages of the Church indicated the transition between the two religions. We find upon their tombs pagan symbols, which ceased to be identified with pagan worship, and became mere conventional ornaments. We have other evidences along the Appian Way of the eclectic revival of paganism at this time. When alluding to the classic stream of the Almo, I spoke of the associations of the worship of Cybele. This naturalistic cult was introduced from Phrygia, and its orgiastic rites and nameless infamies had a horrible fascination for an age of decaying faith. And not far from the mounds of the Horatii and Curiatii there is a monument, probably of the age of Trajan, with a bas-relief portrait, dedicated to the memory of one _Usia Prima_, a priestess of Isis; this worship, with its painful initiations and splendid ritual, being imported from Egypt in the second century. But although this Neo-paganism appealed more to the passions of men than the sunny humanistic worship of older times, and for a time inspired the most frenzied enthusiasm, it failed utterly to resuscitate the decaying corpse of the old religion. Great Pan was hopelessly dead! At a short distance on the same side of the road is the Catacomb of Sts. Nereus and Achilles, which contained the remains of these saints, and are interesting to us as the most ancient Christian cemetery in the world. The masonry of the vestibule is in the best style of Roman brickwork; and the frescoes on its walls, representing Christ and His apostles, the Good Shepherd, Orpheus, Elijah, etc., indicate a period of high artistic taste. This Catacomb contains the oldest representation extant of the Virgin and Child receiving the homage of the Wise men from the East, supposed to date from the end of the second century, and was often made use of in support of Roman Mariolatry. Several days might be profitably spent by the antiquarian in investigating the contents of the different tiers of galleries; while the geologist would find matter for interesting speculation in the partial intrusion of the older lithoid tufa here and there into the softer and more recent volcanic deposits in which the passages are excavated, and in which numerous decomposing crystals of leucite may be observed. On the same side of the way, farther on, is the Jewish Catacomb, the tombs of which bear Jewish symbols, especially the seven-branched golden candlestick, and are inscribed, not with the secular names and occupations of the occupants, but with their sacred names, as office-bearers of the synagogue, rulers, scribes, etc. The inscriptions are not in Hebrew, but in Greek letters. It is supposed that in this Catacomb were interred the bodies of the Jews who were banished to the valley of Egeria by Domitian. About a quarter of a mile beyond the Catacombs you come to a descent, where there is a wide open space with a pillar in the centre, and behind it the natural rock of a peculiarly glowing red colour, overgrown with masses of ivy, wall-flower, and hawthorn just coming into blossom. Below the road, on the right, is a kind of piazza, shaded by a grove of funereal cypresses; and here is the church of St. Sebastian, one of the seven great basilicas which pilgrims visited to obtain the remission of their sins. It was founded by Constantine, on the site of the house and garden of the pious widow Lucina, who buried there the body of St. Sebastian after his martyrdom. This saint was a Gaulish soldier in the Roman army, who, professing Christianity, was put to death by order of Diocletian. The body of the saint is said to repose under one of the altars, marked by a marble statue of him lying dead, pierced with silver arrows, designed by Bernini. The present edifice was entirely rebuilt by Cardinal Scipio Borghese; and nothing remains of the ancient basilica save the six granite columns of the portico, which were in all likelihood taken from some old pagan temple. It was from the nave of this church that the only Catacomb which used to be visited by pilgrims was entered; all the other Catacombs which have since been opened being at that time blocked up and unknown. Indeed it was to the subterranean galleries under this church that the name of Catacomb was originally applied. In the valley beneath St. Sebastian, on the left, is a large enclosure, covered with the greenest turf, and reminding one more, by its softness and compactness, of an English park than anything I had seen about Rome. Here are the magnificent ruins of what was long known as the Circus of Caracalla; but later investigations have proved that the circus was erected in honour of Romulus, the son of the Emperor Maxentius, in the year 311. It is the best preserved of all the ancient Roman circuses, and affords an excellent clue to the arrangements of such places for chariot races and the accommodation of the spectators. The external walls run on unbroken for about a quarter of a mile. In many places the vaults supporting the seats still remain. The spina in the centre marking the course of the races, on either end of which stood the two Egyptian obelisks which now adorn the Piazza Navona and the Piazza del Popolo, though grass-grown, can be easily defined; and the towers flanking the extremities, where the judges sat, and the triumphal gate through which the victors passed, are almost entire. It would not be difficult, with such aids to the imagination, to conjure up the splendid games that used to take place within that vast enclosure; the chariots of green, blue, white, and red driving furiously seven times round the course, the emperor and all his nobles sitting in the places of honour, looking on with enthusiasm, and the victor coming in at the goal, and the shouts and exclamations of the excited multitude. On the elevated ground behind the circus is a fringe of olive-trees, with a line of feathery elms beyond; and rising over all, the purple background of the Sabine and Alban hills. It is a lonely enough spot now; and the gentle hand of spring clothes the naked walls with a perfect garden of wild flowers, and softens with the greenest and tenderest turf the spots trodden by the feet of so many thousands. In the immediate vicinity of the circus are extensive ruins, visible and prominent objects from the road, consisting of large fragments of walls and apses, dispersed among the vineyards and enclosures. By far the best-known monument on the Appian Way is the Tomb of Cæcilia Metella. It is a conspicuous landmark in the wide waste, and catches the eye at a long distance from many points of view. It is as familiar a feature in paintings of the Campagna almost as the Claudian Aqueduct. This celebrity it owes to its immense size, its wonderful state of preservation, and above all to the genius of Lord Byron, who has made it the theme of some of the most elegant and touching stanzas in _Childe Harold_. Nothing can be finer than the appearance of this circular tower in the afternoon, when the red level light of sunset, striking full upon it, brings out the rich warm glow of its yellow travertine stones in striking relief against the monotonous green of the Campagna. It is built on a portion of rising ground caused by a current of lava which descended from the Alban volcano during some prehistoric eruption, and stopped short here, forming the quarries on the left side of the road which supply most of the paving-stone of modern Rome. The Appian Way was here lowered several feet below the original level, in order to diminish the acclivity; and the mausoleum was consequently raised upon a substructure of unequal height corresponding with the inclination of the plane of ascent. It was originally cased with marble slabs, but these were stripped off during the middle ages for making lime; and Pope Clement XII. completed the devastation by removing large blocks which formed the basement, in order to construct the picturesque fountain of Trevi. A large portion of the Doric marble frieze, however, still remains, on which are sculptured bas-reliefs of rams' heads, festooned with garlands of flowers. Usually the bas-reliefs are supposed to represent bulls' heads; and the name of Capo de Bove (the "head of the ox"), by which the monument has long been known to the common people, is said to be derived from these ornaments. But a careful examination will convince any one that they are in reality rams' heads; and the vulgar name of the tomb was obviously borrowed from the armorial bearings of the Gaetani family, consisting of an ox's head, affixed prominently upon it when it served them as a fortress in the thirteenth century. Pope Boniface VIII., a member of this family, added the curious battlements at the top, which seem so slight and airy in comparison with the severe solidity of the rest of the structure, and are but a poor substitute for the massive conical roof which originally covered the tomb. Nature has done her utmost for nigh two thousand years to bring back this monument to her own bosom, but she has been foiled in all her attempts,--the travertine blocks of its exterior, though fitted to each other without cement, being as smooth and even in their courses of masonry as when first constructed, and almost as free from weather-stains as if they had newly been taken from the quarry. Only on the broad summit, where medieval Vandals broke down the noble pile and desecrated it by their own inferior workmanship, has nature been able to effect a lodgment; and in the breaches of this fortress, which is but a thing of yesterday as compared with the monument, and yet is far more ruinous, she has planted bushes, trees, and thick festoons of ivy, as if laying her quiet finger upon the angry passions of man, and obliterating the memory of his evil deeds by her own fair and smiling growth. The sepulchral vault in the interior was not opened till the time of Paul III., about 1540, when a beautiful marble sarcophagus, adorned with bas-reliefs of the chase, was found in it, which is supposed to be that which stands at the present day in the court of the Palazzo Farnese. This is likely to be true, for it is well known that this Pope, who was a member of the Farnese family, unscrupulously despoiled ancient Rome of many of its finest works of art in order to build and adorn his new palace. A golden urn containing ashes is said to have been discovered at the same time; but if so, it has long since disappeared. On a marble panel below the frieze an inscription in bold letters informs us that this is the tomb of Cæcilia Metella, daughter of Quintus Metellus,--who obtained the sobriquet of _Creticus_ for his conquest of Crete,--and wife of Crassus. She belonged to one of the most haughty aristocratic families of ancient Rome, whose members at successive intervals occupied the highest positions in the state, and several of whom were decreed triumphs by the senate on account of their success in war. Her husband was surnamed _Dives_ on account of his enormous wealth. He is said to have possessed a fortune equal to a million and a half pounds sterling; and to have given an entertainment to the whole Roman people in a time of scarcity, besides distributing to each family a quantity of corn sufficient to last three months. Along with Julius Cæsar and Pompey, he formed the famous first Triumvirate. While the richest, he seems, notwithstanding the above-mentioned act of munificence, to have been one of the meanest of the Romans. He had no steady political principle; he was actuated by bitter jealousy towards his colleagues and rivals; and that unsuccessful expedition which he undertook against the Parthians, in flagrant violation of a treaty made with them by Sulla and renewed by Pompey, and which has stamped his memory with incapacity and shame, was prompted by an insatiable greed for the riches of the East. On the field he occupied himself entirely in amassing fresh treasures, while his troops were neglected. The manner of his death, after the defeat and loss of the greater part of his army, was characteristic of his ruling passion. Tempted to seek an interview with the Parthian general by the offer of the present of a horse with splendid trappings, he was cut down when in the act of mounting into the saddle. His body was contemptuously buried in some obscure spot by the enemy, and his hands and head were sent to the king, who received the ghastly trophies while seated at the nuptial feast of his daughter, and ordered in savage irony molten gold to be poured down the severed throat, exclaiming, "Sate thyself now with the metal of which in life thou wert so fond." There is one incident connected with this most disastrous campaign upon which the imagination loves to dwell. Publius, the younger son of Crassus, born of the woman who lay in this tomb before us, after earning great distinction in Gaul as Cæsar's legate, accompanied his father to the East, and was much beloved on account of his noble qualities and his feats of bravery against the enemy. While endeavouring to repulse the last fierce charge of the Parthians, he was wounded severely by an arrow, and finding himself unable to extricate his troops, rather than desert them he ordered his sword-bearer to slay him. When the news of his son's fall reached the aged father, the old Roman spirit blazed up for a moment in him, and he exhorted his soldiers "not to be disheartened by a loss that concerned himself only." In this last triumph of a nobler nature he disappears from our view; and he who built this magnificent monument to the mother of his gallant son had himself no monument. More fortunate than her husband, whose evil manners live in brass,--less fortunate than her son, whose virtues have been handed down for the admiration of posterity,--Cæcilia Metella has left no record of her existence beyond her name. All else has been swallowed up by the oblivion of ages. Whether her husband raised this colossal trophy of the dust to commemorate his own pride of wealth, or his devoted love for her, we know not. He achieved his object; but he has given to his wife only the mockery of immortality. The substance has gone beyond recall, and but the shadow, the mere empty name, remains. Built up against this monument are the remains of the castle in which the Gaetani family long maintained their feudal warfare, with fragments of marble sculpture taken from the tomb incorporated into the plain brick walls. And on the other side of the road, in a beautiful meadow, covered with soft green grass, are the ruins of a roofless Gothic chapel, showing little more than a few bare walls and gables built of dark lava stones, with traces of pointed windows in them, and the spring of the groined arches of the roof. Like the fortress, the chapel has few or no architectural features of interest. It is very unlike any other church in Italy, and reminds one of the country churches of England. What led the Gaetanis to adopt this foreign style of ecclesiastical architecture is a circumstance unexplained. Altogether it is a most incongruous group of objects that are here clustered together--a tomb, a fortress, and a church--and affords a curious illustration of the bizarre condition of society at the time. An extraordinary echo repeats here every sound entrusted to it with the utmost distinctness. It doubtless multiplied the wailings of the mourners who brought to this spot two thousand years ago the ashes of the dead; it sent back the rude sounds of warfare which disturbed the peace of the tomb in the middle ages; and now it haunts the spot like the voice of the past, "informing the solitude," and giving a response to each new-comer according to his mood. Beyond the tomb of Cæcilia Metella the Appian Way becomes more interesting and beautiful. The high walls which previously shut in the road on either side now disappear, and nothing separates it from the Campagna but a low dyke of loose stones. The traveller obtains an uninterrupted view of the immense melancholy plain, which stretches away to the horizon with hardly a single tree to relieve the desolation. Here and there on the waste surface are fragments of ruins which speak to the heart, by their very muteness, more suggestively than if their historical associations were fully known. The mystic light from a sky which over this place seems ever to brood with a sad smile more touching than tears, falls upon the endless arches of the Claudian Aqueduct that remind one, as Ruskin has finely said, of a funeral procession departing from a nation's grave. The afternoon sun paints them with ruby splendours, and gleams vividly upon the picturesque vegetation which a thousand springs have sown upon their crumbling sides. They lead the eye on to the Alban Hills, which form on the horizon a fitting frame to the great picture, tender-toned, with delicate pearly and purple shadows clothing every cliff and hollow, like "harmonies of music turned to shape." I shall never forget my first walk over this enchanted ground. The day was warm and bright, though a little breeze, like the murmur of a child's sleep, occasionally stirred the languid calm. April had just come in; but in this Southern clime spring, having no storms or frosts to fear, lingers in a strange way and unfolds, with slow, patient tenderness, her beauties; not like our Northern spring, which rushes to verdure and bloom as soon as the winter snows have disappeared. And hence, though the few trees along the road had only put forth their first leaves, tender and flaccid as butterfly's wings, the grass was ready to be cut down and was thickly starred with wild flowers. Horace of old said that one could not travel rapidly along the Appian Way, on account of the number and variety of its objects of interest; and the same remark holds good at the present day. It would take months to go over in detail all its wonderful relics of the past. At every step you are arrested by something that opens up a fascinating vista into the old family life of the imperial city. At every step you "set your foot upon some reverend history." From morning to sunset I lingered on this haunted path, and tried to enter into sympathy with old-world sorrows that have left behind no chronicles save these silent stones. It is indeed a path sacred to meditation! One has there an overpowering sense of waste--a depressing feeling of vanity. On every side are innumerable tokens of a vast expenditure of human toil, and love, and sorrow; and it seems as if it had been all thrown away. For two miles and a half from the tomb of Cæcilia Metella I counted fifty-three tombs on the right and forty-eight on the left. The margin of the road on either side is strewn with fragments of hewn marble, travertine, and peperino. Broken tablets, retaining a few letters of the epitaphs of the dead; mutilated statues and alto-relievos; drums and capitals of pillars; a hand or a foot, or a fold of marble drapery,--every form and variety of sculpture, the mere crumbs that had fallen from a profuse feast of artistic beauty, which nobody considers it worth while to pick up, lie mouldering among the grass. At frequent intervals, facing the road, you see with mournful interest the exposed interiors of tombs, showing that beautiful and curious _opus reticulatum_, or reticulated arrangement of bricks or tufa blocks, which is so characteristic of the imperial period, and rows upon rows of neat pigeon-holes in the brickwork, which contained the cinerary urns, all robbed of their treasures, their tear-bottles, and even their bones. Ruthless popes and princes have done their best during all the intervening ages to destroy the monuments by taking away for their own uses the marble and hewn stone which encased them, leaving behind only the inner core of brick and small stones imbedded in mortar which was never meant to be seen. Pitying hands have lately endeavoured to atone for this desecration by lifting here and there out of the rubbish heap on which they were thrown some affecting group of family portraits, some choice specimens of delicate architecture, some mutilated panel on which the stern hard features of a Roman senator look out upon you, and placing them in a prominent position to attract attention. But though they have endeavoured to build up the fragments of the tombs into some semblance of their former appearance, the resuscitation is even more melancholy than was the former ruin. Their efforts at restoration are only the very graves of graves. In some places a side path leading off the main road to a tomb has been uncovered, paved with the original lava-blocks as fresh as when the last mourner retired from it, casting "a lingering look behind;" but it leads now only to a shapeless heap of brick, or to the empty site of a monument that has been razed to the very foundations. One piece of marble sculpture especially arrests the eye, and awakens a chord of feeling in the most callous heart. It represents one of those _Imagines Clipeatæ_ which the ancient Romans were so fond of sculpturing in their temples or upon their tombs; a clam shell or shield with the bust of a man and a woman carved in relief within it, the hand of the one fondly embracing the neck of the other. Below is a long Latin inscription, telling that this is the tomb of a brother and sister who were devotedly attached to each other. Who this soror and frater were, there is no record to tell. All subsidiary details of their lives have been allowed to pass away with the other decorations of the tomb, leaving behind this beautiful expression of household affection in full and lasting relief. I felt drawn more closely to the distant ages by this little carving than by anything else. The huge monuments around weighed down my spirit to the earth. The very effort to secure immortality by the massiveness of these tombs defeated its own object. They spoke only of dust to dust and ashes to ashes; but that little glimpse into the simple love of simple hearts in the far-off past lifted me above all the decays of the sepulchre. It assured me that our deepest heart-affections are the helpers of our highest hopes, and the instinctive guarantees of a life to come. Love creates its own immortality; for "love is love for evermore." Along this avenue of death nothing can be more striking than the profusion of life. It seems as if all the vitality of the many buried generations had there passed into the fuller life of nature. You can trace the street of tombs into the far distance, not only by the ruins that line it on both sides, but also by its borders of grass of a darker green and greater luxuriance than the pale, short, sickly verdure of the Campagna; just as you can trace the course of a moorland stream along the heather by the brighter vegetation which its own waters have created. Myriads of flowers gleam in their own atmosphere of living light, like jewels among the rich herbage, so that the feet can hardly be set down without crushing scores of them: the _Orchis rubra_ with its splendid spike of crimson blossoms, the bee and spider orchises in great variety, whose flowers mimic the insects after whom they are named, sweet-scented alyssum, golden buttercups and hawkweeds, Roman daisies, larger and taller than the English ones, with the bold wide-eyed gaze you see in the Roman peasant-girls, scarlet poppies glowing in a sunshine of their own, like flames in the heart of a furnace, vetches bright azure and pale yellow, dark blue hyacinths, pink geraniums, and "moonlit spires of asphodel," suggestive of the flowery fields of the immortals. My footsteps along the dusty road continually disturbed serpents that wriggled away in long ripples of motion among the tall spears of the grass; while green and golden lizards, sunning themselves on the hot stones, disappeared into their holes with a quick rustling sound at my approach. The air was musical with a perfect chorus of larks, whose jubilant song soared above all sorrow and death to heaven's own gate; and now and then a tawny hawk sailed swiftly across the horizon. Huge plants of gray mullein towered here and there above the sward, whose flannel-like leaves afforded a snug shelter to great quantities of wasps just recovering from their winter torpor. On the very tombs themselves there was a lavish adornment of vegetable life: snow-white drifts of hawthorn and honeysuckle wreaths waved on the summits of those on which a sufficient depth of soil had lodged; the wild dog-rose spread its thorny bushes and passionate-coloured crimson blooms as a fence around others; and even on the barest of them nothing could exceed the wealth of orange lichens that redeemed their poverty and gilded their nakedness with frescoes of fadeless beauty. On some of the rugged masses of masonry grew large hoary tufts of the strange roccella or orchil-weed, which yields the famous purple dye--with which, in all likelihood, the robes of the Cæsars were coloured--and which gave wealth, rank, and name to one princely Italian family, the Rucellai. Over the desolate tombs of those who wore the imperial purple, this humble lichen, that yielded the splendid hue, spread its gray hoar-frost of vegetation. I have already spoken of the solitude of the Campagna; but this part of the Appian Way, leading through it, is exceptionally lonely. It might as well have led over an American prairie or Asiatic steppe on which the foot of man had never intruded. You see along the white reaches of the road at a little distance what looks like a cluster of houses overshadowed by some tall umbrella pine, with all the signs of human life apparently about them; but, as you come near, the sight resolves itself into a mere mass of ruins. The mirage of life turns out to be a tomb--nay, the ruin of a tomb! A carriage full of visitors may, perhaps, be seen at long intervals, their spirits sobered by the melancholy that broods over the scene; or a lumbering cart, laden with wine-casks from Ariccia or Albano, drawn by the soft-eyed mouse-coloured oxen of the Campagna, startles the echoes, and betrays its course by the clouds of dust which it raises. There are no sights or sounds of rural toil in the fields on either side of the way. Only a solitary shepherd, with his picturesque cloak, accompanied by two or three vicious-looking dogs, meets you; or, perhaps, you come unexpectedly upon an artist seated on a tomb and busy sketching the landscape. For hours you may have the scene all to yourself. Even Rome, from this distance, looks like a city of dreams! Its walls and domes have disappeared behind the misty green veil of the horizon; and only the colossal statues of the apostles on the top of the church of S. John Lateran stand out in a halo of golden light, and seem to stretch forth their hands to welcome the approaching pilgrim. It is well known to historians that the villa of Seneca, in which he put himself to death by command of Nero, stood near the fourth milestone on the Appian Way. The circumstances of his death are exceedingly sad. Wishing to get rid of his former tutor, who had become obnoxious to him, the bloodthirsty emperor first attempted to poison him; and when this failed, he accused him, along with his nephew the poet Lucan and several others, of being concerned in a conspiracy against his life. This accusation was false; but it served the purpose of bringing Seneca within reach of his vengeance, under a colour of justice. A tribune with a cohort of soldiers was sent to intimate his fate to the philosopher; allowing him to execute the sentence of death upon himself by whatever means he preferred. Seneca was at supper with his wife Paulina and two friends when the fatal message came. Without any sign of alarm he rose and opened the veins of his arms and legs, having bade farewell to his friends and embraced his wife; and while the blood, impoverished by old age, ebbed slowly from him, he continued to comfort his friends and exhort them to a life of integrity. The last words of one so justly renowned were taken down, and in the time of Tacitus the record was still extant. We should value much these interesting memorials; but they are now irrecoverably lost. His wife, refusing to live without him, also endeavoured to bleed herself to death; but she was recovered by order of Nero almost at the last moment. She remained pale and emaciated ever after from having followed her husband more than half-way on the road to death. No trace of the villa where this pathetic tragedy took place can now be seen; but near the spot where it must have stood, close beside the road, is a marble bas-relief of the death of Atys, the son of Croesus, killed in the chase by Adrastus, placed upon a modern pedestal; and this is supposed to have formed part of the tomb of Seneca. There is no inscription; probably none would be allowed during the lifetime of Nero; and we know that his body was burned privately without any of the usual ceremonies. But if this fragment of sculpture be genuine, the well-known classic story which it tells was an appropriate memorial of one who perished in the midst of the greatest prosperity. No one who is familiar with the history of this "seeker after God," this philosopher who was a pagan John the Baptist in the severity and purity of his mode of life, and in the position which he occupied on the border-line between paganism and Christianity, and who left behind him some of the noblest utterances of antiquity, can gaze upon this interesting bas-relief without being deeply moved. It speaks eloquently of the little dependence to be placed upon the favour of princes; and it points a powerful moral that has been repeatedly enforced in sacred as well as profane history, that he who becomes the accomplice of another in crime, strikes, by that complicity, the death-blow of friendship, and makes himself more hated than even the victim of the crime had been. When Seneca sanctioned, and then defended on political grounds, the matricide of Nero, from that moment his own doom was sealed. Over the former "guide, philosopher, and friend," the shadow of this guilty secret rested, and it deepened and darkened until the pupil embrued his hands in the blood of his teacher. This touching fragment of sculpture is all that now remains of the earthly pomp of one who at one time stood on the very highest summit of human wisdom. There is no likelihood that he ever met the Apostle Paul during his residence in the imperial city, or learned from him any of those precepts that are so wonderfully Christian in their spirit and even words; although an early Christian forger thought it worth while to fabricate a supposititious correspondence between them. The only link of connection between them was the problematical one that St. Paul, with his wide sympathies, may have gazed with interest upon Seneca's villa, as it was pointed out to him on his journey to Rome; and that he was on one occasion dragged as a prisoner into the presence of Seneca's elder brother, that Gallio who dismissed the charge and the accusers with contempt. Passing two massive fragments of a wall, which are supposed to have formed part of a small temple of Jupiter, beside which numerous Christians suffered martyrdom, we come, at the fifth milestone, to a spot associated with one of those poetical legends which occur in the early annals of all nations, and whose hold upon the minds of men is itself an historic truth. Here was the boundary between the territory of Rome and that of Alba. Here was situated the entrenchment called the Cluilian Dyke, where Hannibal encamped, and where previously the Roman and Alban armies were drawn up in battle array, when it was agreed that the quarrel between them should be settled by three champions chosen from each side. Every one knows the story of the Horatii and the Curiatii: how these hapless brothers and cousins fought in sight of both armies with a bravery worthy of the stake; and how, at length, when two of the Roman heroes were slain, and all the Albans were wounded, the third Roman, who was unhurt, feigned to fly, and thus separating his enemies, who followed him as well as their failing strength would permit, easily despatched them one after the other, and thus gained the victory for the Roman cause. This terrible tragedy, which terminated the independent existence of the Alban power, took place in the fields around here; and on the right-hand side of the road are three huge circular mounds, overgrown with long rich grass, planted with tall cypress and ilex trees, and surrounded at the foot with a wall of huge peperino blocks, which antiquarians have determined to be the tombs of the five slaughtered combatants--the farther mound being that of the two Horatii, the second that of one of the Curiatii, and the third that of the other two Curiatii. These tombs are situated exactly where we should have expected to find them from the description of Livy; and they are evidently of far older date than any of the neighbouring tombs of the imperial period. Their form and construction carry us back in imagination to the earliest days of Rome, when Etruscan architecture was universally adopted as a model. For more than twenty-five centuries the huge tent-like mounds have stood, so strikingly different in character from all the other sepulchral monuments of the Appian Way; preserved by the reverential care of successive generations. The modern Romans have not been behind the ancient in the pride with which they have regarded these monuments. They have planted them with the splendid cypress-trees which now add so much to their picturesqueness, and annually repair the ravages of time. I climbed up the steep sides through the long slippery grass to the summits of two of the mounds, and had a grand view of the whole scene of the tragic story, bathed in the dim misty light which always broods over the melancholy Campagna like the spectral presence of the past. The sunshine strove in vain to gild the dark shadows which the cypresses threw over the mound at my feet, and the lonely wind wailed wildly through their closely-huddled shivering branches around me. On the opposite side of the road, beyond the earthen mounds of the Horatii and Curiatii, a large mass of picturesque ruins covers the Campagna for a considerable distance. The peasants persist in calling this spot _Roma Vecchia_, under the idea that ancient Rome stood there, and that these ruins are the remains of the city. Antiquarians, however, are agreed that the ruins belong to the large suburban villa of the Quintilii, one of the noblest and most virtuous families of ancient Rome. One member, the celebrated rhetorician Quintilian, was the first who enjoyed the regular salary allotted by Vespasian to those who provided a solid education for the upper classes. In the time of the Emperor Commodus the villa was owned by two brothers of the Quintilian family, Maximus and Condianus, whose fraternal love is as well known almost as the friendship of Damon and Pythias. They were inseparable in all their pursuits and pleasures; they shared this villa and the surrounding property together; they composed a treatise in common, some fragments of which still survive. They were raised together to the consular dignity by Marcus Aurelius, who greatly valued their virtue and their mutual attachment, and were entrusted together with the civil government of Greece. They were both falsely accused of taking part in a plot against the emperor's life; and Commodus, who coveted their property, had them both put to death together. The tyrant then took possession of their villa, which became as notorious for the evil deeds done in it as it was famous before for the virtuous life of its owners. Here Commodus, the base son of a heroic father, practised those lusts and brutalities which have branded his name as that of one of the most unmitigated monsters that ever stained the pages of history. It was here that the people--exasperated by their sufferings through fire and famine, by the open sale of justice and all public offices, and by the blood shed in the streets by the prætorian cavalry--surrounded the villa, and demanded the head of Cleander, a Phrygian slave whom Commodus had placed at the helm of state because he pandered to his master's vices, and gratified him with rich presents obtained by the vilest means. At the entreaties of his sister and his favourite concubine, the emperor sacrificed his minister, who was with him at the time, sharing in his guilty pleasures; and threw out, from one of the windows of the villa, the bloody head among the crowd, who gratified their vengeance by tossing it about like a football. Here, too, the wretched emperor himself was first poisoned by a cup of wine given to him by his favourite mistress Marcia, on his return weary and thirsty from the Colosseum; and then, as the poison operated too slowly, was strangled in his heavy drugged sleep by his favourite gladiator Narcissus. One could not look upon the bare masses of ruins around without thinking of the terrible orgies that took place there, and of the shout of enthusiastic joy when the news reached Rome that the detested tyrant was no more, and the empire was free to breathe again. The fate of Ahab, who coveted the vineyard of Naboth, overtook him; and but for the interference of his successor, the maddened populace would have dragged his corpse through the streets and flung it into the Tiber. A very extraordinary tomb arrests the attention near the ruins of this villa. It looks like an inverted pyramid, or a huge architectural mushroom. This appearance has been given to the monument by the removal of the large blocks of stone which formed the basement, leaving the massive superincumbent weight to be supported on a very narrow stalk of conglomerate masonry. It is a striking proof of the extraordinary solidity and tenacity of Roman architecture, defying the laws of gravitation. It is called the sepulchre of the Metelli, the family of Cæcilia Metella; but this is a mere guess, as there is no record or inscription to identify it. Next to this singular monument are the remains of a tomb which must be exceedingly interesting to every classical scholar. The inscription indicates that it is the tomb of Quintus Cæcilius, whose nephew and adopted son, Titus Pomponius Atticus, as Cornelius Nepos tells us, was buried in it. This celebrated Roman knight was descended in a direct line from Numa Pompilius. Withdrawing from the civil discords of Rome, he took up his abode in Athens, where he devoted himself to literary and philosophic pursuits and acquired a knowledge of the Greek language so perfect that he could not be distinguished from a native. At the Greek capital, the then university of the world, he secured the devoted friendship of his fellow-student Cicero, whose brother was afterwards married to his sister; and to this intimacy we owe the largest portion of Cicero's unrivalled letters, in which he describes his inmost feelings, as well as the events going on around him. The uncle of Atticus, the brother of his mother, whose family tomb we are now examining, left him at his death an enormous fortune, which he had amassed by usury. Atticus added greatly to it by acting as a kind of publisher to the authors of the day--that is, by employing his numerous slaves in copying and multiplying their manuscripts. He kept himself free from all the political factions of the times, and thus managed to preserve the mutual regard of parties who were hostile to each other,--such as Cæsar and Pompey, Brutus and Antony. He reached the age of seventy-seven years without having had a day's illness; and when at last stricken with an incurable disease, in the spirit of the Epicurean philosophy, since he could enjoy life no longer he starved himself to death, and was interred in his uncle's tomb on the Appian Way. Almost side by side with this ruin is the sepulchre of the family of Cicero's wife, the Terentii, who were related to Pomponius Atticus by the mother's side. In all likelihood Terentia herself, Cicero's brave and devoted but ill-used wife, was interred here with her own friends, for her husband had divorced her in order to marry a beautiful and rich young heiress, whose guardian he had been. Passing on the same side of the road two or three tombs of obscure persons whose names alone are known, we come at the sixth milestone to one of the most extraordinary sepulchral monuments of the Appian Way, called the _Casale Rotondo_. This monument marks the limit to which most visitors extend their explorations. It is circular, like the tomb of Cæcilia Metella; but it is of far larger dimensions, being nearly three hundred and fifty feet in diameter. In the fifteenth century this colossal ruin was converted into a fortress by the Orsini family; and of the remains of this fortification a farmhouse and other buildings were constructed, and these now stand on the summit, surrounded by a tolerably-sized oliveyard and garden, with a sloping grass-grown stair leading up to them on the outside. Notwithstanding their dislike of death and their horror of dead bodies, the modern Romans have no more repugnance to the proximity of tombs than their ancestors had. Shepherds fold their sheep and goats in the interior of the old tombs, whose walls are blackened with the smoke of the fires, and retain an odour of human and animal occupancy more disagreeable than any which the original tenants could have exhaled; and it is by no means unfrequent to find a wine-shop, with a noisy company of wayfarers regaling themselves, in a sepulchre that happens to be conveniently situated by the wayside. So far as can be ascertained, the original appearance of the _Casale Rotondo_ seems to have been that of an enormous circular tower, cased with large blocks of travertine, covered with a pyramidal roof of the same material carved into the semblance of tiles, and surmounted with appropriate sculpture. It was surrounded with a wall of peperino, supporting at intervals vases and statues; and on the outside were semicircular stone seats for the benefit of weary wayfarers. This wall is now grown over with turf, but it can be distinctly traced all round; and the hollow space between it and the tomb is covered with thick grass, and is sometimes filled with water like a fosse. Numerous altars, pedestals, and fine specimens of sculpture in marble and peperino, have been disinterred in this spot, and they are now arranged to advantage at the foot of the huge pile fronting the road. Some of these bear inscriptions which would indicate that the tomb was erected to Messalla Corvinus, the friend of Horace and Augustus, and himself a distinguished historian and poet as well as one of the most influential senators of Rome, by his son Marcus Aurelius Corvinus Cotta, who was consul some years after his father's death. Corvinus died in the eleventh year of our era, so that the tomb has stood for upwards of eighteen centuries and a half; and it is as likely to stand as many more, for what remains of it is as firm and enduring as a rock. In the farmhouse built on its massive platform several generations have lived and died. They have eaten and drunk, they have married and been given in marriage, they have cultivated their vines and olives and consumed their products. And all the time their home and their field of labour have been on a tomb! I did not see the tenants of this curious dwelling during my visit; but if the skeleton at the Egyptian feast was a useful reminder of human mortality to the revellers, one would suppose that the thought of the peculiar character of their home would be sufficient to impart a soberer hue to their lives. What is our earth itself but, on a vaster scale, a _Casale Rotondo_--a garden in a sepulchre--where the dust we tread on was once alive; and we reap our daily bread from human mould-- "Earth builds on the earth castles and towers, Earth says to the earth--All shall be ours." At a distance of about seven minutes' walk is an enormous circular tomb, with a medieval tower of lava stones erected upon it, called the _Torre di Selce_; but there is nothing to indicate who was interred in it, though it must have been a person of some celebrity at the time. An inscription upon a tomb beside it naively tells the passer-by to respect the last resting-place of one who had a shop on the _Via Sacra_, where he sold jewellery and millinery, and was held in much estimation by his customers. Beyond this point there is nothing of any special interest to arrest our attention, till we come to a considerable mass of ruins, consisting of broken Doric columns of peperino, part of a rough mosaic floor and brick pavement, and fragments of walls lined with tufa squares in the _opus reticulatum_ pattern. These remains are supposed to mark the spot on which stood the Temple of Hercules, erected by Domitian, and alluded to in one of the epigrams of the poet Martial. Near this spot are the tomb of the consul Quintus Veranius, who died in Britain in the year 55 of our era; a lofty circular tomb, to some one unknown, with a rude shepherd's hut on the top of it, to which the peasants have given the name of Torraccio; and the tomb of a marble contractor. It may be remarked, in connection with this last mentioned tomb, that a Roman statuary had his workshops for the manufacture of sepulchral monuments and sarcophagi on the Appian Way, which were of great extent, judging from the quantity of sculpture, finished and unfinished, found on the spot. All the sculpture was manifestly copied from Greek originals, for it is hardly conceivable that such groupings and expressions as we see in these bad copies could have been first executed by such inferior artists. In this neighbourhood were the villa and farm of the poet Persius, and portions of the wall are still standing. At the ninth milestone are the tomb and the remains of the villa of the Emperor Gallienus, slain by a conspiracy among his officers at the siege of Milan in the year 268. This emperor has left nothing behind but the memory of his luxury and his vices. When the site of the villa was excavated by an English artist, Gavin Hamilton, at the end of last century, the famous statue of the Discobolus and several other specimens of ancient sculpture were discovered, which are now in the Vatican Gallery. The ground hereabouts produces a whitish efflorescence, and emits a most offensive sulphurous smell. It exhibits the same evidences of recent volcanic activity as the neighbourhood of Lakes Tartarus and Solfatara on the way to Tivoli. The road after this descends into a valley, through which the stream of the Ponticello flows, passing a most massive circular tomb, reminding one of the mounds of the Horatii and Curiatii; and as it ascends gradually on the opposite side, two huge sepulchres of the Imperial period--one on the right hand and the other on the left--attract notice, and are the last on this part of the route. The railway to Naples passes across the road at the eleventh milestone, and disturbs the solemn silence three or four times a day by its incongruous noise. Beyond this is the osteria and village of Frattocchie, where the old Appian Way merges into the new, and ascends continuously to Albano. This neighbourhood is full of historical associations. It was at Frattocchie that the body of Clodius was left lying on the road after his fatal encounter with Milo. This fray furnished the occasion for one of Cicero's most eloquent speeches,--that in defence of Milo,--which was written, but owing to the disturbances in the Forum at the time was not delivered. On the left of the village, near a railway bridge and several quarries of very old hard lava, is the site of Appiolæ, one of the cities of the Latin League, destroyed by Tarquinius Priscus. All the male population were killed, and the women and children transferred to Rome; and with the spoils the Capitolium was completed. The remains of the old city are very slight, consisting of a wall, a few vestiges of a temple, and some foundations on a cliff surrounded by a stream, which could be dammed up and flooded so as to form a fosse. On the right of Frattocchie are the ruins of _Bovillæ_, taken and plundered by Coriolanus, and deserted in the time of Cicero. Some arches of the corridor of an amphitheatre, a reservoir for water, tolerably perfect, and a circus, are still visible. There are also the ruins of a forum. The view, looking back from this elevated position upon the long course of the Appian Way, is exceedingly striking. One feels, when gazing on the long perspective of rugged and mouldering sepulchres, the full force of the name _Strada del Diavolo_ which the peasants give to this street of tombs; and can sympathise with the sentiment that made Charles Dickens say, when standing here at sunset, after having walked all the way from Rome, "I almost felt as if the sun would never rise again, but look its last that night upon a ruined world." We can picture St. Paul's memorable journey from Puteoli to Rome by this route. The thought that the eye of the great apostle must have rested upon the same features of the landscape, and many of the same objects, though now in ruins, that we still behold, invests them with an indescribable charm. From beyond the gates of Albano, near which stood the lofty tomb of Pompey, whose ashes had only recently been brought from the scene of his murder in Egypt, by his devoted wife Cornelia, he would obtain his first glimpse of Rome. And if now it is the most thrilling moment in a man's life to see Rome in its ruin, what must it have been to see it then in its glory! We can imagine that, with the profound emotion of his Master when gazing upon the splendour of Jerusalem from the slope of Olivet, St. Paul would look down from that spot on the capital of the world, and see before him the signs of a magnificence never before or since equalled; but alas! as he knew well, a magnificence that was only the iridescence of social and spiritual corruption, as the pomp of the sepulchres of the Appian Way was but the shroud of death. Doubtless with a sad and pitying heart, he would be led by the cohort of soldiers along the street of tombs, then the most crowded approach to a city of nearly two millions of souls; tombs whose massiveness and solidity were but a vain craving for immortality, and whose epitaphs were the most deeply touching of all epitaphs, on account of the profound despair with which they bade their eternal farewell. Entering into Rome through the Porta Capena; and winding through the valley between the Coelian and Aventine hills, crowded with temples and palaces, he would be brought to the Forum, then a scene of indescribable grandeur; and from thence he would be finally transferred to the charge of Burrus, the prefect of the imperial guards, at the prætorium of Nero's palace, on the Palatine. And here he disappears from our view. We only know of a certainty that for two whole years "he dwelt in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him." Of all the splendid associations of the Appian Way, along which history may be said to have marched exclusively for nigh six hundred years, the most splendid by far is its connection with this ever-memorable journey of the great Apostle of the Gentiles. We can trace the influence of the scenes and objects along the route in all his subsequent writings. He had a deeper yearning for the Gentiles, because he thus beheld with his own eyes the places associated with the darkest aspects of paganism; the scenes that gave rise to the pagan ideas of heaven and hell; the splendid temples in which the human soul had debased itself to objects beneath the dignity of its own nature, and thus prepared itself for all moral corruption; and the massive sepulchral monuments in which the hopeless despair of heathenism had, as it were, become petrified by the Gorgon gaze of death. That Appian Way should be to us the most interesting of all the roads of the world; for by it came to us our civilisation and Christianity--the divine principles and hopes that redeem the soul, retrieve the vanity of existence, open up the path of life through the dark valley of death, and disclose the glorious vista of immortality beyond the tomb. And as we gaze upon the remains of that road, and feel how much we owe to it as the material channel of God's grace to us who were far off, we can say with deepest gratitude of those apostles and martyrs who once walked on this lava pavement, but are now standing on the sea of glass before the throne, "How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!" CHAPTER III THE CUMÆAN SIBYL A part of the monotonous coast-line of Palestine extends into the Mediterranean considerably beyond the rest at Carmel. In this bluff promontory the Holy Land reaches out, as it were, towards the Western World; and like a tie-stone that projects from the gable of the first of a row of houses, indicating that other buildings are to be added, it shows that the inheritance of Israel was not meant to be always exclusive, but was destined to comprehend all the countries which its faith should annex. The remarkable geographical position of this long projecting ridge by the sea--itself a symbol and prophecy--and its peculiar physical features, differing from those of the rest of Palestine, and approximating to a European type of scenery, early marked it out as a religious spot. It was held sacred from time immemorial; an altar existed there long before Elijah's discomfiture of the priests of Baal; the people were accustomed to resort to the sanctuary of its "high place" during new moons and Sabbaths; and to its haunted strand came pilgrims from distant regions, to which the fame of its sanctity had spread. One of the great schools of the prophets of Israel, superintended by Elisha, was planted on one of its mountain prominences. The solitary Elijah found a refuge in its bosom, and came and went from it to the haunts of men like one of its own sudden storms; and in its rocky dells and dense thickets of oaks and evergreens were uttered prophecies of a larger history and a grander salvation, which transcended the narrow circle of Jewish ideas as much as the excellency of Carmel transcended the other landscapes of Palestine. To this instance of striking correspondence between the peculiar nature of a spot and its peculiar religious history in Asia, a parallel may be found in Europe. A part of the long uniform western coast-line of Italy stretches out into the Mediterranean at Cumæ, near the city of Naples. Early colonists from Greece, in search of a new home, found in its bays, islands, and promontories a touching resemblance to the intricate coast scenery of their own country. On a solitary rock overlooking the sea they built their citadel and established their worship. In this rock was the traditional cave of the Cumæan Sibyl, where she gave utterance to the inspirations of pagan prophecy a thousand years before St. John received the visions of the Apocalypse on the lone heights of the Ægean isle. The promontory of Cumæ, like that of Carmel, typified the onward course of history and religion--a great advance in men's ideas upon those of the past. The western sea-board is the historic side of Italy. All its great cities and renowned sites are on the western side of the Apennines; the other side, looking eastward, with the exception of Venice and Ravenna, containing hardly any place that stands out prominently in the history of the world. And at Cumæ this western tendency of Italy was most pronounced. On this westmost promontory of the beautiful land--the farthest point reached by the oldest civilisation of Egypt and Greece--the Sibyl stood on her watch-tower, and gazed with prophetic eye upon the distant horizon, seeing beyond the light of the setting sun and "the baths of all the western stars" the dawn of a more wonderful future, and dreamt of a-- "Vast brotherhood of hearts and hands, Choir of a world in perfect tune." Cumæ is only five miles distant from Puteoli, and about thirteen west of Naples. But it lies so much out of the way that it is difficult to combine it with the other famous localities in this classic neighbourhood in one day's excursion, and hence it is very often omitted. It amply, however, repays a special visit, not so much by what it reveals as by what it suggests. There are two ways by which it can be approached, either by the _Via Cumana_, which gradually ascends from Puteoli along the ridge of the low volcanic hills on the western side of Lake Avernus, and passes under the Arco Felice, a huge brick arch, evidently a fragment of an ancient Roman aqueduct, spanning a ravine at a great height; or directly from the western shore of Lake Avernus, by an ancient road paved with blocks of lava, and leading through an enormous tunnel, called the _Grotta de Pietro Pace_, about three-quarters of a mile long, lighted at intervals by shafts from above, said to have been excavated by Agrippa. Both ways are deeply interesting; but the latter is perhaps preferable because of the saving of time and trouble which it effects. The first glimpse of Cumæ, though very impressive to the imagination, is not equally so to the eye. Crossing some cultivated fields, a bold eminence of trachytic tufa, covered with scanty grass and tufts of brushwood, rises between you and the sea, forming part of a range of low hills, which evidently mark the ancient coast-line. On this elevated plateau, commanding a most splendid view of the blue, sunlit Mediterranean as far as Gaeta and the Ponza Islands, stood the almost mythical city; and crowning its highest point, where a rocky escarpment, broken down on every side except on the south, by which it can be ascended, the massive foundations of the walls of the Acropolis may still be traced throughout their whole extent. Very few relics of the original Greek colony survive; and these have to be sought chiefly underneath the remains of Roman-Gothic and medieval dynasties, which successively occupied the place, and partially obliterated each other, like the different layers of writing in a palimpsest. Time and the passions of man have dealt more ruthlessly with this than with almost any other of the renowned spots of Italy. Some fragments of the ancient fortifications, a confused and scattered heap of ruins within the line of the city walls, and a portion of a fluted column, and a single Doric capital of the grand old style, supposed to belong to the temple of Apollo, on the summit of the Acropolis, are all that meet the eye to remind us of this home of ancient faith and prophecy. In the plain at the foot of the rock is the Necropolis of Cumæ, the most ancient burial-place in Italy, from whose rifled Greek graves a most valuable collection of archaic vases and personal ornaments were obtained and transferred to the museums of Naples, Paris, and St. Petersburg; but the tombs themselves have now been destroyed, and only a few marble fragments of Roman sepulchral decoration scattered around indicate the spot. And not far off, partially concealed by earth and underwood, may be seen the ruins of the amphitheatre, with its twenty-one tiers of seats leading down to the arena. You look in vain for any trace of the sanctuary of the most celebrated of the Sibyls. Her tomb is pointed out as a vague ruin a short distance from the Necropolis, among the tombs which line the Via Domitiana; and Justin Martyr and Pausanias both describe a round cinerary urn found in this spot which was said to have contained her ashes. The tufa rock of the Acropolis is pierced with numerous dark caverns and labyrinthine passages, the work of prehistoric inhabitants, which have only been partially explored on account of the difficulty and danger, and any one of which might have been the abode of the prophetess. A larger excavation in the side of the hill facing the sea, with a flight of steps leading up from it into another smaller recess, and numerous lateral openings and subterranean passages, supposed to penetrate into the very heart of the mountain, and even to communicate with Lake Fusaro, is pointed out by the local guides as the Sibyl's Cave, which, as Virgil tells us, had a hundred entrances and issues, from whence as many resounding voices echoed forth the oracles of the inspired priestess. But we are confused in our efforts at identification; for another cavern bore this name in former ages, which was destroyed by the explosion of the combustible materials with which Narses filled it in undermining the citadel. This, we have reason to believe, was the cave which Justin Martyr visited more than seventeen hundred years ago, and of which he has left behind a most interesting account. "We saw," he says, "when we were in Cumæ, a place where a sanctuary is hollowed in the rock--a thing really wonderful and worthy of all admiration. Here the Sibyl delivered her oracles, we were told by those who had received them from their ancestors, and who kept them even as their patrimony. Also, in the middle of the sanctuary, they showed us three receptacles cut in the same rock, and in which, they being filled with water, she bathed, as they said, and when she resumed her garments, she retired into the inner part of the sanctuary, likewise cut in the same rock, and there being seated on a high place in the centre, she prophesied." But after all you do not care to fasten your attention upon any particular spot, for you feel that the whole place is overshadowed by the presence of this mysterious being; and rock, and hill, and bush are invested with an air of solemn majesty, and with the memory of an ancient sanctity. Nature has taken back the ruins of Cumæ so completely to her own bosom, that it is difficult to believe that on this desolate spot once stood one of the most powerful cities of antiquity, which colonised a large part of Southern Italy. A sad, lonely, fateful place it is, haunted for ever by the gods of old, the dreams of men. A silence, almost painful in its intensity, broods over its deserted fields; hardly a living thing disturbs the solitude; and the traces of man's occupancy are few and faint. The air seems heavy with the breath of the malaria; and no one would care to run the risk of fever by lingering on the spot to watch the sunset gilding the gloom of the Acropolis with a halo of kindred radiance. Every breeze that stirs the tall grasses and the leaves of the brushwood of the dismantled citadel has a wail in it; the long-drawn murmur of the peaceful sea at the foot of the hill comes up with a melancholy cadence to the ear; and even on the beautiful cyclamens and veronicas that strive to enliven the ruins of the temples of Apollo and Serapis, emblems of the immortal youth and signs of the renewing power of Nature as they are, has fallen the gray shadow of the past. Each pathetic bit of ruin has about it the consciousness of an almost fabulous antiquity, and by its very vagueness appeals more powerfully to the imagination than any historical associations. "Time here seems to have folded its wings." In the immemorial calm that is in the air a thousand years seem as one day. Through all the dim ages no feature of its rugged face has changed; and all the potent spell of summer noons can only win from it a languid smile of faintest verdure. The sight of the scanty walls and scattered bits of Greek sculpture here take you back to the speechless ages that have left no other memorials of their activity. What is fact and what is fable it were difficult to tell in this far-away borderland where they seem to blend. And I do not envy the man who is not deeply moved at the thought of the simple, old-world piety that placed a holy presence in this solitary spot, and of the tender awe with which the mysterious divinity of Cumæ was worshipped by generations of like passions and sorrows with ourselves--whose very graves under the shadow of this romantic hill had vanished long ages before our history had begun. Every schoolboy is familiar with the picturesque Roman legend of the Sibyl. It is variously told in connection with the elder and the later Tarquin, the two Etruscan kings of Rome; and the scene of it is laid by some in Cumæ--where Tarquinius Superbus spent the last years of his life in exile--and by others in Rome. But the majority of writers associate it with the building of the great temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill. Several prodigies, significant of the future fate of Rome and of the reigning dynasty, occurred when the foundations of this temple were dug and the walls of it built. A fresh human head, dripping gore, was found deep down beneath the earth, which implied that this spot was destined to become the head of the whole world; and hence the old name of the "Saturnine Hill" was changed to the "Capitoline." All the gods who had been worshipped from time immemorial on this hill, when consulted by auguries, gave permission for the removal of their shrines and altars in order that room might be provided for the gigantic temple of the great Ruler of the gods, save Terminus and Youth, who refused to abandon the sacred spot, and whose obstinacy was therefore regarded as a sign that the boundaries of the city should never be removed, and that her youth would be perpetually renewed. But a still more wonderful sign of the future of Rome was given on this occasion. A mysterious woman, endowed with preternatural longevity--believed to be no other than Deiphobe, the Cumæan Sibyl herself, the daughter of Circe and Gnostus, who had been the guide of Æneas into the world of the dead--appeared before Tarquin and offered him for a certain price nine books, which contained her prophecies in mystic rhyme. Tarquin, ignorant of the value of the books, refused to buy them. The Sibyl departed, and burned three of them. Coming back immediately, she offered the remaining six at the same price that she had asked for the nine. Tarquin again refused; whereupon the Sibyl burned three more volumes, and returning the third time, made the same demand for the reduced remnant. Struck with the singularity of the proceeding, the king consulted the augurs; and learning from them the inestimable preciousness of the books, he bought them, and the Sibyl forthwith vanished as mysteriously as she had appeared. This legend reads like a moral apothegm on the increasing value of life as it passes away. Whatever credence we may attach to this account of their origin--or rather, whatever sediment of historical truth may have been precipitated in the fable--there can be no doubt that the so-called Sibylline books of Rome did actually exist, and that for a very long period they were held in the highest veneration. They were concealed in a stone chest, buried under the ground, in the temple of Jupiter, on the Capitol. Two officers of the highest rank were appointed to guard them, whose punishment, if found unfaithful to their trust, was to be sewed up alive in a sack and thrown into the sea. The number of guardians was afterwards increased, at first to ten and then to fifteen, whose priesthood was for life, and who in consequence were exempted from the obligation of serving in the army and from other public offices in the city. Being regarded as the priests of Apollo, they had each in front of his house a brazen tripod, similar to that on which the priestess of Delphi sat. The contents of the Sibylline books, being supposed to contain the fate of the Roman Empire, were kept a profound secret, and only on occasions of public danger or calamity, and by special order of the senate, were they allowed to be consulted. When the Capitol was burned in the Marsic war, eighty-two years before Christ, they perished in the flames: but so seriously was the loss regarded that ambassadors were sent to Greece, Asia Minor, and Cumæ, wherever Sibylline inspiration was supposed to exist, to collect the prophetic oracles, and thus make up as far as possible for what had been lost. In Cumæ nothing was discovered; but at Erythræa and Samos a large number of mystic verses, said to have been composed by the Sibyl, were found. Some of them were collected into a volume, after having been purged from all spurious or suspected elements; and the volume was brought to Rome, and deposited in two gilt cases at the base of the statue of Apollo, in the temple of that god on the Palatine. More than two thousand prophetic books, pretending to be Sibylline oracles, were found by Augustus in the possession of private persons; and these were condemned to be burned, and in future no private person was allowed to keep any writings of the kind. But in spite of every attempt to authenticate the books that were publicly accepted, the new collection was never regarded with the same veneration as the original volumes of Tarquin which it replaced. A certain suspicion of spuriousness continued to cling to it, and greatly diminished its authority. It was seldom consulted. The Roman emperors after Tiberius--who still further sifted it--utterly neglected the received collection; and not till shortly before the fatal battle of the Milvian Bridge, which overthrew paganism, was it again brought out, by Maxentius, for the purpose of indicating the fate of the enterprise. Julian the Apostate, in his attempt to galvanise the dead pagan religion into the semblance of life, sought to revive an interest in the Sibylline oracles, which were so closely identified with the political and religious fortunes of Rome. But his effort was vain: they fell into greater oblivion than before; and at last they were publicly burned by Stilicho, the father-in-law of the Emperor Honorius--called the Defender of Italy--whose own execution as a traitor at Ravenna shortly afterwards was considered by the pagan zealots as the just vengeance of the gods on his dreadful sacrilege. Unlike the Jewish and Indian faiths, the Greek and Roman religions had no authoritative writings, and were not embodied in a system of elaborate dogmas. The Sibylline oracles may therefore be said to have formed their sacred scriptures, and to have served the purpose of a common religious creed in securing national unity. The original books of the Cumæan Sibyl were written in Greek, which was the language of the whole of the south of Italy at that time. The oracles were inscribed upon palm leaves; to which circumstance Virgil alludes in his description of the sayings of the Cumæan Sibyl being written upon the leaves of the forest. They were in the form of acrostic verses; the letters of the first verse of each oracle containing in regular sequence the initial letters of all the subsequent verses. They were full of enigmas and mysterious analogies, founded upon the numerical value of the initial letters of certain names. It is supposed that they contained not so much predictions of future events, as directions regarding the means by which the wrath of the gods, as revealed by prodigies and calamities, might be appeased. They seemed to have been consulted in the same way as Eastern nations consult the Koran and Hafiz. There was no attempt made to find a passage suitable to the occasion, but one of the palm leaves after being shuffled was selected at random. To this custom of drawing fateful leaves from the Sibylline books--called in consequence _sortes sibyllinæ_--there is frequent allusion by classic authors. We know that the writings of Homer and Virgil were thus treated. The elevation of Septimius Severus to the throne of the Roman Empire was supposed to have been foretold by the circumstance that he opened by chance the writings of Lampridius at the verse, "Remember, Roman, with imperial sway to rule the people." The Bible itself was used by the early Christians for such purposes of divination. St. Augustine, though he condemned the practice as an abuse of the Divine Word, yet preferred that men should have recourse to the Gospels rather than to heathen works. Heraclius is reported by Cedrenus to have asked counsel of the New Testament, and to have been thereby persuaded to winter in Albania. Nicephorus Gregoras frequently opened his Psalter at random in order that there he might find support in the trial under which he laboured. And even in these enlightened days, it is by no means rare to find superstitious men and women using the sacred Scriptures as the old Greeks and Romans used the Sibylline oracles--dipping into them by chance for indications of the Divine Will. The Cumæan Sibyl was not the only prophetess of the kind. There were no less than ten females, endowed with the gift of prevision, and held in high repute, to whom the name of Sibyl was given. We read of the Persian Sibyl, the Libyan, the Delphic, the Erythræan, the Hellespontine, the Phrygian, and the Tiburtine. With the name of the last-mentioned Sibyl tourists make acquaintance at Tivoli. Two ancient temples in tolerable preservation are still standing on the very edge of the deep rocky ravine through which the Anio pours its foaming flood. The one is a small circular building, with ten pillars surrounding the broken-down cella, whose familiar appearance is often represented in plaster models and bronze and marble ornamental articles, taken home as souvenirs by travellers; and the other stands close by, and has been transformed into the present church of St. Giorgio. This latter temple is supposed, from a bas-relief found in it, representing the Sibyl sitting in the act of delivering an oracle, to be the ancient shrine of the Sibyl Albunea mentioned by Horace, Tibullus, and Lactantius. The earliest bronze statues at Rome were those of the three Sibyls, placed near the Rostra, in the middle of the Forum. No specimens of the literature of Rome precede the Sibylline books, except the rude hymn known as the Litany of the Arval Brothers, dating from the time of Romulus himself, which is simply an address to Mars, the Lares, and the Semones, praying for fair weather and for protection to the flocks. And it is thus most interesting to notice that the two compositions which lay at the foundation of all the splendid Latin literature of later ages were of an eminently religious character. One of the most remarkable things connected with the pagan Sibyls were the apocryphal Jewish and Christian prophecies to which they gave rise. When the sacred oak of Dodona perished down to the ground, out of its roots sprang up a fresh growth of fictitious prophetic literature. This literature emanated from different nationalities and different schools of thought. It combined classical story and Scripture tradition. Most of it was the product of pre-Christian Judaism, and seemed to have been composed in times of great national excitement. The misery of the present, the prospect still more gloomy beyond, impelled its authors to anxious inquiries into the future. The books were written, like the genuine Sibylline books, in the metrical form, which the old Greek tradition had consecrated to religious use; and their style so closely resembled that of the Apocalypse and the Old Testament prophecies, that some pagan writers who accepted them as genuine did not hesitate to say that the writers of the Bible had plagiarised parts of their prophecies from the oracles of the Sibyls. Few fragments of the genuine Sibylline books remain to us, and these are to be found chiefly in the writings of Ovid and Virgil, whose "Golden Age" and well-known "Fourth Eclogue" were greatly indebted for their materials to them. But we possess a large collection of the Judæo-Christian oracles, which were probably gathered together by some unknown editor in the seventh century. Originally there were fourteen books of unequal antiquity and value, but some of them have been lost. Cardinal Angelo Mai discovered in the Ambrosian Library at Milan a manuscript which contained the eleventh book entire, besides a portion of the sixth and eighth books; and a few years later, among the secret stores of the Vatican Library, he found two other manuscripts which contained entire the last four books of the collection. These were published in Rome in 1828. The best edition of all the extant books is that which M. Alexandre issued in Paris, under the name of _Oracula Sibyllina_. This editor exaggerates the extent of the Christian element in the Sibylline prophecies; but his dissertation on the origin and value of the several portions of the books is exceedingly interesting. The oldest book is undoubtedly the third, part of which is preserved in the writings of Theophilus of Antioch, and originally consisted of one thousand verses, most of which we possess. It was probably composed at the beginning of the Maccabean period, about 146 B.C., when Ptolemy VII. (Physcon) had become king of Egypt, and the bitter enemy of the Jews in Alexandria, and when the Jewish nation in Palestine had been rejoicing in their independence, through the overthrow of the empire of the Seleucidæ by the usurper Tryphon. The fourth book was written soon after the eruption of Vesuvius in the year of our era 79, and is a most interesting record of Jewish Essenism. It contains the first anticipation of the return of Nero, but in a Jewish form, without Nero's death and resuscitation. The last of the Sibylline books seems to have been written about the beginning of the seventh century, and was directed against the new creed of Islam, which had suddenly sprung up, and in its fierce fanaticism was carrying everything before it. In this apocalyptic literature--the last growth of Judaism--the voice of paganism itself was employed to witness for the supremacy of the Jewish religion. It embraces all history in one great theocratic view, and completes the picture of the Jewish triumph by the prophecy of a great Deliverer, who shall establish the Jewish law as the rule of the whole earth, and shall destroy with a fiery flood all that is corrupt and perishable. In these respects the Jewish Sibylline oracles have an interesting connection with other apocryphal Jewish writings, such as the Fourth Book of Esdras, the Apocalypse of Henoch, and the Book of Jubilees; and they may all be regarded as attempts to carry down the spirit of prophecy beyond the canonical Scriptures, and to furnish a supplement to them. So highly prized was this group of apocryphal Jewish oracles by the primitive Christians, that several new ones were added to them by Christian hands which have not come down to us in their original state. They were regarded as genuine productions, possessing an independent authority which, if not divine, was certainly supernatural; and some did not hesitate even to place them by the side of the Old Testament prophecies. In the very earliest controversies between Christians and the advocates of paganism, they were appealed to frequently as authorities which both recognised. Christian apologists of the second century, such as Tatian, Athenagoras, and very specially Justin Martyr, implicitly relied upon them as indisputable. Even the oracles of the pagan Sibyl were regarded by Christian writers with an awe and reverence little short of that which they inspired in the minds of the heathen themselves. Clement of Alexandria does not scruple to call the Cumæan Sibyl a true prophetess, and her oracles saving canticles. And St. Augustine includes her among the number of those who belong to the "City of God." And this idea of the Sibyl's sacredness continued to a late age in the Christian Church. She had a place in the prophetic order beside the patriarchs and prophets of old, and joined in the great procession of the witnesses for the faith from Seth and Enoch down to the last Christian saint and martyr. In one of the grandest hymns of the Roman Catholic Church, composed by Tommaso di Celano at the beginning of the fourteenth century, there is an allusion to her, taken from the well-known acrostic in the last judgment scene in the eighth book of the _Oracula Sibyllina_-- "Dies iræ, dies illa, Solvet sæclum in favilla, Teste David cum _Sibylla_." The strange Italian mystic of the fifteenth century, Pico della Mirandola, who sought to reconcile the Christian sentiment with the imagery and legends of pagan religion, rehabilitated the Sibyl, and consecrated her as the servant of the Lord Jesus. And he was but a specimen of the many _humanists_ of that age who believed that no oracle that had once spoken to living men and women could ever wholly lose its vitality. Like the Delphic Pythia, old, but clothed as a maiden, the ancient Sibyl appeared to them in the garments of immortal youth, with the charm of her early prime. The dim old church of Ara Coeli in Rome, which occupies the site of the celebrated temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, and in which Gibbon conceived the idea of his great work on the _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, is said to have derived its name from an altar bearing the inscription, "Ara Primogeniti Dei," erected in this place by Augustus, to commemorate the Sibylline prophecy of the coming of our Saviour. She was a favourite subject of Christian art in the middle ages, and was introduced by almost every celebrated painter, along with the prophets and apostles, into the cyclical decorations of the Church. Every visitor to Rome knows the fine picture of the Sibyls by Pinturicchio, on the tribune behind the high altar of the Church of St. Onofrio, where Tasso was buried; and also the still grander head of the Cumæan Sibyl, with its flowing turban by Domenichino, in the great picture gallery of the Borghese Palace. But the highest honour ever conferred upon the Sibyls was that which Michael Angelo bestowed when he painted them on the spandrils of the wonderful roof of the Sistine Chapel. These mysterious beings formed most congenial subjects for the mystic pencil of the great Florentine, and therefore they are more characteristic of his genius than almost any other of his works. He has painted them along with the greater prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Jonah, in throne-like niches surrounding the different incidents of the creation. They look like presiding deities, remote from all human weaknesses, and wearing on their faces an air of profound mystery. They are invested, not with the calm, superficial, unconscious beauty of pagan art, but with the solemn earnestness and travail of soul characteristic of the Christian creed, wrinkled and saddened with thought and worn out with vigils; and are striking examples of the truth, that while each human being can bear his own burden, the burden of the world's mystery and pain crushes us to the earth. The Persian Sibyl, the oldest of the weird sisterhood, to whom the sunset of life had given mystical lore, holds a book close to her eyes, as if from dimness of vision; the Libyan Sibyl lifts a massive volume above her head on to her knees; the Cumæan Sibyl intently reads her book at a distance from her dilated eyes; the Erythræan Sibyl, bareheaded, is about to turn over the page of her book; while the Delphic Sibyl, like Cassandra the youngest and most human-looking of them all, holds a scroll in her hand, and gazes with a dreamy mournfulness into the far futurity. These splendid creations would abundantly reward the minute study of many days. They show how thoroughly the great painter had entered into the history and spirit of these mysterious prophetesses, who, while they bore the sins and sorrows of a corrupt world, had power to look for consolation into the secrets of the future. Very beautiful was this reverence paid to the Sibyl amid all the idolatries of paganism and the corruptions of later Judaism. We may regard it as a relic of the early piety of the world. One who could pass over the interests and distractions of her own time, and fix her gaze upon the distant future, must have seemed far removed from the common order of mankind, who live exclusively in the present, and can imagine no other or higher state of things than they see around them. Standing as the heirs of all the ages on this elevated vantage-ground and looking back upon the long course of the centuries--upon the eventful future of the Sibyl, which is the past to us--it seems a matter of course that the world should have spun down the ringing grooves of change as it has done; and we fancy that this must have been obvious to the world's gray fathers. But though the age of the Sibyl seemed the very threshold of time, there was nothing to indicate this to her, nothing to show that she lived in the youth of the world, and that it was destined to ripen and expand with the process of the suns. The same horizon that bounds us in these last days, bound her view in these early days; and things seemed as fully developed and stereotyped then as now, and to-morrow promised to be only a repetition of to-day. To realise, therefore, that the world had a future, and to take the trouble of thinking what would happen a thousand years off, indicated no common habit of mind. And we are the more impressed by it when we consider the spots bewitched by the spell of Circe where it was exercised. That persons dwelling in lonely, northern isles, where the long wash of the waves upon the shore, and the wild wail of the wind in mountain corries stimulated the imagination, and seemed like voices from another world, should see visions and dream dreams, does not surprise us. The power of second sight may seem natural to spots where nature is mysterious and solemn, and full of change and sudden transitions from storm to calm and from sunshine to gloom. But at Cumæ there is a perpetual peace, an unchanging monotony. The same cloudless sky overarches the earth day after day, and dyes to celestial blue the same placid sea that sleeps beside its shore. The fields are drowsy at noon with the same stagnant sunshine; and the same purple glory lies at sunset on the entranced hills; and the olive and the myrtle bloom through the even months with no fading or brightening tint on leaf or stem; and each day is the twin of that which has gone before. Nature in such a region is transparent. No mist, or cloud, or shadow hides her secrets. There is no subtle joy of despair and hope, of decay and growth, connected with the passing of the seasons. In this Arcadian clime we should expect Nature to lull the soul into the sleep of contentment on her lap; and in its perpetual summer happy shepherds might sing eclogues for ever, and, satisfied with the present, have no hope or wish for the future. How wonderful, then, that in such a charmed lotus-land we should meet with the mysterious unrest of soul, and the fixed onward look of the Sibyl to times widely different from her own. And not only is this forward-looking gaze of the Sibyl contrary to what we should have expected in such a changeless land of beauty and ease; it is also contrary to what we should have expected from the paganism of the people. It is characteristic of the Greek religion, as indeed of all heathen religions, that its golden age should be in the past. It instinctively clings to the memory of a former happier time, and shrinks from the unknown future. Its piety ever looks backward, and aspires to present safety or enjoyment by a faithful imitation of an imaginary past. It is always "returning on the old well-worn path to the paradise of its childhood," and contrasting the gloom that overhangs the present with the radiance that shone on the morning lands. In every crisis of terror or disaster it turns with unutterable yearnings to the tradition of the happy age. Or, if it does look forward to the future, it always pictures "the restoration of the old Saturnian reign"; it has no standard of future excellence or future blessedness to attain to, and no yearnings for consummation and perfection hereafter. The very name given to the south of Italy was Hesperia, the "Land of the Evening Star," as if in token of its exhausted history; and it was regarded as the scene of the fabled golden age from which Saturn and the ancient deities had been expelled by Jupiter. But contrary to this pagan instinct, the Cumæan Sibyl stretched forward to a distant heaven of her aspirations and hopes--to a nobler future of the world, not sentimental and idyllic, but epic and heroic. She pictured the blessing or restoration of this earth itself as distinct from an invisible world of happiness. And in this respect she is more in sympathy with the Jewish and Christian religions than with her own. The golden age of the Hebrews was in the future, and was connected with the coming of the Messiah, who should restore the kingdom again unto Israel. And the characteristic of the Christian religion is hope, the expectation of the times of the restitution of all things, and the realisation of the "one far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves." It is this hopeful element pervading them that gives to the lively oracles of Holy Scripture the triumphant tone which distinguishes them so markedly from the desponding spirit of all false religions, ancient and modern. The subject of the Sibyl brings us to the vexed question of the connection between pagan and Hebrew prophecy. How are we to regard the vaticinations of the heathen oracle? That the great mass of the Sibylline books is spurious is glaringly obvious. But there is a primitive residuum which seems to remind us that the spirit of early prophecy still retained its hold over human nature amid all the corruptions of heathendom, and secured for the Sibyl a sacred rank and authority. We have seen with what reverence the greatest fathers of the Christian Church regarded her. While there was undoubtedly much delusion and deception, conscious or unconscious, mixed up with it, we are constrained at the same time to acknowledge that there was some reality in this prophetic element of paganism, which cannot be explained away as the result of mere political or intellectual foresight or accidental coincidence. It was not all imposture. As a ray of light is contained in all that shines, so a ray of God's truth was reflected in what was best in this pagan prophecy. The fulfilment of many of the ancient oracles cannot be denied without a perversion of all history. There was no doubt an immense difference between the Hebrew prophets and the pagan Sibyl. The predictions of the Sibyl were accompanied by strange fantastic circumstances, and wore the appearance of a blind caprice or arbitrary fate; whereas the announcements of the Hebrew prophets, founded upon the denunciation of moral evil and the reign of sacred and peremptory principles of righteousness in the world, were calm, dignified, and self-consistent. But we cannot, notwithstanding, deny to pagan prophecy some share in the higher influence which inspired and moulded Hebrew prophecy. The apostle of the Gentiles took this view when he called Epimenides the Cretan a prophet. The Bible recognises the existence of true prophets outside the pale of the Jewish Church. Balaam, the son of Beor, was a heathen living in the mountains beyond the Euphrates; and yet the form as well as the substance of his prophecy was cast into the same mould as that of the Hebrew prophets. He is called in the Book of Numbers "the man whose eyes are open;" and God used this power as His organ of intercourse with and influence upon the world. The grand record of his vision is the first example of prophetic utterance respecting the destinies of the world at large; and we see how the base and grovelling nature of the man was overpowered by the irresistible force of the prophetic impulse within him, so that he was constrained to bless the enemies he was hired to curse. And in this respect he represents the purest of the ancient heathen oracles; and his answer to Balak breathes the very essence of prophetic inspiration, and is far in advance of the spirit and thought of the time, reminding us of the noble rebuke of the Cumæan Sibyl to Aristodicus, and of the oracle of Delphi to Glaucus. God did not leave the Gentile nations without some glimpses of the truth which He had revealed so fully and brightly to His own chosen people. While He was the _glory_ of His people Israel, we must not forget that He was a light to lighten the Gentiles. He gave to them oracles and sibyls, who had the "open eye," and saw the vision of the years, and witnessed to a light shining in the darkness, and brought God nearer to a faithless world. Beneath the gross external polytheism of the multitude there were deep, primitive springs of godliness, pure and undefiled, working out their manifestation in noble lives; and those who have ears to hear can listen to the sound of these ancient streams as they flow into the river of life that makes glad the city of our God. We gain immensely by considering the prophetical spirit of Israel as a typical endowment, and the training of the Jews in the household of God, and under His own immediate eye, as the key to the right apprehension of the training of Greece and Rome. The unconscious prophecies of heathendom pointed in their own way, as well as the articulate divine prophecies of Israel, to the coming of Him who is the Desire of all nations, and the true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. The wise men of Greece saw the sign of the Son of Man in some such way as the Magi saw the star in the East. They were, according to Hegel's beautiful comparison, "Memnons waiting for the day." And not without deep significance did the female soothsayer from the oracle of Dionysius, the prophet-god of the Macedonians, whom Paul and Silas met when they first landed on European soil, greet them with the words, "These men are the servants of the most high God, which show unto us the way of salvation." In that wonderful confession we recognise the last utterance of the oracle of Delphi and the Sibyl of Cumæ, as they were cast out by a higher and truer faith. Their mission was accomplished and their shrine deserted when God's way was known upon the earth, and His saving health among all nations. "And now another Canaan yields To thine all-conquering ark; Fly from the 'old poetic fields,' Ye Paynim shadows dark! Immortal Greece, dear land of glorious lays, Lo! here the unknown God of thine unconscious praise. "The olive wreath, the ivied wand, 'The sword in myrtles drest,' Each legend of the shadowy strand Now wakes a vision blest; As little children lisp, and tell of heaven, So thoughts beyond their thoughts to those high bards were given." CHAPTER IV FOOTPRINTS IN ROME In the fork where a cross-road called the Via Ardeatina branches off from the Appian Way, is a little homely church with the strange name of "Domine quo Vadis." It is associated with one of the most beautiful legends of the early Christian Church touchingly told by St. Ambrose. The Apostle Peter, fleeing from the persecution under Nero that arose after the burning of Rome, came to this spot; and there he saw a vision of the Saviour bearing His cross with His face steadfastly set to go to the city. Filled with wonder and awe, the Apostle exclaimed, "Domine quo Vadis," Lord, whither goest thou? To which the Saviour replied, turning upon Peter the old look of mournful pity when he denied Him in the High Priest's palace at Jerusalem, "Venio Roman iterum crucifigi," I go to Rome to be crucified a second time--and then disappeared. Peter regarding this vision as an indication of his Lord's mind, that he ought not to separate himself from the fortunes of his fellow-Christians, immediately turned back to the city, and met with unflinching courage the martyr's death on the yellow sands of Montorio; being crucified with his head downwards, for he said he was not worthy to die in the same way as his Master. This legend has been made the subject of artistic treatment by Michael Angelo, whose famous statue of our Lord as He appeared in the incident to St. Peter is in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, and was for many years a favourite object of worship, until superseded by the predominant worship of Mary. A cast of this statue stands on the floor in front of the altar in the church of Domine quo Vadis. It represents our Lord in the character of a pilgrim, with a long cross in His hand, and an eager onward look in His face and attitude. It is very simple and impressive, and tells the story very effectually. Besides this plaster statue of the Saviour, a circular stone is placed about the centre of the building, surrounded by a low wooden railing, containing the prints of two feet side by side, impressed upon its surface, as if a person had stopped short on a journey. These are said to be the miraculous prints of the Saviour's feet on the pavement of the road when He appeared to Peter; but like the copy of Michael Angelo's statue, this slab is a facsimile, the original stone being preserved among the relics of the neighbouring basilica of St. Sebastian. Unwilling as one is to disturb a legend so beautiful, and with so touching a moral, there can be no doubt that it was an after-thought to account for the footprints; for the material on which they are impressed being white marble, proves conclusively that the slab could never have formed part of the pavement of the Appian Way, which it is well known was composed of an unusually hard lava, found in a quarry near the tomb of Cæcilia Metella; and the distinct marks of the chisel which the impressions bear--for I examined the original footprints very carefully some years ago--indicate a very earthly origin indeed. The traditional relic in all probability belonged to the early subterranean cemetery--leading by a door out of the left aisle of the church of St. Sebastian, to which the name of Catacomb was originally applied. Slabs with footprints carved upon them are by no means rare in Rome. In the Kircherian Museum, in the room devoted to early Christian antiquities, there is a square slab of white marble with two pairs of footprints elegantly incised upon it, pointed in opposite directions, as if produced by a person going and returning, or by two persons crossing each other. There is no record from what catacomb this sepulchral slab was taken. We have descriptions of other relics of the same kind from the Roman Catacombs,--such as a marble slab bearing upon it the mark of the sole of a foot, with the words "In Deo" incised upon it at the one end, and at the other an inscription in Greek meaning "Januaria in God"; and a slab with a pair of footprints carved on it covered with sandals, well executed, which was placed by a devoted husband over the loculus or tomb of his wife. Impressions of feet shod with shoes or sandals are much rarer than those of bare feet; and a pair of feet is a more customary representation than a single foot, which, when carved, is usually in profile. In a dark, half-subterranean chapel, green with damp, belonging to the church of St. Christina in the town of Bolsena, on the great Volscian Mere of Macaulay, there is a stone let into the front of the altar, and protected by an iron grating, on which is rudely impressed a pair of misshapen feet very like those in the church of St. Sebastian at Rome. In the lower church at Assisi there is a duplicate of these footprints. The legend connected with them says that they were produced by the feet of a Christian lady named Christina, living in the neighbourhood in pagan times, who was thrown into the adjoining lake by her persecutors, with a large flat stone attached to her body. Instead of sinking her, the stone formed a raft which floated her in a standing attitude safely to the opposite shore, where she landed--leaving the prints of her feet upon the stone as an incontestable proof of the reality of the miracle. The altar with which the slab is engrafted--with a stone _baldacchino_ over it--I may mention, was the scene of the famous miracle of Bolsena, when a Bohemian priest, officiating here in 1263, was cured of his sceptical doubts regarding the reality of transubstantiation by the sudden appearance of drops of blood on the Host which he had just consecrated--an incident which formed the subject of Raphael's well-known picture in the Vatican, and in connection with which Pope Urban IV. instituted the festival of Corpus Christi. On the Lucanian coast, near the little fishing town of Agrapoli, not far from Pæstum, there is shown on the limestone rock the print of a foot which is said by the inhabitants to have been made by the Apostle Paul, who lingered here on his way to Rome. In the famous church of Radegonde at Poitiers, dedicated to the queen of Clothaire I.--who afterwards took the veil, and was distinguished for her piety--there is shown on a white marble slab a well-defined footmark, which is called "Le pas de Dieu," and is said to indicate the spot where the Saviour appeared to the tutelary saint of the place. Near the altar of the church of St. Genaro de Poveri in Naples, Mary's foot is shown suspended in a glazed frame. In the middle of the footprint there is an oval figure with the old initials of mother, water, matter. The footprint of Mary is very common in churches in Italy and Spain, where it is highly venerated. The significance of these footmarks has been the subject of much controversy. Some have regarded them as symbols of possession--the word "possession" being supposed to be etymologically derived from the Latin words _pedis positio_, and meaning literally the position of the foot. The adage of the ancient jurists was, "Quicquid pes tuus calcaverit tuum erit." The symbol of a foot was carved on the marble slab that closed the _loculus_ or tomb, to indicate that it was the purchased property of the person who reposed in it. This view, however, has not been generally received with favour by the most competent authorities. A more plausible theory is that which regards the sepulchral footmarks in the Catacombs as votive offerings of gratitude, ordered by Christians to be made in commemoration of the completion of their earthly pilgrimage. It was a common pagan custom for persons who had recovered from disease or injury, to hang up as thankofferings in the shrines of the gods who were supposed to have healed them, images or representations, moulded in metal, clay, or wood, of the part that had been affected. In Italy, votive tablets were dedicated to Iris and Hygiea on which footmarks were engraved; and Hygiea received on one occasion tributes of this kind which recorded the gratitude of some Roman soldiers who escaped the amputation which was inflicted upon their comrades by Hannibal. This custom survived in the early Christian Church, and is still kept up, as any one who visits a modern shrine of pilgrimage in Roman Catholic countries can testify. Among such votive offerings, models and carved and painted representations of feet in stone, or wood, or metal, are frequently suspended before the image of the Madonna, in gratitude for recovery from some disease of the feet. We may suppose that as the ancient Romans, when they returned safely from some long and dangerous or difficult journey undertaken for business or health, dedicated in gratitude a representation of their feet to their favourite god--so the early Christians, who in their original condition were pagans, and still cherished many of their old customs, ordered these peculiar footmarks to be made upon their graves, in token of thankfulness that for them the pilgrimage of life was over, and the endless rest begun. There can be little doubt that the slab with the so-called footprints of St. Christina on it at Bolsena, already alluded to, was a pagan ex-votive offering; for the altar on which it is engrafted occupies the site of one anciently dedicated to Apollo, and the legend of St. Christina gradually crystallised around it. And the footprint in the church of Radegonde at Poitiers was more likely pagan than Christian, for Poitiers had a Roman origin, and numerous Roman remains have been found in the town and neighbourhood. A long and curious list might be made of the miraculous impressions said to have been left by our Saviour's feet on the places where He stood. In the centre of the platform at Jerusalem on which the Temple of Solomon stood, covered by the dome of the Sakrah Mosque, a portion of the rough natural limestone rock rises several feet above the marble pavement, and is the principal object of veneration in the place. It has an excavated chamber in one corner, with an aperture through the rocky roof, which has given to the rock the name of "lapis pertusus," or perforated stone. On this rock there are natural or artificial marks, which the successors of the Caliph Omar believed to be the prints of the angel Gabriel's fingers, and the mark of Mohammed's foot, and that of his camel, which performed the whole journey from Mecca to Jerusalem in four bounds. The stone, it is said, originally fell from heaven, and was used as a seat by the venerable prophets of Jerusalem. So long as they enjoyed the gift of prophecy, the stone remained steady under them; but when the gift was withdrawn, and the persecuted seers were compelled to flee for safety to other lands, the stone rose to accompany them: whereupon the angel Gabriel interposed, and prevented the departure of the prophetical chair, leaving on it indelibly the marks of his fingers. It was then supernaturally nailed to its rocky bed by seven brass nails. When any great crisis in the world's fortunes happens, the head of one of these nails disappears; and when they are all gone, the day of judgment will come. There are now only three left, and therefore the Mohammedans believe that the end of all things is not far off. When the Crusaders took possession of the sacred city, they altered the Mohammedan legend, and attributed the mysterious footprint to our Lord when He went out of the Temple to escape the fury of the Jews. There can be no doubt that the marks on the rock are prehistoric, and belong to the primitive worship of Mount Moriah, long before the august associations of Biblical history gathered around it. To this spot the Jews used to come in the fourth century and wail over the rock, and _anoint it with oil_, as if carrying out some dim tradition of former primitive libations. In the Octagon Chapel of the Church of the Ascension on the top of the Mount of Olives, so well known for the magnificent view which it commands of Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, is shown the native rock which forms the summit of the hill from which our Lord ascended into heaven. On this rock, it is said by tradition, He left the mark of His footsteps. Arculf, who visited Palestine about the year 700, says: "On the ground in the midst of the church are to be seen the last prints in the dust of our Lord's feet, and the roof appears above where He ascended; and although the earth is daily carried away by believers, yet still it remains as before, and retains the same impression of the feet." Jerome mentions that in his time the same custom was observed, followed by the same singular result. Later writers, however, asserted that the impressions were made, not in the ground, or in the dust, but on the solid rock; and that originally there were two, one of them having been stolen long ago by the Mohammedans, who broke off the fragment of stone on which it was stamped. Sir John Mandeville describes the appearance of the surviving footmark as it looked in his day, 1322: "From that mount our Lord Jesus Christ ascended to heaven on Ascension Day, and yet there appears the impress of His left foot in the stone." What is now seen in the place is a simple rude cavity in the natural rock, which bears but the slightest resemblance to the human foot. It may have been artificially sculptured, or it may be only one of those curious hollows into which limestone rocks are frequently weathered. In either case it naturally lent itself to the sacred legend that has gathered around it. In the Kaaba, the most ancient and remarkable building of the great Mosque at Mecca, is preserved a miraculous stone with the print of Abraham's feet impressed upon it. It is said, by Mohammedan tradition, to be the identical stone which served the patriarch as a scaffold when he helped Ishmael to rebuild the Kaaba, which had been originally constructed by Seth, and was afterwards destroyed by the Deluge. While Abraham stood upon this stone, it rose and sank with him as he built the walls of the sacred edifice. The relic is said to be a fragment of the same gray Mecca stone of which the whole building is constructed,--in this respect differing from the famous black stone brought to Abraham and Ishmael by the angel Gabriel, and built into the north-east corner of the exterior wall of the Kaaba, which is said by scientific men to be either a meteorite or fragment of volcanic basalt. It is popularly supposed to have been originally a jacinth of dazzling whiteness, but to have been made black as ink by the touch of sinful man, and that it can only recover its original purity and brilliancy at the day of judgment. The millions of kisses and touches impressed by the faithful have worn the surface considerably; but in addition to this, traces of cup-shaped hollows have been observed on it. There can be no doubt that both these relics associated with Abraham are of high antiquity, and may have belonged to the prehistoric worship which marked Mecca as a sacred site, long before the followers of the Prophet had set up their shrine there. In the sacred Mosque of Hebron, built over the cave of Machpelah, is pointed out a footprint of the ordinary size on a slab of stone, variously called that of Adam or of Mohammed. It is said to have been brought from Mecca some six hundred years ago, and is enclosed in a recess at the back of the shrine of Abraham, where it is placed on a sort of shelf about three feet above the floor. On the margin of the tank, in the court of the ruined mosque at Baalbec, there are shown four giant footmarks, which are supposed to have been impressed by some patriarch or prophet, but are more likely to have been connected with the ancient religion of Canaan, which lingered here to the latest days of Roman paganism. In the great Druse shrine of Neby Schaib near Hattin there is a square block of limestone in the centre of which is a piece of alabaster containing the imprint of a human foot of natural size, with the toes very clearly defined. The Druses reverently kiss this impression, asserting that the rock exudes moisture, and that it is never dry. There is a split in the rock across the centre of the footprint, which they account for by saying that when the prophet stepped here he split the rock with his tread. In Damascus there was at one time a sacred building called the Mosque of the Holy Foot, in which there was a stone having upon it the print of the feet of Moses. Ibn Batuta saw this curious relic early in the fourteenth century; but both the mosque and the stone have since disappeared. On the eastern side of the Jordan a Bedouin tribe, called the Adwân, worship the print left on a stone by the roadside by a prophetess while mounting her camel, in order to proceed on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The Kadriyeh dervishes of Egypt adore a gigantic shoe, as an emblem of the sacred foot of the founder of their sect; and near Madura, a large leather shoe is offered in worship to a deity that, like Diana, presides over the chase. To the student of comparative religion the Phrabat, or Sacred Foot of Buddha, opens up a most interesting field of investigation. In the East, impressions of the feet of this wonderful person are as common as those of Christ and the Virgin Mary in the West. Buddhists are continually increasing the number by copies of the originals; and native painters of Siam who are ambitious of distinction often present these sacred objects to the king, adorned with the highest skill of their art, as the most acceptable gift they can offer. The sacred footprint enters into the very essence of the Buddhist religion; it claims from the Indo-Chinese nations a degree of veneration scarcely yielding to that which they pay to Buddha himself. It is very ancient, and was framed to embody in one grand symbol a complete system of theology and theogony, which has been gradually forgotten or perverted by succeeding ages to the purposes of a ridiculous superstition. It is elaborately carved and painted with numerous symbols, each of which has a profound significance. The liturgy of the Siamese connected with it consists of fifty measured lines of eight syllables each, and contains the names of a hundred and eight distinct symbolical objects,--such as the lion, the elephant, the sun and moon in their cars drawn by oxen, the horse, the serpents, the spiral building, the tree, the six spheres, the five lakes, and the altar--all of which are represented on the foot. This list of symbolical allusions is recited by the priests, and forms an essential part of the ritual of worship. The Siamese priests say that any mortal about to arrive at the threshold of Nivána has his feet emblazoned spontaneously with all the symbols to be seen on the Phrabat. The Siamese acknowledge only five genuine Phrabats made by the actual feet of Buddha. They are called the Five Impressions of the Divine Foot. The first is on a rock on the coast of the peninsula of Malacca, where, beside the mark of Buddha's foot, there is also one of a dog's foot, which is much venerated by the natives. The second Phrabat is on the Golden Mountain, the hill with the holy footstep of Buddha, in Siam, which Buddha visited on one occasion. The impression is that of the right foot, and is covered with a maradop, a pyramidal canopy supported by gilded pilasters. The hollow of the footstep is generally filled with water, which the devotee sprinkles over his body to wash away the stain of his sin. The third Phrabat is on a hill on the banks of the Jumna, in the midst of an extensive and deep forest, which spreads over broken ranges of hills. The Phrabat is on a raised terrace, like that on which most of the Buddhist temples are built. The pyramidal structure which shelters it is of hewn stone ninety feet high, and is like the _baldacchino_ of a Roman Catholic church. There are four impressions on different terraces, each rising above the other, corresponding to the four descents of the deity. The fourth Phrabat is also on the banks of the Jumna. But the fifth and most celebrated of all is the print of the sacred foot on the top of the Amala Sri Pada, or Adam's Peak, in Ceylon. On the highest point of this hill there is a pagoda-like building, supported on slender pillars, and open on every side to the winds. Underneath this canopy, in the centre of a huge mass of gneiss and hornblende, forming the living rock, there is the rude outline of a gigantic foot about five feet long, and of proportionate breadth. Sir Emerson Tennent, who has given a full and interesting account of this last Phrabat in his work on Ceylon, supposes that it was originally a natural hollow in the rock, afterwards artificially enlarged and shaped into its present appearance; but whatever may have been its origin at first, its present shape is undoubtedly of great, perhaps prehistoric, antiquity. In the sacred books of the Buddhists it is referred to, upwards of three hundred years before Christ, as the impression left of Buddha's foot when he visited the earth after the Deluge, with gifts and blessings for his worshippers; and in the first century of the Christian era it is recorded that a king of Cashmere went on a pilgrimage to Ceylon for the express purpose of adoring this _Sri-pada_, or Sacred Footprint. The Gnostics of the first Christian centuries attributed it to Ieu, the first man; and in one of the oldest manuscripts in existence, now in the British Museum--the Coptic version of the "Faithful Wisdom," said to have been written by the great Gnostic philosopher Valentinus in the fourth century--there is mention made of this venerable relic, the Saviour being said to inform the Virgin Mary that He has appointed the Spirit Kalapataraoth as guardian over it. From the Gnostics the Mohammedans received the tradition; for they believe that when Adam was expelled from Paradise he lived many years on this mountain alone, before he was reunited to Eve on Mount Arafath, which overhangs Mecca. The early Portuguese settlers in the island attributed the sacred footprint to St. Thomas, who is said by tradition to have preached the Gospel, after the ascension of Christ, in Persia and India, and to have suffered martyrdom at Malabar, where he founded the Christian Church, which still goes by the name of the Christians of St. Thomas; and they believed that all the trees on the mountain, and for half a league round about its base, bent their crowns in the direction of this sacred object--a mark of respect which they affirmed could only be offered to the footstep of an apostle. The Brahmins have appropriated the sacred mark as the footprint of their goddess Siva. At the present day the Buddhists are the guardians of the shrine; but the worshippers of other creeds are not prevented from paying their homage at it, and they meet in peace and goodwill around the object of their common adoration. By this circumstance the Christian visitor is reminded of the sacred footprint, already alluded to, on the rock of the Church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives, which is part of a mosque, and has five altars for the Greek, Latin, Armenian, Syrian, and Coptic Churches, all of whom climb the hill on Ascension Day to celebrate the festival; the Mohammedans, too, coming in and offering their prayers at the same shrine. The worship paid on the mountain of the sacred foot in Ceylon consists of offerings of the crimson flowers of the rhododendron, which grow freely among the crags around, accompanied by various genuflections and shoutings, and concluding with the striking of an ancient bell, and a draught from the sacred well which springs up a little below the summit. These ceremonies point to a very primitive mode of worship; and it is probable that, as Adam's Peak was venerated from a remote antiquity by the aborigines of Ceylon, being connected by them with the worship of the sun, the sacred footprint may belong to this prehistoric cult. Models of the footprint are shown in various temples in Ceylon. Besides these five great Phrabats, there are others of inferior celebrity in the East. In the P'hra Pathom of the Siamese, Buddha is said to have left impressions of his feet at Lauca and Chakravan. At Ava there is a Phrabat near Prome which is supposed to be a type of the creation. Another is seen in the same country on a large rock lying amidst the hills a day's journey west of Meinbu. Dr. Leyden says that it is in the country of the Lan that all the celebrated founders of the religion of Buddha are reported to have left their most remarkable vestiges. The traces of the sacred foot are sparingly scattered over Pegu, Ava, and Arracan. But among the Lan they are concentrated; and thither devotees repair to worship at the sacred steps of Pra Kukuson, Pra Konnakan, Pra Puttakatsop, and Pra Samutacadam. The footsteps of Vishnu are also frequent in India. Sir William Jones tells us that in the Puranas mention is made of a white mountain on which King Sravana sat meditating on the divine foot of Vishnu at the station Trevirana. When the Hindoos entered into possession of Gayá--one of the four most sacred places of Buddhism--they found the popular feeling in favour of the sacred footprint there so strong that they were obliged to incorporate the relic into their own religious system, and to attribute it to Vishnu. Thousands of Hindoo pilgrims from all parts of India now visit the shrine every year. Indeed to the worshippers of Vishnu the Temple of Vishnupad at Gayá is one of the most holy in all India; and as we are informed in the great work of Dr. Mitra, the later religious books earnestly enjoin that no one should fail, at least once in his lifetime, to visit the spot. They commend the wish for numerous offspring on the ground that, out of the many, one son might visit Gayá, and by performing the rites prescribed in connection with the holy footstep, rescue his father from eternal destruction. The stone is a large hemispherical block of granite, with an uneven top, bearing the carvings of two human feet. The frequent washings which it daily undergoes have worn out the peculiar sectorial marks which the feet contain, and even the outlines of the feet themselves are but dimly perceptible. English architects are now engaged in preserving the ruins of the splendid temple associated with this footprint, where the ministry of India's great teacher--the "Light of Asia"--began. In the Indian Museum at Calcutta there is a large slab of white marble bearing the figure of a human foot surrounded by two dragons. It was brought from a temple in Burmah, where it used to be worshipped as a representation of Buddha's foot. It is seven inches long and three inches broad, and is divided into a hundred and eight compartments, each of which contains a different mystical mark. At Gangautri, on the banks of the Ganges, is a wooden temple containing a footprint of Ganga on a black stone. In a strange subterranean temple, inside the great fort at Allahabad, there are two footprints of Vishnu, along with footprints of Rama, and of his wife Sita. In India the "kaddam rassul," or supposed impression of Mohammed's foot in clay, which is kept moist, and enclosed in a sort of cage, is not unfrequently placed at the head of the gravestones of the followers of Islam. On the summit of a mountain one hundred and thirty-six miles south of Bhagalpur is one of the principal places of Jain worship in India. On the table-land are twenty small Jain temples on different craggy heights, which resemble an extinguisher in shape. In each of them is to be found the Vasu Padukas--a sacred foot similar to that which is seen in the Jain temple at Champanagar. The sect of the Jain in South Bihar has two places of pilgrimage. One is a tank choked with weeds and lotus-flowers, which has a small island in the centre containing a temple, with two stones in the interior, on one of which is an inscription and the impression of the two feet of Gautama--the most common object of worship of the Jains in this district. The other is the place in the same part of the country where the body of Mahavira, one of the twenty-four lawgivers, was burnt about six centuries before Christ. It resembles the other temple, and is situated in an island in a tank. The island is terraced round, and in the cavity of the beehive-like top there is the representation of Mahavira's feet, to which crowds of pilgrims are continually flocking. In the centre of the Jain temple at Puri, where this remarkable man died, there are also three representations of his feet, and one impression of the feet of each of his eleven disciples. But the subject of footprints carries us farther back than the ages of the great historic founders of religion. In almost every part of the earth footprints have been found, cut in the solid rock or impressed upon boulders and other stones. These artificial tracks, like the strange human footprint which Robinson Crusoe discovered on the beach of his lonely island, excite the imagination by their mystery, and open up a vista into a hitherto unexplored world of infinite suggestion. They seem the natural successors of those tracks of birds and reptiles on sandstone and other slabs which form one of the most interesting features in every geological museum; the material on which they are impressed having allowed the substantial forms of the creatures themselves to disappear, while it has carefully preserved the more shadowy and incidental memorials of their life. The naturalist can tell us from the ephemeral impressions on the soft primeval mud, not only what was the true nature of the obscure creatures that produced them untold ages ago, but also the direction in which they were moving along the shore, and the state of the tide and the weather, and the appearance of the country at the time. But regarding those literal human "footprints on the sands of time," which have been left behind by our prehistoric ancestors, we can make no such accurate scientific inductions. They have given rise to much speculation, being considered by many persons to be real impressions of human feet, dating from a time when the material on which they were stamped was still in a state of softness. Superstition has invested them with a sacred veneration, and legends of a wild and mystical character have gathered around them. The slightest acquaintance with the results of geological research has sufficed to dispel this delusion, and to show that these mysterious marks could not have been produced by human beings while the rocks were in a state of fusion; and consequently no intelligent observer now holds this theory of their origin. But superstition dies hard; and there are persons who, though confronted with the clearest evidences of science, still refuse to abandon their old obscurantist ideas. They prefer a supernatural theory that allows free scope to their fancy and religious instinct, to one that offers a more prosaic explanation. There is a charm in the mystery connected with these dim imaginings which they would not wish dispelled by the clear daylight of scientific knowledge. In our own country, footmarks on rocks and stones are by no means of unfrequent occurrence. Some of them, indeed, although associated with myths and fairy tales, have doubtless been produced by natural causes, being the mere chance effects of weathering, without any meaning except to a geologist. But there are others that have been unmistakably produced by artificial means, and have a human history and significance. In Scotland Tanist stones--so called from the Gaelic word _tanaiste_, a chief, or the next heir to an estate--have been frequently found. These stones were used in connection with the coronation of a king or the inauguration of a chief. The custom dates from the remotest antiquity. We see traces of it in the Bible,--as when it is mentioned that "Abimelech was made king by the oak of the pillar that was in Shechem"; and "Adonijah slew sheep and oxen and fat cattle by the stone of Zoheleth, which is by En-rogel, and called all his brethren the king's sons, and all the men of Judah the king's servants"; and that when Joash was anointed king by Jehoiada, "the king stood by a pillar, as the manner was"; and again, King Josiah "stood by a pillar" to make a covenant, "and all the people stood to the covenant." The stone connected with the ceremony was regarded as the most sacred attestation of the engagement entered into between the newly-elected king or chief and his people. It was placed in some conspicuous position, upon the top of a "moot-hill," or the open-air place of assembly. Upon it was usually carved an impression of a human foot; and into this impression, during the ceremony of inauguration, the king or chief placed his own right foot, in token that he was installed by right into the possessions of his predecessors, and that he would walk in their footsteps. It may be said literally, that in this way the king or chief came to an understanding with his people; and perhaps the common saying of "stepping into a dead man's shoes" may have originated from this primitive custom. The most famous of the Tanist stones is the Coronation-stone in Westminster Abbey--the Lia Fail, or Stone of Destiny--on which the ancient kings of Scotland sat or stood when crowned, and which forms a singular link of connection between the primitive rites that entered into the election of a king by the people, and the gorgeous ceremonies by which the hereditary sovereigns of England are installed into their high office. There is no footmark, however, on this stone. It may be mentioned that before the arrival of the Scottish stone there had been for ages a similar stone at Westminster Hall, which gave the name to and was the original place of sitting for the Court of King's Bench. It was no doubt a relic of the primitive Folkmoot of Westminster, which has developed into the Parliament of England. In the neighbourhood of Upsala is the Mora stone, celebrated in Swedish history as the spot where the kings were publicly elected and received the homage of their subjects. A more characteristic specimen of a Tanist stone may be seen on the top of Dun Add, a rocky isolated hill about two hundred feet high, in Argyleshire, not far from Ardrishaig. On a smooth flat piece of rock which protrudes above the surface there is carved the mark of a right foot, covered with the old _cuaran_ or thick stocking, eleven inches long and four inches and a half broad at the widest part, the heel being an inch less. It is sunk about half an inch in the rock, and is very little weather-worn--the reason being, perhaps, that it has been protected for ages by the turf that has grown over it, and has only recently been exposed. Quite close to it is a smooth polished basin, eleven inches in diameter and eight deep, also scooped out of the rock. With these two curious sculptures is associated a local myth. Ossian, who lived for a time in the neighbourhood, was one day hunting on the mountain above Loch Fyne. A stag which his dogs had brought to bay charged him, and he fled precipitately. Coming to the hill above Kilmichael, he strode in one step across the valley to the top of Rudal Hill, from whence he took a gigantic leap to the summit of Dun Add. But when he alighted he was somewhat exhausted by his great effort, and fell on his knee, and stretched out his hands to prevent him from falling backwards. He thereupon left on the rocky top of Dun Add the enduring impression of his feet and knee which we see at the present day. This myth is of comparatively recent date, and is interesting as showing that all recollection of the original use of the footmark and basin had died away for many ages in the district. There can be no doubt that the footmark indicates the spot to have been at one time the scene of the inauguration of the kings or chiefs of the region; and the basin was in all probability one of those primitive mortars which were in use for grinding corn long before the invention of the quern. Dun Add is one of the oldest sites in Scotland. It has the hoary ruins of a nameless fort, and a well which is traditionally said to ebb and flow with the tide. It was here that the Dalriadic Scots first settled; and Captain Thomas, who is an authority on this subject, supposes that the remarkable relic on Dun Add was made for the inauguration of Fergus More Mac Erca, the first king of Dalriada, who died in Scotland at the beginning of the sixth century, and to have been the exact measure of his foot. King in his _Munimenta Antiqua_ mentions that in the island of Islay there was on a mound or hill where the high court of judicature sat, a large stone fixed, about seven feet square, in which there was a cavity or deep impression made to receive the feet of Macdonald, who was crowned King of the Isles standing on this stone, and swore that he would continue his vassals in the possession of their lands, and do impartial justice to all his subjects. His father's sword was then put into his hand, and the Bishop of Argyle and seven priests anointed him king in presence of all the heads of the tribes in the Isles and mainland, and at the same time an orator rehearsed a catalogue of his ancestors. In the year 1831, when a mound locally known as the "Fairy Knowe," in the parish of Carmylie, Forfarshire, was levelled in the course of some agricultural improvements in the place, there was found, besides stone cists and a bronze ring, a rude boulder almost two tons in weight, on the under side of which was sculptured the mark of a human foot. The mound or tumulus was in all likelihood a moot-hill, where justice was dispensed and the chieftains of the district were elected. In the same county, in the wild recesses of Glenesk, near Lord Dalhousie's shooting-lodge of Milldam, there is a rough granite boulder, on the upper surface of which a small human foot is scooped out with considerable accuracy, showing traces even of the toes. It is known in the glen as the "Fairy's Footmark." There can be no doubt that this stone was once used in connection with the ceremonial of inaugurating a chief. A similar stone, carved with a representation of two feet, on which the primitive chiefs stood when publicly invested with the insignia of office, is still, or was lately, in existence in Ladykirk, at Burwick, South Ronaldshay, Orkney. A local tradition, that originated long after the Pictish chiefs passed away, and a new Norse race, ignorant of the customs of their predecessors, came in, says that the stone in question was used by St. Magnus as a boat to ferry him over the Pentland Firth; while an earlier tradition looked upon it as a miraculous whale which opportunely appeared at the prayer of the saint when about to be overwhelmed by a storm, and carried him on its back safely to the shore, where it was converted into a stone, as a perpetual memorial of the marvellous occurrence. In North Yell, Shetland, there is a rude stone lying on the hillside, on which is sculptured with considerable skill the mark of a human foot. It is known in the district as the "Giant's Step"; another of the same kind, it is said, being over in Unst. It is undoubtedly the stone on which, in Celtic times, the native kings of this part were crowned. About a mile from Keill, near Campbeltown, a very old site, closely connected with the early ecclesiastical history of Scotland, may be seen on a rock what is locally called the "Footprint of St. Columba," which he made when he landed on this shore on one occasion from Iona. It is very rude and much effaced; but it carries the imagination much farther back than the days of St. Columba,--when a pagan chief or king was inaugurated here to rule over the district. In England and Wales there are several interesting examples of footprints on boulders and rocks. A remarkable Tanist stone--which, however, has no carving upon it, I believe--stands, among a number of other and smaller boulders, on the top of a hill near the village of Long Compton, in Cumberland. It is called "The King"; and the popular rhyme of the country people-- "If Long Compton thou canst see, Then king of England thou shalt be"-- points to the fact that the stone must have been once used as a coronation-stone. Not far from the top of a hill near Barmouth in Wales, in the middle of a rough path, may be seen a flat stone, in which there is a footmark about the natural size, locally known as "Llan Maria," or Mary's step, because the Virgin Mary once, it is supposed, put her foot on this rock, and then walked down the hill to a lower height covered with roots of oak-trees. This impression on the stone is associated with several stone circles and cromlechs--one of which bears upon it the reputed marks of Arthur's fingers, and is called Arthur's Quoit--and with a spring of water and a grove, as the path leading to the hill is still known by a Welsh name which means Grove Lane; and these associations undoubtedly indicate that the spot was once a moot-hill or prehistoric sanctuary, where religious and inauguration rites were performed. At Smithhill's Hall, near Bolton-le-Moors, there is still to be seen an object of curiosity to a large number of visitors--the print of a man's foot in the flagstone. It is said to have been produced by George Marsh, who suffered martyrdom during the persecutions of Queen Mary in 1555. When on one occasion the truth of his words was called in question by his enemies, he stamped his foot upon the stone on which he stood, which ever after bore the ineffaceable impression as a miraculous testimony to his veracity. This story must have been an after-thought, to account for what we may suppose to have been a prehistoric Tanist stone. In Ireland footmarks are very numerous, and are attributed by the peasantry to different saints. Mr. and Mrs. S.C. Hall, in their account of Ireland, refer to several curious examples which are regarded by the people with superstitious reverence, and are the occasions of religious pilgrimage. Near the chapel of Glenfinlough, in King's County, there is a ridge with a boulder on it called the Fairy's Stone or the Horseman's Stone, which presents on its flat surface, besides cup-like hollows, crosses, and other markings, rudely-carved representations of the human foot. On a stone near Parsonstown, called Fin's Seat, there are similar impressions--also associated with crosses and cup-shaped hollows which are traditionally said to be the marks of Fin Mac Coul's thumb and fingers. On an exposed and smooth surface of rock on the northern slope of the Clare Hills, in the townland of Dromandoora, there is the engraved impression of a foot clothed with a sandal; and near it is sculptured on the rock a figure resembling the caduceus of Mercury, while there are two cromlechs in the immediate vicinity. The inauguration-stone of the Macmahons still exists on the hill of Lech--formerly called Mullach Leaght, or "hill of the stone"--three miles south of Meaghan; but the impression of the foot was unfortunately effaced by the owner of the farm about the year 1809. In the garden of Belmont on the Greencastle road, about a mile from Londonderry, there is the famous stone of St. Columba, held in great veneration as the inauguration-stone of the ancient kings of Aileach, and which St. Patrick is said to have consecrated with his blessing. On this remarkable stone, which is about seven feet square, composed of a hard gneiss, and quite undressed by the chisel, are sculptured two feet, right and left, about ten inches long each. Boullaye le Gouze mentions that in 1644 the print of St. Fin Bar's foot might be seen on a stone in the cemetery of the Cathedral of Cork; it has long since disappeared. In the Killarney region is the promontory of Coleman's Eye--so called after a legendary person who leapt across the stream, and left his footprints impressed in the solid rock on the other side. These impressions are considered Druidic, and are pointed out as such to the curious stranger by the guides. Near an old church situated on the southern slope of Knockpatrick, in the parish of Graney in Leinster, there is a large flat granite rock with the impression of two feet clearly defined on its surface. Local tradition assigns these footprints to St. Patrick, who addressed the people on this spot, and left behind these enduring signs of his presence. Allusion is made to them in St. Fiaca's Hymn to St. Patrick--"He pressed his foot on the stone; its traces remain, it wears not." Footprints in connection with St. Patrick are to be found in many localities in Ireland, as, for instance, on the seashore south of Skerries, County Dublin, where the apostle landed; and at Skerries, County Antrim, there are marks which are believed to be the footprints of the angel who appeared to St. Patrick. In Ossory two localities are noted as possessing St. Patrick's footprints. So common are the curious sculptures under consideration in Norway and Sweden, that they are known by the distinct name of _Fotsulor_, or Footsoles. They are marks of either naked feet, or of feet shod with primitive sandals. On a rock at Brygdæa in Westerbotten, in Norway, there are no less than thirty footmarks carved on a rock at an equal distance from each other. In other parts of Norway these footprints are mixed up with rude outlines of ships, wheels, and other _hällristningar_, or rock-sculptures. Holmberg has figured many of them in his interesting work entitled _Scandinaviens Hällristningar_. At Lökeberg Bohnslau, Sweden, there is a group of ten pairs of footmarks, associated with cup-shaped hollows and ship-carvings; and at Backa, in the same district, several pairs of feet, or rather shoe-marks, are engraved upon a rock. In Denmark not a few examples of artificial foot-tracks have been observed and described by Dr. Petersen. One was found on a slab belonging to the covering of a gallery in the inside of a tomb in the island of Seeland, and another on one of the blocks of stone surrounding a tumulus in the island of Laaland. In both cases the soles of the feet are represented as being covered; and in all probability they belong to the late stone or earlier bronze age. With these sepulchral marks are associated curious Danish legends, which refer them to real impressions of human feet. The islands of Denmark were supposed to have been made by enchanters, who wished for greater facilities for going to and fro, and dropped them in the sea as stations or stepping-stones on their way; and hence, in a region where the popular imagination poetises the commonest material objects, and is saturated with stories of elves and giants, with magic swords, and treasures guarded by dragons, it was not difficult to conclude that these mysterious foot-sculptures were made by the tread of supernatural beings. Near the station of Sens, in France, there is a curious dolmen, on one of whose upright stones or props are carved two human feet. And farther north, in Brittany, upon a block of stone in the barrow or tumulus of Petit Mont at Arzon, may be seen carved an outline of the soles of two human feet, right and left, with the impressions of the toes very distinctly cut, like the marks left by a person walking on the soft sandy shore of the sea. They are surrounded by a number of waving circular and serpentine lines exceedingly curious. On Calais pier may be seen a footprint where Louis XVIII. landed in 1814; and on the rocks of Magdesprung, a village in the Hartz Mountains, a couple of hundred feet apart, are two immense footprints, which tradition ascribes to a leap made by a huge giantess from the clouds for the purpose of rescuing one of her maidens from the violence of an ancient baron. In not a few places in our own country and on the Continent, rough misshapen marks on rocks and stones, bearing a fanciful resemblance to the outline of the human foot, have been supposed by popular superstition to have been made by Satan. Every classical student is familiar with the account which Herodotus gives of the print of Hercules shown by the Scythians in his day upon a rock near the river Tyras, the modern Dnieper. It was said to resemble the footstep of a man, only that it was two cubits long. He will also recall the description given by the same gossipy writer of the Temple of Perseus in the Thebaic district of Egypt, in which a sandal worn by the god, two cubits in length, occasionally made its appearance as a token of the visit of Perseus to the earth, and a sign of prosperity to the land. Pythagoras measured similar footprints at Olympia, and calculated "ex pede Herculem"! Still more famous was the mark on the volcanic rock on the shore of Lake Regillus--the scene of the memorable battle in which the Romans, under the dictator Posthumius, defeated the powerful confederation of the Latin tribes under the Tarquins. According to tradition, the Roman forces were assisted by Castor and Pollux, who helped them to achieve their signal victory. The mark was supposed to have been left by the horse of one of the great twins "who fought so well for Rome," as Macaulay says in his spirited ballad. On the way to the famous convent of Monte Casino, very near the door, there is a cross in the middle of the road. In front of it a grating covers the mark of a knee, which is said to have been left in the rock by St. Benedict, when he knelt there to ask a blessing from heaven before laying the foundation-stone of his convent. As the site of the monastery was previously occupied by a temple of Apollo, and a grove sacred to Venus, where the inhabitants of the surrounding locality worshipped as late as the sixth century,--to which circumstance Dante alludes,--it is probable that the sacred mark on the rock may have belonged to the old pagan idolatry, and have been a cup-marked stone connected with sacrificial libations. On many rocks of the United States of America may be seen human footprints, either isolated or connected with other designs belonging to the pictorial system of the Aborigines, and commemorating incidents which they thought worthy of being preserved. In the collection of the Smithsonian Museum are three large stone slabs having impressions of the human foot. On two slabs of sandstone, carefully cut from rocks on the banks of the Missouri, may be seen respectively two impressions of feet, carved apparently with moccasins, such as are worn at the present day by the Sioux and other Indians. The other specimen is a flat boulder of white quartz, obtained in Gasconade County, Missouri, which bears on one of its sides the mark of a naked foot, each toe being distinctly scooped out and indicated. The footmark is surrounded by a number of cup-shaped depressions. In many parts of Dacotah, where the route is difficult to find, rocks occur with human footprints carved upon them which were probably meant to serve as geographical landmarks--as they invariably indicate the best route to some Indian encampment or to the shallow parts of some deep river. Among other places these footprints have been met with on the Blue Mountains between Georgia and North Carolina, and also on the Kenawha River. Some stir was made two years ago by the reported discovery of the prints of human feet in a stone quarry on the coast of Lake Managua in Nicaragua. The footprints are remarkably sharp and distinct; one seems that of a little child. The stone in which they are impressed is a spongy volcanic tuff, and the layer superimposed upon them in the quarry was of similar material. These prehistoric footprints were doubtless accidentally impressed upon the volcanic stone, and would seem to throw back the age of man on the earth to a most remote antiquity. In Equatorial Africa footprints have also been found, and are associated with the folklore of the country. Stanley, in his _Dark Continent_, tells us that in the legendary history of Uganda, Kimera, the third in descent from Ham, was so large and heavy that he made marks in the rocks wherever he trod. The impression of one of his feet is shown at Uganda on a rock near the capital, Ulagolla. It was made by one of his feet slipping while he was in the act of hurling his spear at an elephant. In the South Sea Islands department of the British Museum is an impression of a gigantic footstep five feet in length. The connection of prehistoric footprints with sacred sites and places of sepulture would indicate that they had a religious significance--an idea still further strengthened by the fact of their being frequently associated with holy wells and groves, and with cup-shaped marks on cromlechs or sacrificial altars, which are supposed to have been used for the purpose of receiving libations; while their universal distribution points to a hoary antiquity, when a primitive natural cultus spread over the whole earth, traces of which are found in every land, behind the more elaborate and systematic faith which afterwards took its place. They are probably among the oldest stone-carvings that have been left to us, and were executed by rude races with rude implements either in the later stone or early bronze age. Their subsequent dedication to holy persons in Christian times was in all likelihood only a survival of their original sacred use long ages after the memory of the particular rites and ceremonies connected with them passed away. A considerable proportion of the sacred marks are said to be impressions of the female foot, attributed to the Virgin Mary; and in this circumstance we may perhaps trace a connection with the worship of the receptive element in nature, which was also a distinctive feature of primitive religion. It is strange how traces of this primitive worship of footprints survive, not merely in the mythical stories and superstitious practices connected with the objects themselves, but also in curious rites and customs that at first sight might seem to have had no connection with them. The throwing of the shoe after a newly-married couple is said to refer to the primitive mode of marriage by capture; but there is equal plausibility in referring it to the prehistoric worship of the footprint as a symbol of the powers of nature. To the same original source we may perhaps attribute the custom connected with the Levirate law in the Bible, when the woman took off the shoe of the kinsman who refused to marry her, whose name should be afterwards called in Israel "the house of him that hath his shoe loosed." In regard to the general subject, it may be said that we can discern in the primitive adoration of footprints a somewhat advanced stage in the religious thoughts of man. He has got beyond total unconsciousness of God, and beyond totemism or the mere worship of natural objects--trees, streams, stones, animals, etc. He has reached the conception of a deity who is of a different nature from the objects around him, and whose place of abode is elsewhere. He worships the impression of the foot for the sake of the being who left it; and the impression helps him to realise the presence and to form a picture of his deity. That deity is not a part of nature, because he can make nature plastic to his tread, and leave his footmark on the hard rock as if it were soft mud. He thinks of him as the author and controller of nature, and for the first time rises to the conception of a supernatural being. CHAPTER V THE ROMAN FORUM No spot on earth has a grander name or a more imposing history than the Roman Forum. Its origin takes us far back to geological ages--to a period modern indeed in the inarticulate annals of the earth, but compared with which even those great periods which mark the rise and fall of empires are but as the running of the sands in an hour-glass. It opens up a wonderful chapter in the earth's stony book. Everywhere on the site and in the neighbourhood of Rome striking indications of ancient volcanoes abound. The whole region is as certainly of igneous origin, and was the centre of as violent fiery action, as the vicinity of Naples. The volcanic energy of Italy seems to have begun first in this district, and when exhausted there, to have passed gradually to the south, where Vesuvius, Etna, and Stromboli witness to the great furnace that is still burning fiercely under the beautiful land. No spectacle could have been more sublime than that which the Roman Campagna presented at this period, when no less than ten volcanoes were in full or intermittent action, and poured their clouds of smoke and flame into the lurid sky all around the horizon. Up to the foot of the mountains the sea covered the vast plain; and the action of these waves of fire and steaming floods forms a natural epic of the grandest order. Prodigious quantities of ashes and cinders were discharged from the craters; and these, deposited and hardened by long pressure under water, formed the reddish-brown earthy rock called tufa, of which the seven hills of Rome are composed. When the sea retired, or rather when the land rose suddenly or gradually, and the volcanoes became extinct, the streams which descended from the mountains and watered the recovered land spread themselves out in numerous fresh-water lakes, which stood an hundred and fifty feet higher than the present bed of the Tiber. In these lakes were formed two kinds of fresh-water strata--the first composed of sand and marl; and the second, where mineral springs gushed forth through the volcanic rock, of travertine--a peculiar reddish-brown or yellow calcareous rock, of which St. Peter's and many of the buildings of modern Rome are composed. We find lacustrine marls on the sides of the Esquiline Hill where it slopes down into the Forum, and fresh-water bivalve and univalve shells in the ground under the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius on the Capitol; while on the face of the Aventine Hill, overhanging the Tiber at a height of ninety feet, is a cliff of travertine, which is half a mile long. The lakes which formed these deposits must have covered their sites for many ages. At last, by some new change of level, the lakes retired, and the Tiber scooped out for itself its present channel to the sea. When man came upon the scene we have no definite information; but numerous flints and stone-weapons have been found among the black pumice breccias of the Campagna mixed with remains of the primitive bison, the elephant, and the rhinoceros. Human eyes must therefore have gazed upon the volcanoes of the Roman plain. Human beings, occupying the outposts of the Sabine Hills, must have seen that plain broken up by the sea into a complicated archipelago, and beheld in the very act of formation that wonderful region destined long ages afterwards to be the scene of some of the greatest events in human history. The Alban Hills, whose present quiet beauty, adorned with white gem-like towns, and softened with the purple hues of heaven, strikes every visitor with admiration, were active volcanoes pouring streams of lava down into the plain even after the foundation of the Eternal City. Livy mentions that under the third king of Rome, a shower of stones, accompanied by a loud noise, was thrown up from the Alban Mount--a prodigy which gave rise to a nine days' festival annually celebrated long after by the people of Latium. The remarkable funereal urns found buried under a bed of volcanic matter between Marino and Castel Gandolfo on the Alban Hills are an incontrovertible proof that showers of volcanic ashes must have been ejected from the neighbouring volcano when the country was inhabited by human beings; nay, when the inhabitants were far advanced in civilisation, for among the objects contained in the funereal urns were implements of writing. At the close of the skirmish between the Romans and Etruscans, near Albano, in which Aruns, the son of Lars Porsenna, was slain, whose tomb may still be seen on the spot, a noise like that which Livy mentions was heard among the surrounding hills. But the most extraordinary of all the volcanic phenomena within the historical period was the sudden rising on two memorable occasions of the waters of the Alban Lake, which now lie deep down within the basin of an extinct crater. The first swallowed up the royal palace of Alba, and was so sudden and violent that neither the king nor any of his household had time to escape. The other occurred during the romantic siege of the Etruscan city of Veii, near Rome, by Camillus, four hundred years before Christ. The waters on that occasion rose two hundred and forty feet in the crater almost to the very edge, and threatened to overflow and inundate the surrounding country, when they were withdrawn by a subterranean canal cut in the rock, and poured into the Tiber by a connecting stream. This emissary, which may still be seen, was constructed owing to a hint given by an Etruscan soothsayer, that the city of Veii would not be captured till the Alban Lake was emptied into the sea. The deep winding cavern on the face of the Aventine Hill, said to have been inhabited by the monstrous giant Cacus, the son of Vulcan, who vomited fire, and was the terror of the surrounding inhabitants, was evidently of volcanic origin; and the local tradition from which Virgil concocted his fable was undoubtedly derived from a vivid recollection of the active operations of a volcano. When Evander, as described in the eighth _Æneid_, conducted his distinguished guest to the top of the Tarpeian Rock, in after ages so famous as the place of public execution, and composed of very hard lava, he assured him that an awful terror possessed the place, and that some unknown god had his abode there. The shepherds said it was Jupiter, and that they had often seen him kindling his lightnings and hurling his thunderbolts from thence. Evander then pointed to the ruined cities of Saturnia and Janiculum, on either side of the Tiber, whose destruction had been caused by the wrath of the god. There can be no doubt that this fable clothed with supernatural colouring some volcanic phenomena which had taken place on this spot during the human period. Even as late as three hundred and ninety years after the foundation of Rome, a chasm opened in the Forum, and emitted flames and pestilential vapours. An oracle declared that this chasm would not close until what constituted the glory of Rome should be cast into it. Marcus Curtius asked if anything in Rome was more precious than arms and valour; and arraying himself in his armour, and mounting on a horse splendidly equipped, he leapt in the presence of the Roman people into the abyss, when it instantly closed for ever. We thus see that the geology of the Roman plain throws no inconsiderable light upon the early history and traditions of the Eternal City, and brings within the cycle of natural phenomena what were long supposed to be purely fabulous incidents, the inventions of a poetic imagination. I have dwelt upon these geological incidents so fully, because nowhere does one realise the striking contrast between the shortness of man's existence on earth, as in places like the Roman plain, where the traces of cosmical energy have been greatest and most enduring. The volcanic origin of the Roman Forum suggests the curious idea of the intimate connection of some of the greatest events of history with volcanic centres. Where the strife of nature has been fiercest, there by a strange coincidence the storm of human passion has been greatest. The geological history of a region is most frequently typical of its human history. We can predicate of a scene where the cosmical disturbance has been great,--where fire and flood have contended for the mastery, leaving the effects of their strife in deepening valleys and ascending hills,--that there man has had a strangely varied and eventful career. The strongholds and citadels of the earth, where the great battles of freedom and civilisation have been fought, were all untold ages previously the centres of violent plutonic disturbances. Edinburgh Castle, enthroned on its trap-rock, once the centre of a volcano, is associated with the most stirring and important events in the history of Scotland; Stirling Castle rises on its trap-rock erupted by volcanic action above a vast plain, across which a hundred battles have swept; Dumbarton Castle, crowning its trappean promontory, has represented in its civil history the protracted periods of earthquake and eruption concerned in the formation of its site; while standing in solitude amid the stormy waters of the Firth of Forth, the Bass Rock, once a scene of fiery confusion, of roaring waves and heaving earthquakes, has formed alternately the prison where religious liberty has been strangled, and the fortress where patriotism has taken its last stand against the forces of the invader. Palestine, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, and Scotland, the countries that have had the most remarkable history, and have done most to advance the human race, are distinguished above other countries for their geological convulsions and revolutions. The Roman Forum is thus but one specimen among numerous others of a law of Providence which has associated the strife of nature with the strife of man, and caused the ravages of the most terrible elements to prepare the way for the highest development of the human race. Between the Roman Forum and the valley beneath Edinburgh Castle we can trace a striking resemblance, not only in their volcanic origin and the connection between their geological history and their analogous civil history, but also in the fact that they were both filled with small lakes. Between the ridges of the old and new town of Edinburgh, where the railway runs through Princes Street Gardens, there was in the memory of many now living a considerable collection of water called the North Loch. In like manner, in the hollow of the Roman Forum there was originally a small lake, a relic of the numerous lakes of the Campagna, which remained after the last elevation of the land, and which existed pretty far on into the human period. It was fed by three streams flowing from the Palatine, the Capitoline, and the Esquiline Hills, which now run underground and meet at this point. Let us picture to ourselves the appearance of this lake embosomed in the hollow of its hills in the far-off pastoral times, when the mountains and the high table-lands of Italy were the chosen territory of those tribes whose property consisted chiefly in their flocks. The hills of Rome, whose elevation was far more conspicuous in ancient times than it is now, presented a precipitous front of dark volcanic rock to the lake. Their slopes were covered with grass and with natural copse-wood, intermixed with tall ilex trees, or umbrella pines; while on their summits were little villages surrounded with Cyclopean walls perched there not only for security, but also for the healthier air, just as we see at the present day all over Italy. On the summit of the Capitoline and Esquiline Hills were Sabine settlements, whose origin is lost in the mists of antiquity. To the green wooded slopes of the Palatine, according to a beautiful tradition, sixty years before the destruction of Troy, came Evander and his Arcadians from Greece, and settled there with their flocks and herds, and led a quiet idyllic life. According to another tradition, Æneas, after the destruction of Troy, came to this spot, and marrying the daughter of a neighbouring king, became the ancestor of the twins Romulus and Remus, the popular founders of Rome, whose romantic exposure and nourishment by a she-wolf are known to every schoolboy. Romulus, after slaying his brother, built a stronghold on the Palatine, which he opened as an asylum for outlaws and runaway slaves, who supported themselves chiefly by plunder. The community of this robber-city consisting almost entirely of males, they provided themselves with wives by the famous stratagem known as the "Rape of the Sabine women." Seizing the daughters of their neighbours, the Sabines of the Capitoline and Esquiline Hills, on a festive occasion, they carried them away with them to their fortress. A number of sanguinary fights took place in consequence of this rape around the swampy margin of the lake. In the last of these engagements the combatants were separated by the Sabine women suddenly rushing in with their children between their fathers and brothers and the men who had become their husbands. A mutual reconciliation then ensued, and the two communities contracted a firm and close alliance. The Palatine, Capitoline, and Esquiline villages became henceforth one city, to which from time to time by conquest new accessions were made, until at last all the different settlements on the seven hills of Rome were brought under one rule, and surrounded by a common wall of defence. Mommsen, Niebuhr, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, and other critics, have made sad havoc with these romantic stories of the origin of Rome. But although much of the fabulous undoubtedly mingles with them--for the early history of Rome was not written till it had become a powerful state, and then the historian had no records of days long past save what were embodied in popular tradition and poetry--there has recently been a reaction in favour of them, and they must ever be interesting on account of their own intrinsic charm, the element of truth which they contain, and the indelible associations of schoolboy life. When a joint city was thus compacted and called Rome--possibly its old Pelasgic appellation--the first effort of the confederated settlements was to drain the geological lake in the centre of the city into the Tiber, a quarter of a mile distant. This they did by means of the celebrated Cloaca Maxima, a part of which may be seen open at the present day under the pavement of the Roman Forum, near the Temple of Castor and Pollux. This common sewer of Rome is one of its oldest and greatest relics. It was built by the first Tarquin, the fifth king of Rome, a century and a half after the foundation of the city; and although two thousand five hundred years have passed away since the architect formed without cement its massive archway of huge volcanic stones found on the spot, and during all the time it has been subjected to the shock of numerous earthquakes, inundations of the Tiber, and the crash of falling ruins, it still serves its original purpose as effectually as ever, and promises to stand for as many ages in the future as it has stood in the past. It is commonly said that we owe the invention of the arch to the Romans; and this work of undoubted Etruscan architecture is usually considered as among the very first applications of the principle. But the arched drains and doorways discovered by Layard at Nineveh prove that the Assyrians employed the arch centuries before Rome was founded. It had however only a subordinate place and a very limited application in the ancient architecture of the East; and it was left to the Romans to give it due prominence in crossing wide spaces, to make it "the bow of promise," the bridge over which they passed to the dominion of the world. The Cloaca Maxima is a tunnel roofed with two concentric rings of enormous stones, the innermost having an interior diameter of nearly fourteen feet, the height being about twelve feet. So capacious was it that Strabo mentions that a waggon loaded with hay might find room in it; and it is recorded that the Consul Agrippa passed through it in a boat. The mouth of the Cloaca opens into the Tiber, near the little round temple of Hercules in the Forum Boarium; but it is often invisible owing to the flooding of the river; and even when the Tiber is low, so much has its bed been silted up that only about three feet below the keystone of the sewer can be seen. Subsequently all the sewers of Rome were connected with it; and at the present day the nose gives infallible proof that it carries off a very large portion of the pollution of the modern city. By the Cloaca Maxima, the valley between the Capitoline and Palatine Hills was for the first time made dry land; all indeed, except a small swamp which remained in one corner of it to a later age, and which the great sewer was not deep enough to drain entirely. Reeds grew around its margin, and boats were employed to cross it, as Ovid tells us. The name Velabrum--from an Etruscan root, signifying water, occurring in some other Italian names such as Velletri, Velino--still given to this locality, where a church stood in the middle ages called S. Silvestro in Lacu, commemorates the existence of the primeval lake; while the legend of the casting ashore of Romulus and Remus on the slope of the Palatine points to the gradual desiccation of the spot. On the level ground, recovered in this way from the waters, was formed the Roman Forum; the word Forum meaning simply an open space, surrounded by buildings and porticoes, which served the purpose of a market-place, a court of justice, or an exchange; for the Romans transacted more of their public and private business out of doors than the severe climate of our northern latitudes will permit us to do. On this common ground representatives of the separate communities located on the different hills of Rome, and comprehended and confederated within the walls of Servius Tullius, met together for the settlement of affairs that concerned them all. As Rome grew in importance, so did this central representative part of it grow with it, until at last, in the time of the Cæsars, it became the heart of the mighty empire, where its pulse beat loudest. There the fate of the world was discussed. There Cicero spoke, and Cæsar ruled, and Horace meditated. If the Temple of Jerusalem was the shrine of religion, the Forum of Rome was the shrine of law; and from thence has emanated that unrivalled system of jurisprudence which has formed the model of every nation since. Being thus the centre of the political power of the empire, the Roman Forum became also the focus of its architectural and civic splendour. It was crowded with marble temples, state buildings, and courts of law to such an extent that we wonder how there was room for them all within such a narrow area. Monuments of great men, statues of Greek sculpture, colonnades, and porticoes, rich with the spoils of subject kingdoms, adorned its sides. The whole region was resplendent with all the pomp and luxury of paganism in its proudest hour; the word "ambition," which came ultimately to signify all strivings for eminence, resolving itself into the elementary meaning of a walk round the Roman Forum, canvassing for votes at municipal elections. Thus the Forum continued until the decay of the empire, when hordes of invaders buried its magnificence in ruins. At the beginning of the seventh century it must have been open and comparatively free from _débris_, as is proved by the fact that the column of Phocas, erected, at that time, stood on the original pavement. Virgil says, in his account of the romantic interview of Evander with Æneas on the spot which was to be afterwards Rome--then a quiet pastoral scene, green with grass, and covered with bushes--that they saw herds of cattle wandering over the Forum, and browsing on the rich pasture around the shores of its blue lake. Strange, the law of circularity, after the lapse of two thousand years, brought round the same state of things in that storied spot. During the middle ages the Roman Forum was known only as the Campo Vaccino, the field of cattle. It was a forlorn waste, with a few ruins scattered over it, and two formal rows of poplar-trees running down the middle of it, and wild-eyed buffaloes and mouse-coloured oxen from the Campagna wandering over the solitude, and cropping the grass and green weeds that grew in the very heart of old Rome. When Gibbon conceived the idea of the _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, listening to the vespers of the Franciscan friars in the dim church of Ara Coeli in the neighbourhood, the Forum was an unsightly piece of ground, covered with rubbish-heaps, with only a pillar or two emerging from the general filth. When Byron stood beside the "nameless column with the buried base," commemorated in _Childe Harold_, he little dreamt what a rich collection of the relics of imperial times lay under his feet, as completely buried by the wrecks of ages as Pompeii and Herculaneum under the ashes and lava of Vesuvius. From fifteen to twenty feet of soil had accumulated over them. The work of excavation was begun seventy-five years ago by the Duchess of Devonshire, who spent the last years of her life in Rome, and formed the centre of its brilliant society. Napoleon III., the late Emperor of the French, carried on the task thus auspiciously commenced, for the purpose of shedding light upon the parts of Roman history connected with Julius Cæsar, the hero of his book. In spite of much opposition from the Papal Government, the work of exhumation was continued in fits and starts after the French emperor had given it up; and ever since the Italian Government have taken the matter in hand, gangs of labourers under the directorship of the accomplished Signor Rosa have been more or less continually employed, with the result that almost the whole area has been laid bare from the Capitol to the Arch of Titus. The British Archæological Society of Rome has given valuable aid according to the funds in its possession, and the contributions sent from this country for the purpose. When first commenced, the changes caused by these excavations were regarded with no favourable eye by either the artists or the people of Rome. The trees were cut down, the mantle of verdure that for centuries had covered the spot--Nature's appropriate pall for the decay of art--was ruthlessly torn up, and great unsightly holes and heaps of _débris_ utterly destroyed the picturesque beauty of the scene. But the loss to romance was a gain to knowledge; and now that the greatest part of the Forum has been cleared down to the ancient pavement, we are able to form a much more vivid and accurate conception of what the place must have been in the days of the empire, and are in a position to identify buildings which previously had been a theme for endless and violent disputes. It is a very interesting and suggestive coincidence that the Forum of Rome should have been thus disentombed at the very time that Italy rose from its grave of ages, and under a free and enlightened government, having its centre once more in the Eternal City, proved that it had inherited no small share of the spirit of the heroic past. Let us go over in brief detail the various objects of interest that may now be seen in the centre of Roman greatness. Numerous sources of information exist which enable us to identify these monuments, and to form some idea of what they were in their prime. Among these may be mentioned coins and medals of the emperors, with representations upon them of buildings and sculptures in the Forum; a marble stone found at Ancyra, now Angouri in Phrygia, on which is a long inscription regarding the acts and achievements of Augustus, which is of the greatest value in determining the topography of the city; the bas-reliefs on the Arch of Constantine, and on the marble screens of Trajan, recently excavated in the Forum itself, giving a view of its north-western and south-eastern ends; and the remains of the antique marble plan of Rome, now preserved in the Capitoline Museum, originally affixed to the wall of the superb Temple of Rome, and discovered in fragments in 1867 in the garden of the monastery of SS. Cosma e Damiano. We also get most valuable help in the work of identification from the Itineraries of the middle ages--especially from that of the celebrated pilgrim from Einsiedlen, Zwingli's town in Switzerland--who visited Rome in the eighth century, and left his manuscript to his own abbey, where it may still be seen. A vast apparatus of learning has been accumulated from the works of ancient classic authors by the great scholars who have written on the historical localities and buildings of the Forum, from Donati to Becker. Nibby, Canina, Ampère, Bunsen, Plattner, and Uhrlich, in their magnificent works have supplied a mine of wealth from which most subsequent writers on the Forum have enriched their descriptions. The direction of the Forum is nearly from north to south, trending a little from north-east to south-west. It is surprisingly small to have contained such a large number of buildings, and to have bulked so prominently in the eye of the world; its greatest length being only six hundred and seventy-one feet, and its greatest breadth about two hundred and two feet. Beginning at the north end, we see before us the vast mass of the ancient Capitol, the proudest symbol of the majesty of Rome, crowned with the great staring medieval structures of the Roman municipality, rising up into the campanile of Michael Angelo. Until of late years, this renowned building was completely buried beneath a huge mound of rubbish. Now that it has been removed, the venerable fabric stands out distinctly to view, and we behold the massive walls of the Treasury, the Record Office, and the Senate House. The lowest part, constructed of huge blocks of volcanic stones, was the Ærarium or Public Treasury, and is supposed to have been formed out of the original wall of the city of the Sabines, which surrounded the hill of Saturn, as the Capitoline Mount was originally called, long before Romulus laid the foundation of Rome. As the Roman army was paid in coppers, spacious cellars were required for storing the coin, and these were provided in the underground vaults of the Treasury, partially cut out of the volcanic rock of the Capitol, on which the building rests. Above the Treasury, on the second floor, we see the remains of the Doric portico of the Tabularium or Public Record Office, where the records of Rome, engraved upon bronze tablets, were kept. The place is now converted into an architectural museum, where all the most interesting sculptured fragments found in the Forum are preserved, and are exhibited by gaslight owing to the darkness. These buildings, it must be remembered, form the back of the Capitol fronting the Forum. Strictly speaking, they do not belong to the Forum, which should be traced only from their verge. The view on the other side of the Capitol, where a gently-inclined staircase leads up from the streets to the piazza at the top, surrounded by the modern municipal buildings, raised upon the ancient substructures above described, is quite different. But the present aspect of the Capitol is quite disappointing to one who comes to it seeking for evidences of its former grandeur. There is no trace of the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, to which the triumphal processions of the Roman armies led up, gorgeous with all the attractions of marble architecture, and the richest spoils of the world, the most splendid monument of human pride which the world then contained. Probably its remains were used up in the construction of the gloomy old church of the _Ara Coeli_, which is supposed by most archæologists to stand upon its site. The Capitol, it may be remarked, was precisely similar to the moot-hill, or open-air court, which existed in our own country in primitive times, and where justice was administered at regular intervals. The tradition of this original use of it still clings to the place as a shadow from the past. The hill has always been appropriated for political purposes. It has continued from the earliest days to be a centre of secular as opposed to ecclesiastical authority. The Popes ceded it to the magistracy, whose municipal buildings now cover it, and placed the church of Ara Coeli--the only one ever built on the Capitoline Hill--under their protection. The place of execution was chosen conveniently near to this moot-hill, or seat of justice; and the criminal, when condemned, was speedily executed, by being hurled over the rock, just outside of the eastern rampart, which surrounded the settlement. We can thus easily understand the association of the Tarpeian Rock with the Capitoline Hill. They were as closely correlated as the moot-hill and the Gallow hill in our own country. The primitive method of execution derived a sanctity from its antiquity, and was continued far on into the most civilised times of the empire. So densely crowded were the historical buildings and remarkable sites in that part of the Forum which lay immediately behind the Capitol, that it is almost impossible now to identify their position or remains. This spot forms the great battle-ground of the antiquaries, whose conclusions in many instances are mere guess-work. Below the medieval tower of the Capitol is a wide space paved with fragments of coloured marbles, and with indications of the ground-plan of a building. This is supposed to mark the site of the Temple of Concord, erected by the great general Camillus, after the expulsion of the Gauls, to perpetuate the concord between the plebeians and patricians on the vexed question of the election of consuls. It was placed beside the old meeting-place of the privileged families. From the charred state of some of its sculptures discovered on the spot, it is supposed to have been destroyed by fire. It was restored and enlarged a hundred and twenty years before Christ by the Consul Opimius immediately after the murder of Caius Gracchus. To the classical student it is specially interesting as the place where Cicero convoked the senate after the discovery of the Catiline conspiracy, for the purpose of fixing the punishment due to one of the greatest of crimes. Among the senators present on that memorable occasion were men of the highest political and philosophical renown, including Cæsar, Cato, and Cicero. They came to the conclusion that there was no such thing as retribution beyond the grave, no future state of consciousness, no immortality of the soul; consequently death was considered too mild a punishment for the impious treason of the conspirators; and a penalty, which should keep alive instead of extinguishing suffering, was advocated. We learn from this extraordinary argument, as Merivale well says, how utter was the religious scepticism among the brightest intellects of Rome only thirty-seven years before the coming of Christ. The very name of the temple itself, dedicated not to a divine being as in a more pious age, but to a mere political abstraction, a mere symbol of a compact effected between two discordant parties in the state, indicated how greatly the Romans had declined from their primitive faith. But the most conspicuous of the ancient remains in this quarter, and the first to attract the notice of every visitor, is the Ionic portico of eight columns, called at first the Temple of Jupiter, and then of Vespasian, but now definitely determined to be the Temple of Saturn, for it is closely connected with the Ærarium, and the Ærarium is said by several ancient authors to have led into the podium of the temple by a doorway in its wall still visible. This temple is supposed to be of very early origin, and to have marked the site of an ancient Sabine altar to the oldest of the gods of Italy long before the arrival of the Romans. It was nearly entire so late as the fifteenth century; but its cella was ruthlessly destroyed shortly afterwards, and its marble ornaments used for making lime. The present group of pillars was so clumsily restored by the French at the beginning of this century that they are seen to differ from each other in diameter, and the frieze is composed of fragments that do not harmonise. But the most remarkable monument of antiquity in this part is the marble triumphal Arch of Septimius Severus, which stands in front of the ruins of the Temple of Concord. It invaded the site of the republican Græcostasis, where foreign ambassadors waited for an audience of the senate, and occupied part of the area of the Comitium, whose original character was thereby destroyed; for it was erected at a time when men ceased to care for the venerable associations connected with the early history of their city. One gazes upon this monument of Roman power and pride with deep respect, for it has stood nearly seventeen centuries; and though rusty and sorely battered, and its sculptures much mutilated, it is still one of the most solid and perfect relics of imperial times. It was raised to commemorate the wars of Septimius Severus in Parthia and Arabia; and represents among its carvings the goddess Rome receiving the homage of the Eastern nations. It exhibits on its panels many scenes connected with his campaigns, the memory of which no humane man would have liked to perpetuate. On the upper part of the Arch is a large inscription in honour of the emperor and his two sons, Caracalla and Geta. The name of Geta, however, was afterwards erased by his brother when he had murdered him, and other words substituted. Marks of the erasure may still be seen perfectly distinct after all these centuries, and vividly recall the terrible associations of the incident. The dislike which Caracalla and Geta had for each other was so virulent that their father took them both with him to Britain, in order that they might forget their mutual animosity while engaged in active warfare. Septimius Severus died during this campaign at York, and his sons returned to Rome to work out soon after the domestic tragedy of which this Arch reminds us. On the top of the Arch there was originally a bronze group of a chariot and four horses, with the emperor and his sons driving it. But this was removed at an early date; and in the middle ages the summit of the Arch supported the campanile of the church of St. Sergius and Bacchus that was built up against its sides. A little to the left, the road passing under the Arch joins the Clivus Capitolinus which wound through the Forum, and led up to the great Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol. The pavement of this ancient road, which still exists, is formed of broad hexagonal slabs of lava, and is as smooth and as finely jointed at this day as when the triumphal processions of the victorious Roman generals used to pass over it. At the western corner of the Arch of Severus are the scanty remains of a tall conical pyramid, about fifteen feet in diameter, which is identified as the Umbilicus Romæ, placed in the exact centre of old Rome. Not far from it stood the Milliarium Aureum, or Golden Milestone, on which were inscribed all the distances of roads without the walls. The Roman roads throughout the empire terminated at this point. With this central milestone was connected that admirable system of roads which the Romans constructed in our distant island; and it is a remarkable circumstance that the principal railway lines in England are identical with the general direction of the old Roman roads. The Antonine Way is now the Great Western Railway, and the Roman Watling Street, which ran diagonally across the country from Chester in the north-west to Dover in the south-east, is now replaced by the Dover, London, Birmingham, Grand Junction, Chester, and Crewe Railways. The reason of this union of ancient and modern lines of communication is obvious. The Romans formed their roads for the purpose of transporting their armies from place to place, and at certain distances along the roads a series of military stations were established. In course of time these stations became villages, towns, and cities such as Chester, Leicester, Lancaster, Manchester. Thus, strange as it may appear, the Milliarium Aureum of the Roman Forum has had much to do with the origin of our most ancient and important towns, and with the formation of the great lines of railway that now carry on the enormous traffic between them. The exposed vaults immediately behind the Arch of Severus, bounding the Forum in this direction, are richly draped with the long, delicate fronds of the maidenhair fern. Shaded from the sun, it grows here in the crevices of the old walls in greater luxuriance and profusion than elsewhere in the city. There is something almost pathetic in this association of the frailest of Nature's productions with the ruins of the most enduring of man's works. Strength that is crumbling to dust and ashes, and tender beauty that ever clings to the skirts of time, as she steps over the sepulchres of power, have here in their combination a deep significance. The growth of the soft fern on the mouldering old stones seems like the sad, sweet smile of Nature over a decay with which she sympathises, but which she cannot share. The same feeling took possession of me when, wandering over the ruins of the Palaces of the Cæsars on a sunny February afternoon, I saw above the hoary masses of stone the rose-tinted bloom of almond-trees. Out of the gray relics of man's highest hour of pride, the leafless almond-rod blossomed as of old in the holy place of the Hebrew Tabernacle; and its miracle of colour and tenderness was like the crimson glow that lingers at sunset upon Alpine heights, telling of a glory that had long vanished from the spot. Beneath these fern-draped vaults is the oldest prison in the world. The celebrated Mamertine Prison takes us back to the very foundation of the city. It was regarded in the time of the Cæsars as one of the most ancient relics of Rome, and was invested with peculiar interest because of its venerable associations. It consists of a series of vaults excavated out of the solid tufa rock, where it slopes down from the Capitoline Hill into the Forum, each lined with massive blocks of red volcanic stone. For a long time these vaults have been used as cellars under a row of tall squalid-looking houses built over them between the Via di Marforio and the Vicolo del Ghettarello; and the sense of smell gives convincing proof that where prisoners of state used to be confined, provisions of wine, cheese, and oil have been stored. The prison has recently passed into the possession of the British and American Archæological Society of Rome, which pays a certain rent to the Italian Government for its use. By this society it is illuminated and shown every Monday afternoon during the season. One of the members conducts the party through the upper and lower prisons, and explains everything of interest connected with them. Dr. Parker, whose labours have done so much to elucidate this part of ancient Rome, was the guide on the occasion of my visit; and as the party was unusually small, we had a better opportunity of seeing what was to be seen, and hearing the guide's observations. The uppermost vault is still below the level of the surrounding soil, and the entrance to it is by the church of San Giuseppe di Falegnami, the patron of the Roman joiners, built over it. Beneath is a subterranean chapel, forming a sort of crypt to the upper church, called San Pietro in Carcere, containing a curious ancient crucifix, an object of great veneration, and hung round with blazing lamps and rusty daggers, pistols, and other deadly instruments, the votive offerings of bandits and assassins who sought at this shrine of the chief of the apostles to make their peace with heaven. Descending from the chapel by a flight of steps we come through a modern door, opened through the wall for the convenience of the pilgrims who annually visit the sacred spot in crowds, to the ancient vestibule, or grand chamber of the prison, commonly called the Prison of St. Peter from the church tradition which asserts that the great apostle was confined here by order of Nero before his martyrdom. The pillar to which he was bound is still pointed out in the cell; and Dr. Parker, lifting up its cover, showed us a well in the pavement of the floor, which is said to have sprung up miraculously to furnish water for the baptism of the jailors Processus and Martinianus whom he had converted, though, unfortunately for this tradition, the fountain is described by Plutarch as existing in the time of Jugurtha's imprisonment. Indeed there is every reason to believe that this chamber was originally a well-house or a subterranean cistern for collecting water at the foot of the Capitol, from which circumstance it derived its name of Tullianum, from _tullius_, the old Etruscan word for _spring_, and not from Servius Tullius, who was erroneously supposed to have built it. The whole chamber in primitive times was filled with water, and the hole in the roof was used for drawing it out. Dr. Parker gave us a little of the water in a goblet, but, notwithstanding its sacred reputation, it tasted very much like ordinary water, being very cool and fresh, with a slight medicinal taste. He also pointed our attention to a rugged hollow in the wall of the staircase, and told us that this was the print of St. Peter's head in the hard stone, said to have been produced as he stumbled and fell against it, coming down the stair a chained prisoner. It requires no small amount of devotional credulity to recognise the likeness or to believe the story. But there is no need for having recourse to such ecclesiastical legends in order to produce a solemn impression in this chamber. Its classical associations are sufficient of themselves to powerfully affect the imagination. There is no reason to doubt the common belief that this is the identical cell in which the famous Jugurtha was starved to death. The romantic history of this African king is familiar to all readers of Sallust, who gives a masterly account of the Jugurthine war. When finally defeated, after having long defied the Roman army, his person was taken possession of by treachery and carried in chains to Rome, where he adorned the triumphal procession of his conqueror Marius, and was finally cast into this cell, perishing there of cold and hunger. What a terrible ending to the career of a fierce, free soldier, who had spent his life on horseback in the boundless sultry deserts of Western Africa! The temperature of the place is exceedingly damp and chill. Jugurtha himself, when stripped of his clothes by the executioners, and let down into it from the hole in the roof, exclaimed with grim humour, "By Hercules, how cold your bath is!" A more hideous and heart-breaking dungeon it is impossible to imagine. Not a ray of light can penetrate the profound darkness of this living tomb. Sallust spoke of the appearance of it in his day, from the filth, the gloom, and the smell, as simply terrific. The height of the vault is about sixteen feet, its length thirty feet, and its breadth twenty-two feet. It is cased with huge masses of volcanic stone, arranged in courses, converging towards the roof, not on the principle of the arch, but extending horizontally to a centre, as we see in some of the Etruscan tombs. This peculiar style of construction proves the very high antiquity of the chamber. This cell played the same part in Roman history which the Tower of London has done in our own. Here, by the orders of Cicero, were strangled Lentulus, Cethegus, and one or two more of the accomplices of Catiline, in his famous conspiracy. Here was murdered, under circumstances of great baseness, Vercingetorix, the young and gallant chief of the Gauls, whose bravery called forth the highest qualities of Julius Cæsar's military genius, and who, when success abandoned his arms, boldly gave himself up as an offering to appease the anger of the Romans. Here perished Sejanus, the minister and son-in-law of Tiberius, who was detected in a conspiracy against the emperor, and richly deserved his fate on account of his cruelty and treachery. Here also was put to death Simon Bar-Gioras, the governor of the revolted Jews during the last dreadful siege of Jerusalem, who was taken prisoner, and after gracing the triumph of the emperor Titus at Rome, shared the fate which usually happened to captives after such an exhibition. From the Tullianum or Prison of St. Peter, we were led through a tortuous subterranean passage of Etruscan character, a hundred yards long, cut out of the rock. It was so low that we had to stoop all the way, and in some places almost to creep, and so narrow that a very stout person would have some difficulty in forcing himself through. The floor was here and there wet with the overflowing of neighbouring drains, which exhaled a noisome smell; and we had to pick our steps carefully through thick greasy mud, which on the slopes was very slippery and disagreeable. We followed each other in Indian file, stooping low, each with a wax taper burning dimly in the damp atmosphere, and presenting a most picturesque appearance. This passage was discovered only a few years ago. Numerous passages of a similar nature are said to penetrate the volcanic rock on which the Capitol stands, in every direction, like the galleries of an ant's nest. Some of these have been exposed, and others walled up. They connect the Prison with the _Cloaca_, and doubtless furnished means by which the bodies of criminals who had been executed might be secretly disposed of. The passage in question brought us to four other chambers, each darker and more dismal than the other, and partially filled with heaps of rubbish and masses of stone that had fallen from their roofs and sides. At the top of each vault there was a man-hole for letting a prisoner down with cords into it. A visit to these six vaults of the Mamertine Prison gives one an idea that can never be forgotten of the cruelty and tyranny which underlay all the gorgeous despotism of Rome, alike in the kingly, republican, and imperial periods. Some of the remains may still be seen of the _Scalæ Gemoniæ_, the "steps of sighs," down which the bodies of those who were executed were thrown, to be exposed to the insults of the populace. The only circumstance that relieves the intolerable gloom of the associations of the Prison is, that Nævius is said to have written two of his plays while he was confined in it for his attacks on the aristocracy; a circumstance which links it to the Tower of London, which has also its literary reminiscences. After having been immured so long in such disagreeable physical darkness--appropriate emblem of the deeds of horror committed in it--we were truly glad to catch at last a faint glimmer of daylight shimmering into the uppermost passage, and to emerge into the open sunshine, from beneath a house at the farther end of the Vicolo del Ghettarello. A modern carriage-road used to pass along this way, leading up to the Piazza del Campidoglio in front of the Capitol, and cutting the Forum into two parts, concealing a considerable portion of it. This obstruction has now been swept away, and the Forum is fully exposed from end to end. Below this old road we observe the "nameless column" of _Childe Harold_, which long stood with its base buried, and was taken for the ruins of a temple. When excavated in 1813 it was found to stand on an isolated pedestal, with an inscription recording that it was erected by the exarch Smaragdus to the emperor Phocas; and the mode in which the offering was made was worthy of the infamous subject and the venal dedicator. Nothing can be clearer from the style of the monument than that it was stolen from the Temple of Vespasian adjoining; for it is an exact fellow of the three graceful Corinthian pillars still standing in front of the Ærarium. It was near this pillar, a few years after it was raised, that Gregory the Great, before he became Pope, saw the young Saxon captives exposed to be sold as slaves, and was so struck with their innocent looks and hopeless fate that he asked about their nationality and religion. Being told that they were Angli, he said, "_Non Angli, sed Angeli_." The impression made upon him led to a mission for converting the natives of Britain, which set out from Rome under St. Augustine in 596. Thus does the column of the infamous usurper Phocas link itself on the historic page with the conversion of Britain to Christianity. Beside the Pillar of Phocas are two large marble screens or parapets, with magnificent bas-reliefs sculptured on both sides. They were discovered about sixteen years ago _in situ_, and are among the most interesting and important objects that have been brought to light by the recent excavations in the Forum. Their peculiar form has given rise to much controversy; some antiquarians regarding them as an avenue along which voters went up to the poll at the popular elections of consuls, designed either to preserve the voters from the pressure of the mob, or to prevent any but properly qualified persons from getting admission; while others believe that the passage between the double screen led to an altar. This latter opinion seems the more plausible one, for the sculptures on one side represent the _suovetaurilia_--a bull, a ram, and a boar, adorned with ribbons and vittæ, walking in file, which were usually sacrificed for the purification of Rome at the Lustrum, as the census taken every five years was called. The other sculptures on the marble screens consist of a number of human figures in greater or less relief; one of them being supposed to commemorate the provision made by Trajan for the children of poor or deceased citizens in the orphanage which he was the first to found in Rome; and the other, the burning of the deeds which contained the evidence of the public debt of the Roman citizens, which the emperor generously cancelled. But the chief significance of the sculptures lies in their background of architectural and other objects indicating the locality of the scenes represented. They place before us a view of the Forum as it appeared in the time of Trajan, and enable us to identify the various objects which then crowded it, and to fix their relative position. The topographical importance of these reliefs has been well discussed by Signor Brizio and Professor Henzen in the _Proceedings of the Roman Archæological Institute_; and also in a paper read by Mr. Nichols before the Society of Antiquaries in London in 1875. By translating into perspective their somewhat conventional representations of temples, basilicas, and arches, Mr. Nichols has given us in his monograph on the subject two very effective pictorial restorations of the Forum as it was in the days of Trajan. Both the screens exhibit, very distinctly sculptured, a fig-tree and a statue on a pedestal, which are interesting from their classical associations. The tree is not the famous Ruminal fig-tree originally of the Palatine and then of the Comitium, but, as Pliny tells us, a self-sown tree which grew in the mid Forum on the site of the Lake of Curtius, which in Ovid's time, as we learn from himself, was a dry space of natural ground marked off by a low fence, and including an altar. This fig-tree, along with a vine and an olive, which grew associated with it, was much prized on account of the shade which it afforded. The figure under the fig-tree, carrying a vine stem on its left shoulder, and uplifting its right arm, has been recognised as that of Marsyas, whose statue was often put in market-places as an emblem of plenty and indulgence. Martial, Horace, Seneca, and Pliny all alluded to this statue in the Forum, which stood near the edge of the Lake of Curtius, and was crowned with garlands by Julia, the daughter of Augustus, during her disgraceful assignations beside it with her lovers at night. On the east side of the Forum the excavations have been stopped in the meantime, as the modern level of the ground is occupied by valuable houses, and two very interesting old churches, Santa Martina and Sta. Adriano. Under the part not yet exhumed lie the remains of the earliest of all the Basilicas, the Basilica of Porcia, built by the elder Cato in the immediate vicinity of the Curia, and also those of the famous Basilica Æmilia, which probably extended along the greater part of the east side of the Forum. Some of the most important monuments of ancient Rome, known to us only by the writings of classic authors, doubtless lie buried in this locality. Under the church of Sta. Adriano, the famous Curia Hostilia or Senate House, attributed to Tullus Hostilius, stood. The original building was destroyed by fire at the funeral of Clodius, through the carelessness of the populace, who insisted upon burning his body within it; but it was replaced by the Curia Julia, which was rebuilt by Augustus, who added to it an important structure, called in the Ancyran inscription Chalcidicum, for the convenience of the senators. Around it stood the statues of men who had rendered important services to the state; and not far off was an altar and statue of Victory, which formed the last rallying-ground of expiring paganism against the dominating Christianity of the empire. In the year 382 the Christian party had removed this altar and statue; and when their restoration was demanded by Symmachus, the request was refused by Ambrose, as opposed to the conscience of the Christian senators; and this decision being ratified by the votes of the assembly, the doom of paganism, as the national religion, was in consequence sealed. The Curia Julia ceased to serve its original purpose at the death of Caligula, when the consuls convoked the senate in the Capitol instead, to mark their aversion to the rule of the Cæsars; and the building was probably burnt down and finally rebuilt in the time of Diocletian. One of the most curious uses to which it was put, was to mark the _Suprema tempestas_, which closed the hours of legal business, by means of its shadow projected on the pavement; a primitive mode of reckoning time which existed before the first Punic war, and was afterwards superseded by a sun-dial and a clepsydra or water-clock erected in the Forum. Near the Curia under the present roadway must lie the site of the Comitium, or meeting-place of the Roman burgesses. This was far the most important spot in the Forum in the days of the Republic. It was not a covered building, but a templum or a consecrated space open to the air. In its area grew a fig-tree, in commemoration of the sacred tree which sheltered Romulus and Remus in their infancy; and we read of drops of blood and milk falling upon it as omens from the sky. One of the stones on its pavement, from its extraordinary blackness, was called the tombstone of Romulus, and a number of statues adorned its sides, including the three Sibyls, which gave the name of "In Tria Fata" down to medieval times to this part of the Forum. From its rostra, or stone platform, addresses were delivered by political agitators to open-air assemblies of the people. The Comitium reminds us very strikingly of the municipal origin of the Roman empire. In primitive times that mode of government was admirably adapted to the necessities of the city; but when Rome became mistress of the world it was found unfitted to discharge imperial functions. The establishment of the monarchical form of Government overthrew the Comitium, and with it the very life of the Roman city. In front of the church of S. Adriano--said to be no other than the actual Curia of Diocletian, though greatly altered and partly rebuilt by Pope Honorius I. in the year 630--are some fragments of the Basilica Æmilia. This court was erected on the site of the Basilica Fulvia, and superseded by a more splendid building called the Basilica Pauli, which was the Bourse or Exchange of ancient Rome. The building of this last Basilica was interrupted for a long time by the disorders consequent on the assassination of Cæsar. When finished, it was considered to be one of the most magnificent buildings in the world; and was especially admired on account of its beautiful columns of Phrygian marble. These were afterwards removed to decorate the church of St. Paul outside the gate, where some of them that survived the burning of the old edifice may be seen behind the high altar of the new. Between the Curia and the Basilica Æmilia is supposed to have stood the celebrated Temple of Janus, built according to Livy by Numa Pompilius, the closing or opening of which was the signal of peace or war. It was probably at first one of the ancient gates in a line of fortifications uniting the Capitol with the Palatine; and afterwards comprised, besides a passage-way through which a great part of the traffic of Rome passed, a diminutive bronze temple containing a bronze statue of the venerable deity of the Sabines, whose one face looked to the east, and the other to the west. The bronze gates of the temple were closed by Augustus for the third time after the battle of Actium, and finally shut when Christianity became the religion of the empire. Procopius saw the temple still standing in the sixth century; and he tells us that, during the siege of the city by the Goths, when it was defended by Belisarius, some of the adherents of the old pagan superstition made a secret attempt to open the shrine and set the god at liberty. One gazes at the wall of earth and rubbish, fifteen feet deep, marking the present limit of the excavations in this direction, with a profound longing that the obstruction could be removed at once, and the rich antiquarian treasures lying hid underneath brought to light. Few things in Rome appealed more powerfully to my curiosity than this huge bank of _débris_, behind and beneath which imagination was free to picture all kinds of possibilities. On the part that has been uncovered, we see a row of brick bases on which had stood monuments of gilt bronze to some of the distinguished men of Rome; the remains of a line of shops of the third century demolished during the excavations; the pedestal of what is said by some to have been Domitian's and by others Constantine's gigantic equestrian statue; and farther down, rude heaps of masonry, belonging to the substructures of the Rostra and Temple of Julius Cæsar. Part of the curved wall of the Rostra may still be seen built of large blocks of travertine; and in front is a fixed platform, where a large number of people could stand and listen to the speaker. This Rostra is specially interesting because it was constructed in the year of Cæsar's death, and was intended to mark the design of the great triumvir to destroy the memory of the old oligarchy by separating the rostra or "hustings" from their former connection with the senate and comitia, and make them entirely popular institutions. The front of it was afterwards adorned by Augustus with the beaks of ships taken at Actium. The small Heroön or Temple of Cæsar behind the Rostra was erected on the spot where the body of Cæsar was burned before the house which he had so long inhabited, and in a part of the Forum especially associated with his greatest political triumphs. It superseded an altar and lofty column of Numidian marble, at which the people had previously offered sacrifices to the memory of their idol, the first mortal in Rome raised to the rank of the gods; an honour justified, they imagined, not only by his great deeds, but also by his alleged descent from Venus Anadyomene. Running down the middle of the Forum is a rough, ancient causeway, with its blocks of lava still in their original position, but so disjointed that it is no easy task walking over them. On the other side is the raised platform of the Basilica Julia of Augustus, extending from north to south, the whole length of the Forum, with steps leading up to it from the paved street. This stupendous law court, the grandest in Rome where Trajan sat to administer justice, and from whose roof Caligula day after day lavishly threw down money to the people, has, by its own identity being established beyond dispute, more than any other discovery helped to determine the topography of the Roman Forum. It was begun by Julius Cæsar on the site of the older Basilica Sempronia, which had previously partially replaced the _Veteres Tabernæ_ or shops of early times required for the trades carried on in a market-place, and also the schools for children where Appius Claudius had first seen Virginia reading. Having been partially destroyed by fire, Augustus afterwards completed and greatly enlarged the building. It was used as the place of meeting of the _Centumviri_, a court which we learn from the younger Pliny, who himself practised before it, had a hundred and eight judges sitting in four separate tribunals, within sight and hearing of one another, like the old courts in Westminster Hall. The Basilica is not yet entirely excavated, a large part of its breadth being still under modern buildings. It consisted of a series of plain, massive arches built of travertine. The pavement is wonderfully perfect, being composed of a mosaic pattern of valuable marbles, doubtless saved from destruction or removal to build some church or palace by the fortunate circumstance that the ruins of the Basilica covered and concealed them at an early period. On this pavement and on the steps leading up to it are incised numerous squares and circles which are supposed to have been tabulæ lusoriæ, or gaming-tables. A few have inscriptions near them alluding to their use. Cicero mentions the dice-players of the Forum with reprobation; and the fact that such sports should have intruded into the courts of justice shows that the Romans had lost at this time their early veneration for the law. The rows of brick arches seen on the platform are mere modern restorations, placed there by Cavaliere Rosa to indicate the supposed original plan of the building. At the south end of it an opening in the pavement shows a part of the Cloaca Maxima, with the sewerage passing through it underneath. The ancient street between the Basilica Julia and the Temple of Castor and Pollux, is undoubtedly the famous _Vicus Tuscus_, so called after the Etruscan soldiers who belonged to the army of Porsenna, and, being defeated at Ariccia, took refuge in this part of Rome. This street, so often mentioned by classic writers, led to the Circus Maximus, and is now identified with the Via dei Fienili; the point of departure from the Forum being marked by a statue of Vertumnus, the Etruscan god, the ruined pedestal of which, in all likelihood, is that which has lately been unveiled on the steps at the north-east corner of the Basilica Julia. It was considered almost as sacred as the Via Sacra itself, being the route taken by the great procession of the Circensian games, in which the statues of the gods were carried in cars from the Capitol through the Forum to the circus. In front of the Basilica Julia, and on the opposite side of the way, so numerous were the statues which Julius Cæsar contrived to crowd together, that the Emperor Constantine, during his famous visit to Rome, is said to have been almost stupefied with amazement. Some such feeling is produced in our own minds when we reflect that the bewildering array of sculptures in the Roman galleries, admired by a concourse of pilgrims from every country, are but chance discoveries, unnoticed by history, and of no account in their own time. What must have been the feast of splendour of which these are but the crumbs! Perhaps the most beautiful of the ruins of the Forum are the three marble columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux near the Basilica Julia. They are the only prominent objects on the south-west side of the Forum, and at once arrest the eye by their matchless symmetry and grace. Time has dealt very hardly with them, battering their shapely columns and rich Corinthian capitals, and discolouring their pure white Pentelic marble. But it has not succeeded in destroying their wonderful beauty; and the russet hues with which they have been stained by the long lapse of the ages have rather added to them the charm of antique picturesqueness. They rest upon a huge mound of broken masonry, in the interstices of which Nature has sown her seeds of minute life, which spread over it a tender pall of bright vegetation. The three columns are bound together by iron rods, and still further kept in position by the fragments of architrave and cornice supported by them. They are forty-eight feet in height and nearly five feet in diameter, while their flutings are nine inches across. Around the basement a large quantity of broken columns, capitals, and pedestals has been disinterred, some of which have acquired an historic renown on account of the purposes which they have served in the fine arts. Michael Angelo converted one huge fragment into the pedestal of the celebrated bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, which he transferred from its original site in front of the Arch of Septimius Severus, where it had stood for thirteen or fourteen centuries, to the front of the Capitol; while out of another fragment Raphael carved the well-known statue of Jonah sitting on a whale, to be seen in the Chigi Chapel of Sta. Maria del Popolo, the only piece of sculpture executed by the immortal painter. The Italian Government has entirely excavated the ruins, and thus set at rest the numerous controversies among antiquaries regarding its true name. The temple of Castor and Pollux probably dates as far back as the year 487 before Christ, when the dictator Postumius vowed to build a monument in commemoration of his victory at the great battle of Lake Regillus, with which the mythical history of Rome closes. It recalls the well-known romantic legend of the mysterious interference of the Dioscuri in that memorable struggle which Macaulay has woven into one of the most spirited of his Lays. The temple is supposed to have been erected on the spot where the divine Twins announced the victory to the people in the Forum at the close of the day. About twenty feet from the eastern corner of the temple are slight remains of a shallow oval basin, which has been identified as the lake or fountain of Juturna, the wife of Janus, the Sabine war-god, where the Dioscuri washed their armour and horses from the blood and dust of the fray. It was probably at first a natural spring gushing out of the tufa rock of the Palatine Hill, but being dried up, it became in later times a _lacus_ or basin artificially supplied with water. For long ages afterwards the anniversary of the great battle was celebrated every year on the fifteenth of July by a splendid pageant worthy of the greatness of the empire. The Roman knights, clothed in purple robes, and crowned with olive wreaths, and bearing their trophies, first offered sacrifice in the shrine of Castor and Pollux, and then formed a procession, in which five thousand persons sometimes took part, which filed in front of the temple and marched through the city. The original building having stood for nearly five hundred years, it began to exhibit signs of decay, and accordingly it was rebuilt upon the old foundations by Augustus, and dedicated by Tiberius. The podium or mass of rubble masonry therefore which we see beneath the three columns at the present day belongs to the time of the kings, while the columns themselves belong to the imperial period. Caligula used the temple as a vestibule to his palace on the Palatine Hill immediately behind. On the brow of that hill, separated only by the pavement of the modern street, projects a labyrinth of vaults, arches, and broken walls, a mighty maze of desolation without a plan, so interspersed with verdure and foliage that "it looks as much a landscape as a ruin." This is supposed to be the palace of Caligula; and its remains abundantly attest the extraordinary magnificence of this imperial domain, which contained all that was rich and rare from the golden East, from beyond the snowy Alps, and from Greece, the home of art. The substructions of this mighty ruin are truly astonishing; they are so vast, so massive, so enduring, that they seem as if built by giants. Concealed by modern houses built up against the foot of the palace, some of the remains of the famous bridge which Caligula threw obliquely over the Forum can be made out; two of the tall brick piers are visible above the houses, and in the gable of the outer house the spring of one of the arches can be distinctly seen. The bridge was constructed by Caligula for the purpose of connecting his palace with the Capitol, on the summit of which stood the magnificent Temple of Jupiter, so that, as he said himself, he might be able to converse conveniently with his colleague, the greatest of the gods! It is probable that it served more than one purpose; that it was used both as an aqueduct and a road for horses and chariots from the Palatine to the Capitol. Be this as it may, it must have been a stupendous structure, nearly a quarter of a mile long, and about a hundred feet high, striding over the whole diagonal of the Forum, with a double or triple tier of arches, like the remains of the Claudian aqueduct that spans the Campagna. The immediate vicinity of the Temple of Castor and Pollux is full of interest to the classical student. To the right of it are the remains of the Regia or Royal Palace, the official residence of the early kings of Rome, and afterwards, during the whole period of the Republic, of the Pontifex Maximus, as the real head of the State as well as the Church. Numa Pompilius resided here in the hope that, by occupying neutral ground, he might conciliate the Latins of the Palatine and the Sabines of the Capitoline Hills. It was also the home of Julius Cæsar during the greater part of his life, where Calpurnia, his wife, dreamed that the pediment of the house had fallen down, and the sacred weapons in the Sacrarium were stirred by a supernatural power; an omen that was but too truly fulfilled when Cæsar went forth to the Forum on the fatal Ides of March, and was carried back a bloody corpse from the Curia of Pompey. It ceased to become the residence of the Pontifex when Augustus bought the house of Hortensius on the Palatine, and elected to dwell there instead; and was therefore given over to the Vestal Virgins to increase their scanty accommodation. The _Atrium Vestæ_, or convent of the Vestal Virgins, adjoined the Regia, and behind it, along the lower slope of the Palatine, stretched the sacred grove of Vesta, which seems to have been used as a place of privileged interment for the sisterhood, as a number of gravestones with the names of vestal virgins upon them were found in digging the foundations of the church of Sta. Maria Liberatrice in the seventeenth century. The residence of the Pontifex Maximus and of the Vestal Virgins, who were regarded as the highest and holiest personages in the State, gave an air of great respectability to this neighbourhood, and it became in consequence the fashionable quarter of Rome. Close beside the house of the Vestal Virgins was the far-famed Temple of Vesta, in which they ministered, whose podium or basement, which is a mere circular mound of rough masonry, may be seen on the spot. The worship of Vesta, the goddess of the household fire, was one of the most primitive forms of religion. It doubtless arose from the great difficulty in prehistoric times of producing fire by rubbing two sticks against one another. Such a flame once procured would be carefully guarded against extinction in some central spot by the unmarried women of the household, who had nothing else to do. And from this central fire all the household fires of the settlement would be obtained. A relic of this prehistoric custom existed in the rule that if the sacred vestal fire was ever allowed to go out it could only be kindled anew by the primitive process of friction. The worship of Vesta survived an old world of exhausted craters and extinct volcanoes, with which was buried a world of lost nations. The Pelasgians brought to Italy the stone of the domestic hearth, the foundation of the family, and the tombstone, the boundary of the fields divided after the death of the head of the family, the foundation of property; and upon this double base arose the great distinctive edifice of the Roman Law, the special gift of Rome to the civilisation of the world. Rhea Sylvia, mother of Romulus, was a Vestal Virgin of Alba, which shows that the worship of Vesta existed in this region long before the foundation of Rome. The origin of the first temple and of the institutions of Vestal Virgins for its service was attributed to Numa Pompilius. The first building, as Ovid tells us, was constructed with wattled walls and a thatched roof like the primitive huts of the inhabitants. It was little more than a covered fireplace. It was the public hearth of the new city, round which were gathered all the private ones. On it burned continually the sacred fire, the symbol of the life of the state, which was believed to have been brought from Troy, and the continuance of which was connected by superstition with the fortunes of Rome. In the secret penetralia of the temple, where no man was allowed to enter, was kept with scrupulous care, for its preservation was equally bound up with the safety of the empire, the Palladium, or image of Pallas, saved from the destruction of Troy, and which was supposed to have originally fallen from heaven. The circular form and the domed roof of the temple were survivals of the prehistoric huts of the Aborigines, which were invariably round, as the traces of their foundations show. With the exception of the Palladium, which remained invisible during all the ages to ordinary mortal eyes until the destructive fire in the Forum, in the reign of Commodus, compelled the Vestal Virgins to expose it in removing it for safety to the imperial court, there was in primitive times no statue or material representation of the goddess except the sacred fire in the mysterious shrine of the temple. Indeed the Romans, as Plutarch tells us, raised no statue to the gods until the year of Rome 170. In this respect the religion of the Romans, whose divinities had no participation in the life and passions of men, and had nothing to do with the human form, differed widely from the religion of the Greeks, which, inspired by the sentiment of the beautiful in man and nature, gave birth to art. The Temple of Vesta, as might have been expected, shared in all the wonderful changes of Roman history. It was abandoned when the Gauls entered Rome, and the Vestal Virgins took the sacred fire and the Palladium to Cære in Etruria for safety. It was destroyed two hundred and forty-one years before Christ, when L. Metellus, the Pontifex Maximus at the time, saved the Palladium with the loss of his eyesight, and consequently of his priesthood, for which a statue was erected to him in the Capitol. It was consumed in the great fire of Nero, and rebuilt by Vespasian, on some of whose coins it is represented. It was finally burnt down in the fire of Commodus, which destroyed at the same time many important buildings in the Forum. The worship of Vesta was prohibited by Gratianus in the year 382 of our era, and the public maintenance of the Vestal Virgins abandoned, in spite of the protestations of Symmachus and the forlorn hope of the pagan party. Great as was the reverence paid to the shrine of Vesta, not being a temple in the proper sense of the term, as it was not consecrated by augury, it had not the right of sanctuary. Mucius Scævola, the unfortunate Pontifex Maximus, was murdered beside the altar by order of Marius, and his blood sprinkled the image of the goddess; and Piso Licinianus, the adopted son of Galba, after the assassination of that emperor beside the Curtian Lake in the Forum, was dragged out from the innermost shrine of the temple, to which he had fled for refuge, and barbarously massacred at the door. But it is impossible to dwell upon all the remarkable events with which this haunted shrine of Rome's earliest and most beautiful worship is associated. Certainly no greater object of interest has been exhumed among all the antiquities of the Eternal City than the little round mass of shapeless masonry which has been identified beyond all reasonable doubt as the basement of the world-renowned temple, the household hearth of old Rome. Opposite the Temple of Vesta, at the north-east corner of the Forum, where it ends, is the magnificent façade of the Temple of Antoninus Pius and Faustina, the most perfect of all the Roman temples. There are six splendid Corinthian columns in front and two at the sides, each composed of a single block of green ripple-marked Cipollino marble, about forty-six feet in height and five feet in diameter, with bases and capitals of marble, originally white, but now rusty and discoloured by age; all beautifully proportioned and carved in the finest style of ancient art. These columns were buried to half their height in medieval times; and houses were built up against and between them, the marks of whose roofs are still visible in indentations near their summits. These houses were removed, and the ground excavated down to the bases of the columns in the sixteenth century by Palladio, revealing a grand flight of marble steps, twenty-one in number, leading up to the temple from the street. The excavations at that time were made for the purpose of finding marbles and building materials for the Church of St. Peter's. Two sides of the cella of the temple still remain, formed by large massive blocks of peperino, probably taken from the second wall of Rome, which must have passed very near to the east end of this temple; for the ancient Roman architects were as unscrupulous in appropriating the relics of former ages as their successors. The roughness of these walls was hidden by an outer casing of marble, ornamented with pilasters, of which only the small capitals now remain. Both the cella and the portico still retain a large portion of their magnificent marble entablature; and the frieze and cornice are richly covered with carvings of vases and candelabra, guarded by griffins, exquisite in design and execution. The marble slabs that covered the whole outside of the temple had been burnt for lime in a kiln that stood in front of the portico in the sixteenth century, and in this lime-kiln were found fragments of statues, bas-reliefs, and inscriptions, which were about to be destroyed in that barbarous fashion. The temple was originally begun by Antoninus Pius to the memory of his unworthy wife Faustina in the year 142 of our era, but being unfinished at his death, it was dedicated by the senate to both their names. We see it represented in all its magnificence on some of the coins of this emperor. In the year 1430 Pope Martin V. built over its remains a church called S. Lorenzo in Miranda, whose singular ugliness was in striking contrast to the grandeur of the venerable ruin which embraced it. The floor of this church was ten feet above the original level of the temple, and its roof was carried twenty feet above its cornice. It contained several tombs of the Roman apothecaries, to whose Corporation it belonged. No one will regret that it has been removed; the excavations in front of it having reduced the level of the ground far below its doorway, and thus cut off the approach. It is strange to think of the two different kinds of worship carried on at such widely separated intervals within this remarkable building, first a pagan temple and then a Christian church--worship so different in name and yet so like in reality; for the divine honours paid to a mortal emperor and his wife were transferred in after ages to frail mortals such as Saint Laurence and the Virgin Mary. We are reminded by the inscription above the portico of the temple, "Divo Antonino et Divæ Faustina," that the government of the Cæsars had become an earthly omnipotence in the estimation of the Romans and the subject nations. They looked alone to Cæsar for all their good, and from him they feared their chiefest evil. He had become to them their providence or their fate. The adoration offered to him was not a mere act of homage or sign of fealty, but was most truly and in the highest sense a worship as to a divine being. The view in this part of the Forum, looking down from the Antonine Temple, is most striking and suggestive. It reveals some of the grandest objects of ancient Rome. Immediately beyond is the hoary old church of SS. Cosma e Damiano, with mosaics of the sixth century on its tribune, built out of three ancient temples, as Dr. Parker has clearly proved--the round Temple of Romulus Maxentius, the Temple of Venus, and the Temple of Rome. The south wall of this last-mentioned temple, built of huge square blocks of tufa, to which the marble plan of Rome was fastened by metal hooks, may still be seen in the church; and it is interesting as being the last pagan temple which remained in use in Rome. Here was the last struggle of paganism with the unbelief which itself inspired. The gods of the Pantheon had lost all significance. The worship of abstract qualities, such as Concord and Victory, or of the personification of a local providence in the city of Rome itself, could not satisfy the longing of the human soul. As religion decayed the worship of the gods was superseded by the worship of the emperor. Their statues were decapitated and the head of the emperor was placed upon them. On the statue of Olympic Jove appeared the bust of the contemptible Caligula; and this incongruous adaptation represented the change of the popular faith from its former heavenly idealisations to the most grovelling fetish worship of the time. This deification of the emperors avenged its terrible blasphemy by the sublime wickedness of those who were so raised above humanity. Here, in this last pagan temple of Rome, converted into one of the earliest Christian churches, we see the darkness and despair of the heathen world preparing for that joyful morning light of Christianity which has transferred the faith of mankind to foundations which can never more be shaken. Immediately beyond in the background are the huge gloomy arches of the Basilica of Constantine, fretted with coffers, suspended in mid-air for upwards of sixteen centuries, in defiance of the laws of gravity and the ravages of time and of human destroyers, taken as a model for churches by Roman architects, though built originally for a law court. In front is the Arch of Titus, with its well-known sculptures of the spoils from the Temple of Jerusalem, spanning the highest point of the Via Sacra. And closing up the view is the grandest ruin in the world, the stupendous broken circle of the Colosseum, rising tier above tier into the blue sky, burnt deep brown by the suns of ages, holding the spectator breathless with wonder, and thrilling the mind with the awful associations connected with it. The Forum lies like an open sepulchre in the heart of old Rome. All is death there; the death of nature and the death of a race whose long history has done more to shape the destiny of the world than any other. The soil beneath our feet is formed by the ashes of an extinct fire, and by the dust of a vanished empire. Everywhere the ruins of time and of man are mingled with the relics of an older creation; and the sculptured marbles of the temples and law courts, where Cæsar worshipped and Cicero pled, lie scattered amid the tufa-blocks, the cinders of the long quiescent volcanoes of the Campagna. Nature and man have both accomplished their work in this spot; and the relics they have left behind are only the exuviæ of the chrysalis out of which the butterfly has emerged, or the empty wave-worn shells left high and dry upon an ancient coast-line. It is a remarkable circumstance that the way in which the Forum originated was the very way in which it was destroyed. The cradle of Roman greatness became its tomb. The Forum originated in the volcanic fires of earth; it passed away in the incendiary fires of man. In the month of May 1084 the Norman leader, Robert Guiscard, came with his troops to rescue Gregory VII. from the German army which besieged Rome. Then broke out--whether by accident or design is not known--the terrible conflagration which extended from the Capitol to the Coelian Hill, but raged with the greatest intensity in the Forum. In that catastrophe classical Rome passed away, and from the ashes of the fire arose the Phoenix of modern Rome. The greatest of physical empires was wrecked on this spot, and out of the wreck was constructed the greatest spiritual empire the world has ever known. For the Roman Pontificate, to use the famous saying of Hobbes, was but the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. CHAPTER VI THE EGYPTIAN OBELISKS Among the first objects that arrest the attention and powerfully excite the curiosity of the visitor in Rome are the Egyptian obelisks. They remind him impressively that the oldest things in this city of ages are but as of yesterday in comparison with these imperishable relics of the earliest civilisation. At one time it is said that there were no less than forty-eight obelisks erected in Rome,--six of the largest size and forty-two of the smaller,--all conveyed at enormous cost and with almost incredible labour from the banks of the Nile to the banks of the Tiber. Upwards of thirty of them have perished without leaving any trace behind. They are doubtless buried deep under the ruins of ancient Rome, but the chance of their disinterment is very problematical. One obelisk, indeed, was exposed a hundred and forty years ago in the square of the principal church of the Jesuits, near the Pantheon; but being found to be broken, and also to underlie a corner of the church and the greater part of an adjoining palace, so that it could not be extracted without seriously injuring these buildings, it was covered up again, and was thus lost to the world. As it is, we find in Rome the largest collection of obelisks that exists at the present day in the world, and the best field for studying them. Obelisks were dedicated to the sun, which was the central object of worship, and occupied the most conspicuous position in the religious system of the oldest nations. Sun-worship, that which waited upon some hill-top to catch the first beams of the morning that created a new day, is the oldest and the most natural of all kinds of worship. He was adored as the source of all the life and motion and force in the world by the most primitive people; and we find numerous traces of this ancient sun-worship in the rude stone monuments, with their cup-shaped symbols, that have survived on our moors, in many of the old customs which still linger in our Christianity, and in the name by which the most sacred day of the week is commonly known among us. All the benefits conferred upon our world by the sun must have been strikingly apparent to the ancient Egyptians, dwelling in a land exposed to the sun's vertical rays, and clothed with almost tropical beauty and luxuriance. When they watched the ebbing of the overflowing waters of the Nile, and saw the moist earth on which the sun's rays fell, quickened at once into a marvellous profusion of plant and animal life, they naturally regarded the sun as the Creator, and so deified him in that capacity. The origin of all life, vegetable and animal, to those who stood, as it were, by its cradle, when the world was young and haunted by heaven, seemed a greater mystery and wonder than it is to us in these later faithless ages. Long familiarity with it in its full-grown proportions has made it commonplace to us. Both the obelisk and the pyramid were solar symbols, the obelisk being the symbol of the rising sun, and the pyramid of the setting. The fundamental idea of the obelisk was that of creation by light; that of the pyramid, death through the extinction of light. And this symbolical difference between the two objects was practically expressed by the different situations in which they were placed; the obelisks being all located on the eastern side of the Nile, that being the region of the rising sun, and of the dawn of life; while the pyramids are all found on the western bank of the river, the region of the sunset, with its awfully sterile hills and silent untravelled desert of sand from which no tidings had ever come to living man, where the dead were buried under the shades of night, in their rock-cut cemeteries. It might thus seem, that by placing obelisks in our churchyards in association with the dead, we were violating their original significance, and guilty of adding another to the many incongruities which have arisen from adopting pagan symbols in Christian burying-places. But in reality we find a deeper reason for the association. In some of the oldest sculptures in Egypt, an obelisk is represented as standing on the top of a pyramid; and by this combination it was meant to signify the power of life triumphing over death. And hence the obelisk is the most suitable of all forms to indicate in our cemeteries the glorious truth of the resurrection, life rising victorious out of the transitory condition of death. And how admirably did the obelisk lend itself to its symbolical purposes! There was a most wonderful harmony between the idea and the object which expressed it. Being composed of the most durable of all materials, the hard indestructible granite, the eternal sun was thus fittingly represented by an object that lifts its stern finger in unchangeable defiance of the vicissitudes of the seasons and the ages. Its highly polished surface and rich rosy red colour, its sharply defined lines and narrow proportions, combined with its immense height, suggested the brilliancy and hue and form of a pencil of light. Its tall red column flashing in the strong morning radiance, like a tongue of flame mounting up to its source in the solar fire, or like a ray of the halo that rises up on the low horizon of the Libyan desert, when the dawn has crimsoned all the eastern heavens, might thus well be selected as the most suitable object to bring the invisible sun-god within the ken of human vision and the range of human worship. The poetical imagination may detect a significance even in the difference between the material used in the construction of the obelisk, and that used in the construction of the pyramid, though this may not have been designed by the makers. The obelisks are all formed of granite, the foundation-stone of the globe, belonging to the oldest azoic formation, which laid down the first basis for the appearing of life. The pyramids were nearly all made of nummulitic limestone composed of the remains of organic life; a material which belonged to the latest geologic ages, when whole generations and different platforms of life had come and gone. Thus significantly does the obelisk of granite suggest by its material as by its form the origin of life, as the pyramid suggests by its material and form the extinction of life. But not only was the obelisk raised in connection with the worship of the sun,--it was also intended to honour the reigning monarch who erected it, and whose name and titles were engraved upon it along with the name of the sun. For it was a fundamental idea of the Egyptian religion that the king was not only the son of the solar god, but also the visible human representative of his glory. This was a favourite conception of the ancients. The Incas of Peru regarded themselves as direct descendants of the sun; and the monarchs of the burning Asiatic lands, where the sun rules and dominates everything, assume the name and title of his sons, and clothe themselves with his splendour. The obelisks were thus the symbols of the two great correlative conceptions of the sun in the heavens, and his satellite and representative on the earth--god and the king. This Egyptian faith, as attested by the obelisks, the oldest of all the creeds, antecedent to the theologies of India, Greece, and Rome, ceased not to be venerated till the advent of Christianity swept all material worship away. It awed, as Mr. Cooper has well observed, the mixed multitude in Alexandria under the Cæsars, as it had done the primitive Egyptians under the oldest Pharaohs. It extended over a space of more than three thousand years. During all that long period the obelisk was "the emblem at once of the vivifying power of the sun and of the divine nature of the king, a witness for the divine claim of the sun to be worshipped, and of the right divine of the king to rule." Where is there in all the world, in its most ancient cities, in its loneliest deserts, any class of objects which has been held continuously sacred for so long a time? The description of the sun itself by Ossian applies almost equally well to his worship as thus represented. Obelisks as symbols of the sun and of the creative power of nature, were not confined to Egypt. They belonged to the mythology of all ancient nations. There are modifications of them in India, in prehistoric America, and among the archæological remains of our own country. They were common objects in connection with the Assyrian, Persian and Phoenician religions. And it has been conjectured with much plausibility that the image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth six, the usual proportions of an obelisk, which Nebuchadnezzar set up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon, and commanded Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego to adore, was in reality an obelisk after the Egyptian pattern. Such an obelisk was often gilded, and was associated with the worship of the king as its material purpose, and with the creation and origin of life as its symbolic meaning. And if this was the case, there was an unusual aggravation in this idolatry; for the Egyptian obelisks themselves were never worshipped, but were always regarded as the signs of the higher powers whose glory they expressed. The question is naturally asked, Where were the obelisks originally placed? At the present day we find those of them that remain in Egypt, solitary objects without anything near them, and those that have been carried to other lands have been set up in great open squares, or on river embankments in the heart of the largest cities. Fortunately, there is no doubt at all on this point. They stood in pairs at the doors of the great temples, one on each side, where they served the same purpose which the campanile of the Italian church or the spire of a cathedral serves at the present day. Indeed, architects are of opinion that church towers and steeples are mere survivals of the old Egyptian obelisks, which furnished the original conception. The tower corresponded to the shaft of the obelisk, and the steeple to the sharp pyramidal part in which the summit of the obelisk terminated. And though there is usually only one spire or tower now in connection with our churches, there used to be two, as many old examples still extant testify, one standing on each side of the principal entrance after the manner of the Egyptian obelisks. The slender round towers of Brechin and Abernethy, and of Devenish and other places in Ireland, capped by a conical stone roof terminating in a single stone, which were for a long time a puzzle to the antiquary, are now ascertained to be simply steeples connected with Christian churches of the tenth and eleventh centuries. And just as these towers are now left isolated and solitary without a trace of the buildings with which they were associated, so the Egyptian temples have passed away, and the obelisks are left alone in the desert. But we can reconstruct in imagination the massive and lofty buildings in front of which they stood, and where they showed to the greatest advantage. Instead of being dwarfed by the enormous masses of the propylons, their height gained by the near comparison. The obelisks in our squares and vast open spaces have their effect destroyed by the buildings being at a distance from them. There is no scale near at hand to assist the eye in estimating the height; consequently they seem much smaller than they really are. But when seen in the narrow precincts of a temple court, from whose floor they shot up into the blue sky overhead, surrounded by great columns and lofty gates, breaking the monotony of the heavy masses of masonry of which the Egyptian temples were composed, and acting the part which campanili and spires perform in modern churches, a standard of comparison was thus furnished which greatly enhanced their magnitude. Nothing could be grander than the objects associated with the obelisks where they stood. The temple was approached by an avenue of huge sphinxes, in some cases a mile and a half long. Drawing nearer, the worshipper saw two lofty obelisks towering up a hundred feet in height, on the right and left. Behind these he would observe with awe four or six gigantic statues seated with their hands on their knees. And at the back of the statues he would gaze with astonishment upon two massive towers or pylons, broader at the base than at the summit, two hundred feet wide and a hundred and twenty feet high, crowned by a gigantic cornice, with their whole surface covered with coloured sculptures, representing one of the great dramas in the reign of a victorious monarch. Above them would rise the tall masts of coloured cedar-wood, inserted in sinkings chased into the wall, surmounted by the expanded banners of the king, or the heraldic bearings of the temple floating in the breeze. Between the huge propylons opened up the great gateway of the temple, sixty feet high, which led into a vast court, surrounded by columns and open to the sky. Beyond were walls whose roofs were supported by a forest of enormous pillars, which seemed to have been raised by giants. Each hall diminished in size, but increased in sacredness, until the inmost sanctuary was reached; small, dark, and awful in its obscurity. Here was the holy shrine in the shape of a boat or ark, having in it a kind of chest partially veiled, in which was hid the mystic symbol of the god. Like the tabernacle of Israel, the common people were not allowed to go farther than the outer court beyond the obelisks; only kings and priests being permitted to penetrate into the interior recesses, there to observe the ritual ceremonies of the mysterious Egyptian worship. On the plan of the Egyptian temple were modelled the sacred buildings of the Jews; and the famous pillars of burnished brass, wonderful for their workmanship and their costly material, which Solomon erected in the court of his temple, called Jachin and Boaz, had their prototypes in the obelisks of the Nile. The obelisk belongs essentially to a level country; and there is no habitable region in the world so uniformly flat and unbroken by any elevations or depressions of surface as the valley of the Nile. There it produces its greatest effect; its size is not dwarfed by surrounding heights, and comes out by contrast with the small objects that diversify the plain. It forms a conspicuous landmark, a salient point on which the eye may rest with relief as it takes in the wide featureless horizon. In an artificial landscape, where there is no wild unmixed nature, where every inch of ground is cultivated, it is the appropriate culmination of that triumph of human art which is visible everywhere. It was a sense of this harmony of relation that induced the builders of the great cathedrals and temples of the world to place them, not amid varied and rugged scenery, where they might be brought into comparison with nature's work, but uniformly on level expanses of land. There they form the crowning symbol of man's loving care and painstaking endeavour, and give to the artificial landscape, which man has entirely subdued for his own uses, the finishing touch of power. Obelisks are the most enduring monuments of antiquity, and yet no class of objects has undergone such extraordinary vicissitudes. The history of the changes to which they have been subjected reads like a romance. At a remote age, not long after they were erected, most of them were cast down during some political catastrophe, which shook the whole country to its foundations. Under a subsequent dynasty the obelisks seem to have been lifted up to their former places, and regarded with the old veneration. After the lapse of nearly a thousand years, the land was again convulsed by a terrible revolution, the nature of which is still wrapped up in almost impenetrable mystery. A warlike migratory race came from the north-east, and subdued the whole country. This is known as the Hyksos invasion, or the invasion of the Shepherd Kings, and produced the same effects in Egypt as the Norman invasion produced in England. Previous to this period the horse seemed to have been altogether unknown; but after this date it uniformly appears in Egyptian paintings and sculptures. The Hyksos must therefore have been a pastoral race, in all likelihood belonging to the plains of Tartary; and, mounted on horses, they would find little difficulty in overcoming the foot soldiery of Egypt. When they had obtained possession of the country, they burnt down the cities, demolished the temples, and overthrew the obelisks. This disaster, the most dreadful which Egypt had ever known, followed suddenly upon a period of extraordinary prosperity, when new cities were built, and old cities enlarged; works of great public utility were constructed, a mercantile intercourse established with the surrounding nations, and the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, favoured by the long peace and the abundant resources of the country, reached their highest excellence. The reversal of all these signs of prosperity was so overwhelming, that the Egyptians of subsequent ages looked back upon this period of subjection under a foreign yoke which lay upon them for five hundred years, with bitter resentment. When the hated dynasty was at an end, the Egyptians obliterated, as far as they could, every sign of its supremacy, chiselled out the names of its kings on their monuments, and destroyed their records, so that few traces of this revolution remain to dispel the strange mystery in which it is involved. They could never bear to hear the detested names of the Shepherd Kings; and this circumstance throws light upon the passage in Genesis which says that the occupation of a shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians. Under the patronage of the new dynasty the arts which had been destroyed were again restored, the monuments of the suppressed religion were freed from their indignities, and once more reinstated with the old honours, and the whole country was reconstructed. But, while the temples were re-erected, and the old worship established with even greater splendour, there can be no doubt that many of the earlier obelisks, owing to their smaller size, as compared with the other gigantic monuments of Egypt, had been destroyed past all reconstruction; and some of them remain in the land at the present day on the sites where, and in the exact manner in which, they were overturned by the Shepherd Kings. But greater changes still happened to the Egyptian obelisks after this. Previously they had been devastated and overturned on their own soil. But now they excited the cupidity of the foreign invaders of Egypt, and were carried away to distant lands as trophies of their victories. The first obelisks that were removed in this way were two of the principal ones that adorned one of the temples of Thebes. After the capture of Thebes by Assurbanipal, the Assyrian king, the famous Sardanapalus of the Greeks, they were transported to the conqueror's palace at Nineveh, and were afterwards lost for ever in the destruction of that city, about sixty years later, or about six hundred years before Christ. The transportation of these enormous masses of stone across the country to the seashore, down the Red Sea, over the Indian Ocean, up the Persian Gulf, and the river Tigris, to their destination in the palace of Nineveh, nearly two thousand miles, must have been a feat of engineering skill at that early period of the world's history, far more wonderful in regard to the difficulties overcome, without any precedent to guide, and considering the rudeness of the means of transport, than anything that has ever been attempted since in the same line. The example of the Assyrian tyrant was followed, after a long interval, by the Romans, who sought to magnify and commemorate their conquests in Egypt by spoiling the land of its characteristic monuments. The Cæsars, one after another, for more than a hundred years, took advantage of their victories and the ruin of the unhappy land of Egypt to convey its beautiful obelisks to their own capital to permanently adorn one or other of the various places of public resort. They seem to have set almost the same high value upon these singular monuments which their inventors did. Pliny and Suetonius describe the almost incredible magnitude of the vessels in which these gigantic masses of stone were conveyed to Ostia, the harbour town, and from thence up the Tiber to Rome. The huge triremes were propelled by the force of hundreds of rowers across the waters of the Mediterranean. From the quay at Rome they were dragged and pushed, by the brute force of thousands in the old Egyptian manner, on low carts supported on rollers instead of wheels, to their destination, where they were set upright by a complicated machinery of ropes and huge upright beams. How many obelisks of Egyptian origin existed at one time in the world we do not know. They were undoubtedly very numerous; but many of them were broken up for building materials. The famous column called Pompey's Pillar stands upon a fragment of an ancient obelisk; and tradition asserts that there are many similar fragments of greater or less antiquity under the ruins of the older houses of Alexandria. At present forty-two obelisks are known to be in existence in different parts of the world. Of these, seventeen remain in Egypt on their original sites, of which no less than eleven are prostrate on the ground, having been overturned by some political or religious revolution, by the force of an earthquake, or by the slow undermining of the infiltrated waters of the Nile. No less than twelve of the oldest and grandest are still to be seen standing erect in Rome, where they constitute by far the most striking and memorable monuments. The others are distributed in various places wide apart. One is in Paris, two are in Constantinople, a fourth, the famous Cleopatra's Needle, is on the Thames Embankment, in the heart of London; a fifth, its old companion in Alexandria, is now in one of the public squares of New York. And there are several diminutive ones, from eight feet in height downwards, in the British Museum, in the Florentine Museum in Florence, in Benevento in Italy, and in the town of Alnwick in Northumberland. The oldest of all the obelisks is the beautiful one of rosy granite which stands alone among the green fields on the banks of the Nile not far from Cairo. It is the gravestone of a great ancient city which has vanished and left only this relic behind. That city was the Bethshemesh of Scripture, the famous On, which is memorable to all Bible readers as the residence of the priest Potipherah whose daughter Asenath Joseph married. The Greeks called it Heliopolis, the city of the sun, because there the worship of the sun had its chief centre and its most sacred shrines. It was the seat of the most ancient university in the world, to which youthful students came from all parts of the world, to learn the occult wisdom which the priests of On alone could teach. Thales, Solon, Eudoxus, Pythagoras, and Plato, all studied there, perhaps Moses too. It was also the birthplace of the sacred literature of Egypt, where were written on papyrus leaves the original chapters of the oldest book in the world, generally known as the "Book of the Dead," giving a most striking account of the conflicts and triumphs of the life after death; a whole copy or fragment of which every Egyptian, rich or poor, wished to have buried with him in his coffin, and portions of which are found inscribed on every mummy case and on the walls of every tomb. In front of one of the principal temples of the sun, in this magnificent city, stood along with a companion, long since destroyed, the solitary obelisk which we now behold on the spot. It alone, as I have said, has survived the wreck of all the glory of the place, as if to assure us that what is given to God, however ignorantly and superstitiously, endures, while all the other works of man perish. It was constructed by Usirtesen I., who is supposed to have reigned two thousand eight hundred years before Christ, and has outlasted all the dynastic changes of the land, and still stands where it originally stood nearly forty-seven centuries ago. What appears of its shaft above ground is sixty-eight feet in height, but its base is buried in the mud of the Nile; and year after year the inundation of the river deposits its film of soil around its foot, and buries it still deeper in its sacred grave. Down the centre of each of its four faces runs a line of deeply-cut hieroglyphics, in whose cavities the wild mason-bees construct their mud-cells and store their honey. Nothing can exceed the beauty and distinctness of these carvings. The pictures of birds and beasts, chiselled in the hard polished granite, have a purity of form and line, a directness of expression and intention, which is most impressive. Its top is somewhat damaged, having been originally protected, as was the case with many of the obelisks which were not finely finished to a point, with a capping of gilded bronze that remained intact till the thirteen century. The inscription on its sides contains nothing of historic value. It is simply a dedication to Usirtesen, who constructed it, under the title of Horus, or the rising sun, which was borne, as I have said, by the kings of Egypt on account of their supposed origin as an incarnation of the sun. At Luxor, a single obelisk, the property of the English, still maintains its ancient position. It is very beautiful, formed of red granite, and covered with elegantly carved inscriptions, running up each of the four faces. The hieroglyphics are cut to an unusual depth, and are remarkably clear and well-formed, indicating that the monument was raised in honour of Rameses the Great, the most illustrious of all the Egyptian monarchs, and the most magnificent and prolific architect the world has ever seen. The top of the obelisk was originally left in a rough unfinished state, the roughness having been concealed by a capping of bronze; but this having been removed long ago, the surface has become very much eroded by exposure, which somewhat detracts from the elegance of the shaft. It has also the peculiarity that its two inner faces are sensibly curved--a peculiarity which it is supposed was designed to make the sunlight fall with softer effect, so as to make the shadows less crude, and the angles less sharp. The shaft, which is eighty-two feet high by eight feet in diameter at the base, is elevated upon a pedestal, which is adorned by statues in high relief of dog-headed monkeys standing in an attitude of adoration at the corners worshipping the sun, and also by standing figures of the god of the Nile presenting offerings, incised in the stone like the hieroglyphics of the shaft. The surroundings of this obelisk are far grander than those of any other obelisk in the world. At present the extent and dimensions of the ruins of Thebes produce an overwhelming effect upon the visitor. But it is almost impossible for us to imagine its magnificence when its temples and obelisks were in their full perfection, and the great Rameses was carried on the shoulders of his officers through the ranks of adoring slaves to behold the completion of the works which had been designed to perpetuate his glory. The ancient city, divided in the middle by the Nile, as London is by the Thames or Glasgow by the Clyde, covered the vast plain, with great houses in the outskirts standing in richly cultivated gardens, each temple surrounded by its own little sacred lake, over which the bodies of the dead were carried by the priests before burial, and the beautiful Mokattam Hills bounding the view, wearing the soft lilac hue of distance. Only two or three places on earth can rival the overwhelming interest which the city possesses. But the colossal associated temples of Karnac and Luxor are absolutely unique. There is nothing on earth to equal them. They are man's greatest achievements in religious architecture. Long rows of stupendous pillars, covered from base to top with coloured pictures and hieroglyphics, containing a whole library of actually written and pictured history and religion, look "like a Brobdingnagian forest turned into stone," in the midst of which the visitor feels himself an insignificant insect. A sense of superhuman awfulness, of personal nothingness and irresistible power, is what these stupendous structures inspire in even the most callous spectator. A confused mass of broken columns and heaps of huge sculptured stones present an appearance as if the old giants had been at war on the spot, hurling rocks at each other. Between Luxor and Karnac extended an avenue of sphinxes, two miles long, numbering more than four thousand pieces of sculpture, now represented by mutilated formless blocks of stone. We see in these vast temples, which were raised by a people inspired with the sentiment that they were the greatest of all nations, to be the chief shrines of the religion of the country, the fruits of the plunder and the tribute of Asia and Africa. The funds necessary to build them had been procured by robbing other nations; and most of the work was done by captives taken in war. Many a fair province had been desolated of its inhabitants, many a splendid city spoiled of its riches, in order to construct these awful halls. Unfortunately, the annual overflow of the inundation of the Nile covers the ground to the depth of a foot or two, staining and eating away the bases of the columns, and overthrowing their enormous drums and architraves. The destruction cannot be prevented, for the water infiltrates through the soil; and some day, ere long, the remaining columns will be hurled down, and the pride of Karnac will lie prone in the dust. Passing westward to Rome, the largest obelisk not only in the Eternal City but in the whole world is that which now adorns the square of St. John Lateran. It is, as usual, of red granite much darkened and corroded by time, and stands with its pedestal and cross one hundred and forty-one feet high; the shaft alone being one hundred and eight feet seven inches in height, with faces about nine feet and a half wide at the base; the whole mass weighing upwards of four hundred and sixty tons. It was found among the ruins of the Circus Maximus broken into three pieces, and was dug up by order of Pope Sixtus V., conveyed to its present site, and re-erected by the celebrated architect Fontana in 1588. The lower end had been so much injured by its fall, that in order to enable it to stand, it was found necessary to cut off about two feet and a half to obtain a level base. On the top of it Fontana added by way of ornament four bronze lions, surmounted by three mountain peaks, out of which sprung the cross, as the armorial bearings of the Popes. Thus crowned with the cross, and consecrated to the honour of Christianity, this noble relic of antiquity acquires an additional interest from its nearness to the great Basilica of the Lateran, which is the representative cathedral of the Papacy and the mother church of Christendom, and to the Lateran Palace, for a thousand years the residence of the Popes of Rome. The history of the Lateran obelisk is unusually varied. It was originally constructed by Thothmes III., and set up by him before the great temple of Amen at Heliopolis. But being an old man at the time, he left his successor to complete it by adding most of the hieroglyphics. It took thirty-six years to carve these sculptures; the four sides from top to bottom being covered with inscriptions in the purest style of Egyptian art. From one of these inscriptions we learn that the obelisk was thrown down in Egypt probably during the invasion of the Shepherd Kings, and was re-erected by the great Rameses, who did not, contrary to the usual custom, arrogate to himself the honours of his predecessor. These sculptures tell us of monarchs who had reigned, and conquered, and died long before the mythic times, when the "pious Æneas," as Virgil tells us, landed on the Italian shore, and Romulus ploughed his significant furrow round the Palatine Hill. A thousand years before the foundation of Rome, and two thousand years before the Christian era, it had been excavated from the quarries of Syene and worshipped at Heliopolis. It was as old to the Cæsars as the days of the Cæsars are to us. Pliny tells us that the work of quarrying, conveying, and setting it up employed twenty thousand men; and there is a dim tradition that so anxious was the king for its safety, when it was erected, that in order to ensure this he bound his own son to the top of it. A close examination of the hieroglyphics reveals the curious fact that the name of the god Amen wherever it occurs, is more deeply carved than the other figures, in order to obliterate the name of some other deity which had previously occupied its place. It is supposed that this circumstance indicates a theological revolution which happened in the history of Egypt when Amenhotep III., the Memnon of the Greek historian, married an Arabian wife of the name of Taia, who introduced her own religion into her adopted country, as Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, introduced the worship of Baal into Israel. When this dynasty was overthrown, in the course of about fifty years, the old faith was restored, and the names of the old gods substituted for those which had usurped their place on the religious monuments. It is supposed that the Lateran obelisk was the one before which Cambyses, the great Persian conqueror, stood lost in admiration, arrested in his semi-religious course of destroying the popular monuments of Egypt. Augustus intended to have removed it to Rome, but was deterred by the difficulty of the undertaking, and also by superstitious scruples, because it had been specially dedicated to the sun, and fixed immovably in his temple. Constantine the Great had no such scruples, believing, as he said, that "he did no injury to religion if he removed a wonder from one temple, and again consecrated it in Rome, the temple of the whole world." He died, however, before he had completed his design, having succeeded only in transporting the obelisk to Alexandria, from whence his son and successor Constantius transferred it to Rome, and placed it on the Spina of the Great Circus. So clumsily, however, was it erected in this place, that several deep holes had to be drilled in the upper part of it, in order that ropes for hauling it up might be put through them; a defect in engineering skill which has disfigured the obelisk, and contrasts strikingly with the resources of the ancient Egyptians, who were able to raise the stone to its position without such a device. The obelisk is thus an enduring monument of three great rulers--Thothmes, who first constructed it in Heliopolis; Constantine, who removed it to Rome; and Pope Sixtus V., who conveyed it from the Circus Maximus, and re-erected it where it now stands. Next in point of height to the Lateran obelisk is the one that stands in the great square of St. Peter's, between two beautiful fountains that are continually showering high in the air their radiant sunlit spray. It is meant to serve as the gnomon of a gigantic dial, traced in lines of white marble in the pavement of the square. Its rosy surface glistening in the rays of the sun, and its long shadow cast before it on the ground, make it a very impressive object. Its origin is involved in mystery, for there is no inscription on it to tell who erected it, or where it came from. This absence of hieroglyphics points to its having been an unfinished work--something having prevented its constructor from recording on it the purpose of its erection, as was usually the case. But as the vacant shadow of the dial and the blank empty lines of the spectrum are more suggestive than any sunlit spaces, so the blank unwritten sides of this obelisk give rise to more speculations than if they had been carved from head to foot with hieroglyphics. On account of this peculiarity, some authors have not hesitated to consider it a mere imitation obelisk, constructed by the Romans at a comparatively late period. This idea, however, is refuted by the evidence of Pliny, who regarded it as a genuine Egyptian relic, and tells us that it was cut from the quarry of Syene, and dedicated to the sun by the son of Sesores, in obedience to an oracle, after his recovery from blindness. It is generally believed that it first stood before one of the temples of Heliopolis, was then removed to Alexandria, and finally transported to Rome by Caligula. This emperor constructed a special vessel for the purpose, of greater dimensions than had ever been seen before; and after it had brought the obelisk to the banks of the Tiber, he commanded it to be filled with stones, and sunk as a caisson in the harbour of Ostia, which he was constructing at the time. On arriving at Rome the obelisk was set up on the Spina of the Circus of Nero, which is now occupied by the sacristy of St. Peter's Church. For fifteen centuries the obelisk remained undisturbed on its site, the only one in the city that escaped being overthrown. At last its foundation giving way, so that it leaned dangerously towards the old Basilica of St. Peter's, Sixtus V. formed the design of removing it to where it now stands, a very short distance from the original spot. The record of its re-erection, the first in papal Rome, by Fontana--a work of extreme difficulty and imposing ceremonial magnificence, which was richly rewarded by the grateful Pope--is exceedingly interesting. A curious legend is usually related in connection with it. A papal edict was proclaimed threatening death to any one who should utter a loud word while the operation of lifting and settling the obelisk was going on. As the "huge crystallisation of Egyptian sweat" rose on its basis there was a sudden stoppage, the hempen cables refused to do their work, and the hanging mass of stone threatened to fall and destroy itself. Suddenly from out the breathless crowd rose a loud, clear voice, "Wet the ropes." There was inspiration in the suggestion; the architect acted upon it, and the obelisk at once took its stand on its base, where it has firmly remained ever since. Not only was the sailor Bresca pardoned for transgressing the papal command, but he was rewarded, and the district of Bordighera, from which he came, received the privilege of supplying the palm leaves for the use of Rome on Palm Sunday--a privilege which it still possesses, and which forms the principal trade of the place. To me the most familiar and interesting of all the Roman obelisks is that which stands in the centre of the Piazza del Popolo, the finest and largest square in Rome. It is about eighty feet high, carved with hieroglyphics, with four marble Egyptian lions, one at each corner of the platform on which it stands, pouring from their mouths copious streams of water into large basins, with a refreshing sound. Lions in Egypt were regarded as symbols of the sun when passing through the zodiacal sign of Leo, the time when the annual inundation of the Nile occurred. They had thus a deep significance in connection with water. The obelisk was originally erected in front of the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, by the great Rameses, the Sesostris of the Greeks, whose personal character and wide conquests fill a larger space in the history of ancient Egypt than those of any other monarch. From Heliopolis it was removed to Rome, after the battle of Actium, by Augustus, and placed on the Spina of the Circus Maximus, the sports of which were under the special protection of Apollo, the sun-god, by whose favour it was supposed that the Egyptian victory had been achieved. For four hundred years it acted as a gnomon, regulating by the length and direction of its shadow the hours of the public games of the circus; and then it was overturned during those troublous days in which the empire was rent asunder. Twelve centuries of decay and wreck had buried it from the eyes of men, until it was dug up and placed where it now stands, in 1587, by Pope Sixtus V., to whom modern Rome is indebted for the restoration of many of her ancient monuments, and the construction of many of her public buildings and streets. With the cross planted on its summit, this noble monument was long the first object which met the traveller's eye as he entered Rome from the north by the old Flaminian way. Brought to commemorate the overthrow of the land from whence it came, it has witnessed the overthrow of the conquerors in turn; and now re-erected in the modern capital, it will endure when its glory too has passed away. And out of the ruins of the city of the Popes, as out of the ruins of the city of the Cæsars, some future architect will dig it up to grace the triumph of a brighter and freer resuscitation of the Eternal City than the world has yet seen. The association of fountains at its base with this obelisk seems at first sight as incongruous as the crowning of its apex with a metal cross, for the Christian emblem can never alter the nature of the pagan monument. There is no natural harmony in the association, for there are no fountains or streams of running water in the desert. The obelisk belongs essentially to the dry and parched east; the fountain is the birth of the happier west, bright with the sparkle and musical with the sound of many waters. The obelisk relieves the monotony of immeasurable plains over which a sky of serene unstained blue arches itself in infinite altitude, the image of eternal purity, and the sun rises day after day with the same unsullied brilliance, and sets with the same unmitigable glory. The fountain, on the other hand, is the child of lands whose mountains kiss the clouds and gleam with the purity of everlasting snows, and where each day brings out new beauties, and each season reveals a fresh and ever-varying charm. But although there is no geographical reason why these two objects should be associated, there is a poetical fitness. The obelisk is the symbol of the perpetual past, holding in its changeless unity, as on its carved sides, the memories of former ages; the fountain is the symbol of the perpetual present, ever changing, ever new. The one speaks to us of a petrified old age; the other of an immortal youth. And thus it is in life, each passing moment flowing on with all its changes beside the stern, hard, enduring monument of the irrevocable past on which what is written is changelessly written. How different too are the bright sparkling fountains that leap with ever-varying beauty at the foot of the Flaminian obelisk now, from the dull, sleepy monotonous river that, like a Lethe flood, flowed past it in the old days at Heliopolis! Are they not both symbolical of the new and the old world, of the Christian faith, with its progressive thought and varied expanding life, and the stagnant pagan creed, which impressed the soul with the sense of human helplessness in the face of an unchangeable iron order alike of nature and of society? Another of the great obelisks of Rome is that which stands on Monte Citorio, in front of the present Parliament House. It was brought to Rome by Augustus, who dedicated it anew to the sun, and placed it as the gnomon of a meridian in the midst of the Campus Martius. Originally it had been erected at Heliopolis in honour of Psammeticus I., who reigned about seven hundred years before Christ. This monarch lived during a time when the national religion had become corrupted, and the whole land had come under the influence of Greek thought and Greek customs. But the obelisk which he erected is worthy of the best period of Egyptian art. It is universally admired for the remarkable beauty of its hieroglyphics. The anonymous pilgrim of Einsiedlen mentions that this obelisk was still erect when he visited Rome about the beginning of the ninth century. It seems, however, to have fallen and to have been broken in pieces, nearly three hundred years later, during the terrible conflagration caused by the Norman troops of Robert Guiscard. Several fragments of it were dug up, one after another, during the sixteenth century. The principal part of the shaft was discovered in 1748, among the ruins beneath the choir of the Church of San Lorenzo in Lucina. These portions were damaged in such a way as to show clearly the action of fire, proving that the obelisk had been destroyed in the great fire of 1084. Pope Pius VI. gathered together the fragments, and with the aid of granite pieces taken from the ruined column of Antoninus Pius, which stood in the neighbourhood, he formed of these a whole shaft, which represents, as nearly as possible, the original obelisk. It is seventy-two feet high, and is surmounted by a globe and a small pyramid of bronze, which, along with its pedestal, increases its height to one hundred and thirty-four feet. A portion of the lines of the celebrated sun-dial, whose gnomon it formed, was brought to light under the sacristy of San Lorenzo in Lucina in 1463. All the other obelisks in Rome belong to comparatively recent periods, to the decadence of Egypt. None of them are of any great significance to the student of archæology. Several of them were executed in Egypt by order of the Roman emperors, and are therefore not genuine but imitation obelisks. Of this kind may be mentioned the Esquiline and Quirinal obelisks, which were brought to Rome by the emperor Claudius, and placed in the old Egyptian manner, one on each side of the entrance to the great mausoleum of Augustus in the Campus Martius. They are both destitute of hieroglyphics and are broken into several pieces. One now stands on Monte Cavallo, in front of the great Quirinal Palace, betwixt the two well-known gigantic groups of men and horses, statues of Greek origin, supposed to be those of Castor and Pollux, executed by Pheidias and Praxiteles; and the other in the large open space in front of the great Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. Another of these bastard obelisks occupies a commanding position at the top of the Spanish Stairs, in front of the Church of Trinita dei Monti. It stood originally on the spina of the circus of Sallust, in his gardens, and is covered with hieroglyphics of the rudest workmanship, which sufficiently proclaim their origin, as a Roman forgery probably of the period of the Antonine emperors. In the midst of the public gardens, on the Pincian Hill, there is another Roman obelisk about thirty feet high, excavated from the quarries of Syene, and set up by Hadrian originally at Antinopolis in Egypt in front of a temple dedicated to the deified Antinous, the lamented favourite of the emperor. It was afterwards transferred to the imperial villa at Tivoli, near Rome, and subsequently to the grounds of the Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, from whence it was finally taken to its present site. This obelisk has a special interest because it commemorates one of the most beautiful and touching examples of self-sacrifice which the annals of paganism afford. We are apt to judge of Antinous from the languid beauty of the statue of him in the Roman galleries, as simply the pampered sycophant of a court. But behind his sensual beauty and softness there was an unselfish devotion which the caresses of royalty and the favours of fortune could not spoil. When the oracle declared that the happiness of Hadrian, who was afflicted with a profound melancholy, could only be secured by the sacrifice of what was most dear to him, Antinous went at once and drowned himself in the Nile, and thus gave his life for his imperial friend, who, instead of being made better by the sacrifice, was left altogether inconsolable. The magnificent city founded to perpetuate his memory is now a heap of ruined mounds, and the obelisk that bore his name in Egypt now stands far away in Rome; but time cannot quench the glow of sympathy that kindles in the heart of every one who remembers his story of noble self-sacrificing love. There are three or four obelisks that mark the introduction of the Egyptian worship of Isis into the imperial city of the later emperors. At one time everything Egyptian was fashionable in Rome, and the goddess of Egypt was domesticated in the Roman Pantheon, and temples in her honour were erected in several parts of the city and throughout the empire. Obelisks, fashioned in Egypt by command of the Romans, were often placed in front of the temples. But these spurious obelisks have little dignity or significance, and suffer wofully when brought into comparison with specimens of the genuine work of old Egypt. The largest and most imposing of these monuments of the new faith of the city is the one that now stands in the Piazza Navona, formerly called the Pamphilian Obelisk, in honour of the family name of Pope Innocent X., who placed it there. It is forty feet high, of red granite, broken into five pieces, and covered with hieroglyphics, the whole style and execution of which are so inferior that Winkelman long ago, although he knew nothing of their import, detected the fact of the obelisk being a mere imitation. It was cut and engraved at Syene by order of the emperor Domitian, who designed it to adorn his villa on the Lake of Albano. From thence it was removed by the usurper Maxentius to the circus on the Appian Way, founded by him, and named after his son Romulus. It is now on the site of the old Circus Agonalis, whose form and boundaries are marked out by the houses of the Piazza Navona. Surmounted by the Pope's device of a dove with an olive branch, a vain substitute of heraldry for sacred symbolism, and standing on an artificial rock-work about forty feet high, composed of figures of Tritons and nymphs, disporting themselves amid plashing fountains and marble foliage, the whole subject is incongruous and utterly opposed to the simplicity and majesty of the ancient monuments. Near the Pantheon there is a pair of obelisks which were brought from the East, and stood together before the temple of Isis and Serapis, which is supposed to have been situated on the site of the Dominican Church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. They were found when digging the foundations of the church in 1667, along with an altar of Isis, now in the Capitoline Museum. One of these obelisks was erected by Clement XI. in 1711, in front of the Pantheon, in the midst of the fountain of the Piazza. Its height is only about seventeen feet, and the hieroglyphics on it indicate that it was constructed by Psammeticus II., the supposed Hophra of Hebrew history. This same monarch also constructed its twin-fellow which now stands in the Piazza Minerva in the near neighbourhood. The celebrated sculptor Bernini, when re-erecting it at the command of Pope Alexander VII. in 1660, had the exceedingly bad taste to balance it on the back of a marble elephant, the work of his pupil Ferrata; on account of which absurd incongruity Bernini received from the satirical Roman populace the nickname of "The Elephant." Only one obelisk in Rome was not restored or re-erected by any Pope, viz. that which stands in the beautiful grounds of the Villa Mattei in the Coelian Hill. It was found near the Capitol on the site of an ancient temple of Isis, and was presented by the magistrates to the owner of the villa, a great collector of antiquities. It is said that when it was raised in 1563, on its red granite pedestal, the mason who superintended the work incautiously rested his hand on the block, when the shaft suddenly slid down and crushed it, the bones of the imprisoned member being still held between the two stones. The foregoing were the last obelisks erected in Rome by the emperors. After them no more were constructed either in the imperial city or in their native land of Egypt. The language inscribed upon them had come to be superseded by the universal use of the Greek tongue; there was no use therefore in making monuments for the reception of hieroglyphic records which nobody could understand or interpret. The sudden craze for the Egyptian idolatry passed away as suddenly as it sprang up, and Christianity established itself as the religion of the civilised world. The temples in Egypt and Rome were closed, the altars overthrown, and the objects connected with the material symbolism of paganism were destroyed, and objects connected with the spiritual symbolism of Christianity set up in their place. And thus the obelisk, the oldest of all religious symbols, which was constructed at the very dawn of human existence, to mark the worship of the material luminary, fell into disuse and oblivion, when "the Sun of Righteousness" rose above the horizon of the world, with healing in His wings, dispelling all the mists and delusions of error. The art of constructing obelisks followed the usual stages in the history of all human art. Its best period was that which indicated the greatest faith; its worst that which marked the decay of faith. The oldest specimens are invariably the most perfect and beautiful; the most recent exhibit too marked signs of the decrepitude of skill that had come over their makers. Between the oldest specimens and their surroundings there was a harmony and an appropriateness which solemnised the scene and excited feelings of adoration and awe. Between the latest specimens and their surroundings there was an incongruity which proved them to be aliens and strangers on the scene, and was fatal to all reverence; an incongruity which the modern Romans have only intensified by raising them on pedestals of most uncongenial forms, and crowning them with hideous masses of metal, representing the insignia of popes or other objects equally unsuitable. We see in the oldest obelisks a wonderful ease and an exquisite finish of execution, a maturity of thought and skill which none of the later obelisks reached, and which indicate the high-water mark of man's achievement in that line. There is also "a bloom of youth and of the earth's morning" about them which is quite indescribable, and which doubtless came to them because of the power and reality of faith. They were the fresh natural originals in which a deep primitive spontaneous adoration that dominated the whole nature of man expressed itself; while the specimens that were executed afterwards were slavish imitations, expressing a worship and a creed which had become fixed and formal. One of the most valuable results of the expedition of the great Napoleon to Egypt, ostensibly for scientific and antiquarian purposes, but really for military glory, was the acquisition of the Rosetta stone now in the British Museum--which afforded the key to the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics--and of the obelisk of Luxor which now adorns the noble Place de la Concord in Paris. The history of the engineering difficulties overcome in bringing this obelisk to France is extremely interesting. Indeed, the story of the transportation of the obelisks from their native home, from time to time, to other lands, is no less romantic and worthy of study than the artistic, religious, or antiquarian phases of the subject. It forms a special literature of its own to which Commander Gorringe of the United States Navy, in his elaborate and magnificent work on Egyptian obelisks, has done the amplest justice. It cost upwards of £100,000 to bring the Luxor Obelisk to Paris, owing to the inexperience of the engineers and the imperfection of their method. But it was worthy of this vast expenditure of toil and money; for standing in an open circus unimpeded by narrow streets, and unspoiled by the tawdry ornaments which disfigure the Roman obelisks, it adds to the magnificent modern city the charm of antique majesty. It stands seventy-six feet and a half in height, with its apex left rough and unfinished, destitute of the gilded cap which formerly completed and protected it. Each of its four sides contains three vertical lines of well-executed hieroglyphics, which show that it was raised in honour of Rameses II., to adorn the stupendous temple of Luxor at Thebes which he constructed. When it lay on its original site, previous to its being transported, it was found to have been cracked at the time of its first erection, and repaired by means of two dove-tailed wedges of wood which had perished long ago. But this defect is not now noticeable. The companion of this obelisk is still standing at Luxor, and has already been described. Both of them show a peculiarity in their lines, which could only be noticed effectually when the pair stood together. This peculiarity is a convexity, or _entasis_, as it is called, on the inner faces. Even to the untrained eye its sides seem not of equal dimensions; and actual measurement shows the irregularity more clearly. This is said, however, to be exceptional to the general rule, and to be foreign to the design of an obelisk in the best period of the Pharaonic art. Still, several magnificent specimens, such as the Luxor and Flaminian obelisks, exhibit it. And they are an illustration of what was a marked characteristic of all classic architecture, which shows a slight curvature or entasis in its long lines. It was early found out that mathematical exactness and beauty were not the same. By making its two sides geometrically equal, the living expression of the most beautiful marble statue is destroyed, and it becomes simply a piece of architecture. It is well known that the two sides of the human face are not precisely the same; the irregularity of the one modifies the irregularity of the other, and thus a higher symmetry and harmony is the result. The two sides of the leaf of the begonia are unequal, and if folded together will not correspond. The same is true of the leaf of the elm and the lime. But when the mass of the foliage is seen together, this irregularity gives an added charm to the whole. Every object in nature has some imperfection, which indicates that it has a relation to some other object, and is but a part of a greater whole. The intentional irregularity of the windows in the Doge's Palace at Venice enhances the effect of the marvellous façade. By comparing the Parthenon at Athens, with its curves and inclinations, with the Madeleine at Paris, we see how far short the copy comes of the original in beauty and expressiveness, because of the exact formality of its right angles. The ancient Egyptians understood this well; and in their architecture they sought to rise to a higher symmetry through irregularity; and we can see in their frequent departure from upright and parallel lines in the construction of their temples, an effort to escape from formal exactness, and a longing for the nobler unity which is realised to the full in the rich variety of the Gothic. We may be sure that "every attempt in art that seeks a theoretical completeness, in so doing sinks from the natural into the artificial, from the living and the divine into the mechanical and commonplace." The Egyptian obelisk is thus but a type of a great law of nature. In this simplest and most primitive specimen of architecture we have an illustration of the principle which gives its expressiveness to the human face, beauty to the flowers of the field, and grandeur to the highest triumphs of human art. The obelisks that remain to be described are the two which to us are the most interesting; the pair of "Cleopatra's Needles" which so long stood side by side at Alexandria, and are now separated by the Atlantic Ocean; one standing on the Thames Embankment in London, and the other in Central Park, New York. They were both set up in front of the great temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, about fifteen centuries before Christ, by Thothmes III., and engraved by Rameses II., the two mightiest of the kings of Egypt. After standing on their original site for fourteen centuries, witnessing the rise and fall of many native dynasties, and the establishment of the Greek dominion under the Ptolemies, they were, when Egypt became a province of Imperial Rome, transferred by Cæsar Augustus to Alexandria. There they adorned the Cæsareum or palace of the Cæsars, which stood by the side of the harbour, was surrounded with a sacred grove, and was the greatest building in the city. What Thebes and Heliopolis were in the time of the Pharaohs, Alexandria became in the time of the Ptolemies. And though, being a parasitical growth, it could not originate works of genius, like its ancient prototypes, it could appropriate those which Heliopolis and Thebes had created. The tragic death of Cleopatra, the last of the dynasty of the Ptolemies, had taken place seven years before the setting up of these obelisks at Alexandria; so that she had in reality nothing to do with them personally. For about fifteen centuries the two obelisks stood in their new position before the Cæsareum. They saw the gradual overthrow, by time's resistless hand, of the magnificent palace which they adorned; and they themselves felt the slow undermining of the sea as it encroached upon the land, until at last one of them fell to the ground about three hundred years ago, and got partially covered over with sand, leaving the other to stand alone. Then came the French invasion of Egypt, and the victories of Nelson and Abercromby, when Mahomet Ali, the ruler of the land, offered the prostrate obelisk to the British nation as a token of gratitude. The offer, however, was not taken advantage of, for various reasons. At last the patriotism and enterprise of a private individual, the late Sir Erasmus Wilson, came to the rescue, when the stone was about to be broken up into building material by the proprietor of the ground on which it lay. An iron water-tight cylinder was constructed for its transport, in which, with much toil, the obelisk was encased and floated. It was taken in tow by a steam-tug, which encountered a fearful storm in the Bay of Biscay. This led to the abandonment of the pontoon cylinder, which floated about for three days, and was at last picked up by a passing steamer, and towed to the coast of Spain; from whence it was brought to England, and set up where it now stands on the Thames Embankment. Its transport cost altogether about £13,000, and was a work of great anxiety and difficulty. Standing seventy feet high on its present site, it forms one of the noblest and most appropriate monuments of the greatest city in the world; awakening the curiosity of every passer-by regarding the mysteries revealed in its enigmatical sculptures. The companion obelisk which had been left standing at Alexandria, after having suffered much from neglect, in the midst of its mean and filthy surroundings, was presented to the American Government by the Khedive of Egypt. But that Government acted in the same supine spirit in which our own had acted; and it was left to the ability of Captain Corringe as engineer, and to the liberality of the millionaire Vanderbilt, who paid the expenses incurred, amounting to £20,000, to bring the obelisk in the hold of a chartered steamer across the Atlantic, and set it up in the midst of New York city. And if the one obelisk is a remarkable sight in London, the other is a still more remarkable sight in New York. There, amid the latest inventions of the West, surrounded by the most recent civilisation of the world, rises up serenely, unchanged to heaven, the earliest monument of the East, surrounded by the most ancient civilisation of the world. "Westward the course of empire takes its way;" and as the old obelisk of Heliopolis witnessed the ending of the four first dramas of human history, so shall it close the fifth and last. The sun in the East rose over its birth; the sun in the West shall set over its death. It is possible that when all the stores of coal and other fuel which form the source of the mechanical power and commercial greatness of northern and western nations shall have been exhausted, a method of directly utilising solar radiation may be discovered. And if so, then the seat of empire will be transferred to parts of the earth that are now burnt up by the intense heat of the sun, but which then will be the most valuable of all possessions. The vast solar radiance now wasted on the furnace-like shores of the Red Sea will be stored up as a source of mechanical power. The commerce of the West will once more return to the East where it began; and the whole region will be repeopled with the life that swarmed there in the best days of old Egypt. But under that new civilisation there will be no return of the old religion of the obelisks; for men will no longer worship the sun as a god, but will use him for the common purposes of life, as a slave. After having thus passed in review so many noble obelisks, a mere tithe of what once existed, the conviction is deepened in our minds that no nation had ever devoted so much time, treasure, and skill to the service of religion as the Egyptian. While the Jews had only one tabernacle and one temple, every city in Egypt--and no country had so many great cities--had its magnificent temple and its hosts of obelisks. The spoils of the whole world were devoted to their construction; a third of the produce of the whole land of Egypt was spent in their maintenance. The daily life of the people was moulded entirely upon the religion of these temples and obelisks; their art and their literature were inspired by it. It organised their society; it built up their empire; and it was the salt which for more than three thousand years conserved a civilisation which has been the marvel and the mystery of every succeeding age. Surely the Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world, shone on those who were thus fervently stretching the tendrils of their souls to its dawning in the East, who raised these obelisks as symbols of the glorious and beneficent sunlight of the world. CHAPTER VII THE PAINTED TOMB AT VEII Rome after a season becomes oppressive. Your capacity of enjoyment is exhausted. The atmosphere of excitement in which you live, owing to the number, variety, and transcendent interest of the sights that have to be seen, wears out the nervous system, and you have an ardent desire for a little respite and change of scene. I remember that after the first month I had a deep longing to get away into the heart of an old wood, or into a lonely glen among the mountains, where I should see no trace of man's handiwork, and recover the tone of my spirit amid the wildness of nature. For this inevitable reaction of sight-seeing in the city, a remedy may be found by retiring for a day or two to some one or other of the numerous beautiful scenes in the neighbourhood. There is no city in the world more favourably situated for this purpose than Rome. Some of the most charming excursions may be made from it as a centre, starting in the morning and returning at night. Every tourist who stays but a fortnight in the city makes a point of seeing the idyllic waterfalls of Tivoli, the extensive ruins of Hadrian's Villa, the picturesque olive-clad slopes of Frascati and Tusculum, and the lovely environs of Albano on the edge of its richly-wooded lake. But there are spots that are less known at no greater distance, which yet do not yield in beauty or interest to these familiar resorts. Chief among these is Veii, whose very name has in it a far-off old-world sound. When the Campagna has quickened under the breath of the Italian spring into a tender greenness, and is starred with orchids and sweet-scented narcissuses, I know nothing more pleasant than a visit to this renowned spot. Veii was the greatest city of the Etruscan confederacy. When Rome was in its infancy it was in the height of its grandeur. After a ten years' siege it was captured by Camillus; and so stately were its buildings, so beautiful was the scenery around it, and so strong its natural defences, that it was seriously proposed to abandon Rome and transfer the population to it, and thus save the rebuilding of the houses and temples that had been destroyed during the invasion of the Gauls. It was only by a small majority that this project was set aside. Veii never recovered from its overthrow. In vain the Romans attempted to make it one of their own cities by colonising it. Many families established themselves there, but they were afterwards recalled by a decree of the senate, which made it an offence punishable with death for any Roman to remain at Veii beyond a prescribed period. By degrees it dwindled away, until in the days of Propertius its site was converted into pastures; and the shepherd roamed over it with his flocks, unconscious that one of the most famous cities of Italy once stood on the spot. So long ago as the reign of the emperor Hadrian its very locality was forgotten, and its former existence regarded by many with incredulity as a myth of early times. It was left to the enlightened antiquarian skill of our own times, so fruitful in similar discoveries and resuscitations, to find out among the fastnesses of the wilderness around Rome its true position. And although all the difficult problems connected with its citadel and the circuit of its walls have not yet been solved, there can be no doubt that the city stood in the very place which modern archæologists have determined. This place is a little village called Isola Farnese, about eleven miles north-west of Rome. The way that leads to it branches off by a side path for about three miles from the old diligence road between Florence and Rome at La Storta--the last post station where horses were changed about eight miles from the city. It is situated amid ground so broken into heights and hollows that you see no indications of it until you come abruptly upon it, hid in a fold of the undulating Campagna. And the loneliness of the district and of all the paths leading to it is hardly relieved by the appearance of the village itself. I shall not soon forget my visit to this romantic spot, and the delightful day I spent there with a congenial friend. We left Rome in an open one-horse carriage early one morning about the end of April. Passing out at the Porta del Popolo, we quickly traversed the squalid suburb and crossed the Ponte Molle--the famous old Milvian Bridge. We proceeded as far as the Via Cassia on the old Flaminian Way. At the junction of these roads the villa and gardens of Ovid were situated; but their site is now occupied by a humble osteria or wayside tavern. The road passes over an undulating country entirely uncultivated, diversified here and there with copses and thickets of wild figs intermixed with hawthorn, rose-bushes, and broom. A few ilexes and stone-pines arched their evergreen foliage over the road; and the succulent milky stems of the wild fig-trees were covered with the small green fruit, while the downy leaves were just beginning to peep from their sheaths. It was one of those quiet gray days that give a mystic tone to a landscape. The cloudy sky was in harmony with the dim Campagna, that looked under the sunless smoky light unutterably sad and forlorn. Wreaths of mist lingered in the hollows like the shadowy forms of the past; the lark was silent in the sky; and on the desolate bluffs and headlands, where once stood populous cities, were a few hoary tombs whose very names had perished ages ago. But inexpressibly sad as the landscape looked it was relieved by the grand background of the Sabine range capped with snow. The village of La Storta, that flourished in the old posting days, had fallen into decay when the railway diverted the traffic from it; and its inn, with a rude model of St. Peter's carved in wood projecting above its door, was silent and deserted. Passing down a narrow glen, fringed with wood for three miles from this point, we came in sight of the village of Isola. Its situation is romantic, perched on the summit of a steep cliff, with deep richly-wooded ravines around it, and long swelling downs rising beyond. It is surrounded by two streams which unite and fall along with the Formello into the river called La Valca, which has been identified with the fatal Cremera that was dyed red with the blood of the three hundred Fabii. The rock of Isola is most interesting to the geologist, consisting of large fragments of black pumice cemented together by volcanic ashes deposited under water. It is literally a huge heap of cinders thrown out by the rapidly intermittent action of some neighbouring volcano, probably the crater of Baccano, or that which is now filled with the blue waters of Lake Bracciano. The whole mass is very friable, and in every direction the soft rock is hollowed out into sepulchral caves. By many this isolated rock is considered the arx or citadel of Veii; but the existence of so many sepulchral caves in it is, as Mr. Dennis says, conclusive of the fact that it was the Necropolis of the ancient city, which must therefore, according to Etruscan and Roman usage regarding the interment of the dead, have been outside the walls. The tombs have all been rifled and destroyed, and many of the sepulchral caves have been turned to the basest uses for stalling goats and cattle. An air of profound melancholy breathes around the whole spot. It seems to be more connected with the dead than with the living world. And the hamlet which now occupies the commanding site is of the most wretched description. All its houses, which date from the fifteenth century, are ruinous, and are among the worst in Italy; and the baronial castle which crowns the highest point,--built nearly a thousand years ago, the scene of many a conflict between the Colonnas and the Orsinis, and captured on one occasion after a twelve days' siege by Cæsar Borgia,--has been converted into a barn. The inhabitants of the village do not exceed a hundred in number, and present a haggard and sallow appearance--the effect of the dreadful malaria which haunts the spot. It is strange to contrast this blighted and fever-stricken aspect of the place with the description of Dionysius, who praised its air as in his time exceedingly pure and healthy, and its territory as smiling and fruitful. In the little square of the village are several fragments of marble and other relics of Roman domination; and the church, about four or five hundred years old, dedicated to St. Pancrazio, is in a state of great decay. The walls are damp and mouldy, and all the pictures and ornaments are of the rudest description, with the exception of a faded fresco of the coronation of the Virgin, which is a fair specimen of the art of the fifteenth century. The service of the church is supplied by some distant priest or friar in orders. We left our conveyance in the piazza, and took our lunch in one of the houses. We brought our provisions with us from Rome, but we got a coarse but palatable wine from the people, and a rude but clean room in which to enjoy our repast. This inn--if it may be called, so--had at one time a very evil reputation. But nothing could be more simple-hearted than the landlord and his wife, with their group of timid children who clung to their mother's skirts in dread of the strangers. They told us that the poverty of the place was deplorable. Nearly all the people were laid down during the heats of summer with fever; and they were so poor that they could not afford to keep a doctor. Many deaths occurred, and the survivors, emaciated by the disease, were left to drag on a weary existence embittered by numerous privations. At a distance the village on its lofty rock, surrounded by its richly-wooded ravines, looked like a picture of Arcadia; but near at hand the sad reality dispelled the idyllic dream. Taking with us from Isola a guide, originally a big burly man, but now a sad victim to malaria, we set out to visit the site of the ancient city and the few relics which survive. It takes about four hours to complete the circuit of the walls; but there are four objects of special interest, the Arx, the Columbarium, the Ponte Sodo, and the Painted Tomb, which may be visited in less than three. The extent of the city is surprising to those who have been in the habit of thinking that all the ancient towns in the neighbourhood of Rome were mere villages. Dionysius says that it was equal in size to Athens. Veii was indeed fully larger, and was about the dimensions of the city of Rome, included within the walls of Servius Tullius. It occupied the whole extent of the platform on which it was situated; and as the area was bounded on every side by deep ravines, its size was thus absolutely circumscribed. Built for security and not for the comfort and progress of its inhabitants, its confined and inaccessible situation would have unfitted it to become the capital of a great nation, as was at one time proposed. Passing down a richly-wooded glen by a path overhanging a stream, we came to a molino or polenta mill, most romantically situated. Here a fine cascade, about eighty feet high, plunges over the volcanic rock into a deep gulley overshadowed by bushy ilexes. The scenery is very picturesque, and differs widely from that of the rest of the Campagna. In its profusion of broom and hawthorn bushes, whose golden and snowy blossoms contrasted beautifully with the dark hues of the evergreen oaks, and in the snowy gleam of its falling waters, and the hoary gray of its lichen-clad cliffs, it presented features of resemblance to Scottish scenery. It had indeed a peculiar home look about it which produced a very pleasing impression upon our minds. Crossing the stream above the cascade by stepping-stones, between which the water rushed with a strong current, we entered the wide down upon which Veii stood. No one would have supposed that this was the site of one of the most important ancient cities, which held at bay for ten long years the Roman army, and yielded at last to stratagem and not to force. Not a vestige of a ruin could be seen. In the heart of the city the grass was growing in all the soft green transparency of spring, and a few fields of corn were marked out and showed the tender braird above the soil. The relics of the walls that crowned the cliffs have almost entirely disappeared. No Etruscan site has so few remains; and yet its interest is intensified by the extreme desolation. It is more suggestive to the imagination because of the paucity of its objects to appeal to the eye. Legend and history haunt the spot with nothing to distract the mind or dispel its musing melancholy. All trace of human passion has disappeared, and only the eternal calm of nature broods over the spot; the calm that was before man came upon the scene, and that shall be after all his labour is over. On a part of these downs overgrown with briars was situated the Roman Municipium, a colony founded after the subjugation of Veii. It did not cover more than a third of the area of the ancient city. Several excavations were made here, which resulted in the discovery, among other interesting relics of the imperial period, of the colossal heads of Augustus and Tiberius and the mutilated statue of Germanicus now in the Vatican Gallery. On this spot were also found the twelve Ionic columns of white marble which now form the portico of the post-office in the Piazza Colonna at Rome, and also a few of the pillars which adorn the magnificent Basilica of St. Paul's on the Ostian Road. No one looking at these grand columns, so stainless in hue and so perfect in form, would have supposed that they had formed part of the Roman Forum of Veii more than two thousand years ago. Those in front of the post-office look newer than the rest of the building, which is not more than sixty years old. They owed their perfect preservation doubtless to the fact that they were buried deep under the dry volcanic soil for most of the intervening period. It seems strange to think of these ancient columns, that looked down upon the legal transactions of Roman Veii, now standing in one of the busiest squares of modern Rome, associated with one of the most characteristic and important of our modern institutions, of which ancient Rome had not even the germ. Passing through a beautiful copse wood, where cyclamens grew in lavish profusion, forming little rosy clusters about the oak-stools and diffusing a faint spicy smell through the warm air, we came out at one of the gates of the city into open ground. This gate is simply a gap in a shapeless mound, with traces of an ancient roadway passing through it and fragments of walls on either side. Where the stones can be seen projecting through the turf embankment they are smaller than usual in Etruscan cities. Sir William Gell found hereabouts a portion of the wall composed of enormous blocks of tufa--three or four yards long and more than five feet in height--based upon three courses of thin bricks three feet in length, that rested upon the naked rock. Such a mode of wall construction has no resemblance to anything remaining in Rome or in any Etruscan city. It indicates a still higher antiquity; while the brick foundations remind us of the fame which the Etruscans and particularly the people of Veii had acquired on account of their skill in works of terra cotta. The famous Quadriga or brick chariot which adorned the pediment of the great temple of Jupiter on the Capitol at Rome was made at Veii, and was a remarkable proof of the superiority of its people in this species of art. Indeed the name of Veii is supposed to have been derived from its skill in the manufacture of terra cotta chariots. The old gateway through which we passed out of the wood was probably the principal entrance into the city, and the one over which Tolumnius King of Veii appeared, standing on the wall, during the famous siege when he was challenged to mortal combat by Cornelius Cossus, as graphically described by Livy. Beneath this gate there is a remarkable tunnel called the Ponte Sodo, bored in the volcanic rock for the passage of the river. It is not, however, visible from this point. You require to descend the steep banks of the river to see it; and a very extraordinary excavation it is, two hundred and forty feet long, sixteen feet wide, and twenty feet high. It was doubtless made to prevent the evil effects of winter floods by the inhabitants of Veii, who had considerable skill in such engineering works. The river sometimes fills the tunnel to the very roof, leaving behind trunks and branches of trees firmly wedged in the clefts of the rock in the inside. It was extremely interesting to stand on this spot and see before me this wonderful Etruscan work, and to lave my hands in the waters of the Formello, which, under the classical name of the Cremera, was prominently associated with early Roman history. It would be difficult to find a lovelier dimple in the fair face of mother earth than the valley through which the Formello flows. Precipitous cliffs rose from the bed of the river opposite to me, enriched with all the hues that volcanic rock assumes under the influences of the weather and the garniture of moss and lichen. A perfect tangle of vegetation crowned their tops and fringed their sides; the dark unchanging verdure of the evergreen oak and ivy contrasting beautifully with the tender autumn-like tints in which the varied spring foliage of the brushwood appeared. Bright flowers and gay blossoms grew in every crevice and nook. The shallow river flowed at my feet through ruts of dark volcanic sand, and amid masses of rock fallen from the cliffs, and stones whose artificial appearance showed that they had formed part of the ramparts that once ran round the whole circuit of the heights. The sunshine sparkled on the gray-green waters, and followed them in bright coruscations for a short distance into the mouth of the tunnel, the other end of which, diminished by the distance, opened into the daylight like the eye-piece of an inverted telescope. I found in the bed of the river fragments of marble and porphyry, cut and polished, that had doubtless come from the pavement of some palace or temple, and attested the truth of the report that has come down to us, that the buildings of Veii were stately and magnificent. To me there is something peculiarly impressive in the presence of a stream in a scene of vanished human greatness. Its eternal sameness contrasts with the momentous changes that have taken place; its motion with the death around; its sunny sparkle with the gloom; while its murmur seems the very requiem of the past. In this giant sepulchre, into which, like the Gulf of Curtius in the Forum, all the greatness of Etruscan and Roman Veii had gone down, the abundance of life was most remarkable. The vegetation sprang up with a rank luxuriance unknown in northern latitudes; lizards darted through the long grass; one snake of considerable length and girth uncoiled itself before me and crawled leisurely away; and the air, as bright and warm as it is in July with us, was murmurous with the hum of insects that danced in the April sunshine. Beyond the Ponte Sodo the precipices disappear and the ground slopes down gently to the edge of the river. Here the valley of the Formello opens up--a quiet green pastoral spot rising on the right hand into bare swelling downs, without a tree, or a bush, or a rock to diversify their surface. On the sloping banks of the river the rock has been cut into a number of basins filled with water, where Sir William Gell supposes that the nymphs of Veii, like those of Troy, "washed their white garments in the days of peace;" but they were in all likelihood only holes caused by the quarrying of the blocks of stone used in the construction of the walls and buildings of the city. The slopes of this valley seem to have formed the principal Necropolis of Veii. Numerous tombs were discovered in it; but after having been rifled of their contents they were filled up again, and all traces of them have disappeared. Only one sepulchre now remains open in the Necropolis, half way up the slope of a mound called the _Poggio Reale_. It is commonly known as "The Painted Tomb," or _La Grotta Campana_--after its discoverer, the Marchese Campana of Rome--who got permission forty-five years ago from the Queen of Sardinia, to whom the property then belonged, to dig in this locality for jewels and other relics of antiquity. Instead of closing the tomb, as was done in the other cases, this accomplished antiquarian, with the good taste for which he was distinguished, left it in the exact condition in which he had found it, so that it might be an object of interest to future visitors. Ascending the slope, we entered a long narrow passage about six feet wide and about fourteen feet deep cut through the tufa rock. This was the original entrance to the tomb; and the discoverer had cleared it out by removing the earth that had accumulated in the course of ages. A solitary crouching lion, carved in a species of volcanic stone, guarded the entrance of the passage. Its companion had been removed some distance, and lay neglected on the slope of the hill. The sculpture is exceedingly uncouth and primitive. At the inner end of the passage a couple of similar lions crouch, one on each side of the door of the tomb. They were placed there in all likelihood as symbols of avenging wrath to inspire fear, and thus prevent the desecration of the dead. Originally the tomb was closed by a great slab of volcanic stone: but this having been broken to pieces and carried away to build the first sheepfold or the nearest peasant's hut, it has been replaced by an iron gate. The walls around were damp and covered with moss and weeds, and the bars of the gate were rusty. Our guide applied the key he had brought with him, and the gate opened with a creaking sound. Lighting a candle, he preceded us into the tomb. I cannot describe the strange mixture of feelings which took possession of me,--wonder, curiosity, and awe. This was my first visit to an Etruscan tomb. In Rome I had been familiar with the monuments of a remote past; I had gazed with interest upon objects over which twenty centuries had passed. But here I was to behold one of the mysterious relics of the world's childhood. I had previously read with deep interest the graphic account of this tomb, which Mr. Dennis gives in his _Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria_, and was therefore prepared in large measure for what I was about to see. I found myself when I entered in a gloomy chamber hewn out of a brown arenaceous clay. The floor was a loose mud, somewhat slippery; and on it I noticed a number of vases, large and small, and of various forms. They were not like the exquisite painted vases which we are accustomed to associate with the name of Etruscan, but of the simplest and most archaic shapes, formed out of the coarsest clay. Some of them had a curious squat appearance, with rude figures painted on them; while others of them were about three feet high, of dark-brown earthenware, and were ornamented with some simple device in neutral tints or in very low relief. They were empty now; but when found they contained ashes and fragments of calcined bones. Just within the door there were two stone benches, on each of which, when the tomb was opened, was stretched a skeleton, which rapidly crumbled under the pressure of the air into a cloud of dust. That on the left was supposed to have been a female; and her companion on the right had doubtless been a warrior, judging from the bronze helmet and breastplate, both much corroded, that were left lying on the bench. He had evidently come by a violent death, for at the back of the helmet was an ugly hole, whose ragged side was outwards, showing that the fierce thrust of the spear had crashed through the face, and protruded beyond the casque. The combination of cinerary urns containing ashes, and of stone couches on which dead bodies were extended in the same tomb, is curious, showing that both modes of sepulture were practised at this period. The skeletons found entire were evidently those of the master and mistress of the household, persons of consideration; and the ashes in the jars were probably the remains of the servants and dependants. On the benches beside the skeletons were a bronze laver and mirror, a simple candlestick, and a brazier used for burning perfumes. The vases were exceedingly interesting, as the first rude attempts of the Etruscans in an art in which afterwards they attained to such marvellous perfection, and the only relics now remaining of the fictile statuary for which Veil was so celebrated. But my interest in these objects was speedily transferred to a far more wonderful sight, which the candle of the guide disclosed to me. On the inner wall, which divided the tomb into two chambers, and on the right and left of the door leading from the one to the other, was a most extraordinary fresco. Seen in the dim light of the candle passing over the different parts, it had a singularly weird and grotesque appearance. The colours were as fresh as if they had been laid on yesterday; and the thought at first flashed across my mind that I was gazing not upon a painting which had been sealed up for nearly thirty centuries, but upon the rude attempts at art of some modern shepherd or rustic belonging to the village of Isola, who sought thus to amuse his leisure moments. But such a thought was dismissed at once as absurd. No one after a few moments' inspection could doubt the genuineness of the painting. It is difficult to describe it, for it is altogether unlike anything to be seen elsewhere in Egyptian or Assyrian, in Greek or Roman tombs. On the right side of the door the upper half of the wall was panelled off by a band of colour, and represented one scene or picture. In the centre was a large horse, that reminded me of a child's wooden toy-horse, such as one sees at a country fair. Its legs were unnaturally long and thin; and the slenderness of its barrel was utterly disproportioned to the breadth of its chest. It was coloured in the most curious fashion: the head, hind-quarters, and near-leg being black; the tail and mane and off-legs yellow; and the rest of the body red, with round yellow spots. It was led by a tall groom; a diminutive youth was mounted upon its back; and a proud, dignified-looking personage, having a double-headed axe or hammer on his shoulder, strode in front. These human figures were all naked, and painted of a deep-red colour. In the same picture I noticed two strange-looking nondescript animals, very rudely drawn, and party-coloured like the horse. One probably represented a cat without a tail, like the Manx breed, half-lying upon the back of the horse, and laying its paw on the shoulder of the youth mounted before it; and the other looked like a dog, with open mouth, apparently barking with all his might, running among the feet of the horse. Interspersed with these figures were most uncouth drawings of flowers, growing up from the ground, and forming fantastic wreaths round the picture, all party-coloured in the same way as the animals. This extraordinary fresco seemed like the scene which presented itself to the apostle, when one of the seals of the Apocalyptic book was opened. I wished that I had beside me some authoritative interpreter who could read for me "this mystic handwriting on the wall." It has been suggested that the silent scene before me represented the passage of a soul to the world of the dead. The lean and starved-looking horse symbolised death; and its red and yellow spots indicated corruption. It may have been the ghost of the horse that was burned with the body of his dead master; for we know that the tribes, from which the Etruscans were supposed to be descended, if not the Etruscans themselves, not only burned their dead, but offered along with them the wives, slaves, horses, and other property of the dead upon their funeral pyre. The horse in this remarkable fresco may therefore have been the death-horse, which is well-known in Eastern and European folklore. The diminutive figure which it carried on its back was the soul of the dead person buried in this tomb; and its small size and the fact of its being on horseback might have been suggested by the thought of the long way it had to go, and its last appearance to the mortal eyes that had anxiously watched it from the extreme verge of this world as it vanished in the dim distance of the world beyond. The groom that led the horse and his rider was the Thanatis or Fate that had inflicted the death-blow; and the figure with the hammer was probably intended for the Mantus--the Etruscan Dispater--who led the way to another state of existence. The deep-red colour of the human figures indicated not only that they belonged to the male sex, but also that they were in a state of glorification. This is further confirmed by the flowers, which looked like those of the lotus, universally regarded amongst the ancients as symbols of immortality. It is difficult to say what part the domestic animals were meant to play in this scene of apotheosis. Painted with the same hues as those of the steed, they were doubtless sacrificed at the death of their master, in order that they might share his fortunes and accompany him into the unseen world; their affection for him, and the reluctance with which they parted from him, being indicated by the cat putting its paw upon his shoulder as if to pull him back, and the dog barking furiously at the heels of the horse. But all this is merely conjectural. And yet I caught such a glimpse of the general significance of the picture, of the spirit that prompted it, as deeply impressed me. It seemed as if my own searching dimly with a candle in the inside of a dark sepulchral cave into the meaning of this fresco of death was emblematical of the groping of the ancient Etruscans, by such feeble light of nature as they possessed, in the midst of the profound, terrible darkness of death, for the great truths of immortality. They had not heard of One who alone with returning footsteps had broken the eternal silence of the tomb, and brought the hope of immortal life to the sleeping dead around. These Etruscan sleepers had been laid to rest in their narrow cell ages before the Son of Man had rolled away the stone from the door of the sepulchre, and carried captivity captive; but He whom they ignorantly worshipped had partially lifted the veil and given them faint glimpses of the things unseen and eternal. And these were doubtless sufficient to redeem their life from its vanity and their death from its fear. Below the fresco which I have thus minutely described is another about the same size, representing a sphinx, with a nondescript animal, which may be either an ass or a young deer standing below it, and a panther or leopard sitting behind in a rampant attitude, with one paw on the haunch of the sphinx, and the other on the tail, and its face turned towards the spectator. The face of the sphinx is painted red. The figure bears some resemblance to the Egyptian type of that chimera in its straight black hair depending behind, and its oblique eyes; but in other respects it diverges widely. On Egyptian monuments the sphinx never appears standing as in this fresco, but crouching in the attitude of reposeful observation. Its form also was always fuller and more rounded than the long-legged, attenuated spectre before us, and it was invariably wingless; whereas the Etruscan sphinx had short wings with curling points, spotted and barred with stripes of black, red, and yellow. This strange mixture of the human and the brutal might be regarded as a symbol of the religious state of the people. We see in it higher conceptions of religion struggling out of lower. In the recumbent wingless sphinx of Egypt we see anthropomorphic ideas of religion emerging out of the gross animal-worship of more primitive times. In the standing and winged Etruscan Sphinx we see these ideas assuming a more predominant form; while in the Greek mythology the emancipation of the human from the brutal was complete, and the gods appeared wholly in the likeness of men. On the wall on the opposite side of the door were two other frescoes, somewhat similar in general appearance to those already described. On the upper panel was a horse with a boy on his back, and a panther sitting on the ground behind him; while on the lower panel there was a huge standing panther or leopard, with his long tongue hanging out of his mouth, and a couple of dogs beneath him, one lifting up its paw, and the other trying to catch the protruded tongue of the panther. All the figures in the four frescoes were painted in the same bizarre style of red, yellow, and black characteristic of the first fresco described; and they had all the same Oriental border of lotus flowers. They had evidently all the same symbolic import; for the sphinx guarded the gate of the unseen world, and leopards or panthers were frequently introduced into the paintings of Etruscan tombs as guardians of the dead. Passing through the doorway I entered an inner and smaller chamber, whose only decoration was six small round discs on the opposite wall, each about fifteen inches in diameter, painted in little segments of various colours,--black, blue, red, yellow, and gray. What they were meant to represent no one has satisfactorily explained. Above them I observed a number of rusty nails fixed in the wall, and traces of others that had fallen out around the doorway. On these nails were originally suspended various articles of household economy or of personal ornament; for the Etruscan sepulchres were always furnished with such things as the tenants took delight in when living. For a proof of this nothing could be more satisfactory than a thorough study of Inghirami's voluminous work. Indeed, all ancient nations buried their dead not only with their weapons and armour, but also with their most precious possessions; and in proportion to the rank and wealth of the deceased were the number and value of the offerings deposited with him in his tomb. We are amazed at the variety and preciousness of the golden ornaments found by Dr. Schliemann in the tombs at Mycenæ; and every Etruscan cemetery that has been opened has yielded an immense number of most precious articles, which the devotion of the survivors sacrificed to the manes of their departed friends. It is to this propensity that we owe all our knowledge of this mysterious race. But the fact, as Mr. Dennis says, that the nails in the interior of this tomb were empty, and that no fragments of the objects suspended were found at the foot of the wall, indicated either that the articles had decayed, being of a perishable nature, or that they had been carried off on account of their superior value. This last is the more probable supposition. The Marchese Campana, who opened the tomb, was late in the field, and had in all likelihood been anticipated by some previous explorer. The work of plundering Etruscan tombs was begun, we have reason to believe, in the time of the early Romans, who were attracted, not merely by the precious metals which they contained, but also by the reputation of their vases, which in the days of the Empire were held in as high esteem as now. Many tombs have doubtless been repeatedly searched. The very architects employed in their construction, as Signor Avolta conjectures, may have preserved the secret of the concealed entrance, and used it for the purpose of spoliation afterwards. Indeed, an unviolated tomb is a very rare exception. No modern excavations were made till about sixty years ago; and yet during that short interval many tombs that were opened and filled up again have been forgotten; and now they are being dug afresh by persons ignorant of this, who spend their labour only to be disappointed. There is little reason, therefore, to believe that the Painted Tomb of Veii was so fortunate as to escape all notice until the Marchese Campana had discovered it. Former visitors had robbed it in all likelihood of any objects of intrinsic value it may have contained, and left only the bronze utensils and armour and the rude archaic vases. On the roughly-hewn roof of this inner chamber of the tomb were carved in high relief two beams in imitation of the rafters of a house; and round the walls at the foot ran a low ledge formed out of the rock, like a family couch, on which stood three very curious boxes of earthenware, about a foot and a half long and a foot high, covered with a projecting lid on which was moulded a human head. These were sepulchral urns of a most primitive form, intermediate between the so-called hut-urns found under the lava in the Necropolis of Alba Longa, and supposed to represent the tents in which the Etruscans lived at the time of their arrival in Italy, and the round vases of a later period. On the same ledge were several vases painted in bands of red and yellow, with a row of uncouth animals executed in relief upon the rim. The form and contents of this chamber afforded striking proof of the fact that the Etruscan tombs were imitations of the homes of the living. These tombs were constructed upon two types: one rising in the form of a tumulus or conical mound above the ground when the situation was a level table-land, and the other consisting of one or two chambers excavated out of the rock when the tomb was situated on the precipitous face of a hill. Dr. Isaac Taylor, in his admirable _Etruscan Researches_, says that the former type recalled the tent, and the latter the cave, which were the original habitations of men. The ancestors of the Etruscans are supposed by him to have been a nomadic race, wandering over the steppes of Asia, and to have dwelt either in caves or tents. At the present day the yourts or permanent houses in Siberia and Tartary are modelled on the plan of both kinds of habitation--the upper part being above the ground, representing the tent; and the lower part being subterranean, representing the cave. And so the descendants of this Asiatic horde, having migrated at a remote period to Italy, preserved the burial traditions of their remote ancestors, and formed their tombs after the model of the tent or cave, according as they were constructed on the level plateau or in the rocky brow of a hill. In further illustration of this theory he says that in olden times when a member of the Tartar tribe died, the tent in which he breathed his last, with all its contents intact, was converted into a tomb by simply covering it with a conical mound of earth or stones, in order to preserve it from the ravages of wolves and other beasts of prey. Even the row of stones that surrounded the outside of the tent and kept down the skins that covered it from being blown away by the storms of the steppe, was introduced into the structure of the tomb, and continued to surround the base of the funeral mound. He finds traces of this circle of stones in the podium or low wall of masonry which encircled every Etruscan tumulus or outside tomb, and a remarkable example in the mounds of the Horatii and Curiatii on the Appian Way at Rome. This theory, however, it is only fair to state, is disputed by other writers, who assert that there was no intentional imitation of tents in Etruscan tombs; for if this had been the design there would have been a correspondence between the conical outside and the conical interior, and no Etruscan tomb has been found with a bell-shaped chamber. The tent-like tumulus, say they, was but the mere rude mound of earth heaped over the dead in an uncultured age; and the mound would be made higher and larger according to the dignity of the deceased; and the podium or row of stones around its foot was simply the retaining wall necessary to give it stability and shape. The tomb at Veii had a narrow entrance-passage; and we find this a marked feature in all Etruscan tombs, which are approached by a vaulted passage of masonry, varying from twelve to a hundred feet in length. This also, according to Dr. Taylor, was but a survival of the low entrance-passage through which the ancient Siberians crept into their subterranean habitations, and which the modern Laplanders and Esquimaux still construct before their snow-huts and underground dwellings, to serve the purpose of a door in keeping out the wind and maintaining the temperature of the interior. The other, or cave type of Etruscan tomb, is that which we see at Veii, and of which there are hundreds of examples all over Central Italy, wherever there are deep valleys bounded by low cliffs. This, too, was modelled after the pattern of the house. There were usually two chambers, an outer and an inner one. The outer was the place of meeting between the living and the dead; the surviving friends feasted there during their annual visit to the tomb, while the dead were laid in the inner chamber in the midst of familiar objects. Here everything was designed to keep up the delusion that the dead were still living in their own homes. The roof of the chamber was carved in imitation of the roof-tree, the rafters, and even the tiles of the house; the rock around was hewn into couches, with cushions and footstools like those on which they reposed when living; on the floor were the wine-jars, the vases, and utensils, consecrated by long use; on the various projections were suspended the mirrors, arms, and golden ornaments that were most prized; while the walls were painted with gay frescoes, representing scenes of festivity in which eating and drinking, music and dancing, played a prominent part. And as the ordinary habitation contained the family, the grandparents, the parents, and the children, all living under the same roof, so the Etruscan tombs were all family abodes--the dead of a whole generation being deposited in the same inner chamber. To the outer chamber, as I have said, came the surviving members of the family at least once a year to hold a funeral feast, and pay their devotions to their departed friends. The tombs of this people were thus at the same time also their temples--the sacred places where they came to perform the rites of their religion, which consisted in worshipping the lares and penates of their beloved dead, and making offerings to them. And by this striking link of the cultus of the dead the ancient Etruscans were connected with the present inhabitants of Northern Asia, the Finns, Laplanders, Tartars, Mongols, and Chinese, who have no temples or places of special honour for their idols, but assemble once a year or oftener at the graves of their ancestors to worship the dead. But after all there is no great difference in this respect between the races, ancient and modern; for the churchyard and the church, the burial vaults and monuments within the cathedral and chapel, show how universal is the instinct that associates the dead with the shrine of religion, and makes the tomb the most appropriate place for giving expression to those blessed hopes of immortality upon which all religion is founded. The sanctuary of the Holy Land derived its sacredness, as well as the charter of its inheritance, from the cave of Machpelah. Around that patriarchal tomb clustered all the grand religious hopes of the covenant people. The early Christians adopted and purified the Etruscan custom which they found in Rome, and erected over the tombs of the martyrs and other illustrious persons _Cellæ Memoriæ_, or memorial chapels, in which on anniversary occasions the friends and brethren assembled to partake of a funeral feast in honour of the dead. The primitive Agapæ, or love-feasts, were often nothing more than such banquets in the memorial cells at the tombs of the faithful. And in our own country, many of our most important churches, towns, and villages took their origin and name from the grave of some saint, who in far-off times hallowed the spot and made it a shrine of worship. There are numerous indications that this Painted Tomb at Veii is of very great antiquity, and may be considered as probably the oldest tomb in Europe. No inscription of any kind has been found on its walls or any of its contents; and this circumstance, which is almost singular so far as all Etruscan tombs yet discovered are concerned, of itself indicates a very remote date, when the art of letters if known at all was only known to a privileged few, and confined to public and sacred monuments. No clue remains to inform us who the Veientine warrior was who met his death in so tragic a manner, and who lay down with his wife and dependants in this tomb, and took the last long sleep without a thought of posterity or the conclusions they might form regarding him. And the argument of hoary antiquity derived from this speechless silence of the tomb is still further strengthened by architectural evidence. The outer wall as seen from the inside is built of rough uncemented blocks of the earliest polygonal construction, such as we see in a few of the oldest Cyclopean cities of Central Italy; and the doorway is formed by the gradual convergence of stones laid in horizontal courses, instead of being arched by regular wedges of stone held together. Now, as the perfect arch was known and constructed in Etruria at a very early period, this pseudo-vault, which indicates complete ignorance of the principle, must belong to a very remote age indeed--to the period of the Cyclopean gateways of Italy and Greece, whose origin is lost in the mist of a far-off antiquity. There are two limits within which the date of the tomb may probably be placed. While its style and decorations are genuinely national and characteristic of the primitive Etruscan tomb, there can be no doubt that several Egyptian features in it, such as the sphinx and the lotus, and in some respects the colouring and physiognomy of the human figures, indicate some acquaintance with the land of the Nile. Now an inscription has been found at Karnac which records that Egypt was invaded by a confederation of Libyans, Etruscans, and other races, and was only saved after a desperate struggle by the valour of Menephtah I. of the Nineteenth Dynasty. The allied forces occupied the country for a time, and took away with them when they departed large spoils, consisting among other things of bronze knives and armour. This happened in the fourteenth or fifteenth century before Christ. There can be no doubt, therefore, that the civilisation of Egypt must at this period have been spread by commerce or war among the Western nations, and produced a powerful influence upon the Etruscans. The imitation of Egyptian models is not so decided in this tomb as it is in the painted tombs of Tarquinii and other Etruscan cities of later date; and this circumstance would indicate that it was constructed at the very commencement of the intercourse of Etruria with Egypt. If we take this historic fact as the limit in one direction, the tomb cannot be older than three thousand three hundred years. On the other hand, we know that Veii was destroyed about four hundred years before Christ, and remained uninhabited and desolate till the commencement of the Empire; we have, therefore, the surest ground for fixing the date of the tomb prior to that event. Somewhere between the invasion of Egypt by the Etruscan confederacy and the fall of Veii--that is, somewhere between the fourteenth and the fourth century before Christ--this sepulchre was hewn in the rock and its tenants interred in it. Carlo Avolta of Corneto on one occasion, opening an Etruscan tomb at Tarquinii, saw a most wonderful sight. From an aperture which he had made above the door of the sepulchre he looked in, and for fully five minutes "gazed upon an Etruscan monarch lying on his stone bier, crowned with gold, clothed in armour, with a shield, spear, and arrows by his side." But as he gazed the figure collapsed, and finally disappeared; and by the time an entrance was made all that remained was the golden crown, some fragments of armour, and a handful of gray dust. Like that Etruscan tomb has been the fate of the Etruscan confederacy. This mighty people left traces of their civilisation "inferior in grandeur perhaps to the monuments of Egypt, in beauty to those of Greece, but with these exceptions surpassing in both the relics of any other nation of remote antiquity." At the period of their highest power they lived in close neighbourhood and connection with a people who got its laws, its rulers, its arts, its religion from them--and might therefore if only in gratitude have preserved their history. But their fate was that of the similar civilisation of Mexico and Peru, which its selfish Spanish conquerors instead of preserving sought studiously to obliterate. The comprehensive history of Etruria written in twenty volumes by the emperor Claudius--who, though very feeble in other things, was yet a scholar, and could have given us much interesting information--perished. Their language, which survived their absorption by Rome, almost as late as the time of the Cæsars, finally disappeared; and though thousands of inscriptions in tombs and on works of art remain--which we are able to read from the close resemblance of the alphabet to the Greek--the key to the interpretation of the language is gone beyond recall. In an age that has unravelled the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the cuneiform characters of Assyria, and the runic inscriptions of Northern Europe, the Etruscan language presents almost the only philological problem that refuses to be solved. Thus when the air and the light of modern investigation penetrated into the mystery which surrounded this strange people, all that was most important had vanished; and only the few ornaments of the tomb remained to tell us of a lost world of art, literature, and human life which had perished not by internal exhaustion, but had fallen before the arms of Rome in the full maturity of its civilisation. CHAPTER VIII HOLED STONES AND MARTYR WEIGHTS In the porch of the interesting old church of Sta. Maria in Cosmedin near the Tiber is preserved a huge circular stone like a millstone. It is composed of white marble, upwards of five feet in diameter, and is finished after the model of the dramatic mask used in the ancient theatres. In the centre is a round hole perforating the mass right through, forming the mouth of the mask. It is called the Bocca della Verita, and has given its name to the irregular piazza in which the church is situated. It is so called from the use to which it has been put from time immemorial, as an ordeal for testing the guilt or innocence of an accused person. If the suspected individual on making an affirmation thrust his hand through the hole and was able to draw it back again, he was pronounced innocent; but if, on the contrary, the hand remained fixed in the marble jaws, the person was declared to have sworn falsely and was pronounced guilty. The marble mouth was supposed by the superstitious to contract or expand itself according to the moral character of the arraigned person. No reason has been given why this singular marble mask should have been placed in this church, nor is anything known of its previous history. Some have conjectured that it served as an impluvium or mouth of a drain in the centre of a court to let the water run off; and others regard it as having been an ornament for a fountain, like the colossal mask of marble out of the mouth of which a jet of water falls into a fountain in the Via de Mascherone, called after it, near the Farnese Palace, and the marble mask which belongs to a small fountain on the opposite side of the river near the Palazzo Salviati. But the question arises, Why should the Bocca della Verita, if such was its origin, have been used for the superstitious purpose connected with it? Our answer to this question must lead us back to the Temple of Ceres and Proserpine which originally stood on the site of the church of Sta. Maria in Cosmedin, and of the materials of which the Christian edifice was largely built. In primitive times the worship of clefts in rocks, holes in the earth, or stones having a natural or artificial perforation, appears to have been almost universal. We find traces of it in almost every country, and amongst almost every people. These sacred chasms or holes were regarded as emblems of the celestial mother, and persons went into them and came out again, so as to be born anew, or squeezed themselves through the holes in order to obtain the remission of their sins. In ancient Palestine this form of idolatry was known as the worship of Baal-perazim, or Baal of the clefts or breaches. David obtained a signal victory over the Philistines at one of the shrines of this god, and burnt there the images peculiar to this mode of worship which the enemy had left behind in its flight. About two miles from Bombay there is a rock on the promontory of the Malabar Hill, which has a natural crevice, communicating with a cavity below, and opening upon the sea. This crevice is too narrow for corpulent persons to squeeze through, but it is constantly resorted to for purposes of moral purification. Through natural or artificial caverns in India pilgrims enter at the south side, and make their exit at the northern, as was anciently the custom in the Mithraic mysteries. Those who pass through such caves are considered to receive by this action a new birth of the soul. According to the same idea the rulers of Travancore, who are Nairs by caste, are made into Brahmins when they ascend the throne by passing through a hole in a large golden image of a cow or lotus flower, which then becomes the property of the Brahmin priests. It is possible that there may be an allusion to this primitive custom in the rule of the Jewish Temple, mentioned by Ezekiel,--"He that entereth in by the way of the north gate to worship shall go out by the way of the south gate; and he that entereth by the way of the south gate shall go forth by the way of the north gate: he shall not return by the way of the gate whereby he came in, but shall go forth over against it." This arrangement may have been made not as a mere matter of convenience, but as a survival of the old practice of "passing through" a sacred cave or crevice for the forgiveness of sins;--a survival purified and ennobled in the service of God. The oldest of all religious monuments of which we have any existing trace are cromlechs, found mostly in waste, uncultivated places. These are of various forms, but they are mostly tripods, consisting of a copestone poised upon three other stones, two at the head and one at the foot. The supports are rough boulders, the largest masses of stone that could be found or moved; and the copestone is an enormous flat square block, often with cup-shaped hollows carved upon its surface. Under this copestone there was a vacant space, varying in size from a foot or two to the height of a man on horseback. Through this vacant space persons used to pass; and the narrower the space, the more difficult the feat of crawling through, the more meritorious was the act. In our own country there are numerous relics of this primitive custom. In Cornwall there are two holed stones, one called Tolven, situated near St. Buryan, and the other called Men-an-tol, near Madron, which have been used within living memory for curing infirm children by passing them through the aperture. In the parish of Minchin Hampton, Gloucestershire, is a stone called Long Stone, seven or eight feet in height, having near the bottom of it a large perforation, through which, not many years since, children brought from a considerable distance were passed for the cure of measles and whooping-cough. On the west side of the Island of Tyree in Scotland is a rock with a crevice in it through which children were put when suffering from various infantile diseases. In connection with the ancient ruined church of St. Molaisse on the Island of Devenish in Loch Erne in Ireland, there is an artificially perforated stone, through which persons still pass, when the opening will admit, in order to be regenerated. If the hole be too small, they put the hand or the foot through it, and the effect is thus limited. Examples of such holed stones are to be found in some of the old churches of Ireland, such as Castledermot, County Kildare; Kilmalkedar, County Kerry; Kilbarry, near Tarmon Barry, on the Shannon. In Madras, diseased children are passed under the lintels of doorways; and in rural parts of England they used to be passed through a cleft ash tree. At Maryhill, in the neighbourhood of Glasgow, about a year ago, when an epidemic of measles and whooping-cough was prevalent, two mothers took advantage, for the carrying out of this superstition, of the presence in the village of an ass which drew the cart of a travelling rag-gatherer. They stood one on each side of the animal. One woman then took one of the children and passed it face downward through below the ass's belly to the other woman, who in turn handed it back with its face this time turned towards the sky. The process having been repeated three times, the child was taken away to the house, and then the second child was similarly treated. The mothers were thoroughly satisfied that their children were the better of the magic process. A mysterious virtue was supposed to be connected with passing under the ancient gate of Mycenæ by the primitive race who constructed it. Jacob's words at Bethel, "This is the gate of heaven," may have an allusion to the prehistoric custom of the place; for we have reason to believe that a dolmen existed there, consecrated to solar worship, the original name of Bethel being Beth-on, the house of the sun. The hollow space beneath the dolmen was considered the altar-gate leading to paradise, so that whosoever passed through it was certain to obtain new life or immortality. It was an old superstition that the dead required to be brought out of the house not by the ordinary door of the living, but by a breach made specially in the wall, in order that they might thus pass through a species of purgatory. We find an exceedingly interesting example of this primitive superstition in the punishment that was imposed upon the survivor in the famous combat between the Horatii and Curiatii, when he murdered his sister, on account of her unpatriotic devotion to her slain lover. The father of Horatius, after making a piacular sacrifice, erected a beam across the street leading from the Vicus Cyprius to the Carinæ, with an altar on each side--the one dedicated to Juno Sororia and the other to Janus Curiatius--and under this yoke he made his son pass with his head veiled. This beam long survived under the name of Tigillum Sororium or Sister's Beam, and was constantly repaired at the public expense. In modern times there are two most remarkable survivals of the same kind. One of them is in the corridor of the mosque of Aksa at Jerusalem. In this place are two pillars, standing close together, and like those in the mosque of Omar at Cairo, they are used as a test of character. It is said that whosoever can squeeze himself between them is certain of paradise, and must be a good Moslem. The pillars have been worn thin by the friction of countless devotees. An iron bar has now, however, been placed between the pillars by the present enlightened Pasha of Jerusalem to prevent the practice in future. The other instance is what is popularly known as "threading the needle" in the Cathedral of Ripon. Beneath the central tower of this minster there is a small crypt or vaulted cell entered from the nave by a narrow passage. At the north side of this crypt there is an opening thirteen inches by eighteen, called St. Wilfred's needle. This passage was formerly used as a test of character; for only an honest man, one new-born, could pass through it. "They pricked their credits who could not thread the needle," was the quaint remark of old Fuller in reference to the original use of the opening. It may be remarked that the well-known boys' game of "Through the needle's e'e, boys," had its origin in all likelihood in the old superstition. Thus we can trace the use made of the Bocca della Verita in Rome to the primitive idolatry associated perhaps with the Temple of Ceres that formerly stood on the spot. Some other superstitious practices of a closely allied nature may be traced to the same source. In the Orkney Islands, not far from the famous Standing Stones of Stennis, there is a single monolith with a large hole through it, which has become celebrated, owing to the allusion to it of Sir Walter Scott in his novel of the _Pirate_. It is called Odin's Stone; and till a very recent period it was the local custom to take an oath by joining hands through the hole in it; and this oath was considered even by the regular courts of Orkney as peculiarly solemn and binding; the person who violated it being accounted infamous and excluded from society. In the old churchyard of the ruined monastery of Saints Island in the Shannon, there is an ancient black marble flagstone called the "Cremave" or "swearing stone." The saints are said to have made it a revealer of truth. Any one suspected of falsehood is brought here, and if the accused swears falsely the stone has the power to set a mark upon him and his family for several generations. But if no mark appears he is known to be innocent. Many other equally interesting instances might be quoted all akin to the superstition in Rome. It is not too fanciful to suppose that even the Jewish mode of making a covenant had something to do with this primitive custom. The animal offered in sacrifice was divided into two pieces, and so arranged that a space was left between them. Through this space, between the parts, the contracting persons passed in order to ratify the covenant. We have a striking account of this ceremony in the case of Abraham; and it is in allusion to it that the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says that we have boldness to enter into the holiest "by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh." The superstitious practices connected with clefts and holed stones were denounced by councils of the Christian Church, which subjected transgressors to various penalties. Consequently this mode of worship came into evil repute; and what was formerly considered a meritorious action, securing the cure of disease or future happiness, became a deed of evil, to be followed by some calamity. For this reason the primitive symbolism was reversed in many cases, such as "passing under a ladder," which is now considered unlucky; or in Eastern lands going between a wall and a pole, between two women or two dogs, which the Talmud forbids as an omen of evil. Passing from the subject of holed stones I proceed to consider another class of interesting prehistoric objects that survive in the more primitive churches of Rome. In the same church of Sta. Maria in Cosmedin--where the Bocca della Verita which I have described occurs--there is a curious crypt called the chapel of St. Cyril, who undertook a mission about the year eight hundred and sixty to convert the Slavs in Bulgaria to Christianity, and suffered martyrdom in the attempt. Beside an ancient altar of primitive construction on one side is preserved a large slab of granite on which St. Cyril is said to have knelt when he was put to death; and half-sunk in the wall opposite are two large, smooth, dark-coloured stones, in shape not unlike curling stones--or an orange from which a portion has been sliced off horizontally. They cannot fail to be seen when attention is directed to them. Such stones, often made level at the top and bottom, and with a ring inserted in the upper surface, are not uncommon in the older churches of Rome, although they are very seldom noticed, as their significance is only known to a few experts. One is placed in the centre of the middle nave of Santa Sabina, on the Aventine, on the top of a short spirally-fluted column of white marble, which marks the spot where St. Dominic, the founder of the order of the Dominicans, used to kneel down and pray. It has received the name of Pietra di Paragone, or the Touchstone. Another may be seen at the entrance of the church of Santa Pudenziana, on the Esquiline, supposed to have been built on the site of the house of the Roman senator Pudens, whose daughter, Pudentiana, St. Peter is said to have converted to Christianity. A third exists among the extensive collection of relics belonging to the ten thousand three hundred martyrs whose remains, according to tradition, were deposited in the church of S. Prassede, at the beginning of the ninth century, by Paschal I. Two stones may be observed upon the gable wall immediately above the basins of holy water in the interior of the church of S. Nicolo in Carcere, near the Ghetto. Two others are inserted in the wall of the Baptistery of St. John Lateran, between the vestibule and the octagonal area containing the so-called gigantic font in which Constantine was baptized. A very interesting stone hangs suspended from the gilded iron grating which protects the crypt or confessional of St. Laurence, immediately underneath the high altar of the great Basilica of San Lorenzo beyond the Gate. A stone still more remarkable, guarded by a strong iron grating, projects half its bulk from the wall on the right-hand side of the arch which divides the transept from the middle nave in the venerable church of Santa Maria in Trastevere. Two other stones may be seen in the quaint old church of SS. Cosma e Damiano at the south-eastern angle of the Roman Forum, composed of portions of three pagan temples. They are inserted in the plain whitewashed walls on both sides of the circular arch through which you pass from the round vestibule into the interior of the church. I have noticed similar stones in no less than twenty places besides those I have mentioned; and I am assured that they may be seen in many more churches. It is very difficult to obtain any accurate or satisfactory information regarding these curious stones. They go by the name of _Lapides Martyrum_, or Martyr-stones. During the persecutions of the early Christians in Rome they are said to have been hung round the necks of those who were condemned to be drowned in the Tiber. In the reign of the emperor Diocletian many martyrs perished in this way, and the stones by which they were sunk beneath the fatal waters, according to the popular idea, were afterwards found, and carefully preserved as holy relics in the churches in which they are now to be seen. Beyond doubt they are genuine remains of antiquity, and some of them at least may have been used for the purpose alleged; although we cannot be sure, in any case, that the story connected with particular stones is authentic. St. Sabine desired that the stone which was to be tied to him when thrown in the river should be buried with his body, and this might have been done in the case of other martyrs. The stones in the church of SS. Cosma e Damiano are supposed to have been the very ones that were fastened to the necks of these devoted Christians when they were thrown into the Tiber in the reign of Maximian. But as the place and manner of their martyrdom are involved in hopeless obscurity, the various accounts given of both being contradictory, the ecclesiastical legend has no weight. Cosma and Damian were Arabian doctors who were converted to Christianity, and belonged to the class called "silverless martyrs"--that is, physicians who took no fee from those whom they cured, but only stipulated that they should believe in Christ the Great Physician. They occupied in Christian hagiology the same place as the ancient myth of Esculapius occupied in pagan mythology. Around the stone in the church of Santa Sabina a curious legend has gathered. The sacristan, a Dominican friar of the neighbouring convent, is in the habit of telling the visitors that the devil one day, while St. Dominic was kneeling on the pavement as usual, hurled the huge stone in question, with his utmost force, against the head of the saint; but, strange to say, it either missed him altogether or failed to do him any injury, the saint going calmly on with his devotions as if nothing had happened. On the stone in the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere there is an inscription in Latin, informing us that it was fastened round the neck of St. Calixtus, the Bishop of Rome, who, after having been scourged during an outbreak of pagan hostility, was thrown out of a window in his house in the Trastevere, and flung into a well. The stone in the Basilica of S. Lorenzo is connected with the sufferings and death either of St. Justinian or of St. Stephen, the proto-martyr, who was stoned to death in Palestine, and whose remains, miraculously recovered, are supposed to rest in the crypt below, along with those of St. Laurence. All these relics are devoutly worshipped, and they are believed to cure diseases, and to protect against evil those who touch them. Examining the martyr-stones more closely, we find abundant evidence to confirm the account which is usually given of their origin, viz. that they were first used as Roman measures of weight. Several of them have inscribed upon their upper surface the names of the quæstors or prefects who issued them, as well as the number of pounds and ounces which they represented; the pounds being distinguished by figures, and the ounces expressed by dots or small circles. Numbers of such ancient Roman weights of stone, similarly inscribed, may be seen in the Kircherian Museum in the Collegio Romano. One specimen bears an inscription which signifies that, by the authority of Augustus, the weight was preserved in the temple of the goddess Ops, the wife of Saturn, and one of the most ancient deities of Italy, where the public money was deposited. Montfaucon, in the third volume of his learned and elaborate work on Antiquity, has a plate illustrating a number of characteristic specimens of these weights from the cabinet of St. Germain's. This previous use would lead us to suspect that all the stones in the Roman churches did not figure in scenes of martyrdom. Some of them, indeed, were found in the _loculi_ or graves of the Catacombs; but this circumstance of itself does not prove that the body interred therein had been that of a martyr, and that the stone had been employed in his execution. We know that the early Christians were in the habit of depositing in the graves of their friends the articles that were most valued by them during life. And hence, in the Catacombs, a singular variety of objects have been found. Stone weights, therefore, may have been put into the graves of Christians, not as instruments of suffering but as objects typical of the occupation of the departed in this life, in accordance with the habit of their pagan forefathers, which the Roman Christians had adopted. Some, however, of the stones, as I have said, may have been used according to the popular legend for the drowning of martyrs; and these weights were conveniently at hand in places of public resort, and lent themselves readily, by the rings inserted in many of them, to the persecutor's purpose. The material of which they are composed is in nearly all cases the same. It is a stone of extreme hardness and of various shades of colour, from a light green to a dark olive, with a degree of transparency equal to that of wax and susceptible of a fine polish. By some writers it is called a black stone; but this colour may have been given to it by frequent handling when in use, and by the grime of age since. It was called by the Romans, from the use made of it in fabricating measures of weight, _lapis æquipondus_, and from its supposed efficacy in the cure of diseases of the kidneys _lapis nephriticus_. Fabreti says that it got the name of _lapis Lydius_ from the locality from which it was believed to have come. It is a kind of nephrite or jade, a mineral which usually occurs in talcose or magnesian rocks. At one time it was supposed to exist only on the river Kara-Kash, in the Kuen Luen mountains north of Cashmere, and for thousands of years the mines of that locality were the only known worked ones of pure jade. It has since, however, been found in New Zealand and in India; while the discoverers of South America obtained specimens of it in its natural state from the natives of Peru, who used it for making axes and arrow-heads, and gave it the name of _piedra de yjada_, from which comes our common word _jade_, on account of its use as a supposed cure for the iliac passion. It may be mentioned that there is a mineral closely allied to jade called "Saussurite," discovered by the great geologist whose name it bears near Monte Rosa, and since found on the borders of the Lake of Geneva, near Genoa, and in Corsica. It is possible that the martyr-stones may be made of this mineral, for they have not been analysed. But if they are, as it is supposed, made of true jade, the fact opens up many important questions. No stone has a more remarkable history. It is an object of interest alike to the geologist and the antiquarian; and in spite of the most patient inquiry its antecedents are surrounded with a mystery which cannot be satisfactorily solved. Its antiquity is beyond doubt. In the most ancient books of China it is noticed as one of the articles of tribute paid to the emperor. Dr. Schliemann found it among the ruins of Troy. But its history stretches into the misty past far anterior in time to all ordinary records, to Cyclopean constructions, or to pictured and sculptured stones. One of the most curious things brought to light in connection with the prehistoric annals of our race is the wide diffusion of this mineral in regions as far apart as China and Britain. Owing to its extreme hardness and susceptibility to polish, it was highly prized by the neolithic races for the manufacture of stone axes and hammers. In nearly every European country implements of jade belonging to the primitive inhabitants have been discovered. Some of the most beautiful belonged to one of the latest settlements of the stone age at Gerlafingen, in the Lake of Bienne, and were mixed with bronze celts of primitive type, indicating that the people of these lake-dwellings lived during the transition period between stone and bronze. The presence of such celts made of jade obviously points to a connection at a very early period with the East, from whence the stone must have been brought, for it has never been found in a natural state west of the Caspian. An interesting controversy upon this subject was created about eight years ago by the finding in the bed of the Rhone of a jade strigil, an instrument curved and hollowed like a spoon used to scrape the skin while bathing. Various conjectures were formed as to how this isolated object could have found its way from its distant quarry in the East to this obscure spot among the Alps. Professor Max Müller, and those who along with him advocate the Oriental origin of the first settlers in Europe, are of opinion that this strigil and the various jade implements found in the Swiss lake-dwellings, are relics of this Western migration from the primitive cradle of the Aryan race on the plateaus of Central Asia. The implements could only have come from the East, for the other sources of jade supply in New Zealand and America--since discovered--were altogether unknown in those primitive times. And this conclusion is supported by an imposing array of concurrent philological evidence, based upon the resemblances between the Aryan languages of Europe, so strangely akin to each other, and the ancient dialects of India and Persia. But plausible as this argument looks, the more probable explanation is that the inhabitants of Europe obtained the material which they laboriously fashioned into tools from the East, according to a system of barter similar to that which still exists amongst tribes more rude and savage than the Swiss lake-dwellers. Numerous facts of a like tendency are on record, such as the finding in the mounds of the Mississippi valley, side by side, obsidian from Mexico and mica from the Alleghanies, and in the mounds around the great northern lakes large tropical shells two thousand miles from their native habitat. The ancient inhabitants of China and India found at a very early period that they possessed in their jade rocks a very valuable material, in exchange for which they could get what they wanted from the Western races; while these Western races had at least one article which they could barter for the much-prized jade implements, viz. linen cloth, the weaving of which was practised in the oldest settlements, hanks of unspun flax and thread, nets and cloth of the same material having been found not unfrequently in the lake dwellings. What an interesting glimpse into the far-off past does this link of connection between the East and the West give us! It indicates a degree of civilisation which we are not accustomed to associate with these primeval times. Archæologists are of opinion that the race who inhabited Central Europe during the earlier part of the stone age were akin to the modern Laplanders. The people of the lake dwellings, however, and especially those who used jade implements, who replaced them, were a superior and more civilised race. The evidence of the articles which they used, with the exception of jade itself, points not to an Asiatic origin, but rather to a connection with the shores on both sides of the Mediterranean. When they migrated northwards they brought with them the flax and the cereals of Egypt, and introduced with them the southern weeds which grew among these cultivated plants. The seeds of the catch-fly of Crete, which does not grow in Switzerland or Germany, have been found among the relics of the earliest of the lake dwellings; while the familiar corn blue-bottle of our autumn fields was first brought from its native Sicily by this lacustrine people in whose cultivated fields it grew as a weed, and by them spread over all Western and Northern Europe. Such are the interesting associations and profound problems connected with the material of the martyr weights. And it is unique in this respect, that it meets us as far back as the first traces of neolithic man in Central Europe--nay, farther back still, in the palæolithic flints found in the caves near Mentone; and that it is still used in the countries where it is found for a great variety of useful and ornamental purposes, idols being carved out of it, and altars adorned with its semi-transparent olive-green slabs. The inhabitants of the South Sea Islands until recently used it for their stone implements in the same way that the ancient lake dwellers did; and the Mogul emperors of Delhi set such a high value upon it on account of its superstitious virtues that they had it cut, jewelled, and enamelled into the most exquisite forms. In Rome the martyr weights, as relics of the stone age, afford a curious example of a very primitive epoch projecting far into a highly-civilised one. Stone weights continued in use long after bronze and iron implements were constructed, on account of the sacred associations connected with them. Weights and measures were regarded by the Romans as invested with a peculiar religious significance; the stone of which the weights were composed was called from that circumstance, or because of the occult qualities attributed to it, _lapis divinus_; and therefore there was a deep-seated prejudice, which reached down to the days of the highest splendour of the Empire, against the introduction of a new substance. This was the case with all articles used in religious ceremonies. As late as the period of St. Paul's residence in Rome, and at the time of the first persecution of the Christians, ancient pagan rites were celebrated in the Forum, in which the use of metal was forbidden; and only stone hatchets could be employed in slaughtering animals, and only earthen vessels used in carrying the significant parts of the sacrifices into the temples. Treaties were also ratified by striking the victim offered on the occasion with a flint hatchet. The ancient Egyptians, although using iron and bronze for other objects, invariably used stone knives in preparing bodies for the process of embalming. The sacrifices which the Mexicans offered to their idols at the time of the Spanish conquest were cut up by means of knives of obsidian, which they obtained from the lavas of their volcanoes. In the Bible we have several traces of the same universal custom. The Jews seem to have performed the rite of circumcision with flint implements, for we read in Exodus that Zipporah, the wife of Moses, took a sharp stone for that purpose; and the phrase translated "sharp knives" in Joshua v. 2--"At that time the Lord said unto Joshua, Make thee sharp knives, and circumcise again the children of Israel the second time"--should be translated, as in the marginal reference, _knives of flint_. To the same ancient widespread habit may doubtless be referred the prohibition, mentioned in Exodus and Deuteronomy, against making an altar in any special place where God recorded His name, of hewn stone, or polluting it by lifting up any iron tool upon it. So strong is the conservative instinct in religion that to this very day the enlightened Brahmin of India will not use ordinary fire for sacred purposes, will not procure a fresh spark even from flint and steel, but reverts to, or rather continues the primitive way of obtaining it by friction with a wooden drill. Everywhere innovations in religious worship are resisted with more or less reason or prejudice. The instinct is universal, and has its good and its evil side. CHAPTER IX ST. ONOFRIO AND TASSO One of the most romantic shrines of pilgrimage in Rome is the church of St. Onofrio. It is situated in the Trastevere, that portion of the city beyond the Tiber whose inhabitants boast of their pure descent from the ancient Romans. A steep ascent on the slope of the Janiculum, through a somewhat squalid but picturesque street, and terminating in a series of broad steps, leads up to it from the Porta di San Spirito, not far from the Vatican. The ground here is open and stretches away, free from buildings, to the walls of the city. The church has a simple old-fashioned appearance; its roof, walls, and small campanile are painted with the rusty gold of lichens that have sprung from the kisses of four centuries of rain and sun. It was erected in the reign of Pope Eugenius IV. by Nicolo da Forca Palena, an ancestor of that Conte di Palena who was a great friend of Torquato Tasso at Naples. It was dedicated to the Egyptian hermit Honuphrius, who for sixty years lived in a cave in the desert of Thebes, without seeing a human being or speaking a word, consorting with birds and beasts, and living upon roots and wild herbs. A subtle harmony is felt between the history of the hermit and the character of this building raised in his honour. A spot more drowsy and secluded, more steeped in the dreams of the older ages, is not to be found in the whole city. In front of the church there is a long, narrow portico, supported by eight antique columns of the simplest construction, in all likelihood borrowed from some old pagan temple. Under this portico is a beautiful fresco of the Madonna and Child by Domenichino. To the right are three lunettes, which contain paintings by the same great master, representing the Baptism, Temptation, and Flagellation of St. Jerome. On the left of the arcade are portraits of the most prominent saints of the Hieronomyte order. Exposed to the weather at first, these invaluable frescoes had faded into mere spectres of pictures; but they are now protected from further injury by glass. Usually the church is closed, except in the early morning, and visitors are admitted by the custode on ringing a door bell under the portico. The interior is dark and solemn, with much less gilding and meretricious ornament than is usual in Roman churches. It contains, in the side chapels, many objects of interest; frescoes and altar-pieces by Annibale Caracci, Pinturicchio, and Peruzzi; and splendid sepulchral monuments. Of the last the most conspicuous are the marble tomb of Alessandro Guidi, the Italian lyric poet, who died in 1712; and the simple cenotaph in the last chapel on the left of one of the titular cardinals of the church, who died in 1849, the celebrated linguist Mezzofante. But the tomb upon which the visitor will gaze with deepest interest is that of Torquato Tasso, who died in the adjacent monastery in 1595. The chapel of St. Jerome, in which it is situated, the first on the left as you enter, was restored by public subscription in 1857, in a manner which does not reflect much credit upon the artistic taste of modern Rome. Previous to this the remains of the poet reposed for two hundred years in an obscure part of the church close to the door, indicated by a tablet. Above this spot there is a portrait of the time, which from an artistic point of view is very poor, but is said to be a good likeness. Removed on the anniversary of his death, about thirty years ago, to the chapel of St. Jerome, the poet's remains are now covered by a huge marble monument in the cinque-cento style, adorned by a bas-relief of his funeral and a statue of him by Fabris. Whatever may be said regarding the artistic merits of this monument, no one who has read the poet's immortal epic, and is conversant with the sad incidents of his life, can stand on the spot without being deeply moved. Connected with the church is a monastery dedicated to St. Jerome. In one of the upper corridors is a beautiful arched fresco of the Madonna and Child, by Leonardo da Vinci, with the donor of the picture in profile kneeling before her. The picture is surrounded by a frame of fruit and flowers on an enamelled ground. The soft, tender features of the infant Jesus, and the quiet dignity and grace of the smiling Madonna, are so characteristic of the style of Leonardo da Vinci that the picture would be at once referred to him by one who did not know its origin. The chamber where Tasso spent the last days of his life is on the upper floor, and is the most conveniently situated in the whole building. It is left very much in the same state as when he lived in it. The walls and ceiling are bare and whitewashed, without any decoration. Here and there are several pale marks, indicating the places of objects that had been removed. In one part is painted on the plaster a false door partially open, behind which is seen the figure of Tasso about to enter; but every person of good taste must condemn the melodramatic exhibition, and wish that he could obliterate it with a daub of whitewash. The custode directed my attention to it with an air of great admiration, and could not understand the scowl with which I turned away my face. There are several most interesting relics of Tasso preserved in this chamber--his table, with an inkstand of wood; his great chair covered with Cordova leather, very aged and worn-looking; the belt which he wore; a small German cabinet; a large China bowl, evidently an heirloom; a metal crucifix of singular workmanship, given to him by Pope Clement VIII., which soothed his dying moments; several of his letters, and an autograph copy of verses. In one corner is the leaden coffin, much corroded, in which his remains were originally deposited. On the table is a mask in reddish wax moulded from the dead face of the poet, and placed upon a plaster bust--a most fantastic combination. From this mask, which is an undoubted original, numerous copies have been taken, which are scattered throughout Europe. It is in consequence somewhat effaced, but it still shows the characteristic features of the poet--the purity of the profile, the fineness of the mouth, and the spiritual beauty and fascinating expression of the whole face. But the incoherence of the adaptation makes it painful to think that this is the best representation of the poet we possess. The extensive garden behind the convent combines a considerable variety of natural features. The monks grow large quantities of lettuce and fennochio; and interspersed among the beds of vegetables are orange and other fruit trees, and little trellises of cane, wreathed with vines. A large tank is supplied with water from a spring whose murmur gives a feeling of animation to the spot. The garden rises at the end into broken elevated ground showing the native rock through its grassy sides. A row of tall old cypresses crowns the ridge--their fluted trunks gray with lichen-stains, and their deep green spires of foliage forming harp-strings on which the evening winds discourse solemn music, as if the spirit of the poet haunted them still. On one side are the picturesque ruins of a shrine overarching a fountain, now dry and choked up with weeds, and fringed with ferns. Cyclamens--called by the Italians _viola pazze_, "mad violets"--grow on its margin in glowing masses; sweet-scented violets in profusion perfume all the air; and a few Judas-trees, loaded with crimson blossoms, without a single leaf to relieve the gorgeous colour, serve as an admirable background, almost blending with the clouds on the low horizon. On the other side the hill slopes down in a series of terraces to the crowded streets of the Trastevere, forming a spacious out-door amphitheatre, in which the Arcadian Academy of Rome used to hold its meetings during the summer months, and where St. Filippo Neri was wont to give those half-dramatic musical entertainments which, originating in the oratory of the religious community established by him, are now known throughout the world as oratorios. Between these two objects still stands the large torso of a tree which bears the name of "Tasso's oak," because the poet's favourite seat was under its shadow. It suffered much from the violence of a thunderstorm in 1842, but numerous branches have since sprouted from the old trunk, and it now affords a capacious shade from the noonday heat. It is a variety of the Valonia oak, with delicate, downy, pale-green leaves, much serrated, and contrasts beautifully with the dark green spires of the cypresses behind. The leaves at the time of my visit had but recently unfolded, and exhibited all the delicacy of tint and perfection of outline so characteristic of young foliage. The garden was in the first fresh flush of spring--that idyllic season which, in Italy more than in any other land, realises the glowing descriptions of the poets. Plucking a leafy twig from the branches and a gray lichen from the trunk as mementoes of the place, I sat down on the mossy hole, and tried to bring back in imagination the haunted past. Nature was renewing her old life; the same flowers still covered the earth with their divine frescoes; but where was he whose spirit informed all the beauty and translated its mystic language into human words? The permanency of nature and the vanity of human life seemed here to acquire new significance. The spot on which I sat commands one of the finest views of Rome and the surrounding country. Down below to the left is the enormous group of buildings connected with St Peter's and the Vatican, whose yellow travertine glows in the afternoon sun like dead gold. Beyond rise the steep green slopes of Monte Mario, with vineyards and olive-groves nestling in its warm folds, crowned with the Villa Mellini beside the "Turner pine," a familiar object in many of the great artist's pictures. Stretching away in the direction of the old diligence road from Florence is a succession of gentle ridges and bluffs of volcanic rock covered with brushwood, among which you can trace the bold headland of the citadel of Fidenæ, and the green lonely site of Antemnæ, and the plateau on which are the scanty remains of the almost mythical Etruscan city of Veii, the Troy of Italy. The view in this direction is bounded by the advanced guard of the Sabine range, the blue peak of Soracte looking, as Lord Byron graphically says, like the crest of a billow about to break. In front, at your feet, is the city, broken up into the most picturesque masses by the irregularity of the ground; here and there a brighter light glistening on some stately campanile or cupola, and flashing back from the graceful columns of Trajan and Antonine. The Tiber flows between you and that wilderness of reddish-brown roofs cleaving the city in twain. For a brief space you see it on both sides of the Bridge of Hadrian, overlooked by the gloomy mass of the Castle of St. Angelo, and then it hides itself under the shadow of the Aventine Hill, and at last emerges beyond the walls, to pursue its desolate way to the sea through one of the saddest tracts of country in all the world. Away to the right, where the mass of modern buildings ceases, the great shattered circle of the Colosseum stands up against the sky, indicating by its presence where lie, unseen from this point of view, the ruins of the palaces of the Cæsars and the Forum. Beyond the city stretches away the undulating bosom of the Campagna, bathed in a misty azure light; bridged over by the weird, endless arches of the Claudian aqueduct, throwing long shadows before them in the westering sun. Worthy framework for such a picture, the noble semicircle of the Sabine Hills rises on the horizon to the left, terminating in the grand rugged peak of Monte Gennaro, whose every cliff and scar are distinctly visible, and concealing in its bosom the romantic waterfalls of Tivoli and the lone ancestral farm of Horace. On the right the crested Alban heights form the boundary, crowned on the summit with the white convent of Monte Cavo--the ancient temple of Jupiter Latialis, up to which the Roman consuls came to triumph when the Latin States were merged in the Roman Commonwealth--and bearing on their shoulders the sparkling, gem-like towns of Frascati and Albano, with their thrilling memories of Cicero and Pompey; the whole range melting away into the blue vault of heaven in delicate gradations of pale pink and purple. In the wide gap between these ranges of hills--beyond the stone pines and ilex groves of Præneste--the far perspective is closed by a glorious vision of the snow-crowned mountains of the Abruzzi, giving an air of alpine grandeur to the view. And all this vast and varied landscape, comprehending all glories of nature and art, all zones and climates, from the tropical aloes and palms of the Pincian Hill to the arctic snows of the Apennines, is seen through air that acts upon the spirits like wine, and gives the ideal beauty of a picture to the meanest things. Italian poets share in the wonderful charm that belongs to everything connected with their lovely land. They are seen, like the early Tuscan paintings, against a golden background of romance. Petrarch, Dante, Ariosto, invested with this magic light, are themselves more attractive even than their poetic creations. But Torquato Tasso, perhaps, more than them all, appeals to our deepest feelings. No sadder or more romantic life than his can be found in the annals of literature. He was one of those "infanti perduti" to whom life was one long avenue of darkened days. In his temperament, in the character of his genius, and in the story of his life, we can discern striking features of resemblance between him and the wayward, sorrowful Rousseau. Hercules, according to the old fable, "was afflicted with madness as a punishment for his being so near the gods;" and the imaginativeness of a brain which had in it a fibre of insanity, near which genius often perilously lies, may be supposed to account for much that is strange and sad in his career. The place of his birth was a fit cradle for a poet. On the edge of a bold cliff, overlooking the sea at Sorrento, is the Hotel Tasso, known to every traveller in that region. Here, according to the voice of tradition, the immortal poet was born on the 11th of March 1544, eleven years after the death of Ariosto. It is said that the identical chamber in which the event took place has since disappeared, owing to the portion of rock on which it stood having been undermined by the sea; and, as if to give countenance to this, some of the existing apartments are perilously propped up on the very edge of the cliff by buttresses, which, giving way, would hurl the superstructure into the abyss. The original building stood on the site of an ancient temple; and it is probable that, with the exception of one of the bedrooms, which is said to have been Tasso's cabinet, the edifice retains none of the features which it possessed in the days of the poet. But whatever changes may have taken place in the human habitation, the scenes of Nature around, from which he drew the inspirations of his youthful genius, remain unchanged. Every feature of landscape loveliness is focussed in that matchless panorama. Behind is a range of wild mountains, whose many-shaped peaks and crags, clad with pine and olive, assume, as the day wears on, the golden and purple hues of the sky--sloping down into the midst of vineyards and groves of orange, myrtle, and all the luxuriant verdure which the warm sun of the South calls forth, out of which gleam at frequent intervals picturesque villages and farms, which seem more the creation of Nature than of Art. In front is a glorious view of the Bay of Naples, with the enchanted isles of Capri and Ischia sleeping on its bosom, and the reflected images of domes and palaces all along its curving shores "charming its blue waters;" while dominating the whole horizon are the snowy mountains of Campania, broken by the dark purple mass of Vesuvius, rising up with gradual slope to its rounded cone, over which rests continually a column of flame or smoke, "stimulating the imagination by its mystery and terror." Apart from its associations, that landscape would have been one to gaze on entranced, and to dream of for years afterwards. But with its countless memories of all that is greatest and saddest in human history clinging to almost every object, it is indeed one of the most impressive in the world. The land is the land of Magna Græcia. The sea is the sea of Homer and Pindar. Near at hand are the Isles of the Sirens, who allured Ulysses with their magic song; away in the dim distance are the wonderful Doric temples of Pæstum, which go back to the mythical times of Jason and the Argonauts. On the opposite shore is the tomb of Virgil, on the threshold of the scenes which he loved to describe,--the Holy Land of Paganism, the Phlegræan Fields, with the terrible Avernus and the Cave of the Sibyl, and all the spots associated with the Pagan heaven and hell; and in the near neighbourhood Baiæ, with its awful memories of Roman luxury and cruelty, and Puteoli, with its inspiring associations of the Apostle Paul's visit, and the introduction of Christianity into Italy. Meet nurse for any poetic child, the place of his birth was peculiarly so for such a child as Tasso; and we can detect in the subjects of his Muse in after years, the very themes which such a region would naturally have suggested and inspired. The age in which he was born was also eminently favourable for the development of the poetic faculty. By the wonderful discoveries of the starry Galileo, man's intellectual vision was infinitely extended, and the great fundamental idea of modern astronomy--infinite space peopled with worlds like our own--was for the first time realised. It was an era of maritime enterprise; the world was circumnavigated, and new ideas streamed in from each newly-visited region. It was pre-eminently the period of art. Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael had just passed away, but Michael Angelo, Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese were still living, freeing men's spirits by the productions of their pencil from formal fancies and conventional fetters, and sending them back to the fresh teaching of Nature. The art of printing was giving a new birth to letters, and the reformation of religion a new growth to human thought. A new power had descended into the stagnant waters of European life, and imparted to them a wonderful energy. Along with the revival of classical learning and the general quickening of men's minds, there was blended in the South of Europe a lingering love of romance and chivalry, and a strong religious feeling, which had arisen out of the vigorous reaction of Roman Catholicism. Italy was at this time the acknowledged parent both of the poetry and the general literature of Europe; and the immortal works of Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto had formed an almost perfect vernacular language in which the creations of genius could find fittest expression. But Tasso was not only born in a poetic region and in a poetic age: he was also the son of a poet. He inherited the divine faculty; he was cradled in poetry. His father, Bernardo, though he has been put into the shade by his more gifted son, has claims of his own to be remembered by posterity. He occupies a high place in the well-defined group of the chivalric poets of Italy. His principal poem, the _Amadigi_, which was composed about the time of his son's birth, though not published for sixteen years afterwards, treats in a hundred cantos the romantic history of Amadis of Gaul, and deals in giants, enchanted swords, prodigious wounds, and miraculous cures. Various estimates of this long poem have been formed by critics from the favourable analysis of Ginguéné to the severe censure of Sismondi. But in spite of its lack of dramatic power, and the monotony of its imagery, the heat of his genius crystallising only a part of the substance of his work, there can be no question that the poem is distinguished by a certain gravity and elevation of sentiment, which places it high above the romances of the older school, and brings it near to the dignity of epic poetry. In this respect the _Amadigi_ may be said to form an interesting transition from the irregular romance of Ariosto to the symmetrical epic of his own son. The son's poetic path was thus prepared, and the mould in which his immortal work was cast was formed by his father. The fortunes of the two poets read remarkably alike. They are marked by the same extraordinary vicissitudes, and the same general sadness and gloom. The family of Tasso belonged to Bergamo, in the north of Italy, a region which has given birth to several eminent men, among others to Tiraboschi, the historian of Italian literature. It was originally noble, and had large territorial possessions. One ancestor, Omodeo, who lived in the year 1290, is worthy of special mention as the inventor of the system of postal communication, to which the world owes so much; and hence the family arms of a courier's horn and a badger's skin--tasso being the Italian for badger--which the post-horses, down to within fifty years ago, wore upon their harness. In the time of Bernardo, however, the fortunes of the family had decayed, and the early days of the poet were passed in poverty. Adopted after the death of his parents by his father's brother, the Bishop of Recanati, he was placed at school, where he soon acquired a wonderful familiarity with the Greek and Latin authors, then newly restored to Europe. Highly cultivated, refined, and possessed of great personal beauty, while manifesting at the same time a peculiar talent for diplomacy, Bernardo speedily won his way to distinction. His first work, which was a collection principally of love-poems, celebrating his passion for the beautiful Genevra Malatesta, who belonged to the same family as the ill-fated Parasina of Byron, attracted the attention of the reigning Prince of Salerno, Ferrante Sanseverino, one of the chief patrons of literature in Italy, who thereupon engaged him as his private secretary. At the court of this prince he met Porzia de' Rossi, a lady of noble birth, who was beautiful and accomplished, and possessed what was considered in those days a large fortune. After his marriage with this lady Bernardo and his bride retired to a villa which he had purchased at Sorrento, where he enjoyed for several years an exceptional share of domestic felicity, his wife having proved a most devoted helpmeet to him. In these propitious circumstances the infant that was destined afterwards to confer the greatest lustre upon the family name was born. His father was absent at the time with the Prince of Salerno, who had joined the Spanish army in the new war that had arisen between Charles V. and Francis I.; a war whose chivalrous and inspiring acts the Marquis d'Azeglio made use of in 1866 in his romance of history, _Fieramosca_, to rouse again a spirit of independence in his countrymen. A friend of his father, therefore, held the child at the baptismal font, in the cathedral of Sorrento, where he received the name of Torquato--a name which his elder brother, who lived only a few days, had previously borne. The treaty of Crepi, which concluded the war between Charles V. and Francis I., in which the former was victorious, allowed Bernardo Tasso to return home with his patron ten months after the birth of his son. By this treaty the French king, who had previously assumed the title of King of Naples, resigned all claims upon that State, and the inhabitants were henceforth subjected entirely to the dominion of the Spanish sovereigns of the house of Austria. The emperor, Charles V., appointed the Marquis de Villafranca, better known as Don Pedro de Toledo, to be Viceroy of Naples, who, like his despotic master, carried out his so-called reforms with a high hand, and interfered with the personal and domestic affairs of the inhabitants, so that he speedily roused their resentment. Against the establishment of the Inquisition, which he set about under the mask of zeal for religion, but in reality for the intimidation of the nobles, the whole city rose up in violent opposition. After having exhausted itself in a vain struggle with the viceroy, it resolved to petition the emperor, and commissioned the Prince of Salerno to plead its cause at the Court of Nuremberg. But in consequence of being forestalled by the cunning Don Pedro, the prince, when he arrived, found the case prejudged, and all his arguments and pleadings were of no avail. Disgusted with the failure of his errand, with the coldness of his reception, and with other indignities which he received at the hands of the emperor and his viceroy, he determined to abandon altogether the cause of Austria. Repairing to Venice, he publicly gave effect to his decision; whereupon Don Pedro, too glad to have an opportunity of oppressing his personal enemy, declared the prince a rebel, confiscated his estates, and seized all his personal property. In the misfortunes of his patron Bernardo Tasso shared. He too was proscribed as a rebel; his property at Salerno was seized, and his wife and children were transferred by the viceroy's orders to Naples, where her family resided, and where, under their cruel treatment, instigated by the viceroy, she was deprived of her fortune, and virtually held a prisoner to the day of her death. Such were the dark clouds that, after a brief gleam of the brightest prosperity, hung over the early years of Torquato Tasso. Deprived of the care of a father who followed from court to court the varied fortunes of his benefactor, and in the company of a mother worse than widowed, dependent upon the cold and niggardly charity of friends who were either too timid or superstitious to oppose the patron of the Inquisition, the child grew up in melancholy solitude, like an etiolated plant that has been deprived of the sunshine. The original sadness and sensitiveness of his disposition was much increased by the family misfortunes. In his seventh year he was sent to a school in the neighbourhood, opened by the Jesuits, who were at this time beginning to exert a powerful influence upon society, principally on account of their zeal in the cause of education. At this school he remained for three years, acquiring a wonderful knowledge of Latin and Greek, and manifesting such enthusiasm in his studies that he rose long before day-break, and was so impatient to get to school that his mother was often obliged to send him away in the dark with a lantern. Here he showed the first symptoms of his genius for poetry and rhetoric, and gave public testimony to the deep religious feeling which he inherited from his parents, and which had been so carefully cultivated by his ecclesiastical masters, by joining the communion of the Church. In his tenth year his father left the court of Henry III. of France, and settled in Rome, where he had apartments assigned him in the immense palace of Cardinal Hippolito of the house of Ferrara. These apartments were furnished as handsomely as his impoverished resources allowed, in the hope that he might have his wife and children to live with him. But in spite of all his efforts and entreaties his wife was not allowed by her brothers to rejoin him; while his own position as an outlaw made it impossible for him to enter the kingdom of Naples to rescue her. The only concession he could get from the authorities was permission for her to enter with her daughter Cornelia as pensioners among the nuns in the convent of San Festo; and no sooner was this step taken than her friends openly seized her dowry, on the plea that it would otherwise belong to the convent, as her husband's outlawry cancelled his claims to it. Her boy, of course, could not enter the convent with her; he was therefore sent to his father in Rome. The separation between mother and son, we are told, was most affecting. To her it was the climax of her trials; and, bowed down beneath the weight of her accumulated sufferings, she fell an easy victim to an attack of fever, which, in the short space of twenty-four hours, ended her wretched life. Upon Tasso the parting from a mother whom he was never to see again, and whose personal qualities and grievous trials had greatly endeared her to him, produced an impression which even the great troubles of his after life could never efface. With a mind richly stored, notwithstanding his youthful age, with classic lore, and quickened and made sensitive by a varied and sorrowful career, Torquato Tasso came to Rome. The first occasion of seeing the imperial city must have been exciting and awakening in a high degree to such a boy. He was leaving behind the passive simplicity of the child, and had already a keen interest in the things ennobled by history and cared for by grown-up men. This dawn of a higher consciousness found a congenial sphere in the city of the soul. With what absorbing eagerness his young mind would be drawn to the study of the immortal deeds, which were the inheritance of his race, on the very spot where they were done. He would behold with his eyes the glorious things of which he had heard. There would be much that would shock and disappoint him when he came to be familiar with it. Many of the ancient monuments had been destroyed; and many of the ancient sites, especially the Forum and the Palatine, were deserted wastes which had not yet yielded up their buried treasures of art to the pick and spade of the antiquarian. The ravages inflicted by the ferocious hordes of the Constable Bourbon in 1527 had not yet been obliterated by the restorations and repairs undertaken by Pope Paul III. The city had lost much of its ancient glory, and had not yet exchanged its gloomy medieval aspect for that of modern civilisation. But, in spite of every drawback, he could not sufficiently admire the buildings and the sites which bore witness of all that was grandest in human history. Along with a young relative, Christopher Tasso, he pursued his classical studies in the midst of all these stimulating associations under the tutorship of Maurizio Cattaneo, the most learned master in Italy. The companionship of a youth of his own age did him a great deal of good. It satisfied his affections, it saved him from the loneliness to which his father's ill-health at the time would otherwise have consigned him, and it spurred him on to a healthful exercise of his mental powers. For a short time he led a comparatively happy life in Rome. His father's prospects had somewhat improved. Cardinal Caraffa, who was a personal friend of his, ascended the pontifical throne under the name of Paul IV.; and as they were on the same political side, he hoped that his fortunes would now be retrieved. But this gleam of prosperity speedily vanished. The imperial enmity, which had been the cause of all his previous misfortunes, continued to pursue him like a relentless fate. Philip II. of Spain and the Pope having quarrelled, the formidable Duke of Alba, the new Viceroy of Naples, invaded the Papal States, took Ostia and Tivoli, and threatened Rome itself. With extreme difficulty Bernardo Tasso managed to make his escape to Ravenna, with nothing left him but the manuscript of his _Amadigi_. In the meantime his son was taken to his relatives at Bergamo. In this city, under the shadow of the Alps, Torquato remained for a year in the home of his Roman schoolfellow. The inhabitants have ever since cherished with pride the connection of the Tassos with their town, and have erected a splendid monument to Torquato in the market-place. The exquisite scenery in the neighbourhood had a wonderful effect upon the mind of the youthful poet. It put the finishing touch to his varied education. The snows of the North and the fires of the South, the wild grandeur of the mountains and the soft beauty of the sea, the solitudes of Nature where only the effects of storm and sunshine are chronicled, and the crowded scenes of the most inspiring events in human history, had their share in moulding his temperament and colouring his poetry. From Bergamo Torquato was summoned to Pesaro, since known as the birthplace of Rossini, hence called the "Swan of Pesaro." His father had found a home with the Duke of Urbino, who treated him with the utmost kindness. In the Villa Barachetto, on the shores of the Adriatic, surrounded by the most beautiful scenery and by the finest treasures of art, which have long since been transferred to Paris and Rome, Bernardo Tasso at last completed his _Amadigi_; while, captivated by his grace and intelligence, the duke made Torquato the companion of his son, Francesco Maria, in all his studies and amusements. For two years father and son enjoyed in this place a grateful repose from the buffetings of fortune. But, fired by ambition, Bernardo left Pesaro for Venice, in order to see his poem through the press of Aldus Manutius; and being not only welcomed with open arms by his literary friends in that city, but also appointed secretary of the great Venetian Academy "Della Fama," with a handsome salary, he sent for his son, took a house in a good situation, and resolved to settle down in the place. There was much to captivate the imagination of the youthful Torquato in this wonderful city of the sea, then in the zenith of its fame, surpassing all the capitals of transalpine Europe in the extent of its commerce, in refinement of manners, and in the cultivation of learning and the arts. Its romantic situation, its weird history, its splendid palaces, its silent water-ways, its stirring commerce, its inspiring arts, must have kindled all the enthusiasm of his nature. But he did not yield himself up to the siren attractions of the place, and muse in idleness upon its varied charms. On the contrary, the time that he spent in Venice was the busiest of his life. He was absorbed in the study of Dante and Petrarch; and the results of his devotion may still be seen in the numerous annotations in his handwriting in the copies of these poets which belonged to him, now preserved in the Vatican Library in Rome and the Laurentian Library in Florence. He was also employed by his father in transcribing for the press considerable portions of his poetical works; and these studies and exercises were of much use to him in enabling him to form a graphic and elegant literary style. His own compositions, both in prose and verse, were by this time pretty numerous, though nothing of his had found its way into print as yet. His father saw with much concern the development of his son's genius. Anxious to save him from the trials which he himself had experienced in his literary career, he sent him to the University of Padua to study law, which he thought would be a surer provision for his future life than a devotion to the Muses. One great branch of law, that which relates to ecclesiastical jurisprudence, has always been much esteemed in Italy, and the study of it, in many instances, has paved the way to high honours. Almost all the eminent poets of Italy, Petrarch, Ariosto, Marino, Metastasio, spent their earlier years in this pursuit; but, like Ovid and our own Milton, their nature rebelled against the bondage. They took greater pleasure in the study of the laws for rhyme than in the study of the Pandects of Justinian or the Decretals of Isidore. It was so with Tasso. He attended faithfully the lectures of Guido Panciroli, although these were not compulsory, and waited patiently at the University during the three years of residence which is required for a law degree. But all the time his mind was occupied with other thoughts than those connected with his law studies. Still, uncongenial as they must have been to him, he could not have attended for three years to such studies without unconsciously deriving much benefit from them. They must have impressed upon him those ideas of order and logical arrangement which he afterwards carried out in his writings, and which separate them so markedly from the confused, inconsistent license of the older literature of Italy; and he could not have resided in the birthplace of Livy, in constant association with the highest minds of the time, as a member of a University then the most famous in Europe, numbering no less than ten thousand students from all parts of the world, without his intellectual life being greatly quickened. During ten months of enthusiastic work he produced his first great poem, which, considering his age--for he was then only in his eighteenth year--and the short time occupied in its composition, is one of the most remarkable efforts of genius. He called his poem _Rinaldo_, after the name of the knight whose romantic adventures it celebrates--not the Rinaldo of the _Gerusalemme Liberata_, but the Paladin of whom so much is said in the poems of Boiardo and Ariosto,--and dedicated it to Cardinal Lewis of Este, then one of the most distinguished patrons of literature in Italy. It contains a beautiful allusion to his father's genius as the source of his own inspiration. It abounds in the supernatural incidents and personified abstractions characteristic of the romantic school of poetry; and though Galileo said of it that it reminded him of a picture formed of inlaid work, rather than of a painting in oil, it has nevertheless a unity of plot, a sustained interest, and a uniform elevation of style, which distinguishes it from all the poetry of the period. Our own Spenser has imbibed the spirit of some of its most beautiful passages; and several striking coincidences between his _Faerie Queen_ and the _Rinaldo_ can be traced, particularly in the account of the lion tamed by Clarillo, and the well-known incident of Una and the lion in Spenser. The poem of _Rinaldo_ will always be read with interest, as it strikes the keynote of Tasso's great epic, the _Gerusalemme Liberata_, many of the finest fictions of which were adopted with very little modification from the earlier work. His letter asking his father's permission to publish it came at a very inopportune moment. Bernardo was smarting just then under the disappointments connected with the reception of his own poem, the _Amadigi_. It produced little impression upon the general public; the copies which he distributed among the Italian nobles procured him nothing but conventional thanks and polite praise; while the magnificent edition which he prepared specially for presentation to Philip II. of Spain, in the hope that he might thereby be induced to interest himself in the restoration of his wife's property at Naples, was not even acknowledged. Wounded thus in his deepest sensibilities, and bewailing the misfortunes of his literary career, we need not wonder that he should have sent a reply peremptorily commanding his son to give up poetry and stick to the law. The young poet in his distress sought the intervention of some of his father's literary friends, and through their mediation the destiny of Torquato Tasso and of Italian poetry was accomplished, and the poem of _Rinaldo_ was given to the world through the renowned press of the Franceschi of Venice. No sooner was it published than it achieved an extraordinary success, for Cervantes had not yet made this class of fiction for ever ridiculous. Notwithstanding that the public were surfeited with romantic poetry, the merits of this new work, constructed upon different principles and carried out in an original style, were such that the literary schools were carried by storm, and the young Tasso, or Tassino, as he was now called to distinguish him from his father, at once leapt into fame. So great was his reputation, that the newly-restored University of Bologna invited him to reside there, so that it might share in the distinction conferred by his name. In this magnificent seat of learning he remained, enjoying the advantage of literary intercourse with the great scholars who then occupied the chairs of the University, until the publication of some anonymous pasquinades, reflecting severely upon the leading inhabitants, of which he was falsely supposed to be the author. In his absence the Government officials visited his rooms and seized his papers. The sensitive poet regarded this suspicion as a stain upon his honour, and the outrage he never forgave. Shaking the dust from his shoes, he departed from Bologna, and for some time led an unsettled life, enjoying the generous hospitality of the nobles whose names he had celebrated in his _Rinaldo_. Returning at length to Padua, where he engaged in the study of Aristotle and Plato, and delivered three discourses on Heroic Poetry in the Academia degli Eterei, or the Ethereals--in which he developed the whole theory of his poetical design--which were afterwards published, the office of Laureate at the court of Ferrara was offered to him by Cardinal Lewis of Este, to whom, as I have said, he had dedicated his _Rinaldo_. Torquato Tasso was now in the full bloom of opening manhood. He was distinguished, like his father, for his personal beauty and grace, with a high, noble forehead, deep gray melancholy eyes, regular well-cut features, and hair of a light brown. He had the advantage of all the culture of his time. His manners were refined by familiar intercourse with the highest nobles of the land, and his mind richly furnished, not only with the stores of classic literature, but also with the literary treasures of his own country; while a residence, more or less prolonged, in the most famous towns, and among the most romantic scenes of Italy, had widened his mental horizon and expanded his sympathies. He had already mounted almost to the highest step of the literary ladder. Nothing could exceed the tokens of respect with which he was everywhere received. But, in spite of all these advantages, Tasso was now beginning to realise the shadows that accompany even the most splendid literary career. His own experience was now confirming to him the truth of what his father had often sought to impress upon his mind,--that the favour of princes was capricious, and that a life of dependence at a court was of all others the most unsatisfactory. Constitutionally disposed to melancholy, irritable and sensitive to the last degree, he brooded over the fancied wrongs and slights which he had received; and at first he was disposed to accept the advice of his father's friend, the well-known Sperone, who strongly dissuaded him from going to the court of Ferrara, painting the nature of the life he would lead there in the most forbidding colours. It would have been well had he listened to this wise counsel, strengthened as it was by his own better judgment; for in that case he might have been spared the mortifications which made the whole of his after life one continued martyrdom. But recovering from a protracted illness, into which the agitation of his spirits threw him, when on a visit to his father at the court of the Duke of Mantua, he passed from the depths of despondency to the opposite extreme of eagerness, and, fired by ambition, he resolved to enter upon the path to distinction which now opened before him. And here we come to the crisis of his life. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a state of things existed in Italy somewhat similar to that which existed in the Highlands of Scotland in earlier times. Each Highland chief maintained an independent court, and among his personal retainers a bard who should celebrate his deeds was considered indispensable. So was it with the princes of Italy. In their train was always found a man of letters whose poetic Muse was dedicated to laureate duties, and was valued in proportion as it recorded the triumphs of the protecting court. For this patronage of art and letters no court was more distinguished than that of Ferrara. "Whoe'er in Italy is known to fame, This lordly home as frequent guest can claim." The family of Este was the most ancient and illustrious in Italy. The house of Brunswick, from which our own royal family is descended, was a shoot from this parent stock. It intermarried with the principal reigning families of Europe. Leibnitz, Muratori, and our own great historian, Gibbon, have traced the lineage and chronicled the family incidents of this ducal house. Lucrezia Borgia and the Parasina of Byron were members of it. For several generations the men and women were remarkable for the curious contrasts of a violent character and the pursuits of the arts of peace which they displayed. Poisonings, assassinations, adulteries, imprisonments for life, conspiracies, were by no means uncommon incidents in their tragical history. And yet under their government Ferrara became the first really modern city in Europe, with well-built streets, a large population, and flourishing trade, attracting wealthy settlers from all parts of Italy. Nearly all the members of the reigning house were distinguished for their personal attractions and their mental capacities. They were also notorious for their love of display. We have books, such as the _Antiquities of the House of Este_ by Muratori, the _Chivalries of Ferrara_, the _Borseid_, and the _Hecatommiti_ of Giraldi, which were written almost to order for the purpose of gratifying this vanity. Borso, the first duke, caused his portrait to be painted in a series of historical representations in one of his principal palaces; Hercules I. kept the anniversary of his accession to the throne by a splendid procession, which was compared to the festival of Corpus Christi; an Order, which had nothing in common with medieval chivalry, called the Order of the Golden Spur, was instituted by his court, and conferred upon those who reflected lustre by their deeds or their literary gifts upon the house of Este; while, to crown all, we read at this day on the tower of the cathedral of Ferrara the dedicatory inscription beginning with "To the god Hercules II.," which the complaisant inhabitants had put there,--an apotheosis which reminds us of the worst slavery of imperial Rome under Caligula and Domitian. Some of the greatest names of Italy, such as Petrarch, Boiardo, Ariosto, the wonderful prodigy Olympia Morata, and the celebrated poetess Vittoria Colonna--the friend of Michael Angelo--were connected with this brilliant court. The well-known French poet Clement Marot fled to it to escape persecution in his native country. Calvin found a refuge there for some months under the assumed name of Charles d'Heppeville, during which he converted the duchess to the reformed faith. The father of Tasso visited it when it was at the height of its splendour and renown. Hercules II., the then reigning prince, son of Lucrezia Borgia, had earned a great reputation for his literary works and patronage of the fine arts; and his wife, the friend of Calvin, the youngest daughter of Louis XII. of France, was even more remarkable for her talents, being equally skilled in the Latin and Greek languages. This renowned couple drew around them a circle of the most accomplished men and women in Europe, in whose congenial society Bernardo Tasso spent a few months of great enjoyment, delighting all by his wit and social qualities. But notwithstanding all this magnificence and love of learning, the house of Este, among its other contradictory qualities, was distinguished for capriciousness and meanness. Even Muratori, their ardent panegyrist, does not attempt to conceal this blemish. We must deduct a good deal from the high-sounding praise which the courtly writers of Italy bestowed upon this house for its splendid patronage of literature, when we remember that Ariosto, who passed his life in its service, was treated with niggardliness and contempt. He had a place assigned him among the musicians and jugglers, and was regarded as one of the common domestics of the establishment. Guarini, the well-known author of the _Pastor Fido_, contemporary with Tasso, met with much indignity in the service of Alphonso II.; while Panigarola and several other distinguished men were compelled to leave the service of the ducal family by persecution. Benvenuto Cellini, who resided at the court of Ferrara twenty-five years before Tasso, gives a very unfavourable account of the avarice and rapacity which characterised it; and Serassi, the biographer of Tasso, remarks that the court seems to have been extremely dangerous, especially to literary men. It was not therefore, we may suppose, without other reasons than his being merely a Guelph, that Dante in his _Inferno_ placed one of the scions of the house in hell, and uniformly regarded the family with dislike. Tasso himself was destined to experience both the favour and the hostility, the generosity and the neglect, of this capricious house. Ferrara is now a dull sleepy city of less than thirty thousand inhabitants. It is a place that continues to exist not because of its vitality, but by the mere force of habit. Its broad deserted streets and decaying palaces lie silent and sad in the drowsy noon sunshine, like the aisles of a September forest. But in the days of Tasso it was one of the gayest cities of Italy, which looked upon itself as the centre of the world, and all beyond as mere margin. It was always _festa_, always carnival, in Ferrara; and when the poet came to it in his twentieth year, on the last day of October 1565, he found it one brilliant theatre. The reigning duke, Alphonso II., had just been married to the daughter of Ferdinand I., Emperor of Austria; and this splendid alliance was celebrated by tournaments, balls, feasts, and other pageantry, which transcended everything of the kind that had previously been seen in Italy, with the exception, perhaps, of the fêtes connected with the marriage of Lucrezia Borgia to his grandfather. The ardent mind of the poet, it need hardly be said, was completely fascinated. He saw himself surrounded daily with all the splendours of chivalry, and lived in the midst of scenes such as haunt the dreams of poets and inspire the pages of romance. Goethe, in his _Torquato Tasso_, an exquisite poem, it may be said, but wanting in dramatic action, gives a vivid picture of the poet's life at the court of Ferrara, which bore some resemblance to his own at the court of Weimar. Two sisters of the reigning prince lived in the palace, and by their beauty and accomplishments imparted to the court an air of great refinement. The younger, the famous Leonora of Este, was about thirty years of age at this time, and therefore considerably older than Tasso. A severe and protracted illness had shut her out from the festivities connected with her brother's marriage, and communicated to her mind a touch of sadness, and to her features a spiritual delicacy which greatly increased her attractiveness. The numerous writers by whom she is mentioned talk with rapture, not only of her beauty and genius, but also of her saintly goodness, which was so great that a single prayer of hers on one occasion was said to have rescued Ferrara from the wrath of Heaven evinced in the inundation of the Po. In the society of these ladies Tasso spent a great deal of his time; and perhaps his intercourse with them, unconstrained by court conventionalities, was not altogether free from those tender feelings which the charms of a lovely and accomplished woman, whatever her rank, might readily excite in a poetic temperament. The author of the _Sorrows of Werther_ did not, therefore, perhaps draw exclusively upon his imagination in picturing the rise and struggle of an unhappy passion for Leonora d'Este in the bosom of the young poet. Whatever may be said regarding this passion, however, there can be no doubt that his heart was at this time enslaved by younger and humbler beauties. He had much of the temperament of his father, who, although exemplary in his single and married life, was distinguished for his Platonic gallantry, and cherished a poetic attachment, according to the fashion of the day, for various ladies throughout his career, such as Genevra Malatesta, the beautiful Tullia of Arragon, and Marguerite de Valois, sister of Henry III. These follies were but the froth of his genius, however; and in this respect his son followed his example. Lucrezia Bendidio, a young lady at court gifted with singular beauty and musical talent, reigned for a while supreme over his affections. But she had other suitors, including the author of the _Pastor Fido_, and the poet Pigna, who was the secretary and favourite of the reigning duke. The Princess Leonora tried to cure Tasso of this passion by persuading him to illustrate the verses of his rival Pigna. Nothing came of this first love, therefore, and the object of it soon after married into the house of Machiavelli. In the congenial atmosphere of the court of Ferrara, surrounded by the flower of beauty and chivalry, stimulated by the associations of his master Ariosto, which every object around recalled, and encouraged by the praises of the sweetest lips in the palace, Tasso set himself diligently to the composition of the great work of his life, the _Gerusalemme Liberata_, the plan of which he had formed before he left the University of Padua. Among the treasures of the Vatican Library I have seen a sketch in the poet's own handwriting of the first three cantos. This sketch he now modified and enlarged, and in the space of a few months completed five entire cantos. He read the poem as it proceeded to the fair sisters of his patron, and received the benefit of their criticisms. This work, which is "the great epic poem in the strict sense of modern times," occupied altogether eighteen years of the author's life. It was begun in extreme youth, and finished in middle age, and is a most remarkable example of a young man's devotion to one absorbing object. The opening chapters were written amid the bright dreams of youth, and in the happiest circumstances; the closing ones were composed amid the dark clouds of a morbid melancholy, and during an imprisonment tyrannical in all its features. Placed side by side with Homer and Virgil, it may be said with Voltaire that Tasso was more fortunate than either of these immortals in the choice of his subject. It was based, not upon tradition, but upon true history. It appealed not merely to the passions of love and ambition, but to the deepest feelings of the soul, to faith in the unseen and eternal. To humanity at large the wars of the Cross must be more interesting than the wrath of Achilles, and the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre than the siege of Troy. No theme could be more susceptible of poetic treatment than the Crusades. They were full of stirring incident, of continually changing objects and images. The strife took place amid scenes from which the most familiar stories of our childhood have come, and around which have gathered the most sacred associations of the heart. And Tasso's mind was one that was peculiarly adapted to reflect all the special characteristics of the theme. It was deeply religious in its tone, and therefore could enter into the struggle with all the sympathy of real conviction. His luxuriant imagination was chastened by his classical culture; while the pervading melancholy of his temperament gave to the scenes which he described an effect such as a thin veil of mist that comes and goes gives to a mountain landscape. The gorgeous Oriental world of the palm tree and the camel, seen through this sad poetic haze, has all the shadows of the deep northern forests and the tender gloom of the western hills. The rigid outlines of history fade in it to the indefiniteness of fable, and fact becomes as flexible as fancy. The circumstances of the times were also peculiarly favourable for the composition of such a poem. He was at the proper focal distance to appreciate the full interest of the Crusades, not too near to be absorbed in observation and engrossed in the immediate results; not too far off to lose the sympathy for the religious chivalry which inspired the Holy War. Earlier, in the intensely prosaic period that immediately succeeded, the romance of the Crusades was gone; later, Europe was girding itself for the sterner task of reformation. Before the time of Tasso, Peter the Hermit would have been deemed a foolish enthusiast; later, he would have been sent to a lunatic asylum. But just at the time when Tasso wrote there was much, especially in Italy, of that spirit which roused and quickened Europe in the eleventh century, much that appealed to the natural poetry in the human heart. The recent victory of the Christian forces at the famous battle of Lepanto checked the spread of Mohammedanism in Eastern Europe, and turned men's thoughts back into the old channel of the Crusades; so that Gregory XIII., who ascended the pontifical throne about the time that Tasso had resumed the writing of his _Gerusalemme_, had actually planned an expedition to the Holy Land, like that which his predecessor, Urban II., had sent out. And one of the principal events which the poet witnessed after his arrival at Ferrara, when the marriage rejoicings were over, was the departure of the reigning duke with a company of three hundred gentlemen of his court, arrayed in all the pomp and splendour of the famous Paladins of the first Crusade, to assist the Emperor of Austria in repelling an invasion of the Turks into Hungary. Many of the noble houses of Europe at this time were extremely anxious to trace their origin to the Crusades; and the vanity of the house of Este required that Tasso should make the great hero of his epic--the brave and chivalrous Rinaldo--an ancestor of their family. The scenes and associations, too, in the midst of which his daily life was spent, helped him to realise vividly the pageantry connected with the heroes of his epic. Thus happy in the choice of a subject, and favoured by the spirit of the time and the circumstances in which he was placed, Tasso gave himself up to the composition of his poem with a most absorbing devotion. Like Virgil, he first sketched out his work in prose, and on this groundwork elaborated the charms of colouring and harmony which distinguish the poem. So carefully did he study the military art of his day that all his battles and contests are scientifically described, and are in entire accordance with the most rigorous rules of war; and so thoroughly did he make himself acquainted with the topography of the Holy Land by the aid of books, that Chateaubriand, who read the _Gerusalemme_ under the walls of Jerusalem, was struck with the fidelity of the local descriptions. Tasso occasionally sought relief from his great task by the composition of sonnets and lyrics, which were published in the Rime of the Paduan Academy, and contributed to make him still more popular all over Italy. He also took part in those literary disputations in public which were characteristic of the age; and for three days in the Academy of Ferrara, in the presence of the court, defended against both sexes fifty "Amorous Conclusions" which he had drawn up--a form of controversy which seems to have been a relic of the courts or parliaments of love, very popular in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. One of the ladies of the court impugned with success his twenty-first conclusion "that man loves more intensely and with more stability than woman;" but whether this success was the result of the goodness of her cause, and not rather of her own ability or of Tasso's gallantry, may be left an open question. He afterwards published the whole series of the "Amorous Conclusions," and dedicated them to Genevra Malatesta, who now, as an old married woman, was greatly touched by receiving such a compliment from the son of her former lover. Tasso's father was now dying at Ostiglia, a small place on the Po, of which the Duke of Mantua had made him governor. With talents unimpaired, at the age of seventy-six, and while preparing a new poem upon the episode of Floridante in the _Amadigi_, he was seized with his last illness. His son, full of filial anxiety, hastened to see him, and found the house in wretched disorder; the servants having taken advantage of the helplessness of their master to neglect their duties and steal any valuable property they could lay their hands upon, so that Tasso had not only to take charge of the household affairs, but also to defray out of his own scanty resources the domestic expenditure. After a month's severe struggle his father died in his arms, to the regret of all Italy, and his remains were interred with great pomp by the Duke of Mantua in a marble cenotaph in the principal church of his capital, and were afterwards transferred by Tasso to the church of St. Paul in Ferrara, where they now lie. Thus passed away one of the most conspicuous and unfortunate persons of his age, of whom it has been said that he was "a politician, unlucky in the choice of his party; a client, unlucky in the choice of his patrons; and a poet, unlucky in the choice of his theme." The fatigue and sorrow connected with this bereavement brought on a severe illness, from which Torquato recovered with a sense of loneliness and depression which only deepened as the years went on. From this melancholy he enjoyed, however, a temporary respite by a visit to Paris. The house of Este by frequent intermarriages was connected with the French court, in consequence of which they had a right to use the golden lilies of France in their armorial bearings; and many of the ecclesiastics of the family held rich benefices in that country as well as in their own. Cardinal Lewis, the brother of the reigning duke, resolved to inspect the abbeys that belonged to him in France, and to strengthen the Roman Catholic cause, which had received a severe blow from the Reformation; and among the gentlemen of his train he took with him Tasso, in order to introduce him to his cousin Charles IX., who himself dabbled in poetry and had a fine literary taste. From the French monarch the poet obtained a gracious reception; and by the whole court he was warmly welcomed as one who had worthily commemorated the gallant deeds of the Paladins of France at the siege of Jerusalem. For nearly a year he resided in different parts of France, and notwithstanding the numerous distractions of such a novel mode of life, he added many admirable stanzas to his great epic, inspired by the very scenes among which his hero, Godfrey, and his knights had lived. He left just in time to escape the dreadful massacre of St. Bartholomew; but he may be said to have suffered indirectly on account of it. Though treated with distinction by the French court, his personal wants were left unsupplied, and his patron, Cardinal Lewis, did not make up for this meanness. Voltaire, therefore, had reason to indulge in a cynical sneer at the glowing accounts of his visit given by Italian writers; and Balzac's statement that Tasso left France in the same suit of clothes that he brought with him, after having worn it for a year, is not without foundation. This shabby treatment, however, was part of a wider State policy. The year of Tasso's residence in France was one of preparation for the massacre of St. Bartholomew; but in order to avert the suspicions of the intended victims, the Huguenots were treated with such extraordinary favour by the authorities that the Pope himself was incensed, and remonstrated with the King. Tasso, ignorant of the dreadful secret, spoke candidly and vehemently against the reformed doctrines and those who professed them. His patron therefore simulated deep indignation on account of this imprudence; and as the step fell in both with his personal avarice and his State policy, he broke off the cordial relations that formerly existed between them. On the return of Tasso to Ferrara he occupied himself for about two months with the composition of a pastoral drama called the _Aminta_. This species of poem, which originated with Theocritus, who represented the shepherds of Sicily nearly as they were, and was imitated by Virgil, who idealised the shepherd life, was revived at the court of Ferrara; and some years before a local poet wrote a pastoral describing a romantic Arcadia, which was acted at the palace, and seems to have inspired Tasso with the idea of writing one too. But all previous pastorals--the _Sacrifizio_ of Beccari, the _Aretusa_ of Lollio, the _Sfortunato_ of Argenti--were rough and incongruous medleys compared with the finished production of Tasso, which may be said to mark an era in the history of dramatic poetry. Although Tasso himself did not think much of it, and did not take any steps to publish it, the judgment of his contemporaries and of posterity has placed it next in point of merit to the _Gerusalemme_; and by Italians it is especially admired for its graceful elegance of diction. Leigh Hunt executed a very good translation of it, which he dedicated to Keats. Its choruses, which are so many "lyrical voices floating in the air," are very beautiful. It was designed for the theatre, and was acted with great splendour at the court of Ferrara, and a few years later at Mantua, when the well-known artist and architect Buontalenti painted the scenery. This fact, however, shows how primitive was the state of the theatre at this time; and how the spectators, little accustomed to histrionic representations, were content to witness dramas that had no plot or action, and to follow the progress of a beautiful poem rather than a dramatic development. The _Aminta_ long retained its popularity as an acted poem in Italy. It was often represented in open-air theatres, like the ancient Greek plays, in gardens or in woods, where Nature supplied the scenery, and the _scalinata_ or stage was only some rising piece of ground. Traces of one of these sylvan theatres may still be seen in the grounds of the Villa Madama, on the eastern slopes of Monte Mario near Rome; and one cannot help thinking that a poem so redolent of the open air, so full of Nature and still natural life, which Tasso himself called Favola Boschereccia, or a Sylvan Fable, was better adapted for such a stage than for the heated air and artificial surroundings of the Italian theatres. Such a pastoral was in entire keeping with the manners of the Italian peasants; and the scenes of Arcadia which it represented might be seen almost everywhere in the beautiful valleys and chestnut-covered hills of their native land. The exquisite loveliness of the climate, and the simplicity and indolence of the people, lent themselves naturally to such ideal dreams. And Tasso in his _Aminta_ only gave expression to the same happy thoughts which the same scenery and the same people had ages before inspired in the mind of Virgil when he wrote his Eclogues. After a few months' quiet sojourn with Lucrezia d'Este, now Duchess of Urbino, at that court, he was appointed secretary to the Duke of Ferrara, in room of his rival Pigna, who for this reason became his mortal enemy, and stirred up against him the persecution which embittered his whole subsequent life. But standing high, as he did, in the favour of the duke, he enjoyed for a while a season of calm repose, during which he finished the great epic poem, which was eagerly looked for throughout Italy. Anxious to make this cherished work of his genius as perfect as possible, he unfortunately was imprudent enough to submit portions of his work to all his learned friends for their opinion. Besides in this way getting the most contradictory advices, sacrificing his own independent judgment, and imposing an unworthy yoke upon his genius, the result was that the fragments of the poem passed from hand to hand, and so got into the possession of the printers, who, eager to profit by the public curiosity, pieced them together, and clandestinely printed them. Even in this fragmentary form, the cantos that appeared in various cities of Italy were received with unbounded applause. The author, as may be imagined, was intensely annoyed at this wrong that had been done to him, and wrote to the Pope, to the Republic of Genoa, and to all the Italian princes who had any authority in the case, to put a stop to the publication of a work which had been circulated without his sanction, but in vain. Even the first complete edition, which was issued in 1581, seems to have been without his consent; for the author complains that he was compelled, by the surreptitious publication of parts of his poem, to finish the work in haste, and he wished for more time to elaborate the plot and polish the style. In the later editions, no less than seven of which appeared the same year, Tasso seems to have been to some extent consulted; but it may be said that the great epic was given to the world in the form in which we now have it, without the author's imprimatur, and without the benefit of his finishing touches. But in spite of this disadvantage it took the whole country at once by storm. Two thousand copies were sold in two days. Throughout literary circles nothing else was spoken of. The exquisite stanzas, full of the true chivalric spirit, touched a responsive chord in every Italian bosom. Not only in the academies of the learned was the poem discussed, not only was it recited before princes amid the splendours of courts, but priests mused over it in the solitude of the cloister, and peasants chanted its sonorous strains as they worked in the fields. Quotations from it, we are told, might be heard from the gondolier on the Grand Canal of Venice, as he greeted his neighbour in passing by, and from the brigand on the far heights of the Abruzzi, as he lay in wait for the unsuspecting traveller; and "a portion of the Crusader's Litany was a favourite chant of the galley-slaves of Leghorn, as, chained together, they dragged their weary steps along the shore." There is no book which it is easier to find fault with than the _Gerusalemme_ when estimated by the satiated critical spirit of modern times, which insists upon brevity, and demands in each line a certain poetic excellence; especially if the poem is known only through the medium of a translation, which, however faithful, is but the turning of the wrong side of a piece of tapestry. We may object to the want of originality in the leading characters, to the occasional inflated style, and the conceits and plays upon words now and then introduced, to the apparently disproportionate influence of love upon the action of the poem, as Hallam has remarked, giving it an effeminate tone, and, above all, to the introduction of so much supernatural machinery in the form of magic and demons; for such supernaturalism is out of keeping altogether with our vaster knowledge of the universe, and our more solemn ideas of Him who pervades it. But it is not by an analysis of particular parts, or a criticism of special peculiarities, that the _Gerusalemme_ should be judged. It is by its effect as a whole, as a highly finished work of art. A single campaign of the first crusade--that of 1099--embraces the whole action of the poem; but the numerous episodes form each a perfect picture, that, like a flower floating on a stream, and illumined by a special gleam of sunlight, does not interrupt the continuous flow of the narrative. In a state of society characterised by much corruption, the sentiments are uniformly pure; and in an artificial age, when Nature was regarded as only the background of human action, the descriptions of the objects of Nature are wonderfully accurate; and the mind of the poet towards the flowers and trees, the woods and hills and streams, was in a childlike state, and had all the freshness and joyousness of childhood. The student is not to be envied who can read without emotion the enthusiastic description of the Crusader's first sight of Jerusalem, the touching pathos of Clorinda's death, and the sublime account of the ruins of Carthage. It would indeed refresh many a mind, surfeited by the vast mass of our modern literature, to go back to the green pastures and still waters of this grand old poem. Every visitor to Florence knows the venerable monastery of San Marco, with its hallowed relics of Savonarola, and its beautiful frescoes of Fra Angelico. In a large apartment of this monastery, which was formerly the library of the monks, are now held the meetings of the famous Della Cruscan Academy, instituted in 1582 for the purpose of purifying the national language. At that time every town of the least importance in Italy had its academy with some strange fantastic name, which was an important element in the intellectual life of the people, and exercised a critical control over the literature of the day. Up to the year 1814 the Della Cruscans assembled in the Palazzo Riccardi, the ancient palace of the Medici; but that stately building being required for Government purposes, the members have since been accommodated in San Marco, where they have sunk into obscurity, many of the inhabitants of Florence being altogether ignorant of the existence of such an institution in their city. I had considerable difficulty in finding out the locality. The furniture of the apartment is exceedingly curious, and is meant to indicate the object of the Academy, which--as its name literally translated, _of the_ bran or _chaff_, signifies--is to sift the fine flour of the language from the corrupt bran that has gathered around it. The chairs are made in imitation of a baker's basket, turned bottom upwards and painted red. On the wall behind each chair is suspended a shovel, with the name of its owner painted upon it, along with a group of flowers in allusion to the famous motto of the Academy, "Il più bel fior ne coglie," "It plucks the fairest flower." On the table, during my visit, there was a model of a flour-dressing machine and some meal sacks; while several printed sheets of a new edition of the Italian Dictionary, which the members were engaged in publishing at the time, with manuscript corrections, were scattered about. At present the Academy, besides doing this important work, occasionally holds public sessions; but it is an effete institution, that has little more than an archæological interest. It was very different, however, in the sixteenth century. Then, in point of numbers and reputation, it was the outstanding literary academy of Italy, and occupied the commanding position from which the all-powerful humanists of the previous age had been driven by the counter reformation. It is chiefly, however, by its attacks upon Tasso that it is now known to fame. No sooner was the _Gerusalemme_ published than comparisons began to be instituted between it and the _Orlando Furioso_ of Ariosto. This latter poem was then in the zenith of its reputation; it was regarded as the supreme standard of literary excellence, and it was slavishly imitated by all the inferior poets of Italy. It was inevitable, therefore, that the two works should be compared together. But as well might the _Æneid_ of Virgil be compared with the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid. The _Orlando Furioso_ is a romantic poem in the manner of Ovid, whereas the _Gerusalemme Liberata_ is an epic poem in the manner of Homer and Virgil. No Italian poet previous to Tasso had written an epic; and Tasso himself distinctly avowed that he had chosen that form of poetry deliberately; not only as being more congenial to his own mind, but also that he might avoid following in the steps of Ariosto, whose work he regarded as, in its own department, incapable of being excelled, or even equalled. In reply to the generous letter of Ariosto's nephew, who wrote him a letter of congratulation, he said, "The crown you would honour me with already adorns the head of the poet to whom you are related, from whence it would be as easy to snatch it as to wrest the club from the hand of Hercules. I would no more receive it from your hand than I would snatch it myself." But in spite of the altogether different nature of the two poems, and in spite of the distinct disavowals of Tasso, the critics persisted in accusing him of the presumption of entering the lists with Ariosto. And in this idea they were strengthened by the injudicious praises of Camillo Pellegrini, who in a dialogue entitled _Caraffa_ or _Epic Poetry_, likened the _Orlando Furioso_ to a palace, the plan of which is defective, but which contains superb rooms splendidly adorned, and is therefore very captivating to the simple and ignorant; while the _Gerusalemme Liberata_ resembles a smaller palace, whose architecture is perfect, and whose rooms are suitable and elegant without being gaudy, delighting the true masters of art. This squib was published in Florence, and at once aroused the hostility of the Della Cruscans. They were already prejudiced against Tasso on account of his connection with the court of Ferrara, between which and the court of Florence there was a bitter rivalry; and that offence was intensified by the unguarded way in which he spoke of the Florentines as being under the yoke of the Medici, whom he denounced as tyrants. The Academy, which at the time enjoyed the patronage of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, was therefore too glad to seize upon Pellegrini's squib as a pretext for a vehement attack upon Tasso's epic. Ariosto was dead, had passed among the immortals, and was therefore beyond all envy; but here was a _living_ poet, who belonged to a court which had cruelly treated the daughter of their ruler, Lucrezia de Medici, the first wife of Alfonso of Ferrara, and was a mere youth, who was guilty of the sacrilege of seeking to dethrone their favourite. Ariosto had greatly admired Florence, and celebrated its beauties in one of his finest poems; and was it to be borne that this young upstart, who had presumed to speak disparagingly of their city, should be preferred to him? It would be a useless waste of time to go over in detail the absurd criticisms by which they attempted to throw ridicule upon the _Gerusalemme Liberata_. They would have passed into utter oblivion had not Tasso himself, by condescending to reply to them, given to them an immortality of shame. Not contented with abusing his poem and himself, they also attacked his father, asserting that his _Amadigi_ was a most miserable work, and was pillaged wholesale from the writings of others, and thus wounded the poet in the most tender part. By this combination of critical cavils against him, Tasso was thrown back from the land of poetical vision into a dreary mental wilderness. The effect upon one of his most sensitive nature, predisposed by temperament and the vicissitudes of his life to profound melancholy, was most disastrous. We can trace to this cause the commencement of those mental disorders which, if they never reached actual insanity, bordered upon it, and darkened the rest of his life. His overwrought mind gave way to all kinds of morbid fancies. His body became enfeebled by the agitation of his mind; and the powerful medicines which he was prevailed upon to take to cure his troubles only increased them. Like Rousseau during his sad visit to England, he became suspicious of every one, and lost faith even in himself. Religious doubts commenced to agitate his mind. Distracted by this worst of all evils, he put himself into the hands of the Holy Fraternity at Bologna; and though the inquisitors had sense enough to see that what he considered atheistical doubts were only the illusions of hypochondria, and tried to reassure him as to their belief in the soundness of his faith, he was not satisfied with the absolution which they had given to him. The court of Ferrara was full of unscrupulous intriguers. Tasso's wonderful success could not be forgiven by some of the petty aspirants after literary fame who haunted the ducal precincts. Pigna, whose place as secretary he had usurped, stirred up the jealousy of the other courtiers into open persecution. Leonardo Salvinati, the leader of the Della Cruscan Academy, wishing to ingratiate himself with the court, joined in the hostility. Tasso's papers were stolen, and his letters intercepted and read, and a false construction was put upon everything he did. At first the duke refused to hear the various accusations that were brought against him, and continued to show him every mark of esteem. He had the privilege, in that ceremonious age a very high one, of dining daily with the prince at his own private table. He accompanied the princesses to their country retreats at Urbino, Belriguarda, or Consandoli, where in healthy country pursuits he forgot for a time his troubles. At Urbino he wrote the unfinished canzone to the river Metauro, one of the most touching of his compositions, in which he laments the wounds which fortune had inflicted upon him through the whole of his hapless life. But the tenure of princely favour at Italian courts, amid so many ambitious patrons and anxious suitors, was very precarious. It was uncommonly so at Ferrara. After a while a sudden change passed over the mind of the duke towards Tasso. Whether tired of the poet's incessant complaints, irritated at his incautious conduct--going the length on two occasions of drawing his sword, when provoked, upon members of the ducal household,--or whether his suspicions were aroused regarding the relations between him and his sister Leonora, is not known, but from this time he began to treat Tasso as if he were a madman. He was placed under the charge of the ducal physicians and servants, who reported to their employer every careless word. Removed from Belriguarda, he was ordered to be confined in the Ferrarese convent of San Francisco; and two friars were appointed to watch over him continually. Such a life was unendurable to the proud poet, who disliked the nauseous medicines of the convent as much as its restraint; and taking advantage of a _festa_, when his keepers were unusually negligent, he made his escape by a window. In the disguise of a shepherd he travelled on foot over the mountains of the Abruzzi, getting a morsel of bread and a lodging from the peasants by the way, to his sister's house at Sorrento, now the Vigna Sersale. There he remained during the whole summer, soothed by his sister's affectionate kindness. The monotony of the life, however, began to pall upon him, and he longed to get back to his old scenes of excitement. Undeterred by an evasive reply which the duke sent to an urgent letter of his, he set out for Ferrara; and on his arrival, meeting with a cold reception, he was obliged again to leave the place where he had once been so happy. For a year and a half he wandered over almost the whole of Northern Italy, visiting in turn Venice, Urbino, Mantua, Padua, Rome, and Turin. At the last place he arrived without a passport, and in such a miserable condition that the guards at the gates of the city would not have admitted him had he not been recognised by a Venetian printer who happened to be present. His startled looks, his nervous manner, and his perpetual restlessness, confirmed wherever he went the rumour of his madness; and, even if he were not mad, the object of Alfonso of Este's anger might be a dangerous associate. During all this time he was in the greatest poverty, being obliged to sell for bread the splendid ruby and collar of gold which the Duchess of Urbino had presented to him when he recited to her at her own court his pastoral poem of _Aminta_. From the Duke of Urbino and Prince Charles Emanuel of Savoy, however, he received generous treatment; but a fatal spell carried him back a third time to Ferrara. His arrival by an unfortunate coincidence happened to be on the very day that Margaret Gonzaga, daughter of the Duke of Mantua, was to come home as the third bride of Alfonso. The duke, preoccupied with the stately ceremonies connected with his nuptials, took no notice of him; and many of the courtiers from whom he expected an affectionate welcome, taking their cue from their master, turned their backs upon him. What a contrast to his first reception at that court fourteen years before, when he stood among the noble spectators of Alfonso's marriage with his first wife, the Archduchess of Austria, as one of the most honoured of the guests! He now gazed upon the splendours of this third marriage ceremony, by far the greatest poet of his age, but a homeless vagrant, a reputed maniac, treated with neglect or contumely on every side! No wonder that his cup of misery, which had previously been filled to the brim, overflowed with this last and crowning insult; and, scarce knowing what he did, he broke forth into the most vehement denunciations of the duke and his whole court, declaring that they were all "a gang of poltroons, ingrates, and scoundrels." These fiery reproaches, which his misery had wrung from the poor poet, were carried by his enemies to the ear of the Duke, and Tasso was immediately seized and imprisoned as a lunatic in the hospital of Santa Anna in Ferrara--in the same year and the same month, it may be mentioned, in which another of the great epic poets of the world, Camoens, the author of the _Lusiad_, finished as a pauper in an hospital his miserable career. While madness was alleged as the ostensible reason, the real motives of this step are involved in as deep a mystery as the cause of Ovid's banishment to Tomi, on the Euxine. Muratori, the author of the _Antiquities of the House of Este_, says that he was confined principally in order that he might be cured; while the Abbate Serassi, who wrote a life of the poet, attributes his imprisonment to his insolence to the duke and his court, and to his desire, repeatedly expressed and acted upon, to leave his patron's service. But both these writers considered the interests of the house of Este more sacred than those of truth. The cause generally accepted is Tasso's supposed attachment to Leonora, the sister of the duke. For a long time he is said to have cherished this passion in secret, concealing it even from the object of it, although evidences of it may be found in some marked form or playful allusion in nearly all his poetical writings; the episode of Olinda and Sophronia in the _Gerusalemme_, which he was urged in vain by his friends to withdraw on the ground of its irrelevancy, being intended to represent his own ill-fated love. On one occasion, however, in a confiding mood, he told the secret to one of the courtiers of Ferrara, whom he believed to be his devoted friend. But what was thus whispered in the closet was proclaimed upon the house-top; and a duel was the result, in which Tasso, as expert in the use of the sword as of the pen, put to flight the cowardly traitor and his two brothers, whom he had brought with him to attack the poet. This adventure, and the cause of it, reached the ears of the duke, whose resentment was kindled by the audacity of a poor poet and dependant of his court in falling in love with a lady of royal birth. On the strength of this suspicion his papers were seized, and all the sonnets, madrigals, and canzones that were supposed to give countenance to it, confiscated. The manuscript of the _Gerusalemme_ itself was retained, and a deaf ear was turned to the poet's entreaties for its restoration. Gibbon, in his _Antiquities of the House of Brunswick_, relates that one day at court, when the duke and his sister Leonora were present, Tasso was so struck with the beauty of the princess, that, in a transport of passion, he approached and kissed her before all the assembly; whereupon the duke, gravely turning to his courtiers, expressed his regret that so great a man should have been thus suddenly bereft of reason, and made the circumstance the pretext for shutting him up in the madhouse of St. Anne. An abortive attempt was made to prove the attachment, about fifty years ago, by a certain Count Alberti, who published a manuscript correspondence purporting to be between Tasso and Leonora, which he discovered in the library of the Falconieri Palace at Rome. The alleged discovery excited an immense amount of interest in this country and on the Continent; but ere the edition was completed the author was accused of having forged the manuscripts in question, and was condemned to the galleys. The story of this hapless love is so romantic in itself, and has been made the theme of so much pathetic poetry, that it would be almost a pity to destroy by proof any foundation upon which it may rest. And yet it is difficult to agree with Professor Rosini, who has ably treated the whole question in a work entitled _Amore de Tasso_, and has come to the conclusion, after carefully weighing all the evidence, that this was the rock upon which Tasso's life made shipwreck. On this theory several circumstances are altogether inexplicable. We may dismiss at once the famous kiss as certainly a myth. Besides the disparity of age, the ill-health, severe piety, and exalted rank of Leonora were formidable barriers in the way of Tasso's contracting a passion for her; and it is well known that the poet, who could not have forgotten so soon a devoted love, did not offer a single tribute of regret to her memory when she died a few years afterwards. It is also but too certain that Leonora left her supposed lover to languish in a dungeon without any reply to his pathetic complaints. The force of gravitation is a mutual thing; and just as the great sun himself cannot but bend a little in turn to the smallest orb that wheels around him, so the august Princess of Este could not but have regarded with womanly interest a devoted admirer, however humble. The poetical gallantry of the day will account for all Tasso's lyrical effusions in praise of Leonora. They were in most instances simply the tributes that were expected from the laureate of a court, especially a laureate who was accused, with some show of reason, by the courtiers of Ferrara, of an enthusiastic devotion to women, and of wasting his life with the day-dreams of love and chivalry. Regarding the question of his madness, which was, as I have said, the ostensible cause of his imprisonment, we are left in almost equal uncertainty. His morbid sensibility, irritated by the treatment which he received alike from his friends and foes, his repeated complaints and occasional violences and extravagances of conduct, may have seemed to a selfish prince to border closely upon mental derangement. But his whole conduct during his imprisonment, the nature of the numerous writings which he produced during that dark period, forbid us to suppose that his intellect ever crossed the line which separates reason from insanity. From out the gloom that surrounds the whole case two points stand out clear and indisputable, that no indiscretion of conduct or aberration of mind on the part of Tasso can possibly have merited the sufferings to which he was subjected, and that whatever may have been Alfonso's suspicions, his fiendish vengeance is one of history's darkest crimes, and covers the tyrant with everlasting disgrace. Three objects attract the steps of the modern pilgrim in desolate grass-grown Ferrara; the house, distinguished by a tablet, in which Ariosto was born; the ancient castle in the centre of the town, in whose courtyard Ugo and Parasina, whom Byron has immortalised, were beheaded; and next door to the chief hotel--the Europa--and beside the post-office, the huge hospital of St. Anne, in which Tasso was confined. This last object is by far the most interesting. The sight of it is not needed to sadden one more than the deserted streets themselves do. The dungeon, indicated by a long inscription over the door, is below the ground-floor of the hospital; it is twelve feet long, nine feet wide, and seven feet high, and the light penetrates through its grated windows from a small yard. By several authors, including Goethe, considerable doubts have been expressed regarding the authenticity of this cell; and certainly the present features of the place are not confirmatory of the tradition. This doubt, however, has not prevented relic-hunters--among whom Shelley may be included--from carrying off in small fragments the whole of the bedstead that once stood there, as well as cutting off large pieces from the door which still survives. Lamartine wrote in pencil some poetical lines upon the wall; and Byron, with his intense realism, caused himself to be locked for an hour in it, that he might be able to form some idea of the sufferings which he recorded in his _Lament of Tasso_. Less than sixty years ago the insane were treated with the utmost inhumanity as accursed of God; and the asylums in which they were shut up were dismal prisons, where the unfortunate inmates were left in a state of the utmost filth, or were chained and lashed at the caprice of savage keepers. The madhouse which Hogarth drew will aid us in forming a conception of an Italian asylum in the sixteenth century, which was much worse than anything known in our country. The other inmates of the hospital of St. Anne suffered much doubtless; but they were really mad, and were therefore unconscious of their misery. But that alleviation was wanting in the case of Tasso. He was sane and conscious, and his sanity intensified the horror of his situation, "enabling him to gauge with fearful accuracy the depths of the abyss into which he had fallen." One glimpse of him is given to us by Montaigne, who visited the cell, where it seems the unfortunate inmate was made a show of to all whom curiosity or pity attracted to the hospital. "I had even more indignation than compassion when I saw him at Ferrara in so piteous a state--a living shadow of himself." His jailer was Agostino Mosti, who, although he was himself a man of letters, and therefore should have sympathised with Tasso, on the contrary carried out to the utmost the cruel commands of his prince, and by his harsh language and unceasing vigilance immensely aggravated the sufferings of his victim. This inhuman persecution was caused by Mosti's jealously of Tasso as the rival of his beloved master Ariosto, to whom at his own cost he had erected a monument in the church of the Benedictines at Ferrara. For a whole year Tasso endured all the horrors of the sordid cell in which he was immured. After a while he was removed to a larger apartment, in which he could walk about; and permission was granted to him sometimes to leave the hospital for part of a day. But whatever alleviations he might thus have occasionally enjoyed, he was for seven long years a prisoner in the asylum, tantalised by continual expectations held out to him of approaching release. One person only--the nephew of his churlish jailer--acted the part of the Good Samaritan towards him, cheered his solitude, wrote for him, and transmitted the letters of complaint or entreaty which he addressed to his friends, and which would otherwise have been suppressed or forwarded to his relentless enemy. His sufferings increased as the slow weary months passed on, so that we need not wonder that the last years of his captivity should sometimes have been overclouded by visions of a tormenting demon, of flames and frightful noises, with an apparition of the Virgin and Child sent to comfort him. That he should have been able to preserve the general balance of his mind at all in circumstances sufficient to unseat the reason of most men, is a convincing proof of the stability of his intellect, and his unshaken trust in the God of the sorrowful. While we think of this protracted cruelty of the author of his imprisonment, it is some consolation to know that he met with what we may well call a merited retribution. Alfonso, as Sir John Hobhouse tells us, in spite of his haughty splendour, led an unhappy life, and was deserted in the hour of death by his courtiers, who suffered his body to be interred without even the ceremonies that were paid to the meanest of his subjects. His last wishes were neglected; his will was cancelled. He was succeeded by the descendant of a natural son of Alfonso I., the husband of Lucrezia Borgia; and he, falling under the displeasure of the Vatican, was excommunicated; and Ferrara, having been claimed by Pope Clement VIII. as a vacant fief, passed away for ever from the house of Este. "The link Thou formest in his fortunes bids us think Of thy poor malice, naming thee with scorn, Alfonso! How thy ducal pageants shrink From thee! if in another station born, Scarce fit to be the slave of him thou mad'st to mourn." At no period of his life was the mind of Tasso more active than during his imprisonment. In the absence of all nourishment from the bright world of Nature which he loved so passionately, his fancy could grow and keep itself leafy, like the cress-seed, which germinates and produces its anti-scorbutic foliage on a bit of flannel moistened with water, without any contact with soil or sunlight, in the long Arctic night of the ice-bound ship. With the ravings of madmen ringing in his ears, he composed some of the most beautiful of his writings, both in prose and verse. Among the manuscripts of the British Museum are preserved some of these writings, whose withered vellum pages we turn over with profound pity, as we think of the sad circumstances in which they were composed. The most valuable of these is the manuscript of the _Torrismondo_, in Tasso's own handwriting, and in the original parchment binding. This work was begun before his imprisonment, and it was not finished until the year after his liberation; but the greater part of it was composed in the wretchedness of his cell at Ferrara. The story upon which it is founded is a very harrowing one, a king of the Ostrogoths marrying his own sister, mistaking her for a foreign princess; but it is treated with very inadequate tragic power, and, like the _Aminta_, displays no real action. Its beauty chiefly consists in its choral odes on the vanity of all earthly things, which are exquisitely sad and touching. We hear in them the wild wail of the poet over his own misfortunes, and the vanishing of the dreams of glory which haloed his life. The chorus with which the tragedy winds up--"Ahi! lagrime; Ahi! dolore"--the words appropriately carved upon his tombstone at St. Onofrio--is unspeakably pathetic. It is his own dirge, the cry of a heart whose strings are about to break. It is as untranslatable as the sigh of the wind in a pine forest. If the words are changed, the spell is lost, and the way to the heart is missed. At last the solicitations of the most powerful princes of Italy on Tasso's behalf overcame the tenacity of Alfonso's will, and the victim was released; but not till he had become so weak and ill that, if the imprisonment had continued a little longer, death would inevitably have opened the door for him. When the order for his liberation had been obtained, his friends made known to him by slow degrees the glad tidings, lest a too sudden shock should prove fatal. He was now free to go wherever he pleased, and to behold the beauties of Nature, which had been the mirage of his prison dreams; but the elasticity of his spirits was gone for ever; the bow had been too long bent to recover its original spring, and the memory of his sufferings haunted him continually, and cast a dark shadow over everything. He could not altogether shake off the fear that he was still in Alfonso's power, and wherever he went he fancied that an officer was in pursuit of him to drag him back to the foul prison in St. Anne's. A modern Italian poet, Aleardo Aleardi, has graphically described the feelings of the gentle poet-knight, roaming, pale and dishevelled, as a mendicant from door to door. But the sufferings that had thus maimed him bodily and mentally had spiritually ennobled him; and there is not a more touching incident in all history than his entreaty to be allowed to kiss the hand of the cruel tyrant, as a last favour before leaving Ferrara for ever, in token of his gratitude for the benefits conferred upon him in happier days,--a favour which Alfonso, to his eternal disgrace, refused to grant. At first Tasso took up his abode at the court of the Duke of Mantua, whose son, Vincenzo Gonzaga, had been the principal instrument in his release, on the occasion of his marriage with the sister of Alfonso of Ferrara. This Vincenzo Gonzaga is shown by the light of history in two opposite characters: as the generous friend and patron of Tasso, and as the pupil of the Admirable Crichton, who in a midnight brawl slew his tutor in circumstances of the utmost baseness and treachery. For a while Tasso was treated with great kindness at Mantua, but, the father dying, the son no sooner ascended the ducal throne than, with the capriciousness peculiar to Italian princes, he turned his back upon the poet whom he had formerly befriended. The incident I have mentioned would have prepared us for this dastardly conduct; the evil side of his nature, which was kept in abeyance during his political pupilage, assuming the predominance on his accession to power. Tasso's proud spirit could not endure the neglect of his once ardent friend, and he set out again into the cold inhospitable world, imploring in his great poverty from a former patron the loan of ten scudi, to pay the expenses of his journey to Rome. On the way he turned aside to make a pilgrimage to Loretto, in order to satisfy that earnest religious feeling which had been the inspiration of his genius, but the bane of his life. The searching scrutinies and the solemn acquittals of the inquisitors of Bologna, Ferrara, and the great tribunal of Rome itself, had not satisfied his morbid mind. And he thought that he might get that peace of conscience which nothing else could give by a visit to the Casa Santa--the house of the Virgin Mary at Loretto. Worn out by the long journey, which he made in the old fashion on foot, he knelt in prayer before the magnificent shrine; and thus, admitted as it were within the domestic enclosure of the holy household, he felt that the Blessed Virgin had given him that calmness and repose of heart which he had not known since he had prayed as a boy beside his mother's knee. Strengthened by the successful accomplishment of his vow, he went on to Rome; but the stern Sixtus V., who was now upon the Papal throne, was too much occupied with the architectural reconstruction of Rome, and with the suppression of brigandage in the Papal States, to bestow any attention upon literature; and Tasso had lost whatever energy he once possessed to assert his claims to recognition among the multitude of sycophants at the Vatican. Sick at heart, he left the imperial city, and directed his steps to Naples, in the hope that on the spot he might succeed in recovering his father's possession and his mother's dowry. But here, too, the same ill-fortune that had hitherto dogged his steps attended him. The lawsuit which he instituted, though it promised well at first, proved a will-o'-the-wisp, which lured him into the bog of absolute penury. His sister was dead; his mother's relatives, formerly hostile, were now, because of the lawsuit, doubly embittered against him. In his distress he sought refuge in the Benedictine monastery of Monte Oliveto, which is now occupied by the offices of the Municipality of Naples, and the monastery garden converted into a market-place. Here, in one of the finest situations in Naples, commanding one of the loveliest views in the world, and in the congenial society of the monks, his shattered health was recruited, and his mind tranquillised by the beauties of Nature and the exercises of religion. He repaid the kindness of his hosts by writing a poem on the origin of their Order, and by addressing to them one of his best sonnets. Among the visitors who sought him out in this retreat was John Battista Manso, Marquis of Villa, who afterwards became his biographer. This accomplished nobleman, "whose name the friendship and Latin hexameters of Milton have rendered at once familiar and musical to English ears," was by far the kindest and most consistent patron that Tasso ever met with. He loaded him with presents, and showed him the most delicate and thoughtful attentions during Tasso's visit at his beautiful villa on the seashore near Naples. He took him with him to his tower of Bisaccio, where he remained all October and November, spending his days, with great advantage to his health, in hunting, and his nights in music and dancing, taking special delight in the marvellous performances of the improvisatori. Milton's acquaintance with Manso may be regarded as one of the most fortunate incidents of his foreign travels, inasmuch as his conversations about Tasso are supposed to have suggested to him the design of writing an epic work like the _Gerusalemme_; and indeed Milton is supposed to have borrowed some of his ideas for _Paradise Lost_ from the _Sette Giornate, or Seven Days of Creation_, a fragmentary poem in blank verse, which Tasso began under the roof of his friend at Naples. This work is now very little known, but it is worthy of being read, if only for the lofty dignity of its style, and the beauty of some of its descriptive parts, particularly the creation of light on the first day, and of the firmament on the second, and the episode of the Phoenix on the fifth. Its association with Milton's far grander work, as literary twins laid for a while in the same cradle, will always invest it with deep interest to the student. Tasso occupied himself at the same time with an altered version of his great poem, which he called the _Gerusalemme Conquistata_. He was induced to undertake this work in order to triumph over his truculent critics, the Della Cruscans, who had condemned the former version. In the Imperial Library at Vienna is preserved the manuscript of this version, with its numerous alterations and erasures, showing how laborious the task of remodelling must have been. He suppressed the touching incident of Olinda and Sophronia. He changed the name of Rinaldo to Riccardo; and ruthlessly swept his pen through all the flatteries, direct and indirect, which he had originally bestowed upon the house of Este. There is hardly a single stanza that is not changed. But in the process of revision he deprived his poem of all life. Religious mysticism has been substituted for the refined chivalry of the Crusades, and poetry and romance have been sacrificed for classical regularity and religious orthodoxy. To any one familiar with the original, the _Conquistata_ must be regarded as the most melancholy book in any language; a sad monument of a noble genius robbed of its power and depressed by calamity. And it is all the more melancholy that the author himself was utterly unconscious of its defects, and got so enamoured of what he considered his improvements, that he wrote and published a discourse called the _Giudizio_--a cold pedantic work, in which he explained the principles upon which he made his alterations. In vain, however, did the author thus commit literary suicide. His immortal poem had passed beyond the reach of revision, and stamped itself too deeply upon the minds and hearts of his countrymen to be effaced by any after version. And now the _Conquistata_ has sunk into well-merited oblivion, while the _Liberata_--"his youthful poetical sin," as he himself called it--is everywhere admired as one of the great classics of the world. For nine years Tasso lived after his imprisonment. But his free life was only a little less burdensome than his prison one. With impaired health and extinguished hope, and only the wreck of his great intellect, he wandered a homeless pilgrim from court to court, drawn like a moth to the brilliant flame that had wrought his ruin. Well would it have been for him had he settled down to some quiet independent pursuit that would have taken him away from the atmosphere of court life altogether, such as the Professorship of Poetry and Ethics which had been offered to him by the Genoese Academy. But the habits of a whole lifetime could not now be given up. His education and training had fitted him for no other mode of life. Without the patronage of the great, literature in those days had not a chance of success; and a thousand incidents in the life of Tasso serve to show that "genius was considered the property, not of the individual, but of his patron"; and with petty meanness was the reward allotted for this appropriation dealt out. His experience of the favour of princes at this period was only a repetition of his own earlier one, and that of his father. His patrons, one after another, got tired of him; and yet he persisted in soliciting their favour. From the door of his former friend, Cardinal Gonzaga, at Rome, he was turned away; and as a fever-stricken mendicant he sought refuge in the Bergamese Hospital of that city, founded by a relative of his own, who little thought that it would one day afford an asylum to the most illustrious of his name. But fate had now discharged its last evil arrow, and began to relent during the two remaining years of his life. The sun that was all day obscured, as it struggled with dark clouds, emerged at last, and made the western sky ablaze with splendour. All over the country nothing was to be heard but the echoes of Tasso's praises. From the fountains of the Adige to the Straits of Messina, in the valleys of Savoy, and in the capitals of Spain and France, his immortal epic was read or recited by the highest and the lowest. Fortunes were made by its sale. The famous bandit Sciarra, who with his troop of robbers had terrified the whole of Southern Italy, hearing that Tasso was at Gaeta, on his journey from Naples to Rome, sent to compliment him, and offer him, not only a free passage, but protection by the way. At Florence, whither he went at the invitation of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the whole literary society of the place, even including many of the Della Cruscans, showered honours upon him. While at Rome Pope Clement VIII. gave him the most flattering reception, assigned to him an apartment in the Vatican, and an annual income of two hundred scudi. From the representatives of his mother's friends at Naples he was also offered an annuity of two hundred ducats, and a considerable sum in hand, on condition of stopping the lawsuit. Thus furnished with what he had vainly looked for all his life, the means of a comfortable subsistence, his closing days promised a happiness to which he had hitherto been a stranger. But the gifts of fortune were brought to him with sad auguries, like the soft sunny smiles of September skies, which gild the fading leaves with a mockery of May. Tasso came to Rome in November. But the state of his health was so deplorable that he could not remain with safety in the room assigned to him in the Vatican. It was thought, therefore, that the elevated position and salubrious air, as well as the quiet life of the monastery of St. Onofrio, not far off on the same side of the Tiber, would be more suitable for his restoration. Accordingly, Cardinal Cynthio Aldobrandini, nephew of Clement VIII., who had befriended him on many occasions, brought him to St. Onofrio in his own carriage. And as his weary steps crossed the threshold, he said to the monks, who received him with pitying looks, "I come to die among you." Whenever he was able to go out, he spent the last days of his life in the garden of the monastery. There he sat under the shadow of the aged oak that has since become historical; and as he watched the sunset of his life, he would gaze upon the mighty ruins and the glorious view stretching before him with that inspired vision which creates half the beauty it beholds, and with that enhanced appreciation caused by the prospect of the coming darkness which would hide it for ever from his sight. We love to think of the poet in this quiet resting-place, where the noises of the great world reached him only in subdued murmurs. Heaven was above him, and the world beneath. The memory of his wrongs and his ambitions alike vanished in the shadow cast before by his approaching death. Alfonso and Ferrara faded away upon the horizon of eternity; even the fame of his _Gerusalemme_, the great object for which he had lived, had become utterly indifferent to him. In the monastery of St. Onofrio, a bent, sorrow-stricken man, old before his time, joining with the monks in the duties of religion, Tasso appeals more powerfully to our feelings than when in the full flush of youth and happiness he shone the brightest star in the royal court of Alfonso. Awakening to the sense of the great loss that Italy was about to sustain in his death, his friends and admirers proposed that the Pope should confer upon him at the Capitol the laurel wreath that had crowned the brow of Petrarch. But the weather during the winter proved singularly unpropitious for such a ceremony. Rain fell almost every day, and constant sirocco winds depressed the spirits of the people and prevented all outdoor enjoyments. And thus the season wore on till April dawned with the promise of brighter skies, and the day was fixed, and all the _élite_ of Rome and of the chief cities of Italy were invited to attend the coronation. Extensive preparations were made; the whole city was in a flutter of excitement, and the people looked forward to a holiday such as Rome had not seen since the days of the Cæsars. But by this time the poet was dying, fever-wasted, in his lonely cell. He could see from his window, as he lay propped up with pillows on his narrow couch, across the river and its broad valley crowded with houses, the slender campanile of Michael Angelo ascending from the Capitoline Hill, marking the spot where at the moment the people were busy preparing for the magnificent ceremony of the morrow. But not for him was the triumph; it came too late. "Tomorrow," he said, "I shall be beyond the reach of all earthly honour." He received the last rites of the Church from the hands of the diocesan, and passed quietly away with the unfinished sentence upon his lips, "Into thy hands, O Lord," while the concluding strains of the vesper hymn were chanted by the monks. And they who came on the morrow, to summon him to his coronation, found him in the sleep of death. The laurel wreath that was meant for his brow was laid upon his coffin, as it was carried on the very day of his intended coronation, with great pomp, cardinals and princes bearing up the pall, and deposited in the neighbouring church of the monastery. Ever since, the anniversary of his death has been religiously kept by the monks of St. Onofrio. They throw open on that day, the 25th of April, the monastery and garden to the general public; ladies are freely admitted, and a festival is observed, during which portions of the poet's writings are read, his relics exhibited, and his tomb wreathed with flowers. Tasso died, like Virgil his model, in his fifty-first year. Short and chequered and full of trouble as was his life, it is amazing what an immense amount of literary work he accomplished. Since the publication of his _Rinaldo_, in his seventeenth year, he never ceased writing, even in the most unfavourable circumstances. Of his prose and poetical works no less than twenty-five volumes remain to us. These works are all rich in biographical materials. They show an ideal tenderness of feeling, an intense love for everything beautiful, and a deep piety, not only of sentiment but of duty. They are specially interesting to us as links connecting the ancient world with the modern. We can trace the influence of Tasso's genius in very varied quarters. He not only gave a new impulse to the literature of his own country, but even inspired the artistic productions of the day. The most beautiful passages of Spenser's _Faerie Queen_ were suggested by his pastoral poetry; while his chivalrous epic was to Milton at once the incentive and the model of his own immortal work. It is probable that the _New Heloïse_ of Rousseau, and the tragedy of _Zaire_ by Voltaire, would not have been written had not Tasso invested the subject of romantic love and of the Crusades with such a deep interest to the authors. We of this age may miss in Tasso's poetical works the dramatic force to which we are accustomed in such productions; but we acknowledge the spell which the lyrical element that pervades them all, and towards which Tasso's genius was most strongly bent, casts over us. His own personal history strikingly illustrates the vanity of a life spent in dependence upon princes. But fortunately the lesson is no longer needed; for a wide and intelligent constituency of readers all over the world now afford the patronage to literature which was formerly the special privilege of single individuals favoured by rank or fortune. Both to authors and readers this emancipation has been productive of the happiest results. CHAPTER X THE MARBLES OF ANCIENT ROME Marble-hunting is one of the regular pursuits of the visitor in Rome. The ground in almost every part of the ancient city is strewn with fragments of historical monuments. The largest and most valuable pieces have long since been removed by builders and sculptors, to fashion some Papal palace, or to adorn some pretentious church; and at the present day, in almost every stone-mason's shed, blocks of marble belonging to ancient edifices may be seen in process of conversion into articles of modern furniture. Many bits of the rarest kinds, however, still remain, which not unfrequently bear traces of the richest carving. For ages such spots have been quarries to visitors from all parts of the world, who wished to bring home some memorial of their sojourn in the Eternal City, and the supply is still far from being exhausted. That so much material should have survived the wholesale conversion, during the middle ages, of columns and statues into lime, in kilns erected where the temples and palaces were most crowded, and the vast exportation of objects of antiquity to other countries, is a striking proof of the prodigious quantity of marble that must have existed in ancient Rome. Now, however, such relics are more carefully preserved; and as the places where they are found in greatest quantity have been taken under the charge of the Government, and soldiers are constantly on the watch, it is not so easy as it used to be to abstract a fragment that has taken one's fancy. Marble fragments are so eagerly sought after because they make most suitable and convenient souvenirs. Their own beauty and rarity, apart from all historical associations, are a great attraction. Many of them will form, when cut and polished by the lapidary, pretty tazzas and paper-weights, and even the smallest bits can be put together in a mosaic pattern, so as to make extremely beautiful table-tops. Whole rows of lapidary shops in the English quarter of the city, especially in the Via Babuino and the Via Sistina, are maintained by this curious traffic. In the Forum and Colosseum great quantities of marble and alabaster used to be found; but these localities have been so much ransacked that they now afford very scanty gleanings. The Baths of Caracalla and Titus, the recent excavations on the Esquiline, the ruins of the palaces of the Cæsars on the Palatine, and the open space marked out for new squares and streets between Sta. Maria Maggiore and St. John Lateran, are the best situations within the walls of the city. Outside the supply is almost as large as ever. All over the vast Campagna the foot of the wayfarer strikes against some precious or beautiful relic; and along the Appian and Latin Ways broken pieces of different kinds may be found in such profusion that such spots look like the rubbish-heap around a marble quarry. In the vast grounds over which the imposing ruins of Hadrian's Villa spread, heaps of fragments of marble flooring or casing may be seen in almost every neglected corner, from which it is easy to obtain some lovely bit of giallo antico or pavonazzetto or green porphyry. Beside the ancient quay of Rome, leading to the ruins of the Emporium or Custom-house--at a spot called in modern phrase "La Marmorata," because marble vessels still discharge their cargoes there--immense quantities of marble, alabaster, and porphyry are piled up, that were unshipped untold ages ago for Roman use; and a vineyard a short way off, on the slope of the Aventine, is much frequented by collectors on account of the richness of its finds. But it is not as a mere amusement, or as a means of collecting pretty souvenirs of travel, that such marble-hunting expeditions are to be recommended. They may have a much higher value. The different kinds of marble collected are peculiarly interesting owing to their association with the different epochs of the history of the city and empire; and as the specimens which the geologist obtains throw light upon the formation of the rocky strata of the earth, so the small marble fragments which the student finds in Rome afford a clue to the various stages of its existence. Indeed, a competent knowledge of the marbles of Rome is indispensable to a clear understanding of the age of its ancient monuments. An immense amount of controversy has raged round some remarkable building or statue, which would have been prevented had the nature and origin of the marble of which it was composed been first investigated. The famous statue of the Apollo Belvedere in the Vatican, for instance, was long regarded as an original production either of Pheidias himself or of his school. But the discovery that the marble of which it is wrought is Lunar or Carrara marble--which was unknown until the time of Julius Cæsar, who first introduced it into Rome--is of itself a proof that it is not a genuine work of Greek art of the best period, but a monument of the decadence, or a copy of an original, wrought in imperial times for the adornment of a summer palace in Italy. In numberless other cases, ancient monuments have been identified by the mineral character and history of their marble materials. The first thing, therefore, which the student during his visit to the city ought to do, is to make himself acquainted with the different varieties of marble that have been found within the walls or in the neighbourhood. For this purpose the Museum in the Collegio della Sapienza or University of Rome will afford invaluable aid. In this institution, conveniently arranged in glass cases, are no less than 607 specimens of various marbles and alabasters used by the ancient Romans in the building or decoration of their houses and public monuments. The collection was made by the late Signor Sanginetti, Professor of Mineralogy in the University, and is quite unique. A great deal of instruction may also be obtained from the mineralogical study of the thousands of marble columns still standing in the older churches and palaces of Rome, most of which have been derived from the ruins of ancient temples and basilicas. Several excellent books may also be consulted with advantage--especially Faustino Corsi's Treatise on the Stones of Antiquity, _Trattato delle Pietre Antiche_, which is the most approved Italian work on the subject, and from which much of the information contained in the following pages has been obtained. No marble quarries exist in the vicinity of Rome. The Sabine Hills are indeed of limestone formation, and large masses of travertine, a fresh-water limestone of igneous origin, occur here and there, but no mineral approaching marble in texture and appearance is found within a very considerable radius of the city. The nearest source of supply is at Cesi, near the celebrated "Falls of Terni," about forty-five miles from Rome, where "Cotanella," the red marble of the Roman States, is found, of which the great columns supporting the arches of the side aisles of St. Peter's are formed. The hills and rocks of Rome are all volcanic, and only the different varieties of eruptive rock were first employed for building purposes. The oldest monuments of the kingly period, such as the Cloaca Maxima, the Mamertine Prison, the Walls of Servius Tullius, and some of the earliest substructures on the Palatine Hill, were all built of the brown volcanic tufa found on or near their sites. This is the material of which the famous Tarpeian Rock and the lower part of most of the Seven Hills is composed. It is the oldest of the igneous deposits of Rome, and seems to have been formed by a conglomerate of ashes and fragments of pumice ejected from submarine volcanoes whose craters have been completely obliterated. It reposes upon marine tertiary deposits, and over it, near the Church of Sta. Agnese, where it is still quarried for building stone, rests a quaternary deposit, in which numerous remains of primeval elephants have been found. Though the Consular or Republican period was a very stormy one, and the reconstruction of the city, after its partial demolition by the Gauls, seems to have been too hurried to allow much attention to be paid to the materials and designs of architecture, yet there are numerous indications in the existing remains of that period that there was a decided advance in these respects upon the ruder art of a former age. Finer and more ornamental varieties of volcanic stone were introduced from a distance, such as the _peperino_ or grayish-green tufa of the Alban Hills, the _Lapis Albanus_ of the ancients, with its glittering particles of mica interspersed throughout its mass; the hard basaltine lava from a quarry near the tomb of Cæcilia Metella, on the Appian Way, and from the bed of the Lago della Colonna, once the celebrated Lake Regillus, to which the name of _Lapis Tusculanus_ or _Selce_ was given; and the _Lapis Gabinus_ or _Sperone_, a compact volcanic concrete found in the neighbourhood of the ancient Gabii on the road to Tivoli, extensively used in the construction of the earliest monuments, particularly the Tabularium and the huge Arco de Pantani. Brick was also largely employed in the construction of the foundations and inner walls of public buildings, being arranged at a later date into ornamental patterns, to which the names of _opus incertum_ and _opus reticulatum_ were given; and in the manufacture of this substance, which they were probably at first taught by the Etruscan artificers of Veii in the neighbourhood, the Romans reached a high degree of perfection. The earliest tombs along the Appian Way were constructed of these different varieties of building materials. The sarcophagi of the Scipios were hollowed out of simple blocks of peperino stone; and the sculptor's art and the material in which he wrought were worthy of the severe simplicity of the heroic age. But towards the close of the Republican period, Rome began to be distinguished for the magnificence of its public monuments. As its area of conquest spread, so did its luxury increase. New divinities were introduced from foreign countries, and domesticated in the Capitol; and these required more sumptuous fanes than those with which the native deities had been contented. The brown tufa of the Tarpeian Rock sufficed for the rude sanctuary of Vesta, the primitive hearth-stone of ancient Rome; but in the reconstruction of the sumptuous temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, which marked the grandest period of Roman history, the most precious stones of Asia and Africa were employed. Statues were imported wholesale from Greece to adorn temples and theatres, constructed after the models of Greek architecture, with pillars, friezes, and floors of precious Pentelic and Sicilian marble. During the last century of the Republic marble became a common building-stone. The tomb of Cæcilia Metella, and the temples of Ceres, Juno Sospita, and Castor and Pollux, indicate the introduction of this precious and beautiful material. But it was reserved for the period of the Empire to complete the architectural glories of the city. Travertine, usually called _Lapis Tiburtinus_, a straw-coloured volcanic limestone excavated in the plain below Tivoli, which has the useful property of hardening on exposure, was now used as the principal building-stone instead of the former lavas and tufas; and the Colosseum, entirely constructed of travertine, which was treated in the middle ages as a quarry, out of which were built many of the palaces and churches of Rome, attests to this day the beauty and durability of this material. Quarries of crystalline marbles, admirably adapted for the purposes of the sculptor and architect, were opened in the range of the Apennines overlooking the beautiful Bay of Spezia, in the vicinity of Carrara, Massa, and Seravezza, and largely worked in the time of Augustus. This emperor could boast that he had found Rome of brick, and left it of marble. The marbles of each new territory annexed to the Empire were brought at enormous expense into the Imperial City. A quay, to which reference has already been made, was constructed at the broadest part of the Tiber, where the vessels that transported marbles from Africa, and from the most distant parts of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, landed their cargoes. Here numerous blocks of marble were lately found, one of which was identified as that sent to Nero from a quarry in Carinthia; and another, a column of even more colossal dimensions, weighing about thirty-four tons of valuable African marble, was meant to serve as a memorial pillar of the Council of 1870 on the Janiculum, but the intention was never carried out. So abundant was marble during the first two centuries of the Empire, that it was nothing accounted of. Every temple, palace, and public edifice was built of it either in whole or in part. The tombs that lined the Appian Way on either side for fifteen miles had their brick cores covered with marble slabs; and their magnificence must have impressed every visitor who entered the Imperial City through this avenue of architectural glory shrouding the decays of death. It is obvious, then, that by studying the history of the conquests of Rome, the student can ascertain at what period a particular kind of marble was introduced from its native country, and the proximate date of the building in which this marble had been used. It was a fortunate circumstance for the preservation of the precious marbles of Rome that Christianity laid its cuckoo egg in the nest of the Pagan city. When the capture of Rome by Alaric gave the final blow to heathen worship, by the overthrow of the ruling classes, who alone cherished the proud memories of the ancient faith, the greater number of the temples were still standing without any one to look after the edifices or maintain the religious services. The Christians were therefore free to take possession of the deserted shrines; and they speedily transferred to their own churches the columns and marble decorations that adorned the temples of the gods. Many of the precious stones that once beautified the palaces of emperors and senators were employed to form the altars and the mosaic flooring of the memorial chapels. Almost all the early churches were constructed on or near the sites of the temples, so that the materials of the one might be transported to the other with the least difficulty and expense, just as the settler in the back-woods of America erects his log-house in the immediate vicinity of the trees that are most suitable for his purpose. And the striking contrast between the plain, mean exteriors of the oldest Roman churches--rough, time-stained, and unfinished since their erection--and their gorgeous interiors, with their forests of columns separating the aisles, and the series of richly-sculptured and brilliantly-frescoed chapels, all blazing with gold and marble,--a contrast that reminds us of the surprising difference between the outside of a common clumsy geode lying in the mud, and the sparkling crystals in the drusic cavity at the heart of it,--would lead us to infer that the outer walls were raised in haste to secure the valuable materials on the spot, before they could be otherwise appropriated. Marangoni, a learned Roman archæologist, mentions thirty-five churches in Rome as all raised upon the sites and out of the remains of ancient temples; and no less than six hundred and eighty-eight large columns of marble, granite, porphyry, and other valuable stones, as among the relics of heathen fanes transferred to sacred ground within the city, when the bronze Jupiter was metamorphosed into the Jew Peter, "And Pan to Moses lent his pagan horn." Many of these relics can be traced and identified, for it may be generally presumed, for the reason already given, that none are very far removed from their original situation. I know no more interesting pursuit in Rome than such an investigation; the objects, when their history is ascertained, acquiring a charm from association, over and above their own intrinsic beauty and interest. Most of the materials with which the three hundred and sixty-five churches of modern Rome have been constructed have been derived from the ruins of the ancient city. With the exception of a few comparatively insignificant portions brought from the modern quarries of Carrara, Siena, and Sicily, to complete subordinate details and to give a finish to the work, no marbles, it is said, have been used in ecclesiastical and palatial architecture for the last fifteen hundred years, save those found conveniently on the spot; and hardly a brick has been made or a stone of travertine or tufa hewn out for domestic buildings within the same period. The construction of St. Peter's itself involved more destruction of classical monuments than all the appropriations of previous and subsequent Vandals put together. Much has been lost on account of this extraordinary transmutation and reconsecration, whose loss we can never cease to deplore; but we must not forget at the same time that much has been conserved which would otherwise have wasted away under the slow ravages of time, been consigned to the lime-kiln, or disappeared in obscure and ignoble use. Enough remains to overwhelm us with astonishment, and furnish materials for the study of years. The white marbles of Greece were the first introduced into Rome. Paros supplied the earliest specimens, and long held a monopoly of the trade. _Marmor Parium_, or Marmo Greco duro, as it is called by the modern Italians, is the very flower and consummation of the rocks. This material seems to have been created specially for the use of the sculptor--as that in which he can express most clearly and beautifully his ideal conceptions; and the surpassing excellence of ancient Greek sculpture was largely due to the suitability for high art of the marble of the country, which was so stainlessly pure, delicate, and uniform--as Ruskin remarks, so soft as to allow the sculptor to work it without force, and trace on it his finest lines, and yet so hard as never to betray the touch or moulder away beneath the chisel. Parian marble is by far the most beautiful of the Greek marbles. It is a nearly pure carbonate of lime of creamy whiteness, with a finely crystalline granular structure, and is nearly translucent. It may be readily distinguished from all other white marbles by the peculiarly sparkling light that shines from its crystalline facets on being freshly broken; and this peculiarity enables the expert at once to determine the origin of any fragment of Greek or Roman statuary. The ancient quarries in the island of Paros are still wrought, though very little marble from this source is exported to other countries. In the entablature around the tomb of Cæcilia Metella, which is composed of Parian marble, we see the first example in Rome of the use of ornaments in marble upon the outside of a building; an example that was afterwards extensively followed, for all the tombs of a later age on the Appian Way had their exteriors sheathed with a veneer of marble. The beautiful sarcophagus which contained the remains of the noble lady for whom this gigantic pile was erected, and which is now in the Farnese Palace, was also formed of this material. Most beautiful examples of Parian marble may be seen in the three elegant columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux in the Roman Forum, belonging to the best period of Græco-Roman architecture; and in the nineteen fluted Corinthian pillars which form the little circular temple of Hercules on the banks of the Tiber, long supposed to be the Temple of Vesta. By far the largest mass of this marble in Rome is the colossal fragment in front of the Colosseum that belonged to the Temple of Venus and Rome; and it helps to give one an idea of the extraordinary grandeur and magnificence of this building in its prime, whose fluted columns, six feet in diameter, and the sheathing of whose outside walls of great thickness, were all made of Parian marble. More extensively employed in Greek and Roman statuary and architecture was the _Marmor Pentelicum_, or Marmo Greco fino of the modern Italians. The quarries which yielded inexhaustible materials for the public buildings and statues of Greece, and for the great monuments of Rome, were situated on the slopes of Mount Pentelicus, near Athens; and after having been closed for ages, have recently been reopened for the restoration of some of the buildings in the Greek capital. The marble is dazzlingly white and fine-grained, but it sometimes contains little pieces of quartz or flint, which give some trouble to the workmen. The Parthenon, crowning like a perfect capital of human art the summit of Nature's rough workmanship in the Acropolis, was built of this marble; and the immortal sculpture of Pheidias on the metopes, the frieze of the cella, and the tympana of the pediments of the temple, known as the Elgin Marbles, were carved out of a material worthy of their incomparable beauty. Innumerable specimens at one time existed in Rome. The arch of Septimius Severus and the Arch of Titus are built of it, although the rusty and weather-beaten hue of these venerable monuments hides the nature of the material. Domitian, who restored the celebrated Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, procured columns of Pentelic marble for the purpose from Athens; two of these are now in the nave of the church of Ara Coeli, built upon the site of the temple; and portions of the others, and of the marble decorations, were presented by the magistrates to the Franciscan friars of the neighbouring convent, and by them were wrought in 1348 into the conspicuous staircase leading to the façade of the church, which pious Catholics used to mount on their knees in the manner of the ancient worshippers of Jupiter. Among the statues wrought of this marble may be mentioned the famous group of the Laocoon found in the Baths of Titus; the beautiful Venus de Medici, discovered in the Villa of Hadrian, near Tivoli, and now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence; and the well-known "Farnese Bull," sculptured out of a single block of huge dimensions, unearthed out of the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, and now in the Museum of Naples. Massimo d'Azeglio, in his _Recollections_, gives an interesting instance of the value set upon this marble by modern Roman sculptors. Pacetti having purchased an ancient Greek statue of the best period in Pentelic marble, greatly mutilated, and wishing to repair it, could find nothing among the best products of the Carrara quarries to match the marble in purity and fineness of texture, and was therefore obliged to destroy another Greek statue of inferior merit in order to get materials for the restoration. From this combination he succeeded in producing the sleeping figure known as the Barberini Faun, whose forcible abduction by the Pontifical Government on the eve of its being sold to a German prince, so preyed upon the mind of the cruelly-wronged sculptor, that he took to his bed and died. Very like Pentelic marble, but easily distinguishable, is the Marmor Porinum, the Marmo Grechetto duro of the Italians. It is intermediate in the quality of its grain between Parian and Pentelic marble, being finer than the former and not so fine as the latter. The column in front of the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, removed by Paul V. in 1614 from the Basilica of Constantine, is composed of this species; as well as the celebrated Torso Belvedere of the Vatican, found near the site of the Theatre of Pompey, to which Michael Angelo traced much of his inspiration, and which, as we learn from a Greek Inscription at the base, was the work of the Rhodian sculptor Apollonios, who carved the group of the "Farnese Bull." Not unlike this Porine marble was the _Marmor Hymettium_ of the ancients; but it was never a great favourite in Rome on account of its large grain and dingy white colour, slightly tinged with green and marked by long parallel dark gray veins of unequal breadth. The metamorphic action was not sufficiently energetic to destroy the last traces of organic matter and the original stratification of the rock; and the crystallising force was not sufficiently exercised to allow of the entire rearrangement of the whole of the particles so as to expel the included impurities. This marble was not therefore fitted for sculpture; but it could be used for certain architectural purposes and for ornamentation. It used to be quarried extensively on Hymettus, the well-known mountain of Attica, celebrated for the quantity and excellence of its honey. The rock on which the aromatic flowers grew in such profusion for the bees, did not, however, partake of the same delightful quality. In working it a peculiar fetid odour of sulphuretted hydrogen, somewhat like that of a stale onion, was emitted, which gave rise to its modern Italian name--Marmo Cipolla. This repulsive quality, however, disappeared quickly on exposure. The finest specimens of this marble in Rome are the forty-six columns in the Church of St. Paul's, outside the gate, which belonged originally to the Basilica Æmilia in the Forum, founded about forty-five years before Christ, and were transferred to the new building when the venerable old church, in which they had stood for fifteen hundred years, was destroyed by fire. Nothing too can be finer than the two rows of Ionic columns of Hymettian marble which divide the immense nave of Santa Maria Maggiore from the side aisles. There are eighteen on either side, each upwards of eight feet in circumference, and are supposed to have been taken from the Temple of Juno Lucina, whose site is assigned by antiquaries to the immediate vicinity. Similar rows of fluted Doric columns of the same marble, ten on each side, adorn the Church of St. Pietro in Vincoli. They are ancient, and belonged to some temple or basilica of the Forum. There are also five ancient pillars of Hymettian marble in the upper Church of San Clemente, taken from the same prolific source. The wall which surrounds the unique choir or presbytery of this most interesting old church is also composed of great slabs of Hymettian marble, taken from the original subterranean church and hastily put together. Some of the ancient pillars of Hymettian marble belonging to the peristyle of the temple of Ceres and Proserpine, still as widely spaced as they used to be, adorn the Church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, built on the foundation of that shrine; while twenty-four remarkably fine fluted Corinthian columns of the same material divide the triple nave of Santa Sabina on the Aventine, and are supposed to have belonged to the ancient Temple of Juno Regina, erected by Camillus after the destruction of the Etruscan city of Veii. Hymettian marble was one of the first--if not actually the first--species introduced into Rome. In the year of Rome 662, Lucius Crassus the orator brought to the city six columns of it, each twelve feet in height, with which he adorned his house on the Palatine Hill, receiving, on account of this circumstance, from Marcus Brutus the nickname of the Palatine Venus. At the present day the marble is used for corner-stones in the ordinary houses of Athens. Another livid white marble, somewhat resembling the Hymettian, is that which is known to the Italians as Marmo Greco livido. It was called by the ancients _Marmor Thasium_, from Thasos, now Thapso, an island in the north of the Ægean Sea, off the coast of Thrace. The marble dug from the rocky sides of Mount Ipsario--a romantic hill thickly covered with fir trees, and rising three thousand four hundred and twenty-eight feet above the sea--enjoyed considerable reputation among the ancients. In Rome it must have been very common, if the name of Thasian is to be given to all the fragments of nondescript dusky white marble which are found among the ruins. Seneca says that the fish-ponds in his day were formed of that Thasian marble, with which at one time it was rare to adorn even temples. It was considered the least valuable of the white Greek marbles, and was used for the more ordinary purposes; Statius mentioning, in order to show the surpassing splendour of a particular building, that Thasian marble was not admitted into it. But there are not many well-defined monuments of it remaining in Rome. The chief are the bust of Euripides in the Vatican, and the outside casing of the pyramid of Caius Cestius, near the Protestant cemetery, now so weather-beaten and stained with dusky lichens that it is difficult to identify the material of which it is composed. From this marble, by a slight tinge of yellow and a little darker shade, the livid white marble of Lesbos, the _Marmor Lesbium_, or Marmo Greco Giallognolo, may be distinguished. It is not a beautiful material; and yet, strange to say, the statues of some of the most beautiful women of antiquity, such as those of Julia Pia in the Vatican, and of the Capitoline Venus in the Museum of the Capitol, were made of this marble, obtained from the birthplace of Sappho. More beautiful is the kind known as the _Marmor Tyrium_, or the Greco-Turchinicchio, which has a light bluish tinge. It was shipped by the ancients at the port of Tyre from some unknown quarry in Mount Lebanon, which supplied the marble used without stint in the building and decoration of Solomon's Temple and Palace. In this quarry every block was shaped and polished before it was sent to be inserted in its place in the Temple wall, which therefore, as Heber beautifully says, sprang up like some tall palm in majestic silence. In Rome this marble was very rare. The doors in the great piers which support the dome of St. Peter's are each flanked by a pair of spirally-fluted columns of Tyrian marble, supposed to have been brought to Rome by Titus from the Temple of Jerusalem. They originally decorated the confessional of the old Basilica. The twenty-eight steps of the Scala Santa at the Lateran, said by ecclesiastical tradition to have belonged to Pilate's house in Jerusalem, and to have been the identical ones which our Saviour descended when He left the judgment-hall, are made of this marble; so that, whatever we may think of the tradition itself, there is a feature of verisimilitude in the material. The chief supply of pure white marble in Rome was derived from the quarries in the mountains at Luna, an old Etruscan town near the Bay of Spezia, which fell to decay under the later Roman emperors. This ancient _Marmor Lunense_ is called by the Italians Marmo di Carrara, because it is identical with the famous modern Carrara marble, and belongs to the same range of strata; the ruins of the ancient Luna being only a few miles from the flourishing town of Carrara, the metropolis of the marble trade. From Parian and Pentelic marble, Lunar marble, as already mentioned, can be easily distinguished by the less brilliant sparkle of its crystal facets, as shown by a fresh surface, and also by its more soapy-white colour. It is simply an ordinary Jurassic limestone altered by subsequent metamorphic action. The mountains which contain the quarries are highly picturesque, rising with serried outline to a height of upwards of five thousand feet, their flanks scarred by deep gorges and torrent-beds, and their lower slopes clothed with olive groves, vineyards, and forest trees. Lunar marble was first brought to Rome in the time of Julius Cæsar; and Mamurra, so bitterly reviled by Catullus, the commander of the artificers in Cæsar's army in Gaul, lined with great slabs of this marble the outside and inside of his house on the Coelian Hill--the first recorded instance of veneering or incrusting walls with marble. The discovery of this method of cutting marble into thin slices, and decorating structures of ordinary materials with them, was stigmatised by Pliny as an unreasonable mode of extending luxury. The use of Lunar marble, on account of its easy accessibility, speedily extended to every kind of building, public and private. So vast were the quantities sent to Rome, that Ovid expressed his fear lest the mountains themselves should disappear through the digging out of this marble; and Pliny anticipated that dreadful consequences would be produced by the removal in this way of the great barriers erected by Nature. Many fine specimens still survive the ravages of ages, among which may be mentioned the eleven massive Corinthian columns, upwards of forty-two feet high, and four and a half feet in diameter, which form the peristyle of the Temple of Neptune in the Piazza di Pietra, well known as the old Custom-house. These pillars suffered severely from the action of fire, and are much worn and defaced, but there is a grandeur about them still which deeply impresses the spectator; and the blocks of marble which form the inner part of the architrave and entablature, as seen from the inner side of the court, are so stupendous that the ruins "overhang like a beetling rock of marble on a mountain peak." Grander still is the majestic column of Lunar marble dedicated to Marcus Aurelius, in the Piazza Colonna, which rears aloft its shaft one hundred and twenty-two feet in the air, wreathed around with spiral bands of historic reliefs, illustrating the Roman conquests over the German tribes north of the Danube. Very splendid specimens of the same marble may be seen in the three fluted Corinthian columns and a pilaster belonging to the Temple of Mars Ultor erected by Augustus in his Forum after the battle of Actium, which are the largest columns of any kind of marble in Rome, being eighteen feet in circumference, and upwards of fifty-four feet high. The two well-known pillars of the portico of the Temple of Minerva, called Le Colonnacce, belonging to the adjoining Forum of Nerva, are also composed of the same material; as also the three deeply-fluted Corinthian columns that remain of the Temple of Vespasian in the Roman Forum, which still retain some traces of the purple colour with which they appear to have been painted. By far the largest single masses of Lunar marble are the two portions of a gigantic frieze and entablature, highly ornamented with sculpture, one measuring one thousand four hundred and ninety cubic feet, and weighing upwards of one hundred tons, lying in the Colonna gardens on the slope of the Quirinal. These relics are supposed to have belonged to the splendid Temple of the Sun, which Aurelian erected after the conquest of Palmyra, and in which he deposited the rich spoils of that city. They are associated therefore with romantic memories of the famous Queen Zenobia, who spent her last days near Tivoli, after having been led captive in fetters of gold to grace the triumphal procession of her conqueror. For statuary purposes Lunar marble was extensively used in ancient Rome. It formed the material out of which the sculptor produced some of the noblest creations of his genius. Of these the Apollo Belvedere in the Vatican collection is one of the most remarkable. The evidence of its own material, as already mentioned, has dispelled the old idea that it is one of the masterpieces of the Greek school; and Canova's conjecture, based upon some peculiarities of its drapery, is in all likelihood true, viz. that it was a copy of a bronze original, made, probably at the order of Nero, for one of the baths of the imperial villa at Antium, in whose ruins it was found in the fifteenth century. From the time of the Romans, the white marble of the Montes Lunenses has been used for decorative purposes in many of the churches and public buildings of Italy. It formed the material out of which Michael Angelo, Canova, and Thorwaldsen chiselled their immortal works. Its quality and composition, however, vary very considerably, and small crystals of perfectly limpid quartz, called _Carrara diamonds_, and iron pyrites, occasionally occur, to the annoyance of the sculptor. It becomes soon discoloured when exposed even to the pure air of Italy, but it is capable of resisting decay for very long periods. The opinion current in Paris, that the marbles of Carrara are unable to withstand the effects of the climate of that city, is due to the frequent use of inferior qualities, which are known to artists as _Saloni_ and _Ravaccioni_, and whose particles have but a feeble cohesion, and consequently slight durability. All the white marbles which I have thus described were used in Rome principally for external architecture; and beautiful as a city largely built of them may have looked, it must have had, nevertheless, a garishness and artificiality which would offend the artistic eye. When newly constructed, the Roman temples in the time of the emperors must have been oppressive, reflecting the hot sunshine from their snowy cellæ and pillared porticoes with an insufferable glare. Marble--unlike sandstones, clay-slates, and basalts, which are kindred to the earth and the elements, and find themselves at home in any situation, all things making friends with them, mosses, lichens, ivies--is a dead, cold material, and does not harmonise with surrounding circumstances. Like the snow, which hides the familiar brown soil from us, with its unearthly and uncongenial whiteness, its perpetual snow chills and repels human sympathies. Nature, for a similar reason, introduces white flowers very sparingly into the landscape; and their dazzling whiteness is toned down by the greenery around them, and the balancing of coloured objects near at hand, so that they do not in reality attract more notice than other flowers. The ancient Greeks themselves, keenly sensitive as they were to all external influences, had a fine instinct for this want of harmony between white marble and the tones of nature and the feelings of man; and therefore, in many instances, they coloured not only the marble buildings exposed to view outside, but even the marble statues carefully secluded in the niches within. The Parthenon was thus tinted with vermilion, blue, and gold, which seems to us, who now see only the golden hue with which the suns of ages have dyed its pure Pentelic marble, a barbarous superfluity, but which, to the people of the time, was necessary on account of the dazzling brightness of its material, concealing the exquisite beauty of the workmanship, and the finished grace of its proportions. Colour was used with perfect taste to relieve the sculptured details of the exterior, to articulate and ornament mouldings, and to harmonise the pure white temple with the dark blue sky of Greece and the rich warm tones of her landscape. The magnificent sarcophagi of white marble recently discovered at Sidon, belonging to the best type of Greek art, are most effectively adorned with different tints and gradations of red and purple, gold being sparingly applied. We see many traces of bright colouring on the columns and other parts of the buildings in the Roman Forum. The bas-reliefs on the Lumachella marble of Trajan's Column were originally picked out with profuse gilding and vivid colours; the egg and arrow moulding of the capital being tinted green, red and yellow, the abacus blue and red, the spirals yellow, the prominent figures gilt against backgrounds of different hues, and the water of the various rivers blue. Statues of the deities in Rome were nearly all coloured; and they received a fresh coat of vermilion--which, although it was the hue of divinity, was extremely fugacious--on anniversary occasions or in times of great national rejoicing. All this pleads powerfully in behalf of Gibson's colour-creed, which has had so much prejudice to overcome. The beauty and expression of ancient sculpture, whether for outside or inside decoration, were greatly heightened by this tinting. In cases where it was not employed, Nature herself became the artist, and has burnt into the marble statue or the marble pillar the warm hue of life; and the rusty, withered look of the ruins, over which ages of change have passed, touches us more than the pure white marble structure could have done in the pride of its splendour, and appeals to the tenderest sympathies of beings who see in themselves, and in all around them, the tokens of death and decay. The graceful Corinthian pillars of the Temple of Castor and Pollux in the Forum, the three surviving witnesses of its former grandeur, are all the more suggestive to us by reason of the russet hues with which time has stained the snowy purity of their Parian marble; and it is difficult to say, as some one has shrewdly remarked, how much of the touching effect which the drooping figure of the Dying Gladiator of the Capitol produces upon us may be attributed to its discoloration, and to the absence of the dainty spotlessness of the original Greek marble. That grime of ages "lends a sort of warmth, and suggests flesh and blood," so that the suffering is not a cold and frosty incrustation, with which we have nothing to do, but a real tragedy going on before our eyes, by which our sympathies are most deeply moved. In a dry, hot climate, like that of Rome, there are no tender tones of vegetable colouring, no moss or lichen touches of gold or gray or green to relieve the bare cold surface, and the rigid formal outlines of the marble; but out of the sky itself the marble gathers the soft shadows and the rich brown hues that reconcile its strange, unnatural whiteness with the homely ways of the familiar earth. That wonderful violet sky of Rome would glorify the meanest object. The common red brick glows in its translucent atmosphere like a ruby; and the russet defaced column, as it comes out against its vivid light, becomes luminous like a pillar of gold. Brick and marble are of equal æsthetic value in this magic city, in which the uncomely parts and materials have a more abundant comeliness by reason of the medium through which they are seen. Over all things lingers permanently the transfiguring glow that comes to northern lands only in the afternoon. In that land it is always afternoon; the ruins bathe as it were in a perpetual sunset. The air is constantly flooded with a radiance which seems to transfuse itself through every part of the city, making all its ruinous and hoary age bright and living, forming pictures and harmonies indescribable of the humblest objects. The white marbles hitherto described were principally for exterior use. But as Roman wealth and luxury increased coloured marbles were employed for internal decoration; and the effects which the Greeks obtained by the application of pigments, the Romans obtained by the rich hues of precious marbles incrusting their buildings, and durable as these buildings themselves. At first these rare materials were used with a degree of moderation, chiefly in the form of mosaics of small discs or cubes for the pavements of halls and courts. But at length massive pillars were constructed of them, and the vast inside brick surfaces of imperial baths and palaces were crusted over and concealed by slabs of rare and splendid marbles, the lines of which had no necessary connection with the mass behind or beneath. Carthage from the spoils of its temples supplied Rome with many of its rarest columns; and it is probable that not a few of these survive in the Christian basilicas that occupy the sites and were built out of the materials of the old Pagan structures. With the decay of the Roman Empire the use of coloured marbles in art increased, so that even busts and statues had their faces and necks cut in white and the drapery in coloured marble. It attained its fullest development in the Byzantine style, of which, as it appeals to the senses more by colour than by form, it is a predominant characteristic, necessary to its vitality and expression. The early Christian builders contemplated this mode of decoration for their interiors only. Very rarely had they the means to apply it to the outside surface, as in St. Mark's in Venice, which is the great type of the Byzantine church, coloured within and without with the rich hues of marbles and mosaics. Our great Gothic cathedrals, as an eminent architect has said, were the creation of one thought, and hence they were complete when the workmen of the architects left them, and their whole effect is dominated by one idea or one set of ideas; but the early Roman churches were the results of a general co-operation of associated art, and the large and plain surfaces of the interiors were regarded by the sculptor as a framework for the exhibition of his decorative art. Colour was lavished in veneers of rare marbles, and costly mosaics and frescoes covering the walls. There was thus "less unity of purely architectural design, but a greater amount of general artistic wealth." Intermediate between the white marbles used for external architecture and the coloured marbles used for internal decoration, and forming the link between them, is the variety called by the Italians cipollino, or onion-stone. Its classical name is _Marmor Carystium_, from Carystos, a town of Euboea, mentioned by Homer, situated on the south coast of the island at the foot of Mount Oche. This town was chiefly celebrated for its marble, which was in great request at Rome, and also for its large quantities of valuable asbestos, which received the name of Carystian stone, and was manufactured by the Romans into incombustible cloth for the preservation of the ashes of the dead in the process of cremation. The asbestos occurs in the same quarries with this marble, just as this mineral is usually associated with talc schist, in which chlorite and mica are often present. Strabo places the quarries of cipollino at Marmorium, a place upon the coast near Carystos; but Mr. Hawkins mentions in Walpole's _Travels_ that he found the ancient works upon Mount Oche at a distance of three miles from the sea, the place being indicated by some old half-worked columns, lying apparently on the spot where they had been quarried. This marble is very peculiar, and is at once recognised by its gray-green ground colour and the streaks of darker green running through the calcareous substance like the coats of an onion, hence its name. These streaks belong to a different mineral formation. They are micaceous strata; and thus the true cipollino is a mixture of talcose schist with white saccharoidal marble, and may be said to form a transition link between marble and common stone. It belongs to the Dolomitic group of rocks, which forms so large a part of the romantic scenery of South-Eastern Europe, and yields all over the world some of the best and most ornamental building-stones. In this group calc-spar or dolomite wholly replaces the quartz and films of argillaceous matter, of which, especially in Scotland, micaceous schist is usually composed. There are many varieties of cipollino, the most common being the typical marble, a gray-green stone, sometimes more or less white, with veins of a darker green, forming waves rippling over it like those of the sea. It occurs so often among the ruins that it must have been perhaps more frequently used in Rome than any other marble. It was also one of the first introduced, for Mamurra lined the walls of his house on the Coelian with it, as well as with Lunar marble, in the time of Julius Cæsar; but Statius mentions that it was not very highly esteemed, especially in later times, when more valuable marbles came into use. One remarkably fine variety called _Cipollino marino_ is distinguished by its minute curling veins of light green on a ground of clear white. Four very large columns in the Braccio Nuova of the Vatican, which may have belonged originally, like the two large columns of _giallo antico_ in the same apartment, to some sumptuous tomb on the Appian Way, are formed of this variety, and are unique among all the other pillars of cipollino marble to be seen in Rome for the brightness of their colour and the exquisite beauty of their venation. Nothing can be more striking and beautiful than the rich wavelike ripples of green on the cipollino marbles that encase the Baptistery of St. Mark's in Venice, as if the breakers on the Lido shore had been frost-bound before they fell, and the sea-nymphs had sculptured them into the walls of this "ecclesiastical sea-cave." Indeed all the outside and inside walls of the glorious old church are cased with this marble--in the interior up to the height of the capitals of the columns; while above that, every part of the vaults and domes is incrusted with a truly Byzantine profusion of gold mosaics--fit image, as Ruskin beautifully says, of the sea on which, like a halcyon's nest, Venice rests, and of the glowing golden sky that shines above it. Line after line of pleasant undulation ripples on the smooth polished marble as the sea ebbs and flows through the narrow streets of the city. In the churches and palaces of Rome specimens of all the varieties of cipollino may be found, taken from the old ruins, for the marble is not now worked in the ancient quarries. The largest masses of the common kind in Rome are the eight grand old Corinthian columns which form the portico of the Temple of Antoninus Pius and Faustina in the Forum. The height of each shaft, which is composed of a single block, is forty-six feet, and the circumference fifteen feet. The pillars look very rusty and weather-worn, and are much battered with the ill-usage which they have received. One of the most beautiful and highly-prized marbles of ancient Rome was the species which is familiar to every visitor under the name of _Giallo antico_. It must have existed in immense quantities in the time of the emperors, for fragments of it are found almost everywhere, and it is the variety that is most frequently picked up and converted into ornamental articles. It is easily recognised by its deep brownish-yellow colour, resembling somewhat the yellow marbles of Siena and Verona, though invariably richer and brighter. All the varieties are traversed more or less by veins and blotches of a darker yellow or brownish hue, which give them a charming variety. The texture is remarkably fine and close-grained. In this respect _giallo antico_ can be distinguished from every other marble by the touch. When polished it is exquisitely smooth and soft, looking like ivory that has become yellow with age. No fitter material could be employed for the internal pavements or pillars of old temples, presenting a venerable appearance, as if the suns of many centuries had stained it with their own golden hue. From the fact that it was called by the Romans _Marmor Numidicum_, we are led to infer that this marble was quarried in Numidia, and was brought into Rome when the region was made a Roman province by Julius Cæsar. It was probably known to the Romans in the time of Jugurtha; but the age of luxury had not then begun, and Marius and Sulla were more intent upon the glories of war than upon the arts of peace. The quarries on the slopes of the Atlas, worked for three hundred years to supply the enormous demand made by the luxury of the masters of the world, were at last supposed to be exhausted; and the idea has long prevailed that the marble could only be found among the ruins of the Imperial City. But four or five years ago, the sources from which the Romans obtained some of their most precious varieties of this material have been rediscovered in the range of mountains called Djebel Orousse, north-east of Oran in Algeria. All over an extensive rocky plateau in this place numerous shallow depressions plainly indicate the existence of very ancient quarries. A large company has been formed to work and export the marble, which may now be had in illimitable quantity. The largest specimens of _giallo antico_ existing in Rome are the eight fluted Corinthian pillars, thirty feet high and eleven feet in circumference, with capitals and bases of white marble, which stand in pairs within the niches of the Pantheon. In consequence of the fires of former generations, the marble has here and there a tinge of red on the surface. In the Church of St. John Lateran there is a splendid pair of fluted columns of _giallo antico_, which support the entablature over a portal at the northern extremity of the transept. They are thirty feet in height and nine feet in circumference, and were found in Trajan's Forum. In the Arch of Constantine are several magnificent _giallo antico_ columns and pilasters, which are supposed to have belonged to the triumphal arch of Trajan. They are so damaged in appearance, and so discoloured by the weather, that it is not easy, without close inspection, to tell the material of which they are composed. For pavements and the sheathing of interior walls _giallo antico_ was used more frequently than almost any other kind of marble; hence it is mostly found in fragments of thin slabs, with the old polish still glistening upon them. It is difficult to describe, so as to identify it, the species of marble known as _Africano_. It has a great variety of tints, ranging from the clearest white to the deepest black, through yellow and purple. Its texture is very compact and hard, frequently containing veins of quartz, which render it difficult to work. Its ancient name is _Marmor Chium_, for it was brought to Rome from a quarry on Mount Elias, the highest summit in the island of Chios--the modern Scio--which contested the honour of being the birthplace of Homer. It received its modern name of Africano, not from any connection with Africa, but from its dark colour. It enters pretty frequently into the decoration of the Roman churches, though it is rare to see it in large masses. It seems to have been much in fashion for pavements, of which many fragments may be seen among the ruins of Trajan's Forum. The side wall of the second chapel in the Church of Santa Maria della Pace in the Piazza Navona is sheathed with large slabs of remarkably fine Africano, "with edges bevelled like a rusticated basement." In the Belvedere Cortile in the Vatican is a portion of an ancient column of this marble, which is the most beautiful specimen in Rome; and the principal portal of the portico of St. Peter's is flanked by a pair of fluted Roman Ionic columns of Africano, which are the largest in the city. Closely allied to this marble is an ancient species which puzzles most visitors by its Protean appearance. Its tints are always neutral, but they vary in depth from the lightest to the darkest shade, and are never mixed but in juxtaposition. Dirty yellows, cloudy reds, dim blues and purples, occur in the ground or in the round or waved blotches or crooked veins. It has a fine grain and a dull fracture. This variety of Africano is known by the familiar name of _Porta Santa_, from the circumstance that the jambs and lintel of the first Porta Santa--a Holy Door annexed by Boniface VIII. to St. Peter's in the year 1300--were constructed of this marble. The Porta Santa, it may be mentioned, was instituted in connection with a centenary jubilee, but afterwards the period of formally opening it was reduced to fifty years, and now it is shortened to twenty-five. On the occasion of the jubilee, on Christmas Eve, the Pope knocks three times with a silver hammer against the masonry with which it is filled up, which is then demolished, and the Holy Door remains open for a whole twelvemonth, and on the Christmas Eve of the succeeding year is closed up in the same manner as before. A similar solemnity is performed by proxy at the Lateran, the Liberian, and the Pauline Basilicas. In all these great churches, as in St. Peter's, the jambs and Lintel of the Holy Door are of Porta Santa marble. This beautiful material was brought from the mountains in the neighbourhood of Jassus--a celebrated fishing town of Caria, situated on a small island close to the north coast of the Jassian Bay. From this circumstance it was called by the ancient Romans _Marmor Jassense_. Near the quarries was a sanctuary of Hestia, with a statue of the goddess, which, though unprotected in the open air, was believed never to be touched by rain. The marble, the most highly-prized variety of which was of a blood-red and livid white colour, was used in Greece chiefly for internal decoration. It was introduced in large quantity into Rome, and there are few churches in which the relics of it that existed in older buildings have not been adapted for ornamental purposes. Among the larger and finer masses of Porta Santa may be enumerated two columns and pilasters which belong to the monument of Clement IX., in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, and which are remarkable for their exceedingly fine texture and the unusual predominance of white among the other hues; four splendid Corinthian pillars, considered the finest in Rome, in the nave of Sta. Agnese; the pair of half columns which support the pediment of the altar in the Capella della Presentazione in St. Peter's; and the basin of the handsome fountain in front of the Pillar of Marcus Aurelius in the Piazza Colonna, constructed by the architect Giacoma della Porta out of an enormous mass of Porta Santa found lying on the ancient wharf. Frequent specimens of a beautiful marble known as _Fior di Persico_, from the resemblance of the colour of its bright purple veins on a white ground to that of the blossom of the peach, may be found in the Roman churches. It was much used for mouldings, sheathings, and pedestals, and also for floors. In the Villa of Hadrian large fragments of slabs of this marble may be found, which lined the walls and floors of what are called the Greek and Latin Libraries. The Portuguese Church in Rome has several columns of Fior di Persico supporting the pediments of altars in the different chapels; especially four pairs of fluted ones which adorn the two altars at the extremity of the nave, which are among the largest and finest in Rome. But the most splendid specimens of all are a pair of columns in the Palazzo Rospigliosi. The dado, eight feet in height, in the gorgeous Corsini chapel in the Church of St. John Lateran, is formed of large tablets of highly-polished Fior di Persico, and the frieze that surrounds the whole chapel is composed of the same beautiful material, whose predominance over every other marble is the peculiarity of this sanctuary. The ancient name of this marble was _Marmor Molossium_, from a region in Epirus--now Albania--which was a Roman province in the time of Pompey. It is associated with the celebrated campaigns in Italy of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, in which Greece was for the first time brought into contact with Rome. The region in which the quarries existed was the most ancient seat of Pelasgic religion. The infinite hues and markings of the coloured marbles have all been painted by Nature with one material only, variously proportioned and applied--the oxide of iron. The varieties of marble are mainly caused by the different degrees in which this substance has pervaded them. They are variable mixtures of the metamorphous carbonates of protoxide of iron and lime. And it is an interesting fact that there is a distinct relation between deposits of magnetic iron ore and the metamorphoses of limestones into marbles; so that this substance not only gives to the marbles their colouring, but also their texture. Even the whitest saccharoidal or statuary marble, which it has not coloured, it has created by the crystallisation of the limestone associated with it. And the marbles of the entire province of the Apuan Alps owe their existence to the large quantities of iron ore disseminated throughout them, which have exercised a great influence on the molecular modification they have undergone. The same changes have been produced on the limestones of Greece and Asia Minor by veins containing iron ore running through them. And of the marbles thus produced, one of the most beautiful is that which is known in Rome by the name of Pavonazzetto, from its peacock-like markings. The ground is a clear white, with numerous veins of a dark red or violet colour, while the grain is fine, with large shining scales. It resembles alabaster in the form and character of its veins, and in its transparent quality. It is a Phrygian marble, and was known to the ancients under the name of _Marmor Docimenum_. The poet Statius notices the legend that it was stained with the blood of Atys. It was a favourite marble of the emperor Hadrian, who employed it to decorate his tomb. It was brought to Rome when Phrygia became a Roman province, after the establishment of Christianity in Asia Minor. At first the quarry yielded only small pieces of the marble, but when it came into the possession of the Romans they developed its resources to the utmost; numerous large monolithic columns being wrought on the spot, and conveyed at great expense and labour to the coast. Colonel Leake supposes that the extensive quarries on the road from Khoorukun and Bulwudun are those of the ancient Docimenum. Hamilton, in his _Researches_, says that he saw numerous blocks of marble and columns in a rough state, and others beautifully worked, lying in this locality. In an open space beside a mosque lay neglected a beautifully-finished marble bath, once intended, perhaps, for a Roman villa; and in the wall of the mosque, and of the cemetery beside it, were numerous friezes and cornices, whose elaborately-finished sculptures of the Ionic and Corinthian orders proved that they were never designed for any building on the spot, but were in all probability worked near the quarries for the purpose of easier transportation, as is done in the quarries of Carrara at the present day. Pavonazzetto is thus associated in an interesting manner with the Phrygian cities of Laodicea and Colosse. When St. Paul was preaching the Gospel through this part of Asia Minor, the architects of Rome were conveying this splendid marble from the quarries of the Cadmus, to adorn the palatial buildings of the Imperial City. No marble was so highly esteemed as this, and no other species is so frequently referred to by the Latin poets. The high altar of the subterranean church, under which the relics of St. Ignatius and St. Clement are supposed to lie, is covered by a canopy supported by elegant columns of pavonazzetto marble; while the high altar of the upper church is similarly surmounted by a double entablature of Hymettian marble, supported by four columns of pavonazzetto. The extra-mural church of St. Paul's had several splendid pillars of Phrygian marble, taken by the emperor Theodosius from the grandest of the law courts of the Republic; but these were unfortunately destroyed during the burning of the old basilica about sixty years ago. We see in the flat pilasters of this purple-veined marble, now erect against the transepts of the restored church, the vestiges of the magnificent Æmilian Basilica in the Forum, of whose celebrated columns Pliny spoke in the highest terms. Specimens of pavonazzetto are to be seen in almost every church in Rome. In the interesting old Church of Sta. Agnese there are two columns of this marble, the flutings of which are remarkable for their cabled divisions. The gallery above is supported on small columns, most of which are of pavonazzetto spirally fluted. In the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli there is also a remarkably fine specimen; while there is a grand pair of columns in the vestibule of St. Peter's between the transept and the sacristy. Fourteen fluted columns of Phrygian marble have been dug up from the site of the Augustan Palace on the Palatine; while the one hundred and twenty employed by the emperor Hadrian, in the Temple of Juno and Jupiter erected by him, have been distributed among several of the Roman churches. The side walls of the splendid staircase of the Bracchi Palace are sheathed with a very rare and beautiful variety, remarkable for the delicacy of its veins and its brilliant polish. The veneer was produced by slicing down two ancient columns discovered near the Temple of Romulus Maxentius in the Forum, converted into the Church of SS. Cosma e Damiano. But the finest of all the pavonazzetto columns of Rome are the ten large ones in the Church of San Lorenzo outside the walls. In the volute of the capital of one of them a frog has been carved, which identifies it as having formerly belonged to the Temple of Jupiter or Juno, within the area of the Portico of Octavia. Pliny tells us that both temples were built at their own expense by two wealthy Lacedæmonian artists, named Sauros and Batrakos; and, having been refused the only recompense they asked--the right to place an inscription upon the buildings,--they introduced into the capitals of the pillars, surreptitiously, the symbols of their respective names, a lizard and a frog. The most precious of the old marbles of Rome is the _Rosso antico_. Its classical name has been lost, unless it be identical, as Corsi conjectures, with the Marmor Alabandicum, described by Pliny as black inclining much to purple. For a long time it was uncertain where it was found, but recently quarries of it have been discovered near the sea at Skantari, a village in the district of Teftion, which show traces of having been worked by the ancients. From these quarries the marble can only be extracted in slabs and in small fragments. This is the case, too, with all the red marbles of Italy, which, in spite of their compact character, scale off very readily, and are friable, vitreous, and full of cleavage planes, in addition to which they are usually only found in thin beds, which prevents their being used for other purposes than table-tops and flooring-slabs. The predominance of magnetic iron ore, to which they owe their vivid colour, has thus seriously affected the molecular arrangement of the rocks. It is probable that _rosso antico_, like the Italian red marbles, belongs to one or other of the Liassic formations, which, in Italy as well as in Greece and Asia Minor, constitutes a well-marked geological horizon by its regular stratification and its characteristic ammonite fossils. The quantity found among the Roman ruins of this marble is very large; many of the shops in Rome carving their models of classical buildings in this material. But the fragments are comparatively small. When used in architecture they have been employed to ornament subordinate features in some of the grander churches. The largest specimens to be seen in Rome are the double-branched flight of seven very broad steps, leading from the nave to the high altar of Santa Prassede. Napoleon Bonaparte, a few months before his fall, had ordered these slabs of _rosso antico_ to be sent to Paris to ornament his throne; but fortunately the order came too late to be executed. The cornice of the present choir is also formed of this very rare marble; while large fragments of the old cornice of the same material, which ran round the whole church, are preserved in the Belvedere Cortile of the Vatican. Tradition asserts that the pieces which have been converted to these sacred uses in the church once belonged to the house of Pudens, the father of its titular saint, in which St. Peter is supposed to have dwelt when in Rome. The entrance to the chamber of the Rospigliosi Palace, which contains the far-famed "Aurora" of Guido Reni on the ceiling, is flanked by a pair of Roman Ionic columns of _rosso antico_, fourteen feet high, which are the largest in Rome, although the quality of the marble is much injured by its lighter colour, and by a white streak which runs up each shaft nearly from top to bottom. In the sixth room of the Casino of the Villa Borghese the jambs of the mantelpiece are composed of _rosso antico_ in the form of caryatides supporting a broad frieze of the same material wrought in bas-relief. This marble seems to have been the favourite material in which to execute statues of the Faun; for every one who has visited the Vatican Sculpture Gallery and the Museum of the Capitol will remember well the beautiful statues of this mythic being in _rosso antico_, which are among their chief treasures, and once adorned the luxurious Villa of Hadrian at Tivoli. This marble is admirably adapted for such sculpture, for it gives to the ideal of the artist the warm vividness of life. And it seems a fit colour, as Nathaniel Hawthorne has said, in which to express the rich, sensuous, earthy side of nature, the happy characteristics of all wild natural things which meet and mingle in the human form and in the human soul; the Adam, the red man formed out of the red clay, in which the life of the animals and the life of the gods coalesce. In the Gabinetto of the Vatican, along with a large square tazza of _rosso antico_, is kept a most curious arm-chair of this marble, called _sedia forata_, found near the Church of St. John Lateran, upon which, in the middle ages, the Popes were obliged to sit at their installation in the presence of the Cardinals. This custom, which was practised as late as the coronation of Julius II. in 1503, arose from a desire to secure the throne of St. Peter from being intruded upon by a second Pope Joan--whether there ever really was such a personage, or whatever gave rise to the curious myth. The chair is like an ordinary library chair, with solid back and sides, sculptured out of a single block, and perforated in the seat with a circular aperture. _Rosso antico_ is not what might strictly be called a beautiful marble. Its colour is dusky and opaque, resembling that of a bullock's liver, marked with numerous black reticulations, so minute and faint as to be hardly visible. But the grain is extremely fine, admitting of the highest polish. Of black marbles--in the formation of which both the animal and vegetable kingdoms have taken part, their substance being composed of the finely-ground remains of foraminifera, corals, and shells, and their colour produced by the carbonaceous deposits of ancient forests--few kinds seem to have been used by the ancient Romans. The _nero antico_ was the species most esteemed, on account of its compact texture, fine grain, and deep black colour, marked occasionally with minute white short straight lines, always broken and interrupted. It is the _Marmor Tænarium_ of the ancients, quarried in the Tænarian peninsula, which forms the most southerly point in Europe, now called Cape Matapan. The celebrated quarries which Pliny eloquently describes, but for which Colonel Leake inquired in vain, were under the protection of Poseidon, whose temple was at the extremity of the peninsula. They attracted, on account of the sanctuary which the temple afforded, large numbers of criminals who fled from the pursuit of justice, and who readily found work in them. Very fine specimens of this marble may be seen in a pair of columns in the obscure Church of Santa Maria Regini Coeli, near the Convent of St. Onofrio, on the other side of the Tiber; in a pair in the church of Ara Coeli; and also in a pair in the third room of the Villa Pamphili Doria, which are extremely fine, and are probably as large as any to be met with. In consequence of the quantity used in the inscriptional tablets of monuments, for which this seems to be the favourite material, _nero antico_ is extremely scarce in modern Rome. The _bigio antico_ is a grayish marble, composed of white and black, sometimes in distinct stripes or waves, and sometimes mingled confusedly together. It was the _Marmor Batthium_ of the ancients, and two of the large columns in the principal portal of the Church of Santa Croce in Jerusalemme are remarkably fine specimens of it, probably taken from the Villa of Heliogabalus, in whose gardens, called the Horti Variani, the church was built. Another species is the _bianco e nero antico_, the _Marmor Proconnesium_ of antiquity, obtained from the celebrated quarries of Proconnesos, an island in the western part of the Propontis. Many of the towns of Greece were decorated with this marble. The internal part of the famous sepulchre erected by Artemisia, the widow of Mausolus, king of Caria, to her husband, and after whom all grand tombs ever since have received the name of mausoleum, was built of this marble. So celebrated were the quarries of Proconnesos that the ancient name of the island was changed to Marmora, and the whole of the Propontis is now called the Sea of Marmora. Although so highly esteemed in Greece, this marble does not seem to have been extensively used in Rome; the finest relics being the four columns supporting the marble canopy, in the form of a Gothic temple, which surmounts the high altar of St. Cæcilia, which is among the most ancient of all the churches of Rome. They were probably derived from some old Roman palace, and are remarkable for the clearness and brilliancy of the white blotches on a black ground. There are different varieties of this marble: one kind in which the blotches or veins are pure black on a pure white ground, and another in which the blotches or veins are pure white on a black ground. In these varieties, however, the black and the white are more confused together, but remain notwithstanding distinct and separate, so that if the veins are white the ground is sure to be black, and _vice versâ_. The ancient _Marmor Rhodium_, or the _giallo e nero_, had golden-coloured veins on a black ground, and, owing to its compact texture, was capable of receiving a high polish. It is very like the celebrated marble of Portovenere, a modern Italian species obtained from the western hills of the Gulf of Spezia, where the formation passes into that of the ammonitiferous limestones of the Lias and of the palæozoic rocks. A beautiful highly-polished specimen of Rhodian marble exists in the mask in front of the tomb of Paul III. in the tribune of St. Peter's, sculptured by Della Porta in 1547, long previous to the discovery of the quarries of Portovenere. It may be remarked that the grain of the latter species is such that it will not keep its polish without extreme care; a circumstance which distinguishes it from the Rhodian marble, whose tenacity in this respect renders it eminently adapted for the more costly class of decorative works. The marbles we have been hitherto considering belong to the older calcareous formations of Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt, and go down to the upper triassic and muschel-kalk limestones, and perhaps even to those of an older period. But there is a class of ancient marbles in Rome of much more recent geological origin--belonging indeed to the Miocene epoch--which are called Lumachella, from the Italian word signifying snail, on account of the presence in all the species of fossil shells. They vary in colour from the palest straw to the deepest purple. Some of them are exceedingly beautiful and valuable, and they are nearly all more or less rare, being found chiefly in small fragments of ancient pavements. Their substance is formed of the shells of the common oyster in bluish gray and black particles on a white ground, as in the Lumachella d' Egitto; of the cardium or cockle, assuming a lighter or deeper shade of yellow, as in the Lumachella d' Astracane; of the ammonite, as in the L. Corno d' Ammone; of the Anomia ampulla in the L. occhio di Pavone, so called from the circular form of the fossils whichever way the section is made; of encrinites, belemnites, and starfish, showing white or red on a violet ground, as in the L. pavonazza; and "of broken shells, hardly discernible, together with very shining and saccharoid particles of carbonate of lime," as in the _Marmor Schiston_ of the ancients--the _brocatello antico_ of the Italians, so named from its various shades of yellow and purple, resembling silk brocade. The most important specimens of Lumachella marbles are the pair of very fine large columns of L. rosea on the ground-floor of the Schiarra Palace, the balustrade of the high altar of St. Andrea della Valle, two columns in the garden of the Corsini Palace of L. d' Astracane, and a pair of large pillars which support one of the arches of the Vatican Library, formed of L. occhio di pavone. Specimens of brocatello may be found in several churches and palaces, forming mouldings, sheathings, and pedestals. The most interesting of the Lumachella marbles is the _bianca antica_, the Marmor Megarense of the ancients, composed of shells so small as to be scarcely discernible, and so closely compacted that the substance takes a good polish. The well-known Column of Trajan--the first monument (_columna cochlæa_) of this description ever raised in Rome, and far superior to the Antonine Column--is composed of Lumachella marble from Megara. It presents, in twenty-three spiral bands of bas-reliefs, winding round thirty-four blocks of stone, the history of the victories of Trajan over the Dacians, and, without reckoning horses, implements of war, and walls of cities, is said to consist of no less than two thousand five hundred figures, each about two feet two inches high. It is a strikingly suggestive thought, that this majestic pillar--which produced so deep an impression upon the minds of posterity that, according to the beautiful legend, Pope Gregory the Great was moved to supplicate, by means of masses in several of the Roman churches, for the liberation of him whom it commemorated from purgatory--should be composed of the relics of sea-shells. "Memorial pillar! 'mid the wreck of Time, Preserve thy charge with confidence sublime," said Wordsworth; but this sublime charge is committed to frail keeping. It is itself a sepulchre of the dead; and the tragedies of the Dacian war are inscribed upon tragedies that took place long ages before there was any human eye to witness them. The historic sculptures that so deeply move our pity for a conquered people, are based upon the immemorial sculptures of creatures whose sacrifice in whole hecatombs touches us not, because it is part of the order of the world by which life forms the foundation of and minister to life. It is strange how many of the grandest monuments are wrought out of the creations of primeval molluscs. The enduring pyramids themselves are formed of the nummulitic limestone studded with its "Pharaoh's beans," the exuviæ of shell-fish that perished ages before the Nile had created Egypt. Of the breccias there is a great variety among the relics of ancient Rome. A breccia is a rock made up of angular pebbles or fragments of other rocks. When the pebbles are rounded the conglomerate is a pudding-stone. Marble breccias are formed of angular pieces of highly crystalline limestone, united together by a siliceo-calcareous cement, containing usually an admixture of a hornblendic substance, and which is due to a particular action of adjacent masses or veins of iron ore. The hornblendic cement, with its iron or manganese base, produces the variegated appearance which may be seen in specimens from different localities. As may be imagined from their composition, these rocks are as a rule extremely unalterable by ordinary atmospheric agencies, and are susceptible of a high degree of polish, which they retain with the utmost tenacity. They were favourite materials with the ancient Roman decorators; but they do not occur in large masses in the city. A beautiful pair of Roman Ionic columns under the pediment of the altar of the third chapel in the Church of Ara Coeli are made of a valuable breccia called Breccia dorata, distinguished by its small light-golden fragments on a ground of various shades of purple. The high altar of Santa Prisca on the Aventine is supported by one column of Breccia corallina of remarkably fine quality, in which the fragments are white on a ground of light coral-red. In the second chapel of St. Andrea della Valle there are two Corinthian columns of Breccia gialla e nera, which is an aggregate mass of yellow and black fragments: the yellow in its brilliant golden hue surpassing that of all other marbles, and forming a striking contrast to the long irregular black fragments interspersed throughout it. In the first chapel of the same church there are four fluted Corinthian columns of breccia gialla, containing small and regular blotches, of which the prevailing tint is orange, each fragment edged with a rim of deeper yellow that surrounds it like a shadow. A most beautiful variety of Breccia gialla e nera forms the basin of holy water at the entrance of the Church of St. Carlo di Catinari, in which "the colours resemble a golden network spread upon a ground of black"; and an exceedingly lovely urn is seen underneath the altar in one of the chapels of the Portuguese Church, in which white fragments are imbedded in a purple ground which shines through their soft transparency. Not the least attractive objects in the chamber of the Dying Gladiator in the Museum of the Capitol area portion of a large column of very beautiful and extremely valuable Breccia tracagnina, in which golden-yellow, white, red, and blue fragments occur in very nearly equal proportions, and two large pedestals of Breccia di Sete-Bassi--so called from the discovery of the first specimens near the ruins of the Villa of Septimus Bassus on the Appian Way--containing very small purple fragments of an oblong shape, which is the characteristic peculiarity of all the varieties of this species of marble. Probably the most beautiful of all the ancient breccias is that called Breccia della Villa Adriana, from its occasional occurrence in the ruins of Hadrian's Villa, and also Breccia Quintilina, from its having been found in the grounds of the magnificent Villa of Quintilius Varus, commemorated by Horace, at Tivoli, now occupied by the Church of the Madonna di Quintigliolo. The prevailing colour of the fragments is that of a dark brown intermixed with others of smaller size, of red, green, blue, white, purple, bright yellow, and sometimes black, all harmonising together most beautifully. The comparatively small pieces found at Tivoli now adorn the Churches of St. Andrea della Valle, famous for its rich varieties of breccias, St. Domenico e Sisto and Santa Pudenziana, where they appear among the marble sheathing of the walls. In the chapel of the Gaetani in the last-mentioned church, the wall is incrusted with the richest marbles, especially Lumachella and Brocatello, and large tablets of Hadrian's breccia setting off the splendid sarcophagus of Breccia nera e gialla dedicated to Cardinal Gaetani. Along with the breccias which I have thus incidentally noticed, but to which a whole essay might be devoted on account of their beauty, rich variety, and great value and rarity, should be classified a kind of "breccia dure," called Breccia d' Egitto. It is not, however, a true breccia, but a pudding-stone, composed, not of calcareous but of siliceous fragments; and these fragments are not angular, as in the true breccias, but rounded, indicating that they had been carried by water and consequently rounded by attrition. The connected pebbles must have been broken from rocks of great hardness to have withstood the effects of constant abrasion. In the Egyptian breccia are found very fine pebbles of red granite, porphyry of a darker or lighter green, and yellow quartz, held together by a cement of compact felspar. It has a special geological interest, inasmuch as it represents an ancient sea-beach flanking the crystalline rocks of Upper Egypt, where the cretaceous and nummulitic limestones end. The pebbles were derived from the central nucleus of granite from beyond Assouan to the upper end of the Red Sea, round which are folded successive zones of gneiss and schist pierced by intrusive masses of porphyry and serpentine. The pair of beautiful Grecian Ionic columns, and the large green tazza--eighteen feet in circumference--the finest specimen of Egyptian breccia to be seen in Rome, both in the Villa Albani, and the vase of the same material in the chamber of Candelabra in the Vatican, in which the prevailing green colour is crossed by several stripes of pure white quartz, may thus have been sculptured out of a portion of littoral deposit formed from the ruins of the crystalline rocks of the mountain group of Sinai. There is something extremely interesting and suggestive to the imagination in the twofold origin of these conglomerate ornaments of the palaces of Rome. Around them gather the wonderful associations of ancient human history, and the still more awe-inspiring associations of geological history. They speak to us of the conquests of Rome in the desolate tracts of Nubia and Arabia, from which the spoils that enriched its palaces and temples were derived; and of the existence of coast-lines, when Egypt was a gulf stretching from the Mediterranean to the Mountains of the Moon, which became silted up by slow accumulations. Their language, in both relations, is that of ruin. They are survivors both of the ruins of Nature and of Man, and are made up of the wrecks of both. Older far than the marbles which keep them company in the sculptor's halls and churches of Rome, and whose human history is equally eventful, their materials were deposited along the shore of a vanished sea, when the mountains that yielded these marbles lay as calcareous mud in its depths. Alabasters, of which there are numerous varieties, from pure diaphanous white to the deepest black, were favourite decorative materials with the ancient Romans. The different kinds were used for the walls of baths, vases, busts, pillars, and sepulchral lamps, in which the light shining through the transparent sides had an agreeable softness. Cornelius Nepos, as quoted by Pliny, speaks of having seen columns of alabaster thirty-two feet in length; and Pliny says that he himself had seen thirty huge pillars in the dining-hall of Callistus, the freedman of Claudius. One such column still exists in the Villa Albani, which is twenty-two and a half feet in height. The ancients obtained large blocks of alabaster from quarries in Thebes in Egypt, in the neighbourhood of Damascus, and on Mount Taurus. They imported some kinds also from Cyprus, Spain, and Northern Africa. They obtained varieties nearer home, in different parts of Italy, such as the beautiful Alabastro di Tivoli, employed by Hadrian in his villa, and which appears to have been brought from Terni, where it still exists in abundance. From the quarry near Volterra the Etruscans obtained the alabaster for their cinerary urns. The European alabasters are accumulated masses of stalactite and stalagmite, formed by the slow dropping of water charged with sulphate of lime, to which circumstance they owe the parallel stripes or concentric circles with which they are marked, while the rich and delicate varieties of colouring are produced by the oxides of iron which the water carries with it in its infiltration through the intervening strata. They are very soft and perishable, and consequently are very rarely found among the ruins of ancient Rome. The Oriental alabasters, on the other hand, which are distinguished from the European by their superior hardness and durability, are in reality not sulphates, but carbonates of lime. Their hardness is quite equal to that of the best statuary marbles. The ancient quarries on the hill--the modern Mount St. Anthony--near the town of Alabastron, in Middle Egypt, from which the material got its name, have only recently been re-opened, but blocks of large size and perfect beauty have been obtained. Owing to the facility with which alabaster can be reduced by fire to lime, very few large examples of it in Rome have escaped the ruthless kilns of the middle ages. The most interesting specimens of ancient alabaster are the very beautiful vase of Alabastro cotognino, prolate in form, and in colour white, streaked with very light pink, which contained the ashes of Augustus, found in the ruins of his mausoleum, and now in the Vatican; the bust of Julius Cæsar, made of the variety _tartaruga_, from the resemblance of its brownish-yellow markings to tortoise-shell, in the Museum of the Capitol; and the two large blocks of _alabastro a pecorella_, brought from the Villa of Hadrian, in the fourth portico of the Vatican, the largest and most beautiful specimens of this very rare alabaster in Rome, distinguished by white circular blotches, like a flock of sheep huddled together, on a deep blood-red ground. In the churches there are numerous specimens of all the varieties, forming the columns and sheathings of altars, memorial chapels, and monuments; the incrustations of alabaster on the walls of the Borghese chapel, in Santa Maria Maggiore, being conspicuous for their splendid effect. The baldacchino above the high altar of St. Paul's is supported by four splendid columns of Oriental alabaster presented to Gregory XVI. by Mehemet Ali, the viceroy of Egypt. An interesting collection of beautiful and valuable varieties of alabasters may be made in connection with the building operations still carried on in the unfinished façade of the basilica fronting the Tiber. The well-known _Verde antico_ is not a marble, but a mixture of the green precious serpentine of mineralogists and white granular limestone. It may also be called a breccia, for it is composed of black fragments, larger or smaller, derived from other rocks, whose angular shape indicates that they have not travelled far from the spots where they occur. The ancient Romans called it _Lapis Atracius_, from Atrax, a town in Thessaly, in the vicinity of which it was found. It can hardly be distinguished, except by experts, from the modern green marbles of Vasallo in Sardinia, and Luca in Piedmont. It occurs somewhat abundantly in Rome, having been a favourite material with the old Romans for sheathing walls and tables. Magnificent columns of it were introduced into the temples and triumphal arches. We find relics of these in the older churches. Four splendid fluted Corinthian columns of Verde antico, with gilded capitals, support the pediment of the high altar in Sta. Agnese, in the Piazza Navone, which formerly belonged to the Arch of Marcus Aurelius in the Corso. A pair of very fine columns of this precious stone flank each of the niches, containing statues of the twelve apostles, in the piers which divide the middle nave from the side ones in the Church of St. John Lateran. These twenty-four columns are remarkable for the clearness of the white, green, and black colours that occur in them. They are supposed to have been taken from the Baths of Diocletian. Two of the splendid composite columns which support the pediment of the altar in the Corsini chapel of this church are of this marble, and were also taken from the Arch of Marcus Aurelius in the Corso. One most magnificent column of Verde antico has been found, along with seven others of different marbles, in the wall of the narthex of the subterranean Church of San Clemente. A small portion of it is polished to show the beauty of the material, while the rest is dimmed and incrusted with the grime of age. Very different from this is the ancient serpentine or ophite of Sparta called the _Lapis Lacedæmonius_, found in different hills near Krokee, or in Mount Taygetus in Lacedæmon, where the old quarry has recently been opened. It has a base of dark green with angular crystals of felspar of a lighter green imbedded in it. It is a truly eruptive rock, occurring in intrusive bosses, or in beds interstratified with gneiss and mica-schist, and owes its various shades of green to the presence of copper. Owing to its extraordinary hardness, this stone was seldom used for architectural purposes; and the lapidary will charge three times as much for working a fragment of this material into a letter-weight as for making it of any other stone. A pair of fluted Roman Ionic columns, supporting the pediment of the altar of the chapel of St. John the Baptist, in the Baptistery of St. John Lateran, are the only examples of ophite pillars in Rome. Next to these the largest masses are a circular tablet, forming part of the splendid sheathing of one of the ambones in the Church of San Lorenzo; and two elliptical tablets, still larger, engrafted upon the pilasters in front of the high altar of St. Paul's. The principal use to which this stone was devoted in Rome was the construction of mosaic pavements. The emperor Alexander Severus introduced into his palaces and public buildings a kind of flooring composed of small squares of green serpentine and red porphyry, wrought into elegant patterns, which became very fashionable, and was called after himself _Opus Alexandrinum_. The infamous Heliogabalus had previously paved some of the courts of the Palatine with such intarsio work, but his cousin Alexander Severus, following his example, adorned with it all the terraces and walks around, and the pavements within, the isolated villas called Diætæ, dedicated to his mother Mammæa, which he added to the Palatine buildings. We have examples of this beautiful kind of tesselated pavement in some of the chambers of the Baths of Caracalla; and it is highly probable that the _Opus Alexandrinum_ in the transept and middle nave of the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere is in part at least contemporaneous with Alexander Severus, who conceded the ground on which the original oratory stood to Pope Calixtus I. in 222, for the special use of the Christians. If this be so, we have in this first place of Christian worship established in Rome the first instance of the application of _Opus Alexandrinum_ to the decoration of a church. In the middle ages the fashion was beautifully imitated by artists of the Cosmati family and their school; and the mosaic pavements of this kind in the medieval churches of Rome are no older than this period. But we have reason to believe that the _Opus Alexandrinum_ in two of the chapels of Santa Maria degli Angeli was taken from the Baths of Diocletian; while the splendid pavement of the whole church, naves, transept, and choir of Santa Croce in Jerusalemme, formed originally part of the decorations of the Sessorian Palace of Sextus Varius, the father of Heliogabalus, after whom the church is sometimes called the Sessorian Basilica. The flooring of the whole upper church of San Clemente was transferred from the older subterranean church, which derived its pavement from some of the ruins of the Palatine or the Forum; and the serpentine fragments, which enter very largely into the composition of the curious old mosaic floor of Ara Coeli must have had a similar origin as far back as the time of its founder, Gregory the Great. The _Lapis Lacedæmonius_ must have been very abundant in Rome during the time of Alexander Severus--judging from the quantities that are made up into mosaics in the churches, and the heaps of broken fragments that are found on the Palatine and at the Marmorata. The circular space around the obelisk in the Piazza of St. Peter's to a considerable extent is paved with it; and specimens of it frequently occur among the ordinary road-metal in the city and neighbourhood. Sicilian jaspers, so called, though really marbles, and purely calcareous, because of their resemblance in colour and form of the blotches to jasper, were wrought in great variety in the quarries in the neighbourhood of the celebrated Taormina, and were transported in the form of columns to Rome. Siliceous jaspers, obtained from the crystalline rocks of Asia Minor, Egypt, and Northern Italy, were also used for columns; and their brilliant red, green, and yellow hues, highly polished, contrasted beautifully with the white marbles of the interiors of the palaces. An even more sumptuous material called _Murrha_ was employed, which has been identified with fluor-spar, a translucent crystalline stone marked with blue, red, and purple, similar to the beautiful substance found near Matlock in Derbyshire. Of this fluor-spar were formed the celebrated murrhine cups which were in use in Rome in the days of Pliny among the richest people, and for which fabulous prices were paid. Several blocks of this material were found some years ago at the Marmorata which had been originally imported from Parthia in the reign of Hadrian. One of them was employed by the Jesuits, when cut up into thin slices, in ornamenting the principal altar in the church of Il Gesu. One of the chambers in the Baths of Titus was paved with slabs of the finest lapis lazula--the _Lapis Cyanus_ of the ancients--derived from the spoils of the Golden House of Nero, and originally procured by order of the luxurious tyrant from Persia and the neighbourhood of Lake Baikal. We can trace fragments of this exquisite pavement in the decoration of the chapel of St. Ignatius in the Church of the Jesuits. The globe, three feet in diameter, over the altar, beneath which repose the remains of Ignatius Loyola, is sheathed with this most precious stone, whose brilliant blue, contrasting with the white marble of the group of the Trinity--one of whose members holds it in His hands--has a splendid effect. The rare and costly marbles with which the Church of Il Gesu is profusely adorned were mostly taken from the ruins of the Baths of Titus by Cardinal Farnese in 1568. From the same source came also the magnificent sarcophagus, sheathed with lapis lazula, under the altar of St. Ignazio, which holds the body of St. Luigi Gonzaga. But it is impossible, within the limits of this chapter, to describe fully the relics of other precious and beautiful stones which may be found among the ruins of ancient Rome, or among the churches to which they have been transferred. Profuse as were the ancient Romans in their general expenditure, upon no objects did they lavish their wealth so extravagantly as upon their favourite marbles and precious stones for the decoration of their public buildings and their private houses. No effort was spared that Rome might be adorned with the richest treasures of the mineral kingdom from all parts of the world. Slaves and criminals were made to minister to this luxury in the various quarries of the Roman dominions, which were the penal settlements of antiquity. The antiquary Ficoroni counted the columns in Rome in the year 1700, and he found no less than eight thousand existing entire; and yet these were but a very small proportion of the number that must once have been there. The palaces and modern churches of Rome owe, as I have said, all their ornaments to this passion of the ancients. There is not a doorstep nor a guardstone at the corner of the meanest court in Rome which is not of marble, granite, or porphyry from some ancient building. Almost all the houses, as Raphael said, have been built with lime made of the costly old marbles. The very streets in the newly-formed parts of the city are macadamised with the fragments of costly baths and pillars. I took up one day, out of curiosity, some of the road-metal near the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, and I identified in the handful no less than a dozen varieties of the most beautiful marbles and porphyries from Greece, Africa, and Asia. And when we remember that all these foreign stones were brought into Rome during the interval between the end of the Republic and the time of Constantine--a period of between three hundred and four hundred years--we can form some idea of the extraordinary wealth and luxury of the Imperial City when it was in its prime. CHAPTER XI THE VATICAN CODEX Among the numberless objects of interest to be seen in Rome, a very high place must be assigned to the Codex Vaticanus, probably the oldest vellum manuscript in existence, and the richest treasure of the great Vatican Library. This famous manuscript, which Biblical scholars designate by the letter B, contains the oldest copy of the Septuagint, and the first Greek version of the New Testament. In addition to the profound interest which its own intrinsic value has inspired, it has been invested with a halo of romance seldom associated with dry palæographical studies--on account of the unreasonable jealousy and capricious conduct of its guardians. For a long time it was altogether inaccessible for study to Biblical scholars, and few were allowed even to see it. These restrictions, however, have now happily to a considerable extent been removed; and provided with an order, easily obtained from the Vatican librarian, or from the Prefect of the sacred palaces, in reply to a polite note, any respectable person is permitted to inspect it. The first feeling which one has in the Vatican Library is that of surprise. You might walk through the Great Hall and adjoining galleries without suspecting the place to be a library at all; for the bookcases that line the lower portion of the walls are closed with panelled doors, painted in arabesque on a ground of white and slate colour, and surrounded by gilded mouldings, and not a single book is visible. The vaulted ceiling of the rooms is glowing with gold and ultramarine; the walls are adorned with beautiful frescoes representing the different Councils of the Church; and magnificent tables of polished Oriental granite, and of various precious marbles, vases of porphyry, malachite, and alabaster, and priceless candelabra of Sevres china--the gifts of kings and emperors--occupy the spaces between the pillars and pilasters, and cast their rich shadows on the gleaming marble pavement. A vast variety of objects of rare beauty, artistic value, and antique interest arrest the attention, and would amply reward the study of weeks. The nucleus of the present magnificent collection of books and manuscripts was formed in the Lateran Palace in the year 465 by Bishop Hilary; and, augmented by succeeding pontiffs, the accumulated stores were transferred in 1450 by Pope Nicholas V., the founder of Glasgow University, to the Vatican. What Nicholas began was completed by Sixtus IV. The library was classified according to subjects and writers, and Demetrius Lucensis, under the direction of Platina, made a catalogue of it which is still in existence. During this period Vatican MSS. were lent out to students, as attested by authentic registers containing the autographs of those who enjoyed the privilege. A little later the celebrated Vatican printing press was annexed to the library; and the office of correctors or readers for the accurate printing of ancient books which were wanting in the library was instituted. Pope Sixtus V. erected the present splendid edifice, and used every effort to increase the great collection. Several valuable accessions were made to it after this date, including the library of the Elector Palatine of Germany, the library of the Dukes of Urbino, the libraries of Christina, Queen of Sweden, of the Ottoboni, commenced by Pope Alexander VIII., and of the Marquis Capponi, and the MSS. taken from the convent of S. Basilio at Grotta Ferrata. Under Innocent XIII. in 1721 an attempt was made to prepare for the press a full catalogue of all the MSS. in every language. It was edited by Joseph Simon Assemani and Stephen Evodius, and three volumes were published. But the task was found too great for any one's strength, and was given up finally on account of the political disturbances of the time. The library is a vast unexplored mine of wealth. Unknown literary treasures are contained in the closed cabinets. Among the thirty thousand manuscripts may be hid some of the ancient classical and early Christian treatises, which have been lost for ages, and whose recovery would excite the profoundest interest throughout the civilised world. A large number of these manuscripts had once belonged to the library of the famous Monastery of Bobbio, in the north of Italy, founded in the year 614 by the Irish St. Columbanus. The Irish and Scotch monks who inhabited this monastery were in the dark ages the most zealous collectors of manuscripts in Europe. At the close of the fifteenth century the convent was impoverished and deserted by its lawful occupants; and the Benedictine monks who succeeded them gave away their literary treasures partly to the Ambrosian Library at Milan and partly to the Vatican Library. Cardinal Angelo Mai, who discovered more lost works and transcribed more ancient manuscripts than any one else, found among these treasures in Milan and Rome several most interesting treatises that had long passed into utter oblivion. But though permission is freely granted to duly accredited visitors who may be desirous of consulting manuscripts, the labour of searching among the huge bewildering piles would be overwhelming, and the thought of it would at once paralyse effort. There is no proper catalogue of the printed books; and the list of manuscripts is so deficient as to be altogether worthless. During six months, from November till June, the library is open for study every day, except Thursday and the numerous saints' days, whose recurrence can be easily ascertained beforehand so as to prevent disappointment. I cannot imagine a greater privilege to a student. It is the highest luxury of learning to explore the literary wealth of these princely apartments, that seem to have a climate of their own, like the great Basilica close at hand--the climate of eternal spring--and whose atmosphere breathes the associations of much that is grandest and most memorable in human history. To the charms of some of the noblest productions of human genius working by pen, or pencil, or chisel--adorning roof, and wall, and floor--and vanishing down the long vista in a bright perspective of beauty--Nature adds her crown of perfection. For nothing can exceed the loveliness of the views from the windows of the Papal gardens outside, with their gay flowery parterres, sparkling fountains, depths of shadowy glades and half-hidden sculptured forms of rarest beauty; and, beyond, a purple mountain range, summits old in story, closing up the enchanted vista through the ruddy stems and deep green foliage of tall stone-pines; the whole glowing in the brilliant sunshine and the exquisite violet transparency of the Roman sky. How delightful to spend whole days there and forget the commonplace present in converse with the master minds of the ages, and in dreams of the heroic past; the half-closed shutters and drawn curtains producing a cool and drowsy atmosphere, in delicious contrast with the broiling sun without! Learning, however, would be too apt to fall asleep, and be shorn of its strength on the Delilah lap of such splendid luxury. A few of the most interesting books and manuscripts are now contained in two handsome cabinets placed in the centre of the Great Hall of the library. These cabinets have two cases, an outer and an inner one, and are carefully double-locked. The librarian opened them for me, and displayed their contents, which are usually seen only through a thick plate of protecting glass. In the one cabinet were a manuscript of the Latin poet Terence, of the fourth and fifth century; the celebrated palimpsest of Cicero de Republica, concealed under a version of St. Augustine's Commentary on the Psalms, the oldest Latin manuscript in existence; the famous Virgil of the fifth century, with the well-known portrait of Virgil; the Homilies of St. Gregory of Nazianzum; the folio Hebrew Bible, which was the only thing that Duke Frederico of Urbino reserved for himself of the spoil at the capture of Volterra in 1472, and for which the Jews in Venice offered its weight in gold; a sketch of the first three cantos of the Gerusalemme Liberata in the handwriting of Tasso; a copy of Dante in the handwriting of Boccaccio; and several of Petrarch's autograph sonnets. In the other cabinet is the great gem and glory of the Library--the Codex Vaticanus, in strange association with a number of the love-letters of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, in French and English. This curious correspondence--which, after all that subsequently happened between the English monarch and the Papal Court, we are very much surprised to see in such a place--is in wonderful preservation. But though perfectly legible, the archaic form of the characters and the numerous abbreviations make it extremely difficult to decipher them. The tragic ending of this most inauspicious love-making invests with a deep pathos these faded yellow records of it that seem like the cold, gray ashes of a once glowing fire. In the same cabinet is seen another and altogether different production of this royal author--namely, the dedication copy of the "Assertio Septem Sacramentorum adversus Martinum Luther," written in Latin by Henry VIII. in defence of the seven Roman Catholic Sacraments against Luther, and sent to Leo X., with the original presentation address and royal autograph. The book is a good thick octavo volume, printed in London, in clear type, on vellum, with a broad margin. Only two copies are in existence, one in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and the other in the Vatican. For this theological dissertation Henry VIII. received from the Pope the title of "Defender of the Faith," which has descended to the Protestant monarchs of England ever since, and is now inscribed on our coinage. Luther, several of whose manuscripts are in the Library, published a vigorous reply, in which he treated his royal opponent with scant ceremony. The author himself had no scruple in setting it aside when his personal passions were aroused. And Rome has put this inconsistent book beside the letters to Anne Boleyn, as it were in the pillory here for the condemnation of the world. But deeply interesting as were these literary curiosities, I soon turned from them and became engrossed with the priceless manuscript of the Greek Scriptures. I had very little time to inspect it, for I was afraid to exhaust the patience of the librarian. In appearance the manuscript is a quarto volume bound in red morocco; each of the pages being about eleven inches long, and the same in breadth. This is the usual size of the greater number of ancient manuscripts, very few being in folio or octavo, and in this particular resembling printed books. Each page has three columns, containing seventeen or eighteen letters in a line. It is supposed that this arrangement of the writing was borrowed directly from the most primitive scrolls, whose leaves were joined together lengthwise, so that their contents always appeared in parallel columns, as we see in the papyrus rolls that have recently been discovered. This peculiarity in the two or three manuscripts which possess it, is regarded as a proof of their very high antiquity. The writing on almost every page is so clear and distinct that it can be read with the greatest ease. What astonishes one most is the admirable preservation of this Codex, notwithstanding that it must be nearly sixteen hundred years old. It has quite a fresh and recent look; indeed many manuscripts not fifty years old look much more ancient. No one, looking at the faded handwriting of Tasso, Petrarch, and Henry VIII., beside it, would imagine that they were newer by upwards of twelve hundred years. This peculiarity it shares in common with the architectural remains of imperial Rome, which time has dealt so tenderly with that they appear far more recent than the picturesque ruins of our medieval castles and abbeys. This singular look of freshness in the Vatican manuscript is owing to three causes. In the first place, the vellum upon which it is written is exceedingly fine and close-grained in texture, and therefore has resisted the dust and discoloration of centuries, just as the thin and close-grained Roman brick has withstood the ravages of time. Every one is struck with the wonderful beauty of this vellum, composed of the delicate skins of very young calves. And this feature is a further proof of the high antiquity of the Codex, for the oldest manuscripts are invariably written on the thinnest and whitest vellum, while those of later ages are written on thick and rough parchment which speedily became discoloured. In the second place, we have reason to believe that the manuscript was for many ages almost hermetically sealed in some forgotten recess of the Lateran and Vatican Libraries, and thus unconsciously guarded from the attacks of time. In the third place, a careful scrutiny of the individual lines reveals the curious fact that the whole manuscript, six or seven centuries after it had been written, was gone over by a writer, who, finding the letters faint and yellow, had touched them up with a blacker and more permanent ink. It is a strange circumstance that none of the facsimile representations of the pages of the manuscript that have been published give a correct idea of the original, with the exception of that of Dean Burgon in 1871. Not only do the number of lines in a given space in all the so-called facsimiles differ from that of the manuscript, but the general character of the letters is widely different. The importance of seeing the original, therefore, for purposes of study, is apparent. The uncial letters are very small and neat, upright and regular, and their breadth is nearly equal to their height. They are very like those in the manuscript rolls of Herculaneum. Originally the manuscript had no ornamental initial letters, marks of punctuation, or accents; a small interval of the breadth of a letter at the end of particular sections serving as a simple mode of punctuation. The number of such divisions into sections is very considerable,--one hundred and seventy occurring in St. Matthew; sixty-one in St. Mark; one hundred and fifty-two in St. Luke; and eighty in St. John,--and in this respect the Vatican Codex is unique. Where these divisions do not occur, the writing is continuous for several consecutive pages. Thus, while each of the beatitudes, each of the parables, and each of the series of generations in the genealogies of our Lord, are marked off into separate paragraphs by the small empty spaces referred to, there is no break in the text from the twenty-fourth verse of the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew to the seventeenth verse of the twentieth chapter. So much has space been economised, that when the writer finished one book he began another at the top of the very next column; and throughout the manuscript there are very few breaks, and only one entire column left blank. This empty space is very significant; it occurs at the end of the eighth verse of the sixteenth chapter of St. Mark's Gospel,--thus omitting altogether the last twelve verses with which we are familiar. That this was done purposely is evident, for it involved a departure from the writer's usual method of continuous writing. The blank column testifies that he knew of the existence of this gap at the end of the Gospel, but did not know of any thoroughly trustworthy material with which to fill it up. And acting upon this authority our Revisers have printed the passage that has been supplied as an appendix, and not as a portion of the original Gospel of St. Mark. The only attempt at ornamentation in the Vatican manuscript is found at the end of Lamentations, Ezekiel, St. John's Gospel, and the Acts of the Apostles, where "an arabesque column of crossed lines, with dots in the intersections at the edge," and surmounted by the well-known monogram of Christ, so frequent in the inscriptions of the Catacombs, composed of the letter P in a cruciform shape, has been delicately and skilfully executed by the pen of the scribe. Most of the books have also brief titles and subscriptions. Such was the original state of the Codex, but the critic of the ninth or tenth century already referred to introduced a great many changes. Not only did he deepen the colour of the ink; he, as Dean Burgon tells us, also accentuated the words carefully throughout, marking all the initial vowels with their proper breathings. He also placed instead of the small initial letter of each book an illuminated capital six times the size of the original uncial, painted in bright red and blue colours which have still retained nearly all their old brilliancy. At the top of the column, whenever a new book commenced, he also placed a broad bar painted in green, with three little red crosses above it. Nor was this all; he exercised his critical judgment in revising the text, and marking his approval or disapproval by certain significant indications. "What he approved of he touched up anew with ink, and added the proper accents; what he condemned he left in the faded brown caligraphy of the original and without accentuation." In this way the Codex may be called a kind of palimpsest, in which we have some portions of the original manuscript, and the rest overlaid with the later revision. We must discriminate carefully between these two elements; for it is obvious that it is the oldest portion that is most interesting and suggestive. The Codex consists of upwards of one thousand five hundred pages, of which two hundred and eighty-four are assigned to the New Testament. Originally it contained the whole Bible, and also the Apocrypha and the Epistle of St. Clement to the Corinthians; which last was so much esteemed by the early Christians that it was regularly read in the churches, and bound up with the Scriptures--to which circumstance, indeed, we are indebted for its preservation to our own time. At present the greater part of Genesis and a part of the Psalms are missing from the old Testament; while, in the New Testament, the Epistle to Philemon, the three Pastoral Epistles, the latter part of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Apocalypse, in the original handwriting, are lost; their place having been supplied, it is said, in the fifteenth century, from a manuscript belonging to Cardinal Bessarion. From the evidence of its materials--arrangement and style of writing--the very high antiquity of this Codex may be inferred. It is generally supposed to have been written in the beginning of the fourth century. Vercellone, who edited Cardinal Mai's version of it, argues, from the remarkable correspondence of its text with that used by Cyril of Alexandria in his Commentary on St. John, that it must have been written at Alexandria, where there was a band of remarkably skilful caligraphists. He believes that it was one of the fifty manuscript copies of the Holy Scriptures which Eusebius, by order of the emperor Constantine the Great, got prepared in the year 332 for the use of the Christian Church in the newly-formed capital of Constantinople. And a circumstance that seems to corroborate this opinion is, that the Vatican Codex does not contain, as has already been mentioned, the last twelve verses of St. Mark's Gospel, a peculiarity which Eusebius says belongs to the best manuscripts of the Gospels. On this supposition, the Vatican Codex would be the very first edition of the Bible that had the seal of a sovereign authority. But it may be of even older date than the time of Constantine, for its marginal references do not correspond with the Eusebian canons; and this fact would seem to imply that it belonged to the third century. Its only rival in point of antiquity is the famous Sinaitic Codex, known by the Hebrew letter [Hebrew: alef], discovered in a most romantic way by Tischendorf in the Convent of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai. Tischendorf has pronounced a decided opinion, not only that this manuscript is of the same age as the Vatican one, but that the Vatican manuscript was written by one of the four writers who, he infers from internal evidence, must have been employed upon the Sinaitic Codex. This opinion, however, has been disputed by other scholars; and it seems improbable, for the Sinaitic Codex has four columns to the page, whereas the Vatican Codex has only three. Its uncial letters are also much larger and plainer than those of the Vatican manuscript; and it has the Ammonian sections and Eusebian canons written in all probability by the original hand. There can be little doubt that the Vatican manuscript goes, if not farther, at least as far back in date as the Council of Nice, and is the oldest and most valuable of extant monuments of sacred antiquity. It may have been transcribed directly from some Egyptian papyrus, or through the medium of only one intervening prototype. Perhaps it was a single copy saved from the fate of many surrendered to be burned by the class of Christian renegades called _traditores_, who averted the martyr's death in the great Diocletian persecution by giving up the sacred books of their religion to their enemies. For this pagan emperor endeavoured not only to deprive the Christian Church of its teachers, like his predecessors, but also to destroy the sacred writings upon which the faith of the Church was founded, and whose character and claims were beginning at this time to be generally recognised. The Alexandrine Codex--which is placed first on the list of uncial manuscripts, and therefore distinguished by the letter A--belongs undoubtedly to a more recent time. It is said by tradition to have been written by a noble Egyptian martyr named Thecla about the beginning of the fifth century, and was sent as a present to Charles I. by Cyrillus Lucaris, patriarch of Constantinople, who brought it from Alexandria. It is now one of the greatest treasures of the British Museum. The voice of tradition is confirmed by internal evidence, for it has only two columns in a page, while capital letters of different sizes abound, and vermilion is frequently introduced--all marks of the period indicated. How or when the Codex Vaticanus was brought to the Vatican Library is a matter that is altogether involved in obscurity. It probably formed part of the library in the Lateran Palace, which goes nearly as far back as the time of Constantine, and was transferred along with the other contents of that library to the Vatican in 1450 by Pope Nicholas V. We first hear of it distinctly in a letter written to Erasmus in 1533 by Sepulveda; although there is a somewhat obscure reference to it a few years earlier in the correspondence of the Papal librarian Bombasius with Erasmus. A Roman edition of the Septuagint portion based upon the Vatican MS. appeared in 1587. After that period to 1780 it was several times collated; among others, by Bartolocci, the Vatican librarian; by Bentley, who employed for the purpose the Abbate Mico and Rulotta; and by Birch of Copenhagen, who travelled under the auspices of the King of Denmark. Along with many of the best sculptures and most valuable art-treasures of the Vatican, the precious Codex was taken to Paris in 1810 by order of Napoleon Buonaparte, that unscrupulous robber of foreign palaces and churches for the aggrandisement of his own capital; and while there it was carefully examined by the celebrated critic, J.L. Hug, who was the first to determine, from the nature of its materials and its internal evidence, its very great antiquity. When it was restored, along with the other spoils of the great Roman Palace, it was sealed up by its jealous possessors, and could no longer be consulted for critical purposes. In 1843 Tischendorf could only see it for two days of three hours each. Tregelles, who went to Rome in 1845 for the special purpose of consulting the Codex, provided with a strongly-recommendatory letter of introduction from Cardinal Wiseman, was only permitted to see it, but not to transcribe any of its readings. His pockets, as he himself tells us, were searched, and his pen, ink, and paper taken away, before he was allowed to open it; and if he looked at a passage too long the manuscript was snatched rudely from his hands by the two prelates in watchful attendance. When Dean Alford, in 1861, made use of the manuscript for four days, his labours of collation were carried on in the face of much opposition from the librarian, who insisted that the order of Antonelli permitted him only to see the manuscript, but not to verify passages in it. The reason alleged to the scholars of Europe for this childish jealousy was that the authorities of the Vatican were themselves preparing to publish a thorough collation, and they did not wish the glory of the achievement to pass away from Rome. Cardinal Mai began, indeed, to prepare an edition for publication in 1828; but it did not appear till 1857, three years after the cardinal's death, under the learned editorship of Vercellone. There was a rumour copied into the _Edinburgh Review_ from Sir Charles Lyell's work on the United States, that the cardinal was prevented from publishing his work by Pope Gregory XVI., on account of its variations from the Vulgate, which had been solemnly sanctioned by the decrees of the Council of Trent and the Church's claims to infallibility. It was further asserted that he finally obtained permission to publish his edition on condition that he inserted within brackets the celebrated text 1 John v. 7, which was wanting in the manuscript. Whether this was true or not, it is certain that what the learned cardinal gave to the world was more an edition, a critical recension of the text, than a faithful transcript of the Vatican Codex. Although he had the MS. with him at his residence in the Palazzo Altieri--a circumstance which gave rise to the belief at the time that it had disappeared during the French occupation of Rome--he could only bestow upon the arduous task the scanty leisure available from more engrossing duties. The work was therefore so imperfectly done that the cardinal himself was reluctant to publish it; and the learned and honest Barnabite under whose editorial auspices it appeared was obliged to append a formidable list of errata, and to make a gentle apology in his preface for his friend's inaccuracies. But, with all its defects, the five quarto volumes of the cardinal's reprint has added largely to our critical knowledge of the Codex; and it derives a special interest from the circumstance that it was the first time the Greek Scriptures had ever been published in Rome. Since then Tischendorf, during his second visit to the Eternal City, had an audience of Pope Pius IX., and offered to bring out at his own expense an edition of the Vatican Codex similar to that which he had prepared, under the auspices of the Russian emperor, of the Sinaitic Codex. This request the Pope refused, under the old pretext that he wished to publish such an edition himself. Tischendorf, however, was allowed to use the manuscript more freely than on the former occasion; though several times it was taken away from him, and his labours interrupted, because of alleged breaches of faith on his part. The result of this unusual privilege was that the great Textuary has issued by far the most accurate and satisfactory edition which we possess at present. Pius IX. carried out his intention of publishing a Roman edition in five volumes, printed by the famous press of the Propaganda. The New Testament instalment appeared under the editorship of Vercellone and Cozza in 1868; but Vercellone dying soon after, the subsequent volumes were prepared under less able supervision. The famous manuscript therefore labours under the disadvantage of uncertainty, there being no guarantee that any reading is really that of the original. And while the Alexandrine Codex has been reproduced by photography, and the Sinaitic Codex has been faithfully published, the exact palæography, or the genuine text as it stands, of the Vatican Codex is still a desideratum among scholars. The total disappearance of all manuscripts previous to the Vatican Codex is a matter of surprise, for it has been calculated on sufficient evidence that many thousands of copies of the Gospels were circulated among Christians at the end of the second century. The loss may be attributed to the fact that the older manuscripts were written on less enduring materials. Previous to the second century the principal writing material was paper made of papyrus, a plant found at one time not only in Egypt, but also in the north of Palestine and various parts of southern Italy and Sicily, although now almost extirpated; and we have reason to believe, from one or two incidental notices in St. John's writings, that it was the material employed by the apostles themselves. This papyrus paper was of a very perishable nature, and manuscripts written on it, apart from the wear and tear of continual use, would succumb to the process of decay in a comparatively short period. We are indebted for the preservation of all the papyrus manuscripts that have come down to us from a remote antiquity to the fact of their having been kept in exceptionally favourable circumstances, as in the hermetically-sealed interiors of Egyptian tombs. Those exposed to the air have all disappeared ages ago. In the second century parchment was brought into common use as a writing material, and papyrus paper gradually fell into disuse. And with the change of material the shape of manuscripts was changed; the ancient form of the papyrus-roll giving place, in manuscripts written on parchment, to the form of books with leaves. How we should value the original rolls which contained the handwriting of the evangelists and apostles! With what profound interest should we gaze upon the signature and salutation of St. Paul affixed to the Epistles which he dictated to an amanuensis on account of his defective eyesight! How we should prize the apostolic autograph of the Epistle to the Galatians, of which the writer says, "Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand." What a thrill would pass through us at the sight of those two pastoral Epistles, at the close of which St. John says,--"I had many things to write, but I will not with pen and ink write unto thee"! Our legitimate veneration, however, would be apt to pass over into idolatrous superstition. We should worship such precious documents as the early Christians worshipped the relics of the saints. It was, therefore, a wise providential arrangement that such a temptation should have been taken out of the way. All the original manuscripts of the sacred writings disappeared, on account of the fragile character of their materials, probably in a few years after the death of the writers, no special care having been taken to preserve them; and, as Dr. Westcott has remarked, not a single authentic appeal is made to them in the religious disputes regarding the exact words of certain passages in the Gospels and Epistles in the writings of the second century. But though the Vatican Codex is the oldest manuscript of the New Testament in existence, it does not follow from that circumstance that it is the most reliable. Widely different views of its critical value are entertained by scholars. By some it has been accepted as the most authoritative of all versions, while others have regarded it as one of the most corrupt and imperfect. Indeed the conjecture has been hazarded that the very circumstance of its continued preservation during so many centuries is a proof that it was an unreliable copy long laid aside, and therefore exempt from the wear and tear under which genuine copies of the same date have long ago perished. These extreme views, however, are unjust. While it is not free from many gross inaccuracies and faults, it presents upon the whole a very fair idea of the Greek Vulgate of the early Church, and is worthy of as much respect at least as any single document in existence. The chief peculiarity of the Codex is the large number of important omissions in it; so that, as Dr. Dobbin says, it presents an abbreviated text of the New Testament. A few of these omissions were wilfully made, while the large majority were no doubt caused by the carelessness of the writer in transcribing from the copy before him; for there are several instances of his having written the same words and clauses twice over. On the supposition of the MS. being one of the fifty prepared at Constantine's order, the extreme haste with which such a task would be executed would account for the multitude of clerical errors. Besides the last verses of the Gospel of St. Mark already alluded to, and no less than three hundred and sixty-four other omissions in the same Gospel of greater or less moment, the doxology at the end of the Lord's Prayer, in Matthew vi. 13, is wanting; as also the description of the agony of the Saviour and the help of the angel in Luke xxii. 43, 44; the important clause, "For he was before me," in John i. 27; the miraculous troubling of the water in the Pool of Bethesda in John v. 3, 4; the narrative of the adulterous woman in John vii. 53 to viii. 11; the question of Philip and the answer of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts viii. 37; the significant and affecting incidents in Paul's conversion mentioned in Acts ix. 5, 6; and the well-known disputed text of the _Three witnesses in Heaven_, in 1 John v. 7. These omitted passages, which, from internal evidence, apart from the external testimony of the largest number of critical documents, we must acknowledge to be genuine, are the most serious of the lacunæ, amounting altogether to the extraordinary number of two thousand four hundred and fifty-six. They give the document a very distinctive character; while even the less striking disappearances from the text, which can only be apprehended on a close collation, more or less affect the sense. German critics have stamped several of these omissions with their approbation, especially those referring to the supernatural, owing to their well-known repugnance to the miraculous element in Scripture. There are other peculiarities of the Codex which greatly interested me; but the discussion of them would require me to go too much into critical details. I must mention, however, the occasional use in the manuscript of a Latinised orthography. The name of Silvanus, for instance, mentioned in 1 Peter v. 12, is rendered into the Latinised Greek _Silbanou_, instead of Silouanou, the common Greek form; and in 2 Peter iii. 10, instead of the last word of the verse, _katakaêsetai_, "shall be burned up," occurs the singular word _eurethesetai_,--which means, "shall be found." The Syriac and one Egyptian version have the reading "shall not be found"; and either the "not" was accidentally omitted when the Vatican Codex was copied from an earlier exemplar that had that reading, or the writer had some confused idea of the Latin word _urerentur_, "shall be burnt up," in his mind, and adopted the word _eurethesetai_ from its resemblance to it--as a Latin root with a Greek inflection. Some curious examples of Latin forms and constructions might be given; and this circumstance has led to the hypothesis that the origin of the Vatican manuscript might, after all, have been Italian, and not Alexandrian as is commonly supposed. The Codex has also been accused of theological bias; for in John i. 18, "only begotten God" is substituted for "only begotten Son." This is considered by some to be a reference to the polemics of the fourth century regarding the Arian doctrines; although this supposition would make it of later date. The order of the books of the New Testament in the Codex is different from that with which we are familiar. The Catholic Epistles from James to Jude follow the Acts, according to the order of the ancient Greek Church; then come the Pauline Epistles; and the Epistle to the Hebrews comes in between the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians and First Timothy. Its sections, however, are numbered as if it had originally been placed between the Epistles to the Galatians and Ephesians; thus showing that this was the arrangement in the older document from which the Codex was copied. One of the Moscow manuscripts, it may be mentioned in connection with this novelty in location, places the Epistle to the Hebrews in a position as abnormal as in the Vatican manuscript--namely, before the Epistle to the Romans. In the formation of the Received Text of our New Testament, the Vatican manuscript was not employed. The basis of the early printed editions--the Elzevir and those of Robert Stephens the celebrated Parisian printer--was the Greek New Testament of Erasmus, published in 1516, compiled with the aid of such manuscripts as he found at Basle, and the Complutensian Polyglot--so called after Complutum, the modern Alcala, in Spain, where it was printed in 1522, under the patronage of Cardinal Ximenes, whose text was said to have been formed from manuscripts sent from the Papal Library at Rome--the Vatican Codex certainly not being among the number, as abundantly appears from internal evidence. But though the Vatican manuscript was not employed in the construction of our Authorised Version, it has recently been used as the chief authority by the New Testament Revisers. Drs. Westcott and Hort have built up their Greek text with special deferential regard to it; and this exclusive devotion has been severely condemned by several critics, such as Dean Burgon, who regard it as an endeavour to balance a pyramid upon its apex. But apart from the contradictory views of such textuaries, there can be no doubt that the Vatican Codex has been of the greatest service in these later days in correcting the Authorised Version, and helping to restore the sacred text as nearly as possible to the purity of the original autographs. And it has added its most valuable testimony to that of the many other ancient manuscripts of the Sacred Writings in existence, that, notwithstanding unimportant variations of readings naturally caused by the great multiplication of copies, the sacred text from the time when it first appeared to the present has been preserved substantially uncorrupt; so that we have the same divine truth presented to us that was presented to the Christians of the ages immediately succeeding the time of the apostles. With all these remarkable associations and points of interest connected with the Vatican manuscript, it is not to be wondered at that I should gaze upon it with a species of veneration. It transported me in imagination to a period when the canon of the New Testament was as yet in a state of flux. The evidence of the Muratorian fragment in the Ambrosian Library at Milan shows to us that the separate books of the New Testament had indeed been collected into one; and a belief in their Divine inspiration equally with the Old Testament Scriptures had begun to be entertained. But there was as yet no prevailing unanimity of opinion as to what books should be admitted into the Canon and what books should be excluded. No formal attempt had as yet been made to reconcile conflicting testimonies; or, if made, the recensions undertaken did not meet with general acceptance. Even a good many years afterwards, as late as at the Council of Laodicea in 361, doubts were still expressed as to the claims of the Apocalypse to canonicity. This book was not originally included in the Vatican Codex; for the manuscript copy of it bound up in the volume is of much later date, and in a different handwriting. And this hesitation regarding the full recognition of certain books, proves the great care that was exercised, and the deep sense of responsibility that was felt, in the collection of the other books. The formation of the sacred Canon was done gradually and imperceptibly; but the result to every thoughtful mind is more suggestive of the inspiration of that Spirit whose operation is like the wind that bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth--than if the process had been more formal and conspicuous. CHAPTER XII ST. PAUL AT PUTEOLI The Gospel first came to Europe in circumstances similar to those in which it came into human history. Through poverty, shame, and suffering--through the manger, the cross, and the sepulchre--did our Saviour accomplish the salvation of the world; through stripes and imprisonment, through the gloom of the inner dungeon and the pain and shame of the stocks, did Paul and Silas declare at Philippi the glad tidings of salvation. Out of the midnight darkness which enveloped the apostles of the Cross, as they sang in the prison, came the marvellous light that was destined to illumine all Europe. Out of the stocks which held fast the feet that came to the shores of the West shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, to proclaim deliverance to the captives, sprang that glorious liberty which has broken every fetter that bound the bodies and souls of men throughout Christendom. After the earthquake that shook the prison walls and released the prisoners came the still, small voice of power, which overthrew the tyrannies and superstitions of ages, and remade society from its very foundations. Very similar were the circumstances in which the apostle landed at the quay of Puteoli. A weary, worn-out prisoner, accused by his own countrymen, on his way to be judged at the tribunal of the Roman emperor, associated with a troop of malefactors, St. Paul disembarked, on the 3d of May of the year 59, from the ship _Castor and Pollux_, after having gone through storm and shipwreck, and first touched the shore of the wonderful land destined afterwards to be the scene of the mightiest triumphs of the Gospel, and the most enlightened centre for its diffusion throughout the world. Like the birth of Rome itself, whose obscure foundation, according to the beautiful myth, was laid by the outcast son of a Vestal Virgin, the kingdom of the despised virgin-born Jesus of Nazareth that cometh not with observation, stole unawares, amid the meanest circumstances, into the very heart of the Roman world. Momentous events were taking place at the time throughout the Roman Empire, attracting all eyes, and engaging the attention of all minds; but the unnoticed landing at Puteoli of the humble Jewish prisoner, judging by its marvellous results, was by far the most important. It marked a new era in the history of the world. And there was something significant in the coincidence that St. Paul should have come to the Italian shore in the ship _Castor and Pollux_, the names not merely of the patrons of sailors, but also of the saviours of Rome. The mighty empire which human tyranny had established has crumbled to pieces, and we walk to-day amid its ruins; but the kingdom of peace and righteousness which Paul came to inaugurate has spread from that coign of vantage over all the earth, and in a world of death and change has impressed upon the minds of men with a new force the idea of the eternal and the unchangeable. Earth holds no fairer scene than that which met the apostle's gaze as he entered the bay of Puteoli. "See Naples, and die," is the cuckoo cry of the modern tourist who visits this enchanted region; and such a vision is indeed worthy to be the last imprinted upon a human retina. It is called by the Italians themselves "Un pezzo di cielo caduto in terra," a piece of heaven fallen upon earth. Shores that curve in every line of beauty, holding out arm-like promontories, into whose embrace the tideless sea runs up; mountain-ranges whose tops in winter are covered with snow, and whose sides are draped with the luxuriant vegetation of the South; a large city rising in a series of semicircular terraces from the deep azure of the sea to the deep azure of the mountains, whose eastern architecture flushes to a vivid rosy hue in the afternoon light like some fabled city of the poets; and dominating the glorious horizon the double peak of Vesuvius forming the centre in which all the features of landscape loveliness are focussed--crowned by its pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. Such is the picture upon which travellers crowd from the ends of the earth to gaze. Nor was the view different in its most important elements in the days of the apostle. The same great forms of the landscape met the eye; and the same magic play of light and colour, the same jewel-points flashing in the waters, the same gleams of purple and crimson wandering over town, and vineyard, and wood, transfigured the scene then, which gives it more than half its loveliness now. But its human elements were different. Swarming with life as are these shores at the present day, they were even more populous then. Where we now wander through picturesque ruins and silent solitudes, prosperous towns and villages stood; and temples, palaces, and summer houses of patrician magnificence crowded upon each other to such an extent that the sea itself was invaded, and an older Venice rose from the waters along the curves of its bays. The shores of Baiæ were the very centre of Roman splendour. The emperor and his court spent a large part of the year there; and noble families, that elsewhere had domains miles in extent, were there satisfied with the smallest space upon which they could build a house and plant a garden. Pompeii and Herculaneum, in all their reckless gaiety, lay, unconscious of danger, at the foot of Vesuvius, then a grassy mountain wooded to the summit with oak and chestnut, and known from time immemorial as a field of pasture for flocks and herds. The Bay of Misenum, now so solitary that the scream of the sea-fowl is almost the only sound that breaks the stillness, was crowded with the vessels of the Roman fleet, commanded by Pliny; and its waters were alive with the pleasure-boats of the patrician youths, filling the air with the music of their laughter and song. Puteoli, or, as it is now called, Pozzuoli, a dull and stagnant fourth-rate town, was then the Liverpool of Italy, carrying on an immense trade in corn between Egypt and the western provinces of the Roman Empire. It rivalled Delos in magnificence, and was called the Little Rome. It had a splendid forum and harbour, and was guarded by fortifications which resisted the repeated attacks of Hannibal. In this region almost every famous Roman of the later days of the Republic and the earlier days of the Empire had his sea-side villa to which he retired from the noise and bustle of the Imperial City. It was the Brighton or more properly the Bath of Rome; for though it was frequented during the burning heats of summer for the sake of its comparative coolness, it was principally chosen as a winter retreat to escape from the frosts and snows of the north. Lucullus carried here the gorgeous luxury and extravagance of his city life; here Augustus and Hadrian had their palaces erected on vast piers thrown out into the sea, whose waters still murmur over their remains; while Cicero built here his _Puteolanum_, delightfully situated on the coast, and surrounded by a shady grove, which he called his Academy, in imitation of Plato, and where he composed his "Academia" and "De Fato." Hardly an inch of the soil but is full of fragments of mosaic pavements. The common stones of the road are often rich marbles, that formed part of imperial structures; and the very dust on which you tread, if analysed, would be found to be a powder of gems and precious stones. But alas! in some of the fairest spots of earth man has been vilest; and like the ancient Cities of the Plain, which stood in a region of Edenic loveliness, the shores of the Bay of Naples were inhabited by a race corrupted with the worst vices of Roman civilisation. Some of the most dreadful crimes that have disgraced humanity were committed on that radiant shore. Yonder sleeps in the azure distance the enchanted isle of Capri, haunted for ever by dreadful memories of the unnameable atrocities with which the Emperor Tiberius had stained its peaceful bowers. On the neighbouring heights of Posilipo are traces of the villa of Vedius, and of the celebrated fish-ponds where he fed his _murenæ_ with the flesh of his disobedient slaves. On the shore of Puteoli the apostle might have seen the remains of one of the maddest freaks of imperial folly--the floating-bridge of Caligula, stretching across the bay for nearly three miles, and decorated with the finest mosaic pavements and sculpture. Over this useless bridge the insane emperor drove in the chariot and armour of Alexander the Great, to celebrate his triumph over the Parthians; and from it, on his return, he ordered the crowd of inoffensive spectators to be hurled into the sea. By withdrawing for the construction of this bridge the ships employed in the harbour, the importation of corn was put a stop to, and a grievous famine, felt even in Rome, was the result. And near at hand was Bauli, where Nero--the very Cæsar to whom it is startling to remember that St. Paul appealed, and before whom he was going to be judged,--only two years before attempted the murder of his own mother, Agrippina, which failed because of her discovery of the plot, but which was most ruthlessly accomplished very soon afterwards. Here too Marcellus was poisoned by Livia, that Tiberius might ascend the throne of Augustus; and Domitian by Nero, that he might enjoy the wealth of his aunt. Here Hadrian, a few days before his own miserable end, compelled his beautiful and accomplished wife, Sabina, to put herself to death, that she might not survive him in such a wretched world. And in the cities at the foot of Vesuvius have been revealed to us, after nature had kindly hidden them for eighteen centuries, tokens of a depravity so utter, that we cannot help looking upon the fiery deluge from the mountain, that soon after St. Paul's visit swept them out of existence, as a Divine judgment like that of Sodom and Gomorrha. And darker even than these monstrosities of wickedness was the divine worship paid on these shores to the Roman emperors. It was a pitiable spectacle when the sailors of an Alexandrian ship, coming into the harbour of Puteoli, gave thanks for their prosperous voyage to the dying Augustus, whom they met cruising on the waters vainly in search of health, and offered him divine honours, which the gratified emperor accepted, and rewarded with gifts. But what shall we think of the worship of the god Caligula and the god Nero? Surely a people who could raise altars and offer sacrifices to such unmitigated monsters must have lost the very conception of religion. Not only virtue, but the very belief in any source of virtue, must have been utterly extirpated in them. When Herod spoke, the people said it was the voice of God; and he was smitten with worms because he gave not God the glory. And surely the superhuman wickedness of the Cæsars may be regarded as a punishment, equally significant, of the fearful blasphemy of the worshipped and the worshippers. No wonder that the shores of Baiæ now present a picture of the saddest desolation. Where man sins, there man suffers. The relation between human crime and the barren wilderness is still as inflexibly maintained as at the first. Until all recollection of the iniquities of the place has passed away it is fitting that these silent shores should remain the desert that they are. We should not wish the old voluptuous magnificence revived; and these myrtle bowers can never more regain the charm of virgin solitudes untainted by man. Italy, like Palestine, has thus an accursed spot in its fairest region--a visible monument to all ages, of the great truth that the tidal wave of retribution will inevitably overwhelm every nation that forgets the eternal distinctions of right and wrong. St. Paul was a man of keen sensibilities and strong imagination. He must therefore at Puteoli have been deeply impressed at once with the loveliness of nature and the wickedness of man. The contrast would present itself to him in a very painful manner. As at Athens--where his spirit was moved within him when he saw the city wholly given up to idolatry--so here he must have had that noble indignation against the iniquities of the place--the outrages committed on the laws of God, and the dishonour done to the nature of man made in the Divine image--to which David and Jeremiah, and all the loftiest spirits of mankind, have given such stern and yet patriotic utterance. What others were callous to, filled him with keen shame and sorrow. He who could have wished that himself were accursed from Christ for his brethren, his kinsmen according to the flesh, must have had a profound pity for these wretched victims of profligacy, who were looking in their ignorance for salvation to a brutal mortal worse than themselves,--"the son of perdition, sitting in the temple of God, showing that he was God." And to this feeling of indignation and sorrow, because of the wickedness of the place, must have been added a feeling of personal despondency. From the significant circumstance that the apostle thanked God, and took courage, when he met the Christian brethren at Apii Forum, we may infer that he had previously great heaviness of spirit. He would be more or less than human, if on setting his foot for the first time on the native soil of the conquerors of his country, and the lords of the whole world, and seeing on every side, even at this distance from the imperial city, overwhelming evidences of the luxury and power of the empire, he did not feel oppressed with a sense of personal insignificance. Evil had throned itself there on the high places of the earth, and could mock at the puny efforts of the followers of Jesus to cast it down. Idolatry had so deeply rooted itself in the interests and passions of men which were bound up in its continuance, that it seemed a foolish dream to expect that it would be supplanted by the preaching of the Cross, which to St. Paul's own people was a stumbling-block and to all other nations foolishness. And who was he that he should undertake such a mission--a weak and obscure member of a despised race, a prisoner chained to a soldier, appealing to Cæsar against the condemnation of his own countrymen. We can well believe, that notwithstanding the sustaining grace that was given to him, the heart of the apostle must have been very heavy when he stood in the midst of the jostling crowd on the quay of Puteoli, and took the first step there on Italian soil of his journey to Rome. He felt most keenly all that a man can feel of the shame and offence of the Cross; but nevertheless he was not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. And his presence there on that Roman quay--a despised prisoner in bonds for the sake of the Gospel--is a picture, that appeals to every heart, of the triumph of Divine strength in the midst of human weakness; and a most striking proof, moreover, that not by might, but by the Spirit of love, does God bring down the strongholds of sin. But God furnished a providential cure for whatever despondency the apostle may have felt. No sooner did he land than he found himself surrounded by Christian brethren, who cordially welcomed him, and persuaded him to remain with them seven days. Such brotherly kindness must have greatly cheered him; and the week spent among these loyal followers of the Lord Jesus must have been a time of bodily and spiritual refreshment opportunely fitting him for the trying experiences before him. Doubtless these brethren were Jewish converts to the Christian faith; for that there were Jewish residents at Puteoli, residing in the Tyrian quarter of the city, we are assured by Josephus; and this we should have expected from the mercantile importance of the place and its intimate commercial relations with the East. How they came under the influence of the Gospel we know not; they may have been among "the strangers of Rome" who came to Jerusalem at Pentecost to keep the national feasts in obedience to the Mosaic Law, and who were then brought to the knowledge of the truth by the preaching of St. Peter; or perhaps they were converts of St Paul's own making, in some of the numerous places which he visited on his missionary tours, and who afterwards came to reside for business purposes at this port. We see in the presence of the Jewish brethren at Puteoli one of the most striking illustrations of the providential pre-arrangements made for the diffusion of the Gospel throughout all nations. The Jews had a more than ordinary attachment to their native land. Patriotism in their case was not only a passion, but a part of their religion; and their love of country was entwined with the holiest feelings of their nature. In Jerusalem alone could God be acceptably worshipped. And yet it was divinely ordered that those who had been for ages the hermits of the human race should become all at once the most cosmopolitan, when the time for imparting to the world the benefits of their isolated religious training had come. And the Jews thus scattered abroad preserved amid their alien circumstances their national worship and customs, and thus became the natural links of connection between the missionaries of the Cross and the Gentiles whom they wished to reach. Through such Jewish channels the Gospel speedily penetrated into remote localities, which otherwise it would have taken a long time to reach. We are struck with distinct traces of the Christian faith in the time of St. Paul in the most unexpected places. For instance, in the National Museum at Naples I have seen rings with Christian emblems engraved upon them, which were found at Pompeii; proving beyond doubt that there had been followers of Jesus even in that dissolute place, who, unlike Lot and his household, were overwhelmed in the same destruction with those whose evil deeds must have daily vexed their righteous souls. The same symbols which we find in the Roman Catacombs,--the palm branch, the sacred fish the monogram of Jesus, the dove, are unmistakably represented on these rings. Some of them are double, indicating that they were used by married persons: one has the palm branch twice repeated; another exhibits the palm and anchor; a third has a dove with a twig in its bill; and one ring has the Greek word _elpis_--hope--inscribed upon it. St. Paul at Puteoli may be said to have dwelt among his own people. Not only was he with his own countrymen and fellow-disciples, but he was in the midst of associations that forcibly recalled his home. The apostle was a citizen of a Greek city, and the language in which he spoke was Greek; and here, in the Bay of Naples, he was in the midst of a Greek colony, where Roman influence had not been able to efface the deep impression which Greece had made upon the place. The original name of the splendid expanse of water before him was the Bay of Cumæ; and Cumæ was absolutely the first Greek settlement in the western seas. Neapolis or Parthenope was the beautiful Greek name of the city of Naples, testifying to its Hellenic origin; and Dicæarchia was the older Greek name of Puteoli, a name used to a late period in preference to its Latin name, derived from the numerous mineral springs in the neighbourhood. The whole lower part of Italy was wholly Greek; its arts, its customs, its literature, were all Hellenic; and its people belonged to the pure Ionic race whose keen imaginations and vivid sensuousness seemed to have been created out of the fervid hues and the pellucid air of their native land. Everywhere the subtle Greek tongue might be heard; and all, so far as Greek influence was concerned, was as unchanged in the days of the apostle as when Pythagoras visited the region, and adopted the inhabitants as the fittest agents in his great scheme of universal regeneration. St. Paul therefore, at Puteoli, might have imagined himself standing on the very soil of classic Hellas, and felt as much at home as in his own native city of Tarsus. This wide diffusion of the Greek language throughout the West as well as the East at this time is another of the remarkable providential pre-arrangements which prepared the way for the preaching of the Gospel throughout the world. A Gentile speech, by a series of wonderful events, was thus made ready over all the world to receive and to communicate the glorious Gospel that was to be preached to all nations. The remains of the ancient pier upon which St. Paul landed may still be seen. Indeed, no Roman harbour has left behind such solid memorials. No less than thirteen of the buttresses that supported its arches are left, three lying under water; all constructed of brick held together by that Roman cement called pozzolana, after the town of Pozzuoli, whose extraordinary tenacity rivals that of the living rock. You can plant your feet upon the very stones upon which the apostle must have stood. And if you happen to be there on the 3d of May you will see a solemn procession of the inhabitants of the decayed town, headed by their priests, celebrating the anniversary of this memorable incident. The first conspicuous object upon which the eye of the apostle would rest on landing would be the Temple of Neptune, of which a few pillars are still standing in the midst of the water. Here Caligula, in his mad passage over his bridge of boats, paused to offer propitiatory sacrifices. Here, too, Cæsar, before he sailed to Greece to encounter the forces of Antony at Actium, sacrificed to Neptune; and here the crew of every ship presented offerings, in order to secure favouring winds and waves when outward bound, or in gratitude when returning home from a successful voyage. Beyond this he would see in all its splendour the famous bathing establishment built over a thermal spring near the sea, which has since been known as the Temple of Serapis, an Egyptian deity, whose worship had spread widely in Italy. Three tall columns of cipollino marble, belonging to the portico of this building, are still standing, with their bases under water; and they have acquired a world-wide interest, especially to geologists, as records of the successive elevations and depressions of the coast-line during the historical period; these changes being indicated on their shafts by the different watermarks and the perforations of marine bivalves or boring-shells well known to be living in the Mediterranean Sea. In the upper part of the town, on a commanding height, he would behold the Temple of Augustus, built for the worship of the deified founder of the Roman Empire. A Christian cathedral dedicated to St. Proculus, who suffered martyrdom in the same year with St. Januarius, containing the tomb of Pergolesi, the celebrated musical composer, now occupies the site of the pagan shrine, and has six of its Corinthian pillars, that looked down upon the apostle as he landed, built into its walls. A temple of Diana and a temple of the Nymphs also adorned the town, from which numerous columns and sculptures have been recently recovered. On every side the apostle would see mournful tokens that the city was wholly given up to idolatry,--to the worship of mortal men and an ignoble crowd of gods and goddesses borrowed from all nations; and yet he had equally sad proofs that the idolatry was altogether a hollow and heartless pretence,--that the superstitious creed publicly maintained by the city had long ceased to command the respect of its recognised defenders. I walked up from the town along the remains of the Via Campana, a cross-road that led from Puteoli to Capua and there joined the famous Appian Way. Along this road the apostle passed on his way to Rome; and it is still paved with the original lava-blocks upon which his feet had pressed. One of the principal objects on the way is the amphitheatre of Nero, with its tiers of seats, its arena, and its subterranean passages, in a wonderful state of preservation, richly plumed with the delicate fronds of the maiden-hair fern, which drapes with its living loveliness so many of the ruins of Greece and Italy. It was here that Nero himself rehearsed the parts in which he wished to act on the more public stage of Rome. The sands of the arena were dyed with the blood of St. Januarius, who was thrown to the wild beasts by order of Diocletian, and whose blood is annually liquefied by a supposititious miracle in Naples at the present day. Behind the amphitheatre the apostle would get a glimpse of the famous Phlegræan Fields so often referred to in the classic poets as the scene of the wars of the gods and the giants. This is the Holy Land of Paganism. All the scenery of the eleventh book of the _Odyssey_ and of the sixth book of the _Æneid_ spreads beneath the eye. At every step you come upon some spot associated with the romantic literature of antiquity. From thence the imaginative shapes of Greek mythology passed into the poetry of Rome. There everything takes us back far beyond the birth of Roman civilisation, and reminds us of the legends of the older Hellenic days, which will exercise an undying spell on the higher minds of the human race down to the latest ages. It is the land of Virgil, whose own tomb is not far off; and under the guidance of his genius we visit the ghostly Cimmerian shores, now bathed in glowing sunshine, and stand on spots that thrilled the hearts of Hercules and Ulysses with awe. There the terrible Avernus, to which the descent was so easy, sleeps in its deep basin, long ago divested by the axe of Agrippa of the impenetrable gloom and mysterious dread which its dark forests had created; its steep banks partly covered with natural copsewood bright with a living mosaic of cyclamens and lilies, and partly formed of cultivated fields. During my visit the delicious odour of the bean blossom pervaded the fields, reminding me vividly of familiar rural scenes far away. Yonder is the subterranean passage called by the common people the Sibyl's Cave, where Æneas came and plucked the golden bough, and, led by the melancholy priestess of Apollo, went down to the dreary world of the dead. It was the general tradition of Pagan nations that the point of departure from this world, as well as the entrance to the next, was always in the west. We find the largest number of the prehistoric relics of the dead on the western shores of our own country. The cave of Loch Dearg--at first connected with primitive pagan rites and subsequently the traditional entrance to the Purgatory of St. Patrick--is situated in the west of Ireland, and corresponds to the cave of the Sibyl and the Lake of Avernus in Italy. Indeed the word Avernus itself bears such a close resemblance to the Gaelic word Ifrinn--the name of the infernal regions, and to the name of Loch Hourn, the Lake of Hell, on the north-west coast of Scotland--that it has given rise to the supposition that it was the legacy of a prehistoric Celtic people who at one time inhabited the Phlegræan Fields. On the other side of Lake Avernus is the Mare Morto, the Lake or Sea of the Dead, with its memories of Charon and his ghostly crew, which now shines in the setting sun like a field of gold sparkling with jewels; and beyond it are the Elysian Fields, the abodes of the blessed, the rich life of whose soil breaks out at every pore into a luxuriant maze of vines and orange trees, and all manner of lovely and fruitful vegetation. Still farther behind is the Acherusian Marsh of the poets, now called the Lake of Fusaro, because hemp and flax are put to steep in it; and the river Styx itself, by which the gods dare not swear in vain, reduced to an insignificant rill flowing into the sea. It is most interesting to think of the apostle Paul being associated with this enchanted region. His presence on the scene is necessary to complete its charm, and to remind us that the vain dreams of those blind old seekers after God were all fulfilled in Him who opened a door for us in heaven, and brought life and immortality to light in the Gospel. St. Paul must have noticed--though Scripture, intent only upon the unfolding of the religious drama, makes no reference to it--the crater of Solfatara, one of the most wonderful phenomena of this wonderful region, for it lay directly in his path, and was only about a mile distant from Puteoli. This was the famous Forum of Vulcan, where the god fashioned his terrible tools, and shook the earth with the fierce fires of his forge. On account of its gaseous fumaroles, and the flames thrown out with a loud roaring noise from one gloomy cavern in its side, this volcano may still be considered active. Its white calcined crater is clothed in some places with green shrubs, particularly with luxuriant sage, myrtle, and white heather; but an eruption took place in it so late as 1198, during which a lava current, a rare phenomenon in this district, flowed from its southern edge to the sea, destroying the ancient cemetery on the Via Puteolana, and forming the present promontory of Olibano. The ground sounds hollow beneath a heavy tread, reminding one unpleasantly that but a thin crust covers the fiery abyss which might break through at any moment. With the exception of Vesuvius, this is the only surviving remnant of the fierce elemental forces which have devastated this coast in every direction. The whole region is one mass of craters of various sizes and ages, some far older than Vesuvius, and others of comparatively recent origin. They are all craters of eruption and not of elevation; and in their formation they have interfered with and in some cases almost obliterated pre-existing ones. Some of them are filled with lakes, and others clothed with luxuriant vineyards, and wild woods fit for the chase, or encircling cultivated fields. To one looking upon it from a commanding position such as the heights of Posilipo, the landscape presents a universally blistered appearance. Hot mineral springs everywhere abound, often associated with the ruins of old Roman baths; and the soil is a white felspathic ash, disposed in layers of such fineness and regularity that they look as if they had been stratified under water, the sea and the shore having alternately given place to each other. Of the white earth abounding on every side, which has given to the place the old name of Campi Leucogæi, and is the result of the metamorphosis of the trachytic tufa by the chemical action of the gases that rise up through the fumaroles, a very fine variety of porcelain--known to collectors as Capo di Monti--used to be made on the hill behind Naples, and it has been supposed that the china clays of Cornwall and other places have been produced from the felspars of the granites in a similar way. The whole of the Solfatara crater has been enclosed for the purpose of manufacturing alum from its soil. On the hillside to the north there are several caverns, called _stufe_, from whence gas and hot steam arise, and these are used by the inhabitants as admirable vapour baths. So late as the year 1538 a terrible volcanic explosion, accompanied with violent earthquakes, happened not far from Puteoli, which threw up from the flat plain on which the village of Tripergola stood, a mountain called Monte Nuovo, four hundred and forty feet high and a mile and a half in circumference, consisting entirely of ashes and cinders, obliterating a large part of the celebrated Leucrine Lake, elevating the site of the temple of Serapis sixteen feet, and then depressing it, and generally changing the old features of this locality. This eruption gave relief to the throes of Lake Avernus, which henceforth ceased to send forth its exhalations, and became the cheerful garden scene which we now behold. Here on a small scale, in the very neighbourhood of man's busiest haunts, occur the cosmical cataclysms which are usually seen only in remote solitudes, and which during the unknown ages of geology have left their indelible records on large portions of the earth's surface. Here we are admitted into the very workshop of Nature, and are privileged to witness her processes of creation. In the neighbourhood of Rome the volcanoes are long extinct. Nature is dead, and there is nothing left but her cold gray ashes. But here we see her in all her vigour, changing and renewing and mingling the ruins of her works in strange association with those of man--the ashes of her volcanoes with the fragments of temples and baths and the houses of Roman senators and poets. The whole region lies over a burning mystery, and one has a constant feeling of insecurity lest the ground should open suddenly and precipitate one into the very heart of it. Naples itself, strange to say, a city of more than five hundred thousand inhabitants, is built in great part within an old broken-down volcanic crater, and the proximity of its awful neighbour shows that it stands perilously on the brink of destruction, and may share at any time the fate of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Were it not for the safety-valves of Vesuvius and Solfatara, the whole intermediate region, with its towns and villages and swarming population, would be blown into the air by the vehement forces that are struggling beneath. It was this elemental war--fiercer, we have reason to believe, in classic times than now--that gave rise to the religious fables of the poets. The gloomy shades of Avernus, the tremendous battles of the gods, the dark pictures of Tartarus and the Stygian river, were the supernatural suggestions of a fiery soil. To the fierce throes of volcanic action we owe the weird mythology of the ancients, which has imparted such a profound charm to the region, and also, strange as it may seem, the surpassing loveliness of Nature herself. The fairest regions of the earth are ever those where the awful power of fire has been at work, giving to the landscape that passionate expression which lights up a human face with its most impressive beauty. The visit of the apostle to Puteoli served many important purposes. He who had sent his people Israel into Egypt and Babylon that they might be benefited by coming into contact with other civilisations, sent St. Paul to this famous region where Greece and Rome--which, geographically and historically, were turned back to back, the face of Greece looking eastward, the face of Italy looking westward--seemed to meet and to blend into each other, in order that his sympathies might be expanded by coming into contact with all that man could realise of earthly glory or conceive of religion. We can trace the overruling Hand that was shaping the destinies of the Church in the course which he was led to take from Jerusalem to Damascus, and thence to Asia Minor, Corinth, Athens, Philippi, Puteoli, and Rome; gathering as he went along the fruits of all the wide diversity of experience and culture characterising these places, to equip him more thoroughly for his work for the Gentiles. And we see also how the doctrines of the Gospel were becoming more clearly and fully unfolded by this method of progression; how questions were settled and principles carried out which have shown to us the exceeding riches of Divine grace in a way that we could not otherwise have known. Like the lines and marks of the chrysalis which appear on the body of the butterfly when it first spreads out its wings to fly--like the folds of the bud which may be seen in the newly-expanded leaf or flower--so Christianity at first emerged from its Jewish sheath with the distinctive marks of Judaism upon it. But as it passed westward from the Holy City, it slowly extricated itself out of the spirit and the trammels of Judaism into the self-restraining freedom which Christ gives to His people. The teaching of the Gospel was fully developed, guarded from all possible misinterpretation, and practically applied to all representative circumstances of men, through its coming into contact with the events, persons, and scenes associated with the wonderful missionary journeyings of the apostle Paul, which began at Jerusalem and terminated at Rome. When the Gospel reached the Imperial City, its relations to Jews and Gentiles, bond and free, were fixed for ever, its own form was perfected, and the conditions for its diffusion matured; and its history henceforth, like that of Rome itself, was synonymous with the history of the world. _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_. WORKS BY THE REV. HUGH MACMILLAN, LL.D., F.R.S.E. BIBLE TEACHINGS IN NATURE. Fifteenth Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth. 6s. "Ably and eloquently written. It is a thoughtful book, and one that is prolific of thought."--_Pall Mall Gazette_. 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"This volume, like all Dr. Macmillan's productions, is very delightful reading, and of a special kind. Imagination, natural science, and religious instruction are blended together in a very charming way."--_British Quarterly Review_. OUR LORD'S THREE RAISINGS FROM THE DEAD. Globe 8vo. 6s. "His narrative style is pleasant, and his reflections sensible."--_Westminster Review_. THE MINISTRY OF NATURE. Seventh Edition. Globe 8vo. 6s. "The author exhibits throughout his writings the happiest characteristics of a God-fearing, and, withal, essentially liberal and unprejudiced mind. Of the Essays themselves we cannot speak in terms of too warm admiration."--_Standard_. "We can give unqualified praise to this most charming and suggestive volume. As studies of nature they are new and striking in information, beautiful in description, rich in spiritual thought, and especially helpful and instructive to all religious teachers. If a preacher desires to see how he can give freshness to his ministry, how he can clothe old and familiar truths in new forms, and so invest them with new attractions, how he can secure real beauty and interest without straining after effect, he could not do better than study this book."--_Nonconformist_. THE TRUE VINE; OR, THE ANALOGIES OF OUR LORD'S ALLEGORY. Fifth Edition. Globe 8vo. 6s. "The volume strikes us as being especially well suited for a book of devotional reading."--_Spectator_. "Mr. Macmillan has thrown beautiful light upon many points of natural symbolism. Readers and preachers who are unscientific will find many of his illustrations as valuable as they are beautiful."--_British Quarterly Review_. "It abounds in exquisite bits of description, and in striking facts clearly stated."--_Nonconformist_. FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. Second Edition. Corrected and Enlarged. With Coloured Frontispiece and numerous Illustrations. Globe 8vo. 6s. 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"Dr. Macmillan expounds the circumstances of this miracle with much care, with a good sense and a sound judgment that are but rarely at fault, and with some happy illustrations supplied by his knowledge of natural precept."--_The Spectator_. THE OLIVE LEAF. Globe 8vo. 6s. "Distinguished by felicity of style, delicate insight, and apt application of the phenomena of nature to spiritual truths that have rendered the author's previous writings popular. These fresh studies of forest trees, foliage, and wild flowers are very pleasant reading."--_Saturday Review_. MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON. 
16327	----	AT HOME AND ABROAD; OR, THINGS AND THOUGHTS IN AMERICA AND EUROPE. BY MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI, Author of "Woman in the Nineteenth Century," "Art, Literature, and the Drama," "Life without and Life Within," etc. Edited by Her Brother, ARTHUR B. FULLER. NEW AND COMPLETE EDITION. NEW YORK; THE TRIBUNE ASSOCIATION. 134 Nassau Street 1869 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by ARTHUR B. FULLER, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. PREFACE. There are at least three classes of persons who travel in our own land and abroad. The first and largest in number consists of those who, "having eyes, see not, and ears, hear not," anything which is profitable to be remembered. Crossing lake and ocean, passing over the broad prairies of the New World or the classic fields of the Old, though they look on the virgin soil sown thickly with flowers by the hand of God, or on scenes memorable in man's history, they gaze heedlessly, and when they return home can but tell us what they ate and drank, and where slept,--no more; for this and matters of like import are all for which they have cared in their wanderings. Those composing the second class travel more intelligently. They visit scrupulously all places which are noted either as the homes of literature, the abodes of Art, or made classic by the pens of ancient genius. Accurately do they mark the distance of one famed city from another, the size and general appearance of each; they see as many as possible of celebrated pictures and works of art, and mark carefully dimensions, age, and all details concerning them. Men, too, whom the world regards as great men, whether because of wisdom, poesy, warlike achievements, or of wealth and station, they seek to take by the hand and in some degree to know; at least to note their appearance, demeanor, and mode of life. Writers belonging to this class of travellers are not to be undervalued; returning home, they can give much useful information, and tell much which all wish to hear and know, though, as their narratives are chiefly circumstantial, and every year circumstances change, such recitals lessen constantly in value. But there is a third class of those who journey, who see indeed the outward, and observe it well. They, too, seek localities where Art and Genius dwell, or have painted on canvas or sculptured in marble their memorials; they become acquainted with the people, both famed and obscure, of the lands which they visit and in which for a time they abide; their hearts throb as they stand on places where great deeds have been done, with whose dust perhaps is mingled the sacred ashes of men who fell in the warfare for truth and freedom,--a warfare begun early in the world's history, and not yet ended. But they do much _more_ than this. There is, though in a different sense from what ancient Pagans fancied, a genius or guardian spirit of each scene, each stream and lake and country, and this spirit is ever speaking, but in a tone which only the attent ear of the noble and gifted can hear, and in a language which such minds and hearts only can understand. With vision which needs no miracle to make it prophetic, they see the destinies which nations are all-unconsciously shaping for themselves, and note the deep meaning of passing events which only make others wonder. Beneath the mask of mere externals, their eyes discern the character of those whom they meet, and, refusing to accept popular judgment in place of truth, they see often the real relation which men bear to their race and age, and observe the facts by which to determine whether such men are great only because of circumstances, or by the irresistible power of their own minds. When such narrate their journeyings, we have what is valuable not for a few years only, but, because of its philosophic and suggestive spirit, what must always be useful. The reader of the following pages, it is believed, will decide that Margaret Fuller deserves to rank with the latter class of travellers, while not neglectful of those details which it is well to learn and remember. Twelve years ago she journeyed, in company with several friends, on the Lakes, and through some of the Western States. Returning, she published a volume describing this journey, which seems worthy of republication. It seems so because it rather gives an idea of Western scenery and character, than enters into guide-book statements which would be all erroneous now. Beside this, it is much a record of thoughts as well as things, and those thoughts have lost none of their significance now. It gives us also knowledge of Indian character, and impressions respecting that much injured and fast vanishing race, which justice to them makes it desirable should be remembered. The friends of Madame Ossoli will be glad to make permanent this additional proof of her sympathy with all the oppressed, no matter whether that oppression find embodiment in the Indian or the African, the American or the European. The second part of the present volume gives my sister's impressions and observations during her European journey and residence in Italy. This is done through letters, which originally appeared in the New York Tribune but have never before been gathered into book form. There may be a degree of incompleteness, sometimes perhaps inaccuracy, in these letters, which are inseparable attendants upon letter-writing during a journey or amid exciting and warlike scenes. None can lament more than I that their writer lives not to revise them. Some errors, too, were doubtless made in the original printing of these letters, owing to her handwriting not being easily read by those who were not familiar with it, and very probably some such errors may have escaped my notice in the revision, especially as many emendations must be conjectural, the original manuscript not now existing. There is one fact, however, which gives this part of the volume a high value. Madame Ossoli was in Rome during the most eventful period of its modern history. She was almost the only American who remained there during the Italian Revolution, and the siege of the city. Her marriage with the Marquis Ossoli, who was Captain of the Civic Guard and active in the republican councils and army, and her own ardent love of freedom, and sacrifices for it, brought her into immediate acquaintance with the leaders in the revolutionary army, and made her cognizant of their plans, their motives, and their characters. Unsuccessful for a time as has been that struggle for freedom, it was yet a noble one, and its true history should be known in this country and in all lands, that justice may be done to those who sacrificed much, some even life, in behalf of liberty. Her peculiar fitness to write the history of this struggle is well expressed by Mr. Greeley, in his Introduction to one of her volumes recently published.[A] "Of Italy's last struggle for liberty and light," he says, "she might not merely say, with the Grattan of Ireland's kindred effort, half a century earlier, 'I stood by its cradle; I followed its hearse.' She might fairly claim to have been a portion of its incitement, its animation, its informing soul. She bore more than a woman's part in its conflicts and its perils; and the bombs of that ruthless army which a false and traitorous government impelled against the ramparts of Republican Rome, could have stilled no voice more eloquent in its exposures, no heart more lofty in its defiance, of the villany which so wantonly drowned in blood the hopes, while crushing the dearest rights, of a people, than those of Margaret Fuller." [Footnote A: Introduction to Papers on Literature and Art, p. 8.] Inadequate, indeed, are these letters as a memorial and vindication of that struggle, in comparison with the history which Madame Ossoli had written, and which perished with her; but well do they deserve to be preserved, as the record of a clear-minded and true-hearted eyewitness of, and participator in, this effort to establish a new and better Roman Republic. In one respect they have an interest higher than would the history. They were written during the struggle, and show the fluctuations of hope and despondency-which animated those most deeply interested. I have thought it right to leave unchanged all expressions of her opinion and feeling, even when it is evident from the letters themselves that these were gradually somewhat modified by ensuing events. Especially did this change occur in regard to the Pope, whom she at first regarded, in common with all lovers of freedom in this and other lands, with a hopefulness which was doomed to a cruel disappointment. She was, however, never for a moment deceived as to his character. His heart she believed kindly and good; his intellect, of a low order; his views as to reform, narrow, intending only what is partial, temporary, and alleviating, never a permanent, vital reform, which should remove the cause of the ills on account of which his people groaned. Really to elevate and free Italy, it was necessary to remove the yoke of ecclesiastical and political thraldom; to do this formed no part of his plans,--from his very nature he was incapable of so great a purpose. The expression in her letters of this opinion, when most people hoped better things, was at first censured, as doing injustice to Pius IX.; but alas! events proved the impulses of his heart to be in subjection to the prejudices of his mind, and that mind to be weaker than even she had deemed it, with views as narrow as she had feared. The third part of this volume contains some letters to friends, which were never written for the public eye, but are necessary to complete, as far as can now be done, the narrative of her residence abroad. Some few of these have already appeared in her "Memoirs," a work I cannot too warmly recommend to those who would know my sister's character. Many more of her letters may be there found, equally worthy of perusal, but not so necessary to complete the history of events in Italy. The fourth part contains the details of that shipwreck which caused mourning not only in the hearts of her kindred, but of the many who knew and loved her. These, with some poems commemorative of her character and eventful death, form a sad but fitting close to a book which records her European journeyings, and her voyage to a home which proved to be not in this land, where were waiting warm hearts to bid her welcome, but one in a land yet freer, better than this, where she can be no less loved by the angels, by our Saviour, and the Infinite Father. After the copy for this volume had been sent to the press, it was found necessary to omit some portions of the work in the republication, as too much matter had been furnished for a volume of reasonable size. The Editor made these omissions with much reluctance, but the desire to bring a record of Madame Ossoli's journeyings within the compass of one volume outweighed that reluctance. He believes the omissions have been made in such a way as not materially to diminish its value, especially as most which has been omitted will find place in another volume he hopes soon to issue, containing a portion of the miscellaneous writings of Madame Ossoli. All of these omissions that are important occur in the Summer on the Lakes, it being thought better to omit from a portion of the work which had previously been before the public in book form. The episodical nature of that work, too, enabled the Editor to make omissions without in any way marring its unity. These omissions, when other than mere verbal ones, consist of extracts from books which she read in relation to the Indians; an account of and translation from the Seeress of Prevorst, a German work which had not then, but has since, been translated into English, and republished in this country; a few extracts from letters and poems sent to her by friends while she was in the West, one of which poems has been since published elsewhere by its author; and the story of Marianna, (a great portion of which may be found in my sister's "Memoirs,") and also Lines to Edith, a short poem. Marianna and Lines to Edith will probably be republished in another volume. From the letters of Madame Ossoli in Parts II. and III. no omissions have been made other than verbal, or when pertaining to trifling incidents, having only a temporary interest. Nothing in any portion of the book recording my sister's own observations or opinions has been omitted or changed. The reader, too, will notice that nothing affecting the unity of the narrative is here wanting, the volume even gaining in that respect by the omission of extracts from other writers, and of a story and short poem not connected in any regard with Western life. In conclusion, the Editor would express the sincere hope that this volume may not only be of general interest, but inspire its readers with an increased love of republican institutions, and an earnest purpose to seek the removal of every national wrong which hinders our beloved country from being a perfect example and hearty helper of other nations in their struggles for liberty. May it do something, also, to remove misapprehension of the motives, character, and action of those noble patriots of Italy, who strove, though for a time vainly, to make their country free, and to deepen the sympathy which every true American should feel with faithful men everywhere, who by art are seeking to refine, by philanthropic exertion to elevate, by the diffusion of truth to enlighten, or by self-sacrifice and earnest effort to free, their fellow-men. A.B.F. Boston, March 1, 1856. CONTENTS. PART I. SUMMER ON THE LAKES 1 PART II. THINGS AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE 117 PART III. LETTERS FROM ABROAD TO FRIENDS AT HOME 423 PART IV. HOMEWARD VOYAGE, AND MEMORIALS 441 PART I SUMMER ON THE LAKES. Summer days of busy leisure, Long summer days of dear-bought pleasure, You have done your teaching well; Had the scholar means to tell How grew the vine of bitter-sweet, What made the path for truant feet, Winter nights would quickly pass, Gazing on the magic glass O'er which the new-world shadows pass. But, in fault of wizard spell, Moderns their tale can only tell In dull words, with a poor reed Breaking at each time of need. Yet those to whom a hint suffices Mottoes find for all devices, See the knights behind their shields, Through dried grasses, blooming fields. * * * * * Some dried grass-tufts from the wide flowery field, A muscle-shell from the lone fairy shore, Some antlers from tall woods which never more To the wild deer a safe retreat can yield, An eagle's feather which adorned a Brave, Well-nigh the last of his despairing band,-- For such slight gifts wilt thou extend thy hand When weary hours a brief refreshment crave? I give you what I can, not what I would If my small drinking-cup would hold a flood, As Scandinavia sung those must contain With which, the giants gods may entertain; In our dwarf day we drain few drops, and soon must thirst again. CHAPTER I. NIAGARA. Niagara, June 10, 1843. Since you are to share with me such foot-notes as may be made on the pages of my life during this summer's wanderings, I should not be quite silent as to this magnificent prologue to the, as yet, unknown drama. Yet I, like others, have little to say, where the spectacle is, for once, great enough to fill the whole life, and supersede thought, giving us only its own presence. "It is good to be here," is the best, as the simplest, expression that occurs to the mind. We have been here eight days, and I am quite willing to go away. So great a sight soon satisfies, making us content with itself, and with what is less than itself. Our desires, once realized, haunt us again less readily. Having "lived one day," we would depart, and become worthy to live another. We have not been fortunate in weather, for there cannot be too much, or too warm sunlight for this scene, and the skies have been lowering, with cold, unkind winds. My nerves, too much braced up by such an atmosphere, do not well bear the continual stress of sight and sound. For here there is no escape from the weight of a perpetual creation; all other forms and motions come and go, the tide rises and recedes, the wind, at its mightiest, moves in gales and gusts, but here is really an incessant, an indefatigable motion. Awake or asleep, there is no escape, still this rushing round you and through you. It is in this way I have most felt the grandeur,--somewhat eternal, if not infinite. At times a secondary music rises; the cataract seems to seize its own rhythm and sing it over again, so that the ear and soul are roused by a double vibration. This is some effect of the wind, causing echoes to the thundering anthem. It is very sublime, giving the effect of a spiritual repetition through all the spheres. When I first came, I felt nothing but a quiet satisfaction. I found that drawings, the panorama, &c. had given me a clear notion of the position and proportions of all objects here; I knew where to look for everything, and everything looked as I thought it would. Long ago, I was looking from a hill-side with a friend at one of the finest sunsets that ever enriched, this world. A little cowboy, trudging along, wondered what we could be gazing at. After spying about some time, he found it could only be the sunset, and looking, too, a moment, he said approvingly, "That sun looks well enough"; a speech worthy of Shakespeare's Cloten, or the infant Mercury, up to everything from the cradle, as you please to take it. Even such a familiarity, worthy of Jonathan, our national hero, in a prince's palace, or "stumping," as he boasts to have done, "up the Vatican stairs, into the Pope's presence, in my old boots," I felt here; it looks really _well enough_, I felt, and was inclined, as you suggested, to give my approbation as to the one object in the world that would not disappoint. But all great expression, which, on a superficial survey, seems so easy as well as so simple, furnishes, after a while, to the faithful observer, its own standard by which to appreciate it. Daily these proportions widened and towered more and more upon my sight, and I got, at last, a proper foreground for these sublime distances. Before coming away, I think I really saw the full wonder of the scene. After a while it so drew me into itself as to inspire an undefined dread, such as I never knew before, such as may be felt when death is about to usher us into a new existence. The perpetual trampling of the waters seized my senses. I felt that no other sound, however near, could be heard, and would start and look behind me for a foe. I realized the identity of that mood of nature in which these waters were poured down with such absorbing force, with that in which the Indian was shaped on the same soil. For continually upon my mind came, unsought and unwelcome, images, such as never haunted it before, of naked savages stealing behind me with uplifted tomahawks; again and again this illusion recurred, and even after I had thought it over, and tried to shake it off, I could not help starting and looking behind me. As picture, the falls can only be seen from the British side. There they are seen in their veils, and at sufficient distance to appreciate the magical effects of these, and the light and shade. From the boat, as you cross, the effects and contrasts are more melodramatic. On the road back from the whirlpool, we saw them as a reduced picture with delight. But what I liked best was to sit on Table Rock, close to the great fall. There all power of observing details, all separate consciousness, was quite lost. Once, just as I had seated myself there, a man came to take his first look. He walked close up to the fall, and, after looking at it a moment, with an air as if thinking how he could best appropriate it to his own use, he spat into it. This trait seemed wholly worthy of an age whose love of _utility_ is such that the Prince Puckler Muskau suggests the probability of men coming to put the bodies of their dead parents in the fields to fertilize them, and of a country such as Dickens has described; but these will not, I hope, be seen on the historic page to be truly the age or truly the America. A little leaven is leavening the whole mass for other bread. The whirlpool I like very much. It is seen to advantage after the great falls; it is so sternly solemn. The river cannot look more imperturbable, almost sullen in its marble green, than it does just below the great fall; but the slight circles that mark the hidden vortex seem to whisper mysteries the thundering voice above could not proclaim,--a meaning as untold as ever. It is fearful, too, to know, as you look, that whatever has been swallowed by the cataract is like to rise suddenly to light here, whether uprooted tree, or body of man or bird. The rapids enchanted me far beyond what I expected; they are so swift that they cease to seem so; you can think only of their beauty. The fountain beyond the Moss Islands I discovered for myself, and thought it for some time an accidental beauty which it would not do to leave, lest I might never see it again. After I found it permanent, I returned many times to watch the play of its crest. In the little waterfall beyond, Nature seems, as she often does, to have made a study for some larger design. She delights in this,--a sketch within a sketch, a dream within a dream. Wherever we see it, the lines of the great buttress in the fragment of stone, the hues of the waterfall copied in the flowers that star its bordering mosses, we are delighted; for all the lineaments become fluent, and we mould the scene in congenial thought with its genius. People complain of the buildings at Niagara, and fear to see it further deformed. I cannot sympathize with such an apprehension: the spectacle is capable of swallowing up all such objects; they are not seen in the great whole, more than an earthworm in a wide field. The beautiful wood on Goat Island is full of flowers; many of the fairest love to do homage here. The Wake-robin and May-apple are in bloom now; the former, white, pink, green, purple, copying the rainbow of the fall, and fit to make a garland for its presiding deity when he walks the land, for they are of imperial size, and shaped like stones for a diadem. Of the May-apple, I did not raise one green tent without finding a flower beneath. And now farewell. Niagara. I have seen thee, and I think all who come here must in some sort see thee; thou art not to be got rid of as easily as the stars. I will be here again beneath some flooding July moon and sun. Owing to the absence of light, I have seen the rainbow only two or three times by day; the lunar bow not at all. However, the imperial presence needs not its crown, though illustrated by it. General Porter and Jack Downing were not unsuitable figures here. The former heroically planted the bridges by which we cross to Goat Island and the Wake-robin-crowned genius has punished his temerity with deafness, which must, I think, have come upon him when he sunk the first stone in the rapids. Jack seemed an acute and entertaining representative of Jonathan, come to look at his great water-privilege. He told us all about the Americanisms of the spectacle; that is to say, the battles that have been fought here. It seems strange that men could fight in such a place; but no temple can still the personal griefs and strifes in the breasts of its visitors. No less strange is the fact that, in this neighborhood, an eagle should be chained for a plaything. When a child, I used often to stand at a window from which I could see an eagle chained in the balcony of a museum. The people used to poke at it with sticks, and my childish heart would swell with indignation as I saw their insults, and the mien with which they were borne by the monarch-bird. Its eye was dull, and its plumage soiled and shabby, yet, in its form and attitude, all the king was visible, though sorrowful and dethroned. I never saw another of the family till, when passing through the Notch of the White Mountains, at that moment glowing before us in all the panoply of sunset, the driver shouted, "Look there!" and following with our eyes his upward-pointing finger, we saw, soaring slow in majestic poise above the highest summit, the bird of Jove. It was a glorious sight, yet I know not that I felt more on seeing the bird in all its natural freedom and royalty, than when, imprisoned and insulted, he had filled my early thoughts with the Byronic "silent rages" of misanthropy. Now, again, I saw him a captive, and addressed by the vulgar with the language they seem to find most appropriate to such occasions,--that of thrusts and blows. Silently, his head averted, he ignored their existence, as Plotinus or Sophocles might that of a modern reviewer. Probably he listened to the voice of the cataract, and felt that congenial powers flowed free, and was consoled, though his own wing was broken. The story of the Recluse of Niagara interested me a little. It is wonderful that men do not oftener attach their lives to localities of great beauty,--that, when once deeply penetrated, they will let themselves so easily be borne away by the general stream of things, to live anywhere and anyhow. But there is something ludicrous in being the hermit of a show-place, unlike St. Francis in his mountain-bed, where none but the stars and rising sun ever saw him. There is also a "guide to the falls," who wears his title labelled on his hat; otherwise, indeed, one might as soon think of asking for a gentleman usher to point out the moon. Yet why should we wonder at such, when we have Commentaries on Shakespeare, and Harmonies of the Gospels? And now you have the little all I have to write. Can it interest you? To one who has enjoyed the full life of any scene, of any hour, what thoughts can be recorded about it seem like the commas and semicolons in the paragraph,--mere stops. Yet I suppose it is not so to the absent. At least, I have read things written about Niagara, music, and the like, that interested _me_. Once I was moved by Mr. Greenwood's remark, that he could not realize this marvel till, opening his eyes the next morning after he had seen it, his doubt as to the possibility of its being still there taught him what he had experienced. I remember this now with pleasure, though, or because, it is exactly the opposite to what I myself felt. For all greatness affects different minds, each in "its own particular kind," and the variations of testimony mark the truth of feeling.[A] [Footnote A: "Somewhat avails, in one regard, the mere sight of beauty without the union of feeling therewith. Carried away in memory, it hangs there in the lonely hall as a picture, and may some time do its message. I trust it may be so in my case, for I _saw_ every object far more clearly than if I had been moved and filled with the presence, and my recollections are equally distinct and vivid." Extracted from Manuscript Notes of this Journey left by Margaret Fuller.--ED.] I will here add a brief narrative of the experience of another, as being much better than anything I could write, because more simple and individual. "Now that I have left this 'Earth-wonder,' and the emotions it excited are past, it seems not so much like profanation to analyze my feelings, to recall minutely and accurately the effect of this manifestation of the Eternal. But one should go to such a scene prepared to yield entirely to its influences, to forget one's little self and one's little mind. To see a miserable worm creep to the brink of this falling world of waters, and watch the trembling of its own petty bosom, and fancy that this is made alone to act upon him excites--derision? No,--pity." As I rode up to the neighborhood of the falls, a solemn awe imperceptibly stole over me, and the deep sound of the ever-hurrying rapids prepared my mind for the lofty emotions to be experienced. When I reached the hotel, I felt a strange indifference about seeing the aspiration of my life's hopes. I lounged about the rooms, read the stage-bills upon the walls, looked over the register, and, finding the name of an acquaintance, sent to see if he was still there. What this hesitation arose from, I know not; perhaps it was a feeling of my unworthiness to enter this temple which nature has erected to its God. At last, slowly and thoughtfully I walked down to the bridge leading to Goat Island, and when I stood upon this frail support, and saw a quarter of a mile of tumbling, rushing rapids, and heard their everlasting roar, my emotions overpowered me, a choking sensation rose to my throat, a thrill rushed through my veins, "my blood ran rippling to my fingers' ends." This was the climax of the effect which the falls produced upon me,--neither the American nor the British fall moved me as did these rapids. For the magnificence, the sublimity of the latter, I was prepared by descriptions and by paintings. When I arrived in sight of them I merely felt, "Ah, yes! here is the fall, just as I have seen it in a picture." When I arrived at the Terrapin Bridge, I expected to be overwhelmed, to retire trembling from this giddy eminence, and gaze with unlimited wonder and awe upon the immense mass rolling on and on; but, somehow or other, I thought only of comparing the effect on my mind with what I had read and heard. I looked for a short time, and then, with almost a feeling of disappointment, turned to go to the other points of view, to see if I was not mistaken in not feeling any surpassing emotion at this sight. But from the foot of Biddle's Stairs, and the middle of the river, and from below the Table Rock, it was still "barren, barren all." Provoked with my stupidity in feeling most moved in the wrong place, I turned away to the hotel, determined to set off for Buffalo that afternoon. But the stage did not go, and, after nightfall, as there was a splendid moon, I went down to the bridge, and leaned over the parapet, where the boiling rapids came down in their might. It was grand, and it was also gorgeous; the yellow rays of the moon made the broken waves appear like auburn tresses twining around the black rocks. But they did not inspire me as before. I felt a foreboding of a mightier emotion to rise up and swallow all others, and I passed on to the Terrapin Bridge. Everything was changed, the misty apparition had taken off its many-colored crown which it had worn by day, and a bow of silvery white spanned its summit. The moonlight gave a poetical indefiniteness to the distant parts of the waters, and while the rapids were glancing in her beams, the river below the falls was black as night, save where the reflection of the sky gave it the appearance of a shield of blued steel. No gaping tourists loitered, eyeing with their glasses, or sketching on cards the hoary locks of the ancient river-god. All tended to harmonize with the natural grandeur of the scene. I gazed long. I saw how here mutability and unchangeableness were united. I surveyed the conspiring waters rushing against the rocky ledge to overthrow it at one mad plunge, till, like toppling ambition, o'er-leaping themselves, they fall on t' other side, expanding into foam ere they reach the deep channel where they creep submissively away. Then arose in my breast a genuine admiration, and a humble adoration of the Being who was the architect of this and of all. Happy were the first discoverers of Niagara, those who could come unawares upon this view and upon that, whose feelings were entirely their own. With what gusto does Father Hennepin describe "this great downfall of water," "this vast and prodigious cadence of water, which falls down after a surprising and astonishing manner, insomuch that the universe does not afford its parallel. 'Tis true Italy and Swedeland boast of some such things, but we may well say that they be sorry patterns when compared with this of which we do now speak." CHAPTER II. THE LAKES.--CHICAGO.--GENEVA.--A THUNDER-STORM.--PAPAW GROVE. SCENE, STEAMBOAT.--_About to leave Buffalo.--Baggage coming on board.--Passengers bustling for their berths.--Little boys persecuting everybody with their newspapers and pamphlets.--J., S., and M. huddled up in a forlorn corner, behind a large trunk.--A heavy rain falling._ _M._ Water, water everywhere. After Niagara one would like a dry strip of existence. And at any rate it is quite enough for me to have it under foot without having it overhead in this way. _J._ Ah, do not abuse the gentle element. It is hardly possible to have too much of it, and indeed, if I were obliged to choose amid the four, it would be the one in which I could bear confinement best. _S._ You would make a pretty Undine, to be sure! _J._ Nay. I only offered myself as a Triton, a boisterous Triton of the sounding shell. You, M., I suppose, would be a salamander, rather. _M._ No! that is too equivocal a position, whether in modern mythology, or Hoffman's tales. I should choose to be a gnome. _J._ That choice savors of the pride that apes humility. _M._ By no means; the gnomes are the most important of all the elemental tribes. Is it not they who make the money? _J._ And are accordingly a dark, mean, scoffing ---- _M._ You talk as if you had always lived in that wild, unprofitable element you are so fond of, where all things glitter, and nothing is gold; all show and no substance. My people work in the secret, and their works praise them in the open light; they remain in the dark because only there such marvels could be bred. You call them mean. They do not spend their energies on their own growth, or their own play, but to feed the veins of Mother Earth with permanent splendors, very different from what she shows on the surface. Think of passing a life, not merely in heaping together, but _making_ gold. Of all dreams, that of the alchemist is the most poetical, for he looked at the finest symbol. "Gold," says one of our friends, "is the hidden light of the earth, it crowns the mineral, as wine the vegetable order, being the last expression of vital energy." _J._ Have you paid for your passage? _J._ Yes! and in gold, not in shells or pebbles. _J._ No really wise gnome would scoff at the water, the beautiful water. "The spirit of man is like the water." _S._ And like the air and fire, no less. _J._ Yes, but not like the earth, this low-minded creature's chosen, dwelling. _M._ The earth is spirit made fruitful,--life. And its heartbeats are told in gold and wine. _J._ Oh! it is shocking to hear such sentiments in these times. I thought that Bacchic energy of yours was long since repressed. _M._ No! I have only learned to mix water with my wine, and stamp upon my gold the heads of kings, or the hieroglyphics of worship. But since I have learnt to mix with water, let's hear what you have to say in praise of your favorite. _J._ From water Venus was born, what more would you have? It is the mother of Beauty, the girdle of earth, and the marriage of nations. _S._ Without any of that high-flown poetry, it is enough, I think, that it is the great artist, turning all objects that approach it to picture. _J._ True, no object that touches it, whether it be the cart that ploughs the wave for sea-weed, or the boat or plank that rides upon it, but is brought at once from the demesne of coarse utilities into that of picture. All trades, all callings, become picturesque by the water's side, or on the water. The soil, the slovenliness, is washed out of every calling by its touch. All river-crafts, sea-crafts, are picturesque, are poetical. Their very slang is poetry. _M._ The reasons for that are complex. _J._ The reason is, that there can be no plodding, groping words and motions on my water as there are on your earth. There is no time, no chance for them where all moves so rapidly, though so smoothly; everything connected with water must be like itself, forcible, but clear. That is why sea-slang is so poetical; there is a word for everything and every act, and a thing and an act for every word. Seamen must speak quick and bold, but also with utmost precision. They cannot reef and brace other than in a Homeric dialect,-- therefore--(Steamboat bell rings.) But I must say a quick good-by. _M._ What, going, going back to earth after all this talk upon the other side. Well, that is nowise Homeric, but truly modern. J. is borne off without time for any reply, but a laugh--at himself, of course. S. and M. retire to their state-rooms to forget the wet, the chill, and steamboat smell, in their just-bought new world of novels. Next day, when we stopped at Cleveland, the storm was just clearing up; ascending the bluff, we had one of the finest views of the lake that could have been wished. The varying depths of these lakes give to their surface a great variety of coloring, and beneath this wild sky and changeful light, the waters presented a kaleidoscopic variety of hues, rich, but mournful. I admire these bluffs of red, crumbling earth. Here land and water meet under very different auspices from those of the rock-bound coast to which I have been accustomed. There they meet tenderly to challenge, and proudly to refuse, though, not in fact repel. But here they meet to mingle, are always rushing together, and changing places; a new creation takes place beneath the eye. The weather grew gradually clearer, but not bright; yet we could see the shore and appreciate the extent of these noble waters. Coming up the river St. Clair, we saw Indians for the first time. They were camped out on the bank. It was twilight, and their blanketed forms, in listless groups or stealing along the bank, with a lounge and a stride so different in its wildness from the rudeness of the white settler, gave me the first feeling that I really approached the West. The people on the boat were almost all New-Englanders, seeking their fortunes. They had brought with them their habits of calculation, their cautious manners, their love of polemics. It grieved me to hear these immigrants, who were to be the fathers of a new race, all, from the old man down to the little girl, talking, not of what they should do, but of what they should get in the new scene. It was to them a prospect, not of the unfolding nobler energies, but of more ease and larger accumulation. It wearied me, too, to hear Trinity and Unity discussed in the poor, narrow, doctrinal way on these free waters; but that will soon cease; there is not time for this clash of opinions in the West, where the clash of material interests is so noisy. They will need the spirit of religion more than ever to guide them, but will find less time than before for its doctrine. This change was to me, who am tired of the war of words on these subjects, and believe it only sows the wind to reap the whirlwind, refreshing, but I argue nothing from it; there is nothing real in the freedom of thought at the West,--it is from the position of men's lives, not the state of their minds. So soon as they have time, unless they grow better meanwhile, they will cavil and criticise, and judge other men by their own standard, and outrage the law of love every way, just as they do with us. We reached Mackinaw the evening of the third day, but, to my great disappointment, it was too late and too rainy to go ashore. The beauty of the island, though seen under the most unfavorable circumstances, did not disappoint my expectations.[A] But I shall see it to more purpose on my return. [Footnote A: "Mackinaw, that long desired, sight, was dimly discerned under a thick fog, yet it soothed and cheered me. All looked mellow there; man seemed to have worked in harmony with Nature instead of rudely invading her, as in most Western towns. It seemed possible, on that spot, to lead a life of serenity and cheerfulness. Some richly dressed Indians came down to show themselves. Their dresses were of blue broadcloth, with splendid leggings and knee-ties. On their heads were crimson scarfs adorned with beads and falling on one shoulder, their hair long and looking cleanly. Near were one or two wild figures clad in the common white blankets." Manuscript Notes.--ED.] As the day has passed dully, a cold rain preventing us from keeping out in the air, my thoughts have been dwelling on a story told when we were off Detroit, this morning, by a fellow-passenger, and whose moral beauty touched me profoundly. "Some years ago," said Mrs. L., "my father and mother stopped to dine at Detroit. A short time before dinner my father met in the hall Captain P., a friend of his youthful days. He had loved P. extremely, as did many who knew him, and had not been surprised to hear of the distinction and popular esteem which his wide knowledge, talents, and noble temper commanded, as he went onward in the world. P. was every way fitted to succeed; his aims were high, but not too high for his powers, suggested by an instinct of his own capacities, not by an ideal standard drawn from culture. Though steadfast in his course, it was not to overrun others; his wise self-possession was no less for them than himself. He was thoroughly the gentleman, gentle because manly, and was a striking instance that, where there is strength for sincere courtesy, there is no need of other adaptation to the character of others, to make one's way freely and gracefully through the crowd. "My father was delighted to see him, and after a short parley in the hall, 'We will dine together,' he cried, 'then we shall have time to tell all our stories.' "P. hesitated a moment, then said, 'My wife is with me.' "'And mine with me,' said my father; 'that's well; they, too, will have an opportunity of getting acquainted, and can entertain one another, if they get tired of our college stories.' "P. acquiesced, with a grave bow, and shortly after they all met in the dining-room. My father was much surprised at the appearance of Mrs. P. He had heard that his friend married abroad, but nothing further, and he was not prepared to see the calm, dignified P. with a woman on his arm, still handsome, indeed, but whose coarse and imperious expression showed as low habits of mind as her exaggerated dress and gesture did of education. Nor could there be a greater contrast to my mother, who, though understanding her claims and place with the certainty of a lady, was soft and retiring in an uncommon degree. "However, there was no time to wonder or fancy; they sat down, and P. engaged in conversation, without much vivacity, but with his usual ease. The first quarter of an hour passed well enough. But soon it was observable that Mrs. P. was drinking glass after glass of wine, to an extent few gentlemen did, even then, and soon that she was actually excited by it. Before this, her manner had been brusque, if not contemptuous, towards her new acquaintance; now it became, towards my mother especially, quite rude. Presently she took up some slight remark made by my mother, which, though, it did not naturally mean anything of the sort, could be twisted into some reflection upon England, and made it a handle, first of vulgar sarcasm, and then, upon my mother's defending herself with some surprise and gentle dignity, hurled upon her a volley of abuse, beyond Billingsgate. "My mother, confounded by scenes and ideas presented to her mind equally new and painful, sat trembling; she knew not what to do; tears rushed into her eyes. My father, no less distressed, yet unwilling to outrage the feelings of his friend by doing or saying what his indignation prompted, turned an appealing look on P. "Never, as he often said, was the painful expression of that sight effaced from his mind. It haunted his dreams and disturbed his waking thoughts. P. sat with his head bent forward, and his eyes cast down, pale, but calm, with a fixed expression, not merely of patient woe, but of patient shame, which it would not have been thought possible for that noble countenance to wear. 'Yet,' said my father, 'it became him. At other times he was handsome, but then beautiful, though of a beauty saddened and abashed. For a spiritual light borrowed from the worldly perfection of his mien that illustration by contrast, which the penitence of the Magdalen does from the glowing earthliness of her charms.' "Seeing that he preserved silence, while Mrs. P. grew still more exasperated, my father rose and led his wife to her own room. Half an hour had passed, in painful and wondering surmises, when a gentle knock was heard at the door, and P. entered equipped for a journey. 'We are just going,' he said, and holding out his hand, but without looking at them, 'Forgive.' "They each took his hand, and silently pressed it; then he went without a word more. "Some time passed, and they heard now and then of P., as he passed from one army station to another, with his uncongenial companion, who became, it was said, constantly more degraded. Whoever mentioned having seen them wondered at the chance which had yoked him to such a woman, but yet more at the silent fortitude with which he bore it. Many blamed him for enduring it, apparently without efforts to check her; others answered that he had probably made such at an earlier period, and, finding them unavailing, had resigned himself to despair, and was too delicate to meet the scandal that, with such resistance as such a woman could offer, must attend a formal separation. "But my father, who was not in such haste to come to conclusions, and substitute some plausible explanation for the truth, found something in the look of P. at that trying moment to which, none of these explanations offered a key. There was in it, he felt, a fortitude, but not the fortitude of the hero; a religious submission, above the penitent, if not enkindled with the enthusiasm, of the martyr. "I have said that my father was not one of those who are ready to substitute specious explanations for truth, and those who are thus abstinent rarely lay their hand, on a thread without making it a clew. Such a man, like the dexterous weaver, lets not one color go till Ire finds that which matches it in the pattern,--he keeps on weaving, but chooses his shades; and my father found at last what he wanted to make out the pattern for himself. He met a lady who had been intimate with both himself and P. in early days, and, finding she had seen the latter abroad, asked if she knew the circumstances of the marriage. "'The circumstances of the act which sealed the misery of our friend, I know,' she said, 'though as much in the dark as any one about the motives that led to it. "'We were quite intimate with P. in London, and he was our most delightful companion. He was then in the full flower of the varied accomplishments which set off his fine manners and dignified character, joined, towards those he loved, with a certain soft willingness which gives the desirable chivalry to a man. None was more clear of choice where his personal affections were not touched, but where they were, it cost him pain to say no, on the slightest occasion. I have thought this must have had some connection with the mystery of his misfortunes. "'One day he called on me, and, without any preface, asked if I would be present next day at his marriage. I was so surprised, and so unpleasantly surprised, that I did not at first answer a word. We had been on terms so familiar, that I thought I knew all about him, yet had never dreamed of his having an attachment; and, though I had never inquired on the subject, yet this reserve where perfect openness had been supposed, and really, on my side, existed, seemed to me a kind of treachery. Then it is never pleasant to know that a heart on which we have some claim is to be given to another. We cannot tell how it will affect our own relations with a person; it may strengthen or it may swallow up other affections; the crisis is hazardous, and our first thought, on such an occasion, is too often for ourselves,--at least mine was. Seeing me silent, he repeated his question. "To whom," said I, "are you to be married?" "That," he replied, "I cannot tell you." He was a moment silent, then continued, with an impassive look of cold self-possession, that affected me with strange sadness: "The name of the person you will hear, of course, at the time, but more I cannot tell you. I need, however, the presence, not only of legal, but of respectable and friendly witnesses. I have hoped you and your husband would, do me this kindness. Will you?" Something in his manner made it impossible to refuse. I answered, before I knew I was going to speak, "We will," and he left me. "'I will not weary you with telling how I harassed myself and my husband, who was, however, scarce less interested, with doubts and conjectures. Suffice it that, next morning, P. came and took us in a carriage to a distant church. We had just entered the porch, when a cart, such as fruit and vegetables are brought to market in, drove up, containing an elderly woman and a young girl. P. assisted them to alight, and advanced with the girl to the altar. "'The girl was neatly dressed and quite handsome, yet something in her expression displeased me the moment I looked upon her. Meanwhile, the ceremony was going on, and, at its close, P. introduced us to the bride, and we all went to the door. "Good by, Fanny," said the elderly woman. The new-made Mrs. P. replied without any token of affection or emotion. The woman got into the cart and drove away. "'From that time I saw but little of P. or his wife. I took our mutual friends to see her, and they were civil to her for his sake. Curiosity was very much excited, but entirely baffled; no one, of course, dared speak to P. on the subject, and no other means could be found of solving the riddle. "'He treated his wife with grave and kind politeness, but it was always obvious that they had nothing in common between them. Her manners and tastes were not at that time gross, but her character showed itself hard and material. She was fond of riding, and spent much time so. Her style in this, and in dress, seemed the opposite of P.'s; but he indulged all her wishes, while, for himself, he plunged into his own pursuits. "'For a time he seemed, if not happy, not positively unhappy; but, after a few years, Mrs. P. fell into the habit of drinking, and then such scenes as you witnessed grew frequent. I have often heard of them, and always that P. sat, as you describe him, his head bowed down and perfectly silent all through, whatever might be done or whoever be present, and always his aspect has inspired such sympathy that no person has questioned him or resented her insults, but merely got out of the way as soon as possible.' "'Hard and long penance,' said my father, after some minutes musing, 'for an hour of passion, probably for his only error.' "'Is that your explanation?' said the lady. 'O, improbable! P. might err, but not be led beyond himself.' "I know that his cool, gray eye and calm complexion seemed to say so, but a different story is told by the lip that could tremble, and showed what flashes might pierce those deep blue heavens; and when these over-intellectual beings do swerve aside, it is to fall down a precipice, for their narrow path lies over such. But he was not one to sin without making a brave atonement, and that it had become a holy one, was written on that downcast brow." The fourth day on these waters, the weather was milder and brighter, so that we could now see them to some purpose. At night the moon was clear, and, for the first time, from, the upper deck I saw one of the great steamboats come majestically up. It was glowing with lights, looking many-eyed and sagacious; in its heavy motion it seemed a dowager queen, and this motion, with its solemn pulse, and determined sweep, becomes these smooth waters, especially at night, as much as the dip of the sail-ship the long billows of the ocean. But it was not so soon that I learned to appreciate the lake scenery; it was only after a daily and careless familiarity that I entered into its beauty, for Nature always refuses to be seen by being stared at. Like Bonaparte, she discharges her face of all expression when she catches the eye of impertinent curiosity fixed on her. But he who has gone to sleep in childish ease on her lap, or leaned an aching brow upon her breast, seeking there comfort with full trust as from a mother, will see all a mother's beauty in the look she bends upon him. Later, I felt that I had really seen these regions, and shall speak of them again. In the afternoon we went on shore at the Manitou Islands, where the boat stops to wood. No one lives here except wood-cutters for the steamboats. I had thought of such a position, from its mixture of profound solitude with service to the great world, as possessing an ideal beauty. I think so still, even after seeing the wood-cutters and their slovenly huts. In times of slower growth, man did not enter a situation without a certain preparation or adaptedness to it. He drew from it, if not to the poetical extent, at least in some proportion, its moral and its meaning. The wood-cutter did not cut down so many trees a day, that the Hamadryads had not time to make their plaints heard; the shepherd tended his sheep, and did no jobs or chores the while; the idyl had a chance to grow up, and modulate his oaten pipe. But now the poet must be at the whole expense of the poetry in describing one of these positions; the worker is a true Midas to the gold he makes. The poet must describe, as the painter sketches Irish peasant-girls and Danish fishwives, adding the beauty, and leaving out the dirt. I come to the West prepared for the distaste I must experience at its mushroom growth. I know that, where "go ahead" is tire only motto, the village cannot grow into the gentle proportions that successive lives and the gradations of experience involuntarily give. In older countries the house of the son grew from that of the father, as naturally as new joints on a bough, and the cathedral crowned the whole as naturally as the leafy summit the tree. This cannot be here. The march of peaceful is scarce less wanton than that of warlike invasion. The old landmarks are broken down, and the land, for a season, bears none, except of the rudeness of conquest and the needs of the day, whose bivouac-fires blacken the sweetest forest glades. I have come prepared to see all this, to dislike it, but not with stupid narrowness to distrust or defame. On the contrary, while I will not be so obliging as to confound ugliness with beauty, discord with harmony, and laud and be contented with all I meet, when it conflicts with my best desires and tastes, I trust by reverent faith to woo the mighty meaning of the scene, perhaps to foresee the law by which a new order, a new poetry, is to be evoked from this chaos, and with a curiosity as ardent, but not so selfish, as that of Macbeth, to call up the apparitions of future kings from the strange ingredients of the witch's caldron. Thus I will not grieve that all the noble trees are gone already from this island to feed this caldron, but believe it will have Medea's virtue, and reproduce them in the form of new intellectual growths, since centuries cannot again adorn the land with such as have been removed. On this most beautiful beach of smooth white pebbles, interspersed with agates and cornelians for those who know how to find them, we stepped, not like the Indian, with some humble offering, which, if no better than an arrow-head or a little parched corn, would, he judged, please the Manitou, who looks only at the spirit in which it is offered. Our visit was so far for a religious purpose that one of our party went to inquire the fate of some Unitarian tracts left among the wood-cutters a year or two before. But the old Manitou, though, daunted like his children by the approach of the fire-ships, which he probably considered demons of a new dynasty, he had suffered his woods to be felled to feed their pride, had been less patient of an encroachment which did not to him seem so authorized by the law of the strongest, and had scattered those leaves as carelessly as the others of that year. But S. and I, like other emigrants, went, not to give, but to get, to rifle the wood of flowers for the service of the fire-ship. We returned with a rich booty, among which was the _Uva-ursi_, whose leaves the Indians smoke, with the _Kinnikinnik_, and which had then just put forth its highly finished little blossoms, as pretty as those of the blueberry. Passing along still further, I thought it would be well if the crowds assembled to stare from the various landings were still confined to the _Kinnikinnik_, for almost all had tobacco written on their faces, their cheeks rounded with plugs, their eyes dull with its fumes. We reached Chicago on the evening of the sixth day, having been out five days and a half, a rather longer passage than usual at a favorable season of the year. Chicago, June 20. There can be no two places in the world more completely thoroughfares than this place and Buffalo. They are the two correspondent valves that open and shut all the time, as the life-blood rushes from east to west, and back again from west to east. Since it is their office thus to be the doors, and let in and out, it would be unfair to expect from them much character of their own. To make the best provisions for the transmission of produce is their office, and the people who live there are such as are suited for this,--active, complaisant, inventive, business people. There are no provisions for the student or idler; to know what the place can give, you should be at work with the rest; the mere traveller will not find it profitable to loiter there as I did. Since circumstances made it necessary for me so to do, I read all the books I could find about the new region, which now began, to become real to me. Especially I read all the books about the Indians,--a paltry collection truly, yet which furnished material for many thoughts. The most narrow-minded and awkward recital still bears some lineaments of the great features of this nature, and the races of men that illustrated them. Catlin's book is far the best. I was afterwards assured by those acquainted with the regions he describes, that he is not to be depended on for the accuracy of his facts, and indeed it is obvious, without the aid of such assertions, that he sometimes yields to the temptation of making out a story. They admitted, however, what from my feelings I was sure of, that he is true to the spirit of the scene, and that a far better view can be got from him than from any source at present existing, of the Indian tribes of the Far West, and of the country where their inheritance lay. Murray's Travels I read, and was charmed by their accuracy and clear, broad tone. He is the only Englishman that seems to have traversed these regions as man simply, not as John Bull. He deserves to belong to an aristocracy, for he showed his title to it more when left without a guide in the wilderness, than he can at the court of Victoria. He has; himself, no poetic force at description, but it is easy to make images from his hints. Yet we believe the Indian cannot be locked at truly except by a poetic eye. The Pawnees, no doubt, are such as he describes them, filthy in their habits, and treacherous in their character, but some would have seen, and seen truly, more beauty and dignity than he does with all his manliness and fairness of mind. However, his one fine old man is enough to redeem the rest, and is perhaps tire relic of a better day, a Phocion among the Pawnees. Schoolcraft's Algic Researches is a valuable book, though a worse use could hardly have been made of such fine material. Had the mythological or hunting stories of the Indians been written down exactly as they were received from the lips of the narrators, the collection could not have been surpassed in interest? both for the wild charm they carry with them, and the light they throw on a peculiar modification of life and mind. As it is, though the incidents have an air of originality and pertinence to the occasion, that gives us confidence that they have not been altered, the phraseology in which they were expressed has been entirely set aside, and the flimsy graces, common to the style of annuals and souvenirs, substituted for the Spartan brevity and sinewy grasp of Indian speech. We can just guess what might have been there, as we can detect the fine proportions of the Brave whom the bad taste of some white patron has arranged in frock-coat, hat, and pantaloons. The few stories Mrs. Jameson wrote out, though to these also a sentimental air has been given, offend much less in that way than is common in this book. What would we not give for a completely faithful version of some among them! Yet, with all these drawbacks, we cannot doubt from internal evidence that they truly ascribe to the Indian a delicacy of sentiment and of fancy that justifies Cooper in such inventions as his Uncas. It is a white man's view of a savage hero, who would be far finer in his natural proportions; still, through a masquerade figure, it implies the truth. Irving's books I also read, some for the first, some for the second time, with increased interest, now that I was to meet such people as he received his materials from. Though the books are pleasing from, their grace and luminous arrangement, yet, with the exception of the Tour to the Prairies, they have a stereotype, second-hand air. They lack the breath, the glow, the charming minute traits of living presence. His scenery is only fit to be glanced at from, dioramic distance; his Indians are academic figures only. He would have made the best of pictures, if he could have used his own eyes for studies and sketches; as it is, his success is wonderful, but inadequate. McKenney's Tour to the Lakes is the dullest of books, yet faithful and quiet, and gives some facts not to be met with everywhere. I also read a collection of Indian anecdotes and speeches, the worst compiled and arranged book possible, yet not without clews of some value. All these books I read in anticipation of a canoe-voyage on Lake Superior as far as the Pictured Rocks, and, though I was afterwards compelled to give up this project, they aided me in judging of what I subsequently saw and heard of the Indians. In Chicago I first saw the beautiful prairie-flowers. They were in their glory the first ten days we were there,-- "The golden and the flame-like flowers." The flame-like flower I was taught afterwards, by an Indian girl, to call "Wickapee"; and she told me, too, that its splendors had a useful side, for it was used by the Indians as a remedy for an illness to which they were subject. Beside these brilliant flowers, which gemmed and gilt the grass in a sunny afternoon's drive near the blue lake, between the low oak-wood and the narrow beach, stimulated, whether sensuously by the optic nerve, unused to so much gold and crimson with such tender green, or symbolically through some meaning dimly seen in the flowers, I enjoyed a sort of fairy-land exultation never felt before, and the first drive amid the flowers gave me anticipation of the beauty of the prairies. At first, the prairie seemed to speak of the very desolation of dulness. After sweeping over the vast monotony of the lakes to come to this monotony of land, with all around a limitless horizon,--to walk, and walk, and run, but never climb, oh! it was too dreary for any but a Hollander to bear. How the eye greeted the approach of a sail, or the smoke of a steamboat; it seemed that anything so animated must come from a better land, where mountains gave religion to the scene. The only thing I liked at first to do was to trace with slow and unexpecting step the narrow margin of the lake. Sometimes a heavy swell gave it expression; at others, only its varied coloring, which I found more admirable every day, and which gave it an air of mirage instead of the vastness of ocean. Then there was a grandeur in the feeling that I might continue that walk, if I had any seven-leagued mode of conveyance to save fatigue, for hundreds of miles without an obstacle and without a change. But after I had ridden out, and seen the flowers, and observed the sun set with that calmness seen only in the prairies, and tire cattle winding slowly to their homes in the "island groves,"--most peaceful of sights,--I began to love, because I began to know tire scene, and shrank no longer from "the encircling vastness." It is always thus with the new form of life; we must learn to look at it by its own standard. At first, no doubt, my accustomed eye kept saying, if the mind did not, What! no distant mountains? What! no valleys? But after a while I would ascend the roof of the house where we lived, and pass many hours, needing no sight but the moon reigning in the heavens, or starlight falling upon the lake, till all the lights were out in the island grove of men beneath my feet, and felt nearer heaven that there was nothing but this lovely, still reception on the earth; no towering mountains, no deep tree-shadows, nothing but plain earth and water bathed in light. Sunset, as seen from that place, presented most generally, low-lying, flaky clouds, of the softest serenity. One night a star "shot madly from, its sphere," and it had a fair chance to be seen, but that serenity could not be astonished. Yes! it was a peculiar beauty, that of those sunsets and moonlights on the levels of Chicago, which Chamouny or the Trosachs could not make me forget.[A] [Footnote A: "From the prairie near Chicago had I seen, some days before, the sun set with that calmness observed only on the prairies. I know not what it says, but something quite different from sunset at sea. There is no motion except of waving grasses,--the cattle move slowly homeward in the distance. That _home!_ where is it? It seems as If there was no home, and no need of one, and there is room enough to wander on for ever."--Manuscript Notes.] Notwithstanding all the attractions I thus found out by degrees on the flat shores of the lake, I was delighted when I found myself really on my way into the country for an excursion of two or three weeks. We set forth in a strong wagon, almost as large, and with the look of those used elsewhere for transporting caravans of wild beasts, loaded with everything we might want, in case nobody would give it to us,--for buying and selling were no longer to be counted on,--with, a pair of strong horses, able and willing to force their way through mud-holes and amid stumps, and a guide, equally admirable as marshal and companion, who knew by heart the country and its history, both natural and artificial, and whose clear hunter's eye needed, neither road nor goal to guide it to all the spots where beauty best loves to dwell. Add to this the finest weather, and such country as I had never seen, even in my dreams, although these dreams had been haunted by wishes for just such a one, and you may judge whether years of dulness might not, by these bright days, be redeemed, and a sweetness be shed over all thoughts of the West. The first day brought us through woods rich in the moccason-flower and lupine, and plains whose soft expanse was continually touched with expression by the slow moving clouds which "Sweep over with their shadows, and beneath The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye; Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase The sunny ridges," to the banks of the Fox River, a sweet and graceful stream. We readied Geneva just in time to escape being drenched by a violent thunder-shower, whose rise and disappearance threw expression into all the features of the scene. Geneva reminds me of a New England village, as indeed there, and in the neighborhood, are many New-Englanders of an excellent stamp, generous, intelligent, discreet, and seeking to win from life its true values. Such are much wanted, and seem like points of light among the swarms of settlers, whose aims are sordid, whose habits thoughtless and slovenly.[A] [Footnote A: "We passed a portion of one day with Mr. and Mrs. ----, young, healthy, and, thank Heaven, _gay_ people. In the general dulness that broods over this land where so little genius flows, and care, business, and fashionable frivolity are equally dull, unspeakable is the relief of some flashes of vivacity, some sparkles of wit. Of course it is hard enough for those, most natively disposed that way, to strike fire. I would willingly be the tinder to promote the cheering blaze."--Manuscript Notes.] With great pleasure we heard, with his attentive and affectionate congregation, the Unitarian clergyman, Mr. Conant, and afterward visited him in his house, where almost everything bore traces of his own handiwork or that of his father. He is just such a teacher as is wanted in this region, familiar enough, with the habits of those he addresses to come home to their experience and their wants; earnest and enlightened enough to draw the important inferences from the life of every day.[B] [Footnote B: "Let any who think men do not need or want the church, hear these people talk about it as if it were the only indispensable thing, and see what I saw in Chicago. An elderly lady from Philadelphia, who had been visiting her sons in the West, arrived there about one o'clock on a hot Sunday noon. She rang the bell and requested a room immediately, as she wanted to get ready for afternoon service. Some delay occurring, she expressed great regret, as she had ridden all night for the sake of attending church. She went to church, neither having dined nor taken any repose after her journey."--Manuscript Notes.] A day or two we remained here, and passed some happy hours in the woods that fringe the stream, where the gentlemen found a rich booty of fish. Next day, travelling along the river's banks, was an uninterrupted pleasure. We closed our drive in the afternoon at the house of an English gentleman, who has gratified, as few men do, the common wish to pass the evening of an active day amid the quiet influences of country life. He showed us a bookcase filled with books about this country; these he had collected for years, and become so familiar with the localities, that, on coming here at last, he sought and found, at once, the very spot he wanted, and where he is as content as he hoped to be, thus realizing Wordsworth's description of the wise man, who "sees what he foresaw." A wood surrounds the house, through which paths are cut in every direction. It is, for this new country, a large and handsome dwelling; but round it are its barns and farm-yard, with cattle and poultry. These, however, in the framework of wood, have a very picturesque and pleasing effect. There is that mixture of culture and rudeness in the aspect of things which gives a feeling of freedom, not of confusion. I wish, it were possible to give some idea of this scene, as viewed by the earliest freshness of dewy dawn. This habitation of man seemed like a nest in the grass, so thoroughly were the buildings and all the objects of human care harmonized with, what was natural. The tall trees bent and whispered all around, as if to hail with, sheltering love the men who had come to dwell among them. The young ladies were musicians, and spoke French fluently, having been educated in a convent. Here in the prairie, they had learned to take care of the milk-room, and kill the rattlesnakes that assailed their poultry-yard. Beneath the shade of heavy curtains you looked out from the high and large windows to see Norwegian peasants at work in their national dress. In the wood grew, not only the flowers I had before seen, and wealth of tall, wild roses, but the splendid blue spiderwort, that ornament of our gardens. Beautiful children strayed there, who were soon to leave these civilized regions for some really wild and western place, a post in the buffalo country. Their no less beautiful mother was of Welsh descent, and the eldest child bore the name of Gwynthleon. Perhaps there she will meet with some young descendants of Madoc, to be her friends; at any rate, her looks may retain that sweet, wild beauty, that is soon made to vanish from eyes which look too much on shops and streets, and the vulgarities of city "parties." Next day we crossed the river. We ladies crossed on a little foot-bridge, from which we could look down the stream, and see the wagon pass over at the ford. A black thunder-cloud was coming up; the sky and waters heavy with expectation. The motion of the wagon, with its white cover, and the laboring horses, gave just the due interest to the picture, because it seemed, as if they would not have time to cross before the storm came on. However, they did get across, and we were a mile or two on our way before the violent shower obliged us to take refuge in a solitary house upon the prairie. In this country it is as pleasant to stop as to go on, to lose your way as to find it, for the variety in the population gives you a chance for fresh entertainment in every hut, and the luxuriant beauty makes every path attractive. In this house we found a family "quite above the common," but, I grieve to say, not above false pride, for the father, ashamed of being caught barefoot, told us a story of a man, one of the richest men, he said, in one of the Eastern cities, who went barefoot, from choice and taste. Near the door grew a Provence rose, then in blossom. Other families we saw had brought with them and planted the locust. It was pleasant to see their old home loves, brought into connection with their new splendors. Wherever there were traces of this tenderness of feeling, only too rare among Americans, other things bore signs also of prosperity and intelligence, as if the ordering mind of man had some idea of home beyond a mere shelter beneath which to eat and sleep. No heaven need wear a lovelier aspect than earth did this afternoon, after the clearing up of the shower. We traversed the blooming plain, unmarked by any road, only the friendly track of wheels which bent, not broke, the grass. Our stations were not from town to town, but from grove to grove. These groves first floated like blue islands in the distance. As we drew nearer, they seemed fair parks, and the little log-houses on the edge, with their curling smokes, harmonized beautifully with them. One of these groves, Ross's Grove, we reached just at sunset, It was of the noblest trees I saw during this journey, for generally the trees were not large or lofty, but only of fair proportions. Here they were large enough to form with their clear stems pillars for grand cathedral aisles. There was space enough for crimson light to stream through upon the floor of water which the shower had left. As we slowly plashed through, I thought I was never in a better place for vespers. That night we rested, or rather tarried, at a grove some miles beyond, and there partook of the miseries, so often jocosely portrayed, of bedchambers for twelve, a milk dish for universal hand-basin, and expectations that you would use and lend your "hankercher" for a towel. But this was the only night, thanks to the hospitality of private families, that we passed thus; and it was well that we had this bit of experience, else might we have pronounced all Trollopian records of the kind to be inventions of pure malice. With us was a young lady who showed herself to have been bathed in the Britannic fluid, wittily described by a late French writer, by the impossibility she experienced of accommodating herself to the indecorums of the scene. We ladies were to sleep in the bar-room, from which its drinking visitors could be ejected only at a late hour. The outer door had no fastening to prevent their return. However, our host kindly requested we would call him, if they did, as he had "conquered them for us," and would do so again. We had also rather hard couches (mine was the supper-table); but we Yankees, born to rove, were altogether too much fatigued to stand upon trifles, and slept as sweetly as we would in the "bigly bower" of any baroness. But I think England sat up all night, wrapped in her blanket-shawl, and with a neat lace cap upon her head,--so that she would have looked perfectly the lady, if any one had come in,--shuddering and listening. I know that she was very ill next day, in requital. She watched, as her parent country watches the seas, that nobody may do wrong in any case, and deserved to have met some interruption, she was so well prepared. However, there was none, other than from the nearness of some twenty sets of powerful lungs, which would not leave the night to a deathly stillness. In this house we had, if not good beds, yet good tea, good bread, and wild strawberries, and were entertained with most free communications of opinion and history from our hosts. Neither shall any of us have a right to say again that we cannot find any who may be willing to hear all we may have to say. "A's fish that comes to the net," should be painted on the sign at Papaw Grove. CHAPTER III. ROCK RIVER.--OREGON.--ANCIENT INDIAN VILLAGE.--GANYMEDE TO HIS EAGLE.--WESTERN FOURTH OF JULY CELEBRATION.--WOMEN IN THE WEST.--KISHWAUKIE.--BELVIDERE.--FAREWELL. In the afternoon of this day we reached the Rock River, in whose neighborhood we proposed to make some stay, and crossed at Dixon's Ferry. This beautiful stream flows full and wide over a bed of rocks, traversing a distance of near two hundred miles, to reach the Mississippi. Great part of the country along its banks is the finest region of Illinois, and the scene of some of the latest romance of Indian warfare. To these beautiful regions Black Hawk returned with his band "to pass the summer," when he drew upon himself the warfare in which he was finally vanquished. No wonder he could not resist the longing, unwise though its indulgence might be, to return in summer to this home of beauty. Of Illinois, in general, it has often been remarked, that it bears the character of country which has been inhabited by a nation skilled like the English in all the ornamental arts of life, especially in landscape-gardening. The villas and castles seem to have been burnt, the enclosures taken down, but the velvet lawns, the flower-gardens, the stately parks, scattered at graceful intervals by the decorous hand of art, the frequent deer, and the peaceful herd of cattle that make picture of the plain, all suggest more of the masterly mind of man, than the prodigal, but careless, motherly love of Nature. Especially is this true of the Rock River country. The river flows sometimes through these parks and lawns, then betwixt high bluffs, whose grassy ridges are covered with fine trees, or broken with crumbling stone, that easily assumes the forms of buttress, arch, and clustered columns. Along the face of such crumbling rocks, swallows' nests are clustered, thick as cities, and eagles and deer do not disdain their summits. One morning, out in the boat along the base of these rocks, it was amusing, and affecting too, to see these swallows put their heads out to look at us. There was something very hospitable about it, as if man had never shown himself a tyrant near them. What a morning that was! Every sight is worth twice as much by the early morning light. We borrow something of the spirit of the hour to look upon them. The first place where we stopped was one of singular beauty, a beauty of soft, luxuriant wildness. It was on the bend of the river, a place chosen by an Irish gentleman, whose absenteeship seems of the wisest kind, since, for a sum which would have been but a drop of water to the thirsty fever of his native land, he commands a residence which has all that is desirable, in its independence, its beautiful retirement, and means of benefit to others. His park, his deer-chase, he found already prepared; he had only to make an avenue through it. This brought us to the house by a drive, which in the heat of noon seemed long, though afterwards, in the cool of morning and evening, delightful. This is, for that part of the world, a large and commodious dwelling. Near it stands the log-cabin where its master lived while it was building, a very ornamental accessory. In front of the house was a lawn, adorned by the most graceful trees. A few of these had been taken out to give a full view of the river, gliding through banks such as I have described. On this bend the bank is high and bold, so from, the house or the lawn the view was very rich and commanding. But if you descended a ravine at the side to the water's edge, you found there a long walk on the narrow shore, with a wall above of the richest hanging wood, in which they said the deer lay hid. I never saw one but often fancied that I heard them rustling, at daybreak, by these bright, clear waters, stretching out in such smiling promise where no sound broke the deep and blissful seclusion, unless now and then this rustling, or the splash of some fish a little gayer than the others; it seemed not necessary to have any better heaven, or fuller expression of love and freedom, than in the mood of Nature here. Then, leaving the bank, you would walk far and yet farther through long, grassy paths, full of the most brilliant, also the most delicate flowers. The brilliant are more common on the prairie, but both kinds loved this place. Amid the grass of the lawn, with a profusion of wild strawberries, we greeted also a familiar love, the Scottish harebell, the gentlest and most touching form of the flower-world. The master of the house was absent, but with a kindness beyond thanks had offered us a resting-place there. Here we were taken care of by a deputy, who would, for his youth, have been assigned the place of a page in former times, but in the young West, it seems, he was old enough for a steward. Whatever be called his function, he did the honors of the place so much in harmony with it, as to leave the guests free to imagine themselves in Elysium. And the three days passed here were days of unalloyed, spotless happiness. There was a peculiar charm in coming here, where the choice of location, and the unobtrusive good taste of all the arrangements, showed such intelligent appreciation of the spirit of the scene, after seeing so many dwellings of the new settlers, which showed plainly that they had no thought beyond satisfying the grossest material wants. Sometimes they looked attractive, these little brown houses, the natural architecture of the country, in the edge of the timber. But almost always, when you came near the slovenliness of the dwelling, and the rude way in which objects around it were treated, when so little care would have presented a charming whole, were very repulsive. Seeing the traces of the Indians, who chose the most beautiful sites for their dwellings, and whose habits do not break in on that aspect of Nature under which they were born, we feel as if they were the rightful lords of a beauty they forbore to deform. But most of these settlers do not see it at all; it breathes, it speaks in vain to those who are rushing into its sphere. Their progress is Gothic, not Roman, and their mode of cultivation will, in the course of twenty, perhaps ten years, obliterate the natural expression of the country. This is inevitable, fatal; we must not complain, but look forward to a good result. Still, in travelling through this country, I could not but be struck with the force of a symbol. Wherever the hog comes, the rattlesnake disappears; the omnivorous traveller, safe in its stupidity, willingly and easily makes a meal of the most dangerous of reptiles, and one which the Indian looks on with a mystic awe. Even so the white settler pursues the Indian, and is victor in the chase. But I shall say more upon the subject by and by. While we were here, we had one grand thunder-storm, which added new glory to the scene. One beautiful feature was the return of the pigeons every afternoon to their home. At this time they would come sweeping across the lawn, positively in clouds, and with a swiftness and softness of winged motion more beautiful than anything of the kind I ever knew. Had I been a musician, such as Mendelssohn, I felt that I could have improvised a music quite peculiar, from the sound they made, which should have indicated all the beauty over which their wings bore them. I will here insert a few lines left at this house on parting, which feebly indicate some of the features. THE WESTERN EDEN. Familiar to the childish mind were tales Of rock-girt isles amid a desert sea, Where unexpected stretch the flowery vales To soothe the shipwrecked sailor's misery. Fainting, he lay upon a sandy shore, And fancied that all hope of life was o'er; But let him patient climb the frowning wall, Within, the orange glows beneath the palm-tree tall, And all that Eden boasted waits his call. Almost these tales seem realized to-day, When the long dulness of the sultry way, Where "independent" settlers' careless cheer Made us indeed feel we were "strangers" here, Is cheered by sudden sight of this fair spot, On which "improvement" yet has made no blot, But Nature all-astonished stands, to find Her plan protected by the human mind. Blest be the kindly genius of the scene; The river, bending in unbroken grace, The stately thickets, with their pathways green, Fair, lonely trees, each in its fittest place; Those thickets haunted by the deer and fawn; Those cloudlike flights of birds across the lawn! The gentlest breezes here delight to blow, And sun and shower and star are emulous to deck the show. Wondering, as Crusoe, we survey the land; Happier than Crusoe we, a friendly band. Blest be the hand that reared this friendly home, The heart and mind of him to whom we owe Hours of pure peace such as few mortals know; May he find such, should he be led to roam,-- Be tended by such ministering sprites,-- Enjoy such gayly childish days, such hopeful nights! And yet, amid the goods to mortals given, To give those goods again is most like heaven. Hazelwood, Rock River, June 30, 1843. The only really rustic feature was of the many coops of poultry near the house, which I understood it to be one of the chief pleasures of the master to feed. Leaving this place, we proceeded a day's journey along the beautiful stream, to a little town named Oregon. We called at a cabin, from whose door looked out one of those faces which, once seen, are never forgotten; young, yet touched with many traces of feeling, not only possible, but endured; spirited, too, like the gleam of a finely tempered blade. It was a face that suggested a history, and many histories, but whose scene would have been in courts and camps. At this moment their circles are dull for want of that life which, is waning unexcited in this solitary recess. The master of the house proposed to show us a "short cut," by which we might, to especial advantage, pursue our journey. This proved to be almost perpendicular down a hill, studded with young trees and stumps. From these he proposed, with a hospitality of service worthy an Oriental, to free our wheels whenever they should get entangled, also to be himself the drag, to prevent our too rapid descent. Such generosity deserved trust; however, we women could not be persuaded to render it. We got out and admired, from afar, the process. Left by our guide and prop, we found ourselves in a wide field, where, by playful quips and turns, an endless "creek," seemed to divert itself with our attempts to cross it. Failing in this, the next best was to whirl down a steep bank, which feat our charioteer performed with an air not unlike that of Rhesus, had he but been as suitably furnished with chariot and steeds! At last, after wasting some two or three hours on the "short cut," we got out by following an Indian trail,--Black Hawk's! How fair the scene through which it led! How could they let themselves be conquered, with such a country to fight for! Afterwards, in the wide prairie, we saw a lively picture of nonchalance (to speak in the fashion of clear Ireland). There, in the wide sunny field, with neither tree nor umbrella above his head, sat a pedler, with his pack, waiting apparently for customers. He was not disappointed. We bought what hold, in regard to the human world, as unmarked, as mysterious, and as important an existence, as the infusoria to the natural, to wit, pins. This incident would have delighted those modern sages, who, in imitation of the sitting philosophers of ancient Ind, prefer silence to speech, waiting to going, and scornfully smile, in answer to the motions of earnest life, "Of itself will nothing come, That ye must still be seeking?" However, it seemed to me to-day, as formerly on these sublime occasions, obvious that nothing would, come, unless something would go; now, if we had been as sublimely still as the pedler, his pins would have tarried in the pack, and his pockets sustained an aching void of pence. Passing through one of the fine, park-like woods, almost clear from underbrush and carpeted with thick grasses and flowers, we met (for it was Sunday) a little congregation just returning from their service, which had been performed in a rude house in its midst. It had a sweet and peaceful air, as if such words and thoughts were very dear to them. The parents had with them, all their little children; but we saw no old people; that charm was wanting which exists in such scenes in older settlements, of seeing the silver bent in reverence beside the flaxen head. At Oregon, the beauty of the scene was of even a more sumptuous character than at our former "stopping-place." Here swelled the river in its boldest course, interspersed by halcyon isles on which Nature had lavished all her prodigality in tree, vine, and flower, banked by noble bluffs, three Hundred feet high, their sharp ridges as exquisitely definite as the edge of a shell; their summits adorned with those same beautiful trees, and with buttresses of rich rock, crested with old hemlocks, which wore a touching and antique grace amid, the softer and more luxuriant vegetation. Lofty natural mounds rose amidst the rest, with the same lovely and sweeping outline, showing everywhere the plastic power of water,--water, mother of beauty,--which, by its sweet and eager flow, had left such lineaments as human genius never dreamt of. Not far from the river was a high crag, called the Pine Rock, which looks out, as our guide observed, like a helmet above the brow of the country. It seems as if the water left here and there a vestige of forms and materials that preceded its course, just to set off its new and richer designs. The aspect of this country was to me enchanting, beyond any I have ever seen, from its fulness of expression, its bold and impassioned sweetness. Here the flood of emotion has passed over and marked everywhere its course by a smile. The fragments of rock touch it with a wildness and liberality which give just the needed relief. I should never be tired here, though I have elsewhere seen country of more secret and alluring charms, better calculated to stimulate and suggest. Here the eye and heart are filled. How happy the Indians must have been here! It is not long since they were driven away, and the ground, above and below, is full of their traces. "The earth is full of men." You have only to turn up the sod to find arrowheads and Indian pottery. On an island, belonging to our host, and nearly opposite his house, they loved to stay, and, no doubt, enjoyed its lavish beauty as much as the myriad wild pigeons that now haunt its flower-filled shades. Here are still the marks of their tomahawks, the troughs in which they prepared their corn, their caches. A little way down the river is the site of an ancient Indian village, with its regularly arranged mounds. As usual, they had chosen with the finest taste. When we went there, it was one of those soft, shadowy afternoons when Nature seems ready to weep, not from grief, but from an overfull heart. Two prattling, lovely little girls, and an African boy, with glittering eye and ready grin, made our party gay; but all were still as we entered the little inlet and trod those flowery paths. They may blacken Indian life as they will, talk of its dirt, its brutality, I will ever believe that the men who chose that dwelling-place were able to feel emotions of noble happiness as they returned to it, and so were the women that received them. Neither were the children sad or dull, who lived so familiarly with the deer and the birds, and swam that clear wave in the shadow of the Seven Sisters. The whole scene suggested to me a Greek splendor, a Greek sweetness, and I can believe that an Indian brave, accustomed to ramble in such paths, and be bathed by such sunbeams, might be mistaken for Apollo, as Apollo was for him by West. Two of the boldest bluffs are called the Deer's Walk, (not because deer do _not_ walk there,) and the Eagle's Nest. The latter I visited one glorious morning; it was that of the fourth of July, and certainly I think I had never felt so happy that I was born in America. Woe to all country folks that never saw this spot, never swept an enraptured gaze over the prospect that stretched beneath. I do believe Rome and Florence are suburbs compared to this capital of Nature's art. The bluff was decked with great bunches of a scarlet variety of the milkweed, like cut coral, and all starred with a mysterious-looking dark flower, whose cup rose lonely on a tall stem. This had, for two or three days, disputed the ground with the lupine and phlox. My companions disliked, I liked it. Here I thought of, or rather saw, what the Greek expresses under the form of Jove's darling, Ganymede, and the following stanzas took form. GANYMEDE TO HIS EAGLE. SUGGESTED BY A WORK OF THORWALDSEN'S. Composed on the height called the Eagle's Nest, Oregon, Rock River, July 4th, 1843. Upon the rocky mountain stood the boy, A goblet of pure water in his hand; His face and form spoke him one made for joy, A willing servant to sweet love's command, But a strange pain was written on his brow, And thrilled throughout his silver accents now. "My bird," he cries, "my destined brother friend, O whither fleets to-day thy wayward flight? Hast thou forgotten that I here attend, From the full noon until this sad twilight? A hundred times, at least, from the clear spring, Since the fall noon o'er hill and valley glowed, I've filled the vase which our Olympian king Upon my care for thy sole use bestowed; That, at the moment when thou shouldst descend, A pure refreshment might thy thirst attend. "Hast thou forgotten earth, forgotten me, Thy fellow-bondsman in a royal cause, Who, from the sadness of infinity, Only with thee can know that peaceful pause In which we catch the flowing strain of love, Which binds our dim fates to the throne of Jove? "Before I saw thee, I was like the May, Longing for summer that must mar its bloom, Or like the morning star that calls the day, Whose glories to its promise are the tomb; And as the eager fountain rises higher To throw itself more strongly back to earth, Still, as more sweet and full rose my desire, More fondly it reverted to its birth, For what the rosebud seeks tells not the rose, The meaning that the boy foretold the man cannot disclose. "I was all Spring, for in my being dwelt Eternal youth, where flowers are the fruit; Full feeling was the thought of what was felt, Its music was the meaning of the lute; But heaven and earth such life will still deny, For earth, divorced from heaven, still asks the question _Why?_ "Upon the highest mountains my young feet Ached, that no pinions from their lightness grew, My starlike eyes the stars would fondly greet, Yet win no greeting from the circling blue; Fair, self-subsistent each in its own sphere, They had no care that there was none for me; Alike to them that I was far or near, Alike to them time and eternity. "But from the violet of lower air Sometimes an answer to my wishing came; Those lightning-births my nature seemed to share, They told the secrets of its fiery frame, The sudden messengers of hate and love, The thunderbolts that arm the hand of Jove, And strike sometimes the sacred spire, and strike the sacred grove. "Come in a moment, in a moment gone, They answered me, then left me still more lone; They told me that the thought which ruled the world As yet no sail upon its course had furled, That the creation was but just begun, New leaves still leaving from the primal one, But spoke not of the goal to which _my_ rapid wheels would run. "Still, still my eyes, though tearfully, I strained To the far future which my heart contained, And no dull doubt my proper hope profaned. "At last, O bliss! thy living form I spied, Then a mere speck upon a distant sky; Yet my keen glance discerned its noble pride, And the full answer of that sun-filled eye; I knew it was the wing that must upbear My earthlier form into the realms of air. "Thou knowest how we gained that beauteous height, Where dwells the monarch, of the sons of light; Thou knowest he declared us two to be The chosen servants of his ministry, Thou as his messenger, a sacred sign Of conquest, or, with omen more benign, To give its due weight to the righteous cause, To express the verdict of Olympian laws. "And I to wait upon the lonely spring, Which slakes the thirst of bards to whom 't is given The destined dues of hopes divine to sing, And weave the needed chain to bind to heaven. Only from such could be obtained a draught For him who in his early home from Jove's own cup has quaffed "To wait, to wait, but not to wait too long. Till heavy grows the burden of a song; O bird! too long hast thou been gone to-day, My feet are weary of their frequent way, The spell that opes the spring my tongue no more can say. "If soon thou com'st not, night will fall around, My head with a sad slumber will be bound, And the pure draught be spilt upon the ground. "Remember that I am not yet divine, Long years of service to the fatal Nine Are yet to make a Delphian vigor mine. "O, make them not too hard, thou bird of Jove! Answer the stripling's hope, confirm his love, Receive the service in which he delights, And bear him often to the serene heights, Where hands that were so prompt in serving thee Shall be allowed the highest ministry, And Rapture live with bright Fidelity." The afternoon was spent in a very different manner. The family whose guests we were possessed a gay and graceful hospitality that gave zest to each moment. They possessed that rare politeness which, while fertile in pleasant expedients to vary the enjoyment of a friend, leaves him perfectly free the moment he wishes to be so. With such hosts, pleasure may be combined with repose. They lived on the bank opposite the town, and, as their house was full, we slept in the town, and passed three days with them, passing to and fro morning and evening in their boats. To one of these, called the Fairy, in which a sweet little daughter of the house moved about lighter than any Scotch Ellen ever sung, I should indite a poem, if I had not been guilty of rhyme on this very page. At morning this boating was very pleasant; at evening, I confess, I was generally too tired with the excitements of the day to think it so. The house--a double log-cabin--was, to my eye, the model of a Western villa. Nature had laid out before it grounds which could not be improved. Within, female taste had veiled every rudeness, availed itself of every sylvan grace. In this charming abode what laughter, what sweet thoughts, what pleasing fancies, did we not enjoy! May such never desert those who reared it, and made us so kindly welcome to all its pleasures! Fragments of city life were dexterously crumbled into the dish prepared for general entertainment. Ice-creams followed the dinner, which was drawn by the gentlemen from the river, and music and fireworks wound up the evening of days spent on the Eagle's Nest. Now they had prepared a little fleet to pass over to the Fourth of July celebration, which some queer drumming and fifing, from, the opposite bank, had announced to be "on hand." We found the free and independent citizens there collected beneath the trees, among whom many a round Irish visage dimpled at the usual puffs of "Ameriky." The orator was a New-Englander, and the speech smacked loudly of Boston, but was received with much applause and followed by a plentiful dinner, provided by and for the Sovereign People, to which Hail Columbia served as grace. Returning, the gay flotilla cheered the little flag which the children had raised from a log-cabin, prettier than any president ever saw, and drank the health of our country and all mankind, with a clear conscience. Dance and song wound up the day. I know not when the mere local habitation has seemed to me to afford so fair a chance of happiness as this. To a person of unspoiled tastes, the beauty alone would afford stimulus enough. But with it would be naturally associated all kinds of wild sports, experiments, and the studies of natural history. In these regards, the poet, the sportsman, the naturalist, would alike rejoice in this wide range of untouched loveliness. Then, with a very little money, a ducal estate may be purchased, and by a very little more, and moderate labor, a family be maintained upon it with raiment, food, and shelter. The luxurious and minute comforts of a city life are not yet to be had without effort disproportionate to their value. But, where there is so great a counterpoise, cannot these be given up once for all? If the houses are imperfectly built, they can afford immense fires and plenty of covering; if they are small, who cares,--with, such fields to roam in? in winter, it may be borne; in summer, is of no consequence. With plenty of fish, and game, and wheat, can they not dispense with a baker to bring "muffins hot" every morning to the door for their breakfast? A man need not here take a small slice from the landscape, and fence it in from the obtrusions of an uncongenial neighbor, and there cut down his fancies to miniature improvements which a chicken could run over in ten minutes. He may have water and wood and land enough, to dread no incursions on his prospect from some chance Vandal that may enter his neighborhood. He need not painfully economize and manage how he may use it all; he can afford to leave some of it wild, and to carry out his own plans without obliterating those of Nature. Here, whole families might live together, if they would. The sons might return from their pilgrimages to settle near the parent hearth; the daughters might find room near their mother. Those painful separations, which already desecrate and desolate the Atlantic coast, are not enforced here by the stern need of seeking bread; and where they are voluntary, it is no matter. To me, too, used to the feelings which haunt a society of struggling men, it was delightful to look upon a scene where Nature still wore her motherly smile, and seemed to promise room, not only for those favored or cursed with the qualities best adapting for the strifes of competition, but for the delicate, the thoughtful, even the indolent or eccentric. She did not say, Fight or starve; nor even, Work or cease to exist; but, merely showing that the apple was a finer fruit than the wild crab, gave both room to grow in the garden. A pleasant society is formed of the families who live along the banks of this stream upon farms. They are from various parts of the world, and have much to communicate to one another. Many have cultivated minds and refined manners, all a varied experience, while they have in common the interests of a new country and a new life. They must traverse some space to get at one another, but the journey is through scenes that make it a separate pleasure. They must bear inconveniences to stay in one another's houses; but these, to the well-disposed, are only a source of amusement and adventure. The great drawback upon the lives of these settlers, at present, is the unfitness of the women for their new lot. It has generally been the choice of the men, and the women follow, as women will, doing their best for affection's sake, but too often in heartsickness and weariness. Beside, it frequently not being a choice or conviction of their own minds that it is best to be here, their part is the hardest, and they are least fitted for it. The men can find assistance in field labor, and recreation with the gun and fishing-rod. Their bodily strength is greater, and enables them to bear and enjoy both these forms of life. The women can rarely find any aid in domestic labor. All its various and careful tasks must often be performed, sick, or well, by the mother and daughters, to whom a city education has imparted neither the strength nor skill now demanded. The wives of the poorer settlers, having more hard work to do than before, very frequently become slatterns; but the ladies, accustomed to a refined neatness, feel that they cannot degrade themselves by its absence, and struggle under every disadvantage to keep up the necessary routine of small arrangements. With all these disadvantages for work, their resources for pleasure are fewer. When they can leave the housework, they have not learnt to ride, to drive, to row, alone. Their culture has too generally been that given to women to make them "the ornaments of society." They can dance, but not draw; talk French, but know nothing of the language of flowers; neither in childhood were allowed to cultivate them, lest they should tan their complexions. Accustomed to the pavement of Broadway, they dare not tread the wild-wood paths for fear of rattlesnakes! Seeing much of this joylessness, and inaptitude, both of body and mind, for a lot which would be full of blessings for those prepared for it, we could not but look with deep interest on the little girls, and hope they would grow up with the strength of body, dexterity, simple tastes, and resources that would fit them to enjoy and refine the Western farmer's life. But they have a great deal to war with in the habits of thought acquired by their mothers from their own early life. Everywhere the fatal spirit of imitation, of reference to European standards, penetrates, and threatens to blight whatever of original growth might adorn the soil. If the little girls grow up strong, resolute, able to exert their faculties, their mothers mourn over their want of fashionable delicacy. Are they gay, enterprising, ready to fly about in the various ways that teach them so much, these ladies lament that "they cannot go to school, where they might learn to be quiet." They lament the want of "education" for their daughters, as if the thousand needs which call out their young energies, and the language of nature around, yielded no education. Their grand ambition for their children is to send them to school in some Eastern city, the measure most likely to make them useless and unhappy at home. I earnestly hope that, erelong, the existence of good schools near themselves, planned by persons of sufficient thought to meet the wants of the place and time, instead of copying New York or Boston, will correct this mania. Instruction the children want to enable them to profit by the great natural advantages of their position; but methods copied from the education of some English Lady Augusta are as ill suited to the daughter of an Illinois farmer, as satin shoes to climb the Indian mounds. An elegance she would diffuse around her, if her mind were opened to appreciate elegance; it might be of a kind new, original, enchanting, as different from that of the city belle as that of the prairie torch-flower from the shop-worn article that touches the cheek of that lady within her bonnet. To a girl really skilled to make home beautiful and comfortable, with bodily strength to enjoy plenty of exercise, the woods, the streams, a few studies, music, and the sincere and familiar intercourse, far more easily to be met with here than elsewhere, would afford happiness enough. Her eyes would not grow dim, nor her cheeks sunken, in the absence of parties, morning visits, and milliners' shops. As to music, I wish I could see in such places the guitar rather than the piano, and good vocal more than instrumental music. The piano many carry with them, because it is the fashionable instrument in the Eastern cities. Even there, it is so merely from the habit of imitating Europe, for not one in a thousand is willing to give the labor requisite to insure any valuable use of the instrument. But out here, where the ladies have so much less leisure, it is still less desirable. Add to this, they never know how to tune their own instruments, and as persons seldom visit them who can do so, these pianos are constantly out of tune, and would spoil the ear of one who began by having any. The guitar, or some portable instrument which requires less practice, and could be kept in tune by themselves, would be far more desirable for most of these ladies. It would give all they want as a household companion to fill up the gaps of life with a pleasant stimulus or solace, and be sufficient accompaniment to the voice in social meetings. Singing in parts is the most delightful family amusement, and those who are constantly together can learn to sing in perfect accord. All the practice it needs, after some good elementary instruction, is such as meetings by summer twilight and evening firelight naturally suggest. And as music is a universal language, we cannot but think a fine Italian duet would be as much at home in the log cabin as one of Mrs. Gore's novels. The 6th of July we left this beautiful place. It was one of those rich days of bright sunlight, varied by the purple shadows of large, sweeping clouds. Many a backward look we cast, and left the heart behind. Our journey to-day was no less delightful than before, still all new, boundless, limitless. Kinmont says, that limits are sacred; that the Greeks were in the right to worship a god of limits. I say, that what is limitless is alone divine, that there was neither wall nor road in Eden, that those who walked, there lost and found their way just as we did, and that all the gain from the Fall was that we had a wagon to ride in. I do not think, either, that even the horses doubted whether this last was any advantage. Everywhere the rattlesnake-weed grows in profusion. The antidote survives the bane. Soon the coarser plantain, the "white man's footstep," shall take its place. We saw also the compass-plant, and the Western tea-plant. Of some of the brightest flowers an Indian girl afterwards told me the medicinal virtues. I doubt not those students of the soil knew a use to every fair emblem, on which we could only look to admire its hues and shape. After noon we were ferried by a girl (unfortunately not of the most picturesque appearance) across the Kishwaukie, the most graceful of streams, and on whose bosom rested many full-blown water-lilies,--twice as large as any of ours. I was told that, _en revanche_, they were scentless, but I still regret that I could not get at one of them to try. Query, did the lilied fragrance which, in the miraculous times, accompanied visions of saints and angels, proceed from water or garden lilies? Kishwaukie is, according to tradition, the scene of a famous battle, and its many grassy mounds contain the bones of the valiant. On these waved thickly the mysterious purple flower, of which I have spoken before. I think it springs from the blood of the Indians, as the hyacinth did from that of Apollo's darling. The ladies of our host's family at Oregon, when they first went, there, after all the pains and plagues of building and settling, found their first pastime in opening one of these mounds, in which they found, I think, three of the departed, seated, in the Indian fashion. One of these same ladies, as she was making bread one winter morning, saw from the window a deer directly before the house. She ran out, with her hands covered with dough, calling the others, and they caught him bodily before he had time to escape. Here (at Kiskwaukie) we received a visit from a ragged and barefooted, but bright-eyed gentleman, who seemed to be the intellectual loafer, the walking Will's coffee-house, of the place. He told us many charming snake-stories; among others, of himself having seen seventeen young ones re-enter the mother snake, on the approach of a visitor. This night we reached Belvidere, a flourishing town in Boon County, where was the tomb, now despoiled, of Big Thunder. In this later day we felt happy to find a really good hotel. From this place, by two days of very leisurely and devious journeying, we reached Chicago, and thus ended a journey, which one at least of the party might have wished unending. I have not been particularly anxious to give the geography of the scene, inasmuch as it seemed to me no route, nor series of stations, but a garden interspersed with cottages, groves, and flowery lawns, through which a stately river ran. I had no guide-book, kept no diary, do not know how many miles we travelled each day, nor how many in all. What I got from the journey was the poetic impression of the country at large; it is all I have aimed to communicate. The narrative might have been made much more interesting, as life was at the time, by many piquant anecdotes and tales drawn from private life. But here courtesy restrains the pen, for I know those who received the stranger with such frank kindness would feel ill requited by its becoming the means of fixing many spy-glasses, even though the scrutiny might be one of admiring interest, upon their private homes. For many of these anecdotes, too, I was indebted to a friend, whose property they more lawfully are. This friend was one of those rare beings who are equally at home in nature and with man. He knew a tale of all that ran and swam and flew, or only grew, possessing that extensive familiarity with things which shows equal sweetness of sympathy and playful penetration. Most refreshing to me was his unstudied lore, the unwritten poetry which common life presents to a strong and gentle mind. It was a great contrast to the subtilties of analysis, the philosophic strainings of which I had seen too much. But I will not attempt to transplant it. May it profit others as it did me in the region where it was born, where it belongs. The evening of our return to Chicago, the sunset was of a splendor and calmness beyond any we saw at the West. The twilight that succeeded was equally beautiful; soft, pathetic, but just so calm. When afterwards I learned this was the evening of Allston's death, it seemed to me as if this glorious pageant was not without connection with that event; at least, it inspired similar emotions,--a heavenly gate closing a path adorned with shows well worthy Paradise. FAREWELL TO ROCK RIVER VALLEY. Farewell, ye soft and sumptuous solitudes! Ye fairy distances, ye lordly woods, Haunted, by paths like those that Poussin knew, When after his all gazers' eyes he drew; I go,--and if I never more may steep An eager heart in your enchantments deep, Yet ever to itself that heart may say, Be not exacting; them hast lived one day,-- Hast looked on that which matches with thy mood, Impassioned sweetness of full being's flood, Where nothing checked the bold yet gentle wave, Where naught repelled the lavish love that gave. A tender blessing lingers o'er the scene, Like some young mother's thought, fond, yet serene, And through its life new-born our lives have been. Once more farewell,--a sad, a sweet farewell; And, if I never must behold you more, In other worlds I will not cease to tell The rosary I here have numbered o'er; And bright-haired Hope will lend a gladdened ear, And Love will free him from the grasp of Fear, And Gorgon critics, while the tale they hear, Shall dew their stony glances with a tear, If I but catch one echo from your spell:-- And so farewell,--a grateful, sad farewell! CHAPTER IV. A SHORT CHAPTER.--CHICAGO AGAIN.--MORRIS BIRKBECK. Chicago had become interesting to me now, that I knew it as the portal to so fair a scene. I had become interested in the land, in the people, and looked sorrowfully on the lake on which I must soon embark, to leave behind what I had just begun to enjoy. Now was the time to see the lake. The July moon was near its full, and night after night it rose in a cloudless sky above this majestic sea. The heat was excessive, so that there was no enjoyment of life, except in the night; but then the air was of that delicious temperature worthy of orange-groves. However, they were not wanted;--nothing was, as that full light fell on the faintly rippling waters, which then seemed, boundless. The most picturesque objects to be seen from Chicago on the inland side were the lines of Hoosier wagons. These rude farmers, the large first product of the soil, travel leisurely along, sleeping in their wagons by night, eating only what they bring with them. In the town they observe the same plan, and trouble no luxurious hotel for board and lodging. Here they look like foreign peasantry, and contrast well with the many Germans, Dutch, and Irish. In the country it is very pretty to see them prepared to "camp out" at night, their horses taken out of harness, and they lounging under the trees, enjoying the evening meal. On the lake-side it is fine to see the great boats come panting in from their rapid and marvellous journey. Especially at night the motion of their lights is very majestic. When the favorite boats, the Great Western and Illinois, are going out, the town is thronged with, people from the South and farther West, to go in them. These moonlight nights I would hear the French rippling and fluttering familiarly amid the rude ups and downs of the Hoosier dialect. At the hotel table were daily to be seen new faces, and new stories to be learned. And any one who has a large acquaintance may be pretty sure of meeting some of them here in the course of a few days. At Chicago I read again Philip Van Artevelde, and certain passages in it will always be in my mind associated with the deep sound of the lake, as heard in the night. I used to read a short time at night, and then open the blind to look out. The moon would be full upon the lake, and the calm breath, pure light, and the deep voice harmonized well with the thought of the Flemish hero. When will this country have such a man? It is what she needs; no thin Idealist, no coarse Realist, but a man whose eye reads the heavens, while his feet step firmly on the ground, and his hands are strong and dexterous for the use of human implements. A man religious, virtuous, and--sagacious; a man of universal sympathies, but self-possessed; a man who knows the region of emotion, though he is not its slave; a man to whom this world is no mere spectacle, or fleeting shadow, not a great, solemn game, to be played with, good heed, for its stakes are of eternal value, yet who, if his own play be true, heeds not what he loses by the falsehood of others;--a man who hives from the past, yet knows that its honey can but moderately avail him; whose comprehensive eye scans the present, neither infatuated by its golden lures, nor chilled by its many ventures; who possesses prescience, as the wise man must, but not so far as to be driven mad to-day by the gift which discerns to-morrow;--when there is such a man for America, the thought which urges her on will be expressed. * * * * * Now that I am about to leave Illinois, feelings of regret and admiration come over me, as in parting with a friend whom, we have not had the good sense to prize and study, while hours of association, never perhaps to return, were granted. I have fixed my attention almost exclusively on the picturesque beauty of this region; it was so new, so inspiring. But I ought to have been more interested in the housekeeping of this magnificent State, in the education she is giving her children, in their prospects. Illinois is, at present, a by-word of reproach among the nations, for the careless, prodigal course by which, in early youth, she has endangered her honor. But you cannot look about you there, without seeing that there are resources abundant to retrieve, and soon to retrieve, far greater errors, if they are only directed with wisdom. Would that the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy, might be laid to heart; that a sense of the true aim of life might elevate the tone of politics and trade till public and private honor became identical; that the Western man, in that crowded and exciting life which, develops his faculties so fully for to-day, might not forget that better part which could not be taken from him; that the Western woman might take that interest and acquire that light for the education of the children, for which she alone has leisure! This is indeed the great problem of the place and time. If the next generation be well prepared for their work, ambitious of good and skilful to achieve it, the children of the present settlers may be leaven enough for the mass constantly increasing by immigration. And how much is this needed, where those rude foreigners can so little understand the best interests of the land they seek for bread and shelter! It would be a happiness to aid in this good work, and interweave the white and golden threads into the fate of Illinois. It would be a work worthy the devotion of any mind. In the little that I saw was a large proportion of intelligence, activity, and kind feeling; but, if there was much serious laying to heart of the true purposes of life, it did not appear in the tone of conversation. Having before me the Illinois Guide-Book, I find there mentioned, as a "visionary," one of the men I should think of as able to be a truly valuable settler in a new and great country,--Morris Birkbeck, of England. Since my return, I have read his journey to, and letters from, Illinois. I see nothing promised there that will not surely belong to the man who knows how to seek for it. Mr. Birkbeck was an enlightened, philanthropist, the rather that he did not wish to sacrifice himself to his fellow-men, but to benefit them with all he had, and was, and wished. He thought all the creatures of a divine love ought to be happy and ought to be good, and that his own soul and his own life were not less precious than those of others; indeed, that to keep these healthy was his only means of a healthy influence. But his aims were altogether generous. Freedom, the liberty of law, not license; not indolence, work for himself and children and all men, but under genial and poetic influences;--these were his aims. How different from those of the new settlers in general! And into his mind so long ago shone steadily the two thoughts, now so prevalent in thinking and aspiring minds, of "Resist not evil," and "Every man his own priest, and the heart the only true church." He has lost credit for sagacity from accidental circumstances. It does not appear that his position was ill chosen, or his means disproportioned to his ends, had he been sustained by funds from England, as he had a right to expect. But through the profligacy of a near relative, commissioned to collect these dues, he was disappointed of them, and his paper protested and credit destroyed in our cities, before he became aware of his danger. Still, though more slowly and with more difficulty, he might have succeeded in his designs. The English farmer might have made the English settlement a model for good methods and good aims to all that region, had not death prematurely cut short his plans. I have wished to say these few words, because the veneration with which I have been inspired for his character by those who knew him well, makes me impatient of this careless blame being passed from mouth to mouth and book to book. Success is no test of a man's endeavor, and Illinois will yet, I hope, regard this man, who knew so well what _ought_ to be, as one of her true patriarchs, the Abraham of a promised land. He was one too much before his time to be soon valued; but the time is growing up to him, and will understand his mild philanthropy, and clear, large views. I subjoin the account of his death, given me by a friend, as expressing, in fair picture, the character of the man. "Mr. Birkbeck was returning from the seat of government, whither he had been on public business, and was accompanied by his son Bradford, a youth of sixteen or eighteen. It was necessary to cross a ford, which was rendered difficult by the swelling of the stream. Mr. B.'s horse was unwilling to plunge into the water, so his son offered to go first, and he followed. Bradford's horse had just gained footing on the opposite shore, when he looked back and perceived his father was dismounted, struggling in the water, and carried down by the current. "Mr. Birkbeck could not swim; Bradford could; so he dismounted, and plunged into the stream to save his father. He got to him before he sunk, held him up above water, and told him to take hold of his collar, and he would swim ashore with him. Mr. B. did so, and Bradford exerted all his strength to stem the current and reach the shore at a point where they could land; but, encumbered by his own clothing and his father's weight, he made no progress; when Mr. B. perceived this, he, with his characteristic calmness and resolution, gave up his hold of his son, and, motioning to him to save himself, resigned himself to his fate. His son reached the shore, but was too much overwhelmed by his loss to leave it. He was found by some travellers, many hours after, seated on the margin of the stream, with his face in his hands, stupefied with grief. "The body was found, and on the countenance was the sweetest smile; and Bradford said, 'Just so he smiled, upon me when he let go and pushed me away from him.'" Many men can choose the right and best on a great occasion, but not many can, with such ready and serene decision, lay aside even life, when that is right and best. This little narrative touched my imagination in very early youth, and often has come up, in lonely vision, that face, serenely smiling above the current which bore him away to another realm of being. CHAPTER V. THOUGHTS AND SCENES IN WISCONSIN.--SOCIETY IN MILWAUKIE.--INDIAN ANECDOTE.--SEERESS OF PREVORST.--MILWAUKIE. A territory, not yet a State;[A] still nearer the acorn than we were. [Footnote A: Wisconsin was not admitted into the Union as a State till 1847, after this volume was written.--ED.] It was very pleasant coming up. These large and elegant boats are so well arranged that every excursion may be a party of pleasure. There are many fair shows to see on the lake and its shores, almost always new and agreeable persons on board, pretty children playing about, ladies singing (and if not very well, there is room, to keep out of the way). You may see a great deal here of Life, in the London sense, if you know a few people; or if you do not, and have the tact to look about you without seeming to stare. We came to Milwaukie, where we were to pass a fortnight or more. This place is most beautifully situated. A little river, with romantic banks, passes up through the town. The bank of the lake is here a bold bluff, eighty feet in height. From its summit is enjoyed a noble outlook on the lake. A little narrow path winds along the edge of the lake below. I liked this walk much,--above me this high wall of rich earth, garlanded on its crest with trees, the long ripples of the lake coming up to my feet. Here, standing in the shadow, I could appreciate better its magnificent changes of color, which are the chief beauties of the lake-waters; but these are indescribable. It was fine to ascend into the lighthouse, above this bluff, and thence watch the thunder-clouds which so frequently rose over the lake, or the great boats coming in. Approaching the Milwaukie pier, they made a bend, and seemed to do obeisance in the heavy style of some dowager duchess entering a circle she wishes to treat with especial respect. These boats come in and out every day, and still afford a cause for general excitement. The people swarm, down to greet them, to receive and send away their packages and letters. To me they seemed such mighty messengers, to give, by their noble motion, such an idea of the power and fulness of life, that they were worthy to carry despatches from king to king. It must be very pleasant for those who have an active share in carrying on the affairs of this great and growing world to see them approach, and pleasant to such as have dearly loved friends at the next station. To those who have neither business nor friends, it sometimes gives a desolating sense of insignificance. The town promises to be, some time, a fine one, as it is so well situated; and they have good building material,--a yellow brick, very pleasing to the eye. It seems to grow before you, and has indeed but just emerged from the thickets of oak and wild-roses. A few steps will take you into the thickets, and certainly I never saw so many wild-roses, or of so beautiful a red. Of such a color were the first red ones the world ever saw, when, says the legend, Venus flying to the assistance of Adonis, the rose-bushes kept catching her to make her stay, and the drops of blood the thorns drew from her feet, as she tore herself a way, fell on the white roses, and turned them this beautiful red. One day, walking along the river's bank in search of a waterfall to be seen from one ravine, we heard tones from a band of music, and saw a gay troop shooting at a mark, on the opposite bank. Between every shot the band played; the effect was very pretty. On this walk we found two of the oldest and most gnarled hemlocks that ever afforded study for a painter. They were the only ones we saw; they seemed the veterans of a former race. At Milwaukie, as at Chicago, are many pleasant people, drawn together from all parts of the world. A resident here would find great piquancy in the associations,--those he met having such dissimilar histories and topics. And several persons I saw, evidently transplanted from the most refined circles to be met in this country. There are lures enough in the West for people of all kinds;--the enthusiast and the cunning man; the naturalist, and the lover who needs to be rich for the sake of her he loves. The torrent of immigration swells very strongly towards this place. During the fine weather, the poor refugees arrive daily, in their national dresses, all travel-soiled and worn. The night they pass in rude shantees, in a particular quarter of the town, then walk off into the country,--the mothers carrying their infants, the fathers leading the little children by the hand, seeking a home where their hands may maintain them. One morning we set off in their track, and travelled a day's journey into this country,--fair, yet not, in that part which I saw, comparable, in my eyes, to the Rock River region. Rich fields, proper for grain, alternate with oak openings, as they are called; bold, various, and beautiful were the features of the scene, but I saw not those majestic sweeps, those boundless distances, those heavenly fields; it was not the same world. Neither did we travel in the same delightful manner. We were now in a nice carriage, which must not go off the road, for fear of breakage, with a regular coachman, whose chief care was not to tire his horses, and who had no taste for entering fields in pursuit of wild-flowers, or tempting some strange wood-path, in search of whatever might befall. It was pleasant, but almost as tame as New England. But charming indeed was the place where we stopped. It was in the vicinity of a chain of lakes, and on the bank of the loveliest little stream, called, the Bark River, which, flowed in rapid amber brightness, through fields, and dells, and stately knolls, of most poetic beauty. The little log-cabin where we slept, with its flower-garden in front, disturbed the scene no more than a stray lock on the fair cheek. The hospitality of that house I may well call princely; it was the boundless hospitality of the heart, which, if it has no Aladdin's lamp to create a palace for the guest, does him still higher service by the freedom of its bounty to the very last drop of its powers. Sweet were the sunsets seen in the valley of this stream, though, here, and, I grieve to say, no less near the Rock River, the fiend, who has every liberty to tempt the happy in this world, appeared in the shape of mosquitos, and allowed us no bodily to enjoy our mental peace. One day we ladies gave, under the guidance of our host, to visiting all the beauties of the adjacent lakes,--Nomabbin, Silver, and Pine Lakes. On the shore of Nomabbin had formerly been one of the finest Indian villages. Our host said, that once, as he was lying there beneath the bank, he saw a tall Indian standing at gaze on the knoll. He lay a long time, curious to see how long the figure would maintain its statue-like absorption. But at last his patience yielded, and, in moving, he made a slight noise. The Indian saw him, gave a wild, snorting sound of indignation and pain, and strode away. What feelings must consume their hearts at such moments! I scarcely see how they can forbear to shoot the white man where he stands. But the power of fate is with, the white man, and the Indian feels it. This same gentleman told of his travelling through the wilderness with an Indian guide. He had with him a bottle of spirit which he meant to give him in small quantities, but the Indian, once excited, wanted the whole at once. "I would not," said Mr. ----, "give it him, for I thought, if he got really drunk, there was an end to his services as a guide. But he persisted, and at last tried to take it from me. I was not armed; he was, and twice as strong as I. But I knew an Indian could not resist the look of a white man, and I fixed my eye steadily on his. He bore it for a moment, then his eye fell; he let go the bottle. I took his gun and threw it to a distance. After a few moments' pause, I told him to go and fetch it, and left it in his hands. From that moment he was quite obedient, even servile, all the rest of the way." This gentleman, though in other respects of most kindly and liberal heart, showed the aversion that the white man soon learns to feel for the Indian on whom he encroaches,--the aversion of the injurer for him he has degraded. After telling the anecdote of his seeing the Indian gazing at the seat of his former home, "A thing for human feelings the most trying," and which, one would think, would have awakened soft compassion-- almost remorse--in the present owner of that fair hill, which contained for the exile the bones of his dead, the ashes of his hopes, he observed: "They cannot be prevented from straggling back here to their old haunts. I wish they could. They ought not to be permitted to drive away _our_ game." OUR game,--just heavens! The same gentleman showed, on a slight occasion, the true spirit of a sportsman, or perhaps I might say of Man, when engaged in any kind of chase. Showing us some antlers, he said: "This one belonged to a majestic creature. But this other was the beauty. I had been lying a long time at watch, when at last I heard them come crackling along. I lifted my head cautiously, as they burst through the trees. The first was a magnificent fellow; but then I saw coming one, the prettiest, the most graceful I ever beheld,--there was something so soft and beseeching in its look. I chose him at once, took aim, and shot him dead. You see the antlers are not very large; it was young, but the prettiest creature!" In the course of this morning's drive, we visited the gentlemen on their fishing party. They hailed us gayly, and rowed ashore to show us what fine booty they had. No disappointment there, no dull work. On the beautiful point of land from which we first saw them lived a contented woman, the only one I heard of out there. She was English, and said she had seen so much suffering in her own country, that the hardships of this seemed as nothing to her. But the others--even our sweet and gentle hostess--found their labors disproportioned to their strength, if not to their patience; and, while their husbands and brothers enjoyed the country in hunting or fishing, they found themselves confined to a comfortless and laborious in-door life. But it need not be so long. This afternoon, driving about on the banks of these lakes, we found the scene all of one kind of loveliness; wide, graceful woods, and then these fine sheets of water, with, fine points of land jutting out boldly into them. It was lovely, but not striking or peculiar. All woods suggest pictures. The European forest, with its long glades and green, sunny dells, naturally suggested the figures of armed knight on his proud steed, or maiden, decked in gold and pearl, pricking along them on a snow-white palfrey; the green dells, of weary Palmer sleeping there beside the spring with his head upon his wallet. Our minds, familiar with such, figures, people with them the New England woods, wherever the sunlight falls down a longer than usual cart-track, wherever a cleared spot has lain still enough for the trees to look friendly, with their exposed sides cultivated by the light, and the grass to look velvet warm, and be embroidered with flowers. These Western woods suggest a different kind of ballad. The Indian legends have often an air of the wildest solitude, as has the one Mr. Lowell has put into verse in his late volume. But I did not see those wild woods; only such as suggest to me little romances of love and sorrow, like this:-- GUNHILDA. A maiden sat beneath the tree, Tear-bedewed her pale cheeks be, And she sigheth heavily. From forth the wood into the light A hunter strides, with carol light, And a glance so bold and bright. He careless stopped and eyed the maid; "Why weepest thou?" he gently said; "I love thee well; be not afraid." He takes her hand, and leads her on; She should have waited there alone, For he was not her chosen one. He leans her head upon his breast, She knew 't was not her home of rest, But ah! she had been sore distrest. The sacred stars looked sadly down; The parting moon appeared to frown, To see thus dimmed the diamond crown. Then from the thicket starts a deer, The huntsman, seizing on his spear, Cries, "Maiden, wait thou for me here." She sees him vanish into night, She starts from sleep in deep affright, For it was not her own true knight. Though but in dream Gunhilda failed. Though but a fancied ill assailed, Though she but fancied fault bewailed,-- Yet thought of day makes dream of night: She is not worthy of the knight, The inmost altar burns not bright. If loneliness thou canst not bear, Cannot the dragon's venom dare, Of the pure meed thou shouldst despair. Now sadder that lone maiden sighs, Far bitterer tears profane her eyes, Crushed, in the dust her heart's flower lies. On the bank of Silver Lake we saw an Indian encampment. A shower threatened us, but we resolved to try if we could not visit it before it came on. We crossed a wide field on foot, and found the Indians amid the trees on a shelving bank; just as we reached them, the rain began to fall in torrents, with frequent thunderclaps, and we had to take refuge in their lodges. These were very small, being for temporary use, and we crowded the occupants much, among whom were several sick, on the damp ground, or with only a ragged mat between them and it. But they showed all the gentle courtesy which, marks their demeanor towards the stranger, who stands in any need; though it was obvious that the visit, which inconvenienced them, could only have been caused by the most impertinent curiosity, they made us as comfortable as their extreme poverty permitted. They seemed to think we would not like to touch them; a sick girl in the lodge where I was, persisted in moving so as to give me the dry place; a woman, with the sweet melancholy eye of the race, kept off the children and wet dogs from even the hem of my garment. Without, their fires smouldered, and black kettles, hung over them on sticks, smoked, and seethed in the rain. An old, theatrical-looking Indian stood with arms folded, looking up to the heavens, from which the rain clashed and the thunder reverberated; his air was French-Roman; that is, more Romanesque than Roman. The Indian ponies, much excited, kept careering through the wood, around the encampment, and now and then, halting suddenly, would thrust in their intelligent, though amazed faces, as if to ask their masters when this awful pother would cease, and then, after a moment, rush and trample off again. At last we got away, well wetted, but with a picturesque scene for memory. At a house where we stopped to get dry, they told us that this wandering band (of Pottawattamies), who had returned, on a visit, either from homesickness, or need of relief, were extremely destitute. The women had been there to see if they could barter for food their head-bands, with which they club their hair behind into a form not unlike a Grecian knot. They seemed, indeed, to have neither food, utensils, clothes, nor bedding; nothing but the ground, the sky, and their own strength. Little wonder if they drove off the game! Part of the same band I had seen in Milwaukee, on a begging dance. The effect of this was wild and grotesque. They wore much paint and feather head-dresses. "Indians without paint are poor coots," said a gentleman who had been a great deal with, and really liked, them; and I like the effect of the paint on them; it reminds of the gay fantasies of nature. With them in Milwaukie was a chief, the finest Indian figure I saw, more than six feet in height, erect, and of a sullen, but grand gait and gesture. He wore a deep-red blanket, which fell in large folds from his shoulders to his feet, did not join in the dance, but slowly strode about through the streets, a fine sight, not a French-Roman, but a real Roman. He looked unhappy, but listlessly unhappy, as if he felt it was of no use to strive or resist. While in the neighborhood of these lakes, we visited also a foreign settlement of great interest. Here were minds, it seemed, to "comprehend the trust" of their new life; and, if they can only stand true to them, will derive and bestow great benefits therefrom. But sad and sickening to the enthusiast who comes to these shores, hoping the tranquil enjoyment of intellectual blessings, and the pure happiness of mutual love, must be a part of the scene that he encounters at first. He has escaped from the heartlessness of courts, to encounter the vulgarity of the mob; he has secured solitude, but it is a lonely, a deserted solitude. Amid the abundance of nature, he cannot, from petty, but insuperable obstacles, procure, for a long time, comforts or a home. But let him come sufficiently armed with patience to learn the new spells which the new dragons require, (and this can only be done on the spot,) he will not finally be disappointed of the promised treasure; the mob will resolve itself into men, yet crude, but of good dispositions, and capable of good character; the solitude will become sufficiently enlivened, and home grow up at last from the rich sod. In this transition state we found one of these homes. As we approached, it seemed the very Eden which earth might still afford to a pair willing to give up the hackneyed pleasures of the world for a better and more intimate communion with one another and with beauty: the wild road led through wide, beautiful woods, to the wilder and more beautiful shores of the finest lake we saw. On its waters, glittering in the morning sun, a few Indians were paddling to and fro in their light canoes. On one of those fair knolls I have so often mentioned stood the cottage, beneath trees which stooped as if they yet felt brotherhood with its roof-tree. Flowers waved, birds fluttered round, all had the sweetness of a happy seclusion; all invited to cry to those who inhabited it, All hail, ye happy ones! But on entrance to those evidently rich in personal beauty, talents, love, and courage, the aspect of things was rather sad. Sickness had been with them, death, care, and labor; these had not yet blighted them, but had turned their gay smiles grave. It seemed that hope and joy had given place to resolution. How much, too, was there in them, worthless in this place, which would have been so valuable elsewhere! Refined graces, cultivated powers, shine in vain before field-laborers, as laborers are in this present world; you might as well cultivate heliotropes to present to an ox. Oxen and heliotropes are both good, but not for one another. With them were some of the old means of enjoyment, the books, the pencil, the guitar; but where the wash-tub and the axe are so constantly in requisition, there is not much time and pliancy of hand for these. In the inner room, the master of the house was seated; he had been sitting there long, for he had injured his foot on ship-board, and his farming had to be done by proxy. His beautiful young wife was his only attendant and nurse, as well as a farm, housekeeper. How well she performed hard and unaccustomed duties, the objects of her care showed; everything that belonged to the house was rude, but neatly arranged. The invalid, confined to an uneasy wooden chair, (they had not been able to induce any one to bring them an easy-chair from the town,) looked as neat and elegant as if he had been dressed by the valet of a duke. He was of Northern blood, with clear, full blue eyes, calm features, a tempering of the soldier, scholar, and man of the world, in his aspect. Either various intercourses had given him that thoroughbred look never seen in Americans, or it was inherited from a race who had known all these disciplines. He formed a great but pleasing contrast to his wife, whose glowing complexion and dark yellow eye bespoke an origin in some climate more familiar with the sun. He looked as if he could sit there a great while patiently, and live on his own mind, biding his time; she, as if she could bear anything for affection's sake, but would feel the weight of each moment as it passed. Seeing the album full of drawings and verses, which bespoke the circle of elegant and affectionate intercourse they had left behind, we could not but see that the young wife sometimes must need a sister, the husband a companion, and both must often miss that electricity which sparkles from the chain of congenial minds. For mankind, a position is desirable in some degree proportioned to education. Mr. Birkbeck was bred a farmer, but these were nurslings of the court and city; they may persevere, for an affectionate courage shone in their eyes, and, if so, become true lords of the soil, and informing geniuses to those around; then, perhaps, they will feel that they have not paid too clear for the tormented independence of the new settler's life. But, generally, damask roses will not thrive in the wood, and a ruder growth, if healthy and pure, we wish rather to see there. I feel about these foreigners very differently from what I do about Americans. American men and women are inexcusable if they do not bring up children so as to be fit for vicissitudes; the meaning of our star is, that here all men being free and equal, every man should be fitted for freedom and an independence by his own resources wherever the changeful wave of our mighty stream may take him. But the star of Europe brought a different horoscope, and to mix destinies breaks the thread of both. The Arabian horse will not plough well, nor can the plough-horse be rode to play the jereed. Yet a man is a man wherever he goes, and something precious cannot fail to be gained by one who knows how to abide by a resolution of any kind, and pay the cost without a murmur. Returning, the fine carriage at last fulfilled its threat of breaking down. We took refuge in a farm-house. Here was a pleasant scene,--a rich and beautiful estate, several happy families, who had removed together, and formed a natural community, ready to help and enliven one another. They were farmers at home, in Western New York, and both men and women knew how to work. Yet even here the women did not like the change, but they were willing, "as it might be best for the young folks." Their hospitality was great: the houseful of women and pretty children seemed all of one mind. Returning to Milwaukie much fatigued, I entertained myself: for a day or two with reading. The book I had brought with me was in strong contrast with, the life around, me. Very strange was this vision of an exalted and sensitive existence, which seemed to invade the next sphere, in contrast with the spontaneous, instinctive life, so healthy and so near the ground I had been surveying. This was the German book entitled:-- "The Seeress of Prevorst.--Revelations concerning the Inward Life of Man, and the Projection of a World of Spirits into ours, communicated by Justinus Kerner." This book, published in Germany some twelve years since, and which called forth there plenteous dews of admiration, as plenteous hail-storms of jeers and scorns, I never saw mentioned in any English publication till some year or two since. Then a playful, but not sarcastic account of it, in the Dublin Magazine, so far excited my curiosity, that I procured the book, intending to read it so soon as I should have some leisure days, such as this journey has afforded. Dr. Kerner, its author, is a man of distinction in his native land, both as a physician and a thinker, though always on the side of reverence, marvel, and mysticism. He was known to me only through two or three little poems of his in Catholic legends, which I much admired for the fine sense they showed of the beauty of symbols. He here gives a biography, mental and physical, of one of the most remarkable cases of high nervous excitement that the age, so interested in such, yet affords, with all its phenomena of clairvoyance and susceptibility of magnetic influences. As to my own mental positron on these subjects, it may be briefly expressed by a dialogue between several persons who honor me with a portion of friendly confidence and criticism, and myself, personified as _Free Hope_. The others may be styled _Old Church_, _Good Sense_, and _Self-Poise_. DIALOGUE. _Good Sense._ I wonder you can take any interest in such observations or experiments. Don't you see how almost impossible it is to make them with any exactness, how entirely impossible to know anything about them unless made by yourself, when the least leaven of credulity, excited fancy, to say nothing of willing or careless imposture, spoils the whole loaf? Beside, allowing the possibility of some clear glimpses into a higher state of being, what do we want of it now? All around us lies what we neither understand nor use. Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere, are but half developed. Let us confine ourselves to that till the lesson be learned; let us be completely natural, before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural. I never see any of these things but I long to get away and lie under a green tree, and let the wind blow on me. There is marvel and charm enough in that for me. _Free Hope._ And for me also. Nothing is truer than the Wordsworthian creed, on which Carlyle lays such stress, that we need only look on the miracle of every day, to sate ourselves with thought and admiration every day. But how are our faculties sharpened to do it? Precisely by apprehending the infinite results of every day. Who sees the meaning of the flower uprooted in the ploughed field? The ploughman who does not look beyond its boundaries and does not raise his eyes from the ground? No,--but the poet who sees that field in its relations with the universe, and looks oftener to the sky than on the ground. Only the dreamer shall understand realities, though, in truth, his dreaming must be not out of proportion to his waking! The mind, roused powerfully by this existence, stretches of itself into what the French sage calls the "aromal state." From the hope thus gleaned it forms the hypothesis, under whose banner it collects its facts. Long before these slight attempts were made to establish, as a science what is at present called animal magnetism, always, in fact, men were occupied more or less with this vital principle,--principle of flux and influx,--dynamic of our mental mechanics,--human phase of electricity. Poetic observation was pure, there was no quackery in its free course, as there is so often in this wilful tampering with the hidden springs of life, for it is tampering unless done in a patient spirit and with severe truth; yet it may be, by the rude or greedy miners, some good ore is unearthed. And some there are who work in the true temper, patient and accurate in trial, not rushing to conclusions, feeling there is a mystery, not eager to call it by name till they can know it as a reality: such may learn, such may teach. Subject to the sudden revelations, the breaks in habitual existence, caused by the aspect of death, the touch of love, the flood of music, I never lived, that I remember, what you call a common natural day. All my days are touched by the supernatural, for I feel the pressure of hidden causes, and the presence, sometimes the communion, of unseen powers. It needs not that I should ask the clairvoyant whether "a spirit-world projects into ours." As to the specific evidence, I would not tarnish my mind by hasty reception. The mind is not, I know, a highway, but a temple, and its doors should not be carelessly left open. Yet it were sin, if indolence or coldness excluded what had a claim to enter; and I doubt whether, in the eyes of pure intelligence, an ill-grounded hasty rejection be not a greater sign of weakness than an ill-grounded and hasty faith. I will quote, as my best plea, the saying of a man old in years, but not in heart, and whose long life has been distinguished by that clear adaptation of means to ends which gives the credit of practical wisdom. He wrote to his child, "I have lived too long, and seen too much, to be _in_ credulous." Noble the thought, no less so its frank expression, instead of saws of caution, mean advices, and other modern instances. Such was the romance of Socrates when he bade his disciples "sacrifice a cock to �sculapius." _Old Church._ You are always so quick-witted and voluble, Free Hope, you don't get time to see how often you err, and even, perhaps, sin and blaspheme. The Author of all has intended to confine our knowledge within certain boundaries, has given us a short span of time for a certain probation, for which our faculties are adapted. By wild speculation and intemperate curiosity we violate His will, and incur dangerous, perhaps fatal, consequences. We waste our powers, and, becoming morbid and visionary, are unfitted to obey positive precepts, and perform positive duties. _Free Hope._ I do not see how it is possible to go further beyond the results of a limited human experience than those do who pretend to settle the origin and nature of sin, the final destiny of souls, and the whole plan of the Causal Spirit with regard to them. I think those who take your view have not examined themselves, and do not know the ground on which they stand. I acknowledge no limit, set up by man's opinion, as to the capacities of man. "Care is taken," I see it, "that the trees grow not up into heaven"; but, to me it seems, the more vigorously they aspire, the better. Only let it be a vigorous, not a partial or sickly aspiration. Let not the tree forget its root. So long as the child insists on knowing where its dead parent is, so long as bright eyes weep at mysterious pressures, too heavy for the life, so long as that impulse is constantly arising which made the Roman emperor address his soul in a strain of such touching softness, vanishing from, the thought, as the column of smoke from the eye, I know of no inquiry which the impulse of man suggests that is forbidden to the resolution of man to pursue. In every inquiry, unless sustained by a pure and reverent spirit, he gropes in the dark, or falls headlong. _Self-Poise._ All this may be very true, but what is the use of all this straining? Far-sought is dear-bought. When we know that all is in each, and that the ordinary contains the extraordinary, why should we play the baby, and insist upon having the moon for a toy when a tin dish will do as well? Our deep ignorance is a chasm that we can only fill up by degrees, but the commonest rubbish will help us as well as shred silk. The god Brahma, while on earth, was set to fill up a valley, but he had only a basket given him in which to fetch earth for this purpose; so is it with us all. No leaps, no starts, will avail us; by patient crystallization alone, the equal temper of wisdom is attainable. Sit at home, and the spirit-world will look in at your window with moonlit eyes; run out to find it, and rainbow and golden cup will have vanished, and left you the beggarly child you were. The better part of wisdom is a sublime prudence, a pure and patient truth, that will receive nothing it is not sure it can permanently lay to heart. Of our study, there should be in proportion two thirds of rejection to one of acceptance. And, amid the manifold infatuations and illusions of this world of emotion, a being capable of clear intelligence can do no better service than to hold himself upright, avoid nonsense, and do what chores lie in his way, acknowledging every moment that primal truth, which no fact exhibits, nor, if pressed by too warm a hope, will even indicate. I think, indeed, it is part of our lesson to give a formal consent to what is farcical, and to pick up our living and our virtue amid what is so ridiculous, hardly deigning a smile, and certainly not vexed. The work is done through all, if not by every one. _Free Hope._ Thou art greatly wise, my friend, and ever respected by me, yet I find not in your theory or your scope room enough for the lyric inspirations or the mysterious whispers of life. To me it seems that it is madder never to abandon one's self, than often to be infatuated; better to be wounded, a captive, and a slave, than always to walk in armor. As to magnetism, that is only a matter of fancy. You sometimes need just such a field in which to wander vagrant, and if it bear a higher name, yet it may be that, in last result, the trance of Pythagoras might be classed with the more infantine transports of the Seeress of Prevorst. What is done interests me more than what is thought and supposed. Every fact is impure, but every fact contains in it the juices of life. Every fact is a clod, from which may grow an amaranth or a palm. Climb you the snowy peaks whence come the streams, where the atmosphere is rare, where you can see the sky nearer, from which you can get a commanding view of the landscape? I see great disadvantages as well as advantages in this dignified position. I had rather walk myself through all kinds of places, even at the risk of being robbed in the forest, half drowned at the ford, and covered with dust in the street. I would beat with the living heart of the world, and understand all the moods, even the fancies or fantasies, of nature. I dare to trust to the interpreting spirit to bring me out all right at last,--establish truth through error. Whether this be the best way is of no consequence, if it be the one individual character points out. For one, like me, it would be vain From glittering heights the eyes to strain; I the truth can only know, Tested by life's most fiery glow. Seeds of thought will never thrive, Till dews of love shall bid them live. Let me stand in my age with all its waters flowing round me. If they sometimes subdue, they must finally upbear me, for I seek the universal,--and that must be the best. The Spirit, no doubt, leads in every movement of my time: if I seek the How, I shall find it, as well as if I busied myself more with the Why. Whatever is, is right, if only men are steadily bent to make it so, by comprehending and fulfilling its design. May not I have an office, too, in my hospitality and ready sympathy? If I sometimes entertain guests who cannot pay with gold coin, with "fair rose nobles," that is better than to lose the chance of entertaining angels unawares. You, my three friends, are held, in heart-honor, by me. You, especially, Good Sense, because where you do not go yourself, you do not object to another's going, if he will. You are really liberal. You, Old Church, are of use, by keeping unforgot the effigies of old religion, and reviving the tone of pure Spenserian sentiment, which this time is apt to stifle in its childish haste. But you are very faulty in censuring and wishing to limit others by your own standard. You, Self-Poise, fill a priestly office. Could but a larger intelligence of the vocations of others, and a tender sympathy with their individual natures, be added, had you more of love, or more of apprehensive genius, (for either would give you the needed expansion and delicacy,) you would command my entire reverence. As it is, I must at times deny and oppose you, and so must others, for you tend, by your influence, to exclude us from our full, free life. We must be content when you censure, and rejoiced when you approve; always admonished to good by your whole being, and sometimes by your judgment. * * * * * Do not blame me that I have written so much suggested by the German seeress, while you were looking for news of the West. Here on the pier, I see disembarking the Germans, the Norwegians, the Swedes, the Swiss. Who knows how much of old legendary lore, of modern wonder, they have already planted amid the Wisconsin forests? Soon, their tales of the origin of things, and the Providence which rules them, will be so mingled with those of the Indian, that the very oak-tree will not know them apart,--will not know whether itself be a Runic, a Druid, or a Winnebago oak. Some seeds of all growths that have ever been known in this world might, no doubt, already be found in these Western wilds, if we had the power to call them to life. I saw, in the newspaper, that the American Tract Society boasted of their agent's having exchanged, at a Western cabin door, tracts for the "Devil on Two Sticks," and then burnt that more entertaining than edifying volume. No wonder, though, they study it there. Could one but have the gift of reading the dreams dreamed by men of such various birth, various history, various mind, it would afford much, more extensive amusement than did the chambers of one Spanish city! Could I but have flown at night through such mental experiences, instead of being shut up in my little bedroom at the Milwaukie boarding-house, this chapter would have been worth reading. As it is, let us hasten to a close. Had I been rich in money, I might have built a house, or set up in business, during my fortnight's stay at Milwaukie, matters move on there at so rapid a rate. But being only rich in curiosity, I was obliged to walk the streets and pick up what I could in casual intercourse. When I left the street, indeed, and walked on the bluffs, or sat beside the lake in their shadow, my mind was rich in dreams congenial to the scene, some time to be realized, though not by me. A boat was left, keel up, half on the sand, half in the water, swaying with each swell of the lake. It gave a picturesque grace to that part of the shore, as the only image of inaction,--only object of a pensive character to be seen. Near this I sat, to dream my dreams and watch the colors of the lake, changing hourly, till the sun sank. These hours yielded impulses, wove webs, such as life will not again afford. Returning to the boarding-house, which was also a boarding-school, we were sure to be greeted by gay laughter. This school was conducted by two girls of nineteen and seventeen years; their pupils were nearly as old as themselves. The relation seemed very pleasant between them; the only superiority--that of superior knowledge--was sufficient to maintain authority,--all the authority that was needed to keep daily life in good order. In the West, people are not respected merely because they are old in years; people there have not time to keep up appearances in that way; when persons cease to have a real advantage in wisdom, knowledge, or enterprise, they must stand back, and let those who are oldest in character "go ahead," however few years they may count. There are no banks of established respectability in which to bury the talent there; no napkin of precedent in which to wrap it. What cannot be made to pass current, is not esteemed coin of the realm. To the windows of this house, where the daughter of a famous "Indian fighter," i.e. fighter against the Indians, was learning French, and the piano, came wild, tawny figures, offering for sale their baskets of berries. The boys now, instead of brandishing the tomahawk, tame their hands to pick raspberries. Here the evenings were much lightened by the gay chat of one of the party, who with the excellent practical sense of mature experience, and the kindest heart, united a _naïveté_ and innocence such as I never saw in any other who had walked so long life's tangled path. Like a child, she was everywhere at home, and, like a child, received and bestowed entertainment from all places, all persons. I thanked her for making me laugh, as did the sick and poor, whom she was sure to find out in her briefest sojourn in any place, for more substantial aid. Happy are those who never grieve, and so often aid and enliven their fellow-men! This scene, however, I was not sorry to exchange for the much celebrated beauties of the island of Mackinaw. CHAPTER VI. MACKINAW.--INDIANS.--INDIAN WOMEN.--EVERETT'S RECEPTION OF CHIEFS.--UNFITNESS OF INDIAN MISSIONARIES.--OUR DUTIES TOWARD THIS RACE. Late at night we reached this island of Mackinaw, so famous for its beauty, and to which I proposed a visit of some length. It was the last week in August, at which, time a large representation from the Chippewa and Ottawa tribes are here to receive their annual payments from the American government. As their habits make travelling easy and inexpensive to them, neither being obliged to wait for steamboats, or write to see whether hotels are full, they come hither by thousands, and those thousands in families, secure of accommodation on the beach, and food from the lake, to make a long holiday out of the occasion. There were near two thousand encamped on the island already, and more arriving every day. As our boat came in, the captain had some rockets let off. This greatly excited the Indians, and their yells and wild cries resounded along the shore. Except for the momentary flash of the rockets, it was perfectly dark, and my sensations as I walked with a stranger to a strange hotel, through the midst of these shrieking savages, and heard the pants and snorts of the departing steamer, which carried, away all my companions, were somewhat of the dismal sort; though it was pleasant, too, in the way that everything strange is; everything that breaks in upon the routine that so easily incrusts us. I had reason to expect a room to myself at the hotel, but found none, and was obliged to take up my rest in the common parlor and eating-room, a circumstance which insured my being an early riser. With the first rosy streak, I was out among my Indian neighbors, whose lodges honeycombed the beautiful beach, that curved away in long, fair outline on either side the house. They were already on the alert, the children creeping out from beneath the blanket door of the lodge, the women pounding corn in their rude mortars, the young men playing on their pipes. I had been much amused, when the strain proper to the Winnebago courting flute was played to me on another instrument, at any one fancying it a melody; but now, when I heard the notes in their true tone and time, I thought it not unworthy comparison, in its graceful sequence, and the light flourish at the close, with the sweetest bird-song; and this, like the bird-song, is only practised to allure a mate. The Indian, become a citizen and a husband, no more thinks of playing the flute, than one of the "settled-down" members of our society would, of choosing the "purple light of love" as dye-stuff for a surtout. Mackinaw has been fully described by able pens, and I can only add my tribute to the exceeding beauty of the spot and its position. It is charming to be on an island so small that you can sail round it in an afternoon, yet large enough to admit of long, secluded walks through its gentle groves. You can go round it in your boat; or, on foot, you can tread its narrow beach, resting, at times, beneath the lofty walls of stone, richly wooded, which rise from it in various architectural forms. In this stone, caves are continually forming, from the action of the atmosphere; one of these is quite deep, and a rocky fragment left at its mouth, wreathed with little creeping plants, looks, as you sit within, like a ruined pillar. The arched rock surprised me, much as I had heard of it, from, the perfection of the arch. It is perfect, whether you look up through it from the lake, or down through it to the transparent waters. We both ascended and descended--no very easy matter--the steep and crumbling path, and rested at the summit, beneath the trees, and at the foot, upon the cool, mossy stones beside the lapsing wave. Nature has carefully decorated all this architecture with shrubs that take root within the crevices, and small creeping vines. These natural ruins may vie for beautiful effect with the remains of European grandeur, and have, beside, a charm as of a playful mood in Nature. The sugar-loaf rock is a fragment in the same kind as the pine rock we saw in Illinois. It has the same air of a helmet, as seen from an eminence at the side, which you descend by a long and steep path. The rock itself may be ascended by the bold and agile: half-way up is a niche, to which those who are neither can climb by a ladder. A very handsome young officer and lady who were with us did so, and then, facing round, stood there side by side, looking in the niche, if not like saints or angels wrought by pious hands in stone, as romantically, if not as holily, worthy the gazer's eye. The woods which adorn the central ridge of the island are very full in foliage, and, in August, showed the tender green and pliant leaf of June elsewhere. They are rich in beautiful mosses and the wild raspberry. From Fort Holmes, the old fort, we had the most commanding view of the lake and straits, opposite shores, and fair islets. Mackinaw itself is best seen from the water. Its peculiar shape is supposed to have been the origin of its name, Michilimackinac, which means the Great Turtle. One person whom I saw wished to establish another etymology, which he fancied to be more refined; but, I doubt not, this is the true one, both because the shape might suggest such a name, and the existence of an island of such form in this commanding position would seem a significant fact to the Indians. For Henry gives the details of peculiar worship paid to the Great Turtle, and the oracles received from this extraordinary Apollo of the Indian Delphos. It is crowned, most picturesquely, by the white fort, with its gay flag. From this, on one side, stretches the town. How pleasing a sight, after the raw, crude, staring assemblage of houses everywhere else to be met in this country, is an old French town, mellow in its coloring, and with the harmonious effect of a slow growth, which assimilates, naturally, with objects round it! The people in its streets, Indian, French, half-breeds, and others, walked with a leisure step, as of those who live a life of taste and inclination, rather than of the hard press of business, as in American towns elsewhere. On the other side, along the fair, curving beach, below the white houses scattered on the declivity, clustered the Indian lodges, with their amber-brown matting, so soft and bright of hue, in the late afternoon sun. The first afternoon I was there, looking down from a near height, I felt that I never wished to see a more fascinating picture. It was an hour of the deepest serenity; bright blue and gold, with rich shadows. Every moment the sunlight fell more mellow. The Indians were grouped and scattered among the lodges; the women preparing food, in the kettle or frying-pan, over the many small fires; the children, half naked, wild as little goblins, were playing both in and out of the water. Here and there lounged a young girl, with a baby at her back, whose bright eyes glanced, as if born into a world of courage and of joy, instead of ignominious servitude and slow decay. Some girls were cutting wood, a little way from me, talking and laughing, in the low musical tone, so charming in the Indian women. Many bark canoes were upturned upon the beach, and, by that light, of almost the same amber as the lodges; others coming in, their square sails set, and with almost arrowy speed, though heavily laden with dusky forms, and all the apparatus of their household. Here and there a sail-boat glided by, with a different but scarce less pleasing motion. It was a scene of ideal loveliness, and these wild forms adorned it, as looking so at home in it. All seemed happy, and they were happy that day, for they had no fire-water to madden them, as it was Sunday, and the shops were shut. From my window, at the boarding-house, my eye was constantly attracted by these picturesque groups. I was never tired of seeing the canoes come in, and the new arrivals set up their temporary dwellings. The women ran to set up the tent-poles, and spread the mats on the ground. The men brought the chests, kettles, &c.; the mats were then laid on the outside, the cedar-boughs strewed on the ground, the blanket hung up for a door, and all was completed in less than twenty minutes. Then they began to prepare the night meal, and to learn of their neighbors the news of the day. The habit of preparing food out of doors gave all the gypsy charm and variety to their conduct. Continually I wanted Sir Walter Scott to have been there. If such romantic sketches were suggested to him, by the sight of a few gypsies, not a group near one of these fires but would have furnished him material for a separate canvas. I was so taken up with the spirit of the scene, that I could not follow out the stories suggested by these weather-beaten, sullen, but eloquent figures. They talked a great deal, and with much, variety of gesture, so that I often had a good guess at the meaning of their discourse. I saw that, whatever the Indian may be among the whites, he is anything but taciturn with his own people; and he often would declaim, or narrate at length. Indeed, it is obvious, if only from the fables taken from their stores by Mr. Schoolcraft, that these tribes possess great power that way. I liked very much, to walk or sit among them. With, the women I held much communication by signs. They are almost invariably coarse and ugly, with the exception of their eyes, with a peculiarly awkward gait, and forms bent by burdens. This gait, so different from the steady and noble step of the men, marks the inferior position they occupy. I had heard much eloquent contradiction of this. Mrs. Schoolcraft had maintained to a friend, that they were in fact as nearly on a par with their husbands as the white woman with hers. "Although," said she, "on account of inevitable causes, the Indian woman is subjected to many hardships of a peculiar nature, yet her position, compared with that of the man, is higher and freer than that of the white woman. Why will people look only on one side? They either exalt the red man into a demigod, or degrade him into a beast. They say that he compels his wife to do all the drudgery, while he does nothing but hunt and amuse himself; forgetting that upon his activity and power of endurance as a hunter depends the support of his family; that this is labor of the most fatiguing kind, and that it is absolutely necessary that he should keep his frame unbent by burdens and unworn by toil, that he may be able to obtain the means of subsistence. I have witnessed scenes of conjugal and parental love in the Indian's wigwam, from, which I have often, often thought the educated white man, proud of his superior civilization, might learn a useful lesson. When he returns from hunting, worn out with, fatigue, having tasted nothing since dawn, his wife, if she is a good wife, will take off his moccasons and replace them with dry ones, and will prepare his game for their repast, while his children will climb upon him, and he will caress them, with all the tenderness of a woman; and in the evening the Indian wigwam is the scene of the purest domestic pleasures. The father will relate, for the amusement of the wife and for the instruction of the children, all the events of the day's hunt, while they will treasure up every word that falls, and thus learn the theory of the art whose practice is to be the occupation of their lives." Mrs. Grant speaks thus of the position of woman amid the Mohawk Indians:-- "Lady Mary Montague says, that the court of Vienna was the paradise of old women, and that there is no other place in the world where a woman past fifty excites the least interest. Had her travels extended to the interior of North America, she would have seen another instance of this inversion of the common mode of thinking. Here a woman never was of consequence, till sire had a son old enough to fight the battles of his country. From, that date she held a superior rank in society; was allowed to live at ease, and even called to consultations on national affairs. In savage and warlike countries, the reign of beauty is very short, and its influence comparatively limited. The girls in childhood had a very pleasing appearance; but excepting their fine hair, eyes, and teeth, every external grace was soon banished by perpetual drudgery, carrying burdens too heavy to be borne, and other slavish employments, considered beneath the dignity of the men. These walked before, erect and graceful, decked with ornaments which set off to advantage the symmetry of their well-formed persons, while the poor women followed, meanly attired, bent under the weight of the children and the utensils, which they carried everywhere with, them, and disfigured and degraded by ceaseless toils. They were very early married, for a Mohawk had no other servant but his wife; and whenever he commenced hunter, it was requisite he should have some one to carry his load, cook his kettle, make his moccasons, and, above all, produce the young warriors who were to succeed him in the honors of the chase and of the tomahawk. Wherever man is a mere hunter, woman is a mere slave. It is domestic intercourse that softens man, and elevates woman; and of that there can be but little, where the employments and amusements are not in common. The ancient Caledonians honored the fair; but then it is to be observed, they were fair huntresses, and moved in the light of their beauty to the hill of roes; and the culinary toils were entirely left to the rougher sex. When the young warrior made his appearance, it softened the cares of his mother, who well knew that, when he grew up, every deficiency in tenderness to his wife would be made up in superabundant duty and affection to her. If it were possible to carry filial veneration to excess, it was done here; for all other charities were absorbed in it. I wonder this system of depressing the sex in their early years, to exalt them, when all their juvenile attractions are flown, and when mind alone can distinguish them, has not occurred to our modern reformers. The Mohawks took good care not to admit their women to share their prerogatives, till they approved themselves good wives and mothers." The observations of women upon the position of woman are always more valuable than those of men; but, of these two, Mrs. Grant's seem much, nearer the truth than Mrs. Schoolcraft's, because, though her opportunities for observation did not bring her so close, she looked more at both sides to find the truth. Carver, in his travels among the Winnebagoes, describes two queens, one nominally so, like Queen Victoria; the other invested with a genuine royalty, springing from her own conduct. In the great town of the Winnebagoes, he found a queen presiding over the tribe, instead of a sachem. He adds, that, in some tribes, the descent is given to the female line in preference to the male, that is, a sister's son will succeed to the authority, rather than a brother's son. The position of this Winnebago queen reminded me forcibly of Queen Victoria's. "She sat in the council, but only asked a few questions, or gave some trifling directions in matters relative to the state, for women are never allowed to sit in their councils, except they happen to be invested with the supreme authority, and then it is not customary for them to make any formal speeches, as the chiefs do. She was a very ancient woman, small in stature, and not much distinguished by her dress from several young women that attended her. These, her attendants, seemed greatly pleased whenever I showed any tokens of respect to their queen, especially when I saluted her, which I frequently did to acquire her favor." The other was a woman, who, being taken captive, found means to kill her captor, and make her escape; and the tribe were so struck with admiration at the courage and calmness she displayed on the occasion, as to make her chieftainess in her own light. Notwithstanding the homage paid to women, and the consequence allowed them in some cases, it is impossible to look upon the Indian women without feeling that they _do_ occupy a lower place than women among the nations of European civilization. The habits of drudgery expressed in their form and gesture, the soft and wild but melancholy expression of their eye, reminded me of the tribe mentioned by Mackenzie, where the women destroy their female children, whenever they have a good opportunity; and of the eloquent reproaches addressed by the Paraguay woman to her mother, that she had not, in the same way, saved her from the anguish and weariness of her lot. More weariness than anguish, no doubt, falls to the lot of most of these women. They inherit submission, and the minds of the generality accommodate themselves more or less to any posture. Perhaps they suffer less than their white sisters, who have more aspiration and refinement, with little power of self-sustenance. But their place is certainly lower, and their share of the human inheritance less. Their decorum and delicacy are striking, and show that, when these are native to the mind, no habits of life make any difference. Their whole gesture is timid, yet self-possessed. They used to crowd round me, to inspect little things I had to show them, but never press near; on the contrary, would reprove and keep off the children. Anything they took from my hand was held with care, then shut or folded, and returned with an air of lady-like precision. They would not stare, however curious they might be, but cast sidelong glances. A locket that I wore was an object of untiring interest; they seemed to regard it as a talisman. My little sun-shade was still more fascinating to them; apparently they had never before seen one. For an umbrella they entertained profound regard, probably looking upon it as the most luxurious superfluity a person can possess, and therefore a badge of great wealth. I used to see an old squaw, whose sullied skin and coarse, tanned locks told that she had braved sun and storm, without a doubt or care, for sixty years at least, sitting gravely at the door of her lodge, with an old green umbrella over her head, happy for hours together in the dignified shade. For her happiness pomp came not, as it so often does, too late; she received it with grateful enjoyment. One day, as I was seated on one of the canoes, a woman came and sat beside me, with her baby in its cradle set up at her feet. She asked me by a gesture to let her take my sun-shade, and then to show her how to open it. Then she put it into her baby's hand, and held it over its head, looking at me the while with a sweet, mischievous laugh, as much, as to say, "You carry a thing that is only fit for a baby." Her pantomime was very pretty. She, like the other women, had a glance, and shy, sweet expression in the eye; the men have a steady gaze. That noblest and loveliest of modern Preux, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who came through Buffalo to Detroit and Mackinaw, with Brant, and was adopted into the Bear tribe by the name of Eghnidal, was struck in the same way by the delicacy of manners in women. He says: "Notwithstanding the life they lead, which would make most women rough and masculine, they are as soft, meek, and modest as the best brought up girls in England. Somewhat coquettish too! Imagine the manners of Mimi in a poor _squaw_, that has been carrying packs in the woods all her life." McKenney mentions that the young wife, during the short bloom of her beauty, is an object of homage and tenderness to her husband. One Indian woman, the Flying Pigeon, a beautiful and excellent person, of whom he gives some particulars, is an instance of the power uncommon characters will always exert of breaking down the barriers custom has erected round them. She captivated by her charms, and inspired her husband and son with, reverence for her character. The simple praise with which the husband indicates the religion, the judgment, and the generosity he saw in her, are as satisfying as Count Zinzendorf's more labored eulogium on his "noble consort." The conduct of her son, when, many years after her death, he saw her picture at Washington, is unspeakably affecting. Catlin gives anecdotes of the grief of a chief for the loss of a daughter, and the princely gifts he offers in exchange for her portrait, worthy not merely of European, but of Troubadour sentiment. It is also evident that, as Mrs. Schoolcraft says, the women have great power at home. It can never be otherwise, men being dependent upon them for the comfort of their lives. Just so among ourselves, wives who are neither esteemed nor loved by their husbands have great power over their conduct by the friction of every day, and over the formation of their opinions by the daily opportunities so close a relation affords of perverting testimony and instilling doubts. But these sentiments should not come in brief flashes, but burn as a steady flame; then there would be more women worthy to inspire them. This power is good for nothing, unless the woman be wise to use it aright. Has the Indian, has the white woman, as noble a feeling of life and its uses, as religious a self-respect, as worthy a field of thought and action, as man? If not, the white woman, the Indian woman, occupies a position inferior to that of man. It is not so much a question of power, as of privilege. The men of these subjugated tribes, now accustomed to drunkenness and every way degraded, bear but a faint impress of the lost grandeur of the race. They are no longer strong, tall, or finely proportioned. Yet, as you see them stealing along a height, or striding boldly forward, they remind you of what _was_ majestic in the red man. On the shores of Lake Superior, it is said, if you visit them at home, you may still see a remnant of the noble blood. The Pillagers (Pilleurs), a band celebrated by the old travellers, are still existent there. "Still some, 'the eagles of their tribe,' may rush." I have spoken of the hatred felt by the white man for the Indian: with white women it seems to amount to disgust, to loathing. How I could endure the dirt, the peculiar smell, of the Indians, and their dwellings, was a great marvel in the eyes of my lady acquaintance; indeed, I wonder why they did not quite give me up, as they certainly looked on me with great distaste for it. "Get you gone, you Indian dog," was the felt, if not the breathed, expression towards the hapless owners of the soil;--all their claims, all their sorrows quite forgot, in abhorrence of their dirt, their tawny skins, and the vices the whites have taught them. A person who had seen them during great part of a life expressed his prejudices to me with such violence, that I was no longer surprised that the Indian children threw sticks at him, as he passed. A lady said: "Do what you will for them, they will be ungrateful. The savage cannot be washed out of them. Bring up an Indian child, and see if you can attach it to you." The next moment, she expressed, in the presence of one of those children whom she was bringing up, loathing at the odor left by one of her people, and one of the most respected, as he passed through the room. When the child is grown, she will be considered basely ungrateful not to love the lady, as she certainly will not; and this will be cited as an instance of the impossibility of attaching the Indian. Whether the Indian could, by any efforts of love and intelligence from, the white man, have been civilized and made a valuable ingredient in the new state, I will not say; but this we are sure of,--the French Catholics, at least, did not harm them, nor disturb their minds merely to corrupt them. The French, they loved. But the stern Presbyterian, with his dogmas and his task-work, the city circle and the college, with their niggard concessions and unfeeling stare, have never tried the experiment. It has not been tried. Our people and our government have sinned alike against the first-born of the soil, and if they are the fated agents of a new era, they have done nothing,--have invoked no god to keep them sinless while they do the hest of fate. Worst of all is it, when they invoke the holy power only to mask their iniquity; when the felon trader, who, all the week, has been besotting and degrading the Indian with rum mixed with red pepper, and damaged tobacco, kneels with him on Sunday before a common altar, to tell the rosary which recalls the thought of Him crucified for love of suffering men, and to listen to sermons in praise of "purity"!! "My savage friends," cries the old, fat priest, "you must, above all things, aim at _purity_." Oh! my heart swelled when I saw them in a Christian church. Better their own dog-feasts and bloody rites than such mockery of that other faith. "The dog," said an Indian, "was once a spirit; he has fallen for his sin, and was given by the Great Spirit, in this shape, to man, as his most intelligent companion. Therefore we sacrifice it in highest honor to our friends in this world,--to our protecting geniuses in another." There was religion in that thought. The white man sacrifices his own brother, and to Mammon, yet he turns in loathing from, the dog-feast. "You say," said the Indian of the South to the missionary, "that Christianity is pleasing to God. How can that be?--Those men at Savannah are Christians." Yes! slave-drivers and Indian traders are called Christians, and the Indian is to be deemed less like the Son of Mary than they! Wonderful is the deceit of man's heart! I have not, on seeing something of them in their own haunts, found reason to change the sentiments expressed in the following lines, when a deputation of the Sacs and Foxes visited Boston in 1837, and were, by one person at least, received in a dignified and courteous manner. GOVERNOR EVERETT RECEIVING THE INDIAN CHIEFS, NOVEMBER, 1837. Who says that Poesy is on the wane, And that the Muses tune their lyres in vain? 'Mid all the treasures of romantic story, When thought was fresh and fancy in her glory, Has ever Art found out a richer theme, More dark a shadow, or more soft a gleam, Than fall upon the scene, sketched carelessly, In the newspaper column of to-day? American romance is somewhat stale. Talk of the hatchet, and the faces pale, Wampum and calumets and forests dreary, Once so attractive, now begins to weary. Uncas and Magawisca please us still, Unreal, yet idealized with skill; But every poetaster, scribbling witling, From the majestic oak his stylus whittling, Has helped to tire us, and to make us fear The monotone in which so much we hear Of "stoics of the wood," and "men without a tear." Yet Nature, ever buoyant, ever young, If let alone, will sing as erst she sung; The course of circumstance gives back again The Picturesque, erewhile pursued in vain; Shows us the fount of Romance is not wasted,-- The lights and shades of contrast not exhausted. Shorn of his strength, the Samson now must sue For fragments from the feast his fathers gave; The Indian dare not claim what is his due, But as a boon his heritage must crave; His stately form shall soon be seen no more Through all his father's land, the Atlantic shore; Beneath the sun, to _us_ so kind, _they_ melt, More heavily each day our rule is felt. The tale is old,--we do as mortals must: Might makes right here, but God and Time are just. Though, near the drama hastens to its close, On this last scene awhile your eyes repose; The polished Greek and Scythian meet again, The ancient life is lived by modern men; The savage through our busy cities walks, He in his untouched, grandeur silent stalks. Unmoved by all our gayeties and shows, Wonder nor shame can touch him as he goes; He gazes on the marvels we have wrought, But knows the models from whence all was brought; In God's first temples he has stood so oft, And listened to the natural organ-loft, Has watched the eagle's flight, the muttering thunder heard. Art cannot move him to a wondering word. Perhaps he sees that all this luxury Brings less food to the mind than to the eye; Perhaps a simple sentiment has brought More to him than your arts had ever taught. What are the petty triumphs _Art_ has given, To eyes familiar with the naked heaven? All has been seen,--dock, railroad, and canal, Fort, market, bridge, college, and arsenal, Asylum, hospital, and cotton-mill, The theatre, the lighthouse, and the jail. The Braves each novelty, reflecting, saw, And now and then growled out the earnest "_Yaw_." And now the time is come, 'tis understood, When, having seen and thought so much, a _talk_ may do some good. A well-dressed mob have thronged the sight to greet, And motley figures throng the spacious street; Majestical and calm through all they stride, Wearing the blanket with a monarch's pride; The gazers stare and shrug, but can't deny Their noble forms and blameless symmetry. If the Great Spirit their _morale_ has slighted, And wigwam smoke their mental culture blighted, Yet the _physique_, at least, perfection reaches, In wilds where neither Combe nor Spurzheim teaches; Where whispering trees invite man to the chase, And bounding deer allure him to the race. Would thou hadst seen it! That dark, stately band, Whose ancestors enjoyed all this fair land, Whence they, by force or fraud, were made to flee, Are brought, the white man's victory to see. Can kind emotions in their proud hearts glow, As through these realms, now decked by Art, they go? The church, the school, the railroad, and the mart,-- Can these a pleasure to their minds impart? All once was theirs,--earth, ocean, forest, sky,-- How can they joy in what now meets the eye? Not yet Religion has unlocked the soul, Nor Each has learned to glory in the Whole! Must they not think, so strange and sad their lot, That they by the Great Spirit are forgot? From the far border to which they are driven, They might look up in trust to the clear heaven; But _here_,--what tales doth every object tell Where Massasoit sleeps, where Philip fell! We take our turn, and the Philosopher Sees through the clouds a hand which cannot err An unimproving race, with all their graces And all their vices, must resign their places; And Human Culture rolls its onward flood Over the broad plains steeped in Indian blood Such thoughts steady our faith; yet there will rise Some natural tears into the calmest eyes,-- Which gaze where forest princes haughty go, Made for a gaping crowd a raree-show. But _this_ a scene seems where, in courtesy, The pale face with the forest prince could vie, For one presided, who, for tact and grace, In any age had held an honored place,-- In Beauty's own dear day had shone a polished Phidian vase! Oft have I listened to his accents bland, And owned the magic of his silvery voice, In all the graces which life's arts demand, Delighted by the justness of his choice. Not his the stream of lavish, fervid thought,-- The rhetoric by passion's magic wrought; Not his the massive style, the lion port, Which with the granite class of mind assort; But, in a range of excellence his own, With all the charms to soft persuasion known, Amid our busy people we admire him,--"elegant and lone." He scarce needs words: so exquisite the skill Which modulates the tones to do his will, That the mere sound enough would charm the ear, And lap in its Elysium all who hear. The intellectual paleness of his cheek, The heavy eyelids and slow, tranquil smile, The well-cut lips from which the graces speak, Pit him alike to win or to beguile; Then those words so well chosen, fit, though few, Their linked sweetness as our thoughts pursue, We deem them spoken pearls, or radiant diamond dew. And never yet did I admire the power Which makes so lustrous every threadbare theme,-- Which won for La Fayette one other hour, And e'en on July Fourth could cast a gleam,-- As now, when I behold him play the host, With all the dignity which red men boast,-- With all the courtesy the whites have lost; Assume the very hue of savage mind, Yet in rude accents show the thought refined; Assume the _naïveté_ of infant age, And in such prattle seem still more a sage; The golden mean with tact unerring seized, A courtly critic shone, a simple savage pleased. The stoic of the woods his skill confessed, As all the father answered in his breast; To the sure mark the silver arrow sped, The "man without a tear" a tear has shed; And them hadst wept, hadst thou been there, to see How true one sentiment must ever be, In court or camp, the city or the wild,-- To rouse the father's heart, you need but name his child. The speech of Governor Everett on that occasion was admirable; as I think, the happiest attempt ever made to meet the Indian in his own way, and catch the tone of his mind. It was said, in the newspapers, that Keokuck did actually shed tears when addressed as a father. If he did not with his eyes, he well might in his heart. Not often have they been addressed with such intelligence and tact. The few who have not approached them with sordid rapacity, but from love to them, as men having souls to be redeemed, have most frequently been persons intellectually too narrow, too straitly bound in sects or opinions, to throw themselves into the character or position of the Indians, or impart to them anything they can make available. The Christ shown them by these missionaries is to them but a new and more powerful Manito; the signs of the new religion, but the fetiches that have aided the conquerors. Here I will copy some remarks made by a discerning observer, on the methods used by the missionaries, and their natural results. "Mr. ---- and myself had a very interesting conversation, upon the subject of the Indians, their character, capabilities, &c. After ten years' experience among them, he was forced to acknowledge that the results of the missionary efforts had produced nothing calculated to encourage. He thought that there was an intrinsic disability in them to rise above, or go beyond, the sphere in which they had so long moved. He said, that even those Indians who had been converted, and who had adopted the habits of civilization, were very little improved in their real character; they were as selfish, as deceitful, and as indolent, as those who were still heathens. They had repaid the kindnesses of the missionaries with the basest ingratitude, killing their cattle and swine, and robbing them of their harvests, which, they wantonly destroyed. He had abandoned the idea of effecting any general good to the Indians. He had conscientious scruples as to promoting an enterprise so hopeless as that of missions among the Indians, by sending accounts to the East that might induce philanthropic individuals to contribute to their support. In fact, the whole experience of his intercourse with them seemed to have convinced him of the irremediable degradation of the race. Their fortitude under suffering he considered the result of physical and mental insensibility; their courage, a mere animal excitement, which they found it necessary to inflame, before daring to meet a foe. They have no constancy of purpose; and are, in fact, but little superior to the brutes in point of moral development. It is not astonishing, that one looking upon the Indian character from Mr. ----'s point of view should entertain such sentiments. The object of his intercourse with them was, to make them apprehend the mysteries of a theology, which, to the most enlightened, is an abstruse, metaphysical study; and it is not singular they should prefer their pagan superstitions, which address themselves more directly to the senses. Failing in the attempt to Christianize before civilizing them, he inferred that in the intrinsic degradation of their faculties the obstacle was to be found." Thus the missionary vainly attempts, by once or twice holding up the cross, to turn deer and tigers into lambs; vainly attempts to convince the red man that a heavenly mandate takes from him his broad lands. He bows his head, but does not at heart acquiesce. He cannot. It is not true; and if it were, the descent of blood through the same channels, for centuries, has formed habits of thought not so easily to be disturbed. Amalgamation would afford the only true and profound means of civilization. But nature seems, like all else, to declare that this race is fated to perish. Those of mixed blood fade early, and are not generally a fine race. They lose what is best in either type, rather than enhance the value of each, by mingling. There are exceptions,--one or two such I know of,--but this, it is said, is the general rule. A traveller observes, that the white settlers who live in the woods soon become sallow, lanky, and dejected; the atmosphere of the trees does not agree with Caucasian lungs; and it is, perhaps, in part an instinct of this which causes the hatred of the new settlers towards trees. The Indian breathed the atmosphere of the forests freely; he loved their shade. As they are effaced from the land, he fleets too; a part of the same manifestation, which cannot linger behind its proper era. The Chippewas have lately petitioned the State of Michigan, that they may be admitted as citizens; but this would be vain, unless they could be admitted, as brothers, to the heart of the white man. And while the latter feels that conviction of superiority which enabled our Wisconsin friend to throw away the gun, and send the Indian to fetch it, he needs to be very good, and very wise, not to abuse his position. But the white man, as yet, is a half-tamed pirate, and avails himself as much as ever of the maxim, "Might makes right." All that civilization does for the generality is to cover up this with a veil of subtle evasions and chicane, and here and there to rouse the individual mind to appeal to Heaven against it. I have no hope of liberalizing the missionary, of humanizing the sharks of trade, of infusing the conscientious drop into the flinty bosom of policy, of saving the Indian from immediate degradation and speedy death. The whole sermon may be preached from the text, "Needs be that offences must come, yet woe onto them by whom they come." Yet, ere they depart, I wish there might be some masterly attempt to reproduce, in art or literature, what is proper to them,--a kind of beauty and grandeur which few of the every-day crowd have hearts to feel, yet which ought to leave in the world its monuments, to inspire the thought of genius through all ages. Nothing in this kind has been done masterly; since it was Clevengers's ambition, 't is pity he had not opportunity to try fully his powers. We hope some other mind may be bent upon it, ere too late. At present the only lively impress of their passage through the world is to be found in such books as Catlin's, and some stories told by the old travellers. Let me here give another brief tale of the power exerted by the white man over the savage in a trying case; but in this case it was righteous, was moral power. "We were looking over McKenney's Tour to the Lakes, and, on observing the picture of Key-way-no-wut, or the Going Cloud, Mr. B. observed, 'Ah, that is the fellow I came near having a fight with'; and he detailed at length the circumstances. This Indian was a very desperate character, and of whom, all the Leech Lake band stood in fear. He would shoot down any Indian who offended him, without the least hesitation, and had become quite the bully of that part of the tribe. The trader at Leech Lake warned Mr. B. to beware of him, and said that he once, when he (the trader) refused to give up to him his stock of wild-rice, went and got his gun and tomahawk, and shook the tomahawk over his head, saying, '_Now_, give me your wild-rice.' The trader complied with his exaction, but not so did Mr. B. in the adventure which I am about to relate. Key-way-no-wut came frequently to him with furs, wishing him to give for them, cotton-cloth, sugar, flour, &c. Mr. B. explained to him that he could not trade for furs, as he was sent there as a teacher, and that it would be like putting his hand into the fire to do so, as the traders would inform against him, and he would be sent out of the country. At the same time, he _gave_ him the articles which he wished. Key-way-no-wut found this a very convenient way of getting what he wanted, and followed up this sort of game, until, at last, it became insupportable. One day the Indian brought a very large otter-skin, and said, 'I want to get for this ten pounds of sugar, and some flour and cloth,' adding, 'I am not like other Indians, _I_ want to pay for what I get.' Mr. B. found that he must either be robbed of all he had by submitting to these exactions, or take a stand at once. He thought, however, he would try to avoid a scrape, and told his customer he had not so much sugar to spare. 'Give me, then,' said he, 'what you can spare'; and Mr. B., thinking to make him back out, told him he would, give him five pounds of sugar for his skin. 'Take it,' said the Indian. He left the skin, telling Mr. B. to take good care of it. Mr. B. took it at once to the trader's store, and related the circumstance, congratulating himself that he had got rid of the Indian's exactions. But in about a month Key-way-no-wut appeared, bringing some dirty Indian sugar, and said, 'I have brought back the sugar that I borrowed of you, and I want my otter-skin back.' Mr. B. told him, 'I _bought_ an otter-skin of you, but if you will return the other articles you have got for it, perhaps I can get it for you.' 'Where is the skin?' said he very quickly; 'what have you done with it?' Mr. B. replied it was in the trader's store, where he (the Indian) could not get it. At this information he was furious, laid his hands on his knife and tomahawk, and commanded Mr. B. to bring it at once. Mr. B. found this was the crisis, where he must take a stand or be 'rode over rough-shod' by this man. His wife, who was present was much alarmed, and begged he would get the skin for the Indian, but he told her that 'either he or the Indian would soon be master of his house, and if she was afraid to see it decided which was to be so, she had better retire,' He turned to Key-way-no-wut, and addressed him in a stern voice as follows: 'I will _not_ give you the skin. How often have you come to my house, and I have shared with you what I had. I gave you tobacco when you were well, and medicine when you were sick, and you never went away from my wigwam with your hands empty. And this is the way you return my treatment to you. I had thought you were a man and a chief, but you are not, you are nothing but an old woman. Leave this house, and never enter it again.' Mr. B. said he expected the Indian would attempt his life when he said this, but that he had placed himself in a position so that he could defend himself, and looked straight into the Indian's eye, and, like other wild beasts, he quailed before the glance of mental and moral courage. He calmed down at once, and soon began to make apologies. Mr. B. then told him kindly, but firmly, that, if he wished to walk in the same path with him, he must walk as straight as the crack on the floor before them; adding, that he would not walk with anybody who would jostle him by walking so crooked as he had done. He was perfectly tamed, and Mr. B. said he never had any more trouble with him." The conviction here livingly enforced of the superiority on the side of the white man, was thus expressed by the Indian orator at Mackinaw while we were there. After the customary compliments about sun, dew, &c., "This," said he, "is the difference between the white and the red man; the white man looks to the future and paves the way for posterity. The red man never thought of this." This is a statement uncommonly refined for an Indian; but one of the gentlemen present, who understood the Chippewa, vouched for it as a literal rendering of his phrases; and he did indeed touch the vital point of difference. But the Indian, if he understands, cannot make use of his intelligence. The fate of his people is against it, and Pontiac and Philip have no more chance than Julian in the times of old. The Indian is steady to that simple creed which forms the basis of all his mythology; that there is a God and a life beyond this; a right and wrong which each man can see, betwixt which each man should choose; that good brings with it its reward, and vice its punishment. His moral code, if not as refined as that of civilized nations, is clear and noble in the stress laid upon truth and fidelity. And all unprejudiced observers bear testimony, that the Indians, until broken from their old anchorage by intercourse with the whites,--who offer them, instead, a religion of which they furnish neither interpretation nor example,--were singularly virtuous, if virtue be allowed to consist in a man's acting up to his own ideas of right. My friend, who joined me at Mackinaw, happened, on the homeward journey, to see a little Chinese girl, who had been sent over by one of the missionaries, and observed that, in features, complexion, and gesture, she was a counterpart to the little Indian girls she had just seen playing about on the lake shore. The parentage of these tribes is still an interesting subject of speculation, though, if they be not created for this region, they have become so assimilated to it as to retain little trace of any other. To me it seems most probable, that a peculiar race was bestowed on each region,[A] as the lion on one latitude and the white bear on another. As man has two natures,--one, like that of the plants and animals, adapted to the uses and enjoyments of this planet, another which presages and demands a higher sphere,--he is constantly breaking bounds, in proportion as the mental gets the better of the mere instinctive existence. As yet, he loses in harmony of being what he gains in height and extension; the civilized man is a larger mind, but a more imperfect nature, than the savage. [Footnote A: Professor Agassiz has recently published some able scientific papers tending to enforce this theory.--ED.] We hope there will be a national institute, containing all the remains of the Indians, all that has been preserved by official intercourse at Washington, Catlin's collection, and a picture-gallery as complete as can be made, with a collection of skulls from all parts of the country. To this should be joined the scanty library that exists on the subject. A little pamphlet, giving an account of the massacre at Chicago, has lately; been published, which I wish much I had seen while there, as it would have imparted an interest to spots otherwise barren. It is written with animation, and in an excellent style, telling just what we want to hear, and no more. The traits given of Indian generosity are as characteristic as those of Indian cruelty. A lady, who was saved by a friendly chief holding her under the waters of the lake, at the moment the balls endangered her, received also, in the heat of the conflict, a reviving draught from a squaw, who saw she was exhausted; and as she lay down, a mat was hung up between her and the scene of butchery, so that she was protected from the sight, though she could not be from sounds full of horror. I have not wished to write sentimentally about the Indians, however moved by the thought of their wrongs and speedy extinction. I know that the Europeans who took possession of this country felt themselves justified by their superior civilization and religious ideas. Had they been truly civilized or Christianized, the conflicts which sprang from the collision of the two races might have been avoided; but this cannot be expected in movements made by masses of men. The mass has never yet been humanized, though the age may develop a human thought. Since those conflicts and differences did arise, the hatred which sprang from terror and suffering, on the European side, has naturally warped the whites still further from justice. The Indian, brandishing the scalps of his wife and friends, drinking their blood, and eating their hearts, is by him viewed as a fiend, though, at a distant day, he will no doubt be considered as having acted the Roman or Carthaginian part of heroic and patriotic self-defence, according to the standard of right and motives prescribed by his religious faith and education. Looked at by his own standard, he is virtuous when he most injures his enemy, and the white, if he be really the superior in enlargement of thought, ought to cast aside his inherited prejudices enough to see this, to look on him in pity and brotherly good-will, and do all he can to mitigate the doom of those who survive his past injuries. In McKenney's book is proposed a project for organizing the Indians under a patriarchal government; but it does not look feasible, even on paper. Could their own intelligent men be left to act unimpeded in their behalf, they would do far better for them than the white thinker, with all his general knowledge. But we dare not hope the designs of such will not always be frustrated by barbarous selfishness, as they were in Georgia. _There_ was a chance of seeing what might have been done, now lost for ever. Yet let every man look to himself how far this blood shall be required at his hands. Let the missionary, instead of preaching to the Indian, preach to the trader who ruins him, of the dreadful account which will be demanded of the followers of Cain, in a sphere where the accents of purity and love come on the ear more decisively than in ours. Let every legislator take the subject to heart, and, if he cannot undo the effects of past sin, try for that clear view and right sense that may save us from sinning still more deeply. And let every man and every woman, in their private dealings with the subjugated race, avoid all share in embittering, by insult or unfeeling prejudice, the captivity of Israel. CHAPTER VII. SAULT ST. MARIE.--ST. JOSEPH'S ISLAND.--THE LAND OF MUSIC.--RAPIDS.--HOMEWARD.--GENERAL HULL.--THE BOOK TO THE READER. Nine days I passed alone at Mackinaw, except for occasional visits from kind and agreeable residents at the fort, and Mr. and Mrs. A. Mr. A., long engaged in the fur-trade, is gratefully remembered by many travellers. From Mrs. A., also, I received kind attentions, paid in the vivacious and graceful manner of her nation. The society at the boarding-house entertained, being of a kind entirely new to me. There were many traders from the remote stations, such as La Pointe, Arbre Croche,--men who had become half wild and wholly rude by living in the wild; but good-humored, observing, and with a store of knowledge to impart, of the kind proper to their place. There were two little girls here, that were pleasant companions for me. One gay, frank, impetuous, but sweet and winning. She was an American, fair, and with bright brown hair. The other, a little French Canadian, used to join me in my walks, silently take my hand, and sit at my feet when I stopped in beautiful places. She seemed to understand without a word; and I never shall forget her little figure, with its light, but pensive motion, and her delicate, grave features, with the pale, clear complexion and soft eye. She was motherless, and much left alone by her father and brothers, who were boatmen. The two little girls were as pretty representatives of Allegro and Penseroso as one would wish to see. I had been wishing that a boat would come in to take me to the Sault St. Marie, and several times started to the window at night in hopes that the pant and dusky-red light crossing the waters belonged to such an one; but they were always boats for Chicago or Buffalo, till, on the 28th of August, Allegro, who shared my plans and wishes, rushed in to tell me that the General Scott had come; and in this little steamer, accordingly, I set off the next morning. I was the only lady, and attended in the cabin by a Dutch girl and an Indian woman. They both spoke English fluently, and entertained me much by accounts of their different experiences. The Dutch girl told me of a dance among the common people at Amsterdam, called the shepherd's dance. The two leaders are dressed as shepherd and shepherdess; they invent to the music all kinds of movements, descriptive of things that may happen in the field, and the rest are obliged to follow. I have never heard of any dance which gave such free play to the fancy as this. French dances merely describe the polite movements of society; Spanish and Neapolitan, love; the beautiful Mazurkas, &c. are war-like or expressive of wild scenery. But in this one is great room both for fun and fancy. The Indian was married, when young, by her parents, to a man she did not love. He became dissipated, and did not maintain her. She left him, taking with her their child, for whom and herself she earns a subsistence by going as chambermaid in these boats. Now and then, she said, her husband called on her, and asked if he might live with her again; but she always answered, No. Here she was far freer than she would have been in civilized life. I was pleased by the nonchalance of this woman, and the perfectly national manner she had preserved after so many years of contact with all kinds of people. The two women, when I left the boat, made me presents of Indian work, such as travellers value, and the manner of the two was characteristic of their different nations. The Indian brought me hers, when I was alone, looked bashfully down when she gave it, and made an almost sentimental little speech. The Dutch girl brought hers in public, and, bridling her short chin with a self-complacent air, observed she had _bought_ it for me. But the feeling of affectionate regard was the same in the minds of both. Island after island we passed, all fairly shaped and clustering in a friendly way, but with little variety of vegetation. In the afternoon the weather became foggy, and we could not proceed after dark. That was as dull an evening as ever fell. The next morning the fog still lay heavy, but the captain took me out in his boat on an exploring expedition, and we found the remains of the old English fort on Point St. Joseph's. All around was so wholly unmarked by anything but stress of wind and weather, the shores of these islands and their woods so like one another, wild and lonely, but nowhere rich and majestic, that there was some charm, in the remains of the garden, the remains even of chimneys and a pier. They gave feature to the scene. Here I gathered many flowers, but they were the same as at Mackinaw. The captain, though he had been on this trip hundreds of times, had never seen this spot, and never would but for this fog, and his desire to entertain me. He presented a striking instance how men, for the sake of getting a living, forget to live. It is just the same in the most romantic as the most dull and vulgar places. Men get the harness on so fast, that they can never shake it off, unless they guard against this danger from the very first. In Chicago, how many men live who never find time to see the prairies, or learn anything unconnected with the business of the day, or about the country they are living in! So this captain, a man of strong sense and good eyesight, rarely found time to go off the track or look about him on it. He lamented, too, that there had been no call which, induced him to develop his powers of expression, so that he might communicate what he had seen for the enjoyment or instruction of others. This is a common fault among the active men, the truly living, who could tell what life is. It should not be so. Literature should not be left to the mere literati,--eloquence to the mere orator; every Cæsar should be able to write his own commentary. We want a more equal, more thorough, more harmonious development, and there is nothing to hinder the men of this country from it, except their own supineness, or sordid views. When the weather did clear, our course up the river was delightful. Long stretched before us the island of St. Joseph's, with its fair woods of sugar-maple. A gentleman on board, who belongs to the Fort at the Sault, said their pastime was to come in the season of making sugar, and pass some time on this island,--the days at work, and the evening in dancing and other amusements. Work of this kind done in the open air, where everything is temporary, and every utensil prepared on the spot, gives life a truly festive air. At such times, there is labor and no care,--energy with gayety, gayety of the heart. I think with the same pleasure of the Italian vintage, the Scotch harvest-home, with its evening dance in the barn, the Russian cabbage-feast even, and our huskings and hop-gatherings. The hop-gatherings, where the groups of men and girls are pulling down and filling baskets with the gay festoons, present as graceful pictures as the Italian vintage. How pleasant is the course along a new river, the sight of new shores! like a life, would but life flow as fast, and upbear us with as full a stream. I hoped we should come in sight of the rapids by daylight; but the beautiful sunset was quite gone, and only a young moon trembling over the scene, when we came within hearing of them. I sat up long to hear them merely. It was a thoughtful hour. These two days, the 29th and 30th of August, are memorable in my life; the latter is the birthday of a near friend. I pass them alone, approaching Lake Superior; but I shall not enter into that truly wild and free region; shall not have the canoe voyage, whose daily adventure, with the camping out at night beneath the stars, would have given an interlude of such value to my existence. I shall not see the Pictured Rocks, their chapels and urns. It did not depend on me; it never has, whether such things shall be done or not. My friends! may they see, and do, and be more; especially those who have before them a greater number of birthdays, and a more healthy and unfettered existence! I should like to hear some notes of earthly music to-night. By the faint moonshine I can hardly see the banks; how they look I have no guess, except that there are trees, and, now and then, a light lets me know there are homes, with their various interests. I should like to hear some strains of the flute from beneath those trees, just to break the sound of the rapids. THE LAND OF MUSIC. When no gentle eyebeam charms; No fond hope the bosom warms; Of thinking the lone mind is tired,-- Naught seems bright to be desired. Music, be thy sails unfurled; Bear me to thy better world; O'er a cold and weltering sea, Blow thy breezes warm and free. By sad sighs they ne'er were chilled, By sceptic spell were never stilled. Take me to that far-off shore, Where lovers meet to part no more. There doubt and fear and sin are o'er; The star of love shall set no more. With the first light of dawn I was up and out, and then was glad I had not seen all the night before, it came upon me with such power in its dewy freshness. O, they are beautiful indeed, these rapids! The grace is so much more obvious than the power. I went up through the old Chippewa burying-ground to their head, and sat down on a large stone to look. A little way off was one of the home-lodges, unlike in shape to the temporary ones at Mackinaw, but these have been described by Mrs. Jameson. Women, too, I saw coming home from the woods, stooping under great loads of cedar-boughs, that were strapped upon their backs. But in many European countries women carry great loads, even of wood, upon their backs. I used to hear the girls singing and laughing as they were cutting down boughs at Mackinaw; this part of their employment, though laborious, gives them the pleasure of being a great deal in the free woods. I had ordered a canoe to take me down the rapids, and presently I saw it coming, with the two Indian canoe-men in pink calico shirts, moving it about with their long poles, with a grace and dexterity worthy fairy-land. Now and then they cast the scoop-net;--all looked just as I had fancied, only far prettier. When they came to me, they spread a mat in the middle of the canoe; I sat down, and in less than four minutes we had descended the rapids, a distance of more than three quarters of a mile. I was somewhat disappointed in this being no more of an exploit than I found it. Having heard such expressions used as of "darting," or "shooting down," these rapids, I had fancied there was a wall of rock somewhere, where descent would somehow be accomplished, and that there would come some one gasp of terror and delight, some sensation entirely new to me; but I found myself in smooth water, before I had time to feel anything but the buoyant pleasure of being carried so lightly through this surf amid the breakers. Now and then the Indians spoke to one another in a vehement jabber, which, however, had no tone that expressed other than pleasant excitement. It is, no doubt, an act of wonderful dexterity to steer amid these jagged rocks, when one rude touch would tear a hole in the birch canoe; but these men are evidently so used to doing it, and so adroit, that the silliest person could not feel afraid. I should like to have come down twenty times, that I might have had leisure to realize the pleasure. But the fog which had detained us on the way shortened the boat's stay at the Sault, and I wanted my time to walk about. While coming down the rapids, the Indians caught a white-fish for my breakfast; and certainly it was the best of breakfasts. The white-fish I found quite another thing caught on the spot, and cooked immediately, from what I had found it at Chicago or Mackinaw. Before, I had had the bad taste to prefer the trout, despite the solemn and eloquent remonstrances of the _habitués_, to whom the superiority of white-fish seemed a cardinal point of faith. I am here reminded that I have omitted that indispensable part of a travelling journal, the account of what we found to eat. I cannot hope to make up, by one bold stroke, all my omissions of daily record; but that I may show myself not destitute of the common feelings of humanity, I will observe that he whose affections turn in summer towards vegetables should not come to this region, till the subject of diet be better understood; that of fruit, too, there is little yet, even at the best hotel tables; that the prairie chickens require no praise from me, and that the trout and white-fish are worthy the transparency of the lake waters. In this brief mention I by no means intend to give myself an air of superiority to the subject. If a dinner in the Illinois woods, on dry bread and drier meat, with water from the stream that flowed hard by, pleased me best of all, yet, at one time, when living at a house where nothing was prepared for the table fit to touch, and even the bread could not be partaken of without a headache in consequence, I learnt to understand and sympathize with the anxious tone in which fathers of families, about to take their innocent children into some scene of wild beauty, ask first of all, "Is there a good, table?" I shall ask just so in future. Only those whom the Powers have furnished with small travelling cases of ambrosia can take exercise all day, and be happy without even bread morning or night. Our voyage back was all pleasure. It was the fairest day. I saw the river, the islands, the clouds, to the greatest advantage. On board was an old man, an Illinois farmer, whom I found a most agreeable companion. He had just been with his son, and eleven other young men, on an exploring expedition to the shores of Lake Superior. He was the only old man of the party, but he had enjoyed most of any the journey. He had been the counsellor and playmate, too, of the young ones. He was one of those parents--why so rare?--who understand and live a new life in that of their children, instead of wasting time and young happiness in trying to make them conform to an object and standard of their own. The character and history of each child may be a new and poetic experience to the parent, if he will let it. Our farmer was domestic, judicious, solid; the son, inventive, enterprising, superficial, full of follies, full of resources, always liable to failure, sure to rise above it. The father conformed to, and learnt from, a character he could not change, and won the sweet from the bitter. His account of his life at home, and of his late adventures among the Indians, was very amusing, but I want talent to write it down, and I have not heard the slang of these people intimately enough. There is a good book about Indiana, called the New Purchase, written by a person who knows the people of the country well enough to describe them in their own way. It is not witty, but penetrating, valuable for its practical wisdom and good-humored fun. There were many sportsman-stories told, too, by those from Illinois and Wisconsin. I do not retain any of these well enough, nor any that I heard earlier, to write them down, though they always interested me from bringing wild natural scenes before the mind. It is pleasant for the sportsman to be in countries so alive with game; yet it is so plenty that one would think shooting pigeons or grouse would seem more like slaughter, than the excitement of skill to a good sportsman. Hunting the deer is full of adventure, and needs only a Scrope to describe it to invest the Western woods with _historic_ associations. How pleasant it was to sit and hear rough men tell pieces out of their own common lives, in place of the frippery talk of some fine circle with its conventional sentiment, and timid, second-hand criticism. Free blew the wind, and boldly flowed the stream, named for Mary mother mild. A fine thunder-shower came on in the afternoon. It cleared at sunset, just as we came in sight of beautiful Mackinaw, over which, a rainbow bent in promise of peace. I have always wondered, in reading travels, at the childish joy travellers felt at meeting people they knew, and their sense of loneliness when they did not, in places where there was everything new to occupy the attention. So childish, I thought, always to be longing for the new in the old, and the old in the new. Yet just such sadness I felt, when I looked on the island glittering in the sunset, canopied by the rainbow, and thought no friend would welcome me there; just such childish joy I felt to see unexpectedly on the landing the face of one whom I called friend. The remaining two or three days were delightfully spent, in walking or boating, or sitting at the window to see the Indians go. This was not quite so pleasant as their coming in, though accomplished with the same rapidity; a family not taking half an hour to prepare for departure, and the departing canoe a beautiful object. But they left behind, on all the shore, the blemishes of their stay,--old rags, dried boughs, fragments of food, the marks of their fires. Nature likes to cover up and gloss over spots and scars, but it would take her some time to restore that beach to the state it was in before they came. S. and I had a mind for a canoe excursion, and we asked one of the traders to engage us two good Indians, that would not only take us out, but be sure and bring us back, as we could not hold converse with them. Two others offered their aid, beside the chief's son, a fine-looking youth of about sixteen, richly dressed in blue broadcloth, scarlet sash and leggins, with a scarf of brighter red than the rest, tied around his head, its ends falling gracefully on one shoulder. They thought it, apparently, fine amusement to be attending two white women; they carried us into the path of the steamboat, which was going out, and paddled with all their force,--rather too fast, indeed, for there was something of a swell on the lake, and they sometimes threw water into the canoe. However, it flew over the waves, light as a seagull. They would say, "Pull away," and "Ver' warm," and, after these words, would laugh gayly. They enjoyed the hour, I believe, as much as we. The house where we lived belonged to the widow of a French trader, an Indian by birth, and wearing the dress of her country She spoke French fluently, and was very ladylike in her manners. She is a great character among them. They were all the time coming to pay her homage, or to get her aid and advice; for she is, I am told, a shrewd woman of business. My companion carried about her sketch-book with her, and the Indians were interested when they saw her using her pencil, though less so than about the sun-shade. This lady of the tribe wanted to borrow the sketches of the beach, with its lodges and wild groups, "to show to the _savages_" she said. Of the practical ability of the Indian women, a good specimen is given by McKenney, in an amusing story of one who went to Washington, and acted her part there in the "first circles," with a tact and sustained dissimulation worthy of Cagliostro. She seemed to have a thorough love of intrigue for its own sake, and much dramatic talent. Like the chiefs of her nation, when on an expedition among the foe, whether for revenge or profit, no impulses of vanity or way-side seductions had power to turn her aside from carrying out her plan as she had originally projected it. Although I have little to tell, I feel that I have learnt a great deal of the Indians, from observing them even in this broken and degraded condition. There is a language of eye and motion which cannot be put into words, and which teaches what words never can. I feel acquainted with the soul of this race; I read its nobler thought in their defaced figures. There _was_ a greatness, unique and precious, which he who does not feel will never duly appreciate the majesty of nature in this American continent. I have mentioned that the Indian orator, who addressed the agents on this occasion, said, the difference between the white man and the red man is this: "The white man no sooner came here, than he thought of preparing the way for his posterity; the red man never thought of this." I was assured this was exactly his phrase; and it defines the true difference. We get the better because we do "Look before and after." But, from, the same cause, we "Pine for what is not." The red man, when happy, was thoroughly happy; when good, was simply good. He needed the medal, to let him know that he _was_ good. These evenings we were happy, looking over the old-fashioned garden, over the beach, over the waters and pretty island opposite, beneath the growing moon. We did not stay to see it full at Mackinaw; at two o'clock one night, or rather morning, the Great Western came snorting in, and we must go; and Mackinaw, and all the Northwest summer, is now to me no more than picture and dream:-- "A dream within a dream." These last days at Mackinaw have been pleasanter than the "lonesome" nine, for I have recovered the companion with whom I set out from the East,--one who sees all, prizes all, enjoys much, interrupts never. At Detroit we stopped for half a day. This place is famous in our history, and the unjust anger at its surrender is still expressed by almost every one who passes there. I had always shared the common feeling on this subject; for the indignation at a disgrace to our arms that seemed so unnecessary has been handed down from father to child, and few of us have taken the pains to ascertain where the blame lay. But now, upon the spot, having read all the testimony, I felt convinced that it should rest solely with the government, which, by neglecting to sustain General Hull, as he had a right to expect they would, compelled him to take this step, or sacrifice many lives, and of the defenceless inhabitants, not of soldiers, to the cruelty of a savage foe, for the sake of his reputation. I am a woman, and unlearned in such affairs; but, to a person with common sense and good eyesight, it is clear, when viewing the location, that, under the circumstances, he had no prospect of successful defence, and that to attempt it would have been an act of vanity, not valor. I feel that I am not biassed in this judgment by my personal relations, for I have always heard both sides, and though my feelings had been moved by the picture of the old man sitting in the midst of his children, to a retired and despoiled old age, after a life of honor and happy intercourse with the public, yet tranquil, always secure that justice must be done at last, I supposed, like others, that he deceived himself, and deserved to pay the penalty for failure to the responsibility he had undertaken. Now, on the spot, I change, and believe the country at large must, erelong, change from this opinion. And I wish to add my testimony, however trifling its weight, before it be drowned in the voice of general assent, that I may do some justice to the feelings which possess me here and now. A noble boat, the Wisconsin, was to be launched this afternoon; the whole town was out in many-colored array, the band playing. Our boat swept round to a good position, and all was ready but--the Wisconsin, which could not be made to stir. This was quite a disappointment. It would have been an imposing sight. In the boat many signs admonished that we were floating eastward. A shabbily-dressed phrenologist laid his hand on every head which would bend, with half-conceited, half-sheepish expression, to the trial of his skill. Knots of people gathered here and there to discuss points of theology. A bereaved lover was seeking religious consolation in--Butler's Analogy, which he had purchased for that purpose. However, he did not turn over many pages before his attention was drawn aside by the gay glances of certain damsels that came on board at Detroit, and, though Butler might afterwards be seen sticking from his pocket, it had not weight to impede him from many a feat of lightness and liveliness. I doubt if it went with him from the boat. Some there were, even, discussing the doctrines of Fourier. It seemed pity they were not going to, rather than from, the rich and free country where it would be so much easier than with us to try the great experiment of voluntary association, and show beyond a doubt that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," a maxim of the "wisdom of nations" which has proved of little practical efficacy as yet. Better to stop before landing at Buffalo, while I have yet the advantage over some of my readers. THE BOOK TO THE READER, WHO OPENS, AS AMERICAN READERS OFTEN DO,--AT THE END. To see your cousin in her country home, If at the time of blackberries you come, "Welcome, my friends," she cries with ready glee, "The fruit is ripened, and the paths are free. But, madam, you will tear that handsome gown; The little boy be sure to tumble down; And, in the thickets where they ripen best, The matted ivy, too, its bower has drest. And then the thorns your hands are sure to rend, Unless with heavy gloves you will defend; Amid most thorns the sweetest roses blow, Amid most thorns the sweetest berries grow." If, undeterred, you to the fields must go, You tear your dresses and you scratch your hands; But, in the places where the berries grow, A sweeter fruit the ready sense commands, Of wild, gay feelings, fancies springing sweet,-- Of bird-like pleasures, fluttering and fleet. Another year, you cannot go yourself, To win the berries from the thickets wild, And housewife skill, instead, has filled the shelf With blackberry jam, "by best receipts compiled,-- Not made with country sugar, for too strong The flavors that to maple-juice belong; But foreign sugar, nicely mixed 'to suit The taste,' spoils not the fragrance of the fruit." "'Tis pretty good," half-tasting, you reply, "I scarce should know it from fresh blackberry. But the best pleasure such a fruit can yield Is to be gathered in the open field; If only as an article of food, Cherry or crab-apple is quite as good; And, for occasions of festivity, West India sweetmeats you had better buy." Thus, such a dish of homely sweets as these In neither way may chance the taste to please. Yet try a little with the evening-bread; Bring a good needle for the spool of thread; Take fact with fiction, silver with the lead, And, at the mint, you can get gold instead; In fine, read me, even as you would be read. PART II. THINGS AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. LETTER I. PASSAGE IN THE CAMBRIA.--LORD AND LADY FALKLAND.--CAPTAIN JUDKINS.--LIVERPOOL.--MANCHESTER.--MECHANICS' INSTITUTE.--"THE DIAL."--PEACE AND WAR.--THE WORKING-MEN OF ENGLAND.--THEIR TRIBUTE TO SIR ROBERT PEEL.--THE ROYAL INSTITUTE.--STATUES.--CHESTER.--BATHING. Ambleside, Westmoreland, 23d August, 1846. I take the first interval of rest and stillness to be filled up by some lines for the Tribune. Only three weeks have passed since leaving New York, but I have already had nine days of wonder in England, and, having learned a good deal, suppose I may have something to tell. Long before receiving this, you know that we were fortunate in the shortest voyage ever made across the Atlantic,[A]--only ten days and sixteen hours from Boston to Liverpool. The weather and all circumstances were propitious; and, if some of us were weak of head enough to suffer from the smell and jar of the machinery, or other ills by which the sea is wont to avenge itself on the arrogance of its vanquishers, we found no pity. The stewardess observed that she thought "any one tempted God Almighty who complained on a voyage where they did not even have to put guards to the dishes"! [Footnote A: True at the time these Letters were written.--ED.] As many contradictory counsels were given us with regard to going in one of the steamers in preference to a sailing vessel, I will mention here, for the benefit of those who have not yet tried one, that he must be fastidious indeed who could complain of the Cambria. The advantage of a quick passage and certainty as to the time of arrival, would, with us, have outweighed many ills; but, apart from this, we found more space than we expected and as much as we needed for a very tolerable degree of convenience in our sleeping-rooms, better ventilation than Americans in general can be persuaded to accept, general cleanliness, and good attendance. In the evening, when the wind was favorable, and the sails set, so that the vessel looked like a great winged creature darting across the apparently measureless expanse, the effect was very grand, but ah! for such a spectacle one pays too dear; I far prefer looking out upon "the blue and foaming sea" from a firm green shore. Our ship's company numbered several pleasant members, and that desire prevailed in each to contribute to the satisfaction of all, which, if carried out through the voyage of life, would make this earth as happy as it is a lovely abode. At Halifax we took in the Governor of Nova Scotia, returning from his very unpopular administration. His lady was with, him, a daughter of William the Fourth and the celebrated Mrs. Jordan. The English on board, and the Americans, following their lead, as usual, seemed to attach much importance to her left-handed alliance with one of the dullest families that ever sat upon a throne, (and that is a bold word, too,) none to her descent from one whom Nature had endowed with her most splendid regalia,--genius that fascinated the attention of all kinds and classes of men, grace and winning qualities that no heart could resist. Was the cestus buried with her, that no sense of its pre-eminent value lingered, as far as I could perceive, in the thoughts of any except myself? We had a foretaste of the delights of living under an aristocratical government at the Custom-House, where our baggage was detained, and we waiting for it weary hours, because of the preference given to the mass of household stuff carried back by this same Lord and Lady Falkland. Captain Judkins of the Cambria, an able and prompt commander, is the man who insisted upon Douglass being admitted to equal rights upon his deck with the insolent slave-holders, and assumed a tone toward their assumptions, which, if the Northern States had had the firmness, good sense, and honor to use, would have had the same effect, and put our country in a very different position from that she occupies at present. He mentioned with pride that he understood the New York Herald called him "the Nigger Captain," and seemed as willing to accept the distinction as Colonel McKenney is to wear as his last title that of "the Indian's friend." At the first sight of the famous Liverpool Docks, extending miles on each side of our landing, we felt ourselves in a slower, solider, and not on that account less truly active, state of things than at home. That impression is confirmed. There is not as we travel that rushing, tearing, and swearing, that snatching of baggage, that prodigality of shoe-leather and lungs, which attend the course of the traveller in the United States; but we do not lose our "goods," we do not miss our car. The dinner, if ordered in time, is cooked properly, and served punctually, and at the end of the day more that is permanent seems to have come of it than on the full-drive system. But more of this, and with a better grace, at a later day. The day after our arrival we went to Manchester. There we went over the magnificent warehouse of ---- Phillips, in itself a Bazaar ample to furnish provision for all the wants and fancies of thousands. In the evening we went to the Mechanics' Institute, and saw the boys and young men in their classes. I have since visited the Mechanics' Institute at Liverpool, where more than seventeen hundred pupils are received, and with more thorough educational arrangements; but the excellent spirit, the desire for growth in wisdom and enlightened benevolence, is the same in both. For a very small fee, the mechanic, clerk, or apprentice, and the women of their families, can receive various good and well-arranged instruction, not only in common branches of an English education, but in mathematics, composition, the French and German, languages, the practice and theory of the Fine Arts, and they are ardent in availing themselves of instruction in the higher branches. I found large classes, not only in architectural drawing, which may be supposed to be followed with a view to professional objects, but landscape also, and as large in German as in French. They can attend many good lectures and concerts without additional charge, for a due place is here assigned to music as to its influence on the whole mind. The large and well-furnished libraries are in constant requisition, and the books in most constant demand are not those of amusement, but of a solid and permanent interest and value. Only for the last year in Manchester, and for two in Liverpool, have these advantages been extended to girls; but now that part of the subject is looked upon as it ought to be, and begins to be treated more and more as it must and will be wherever true civilization is making its way. One of the handsomest houses in Liverpool has been purchased for the girls' school, and room and good arrangement been afforded for their work and their play. Among other things they are taught, as they ought to be in all American schools, to cut out and make dresses. I had the pleasure of seeing quotations made from our Boston "Dial," in the address in which the Director of the Liverpool Institute, a very benevolent and intelligent man, explained to his disciples and others its objects, and which concludes thus:-- "But this subject of self-improvement is inexhaustible. If traced to its results in action, it is, in fact, 'The Whole Duty of Man.' What of detail it involves and implies, I know that you will, each and all, think out for yourselves. Beautifully has it been said: 'Is not the difference between spiritual and material things just this,--that in the one case we must watch details, in the other, keep alive the high resolve, and the details will take care of themselves? Keep the sacred central fire burning, and throughout the system, in each of its acts, will be warmth and glow enough.'[A] [Footnote A: The Dial, Vol. I. p. 188, October, 1840, "Musings of a Recluse."] "For myself, if I be asked what my purpose is in relation to you, I would briefly reply, It is that I may help, be it ever so feebly, to train up a race of young men, who shall escape vice by rising above it; who shall love truth because it is truth, not because it brings them wealth or honor; who shall regard life as a solemn thing, involving too weighty responsibilities to be wasted in idle or frivolous pursuits; who shall recognize in their daily labors, not merely a tribute to the "hard necessity of daily bread," but a field for the development of their better nature by the discharge of duty; who shall judge in all things for themselves, bowing the knee to no sectarian or party watchwords of any kind; and who, while they think for themselves, shall feel for others, and regard their talents, their attainments, their opportunities, their possessions, as blessings held in trust for the good of their fellow-men." I found that The Dial had been read with earnest interest by some of the best minds in these especially practical regions, that it had been welcomed as a representative of some sincere and honorable life in America, and thought the fittest to be quoted under this motto:-- "What are noble deeds but noble thoughts realized?" Among other signs of the times we bought Bradshaw's Railway Guide, and, opening it, found extracts from the writings of our countrymen, Elihu Burritt and Charles Sumner, on the subject of Peace, occupying a leading place in the "Collect," for the month, of this little hand-book, more likely, in an era like ours, to influence the conduct of the day than would an illuminated breviary. Now that peace is secured for the present between our two countries, the spirit is not forgotten that quelled the storm. Greeted on every side with expressions of feeling about the blessings of peace, the madness and wickedness of war, that would be deemed romantic in our darker land, I have answered to the speakers, "But you are mightily pleased, and illuminate for your victories in China and Ireland, do you not?" and they, unprovoked by the taunt, would mildly reply, "_We_ do not, but it is too true that a large part of the nation fail to bring home the true nature and bearing of those events, and apply principle to conduct with as much justice as they do in the case of a nation nearer to them by kindred and position. But we are sure that feeling is growing purer on the subject day by day, and that there will soon be a large majority against war on any occasion or for any object." I heard a most interesting letter read from a tradesman in one of the country towns, whose daughters are self-elected instructors of the people in the way of cutting out from books and pamphlets fragments on the great subjects of the day, which they send about in packages, or paste on walls and doors. He said that one such passage, pasted on a door, he had seen read with eager interest by hundreds to whom such thoughts were, probably, quite new, and with some of whom it could scarcely fail to be as a little seed of a large harvest. Another good omen I found in written tracts by Joseph Barker, a working-man of the town of Wortley, published through his own printing-press. How great, how imperious the need of such men, of such deeds, we felt more than ever, while compelled to turn a deaf ear to the squalid and shameless beggars of Liverpool, or talking by night in the streets of Manchester to the girls from the Mills, who were strolling bareheaded, with coarse, rude, and reckless air, through the streets, or seeing through the windows of the gin-palaces the women seated drinking, too dull to carouse. The homes of England! their sweetness is melting into fable; only the new Spirit in its holiest power can restore to those homes their boasted security of "each man's castle," for Woman, the warder, is driven into the street, and has let fall the keys in her sad plight. Yet darkest hour of night is nearest dawn, and there seems reason to believe that "There's a good time coming." Blest be those who aid, who doubt not that "Smallest helps, if rightly given, Make the impulse stronger; 'Twill be strong enough one day." Other things we saw in Liverpool,--the Royal Institute, with the statue of Roscoe by Chantrey, and in its collection from the works of the early Italian artists, and otherwise, bearing traces of that liberality and culture by which the man, happy enough to possess them, and at the same time engaged with his fellow-citizens in practical life, can do so much more to enlighten and form them, than prince or noble possibly can with far larger pecuniary means. We saw the statue of Huskisson in the Cemetery. It is fine as a portrait statue, but as a work of art wants firmness and grandeur. I say it is fine as a portrait statue, though we were told it is not like the original; but it is a good conception of an individuality which might exist, if it does not yet. It is by Gibson, who received his early education in Liverpool. I saw there, too, the body of an infant borne to the grave by women; for it is a beautiful custom, here, that those who have fulfilled all other tender offices to the little being should hold to it the same relation to the very last. From Liverpool we went to Chester, one of the oldest cities in England, a Roman station once, and abode of the "Twentieth Legion," "the Victorious." Tiles bearing this inscription, heads of Jupiter, and other marks of their occupation, have, not long ago, been detected beneath the sod. The town also bears the marks of Welsh invasion and domestic struggles. The shape of a cross in which it is laid out, its walls and towers, its four arched gateways, its ramparts and ruined, towers, mantled with ivy, its old houses with Biblical inscriptions, its cathedral,--in which tall trees have grown up amid the arches, a fresh garden-plot, with flowers, bright green and red, taken place of the altar, and a crowd of revelling swallows supplanted the sallow choirs of a former priesthood,--present a _tout-ensemble_ highly romantic in itself, and charming, indeed, to Transatlantic eyes. Yet not to all eyes would it have had charms, for one American traveller, our companion on the voyage, gravely assured us that we should find the "castles and that sort of thing all humbug," and that, if we wished to enjoy them, it would "be best to sit at home and read some _handsome_ work on the subject." At the hotel in Liverpool and that in Manchester I had found no bath, and asking for one at Chester, the chambermaid said, with earnest good-will, that "they had none, but she thought she could get me a note from her master to the Infirmary (!!) if I would go there." Luckily I did not generalize quite as rapidly as travellers in America usually do, and put in the note-book,--"_Mem._: None but the sick ever bathe in England"; for in the next establishment we tried, I found the plentiful provision for a clean and healthy day, which I had read would be met _everywhere_ in this country. All else I must defer to my next, as the mail is soon to close. LETTER II. CHESTER.--ITS MUSEUM.--TRAVELLING COMPANIONS.--A BENGALESE.-- WESTMORELAND.--AMBLESIDE.--COBDEN AND BRIGHT.--A SCOTCH LADY.--WORDSWORTH.--HIS FLOWERS.--MISS MARTINEAU. Ambleside. Westmoreland, 27th August, 1846. I forgot to mention, in writing of Chester, an object which gave me pleasure. I mentioned, that the wall which enclosed the old town was two miles in circumference; far beyond this stretches the modern part of Chester, and the old gateways now overarch the middle of long streets. This wall is now a walk for the inhabitants, commanding a wide prospect, and three persons could walk abreast on its smooth flags. We passed one of its old picturesque towers, from whose top Charles the First, poor, weak, unhappy king, looked down and saw his troops defeated by the Parliamentary army on the adjacent plain. A little farther on, one of these picturesque towers is turned to the use of a Museum, whose stock, though scanty, I examined with singular pleasure, for it had been made up by truly filial contributions from, all who had derived benefit from Chester, from the Marquis of Westminster--whose magnificent abode, Eton Hall, lies not far off--down to the merchant's clerk, who had furnished it in his leisure hours with a geological chart, the soldier and sailor, who sent back shells, insects, and petrifactions from their distant wanderings, and a boy of thirteen, who had made, in wood, a model of its cathedral, and even furnished it with a bell to ring out the evening chimes. Many women had been busy in filling these magazines for the instruction and the pleasure of their fellow-townsmen. Lady ----, the wife of the captain of the garrison, grateful for the gratuitous admission of the soldiers once a month,--a privilege of which the keeper of the Museum (a woman also, who took an intelligent pleasure in her task) assured me that they were eager to avail themselves,--had given a fine collection of butterflies, and a ship. An untiring diligence had been shown in adding whatever might stimulate or gratify imperfectly educated minds. I like to see women perceive that there are other ways of doing good besides making clothes for the poor or teaching Sunday-school; these are well, if well directed, but there are many other ways, some as sure and surer, and which benefit the giver no less than the receiver. I was waked from sleep at the Chester Inn by a loud dispute between the chambermaid and an unhappy elderly gentleman, who insisted that he had engaged the room in which I was, had returned to sleep in it, and consequently must do so. To her assurances that the lady was long since in possession, he was deaf; but the lock, fortunately for me, proved a stronger defence. With all a chambermaid's morality, the maiden boasted to me, "He said he had engaged 44, and would not believe me when I assured him it was 46; indeed, how could he? I did not believe myself." To my assurance that, if I had known the room, was his, I should not have wished for it, but preferred taking a worse, I found her a polite but incredulous listener. Passing from Liverpool to Lancaster by railroad, that convenient but most unprofitable and stupid way of travelling, we there took the canal-boat to Kendal, and passed pleasantly through a country of that soft, that refined and cultivated loveliness, which, however much we have heard of it, finds the American eye--accustomed to so much wildness, so much rudeness, such a corrosive action of man upon nature--wholly unprepared. I feel all the time as if in a sweet dream, and dread to be presently awakened by some rude jar or glare; but none comes, and here in Westmoreland--but wait a moment, before we speak of that. In the canal-boat we found two well-bred English gentlemen, and two well-informed German gentlemen, with whom we had some agreeable talk. With one of the former was a beautiful youth, about eighteen, whom I supposed, at the first glance, to be a type of that pure East-Indian race whose beauty I had never seen represented before except in pictures; and he made a picture, from which I could scarcely take my eyes a moment, and from it could as ill endure to part. He was dressed in a broadcloth robe richly embroidered, leaving his throat and the upper part of his neck bare, except that he wore a heavy gold chain. A rich shawl was thrown gracefully around him; the sleeves of his robe were loose, with white sleeves below. He wore a black satin cap. The whole effect of this dress was very fine yet simple, setting off to the utmost advantage the distinguished beauty of his features, in which there was a mingling of national pride, voluptuous sweetness in that unconscious state of reverie when it affects us as it does in the flower, and intelligence in its newly awakened purity. As he turned his head, his profile was like one I used to have of Love asleep, while Psyche leans over him with the lamp; but his front face, with the full, summery look of the eye, was unlike that. He was a Bengalese, living in England for his education, as several others are at present. He spoke English well, and conversed on several subjects, literary and political, with grace, fluency, and delicacy of thought. Passing from Kendal to Ambleside, we found a charming abode furnished us by the care of a friend in one of the stone cottages of this region, almost the only one _not_ ivy-wreathed, but commanding a beautiful view of the mountains, and truly an English home in its neatness, quiet, and delicate, noiseless attention to the wants of all within its walls. Here we have passed eight happy days, varied by many drives, boating excursions on Grasmere and Winandermere, and the society of several agreeable persons. As the Lake district at this season draws together all kinds of people, and a great variety beside come from, all quarters to inhabit the charming dwellings that adorn its hill-sides and shores, I met and saw a good deal of the representatives of various classes, at once. I found here two landed proprietors from other parts of England, both "travelled English," one owning a property in Greece, where he frequently resides, both warmly engaged in Reform measures, anti-Corn-Law, anti-Capital-Punishment,--one of them an earnest student of Emerson's Essays. Both of them had wives, who kept pace with their projects and their thoughts, active and intelligent women, true ladies, skilful in drawing and music; all the better wives for the development of every power. One of them told me, with a glow of pride, that it was not long since her husband had been "cut" by all his neighbors among the gentry for the part he took against the Corn Laws; but, she added, he was now a favorite with them all. Verily, faith will remove mountains, if only you do join with it any fair portion of the dove and serpent attributes. I found here, too, a wealthy manufacturer, who had written many valuable pamphlets on popular subjects. He said: "Now that the progress of public opinion was beginning to make the Church and the Army narrower fields for the younger sons of 'noble' families, they sometimes wish to enter into trade; but, beside the aversion which had been instilled into them for many centuries, they had rarely patience and energy for the apprenticeship requisite to give the needed knowledge of the world and habits of labor." Of Cobden he said: "He is inferior in acquirements to very many of his class, as he is self-educated and had everything to learn after he was grown up; but in clear insight there is none like him." A man of very little education, whom I met a day or two after in the stage-coach, observed to me: "Bright is far the more eloquent of the two, but Cobden is more felt, just _because_ his speeches are so plain, so merely matter-of-fact and to the point." We became acquainted also with Dr. Gregory, Professor of Chemistry at Edinburgh, a very enlightened and benevolent man, who in many ways both instructed and benefited us. He is the friend of Liebig, and one of his chief representatives here. We also met a fine specimen of the noble, intelligent Scotchwoman, such as Walter Scott and Burns knew how to prize. Seventy-six years have passed over her head, only to prove in her the truth of my theory, that we need never grow old. She was "brought up" in the animated and intellectual circle of Edinburgh, in youth an apt disciple, in her prime a bright ornament of that society. She had been an only child, a cherished wife, an adored mother, unspoiled by love in any of these relations, because that love was founded on knowledge. In childhood she had warmly sympathized in the spirit that animated the American Revolution, and Washington had been her hero; later, the interest of her husband in every struggle for freedom had cherished her own; she had known in the course of her long life many eminent men, knew minutely the history of efforts in that direction, and sympathized now in the triumph of the people over the Corn Laws, as she had in the American victories, with as much ardor as when a girl, though with a wiser mind. Her eye was full of light, her manner and gesture of dignity; her voice rich, sonorous, and finely modulated; her tide of talk marked by candor, justice, and showing in every sentence her ripe experience and her noble, genial nature. Dear to memory will be the sight of her in the beautiful seclusion of her home among the mountains, a picturesque, flower-wreathed dwelling, where affection, tranquillity, and wisdom were the gods of the hearth, to whom was offered no vain oblation. Grant us more such women, Time! Grant to men the power to reverence, to seek for such! Our visit to Mr. Wordsworth was very pleasant. He also is seventy-six, but his is a florid, fair old age. He walked with us to all his haunts about the house. Its situation is beautiful, and the "Rydalian Laurels" are magnificent. Still I saw abodes among the hills that I should have preferred for Wordsworth, more wild and still, more romantic; the fresh and lovely Rydal Mount seems merely the retirement of a gentleman, rather than the haunt of a poet. He showed his benignity of disposition in several little things, especially in his attentions to a young boy we had with us. This boy had left the Circus, exhibiting its feats of horsemanship in Ambleside "for that day only," at his own desire to see Wordsworth, and I feared he would be disappointed, as I know I should have been at his age, if, when called to see a poet, I had found no Apollo, flaming with youthful glory, laurel-crowned and lyre in hand, but, instead, a reverend old man clothed in black, and walking with cautious step along the level garden-path; however, he was not disappointed, but seemed in timid reverence to recognize the spirit that had dictated "Laodamia" and "Dion,"--and Wordsworth, in his turn, seemed to feel and prize a congenial nature in this child. Taking us into the house, he showed us the picture of his sister, repeating with much expression some lines of hers, and those so famous of his about her, beginning, "Five years," &c.; also his own picture, by Inman, of whom he spoke with esteem. Mr. Wordsworth is fond of the hollyhock, a partiality scarcely deserved by the flower, but which marks the simplicity of his tastes. He had made a long avenue of them of all colors, from the crimson-brown to rose, straw-color, and white, and pleased himself with having made proselytes to a liking for them among his neighbors. I never have seen such magnificent fuchsias as at Ambleside, and there was one to be seen in every cottage-yard. They are no longer here under the shelter of the green-house, as with us, and as they used to be in England. The plant, from its grace and finished elegance, being a great favorite of mine, I should like to see it as frequently and of as luxuriant a growth at home, and asked their mode of culture, which I here mark down, for the benefit of all who may be interested. Make a bed of bog-earth and sand, put down slips of the fuchsia, and give them a great deal of water,--this is all they need. People have them out here in winter, but perhaps they would not bear the cold of our Januaries. Mr. Wordsworth spoke with, more liberality than we expected of the recent measures about the Corn Laws, saying that "the principle was certainly right, though as to whether existing interests had been as carefully attended to as was just, he was not prepared to say." His neighbors were pleased to hear of his speaking thus mildly, and hailed it as a sign that he was opening his mind to more light on these subjects. They lament that his habits of seclusion keep him much ignorant of the real wants of England and the world. Living in this region, which is cultivated by small proprietors, where there is little poverty, vice, or misery, he hears not the voice which cries so loudly from other parts of England, and will not be stilled by sweet poetic suasion or philosophy, for it is the cry of men in the jaws of destruction. It was pleasant to find the reverence inspired by this great and pure mind warmest nearest home. Our landlady, in heaping praises upon him, added, constantly, "And Mrs. Wordsworth, too." "Do the people here," said I, "value Mr. Wordsworth most because he is a celebrated writer?" "Truly, madam," said she, "I think it is because he is so kind a neighbor." "True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home." Dr. Arnold, too,--who lived, as his family still live, here,--diffused the same ennobling and animating spirit among those who knew him in private, as through the sphere of his public labors. Miss Martineau has here a charming residence; it has been finished only a few months, but all about it is in unexpectedly fair order, and promises much beauty after a year or two of growth. Here we found her restored to full health and activity, looking, indeed, far better than she did when in the United States. It was pleasant to see her in this home, presented to her by the gratitude of England for her course of energetic and benevolent effort, and adorned by tributes of affection and esteem from many quarters. From the testimony of those who were with her in and since her illness, her recovery would seem to be of as magical quickness and sure progress as has been represented. At the house of Miss Martineau I saw Milman, the author, I must not say poet,--a specimen of the polished, scholarly man of the world. We passed one most delightful day in a visit to Langdale,--the scene of "The Excursion,"--and to Dungeon-Ghyll Force. I am finishing my letter at Carlisle on my way to Scotland, and will give a slight sketch of that excursion, and one which occupied another day, from Keswick to Buttermere and Crummock Water, in my next. LETTER III. WESTMORELAND.--LANGDALE.--DUNGEON-GHYLL FORCE.--KESWICK.--CARLISLE.-- BRANXHOLM.--SCOTT.--BURNS. Edinburgh, 20th September, 1846. I have too long delayed writing up my journal.--Many interesting observations slip from recollection if one waits so many days: yet, while travelling, it is almost impossible to find an hour when something of value to be seen will not be lost while writing. I said, in closing my last, that I would write a little more about Westmoreland; but so much, has happened since, that I must now dismiss that region with all possible brevity. The first day of which I wished to speak was passed in visiting Langdale, the scene of Wordsworth's "Excursion." Our party of eight went in two of the vehicles called cars or droskas,--open carriages, each drawn by one horse. They are rather fatiguing to ride in, but good to see from. In steep and stony places all alight, and the driver leads the horse: so many of these there are, that we were four or five hours in going ten miles, including the pauses when we wished to _look_. The scenes through which we passed are, indeed, of the most wild and noble character. The wildness is not savage, but very calm. Without recurring to details, I recognized the tone and atmosphere of that noble poem, which was to me, at a feverish period in my life, as pure waters, free breezes, and cold blue sky, bringing a sense of eternity that gave an aspect of composure to the rudest volcanic wrecks of time. We dined at a farm-house of the vale, with its stone floors, old carved cabinet (the pride of a house of this sort), and ready provision of oaten cakes. We then ascended a near hill to the waterfall called Dungeon-Ghyll Force, also a subject touched by Wordsworth's Muse. You wind along a path for a long time, hearing the sound of the falling water, but do not see it till, descending by a ladder the side of the ravine, you come to its very foot. You find yourself then in a deep chasm, bridged over by a narrow arch of rock; the water falls at the farther end in a narrow column. Looking up, you see the sky through a fissure so narrow as to make it look very pure and distant. One of our party, passing in, stood some time at the foot of the waterfall, and added much to its effect, as his height gave a measure by which to appreciate that of surrounding objects, and his look, by that light so pale and statuesque, seemed to inform the place with the presence of its genius. Our circuit homeward from this grand scene led us through some lovely places, and to an outlook upon the most beautiful part of Westmoreland. Passing over to Keswick we saw Derwentwater, and near it the Fall of Lodore. It was from Keswick that we made the excursion of a day through Borrowdale to Buttermere and Crummock Water, which I meant to speak of, but find it impossible at this moment. The mind does not now furnish congenial colors with which to represent the vision of that day: it must still wait in the mind and bide its time, again to emerge to outer air. At Keswick we went to see a model of the Lake country which gives an excellent idea of the relative positions of all objects. Its maker had given six years to the necessary surveys and drawings. He said that he had first become acquainted with the country from his taste for fishing, but had learned to love its beauty, till the thought arose of making this model; that while engaged in it, he visited almost every spot amid the hills, and commonly saw both sunrise and sunset upon them; that he was happy all the time, but almost too happy when he saw one section of his model coming out quite right, and felt sure at last that he should be quite successful in representing to others the home of his thoughts. I looked upon him as indeed an enviable man, to have a profession so congenial with his feelings, in which he had been so naturally led to do what would be useful and pleasant for others. Passing from Keswick through a pleasant and cultivated country, we paused at "fair Carlisle," not voluntarily, but because we could not get the means of proceeding farther that day. So, as it was one in which "The sun shone fair on Carlisle wall," we visited its Cathedral and Castle, and trod, for the first time, in some of the footsteps of the unfortunate Queen of Scots. Passing next day the Border, we found the mosses all drained, and the very existence of sometime moss-troopers would have seemed problematical, but for the remains of Gilnockie,--the tower of Johnnie Armstrong, so pathetically recalled in one of the finest of the Scottish ballads. Its size, as well as that of other keeps, towers, and castles, whose ruins are reverentially preserved in Scotland, gives a lively sense of the time when population was so scanty, and individual manhood grew to such force. Ten men in Gilnockie were stronger then in proportion to the whole, and probably had in them more of intelligence, resource, and genuine manly power, than ten regiments now of red-coats drilled to act out manoeuvres they do not understand, and use artillery which needs of them no more than the match to go off and do its hideous message. Farther on we saw Branxholm, and the water in crossing which the Goblin Page was obliged to resume his proper shape and fly, crying, "Lost, lost, lost!" Verily these things seem more like home than one's own nursery, whose toys and furniture could not in actual presence engage the thoughts like these pictures, made familiar as household words by the most generous, kindly genius that ever blessed this earth. On the coach with us was a gentleman coming from London to make his yearly visit to the neighborhood of Burns, in which he was born. "I can now," said he, "go but once a year; when a boy, I never let a week pass without visiting the house of Burns." He afterward observed, as every step woke us to fresh recollections of Walter Scott, that Scott, with all his vast range of talent, knowledge, and activity, was a poet of the past only, and in his inmost heart wedded to the habits of a feudal aristocracy, while Burns is the poet of the present and the future, the man of the people, and throughout a genuine man. This is true enough; but for my part I cannot endure a comparison which by a breath of coolness depreciates either. Both were wanted; each acted the important part assigned him by destiny with a wonderful thoroughness and completeness. Scott breathed the breath just fleeting from the forms of ancient Scottish heroism and poesy into new,--he made for us the bridge by which we have gone into the old Ossianic hall and caught the meaning just as it was about to pass from us for ever. Burns is full of the noble, genuine democracy which seeks not to destroy royalty, but to make all men kings, as he himself was, in nature and in action. They belong to the same world; they are pillars of the same church, though they uphold its starry roof from opposite sides. Burns was much the rarer man; precisely because he had most of common nature on a grand scale; his humor, his passion, his sweetness, are all his own; they need no picturesque or romantic accessories to give them due relief: looked at by all lights they are the same. Since Adam, there has been none that approached nearer fitness to stand up before God and angels in the naked majesty of manhood than Robert Burns;--but there was a serpent in his field also! Yet but for his fault we could never have seen brought out the brave and patriotic modesty with which he owned it. Shame on him who could bear to think of fault in this rich jewel, unless reminded by such confession. We passed Abbotsford without stopping, intending to go there on our return. Last year five hundred Americans inscribed their names in its porter's book. A raw-boned Scotsman, who gathered his weary length into our coach on his return from a pilgrimage thither, did us the favor to inform us that "Sir Walter was a vara intelligent mon," and the guide-book mentions "the American Washington" as "a worthy old patriot." Lord safe us, cummers, what news be there! This letter, meant to go by the Great Britain, many interruptions force me to close, unflavored by one whiff from the smoke of Auld Reekie. More and better matter shall my next contain, for here and in the Highlands I have passed three not unproductive weeks, of which more anon. LETTER IV. EDINBURGH, OLD AND NEW.--SCOTT AND BURNS.--DR. ANDREW COMBE.--AMERICAN RE-PUBLISHING.--THE BOOKSELLING TRADE.--THE MESSRS. CHAMBERS.--DE QUINCEY THE OPIUM-EATER.--DR. CHALMERS. Edinburgh, September 22d, 1846. The beautiful and stately aspect of this city has been the theme of admiration so general that I can only echo it. We have seen it to the greatest advantage both from Calton Hill and Arthur's Seat, and our lodgings in Princess Street allow us a fine view of the Castle, always impressive, but peculiarly so in the moonlit evenings of our first week here, when a veil of mist added to its apparent size, and at the same time gave it the air with which Martin, in his illustrations of "Paradise Lost," has invested the palace which "rose like an exhalation." On this our second visit, after an absence of near a fortnight in the Highlands, we are at a hotel nearly facing the new monument to Scott, and the tallest buildings of the Old Town. From my windows I see the famous Kirk, the spot where the old Tolbooth was, and can almost distinguish that where Porteous was done to death, and other objects described in the most dramatic part of "The Heart of Mid-Lothian." In one of these tall houses Hume wrote part of his History of England, and on this spot still nearer was the home of Allan Ramsay. A thousand other interesting and pregnant associations present themselves every time I look out of the window. In the open square between us and the Old Town is to be the terminus of the railroad, but as the building will be masked with trees, it is thought it will not mar the beauty of the place; yet Scott could hardly have looked without regret upon an object that marks so distinctly the conquest of the New over the Old, and, appropriately enough, his statue has its back turned that way. The effect of the monument to Scott is pleasing, though without strict unity of thought or original beauty of design. The statue is too much hid within the monument, and wants that majesty of repose in the attitude and drapery which a sitting figure should have, and which might well accompany the massive head of Scott. Still the monument is an ornament and an honor to the city. This is now the fourth that has been erected within two years to commemorate the triumphs of genius. Monuments that have risen from the same idea, and in such quick succession, to Schiller, to Goethe, to Beethoven, and to Scott, signalize the character of the new era still more happily than does the railroad coming up almost to the foot of Edinburgh Castle. The statue of Burns has been removed from the monument erected in his honor, to one of the public libraries, as being there more accessible to the public. It is, however, entirely unworthy its subject, giving the idea of a smaller and younger person, while we think of Burns as of a man in the prime of manhood, one who not only promised, but _was_, and with a sunny glow and breadth, of character of which this stone effigy presents no sign. A Scottish gentleman told me the following story, which would afford the finest subject for a painter capable of representing the glowing eye and natural kingliness of Burns, in contrast to the poor, mean puppets he reproved. Burns, still only in the dawn of his celebrity, was invited to dine with one of the neighboring so-called gentry (unhappily quite void of true gentle blood). On arriving he found his plate set in the servants' room!! After dinner he was invited into a room where guests were assembled, and, a chair being placed for him at the lower end of the board, a glass of wine was offered, and he was requested to sing one of his songs for the entertainment of the company. He drank off the wine, and thundered forth in reply his grand song, "For a' that and a' that," with which it will do no harm to refresh the memories of our readers, for we doubt there may be, even in Republican America, those who need the reproof as much, and with far less excuse, than had that Scottish company. "Is there, for honest poverty, That hangs his head, and a' that? The coward slave, we pass him by, We dare be poor for a' that! For a' that, and a' that, Our toils obscure, and a' that, The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gowd for a' that. "What tho' on hamely fare we dine, Wear hoddin gray, and a' that; Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, A man's a man for a' that! For a' that, and a' that, Their tinsel show, and a' that, The honest man, though, e'er sae poor Is king o' men for a' that. "Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, Wha struts, and stares, and a' that; Tho' hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof for a' that; For a' that, and a' that, His ribbon, star, and a' that, The man of independent mind, He looks and laughs at a' that. "A prince can make a belted knight, A marquis, duke, and a' that; But an honest man's aboon his might Guid faith, he maunna fa' that! For a' that, and a' that, Their dignities, and a' that, The pith o' sense and pride o' worth Are higher ranks than a' that. "Then let us pray that, come it may, As come it will for a' that, That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth, May bear the gree, and a' that; For a' that, and a' that, It's coming yet for a' that, That man to man, the wide warld o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that." And, having finished this prophecy and prayer, Nature's nobleman left his churlish entertainers to hide their diminished heads in the home they had disgraced. We have seen all the stock lions. The Regalia people still crowd to see, though the old natural feelings from which they so long lay hidden seem almost extinct. Scotland grows English day by day. The libraries of the Advocates, Writers to the Signet, &c., are fine establishments. The University and schools are now in vacation; we are compelled by unwise postponement of our journey to see both Edinburgh and London at the worst possible season. We should have been here in April, there in June. There is always enough to see, but now we find a majority of the most interesting persons absent, and a stagnation in the intellectual movements of the place. We had, however, the good fortune to find Dr. Andrew Combe, who, though a great invalid, was able and disposed for conversation at this time. I was impressed with great and affectionate respect by the benign and even temper of his mind, his extensive and accurate knowledge, accompanied, as such should naturally be, by a large and intelligent liberality. Of our country he spoke very wisely and hopefully, though among other stories with which we, as Americans, are put to the blush here, there is none worse than that of the conduct of some of our publishers toward him. One of these stories I had heard in New York, but supposed it to be exaggerated till I had it from the best authority. It is of one of our leading houses who were publishing on their own account and had stereotyped one of his works from an early edition. When this work had passed through other editions and he had for years been busy in reforming and amending it, he applied to this house to republish from the later and better edition. They refused. In vain he urged that it was not only for his own reputation as an author that he was anxious, but for the good of the great country through which writings on such, important subjects were to be circulated, that they might have the benefit of his labors and best knowledge. Such arguments on the stupid and mercenary tempers of those addressed fell harmless as on a buffalo's hide might a gold-tipped arrow. The book, they thought, answered THEIR purpose sufficiently, for IT SELLS. Other purpose for a book they knew none. And as to the natural rights of an author over the fruits of his mind, the distilled essence of a life consumed in the severities of mental labor, they had never heard of such a thing. His work was in the market, and he had no more to do with it, that they could see, than the silkworm with the lining of one of their coats. Mr. Greeley, the more I look at this subject, the more I must maintain, in opposition to your views, that the publisher cannot, if a mere tradesman, be a man of honor. It is impossible in the nature of things. He _must_ have some idea of the nature and value of literary labor, or he is wholly unfit to deal with its products. He cannot get along by occasional recourse to paid critics or readers; he must himself have some idea what he is about. One partner, at least, in the firm, must be a man of culture. All must understand enough to appreciate their position, and know that he who, for his sordid aims, circulates poisonous trash amid a great and growing people, and makes it almost impossible for those whom Heaven has appointed as its instructors to do their office, are the worst of traitors, and to be condemned at the bar of nations under a sentence no less severe than false statesmen and false priests. This matter should and must be looked to more conscientiously. Dr. Combe, repelled by all this indifference to conscience and natural equity in the firm who had taken possession of his work, applied to others. But here he found himself at once opposed by the invisible barrier that makes this sort of tyranny so strong and so pernicious. "It was the understanding among the trade that they were not to interfere with one another; indeed, they could have no chance," &c., &c. When at last he did get the work republished in another part of the country less favorable for his purposes, the bargain made as to the pecuniary part of the transaction was in various ways so evaded, that, up to this time, he has received no compensation from that widely-circulated work, except a lock of Spurzheim's hair!! I was pleased to hear the true view expressed by one of the Messrs. Chambers. These brothers have worked their way up to wealth and influence by daily labor and many steps. One of them is more the business man, the other the literary curator of their Journal. Of this Journal they issue regularly eighty thousand copies, and it is doing an excellent work, by awakening among the people a desire for knowledge, and, to a considerable extent, furnishing them with good materials. I went over their fine establishment, where I found more than a hundred and fifty persons, in good part women, employed, all in well-aired, well-lighted rooms, seemingly healthy and content. Connected with the establishment is a Savings Bank, and evening instruction in writing, singing, and arithmetic. There was also a reading-room, and the same valuable and liberal provision we had found attached to some of the Manchester warehouses. Such accessories dignify and gladden all kinds of labor, and show somewhat of the true spirit of human brotherhood in the employer. Mr. Chambers said he trusted they should never look on publishing _chiefly_ as _business_, or a lucrative and respectable employment, but as the means of mental and moral benefit to their countrymen. To one so wearied and disgusted as I have been by vulgar and base avowals on such subjects, it was very refreshing to hear this from the lips of a successful publisher. Dr. Combe spoke with high praise of Mr. Hurlbart's book, "Human Rights and their Political Guaranties," which was published at the Tribune office. He observed that it was the work of a real thinker, and extremely well written. It is to be republished here. Dr. Combe said that it must make its way slowly, as it could interest those only who were willing to read thoughtfully; but its success was sure at last. He also spoke with, great interest and respect of Mrs. Farnham, of whose character and the influence she has exerted on the female prisoners at Sing Sing he had heard some account. A person of a quite different character and celebrity is De Quincey, the English Opium-Eater, and who lately has delighted us again with the papers in Blackwood headed "Suspiria de Profundis." I had the satisfaction, not easily attainable now, of seeing him for some hours, and in the mood of conversation. As one belonging to the Wordsworth, and Coleridge constellation, (he too is now seventy-six years of age,) the thoughts and knowledge of Mr. De Quincey lie in the past; and oftentimes he spoke of matters now become trite to one of a later culture. But to all that fell from his lips, his eloquence, subtile and forcible as the wind, full and gently falling as the evening dew, lent a peculiar charm. He is an admirable narrator, not rapid, but gliding along like a rivulet through a green meadow, giving and taking a thousand little beauties not absolutely required to give his story due relief, but each, in itself, a separate boon. I admired, too, his urbanity, so opposite to the rapid, slang, Vivian-Greyish style current in the literary conversation of the day. "Sixty years since," men had time to do things better and more gracefully than now. With Dr. Chalmers we passed a couple of hours. He is old now, but still full of vigor and fire. We had an opportunity of hearing a fine burst of indignant eloquence from him. "I shall blush to my very bones," said he, "if the _Chaarrch_"--(sound these two _rr_'s with as much burr as possible and you will get at an idea of his mode of pronouncing that unweariable word)--"if the Chaarrch yields to the storm." He alluded to the outcry now raised against the Free Church by the Abolitionists, whose motto is, "Send back the money," i.e. money taken from the American slaveholders. Dr. Chalmers felt that, if they did not yield from conviction, they must not to assault. His manner of speaking on this subject gave me an idea of the nature of his eloquence. He seldom preaches now. A fine picture was presented by the opposition of figure and lineaments between a young Indian, son of the celebrated Dwarkanauth Tagore, who happened to be there that morning, and Dr. Chalmers, as they were conversing together. The swarthy, half-timid, yet elegant face and form of the Indian made a fine contrast with the florid, portly, yet intellectually luminous appearance of the Doctor; half shepherd, half orator, he looked a Shepherd King opposed to some Arabian story-teller. I saw others in Edinburgh of a later date who haply gave more valuable as well as fresher revelations of the spirit, and whose names may be by and by more celebrated than those I have cited; but for the present this must suffice. It would take a week, if I wrote half I saw or thought in Edinburgh, and I must close for to-day. LETTER V. PERTH.--TRAVELLING BY COACH.--LOCH LEVEN.--QUEEN MARY.--LOCH KATRINE.--THE TROSACHS.--ROWARDENNAN.--A NIGHT ON BEN LOMOND.--SCOTCH PEASANTRY. Birmingham, September 30th, 1846. I was obliged to stop writing at Edinburgh before the better half of my tale was told, and must now begin there again, to speak of an excursion into the Highlands, which occupied about a fortnight. We left Edinburgh, by coach for Perth, and arrived there about three in the afternoon. I have reason to be very glad that I visit this island before the reign of the stage-coach is quite over. I have been constantly on the top of the coach, even one day of drenching rain, and enjoy it highly. Nothing can be more inspiring than this swift, steady progress over such smooth roads, and placed so high as to overlook the country freely, with the lively flourish of the horn preluding every pause. Travelling by railroad is, in my opinion, the most stupid process on earth; it is sleep without the refreshment of sleep, for the noise of the train makes it impossible either to read, talk, or sleep to advantage. But here the advantages are immense; you can fly through this dull trance from one beautiful place to another, and stay at each during the time that would otherwise be spent on the road. Already the artists, who are obliged to find their home in London, rejoice that all England is thrown open to them for sketching-ground, since they can now avail themselves of a day's leisure at a great distance, and with choice of position, whereas formerly they were obliged to confine themselves to a few "green, and bowery" spots in the neighborhood of the metropolis. But while in the car, it is to me that worst of purgatories, the purgatory of dulness. Well, on the coach we went to Perth, and passed through Kinross, and saw Loch Leven, and the island where Queen Mary passed those sorrowful months, before her romantic escape under care of the Douglas. As this unhappy, lovely woman stands for a type in history, death, time, and distance do not destroy her attractive power. Like Cleopatra, she has still her adorers; nay, some are born to her in each new generation of men. Lately she has for her chevalier the Russian Prince Labanoff, who has spent fourteen years in studying upon all that related to her, and thinks now that he can make out a story and a picture about the mysteries of her short reign, which shall satisfy the desire of her lovers to find her as pure and just as she was charming. I have only seen of his array of evidence so much, as may be found in the pages of Chambers's Journal, but that much does not disturb the original view I have taken of the case; which is, that from a princess educated under the Medici and Guise influence, engaged in the meshes of secret intrigue to favor the Roman Catholic faith, her tacit acquiescence, at least, in the murder of Darnley, after all his injurious conduct toward her, was just what was to be expected. From a poor, beautiful young woman, longing to enjoy life, exposed both by her position and her natural fascinations to the utmost bewilderment of flattery, whether prompted by interest or passion, her other acts of folly are most natural, and let all who feel inclined harshly to condemn her remember to "Gently scan your brother man, Still gentler sister woman." Surely, in all the stern pages of life's account-book there is none on which a more terrible price is exacted for every precious endowment. Her rank and reign only made her powerless to do good, and exposed her to danger; her talents only served to irritate her foes and disappoint her friends. This most charming of women was the destruction of her lovers: married three times, she had never any happiness as a wife, but in both the connections of her choice found that she had either never possessed or could not retain, even for a few weeks, the love of the men she had chosen, so that Darnley was willing to risk her life and that of his unborn child to wreak his wrath upon Rizzio, and after a few weeks with Bothwell she was heard "calling aloud for a knife to kill herself with." A mother twice, and of a son and daughter, both the children were brought forth in loneliness and sorrow, and separated from her early, her son educated to hate her, her daughter at once immured in a convent. Add the eighteen years of her imprisonment, and the fact that this foolish, prodigal world, when there was in it one woman fitted by her grace and loveliness to charm all eyes and enliven all fancies, suffered her to be shut up to water with her tears her dull embroidery during all the full rose-blossom of her life, and you will hardly get beyond this story for a tragedy, not noble, but pallid and forlorn. Such were the bootless, best thoughts I had while looking at the dull blood-stain and blocked-up secret stair of Holyrood, at the ruins of Loch Leven castle, and afterward at Abbotsford, where the picture of Queen Mary's head, as it lay on the pillow when severed from the block, hung opposite to a fine caricature of "Queen Elizabeth dancing high and disposedly." In this last the face is like a mask, so frightful is the expression of cold craft, irritated, vanity, and the malice of a lonely breast in contrast with the attitude and elaborate frippery of the dress. The ambassador looks on dismayed; the little page can scarcely control the laughter which swells his boyish cheeks. Such can win the world which, better hearts (and such Mary's was, even if it had a large black speck in it) are most like to lose. That was a most lovely day on which we entered Perth, and saw in full sunshine its beautiful meadows, among them the North-Inch, the famous battle-ground commemorated in "The Fair Maid of Perth," adorned with graceful trees like those of the New England country towns. In the afternoon we visited the modern Kinfauns, the stately home of Lord Grey. The drive to it is most beautiful, on the one side the Park, with noble heights that skirt it, on the other through a belt of trees was seen the river and the sweep of that fair and cultivated country. The house is a fine one, and furnished with taste, the library large, and some good works in marble. Among the family pictures one arrested my attention,--the face of a girl full of the most pathetic sensibility, and with no restraint of convention upon its ardent, gentle expression. She died young. Returning, we were saddened, as almost always on leaving any such place, by seeing such swarms of dirty women and dirtier children at the doors of the cottages almost close by the gate of the avenue. To the horrors and sorrows of the streets in such places as Liverpool, Glasgow, and, above all, London, one has to grow insensible or die daily; but here in the sweet, fresh, green country, where there seems to be room for everybody, it is impossible to forget the frightful inequalities between the lot of man and man, or believe that God can smile upon a state of things such as we find existent here. Can any man who has seen these things dare blame the Associationists for their attempt to find prevention against such misery and wickedness in our land? Rather will not every man of tolerable intelligence and good feeling commend, say rather revere, every earnest attempt in that direction, nor dare interfere with any, unless he has a better to offer in its place? Next morning we passed on to Crieff, in whose neighborhood we visited Drummond Castle, the abode, or rather one of the abodes, of Lord Willoughby D'Eresby. It has a noble park, through which you pass by an avenue of two miles long. The old keep is still ascended to get the fine view of the surrounding country; and during Queen Victoria's visit, her Guards were quartered there. But what took my fancy most was the old-fashioned garden, full of old shrubs and new flowers, with its formal parterres in the shape of the family arms, and its clipped yew and box trees. It was fresh from a shower, and now glittering and fragrant in bright sunshine. This afternoon we pursued our way, passing through the plantations of Ochtertyre, a far more charming place to my taste than Drummond Castle, freer and more various in its features. Five or six of these fine places lie in the neighborhood of Crieff, and the traveller may give two or three days to visiting them with a rich reward of delight. But we were pressing on to be with the lakes and mountains rather, and that night brought us to St. Fillan's, where we saw the moon shining on Loch Earn. All this region, and that of Loch Katrine and the Trosachs, which we reached next day, Scott has described exactly in "The Lady of the Lake"; nor is it possible to appreciate that poem, without going thither, neither to describe the scene better than he has done after you have seen it. I was somewhat disappointed in the pass of the Trosachs itself; it is very grand, but the grand part lasts so little while. The opening view of Loch Katrine, however, surpassed, expectation. It was late in the afternoon when we launched our little boat there for Ellen's isle. The boatmen recite, though not _con molto espressione_, the parts of the poem which describe these localities. Observing that they spoke of the personages, too, with the same air of confidence, we asked if they were sure that all this really happened. They replied, "Certainly; it had been told from father to son through so many generations." Such is the power of genius to interpolate what it will into the regular log-book of Time's voyage. Leaving Loch Katrine the following day, we entered Rob Roy's country, and saw on the way the house where Helen MacGregor was born, and Rob Roy's sword, which is shown in a house by the way-side. We came in a row-boat up Loch Katrine, though both on that and Loch Lomond you _may_ go in a hateful little steamer with a squeaking fiddle to play Rob Roy MacGregor O. I walked almost all the way through the pass from Loch Katrine to Loch Lomond; it was a distance of six miles; but you feel as if you could walk sixty in that pure, exhilarating air. At Inversnaid we took boat again to go down Loch Lomond to the little inn of Rowardennan, from which the ascent is made of Ben Lomond, the greatest elevation in these parts. The boatmen are fine, athletic men; one of those with us this evening, a handsome young man of two or three and twenty, sang to us some Gaelic songs. The first, a very wild and plaintive air, was the expostulation of a girl whose lover has deserted her and married another. It seems he is ashamed, and will not even look at her when they meet upon the road. She implores him, if he has not forgotten all that scene of bygone love, at least to lift up his eyes and give her one friendly glance. The sad _crooning_ burden of the stanzas in which she repeats this request was very touching. When the boatman had finished, he hung his head and seemed ashamed of feeling the song too much; then, when we asked for another, he said he would sing another about a girl that was happy. This one was in three parts. First, a tuneful address from a maiden to her absent lover; second, his reply, assuring her of his fidelity and tenderness; third, a strain which expresses their joy when reunited. I thought this boatman had sympathies which would prevent his tormenting any poor women, and perhaps make some one happy, and this was a pleasant thought, since probably in the Highlands, as elsewhere, "Maidens lend an ear too oft To the careless wooer; Maidens' hearts are _always soft_; Would that men's were truer!" I don't know that I quote the words correctly, but that is the sum and substance of a masculine report on these matters. The first day at Rowardennan not being propitious for ascending the mountain, we went down the lake to sup, and got very tired in various ways, so that we rose very late next morning. Their we found a day of ten thousand for our purpose; but unhappily a large party had come with the sun and engaged all the horses, so that, if we went, it must be on foot. This was something of an enterprise for me, as the ascent is four miles, and toward the summit quite fatiguing; however, in the pride of newly gained health and strength, I was ready, and set forth with Mr. S. alone. We took no guide,--and the people of the house did not advise it, as they ought. They told us afterward they thought the day was so clear that there was no probability of danger, and they were afraid of seeming mercenary about it. It was, however, wrong, as they knew what we did not, that even the shepherds, if a mist comes on, can be lost in these hills; that a party of gentlemen were so a few weeks before, and only by accident found their way to a house on the other side; and that a child which had been lost was not found for five days, long after its death. We, however, nothing doubting, set forth, ascending slowly, and often stopping to enjoy the points of view, which are many, for Ben Lomond consists of a congeries of hills, above which towers the true Ben, or highest peak, as the head of a many-limbed body. On reaching the peak, the night was one of beauty and grandeur such as imagination never painted. You see around you no plain ground, but on every side constellations or groups of hills exquisitely dressed in the soft purple of the heather, amid which gleam the lakes, like eyes that tell the secrets of the earth and drink in those of the heavens. Peak beyond peak caught from the shifting light all the colors of the prism, and on the farthest, angel companies seemed hovering in their glorious white robes. Words are idle on such subjects; what can I say, but that it was a noble vision, that satisfied the eye and stirred the imagination in all its secret pulses? Had that been, as afterward seemed likely, the last act of my life, there could not have been a finer decoration painted on the curtain which was to drop upon it. About four o'clock we began our descent. Near the summit the traces of the path are not distinct, and I said to Mr. S., after a while, that we had lost it. He said, he thought that was of no consequence, we could find oar way down. I thought however it was, as the ground was full of springs that were bridged over in the pathway. He accordingly went to look for it, and I stood still because so tired that I did not like to waste any labor. Soon he called to me that he had found it, and I followed in the direction where he seemed to be. But I mistook, overshot it, and saw him no more. In about ten minutes I became alarmed, and called him many times. It seems he on his side did the same, but the brow of some hill was between us, and we neither saw nor heard one another. I then thought I would make the best of my way down, and I should find him upon my arrival. But in doing so I found the justice of my apprehension about the springs, as, so soon as I got to the foot of the hills, I would sink up to my knees in bog, and have to go up the hills again, seeking better crossing-places. Thus I lost much time; nevertheless, in the twilight I saw at last the lake and the inn of Rowardennan on its shore. Between me and it lay direct a high heathery hill, which I afterward found is called "The Tongue," because hemmed in on three sides by a watercourse. It looked as if, could I only get to the bottom of that, I should be on comparatively level ground. I then attempted to descend in the watercourse, but, finding that impracticable, climbed on the hill again and let myself down by the heather, for it was very steep and full of deep holes. With great fatigue I got to the bottom, but when about to cross the watercourse there, it looked so deep in the dim twilight that I felt afraid. I got down as far as I could by the root of a tree, and threw down a stone; it sounded very hollow, and made me afraid to jump. The shepherds told me afterward, if I had, I should probably have killed myself, it was so deep and the bed of the torrent full of sharp stones. I then tried to ascend the hill again, for there was no other way to get off it, but soon sunk down utterly exhausted. When able to get up again and look about me, it was completely dark. I saw far below me a light, that looked about as big as a pin's head, which I knew to be from the inn at Rowardennan, but heard no sound except the rush of the waterfall, and the sighing of the night-wind. For the first few minutes after I perceived I had got to my night's lodging, such as it was, the prospect seemed appalling. I was very lightly clad,--my feet and dress were very wet,--I had only a little shawl to throw round me, and a cold autumn wind had already come, and the night-mist was to fall on me, all fevered and exhausted as I was. I thought I should not live through the night, or, if I did, live always a miserable invalid. There was no chance to keep myself warm by walking, for, now it was dark, it would be too dangerous to stir. My only chance, however, lay in motion, and my only help in myself, and so convinced was I of this, that I did keep in motion the whole of that long night, imprisoned as I was on such a little perch of that great mountain. _How_ long it seemed under such circumstances only those can guess who may have been similarly circumstanced. The mental experience of the time, most precious and profound,--for it was indeed a season lonely, dangerous, and helpless enough for the birth of thoughts beyond what the common sunlight will ever call to being,--may be told in another place and time. For about two hours I saw the stars, and very cheery and companionable they looked; but then the mist fell, and I saw nothing more, except such apparitions as visited Ossian on the hill-side when he went out by night and struck the bosky shield and called to him the spirits of the heroes and the white-armed maids with their blue eyes of grief. To me, too, came those visionary shapes; floating slowly and gracefully, their white robes would unfurl from the great body of mist in which they had been engaged, and come upon me with a kiss pervasively cold as that of death. What they might have told me, who knows, if I had but resigned myself more passively to that cold, spirit-like breathing! At last the moon rose. I could not see her, but the silver light filled the mist. Then I knew it was two o'clock, and that, having weathered out so much of the night, I might the rest; and the hours hardly seemed long to me more. It may give an idea of the extent of the mountain to say that, though I called every now and then with all my force, in case by chance some aid might be near, and though no less than twenty men with their dogs were looking for me, I never heard a sound except the rush of the waterfall and the sighing of the night-wind, and once or twice the startling of the grouse in the heather. It was sublime indeed,--a never-to-be-forgotten presentation of stern, serene realities. At last came the signs of day, the gradual clearing and breaking up; some faint sounds, from I know not what. The little flies, too, arose from their bed amid the purple heather, and bit me; truly they were very welcome to do so. But what was my disappointment to find the mist so thick, that I could see neither lake nor inn, nor anything to guide me. I had to go by guess, and, as it happened, my Yankee method served me well. I ascended the hill, crossed the torrent in the waterfall, first drinking some of the water, which was as good at that time as ambrosia. I crossed in that place because the waterfall made steps, as it were, to the next hill; to be sure they were covered with water, but I was already entirely wet with the mist, so that it did not matter. I then kept on scrambling, as it happened, in the right direction, till, about seven, some of the shepherds found me. The moment they came, all my feverish strength departed, though, if unaided, I dare say it would have kept me up during the day; and they carried me home, where my arrival relieved my friends of distress far greater than I had undergone, for I had had my grand solitude, my Ossianic visions, and the pleasure of sustaining myself while they had only doubt amounting to anguish and a fruitless search through the night. Entirely contrary to my expectations, I only suffered for this a few days, and was able to take a parting look at my prison, as I went down the lake, with feelings of complacency. It was a majestic-looking hill, that Tongue, with the deep ravines on either side, and the richest robe of heather I have seen anywhere. Mr. S. gave all the men who were looking for me a dinner in the barn, and he and Mrs. S. ministered to them, and they talked of Burns, really the national writer, and known by them, apparently, as none other is, and of hair-breadth escapes by flood and fell. Afterwards they were all brought up to see me, and it was pleasing indeed to observe the good breeding and good, feeling with which they deported themselves on the occasion. Indeed, this adventure created quite an intimate feeling between us and the people there. I had been much pleased, with them before, in attending one of their dances, on account of the genuine independence and politeness of their conduct. They were willing and pleased to dance their Highland flings and strathspeys for our amusement, and did it as naturally and as freely as they would have offered the stranger the best chair. All the rest must wait a while. I cannot economize time to keep up my record in any proportion with what happens, nor can I get out of Scotland on this page, as I had intended, without utterly slighting many gifts and graces. LETTER VI. INVERARY.--THE ARGYLE FAMILY.--DUMBARTON.--SUNSET ON THE CLYDE.--GLASGOW.--DIRT AND INTELLECT.--STIRLING.--"THE SCOTTISH CHIEFS."--STIRLING CASTLE.--THE TOURNAMENT GROUND.--EDINBURGH.--JAMES SIMPSON.--INFANT SCHOOLS.--FREE BATHS.--MELROSE.--ABBOTSFORD.--WALTER SCOTT.--DRYBURGH ABBEY.--SCOTT'S TOMB. Paris, November, 1846. I am very sorry to leave such a wide gap between my letters, but I was inevitably prevented from finishing one that was begun for the steamer of the 4th of November. I then hoped to prepare one after my arrival here in time for the Hibernia, but a severe cold, caught on the way, unfitted me for writing. It is now necessary to retrace my steps a long way, or lose sight of several things it has seemed desirable to mention to friends in America, though I shall make out my narrative more briefly than if nearer the time of action. If I mistake not, my last closed just as I was looking back on the hill where I had passed the night in all the miserable chill and amid the ghostly apparitions of a Scotch mist, but which looked in the morning truly beautiful, and (had I not known it too well to be deceived) alluring, in its mantle of rich pink heath, the tallest and most full of blossoms we anywhere saw, and with, the waterfall making music by its side, and sparkling in the morning sun. Passing from Tarbet, we entered the grand and beautiful pass of Glencoe,--sublime with purple shadows with bright lights between, and in one place showing an exquisitely silent and lonely little lake. The wildness of the scene was heightened by the black Highland cattle feeding here and there. They looked much at home, too, in the park at Inverary, where I saw them next day. In Inverary I was disappointed. I found, indeed, the position of every object the same as indicated in the "Legend of Montrose," but the expression of the whole seemed unlike what I had fancied. The present abode of the Argyle family is a modern structure, and boasts very few vestiges of the old romantic history attached to the name. The park and look-out upon the lake are beautiful, but except from the brief pleasure derived from these, the old cross from Iona that stands in the market-place, and the drone of the bagpipe which lulled me to sleep at night playing some melancholy air, there was nothing to make me feel that it was "a far cry to Lochawe," but, on the contrary, I seemed in the very midst of the prosaic, the civilized world. Leaving Inverary, we left that day the Highlands too, passing through. Hell Glen, a very wild and grand defile. Taking boat then on Loch Levy, we passed down the Clyde, stopping an hour or two on our way at Dumbarton. Nature herself foresaw the era of picture when she made and placed this rock: there is every preparation for the artist's stealing a little piece from her treasures to hang on the walls of a room. Here I saw the sword of "Wallace wight," shown by a son of the nineteenth century, who said that this hero lived about fifty years ago, and who did not know the height of this rock, in a cranny of which he lived, or at least ate and slept and "donned his clothes." From the top of the rock I saw sunset on the beautiful Clyde, animated that day by an endless procession of steamers, little skiffs, and boats. In one of the former, the Cardiff Castle, we embarked as the last light of day was fading, and that evening found ourselves in Glasgow. I understand there is an intellectual society of high merit in Glasgow, but we were there only a few hours, and did not see any one. Certainly the place, as it may be judged of merely from the general aspect of the population and such objects as may be seen in the streets, more resembles an _Inferno_ than any other we have yet visited. The people are more crowded together, and the stamp of squalid, stolid misery and degradation more obvious and appalling. The English and Scotch do not take kindly to poverty, like those of sunnier climes; it makes them fierce or stupid, and, life presenting no other cheap pleasure, they take refuge in drinking. I saw here in Glasgow persons, especially women, dressed in dirty, wretched tatters, worse than none, and with an expression of listless, unexpecting woe upon their faces, far more tragic than the inscription over the gate of Dante's _Inferno_. To one species of misery suffered here to the last extent, I shall advert in speaking of London. But from all these sorrowful tokens I by no means inferred the falsehood of the information, that here was to be found a circle rich in intellect and in aspiration. The manufacturing and commercial towns, burning focuses of grief and vice, are also the centres of intellectual life, as in forcing-beds the rarest flowers and fruits are developed by use of impure and repulsive materials. Where evil comes to an extreme, Heaven seems busy in providing means for the remedy. Glaring throughout Scotland and England is the necessity for the devoutest application of intellect and love to the cure of ills that cry aloud, and, without such application, erelong help _must_ be sought by other means than words. Yet there is every reason to hope that those who ought to help are seriously, though, slowly, becoming alive to the imperative nature of this duty; so we must not cease to hope, even in the streets of Glasgow, and the gin-palaces of Manchester, and the dreariest recesses of London. From Glasgow we passed to Stirling, like Dumbarton endeared to the mind which cherishes the memory of its childhood more by association with Miss Porter's Scottish Chiefs, than with "Snowdon's knight and Scotland's king." We reached the town too late to see the castle before the next morning, and I took up at the inn "The Scottish Chiefs," in which I had not read a word since ten or twelve years old. We are in the habit now of laughing when this book is named, as if it were a representative of what is most absurdly stilted or bombastic, but now, in reading, my maturer mind was differently impressed from what I expected, and the infatuation with which childhood and early youth regard this book and its companion, "Thaddeus of Warsaw," was justified. The characters and dialogue are, indeed, out of nature, but the sentiment that animates them is pure, true, and no less healthy than noble. Here is bad drawing, bad drama, but good music, to which the unspoiled heart will always echo, even when the intellect has learned to demand a better organ for its communication. The castle of Stirling is as rich as any place in romantic associations. We were shown its dungeons and its Court of Lions, where, says tradition, wild animals, kept in the grated cells adjacent, were brought out on festival occasions to furnish entertainment for the court. So, while lords and ladies gay danced and sang above, prisoners pined and wild beasts starved below. This, at first blush, looks like a very barbarous state of things, but, on reflection, one does not find that we have outgrown it in our present so-called state of refined civilization, only the present way of expressing the same facts is a little different. Still lords and ladies dance and sing, unknowing or uncaring that the laborers who minister to their luxuries starve or are turned into wild beasts. Man need not boast his condition, methinks, till he can weave his costly tapestry without the side that is kept under looking thus sadly. The tournament ground is still kept green and in beautiful order, near Stirling castle, as a memento of the olden time, and as we passed away down the beautiful Firth, a turn of the river gave us a very advantageous view of it. So gay it looked, so festive in the bright sunshine, one almost seemed to see the graceful forms of knight and noble pricking their good steeds to the encounter, or the stalwart Douglas, vindicating his claim to be indeed a chief by conquest in the rougher sports of the yeomanry. Passing along the Firth to Edinburgh, we again passed two or three days in that beautiful city, which I could not be content to leave so imperfectly seen, if I had not some hope of revisiting it when the bright lights that adorn it are concentred there. In summer almost every one is absent. I was very fortunate to see as many interesting persons as I did. On this second visit I saw James Simpson, a well-known philanthropist, and leader in the cause of popular education. Infant schools have been an especial care of his, and America as well as Scotland has received the benefit of his thoughts on this subject. His last good work has been to induce the erection of public baths in Edinburgh, and the working people of that place, already deeply in his debt for the lectures he has been unwearied in delivering for their benefit, have signified their gratitude by presenting him with a beautiful model of a fountain in silver as an ornament to his study. Never was there a place where such a measure would be more important; if cleanliness be akin to godliness, Edinburgh stands at great disadvantage in her devotions. The impure air, the terrific dirt which surround the working people, must make all progress in higher culture impossible; and I saw nothing which seemed to me so likely to have results of incalculable good, as this practical measure of the Simpsons in support of the precept, "Wash and be clean every whit." We returned into England by the way of Melrose, not content to leave Scotland without making our pilgrimage to Abbotsford. The universal feeling, however, has made this pilgrimage so common that there is nothing left for me to say; yet, though I had read a hundred descriptions, everything seemed new as I went over this epitome of the mind and life of Scott. As what constitutes the great man is more commonly some extraordinary combination and balance of qualities, than the highest development of any one, so you cannot but here be struck anew by the singular combination in Scott's mind of love for the picturesque and romantic with the plainest common sense,--a delight in heroic excess with the prudential habit of order. Here the most pleasing order pervades emblems of what men commonly esteem disorder and excess. Amid the exquisite beauty of the ruins of Dryburgh, I saw with regret that Scott's body rests in almost the only spot that is not green, and cannot well be made so, for the light does not reach it. That is not a fit couch for him who dressed so many dim and time-worn relics with living green. Always cheerful and beneficent, Scott seemed to the common eye in like measure prosperous and happy, up to the last years, and the chair in which, under the pressure of the sorrows which led to his death, he was propped up to write when brain and eye and hand refused their aid, the product remaining only as a guide to the speculator as to the workings of the mind in case of insanity or approaching imbecility, would by most persons be viewed as the only saddening relic of his career. Yet when I recall some passages in the Lady of the Lake, and the Address to his Harp, I cannot doubt that Scott had the full share of bitter in his cup, and feel the tender hope that we do about other gentle and generous guardians and benefactors of our youth, that in a nobler career they are now fulfilling still higher duties with serener mind. Doubtless too they are trusting in us that we will try to fill their places with kindly deeds, ardent thoughts, nor leave the world, in their absence, "A dim, vast vale of tears, Vacant and desolate." LETTER VII. NEWCASTLE.--DESCENT INTO A COAL-MINE.--YORK WITH ITS MINSTER.-- SHEFFIELD.--CHATSWORTH.--WARWICK CASTLE.--LEAMINGTON AND STRATFORD.--SHAKESPEARE.--BIRMINGHAM.--GEORGE DAWSON.--JAMES MARTINEAU.--W.J. FOX.--W.H. CHARMING AND THEODORE PARKER.--LONDON AND PARIS. Paris, 1846. We crossed the moorland in a heavy rain, and reached Newcastle late at night. Next day we descended into a coal-mine; it was quite an odd sensation to be taken off one's feet and dropped down into darkness by the bucket. The stables under ground had a pleasant Gil-Blas air, though the poor horses cannot like it much; generally they see the light of day no more after they have once been let down into these gloomy recesses, but pass their days in dragging cars along the rails of the narrow passages, and their nights in eating hay and dreaming of grass!! When we went down, we meant to go along the gallery to the place where the miners were then at work, but found this was a walk of a mile and a half, and, beside the weariness of picking one's steps slowly along by the light of a tallow candle, too wet and dirty an enterprise to be undertaken by way of amusement; so, after proceeding half a mile or so, we begged to be restored to our accustomed level, and reached it with minds slightly edified and face and hands much blackened. Passing thence we saw York with its Minster, that dream of beauty realized. From, its roof I saw two rainbows, overarching that lovely country. Through its aisles I heard grand music pealing. But how sorrowfully bare is the interior of such a cathedral, despoiled of the statues, the paintings, and the garlands that belong to the Catholic religion! The eye aches for them. Such a church is ruined by Protestantism; its admirable exterior seems that of a sepulchre; there is no correspondent life within. Within the citadel, a tower half ruined and ivy-clad, is life that has been growing up while the exterior bulwarks of the old feudal time crumbled to ruin. George Fox, while a prisoner at York for obedience to the dictates of his conscience, planted here a walnut, and the tall tree that grew from it still "bears testimony" to his living presence on that spot. The tree is old, but still bears nuts; one of them was taken away by my companions, and may perhaps be the parent of a tree somewhere in America, that shall shade those who inherit the spirit, if they do not attach importance to the etiquettes, of Quakerism. In Sheffield I saw the sooty servitors tending their furnaces. I saw them, also on Saturday night, after their work was done, going to receive its poor wages, looking pallid and dull, as if they had spent on tempering the steel that vital force that should have tempered themselves to manhood. We saw, also, Chatsworth, with its park and mock wilderness, and immense conservatory, and really splendid fountains and wealth of marbles. It is a fine expression of modern luxury and splendor, but did not interest me; I found little there of true beauty or grandeur. Warwick Castle is a place entirely to my mind, a real representative of the English aristocracy in the day of its nobler life. The grandeur of the pile itself, and its beauty of position, introduce you fitly to the noble company with which the genius of Vandyke has peopled its walls. But a short time was allowed to look upon these nobles, warriors, statesmen, and ladies, who gaze upon us in turn with such a majesty of historic association, yet was I very well satisfied. It is not difficult to see men through the eyes of Vandyke. His way of viewing character seems superficial, though commanding; he sees the man in his action on the crowd, not in his hidden life; he does not, like some painters, amaze and engross us by his revelations as to the secret springs of conduct. I know not by what hallucination I forebore to look at the picture I most desired to see,--that of Lucy, Countess of Carlisle. I was looking at something else, and when the fat, pompous butler announced her, I did not recognize her name from his mouth. Afterward it flashed across me, that I had really been standing before her and forgotten to look. But repentance was too late; I had passed the castle gate to return no more. Pretty Leamington and Stratford are hackneyed ground. Of the latter I only observed what, if I knew, I had forgotten, that the room where Shakespeare was born has been an object of devotion only for forty years. England has learned much of her appreciation of Shakespeare from the Germans. In the days of innocence, I fondly supposed that every one who could understand English, and was not a cannibal, adored Shakespeare and read him on Sundays always for an hour or more, and on week days a considerable portion of the time. But I have lived to know some hundreds of persons in my native land, without finding ten who had any direct acquaintance with their greatest benefactor, and I dare say in England as large an experience would not end more honorably to its subjects. So vast a treasure is left untouched, while men are complaining of being poor, because they have not toothpicks exactly to their mind. At Stratford I handled, too, the poker used to such good purpose by Geoffrey Crayon. The muse had fled, the fire was out, and the poker rusty, yet a pleasant influence lingered even in that cold little room, and seemed to lend a transient glow to the poker under the influence of sympathy. In Birmingham I heard two discourses from one of the rising lights of England, George Dawson, a young man of whom I had earlier heard much in praise. He is a friend of the people, in the sense of brotherhood, not of a social convenience or patronage; in literature catholic; in matters of religion antisectarian, seeking truth in aspiration and love. He is eloquent, with good method in his discourse, fire and dignity when wanted, with a frequent homeliness in enforcement and illustration which offends the etiquettes of England, but fits him the better for the class he has to address. His powers are uncommon and unfettered in their play; his aim is worthy. He is fulfilling and will fulfil an important task as an educator of the people, if all be not marred by a taint of self-love and arrogance now obvious in his discourse. This taint is not surprising in one so young, who has done so much, and in order to do it has been compelled to great self-confidence and light heed of the authority of other minds, and who is surrounded almost exclusively by admirers; neither is it, at present, a large speck; it may be quite purged from him by the influence of nobler motives and the rise of his ideal standard; but, on the other hand, should it spread, all must be vitiated. Let us hope the best, for he is one that could ill be spared from the band who have taken up the cause of Progress in England. In this connection I may as well speak of James Martineau, whom I heard in Liverpool, and W.J. Fox, whom I heard in London. Mr. Martineau looks like the over-intellectual, the partially developed man, and his speech confirms this impression. He is sometimes conservative, sometimes reformer, not in the sense of eclecticism, but because his powers and views do not find a true harmony. On the conservative side he is scholarly, acute,--on the other, pathetic, pictorial, generous. He is no prophet and no sage, yet a man full of fine affections and thoughts, always suggestive, sometimes satisfactory; he is well adapted to the wants of that class, a large one in the present day, who love the new wine, but do not feel that they can afford to throw away _all_ their old bottles. Mr. Fox is the reverse of all this: he is homogeneous in his materials and harmonious in the results he produces. He has great persuasive power; it is the persuasive power of a mind warmly engaged in seeking truth for itself. He sometimes carries homeward convictions with great energy, driving in the thought as with golden nails. A glow of kindly human sympathy enlivens his argument, and the whole presents thought in a well-proportioned, animated body. But I am told he is far superior in speech on political or social problems, than on such as I heard him discuss. I was reminded, in hearing all three, of men similarly engaged in our country, W.H. Charming and Theodore Parker. None of them compare in the symmetrical arrangement of extempore discourse, or in pure eloquence and communication of spiritual beauty, with Charming, nor in fulness and sustained flow with Parker, but, in power of practical and homely adaptation of their thought to common wants, they are superior to the former, and all have more variety, finer perceptions, and are more powerful in single passages, than Parker. And now my pen has run to 1st October, and still I have such notabilities as fell to my lot to observe while in London, and these that are thronging upon me here in Paris to record for you. I am sadly in arrears, but 't is comfort to think that such meats as I have to serve up are as good cold as hot. At any rate, it is just impossible to do any better, and I shall comfort myself, as often before, with the triplet which I heard in childhood from a sage (if only sages wear wigs!):-- "As said the great Prince Fernando, What _can_ a man do, More than he can do?" LETTER VIII. RECOLLECTIONS OF LONDON.--THE ENGLISH GENTLEMAN.--LONDON CLIMATE.--OUT OF SEASON.--LUXURY AND MISERY.--A DIFFICULT PROBLEM.--TERRORS OF POVERTY.--JOANNA BAILLIE AND MADAME ROLAND.--HAMPSTEAD.--MISS BERRY.--FEMALE ARTISTS.--MARGARET GILLIES.--THE PEOPLE'S JOURNAL.--THE TIMES.--THE HOWITTS.--SOUTH WOOD SMITH.--HOUSES FOR THE POOR.--SKELETON OF JEREMY BENTHAM.--COOPER THE POET.--THOM. Paris, December, 1846. I sit down here in Paris to narrate some recollections of London. The distance in space and time is not great, yet I seem in wholly a different world. Here in the region of wax-lights, mirrors, bright wood fires, shrugs, vivacious ejaculations, wreathed smiles, and adroit courtesies, it is hard to remember John Bull, with his coal-smoke, hands in pockets, except when extended for ungracious demand of the perpetual half-crown, or to pay for the all but perpetual mug of beer. John, seen on that side, is certainly the most churlish of clowns, and the most clownish of churls. But then there are so many other sides! When a gentleman, he is so truly the gentleman, when a man, so truly the man of honor! His graces, when he has any, grow up from his inmost heart. Not that he is free from humbug; on the contrary, he is prone to the most solemn humbug, generally of the philanthrophic or otherwise moral kind. But he is always awkward beneath the mask, and can never impose upon anybody--but himself. Nature meant him to be noble, generous, sincere, and has furnished him with no faculties to make himself agreeable in any other way or mode of being. 'Tis not so with your Frenchman, who can cheat you pleasantly, and move with grace in the devious and slippery path. You would be almost sorry to see him quite disinterested and straightforward, so much of agreeable talent and naughty wit would thus lie hid for want of use. But John, O John, we must admire, esteem, or be disgusted with thee. As to climate, there is not much to choose at this time of year. In London, for six weeks, we never saw the sun for coal-smoke and fog. In Paris we have not been blessed with its cheering rays above three or four days in the same length of time, and are, beside, tormented with an oily and tenacious mud beneath the feet, which makes it almost impossible to walk. This year, indeed, is an uncommonly severe one at Paris; but then, if they have their share of dark, cold days, it must be admitted that they do all they can to enliven them. But to dwell first on London,--London, in itself a world. We arrived at a time which the well-bred Englishman considers as no time at all,--quite out of "the season," when Parliament is in session, and London thronged with the equipages of her aristocracy, her titled wealthy nobles. I was listened to with a smile of contempt when I declared that the stock shows of London would yield me amusement and employment more than sufficient for the time I had to stay. But I found that, with my way of viewing things, it would be to me an inexhaustible studio, and that, if life were only long enough, I would live there for years obscure in some corner, from which I could issue forth day by day to watch unobserved the vast stream of life, or to decipher the hieroglyphics which ages have been inscribing on the walls of this vast palace (I may not call it a temple), which human effort has reared for means, not yet used efficaciously, of human culture. And though I wish to return to London in "the season," when that city is an adequate representative of the state of things in England, I am glad I did not at first see all that pomp and parade of wealth and luxury in contrast with the misery, squalid, agonizing, ruffianly, which stares one in the face in every street of London, and hoots at the gates of her palaces more ominous a note than ever was that of owl or raven in the portentous times when empires and races have crumbled and fallen from inward decay. It is impossible, however, to take a near view of the treasures created by English genius, accumulated by English industry, without a prayer, daily more fervent, that the needful changes in the condition of this people may be effected by peaceful revolution, which shall destroy nothing except the shocking inhumanity of exclusiveness, which now prevents their being used, for the benefit of all. May their present possessors look to it in time! A few already are earnest in a good spirit. For myself, much as I pitied the poor, abandoned, hopeless wretches that swarm in the roads and streets of England, I pity far more the English noble, with this difficult problem before him, and such need of a speedy solution. Sad is his life, if a conscientious man; sadder still, if not. Poverty in England has terrors of which I never dreamed at home. I felt that it would be terrible to be poor there, but far more so to be the possessor of that for which so many thousands are perishing. And the middle class, too, cannot here enjoy that serenity which the sages have described as naturally their peculiar blessing. Too close, too dark throng the evils they cannot obviate, the sorrows they cannot relieve. To a man of good heart, each day must bring purgatory which he knows not how to bear, yet to which he fears to become insensible. From these clouds of the Present, it is pleasant to turn the thoughts to some objects which have cast a light upon the Past, and which, by the virtue of their very nature, prescribe hope for the Future. I have mentioned with satisfaction seeing some persons who illustrated the past dynasty in the progress of thought here: Wordsworth, Dr. Chalmers, De Quincey, Andrew Combe. With a still higher pleasure, because to one of my own sex, whom I have honored almost above any, I went to pay my court to Joanna Baillie. I found on her brow, not indeed a coronal of gold, but a serenity and strength undimmed and unbroken by the weight of more than fourscore years, or by the scanty appreciation which her thoughts have received. I prize Joanna Baillie and Madame Roland as the best specimens which have been hitherto offered of women of a Roman strength and singleness of mind, adorned by the various culture and capable of the various action opened to them by the progress of the Christian Idea. They are not sentimental; they do not sigh and write of withered flowers of fond affection, and woman's heart born to be misunderstood by the object or objects of her fond, inevitable choice. Love (the passion), when spoken of at all by them, seems a thing noble, religious, worthy to be felt. They do not write of it always; they did not think of it always; they saw other things in this great, rich, suffering world. In superior delicacy of touch, they show the woman, but the hand is firm; nor was all their speech, one continued utterance of mere personal experience. It contained things which are good, intellectually, universally. I regret that the writings of Joanna Baillie are not more known in the United States. The Plays on the Passions are faulty in their plan,--all attempts at comic, even at truly dramatic effect, fail; but there are masterly sketches of character, vigorous expressions of wise thought, deep, fervent ejaculations of an aspiring soul! We found her in her little calm retreat at Hampstead, surrounded by marks of love and reverence from distinguished and excellent friends. Near her was the sister, older than herself, yet still sprightly and full of active kindness, whose character and their mutual relation she has, in one of her last poems, indicated with such a happy mixture of sagacity, humor, and tender pathos, and with so absolute a truth of outline. Although no autograph collector, I asked for theirs, and when the elder gave hers as "sister to Joanna Baillie," it drew a tear from my eye,--a good tear, a genuine pearl,--fit homage to that fairest product of the soul of man, humble, disinterested tenderness. Hampstead has still a good deal of romantic beauty. I was told it was the favorite sketching-ground of London artists, till the railroads gave them easy means of spending a few hours to advantage farther off. But, indeed, there is a wonderful deal of natural beauty lying in untouched sweetness near London. Near one of our cities it would all have been grabbed up the first thing. But we, too, are beginning to grow wiser. At Richmond I went to see another lady of more than threescore years' celebrity, more than fourscore in age, Miss Berry the friend of Horace Walpole, and for her charms of manner and conversation long and still a reigning power. She has still the vivacity, the careless nature, or refined art, that made her please so much in earlier days,--still is girlish, and gracefully so. Verily, with her was no sign of labor or sorrow. From the older turning to the young, I must speak with pleasure of several girls I know in London, who are devoting themselves to painting as a profession. They have really wise and worthy views of the artist's avocation; if they remain true to them, they will enjoy a free, serene existence, unprofaned by undue care or sentimental sorrow. Among these, Margaret Gillies has attained some celebrity; she may be known to some in America by engravings in the "People's Journal" from her pictures; but, if I remember right, these are coarse things, and give no just notion of her pictures, which are distinguished for elegance and refinement; a little mannerized, but she is improving in that respect. The "People's Journal" comes nearer being a fair sign of the times than any other publication of England, apparently, if we except Punch. As for the Times, on which you all use your scissors so industriously, it is managed with vast ability, no doubt, but the blood would tingle many a time to the fingers' ends of the body politic, before that solemn organ which claims to represent the heart would dare to beat in unison. Still it would require all the wise management of the Times, or wisdom enough to do without it, and a wide range and diversity of talent, indeed, almost sweeping the circle, to make a People's Journal for England. The present is only a bud of the future flower. Mary and William Howitt are its main support. I saw them several times at their cheerful and elegant home. In Mary Howitt I found the same engaging traits of character we are led to expect from her books for children. Her husband is full of the same agreeable information, communicated in the same lively yet precise manner we find in his books; it was like talking with old friends, except that now the eloquence of the eye was added. At their house I became acquainted with Dr. Southwood Smith, the well-known philanthropist. He is at present engaged on the construction of good tenements calculated to improve the condition of the working people. His plans look promising, and should they succeed, you shall have a detailed account of them. On visiting him, we saw an object which I had often heard celebrated, and had thought would be revolting, but found, on the contrary, an agreeable sight; this is the skeleton of Jeremy Bentham. It was at Bentham's request that the skeleton, dressed in the same dress he habitually wore, stuffed out to an exact resemblance of life, and with a portrait mark in wax, the best I ever saw, sits there, as assistant to Dr. Smith in the entertainment of his guests and companion of his studies. The figure leans a little forward, resting the hands on a, stout stick which Bentham always carried, and had named "Dapple"; the attitude is quite easy, the expression of the whole quite mild, winning, yet highly individual. It is a pleasing mark of that unity of aim and tendency to be expected throughout the life of such a mind, that Bentham, while quite a young man, had made a will, in which, to oppose in the most convincing manner the prejudice against dissection of the human subject, he had given his body after death to be used in service of the cause of science. "I have not yet been able," said the will, "to do much service to my fellow-men by my life, but perhaps I may in this manner by my death." Many years after, reading a pamphlet by Dr. Smith on the same subject, he was much pleased with it, became his friend, and bequeathed his body to his care and use, with directions that the skeleton should finally be disposed of in the way I have described. The countenance of Dr. Smith has an expression of expansive, sweet, almost childlike goodness. Miss Gillies has made a charming picture of him, with a favorite little granddaughter nestling in his arms. Another marked figure that I encountered on this great showboard was Cooper, the author of "The Purgatory of Luicides," a very remarkable poem, of which, had there been leisure before my departure, I should have made a review, and given copious extracts in the Tribune. Cooper is as strong a man, and probably a milder one, than when in the prison where that poem was written. The earnestness in seeking freedom and happiness for all men, which drew upon him that penalty, seems unabated; he is a very significant type of the new era, and also an agent in bringing it near. One of the poets of the people, also, I saw,--the sweetest singer of them all,--Thom. "A Chieftain unknown to the Queen" is again exacting a cruel tribute from him. I wish much that some of those of New York who have taken an interest in him would provide there a nook in which he might find refuge and solace for the evening of his days, to sing or to work as likes him best, and where he could bring up two fine boys to happier prospects than the parent land will afford them. Could and would America but take from other lands more of the talent, as well as the bone and sinew, she would be rich. But the stroke of the clock warns me to stop now, and begin to-morrow with fresher eye and hand on some interesting topics. My sketches are slight; still they cannot be made without time, and I find none to be had in this Europe except late at night. I believe it is what all the inhabitants use, but I am too sleepy a genius to carry the practice far. LETTER IX. WRITING AT NIGHT.--LONDON.--NATIONAL GALLERY.--MURILLO.--THE FLOWER GIRL.--NURSERY-MAIDS AND WORKING-MEN.--HAMPTON COURT.--ZO�LOGICAL GARDENS.--KING OF ANIMALS.--ENGLISH PIETY.--EAGLES.--SIR JOHN SOANE'S MUSEUM.--KEW GARDENS.--THE GREAT CACTUS.--THE REFORM CLUB HOUSE.--MEN COOKS.--ORDERLY KITCHEN.--A GILPIN EXCURSION.--THE BELL AT EDMONTON.-- OMNIBUS.--CHEAPSIDE.--ENGLISH SLOWNESS.--FREILIGRATH.--ARCADIA.-- ITALIAN SCHOOL.--MAZZINI.--ITALY.--ITALIAN REFUGEES.--CORREGGIO.-- HOPE OF ITALIANS.--ADDRESSES.--SUPPER.--CARLYLE, HIS APPEARANCE, CONVERSATION, &C. Again I must begin to write late in the evening. I am told it is the custom of the literati in these large cities to work in the night. It is easy to see that it must be almost impossible to do otherwise; yet not only is the practice very bad for the health, and one that brings on premature old age, but I cannot think this night-work will prove as firm in texture and as fair of hue as what is done by sunlight. Give me a lonely chamber, a window from which through the foliage you can catch glimpses of a beautiful prospect, and the mind finds itself tuned to action. But London, London! I have yet some brief notes to make on London. We had scarcely any sunlight by which to see pictures, and I postponed all visits to private collections, except one, in the hope of being in England next time in the long summer days. In the National Gallery I saw little except the Murillos; they were so beautiful, that with me, who had no true conception of his kind of genius before, they took away the desire to look into anything else at the same time. They did not affect me much either, except with a sense of content in this genius, so rich and full and strong. It was a cup of sunny wine that refreshed but brought no intoxicating visions. There is something very noble in the genius of Spain, there is such an intensity and singleness; it seems to me it has not half shown itself, and must have an important part to play yet in the drama of this planet. At the Dulwich Gallery I saw the Flower Girl of Murillo, an enchanting picture, the memory of which must always "Cast a light upon the day, A light that will not pass away, A sweet forewarning." Who can despair when he thinks of a form like that, so full of life and bliss! Nature, that made such human forms to match the butterfly and the bee on June mornings when the lime-trees are in blossom, has surely enough of happiness in store to satisfy us all, somewhere, some time. It was pleasant, indeed, to see the treasures of those galleries, of the British Museum, and of so charming a place as Hampton Court, open to everybody. In the National Gallery one finds a throng of nursery-maids, and men just come from their work; true, they make a great deal of noise thronging to and fro on the uncarpeted floors in their thick boots, and noise from which, when penetrated by the atmosphere of Art, men in the thickest boots would know how to refrain; still I felt that the sight of such objects must be gradually doing them a great deal of good. The British Museum would, in itself, be an education for a man who should go there once a week, and think and read at his leisure moments about what he saw. Hampton Court I saw in the gloom, and rain, and my chief recollections are of the magnificent yew-trees beneath whose shelter--the work of ages--I took refuge from the pelting shower. The expectations cherished from childhood about the Cartoons were all baffled; there was no light by which they could be seen. But I must hope to visit Hampton Court again in the time of roses. The Zoölogical Gardens are another pleasure of the million, since, although something is paid there, it is so little that almost all can afford it. To me, it is a vast pleasure to see animals where they can show out their habits or instincts, and to see them assembled from, all climates and countries, amid verdure and with room enough, as they are here, is a true poem. They have a fine lion, the first I ever saw that realized the idea we have of the king of the animal world; but the groan and roar of this one were equally royal. The eagles were fine, but rather disgraced themselves. It is a trait of English piety, which would, no doubt, find its defenders among ourselves, not to feed the animals on Sunday, that their keepers may have rest; at least this was the explanation given us by one of these men of the state of ravenous hunger in which we found them on the Monday. I half hope he was jesting with us. Certain it is that the eagles were wild with famine, and even the grandest of them, who had eyed us at first as if we were not fit to live in the same zone with him, when the meat came round, after a short struggle to maintain his dignity, joined in wild shriek and scramble with the rest. Sir John Soane's Museum I visited, containing the sarcophagus described by Dr. Waagen, Hogarth's pictures, a fine Canaletto, and a manuscript of Tasso. It fills the house once the residence of his body, still of his mind. It is not a mind with which I have sympathy; I found there no law of harmony, and it annoyed me to see things all jumbled together as if in an old curiosity-shop. Nevertheless it was a generous bequest, and much may perhaps be found there of value to him who takes time to seek. The Gardens at Kew delighted me, thereabouts all was so green, and still one could indulge at leisure in the humorous and fantastic associations that cluster around the name of Kew, like the curls of a "big wig" round the serene and sleepy face of its wearer. Here are fourteen green-houses: in one you find all the palms; in another, the productions of the regions of snow; in another, those squibs and humorsome utterances of Nature, the cactuses,--ay! there I saw the great-grandfather of all the cactuses, a hoary, solemn plant, declared to be a thousand years old, disdaining to say if it is not really much, older; in yet another, the most exquisitely minute plants, delicate as the tracery of frostwork, too delicate for the bowers of fairies, such at least as visit the gross brains of earthly poets. The Reform Club was the only one of those splendid establishments that I visited. Certainly the force of comfort can no farther go, nor can anything be better contrived to make dressing, eating, news-getting, and even sleeping (for there are bedrooms as well as dressing-rooms for those who will), as comfortable as can be imagined. Yet to me this palace of so many "single gentlemen rolled into one" seemed _stupidly_ comfortable, in the absence of that elegant arrangement and vivacious atmosphere which only women can inspire. In the kitchen, indeed, I met them, and on that account it seemed the pleasantest part of the building,--though even there they are but the servants of servants. There reigned supreme a genius in his way, who has published a work on Cookery, and around him his pupils,--young men who pay a handsome yearly fee for novitiate under his instruction. I was not sorry, however, to see men predominant in the cooking department, as I hope to see that and washing transferred to their care in the progress of things, since they are "the stronger sex." The arrangements of this kitchen were very fine, combining great convenience with neatness, and even elegance. Fourier himself might have taken pleasure in them. Thence we passed into the private apartments of the artist, and found them full of pictures by his wife, an artist in another walk. One or two of them had been engraved. _She_ was an Englishwoman. A whimsical little excursion we made on occasion of the anniversary of the wedding-day of two of my friends. They had often enjoyed reading the account of John Gilpin's in America, and now thought that, as they were in England and near enough, they would celebrate theirs also at "the Bell at Edmonton." I accompanied them with "a little foot-page," to eke out the train, pretty and graceful and playful enough for the train of a princess. But our excursion turned out somewhat of a failure, in an opposite way to Gilpin's. Whereas he went too fast, we went too slow. First we took coach and went through Cheapside to take omnibus at (strange misnomer!) the Flower-Pot. But Gilpin could never have had his race through Cheapside as it is in its present crowded state; we were obliged to proceed at a funeral pace. We missed the omnibus, and when we took the next one it went with the slowness of a "family horse" in the old chaise of a New England deacon, and, after all, only took us half-way. At the half-way house a carriage was to be sought. The lady who let it, and all her grooms, were to be allowed time to recover from their consternation at so unusual a move as strangers taking a carriage to dine at the little inn at Edmonton, now a mere alehouse, before we could be allowed to proceed. The English stand lost in amaze at "Yankee notions," with their quick come and go, and it is impossible to make them "go ahead" in the zigzag chain-lightning path, unless you push them. A rather old part of the plan had been a pilgrimage to the grave of Lamb, with a collateral view to the rural beauties of Edmonton, but night had fallen on all such hopes two hours at least before we reached the Bell. _There_, indeed, we found them somewhat more alert to comprehend our wishes; they laughed when we spoke of Gilpin, showed us a print of the race and the window where Mrs. Gilpin must have stood,--balcony, alas! there was none; allowed us to make our own fire, and provided us a wedding dinner of tough meat and stale bread. Nevertheless we danced, dined, paid (I believe), and celebrated the wedding quite to our satisfaction, though in the space of half an hour, as we knew friends were even at that moment expecting us to _tea_ at some miles' distance. But it is always pleasant in this world of routine to act out a freak. "Such a one," said an English gentleman, "one of _us_ would rarely have dreamed of, much, less acted." "Why, was it not pleasant?" "Oh, _very_! but _so_ out of the way!" Returning, we passed the house where Freiligrath finds a temporary home, earning the bread, of himself and his family in a commercial house. England houses the exile, but not without house-tax, window-tax, and head-tax. Where is the Arcadia that dares invite all genius to her arms, and change her golden wheat for their green laurels and immortal flowers? Arcadia?--would the name were America! And now returns naturally to my mind one of the most interesting things I have seen here or elsewhere,--the school for poor Italian boys, sustained and taught by a few of their exiled compatriots, and especially by the mind and efforts of Mazzini. The name of Joseph Mazzini is well known to those among us who take an interest in the cause of human freedom, who, not content with the peace and ease bought for themselves by the devotion and sacrifices of their fathers, look with anxious interest on the suffering nations who are preparing for a similar struggle. Those who are not, like the brutes that perish, content with the enjoyment of mere national advantages, indifferent to the idea they represent, cannot forget that the human family is one, "And beats with one great heart." They know that there can be no genuine happiness, no salvation for any, unless the same can be secured for all. To this universal interest in all nations and places where man, understanding his inheritance, strives to throw off an arbitrary rule and establish a state of things where he shall be governed as becomes a man, by his own conscience and intelligence,--where he may speak the truth as it rises in his mind, and indulge his natural emotions in purity,--is added an especial interest in Italy, the mother of our language and our laws, our greatest benefactress in the gifts of genius, the garden of the world, in which our best thoughts have delighted to expatiate, but over whose bowers now hangs a perpetual veil of sadness, and whose noblest plants are doomed to removal,--for, if they cannot bear their ripe and perfect fruit in another climate, they are not permitted to lift their heads to heaven in their own. Some of these generous refugees our country has received kindly, if not with a fervent kindness; and the word _Correggio_ is still in my ears as I heard it spoken in New York by one whose heart long oppression could not paralyze. _Speranza_ some of the Italian youth now inscribe on their banners, encouraged by some traits of apparent promise in the new Pope. However, their only true hope is in themselves, in their own courage, and in that wisdom winch may only be learned through many disappointments as to how to employ it so that it may destroy tyranny, not themselves. Mazzini, one of these noble refugees, is not only one of the heroic, the courageous, and the faithful,--Italy boasts many such,--but he is also one of the wise;--one of those who, disappointed in the outward results of their undertakings, can yet "bate no jot of heart and hope," but _must_ "steer right onward "; for it was no superficial enthusiasm, no impatient energies, that impelled him, but an understanding of what _must_ be the designs of Heaven with regard to man, since God is Love, is Justice. He is one who can live fervently, but steadily, gently, every day, every hour, as well as on great, occasions, cheered by the light of hope; for, with Schiller, he is sure that "those who live for their faith shall behold it living." He is one of those same beings who, measuring all things by the ideal standard, have yet no time to mourn over failure or imperfection; there is too much to be done to obviate it. Thus Mazzini, excluded from publication in his native language, has acquired the mastery both of French and English, and through his expressions in either shine the thoughts which animated his earlier effort with mild and steady radiance. The misfortunes of his country have only widened the sphere of his instructions, and made him an exponent of the better era to Europe at large. Those who wish to form an idea of his mind could not do better than to read his sketches of the Italian Martyrs in the "People's Journal." They will find there, on one of the most difficult occasions, an ardent friend speaking of his martyred friends with, the purity of impulse, warmth of sympathy, largeness and steadiness of view, and fineness of discrimination which must belong to a legislator for a CHRISTIAN commonwealth. But though I have read these expressions with great delight, this school was one to me still more forcible of the same ideas. Here these poor boys, picked up from the streets, are redeemed from bondage and gross ignorance by the most patient and constant devotion of time and effort. What love and sincerity this demands from minds capable of great thoughts, large plans, and rapid progress, only their peers can comprehend, yet exceeding great shall he the reward; and as among the fishermen, and poor people of Judæa were picked up those who have become to modern Europe a leaven that leavens the whole mass, so may these poor Italian boys yet become more efficacious as missionaries to their people than would an Orphic poet at this period. These youths have very commonly good faces, and eyes from which that Italian fire that has done so much to warm the world glows out. We saw the distribution of prizes to the school, heard addresses from Mazzini, Pistracci, Mariotti (once a resident in our country), and an English gentleman who takes a great interest in the work, and then adjourned to an adjacent room, where a supper was provided for the boys and other guests, among whom we saw some of the exiled Poles. The whole evening gave a true and deep pleasure, though tinged with sadness. We saw a planting of the kingdom of Heaven, though now no larger than a grain of mustard-seed, and though perhaps none of those who watch the spot may live to see the birds singing in its branches. I have not yet spoken of one of _our_ benefactors, Mr. Carlyle, whom I saw several times. I approached him with more reverence after a little experience of England and Scotland had taught me to appreciate the strength and height of that wall of shams and conventions which he more than any man, or thousand men,--indeed, he almost alone,--has begun to throw down. Wherever there was fresh thought, generous hope, the thought of Carlyle has begun the work. He has torn off the veils from hideous facts; he has burnt away foolish illusions; he has awakened thousands to know what it is to be a man,--that we must live, and not merely pretend to others that we live. He has touched the rocks and they have given forth musical answer; little more was wanting to begin to construct the city. But that little was wanting, and the work of construction is left to those that come after him: nay, all attempts of the kind he is the readiest to deride, fearing new shams worse than the old, unable to trust the general action of a thought, and finding no heroic man, no natural king, to represent it and challenge his confidence. Accustomed to the infinite wit and exuberant richness of his writings, his talk is still an amazement and a splendor scarcely to be faced with steady eyes. He does not converse,--only harangues. It is the usual misfortune of such marked men (happily not one invariable or inevitable) that they cannot allow other minds room to breathe and show themselves in their atmosphere, and thus miss the refreshment and instruction, which the greatest never cease to need from the experience of the humblest. Carlyle allows no one a chance, but bears down all opposition, not only by his wit and onset of words, resistless in their sharpness as so many bayonets, but by actual physical superiority, raising his voice and rushing on his opponent with a torrent of sound. This is not the least from unwillingness to allow freedom to others; on the contrary, no man would more enjoy a manly resistance to his thought; but it is the impulse of a mind accustomed to follow out its own impulse as the hawk its prey, and which knows not how to stop in the chase. Carlyle, indeed, is arrogant and overbearing, but in his arrogance there is no littleness or self-love: it is the heroic arrogance of some old Scandinavian conqueror,--it is his nature and the untamable impulse that has given him power to crush the dragons. You do not love him, perhaps, nor revere, and perhaps, also, he would only laugh at you if you did; but you like him heartily, and like to see him the powerful smith, the Siegfried, melting all the old iron in his furnace till it glows to a sunset red, and burns you if you senselessly go too near. He seemed to me quite isolated, lonely as the desert; yet never was man more fitted to prize a man, could he find one to match his mood. He finds such, but only in the past. He sings rather than talks. He pours upon you a kind of satirical, heroical, critical poem, with regular cadences, and generally catching up near the beginning some singular epithet, which, serves as a _refrain_ when his song is full, or with which as with a knitting-needle he catches up the stitches if he has chanced now and then to let fall a row. For the higher kinds of poetry he has no sense, and his talk on that subject is delightfully and gorgeously absurd; he sometimes stops a minute to laugh at it himself, then begins anew with fresh vigor; for all the spirits he is driving before him seem to him as Fata Morganas, ugly masks, in fact, if he can but make them turn about, but he laughs that they seem to others such dainty Ariels. He puts out his chin sometimes till it looks like the beak of a bird, and his eyes flash bright instinctive meanings like Jove's bird; yet he is not calm and grand enough for the eagle: he is more like the falcon, and yet not of gentle blood enough for that either. He is not exactly like anything but himself, and therefore you cannot see him without the most hearty refreshment and good-will, for he is original, rich, and strong enough to afford a thousand, faults; one expects some wild land in a rich kingdom. His talk, like his books, is full of pictures, his critical strokes masterly; allow for his point of view, and his survey is admirable. He is a large subject; I cannot speak more or wiselier of him now, nor needs it; his works are true, to blame and praise him, the Siegfried of England, great and powerful, if not quite invulnerable, and of a might rather to destroy evil than legislate for good. At all events, he seems to be what Destiny intended, and represents fully a certain side; so we make no remonstrance as to his being and proceeding for himself, though we sometimes must for us. I had meant some remarks on some fine pictures, and the little I saw of the theatre in England; but these topics must wait till my next, where they may connect themselves naturally enough with what I have to say of Paris. LETTER X. MORE OF LONDON.--THE MODEL PRISON AT PENTONVILLE.--BATHING ESTABLISHMENT FOR THE POOR.--ALSO ONE FOR WASHING CLOTHES.--THE CR�CHES OF PARIS, FOR POOR PEOPLE'S CHILDREN.--OLD DRURY IN LONDON.--SADLER'S WELLS.--ENGLISH AND FRENCH ACTING COMPARED.-- MADEMOISELLE RACHEL.--FRENCH TRAGEDY.--ROSE CHENY.--DUMAS.--GUIZOT.-- THE PRESENTATION AT COURT OF THE YOUNG DUCHESS.--BALL AT THE TUILERIES.--AMERICAN AND FRENCH WOMEN.--LEVERRIER.--THE SORBONNE.-- ARAGO.--DISCUSSIONS ON SUICIDE AND THE CRUSADES.--R�MUSAT.--THE ACADEMY.--LA MENNAIS.--B�RANGER.--REFLECTIONS. Paris. When I wrote last I could not finish with London, and there remain yet two or three things I wish to speak of before passing to my impressions of this wonder-full Paris. I visited the model prison at Pentonville; but though in some respects an improvement upon others I have seen,--though there was the appearance of great neatness and order in the arrangements of life, kindness and good judgment in the discipline of the prisoners,--yet there was also an air of bleak forlornness about the place, and it fell far short of what my mind demands of such abodes considered as redemption schools. But as the subject of prisons is now engaging the attention of many of the wisest and best, and the tendency is in what seems to me the true direction, I need not trouble myself to make prude and hasty suggestions; it is a subject to which persons who would be of use should give the earnest devotion of calm and leisurely thought. The same day I went to see an establishment which gave me unmixed pleasure; it is a bathing establishment put at a very low rate to enable the poor to avoid one of thee worst miseries of their lot, and which yet promises _to pay_. Joined with this is an establishment for washing clothes, where the poor can go and hire, for almost nothing, good tubs, water ready heated, the use of an apparatus for rinsing, drying, and ironing, all so admirably arranged that a poor woman can in three hours get through an amount of washing and ironing that would, under ordinary circumstances, occupy three or four days. Especially the drying closets I contemplated with great satisfaction, and hope to see in our own country the same arrangements throughout the cities, and even in the towns and villages. Hanging out the clothes is a great exposure for women, even when they have a good place for it; but when, as is so common in cities, they must dry them in the house, how much they suffer! In New York, I know, those poor women who take in washing endure a great deal of trouble and toil from this cause; I have suffered myself from being obliged to send back what had cost them so much toil, because it had been, perhaps inevitably, soiled in the drying or ironing, or filled with the smell of their miscellaneous cooking. In London it is much worse. An eminent physician told me he knew of two children whom he considered to have died because their mother, having but one room to live in, was obliged to wash and dry clothes close to their bed when they were ill. The poor people in London naturally do without washing all they can, and beneath that perpetual fall of soot the result may be guessed. All but the very poor in England put out their washing, and this custom ought to be universal in civilized countries, as it can be done much better and quicker by a few regular laundresses than by many families, and "the washing day" is so malignant a foe to the peace and joy of households that it ought to be effaced from the calendar. But as long as we are so miserable as to have any very poor people in this world, _they_ cannot put out their washing, because they cannot earn enough money to pay for it, and, preliminary to something better, washing establishments like this of London are desirable. One arrangement that they have here in Paris will be a good one, even when we cease to have any very poor people, and, please Heaven, also to have any very rich. These are the _Crèches_,--houses where poor women leave their children to be nursed during the day while they are at work. I must mention that the superintendent of the washing establishment observed, with a legitimate triumph, that it had been built without giving a single dinner or printing a single puff,--an extraordinary thing, indeed, for England! To turn to something a little gayer,--the embroidery on this tattered coat of civilized life,--I went into only two theatres; one the Old Drury, once the scene of great glories, now of execrable music and more execrable acting. If anything can be invented more excruciating than an English opera, such as was the fashion at the time I was in London, I am sure no sin of mine deserves the punishment of bearing it. At the Sadler's Wells theatre I saw a play which I had much admired in reading it, but found still better in actual representation; indeed, it seems to me there can be no better acting play: this is "The Patrician's Daughter," by J.W. Marston. The movement is rapid, yet clear and free; the dialogue natural, dignified, and flowing; the characters marked with few, but distinct strokes. Where the tone of discourse rises with manly sentiment or passion, the audience applauded with bursts of generous feeling that gave me great pleasure, for this play is one that, in its scope and meaning, marks the new era in England; it is full of an experience which is inevitable to a man of talent there, and is harbinger of the day when the noblest commoner shall be the only noble possible in England. But how different all this acting to what I find in France! Here the theatre is living; you see something really good, and good throughout. Not one touch of that stage strut and vulgar bombast of tone, which the English actor fancies indispensable to scenic illusion, is tolerated here. For the first time in my life I saw something represented in a style uniformly good, and should have found sufficient proof, if I had needed any, that all men will prefer what is good to what is bad, if only a fair opportunity for choice be allowed. When I came here, my first thought was to go and see Mademoiselle Rachel. I was sure that in her I should find a true genius, absolutely the diamond, and so it proved. I went to see her seven or eight times, always in parts that required great force of soul and purity of taste even to conceive them, and only once had reason to find fault with her. On one single occasion I saw her violate the harmony of the character to produce effect at a particular moment; but almost invariably I found her a true artist, worthy Greece, and worthy at many moments to have her conceptions immortalized in marble. Her range even in high tragedy is limited. She can only express the darker passions, and grief in its most desolate aspects. Nature has not gifted her with those softer and more flowery attributes that lend to pathos its utmost tenderness. She does not melt to tears, or calm or elevate the heart by the presence of that tragic beauty that needs all the assaults of Fate to make it show its immortal sweetness. Her noblest aspect is when sometimes she expresses truth in some severe shape, and rises, simple and austere, above the mixed elements around her. On the dark side, she is very great in hatred and revenge. I admired her more in Phedre than in any other part in which I saw her. The guilty love inspired by the hatred of a goddess was expressed in all its symptoms with a force and terrible naturalness that almost suffocated the beholder. After she had taken the poison, the exhaustion and paralysis of the system, the sad, cold, calm submission to Fate, were still more grand. I had heard so much about the power of her eye in one fixed look, and the expression she could concentrate in a single word, that the utmost results could only satisfy my expectations. It is, indeed, something magnificent to see the dark cloud give out such sparks, each one fit to deal a separate death; but it was not that I admired most in her: it was the grandeur, truth, and depth of her conception of each part, and the sustained purity with which she represented it. For the rest, I shall write somewhere a detailed _critique_ upon the parts in which I saw her. It is she who has made me acquainted with the true way of viewing French tragedy. I had no idea of its powers and symmetry till now, and have received from the revelation high pleasure and a crowd of thoughts. The French language from her lips is a divine dialect; it is stripped of its national and personal peculiarities, and becomes what any language must, moulded by such a genius, the pure music of the heart and soul. I never could remember her tone in speaking any word; it was too perfect; you had received the thought quite direct. Yet, had I never heard her speak a word, my mind would, be filled by her attitudes. Nothing more graceful can be conceived, nor could the genius of sculpture surpass her management of the antique drapery. She has no beauty except in the intellectual severity of her outline, and bears marks of age which will grow stronger every year, and make her ugly before long. Still it will be a _grandiose_, gypsy, or rather Sibylline ugliness, well adapted to the expression of some tragic parts. Only it seems as if she could not live long; she expends force enough upon a part to furnish out a dozen common lives. Though the French tragedy is well acted throughout, yet unhappily there is no male actor now with a spark of fire, and these men seem the meanest pigmies by the side of Rachel;--so on the scene, beside the tragedy intended by the author, you see also that common tragedy, a woman of genius who throws away her precious heart, lives and dies for one unworthy of her. In parts this effect is productive of too much pain. I saw Rachel one night with her brother and sister. The sister imitated her so closely that you could not help seeing she had a manner, and an imitable manner. Her brother was in the play her lover,--a wretched automaton, and presenting the most unhappy family likeness to herself. Since then I have hardly cared to go and see her. We could wish with geniuses, as with the Phoenix, to see only one of the family at a time. In the pathetic or sentimental drama Paris boasts another young actress, nearly as distinguished in that walk as Rachel in hers. This is Rose Cheny, whom we saw in her ninety-eighth personation of Clarissa Harlowe, and afterward in Genevieve and the _Protégé sans le Savoir_,--a little piece written expressly for her by Scribe. The "Miss Clarisse" of the French drama is a feeble and partial reproduction of the heroine of Richardson; indeed, the original in all its force of intellect and character would have been too much for the charming Rose Cheny, but to the purity and lovely tenderness of Clarissa she does full justice. In the other characters she was the true French girl, full of grace and a mixture of _naïveté_ and cunning, sentiment and frivolity, that is winning and _piquant_, if not satisfying. Only grief seems very strange to those bright eyes; we do not find that they can weep much and bear the light of day, and the inhaling of charcoal seems near at hand to their brightest pleasures. At the other little theatres you see excellent acting, and a sparkle of wit unknown to the world out of France. The little pieces in which all the leading topics of the day are reviewed are full of drolleries that make you laugh at each instant. _Poudre-Colon_ is the only one of these I have seen; in this, among other jokes, Dumas, in the character of Monte-Christo and in a costume half Oriental, half juggler, is made to pass the other theatres in review while seeking candidates for his new one. Dumas appeared in court yesterday, and defended his own cause against the editors who sue him for evading some of his engagements. I was very desirous to hear him speak, and went there in what I was assured would be very good season; but a French audience, who knew the ground better, had slipped in before me, and I returned, as has been too often the case with me in Paris, having seen nothing but endless staircases, dreary vestibules, and _gens d'armes_. The hospitality of _le grande nation_ to the stranger is, in many respects, admirable. Galleries, libraries, cabinets of coins, museums, are opened in the most liberal manner to the stranger, warmed, lighted, ay, and guarded, for him almost all days in the week; treasures of the past are at his service; but when anything is happening in the present, the French run quicker, glide in more adroitly, and get possession of the ground. I find it not the most easy matter to get to places even where there is nothing going on, there is so much tiresome fuss of getting _billets_ from one and another to be gone through; but when something is happening it is still worse. I missed hearing M. Guizot in his speech on the Montpensier marriage, which would have given a very good idea of his manner, and which, like this defence of M. Dumas, was a skilful piece of work as regards evasion of the truth. The good feeling toward England which had been fostered with so much care and toil seems to have been entirely dissipated by the mutual recriminations about this marriage, and the old dislike flames up more fiercely for having been hid awhile beneath the ashes. I saw the little Duchess, the innocent or ignorant cause of all this disturbance, when presented at court. She went round the circle on the arm of the Queen. Though only fourteen, she looks twenty, but has something fresh, engaging, and girlish about her. I fancy it will soon be rubbed out under the drill of the royal household. I attended not only at the presentation, but at the ball given at the Tuileries directly after. These are fine shows, as the suite of apartments is very handsome, brilliantly lighted, and the French ladies surpass all others in the art of dress; indeed, it gave me much, pleasure to see them. Certainly there are many ugly ones, but they are so well dressed, and have such an air of graceful vivacity, that the general effect was that of a flower-garden. As often happens, several American women were among the most distinguished for positive beauty; one from Philadelphia, who is by many persons considered the prettiest ornament of the dress circle at the Italian Opera, was especially marked by the attention of the king. However, these ladies, even if here a long time, do not attain the air and manner of French women; the magnetic atmosphere that envelops them is less brilliant and exhilarating in its attractions. It was pleasant to my eye, which has always been so wearied in our country by the sombre masses of men that overcloud our public assemblies, to see them now in so great variety of costume, color, and decoration. Among the crowd wandered Leverrier, in the costume of Academician, looking as if he had lost, not found, his planet. French _savants_ are more generally men of the world, and even men of fashion, than those of other climates; but, in his case, he seemed not to find it easy to exchange the music of the spheres for the music of fiddles. Speaking of Leverrier leads to another of my disappointments. I went to the Sorbonne to hear him lecture, nothing dreaming that the old pedantic and theological character of those halls was strictly kept up in these days of light. An old guardian of the inner temple, seeing me approach, had his speech all ready, and, manning the entrance, said with a disdainful air, before we had time to utter a word, "Monsieur may enter if he pleases, but Madame must remain here" (i.e. in the court-yard). After some exclamations of surprise, I found an alternative in the Hotel de Clugny, where I passed an hour very delightfully while waiting for my companion. The rich remains of other centuries are there so arranged that they can be seen to the best advantage; many of the works in ivory, china, and carved wood are truly splendid or exquisite. I saw a dagger with jewelled hilt which talked whole poems to my mind. In the various "Adorations of the Magi," I found constantly one of the wise men black, and with the marked African lineaments. Before I had half finished, my companion came and wished me at least to visit the lecture-rooms of the Sorbonne, now that the talk, too good for female ears, was over. But the guardian again interfered to deny me entrance. "You can go, Madame," said he, "to the College of France; you can go to this and t'other place, but you cannot enter here." "What, sir," said I, "is it your institution alone that remains in a state of barbarism?" "Que voulez vous, Madame?" he replied, and, as he spoke, his little dog began to bark at me,--"Que voulez vous, Madame? c'est la regle,"--"What would you have, Madam? IT IS THE RULE,"--a reply which makes me laugh even now, as I think how the satirical wits of former days might have used it against the bulwarks of learned dulness. I was more fortunate in hearing Arago, and he justified all my expectations. Clear, rapid, full and equal, his discourse is worthy its celebrity, and I felt repaid for the four hours one is obliged to spend in going, in waiting, and in hearing; for the lecture begins at half past one, and you must be there before twelve to get a seat, so constant and animated is his popularity. I have attended, with some interest, two discussions at the Athenée,--one on Suicide, the other on the Crusades. They are amateur affairs, where, as always at such times, one hears much, nonsense and vanity, much making of phrases and sentimental grimace; but there was one excellent speaker, adroit and rapid as only a Frenchman could be. With admirable readiness, skill, and rhetorical polish, he examined the arguments of all the others, and built upon their failures a triumph for himself. His management of the language, too, was masterly, and French is the best of languages for such a purpose,--clear, flexible, full of sparkling points and quick, picturesque turns, with a subtile blandness that makes the dart tickle while it wounds. Truly he pleased the fancy, filled the ear, and carried us pleasantly along over the smooth, swift waters; but then came from the crowd a gentleman, not one of the appointed orators of the evening, but who had really something in his heart to say,--a grave, dark man, with Spanish eyes, and the simple dignity of honor and earnestness in all his gesture and manner. He said in few and unadorned words his say, and the sense of a real presence filled the room, and those charms of rhetoric faded, as vanish the beauties of soap-bubbles from the eyes of astonished childhood. I was present on one good occasion at the Academy the day that M. Rémusat was received there in the place of Royer-Collard. I looked down from one of the tribunes upon the flower of the celebrities of France, that is to say, of the celebrities which are authentic, _comme il faut_. Among them were many marked faces, many fine heads; but in reading the works of poets we always fancy them about the age of Apollo himself, and I found with pain some of my favorites quite old, and very unlike the company on Parnassus as represented by Raphael. Some, however, were venerable, even noble, to behold. Indeed, the literary dynasty of France is growing old, and here, as in England and Germany, there seems likely to occur a serious gap before the inauguration of another, if indeed another is coming. However, it was an imposing sight; there are men of real distinction now in the Academy, and Molière would have a fair chance if he were proposed to-day. Among the audience I saw many ladies of fine expression and manner, as well as one or two _precieuses ridicules_, a race which is never quite extinct. M. Rémusat, as is the custom on these occasions, painted the portrait of his predecessor; the discourse was brilliant and discriminating in the details, but the orator seemed to me to neglect drawing some obvious inferences which would have given a better point of view for his subject. A _séance_ to me much more impressive find interesting was one which borrowed nothing from dress, decorations, or the presence of titled pomp. I went to call on La Mennais, to whom I had a letter, I found him in a little study; his secretary was writing in a larger room through which I passed. With him was a somewhat citizen-looking, but vivacious, elderly man, whom I was at first sorry to see, having wished for half an hour's undisturbed visit to the apostle of Democracy. But how quickly were those feelings displaced by joy when he named to me the great national lyrist of France, the unequalled Béranger. I had not expected to see him at all, for he is not one to be seen in any show place; he lives in the hearts of the people, and needs no homage from their eyes. I was very happy in that little study in presence of these two men, whose influence has been so great, so real. To me Béranger has been much; his wit, his pathos, his exquisite lyric grace, have made the most delicate strings vibrate, and I can feel, as well as see, what he is in his nation and his place. I have not personally received anything from La Mennais, as, born under other circumstances, mental facts which he, once the pupil of Rome, has learned by passing through severe ordeals, are at the basis of all my thoughts. But I see well what he has been and is to Europe, and of what great force of nature and spirit. He seems suffering and pale, but in his eyes is the light of the future. These are men who need no flourish of trumpets to announce their coming,--no band of martial music upon their steps,--no obsequious nobles in their train. They are the true kings, the theocratic kings, the judges in Israel. The hearts of men make music at their approach; the mind of the age is the historian of their passage; and only men of destiny like themselves shall be permitted to write their eulogies, or fill their vacant seats. Wherever there is a genius like his own, a germ of the finest fruit still hidden beneath the soil, the "_Chante pauvre petit_" of Béranger shall strike, like a sunbeam, and give it force to emerge, and wherever there is the true Crusade,--for the spirit, not the tomb of Christ,--shall be felt an echo of the "_Que tes armes soient benis jeune soldat_" of La Mennais. LETTER XI. FRANCE AND HER ARTISTIC EXCELLENCE.--THE PICTURES OF HORACE VERNET.--DE LA ROCHE.--LEOPOLD ROBERT.--CONTRAST BETWEEN THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH SCHOOLS OF ART.--THE GENERAL APPRECIATION OF TURNER'S PICTURES.--BOTANICAL MODELS IN WAX.--MUSIC.--THE OPERA.--DUPREZ.-- LABLACHE.--RONCONI.--GRISI.--PERSIANA.--"SEMIRAMIDE" AS PERFORMED BY THE NEW YORK AND PARIS OPERAS.--MARIO.--COLETTI.--GARDINI.-- "DON GIOVANNI."--THE WRITER'S TRIAL OF THE "LETHEON."--ITS EFFECTS. It needs not to speak in this cursory manner of the treasures of Art, pictures, sculptures, engravings, and the other riches which France lays open so freely to the stranger in her Musées. Any examination worth writing of such objects, or account of the thoughts they inspire, demands a place by itself, and an ample field in which to expatiate. The American, first introduced to some good pictures by the truly great geniuses of the religious period in Art, must, if capable at all of mental approximation to the life therein embodied, be too deeply affected, too full of thoughts, to be in haste to say anything, and for me, I bide my time. No such great crisis, however, is to be apprehended from acquaintance with the productions of the modern French school. They are, indeed, full of talent and of vigor, but also melodramatic and exaggerated to a degree that seems to give the nightmare passage through the fresh and cheerful day. They sound no depth of soul, and are marked with the signet of a degenerate age. Thus speak I generally. To the pictures of Horace Vernet one cannot but turn a gracious eye, they are so faithful a transcript of the life which circulates around us in the present state of things, and we are willing to see his nobles and generals mounted on such excellent horses. De la Roche gives me pleasure; there is in his pictures a simple and natural poesy; he is a man who has in his own heart a well of good water, whence he draws for himself when the streams are mixed with strange soil and bear offensive marks of the bloody battles of life. The pictures of Leopold Robert I find charming. They are full of vigor and nobleness; they express a nature where all is rich, young, and on a large scale. Those that I have seen are so happily expressive of the thoughts and perceptions of early manhood, I can hardly regret he did not live to enter on another stage of life, the impression now received is so single. The effort of the French school in Art, as also its main tendency in literature, seems to be to turn the mind inside out, in the coarsest acceptation of such a phrase. Art can only be truly Art by presenting an adequate outward symbol of some fact in the interior life. But then it _is_ a symbol that Art seeks to present, and not the fact itself. These French painters seem to have no idea of this; they have not studied the method of Nature. With the true artist, as with Nature herself, the more full the representation, the more profound and enchanting is the sense of mystery. We look and look, as on a flower of which we cannot scrutinize the secret life, yet b; looking seem constantly drawn nearer to the soul that causes and governs that life. But in the French pictures suffering is represented by streams of blood,--wickedness by the most ghastly contortions. I saw a movement in the opposite direction in England; it was in Turner's pictures of the later period. It is well known that Turner, so long an idol of the English public, paints now in a manner which has caused the liveliest dissensions in the world of connoisseurs. There are two parties, one of which maintains, not only that the pictures of the late period are not good, but that they are not pictures at all,--that it is impossible to make out the design, or find what Turner is aiming at by those strange blotches of color. The other party declare that these pictures are not only good, but divine,--that whoever looks upon them in the true manner will not fail to find there somewhat ineffably and transcendently admirable,--the soul of Art. Books have been written to defend this side of the question. I had become much interested about this matter, as the fervor of feeling on either side seemed to denote that there was something real and vital going on, and, while time would not permit my visiting other private collections in London and its neighborhood, I insisted on taking it for one of Turner's pictures. It was at the house of one of his devoutest disciples, who has arranged everything in the rooms to harmonize with them. There were a great many of the earlier period; these seemed to me charming, but superficial, views of Nature. They were of a character that he who runs may read,--obvious, simple, graceful. The later pictures were quite a different matter; mysterious-looking things,--hieroglyphics of picture, rather than picture itself. Sometimes you saw a range of red dots, which, after long looking, dawned on you as the roofs of houses,--shining streaks turned out to be most alluring rivulets, if traced with patience and a devout eye. Above all, they charmed the eye and the thought. Still, these pictures, it seems to me, cannot be considered fine works of Art, more than the mystical writing common to a certain class of minds in the United States can be called good writing. A great work of Art demands a great thought, or a thought of beauty adequately expressed. Neither in Art nor literature more than in life can an ordinary thought be made interesting because well dressed. But in a transition state, whether of Art or literature, deeper thoughts are imperfectly expressed, because they cannot yet be held and treated masterly. This seems to be the case with Turner. He has got beyond the English gentleman's conventional view of Nature, which implies a _little_ sentiment and a _very_ cultivated taste; he has become awake to what is elemental, normal, in Nature,--such, for instance, as one sees in the working of water on the sea-shore. He tries to represent these primitive forms. In the drawings of Piranesi, in the pictures of Rembrandt, one sees this grand language exhibited more truly. It is not picture, but certain primitive and leading effects of light and shadow, or lines and contours, that captivate the attention. I saw a picture of Rembrandt's at the Louvre, whose subject I do not know and have never cared to inquire. I cannot analyze the group, but I understand and feel the thought it embodies. At something similar Turner seems aiming; an aim so opposed to the practical and outward tendency of the English mind, that, as a matter of course, the majority find themselves mystified, and thereby angered, but for the same reason answering to so deep and seldom satisfied a want in the minds of the minority, as to secure the most ardent sympathy where any at all can be elicited. Upon this topic of the primitive forms and operations of nature, I am reminded of something interesting I was looking at yesterday. These are botanical models in wax, with microscopic dissections, by an artist from Florence, a pupil of Calamajo, the Director of the Wax-Model Museum there. I saw collections of ten different genera, embracing from fifty to sixty species, of Fungi, Mosses, and Lichens, detected and displayed in all the beautiful secrets of their lives; many of them, as observed by Dr. Leveillé of Paris. The artist told me that a fisherman, introduced to such acquaintance with the marvels of love and beauty which we trample under foot or burn in the chimney each careless day, exclaimed, "'Tis the good God who protects us on the sea that made all these"; and a similar recognition, a correspondent feeling, will not be easily evaded by the most callous observer. This artist has supplied many of these models to the magnificent collection of the _Jardin des Plantes_, to Edinburgh, and to Bologna, and would furnish them, to our museums at a much cheaper rate than they can elsewhere be obtained. I wish the Universities of Cambridge, New York, and other leading institutions of our country, might avail themselves of the opportunity. In Paris I have not been very fortunate in hearing the best music. At the different Opera-Houses, the orchestra is always good, but the vocalization, though far superior to what I have heard at home, falls so far short of my ideas and hopes that--except to the Italian Opera--I have not been often. The _Opera Comique_ I visited only once; it was tolerably well, and no more, and, for myself, I find the tolerable intolerable in music. At the Grand Opera I heard _Robert le Diable_ and _Guillaume Tell_ almost with ennui; the decorations and dresses are magnificent, the instrumental performance good, but not one fine singer to fill these fine parts. Duprez has had a great reputation, and probably has sung better In former days; still he has a vulgar mind, and can never have had any merit as an artist. At present I find him unbearable. He forces his voice, sings in the most coarse, showy style, and aims at producing effects without regard to the harmony of his part; fat and vulgar, he still takes the part of the lover and young chevalier; to my sorrow I saw him in Ravenswood, and he has well-nigh disenchanted for me the Bride of Lammermoor. The Italian Opera is here as well sustained, I believe, as anywhere in the world at present; all about it is certainly quite good, but alas! nothing excellent, nothing admirable. Yet no! I must not say nothing: Lablache is excellent,--voice, intonation, manner of song, action. Ronconi I found good in the Doctor of "_L'Elisire d'Amore_". For the higher parts Grisi, though now much too large for some of her parts, and without a particle of poetic grace or dignity, has certainly beauty of feature, and from nature a fine voice. But I find her conception of her parts equally coarse and shallow. Her love is the love of a peasant; her anger, though having the Italian picturesque richness and vigor, is the anger of an Italian fishwife, entirely unlike anything in the same rank elsewhere; her despair is that of a person with the toothache, or who has drawn a blank in the lottery. The first time I saw her was in _Norma_; then the beauty of her outline, which becomes really enchanting as she recalls the first emotions of love, the force and gush of her song, filled my ear, and charmed the senses, so that I was pleased, and did not perceive her great defects; but with each time of seeing her I liked her less, and now I do not like her at all. Persiani is more generally a favorite here; she is indeed skilful both as an actress and in the management of her voice, but I find her expression meretricious, her singing mechanical. Neither of these women is equal to Pico in natural force, if she had but the same advantages of culture and environment. In hearing _Semiramide_ here, I first learned to appreciate the degree of talent with which it was cast in New York. Grisi indeed is a far better Semiramis than Borghese, but the best parts of the opera lost all their charm from the inferiority of Brambilla, who took Pico's place. Mario has a charming voice, grace and tenderness; he fills very well the part of the young, chivalric lover, but he has no range of power. Coletti is a very good singer; he has not from Nature a fine voice or personal beauty; but he has talent, good taste, and often surpasses the expectation he has inspired. Gardini, the new singer, I have only heard once, and that was in a lovesick-shepherd part; he showed delicacy, tenderness, and tact. In fine, among all these male singers there is much to please, but little to charm; and for the women, they never fail absolutely to fill their parts, but no ray of the Muse has fallen on them. _Don Giovanni_ conferred on me a benefit, of which certainly its great author never dreamed. I shall relate it,--first begging pardon of Mozart, and assuring him I had no thought of turning his music to the account of a "vulgar utility." It was quite by accident. After suffering several days very much with the toothache, I resolved to get rid of the cause of sorrow by the aid of ether; not sorry, either, to try its efficacy, after all the marvellous stories I had heard. The first time I inhaled it, I did not for several seconds feel the effect, and was just thinking, "Alas! this has not power to soothe nerves so irritable as mine," when suddenly I wandered off, I don't know where, but it was a sensation like wandering in long garden-walks, and through many alleys of trees,--many impressions, but all pleasant and serene. The moment the tube was removed, I started into consciousness, and put my hand to my cheek; but, sad! the throbbing tooth was still there. The dentist said I had not seemed to him insensible. He then gave me the ether in a stronger dose, and this time I quitted the body instantly, and cannot remember any detail of what I saw and did; but the impression was as in the Oriental tale, where the man has his head in the water an instant only, but in his vision a thousand years seem to have passed. I experienced that same sense of an immense length of time and succession of impressions; even, now, the moment my mind was in that state seems to me a far longer period in time than my life on earth does as I look back upon it. Suddenly I seemed to see the old dentist, as I had for the moment before I inhaled the gas, amid his plants, in his nightcap and dressing-gown; in the twilight the figure had somewhat of a Faust-like, magical air, and he seemed to say, "_C'est inutile._" Again I started up, fancying that once more he had not dared to extract the tooth, but it was gone. What is worth, noticing is the mental translation I made of his words, which, my ear must have caught, for my companion tells me he said, "_C'est le moment_," a phrase of just as many syllables, but conveying just the opposite sense. Ah! I how I wished then, that you had settled, there in the United States, who really brought this means of evading a portion of the misery of life into use. But as it was, I remained at a loss whom to apostrophize with my benedictions, whether Dr. Jackson, Morton, or Wells, and somebody thus was robbed of his clue;--neither does Europe know to whom to address her medals. However, there is no evading the heavier part of these miseries. You avoid the moment of suffering, and escape the effort of screwing up your courage for one of these moments, but not the jar to the whole system. I found the effect of having taken the ether bad for me. I seemed to taste it all the time, and neuralgic pain continued; this lasted three days. For the evening of the third, I had taken a ticket to _Don Giovanni_, and could not bear to give up this opera, which I had always been longing to hear; still I was in much suffering, and, as it was the sixth day I had been so, much weakened. However, I went, expecting to be obliged to come out; but the music soothed the nerves at once. I hardly suffered at all during the opera; however, I supposed the pain would return as soon as I came out; but no! it left me from that time. Ah! if physicians only understood the influence of the mind over the body, instead of treating, as they so often do, their patients like machines, and according to precedent! But I must pause here for to-day. LETTER XII. ADIEU TO PARIS.--ITS SCENES.--THE PROCESSION OF THE FAT OX.--DESTITUTION OF THE POORER CLASSES.--NEED OF A REFORM.--THE DOCTRINES OF FOURIER MAKING PROGRESS.--REVIEW OF FOURIER'S LIFE AND CHARACTER.--THE PARISIAN PRESS ON THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.--GUIZOT'S POLICY.--NAPOLEON.--THE MANUSCRIPTS OF ROUSSEAU IN THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES.--HIS CHARACTER.--SPEECH OF M. BERRYER IN THE CHAMBER.--AMERICAN AND FRENCH ORATORY.--THE AFFAIR OF CRACOW.--DULL SPEAKERS IN THE CHAMBER.--FRENCH VIVACITY.--AMUSING SCENE.--GUIZOT SPEAKING.--INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE OF BOOKS.--THE EVENING SCHOOL OF THE _FR�RES CHRETIENS_.--THE GREAT GOOD ACCOMPLISHED BY THEM.--SUGGESTIONS FOR THE LIKE IN AMERICA.--THE INSTITUTION OF THE DEACONESSES.--THE NEW YORK "HOME."--SCHOOL FOR IDIOTS NEAR PARIS.--THE RECLAMATION OF IDIOTS. I bade adieu to Paris on the 25th of February, just as we had had one fine day. It was the only one of really delightful weather, from morning till night, that I had to enjoy all the while I was at Paris, from the 13th of November till the 25th of February. Let no one abuse our climate; even in winter it is delightful, compared to the Parisian winter of mud and mist. This one day brought out the Parisian world in its gayest colors. I never saw anything more animated or prettier, of the kind, than the promenade that day in the _Champs Elysées_. Such crowds of gay equipages, with _cavaliers_ and their _amazons_ flying through their midst on handsome and swift horses! On the promenade, what groups of passably pretty ladies, with excessively pretty bonnets, announcing in their hues of light green, peach-blossom, and primrose the approach of spring, and charming children, for French children are charming! I cannot speak with equal approbation of the files of men sauntering arm in arm. One sees few fine-looking men in Paris: the air, half-military, half-dandy, of self-esteem and _savoir-faire_, is not particularly interesting; nor are the glassy stare and fumes of bad cigars exactly what one most desires to encounter, when the heart is opened by the breath of spring zephyrs and the hope of buds and blossoms. But a French crowd is always gay, full of quick turns and drolleries; most amusing when most petulant, it represents what is so agreeable in the character of the nation. We have now seen it on two good occasions, the festivities of the new year, and just after we came was the procession of the _Fat Ox_, described, if I mistake not, by Eugene Sue. An immense crowd thronged the streets this year to see it, but few figures and little invention followed the emblem of plenty; indeed, few among the people could have had the heart for such a sham, knowing how the poorer classes have suffered from hunger this winter. All signs of this are kept out of sight in Paris. A pamphlet, called "The Voice of Famine," stating facts, though in the tone of vulgar and exaggerated declamation, unhappily common to productions on the radical side, was suppressed almost as soon as published; but the fact cannot be suppressed, that the people in the provinces have suffered most terribly amid the vaunted prosperity of France. While Louis Philippe lives, the gases, compressed by his strong grasp, may not burst up to light; but the need of some radical measures of reform is not less strongly felt in France than elsewhere, and the time will come before long when such will be imperatively demanded. The doctrines of Fourier are making considerable progress, and wherever they spread, the necessity of some practical application of the precepts of Christ, in lieu of the mummeries of a worn-out ritual, cannot fail to be felt. The more I see of the terrible ills which infest the body politic of Europe, the more indignation I feel at the selfishness or stupidity of those in my own country who oppose an examination of these subjects,--such as is animated by the hope of prevention. The mind of Fourier was, in many respects, uncongenial to mine. Educated in an age of gross materialism, he was tainted by its faults. In attempts to reorganize society, he commits the error of making soul the result of health of body, instead of body the clothing of soul; but his heart was that of a genuine lover of his kind, of a philanthropist in the sense of Jesus,--his views were large and noble. His life was one of devout study on these subjects, and I should pity the person who, after the briefest sojourn in Manchester and Lyons,--the most superficial acquaintance with the population of London and Paris,--could seek to hinder a study of his thoughts, or be wanting in reverence for his purposes. But always, always, the unthinking mob has found stones on the highway to throw at the prophets. Amid so many great causes for thought and anxiety, how childish has seemed the endless gossip of the Parisian press on the subject of the Spanish marriage,--how melancholy the flimsy falsehoods of M. Guizot,--more melancholy the avowal so naïvely made, amid those falsehoods, that to his mind expediency is the best policy! This is the policy, said he, that has made France so prosperous. Indeed, the success is correspondent with the means, though in quite another sense than that he meant. I went to the _Hotel des Invalides_, supposing I should be admitted to the spot where repose the ashes of Napoleon, for though I love not pilgrimages to sepulchres, and prefer paying my homage to the living spirit rather than to the dust it once animated, I should have liked to muse a moment beside his urn; but as yet the visitor is not admitted there. In the library, however, one sees the picture of Napoleon crossing the Alps, opposite to that of the present King of the French. Just as they are, these should serve as frontispieces to two chapters of history. In the first, the seed was sown in a field of blood indeed, yet was it the seed of all that is vital in the present period. By Napoleon the career was really laid open to talent, and all that is really great in France now consists in the possibility that talent finds of struggling to the light. Paris is a great intellectual centre, and there is a Chamber of Deputies to represent the people, very different from the poor, limited Assembly politically so called. Their tribune is that of literature, and one needs not to beg tickets to mingle with the audience. To the actually so-called Chamber of Deputies I was indebted for two pleasures. First and greatest, a sight of the manuscripts of Rousseau treasured in their Library. I saw them and touched them,--those manuscripts just as he has celebrated them, written on the fine white paper, tied with ribbon. Yellow and faded age has made them, yet at their touch I seemed to feel the fire of youth, immortally glowing, more and more expansive, with which his soul has pervaded this century. He was the precursor of all we most prize. True, his blood was mixed with madness, and the course of his actual life made some detours through villanous places, but his spirit was intimate with the fundamental truths of human nature, and fraught with prophecy. There is none who has given birth to more life for this age; his gifts are yet untold; they are too present with us; but he who thinks really must often think with Rousseau, and learn of him even more and more: such is the method of genius, to ripen fruit for the crowd of those rays of whose heat they complain. The second pleasure was in the speech of M. Berryer, when the Chamber was discussing the Address to the King. Those of Thiers and Guizot had been, so far, more interesting, as they stood for more that was important; but M. Berryer is the most eloquent speaker of the House. His oratory is, indeed, very good; not logical, but plausible, full and rapid, with occasional bursts of flame and showers of sparks, though indeed no stone of size and weight enough to crush any man was thrown out of the crater. Although the oratory of our country is very inferior to what might be expected from the perfect freedom and powerful motive for development of genius in this province, it presents several examples of persons superior in both force and scope, and equal in polish, to M. Berryer. Nothing can be more pitiful than the manner in which the infamous affair of Cracow is treated on all hands. There is not even the affectation of noble feeling about it. La Mennais and his coadjutors published in _La Reforme_ an honorable and manly protest, which the public rushed to devour the moment it was out of the press;--and no wonder! for it was the only crumb of comfort offered to those who have the nobleness to hope that the confederation of nations may yet be conducted on the basis of divine justice and human right. Most men who touched the subject apparently weary of feigning, appeared in their genuine colors of the calmest, most complacent selfishness. As described by Körner in the prayer of such a man:-- "O God, save me, My wife, child, and hearth, Then my harvest also; Then will I bless thee, Though thy lightning scorch to blackness All the rest of human kind." A sentiment which finds its paraphrase in the following vulgate of our land:-- "O Lord, save me, My wife, child, and brother Sammy, Us four, _and no more_." The latter clause, indeed, is not quite frankly avowed as yet by politicians. It is very amusing to be in the Chamber of Deputies when some dull person is speaking. The French have a truly Greek vivacity; they cannot endure to be bored. Though their conduct is not very dignified, I should like a corps of the same kind of sharp-shooters in our legislative assemblies when honorable gentlemen are addressing their constituents and not the assembly, repeating in lengthy, windy, clumsy paragraphs what has been the truism of the newspaper press for months previous, wickedly wasting the time that was given us to learn something for ourselves, and help our fellow-creatures. In the French Chamber, if a man who has nothing to say ascends the tribune, the audience-room is filled with the noise as of myriad beehives; the President rises on his feet, and passes the whole time of the speech in taking the most violent exercise, stretching himself to look imposing, ringing his bell every two minutes, shouting to the representatives of the nation to be decorous and attentive. In vain: the more he rings, the more they won't be still. I saw an orator in this situation, fighting against the desires of the audience, as only a Frenchman could,--certainly a man of any other nation would have died of embarrassment rather,--screaming out his sentences, stretching out both arms with an air of injured dignity, panting, growing red in the face; but the hubbub of voices never stopped an instant. At last he pretended to be exhausted, stopped, and took out his snuff-box. Instantly there was a calm. He seized the occasion, and shouted out a sentence; but it was the only one he was able to make heard. They were not to be trapped so a second time. When any one is speaking that commands interest, as Berryer did, the effect of this vivacity is very pleasing, the murmur of feeling that rushes over the assembly is so quick and electric,--light, too, as the ripple on the lake. I heard Guizot speak one day for a short time. His manner is very deficient in dignity,--has not even the dignity of station; you see the man of cultivated intellect, but without inward strength; nor is even his panoply of proof. I saw in the Library of the Deputies some books intended to be sent to our country through M. Vattemare. The French have shown great readiness and generosity with regard to his project, and I earnestly hope that our country, if it accept these tokens of good-will, will show both energy and judgment in making a return. I do not speak from myself alone, but from others whose opinion is entitled to the highest respect, when I say it is not by sending a great quantity of documents of merely local interest, that would be esteemed lumber in our garrets at home, that you pay respect to a nation able to look beyond, the binding of a book. If anything is to be sent, let persons of ability be deputed to make a selection honorable to us and of value to the French. They would like documents from our Congress,--what is important as to commerce and manufactures; they would also like much what can throw light on the history and character of our aborigines. This project of international exchange could not be carried on to any permanent advantage without accredited agents on either side, but in its present shape it wears an aspect of good feeling that is valuable, and may give a very desirable impulse to thought and knowledge. M. Vattemare has given himself to the plan with indefatigable perseverance, and I hope our country will not be backward to accord him that furtherance he has known how to conquer from his countrymen. To his complaisance I was indebted for opportunity of a leisurely survey of the _Imprimeri Royale_, which gave me several suggestions I shall impart at a more favorable time, and of the operations of the Mint also. It was at his request that the Librarian of the Chamber showed me the manuscripts of Rousseau, which are not always seen by the traveller. He also introduced me to one of the evening schools of the _Frères Chretiens_, where I saw, with pleasure, how much can be done for the working classes only by evening lessons. In reading and writing, adults had made surprising progress, and still more so in drawing. I saw with the highest pleasure, excellent copies of good models, made by hard-handed porters and errand-boys with their brass badges on their breasts. The benefits of such an accomplishment are, in my eyes, of the highest value, giving them, by insensible degrees, their part in the glories of art and science, and in the tranquil refinements of home. Visions rose in my mind of all that might be done in our country by associations of men and women who have received the benefits of literary culture, giving such evening lessons throughout our cities and villages. Should I ever return, I shall propose to some of the like-minded an association for such a purpose, and try the experiment of one of these schools of Christian brothers, with the vow of disinterestedness, but without the robe and the subdued priestly manner, which even in these men, some of whom seemed to me truly good, I could not away with. I visited also a Protestant institution, called that of the Deaconesses, which pleased me in some respects. Beside the regular _Crèche_, they take the sick children of the poor, and nurse them till they are well. They have also a refuge like that of the Home which, the ladies of New York have provided, through which members of the most unjustly treated class of society may return to peace and usefulness. There are institutions of the kind in Paris, but too formal,--and the treatment shows ignorance of human nature. I see nothing that shows so enlightened a spirit as the Home, a little germ of good which I hope flourishes and finds active aid in the community. I have collected many facts with regard to this suffering class of women, both in England and in France. I have seen them under the thin veil of gayety, and in the horrible tatters of utter degradation. I have seen the feelings of men with regard to their condition, and the general heartlessness in women of more favored and protected lives, which I can only ascribe to utter ignorance of the facts. If a proclamation of some of these can remove it, I hope to make such a one in the hour of riper judgment, and after a more extensive survey. Sad as are many features of the time, we have at least the satisfaction of feeling that if something true can be revealed, if something wise and kind shall be perseveringly tried, it stands a chance of nearer success than ever before; for much light has been let in at the windows of the world, and many dark nooks have been touched by a consoling ray. The influence of such a ray I felt in visiting the School for Idiots, near Paris,--idiots, so called long time by the impatience of the crowd; yet there are really none such, but only beings so below the average standard, so partially organized, that it is difficult for them to learn or to sustain themselves. I wept the whole time I was in this place a shower of sweet and bitter tears; of joy at what had been done, of grief for all that I and others possess and cannot impart to these little ones. But patience, and the Father of All will give them all yet. A good angel these of Paris have in their master. I have seen no man that seemed to me more worthy of envy, if one could envy happiness so pure and tender. He is a man of seven or eight and twenty, who formerly came there only to give lessons in writing, but became so interested in his charge that he came at last to live among them and to serve them. They sing the hymns he writes for them, and as I saw his fine countenance looking in love on those distorted and opaque vases of humanity, where he had succeeded in waking up a faint flame, I thought his heart could never fail to be well warmed and buoyant. They sang well, both in parts and in chorus, went through gymnastic exercises with order and pleasure, then stood in a circle and kept time, while several danced extremely well. One little fellow, with whom the difficulty seemed to be that an excess of nervous sensibility paralyzed instead of exciting the powers, recited poems with a touching, childish grace and perfect memory. They write well, draw well, make shoes, and do carpenter's work. One of the cases most interesting to the metaphysician is that of a boy, brought there about two years and a half ago, at the age of thirteen, in a state of brutality, and of ferocious brutality. I read the physician's report of him at that period. He discovered no ray of decency or reason; entirely beneath the animals in the exercise of the senses, he discovered a restless fury beyond that of beasts of prey, breaking and throwing down whatever came in his way; was a voracious glutton, and every way grossly sensual. Many trials and vast patience were necessary before an inlet could be obtained to his mind; then it was through the means of mathematics. He delights in the figures, can draw and name them all, detects them by the touch when blindfolded. Each, mental effort of the kind he still follows up with an imbecile chuckle, as indeed his face and whole manner are still that of an idiot; but he has been raised from his sensual state, and can now discriminate and name colors and perfumes which before were all alike to him. He is partially redeemed; earlier, no doubt, far more might have been done for him, but the degree of success is an earnest which must encourage to perseverance in the most seemingly hopeless cases. I thought sorrowfully of the persons of this class whom I have known in our country, who might have been so raised and solaced by similar care. I hope ample provision may erelong be made for these Pariahs of the human race; every case of the kind brings its blessings with it, and observation on these subjects would be as rich in suggestion for the thought, as such acts of love are balmy for the heart. LETTER XIII. MUSIC IN PARIS.--CHOPIN AND THE CHEVALIER NEUKOMM.--ADIEU TO PARIS.--A MIDNIGHT DRIVE IN A DILIGENCE.--LYONS AND ITS WEAVERS.--THEIR MANNER OF LIFE.--A YOUNG WIFE.--THE WEAVERS' CHILDREN.--THE BANKS OF THE RHONE.--DREARY WEATHER FOR SOUTHERN FRANCE.--THE OLD ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE AT ARLES.--THE WOMEN OF ARLES.--MARSEILLES.--PASSAGE TO GENOA.--ITALY.--GENOA AND NAPLES.--BAI�.--VESUVIUS.--THE ITALIAN CHARACTER AT HOME.--PASSAGE FROM LEGHORN IN A SMALL STEAMER.--NARROW ESCAPE.--A CONFUSION OF LANGUAGES.--DEGRADATION OF THE NEAPOLITANS. Naples. In my last days at Paris I was fortunate in hearing some delightful music. A friend of Chopin's took me to see him, and I had the pleasure, which the delicacy of Iris health makes a rare one for the public, of hearing him play. All the impressions I had received from hearing his music imperfectly performed were justified, for it has marked traits, which can be veiled, but not travestied; but to feel it as it merits, one must hear himself; only a person as exquisitely organized as he can adequately express these subtile secrets of the creative spirit. It was with, a very different sort of pleasure that I listened to the Chevalier Neukomm, the celebrated composer of "David," which has been so popular in our country. I heard him improvise on the _orgue expressif_, and afterward on a great organ which has just been built here by Cavaille for the cathedral of Ajaccio. Full, sustained, ardent, yet exact, the stream, of his thought bears with it the attention of hearers of all characters, as his character, full of _bonhommie_, open, friendly, animated, and sagacious, would seem to have something to present for the affection and esteem of all kinds of men. Chopin is the minstrel, Neukomm the orator of music: we want them both,--the mysterious whispers and the resolute pleadings from the better world, which calls us not to slumber here, but press daily onward to claim our heritage. Paris! I was sad to leave thee, thou wonderful focus, where ignorance ceases to be a pain, because there we find such means daily to lessen it. It is the only school where I ever found abundance of teachers who could bear being examined by the pupil in their special branches. I must go to this school more before I again cross the Atlantic, where often for years I have carried about some trifling question without finding the person who could answer it. Really deep questions we must all answer for ourselves; the more the pity, then, that we get not quickly through with a crowd of details, where the experience of others might accelerate our progress. Leaving by _diligence_, we pursued our way from twelve o'clock on Thursday till twelve at night on Friday, thus having a large share of magnificent moonlight upon the unknown fields we were traversing. At Chalons we took boat and reached Lyons betimes that afternoon. So soon as refreshed, we sallied out to visit some of the garrets of the weavers. As we were making inquiries about these, a sweet little girl who heard us offered to be our guide. She led us by a weary, winding way, whose pavement was much easier for her feet in their wooden _sabots_ than for ours in Paris shoes, to the top of a hill, from which we saw for the first time "the blue and arrowy Rhone." Entering the light buildings on this high hill, I found each chamber tenanted by a family of weavers,--all weavers; wife, husband, sons, daughters,--from nine years old upward,--each was helping. On one side were the looms; nearer the door the cooking apparatus; the beds were shelves near the ceiling: they climbed up to them on ladders. My sweet little girl turned out to be a wife of six or seven years' standing, with two rather sickly-looking children; she seemed to have the greatest comfort that is possible amid the perplexities of a hard and anxious lot, to judge by the proud and affectionate manner in which she always said "_mon mari_," and by the courteous gentleness of his manner toward her. She seemed, indeed, to be one of those persons on whom "the Graces have smiled in their cradle," and to whom a natural loveliness of character makes the world as easy as it can be made while the evil spirit is still so busy choking the wheat with tares. I admired her graceful manner of introducing us into those dark little rooms, and she was affectionately received by all her acquaintance. But alas! that voice, by nature of such bird-like vivacity, repeated again and again, "Ah! we are all very unhappy now." "Do you sing together, or go to evening schools?" "We have not the heart. When we have a piece of work, we do not stir till it is finished, and then we run to try and get another; but often we have to wait idle for weeks. It grows worse and worse, and they say it is not likely to be any better. We can think of nothing, but whether we shall be able to pay our rent. Ah! the workpeople are very unhappy now." This poor, lovely little girl, at an age when the merchant's daughters of Boston and New York are just gaining their first experiences of "society," knew to a farthing the price of every article of food and clothing that is wanted by such a household. Her thought by day and her dream by night was, whether she should long be able to procure a scanty supply of these, and Nature had gifted her with precisely those qualities, which, unembarrassed by care, would have made her and all she loved really happy; and she was fortunate now, compared with many of her sex in Lyons,--of whom a gentleman who knows the class well said: "When their work fails, they have no resource except in the sale of their persons. There are but these two ways open to them, weaving or prostitution, to gain their bread." And there are those who dare to say that such a state of things is _well enough_, and what Providence intended for man,--who call those who have hearts to suffer at the sight, energy and zeal to seek its remedy, visionaries and fanatics! To themselves be woe, who have eyes and see not, ears and hear not, the convulsions and sobs of injured Humanity! My little friend told me she had nursed both her children,--though almost all of her class are obliged to put their children out to nurse; "but," said she, "they are brought back so little, so miserable, that I resolved, if possible, to keep mine with me." Next day in the steamboat I read a pamphlet by a physician of Lyons in which he recommends the establishment of _Crèches_, not merely like those of Paris, to keep the children by day, but to provide wet-nurses for them. Thus, by the infants receiving nourishment from more healthy persons, and who under the supervision of directors would treat them well, he hopes to counteract the tendency to degenerate in this race of sedentary workers, and to save the mothers from too heavy a burden of care and labor, without breaking the bond between them and their children, whom, under such circumstances, they could visit often, and see them taken care of as they, brought up to know nothing except how to weave, cannot take care of them. Here, again, how is one reminded of Fourier's observations and plans, still more enforced by the recent developments at Manchester as to the habit of feeding children on opium, which has grown out of the position of things there. Descending next day to Avignon, I had the mortification of finding the banks of the Rhone still sheeted with white, and there waded through melting snow to Laura's tomb. We did not see Mr. Dickens's Tower and Goblin,--it was too late in the day,--but we saw a snowball fight between two bands of the military in the castle yard that was gay enough to make a goblin laugh. And next day on to Arles, still snow,--snow and cutting blasts in the South of France, where everybody had promised us bird-songs and blossoms to console us for the dreary winter of Paris. At Arles, indeed, I saw the little saxifrage blossoming on the steps of the Amphitheatre, and fruit-trees in flower amid the tombs. Here for the first time I saw the great handwriting of the Romans in its proper medium of stone, and I was content. It looked us grand and solid as I expected, as if life in those days was thought worth the having, the enjoying, and the using. The sunlight was warm this day; it lay deliciously still and calm upon the ruins. One old woman sat knitting where twenty-five thousand persons once gazed down in fierce excitement on the fights of men and lions. Coming back, we were refreshed all through the streets by the sight of the women of Arles. They answered to their reputation for beauty; tall, erect, and noble, with high and dignified features, and a full, earnest gaze of the eye, they looked as if the Eagle still waved its wings over their city. Even the very old women still have a degree of beauty, because when the colors are all faded, and the skin wrinkled, the face retains this dignity of outline. The men do not share in these characteristics; some priestess, well beloved of the powers of old religion, must have called down an especial blessing on her sex in this town. Hence to Marseilles,--where is little for the traveller to see, except the mixture of Oriental blood in the crowd of the streets. Thence by steamer to Genoa. Of this transit, he who has been on the Mediterranean in a stiff breeze well understands I can have nothing to say, except "I suffered." It was all one dull, tormented dream to me, and, I believe, to most of the ship's company,--a dream too of thirty hours' duration, instead of the promised sixteen. The excessive beauty of Genoa is well known, and the impression upon the eye alone was correspondent with what I expected; but, alas! the weather was still so cold I could not realize that I had actually touched those shores to which I had looked forward all my life, where it seemed that the heart would expand, and the whole nature be turned to delight. Seen by a cutting wind, the marble palaces, the gardens, the magnificent water-view of Genoa, failed to charm,--"I _saw, not felt_, how beautiful they were." Only at Naples have I found _my_ Italy, and here not till after a week's waiting,--not till I began to believe that all I had heard in praise of the climate of Italy was fable, and that there is really no spring anywhere except in the imagination of poets. For the first week was an exact copy of the miseries of a New England spring; a bright sun came for an hour or two in the morning, just to coax you forth without your cloak, and then came up a villanous, horrible wind, exactly like the worst east wind of Boston, breaking the heart, racking the brain, and turning hope and fancy to an irrevocable green and yellow hue, in lieu of their native rose. However, here at Naples I _have_ at last found _my_ Italy; I have passed through the Grotto of Pausilippo, visited Cuma, Baiæ, and Capri, ascended Vesuvius, and found all familiar, except the sense of enchantment, of sweet exhilaration, this scene conveys. "Behold how brightly breaks the morning!" and yet all new, as if never yet described, for Nature here, most prolific and exuberant in her gifts, has touched them all with a charm unhackneyed, unhackneyable, which the boots of English dandies cannot trample out, nor the raptures of sentimental tourists daub or fade. Baiæ had still a hid divinity for me, Vesuvius a fresh baptism of fire, and Sorrento--O Sorrento was beyond picture, beyond poesy, for the greatest Artist had been at work there in a temper beyond the reach of human art. Beyond this, reader, my old friend and valued acquaintance on other themes, I shall tell you nothing of Naples, for it is a thing apart in the journey of life, and, if represented at all, should be so in a fairer form than offers itself at present. Now the actual life here is over, I am going to Rome, and expect to see that fane of thought the last day of this week. At Genoa and Leghorn, I saw for the first time Italians in their homes. Very attractive I found them, charming women, refined men, eloquent and courteous. If the cold wind hid Italy, it could not the Italians. A little group of faces, each so full of character, dignity, and, what is so rare in an American face, the capacity for pure, exalting passion, will live ever in my memory,--the fulfilment of a hope! We started from Leghorn in an English boat, highly recommended, and as little deserving of such praise as many another bepuffed article. In the middle of a fine, clear night, she was run into by the mail steamer, which all on deck clearly saw coming upon her, for no reason that could be ascertained, except that the man at the wheel said _he_ had turned the right way, and it never seemed to occur to him that he could change when he found the other steamer had taken the same direction. To be sure, the other steamer was equally careless, but as a change on our part would have prevented an accident that narrowly missed sending us all to the bottom, it hardly seemed worth while to persist, for the sake of convicting them of error. Neither the Captain nor any of his people spoke French, and we had been much amused before by the chambermaid acting out the old story of "Will you lend me the loan of a gridiron?" A Polish lady was on board, with a French waiting-maid, who understood no word of English. The daughter of John Bull would speak to the lady in English, and, when she found it of no use, would say imperiously to the _suivante_, "Go and ask your mistress what she will have for breakfast." And now when I went on deck there was a parley between the two steamers, which the Captain was obliged to manage by such interpreters as he could find; it was a long and confused business. It ended at last in the Neapolitan steamer taking us in tow for an inglorious return to Leghorn. When she had decided upon this she swept round, her lights glancing like sagacious eyes, to take us. The sea was calm as a lake, the sky full of stars; she made a long detour, with her black hull, her smoke and lights, which look so pretty at night, then came round to us like the bend of an arm embracing. It was a pretty picture, worth the stop and the fright,--perhaps the loss of twenty-four hours, though I did not think so at the time. At Leghorn we changed the boat, and, retracing our steps, came now at last to Naples,--to this priest-ridden, misgoverned, full of dirty, degraded men and women, yet still most lovely Naples,--of which the most I can say is that the divine aspect of nature _can_ make you forget the situation of man in this region, which was surely intended for him as a princely child, angelic in virtue, genius, and beauty, and not as a begging, vermin-haunted, image kissing Lazzarone. LETTER XIV. ITALY.--MISFORTUNE OF TRAVELLERS.--ENGLISH TRAVELLERS.-- COCKNEYISM.--MACDONALD THE SCULPTOR.--BRITISH ARISTOCRACY.-- TENERANI.--WOLFF'S DIANA AND SEASONS.--GOTT.--CRAWFORD.--OVERBECK THE PAINTER.--AMERICAN PAINTERS IN ROME.--TERRY.--GRANCH.--HICKS.-- REMAINS OF THE ANTIQUE.--ITALIAN PAINTERS.--DOMENICHIMO AND TITIAN.--FRESCOS OF RAPHAEL.--MICHEL ANGELO.--THE COLOSSEUM.--HOLY WEEK.--ST. PETER'S.--PIUS IX. AND HIS MEASURES.--POPULAR ENTHUSIASM.--PUBLIC DINNER AT THE BATHS OF TITUS.--AUSTRIAN JEALOUSY.--THE "CONTEMPORANEO." Rome, May, 1847. There is very little that I can like to write about Italy. Italy is beautiful, worthy to be loved and embraced, not talked about. Yet I remember well that, when afar, I liked to read what was written about her; now, all thought of it is very tedious. The traveller passing along the beaten track, vetturinoed from inn to inn, ciceroned from gallery to gallery, thrown, through indolence, want of tact, or ignorance of the language, too much into the society of his compatriots, sees the least possible of the country; fortunately, it is impossible to avoid seeing a great deal. The great features of the part pursue and fill the eye. Yet I find that it is quite out of the question to know Italy; to say anything of her that is full and sweet, so as to convey any idea of her spirit, without long residence, and residence in the districts untouched by the scorch and dust of foreign invasion (the invasion of the _dilettanti_ I mean), and without an intimacy of feeling, an abandonment to the spirit of the place, impossible to most Americans. They retain too much, of their English blood; and the travelling English, as a class, seem to me the most unseeing of all possible animals. There are exceptions; for instance, the perceptions and pictures of Browning seem as delicate and just here on the spot as they did at a distance; but, take them as a class, they have the vulgar familiarity of Mrs. Trollope without her vivacity, the cockneyism of Dickens without his graphic power and love of the odd corners of human nature. I admired the English at home in their island; I admired their honor, truth, practical intelligence, persistent power. But they do not look well in Italy; they are not the figures for this landscape. I am indignant at the contempt they have presumed to express for the faults of our semi-barbarous state. What is the vulgarity expressed in our tobacco-chewing, and way of eating eggs, compared to that which elbows the Greek marbles, guide-book in hand,--chatters and sneers through the Miserere of the Sistine Chapel, beneath the very glance of Michel Angelo's Sibyls,--praises St. Peter's as "_nice_"--talks of "_managing_" the Colosseum by moonlight,--and snatches "_bits_" for a "_sketch_" from the sublime silence of the Campagna. Yet I was again reconciled with them, the other day, in visiting the studio of Macdonald. There I found a complete gallery of the aristocracy of England; for each lord and lady who visits Rome considers it a part of the ceremony to sit to him for a bust. And what a fine race! how worthy the marble! what heads of orators, statesmen, gentlemen! of women chaste, grave, resolute, and tender! Unfortunately, they do not look as well in flesh and blood; then they show the habitual coldness of their temperament, the habitual subservience to frivolous conventionalities. They need some great occasion, some exciting crisis, in order to make them look as free and dignified as these busts; yet is the beauty there, though, imprisoned, and clouded, and such a crisis would show us more then one Boadicea, more than one Alfred. Tenerani has just completed a statue which is highly-spoken of; it is called the Angel of the Resurrection. I was not so fortunate as to find it in his studio. In that of Wolff I saw a Diana, ordered by the Emperor of Russia. It is modern and sentimental; as different from, the antique Diana as the trance of a novel-read young lady of our day from the thrill with which the ancient shepherds deprecated the magic pervasions of Hecate, but very beautiful and exquisitely wrought. He has also lately finished the Four Seasons, represented as children. Of these, Winter is graceful and charming. Among the sculptors I delayed longest in the work-rooms of Gott. I found his groups of young figures connected with animals very refreshing after the grander attempts of the present time. They seem real growths of his habitual mind,--fruits of Nature, full of joy and freedom. His spaniels and other frisky poppets would please Apollo far better than most of the marble nymphs and muses of the present day. Our Crawford has just finished a bust of Mrs. Crawford, which is extremely beautiful, full of grace and innocent sweetness. All its accessaries are charming,--the wreaths, the arrangement of drapery, the stuff of which the robe is made. I hope it will be much seen on its arrival in New York. He has also an Herodias in the clay, which is individual in expression, and the figure of distinguished elegance. I liked the designs of Crawford better than those of Gibson, who is estimated as highest in the profession now. Among the studios of the European painters I have visited only that of Overbeck. It is well known in the United States what his pictures are. I have much to say at a more favorable time of what they represented to me. He himself looks as if he had just stepped out of one of them,--a lay monk, with a pious eye and habitual morality of thought which limits every gesture. Painting is not largely represented here by American artists at present. Terry has two pleasing pictures on the easel: one is a costume picture of Italian life, such as I saw it myself, enchanted beyond my hopes, on coming to Naples on a day of grand festival in honor of Santa Agatha. Cranch sends soon to America a picture of the Campagna, such as I saw it on my first entrance into Rome, all light and calmness; Hicks, a charming half-length of an Italian girl, holding a mandolin: it will be sure to please. His pictures are full of life, and give the promise of some real achievement in Art. Of the fragments of the great time, I have now seen nearly all that are treasured up here: I have, however, as yet nothing of consequence to say of them. I find that others have often given good hints as to how they _look_; and as to what they _are_, it can only be known by approximating to the state of soul out of which they grew. They should not be described, but reproduced. They are many and precious, yet is there not so much of high excellence as I had expected: they will not float the heart on a boundless sea of feeling, like the starry night on our Western prairies. Yet I love much to see the galleries of marbles, even when there are not many separately admirable, amid the cypresses and ilexes of Roman villas; and a picture that is good at all looks very good in one of these old palaces. The Italian painters whom I have learned most to appreciate, since I came abroad, are Domenichino and Titian. Of others one may learn something by copies and engravings: but not of these. The portraits of Titian look upon me from the walls things new and strange. They are portraits of men such as I have not known. In his picture, absurdly called _Sacred and Profane Love_, in the Borghese Palace, one of the figures has developed my powers of gazing to an extent unknown before. Domenichino seems very unequal in his pictures; but when he is grand and free, the energy of his genius perfectly satisfies. The frescos of Caracci and his scholars in the Farnese Palace have been to me a source of the purest pleasure, and I do not remember to have heard of them. I loved Guercino much before I came here, but I have looked too much at his pictures and begin to grow sick of them; he is a very limited genius. Leonardo I cannot yet like at all, but I suppose the pictures are good for some people to look at; they show a wonderful deal of study and thought. That is not what I can best appreciate in a work of art. I hate to see the marks of them. I want a simple and direct expression of soul. For the rest, the ordinary cant of connoisseur-ship on these matters seems in Italy even more detestable than elsewhere. I have not yet so sufficiently recovered from my pain at finding the frescos of Raphael in such a state, as to be able to look at them, happily. I had heard of their condition, but could not realize it. However, I have gained nothing by seeing his pictures in oil, which are well preserved. I find I had before the full impression of his genius. Michel Angelo's frescos, in like manner, I seem to have seen as far as I can. But it is not the same with the sculptures: my thought had not risen to the height of the Moses. It is the only thing in Europe, so far, which has entirely outgone my hopes. Michel Angelo was my demigod before; but I find no offering worthy to cast at the feet of his Moses. I like much, too, his Christ. It is a refreshing contrast with all the other representations of the same subject. I like it even as contrasted with Raphael's Christ of the Transfiguration, or that of the cartoon of _Feed my Lambs_. I have heard owls hoot in the Colosseum by moonlight, and they spoke more to the purpose than I ever heard any other voice upon that subject. I have seen all the pomps and shows of Holy Week in the church of St. Peter, and found them less imposing than an habitual acquaintance with the place, with processions of monks and nuns stealing in now and then, or the swell of vespers from some side chapel. I have ascended the dome, and seen thence Rome and its Campagna, its villas with, their cypresses and pines serenely sad as is nothing else in the world, and the fountains of the Vatican garden gushing hard by. I have been in the Subterranean to see a poor little boy introduced, much to his surprise, to the bosom of the Church; and then I have seen by torch-light the stone popes where they lie on their tombs, and the old mosaics, and virgins with gilt caps. It is all rich, and full,--very impressive in its way. St. Peter's must be to each one a separate poem. The ceremonies of the Church, have been numerous and splendid during our stay here; and they borrow unusual interest from the love and expectation inspired by the present Pontiff. He is a man of noble and good aspect, who, it is easy to see, has set his heart upon doing something solid for the benefit of man. But pensively, too, must one feel how hampered and inadequate are the means at his command to accomplish these ends. The Italians do not feel it, but deliver themselves, with all the vivacity of their temperament, to perpetual hurras, vivas, rockets, and torch-light processions. I often think how grave and sad must the Pope feel, as he sits alone and hears all this noise of expectation. A week or two ago the Cardinal Secretary published a circular inviting the departments to measures which would give the people a sort of representative council. Nothing could seem more limited than this improvement, but it was a great measure for Rome. At night the Corso in which, we live was illuminated, and many thousands passed through it in a torch-bearing procession. I saw them first assembled in the Piazza del Popolo, forming around its fountain a great circle of fire. Then, as a river of fire, they streamed slowly through the Corso, on their way to the Quirinal to thank the Pope, upbearing a banner on which the edict was printed. The stream, of fire advanced slowly, with a perpetual surge-like sound of voices; the torches flashed on the animated Italian faces. I have never seen anything finer. Ascending the Quirinal they made it a mount of light. Bengal fires were thrown up, which cast their red and white light on the noble Greek figures of men and horses that reign over it. The Pope appeared on his balcony; the crowd shouted three vivas; he extended his arms; the crowd fell on their knees and received his benediction; he retired, and the torches were extinguished, and the multitude dispersed in an instant. The same week came the natal day of Rome. A great dinner was given at the Baths of Titus, in the open air. The company was on the grass in the area; the music at one end; boxes filled with the handsome Roman women occupied the other sides. It was a new thing here, this popular dinner, and the Romans greeted it in an intoxication of hope and pleasure. Sterbini, author of "The Vestal," presided: many others, like him, long time exiled and restored to their country by the present Pope, were at the tables. The Colosseum, and triumphal arches were in sight; an effigy of the Roman wolf with her royal nursling was erected on high; the guests, with shouts and music, congratulated themselves on the possession, in Pius IX., of a new and nobler founder for another state. Among the speeches that of the Marquis d'Azeglio, a man of literary note in Italy, and son-in-law of Manzoni, contained this passage (he was sketching the past history of Italy):-- "The crown passed to the head of a German monarch; but he wore it not to the benefit, but the injury, of Christianity,--of the world. The Emperor Henry was a tyrant who wearied out the patience of God. God said to Rome, 'I give you the Emperor Henry'; and from these hills that surround us, Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII., raised his austere and potent voice to say to the Emperor, 'God did not give you Italy that you might destroy her,' and Italy, Germany, Europe, saw her butcher prostrated at the feet of Gregory in penitence. Italy, Germany, Europe, had then kindled in the heart the first spark of liberty." The narrative of the dinner passed the censor, and was published: the Ambassador of Austria read it, and found, with a modesty and candor truly admirable, that this passage was meant to allude to his Emperor. He must take his passports, if such home thrusts are to be made. And so the paper was seized, and the account of the dinner only told from, mouth to mouth, from those who had already read it. Also the idea of a dinner for the Pope's fête-day is abandoned, lest something too frank should again be said; and they tell me here, with a laugh, "I fancy you have assisted at the first and last popular dinner." Thus we may see that the liberty of Rome does not yet advance with seven-leagued boots; and the new Romulus will need to be prepared for deeds at least as bold as his predecessor, if he is to open a new order of things. I cannot well wind up my gossip on this subject better than by translating a passage from the programme of the _Contemporaneo_, which represents the hope of Rome at this moment. It is conducted by men of well-known talent. "The _Contemporaneo_ (Contemporary) is a journal of progress, but tempered, as the good and wise think best, in conformity with the will of our best of princes, and the wants and expectations of the public.... "Through discussion it desires to prepare minds to receive reforms so soon and far as they are favored by the law of _opportunity_. "Every attempt which is made contrary to this social law must fail. It is vain to hope fruits from a tree out of season, and equally in vain to introduce the best measures into a country not prepared to receive them." And so on. I intended to have translated in full the programme, but time fails, and the law of opportunity does not favor, as my "opportunity" leaves for London this afternoon. I have given enough to mark the purport of the whole. It will easily be seen that it was not from the platform assumed by the _Contemporaneo_ that Lycurgus legislated, or Socrates taught,--that the Christian religion was propagated, or the Church, was reformed by Luther. The opportunity that the martyrs found here in the Colosseum, from whose blood grew up this great tree of Papacy, was not of the kind waited for by these moderate progressists. Nevertheless, they may be good schoolmasters for Italy, and are not to be disdained in these piping times of peace. More anon, of old and new, from Tuscany. LETTER XV. ITALY.--FRUITS AND FLOWERS ON THE ROUTE FROM FLORENCE TO ROME.--THE PLAIN OF UMBRIA.--ASSISI.--THE SAINTS.--TUITION IN SCHOOLS.--PIUS IX.--THE ETRURIAN TOMB.--PERUGIA AND ITS STORES OF EARLY ART.--PORTRAITS OF RAPHAEL.--FLORENCE.--THE GRAND DUKE AND HIS POLICY.--THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS AND ITS INFLUENCE.--THE AMERICAN SCULPTORS.--GREENOUGH AND HIS NEW WORKS.--POWERS.--HIS STATUE OF CALHOUN.--REVIEW OF HIS ENDEAVORS.--THE FESTIVALS OF ST. JOHN AT FLORENCE.--BOLOGNA.--FEMALE PROFESSORS IN ITS UNIVERSITY.--MATILDA TAMBRONI AND OTHERS.--MILAN AND HER FEMALE MATHEMATICIAN.--THE STATE OF WOMAN IN ITALY.--RAVENNA AND BYRON.--VENICE.--THE ADDA.--MILAN AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD, AND MANZONI.--EXCITEMENTS.--NATIONAL AFFAIRS. Milan, August 9, 1847. Since leaving Rome, I have not been able to steal a moment from the rich and varied objects before me to write about them. I will, therefore, take a brief retrospect of the ground. I passed from Florence to Rome by the Perugia route, and saw for the first time the Italian vineyards. The grapes hung in little clusters. When I return, they will be full of light and life, but the fields will not be so enchantingly fresh, nor so enamelled with flowers. The profusion of red poppies, which dance on every wall and glitter throughout the grass, is a great ornament to the landscape. In full sunlight their vermilion is most beautiful. Well might Ceres gather _such_ poppies to mingle with her wheat. We climbed the hill to Assisi, and my ears thrilled as with many old remembered melodies, when an old peasant, in sonorous phrase, bade me look out and see the plain of Umbria. I looked back and saw the carriage toiling up the steep path, drawn by a pair of those light-colored oxen Shelley so much admired. I stood near the spot where Goethe met with a little adventure, which he has described with even more than his usual delicate humor. Who can ever be alone for a moment in Italy? Every stone has a voice, every grain of dust seems instinct with spirit from the Past, every step recalls some line, some legend of long-neglected lore. Assisi was exceedingly charming to me. So still!--all temporal noise and bustle seem hushed down yet by the presence of the saint. So clean!--the rains of heaven wash down all impurities into the valley. I must confess that, elsewhere, I have shared the feelings of Dickens toward St. Francis and St. Sebastian, as the "Mounseer Tonsons" of Catholic art. St. Sebastian I have not been so tired of, for the beauty and youth of the figure make the monotony with which the subject of his martyrdom is treated somewhat less wearisome. But St. Francis is so sad, and so ecstatic, and so brown, so entirely the monk,--and St. Clara so entirely the nun! I have been very sorry for her that he was able to draw her from the human to the heavenly life; she seems so sad and so worn out by the effort. But here at Assisi, one cannot help being penetrated by the spirit that flowed from that life. Here is the room where his father shut up the boy to punish his early severity of devotion. Here is the picture which represents him despoiled of all outward things, even his garments,--devoting himself, body and soul, to the service of God in the way he believed most acceptable. Here is the underground chapel, where rest those weary bones, saluted by the tears of so many weary pilgrims who have come hither to seek strength from his example. Here are the churches above, full of the works of earlier art, animated by the contagion of a great example. It is impossible not to bow the head, and feel how mighty an influence flows from a single soul, sincere in its service of truth, in whatever form that truth comes to it. A troop of neat, pretty school-girls attended us about, going with us into the little chapels adorned with pictures which open at every corner of the streets, smiling on us at a respectful distance. Some of them were fourteen or fifteen years old. I found reading, writing, and sewing were all they learned at their school; the first, indeed, they knew well enough, if they could ever get books to use it on. Tranquil as Assisi was, on every wall was read _Viva Pio IX.!_ and we found the guides and workmen in the shop full of a vague hope from him. The old love which has made so rich this aerial cradle of St. Francis glows warm as ever in the breasts of men; still, as ever, they long for hero-worship, and shout aloud at the least appearance of an object. The church at the foot of the hill, Santa Maria degli Angeli, seems tawdry after Assisi. It also is full of records of St. Francis, his pains and his triumphs. Here, too, on a little chapel, is the famous picture by Overbeck; too exact a copy, but how different in effect from the early art we had just seen above! Harmonious but frigid, grave but dull; childhood is beautiful, but not when continued, or rather transplanted, into the period where we look for passion, varied means, and manly force. Before reaching Perugia, I visited an Etrurian tomb, which is a little way off the road; it is said to be one of the finest in Etruria. The hill-side is full of them, but excavations are expensive, and not frequent. The effect of this one was beyond my expectations; in it were several female figures, very dignified and calm, as the dim lamp-light fell on them by turns. The expression of these figures shows that the position of woman in these states was noble. Their eagles' nests cherished well the female eagle who kept watch in the eyrie. Perugia too is on a noble hill. What a daily excitement such a view, taken at every step! life is worth ten times as much in a city so situated. Perugia is full, overflowing, with the treasures of early art. I saw them so rapidly it seems now as if in a trance, yet certainly with a profit, a manifold gain, such as Mahomet thought he gained from his five minutes' visits to other spheres. Here are two portraits of Raphael as a youth: it is touching to see what effect this angel had upon all that surrounded him from the very first. Florence! I was there a month, and in a sense saw Florence: that is to say, I took an inventory of what is to be seen there, and not without great intellectual profit. There is too much that is really admirable in art,--the nature of its growth lies before you too clearly to be evaded. Of such things more elsewhere. I do not like Florence as I do cities more purely Italian. The natural character is ironed out here, and done up in a French pattern; yet there is no French vivacity, nor Italian either. The Grand Duke--more and more agitated by the position in which he finds himself between the influence of the Pope and that of Austria--keeps imploring and commanding his people to keep still, and they _are_ still and glum as death. This is all on the outside; within, Tuscany burns. Private culture has not been in vain, and there is, in a large circle, mental preparation for a very different state of things from the present, with an ardent desire to diffuse the same amid the people at large. The sovereign has been obliged for the present to give more liberty to the press, and there is an immediate rush of thought to the new vent; if it is kept open a few months, the effect on the body of the people cannot fail to be great. I intended to have translated some passages from the programme of the _Patria_, one of the papers newly started at Florence, but time fails. One of the articles in the same number by Lambruschini, on the duties of the clergy at this juncture, contains views as liberal as can be found in print anywhere in the world. More of these things when I return to Rome in the autumn, when I hope to find a little leisure to think over what I have seen, and, if found worthy, to put the result in writing. I visited the studios of our sculptors; Greenough has in clay a David which promises high beauty and nobleness, a bass-relief, full of grace and tender expression; he is also modelling a head of Napoleon, and justly enthusiastic in the study. His great group I did not see in such a state as to be secure of my impression. The face of the Pioneer is very fine, the form of the woman graceful and expressive; but I was not satisfied with the Indian. I shall see it more as a whole on my return to Florence. As to the Eve and the Greek Slave, I could only join with the rest of the world in admiration of their beauty and the fine feeling of nature which they exhibit. The statue of Calhoun is full of power, simple, and majestic in attitude and expression. In busts Powers seems to me unrivalled; still, he ought not to spend his best years on an employment which cannot satisfy his ambition nor develop his powers. If our country loves herself, she will order from him some great work before the prime of his genius has been frittered away, and his best years spent on lesser things. I saw at Florence the festivals of St. John, but they are poor affairs to one who has seen the Neapolitan and Roman people on such occasions. Passing from Florence, I came to Bologna,--learned Bologna; indeed an Italian city, full of expression, of physiognomy, so to speak. A woman should love Bologna, for there has the spark of intellect in woman been cherished with reverent care. Not in former ages only, but in this, Bologna raised a woman who was worthy to the dignities of its University, and in their Certosa they proudly show the monument to Matilda Tambroni, late Greek Professor there. Her letters, preserved by her friends, are said to form a very valuable collection. In their anatomical hall is the bust of a woman, Professor of Anatomy. In Art they have had Properzia di Rossi, Elizabetta Sirani, Lavinia Fontana, and delight to give their works a conspicuous place. In other cities the men alone have their _Casino dei Nobili_, where they give balls, _conversazioni_, and similar entertainments. Here women have one, and are the soul of society. In Milan, also, I see in the Ambrosian Library the bust of a female mathematician. These things make me feel that, if the state of woman in Italy is so depressed, yet a good-will toward a better is not wholly wanting. Still more significant is the reverence to the Madonna and innumerable female saints, who, if, like St. Teresa, they had intellect as well as piety, became counsellors no less than comforters to the spirit of men. Ravenna, too, I saw, and its old Christian art, the Pineta, where Byron loved to ride, and the paltry apartments where, cheered by a new affection, in which was more of tender friendship than of passion, he found himself less wretched than at beautiful Venice or stately Genoa. All the details of this visit to Ravenna are pretty. I shall write them out some time. Of Padua, too, the little to be said should be said in detail. Of Venice and its enchanted life I could not speak; it should only be echoed back in music. There only I began to feel in its fulness Venetian Art. It can only be seen in its own atmosphere. Never had I the least idea of what is to be seen at Venice. It seems to me as if no one ever yet had seen it,--so entirely wanting is any expression of what I felt myself. Venice! on this subject I shall not write much till time, place, and mode agree to make it fit. Venice, where all is past, is a fit asylum for the dynasties of the Past. The Duchesse de Berri owns one of the finest palaces on the Grand Canal; the Duc de Bordeaux rents another; Mademoiselle Taglioni has bought the famous Casa d'Oro, and it is under repair. Thanks to the fashion which has made Venice a refuge of this kind, the palaces, rarely inhabited by the representatives of their ancient names, are valuable property, and the noble structures will not be suffered to lapse into the sea, above which they rose so proudly. The restorations, too, are made with excellent taste and judgment,--nothing is spoiled. Three of these fine palaces are now hotels, so that the transient visitor can enjoy from their balconies all the wondrous shows of the Venetian night and day as much as any of their former possessors did. I was at the Europa, formerly the Giustiniani Palace, with better air than those on the Grand Canal, and a more unobstructed view than Danieli's. Madame de Berri gave an entertainment on the birthnight of her son, and the old Duchesse d'Angoulême came from Vienna to attend it. 'T was a scene of fairy-land, the palace full of light, so that from the canal could be seen even the pictures on the walls. Landing from the gondolas, the elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen seemed to rise from the water; we also saw them glide up the great stair, rustling their plumes, and in the reception-rooms make and receive the customary grimaces. A fine band stationed on the opposite side of the canal played the while, and a flotilla of gondolas lingered there to listen. I, too, amid, the mob, a pleasant position in Venice alone, thought of the Stuarts, Bourbons, Bonapartes, here in Italy, and offered up a prayer that other names, when the possessors have power without the heart to use it for the emancipation of mankind, might he added to the list, and other princes, more rich in blood than brain, might come to enjoy a perpetual _villeggiatura_ in Italy. It did not seem to me a cruel wish. The show of greatness will satisfy every legitimate desire of such minds. A gentle punishment for the distributors of _letters de cachet_ and Spielberg dungeons to their fellow-men. Having passed more than a fortnight at Venice, I have come here, stopping at Vicenza, Verona, Mantua, Lago di Garda, Brescia. Certainly I have learned more than ever in any previous ten days of my existence, and have formed an idea what is needed for the study of Art and its history in these regions. To be sure, I shall never have time to follow it up, but it is a delight to look up those glorious vistas, even when there is no hope of entering them. A violent shower obliged me to stop on the way. It was late at night, and I was nearly asleep, when, roused by the sound of bubbling waters, I started up and asked, "Is that the Adda?" and it was. So deep is the impression made by a simple natural recital, like that of Renzo's wanderings in the _Promessi Sposi_, that the memory of his hearing the Adda in this way occurred to me at once, and the Adda seemed familiar as if I had been a native of this region. As the Scottish lakes seem the domain of Walter Scott, so does Milan and its neighborhood in the mind of a foreigner belong to Manzoni. I have seen him since, the gentle lord of this wide domain; his hair is white, but his eyes still beam as when he first saw the apparitions of truth, simple tenderness, and piety which he has so admirably recorded for our benefit. Those around lament that the fastidiousness of his taste prevents his completing and publishing more, and that thus a treasury of rare knowledge and refined thought will pass from us without our reaping the benefit. We, indeed, have no title to complain, what we do possess from his hand is so excellent. At this moment there is great excitement in Italy. A supposed spy of Austria has been assassinated at Ferrara, and Austrian troops are marched there. It is pretended that a conspiracy has been discovered in Rome; the consequent disturbances have been put down. The National Guard is forming. All things seem to announce that some important change is inevitable here, but what? Neither Radicals nor Moderates dare predict with confidence, and I am yet too much a stranger to speak with assurance of impressions I have received. But it is impossible not to hope. LETTER XVI. REVIEW OF PAST AND PRESENT.--THE MERITS OF ITALIAN LITERATURE.--MANZONI.--ITALIAN DIALECTS.--MILAN, THE MILANESE, AND THE SIMPLICITY OF THEIR LANGUAGE.--THE NORTH OF ITALY, AND A TOUR TO SWITZERLAND.--ITALIAN LAKES.--MAGGIORE, COMO, AND LUGANO.--LAGO DI GARDA.--THE BOATMEN OF THE LAKES AND THE GONDOLIERS.--LADY FRANKLIN, WIDOW OF THE NAVIGATOR.--RETURN TO AND FESTIVALS AT MILAN.--THE ARCHBISHOP.--AUSTRIAN RULE AND AUSTRIAN POLICY.--THE FUTURE HOPES OF ITALY.--A GLANCE AT PAVIA, FLORENCE, PARMA, AND BOLOGNA, AND THE WORKS OF THE MASTERS. Rome, October, 1847. I think my last letter was from Milan, and written after I had seen Manzoni. This was to me a great pleasure. I have now seen the most important representatives who survive of the last epoch in thought. Our age has still its demonstrations to make, its heroes and poets to crown. Although the modern Italian literature is not poor, as many persons at a distance suppose, but, on the contrary, surprisingly rich in tokens of talent, if we consider the circumstances under which it struggles to exist, yet very few writers have or deserve a European or American reputation. Where a whole country is so kept down, her best minds cannot take the lead in the progress of the age; they have too much to suffer, too much to explain. But among the few who, through depth of spiritual experience and the beauty of form in which it is expressed, belong not only to Italy, but to the world, Manzoni takes a high rank. The passive virtues he teaches are no longer what is wanted; the manners he paints with so delicate a fidelity are beginning to change; but the spirit of his works,--the tender piety, the sensibility to the meaning of every humblest form of life, the delicate humor and satire so free from disdain,--these are immortal. Young Italy rejects Manzoni, though not irreverently; Young Italy prizes his works, but feels that the doctrine of "Pray and wait" is not for her at this moment,--that she needs a more fervent hope, a more active faith. She is right. It is well known that the traveller, if he knows the Italian language as written in books, the standard Tuscan, still finds himself a stranger in many parts of Italy, unable to comprehend the dialects, with their lively abbreviations and witty slang. That of Venice I had understood somewhat, and could enter into the drollery and _naïveté_ of the gondoliers, who, as a class, have an unusual share of character. But the Milanese I could not at first understand at all. Their language seemed to me detestably harsh, and their gestures unmeaning. But after a friend, who possesses that large and ready sympathy easier found in Italy than anywhere else, had translated for me verbatim into French some of the poems written in the Milanese, and then read them aloud in the original, I comprehended the peculiar inflection of voice and idiom in the people, and was charmed with it, as one is with the instinctive wit and wisdom of children. There is very little to see at Milan, compared with any other Italian city; and this was very fortunate for me, allowing an interval of repose in the house, which I cannot take when there is so much without, tempting me to incessant observation and study. I went through, the North of Italy with a constantly increasing fervor of interest. When I had thought of Italy, it was always of the South, of the Roman States, of Tuscany. But now I became deeply interested in the history, the institutions, the art of the North. The fragments of the past mark the progress of its waves so clearly, I learned to understand, to prize them every day more, to know how to make use of the books about them. I shall have much to say on these subjects some day. Leaving Milan, I went on the Lago Maggiore, and afterward into Switzerland. Of this tour I shall not speak here; it was a beautiful little romance by itself, and infinitely refreshing to be so near nature in these grand and simple forms, after so much exciting thought of Art and Man. The day passed in the St. Bernardin, with its lofty peaks and changing lights upon the distant snows,--its holy, exquisite valleys and waterfalls, its stories of eagles and chamois, was the greatest refreshment I ever experienced: it was bracing as a cold bath after the heat of a crowd amid which one has listened to some most eloquent oration. Returning from Switzerland, I passed a fortnight on the Lake of Como, and afterward visited Lugano. There is no exaggeration in the enthusiastic feeling with which artists and poets have viewed these Italian lakes. Their beauties are peculiar, enchanting, innumerable. The Titan of Richter, the Wanderjahre of Goethe, the Elena of Taylor, the pictures of Turner, had not prepared me for the visions of beauty that daily entranced the eyes and heart in those regions. To our country Nature has been most bounteous; but we have nothing in the same kind that can compare with these lakes, as seen under the Italian heaven. As to those persons who have pretended to discover that the effects of light and atmosphere were no finer than they found in our own lake scenery, I can only say that they must be exceedingly obtuse in organization,--a defect not uncommon among Americans. Nature seems to have labored to express her full heart in as many ways as possible, when she made these lakes, moulded and planted their shores. Lago Maggiore is grand, resplendent in Its beauty; the view of the Alps gives a sort of lyric exaltation to the scene. Lago di Garda is so soft and fair,--so glittering sweet on one side, the ruins of ancient palaces rise so softly with the beauties of that shore; but at the other end, amid the Tyrol, it is sublime, calm, concentrated in its meaning. Como cannot be better described in general than in the words of Taylor: "Softly sublime, profusely fair." Lugano is more savage, more free in its beauty. I was on it in a high gale; there was a little clanger, just enough to exhilarate; its waters were wild, and clouds blowing across the neighboring peaks. I like very much the boatmen on these lakes; they have strong and prompt character. Of simple features, they are more honest and manly than Italian men are found in the thoroughfares; their talk is not so witty as that of the Venetian gondoliers, but picturesque, and what the French call _incisive_. Very touching were some of their histories, as they told them to me while pausing sometimes on the lake. On this lake, also, I met Lady Franklin, wife of the celebrated navigator. She has been in the United States, and showed equal penetration and candor in remarks on what she had seen there. She gave me interesting particulars as to the state of things in Van Diemen's Land, where she passed seven years when her husband was in authority there. I returned to Milan for the great feast of the Madonna, 8th September, and those made for the Archbishop's entry, which took place the same week. These excited as much feeling as the Milanese can have a chance to display, this Archbishop being much nearer tire public heart than his predecessor, who was a poor servant of Austria. The Austrian rule is always equally hated, and time, instead of melting away differences, only makes them more glaring. The Austrian race have no faculties that can ever enable them to understand the Italian character; their policy, so well contrived to palsy and repress for a time, cannot kill, and there is always a force at work underneath which shall yet, and I think now before long, shake off the incubus. The Italian nobility have always kept the invader at a distance; they have not been at all seduced or corrupted by the lures of pleasure or power, but have shown a passive patriotism highly honorable to them. In the middle class ferments much thought, and there is a capacity for effort; in the present system it cannot show itself, but it is there; thought ferments, and will yet produce a wine that shall set the Lombard veins on fire when the time for action shall arrive. The lower classes of the population are in a dull state indeed. The censorship of the press prevents all easy, natural ways of instructing them; there are no public meetings, no free access to them by more instructed and aspiring minds. The Austrian policy is to allow them a degree of material well-being, and though so much wealth is drained from, the country for the service of the foreigners, jet enough must remain on these rich plains comfortably to feed and clothe the inhabitants. Yet the great moral influence of the Pope's action, though obstructed in their case, does reach and rouse them, and they, too, felt the thrill of indignation at the occupation of Ferrara. The base conduct of the police toward the people, when, at Milan, some youths were resolute to sing tire hymn in honor of Pius IX., when the feasts for the Archbishop afforded so legitimate an occasion, roused all the people to unwonted feeling. The nobles protested, and Austria had not courage to persist as usual. She could not sustain her police, who rushed upon a defenceless crowd, that had no share in what excited their displeasure, except by sympathy, and, driving them like sheep, wounded them _in the backs_. Austria feels that there is now no sympathy for her in these matters; that it is not the interest of the world to sustain her. Her policy is, indeed, too thoroughly organized to change except by revolution; its scope is to serve, first, a reigning family instead of the people; second, with the people to seek a physical in preference to an intellectual good; and, third, to prefer a seeming outward peace to an inward life. This policy may change its opposition from the tyrannical to the insidious; it can know no other change. Yet do I meet persons who call themselves Americans,--miserable, thoughtless Esaus, unworthy their high birthright,--who think that a mess of pottage can satisfy the wants of man, and that the Viennese listening to Strauss's waltzes, the Lombard peasant supping full of his polenta, is _happy enough_. Alas: I have the more reason to be ashamed of my countrymen that it is not among the poor, who have so much, toil that there is little time to think, but those who are rich, who travel,--in body that is, they do not travel in mind. Absorbed at home by the lust of gain, the love of show, abroad they see only the equipages, the fine clothes, the food,--they have no heart for the idea, for the destiny of our own great nation: how can they feel the spirit that is struggling now in this and others of Europe? But of the hopes of Italy I will write more fully in another letter, and state what I have seen, what felt, what thought. I went from Milan, to Pavia, and saw its magnificent Certosa, I passed several hours in examining its riches, especially the sculptures of its façade, full of force and spirit. I then went to Florence by Parma and Bologna. In Parma, though ill, I went to see all the works of the masters. A wonderful beauty it is that informs them,--not that which is the chosen food of my soul, yet a noble beauty, and which did its message to me also. Those works are failing; it will not be useless to describe them in a book. Beside these pictures, I saw nothing in Parma and Modena; these states are obliged to hold their breath while their poor, ignorant sovereigns skulk in corners, hoping to hide from the coming storm. Of all this more in my next. LETTER XVII. FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ROME IN THE SPRING.--THE POPE.--ROME AS A CAPITAL.--TUSCANY.--THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS THERE JUST ESTABLISHED.--THE ENLIGHTENED MINDS AND AVAILABLE INSTRUCTORS OF TUSCANY.--ITALIAN ESTIMATION OF PIUS IX., AND THE INFLUENCE, PRESENT AND FUTURE, OF HIS LABORS.--FOREIGN INTRUSION THE CURSE OF ITALY.--IRRUPTION OF THE AUSTRIANS INTO ITALY, AND ITS EFFECTS.--LOUIS PHILIPPE'S APOSTASY TURNED TO THE ADVANTAGE OF FREEDOM.--THE GREAT F�TE AT FLORENCE IN HONOR OF THE GRANT OF A NATIONAL GUARD.--THE AMERICAN SCULPTORS, GREENOUGH, CRAWFORD, AND THEIR PARTICIPATION IN THE F�TE.--AMERICANS GENERALLY IN ITALY.--HYMNS IN FLORENCE IN HONOR OF PIUS IX.--HAPPY AUGURY TO BE DRAWN FROM THE WISE DOCILITY OF THE PEOPLE.--AN EXPRESSION OF SYMPATHY FROM AMERICA TOWARD ITALY EARNESTLY HOPED FOR. Rome, October 18, 1847. In the spring, when I came to Rome, the people were in the intoxication of joy at the first serious measures of reform taken by the Pope. I saw with pleasure their childlike joy and trust. With equal pleasure I saw the Pope, who has not in his expression the signs of intellectual greatness so much as of nobleness and tenderness of heart, of large and liberal sympathies. Heart had spoken to heart between the prince and the people; it was beautiful to see the immediate good influence exerted by human feeling and generous designs, on the part of a ruler. He had wished to be a father, and the Italians, with that readiness of genius that characterizes them, entered at once into the relation; they, the Roman people, stigmatized by prejudice as so crafty and ferocious, showed themselves children, eager to learn, quick to obey, happy to confide. Still doubts were always present whether all this joy was not premature. The task undertaken by the Pope seemed to present insuperable difficulties. It is never easy to put new wine into old bottles, and our age is one where all things tend to a great crisis; not merely to revolution, but to radical reform. From the people themselves the help must come, and not from princes; in the new state of things, there will be none but natural princes, great men. From the aspirations of the general heart, from the teachings of conscience in individuals, and not from an old ivy-covered church long since undermined, corroded by time and gnawed by vermin, the help must come. Rome, to resume her glory, must cease to be an ecclesiastical capital; must renounce all this gorgeous mummery, whose poetry, whose picture, charms no one more than myself, but whose meaning is all of the past, and finds no echo in the future. Although I sympathized warmly with the warm love of the people, the adulation of leading writers, who were so willing to take all from the hand of the prince, of the Church, as a gift and a bounty, instead of implying steadily that it was the right of the people, was very repulsive to me. The moderate party, like all who, in a transition state, manage affairs with a constant eye to prudence, lacks dignity always in its expositions; it is disagreeable and depressing to read them. Passing into Tuscany, I found the liberty of the press just established, and a superior preparation to make use of it. The _Alba_, the _Patria_, were begun, and have been continued with equal judgment and spirit. Their aim is to educate the youth, to educate the lower people; they see that this is to be done by promoting thought fearlessly, yet urge temperance in action, while the time is yet so difficult, and many of its signs dubious. They aim at breaking down those barriers between the different states of Italy, relics of a barbarous state of polity, artificially kept up by the craft of her foes. While anxious not to break down what is really native to the Italian character,--defences and differences that give individual genius a chance to grow and the fruits of each region to ripen in their natural way,--they aim at a harmony of spirit as to measures of education and for the affairs of business, without which Italy can never, as one nation, present a front strong enough to resist foreign robbery, and for want of which so much time and talent are wasted here, and internal development almost wholly checked. There is in Tuscany a large corps of enlightened minds, well prepared to be the instructors, the elder brothers and guardians, of the lower people, and whose hearts burn to fulfil that noble office. Before, it had been almost impossible to them, for the reasons I have named in speaking of Lombardy; but during these last four months that the way has been opened by the freedom of the press, and establishment of the National Guard,--so valuable, first of all, as giving occasion for public meetings and free interchange of thought between the different classes,--it is surprising how much light they have been able to diffuse. A Bolognese, to whom I observed, "How can you be so full of trust when all your hopes depend, not on the recognition of principles and wants throughout the people, but on the life of one mortal man?" replied: "Ah! but you don't consider that his life gives us a chance to effect that recognition. If Pius IX. be spared to us five years, it will be impossible for his successors ever to take a backward course. Our nation is of a genius so vivacious,--we are unhappy, but not stupid, we Italians,--we can learn as much in two months as other nations in twenty years." This seemed to me no brag when I returned to Tuscany and saw the great development and diffusion of thought that had taken place during my brief absence. The Grand Duke, a well-intentioned, though dull man, had dared, to declare himself "_an_ ITALIAN _prince_" and the heart of Tuscany had bounded with hope. It is now deeply as justly felt that _the_ curse of Italy is foreign intrusion; that if she could dispense with foreign aid, and be free from foreign aggression, she would find the elements of salvation within herself. All her efforts tend that way, to re-establish the natural position of things; may Heaven grant them success! For myself, I believe they will attain it. I see more reason for hope, as I know more of the people. Their rash and baffled struggles have taught them prudence; they are wanted in the civilized world as a peculiar influence; their leaders are thinking men, their cause is righteous. I believe that Italy will revive to new life, and probably a greater, one more truly rich and glorious, than at either epoch of her former greatness. During the period of my absence, the Austrians had entered Ferrara. It is well that they hazarded this step, for it showed them the difficulties in acting against a prince of the Church who is at the same time a friend to the people. The position was new, and they were probably surprised at the result,--surprised at the firmness of the Pope, surprised at the indignation, tempered by calm resolve, on the part of the Italians. Louis Philippe's mean apostasy has this time turned to the advantage of freedom. He renounced the good understanding with England which it had been one of the leading features of his policy to maintain, in the hope of aggrandizing and enriching his family (not France, he did not care for France); he did not know that he was paving the way for Italian freedom. England now is led to play a part a little nearer her pretensions as the guardian of progress than she often comes, and the ghost of La Fayette looks down, not unappeased, to see the "Constitutional King" decried by the subjects he has cheated and lulled so craftily. The king of Sardinia is a worthless man, in whom nobody puts any trust so far as regards his heart or honor; but the stress of things seems likely to keep him on the right side. The little sovereigns blustered at first, then ran away affrighted when they found there was really a spirit risen at last within the charmed circle,--a spirit likely to defy, to transcend, the spells of haggard premiers and imbecile monarchs. I arrived in Florence, unhappily, too late for the great fête of the 12th of September, in honor of the grant of a National Guard. But I wept at the mere recital of the events of that day, which, if it should lead to no important results, must still be hallowed for ever in the memory of Italy, for the great and beautiful emotions that flooded the hearts of her children. The National Guard is hailed with no undue joy by Italians, as the earnest of progress, the first step toward truly national institutions and a representation of the people. Gratitude has done its natural work in their hearts; it has made them better. Some days before the fête were passed in reconciling all strifes, composing all differences between cities, districts, and individuals. They wished to drop all petty, all local differences, to wash away all stains, to bathe and prepare for a new great covenant of brotherly love, where each should act for the good of all. On that day they all embraced in sign of this,--strangers, foes, all exchanged the kiss of faith and love; they exchanged banners, as a token that they would fight for, would animate, one another. All was done in that beautiful poetic manner peculiar to this artist people; but it was the spirit, so great and tender, that melts my heart to think of. It was the spirit of true religion,--such, my Country! as, welling freshly from some great hearts in thy early hours, won for thee all of value that thou canst call thy own, whose groundwork is the assertion, still sublime though thou hast not been true to it, that all men have equal rights, and that these are _birth_-rights, derived from God alone. I rejoice to say that the Americans took their share on this occasion, and that Greenough--one of the few Americans who, living in Italy, takes the pains to know whether it is alive or dead, who penetrates beyond the cheats of tradesmen and the cunning of a mob corrupted by centuries of slavery, to know the real mind, the vital blood, of Italy--took a leading part. I am sorry to say that a large portion of my countrymen here take the same slothful and prejudiced view as the English, and, after many years' sojourn, betray entire ignorance of Italian literature and Italian life, beyond what is attainable in a month's passage through the thoroughfares. However, they did show, this time, a becoming spirit, and erected the American eagle where its cry ought to be heard from afar,--where a nation is striving for independent existence, and a government representing the people. Crawford here in Rome has had the just feeling to join the Guard, and it is a real sacrifice for an artist to spend time on the exercises; but it well becomes the sculptor of Orpheus,--of him who had such faith, such music of divine thought, that he made the stones move, turned the beasts from their accustomed haunts, and shamed hell itself into sympathy with the grief of love. I do not deny that such a spirit is wanted here in Italy; it is everywhere, if anything great, anything permanent, is to be done. In reference to what I have said of many Americans in Italy, I will only add, that they talk about the corrupt and degenerate state of Italy as they do about that of our slaves at home. They come ready trained to that mode of reasoning which affirms that, because men are degraded by bad institutions, they are not fit for better. As to the English, some of them are full of generous, intelligent sympathy;--indeed what is more solidly, more wisely good than the right sort of Englishmen!--but others are like a gentleman I travelled with the other day, a man of intelligence and refinement too as to the details of life and outside culture, who observed, that he did not see what the Italians wanted of a National Guard, unless to wear these little caps. He was a man who had passed five years in Italy, but always covered with that non-conductor called by a witty French writer "the Britannic fluid." Very sweet to my ear was the continual hymn in the streets of Florence, in honor of Pius IX. It is the Roman hymn, and none of the new ones written in Tuscany have been able to take its place. The people thank the Grand Duke when he does them good, but they know well from whose mind that good originates, and all their love is for the Pope. Time presses, or I would fain describe in detail the troupe of laborers of the lower class, marching home at night, keeping step as if they were in the National Guard, filling the air, and cheering the melancholy moon, by the patriotic hymns sung with the mellow tone and in the perfect time which belong to Italians. I would describe the extempore concerts in the streets, the rejoicings at the theatres, where the addresses of liberal souls to the people, through that best vehicle, the drama, may now be heard. But I am tired; what I have to write would fill volumes, and my letter must go. I will only add some words upon the happy augury I draw from the wise docility of the people. With what readiness they listened to wise counsel, and the hopes of the Pope that they would give no advantage to his enemies, at a time when they were so fevered by the knowledge that conspiracy was at work in their midst! That was a time of trial. On all these occasions of popular excitement their conduct is like music, in such order, and with such union of the melody of feeling with discretion where to stop; but what is wonderful is that they acted in the same manner on that difficult occasion. The influence of the Pope here is without bounds; he can always calm the crowd at once. But in Tuscany, where they have no such idol, they listened in the same way on a very trying occasion. The first announcement of the regulation for the Tuscan National Guard terribly disappointed the people; they felt that the Grand Duke, after suffering them to demonstrate such trust and joy on the feast of the 12th, did not really trust, on his side; that he meant to limit them all he could. They felt baffled, cheated; hence young men in anger tore down at once the symbols of satisfaction and respect; but the leading men went among the people, begged them to be calm, and wait till a deputation had seen the Grand Duke. The people, listening at once to men who, they were sure, had at heart their best good, waited; the Grand Duke became convinced, and all ended without disturbance. If they continue to act thus, their hopes cannot be baffled. Certainly I, for one, do not think that the present road will suffice to lead Italy to her goal. But it _is_ an onward, upward road, and the people learn as they advance. Now they can seek and think fearless of prisons and bayonets, a healthy circulation of blood begins, and the heart frees itself from disease. I earnestly hope for some expression of sympathy from my country toward Italy. Take a good chance and do something; you have shown much good feeling toward the Old World in its physical difficulties,--you ought to do still more in its spiritual endeavor. This cause is OURS, above all others; we ought to show that we feel it to be so. At present there is no likelihood of war, but in case of it I trust the United States would not fail in some noble token of sympathy toward this country. The soul of our nation need not wait for its government; these things are better done by individuals. I believe some in the United States will pay attention to these words of mine, will feel that I am not a person to be kindled by a childish, sentimental enthusiasm, but that I must be sure I have seen something of Italy before speaking as I do. I have been here only seven months, but my means of observation have been uncommon. I have been ardently desirous to judge fairly, and had no prejudices to prevent; beside, I was not ignorant of the history and literature of Italy, and had some common ground on which to stand with, its inhabitants, and hear what they have to say. In many ways Italy is of kin to us; she is the country of Columbus, of Amerigo, of Cabot. It would please me much to see a cannon here bought by the contributions of Americans, at whose head should stand the name of Cabot, to be used by the Guard for salutes on festive occasions, if they should be so happy as to have no more serious need. In Tuscany they are casting one to be called the "Gioberti," from a writer who has given a great impulse to the present movement. I should like the gift of America to be called the AMERIGO, the COLUMBO, or the WASHINGTON. Please think of this, some of my friends, who still care for the eagle, the Fourth of July, and the old cries of hope and honor. See if there are any objections that I do not think of, and do something if it is well and brotherly. Ah! America, with all thy rich boons, thou hast a heavy account to render for the talent given; see in every way that thou be not found wanting. LETTER XVIII. REFLECTIONS FOR THE NEW YEAR.--AMERICANS IN EUROPE.--FRANCE, ENGLAND, POLAND, ITALY, RUSSIA, AUSTRIA,--THEIR POLICY.--EUROPE TOILS AND STRUGGLES.--ALL THINGS BODE A NEW OUTBREAK.--THE EAGLE OF AMERICA STOOPS TO EARTH, AND SHARES THE CHARACTER OF THE VULTURE.--ABOLITION.--THE YOUTH OF THE LAND.--ANTICIPATIONS OF THEIR USEFULNESS. This letter will reach the United States about the 1st of January; and it may not be impertinent to offer a few New-Year's reflections. Every new year, indeed, confirms the old thoughts, but also presents them under some new aspects. The American in Europe, if a thinking mind, can only become more American. In some respects it is a great pleasure to be here. Although we have an independent political existence, bur position toward Europe, as to literature and the arts, is still that of a colony, and one feels the same joy here that is experienced by the colonist in returning to the parent home. What was but picture to us becomes reality; remote allusions and derivations trouble no more: we see the pattern of the stuff, and understand the whole tapestry. There is a gradual clearing up on many points, and many baseless notions and crude fancies are dropped. Even the post-haste passage of the business American through the great cities, escorted by cheating couriers and ignorant _valets de place_, unable to hold intercourse with the natives of the country, and passing all his leisure hours with his countrymen, who know no more than himself, clears his mind of some mistakes,--lifts some mists from his horizon. There are three species. First, the servile American,--a being utterly shallow, thoughtless, worthless. He comes abroad to spend his money and indulge his tastes. His object in Europe is to have fashionable clothes, good foreign cookery, to know some titled persons, and furnish himself with coffee-house gossip, by retailing which among those less travelled and as uninformed as himself he can win importance at home. I look with unspeakable contempt on this class,--a class which has all the thoughtlessness and partiality of the exclusive classes in Europe, without any of their refinement, or the chivalric feeling which still sparkles among them here and there. However, though these willing serfs in a free age do some little hurt, and cause some annoyance at present, they cannot continue long; our country is fated to a grand, independent existence, and, as its laws develop, these parasites of a bygone period must wither and drop away. Then there is the conceited American, instinctively bristling and proud of--he knows not what. He does not see, not he, that the history of Humanity for many centuries is likely to have produced results it requires some training, some devotion, to appreciate and profit by. With his great clumsy hands, only fitted to work on a steam-engine, he seizes the old Cremona violin, makes it shriek with anguish, in his grasp, and then declares he thought it was all humbug before he came, and now he knows it; that there is not really any music in these old things; that the frogs in one of our swamps make much finer, for they are young and alive. To him the etiquettes of courts and camps, the ritual of the Church, seem simply silly,--and no wonder, profoundly ignorant as he is of their origin and meaning. Just so the legends which are the subjects of pictures, the profound myths which are represented in the antique marbles, amaze and revolt him; as, indeed, such things need to be judged of by another standard than that of the Connecticut Blue-Laws. He criticises severely pictures, feeling quite sure that his natural senses are better means of judgment than the rules of connoisseurs,--not feeling that, to see such objects, mental vision as well as fleshly eyes are needed and that something is aimed at in Art beyond the imitation of the commonest forms of Nature. This is Jonathan in the sprawling state, the booby truant, not yet aspiring enough to be a good school-boy. Yet in his folly there is meaning; add thought and culture to his independence, and he will be a man of might: he is not a creature without hope, like the thick-skinned dandy of the class first specified. The artistes form a class by themselves. Yet among them, though seeking special aims by special means, may also be found the lineaments of these two classes, as well as of the third, of which I am now to speak. This is that of the thinking American,--a man who, recognizing the immense advantage of being born to a new world and on a virgin soil, yet does not wish one seed from the past to be lost. He is anxious to gather and carry back with him every plant that will bear a new climate and new culture. Some will dwindle; others will attain a bloom and stature unknown before. He wishes to gather them clean, free from noxious insects, and to give them a fair trial in his new world. And that he may know the conditions under which he may best place them in that new world, he does not neglect to study their history in this. The history of our planet in some moments seems so painfully mean and little,--such terrible bafflings and failures to compensate some brilliant successes,--such a crushing of the mass of men beneath, the feet of a few, and these, too, often the least worthy,--such a small drop of honey to each cup of gall, and, in many cases, so mingled that it is never one moment in life purely tasted,--above all, so little achieved for Humanity as a whole, such tides of war and pestilence intervening to blot out the traces of each triumph,--that no wonder if the strongest soul sometimes pauses aghast; no wonder if the many indolently console themselves with gross joys and frivolous prizes. Yes! those men _are_ worthy of admiration who can carry this cross faithfully through fifty years; it is a great while for all the agonies that beset a lover of good, a lover of men; it makes a soul worthy of a speedier ascent, a more productive ministry in the next sphere. Blessed are they who ever keep that portion of pure, generous love with which they began life! How blessed those who have deepened the fountains, and have enough to spare for the thirst of others! Some such there are; and, feeling that, with all the excuses for failure, still only the sight of those who triumph, gives a meaning to life or makes its pangs endurable, we must arise and follow. Eighteen hundred years of this Christian culture in these European kingdoms, a great theme never lost sight of, a mighty idea, an adorable history to which the hearts of men invariably cling, yet are genuine results rare as grains of gold in the river's sandy bed! Where is the genuine democracy to which the rights of all men are holy? where the child-like wisdom learning all through life more and more of the will of God? where the aversion to falsehood, in all its myriad disguises of cant, vanity, covetousness, so clear to be read in all the history of Jesus of Nazareth? Modern Europe is the sequel to that history, and see this hollow England, with its monstrous wealth and cruel poverty, its conventional life, and low, practical aims! see this poor France, so full of talent, so adroit, yet so shallow and glossy still, which could not escape from a false position with all its baptism of blood! see that lost Poland, and this Italy bound down by treacherous hands in all the force of genius! see Russia with its brutal Czar and innumerable slaves! see Austria and its royalty that represents nothing, and its people, who, as people, are and have nothing! If we consider the amount of truth that has really been spoken out in the world, and the love that has beat in private hearts,--how genius has decked each spring-time with such splendid flowers, conveying each one enough of instruction in its life of harmonious energy, and how continually, unquenchably, the spark of faith has striven to burst into flame and light up the universe,--the public failure seems amazing, seems monstrous. Still Europe toils and struggles with her idea, and, at this moment, all things bode and declare a new outbreak of the fire, to destroy old palaces of crime! May it fertilize also many vineyards! Here at this moment a successor of St. Peter, after the lapse of near two thousand years, is called "Utopian" by a part of this Europe, because he strives to get some food to the mouths of the _leaner_ of his flock. A wonderful state of things, and which leaves as the best argument against despair, that men do not, _cannot_ despair amid such dark experiences. And thou, my Country! wilt thou not be more true? does no greater success await thee? All things have so conspired to teach, to aid! A new world, a new chance, with oceans to wall in the new thought against interference from the old!--treasures of all kinds, gold, silver, corn, marble, to provide for every physical need! A noble, constant, starlike soul, an Italian, led the way to thy shores, and, in the first days, the strong, the pure, those too brave, too sincere, for the life of the Old World, hastened to people them. A generous struggle then shook off what was foreign, and gave the nation a glorious start for a worthy goal. Men rocked the cradle of its hopes, great, firm, disinterested, men, who saw, who wrote, as the basis of all that was to be done, a statement of the rights, the _inborn_ rights of men, which, if fully interpreted and acted upon, leaves nothing to be desired. Yet, O Eagle! whose early flight showed this clear sight of the sun, how often dost thou near the ground, how show the vulture in these later days! Thou wert to be the advance-guard of humanity, the herald of all progress; how often hast thou betrayed this high commission! Fain would the tongue in clear, triumphant accents draw example from thy story, to encourage the hearts of those who almost faint and die beneath the old oppressions. But we must stammer and blush when we speak of many things. I take pride here, that I can really say the liberty of the press works well, and that checks and balances are found naturally which suffice to its government. I can say that the minds of our people are alert, and that talent has a free chance to rise. This is much. But dare I further say that political ambition is not as darkly sullied as in other countries? Dare I say that men of most influence in political life are those who represent most virtue, or even intellectual power? Is it easy to find names in that career of which I can speak with enthusiasm? Must I not confess to a boundless lust of gain in my country? Must I not concede the weakest vanity, which bristles and blusters at each foolish taunt of the foreign press, and admit that the men who make these undignified rejoinders seek and find popularity so? Can I help admitting that there is as yet no antidote cordially adopted, which will defend even that great, rich country against the evils that have grown out of the commercial system in the Old World? Can I say our social laws are generally better, or show a nobler insight into the wants of man and woman? I do, indeed, say what I believe, that voluntary association for improvement in these particulars will be the grand means for my nation to grow, and give a nobler harmony to the coming age. But it is only of a small minority that I can say they as yet seriously take to heart these things; that they earnestly meditate on what is wanted for their country, for mankind,--for our cause is indeed, the cause of all mankind at present. Could we succeed, really succeed, combine a deep religious love with practical development, the achievements of genius with the happiness of the multitude, we might believe man had now reached a commanding point in his ascent, and would stumble and faint no more. Then there is this horrible cancer of slavery, and the wicked war that has grown out of it. How dare I speak of these things here? I listen to the same arguments against the emancipation of Italy, that are used against the emancipation of our blacks; the same arguments in favor of the spoliation of Poland, as for the conquest of Mexico. I find the cause of tyranny and wrong everywhere the same,--and lo! my country! the darkest offender, because with the least excuse; forsworn to the high calling with which she was called; no champion of the rights of men, but a robber and a jailer; the scourge hid behind her banner; her eyes fixed, not on the stars, but on the possessions of other men. How it pleases me here to think of the Abolitionists! I could never endure to be with them at home, they were so tedious, often so narrow, always so rabid and exaggerated in their tone. But, after all, they had a high motive, something eternal in their desire and life; and if it was not the only thing worth thinking of, it was really something worth living and dying for, to free a great nation from such a terrible blot, such a threatening plague. God strengthen them, and make them wise to achieve their purpose! I please myself, too, with remembering some ardent souls among the American youth, who I trust will yet expand, and help to give soul to the huge, over-fed, too hastily grown-up body. May they be constant! "Were man but constant, he were perfect," it has been said; and it is true that he who could be constant to those moments in which he has been truly human, not brutal, not mechanical, is on the sure path to his perfection, and to effectual service of the universe. It is to the youth that hope addresses itself; to those who yet burn with aspiration, who are not hardened in their sins. But I dare not expect too much of them. I am not very old; yet of those who, in life's morning, I saw touched by the light of a high hope, many have seceded. Some have become voluptuaries; some, mere family men, who think it quite life enough to win bread for half a dozen people, and treat them, decently; others are lost through indolence and vacillation. Yet some remain constant; "I have witnessed many a shipwreck, Yet still beat noble hearts." I have found many among the youth of England, of France, of Italy, also, full of high desire; but will they have courage and purity to fight the battle through in the sacred, the immortal band? Of some of them I believe it, and await the proof. If a few succeed amid the trial, we have not lived and loved in vain. To these, the heart and hope of my country, a happy new year! I do not know what I have written; I have merely yielded to my feelings in thinking of America; but something of true love must be in these lines. Receive them kindly, my friends; it is, of itself, some merit for printed words to be sincere. LETTER XIX. THE CLIMATE OF ITALY.--REVIEW OF FIRST IMPRESSIONS.--ROME IN ITS VARIOUS ASPECTS.--THE POPE.--CEMETERY OF SANTO SPIRITO.--CEREMONIES AT THE CHAPELS.--THE WOMEN OF ITALY.--FESTIVAL OF ST. CARLO BORROMEO.--AN INCIDENT IN THE CHAPEL.--ENGLISH RESIDENTS IN THE SEVEN-HILLED CITY.--MRS. TROLLOPE A RESIDENT OF FLORENCE.--THE POPE AS HE COMMUNICATES WITH HIS PEOPLE.--THE POSITION OF AFFAIRS.--LESSER POTENTATES.--THE INAUGURATION OF THE NEW COUNCIL.--THE CEREMONIES THERETO APPERTAINING.--THE AMERICAN FLAG IN ROME.--A BALL.--A FEAST, AND ITS REVERSE.--THE FUNERAL OF A COUNCILLOR. Rome, December 17, 1847. This 17th day of December I rise to see the floods of sunlight blessing us, as they have almost every day since I returned to Rome,--two months and more,--with scarce three or four days of rainy weather. I still see the fresh roses and grapes each morning on my table, though both these I expect to give up at Christmas. This autumn is _something like_, as my countrymen say at home. Like _what_, they do not say; so I always supposed they meant like their ideal standard. Certainly this weather corresponds with mine; and I begin to believe the climate of Italy is really what it has been represented. Shivering here last spring in an air no better than the cruel cast wind of Puritan Boston, I thought all the praises lavished on "Italia, O Italia!" would turn out to be figments of the brain; and that even Byron, usually accurate beyond the conception of plodding pedants, had deceived us when he says, you have the happiness in Italy to "See the sun set, sure he'll rise to-morrow," and not, according to a view which exercises a withering influence on the enthusiasm of youth in my native land, be forced to regard each pleasant day as a _weather-breeder_. How delightful, too, is the contrast between this time and the spring in another respect! Then I was here, like travellers in general, expecting to be driven away in a short time. Like others, I went through the painful process of sight-seeing, so unnatural everywhere, so counter to the healthful methods and true life of the mind. You rise in the morning knowing there are a great number of objects worth knowing, which you may never have the chance to see again. You go every day, in all moods, under all circumstances; feeling, probably, in seeing them, the inadequacy of your preparation for understanding or duly receiving them. This consciousness would be most valuable if one had time to think and study, being the natural way in which the mind is lured to cure its defects; but you have no time; you are always wearied, body and mind, confused, dissipated, sad. The objects are of commanding beauty or full of suggestion, but there is no quiet to let that beauty breathe its life into the soul; no time to follow up these suggestions, and plant for the proper harvest. Many persons run about Rome for nine days, and then go away; they might as well expect to appreciate the Venus by throwing a stone at it, as hope really to see Rome in this time. I stayed in Rome nine weeks, and came away unhappy as he who, having been taken in the visions of the night through some wondrous realm, wakes unable to recall anything but the hues and outlines of the pageant; the real knowledge, the recreative power induced by familiar love, the assimilation of its soul and substance,--all the true value of such a revelation,--is wanting; and he remains a poor Tantalus, hungrier than before he had tasted this spiritual food. No; Rome is not a nine-days wonder; and those who try to make it such lose the ideal Rome (if they ever had it), without gaining any notion of the real. To those who travel, as they do everything else, only because others do, I do not speak; they are nothing. Nobody counts in the estimate of the human race who has not a character. For one, I now really live in Rome, and I begin to see and feel the real Rome. She reveals herself day by day; she tells me some of her life. Now I never go out to see a sight, but I walk every day; and here I cannot miss of some object of consummate interest to end a walk. In the evenings, which are long now, I am at leisure to follow up the inquiries suggested by the day. As one becomes familiar, Ancient and Modern Rome, at first so painfully and discordantly jumbled together, are drawn apart to the mental vision. One sees where objects and limits anciently wore; the superstructures vanish, and you recognize the local habitation of so many thoughts. When this begins to happen, one feels first truly at ease in Rome. Then the old kings, the consuls and tribunes, the emperors, drunk with blood and gold, the warriors of eagle sight and remorseless beak, return for us, and the togated procession finds room to sweep across the scene; the seven hills tower, the innumerable temples glitter, and the Via Sacra swarms with triumphal life once more. Ah! how joyful to see once more _this_ Rome, instead of the pitiful, peddling, Anglicized Rome, first viewed in unutterable dismay from the _coupé_ of the vettura,--a Rome all full of taverns, lodging-houses, cheating chambermaids, vilest _valets de place_, and fleas! A Niobe of nations indeed! Ah! why, secretly the heart blasphemed, did the sun omit to kill her too, when all the glorious race which wore her crown fell beneath his ray? Thank Heaven, it is possible to wash away all this dirt, and come at the marble yet. Their the later Papal Rome: it requires much acquaintance, much thought, much reference to books, for the child of Protestant Republican America to see where belong the legends illustrated by rite and picture, the sense of all the rich tapestry, where it has a united and poetic meaning, where it is broken by some accident of history. For all these things--a senseless mass of juggleries to the uninformed eye--are really growths of the human spirit struggling to develop its life, and full of instruction for those who learn to understand them. Then Modern Rome,--still ecclesiastical, still darkened and damp in the shadow of the Vatican, but where bright hopes gleam now amid the ashes! Never was a people who have had more to corrupt them,--bloody tyranny, and incubus of priestcraft, the invasions, first of Goths, then of trampling emperors and kings, then of sight-seeing foreigners,--everything to turn them from a sincere, hopeful, fruitful life; and they are much corrupted, but still a fine race. I cannot look merely with a pictorial eye on the lounge of the Roman dandy, the bold, Juno gait of the Roman Contadina. I love them,--dandies and all? I believe the natural expression of these fine forms will animate them yet. Certainly there never was a people that showed a better heart than they do in this day of love, of purely moral influence. It makes me very happy to be for once in a place ruled by a father's love, and where the pervasive glow of one good, generous heart is felt in every pulse of every day. I have seen the Pope several times since my return, and it is a real pleasure to see him in the thoroughfares, where his passage is always greeted as that of _the_ living soul. The first week of November there is much praying for the dead here in the chapels of the cemeteries. I went to Santo Spirito. This cemetery stands high, and all the way up the slope was lined with beggars petitioning for alms, in every attitude find tone, (I mean tone that belongs to the professional beggar's gamut, for that is peculiar,) and under every pretext imaginable, from the quite legless elderly gentleman to the ragged ruffian with the roguish twinkle in his eye, who has merely a slight stiffness in one arm and one leg. I could not help laughing, it was such a show,--greatly to the alarm of my attendant, who declared they would kill me, if ever they caught me alone; but I was not afraid. I am sure the endless falsehood in which such creatures live must make them very cowardly. We entered the cemetery; it was a sweet, tranquil place, lined with cypresses, and soft sunshine lying on the stone coverings where repose the houses of clay in which once dwelt joyous Roman hearts,--for the hearts here do take pleasure in life. There were several chapels; in one boys were chanting, in others people on their knees silently praying for the dead. In another was one of the groups in wax exhibited in such chapels through the first week of November. It represented St. Carlo Borromeo as a beautiful young man in a long scarlet robe, pure and brilliant as was the blood of the martyrs, relieving the poor who were grouped around him,--old people and children, the halt, the maimed, the blind; he had called them all into the feast of love. The chapel was lighted and draped so as to give very good effect to this group; the spectators were mainly children and young girls, listening with ardent eyes, while their parents or the nuns explained to them the group, or told some story of the saint. It was a pretty scene, only marred by the presence of a villanous-looking man, who ever and anon shook the poor's box. I cannot understand the bad taste of choosing him, when there were _frati_ and priests enough of expression less unprepossessing. I next entered a court-yard, where the stations, or different periods in the Passion of Jesus, are painted on the wall. Kneeling before these were many persons: here a Franciscan, in his brown robe and cord; there a pregnant woman, uttering, doubtless, some tender aspiration for the welfare of the yet unborn dear one; there some boys, with gay yet reverent air; while all the while these fresh young voices were heard chanting. It was a beautiful moment, and despite the wax saint, the ill-favored friar, the professional mendicants, and my own removal, wide as pole from pole, from the positron of mind indicated by these forms, their spirit touched me, and. I prayed too; prayed for the distant, every way distant,--for those who seem to have forgotten me, and with me all we had in common; prayed for the dead in spirit, if not in body; prayed for myself, that I might never walk the earth "The tomb of my dead self"; and prayed in general for all unspoiled and loving hearts,--no less for all who suffer and find yet no helper. Going out, I took my road by the cross which marks the brow of the hill. Up the ascent still wound the crowd of devotees, and still the beggars beset them. Amid that crowd, how many lovely, warm-hearted women! The women of Italy are intellectually in a low place, _but_--they are unaffected; you can see what Heaven meant them to be, and I believe they will be yet the mothers of a great and generous race. Before me lay Rome,--how exquisitely tranquil in the sunset! Never was an aspect that for serene grandeur could vie with that of Rome at sunset. Next day was the feast of the Milanese saint, whose life has been made known to some Americans by Manzoni, when speaking in his popular novel of the cousin of St. Carlo, Federigo Borromeo. The Pope came in state to the church of St. Carlo, in the Corso. The show was magnificent; the church is not very large, and was almost filled with Papal court and guards, in all their splendid harmonies of color. An Italian child was next me, a little girl of four or five years, whom her mother had brought to see the Pope. As in the intervals of gazing the child smiled and made signs to me, I nodded in return, and asked her name. "Virginia," said she; "and how is the Signora named?" "Margherita," "My name," she rejoined, "is Virginia Gentili." I laughed, but did not follow up the cunning, graceful lead,--still I chatted and played with her now and then. At last, she said to her mother, "La Signora e molto cara," ("The Signora is very dear," or, to use the English equivalent, _a darling_,) "show her my two sisters." So the mother, herself a fine-looking woman, introduced two handsome young ladies, and with the family I was in a moment pleasantly intimate for the hour. Before me sat three young English ladies, the pretty daughters of a noble Earl; their manners were a strange contrast to this Italian graciousness, best expressed by their constant use of the pronoun _that_. "_See that man!_" (i.e. some high dignitary of the Church,) "Look at that dress!" dropped constantly from their lips. Ah! without being a Catholic, one may well wish Rome was not dependent on English sight-seers, who violate her ceremonies with acts that bespeak their thoughts full of wooden shoes and warming-pans. Can anything be more sadly expressive of times out of joint than the fact that Mrs. Trollope is a resident in Italy? Yes! she is fixed permanently in Florence, as I am told, pensioned at the rate of two thousand pounds a year to trail her slime over the fruit of Italy. She is here in Rome this winter, and, after having violated the virgin beauty of America, will have for many a year her chance to sully the imperial matron of the civilized world. What must the English public be, if it wishes to pay two thousand pounds a year to get Italy Trollopified? But to turn to a pleasanter subject. When the Pope entered, borne in his chair of state amid the pomp of his tiara and his white and gold robes, he looked to me thin, or, as the Italians murmur anxiously at times, _consumato_, or wasted. But during the ceremony he seemed absorbed in his devotions, and at the end I think he had become exhilarated by thinking of St. Carlo, who was such another over the human race as himself, and his face wore a bright glow of faith. As he blessed the people, he raised his eyes to Heaven, with a gesture quite natural: it was the spontaneous act of a soul which felt that moment more than usual its relation with things above it, and sure of support from a higher Power. I saw him to still greater advantage a little while after, when, riding on the Campagna with a young gentleman who had been ill, we met the Pope on foot, taking exercise. He often quits his carriage at the gates and walks in this way. He walked rapidly, robed in a simple white drapery, two young priests in spotless purple on either side; they gave silver to the poor who knelt beside the way, while the beloved Father gave his benediction. My companion knelt; he is not a Catholic, but he felt that "this blessing would do him no harm." The Pope saw at once he was ill, and gave him a mark of interest, with that expression of melting love, the true, the only charity, which assures all who look on him that, were his power equal to his will, no living thing would ever suffer more. This expression the artists try in vain to catch; all busts and engravings of him are caricatures; it is a magnetic sweetness, a lambent light that plays over his features, and of which only great genius or a soul tender as his own would form an adequate image. The Italians have one term of praise peculiarly characteristic of their highly endowed nature. They say of such and such, _Ha una phisonomia simpatica_,--"He has a sympathetic expression"; and this is praise enough. This may be pre-eminently said of that of Pius IX. _He_ looks, indeed, as if nothing human could be foreign to him. Such alone are the genuine kings of men. He has shown undoubted wisdom, clear-sightedness, bravery, and firmness; but it is, above all, his generous human heart that gives him his power over this people. His is a face to shame the selfish, redeem the sceptic, alarm the wicked, and cheer to new effort the weary and heavy-laden. What form the issues of his life may take is yet uncertain; in my belief, they are such as he does not think of; but they cannot fail to be for good. For my part, I shall always rejoice to have been here in his time. The working of his influence confirms my theories, and it is a positive treasure to me to have seen him. I have never been presented, not wishing to approach, so real a presence in the path of mere etiquette; I am quite content to see him standing amid the crowd, while the band plays the music he has inspired. "Sons of Rome, awake!" Yes, awake, and let no police-officer put you again to sleep in prison, as has happened to those who were called by the Marseillaise. Affairs look well. The king of Sardinia has at last, though with evident distrust and heartlessness, entered the upward path in a way that makes it difficult to return. The Duke of Modena, the most senseless of all these ancient gentlemen, after publishing a declaration, which made him more ridiculous than would the bitterest pasquinade penned by another, that he would fight to the death against reform, finds himself obliged to lend an ear as to the league for the customs; and if he joins that, other measures follow of course. Austria trembles; and, in fine, cannot sustain the point of Ferrara. The king of Naples, after having shed much blood, for which he has a terrible account to render, (ah! how many sad, fair romances are to tell already about the Calabrian difficulties!) still finds the spirit fomenting in his people; he cannot put it down. The dragon's teeth are sown, and the Lazzaroni may be men yet! The Swiss affairs have taken the right direction, and good will ensue, if other powers act with decent honesty, and think of healing the wounds of Switzerland, rather than merely of tying her down, so that she cannot annoy them. In Rome, here, the new Council is inaugurated, and elections have given tolerable satisfaction. Already, struggles ended in other places begin to be renewed here, as to gas-lights, introduction of machinery, &c. We shall see at the end of the winter how they have gone on. At any rate, the wants of the people are in some measure represented; and already the conduct of those who have taken to themselves so large a portion of the loaves and fishes on the very platform supposed to be selected by Jesus for a general feeding of his sheep, begins to be the subject of spoken as well as whispered animadversion. Torlonia is assailed in his bank, Campana amid his urns or his Monte di Picti; but these assaults have yet to be verified. On the day when the Council was to be inaugurated, great preparations were made by representatives of other parts of Italy, and also of foreign nations friendly to the cause of progress. It was considered to represent the same fact as the feast of the 12th of September in Tuscany,--the dawn of an epoch when the people shall find their wants and aspirations represented and guarded. The Americans showed a warm interest; the gentlemen subscribing to buy a flag, the United States having none before in Rome, and the ladies meeting to make it. The same distinguished individual, indeed, who at Florence made a speech to prevent "the American eagle being taken out on so trifling an occasion," with similar perspicuity and superiority of view, on the present occasion, was anxious to prevent "rash demonstrations, which might embroil the United States with Austria"; but the rash youth here present rushed on, ignorant how to value his Nestorian prudence,--fancying, hot-headed simpletons, that the cause of Freedom was the cause of America, and her eagle at home wherever the sun shed a warmer ray, and there was reason to hope a happier life for man. So they hurried to buy their silk, red, white, and blue, and inquired of recent arrivals how many States there are this winter in the Union, in order to making the proper number of stars. A magnificent spread-eagle was procured, not without difficulty, as this, once the eyrie of the king of birds, is now a rookery rather, full of black, ominous fowl, ready to eat the harvest sown by industrious hands. This eagle, having previously spread its wings over a piece of furniture where its back was sustained by the wall, was somewhat deficient in a part of its anatomy. But we flattered ourselves he should be held so high that no Roman eye, if disposed, could carp and criticise. When lo! just as the banner was ready to unfold its young glories in the home of Horace, Virgil, and Tacitus, an ordinance appeared prohibiting the display of any but the Roman ensign. This ordinance was, it is said, caused by representations made to the Pope that the Oscurantists, ever on the watch to do mischief, meant to make this the occasion of disturbance,--as it is their policy to seek to create irritation here; that the Neapolitan and Lombardo-Venetian flags would appear draped with black, and thus the signal be given for tumult. I cannot help thinking these fears were groundless; that the people, on their guard, would have indignantly crushed at once any of these malignant efforts. However that may be, no one can ever be really displeased with any measure of the Pope, knowing his excellent intentions. But the limitation of the festival deprived it of the noble character of the brotherhood of nations and an ideal aim, worn by that of Tuscany. The Romans, drilled and disappointed, greeted their Councillors with but little enthusiasm. The procession, too, was but a poor affair for Rome. Twenty-four carriages had been lent by the princes and nobles, at the request of the city, to convey the Councillors. I found something symbolical in this. Thus will they be obliged to furnish from their old grandeur the vehicles of the new ideas. Each deputy was followed by his target and banner. When the deputy for Ferrara passed, many garlands were thrown upon his carriage. There has been deep respect and sympathy felt for the citizens of Ferrara, they have conducted so well under their late trying circumstances. They contained themselves, knowing that the least indiscretion would give a handle for aggression to the enemies of the good cause. But the daily occasions of irritation must have been innumerable, and they have shown much power of wise and dignified self-government. After the procession passed, I attempted to go on foot from the Café Novo, in the Corso, to St. Peter's, to see the decorations of the streets, but it was impossible. In that dense, but most vivacious, various, and good-humored crowd, with all best will on their part to aid the foreigner, it was impossible to advance. So I saw only themselves; but that was a great pleasure. There is so much individuality of character here, that it is a great entertainment to be in a crowd. In the evening, there was a ball given at the Argentina. Lord Minto was there; Prince Corsini, now Senator; the Torlonias, in uniform of the Civic Guard,--Princess Torlonia in a sash of their colors, given her by the Civic Guard, which she waved often in answer to their greetings. But the beautiful show of the evening was the Trasteverini dancing the Saltarello in their most brilliant costume. I saw them thus to much greater advantage than ever before. Several were nobly handsome, and danced admirably; it was really like Pinelli. The Saltarello enchants me; in this is really the Italian wine, the Italian sun. The first time, I saw it danced one night very unexpectedly near the Colosseum; it carried me quite beyond myself, so that I most unamiably insisted on staying, while the friends in my company, not heated by enthusiasm like me, were shivering and perhaps catching cold from the damp night-air. I fear they remember it against me; nevertheless I cherish the memory of the moments wickedly stolen at their expense, for it is only the first time seeing such a thing that you enjoy a peculiar delight. But since, I love to see and study it much. The Pope, in receiving the Councillors, made a speech,--such as the king of Prussia intrenched himself in on a similar occasion, only much better and shorter,--implying that he meant only to improve, not to _reform_, and should keep things _in statu quo_, safe locked with the keys of St. Peter. This little speech was made, no doubt, more to reassure czars, emperors, and kings, than from the promptings of the spirit. But the fact of its necessity, as well as the inferior freedom and spirit of the Roman journals to those of Tuscany, seems to say that the pontifical government, though from the accident of this one man's accession it has taken the initiative to better times, yet may not, after a while, from its very nature, be able to keep in the vanguard. A sad contrast to the feast of this day was presented by the same persons, a fortnight after, following the body of Silvani, one of the Councillors, who died suddenly. The Councillors, the different societies of Rome, a corps _frati_ bearing tapers, the Civic Guard with drums slowly beating, the same state carriages with their liveried attendants all slowly, sadly moving, with torches and banners, drooped along the Corso in the dark night. A single horseman, with his long white plume and torch reversed, governed the procession; it was the Prince Aldobrandini. The whole had that grand effect so easily given by this artist people, who seize instantly the natural poetry of an occasion, and with unanimous tact hasten to represent it. More and much anon. LETTER XX. ROME.--BAD WEATHER.--ST. CECILIA.--THE PEOPLE'S PROCESSIONS.--TAKING THE VEIL.--FESTIVITIES.--POLITICAL AGITATION.--NOBLES.--MARIA LOUISA.--GUICCIOLI.--PARMA.--ADDRESS TO THE NEW SOVEREIGN.--THE NEW YORK MEETING FOR ITALY.--ADDRESS TO THE POPE. Rome, December 30, 1847. I could not, in my last, content myself with praising the glorious weather. I wrote in the last day of it. Since, we have had a fortnight of rain falling incessantly, and whole days and nights of torrents such as are peculiar to the "clearing-up" shower in our country. Under these circumstances, I have found my lodging in the Corso not only has its dark side, but is all dark, and that one in the Piazza di Spagne would have been better for me in this respect; there on these days, the only ones when I wish to stay at home and write and study, I should have had the light. Now, if I consulted the good of my eyes, I should have the lamp lit on first rising in the morning. "Every sweet must have its bitter," and the exchange from the brilliance of the Italian heaven to weeks and months of rain, and such black cloud, is unspeakably dejecting. For myself, at the end of this fortnight without exercise or light, and in such a damp atmosphere, I find myself without strength, without appetite, almost without spirits. The life of the German scholar who studies fifteen hours out of the twenty-four, or that of the Spielberg prisoner who could live through ten, fifteen, twenty years of dark prison with, only half an hour's exercise in the day, is to me a mystery. How can the brain, the nerves, ever support it? We are made to keep in motion, to drink the air and light; to me these are needed to make life supportable, the physical state is so difficult and full of pains at any rate. I am sorry for those who have arrived just at this time hoping to enjoy the Christmas festivities. Everything was spoiled by the weather. I went at half past ten to San Luigi Francese, a church adorned with some of Domenichino's finest frescos on the life and death of St. Cecilia. This name leads me to a little digression. In a letter to Mr. Phillips, the dear friend of our revered Dr. Charming, I asked him if he remembered what recumbent statue it was of which Dr. Charming was wont to speak as of a sight that impressed him more than anything else in Rome. He said, indeed, his mood, and the unexpectedness in seeing this gentle, saintly figure lying there as if death had just struck her down, had no doubt much influence upon him; but still he believed the work had a peculiar holiness in its expression. I recognized at once the theme of his description (the name he himself had forgotten) as I entered the other evening the lonely church of St. Cecilia in Trastevere. As in his case, it was twilight: one or two nuns were at their devotions, and there lay the figure in its grave-clothes, with an air so gentle, so holy, as if she had only ceased to pray as the hand of the murderer struck her down. Her gentle limbs seemed instinct still with soft, sweet life; the expression was not of the heroine, the martyr, so much as of the tender, angelic woman. I could well understand the deep impression made upon his mind. The expression of the frescos of Domenichino is not inharmonious with the suggestions of this statue. Finding the Mass was not to begin for some time, I set out for the Quirinal to see the Pope return from that noble church, Santa Maria Maggiore, where he officiated this night. I reached the mount just as he was returning. A few torches gleamed before his door; perhaps a hundred people were gathered together round the fountain. Last year an immense multitude waited for him there to express their affection in one grand good-night; the change was occasioned partly by the weather, partly by other causes, of which I shall speak by and by. Just as he returned, the moon looked palely out from amid the wet clouds, and shone upon the fountain, and the noble figures above it, and the long white cloaks of the Guardia Nobile who followed his carriage on horseback; darker objects could scarcely be seen, except by the flickering light of the torches, much blown by the wind. I then returned to San Luigi. The effect of the night service there was very fine; those details which often have such a glaring, mean look by day are lost sight of in the night, and the unity of impression from the service is much more undisturbed. The music, too, descriptive of that era which promised peace on earth, good-will to men, was very sweet, and the _pastorale_ particularly soothed the heart amid the crowd, and pompous ceremonial. But here, too, the sweet had its bitter, in the vulgar vanity of the leader of the orchestra, a trait too common in such, who, not content with marking the time for the musicians, made his stick heard in the remotest nook of the church; so that what would have been sweet music, and flowed in upon the soul, was vulgarized to make you remember the performers and their machines. On Monday the leaders of the Guardia Civica paid their respects to the Pope, who, in receiving them, expressed his constantly increasing satisfaction in having given this institution to his people. The same evening there was a procession with torches to the Quirinal, to pay the homage due to the day (Feast of St. John, and name-day of the Pope, _Giovanni Maria Mastai_); but all the way the rain continually threatened to extinguish the torches, and the Pope could give but a hasty salute under an umbrella, when the heavens were again opened, and such a cataract of water descended, as drove both man and beast to seek the nearest shelter. On Sunday, I went to see a nun take the veil. She was a person of high family; a princess gave her away, and the Cardinal Ferreti, Secretary of State, officiated. It was a much less effective ceremony than I expected from the descriptions of travellers and romance-writers. There was no moment of throwing on the black veil; no peal of music; no salute of cannon. The nun, an elegantly dressed woman of five or six and twenty,--pretty enough, but whose quite worldly air gave the idea that it was one of those arrangements made because no suitable establishment could otherwise be given her,--came forward, knelt, and prayed; her confessor, in that strained, unnatural whine too common among preachers of all churches and all countries, praised himself for having induced her to enter on a path which would lead her fettered steps "from palm to palm, from triumph to triumph," Poor thing! she looked as if the domestic olives and poppies were all she wanted; and lacking these, tares and wormwood must be her portion. She was then taken behind a grating, her hair cut, and her clothes exchanged for the nun's vestments; the black-robed sisters who worked upon her looking like crows or ravens at their ominous feasts. All the while, the music played, first sweet and thoughtful, then triumphant strains. The effect on my mind was revolting and painful to the last degree. Were monastic seclusion always voluntary, and could it be ended whenever the mind required a change back from seclusion to common life, I should have nothing to say against it; there are positions of the mind which it suits exactly, and even characters that might choose it all through life; certainly, to the broken-hearted it presents a shelter that Protestant communities do not provide. But where it is enforced or repented of, no hell could be worse; nor can a more terrible responsibility be incurred than by him who has persuaded a novice that the snares of the world are less dangerous than the demons of solitude. Festivities in Italy have been of great importance, since, for a century or two back, the thought, the feeling, the genius of the people have had more chance to expand, to express themselves, there than anywhere else. Now, if the march of reform goes forward, this will not be so; there will be also speeches made freely on public occasions, without having the life pressed out of them by the censorship. Now we hover betwixt the old and the new; when the many reasons for the new prevail, I hope what is poetical in the old will not be lost. The ceremonies of New Year are before me; but as I shall have to send this letter on New-Year's day, I cannot describe them. The Romans begin now to talk of the mad gayeties of Carnival, and the Opera is open. They have begun with "Attila," as, indeed, there is little hope of hearing in Italy other music than Verdi's. Great applause waited on the following words:-- "EZIO (THE ROMAN LEADER). "E gittata la mia sorte, Pronto sono ad ogni guerra, S' io cardò, cadrè da forte, E il mio nome resterà. "Non vedrò l'amata terra Svener lenta e farri a brano, Sopra l'ultimo Romano Tutta Italia piangerà." "My lot is fixed, and I stand ready for every conflict. If I must fall, I shall fall as a brave man, and my fame will survive. I shall not see my beloved country fall to pieces and slowly perish, and over the last Roman all Italy will weep." And at lines of which the following is a translation:-- "O brave man, whose mighty power can raise thy country from such dire distress; from the immortal hills, radiant with glory, let the shades of our ancestors arise; oh! only one day, one instant, arise to look upon us!" It was an Italian who sung this strain, though, singularly enough, here in the heart of Italy, so long reputed the home of music, three principal parts were filled by persons bearing the foreign names of Ivanoff, Mitrovich, and Nissren. Naples continues in a state of great excitement, which now pervades the upper classes, as several young men of noble families have been arrested; among them, one young man much beloved, son of Prince Terella, and who, it is said, was certainly not present on the occasion for which he was arrested, and that the measure was taken because he was known to sympathize strongly with the liberal movement. The nobility very generally have not feared to go to the house of his father to express their displeasure at the arrest and interest in the young man. The ministry, it is said, are now persuaded of the necessity of a change of measures. The king alone remains inflexible in his stupidity. The stars of Bonaparte and Byron show again a conjunction, by the almost simultaneous announcement of changes in the lot of women with whom they were so intimately connected;--the Archduchess of Parma, Maria Louisa, is dead; the Countess Guiccioli is married. The Countess I have seen several times; she still looks young, and retains the charms which by the contemporaries of Byron she is reputed to have had; they never were of a very high order; her best expression is that of a good heart. I always supposed that Byron, weary and sick of the world such as he had known it, became attached to her for her good disposition, and sincere, warm tenderness for him; the sight of her, and the testimony of a near relative, confirmed this impression. This friend of hers added, that she had tried very hard to remain devoted to the memory of Byron, but was quite unequal to the part, being one of those affectionate natures that must have some one near with whom to be occupied; and now, it seems, she has resigned herself publicly to abandon her romance. However, I fancy the manes of Byron remain undisturbed. We all know the worthless character of Maria Louisa, the indifference she showed to a husband who, if he was not her own choice, yet would have been endeared to almost any woman, as one fallen from an immense height into immense misfortune, and as the father of her child. No voice from her penetrated to cheer his exile: the unhappiness of Josephine was well avenged. And that child, the poor Duke of Reichstadt, of a character so interesting, and with obvious elements of greatness, withering beneath the mean, cold influence of his grandfather,--what did Maria Louisa do for him,--she, appointed by Nature to be his inspiring genius, his protecting angel? I felt for her a most sad and profound contempt last summer, as I passed through her oppressed dominion, a little sphere, in which, if she could not save it from the usual effects of the Austrian rule, she might have done so much private, womanly good,--might have been a genial heart to warm it,--and where she had let so much ill be done. A journal announces her death in these words: "The Archduchess is dead; a woman who _might_ have occupied one of the noblest positions in the history of the age";--and there makes expressive pause. Parma, passing from bad to worse, falls into the hands of the Duke of Modena; and the people and magistracy have made an address to their new ruler. The address has received many thousand signatures, and seems quite sincere, except in the assumption of good-will in the Duke of Modena; and this is merely an insincerity of etiquette. LETTER XXI. THE POPE'S RECEPTION OF THE NEW OFFICERS.--THEY KISS HIS FOOT.--VESPERS AT THE GES�.--A POOR YOUTH IN ROME SEEKING A PATRON.--RUMORS OF DISTURBANCES.--THEIR CAUSE.--REPRESENTATIONS TO THE POPE.--HIS CONDUCT IN THE AFFAIR.--AN ITALIAN CONSUL FOR THE UNITED STATES.--CATHOLICISM.--THE POPULARITY OF THE POPE.--HIS DEPOSITION OF A CENSOR.--THE POLICY OF THE POPE IN HIS DOMESTIC NOT EQUAL TO THAT OF HIS PUBLIC LIFE.--HIS OPPOSITION TO PROTESTANT REFORM.--LETTER FROM JOSEPH MAZZINI TO THE PONTIFF.--REFLECTIONS ON IT. Rome, January 10, 1848. In the first morning of this New Year I sent off a letter which must then be mailed, in order to reach the steamer of the 16th. So far am I from home, that even steam does not come nigh to annihilate the distance. This afternoon I went to the Quirinal Palace to see the Pope receive the new municipal officers. He was to-day in his robes of white and gold, with his usual corps of attendants in pure red and white, or violet and white. The new officers were in black velvet dresses, with broad white collars. They took the oaths of office, and then actually kissed his foot. I had supposed this was never really done, but only a very low obeisance made; the act seemed to me disgustingly abject. A Heavenly Father does not want his children at his feet, but in his arms, on a level with his heart. After this was over the Pope went to the Gesù, a very rich church, belonging to the Jesuits, to officiate at Vespers, and we followed. The music was beautiful, and the effect of the church, with its richly-painted dome and altar-piece in a blaze of light, while the assembly were in a sort of brown darkness, was very fine. A number of Americans there, new arrivals, kept requesting in the midst of the music to know when _it_ would begin. "Why, this is _it_," some one at last had the patience to answer; "you are hearing Vespers now." "What," they replied, "is there no oration, no speech!" So deeply rooted in the American mind is the idea that a sermon is the only real worship! This church, is indelibly stamped on my mind. Coming to Rome this time, I saw in the diligence a young man, whom his uncle, a priest of the convent that owns this church, had sent for, intending to provide him employment here. Some slight circumstances tested the character of this young man, and showed it what I have ever found it, singularly honorable and conscientious. He was led to show me his papers, among which was a letter from a youth whom, with that true benevolence only possible to the poor, because only they _can_ make great sacrifices, he had so benefited as to make an entire change in his prospects for life. Himself a poor orphan, with nothing but a tolerable education at an orphan asylum, and a friend of his dead parents to find him employment on leaving it, he had felt for this young man, poorer and more uninstructed than himself, had taught him at his leisure to read and write, had then collected from, friends, and given himself, till he had gathered together sixty francs, procuring also for his _protégé_ a letter from monks, who were friends of his, to the convents on the road, so that wherever there was one, the poor youth had lodging and food gratis. Thus armed, he set forth on foot for Rome; Piacenza, their native place, affording little hope even of gaining bread, in the present distressed state of that dominion. The letter was to say that he had arrived, and been so fortunate as to find employment immediately in the studio of Benzoni, the sculptor. The poor patron's eyes sparkled as I read the letter. "How happy he is!" said he. "And does he not spell and write well? I was his only master." But the good do not inherit the earth, and, less fortunate than his _protégé_, Germano on his arrival found his uncle ill of the Roman fever. He came to see me, much agitated. "Can it be, Signorina," says he, "that God, who has taken my father and mother, will also take from me the only protector I have left, and just as I arrive in this strange place, too?" After a few days he seemed more tranquil, and told me that, though he had felt as if it would console him and divert his mind to go to some places of entertainment, he had forborne and applied the money to have masses said for his uncle. "I feel," he said, "as if God would help me." Alas! at that moment the uncle was dying. Poor Germano came next day with a receipt for masses said for the soul of the departed, (his simple faith in these being apparently indestructible,) and amid his tears he said: "The Fathers were so unkind, they were hardly willing to hear me speak a word; they were so afraid I should be a burden to them, I shall never go there again. But the most cruel thing was, I offered them a scudo (dollar) to say six masses for the soul of my poor uncle; they said they would only say five, and must have seven baiocchi (cents) more for that." A few days after, I happened to go into their church, and found it thronged, while a preacher, panting, sweating, leaning half out of the pulpit, was exhorting his hearers to "imitate Christ." With unspeakable disgust I gazed on this false shepherd of those who had just so failed in their duty to a poor stray lamb, Their church is so rich in ornaments, the seven baiocchi were hardly needed to burnish it. Their altar-piece is a very imposing composition, by an artist of Rome, still in the prime of his powers. Capalti. It represents the Circumcision, with the cross and six waiting angels in the background; Joseph, who holds the child, the priest, and all the figures in the foreground, seem intent upon the barbarous rite, except Mary the mother; her mind seems to rush forward into the future, and understand the destiny of her child; she sees the cross,--she sees the angels, too. Now I have mentioned a picture, let me say a word or two about Art and artists, by way of parenthesis in this letter so much occupied, with political affairs. We laugh a little here at some words that come from your city on the subject of Art. We hear that the landscapes painted here show a want of familiarity with Nature; artists need to return to America and see her again. But, friends, Nature wears a different face in Italy from what she does in America. Do you not want to see her Italian face? it is very glorious! We thought it was the aim of Art to reproduce all forms of Nature, and that you would not be sorry to have transcripts of what you have not always round you. American Art is not necessarily a reproduction of American Nature. Hicks has made a charming picture of familiar life, which those who cannot believe in Italian daylight would not tolerate. I am not sure that all eyes are made in the same manner, for I have known those who declare they see nothing remarkable in these skies, these hues; and always complain when they are reproduced in picture. I have yet seen no picture by Cropsey on an Italian subject, but his sketches from Scotch scenes are most poetical and just presentations of those lakes, those mountains, with their mourning veils. He is an artist of great promise. Cranch has made a picture for Mr. Ogden Haggerty of a fine mountain-hold of old Colonna story. I wish he would write a ballad about it too; there is plenty of material. But to return to the Jesuits. One swallow does not make a summer, nor am I--who have seen so much hard-heartedness and barbarous greed of gain in all classes of men--so foolish as to attach undue importance to the demand, by those who have dared to appropriate peculiarly to themselves the sacred name of Jesus, from a poor orphan, and for the soul of one of their own order, of "seven baiocchi more." But I have always been satisfied, from the very nature of their institutions, that the current prejudice against them must be correct. These institutions are calculated to harden the heart, and destroy entirely that truth which is the conservative principle in character. Their influence is and must be always against the free progress of humanity. The more I see of its working, the more I feel how pernicious it is, and were I a European, to no object should I lend myself with more ardor, than to the extirpation of this cancer. True, disband the Jesuits, there would still remain Jesuitical men, but singly they would have infinitely less power to work mischief. The influence of the Oscurantist foe has shown itself more and more plainly in Rome, during the last four or five weeks. A false miracle is devised: the Madonna del Popolo, (who has her handsome house very near me,) has cured, a paralytic youth, (who, in fact, was never diseased,) and, appearing to him in a vision, takes occasion to criticise severely the measures of the Pope. Rumors of tumult in one quarter are circulated, to excite it in another. Inflammatory handbills are put up in the night. But the Romans thus far resist all intrigues of the foe to excite them to bad conduct. On New-Year's day, however, success was near. The people, as usual, asked permission of the Governor to go to the Quirinal and receive the benediction of the Pope. This was denied, and not, as it might truly have been, because the Pope was unwell, but in the most ungracious, irritating manner possible, by saying, "He is tired of these things: he is afraid of disturbance." Then, the people being naturally excited and angry, the Governor sent word to the Pope that there was excitement, without letting him know why, and had the guards doubled on the posts. The most absurd rumors were circulated among the people that the cannon of St. Angelo were to be pointed on them, &c. But they, with that singular discretion which they show now, instead of rising, as their enemies had hoped, went to ask counsel of their lately appointed Senator, Corsini. He went to the Pope, found him ill, entirely ignorant of what was going on, and much distressed when he heard it. He declared that the people should be satisfied, and, since they had not been allowed to come to him, he would go to them. Accordingly, the next day, though rainy and of a searching cold like that of a Scotch mist, we had all our windows thrown open, and the red and yellow tapestries hung out. He passed through the principal parts of the city, the people throwing themselves on their knees and crying out, "O Holy Father, don't desert us! don't forget us! don't listen to our enemies!" The Pope wept often, and replied, "Fear nothing, my people, my heart is yours." At last, seeing how ill he was, they begged him to go in, and he returned to the Quirinal; the present Tribune of the People, as far as rule in the heart is concerned, Ciceronacchio, following his carriage. I shall give some account of this man in another letter. For the moment, the difficulties are healed, as they will be whenever the Pope directly shows himself to the people. Then his generous, affectionate heart will always act, and act on them, dissipating the clouds which others have been toiling to darken. In speaking of the intrigues of these emissaries of the power of darkness, I will mention that there is a report here that they are trying to get an Italian Consul for the United States, and one in the employment of the Jesuits. This rumor seems ridiculous; yet it is true that Dr. Beecher's panic about Catholic influence in the United States is not quite unfounded, and that there is considerable hope of establishing a new dominion there. I hope the United States will appoint no Italian, no Catholic, to a consulship. The representative of the United States should be American; our national character and interests are peculiar, and cannot be fitly represented by a foreigner, unless, like Mr. Ombrossi of Florence, he has passed part of his youth in the United States. It would, indeed, be well if our government paid attention to qualification for the office in the candidate, and not to pretensions founded on partisan service; appointing only men of probity, who would not stain the national honor in the sight of Europe. It would be wise also not to select men entirely ignorant of foreign manners, customs, ways of thinking, or even of any language in which to communicate with foreign society, making the country ridiculous by all sorts of blunders; but 't were pity if a sufficient number of Americans could not be found, who are honest, have some knowledge of Europe and gentlemanly tact, and are able at least to speak French. To return to the Pope, although the shadow that has fallen on his popularity is in a great measure the work of his enemies, yet there is real cause for it too. His conduct in deposing for a time one of the Censors, about the banners of the 15th of December, his speech to the Council the same day, his extreme displeasure at the sympathy of a few persons with the triumph of the Swiss Diet, because it was a Protestant triumph, and, above all, his speech to the Consistory, so deplorably weak in thought and absolute in manner, show a man less strong against domestic than foreign foes, instigated by a generous, humane heart to advance, but fettered by the prejudices of education, and terribly afraid to be or seem to be less the Pope of Rome, in becoming a reform prince, and father to the fatherless. I insert a passage of this speech, which seems to say that, whenever there shall be collision between the priest and the reformer, the priest shall triumph:-- "Another subject there is which profoundly afflicts and harasses our mind. It is not certainly unknown to you, Venerable Brethren, that many enemies of Catholic truth have, in our times especially, directed their efforts by the desire to place certain monstrous offsprings of opinion on a par with the doctrine of Christ, or to blend them therewith, seeking to propagate more and more that impious system of _indifference_ toward all religion whatever. "And lately some have been found, dreadful to narrate! who have offered such an insult to our name and Apostolic dignity, as slanderously to represent us participators in their folly, and favorers of that most iniquitous system above named. These have been pleased to infer from, the counsels (certainly not foreign to the sanctity of the Catholic religion) which, in certain affairs pertaining to the civil exercise of the Pontific sway, we had benignly embraced for the increase of public prosperity and good, and also from the pardon bestowed in clemency upon certain persons subject to that sway, in the very beginning of our Pontificate, that we had such benevolent sentiments toward every description of persons as to believe that not only the sons of the Church, but others also, remaining aliens from Catholic unity, are alike in the way of salvation, and may attain eternal life. Words are wanting to us, from horror, to repel this new and atrocious calumny against us. It is true that with intimate affection of heart we love all mankind, but not otherwise than in the charity of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ, who came to seek and to save that which had perished, who wisheth that all men should be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth, and who sent his disciples through the whole world to preach the Gospel to every creature, declaring that those who should believe and be baptized should be saved, but those who should not believe, should be condemned. Let those therefore who seek salvation come to the pillar and support of the Truth, which is the Church,--let them come, that is, to the true Church of Christ, which possesses in its bishops and the supreme head of all, the Roman Pontiff, a never-interrupted succession of Apostolic authority, and which for nothing has ever been more zealous than to preach, and with all care preserve and defend, the doctrine announced as the mandate of Christ by his Apostles; which Church afterward increased, from the time of the Apostles, in the midst of every species of difficulties, and flourished throughout the whole world, radiant in the splendor of miracles, amplified by the blood of martyrs, ennobled by the virtues of confessors and virgins, corroborated by the testimony and most sapient writings of the fathers,--as it still flourishes throughout all lands, refulgent in perfect unity of the sacraments, of faith, and of holy discipline. We who, though unworthy, preside in this supreme chair of the Apostle Peter, in which Christ our Lord placed the foundation of his Church, have at no time abstained, from any cares or toils to bring, through the grace of Christ himself, those who are in ignorance and error to this sole way of truth and salvation. Let those, whoever they be, that are adverse, remember that heaven and earth shall pass away, but nothing can ever perish of the words of Christ, nor be changed in the doctrine which the Catholic Church received, to guard, defend, and publish, from him. "Next to this we cannot but speak to you, Venerable Brethren, of the bitterness of sorrow by which we were affected, on seeing that a few days since, in this our fair city, the fortress and centre of the Catholic religion, it proved possible to find some--very few indeed and well-nigh frantic men--who, laying aside the very sense of humanity, and to the extreme disgust and indignation of other citizens of this town, were not withheld, by horror from triumphing openly and publicly over the most lamentable intestine war lately excited among the Helvetic people; which truly fatal war we sorrow over from the depths of our heart, as well considering the blood shed by that nation, the slaughter of brothers, the atrocious, daily recurring, and fatal discords, hatreds, and dissensions (which usually redound among nations in consequence especially of civil wars), as the detriment which we learn the Catholic religion has suffered, and fear it may yet suffer, in consequence of this, and, finally, the deplorable acts of sacrilege committed in the first conflict, which our soul shrinks from narrating." It is probably on account of these fears of Pius IX. lest he should be a called a Protestant Pope, that the Roman journals thus far, in translating the American Address to the Pope, have not dared to add any comment. But if the heart, the instincts, of this good man have been beyond his thinking powers, that only shows him the providential agent to work out aims beyond his ken. A wave has been set in motion, which cannot stop till it casts up its freight upon the shore, and if Pius IX. does not suffer himself to be surrounded by dignitaries, and see the signs of the times through the eyes of others,--if he does not suffer the knowledge he had of general society as a simple prelate to become incrusted by the ignorance habitual to princes,--he cannot fail long to be a most important agent in fashioning a new and better era for this beautiful injured land. I will now give another document, which may be considered as representing the view of what is now passing taken by the democratic party called "Young Italy." Should it in any other way have reached the United States, yet it will not come amiss to have it translated for the Tribune, as many of your readers may not otherwise have a chance of seeing this noble document, one of the milestones in the march of thought. It is a letter to the Most High Pontiff, Pius IX., from Joseph Mazzini. "London, 8th September, 1847. "MOST HOLY FATHER,--Permit an Italian, who has studied your every step for some months back with much hopefulness, to address to you, in the midst of the applauses, often far too servile and unworthy of you, which, resound near you, some free and profoundly sincere words. Take to read them some moments from your infinite cares. From a simple individual animated by holy intentions may come, sometimes, a great counsel; and I write to you with so much love, with so much emotion of my whole soul, with so much faith in the destiny of my country, which may be revived by your means, that my thoughts ought to speak truth. "And first, it is needful, Most Holy Father, that I should say to you somewhat of myself. My name has probably reached your ears, but accompanied by all the calumnies, by all the errors, by all the foolish conjectures, which the police, by system, and many men of my party through want of knowledge or poverty of intellect, have heaped upon it. I am not a subverter, nor a communist, nor a man of blood, nor a hater, nor intolerant, nor exclusive adorer of a system, or of a form imagined by my mind. I adore God, and an idea which seems to me of God,--Italy an angel of moral unity and of progressive civilization for the nations of Europe. Here and everywhere I have written the best I know how against the vices of materialism, of egotism, of reaction, and against the destructive tendencies which contaminate many of our party. If the people should rise in violent attack against the selfishness and bad government of their rulers, I, while rendering homage to the right of the people, shall be among the first to prevent the excesses and the vengeance which long slavery has prepared. I believe profoundly in a religious principle, supreme above all social ordinances; in a divine order, which we ought to seek to realize here on earth; in a law, in a providential design, which we all ought, according to our powers, to study and to promote. I believe in the inspiration of my immortal soul, in the teaching of Humanity, which shouts to me, through the deeds and words of all its saints, incessant progress for all through, the work of all my brothers toward a common moral amelioration, toward the fulfilment of the Divine Law. And in the great history of Humanity I have studied the history of Italy, and have found there Rome twice directress of the world,--first through the Emperors, later through the Popes. I have found there, that every manifestation of Italian life has also been a manifestation of European life; and that always when Italy fell, the moral unity of Europe began to fall apart in analysis, in doubt, in anarchy. I believe in yet another manifestation of the Italian idea; and I believe that another European world ought to be revealed from the Eternal City, that had the Capitol, and has the Vatican. And this faith has not abandoned me ever, through years, poverty, and griefs which God alone knows. In these few words lies all my being, all the secret of my life. I may err in the intellect, but the heart has always remained pure. I have never lied through fear or hope, and I speak to you as I should speak to God beyond the sepulchre. "I believe you good. There is no man this day, I will not say in Italy, but in all Europe, more powerful than you; you then have, most Holy Father, vast duties. God measures these according to the means which he has granted to his creatures. "Europe is in a tremendous crisis of doubts and desires. Through the work of time, accelerated by your predecessors of the hierarchy of the Church, faith is dead, Catholicism is lost in despotism; Protestantism is lost in anarchy. Look around you; you will find superstitious and hypocrites, but not believers. The intellect travels in a void. The bad adore calculation, physical good; the good pray and hope; nobody _believes_. Kings, governments, the ruling classes, combat for a power usurped, illegitimate, since it does not represent the worship of truth, nor disposition to sacrifice one's self for the good of all; the people combat because they suffer, because they would fain take their turn to enjoy; nobody fights for duty, nobody because the war against evil and falsehood is a holy war, the crusade of God. We have no more a heaven; hence we have no more a society. "Do not deceive yourself, Most Holy Father; this is the present state of Europe. "But humanity cannot exist without a heaven. The idea of society is only a consequence of the idea of religion. We shall have then, sooner or later, religion and heaven. We shall have these not in the kings and the privileged classes,--their very condition excludes love, the soul of all religions,--but in the people. The spirit from God descends on many gathered together in his name. The people have suffered for ages on the cross, and God will bless them with a faith. "You can, Most Holy Father, hasten that moment. I will not tell you my individual opinions on the religious development which is to come; these are of little importance. But I will say to you, that, whatever be the destiny of the creeds now existing, you can put yourself at the head of this development. If God wills that such creeds should revive, you can make them revive; if God wills that they should be transformed, that, leaving the foot of the cross, dogma and worship should be purified by rising a step nearer God, the Father and Educator of the world, you can put yourself between the two epochs, and guide the world to the conquest and the practice of religious truth, extirpating a hateful egotism, a barren negation. "God preserve me from tempting you with ambition; that would be profanation. I call you, in the name of the power which God has granted you, and has not granted without a reason, to fulfil the good, the regenerating European work. I call you, after so many ages of doubt and corruption, to be apostle of Eternal Truth. I call you to make yourself the 'servant of all,' to sacrifice yourself, if needful, so that 'the will of God may be done on the earth as it is in heaven'; to hold yourself ready to glorify God in victory, or to repeat with resignation, if you must fail, the words of Gregory VII.: 'I die in exile, because I have loved justice and hated iniquity.' "But for this, to fulfil the mission which God confides to you, two things are needful,--to be a believer, and to unify Italy. Without the first, you will fall in the middle of the way, abandoned by God and by men; without the second, you will not have the lever with which only you can effect great, holy, and durable things. "Be a believer; abhor to be king, politician, statesman. Make no compromise with error; do not contaminate yourself with diplomacy, make no compact with fear, with expediency, with the false doctrines of a _legality_, which is merely a falsehood invented when faith failed. Take no counsel except from God, from the inspirations of your own heart, and from the imperious necessity of rebuilding a temple to truth, to justice, to faith. Self-collected, in enthusiasm of love for humanity, and apart from every human regard, ask of God that he will teach you the way; then enter upon it, with the faith of a conqueror on your brow, with the irrevocable decision of the martyr in your heart; look neither to the right hand nor the left, but straight before you, and up to heaven. Of every object that meets you on the way, ask of yourself: 'Is this just or unjust, true or false, law of man or law of God?' Proclaim aloud the result of your examination, and act accordingly. Do not say to yourself: 'If I speak and work in such a way, the princes of the earth will disagree; the ambassadors will present notes and protests!' What are the quarrels of selfishness in princes, or their notes, before a syllable of the eternal Evangelists of God? They have had importance till now, because, though phantoms, they had nothing to oppose them but phantoms; oppose to them the reality of a man who sees the Divine view, unknown to them, of human affairs, of an immortal soul conscious of a high mission, and these will vanish before you as vapors accumulated in darkness before the sun which rises in the east. Do not let yourself be affrighted by intrigues; the creature who fulfils a duty belongs not to men, but to God. God will protect you; God will spread around you such a halo of love, that neither the perfidy of men irreparably lost, nor the suggestions of hell, can break through it. Give to the world a spectacle new, unique: you will have results new, not to be foreseen by human calculation. Announce an era; declare that Humanity is sacred, and a daughter of God; that all who violate her rights to progress, to association, are on the way of error; that in God is the source of every government; that those who are best by intellect and heart, by genius and virtue, must be the guides of the people. Bless those who suffer and combat; blame, reprove, those who cause suffering, without regard to the name they bear, the rank that invests them. The people will adore in you the best interpreter of the Divine design, and your conscience will give you rest, strength, and ineffable comfort. "Unify Italy, your country. For this you have no need to work, but to bless Him who works through you and in your name. Gather round you those who best represent the national party. Do not beg alliances with princes. Continue to seek the alliance of our own people; say, 'The unity of Italy ought to be a fact of the nineteenth century,' and it will suffice; we shall work for you. Leave our pens free; leave free the circulation of ideas in what regards this point, vital for us, of the national unity. Treat the Austrian government, even when it no longer menaces your territory, with the reserve of one who knows that it governs by usurpation in Italy and elsewhere; combat it with words of a just man, wherever it contrives oppressions and violations of the rights of others out of Italy. Require, in the name of the God of Peace, the Jesuits allied with Austria in Switzerland to withdraw from that country, where their presence prepares an inevitable and speedy effusion of the blood of the citizens. Give a word of sympathy which shall become public to the first Pole of Galicia who comes into your presence. Show us, in fine, by some fact, that you intend not only to improve the physical condition of your own few subjects, but that you embrace in your love the twenty-four millions of Italians, your brothers; that you believe them called by God to unite in family unity under one and the same compact; that you would bless the national banner, wherever it should be raised by pure and incontaminate hands; and leave the rest to us. We will cause to rise around you a nation over whose free and popular development you, living, shall preside. We will found a government unique in Europe, which shall destroy the absurd divorce between spiritual and temporal power, and in which you shall be chosen to represent the principle of which the men chosen by the nation will make the application. We shall know how to translate into a potent fact the instinct which palpitates through all Italy. We will excite for you active support among the nations of Europe; we will find you friends even in the ranks of Austria; we alone, because we alone have unity of design, believe in the truth of our principle, and have never betrayed it. Do not fear excesses from the people once entered upon this way; the people only commit excesses when left to their own impulses without any guide whom they respect. Do not pause before the idea of becoming a cause of war. War exists, everywhere, open or latent, but near breaking out, inevitable; nor can human power prevent it. Nor do I, it must be said frankly, Most Holy Father, address to you these words because I doubt in the least of our destiny, or because I believe you the sole, the indispensable means of the enterprise. The unity of Italy is a work of God,--a part of the design of Providence and of all, even of those who show themselves most satisfied with local improvements, and who, less sincere than I, wish to make them means of attaining their own aims. It will be fulfilled, with you or without you. But I address you, because I believe you worthy to take the initiative in a work so vast; because your putting yourself at the head of it would much abridge the road and diminish the dangers, the injury, the blood; because with you the conflict would assume a religious aspect, and be freed from many dangers of reaction and civil errors; because might be attained at once under your banner a political result and a vast moral result; because the revival of Italy under the ægis of a religious idea, of a standard, not of rights, but of duties, would leave behind all the revolutions of other countries, and place her immediately at the head of European progress; because it is in your power to cause that God and the people, terms too often fatally disjoined, should meet at once in beautiful and holy harmony, to direct the fate of nations. "If I could be near you, I would invoke from God power to convince you, by gesture, by accent, by tears; now I can only confide to the paper the cold corpse, as it were, of my thought; nor can I ever have the certainty that you have read, and meditated a moment what I write. But I feel an imperious necessity of fulfilling this duty toward Italy and you, and, whatsoever you may think of it, I shall find myself more in peace with my conscience for having thus addressed you. "Believe, Most Holy Father, in the feelings of veneration and of high hope which professes for you your most devoted "JOSEPH MAZZINI." Whatever may be the impression of the reader as to the ideas and propositions contained in this document,[A] I think he cannot fail to be struck with its simple nobleness, its fervent truth. [Footnote A: This letter was printed in Paris to be circulated in Italy. A prefatory note signed by a friend of Mazzini's, states that the original was known to have reached the hands of the Pope. The hope is expressed that the publication of this letter, though without the authority of its writer, will yet not displease him, as those who are deceived as to his plans and motives will thus learn his true purposes and feelings, and the letter will one day aid the historian who seeks to know what were the opinions and hopes of the entire people of Italy.--ED.] A thousand petty interruptions have prevented my completing this letter, till, now the hour of closing the mail for the steamer is so near, I shall not have time to look over it, either to see what I have written or make slight corrections. However, I suppose it represents the feelings of the last few days, and shows that, without having lost any of my confidence in the Italian movement, the office of the Pope in promoting it has shown narrower limits, and sooner than I had expected. This does not at all weaken my personal feeling toward this excellent man, whose heart I have seen in his face, and can never doubt. It was necessary to be a great thinker, a great genius, to compete with the difficulties of his position. I never supposed he was that; I am only disappointed that his good heart has not carried him on a little farther. With regard to the reception of the American address, it is only the Roman press that is so timid; the private expressions of pleasure have been very warm; the Italians say, "The Americans are indeed our brothers." It remains to be seen, when Pius IX. receives it, whether the man, the reforming prince, or the Pope is uppermost at that moment. LETTER XXII. THE CEREMONIES SUCCEEDING EPIPHANY.--THE DEATH OF TORLONIA, AND ITS PREDISPOSING CAUSES.--FUNERAL HONORS.--A STRIKING CONTRAST IN THE DECEASE OF THE CARDINAL PRINCE MASSIMO.--THE POPE AND HIS OFFICERS OF STATE.--THE CARDINAL BOFONDI.--SYMPATHETIC EXCITEMENTS THROUGH ITALY.--SICILY IN FULL INSURRECTION.--THE KING OF SICILY, PRINCE METTERNICH, AND LOUIS PHILIPPE.--A RUMOR AS TO THE PARENTAGE OF THE KING OF THE FRENCH.--ROME: AVE MARIA.--LIFE IN THE ETERNAL CITY.--THE BAMBINO.--CATHOLICISM: ITS GIFTS AND ITS WORKINGS.--THE CHURCH OF ARA COELI.--EXHIBITION OF THE BAMBINO.--BYGONE SUPERSTITION AND LIVING REALITY.--THE SOUL OF CATHOLICISM HAS FLED.--REFLECTIONS.--EXHIBITION BY THE COLLEGE OF THE PROPAGANDA.--EXERCISES IN ALL LANGUAGES.-- DISTURBANCES AND THEIR CAUSES.--THOUGHTS.--BLESSING ANIMALS.--ACCOUNTS FROM PAVIA.--AUSTRIA.--THE KING OF NAPLES.--RUMORS FROM OTHER PARTS OF EUROPE.--FRANCE.--GUIZOT.--APPEARANCES AND APPREHENSIONS. Rome, January, 1848. I think I closed my last letter, without having had time to speak of the ceremonies that precede and follow Epiphany. This month, no day, scarcely an hour, has passed unmarked by some showy spectacle or some exciting piece of news. On the last day of the year died Don Carlo Torlonia, brother of the banker, a man greatly beloved and regretted. The public felt this event the more that its proximate cause was an attack made upon his brother's house by Paradisi, now imprisoned in the Castle of St. Angelo, pending a law process for proof of his accusations. Don Carlo had been ill before, and the painful agitation caused by these circumstances decided his fate. The public had been by no means displeased at this inquiry into the conduct of Don Alessandro Torlonia, believing that his assumed munificence is, in this case, literally a robbery of Peter to pay Paul, and that all he gives to Rome is taken from Rome. But I sympathized no less with the affectionate indignation of his brother, too good a man to be made the confidant of wrong, or have eyes for it, if such exist. Thus, in the poetical justice which does not fail to be done in the prose narrative of life, while men hastened, the moment a cry was raised against Don Alessandro, to echo it back with all kinds of imputations both on himself and his employees, every man held his breath, and many wept, when the mortal remains of Don Carlo passed; feeling that in him was lost a benefactor, a brother, a simple, just man. Don Carlo was a Knight of Malta; yet with him the celibate life had not hardened the heart, but only left it free on all sides to general love. Not less than half a dozen pompous funerals were given in his honor, by his relatives, the brotherhoods to which he belonged, and the battalion of the Civic Guard of which he was commander-in-chief. But in his own house the body lay in no other state than that of a simple Franciscan, the order to which he first belonged, and whose vow he had kept through half a century, by giving all he had for the good of others. He lay on the ground in the plain dark robe and cowl, no unfit subject for a modern picture of little angels descending to shower lilies on a good man's corpse. The long files of armed men, the rich coaches, and liveried retinues of the princes, were little observed, in comparison with more than a hundred orphan girls whom his liberality had sustained, and who followed the bier in mourning robes and long white veils, spirit-like, in the dark night. The trumpet's wail, and soft, melancholy music from the bands, broke at times the roll of the muffled drum; the hymns of the Church were chanted, and volleys of musketry discharged, in honor of the departed; but much more musical was the whisper in which the crowd, as passed his mortal frame, told anecdotes of his good deeds. I do not know when I have passed more consolatory moments than in the streets one evening during this pomp and picturesque show,--for once not empty of all meaning as to the present time, recognizing that good which remains in the human being, ineradicable by all ill, and promises that our poor, injured nature shall rise, and bloom again, from present corruption to immortal purity. If Don Carlo had been a thinker,--a man of strong intellect,--he might have devised means of using his money to more radical advantage than simply to give it in alms; he had only a kind human heart, but from that heart distilled a balm which made all men bless it, happy in finding cause to bless. As in the moral little books with which our nurseries are entertained, followed another death in violent contrast. One of those whom the new arrangements deprived of power and the means of unjust gain was the Cardinal Prince Massimo, a man a little younger than Don Carlo, but who had passed his forty years in a very different manner. He remonstrated; the Pope was firm, and, at last, is said to have answered with sharp reproof for the past. The Cardinal contained himself in the audience, but, going out, literally suffocated with the rage he had suppressed. The bad blood his bad heart had been so long making rushed to his head, and he died on his return home. Men laughed, and proposed that all the widows he had deprived of a maintenance should combine to follow _his_ bier. It was said boys hissed as that bier passed. Now, a splendid suit of lace being for sale in a shop of the Corso, everybody says: "Have you been to look at the lace of Cardinal Massimo, who died of rage, because he could no longer devour the public goods?" And this is the last echo of _his_ requiem. The Pope is anxious to have at least well-intentioned men in places of power. Men of much ability, it would seem, are not to be had. His last prime minister was a man said to have energy, good dispositions, but no thinking power. The Cardinal Bofondi, whom he has taken now, is said to be a man of scarce any ability; there being few among the new Councillors the public can name as fitted for important trust. In consolation, we must remember that the Chancellor Oxenstiern found nothing more worthy of remark to show his son, than by how little wisdom the world could be governed. We must hope these men of straw will serve as thatch to keep out the rain, and not be exposed to the assaults of a devouring flame. Yet that hour may not be distant. The disturbances of the 1st of January here were answered by similar excitements in Leghorn and Genoa, produced by the same hidden and malignant foe. At the same time, the Austrian government in Milan organized an attempt to rouse the people to revolt, with a view to arrests, and other measures calculated to stifle the spirit of independence they know to be latent there. In this iniquitous attempt they murdered eighty persons; yet the citizens, on their guard, refused them the desired means of ruin, and they were forced to retractions as impudently vile as their attempts had been. The Viceroy proclaimed that "he hoped the people would confide in him as he did in them"; and no doubt they will. At Leghorn and Genoa, the wiles of the foe were baffled by the wisdom of the popular leaders, as I trust they always will be; but it is needful daily to expect these nets laid in the path of the unwary. Sicily is in full insurrection; and it is reported Naples, but this is not sure. There was a report, day before yesterday, that the poor, stupid king was already here, and had taken cheap chambers at the Hotel d'Allemagne, as, indeed, it is said he has always a turn for economy, when he cannot live at the expense of his suffering people. Day before yesterday, every carriage that the people saw with a stupid-looking man in it they did not know, they looked to see if it was not the royal runaway. But it was their wish was father to that thought, and it has not as yet taken body as fact. In like manner they report this week the death of Prince Metternich; but I believe it is not sure he is dead yet, only dying. With him passes one great embodiment of ill to Europe. As for Louis Philippe, he seems reserved to give the world daily more signal proofs of his base apostasy to the cause that placed him on the throne, and that heartless selfishness, of which his face alone bears witness to any one that has a mind to read it. How the French nation could look upon that face, while yet flushed with the hopes of the Three Days, and put him on the throne as representative of those hopes, I cannot conceive. There is a story current in Italy, that he is really the child of a man first a barber, afterwards a police-officer, and was substituted at nurse for the true heir of Orleans; and the vulgarity of form in his body of limbs, power of endurance, greed of gain, and hard, cunning intellect, so unlike all traits of the weak, but more "genteel" Bourbon race, might well lend plausibility to such a fable. But to return to Rome, where I hear the Ave Maria just ringing. By the way, nobody pauses, nobody thinks, nobody prays. "Ave Maria! 't is the hour of prayer, Ave Maria! 't is the hour of love," &c., is but a figment of the poet's fancy. To return to Rome: what a Rome! the fortieth day of rain, and damp, and abominable reeking odors, such as blessed cities swept by the sea-breeze--bitter sometimes, yet indeed a friend--never know. It has been dark all day, though the lamp has only been lit half an hour. The music of the day has been, first the atrocious _arias_, which last in the Corso till near noon, though certainly less in virulence on rainy days. Then came the wicked organ-grinder, who, apart from the horror of the noise, grinds exactly the same obsolete abominations as at home or in England,--the Copenhagen Waltz, "Home, sweet home," and all that! The cruel chance that both an English my-lady and a Councillor from one of the provinces live opposite, keeps him constantly before my window, hoping baiocchi. Within, the three pet dogs of my landlady, bereft of their walk, unable to employ their miserable legs and eyes, exercise themselves by a continual barking, which is answered by all the dogs in the neighborhood. An urchin returning from the laundress, delighted with the symphony, lays down his white bundle in the gutter, seats himself on the curb-stone, and attempts an imitation of the music of cats as a tribute to the concert. The door-bell rings. _Chi è?_ "Who is it?" cries the handmaid, with unweariable senselessness, as if any one would answer, _Rogue_, or _Enemy_, instead of the traditionary _Amico_, _Friend_. Can it be, perchance, a letter, news of home, or some of the many friends who have neglected so long to write, or some ray of hope to break the clouds of the difficult Future? Far from it. Enter a man poisoning me at once with the smell of the worst possible cigars, not to be driven out, insisting I shall look upon frightful, ill-cut cameos, and worse-designed mosaics, made by some friend of his, who works in a chamber and will sell _so_ cheap. Man of ill-odors and meanest smile! I am no Countess to be fooled by you. For dogs they were not even--dog-cheap. A faint and misty gleam of sun greeted the day on which there was the feast to the Bambino, the most venerated doll of Rome. This is the famous image of the infant Jesus, reputed to be made of wood from a tree of Palestine, and which, being taken away from its present abode,--the church of Ara Coeli,--returned by itself, making the bells ring as it sought admittance at the door. It is this which is carried in extreme cases to the bedside of the sick. It has received more splendid gifts than any other idol. An orphan by my side, now struggling with difficulties, showed me on its breast a splendid jewel, which a doting grandmother thought more likely to benefit her soul if given to the Bambino, than if turned into money to give her grandchildren education and prospects in life. The same old lady left her vineyard, not to these children, but to her confessor, a well-endowed Monsignor, who occasionally asks this youth, his godson, to dinner! Children so placed are not quite such devotees to Catholicism as the new proselytes of America;--they are not so much patted on the head, and things do not show to them under quite the same silver veil. The church of Ara Coeli is on or near the site of the temple of Capitoline Jove, which certainly saw nothing more idolatrous than these ceremonies. For about a week the Bambino is exhibited in an illuminated chapel, in the arms of a splendidly dressed Madonna doll. Behind, a transparency represents the shepherds, by moonlight, at the time the birth was announced, and, above, God the Father, with many angels hailing the event. A pretty part of this exhibition, which I was not so fortunate as to hit upon, though I went twice on purpose, is the children making little speeches in honor of the occasion. Many readers will remember some account of this in Andersen's "Improvvisatore." The last time I went was the grand feast in honor of the Bambino. The church was entirely full, mostly with Contadini and the poorer people, absorbed in their devotions: one man near me never raised his head or stirred from his knees to see anything; he seemed in an anguish of prayer, either from repentance or anxiety. I wished I could have hoped the ugly little doll could do Mm any good. The noble stair which descends from the great door of this church to the foot of the Capitol,--a stair made from fragments of the old imperial time,--was flooded with people; the street below was a rapid river also, whose waves were men. The ceremonies began with splendid music from the organ, pealing sweetly long and repeated invocations. As if answering to this call, the world came in, many dignitaries, the Conservatori, (I think conservatives are the same everywhere, official or no,) and did homage to the image; then men in white and gold, with the candles they are so fond here of burning by daylight, as if the poorest artificial were better than the greatest natural light, uplifted high above themselves the baby, with its gilded robes and crown, and made twice the tour of the church, passing twice the column labelled "From the Home of Augustus," while the band played--what?--the Hymn to Pius IX. and "Sons of Rome, awake!" Never was a crueller comment upon the irreconcilableness of these two things. Rome seeks to reconcile reform and priestcraft. But her eyes are shut, that they see not. O awake indeed, Romans! and you will see that the Christ who is to save men is no wooden dingy effigy of bygone superstitions, but such as Art has seen him in your better mood,--a Child, living, full of love, prophetic of a boundless future,--a Man acquainted with all sorrows that rend the heart of all, and ever loving man with sympathy and faith death could not quench,--_that_ Christ lives and may be sought; burn your doll of wood. How any one can remain a Catholic--I mean who has ever been aroused to think, and is not biassed by the partialities of childish years--after seeing Catholicism here in Italy, I cannot conceive. There was once a soul in the religion while the blood of its martyrs was yet fresh upon the ground, but that soul was always too much encumbered with the remains of pagan habits and customs: that soul is now quite fled elsewhere, and in the splendid catafalco, watched by so many white and red-robed snuff-taking, sly-eyed men, would they let it be opened, nothing would be found but bones! Then the College for propagating all this, the most venerable Propaganda, has given its exhibition in honor of the Magi, wise men of the East who came to Christ. I was there one day. In conformity with the general spirit of Rome,--strangely inconsistent in a country where the Madonna is far more frequently and devoutly worshipped than God or Christ, in a city where at least as many female saints and martyrs are venerated as male,--there was no good place for women to sit. All the good seats were for the men in the area below, but in the gallery windows, and from the organ-loft, a few women were allowed to peep at what was going on. I was one of these exceptional characters. The exercises were in all the different languages under the sun. It would have been exceedingly interesting to hear them, one after the other, each in its peculiar cadence and inflection, but much of the individual expression was taken away by that general false academic tone which is sure to pervade such exhibitions where young men speak who have as yet nothing to say. It would have been different, indeed, if we could have heard natives of all those countries, who were animated by real feelings, real wants. Still it was interesting, particularly the language and music of Kurdistan, and the full-grown beauty of the Greek after the ruder dialects. Among those who appeared to the best advantage were several blacks, and the majesty of the Latin hexameters was confided to a full-blooded Guinea negro, who acquitted himself better than any other I heard. I observed, too, the perfectly gentlemanly appearance of these young men, and that they had nothing of that Cuffy swagger by which those freed from a servile state try to cover a painful consciousness of their position in our country. Their air was self-possessed, quiet and free beyond that of most of the whites. January 22, 2 o'clock, P.M. Pour, pour, pour again, dark as night,--many people coming in to see me because they don't know what to do with themselves. I am very glad to see them for the same reason; this atmosphere is so heavy, I seem to carry the weight of the world on my head and feel unfitted for every exertion. As to eating, that is a bygone thing; wine, coffee, meat, I have resigned; vegetables are few and hard to have, except horrible cabbage, in which the Romans delight. A little rice still remains, which I take with pleasure, remembering it growing in the rich fields of Lombardy, so green and full of glorious light. That light fell still more beautiful on the tall plantations of hemp, but it is dangerous just at present to think of what is made from hemp. This week all the animals are being blessed,[A] and they get a gratuitous baptism, too, the while. The lambs one morning were taken out to the church of St. Agnes for this purpose. The little companion of my travels, if he sees this letter, will remember how often we saw her with her lamb in pictures. The horses are being blessed by St. Antonio, and under his harmonizing influence are afterward driven through the city, twelve and even twenty in hand. They are harnessed into light wagons, and men run beside them to guard against accident, in case the good influence of the Saint should fail. [Footnote A: One of Rome's singular customs.--ED.] This morning came the details of infamous attempts by the Austrian police to exasperate the students of Pavia. The way is to send persons to smoke cigars in forbidden places, who insult those who are obliged to tell them to desist. These traps seem particularly shocking when laid for fiery and sensitive young men. They succeeded: the students were lured, into combat, and a number left dead and wounded on both sides. The University is shut up; the inhabitants of Pavia and Milan have put on mourning; even at the theatre they wear it. The Milanese will not walk in that quarter where the blood of their fellow-citizens has been so wantonly shed. They have demanded a legal investigation of the conduct of the officials. At Piacenza similar attempts have been made to excite the Italians, by smoking in their faces, and crying, "Long live the Emperor!" It is a worthy homage to pay to the Austrian crown,--this offering of cigars and blood. "O this offence is rank; it smells to Heaven." This morning authentic news is received from Naples. The king, when assured by his own brother that Sicily was in a state of irresistible revolt, and that even the women quelled the troops,--showering on them stones, furniture, boiling oil, such means of warfare as the household may easily furnish to a thoughtful matron,--had, first, a stroke of apoplexy, from, which the loss of a good deal of bad blood relieved him. His mind apparently having become clearer thereby, he has offered his subjects an amnesty and terms of reform, which, it is hoped, will arrive before his troops have begun to bombard the cities in obedience to earlier orders. Comes also to-day the news that the French Chamber of Peers propose an Address to the King, echoing back all the falsehoods of his speech, including those upon reform, and the enormous one that "the peace of Europe is now assured"; but that some members have worthily opposed this address, and spoken truth in an honorable manner. Also, that the infamous sacrifice of the poor little queen of Spain puts on more tragic colors; that it is pretended she has epilepsy, and she is to be made to renounce the throne, which, indeed, has been a terrific curse to her. And Heaven and Earth have looked calmly on, while the king of France has managed all this with the most unnatural of mothers. January 27. This morning comes the plan of the Address of the Chamber of Deputies to the King: it contains some passages that are keenest satire upon him, as also some remarks which have been made, some words of truth spoken in the Chamber of Peers, that must have given him some twinges of nervous shame as he read. M. Guizot's speech on the affairs of Switzerland shows his usual shabbiness and falsehood. Surely never prime minister stood in so mean a position as he: one like Metternich seems noble and manly in comparison; for if there is a cruel, atheistical, treacherous policy, there needs not at least continual evasion to avoid declaring in words what is so glaringly manifest in fact. There is news that the revolution has now broken out in Naples; that neither Sicilians nor Neapolitans will trust the king, but demand his abdication; and that his bad demon, Coclo, has fled, carrying two hundred thousand ducats of gold. But in particulars this news is not yet sure, though, no doubt, there is truth, at the bottom. Aggressions on the part of the Austrians continue in the North. The advocates Tommaso and Manin (a light thus reflected on the name of the last Doge), having dared to declare formally the necessity of reform, are thrown into prison. Every day the cloud swells, and the next fortnight is likely to bring important tidings. LETTER XXIII. UNPLEASANTNESS OF A ROMAN WINTER.--PROGRESS OF EVENTS IN EUROPE, AND THEIR EFFECT UPON ITALY.--THE CARNIVAL.--RAIN INTERRUPTS THE GAYETY.--REJOICINGS FOR THE REVOLUTIONS OF FRANCE AND AUSTRIA.--TRANSPORTS OF THE PEOPLE.--OBLATIONS TO THE CAUSE OF LIBERTY.--CASTLE FUSANO.--THE WEATHER, GLADSOMENESS OF NATURE, AND THE PLEASURE OF THOUGHT. Rome, March 29, 1848. It is long since I have written. My health entirely gave way beneath the Roman winter. The rain was constant, commonly falling in torrents from the 16th of December to the 19th of March. Nothing could surpass the dirt, the gloom, the desolation, of Rome. Let no one fancy he has seen her who comes here only in the winter. It is an immense mistake to do so. I cannot sufficiently rejoice that I did not first see Italy in the winter. The climate of Rome at this time of extreme damp I have found equally exasperating and weakening. I have had constant nervous headache without strength to bear it, nightly fever, want of appetite. Some constitutions bear it better, but the complaint of weakness and extreme dejection of spirits is general among foreigners in the wet season. The English say they become acclimated in two or three years, and cease to suffer, though never so strong as at home. Now this long dark dream--to me the most idle and most suffering season of my life--seems past. The Italian heavens wear again their deep blue; the sun shines gloriously; the melancholy lustres are stealing again over the Campagna, and hundreds of larks sing unwearied above its ruins. Nature seems in sympathy with the great events that are transpiring,--with the emotions which are swelling the hearts of men. The morning sun is greeted by the trumpets of the Roman legions marching out once more, now not to oppress but to defend. The stars look down on their jubilees over the good news which nightly reaches them from their brothers of Lombardy. This week has been one of nobler, sweeter feeling, of a better hope and faith, than Rome in her greatest days ever knew. How much has happened since I wrote! First, the victorious resistance of Sicily and the revolution of Naples. This has led us yet only to half-measures, but even these have been of great use to the progress of Italy. The Neapolitans will probably have to get rid at last of the stupid crowned head who is at present their puppet; but their bearing with him has led to the wiser sovereigns granting these constitutions, which, if eventually inadequate to the wants of Italy, will be so useful, are so needed, to educate her to seek better, completer forms of administration. In the midst of all this serious work came the play of Carnival, in which there was much less interest felt than usual, but enough to dazzle and captivate a stranger. One thing, however, has been omitted in the description of the Roman Carnival; i.e. that it rains every day. Almost every day came on violent rain, just as the tide of gay masks was fairly engaged in the Corso. This would have been well worth bearing once or twice, for the sake of seeing the admirable good humor of this people. Those who had laid out all their savings in the gayest, thinnest dresses, on carriages and chairs for the Corso, found themselves suddenly drenched, their finery spoiled, and obliged to ride and sit shivering all the afternoon. But they never murmured, never scolded, never stopped throwing their flowers. Their strength of constitution is wonderful. While I, in my shawl and boa, was coughing at the open window from the moment I inhaled the wet sepulchral air, the servant-girls of the house had taken off their woollen gowns, and, arrayed in white muslins and roses, sat in the drenched street beneath the drenching rain, quite happy, and have suffered nothing in consequence. The Romans renounced the _Moccoletti_, ostensibly as an expression of sympathy for the sufferings of the Milanese, but really because, at that time, there was great disturbance about the Jesuits, and the government feared that difficulties would arise in the excitement of the evening. But, since, we have had this entertainment in honor of the revolutions of France and Austria, and nothing could be more beautiful. The fun usually consists in all the people blowing one another's lights out. We had not this; all the little tapers were left to blaze, and the long Corso swarmed with tall fire-flies. Lights crept out over the surface of all the houses, and such merry little twinkling lights, laughing and flickering with each slightest movement of those who held them! Up and down the Corso they twinkled, they swarmed, they streamed, while a surge of gay triumphant sound ebbed and flowed beneath that glittering surface. Here and there danced men carrying aloft _moccoli_, and clanking chains, emblem of the tyrannic power now vanquished by the people;--the people, sweet and noble, who, in the intoxication of their joy, were guilty of no rude or unkindly word or act, and who, no signal being given as usual for the termination of their diversion, closed, of their own accord and with one consent, singing the hymns for Pio, by nine o'clock, and retired peacefully to their homes, to dream of hopes they yet scarce understand. This happened last week. The news of the dethronement of Louis Philippe reached us just after the close of the Carnival. It was just a year from my leaving Paris. I did not think, as I looked with such disgust on the empire of sham he had established in France, and saw the soul of the people imprisoned and held fast as in an iron vice, that it would burst its chains so soon. Whatever be the result, France has done gloriously; she has declared that she will not be satisfied with pretexts while there are facts in the world,--that to stop her march is a vain attempt, though the onward path be dangerous and difficult. It is vain to cry, Peace! peace! when there is no peace. The news from France, in these days, sounds ominous, though still vague. It would appear that the political is being merged in the social struggle: it is well. Whatever blood is to be shed, whatever altars cast down, those tremendous problems MUST be solved, whatever be the cost! That cost cannot fail to break many a bank, many a heart, in Europe, before the good can bud again out of a mighty corruption. To you, people of America, it may perhaps be given to look on and learn in time for a preventive wisdom. You may learn the real meaning of the words FRATERNITY, EQUALITY: you may, despite the apes of the past who strive to tutor you, learn the needs of a true democracy. You may in time learn to reverence, learn to guard, the true aristocracy of a nation, the only really nobles,--the LABORING CLASSES. And Metternich, too, is crushed; the seed of the woman has had his foot on the serpent. I have seen the Austrian arms dragged through the streets of Rome and burned in the Piazza del Popolo. The Italians embraced one another, and cried, _Miracolo! Providenza!_ the modern Tribune Ciceronacchio fed the flame with faggots; Adam Mickiewicz, the great poet of Poland, long exiled from his country or the hopes of a country, looked on, while Polish women, exiled too, or who perhaps, like one nun who is here, had been daily scourged by the orders of a tyrant, brought little pieces that had been scattered in the street and threw them into the flames,--an offering received by the Italians with loud plaudits. It was a transport of the people, who found no way to vent their joy, but the symbol, the poesy, natural to the Italian mind. The ever-too-wise "upper classes" regret it, and the Germans choose to resent it as an insult to Germany; but it was nothing of the kind; the insult was to the prisons of Spielberg, to those who commanded the massacres of Milan,--a base tyranny little congenial to the native German heart, as the true Germans of Germany are at this moment showing by their resolves, by their struggles. When the double-headed eagle was pulled down from above the lofty portal of the Palazzo di Venezia, the people placed there in its stead one of white and gold, inscribed with the name ALTA ITALIA, and quick upon the emblem followed the news that Milan was fighting against her tyrants,--that Venice had driven them out and freed from their prisons the courageous Protestants in favor of truth, Tommaso and Manin,--that Manin, descendant of the last Doge, had raised the republican banner on the Place St. Mark,--and that Modena, that Parma, were driving out the unfeeling and imbecile creatures who had mocked Heaven and man by the pretence of government there. With indescribable rapture these tidings were received in Rome. Men were seen dancing, women weeping with joy along the street. The youth rushed to enroll themselves in regiments to go to the frontier. In the Colosseum their names were received. Father Gavazzi, a truly patriotic monk, gave them the cross to carry on a new, a better, because defensive, crusade. Sterbini, long exiled, addressed them. He said: "Romans, do you wish to go; do you wish to go with all your hearts? If so, you _may_, and those who do not wish to go themselves may give money. To those who will go, the government gives bread and fifteen baiocchi a day." The people cried: "We wish to go, but we do not wish so much; the government is very poor; we can live on a paul a day." The princes answered by giving, one sixty thousand, others twenty, fifteen, ten thousand dollars. The people responded by giving at the benches which are opened in the piazzas literally everything; street-pedlers gave the gains of each day; women gave every ornament,--from the splendid necklace and bracelet down to the poorest bit of coral; servant-girls gave five pauls, two pauls, even half a paul, if they had no more. A man all in rags gave two pauls. "It is," said he, "all I have." "Then," said Torlonia, "take from me this dollar." The man of rags thanked him warmly, and handed that also to the bench, which refused to receive it. "No! _that_ must stay with you," shouted all present. These are the people whom the traveller accuses of being unable to rise above selfish considerations;--a nation rich and glorious by nature, capable, like all nations, all men, of being degraded by slavery, capable, as are few nations, few men, of kindling into pure flame at the touch of a ray from the Sun of Truth, of Life. The two or three days that followed, the troops were marching about by detachments, followed always by the people, to the Ponte Molle, often farther. The women wept; for the habits of the Romans are so domestic, that it seemed a great thing to have their sons and lovers gone even for a few months. The English--or at least those of the illiberal, bristling nature too often met here, which casts out its porcupine quills against everything like enthusiasm (of the more generous Saxon blood I know some noble examples)--laughed at all this. They have said that this people would not fight; when the Sicilians, men and women, did so nobly, they said: "O, the Sicilians are quite unlike the Italians; you will see, when the struggle comes on in Lombardy, they cannot resist the Austrian force a moment." I said: "That force is only physical; do not you think a sentiment can sustain them?" They replied: "All stuff and poetry; it will fade the moment their blood flows." When the news came that the Milanese, men and women, fight as the Sicilians did, they said: "Well, the Lombards are a better race, but these Romans are good for nothing. It is a farce for a Roman to try to walk even; they never walk a mile; they will not be able to support the first day's march of thirty miles, and not have their usual _minéstra_ to eat either." Now the troops were not willing to wait for the government to make the necessary arrangements for their march, so at the first night's station--Monterosi--they did _not_ find food or bedding; yet the second night, at Civita Castellana, they were so well alive as to remain dancing and vivaing Pio Nono in the piazza till after midnight. No, Gentlemen, soul is not quite nothing, if matter be a clog upon its transports. The Americans show a better, warmer feeling than they did; the meeting in New York was of use in instructing the Americans abroad! The dinner given here on Washington's birthday was marked by fine expressions of sentiment, and a display of talent unusual on such occasions. There was a poem from Mr. Story of Boston, which gave great pleasure; a speech by Mr. Hillard, said to be very good, and one by Rev. Mr. Hedge of Bangor, exceedingly admired for the felicity of thought and image, and the finished beauty of style. Next week we shall have more news, and I shall try to write and mention also some interesting things want of time obliges me to omit in this letter. April 1. Yesterday I passed at Ostia and Castle Fusano. A million birds sang; the woods teemed with blossoms; the sod grew green hourly over the graves of the mighty Past; the surf rushed in on a fair shore; the Tiber majestically retreated to carry inland her share from the treasures of the deep; the sea-breezes burnt my face, but revived my heart. I felt the calm of thought, the sublime hopes of the future, nature, man,--so great, though so little,--so dear, though incomplete. Returning to Rome, I find the news pronounced official, that the viceroy Ranieri has capitulated at Verona; that Italy is free, independent, and one. I trust this will prove no April-foolery, no premature news; it seems too good, too speedy a realization of hope, to have come on earth, and can only be answered in the words of the proclamation made yesterday by Pius IX.:-- "The events which these two months past have seen rush after one another in rapid succession, are no human work. Woe to him who, in this wind, which shakes and tears up alike the lofty cedars and humble shrubs, hears not the voice of God! Woe to human pride, if to the fault or merit of any man whatsoever it refer these wonderful changes, instead of adoring the mysterious designs of Providence." LETTER XXIV. AFFAIRS IN ITALY.--THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF MILAN.--ADDRESS TO THE GERMAN NATION.--BROTHERHOOD, AND THE INDEPENDENCE OF ITALY.--THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT TO THE NATIONS SUBJECT TO THE RULE OF THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA.--REFLECTIONS ON THESE MOVEMENTS.--LAMARTINE.-- BERANGER.--MICKIEWICZ IN FLORENCE: ENTHUSIASTIC RECEPTION: STYLED THE DANTE OF POLAND: HIS ADDRESS BEFORE THE FLORENTINES.--EXILES RETURNING.--MAZZINI.--THE POSITION OF PIUS IX.--HIS DERELICTION FROM THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM AND OF PROGRESS.--THE AFFAIR OF THE JESUITS.-- HIS COURSE IN VARIOUS MATTERS.--LANGUAGE OF THE PEOPLE.--THE WORK BEGUN BY NAPOLEON VIRTUALLY FINISHED.--THE LOSS OF PIUS IX. FOR THE MOMENT A GREAT ONE.--THE RESPONSIBILITY OF EVENTS LYING WHOLLY WITH THE PEOPLE.--HOPES AND PROSPECTS OF THE FUTURE. Rome, April 19, 1848. In closing my last, I hoped to have some decisive intelligence to impart by this time, as to the fortunes of Italy. But though everything, so far, turns in her favor, there has been no decisive battle, no final stroke. It pleases me much, as the news comes from day to day, that I passed so leisurely last summer over that part of Lombardy now occupied by the opposing forces, that I have in my mind the faces both of the Lombard and Austrian leaders. A number of the present members of the Provisional Government of Milan I knew while there; they are men of twenty-eight and thirty, much more advanced in thought than the Moderates of Rome, Naples, Tuscany, who are too much fettered with a bygone state of things, and not on a par in thought, knowledge, preparation for the great future, with the rest of the civilized world at this moment. The papers that emanate from the Milanese government are far superior in tone to any that have been uttered by the other states. Their protest in favor of their rights, their addresses to the Germans at large and the countries under the dominion of Austria, are full of nobleness and thoughts sufficiently great for the use of the coming age. These addresses I translate, thinking they may not in other form reach America. "THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF MILAN TO THE GERMAN NATION. "We hail you as brothers, valiant, learned, generous Germans! "This salutation from a people just risen after a terrible struggle to self-consciousness and to the exercise of its rights, ought deeply to move your magnanimous hearts. "We deem ourselves worthy to utter that great word Brotherhood, which effaces among nations the traditions of all ancient hate, and we proffer it over the new-made graves of our fellow-citizens, who have fought and died to give us the right to proffer it without fear or shame. "We call brothers men of all nations who believe and hope in the improvement of the human family, and seek the occasion to further it; but you, especially, we call brothers, you Germans, with whom, we have in common so many noble sympathies,--the love of the arts and higher studies, the delight of noble contemplation,--with whom also we have much correspondence in our civil destinies. "With you are of first importance the interests of the great country, Germany,--with us, those of the great country, Italy. "We were induced to rise in arms against Austria, (we mean, not the people, but the government of Austria,) not only by the need of redeeming ourselves from the shame and grief of thirty-one years of the most abject despotism, but by a deliberate resolve to take our place upon the plane of nations, to unite with our brothers of the Peninsula, and take rank with them under the great banner raised by Pius IX., on which is written, THE INDEPENDENCE OF ITALY. "Can you blame us, independent Germans? In blaming us, you would sink beneath your history, beneath your most honored and recent declarations. "We have chased the Austrian from our soil; we shall give ourselves no repose till we have chased him from all parts of Italy. No this enterprise we are all sworn; for this fights our army enrolled in every part of the Peninsula,--an array of brothers led by the king of Sardinia, who prides himself on being the sword of Italy. "And the Austrian is not more our enemy than yours. "The Austrian--we speak still of the government, and not of the people--has always denied and contradicted the interests of the whole German nation, at the head of an assemblage of races differing in language, in customs, in institutions. When it was in his power to have corrected the errors of time and a dynastic policy, by assuming the high mission of uniting them by great moral interests, he preferred to arm one against the other, and to corrupt them all. "Fearing every noble instinct, hostile to every grand idea, devoted to the material interests of an oligarchy of princes spoiled by a senseless education, of ministers who had sold their consciences, of speculators who subjected and sacrificed everything to gold, the only aim of such a government was to sow division everywhere. What wonder if everywhere in Italy, as in Germany, it reaps harvests of hate and ignominy. Yes, of hate! To this the Austrian has condemned us, to know hate and its deep sorrows. But we are absolved in the sight of God, and by the insults which have been heaped upon us for so many years, the unwearied efforts to debase us, the destruction of our villages, the cold-blooded slaughter of our aged people, our priests, our women, our children. And you,--you shall be the first to absolve us, you, virtuous among the Germans, who certainly have shared our indignation when a venal and lying press accused us of being enemies to your great and generous nation, and we could not answer, and were constrained to devour in silence the shame of an accusation which wounded us to the heart. "We honor you, Germans! we pant to give you glorious evidence of this. And, as a prelude to the friendly relations we hope to form with your governments, we seek to alleviate as much as possible the pains of captivity to some officers and soldiers belonging to various states of the Germanic Confederation, who fought in the Austrian army. These we wish to send back to you, and are occupied by seeking the means to effect this purpose. We honor you so much, that we believe you capable of preferring to the bonds of race and language the sacred titles of misfortune and of right. "Ah! answer to our appeal, valiant, wise, and generous Germans! Clasp the hand, which we offer you with the heart of a brother and friend; hasten to disavow every appearance of complicity with a government which the massacres of Galicia and Lombardy have blotted from the list of civilized and Christian governments. It would be a beautiful thing for you to give this example, which will be new in history and worthy of these miraculous times,--the example of a strong and generous people casting aside other sympathies, other interests, to answer the invitation of a regenerate people, to cheer it in its new career, obedient to the great principles of justice, of humanity, of civil and Christian brotherhood." "THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF MILAN TO THE NATIONS SUBJECT TO THE RULE OF THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA. "From your lands have come three armies which have brought war into ours; your speech is spoken by those hostile bands who come to us with fire and sword; nevertheless we come to you as to brothers. "The war which calls for our resistance is not your war; you are not our enemies: you are only instruments in the hand of our foe, and this foe, brothers, is common to us all. "Before God, before men, solemnly we declare it,--our only enemy is the government of Austria. "And that government which for so many years has labored to cancel, in the races it has subdued, every vestige of nationality, which takes no heed of their wants or prayers, bent only on serving miserable interests and more miserable pride, fomenting always antipathies conformably with the ancient maxim of tyrants, _Divide and govern_,--this government has constituted itself the adversary of every generous thought, the ally and patron of all ignoble causes, the government declared by the whole civilized world paymaster of the executioners of Galicia. "This government, after having pertinaciously resisted the legal expression of moderate desires,--after having defied with ludicrous hauteur the opinion of Europe, has found itself in its metropolis too weak to resist an insurrection of students, and has yielded,--has yielded, making an assignment on time, and throwing to you, brothers, as an alms-gift to the importunate beggar, the promise of institutions which, in these days, are held essential conditions of life for a civilized nation. "But you have not confided in this promise; for the youth of Vienna, which feels the inspiring breath of this miraculous time, is impelled on the path of progress; and therefore the Austrian government, uncertain of itself and of your dispositions, took its old part of standing still to wait for events, in the hope of turning them to its own profit. "In the midst of this it received the news of our glorious revolution, and it thought to have found in this the best way to escape from its embarrassment. First it concealed that news; then made it known piecemeal, and disfigured by hypocrisy and hatred. We were a handful of rebels thirsting for German blood. We make a war of stilettos, we wish the destruction of all Germany. But for us answers the admiration of all Italy, of all Europe, even the evidence of your own people whom we are constrained to hold prisoners or hostages, who will unanimously avow that we have shown heroic courage in the fight, heroic moderation in victory. "Yes! we have risen as one man against the Austrian government, to become again a nation, to make common cause with our Italian brothers, and the arms which we have assumed for so great an object we shall not lay down till we have attained it. Assailed by a brutal executor of brutal orders, we have combated in a just war; betrayed, a price set on our heads, wounded in the most vital parts, we have not transgressed the bounds of legitimate defence. The murders, the depredations of the hostile band, irritated against us by most wicked arts, have excited our horror, but never a reprisal. The soldier, his arms once laid down, was for us only an unfortunate. "But behold how the Austrian government provokes you against us, and bids you come against us as a crusade! A crusade! The parody would be ludicrous if it were not so cruel. A crusade against a people which, in the name of Christ, under a banner blessed by the Vicar of Christ, and revered by all the nations, fights to secure its indefeasible rights. "Oh! if you form against us this crusade,--we have already shown the world what a people can do to reconquer its liberty, its independence,--we will show, also, what it can do to preserve them. If, almost unarmed, we have put to flight an army inured to war,--surely, brothers, that army wanted faith in the cause for which it fought,--can we fear that our courage will grow faint after our triumph, and when aided by all our brothers of Italy? Let the Austrian government send against us its threatened battalions, they will find in our breasts a barrier more insuperable than the Alps. Everything will be a weapon to us; from every villa, from every field, from every hedge, will issue defenders of the national cause; women and children will fight like men; men will centuple their strength, their courage; and we will all perish amid the ruins of our city, before receiving foreign rule into this land which at last we call ours. "But this must not be. You, our brothers, must not permit it to be; your honor, your interests, do not permit it. Will you fight in a cause which you must feel to be absurd and wicked? You sink to the condition of hirelings, and do you not believe that the Austrian government, should it conquer us and Italy, would turn against you the arms you had furnished for the conquest? Do you not believe it would act as after the struggle with Napoleon? And are you not terrified by the idea of finding yourself in conflict with all civilized Europe, and constrained to receive, to feast as your ally, the Autocrat of Russia, that perpetual terror to the improvement and independence of Europe? It is not possible for the house of Lorraine to forget its traditions; it is not possible that it should resign itself to live tranquil in the atmosphere of Liberty. You can only constrain it by sustaining yourself, with the Germanic and Slavonian nationalities, and with this Italy, which longs only to see the nations harmonize with that resolve which she has finally taken, that she may never more be torn in pieces. "Think of us, brothers. This is for you and for us a question of life and of death; it is a question on which depends, perhaps, the peace of Europe. "For ourselves, we have already weighed the chances of the struggle, and subordinated them all to this final resolution, that we will be free and independent, with our brothers of Italy. "We hope that our words will induce you to calm counsels; if not, you will find us on the field of battle generous and loyal enemies, as now we profess ourselves your generous and loyal brothers. (Signed,) "CASATI, _President_, DURINI, STRIGELLI, BERETTA, GRAPPI, TURRONI, REZZONICO, CARBONERA, BORROMEO, P. LITTA, GIULINI, GUERRIERI, PORRO, MORRONI, AB. ANELLI, CORRENTI, _Sec.-Gen._" These are the names of men whose hearts glow with that generous ardor, the noble product of difficult times. Into their hearts flows wisdom from on high,--thoughts great, magnanimous, brotherly. They may not all remain true to this high vocation, but, at any rate, they will have lived a period of true life. I knew some of these men when in Lombardy; of old aristocratic families, with all the refinement of inheritance and education, they are thoroughly pervaded by principles of a genuine democracy of brotherhood and justice. In the flower of their age, they have before them a long career of the noblest usefulness, if this era follows up its present promise, and they are faithful to their present creed, and ready to improve and extend it. Every day produces these remarkable documents. So many years as we have been suffocated and poisoned by the atmosphere of falsehood in official papers, how refreshing is the tone of noble sentiment in Lamartine! What a real wisdom and pure dignity in the letter of Béranger! _He_ was always absolutely true,--an oasis in the pestilential desert of Humbug; but the present time allowed him a fine occasion. The Poles have also made noble manifestations. Their great poet, Adam Mickiewicz, has been here to enroll the Italian Poles, publish the declaration of faith in which they hope to re-enter and re-establish their country, and receive the Pope's benediction on their banner. In their declaration of faith are found these three articles:-- "Every one of the nation a citizen,--every citizen equal in rights and before authorities. "To the Jew, our elder brother, respect, brotherhood, aid on the way to his eternal and terrestrial good, entire equality in political and civil rights. "To the companion of life, woman, citizenship, entire equality of rights." This last expression of just thought the Poles ought to initiate, for what other nation has had such truly heroic women? Women indeed,--not children, servants, or playthings. Mickiewicz, with the squadron that accompanied him from Rome, was received with the greatest enthusiasm at Florence. Deputations from the clubs and journals went to his hotel and escorted him to the Piazza del Gran Dúca, where, amid an immense concourse of people, some good speeches were made. A Florentine, with a generous forgetfulness of national vanity, addressed him as the Dante of Poland, who, more fortunate than the great bard and seer of Italy, was likely to return to his country to reap the harvest of the seed he had sown. "O Dante of Poland! who, like our Alighieri, hast received from Heaven sovereign genius, divine song, but from earth sufferings and exile,--more happy than our Alighieri, thou hast reacquired a country; already thou art meditating on the sacred harp the patriotic hymn of restoration and of victory. The pilgrims of Poland have become the warriors of their nation. Long live Poland, and the brotherhood of nations!" When this address was finished, the great poet appeared on the balcony to answer. The people received him with a tumult of applause, followed by a profound silence, as they anxiously awaited his voice. Those who are acquainted with the powerful eloquence, the magnetism, of Mickiewicz as an orator, will not be surprised at the effect produced by this speech, though delivered in a foreign language. It is the force of truth, the great vitality of his presence, that loads his words with such electric power. He spoke as follows:-- "People of Tuscany! Friends! Brothers! We receive your shouts of sympathy in the name of Poland; not for us, but for our country. Our country, though distant, claims from you this sympathy by its long martyrdom. The glory of Poland, its only glory, truly Christian, is to have suffered more than all the nations. In other countries the goodness, the generosity of heart, of some sovereigns protected the people; as yours has enjoyed the dawn of the era now coming, under the protection of your excellent prince. [Viva Leopold II.!] But conquered Poland, slave and victim, of sovereigns who were her sworn enemies and executioners,--Poland, abandoned by the governments and the nations, lay in agony on her solitary Golgotha. She was believed slain, dead, burred. 'We have slain her,' shouted the despots; 'she is dead!' [No, no! long live Poland!] 'The dead cannot rise again,' replied the diplomatists; 'we may now be tranquil.' [A universal shudder of feeling in the crowd.] There came a moment in which the world doubted of the mercy and justice of the Omnipotent. There was a moment in which the nations thought that the earth might be for ever abandoned by God, and condemned to the rule of the demon, its ancient lord. The nations forgot that Jesus Christ came down from heaven to give liberty and peace to the earth. The nations had forgotten all this. But God is just. The voice of Pius IX. roused Italy. [Long live Pius IX.!] The people of Paris have driven out the great traitor against the cause of the nations. [Bravo! Viva the people of Paris!] Very soon will be heard the voice of Poland. Poland will rise again! [Yes, yes! Poland will rise again!] Poland will call to life all the Slavonic races,--the Croats, the Dalmatians, the Bohemians, the Moravians, the Illyrians. These will form the bulwark against the tyrant of the North. [Great applause.] They will close for ever the way against the barbarians of the North,--destroyers of liberty and of civilization. Poland is called to do more yet: Poland, as crucified nation, is risen again, and called to serve her sister nations. The will of God is, that Christianity should become in Poland, and through Poland elsewhere, no more a dead letter of the law, but the living law of states and civil associations;--[Great applause;]--that Christianity should be manifested by acts, the sacrifices of generosity and liberality. This Christianity is not new to you, Florentines; your ancient republic knew and has acted upon it: it is time that the same spirit should make to itself a larger sphere. The will of God is that the nations should act towards one another as neighbors,--as brothers. [A tumult of applause.] And you, Tuscans, have to-day done an act of Christian brotherhood. Receiving thus foreign, unknown pilgrims, who go to defy the greatest powers of the earth, you have in us saluted only what is in us of spiritual and immortal,--our faith and our patriotism. [Applause.] We thank you; and we will now go into the church to thank God." "All the people then followed the Poles to the church of Santa Cróce, where was sung the _Benedictus Dominus_, and amid the memorials of the greatness of Italy collected in that temple was forged more strongly the chain of sympathy and of union between two nations, sisters in misfortune and in glory." This speech and its reception, literally translated from the journal of the day, show how pleasant it is on great occasions to be brought in contact with this people, so full of natural eloquence and of lively sensibility to what is great and beautiful. It is a glorious time too for the exiles who return, and reap even a momentary fruit of their long sorrows. Mazzini has been able to return from his seventeen years' exile, during which there was no hour, night or day, that the thought of Italy was banished from his heart,--no possible effort that he did not make to achieve the emancipation of his people, and with it the progress of mankind. He returns, like Wordsworth's great man, "to see what he foresaw." He will see his predictions accomplishing yet for a long time, for Mazzini has a mind far in advance of his times in general, and his nation in particular,--a mind that will be best revered and understood when the "illustrious Gioberti" shall be remembered as a pompous verbose charlatan, with just talent enough to catch the echo from the advancing wave of his day, but without any true sight of the wants of man at this epoch. And yet Mazzini sees not all: he aims at political emancipation; but he sees not, perhaps would deny, the bearing of some events, which even now begin to work their way. Of this, more anon; but not to-day, nor in the small print of the Tribune. Suffice it to say, I allude to that of which the cry of Communism, the systems of Fourier, &c., are but forerunners. Mazzini sees much already,--at Milan, where he is, he has probably this day received the intelligence of the accomplishment of his foresight, implied in his letter to the Pope, which angered Italy by what was thought its tone of irreverence and doubt, some six months since. To-day is the 7th of May, for I had thrown aside this letter, begun the 19th of April, from a sense that there was something coming that would supersede what was then to say. This something has appeared in a form that will cause deep sadness to good hearts everywhere. Good and loving hearts, that long for a human form which they can revere, will be unprepared and for a time must suffer much from the final dereliction of Pius IX. to the cause of freedom, progress, and of the war. He was a fair image, and men went nigh to idolize it; this they can do no more, though they may be able to find excuse for his feebleness, love his good heart no less than before, and draw instruction from the causes that have produced his failure, more valuable than his success would have been. Pius IX., no one can doubt who has looked on him, has a good and pure heart; but it needed also, not only a strong, but a great mind, "To _comprehend his trust_, and to the same Keep faithful, with a singleness of aim." A highly esteemed friend in the United States wrote to express distaste to some observations in a letter of mine to the Tribune on first seeing the Pontiff a year ago, observing, "To say that he had not the expression of great intellect was _uncalled for_" Alas! far from it; it was an observation that rose inevitably on knowing something of the task before Pius IX., and the hopes he had excited. The problem he had to solve was one of such difficulty, that only one of those minds, the rare product of ages for the redemption of mankind, could be equal to its solution. The question that inevitably rose on seeing him was, "Is he such a one?" The answer was immediately negative. But at the same time, he had such an aspect of true benevolence and piety, that a hope arose that Heaven would act through him, and impel him to measures wise beyond his knowledge. This hope was confirmed by the calmness he showed at the time of the conspiracy of July, and the occupation of Ferrara by the Austrians. Tales were told of simple wisdom, of instinct, which he obeyed in opposition to the counsels of all his Cardinals. Everything went on well for a time. But tokens of indubitable weakness were shown by the Pope in early acts of the winter, in the removal of a censor at the suggestion of others, in his speech, to the Consistory, in his answer to the first address of the Council. In these he declared that, when there was conflict between the priest and the man, he always meant to be the priest; and that he preferred the wisdom of the past to that of the future. Still, times went on bending his predeterminations to the call of the moment. He _acted_ wiselier than he intended; as, for instance, three weeks after declaring he would not give a constitution to his people, he gave it,--a sop to Cerberus, indeed,--a poor vamped-up thing that will by and by have to give place to something more legitimate, but which served its purpose at the time as declaration of rights for the people. When the news of the revolution of Vienna arrived, the Pope himself cried _Viva Pio Nono!_ and this ebullition of truth in one so humble, though opposed to his formal declarations, was received by his people with that immediate assent which truth commands. The revolution of Lombardy followed. The troops of the line were sent thither; the volunteers rushed to accompany them. In the streets of Rome was read the proclamation of Charles Albert, in which he styles himself the servant of Italy and of Pius IX. The priests preached the war, and justly, as a crusade; the Pope blessed their banners. Nobody dreamed, or had cause to dream, that these movements had not his full sympathy; and his name was in every form invoked as the chosen instrument of God to inspire Italy to throw off the oppressive yoke of the foreigner, and recover her rights in the civilized world. At the same time, however, the Pope was seen to act with great blindness in the affair of the Jesuits. The other states of Italy drove them out by main force, resolved not to have in the midst of the war a foe and spy in the camp. Rome wished to do the same, but the Pope rose in their defence. He talked as if they were assailed as a _religious_ body, when he could not fail, like everybody else, to be aware that they were dreaded and hated solely as agents of despotism. He demanded that they should be assailed only by legal means, when none such were available. The end was in half-measures, always the worst possible. He would not entirely yield, and the people would not at all. The Order was ostensibly dissolved; but great part of the Jesuits really remain here in disguise, a constant source of irritation and mischief, which, if still greater difficulties had not arisen, would of itself have created enough. Meanwhile, in the earnestness of the clergy about the pretended loss of the head of St. Andrew, in the ceremonies of the holy week, which at this juncture excited no real interest, was much matter for thought to the calm observer as to the restlessness of the new wine, the old bottles being heard to crack on every side, and hour by hour. Thus affairs went on from day to day,--the Pope kissing the foot of the brazen Jupiter and blessing palms of straw at St. Peter's; the _Circolo Romano_ erecting itself into a kind of Jacobin Club, dictating programmes for an Italian Diet-General, and choosing committees to provide for the expenses of the war; the Civic Guard arresting people who tried to make mobs as if famishing, and, being searched, were found well provided both with arms and money; the ministry at their wits' end, with their trunks packed up ready to be off at a moment's warning,--when the report, it is not yet known whether true or false, that one of the Roman Civic Guard, a well-known artist engaged in the war of Lombardy, had been taken and hung by the Austrians as a brigand, roused the people to a sense of the position of their friends, and they went to the Pope to demand that he should take a decisive stand, and declare war against the Austrians. The Pope summoned, a consistory; the people waited anxiously, for expressions of his were reported, as if the troops ought not to have thought of leaving the frontier, while every man, woman, and child in Rome knew, and every letter and bulletin declared, that all their thought was to render active aid to the cause of Italian independence. This anxious doubt, however, had not prepared at all for the excess to which they were to be disappointed. The speech of the Pope declared, that he had never any thought of the great results which had followed his actions; that he had only intended local reforms, such as had previously been suggested by the potentates of Europe; that he regretted the _mis_use which had been made of his name; and wound up by lamenting over the war,--dear to every Italian heart as the best and holiest cause in which for ages they had been called to embark their hopes,--as if it was something offensive to the spirit of religion, and which he would fain see hushed up, and its motives smoothed out and ironed over. A momentary stupefaction followed this astounding performance, succeeded by a passion of indignation, in which the words _traitor_ and _imbecile_ were associated with the name that had been so dear to his people. This again yielded to a settled grief: they felt that he was betrayed, but no traitor; timid and weak, but still a sovereign whom they had adored, and a man who had brought them much good, which could not be quite destroyed by his wishing to disown it. Even of this fact they had no time to stop and think; the necessity was too imminent of obviating the worst consequences of this ill; and the first thought was to prevent the news leaving Rome, to dishearten the provinces and army, before they had tried to persuade the Pontiff to wiser resolves, or, if this could not be, to supersede his power. I cannot repress my admiration at the gentleness, clearness, and good sense with which the Roman people acted under these most difficult circumstances. It was astonishing to see the clear understanding which animated the crowd, as one man, and the decision with which they acted to effect their purpose. Wonderfully has this people been developed within a year! The Pope, besieged by deputations, who mildly but firmly showed him that, if he persisted, the temporal power must be placed in other hands, his ears filled with reports of Cardinals, "such venerable persons," as he pathetically styles them, would not yield in spirit, though compelled to in act. After two days' struggle, he was obliged to place the power in the hands of the persons most opposed to him, and nominally acquiesce in their proceedings, while in his second proclamation, very touching from the sweetness of its tone, he shows a fixed misunderstanding of the cause at issue, which leaves no hope of his ever again being more than a name or an effigy in their affairs. His people were much affected, and entirely laid aside their anger, but they would not be blinded as to the truth. While gladly returning to their accustomed habits of affectionate homage toward the Pontiff, their unanimous sense and resolve is thus expressed in an able pamphlet of the day, such as in every respect would have been deemed impossible to the Rome of 1847:-- "From the last allocution of Pius result two facts of extreme gravity;--the entire separation between the spiritual and temporal power, and the express refusal of the Pontiff to be chief of an Italian Republic. But far from drawing hence reason for discouragement and grief, who looks well at the destiny of Italy may bless Providence, which breaks or changes the instrument when the work is completed, and by secret and inscrutable ways conducts us to the fulfilment of our desires and of our hopes. "If Pius IX. refuses, the Italian people does not therefore draw back. Nothing remains to the free people of Italy, except to unite in one constitutional kingdom, founded on the largest basis; and if the chief who, by our assemblies, shall be called to the highest honor, either declines or does not answer worthily, the people will take care of itself. "Italians! down with all emblems of private and partial interests. Let us unite under one single banner, the tricolor, and if he who has carried it bravely thus far lets it fall from his hand, we will take it one from the other, twenty-four millions of us, and, till the last of us shall have perished under the banner of our redemption, the stranger shall not return into Italy. "Viva Italy! viva the Italian people!"[A] [Footnote A: Close of "A Comment by Pio Angelo Fierortino on the Allocution of Pius IX. spoken in the Secret Consistory of 29th April, 1848," dated Italy, 30th April, 1st year of the Redemption of Italy.] These events make indeed a crisis. The work begun by Napoleon is finished. There will never more be really a Pope, but only the effigy or simulacrum of one. The loss of Pius IX. is for the moment a great one. His name had real moral weight,--was a trumpet appeal to sentiment. It is not the same with any man that is left. There is not one that can be truly a leader in the Roman dominion, not one who has even great intellectual weight. The responsibility of events now lies wholly with the people, and that wave of thought which has begun to pervade them. Sovereigns and statesmen will go where they are carried; it is probable power will be changed continually from, hand to hand, and government become, to all intents and purposes, representative. Italy needs now quite to throw aside her stupid king of Naples, who hangs like a dead weight on her movements. The king of Sardinia and the Grand Duke of Tuscany will be trusted while they keep their present course; but who can feel sure of any sovereign, now that Louis Philippe has shown himself so mad and Pius IX. so blind? It seems as if fate was at work to bewilder and cast down the dignities of the world and democratize society at a blow. In Rome there is now no anchor except the good sense of the people. It seems impossible that collision should not arise between him who retains the name but not the place of sovereign, and the provisional government which calls itself a ministry. The Count Mamiani, its new head, is a man of reputation as a writer, but untried as yet as a leader or a statesman. Should agitations arise, the Pope can no longer calm them by one of his fatherly looks. All lies in the future; and our best hope must be that the Power which has begun so great a work will find due means to end it, and make the year 1850 a year of true jubilee to Italy; a year not merely of pomps and tributes, but of recognized rights and intelligent joys; a year of real peace,--peace, founded not on compromise and the lying etiquettes of diplomacy, but on truth and justice. Then this sad disappointment in Pius IX. may be forgotten, or, while all that was lovely and generous in his life is prized and reverenced, deep instruction may be drawn from his errors as to the inevitable dangers of a priestly or a princely environment, and a higher knowledge may elevate a nobler commonwealth than the world has yet known. Hoping this era, I remain at present here. Should my hopes be dashed to the ground, it will not change my faith, but the struggle for its manifestation is to me of vital interest. My friends write to urge my return; they talk of our country as the land of the future. It is so, but that spirit which made it all it is of value in my eyes, which gave all of hope with which I can sympathize for that future, is more alive here at present than in America. My country is at present spoiled by prosperity, stupid with the lust of gain, soiled by crime in its willing perpetuation of slavery, shamed by an unjust war, noble sentiment much forgotten even by individuals, the aims of politicians selfish or petty, the literature frivolous and venal. In Europe, amid the teachings of adversity, a nobler spirit is struggling,--a spirit which cheers and animates mine. I hear earnest words of pure faith and love. I see deeds of brotherhood. This is what makes _my_ America. I do not deeply distrust my country. She is not dead, but in my time she sleepeth, and the spirit of our fathers flames no more, but lies hid beneath the ashes. It will not be so long; bodies cannot live when the soul gets too overgrown with gluttony and falsehood. But it is not the making a President out of the Mexican war that would make me wish to come back. Here things are before my eyes worth recording, and, if I cannot help this work, I would gladly be its historian. May 13. Returning from a little tour in the Alban Mount, where everything looks so glorious this glorious spring, I find a temporary quiet. The Pope's brothers have come to sympathize with him; the crowd sighs over what he has done, presents him with great bouquets of flowers, and reads anxiously the news from the north and the proclamations of the new ministry. Meanwhile the nightingales sing; every tree and plant is in flower, and the sun and moon shine as if paradise were already re-established on earth. I go to one of the villas to dream it is so, beneath the pale light of the stars. LETTER XXV. REVIEW OF THE COURSE OF PIUS IX.--MAMIANI.--THE PEOPLE'S DISAPPOINTED HOPES.--THE MONUMENTS IN MILAN, NAPLES, ETC.--THE KING OF NAPLES AND HIS TROOPS.--CALAMITIES OF THE WAR.--THE ITALIAN PEOPLE.--CHARLES ALBERT.--DEDUCTIONS.--SUMMER AMONG THE MOUNTAINS OF ITALY. Rome, December 2, 1848. I have not written for six months, and within that time what changes have taken place on this side "the great water,"--changes of how great dramatic interest historically,--of bearing infinitely important ideally! Easy is the descent in ill. I wrote last when Pius IX. had taken the first stride on the downward road. He had proclaimed himself the foe of further reform measures, when he implied that Italian independence was not important in his eyes, when he abandoned the crowd of heroic youth who had gone to the field with his benediction, to some of whom his own hand had given crosses. All the Popes, his predecessors, had meddled with, most frequently instigated, war; now came one who must carry out, literally, the doctrines of the Prince of Peace, when the war was not for wrong, or the aggrandizement of individuals, but to redeem national, to redeem human, rights from the grasp of foreign oppression. I said some cried "traitor," some "imbecile," some wept, but In the minds of all, I believe, at that time, grief was predominant. They could no longer depend on him they had thought their best friend. They had lost their father. Meanwhile his people would not submit to the inaction he urged. They saw it was not only ruinous to themselves, but base and treacherous to the rest of Italy. They said to the Pope, "This cannot be; you must follow up the pledges you have given, or, if you will not act to redeem them, you must have a ministry that will." The Pope, after he had once declared to the contrary, ought to have persisted. He should have said, "I cannot thus belie myself, I cannot put my name to acts I have just declared to be against my conscience." The ministers of the people ought to have seen that the position they assumed was utterly untenable; that they could not advance with an enemy in the background cutting off all supplies. But some patriotism and some vanity exhilarated them, and, the Pope having weakly yielded, they unwisely began their impossible task. Mamiani, their chief, I esteem a man, under all circumstances, unequal to such a position,--a man of rhetoric merely. But no man could have acted, unless the Pope had resigned his temporal power, the Cardinals been put under sufficient check, and the Jesuits and emissaries of Austria driven from their lurking-places. A sad scene began. The Pope,--shut up more and more in his palace, the crowd of selfish and insidious advisers darkening round, enslaved by a confessor,--he who might have been the liberator of suffering Europe permitted the most infamous treacheries to be practised in his name. Private letters were written to the foreign powers, denying the acts he outwardly sanctioned; the hopes of the people were evaded or dallied with; the Chamber of Deputies permitted to talk and pass measures which they never could get funds to put into execution; legions to form and manoeuvre, but never to have the arms and clothing they needed. Again and again the people went to the Pope for satisfaction. They got only--benediction. Thus plotted and thus worked the scarlet men of sin, playing the hopes of Italy off and on, while _their_ hope was of the miserable defeat consummated by a still worse traitor at Milan on the 6th of August. But, indeed, what could be expected from the "Sword of Pius IX.," when Pius IX. himself had thus failed in his high vocation. The king of Naples bombarded his city, and set on the Lazzaroni to rob and murder the subjects he had deluded by his pretended gift of the Constitution. Pius proclaimed that he longed to embrace _all_ the princes of Italy. He talked of peace, when all knew for a great part of the Italians there was no longer hope of peace, except in the sepulchre, or freedom. The taunting manifestos of Welden are a sufficient comment on the conduct of the Pope. "As the government of his Holiness is too weak to control his subjects,"--"As, singularly enough, a great number of Romans are found, fighting against us, contrary to the _expressed_ will of their prince,"--such were the excuses for invasions of the Pontifical dominions, and the robbery and insult by which they were accompanied. Such invasions, it was said, made his Holiness very indignant; he remonstrated against these; but we find no word of remonstrance against the tyranny of the king of Naples,--no word of sympathy for the victims of Lombardy, the sufferings of Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Mantua, Venice. In the affairs of Europe there are continued signs of the plan of the retrograde party to effect similar demonstrations in different places at the same hour. The 15th of May was one of these marked days. On that day the king of Naples made use of the insurrection he had contrived to excite, to massacre his people, and find an excuse for recalling his troops from Lombardy. The same day a similar crisis was hoped in Rome from the declarations of the Pope, but that did not work at the moment exactly as the foes of enfranchisement hoped. However, the wounds were cruel enough. The Roman volunteers received the astounding news that they were not to expect protection or countenance from their prince; all the army stood aghast, that they were no longer to fight in the name of Pio. It had been so dear, so sweet, to love and really reverence the head of their Church, so inspiring to find their religion for once in accordance with the aspirations of the soul! They were to be deprived, too, of the aid of the disciplined Neapolitan troops and their artillery, on which they had counted. How cunningly all this was contrived to cause dissension and dismay may easily be seen. The Neapolitan General Pepe nobly refused to obey, and called on the troops to remain with him. They wavered; but they are a pampered army, personally much attached to the king, who pays them well and indulges them at the expense of his people, that they may be his support against that people when in a throe of nature it rises and striven for its rights. For the same reason, the sentiment of patriotism was little diffused among them in comparison with the other troops. And the alternative presented was one in which it required a very clear sense of higher duty to act against habit. Generally, after wavering awhile, they obeyed and returned. The Roman States, which had received them with so many testimonials of affection and honor, on their retreat were not slack to show a correspondent aversion and contempt. The towns would not suffer their passage; the hamlets were unwilling to serve them even with fire and water. They were filled at once with shame and rage; one officer killed himself, unable to bear it; in the unreflecting minds of the soldiers, hate sprung up for the rest of Italy, and especially Rome, which will make them admirable tools of tyranny in case of civil war. This was the first great calamity of the war. But apart from the treachery of the king of Naples and the dereliction of the Pope, it was impossible it should end thoroughly well. The people were in earnest, and have shown themselves so; brave, and able to bear privation. No one should dare, after the proofs of the summer, to reiterate the taunt, so unfriendly frequent on foreign lips at the beginning of the contest, that the Italian can boast, shout, and fling garlands, but not _act_. The Italian always showed himself noble and brave, even in foreign service, and is doubly so in the cause of his country. But efficient heads were wanting. The princes were not in earnest; they were looking at expediency. The Grand Duke, timid and prudent, wanted to do what was safest for Tuscany; his ministry, "_Moderate_" and prudent, would have liked to win a great prize at small risk. They went no farther than the people pulled them. The king of Sardinia had taken the first bold step, and the idea that treachery on his part was premeditated cannot be sustained; it arises from the extraordinary aspect of his measures, and the knowledge that he is not incapable of treachery, as he proved in early youth. But now it was only his selfishness that worked to the same results. He fought and planned, not for Italy, but the house of Savoy, which his Balbis and Giobertis had so long been prophesying was to reign supreme in the new great era of Italy. These prophecies he more than half believed, because they chimed with his ambitious wishes; but he had not soul enough to realize them; he trusted only in his disciplined troops; he had not nobleness enough to believe he might rely at all on the sentiment of the people. For his troops he dared not have good generals; conscious of meanness and timidity, he shrank from the approach of able and earnest men; he was inly afraid they would, in helping Italy, take her and themselves out of his guardianship. Antonini was insulted, Garibaldi rejected; other experienced leaders, who had rushed to Italy at the first trumpet-sound, could never get employment from him. As to his generalship, it was entirely inadequate, even if he had made use of the first favorable moments. But his first thought was not to strike a blow at the Austrians before they recovered from the discomfiture of Milan, but to use the panic and need of his assistance to induce Lombardy and Venice to annex themselves to his kingdom. He did not even wish seriously to get the better till this was done, and when this was done, it was too late. The Austrian army was recruited, the generals had recovered their spirits, and were burning to retrieve and avenge their past defeat. The conduct of Charles Albert had been shamefully evasive in the first months. The account given by Franzini, when challenged in the Chamber of Deputies at Turin, might be summed up thus: "Why, gentlemen, what would you have? Every one knows that the army is in excellent condition, and eager for action. They are often reviewed, hear speeches, and sometimes get medals. We take places always, if it is not difficult. I myself was present once when the troops advanced; our men behaved gallantly, and had the advantage in the first skirmish; but afterward the enemy pointed on us artillery from the heights, and, naturally, we retired. But as to supposing that his Majesty Charles Albert is indifferent to the success of Italy in the war, that is absurd. He is 'the Sword of Italy'; he is the most magnanimous of princes; he is seriously occupied about the war; many a day I have been called into his tent to talk it over, before he was up in the morning!" Sad was it that the heroic Milan, the heroic Venice, the heroic Sicily, should lean on such a reed as this, and by hurried acts, equally unworthy as unwise, sully the glory of their shields. Some names, indeed, stand, out quite free from this blame. Mazzini, who kept up a combat against folly and cowardice, day by day and hour by hour, with almost supernatural strength, warned the people constantly of the evils which their advisers were drawing upon them. He was heard then only by a few, but in this "Italia del Popolo" may be found many prophecies exactly fulfilled, as those of "the golden-haired love of Phoebus" during the struggles of Ilium. He himself, in the last sad days of Milan, compared his lot to that of Cassandra. At all events, his hands are pure from that ill. What could be done to arouse Lombardy he did, but the "Moderate" party unable to wean themselves from old habits, the pupils of the wordy Gioberti thought there could be no safety unless under the mantle of a prince. They did not foresee that he would run away, and throw that mantle on the ground. Tommaso and Manin also were clear in their aversion to these measures; and with them, as with all who were resolute in principle at that time, a great influence has followed. It is said Charles Albert feels bitterly the imputations on his courage, and says they are most ungrateful, since he has exposed the lives of himself and his sons in the combat. Indeed, there ought to be made a distinction between personal and mental courage. The former Charles Albert may possess, may have too much of what this still aristocratic world calls "the feelings of a gentleman" to shun exposing himself to a chance shot now and then. An entire want of mental courage he has shown. The battle, decisive against him, was made so by his giving up the moment fortune turned against him. It is shameful to hear so many say this result was inevitable, just because the material advantages were in favor of the Austrians. Pray, was never a battle won against material odds? It is precisely such that a good leader, a noble man, may expect to win. Were the Austrians driven out of Milan because the Milanese had that advantage? The Austrians would again, have suffered repulse from them, but for the baseness of this man, on whom they had been cajoled into relying,--a baseness that deserves the pillory; and on a pillory will the "Magnanimous," as he was meanly called in face of the crimes of his youth and the timid selfishness of his middle age, stand in the sight of posterity. He made use of his power only to betray Milan; he took from the citizens all means of defence, and then gave them up to the spoiler; he promised to defend them "to the last drop of his blood," and sold them the next minute; even the paltry terms he made, he has not seen maintained. Had the people slain him in their rage, he well deserved it at their hands; and all his conduct since show how righteous would have been that sudden verdict of passion. Of all this great drama I have much to write, but elsewhere, in a more full form, and where I can duly sketch the portraits of actors little known in America. The materials are over-rich. I have bought my right in them by much sympathetic suffering; yet, amid the blood and tears of Italy, 'tis joy to see some glorious new births. The Italians are getting cured of mean adulation and hasty boasts; they are learning to prize and seek realities; the effigies of straw are getting knocked down, and living, growing men take their places. Italy is being educated for the future, her leaders are learning that the time is past for trust in princes and precedents,--that there is no hope except in truth and God; her lower people are learning to shout less and think more. Though my thoughts have been much with the public in this struggle for life, I have been away from it during the summer months, in the quiet valleys, on the lonely mountains. There, personally undisturbed, I have seen the glorious Italian summer wax and wane,--the summer of Southern Italy, which I did not see last year. On the mountains it was not too hot for me, and I enjoyed the great luxuriance of vegetation. I had the advantage of having visited the scene of the war minutely last summer, so that, in mind, I could follow every step of the campaign, while around me were the glorious relics of old times,--the crumbling theatre or temple of the Roman day, the bird's-nest village of the Middle Ages, on whose purple height shone the sun and moon of Italy in changeless lustre. It was great pleasure to me to watch the gradual growth and change of the seasons, so different from ours. Last year I had not leisure for this quiet acquaintance. Now I saw the fields first dressed in their carpets of green, enamelled richly with the red poppy and blue corn-flower,--in that sunshine how resplendent! Then swelled the fig, the grape, the olive, the almond; and my food was of these products of this rich clime. For near three months I had grapes every day; the last four weeks, enough daily for two persons for a cent! Exquisite salad for two persons' dinner and supper cost but a cent, and all other products of the region were in the same proportion. One who keeps still in Italy, and lives as the people do, may really have much simple luxury for very little money; though both travel, and, to the inexperienced foreigner, life in the cities, are expensive. LETTER XXVI. THOUGHTS OF THE ITALIAN RACE, THE SEASONS, AND ROME.--CHANGES.--THE DEATH OF THE MINISTER ROSSI.--THE CHURCH OF SAN LUIGI DEL FRANCESI.--ST. CECILIA AND THE DOMENICHINO CHAPEL.--THE PIAZZA DEL POPOLO.--THE TROOPS: PREPARATORY MOVEMENTS TOWARD THE QUIRINAL.--THE DEMONSTRATION ON THE PALACE.--THE CHURCH: ITS POSITION AND AIMS.--THE POPE'S FLIGHT, &C.--SOCIAL LIFE.--DON TIRLONE.--THE NEW YEAR. Rome, December 2, 1848. Not till I saw the snow on the mountains grow rosy in the autumn sunset did I turn my steps again toward Rome. I was very ready to return. After three or four years of constant excitement, this six months of seclusion had been welcome; but now I felt the need of meeting other eyes beside those, so bright and so shallow, of the Italian peasant. Indeed, I left what was most precious, but which I could not take with me;[A] still it was a compensation that I was again to see Rome,--Rome, that almost killed me with her cold breath of last winter, yet still with that cold breath whispered a tale of import so divine. Rome so beautiful, so great! her presence stupefies, and one has to withdraw to prize the treasures she has given. City of the soul! yes, it is _that_; the very dust magnetizes you, and thousand spells have been chaining you in every careless, every murmuring moment. Yes! Rome, however seen, thou must be still adored; and every hour of absence or presence must deepen love with one who has known what it is to repose in thy arms. [Footnote A: Her child, who was born in Rieti, September 5, 1848, and was necessarily left in that town during the difficulties and siege of Rome.--ED.] Repose! for whatever be the revolutions, tumults, panics, hopes, of the present day, still the temper of life here is repose. The great past enfolds us, and the emotions of the moment cannot here greatly disturb that impression. From the wild shout and throng of the streets the setting sun recalls us as it rests on a hundred domes and temples,--rests on the Campagna, whose grass is rooted in departed human greatness. Burial-place so full of spirit that death itself seems no longer cold! O let me rest here, too! Hest here seems possible; meseems myriad lives still linger here, awaiting some one great summons. The rivers had burst their bounds, and beneath the moon the fields round Rome lay one sheet of silver. Entering the gate while the baggage was under examination, I walked to the entrance of a villa. Far stretched its overarching shrubberies, its deep green bowers; two statues, with foot advanced and uplifted finger, seemed to greet me; it was near the scene of great revels, great splendors in the old time; there lay the gardens of Sallust, where were combined palace, theatre, library, bath, and villa. Strange things have happened since, the most attractive part of which--the secret heart--lies buried or has fled to animate other forms; for of that part historians have rarely given a hint more than they do now of the truest life of our day, which refuses to be embodied, by the pen, craving forms more mutable, more eloquent than the pen can give. I found Rome empty of foreigners. Most of the English have fled in affright,--the Germans and French are wanted at home,--the Czar has recalled many of his younger subjects; he does not like the schooling they get here. That large part of the population, which lives by the visits of foreigners was suffering very much,--trade, industry, for every reason, stagnant. The people were every moment becoming more exasperated by the impudent measures of the Minister Rossi, and their mortification at seeing Rome represented and betrayed by a foreigner. And what foreigner? A pupil of Guizot and Louis Philippe. The news of the bombardment and storm of Vienna had just reached Rome. Zucchi, the Minister of War, at once left the city to put down over-free manifestations in the provinces, and impede the entrance of the troops of the patriot chief, Garibaldi, into Bologna. From the provinces came soldiery, called by Rossi to keep order at the opening of the Chamber of Deputies. He reviewed them in the face of the Civic Guard; the press began to be restrained; men were arbitrarily seized and sent out of the kingdom. The public indignation rose to its height; the cup overflowed. The 15th was a beautiful day, and I had gone out for a long walk. Returning at night, the old Padrona met me with her usual smile a little clouded. "Do you know," said she, "that the Minister Rossi has been killed?" No Roman said _murdered_. "Killed?" "Yes,--with a thrust in the back. A wicked man, surely; but is that the way to punish even the wicked?" "I cannot," observed a philosopher, "sympathize under any circumstances with so immoral a deed; but surely the manner of doing it was great." The people at large were not so refined in their comments as either the Padrona or the philosopher; but soldiers and populace alike ran up and down, singing, "Blessed the hand that rids the earth of a tyrant." Certainly, the manner _was_ "great." The Chamber was awaiting the entrance of Rossi. Had he lived to enter, he would have found the Assembly, without a single exception, ranged upon the Opposition benches. His carriage approached, attended by a howling, hissing multitude. He smiled, affected unconcern, but must have felt relieved when his horses entered the courtyard gate of the _Cancelleria_. He did not know he was entering the place of his execution. The horses stopped; he alighted in the midst of a crowd; it jostled him, as if for the purpose of insult; he turned abruptly, and received as he did so the fatal blow. It was dealt by a resolute, perhaps experienced, hand; he fell and spoke no word more. The crowd, as if all previously acquainted with the plan, as no doubt most of them were, issued quietly from the gate, and passed through the outside crowd,--its members, among whom was he who dealt the blow, dispersing in all directions. For two or three minutes this outside crowd did not know that anything special had happened. When they did, the news was at the moment received in silence. The soldiers in whom Rossi had trusted, whom he had hoped to flatter and bribe, stood at their posts and said not a word. Neither they nor any one asked, "Who did this? Where is he gone?" The sense of the people certainly was that it was an act of summary justice on an offender whom the laws could not reach, but they felt it to be indecent to shout or exult on the spot where he was breathing his last. Rome, so long supposed the capital of Christendom, certainly took a very pagan view of this act, and the piece represented on the occasion at the theatres was "The Death of Nero." The next morning I went to the Church of St. Andrea della Valle, where was to be performed a funeral service, with fine music, in honor of the victims of Vienna; for this they do here for the victims of every place,--"victims of Milan," "victims of Paris," "victims of Naples," and now "victims of Vienna." But to-day I found the church closed, the service put off,--Rome was thinking about her own victims. I passed into the Ripetta, and entered the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi. The Republican flag was flying at the door; the young sacristan said the fine musical service, which this church gave formerly on St. Philip's day in honor of Louis Philippe, would now be transferred to the Republican anniversary, the 25th of February. I looked at the monument Chateaubriand erected when here, to a poor girl who died, last of her family, having seen all the others perish round her. I entered the Domenichino Chapel, and gazed anew on the magnificent representations of the Life and Death of St. Cecilia. She and St. Agnes are my favorite saints. I love to think of those angel visits which her husband knew by the fragrance of roses and lilies left behind in the apartment. I love to think of his visit to the Catacombs, and all that followed. In one of the pictures St. Cecilia, as she stretches out her arms toward the suffering multitude, seems as if an immortal fount of purest love sprung from her heart. It gives very strongly the idea of an inexhaustible love,--the only love that is much worth thinking about. Leaving the church, I passed along toward the Piazza del Popolo. "Yellow Tiber rose," but not high enough to cause "distress," as he does when in a swelling mood. I heard the drums beating, and, entering the Piazza, I found the troops of the line already assembled, and the Civic Guard marching in by platoons, each battalion saluted as it entered by trumpets and a fine strain from the band of the Carbineers. I climbed the Pincian to see better. There is no place so fine for anything of this kind as the Piazza del Popolo, it is so full of light, so fair and grand, the obelisk and fountain make so fine a centre to all kinds of groups. The object of the present meeting was for the Civic Guard and troops of the line to give pledges of sympathy preparatory to going to the Quirinal to demand a change of ministry and of measures. The flag of the Union was placed in front of the obelisk; all present saluted it; some officials made addresses; the trumpets sounded, and all moved toward the Quirinal. Nothing could be gentler than the disposition of those composing the crowd. They were resolved to be played with no longer, but no threat was uttered or thought. They believed that the court would be convinced by the fate of Rossi that the retrograde movement it had attempted was impracticable. They knew the retrograde party were panic-struck, and hoped to use the occasion to free the Pope from its meshes. All felt that Pius IX. had fallen irrevocably from his high place as the friend of progress and father of Italy; but still he was personally beloved, and still his name, so often shouted in hope and joy, had not quite lost its _prestige_. I returned to the house, which is very near the Quirinal. On one side I could see the palace and gardens of the Pope, on the other the Piazza Barberini and street of the Four Fountains. Presently I saw the carriage of Prince Barberini drive hurriedly into his court-yard gate, the footman signing to close it, a discharge of fire-arms was heard, and the drums of the Civic Guard beat to arms. The Padrona ran up and down, crying with every round of shot, "Jesu Maria, they are killing the Pope! O poor Holy Father!--Tito, Tito," (out of the window to her husband,) "what _is_ the matter?" The lord of creation disdained to reply. "O Signora! pray, pray, ask Tito what is the matter?" I did so. "I don't know, Signora; nobody knows." "Why don't you go on the Mount and see?" "It would be an imprudence, Signora; nobody will go." I was just thinking to go myself, when I saw a poor man borne by, badly wounded, and heard that the Swiss were firing on the people. Their doing so was the cause of whatever violence there was, and it was not much. The people had assembled, as usual, at the Quirinal, only with more form and solemnity than usual. They had taken with them several of the Chamber of Deputies, and they sent an embassy, headed by Galetti, who had been in the late ministry, to state their wishes. They received a peremptory negative. They then insisted on seeing the Pope, and pressed on the palace. The Swiss became alarmed, and fired from the windows and from the roof. They did this, it is said, without orders; but who could, at the time, suppose that? If it had been planned to exasperate the people to blood, what more could have been done? As it was, very little was shed; but the Pope, no doubt, felt great panic. He heard the report of fire-arms,--heard that they tried to burn a door of the palace. I would lay my life that he could have shown himself without the slightest danger; nay, that the habitual respect for his presence would have prevailed, and hushed all tumult. He did not think so, and, to still it, once more degraded himself and injured his people, by making promises he did not mean to keep. He protests now against those promises as extorted by violence,--a strange plea indeed for the representative of St. Peter! Rome is all full of the effigies of those over whom violence had no power. There was an early Pope about to be thrown into the Tiber; violence had no power to make him say what he did not mean. Delicate girls, men in the prime of hope and pride of power,--they were all alike about that. They could die in boiling oil, roasted on coals, or cut to pieces; but they could not say what they did not mean. These formed the true Church; it was these who had power to disseminate the religion of him, the Prince of Peace, who died a bloody death of torture between sinners, because he never could say what he did not mean. A little church, outside the gate of St. Sebastian commemorates the following affecting tradition of the Church. Peter, alarmed at the persecution of the Christians, had gone forth to fly, when in this spot he saw a bright figure in his path, and recognized his Master travelling toward Rome. "Lord," he said, "whither goest thou?" "I go," replied Jesus, "to die with my people." Peter comprehended the reproof. He felt that he must not a fourth time deny his Master, yet hope for salvation. He returned to Rome to offer his life in attestation of his faith. The Roman Catholic Church has risen a monument to the memory of such facts. And has the present head of that Church quite failed to understand their monition? Not all the Popes have so failed, though the majority have been intriguing, ambitious men of the world. But even the mob of Rome--and in Rome there _is_ a true mob of unheeding cabbage-sellers, who never had a thought before beyond contriving how to satisfy their animal instincts for the day--said, on hearing the protest, "There was another Pius, not long since, who talked in a very different style. When the French threatened him, he said, 'You may do with me as you see fit, but I cannot consent to act against my convictions.'" In fact, the only dignified course for the Pope to pursue was to resign his temporal power. He could no longer hold it on his own terms; but to it he clung; and the counsellors around him were men to wish him to regard _that_ as the first of duties. When the question was of waging war for the independence of Italy, they regarded him solely as the head of the Church; but when the demand was to satisfy the wants of his people, and ecclesiastical goods were threatened with taxes, then he was the prince of the state, bound to maintain all the selfish prerogatives of bygone days for the benefit of his successors. Poor Pope! how has his mind been torn to pieces in these later days! It moves compassion. There can be no doubt that all his natural impulses are generous and kind, and in a more private station he would have died beloved and honored; but to this he was unequal; he has suffered bad men to surround him, and by their misrepresentations and insidious suggestions at last entirely to cloud his mind. I believe he really thinks now the Progress movement tends to anarchy, blood, and all that looked worst in the first French revolution. However that may be, I cannot forgive him some of the circumstances of this flight. To fly to Naples; to throw himself in the arms of the bombarding monarch, blessing him and thanking his soldiery for preserving that part of Italy from anarchy; to protest that all his promises at Rome were null and void, when he thought himself in safety to choose a commission for governing in his absence, composed of men of princely blood, but as to character so null that everybody laughed, and said he chose those who could best be spared if they were killed; (but they all ran away directly;) when Rome was thus left without any government, to refuse to see any deputation, even the Senator of Rome, whom he had so gladly sanctioned,--these are the acts either of a fool or a foe. They are not his acts, to be sure, but he is responsible; he lets them stand as such in the face of the world, and weeps and prays for their success. No more of him! His day is over. He has been made, it seems unconsciously, an instrument of good his regrets cannot destroy. Nor can he be made so important an instrument of ill. These acts have not had the effect the foes of freedom hoped. Rome remained quite cool and composed; all felt that they had not demanded more than was their duty to demand, and were willing to accept what might follow. In a few days all began to say: "Well, who would have thought it? The Pope, the Cardinals, the Princes are gone, and Rome is perfectly tranquil, and one does not miss anything, except that there are not so many rich carriages and liveries." The Pope may regret too late that he ever gave the people a chance to make this reflection. Yet the best fruits of the movement may not ripen for a long time. It is a movement which requires radical measures, clear-sighted, resolute men: these last, as yet, do not show themselves in Rome. The new Tuscan ministry has three men of superior force in various ways,--Montanelli, Guerazzi, D'Aguila; such are not as yet to be found in Rome. But should she fall this time,--and she must either advance with decision and force, or fall, since to stand still is impossible,--the people have learned much; ignorance and servility of thought are lessened,--the way is paving for final triumph. And my country, what does she? You have chosen a new President from a Slave State, representative of the Mexican war. But he seems to be honest, a man that can be esteemed, and is one really known to the people, which is a step upward, after having sunk last time to choosing a mere tool of party. Pray send here a good Ambassador,--one that has experience of foreign life, that he may act with good judgment, and, if possible, a man that has knowledge and views which extend beyond the cause of party politics in the United States,--a man of unity in principles, but capable of understanding variety in forms. And send a man capable of prizing the luxury of living in, or knowing Rome; the office of Ambassador is one that should not be thrown away on a person who cannot prize or use it. Another century, and I might ask to be made Ambassador myself, ('tis true, like other Ambassadors, I would employ clerks to do the most of the duty,) but woman's day has not come yet. They hold their clubs in Paris, but even George Sand will not act with women as they are. They say she pleads they are too mean, too treacherous. She should not abandon them for that, which is not nature, but misfortune. How much I shall have to say on that subject if I live, which I desire not, for I am very tired of the battle with giant wrongs, and would like to have some one younger and stronger arise to say what ought to be said, still more to do what ought to be done. Enough! if I felt these things in privileged America, the cries of mothers and wives beaten at night by sons and husbands for their diversion after drinking, as I have repeatedly heard them these past months,--the excuse for falsehood, "I _dare not_ tell my husband, he would be ready to kill me,"--have sharpened my perception as to the ills of woman's condition and the remedies that must be applied. Had I but genius, had I but energy, to tell what I know as it ought to be told! God grant them me, or some other more worthy woman, I pray. _Don Tirlone_, the _Punch_ of Rome, has just come in. This number represents the fortress of Gaëta. Outside hangs a cage containing a parrot (_pappagallo_), the plump body of the bird surmounted by a noble large head with benign face and Papal head-dress. He sits on the perch now with folded wings, but the cage door, in likeness of a portico, shows there is convenience to come forth for the purposes of benediction, when wanted. Outside, the king of Naples, dressed as Harlequin, plays the organ for instruction of the bird (unhappy penitent, doomed to penance), and, grinning with sharp teeth, observes: "He speaks in my way now." In the background a young Republican holds ready the match for a barrel of gunpowder, but looks at his watch, waiting the moment to ignite it. A happy New Year to my country! may she be worthy of the privileges she possesses, while others are lavishing their blood to win them,--that is all that need be wished for her at present. LETTER XXVII. ROME.--THE CARNIVAL: THE MOCCOLETTI.--THE ROMAN CHARACTER.--THE POPE'S FLIGHT.--THE ASSEMBLY.--THE PEOPLE.--THE POPE'S MISTAKE.--HIS MANIFESTO: ITS TONE AND EFFECT.--DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPORAL DOMINION OF THE CHURCH. Rome, Evening of Feb. 20, 1849. It is said you cannot thoroughly know any place till you have both summered and wintered in it; but more than one summer and winter of experience seems to be needed for Rome. How I fretted last winter, during the three months' rain, and sepulchral chill, and far worse than sepulchral odors, which accompanied it! I thought it was the invariable Roman winter, and that I should never be able to stay here during another; so took my room only by the month, thinking to fly so soon as the rain set in. And lo! it has never rained at all; but there has been glorious sun and moon, unstained by cloud, always; and these last days have been as warm as May,--the days of the Carnival, for I have just come in from seeing the _Moccoletti_. The Republican Carnival has not been as splendid as the Papal, the absence of dukes and princes being felt in the way of coaches and rich dresses; there are also fewer foreigners than usual, many having feared to assist at this most peaceful of revolutions. But if less splendid, it was not less gay; the costumes were many and fanciful,--flowers, smiles, and fun abundant. This is the first time of my seeing the true _Moccoletti_; last year, in one of the first triumphs of democracy, they did not blow oat the lights, thus turning it into an illumination. The effect of the swarms of lights, little and large, thus in motion all over the fronts of the houses, and up and down the Corso, was exceedingly pretty and fairy-like; but that did not make up for the loss of that wild, innocent gayety of which this people alone is capable after childhood, and which never shines out so much as on this occasion. It is astonishing the variety of tones, the lively satire and taunt of which the words _Senza moccolo_, _senza mo_, are susceptible from their tongues. The scene is the best burlesque on the life of the "respectable" world that can be imagined. A ragamuffin with a little piece of candle, not even lighted, thrusts it in your face with an air of far greater superiority than he can wear who, dressed in gold and velvet, erect in his carriage, holds aloft his light on a tall pole. In vain his security; while he looks down on the crowd to taunt the wretches _senza mo_, a weak female hand from a chamber window blots out his pretensions by one flirt of an old handkerchief. Many handsome women, otherwise dressed in white, wore the red liberty cap, and the noble though somewhat coarse Roman outline beneath this brilliant red, by the changeful glow of million lights, made a fine effect. Men looked too vulgar in the liberty cap. How I mourn that my little companion E. never saw these things, that would have given him such store of enchanting reminiscences for all his after years! I miss him always on such occasions; formerly it was through him that I enjoyed them. He had the child's heart, had the susceptible fancy, and, naturally, a fine discerning sense for whatever is individual or peculiar. I missed him much at the Fair of St. Eustachio. This, like the Carnival, was last year entirely spoiled by constant rain. I never saw it at all before. It comes in the first days, or rather nights, of January. All the quarter of St. Eustachio is turned into one toy-shop; the stalls are set out in the street and brightly lighted, up. These are full of cheap toys,--prices varying from half a cent up to twenty cents. The dolls, which are dressed as husband and wife, or sometimes grouped in families, are the most grotesque rag-babies that can be imagined. Among the toys are great quantities of whistles, tin trumpets, and little tambourines; of these every man, woman, and child has bought one, and is using it to make a noise. This extempore concert begins about ten o'clock, and lasts till midnight; the delight of the numerous children that form part of the orchestra, the good-humored familiarity without the least touch of rudeness in the crowd, the lively effect of the light upon the toys, and the jumping, shouting figures that, exhibit them, make this the pleasantest Saturnalia. Had you only been there, E., to guide me by the hand, blowing the trumpet for both, and spying out a hundred queer things in nooks that entirely escape me! The Roman still plays amid his serious affairs, and very serious have they been this past winter. The Roman legions went out singing and dancing to fight in Lombardy, and they fought no less bravely for that. When I wrote last, the Pope had fled, guided, he says, "by the hand of Providence,"--Italy deems by the hand of Austria,--to Gaëta. He had already soiled his white robes, and defamed himself for ever, by heaping benedictions on the king of Naples and the bands of mercenaries whom he employs to murder his subjects on the least sign of restlessness in their most painful position. Most cowardly had been the conduct of his making promises he never meant to keep, stealing away by night in the coach of a foreign diplomatist, protesting that what he had done was null because he had acted under fear,--as if such a protest could avail to one who boasts himself representative of Christ and his Apostles, guardian of the legacy of the martyrs! He selected a band of most incapable men to face the danger he had feared for himself; most of these followed his example and fled. Rome sought an interview with him, to see if reconciliation were possible; he refused to receive her messengers. His wicked advisers calculated upon great confusion and distress as inevitable on the occasion; but, for once, the hope of the bad heart was doomed to immediate disappointment. Rome coolly said, "If you desert me,--if you will not hear me,--I must act for myself." She threw herself into the arms of a few men who had courage and calmness for this crisis; they bade her think upon what was to be done, meanwhile avoiding every excess that could give a color to calumny and revenge. The people, with admirable good sense, comprehended and followed up this advice. Never was Rome so truly tranquil, so nearly free from gross ill, as this winter. A few words of brotherly admonition have been more powerful than all the spies, dungeons, and scaffolds of Gregory. "The hand of the Omnipotent works for us," observed an old man whom I saw in the street selling cigars the evening before the opening of the Constitutional Assembly. He was struck by the radiant beauty of the night. The old people observe that there never has been such a winter as this which follows the establishment by the French of a republic. May the omens speed well! A host of enemies without are ready to levy war against this long-suffering people, to rivet anew their chains. Still there is now an obvious tide throughout Europe toward a better order of things, and a wave of it may bear Italy onward to the shore. The revolution, like all genuine ones, has been instinctive, its results unexpected and surprising to the greater part of those who achieved them. The waters, which had flowed so secretly beneath the crust of habit that many never heard their murmur, unless in dreams, have suddenly burst to light in full and beautiful jets; all rush to drink the pure and living draught. As in the time of Jesus, the multitude had been long enslaved beneath a cumbrous ritual, their minds designedly darkened by those who should have enlightened them, brutified, corrupted, amid monstrous contradictions and abuses; yet the moment they hear a word correspondent to the original nature, "Yes, it is true," they cry. "It is spoken with, authority. Yes, it ought to be so. Priests ought to be better and wiser than other men; if they were, they would not need pomp and temporal power to command respect. Yes, it is true; we ought not to lie; we should not try to impose upon one another. We ought rather to prefer that our children should work honestly for their bread, than get it by cheating, begging, or the prostitution of their mothers. It would be better to act worthily and kindly, probably would please God more than the kissing of relics. We have long darkly felt that these things were so; _now_ we know it." The unreality of relation between the people and the hierarchy was obvious instantly upon the flight of Pius. He made an immense mistake then, and he made it because neither he nor his Cardinals were aware of the unreality. They did not know that, great as is the force of habit, truth _only_ is imperishable. The people had abhorred Gregory, had adored Pius, upon whom they looked as a saviour, as a liberator; finding themselves deceived, a mourning-veil had overshadowed their love. Still, had Pius remained here, and had courage to show himself on agitating occasions, his position as the Pope, before whom they had been bred to bow, his aspect, which had once seemed to them full of blessing and promise, like that of an angel, would have still retained power. Probably the temporal dominion of the Papacy would not have been broken up. He fled; the people felt contempt for his want of force and truth. He wrote to reproach them with ingratitude; they were indignant. What had they to be grateful for? A constitution to which he had not kept true an instant; the institution of the National Guard, which he had begun to neutralize; benedictions, followed by such actions as the desertion of the poor volunteers in the war for Italian independence? Still, the people were not quite alienated from Pius. They felt sure that his heart was, in substance, good and kindly, though the habits of the priest and the arts of his counsellors had led him so egregiously to falsify its dictates and forget the vocation with which he had been called. Many hoped he would see his mistake, and return to be at one with the people. Among the more ignorant, there was a superstitious notion that he would return in the night of the 5th of January. There were many bets that he would be found in the palace of the Quirinal the morning of the 6th. All these lingering feelings were finally extinguished by the advice of excommunication. As this may not have readied America, I subjoin a translation. Here I was obliged to make use of a manuscript copy; all the printed ones were at once destroyed. It is probably the last document of the kind the world will see. MANIFESTO OF PIUS IX. "To OUR MOST BELOVED SUBJECTS:-- "From this pacific abode to which it has pleased Divine Providence to conduct us, and whence we can freely manifest our sentiments and our will, we have waited for testimonies of remorse from our misguided children for the sacrileges and misdeeds committed against persons attached to our service,--among whom some have been slain, others outraged in the most barbarous manner,--as well as for those against our residence and our person. But we have seen nothing except a sterile invitation to return to our capital, unaccompanied by a word of condemnation for those crimes or the least guaranty for our security against the frauds and violences of that same company of furious men which still tyrannizes with a barbarous despotism over Rome and the States of the Church. We also waited, expecting that the protests and orders we have uttered would recall to the duties of fidelity and subjection those who have despised and trampled upon them in the very capital of our States. But, instead of this, a new and more monstrous act of undisguised felony and of actual rebellion by them audaciously committed, has filled the measure of our affliction, and excited at the same time our just indignation, as it will afflict the Church Universal. We speak of that act, in every respect detestable, by which, it has been pretended to initiate the convocation of a so-called General National Assembly of the Roman States, by a decree of the 29th of last December, in order to establish new political forms for the Pontifical dominion. Adding thus iniquity to iniquity, the authors and favorers of the demagogical anarchy strive to destroy the temporal authority of the Roman Pontiff over the dominions of Holy Church,--however irrefragably established through the most ancient and solid rights, and venerated, recognized, and sustained by all the nations,--pretending and making others believe that his sovereign power can be subject to controversy or depend on the caprices of the factious. We shall spare our dignity the humiliation of dwelling on all that is monstrous contained in that act, abominable through the absurdity of its origin no less than the illegality of its form and the impiety of its scope; but it appertains to the apostolic authority, with which, however unworthy, we are invested, and to the responsibility which binds us by the most sacred oaths in the sight of the Omnipotent, not only to protest in the most energetic and efficacious manner against that same act, but to condemn it in the face of the universe as an enormous and sacrilegious crime against our independence and sovereignty, meriting the chastisements threatened by divine and human laws. We are persuaded that, on receiving the impudent invitation, you were full of holy indignation, and will have rejected far from you this guilty and shameful provocation. Notwithstanding, that none of you may say he has been deluded by fallacious seductions, and by the preachers of subversive doctrines, or ignorant of what is contriving by the foes of all order, all law, all right, true liberty, and your happiness, we to-day again raise and utter abroad our voice, so that you may be more certain of the absoluteness with which we prohibit men, of whatever class and condition, from taking any part in the meetings which those persons may dare to call, for the nomination of individuals to be sent to the condemned Assembly. At the same time we recall to you how this absolute prohibition is sanctioned by the decrees of our predecessors and of the Councils, especially of the Sacred Council-General of Trent, Sect. XXII. Chap. 11, in which the Church has fulminated many times her censures, and especially the greater excommunication, as incurred without fail by any declaration of whomsoever daring to become guilty of whatsoever attempt against the temporal sovereignty of the Supreme Pontiff, this we declare to have been already unhappily incurred by all those who have given aid to the above-named act, and others preceding, intended to prejudice the same sovereignty, and in other modes and under false pretexts have, perturbed, violated, and usurped our authority. Yet, though we feel ourselves obliged by conscience to guard the sacred deposit of the patrimony of the Spouse of Jesus Christ, confided to our care, by using the sword of severity given to us for that purpose, we cannot therefore forget that we are on earth the representative of Him who in exercise of his justice does not forget mercy. Raising, therefore, our hands to Heaven, while we to it recommend a cause which is indeed more Heaven's than ours, and while anew we declare ourselves ready, with the aid of its powerful grace, to drink even to the dregs, for the defence and glory of the Catholic Church, the cup of persecution which He first wished to drink for the salvation of the same, we shall not desist from supplicating Him benignly to hear the fervent prayers which day and night we unceasingly offer for the salvation of the misguided. No day certainly could be more joyful for us, than that in which it shall be granted to see return into the fold of the Lord our sons from whom now we derive so much bitterness and so great tribulations. The hope of enjoying soon the happiness of such a day is strengthened in us by the reflection, that universal are the prayers which, united to ours, ascend to the throne of Divine Mercy from the lips and the heart of the faithful throughout the Catholic world, urging it continually to change the hearts of sinners, and reconduct them into the paths of truth and of justice. "Gaëta, January 6, 1849." The silliness, bigotry, and ungenerous tone of this manifesto excited a simultaneous movement in the population. The procession which carried it, mumbling chants, for deposit in places provided for lowest uses, and then, taking from, the doors of the hatters' shops the cardinals' hats, threw them into the Tiber, was a real and general expression of popular disgust. From that hour the power of the scarlet hierarchy fell to rise no more. No authority can survive a universal movement of derision. From that hour tongues and pens were loosed, the leaven of Machiavellism, which still polluted the productions of the more liberal, disappeared, and people talked as they felt, just as those of us who do not choose to be slaves are accustomed to do in America. "Jesus," cried an orator, "bade them feed his lambs. If they have done so, it has been to rob their fleece and drink their blood." "Why," said another, "have we been so long deaf to the saying, that the temporal dominion of the Church was like a thorn in the wound of Italy, which shall never be healed till that thorn is extracted?" And then, without passion, all felt that the temporal dominion was in fact finished of itself, and that it only remained to organize another form of government. LETTER XXVIII. GIOBERTI, MAMIANI, AND MAZZINI.--FORMATION OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL ASSEMBLY.--THE RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE.--A PROCESSION.--PROCLAMATION OF THE REPUBLIC.--RESULTS.--DECREE OF THE ASSEMBLY.--AMERICANS IN ROME: DIFFERENCE OF IMPRESSIONS.--FLIGHT OF THE GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY.--CHARLES ALBERT.--PRESENT STATE OF ROME.--REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS.--LATEST INTELLIGENCE. Rome, Evening of Feb. 20, 1849. The League between the Italian States, and the Diet which was to establish it, had been the thought of Gioberti, but had found the instrument at Rome in Mamiani. The deputies were to be named by princes or parliaments, their mandate to be limited by the existing institutions of the several states; measures of mutual security and some modifications in the way of reform would be the utmost that could be hoped from this Diet. The scope of this party did not go beyond more vigorous prosecution of the war for independence, and the establishment of good, institutions for the several principalities on a basis of assimilation. Mazzini, the great radical thinker of Italy, was, on the contrary, persuaded that unity, not union, was necessary to this country. He had taken for his motto, GOD AND THE PEOPLE, and believed in no other powers. He wished an Italian Constitutional Assembly, selected directly by the people, and furnished with an unlimited mandate to decide what form was now required by the needs of the Peninsula. His own wishes, certainly, aimed at a republic; but the decision remained with the representatives of the people. The thought of Gioberti had been at first the popular one, as he, in fact, was the seer of the so-called Moderate party. For myself, I always looked upon him as entirely a charlatan, who covered his want of all real force by the thickest embroidered mantle of words. Still, for a time, he corresponded with the wants of the Italian mind. He assailed the Jesuits, and was of real use by embodying the distrust and aversion that brooded in the minds of men against these most insidious and inveterate foes of liberty and progress. This triumph, at least, he may boast: that sect has been obliged to yield; its extinction seems impossible, of such life-giving power was the fiery will of Loyola. In the Primate he had embodied the lingering hope of the Catholic Church; Pius IX. had answered to the appeal, had answered only to show its futility. He had run through Italy as courier for Charles Albert, when the so falsely styled Magnanimous entered, pretending to save her from the stranger, really hoping to take her for himself. His own cowardice and treachery neutralized the hope, and Charles Albert, abject in his disgrace, took a retrograde ministry. This the country would not suffer, and obliged him after a while to reassume at least the position of the previous year, by taking Gioberti for his premier. But it soon became evident that the ministry of Charles Albert was in the same position as had been that of Pius IX. The hand was powerless when the head was indisposed. Meantime the name of Mazzini had echoed through Tuscany from the revered lips of Montanelli; it reached the Roman States, and though at first propagated by foreign impulse, yet, as soon as understood, was welcomed as congenial. Montanelli had nobly said, addressing Florence: "We could not regret that the realization of this project should take place in a sister city, still more illustrious than ours." The Romans took him at his word; the Constitutional Assembly for the Roman States was elected with a double mandate, that the deputies might sit in the Constitutional Assembly for all Italy whenever the other provinces could send theirs. They were elected by universal suffrage. Those who listened to Jesuits and Moderates predicted that the project would fail of itself. The people were too ignorant to make use of the liberty of suffrage. But ravens now-a-days are not the true prophetic birds. The Roman eagle recommences her flight, and it is from its direction only that the high-priest may draw his augury. The people are certainly as ignorant as centuries of the worst government, the neglect of popular education, the enslavement of speech and the press, could make them; yet they have an instinct to recognize measures that are good for them. A few weeks' schooling at some popular meetings, the clubs, the conversations of the National Guards in their quarters or on patrol, were sufficient to concert measures so well, that the people voted in larger proportion than at contested elections in our country, and made a very good choice. The opening of the Constitutional Assembly gave occasion for a fine procession. All the troops in Rome defiled from the Campidoglio; among them many bear the marks of suffering from the Lombard war. The banners of Sicily, Venice, and Bologna waved proudly; that of Naples was veiled with crape. I was in a balcony in the Piazza di Venezia; the Palazzo di Venezia, that sternest feudal pile, so long the head-quarters of Austrian machinations, seemed to frown, as the bands each in passing struck up the _Marseillaise_. The nephew of Napoleon and Garibaldi, the hero of Montevideo, walked together, as deputies. The deputies, a grave band, mostly advocates or other professional men, walked without other badge of distinction than the tricolored scarf. I remembered the entrance of the deputies to the Council only fourteen months ago, in the magnificent carriages lent by the princes for the occasion; they too were mostly nobles, and their liveried attendants followed, carrying their scutcheons. Princes and councillors have both fled or sunk into nothingness; in those councillors was no counsel. Will it be found in the present? Let us hope so! What we see to-day has much more the air of reality than all that parade of scutcheons, or the pomp of dress and retinue with which the Ecclesiastical Court was wont to amuse the people. A few days after followed the proclamation of a Republic. An immense crowd of people surrounded the Palazzo della Cancelleria, within whose court-yard Rossi fell, while the debate was going on within. At one o'clock in the morning of the 9th of February, a Republic was resolved upon, and the crowd rushed away to ring all the bells. Early next morning I rose and went forth to observe the Republic. Over the Quirinal I went, through the Forum, to the Capitol. There was nothing to be seen except the magnificent calm emperor, the tamers of horses, the fountain, the trophies, the lions, as usual; among the marbles, for living figures, a few dirty, bold women, and Murillo boys in the sun just as usual. I passed into the Corso; there were men in the liberty cap,--of course the lowest and vilest had been the first to assume it; all the horrible beggars persecuting as impudently as usual. I met some English; all their comfort was, "It would not last a month." "They hoped to see all these fellows shot yet." The English clergyman, more mild and legal, only hopes to see them (i.e. the ministry, deputies, &c.) _hung_. Mr. Carlyle would be delighted with his countrymen. They are entirely ready and anxious to see a Cromwell for Italy. They, too, think, when the people starve, "It is no matter what happens in the back parlor." What signifies that, if there is "order" in the front? How dare the people make a noise to disturb us yawning at billiards! I met an American. He "had no confidence in the Republic." Why? Because he "had no confidence in the people." Why? Because "they were not like _our_ people." Ah! Jonathan and John,--excuse me, but I must say the Italian has a decided advantage over you in the power of quickly feeling generous sympathy, as well as some other things which I have not time now to particularize. I have memoranda from you both in my note-book. At last the procession mounts the Campidoglio. It is all dressed with banners. The tricolor surmounts the palace of the senator; the senator himself has fled. The deputies mount the steps, and one of them reads, in a clear, friendly voice, the following words:-- "FUNDAMENTAL DECREE OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL ASSEMBLY OF ROME. "ART. I.--The Papacy has fallen in fact and in right from the temporal government of the Roman State. "ART. II.--The Roman Pontiff shall have all the necessary guaranties for independence in the exercise of his spiritual power. "ART. III.--The form of government of the Roman State shall be a pure democracy, and will take the glorious name of Roman Republic. "ART. IV.--The Roman Republic shall have with the rest of Italy the relations exacted by a common nationality." Between each of these expressive sentences the speaker paused; the great bell of the Capitol gave forth its solemn melodies; the cannon answered; while the crowd shouted, _Viva la Republica! Viva Italia!_ The imposing grandeur of the spectacle to me gave new force to the emotion that already swelled my heart; my nerves thrilled, and I longed to see in some answering glance a spark of Rienzi, a little of that soul which made my country what she is. The American at my side remained impassive. Receiving all his birthright from a triumph of democracy, he was quite indifferent to this manifestation on this consecrated spot. Passing the winter in Rome to study art, he was insensible to the artistic beauty of the scene,--insensible to this new life of that spirit from which all the forms he gazes at in galleries emanated. He "did not see the use of these popular demonstrations." Again I must mention a remark of his, as a specimen of the ignorance in which Americans usually remain during their flighty visits to these scenes, where they associate only with one another. And I do it the rather as this seemed a really thoughtful, intelligent man; no vain, vulgar trifler. He said, "The people seem only to be looking on; they take no part." What people? said I. "Why, these around us; there is no other people." There are a few beggars, errand-boys, and nurse-maids. "The others are only soldiers." Soldiers! The Civic Guard! all the decent men in Rome. Thus it is that the American, on many points, becomes more ignorant for coming abroad, because he attaches some value to his crude impressions and frequent blunders. It is not thus that any seed-corn can be gathered from foreign gardens. Without modest scrutiny, patient study, and observation, he spends his money and goes home, with a new coat perhaps, but a mind befooled rather than instructed. It is necessary to speak the languages of these countries, and know personally some of their inhabitants, in order to form any accurate impressions. The flight of the Grand Duke of Tuscany followed. In imitation of his great exemplar, he promised and smiled to the last, deceiving Montanelli, the pure and sincere, at the very moment he was about to enter his carriage, into the belief that he persevered in his assent to the liberal movement. His position was certainly very difficult, but he might have left it like a gentleman, like a man of honor. 'T was pity to destroy so lightly the good opinion the Tuscans had of him. Now Tuscany meditates union with Rome. Meanwhile, Charles Albert is filled with alarm. He is indeed betwixt two fires. Gioberti has published one of his prolix, weak addresses, in which, he says, that in the beginning of every revolution one must fix a limit beyond which he will not go; that, for himself, he has done it,--others are passing beyond his mark, and he will not go any farther. Of the want of thought, of insight into historic and all other truths, which distinguishes the "illustrious Gioberti," this assumption is a specimen. But it makes no difference; he and his prince must go, sooner or later, if the movement continues, nor is there any prospect of its being stayed unless by foreign intervention. This the Pope has not yet, it is believed, solicited, but there is little reason to hope he will be spared that crowning disgrace. He has already consented to the incitement of civil war. Should an intervention be solicited, all depends on France. Will she basely forfeit every pledge and every duty, to say nothing of her true interest? It seems that her President stands doubtful, intending to do what is for _his_ particular interest; but if his interest proves opposed to the republican principle, will France suffer herself again to be hoodwinked and enslaved? It is impossible to know, she has already shown such devotion to the mere prestige of a name. On England no dependence can be placed. She is guided by no great idea; her Parliamentary leaders sneer at sentimental policy, and the "jargon" of ideas. She will act, as always, for her own interest; and the interest of her present government is becoming more and more the crushing of the democratic tendency. They are obliged to do it at home, both in the back and the front parlor; it would not be decent as yet to have a Spielberg just at home for obstreperous patriots, but England has so many ships, it is just as easy to transport them to a safe distance. Then the Church of England, so long an enemy to the Church of Rome, feels a decided interest with it on the subject of temporal possessions. The rich English traveller, fearing to see the Prince Borghese stripped of one of his palaces for a hospital or some such low use, thinks of his own twenty-mile park and the crowded village of beggars at its gate, and muses: "I hope to see them all shot yet, these rascally republicans." How I wish my country would show some noble sympathy when an experience so like her own is going on. Politically she cannot interfere; but formerly, when Greece and Poland were struggling, they were at least aided by private contributions. Italy, naturally so rich, but long racked and impoverished by her oppressors, greatly needs money to arm and clothe her troops. Some token of sympathy, too, from America would be so welcome to her now. If there were a circle of persons inclined to trust such to me, I might venture to promise the trust should be used to the advantage of Italy. It would make me proud to have my country show a religious faith in the progress of ideas, and make some small sacrifice of its own great resources in aid of a sister cause, now. But I must close this letter, which it would be easy to swell to a volume from the materials in my mind. One or two traits of the hour I must note. Mazzarelli, chief of the present ministry, was a prelate, and named spontaneously by the Pope before his flight. He has shown entire and frank intrepidity. He has laid aside the title of Monsignor, and appears before the world as a layman. Nothing can be more tranquil than has been the state of Rome all winter. Every wile has been used by the Oscurantists to excite the people, but their confidence in their leaders could not be broken. A little mutiny in the troops, stimulated by letters from their old leaders, was quelled in a moment. The day after the proclamation of the Republic, some zealous ignoramuses insulted the carriages that appeared with servants in livery. The ministry published a grave admonition, that democracy meant liberty, not license, and that he who infringed upon an innocent freedom of action in others must be declared traitor to his country. Every act of the kind ceased instantly. An intimation that it was better not to throw large comfits or oranges during the Carnival, as injuries have thus been sometimes caused, was obeyed with equal docility. On Sunday last, placards affixed in the high places summoned the city to invest Giuseppe Mazzini with the rights of a Roman citizen. I have not yet heard the result. The Pope made Rossi a Roman citizen; he was suffered to retain that title only one day. It was given him on the 14th of November, he died the 15th. Mazzini enters Rome at any rate, for the first time in his life, as deputy to the Constitutional Assembly; it would be a noble poetic justice, if he could enter also as a Roman citizen. February 24. The Austrians have invaded Ferrara, taken $200,000 and six hostages, and retired. This step is, no doubt, intended to determine whether France will resent the insult, or whether she will betray Italy. It shows also the assurance of the Austrian that the Pope will approve of an armed intervention. Probably before I write again these matters will reach some decided crisis. LETTER XXIX. THE ROMAN REPUBLIC.--CHARLES ALBERT A TRAITOR.--FALL OF GIOBERTI.--MAZZINI.--HIS CHARACTER.--HIS ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE.--HIS ORATORY.--AMERICAN ARTISTS.--BROWN, TERRY, AND FREEMAN.--HICKS AND HIS PICTURES.--CROPSEY AND CRANCH CONTRASTED.--AMERICAN LANDSCAPE PAINTINGS.--SCULPTORS.--STORY'S "FISHER BOY."--MOZIER'S "POCAHONTAS."--GREENOUGH'S GROUP.--POWERS'S "SLAVE."--THE EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF WASHINGTON.--CRAWFORD'S DESIGN.--TRIALS OF THE ARTIST.--AMERICAN PATRONS OF ART.--EXPENSES OF ARTIST LIFE.--A GERMAN SCULPTOR.--OVERBECK AND HIS PAINTINGS.--FESTIVAL OF FRIED RICE.--AN AVE MARIA. Rome, March 20, 1849. The Roman Republic moves on better than could have been expected. There are great difficulties about money, necessarily, as the government, so beset with trials and dangers, cannot command confidence in that respect. The solid coin has crept out of the country or lies hid, and in the use of paper there are the corresponding inconveniences. But the poor, always the chief sufferers from such a state of things, are wonderfully patient, and I doubt not that the new form, if Italy could be left to itself, would be settled for the advantage of all. Tuscany would soon be united with Rome, and to the Republic of Central Italy, no longer broken asunder by petty restrictions and sacrificed to the interests of a few persons, would come that prosperity natural to a region so favored by nature. Could Italy be left alone! But treacherous, selfish men at home strive to betray, and foes threaten her from without on every side. Even France, her natural ally, promises to prove foolishly and basely faithless. The dereliction from principle of her government seems certain, and thus far the nation, despite the remonstrance of a few worthy men, gives no sign of effective protest. There would be little hope for Italy, were not the thrones of her foes in a tottering state, their action liable at every moment to be distracted by domestic difficulties. The Austrian government seems as destitute of support from the nation as is possible for a government to be, and the army is no longer what it was, being made up so largely of new recruits. The Croats are uncertain in their adhesion, the war in Hungary likely to give them much to do; and if the Russian is called in, the rest of Europe becomes hostile. All these circumstances give Italy a chance she otherwise could not have; she is in great measure unfurnished with arms and money; her king in the South is a bloody, angry, well-armed foe; her king in the North, a proved traitor. Charles Albert has now declared, war because he could not do otherwise; but his sympathies are in fact all against liberty; the splendid lure that he might become king of Italy glitters no more; the Republicans are in the ascendant, and he may well doubt, should the stranger be driven out, whether Piedmont could escape the contagion. Now, his people insisting on war, he has the air of making it with a good grace; but should he be worsted, probably he will know some loophole by which to steal out. The rat will get out and leave the lion in the trap. The "illustrious Gioberti" has fallen,--fallen for ever from his high scaffold of words. His demerits were too unmistakable for rhetoric to hide. That he sympathized with the Pope rather than the Roman people, and could not endure to see him stripped of his temporal power, no one could blame in the author of the _Primato_. That he refused the Italian General Assembly, if it was to be based on the so-called Montanelli system instead of his own, might be conviction, or it might be littleness and vanity. But that he privily planned, without even adherence of the council of ministers, an armed intervention of the Piedmontese troops in Tuscany, thus willing to cause civil war, and, at this great moment, to see Italian blood shed by Italian hands, was treachery. I think, indeed, he has been probably made the scape-goat in that affair; that Charles Albert planned the measure, and, finding himself unable to carry it out, in consequence of the vigilance and indignant opposition of the Chamber of Deputies, was somewhat consoled by making it an occasion to victimize the "Illustrious," whom four weeks before the people had forced him to accept as his minister. Now the name of Gioberti is erased from the corners of the streets to which it was affixed a year ago; he is stripped of all his honorary degrees, and proclaimed an unworthy son of the country. Mazzini is the idol of the people. "Soon to be hunted out," sneered the sceptical American. Possibly yes; for no man is secure of his palm till the fight is over. The civic wreath may be knocked from his head a hundred times in the ardor of the contest. No matter, if he can always keep the forehead pure and lofty, as will Mazzini. In thinking of Mazzini, I always remember Petrarch's invocation to Rienzi. Mazzini comes at a riper period in the world's history, with the same energy of soul, but of purer temper and more enlarged views to answer them. I do not know whether I mentioned a kind of poetical correspondence about Mazzini and Rossi. Rossi was also an exile for liberal principles, but he did not value his birthright; he alienated it, and as a French citizen became peer of France and representative of Louis Philippe in Italy. When, with the fatuity of those whom the gods have doomed to perish, Pius IX. took the representative of the fallen Guizot policy for his minister, he made him a Roman citizen. He was proclaimed such on the 14th of November. On the 15th he perished, before he could enter the parliament he had called. He fell at the door of the Cancelleria when it was sitting. Mazzini, in his exile, remained absolutely devoted to his native country. Because, though feeling as few can that the interests of humanity in all nations are identical, he felt also that, born of a race so suffering, so much needing devotion and energy, his first duty was to that. The only powers he acknowledged were _God and the People_, the special scope of his acts the unity and independence of Italy. Rome was the theme of his thoughts, but, very early exiled, he had never seen that home to which all the orphans of the soul so naturally turn. Now he entered it as a Roman citizen, elected representative of the people by universal suffrage. His motto, _Dio e Popolo_, is put upon the coin with the Roman eagle; unhappily this first-issued coin is of brass, or else of silver, with much alloy. _Dii, avertite omen_, and may peaceful days turn it all to pure gold! On his first entrance to the house, Mazzini, received with fervent applause and summoned, to take his place beside the President, spoke as follows:-- "It is from me, colleagues, that should come these tokens of applause, these tokens of affection, because the little good I have not done, but tried to do, has come to me from Rome. Rome was always a sort of talisman for me; a youth, I studied the history of Italy, and found, while all the other nations were born, grew up, played their part in the world, then fell to reappear no more in the same power, a single city was privileged by God to die only to rise again greater than before, to fulfil a mission greater than the first. I saw the Rome of the Empire extend her conquests from the confines of Africa to the confines of Asia. I saw Rome perish, crushed by the barbarians, by those whom even yet the world, calls barbarians. I saw her rise again, after having chased away these same barbarians, reviving in its sepulchre the germ of Civilization. I saw her rise more great for conquest, not with arms, but with words,--rise in the name of the Popes to repeat her grand mission. I said in my heart, the city which alone in the world has had two grand lives, one greater than the other, will have a third. After the Rome which wrought by conquest of arms, the Rome which wrought by conquest of words, must come a third which shall work by virtue of example. After the Rome of the Emperors, after the Rome of the Popes, will come the Rome of the People. The Rome of the People is arisen; do not salute with applauses, but let us rejoice together! I cannot promise anything for myself, except concurrence in all you shall do for the good of Rome, of Italy, of mankind. Perhaps we shall have to pass through great crises; perhaps we shall have to fight a sacred battle against the only enemy that threatens us,--Austria. We will fight it, and we will conquer. I hope, please God, that foreigners may not be able to say any more that which so many of them repeat to-day, speaking of our affairs,--that the light which, comes from Rome is only an _ignis fatuus_ wandering among the tombs. The world shall see that it is a starry light, eternal, pure, and resplendent as those we look up to in the heavens!" On a later day he spoke more fully of the difficulties that threaten at home the young republic, and said:-- "Let us not hear of Right, of Left, of Centre; these terms express the three powers in a constitutional monarchy; for us they have no meaning; the only divisions for us are of Republicans or non-Republicans,--or of sincere men and temporizing men. Let us not hear so much of the Republicans of to-day and of yesterday; I am a Republican of twenty years' standing. Entertaining such hopes for Italy, when many excellent, many sincere men held them as Utopian, shall I denounce these men because they are now convinced of their practicability?" This last I quote from memory. In hearing the gentle tone of remonstrance with those of more petty mind, or influenced by the passions of the partisan, I was forcibly reminded of the parable by Jesus, of the vineyard and the discontent of the laborers that those who came at the eleventh hour "received also a penny." Mazzini also is content that all should fare alike as brethren, if only they will come into the vineyard. He is not an orator, but the simple conversational tone of his address is in refreshing contrast with the boyish rhetoric and academic swell common to Italian speakers in the present unfledged state. As they have freer use of the power of debate, they will become more simple and manly. The speech of Mazzini is laden with thought,--it goes straight to the mark by the shortest path, and moves without effort, from the irresistible impression of deep conviction and fidelity in the speaker. Mazzini is a man of genius, an elevated thinker; but the most powerful and first impression from his presence must always be of the religion of his soul, of his _virtue_, both in the modern and antique sense of that word. If clearness of right, if energy, if indefatigable perseverance, can steer the ship through this dangerous pass, it will be done. He said, "We will conquer"; whether Rome will, this time, is not to me certain, but such men as Mazzini conquer always,--conquer in defeat. Yet Heaven grant that no more blood, no more corruption of priestly government, be for Italy. It could only be for once more, for the strength, of her present impulse would not fail to triumph at last; but even one more trial seems too intolerably much, when I think of the holocaust of the broken hearts, baffled lives, that must attend it. But enough of politics for the present; this letter goes by private hand, and, as news, will be superseded before it can arrive. Let me rather take the opportunity to say some things that I have let lie by, while writing of political events. Especially of our artists I wish to say something. I know many of thorn, if not all, and see with pleasure our young country so fairly represented. Among the painters I saw of Brown only two or three pictures at the exhibition in Florence; they were coarse, flashy things. I was told he could do better; but a man who indulges himself with such, coarse sale-work cannot surely do well at any time. The merits of Terry and Freeman are not my merits; they are beside both favorites in our country, and have a sufficient number of pictures there for every one to judge. I am no connoisseur as regards the technical merits of paintings; it is only poetic invention, or a tender feeling of nature, which captivates me. Terry loves grace, and consciously works from the model. The result is a pleasing transposition of the hues of this clime. But the design of the picture is never original, nor is it laden with any message from, the heart. Of Freeman I know less; as the two or three pictures of his that I have seen never interested me. I have not visited his studio. Of Hicks I think very highly. He is a man of ideas, an original observer, and with a poetic heart. His system of coloring is derived from a thoughtful study, not a mere imitation of nature, and shows the fineness of his organization. Struggling unaided to pursue the expensive studies of his art, he has had only a small studio, and received only orders for little cabinet pictures. Could, he carry out adequately his ideas, in him would be found the treasure of genius. He has made the drawings for a large picture of many figures; the design is original and noble, the grouping highly effective. Could he paint this picture, I believe it would be a real boon to the lovers of art, the lovers of truth. I hope very much that, when he returns to the United States, some competent patron of art--one of the few who have mind as well as purse--will see the drawings and order the picture. Otherwise he cannot paint it, as the expenses attendant on models for so many figures, &c. are great, and the time demanded could not otherwise be taken from the claims of the day. Among landscape painters Cropsey and Cranch have the true artist spirit. In faculties, each has what the other wants. Cropsey is a reverent and careful student of nature in detail; it is no pedantry, but a true love he has, and his pictures are full of little, gentle signs of intimacy. They please and touch; but yet in poetic feeling of the heart of nature he is not equal to Cranch, who produces fine effects by means more superficial, and, on examination, less satisfactory. Each might take somewhat from the other to advantage, could he do it without diminishing his own original dower. Both are artists of high promise, and deserve to be loved and cherished by a country which may, without presumption, hope to carry landscape painting to a pitch of excellence unreached before. For the historical painter, the position with us is, for many reasons, not favorable; but there is no bar in the way of the landscape painter, and fate, bestowing such a prodigality of subject, seems to give us a hint not to be mistaken. I think the love of landscape painting is genuine in our nation, and as it is a branch of art where achievement has been comparatively low, we may not unreasonably suppose it has been left for us. I trust it will be undertaken in the highest spirit. Nature, it seems to me, reveals herself more freely in our land; she is true, virgin, and confiding,--she smiles upon the vision of a true Endymion. I hope to see, not only copies upon canvas of our magnificent scenes, but a transfusion of the spirit which is their divinity. Then why should the American landscape painter come to Italy? cry many. I think, myself, he ought not to stay here very long. Yet a few years' study is precious, for here Nature herself has worked with man, as if she wanted to help him in the composition of pictures. The ruins of Italy, in their varied relations with vegetation and the heavens, make speeches from every stone for instruction of the artist; the greatest variety here is found with the greatest harmony. To know how this union may be accomplished is a main secret of art, and though the coloring is not the same, yet he who has the key to its mysteries of beauty is the more initiated to the same in other climates, and will easily attune afresh his more instructed eye and mind to the contemplation of that which moulded his childhood. I may observe of the two artists I have named, that Cranch has entered more into the spirit of Italian landscape, while Cropsey is still more distinguished on subjects such as he first loved. He seemed to find the Scotch lake and mountain scenery very congenial; his sketches and pictures taken from a short residence there are impressive. Perhaps a melancholy or tender subject suits him best; something rich, bold, and mellow is more adapted to call out the genius of Cranch. Among the sculptors new names rise up, to show that this is decidedly a province for hope in America. I look upon this as the natural talent of an American, and have no doubt that glories will be displayed by our sculptors unknown to classic art. The facts of our history, ideal and social, will be grand and of new import; it is perfectly natural to the American to mould in clay and carve in stone. The permanence of material and solid, relief in the forms correspond to the positiveness of his nature better than the mere ephemeral and even tricky methods of the painter,--to his need of motion and action, better than the chambered scribbling of the poet. He will thus record his best experiences, and these records will adorn the noble structures that must naturally arise for the public uses of our society. It is particularly gratifying to see men that might amass far more money and attain more temporary power in other things, despise those lower lures, too powerful in our country, and aim only at excellence in the expression of thought. Among these I may mention Story and Mozier. Story has made in Florence the model for a statue of his father. This I have not seen, but two statuettes that he modelled here from the "Fisher" of Goethe pleased me extremely. The languid, meditative reverie of the boy, the morbid tenderness of his nature, is most happily expressed in the first, as is the fascinated surrender to the siren murmur of tire flood in the second. He has taken the moment "Half drew she him; half sank he in," &c. I hope some one will give him an order to make them in marble. Mozier seemed to have an immediate success. The fidelity and spirit of his portrait-busts could be appreciated by every one; for an ideal head of Pocahontas, too, he had at once orders for many copies. It was not an Indian head, but, in the union of sweetness and strength with a princelike, childlike dignity, very happily expressive of his idea of her character. I think he has modelled a Rebecca at the Well, but this I did not see. These have already a firm hold on the affections of our people; every American who comes to Italy visits their studios, and speaks of them with pride, as indeed they well may, in comparing them with artists of other nations. It will not be long before you see Greenough's group; it is in spirit a pendant to Cooper's novels. I confess I wish he had availed himself of the opportunity to immortalize the real noble Indian in marble. This is only the man of the woods,--no Metamora, no Uncas. But the group should be very instructive to our people. You seem as crazy about Powers's Greek Slave as the Florentines were about Cimabue's Madonnas, in which we still see the spark of genius, but not fanned to its full flame. If your enthusiasm be as genuine as that of the lively Florentines, we will not quarrel with it; but I am afraid a great part is drawing-room rapture and newspaper echo. Genuine enthusiasm, however crude the state of mind from which it springs, always elevates, always educates; but in the same proportion talking and writing for effect stultifies and debases. I shall not judge the adorers of the Greek Slave, but only observe, that they have not kept in reserve any higher admiration for works even now extant, which are, in comparison with that statue, what that statue is compared with any weeping marble on a common monument. I consider the Slave as a form of simple and sweet beauty, but that neither as an ideal expression nor a specimen of plastic power is it transcendent. Powers stands far higher in his busts than in any ideal statue. His conception of what is individual in character is clear and just, his power of execution almost unrivalled; but he has had a lifetime of discipline for the bust, while his studies on the human body are comparatively limited; nor is his treatment of it free and masterly. To me, his conception of subject is not striking: I do not consider him rich in artistic thought. He, no less than Greenough and Crawford, would feel it a rich reward for many labors, and a happy climax to their honors, to make an equestrian statue of Washington for our country. I wish they might all do it, as each would show a different kind of excellence. To present the man on horseback, the wise centaur, the tamer of horses, may well be deemed a high achievement of modern, as it was of ancient art. The study of the anatomy and action of the horse, so rich in suggestions, is naturally most desirable to the artist; happy he who, obliged by the brevity of life and the limitations of fortune, to make his studies conform to his "orders," finds himself justified by a national behest in entering on this department. At home one gets callous about the character of Washington, from a long experience of Fourth of July bombast in his praise. But seeing the struggles of other nations, and the deficiencies of the leaders who try to sustain them, the heart is again stimulated, and puts forth buds of praise. One appreciates the wonderful combination of events and influences that gave our independence so healthy a birth, and the almost miraculous merits of the men who tended its first motions. In the combination of excellences needed at such a period with the purity and modesty which dignify the private man in the humblest station, Washington as yet stands alone. No country has ever had such a good future; no other is so happy as to have a pattern of spotless worth which will remain in her latest day venerable as now. Surely, then, that form should be immortalized in material solid as its fame; and, happily for the artist, that form was of natural beauty and dignity, and he who places him on horseback simply represents his habitual existence. Everything concurs to make an equestrian statue of Washington desirable. The dignified way to manage that affair would be to have a committee chosen of impartial judges, men who would look only to the merits of the work and the interests of the country, unbiassed by any personal interest in favor of some one artist. It is said it is impossible to find such a committee, but I cannot believe it. Let there be put aside the mean squabbles and jealousies, the vulgar pushing of unworthy friends, with which, unhappily, the artist's career seems more rife than any other, and a fair concurrence established; let each artist offer his design for an equestrian statue of Washington, and let the best have the preference. Mr. Crawford has made a design which he takes with him to America, and which, I hope, will be generally seen. He has represented Washington in his actual dress; a figure of Fame, winged, presents the laurel and civic wreath; his gesture declines them; he seems to say, "For me the deed is enough,--I need no badge, no outward, token in reward." This group has no insipid, allegorical air, as might be supposed; and its composition is very graceful, simple, and harmonious. The costume is very happily managed. The angel figure is draped, and with, the liberty-cap, which, as a badge both of ancient and modern times, seems to connect the two figures, and in an artistic point of view balances well the cocked hat; there is a similar harmony between the angel's wings and the extremities of the horse. The action of the winged figure induces a natural and spirited action of the horse and rider. I thought of Goethe's remark, that a fine work of art will always have, at a distance, where its details cannot be discerned, a beautiful effect, as of architectural ornament, and that this excellence the groups of Raphael share with the antique. He would have been pleased with the beautiful balance of forms in this group, with the freedom with which light and air play in and out, the management of the whole being clear and satisfactory at the first glance. But one should go into a great number of studies, as you can in Rome or Florence, and see the abundance of heavy and inharmonious designs to appreciate the merits of this; anything really good seems so simple and so a matter of course to the unpractised observer. Some say the Americans will not want a group, but just the fact; the portrait of Washington riding straight onward, like Marcus Aurelius, or making an address, or lifting his sword. I do not know about that,--it is a matter of feeling. This winged figure not only gives a poetic sense to the group, but a natural support and occasion for action to the horse and rider. Uncle Sam must send Major Downing to look at it, and then, if he wants other designs, let him establish a concurrence, as I have said, and choose what is best. I am not particularly attached to Mr. Greenough, Mr. Powers, or Mr. Crawford. I admire various excellences in the works of each, and should be glad if each received an order for an equestrian statue. Nor is there any reason why they should not. There is money enough in the country, and the more good things there are for the people to see freely in open daylight, the better. That makes artists germinate. I love the artists, though I cannot speak of their works in a way to content their friends, or even themselves, often. Who can, that has a standard of excellence in the mind, and a delicate conscience in the use of words? My highest tribute is meagre of superlatives in comparison with the hackneyed puffs with which artists submit to be besmeared. Submit? alas! often they court them, rather. I do not expect any kindness from my contemporaries. I know that what is to me justice and honor is to them only a hateful coldness. Still I love them, I wish for their good, I feel deeply for their sufferings, annoyances, privations, and would lessen them if I could. I have thought it might perhaps be of use to publish some account of the expenses of the artist. There is a general impression, that the artist lives very cheaply in Italy. This is a mistake. Italy, compared with America, is not so very cheap, except for those who have iron constitutions to endure bad food, eaten in bad air, damp and dirty lodgings. The expenses, even in Florence, of a simple but clean and wholesome life, are little less than in New York. The great difference is for people that are rich. An Englishman of rank and fortune does not need the same amount of luxury as at home, to be on a footing with the nobles of Italy. The Broadway merchant would find his display of mahogany and carpets thrown away in a country where a higher kind of ornament is the only one available. But poor people, who can, at any rate, buy only the necessaries of life, will find them in the Italian cities, where all sellers live by cheating foreigners, very little cheaper than in America. The patrons of Art in America, ignorant of these facts, and not knowing the great expenses which attend the study of Art and the production of its wonders, are often guilty of most undesigned cruelty, and do things which it would grieve their hearts to have done, if they only knew the facts. They have read essays on the uses of adversity in developing genius, and they are not sufficiently afraid to administer a dose of adversity beyond what the forces of the patient can bear. Laudanum in drops is useful as a medicine, but a cupful kills downright. Beside this romantic idea about letting artists suffer to develop their genius, the American Mæcenas is not sufficiently aware of the expenses attendant on producing the work he wants. He does not consider that the painter, the sculptor, must be paid for the time he spends in designing and moulding, no less than in painting and carving; that he must have his bread and sleeping-house, his workhouse or studio, his marbles and colors,--the sculptor his workmen; so that if the price be paid he asks, a modest and delicate man very commonly receives _no_ guerdon for his thought,--the real essence of the work,--except the luxury of seeing it embodied, which he could not otherwise have afforded, The American Mæcenas often pushes the price down, not from want of generosity, but from a habit of making what are called good bargains,--i.e. bargains for one's own advantage at the expense of a poorer brother. Those who call these good do not believe that "Mankind is one, And beats with one great heart." They have not read the life of Jesus Christ. Then the American Mæcenas sometimes, after ordering a work, has been known to change his mind when the statue is already modelled. It is the American who does these things, because an American, who either from taste or vanity buys a picture, is often quite uneducated as to the arts, and cannot understand why a little picture or figure costs so much money. The Englishman or Frenchman, of a suitable position to seek these adornments for his house, usually understands better than the visitor of Powers who, on hearing the price of the Proserpine, wonderingly asked, "Isn't statuary riz lately?" Queen Victoria of England, and her Albert, it is said, use their royal privilege to get works of art at a price below their value; but their subjects would be ashamed to do so. To supply means of judging to the American merchant (full of kindness and honorable sympathy as beneath the crust he so often is) who wants pictures and statues, not merely from ostentation, but as means of delight and improvement to himself and his friends, who has a soul to respect the genius and desire the happiness of the artist, and who, if he errs, does so from ignorance of the circumstances, I give the following memorandum, made at my desire by an artist, my neighbor:-- "The rent of a suitable studio for modelling in clay and executing statues in marble may be estimated at $200 a year. "The best journeyman carver in marble at Rome receives $60 a month. Models are paid $1 a day. "The cost of marble varies according to the size of the block, being generally sold by the cubic palm, a square of nine inches English. As a general guide regarding the prices established among the higher sculptors of Rome, I may mention that for a statue of life-size the demand is from $1,000 to $5,000, varying according to the composition of the figure and the number of accessories. "It is a common belief in the United States, that a student of Art can live in Italy and pursue his studies on an income of $300 or $400 a year. This is a lamentable error; the Russian government allows its pensioners $700, which is scarcely sufficient. $1,000 per annum should be placed at the disposal of every young artist leaving our country for Europe." Let it be remembered, in addition to considerations inevitable from this memorandum, that an artist may after years and months of uncheered and difficult toil, after he has gone through the earlier stages of an education, find it too largely based, and of aim too high, to finish in this world. The Prussian artist here on my left hand learned not only his art, but reading and writing, after he was thirty. A farmer's son, he was allowed no freedom to learn anything till the death of the head of the house left him a beggar, but set him free; he walked to Berlin, distant several hundred miles, attracted by his first works some attention, and received some assistance in money, earned more by invention of a ploughshare, walked to Rome, struggled through every privation, and has now a reputation which has secured him the means of putting his thoughts into marble. True, at forty-nine years of age he is still severely poor; he cannot marry, because he cannot maintain a family; but he is cheerful, because he can work in his own way, trusts with childlike reliance in God, and is still sustained by the vigorous health he won laboring in his father's fields. Not every man could continue to work, circumstanced as he is, at the end of the half-century. For him the only sad thing in my mind is that his works are not worth working, though of merit in composition and execution, yet ideally a product of the galvanized piety of the German school, more mutton-like than lamb-like to my unchurched eyes. You are likely to have a work to look at in the United States by the great master of that school, Overbeck; Mr. Perkins of Boston, who knows how to spend his money with equal generosity and discretion, having bought his "Wise and Foolish Virgins." It will be precious to the country from great artistic merits. As to the spirit, "blessed are the poor in spirit." That kind of severity is, perhaps has become, the nature of Overbeck. He seems like a monk, but a really pious and pure one. This spirit is not what I seek; I deem it too narrow for our day, but being deeply sincere in him, its expression is at times also deeply touching. Barabbas borne in triumph, and the child Jesus, who, playing with his father's tools, has made himself a cross, are subjects best adapted for expression of this spirit. I have written too carelessly,--much writing hath made me mad of late. Forgive if the "style be not neat, terse, and sparkling," if there be naught of the "thrilling," if the sentences seem not "written with a diamond pen," like all else that is published in America. Some time I must try to do better. For this time "Forgive my faults; forgive my virtues too." March 21. Day before yesterday was the Feast of St. Joseph. He is supposed to have acquired a fondness for fried rice-cakes during his residence in Egypt. Many are eaten in the open street, in arbors made for the occasion. One was made beneath my window, on Piazza Barberini. All the day and evening men, cleanly dressed in white aprons and liberty caps, quite new, of fine, red cloth, were frying cakes for crowds of laughing, gesticulating customers. It rained a little, and they held an umbrella over the frying-pan, but not over themselves. The arbor is still there, and little children are playing in and out of it; one still lesser runs in its leading-strings, followed by the bold, gay nurse, to the brink of the fountain, after its orange which has rolled before it. Tenerani's workmen are coming out of his studio, the priests are coming home from Ponte Pio, the Contadini beginning to play at _moro_, for the setting sun has just lit up the magnificent range of windows in the Palazzo Barberini, and then faded tenderly, sadly away, and the mellow bells have chimed the Ave Maria. Rome looks as Roman, that is to say as tranquil, as ever, despite the trouble that tugs at her heart-strings. There is a report that Mazzini is to be made Dictator, as Manin is in Venice, for a short time, so as to provide hastily and energetically for the war. Ave Maria Sanissima! when thou didst gaze on thy babe with such infinite hope, thou didst not dream that, so many ages after, blood would be shed and curses uttered in his name. Madonna Addolorata! hadst thou not hoped peace and good-will would spring from his bloody woes, couldst thou have borne those hours at the foot of the cross. O Stella! woman's heart of love, send yet a ray of pure light on this troubled deep? LETTER XXX. THE STRUGGLE IN ROME.--POSITION OF THE FRENCH.--THE AUSTRIANS.--FEELING OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE.--THE FRENCH TROOPS.--EFFECTS OF WAR.--HOSPITALS.--THE PRINCESS BELGIOIOSO.--POSITION OF MR. CASS AS ENVOY.--DIFFICULTIES AND SUGGESTIONS.--AMERICA AND ROME.--REFLECTIONS ON THE ETERNAL CITY.--THE FRENCH: THE PEOPLE. Rome, May 27, 1849. I have suspended writing in the expectation of some decisive event; but none such comes yet. The French, entangled in a web of falsehood, abashed by a defeat that Oudinot has vainly tried to gloss over, the expedition disowned by all honorable men at home, disappointed at Gaëta, not daring to go the length Papal infatuation demands, know not what to do. The Neapolitans have been decidedly driven back into their own borders, the last time in a most shameful rout, their king flying in front. We have heard for several days that the Austrians were advancing, but they come not. They also, it is probable, meet with unexpected embarrassments. They find that the sincere movement of the Italian people is very unlike that of troops commanded by princes and generals who never wished to conquer and were always waiting to betray. Then their troubles at home are constantly increasing, and, should the Russian intervention quell these to-day, it is only to raise a storm far more terrible to-morrow. The struggle is now fairly, thoroughly commenced between the principle of democracy and the old powers, no longer legitimate. That struggle may last fifty years, and the earth be watered with the blood and tears of more than one generation, but the result is sure. All Europe, including Great Britain, where the most bitter resistance of all will be made, is to be under republican government in the next century. "God moves in a mysterious way." Every struggle made by the old tyrannies, all their Jesuitical deceptions, their rapacity, their imprisonments and executions of the most generous men, only sow more dragon's teeth; the crop shoots up daily more and more plenteous. When I first arrived in Italy, the vast majority of this people had no wish beyond limited monarchies, constitutional governments. They still respected the famous names of the nobility; they despised the priests, but were still fondly attached to the dogmas and ritual of the Roman Catholic Church. It required King Bomba, the triple treachery of Charles Albert, Pius IX., and the "illustrious Gioberti," the naturally kind-hearted, but, from the necessity of his position, cowardly and false Leopold of Tuscany, the vagabond "serene" meannesses of Parma and Modena, the "fatherly" Radetzsky, and, finally, the imbecile Louis Bonaparte, "would-be Emperor of France," to convince this people that no transition is possible between the old and the new. _The work is done_; the revolution in Italy is now radical, nor can it stop till Italy becomes independent and united as a republic. Protestant she already is, and though the memory of saints and martyrs may continue to be revered, the ideal of woman to be adored under the name of Mary, yet Christ will now begin to be a little thought of; _his_ idea has always been kept carefully out of sight under the old _régime_; all the worship being for the Madonna and saints, who were to be well paid for interceding for sinners;--an example which might make men cease to be such, was no way coveted. Now the New Testament has been translated into Italian; copies are already dispersed far and wide; men calling themselves Christians will no longer be left entirely ignorant of the precepts and life of Jesus. The people of Rome have burnt the Cardinals' carriages. They took the confessionals out of the churches, and made mock confessions in the piazzas, the scope of which was, "I have sinned, father, so and so." "Well, my son, how much will you _pay_ to the Church for absolution?" Afterward the people thought of burning the confessionals, or using them for barricades; but at the request of the Triumvirate they desisted, and even put them back into the churches. But it was from no reaction of feeling that they stopped short, only from respect for the government. The "Tartuffe" of Molière has been translated into Italian, and was last night performed with great applause at the Valle. Can all this be forgotten? Never! Should guns and bayonets replace the Pope on the throne, he will find its foundations, once deep as modern civilization, now so undermined that it falls with the least awkward movement. But I cannot believe he will be replaced there. France alone could consummate that crime,--that, for her, most cruel, most infamous treason. The elections in France will decide. In three or four days we shall know whether the French nation at large be guilty or no,--whether it be the will of the nation to aid or strive to ruin a government founded on precisely the same basis as their own. I do not dare to trust that people. The peasant is yet very ignorant. The suffering workman is frightened as he thinks of the punishments that ensued on the insurrections of May and June. The man of property is full of horror at the brotherly scope of Socialism. The aristocrat dreams of the guillotine always when he hears men speak of the people. The influence of the Jesuits is still immense in France. Both in France and England the grossest falsehoods have been circulated with unwearied diligence about the state of things in Italy. An amusing specimen of what is still done in this line I find just now in a foreign journal, where it says there are red flags on all the houses of Rome; meaning to imply that the Romans are athirst for blood. Now, the fact is, that these flags are put up at the entrance of those streets where there is no barricade, as a signal to coachmen and horsemen that they can pass freely. There is one on the house where I am, in which is no person but myself, who thirst for peace, and the Padrone, who thirsts for money. Meanwhile the French troops are encamped at a little distance from Rome. Some attempts at fair and equal treaty when their desire to occupy Rome was firmly resisted, Oudinot describes in his despatches as a readiness for _submission_. Having tried in vain to gain this point, he has sent to France for fresh orders. These will be decided by the turn the election takes. Meanwhile the French troops are much exposed to the Roman force where they are. Should the Austrians come up, what will they do? Will they shamelessly fraternize with the French, after pretending and proclaiming that they came here as a check upon their aggressions? Will they oppose them in defence of Rome, with which they are at war? Ah! the way of falsehood, the way of treachery,--how dark, how full of pitfalls and traps! Heaven defend from it all who are not yet engaged therein! War near at hand seems to me even more dreadful than I had fancied it. True, it tries men's souls, lays bare selfishness in undeniable deformity. Here it has produced much fruit of noble sentiment, noble act; but still it breeds vice too, drunkenness, mental dissipation, tears asunder the tenderest ties, lavishes the productions of Earth, for which her starving poor stretch out their hands in vain, in the most unprofitable manner. And the ruin that ensues, how terrible! Let those who have ever passed happy days in Rome grieve to hear that the beautiful plantations of Villa Borghese--that chief delight and refreshment of citizens, foreigners, and little children--are laid low, as far as the obelisk. The fountain, singing alone amid the fallen groves, cannot be seen and heard without tears; it seems like some innocent infant calling and crowing amid dead bodies on a field which battle has strewn with the bodies of those who once cherished it. The plantations of Villa Salvage on the Tiber, also, the beautiful trees on the way from St. John Lateran to La Maria Maggiore, the trees of the Forum, are fallen. Rome is shorn of the locks which lent grace to her venerable brow. She looks desolate, profaned. I feel what I never expected to,--as if I might by and by be willing to leave Rome. Then I have, for the first time, seen what wounded men suffer. The night of the 30th of April I passed in the hospital, and saw the terrible agonies of those dying or who needed amputation, felt their mental pains and longing for the loved ones who were away; for many of these were Lombards, who had come from the field of Novarra to fight with a fairer chance,--many were students of the University, who had enlisted and thrown themselves into the front of the engagement. The impudent falsehoods of the French general's despatches are incredible. The French were never decoyed on in any way. They were received with every possible mark of hostility. They were defeated in open field, the Garibaldi legion rushing out to meet them; and though they suffered much from the walls, they sustained themselves nowhere. They never put up a white flag till they wished to surrender. The vanity that strives to cover over these facts is unworthy of men. The only excuse for the imprudent conduct of the expedition is that they were deceived, not by the Romans here, but by the priests of Gaëta, leading them to expect action in their favor within the walls. These priests themselves were deluded by their hopes and old habits of mind. The troops did not fight well, and General Oudinot abandoned his wounded without proper care. All this says nothing against French valor, proved by ages of glory, beyond the doubt of their worst foes. They were demoralized because they fought in so bad a cause, and there was no sincere ardor or clear hope in any breast. But to return to the hospitals: these were put in order, and have been kept so, by the Princess Belgioioso. The princess was born of one of the noblest families of the Milanese, a descendant of the great Trivalzio, and inherited a large fortune. Very early she compromised it in liberal movements, and, on their failure, was obliged to fly to Paris, where for a time she maintained herself by writing, and I think by painting also. A princess so placed naturally excited great interest, and she drew around her a little court of celebrated men. After recovering her fortune, she still lived in Paris, distinguished for her talents and munificence, both toward literary men and her exiled countrymen. Later, on her estate, called Locate, between Pavia and Milan, she had made experiments in the Socialist direction with fine judgment and success. Association for education, for labor, for transaction of household affairs, had been carried on for several years; she had spared no devotion of time and money to this object, loved, and was much beloved by, those objects of her care, and said she hoped to die there. All is now despoiled and broken up, though it may be hoped that some seeds of peaceful reform have been sown which will spring to light when least expected. The princess returned to Italy in 1847-8, full of hope in Pius IX and Charles Albert. She showed her usual energy and truly princely heart, sustaining, at her own expense, a company of soldiers and a journal up to the last sad betrayal of Milan, August 6th. These days undeceived all the people, but few of the noblesse; she was one of the few with mind strong enough to understand the lesson, and is now warmly interested in the republican movement. From Milan she went to France, but, finding it impossible to effect anything serious there in behalf of Italy, returned, and has been in Rome about two months. Since leaving Milan she receives no income, her possessions being in the grasp of Radetzky, and cannot know when, if ever, she will again. But as she worked so largely and well with money, so can she without. She published an invitation to the Roman women to make lint and bandages, and offer their services to the wounded; she put the hospitals in order; in the central one, Trinita de Pellegrini, once the abode where the pilgrims were received during holy week, and where foreigners were entertained by seeing their feet washed by the noble dames and dignitaries of Rome, she has remained day and night since the 30th of April, when the wounded were first there. Some money she procured at first by going through Rome, accompanied by two other ladies veiled, to beg it. Afterward the voluntary contributions were generous; among the rest, I am proud to say, the Americans in Rome gave $250, of which a handsome portion came from Mr. Brown, the Consul. I value this mark of sympathy more because of the irritation and surprise occasioned here by the position of Mr. Cass, the Envoy. It is most unfortunate that we should have an envoy here for the first time, just to offend and disappoint the Romans. When all the other ambassadors are at Gaëta, ours is in Rome, as if by his presence to discountenance the republican government, which he does not recognize. Mr. Cass, it seems, is required by his instructions not to recognize the government till sure it can be sustained. Now it seems to me that the only dignified ground for our government, the only legitimate ground for any republican government, is to recognize for any nation the government chosen by itself. The suffrage had been correct here, and the proportion of votes to the whole population was much larger, it was said by Americans here, than it is in our own country at the time of contested elections. It had elected an Assembly; that Assembly had appointed, to meet the exigencies of this time, the Triumvirate. If any misrepresentations have induced America to believe, as France affects to have believed, that so large a vote could have been obtained by moral intimidation, the present unanimity of the population in resisting such immense odds, and the enthusiasm of their every expression in favor of the present government, puts the matter beyond a doubt. The Roman people claims once more to have a national existence. It declines further serfdom to an ecclesiastical court. It claims liberty of conscience, of action, and of thought. Should it fall from its present position, it will not be from, internal dissent, but from foreign oppression. Since this is the case, surely our country, if no other, is bound to recognize the present government _so long as it can sustain itself_. This position is that to which we have a right: being such, it is no matter how it is viewed by others. But I dare assert it is the only respectable one for our country, in the eyes of the Emperor of Russia himself. The first, best occasion is past, when Mr. Cass might, had he been empowered to act as Mr. Rush did in France, have morally strengthened the staggering republic, which would have found sympathy where alone it is of permanent value, on the basis of principle. Had it been in vain, what then? America would have acted honorably; as to our being compromised thereby with the Papal government, that fear is idle. Pope and Cardinals have great hopes from America; the giant influence there is kept up with the greatest care; the number of Catholic writers in the United States, too, carefully counted. Had our republican government acknowledged this republican government, the Papal Camarilla would have respected us more, but not loved us less; for have we not the loaves and fishes to give, as well as the precious souls to be saved? Ah! here, indeed, America might go straightforward with all needful impunity. Bishop Hughes himself need not be anxious. That first, best occasion has passed, and the unrecognized, unrecognizing Envoy has given offence, and not comfort, by a presence that seemed constantly to say, I do not think you can sustain yourselves. It has wounded both the heart and the pride of Rome. Some of the lowest people have asked me, "Is it not true that your country had a war to become free?" "Yes." "Then why do they not feel for us?" Yet even now it is not too late. If America would only hail triumphant, though she could not sustain injured Rome, that would be something. "Can you suppose Rome will triumph," you say, "without money, and against so potent a league of foes?" I am not sure, but I hope, for I believe something in the heart of a people when fairly awakened. I have also a lurking confidence in what our fathers spoke of so constantly, a providential order of things, by which brute force and selfish enterprise are sometimes set at naught by aid which seems to descend from a higher sphere. Even old pagans believed in that, you know; and I was born in America, Christianized by the Puritans,--America, freed by eight years' patient suffering, poverty, and struggle,--America, so cheered in dark days by one spark of sympathy from a foreign shore,--America, first "recognized" by Lafayette. I saw him when traversing our country, then great, rich, and free. Millions of men who owed in part their happiness to what, no doubt, was once sneered at as romantic sympathy, threw garlands in his path. It is natural that I should have some faith. Send, dear America! to thy ambassadors a talisman precious beyond all that boasted gold of California. Let it loose his tongue to cry, "Long live the Republic, and may God bless the cause of the people, the brotherhood of nations and of men,--equality of rights for all." _Viva America!_ Hail to my country! May she live a free, a glorious, a loving life, and not perish, like the old dominions, from, the leprosy of selfishness. Evening. I am alone in the ghostly silence of a great house, not long since full of gay faces and echoing with gay voices, now deserted by every one but me,--for almost all foreigners are gone now, driven by force either of the summer heats or the foe. I hear all the Spaniards are going now,--that twenty-one have taken passports to-day; why that is, I do not know. I shall not go till the last moment; my only fear is of France. I cannot think in any case there would be found men willing to damn themselves to latest posterity by bombarding Rome. Other cities they may treat thus, careless of destroying the innocent and helpless, the babe and old grandsire who cannot war against them. But Rome, precious inheritance of mankind,--will they run the risk of marring her shrined treasures? Would they dare do it? Two of the balls that struck St. Peter's have been sent to Pius IX. by his children, who find themselves so much less "beloved" than were the Austrians. These two days, days of solemn festivity in the calends of the Church, have been duly kept, and the population looks cheerful as it swarms through the streets. The order of Rome, thronged as it is with troops, is amazing. I go from one end to the other, and amid the poorest and most barbarous of the population, (barbarously ignorant, I mean,) alone and on foot. My friends send out their little children alone with their nurses. The amount of crime is almost nothing to what it was. The Roman, no longer pent in ignorance and crouching beneath espionage, no longer stabs in the dark. His energies have true vent; his better feelings are roused; he has thrown aside the stiletto. The power here is indeed miraculous, since no doubt still lurk within the walls many who are eager to incite brawls, if only to give an excuse for slander. To-day I suppose twelve thousand Austrians marched into Florence. The Florentines have humbled and disgraced themselves in vain. They recalled the Grand Duke to ward off the entrance of the Austrians, but in vain went the deputation to Gaëta--in an American steamer! Leopold was afraid to come till his dear cousins of Austria had put everything in perfect order; then the Austrians entered to take Leghorn, but the Florentines still kept on imploring them not to come there; Florence was as subdued, as good as possible, already:--they have had the answer they deserved. Now they crown their work by giving over Guerazzi and Petracci to be tried by an Austrian court-martial. Truly the cup of shame brims over. I have been out on the balcony to look over the city. All sleeps with that peculiar air of serene majesty known to this city only;--this city that has grown, not out of the necessities of commerce nor the luxuries of wealth, but first out of heroism, then out of faith. Swelling domes, roofs softly tinted with yellow moss! what deep meaning, what deep repose, in your faintly seen outline! The young moon climbs among clouds,--the clouds of a departing thunderstorm. Tender, smiling moon! can it be that thy full orb may look down on a smoking, smouldering Rome, and see her best blood run along the stones, without one nation in the world to defend, one to aid,--scarce one to cry out a tardy "Shame"? We will wait, whisper the nations, and see if they can bear it. Rack them well to see if they are brave. _If they can do without us_, we will help them. Is it thus ye would be served in your turn? Beware! LETTER XXXI. THE FRENCH TREASON AT ROME.--OUDINOT.--LESSEPS.--LETTER OF THE TRIUMVIRATE.--REPLY OF LESSEPS.--COURSE OF OUDINOT.--THE WOUNDED ITALIANS.--GARIBALDI.--ITALIAN YOUNG MEN.--MILITARY FUNERAL.--HAVOC OF THE SIEGE.--COURAGE OF MAZZINI.--FALSENESS OF THE LONDON TIMES. Rome, June 10, 1849. What shall I write of Rome in these sad but glorious days? Plain facts are the best; for my feelings I could not find fit words. When I last wrote, the French were playing the second act of their farce. In the first, the French government affected to consult the Assembly. The Assembly, or a majority of the Assembly, affected to believe the pretext it gave, and voted funds for twelve thousand men to go to Civita Vecchia. Arriving there, Oudinot proclaimed that he had come as a friend and brother. He was received as such. Immediately he took possession of the town, disarmed the Roman troops, and published a manifesto in direct opposition to his first declaration. He sends to Rome that he is coming there as a friend; receives the answer that he is not wanted and cannot be trusted. This answer he chooses to consider as coming from a minority, and advances on Rome. The pretended majority on which he counts never shows itself by a single movement within the walls. He makes an assault, and is defeated. On this subject his despatches to his government are full of falsehoods that would disgrace the lowest pickpocket,--falsehoods which it is impossible he should not know to be such. The Assembly passed a vote of blame. M. Louis Bonaparte writes a letter of compliment and assurance that this course of violence shall be sustained. In conformity with this promise twelve thousand more troops are sent. This time it is not thought necessary to consult the Assembly. Let us view the SECOND ACT. Now appears in Rome M. Ferdinand Lesseps, Envoy, &c. of the French government. He declares himself clothed with full powers to treat with Rome. He cannot conceal his surprise at all he sees there, at the ability with which preparations have been made for defence, at the patriotic enthusiasm which pervades the population. Nevertheless, in beginning his game of treaty-making, he is not ashamed to insist on the French occupying the city. Again and again repulsed, he again and again returns to the charge on this point. And here I shall translate the letter addressed to him by the Triumvirate, both because of its perfect candor of statement, and to give an idea of the sweet and noble temper in which these treacherous aggressions have been met. LETTER OF THE TRIUMVIRS TO MONSIEUR LESSEPS. "May 25, 1849. "We have had the honor, Monsieur, to furnish you, in our note of the 16th, with some information as to the unanimous consent which was given to the formation of the government of the Roman Republic. We to-day would speak to you of the actual question, such as it is debated in fact, if not by right, between the French government and ours. You will allow us to do it with the frankness demanded by the urgency of the situation, as well as the sympathy which ought to govern all relations between France and Italy. Our diplomacy is the truth, and the character given to your mission is a guaranty that the best possible interpretation will be given to what we shall say to you. "With your permission, we return for an instant to the cause of the present situation of affairs. "In consequence of conferences and arrangements which took place without the government of the Roman Republic ever being called on to take part, it was some time since decided by the Catholic Powers,--1st. That a modification should take place in the government and institutions of the Roman States; 2d. That this modification should have for basis the return of Pius IX., not as Pope, for to that no obstacle is interposed by us, but as temporal sovereign; 3d. That if, to attain that aim, a continuous intervention was judged necessary, that intervention should take place. "We are willing to admit, that while for some of the contracting governments the only motive was the hope of a general restoration and absolute return to the treaties of 1815, the French government was drawn into this agreement only in consequence of erroneous information, tending systematically to depict the Roman States as given up to anarchy and governed by terror exercised in the name of an audacious minority. We know also, that, in the modification proposed, the French government intended to represent an influence more or less liberal, opposed to the absolutist programme of Austria and of Naples. It does none the less remain true, that under the Apostolic or constitutional form, with or without liberal guaranties to the Roman people, the dominant thought in all the negotiations to which we allude has been some sort of return toward the past, a compromise between the Roman people and Pius IX. considered as temporal prince. "We cannot dissemble to ourselves, Monsieur, that the French expedition has been planned and executed under the inspiration of this thought. Its object was, on one side, to throw the sword of France into the balance of negotiations which were to be opened at Rome; on the other, to guarantee the Roman people from the excess of retrograde, but always on condition that it should submit to constitutional monarchy in favor of the Holy Father. This is assured to us partly from information which we believe we possess as to the concert with Austria; from the proclamations of General Oudinot; from the formal declarations made by successive envoys to the Triumvirate; from the silence obstinately maintained whenever we have sought to approach the political question and obtain a formal declaration of the fact proved in our note of the 16th, that the institutions by which the Roman people are governed at this time are the free and spontaneous expression of the wish of the people inviolable when legally ascertained. For the rest, the vote of the French Assembly sustains implicitly the fact that we affirm. "In such a situation, under the menace of an inadmissible compromise, and of negotiations which the state of our people no way provoked, our part, Monsieur, could not be doubtful. To resist,--we owed this to our country, to France, to all Europe. We ought, in fulfilment of a mandate loyally given, loyally accepted, maintain to our country the inviolability, so far as that was possible to us, of its territory, and of the institutions decreed by all the powers, by all the elements, of the state. We ought to conquer the time needed for appeal from France ill informed to France better informed, to save the sister republic the disgrace and the remorse which must be hers if, rashly led on by bad suggestions from without, she became, before she was aware, accomplice in an act of violence to which we can find no parallel without going back to the partition of Poland in 1772. We owed it to Europe to maintain, as far as we could, the fundamental principles of all international life, the independence of each people in all that concerns its internal administration. We say it without pride,--for if it is with enthusiasm that we resist the attempts of the Neapolitan monarchy and of Austria, our eternal enemy, it is with profound grief that we are ourselves constrained to contend with the arms of France,--we believe in following this line of conduct we have deserved well, not only of our country, but of all the people of Europe, even of France herself. "We come to the actual question. You know, Monsieur, the events which have followed the French intervention. Our territory has been invaded by the king of Naples. "Four thousand Spaniards were to embark on the 17th for invasion of this country. The Austrians, having surmounted the heroic resistance of Bologna, have advanced into Romagna, and are now marching on Ancona. "We have beaten and driven out of our territory the forces of the king of Naples. We believe we should do the same by the Austrian forces, if the attitude of the French here did not fetter our action. "We are sorry to say it, but France must be informed that the expedition of Civita Vecchia, said to be planned for our protection, costs us very dear. Of all the interventions with which it is hoped to overwhelm us, that of the French has been the most perilous. Against the soldiers of Austria and the king of Naples we can fight, for God protects a good cause. But we _do not wish to fight_ against the French. We are toward them in a state, not of war, but of simple defence. But this position, the only one we wish to take wherever we meet France, has for us all the inconveniences without any of the favorable chances of war. "The French expedition has, from the first, forced us to concentrate our troops, thus leaving our frontier open to Austrian invasion, and Bologna and the cities of Romagna unsustained. The Austrians have profited by this. After eight days of heroic resistance by the population, Bologna was forced to yield. We had bought in France arms for our defence. Of these ten thousand muskets have been detained between Marseilles and Civita Vecchia. These are in your hands. Thus with a single blow you deprive us of ten thousand soldiers. In every armed man is a soldier against the Austrians. "Your forces are disposed around our walls as if for a siege. They remain there without avowed aim or programme. They have forced us to keep the city in a state of defence which weighs upon our finances. They force us to keep here a body of troops who might be saving our cities from the occupation and ravages of the Austrians. They hinder our going from place to place, our provisioning the city, our sending couriers. They keep minds in a state of excitement and distrust which might, if our population were less good and devoted, lead to sinister results. They do _not_ engender anarchy nor reaction, for both are impossible at Rome; but they sow the seed of irritation against France, and it is a misfortune for us who were accustomed to love and hope in her. "We are besieged, Monsieur, besieged by France, in the name of a protective mission, while some leagues off the king of Naples, flying, carries off our hostages, and the Austrian slays our brothers. "You have presented propositions. Those propositions have been declared inadmissible by the Assembly. To-day you add a fourth to the three already rejected. This says that France will protect from foreign invasion all that part of our territory that may be occupied by her troops. You must yourself feel that this changes nothing in our position. "The parts of the territory occupied by your troops are in fact protected; but if only for the present, to what are they reduced? and if it is for the future, have we no other way to protect our territory than by giving it up entirely to you? "The real intent of your demands is not stated. It is the occupation of Rome. This demand has constantly stood first in your list of propositions. Now we have had the honor to say to you, Monsieur, that is impossible. The people will never consent to it. If the occupation of Rome has for its aim only to protect it, the people thank you, but tell you at the same time, that, able to defend Rome by their own forces, they would be dishonored even in your eyes by declaring themselves insufficient, and needing the aid of some regiments of French soldiers. If the occupation has otherwise a political object, which God forbid, the people, who have given themselves freely these institutions, cannot suffer it. Rome is their capital, their palladium, their sacred city. They know very well, that, apart from their principles, apart from their honor, there is civil war at the end of such an occupation. They are filled with distrust by your persistence. They foresee, the troops being once admitted, changes in men and in actions which would be fatal to their liberty. They know that, in presence of foreign bayonets, the independence of their Assembly, of their government, would be a vain word. They have always Civita Vecchia before their eyes. "On this point be sure their will is irrevocable. They will be massacred from barricade to barricade, before they will surrender. Can the soldiers of France wish to massacre a brother people whom they came to protect, because they do not wish to surrender to them their capital? "There are for France only three parts to take in the Roman States. She ought to declare herself for us, against us, or neutral. To declare herself for us would be to recognize our republic, and fight side by side with us against the Austrians. To declare against us is to crush without motive the liberty, the national life, of a friendly people, and fight side by side with the Austrians. France _cannot_ do that. She _will not_ risk a European war to depress us, her ally. Let her, then, rest neutral in this conflict between us and our enemies. Only yesterday we hoped more from her, but to-day we demand but this. "The occupation of Civita Vecchia is a fact accomplished; let it go. France thinks that, in the present state of things, she ought not to remain distant from the field of battle. She thinks that, vanquishers or vanquished, we may have need of her moderative action and of her protection. We do not think so; but we will not react against her. Let her keep Civita Vecchia. Let her even extend her encampments, if the numbers of her troops require it, in the healthy regions of Civita Vecchia and Viterbo. Let her then wait the issue of the combats about to take place. All facilities will be offered her, every proof of frank and cordial sympathy given; her officers can visit Rome, her soldiers have all the solace possible. But let her neutrality be sincere and without concealed plans. Let her declare herself in explicit terms. Let her leave us free to use all our forces. Let her restore our arms. Let her not by her cruisers drive back from our ports the men who come to our aid from other parts of Italy. Let her, above all, withdraw from before our walls, and cause even the appearance of hostility to cease between two nations who, later, undoubtedly are destined to unite in the same international faith, as now they have adopted the same form of government." In his answer, Lesseps appears moved by this statement, and particularly expresses himself thus:-- "One point appears above all to occupy you; it is the thought that we wish forcibly to impose upon you the obligation of receiving us as friends. _Friendship and violence are incompatible._ Thus it would be _inconsistent_ on our part to begin by firing our cannon upon you, since we are your natural protectors. _Such a contradiction enters neither into my intentions, nor those of the government of the French republic, nor of our army and its honorable chief._" These words were written at the head-quarters of Oudinot, and of course seen and approved by him. At the same time, in private conversation, "the honorable chief" could swear he would occupy Rome by "one means or another." A few days after, Lesseps consented to conditions such as the Romans would tolerate. He no longer insisted on occupying Rome, but would content himself with good positions in the country. Oudinot protested that the Plenipotentiary had "exceeded his powers,"--that he should not obey,--that the armistice was at an end, and he should attack Rome on Monday. It was then Friday. He proposed to leave these two days for the few foreigners that remained to get out of town. M. Lesseps went off to Paris, in great seeming indignation, to get _his_ treaty ratified. Of course we could not hear from him for eight or ten days. Meanwhile, the _honorable_ chief, alike in all his conduct, attacked on Sunday instead of Monday. The attack began before sunrise, and lasted all day. I saw it from my window, which, though distant, commands the gate of St. Pancrazio. Why the whole force was bent on that part, I do not know. If they could take it, the town would be cannonaded, and the barricades useless; but it is the same with the Pincian Gate. Small-parties made feints in two other directions, but they were at once repelled. The French fought with great bravery, and this time it is said with beautiful skill and order, sheltering themselves in their advance by movable barricades. The Italians fought like lions, and no inch of ground was gained by the assailants. The loss of the French is said to be very great: it could not be otherwise. Six or seven hundred Italians are dead or wounded. Among them are many officers, those of Garibaldi especially, who are much exposed by their daring bravery, and whose red tunic makes them the natural mark of the enemy. It seems to me great folly to wear such a dress amid the dark uniforms; but Garibaldi has always done it. He has now been wounded twice here and seventeen times in Ancona. All this week I have been much at the hospitals where are these noble sufferers. They are full of enthusiasm; this time was no treason, no Vicenza, no Novara, no Milan. They had not been given up by wicked chiefs at the moment they were shedding their blood, and they had conquered. All were only anxious to get out again and be at their posts. They seemed to feel that those who died so gloriously were fortunate; perhaps they were, for if Rome is obliged to yield,--and how can she stand always unaided against the four powers?--where shall these noble youths fly? They are the flower of the Italian youth; especially among the Lombards are some of the finest young men I have ever seen. If Rome falls, if Venice falls, there is no spot of Italian earth where they can abide more, and certainly no Italian will wish to take refuge in France. Truly you said, M. Lesseps, "Violence and friendship are incompatible." A military funeral of the officer Ramerino was sadly picturesque and affecting. The white-robed priests went before the body singing, while his brothers in arms bore the lighted tapers. His horse followed, saddled and bridled. The horse hung his head and stepped dejectedly; he felt there was something strange and gloomy going on,--felt that his master was laid low. Ramerino left a wife and children. A great proportion of those who run those risks are, happily, alone. Parents weep, but will not suffer long; their grief is not like that of widows and children. Since the 3d we have only cannonade and skirmishes. The French are at their trenches, but cannot advance much; they are too much molested from the walls. The Romans have made one very successful sortie. The French availed themselves of a violent thunderstorm, when the walls were left more thinly guarded, to try to scale them, but were immediately driven back. It was thought by many that they never would be willing to throw bombs and shells into Rome, but they do whenever they can. That generous hope and faith in them as republicans and brothers, which put the best construction on their actions, and believed in their truth as far as possible, is now destroyed. The government is false, and the people do not resist; the general is false, and the soldiers obey. Meanwhile, frightful sacrifices are being made by Rome. All her glorious oaks, all her gardens of delight, her casinos, full of the monuments of genius and taste, are perishing in the defence. The houses, the trees which had been spared at the gate of St. Pancrazio, all afforded shelter to the foe, and caused so much loss of life, that the Romans have now fully acquiesced in destruction agonizing to witness. Villa Borghese is finally laid waste, the villa of Raphael has perished, the trees are all cut down at Villa Albani, and the house, that most beautiful ornament of Rome, must, I suppose, go too. The stately marble forms are already driven from their place in that portico where Winckelmann sat and talked with such delight. Villa Salvage is burnt, with all its fine frescos, and that bank of the Tiber shorn of its lovely plantations. Rome will never recover the cruel ravage of these days, perhaps only just begun. I had often thought of living a few months near St. Peter's, that I might go as much as I liked to the church and the museum, have Villa Pamfili and Monte Mario within the compass of a walk. It is not easy to find lodgings there, as it is a quarter foreigners never inhabit; but, walking about to see what pleasant places there were, I had fixed my eye on a clean, simple house near Ponte St. Angelo. It bore on a tablet that it was the property of Angela ----; its little balconies with their old wooden rails, full of flowers in humble earthen vases, the many bird-cages, the air of domestic quiet and comfort, marked it as the home of some vestal or widow, some lone woman whose heart was centred in the ordinary and simplest pleasures of a home. I saw also she was one having the most limited income, and I thought, "She will not refuse to let me a room for a few months, as I shall be as quiet as herself, and sympathize about the flowers and birds." Now the Villa Pamfili is all laid waste. The French encamp on Monte Mario; what they have done there is not known yet. The cannonade reverberates all day under the dome of St. Peter's, and the house of poor Angela is levelled with the ground. I hope her birds and the white peacocks of the Vatican gardens are in safety;--but who cares for gentle, harmless creatures now? I have been often interrupted while writing this letter, and suppose it is confused as well as incomplete. I hope my next may tell of something decisive one way or the other. News is not yet come from Lesseps, but the conduct of Oudinot and the formation of the new French ministry give reason to hope no good. Many seem resolved to force back Pius IX. among his bleeding flock, into the city ruined by him, where he cannot remain, and if he come, all this struggle and sorrow is to be borne over again. Mazzini stands firm as a rock. I know not whether he hopes for a successful issue, but he _believes_ in a God bound to protect men who do what they deem their duty. Yet how long, O Lord, shall the few trample on the many? I am surprised to see the air of perfect good faith with which articles from the London Times, upon the revolutionary movements, are copied into our papers. There exists not in Europe a paper more violently opposed to the cause of freedom than the Times, and neither its leaders nor its foreign correspondence are to be depended upon. It is said to receive money from Austria. I know not whether this be true, or whether it be merely subservient to the aristocratical feeling of England, which is far more opposed to republican movements than is that of Russia; for in England fear embitters hate. It is droll to remember our reading in the class-book. "Ay, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are";-- to think how bitter the English were on the Italians who succumbed, and see how they hate those who resist. And their cowardice here in Italy is ludicrous. It is they who run away at the least intimation of danger,--it is they who invent all the "fe, fo, fum" stories about Italy,--it is they who write to the Times and elsewhere that they dare not for their lives stay in Rome, where I, a woman, walk everywhere alone, and all the little children do the same, with their nurses. More of this anon. LETTER XXXII. PROGRESS OF THE TRAGEDY.--PIUS IX. DISAVOWS LIBERALISM.--OUDINOT, AND THE ROMAN AUTHORITIES.--SHAME OF FRANCE.--DEVASTATION OF THE CITY.--COURAGE OF THE PEOPLE.--BOMBS EXTINGUISHED.--A CRISIS APPROACHING. Rome, June 21, 1849. It is now two weeks since the first attack of Oudinot, and as yet we hear nothing decisive from Paris. I know not yet what news may have come last night, but by the morning's mail we did not even receive notice that Lesseps had arrived in Paris. Whether Lesseps was consciously the servant of all these base intrigues, time will show. His conduct was boyish and foolish, if it was not treacherous. The only object seemed to be to create panic, to agitate, to take possession of Rome somehow, though what to do with it, if they could get it, the French government would hardly know. Pius IX., in his allocution of the 29th of April last, has explained himself fully. He has disavowed every liberal act which ever seemed to emanate from him, with the exception of the amnesty. He has shamelessly recalled his refusal to let Austrian blood be shed, while Roman flows daily at his request. He has implicitly declared that his future government, could he return, would be absolute despotism,--has dispelled the last lingering illusion of those still anxious to apologize for him as only a prisoner now in the hands of the Cardinals and the king of Naples. The last frail link is broken that bound to him the people of Rome, and could the French restore him, they must frankly avow themselves, abandon entirely and fully the position they took in February, 1848, and declare themselves the allies of Austria and of Russia. Meanwhile they persevere in the Jesuitical policy that has already disgraced and is to ruin them. After a week of vain assaults, Oudinot sent to Rome the following letter, which I translate, as well as the answers it elicited. LETTER OF GENERAL OUDINOT, _Intended for the Roman Constituent Assembly, the Triumvirate, the Generalissimo, and the Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard._ "General,--The events of war have, as you know, conducted the French army to the gates of Rome. "Should the entrance into the city remain closed against us, I should see myself constrained to employ immediately all the means of action that France has placed in my hands. "Before having recourse to such terrible necessity, I think it my duty to make a last appeal to a people who cannot have toward France sentiments of hostility. "The Roman army wishes, no doubt, equally with myself, to spare bloody ruin to the capital of the Christian world. "With this conviction, I pray you, Signore General, to give the enclosed proclamation the most speedy publicity. If, twelve hours after this despatch shall have been delivered to you, an answer corresponding to the honor and the intentions of France shall not have reached me, I shall be constrained to give the forcible attack. "Accept, &c. "Villa Pamfili, 12 June, 1849, 5 P.M." He was in fact at Villa Santucci, much farther out, but could not be content without falsifying his date as well as all his statements. "PROCLAMATION. "Inhabitants of Rome,--We did not come to bring you war. We came to sustain among you order, with liberty. The intentions of our government have been misunderstood. The labors of the siege have conducted us under your walls. Till now we have wished only occasionally to answer the fire of your batteries. We approach these last moments, when the necessities of war burst out in terrible calamities. Spare them to a city fall of so many glorious memories. "If you persist in repelling us, on you alone will fall the responsibility of irreparable disasters." The following are the answers of the various functionaries to whom this letter was sent:-- ANSWER OF THE ASSEMBLY. "General,--The Roman Constitutional Assembly informs you, in reply to your despatch of yesterday, that, having concluded a convention from the 31st of May, 1849, with M. de Lesseps, Minister Plenipotentiary of the French Republic, a convention which we confirmed soon after your protest, it must consider that convention obligatory for both parties, and indeed a safeguard of the rights of nations, until it has been ratified or declined by the government of France. Therefore the Assembly must regard as a violation of that convention every hostile act of the French army since the above-named 31st of May, and all others that shall take place before the resolution of your government can be made known, and before the expiration of the time agreed upon for the armistice. You demand, General, an answer correspondent to the intentions and power of France. Nothing could be more conformable with the intentions and power of France than to cease a flagrant violation of the rights of nations. "Whatever may be the results of such violation, the people of Rome are not responsible for them. Rome is strong in its right, and decided to maintain tire conventions which attach it to your nation; only it finds itself constrained by the necessity of self-defence to repel unjust aggressions. "Accept, &c., for the Assembly, "The President, GALLETTI. "Secretaries, FABRETTI, PANNACCHI, COCCHI." "ANSWER OF THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE NATIONAL GUARD. "General,--The treaty, of which we await the ratification, assures this tranquil city from every disaster. "The National Guard, destined to maintain order, has the duty of seconding the resolutions of the government; willingly and zealously it fulfils this duty, not caring for annoyance and fatigue. "The National Guard showed very lately, when it escorted the prisoners sent back to you, its sympathy for France, but it shows also on every occasion a supreme regard for its own dignity, for the honor of Rome. "Any misfortune to the capital of the Catholic world, to the monumental city, must be attributed not to the pacific citizens constrained to defend themselves, but solely to its aggressors. "Accept, &c. "STURBINETTI, _General of the National Guard, Representative of the People_". ANSWER OF THE GENERALISSIMO. "Citizen General,--A fatality leads to conflict between the armies of two republics, whom a better destiny would have invited to combat against their common enemy; for the enemies of the one cannot fail to be also enemies of the other. "We are not deceived, and shall combat by every means in our power whoever assails our institutions, for only the brave are worthy to stand before the French soldiers. "Reflecting that there is a state of life worse than death, if the war you wage should put us in that state, it will be better to close our eyes for ever than to see the interminable oppressions of oar country. "I wish you well, and desire fraternity. "ROSSELLI." ANSWER OF THE TRIUMVIRATE. "We have the honor to transmit to you the answer of the Assembly. "We never break our promises. We have promised to defend, in execution of orders from the Assembly and people of Rome, the banner of the Republic, the honor of the country, and the sanctity of the capital of the Christian world; this promise we shall maintain. "Accept, &c. "The Triumvirs, ARMELLINI. MAZZINI. SAFFI." Observe the miserable evasion of this missive of Oudinot: "The fortune of war has conducted us." What war? He pretended to come as a friend, a protector; is enraged only because, after his deceits at Civita Vecchia, Rome will not trust him within her walls. For this he daily sacrifices hundreds of lives. "The Roman people cannot be hostile to the French?" No, indeed; they were not disposed to be so. They had been stirred to emulation by the example of France. They had warmly hoped in her as their true ally. It required all that Oudinot has done to turn their faith to contempt and aversion. Cowardly man! He knows now that he comes upon a city which wished to receive him only as a friend, and he cries, "With my cannon, with my bombs, I will compel you to let me betray you." The conduct of France--infamous enough before--looks tenfold blacker now that, while the so-called Plenipotentiary is absent with the treaty to be ratified, her army daily assails Rome,--assails in vain. After receiving these answers to his letter and proclamation, Oudinot turned all the force of his cannonade to make a breach, and began, what no one, even in these days, has believed possible, the bombardment of Rome. Yes! the French, who pretend to be the advanced guard of civilization, are bombarding Rome. They dare take the risk of destroying the richest bequests made to man by the great Past. Nay, they seem to do it in an especially barbarous manner. It was thought they would avoid, as much as possible, the hospitals for the wounded, marked to their view by the black banner, and the places where are the most precious monuments; but several bombs have fallen on the chief hospital, and the Capitol evidently is especially aimed at. They made a breach in the wall, but it was immediately filled up with a barricade, and all the week they have been repulsed in every attempt they made to gain ground, though with considerable loss of life on our side; on theirs it must be great, but how great we cannot know. Ponte Molle, the scene of Raphael's fresco of a battle, in the Vatican, saw again a fierce struggle last Friday. More than fifty were brought wounded into Rome. But wounds and assaults only fire more and more the courage of her defenders. They feel the justice of their cause, and the peculiar iniquity of this aggression. In proportion as there seems little aid to be hoped from man, they seem to claim it from God. The noblest sentiments are heard from every lip, and, thus far, their acts amply correspond. On the eve of the bombardment one or two officers went round with a fine band. It played on the piazzas the Marseillaise and Roman marches; and when the people were thus assembled, they were told of the proclamation, and asked how they felt. Many shouted loudly, _Guerra! Viva la Republica Romana!_ Afterward, bands of young men went round singing the chorus, "Vogliamo sempre quella, Vogliamo Liberta." ("We want always one thing; we want liberty.") Guitars played, and some danced. When the bombs began to come, one of the Trasteverini, those noble images of the old Roman race, redeemed her claim to that descent by seizing a bomb and extinguishing the match. She received a medal and a reward in money. A soldier did the same thing at Palazza Spada, where is the statue of Pompey, at whose base great Cæsar fell. He was promoted. Immediately the people were seized with emulation; armed with pans of wet clay, they ran wherever the bombs fell, to extinguish them. Women collect the balls from the hostile cannon, and carry them to ours. As thus very little injury has been done to life, the people cry, "Madonna protects us against the bombs; she wills not that Rome should be destroyed." Meanwhile many poor people are driven from their homes, and provisions are growing very dear. The heats are now terrible for us, and must be far more so for the French. It is said a vast number are ill of fever; indeed, it cannot be otherwise. Oudinot himself has it, and perhaps this is one explanation of the mixture of violence and weakness in his actions. He must be deeply ashamed at the poor result of his bad acts,--that at the end of two weeks and so much bravado, he has done nothing to Rome, unless intercept provisions, kill some of her brave youth, and injure churches, which should be sacred to him as to us. St. Maria Trastevere, that ancient church, so full of precious remains, and which had an air of mild repose more beautiful than almost any other, is said to have suffered particularly. As to the men who die, I share the impassioned sorrow of the Triumvirs. "O Frenchmen!" they wrote, "could you know what men you destroy! _They_ are no mercenaries, like those who fill your ranks, but the flower of the Italian youth, and the noblest among the aged. When you shall know of what minds you have robbed the world, how ought you to repent and mourn!" This is especially true of the Emigrant and Garibaldi legions. The misfortunes of Northern and Southern Italy, the conscription which compels to the service of tyranny those who remain, has driven from the kingdom of Naples and from Lombardy all the brave and noble youth. Many are in Venice or Rome, the forlorn hope of Italy. Radetzky, every day more cruel, now impresses aged men and the fathers of large families. He carries them with him in chains, determined, if he cannot have good troops to send into Hungary, at least to revenge himself on the unhappy Lombards. Many of these young men, students from Pisa, Pavia, Padua, and the Roman University, lie wounded in the hospitals, for naturally they rushed first to the combat. One kissed an arm which was cut off; another preserves pieces of bone which were painfully extracted from his wound, as relics of the best days of his life. The older men, many of whom have been saddened by exile and disappointment, less glowing, are not less resolved. A spirit burns noble as ever animated the most precious deeds we treasure from the heroic age. I suffer to see these temples of the soul thus broken, to see the fever-weary days and painful operations undergone by these noble men, these true priests of a higher hope; but I would not, for much, have missed seeing it all. The memory of it will console amid the spectacles of meanness, selfishness, and faithlessness which life may yet have in store for the pilgrim. June 23. Matters verge to a crisis. The French government sustains Oudinot and disclaims Lesseps. Harmonious throughout, shameless in falsehood, it seems Oudinot knew that tire mission of Lesseps was at an end, when he availed himself of his pacific promises to occupy Monte Mario. When the Romans were anxious at seeing French troops move in that direction, Lesseps said it was only done to occupy them, and conjured the Romans to avoid all collision which might prevent his success with the treaty. The sham treaty was concluded on the 30th of May, a detachment of French having occupied Monte Mario on the night of the 29th. Oudinot flies into a rage and refuses to sign; M. Lesseps goes off to Paris; meanwhile, the brave Oudinot attacks on the 3d of June, after writing to the French Consul that Ire should not till the 4th, to leave time for the foreigners remaining to retire. He attacked in the night, possessing himself of Villa Pamfili, as he had of Monte Mario, by treachery and surprise. Meanwhile, M. Lesseps arrives in Paris, to find himself seemingly or really in great disgrace with the would-be Emperor and his cabinet. To give reason for this, M. Drouyn de Lhuys, who had publicly declared to the Assembly that M. Lesseps had no instructions except from the report of the sitting of the 7th of May, shamefully publishes a letter of special instructions, hemming him in on every side, which M. Lesseps, the "Plenipotentiary," dares not disown. What are we to think of a great nation, whose leading men are such barefaced liars? M. Guizot finds his creed faithfully followed up. The liberal party in France does what it can to wash its hands of this offence, but it seems weak, and unlikely to render effectual service at this crisis. Venice, Rome, Ancona, are the last strong-holds of hope, and they cannot stand for ever thus unsustained. Night before last, a tremendous cannonade left no moment to sleep, even had the anxious hearts of mothers and wives been able to crave it. At morning a little detachment of French had entered by the breach of St. Pancrazio, and intrenched itself in a vineyard. Another has possession of Villa Poniatowski, close to the Porta del Popolo, and attacks and alarms are hourly to be expected. I long to see the final one, dreadful as that hour may be, since now there seems no hope from delay. Men are daily slain, and this state of suspense is agonizing. In the evening 'tis pretty, though terrible, to see the bombs, fiery meteors, springing from the horizon line upon their bright path, to do their wicked message. 'T would not be so bad, methinks, to die by one of these, as wait to have every drop of pure blood, every childlike radiant hope, drained and driven from the heart by the betrayals of nations and of individuals, till at last the sickened eyes refuse more to open to that light which shines daily on such pits of iniquity. LETTER XXXIII. SIEGE OF ROME.--HEAT.--NIGHT ATTACKS.--THE BOMBARDMENT.--THE NIGHT BREACH.--DEFECTION.--ENTRY OF THE FRENCH.--SLAUGHTER OF THE ROMANS.--THE HOSPITALS.--DESTRUCTION BY BOMBS.--CESSATION OF RESISTANCE.--OUDINOT'S STUBBORNNESS.--GARIBALDI'S TROOPS.--THEIR MUSTER ON THE SCENE OF RIENZI'S TRIUMPH.--GARIBALDI.--HIS DEPARTURE.--"RESPECTABLE" OPINION.--THE PROTECTORS UNMASKED.--COLD RECEPTION.--A PRIEST ASSASSINATED.--MARTIAL LAW DECLARED.--REPUBLICAN EDUCATION.--DISAPPEARANCE OF FRENCH SOLDIERS.--CLEARING THE HOSPITALS.--PRIESTLY BASENESS.--INSULT TO THE AMERICAN CONSUL.--HIS PROTEST AND DEPARTURE.--DISARMING THE NATIONAL GUARD.--POSITION OF MR. CASS.--PETTY OPPRESSION.--EXPULSION OF FOREIGNERS.--EFFECT OF FRENCH PRESENCE.--ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE.--VISIT TO THE SCENE OF STRIFE.--AMERICAN SYMPATHY FOR LIBERTY IN EUROPE. Rome, July 6, 1849. If I mistake not, I closed my last letter just as the news arrived here that the attempt of the democratic party in France to resist the infamous proceedings of the government had failed, and thus Rome, as far as human calculation went, had not a hope for her liberties left. An inland city cannot long sustain a siege when there is no hope of aid. Then followed the news of the surrender of Ancona, and Rome found herself alone; for, though Venice continued to hold out, all communication was cut off. The Republican troops, almost to a man, left Ancona, but a long march separated them from Rome. The extreme heat of these days was far more fatal to the Romans than to their assailants, for as fast as the French troops sickened, their place was taken by fresh arrivals. Ours also not only sustained the exhausting service by day, but were harassed at night by attacks, feigned or real. These commonly began about eleven or twelve o'clock at night, just when all who meant to rest were fairly asleep. I can imagine the harassing effect upon the troops, from what I feel in my sheltered pavilion, in consequence of not knowing a quiet night's sleep for a month. The bombardment became constantly more serious. The house where I live was filled as early as the 20th with persons obliged to fly from the Piazza di Gesu, where the fiery rain fell thickest. The night of the 21st-22d, we were all alarmed about two o'clock, A.M. by a tremendous cannonade. It was the moment when the breach was finally made by which the French entered. They rushed in, and I grieve to say, that, by the only instance of defection known in the course of the siege, those companies of the regiment Union which had in charge a position on that point yielded to panic and abandoned it. The French immediately entered and intrenched themselves. That was the fatal hour for the city. Every day afterward, though obstinately resisted, the enemy gained, till at last, their cannon being well placed, the city was entirely commanded from the Janiculum, and all thought of further resistance was idle. It was true policy to avoid a street-fight, in which the Italian, an unpractised soldier, but full of feeling and sustained from the houses, would have been a match even for their disciplined troops. After the 22d of June, the slaughter of the Romans became every day more fearful. Their defences were knocked down by the heavy cannon of the French, and, entirely exposed in their valorous onsets, great numbers perished on the spot. Those who were brought into the hospitals were generally grievously wounded, very commonly subjects for amputation. My heart bled daily more and more at these sights, and I could not feel much for myself, though now the balls and bombs began to fall round me also. The night of the 28th the effect was truly fearful, as they whizzed and burst near me. As many as thirty fell upon or near the Hotel de Russie, where Mr. Cass has his temporary abode. The roof of the studio in the pavilion, tenanted by Mr. Stermer, well known to the visitors of Rome for his highly-finished cabinet pictures, was torn to pieces. I sat alone in my much exposed apartment, thinking, "If one strikes me, I only hope it will kill me at once, and that God will transport my soul to some sphere where virtue and love are not tyrannized over by egotism and brute force, as in this." However, that night passed; the next, we had reason to expect a still more fiery salute toward the Pincian, as here alone remained three or four pieces of cannon which could be used. But on the morning of the 30th, in a contest at the foot of the Janiculum, the line, old Papal troops, naturally not in earnest like the free corps, refused to fight against odds so terrible. The heroic Marina fell, with hundreds of his devoted Lombards. Garibaldi saw his best officers perish, and himself went in the afternoon to say to the Assembly that further resistance was unavailing. The Assembly sent to Oudinot, but he refused any conditions,--refused even to guarantee a safe departure to Garibaldi, his brave foe. Notwithstanding, a great number of men left the other regiments to follow the leader whose courage had captivated them, and whose superiority over difficulties commanded their entire confidence. Toward the evening of Monday, the 2d of July, it was known that the French were preparing to cross the river and take possession of all the city. I went into the Corso with some friends; it was filled with citizens and military. The carriage was stopped by the crowd near the Doria palace; the lancers of Garibaldi galloped along in full career. I longed for Sir Walter Scott to be on earth again, and see them; all are light, athletic, resolute figures, many of the forms of the finest manly beauty of the South, all sparkling with its genius and ennobled by the resolute spirit, ready to dare, to do, to die. We followed them to the piazza of St. John Lateran. Never have I seen a sight so beautiful, so romantic, and so sad. Whoever knows Rome knows the peculiar solemn grandeur of that piazza, scene of the first triumph of Rienzi, and whence may be seen the magnificence of the "mother of all churches," the baptistery with its porphyry columns, the Santa Scala with its glittering mosaics of the early ages, the obelisk standing fairest of any of those most imposing monuments of Rome, the view through the gates of the Campagna, on that side so richly strewn with ruins. The sun was setting, the crescent moon rising, the flower of the Italian youth were marshalling in that solemn place. They had been driven from every other spot where they had offered their hearts as bulwarks of Italian independence; in this last strong-hold they had sacrificed hecatombs of their best and bravest in that cause; they must now go or remain prisoners and slaves. _Where_ go, they knew not; for except distant Hungary there is not now a spot which would receive them, or where they can act as honor commands. They had all put on the beautiful dress of the Garibaldi legion, the tunic of bright red cloth, the Greek cap, or else round hat with Puritan plume. Their long hair was blown back from resolute faces; all looked full of courage. They had counted the cost before they entered on this perilous struggle; they had weighed life and all its material advantages against liberty, and made their election; they turned not back, nor flinched, at this bitter crisis. I saw the wounded, all that could go, laden upon their baggage cars; some were already pale and fainting, still they wished to go. I saw many youths, born to rich inheritance, carrying in a handkerchief all their worldly goods. The women were ready; their eyes too were resolved, if sad. The wife of Garibaldi followed him on horseback. He himself was distinguished by the white tunic; his look was entirely that of a hero of the Middle Ages,--his face still young, for the excitements of his life, though so many, have all been youthful, and there is no fatigue upon his brow or cheek. Fall or stand, one sees in him a man engaged in the career for which he is adapted by nature. He went upon the parapet, and looked upon the road with a spy-glass, and, no obstruction being in sight, he turned his face for a moment back upon Rome, then led the way through the gate. Hard was the heart, stony and seared the eye, that had no tear for that moment. Go, fated, gallant band! and if God care not indeed for men as for the sparrows, most of ye go forth to perish. And Rome, anew the Niobe! Must she lose also these beautiful and brave, that promised her regeneration, and would have given it, but for the perfidy, the overpowering force, of the foreign intervention? I know that many "respectable" gentlemen would be surprised to hear me speak in this way. Gentlemen who perform their "duties to society" by buying for themselves handsome clothes and furniture with the interest of their money, speak of Garibaldi and his men as "brigands" and "vagabonds." Such are they, doubtless, in the same sense as Jesus, Moses, and Eneas were. To me, men who can throw so lightly aside the ease of wealth, the joys of affection, for the sake of what they deem honor, in whatsoever form, are the "respectable." No doubt there are in these bands a number of men of lawless minds, and who follow this banner only because there is for them no other path. But the greater part are the noble youths who have fled from the Austrian conscription, or fly now from the renewal of the Papal suffocation, darkened by French protection. As for the protectors, they entirely threw aside the mask, as it was always supposed they would, the moment they had possession of Rome. I do not know whether they were really so bewildered by their priestly counsellors as to imagine they would be well received in a city which they had bombarded, and where twelve hundred men were lying wounded by their assault. To say nothing of the justice or injustice of the matter, it could not be supposed that the Roman people, if it had any sense of dignity, would welcome them. I did not appear in the street, as I would not give any countenance to such a wrong; but an English lady, my friend, told me they seemed to look expectingly for the strong party of friends they had always pretended to have within the walls. The French officers looked up to the windows for ladies, and, she being the only one they saw, saluted her. She made no reply. They then passed into the Corso. Many were assembled, the softer Romans being unable to control a curiosity the Milanese would have disclaimed, but preserving an icy silence. In an evil hour, a foolish priest dared to break it by the cry of _Viva Pio Nono!_ The populace, roused to fury, rushed on him with their knives. He was much wounded; one or two others were killed in the rush. The people howled then, and hissed at the French, who, advancing their bayonets, and clearing the way before them, fortified themselves in the piazzas. Next day the French troops were marched to and fro through Rome, to inspire awe in the people; but it has only created a disgust amounting to loathing, to see that, with such an imposing force, and in great part fresh, the French were not ashamed to use bombs also, and kill women and children in their beds. Oudinot then, seeing the feeling of the people, and finding they pursued as a spy any man who so much as showed the way to his soldiers,--that the Italians went out of the cafés if Frenchmen entered,--in short, that the people regarded him and his followers in the same light as the Austrians,--has declared martial law in Rome; the press is stifled; everybody is to be in the house at half past nine o'clock in the evening, and whoever in any way insults his men, or puts any obstacle in their way, is to be shot. The fruits of all this will be the same as elsewhere; temporary repression will sow the seeds of perpetual resistance; and never was Rome in so fair a way to be educated for a republican form of government as now. Especially could nothing be more irritating to an Italian population, in the month of July, than to drive them to their homes at half past nine. After the insupportable heat of the day, their only enjoyment and refreshment are found in evening walks, and chats together as they sit before their cafés, or in groups outside some friendly door. Now they must hurry home when the drum beats at nine o'clock. They are forbidden to stand or sit in groups, and this by their bombarding _protector!_ Comment is unnecessary. French soldiers are daily missing; of some it is known that they have been killed by the Trasteverini for daring to make court to their women. Of more than a hundred and fifty, it is only known that they cannot he found; and in two days of French "order" more acts of violence have been committed, than in two months under the Triumvirate. The French have taken up their quarters in the court-yards of the Quirinal and Venetian palaces, which are full of the wounded, many of whom have been driven well-nigh mad, and their burning wounds exasperated, by the sound of the drums and trumpets,--the constant sense of an insulting presence. The wounded have been warned to leave the Quirinal at the end of eight days, though there are many who cannot be moved from bed to bed without causing them great anguish and peril; nor is it known that any other place has been provided as a hospital for them. At the Palazzo di Venezia the French have searched for three emigrants whom they wished to imprison, even in the apartments where the wounded were lying, running their bayonets into the mattresses. They have taken for themselves beds given by the Romans to the hospital,--not public property, but private gift. The hospital of Santo Spirito was a governmental establishment, and, in using a part of it for the wounded, its director had been retained, because he had the reputation of being honest and not illiberal. But as soon as the French entered, he, with true priestly baseness, sent away the women nurses, saying he had no longer money to pay them, transported the wounded into a miserable, airless basement, that had before been used as a granary, and appropriated the good apartments to the use of the French! July 8. The report of this morning is that the French yesterday violated the domicile of our Consul, Mr. Brown, pretending to search for persons hidden there; that Mr. Brown, banner in one hand and sword in the other, repelled the assault, and fairly drove them down stairs; that then he made them an appropriate speech, though in a mixed language of English, French, and Italian; that the crowd vehemently applauded Mr. Brown, who already was much liked for the warm sympathy he had shown the Romans in their aspirations and their distresses; and that he then donned his uniform, and went to Oudinot to make his protest. How this was received I know not, but understand Mr. Brown departed with his family yesterday evening. Will America look as coldly on the insult to herself, as she has on the struggle of this injured people? To-day an edict is out to disarm the National Guard. The generous "protectors" wish to take all the trouble upon themselves. Rome is full of them; at every step are met groups in the uniform of France, with faces bronzed in the African war, and so stultified by a life without enthusiasm and without thought, that I do not believe Napoleon would recognize them as French soldiers. The effect of their appearance compared with that of the Italian free corps is that of body as compared with spirit. It is easy to see how they could be used to purposes so contrary to the legitimate policy of France, for they do not look more intellectual, more fitted to have opinions of their own, than the Austrian soldiery. July 10. The plot thickens. The exact facts with regard to the invasion of Mr. Brown's house I have not been able to ascertain. I suppose they will be published, as Oudinot has promised to satisfy Mr. Cass. I must add, in reference to what I wrote some time ago of the position of our Envoy here, that the kind and sympathetic course of Mr. Cass toward the Republicans in these troubles, his very gentlemanly and courteous bearing, have from the minds of most removed all unpleasant feelings. They see that his position was very peculiar,--sent to the Papal government, finding here the Republican, and just at that moment violently assailed. Unless he had extraordinary powers, he naturally felt obliged to communicate further with our government before acknowledging this. I shall always regret, however, that he did not stand free to occupy the high position that belonged to the representative of the United States at that moment, and peculiarly because it was by a republic that the Roman Republic was betrayed. But, as I say, the plot thickens. Yesterday three families were carried to prison because a boy crowed like a cock at the French soldiery from the windows of the house they occupied. Another, because a man pursued took refuge in their court-yard. At the same time, the city being mostly disarmed, came the edict to take down the insignia of the Republic, "emblems of anarchy." But worst of all they have done is an edict commanding all foreigners who had been in the service of the Republican government to leave Rome within twenty-four hours. This is the most infamous thing done yet, as it drives to desperation those who stayed because they had so many to go with and no place to go to, or because their relatives lie wounded here: no others wished to remain in Rome under present circumstances. I am sick of breathing the same air with men capable of a part so utterly cruel and false. As soon as I can, I shall take refuge in the mountains, if it be possible to find an obscure nook unpervaded by these convulsions. Let not my friends be surprised if they do not hear from me for some time. I may not feel like writing. I have seen too much sorrow, and, alas! without power to aid. It makes me sick to see the palaces and streets of Rome full of these infamous foreigners, and to note the already changed aspect of her population. The men of Rome had begun, filled with new hopes, to develop unknown energy,--they walked quick, their eyes sparkled, they delighted in duty, in responsibility; in a year of such life their effeminacy would have been vanquished. Now, dejectedly, unemployed, they lounge along the streets, feeling that all the implements of labor, all the ensigns of hope, have been snatched from them. Their hands fall slack, their eyes rove aimless, the beggars begin to swarm again, and the black ravens who delight in the night of ignorance, the slumber of sloth, as the only sureties for their rule, emerge daily more and more frequent from their hiding-places. The following Address has been circulated from hand to hand. "TO THE PEOPLE OF ROME. "Misfortune, brothers, has fallen upon us anew. But it is trial of brief duration,--it is the stone of the sepulchre which we shall throw away after three days, rising victorious and renewed, an immortal nation. For with us are God and Justice,--God and Justice, who cannot die, but always triumph, while kings and popes, once dead, revive no more. "As you have been great in the combat, be so in the days of sorrow,--great in your conduct as citizens, by generous disdain, by sublime silence. Silence is the weapon we have now to use against the Cossacks of France and the priests, their masters. "In the streets do not look at them; do not answer if they address you. "In the cafés, in the eating-houses, if they enter, rise and go out. "Let your windows remain closed as they pass. "Never attend their feasts, their parades. "Regard the harmony of their musical bands as tones of slavery, and, when you hear them, fly. "Let the liberticide soldier be condemned to isolation; let him atone in solitude and contempt for having served priests and kings. "And you, Roman women, masterpiece of God's work! deign no look, no smile, to those satellites of an abhorred Pope! Cursed be she who, before the odious satellites of Austria, forgets that she is Italian! Her name shall be published for the execration of all her people! And even the courtesans! let them show love for their country, and thus regain the dignity of citizens! "And our word of order, our cry of reunion and emancipation, be now and ever, VIVA LA REPUBLICA! "This incessant cry, which not even French slaves can dispute, shall prepare us to administer the bequest of our martyrs, shall be consoling dew to the immaculate and holy bones that repose, sublime holocaust of faith and of love, near our walls, and make doubly divine the Eternal City. In this cry we shall find ourselves always brothers, and we shall conquer. Viva Rome, the capital of Italy! Viva the Italy of the people! Viva the Roman Republic! "A ROMAN. "Rome, July 4, 1849." Yes; July 4th, the day so joyously celebrated in our land, is that of the entrance of the French into Rome! I know not whether the Romans will follow out this programme with constancy, as the sterner Milanese have done. If they can, it will draw upon them endless persecutions, countless exactions, but at once educate and prove them worthy of a nobler life. Yesterday I went over the scene of conflict. It was fearful even to _see_ the Casinos Quattro Venti and Vascello, where the French and Romans had been several days so near one another, all shattered to pieces, with fragments of rich stucco and painting still sticking to rafters between the great holes made by the cannonade, and think that men had stayed and fought in them when only a mass of ruins. The French, indeed, were entirely sheltered the last days; to my unpractised eyes, the extent and thoroughness of their works seemed miraculous, and gave me the first clear idea of the incompetency of the Italians to resist organized armies. I saw their commanders had not even known enough of the art of war to understand how the French were conducting the siege. It is true, their resources were at any rate inadequate to resistance; only continual sorties would have arrested the progress of the foe, and to make them and man the wall their forces were inadequate. I was struck more than ever by the heroic valor of _our_ people,--let me so call them now as ever; for go where I may, a large part of my heart will ever remain in Italy. I hope her children will always acknowledge me as a sister, though I drew not my first breath here. A Contadini showed me where thirty-seven braves are buried beneath a heap of wall that fell upon them in the shock of one cannonade. A marble nymph, with broken arm, looked sadly that way from her sun-dried fountain; some roses were blooming still, some red oleanders, amid the ruin. The sun was casting its last light on the mountains on the tranquil, sad Campagna, that sees one leaf more turned in the book of woe. This was in the Vascello. I then entered the French ground, all mapped and hollowed like a honeycomb. A pair of skeleton legs protruded from a bank of one barricade; lower, a dog had scratched away its light covering of earth from the body of a man, and discovered it lying face upward all dressed; the dog stood gazing on it with an air of stupid amazement. I thought at that moment, recalling some letters received: "O men and women of America, spared these frightful sights, these sudden wrecks of every hope, what angel of heaven do you suppose has time to listen to your tales of morbid woe? If any find leisure to work for men to-day, think you not they have enough to do to care for the victims here?" I see you have meetings, where you speak of the Italians, the Hungarians. I pray you _do something_; let it not end in a mere cry of sentiment. That is better than to sneer at all that is liberal, like the English,--than to talk of the holy victims of patriotism as "anarchists" and "brigands"; but it is not enough. It ought not to content your consciences. Do you owe no tithe to Heaven for the privileges it has showered on you, for whose achievement so many here suffer and perish daily? Deserve to retain them, by helping your fellow-men to acquire them. Our government must abstain from interference, but private action is practicable, is due. For Italy, it is in this moment too late; but all that helps Hungary helps her also,--helps all who wish the freedom of men from an hereditary yoke now become intolerable. Send money, send cheer,--acknowledge as the legitimate leaders and rulers those men who represent the people, who understand their wants, who are ready to die or to live for their good. Kossuth I know not, but his people recognize him; Manin I know not, but with what firm nobleness, what perserving virtue, he has acted for Venice! Mazzini I know, the man and his acts, great, pure, and constant,--a man to whom only the next age can do justice, as it reaps the harvest of the seed he has sown in this. Friends, countrymen, and lovers of virtue, lovers of freedom, lovers of truth! be on the alert; rest not supine in your easier lives, but remember "Mankind is one, And beats with one great heart." PART III. LETTERS FROM ABROAD TO FRIENDS AT HOME. LETTERS. FROM A LETTER TO ---- ----. Bellagio, Lake of Como, August, 1847. You do not deceive yourself surely about religion, in so far as that there is a deep meaning in those pangs of our fate which, if we live by faith, will become our most precious possession. "Live for thy faith and thou shalt yet behold it living," is with me, as it hath been, a maxim. Wherever I turn, I see still the same dark clouds, with occasional gleams of light. In this Europe how much suffocated life!--a sort of woe much less seen with us. I know many of the noble exiles, pining for their natural sphere; many of them seek in Jesus the guide and friend, as you do. For me, it is my nature to wish to go straight to the Creative Spirit, and I can fully appreciate what you say of the need of our happiness depending on no human being. Can you really have attained such wisdom? Your letter seemed to me very modest and pure, and I trust in Heaven all may be solid. I am everywhere well received, and high and low take pleasure in smoothing my path. I love much the Italians. The lower classes have the vices induced by long subjection to tyranny; but also a winning sweetness, a ready and discriminating love for the beautiful, and a delicacy in the sympathies, the absence of which always made me sick in our own country. Here, at least, one does not suffer from obtuseness or indifference. They take pleasure, too, in acts of kindness; they are bountiful, but it is useless to hope the least honor in affairs of business. I cannot persuade those who serve me, however attached, that they should not deceive me, and plunder me. They think that is part of their duty towards a foreigner. This is troublesome no less than disagreeable; it is absolutely necessary to be always on the watch against being cheated. * * * * * EXTRACT FROM A LETTER. One loses sight of all dabbling and pretension when seated at the feet of dead Rome,--Rome so grand and beautiful upon her bier. Art is dead here; the few sparkles that sometimes break through the embers cannot make a flame; but the relics of the past are great enough, over-great; we should do nothing but sit, and weep, and worship. In Rome, one has all the free feeling of the country; the city is so interwoven with vineyards and gardens, such delightful walks in the villas, such ceaseless music of the fountains, and from every high point the Campagna and Tiber seem so near. Full of enchantment has been my summer, passed wholly among Italians, in places where no foreigner goes, amid the snowy peaks, in the exquisite valleys of the Abruzzi. I have seen a thousand landscapes, any one of which might employ the thoughts of the painter for years. Not without reason the people dream that, at the death of a saint, columns of light are seen to hover on those mountains. They take, at sunset, the same rose-hues as the Alps. The torrents are magnificent. I knew some noblemen, with baronial castles nestled in the hills and slopes, rich in the artistic treasures of centuries. They liked me, and showed me the hidden beauties of Roman remains. * * * * * Rome, April, 1848. The gods themselves walk on earth, here in the Italian spring. Day after day of sunny weather lights up the flowery woods and Arcadian glades. The fountains, hateful during the endless rains, charm again. At Castle Turano I found heaths, as large as our pear-trees, in full flower. Such wealth of beauty is irresistible, but ah! the drama of my life is very strange: the ship plunges deeper as it rises higher. You would be amazed, could you know how different is my present phase of life from that in which you knew me; but you would love me no less; it is tire same planet that shows such different climes. * * * * * TO HER MOTHER. Rome, November 16, 1848. I am again in Rome, situated for the first time entirely to my mind. I have only one room, but large; and everything about the bed so gracefully and adroitly disposed that it makes a beautiful parlor,--and of course I pay much less. I have the sun all day, and an excellent chimney. It is very high, and has pure air and the most beautiful view all around imaginable. Add, that I am with the dearest, delightful old couple one can imagine,--quick, prompt, and kind, sensible and contented. Having no children, they like to regard me and the Prussian sculptor, my neighbor, as such; yet are too delicate and too busy ever to intrude. In the attic dwells a priest, who insists on making my fire when Antonia is away. To be sure, he pays himself for his trouble by asking a great many questions.... You cannot conceive the enchantment of this place. So much I suffered here last January and February, I thought myself a little weaned; but returning, my heart swelled even to tears with the cry of the poet, "O Rome, _my_ country, city of the soul!" Those have not lived who have not seen Rome. Warned, however, by the last winter, I dared not rent my lodgings for the year. I hope I am acclimated. I have been through what is called the grape-cure, much more charming, certainly, than the water-cure. At present I am very well, but, alas! because I have gone to bed early, and done very little. I do not know if I can maintain any labor. As to my life, I think it is not the will of Heaven it should terminate very soon. I have had another strange escape. I had taken passage in the diligence to come to Rome; two rivers were to be passed, the Turano and the Tiber, but passed by good bridges, and a road excellent when not broken unexpectedly by torrents from the mountains. The diligence sets out between three and four in the morning, long before light. The director sent me word that the Marchioness Crispoldi had taken for herself and family a coach extraordinary, which would start two hours later, and that I could have a place in that if I liked; so I accepted. The weather had been beautiful, but on the eve of the day fixed for my departure, the wind rose, and the rain fell in torrents. I observed that the river, which passed my window, was much swollen, and rushed with great violence. In the night I heard its voice still stronger, and felt glad I had not to set out in the dark. I rose at twilight and was expecting my carriage, and wondering at its delay, when I heard that the great diligence, several miles below, had been seized by a torrent; the horses were up to their necks in water, before any one dreamed of danger. The postilion called on all the saints, and threw himself into the water. Tire door of the diligence could not be opened, and tire passengers forced themselves, one after another, into the cold water; it was dark too. Had I been there, I had fared ill. A pair of strong men were ill after it, though all escaped with life. For several days there was no going to Rome; but at last we set forth in two great diligences, with all the horses of the route. For many miles the mountains and ravines were covered with snow; I seemed to have returned to my own country and climate. Few miles were passed before the conductor injured his leg under the wheel, and I had the pain of seeing him suffer all the way, while "Blood of Jesus!" and "Souls in Purgatory!" was the mildest beginning of an answer to the jeers of the postilions upon his paleness. We stopped at a miserable osteria, in whose cellar we found a magnificent relic of Cyclopean architecture,--as indeed in Italy one is paid at every step for discomfort and danger, by some precious subject of thought. We proceeded very slowly, and reached just at night a solitary little inn which marks the site of the ancient home of the Sabine virgins, snatched away to become the mothers of Rome. We were there saluted with, the news that the Tiber also had overflowed its banks, and it was very doubtful if we could pass. But what else to do? There were no accommodations in the house for thirty people, or even for three; and to sleep in the carriages, in that wet air of the marshes, was a more certain danger than to attempt the passage. So we set forth; the moon, almost at the full, smiling sadly on the ancient grandeurs half draped in mist, and anon drawing over her face a thin white veil. As we approached the Tiber, the towers and domes of Rome could be seen, like a cloud lying low on the horizon. The road and the meadows, alike under water, Jay between us and it, one sheet of silver. The horses entered; they behaved nobly. We proceeded, every moment uncertain if the water would not become deep; but the scene was beautiful, and I enjoyed it highly. I have never yet felt afraid, when really in the presence of danger, though sometimes in its apprehension. At last we entered the gate; the diligence stopping to be examined, I walked to the gate of Villa Ludovisi, and saw its rich shrubberies of myrtle, so pale and eloquent in the moonlight.... My dear friend, Madame Arconati, has shown me generous love; a Contadina, whom I have known this summer, hardly less. Every Sunday she came in her holiday dress, a beautiful corset of red silk, richly embroidered, rich petticoat, nice shoes and stockings, and handsome coral necklace, on one arm an immense basket of grapes, on the other a pair of live chickens to be eaten by me for her sake ("_per amore mio_"), and wanted no present, no reward: it was, as she said, "for the honor and pleasure of her acquaintance." The old father of the family never met me but he took off his hat, and said, "Madame, it is to me a consolation to see you." Are there not sweet flowers of affection in life, glorious moments, great thoughts? Why must they be so dearly paid for? Many Americans have shown me great and thoughtful kindness and none more so than William Story and his wife. They are now in Florence, but may return. I do not know whether I shall stay here or not: I shall be guided much by the state of my health. All is quieted now in Rome. Late at night the Pope had to yield, but not till the door of his palace was half burned, and his confessor killed. This man, Parma, provoked his fate by firing on the people from a window. It seems the Pope never gave order to fire; his guard acted from a sudden impulse of their own. The new ministry chosen are little inclined to accept. It is almost impossible for any one to act, unless the Pope is stripped of his temporal power, and the hour for that is not yet quite ripe; though they talk more and more of proclaiming the Republic, and even of calling to Rome my friend Mazzini. If I came home at this moment, I should feel as if forced to leave my own house, my own people, and the hour which I had always longed for. If I do come in this way, all I can promise is to plague other people as little as possible. My own plans and desires will be postponed to another world. Do not feel anxious about me. Some higher Power leads me through strange, dark, thorny paths, broken at times by glades opening down into prospects of sunny beauty, into which I am not permitted to enter. If God disposes for us, it is not for nothing. This I can say: my heart is in some respects better, it is kinder, and more humble. Also, my mental acquisitions have certainly been great, however inadequate to my desires. * * * * * TO HER BROTHER, K.F. FULLER. Rome, January 19, 1849. MY DEAR RICHARD,--With my window open, looking out upon St. Peter's, and the glorious Italian sun pouring in, I was just thinking of you; I was just thinking how I wished you were here, that we might walk forth and talk together under the influence of these magnificent objects. I was thinking of the proclamation of the Constitutional Assembly here, a measure carried by courageous youth in the face of age, sustained by the prejudices of many years, the ignorance of the people, and all the wealth of the country; yet courageous youth faces not only these, but the most threatening aspect of foreign powers, and dares a future of blood and exile to achieve privileges which are our American common birthright. I thought of the great interests which may in our country be sustained without obstacle by every able man,--interests of humanity, interests of God. I thought of the new prospects of wealth opened to our countrymen by the acquisition of New Mexico and California,--the vast prospects of our country every way, so that it is itself a vast blessing to be born an American; and I thought how impossible it is that one like you, of so strong and generous a nature, should, if he can but patiently persevere, be defrauded of a rich, manifold, powerful life. Thursday eve, January 25. This has been a most beautiful day, and I have taken a long walk out of town. How much I should like sometimes to walk with you again! I went to the church of St. Lorenzo, one of the most ancient in Rome, rich in early mosaics, also with spoils from the temples, marbles, ancient sarcophagi with fine bassirilievi, and magnificent columns. There is a little of everything, but the medley is harmonized by the action of time, and the sensation induced is that of repose. It has the public cemetery, and there lie the bones of many poor; the rich and noble lie in lead coffins in the church vaults of Rome, but St. Lorenzo loved the poor. When his tormentors insisted on knowing where he had hid his riches,--"There," he said, pointing to the crowd of wretches who hovered near his bed, compelled to see the tyrants of the earth hew down the tree that had nourished and sheltered them. Amid the crowd of inexpressive epitaphs, one touched me, erected by a son to his father. "He was," says the son, "an angel of prosperity, seeking our good in distant countries with unremitting toll and pain. We owe him all. For his death it is my only consolation that in life I never left his side." Returning, I passed the Pretorian Camp, the Campus Salisetus, where vestals that had broken their vows were buried alive in the city whose founder was born from a similar event. Such are the usual, the frightful inconsistencies of mankind. From my windows I see the Barberini palace; in its chambers are the pictures of the Cenci, and the Galatea, so beautifully described by Goethe; in the gardens are the remains of the tomb of Servius Tullius. Yesterday as I went forth I saw the house where Keats lived in Rome, and where he died; I saw the Casino of Raphael. Returning, I passed the villa where Goethe lived when in Rome: afterwards, the houses of Claude and Poussin. Ah what human companionship here! how everything speaks! I live myself in the apartment described in Andersen's "Improvvisatore," which get you, and read a scene of the childhood of Antonio. I have the room, I suppose, indicated as being occupied by the Danish sculptor. * * * * * TO THE SAME. Rome, March 17, 1849. I take occasion to enclose this seal, as a little birthday present, for I think you will be twenty-five in May. I have used it a great deal; the design is graceful and expressive,--the stone of some little value. I live with the severest economy consistent with my health. I could not live for less anywhere. I have renounced much, have suffered more. I trust I shall not find it impossible to accomplish, at least one of my designs. This is, to see the end of the political struggle in Italy, and write its history. I think it will come to its crisis within, this year. But to complete my work as I have begun, I must watch it to the end. This work, if I can accomplish it, will be a worthy chapter in the history of the world; and if written with the spirit which breathes through me, and with sufficient energy and calmness to execute well the details, would be what the motto on my ring indicates,--"_a possession for ever, for man_." It ought to be profitable to me pecuniarily; but in these respects Fate runs so uniformly counter to me, that I dare not expect ever to be free from perplexity and uncongenial labor. Still, these will never more be so hard to me, if I shall have done something good, which may survive my troubled existence. Yet it would be like the rest, if by ill health, want of means, or being driven prematurely from the field of observation, this hope also should be blighted. I am prepared to have it so. Only my efforts tend to the accomplishment of my object; and should they not be baffled, you will not see me before the summer of 1850. Meantime, let the future be what it may, I live as well as I can in the present. Farewell, my dear Richard; that you may lead a peaceful, aspiring, and generous life was ever, and must ever be, the prayer from the soul of your sister MARGARET. * * * * * UNDAUNTED ROME. Rome, May 6, 1849. I write you from barricaded Rome. The "Mother of Nations" is now at bay against them all. Rome was suffering before. The misfortunes of other regions of Italy, the defeat at Novara, preconcerted in hope to strike the last blow at Italian independence, the surrender and painful condition of Genoa, the money-difficulties,--insuperable unless the government could secure confidence abroad as well as at home,--prevented her people from finding that foothold for which they were ready. The vacillations of France agitated them; still they could not seriously believe she would ever act the part she has. We must say France, because, though many honorable men have washed their hands of all share in the perfidy, the Assembly voted funds to sustain the expedition to Civita Vecchia; and the nation, the army, have remained quiescent. No one was, no one could be, deceived as to the scope of this expedition. It was intended to restore the Pope to the temporal sovereignty, from which the people, by the use of suffrage, had deposed him. No doubt the French, in case of success, proposed to temper the triumph of Austria and Naples, and stipulate for conditions that might soothe the Romans and make their act less odious. They were probably deceived, also, by the representations of Gaëta, and believed that a large party, which had been intimidated by the republicans, would declare in favor of the Pope when they found themselves likely to be sustained. But this last pretext can in noway avail them. They landed at Civita Vecchia, and no one declared for the Pope. They marched on Rome. Placards were affixed within the walls by hands unknown, calling upon the Papal party to rise within the town. Not a soul stirred. The French had no excuse left for pretending to believe that the present government was not entirely acceptable to the people. Notwithstanding, they assail the gates; they fire upon St. Peter's, and their balls pierce the Vatican. They were repulsed, as they deserved, retired in quick and shameful defeat, as surely the brave French soldiery could not, if they had not been demoralized by the sense of what an infamous course they were pursuing. France, eager to destroy the last hope of Italian emancipation,--France, the alguazil of Austria, the soldiers of republican France, firing upon republican Rome! If there be angel as well as demon powers that interfere in the affairs of men, those bullets could scarcely fail to be turned back against their own breasts. Yet Roman blood has flowed also; I saw how it stained the walls of the Vatican Gardens on the 30th of April--the first anniversary of the appearance of Pius IX.'s too famous encyclic letter. Shall he, shall any Pope, ever again walk peacefully in these gardens? It seems impossible! The temporal sovereignty of the Popes is virtually destroyed by their shameless, merciless measures taken to restore it. The spiritual dominion ultimately falls, too, into irrevocable ruin. What may be the issue at this moment, we cannot guess. The French have retired to Civita Vecchia, but whether to reëmbark or to await reinforcements, we know not. The Neapolitan force has halted within a few miles of the walls; it is not large, and they are undoubtedly surprised at the discomfiture of the French. Perhaps they wait for the Austrians, but we do not yet hear that these have entered the Romagna. Meanwhile, Rome is strongly barricaded, and, though she cannot stand always against a world in arms, she means at least to do so as long as possible. Mazzini is at her head; she has now a guide "who understands his faith," and all there is of a noble spirit will show itself. We all feel very sad, because the idea of bombs, barbarously thrown in, and street-fights in Rome, is peculiarly dreadful. Apart from all the blood and anguish inevitable at such times, the glories of Art may perish, and mankind be forever despoiled of the most beautiful inheritance. Yet I would defend Rome to the last moment. She must not be false to the higher hope that has dawned upon her. She must not fall back again into servility and corruption. And no one is willing. The interference of the French has roused the weakest to resistance. "From the Austrians, from the Neapolitans," they cried, "we expected this; but from the French--it is too infamous; it cannot be borne;" and they all ran to arms and fought nobly. The Americans here are not in a pleasant situation. Mr. Cass, the Chargé of the United States, stays here without recognizing the government. Of course, he holds no position at the present moment that can enable him to act for us. Beside, it gives us pain that our country, whose policy it justly is to avoid armed interference with the affairs of Europe, should not use a moral influence. Rome has, as we did, thrown off a government no longer tolerable; she has made use of the suffrage to form another; she stands on the same basis as ourselves. Mr. Rush did us great honor by his ready recognition of a principle as represented by the French Provisional Government; had Mr. Cass been empowered to do the same, our country would have acted nobly, and all that is most truly American in America would have spoken to sustain the sickened hopes of European democracy. But of this more when I write next. Who knows what I may have to tell another week? * * * * * TO HER BROTHER, R.B. FULLER. Rome, May 22, 1849. I do not write to Eugene yet, because around me is such excitement I cannot settle my mind enough to write a letter good for anything. The Neapolitans have been driven back; but the French, seem to be amusing us with a pretence of treaties, while waiting for the Austrians to come up. The Austrians cannot, I suppose, be more than three days' march from us. I feel but little about myself. Such thoughts are merged in indignation, and in the fears I have that Rome may be bombarded. It seems incredible that any nation should be willing to incur the infamy of such an act,--an act that may rob posterity of a most precious part of its inheritance;--only so many incredible things have happened of late. I am with William Story, his wife and uncle. Very kind friends they have been in this strait. They are going away, so soon as they can find horses,--going into Germany. I remain alone in the house, under our flag, almost the only American except the Consul and Ambassador. But Mr. Cass, the Envoy, has offered to do anything for me, and I feel at liberty to call on him if I please. But enough of this. Let us implore of fate another good meeting, full and free, whether long or short. Love to dearest mother, Arthur, Ellen, Lloyd. Say to all, that, should any accident possible to these troubled times transfer me to another scene of existence, they need not regret it. There must be better worlds than this, where innocent blood is not ruthlessly shed, where treason does not so easily triumph, where the greatest and best are not crucified. I do not say this in apprehension, but in case of accident, you might be glad to keep this last word from your sister MARGARET. * * * * * TO R.W. EMERSON. Rome, June 10, 1849. I received your letter amid the round of cannonade and musketry. It was a terrible battle fought here from the first to the last light of day. I could see all its progress from my balcony. The Italians fought like lions. It is a truly heroic spirit that animates them. They make a stand here for honor and their rights, with little ground for hope that they can resist, now they are betrayed by France. Since the 30th of April, I go almost daily to the hospitals, and though I have suffered, for I had no idea before how terrible gun-shot wounds and wound-fevers are, yet I have taken pleasure, and great pleasure, in being with the men. There is scarcely one who is not moved by a noble spirit. Many, especially among the Lombards, are the flower of the Italian youth. When they begin to get better, I carry them books and flowers; they read, and we talk. The palace of the Pope, on the Quirinal, is now used for convalescents. In those beautiful gardens I walk with them, one with his sling, another with his crutch. The gardener plays off all his water-works for the defenders of the country, and gathers flowers for me, their friend. A day or two since, we sat in the Pope's little pavilion, where he used to give private audience. The sun was going gloriously down over Monte Mario, where gleamed the white tents of the French light-horse among the trees. The cannonade was heard at intervals. Two bright-eyed boys sat at our feet, and gathered up eagerly every word said by the heroes of the day. It was a beautiful hour, stolen from the midst of ruin and sorrow, and tales were told as full of grace and pathos as in the gardens of Boccaccio, only in a very different spirit,--with noble hope for man, and reverence for woman. The young ladies of the family, very young girls, were filled with enthusiasm for the suffering, wounded patriots, and they wished to go to the hospital, to give their services. Excepting the three superintendents, none but married ladies were permitted to serve there, but their services were accepted. Their governess then wished to go too, and, as she could speak several languages, she was admitted to the rooms of the wounded soldiers, to interpret for them, as the nurses knew nothing but Italian, and many of these poor men were suffering because they could not make their wishes known. Some are French, some Germans, many Poles. Indeed, I am afraid it is too true that there were comparatively few Romans among them. This young lady passed several nights there. Should I never return, and sometimes I despair of doing so, it seems so far off,--so difficult, I am caught in such a net of ties here,--if ever you know of my life here, I think you will only wonder at the constancy with which I have sustained myself,--the degree of profit to which, amid great difficulties, I have put the time,--at least in the way of observation. Meanwhile, love me all you can. Let me feel that, amid the fearful agitations of the world, there are pure hands, with healthful, even pulse, stretched out toward me, if I claim their grasp. I feel profoundly for Mazzini. At moments I am tempted to say, "Cursed with every granted prayer,"--so cunning is the demon. Mazzini has become the inspiring soul of his people. He saw Rome, to which all his hopes through life tended, for the first time as a Roman citizen, and to become in a few days its ruler. He has animated, he sustains her to a glorious effort, which, if it fails this time, will not in the age. His country will be free. Yet to me it would be so dreadful to cause all this bloodshed,--to dig the graves of such martyrs! Then, Rome is being destroyed; her glorious oaks,--her villas, haunts of sacred beauty, that seemed the possession of the world for ever,--the villa of Raphael, the villa of Albani, home of Winckelmann and the best expression of the ideal of modern Rome, and so many other sanctuaries of beauty,--all must perish, lest a foe should level his musket from their shelter. I could not, could not! I know not, dear friend, whether I shall ever get home across that great ocean, but here in Rome I shall no longer wish to live. O Rome, _my_ country! could I imagine that the triumph of what I held dear was to heap such desolation on thy head! Speaking of the republic, you say, "Do you not wish Italy had a great man?" Mazzini is a great man. In mind, a great, poetic statesman; in heart, a lover; in action, decisive and full of resource as Cæsar. Dearly I love Mazzini. He came in, just as I had finished the first letter to you. His soft, radiant look makes melancholy music in my soul; it consecrates my present life, that, like the Magdalen, I may, at the important hour, shed all the consecrated ointment on his head. There is one, Mazzini, who understands thee well,--who knew thee no less when an object of popular fear than now of idolatry,--and who, if the pen be not held too feebly, will help posterity to know thee too! * * * * * TO HER SISTER, MRS. E.K. CHANNING. Rome, June 19, 1849. As was Eve, at first, I suppose every mother is delighted by the birth of a man-child. There is a hope that he will conquer more ill, and effect more good, than is expected from girls. This prejudice in favor of man does not seem to be destroyed by his shortcomings for ages. Still, each mother hopes to find in hers an Emanuel. I should like very much to see your children, but hardly realize I ever shall. The journey home seems so long, so difficult, so expensive. I should really like to lie down here, and sleep my way into another sphere of existence, if I could take with me one or two that love and need me, and was sure of a good haven for them on that other side. The world seems to go so strangely wrong! The bad side triumphs; the blood and tears of the generous flow in vain. I assist at many saddest scenes, and suffer for those whom I knew not before. Those whom I knew and loved,--who, if they had triumphed, would have opened for me an easier, broader, higher-mounting road,--are everyday more and more involved in earthly ruin. Eternity is with us, but there is much darkness and bitterness in this portion of it. A baleful star rose on my birth, and its hostility, I fear, will never be disarmed while I walk below. * * * * * TO W.H. CHANNING. July, 1849. I cannot tell you what I endured in leaving Rome, abandoning the wounded soldiers,--knowing that there is no provision made for them, when they rise from the beds where they have been thrown by a noble courage, and have suffered with a noble patience. Some of the poorer men, who rise bereft even of the right arm,--one having lost both the right arm and the right leg,--I could have provided for with a small sum. Could I have sold my hair, or blood from my arm, I would have done it. Had any of the rich Americans remained in Rome, they would have given it to me; they helped nobly at first, in the service of the hospitals, when there was far less need; but they had all gone. What would I have given could I but have spoken to one of the Lawrences, or the Phillipses! They could and would have saved this misery. These poor men are left helpless in the power of a mean and vindictive foe. You felt so oppressed in the Slave States; imagine what I felt at seeing all the noblest youth, all the genius of this dear land, again enslaved! * * * * * TO HER MOTHER. Florence, February 6, 1850. Dearest Mother,--After receiving your letter of October, I answered immediately; but as Richard mentions, in one dated December 4th, that you have not heard, I am afraid, by some post-office mistake, it went into the mail-bag of some sail-ship, instead of steamer, so you were very long without hearing. I regret it the more, as I wanted so much to respond fully to your letter,--so lovely, so generous, and which, of all your acts of love, was perhaps the one most needed by me, and which has touched me the most deeply. I gave you in that a flattering picture of our life. And those pleasant days lasted till the middle of December; but then came on a cold unknown to Italy, and which has lasted ever since. As the apartments were not prepared for such weather, we suffered a good deal. Besides, both Ossoli and myself were taken ill at New-Year's time, and were not quite well again, all January: now we are quite well. The weather begins to soften, though still cloudy, damp, and chilly, so that poor baby can go out very little; on that account he does not grow so fast, and gets troublesome by evening, as he tires of being shut up in two or three little rooms, where he has examined every object hundreds of times. He is always pointing to the door. He suffers much with chilblains, as do other children here; however, he is, with that exception, in the best health, and is a great part of the time very gay, laughing and dancing in the nurse-maid's arms, and trying to sing and drum, in imitation of the bands, which play a great deal in the Piazza. Nothing special has happened to me. The uninhabitableness of the rooms where I had expected to write, and the need of using our little dining-room, the only one in which is a stove, for dressing baby, taking care of him, eating, and receiving visits and messages, have prevented my writing for six or seven weeks past. In the evening, when baby went to bed, about eight, I began to have time, but was generally too tired to do anything but read. The four hours, however, from nine till one, beside the bright little fire, have been very pleasant. I have thought of you a great deal, remembering how you suffer from cold in the winter, and hope you are in a warm, comfortable house, have pleasant books to read, and some pleasant friends to see. One does not want many; only a few bright faces to look in now and then, and help thaw the ice with little rills of genial conversation. I have fewer of these than at Rome,--but still several. * * * * * Horace Sumner, youngest son of father's friend, Mr. Charles P. Sumner, lives near us, and comes every evening to read a little while with Ossoli. He has solid good in his heart and mind. We have a true regard for him, and he has shown true and steadfast sympathy for us; when I am ill or in a hurry, he helps me like a brother. Ossoli and Sumner exchange some instruction in English and Italian. * * * * * My sister's last letter from Europe is full of solemnity, and evidences her clear conviction of the perils of the voyage across the treacherous ocean. It is a leave-taking, dearly cherished now by the mother to whom it was addressed, the kindred of whom she speaks, and by those other kindred,--those who in spirit felt near to and loved her. It is as follows:-- Florence, May 14, 1850. "Dear Mother,--I will believe I shall be welcome with my treasures,--my husband and child. For me, I long so much to see you! Should anything hinder our meeting upon earth, think of your daughter, as one who always wished, at least, to do her duty, and who always cherished you, according as her mind opened to discover excellence. "Give dear love, too, to my brothers; and first to my eldest, faithful friend, Eugene; a sister's love to Ellen; love to my kind good aunts, and to my dear cousin E. God bless them! "I hope we shall be able to pass some time together yet, in this world. But if God decrees otherwise,--here and HEREAFTER, my dearest mother, "Your loving child, "MARGARET." PART IV. HOMEWARD VOYAGE, AND MEMORIALS. It seems proper that some account of the sad close of Madame Ossoli's earthly journeyings should be embodied in this volume recording her travels. But a brother's hand trembles even now and _cannot_ write it. Noble, heroic, unselfish, _Christian_ was that death, even as had been her life; but its outward circumstances were too painful for my pen to describe. Nor needs it,--for a scene like that must have impressed itself indelibly on those who witnessed it, and accurate and vivid have been their narratives. The Memoirs of my sister contain a most faithful description; but as they are accessible to all, and I trust will be read by all who have read this volume, I have chosen rather to give the accounts somewhat condensed which appeared in the New York Tribune at the time of the calamity. The first is from the pen of Bayard Taylor, who visited the scene on the day succeeding the wreck, and describes the appearance of the shore and the remains of the vessel. This is followed by the narrative of Mrs. Hasty, wife of the captain, herself a participant in the scene, and so overwhelmed by grief at her husband's loss, and that of friends she had learned so much to value, that she has since faded from this life. A true and noble woman, her account deserves to be remembered. The third article is from the pen of Horace Greeley, my sister's ever-valued friend. Several poems, suggested by this scene, written by those in the Old World and New who loved and honored Madame Ossoli, are also inserted here. The respect they testify for the departed is soothing to the hearts of kindred, and to the many who love and cherish the memory of Margaret Fuller.--ED. LETTER OF BAYARD TAYLOR Fire Island, Tuesday, July 23. To the Editors of the Tribune:-- I reached the house of Mr. Smith Oakes, about one mile from the spot where the Elizabeth was wrecked, at three o'clock this morning. The boat in which I set out last night from Babylon, to cross the bay, was seven hours making the passage. On landing among the sand-hills, Mr. Oakes admitted me into his house, and gave me a place of rest for the remaining two or three hours of the night. This morning I visited the wreck, traversed the beach for some extent on both sides, and collected all the particulars that are now likely to be obtained, relative to the closing scenes of this terrible disaster. The sand is strewn for a distance of three or four miles with fragments of planks, spars, boxes, and the merchandise with which the vessel was laden. With the exception of a piece of her broadside, which floated to the shore intact, all the timbers have been so chopped and broken by the sea, that scarcely a stick of ten feet in length can be found. In front of the wreck these fragments are piled up along high-water mark to the height of several feet, while farther in among the sand-hills are scattered casks of almonds stove in, and their contents mixed with the sand, sacks of juniper-berries, oil-flasks, &c. About half the hull remains under water, not more than fifty yards from the shore. The spars and rigging belonging to the foremast, with part of the mast itself, are still attached to the ruins, surging over them at every swell. Mr. Jonathan Smith, the agent of the underwriters, intended to have the surf-boat launched this morning, for the purpose of cutting away the rigging and ascertaining how the wreck lies; but the sea is still too high. From what I can learn, the loss of the Elizabeth is mainly to be attributed to the inexperience of the mate, Mr. H.P. Bangs, who acted as captain after leaving Gibraltar. By his own statement, he supposed he was somewhere between Cape May and Barnegat, on Thursday evening. The vessel was consequently running northward, and struck head on. At the second thump, a hole was broken in her side, the seas poured through and over her, and she began going to pieces. This happened at ten minutes before four o'clock. The passengers were roused from their sleep by the shock, and hurried out of the cabin in their night-clothes, to take refuge on the forecastle, which was the least exposed part of the vessel. They succeeded with great difficulty; Mrs. Hasty, the widow of the late captain, fell into a hatchway, from which she was dragged by a sailor who seized her by the hair. The swells increased continually, and the danger of the vessel giving way induced several of the sailors to commit themselves to the waves. Previous to this they divested themselves of their clothes, which they tied to pieces of plank and sent ashore. These were immediately seized upon by the beach pirates, and never afterward recovered. The carpenter cut loose some planks and spars, and upon one of these Madame Ossoli was advised to trust herself, the captain promising to go in advance, with her boy. She refused, saying that she had no wish to live without the child, and would not, at that hour, give the care of it to another. Mrs. Hasty then took hold of a plank, in company with the second mate, Mr. Davis, through whose assistance she landed safely, though terribly bruised by the floating timber. The captain clung to a hatch, and was washed ashore insensible, where he was resuscitated by the efforts of Mr. Oakes and several others, who were by this time collected on the beach. Most of the men were entirely destitute of clothing, and some, who were exhausted and ready to let go their hold, were saved by the islanders, who went into the surf with lines about their waists, and caught them. The young Italian girl, Celesta Pardena, who was bound for New York, where she had already lived in the family of Henry Peters Gray, the artist, was at first greatly alarmed, and uttered the most piercing screams. By the exertions of the Ossolis she was quieted, and apparently resigned to her fate. The passengers reconciled themselves to the idea of death. At the proposal of the Marquis Ossoli some time was spent in prayer, after which all sat down calmly to await the parting of the vessel. The Marchioness Ossoli was entreated by the sailors to leave the vessel, or at least to trust her child to them, but she steadily refused. Early in the morning some men had been sent to the lighthouse for the life-boat which is kept there. Although this is but two miles distant, the boat did not arrive till about one o'clock, by which time the gale had so increased, and the swells were so high and terrific, that it was impossible to make any use of it. A mortar was also brought for the purpose of firing a line over the vessel, to stretch a hawser between it and the shore. The mortar was stationed on the lee of a hillock, about a hundred and fifty rods from the wreck, that the powder might be kept dry. It was fired five times, but failed to carry a line more than half the necessary distance. Just before the forecastle sunk, the remaining sailors determined to leave. The steward, with whom the child had always been a great favorite, took it, almost by main force, and plunged with it into the sea; neither reached the shore alive. The Marquis Ossoli was soon afterwards washed away, but his wife remained in ignorance of his fate. The cook, who was the last person that reached the shore alive, said that the last words he heard her speak were: "I see nothing but death before me,--I shall never reach the shore." It was between two and three o'clock in the afternoon, and after lingering for about ten hours, exposed to the mountainous surf that swept over the vessel, with the contemplation of death constantly forced upon her mind, she was finally overwhelmed as the foremast fell. It is supposed that her body and that of her husband are still buried under the ruins of the vessel. Mr. Horace Sumner, who jumped overboard early in the morning, was never seen afterwards. The dead bodies that were washed on shore were terribly bruised and mangled. That of the young Italian girl was enclosed in a rough box, and buried in the sand, together with those of the sailors. Mrs. Hasty had by this time found a place of shelter at Mr. Oakes's house, and at her request the body of the boy, Angelo Eugene Ossoli, was carried thither, and kept for a day previous to interment. The sailors, who had all formed a strong attachment to him during the voyage, wept like children when they saw him. There was some difficulty in finding a coffin when the time of burial came, whereupon they took one of their chests, knocked out the tills, laid the body carefully inside, locked and nailed down the lid. He was buried in a little nook between two of the sand-hills, some distance from the sea. The same afternoon a trunk belonging to the Marchioness Ossoli came to shore, and was fortunately secured before the pirates had an opportunity of purloining it. Mrs. Hasty informs me that it contained several large packages of manuscripts, which she dried carefully by the fire. I have therefore a strong hope that the work on Italy will be entirely recovered. In a pile of soaked papers near the door, I found files of the _Democratie Pacifique_ and _Il Nazionale_ of Florence, as well as several of Mazzini's pamphlets, which I have preserved. An attempt will probably be made to-morrow to reach the wreck with the surf-boat. Judging from its position and the known depth of the water, I should think the recovery, not only of the bodies, if they are still remaining there, but also of Powers's statue and the blocks of rough Carrara, quite practicable, if there should be a sufficiency of still weather. There are about a hundred and fifty tons of marble under the ruins. The paintings, belonging to Mr. Aspinwall, which were washed ashore in boxes, and might have been saved had any one been on the spot to care for them, are for the most part utterly destroyed. Those which were least injured by the sea-water were cut from the frames and carried off by the pirates; the frames were broken in pieces, and scattered along the beach. This morning I found several shreds of canvas, evidently more than a century old, half buried in the sand. All the silk, Leghorn braid, hats, wool, oil, almonds, and other articles contained in the vessel, were carried off as soon as they came to land. On Sunday there were nearly a thousand persons here, from all parts of the coast between Rockaway and Montauk, and more than half of them were engaged in secreting and carrying off everything that seemed to be of value. The two bodies found yesterday were those of sailors. All have now come to land but those of the Ossolis and Horace Sumner. If not found in the wreck, they will be cast ashore to the westward of this, as the current has set in that direction since the gale. Yours, &c. * * * * * THE WRECK OF THE ELIZABETH. From a conversation with Mrs. Hasty, widow of the captain of the ill-fated Elizabeth, we gather the following particulars of her voyage and its melancholy termination. We have already stated that Captain Hasty was prostrated, eight days after leaving Leghorn, by a disease which was regarded and treated as fever, but which ultimately exhibited itself as small-pox of the most malignant type. He died of it just as the vessel reached Gibraltar, and his remains were committed to the deep. After a short detention in quarantine, the Elizabeth resumed her voyage on the 8th ultimo, and was long baffled by adverse winds. Two days from Gibraltar, the terrible disease which had proved fatal to the captain attacked the child of the Ossolis, a beautiful boy of two years, and for many days his recovery was regarded as hopeless. His eyes were completely closed for five days, his head deprived of all shape, and his whole person covered with pustules; yet, through the devoted attention of his parents and their friends, he survived, and at length gradually recovered. Only a few scars and red spots remained on his face and body, and these were disappearing, to the great joy of his mother, who felt solicitous that his rare beauty should not be marred at his first meeting with those she loved, and especially her mother. At length, after a month of slow progress, the wind shifted, and blew strongly from the southwest for several days, sweeping them rapidly on their course, until, on Thursday evening last, they knew that they were near the end of their voyage. Their trunks were brought up and repacked, in anticipation of a speedy arrival in port. Meantime, the breeze gradually swelled to a gale, which became decided about nine o'clock on that evening. But their ship was new and strong, and all retired to rest as usual. They were running west, and supposed themselves about sixty miles farther south than they actually were. By their reckoning, they would be just off the harbor of New York next morning. About half past two o'clock, Mr. Bangs, the mate in command, took soundings, and reported twenty-one fathoms. He said that depth insured their safety till daylight, and turned in again. Of course, all was thick around the vessel, and the storm howling fiercely. One hour afterward, the ship struck with great violence, and in a moment was fast aground. She was a stout brig of 531 tons, five years old, heavily laden with marble, &c., and drawing seventeen feet water. Had she been light, she might have floated over the bar into twenty feet water, and all on board could have been saved. She struck rather sidewise than bows on, canted on her side and stuck fast, the mad waves making a clear sweep over her, pouring down into the cabin through the skylight, which was destroyed. One side of the cabin was immediately and permanently under water, the other frequently drenched. The passengers, who were all up in a moment, chose the most sheltered positions, and there remained, calm, earnest, and resigned to any fate, for a long three hours. No land was yet visible; they knew not where they were, but they knew that their chance of surviving was small indeed. When the coast was first visible through the driving storm in the gray light of morning, the sand-hills were mistaken for rocks, which made the prospect still more dismal. The young Ossoli cried a little with discomfort and fright, but was soon hushed to sleep. Our friend Margaret had two life-preservers, but one of them proved unfit for use. All the boats had been smashed in pieces or torn away soon after the vessel struck; and it would have been madness to launch them in the dark, if it had been possible to launch them at all, with the waves charging over the wreck every moment. A sailor, soon after light, took Madame Ossoli's serviceable life-preserver and swam ashore with it, in quest of aid for those left on board, and arrived safe, but of course could not return his means of deliverance. By 7 A.M. it became evident that the cabin must soon go to pieces, and indeed it was scarcely tenantable then. The crew were collected in the forecastle, which was stronger and less exposed, the vessel having settled by the stem, and the sailors had been repeatedly ordered to go aft and help the passengers forward, but the peril was so great that none obeyed. At length the second mate, Davis, went himself, and accompanied the Italian girl, Celesta Pardena, safely to the forecastle, though with great difficulty. Madame Ossoli went next, and had a narrow escape from being washed away, but got over. Her child was placed in a bag tied around a sailor's neck, and thus carried safely. Marquis Ossoli and the rest followed, each convoyed by the mate or one of the sailors. All being collected in the forecastle, it was evident that their position was still most perilous, and that the ship could not much longer hold together. The women were urged to try first the experiment of taking each a plank and committing themselves to the waves. Madame Ossoli refused thus to be separated from her husband and child. She had from the first expressed a willingness to live or die with them, but not to live without them. Mrs. Hasty was the first to try the plank, and, though the struggle was for some time a doubtful one, did finally reach the shore, utterly exhausted. There was a strong current setting to the westward, so that, though the wreck lay but a quarter of a mile from the shore, she landed three fourths of a mile distant. No other woman, and no passenger, survives, though several of the crew came ashore after she did, in a similar manner. The last who came reports that the child had been washed away from the man who held it before the ship broke up, that Ossoli had in like manner been washed from the foremast, to which he was clinging; but, in the horror of the moment, Margaret never learned that those she so clung to had preceded her to the spirit land. Those who remained of the crew had just persuaded her to trust herself to a plank, in the belief that Ossoli and their child had already started for the shore, when just as she was stepping down, a great wave broke over the vessel and swept her into the boiling deep. She never rose again. The ship broke up soon after (about 10 A.M. Mrs. Hasty says, instead of the later hour previously reported); but both mates and most of the crew got on one fragment or another. It was supposed that those of them who were drowned were struck by floating spars or planks, and thus stunned or disabled so as to preclude all chance of their rescue. We do not know at the time of this writing whether the manuscript of our friend's work on Italy and her late struggles has been saved. We fear it has not been. One of her trunks is known to have been saved; but, though it contained a good many papers, Mrs. Hasty believes that this was not among them. The author had thrown her whole soul into this work, had enjoyed the fullest opportunities for observation, was herself a partaker in the gallant though unsuccessful struggle which has redeemed the name of Rome from the long rust of sloth, servility, and cowardice, was the intimate friend and compatriot of the Republican leaders, and better fitted than any one else to refute the calumnies and falsehoods with which their names have been blackened by the champions of aristocratic "order" throughout the civilized world. We cannot forego the hope that her work on Italy has been saved, or will yet be recovered. * * * * * The following is a complete list of the persons lost by the wreck of the ship Elizabeth:-- Giovanni, Marquis Ossoli. Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Their child, Eugene Angelo Ossoli. Celesta Pardena, of Rome. Horace Sumner, of Boston. George Sanford, seaman (Swede). Henry Westervelt, seaman (Swede). George Bates, steward. * * * * * DEATH OF MARGARET FULLER. A great soul has passed from this mortal stage of being by the death of MARGARET FULLER, by marriage Marchioness Ossoli, who, with her husband and child, Mr. Horace Sumner of Boston,[A] and others, was drowned in the wreck of the brig Elizabeth from Leghorn for this port, on the south shore of Long Island, near Fire Island, on Friday afternoon last. No passenger survives to tell the story of that night of horrors, whose fury appalled many of our snugly sheltered citizens reposing securely in their beds. We can adequately realize what it must have been to voyagers approaching our coast from the Old World, on vessels helplessly exposed to the rage of that wild southwestern gale, and seeing in the long and anxiously expected land of their youth and their love only an aggravation of their perils, a death-blow to their hopes, an assurance of their temporal doom! [Footnote A: Horace Sumner, one of the victims of the lamentable wreck of the Elizabeth, was the youngest son of the late Hon. Charles P. Sumner, of Boston, for many years Sheriff of Suffolk County, and the brother of George Sumner, Esq., the distinguished American writer, now resident at Paris, and of Hon. Charles Sumner of Boston, who is well known for his legal and literary eminence throughout the country. He was about twenty-four years of age, and had been abroad for nearly a year, travelling in the South of Europe for the benefit of his health. The past winter was spent by him chiefly in Florence, where he was on terms of familiar intimacy with the Marquis and Marchioness Ossoli, and was induced to take passage in the same vessel with them for his return to his native land. He was a young man of singular modesty of deportment, of an original turn of mind, and greatly endeared to his friends by the sweetness of his disposition and the purity of his character.] Margaret Fuller was the daughter of Hon. Timothy Fuller, a lawyer of Boston, but nearly all his life a resident of Cambridge, and a Representative of the Middlessex District in Congress from 1817 to 1825. Mr. Fuller, upon his retirement from Congress, purchased a farm at some distance from Boston, and abandoned law for agriculture, soon after which he died. His widow and six children still survive. Margaret, if we mistake not, was the first-born, and from a very early age evinced the possession of remarkable intellectual powers. Her father regarded her with a proud admiration, and was from childhood her chief instructor, guide, companion, and friend. He committed the too common error of stimulating her intellect to an assiduity and persistency of effort which severely taxed and ultimately injured her physical powers.[A] At eight years of age he was accustomed to require of her the composition of a number of Latin verses per day, while her studies in philosophy, history, general science, and current literature were in after years extensive and profound. After her father's death, she applied herself to teaching as a vocation, first in Boston, then in Providence, and afterward in Boston again, where her "Conversations" were for several seasons attended by classes of women, some of them married, and including many from the best families of the "American Athens." [Footnote A: I think this opinion somewhat erroneous, for reasons which I have already given in the edition recently published of Woman in the Nineteenth Century. The reader is referred to page 352 of that work, and also to page 38, where I believe my sister personified herself under the name of Miranda, and stated clearly and justly the relation which, existed between her father and herself.--ED.] In the autumn of 1844, she accepted an invitation to take part in the conduct of the Tribune, with especial reference to the department of Reviews and Criticism on current Literature, Art, Music, &c.; a position which she filled for nearly two years,--how eminently, our readers well know. Her reviews of Longfellow's Poems, Wesley's Memoirs, Poe's Poems, Bailey's "Festus," Douglas's Life, &c. must yet be remembered by many. She had previously found "fit audience, though few," for a series of remarkable papers on "The Great Musicians," "Lord Herbert of Cherbury," "Woman," &c., &c., in "The Dial," a quarterly of remarkable breadth and vigor, of which she was at first co-editor with Ralph Waldo Emerson, but which was afterward edited by him only, though she continued a contributor to its pages. In 1843, she accompanied some friends on a tour via Niagara, Detroit, and Mackinac to Chicago, and across the prairies of Illinois, and her resulting volume, entitled "Summer on the Lakes," is one of the best works in this department ever issued from the American press. It was too good to be widely and instantly popular. Her "Woman in the Nineteenth Century"--an extension of her essay in the Dial--was published by us early in 1845, and a moderate edition sold. The next year, a selection from her "Papers on Literature and Art" was issued by Wiley and Putnam, in two fair volumes of their "Library of American Books." We believe the original edition was nearly or quite exhausted, but a second has not been called for, while books nowise comparable to it for strength or worth have run through half a dozen editions.[A] These "Papers" embody some of her best contributions to the Dial, the Tribune, and perhaps one or two which had not appeared in either. [Footnote A: A second edition has since been published.--ED.] In the summer of 1845, Miss Fuller accompanied the family of a devoted friend to Europe, visiting England, Scotland, France, and passing through Italy to Rome, where they spent the ensuing winter. She accompanied her friends next spring to the North of Italy, and there stopped, spending most of the summer at Florence, and returning at the approach of winter to Rome, where she was soon after married to Giovanni, Marquis Ossoli, who had made her acquaintance during her first winter in the Eternal City. They have since resided in the Roman States until the last summer, after the surrender of Rome to the French army of assassins of liberty, when they deemed it expedient to migrate to Florence, both having taken an active part in the Republican movement which resulted so disastrously,--nay, of which the ultimate result is yet to be witnessed. Thence in June they departed and set sail at Leghorn for this port, in the Philadelphia brig Elizabeth, which was doomed to encounter a succession of disasters. They had not been many days at sea when the captain was prostrated by a disease which ultimately exhibited itself as confluent small-pox of the most malignant type, and terminated his life soon after they touched at Gibraltar, after a sickness of intense agony and loathsome horror. The vessel was detained some days in quarantine by reason of this affliction, but finally set sail again on the 8th ultimo, just in season to bring her on our coast on the fearful night between Thursday and Friday last, when darkness, rain, and a terrific gale from the southwest (the most dangerous quarter possible), conspired to hurl her into the very jaws of destruction. It is said, but we know not how truly, that the mate in command since the captain's death mistook the Fire Island light for that on the Highlands of Neversink, and so fatally miscalculated his course; but it is hardly probable that any other than a first-class, fully manned ship could have worked off that coast under such a gale, blowing him directly toward the roaring breakers. She struck during the night, and before the next evening the Elizabeth was a mass of drifting sticks and planks, while her passengers and part of her crew were buried in the boiling surges. Alas that our gifted friend, and those nearest to and most loved by her, should have been among them! We trust a new, compact, and cheap edition or selection, of Margaret Fuller's writings will soon be given to the public, prefaced by a Memoir. It were a shame to us if one so radiantly lofty in intellect, so devoted to human liberty and well-being, so ready to dare and to endure for the upraising of her sex and her race, should perish from among us, and leave no memento less imperfect and casual than those we now have. We trust the more immediate relatives of our departed friend will lose no time in selecting the fittest person to prepare a Memoir, with a selection from her writings, for the press.[A] America has produced no woman who in mental endowments and acquirements has surpassed Margaret Fuller, and it will be a public misfortune if her thoughts are not promptly and acceptably embodied. [Footnote A: The reader is aware that such a Memoir has since been published, and that several of her works have been republished likewise. I trust soon to publish a volume of Madame Ossoli's Miscellaneous Writings.--ED.] * * * * * MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI BY C.P. CRANCH. O still, sweet summer days! O moonlight nights! After so drear a storm how can ye shine? O smiling world of many-hued delights, How canst thou 'round our sad hearts still entwine The accustomed wreaths of pleasure? How, O Day, Wakest thou so full of beauty? Twilight deep, How diest thou so tranquilly away? And how, O Night, bring'st thou the sphere of sleep? For she is gone from us,--gone, lost for ever,-- In the wild billows swallowed up and lost,-- Gone, full of love, life, hope, and high endeavor, Just when we would have welcomed her the most. Was it for this, O woman, true and pure! That life through shade and light had formed thy mind To feel, imagine, reason, and endure,-- To soar for truth, to labor for mankind? Was it for this sad end thou didst bear thy part In deeds and words for struggling Italy,-- Devoting thy large mind and larger heart That Rome in later days might yet be free? And, from that home driven out by tyranny, Didst turn to see thy fatherland once more, Bearing affection's dearest ties with thee; And as the vessel bore thee to our shore, And hope rose to fulfilment,--on the deck, When friends seemed almost beckoning unto thee: O God! the fearful storm,--the splitting wreck,-- The drowning billows of the dreary sea! O, many a heart was stricken dumb with grief! We who had known thee here,--had met thee there Where Rome threw golden light on every leaf Life's volume turned in that enchanted air,-- O friend! how we recall the Italian days Amid the Cæsar's ruined palace halls,-- The Coliseum, and the frescoed blaze Of proud St. Peter's dome,--the Sistine walls,-- The lone Campagna and the village green,-- The Vatican,--the music and dim light Of gorgeous temples,--statues, pictures, seen With thee: those sunny days return so bright, Now thou art gone! Thou hast a fairer world Than that bright clime. The dreams that filled thee here Now find divine completion, and, unfurled Thy spirit-wings, find out their own high sphere. Farewell! thought-gifted, noble-hearted one! We, who have known thee, know thou art not lost; The star that set in storms still shines upon The o'ershadowing cloud, and, when we sorrow most, In the blue spaces of God's firmament Beams out with purer light than we have known. Above the tempest and the wild lament Of those who weep the radiance that is flown. * * * * * THE DEATH OF MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. BY MARY C. AMES. O Italy! amid thy scenes of blood, She acted long a woman's noble part! Soothing the dying of thy sons, proud Rome! Till thou wert bowed, O city of her heart! When thou hadst fallen, joy no longer flowed In the rich sunlight of thy heaven; And from thy glorious domes and shrines of art, No quickening impulse to her life was given. From the deep shadow of thy cypress hills, From the soft beauty of thy classic plains, The noble-hearted, with, her treasures, turned To the far land where Freedom proudly reigns. After the rocking of long years of storms, Her weary spirit looked and longed for rest; Pictures of home, of loved and kindred forms, Rose warm and life-like in her aching breast. But the wild ocean rolled before her home; And, listening long unto its fearful moan, She thought of myriads who had found their rest Down in its caverns, silent, deep, and lone. Then rose the prayer within her heart of hearts, With the dark phantoms of a coming grief, That "_Nino_, Ossoli, and I may go _Together_;--that the anguish may be brief." The bark spread out her pennons proud and free, The sunbeams frolicked with the wanton waves; Smiled through the long, long days the summer sea, And sung sweet requiems o'er her sunken graves. E'en then the shadow of the fearful King Hung deep and darkening o'er the fated bark; Suffering and death and anguish reigned, ere came Hope's weary dove back to the longing ark. This was the morning to the night of woe; When the grim Ocean, in his fiercest wrath, Held fearful contest with the god of storms, Who lashed the waves with death upon his path. O night of agony! O awful morn, That oped on such a scene thy sullen eyes! The shattered ship,--those wrecked and broken hearts, Who only prayed, "_Together let us die_." Was this thy greeting longed for, Margaret, In the high, noontide of thy lofty pride? The welcome sighed for, in thine hours of grief, When pride had fled and hope in thee had died? Twelve hours' communion with the Terror-King! No wandering hope to give the heart relief! And yet thy prayer was heard,--the cold waves wrapt Those forms "together," and the woe was "brief." Thus closed thy day in darkness and in tears; Thus waned a life, alas! too full of pain; But O thou noble woman! thy brief life, Though full of sorrows, was not lived in vain. No more a pilgrim o'er a weary waste, With light ineffable thy mind is crowned; Heaven's richest lore is thine own heritage; All height is gained, thy "kingdom" now is found. * * * * * TO THE MEMORY OF MARGARET FULLER. BY E. OAKES SMITH. We hailed thee, Margaret, from the sea, We hailed thee o'er the wave, And little thought, in greeting thee, Thy home would be a grave. We blest thee in thy laurel crown, And in the myrtle's sheen,-- Rejoiced thy noble worth to own, Still joy, our tears between. We hoped that many a happy year Would bless thy coming feet; And thy bright fame grow brighter here, By Fatherland made sweet. Gone, gone! with all thy glorious thought,-- Gone with thy waking life,-- With the green chaplet Fame had wrought,-- The joy of Mother, Wife. Oh! who shall dare thy harp to take, And pour upon the air The clear, calm music, that should wake The heart to love and prayer! The lip, all eloquent, is stilled And silent with its trust,-- The heart, with Woman's greatness filled, Must crumble to the dust: But from thy _great heart_ we will take New courage for the strife; From petty ills our bondage break, And labor with new life. Wake up, in darkness though it be, To better truth and light; Patient in toil, as we saw thee, In searching for the light; And mindless of the scorn it brings, For 't is in desert land That angels come with sheltering wings To lead us by the hand. Courageous one! thou art not lost, Though sleeping in the wave; Upon its chainless billows tost, For thee is fitting grave. * * * * * SLEEP SWEETLY, GENTLE CHILD.[A] [The only child of the Marchioness Ossoli, well known as Margaret Fuller, is buried in the Valley Cemetery, at Manchester, N.H. There is always a vase of flowers placed near the grave, and a marble slab, with a cross and lily sculptured upon it, bears this inscription: "In Memory of Angelo Eugene Philip Ossoli, who was born at Rieti, in Italy, 5th September, 1848, and perished by shipwreck off Fire Island, with both his parents, Giovanni Angelo and Margaret Fuller Ossoli, on the 19th of July, 1850."] Sleep sweetly, gentle child! though to this sleep The cold winds rocked thee, on the ocean's breast, And strange, wild murmurs o'er the dark, blue deep Were the last sounds that lulled thee to thy rest, And while the moaning waves above thee rolled, The hearts that loved thee best grew still and cold. Sleep sweetly, gentle child! though the loved tone That twice twelve months had hushed thee to repose Could give no answer to the tearful moan That faintly from thy sea-moss pillow rose. That night the arms that closely folded thee Were the wet weeds that floated in the sea. Sleep sweetly, gentle child! the cold, blue wave Hath pitied the sad sighs the wild winds bore, And from the wreck it held _one_ treasure gave To the fond watchers weeping on the shore;-- Now the sweet vale shall guard its precious trust, While mourning hearts weep o'er thy silent dust. Sleep sweetly, gentle child! love's tears are shed Upon the garlands of fair Northern flowers That fond hearts strew above thy lowly bed, Through all our summer's glad and pleasant hours: For thy sake, and for hers who sleeps beneath the wave, Kind hands bring flowers to fade upon thy grave. Sleep sweetly, gentle child! the warm wind sighs Amid the dark pines through this quiet dell, And waves the light flower-shade that lies Upon the white-leaved lily's sculptured bell;-- The "Valley's" flowers are fair, the turf is green;-- Sleep sweetly here, wept-for Eugene! Sleep sweetly, gentle child! this peaceful rest Hath early given thee to a home above, Safe from all sin and tears, for, ever blest To sing sweet praises of redeeming love.-- The love that took thee to that world of bliss Ere thou hadst learned the sighs and griefs of this. JULIET. Laurel Brook, N.H., September, 1851. [Footnote A: These lines are beautiful and full of sweet sympathy. The home of the mother and brother of Margaret Fuller being now removed from Manchester to Boston, the remains of the little child, too dear to remain distant from us, have been removed to Mount Auburn. The same marble slab is there with, its inscription, and the lines deserve insertion here.--ED.] * * * * * ON THE DEATH OF MARGARET FULLER. BY G.P.R. JAMES. High hopes and bright thine early path bedecked, And aspirations beautiful though wild,-- A heart too strong, a powerful will unchecked, A dream that earth-things could be undefiled. But soon, around thee, grew a golden chain, That bound the woman to more human things, And taught with joy--and, it may be, with pain-- That there are limits e'en to Spirit's wings. Husband and child,--the loving and beloved,-- Won, from the vast of thought, a mortal part, The impassioned wife and mother, yielding, proved Mind has itself a master--in the heart. In distant lands enhaloed by, old fame Thou found'st the only chain thy spirit knew, But captive ledst thy captors, from the shame Of ancient freedom, to the pride of new. And loved hearts clung around thee on the deck, Welling with sunny hopes 'neath sunny skies: The wide horizon round thee had no speck,-- E'en Doubt herself could see no cloud arise. Thy loved ones clung around thee, when the sail O'er wide Atlantic billows onward bore Thy freight of joys, and the expanding gale Pressed the glad bark toward thy native shore. The loved ones clung around thee still, when all Was darkness, tempest, terror, and dismay,-- More closely clung around thee, when the pall Of Fate was falling o'er the mortal clay. With them to live,--with them, with them to die, Sublime of human love intense and fine!-- Was thy last prayer unto the Deity; And it was granted thee by Love Divine. In the same billow,--in the same dark grave,-- Mother, and child, and husband, find their rest. The dream is ended; and the solemn wave Gives back the gifted to her country's breast. * * * * * ON THE DEATH OF MARQUIS OSSOLI AND HIS WIFE, MARGARET FULLER. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. Over his millions Death has lawful power, But over thee, brave Ossoli! none, none! After a long struggle, in a fight Worthy of Italy to youth restored, Thou, far from home, art sunk beneath the surge Of the Atlantic; on its shore; in reach Of help; in trust of refuge; sunk with all Precious on earth to thee,--a child, a wife! Proud as thou wert of her, America Is prouder, showing to her sons how high Swells woman's courage in a virtuous breast. She would not leave behind her those she loved: Such solitary safety might become Others,--not her; not her who stood beside The pallet of the wounded, when the worst Of France and Perfidy assailed the walls Of unsuspicious Rome. Rest, glorious soul, Renowned for strength of genius, Margaret! Rest with the twain too dear! My words are few, And shortly none will hear my failing voice, But the same language with more full appeal Shall hail thee. Many are the sons of song Whom thou hast heard upon thy native plains, Worthy to sing of thee; the hour is come; Take we our seats and let the dirge begin. * * * * * MONUMENT TO THE OSSOLI FAMILY. [FROM THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE.] The family of Margaret Fuller Ossoli have just erected to her memory, and that of her husband and child, a marble monument in Mount Auburn cemetery, in Massachusetts. It is located on Pyrola Path, in a beautiful part of the grounds, and has near it some noble oaks, while the hand of affection has planted many a flower. The body of Margaret Fuller rests in the ocean, but her memory abides in many hearts. She needs no monumental stone, but human affection loves thus to do honor to the departed. The following is the inscription on the monument:-- Erected In Memory of MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI, Born in Cambridge, Mass., May 23, 1810. By birth, a Citizen of New England; by adoption, a Citizen of Rome; by genius, belonging to the World. In youth, an insatiate Student, seeking the highest culture; in riper years, Teacher, Writer, Critic of Literature and Art; in maturer age, Companion and Helper of many earnest Reformers in America and Europe. And In Memory of her Husband, GIOVANNI ANGELO, MARQUIS OSSOLI. He gave up rank, station, and home for the Roman Republic, and for his Wife and Child. And In Memory of that Child, ANGELO EUGENE PHILIP OSSOLI, Born in Rieti, Italy, Sept. 5, 1848, Whose dust reposes at the foot of this stone. They passed from life together by shipwreck, July 19, 1850. United in life by mutual love, labors, and trials, the merciful Father took them together, and In death they were not divided. THE END. 
27873	----	THE SPIRIT OF ROME BY VERNON LEE. CONTENTS. Explanatory and Apologetic I. First Return to Rome II. A Pontifical Mass at the Sixtine Chapel III. Second Return to Rome IV. Ara Coeli V. Villa Cæsia VI. The Pantheon VII. By the Cemetery SPRING 1895. I. Villa Livia II. Colonna Gallery III. San Saba IV. S. Paolo Fuori V. Pineta Torlonia SPRING 1897. I. Return at Midnight II. Villa Madama III. From Valmontone to Olevano IV. From Olevano to Subiaco V. Acqua Marcia VI. The Sacra Speco VII. The Valley of the Anio VIII. Vicovaro IX. Tor Pignattara X. Villa Adriana XI. S. Lorenzo Fuori XII. On the Alban Hills XIII. Maundy Thursday XIV. Good Friday XV. Asphodels XVI. Nettuno XVII. Torre Astura SPRING 1899. I. The Walls II. Palazzo Cenci III. Monte Cavo IV. A River God V. The Pantheon VI. Santi Quattro Coronati VII. Beyond Pont Molle SPRING 1900. I. Outside the Gates II. Latter-Day Rome III. Santa Balbina IV. The Catacombs V. The Rione Monti VI. Amphoræ VII. Mass at the Lateran VIII. Stage Illusion IX. Santa Maria in Cosmedin X. Inscriptions XI. Palazzo Orsini, formerly Savelli SPRING 1901. I. Quomodo Sedet II. Villa Falconieri III. Porta Latina SPRING 1902. I. The Rubbish-Heap II. The Excavations III. The Meet IV. V. Monte Mario VI. Via Ostiense VII. Palace Yards SPRING 1903. I. Return to Rome II. Palm Sunday III. Mondragone IV. San Saba V. A Convent VI. Colonna Gardens VII. Palo VIII. Fiumicino IX. Via Ardeatina X. San Teodoro WINTER 1904. I. Palo II. A Walk at Dusk III. Tusculum IV. St. Peter's V. The Crypts VI. San Stefano VII. Via Latina SPRING 1905. I. Rome again Postscript THE SPIRIT OF ROME. LEAVES FROM A DIARY. DIS MANIBVS SACRVM. * * * * * TO ALL THE FRIENDS LIVING AND DEAD REAL AND IMAGINARY MORTAL AND IMMORTAL WHO HAVE MADE ROME WHAT IT IS TO ME. EXPLANATORY AND APOLOGETIC. I was brought up in Rome, from the age of twelve to that of seventeen, but did not return there for many years afterwards. I discovered it anew for myself, while knowing all its sites and its details; discovered, that is to say, its meaning to my thoughts and feelings. Hence, in all my impressions, a mixture of familiarity and of astonishment; a sense, perhaps answering to the reality, that Rome--it sounds a platitude--is utterly different from everything else, and that we are therefore in different relations to it. Probably for this reason I have found it impossible to use up, in what I have written upon places and their genius, these notes about Rome. I cannot focus Rome into any definite perspective, or see it in the colour of one mood. And whatever may have happened there to my small person has left no trace in what I have written. What I meet in Rome is Rome itself. Rome is alive (only the more so for its occasional air of death), and one is too busy loving, hating, being harassed or soothed, and ruminating over its contradictions, to remember much of the pains and joys which mere mortals have given one in its presence. A similar reason has prevented all attempt to rewrite or alter these notes. One cannot sit down and attempt a faithful portrait of Rome; at least I cannot. And the value of these notes to those who love Rome, or are capable of loving it, is that they express, in however stammering a manner, what I said to myself about Rome; or, perhaps, if the phrase is not presumptuous, what Rome, day after day and year after year, has said to me. _Autumn_, 1903. THE SPIRIT OF ROME. I. FIRST RETURN TO ROME. Strange that in the confusion of impressions, not new mainly, but oddly revived (the same things transposed by time into new keys), my most vivid impression should be of something so impersonal, so unimportant, as an antique sarcophagus serving as base to a mediæval tomb. Impressions? Scarcely. My mind seems like an old blotting-book, full of fragments of sentences, of words suggesting something, which refuses to absorb any more ink. How I had forgotten them, and how well I know them, these little details out of the past! the darkish sponge-like holes in the travertine, the reversed capital on the Trinità dei Monti steps, the caryatides of the Stanza dell' Incendio, the scowl or smirk of the Emperors and philosophers at the Capitol: a hundred details. I seem to have been looking at nothing else these fifteen years, during which they have all been absolutely forgotten. The very Campagna to-day, driving out beyond Cecilia Metella, little as I knew it before, seems quite familiar, leaves no impression. Yes, the fences tied like that with reeds, overtopped by sprouting elders, the fat weeds on wall and tomb, the undulations of sere green plain, the white snow-masses floating, as it were, in the blue of the sky; the straddling bits of aqueduct, the lumps of masonry. Am I utterly and for ever spoilt for this? Has it given me so much that it can never give me any more?--that the sight of Arezzo and its towers beneath the blueness and the snow of Falterona, the green marshy valley, with the full Tiber issuing from beneath the last Umbrian Mountains, seemed so much more poignant than all this. Is it possible that Rome in three days can give me nothing more vivid and heady than the thought of that sarcophagus, let into the wall of the Ara Coeli, its satyrs and cupids and grapes and peacocks surmounted by the mosaic crosses, the mediæval inscriptions of Dominus Pandulphus Sabelli? ROME, _February_ 1888. II. A PONTIFICAL MASS AT THE SIXTINE CHAPEL. I never knew so many hours pass so pleasantly as in this tribune, surrounded by those whispering, elbowing, plunging, veiled women in black, under the wall painted with Perugino's Charge of St. Peter, and dadoed with imitation Spanish leather, superb gold and blue scrolls of Rhodian pomegranate pattern and Della Rovere shields with the oak-tree. My first impression is of the magnificence of all these costumes, the Swiss with their halberts, the Knights of Malta, the Chamberlains like so many Rubenses or Frans Halses, the Prelates and cardinals, each with his little train of purple priestlets; particularly of the perfection in wearing these clothes, something analogous to the brownish depth of the purple, the carnation vividness of the scarlet, due to all these centuries of tradition. At the same time, an impression of the utter disconnectedness of it all, the absence of all spirit or meaning; this magnificence being as the turning out of a great rag bag of purple and crimson and gold, of superb artistic things all out of place, useless, patternless, and almost odious: pageantry, ritual, complicated Palestrina music, crowded Renaissance frescoes, that huge Last Judgment, that mass of carefully grouped hideous nudities, brutal, butcher-like, on its harsh blue ground; that ceiling packed with superb pictures and figures, symmetrical yet at random, portentous arm and thighs and shoulders hitting one as it were in the eye. The papal procession, white robes, gold candlesticks, a wizen old priest swaying, all pale with sea-sickness, above the crowd, above the halberts and plumes, between the white ostrich fans, and dabbing about benedictions to the right and left. The shuffle of the people down onto their knees, and scuffle again onto their feet, the shrill reading of the Mass, and endless unfinished cadences, overtopped by unearthly slightly sickening quaverings of the choir; the ceaseless moving about of all this mass of black backs, veils, cloaks, outlines of cheek and ear presenting every now and then among the various kinds of rusty black; no devotion, no gravity, no quiet anywhere, among these creatures munching chocolates and adjusting opera-glasses. M.P.'s voice at my ear, now about Longus and Bonghi's paganism, now about the odiousness of her neighbour who won't let her climb on her seat, the dreadful grief of not seeing the Cardinal's tails, the wonderfulness of Christianity having come out of people like the Apostles (I having turned out Gethsemane in St. Matthew in the Gospel which she brought, together with a large supply of chocolate and the Fioretti di S. Francesco), the ugliness of the women, &c. &c. And meanwhile the fat pink profile perdu, the _toupé_ of grey hair like powder of a colossal soprano sways to and fro fatuously over the gold grating above us. All this vaguely on for a space of time seeming quite indeterminate. Little by little, however, a change came over things, or my impression of them. Is it that one's body being well broken, one's mind becomes more susceptible of homogeneous impressions? I know not. But the higher light, the incense, fills the space above all those black women's heads, over the tapers burning yellow on the carved marble balustrades with the Rovere arms, with a luminous grey vagueness; the blue background of the _Last Judgment_ grows into a kind of deep hyacinthine evening sky, on which twist and writhe like fleshy snakes the group of demons and damned, the naked Christ thundering with His empty hand among them; the voices moving up and down, round and round in endless unended cadences, become strange instruments (all sense of register and vocal cords departing), unearthly harps and bugles and double basses, rasping often and groaning like a broken-down organ, above which warbles the hautboy quaver of the sopranos. And the huge things on the ceiling, with their prodigious thighs and toes and arms and jowls crouch and cower and scowl, and hang uneasily on arches, and strain themselves wearily on brackets, dreary, magnificent, full of inexplicable feelings all about nothing: the colossal prophetic creature in green and white over the altar, on the keystone of the vault, striking out his arms--to pull it all down or prop it all up? The very creation of the world becoming the creation of chaos, the Creator scudding away before Himself as He separates the light from the darkness. Chaos, chaos, and all these things moving, writhing, making fearful efforts, in a way living, all about nothing and in nothing, much like those voices grating and quavering endlessly long. ROME, _March_ 4, 1888. III. SECOND RETURN TO ROME. I feel very much the grandeur of Rome; not in the sense of the heroic or tragic; but grandeur in the sense of splendid rhetoric. The great size of most things, the huge pilasters and columns of churches, the huge stretches of palace, the profusion of water, the stature of the people, their great beards and heads of hair, their lazy drawl--all this tends to the grand, the emphatic. It is not a grandeur of effort and far-fetchedness like that of Jesuit Spain, still less of achievement and restrained force like that of Tuscany. It is a splendid wide-mouthed rhetoric; with a meaning certainly, but with no restriction of things to mere meaning. The man who has understood Rome best, in this respect, is Piranesi. His edifices, always immensely too big, his vegetation, extravagantly too luxurious, are none too much to render Rome. And those pools of blackness and immense lakes of ink. ROME, _February_ 20, 1889. IV. ARA COELI. Ended the morning characteristically at Ara Coeli, one of the churches here I like best, or rather one of the few I like at all. I find that the pleasure I derive from churches is mainly due to their being the most _inhabited_ things in the world: inhabited by generation after generation, each bringing its something grand or paltry like its feelings, sometimes things stolen from previous generations like the rites themselves with their Pagan and Hebrew colour; bringing something, sticking in something, regardless of crowding (as life is ever regardless of other life): tombs, pictures, silver hearts and votive pictures of accidents and illnesses, paper flowers, marbled woodwork pews, hangings. And each generation also wearing something away, the bricks and marble discs into unevenness, the columns into polish, effacing with their tread the egotism of the effigies, reducing them to that mere film, mere outline of rigid feet, cushioned head and folded hands which is so pious and pathetic. Such a church as Ara Coeli--like those of Ravenna--has this character all the more, that its very pillars are stolen from antique edifices, and show, in their broken flutings or scarred granite, that the weather also has felt its feelings about them, that they have shared in the life not merely of this religion or of that, Pagan or Christian, but in the life of the winds and rains. Such churches as this, anything but swept and garnished, correspond in a way to Browning's poetry; there is the high solemnity brought home to you, not disturbed, by the very triviality of the details; mysteries and wonders overarching the real living life of ex-votos and pictures of runaway horses and houses on fire; the life worn like the porphyry discs of the pavement, precious bits trodden into the bricks, the life of the present filched out of the past, like the columns of the temple supporting arches painted with seventeenth-century saints. The organ was playing to the chanting of the monks; and standing before the chapel of S. Bernardino, where the Christ in the gold almond and the worshipping and music-making angels of Pinturicchio rise out of the blue darkness behind the grating, I felt oddly that music of the organ. The sonorous rasping of the bass tubes, the somewhat nasal quaver of the vox humana and the hautboy, was actually the music made by these beribboned Umbrian angels, those long ages ago, in the gloom of their blue cloudy sky, with the blessing, newly arisen Christ in the cherub-spangled gold almond among them. _Holy Saturday._ V. VILLA CÆSIA. Several miles along the Via Nomentana, we came to a strange place, situate in an oasis in the wilderness, or rather in what is already the beginning of a new country--the mere mounds of tufo turning into high slopes, and a few trees (it is odd how they immediately give a soul to this soulless desert), leafless at present, serpentine along the greener grass. And there, with the russet of an oakwood behind, rises a square huddle of buildings, a tall brick watch-tower, battlemented and corbelled in the midst, and a great bay-tree at each corner. On the tower, immediately below the battlements, is the inscription, in huge letters, made, I should think, of white majolica tiles--VILLA CÆSIA. The lettering, besides being broken, is certainly not modern, and has a sharpness of outline telling of the Renaissance. What solitary humanist may have put up that inscription, coming out from Rome to commune in that wilderness, amid the rustle of the oakwood and of the laurel-trees, and the screaming of magpies and owls, with the togaed poets and philosophers of the Past? VI. THE PANTHEON. The back of the Pantheon, and its side, as seen from the steps of the Minerva, the splendid circle of masonry, and arched courses of rose-coloured brickwork, lichened and silvered over, broken off, turned into something almost like a natural cliff of rosy limestone; and at its foot the capitols of magnificent columns, and fragments of delicate dolphined frieze. VII. BY THE CEMETERY. I am struck again this time by one of the things which on my first return after so many years got to mean for my mind Rome. The Aventine, where it slopes down to the Tiber white with fruit blossom, the trees growing freely in masonry and weeds, against the moist sky; this ephemeral exquisiteness seeming to mean more here among the centuries than in any other place. I was right, I think, when I wrote the other day that it would be easier for us to face the thought of danger, death, change, here in Rome than elsewhere. K. told me she felt it when we met at the Cemetery at her poor old aunt's grave. To die here might seem, one would think, more like re-entering into the world's outer existence, returning, as Epictetus has it, _where one is wanted_. The cypresses of the graveyard, there under the city walls, among the ruins, do not seem to unite folk with the terrible unity Death, so much as with the everlasting life of the centuries. _March_ 4, 1893. SPRING 1895. I. VILLA LIVIA. Along the road to Civita Castellana, absolutely deserted. The Tiber between low, interrupted slopes, some covered with longest most compact green grass, others of brown, unreal tufo, like crumbled masonry, or hollowed into Signorelli-looking grottoes, with deep growths of Judas-tree, broom, and scant asphodels; all green and brown, of such shapes that one wonders whether they also, like so many seeming boulders scattered in their neighbourhood, are not in reality masonry, long destroyed towns. The Tiber, pale fawn colour, flush, among greenness, receiving delicate little confluents which have come along under lush foliage; smooth dark shallow streams, stoneless on sandy bottom; one imagines each fought about in those first Roman days. The country is a great pale circular greenness under tender melting sky, with pale distant mountains all round. How Rome seems to have been isolated from all life save the life eternal and unchangeable of grass and water, and cattle and larks; to have been suspended in a sort of void! Further along, reed hovels (some propped in aqueduct arches), hovels also in caves, and squalid osterias, into whose side are built escutcheoned mediæval capitals. A few mounted drovers trot slowly by. At Prima Porta, in this wilderness, a hillock of grass, descending into which you find a small chamber painted all round with a deep hedge of orchard and woodland plants, pomegranates, apples, arbutus, small pines and spruce firs, all most lovingly and knowingly given, with birds nesting and pecking, in brilliant enamel like encaustic on an enamel blue sky. Coming home in rain, Rome appears with cupola of St. Peter's and Vatican gardens so disposed as to seem only a colossal sanctuary in the wilderness. _May_ 8. II. COLONNA GALLERY. Durer?? Portrait of a red-haired Colonna with the ruins of Rome behind him; ruins which, with his violent, wild-man-of-the-woods face, he looks as if he had made. III. SAN SABA. The lovely floor, the minute pieces of marble forming a far-more-lovely-than possible faded purple and lilac rug. Also, the pathetically trodden-down-to-bits porphyry discs in the doorway. And the little cippus of a Roman girl who lived sixteen years and twenty-eight days. Against the apse, outside, the great python of a cactus. Looking down into the deserted church through the window of the loggia, one half expects to see stoled ghosts in the vagueness below. Outside and opposite, the immense counterforts of the Palatine, and its terrace and sparse cypresses. IV. S. PAOLO FUORI. The wonderful loveliness of the double colonnade of polished granite pillars on the polished pale grey marble floor; fantastic, like transfigured pools and streams of purest water. _May_ 9. V. PINETA TORLONIA. Asphodels on the banks. As we come up, the peasants drive into the stable, one by one, a lot of mares with their foals. Along the road a drove of great long-horned grey oxen; a bull-calf canters among them. Between us and St. Peter's is a dell full of scrub ilex; walls also, full of valerian and that grey myrrh-like weed. From that little height we face a tremendous black storm, against which all the Sabine and Alban hills flash in the low sunlight, above the green Campagna pale like a strip of sea. _May_ 12. SPRING 1897. I. RETURN AT MIDNIGHT. Driving from the station at midnight, the immensity of everything, gigantic proportions of silent palaces and closed churches. Passing in front of the Quirinal, the colossal Dioscuri with their horses, the fountain flowing down and spurting upwards between them, white under the electric light, against the deep blue darkness. Even the incredible huge vulgarity of modern things, advertisements, yards long at the street corners under the gas, and immense rows of jerry-built houses, somehow help to make up the impression of Rome as a theatre of the ages: a gigantic stage, splendidly impressive to eye and fancy, where Time has strutted and ranted, and ever will continue. At night particularly one feels the Piranesi grandeur, but also the Callot picturesqueness which are secondary qualities of Rome. As a whole the town belongs mainly to the shabby and magnificent seventeenth century. Those hundreds of architecturally worthless Jesuit churches are not, as we are apt stupidly to say, absurd or meaningless, but quite the contrary; admirably suited to their place and function among ruins and vagueness. The beggars and loafers, the inconceivable squalor and lousiness, are also, in this sense, in their rights. _March_ 24. II. VILLA MADAMA. The great empty, unfinished, hulk, very grand and with delicate details, stranded like the ark on Ararat on its hillside of brushwood and market-garden, seems to sum up, in a shape only a little more splendid than usual, the story told on all sides. For on all sides there are great mouldering unfinished villas, barrocco casinos, even fifteenth-century small palaces, deserted among the fields; and everywhere monumental gateways leading to nothing. Their story is that of the unceasing enterprise of pope after pope, and cardinal after cardinal against the inexorable climate of Rome. Each shortlived generation of old men, come to Rome too late to learn, already accustomed to order about and to swagger, refusing to see the ruins left by its predecessors; insisting on having its way with those malarious hillocks and riversides; only to die like the rest, leaving another gaunt enclosure behind. One of the fascinations of Rome is undoubtedly not its murderous quality as such, but the character of which that seems a part, the quality of being a living creature, with unbreakable habits and unanswerable reasons, making it massacre quite quietly, whatever came in its way. Rome, as perhaps only Venice, is an organic city, almost a living being; its _genius loci_ no allegory, but its own real self. _March._ III. FROM VALMONTONE TO OLEVANO. Valmontone, on the railway line to Naples, to which we bicycled back from Segni--a savage village on a hill, pigs burrowing and fighting at its foot--and on its skirt a great stained Palazzo Farnese-like palace. Crossing the low hills of the wide valley between the Alban and Sabine chains, magnificent bare mountains appear seated opposite, crystalline, almost gemlike; and splendid, almost crepuscular, colours in the valley even at noon: deep greens and purples, the pointed straw stacks replacing, as black accents, our Tuscan cypresses. Quantities of blue and white wind-flowers on the banks, and wine-coloured anemones under the thick ilex-like olives; and all round the splendid pale-blue chains of jagged and conical mountains. A population of tattered people and galled horses; much misery; a sort of more savage Umbrian landscape, and without Umbrian serenity; deserted, deserted roads. I am writing from the olive yard above the inn; the rugged little Olevano hanging, almost sliding, down the hillside opposite, black houses and yellow-lichened roofs. OLEVANO, _March_ 28. IV. FROM OLEVANO TO SUBIACO. Yesterday afternoon bicycled and walked from Olevano to Subiaco. A steep mile and a half up to the very crest of the mountains, and then down some sharp corners and one or two very precipitous zigzags, letting myself run down; the first time I have had such a sensation, a sensation largely of fear, partly of joy: a changing view in front, on the side--steeps of sere woods, great mountains, like jasper or some other stone that should be veined amethyst, a smell of freshness, whiffs of violets, at one point a small green lake deep, deep below (Stagno di Rojate); yet an annihilation of both space and time. It was better when Ch. Br. and I dismounted and walked down; the road cut out of the steep wooded hills; on the shady side trickling with water and delicious with moss, primroses, and violets among the sere chestnuts. Here and there a cherry-tree in the valley deep below, like a little puff of smoke. The sweetness of those mountain woods with the great bare lilac mountains all round! A sharp zigzag, a swish over a bridge, where as one rather felt than saw the full green Anio dashing through rocks; and just at sunset we came upon Subiaco--rising violet, with its great pointing castle mound, from the green valley of water and budding poplars into a purple and fiery sky. Then in the dusk through the little town, where the bells were ringing. TIVOLI, _March_ 29. V. ACQUA MARCIA. I sha'n't forget, on the long bleak road from Subiaco to Vicovaro, a violent dry wind against us, veiling all things in dust, a spring near Spiagge: a wide runnel of water spirting out of the travertine and running off into clear rills where the mules drink. The water they collect up here for the Acqua Marcia, whose aqueducts we see about, old arches and new; water, cold, infinitely pure, exquisite, one might say almost fragrant. It was such spirts from the rock, as well as the sight of pure mountain streams, which taught St. Francis his verse about Suor Acqua. St. Francis must have wandered in these fastnesses which (totally unlike the country between Segni and Olevano) are very Umbrian in character. There is a portrait of him, said to be by a contemporary monk, on a pilaster of one of the subterranean chapels of the Sacro Speco above Subiaco: blond, wide-eyed, the cowl drawn over his head. TIVOLI, _March_ 29. VI. THE SACRO SPECO. The Sacro Speco was a very charming surprise. The series of little churches and chapels up and down flights of steps, vaulted and painted in Gothic style, with shrine lamps here and there, were quite open and empty. We walked into them, or rather into a crooked vestibule frescoed by some Umbrian, with no sudden transition from the splendid grove of ilexes, immense branches like beams overhead, from the great hillside of bluish-grey tufo, with only a few bitter herbs on it. The convent of the Sacro Speco is a half-fortified little place into which we could not penetrate. Only a surly monk, found with difficulty (another entered the chapels with a great bundle of wall-flowers and irises), took us into the microscopic garden under the convent battlements hedged with flowering rosemary, where the roses in which St. Benedict rolled are grown (May roses, only bright leaves as yet) literally in the shape of a bed or gridiron, row along row. Though it is not remote-looking, 'tis a splendid place for a hermit's thoughts: the blue-grey hillside running down into the green rushing Anio, the great bare bluish mountains all round, far enough to be visible, a great sense of air and space, for a valley. No vegetation, save a few olives and scrub oaks and the bitter herbs and euphorbus. No scented happy Tuscan things. And deep below, the arches of Nero's Villa--with demons no doubt galore. Those giottesque chapels hold in them, all hung with lamps, a small tufo grotto, the one down which, as in Sodoma's fresco, the angels sent baskets of provisions and the devils made horns at St. Benedict. ROME, _March_ 30. VII. THE VALLEY OF THE ANIO. There is a nice Cosmati cloister at S. Scolastica, lower on the hill, an enormous also fortified-looking monastery, but to which also there is only a mule path. These places are splendidly _meditative_, but they do not give me the idea of hermitages in the wilderness like that ruined Abbey of Sassovivo above Foligno. But the Sacro Speco's little up and down chapels, a miniature Assisi, empty, yet not abandoned on this sunburnt rock, are very impressive. I take great pleasure following the Anio, which we first met coming out of the narrow gorge round the S. Scolastica hill (the other side behind Nero's ruins is a hill covered with pale green scrub, beech, or more likely alder), down below Subiaco. In the ever-widening valley it is an impetuous stream, but not at all a torrent; pale green filling up a narrow bed between pale green willows, here and there slackening into pools with delicate green waving plants: a very unexpected and (to me) inexplicable sight among those mountains which are more arid than any Tuscan ones, and from which very few tributary streams seem to descend. (I can remember crossing only one, full and with waving weeds also.) The Anio swirls round a beautiful wooded promontory, ilexes and even a few cypresses, between Spiagge and Vicovaro, making a little church into a miniature Tivoli Sibilla. One becomes very fond of such a stream, and it is a great delight to see it in its triumph at Tivoli racing headlong into the abyss of the big fall, only a spray cloud revealing it among the thick green; or breaking out into tiny delicate fountains--garden fountains, you would think--among the ilexes and grottoes under the little round Temple; a wonderful mixture of wildness and art, a place, with its high air, its leaping waters and glimpses of distant plain, such as one would really wish for a sibyl, and might imagine for Delphi. An enchanted place with its flight and twitter of birds above the water. I should like to follow the Anio into the Tiber. At sunset, had there been one, we went into the Villa d'Este, entering through the huge deserted courts and grottoed halls of the colossal palace, surprised to find the enchanted gardens, the terraces and cypresses descending on the other side, the grey vague plain and distant mountains--and always the sound of waters. What a solemn magnificent place! How strange a contrast from the Benedictine monastery on its arid rocks, to this huge, solemn, pompous palace, with its plumed gardens and statued hedges, hanging on a hillside too, but what a different one! ROME, _March_ 30. VIII. VICOVARO. There was cultivation all down the valley of the Anio, lots of blossoming cherry-trees; and the peasant-women in stays, and some men in knee breeches, looked prosperous. Subiaco seeming a sort of S. Marcello. Vicovaro is a delightful village above the Anio, with a fine palace of the Bolognettis, a good many houses with handsome carved windows and lintels as in Umbria, a nice circular church with fourteenth-century elaborate statued porch, and a very charming temple portico. Here also the people looked well-to-do and civilised, on the whole like Umbrians; whereas on the Olevano side, even on Sunday, they were in rags and miserably stolid. The little caffè where we eat was lined with political caricatures. Places like Vicovaro and still more the many apparently inaccessible other villages incredibly high up--Cantalupo, Castel Madama, S. Vito, &c., each with its distinguishing _palazzone_--makes one understand _what Rome is made of_--the feudal, savage mountains whence, even like its drinking water which splashes in Bernini fountains, this sixteenth and seventeenth century Rome has descended. _For Rome is not an Urban City_; and underneath all the Bernini palaces, we must imagine things like Palazzo Capranica, with the few mullioned and Gothic windows picked in its fortress-like walls. How I seem to feel what Rome is made of--its strange living components in the past! At Subiaco the streets were strewn, as for a procession, with shredded petals of violets. All kinds of violets grow on those hills, some reddish and as big as pansies; and as we swished past, instead of the dry scent of myrrh and mint of our Tuscan hills, there came a moist smell of violets from the hedgerows. ROME, _March_ 31. IX. TOR PIGNATTARA. Drove to-day with Maria outside Porta Maggiore, little changed since my childhood. Stormy sunshine, the mountains blue, with patches of violet, like dark rainbow splendours, flashing out with white towns; cherry blossoms among the reeds, vague gardens with statues and bits of relief stuck about. Finally the circular domed tomb of Empress Helena, with a tiny church, a bit of orphanage built into it, and all round the priest's well-kept garden and orphans' vegetable garden. A sound of harmonium and girls' hymn issuing out of the ruin, on which grow against the sky great tufts of fennel, of stuff like London pride and of budding lentisk. This _is_ Rome! _March_ 31. X. VILLA ADRIANA. We crossed the Anio twice--first at Ponte Mammolo, where it is Tiber-coloured, and it tugs at the willows; then before it has been polluted by the sulphur water of the Acque Albule (though the sulphur blue water is itself lovely) at a magnificent tower under Tivoli, like Cecilia Metella. An Anio green, rushing flush as at Subiaco, among poplars and willows, fields of sprouting reeds. Villa Adriana: you see it from a distance at the foot of the Tivoli hills--sloping olive woods and domes of pines. What a place! The Armida gardens for a Faust-Rinaldo. Antiquity like a _belle au bois dormant_ in the groves of colossal ilexes, the rows of immense cypresses, above all, enclosed in the magic of those thick old silver-coloured huge unpruned olives, of the high flowering grasses. These vestiges of porticoes and domes and grottoes are not in the least beautiful architecturally; and every statue, every bit of frieze has been ruthlessly removed, only the broken slabs of marble, of wainscot and a few broken mosaics remaining--'tis the only garden near Rome with not _one_ statue in it! But somehow the divine vegetation, the divine view of near blue mountains and blue plain seem to transform all this brick and cement into something beautiful and precious, to turn the few remaining columns and stalked broken capitals (all the rest, vases, baths, floors, marbles, gone to the Vatican) into something exquisite. Perhaps 'tis the very absence of statues which makes one think what statues must have stood there, and feel as if they were still present. Anyhow this quite accidental place, this vanished palace covered over by the olive groves, the box hedges, cypress avenues and pastures of little trumpery farm villas--is far more beautiful and wonderful than any of the art-made Roman gardens, and is, so to speak, their _original_--much as those Tivoli falls seem the prototype of all the Roman fountains. It began to rain as we were there, and thundered through the great halls. Then as it cleared over the mountains, the plain green, vague! was blotted with black rain, a threatening yellow sky above. _April_ 10. XI. S. LORENZO FUORI. The fine _ambones_; the very peculiar and beautiful galleries, with delicate columns, like a triforium on either side of choir for women; the choir with splendid episcopal seat and pale cipolin benches--Tadema like--for priests all round. We must imagine classic antiquity full of this wonderful blond colour of marbles; arrangements of palest lilac, green, rosy yellow, and a white shimmer. Colours such as we see on water at sunset, ineffable. _April_ 10. XII. ON THE ALBAN HILLS. The big olives, pruned square, but of full dense foliage, not smoke-like, but the colour of old dark silver; the vineyards of pale criss-cross blond canes on violet ground. The railway goes round Lake Albano, reflecting blue stormy sky and white cloud balls; a gash when the current alters shows marvellous hyacinth blue. A fringe of budding little trees and of great pale asphodels; the smell of them and of freshness. Beautiful circular church, cupola silvery, ribbed outside, at Ariccia, opposite Palazzo Chigi; a great grim palace, stained grey with damp and time, flanked by four sorts of towers; windows scarce. This solemn type of sixteenth-century _White Devil of Italy_ palace or villa recurs in this neighbourhood; places to keep their secrets; some apparently on the very border of the Campagna, where vines and olives end. Wonderful woods full of flowers between Albano and Genzano. The little round Lake of Nemi disappointed me. Bicycling to Marino, Lake Albano seen from above, waters reflecting black storm, sere oakwoods of Rocca di Papa stormy purple too, and round the highest Latin peak, which looks like an altar slab, a great inky storm, water, hills, sky, all threatening inky green and violet; and against them, on the hill ridge of stones, the delicate pale pink chandeliers of the asphodels. On the other side the slopes of vineyards and pale blue campagna and faint shining sea line, blond under a clear sky. Lovely woods of oak near Marino, through which, alas! we swished down hill. A whole flock of sheep, newly raddled, and faunlike shepherds lying in the shade opposite. In Villa Torlonia at Albano, a pond, surrounded by masks (whence water spouted), deep green water, broken by fountain, green deep ilex groves round; every stone picked out with delicate green moss. And at the end of the vistas the campagna in green, purple blue modelling of evening, hillocks and farms and aqueducts, hay and straw stacks vaguely visible. And beyond the white shiny sea. The storm has disappeared, leaving only a few clouds veiling the Subiaco mountains which we see. How different in memory from these Latin Hills! All up the hill great terraced gardens, piled-up villas: Aldobrandini, Falconieri, Lancillotti. ROME, _April_ 13. XIII. MAUNDY THURSDAY. Yesterday, Giovedi Santo evening, the washing of the high-altar of St. Peter's. A sudden impression of the magnificence of this church, its vastness filled with dusk, a few wax tapers scattered along the nave; in the far distance a lit-up altar throwing its light up into the vault of an aisle, showing the shimmer of golden coffering; the crowd circling unseen. Then the ceremony of washing the high-altar: all the canons, priests and choir-boys mounted onto its dais; and, as they passed, wiped the great slab with a brush of white shavings dipped in oil and wine; then walked round the church in solemn procession, tiny choir-boys first, purple canons, and, lastly, a tall cardinal with scarlet cap, all with their white mops; a penetrating sweet smell of wine and oil filling the place, and seeming to waken paganism. As they turned again towards the high-altar, its huge twisted gilded columns glimmering in the light of the tapers, lights appeared in the Veronica balcony; priests moved to and fro with a great gold cross in that distant lit-up gloom; the canons fell on their knees, great purple poppies. There was the noise of a rattle; more lights in that balcony, and another gold shining thing was displayed; the Veronica this time, with (as you guessed) the outline of a bearded face. It was twilight outside; and St. Peter's, its colonnade, St. Angelo's, the Tiber, looked colossal. MAUNDY THURSDAY. XIV. GOOD FRIDAY. It was overcast yesterday, and the sun set as we approached this place, the train passing through woods of myrtle and lentisk scrub. Suddenly we came upon green fields lying against the skyline, and full of asphodels--a pale golden-rosy sunset under mists, a pinkish full moon rising in the misty blue opposite; and against this pale, serene sky, the hundreds of asphodels, each distinct like a candlestick, rising out of the green. I never saw such a vision of the Elysian fields. Here at Anzio we found a Gesù Morto procession winding with a band, and a red-and-white confraternity, through the little fishing town. At one moment the great black erect Madonna appeared among the torch-light against the deep blue sky, the misty blue moonlit sea. Much less fine than such processions are in Tuscany; but impressive. The little boats, with folded lateen sails, near the pier had coloured lanterns slung from the mast to the bowsprit. The sea broke like ruffled silk. ANZIO, _April_ 17. XV. ASPHODELS. Like Johnson and his wall-fruit, I have never had as many asphodels to look at as I wanted. Ever since I saw them first, rushing by train through the Maremma, nay ever since I saw them in a photograph of a Sicilian temple, nay perhaps, secretly, since hearing their name, I have felt a longing for them, and a secret sense that I was never going to be shown as many as I want. Here I have. Yesterday morning bicycling inland, along a rising road along which alternate green pastures and sea, and woods of dense myrtle and lentisk scrub overtopped by ilexes and cork-trees, _there were asphodels enough_: deep plantations, little fields, like those of cultivated narcissus, compact masses of their pale salmon and grey shot colours and greyish-green leaves, or fringes, each flower distinct against field or sky, on the ledges of rock and the high earth banks. The flowers are rarely perfect when you pick them, some of the starry blossoms having withered and left an untidy fringe instead; but at a distance this half-decay gives them a singular distinction, makes the light fall on the very tips, the silvery buds, sinking the stretching out branches and picking out the pale rose colour with grey. The beauty of the plant is in the candlestick thrust of the branches. The flower has a faint oniony smell, but fresh like box hedge. ANZIO, EASTER DAY. XVI. NETTUNO. Nettuno, a little castellated town on the rocks; battlemented walls and towers, a house with fortified windows, a sixteenth-century fortress, very beautiful. All manner of vines, weeds and lilac flowers growing in the walls. Men in boots and breeches and brigand hats about, women with outside stays. In the evening a flock of goats being milked. Strings of mules, literally strings, beasts tied together. Last evening we bicycled beyond Nettuno on the way to Torre Astura, which you see bounding this semicircular gulf, vague great mountains behind. The Cape of Circe, which looks (and surely must have been) an island, came out faint towards evening, a great cliff ending in something like a castle, apparently in the middle of the sea, mysterious. We got, skirting the sea, to a large heath--a heath, black sandy soil, of budding bracken, grass and asphodels; immense, inexpressibly solemn and fresh; a little wood of cork-trees in the distance, a broken Roman ruin, blue Apennines half hidden in clouds. A few shepherds were going home, looking immense on the flatness, and goats and horses. Song of larks, and suddenly an unexpected booming of surf. Following the sound inexplicably loud, across the deeper black sandy soil, we got to the sea. Most strange against it, a fringe of marshy grass, of bulrushes! Far off the tower of Astura, and the faint Cape of Circe among mists. It began to rain. ANZIO, _Easter_. XVII. TORRE ASTURA. Yesterday evening bicycled farther in the direction of Torre Astura, which seemed quite near in its solitude. The dunes were covered with thick bushes of lentisk, myrtle and similar shrubs; every step bruised some scented thing. Along the sands, black, hard and full of coloured shells, was a strip of bulrushes. The sea, which is tame and messy in the artificial bay formed by the pier of Anzio, was fresh and rushing; the wind swept the brown dark sand like smoke along the ground. Monte Circeo was quite distinct, blue and white its summit an overhanging rock, no castle. Inland stretched the fields of asphodels and the deep woods. We found in the morning a lane or road gone to ruin, running high up from Anzio to Nettuno, and entirely under splendid overarching ilexes; a sunk lane, with here and there a glimpse of blue sea among the evergreen branches. ANZIO, _April_ 19. SPRING 1899. I. THE WALLS. Drove from Porta Angelica to Porta Portese; an immense round, possible, conceivable, only in Rome. I see for the first time the _outside_ of the Vatican, galleries and gardens, realising the sort of fortified town it is, a Rome within Rome. And a fortified one: that long passage (Hall of the Ariadne) between the Belvedere and the Rotunda has battlements (oddly enough, Ghibelline); there are towers and counterforts I cannot identify; and then the immense buttressed walls, with their green vegetation, and slabs and coats of arms of Medicis, Roveres; with the clipped ilexes of the gardens, the pines and bays overtopping, on and on. And in a gap, suddenly, and close enough to take one's breath away, the immensity of St. Peter's and the Cupola. And that this town, which is the Vatican and St. Peter's, these centres of so much life, should, as a fact, look on one side straight onto forsaken roads, and the most desolate of countries! Such a thing is impossible except in Rome; and even in Rome I never suspected it. Continuing outside the walls, we come to the little church of San Pancrazio, on an empty road hedged with reed-tied dry thorns: the little porched doorway leading into an atrium which is an olive garden, big old trees set orderly, and a pillar with the cross; outside at least, a solemn little basilica, making one think of Ravenna. We drove, apparently for miles, up and down, round and round, between two immediately successive gates, San Pancrazio and Portese. Green slopes, dry vineyards with almond blossom among the criss-cross canes, brakes of reeds; here and there rows of little triumphal bay-trees in flower over the walls; great overhanging ornamental gateways, leading to nothing; and, at long intervals, mouldering little villas and _trattorie_, with mulberry-trees clipped into umbrellas. Rome totally disappeared, hidden, heaven knows where, in this country of which there seems an unlimited amount: always more green slopes, more dry vineyards, more distant Campagna. And yet, seemingly close by, the great bells of St. Peter's ring out the thanksgiving service for the Pope. Antonia said, "Shall we go for a minute into St. Peter's? It will be all lit up." And, in that endless emptiness, the words sounded absurd. St. Peter's? Rome? Where? _March_ 13. II. PALAZZO CENCI. This morning, rambling along the unfinished Tiber quays, and the half pulled-down houses of the old Jewish quarter, attracted a little, perhaps, by the name "Vicolo dei Cenci," I let myself be importuned by a red-haired woman into entering the Casa di Beatrice Cenci, a dreary, squalid palace, given over to plasterers among the dust-heaps. And afterwards, beguiled further up flights and flights of black stairs into someone's filthy little kitchen, I was made to look down, through a mysterious window, into the closed church of the Cencis. Looking down, always a curious impression, into a dark, musty place and onto vague somethings which are, they tell me, the tombs of the Cencis. A grim and sordid impression altogether; and heaven knows how sickening a story. Yet what power of popular romance, of great poetry, has enveloped it all! A story one would be ashamed to read through in a cheap newspaper ... and yet!... _March_ 24. III. MONTE CAVO. Yesterday, with Maria, Antonia, and the poet Pascarella, to Rocca di Papa, lunching in a piece of the woods which M. has bought. The grass of the campagna, beyond the aqueducts, is powdered with daisies like a cake with sugar. Further, where the slopes begin, the exquisite brilliant pink of the peach blossom is on the palest yellow criss-cross of reeds in the dry vineyards. I am struck once more by the majestic air of that opening square of Frascati, expanding upwards into terraces, lawns, and ilexes, all flanked by pinnacled and voluted buildings, Villa Aldobrandini, or whatever it is. We drive up through the sere chestnut woods, where wind-flowers and blue squills come up everywhere among the russet leaves. Suddenly, in the faint light, above a clearing, the stacked white trunks, the lilac sereness of the trees; and high up, shimmering and misty, the rock of Rocca di Papa with its piled-up houses. Then through the woods again, on foot, up a path first deep in dry leaves, then paved with hard volcanic flags; chestnut woods, but no longer cut for charcoal (the smoke of its burning rises from below), but in clumps, straight slender boles rising from immense roots. Chestnuts so unlike those of our Apennines that, when, higher up, they are exchanged for beeches, it is only by picking up the fallen dry leaves that we could tell the difference. And beyond, descending towards Nemi, the woods reveal themselves for alder only by their catkins. Immediately above the town of Rocca di Papa, before you begin that ascent through the woods of Monte Cavo, are the Campi d'Annibale, the former crater of the volcano of Mons Latialis, grass fields whose legend Pascarella tells us: that when Hannibal encamped there the Romans raised the necessary money by selling the ground of the enemy's camp! A strange, unexpected place; a great green basin, bleak and bare, marked only by fences like some northern hill-top; on such fell sides shall the Romans camp above the Tyne and Tweed. We climbed up through the woods, Antonia and I, following the keeper in his riding boots, silent, or at most exchanging a word about the flowers, all blue, borage, squill, and dog violets, among the fallen leaves. And little by little there unrolled, deep below us, the dim green plain with a whiteness which is St. Peter's; and then there unfolded, gradually, unexpected, the pale blue of one lake and of a second. Till, near the top, they had both turned into steely mirrors, tarnished, as by breath, by the rapidly passing clouds. And the pink of the leafless woods stretches away, soft and feathery, to distant towns and villages. And we ascend, with the wind arising to meet us, always through softly winding paths, to the summit of the Latin mountain. To a long, gaunt, white, empty house, a circle of ancient moss-grown walls, a circle of old, wind-bent, leafless beeches, with the whole world of earliest Rome misty below, and thin clouds passing rapidly overhead. This is that sort of natural altar, visible as such even from the streets of Rome, of the Latin Jove, which, when we saw it again later from the ridge near Castel Gandolfo, above the deep circular chasm (fringed with asphodel) of the lake, seemed to smoke with a superhuman sacrifice. How Renan, in the _Prêtre di Némi_, has rendered, without descriptions, the charm of that outlook towards Rome from this lower portion of the Latin hills! They cover a very small amount of country, volcanic and isolated; they are a kind of living whole in themselves, with their towns, woods, and those two deep lakes hidden in their fastnesses. The most living range of hills, surely, out of which the greatest life has spread, the vastest, perhaps, in the world. Up there one looks not merely into space unlimited, but into time. What a strange country this Roman one! How different from the rest of Italy; this, with its great plain, its isolated groups of hills, its disdain of river-valley and gorge; a country set aside for different destinies. And yet I own that what these hills represent most to me is the keenness of the air, the sweetness of those straight-boled, pinkish, leafless woods, the freshness of sprouting grass and flowers. _March_ 20. IV. A RIVER GOD. We have been bicycling these two days in the campagna; sunny, windy days, the hills faint in the general blueness. About three miles along the Via Ardeatina we alighted and sat on the grass in a little valley. A little valley between two low grass hills; a stream, a few reeds, two or three scant trees in bud, and the usual fences, leading up to the mountain, framed in, with its white towns, between the green slopes. Grass still short and dry; larks, invisible, singing; a flock of sheep going along with shepherds stopping to set the new-born, tottering lambs to suck. At the valley's mouth, over a wide horse-trough where a donkey cart was watering, a little recumbent river god, rudely carved and much time-stained. _March_ 16. V. THE PANTHEON. A bright day of iciest tramontana, cutting you in two in the square, under the colonnades, and in the narrow chink-opening of the great green bronze doors. Almost entirely empty, that great round place, the light, the cold haunting its grey dome. At the high-altar some priests in purple; the Crucifix and pictures veiled in violet silk. And in the organ loft, buttoned up in great coats, five wretched musicians; not on high, but in a sort of cage set down by the altar. Such singing! but an alto, two tenors and a bass, as in Marcello's psalms. And, frightful as was the performance, I was fascinated by their unaccompanied song: something of long vague passages, and suspended cadences, fitting, in its mixture of complexity and primitiveness, its very rudeness, barbarousness of execution, into the great round bleak temple, with the cold windy sky looking down its roof, the bleakness of outdoors, enclosed, as it were, within doors. _Palm Sunday_, 1899. VI. SANTI QUATTRO CORONATI. I went into several small churches to see the sepulchres. Not like our Tuscan ones; wretched things, mainly tinsel and shabby frippery. At Santa Prisca we trespassed into orchards, almond trees barely green, artichokes and dust-heaps, with the belfries of the Aventine behind, the pillared loggia of San Saba, and the great blocks of the Baths of Caracalla in front. The church, shut on ordinary days, was quite empty, only a dozen Franciscans at office, kneeling by the frame of lighted candles, one of which was extinguished with each verse of hoarse liturgy by a monk kneeling apart. After Sta. Prisca, San Clemente, very Byzantine and fine in the gloom, and then to that dear church of the Santi Quattro Coronati, which has beckoned to me ever since my childhood; and which, with its fortified-looking apse, its yard and great gate-tower, looks like a remote abbey one would drive to, forgotten, hidden, unheard of, for hours and hours from some out-of-the-way country town. "We'll take you to so and so," one's host would say, and one would never have heard the name before.... And there it is, above the modernest slums of modern Rome! The church was darkish; a little light from the sunset just picking out some green and purple of the broken pavement; the tapers of a curtained-off chapel, and tapers above the sepulchre, throwing a broad weak yellow light up to the arched triforium, to the grated gallery whence came the voices of nuns chanting the Lamentations. From round the illuminated sepulchre rose, like a flock of birds on our entrance, a bevy of kneeling nuns in _béguine_ cloak and cap. And in the apse, before the high-altar, was stretched on the slabs, with a night-light at each corner, something dark and mysterious: the crucifix, the form barely defined, shrouded in violet. When the nuns went away a number of children, tiny, tiny girls came in, and knelt round that veiled mysterious thing; a baby at the end of their procession. One of the little girls could not resist, and lifted a corner of the violet silk. But her elder sister quickly slapped her, pulled her kerchief straight, and all was order and piety. The dear church, quite empty save for these children, was full of the smell of the fresh flowers round the sepulchre. A holy, fragrant, venerable, kindly church, safe-hidden behind its pillared atrium and gate-tower; and looking from afar like a hillside fortress among the jerry-built modern streets. _Maundy Thursday_, 1899. VII. BEYOND PONT MOLLE. A meadow near the Tiber, of grass and daisies, tufted with yellow-hearted jonquils. Larks and sun and wind overhead; in the distance the pale mountains, patched with snow. All round, the pale green embosomings of the soft earth hills. If the Umbrians got their love of circular hill lines at home, they learned in Rome the real existence of the green grass valleys and hills unbroken by cultivation, like those behind Perugino's _Crucifixion_ and Spagna's _Muses_. All round, as I sit in that place, the dry last year's stalks dance in the wind above the new grass and flowers. O Easter, Resurrection, Renovation! The larks proclaim it! _Easter_, 1899. SPRING 1900. I. OUTSIDE THE GATES. Rome took hold of me again as usual, yesterday, bicycling near Porta S. Sebastiano. On the walls which enclose those remote forsaken vignas (fit abode for lamias and female vampyres, as in Frau von Degen's tale), nay, even on the gates of old Rome are painted great advertisements exhorting the traveller to go to such or such a curiosity shop. The Arch of Drusus was surrounded by a band of Cookites, listening inattentively to their Bear Leader; and the whole Via Appia, to beyond Cecilia Metella, was alive with cabs and landaus. But such things, which desecrate Venice and spoil Florence, are all right in Rome; Rome, somehow, knows how to subdue them all to her eternal harmony. That all the vulgarities of all the furthest lands should all pass through Rome, like all the barbarians, the nations and centuries, seems proper and fit. The spirit of the place requires them, as much as the captives who came in the triumphs, as the Goths and Huns, as the pilgrims of the Mediæval Jubilees, and it subdues them: subdues them, as it subdues with the chemistry of this odd climate of crumble and decay, the new dreadful houses; as it has made, with the marvellous rank Roman vegetation, a sort of Forum or Palatine of the knocked-down modern houses, the empty unfinished basements behind the hoardings under my window. Driving at midnight from the station, my eye and mind were caught not merely by Castor and Pollux under the electric light, and by the endless walls of high palaces, but also by a colossal advertisement of Anzio, in English, setting forth to the traveller its merits connected with Nero, and I think Coriolanus--Nero and Coriolanus as elements of _réclame_! But here it seems all right; becoming only one of those immense ironies of Time, more dignified than any of Time's paltry creatures of which this place is full. Time, whose presence, whose very cruelties and gigantic jests, brings such peace to the soul in this place. Peace because hope. This litter, this dust-heap (for it is after all not much better, few great or precious or perfect things remaining), dust-heap or rag-fair symbolised by its own most barbarous and vilest and most venerable parts along the Tiber and under the Capitoline,--this Rome accustoms one to take patience and heart of grace. It helps one to conceive the fact that life comes everywhere out of death and subdues it; to feel that, as there are centuries in the Past, so there will be centuries and centuries in the Future. It helps the imagination with its remnants of old, used-up theatre scenes, to guess at all the scene-shifting that will be accomplished, and to take its stand, be it only in the emotion of an instant, as witness of the vague phantasmagoria of the future. Why despair? Why be impatient? only give time, only secure all the possible tickets in the lottery of chance, and our hopes must at last be realised, all will be all right. 'Tis only our miserable impatience, our miserable sense of our own impotent mortality, which makes us fret: and Rome bids us take patience and comfort. We despair of the future, for one reason, because we attribute to the future our own growing sense of fatigue, the feelings of evening. But the future will, for those to whom it belongs, be morning, with the vigour and buoyancy of the awakening. Our ideal would be to preserve in the future the beautiful things--certain flowers of tradition and privilege--of the past. 'Tis a delusion. We might as well hope to keep the old leaves on the trees into next summer. But after the old leaves have fallen and the trees have stood bare, new ones will come, not the same, but similar. _March_ 11. II. LATTER-DAY ROME. As a matter of fact Rome has never been so much Rome, never expressed its full meaning so completely, as nowadays. This change and desecration, this inroad of modernness, merely completes its eternity. Goethe has an epigram of a Chinese he met here; but a Chinese of the eighteenth century completed Rome less than an American of the nineteenth. Not only all roads in space, but all roads across Time, converge hither. _March_ 11. III. SANTA BALBINA. Went to take the English seeds to the gardener at S. Saba, and got in return some plants of border pinks. The most poetical and real place in all Rome. Afterwards bicycled to S. Balbina. Impression of primitive church (the outside has from a distance a look as of something in a Pinturicchio fresco) given over to the Franciscan nuns--thirty--who look after two hundred unruly girls off the streets. Their thick grey cloaks are folded on the pews; images, screens, lecterns, all the litter of a priestly lumber-room, poked here and there, a little portable iron pulpit, not unlike a curtained washstand, in front of a beautiful tomb of a grave mediæval person above a delicate mosaic of the Cosmatis, and a small coloured Rue Bonaparte St. Joseph on the episcopal mosaic throne in the apse! _March_ 15. IV. THE CATACOMBS. To-day Catacombs of S. Domitilla in Via Sette Chiese, with Maria, Guido and Pascarella. The impression of walking for miles by taper-light between those close walls of brown friable stone, or that soft dusty ground, in a warm vague stifling air; the monotonous rough sides, the monotonous corners, the widenings in and out of little Galla Placidia-like crypts, with rough hewn pillars and faded frescoes; of the irregularly cut pigeon-holes, where bits of bone moulder, and the brown earth seems half composed of bone. That brown soft earth of the Catacombs, the stuff you would scratch off the damp walls with your nail; rotting stone, rotting bone: the very soil of Rome lilackish like cocoa, friable, light, which used somehow to give me the horrors already as a child; the soil in which the gardener of S. Saba grows his pinks and freesias without a spade or hoe visible anywhere; the soil which seems to demand no plough; the farthest possible from the honest and stiff clay, demanding human work, of nature; the Roman soil, a _compost_, as Whitman would say, ready manured! The work of man in this earth (of which a pinch transported into church front or roof produces great tufts of fennel and wild mignonette), the work of man in it merely to have died! No sense of the ages in these Catacombs, or of the solemnity of death, or of the sweetness of religion; black narrow passages gutted for centuries, the poor wretched human remains (save those few turned up by the modern spade) packed, sent off, made presents of, sold to all the churches and convents of Christendom; bits of bones in cotton wool, with faded labels, in glass cases, such as we see in sacristies, &c., or enclosed in glories of enamel and gold! But all gone, gone, those poor humble inhabitants, who were so anxious to be entire for the resurrection of the body!--patrician ladies, slaves, soldiers, eunuchs, theologians--all gone piecemeal all over the distant earth! the corridors swept and empty, the pigeon-holes with only a little brown cocoa-like dust! It was raining all day, dull, dismal. Yet coming out of that place, out of that brown crumbly darkness, what was not the interest of the wet grey sky! How great the beauty, the movements of the lazy clouds! How complex and lovely the bare lane of wattled dry reeds--the ineffable exquisiteness of patches of green corn, of a few scant pink blossoms, of the shoots of elder! I remember the solemnity of the subterranean tombs at Perugia; the grisliness of the Beauchamp crypt at Warwick. But these catacombs, emptiness, desolation and that old brown lilacky, crumbly Roman earth, in which no plough need move nor spade,--that _terriccio_, that pot-mould of the past. _March_ 16. V. THE RIONE MONTI. Yesterday, in gusty weather, wandered round muddy streets of Rione Monti, and entered some churches. S.S. Cosmae Damiano in Forum: it has got lost, so to speak, in the excavations, and you seek it through blind alleys and a long dark passage--a dirty, tawdry church, with a few frowsy, sluttish people; and behind the ballroom chandeliers above the altar, a Ravenna apse, gold and blue; and lambs in procession on a green ground. Then S. Pietro in Vincoli, which has a delightful position, with its big palm and tower and a certain Romantic Catherine Sforza character; also, what always refreshes me in Rome, its early Renaissance character, before Jesuits, &c. &c., an imported thing from Tuscany, and the fact of the tomb of the Pollajuolos! Michel Angelo's _Moses_ somehow belongs to Rome--has Rome's grandeur, emphasis, and Rome's theatrical quality. All round are buried seventeenth-century prelates. Cinthio Aldobrandini, &c., setting forth glories, but with skeletons as supporters! Decidedly Rome was never more Roman than at present--the pulling down and building and excavating, the inappropriate jostlings of time and character merely add to the eternal quality, serene and ironical. Besides, these demolitions have disclosed many things hitherto hidden, and soon destroyed: here in Rione Monti, for instance, above the tram-lines, great green walls, boulders from Antiquity, and quiet convent gardens, with spaliered lemons, suddenly displayed above the illustrated hoardings of a street to be. In the midst of it, in a filthy, half modern, crowded street, a rugged Lombard church porch, dark ages all over: the object of my search, St. Praxed's church; but it was walled up, and I entered by a door in a side lane. Entered to remain on threshold, a Mass at a side altar. Eight small boys blocking the way, with a crowd of sluttish, tawdry worshippers, with the usual Roman church stifling dirty smell. These Roman churches, all save the basilicas, are inconceivably ill kept, frowsy, musty, tawdry, sluttish: they belong not to God, but to Rome--the same barbarous Rome of the tumble-down houses, the tattered begging people, the whole untidy squalor of its really Roman parts. Nothing swept and garnished; nothing evincing one grain of past or present reverence--a down-at-heel indifferent idolatry. At last the crowd streamed out, Mass being over, and I entered--and, oh wonder! found myself in a place of all Byzantine splendour: that little chapel, tapestried with crimson silk, lit with hanging lamps, its vaults a marvellous glory of golden--infinite tinted golden--mosaics with great white angels. A bit of Venice, of S. Mark's in this sluttish Rome. Poets really make places. I cannot pass the Consolazione Hospital without thinking of Pompilia's death there; and the imaginary bishop, of whom there is no visible trace, haunts Sta. Prassede. VI. AMPHORÆ. In the afternoon we went to the Via Appia, and in the excavations of Villa Lugari, among sprouting corn and under the song of larks, saw those amphoræ Pascarella had told us of, which, after holding pagan wine, were used to bury Christian children. To me there is nothing repulsive in the thought of this burial in the earth's best product. VII. MASS AT THE LATERAN. To-day, on the way to Porta Furba (the country, where one sees it near the gate, is beginning to be powdered over with peach blossom), I went into the Lateran, and heard and saw a beautiful canonical Mass. Here was the swept and garnished (but it was behind glass doors!) sanctuary, the canons dainty in minever, a splendid monsignore, grey-haired, in three shades of purple; exquisite white and gold officiating priests, like great white peacocks, at the altar; the perfect movement of the incensing, perfect courtesy and dignity of the mutual salutations; and a well-played organ, on a reed stop, giving an imitation Bach _musette_. The whole ceremony, rather like the 6/8 of that _musette_, perhaps a trifle too much of the dancing element, but grave and very perfect. Why should not, at some future period, our philosophers sit in carved oak stalls, in minever and purple, and salute and be saluted, and speak with intervals of _musettes_ on the organ? It would suit Renan at least; and surely this, which is so venerable and sanctioned by time in our eyes, would have seemed quite as odd and grotesque a thing if foretold to St. Paul. VIII. STAGE ILLUSION. I feel that, among other good things, Rome, while it gave my childhood notions of dignity, of time and solemn things, kept my eye and fancy on very short commons. How stunted are the trees (all except the weeds) here! how flowerless the hedges! how empty of life, grace, detail the country! I remember the sort of rapture of the first acquaintance with Tuscan valleys, hills, woods, fields, and all the lovely fulness of dainty real detail. Rome, as I said before, is all theatre scenes; marvellous _coup d'oeils_, into which, advancing (from the Capitol) from opposite the Palatine palms, from the Lateran steps, from the Tiber quays, you find nothing _to go on with_; and in so far it fits, it symbolises, perhaps, its own history--for what is history but a series of such admirable theatrical views; mere delusion, and behind them prose, mere prose? The reality of Rome is, one feels it, in its distant hills. There you can penetrate; thence history streamed. _March_ 19. IX. SANTA MARIA IN COSMEDIN. After wandering between tremendous hailstorms about the Aventine (the black sky and turbid Tiber from S. Alessio, in odd contrast with the lemons and oranges and freesias of S. Sabina, and with the chill empty churches), I waited for a Mass at S. M. in Cosmedin. Garlands (how poor and inartistic compared to the Tuscan and Venetian ones!) hanging in porch and box strewn at the door. The church, just restored, very swept and garnished still, with its Byzantine delicacy of fluted ribbed columns, carved precious ambones and carpet of lovely marbles, a place for the perfect ritual and splendid vestments of an aristocratic worship, slowly filled with, oh! such a poor, poor, wretched congregation, while the two priests, two sacristans and small choir-boys looked on (with a glance at watch) like people preparing for a play and waiting for a full house; the bell-ringer occasionally hanging on to the rope near the door, and giving a jump as he let go. I don't mean merely poor in fortune, in ragged draggled clothes, the sweepings of those rag-fair quarters, but poor in wretched, ill-grown, ill, dull, stupid bodies and souls, draggle-tailed like their clothes, only two savage-looking peasants having dignity or grace. More like an Irish congregation than an Italian, the two policemen, the women nursing their babies, the dreary sickly nuns, the broken, idiot-looking shabby elderly men in overcoats. At last the priests and choir-boys, to match, went in procession to the altar, and the service began; merely chants with a response from the crowd. But as soon as they began everything seemed to pull together, to be all right, to have significance.... Is it possible that of religious things only the æsthetic side is vital, universal, is what gives or seems to give a meaning, deludes us into a belief in some spirituality? Sometimes one suspects as much: that the unifying element is not so much religion, as, after all, art. _March_ 23. X. INSCRIPTIONS. These are fragments of inscriptions from the Macellus Liviæ, of the time of Valens and Gratian, now transferred to the porch of S. Maria in Trastevere: "Maceus vixit dulcissime cum suis ad supremam diem. C. Gannius primogenitus vix: ann. VII. Desine jam mater lacrimis rinovare querellas--namque dolor talis non tibi contigit uni." So at least I read. Another states that "M. Cocceius Ambrosius Aug: Lib: præpositus vestis albæ triumphalis (?) fecit." When he had lived with Nice (?) his wife forty-five years eleven days "sine ulla querela." Also, "Dis Manib. Rhodope fecerent (?) Berenice et Drusilla delicatæ dulcissimæ suae (_sic_)." Also, "Attidiæ felicissimæ uxori rariosimæ Fl: Antoninus." How these inscriptions, of which I copied out a few yesterday during a heavy shower in the portico of S. M. in Trastevere, make one feel, again by this magic of Rome, the other half of the truth: How little the centuries matter, how vain are these thousands of years, which exist only in our thoughts, how solely important are the brief pangs of us poor obscure shortlived forgotten creatures! _March_ 30. XI. PALAZZO ORSINI, FORMERLY SAVELLI. This is the most Roman house, in my sense, of all Rome. The first evening, when I came into my room, the sunset streaming in, the lights beginning below, it was fantastic and overwhelming. What I said of this being a unique moment in Roman history--the genius of the city stripped of all veils, visible everywhere, is especially true about the view from this window. During my childhood Rome was closed, uniform, without either the detail or the panoramic efforts which speak to the imagination; and ten or fifteen years hence the great gaps will be filled up, and the deep historical viscera, so to speak, of the city closed and grown together. Now, with the torn-down houses, the swept-away quarters, one has not only views of hills and river and bridges, and of gardens and palaces and loggias, hidden once and to be hidden again, but into the very life of the people: the squalor of back streets revealed, of yards looked into, of the open places turned into _immondezzaio_ and play and grazing ground, showing the barbarism and nakedness of the land--showing one that there is here no tradition of anything more active, decent or human than this present demolition. And the _Sventramento_ also reveals the past! From my window, under that sunset behind the trees and fountains and churches of the Janiculum, I look down on a sort of mediæval city of the Trastevere--upon a still stranger, imaginary one made by perspective and fancy; the old bridge, with its two double _hermes_ leading between towers, and the long prison-like walls of the inland buildings, into an imaginary square--an imaginary city with more towers, more Romanesque belfries. This is a case of the imaginary place due to perspective, to bird's-eye view, to some reminiscence. (I trace a resemblance to the arsenal gate at Venice, perhaps also to the inner town at Castelfranco.) This case is an illustration of how large a part illusion, even recognised as such, plays in our feeling. And similarly as regards the _invisible_ view. Here am I, in a house nesting in the theatre of Marcellus, the little orange and lemon garden presumably built actually onto those remaining black arches in which coppersmiths and coopers and saddlers, all the humble trades of a backward little country town or village, have burrowed: the thought of Virgil's line with it all. The mangy green grass in front, where the children fly kites and the inconceivable skeleton horses graze, is the site of the former Ghetto; and behind its remaining synagogue, the little belfry, the houses of the Cencis, are down at heel carts and ragged peasants round the little isolated Ghetto fountain; and on the other side the Aventine, the bridge of--was it Cocles? a land of ballad, of popular romance, of tragedy. _March_ 30. SPRING 1901. I. QUOMODO SEDET.... Appalling morning of wind and dust; I bicycled in agitation of spirit to Domine quo Vadis. A wretched little church, no kind of beauty about it, full of decayed, greasy pictures, and, far better than they, penny coloured prints of the Saviour and Infant Baptist, and of the Life and Death of the Religious and the Irreligious Person about 1850, both in high hats and tail-coats. The old custodian crone tells me she is half blind, and envies me my glasses. She points out a bit of fresco: "Questo è Gesu Nazzareno"--as the housekeeper might say, "This is the present Earl"--also points out the marble copy of the slab bearing the print of _i suoi santissimi piedi_, square little feet, of such a squat, fat, short-jointed Christ, about as miraculous or venerable as the pattern on a pat of butter. Turning my face, in that tornado of dust, towards Rome, its walls stretch suddenly before me across the vineyards and fields, broken walls, of any mediæval city you please, and hiding, it would seem, emptiness behind them. The desolation of this distant city, with its foreground of squalid hovels, and ill-favoured wine shop and smithies where the very inscriptions, "Vino di Marino," or "Ferracocchio," or "Ova di Giornata," look as if a megalomaniac, escaped from an asylum, had dipped a brush into a paint-pot and splashed all over; this foreground of vague tombs, masonry heaven knows what, all flowered with huge wild mignonette; this other moving background of ragged peasants and unutterable galled horses; the desolation of this dead city which I feel behind those mediæval walls comes home to them, like the sting of the dust whirlpools and roar of the wind. _Quomodo sedet sola civitas_! Meanwhile, close to one of those city gates, is a poster announcing lectures "Sur le costume des Premiers Chrétiens!" But not less incongruous, behind those walls of Rome, are all of us, bringing our absurd modernnesses, our far-fetched things of civilisation into the solemn, starved, lousy, silent Past! At moments like these I feel that one needs be entirely engrossed either in making two ends meet (a clerk or shopkeeper, or one of these haranguing archæologists holding forth under the Arch of Drusus) for his dinner or in tea parties and "jours," and "sport," to endure the company of Rome. I went into the vigna of S. Cesario for the key of the church. It is the place where there is a small fifteenth-century villa, with those mullioned windows like Palazzo di Venezia, and a little portico, seeming to tell, among the rubbish heaps and onions, of Riario and Borgia suppers. And in this church and the neighbouring one the impression of the inscriptions recording succession of popes and cardinals, all the magnificent locusts who came swarm after swarm, to devour this land, leaving the broken remains of their hurried magnificence, volutes, plaster churches, and, inscriptions! inscriptions! _April_ 13. II. VILLA FALCONIERI. Villa Falconieri, Frascati--abandoned, overgrown--the wonderful outline of huge Mondragone, with its pines against the mountains. All these villas near each other, and while they open up into the hill and woods (the lovely delicate rose of the budding chestnuts) are still almost within hail of the little town across the valley. So different from the Tuscan villa, even the grandest, say Mte. Gufoni, which is only the extended _fattoria_, its place chosen by the accident of agricultural business. This mouldering rococo villa is inhabited in summer by the Trappists of Tre Fontane, of that Abbey of St. Anastasia which was the suzerain of all Maremma, great part of Umbria and the Tuscan islands! At the end of their miserably cultivated little _orto_, presiding over the few leeks and garlics, on the balustrade towards Rome of all divinities, who but Hortorum Deus! Near Grottaferrata in a flat green field, a nun, all in white, was seated under one of the big olives: a curious biblical figure. _April_ 26. III. PORTA LATINA. Yesterday with P. D. P. at Porta Latina. He told me an extraordinary thing. In the blocked-up arch of that suppressed gate, at the end of a blind alley, an old old couple--a man of ninety and a woman of eighty, had taken up their abode for months; helped occasionally by the monks of the neighbouring convent (with pretty rose-garden) of S. Giovanni a Porta Latina, to whom however permission was refused (the Superior referring to the Card. Vicar and the Card. Vicar to _his_ Confessor) to give a roof to the couple because of the woman; also there was a suspicion that the couple had not been married in church. All this P. D. had learned when these people were still there, in the arch. But we found them gone; and the strangest sight instead. In the immense thickness of the gate a heap of reeds in a corner; and strewn all about in this artificial grotto, old rusty utensils, a grater, a strainer, broken pots, papers, rags, half-burnt logs, a straw hat, and a walking stick! And over a kind of recess, on a plank, a little shrine, two broken Madonnas picked out of some dust-heap, withered flowers in a crock, and a sprig of olive, evidently of last Palm Sunday! Poor little properties, so poor, so wretched that they had remained unmolested, despised even by the poorest, safe at the end of that blind road in that closed-up gate of Rome! That two human beings in our day should have lived there for months, even years (for they returned after an absence, the monk told us); lived, like some anchorites of old, in the ruins, in a grotto made by human hands; with the vineyards all round, and the shrubs and flowers waving from the broken masonry! Their rags and shreds of paper littered the rank grass and acanthus by the walled-up gate, where the little Bramantesque temple stands, built by a French prelate under Julius II., and inscribed "Au plaisir de Dieu." _Au plaisir de Dieu!_ Over the walls, the great bones of the Baths of Caracalla half hidden by trees: and, closing the distance, St. Peters. We went into the little damp church, with a twelfth-century campanile and well in the rose-garden; a deserted little place, only a bit of opus Alexandrinum, and a string of Cosmati work remaining, all the rest overlaid by the frescoes and stuccoes of a seventeenth-century Rasponi. The grey Franciscan who showed us round told us that a lady had given five hundred francs for admission of the old man and woman of the gate at the Petites Soeurs; but these required the religious marriage. About a month ago the couple was married and taken off to the Petites Soeurs; the day after the poor old man died! The old people had desired the monks to distribute their bedding and rags to the poor, now they themselves were provided for. And that is how the place came to be abandoned. The old man told the monks he much preferred the arch to the damp cellar where a greengrocer of Rome used to make him sleep. "They had good sides those people," I remarked. "Sfido! bonissimi," said the Franciscan; he was from Albi, but had got to speak with a Roman accent. While we were there, under the impression of that story, of the deserted church, the ragged grey monk, and of that whole squalid, imaginative Roman corner, a little cart drove up with a young man and two little girls, who went round with us and gathered sprays of hawthorn off the walls, leaving the pony to graze meanwhile. "No Romans," said P. D.; and indeed they turned out to be Vicentines, the young man a student of law taking out his young cousins for a _scampagnata_. P. D. very characteristically made them write their names for him in his pocket-book, and bowed to the little girls as if they were duchesses. More characteristically still, my friend carried off the old beggar's stick to keep in his study. _April_ 26. SPRING 1902. I. THE RUBBISH-HEAP. Yesterday wandered in Trastevere and about Piazza Mattei and Montanara and back by 'bus; again this morning tramm'd to Lateran in showers. The squalor of this Rome and of its people! The absence of all trace of any decent past, ancient barbarism as down at heel and unkempt as any modern slum! The starved galled horses, broken harness, unmended clothes and wide-mouthed sluttishness under the mound on which stand the Cenci's houses, a foul mound of demolition and rag-pickers, only a stone's-throw from the brand-new shop streets, the Lungo Tevere, the magnificence of palaces like the Mattei, Caetani, &c. If Rome undoubtedly gives the soul peace by its assurance that the present is as nothing in the centuries, it also depresses one, in other moods, with the feeling that all history is but a vast rubbish-heap and sink; that nothing matters, nothing comes out of all the ages save rags and brutishness. There is a great value for our souls in any place which tells us, by however slight indications, of a past of self-respect, activity and beauty; and I long for Tuscany. _February_ 25. II. THE EXCAVATIONS. In the Forum this morning with Css. B. and the excavator Boni. In the Director's shed a "Campionario," literally pattern sheets of the various strata of excavation: bits of crock, stone, tile, iron, little earthenware spoons for putting sacrificial salt in the fire, even what looked like a set of false teeth. Time represented thus in space. And similarly with the excavations themselves: century under century, each also represented by little more than foot-prints, bases of gone columns, foundations of rough edifices. Among these neatly-dug-out layers of nothingness, these tidy heaps of chips with so few things, stand out the few old column- and temple-ends which Piranesi already drew. I felt very keenly that the past is only a creation of the present. Boni, a very interesting and ardent mind, poetical and mystical, showed us things not really of this earth, not really laid bare by the spade, but existing in realms of fantastic speculation, shaped by argument, faultlessly cast in logical moulds. Too faultlessly methought, for looking at the mere heaps of architectural rubbish, let alone the earth, the various vegetations which have accumulated upon it, I had a sense of the infinite intricacy of all reality, and of the partiality and insufficiency of the paths which our reason (or our fancy in the garb of reason) cuts into it. Rituals and laws whose meaning had become mere shibboleths two thousand years ago, races whose very mien and aspect (often their language) can only be speculated on: all this reappears, takes precision and certainty. But is not this a mere creation, like that of art or of systematic metaphysics? What struck me as the only certainty among these admirable cogent arguments was that the once tank of Juturna, round whose double springs Rome must have arisen to drink and worship, this sacred and healing water where the Dioscuri watered their steeds after Lake Regillus, has been fouled by human privies so deeply that years of dredging and pumping will be required to restore its purity. Of how many things is not this tank a symbol as cogent as any which our archæologist ascribed to those old symbol-mongers of his discourse! With us was a man who took no interest in all these matters; none in the significance of rituals, symbols, or the laws of racial growth and decadence. _He_ wanted to be shown the place where Cæsar had fallen; he was a survivor of the old school of historical interest. Very out of date and droll; but is not this old-fashioned interest in half-imaginary dramatic figures as legitimate as our playing with races, rituals, the laws, the metaphysical essence of the past? _February_ 27. III. THE MEET. The meet the other day, at Maglianella, beyond Porta S. Pancrazio. Desolate, rolling country, pale green wide dells, where streams should be, but are not; roads excavated in the brown volcanic rock, here and there fringed with a few cork-trees; the approach, very much, to Toscanella. But raced along by carriages, bicycles and motor-cars, and leading to a luncheon tent, a car full of hounds, school of cavalry officers, and the redcoats preparing to start. The cloud banks sat on the horizon as on the sea; the sky very pale and blue, moist, with song of larks descending from it. And as the horses cantered along the soft grass, the scent of last year's mint and fennel rose from stubble-fields, and the rank, fresh smell of crushed succulent asphodels. _February_ 27. IV. The cabman who, yesterday evening, took me to Palazzo Gabbrielli instead of Palazzo Orsini, excused himself saying that priests even blunder at the altar--"anche li preti sbajano all' altare." Very Roman! V. MONTE MARIO. With E. de V. on Monte Mario. The weather has cleared; slight tramontana, pure sky, with white storm- or snow-clouds collected like rolled-up curtains, everywhere on the horizon. Great green slopes of grass appear as far as one could see, here and there a little valley full of ilex scrub; in the mist of the distance conical shepherds' huts, with smoke wreath. We sat on a piece of turf, cut in by horses' hoofs, by a stack of faggots; song of lark and bleating of sheep. But for the road, the carriage, it might have been in the Maremma for utter loneliness and freshness. Turning round a few yards further, carriages and motor-cars, and all Rome, with its unfinished new quarters nearest, stretched under us. _March_ 3. VI. VIA OSTIENSE. Day before yesterday with dear Paso along Via Ostiense. Perhaps the most solemn of all those solemn Roman roads, with the solemnity and desolation of the great brimful brown Tiber, between barren banks of mud, added to the solemnity of the empty green country. It is the refusal of vegetation in great part which makes this country strange and solemn. Such vegetation as there is, the asphodels and rare blackthorn along the road, the stumpy oaks or cork-trees or the bends of the river, gaining an importance, a significance out of all proportion; and the thinnest little distant spinny, looking like a mysterious consecrated wood. We got to the top of a hill, and there, far off against the grey flatness, was the lavender line of the sea. It was a brilliant day of freshly fallen distant snow; the air keen and windless, with a feel of the sea as we went towards it. VII. PALACE YARDS. Yesterday P. D. P. took me to see a former Marescotti palace in the Via della Pigna. A very quiet aristocratic part of Rome, of narrow streets between high palaces, and little untraversed squares. The gloominess of the outside succeeded by the sunlight, the spaciousness of a vast courtyard, on to which look sixteenth-, seventeenth-, eighteenth-century windows, closed by the back of a church with its clock-tower, so that, as Pierino says, it might almost be the piazza of a provincial town. A campanile, fountain, piazza, almost a _sun_, all to oneself. One wonders with what these palaces could ever have been filled by the original owners. We then went into another palace yard; and there was a shop with three young men working at a huge sawdust doll, with porcelain sandalled feet. I thought it was a doll for displaying surgical apparatus, but it turned out to be a female saint, whose head we were shown, life-size, properly expressive with rolling eyes and a little halo. _March_ 6. SPRING 1903. I. RETURN TO ROME. That I should feel it most on return here; find I have returned without _her_, travelled without her, that she is not there to tell; the sense of utter loneliness, of the letter one would write, the greeting one would give--and which no creature now wants! Yesterday morning, feeling ill and very sad, Rome came for half-hour with its odd consolation. I sat on the balcony of the corner room, very high up, in the sunshine. Cabs, with their absurd Roman canter, crossing the diaper of the little square, circling, as I remember them doing in my childhood, round the unwilling fare. A soldier rode across, dismounted, took his beast by the bridle to the cattle-trough in the palace wall opposite; a bit of campagna intruded into town. And motor-cars snorted and bells rang. High up on the same level with me was the hidden real Rome--all that you do not guess while walking in the streets below. Colonna gardens with bridges over the way, and green-clipped hedges and reddening Judas-trees under the big pines, and a row of marble Emperors turning their backs; and, further, the Quirinal with tip of obelisk, and plaster trumpet-blowing Fame; and a palm-tree, its head rising out of I know not what hidden yard, in front of a terrace of drying rags. And at every vista end, pines of the Pincian, Villa Doria, &c.; and domes; and the pale blond roofs with the telephone wires like gossamer stretched over them. Sunshine; distant noise and incessant bells. Rome in a fashion consoling; but how empty! _April_ 3. II. PALM SUNDAY. This morning I know not what ceremony in the Portico of SS. Apostoli: a little procession, some monks, a priest in purple, and a few draggle-tailed people before the closed door, chanting at intervals, till the door opened and they entered, their silver cross in its purple bag ahead, and their little branches of olive. The fine carved Roman eagle in its magnificent garland of oak-leaves, presiding, very fierce and contemptuous, over this little scene. When one effaces the notion of habit, how very odd to see a company of nineteenth-century people, battered and galled by life like old cab-horses, stationing in a portico singing verses and holding branches of olive! There is something refreshing, something of the fields and hills, of leisure and childishness, in the proceeding, if only the poor creatures realised it. But to most of them, I take it, the bearing of a silver cross, of an olive branch, is in reality as utilitarian (though utilitarian in regard to another world) as holding the tail of a saucepan or rattling a money-box. For how many, one wonders, is that door, opening to the cross and the olive branches, the door of an inner temple, of a place swept and garnished in the pious fancy? alas! alas! I went on, on foot, past the Capitol, through the Montanara region, with a growing sense, which I have had ever since return here, of the squalor, the lousiness, the dust-heap, the unblushing _immondezzaio_ quality of Rome and its inhabitants. Everything ragged, filthy, listless; the very cauliflowers they were selling looking all stalk, fit for that refuse midden which symbolises the city. By the Temple of Vesta a lot of carts were drawn up, with galled horses and ragged crouching peasants--that sort of impression which Piranesi gives. A school of little girls, conducted by a nun, was filing out of S. Maria in Cosmedin, and I helped up the leathern curtain for them to pass. Tatters, squalor, with that abundant animal strength and beauty of these people; one feels they have been eating and drinking, and befouling the earth and the streets with the excrements of themselves and their lives, love-making and begetting, and suffering stolidly all through the centuries, and one wonders why? as one wonders before a ditch full of tadpoles. Low mass was going on at a side altar, and the canon's mass in the beautiful marble choir, behind the ambones, behind those delicate marble railings and seats, which, with their inclusion, makes the fine aristocratic, swept and garnished quality of that Byzantine architecture more delicate and dainty still. The church was finished restoring two years ago, but the population of that low part of Rome, the Piazza Montanara St. Giles, has already given it the squalor of ages. I cannot say how deeply, though vaguely, I felt the meaningless tragic triviality of these successive generations of reality, in the face of that solemn, meaningful abstraction which we call history, which we call humanity, the centuries, Rome. The great holes through which, as through earthquake rents, the innermost life of Rome has become visible in the last thirty years, are beginning to close up. In that sort of rag-fair, witch-burning ground limited only by the island and the belfries of Trastevere which I used to look down upon from Palazzo Orsini, the Jews are building a colossal synagogue. One does not grudge it them, after their Holy Cross Days! But that strange simultaneous vision of the centuries (like that of their life which drowning folk are said to have) is ending with the death agony of old Rome. _April_ 4. III. MONDRAGONE. The white peacocks apparently all gone; but two superb green ones, their tails outspread, glittering on the grass under the olives just below the villa terrace. Near the terrace, where a lot of olive wood was being chopped on a stump of fine fluted column, a bay-tree of the girth of a good-sized oak, bearing pale yellow leaves and blossom, as of beaten metal, the golden bough of the Sibyl. Hard by another bay-tree, a ramping python, rearing up a head of bright green leaves. The loveliness of the chestnut woods on the hill behind, not yet in leaf, but rosy with rising sap; big round olives also, dark silver in front. The same colours and same wonderful rounded dimpled volcanic lie of the land as round Villa Lante at Viterbo. We walked, the Carlo R.'s little governess and I, along round above Mondragone and down by Villa Falconieri; the three children on donkeys in front, Gabriella's boys and their cousins. The pleasantness of the children's voices, of their bear-fighting in the train coming back. A splendid day of sun, wind, of dove's-wing distant Campagna view. _April_ 14. IV. SAN SABA. San Saba to-day, for the second time this year, with those pleasant English people the P.s. It was Thursday, and we were not admitted into the garden (though we were very kindly allowed into the loggia) because the pupils of the Germanic College were having their weekly recreation, a hundred of them. We saw their gowns, like geraniums or capsicums, moving between the columns and under the blossoming orange-trees. And a party of them sat among the fallen pillars and broken friezes outside the little churches singing--and what?--the Lorelei in chorus, "Sie kämmt sich mit goldenem Kamme und singt ein Lied dabei." Oh, friendly romance of Germany, lurking even in the house of the Lord, and cheek-by-jowl with De Propaganda Fide! PAL. SCIARRA, _April_ 16. V. A CONVENT. This morning with Antonia at S. Cecilia in Trastevere, having a special permission from Minister to see the Cavalieri frescoes in the nuns' choir gallery (like poorer, clumsier, _jowlier_ Duccio; Byzantine, with antique braided hair and "Greek" features). The impression of the convent _clausura_--little vestibule, a strongly grated small window inside it, apparently ending only in darkness; the "Ruota," behind which a voice spoke mysteriously as through a telephone, the wooden shelf turning on itself and offering us a key--key opening (by instructions of mysterious voice) an adjacent small room: two straw chairs on either side of small table before a thick black grating; another grating behind that, and a kind of perforated shutter between. The latter rattled away, a nun's face uncertainly seen--faded cheeks, immense eyes, white dress, behind the black double bars; the key restored to the Ruota, and engulfed after directions from the mysterious voice; another door, sound of keys and bolts. In all this a predominant and lugubrious impression of keys and bolts. The little portress, Donna Maria Geltude (for these nuns are Benedictines, and have the handle to their names), a wizen, very ugly little woman, in incredibly shabby but spotless dress, white wool washed threadbare to an appearance of linen, voluminous skirts and black veil. A glazed cloister (with twelfth-century columns), a few pictures, seventeenth-century tables and chairs, as in a passage; more passages similar, with _prie Dieu_ and scant peasant furniture. The little library, a smallish glass press with nothing but Filotea, Fr. de Sales, Vite dei Santi, &c. Might they read them? Yes, but only on asking the Abbess. Terror of nun lest Antonia and I should go on or into anything not mentioned in our permit--the impression that in this life all can be done, but done only by permission. "Men allowed to visit?" Only by permission of Cardinal Segretario di Stato. "Men working in garden, masons, &c.?" Yes, but always with special permission; permission and bars! In all these corridors and stairs not a creature; only at one moment a door stirred, Antonia thought she saw a nun?? Little garden, with box hedges and lemon-trees. The inner windows (cells) open on this garden, are large, ordinary, and without bars. There was even one long ground floor window with a little balcony and steps with a cat on them. But never a soul! Great bareness, fair neatness, and order. The gilt box of the choir, looking down into church; the stalls; the Abbess's gold-headed crozier stuck into her stall (St. Cecilia with harp in it), two lecterns with Latin lessons of the day--the day's martyrology. _April_ 22. VI. COLONNA GARDENS. With Contessa Z. to-day in Colonna Gardens. Great surprise on finding them more romantic than from the outside. A terrace, with all Rome, blond; all manner of unexpected towers and cupolas. The pines of the Janiculum, staircase fountains, waterless but noisy, the Roman veil of vegetation everywhere; and great vague walls of spaliered roses and lemons. In the midst of these terraces and balustrades and crowded nurseries of flowers, the surprise of finding that that great vague building I have noticed from below is a ruin, roofless, full of wild fig, a castle's square keep. Mediæval? antique? the place surely whence the imaginary Nero watched the burning, and harped! _April_ 25. VII. PALO. Palo Beach yesterday; motored there by my French friends. I have had fever some days past, and there was more than mere pleasure and amusement in sitting on the sand and breathing the clean cloudless sea-air, instead of the scirocco stuff we had left, alternately simmering and shivering in Rome. By the way, how little the sea gives to Rome (except at the Aventine corner sometimes by a violent libeccio), and how one feels the futility of this tideless Mediterranean, unable to purify or renovate even a few yards of the inland! Think of the estuaries of the North! of the cleansing vivifying tides and draughts which the ocean thrusts into the very vitals of the countries! No one, one feels, ever landed (since Æneas and his companions) upon this shallow strand, save the raiding Saracens and Barbary pirates, against whom the castle, the martello tower, barely more of Palo, was built. For there is not even here what represents the life of the Mediterranean, the jutting rocks, the sucking in of sea, by the cliffs, the sudden squalls of the stony coasts where sea and land really play and fight together, waves leaping tower-high, and battering at hillsides and swirling in and out of creeks. Here, one understands that a storm would mean mere passive submerging: the water rising higher, covering the straight narrow beach, the low green fields, noiselessly, and retreating when so inclined, with neat stacks of seaweed and samphire left behind. The renovation of Rome, like its drinking water, has always come from the mountains; the Tiber mouth is their outlet, not the inlet of the sea. And the mountain clouds change in shape, stagnate and brood in this low trough; the mountain air faints, dies, in these fever levels. The beach of Palo is only a few yards wide: a low natural wall of corroded tufo, covered with no maritime bent, but ordinary grass; a line of sea refuse, a band of fine black sparkling sand, and little waves fringed black with that mournful sand, breaking feebly against it. A high sky, with a few sailing clouds; and in it, rather than on the sea, some boats, like toy ducks, on the offing, motionless. We sat on the sand, digging into its moist warmth, and amused (I at least) that this glittering beach left no trace on the land; making Carpaccio St. George Dragons (with inserted eyes of sand flint) out of blistered drift-wood; and looking about, later, for bits of antique marble and brick upon the sands. For this lazy sea appears to wash no pebbles of its own bringing, but only fragments of stone brought by man, broken off man's buildings, shot by him into the Tiber, in the days, no doubt, when columns were sawed into discs and smashed into petal-shaped wedges for the _Opus Alexandrinum_. I don't think we saw one natural looking stone upon that beach; everything seemed vaguely, precious and outlandish, basalt, porphyry, agate, Rossoantique, and serpentine still bearing its original polish; also fine white marble, Mme. B. possessing a beautiful piece of salty Parian found there, and shaped delicately, curved and bossy, into a perfect heart, the heart of a marble Artemis or Amazon. This the lazy Roman sea does, and it is surely an unusual feat: roll its shingle into vague shapes of symbolic hearts, hearts of serpentine, of jasper, of various beautiful rose and lilac breccias, of basalt, and of fine rose brick, all scattered on the glittering black sand (with funny mourning edges of violet shells), and in the lip of those little black waves. But far more beautiful and extraordinary and brilliant (and to me far more wonderful and odd) was the still uncorrupted little corpse of a kingfisher: sky-blue breast, greenish turquoise ruff, and glossy dark back, lying in state, as dead birds do. _April_ 29. VIII. FIUMICINO. Three days ago, in heavy rain, taken in motor to Fiumicino. Impression of grass, yellow with buttercups, soused with rain, opening, falling aside as we swish noiselessly into it, under the moving dark sky. Magliana: a big farm; one takes a minute in the soaking filthy yard, among manure and litter, to recognise that this dilapidated, leprous-looking building is a palace, with mullioned fifteenth-century windows and coats of arms and inscriptions of Cibo and Riario popes. From the top of the wide low-stepped staircase (like that, also of the Cibo's originally, of Pal. Ruffo), wide views of meadows of pale rumpled grass, yellow here, and there with clover, and a great yellow Tiber arm unaccountable in this sort of England. This is the place, I believe, where the quails are shot and netted at this time of year; and I suppose Leo X. was on some such expedition when he caught his death here. Fiumicino, a canal or arm of the Tiber, a yellowish marsh, a big, uprooted looking martello tower by the beach, and a little pier with a green boat like a beetle in the rain. The look of Viareggio or Porto Corsini, of all the little God-forsaken and strangled harbours of this country. The sacred island, I suppose, on the other side of a bridge of boats, covered with what seems a scrub of ilex and lentisk. IX. VIA ARDEATINA. Yesterday, again in pelting rain, far along Via Ardeatina (the brutes have taken away the little river god from off that trough in the little valley of poplars). The hollows full of foaming yellow streams, and yellow water gushing everywhere. The great wet green slopes under the dark low sky, with only sheep and here and there a stump of masonry, no trees, no hedges, no walls save of rough stones, no bounding mountains, visible; the whole country transformed into some northern high-lying moorland. A sort of tiny half-ruined, towered and walled St. Gimignano, with many olives about it, seems a ghostly apparition in it all. _May_ 3. X. SAN TEODORO. This morning, trying to lose time before lunching at Monte Savella, I was attracted into that little round brick church nearly always closed, which stands in a circular hole under the Palatine. You go down a flight of steps into a round paved place: and this, with a worn-down sacrificial altar, carved with laurel wreaths, was strewn this morning with ivy leaves and bay. Lifting the big green drapery which had first attracted me to that church, for it hung outside it, and pushing the door, there was a shock of surprise; a plunge into mystery. The round church was empty, dark, but full of the smell of fresh incense; and in that darkness I was fairly blinded by the effulgence of the high-altar, tier upon tier of tapers. When I was able to see, there were three women, black, with red scapulars about their necks, kneeling; and on either side, in the extreme corners of the lit-up altar, two figures, or what, after a second, I decided must be figures, kneeling also. They were on either side of the empty praying stool in front of the altar, on which lay big gilt books and a couple of shimmering stoles. Lit up by that blaze of candles, their whitish folded robes looked almost like fluted marble columns; and as they knelt they ended off like broken columns, for they were, to all appearance, headless. Round their middle each had a white rope, about as thick as a hand, cutting the flutings of the robe; and where the head disappeared, a white penitent's hood thrown backward. They remained absolutely motionless, so that after awhile I began almost to doubt whether I had not interpreted some column or curtain into human figures. But after about five minutes one of the two--the right-hand one--moved slightly, just enough to show the thing was living. There they remained motionless, stooping in their fluted robes and thrown-back hoods, headless; and I went out, leaving them so, through the circular yard strewn with ivy and bay all round that worn away altar. What was it all? I have a vague notion this church is connected with the Cave of Cacus, or the lair of Romulus' she-wolf. _May_ 3. WINTER 1904. I. PALO. Palo again. The little pineta or grove rather of young pines, very close together and tufty, which open out and close fanlike in long green avenues, each with its prismatic star of shivering light, as we race through in the motor. A place where laurel-crowned poets in white should wander with verse-like monotony upon the soft green turf. Beyond, a band of lilac sere field, a band of blue sea; and between the fringe of the compact round pines, the sun setting, its light shivering diamond-like among the needles. _February_ 25. II. A WALK AT DUSK. Yesterday went, in a band at dusk, for a melancholy stroll through the back streets. The Piranesi effect: yards of palaces, Marescotti, Massimo alle Colonne, the staircase of Palazzo Altieri. These immense grass-grown yards, with dreary closed windows all round, fountains alone breaking their silence, look like a bit of provincial life, of some tiny mountain town, enclosed in Rome. At Monte Giordano (Palazzo Gabbrielli) it becomes the walled Umbrian town, castellated. In this gloom, this sadness of icy evening sky between the high roofs, and after the appalling sadness of a church, squalid, dark, a few people kneeling, and the sacristan extinguishing the altars after a Benediction (every grief, one would think, laid down on that floor only to pick up a weight of the grief of others); after this there was something sweet and country-like in the splash of the fountains at Monte Giordano; the water bringing from the free mountains into this gloomy city; and to me the recollection of a Tuscan villa, of peace and serenity. _February_ 27. III. TUSCULUM. To Tusculum to-day with Maria and Du B. This is the place I carried away in my thoughts and wishes, a mere rapidly passed steep grassy hill, topped with pines and leafless chestnuts, from that motor drive last year round by Monte Compatri and Grottaferrata. The steepness and bareness of that great grass slope was heightened to-day by the tremendous gales blowing in a cloudless sky; one felt as if it were that wind which had kept the place so inaccessible, so virgin of trees and people, nay, had made the grass slippery, and polished the black basalt slabs of the path. And that wind struggling upwards against it in the sunshine, with the great rose and lilac sere hills opposite, the pale blond valley behind, seemed to clear the soul also of all rank vegetation, of all thoughts and feelings thick and muddy and leaden; to sweep away all that gets between the reality of things and oneself. One should contrive to have impressions like these sufficiently often in life: this is the excitement which is helpful; the heartbeating, the breathlessness, the pain even, which brace and make us widely sensitive. Brother Wind--why did St. Francis not invoke him?--played with us roughly and healthfully, telling us, in the hurtling against houses, the rustling, soughing among trees, and the whistling in our own hair and ears, of the greatness of the universe's life and the greatness of our own. On the crest, under the thin fringe of bare trees, with the plain of Rome, the snow of the Apennines on one side, the violet woods of Monte Laziale on the other, the surprise of suddenly coming on a rude stone cottage, with headless statues of athletes and togaed Romans built into its rough walls. And in a hollow under delicate leafless chestnuts that wonderful little theatre, cut out of black volcanic stone, as if the representation were to be storm and full moon, making and unmaking of mountains and countries, and the whole of history.... Beginning to come down, and just above that little theatre, as we turned, we saw, beyond the dark ridge of Castel Gandolfo, cupolaed and towered, a narrow belt of light, more brilliant than that of the sky: the light upon the sea. _March_ 7. IV. ST. PETER'S. The greatness of the place had taken me, and quite unexpectedly, at once: the pale shimmer of the marble and the gold, the little encampment of yellow lights ever so far off close to the ground at the Confession; and, above all, the spaciousness, the vast airiness and emptiness, which seemed in a way to be rather a mode of myself than a quality of the place. I had come to see, if I could, Pollaiolo's tomb in the Chapel of the Sacrament. I found the grating closed; and kneeling before it, a foreign northern-looking man, with grizzled, curly hair and beard, and a torn fustian coat and immense nailed shoes. He was muttering prayers, kissing his rosary or medal at intervals, and slightly prostrating himself. But what struck me, and apparently others (for people approached and stared), was his extraordinary intentness and fervour. He was certainly conscious of no one and nothing save whatever his eyes were fixed upon--either the sacrament or the altar behind that railing, or merely some vision of his own. And he seemed not only different from everyone else, but separate, isolated from that vast place which made all the rest of us so small, such tiny details of itself. He was no detail, but an independent reality--he and his prayer, his belief, his nailed shoes: all come who knows how far in what loneliness! I got the sacristan to open, and went in to see the tomb--a mad masquerade thing, everything in wrong relief and showing the wrong side, the very virtues or sciences flat on their backs, so that you could not see them. And in the middle, presenting his stark bronze feet, the brown, mummied-looking, wicked pope, with great nose under his tiara. An insane thing--more so than any Bernini monument, I thought. Perhaps it was the presence of that man praying away outside which affected me to think this. There he was, as little likely to move away, apparently, as the bronze pope stretched out, soles protruded, among the absurd allegories. I went also to see the Pietà, and then stayed a long while walking up and down; but still the man was kneeling there, and might be kneeling, doubtless, till now or till doomsday, if the vergers had not, in closing the doors, turned him out. _March_ 8. V. THE CRYPTS. Yesterday the Grotte Vaticane, the Crypts of St. Peter's, a horrible disappointment, and on the whole absurd impression. That of being conducted (down a little staircase carpeted with stair cloth) through the basement of a colossal hotel, with all the electric light turned on at midday--a basement with lumber-rooms full of rather tawdry antiquities giving off its corridors, and other antiquities (as we see them in Italian inns) crammed against walls and into corners. Donatello and Mino bas-reliefs become sham by their surroundings, apocryphal Byzantine mosaics, second-rate pictures. Even empty sarcophagi and desecrated tombs just as at Riettis or Della Torres at Venice, and with seventeenth-century gilding and painting obbligato overhead. And then into wider corridors, whitewashed, always with that glare of electricity from the low roof; corridors where you expect automatic trucks of coals, or dinner lifts; and where the vague whitewashed cubes of masonry against the walls suggest new-fangled washing or heating apparatus. And instead! they are the resting-place of the Stuarts, only labels telling us so, or of mediæval popes. And that vague arched thing with wooden cover, painted to imitate porphyry, is the tomb of the Emperor Otho; and there, as we go on, it grows upon one that the carved and mitred figures tucked away under arches are not warehoused for sale to forestiere, but lying on the sarcophagus, over the bones or the _praecordia_ of Boniface VIII. of Roveres and Borgias. Waiting at the head of that staircase for the beadle, faint strains of music come from very far. In St. Peter's a great choral service like this one going on in the left-hand chapel, becomes a detail lost as in the life of a whole city. _March_ 17. VI. SAN STEFANO. San Stefano Rotondo on that rainy afternoon, the extraordinary grandeur of this circular church filled with diffuse white light. Architecturally one of the most beautiful Roman churches, certainly, with its circle of columns surrounding the great central well, where two colossal pillars carry the triumphal arch, carry a great blank windowed wall above it, immensely high up. Those columns, that wall, pearly white, of carved and broken marble against pure chalky brilliancy of whitewash, seem in a way the presiding divinities of this great circular sanctuary in the church's centre; or is it the white light, the solemn pure emptiness among them? An immanent presence, greater certainly than could be any gigantic statue. _March_ 18. VII. VIA LATINA. Afterwards, in fitful rain, we went to the Tombs and the little roofless basilica near them in the Via Latina; and walked up and down, a melancholy little party enough, grubbing up marbles and picking them out of the rubbish heap among the quickening grass. The delicate grey sky kept dissolving in short showers; the corn and ploughed purple earth (_that compost!_) were drenched and fragrant with new life; and the air was full of the twitter of invisible larks. But in this warm soft renewal there was, for us, only the mood of lost things and imminent partings; and the song of the peasants in the field hard by told not, as it should, of their mountains, but of this sad, wet landscape traversed by endless lines of ruins. Suddenly in the clouds, a solid dark spot appeared; the top, the altar slab of Mons Latialis. And little by little the clouds slipped lower, the whole mountain range of hills stepped forth from the vapours, with its great peaceful life and strength. _March_ 18. SPRING 1905. I. ROME AGAIN. Yesterday, after D. Laura's, took Du B. that walk through the Ghetto, along the Tiber quays by the island; a stormy, wet day. Rome again! As we stood by the worn Januses of the bridge and looked into the swirling water, thinking of how that Terme Apollo had lain there, the Tiber, like Marsyas, flaying one fair flank of the god; I felt Rome and its unchanging meaning grip me again, and liberate me from the frettings of my own past and present. We went in to see some people who are furnishing an apartment in Palazzo Orsini. A very Roman impression this: the central court of that fortified palace built into the theatre of Marcellus; lemons spaliered and rows of Tangerine trees, with little Moorish-looking fountains between; only the sky above, only the sound of the bubbling fountains. You look out of a window and behold, close by, the unspeakable rag-fair of that foul quarter, with its yells and cries rising up and stench of cheap cooking. We saw some small Renaissance closets, still with their ceilings and fire-places, where tradition says a last Savelli was stabbed. A feudal fortress this, and, like those of the hills round Rome which these ruins mimic, raising its gardens and pompous rooms above the squalor of the mediæval village. Immediately below, the corridors of the theatre; below that, the shops, where pack-saddles, ploughs, scythes, wooden pails--the things of a village--are for sale in the midst of those black arches. And then the dining-room, library, bath-rooms of excellent New Englanders crowning it all; and in the chapel, their telephone! "Take care," I said, "the message will come some day--not across space, but across time. _Con chi parlo?_" Well, say, _The White Devil of Italy!_ In that Campitelli quarter, the constant blind turnings behind the great giant palaces; places for cut-throats, for the sudden onslaught of bravos. I feel very often that if one lived in all this picturesqueness, the horrors of the past, the vacuity of the present, would drive one I know not whither. I have had, more than ever this time, the sense of horror at the barbarism of Rome, of civilisation being encamped in all this human refuse, and doing nothing for it; and the feeling of horror at this absorbing Italy, and at one's liking it! They are impressions of the sort I had at Tangier. And the face of an idiot beggar--the odd, pleased smile above his filth--suddenly brought back to me that special feeling, I suppose of the East. We are wretched, transitional creatures to be so much moved by such things, by this dust-heap of time, and to be pacified in spirit by the sight of all this litter of ages; 'tis a Hamlet and the gravedigger's attitude; and the attitude of Whitman in the fertile field of _This Compost_ is a deal better. SABATO SANTO. POSTSCRIPT. Yesterday morning, while looking through, with a view to copying out, my Roman notes of the last eighteen years, I felt, with odd vividness, the various myselfs who suffered and hoped while writing them. And, even more, I felt the presence of the beloved ones who, unmentioned, not even alluded to, had been present in those various successive Romes of mine. All of them have changed; some are dead, others were never really living. But while I turned over my note-books, there they were back. Back with their feeling of _then_; back with their presence (in one case the presence of a distant companion, to whom I could show these things only in thought); their complete realisation, or their half explicit charm, their still unshattered promise. Of all these I find not a word, barely a name; nothing telling of them to others. Only to me, in these sites, impersonal and almost eternal, on these walls which have stood two thousand years and may stand two thousand more, and these hillsides and roads full of the world's legend--there appear, visible, distinct, the shadows cast by my own life; the forms and faces of those changed, gone, dead ones; and my own. FLORENCE, _April_, 1905. TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: The edition from which this text was drawn is volume 4175 of the Tauchnitz Edition of British Authors, where it appeared together with _Laurus Nobilis_, also by Vernon Lee. The volume was published in 1910. Section IV in under Spring 1902 is not named in the original book. The following changes were made to the text: turning out of great rag bag turning out of a great rag bag bégunie béguine comes home to theme comes home to them solemn, meaning full abstraction solemn, meaningful abstraction 
8722	----	and David Widger [widger@cecomet.net] THE THREE CITIES ROME BY EMILE ZOLA TRANSLATED BY ERNEST A. VIZETELLY PART II IV ON the afternoon of that same day Pierre, having leisure before him, at once thought of beginning his peregrinations through Rome by a visit on which he had set his heart. Almost immediately after the publication of "New Rome" he had been deeply moved and interested by a letter addressed to him from the Eternal City by old Count Orlando Prada, the hero of Italian independence and reunion, who, although unacquainted with him, had written spontaneously after a first hasty perusal of his book. And the letter had been a flaming protest, a cry of the patriotic faith still young in the heart of that aged man, who accused him of having forgotten Italy and claimed Rome, the new Rome, for the country which was at last free and united. Correspondence had ensued, and the priest, while clinging to his dream of Neo-Catholicism saving the world, had from afar grown attached to the man who wrote to him with such glowing love of country and freedom. He had eventually informed him of his journey, and promised to call upon him. But the hospitality which he had accepted at the Boccanera mansion now seemed to him somewhat of an impediment; for after Benedetta's kindly, almost affectionate, greeting, he felt that he could not, on the very first day and with out warning her, sally forth to visit the father of the man from whom she had fled and from whom she now asked the Church to part her for ever. Moreover, old Orlando was actually living with his son in a little palazzo which the latter had erected at the farther end of the Via Venti Settembre. Before venturing on any step Pierre resolved to confide in the Contessina herself; and this seemed the easier as Viscount Philibert de la Choue had told him that the young woman still retained a filial feeling, mingled with admiration, for the old hero. And indeed, at the very first words which he uttered after lunch, Benedetta promptly retorted: "But go, Monsieur l'Abbe, go at once! Old Orlando, you know, is one of our national glories--you must not be surprised to hear me call him by his Christian name. All Italy does so, from pure affection and gratitude. For my part I grew up among people who hated him, who likened him to Satan. It was only later that I learned to know him, and then I loved him, for he is certainly the most just and gentle man in the world." She had begun to smile, but timid tears were moistening her eyes at the recollection, no doubt, of the year of suffering she had spent in her husband's house, where her only peaceful hours had been those passed with the old man. And in a lower and somewhat tremulous voice she added: "As you are going to see him, tell him from me that I still love him, and, whatever happens, shall never forget his goodness." So Pierre set out, and whilst he was driving in a cab towards the Via Venti Settembre, he recalled to mind the heroic story of old Orlando's life which had been told him in Paris. It was like an epic poem, full of faith, bravery, and the disinterestedness of another age. Born of a noble house of Milan, Count Orlando Prada had learnt to hate the foreigner at such an early age that, when scarcely fifteen, he already formed part of a secret society, one of the ramifications of the antique Carbonarism. This hatred of Austrian domination had been transmitted from father to son through long years, from the olden days of revolt against servitude, when the conspirators met by stealth in abandoned huts, deep in the recesses of the forests; and it was rendered the keener by the eternal dream of Italy delivered, restored to herself, transformed once more into a great sovereign nation, the worthy daughter of those who had conquered and ruled the world. Ah! that land of whilom glory, that unhappy, dismembered, parcelled Italy, the prey of a crowd of petty tyrants, constantly invaded and appropriated by neighbouring nations--how superb and ardent was that dream to free her from such long opprobrium! To defeat the foreigner, drive out the despots, awaken the people from the base misery of slavery, to proclaim Italy free and Italy united--such was the passion which then inflamed the young with inextinguishable ardour, which made the youthful Orlando's heart leap with enthusiasm. He spent his early years consumed by holy indignation, proudly and impatiently longing for an opportunity to give his blood for his country, and to die for her if he could not deliver her. Quivering under the yoke, wasting his time in sterile conspiracies, he was living in retirement in the old family residence at Milan, when, shortly after his marriage and his twenty-fifth birthday, tidings came to him of the flight of Pius IX and the Revolution of Rome.* And at once he quitted everything, wife and hearth, and hastened to Rome as if summoned thither by the call of destiny. This was the first time that he set out scouring the roads for the attainment of independence; and how frequently, yet again and again, was he to start upon fresh campaigns, never wearying, never disheartened! And now it was that he became acquainted with Mazzini, and for a moment was inflamed with enthusiasm for that mystical unitarian Republican. He himself indulged in an ardent dream of a Universal Republic, adopted the Mazzinian device, "/Dio e popolo/" (God and the people), and followed the procession which wended its way with great pomp through insurrectionary Rome. The time was one of vast hopes, one when people already felt a need of renovated religion, and looked to the coming of a humanitarian Christ who would redeem the world yet once again. But before long a man, a captain of the ancient days, Giuseppe Garibaldi, whose epic glory was dawning, made Orlando entirely his own, transformed him into a soldier whose sole cause was freedom and union. Orlando loved Garibaldi as though the latter were a demi-god, fought beside him in defence of Republican Rome, took part in the victory of Rieti over the Neapolitans, and followed the stubborn patriot in his retreat when he sought to succour Venice, compelled as he was to relinquish the Eternal City to the French army of General Oudinot, who came thither to reinstate Pius IX. And what an extraordinary and madly heroic adventure was that of Garibaldi and Venice! Venice, which Manin, another great patriot, a martyr, had again transformed into a republican city, and which for long months had been resisting the Austrians! And Garibaldi starts with a handful of men to deliver the city, charters thirteen fishing barks, loses eight in a naval engagement, is compelled to return to the Roman shores, and there in all wretchedness is bereft of his wife, Anita, whose eyes he closes before returning to America, where, once before, he had awaited the hour of insurrection. Ah! that land of Italy, which in those days rumbled from end to end with the internal fire of patriotism, where men of faith and courage arose in every city, where riots and insurrections burst forth on all sides like eruptions--it continued, in spite of every check, its invincible march to freedom! * It was on November 24, 1848, that the Pope fled to Gaeta, consequent upon the insurrection which had broken out nine days previously.--Trans. Orlando returned to his young wife at Milan, and for two years lived there, almost in concealment, devoured by impatience for the glorious morrow which was so long in coming. Amidst his fever a gleam of happiness softened his heart; a son, Luigi, was born to him, but the birth killed the mother, and joy was turned into mourning. Then, unable to remain any longer at Milan, where he was spied upon, tracked by the police, suffering also too grievously from the foreign occupation, Orlando decided to realise the little fortune remaining to him, and to withdraw to Turin, where an aunt of his wife took charge of the child. Count di Cavour, like a great statesman, was then already seeking to bring about independence, preparing Piedmont for the decisive /role/ which it was destined to play. It was the time when King Victor Emmanuel evinced flattering cordiality towards all the refugees who came to him from every part of Italy, even those whom he knew to be Republicans, compromised and flying the consequences of popular insurrection. The rough, shrewd House of Savoy had long been dreaming of bringing about Italian unity to the profit of the Piedmontese monarchy, and Orlando well knew under what master he was taking service; but in him the Republican already went behind the patriot, and indeed he had begun to question the possibility of a united Republican Italy, placed under the protectorate of a liberal Pope, as Mazzini had at one time dreamed. Was that not indeed a chimera beyond realisation which would devour generation after generation if one obstinately continued to pursue it? For his part, he did not wish to die without having slept in Rome as one of the conquerors. Even if liberty was to be lost, he desired to see his country united and erect, returning once more to life in the full sunlight. And so it was with feverish happiness that he enlisted at the outset of the war of 1859; and his heart palpitated with such force as almost to rend his breast, when, after Magenta, he entered Milan with the French army--Milan which he had quitted eight years previously, like an exile, in despair. The treaty of Villafranca which followed Solferino proved a bitter deception: Venetia was not secured, Venice remained enthralled. Nevertheless the Milanese was conquered from the foe, and then Tuscany and the duchies of Parma and Modena voted for annexation. So, at all events, the nucleus of the Italian star was formed; the country had begun to build itself up afresh around victorious Piedmont. Then, in the following year, Orlando plunged into epopoeia once more. Garibaldi had returned from his two sojourns in America, with the halo of a legend round him--paladin-like feats in the pampas of Uruguay, an extraordinary passage from Canton to Lima--and he had returned to take part in the war of 1859, forestalling the French army, overthrowing an Austrian marshal, and entering Como, Bergamo, and Brescia. And now, all at once, folks heard that he had landed at Marsala with only a thousand men--the Thousand of Marsala, the ever illustrious handful of braves! Orlando fought in the first rank, and Palermo after three days' resistance was carried. Becoming the dictator's favourite lieutenant, he helped him to organise a government, then crossed the straits with him, and was beside him on the triumphal entry into Naples, whose king had fled. There was mad audacity and valour at that time, an explosion of the inevitable; and all sorts of supernatural stories were current--Garibaldi invulnerable, protected better by his red shirt than by the strongest armour, Garibaldi routing opposing armies like an archangel, by merely brandishing his flaming sword! The Piedmontese on their side had defeated General Lamoriciere at Castelfidardo, and were invading the States of the Church. And Orlando was there when the dictator, abdicating power, signed the decree which annexed the Two Sicilies to the Crown of Italy; even as subsequently he took part in that forlorn attempt on Rome, when the rageful cry was "Rome or Death!"--an attempt which came to a tragic issue at Aspromonte, when the little army was dispersed by the Italian troops, and Garibaldi, wounded, was taken prisoner, and sent back to the solitude of his island of Caprera, where he became but a fisherman and a tiller of the rocky soil.* * M. Zola's brief but glowing account of Garibaldi's glorious achievements has stirred many memories in my mind. My uncle, Frank Vizetelly, the war artist of the /Illustrated London News/, whose bones lie bleaching somewhere in the Soudan, was one of Garibaldi's constant companions throughout the memorable campaign of the Two Sicilies, and afterwards he went with him to Caprera. Later, in 1870, my brother, Edward Vizetelly, acted as orderly-officer to the general when he offered the help of his sword to France.--Trans. Six years of waiting again went by, and Orlando still dwelt at Turin, even after Florence had been chosen as the new capital. The Senate had acclaimed Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy; and Italy was indeed almost built, it lacked only Rome and Venice. But the great battles seemed all over, the epic era was closed; Venice was to be won by defeat. Orlando took part in the unlucky battle of Custozza, where he received two wounds, full of furious grief at the thought that Austria should be triumphant. But at that same moment the latter, defeated at Sadowa, relinquished Venetia, and five months later Orlando satisfied his desire to be in Venice participating in the joy of triumph, when Victor Emmanuel made his entry amidst the frantic acclamations of the people. Rome alone remained to be won, and wild impatience urged all Italy towards the city; but friendly France had sworn to maintain the Pope, and this acted as a check. Then, for the third time, Garibaldi dreamt of renewing the feats of the old-world legends, and threw himself upon Rome like a soldier of fortune illumined by patriotism and free from every tie. And for the third time Orlando shared in that fine heroic madness destined to be vanquished at Mentana by the Pontifical Zouaves supported by a small French corps. Again wounded, he came back to Turin in almost a dying condition. But, though his spirit quivered, he had to resign himself; the situation seemed to have no outlet; only an upheaval of the nations could give Rome to Italy. All at once the thunderclap of Sedan, of the downfall of France, resounded through the world; and then the road to Rome lay open, and Orlando, having returned to service in the regular army, was with the troops who took up position in the Campagna to ensure the safety of the Holy See, as was said in the letter which Victor Emmanuel wrote to Pius IX. There was, however, but the shadow of an engagement: General Kanzler's Pontifical Zouaves were compelled to fall back, and Orlando was one of the first to enter the city by the breach of the Porta Pia. Ah! that twentieth of September--that day when he experienced the greatest happiness of his life--a day of delirium, of complete triumph, which realised the dream of so many years of terrible contest, the dream for which he had sacrificed rest and fortune, and given both body and mind! Then came more than ten happy years in conquered Rome--in Rome adored, flattered, treated with all tenderness, like a woman in whom one has placed one's entire hope. From her he awaited so much national vigour, such a marvellous resurrection of strength and glory for the endowment of the young nation. Old Republican, old insurrectional soldier that he was, he had been obliged to adhere to the monarchy, and accept a senatorship. But then did not Garibaldi himself--Garibaldi his divinity--likewise call upon the King and sit in parliament? Mazzini alone, rejecting all compromises, was unwilling to rest content with a united and independent Italy that was not Republican. Moreover, another consideration influenced Orlando, the future of his son Luigi, who had attained his eighteenth birthday shortly after the occupation of Rome. Though he, Orlando, could manage with the crumbs which remained of the fortune he had expended in his country's service, he dreamt of a splendid destiny for the child of his heart. Realising that the heroic age was over, he desired to make a great politician of him, a great administrator, a man who should be useful to the mighty nation of the morrow; and it was on this account that he had not rejected royal favour, the reward of long devotion, desiring, as he did, to be in a position to help, watch, and guide Luigi. Besides, was he himself so old, so used-up, as to be unable to assist in organisation, even as he had assisted in conquest? Struck by his son's quick intelligence in business matters, perhaps also instinctively divining that the battle would now continue on financial and economic grounds, he obtained him employment at the Ministry of Finances. And again he himself lived on, dreaming, still enthusiastically believing in a splendid future, overflowing with boundless hope, seeing Rome double her population, grow and spread with a wild vegetation of new districts, and once more, in his loving enraptured eyes, become the queen of the world. But all at once came a thunderbolt. One morning, as he was going downstairs, Orlando was stricken with paralysis. Both his legs suddenly became lifeless, as heavy as lead. It was necessary to carry him up again, and never since had he set foot on the street pavement. At that time he had just completed his fifty-sixth year, and for fourteen years since he had remained in his arm-chair, as motionless as stone, he who had so impetuously trod every battlefield of Italy. It was a pitiful business, the collapse of a hero. And worst of all, from that room where he was for ever imprisoned, the old soldier beheld the slow crumbling of all his hopes, and fell into dismal melancholy, full of unacknowledged fear for the future. Now that the intoxication of action no longer dimmed his eyes, now that he spent his long and empty days in thought, his vision became clear. Italy, which he had desired to see so powerful, so triumphant in her unity, was acting madly, rushing to ruin, possibly to bankruptcy. Rome, which to him had ever been the one necessary capital, the city of unparalleled glory, requisite for the sovereign people of to-morrow, seemed unwilling to take upon herself the part of a great modern metropolis; heavy as a corpse she weighed with all her centuries on the bosom of the young nation. Moreover, his son Luigi distressed him. Rebellious to all guidance, the young man had become one of the devouring offsprings of conquest, eager to despoil that Italy, that Rome, which his father seemed to have desired solely in order that he might pillage them and batten on them. Orlando had vainly opposed Luigi's departure from the ministry, his participation in the frantic speculations on land and house property to which the mad building of the new districts had given rise. But at the same time he loved his son, and was reduced to silence, especially now when everything had succeeded with Luigi, even his most risky financial ventures, such as the transformation of the Villa Montefiori into a perfect town--a colossal enterprise in which many of great wealth had been ruined, but whence he himself had emerged with millions. And it was in part for this reason that Orlando, sad and silent, had obstinately restricted himself to one small room on the third floor of the little palazzo erected by Luigi in the Via Venti Settembre--a room where he lived cloistered with a single servant, subsisting on his own scanty income, and accepting nothing but that modest hospitality from his son. As Pierre reached that new Via Venti Settembre* which climbs the side and summit of the Viminal hill, he was struck by the heavy sumptuousness of the new "palaces," which betokened among the moderns the same taste for the huge that marked the ancient Romans. In the warm afternoon glow, blent of purple and old gold, the broad, triumphant thoroughfare, with its endless rows of white house-fronts, bore witness to new Rome's proud hope of futurity and sovereign power. And Pierre fairly gasped when he beheld the Palazzo delle Finanze, or Treasury, a gigantic erection, a cyclopean cube with a profusion of columns, balconies, pediments, and sculptured work, to which the building mania had given birth in a day of immoderate pride. And on the other side of the street, a little higher up, before reaching the Villa Bonaparte, stood Count Prada's little palazzo. * The name--Twentieth September Street--was given to the thoroughfare to commemorate the date of the occupation of Rome by Victor Emmanuel's army.--Trans. After discharging his driver, Pierre for a moment remained somewhat embarrassed. The door was open, and he entered the vestibule; but, as at the mansion in the Via Giulia, no door porter or servant was to be seen. So he had to make up his mind to ascend the monumental stairs, which with their marble balustrades seemed to be copied, on a smaller scale, from those of the Palazzo Boccanera. And there was much the same cold bareness, tempered, however, by a carpet and red door-hangings, which contrasted vividly with the white stucco of the walls. The reception-rooms, sixteen feet high, were on the first floor, and as a door chanced to be ajar he caught a glimpse of two /salons/, one following the other, and both displaying quite modern richness, with a profusion of silk and velvet hangings, gilt furniture, and lofty mirrors reflecting a pompous assemblage of stands and tables. And still there was nobody, not a soul, in that seemingly forsaken abode, which exhaled nought of woman's presence. Indeed Pierre was on the point of going down again to ring, when a footman at last presented himself. "Count Prada, if you please." The servant silently surveyed the little priest, and seemed to understand. "The father or the son?" he asked. "The father, Count Orlando Prada." "Oh! that's on the third floor." And he condescended to add: "The little door on the right-hand side of the landing. Knock loudly if you wish to be admitted." Pierre indeed had to knock twice, and then a little withered old man of military appearance, a former soldier who had remained in the Count's service, opened the door and apologised for the delay by saying that he had been attending to his master's legs. Immediately afterwards he announced the visitor, and the latter, after passing through a dim and narrow ante-room, was lost in amazement on finding himself in a relatively small chamber, extremely bare and bright, with wall-paper of a light hue studded with tiny blue flowers. Behind a screen was an iron bedstead, the soldier's pallet, and there was no other furniture than the arm-chair in which the cripple spent his days, with a table of black wood placed near him, and covered with books and papers, and two old straw-seated chairs which served for the accommodation of the infrequent visitors. A few planks, fixed to one of the walls, did duty as book-shelves. However, the broad, clear, curtainless window overlooked the most admirable panorama of Rome that could be desired. Then the room disappeared from before Pierre's eyes, and with a sudden shock of deep emotion he only beheld old Orlando, the old blanched lion, still superb, broad, and tall. A forest of white hair crowned his powerful head, with its thick mouth, fleshy broken nose, and large, sparkling, black eyes. A long white beard streamed down with the vigour of youth, curling like that of an ancient god. By that leonine muzzle one divined what great passions had growled within; but all, carnal and intellectual alike, had erupted in patriotism, in wild bravery, and riotous love of independence. And the old stricken hero, his torso still erect, was fixed there on his straw-seated arm-chair, with lifeless legs buried beneath a black wrapper. Alone did his arms and hands live, and his face beam with strength and intelligence. Orlando turned towards his servant, and gently said to him: "You can go away, Batista. Come back in a couple of hours." Then, looking Pierre full in the face, he exclaimed in a voice which was still sonorous despite his seventy years: "So it's you at last, my dear Monsieur Froment, and we shall be able to chat at our ease. There, take that chair, and sit down in front of me." He had noticed the glance of surprise which the young priest had cast upon the bareness of the room, and he gaily added: "You will excuse me for receiving you in my cell. Yes, I live here like a monk, like an old invalided soldier, henceforth withdrawn from active life. My son long begged me to take one of the fine rooms downstairs. But what would have been the use of it? I have no needs, and I scarcely care for feather beds, for my old bones are accustomed to the hard ground. And then too I have such a fine view up here, all Rome presenting herself to me, now that I can no longer go to her." With a wave of the hand towards the window he sought to hide the embarrassment, the slight flush which came to him each time that he thus excused his son; unwilling as he was to tell the true reason, the scruple of probity which had made him obstinately cling to his bare pauper's lodging. "But it is very nice, the view is superb!" declared Pierre, in order to please him. "I am for my own part very glad to see you, very glad to be able to grasp your valiant hands, which accomplished so many great things." Orlando made a fresh gesture, as though to sweep the past away. "Pooh! pooh! all that is dead and buried. Let us talk about you, my dear Monsieur Froment, you who are young and represent the present; and especially about your book, which represents the future! Ah! if you only knew how angry your book, your 'New Rome,' made me first of all." He began to laugh, and took the book from off the table near him; then, tapping on its cover with his big, broad hand, he continued: "No, you cannot imagine with what starts of protest I read your book. The Pope, and again the Pope, and always the Pope! New Rome to be created by the Pope and for the Pope, to triumph thanks to the Pope, to be given to the Pope, and to fuse its glory in the glory of the Pope! But what about us? What about Italy? What about all the millions which we have spent in order to make Rome a great capital? Ah! only a Frenchman, and a Frenchman of Paris, could have written such a book! But let me tell you, my dear sir, if you are ignorant of it, that Rome has become the capital of the kingdom of Italy, that we here have King Humbert, and the Italian people, a whole nation which must be taken into account, and which means to keep Rome--glorious, resuscitated Rome--for itself!" This juvenile ardour made Pierre laugh in turn. "Yes, yes," said he, "you wrote me that. Only what does it matter from my point of view? Italy is but one nation, a part of humanity, and I desire concord and fraternity among all the nations, mankind reconciled, believing, and happy. Of what consequence, then, is any particular form of government, monarchy or republic, of what consequence is any question of a united and independent country, if all mankind forms but one free people subsisting on truth and justice?" To only one word of this enthusiastic outburst did Orlando pay attention. In a lower tone, and with a dreamy air, he resumed: "Ah! a republic. In my youth I ardently desired one. I fought for one; I conspired with Mazzini, a saintly man, a believer, who was shattered by collision with the absolute. And then, too, one had to bow to practical necessities; the most obstinate ended by submitting. And nowadays would a republic save us? In any case it would differ but little from our parliamentary monarchy. Just think of what goes on in France! And so why risk a revolution which would place power in the hands of the extreme revolutionists, the anarchists? We fear all that, and this explains our resignation. I know very well that a few think they can detect salvation in a republican federation, a reconstitution of all the former little states in so many republics, over which Rome would preside. The Vatican would gain largely by any such transformation; still one cannot say that it endeavours to bring it about; it simply regards the eventuality without disfavour. But it is a dream, a dream!" At this Orlando's gaiety came back to him, with even a little gentle irony: "You don't know, I suppose, what it was that took my fancy in your book--for, in spite of all my protests, I have read it twice. Well, what pleased me was that Mazzini himself might almost have written it at one time. Yes! I found all my youth again in your pages, all the wild hope of my twenty-fifth year, the new religion of a humanitarian Christ, the pacification of the world effected by the Gospel! Are you aware that, long before your time, Mazzini desired the renovation of Christianity? He set dogma and discipline on one side and only retained morals. And it was new Rome, the Rome of the people, which he would have given as see to the universal Church, in which all the churches of the past were to be fused--Rome, the eternal and predestined city, the mother and queen, whose domination was to arise anew to ensure the definitive happiness of mankind! Is it not curious that all the present-day Neo-Catholicism, the vague, spiritualistic awakening, the evolution towards communion and Christian charity, with which some are making so much stir, should be simply a return of the mystical and humanitarian ideas of 1848? Alas! I saw all that, I believed and burned, and I know in what a fine mess those flights into the azure of mystery landed us! So it cannot be helped, I lack confidence." Then, as Pierre on his side was growing impassioned and sought to reply, he stopped him: "No, let me finish. I only want to convince you how absolutely necessary it was that we should take Rome and make her the capital of Italy. Without Rome new Italy could not have existed; Rome represented the glory of ancient time; in her dust lay the sovereign power which we wished to re-establish; she brought strength, beauty, eternity to those who possessed her. Standing in the middle of our country, she was its heart, and must assuredly become its life as soon as she should be awakened from the long sleep of ruin. Ah! how we desired her, amidst victory and amidst defeat, through years and years of frightful impatience! For my part I loved her, and longed for her, far more than for any woman, with my blood burning, and in despair that I should be growing old. And when we possessed her, our folly was a desire to behold her huge, magnificent, and commanding all at once, the equal of the other great capitals of Europe--Berlin, Paris, and London. Look at her! she is still my only love, my only consolation now that I am virtually dead, with nothing alive in me but my eyes." With the same gesture as before, he directed Pierre's attention to the window. Under the glowing sky Rome stretched out in its immensity, empurpled and gilded by the slanting sunrays. Across the horizon, far, far away, the trees of the Janiculum stretched a green girdle, of a limpid emerald hue, whilst the dome of St. Peter's, more to the left, showed palely blue, like a sapphire bedimmed by too bright a light. Then came the low town, the old ruddy city, baked as it were by centuries of burning summers, soft to the eye and beautiful with the deep life of the past, an unbounded chaos of roofs, gables, towers, /campanili/, and cupolas. But, in the foreground under the window, there was the new city--that which had been building for the last five and twenty years--huge blocks of masonry piled up side by side, still white with plaster, neither the sun nor history having as yet robed them in purple. And in particular the roofs of the colossal Palazzo delle Finanze had a disastrous effect, spreading out like far, bare steppes of cruel hideousness. And it was upon the desolation and abomination of all the newly erected piles that the eyes of the old soldier of conquest at last rested. Silence ensued. Pierre felt the faint chill of hidden, unacknowledged sadness pass by, and courteously waited. "I must beg your pardon for having interrupted you just now," resumed Orlando; "but it seems to me that we cannot talk about your book to any good purpose until you have seen and studied Rome closely. You only arrived yesterday, did you not? Well, stroll about the city, look at things, question people, and I think that many of your ideas will change. I shall particularly like to know your impression of the Vatican since you have cone here solely to see the Pope and defend your book against the Index. Why should we discuss things to-day, if facts themselves are calculated to bring you to other views, far more readily than the finest speeches which I might make? It is understood, you will come to see me again, and we shall then know what we are talking about, and, maybe, agree together." "Why certainly, you are too kind," replied Pierre. "I only came to-day to express my gratitude to you for having read my book so attentively, and to pay homage to one of the glories of Italy." Orlando was not listening, but remained for a moment absorbed in thought, with his eyes still resting upon Rome. And overcome, despite himself, by secret disquietude, he resumed in a low voice as though making an involuntary confession: "We have gone too fast, no doubt. There were expenses of undeniable utility--the roads, ports, and railways. And it was necessary to arm the country also; I did not at first disapprove of the heavy military burden. But since then how crushing has been the war budget--a war which has never come, and the long wait for which has ruined us. Ah! I have always been the friend of France. I only reproach her with one thing, that she has failed to understand the position in which we were placed, the vital reasons which compelled us to ally ourselves with Germany. And then there are the thousand millions of /lire/* swallowed up in Rome! That was the real madness; pride and enthusiasm led us astray. Old and solitary as I've been for many years now, given to deep reflection, I was one of the first to divine the pitfall, the frightful financial crisis, the deficit which would bring about the collapse of the nation. I shouted it from the housetops, to my son, to all who came near me; but what was the use? They didn't listen; they were mad, still buying and selling and building, with no thought but for gambling booms and bubbles. But you'll see, you'll see. And the worst is that we are not situated as you are; we haven't a reserve of men and money in a dense peasant population, whose thrifty savings are always at hand to fill up the gaps caused by big catastrophes. There is no social rise among our people as yet; fresh men don't spring up out of the lower classes to reinvigorate the national blood, as they constantly do in your country. And, besides, the people are poor; they have no stockings to empty. The misery is frightful, I must admit it. Those who have any money prefer to spend it in the towns in a petty way rather than to risk it in agricultural or manufacturing enterprise. Factories are but slowly built, and the land is almost everywhere tilled in the same primitive manner as it was two thousand years ago. And then, too, take Rome--Rome, which didn't make Italy, but which Italy made its capital to satisfy an ardent, overpowering desire--Rome, which is still but a splendid bit of scenery, picturing the glory of the centuries, and which, apart from its historical splendour, has only given us its degenerate papal population, swollen with ignorance and pride! Ah! I loved Rome too well, and I still love it too well to regret being now within its walls. But, good heavens! what insanity its acquisition brought us, what piles of money it has cost us, and how heavily and triumphantly it weighs us down! Look! look!" * 40,000,000 pounds. He waved his hand as he spoke towards the livid roofs of the Palazzo delle Finanze, that vast and desolate steppe, as though he could see the harvest of glory all stripped off and bankruptcy appear with its fearful, threatening bareness. Restrained tears were dimming his eyes, and he looked superbly pitiful with his expression of baffled hope and grievous disquietude, with his huge white head, the muzzle of an old blanched lion henceforth powerless and caged in that bare, bright room, whose poverty-stricken aspect was instinct with so much pride that it seemed, as it were, a protest against the monumental splendour of the whole surrounding district! So those were the purposes to which the conquest had been put! And to think that he was impotent, henceforth unable to give his blood and his soul as he had done in the days gone by. "Yes, yes," he exclaimed in a final outburst; "one gave everything, heart and brain, one's whole life indeed, so long as it was a question of making the country one and independent. But, now that the country is ours, just try to stir up enthusiasm for the reorganisation of its finances! There's no ideality in that! And this explains why, whilst the old ones are dying off, not a new man comes to the front among the young ones--" All at once he stopped, looking somewhat embarrassed, yet smiling at his feverishness. "Excuse me," he said, "I'm off again, I'm incorrigible. But it's understood, we'll leave that subject alone, and you'll come back here, and we'll chat together when you've seen everything." From that moment he showed himself extremely pleasant, and it was apparent to Pierre that he regretted having said so much, by the seductive affability and growing affection which he now displayed. He begged the young priest to prolong his sojourn, to abstain from all hasty judgments on Rome, and to rest convinced that, at bottom, Italy still loved France. And he was also very desirous that France should love Italy, and displayed genuine anxiety at the thought that perhaps she loved her no more. As at the Boccanera mansion, on the previous evening, Pierre realised that an attempt was being made to persuade him to admiration and affection. Like a susceptible woman with secret misgivings respecting the attractive power of her beauty, Italy was all anxiety with regard to the opinion of her visitors, and strove to win and retain their love. However, Orlando again became impassioned when he learnt that Pierre was staying at the Boccanera mansion, and he made a gesture of extreme annoyance on hearing, at that very moment, a knock at the outer door. "Come in!" he called; but at the same time he detained Pierre, saying, "No, no, don't go yet; I wish to know--" But a lady came in--a woman of over forty, short and extremely plump, and still attractive with her small features and pretty smile swamped in fat. She was a blonde, with green, limpid eyes; and, fairly well dressed in a sober, nicely fitting mignonette gown, she looked at once pleasant, modest, and shrewd. "Ah! it's you, Stefana," said the old man, letting her kiss him. "Yes, uncle, I was passing by and came up to see how you were getting on." The visitor was the Signora Sacco, niece of Prada and a Neapolitan by birth, her mother having quitted Milan to marry a certain Pagani, a Neapolitan banker, who had afterwards failed. Subsequent to that disaster Stefana had married Sacco, then merely a petty post-office clerk. He, later on, wishing to revive his father-in-law's business, had launched into all sorts of terrible, complicated, suspicious affairs, which by unforeseen luck had ended in his election as a deputy. Since he had arrived in Rome, to conquer the city in his turn, his wife had been compelled to assist his devouring ambition by dressing well and opening a /salon/; and, although she was still a little awkward, she rendered him many real services, being very economical and prudent, a thorough good housewife, with all the sterling, substantial qualities of Northern Italy which she had inherited from her mother, and which showed conspicuously beside the turbulence and carelessness of her husband, in whom flared Southern Italy with its perpetual, rageful appetite. Despite his contempt for Sacco, old Orlando had retained some affection for his niece, in whose veins flowed blood similar to his own. He thanked her for her kind inquiries, and then at once spoke of an announcement which he had read in the morning papers, for he suspected that the deputy had sent his wife to ascertain his opinion. "Well, and that ministry?" he asked. The Signora had seated herself and made no haste to reply, but glanced at the newspapers strewn over the table. "Oh! nothing is settled yet," she at last responded; "the newspapers spoke out too soon. The Prime Minister sent for Sacco, and they had a talk together. But Sacco hesitates a good deal; he fears that he has no aptitude for the Department of Agriculture. Ah! if it were only the Finances--However, in any case, he would not have come to a decision without consulting you. What do you think of it, uncle?" He interrupted her with a violent wave of the hand: "No, no, I won't mix myself up in such matters!" To him the rapid success of that adventurer Sacco, that schemer and gambler who had always fished in troubled waters, was an abomination, the beginning of the end. His son Luigi certainly distressed him; but it was even worse to think that--whilst Luigi, with his great intelligence and many remaining fine qualities, was nothing at all--Sacco, on the other hand, Sacco, blunderhead and ever-famished battener that he was, had not merely slipped into parliament, but was now, it seemed, on the point of securing office! A little, swarthy, dry man he was, with big, round eyes, projecting cheekbones, and prominent chin. Ever dancing and chattering, he was gifted with a showy eloquence, all the force of which lay in his voice--a voice which at will became admirably powerful or gentle! And withal an insinuating man, profiting by every opportunity, wheedling and commanding by turn. "You hear, Stefana," said Orlando; "tell your husband that the only advice I have to give him is to return to his clerkship at the post-office, where perhaps he may be of use." What particularly filled the old soldier with indignation and despair was that such a man, a Sacco, should have fallen like a bandit on Rome--on that Rome whose conquest had cost so many noble efforts. And in his turn Sacco was conquering the city, was carrying it off from those who had won it by such hard toil, and was simply using it to satisfy his wild passion for power and its attendant enjoyments. Beneath his wheedling air there was the determination to devour everything. After the victory, while the spoil lay there, still warm, the wolves had come. It was the North that had made Italy, whereas the South, eager for the quarry, simply rushed upon the country, preyed upon it. And beneath the anger of the old stricken hero of Italian unity there was indeed all the growing antagonism of the North towards the South--the North industrious, economical, shrewd in politics, enlightened, full of all the great modern ideas, and the South ignorant and idle, bent on enjoying life immediately, amidst childish disorder in action, and an empty show of fine sonorous words. Stefana had begun to smile in a placid way while glancing at Pierre, who had approached the window. "Oh, you say that, uncle," she responded; "but you love us well all the same, and more than once you have given me myself some good advice, for which I'm very thankful to you. For instance, there's that affair of Attilio's--" She was alluding to her son, the lieutenant, and his love affair with Celia, the little Princess Buongiovanni, of which all the drawing-rooms, white and black alike, were talking. "Attilio--that's another matter!" exclaimed Orlando. "He and you are both of the same blood as myself, and it's wonderful how I see myself again in that fine fellow. Yes, he is just the same as I was at his age, good-looking and brave and enthusiastic! I'm paying myself compliments, you see. But, really now, Attilio warms my heart, for he is the future, and brings me back some hope. Well, and what about his affair?" "Oh! it gives us a lot of worry, uncle. I spoke to you about it before, but you shrugged your shoulders, saying that in matters of that kind all that the parents had to do was to let the lovers settle their affairs between them. Still, we don't want everybody to repeat that we are urging our son to get the little princess to elope with him, so that he may afterwards marry her money and title." At this Orlando indulged in a frank outburst of gaiety: "That's a fine scruple! Was it your husband who instructed you to tell me of it? I know, however, that he affects some delicacy in this matter. For my own part, I believe myself to be as honest as he is, and I can only repeat that, if I had a son like yours, so straightforward and good, and candidly loving, I should let him marry whomsoever he pleased in his own way. The Buongiovannis--good heavens! the Buongiovannis--why, despite all their rank and lineage and the money they still possess, it will be a great honour for them to have a handsome young man with a noble heart as their son-in-law!" Again did Stefana assume an expression of placid satisfaction. She had certainly only come there for approval. "Very well, uncle," she replied, "I'll repeat that to my husband, and he will pay great attention to it; for if you are severe towards him he holds you in perfect veneration. And as for that ministry--well, perhaps nothing will be done, Sacco will decide according to circumstances." She rose and took her leave, kissing the old soldier very affectionately as on her arrival. And she complimented him on his good looks, declaring that she found him as handsome as ever, and making him smile by speaking of a lady who was still madly in love with him. Then, after acknowledging the young priest's silent salutation by a slight bow, she went off, once more wearing her modest and sensible air. For a moment Orlando, with his eyes turned towards the door, remained silent, again sad, reflecting no doubt on all the difficult, equivocal present, so different from the glorious past. But all at once he turned to Pierre, who was still waiting. "And so, my friend," said he, "you are staying at the Palazzo Boccanera? Ah! what a grievous misfortune there has been on that side too!" However, when the priest had told him of his conversation with Benedetta, and of her message that she still loved him and would never forget his goodness to her, no matter whatever happened, he appeared moved and his voice trembled: "Yes, she has a good heart, she has no spite. But what would you have? She did not love Luigi, and he was possibly violent. There is no mystery about the matter now, and I can speak to you freely, since to my great grief everybody knows what has happened." Then Orlando abandoned himself to his recollections, and related how keen had been his delight on the eve of the marriage at the thought that so lovely a creature would become his daughter, and set some youth and charm around his invalid's arm-chair. He had always worshipped beauty, and would have had no other love than woman, if his country had not seized upon the best part of him. And Benedetta on her side loved him, revered him, constantly coming up to spend long hours with him, sharing his poor little room, which at those times became resplendent with all the divine grace that she brought with her. With her fresh breath near him, the pure scent she diffused, the caressing womanly tenderness with which she surrounded him, he lived anew. But, immediately afterwards, what a frightful drama and how his heart had bled at his inability to reconcile the husband and the wife! He could not possibly say that his son was in the wrong in desiring to be the loved and accepted spouse. At first indeed he had hoped to soften Benedetta, and throw her into Luigi's arms. But when she had confessed herself to him in tears, owning her old love for Dario, and her horror of belonging to another, he realised that she would never yield. And a whole year had then gone by; he had lived for a whole year imprisoned in his arm-chair, with that poignant drama progressing beneath him in those luxurious rooms whence no sound even reached his ears. How many times had he not listened, striving to hear, fearing atrocious quarrels, in despair at his inability to prove still useful by creating happiness. He knew nothing by his son, who kept his own counsel; he only learnt a few particulars from Benedetta at intervals when emotion left her defenceless; and that marriage in which he had for a moment espied the much-needed alliance between old and new Rome, that unconsummated marriage filled him with despair, as if it were indeed the defeat of every hope, the final collapse of the dream which had filled his life. And he himself had ended by desiring the divorce, so unbearable had become the suffering caused by such a situation. "Ah! my friend!" he said to Pierre; "never before did I so well understand the fatality of certain antagonism, the possibility of working one's own misfortune and that of others, even when one has the most loving heart and upright mind!" But at that moment the door again opened, and this time, without knocking, Count Luigi Prada came in. And after rapidly bowing to the visitor, who had risen, he gently took hold of his father's hands and felt them, as if fearing that they might be too warm or too cold. "I've just arrived from Frascati, where I had to sleep," said he; "for the interruption of all that building gives me a lot of worry. And I'm told that you spent a bad night!" "No, I assure you." "Oh! I knew you wouldn't own it. But why will you persist in living up here without any comfort? All this isn't suited to your age. I should be so pleased if you would accept a more comfortable room where you might sleep better." "No, no--I know that you love me well, my dear Luigi. But let me do as my old head tells me. That's the only way to make me happy." Pierre was much struck by the ardent affection which sparkled in the eyes of the two men as they gazed at one another, face to face. This seemed to him very touching and beautiful, knowing as he did how many contrary ideas and actions, how many moral divergencies separated them. And he next took an interest in comparing them physically. Count Luigi Prada, shorter, more thick-set than his father, had, however, much the same strong energetic head, crowned with coarse black hair, and the same frank but somewhat stern eyes set in a face of clear complexion, barred by thick moustaches. But his mouth differed--a sensual, voracious mouth it was, with wolfish teeth--a mouth of prey made for nights of rapine, when the only question is to bite, and tear, and devour others. And for this reason, when some praised the frankness in his eyes, another would retort: "Yes, but I don't like his mouth." His feet were large, his hands plump and over-broad, but admirably cared for. And Pierre marvelled at finding him such as he had anticipated. He knew enough of his story to picture in him a hero's son spoilt by conquest, eagerly devouring the harvest garnered by his father's glorious sword. And he particularly studied how the father's virtues had deflected and become transformed into vices in the son--the most noble qualities being perverted, heroic and disinterested energy lapsing into a ferocious appetite for possession, the man of battle leading to the man of booty, since the great gusts of enthusiasm no longer swept by, since men no longer fought, since they remained there resting, pillaging, and devouring amidst the heaped-up spoils. And the pity of it was that the old hero, the paralytic, motionless father beheld it all--beheld the degeneration of his son, the speculator and company promoter gorged with millions! However, Orlando introduced Pierre. "This is Monsieur l'Abbe Pierre Froment, whom I spoke to you about," he said, "the author of the book which I gave you to read." Luigi Prada showed himself very amiable, at once talking of home with an intelligent passion like one who wished to make the city a great modern capital. He had seen Paris transformed by the Second Empire; he had seen Berlin enlarged and embellished after the German victories; and, according to him, if Rome did not follow the movement, if it did not become the inhabitable capital of a great people, it was threatened with prompt death: either a crumbling museum or a renovated, resuscitated city--those were the alternatives.* * Personally I should have thought the example of Berlin a great deterrent. The enlargement and embellishment of the Prussian capital, after the war of 1870, was attended by far greater roguery and wholesale swindling than even the previous transformation of Paris. Thousands of people too were ruined, and instead of an increase of prosperity the result was the very reverse.--Trans. Greatly struck, almost gained over already, Pierre listened to this clever man, charmed with his firm, clear mind. He knew how skilfully Prada had manoeuvred in the affair of the Villa Montefiori, enriching himself when every one else was ruined, having doubtless foreseen the fatal catastrophe even while the gambling passion was maddening the entire nation. However, the young priest could already detect marks of weariness, precocious wrinkles and a fall of the lips, on that determined, energetic face, as though its possessor were growing tired of the continual struggle that he had to carry on amidst surrounding downfalls, the shock of which threatened to bring the most firmly established fortunes to the ground. It was said that Prada had recently had grave cause for anxiety; and indeed there was no longer any solidity to be found; everything might be swept away by the financial crisis which day by day was becoming more and more serious. In the case of Luigi, sturdy son though he was of Northern Italy, a sort of degeneration had set in, a slow rot, caused by the softening, perversive influence of Rome. He had there rushed upon the satisfaction of every appetite, and prolonged enjoyment was exhausting him. This, indeed, was one of the causes of the deep silent sadness of Orlando, who was compelled to witness the swift deterioration of his conquering race, whilst Sacco, the Italian of the South--served as it were by the climate, accustomed to the voluptuous atmosphere, the life of those sun-baked cities compounded of the dust of antiquity--bloomed there like the natural vegetation of a soil saturated with the crimes of history, and gradually grasped everything, both wealth and power. As Orlando spoke of Stefana's visit to his son, Sacco's name was mentioned. Then, without another word, the two men exchanged a smile. A rumour was current that the Minister of Agriculture, lately deceased, would perhaps not be replaced immediately, and that another minister would take charge of the department pending the next session of the Chamber. Next the Palazzo Boccanera was mentioned, and Pierre, his interest awakened, became more attentive. "Ah!" exclaimed Count Luigi, turning to him, "so you are staying in the Via Giulia? All the Rome of olden time sleeps there in the silence of forgetfulness." With perfect ease he went on to speak of the Cardinal and even of Benedetta--"the Countess," as he called her. But, although he was careful to let no sign of anger escape him, the young priest could divine that he was secretly quivering, full of suffering and spite. In him the enthusiastic energy of his father appeared in a baser, degenerate form. Quitting the yet handsome Princess Flavia in his passion for Benedetta, her divinely beautiful niece, he had resolved to make the latter his own at any cost, determined to marry her, to struggle with her and overcome her, although he knew that she loved him not, and that he would almost certainly wreck his entire life. Rather than relinquish her, however, he would have set Rome on fire. And thus his hopeless suffering was now great indeed: this woman was but his wife in name, and so torturing was the thought of her disdain, that at times, however calm his outward demeanour, he was consumed by a jealous vindictive sensual madness that did not even recoil from the idea of crime. "Monsieur l'Abbe is acquainted with the situation," sadly murmured old Orlando. His son responded by a wave of the hand, as though to say that everybody was acquainted with it. "Ah! father," he added, "but for you I should never have consented to take part in those proceedings for annulling the marriage! The Countess would have found herself compelled to return here, and would not nowadays be deriding us with her lover, that cousin of hers, Dario!" At this Orlando also waved his hand, as if in protest. "Oh! it's a fact, father," continued Luigi. "Why did she flee from here if it wasn't to go and live with her lover? And indeed, in my opinion, it's scandalous that a Cardinal's palace should shelter such goings-on!" This was the report which he spread abroad, the accusation which he everywhere levelled against his wife, of publicly carrying on a shameless /liaison/. In reality, however, he did not believe a word of it, being too well acquainted with Benedetta's firm rectitude, and her determination to belong to none but the man she loved, and to him only in marriage. However, in Prada's eyes such accusations were not only fair play but also very efficacious. And now, although he turned pale with covert exasperation, and laughed a hard, vindictive, cruel laugh, he went on to speak in a bantering tone of the proceedings for annulling the marriage, and in particular of the plea put forward by Benedetta's advocate Morano. And at last his language became so free that Orlando, with a glance towards the priest, gently interposed: "Luigi! Luigi!" "Yes, you are right, father, I'll say no more," thereupon added the young Count. "But it's really abominable and ridiculous. Lisbeth, you know, is highly amused at it." Orlando again looked displeased, for when visitors were present he did not like his son to refer to the person whom he had just named. Lisbeth Kauffmann, very blonde and pink and merry, was barely thirty years of age, and belonged to the Roman foreign colony. For two years past she had been a widow, her husband having died at Rome whither he had come to nurse a complaint of the lungs. Thenceforward free, and sufficiently well off, she had remained in the city by taste, having a marked predilection for art, and painting a little, herself. In the Via Principe Amadeo, in the new Viminal district, she had purchased a little palazzo, and transformed a large apartment on its second floor into a studio hung with old stuffs, and balmy in every season with the scent of flowers. The place was well known to tolerant and intellectual society. Lisbeth was there found in perpetual jubilation, clad in a long blouse, somewhat of a /gamine/ in her ways, trenchant too and often bold of speech, but nevertheless capital company, and as yet compromised with nobody but Prada. Their /liaison/ had begun some four months after his wife had left him, and now Lisbeth was near the time of becoming a mother. This she in no wise concealed, but displayed such candid tranquillity and happiness that her numerous acquaintances continued to visit her as if there were nothing in question, so facile and free indeed is the life of the great cosmopolitan continental cities. Under the circumstances which his wife's suit had created, Prada himself was not displeased at the turn which events had taken with regard to Lisbeth, but none the less his incurable wound still bled. There could be no compensation for the bitterness of Benedetta's disdain, it was she for whom his heart burned, and he dreamt of one day wreaking on her a tragic punishment. Pierre, knowing nothing of Lisbeth, failed to understand the allusions of Orlando and his son. But realising that there was some embarrassment between them, he sought to take countenance by picking from off the littered table a thick book which, to his surprise, he found to be a French educational work, one of those manuals for the /baccalaureat/,* containing a digest of the knowledge which the official programmes require. It was but a humble, practical, elementary work, yet it necessarily dealt with all the mathematical, physical, chemical, and natural sciences, thus broadly outlining the intellectual conquests of the century, the present phase of human knowledge. * The examination for the degree of bachelor, which degree is the necessary passport to all the liberal professions in France. M. Zola, by the way, failed to secure it, being ploughed for "insufficiency in literature"!--Trans. "Ah!" exclaimed Orlando, well pleased with the diversion, "you are looking at the book of my old friend Theophile Morin. He was one of the thousand of Marsala, you know, and helped us to conquer Sicily and Naples. A hero! But for more than thirty years now he has been living in France again, absorbed in the duties of his petty professorship, which hasn't made him at all rich. And so he lately published that book, which sells very well in France it seems; and it occurred to him that he might increase his modest profits on it by issuing translations, an Italian one among others. He and I have remained brothers, and thinking that my influence would prove decisive, he wishes to utilise it. But he is mistaken; I fear, alas! that I shall be unable to get anybody to take up his book." At this Luigi Prada, who had again become very composed and amiable, shrugged his shoulders slightly, full as he was of the scepticism of his generation which desired to maintain things in their actual state so as to derive the greatest profit from them. "What would be the good of it?" he murmured; "there are too many books already!" "No, no!" the old man passionately retorted, "there can never be too many books! We still and ever require fresh ones! It's by literature, not by the sword, that mankind will overcome falsehood and injustice and attain to the final peace of fraternity among the nations--Oh! you may smile; I know that you call these ideas my fancies of '48, the fancies of a greybeard, as people say in France. But it is none the less true that Italy is doomed, if the problem be not attacked from down below, if the people be not properly fashioned. And there is only one way to make a nation, to create men, and that is to educate them, to develop by educational means the immense lost force which now stagnates in ignorance and idleness. Yes, yes, Italy is made, but let us make an Italian nation. And give us more and more books, and let us ever go more and more forward into science and into light, if we wish to live and to be healthy, good, and strong!" With his torso erect, with his powerful leonine muzzle flaming with the white brightness of his beard and hair, old Orlando looked superb. And in that simple, candid chamber, so touching with its intentional poverty, he raised his cry of hope with such intensity of feverish faith, that before the young priest's eyes there arose another figure--that of Cardinal Boccanera, erect and black save for his snow-white hair, and likewise glowing with heroic beauty in his crumbling palace whose gilded ceilings threatened to fall about his head! Ah! the magnificent stubborn men of the past, the believers, the old men who still show themselves more virile, more ardent than the young! Those two represented the opposite poles of belief; they had not an idea, an affection in common, and in that ancient city of Rome, where all was being blown away in dust, they alone seemed to protest, indestructible, face to face like two parted brothers, standing motionless on either horizon. And to have seen them thus, one after the other, so great and grand, so lonely, so detached from ordinary life, was to fill one's day with a dream of eternity. Luigi, however, had taken hold of the old man's hands to calm him by an affectionate filial clasp. "Yes, yes, you are right, father, always right, and I'm a fool to contradict you. Now, pray don't move about like that, for you are uncovering yourself, and your legs will get cold again." So saying, he knelt down and very carefully arranged the wrapper; and then remaining on the floor like a child, albeit he was two and forty, he raised his moist eyes, full of mute, entreating worship towards the old man who, calmed and deeply moved, caressed his hair with a trembling touch. Pierre had been there for nearly two hours, when he at last took leave, greatly struck and affected by all that he had seen and heard. And again he had to promise that he would return and have a long chat with Orlando. Once out of doors he walked along at random. It was barely four o'clock, and it was his idea to ramble in this wise, without any predetermined programme, through Rome at that delightful hour when the sun sinks in the refreshed and far blue atmosphere. Almost immediately, however, he found himself in the Via Nazionale, along which he had driven on arriving the previous day. And he recognised the huge livid Banca d'Italia, the green gardens climbing to the Quirinal, and the heaven-soaring pines of the Villa Aldobrandini. Then, at the turn of the street, as he stopped short in order that he might again contemplate the column of Trajan which now rose up darkly from its low piazza, already full of twilight, he was surprised to see a victoria suddenly pull up, and a young man courteously beckon to him. "Monsieur l'Abbe Froment! Monsieur l'Abbe Froment!" It was young Prince Dario Boccanera, on his way to his daily drive along the Corso. He now virtually subsisted on the liberality of his uncle the Cardinal, and was almost always short of money. But, like all the Romans, he would, if necessary, have rather lived on bread and water than have forgone his carriage, horse, and coachman. An equipage, indeed, is the one indispensable luxury of Rome. "If you will come with me, Monsieur l'Abbe Froment," said the young Prince, "I will show you the most interesting part of our city." He doubtless desired to please Benedetta, by behaving amiably towards her protege. Idle as he was, too, it seemed to him a pleasant occupation to initiate that young priest, who was said to be so intelligent, into what he deemed the inimitable side, the true florescence of Roman life. Pierre was compelled to accept, although he would have preferred a solitary stroll. Yet he was interested in this young man, the last born of an exhausted race, who, while seemingly incapable of either thought or action, was none the less very seductive with his high-born pride and indolence. Far more a Roman than a patriot, Dario had never had the faintest inclination to rally to the new order of things, being well content to live apart and do nothing; and passionate though he was, he indulged in no follies, being very practical and sensible at heart, as are all his fellow-citizens, despite their apparent impetuosity. As soon as his carriage, after crossing the Piazza di Venezia, entered the Corso, he gave rein to his childish vanity, his desire to shine, his passion for gay, happy life in the open under the lovely sky. All this, indeed, was clearly expressed in the simple gesture which he made whilst exclaiming: "The Corso!" As on the previous day, Pierre was filled with astonishment. The long narrow street again stretched before him as far as the white dazzling Piazza del Popolo, the only difference being that the right-hand houses were now steeped in sunshine, whilst those on the left were black with shadow. What! was that the Corso then, that semi-obscure trench, close pressed by high and heavy house-fronts, that mean roadway where three vehicles could scarcely pass abreast, and which serried shops lined with gaudy displays? There was neither space, nor far horizon, nor refreshing greenery such as the fashionable drives of Paris could boast! Nothing but jostling, crowding, and stifling on the little footways under the narrow strip of sky. And although Dario named the pompous and historical palaces, Bonaparte, Doria, Odescalchi, Sciarra, and Chigi; although he pointed out the column of Marcus Aurelius on the Piazza Colonna, the most lively square of the whole city with its everlasting throng of lounging, gazing, chattering people; although, all the way to the Piazza del Popolo, he never ceased calling attention to churches, houses, and side-streets, notably the Via dei Condotti, at the far end of which the Trinity de' Monti, all golden in the glory of the sinking sun, appeared above that famous flight of steps, the triumphal Scala di Spagna--Pierre still and ever retained the impression of disillusion which the narrow, airless thoroughfare had conveyed to him: the "palaces" looked to him like mournful hospitals or barracks, the Piazza Colonna suffered terribly from a lack of trees, and the Trinity de' Monti alone took his fancy by its distant radiance of fairyland. But it was necessary to come back from the Piazza del Popolo to the Piazza di Venezia, then return to the former square, and come back yet again, following the entire Corso three and four times without wearying. The delighted Dario showed himself and looked about him, exchanging salutations. On either footway was a compact crowd of promenaders whose eyes roamed over the equipages and whose hands could have shaken those of the carriage folks. So great at last became the number of vehicles that both lines were absolutely unbroken, crowded to such a point that the coachmen could do no more than walk their horses. Perpetually going up and coming down the Corso, people scrutinised and jostled one another. It was open-air promiscuity, all Rome gathered together in the smallest possible space, the folks who knew one another and who met here as in a friendly drawing-room, and the folks belonging to adverse parties who did not speak together but who elbowed each other, and whose glances penetrated to each other's soul. Then a revelation came to Pierre, and he suddenly understood the Corso, the ancient custom, the passion and glory of the city. Its pleasure lay precisely in the very narrowness of the street, in that forced elbowing which facilitated not only desired meetings but the satisfaction of curiosity, the display of vanity, and the garnering of endless tittle-tattle. All Roman society met here each day, displayed itself, spied on itself, offering itself in spectacle to its own eyes, with such an indispensable need of thus beholding itself that the man of birth who missed the Corso was like one out of his element, destitute of newspapers, living like a savage. And withal the atmosphere was delightfully balmy, and the narrow strip of sky between the heavy, rusty mansions displayed an infinite azure purity. Dario never ceased smiling, and slightly inclining his head while he repeated to Pierre the names of princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses--high-sounding names whose flourish had filled history, whose sonorous syllables conjured up the shock of armour on the battlefield and the splendour of papal pomp with robes of purple, tiaras of gold, and sacred vestments sparkling with precious stones. And as Pierre listened and looked he was pained to see merely some corpulent ladies or undersized gentlemen, bloated or shrunken beings, whose ill-looks seemed to be increased by their modern attire. However, a few pretty women went by, particularly some young, silent girls with large, clear eyes. And just as Dario had pointed out the Palazzo Buongiovanni, a huge seventeenth-century facade, with windows encompassed by foliaged ornamentation deplorably heavy in style, he added gaily: "Ah! look--that's Attilio there on the footway. Young Lieutenant Sacco--you know, don't you?" Pierre signed that he understood. Standing there in uniform, Attilio, so young, so energetic and brave of appearance, with a frank countenance softly illumined by blue eyes like his mother's, at once pleased the priest. He seemed indeed the very personification of youth and love, with all their enthusiastic, disinterested hope in the future. "You'll see by and by, when we pass the palace again," said Dario. "He'll still be there and I'll show you something." Then he began to talk gaily of the girls of Rome, the little princesses, the little duchesses, so discreetly educated at the convent of the Sacred Heart, quitting it for the most part so ignorant and then completing their education beside their mothers, never going out but to accompany the latter on the obligatory drive to the Corso, and living through endless days, cloistered, imprisoned in the depths of sombre mansions. Nevertheless what tempests raged in those mute souls to which none had ever penetrated! what stealthy growth of will suddenly appeared from under passive obedience, apparent unconsciousness of surroundings! How many there were who stubbornly set their minds on carving out their lives for themselves, on choosing the man who might please them, and securing him despite the opposition of the entire world! And the lover was chosen there from among the stream of young men promenading the Corso, the lover hooked with a glance during the daily drive, those candid eyes speaking aloud and sufficing for confession and the gift of all, whilst not a breath was wafted from the lips so chastely closed. And afterwards there came love letters, furtively exchanged in church, and the winning-over of maids to facilitate stolen meetings, at first so innocent. In the end, a marriage often resulted. Celia, for her part, had determined to win Attilio on the very first day when their eyes had met. And it was from a window of the Palazzo Buongiovanni that she had perceived him one afternoon of mortal weariness. He had just raised his head, and she had taken him for ever and given herself to him with those large, pure eyes of hers as they rested on his own. She was but an /amorosa/--nothing more; he pleased her; she had set her heart on him--him and none other. She would have waited twenty years for him, but she relied on winning him at once by quiet stubbornness of will. People declared that the terrible fury of the Prince, her father, had proved impotent against her respectful, obstinate silence. He, man of mixed blood as he was, son of an American woman, and husband of an English woman, laboured but to retain his own name and fortune intact amidst the downfall of others; and it was rumoured that as the result of a quarrel which he had picked with his wife, whom he accused of not sufficiently watching over their daughter, the Princess had revolted, full not only of the pride of a foreigner who had brought a huge dowry in marriage, but also of such plain, frank egotism that she had declared she no longer found time enough to attend to herself, let alone another. Had she not already done enough in bearing him five children? She thought so; and now she spent her time in worshipping herself, letting Celia do as she listed, and taking no further interest in the household through which swept stormy gusts. However, the carriage was again about to pass the Buongiovanni mansion, and Dario forewarned Pierre. "You see," said he, "Attilio has come back. And now look up at the third window on the first floor." It was at once rapid and charming. Pierre saw the curtain slightly drawn aside and Celia's gentle face appear. Closed, candid lily, she did not smile, she did not move. Nothing could be read on those pure lips, or in those clear but fathomless eyes of hers. Yet she was taking Attilio to herself, and giving herself to him without reserve. And soon the curtain fell once more. "Ah, the little mask!" muttered Dario. "Can one ever tell what there is behind so much innocence?" As Pierre turned round he perceived Attilio, whose head was still raised, and whose face was also motionless and pale, with closed mouth, and widely opened eyes. And the young priest was deeply touched, for this was love, absolute love in its sudden omnipotence, true love, eternal and juvenescent, in which ambition and calculation played no part. Then Dario ordered the coachman to drive up to the Pincio; for, before or after the Corso, the round of the Pincio is obligatory on fine, clear afternoons. First came the Piazza del Popolo, the most airy and regular square of Rome, with its conjunction of thoroughfares, its churches and fountains, its central obelisk, and its two clumps of trees facing one another at either end of the small white paving-stones, betwixt the severe and sun-gilt buildings. Then, turning to the right, the carriage began to climb the inclined way to the Pincio--a magnificent winding ascent, decorated with bas-reliefs, statues, and fountains--a kind of apotheosis of marble, a commemoration of ancient Rome, rising amidst greenery. Up above, however, Pierre found the garden small, little better than a large square, with just the four necessary roadways to enable the carriages to drive round and round as long as they pleased. An uninterrupted line of busts of the great men of ancient and modern Italy fringed these roadways. But what Pierre most admired was the trees--trees of the most rare and varied kinds, chosen and tended with infinite care, and nearly always evergreens, so that in winter and summer alike the spot was adorned with lovely foliage of every imaginable shade of verdure. And beside these trees, along the fine, breezy roadways, Dario's victoria began to turn, following the continuous, unwearying stream of the other carriages. Pierre remarked one young woman of modest demeanour and attractive simplicity who sat alone in a dark-blue victoria, drawn by a well-groomed, elegantly harnessed horse. She was very pretty, short, with chestnut hair, a creamy complexion, and large gentle eyes. Quietly robed in dead-leaf silk, she wore a large hat, which alone looked somewhat extravagant. And seeing that Dario was staring at her, the priest inquired her name, whereat the young Prince smiled. Oh! she was nobody, La Tonietta was the name that people gave her; she was one of the few /demi-mondaines/ that Roman society talked of. Then, with the freeness and frankness which his race displays in such matters, Dario added some particulars. La Tonietta's origin was obscure; some said that she was the daughter of an innkeeper of Tivoli, and others that of a Neapolitan banker. At all events, she was very intelligent, had educated herself, and knew thoroughly well how to receive and entertain people at the little palazzo in the Via dei Mille, which had been given to her by old Marquis Manfredi now deceased. She made no scandalous show, had but one protector at a time, and the princesses and duchesses who paid attention to her at the Corso every afternoon, considered her nice-looking. One peculiarity had made her somewhat notorious. There was some one whom she loved and from whom she never accepted aught but a bouquet of white roses; and folks would smile indulgently when at times for weeks together she was seen driving round the Pincio with those pure, white bridal flowers on the carriage seat. Dario, however, suddenly paused in his explanations to address a ceremonious bow to a lady who, accompanied by a gentleman, drove by in a large landau. Then he simply said to the priest: "My mother." Pierre already knew of her. Viscount de la Choue had told him her story, how, after Prince Onofrio Boccanera's death, she had married again, although she was already fifty; how at the Corso, just like some young girl, she had hooked with her eyes a handsome man to her liking--one, too, who was fifteen years her junior. And Pierre also knew who that man was, a certain Jules Laporte, an ex-sergeant of the papal Swiss Guard, an ex-traveller in relics, compromised in an extraordinary "false relic" fraud; and he was further aware that Laporte's wife had made a fine-looking Marquis Montefiori of him, the last of the fortunate adventurers of romance, triumphing as in the legendary lands where shepherds are wedded to queens. At the next turn, as the large landau again went by, Pierre looked at the couple. The Marchioness was really wonderful, blooming with all the classical Roman beauty, tall, opulent, and very dark, with the head of a goddess and regular if somewhat massive features, nothing as yet betraying her age except the down upon her upper lip. And the Marquis, the Romanised Swiss of Geneva, really had a proud bearing, with his solid soldierly figure and long wavy moustaches. People said that he was in no wise a fool but, on the contrary, very gay and very supple, just the man to please women. His wife so gloried in him that she dragged him about and displayed him everywhere, having begun life afresh with him as if she were still but twenty, spending on him the little fortune which she had saved from the Villa Montefiori disaster, and so completely forgetting her son that she only saw the latter now and again at the promenade and acknowledged his bow like that of some chance acquaintance. "Let us go to see the sun set behind St. Peter's," all at once said Dario, conscientiously playing his part as a showman of curiosities. The victoria thereupon returned to the terrace, where a military band was now playing with a terrific blare of brass instruments. In order that their occupants might hear the music, a large number of carriages had already drawn up, and a growing crowd of loungers on foot had assembled there. And from that beautiful terrace, so broad and lofty, one of the most wonderful views of Rome was offered to the gaze. Beyond the Tiber, beyond the pale chaos of the new district of the castle meadows,* and between the greenery of Monte Mario and the Janiculum arose St. Peter's. Then on the left came all the olden city, an endless stretch of roofs, a rolling sea of edifices as far as the eye could reach. But one's glances always came back to St. Peter's, towering into the azure with pure and sovereign grandeur. And, seen from the terrace, the slow sunsets in the depths of the vast sky behind the colossus were sublime. * See /ante/ note on castle meadows. Sometimes there are topplings of sanguineous clouds, battles of giants hurling mountains at one another and succumbing beneath the monstrous ruins of flaming cities. Sometimes only red streaks or fissures appear on the surface of a sombre lake, as if a net of light has been flung to fish the submerged orb from amidst the seaweed. Sometimes, too, there is a rosy mist, a kind of delicate dust which falls, streaked with pearls by a distant shower, whose curtain is drawn across the mystery of the horizon. And sometimes there is a triumph, a /cortege/ of gold and purple chariots of cloud rolling along a highway of fire, galleys floating upon an azure sea, fantastic and extravagant pomps slowly sinking into the less and less fathomable abyss of the twilight. But that night the sublime spectacle presented itself to Pierre with a calm, blinding, desperate grandeur. At first, just above the dome of St. Peter's, the sun, descending in a spotless, deeply limpid sky, proved yet so resplendent that one's eyes could not face its brightness. And in this resplendency the dome seemed to be incandescent, you would have said a dome of liquid silver; whilst the surrounding districts, the house-roofs of the Borgo, were as though changed into a lake of live embers. Then, as the sun was by degrees inclined, it lost some of its blaze, and one could look; and soon afterwards sinking with majestic slowness it disappeared behind the dome, which showed forth darkly blue, while the orb, now entirely hidden, set an aureola around it, a glory like a crown of flaming rays. And then began the dream, the dazzling symbol, the singular illumination of the row of windows beneath the cupola which were transpierced by the light and looked like the ruddy mouths of furnaces, in such wise that one might have imagined the dome to be poised upon a brazier, isolated, in the air, as though raised and upheld by the violence of the fire. It all lasted barely three minutes. Down below the jumbled roofs of the Borgo became steeped in violet vapour, sank into increasing gloom, whilst from the Janiculum to Monte Mario the horizon showed its firm black line. And it was the sky then which became all purple and gold, displaying the infinite placidity of a supernatural radiance above the earth which faded into nihility. Finally the last window reflections were extinguished, the glow of the heavens departed, and nothing remained but the vague, fading roundness of the dome of St. Peter's amidst the all-invading night. And, by some subtle connection of ideas, Pierre at that moment once again saw rising before him the lofty, sad, declining figures of Cardinal Boccanera and old Orlando. On the evening of that day when he had learnt to know them, one after the other, both so great in the obstinacy of their hope, they seemed to be there, erect on the horizon above their annihilated city, on the fringe of the heavens which death apparently was about to seize. Was everything then to crumble with them? was everything to fade away and disappear in the falling night following upon accomplished Time? V ON the following day Narcisse Habert came in great worry to tell Pierre that Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo complained of being unwell, and asked for a delay of two or three days before receiving the young priest and considering the matter of his audience. Pierre was thus reduced to inaction, for he dared not make any attempt elsewhere in view of seeing the Pope. He had been so frightened by Nani and others that he feared he might jeopardise everything by inconsiderate endeavours. And so he began to visit Rome in order to occupy his leisure. His first visit was for the ruins of the Palatine. Going out alone one clear morning at eight o'clock, he presented himself at the entrance in the Via San Teodoro, an iron gateway flanked by the lodges of the keepers. One of the latter at once offered his services, and though Pierre would have preferred to roam at will, following the bent of his dream, he somehow did not like to refuse the offer of this man, who spoke French very distinctly, and smiled in a very good-natured way. He was a squatly built little man, a former soldier, some sixty years of age, and his square-cut, ruddy face was barred by thick white moustaches. "Then will you please follow me, Monsieur l'Abbe," said he. "I can see that you are French, Monsieur l'Abbe. I'm a Piedmontese myself, but I know the French well enough; I was with them at Solferino. Yes, yes, whatever people may say, one can't forget old friendships. Here, this way, please, to the right." Raising his eyes, Pierre had just perceived the line of cypresses edging the plateau of the Palatine on the side of the Tiber; and in the delicate blue atmosphere the intense greenery of these trees showed like a black fringe. They alone attracted the eye; the slope, of a dusty, dirty grey, stretched out bare and devastated, dotted by a few bushes, among which peeped fragments of ancient walls. All was instinct with the ravaged, leprous sadness of a spot handed over to excavation, and where only men of learning could wax enthusiastic. "The palaces of Tiberius, Caligula, and the Flavians are up above," resumed the guide. "We must keep then for the end and go round." Nevertheless he took a few steps to the left, and pausing before an excavation, a sort of grotto in the hillside, exclaimed: "This is the Lupercal den where the wolf suckled Romulus and Remus. Just here at the entry used to stand the Ruminal fig-tree which sheltered the twins." Pierre could not restrain a smile, so convinced was the tone in which the old soldier gave these explanations, proud as he was of all the ancient glory, and wont to regard the wildest legends as indisputable facts. However, when the worthy man pointed out some vestiges of Roma Quadrata--remnants of walls which really seemed to date from the foundation of the city--Pierre began to feel interested, and a first touch of emotion made his heart beat. This emotion was certainly not due to any beauty of scene, for he merely beheld a few courses of tufa blocks, placed one upon the other and uncemented. But a past which had been dead for seven and twenty centuries seemed to rise up before him, and those crumbling, blackened blocks, the foundation of such a mighty eclipse of power and splendour, acquired extraordinary majesty. Continuing their inspection, they went on, skirting the hillside. The outbuildings of the palaces must have descended to this point; fragments of porticoes, fallen beams, columns and friezes set up afresh, edged the rugged path which wound through wild weeds, suggesting a neglected cemetery; and the guide repeated the words which he had used day by day for ten years past, continuing to enunciate suppositions as facts, and giving a name, a destination, a history, to every one of the fragments. "The house of Augustus," he said at last, pointing towards some masses of earth and rubbish. Thereupon Pierre, unable to distinguish anything, ventured to inquire: "Where do you mean?" "Oh!" said the man, "it seems that the walls were still to be seen at the end of the last century. But it was entered from the other side, from the Sacred Way. On this side there was a huge balcony which overlooked the Circus Maximus so that one could view the sports. However, as you can see, the greater part of the palace is still buried under that big garden up above, the garden of the Villa Mills. When there's money for fresh excavations it will be found again, together with the temple of Apollo and the shrine of Vesta which accompanied it." Turning to the left, he next entered the Stadium, the arena erected for foot-racing, which stretched beside the palace of Augustus; and the priest's interest was now once more awakened. It was not that he found himself in presence of well-preserved and monumental remains, for not a column had remained erect, and only the right-hand walls were still standing. But the entire plan of the building had been traced, with the goals at either end, the porticus round the course, and the colossal imperial tribune which, after being on the left, annexed to the house of Augustus, had afterwards opened on the right, fitting into the palace of Septimius Severus. And while Pierre looked on all the scattered remnants, his guide went on chattering, furnishing the most copious and precise information, and declaring that the gentlemen who directed the excavations had mentally reconstructed the Stadium in each and every particular, and were even preparing a most exact plan of it, showing all the columns in their proper order and the statues in their niches, and even specifying the divers sorts of marble which had covered the walls. "Oh! the directors are quite at ease," the old soldier eventually added with an air of infinite satisfaction. "There will be nothing for the Germans to pounce on here. They won't be allowed to set things topsy-turvy as they did at the Forum, where everybody's at sea since they came along with their wonderful science!" Pierre--a Frenchman--smiled, and his interest increased when, by broken steps and wooden bridges thrown over gaps, he followed the guide into the great ruins of the palace of Severus. Rising on the southern point of the Palatine, this palace had overlooked the Appian Way and the Campagna as far as the eye could reach. Nowadays, almost the only remains are the substructures, the subterranean halls contrived under the arches of the terraces, by which the plateau of the hill was enlarged; and yet these dismantled substructures suffice to give some idea of the triumphant palace which they once upheld, so huge and powerful have they remained in their indestructible massiveness. Near by arose the famous Septizonium, the tower with the seven tiers of arcades, which only finally disappeared in the sixteenth century. One of the palace terraces yet juts out upon cyclopean arches and from it the view is splendid. But all the rest is a commingling of massive yet crumbling walls, gaping depths whose ceilings have fallen, endless corridors and vast halls of doubtful destination. Well cared for by the new administration, swept and cleansed of weeds, the ruins have lost their romantic wildness and assumed an aspect of bare and mournful grandeur. However, flashes of living sunlight often gild the ancient walls, penetrate by their breaches into the black halls, and animate with their dazzlement the mute melancholy of all this dead splendour now exhumed from the earth in which it slumbered for centuries. Over the old ruddy masonry, stripped of its pompous marble covering, is the purple mantle of the sunlight, draping the whole with imperial glory once more. For more than two hours already Pierre had been walking on, and yet he still had to visit all the earlier palaces on the north and east of the plateau. "We must go back," said the guide, "the gardens of the Villa Mills and the convent of San Bonaventura stop the way. We shall only be able to pass on this side when the excavations have made a clearance. Ah! Monsieur l'Abbe, if you had walked over the Palatine merely some fifty years ago! I've seen some plans of that time. There were only some vineyards and little gardens with hedges then, a real campagna, where not a soul was to be met. And to think that all these palaces were sleeping underneath!" Pierre followed him, and after again passing the house of Augustus, they ascended the slope and reached the vast Flavian palace,* still half buried by the neighbouring villa, and composed of a great number of halls large and small, on the nature of which scholars are still arguing. The aula regia, or throne-room, the basilica, or hall of justice, the triclinium, or dining-room, and the peristylium seem certainties; but for all the rest, and especially the small chambers of the private part of the structure, only more or less fanciful conjectures can be offered. Moreover, not a wall is entire; merely foundations peep out of the ground, mutilated bases describing the plan of the edifice. The only ruin preserved, as if by miracle, is the house on a lower level which some assert to have been that of Livia,* a house which seems very small beside all the huge palaces, and where are three halls comparatively intact, with mural paintings of mythological scenes, flowers, and fruits, still wonderfully fresh. As for the palace of Tiberius, not one of its stones can be seen; its remains lie buried beneath a lovely public garden; whilst of the neighbouring palace of Caligula, overhanging the Forum, there are only some huge substructures, akin to those of the house of Severus--buttresses, lofty arcades, which upheld the palace, vast basements, so to say, where the praetorians were posted and gorged themselves with continual junketings. And thus this lofty plateau dominating the city merely offered some scarcely recognisable vestiges to the view, stretches of grey, bare soil turned up by the pick, and dotted with fragments of old walls; and it needed a real effort of scholarly imagination to conjure up the ancient imperial splendour which once had triumphed there. * Begun by Vespasian and finished by Domitian.--Trans. ** Others assert it to have been the house of Germanicus, father of Caligula.--Trans. Nevertheless Pierre's guide, with quiet conviction, persisted in his explanations, pointing to empty space as though the edifices still rose before him. "Here," said he, "we are in the Area Palatina. Yonder, you see, is the facade of Domitian's palace, and there you have that of Caligula's palace, while on turning round the temple of Jupiter Stator is in front of you. The Sacred Way came up as far as here, and passed under the Porta Mugonia, one of the three gates of primitive Rome." He paused and pointed to the northwest portion of the height. "You will have noticed," he resumed, "that the Caesars didn't build yonder. And that was evidently because they had to respect some very ancient monuments dating from before the foundation of the city and greatly venerated by the people. There stood the temple of Victory built by Evander and his Arcadians, the Lupercal grotto which I showed you, and the humble hut of Romulus constructed of reeds and clay. Oh! everything has been found again, Monsieur l'Abbe; and, in spite of all that the Germans say there isn't the slightest doubt of it." Then, quite abruptly, like a man suddenly remembering the most interesting thing of all, he exclaimed: "Ah! to wind up we'll just go to see the subterranean gallery where Caligula was murdered." Thereupon they descended into a long crypto-porticus, through the breaches of which the sun now casts bright rays. Some ornaments of stucco and fragments of mosaic-work are yet to be seen. Still the spot remains mournful and desolate, well fitted for tragic horror. The old soldier's voice had become graver as he related how Caligula, on returning from the Palatine games, had been minded to descend all alone into this gallery to witness certain sacred dances which some youths from Asia were practising there. And then it was that the gloom gave Cassius Chaereas, the chief of the conspirators, an opportunity to deal him the first thrust in the abdomen. Howling with pain, the emperor sought to flee; but the assassins, his creatures, his dearest friends, rushed upon him, threw him down, and dealt him blow after blow, whilst he, mad with rage and fright, filled the dim, deaf gallery with the howling of a slaughtered beast. When he had expired, silence fell once more, and the frightened murderers fled. The classical visit to the Palatine was now over, and when Pierre came up into the light again, he wished to rid himself of his guide and remain alone in the pleasant, dreamy garden on the summit of the height. For three hours he had been tramping about with the guide's voice buzzing in his ears. The worthy man was now talking of his friendship for France and relating the battle of Magenta in great detail. He smiled as he took the piece of silver which Pierre offered him, and then started on the battle of Solferino. Indeed, it seemed impossible to stop him, when fortunately a lady came up to ask for some information. And, thereupon, he went off with her. "Good-evening, Monsieur l'Abbe," he said; "you can go down by way of Caligula's palace." Delightful was Pierre's relief when he was at last able to rest for a moment on one of the marble seats in the garden. There were but few clumps of trees, cypresses, box-trees, palms, and some fine evergreen oaks; but the latter, sheltering the seat, cast a dark shade of exquisite freshness around. The charm of the spot was also largely due to its dreamy solitude, to the low rustle which seemed to come from that ancient soil saturated with resounding history. Here formerly had been the pleasure grounds of the Villa Farnese which still exists though greatly damaged, and the grace of the Renascence seems to linger here, its breath passing caressingly through the shiny foliage of the old evergreen oaks. You are, as it were, enveloped by the soul of the past, an ethereal conglomeration of visions, and overhead is wafted the straying breath of innumerable generations buried beneath the sod. After a time, however, Pierre could no longer remain seated, so powerful was the attraction of Rome, scattered all around that august summit. So he rose and approached the balustrade of a terrace; and beneath him appeared the Forum, and beyond it the Capitoline hill. To the eye the latter now only presented a commingling of grey buildings, lacking both grandeur and beauty. On the summit one saw the rear of the Palace of the Senator, flat, with little windows, and surmounted by a high, square campanile. The large, bare, rusty-looking walls hid the church of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli and the spot where the temple of Capitoline Jove had formerly stood, radiant in all its royalty. On the left, some ugly houses rose terrace-wise upon the slope of Monte Caprino, where goats were pastured in the middle ages; while the few fine trees in the grounds of the Caffarelli palace, the present German embassy, set some greenery above the ancient Tarpeian rock now scarcely to be found, lost, hidden as it is, by buttress walls. Yet this was the Mount of the Capitol, the most glorious of the seven hills, with its citadel and its temple, the temple to which universal dominion was promised, the St. Peter's of pagan Rome; this indeed was the hill--steep on the side of the Forum, and a precipice on that of the Campus Martius--where the thunder of Jupiter fell, where in the dimmest of the far-off ages the Asylum of Romulus rose with its sacred oaks, a spot of infinite savage mystery. Here, later, were preserved the public documents of Roman grandeur inscribed on tablets of brass; hither climbed the heroes of the triumphs; and here the emperors became gods, erect in statues of marble. And nowadays the eye inquires wonderingly how so much history and so much glory can have had for their scene so small a space, such a rugged, jumbled pile of paltry buildings, a mole-hill, looking no bigger, no loftier than a hamlet perched between two valleys. Then another surprise for Pierre was the Forum, starting from the Capitol and stretching out below the Palatine: a narrow square, close pressed by the neighbouring hills, a hollow where Rome in growing had been compelled to rear edifice close to edifice till all stifled for lack of breathing space. It was necessary to dig very deep--some fifty feet--to find the venerable republican soil, and now all you see is a long, clean, livid trench, cleared of ivy and bramble, where the fragments of paving, the bases of columns, and the piles of foundations appear like bits of bone. Level with the ground the Basilica Julia, entirely mapped out, looks like an architect's ground plan. On that side the arch of Septimius Severus alone rears itself aloft, virtually intact, whilst of the temple of Vespasian only a few isolated columns remain still standing, as if by miracle, amidst the general downfall, soaring with a proud elegance, with sovereign audacity of equilibrium, so slender and so gilded, into the blue heavens. The column of Phocas is also erect; and you see some portions of the Rostra fitted together out of fragments discovered near by. But if the eye seeks a sensation of extraordinary vastness, it must travel beyond the three columns of the temple of Castor and Pollux, beyond the vestiges of the house of the Vestals, beyond the temple of Faustina, in which the Christian Church of San Lorenzo has so composedly installed itself, and even beyond the round temple of Romulus, to light upon the Basilica of Constantine with its three colossal, gaping archways. From the Palatine they look like porches built for a nation of giants, so massive that a fallen fragment resembles some huge rock hurled by a whirlwind from a mountain summit. And there, in that illustrious, narrow, overflowing Forum the history of the greatest of nations held for centuries, from the legendary time of the Sabine women, reconciling their relatives and their ravishers, to that of the proclamation of public liberty, so slowly wrung from the patricians by the plebeians. Was not the Forum at once the market, the exchange, the tribunal, the open-air hall of public meeting? The Gracchi there defended the cause of the humble; Sylla there set up the lists of those whom he proscribed; Cicero there spoke, and there, against the rostra, his bleeding head was hung. Then, under the emperors, the old renown was dimmed, the centuries buried the monuments and temples with such piles of dust that all that the middle ages could do was to turn the spot into a cattle market! Respect has come back once more, a respect which violates tombs, which is full of feverish curiosity and science, which is dissatisfied with mere hypotheses, which loses itself amidst this historical soil where generations rise one above the other, and hesitates between the fifteen or twenty restorations of the Forum that have been planned on paper, each of them as plausible as the other. But to the mere passer-by, who is not a professional scholar and has not recently re-perused the history of Rome, the details have no significance. All he sees on this searched and scoured spot is a city's cemetery where old exhumed stones are whitening, and whence rises the intense sadness that envelops dead nations. Pierre, however, noting here and there fragments of the Sacred Way, now turning, now running down, and now ascending with their pavement of silex indented by the chariot-wheels, thought of the triumphs, of the ascent of the triumpher, so sorely shaken as his chariot jolted over that rough pavement of glory. But the horizon expanded towards the southeast, and beyond the arches of Titus and Constantine he perceived the Colosseum. Ah! that colossus, only one-half or so of which has been destroyed by time as with the stroke of a mighty scythe, it rises in its enormity and majesty like a stone lace-work with hundreds of empty bays agape against the blue of heaven! There is a world of halls, stairs, landings, and passages, a world where one loses oneself amidst death-like silence and solitude. The furrowed tiers of seats, eaten into by the atmosphere, are like shapeless steps leading down into some old extinct crater, some natural circus excavated by the force of the elements in indestructible rock. The hot suns of eighteen hundred years have baked and scorched this ruin, which has reverted to a state of nature, bare and golden-brown like a mountain-side, since it has been stripped of its vegetation, the flora which once made it like a virgin forest. And what an evocation when the mind sets flesh and blood and life again on all that dead osseous framework, fills the circus with the 90,000 spectators which it could hold, marshals the games and the combats of the arena, gathers a whole civilisation together, from the emperor and the dignitaries to the surging plebeian sea, all aglow with the agitation and brilliancy of an impassioned people, assembled under the ruddy reflection of the giant purple velum. And then, yet further, on the horizon, were other cyclopean ruins, the baths of Caracalla, standing there like relics of a race of giants long since vanished from the world: halls extravagantly and inexplicably spacious and lofty; vestibules large enough for an entire population; a /frigidarium/ where five hundred people could swim together; a /tepidarium/ and a /calidarium/* on the same proportions, born of a wild craving for the huge; and then the terrific massiveness of the structures, the thickness of the piles of brick-work, such as no feudal castle ever knew; and, in addition, the general immensity which makes passing visitors look like lost ants; such an extraordinary riot of the great and the mighty that one wonders for what men, for what multitudes, this monstrous edifice was reared. To-day, you would say a mass of rocks in the rough, thrown from some height for building the abode of Titans. * Tepidarium, warm bath; calidarium, vapour bath.--Trans. And as Pierre gazed, he became more and more immersed in the limitless past which encompassed him. On all sides history rose up like a surging sea. Those bluey plains on the north and west were ancient Etruria; those jagged crests on the east were the Sabine Mountains; while southward, the Alban Mountains and Latium spread out in the streaming gold of the sunshine. Alba Longa was there, and so was Monte Cavo, with its crown of old trees, and the convent which has taken the place of the ancient temple of Jupiter. Then beyond the Forum, beyond the Capitol, the greater part of Rome stretched out, whilst behind Pierre, on the margin of the Tiber, was the Janiculum. And a voice seemed to come from the whole city, a voice which told him of Rome's eternal life, resplendent with past greatness. He remembered just enough of what he had been taught at school to realise where he was; he knew just what every one knows of Rome with no pretension to scholarship, and it was more particularly his artistic temperament which awoke within him and gathered warmth from the flame of memory. The present had disappeared, and the ocean of the past was still rising, buoying him up, carrying him away. And then his mind involuntarily pictured a resurrection instinct with life. The grey, dismal Palatine, razed like some accursed city, suddenly became animated, peopled, crowned with palaces and temples. There had been the cradle of the Eternal City, founded by Romulus on that summit overlooking the Tiber. There assuredly the seven kings of its two and a half centuries of monarchical rule had dwelt, enclosed within high, strong walls, which had but three gateways. Then the five centuries of republican sway spread out, the greatest, the most glorious of all the centuries, those which brought the Italic peninsula and finally the known world under Roman dominion. During those victorious years of social and war-like struggle, Rome grew and peopled the seven hills, and the Palatine became but a venerable cradle with legendary temples, and was even gradually invaded by private residences. But at last Caesar, the incarnation of the power of his race, after Gaul and after Pharsalia triumphed in the name of the whole Roman people, having completed the colossal task by which the five following centuries of imperialism were to profit, with a pompous splendour and a rush of every appetite. And then Augustus could ascend to power; glory had reached its climax; millions of gold were waiting to be filched from the depths of the provinces; and the imperial gala was to begin in the world's capital, before the eyes of the dazzled and subjected nations. Augustus had been born on the Palatine, and after Actium had given him the empire, he set his pride in reigning from the summit of that sacred mount, venerated by the people. He bought up private houses and there built his palace with luxurious splendour: an atrium upheld by four pilasters and eight columns; a peristylium encompassed by fifty-six Ionic columns; private apartments all around, and all in marble; a profusion of marble, brought at great cost from foreign lands, and of the brightest hues, resplendent like gems. And he lodged himself with the gods, building near his own abode a large temple of Apollo and a shrine of Vesta in order to ensure himself divine and eternal sovereignty. And then the seed of the imperial palaces was sown; they were to spring up, grow and swarm, and cover the entire mount. Ah! the all-powerfulness of Augustus, his four and forty years of total, absolute, superhuman power, such as no despot has known even in his dreams! He had taken to himself every title, united every magistracy in his person. Imperator and consul, he commanded the armies and exercised executive power; pro-consul, he was supreme in the provinces; perpetual censor and princeps, he reigned over the senate; tribune, he was the master of the people. And, formerly called Octavius, he had caused himself to be declared Augustus, sacred, god among men, having his temples and his priests, worshipped in his lifetime like a divinity deigning to visit the earth. And finally he had resolved to be supreme pontiff, annexing religious to civil power, and thus by a stroke of genius attaining to the most complete dominion to which man can climb. As the supreme pontiff could not reside in a private house, he declared his abode to be State property. As the supreme pontiff could not leave the vicinity of the temple of Vesta, he built a temple to that goddess near his own dwelling, leaving the guardianship of the ancient altar below the Palatine to the Vestal virgins. He spared no effort, for he well realised that human omnipotence, the mastery of mankind and the world, lay in that reunion of sovereignty, in being both king and priest, emperor and pope. All the sap of a mighty race, all the victories achieved, and all the favours of fortune yet to be garnered, blossomed forth in Augustus, in a unique splendour which was never again to shed such brilliant radiance. He was really the master of the world, amidst the conquered and pacified nations, encompassed by immortal glory in literature and in art. In him would seem to have been satisfied the old intense ambition of his people, the ambition which it had pursued through centuries of patient conquest, to become the people-king. The blood of Rome, the blood of Augustus, at last coruscated in the sunlight, in the purple of empire. And the blood of Augustus, of the divine, triumphant, absolute sovereign of bodies and souls, of the man in whom seven centuries of national pride had culminated, was to descend through the ages, through an innumerable posterity with a heritage of boundless pride and ambition. For it was fatal: the blood of Augustus was bound to spring into life once more and pulsate in the veins of all the successive masters of Rome, ever haunting them with the dream of ruling the whole world. And later on, after the decline and fall, when power had once more become divided between the king and the priest, the popes--their hearts burning with the red, devouring blood of their great forerunner--had no other passion, no other policy, through the centuries, than that of attaining to civil dominion, to the totality of human power. But Augustus being dead, his palace having been closed and consecrated, Pierre saw that of Tiberius spring up from the soil. It had stood where his feet now rested, where the beautiful evergreen oaks sheltered him. He pictured it with courts, porticoes, and halls, both substantial and grand, despite the gloomy bent of the emperor who betook himself far from Rome to live amongst informers and debauchees, with his heart and brain poisoned by power to the point of crime and most extraordinary insanity. Then the palace of Caligula followed, an enlargement of that of Tiberius, with arcades set up to increase its extent, and a bridge thrown over the Forum to the Capitol, in order that the prince might go thither at his ease to converse with Jove, whose son he claimed to be. And sovereignty also rendered this one ferocious--a madman with omnipotence to do as he listed! Then, after Claudius, Nero, not finding the Palatine large enough, seized upon the delightful gardens climbing the Esquiline in order to set up his Golden House, a dream of sumptuous immensity which he could not complete and the ruins of which disappeared in the troubles following the death of this monster whom pride demented. Next, in eighteen months, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius fell one upon the other, in mire and in blood, the purple converting them also into imbeciles and monsters, gorged like unclean beasts at the trough of imperial enjoyment. And afterwards came the Flavians, at first a respite, with commonsense and human kindness: Vespasian; next Titus, who built but little on the Palatine; but then Domitian, in whom the sombre madness of omnipotence burst forth anew amidst a /regime/ of fear and spying, idiotic atrocities and crimes, debauchery contrary to nature, and building enterprises born of insane vanity instinct with a desire to outvie the temples of the gods. The palace of Domitian, parted by a lane from that of Tiberius, arose colossal-like--a palace of fairyland. There was the hall of audience, with its throne of gold, its sixteen columns of Phrygian and Numidian marble and its eight niches containing colossal statues; there were the hall of justice, the vast dining-room, the peristylium, the sleeping apartments, where granite, porphyry, and alabaster overflowed, carved and decorated by the most famous artists, and lavished on all sides in order to dazzle the world. And finally, many years later, a last palace was added to all the others--that of Septimius Severus: again a building of pride, with arches supporting lofty halls, terraced storeys, towers o'er-topping the roofs, a perfect Babylonian pile, rising up at the extreme point of the mount in view of the Appian Way, so that the emperor's compatriots--those from the province of Africa, where he was born--might, on reaching the horizon, marvel at his fortune and worship him in his glory. And now Pierre beheld all those palaces which he had conjured up around him, resuscitated, resplendent in the full sunlight. They were as if linked together, parted merely by the narrowest of passages. In order that not an inch of that precious summit might be lost, they had sprouted thickly like the monstrous florescence of strength, power, and unbridled pride which satisfied itself at the cost of millions, bleeding the whole world for the enjoyment of one man. And in truth there was but one palace altogether, a palace enlarged as soon as one emperor died and was placed among the deities, and another, shunning the consecrated pile where possibly the shadow of death frightened him, experienced an imperious need to build a house of his own and perpetuate in everlasting stone the memory of his reign. All the emperors were seized with this building craze; it was like a disease which the very throne seemed to carry from one occupant to another with growing intensity, a consuming desire to excel all predecessors by thicker and higher walls, by a more and more wonderful profusion of marbles, columns, and statues. And among all these princes there was the idea of a glorious survival, of leaving a testimony of their greatness to dazzled and stupefied generations, of perpetuating themselves by marvels which would not perish but for ever weigh heavily upon the earth, when their own light ashes should long since have been swept away by the winds. And thus the Palatine became but the venerable base of a monstrous edifice, a thick vegetation of adjoining buildings, each new pile being like a fresh eruption of feverish pride; while the whole, now showing the snowy brightness of white marble and now the glowing hues of coloured marble, ended by crowning Rome and the world with the most extraordinary and most insolent abode of sovereignty-- whether palace, temple, basilica, or cathedral--that omnipotence and dominion have ever reared under the heavens. But death lurked beneath this excess of strength and glory. Seven hundred and thirty years of monarchy and republic had sufficed to make Rome great; and in five centuries of imperial sway the people-king was to be devoured down to its last muscles. There was the immensity of the territory, the more distant provinces gradually pillaged and exhausted; there was the fisc consuming everything, digging the pit of fatal bankruptcy; and there was the degeneration of the people, poisoned by the scenes of the circus and the arena, fallen to the sloth and debauchery of their masters, the Caesars, while mercenaries fought the foe and tilled the soil. Already at the time of Constantine, Rome had a rival, Byzantium; disruption followed with Honorius; and then some ten emperors sufficed for decomposition to be complete, for the bones of the dying prey to be picked clean, the end coming with Romulus Augustulus, the sorry creature whose name is, so to say, a mockery of the whole glorious history, a buffet for both the founder of Rome and the founder of the empire. The palaces, the colossal assemblage of walls, storeys, terraces, and gaping roofs, still remained on the deserted Palatine; many ornaments and statues, however, had already been removed to Byzantium. And the empire, having become Christian, had afterwards closed the temples and extinguished the fire of Vesta, whilst yet respecting the ancient Palladium. But in the fifth century the barbarians rush upon Rome, sack and burn it, and carry the spoils spared by the flames away in their chariots. As long as the city was dependent on Byzantium a custodian of the imperial palaces remained there watching over the Palatine. Then all fades and crumbles in the night of the middle ages. It would really seem that the popes then slowly took the place of the Caesars, succeeding them both in their abandoned marble halls and their ever-subsisting passion for domination. Some of them assuredly dwelt in the palace of Septimius Severus; a council of the Church was held in the Septizonium; and, later on, Gelasius II was elected in a neighbouring monastery on the sacred mount. It was as if Augustus were again rising from the tomb, once more master of the world, with a Sacred College of Cardinals resuscitating the Roman Senate. In the twelfth century the Septizonium belonged to some Benedictine monks, and was sold by them to the powerful Frangipani family, who fortified it as they had already fortified the Colosseum and the arches of Constantine and Titus, thus forming a vast fortress round about the venerable cradle of the city. And the violent deeds of civil war and the ravages of invasion swept by like whirlwinds, throwing down the walls, razing the palaces and towers. And afterwards successive generations invaded the ruins, installed themselves in them by right of trover and conquest, turned them into cellars, store-places for forage, and stables for mules. Kitchen gardens were formed, vines were planted on the spots where fallen soil had covered the mosaics of the imperial halls. All around nettles and brambles grew up, and ivy preyed on the overturned porticoes, till there came a day when the colossal assemblage of palaces and temples, which marble was to have rendered eternal, seemed to dive beneath the dust, to disappear under the surging soil and vegetation which impassive Nature threw over it. And then, in the hot sunlight, among the wild flowerets, only big, buzzing flies remained, whilst herds of goats strayed in freedom through the throne-room of Domitian and the fallen sanctuary of Apollo. A great shudder passed through Pierre. To think of so much strength, pride, and grandeur, and such rapid ruin--a world for ever swept away! He wondered how entire palaces, yet peopled by admirable statuary, could thus have been gradually buried without any one thinking of protecting them. It was no sudden catastrophe which had swallowed up those masterpieces, subsequently to be disinterred with exclamations of admiring wonder; they had been drowned, as it were--caught progressively by the legs, the waist, and the neck, till at last the head had sunk beneath the rising tide. And how could one explain that generations had heedlessly witnessed such things without thought of putting forth a helping hand? It would seem as if, at a given moment, a black curtain were suddenly drawn across the world, as if mankind began afresh, with a new and empty brain which needed moulding and furnishing. Rome had become depopulated; men ceased to repair the ruins left by fire and sword; the edifices which by their very immensity had become useless were utterly neglected, allowed to crumble and fall. And then, too, the new religion everywhere hunted down the old one, stole its temples, overturned its gods. Earthly deposits probably completed the disaster--there were, it is said, both earthquakes and inundations--and the soil was ever rising, the alluvia of the young Christian world buried the ancient pagan society. And after the pillaging of the temples, the theft of the bronze roofs and marble columns, the climax came with the filching of the stones torn from the Colosseum and the Theatre of Marcellus, with the pounding of the statuary and sculpture-work, thrown into kilns to procure the lime needed for the new monuments of Catholic Rome. It was nearly one o'clock, and Pierre awoke as from a dream. The sun-rays were streaming in a golden rain between the shiny leaves of the ever-green oaks above him, and down below Rome lay dozing, overcome by the great heat. Then he made up his mind to leave the garden, and went stumbling over the rough pavement of the Clivus Victoriae, his mind still haunted by blinding visions. To complete his day, he had resolved to visit the old Appian Way during the afternoon, and, unwilling to return to the Via Giulia, he lunched at a suburban tavern, in a large, dim room, where, alone with the buzzing flies, he lingered for more than two hours, awaiting the sinking of the sun. Ah! that Appian Way, that ancient queen of the high roads, crossing the Campagna in a long straight line with rows of proud tombs on either hand--to Pierre it seemed like a triumphant prolongation of the Palatine. He there found the same passion for splendour and domination, the same craving to eternise the memory of Roman greatness in marble and daylight. Oblivion was vanquished; the dead refused to rest, and remained for ever erect among the living, on either side of that road which was traversed by multitudes from the entire world. The deified images of those who were now but dust still gazed on the passers-by with empty eyes; the inscriptions still spoke, proclaiming names and titles. In former times the rows of sepulchres must have extended without interruption along all the straight, level miles between the tomb of Caecilia Metella and that of Casale Rotondo, forming an elongated cemetery where the powerful and wealthy competed as to who should leave the most colossal and lavishly decorated mausoleum: such, indeed, was the craving for survival, the passion for pompous immortality, the desire to deify death by lodging it in temples; whereof the present-day monumental splendour of the Genoese Campo Santo and the Roman Campo Verano is, so to say, a remote inheritance. And what a vision it was to picture all the tremendous tombs on the right and left of the glorious pavement which the legions trod on their return from the conquest of the world! That tomb of Caecilia Metella, with its bond-stones so huge, its walls so thick that the middle ages transformed it into the battlemented keep of a fortress! And then all the tombs which follow, the modern structures erected in order that the marble fragments discovered might be set in place, the old blocks of brick and concrete, despoiled of their sculptured-work and rising up like seared rocks, yet still suggesting their original shapes as shrines, /cippi/, and /sarcophagi/. There is a wondrous succession of high reliefs figuring the dead in groups of three and five; statues in which the dead live deified, erect; seats contrived in niches in order that wayfarers may rest and bless the hospitality of the dead; laudatory epitaphs celebrating the dead, both the known and the unknown, the children of Sextius Pompeius Justus, the departed Marcus Servilius Quartus, Hilarius Fuscus, Rabirius Hermodorus; without counting the sepulchres venturously ascribed to Seneca and the Horatii and Curiatii. And finally there is the most extraordinary and gigantic of all the tombs, that known as Casale Rotondo, which is so large that it has been possible to establish a farmhouse and an olive garden on its substructures, which formerly upheld a double rotunda, adorned with Corinthian pilasters, large candelabra, and scenic masks.* * Some believe this tomb to have been that of Messalla Corvinus, the historian and poet, a friend of Augustus and Horace; others ascribe it to his son, Aurelius Messallinus Cotta.--Trans. Pierre, having driven in a cab as far as the tomb of Caecilia Metella, continued his excursion on foot, going slowly towards Casale Rotondo. In many places the old pavement appears--large blocks of basaltic lava, worn into deep ruts that jolt the best-hung vehicles. Among the ruined tombs on either hand run bands of grass, the neglected grass of cemeteries, scorched by the summer suns and sprinkled with big violet thistles and tall sulphur-wort. Parapets of dry stones, breast high, enclose the russet roadsides, which resound with the crepitation of grasshoppers; and, beyond, the Campagna stretches, vast and bare, as far as the eye can see. A parasol pine, a eucalyptus, some olive or fig trees, white with dust, alone rise up near the road at infrequent intervals. On the left the ruddy arches of the Acqua Claudia show vigorously in the meadows, and stretches of poorly cultivated land, vineyards, and little farms, extend to the blue and lilac Sabine and Alban hills, where Frascati, Rocca di Papa, and Albano set bright spots, which grow and whiten as one gets nearer to them. Then, on the right, towards the sea, the houseless, treeless plain grows and spreads with vast, broad ripples, extraordinary ocean-like simplicity and grandeur, a long, straight line alone parting it from the sky. At the height of summer all burns and flares on this limitless prairie, then of a ruddy gold; but in September a green tinge begins to suffuse the ocean of herbage, which dies away in the pink and mauve and vivid blue of the fine sunsets. As Pierre, quite alone and in a dreary mood, slowly paced the endless, flat highway, that resurrection of the past which he had beheld on the Palatine again confronted his mind's eye. On either hand the tombs once more rose up intact, with marble of dazzling whiteness. Had not the head of a colossal statue been found, mingled with fragments of huge sphinxes, at the foot of yonder vase-shaped mass of bricks? He seemed to see the entire colossal statue standing again between the huge, crouching beasts. Farther on a beautiful headless statue of a woman had been discovered in the cella of a sepulchre, and he beheld it, again whole, with features expressive of grace and strength smiling upon life. The inscriptions also became perfect; he could read and understand them at a glance, as if living among those dead ones of two thousand years ago. And the road, too, became peopled: the chariots thundered, the armies tramped along, the people of Rome jostled him with the feverish agitation of great communities. It was a return of the times of the Flavians or the Antonines, the palmy years of the empire, when the pomp of the Appian Way, with its grand sepulchres, carved and adorned like temples, attained its apogee. What a monumental Street of Death, what an approach to Rome, that highway, straight as an arrow, where with the extraordinary pomp of their pride, which had survived their dust, the great dead greeted the traveller, ushered him into the presence of the living! He may well have wondered among what sovereign people, what masters of the world, he was about to find himself--a nation which had committed to its dead the duty of telling strangers that it allowed nothing whatever to perish--that its dead, like its city, remained eternal and glorious in monuments of extraordinary vastness! To think of it--the foundations of a fortress, and a tower sixty feet in diameter, that one woman might be laid to rest! And then, far away, at the end of the superb, dazzling highway, bordered with the marble of its funereal palaces, Pierre, turning round, distinctly beheld the Palatine, with the marble of its imperial palaces--the huge assemblage of palaces whose omnipotence had dominated the world! But suddenly he started: two carabiniers had just appeared among the ruins. The spot was not safe; the authorities watched over tourists even in broad daylight. And later on came another meeting which caused him some emotion. He perceived an ecclesiastic, a tall old man, in a black cassock, edged and girt with red; and was surprised to recognise Cardinal Boccanera, who had quitted the roadway, and was slowly strolling along the band of grass, among the tall thistles and sulphur-wort. With his head lowered and his feet brushing against the fragments of the tombs, the Cardinal did not even see Pierre. The young priest courteously turned aside, surprised to find him so far from home and alone. Then, on perceiving a heavy coach, drawn by two black horses, behind a building, he understood matters. A footman in black livery was waiting motionless beside the carriage, and the coachman had not quitted his box. And Pierre remembered that the Cardinals were not expected to walk in Rome, so that they were compelled to drive into the country when they desired to take exercise. But what haughty sadness, what solitary and, so to say, ostracised grandeur there was about that tall, thoughtful old man, thus forced to seek the desert, and wander among the tombs, in order to breathe a little of the evening air! Pierre had lingered there for long hours; the twilight was coming on, and once again he witnessed a lovely sunset. On his left the Campagna became blurred, and assumed a slaty hue, against which the yellowish arcades of the aqueduct showed very plainly, while the Alban hills, far away, faded into pink. Then, on the right, towards the sea, the planet sank among a number of cloudlets, figuring an archipelago of gold in an ocean of dying embers. And excepting the sapphire sky, studded with rubies, above the endless line of the Campagna, which was likewise changed into a sparkling lake, the dull green of the herbage turning to a liquid emerald tint, there was nothing to be seen, neither a hillock nor a flock--nothing, indeed, but Cardinal Boccanera's black figure, erect among the tombs, and looking, as it were, enlarged as it stood out against the last purple flush of the sunset. Early on the following morning Pierre, eager to see everything, returned to the Appian Way in order to visit the catacomb of St. Calixtus, the most extensive and remarkable of the old Christian cemeteries, and one, too, where several of the early popes were buried. You ascend through a scorched garden, past olives and cypresses, reach a shanty of boards and plaster in which a little trade in "articles of piety" is carried on, and there a modern and fairly easy flight of steps enables you to descend. Pierre fortunately found there some French Trappists, who guard these catacombs and show them to strangers. One brother was on the point of going down with two French ladies, the mother and daughter, the former still comely and the other radiant with youth. They stood there smiling, though already slightly frightened, while the monk lighted some long, slim candles. He was a man with a bossy brow, the large, massive jaw of an obstinate believer and pale eyes bespeaking an ingenuous soul. "Ah! Monsieur l'Abbe," he said to Pierre, "you've come just in time. If the ladies are willing, you had better come with us; for three Brothers are already below with people, and you would have a long time to wait. This is the great season for visitors." The ladies politely nodded, and the Trappist handed a candle to the priest. In all probability neither mother nor daughter was devout, for both glanced askance at their new companion's cassock, and suddenly became serious. Then they all went down and found themselves in a narrow subterranean corridor. "Take care, mesdames," repeated the Trappist, lighting the ground with his candle. "Walk slowly, for there are projections and slopes." Then, in a shrill voice full of extraordinary conviction, he began his explanations. Pierre had descended in silence, his heart beating with emotion. Ah! how many times, indeed, in his innocent seminary days, had he not dreamt of those catacombs of the early Christians, those asylums of the primitive faith! Even recently, while writing his book, he had often thought of them as of the most ancient and venerable remains of that community of the lowly and simple, for the return of which he called. But his brain was full of pages written by poets and great prose writers. He had beheld the catacombs through the magnifying glass of those imaginative authors, and had believed them to be vast, similar to subterranean cities, with broad highways and spacious halls, fit for the accommodation of vast crowds. And now how poor and humble the reality! "Well, yes," said the Trappist in reply to the ladies' questions, "the corridor is scarcely more than a yard in width; two persons could not pass along side by side. How they dug it? Oh! it was simple enough. A family or a burial association needed a place of sepulchre. Well, a first gallery was excavated with pickaxes in soil of this description--granular tufa, as it is called--a reddish substance, as you can see, both soft and yet resistant, easy to work and at the same time waterproof. In a word, just the substance that was needed, and one, too, that has preserved the remains of the buried in a wonderful way." He paused and brought the flamelet of his candle near to the compartments excavated on either hand of the passage. "Look," he continued, "these are the /loculi/. Well, a subterranean gallery was dug, and on both sides these compartments were hollowed out, one above the other. The bodies of the dead were laid in them, for the most part simply wrapped in shrouds. Then the aperture was closed with tiles or marble slabs, carefully cemented. So, as you can see, everything explains itself. If other families joined the first one, or the burial association became more numerous, fresh galleries were added to those already filled. Passages were excavated on either hand, in every sense; and, indeed, a second and lower storey, at times even a third, was dug out. And here, you see, we are in a gallery which is certainly thirteen feet high. Now, you may wonder how they raised the bodies to place them in the compartments of the top tier. Well, they did not raise them to any such height; in all their work they kept on going lower and lower, removing more and more of the soil as the compartments became filled. And in this wise, in these catacombs of St. Calixtus, in less than four centuries, the Christians excavated more than ten miles of galleries, in which more than a million of their dead must have been laid to rest. Now, there are dozens of catacombs; the environs of Rome are honeycombed with them. Think of that, and perhaps you will be able to form some idea of the vast number of people who were buried in this manner." Pierre listened, feeling greatly impressed. He had once visited a coal pit in Belgium, and he here found the same narrow passages, the same heavy, stifling atmosphere, the same nihility of darkness and silence. The flamelets of the candles showed merely like stars in the deep gloom; they shed no radiance around. And he at last understood the character of this funereal, termite-like labour--these chance burrowings continued according to requirements, without art, method, or symmetry. The rugged soil was ever ascending and descending, the sides of the gallery snaked: neither plumb-line nor square had been used. All this, indeed, had simply been a work of charity and necessity, wrought by simple, willing grave-diggers, illiterate craftsmen, with the clumsy handiwork of the decline and fall. Proof thereof was furnished by the inscriptions and emblems on the marble slabs. They reminded one of the childish drawings which street urchins scrawl upon blank walls. "You see," the Trappist continued, "most frequently there is merely a name; and sometimes there is no name, but simply the words /In Pace/. At other times there is an emblem, the dove of purity, the palm of martyrdom, or else the fish whose name in Greek is composed of five letters which, as initials, signify: 'Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour.'" He again brought his candle near to the marble slabs, and the palm could be distinguished: a central stroke, whence started a few oblique lines; and then came the dove or the fish, roughly outlined, a zigzag indicating a tail, two bars representing the bird's feet, while a round point simulated an eye. And the letters of the short inscriptions were all askew, of various sizes, often quite misshapen, as in the coarse handwriting of the ignorant and simple. However, they reached a crypt, a sort of little hall, where the graves of several popes had been found; among others that of Sixtus II, a holy martyr, in whose honour there was a superbly engraved metrical inscription set up by Pope Damasus. Then, in another hall, a family vault of much the same size, decorated at a later stage, with naive mural paintings, the spot where St. Cecilia's body had been discovered was shown. And the explanations continued. The Trappist dilated on the paintings, drawing from them a confirmation of every dogma and belief, baptism, the Eucharist, the resurrection, Lazarus arising from the tomb, Jonas cast up by the whale, Daniel in the lions' den, Moses drawing water from the rock, and Christ--shown beardless, as was the practice in the early ages--accomplishing His various miracles. "You see," repeated the Trappist, "all those things are shown there; and remember that none of the paintings was specially prepared: they are absolutely authentic." At a question from Pierre, whose astonishment was increasing, he admitted that the catacombs had been mere cemeteries at the outset, when no religious ceremonies had been celebrated in them. It was only later, in the fourth century, when the martyrs were honoured, that the crypts were utilised for worship. And in the same way they only became places of refuge during the persecutions, when the Christians had to conceal the entrances to them. Previously they had remained freely and legally open. This was indeed their true history: cemeteries four centuries old becoming places of asylum, ravaged at times during the persecutions; afterwards held in veneration till the eighth century; then despoiled of their holy relics, and subsequently blocked up and forgotten, so that they remained buried during more than seven hundred years, people thinking of them so little that at the time of the first searches in the fifteenth century they were considered an extraordinary discovery--an intricate historical problem--one, moreover, which only our own age has solved. "Please stoop, mesdames," resumed the Trappist. "In this compartment here is a skeleton which has not been touched. It has been lying here for sixteen or seventeen hundred years, and will show you how the bodies were laid out. Savants say that it is the skeleton of a female, probably a young girl. It was still quite perfect last spring; but the skull, as you can see, is now split open. An American broke it with his walking stick to make sure that it was genuine." The ladies leaned forward, and the flickering light illumined their pale faces, expressive of mingled fright and compassion. Especially noticeable was the pitiful, pain-fraught look which appeared on the countenance of the daughter, so full of life with her red lips and large black eyes. Then all relapsed into gloom, and the little candles were borne aloft and went their way through the heavy darkness of the galleries. The visit lasted another hour, for the Trappist did not spare a detail, fond as he was of certain nooks and corners, and as zealous as if he desired to work the redemption of his visitors. While Pierre followed the others, a complete evolution took place within him. As he looked about him, and formed a more and more complete idea of his surroundings, his first stupefaction at finding the reality so different from the embellished accounts of story-tellers and poets, his disillusion at being plunged into such rudely excavated mole-burrows, gave way to fraternal emotion. It was not that he thought of the fifteen hundred martyrs whose sacred bones had rested there. But how humble, resigned, yet full of hope had been those who had chosen such a place of sepulchre! Those low, darksome galleries were but temporary sleeping-places for the Christians. If they did not burn the bodies of their dead, as the Pagans did, it was because, like the Jews, they believed in the resurrection of the body; and it was that lovely idea of sleep, of tranquil rest after a just life, whilst awaiting the celestial reward, which imparted such intense peacefulness, such infinite charm, to the black, subterranean city. Everything there spoke of calm and silent night; everything there slumbered in rapturous quiescence, patient until the far-off awakening. What could be more touching than those terra-cotta tiles, those marble slabs, which bore not even a name--nothing but the words /In Pace/--at peace. Ah! to be at peace--life's work at last accomplished; to sleep in peace, to hope in peace for the advent of heaven! And the peacefulness seemed the more delightful as it was enjoyed in such deep humility. Doubtless the diggers worked chance-wise and clumsily; the craftsmen no longer knew how to engrave a name or carve a palm or a dove. Art had vanished; but all the feebleness and ignorance were instinct with the youth of a new humanity. Poor and lowly and meek ones swarmed there, reposing beneath the soil, whilst up above the sun continued its everlasting task. You found there charity and fraternity and death; husband and wife often lying together with their offspring at their feet; the great mass of the unknown submerging the personage, the bishop, or the martyr; the most touching equality--that springing from modesty--prevailing amidst all that dust, with compartments ever similar and slabs destitute of ornament, so that rows and rows of the sleepers mingled without distinctive sign. The inscriptions seldom ventured on a word of praise, and then how prudent, how delicate it was: the men were very worthy, very pious: the women very gentle, very beautiful, very chaste. A perfume of infancy arose, unlimited human affection spread: this was death as understood by the primitive Christians--death which hid itself to await the resurrection, and dreamt no more of the empire of the world! And all at once before Pierre's eyes arose a vision of the sumptuous tombs of the Appian Way, displaying the domineering pride of a whole civilisation in the sunlight--tombs of vast dimensions, with a profusion of marbles, grandiloquent inscriptions, and masterpieces of sculptured-work. Ah! what an extraordinary contrast between that pompous avenue of death, conducting, like a highway of triumph, to the regal Eternal City, when compared with the subterranean necropolis of the Christians, that city of hidden death, so gentle, so beautiful, and so chaste! Here only quiet slumber, desired and accepted night, resignation and patience were to be found. Millions of human beings had here laid themselves to rest in all humility, had slept for centuries, and would still be sleeping here, lulled by the silence and the gloom, if the living had not intruded on their desire to remain in oblivion so long as the trumpets of the Judgment Day did not awaken them. Death had then spoken of Life: nowhere had there been more intimate and touching life than in these buried cities of the unknown, lowly dead. And a mighty breath had formerly come from them--the breath of a new humanity destined to renew the world. With the advent of meekness, contempt for the flesh, terror and hatred of nature, relinquishment of terrestrial joys, and a passion for death, which delivers and opens the portals of Paradise, another world had begun. And the blood of Augustus, so proud of purpling in the sunlight, so fired by the passion for sovereign dominion, seemed for a moment to disappear, as if, indeed, the new world had sucked it up in the depths of its gloomy sepulchres. However, the Trappist insisted on showing the ladies the steps of Diocletian, and began to tell them the legend. "Yes," said he, "it was a miracle. One day, under that emperor, some soldiers were pursuing several Christians, who took refuge in these catacombs; and when the soldiers followed them inside the steps suddenly gave way, and all the persecutors were hurled to the bottom. The steps remain broken to this day. Come and see them; they are close by." But the ladies were quite overcome, so affected by their prolonged sojourn in the gloom and by the tales of death which the Trappist had poured into their ears that they insisted on going up again. Moreover, the candles were coming to an end. They were all dazzled when they found themselves once more in the sunlight, outside the little hut where articles of piety and souvenirs were sold. The girl bought a paper weight, a piece of marble on which was engraved the fish symbolical of "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour of Mankind." On the afternoon of that same day Pierre decided to visit St. Peter's. He had as yet only driven across the superb piazza with its obelisk and twin fountains, encircled by Bernini's colonnades, those four rows of columns and pilasters which form a girdle of monumental majesty. At the far end rises the basilica, its facade making it look smaller and heavier than it really is, but its sovereign dome nevertheless filling the heavens. Pebbled, deserted inclines stretched out, and steps followed steps, worn and white, under the burning sun; but at last Pierre reached the door and went in. It was three o'clock. Broad sheets of light streamed in through the high square windows, and some ceremony--the vesper service, no doubt--was beginning in the Capella Clementina on the left. Pierre, however, heard nothing; he was simply struck by the immensity of the edifice, as with raised eyes he slowly walked along. At the entrance came the giant basins for holy water with their boy-angels as chubby as Cupids; then the nave, vaulted and decorated with sunken coffers; then the four cyclopean buttress-piers upholding the dome, and then again the transepts and apsis, each as large as one of our churches. And the proud pomp, the dazzling, crushing splendour of everything, also astonished him: he marvelled at the cupola, looking like a planet, resplendent with the gold and bright colours of its mosaic-work, at the sumptuous /baldacchino/ of bronze, crowning the high altar raised above the very tomb of St. Peter, and whence descend the double steps of the Confession, illumined by seven and eighty lamps, which are always kept burning. And finally he was lost in astonishment at the extraordinary profusion of marble, both white and coloured. Oh! those polychromatic marbles, Bernini's luxurious passion! The splendid pavement reflecting the entire edifice, the facings of the pilasters with their medallions of popes, the tiara and the keys borne aloft by chubby angels, the walls covered with emblems, particularly the dove of Innocent X, the niches with their colossal statues uncouth in taste, the /loggie/ and their balconies, the balustrade and double steps of the Confession, the rich altars and yet richer tombs--all, nave, aisles, transepts, and apsis, were in marble, resplendent with the wealth of marble; not a nook small as the palm of one's hand appearing but it showed the insolent opulence of marble. And the basilica triumphed, beyond discussion, recognised and admired by every one as the largest and most splendid church in the whole world--the personification of hugeness and magnificence combined. Pierre still wandered on, gazing, overcome, as yet not distinguishing details. He paused for a moment before the bronze statue of St. Peter, seated in a stiff, hierarchical attitude on a marble pedestal. A few of the faithful were there kissing the large toe of the Saint's right foot. Some of them carefully wiped it before applying their lips; others, with no thought of cleanliness, kissed it, pressed their foreheads to it, and then kissed it again. Next, Pierre turned into the transept on the left, where stand the confessionals. Priests are ever stationed there, ready to confess penitents in every language. Others wait, holding long staves, with which they lightly tap the heads of kneeling sinners, who thereby obtain thirty days' indulgence. However, there were few people present, and inside the small wooden boxes the priests occupied their leisure time in reading and writing, as if they were at home. Then Pierre again found himself before the Confession, and gazed with interest at the eighty lamps, scintillating like stars. The high altar, at which the Pope alone can officiate, seemed wrapped in the haughty melancholy of solitude under its gigantic, flowery /baldacchino/, the casting and gilding of which cost two and twenty thousand pounds. But suddenly Pierre remembered the ceremony in the Capella Clementina, and felt astonished, for he could hear nothing of it. As he drew near a faint breath, like the far-away piping of a flute, was wafted to him. Then the volume of sound slowly increased, but it was only on reaching the chapel that he recognised an organ peal. The sunlight here filtered through red curtains drawn before the windows, and thus the chapel glowed like a furnace whilst resounding with the grave music. But in that huge pile all became so slight, so weak, that at sixty paces neither voice nor organ could be distinguished. On entering the basilica Pierre had fancied that it was quite empty and lifeless. There were, however, some people there, but so few and far between that their presence was not noticed. A few tourists wandered about wearily, guide-book in hand. In the grand nave a painter with his easel was taking a view, as in a public gallery. Then a French seminary went by, conducted by a prelate who named and explained the tombs. But in all that space these fifty or a hundred people looked merely like a few black ants who had lost themselves and were vainly seeking their way. And Pierre pictured himself in some gigantic gala hall or tremendous vestibule in an immeasurable palace of reception. The broad sheets of sunlight streaming through the lofty square windows of plain white glass illumined the church with blending radiance. There was not a single stool or chair: nothing but the superb, bare pavement, such as you might find in a museum, shining mirror-like under the dancing shower of sunrays. Nor was there a single corner for solitary reflection, a nook of gloom and mystery, where one might kneel and pray. In lieu thereof the sumptuous, sovereign dazzlement of broad daylight prevailed upon every side. And, on thus suddenly finding himself in this deserted opera-house, all aglow with flaring gold and purple, Pierre could but remember the quivering gloom of the Gothic cathedrals of France, where dim crowds sob and supplicate amidst a forest of pillars. In presence of all this ceremonial majesty--this huge, empty pomp, which was all Body--he recalled with a pang the emaciate architecture and statuary of the middle ages, which were all Soul. He vainly sought for some poor, kneeling woman, some creature swayed by faith or suffering, yielding in a modest half-light to thoughts of the unknown, and with closed lips holding communion with the invisible. These he found not: there was but the weary wandering of the tourists, and the bustle of the prelates conducting the young priests to the obligatory stations; while the vesper service continued in the left-hand chapel, nought of it reaching the ears of the visitors save, perhaps, a confused vibration, as of the peal of a bell penetrating from outside through the vaults above. And Pierre then understood that this was the splendid skeleton of a colossus whence life was departing. To fill it, to animate it with a soul, all the gorgeous display of great religious ceremonies was needed; the eighty thousand worshippers which it could hold, the great pontifical pomps, the festivals of Christmas and Easter, the processions and /corteges/ displaying all the luxury of the Church amidst operatic scenery and appointments. And he tried to conjure up a picture of the past magnificence--the basilica overflowing with an idolatrous multitude, and the superhuman /cortege/ passing along whilst every head was lowered; the cross and the sword opening the march, the cardinals going two by two, like twin divinities, in their rochets of lace and their mantles and robes of red moire, which train-bearers held up behind them; and at last, with Jove-like pomp, the Pope, carried on a stage draped with red velvet, seated in an arm-chair of red velvet and gold, and dressed in white velvet, with cope of gold, stole of gold, and tiara of gold. The bearers of the /Sedia gestatoria/* shone bravely in red tunics broidered with gold. Above the one and only Sovereign Pontiff of the world the /flabelli/ waved those huge fans of feathers which formerly were waved before the idols of pagan Rome. And around the seat of triumph what a dazzling, glorious court there was! The whole pontifical family, the stream of assistant prelates, the patriarchs, the archbishops, and the bishops, with vestments and mitres of gold, the /Camerieri segreti partecipanti/ in violet silk, the /Camerieri partecipanti/ of the cape and the sword in black velvet Renascence costumes, with ruffs and golden chains, the whole innumerable ecclesiastical and laical suite, which not even a hundred pages of the "Gerarchia" can completely enumerate, the prothonotaries, the chaplains, the prelates of every class and degree, without mentioning the military household, the gendarmes with their busbies, the Palatine Guards in blue trousers and black tunics, the Swiss Guards costumed in red, yellow, and black, with breastplates of silver, suggesting the men at arms of some drama of the Romantic school, and the Noble Guards, superb in their high boots, white pigskins, red tunics, gold lace, epaulets, and helmets! However, since Rome had become the capital of Italy the doors were no longer thrown wide open; on the rare occasions when the Pope yet came down to officiate, to show himself as the supreme representative of the Divinity on earth, the basilica was filled with chosen ones. To enter it you needed a card of invitation. You no longer saw the people--a throng of fifty, even eighty, thousand Christians--flocking to the Church and swarming within it promiscuously; there was but a select gathering, a congregation of friends convened as for a private function. Even when, by dint of effort, thousands were collected together there, they formed but a picked audience invited to the performance of a monster concert. * The chair and stage are known by that name.--Trans. And as Pierre strolled among the bright, crude marbles in that cold if gorgeous museum, the feeling grew upon him that he was in some pagan temple raised to the deity of Light and Pomp. The larger temples of ancient Rome were certainly similar piles, upheld by the same precious columns, with walls covered with the same polychromatic marbles and vaulted ceilings having the same gilded panels. And his feeling was destined to become yet more acute after his visits to the other basilicas, which could but reveal the truth to him. First one found the Christian Church quietly, audaciously quartering itself in a pagan church, as, for instance, San Lorenzo in Miranda installed in the temple of Antoninus and Faustina, and retaining the latter's rare porticus in /cipollino/ marble and its handsome white marble entablature. Then there was the Christian Church springing from the ruins of the destroyed pagan edifice, as, for example, San Clemente, beneath which centuries of contrary beliefs are stratified: a very ancient edifice of the time of the kings or the republic, then another of the days of the empire identified as a temple of Mithras, and next a basilica of the primitive faith. Then, too, there was the Christian Church, typified by that of Saint Agnes-beyond-the-walls which had been built on exactly the same pattern as the Roman secular basilica--that Tribunal and Exchange which accompanied every Forum. And, in particular, there was the Christian Church erected with material stolen from the demolished pagan temples. To this testified the sixteen superb columns of that same Saint Agnes, columns of various marbles filched from various gods; the one and twenty columns of Santa Maria in Trastevere, columns of all sorts of orders torn from a temple of Isis and Serapis, who even now are represented on their capitals; also the six and thirty white marble Ionic columns of Santa Maria Maggiore derived from the temple of Juno Lucina; and the two and twenty columns of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli, these varying in substance, size, and workmanship, and certain of them said to have been stolen from Jove himself, from the famous temple of Jupiter Capitolinus which rose upon the sacred summit. In addition, the temples of the opulent Imperial period seemed to resuscitate in our times at San Giovanni in Laterano and San Paolo-fuori-le-mura. Was not that Basilica of San Giovanni--"the Mother and Head of all the churches of the city and the earth"--like the abode of honour of some pagan divinity whose splendid kingdom was of this world? It boasted five naves, parted by four rows of columns; it was a profusion of bas-reliefs, friezes, and entablatures, and its twelve colossal statues of the Apostles looked like subordinate deities lining the approach to the master of the gods! And did not San Paolo, lately completed, its new marbles shimmering like mirrors, recall the abode of the Olympian immortals, typical temple as it was with its majestic colonnade, its flat, gilt-panelled ceiling, its marble pavement incomparably beautiful both in substance and workmanship, its violet columns with white bases and capitals, and its white entablature with violet frieze: everywhere, indeed, you found, the mingling of those two colours so divinely carnal in their harmony. And there, as at St. Peter's, not one patch of gloom, not one nook of mystery where one might peer into the invisible, could be found! And, withal, St. Peter's remained the monster, the colossus, larger than the largest of all others, an extravagant testimony of what the mad passion for the huge can achieve when human pride, by dint of spending millions, dreams of lodging the divinity in an over-vast, over-opulent palace of stone, where in truth that pride itself, and not the divinity, triumphs! And to think that after long centuries that gala colossus had been the outcome of the fervour of primitive faith! You found there a blossoming of that ancient sap, peculiar to the soil of Rome, which in all ages has thrown up preposterous edifices, of exaggerated hugeness and dazzling and ruinous luxury. It would seem as if the absolute masters successively ruling the city brought that passion for cyclopean building with them, derived it from the soil in which they grew, for they transmitted it one to the other, without a pause, from civilisation to civilisation, however diverse and contrary their minds. It has all been, so to say, a continuous blossoming of human vanity, a passionate desire to set one's name on an imperishable wall, and, after being master of the world, to leave behind one an indestructible trace, a tangible proof of one's passing glory, an eternal edifice of bronze and marble fit to attest that glory until the end of time. At the bottom the spirit of conquest, the proud ambition to dominate the world, subsists; and when all has crumbled, and a new society has sprung up from the ruins of its predecessor, men have erred in imagining it to be cured of the sin of pride, steeped in humility once more, for it has had the old blood in its veins, and has yielded to the same insolent madness as its ancestors, a prey to all the violence of its heredity directly it has become great and strong. Among the illustrious popes there has not been one that did not seek to build, did not revert to the traditions of the Caesars, eternising their reigns in stone and raising temples for resting-places, so as to rank among the gods. Ever the same passion for terrestrial immortality has burst forth: it has been a battle as to who should leave the highest, most substantial, most gorgeous monument; and so acute has been the disease that those who, for lack of means and opportunity, have been unable to build, and have been forced to content themselves with repairing, have, nevertheless, desired to bequeath the memory of their modest achievements to subsequent generations by commemorative marble slabs engraved with pompous inscriptions! These slabs are to be seen on every side: not a wall has ever been strengthened but some pope has stamped it with his arms, not a ruin has been restored, not a palace repaired, not a fountain cleaned, but the reigning pope has signed the work with his Roman and pagan title of "Pontifex Maximus." It is a haunting passion, a form of involuntary debauchery, the fated florescence of that compost of ruins, that dust of edifices whence new edifices are ever arising. And given the perversion with which the old Roman soil almost immediately tarnished the doctrines of Jesus, that resolute passion for domination and that desire for terrestrial glory which wrought the triumph of Catholicism in scorn of the humble and pure, the fraternal and simple ones of the primitive Church, one may well ask whether Rome has ever been Christian at all! And whilst Pierre was for the second time walking round the huge basilica, admiring the tombs of the popes, truth, like a sudden illumination, burst upon him and filled him with its glow. Ah! those tombs! Yonder in the full sunlight, in the rosy Campagna, on either side of the Appian Way--that triumphal approach to Rome, conducting the stranger to the august Palatine with its crown of circling palaces--there arose the gigantic tombs of the powerful and wealthy, tombs of unparalleled artistic splendour, perpetuating in marble the pride and pomp of a strong race that had mastered the world. Then, near at hand, beneath the sod, in the shrouding night of wretched mole-holes, other tombs were hidden--the tombs of the lowly, the poor, and the suffering--tombs destitute of art or display, but whose very humility proclaimed that a breath of affection and resignation had passed by, that One had come preaching love and fraternity, the relinquishment of the wealth of the earth for the everlasting joys of a future life, and committing to the soil the good seed of His Gospel, sowing the new humanity which was to transform the olden world. And, behold, from that seed, buried in the soil for centuries, behold, from those humble, unobtrusive tombs, where martyrs slept their last and gentle sleep whilst waiting for the glorious call, yet other tombs had sprung, tombs as gigantic and as pompous as the ancient, destroyed sepulchres of the idolaters, tombs uprearing their marbles among a pagan-temple-like splendour, proclaiming the same superhuman pride, the same mad passion for universal sovereignty. At the time of the Renascence Rome became pagan once more; the old imperial blood frothed up and swept Christianity away with the greatest onslaught ever directed against it. Ah! those tombs of the popes at St. Peter's, with their impudent, insolent glorification of the departed, their sumptuous, carnal hugeness, defying death and setting immortality upon this earth. There are giant popes of bronze, allegorical figures and angels of equivocal character wearing the beauty of lovely girls, of passion-compelling women with the thighs and the breasts of pagan goddesses! Paul III is seated on a high pedestal, Justice and Prudence are almost prostrate at his feet. Urban VIII is between Prudence and Religion, Innocent XI between Religion and Justice, Innocent XII between Justice and Charity, Gregory XIII between Religion and Strength. Attended by Prudence and Justice, Alexander VII appears kneeling, with Charity and Truth before him, and a skeleton rises up displaying an empty hour-glass. Clement XIII, also on his knees, triumphs above a monumental sarcophagus, against which leans Religion bearing the Cross; while the Genius of Death, his elbow resting on the right-hand corner, has two huge, superb lions, emblems of omnipotence, beneath him. Bronze bespeaks the eternity of the figures, white marble describes opulent flesh, and coloured marble winds around in rich draperies, deifying the monuments under the bright, golden glow of nave and aisles. And Pierre passed from one tomb to the other on his way through the magnificent, deserted, sunlit basilica. Yes, these tombs, so imperial in their ostentation, were meet companions for those of the Appian Way. Assuredly it was Rome, the soil of Rome, that soil where pride and domination sprouted like the herbage of the fields that had transformed the humble Christianity of primitive times, the religion of fraternity, justice, and hope into what it now was: victorious Catholicism, allied to the rich and powerful, a huge implement of government, prepared for the conquest of every nation. The popes had awoke as Caesars. Remote heredity had acted, the blood of Augustus had bubbled forth afresh, flowing through their veins and firing their minds with immeasurable ambition. As yet none but Augustus had held the empire of the world, had been both emperor and pontiff, master of the body and the soul. And thence had come the eternal dream of the popes in despair at only holding the spiritual power, and obstinately refusing to yield in temporal matters, clinging for ever to the ancient hope that their dream might at last be realised, and the Vatican become another Palatine, whence they might reign with absolute despotism over all the conquered nations. VI PIERRE had been in Rome for a fortnight, and yet the affair of his book was no nearer solution. He was still possessed by an ardent desire to see the Pope, but could in no wise tell how to satisfy it, so frequent were the delays and so greatly had he been frightened by Monsignor Nani's predictions of the dire consequences which might attend any imprudent action. And so, foreseeing a prolonged sojourn, he at last betook himself to the Vicariate in order that his "celebret" might be stamped, and afterwards said his mass each morning at the Church of Santa Brigida, where he received a kindly greeting from Abbe Pisoni, Benedetta's former confessor. One Monday evening he resolved to repair early to Donna Serafina's customary reception in the hope of learning some news and expediting his affairs. Perhaps Monsignor Nani would look in; perhaps he might be lucky enough to come across some cardinal or domestic prelate willing to help him. It was in vain that he had tried to extract any positive information from Don Vigilio, for, after a short spell of affability and willingness, Cardinal Pio's secretary had relapsed into distrust and fear, and avoided Pierre as if he were resolved not to meddle in a business which, all considered, was decidedly suspicious and dangerous. Moreover, for a couple of days past a violent attack of fever had compelled him to keep his room. Thus the only person to whom Pierre could turn for comfort was Victorine Bosquet, the old Beauceronne servant who had been promoted to the rank of housekeeper, and who still retained a French heart after thirty years' residence in Rome. She often spoke to the young priest of Auneau, her native place, as if she had left it only the previous day; but on that particular Monday even she had lost her wonted gay vivacity, and when she heard that he meant to go down in the evening to see the ladies she wagged her head significantly. "Ah! you won't find them very cheerful," said she. "My poor Benedetta is greatly worried. Her divorce suit is not progressing at all well." All Rome, indeed, was again talking of this affair. An extraordinary revival of tittle-tattle had set both white and black worlds agog. And so there was no need for reticence on Victorine's part, especially in conversing with a compatriot. It appeared, then, that, in reply to Advocate Morano's memoir setting forth that the marriage had not been consummated, there had come another memoir, a terrible one, emanating from Monsignor Palma, a doctor in theology, whom the Congregation of the Council had selected to defend the marriage. As a first point, Monsignor Palma flatly disputed the alleged non-consummation, questioned the certificate put forward on Benedetta's behalf, and quoted instances recorded in scientific text-books which showed how deceptive appearances often were. He strongly insisted, moreover, on the narrative which Count Prada supplied in another memoir, a narrative well calculated to inspire doubt; and, further, he so turned and twisted the evidence of Benedetta's own maid as to make that evidence also serve against her. Finally he argued in a decisive way that, even supposing the marriage had not been consummated, this could only be ascribed to the resistance of the Countess, who had thus set at defiance one of the elementary laws of married life, which was that a wife owed obedience to her husband. Next had come a fourth memoir, drawn up by the reporter of the Congregation, who analysed and discussed the three others, and subsequently the Congregation itself had dealt with the matter, opining in favour of the dissolution of the marriage by a majority of one vote--such a bare majority, indeed, that Monsignor Palma, exercising his rights, had hastened to demand further inquiry, a course which brought the whole /procedure/ again into question, and rendered a fresh vote necessary. "Ah! the poor Contessina!" exclaimed Victorine, "she'll surely die of grief, for, calm as she may seem, there's an inward fire consuming her. It seems that Monsignor Palma is the master of the situation, and can make the affair drag on as long as he likes. And then a deal of money had already been spent, and one will have to spend a lot more. Abbe Pisoni, whom you know, was very badly inspired when he helped on that marriage; and though I certainly don't want to soil the memory of my good mistress, Countess Ernesta, who was a real saint, it's none the less true that she wrecked her daughter's life when she gave her to Count Prada." The housekeeper paused. Then, impelled by an instinctive sense of justice, she resumed. "It's only natural that Count Prada should be annoyed, for he's really being made a fool of. And, for my part, as there is no end to all the fuss, and this divorce is so hard to obtain, I really don't see why the Contessina shouldn't live with her Dario without troubling any further. Haven't they loved one another ever since they were children? Aren't they both young and handsome, and wouldn't they be happy together, whatever the world might say? Happiness, /mon Dieu/! one finds it so seldom that one can't afford to let it pass." Then, seeing how greatly surprised Pierre was at hearing such language, she began to laugh with the quiet composure of one belonging to the humble classes of France, whose only desire is a quiet and happy life, irrespective of matrimonial ties. Next, in more discreet language, she proceeded to lament another worry which had fallen on the household, another result of the divorce affair. A rupture had come about between Donna Serafina and Advocate Morano, who was very displeased with the ill success of his memoir to the congregation, and accused Father Lorenza--the confessor of the Boccanera ladies--of having urged them into a deplorable lawsuit, whose only fruit could be a wretched scandal affecting everybody. And so great had been Morano's annoyance that he had not returned to the Boccanera mansion, but had severed a connection of thirty years' standing, to the stupefaction of all the Roman drawing-rooms, which altogether disapproved of his conduct. Donna Serafina was, for her part, the more grieved as she suspected the advocate of having purposely picked the quarrel in order to secure an excuse for leaving her; his real motive, in her estimation, being a sudden, disgraceful passion for a young and intriguing woman of the middle classes. That Monday evening, when Pierre entered the drawing-room, hung with yellow brocatelle of a flowery Louis XIV pattern, he at once realised that melancholy reigned in the dim light radiating from the lace-veiled lamps. Benedetta and Celia, seated on a sofa, were chatting with Dario, whilst Cardinal Sarno, ensconced in an arm-chair, listened to the ceaseless chatter of the old relative who conducted the little Princess to each Monday gathering. And the only other person present was Donna Serafina, seated all alone in her wonted place on the right-hand side of the chimney-piece, and consumed with secret rage at seeing the chair on the left-hand side unoccupied--that chair which Morano had always taken during the thirty years that he had been faithful to her. Pierre noticed with what anxious and then despairing eyes she observed his entrance, her glance ever straying towards the door, as though she even yet hoped for the fickle one's return. Withal her bearing was erect and proud; she seemed to be more tightly laced than ever; and there was all the wonted haughtiness on her hard-featured face, with its jet-black eyebrows and snowy hair. Pierre had no sooner paid his respects to her than he allowed his own worry to appear by inquiring whether they would not have the pleasure of seeing Monsignor Nani that evening. Thereupon Donna Serafina could not refrain from answering: "Oh! Monsignor Nani is forsaking us like the others. People always take themselves off when they can be of service." She harboured a spite against the prelate for having done so little to further the divorce in spite of his many promises. Beneath his outward show of extreme willingness and caressing affability he doubtless concealed some scheme of his own which he was tenaciously pursuing. However, Donna Serafina promptly regretted the confession which anger had wrung from her, and resumed: "After all, he will perhaps come. He is so good-natured, and so fond of us." In spite of the vivacity of her temperament she really wished to act diplomatically, so as to overcome the bad luck which had recently set in. Her brother the Cardinal had told her how irritated he was by the attitude of the Congregation of the Council; he had little doubt that the frigid reception accorded to his niece's suit had been due in part to the desire of some of his brother cardinals to be disagreeable to him. Personally, he desired the divorce, as it seemed to him the only means of ensuring the perpetuation of the family; for Dario obstinately refused to marry any other woman than his cousin. And thus there was an accumulation of disasters; the Cardinal was wounded in his pride, his sister shared his sufferings and on her own side was stricken in the heart, whilst both lovers were plunged in despair at finding their hopes yet again deferred. As Pierre approached the sofa where the young folks were chatting he found that they were speaking of the catastrophe. "Why should you be so despondent?" asked Celia in an undertone. "After all, there was a majority of a vote in favour of annulling the marriage. Your suit hasn't been rejected; there is only a delay." But Benedetta shook her head. "No, no! If Monsignor Palma proves obstinate his Holiness will never consent. It's all over." "Ah! if one were only rich, very rich!" murmured Dario, with such an air of conviction that no one smiled. And, turning to his cousin, he added in a whisper: "I must really have a talk with you. We cannot go on living like this." In a breath she responded: "Yes, you are right. Come down to-morrow evening at five. I will be here alone." Then dreariness set in; the evening seemed to have no end. Pierre was greatly touched by the evident despair of Benedetta, who as a rule was so calm and sensible. The deep eyes which illumined her pure, delicate, infantile face were now blurred as by restrained tears. He had already formed a sincere affection for her, pleased as he was with her equable if somewhat indolent disposition, the semblance of discreet good sense with which she veiled her soul of fire. That Monday even she certainly tried to smile while listening to the pretty secrets confided to her by Celia, whose love affairs were prospering far more than her own. There was only one brief interval of general conversation, and that was brought about by the little Princess's aunt, who, suddenly raising her voice, began to speak of the infamous manner in which the Italian newspapers referred to the Holy Father. Never, indeed, had there been so much bad feeling between the Vatican and the Quirinal. Cardinal Sarno felt so strongly on the subject that he departed from his wonted silence to announce that on the occasion of the sacrilegious festivities of the Twentieth of September, celebrating the capture of Rome, the Pope intended to cast a fresh letter of protest in the face of all the Christian powers, whose indifference proved their complicity in the odious spoliation of the Church. "Yes, indeed! what folly to try and marry the Pope and the King," bitterly exclaimed Donna Serafina, alluding to her niece's deplorable marriage. The old maid now seemed quite beside herself; it was already so late that neither Monsignor Nani nor anybody else was expected. However, at the unhoped-for sound of footsteps her eyes again brightened and turned feverishly towards the door. But it was only to encounter a final disappointment. The visitor proved to be Narcisse Habert, who stepped up to her, apologising for making so late a call. It was Cardinal Sarno, his uncle by marriage, who had introduced him into this exclusive /salon/, where he had received a cordial reception on account of his religious views, which were said to be most uncompromising. If, however, despite the lateness of the hour, he had ventured to call there that evening, it was solely on account of Pierre, whom he at once drew on one side. "I felt sure I should find you here," he said. "Just now I managed to see my cousin, Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo, and I have some good news for you. He will see us to-morrow at about eleven in his rooms at the Vatican." Then, lowering his voice: "I think he will endeavour to conduct you to the Holy Father. Briefly, the audience seems to me assured." Pierre was greatly delighted by this promised certainty, which came to him so suddenly in that dreary drawing-room, where for a couple of hours he had been gradually sinking into despair! So at last a solution was at hand! Meantime Narcisse, after shaking hands with Dario and bowing to Benedetta and Celia, approached his uncle the Cardinal, who, having rid himself of the old relation, made up his mind to talk. But his conversation was confined to the state of his health, and the weather, and sundry insignificant anecdotes which he had lately heard. Not a word escaped him respecting the thousand complicated matters with which he dealt at the Propaganda. It was as though, once outside his office, he plunged into the commonplace and the unimportant by way of resting from the anxious task of governing the world. And after he had spoken for a time every one got up, and the visitors took leave. "Don't forget," Narcisse repeated to Pierre, "you will find me at the Sixtine Chapel to-morrow at ten. And I will show you the Botticellis before we go to our appointment." At half-past nine on the following morning Pierre, who had come on foot, was already on the spacious Piazza of St. Peter's; and before turning to the right, towards the bronze gate near one corner of Bernini's colonnade, he raised his eyes and lingered, gazing at the Vatican. Nothing to his mind could be less monumental than the jumble of buildings which, without semblance of architectural order or regularity of any kind, had grown up in the shadow cast by the dome of the basilica. Roofs rose one above the other and broad, flat walls stretched out chance-wise, just as wings and storeys had been added. The only symmetry observable above the colonnade was that of the three sides of the court of San Damaso, where the lofty glass-work which now encloses the old /loggie/ sparkled in the sun between the ruddy columns and pilasters, suggesting, as it were, three huge conservatories. And this was the most beautiful palace in the world, the largest of all palaces, comprising no fewer than eleven thousand apartments and containing the most admirable masterpieces of human genius! But Pierre, disillusioned as he was, had eyes only for the lofty facade on the right, overlooking the piazza, for he knew that the second-floor windows there were those of the Pope's private apartments. And he contemplated those windows for a long time, and remembered having been told that the fifth one on the right was that of the Pope's bed-room, and that a lamp could always be seen burning there far into the night. What was there, too, behind that gate of bronze which he saw before him--that sacred portal by which all the kingdoms of the world communicated with the kingdom of heaven, whose august vicar had secluded himself behind those lofty, silent walls? From where he stood Pierre gazed on that gate with its metal panels studded with large square-headed nails, and wondered what it defended, what it concealed, what it shut off from the view, with its stern, forbidding air, recalling that of the gate of some ancient fortress. What kind of world would he find behind it, what treasures of human charity jealously preserved in yonder gloom, what revivifying hope for the new nations hungering for fraternity and justice? He took pleasure in fancying, in picturing the one holy pastor of humanity, ever watching in the depths of that closed palace, and, while the nations strayed into hatred, preparing all for the final reign of Jesus, and at last proclaiming the advent of that reign by transforming our democracies into the one great Christian community promised by the Saviour. Assuredly the world's future was being prepared behind that bronze portal; assuredly it was that future which would issue forth. But all at once Pierre was amazed to find himself face to face with Monsignor Nani, who had just left the Vatican on his way to the neighbouring Palace of the Inquisition, where, as Assessor, he had his residence. "Ah! Monsignor," said Pierre, "I am very pleased. My friend Monsieur Habert is going to present me to his cousin, Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo, and I think I shall obtain the audience I so greatly desire." Monsignor Nani smiled with his usual amiable yet keen expression. "Yes, yes, I know." But, correcting himself as it were, he added: "I share your satisfaction, my dear son. Only, you must be prudent." And then, as if fearing that the young priest might have understood by his first words that he had just seen Monsignor Gamba, the most easily terrified prelate of the whole prudent pontifical family, he related that he had been running about since an early hour on behalf of two French ladies, who likewise were dying of a desire to see the Pope. However, he greatly feared that the help he was giving them would not prove successful. "I will confess to you, Monsignor," replied Pierre, "that I myself was getting very discouraged. Yes, it is high time I should find a little comfort, for my sojourn here is hardly calculated to brace my soul." He went on in this strain, allowing it to be seen that the sights of Rome were finally destroying his faith. Such days as those which he had spent on the Palatine and along the Appian Way, in the Catacombs and at St. Peter's, grievously disturbed him, spoilt his dream of Christianity rejuvenated and triumphant. He emerged from them full of doubt and growing lassitude, having already lost much of his usually rebellious enthusiasm. Still smiling, Monsignor Nani listened and nodded approvingly. Yes, no doubt that was the fatal result. He seemed to have foreseen it, and to be well satisfied thereat. "At all events, my dear son," said he, "everything is going on well, since you are now certain that you will see his Holiness." "That is true, Monsignor; I have placed my only hope in the very just and perspicacious Leo XIII. He alone can judge me, since he alone can recognise in my book his own ideas, which I think I have very faithfully set forth. Ah! if he be willing he will, in Jesus' name and by democracy and science, save this old world of ours!" Pierre's enthusiasm was returning again, and Nani, smiling more and more affably with his piercing eyes and thin lips, again expressed approval: "Certainly; quite so, my dear son. You will speak to him, you will see." Then as they both raised their heads and looked towards the Vatican, Nani carried his amiability so far as to undeceive Pierre with respect to the Pope's bed-room. No, the window where a light was seen every evening was simply that of a landing where the gas was kept burning almost all night. The window of his Holiness's bed-chamber was the second one farther on. Then both relapsed into silence, equally grave as they continued to gaze at the facade. "Well, till we meet again, my dear son," said Nani at last. "You will tell me of your interview, I hope." As soon as Pierre was alone he went in by the bronze portal, his heart beating violently, as if he were entering some redoubtable sanctuary where the future happiness of mankind was elaborated. A sentry was on duty there, a Swiss guard, who walked slowly up and down in a grey-blue cloak, below which one only caught a glimpse of his baggy red, black, and yellow breeches; and it seemed as if this cloak of sober hue were purposely cast over a disguise in order to conceal its strangeness, which had become irksome. Then, on the right-hand, came the covered stairway conducting to the Court of San Damaso; but to reach the Sixtine Chapel it was necessary to follow a long gallery, with columns on either hand, and ascend the royal staircase, the Scala Regia. And in this realm of the gigantic, where every dimension is exaggerated and replete with overpowering majesty, Pierre's breath came short as he ascended the broad steps. He was much surprised on entering the Sixtine Chapel, for it at first seemed to him small, a sort of rectangular and lofty hall, with a delicate screen of white marble separating the part where guests congregate on the occasion of great ceremonies from the choir where the cardinals sit on simple oaken benches, while the inferior prelates remain standing behind them. On a low platform to the right of the soberly adorned altar is the pontifical throne; while in the wall on the left opens the narrow singing gallery with its balcony of marble. And for everything suddenly to spread out and soar into the infinite one must raise one's head, allow one's eyes to ascend from the huge fresco of the Last Judgment, occupying the whole of the end wall, to the paintings which cover the vaulted ceiling down to the cornice extending between the twelve windows of white glass, six on either hand. Fortunately there were only three or four quiet tourists there; and Pierre at once perceived Narcisse Habert occupying one of the cardinals' seats above the steps where the train-bearers crouch. Motionless, and with his head somewhat thrown back, the young man seemed to be in ecstasy. But it was not the work of Michael Angelo that he thus contemplated. His eyes never strayed from one of the earlier frescoes below the cornice; and on recognising the priest he contented himself with murmuring: "Ah! my friend, just look at the Botticelli." Then, with dreamy eyes, he relapsed into a state of rapture. Pierre, for his part, had received a great shock both in heart and in mind, overpowered as he was by the superhuman genius of Michael Angelo. The rest vanished; there only remained, up yonder, as in a limitless heaven, the extraordinary creations of the master's art. That which at first surprised one was that the painter should have been the sole artisan of the mighty work. No marble cutters, no bronze workers, no gilders, no one of another calling had intervened. The painter with his brush had sufficed for all--for the pilasters, columns, and cornices of marble, for the statues and the ornaments of bronze, for the /fleurons/ and roses of gold, for the whole of the wondrously rich decorative work which surrounded the frescoes. And Pierre imagined Michael Angelo on the day when the bare vault was handed over to him, covered with plaster, offering only a flat white surface, hundreds of square yards to be adorned. And he pictured him face to face with that huge white page, refusing all help, driving all inquisitive folks away, jealously, violently shutting himself up alone with his gigantic task, spending four and a half years in fierce solitude, and day by day adding to his colossal work of creation. Ah! that mighty work, a task to fill a whole lifetime, a task which he must have begun with quiet confidence in his own will and power, drawing, as it were, an entire world from his brain and flinging it there with the ceaseless flow of creative virility in the full heyday of its omnipotence. And Pierre was yet more overcome when he began to examine these presentments of humanity, magnified as by the eyes of a visionary, overflowing in mighty sympathetic pages of cyclopean symbolisation. Royal grace and nobility, sovereign peacefulness and power--every beauty shone out like natural florescence. And there was perfect science, the most audacious foreshortening risked with the certainty of success--an everlasting triumph of technique over the difficulty which an arched surface presented. And, in particular, there was wonderful simplicity of medium; matter was reduced almost to nothingness; a few colours were used broadly without any studied search for effect or brilliancy. Yet that sufficed, the blood seethed freely, the muscles projected, the figures became animated and stood out of their frames with such energy and dash that it seemed as if a flame were flashing by aloft, endowing all those beings with superhuman and immortal life. Life, aye, it was life, which burst forth and triumphed--mighty, swarming life, miraculous life, the creation of one sole hand possessed of the supreme gift--simplicity blended with power. That a philosophical system, a record of the whole of human destiny, should have been found therein, with the creation of the world, of man, and of woman, the fall, the chastisement, then the redemption, and finally God's judgment on the last day--this was a matter on which Pierre was unable to dwell, at this first visit, in the wondering stupor into which the paintings threw him. But he could not help noticing how the human body, its beauty, its power, and its grace were exalted! Ah! that regal Jehovah, at once terrible and paternal, carried off amid the whirlwind of his creation, his arms outstretched and giving birth to worlds! And that superb and nobly outlined Adam, with extended hand, whom Jehovah, though he touch him not, animates with his finger--a wondrous and admirable gesture, leaving a sacred space between the finger of the Creator and that of the created--a tiny space, in which, nevertheless, abides all the infinite of the invisible and the mysterious. And then that powerful yet adorable Eve, that Eve with the sturdy flanks fit for the bearing of humanity, that Eve with the proud, tender grace of a woman bent on being loved even to perdition, that Eve embodying the whole of woman with her fecundity, her seductiveness, her empire! Moreover, even the decorative figures of the pilasters at the corners of the frescoes celebrate the triumph of the flesh: there are the twenty young men radiant in their nakedness, with incomparable splendour of torso and of limb, and such intensity of life that a craze for motion seems to carry them off, bend them, throw them over in superb attitudes. And between the windows are the giants, the prophets and the sibyls--man and woman deified, with inordinate wealth of muscle and grandeur of intellectual expression. There is Jeremiah with his elbow resting on his knee and his chin on his hand, plunged as he is in reflection--in the very depths of his visions and his dreams; there is the Sibylla Erithraea, so pure of profile, so young despite the opulence of her form, and with one finger resting on the open book of destiny; there is Isaiah with the thick lips of truth, virile and haughty, his head half turned and his hand raised with a gesture of command; there is the Sibylla Cumaea, terrifying with her science and her old age, her wrinkled countenance, her vulture's nose, her square protruding chin; there is Jonah cast forth by the whale, and wondrously foreshortened, his torso twisted, his arms bent, his head thrown back, and his mouth agape and shouting: and there are the others, all of the same full-blown, majestic family, reigning with the sovereignty of eternal health and intelligence, and typifying the dream of a broader, loftier, and indestructible humanity. Moreover, in the lunettes and the arches over the windows other figures of grace, power, and beauty appear and throng, the ancestors of the Christ, thoughtful mothers with lovely nude infants, men with wondering eyes peering into the future, representatives of the punished weary race longing for the promised Redeemer; while in the pendentives of the four corners various biblical episodes, the victories of Israel over the Spirit of Evil, spring into life. And finally there is the gigantic fresco at the far end, the Last Judgment with its swarming multitude, so numerous that days and days are needed to see each figure aright, a distracted crowd, full of the hot breath of life, from the dead rising in response to the furious trumpeting of the angels, from the fearsome groups of the damned whom the demons fling into hell, even to Jesus the justiciar, surrounded by the saints and apostles, and to the radiant concourse of the blessed who ascend upheld by angels, whilst higher and still higher other angels, bearing the instruments of the Passion, triumph as in full glory. And yet, above this gigantic composition, painted thirty years subsequently, in the full ripeness of age, the ceiling retains its ethereality, its unquestionable superiority, for on it the artist bestowed all his virgin power, his whole youth, the first great flare of his genius. And Pierre found but one word to express his feelings: Michael Angelo was the monster dominating and crushing all others. Beneath his immense achievement you had only to glance at the works of Perugino, Pinturicchio, Roselli, Signorelli, and Botticelli, those earlier frescoes, admirable in their way, which below the cornice spread out around the chapel. Narcisse for his part had not raised his eyes to the overpowering splendour of the ceiling. Wrapt in ecstasy, he did not allow his gaze to stray from one of the three frescoes of Botticelli. "Ah! Botticelli," he at last murmured; "in him you have the elegance and the grace of the mysterious; a profound feeling of sadness even in the midst of voluptuousness, a divination of the whole modern soul, with the most troublous charm that ever attended artist's work." Pierre glanced at him in amazement, and then ventured to inquire: "You come here to see the Botticellis?" "Yes, certainly," the young man quietly replied; "I only come here for him, and five hours every week I only look at his work. There, just study that fresco, Moses and the daughters of Jethro. Isn't it the most penetrating work that human tenderness and melancholy have produced?" Then, with a faint, devout quiver in his voice and the air of a priest initiating another into the delightful but perturbing atmosphere of a sanctuary, he went on repeating the praises of Botticelli's art; his women with long, sensual, yet candid faces, supple bearing, and rounded forms showing from under light drapery; his young men, his angels of doubtful sex, blending stateliness of muscle with infinite delicacy of outline; next the mouths he painted, fleshy, fruit-like mouths, at times suggesting irony, at others pain, and often so enigmatical with their sinuous curves that one knew not whether the words they left unuttered were words of purity or filth; then, too, the eyes which he bestowed on his figures, eyes of languor and passion, of carnal or mystical rapture, their joy at times so instinct with grief as they peer into the nihility of human things that no eyes in the world could be more impenetrable. And finally there were Botticelli's hands, so carefully and delicately painted, so full of life, wantoning so to say in a free atmosphere, now joining, caressing, and even, as it were, speaking, the whole evincing such intense solicitude for gracefulness that at times there seems to be undue mannerism, though every hand has its particular expression, each varying expression of the enjoyment or pain which the sense of touch can bring. And yet there was nothing effeminate or false about the painter's work: on all sides a sort of virile pride was apparent, an atmosphere of superb passionate motion, absolute concern for truth, direct study from life, conscientiousness, veritable realism, corrected and elevated by a genial strangeness of feeling and character that imparted a never-to-be-forgotten charm even to ugliness itself. Pierre's stupefaction, however, increased as he listened to Narcisse, whose somewhat studied elegance, whose curly hair cut in the Florentine fashion, and whose blue, mauvish eyes paling with enthusiasm he now for the first time remarked. "Botticelli," he at last said, "was no doubt a marvellous artist, only it seems to me that here, at any rate, Michael Angelo--" But Narcisse interrupted him almost with violence. "No! no! Don't talk of him! He spoilt everything, ruined everything! A man who harnessed himself to his work like an ox, who laboured at his task like a navvy, at the rate of so many square yards a day! And a man, too, with no sense of the mysterious and the unknown, who saw everything so huge as to disgust one with beauty, painting girls like the trunks of oak-trees, women like giant butchers, with heaps and heaps of stupid flesh, and never a gleam of a divine or infernal soul! He was a mason--a colossal mason, if you like--but he was nothing more." Weary "modern" that Narcisse was, spoilt by the pursuit of the original and the rare, he thus unconsciously gave rein to his fated hate of health and power. That Michael Angelo who brought forth without an effort, who had left behind him the most prodigious of all artistic creations, was the enemy. And his crime precisely was that he had created life, produced life in such excess that all the petty creations of others, even the most delightful among them, vanished in presence of the overflowing torrent of human beings flung there all alive in the sunlight. "Well, for my part," Pierre courageously declared, "I'm not of your opinion. I now realise that life is everything in art; that real immortality belongs only to those who create. The case of Michael Angelo seems to me decisive, for he is the superhuman master, the monster who overwhelms all others, precisely because he brought forth that magnificent living flesh which offends your sense of delicacy. Those who are inclined to the curious, those who have minds of a pretty turn, whose intellects are ever seeking to penetrate things, may try to improve on the equivocal and invisible, and set all the charm of art in some elaborate stroke or symbolisation; but, none the less, Michael Angelo remains the all-powerful, the maker of men, the master of clearness, simplicity, and health." At this Narcisse smiled with indulgent and courteous disdain. And he anticipated further argument by remarking: "It's already eleven. My cousin was to have sent a servant here as soon as he could receive us. I am surprised to have seen nobody as yet. Shall we go up to see the /stanze/ of Raffaelle while we wait?" Once in the rooms above, he showed himself perfect, both lucid in his remarks and just in his appreciations, having recovered all his easy intelligence as soon as he was no longer upset by his hatred of colossal labour and cheerful decoration. It was unfortunate that Pierre should have first visited the Sixtine Chapel; for it was necessary he should forget what he had just seen and accustom himself to what he now beheld in order to enjoy its pure beauty. It was as if some potent wine had confused him, and prevented any immediate relish of a lighter vintage of delicate fragrance. Admiration did not here fall upon one with lightning speed; it was slowly, irresistibly that one grew charmed. And the contrast was like that of Racine beside Corneille, Lamartine beside Hugo, the eternal pair, the masculine and feminine genius coupled through centuries of glory. With Raffaelle it is nobility, grace, exquisiteness, and correctness of line, and divineness of harmony that triumph. You do not find in him merely the materialist symbolism so superbly thrown off by Michael Angelo; he introduces psychological analysis of deep penetration into the painter's art. Man is shown more purified, idealised; one sees more of that which is within him. And though one may be in presence of an artist of sentimental bent, a feminine genius whose quiver of tenderness one can feel, it is also certain that admirable firmness of workmanship confronts one, that the whole is very strong and very great. Pierre gradually yielded to such sovereign masterliness, such virile elegance, such a vision of supreme beauty set in supreme perfection. But if the "Dispute on the Sacrament" and the so-called "School of Athens," both prior to the paintings of the Sixtine Chapel, seemed to him to be Raffaelle's masterpieces, he felt that in the "Burning of the Borgo," and particularly in the "Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple," and "Pope St. Leo staying Attila at the Gates of Rome," the artist had lost the flower of his divine grace, through the deep impression which the overwhelming grandeur of Michael Angelo had wrought upon him. How crushing indeed had been the blow when the Sixtine Chapel was thrown open and the rivals entered! The creations of the monster then appeared, and the greatest of the humanisers lost some of his soul at sight of them, thenceforward unable to rid himself of their influence. From the /stanze/ Narcisse took Pierre to the /loggie/, those glazed galleries which are so high and so delicately decorated. But here you only find work which pupils executed after designs left by Raffaelle at his death. The fall was sudden and complete, and never had Pierre better understood that genius is everything--that when it disappears the school collapses. The man of genius sums up his period; at a given hour he throws forth all the sap of the social soil, which afterwards remains exhausted often for centuries. So Pierre became more particularly interested in the fine view that the /loggie/ afford, and all at once he noticed that the papal apartments were in front of him, just across the Court of San Damaso. This court, with its porticus, fountain, and white pavement, had an aspect of empty, airy, sunlit solemnity which surprised him. There was none of the gloom or pent-up religious mystery that he had dreamt of with his mind full of the surroundings of the old northern cathedrals. Right and left of the steps conducting to the rooms of the Pope and the Cardinal Secretary of State four or five carriages were ranged, the coachmen stiffly erect and the horses motionless in the brilliant light; and nothing else peopled that vast square desert of a court which, with its bareness gilded by the coruscations of its glass-work and the ruddiness of its stones, suggested a pagan temple dedicated to the sun. But what more particularly struck Pierre was the splendid panorama of Rome, for he had not hitherto imagined that the Pope from his windows could thus behold the entire city spread out before him as if he merely had to stretch forth his hand to make it his own once more. While Pierre contemplated the scene a sound of voices caused him to turn; and he perceived a servant in black livery who, after repeating a message to Narcisse, was retiring with a deep bow. Looking much annoyed, the /attache/ approached the young priest. "Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo," said he, "has sent word that he can't see us this morning. Some unexpected duties require his presence." However, Narcisse's embarrassment showed that he did not believe in the excuse, but rather suspected some one of having so terrified his cousin that the latter was afraid of compromising himself. Obliging and courageous as Habert himself was, this made him indignant. Still he smiled and resumed: "Listen, perhaps there's a means of forcing an entry. If your time is your own we can lunch together and then return to visit the Museum of Antiquities. I shall certainly end by coming across my cousin and we may, perhaps, be lucky enough to meet the Pope should he go down to the gardens." At the news that his audience was yet again postponed Pierre had felt keenly disappointed. However, as the whole day was at his disposal, he willingly accepted the /attache's/ offer. They lunched in front of St. Peter's, in a little restaurant of the Borgo, most of whose customers were pilgrims, and the fare, as it happened, was far from good. Then at about two o'clock they set off for the museum, skirting the basilica by way of the Piazza della Sagrestia. It was a bright, deserted, burning district; and again, but in a far greater degree, did the young priest experience that sensation of bare, tawny, sun-baked majesty which had come upon him while gazing into the Court of San Damaso. Then, as he passed the apse of St. Peter's, the enormity of the colossus was brought home to him more strongly than ever: it rose like a giant bouquet of architecture edged by empty expanses of pavement sprinkled with fine weeds. And in all the silent immensity there were only two children playing in the shadow of a wall. The old papal mint, the Zecca, now an Italian possession, and guarded by soldiers of the royal army, is on the left of the passage leading to the museums, while on the right, just in front, is one of the entrances of honour to the Vatican where the papal Swiss Guard keeps watch and ward; and this is the entrance by which, according to etiquette, the pair-horse carriages convey the Pope's visitors into the Court of San Damaso. Following the long lane which ascends between a wing of the palace and its garden wall, Narcisse and Pierre at last reached the Museum of Antiquities. Ah! what a museum it is, with galleries innumerable, a museum compounded of three museums, the Pio-Clementino, Chiaramonti, and the Braccio-Nuovo, and containing a whole world found beneath the soil, then exhumed, and now glorified in full sunlight. For more than two hours Pierre went from one hall to another, dazzled by the masterpieces, bewildered by the accumulation of genius and beauty. It was not only the celebrated examples of statuary, the Laocoon and the Apollo of the cabinets of the Belvedere, the Meleager, or even the torso of Hercules--that astonished him. He was yet more impressed by the /ensemble/, by the innumerable quantities of Venuses, Bacchuses, and deified emperors and empresses, by the whole superb growth of beautiful or August flesh celebrating the immortality of life. Three days previously he had visited the Museum of the Capitol, where he had admired the Venus, the Dying Gaul,* the marvellous Centaurs of black marble, and the extraordinary collection of busts, but here his admiration became intensified into stupor by the inexhaustible wealth of the galleries. And, with more curiosity for life than for art, perhaps, he again lingered before the busts which so powerfully resuscitate the Rome of history--the Rome which, whilst incapable of realising the ideal beauty of Greece, was certainly well able to create life. The emperors, the philosophers, the learned men, the poets are all there, and live such as they really were, studied and portrayed in all scrupulousness with their deformities, their blemishes, the slightest peculiarities of their features. And from this extreme solicitude for truth springs a wonderful wealth of character and an incomparable vision of the past. Nothing, indeed, could be loftier: the very men live once more, and retrace the history of their city, that history which has been so falsified that the teaching of it has caused generations of school-boys to hold antiquity in horror. But on seeing the men, how well one understands, how fully one can sympathise! And indeed the smallest bits of marble, the maimed statues, the bas-reliefs in fragments, even the isolated limbs--whether the divine arm of a nymph or the sinewy, shaggy thigh of a satyr--evoke the splendour of a civilisation full of light, grandeur, and strength. * Best known in England, through Byron's lines, as the Dying Gladiator, though that appellation is certainly erroneous.--Trans. At last Narcisse brought Pierre back into the Gallery of the Candelabra, three hundred feet in length and full of fine examples of sculpture. "Listen, my dear Abbe," said he. "It is scarcely more than four o'clock, and we will sit down here for a while, as I am told that the Holy Father sometimes passes this way to go down to the gardens. It would be really lucky if you could see him, perhaps even speak to him--who can tell? At all events, it will rest you, for you must be tired out." Narcisse was known to all the attendants, and his relationship to Monsignor Gamba gave him the run of almost the entire Vatican, where he was fond of spending his leisure time. Finding two chairs, they sat down, and the /attache/ again began to talk of art. How astonishing had been the destiny of Rome, what a singular, borrowed royalty had been hers! She seemed like a centre whither the whole world converged, but where nothing grew from the soil itself, which from the outset appeared to be stricken with sterility. The arts required to be acclimatised there; it was necessary to transplant the genius of neighbouring nations, which, once there, however, flourished magnificently. Under the emperors, when Rome was the queen of the earth, the beauty of her monuments and sculpture came to her from Greece. Later, when Christianity arose in Rome, it there remained impregnated with paganism; it was on another soil that it produced Gothic art, the Christian Art /par excellence/. Later still, at the Renascence, it was certainly at Rome that the age of Julius II and Leo X shone forth; but the artists of Tuscany and Umbria prepared the evolution, brought it to Rome that it might thence expand and soar. For the second time, indeed, art came to Rome from without, and gave her the royalty of the world by blossoming so triumphantly within her walls. Then occurred the extraordinary awakening of antiquity, Apollo and Venus resuscitated worshipped by the popes themselves, who from the time of Nicholas V dreamt of making papal Rome the equal of the imperial city. After the precursors, so sincere, tender, and strong in their art--Fra Angelico, Perugino, Botticelli, and so many others--came the two sovereigns, Michael Angelo and Raffaelle, the superhuman and the divine. Then the fall was sudden, years elapsed before the advent of Caravaggio with power of colour and modelling, all that the science of painting could achieve when bereft of genius. And afterwards the decline continued until Bernini was reached--Bernini, the real creator of the Rome of the present popes, the prodigal child who at twenty could already show a galaxy of colossal marble wenches, the universal architect who with fearful activity finished the facade, built the colonnade, decorated the interior of St. Peter's, and raised fountains, churches, and palaces innumerable. And that was the end of all, for since then Rome has little by little withdrawn from life, from the modern world, as though she, who always lived on what she derived from others, were dying of her inability to take anything more from them in order to convert it to her own glory. "Ah! Bernini, that delightful Bernini!" continued Narcisse with his rapturous air. "He is both powerful and exquisite, his verve always ready, his ingenuity invariably awake, his fecundity full of grace and magnificence. As for their Bramante with his masterpiece, that cold, correct Cancelleria, we'll dub him the Michael Angelo and Raffaelle of architecture and say no more about it. But Bernini, that exquisite Bernini, why, there is more delicacy and refinement in his pretended bad taste than in all the hugeness and perfection of the others! Our own age ought to recognise itself in his art, at once so varied and so deep, so triumphant in its mannerisms, so full of a perturbing solicitude for the artificial and so free from the baseness of reality. Just go to the Villa Borghese to see the group of Apollo and Daphne which Bernini executed when he was eighteen,* and in particular see his statue of Santa Teresa in ecstasy at Santa Maria della Vittoria! Ah! that Santa Teresa! It is like heaven opening, with the quiver that only a purely divine enjoyment can set in woman's flesh, the rapture of faith carried to the point of spasm, the creature losing breath and dying of pleasure in the arms of the Divinity! I have spent hours and hours before that work without exhausting the infinite scope of its precious, burning symbolisation." * There is also at the Villa Borghese Bernini's /Anchises carried by Aeneas/, which he sculptured when only sixteen. No doubt his faults were many; but it was his misfortune to belong to a decadent period.--Trans. Narcisse's voice died away, and Pierre, no longer astonished at his covert, unconscious hatred of health, simplicity, and strength, scarcely listened to him. The young priest himself was again becoming absorbed in the idea he had formed of pagan Rome resuscitating in Christian Rome and turning it into Catholic Rome, the new political, sacerdotal, domineering centre of earthly government. Apart from the primitive age of the Catacombs, had Rome ever been Christian? The thoughts that had come to him on the Palatine, in the Appian Way, and in St. Peter's were gathering confirmation. Genius that morning had brought him fresh proof. No doubt the paganism which reappeared in the art of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle was tempered, transformed by the Christian spirit. But did it not still remain the basis? Had not the former master peered across Olympus when snatching his great nudities from the terrible heavens of Jehovah? Did not the ideal figures of Raffaelle reveal the superb, fascinating flesh of Venus beneath the chaste veil of the Virgin? It seemed so to Pierre, and some embarrassment mingled with his despondency, for all those beautiful forms glorifying the ardent passions of life, were in opposition to his dream of rejuvenated Christianity giving peace to the world and reviving the simplicity and purity of the early ages. All at once he was surprised to hear Narcisse, by what transition he could not tell, speaking to him of the daily life of Leo XIII. "Yes, my dear Abbe, at eighty-four* the Holy Father shows the activity of a young man and leads a life of determination and hard work such as neither you nor I would care for! At six o'clock he is already up, says his mass in his private chapel, and drinks a little milk for breakfast. Then, from eight o'clock till noon, there is a ceaseless procession of cardinals and prelates, all the affairs of the congregations passing under his eyes, and none could be more numerous or intricate. At noon the public and collective audiences usually begin. At two he dines. Then comes the siesta which he has well earned, or else a promenade in the gardens until six o'clock. The private audiences then sometimes keep him for an hour or two. He sups at nine and scarcely eats, lives on nothing, in fact, and is always alone at his little table. What do you think, eh, of the etiquette which compels him to such loneliness? There you have a man who for eighteen years has never had a guest at his table, who day by day sits all alone in his grandeur! And as soon as ten o'clock strikes, after saying the Rosary with his familiars, he shuts himself up in his room. But, although he may go to bed, he sleeps very little; he is frequently troubled by insomnia, and gets up and sends for a secretary to dictate memoranda or letters to him. When any interesting matter requires his attention he gives himself up to it heart and soul, never letting it escape his thoughts. And his life, his health, lies in all this. His mind is always busy; his will and strength must always be exerting themselves. You may know that he long cultivated Latin verse with affection; and I believe that in his days of struggle he had a passion for journalism, inspired the articles of the newspapers he subsidised, and even dictated some of them when his most cherished ideas were in question." * The reader should remember that the period selected for this narrative is the year 1894. Leo XIII was born in 1810.--Trans. Silence fell. At every moment Narcisse craned his neck to see if the little papal /cortege/ were not emerging from the Gallery of the Tapestries to pass them on its way to the gardens. "You are perhaps aware," he resumed, "that his Holiness is brought down on a low chair which is small enough to pass through every doorway. It's quite a journey, more than a mile, through the /loggie/, the /stanze/ of Raffaelle, the painting and sculpture galleries, not to mention the numerous staircases, before he reaches the gardens, where a pair-horse carriage awaits him. It's quite fine this evening, so he will surely come. We must have a little patience." Whilst Narcisse was giving these particulars Pierre again sank into a reverie and saw the whole extraordinary history pass before him. First came the worldly, ostentatious popes of the Renascence, those who resuscitated antiquity with so much passion and dreamt of draping the Holy See with the purple of empire once more. There was Paul II, the magnificent Venetian who built the Palazzo di Venezia; Sixtus IV, to whom one owes the Sixtine Chapel; and Julius II and Leo X, who made Rome a city of theatrical pomp, prodigious festivities, tournaments, ballets, hunts, masquerades, and banquets. At that time the papacy had just rediscovered Olympus amidst the dust of buried ruins, and as though intoxicated by the torrent of life which arose from the ancient soil, it founded the museums, thus reviving the superb temples of the pagan age, and restoring them to the cult of universal admiration. Never had the Church been in such peril of death, for if the Christ was still honoured at St. Peter's, Jupiter and all the other gods and goddesses, with their beauteous, triumphant flesh, were enthroned in the halls of the Vatican. Then, however, another vision passed before Pierre, one of the modern popes prior to the Italian occupation--notably Pius IX, who, whilst yet free, often went into his good city of Rome. His huge red and gold coach was drawn by six horses, surrounded by Swiss Guards and followed by Noble Guards; but now and again he would alight in the Corso, and continue his promenade on foot, and then the mounted men of the escort galloped forward to give warning and stop the traffic. The carriages drew up, the gentlemen had to alight and kneel on the pavement, whilst the ladies simply rose and devoutly inclined their heads, as the Holy Father, attended by his Court, slowly wended his way to the Piazza del Popolo, smiling and blessing at every step. And now had come Leo XIII, the voluntary prisoner, shut up in the Vatican for eighteen years, and he, behind the high, silent walls, in the unknown sphere where each of his days flowed by so quietly, had acquired a more exalted majesty, instinct with sacred and redoubtable mysteriousness. Ah! that Pope whom you no longer meet or see, that Pope hidden from the common of mankind like some terrible divinity whom the priests alone dare to approach! It is in that sumptuous Vatican which his forerunners of the Renascence built and adorned for giant festivities that he has secluded himself; it is there he lives, far from the crowd, in prison with the handsome men and the lovely women of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle, with the gods and goddesses of marble, with the whole of resplendent Olympus celebrating around him the religion of life and light. With him the entire Papacy is there steeped in paganism. What a spectacle when the slender, weak old man, all soul, so purely white, passes along the galleries of the Museum of Antiquities on his way to the gardens. Right and left the statues behold him pass with all their bare flesh. There is Jupiter, there is Apollo, there is Venus the /dominatrix/, there is Pan, the universal god in whose laugh the joys of earth ring out. Nereids bathe in transparent water. Bacchantes roll, unveiled, in the warm grass. Centaurs gallop by carrying lovely girls, faint with rapture, on their steaming haunches. Ariadne is surprised by Bacchus, Ganymede fondles the eagle, Adonis fires youth and maiden with his flame. And on and on passes the weak, white old man, swaying on his low chair, amidst that splendid triumph, that display and glorification of the flesh, which shouts aloud the omnipotence of Nature, of everlasting matter! Since they have found it again, exhumed it, and honoured it, that it is which once more reigns there imperishable; and in vain have they set vine leaves on the statues, even as they have swathed the huge figures of Michael Angelo; sex still flares on all sides, life overflows, its germs course in torrents through the veins of the world. Near by, in that Vatican library of incomparable wealth, where all human science lies slumbering, there lurks a yet more terrible danger--the danger of an explosion which would sweep away everything, Vatican and St. Peter's also, if one day the books in their turn were to awake and speak aloud as speak the beauty of Venus and the manliness of Apollo. But the white, diaphanous old man seems neither to see nor to hear, and the huge heads of Jupiter, the trunks of Hercules, the equivocal statues of Antinous continue to watch him as he passes on! However, Narcisse had become impatient, and, going in search of an attendant, he learnt from him that his Holiness had already gone down. To shorten the distance, indeed, the /cortege/ often passes along a kind of open gallery leading towards the Mint. "Well, let us go down as well," said Narcisse to Pierre; "I will try to show you the gardens." Down below, in the vestibule, a door of which opened on to a broad path, he spoke to another attendant, a former pontifical soldier whom he personally knew. The man at once let him pass with Pierre, but was unable to tell him whether Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo had accompanied his Holiness that day. "No matter," resumed Narcisse when he and his companion were alone in the path; "I don't despair of meeting him--and these, you see, are the famous gardens of the Vatican." They are very extensive grounds, and the Pope can go quite two and a half miles by passing along the paths of the wood, the vineyard, and the kitchen garden. Occupying the plateau of the Vatican hill, which the medieval wall of Leo IV still girdles, the gardens are separated from the neighbouring valleys as by a fortified rampart. The wall formerly stretched to the castle of Sant' Angelo, thereby forming what was known as the Leonine City. No inquisitive eyes can peer into the grounds excepting from the dome of St. Peter's, which casts its huge shadow over them during the hot summer weather. They are, too, quite a little world, which each pope has taken pleasure in embellishing. There is a large parterre with lawns of geometrical patterns, planted with handsome palms and adorned with lemon and orange trees in pots; there is a less formal, a shadier garden, where, amidst deep plantations of yoke-elms, you find Giovanni Vesanzio's fountain, the Aquilone, and Pius IV's old Casino; then, too, there are the woods with their superb evergreen oaks, their thickets of plane-trees, acacias, and pines, intersected by broad avenues, which are delightfully pleasant for leisurely strolls; and finally, on turning to the left, beyond other clumps of trees, come the kitchen garden and the vineyard, the last well tended. Whilst walking through the wood Narcisse told Pierre of the life led by the Holy Father in these gardens. He strolls in them every second day when the weather allows. Formerly the popes left the Vatican for the Quirinal, which is cooler and healthier, as soon as May arrived; and spent the dog days at Castle Gandolfo on the margins of the Lake of Albano. But nowadays the only summer residence possessed by his Holiness is a virtually intact tower of the old rampart of Leo IV. He here spends the hottest days, and has even erected a sort of pavilion beside it for the accommodation of his suite. Narcisse, like one at home, went in and secured permission for Pierre to glance at the one room occupied by the Pope, a spacious round chamber with semispherical ceiling, on which are painted the heavens with symbolical figures of the constellations; one of the latter, the lion, having two stars for eyes--stars which a system of lighting causes to sparkle during the night. The walls of the tower are so thick that after blocking up a window, a kind of room, for the accommodation of a couch, has been contrived in the embrasure. Beside this couch the only furniture is a large work-table, a dining-table with flaps, and a large regal arm-chair, a mass of gilding, one of the gifts of the Pope's episcopal jubilee. And you dream of the days of solitude and perfect silence, spent in that low donjon hall, where the coolness of a tomb prevails whilst the heavy suns of August are scorching overpowered Rome. An astronomical observatory has been installed in another tower, surmounted by a little white cupola, which you espy amidst the greenery; and under the trees there is also a Swiss chalet, where Leo XIII is fond of resting. He sometimes goes on foot to the kitchen garden, and takes much interest in the vineyard, visiting it to see if the grapes are ripening and if the vintage will be a good one. What most astonished Pierre, however, was to learn that the Holy Father had been very fond of "sport" before age had weakened him. He was indeed passionately addicted to bird snaring. Broad-meshed nets were hung on either side of a path on the fringe of a plantation, and in the middle of the path were placed cages containing the decoys, whose songs soon attracted all the birds of the neighbourhood--red-breasts, white-throats, black-caps, nightingales, fig-peckers of all sorts. And when a numerous company of them was gathered together Leo XIII, seated out of sight and watching, would suddenly clap his hands and startle the birds, which flew up and were caught by the wings in the meshes of the nets. All that then remained to be done was to take them out of the nets and stifle them by a touch of the thumb. Roast fig-peckers are delicious.* * Perhaps so; but what a delightful pastime for the Vicar of the Divinity!--Trans. As Pierre came back through the wood he had another surprise. He suddenly lighted on a "Grotto of Lourdes," a miniature imitation of the original, built of rocks and blocks of cement. And such was his emotion at the sight that he could not conceal it. "It's true, then!" said he. "I was told of it, but I thought that the Holy Father was of loftier mind--free from all such base superstitions!" "Oh!" replied Narcisse, "I fancy that the grotto dates from Pius IX, who evinced especial gratitude to our Lady of Lourdes. At all events, it must be a gift, and Leo XIII simply keeps it in repair." For a few moments Pierre remained motionless and silent before that imitation grotto, that childish plaything. Some zealously devout visitors had left their visiting cards in the cracks of the cement-work! For his part, he felt very sad, and followed his companion with bowed head, lamenting the wretched idiocy of the world. Then, on emerging from the wood, on again reaching the parterre, he raised his eyes. Ah! how exquisite in spite of everything was that decline of a lovely day, and what a victorious charm ascended from the soil in that part of the gardens. There, in front of that bare, noble, burning parterre, far more than under the languishing foliage of the wood or among the fruitful vines, Pierre realised the strength of Nature. Above the grass growing meagrely over the compartments of geometrical pattern which the pathways traced there were barely a few low shrubs, dwarf roses, aloes, rare tufts of withering flowers. Some green bushes still described the escutcheon of Pius IX in accordance with the strange taste of former times. And amidst the warm silence one only heard the faint crystalline murmur of the water trickling from the basin of the central fountain. But all Rome, its ardent heavens, sovereign grace, and conquering voluptuousness, seemed with their own soul to animate this vast rectangular patch of decorative gardening, this mosaic of verdure, which in its semi-abandonment and scorched decay assumed an aspect of melancholy pride, instinct with the ever returning quiver of a passion of fire that could not die. Some antique vases and statues, whitely nude under the setting sun, skirted the parterres. And above the aroma of eucalyptus and of pine, stronger even than that of the ripening oranges, there rose the odour of the large, bitter box-shrubs, so laden with pungent life that it disturbed one as one passed as if indeed it were the very scent of the fecundity of that ancient soil saturated with the dust of generations. "It's very strange that we have not met his Holiness," exclaimed Narcisse. "Perhaps his carriage took the other path through the wood while we were in the tower." Then, reverting to Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo, the /attache/ explained that the functions of /Copiere/, or papal cup-bearer, which his cousin should have discharged as one of the four /Camerieri segreti partecipanti/ had become purely honorary since the dinners offered to diplomatists or in honour of newly consecrated bishops had been given by the Cardinal Secretary of State. Monsignor Gamba, whose cowardice and nullity were legendary, seemed therefore to have no other /role/ than that of enlivening Leo XIII, whose favour he had won by his incessant flattery and the anecdotes which he was ever relating about both the black and the white worlds. Indeed this fat, amiable man, who could even be obliging when his interests were not in question, was a perfect newspaper, brimful of tittle-tattle, disdaining no item of gossip whatever, even if it came from the kitchens. And thus he was quietly marching towards the cardinalate, certain of obtaining the hat without other exertion than that of bringing a budget of gossip to beguile the pleasant hours of the promenade. And Heaven knew that he was always able to garner an abundant harvest of news in that closed Vatican swarming with prelates of every kind, in that womanless pontifical family of old begowned bachelors, all secretly exercised by vast ambitions, covert and revolting rivalries, and ferocious hatreds, which, it is said, are still sometimes carried as far as the good old poison of ancient days. All at once Narcisse stopped. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "I was certain of it. There's the Holy Father! But we are not in luck. He won't even see us; he is about to get into his carriage again." As he spoke a carriage drew up at the verge of the wood, and a little /cortege/ emerging from a narrow path, went towards it. Pierre felt as if he had received a great blow in the heart. Motionless beside his companion, and half hidden by a lofty vase containing a lemon-tree, it was only from a distance that he was able to see the white old man, looking so frail and slender in the wavy folds of his white cassock, and walking so very slowly with short, gliding steps. The young priest could scarcely distinguish the emaciated face of old diaphanous ivory, emphasised by a large nose which jutted out above thin lips. However, the Pontiff's black eyes were glittering with an inquisitive smile, while his right ear was inclined towards Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo, who was doubtless finishing some story at once rich and short, flowery and dignified. And on the left walked a Noble Guard; and two other prelates followed. It was but a familiar apparition; Leo XIII was already climbing into the closed carriage. And Pierre, in the midst of that large, odoriferous, burning garden, again experienced the singular emotion which had come upon him in the Gallery of the Candelabra while he was picturing the Pope on his way between the Apollos and Venuses radiant in their triumphant nudity. There, however, it was only pagan art which had celebrated the eternity of life, the superb, almighty powers of Nature. But here he had beheld the Pontiff steeped in Nature itself, in Nature clad in the most lovely, most voluptuous, most passionate guise. Ah! that Pope, that old man strolling with his Divinity of grief, humility, and renunciation along the paths of those gardens of love, in the languid evenings of the hot summer days, beneath the caressing scents of pine and eucalyptus, ripe oranges, and tall, acrid box-shrubs! The whole atmosphere around him proclaimed the powers of the great god Pan. How pleasant was the thought of living there, amidst that magnificence of heaven and of earth, of loving the beauty of woman and of rejoicing in the fruitfulness of all! And suddenly the decisive truth burst forth that from a land of such joy and light it was only possible for a temporal religion of conquest and political domination to rise; not the mystical, pain-fraught religion of the North--the religion of the soul! However, Narcisse led the young priest away, telling him other anecdotes as they went--anecdotes of the occasional /bonhomie/ of Leo XIII, who would stop to chat with the gardeners, and question them about the health of the trees and the sale of the oranges. And he also mentioned the Pope's former passion for a pair of gazelles, sent him from Africa, two graceful creatures which he had been fond of caressing, and at whose death he had shed tears. But Pierre no longer listened. When they found themselves on the Piazza of St. Peter's, he turned round and gazed at the Vatican once more. His eyes had fallen on the gate of bronze, and he remembered having wondered that morning what there might be behind these metal panels ornamented with big nails. And he did not yet dare to answer the question, and decide if the new nations thirsting for fraternity and justice would really find there the religion necessary for the democracies of to-morrow; for he had not been able to probe things, and only carried a first impression away with him. But how keen it was, and how ill it boded for his dreams! A gate of bronze! Yes, a hard, impregnable gate, so completely shutting the Vatican off from the rest of the world that nothing new had entered the palace for three hundred years. Behind that portal the old centuries, as far as the sixteenth, remained immutable. Time seemed to have stayed its course there for ever; nothing more stirred; the very costumes of the Swiss Guards, the Noble Guards, and the prelates themselves were unchanged; and you found yourself in the world of three hundred years ago, with its etiquette, its costumes, and its ideas. That the popes in a spirit of haughty protest should for five and twenty years have voluntarily shut themselves up in their palace was already regrettable; but this imprisonment of centuries within the past, within the grooves of tradition, was far more serious and dangerous. It was all Catholicism which was thus imprisoned, whose dogmas and sacerdotal organisation were obstinately immobilised. Perhaps, in spite of its apparent flexibility, Catholicism was really unable to yield in anything, under peril of being swept away, and therein lay both its weakness and its strength. And then what a terrible world was there, how great the pride and ambition, how numerous the hatreds and rivalries! And how strange the prison, how singular the company assembled behind the bars--the Crucified by the side of Jupiter Capitolinus, all pagan antiquity fraternising with the Apostles, all the splendours of the Renascence surrounding the pastor of the Gospel who reigns in the name of the humble and the poor! The sun was sinking, the gentle, luscious sweetness of the Roman evenings was falling from the limpid heavens, and after that splendid day spent with Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, the ancients, and the Pope, in the finest palace of the world, the young priest lingered, distracted, on the Piazza of St. Peter's. "Well, you must excuse me, my dear Abbe," concluded Narcisse. "But I will now confess to you that I suspect my worthy cousin of a fear that he might compromise himself by meddling in your affair. I shall certainly see him again, but you will do well not to put too much reliance on him." It was nearly six o'clock when Pierre got back to the Boccanera mansion. As a rule, he passed in all modesty down the lane, and entered by the little side door, a key of which had been given him. But he had that morning received a letter from M. de la Choue, and desired to communicate it to Benedetta. So he ascended the grand staircase, and on reaching the anteroom was surprised to find nobody there. As a rule, whenever the man-servant went out Victorine installed herself in his place and busied herself with some needlework. Her chair was there, and Pierre even noticed some linen which she had left on a little table when probably summoned elsewhere. Then, as the door of the first reception-room was ajar, he at last ventured in. It was almost night there already, the twilight was softly dying away, and all at once the young priest stopped short, fearing to take another step, for, from the room beyond, the large yellow /salon/, there came a murmur of feverish, distracted words, ardent entreaties, fierce panting, a rustling and a shuffling of footsteps. And suddenly Pierre no longer hesitated, urged on despite himself by the conviction that the sounds he heard were those of a struggle, and that some one was hard pressed. And when he darted into the further room he was stupefied, for Dario was there, no longer showing the degenerate elegance of the last scion of an exhausted race, but maddened by the hot, frantic blood of the Boccaneras which had bubbled up within him. He had clasped Benedetta by the shoulders in a frenzy of passion and was scorching her face with his hot, entreating words: "But since you say, my darling, that it is all over, that your marriage will never be dissolved--oh! why should we be wretched for ever! Love me as you do love me, and let me love you--let me love you!" But the Contessina, with an indescribable expression of tenderness and suffering on her tearful face, repulsed him with her outstretched arms, she likewise evincing a fierce energy as she repeated: "No, no; I love you, but it must not, it must not be." At that moment, amidst the roar of his despair, Dario became conscious that some one was entering the room. He turned and gazed at Pierre with an expression of stupefied insanity, scarce able even to recognise him. Then he carried his two hands to his face, to his bloodshot eyes and his cheeks wet with scalding tears, and fled, heaving a terrible, pain-fraught sigh in which baffled passion mingled with grief and repentance. Benedetta seated herself, breathing hard, her strength and courage wellnigh exhausted. But as Pierre, too much embarrassed to speak, turned towards the door, she addressed him in a calmer voice: "No, no, Monsieur l'Abbe, do not go away--sit down, I pray you; I should like to speak to you for a moment." He thereupon thought it his duty to account for his sudden entrance, and explained that he had found the door of the first /salon/ ajar, and that Victorine was not in the ante-room, though he had seen her work lying on the table there. "Yes," exclaimed the Contessina, "Victorine ought to have been there; I saw her there but a short time ago. And when my poor Dario lost his head I called her. Why did she not come?" Then, with sudden expansion, leaning towards Pierre, she continued: "Listen, Monsieur l'Abbe, I will tell you what happened, for I don't want you to form too bad an opinion of my poor Dario. It was all in some measure my fault. Last night he asked me for an appointment here in order that we might have a quiet chat, and as I knew that my aunt would be absent at this time to-day I told him to come. It was only natural--wasn't it?--that we should want to see one another and come to an agreement after the grievous news that my marriage will probably never be annulled. We suffer too much, and must form a decision. And so when he came this evening we began to weep and embrace, mingling our tears together. I kissed him again and again, telling him how I adored him, how bitterly grieved I was at being the cause of his sufferings, and how surely I should die of grief at seeing him so unhappy. Ah! no doubt I did wrong; I ought not to have caught him to my heart and embraced him as I did, for it maddened him, Monsieur l'Abbe; he lost his head, and would have made me break my vow to the Blessed Virgin." She spoke these words in all tranquillity and simplicity, without sign of embarrassment, like a young and beautiful woman who is at once sensible and practical. Then she resumed: "Oh! I know my poor Dario well, but it does not prevent me from loving him; perhaps, indeed, it only makes me love him the more. He looks delicate, perhaps rather sickly, but in truth he is a man of passion. Yes, the old blood of my people bubbles up in him. I know something of it myself, for when I was a child I sometimes had fits of angry passion which left me exhausted on the floor, and even now, when the gusts arise within me, I have to fight against myself and torture myself in order that I may not act madly. But my poor Dario does not know how to suffer. He is like a child whose fancies must be gratified. And yet at bottom he has a good deal of common sense; he waits for me because he knows that the only real happiness lies with the woman who adores him." As Pierre listened he was able to form a more precise idea of the young prince, of whose character he had hitherto had but a vague perception. Whilst dying of love for his cousin, Dario had ever been a man of pleasure. Though he was no doubt very amiable, the basis of his temperament was none the less egotism. And, in particular, he was unable to endure suffering; he loathed suffering, ugliness, and poverty, whether they affected himself or others. Both his flesh and his soul required gaiety, brilliancy, show, life in the full sunlight. And withal he was exhausted, with no strength left him but for the idle life he led, so incapable of thought and will that the idea of joining the new /regime/ had not even occurred to him. Yet he had all the unbounded pride of a Roman; sagacity--a keen, practical perception of the real--was mingled with his indolence; while his inveterate love of woman, more frequently displayed in charm of manner, burst forth at times in attacks of frantic sensuality. "After all he is a man," concluded Benedetta in a low voice, "and I must not ask impossibilities of him." Then, as Pierre gazed at her, his notions of Italian jealousy quite upset, she exclaimed, aglow with passionate adoration: "No, no. Situated as we are, I am not jealous. I know very well that he will always return to me, and that he will be mine alone whenever I please, whenever it may be possible." Silence followed; shadows were filling the room, the gilding of the large pier tables faded away, and infinite melancholy fell from the lofty, dim ceiling and the old hangings, yellow like autumn leaves. But soon, by some chance play of the waning light, a painting stood out above the sofa on which the Contessina was seated. It was the portrait of the beautiful young girl with the turban--Cassia Boccanera the forerunner, the /amorosa/ and avengeress. Again was Pierre struck by the portrait's resemblance to Benedetta, and, thinking aloud, he resumed: "Passion always proves the stronger; there invariably comes a moment when one succumbs--" But Benedetta violently interrupted him: "I! I! Ah! you do not know me; I would rather die!" And with extraordinary exaltation, all aglow with love, as if her superstitious faith had fired her passion to ecstasy, she continued: "I have vowed to the Madonna that I will belong to none but the man I love, and to him only when he is my husband. And hitherto I have kept that vow, at the cost of my happiness, and I will keep it still, even if it cost me my life! Yes, we will die, my poor Dario and I, if it be necessary; but the holy Virgin has my vow, and the angels shall not weep in heaven!" She was all in those words, her nature all simplicity, intricate, inexplicable though it might seem. She was doubtless swayed by that idea of human nobility which Christianity has set in renunciation and purity; a protest, as it were, against eternal matter, against the forces of Nature, the everlasting fruitfulness of life. But there was more than this; she reserved herself, like a divine and priceless gift, to be bestowed on the one being whom her heart had chosen, he who would be her lord and master when God should have united them in marriage. For her everything lay in the blessing of the priest, in the religious solemnisation of matrimony. And thus one understood her long resistance to Prada, whom she did not love, and her despairing, grievous resistance to Dario, whom she did love, but who was not her husband. And how torturing it was for that soul of fire to have to resist her love; how continual was the combat waged by duty in the Virgin's name against the wild, passionate blood of her race! Ignorant, indolent though she might be, she was capable of great fidelity of heart, and, moreover, she was not given to dreaming: love might have its immaterial charms, but she desired it complete. As Pierre looked at her in the dying twilight he seemed to see and understand her for the first time. The duality of her nature appeared in her somewhat full, fleshy lips, in her big black eyes, which suggested a dark, tempestuous night illumined by flashes of lightning, and in the calm, sensible expression of the rest of her gentle, infantile face. And, withal, behind those eyes of flame, beneath that pure, candid skin, one divined the internal tension of a superstitious, proud, and self-willed woman, who was obstinately intent on reserving herself for her one love. And Pierre could well understand that she should be adored, that she should fill the life of the man she chose with passion, and that to his own eyes she should appear like the younger sister of that lovely, tragic Cassia who, unwilling to survive the blow that had rendered self-bestowal impossible, had flung herself into the Tiber, dragging her brother Ercole and the corpse of her lover Flavio with her. However, with a gesture of kindly affection Benedetta caught hold of Pierre's hands. "You have been here a fortnight, Monsieur l'Abbe," said she, "and I have come to like you very much, for I feel you to be a friend. If at first you do not understand us, at least pray do not judge us too severely. Ignorant as I may be, I always strive to act for the best, I assure you." Pierre was greatly touched by her affectionate graciousness, and thanked her whilst for a moment retaining her beautiful hands in his own, for he also was becoming much attached to her. A fresh dream was carrying him off, that of educating her, should he have the time, or, at all events, of not returning home before winning her soul over to his own ideas of future charity and fraternity. Did not that adorable, unoccupied, indolent, ignorant creature, who only knew how to defend her love, personify the Italy of yesterday? The Italy of yesterday, so lovely and so sleepy, instinct with a dying grace, charming one even in her drowsiness, and retaining so much mystery in the fathomless depths of her black, passionate eyes! And what a /role/ would be that of awakening her, instructing her, winning her over to truth, making her the rejuvenated Italy of to-morrow such as he had dreamt of! Even in that disastrous marriage with Count Prada he tried to see merely a first attempt at revival which had failed, the modern Italy of the North being over-hasty, too brutal in its eagerness to love and transform that gentle, belated Rome which was yet so superb and indolent. But might he not take up the task? Had he not noticed that his book, after the astonishment of the first perusal, had remained a source of interest and reflection with Benedetta amidst the emptiness of her days given over to grief? What! was it really possible that she might find some appeasement for her own wretchedness by interesting herself in the humble, in the happiness of the poor? Emotion already thrilled her at the idea, and he, quivering at the thought of all the boundless love that was within her and that she might bestow, vowed to himself that he would draw tears of pity from her eyes. But the night had now almost completely fallen, and Benedetta rose to ask for a lamp. Then, as Pierre was about to take leave, she detained him for another moment in the gloom. He could no longer see her; he only heard her grave voice: "You will not go away with too bad an opinion of us, will you, Monsieur l'Abbe? We love one another, Dario and I, and that is no sin when one behaves as one ought. Ah! yes, I love him, and have loved him for years. I was barely thirteen, he was eighteen, and we already loved one another wildly in those big gardens of the Villa Montefiori which are now all broken up. Ah! what days we spent there, whole afternoons among the trees, hours in secret hiding-places, where we kissed like little angels. When the oranges ripened their perfume intoxicated us. And the large box-plants, ah, /Dio!/ how they enveloped us, how their strong, acrid scent made our hearts beat! I can never smell then nowadays without feeling faint!" A man-servant brought in the lamp, and Pierre ascended to his room. But when half-way up the little staircase he perceived Victorine, who started slightly, as if she had posted herself there to watch his departure from the /salon/. And now, as she followed him up, talking and seeking for information, he suddenly realised what had happened. "Why did you not go to your mistress instead of running off," he asked, "when she called you, while you were sewing in the ante-room?" At first she tried to feign astonishment and reply that she had heard nothing. But her good-natured, frank face did not know how to lie, and she ended by confessing, with a gay, courageous air. "Well," she said, "it surely wasn't for me to interfere between lovers! Besides, my poor little Benedetta is simply torturing herself to death with those ideas of hers. Why shouldn't they be happy, since they love one another? Life isn't so amusing as some may think. And how bitterly one regrets not having seized hold of happiness when the time for it has gone!" Once alone in his room, Pierre suddenly staggered, quite overcome. The great box-plants, the great box-plants with their acrid, perturbing perfume! She, Benedetta, like himself, had quivered as she smelt them; and he saw them once more in a vision of the pontifical gardens, the voluptuous gardens of Rome, deserted, glowing under the August sun. And now his whole day crystallised, assumed clear and full significance. It spoke to him of the fruitful awakening, of the eternal protest of Nature and life, Venus and Hercules, whom one may bury for centuries beneath the soil, but who, nevertheless, one day arise from it, and though one may seek to wall them up within the domineering, stubborn, immutable Vatican, reign yet even there, and rule the whole, wide world with sovereign power! 
8721	----	and David Widger [widger@cecomet.net] THE THREE CITIES ROME BY EMILE ZOLA TRANSLATED BY ERNEST A. VIZETELLY PREFACE IN submitting to the English-speaking public this second volume of M. Zola's trilogy "Lourdes, Rome, Paris," I have no prefatory remarks to offer on behalf of the author, whose views on Rome, its past, present, and future, will be found fully expounded in the following pages. That a book of this character will, like its forerunner "Lourdes," provoke considerable controversy is certain, but comment or rejoinder may well be postponed until that controversy has arisen. At present then I only desire to say, that in spite of the great labour which I have bestowed on this translation, I am sensible of its shortcomings, and in a work of such length, such intricacy, and such a wide range of subject, it will not be surprising if some slips are discovered. Any errors which may be pointed out to me, however, shall be rectified in subsequent editions. I have given, I think, the whole essence of M. Zola's text; but he himself has admitted to me that he has now and again allowed his pen to run away with him, and thus whilst sacrificing nothing of his sense I have at times abbreviated his phraseology so as slightly to condense the book. I may add that there are no chapter headings in the original, and that the circumstances under which the translation was made did not permit me to supply any whilst it was passing through the press; however, as some indication of the contents of the book--which treats of many more things than are usually found in novels--may be a convenience to the reader, I have prepared a table briefly epitomising the chief features of each successive chapter. E. A. V. MERTON, SURREY, ENGLAND, April, 1896. CONTENTS TO PART I I "NEW ROME"--Abbe Froment in the Eternal City--His First Impressions--His Book and the Rejuvenation of Christianity II "BLACK MOUTH, RED SOUL"--The Boccaneras, their Mansion, Ancestors, History, and Friends III ROMANS OF THE CHURCH--Cardinals Boccanera and Sanguinetti--Abbes Paparelli and Santobono--Don Vigilio--Monsignor Nani CONTENTS TO PART II IV ROMANS OF NEW ITALY--The Pradas and the Saccos--The Corso and the Pincio V THE BLOOD OF AUGUSTUS--The Palaces of the Caesars--The Capitol--The Forum--The Appian Way--The Campagna--The Catacombs--St. Peter's. VI VENUS AND HERCULES--The Vatican--The Sixtine Chapel--Michael Angelo and Raffaelle--Botticelli and Bernini--Gods and Goddesses--The Gardens--Leo XIII--The Revolt of Passion CONTENTS TO PART III VII PRINCE AND PONTIFF--The International Pilgrimage--The Papal Revenue--A Function at St. Peter's--The Pope-King--The Temporal Power VIII THE POOR AND THE POPE--The Building Mania--The Financial Crash--The Horrors of the Castle Fields--The Roman Workman--May Christ's Vicar Gamble?--Hopes and Fears of the Papacy IX TITO's WARNING--Aspects of Rome--The Via Giulia--The Tiber by Day--The Gardens--The Villa Medici---The Squares--The Fountains--Poussin and the Campagna--The Campo Verano--The Trastevere--The "Palaces"--Aristocracy, Middle Class, Democracy--The Tiber by Night CONTENTS TO PART IV X FROM PILLAR TO POST--The Propaganda--The Index--Dominicans, Jesuits, Franciscans--The Secular Clergy--Roman Worship--Freemasonry--Cardinal Vicar and Cardinal Secretary--The Inquisition. XI POISON!--Frascati--A Cardinal and his Creature--Albano, Castel Gandolfo, Nemi--Across the Campagna--An Osteria--Destiny on the March XII THE AGONY OF PASSION--A Roman Gala--The Buongiovannis--The Grey World--The Triumph of Benedetta--King Humbert and Queen Margherita--The Fig-tree of Judas XIII DESTINY!--A Happy Morning--The Mid-day Meal--Dario and the Figs--Extreme Unction--Benedetta's Curse--The Lovers' Death CONTENTS TO PART V XIV SUBMISSION--The Vatican by Night--The Papal Anterooms--Some Great Popes--His Holiness's Bed-room--Pierre's Reception--Papal Wrath--Pierre's Appeal--The Pope's Policy--Dogma and Lourdes--Pierre Reprobates his Book XV A HOUSE OF MOURNING--Lying in State--Mother and Son--Princess and Work-girl--Nani the Jesuit--Rival Cardinals--The Pontiff of Destruction XVI JUDGMENT--Pierre and Orlando--Italian Rome--Wanted, a Democracy--Italy and France--The Rome of the Anarchists--The Agony of Guilt--A Botticelli--The Papacy Condemned--The Coming Schism--The March of Science--The Destruction of Rome--The Victory of Reason--Justice not Charity--Departure--The March of Civilisation--One Fatherland for All Mankind ROME PART I I THE train had been greatly delayed during the night between Pisa and Civita Vecchia, and it was close upon nine o'clock in the morning when, after a fatiguing journey of twenty-five hours' duration, Abbe Pierre Froment at last reached Rome. He had brought only a valise with him, and, springing hastily out of the railway carriage amidst the scramble of the arrival, he brushed the eager porters aside, intent on carrying his trifling luggage himself, so anxious was he to reach his destination, to be alone, and look around him. And almost immediately, on the Piazza dei Cinquecento, in front of the railway station, he climbed into one of the small open cabs ranged alongside the footwalk, and placed the valise near him after giving the driver this address: "Via Giulia, Palazzo Boccanera."* * Boccanera mansion, Julia Street. It was a Monday, the 3rd of September, a beautifully bright and mild morning, with a clear sky overhead. The cabby, a plump little man with sparkling eyes and white teeth, smiled on realising by Pierre's accent that he had to deal with a French priest. Then he whipped up his lean horse, and the vehicle started off at the rapid pace customary to the clean and cheerful cabs of Rome. However, on reaching the Piazza delle Terme, after skirting the greenery of a little public garden, the man turned round, still smiling, and pointing to some ruins with his whip, "The baths of Diocletian," said he in broken French, like an obliging driver who is anxious to court favour with foreigners in order to secure their custom. Then, at a fast trot, the vehicle descended the rapid slope of the Via Nazionale, which dips down from the summit of the Viminalis,* where the railway station is situated. And from that moment the driver scarcely ceased turning round and pointing at the monuments with his whip. In this broad new thoroughfare there were only buildings of recent erection. Still, the wave of the cabman's whip became more pronounced and his voice rose to a higher key, with a somewhat ironical inflection, when he gave the name of a huge and still chalky pile on his left, a gigantic erection of stone, overladen with sculptured work-pediments and statues. * One of the seven hills on which Rome is built. The other six are the Capitoline, Aventine, Quirinal, Esquiline, Coelian, and Palatine. These names will perforce frequently occur in the present narrative. "The National Bank!" he said. Pierre, however, during the week which had followed his resolve to make the journey, had spent wellnigh every day in studying Roman topography in maps and books. Thus he could have directed his steps to any given spot without inquiring his way, and he anticipated most of the driver's explanations. At the same time he was disconcerted by the sudden slopes, the perpetually recurring hills, on which certain districts rose, house above house, in terrace fashion. On his right-hand clumps of greenery were now climbing a height, and above them stretched a long bare yellow building of barrack or convent-like aspect. "The Quirinal, the King's palace," said the driver. Lower down, as the cab turned across a triangular square, Pierre, on raising his eyes, was delighted to perceive a sort of aerial garden high above him--a garden which was upheld by a lofty smooth wall, and whence the elegant and vigorous silhouette of a parasol pine, many centuries old, rose aloft into the limpid heavens. At this sight he realised all the pride and grace of Rome. "The Villa Aldobrandini," the cabman called. Then, yet lower down, there came a fleeting vision which decisively impassioned Pierre. The street again made a sudden bend, and in one corner, beyond a short dim alley, there was a blazing gap of light. On a lower level appeared a white square, a well of sunshine, filled with a blinding golden dust; and amidst all that morning glory there arose a gigantic marble column, gilt from base to summit on the side which the sun in rising had laved with its beams for wellnigh eighteen hundred years. And Pierre was surprised when the cabman told him the name of the column, for in his mind he had never pictured it soaring aloft in such a dazzling cavity with shadows all around. It was the column of Trajan. The Via Nazionale turned for the last time at the foot of the slope. And then other names fell hastily from the driver's lips as his horse went on at a fast trot. There was the Palazzo Colonna, with its garden edged by meagre cypresses; the Palazzo Torlonia, almost ripped open by recent "improvements"; the Palazzo di Venezia, bare and fearsome, with its crenelated walls, its stern and tragic appearance, that of some fortress of the middle ages, forgotten there amidst the commonplace life of nowadays. Pierre's surprise increased at the unexpected aspect which certain buildings and streets presented; and the keenest blow of all was dealt him when the cabman with his whip triumphantly called his attention to the Corso, a long narrow thoroughfare, about as broad as Fleet Street,* white with sunshine on the left, and black with shadows on the right, whilst at the far end the Piazza del Popolo (the Square of the People) showed like a bright star. Was this, then, the heart of the city, the vaunted promenade, the street brimful of life, whither flowed all the blood of Rome? * M. Zola likens the Corso to the Rue St. Honore in Paris, but I have thought that an English comparison would be preferable in the present version.--Trans. However, the cab was already entering the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, which follows the Via Nazionale, these being the two piercings effected right across the olden city from the railway station to the bridge of St. Angelo. On the left-hand the rounded apsis of the Gesu church looked quite golden in the morning brightness. Then, between the church and the heavy Altieri palace which the "improvers" had not dared to demolish, the street became narrower, and one entered into cold, damp shade. But a moment afterwards, before the facade of the Gesu, when the square was reached, the sun again appeared, dazzling, throwing golden sheets of light around; whilst afar off at the end of the Via di Ara Coeli, steeped in shadow, a glimpse could be caught of some sunlit palm-trees. "That's the Capitol yonder," said the cabman. The priest hastily leant to the left, but only espied the patch of greenery at the end of the dim corridor-like street. The sudden alternations of warm light and cold shade made him shiver. In front of the Palazzo di Venezia, and in front of the Gesu, it had seemed to him as if all the night of ancient times were falling icily upon his shoulders; but at each fresh square, each broadening of the new thoroughfares, there came a return to light, to the pleasant warmth and gaiety of life. The yellow sunflashes, in falling from the house fronts, sharply outlined the violescent shadows. Strips of sky, very blue and very benign, could be perceived between the roofs. And it seemed to Pierre that the air he breathed had a particular savour, which he could not yet quite define, but it was like that of fruit, and increased the feverishness which had possessed him ever since his arrival. The Corso Vittorio Emanuele is, in spite of its irregularity, a very fine modern thoroughfare; and for a time Pierre might have fancied himself in any great city full of huge houses let out in flats. But when he passed before the Cancelleria,* Bramante's masterpiece, the typical monument of the Roman Renascence, his astonishment came back to him and his mind returned to the mansions which he had previously espied, those bare, huge, heavy edifices, those vast cubes of stone-work resembling hospitals or prisons. Never would he have imagined that the famous Roman "palaces" were like that, destitute of all grace and fancy and external magnificence. However, they were considered very fine and must be so; he would doubtless end by understanding things, but for that he would require reflection.** * Formerly the residence of the Papal Vice-Chancellors. ** It is as well to point out at once that a palazzo is not a palace as we understand the term, but rather a mansion.--Trans. All at once the cab turned out of the populous Corso Vittorio Emanuele into a succession of winding alleys, through which it had difficulty in making its way. Quietude and solitude now came back again; the olden city, cold and somniferous, followed the new city with its bright sunshine and its crowds. Pierre remembered the maps which he had consulted, and realised that he was drawing near to the Via Giulia, and thereupon his curiosity, which had been steadily increasing, augmented to such a point that he suffered from it, full of despair at not seeing more and learning more at once. In the feverish state in which he had found himself ever since leaving the station, his astonishment at not finding things such as he had expected, the many shocks that his imagination had received, aggravated his passion beyond endurance, and brought him an acute desire to satisfy himself immediately. Nine o'clock had struck but a few minutes previously, he had the whole morning before him to repair to the Boccanera palace, so why should he not at once drive to the classic spot, the summit whence one perceives the whole of Rome spread out upon her seven hills? And when once this thought had entered into his mind it tortured him until he was at last compelled to yield to it. The driver no longer turned his head, so that Pierre rose up to give him this new address: "To San Pietro in Montorio!" On hearing him the man at first looked astonished, unable to understand. He indicated with his whip that San Pietro was yonder, far away. However, as the priest insisted, he again smiled complacently, with a friendly nod of his head. All right! For his own part he was quite willing. The horse then went on at a more rapid pace through the maze of narrow streets. One of these was pent between high walls, and the daylight descended into it as into a deep trench. But at the end came a sudden return to light, and the Tiber was crossed by the antique bridge of Sixtus IV, right and left of which stretched the new quays, amidst the ravages and fresh plaster-work of recent erections. On the other side of the river the Trastevere district also was ripped open, and the vehicle ascended the slope of the Janiculum by a broad thoroughfare where large slabs bore the name of Garibaldi. For the last time the driver made a gesture of good-natured pride as he named this triumphal route. "Via Garibaldi!" The horse had been obliged to slacken its pace, and Pierre, mastered by childish impatience, turned round to look at the city as by degrees it spread out and revealed itself behind him. The ascent was a long one; fresh districts were ever rising up, even to the most distant hills. Then, in the increasing emotion which made his heart beat, the young priest felt that he was spoiling the contentment of his desire by thus gradually satisfying it, slowly and but partially effecting his conquest of the horizon. He wished to receive the shock full in the face, to behold all Rome at one glance, to gather the holy city together, and embrace the whole of it at one grasp. And thereupon he mustered sufficient strength of mind to refrain from turning round any more, in spite of the impulses of his whole being. There is a spacious terrace on the summit of the incline. The church of San Pietro in Montorio stands there, on the spot where, as some say, St. Peter was crucified. The square is bare and brown, baked by the hot summer suns; but a little further away in the rear, the clear and noisy waters of the Acqua Paola fall bubbling from the three basins of a monumental fountain amidst sempiternal freshness. And alongside the terrace parapet, on the very crown of the Trastevere, there are always rows of tourists, slim Englishmen and square-built Germans, agape with traditional admiration, or consulting their guide-books in order to identify the monuments. Pierre sprang lightly from the cab, leaving his valise on the seat, and making a sign to the driver, who went to join the row of waiting cabs, and remained philosophically seated on his box in the full sunlight, his head drooping like that of his horse, both resigning themselves to the customary long stoppage. Meantime Pierre, erect against the parapet, in his tight black cassock, and with his bare feverish hands nervously clenched, was gazing before him with all his eyes, with all his soul. Rome! Rome! the city of the Caesars, the city of the Popes, the Eternal City which has twice conquered the world, the predestined city of the glowing dream in which he had indulged for months! At last it was before him, at last his eyes beheld it! During the previous days some rainstorms had abated the intense August heat, and on that lovely September morning the air had freshened under the pale blue of the spotless far-spreading heavens. And the Rome that Pierre beheld was a Rome steeped in mildness, a visionary Rome which seemed to evaporate in the clear sunshine. A fine bluey haze, scarcely perceptible, as delicate as gauze, hovered over the roofs of the low-lying districts; whilst the vast Campagna, the distant hills, died away in a pale pink flush. At first Pierre distinguished nothing, sought no particular edifice or spot, but gave sight and soul alike to the whole of Rome, to the living colossus spread out below him, on a soil compounded of the dust of generations. Each century had renewed the city's glory as with the sap of immortal youth. And that which struck Pierre, that which made his heart leap within him, was that he found Rome such as he had desired to find her, fresh and youthful, with a volatile, almost incorporeal, gaiety of aspect, smiling as at the hope of a new life in the pure dawn of a lovely day. And standing motionless before the sublime vista, with his hands still clenched and burning, Pierre in a few minutes again lived the last three years of his life. Ah! what a terrible year had the first been, spent in his little house at Neuilly, with doors and windows ever closed, burrowing there like some wounded animal suffering unto death. He had come back from Lourdes with his soul desolate, his heart bleeding, with nought but ashes within him. Silence and darkness fell upon the ruins of his love and his faith. Days and days went by, without a pulsation of his veins, without the faintest gleam arising to brighten the gloom of his abandonment. His life was a mechanical one; he awaited the necessary courage to resume the tenor of existence in the name of sovereign reason, which had imposed upon him the sacrifice of everything. Why was he not stronger, more resistant, why did he not quietly adapt his life to his new opinions? As he was unwilling to cast off his cassock, through fidelity to the love of one and disgust of backsliding, why did he not seek occupation in some science suited to a priest, such as astronomy or archaeology? The truth was that something, doubtless his mother's spirit, wept within him, an infinite, distracted love which nothing had yet satisfied and which ever despaired of attaining contentment. Therein lay the perpetual suffering of his solitude: beneath the lofty dignity of reason regained, the wound still lingered, raw and bleeding. One autumn evening, however, under a dismal rainy sky, chance brought him into relations with an old priest, Abbe Rose, who was curate at the church of Ste. Marguerite, in the Faubourg St. Antoine. He went to see Abbe Rose in the Rue de Charonne, where in the depths of a damp ground floor he had transformed three rooms into an asylum for abandoned children, whom he picked up in the neighbouring streets. And from that moment Pierre's life changed, a fresh and all-powerful source of interest had entered into it, and by degrees he became the old priest's passionate helper. It was a long way from Neuilly to the Rue de Charonne, and at first he only made the journey twice a week. But afterwards he bestirred himself every day, leaving home in the morning and not returning until night. As the three rooms no longer sufficed for the asylum, he rented the first floor of the house, reserving for himself a chamber in which ultimately he often slept. And all his modest income was expended there, in the prompt succouring of poor children; and the old priest, delighted, touched to tears by the young devoted help which had come to him from heaven, would often embrace Pierre, weeping, and call him a child of God. It was then that Pierre knew want and wretchedness--wicked, abominable wretchedness; then that he lived amidst it for two long years. The acquaintance began with the poor little beings whom he picked up on the pavements, or whom kind-hearted neighbours brought to him now that the asylum was known in the district--little boys, little girls, tiny mites stranded on the streets whilst their fathers and mothers were toiling, drinking, or dying. The father had often disappeared, the mother had gone wrong, drunkenness and debauchery had followed slack times into the home; and then the brood was swept into the gutter, and the younger ones half perished of cold and hunger on the footways, whilst their elders betook themselves to courses of vice and crime. One evening Pierre rescued from the wheels of a stone-dray two little nippers, brothers, who could not even give him an address, tell him whence they had come. On another evening he returned to the asylum with a little girl in his arms, a fair-haired little angel, barely three years old, whom he had found on a bench, and who sobbed, saying that her mother had left her there. And by a logical chain of circumstances, after dealing with the fleshless, pitiful fledglings ousted from their nests, he came to deal with the parents, to enter their hovels, penetrating each day further and further into a hellish sphere, and ultimately acquiring knowledge of all its frightful horror, his heart meantime bleeding, rent by terrified anguish and impotent charity. Oh! the grievous City of Misery, the bottomless abyss of human suffering and degradation--how frightful were his journeys through it during those two years which distracted his whole being! In that Ste. Marguerite district of Paris, in the very heart of that Faubourg St. Antoine, so active and so brave for work, however hard, he discovered no end of sordid dwellings, whole lanes and alleys of hovels without light or air, cellar-like in their dampness, and where a multitude of wretches wallowed and suffered as from poison. All the way up the shaky staircases one's feet slipped upon filth. On every story there was the same destitution, dirt, and promiscuity. Many windows were paneless, and in swept the wind howling, and the rain pouring torrentially. Many of the inmates slept on the bare tiled floors, never unclothing themselves. There was neither furniture nor linen, the life led there was essentially an animal life, a commingling of either sex and of every age--humanity lapsing into animality through lack of even indispensable things, through indigence of so complete a character that men, women, and children fought even with tooth and nail for the very crumbs swept from the tables of the rich. And the worst of it all was the degradation of the human being; this was no case of the free naked savage, hunting and devouring his prey in the primeval forests; here civilised man was found, sunk into brutishness, with all the stigmas of his fall, debased, disfigured, and enfeebled, amidst the luxury and refinement of that city of Paris which is one of the queens of the world. In every household Pierre heard the same story. There had been youth and gaiety at the outset, brave acceptance of the law that one must work. Then weariness had come; what was the use of always toiling if one were never to get rich? And so, by way of snatching a share of happiness, the husband turned to drink; the wife neglected her home, also drinking at times, and letting the children grow up as they might. Sordid surroundings, ignorance, and overcrowding did the rest. In the great majority of cases, prolonged lack of work was mostly to blame; for this not only empties the drawers of the savings hidden away in them, but exhausts human courage, and tends to confirmed habits of idleness. During long weeks the workshops empty, and the arms of the toilers lose strength. In all Paris, so feverishly inclined to action, it is impossible to find the slightest thing to do. And then the husband comes home in the evening with tearful eyes, having vainly offered his arms everywhere, having failed even to get a job at street-sweeping, for that employment is much sought after, and to secure it one needs influence and protectors. Is it not monstrous to see a man seeking work that he may eat, and finding no work and therefore no food in this great city resplendent and resonant with wealth? The wife does not eat, the children do not eat. And then comes black famine, brutishness, and finally revolt and the snapping of all social ties under the frightful injustice meted out to poor beings who by their weakness are condemned to death. And the old workman, he whose limbs have been worn out by half a century of hard toil, without possibility of saving a copper, on what pallet of agony, in what dark hole must he not sink to die? Should he then be finished off with a mallet, like a crippled beast of burden, on the day when ceasing to work he also ceases to eat? Almost all pass away in the hospitals, others disappear, unknown, swept off by the muddy flow of the streets. One morning, on some rotten straw in a loathsome hovel, Pierre found a poor devil who had died of hunger and had been forgotten there for a week. The rats had devoured his face. But it was particularly on an evening of the last winter that Pierre's heart had overflowed with pity. Awful in winter time are the sufferings of the poor in their fireless hovels, where the snow penetrates by every chink. The Seine rolls blocks of ice, the soil is frost-bound, in all sorts of callings there is an enforced cessation of work. Bands of urchins, barefooted, scarcely clad, hungry and racked by coughing, wander about the ragpickers' "rents" and are carried off by sudden hurricanes of consumption. Pierre found families, women with five and six children, who had not eaten for three days, and who huddled together in heaps to try to keep themselves warm. And on that terrible evening, before anybody else, he went down a dark passage and entered a room of terror, where he found that a mother had just committed suicide with her five little ones--driven to it by despair and hunger--a tragedy of misery which for a few hours would make all Paris shudder! There was not an article of furniture or linen left in the place; it had been necessary to sell everything bit by bit to a neighbouring dealer. There was nothing but the stove where the charcoal was still smoking and a half-emptied palliasse on which the mother had fallen, suckling her last-born, a babe but three months old. And a drop of blood had trickled from the nipple of her breast, towards which the dead infant still protruded its eager lips. Two little girls, three and five years old, two pretty little blondes, were also lying there, sleeping the eternal sleep side by side; whilst of the two boys, who were older, one had succumbed crouching against the wall with his head between his hands, and the other had passed through the last throes on the floor, struggling as though he had sought to crawl on his knees to the window in order to open it. Some neighbours, hurrying in, told Pierre the fearful commonplace story; slow ruin, the father unable to find work, perchance taking to drink, the landlord weary of waiting, threatening the family with expulsion, and the mother losing her head, thirsting for death, and prevailing on her little ones to die with her, while her husband, who had been out since the morning, was vainly scouring the streets. Just as the Commissary of Police arrived to verify what had happened, the poor devil returned, and when he had seen and understood things, he fell to the ground like a stunned ox, and raised a prolonged, plaintive howl, such a poignant cry of death that the whole terrified street wept at it. Both in his ears and in his heart Pierre carried away with him that horrible cry, the plaint of a condemned race expiring amidst abandonment and hunger; and that night he could neither eat nor sleep. Was it possible that such abomination, such absolute destitution, such black misery leading straight to death should exist in the heart of that great city of Paris, brimful of wealth, intoxicated with enjoyment, flinging millions out of the windows for mere pleasure? What! there should on one side be such colossal fortunes, so many foolish fancies gratified, with lives endowed with every happiness, whilst on the other was found inveterate poverty, lack even of bread, absence of every hope, and mothers killing themselves with their babes, to whom they had nought to offer but the blood of their milkless breast! And a feeling of revolt stirred Pierre; he was for a moment conscious of the derisive futility of charity. What indeed was the use of doing that which he did--picking up the little ones, succouring the parents, prolonging the sufferings of the aged? The very foundations of the social edifice were rotten; all would soon collapse amid mire and blood. A great act of justice alone could sweep the old world away in order that the new world might be built. And at that moment he realised so keenly how irreparable was the breach, how irremediable the evil, how deathly the cancer of misery, that he understood the actions of the violent, and was himself ready to accept the devastating and purifying whirlwind, the regeneration of the world by flame and steel, even as when in the dim ages Jehovah in His wrath sent fire from heaven to cleanse the accursed cities of the plains. However, on hearing him sob that evening, Abbe Rose came up to remonstrate in fatherly fashion. The old priest was a saint, endowed with infinite gentleness and infinite hope. Why despair indeed when one had the Gospel? Did not the divine commandment, "Love one another," suffice for the salvation of the world? He, Abbe Rose, held violence in horror and was wont to say that, however great the evil, it would soon be overcome if humanity would but turn backward to the age of humility, simplicity, and purity, when Christians lived together in innocent brotherhood. What a delightful picture he drew of evangelical society, of whose second coming he spoke with quiet gaiety as though it were to take place on the very morrow! And Pierre, anxious to escape from his frightful recollections, ended by smiling, by taking pleasure in Abbe Rose's bright consoling tale. They chatted until a late hour, and on the following days reverted to the same subject of conversation, one which the old priest was very fond of, ever supplying new particulars, and speaking of the approaching reign of love and justice with the touching confidence of a good if simple man, who is convinced that he will not die till he shall have seen the Deity descend upon earth. And now a fresh evolution took place in Pierre's mind. The practice of benevolence in that poor district had developed infinite compassion in his breast, his heart failed him, distracted, rent by contemplation of the misery which he despaired of healing. And in this awakening of his feelings he often thought that his reason was giving way, he seemed to be retracing his steps towards childhood, to that need of universal love which his mother had implanted in him, and dreamt of chimerical solutions, awaiting help from the unknown powers. Then his fears, his hatred of the brutality of facts at last brought him an increasing desire to work salvation by love. No time should be lost in seeking to avert the frightful catastrophe which seemed inevitable, the fratricidal war of classes which would sweep the old world away beneath the accumulation of its crimes. Convinced that injustice had attained its apogee, that but little time remained before the vengeful hour when the poor would compel the rich to part with their possessions, he took pleasure in dreaming of a peaceful solution, a kiss of peace exchanged by all men, a return to the pure morals of the Gospel as it had been preached by Jesus. Doubts tortured him at the outset. Could olden Catholicism be rejuvenated, brought back to the youth and candour of primitive Christianity? He set himself to study things, reading and questioning, and taking a more and more passionate interest in that great problem of Catholic socialism which had made no little noise for some years past. And quivering with pity for the wretched, ready as he was for the miracle of fraternisation, he gradually lost such scruples as intelligence might have prompted, and persuaded himself that once again Christ would work the redemption of suffering humanity. At last a precise idea took possession of him, a conviction that Catholicism purified, brought back to its original state, would prove the one pact, the supreme law that might save society by averting the sanguinary crisis which threatened it. When he had quitted Lourdes two years previously, revolted by all its gross idolatry, his faith for ever dead, but his mind worried by the everlasting need of the divine which tortures human creatures, a cry had arisen within him from the deepest recesses of his being: "A new religion! a new religion!" And it was this new religion, or rather this revived religion which he now fancied he had discovered in his desire to work social salvation--ensuring human happiness by means of the only moral authority that was erect, the distant outcome of the most admirable implement ever devised for the government of nations. During the period of slow development through which Pierre passed, two men, apart from Abbe Rose, exercised great influence on him. A benevolent action brought him into intercourse with Monseigneur Bergerot, a bishop whom the Pope had recently created a cardinal, in reward for a whole life of charity, and this in spite of the covert opposition of the papal /curia/ which suspected the French prelate to be a man of open mind, governing his diocese in paternal fashion. Pierre became more impassioned by his intercourse with this apostle, this shepherd of souls, in whom he detected one of the good simple leaders that he desired for the future community. However, his apostolate was influenced even more decisively by meeting Viscount Philibert de la Choue at the gatherings of certain workingmen's Catholic associations. A handsome man, with military manners, and a long noble-looking face, spoilt by a small and broken nose which seemed to presage the ultimate defeat of a badly balanced mind, the Viscount was one of the most active agitators of Catholic socialism in France. He was the possessor of vast estates, a vast fortune, though it was said that some unsuccessful agricultural enterprises had already reduced his wealth by nearly one-half. In the department where his property was situated he had been at great pains to establish model farms, at which he had put his ideas on Christian socialism into practice, but success did not seem to follow him. However, it had all helped to secure his election as a deputy, and he spoke in the Chamber, unfolding the programme of his party in long and stirring speeches. Unwearying in his ardour, he also led pilgrimages to Rome, presided over meetings, and delivered lectures, devoting himself particularly to the people, the conquest of whom, so he privately remarked, could alone ensure the triumph of the Church. And thus he exercised considerable influence over Pierre, who in him admired qualities which himself did not possess--an organising spirit and a militant if somewhat blundering will, entirely applied to the revival of Christian society in France. However, though the young priest learnt a good deal by associating with him, he nevertheless remained a sentimental dreamer, whose imagination, disdainful of political requirements, straightway winged its flight to the future abode of universal happiness; whereas the Viscount aspired to complete the downfall of the liberal ideas of 1789 by utilising the disillusion and anger of the democracy to work a return towards the past. Pierre spent some delightful months. Never before had neophyte lived so entirely for the happiness of others. He was all love, consumed by the passion of his apostolate. The sight of the poor wretches whom he visited, the men without work, the women, the children without bread, filled him with a keener and keener conviction that a new religion must arise to put an end to all the injustice which otherwise would bring the rebellious world to a violent death. And he was resolved to employ all his strength in effecting and hastening the intervention of the divine, the resuscitation of primitive Christianity. His Catholic faith remained dead; he still had no belief in dogmas, mysteries, and miracles; but a hope sufficed him, the hope that the Church might still work good, by connecting itself with the irresistible modern democratic movement, so as to save the nations from the social catastrophe which impended. His soul had grown calm since he had taken on himself the mission of replanting the Gospel in the hearts of the hungry and growling people of the Faubourgs. He was now leading an active life, and suffered less from the frightful void which he had brought back from Lourdes; and as he no longer questioned himself, the anguish of uncertainty no longer tortured him. It was with the serenity which attends the simple accomplishment of duty that he continued to say his mass. He even finished by thinking that the mystery which he thus celebrated--indeed, that all the mysteries and all the dogmas were but symbols--rites requisite for humanity in its childhood, which would be got rid of later on, when enlarged, purified, and instructed humanity should be able to support the brightness of naked truth. And in his zealous desire to be useful, his passion to proclaim his belief aloud, Pierre one morning found himself at his table writing a book. This had come about quite naturally; the book proceeded from him like a heart-cry, without any literary idea having crossed his mind. One night, whilst he lay awake, its title suddenly flashed before his eyes in the darkness: "NEW ROME." That expressed everything, for must not the new redemption of the nations originate in eternal and holy Rome? The only existing authority was found there; rejuvenescence could only spring from the sacred soil where the old Catholic oak had grown. He wrote his book in a couple of months, having unconsciously prepared himself for the work by his studies in contemporary socialism during a year past. There was a bubbling flow in his brain as in a poet's; it seemed to him sometimes as if he dreamt those pages, as if an internal distant voice dictated them to him. When he read passages written on the previous day to Viscount Philibert de la Choue, the latter often expressed keen approval of them from a practical point of view, saying that one must touch the people in order to lead them, and that it would also be a good plan to compose pious and yet amusing songs for singing in the workshops. As for Monseigneur Bergerot, without examining the book from the dogmatic standpoint, he was deeply touched by the glowing breath of charity which every page exhaled, and was even guilty of the imprudence of writing an approving letter to the author, which letter he authorised him to insert in his work by way of preface. And yet now the Congregation of the Index Expurgatorius was about to place this book, issued in the previous June, under interdict; and it was to defend it that the young priest had hastened to Rome, inflamed by the desire to make his ideas prevail, and resolved to plead his cause in person before the Holy Father, having, he was convinced of it, simply given expression to the pontiff's views. Pierre had not stirred whilst thus living his three last years afresh: he still stood erect before the parapet, before Rome, which he had so often dreamt of and had so keenly desired to see. There was a constant succession of arriving and departing vehicles behind him; the slim Englishmen and the heavy Germans passed away after bestowing on the classic view the five minutes prescribed by their guidebooks; whilst the driver and the horse of Pierre's cab remained waiting complacently, each with his head drooping under the bright sun, which was heating the valise on the seat of the vehicle. And Pierre, in his black cassock, seemed to have grown slimmer and elongated, very slight of build, as he stood there motionless, absorbed in the sublime spectacle. He had lost flesh after his journey to Lourdes, his features too had become less pronounced. Since his mother's part in his nature had regained ascendency, the broad, straight forehead, the intellectual air which he owed to his father seemed to have grown less conspicuous, while his kind and somewhat large mouth, and his delicate chin, bespeaking infinite affection, dominated, revealing his soul, which also glowed in the kindly sparkle of his eyes. Ah! how tender and glowing were the eyes with which he gazed upon the Rome of his book, the new Rome that he had dreamt of! If, first of all, the /ensemble/ had claimed his attention in the soft and somewhat veiled light of that lovely morning, at present he could distinguish details, and let his glance rest upon particular edifices. And it was with childish delight that he identified them, having long studied them in maps and collections of photographs. Beneath his feet, at the bottom of the Janiculum, stretched the Trastevere district with its chaos of old ruddy houses, whose sunburnt tiles hid the course of the Tiber. He was somewhat surprised by the flattish aspect of everything as seen from the terraced summit. It was as though a bird's-eye view levelled the city, the famous hills merely showing like bosses, swellings scarcely perceptible amidst the spreading sea of house-fronts. Yonder, on the right, distinct against the distant blue of the Alban mountains, was certainly the Aventine with its three churches half-hidden by foliage; there, too, was the discrowned Palatine, edged as with black fringe by a line of cypresses. In the rear, the Coelian hill faded away, showing only the trees of the Villa Mattei paling in the golden sunshine. The slender spire and two little domes of Sta. Maria Maggiore alone indicated the summit of the Esquiline, right in front and far away at the other end of the city; whilst on the heights of the neighbouring Viminal, Pierre only perceived a confused mass of whitish blocks, steeped in light and streaked with fine brown lines--recent erections, no doubt, which at that distance suggested an abandoned stone quarry. He long sought the Capitol without being able to discover it; he had to take his bearings, and ended by convincing himself that the square tower, modestly lost among surrounding house-roofs, which he saw in front of Sta. Maria Maggiore was its campanile. Next, on the left, came the Quirinal, recognisable by the long facade of the royal palace, a barrack or hospital-like facade, flat, crudely yellow in hue, and pierced by an infinite number of regularly disposed windows. However, as Pierre was completing the circuit, a sudden vision made him stop short. Without the city, above the trees of the Botanical Garden, the dome of St. Peter's appeared to him. It seemed to be poised upon the greenery, and rose up into the pure blue sky, sky-blue itself and so ethereal that it mingled with the azure of the infinite. The stone lantern which surmounts it, white and dazzling, looked as though it were suspended on high. Pierre did not weary, and his glances incessantly travelled from one end of the horizon to the other. They lingered on the noble outlines, the proud gracefulness of the town-sprinkled Sabine and Alban mountains, whose girdle limited the expanse. The Roman Campagna spread out in far stretches, bare and majestic, like a desert of death, with the glaucous green of a stagnant sea; and he ended by distinguishing "the stern round tower" of the tomb of Cecilia Metella, behind which a thin pale line indicated the ancient Appian Way. Remnants of aqueducts strewed the short herbage amidst the dust of the fallen worlds. And, bringing his glance nearer in, the city again appeared with its jumble of edifices, on which his eyes lighted at random. Close at hand, by its loggia turned towards the river, he recognised the huge tawny cube of the Palazzo Farnese. The low cupola, farther away and scarcely visible, was probably that of the Pantheon. Then by sudden leaps came the freshly whitened walls of San Paolo-fuori-le-Mura,* similar to those of some huge barn, and the statues crowning San Giovanni in Laterano, delicate, scarcely as big as insects. Next the swarming of domes, that of the Gesu, that of San Carlo, that of St'. Andrea della Valle, that of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini; then a number of other sites and edifices, all quivering with memories, the castle of St'. Angelo with its glittering statue of the Destroying Angel, the Villa Medici dominating the entire city, the terrace of the Pincio with its marbles showing whitely among its scanty verdure; and the thick-foliaged trees of the Villa Borghese, whose green crests bounded the horizon. Vainly however did Pierre seek the Colosseum. * St. Paul-beyond-the-walls. The north wind, which was blowing very mildly, had now begun to dissipate the morning haze. Whole districts vigorously disentangled themselves, and showed against the vaporous distance like promontories in a sunlit sea. Here and there, in the indistinct swarming of houses, a strip of white wall glittered, a row of window panes flared, or a garden supplied a black splotch, of wondrous intensity of hue. And all the rest, the medley of streets and squares, the endless blocks of buildings, scattered about on either hand, mingled and grew indistinct in the living glory of the sun, whilst long coils of white smoke, which had ascended from the roofs, slowly traversed the pure sky. Guided by a secret influence, however, Pierre soon ceased to take interest in all but three points of the mighty panorama. That line of slender cypresses which set a black fringe on the height of the Palatine yonder filled him with emotion: beyond it he saw only a void: the palaces of the Caesars had disappeared, had fallen, had been razed by time; and he evoked their memory, he fancied he could see them rise like vague, trembling phantoms of gold amidst the purple of that splendid morning. Then his glances reverted to St. Peter's, and there the dome yet soared aloft, screening the Vatican which he knew was beside the colossus, clinging to its flanks. And that dome, of the same colour as the heavens, appeared so triumphant, so full of strength, so vast, that it seemed to him like a giant king, dominating the whole city and seen from every spot throughout eternity. Then he fixed his eyes on the height in front of him, on the Quirinal, and there the King's palace no longer appeared aught but a flat low barracks bedaubed with yellow paint. And for him all the secular history of Rome, with its constant convulsions and successive resurrections, found embodiment in that symbolical triangle, in those three summits gazing at one another across the Tiber. Ancient Rome blossoming forth in a piling up of palaces and temples, the monstrous florescence of imperial power and splendour; Papal Rome, victorious in the middle ages, mistress of the world, bringing that colossal church, symbolical of beauty regained, to weigh upon all Christendom; and the Rome of to-day, which he knew nothing of, which he had neglected, and whose royal palace, so bare and so cold, brought him disparaging ideas--the idea of some out-of-place, bureaucratic effort, some sacrilegious attempt at modernity in an exceptional city which should have been left entirely to the dreams of the future. However, he shook off the almost painful feelings which the importunate present brought to him, and would not let his eyes rest on a pale new district, quite a little town, in course of erection, no doubt, which he could distinctly see near St. Peter's on the margin of the river. He had dreamt of his own new Rome, and still dreamt of it, even in front of the Palatine whose edifices had crumbled in the dust of centuries, of the dome of St. Peter's whose huge shadow lulled the Vatican to sleep, of the Palace of the Quirinal repaired and repainted, reigning in homely fashion over the new districts which swarmed on every side, while with its ruddy roofs the olden city, ripped up by improvements, coruscated beneath the bright morning sun. Again did the title of his book, "NEW ROME," flare before Pierre's eyes, and another reverie carried him off; he lived his book afresh even as he had just lived his life. He had written it amid a flow of enthusiasm, utilising the /data/ which he had accumulated at random; and its division into three parts, past, present, and future, had at once forced itself upon him. The PAST was the extraordinary story of primitive Christianity, of the slow evolution which had turned this Christianity into present-day Catholicism. He showed that an economical question is invariably hidden beneath each religious evolution, and that, upon the whole, the everlasting evil, the everlasting struggle, has never been aught but one between the rich and the poor. Among the Jews, when their nomadic life was over, and they had conquered the land of Canaan, and ownership and property came into being, a class warfare at once broke out. There were rich, and there were poor; thence arose the social question. The transition had been sudden, and the new state of things so rapidly went from bad to worse that the poor suffered keenly, and protested with the greater violence as they still remembered the golden age of the nomadic life. Until the time of Jesus the prophets are but rebels who surge from out the misery of the people, proclaim its sufferings, and vent their wrath upon the rich, to whom they prophesy every evil in punishment for their injustice and their harshness. Jesus Himself appears as the claimant of the rights of the poor. The prophets, whether socialists or anarchists, had preached social equality, and called for the destruction of the world if it were unjust. Jesus likewise brings to the wretched hatred of the rich. All His teaching threatens wealth and property; and if by the Kingdom of Heaven which He promised one were to understand peace and fraternity upon this earth, there would only be a question of returning to a life of pastoral simplicity, to the dream of the Christian community, such as after Him it would seem to have been realised by His disciples. During the first three centuries each Church was an experiment in communism, a real association whose members possessed all in common--wives excepted. This is shown to us by the apologists and early fathers of the Church. Christianity was then but the religion of the humble and the poor, a form of democracy, of socialism struggling against Roman society. And when the latter toppled over, rotted by money, it succumbed far more beneath the results of frantic speculation, swindling banks, and financial disasters, than beneath the onslaught of barbarian hordes and the stealthy, termite-like working of the Christians. The money question will always be found at the bottom of everything. And a new proof of this was supplied when Christianity, at last triumphing by virtue of historical, social, and human causes, was proclaimed a State religion. To ensure itself complete victory it was forced to range itself on the side of the rich and the powerful; and one should see by means of what artfulness and sophistry the fathers of the Church succeeded in discovering a defence of property and wealth in the Gospel of Jesus. All this, however, was a vital political necessity for Christianity; it was only at this price that it became Catholicism, the universal religion. From that time forth the powerful machine, the weapon of conquest and rule, was reared aloft: up above were the powerful and the wealthy, those whose duty it was to share with the poor, but who did not do so; while down below were the poor, the toilers, who were taught resignation and obedience, and promised the kingdom of futurity, the divine and eternal reward--an admirable monument which has lasted for ages, and which is entirely based on the promise of life beyond life, on the inextinguishable thirst for immortality and justice that consumes mankind. Pierre had completed this first part of his book, this history of the past, by a broad sketch of Catholicism until the present time. First appeared St. Peter, ignorant and anxious, coming to Rome by an inspiration of genius, there to fulfil the ancient oracles which had predicted the eternity of the Capitol. Then came the first popes, mere heads of burial associations, the slow rise of the all-powerful papacy ever struggling to conquer the world, unremittingly seeking to realise its dream of universal domination. At the time of the great popes of the middle ages it thought for a moment that it had attained its goal, that it was the sovereign master of the nations. Would not absolute truth and right consist in the pope being both pontiff and ruler of the world, reigning over both the souls and the bodies of all men, even like the Deity whose vicar he is? This, the highest and mightiest of all ambitions, one, too, that is perfectly logical, was attained by Augustus, emperor and pontiff, master of all the known world; and it is the glorious figure of Augustus, ever rising anew from among the ruins of ancient Rome, which has always haunted the popes; it is his blood which has pulsated in their veins. But power had become divided into two parts amidst the crumbling of the Roman empire; it was necessary to content oneself with a share, and leave temporal government to the emperor, retaining over him, however, the right of coronation by divine grant. The people belonged to God, and in God's name the pope gave the people to the emperor, and could take it from him; an unlimited power whose most terrible weapon was excommunication, a superior sovereignty, which carried the papacy towards real and final possession of the empire. Looking at things broadly, the everlasting quarrel between the pope and the emperor was a quarrel for the people, the inert mass of humble and suffering ones, the great silent multitude whose irremediable wretchedness was only revealed by occasional covert growls. It was disposed of, for its good, as one might dispose of a child. Yet the Church really contributed to civilisation, rendered constant services to humanity, diffused abundant alms. In the convents, at any rate, the old dream of the Christian community was ever coming back: one-third of the wealth accumulated for the purposes of worship, the adornment and glorification of the shrine, one-third for the priests, and one-third for the poor. Was not this a simplification of life, a means of rendering existence possible to the faithful who had no earthly desires, pending the marvellous contentment of heavenly life? Give us, then, the whole earth, and we will divide terrestrial wealth into three such parts, and you shall see what a golden age will reign amidst the resignation and the obedience of all! However, Pierre went on to show how the papacy was assailed by the greatest dangers on emerging from its all-powerfulness of the middle ages. It was almost swept away amidst the luxury and excesses of the Renascence, the bubbling of living sap which then gushed from eternal nature, downtrodden and regarded as dead for ages past. More threatening still were the stealthy awakenings of the people, of the great silent multitude whose tongue seemed to be loosening. The Reformation burst forth like the protest of reason and justice, like a recall to the disregarded truths of the Gospel; and to escape total annihilation Rome needed the stern defence of the Inquisition, the slow stubborn labour of the Council of Trent, which strengthened the dogmas and ensured the temporal power. And then the papacy entered into two centuries of peace and effacement, for the strong absolute monarchies which had divided Europe among themselves could do without it, and had ceased to tremble at the harmless thunderbolts of excommunication or to look on the pope as aught but a master of ceremonies, controlling certain rites. The possession of the people was no longer subject to the same rules. Allowing that the kings still held the people from God, it was the pope's duty to register the donation once for all, without ever intervening, whatever the circumstances, in the government of states. Never was Rome farther away from the realisation of its ancient dream of universal dominion. And when the French Revolution burst forth, it may well have been imagined that the proclamation of the rights of man would kill that papacy to which the exercise of divine right over the nations had been committed. And so how great at first was the anxiety, the anger, the desperate resistance with which the Vatican opposed the idea of freedom, the new /credo/ of liberated reason, of humanity regaining self-possession and control. It was the apparent /denouement/ of the long struggle between the pope and the emperor for possession of the people: the emperor vanished, and the people, henceforward free to dispose of itself, claimed to escape from the pope--an unforeseen solution, in which it seemed as though all the ancient scaffolding of the Catholic world must fall to the very ground. At this point Pierre concluded the first part of his book by contrasting primitive Christianity with present-day Catholicism, which is the triumph of the rich and the powerful. That Roman society which Jesus had come to destroy in the name of the poor and humble, had not Catholic Rome steadily continued rebuilding it through all the centuries, by its policy of cupidity and pride? And what bitter irony it was to find, after eighteen hundred years of the Gospel, that the world was again collapsing through frantic speculation, rotten banks, financial disasters, and the frightful injustice of a few men gorged with wealth whilst thousands of their brothers were dying of hunger! The whole redemption of the wretched had to be worked afresh. However, Pierre gave expression to all these terrible things in words so softened by charity, so steeped in hope, that they lost their revolutionary danger. Moreover, he nowhere attacked the dogmas. His book, in its sentimental, somewhat poetic form, was but the cry of an apostle glowing with love for his fellow-men. Then came the second part of the work, the PRESENT, a study of Catholic society as it now exists. Here Pierre had painted a frightful picture of the misery of the poor, the misery of a great city, which he knew so well and bled for, through having laid his hands upon its poisonous wounds. The present-day injustice could no longer be tolerated, charity was becoming powerless, and so frightful was the suffering that all hope was dying away from the hearts of the people. And was it not the monstrous spectacle presented by Christendom, whose abominations corrupted the people, and maddened it with hatred and vengeance, that had largely destroyed its faith? However, after this picture of rotting and crumbling society, Pierre returned to history, to the period of the French Revolution, to the mighty hope with which the idea of freedom had filled the world. The middle classes, the great Liberal party, on attaining power had undertaken to bring happiness to one and all. But after a century's experience it really seemed that liberty had failed to bring any happiness whatever to the outcasts. In the political sphere illusions were departing. At all events, if the reigning third estate declares itself satisfied, the fourth estate, that of the toilers,* still suffers and continues to demand its share of fortune. The working classes have been proclaimed free; political equality has been granted them, but the gift has been valueless, for economically they are still bound to servitude, and only enjoy, as they did formerly, the liberty of dying of hunger. All the socialist revendications have come from that; between labour and capital rests the terrifying problem, the solution of which threatens to sweep away society. When slavery disappeared from the olden world to be succeeded by salaried employment the revolution was immense, and certainly the Christian principle was one of the great factors in the destruction of slavery. Nowadays, therefore, when the question is to replace salaried employment by something else, possibly by the participation of the workman in the profits of his work, why should not Christianity again seek a new principle of action? The fatal and proximate accession of the democracy means the beginning of another phase in human history, the creation of the society of to-morrow. And Rome cannot keep away from the arena; the papacy must take part in the quarrel if it does not desire to disappear from the world like a piece of mechanism that has become altogether useless. * In England we call the press the fourth estate, but in France and elsewhere the term is applied to the working classes, and in that sense must be taken here.--Trans. Hence it followed that Catholic socialism was legitimate. On every side the socialist sects were battling with their various solutions for the privilege of ensuring the happiness of the people, and the Church also must offer her solution of the problem. Here it was that New Rome appeared, that the evolution spread into a renewal of boundless hope. Most certainly there was nothing contrary to democracy in the principles of the Roman Catholic Church. Indeed she had only to return to the evangelical traditions, to become once more the Church of the humble and the poor, to re-establish the universal Christian community. She is undoubtedly of democratic essence, and if she sided with the rich and the powerful when Christianity became Catholicism, she only did so perforce, that she might live by sacrificing some portion of her original purity; so that if to-day she should abandon the condemned governing classes in order to make common cause with the multitude of the wretched, she would simply be drawing nearer to Christ, thereby securing a new lease of youth and purifying herself of all the political compromises which she formerly was compelled to accept. Without renouncing aught of her absolutism the Church has at all times known how to bow to circumstances; but she reserves her perfect sovereignty, simply tolerating that which she cannot prevent, and patiently waiting, even through long centuries, for the time when she shall again become the mistress of the world. Might not that time come in the crisis which was now at hand? Once more, all the powers are battling for possession of the people. Since the people, thanks to liberty and education, has become strong, since it has developed consciousness and will, and claimed its share of fortune, all rulers have been seeking to attach it to themselves, to reign by it, and even with it, should that be necessary. Socialism, therein lies the future, the new instrument of government; and the kings tottering on their thrones, the middle-class presidents of anxious republics, the ambitious plotters who dream of power, all dabble in socialism! They all agree that the capitalist organisation of the State is a return to pagan times, to the olden slave-market; and they all talk of breaking for ever the iron law by which the labour of human beings has become so much merchandise, subject to supply and demand, with wages calculated on an estimate of what is strictly necessary to keep a workman from dying of hunger. And, down in the sphere below, the evil increases, the workmen agonise with hunger and exasperation, while above them discussion still goes on, systems are bandied about, and well-meaning persons exhaust themselves in attempting to apply ridiculously inadequate remedies. There is much stir without any progress, all the wild bewilderment which precedes great catastrophes. And among the many, Catholic socialism, quite as ardent as Revolutionary socialism, enters the lists and strives to conquer. After these explanations Pierre gave an account of the long efforts made by Catholic socialism throughout the Christian world. That which particularly struck one in this connection was that the warfare became keener and more victorious whenever it was waged in some land of propaganda, as yet not completely conquered by Roman Catholicism. For instance, in the countries where Protestantism confronted the latter, the priests fought with wondrous passion, as for dear life itself, contending with the schismatical clergy for possession of the people by dint of daring, by unfolding the most audacious democratic theories. In Germany, the classic land of socialism, Mgr. Ketteler was one of the first to speak of adequately taxing the rich; and later he fomented a wide-spread agitation which the clergy now directs by means of numerous associations and newspapers. In Switzerland Mgr. Mermillod pleaded the cause of the poor so loudly that the bishops there now almost make common cause with the democratic socialists, whom they doubtless hope to convert when the day for sharing arrives. In England, where socialism penetrates so very slowly, Cardinal Manning achieved considerable success, stood by the working classes on the occasion of a famous strike, and helped on a popular movement, which was signalised by numerous conversions. But it was particularly in the United States of America that Catholic socialism proved triumphant, in a sphere of democracy where the bishops, like Mgr. Ireland, were forced to set themselves at the head of the working-class agitation. And there across the Atlantic a new Church seems to be germinating, still in confusion but overflowing with sap, and upheld by intense hope, as at the aurora of the rejuvenated Christianity of to-morrow. Passing thence to Austria and Belgium, both Catholic countries, one found Catholic socialism mingling in the first instance with anti-semitism, while in the second it had no precise sense. And all movement ceased and disappeared when one came to Spain and Italy, those old lands of faith. The former with its intractable bishops who contented themselves with hurling excommunication at unbelievers as in the days of the Inquisition, seemed to be abandoned to the violent theories of revolutionaries, whilst Italy, immobilised in the traditional courses, remained without possibility of initiative, reduced to silence and respect by the presence of the Holy See. In France, however, the struggle remained keen, but it was more particularly a struggle of ideas. On the whole, the war was there being waged against the revolution, and to some it seemed as though it would suffice to re-establish the old organisation of monarchical times in order to revert to the golden age. It was thus that the question of working-class corporations had become the one problem, the panacea for all the ills of the toilers. But people were far from agreeing; some, those Catholics who rejected State interference and favoured purely moral action, desired that the corporations should be free; whilst others, the young and impatient ones, bent on action, demanded that they should be obligatory, each with capital of its own, and recognised and protected by the State. Viscount Philibert de la Choue had by pen and speech carried on a vigorous campaign in favour of the obligatory corporations; and his great grief was that he had so far failed to prevail on the Pope to say whether in his opinion these corporations should be closed or open. According to the Viscount, herein lay the fate of society, a peaceful solution of the social question or the frightful catastrophe which must sweep everything away. In reality, though he refused to own it, the Viscount had ended by adopting State socialism. And, despite the lack of agreement, the agitation remained very great; attempts, scarcely happy in their results, were made; co-operative associations, companies for erecting workmen's dwellings, popular savings' banks were started; many more or less disguised efforts to revert to the old Christian community organisation were tried; while day by day, amidst the prevailing confusion, in the mental perturbation and political difficulties through which the country passed, the militant Catholic party felt its hopes increasing, even to the blind conviction of soon resuming sway over the whole world. The second part of Pierre's book concluded by a picture of the moral and intellectual uneasiness amidst which the end of the century is struggling. While the toiling multitude suffers from its hard lot and demands that in any fresh division of wealth it shall be ensured at least its daily bread, the /elite/ is no better satisfied, but complains of the void induced by the freeing of its reason and the enlargement of its intelligence. It is the famous bankruptcy of rationalism, of positivism, of science itself which is in question. Minds consumed by need of the absolute grow weary of groping, weary of the delays of science which recognises only proven truths; doubt tortures them, they need a complete and immediate synthesis in order to sleep in peace; and they fall on their knees, overcome by the roadside, distracted by the thought that science will never tell them all, and preferring the Deity, the mystery revealed and affirmed by faith. Even to-day, it must be admitted, science calms neither our thirst for justice, our desire for safety, nor our everlasting idea of happiness after life in an eternity of enjoyment. To one and all it only brings the austere duty to live, to be a mere contributor in the universal toil; and how well one can understand that hearts should revolt and sigh for the Christian heaven, peopled with lovely angels, full of light and music and perfumes! Ah! to embrace one's dead, to tell oneself that one will meet them again, that one will live with them once more in glorious immortality! And to possess the certainty of sovereign equity to enable one to support the abominations of terrestrial life! And in this wise to trample on the frightful thought of annihilation, to escape the horror of the disappearance of the /ego/, and to tranquillise oneself with that unshakable faith which postpones until the portal of death be crossed the solution of all the problems of destiny! This dream will be dreamt by the nations for ages yet. And this it is which explains why, in these last days of the century, excessive mental labour and the deep unrest of humanity, pregnant with a new world, have awakened religious feeling, anxious, tormented by thoughts of the ideal and the infinite, demanding a moral law and an assurance of superior justice. Religions may disappear, but religious feelings will always create new ones, even with the help of science. A new religion! a new religion! Was it not the ancient Catholicism, which in the soil of the present day, where all seemed conducive to a miracle, was about to spring up afresh, throw out green branches and blossom in a young yet mighty florescence? At last, in the third part of his book and in the glowing language of an apostle, Pierre depicted the FUTURE: Catholicism rejuvenated, and bringing health and peace, the forgotten golden age of primitive Christianity, back to expiring society. He began with an emotional and sparkling portrait of Leo XIII, the ideal Pope, the Man of Destiny entrusted with the salvation of the nations. He had conjured up a presentment of him and beheld him thus in his feverish longing for the advent of a pastor who should put an end to human misery. It was perhaps not a close likeness, but it was a portrait of the needed saviour, with open heart and mind, and inexhaustible benevolence, such as he had dreamed. At the same time he had certainly searched documents, studied encyclical letters, based his sketch upon facts: first Leo's religious education at Rome, then his brief nunciature at Brussels, and afterwards his long episcopate at Perugia. And as soon as Leo became pope in the difficult situation bequeathed by Pius IX, the duality of his nature appeared: on one hand was the firm guardian of dogmas, on the other the supple politician resolved to carry conciliation to its utmost limits. We see him flatly severing all connection with modern philosophy, stepping backward beyond the Renascence to the middle ages and reviving Christian philosophy, as expounded by "the angelic doctor," St. Thomas Aquinas, in Catholic schools. Then the dogmas being in this wise sheltered, he adroitly maintains himself in equilibrium by giving securities to every power, striving to utilise every opportunity. He displays extraordinary activity, reconciles the Holy See with Germany, draws nearer to Russia, contents Switzerland, asks the friendship of Great Britain, and writes to the Emperor of China begging him to protect the missionaries and Christians in his dominions. Later on, too, he intervenes in France and acknowledges the legitimacy of the Republic. From the very outset an idea becomes apparent in all his actions, an idea which will place him among the great papal politicians. It is moreover the ancient idea of the papacy--the conquest of every soul, Rome capital and mistress of the world. Thus Leo XIII has but one desire, one object, that of unifying the Church, of drawing all the dissident communities to it in order that it may be invincible in the coming social struggle. He seeks to obtain recognition of the moral authority of the Vatican in Russia; he dreams of disarming the Anglican Church and of drawing it into a sort of fraternal truce; and he particularly seeks to come to an understanding with the Schismatical Churches of the East, which he regards as sisters, simply living apart, whose return his paternal heart entreats. Would not Rome indeed dispose of victorious strength if she exercised uncontested sway over all the Christians of the earth? And here the social ideas of Leo XIII come in. Whilst yet Bishop of Perugia he wrote a pastoral letter in which a vague humanitarian socialism appeared. As soon, however, as he had assumed the triple crown his opinions changed and he anathematised the revolutionaries whose audacity was terrifying Italy. But almost at once he corrected himself, warned by events and realising the great danger of leaving socialism in the hands of the enemies of the Church. Then he listened to the bishops of the lands of propaganda, ceased to intervene in the Irish quarrel, withdrew the excommunications which he had launched against the American "knights of labour," and would not allow the bold works of Catholic socialist writers to be placed in the Index. This evolution towards democracy may be traced through his most famous encyclical letters: /Immortale Dei/, on the constitution of States; /Libertas/, on human liberty; /Sapientoe/, on the duties of Christian citizens; /Rerum novarum/, on the condition of the working classes; and it is particularly this last which would seem to have rejuvenated the Church. The Pope herein chronicles the undeserved misery of the toilers, the undue length of the hours of labour, the insufficiency of salaries. All men have the right to live, and all contracts extorted by threats of starvation are unjust. Elsewhere he declares that the workman must not be left defenceless in presence of a system which converts the misery of the majority into the wealth of a few. Compelled to deal vaguely with questions of organisation, he contents himself with encouraging the corporative movement, placing it under State patronage; and after thus contributing to restore the secular power, he reinstates the Deity on the throne of sovereignty, and discerns the path to salvation more particularly in moral measures, in the ancient respect due to family ties and ownership. Nevertheless, was not the helpful hand which the august Vicar of Christ thus publicly tendered to the poor and the humble, the certain token of a new alliance, the announcement of a new reign of Jesus upon earth? Thenceforward the people knew that it was not abandoned. And from that moment too how glorious became Leo XIII, whose sacerdotal jubilee and episcopal jubilee were celebrated by all Christendom amidst the coming of a vast multitude, of endless offerings, and of flattering letters from every sovereign! Pierre next dealt with the question of the temporal power, and this he thought he might treat freely. Naturally, he was not ignorant of the fact that the Pope in his quarrel with Italy upheld the rights of the Church over Rome as stubbornly as his predecessor; but he imagined that this was merely a necessary conventional attitude, imposed by political considerations, and destined to be abandoned when the times were ripe. For his own part he was convinced that if the Pope had never appeared greater than he did now, it was to the loss of the temporal power that he owed it; for thence had come the great increase of his authority, the pure splendour of moral omnipotence which he diffused. What a long history of blunders and conflicts had been that of the possession of the little kingdom of Rome during fifteen centuries! Constantine quits Rome in the fourth century, only a few forgotten functionaries remaining on the deserted Palatine, and the Pope naturally rises to power, and the life of the city passes to the Lateran. However, it is only four centuries later that Charlemagne recognises accomplished facts and formally bestows the States of the Church upon the papacy. From that time warfare between the spiritual power and the temporal powers has never ceased; though often latent it has at times become acute, breaking forth with blood and fire. And to-day, in the midst of Europe in arms, is it not unreasonable to dream of the papacy ruling a strip of territory where it would be exposed to every vexation, and where it could only maintain itself by the help of a foreign army? What would become of it in the general massacre which is apprehended? Is it not far more sheltered, far more dignified, far more lofty when disentangled from all terrestrial cares, reigning over the world of souls? In the early times of the Church the papacy from being merely local, merely Roman, gradually became catholicised, universalised, slowly acquiring dominion over all Christendom. In the same way the Sacred College, at first a continuation of the Roman Senate, acquired an international character, and in our time has ended by becoming the most cosmopolitan of assemblies, in which representatives of all the nations have seats. And is it not evident that the Pope, thus leaning on the cardinals, has become the one great international power which exercises the greater authority since it is free from all monarchical interests, and can speak not merely in the name of country but in that of humanity itself? The solution so often sought amidst such long wars surely lies in this: Either give the Pope the temporal sovereignty of the world, or leave him only the spiritual sovereignty. Vicar of the Deity, absolute and infallible sovereign by divine delegation, he can but remain in the sanctuary if, ruler already of the human soul, he is not recognised by every nation as the one master of the body also--the king of kings. But what a strange affair was this new incursion of the papacy into the field sown by the French Revolution, an incursion conducting it perhaps towards the domination, which it has striven for with a will that has upheld it for centuries! For now it stands alone before the people. The kings are down. And as the people is henceforth free to give itself to whomsoever it pleases, why should it not give itself to the Church? The depreciation which the idea of liberty has certainly undergone renders every hope permissible. The liberal party appears to be vanquished in the sphere of economics. The toilers, dissatisfied with 1789 complain of the aggravation of their misery, bestir themselves, seek happiness despairingly. On the other hand the new /regimes/ have increased the international power of the Church; Catholic members are numerous in the parliaments of the republics and the constitutional monarchies. All circumstances seem therefore to favour this extraordinary return of fortune, Catholicism reverting to the vigour of youth in its old age. Even science, remember, is accused of bankruptcy, a charge which saves the /Syllabus/ from ridicule, troubles the minds of men, and throws the limitless sphere of mystery and impossibility open once more. And then a prophecy is recalled, a prediction that the papacy shall be mistress of the world on the day when she marches at the head of the democracy after reuniting the Schismatical Churches of the East to the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church. And, in Pierre's opinion, assuredly the times had come since Pope Leo XIII, dismissing the great and the wealthy of the world, left the kings driven from their thrones in exile to place himself like Jesus on the side of the foodless toilers and the beggars of the high roads. Yet a few more years, perhaps, of frightful misery, alarming confusion, fearful social danger, and the people, the great silent multitude which others have so far disposed of, will return to the cradle, to the unified Church of Rome, in order to escape the destruction which threatens human society. Pierre concluded his book with a passionate evocation of New Rome, the spiritual Rome which would soon reign over the nations, reconciled and fraternising as in another golden age. Herein he even saw the end of superstitions. Without making a direct attack on dogma, he allowed himself to dream of an enlargement of religious feeling, freed from rites, and absorbed in the one satisfaction of human charity. And still smarting from his journey to Lourdes, he felt the need of contenting his heart. Was not that gross superstition of Lourdes the hateful symptom of the excessive suffering of the times? On the day when the Gospel should be universally diffused and practised, suffering ones would cease seeking an illusory relief so far away, assured as they would be of finding assistance, consolation, and cure in their homes amidst their brothers. At Lourdes there was an iniquitous displacement of wealth, a spectacle so frightful as to make one doubt of God, a perpetual conflict which would disappear in the truly Christian society of to-morrow. Ah! that society, that Christian community, all Pierre's work ended in an ardent longing for its speedy advent: Christianity becoming once more the religion of truth and justice which it had been before it allowed itself to be conquered by the rich and the powerful! The little ones and the poor ones reigning, sharing the wealth of earth, and owing obedience to nought but the levelling law of work! The Pope alone erect at the head of the federation of nations, prince of peace, with the simple mission of supplying the moral rule, the link of charity and love which was to unite all men! And would not this be the speedy realisation of the promises of Christ? The times were near accomplishment, secular and religious society would mingle so closely that they would form but one; and it would be the age of triumph and happiness predicted by all the prophets, no more struggles possible, no more antagonism between the mind and the body, but a marvellous equilibrium which would kill evil and set the kingdom of heaven upon earth. New Rome, the centre of the world, bestowing on the world the new religion! Pierre felt that tears were coming to his eyes, and with an unconscious movement, never noticing how much he astonished the slim Englishmen and thick-set Germans passing along the terrace, he opened his arms and extended them towards the /real/ Rome, steeped in such lovely sunshine and stretched out at his feet. Would she prove responsive to his dream? Would he, as he had written, find within her the remedy for our impatience and our alarms? Could Catholicism be renewed, could it return to the spirit of primitive Christianity, become the religion of the democracy, the faith which the modern world, overturned and in danger of perishing, awaits in order to be pacified and to live? Pierre was full of generous passion, full of faith. He again beheld good Abbe Rose weeping with emotion as he read his book. He heard Viscount Philibert de la Choue telling him that such a book was worth an army. And he particularly felt strong in the approval of Cardinal Bergerot, that apostle of inexhaustible charity. Why should the Congregation of the Index threaten his work with interdiction? Since he had been officiously advised to go to Rome if he desired to defend himself, he had been turning this question over in his mind without being able to discover which of his pages were attacked. To him indeed they all seemed to glow with the purest Christianity. However, he had arrived quivering with enthusiasm and courage: he was all eagerness to kneel before the Pope, and place himself under his august protection, assuring him that he had not written a line without taking inspiration from his ideas, without desiring the triumph of his policy. Was it possible that condemnation should be passed on a book in which he imagined in all sincerity that he had exalted Leo XIII by striving to help him in his work of Christian reunion and universal peace? For a moment longer Pierre remained standing before the parapet. He had been there for nearly an hour, unable to drink in enough of the grandeur of Rome, which, given all the unknown things she hid from him, he would have liked to possess at once. Oh! to seize hold of her, know her, ascertain at once the true word which he had come to seek from her! This again, like Lourdes, was an experiment, but a graver one, a decisive one, whence he would emerge either strengthened or overcome for evermore. He no longer sought the simple, perfect faith of the little child, but the superior faith of the intellectual man, raising himself above rites and symbols, working for the greatest happiness of humanity as based on its need of certainty. His temples throbbed responsive to his heart. What would be the answer of Rome? The sunlight had increased and the higher districts now stood out more vigorously against the fiery background. Far away the hills became gilded and empurpled, whilst the nearer house-fronts grew very distinct and bright with their thousands of windows sharply outlined. However, some morning haze still hovered around; light veils seemed to rise from the lower streets, blurring the summits for a moment, and then evaporating in the ardent heavens where all was blue. For a moment Pierre fancied that the Palatine had vanished, for he could scarcely see the dark fringe of cypresses; it was as though the dust of its ruins concealed the hill. But the Quirinal was even more obscured; the royal palace seemed to have faded away in a fog, so paltry did it look with its low flat front, so vague in the distance that he no longer distinguished it; whereas above the trees on his left the dome of St. Peter's had grown yet larger in the limpid gold of the sunshine, and appeared to occupy the whole sky and dominate the whole city! Ah! the Rome of that first meeting, the Rome of early morning, whose new districts he had not even noticed in the burning fever of his arrival--with what boundless hopes did she not inspirit him, this Rome which he believed he should find alive, such indeed as he had dreamed! And whilst he stood there in his thin black cassock, thus gazing on her that lovely day, what a shout of coming redemption seemed to arise from her house-roofs, what a promise of universal peace seemed to issue from that sacred soil, twice already Queen of the world! It was the third Rome, it was New Rome whose maternal love was travelling across the frontiers to all the nations to console them and reunite them in a common embrace. In the passionate candour of his dream he beheld her, he heard her, rejuvenated, full of the gentleness of childhood, soaring, as it were, amidst the morning freshness into the vast pure heavens. But at last Pierre tore himself away from the sublime spectacle. The driver and the horse, their heads drooping under the broad sunlight, had not stirred. On the seat the valise was almost burning, hot with rays of the sun which was already heavy. And once more Pierre got into the vehicle and gave this address: "Via Giulia, Palazzo Boccanera." II THE Via Giulia, which runs in a straight line over a distance of five hundred yards from the Farnese palace to the church of St. John of the Florentines, was at that hour steeped in bright sunlight, the glow streaming from end to end and whitening the small square paving stones. The street had no footways, and the cab rolled along it almost to the farther extremity, passing the old grey sleepy and deserted residences whose large windows were barred with iron, while their deep porches revealed sombre courts resembling wells. Laid out by Pope Julius II, who had dreamt of lining it with magnificent palaces, the street, then the most regular and handsome in Rome, had served as Corso* in the sixteenth century. One could tell that one was in a former luxurious district, which had lapsed into silence, solitude, and abandonment, instinct with a kind of religious gentleness and discretion. The old house-fronts followed one after another, their shutters closed and their gratings occasionally decked with climbing plants. At some doors cats were seated, and dim shops, appropriated to humble trades, were installed in certain dependencies. But little traffic was apparent. Pierre only noticed some bare-headed women dragging children behind them, a hay cart drawn by a mule, a superb monk draped in drugget, and a bicyclist speeding along noiselessly, his machine sparkling in the sun. * The Corso was so called on account of the horse races held in it at carnival time.--Trans. At last the driver turned and pointed to a large square building at the corner of a lane running towards the Tiber. "Palazzo Boccanera." Pierre raised his head and was pained by the severe aspect of the structure, so bare and massive and blackened by age. Like its neighbours the Farnese and Sacchetti palaces, it had been built by Antonio da Sangallo in the early part of the sixteenth century, and, as with the former of those residences, the tradition ran that in raising the pile the architect had made use of stones pilfered from the Colosseum and the Theatre of Marcellus. The vast, square-looking facade had three upper stories, each with seven windows, and the first one very lofty and noble. Down below, the only sign of decoration was that the high ground-floor windows, barred with huge projecting gratings as though from fear of siege, rested upon large consoles, and were crowned by attics which smaller consoles supported. Above the monumental entrance, with folding doors of bronze, there was a balcony in front of the central first-floor window. And at the summit of the facade against the sky appeared a sumptuous entablature, whose frieze displayed admirable grace and purity of ornamentation. The frieze, the consoles, the attics, and the door-case were of white marble, but marble whose surface had so crumbled and so darkened that it now had the rough yellowish grain of stone. Right and left of the entrance were two antique seats upheld by griffons also of marble; and incrusted in the wall at one corner, a lovely Renascence fountain, its source dried up, still lingered; and on it a cupid riding a dolphin could with difficulty be distinguished, to such a degree had the wear and tear of time eaten into the sculpture. Pierre's eyes, however, had been more particularly attracted by an escutcheon carved above one of the ground-floor windows, the escutcheon of the Boccaneras, a winged dragon venting flames, and underneath it he could plainly read the motto which had remained intact: "/Bocca nera, Alma rossa/" (black mouth, red soul). Above another window, as a pendant to the escutcheon, there was one of those little shrines which are still common in Rome, a satin-robed statuette of the Blessed Virgin, before which a lantern burnt in the full daylight. The cabman was about to drive through the dim and gaping porch, according to custom, when the young priest, overcome by timidity, stopped him. "No, no," he said; "don't go in, it's useless." Then he alighted from the vehicle, paid the man, and, valise in hand, found himself first under the vaulted roof, and then in the central court without having met a living soul. It was a square and fairly spacious court, surrounded by a porticus like a cloister. Some remnants of statuary, marbles discovered in excavating, an armless Apollo, and the trunk of a Venus, were ranged against the walls under the dismal arcades; and some fine grass had sprouted between the pebbles which paved the soil as with a black and white mosaic. It seemed as if the sun-rays could never reach that paving, mouldy with damp. A dimness and a silence instinct with departed grandeur and infinite mournfulness reigned there. Surprised by the emptiness of this silent mansion, Pierre continued seeking somebody, a porter, a servant; and, fancying that he saw a shadow flit by, he decided to pass through another arch which led to a little garden fringing the Tiber. On this side the facade of the building was quite plain, displaying nothing beyond its three rows of symmetrically disposed windows. However, the abandonment reigning in the garden brought Pierre yet a keener pang. In the centre some large box-plants were growing in the basin of a fountain which had been filled up; while among the mass of weeds, some orange-trees with golden, ripening fruit alone indicated the tracery of the paths which they had once bordered. Between two huge laurel-bushes, against the right-hand wall, there was a sarcophagus of the second century--with fauns offering violence to nymphs, one of those wild /baccanali/, those scenes of eager passion which Rome in its decline was wont to depict on the tombs of its dead; and this marble sarcophagus, crumbling with age and green with moisture, served as a tank into which a streamlet of water fell from a large tragic mask incrusted in the wall. Facing the Tiber there had formerly been a sort of colonnaded loggia, a terrace whence a double flight of steps descended to the river. For the construction of the new quays, however, the river bank was being raised, and the terrace was already lower than the new ground level, and stood there crumbling and useless amidst piles of rubbish and blocks of stone, all the wretched chalky confusion of the improvements which were ripping up and overturning the district. Pierre, however, was suddenly convinced that he could see somebody crossing the court. So he returned thither and found a woman somewhat short of stature, who must have been nearly fifty, though as yet she had not a white hair, but looked very bright and active. At sight of the priest, however, an expression of distrust passed over her round face and clear eyes. Employing the few words of broken Italian which he knew, Pierre at once sought to explain matters: "I am Abbe Pierre Froment, madame--" he began. However, she did not let him continue, but exclaimed in fluent French, with the somewhat thick and lingering accent of the province of the Ile-de-France: "Ah! yes, Monsieur l'Abbe, I know, I know--I was expecting you, I received orders about you." And then, as he gazed at her in amazement, she added: "Oh! I'm a Frenchwoman! I've been here for five and twenty years, but I haven't yet been able to get used to their horrible lingo!" Pierre thereupon remembered that Viscount Philibert de la Choue had spoken to him of this servant, one Victorine Bosquet, a native of Auneau in La Beauce, who, when two and twenty, had gone to Rome with a consumptive mistress. The latter's sudden death had left her in as much terror and bewilderment as if she had been alone in some land of savages; and so she had gratefully devoted herself to the Countess Ernesta Brandini, a Boccanera by birth, who had, so to say, picked her up in the streets. The Countess had at first employed her as a nurse to her daughter Benedetta, hoping in this way to teach the child some French; and Victorine--remaining for some five and twenty years with the same family--had by degrees raised herself to the position of housekeeper, whilst still remaining virtually illiterate, so destitute indeed of any linguistic gift that she could only jabber a little broken Italian, just sufficient for her needs in her intercourse with the other servants. "And is Monsieur le Vicomte quite well?" she resumed with frank familiarity. "He is so very pleasant, and we are always so pleased to see him. He stays here, you know, each time he comes to Rome. I know that the Princess and the Contessina received a letter from him yesterday announcing you." It was indeed Viscount Philibert de la Choue who had made all the arrangements for Pierre's sojourn in Rome. Of the ancient and once vigorous race of the Boccaneras, there now only remained Cardinal Pio Boccanera, the Princess his sister, an old maid who from respect was called "Donna" Serafina, their niece Benedetta--whose mother Ernesta had followed her husband, Count Brandini, to the tomb--and finally their nephew, Prince Dario Boccanera, whose father, Prince Onofrio, was likewise dead, and whose mother, a Montefiori, had married again. It so chanced that the Viscount de la Choue was connected with the family, his younger brother having married a Brandini, sister to Benedetta's father; and thus, with the courtesy rank of uncle, he had, in Count Brandini's time, frequently sojourned at the mansion in the Via Giulia. He had also become attached to Benedetta, especially since the advent of a private family drama, consequent upon an unhappy marriage which the young woman had contracted, and which she had petitioned the Holy Father to annul. Since Benedetta had left her husband to live with her aunt Serafina and her uncle the Cardinal, M. de la Choue had often written to her and sent her parcels of French books. Among others he had forwarded her a copy of Pierre's book, and the whole affair had originated in that wise. Several letters on the subject had been exchanged when at last Benedetta sent word that the work had been denounced to the Congregation of the Index, and that it was advisable the author should at once repair to Rome, where she graciously offered him the hospitality of the Boccanera mansion. The Viscount was quite as much astonished as the young priest at these tidings, and failed to understand why the book should be threatened at all; however, he prevailed on Pierre to make the journey as a matter of good policy, becoming himself impassioned for the achievement of a victory which he counted in anticipation as his own. And so it was easy to understand the bewildered condition of Pierre, on tumbling into this unknown mansion, launched into an heroic adventure, the reasons and circumstances of which were beyond him. Victorine, however, suddenly resumed: "But I am leaving you here, Monsieur l'Abbe. Let me conduct you to your rooms. Where is your luggage?" Then, when he had shown her his valise which he had placed on the ground beside him, and explained that having no more than a fortnight's stay in view he had contented himself with bringing a second cassock and some linen, she seemed very much surprised. "A fortnight! You only expect to remain here a fortnight? Well, well, you'll see." And then summoning a big devil of a lackey who had ended by making his appearance, she said: "Take that up into the red room, Giacomo. Will you kindly follow me, Monsieur l'Abbe?" Pierre felt quite comforted and inspirited by thus unexpectedly meeting such a lively, good-natured compatriot in this gloomy Roman "palace." Whilst crossing the court he listened to her as she related that the Princess had gone out, and that the Contessina--as Benedetta from motives of affection was still called in the house, despite her marriage--had not yet shown herself that morning, being rather poorly. However, added Victorine, she had her orders. The staircase was in one corner of the court, under the porticus. It was a monumental staircase with broad, low steps, the incline being so gentle that a horse might easily have climbed it. The stone walls, however, were quite bare, the landings empty and solemn, and a death-like mournfulness fell from the lofty vault above. As they reached the first floor, noticing Pierre's emotion, Victorine smiled. The mansion seemed to be uninhabited; not a sound came from its closed chambers. Simply pointing to a large oaken door on the right-hand, the housekeeper remarked: "The wing overlooking the court and the river is occupied by his Eminence. But he doesn't use a quarter of the rooms. All the reception-rooms on the side of the street have been shut. How could one keep up such a big place, and what, too, would be the use of it? We should need somebody to lodge." With her lithe step she continued ascending the stairs. She had remained essentially a foreigner, a Frenchwoman, too different from those among whom she lived to be influenced by her environment. On reaching the second floor she resumed: "There, on the left, are Donna Serafina's rooms; those of the Contessina are on the right. This is the only part of the house where there's a little warmth and life. Besides, it's Monday to-day, the Princess will be receiving visitors this evening. You'll see." Then, opening a door, beyond which was a second and very narrow staircase, she went on: "We others have our rooms on the third floor. I must ask Monsieur l'Abbe to let me go up before him." The grand staircase ceased at the second floor, and Victorine explained that the third story was reached exclusively by this servants' staircase, which led from the lane running down to the Tiber on one side of the mansion. There was a small private entrance in this lane, which was very convenient. At last, reaching the third story, she hurried along a passage, again calling Pierre's attention to various doors. "These are the apartments of Don Vigilio, his Eminence's secretary. These are mine. And these will be yours. Monsieur le Vicomte will never have any other rooms when he comes to spend a few days in Rome. He says that he enjoys more liberty up here, as he can come in and go out as he pleases. I gave him a key to the door in the lane, and I'll give you one too. And, besides, you'll see what a nice view there is from here!" Whilst speaking she had gone in. The apartments comprised two rooms: a somewhat spacious /salon/, with wall-paper of a large scroll pattern on a red ground, and a bed-chamber, where the paper was of a flax grey, studded with faded blue flowers. The sitting-room was in one corner of the mansion overlooking the lane and the Tiber, and Victorine at once went to the windows, one of which afforded a view over the distant lower part of the river, while the other faced the Trastevere and the Janiculum across the water. "Ah! yes, it's very pleasant!" said Pierre, who had followed and stood beside her. Giaccomo, who did not hurry, came in behind them with the valise. It was now past eleven o'clock; and seeing that the young priest looked tired, and realising that he must be hungry after such a journey, Victorine offered to have some breakfast served at once in the sitting-room. He would then have the afternoon to rest or go out, and would only meet the ladies in the evening at dinner. At the mere suggestion of resting, however, Pierre began to protest, declaring that he should certainly go out, not wishing to lose an entire afternoon. The breakfast he readily accepted, for he was indeed dying of hunger. However, he had to wait another full half hour. Giaccomo, who served him under Victorine's orders, did everything in a most leisurely way. And Victorine, lacking confidence in the man, remained with the young priest to make sure that everything he might require was provided. "Ah! Monsieur l'Abbe," said she, "what people! What a country! You can't have an idea of it. I should never get accustomed to it even if I were to live here for a hundred years. Ah! if it were not for the Contessina, but she's so good and beautiful." Then, whilst placing a dish of figs on the table, she astonished Pierre by adding that a city where nearly everybody was a priest could not possibly be a good city. Thereupon the presence of this gay, active, unbelieving servant in the queer old palace again scared him. "What! you are not religious?" he exclaimed. "No, no, Monsieur l'Abbe, the priests don't suit me," said Victorine; "I knew one in France when I was very little, and since I've been here I've seen too many of them. It's all over. Oh! I don't say that on account of his Eminence, who is a holy man worthy of all possible respect. And besides, everybody in the house knows that I've nothing to reproach myself with. So why not leave me alone, since I'm fond of my employers and attend properly to my duties?" She burst into a frank laugh. "Ah!" she resumed, "when I was told that another priest was coming, just as if we hadn't enough already, I couldn't help growling to myself. But you look like a good young man, Monsieur l'Abbe, and I feel sure we shall get on well together. . . . I really don't know why I'm telling you all this--probably it's because you've come from yonder, and because the Contessina takes an interest in you. At all events, you'll excuse me, won't you, Monsieur l'Abbe? And take my advice, stay here and rest to-day; don't be so foolish as to go running about their tiring city. There's nothing very amusing to be seen in it, whatever they may say to the contrary." When Pierre found himself alone, he suddenly felt overwhelmed by all the fatigue of his journey coupled with the fever of enthusiasm that had consumed him during the morning. And as though dazed, intoxicated by the hasty meal which he had just made--a couple of eggs and a cutlet--he flung himself upon the bed with the idea of taking half an hour's rest. He did not fall asleep immediately, but for a time thought of those Boccaneras, with whose history he was partly acquainted, and of whose life in that deserted and silent palace, instinct with such dilapidated and melancholy grandeur, he began to dream. But at last his ideas grew confused, and by degrees he sunk into sleep amidst a crowd of shadowy forms, some tragic and some sweet, with vague faces which gazed at him with enigmatical eyes as they whirled before him in the depths of dreamland. The Boccaneras had supplied two popes to Rome, one in the thirteenth, the other in the fifteenth century, and from those two favoured ones, those all-powerful masters, the family had formerly derived its vast fortune--large estates in the vicinity of Viterbo, several palaces in Rome, enough works of art to fill numerous spacious galleries, and a pile of gold sufficient to cram a cellar. The family passed as being the most pious of the Roman /patriziato/, a family of burning faith whose sword had always been at the service of the Church; but if it were the most believing family it was also the most violent, the most disputatious, constantly at war, and so fiercely savage that the anger of the Boccaneras had become proverbial. And thence came their arms, the winged dragon spitting flames, and the fierce, glowing motto, with its play on the name "/Bocca sera, Alma rossa/" (black mouth, red soul), the mouth darkened by a roar, the soul flaming like a brazier of faith and love. Legends of endless passion, of terrible deeds of justice and vengeance still circulated. There was the duel fought by Onfredo, the Boccanera by whom the present palazzo had been built in the sixteenth century on the site of the demolished antique residence of the family. Onfredo, learning that his wife had allowed herself to be kissed on the lips by young Count Costamagna, had caused the Count to be kidnapped one evening and brought to the palazzo bound with cords. And there in one of the large halls, before freeing him, he compelled him to confess himself to a monk. Then he severed the cords with a stiletto, threw the lamps over and extinguished them, calling to the Count to keep the stiletto and defend himself. During more than an hour, in complete obscurity, in this hall full of furniture, the two men sought one another, fled from one another, seized hold of one another, and pierced one another with their blades. And when the doors were broken down and the servants rushed in they found among the pools of blood, among the overturned tables and broken seats, Costamagna with his nose sliced off and his hips pierced with two and thirty wounds, whilst Onfredo had lost two fingers of his right hand, and had both shoulders riddled with holes! The wonder was that neither died of the encounter. A century later, on that same bank of the Tiber, a daughter of the Boccaneras, a girl barely sixteen years of age, the lovely and passionate Cassia, filled all Rome with terror and admiration. She loved Flavio Corradini, the scion of a rival and hated house, whose alliance her father, Prince Boccanera, roughly rejected, and whom her elder brother, Ercole, swore to slay should he ever surprise him with her. Nevertheless the young man came to visit her in a boat, and she joined him by the little staircase descending to the river. But one evening Ercole, who was on the watch, sprang into the boat and planted his dagger full in Flavio's heart. Later on the subsequent incidents were unravelled; it was understood that Cassia, wrathful and frantic with despair, unwilling to survive her love and bent on wreaking justice, had thrown herself upon her brother, had seized both murderer and victim with the same grasp whilst overturning the boat; for when the three bodies were recovered Cassia still retained her hold upon the two men, pressing their faces one against the other with her bare arms, which had remained as white as snow. But those were vanished times. Nowadays, if faith remained, blood violence seemed to be departing from the Boccaneras. Their huge fortune also had been lost in the slow decline which for a century past has been ruining the Roman /patriziato/. It had been necessary to sell the estates; the palace had emptied, gradually sinking to the mediocrity and bourgeois life of the new times. For their part the Boccaneras obstinately declined to contract any alien alliances, proud as they were of the purity of their Roman blood. And poverty was as nothing to them; they found contentment in their immense pride, and without a plaint sequestered themselves amidst the silence and gloom in which their race was dwindling away. Prince Ascanio, dead since 1848, had left four children by his wife, a Corvisieri; first Pio, the Cardinal; then Serafina, who, in order to remain with her brother, had not married; and finally Ernesta and Onofrio, both of whom were deceased. As Ernesta had merely left a daughter, Benedetta, behind her, it followed that the only male heir, the only possible continuator of the family name was Onofrio's son, young Prince Dario, now some thirty years of age. Should he die without posterity, the Boccaneras, once so full of life and whose deeds had filled Roman history in papal times, must fatally disappear. Dario and his cousin Benedetta had been drawn together by a deep, smiling, natural passion ever since childhood. They seemed born one for the other; they could not imagine that they had been brought into the world for any other purpose than that of becoming husband and wife as soon as they should be old enough to marry. When Prince Onofrio--an amiable man of forty, very popular in Rome, where he spent his modest fortune as his heart listed--espoused La Montefiori's daughter, the little Marchesa Flavia, whose superb beauty, suggestive of a youthful Juno, had maddened him, he went to reside at the Villa Montefiori, the only property, indeed the only belonging, that remained to the two ladies. It was in the direction of St'. Agnese-fuori-le-Mura,* and there were vast grounds, a perfect park in fact, planted with centenarian trees, among which the villa, a somewhat sorry building of the seventeenth century, was falling into ruins. * St. Agnes-without-the-walls, N.E. of Rome. Unfavourable reports were circulated about the ladies, the mother having almost lost caste since she had become a widow, and the girl having too bold a beauty, too conquering an air. Thus the marriage had not met with the approval of Serafina, who was very rigid, or of Onofrio's elder brother Pio, at that time merely a /Cameriere segreto/ of the Holy Father and a Canon of the Vatican basilica. Only Ernesta kept up a regular intercourse with Onofrio, fond of him as she was by reason of his gaiety of disposition; and thus, later on, her favourite diversion was to go each week to the Villa Montefiori with her daughter Benedetta, there to spend the day. And what a delightful day it always proved to Benedetta and Dario, she ten years old and he fifteen, what a fraternal loving day in that vast and almost abandoned garden with its parasol pines, its giant box-plants, and its clumps of evergreen oaks, amidst which one lost oneself as in a virgin forest. The poor stifled soul of Ernesta was a soul of pain and passion. Born with a mighty longing for life, she thirsted for the sun--for a free, happy, active existence in the full daylight. She was noted for her large limpid eyes and the charming oval of her gentle face. Extremely ignorant, like all the daughters of the Roman nobility, having learnt the little she knew in a convent of French nuns, she had grown up cloistered in the black Boccanera palace, having no knowledge of the world than by those daily drives to the Corso and the Pincio on which she accompanied her mother. Eventually, when she was five and twenty, and was already weary and desolate, she contracted the customary marriage of her caste, espousing Count Brandini, the last-born of a very noble, very numerous and poor family, who had to come and live in the Via Giulia mansion, where an entire wing of the second floor was got ready for the young couple. And nothing changed, Ernesta continued to live in the same cold gloom, in the midst of the same dead past, the weight of which, like that of a tombstone, she felt pressing more and more heavily upon her. The marriage was, on either side, a very honourable one. Count Brandini soon passed as being the most foolish and haughty man in Rome. A strict, intolerant formalist in religious matters, he became quite triumphant when, after innumerable intrigues, secret plottings which lasted ten long years, he at last secured the appointment of grand equerry to the Holy Father. With this appointment it seemed as if all the dismal majesty of the Vatican entered his household. However, Ernesta found life still bearable in the time of Pius IX--that is until the latter part of 1870--for she might still venture to open the windows overlooking the street, receive a few lady friends otherwise than in secrecy, and accept invitations to festivities. But when the Italians had conquered Rome and the Pope declared himself a prisoner, the mansion in the Via Giulia became a sepulchre. The great doors were closed and bolted, even nailed together in token of mourning; and during ten years the inmates only went out and came in by the little staircase communicating with the lane. It was also forbidden to open the window shutters of the facade. This was the sulking, the protest of the black world, the mansion sinking into death-like immobility, complete seclusion; no more receptions, barely a few shadows, the intimates of Donna Serafina who on Monday evenings slipped in by the little door in the lane which was scarcely set ajar. And during those ten lugubrious years, overcome by secret despair, the young woman wept every night, suffered untold agony at thus being buried alive. Ernesta had given birth to her daughter Benedetta rather late in life, when three and thirty years of age. At first the little one helped to divert her mind. But afterwards her wonted existence, like a grinding millstone, again seized hold of her, and she had to place the child in the charge of the French nuns, by whom she herself had been educated, at the convent of the Sacred Heart of La Trinita de' Monti. When Benedetta left the convent, grown up, nineteen years of age, she was able to speak and write French, knew a little arithmetic and her catechism, and possessed a few hazy notions of history. Then the life of the two women was resumed, the life of a /gynoeceum/, suggestive of the Orient; never an excursion with husband or father, but day after day spent in closed, secluded rooms, with nought to cheer one but the sole, everlasting, obligatory promenade, the daily drive to the Corso and the Pincio. At home, absolute obedience was the rule; the tie of relationship possessed an authority, a strength, which made both women bow to the will of the Count, without possible thought of rebellion; and to the Count's will was added that of Donna Serafina and that of Cardinal Pio, both of whom were stern defenders of the old-time customs. Since the Pope had ceased to show himself in Rome, the post of grand equerry had left the Count considerable leisure, for the number of equipages in the pontifical stables had been very largely reduced; nevertheless, he was constant in his attendance at the Vatican, where his duties were now a mere matter of parade, and ever increased his devout zeal as a mark of protest against the usurping monarchy installed at the Quirinal. However, Benedetta had just attained her twentieth year, when one evening her father returned coughing and shivering from some ceremony at St. Peter's. A week later he died, carried off by inflammation of the lungs. And despite their mourning, the loss was secretly considered a deliverance by both women, who now felt that they were free. Thenceforward Ernesta had but one thought, that of saving her daughter from that awful life of immurement and entombment. She herself had sorrowed too deeply: it was no longer possible for her to remount the current of existence; but she was unwilling that Benedetta should in her turn lead a life contrary to nature, in a voluntary grave. Moreover, similar lassitude and rebellion were showing themselves among other patrician families, which, after the sulking of the first years, were beginning to draw nearer to the Quirinal. Why indeed should the children, eager for action, liberty, and sunlight, perpetually keep up the quarrel of the fathers? And so, though no reconciliation could take place between the black world and the white world,* intermediate tints were already appearing, and some unexpected matrimonial alliances were contracted. * The "blacks" are the supporters of the papacy, the "whites" those of the King of Italy.--Trans. Ernesta for her part was indifferent to the political question; she knew next to nothing about it; but that which she passionately desired was that her race might at last emerge from that hateful sepulchre, that black, silent Boccanera mansion, where her woman's joys had been frozen by so long a death. She had suffered very grievously in her heart, as girl, as lover, and as wife, and yielded to anger at the thought that her life should have been so spoiled, so lost through idiotic resignation. Then, too, her mind was greatly influenced by the choice of a new confessor at this period; for she had remained very religious, practising all the rites of the Church, and ever docile to the advice of her spiritual director. To free herself the more, however, she now quitted the Jesuit father whom her husband had chosen for her, and in his stead took Abbe Pisoni, the rector of the little church of Sta. Brigida, on the Piazza Farnese, close by. He was a man of fifty, very gentle, and very good-hearted, of a benevolence seldom found in the Roman world; and archaeology, a passion for the old stones of the past, had made him an ardent patriot. Humble though his position was, folks whispered that he had on several occasions served as an intermediary in delicate matters between the Vatican and the Quirinal. And, becoming confessor not only of Ernesta but of Benedetta also, he was fond of discoursing to them about the grandeur of Italian unity, the triumphant sway that Italy would exercise when the Pope and the King should agree together. Meantime Benedetta and Dario loved as on the first day, patiently, with the strong tranquil love of those who know that they belong to one another. But it happened that Ernesta threw herself between them and stubbornly opposed their marriage. No, no! her daughter must not espouse that Dario, that cousin, the last of the name, who in his turn would immure his wife in the black sepulchre of the Boccanera palace! Their union would be a prolongation of entombment, an aggravation of ruin, a repetition of the haughty wretchedness of the past, of the everlasting peevish sulking which depressed and benumbed one! She was well acquainted with the young man's character; she knew that he was egotistical and weak, incapable of thinking and acting, predestined to bury his race with a smile on his lips, to let the last remnant of the house crumble about his head without attempting the slightest effort to found a new family. And that which she desired was fortune in another guise, a new birth for her daughter with wealth and the florescence of life amid the victors and powerful ones of to-morrow. From that moment the mother did not cease her stubborn efforts to ensure her daughter's happiness despite herself. She told her of her tears, entreated her not to renew her own deplorable career. Yet she would have failed, such was the calm determination of the girl who had for ever given her heart, if certain circumstances had not brought her into connection with such a son-in-law as she dreamt of. At that very Villa Montefiori where Benedetta and Dario had plighted their troth, she met Count Prada, son of Orlando, one of the heroes of the reunion of Italy. Arriving in Rome from Milan, with his father, when eighteen years of age, at the time of the occupation of the city by the Italian Government, Prada had first entered the Ministry of Finances as a mere clerk, whilst the old warrior, his sire, created a senator, lived scantily on a petty income, the last remnant of a fortune spent in his country's service. The fine war-like madness of the former comrade of Garibaldi had, however, in the son turned into a fierce appetite for booty, so that the young man became one of the real conquerors of Rome, one of those birds of prey that dismembered and devoured the city. Engaged in vast speculations on land, already wealthy according to popular report, he had--at the time of meeting Ernesta--just become intimate with Prince Onofrio, whose head he had turned by suggesting to him the idea of selling the far-spreading grounds of the Villa Montefiori for the erection of a new suburban district on the site. Others averred that he was the lover of the princess, the beautiful Flavia, who, although nine years his senior, was still superb. And, truth to tell, he was certainly a man of violent desires, with an eagerness to rush on the spoils of conquest which rendered him utterly unscrupulous with regard either to the wealth or to the wives of others. From the first day that he beheld Benedetta he desired her. But she, at any rate, could only become his by marriage. And he did not for a moment hesitate, but broke off all connection with Flavia, eager as he was for the pure virgin beauty, the patrician youth of the other. When he realised that Ernesta, the mother, favoured him, he asked her daughter's hand, feeling certain of success. And the surprise was great, for he was some fifteen years older than the girl. However, he was a count, he bore a name which was already historical, he was piling up millions, he was regarded with favour at the Quirinal, and none could tell to what heights he might not attain. All Rome became impassioned. Never afterwards was Benedetta able to explain to herself how it happened that she had eventually consented. Six months sooner, six months later, such a marriage would certainly have been impossible, given the fearful scandal which it raised in the black world. A Boccanera, the last maiden of that antique papal race, given to a Prada, to one of the despoilers of the Church! Was it credible? In order that the wild project might prove successful it had been necessary that it should be formed at a particular brief moment--a moment when a supreme effort was being made to conciliate the Vatican and the Quirinal. A report circulated that an agreement was on the point of being arrived at, that the King consented to recognise the Pope's absolute sovereignty over the Leonine City,* and a narrow band of territory extending to the sea. And if such were the case would not the marriage of Benedetta and Prada become, so to say, a symbol of union, of national reconciliation? That lovely girl, the pure lily of the black world, was she not the acquiescent sacrifice, the pledge granted to the whites? * The Vatican suburb of Rome, called the /Civitas Leonina/, because Leo IV, to protect it from the Saracens and Arabs, enclosed it with walls in the ninth century.--Trans. For a fortnight nothing else was talked of; people discussed the question, allowed their emotion rein, indulged in all sorts of hopes. The girl, for her part, did not enter into the political reasons, but simply listened to her heart, which she could not bestow since it was hers no more. From morn till night, however, she had to encounter her mother's prayers entreating her not to refuse the fortune, the life which offered. And she was particularly exercised by the counsels of her confessor, good Abbe Pisoni, whose patriotic zeal now burst forth. He weighed upon her with all his faith in the Christian destinies of Italy, and returned heartfelt thanks to Providence for having chosen one of his penitents as the instrument for hastening the reconciliation which would work God's triumph throughout the world. And her confessor's influence was certainly one of the decisive factors in shaping Benedetta's decision, for she was very pious, very devout, especially with regard to a certain Madonna whose image she went to adore every Sunday at the little church on the Piazza Farnese. One circumstance in particular struck her: Abbe Pisoni related that the flame of the lamp before the image in question whitened each time that he himself knelt there to beg the Virgin to incline his penitent to the all-redeeming marriage. And thus superior forces intervened; and she yielded in obedience to her mother, whom the Cardinal and Donna Serafina had at first opposed, but whom they left free to act when the religious question arose. Benedetta had grown up in such absolute purity and ignorance, knowing nothing of herself, so shut off from existence, that marriage with another than Dario was to her simply the rupture of a long-kept promise of life in common. It was not the violent wrenching of heart and flesh that it would have been in the case of a woman who knew the facts of life. She wept a good deal, and then in a day of self-surrender she married Prada, lacking the strength to continue resisting everybody, and yielding to a union which all Rome had conspired to bring about. But the clap of thunder came on the very night of the nuptials. Was it that Prada, the Piedmontese, the Italian of the North, the man of conquest, displayed towards his bride the same brutality that he had shown towards the city he had sacked? Or was it that the revelation of married life filled Benedetta with repulsion since nothing in her own heart responded to the passion of this man? On that point she never clearly explained herself; but with violence she shut the door of her room, locked it and bolted it, and refused to admit her husband. For a month Prada was maddened by her scorn. He felt outraged; both his pride and his passion bled; and he swore to master her, even as one masters a colt, with the whip. But all his virile fury was impotent against the indomitable determination which had sprung up one evening behind Benedetta's small and lovely brow. The spirit of the Boccaneras had awoke within her; nothing in the world, not even the fear of death, would have induced her to become her husband's wife.* And then, love being at last revealed to her, there came a return of her heart to Dario, a conviction that she must reserve herself for him alone, since it was to him that she had promised herself. * Many readers will doubtless remember that the situation as here described is somewhat akin to that of the earlier part of M. George Ohnet's /Ironmaster/, which, in its form as a novel, I translated into English many years ago. However, all resemblance between /Rome/ and the /Ironmaster/ is confined to this one point.--Trans. Ever since that marriage, which he had borne like a bereavement, the young man had been travelling in France. She did not hide the truth from him, but wrote to him, again vowing that she would never be another's. And meantime her piety increased, her resolve to reserve herself for the lover she had chosen mingled in her mind with constancy of religious faith. The ardent heart of a great /amorosa/ had ignited within her, she was ready for martyrdom for faith's sake. And when her despairing mother with clasped hands entreated her to resign herself to her conjugal duties, she replied that she owed no duties, since she had known nothing when she married. Moreover, the times were changing; the attempts to reconcile the Quirinal and the Vatican had failed, so completely, indeed, that the newspapers of the rival parties had, with renewed violence, resumed their campaign of mutual insult and outrage; and thus that triumphal marriage, to which every one had contributed as to a pledge of peace, crumbled amid the general smash-up, became but a ruin the more added to so many others. Ernesta died of it. She had made a mistake. Her spoilt life--the life of a joyless wife--had culminated in this supreme maternal error. And the worst was that she alone had to bear all the responsibility of the disaster, for both her brother, the Cardinal, and her sister, Donna Serafina, overwhelmed her with reproaches. For consolation she had but the despair of Abbe Pisoni, whose patriotic hopes had been destroyed, and who was consumed with grief at having contributed to such a catastrophe. And one morning Ernesta was found, icy white and cold, in her bed. Folks talked of the rupture of a blood-vessel, but grief had been sufficient, for she had suffered frightfully, secretly, without a plaint, as indeed she had suffered all her life long. At this time Benedetta had been married about a twelvemonth: still strong in her resistance to her husband, but remaining under the conjugal roof in order to spare her mother the terrible blow of a public scandal. However, her aunt Serafina had brought influence to bear on her, by opening to her the hope of a possible nullification of her marriage, should she throw herself at the feet of the Holy Father and entreat his intervention. And Serafina ended by persuading her of this, when, deferring to certain advice, she removed her from the spiritual control of Abbe Pisoni, and gave her the same confessor as herself. This was a Jesuit father named Lorenza, a man scarce five and thirty, with bright eyes, grave and amiable manners, and great persuasive powers. However, it was only on the morrow of her mother's death that Benedetta made up her mind, and returned to the Palazzo Boccanera, to occupy the apartments where she had been born, and where her mother had just passed away. Immediately afterwards proceedings for annulling the marriage were instituted, in the first instance, for inquiry, before the Cardinal Vicar charged with the diocese of Rome. It was related that the Contessina had only taken this step after a secret audience with his Holiness, who had shown her the most encouraging sympathy. Count Prada at first spoke of applying to the law courts to compel his wife to return to the conjugal domicile; but, yielding to the entreaties of his old father Orlando, whom the affair greatly grieved, he eventually consented to accept the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. He was infuriated, however, to find that the nullification of the marriage was solicited on the ground of its non-consummation through /impotentia mariti/; this being one of the most valid and decisive pleas on which the Church of Rome consents to part those whom she has joined. And far more unhappy marriages than might be imagined are severed on these grounds, though the world only gives attention to those cases in which people of title or renown are concerned, as it did, for instance, with the famous Martinez Campos suit. In Benedetta's case, her counsel, Consistorial-Advocate Morano, one of the leading authorities of the Roman bar, simply neglected to mention, in his memoir, that if she was still merely a wife in name, this was entirely due to herself. In addition to the evidence of friends and servants, showing on what terms the husband and wife had lived since their marriage, the advocate produced a certificate of a medical character, showing that the non-consummation of the union was certain. And the Cardinal Vicar, acting as Bishop of Rome, had thereupon remitted the case to the Congregation of the Council. This was a first success for Benedetta, and matters remained in this position. She was waiting for the Congregation to deliver its final pronouncement, hoping that the ecclesiastical dissolution of the marriage would prove an irresistible argument in favour of the divorce which she meant to solicit of the civil courts. And meantime, in the icy rooms where her mother Ernesta, submissive and desolate, had lately died, the Contessina resumed her girlish life, showing herself calm, yet very firm in her passion, having vowed that she would belong to none but Dario, and that she would not belong to him until the day when a priest should have joined them together in God's holy name. As it happened, some six months previously, Dario also had taken up his abode at the Boccanera palace in consequence of the death of his father and the catastrophe which had ruined him. Prince Onofrio, after adopting Prada's advice and selling the Villa Montefiori to a financial company for ten million /lire/,* had, instead of prudently keeping his money in his pockets, succumbed to the fever of speculation which was consuming Rome. He began to gamble, buying back his own land, and ending by losing everything in the formidable /krach/ which was swallowing up the wealth of the entire city. Totally ruined, somewhat deeply in debt even, the Prince nevertheless continued to promenade the Corso, like the handsome, smiling, popular man he was, when he accidentally met his death through falling from his horse; and four months later his widow, the ever beautiful Flavia--who had managed to save a modern villa and a personal income of forty thousand /lire/* from the disaster--was remarried to a man of magnificent presence, her junior by some ten years. This was a Swiss named Jules Laporte, originally a sergeant in the Papal Swiss Guard, then a traveller for a shady business in "relics," and finally Marchese Montefiore, having secured that title in securing his wife, thanks to a special brief of the Holy Father. Thus the Princess Boccanera had again become the Marchioness Montefiori. * 400,000 pounds. ** 1,800 pounds. It was then that Cardinal Boccanera, feeling greatly hurt, insisted on his nephew Dario coming to live with him, in a small apartment on the first floor of the palazzo. In the heart of that holy man, who seemed dead to the world, there still lingered pride of name and lineage, with a feeling of affection for his young, slightly built nephew, the last of the race, the only one by whom the old stock might blossom anew. Moreover, he was not opposed to Dario's marriage with Benedetta, whom he also loved with a paternal affection; and so proud was he of the family honour, and so convinced of the young people's pious rectitude that, in taking them to live with him, he absolutely scorned the abominable rumours which Count Prada's friends in the white world had begun to circulate ever since the two cousins had resided under the same roof. Donna Serafina guarded Benedetta, as he, the Cardinal, guarded Dario, and in the silence and the gloom of the vast deserted mansion, ensanguined of olden time by so many tragic deeds of violence, there now only remained these four with their restrained, stilled passions, last survivors of a crumbling world upon the threshold of a new one. When Abbe Pierre Froment all at once awoke from sleep, his head heavy with painful dreams, he was worried to find that the daylight was already waning. His watch, which he hastened to consult, pointed to six o'clock. Intending to rest for an hour at the utmost, he had slept on for nearly seven hours, overcome beyond power of resistance. And even on awaking he remained on the bed, helpless, as though he were conquered before he had fought. Why, he wondered, did he experience this prostration, this unreasonable discouragement, this quiver of doubt which had come he knew not whence during his sleep, and which was annihilating his youthful enthusiasm of the morning? Had the Boccaneras any connection with this sudden weakening of his powers? He had espied dim disquieting figures in the black night of his dreams; and the anguish which they had brought him continued, and he again evoked them, scared as he was at thus awaking in a strange room, full of uneasiness in presence of the unknown. Things no longer seemed natural to him. He could not understand why Benedetta should have written to Viscount Philibert de la Choue to tell him that his, Pierre's, book had been denounced to the Congregation of the Index. What interest too could she have had in his coming to Rome to defend himself; and with what object had she carried her amiability so far as to desire that he should take up his quarters in the mansion? Pierre's stupefaction indeed arose from his being there, on that bed in that strange room, in that palace whose deep, death-like silence encompassed him. As he lay there, his limbs still overpowered and his brain seemingly empty, a flash of light suddenly came to him, and he realised that there must be certain circumstances that he knew nothing of that, simple though things appeared, they must really hide some complicated intrigue. However, it was only a fugitive gleam of enlightenment; his suspicions faded; and he rose up shaking himself and accusing the gloomy twilight of being the sole cause of the shivering and the despondency of which he felt ashamed. In order to bestir himself, Pierre began to examine the two rooms. They were furnished simply, almost meagrely, in mahogany, there being scarcely any two articles alike, though all dated from the beginning of the century. Neither the bed nor the windows nor the doors had any hangings. On the floor of bare tiles, coloured red and polished, there were merely some little foot-mats in front of the various seats. And at sight of this middle-class bareness and coldness Pierre ended by remembering a room where he had slept in childhood--a room at Versailles, at the abode of his grandmother, who had kept a little grocer's shop there in the days of Louis Philippe. However, he became interested in an old painting which hung in the bed-room, on the wall facing the bed, amidst some childish and valueless engravings. But partially discernible in the waning light, this painting represented a woman seated on some projecting stone-work, on the threshold of a great stern building, whence she seemed to have been driven forth. The folding doors of bronze had for ever closed behind her, yet she remained there in a mere drapery of white linen; whilst scattered articles of clothing, thrown forth chance-wise with a violent hand, lay upon the massive granite steps. Her feet were bare, her arms were bare, and her hands, distorted by bitter agony, were pressed to her face--a face which one saw not, veiled as it was by the tawny gold of her rippling, streaming hair. What nameless grief, what fearful shame, what hateful abandonment was thus being hidden by that rejected one, that lingering victim of love, of whose unknown story one might for ever dream with tortured heart? It could be divined that she was adorably young and beautiful in her wretchedness, in the shred of linen draped about her shoulders; but a mystery enveloped everything else--her passion, possibly her misfortune, perhaps even her transgression--unless, indeed, she were there merely as a symbol of all that shivers and that weeps visageless before the ever closed portals of the unknown. For a long time Pierre looked at her, and so intently that he at last imagined he could distinguish her profile, divine in its purity and expression of suffering. But this was only an illusion; the painting had greatly suffered, blackened by time and neglect; and he asked himself whose work it might be that it should move him so intensely. On the adjoining wall a picture of a Madonna, a bad copy of an eighteenth-century painting, irritated him by the banality of its smile. Night was falling faster and faster, and, opening the sitting-room window, Pierre leant out. On the other bank of the Tiber facing him arose the Janiculum, the height whence he had gazed upon Rome that morning. But at this dim hour Rome was no longer the city of youth and dreamland soaring into the early sunshine. The night was raining down, grey and ashen; the horizon was becoming blurred, vague, and mournful. Yonder, to the left, beyond the sea of roofs, Pierre could still divine the presence of the Palatine; and yonder, to the right, there still arose the Dome of St. Peter's, now grey like slate against the leaden sky; whilst behind him the Quirinal, which he could not see, must also be fading away into the misty night. A few minutes went by, and everything became yet more blurred; he realised that Rome was fading, departing in its immensity of which he knew nothing. Then his causeless doubt and disquietude again came on him so painfully that he could no longer remain at the window. He closed it and sat down, letting the darkness submerge him with its flood of infinite sadness. And his despairing reverie only ceased when the door gently opened and the glow of a lamp enlivened the room. It was Victorine who came in quietly, bringing the light. "Ah! so you are up, Monsieur l'Abbe," said she; "I came in at about four o'clock but I let you sleep on. You have done quite right to take all the rest you required." Then, as he complained of pains and shivering, she became anxious. "Don't go catching their nasty fevers," she said. "It isn't at all healthy near their river, you know. Don Vigilio, his Eminence's secretary, is always having the fever, and I assure you that it isn't pleasant." She accordingly advised him to remain upstairs and lie down again. She would excuse his absence to the Princess and the Contessina. And he ended by letting her do as she desired, for he was in no state to have any will of his own. By her advice he dined, partaking of some soup, a wing of a chicken, and some preserves, which Giaccomo, the big lackey, brought up to him. And the food did him a great deal of good; he felt so restored that he refused to go to bed, desiring, said he, to thank the ladies that very evening for their kindly hospitality. As Donna Serafina received on Mondays he would present himself before her. "Very good," said Victorine approvingly. "As you are all right again it can do you no harm, it will even enliven you. The best thing will be for Don Vigilio to come for you at nine o'clock and accompany you. Wait for him here." Pierre had just washed and put on the new cassock he had brought with him, when, at nine o'clock precisely, he heard a discreet knock at his door. A little priest came in, a man scarcely thirty years of age, but thin and debile of build, with a long, seared, saffron-coloured face. For two years past attacks of fever, coming on every day at the same hour, had been consuming him. Nevertheless, whenever he forgot to control the black eyes which lighted his yellow face, they shone out ardently with the glow of his fiery soul. He bowed, and then in fluent French introduced himself in this simple fashion: "Don Vigilio, Monsieur l'Abbe, who is entirely at your service. If you are willing, we will go down." Pierre immediately followed him, expressing his thanks, and Don Vigilio, relapsing into silence, answered his remarks with a smile. Having descended the small staircase, they found themselves on the second floor, on the spacious landing of the grand staircase. And Pierre was surprised and saddened by the scanty illumination, which, as in some dingy lodging-house, was limited to a few gas-jets, placed far apart, their yellow splotches but faintly relieving the deep gloom of the lofty, endless corridors. All was gigantic and funereal. Even on the landing, where was the entrance to Donna Serafina's apartments, facing those occupied by her niece, nothing indicated that a reception was being held that evening. The door remained closed, not a sound came from the rooms, a death-like silence arose from the whole palace. And Don Vigilio did not even ring, but, after a fresh bow, discreetly turned the door-handle. A single petroleum lamp, placed on a table, lighted the ante-room, a large apartment with bare fresco-painted walls, simulating hangings of red and gold, draped regularly all around in the antique fashion. A few men's overcoats and two ladies' mantles lay on the chairs, whilst a pier table was littered with hats, and a servant sat there dozing, with his back to the wall. However, as Don Vigilio stepped aside to allow Pierre to enter a first reception-room, hung with red /brocatelle/, a room but dimly lighted and which he imagined to be empty, the young priest found himself face to face with an apparition in black, a woman whose features he could not at first distinguish. Fortunately he heard his companion say, with a low bow, "Contessina, I have the honour to present to you Monsieur l'Abbe Pierre Froment, who arrived from France this morning." Then, for a moment, Pierre remained alone with Benedetta in that deserted /salon/, in the sleepy glimmer of two lace-veiled lamps. At present, however, a sound of voices came from a room beyond, a larger apartment whose doorway, with folding doors thrown wide open, described a parallelogram of brighter light. The young woman at once showed herself very affable, with perfect simplicity of manner: "Ah! I am happy to see you, Monsieur l'Abbe. I was afraid that your indisposition might be serious. You are quite recovered now, are you not?" Pierre listened to her, fascinated by her slow and rather thick voice, in which restrained passion seemed to mingle with much prudent good sense. And at last he saw her, with her hair so heavy and so dark, her skin so white, the whiteness of ivory. She had a round face, with somewhat full lips, a small refined nose, features as delicate as a child's. But it was especially her eyes that lived, immense eyes, whose infinite depths none could fathom. Was she slumbering? Was she dreaming? Did her motionless face conceal the ardent tension of a great saint and a great /amorosa/? So white, so young, and so calm, her every movement was harmonious, her appearance at once very staid, very noble, and very rhythmical. In her ears she wore two large pearls of matchless purity, pearls which had come from a famous necklace of her mother's, known throughout Rome. Pierre apologised and thanked her. "You see me in confusion, madame," said he; "I should have liked to express to you this morning my gratitude for your great kindness." He had hesitated to call her madame, remembering the plea brought forward in the suit for the dissolution of her marriage. But plainly enough everybody must call her madame. Moreover, her face had retained its calm and kindly expression. "Consider yourself at home here, Monsieur l'Abbe," she responded, wishing to put him at his ease. "It is sufficient that our relative, Monsieur de la Choue, should be fond of you, and take interest in your work. I have, you know, much affection for him." Then her voice faltered slightly, for she realised that she ought to speak of the book, the one reason of Pierre's journey and her proffered hospitality. "Yes," she added, "the Viscount sent me your book. I read it and found it very beautiful. It disturbed me. But I am only an ignoramus, and certainly failed to understand everything in it. We must talk it over together; you will explain your ideas to me, won't you, Monsieur l'Abbe?" In her large clear eyes, which did not know how to lie, Pierre then read the surprise and emotion of a child's soul when confronted by disquieting and undreamt-of problems. So it was not she who had become impassioned and had desired to have him near her that she might sustain him and assist his victory. Once again, and this time very keenly, he suspected a secret influence, a hidden hand which was directing everything towards some unknown goal. However, he was charmed by so much simplicity and frankness in so beautiful, young, and noble a creature; and he gave himself to her after the exchange of those few words, and was about to tell her that she might absolutely dispose of him, when he was interrupted by the advent of another woman, whose tall, slight figure, also clad in black, stood out strongly against the luminous background of the further reception-room as seen through the open doorway. "Well, Benedetta, have you sent Giaccomo up to see?" asked the newcomer. "Don Vigilio has just come down and he is quite alone. It is improper." "No, no, aunt. Monsieur l'Abbe is here," was the reply of Benedetta, hastening to introduce the young priest. "Monsieur l'Abbe Pierre Froment--The Princess Boccanera." Ceremonious salutations were exchanged. The Princess must have been nearly sixty, but she laced herself so tightly that from behind one might have taken her for a young woman. This tight lacing, however, was her last coquetry. Her hair, though still plentiful, was quite white, her eyebrows alone remaining black in her long, wrinkled face, from which projected the large obstinate nose of the family. She had never been beautiful, and had remained a spinster, wounded to the heart by the selection of Count Brandini, who had preferred her younger sister, Ernesta. From that moment she had resolved to seek consolation and satisfaction in family pride alone, the hereditary pride of the great name which she bore. The Boccaneras had already supplied two Popes to the Church, and she hoped that before she died her brother would become the third. She had transformed herself into his housekeeper, as it were, remaining with him, watching over him, and advising him, managing all the household affairs herself, and accomplishing miracles in order to conceal the slow ruin which was bringing the ceilings about their heads. If every Monday for thirty years past she had continued receiving a few intimates, all of them folks of the Vatican, it was from high political considerations, so that her drawing-room might remain a meeting-place of the black world, a power and a threat. And Pierre divined by her greeting that she deemed him of little account, petty foreign priest that he was, not even a prelate. This too again surprised him, again brought the puzzling question to the fore: Why had he been invited, what was expected of him in this society from which the humble were usually excluded? Knowing the Princess to be austerely devout, he at last fancied that she received him solely out of regard for her kinsman, the Viscount, for in her turn she only found these words of welcome: "We are so pleased to receive good news of Monsieur de la Choue! He brought us such a beautiful pilgrimage two years ago." Passing the first through the doorway, she at last ushered the young priest into the adjoining reception-room. It was a spacious square apartment, hung with old yellow /brocatelle/ of a flowery Louis XIV pattern. The lofty ceiling was adorned with a very fine panelling, carved and coloured, with gilded roses in each compartment. The furniture, however, was of all sorts. There were some high mirrors, a couple of superb gilded pier tables, and a few handsome seventeenth-century arm-chairs; but all the rest was wretched. A heavy round table of first-empire style, which had come nobody knew whence, caught the eye with a medley of anomalous articles picked up at some bazaar, and a quantity of cheap photographs littered the costly marble tops of the pier tables. No interesting article of /virtu/ was to be seen. The old paintings on the walls were with two exceptions feebly executed. There was a delightful example of an unknown primitive master, a fourteenth-century Visitation, in which the Virgin had the stature and pure delicacy of a child of ten, whilst the Archangel, huge and superb, inundated her with a stream of dazzling, superhuman love; and in front of this hung an antique family portrait, depicting a very beautiful young girl in a turban, who was thought to be Cassia Boccanera, the /amorosa/ and avengeress who had flung herself into the Tiber with her brother Ercole and the corpse of her lover, Flavio Corradini. Four lamps threw a broad, peaceful glow over the faded room, and, like a melancholy sunset, tinged it with yellow. It looked grave and bare, with not even a flower in a vase to brighten it. In a few words Donna Serafina at once introduced Pierre to the company; and in the silence, the pause which ensued in the conversation, he felt that every eye was fixed upon him as upon a promised and expected curiosity. There were altogether some ten persons present, among them being Dario, who stood talking with little Princess Celia Buongiovanni, whilst the elderly relative who had brought the latter sat whispering to a prelate, Monsignor Nani, in a dim corner. Pierre, however, had been particularly struck by the name of Consistorial-Advocate Morano, of whose position in the house Viscount de la Choue had thought proper to inform him in order to avert any unpleasant blunder. For thirty years past Morano had been Donna Serafina's /amico/. Their connection, formerly a guilty one, for the advocate had wife and children of his own, had in course of time, since he had been left a widower, become one of those /liaisons/ which tolerant people excuse and except. Both parties were extremely devout and had certainly assured themselves of all needful "indulgences." And thus Morano was there in the seat which he had always taken for a quarter of a century past, a seat beside the chimney-piece, though as yet the winter fire had not been lighted, and when Donna Serafina had discharged her duties as mistress of the house, she returned to her own place in front of him, on the other side of the chimney. When Pierre in his turn had seated himself near Don Vigilio, who, silent and discreet, had already taken a chair, Dario resumed in a louder voice the story which he had been relating to Celia. Dario was a handsome man, of average height, slim and elegant. He wore a full beard, dark and carefully tended, and had the long face and pronounced nose of the Boccaneras, but the impoverishment of the family blood over a course of centuries had attenuated, softened as it were, any sharpness or undue prominence of feature. "Oh! a beauty, an astounding beauty!" he repeated emphatically. "Whose beauty?" asked Benedetta, approaching him. Celia, who resembled the little Virgin of the primitive master hanging above her head, began to laugh. "Oh! Dario's speaking of a poor girl, a work-girl whom he met to-day," she explained. Thereupon Dario had to begin his narrative again. It appeared that while passing along a narrow street near the Piazza Navona, he had perceived a tall, shapely girl of twenty, who was weeping and sobbing violently, prone upon a flight of steps. Touched particularly by her beauty, he had approached her and learnt that she had been working in the house outside which she was, a manufactory of wax beads, but that, slack times having come, the workshops had closed and she did not dare to return home, so fearful was the misery there. Amidst the downpour of her tears she raised such beautiful eyes to his that he ended by drawing some money from his pocket. But at this, crimson with confusion, she sprang to her feet, hiding her hands in the folds of her skirt, and refusing to take anything. She added, however, that he might follow her if it so pleased him, and give the money to her mother. And then she hurried off towards the Ponte St'. Angelo.* * Bridge of St. Angelo. "Yes, she was a beauty, a perfect beauty," repeated Dario with an air of ecstasy. "Taller than I, and slim though sturdy, with the bosom of a goddess. In fact, a real antique, a Venus of twenty, her chin rather bold, her mouth and nose of perfect form, and her eyes wonderfully pure and large! And she was bare-headed too, with nothing but a crown of heavy black hair, and a dazzling face, gilded, so to say, by the sun." They had all begun to listen to him, enraptured, full of that passionate admiration for beauty which, in spite of every change, Rome still retains in her heart. "Those beautiful girls of the people are becoming very rare," remarked Morano. "You might scour the Trastevere without finding any. However, this proves that there is at least one of them left." "And what was your goddess's name?" asked Benedetta, smiling, amused and enraptured like the others. "Pierina," replied Dario, also with a laugh. "And what did you do with her?" At this question the young man's excited face assumed an expression of discomfort and fear, like the face of a child on suddenly encountering some ugly creature amidst its play. "Oh! don't talk of it," said he. "I felt very sorry afterwards. I saw such misery--enough to make one ill." Yielding to his curiosity, it seemed, he had followed the girl across the Ponte St'. Angelo into the new district which was being built over the former castle meadows*; and there, on the first floor of an abandoned house which was already falling into ruins, though the plaster was scarcely dry, he had come upon a frightful spectacle which still stirred his heart: a whole family, father and mother, children, and an infirm old uncle, dying of hunger and rotting in filth! He selected the most dignified words he could think of to describe the scene, waving his hand the while with a gesture of fright, as if to ward off some horrible vision. * The meadows around the Castle of St. Angelo. The district, now covered with buildings, is quite flat and was formerly greatly subject to floods. It is known as the Quartiere dei Prati.--Trans. "At last," he concluded, "I ran away, and you may be sure that I shan't go back again." A general wagging of heads ensued in the cold, irksome silence which fell upon the room. Then Morano summed up the matter in a few bitter words, in which he accused the despoilers, the men of the Quirinal, of being the sole cause of all the frightful misery of Rome. Were not people even talking of the approaching nomination of Deputy Sacco as Minister of Finances--Sacco, that intriguer who had engaged in all sorts of underhand practices? His appointment would be the climax of impudence; bankruptcy would speedily and infallibly ensue. Meantime Benedetta, who had fixed her eyes on Pierre, with his book in her mind, alone murmured: "Poor people, how very sad! But why not go back to see them?" Pierre, out of his element and absent-minded during the earlier moments, had been deeply stirred by the latter part of Dario's narrative. His thoughts reverted to his apostolate amidst the misery of Paris, and his heart was touched with compassion at being confronted by the story of such fearful sufferings on the very day of his arrival in Rome. Unwittingly, impulsively, he raised his voice, and said aloud: "Oh! we will go to see them together, madame; you will take me. These questions impassion me so much." The attention of everybody was then again turned upon the young priest. The others questioned him, and he realised that they were all anxious about his first impressions, his opinion of their city and of themselves. He must not judge Rome by mere outward appearances, they said. What effect had the city produced on him? How had he found it, and what did he think of it? Thereupon he politely apologised for his inability to answer them. He had not yet gone out, said he, and had seen nothing. But this answer was of no avail; they pressed him all the more keenly, and he fully understood that their object was to gain him over to admiration and love. They advised him, adjured him not to yield to any fatal disillusion, but to persist and wait until Rome should have revealed to him her soul. "How long do you expect to remain among us, Monsieur l'Abbe?" suddenly inquired a courteous voice, with a clear but gentle ring. It was Monsignor Nani, who, seated in the gloom, thus raised his voice for the first time. On several occasions it had seemed to Pierre that the prelate's keen blue eyes were steadily fixed upon him, though all the while he pretended to be attentively listening to the drawling chatter of Celia's aunt. And before replying Pierre glanced at him. In his crimson-edged cassock, with a violet silk sash drawn tightly around his waist, Nani still looked young, although he was over fifty. His hair had remained blond, he had a straight refined nose, a mouth very firm yet very delicate of contour, and beautifully white teeth. "Why, a fortnight or perhaps three weeks, Monsignor," replied Pierre. The whole /salon/ protested. What, three weeks! It was his pretension to know Rome in three weeks! Why, six weeks, twelve months, ten years were required! The first impression was always a disastrous one, and a long sojourn was needed for a visitor to recover from it. "Three weeks!" repeated Donna Serafina with her disdainful air. "Is it possible for people to study one another and get fond of one another in three weeks? Those who come back to us are those who have learned to know us." Instead of launching into exclamations like the others, Nani had at first contented himself with smiling, and gently waving his shapely hand, which bespoke his aristocratic origin. Then, as Pierre modestly explained himself, saying that he had come to Rome to attend to certain matters and would leave again as soon as those matters should have been concluded, the prelate, still smiling, summed up the argument with the remark: "Oh! Monsieur l'Abbe will stay with us for more than three weeks; we shall have the happiness of his presence here for a long time, I hope." These words, though spoken with quiet cordiality, strangely disturbed the young priest. What was known, what was meant? He leant towards Don Vigilio, who had remained near him, still and ever silent, and in a whisper inquired: "Who is Monsignor Nani?" The secretary, however, did not at once reply. His feverish face became yet more livid. Then his ardent eyes glanced round to make sure that nobody was watching him, and in a breath he responded: "He is the Assessor of the Holy Office."* * Otherwise the Inquisition. This information sufficed, for Pierre was not ignorant of the fact that the assessor, who was present in silence at the meetings of the Holy Office, waited upon his Holiness every Wednesday evening after the sitting, to render him an account of the matters dealt with in the afternoon. This weekly audience, this hour spent with the Pope in a privacy which allowed of every subject being broached, gave the assessor an exceptional position, one of considerable power. Moreover the office led to the cardinalate; the only "rise" that could be given to the assessor was his promotion to the Sacred College. Monsignor Nani, who seemed so perfectly frank and amiable, continued to look at the young priest with such an encouraging air that the latter felt obliged to go and occupy the seat beside him, which Celia's old aunt at last vacated. After all, was there not an omen of victory in meeting, on the very day of his arrival, a powerful prelate whose influence would perhaps open every door to him? He therefore felt very touched when Monsignor Nani, immediately after the first words, inquired in a tone of deep interest, "And so, my dear child, you have published a book?" After this, gradually mastered by his enthusiasm and forgetting where he was, Pierre unbosomed himself, and recounted the birth and progress of his burning love amidst the sick and the humble, gave voice to his dream of a return to the olden Christian community, and triumphed with the rejuvenescence of Catholicism, developing into the one religion of the universal democracy. Little by little he again raised his voice, and silence fell around him in the stern, antique reception-room, every one lending ear to his words with increasing surprise, with a growing coldness of which he remained unconscious. At last Nani gently interrupted him, still wearing his perpetual smile, the faint irony of which, however, had departed. "No doubt, no doubt, my dear child," he said, "it is very beautiful, oh! very beautiful, well worthy of the pure and noble imagination of a Christian. But what do you count on doing now?" "I shall go straight to the Holy Father to defend myself," answered Pierre. A light, restrained laugh went round, and Donna Serafina expressed the general opinion by exclaiming: "The Holy Father isn't seen as easily as that." Pierre, however, was quite impassioned. "Well, for my part," he rejoined, "I hope I shall see him. Have I not expressed his views? Have I not defended his policy? Can he let my book be condemned when I believe that I have taken inspiration from all that is best in him?" "No doubt, no doubt," Nani again hastily replied, as if he feared that the others might be too brusque with the young enthusiast. "The Holy Father has such a lofty mind. And of course it would be necessary to see him. Only, my dear child, you must not excite yourself so much; reflect a little; take your time." And, turning to Benedetta, he added, "Of course his Eminence has not seen Abbe Froment yet. It would be well, however, that he should receive him to-morrow morning to guide him with his wise counsel." Cardinal Boccanera never attended his sister's Monday-evening receptions. Still, he was always there in the spirit, like some absent sovereign master. "To tell the truth," replied the Contessina, hesitating, "I fear that my uncle does not share Monsieur l'Abbe's views." Nani again smiled. "Exactly; he will tell him things which it is good he should hear." Thereupon it was at once settled with Don Vigilio that the latter would put down the young priest's name for an audience on the following morning at ten o'clock. However, at that moment a cardinal came in, clad in town costume--his sash and his stockings red, but his simar black, with a red edging and red buttons. It was Cardinal Sarno, a very old intimate of the Boccaneras; and whilst he apologised for arriving so late, through press of work, the company became silent and deferentially clustered round him. This was the first cardinal Pierre had seen, and he felt greatly disappointed, for the newcomer had none of the majesty, none of the fine port and presence to which he had looked forward. On the contrary, he was short and somewhat deformed, with the left shoulder higher than the right, and a worn, ashen face with lifeless eyes. To Pierre he looked like some old clerk of seventy, half stupefied by fifty years of office work, dulled and bent by incessantly leaning over his writing desk ever since his youth. And indeed that was Sarno's story. The puny child of a petty middle-class family, he had been educated at the Seminario Romano. Then later he had for ten years professed Canon Law at that same seminary, afterwards becoming one of the secretaries of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. Finally, five and twenty years ago, he had been created a cardinal, and the jubilee of his cardinalate had recently been celebrated. Born in Rome, he had always lived there; he was the perfect type of the prelate who, through growing up in the shade of the Vatican, has become one of the masters of the world. Although he had never occupied any diplomatic post, he had rendered such important services to the Propaganda, by his methodical habits of work, that he had become president of one of the two commissions which furthered the interests of the Church in those vast countries of the west which are not yet Catholic. And thus, in the depths of his dim eyes, behind his low, dull-looking brow, the huge map of Christendom was stored away. Nani himself had risen, full of covert respect for the unobtrusive but terrible man whose hand was everywhere, even in the most distant corners of the earth, although he had never left his office. As Nani knew, despite his apparent nullity, Sarno, with his slow, methodical, ably organised work of conquest, possessed sufficient power to set empires in confusion. "Has your Eminence recovered from that cold which distressed us so much?" asked Nani. "No, no, I still cough. There is a most malignant passage at the offices. I feel as cold as ice as soon as I leave my room." From that moment Pierre felt quite little, virtually lost. He was not even introduced to the Cardinal. And yet he had to remain in the room for nearly another hour, looking around and observing. That antiquated world then seemed to him puerile, as though it had lapsed into a mournful second childhood. Under all the apparent haughtiness and proud reserve he could divine real timidity, unacknowledged distrust, born of great ignorance. If the conversation did not become general, it was because nobody dared to speak out frankly; and what he heard in the corners was simply so much childish chatter, the petty gossip of the week, the trivial echoes of sacristies and drawing-rooms. People saw but little of one another, and the slightest incidents assumed huge proportions. At last Pierre ended by feeling as though he were transported into some /salon/ of the time of Charles X, in one of the episcopal cities of the French provinces. No refreshments were served. Celia's old aunt secured possession of Cardinal Sarno; but, instead of replying to her, he simply wagged his head from time to time. Don Vigilio had not opened his mouth the whole evening. However, a conversation in a very low tone was started by Nani and Morano, to whom Donna Serafina listened, leaning forward and expressing her approval by slowly nodding her head. They were doubtless speaking of the dissolution of Benedetta's marriage, for they glanced at the young woman gravely from time to time. And in the centre of the spacious room, in the sleepy glow of the lamps, there was only the young people, Benedetta, Dario, and Celia who seemed to be at all alive, chattering in undertones and occasionally repressing a burst of laughter. All at once Pierre was struck by the great resemblance between Benedetta and the portrait of Cassia hanging on the wall. Each displayed the same delicate youth, the same passionate mouth, the same large, unfathomable eyes, set in the same round, sensible, healthy-looking face. In each there was certainly the same upright soul, the same heart of flame. Then a recollection came to Pierre, that of a painting by Guido Reni, the adorable, candid head of Beatrice Cenci, which, at that moment and to his thinking, the portrait of Cassia closely resembled. This resemblance stirred him and he glanced at Benedetta with anxious sympathy, as if all the fierce fatality of race and country were about to fall on her. But no, it could not be; she looked so calm, so resolute, and so patient! Besides, ever since he had entered that room he had noticed none other than signs of gay fraternal tenderness between her and Dario, especially on her side, for her face ever retained the bright serenity of a love which may be openly confessed. At one moment, it is true, Dario in a joking way had caught hold of her hands and pressed them; but while he began to laugh rather nervously, with a brighter gleam darting from his eyes, she on her side, all composure, slowly freed her hands, as though theirs was but the play of old and affectionate friends. She loved him, though, it was visible, with her whole being and for her whole life. At last when Dario, after stifling a slight yawn and glancing at his watch, had slipped off to join some friends who were playing cards at a lady's house, Benedetta and Celia sat down together on a sofa near Pierre; and the latter, without wishing to listen, overheard a few words of their confidential chat. The little Princess was the eldest daughter of Prince Matteo Buongiovanni, who was already the father of five children by an English wife, a Mortimer, to whom he was indebted for a dowry of two hundred thousand pounds. Indeed, the Buongiovannis were known as one of the few patrician families of Rome that were still rich, still erect among the ruins of the past, now crumbling on every side. They also numbered two popes among their forerunners, yet this had not prevented Prince Matteo from lending support to the Quirinal without quarrelling with the Vatican. Son of an American woman, no longer having the pure Roman blood in his veins, he was a more supple politician than other aristocrats, and was also, folks said, extremely grasping, struggling to be one of the last to retain the wealth and power of olden times, which he realised were condemned to death. Yet it was in his family, renowned for its superb pride and its continued magnificence, that a love romance had lately taken birth, a romance which was the subject of endless gossip: Celia had suddenly fallen in love with a young lieutenant to whom she had never spoken; her love was reciprocated, and the passionate attachment of the officer and the girl only found vent in the glances they exchanged on meeting each day during the usual drive through the Corso. Nevertheless Celia displayed a tenacious will, and after declaring to her father that she would never take any other husband, she was waiting, firm and resolute, in the certainty that she would ultimately secure the man of her choice. The worst of the affair was that the lieutenant, Attilio Sacco, happened to be the son of Deputy Sacco, a parvenu whom the black world looked down upon, as upon one sold to the Quirinal and ready to undertake the very dirtiest job. "It was for me that Morano spoke just now," Celia murmured in Benedetta's ear. "Yes, yes, when he spoke so harshly of Attilio's father and that ministerial appointment which people are talking about. He wanted to give me a lesson." The two girls had sworn eternal affection in their school-days, and Benedetta, the elder by five years, showed herself maternal. "And so," she said, "you've not become a whit more reasonable. You still think of that young man?" "What! are you going to grieve me too, dear?" replied Celia. "I love Attilio and mean to have him. Yes, him and not another! I want him and I'll have him, because I love him and he loves me. It's simple enough." Pierre glanced at her, thunderstruck. With her gentle virgin face she was like a candid, budding lily. A brow and a nose of blossom-like purity; a mouth all innocence with its lips closing over pearly teeth, and eyes like spring water, clear and fathomless. And not a quiver passed over her cheeks of satiny freshness, no sign, however faint, of anxiety or inquisitiveness appeared in her candid glance. Did she think? Did she know? Who could have answered? She was virginity personified with all its redoubtable mystery. "Ah! my dear," resumed Benedetta, "don't begin my sad story over again. One doesn't succeed in marrying the Pope and the King." All tranquillity, Celia responded: "But you didn't love Prada, whereas I love Attilio. Life lies in that: one must love." These words, spoken so naturally by that ignorant child, disturbed Pierre to such a point that he felt tears rising to his eyes. Love! yes, therein lay the solution of every quarrel, the alliance between the nations, the reign of peace and joy throughout the world! However, Donna Serafina had now risen, shrewdly suspecting the nature of the conversation which was impassioning the two girls. And she gave Don Vigilio a glance, which the latter understood, for he came to tell Pierre in an undertone that it was time to retire. Eleven o'clock was striking, and Celia went off with her aunt. Advocate Morano, however, doubtless desired to retain Cardinal Sarno and Nani for a few moments in order that they might privately discuss some difficulty which had arisen in the divorce proceedings. On reaching the outer reception-room, Benedetta, after kissing Celia on both cheeks, took leave of Pierre with much good grace. "In answering the Viscount to-morrow morning," said she, "I shall tell him how happy we are to have you with us, and for longer than you think. Don't forget to come down at ten o'clock to see my uncle, the Cardinal." Having climbed to the third floor again, Pierre and Don Vigilio, each carrying a candlestick which the servant had handed to them, were about to part for the night, when the former could not refrain from asking the secretary a question which had been worrying him for hours: "Is Monsignor Nani a very influential personage?" Don Vigilio again became quite scared, and simply replied by a gesture, opening his arms as if to embrace the world. Then his eyes flashed, and in his turn he seemed to yield to inquisitiveness. "You already knew him, didn't you?" he inquired. "I? not at all!" "Really! Well, he knows you very well. Last Monday I heard him speak of you in such precise terms that he seemed to be acquainted with the slightest particulars of your career and your character." "Why, I never even heard his name before." "Then he must have procured information." Thereupon Don Vigilio bowed and entered his room; whilst Pierre, surprised to find his door open, saw Victorine come out with her calm active air. "Ah! Monsieur l'Abbe, I wanted to make sure that you had everything you were likely to want. There are candles, water, sugar, and matches. And what do you take in the morning, please? Coffee? No, a cup of milk with a roll. Very good; at eight o'clock, eh? And now rest and sleep well. I was awfully afraid of ghosts during the first nights I spent in this old palace! But I never saw a trace of one. The fact is, when people are dead, they are too well pleased, and don't want to break their rest!" Then off she went, and Pierre at last found himself alone, glad to be able to shake off the strain imposed on him, to free himself from the discomfort which he had felt in that reception-room, among those people who in his mind still mingled and vanished like shadows in the sleepy glow of the lamps. Ghosts, thought he, are the old dead ones of long ago whose distressed spirits return to love and suffer in the breasts of the living of to-day. And, despite his long afternoon rest, he had never felt so weary, so desirous of slumber, confused and foggy as was his mind, full of the fear that he had hitherto not understood things aright. When he began to undress, his astonishment at being in that room returned to him with such intensity that he almost fancied himself another person. What did all those people think of his book? Why had he been brought to this cold dwelling whose hostility he could divine? Was it for the purpose of helping him or conquering him? And again in the yellow glimmer, the dismal sunset of the drawing-room, he perceived Donna Serafina and Advocate Morano on either side of the chimney-piece, whilst behind the calm yet passionate visage of Benedetta appeared the smiling face of Monsignor Nani, with cunning eyes and lips bespeaking indomitable energy. He went to bed, but soon got up again, stifling, feeling such a need of fresh, free air that he opened the window wide in order to lean out. But the night was black as ink, the darkness had submerged the horizon. A mist must have hidden the stars in the firmament; the vault above seemed opaque and heavy like lead; and yonder in front the houses of the Trastevere had long since been asleep. Not one of all their windows glittered; there was but a single gaslight shining, all alone and far away, like a lost spark. In vain did Pierre seek the Janiculum. In the depths of that ocean of nihility all sunk and vanished, Rome's four and twenty centuries, the ancient Palatine and the modern Quirinal, even the giant dome of St. Peter's, blotted out from the sky by the flood of gloom. And below him he could not see, he could not even hear the Tiber, the dead river flowing past the dead city. III AT a quarter to ten o'clock on the following morning Pierre came down to the first floor of the mansion for his audience with Cardinal Boccanera. He had awoke free of all fatigue and again full of courage and candid enthusiasm; nothing remaining of his strange despondency of the previous night, the doubts and suspicions which had then come over him. The morning was so fine, the sky so pure and so bright, that his heart once more palpitated with hope. On the landing he found the folding doors of the first ante-room wide open. While closing the gala saloons which overlooked the street, and which were rotting with old age and neglect, the Cardinal still used the reception-rooms of one of his grand-uncles, who in the eighteenth century had risen to the same ecclesiastical dignity as himself. There was a suite of four immense rooms, each sixteen feet high, with windows facing the lane which sloped down towards the Tiber; and the sun never entered them, shut off as it was by the black houses across the lane. Thus the installation, in point of space, was in keeping with the display and pomp of the old-time princely dignitaries of the Church. But no repairs were ever made, no care was taken of anything, the hangings were frayed and ragged, and dust preyed on the furniture, amidst an unconcern which seemed to betoken some proud resolve to stay the course of time. Pierre experienced a slight shock as he entered the first room, the servants' ante-chamber. Formerly two pontifical /gente d'armi/ in full uniform had always stood there amidst a stream of lackeys; and the single servant now on duty seemed by his phantom-like appearance to increase the melancholiness of the vast and gloomy hall. One was particularly struck by an altar facing the windows, an altar with red drapery surmounted by a /baldacchino/ with red hangings, on which appeared the escutcheon of the Boccaneras, the winged dragon spitting flames with the device, /Bocca nera, Alma rossa/. And the grand-uncle's red hat, the old huge ceremonial hat, was also there, with the two cushions of red silk, and the two antique parasols which were taken in the coach each time his Eminence went out. And in the deep silence it seemed as if one could almost hear the faint noise of the moths preying for a century past upon all this dead splendour, which would have fallen into dust at the slightest touch of a feather broom. The second ante-room, that was formerly occupied by the secretary, was also empty, and it was only in the third one, the /anticamera nobile/, that Pierre found Don Vigilio. With his retinue reduced to what was strictly necessary, the Cardinal had preferred to have his secretary near him--at the door, so to say, of the old throne-room, where he gave audience. And Don Vigilio, so thin and yellow, and quivering with fever, sat there like one lost, at a small, common, black table covered with papers. Raising his head from among a batch of documents, he recognised Pierre, and in a low voice, a faint murmur amidst the silence, he said, "His Eminence is engaged. Please wait." Then he again turned to his reading, doubtless to escape all attempts at conversation. Not daring to sit down, Pierre examined the apartment. It looked perhaps yet more dilapidated than the others, with its hangings of green damask worn by age and resembling the faded moss on ancient trees. The ceiling, however, had remained superb. Within a frieze of gilded and coloured ornaments was a fresco representing the Triumph of Amphitrite, the work of one of Raffaelle's pupils. And, according to antique usage, it was here that the /berretta/, the red cap, was placed, on a credence, below a large crucifix of ivory and ebony. As Pierre grew used to the half-light, however, his attention was more particularly attracted by a recently painted full-length portrait of the Cardinal in ceremonial costume--cassock of red moire, rochet of lace, and /cappa/ thrown like a royal mantle over his shoulders. In these vestments of the Church the tall old man of seventy retained the proud bearing of a prince, clean shaven, but still boasting an abundance of white hair which streamed in curls over his shoulders. He had the commanding visage of the Boccaneras, a large nose and a large thin-lipped mouth in a long face intersected by broad lines; and the eyes which lighted his pale countenance were indeed the eyes of his race, very dark, yet sparkling with ardent life under bushy brows which had remained quite black. With laurels about his head he would have resembled a Roman emperor, very handsome and master of the world, as though indeed the blood of Augustus pulsated in his veins. Pierre knew his story which this portrait recalled. Educated at the College of the Nobles, Pio Boccanera had but once absented himself from Rome, and that when very young, hardly a deacon, but nevertheless appointed oblegate to convey a /berretta/ to Paris. On his return his ecclesiastical career had continued in sovereign fashion. Honours had fallen on him naturally, as by right of birth. Ordained by Pius IX himself, afterwards becoming a Canon of the Vatican Basilica, and /Cameriere segreto/, he had risen to the post of Majordomo about the time of the Italian occupation, and in 1874 had been created a Cardinal. For the last four years, moreover, he had been Papal Chamberlain (/Camerlingo/), and folks whispered that Leo XIII had appointed him to that post, even as he himself had been appointed to it by Pius IX, in order to lessen his chance of succeeding to the pontifical throne; for although the conclave in choosing Leo had set aside the old tradition that the Camerlingo was ineligible for the papacy, it was not probable that it would again dare to infringe that rule. Moreover, people asserted that, even as had been the case in the reign of Pius, there was a secret warfare between the Pope and his Camerlingo, the latter remaining on one side, condemning the policy of the Holy See, holding radically different opinions on all things, and silently waiting for the death of Leo, which would place power in his hands with the duty of summoning the conclave, and provisionally watching over the affairs and interests of the Church until a new Pope should be elected. Behind Cardinal Pio's broad, stern brow, however, in the glow of his dark eyes, might there not also be the ambition of actually rising to the papacy, of repeating the career of Gioachino Pecci, Camerlingo and then Pope, all tradition notwithstanding? With the pride of a Roman prince Pio knew but Rome; he almost gloried in being totally ignorant of the modern world; and verily he showed himself very pious, austerely religious, with a full firm faith into which the faintest doubt could never enter. But a whisper drew Pierre from his reflections. Don Vigilio, in his prudent way, invited him to sit down: "You may have to wait some time: take a stool." Then he began to cover a large sheet of yellowish paper with fine writing, while Pierre seated himself on one of the stools ranged alongside the wall in front of the portrait. And again the young man fell into a reverie, picturing in his mind a renewal of all the princely pomp of the old-time cardinals in that antique room. To begin with, as soon as nominated, a cardinal gave public festivities, which were sometimes very splendid. During three days the reception-rooms remained wide open, all could enter, and from room to room ushers repeated the names of those who came--patricians, people of the middle class, poor folks, all Rome indeed, whom the new cardinal received with sovereign kindliness, as a king might receive his subjects. Then there was quite a princely retinue; some cardinals carried five hundred people about with them, had no fewer than sixteen distinct offices in their households, lived, in fact, amidst a perfect court. Even when life subsequently became simplified, a cardinal, if he were a prince, still had a right to a gala train of four coaches drawn by black horses. Four servants preceded him in liveries, emblazoned with his arms, and carried his hat, cushion, and parasols. He was also attended by a secretary in a mantle of violet silk, a train-bearer in a gown of violet woollen stuff, and a gentleman in waiting, wearing an Elizabethan style of costume, and bearing the /berretta/ with gloved hands. Although the household had then become smaller, it still comprised an /auditore/ specially charged with the congregational work, a secretary employed exclusively for correspondence, a chief usher who introduced visitors, a gentleman in attendance for the carrying of the /berretta/, a train-bearer, a chaplain, a majordomo and a /valet-de-chambre/, to say nothing of a flock of underlings, lackeys, cooks, coachmen, grooms, quite a population, which filled the vast mansions with bustle. And with these attendants Pierre mentally sought to fill the three spacious ante-rooms now so deserted; the stream of lackeys in blue liveries broidered with emblazonry, the world of abbes and prelates in silk mantles appeared before him, again setting magnificent and passionate life under the lofty ceilings, illumining all the semi-gloom with resuscitated splendour. But nowadays--particularly since the Italian occupation of Rome--nearly all the great fortunes of the Roman princes have been exhausted, and the pomp of the great dignitaries of the Church has disappeared. The ruined patricians have kept aloof from badly remunerated ecclesiastical offices to which little renown attaches, and have left them to the ambition of the petty /bourgeoisie/. Cardinal Boccanera, the last prince of ancient nobility invested with the purple, received scarcely more than 30,000 /lire/* a year to enable him to sustain his rank, that is 22,000 /lire/,** the salary of his post as Camerlingo, and various small sums derived from other functions. And he would never have made both ends meet had not Donna Serafina helped him with the remnants of the former family fortune which he had long previously surrendered to his sisters and his brother. Donna Serafina and Benedetta lived apart, in their own rooms, having their own table, servants, and personal expenses. The Cardinal only had his nephew Dario with him, and he never gave a dinner or held a public reception. His greatest source of expense was his carriage, the heavy pair-horse coach, which ceremonial usage compelled him to retain, for a cardinal cannot go on foot through the streets of Rome. However, his coachman, an old family servant, spared him the necessity of keeping a groom by insisting on taking entire charge of the carriage and the two black horses, which, like himself, had grown old in the service of the Boccaneras. There were two footmen, father and son, the latter born in the house. And the cook's wife assisted in the kitchen. However, yet greater reductions had been made in the ante-rooms, where the staff, once so brilliant and numerous, was now simply composed of two petty priests, Don Vigilio, who was at once secretary, auditore, and majordomo, and Abbe Paparelli, who acted as train-bearer, chaplain, and chief usher. There, where a crowd of salaried people of all ranks had once moved to and fro, filling the vast halls with bustle and colour, one now only beheld two little black cassocks gliding noiselessly along, two unobtrusive shadows flitting about amidst the deep gloom of the lifeless rooms. * 1,200 pounds. ** 880 pounds. And Pierre now fully understood the haughty unconcern of the Cardinal, who suffered time to complete its work of destruction in that ancestral mansion, to which he was powerless to restore the glorious life of former times! Built for that shining life, for the sovereign display of a sixteenth-century prince, it was now deserted and empty, crumbling about the head of its last master, who had no servants left him to fill it, and would not have known how to pay for the materials which repairs would have necessitated. And so, since the modern world was hostile, since religion was no longer sovereign, since men had changed, and one was drifting into the unknown, amidst the hatred and indifference of new generations, why not allow the old world to collapse in the stubborn, motionless pride born of its ancient glory? Heroes alone died standing, without relinquishing aught of their past, preserving the same faith until their final gasp, beholding, with pain-fraught bravery and infinite sadness, the slow last agony of their divinity. And the Cardinal's tall figure, his pale, proud face, so full of sovereign despair and courage, expressed that stubborn determination to perish beneath the ruins of the old social edifice rather than change a single one of its stones. Pierre was roused by a rustling of furtive steps, a little mouse-like trot, which made him raise his head. A door in the wall had just opened, and to his surprise there stood before him an abbe of some forty years, fat and short, looking like an old maid in a black skirt, a very old maid in fact, so numerous were the wrinkles on his flabby face. It was Abbe Paparelli, the train-bearer and usher, and on seeing Pierre he was about to question him, when Don Vigilio explained matters. "Ah! very good, very good, Monsieur l'Abbe Froment. His Eminence will condescend to receive you, but you must wait, you must wait." Then, with his silent rolling walk, he returned to the second ante-room, where he usually stationed himself. Pierre did not like his face--the face of an old female devotee, whitened by celibacy, and ravaged by stern observance of the rites; and so, as Don Vigilio--his head weary and his hands burning with fever--had not resumed his work, the young man ventured to question him. Oh! Abbe Paparelli, he was a man of the liveliest faith, who from simple humility remained in a modest post in his Eminence's service. On the other hand, his Eminence was pleased to reward him for his devotion by occasionally condescending to listen to his advice. As Don Vigilio spoke, a faint gleam of irony, a kind of veiled anger appeared in his ardent eyes. However, he continued to examine Pierre, and gradually seemed reassured, appreciating the evident frankness of this foreigner who could hardly belong to any clique. And so he ended by departing somewhat from his continual sickly distrust, and even engaged in a brief chat. "Yes, yes," he said, "there is a deal of work sometimes, and rather hard work too. His Eminence belongs to several Congregations, the Consistorial, the Holy Office, the Index, the Rites. And all the documents concerning the business which falls to him come into my hands. I have to study each affair, prepare a report on it, clear the way, so to say. Besides which all the correspondence is carried on through me. Fortunately his Eminence is a holy man, and intrigues neither for himself nor for others, and this enables us to taste a little peace." Pierre took a keen interest in these particulars of the life led by a prince of the Church. He learnt that the Cardinal rose at six o'clock, summer and winter alike. He said his mass in his chapel, a little room which simply contained an altar of painted wood, and which nobody but himself ever entered. His private apartments were limited to three rooms--a bed-room, dining-room, and study--all very modest and small, contrived indeed by partitioning off portions of one large hall. And he led a very retired life, exempt from all luxury, like one who is frugal and poor. At eight in the morning he drank a cup of cold milk for his breakfast. Then, when there were sittings of the Congregations to which he belonged, he attended them; otherwise he remained at home and gave audience. Dinner was served at one o'clock, and afterwards came the siesta, lasting until five in summer and until four at other seasons--a sacred moment when a servant would not have dared even to knock at the door. On awaking, if it were fine, his Eminence drove out towards the ancient Appian Way, returning at sunset when the /Ave Maria/ began to ring. And finally, after again giving audience between seven and nine, he supped and retired into his room, where he worked all alone or went to bed. The cardinals wait upon the Pope on fixed days, two or three times each month, for purposes connected with their functions. For nearly a year, however, the Camerlingo had not been received in private audience by his Holiness, and this was a sign of disgrace, a proof of secret warfare, of which the entire black world spoke in prudent whispers. "His Eminence is sometimes a little rough," continued Don Vigilio in a soft voice. "But you should see him smile when his niece the Contessina, of whom he is very fond, comes down to kiss him. If you have a good reception, you know, you will owe it to the Contessina." At this moment the secretary was interrupted. A sound of voices came from the second ante-room, and forthwith he rose to his feet, and bent very low at sight of a stout man in a black cassock, red sash, and black hat, with twisted cord of red and gold, whom Abbe Paparelli was ushering in with a great display of deferential genuflections. Pierre also had risen at a sign from Don Vigilio, who found time to whisper to him, "Cardinal Sanguinetti, Prefect of the Congregation of the Index." Meantime Abbe Paparelli was lavishing attentions on the prelate, repeating with an expression of blissful satisfaction: "Your most reverend Eminence was expected. I have orders to admit your most reverend Eminence at once. His Eminence the Grand Penitentiary is already here." Sanguinetti, loud of voice and sonorous of tread, spoke out with sudden familiarity, "Yes, yes, I know. A number of importunate people detained me! One can never do as one desires. But I am here at last." He was a man of sixty, squat and fat, with a round and highly coloured face distinguished by a huge nose, thick lips, and bright eyes which were always on the move. But he more particularly struck one by his active, almost turbulent, youthful vivacity, scarcely a white hair as yet showing among his brown and carefully tended locks, which fell in curls about his temples. Born at Viterbo, he had studied at the seminary there before completing his education at the Universita Gregoriana in Rome. His ecclesiastical appointments showed how rapidly he had made his way, how supple was his mind: first of all secretary to the nunciature at Lisbon; then created titular Bishop of Thebes, and entrusted with a delicate mission in Brazil; on his return appointed nuncio first at Brussels and next at Vienna; and finally raised to the cardinalate, to say nothing of the fact that he had lately secured the suburban episcopal see of Frascati.* Trained to business, having dealt with every nation in Europe, he had nothing against him but his ambition, of which he made too open a display, and his spirit of intrigue, which was ever restless. It was said that he was now one of the irreconcilables who demanded that Italy should surrender Rome, though formerly he had made advances to the Quirinal. In his wild passion to become the next Pope he rushed from one opinion to the other, giving himself no end of trouble to gain people from whom he afterwards parted. He had twice already fallen out with Leo XIII, but had deemed it politic to make his submission. In point of fact, given that he was an almost openly declared candidate to the papacy, he was wearing himself out by his perpetual efforts, dabbling in too many things, and setting too many people agog. * Cardinals York and Howard were Bishops of Frascati.--Trans. Pierre, however, had only seen in him the Prefect of the Congregation of the Index; and the one idea which struck him was that this man would decide the fate of his book. And so, when the Cardinal had disappeared and Abbe Paparelli had returned to the second ante-room, he could not refrain from asking Don Vigilio, "Are their Eminences Cardinal Sanguinetti and Cardinal Boccanera very intimate, then?" An irrepressible smile contracted the secretary's lips, while his eyes gleamed with an irony which he could no longer subdue: "Very intimate--oh! no, no--they see one another when they can't do otherwise." Then he explained that considerable deference was shown to Cardinal Boccanera's high birth, and that his colleagues often met at his residence, when, as happened to be the case that morning, any grave affair presented itself, requiring an interview apart from the usual official meetings. Cardinal Sanguinetti, he added, was the son of a petty medical man of Viterbo. "No, no," he concluded, "their Eminences are not at all intimate. It is difficult for men to agree when they have neither the same ideas nor the same character, especially too when they are in each other's way." Don Vigilio spoke these last words in a lower tone, as if talking to himself and still retaining his sharp smile. But Pierre scarcely listened, absorbed as he was in his own worries. "Perhaps they have met to discuss some affair connected with the Index?" said he. Don Vigilio must have known the object of the meeting. However, he merely replied that, if the Index had been in question, the meeting would have taken place at the residence of the Prefect of that Congregation. Thereupon Pierre, yielding to his impatience, was obliged to put a straight question. "You know of my affair--the affair of my book," he said. "Well, as his Eminence is a member of the Congregation, and all the documents pass through your hands, you might be able to give me some useful information. I know nothing as yet and am so anxious to know!" At this Don Vigilio relapsed into scared disquietude. He stammered, saying that he had not seen any documents, which was true. "Nothing has yet reached us," he added; "I assure you I know nothing." Then, as the other persisted, he signed to him to keep quiet, and again turned to his writing, glancing furtively towards the second ante-room as if he believed that Abbe Paparelli was listening. He had certainly said too much, he thought, and he made himself very small, crouching over the table, and melting, fading away in his dim corner. Pierre again fell into a reverie, a prey to all the mystery which enveloped him--the sleepy, antique sadness of his surroundings. Long minutes went by; it was nearly eleven when the sound of a door opening and a buzz of voices roused him. Then he bowed respectfully to Cardinal Sanguinetti, who went off accompanied by another cardinal, a very thin and tall man, with a grey, bony, ascetic face. Neither of them, however, seemed even to see the petty foreign priest who bent low as they went by. They were chatting aloud in familiar fashion. "Yes! the wind is falling; it is warmer than yesterday." "We shall certainly have the sirocco to-morrow." Then solemn silence again fell on the large, dim room. Don Vigilio was still writing, but his pen made no noise as it travelled over the stiff yellow paper. However, the faint tinkle of a cracked bell was suddenly heard, and Abbe Paparelli, after hastening into the throne-room for a moment, returned to summon Pierre, whom he announced in a restrained voice: "Monsieur l'Abbe Pierre Froment." The spacious throne-room was like the other apartments, a virtual ruin. Under the fine ceiling of carved and gilded wood-work, the red wall-hangings of /brocatelle/, with a large palm pattern, were falling into tatters. A few holes had been patched, but long wear had streaked the dark purple of the silk--once of dazzling magnificence--with pale hues. The curiosity of the room was its old throne, an arm-chair upholstered in red silk, on which the Holy Father had sat when visiting Cardinal Pio's grand-uncle. This chair was surmounted by a canopy, likewise of red silk, under which hung the portrait of the reigning Pope. And, according to custom, the chair was turned towards the wall, to show that none might sit on it. The other furniture of the apartment was made up of sofas, arm-chairs, and chairs, with a marvellous Louis Quatorze table of gilded wood, having a top of mosaic-work representing the rape of Europa. But at first Pierre only saw Cardinal Boccanera standing by the table which he used for writing. In his simple black cassock, with red edging and red buttons, the Cardinal seemed to him yet taller and prouder than in the portrait which showed him in ceremonial costume. There was the same curly white hair, the same long, strongly marked face, with large nose and thin lips, and the same ardent eyes, illumining the pale countenance from under bushy brows which had remained black. But the portrait did not express the lofty tranquil faith which shone in this handsome face, a complete certainty of what truth was, and an absolute determination to abide by it for ever. Boccanera had not stirred, but with black, fixed glance remained watching his visitor's approach; and the young priest, acquainted with the usual ceremonial, knelt and kissed the large ruby which the prelate wore on his hand. However, the Cardinal immediately raised him. "You are welcome here, my dear son. My niece spoke to me about you with so much sympathy that I am happy to receive you." With these words Pio seated himself near the table, as yet not telling Pierre to take a chair, but still examining him whilst speaking slowly and with studied politeness: "You arrived yesterday morning, did you not, and were very tired?" "Your Eminence is too kind--yes, I was worn out, as much through emotion as fatigue. This journey is one of such gravity for me." The Cardinal seemed indisposed to speak of serious matters so soon. "No doubt; it is a long way from Paris to Rome," he replied. "Nowadays the journey may be accomplished with fair rapidity, but formerly how interminable it was!" Then speaking yet more slowly: "I went to Paris once--oh! a long time ago, nearly fifty years ago--and then for barely a week. A large and handsome city; yes, yes, a great many people in the streets, extremely well-bred people, a nation which has accomplished great and admirable things. Even in these sad times one cannot forget that France was the eldest daughter of the Church. But since that one journey I have not left Rome--" Then he made a gesture of quiet disdain, expressive of all he left unsaid. What was the use of journeying to a land of doubt and rebellion? Did not Rome suffice--Rome, which governed the world--the Eternal City which, when the times should be accomplished, would become the capital of the world once more? Silently glancing at the Cardinal's lofty stature, the stature of one of the violent war-like princes of long ago, now reduced to wearing that simple cassock, Pierre deemed him superb with his proud conviction that Rome sufficed unto herself. But that stubborn resolve to remain in ignorance, that determination to take no account of other nations excepting to treat them as vassals, disquieted him when he reflected on the motives that had brought him there. And as silence had again fallen he thought it politic to approach the subject he had at heart by words of homage. "Before taking any other steps," said he, "I desired to express my profound respect for your Eminence; for in your Eminence I place my only hope; and I beg your Eminence to be good enough to advise and guide me." With a wave of the hand Boccanera thereupon invited Pierre to take a chair in front of him. "I certainly do not refuse you my counsel, my dear son," he replied. "I owe my counsel to every Christian who desires to do well. But it would be wrong for you to rely on my influence. I have none. I live entirely apart from others; I cannot and will not ask for anything. However, this will not prevent us from chatting." Then, approaching the question in all frankness, without the slightest artifice, like one of brave and absolute mind who fears no responsibility however great, he continued: "You have written a book, have you not?--'New Rome,' I believe--and you have come to defend this book which has been denounced to the Congregation of the Index. For my own part I have not yet read it. You will understand that I cannot read everything. I only see the works that are sent to me by the Congregation which I have belonged to since last year; and, besides, I often content myself with the reports which my secretary draws up for me. However, my niece Benedetta has read your book, and has told me that it is not lacking in interest. It first astonished her somewhat, and then greatly moved her. So I promise you that I will go through it and study the incriminated passages with the greatest care." Pierre profited by the opportunity to begin pleading his cause. And it occurred to him that it would be best to give his references at once. "Your Eminence will realise how stupefied I was when I learnt that proceedings were being taken against my book," he said. "Monsieur le Vicomte Philibert de la Choue, who is good enough to show me some friendship, does not cease repeating that such a book is worth the best of armies to the Holy See." "Oh! De la Choue, De la Choue!" repeated the Cardinal with a pout of good-natured disdain. "I know that De la Choue considers himself a good Catholic. He is in a slight degree our relative, as you know. And when he comes to Rome and stays here, I willingly see him, on condition however that no mention is made of certain subjects on which it would be impossible for us to agree. To tell the truth, the Catholicism preached by De la Choue--worthy, clever man though he is--his Catholicism, I say, with his corporations, his working-class clubs, his cleansed democracy and his vague socialism, is after all merely so much literature!" This pronouncement struck Pierre, for he realised all the disdainful irony contained in it--an irony which touched himself. And so he hastened to name his other reference, whose authority he imagined to be above discussion: "His Eminence Cardinal Bergerot has been kind enough to signify his full approval of my book." At this Boccanera's face suddenly changed. It no longer wore an expression of derisive blame, tinged with the pity that is prompted by a child's ill-considered action fated to certain failure. A flash of anger now lighted up the Cardinal's dark eyes, and a pugnacious impulse hardened his entire countenance. "In France," he slowly resumed, "Cardinal Bergerot no doubt has a reputation for great piety. We know little of him in Rome. Personally, I have only seen him once, when he came to receive his hat. And I would not therefore allow myself to judge him if his writings and actions had not recently saddened my believing soul. Unhappily, I am not the only one; you will find nobody here, of the Sacred College, who approves of his doings." Boccanera paused, then in a firm voice concluded: "Cardinal Bergerot is a Revolutionary!" This time Pierre's surprise for a moment forced him to silence. A Revolutionary--good heavens! a Revolutionary--that gentle pastor of souls, whose charity was inexhaustible, whose one dream was that Jesus might return to earth to ensure at last the reign of peace and justice! So words did not have the same signification in all places; into what religion had he now tumbled that the faith of the poor and the humble should be looked upon as a mere insurrectional, condemnable passion? As yet unable to understand things aright, Pierre nevertheless realised that discussion would be both discourteous and futile, and his only remaining desire was to give an account of his book, explain and vindicate it. But at his first words the Cardinal interposed. "No, no, my dear son. It would take us too long and I wish to read the passages. Besides, there is an absolute rule. All books which meddle with the faith are condemnable and pernicious. Does your book show perfect respect for dogma?" "I believe so, and I assure your Eminence that I have had no intention of writing a work of negation." "Good: I may be on your side if that is true. Only, in the contrary case, I have but one course to advise you, which is to withdraw your work, condemn it, and destroy it without waiting until a decision of the Index compels you to do so. Whosoever has given birth to scandal must stifle it and expiate it, even if he have to cut into his own flesh. The only duties of a priest are humility and obedience, the complete annihilation of self before the sovereign will of the Church. And, besides, why write at all? For there is already rebellion in expressing an opinion of one's own. It is always the temptation of the devil which puts a pen in an author's hand. Why, then, incur the risk of being for ever damned by yielding to the pride of intelligence and domination? Your book again, my dear son--your book is literature, literature!" This expression again repeated was instinct with so much contempt that Pierre realised all the wretchedness that would fall upon the poor pages of his apostolate on meeting the eyes of this prince who had become a saintly man. With increasing fear and admiration he listened to him, and beheld him growing greater and greater. "Ah! faith, my dear son, everything is in faith--perfect, disinterested faith--which believes for the sole happiness of believing! How restful it is to bow down before the mysteries without seeking to penetrate them, full of the tranquil conviction that, in accepting them, one possesses both the certain and the final! Is not the highest intellectual satisfaction that which is derived from the victory of the divine over the mind, which it disciplines, and contents so completely that it knows desire no more? And apart from that perfect equilibrium, that explanation of the unknown by the divine, no durable peace is possible for man. If one desires that truth and justice should reign upon earth, it is in God that one must place them. He that does not believe is like a battlefield, the scene of every disaster. Faith alone can tranquillise and deliver." For an instant Pierre remained silent before the great figure rising up in front of him. At Lourdes he had only seen suffering humanity rushing thither for health of the body and consolation of the soul; but here was the intellectual believer, the mind that needs certainty, finding satisfaction, tasting the supreme enjoyment of doubting no more. He had never previously heard such a cry of joy at living in obedience without anxiety as to the morrow of death. He knew that Boccanera's youth had been somewhat stormy, traversed by acute attacks of sensuality, a flaring of the red blood of his ancestors; and he marvelled at the calm majesty which faith had at last implanted in this descendant of so violent a race, who had no passion remaining in him but that of pride. "And yet," Pierre at last ventured to say in a timid, gentle voice, "if faith remains essential and immutable, forms change. From hour to hour evolution goes on in all things--the world changes." "That is not true!" exclaimed the Cardinal, "the world does not change. It continually tramps over the same ground, loses itself, strays into the most abominable courses, and it continually has to be brought back into the right path. That is the truth. In order that the promises of Christ may be fulfilled, is it not necessary that the world should return to its starting point, its original innocence? Is not the end of time fixed for the day when men shall be in possession of the full truth of the Gospel? Yes, truth is in the past, and it is always to the past that one must cling if one would avoid the pitfalls which evil imaginations create. All those fine novelties, those mirages of that famous so-called progress, are simply traps and snares of the eternal tempter, causes of perdition and death. Why seek any further, why constantly incur the risk of error, when for eighteen hundred years the truth has been known? Truth! why it is in Apostolic and Roman Catholicism as created by a long succession of generations! What madness to desire to change it when so many lofty minds, so many pious souls have made of it the most admirable of monuments, the one instrument of order in this world, and of salvation in the next!" Pierre, whose heart had contracted, refrained from further protest, for he could no longer doubt that he had before him an implacable adversary of his most cherished ideas. Chilled by a covert fear, as though he felt a faint breath, as of a distant wind from a land of ruins, pass over his face, bringing with it the mortal cold of a sepulchre, he bowed respectfully whilst the Cardinal, rising to his full height, continued in his obstinate voice, resonant with proud courage: "And if Catholicism, as its enemies pretend, be really stricken unto death, it must die standing and in all its glorious integrality. You hear me, Monsieur l'Abbe--not one concession, not one surrender, not a single act of cowardice! Catholicism is such as it is, and cannot be otherwise. No modification of the divine certainty, the entire truth, is possible. The removal of the smallest stone from the edifice could only prove a cause of instability. Is this not evident? You cannot save old houses by attacking them with the pickaxe under pretence of decorating them. You only enlarge the fissures. Even if it were true that Rome were on the eve of falling into dust, the only result of all the repairing and patching would be to hasten the catastrophe. And instead of a noble death, met unflinchingly, we should then behold the basest of agonies, the death throes of a coward who struggles and begs for mercy! For my part I wait. I am convinced that all that people say is but so much horrible falsehood, that Catholicism has never been firmer, that it imbibes eternity from the one and only source of life. But should the heavens indeed fall, on that day I should be here, amidst these old and crumbling walls, under these old ceilings whose beams are being devoured by the worms, and it is here, erect, among the ruins, that I should meet my end, repeating my /credo/ for the last time." His final words fell more slowly, full of haughty sadness, whilst with a sweeping gesture he waved his arms towards the old, silent, deserted palace around him, whence life was withdrawing day by day. Had an involuntary presentiment come to him, did the faint cold breath from the ruins also fan his own cheeks? All the neglect into which the vast rooms had fallen was explained by his words; and a superb, despondent grandeur enveloped this prince and cardinal, this uncompromising Catholic who, withdrawing into the dim half-light of the past, braved with a soldier's heart the inevitable downfall of the olden world. Deeply impressed, Pierre was about to take his leave when, to his surprise, a little door opened in the hangings. "What is it? Can't I be left in peace for a moment?" exclaimed Boccanera with sudden impatience. Nevertheless, Abbe Paparelli, fat and sleek, glided into the room without the faintest sign of emotion. And he whispered a few words in the ear of the Cardinal, who, on seeing him, had become calm again. "What curate?" asked Boccanera. "Oh! yes, Santobono, the curate of Frascati. I know--tell him I cannot see him just now." Paparelli, however, again began whispering in his soft voice, though not in so low a key as previously, for some of his words could be overheard. The affair was urgent, the curate was compelled to return home, and had only a word or two to say. And then, without awaiting consent, the train-bearer ushered in the visitor, a /protege/ of his, whom he had left just outside the little door. And for his own part he withdrew with the tranquillity of a retainer who, whatever the modesty of his office, knows himself to be all powerful. Pierre, who was momentarily forgotten, looked at the visitor--a big fellow of a priest, the son of a peasant evidently, and still near to the soil. He had an ungainly, bony figure, huge feet and knotted hands, with a seamy tanned face lighted by extremely keen black eyes. Five and forty and still robust, his chin and cheeks bristling, and his cassock, overlarge, hanging loosely about his big projecting bones, he suggested a bandit in disguise. Still there was nothing base about him; the expression of his face was proud. And in one hand he carried a small wicker basket carefully covered over with fig-leaves. Santobono at once bent his knees and kissed the Cardinal's ring, but with hasty unconcern, as though only some ordinary piece of civility were in question. Then, with that commingling of respect and familiarity which the little ones of the world often evince towards the great, he said, "I beg your most reverend Eminence's forgiveness for having insisted. But there were people waiting, and I should not have been received if my old friend Paparelli had not brought me by way of that door. Oh! I have a very great service to ask of your Eminence, a real service of the heart. But first of all may I be allowed to offer your Eminence a little present?" The Cardinal listened with a grave expression. He had been well acquainted with Santobono in the years when he had spent the summer at Frascati, at a princely residence which the Boccaneras had possessed there--a villa rebuilt in the seventeenth century, surrounded by a wonderful park, whose famous terrace overlooked the Campagna, stretching far and bare like the sea. This villa, however, had since been sold, and on some vineyards, which had fallen to Benedetta's share, Count Prada, prior to the divorce proceedings, had begun to erect quite a district of little pleasure houses. In former times, when walking out, the Cardinal had condescended to enter and rest in the dwelling of Santobono, who officiated at an antique chapel dedicated to St. Mary of the Fields, without the town. The priest had his home in a half-ruined building adjoining this chapel, and the charm of the place was a walled garden which he cultivated himself with the passion of a true peasant. "As is my rule every year," said he, placing his basket on the table, "I wished that your Eminence might taste my figs. They are the first of the season. I gathered them expressly this morning. You used to be so fond of them, your Eminence, when you condescended to gather them from the tree itself. You were good enough to tell me that there wasn't another tree in the world that produced such fine figs." The Cardinal could not help smiling. He was indeed very fond of figs, and Santobono spoke truly: his fig-tree was renowned throughout the district. "Thank you, my dear Abbe," said Boccanera, "you remember my little failings. Well, and what can I do for you?" Again he became grave, for, in former times, there had been unpleasant discussions between him and the curate, a lack of agreement which had angered him. Born at Nemi, in the core of a fierce district, Santobono belonged to a violent family, and his eldest brother had died of a stab. He himself had always professed ardently patriotic opinions. It was said that he had all but taken up arms for Garibaldi; and, on the day when the Italians had entered Rome, force had been needed to prevent him from raising the flag of Italian unity above his roof. His passionate dream was to behold Rome mistress of the world, when the Pope and the King should have embraced and made cause together. Thus the Cardinal looked on him as a dangerous revolutionary, a renegade who imperilled Catholicism. "Oh! what your Eminence can do for me, what your Eminence can do if only condescending and willing!" repeated Santobono in an ardent voice, clasping his big knotty hands. And then, breaking off, he inquired, "Did not his Eminence Cardinal Sanguinetti explain my affair to your most reverend Eminence?" "No, the Cardinal simply advised me of your visit, saying that you had something to ask of me." Whilst speaking Boccanera's face had clouded over, and it was with increased sternness of manner that he again waited. He was aware that the priest had become Sanguinetti's "client" since the latter had been in the habit of spending weeks together at his suburban see of Frascati. Walking in the shadow of every cardinal who is a candidate to the papacy, there are familiars of low degree who stake the ambition of their life on the possibility of that cardinal's election. If he becomes Pope some day, if they themselves help him to the throne, they enter the great pontifical family in his train. It was related that Sanguinetti had once already extricated Santobono from a nasty difficulty: the priest having one day caught a marauding urchin in the act of climbing his wall, had beaten the little fellow with such severity that he had ultimately died of it. However, to Santobono's credit it must be added that his fanatical devotion to the Cardinal was largely based upon the hope that he would prove the Pope whom men awaited, the Pope who would make Italy the sovereign nation of the world. "Well, this is my misfortune," he said. "Your Eminence knows my brother Agostino, who was gardener at the villa for two years in your Eminence's time. He is certainly a very pleasant and gentle young fellow, of whom nobody has ever complained. And so it is hard to understand how such an accident can have happened to him, but it seems that he has killed a man with a knife at Genzano, while walking in the street in the evening. I am dreadfully distressed about it, and would willingly give two fingers of my right hand to extricate him from prison. However, it occurred to me that your Eminence would not refuse me a certificate stating that Agostino was formerly in your Eminence's service, and that your Eminence was always well pleased with his quiet disposition." But the Cardinal flatly protested: "I was not at all pleased with Agostino. He was wildly violent, and I had to dismiss him precisely because he was always quarrelling with the other servants." "Oh! how grieved I am to hear your Eminence say that! So it is true, then, my poor little Agostino's disposition has really changed! Still there is always a way out of a difficulty, is there not? You can still give me a certificate, first arranging the wording of it. A certificate from your Eminence would have such a favourable effect upon the law officers." "No doubt," replied Boccanera; "I can understand that, but I will give no certificate." "What! does your most reverend Eminence refuse my prayer?" "Absolutely! I know that you are a priest of perfect morality, that you discharge the duties of your ministry with strict punctuality, and that you would be deserving of high commendation were it not for your political fancies. Only your fraternal affection is now leading you astray. I cannot tell a lie to please you." Santobono gazed at him in real stupefaction, unable to understand that a prince, an all-powerful cardinal, should be influenced by such petty scruples, when the entire question was a mere knife thrust, the most commonplace and frequent of incidents in the yet wild land of the old Roman castles. "A lie! a lie!" he muttered; "but surely it isn't lying just to say what is good of a man, leaving out all the rest, especially when a man has good points as Agostino certainly has. In a certificate, too, everything depends on the words one uses." He stubbornly clung to that idea; he could not conceive that a person should refuse to soften the rigour of justice by an ingenious presentation of the facts. However, on acquiring a certainty that he would obtain nothing, he made a gesture of despair, his livid face assuming an expression of violent rancour, whilst his black eyes flamed with restrained passion. "Well, well! each looks on truth in his own way," he said. "I shall go back to tell his Eminence Cardinal Sanguinetti. And I beg your Eminence not to be displeased with me for having disturbed your Eminence to no purpose. By the way, perhaps the figs are not yet quite ripe; but I will take the liberty to bring another basketful towards the end of the season, when they will be quite nice and sweet. A thousand thanks and a thousand felicities to your most reverend Eminence." Santobono went off backwards, his big bony figure bending double with repeated genuflections. Pierre, whom the scene had greatly interested, in him beheld a specimen of the petty clergy of Rome and its environs, of whom people had told him before his departure from Paris. This was not the /scagnozzo/, the wretched famished priest whom some nasty affair brings from the provinces, who seeks his daily bread on the pavements of Rome; one of the herd of begowned beggars searching for a livelihood among the crumbs of Church life, voraciously fighting for chance masses, and mingling with the lowest orders in taverns of the worst repute. Nor was this the country priest of distant parts, a man of crass ignorance and superstition, a peasant among the peasants, treated as an equal by his pious flock, which is careful not to mistake him for the Divinity, and which, whilst kneeling in all humility before the parish saint, does not bend before the man who from that saint derives his livelihood. At Frascati the officiating minister of a little church may receive a stipend of some nine hundred /lire/ a year,* and he has only bread and meat to buy if his garden yields him wine and fruit and vegetables. This one, Santobono, was not without education; he knew a little theology and a little history, especially the history of the past grandeur of Rome, which had inflamed his patriotic heart with the mad dream that universal domination would soon fall to the portion of renascent Rome, the capital of united Italy. But what an insuperable distance still remained between this petty Roman clergy, often very worthy and intelligent, and the high clergy, the high dignitaries of the Vatican! Nobody that was not at least a prelate seemed to count. * About 36 pounds. One is reminded of Goldsmith's line: "And passing rich with forty pounds a year."--Trans. "A thousand thanks to your most reverend Eminence, and may success attend all your Eminence's desires." With these words Santobono finally disappeared, and the Cardinal returned to Pierre, who also bowed preparatory to taking his leave. "To sum up the matter, Monsieur l'Abbe," said Boccanera, "the affair of your book presents certain difficulties. As I have told you, I have no precise information, I have seen no documents. But knowing that my niece took an interest in you, I said a few words on the subject to Cardinal Sanguinetti, the Prefect of the Index, who was here just now. And he knows little more than I do, for nothing has yet left the Secretary's hands. Still he told me that the denunciation emanated from personages of rank and influence, and applied to numerous pages of your work, in which it was said there were passages of the most deplorable character as regards both discipline and dogma." Greatly moved by the idea that he had hidden foes, secret adversaries who pursued him in the dark, the young priest responded: "Oh! denounced, denounced! If your Eminence only knew how that word pains my heart! And denounced, too, for offences which were certainly involuntary, since my one ardent desire was the triumph of the Church! All I can do, then, is to fling myself at the feet of the Holy Father and entreat him to hear my defence." Boccanera suddenly became very grave again. A stern look rested on his lofty brow as he drew his haughty figure to its full height. "His Holiness," said he, "can do everything, even receive you, if such be his good pleasure, and absolve you also. But listen to me. I again advise you to withdraw your book yourself, to destroy it, simply and courageously, before embarking in a struggle in which you will reap the shame of being overwhelmed. Reflect on that." Pierre, however, had no sooner spoken of the Pope than he had regretted it, for he realised that an appeal to the sovereign authority was calculated to wound the Cardinal's feelings. Moreover, there was no further room for doubt. Boccanera would be against his book, and the utmost that he could hope for was to gain his neutrality by bringing pressure to bear on him through those about him. At the same time he had found the Cardinal very plain spoken, very frank, far removed from all the secret intriguing in which the affair of his book was involved, as he now began to realise; and so it was with deep respect and genuine admiration for the prelate's strong and lofty character that he took leave of him. "I am infinitely obliged to your Eminence," he said, "and I promise that I will carefully reflect upon all that your Eminence has been kind enough to say to me." On returning to the ante-room, Pierre there found five or six persons who had arrived during his audience, and were now waiting. There was a bishop, a domestic prelate, and two old ladies, and as he drew near to Don Vigilio before retiring, he was surprised to find him conversing with a tall, fair young fellow, a Frenchman, who, also in astonishment, exclaimed, "What! are you here in Rome, Monsieur l'Abbe?" For a moment Pierre had hesitated. "Ah! I must ask your pardon, Monsieur Narcisse Habert," he replied, "I did not at first recognise you! It was the less excusable as I knew that you had been an /attache/ at our embassy here ever since last year." Tall, slim, and elegant of appearance, Narcisse Habert had a clear complexion, with eyes of a bluish, almost mauvish, hue, a fair frizzy beard, and long curling fair hair cut short over the forehead in the Florentine fashion. Of a wealthy family of militant Catholics, chiefly members of the bar or bench, he had an uncle in the diplomatic profession, and this had decided his own career. Moreover, a place at Rome was marked out for him, for he there had powerful connections. He was a nephew by marriage of Cardinal Sarno, whose sister had married another of his uncles, a Paris notary; and he was also cousin german of Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo, a /Cameriere segreto/, and son of one of his aunts, who had married an Italian colonel. And in some measure for these reasons he had been attached to the embassy to the Holy See, his superiors tolerating his somewhat fantastic ways, his everlasting passion for art which sent him wandering hither and thither through Rome. He was moreover very amiable and extremely well-bred; and it occasionally happened, as was the case that morning, that with his weary and somewhat mysterious air he came to speak to one or another of the cardinals on some real matter of business in the ambassador's name. So as to converse with Pierre at his ease, he drew him into the deep embrasure of one of the windows. "Ah! my dear Abbe, how pleased I am to see you!" said he. "You must remember what pleasant chats we had when we met at Cardinal Bergerot's! I told you about some paintings which you were to see for your book, some miniatures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. And now, you know, I mean to take possession of you. I'll show you Rome as nobody else could show it to you. I've seen and explored everything. Ah! there are treasures, such treasures! But in truth there is only one supreme work; one always comes back to one's particular passion. The Botticelli in the Sixtine Chapel--ah, the Botticelli!" His voice died away, and he made a faint gesture as if overcome by admiration. Then Pierre had to promise that he would place himself in his hands and accompany him to the Sixtine Chapel. "You know why I am here," at last said the young priest. "Proceedings have been taken against my book; it has been denounced to the Congregation of the Index." "Your book! is it possible?" exclaimed Narcisse: "a book like that with pages recalling the delightful St. Francis of Assisi!" And thereupon he obligingly placed himself at Pierre's disposal. "But our ambassador will be very useful to you," he said. "He is the best man in the world, of charming affability, and full of the old French spirit. I will present you to him this afternoon or to-morrow morning at the latest; and since you desire an immediate audience with the Pope, he will endeavour to obtain one for you. His position naturally designates him as your intermediary. Still, I must confess that things are not always easily managed. Although the Holy Father is very fond of him, there are times when his Excellency fails, for the approaches are so extremely intricate." Pierre had not thought of employing the ambassador's good offices, for he had naively imagined that an accused priest who came to defend himself would find every door open. However, he was delighted with Narcisse's offer, and thanked him as warmly as if the audience were already obtained. "Besides," the young man continued, "if we encounter any difficulties I have relatives at the Vatican, as you know. I don't mean my uncle the Cardinal, who would be of no use to us, for he never stirs out of his office at the Propaganda, and will never apply for anything. But my cousin, Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo, is very obliging, and he lives in intimacy with the Pope, his duties requiring his constant attendance on him. So, if necessary, I will take you to see him, and he will no doubt find a means of procuring you an interview, though his extreme prudence keeps him perpetually afraid of compromising himself. However, it's understood, you may rely on me in every respect." "Ah! my dear sir," exclaimed Pierre, relieved and happy, "I heartily accept your offer. You don't know what balm your words have brought me; for ever since my arrival everybody has been discouraging me, and you are the first to restore my strength by looking at things in the true French way." Then, lowering his voice, he told the /attache/ of his interview with Cardinal Boccanera, of his conviction that the latter would not help him, of the unfavourable information which had been given by Cardinal Sanguinetti, and of the rivalry which he had divined between the two prelates. Narcisse listened, smiling, and in his turn began to gossip confidentially. The rivalry which Pierre had mentioned, the premature contest for the tiara which Sanguinetti and Boccanera were waging, impelled to it by a furious desire to become the next Pope, had for a long time been revolutionising the black world. There was incredible intricacy in the depths of the affair; none could exactly tell who was pulling the strings, conducting the vast intrigue. As regards generalities it was simply known that Boccanera represented absolutism--the Church freed from all compromises with modern society, and waiting in immobility for the Deity to triumph over Satan, for Rome to be restored to the Holy Father, and for repentant Italy to perform penance for its sacrilege; whereas Sanguinetti, extremely politic and supple, was reported to harbour bold and novel ideas: permission to vote to be granted to all true Catholics,* a majority to be gained by this means in the Legislature; then, as a fatal corollary, the downfall of the House of Savoy, and the proclamation of a kind of republican federation of all the former petty States of Italy under the august protectorate of the Pope. On the whole, the struggle was between these two antagonistic elements--the first bent on upholding the Church by a rigorous maintenance of the old traditions, and the other predicting the fall of the Church if it did not follow the bent of the coming century. But all was steeped in so much mystery that people ended by thinking that, if the present Pope should live a few years longer, his successor would certainly be neither Boccanera nor Sanguinetti. * Since the occupation of Rome by the Italian authorities, the supporters of the Church, obedient to the prohibition of the Vatican, have abstained from taking part in the political elections, this being their protest against the new order of things which they do not recognise. Various attempts have been made, however, to induce the Pope to give them permission to vote, many members of the Roman aristocracy considering the present course impolitic and even harmful to the interests of the Church.--Trans. All at once Pierre interrupted Narcisse: "And Monsignor Nani, do you know him? I spoke with him yesterday evening. And there he is coming in now!" Nani was indeed just entering the ante-room with his usual smile on his amiable pink face. His cassock of fine texture, and his sash of violet silk shone with discreet soft luxury. And he showed himself very amiable to Abbe Paparelli, who, accompanying him in all humility, begged him to be kind enough to wait until his Eminence should be able to receive him. "Oh! Monsignor Nani," muttered Narcisse, becoming serious, "he is a man whom it is advisable to have for a friend." Then, knowing Nani's history, he related it in an undertone. Born at Venice, of a noble but ruined family which had produced heroes, Nani, after first studying under the Jesuits, had come to Rome to perfect himself in philosophy and theology at the Collegio Romano, which was then also under Jesuit management. Ordained when three and twenty, he had at once followed a nuncio to Bavaria as private secretary; and then had gone as /auditore/ to the nunciatures of Brussels and Paris, in which latter city he had lived for five years. Everything seemed to predestine him to diplomacy, his brilliant beginnings and his keen and encyclopaedical intelligence; but all at once he had been recalled to Rome, where he was soon afterwards appointed Assessor to the Holy Office. It was asserted at the time that this was done by the Pope himself, who, being well acquainted with Nani, and desirous of having a person he could depend upon at the Holy Office, had given instructions for his recall, saying that he could render far more services at Rome than abroad. Already a domestic prelate, Nani had also lately become a Canon of St. Peter's and an apostolic prothonotary, with the prospect of obtaining a cardinal's hat whenever the Pope should find some other favourite who would please him better as assessor. "Oh, Monsignor Nani!" continued Narcisse. "He's a superior man, thoroughly well acquainted with modern Europe, and at the same time a very saintly priest, a sincere believer, absolutely devoted to the Church, with the substantial faith of an intelligent politician--a belief different, it is true, from the narrow gloomy theological faith which we know so well in France. And this is one of the reasons why you will hardly understand things here at first. The Roman prelates leave the Deity in the sanctuary and reign in His name, convinced that Catholicism is the human expression of the government of God, the only perfect and eternal government, beyond the pales of which nothing but falsehood and social danger can be found. While we in our country lag behind, furiously arguing whether there be a God or not, they do not admit that God's existence can be doubted, since they themselves are his delegated ministers; and they entirely devote themselves to playing their parts as ministers whom none can dispossess, exercising their power for the greatest good of humanity, and devoting all their intelligence, all their energy to maintaining themselves as the accepted masters of the nations. As for Monsignor Nani, after being mixed up in the politics of the whole world, he has for ten years been discharging the most delicate functions in Rome, taking part in the most varied and most important affairs. He sees all the foreigners who come to Rome, knows everything, has a hand in everything. Add to this that he is extremely discreet and amiable, with a modesty which seems perfect, though none can tell whether, with his light silent footstep, he is not really marching towards the highest ambition, the purple of sovereignty." "Another candidate for the tiara," thought Pierre, who had listened passionately; for this man Nani interested him, caused him an instinctive disquietude, as though behind his pink and smiling face he could divine an infinity of obscure things. At the same time, however, the young priest but ill understood his friend, for he again felt bewildered by all this strange Roman world, so different from what he had expected. Nani had perceived the two young men and came towards them with his hand cordially outstretched "Ah! Monsieur l'Abbe Froment, I am happy to meet you again. I won't ask you if you have slept well, for people always sleep well at Rome. Good-day, Monsieur Habert; your health has kept good I hope, since I met you in front of Bernini's Santa Teresa, which you admire so much.* I see that you know one another. That is very nice. I must tell you, Monsieur l'Abbe, that Monsieur Habert is a passionate lover of our city; he will be able to show you all its finest sights." * The allusion is to a statue representing St. Theresa in ecstasy, with the Angel of Death descending to transfix her with his dart. It stands in a transept of Sta. Maria della Vittoria.--Trans. Then, in his affectionate way, he at once asked for information respecting Pierre's interview with the Cardinal. He listened attentively to the young man's narrative, nodding his head at certain passages, and occasionally restraining his sharp smile. The Cardinal's severity and Pierre's conviction that he would accord him no support did not at all astonish Nani. It seemed as if he had expected that result. However, on hearing that Cardinal Sanguinetti had been there that morning, and had pronounced the affair of the book to be very serious, he appeared to lose his self-control for a moment, for he spoke out with sudden vivacity: "It can't be helped, my dear child, my intervention came too late. Directly I heard of the proceedings I went to his Eminence Cardinal Sanguinetti to tell him that the result would be an immense advertisement for your book. Was it sensible? What was the use of it? We know that you are inclined to be carried away by your ideas, that you are an enthusiast, and are prompt to do battle. So what advantage should we gain by embarrassing ourselves with the revolt of a young priest who might wage war against us with a book of which some thousands of copies have been sold already? For my part I desired that nothing should be done. And I must say that the Cardinal, who is a man of sense, was of the same mind. He raised his arms to heaven, went into a passion, and exclaimed that he was never consulted, that the blunder was already committed beyond recall, and that it was impossible to prevent process from taking its course since the matter had already been brought before the Congregation, in consequence of denunciations from authoritative sources, based on the gravest motives. Briefly, as he said, the blunder was committed, and I had to think of something else." All at once Nani paused. He had just noticed that Pierre's ardent eyes were fixed upon his own, striving to penetrate his meaning. A faint flush then heightened the pinkiness of his complexion, whilst in an easy way he continued, unwilling to reveal how annoyed he was at having said too much: "Yes, I thought of helping you with all the little influence I possess, in order to extricate you from the worries in which this affair will certainly land you." An impulse of revolt was stirring Pierre, who vaguely felt that he was perhaps being made game of. Why should he not be free to declare his faith, which was so pure, so free from personal considerations, so full of glowing Christian charity? "Never," said he, "will I withdraw; never will I myself suppress my book, as I am advised to do. It would be an act of cowardice and falsehood, for I regret nothing, I disown nothing. If I believe that my book brings a little truth to light I cannot destroy it without acting criminally both towards myself and towards others. No, never! You hear me--never!" Silence fell. But almost immediately he resumed: "It is at the knees of the Holy Father that I desire to make that declaration. He will understand me, he will approve me." Nani no longer smiled; henceforth his face remained as it were closed. He seemed to be studying the sudden violence of the young priest with curiosity; then sought to calm him with his own tranquil kindliness. "No doubt, no doubt," said he. "There is certainly great sweetness in obedience and humility. Still I can understand that, before anything else, you should desire to speak to his Holiness. And afterwards you will see--is that not so?--you will see--" Then he evinced a lively interest in the suggested application for an audience. He expressed keen regret that Pierre had not forwarded that application from Paris, before even coming to Rome: in that course would have rested the best chance of a favourable reply. Bother of any kind was not liked at the Vatican, and if the news of the young priest's presence in Rome should only spread abroad, and the motives of his journey be discussed, all would be lost. Then, on learning that Narcisse had offered to present Pierre to the French ambassador, Nani seemed full of anxiety, and deprecated any such proceeding: "No, no! don't do that--it would be most imprudent. In the first place you would run the risk of embarrassing the ambassador, whose position is always delicate in affairs of this kind. And then, too, if he failed--and my fear is that he might fail--yes, if he failed it would be all over; you would no longer have the slightest chance of obtaining an audience by any other means. For the Vatican would not like to hurt the ambassador's feelings by yielding to other influence after resisting his." Pierre anxiously glanced at Narcisse, who wagged his head, embarrassed and hesitating. "The fact is," the /attache/ at last murmured, "we lately solicited an audience for a high French personage and it was refused, which was very unpleasant for us. Monsignor is right. We must keep our ambassador in reserve, and only utilise him when we have exhausted all other means." Then, noticing Pierre's disappointment, he added obligingly: "Our first visit therefore shall be for my cousin at the Vatican." Nani, his attention again roused, looked at the young man in astonishment. "At the Vatican? You have a cousin there?" "Why, yes--Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo." "Gamba! Gamba! Yes, yes, excuse me, I remember now. Ah! so you thought of Gamba to bring influence to bear on his Holiness? That's an idea, no doubt; one must see--one must see." He repeated these words again and again as if to secure time to see into the matter himself, to weigh the pros and cons of the suggestion. Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo was a worthy man who played no part at the Papal Court, whose nullity indeed had become a byword at the Vatican. His childish stories, however, amused the Pope, whom he greatly flattered, and who was fond of leaning on his arm while walking in the gardens. It was during these strolls that Gamba easily secured all sorts of little favours. However, he was a remarkable poltroon, and had such an intense fear of losing his influence that he never risked a request without having convinced himself by long meditation that no possible harm could come to him through it. "Well, do you know, the idea is not a bad one," Nani at last declared. "Yes, yes, Gamba can secure the audience for you, if he is willing. I will see him myself and explain the matter." At the same time Nani did not cease advising extreme caution. He even ventured to say that it was necessary to be on one's guard with the papal /entourage/, for, alas! it was a fact his Holiness was so good, and had such a blind faith in the goodness of others, that he had not always chosen his familiars with the critical care which he ought to have displayed. Thus one never knew to what sort of man one might be applying, or in what trap one might be setting one's foot. Nani even allowed it to be understood that on no account ought any direct application to be made to his Eminence the Secretary of State, for even his Eminence was not a free agent, but found himself encompassed by intrigues of such intricacy that his best intentions were paralysed. And as Nani went on discoursing in this fashion, in a very gentle, extremely unctuous manner, the Vatican appeared like some enchanted castle, guarded by jealous and treacherous dragons--a castle where one must not take a step, pass through a doorway, risk a limb, without having carefully assured oneself that one would not leave one's whole body there to be devoured. Pierre continued listening, feeling colder and colder at heart, and again sinking into uncertainty. "/Mon Dieu/!" he exclaimed, "I shall never know how to act. You discourage me, Monsignor." At this Nani's cordial smile reappeared. "I, my dear child? I should be sorry to do so. I only want to repeat to you that you must wait and do nothing. Avoid all feverishness especially. There is no hurry, I assure you, for it was only yesterday that a /consultore/ was chosen to report upon your book, so you have a good full month before you. Avoid everybody, live in such a way that people shall be virtually ignorant of your existence, visit Rome in peace and quietness--that is the best course you can adopt to forward your interests." Then, taking one of the priest's hands between both his own, so aristocratic, soft, and plump, he added: "You will understand that I have my reasons for speaking to you like this. I should have offered my own services; I should have made it a point of honour to take you straight to his Holiness, had I thought it advisable. But I do not wish to mix myself up in the matter at this stage; I realise only too well that at the present moment we should simply make sad work of it. Later on--you hear me--later on, in the event of nobody else succeeding, I myself will obtain you an audience; I formally promise it. But meanwhile, I entreat you, refrain from using those words 'a new religion,' which, unfortunately, occur in your book, and which I heard you repeat again only last night. There can be no new religion, my dear child; there is but one eternal religion, which is beyond all surrender and compromise--the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion. And at the same time leave your Paris friends to themselves. Don't rely too much on Cardinal Bergerot, whose lofty piety is not sufficiently appreciated in Rome. I assure you that I am speaking to you as a friend." Then, seeing how disabled Pierre appeared to be, half overcome already, no longer knowing in what direction to begin his campaign, he again strove to comfort him: "Come, come, things will right themselves; everything will end for the best, both for the welfare of the Church and your own. And now you must excuse me, I must leave you; I shall not be able to see his Eminence to-day, for it is impossible for me to wait any longer." Abbe Paparelli, whom Pierre had noticed prowling around with his ears cocked, now hastened forward and declared to Monsignor Nani that there were only two persons to be received before him. But the prelate very graciously replied that he would come back again at another time, for the affair which he wished to lay before his Eminence was in no wise pressing. Then he withdrew, courteously bowing to everybody. Narcisse Habert's turn came almost immediately afterwards. However, before entering the throne-room he pressed Pierre's hand, repeating, "So it is understood. I will go to see my cousin at the Vatican to-morrow, and directly I get a reply I will let you know. We shall meet again soon I hope." It was now past twelve o'clock, and the only remaining visitor was one of the two old ladies who seemed to have fallen asleep. At his little secretarial table Don Vigilio still sat covering huge sheets of yellow paper with fine handwriting, from which he only lifted his eyes at intervals to glance about him distrustfully, and make sure that nothing threatened him. In the mournful silence which fell around, Pierre lingered for yet another moment in the deep embrasure of the window. Ah! what anxiety consumed his poor, tender, enthusiastic heart! On leaving Paris things had seemed so simple, so natural to him! He was unjustly accused, and he started off to defend himself, arrived and flung himself at the feet of the Holy Father, who listened to him indulgently. Did not the Pope personify living religion, intelligence to understand, justice based upon truth? And was he not, before aught else, the Father, the delegate of divine forgiveness and mercy, with arms outstretched towards all the children of the Church, even the guilty ones? Was it not meet, then, that he should leave his door wide open so that the humblest of his sons might freely enter to relate their troubles, confess their transgressions, explain their conduct, imbibe comfort from the source of eternal loving kindness? And yet on the very first day of his, Pierre's, arrival, the doors closed upon him with a bang; he felt himself sinking into a hostile sphere, full of traps and pitfalls. One and all cried out to him "Beware!" as if he were incurring the greatest dangers in setting one foot before the other. His desire to see the Pope became an extraordinary pretension, so difficult of achievement that it set the interests and passions and influences of the whole Vatican agog. And there was endless conflicting advice, long-discussed manoeuvring, all the strategy of generals leading an army to victory, and fresh complications ever arising in the midst of a dim stealthy swarming of intrigues. Ah! good Lord! how different all this was from the charitable reception that Pierre had anticipated: the pastor's house standing open beside the high road for the admission of all the sheep of the flock, both those that were docile and those that had gone astray. That which began to frighten Pierre, however, was the evil, the wickedness, which he could divine vaguely stirring in the gloom: Cardinal Bergerot suspected, dubbed a Revolutionary, deemed so compromising that he, Pierre, was advised not to mention his name again! The young priest once more saw Cardinal Boccanera's pout of disdain while speaking of his colleague. And then Monsignor Nani had warned him not to repeat those words "a new religion," as if it were not clear to everybody that they simply signified the return of Catholicism to the primitive purity of Christianity! Was that one of the crimes denounced to the Congregation of the Index? He had begun to suspect who his accusers were, and felt alarmed, for he was now conscious of secret subterranean plotting, a great stealthy effort to strike him down and suppress his work. All that surrounded him became suspicious. If he listened to advice and temporised, it was solely to follow the same politic course as his adversaries, to learn to know them before acting. He would spend a few days in meditation, in surveying and studying that black world of Rome which to him had proved so unexpected. But, at the same time, in the revolt of his apostle-like faith, he swore, even as he had said to Nani, that he would never yield, never change either a page or a line of his book, but maintain it in its integrity in the broad daylight as the unshakable testimony of his belief. Even were the book condemned by the Index, he would not tender submission, withdraw aught of it. And should it become necessary he would quit the Church, he would go even as far as schism, continuing to preach the new religion and writing a new book, /Real Rome/, such as he now vaguely began to espy. However, Don Vigilio had ceased writing, and gazed so fixedly at Pierre that the latter at last stepped up to him politely in order to take leave. And then the secretary, yielding, despite his fears, to a desire to confide in him, murmured, "He came simply on your account, you know; he wanted to ascertain the result of your interview with his Eminence." It was not necessary for Don Vigilio to mention Nani by name; Pierre understood. "Really, do you think so?" he asked. "Oh! there is no doubt of it. And if you take my advice you will do what he desires with a good grace, for it is absolutely certain that you will do it later on." These words brought Pierre's disquietude and exasperation to a climax. He went off with a gesture of defiance. They would see if he would ever yield. The three ante-rooms which he again crossed appeared to him blacker, emptier, more lifeless than ever. In the second one Abbe Paparelli saluted him with a little silent bow; in the first the sleepy lackey did not even seem to see him. A spider was weaving its web between the tassels of the great red hat under the /baldacchino/. Would not the better course have been to set the pick at work amongst all that rotting past, now crumbling into dust, so that the sunlight might stream in freely and restore to the purified soil the fruitfulness of youth? 
40181	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustration. See 40181-h.htm or 40181-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40181/40181-h/40181-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40181/40181-h.zip) The Complete Works of F. Marion Crawford TO LEEWARD by F. MARION CRAWFORD With Frontispiece P. F. Collier & Son New York Copyright 1883 And 1892 By F. Marion Crawford All Rights Reserved TO My Uncle SAMUEL WARD OF NEW YORK THIS NOVEL IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED [Illustration: THE LAST RAYS OF THE SUN SHONE HORIZONTALLY ACROSS THE TERRACE.] TO LEEWARD. CHAPTER I. There are two Romes. There is the Rome of the intelligent foreigner, consisting of excavations, monuments, tramways, hotels, typhoid fever, incense, and wax candles; and there is the Rome within, a city of antique customs, good and bad, a town full of aristocratic prejudices, of intrigues, of religion, of old-fashioned honour and new-fashioned scandal, of happiness and unhappiness, of just people and unjust. Besides all this, there is a very modern court and a government of the future, which may almost be said to make up together a third city. Moreover, these several coexistent cities, and their corresponding inhabitants, are subdivided to an infinity of gradations, in order to contain all and make room for all. The foreigner who hunts excavations does not cross the path of the foreigner who sniffs after incense, any more than the primeval aristocrat sits down to dinner with the representative of fashionable scandal; any more than the just man would ever allow the unjust to be introduced to him. They all enjoy so thoroughly the freedom to ignore each other that they would not for worlds endanger the safety of the barrier that separates them. Of course, as they all say, this state of things cannot last. There must ultimately be an amalgamation, a deluge, a unity, fraternity and equality; a state of things in which we shall say, "Sois mon frère, ou je te tue,"--a future glorious, disgusting, or dull, according as you look at it. But, meanwhile, it is all very charming, and there is plenty for every one to enjoy, and an abundance for every one to abuse. When Marcantonio Carantoni saw his sister married to a Frenchman, he was exceedingly glad that she had not married an Englishman, a Turk, a Jew, or an infidel. The Vicomte de Charleroi was, and is, a gentleman; rather easy-going, perhaps, and inclined to look upon republics in general, and the French republic in particular, with the lenient eye of the man who owns land and desires peace first--and a monarchy afterwards, whenever convenient. But in these days it is not altogether worthy of blame that a man should look after his worldly interests and goods; for how else can the aristocracy expect to make any headway against the stream of grimy bourgeois, who sell everything at a profit, while the nobles buy everything at a loss? So Marcantonio is satisfied with his brother-in-law, and just now is particularly delighted because Charleroi has got himself appointed to a post in Rome; and he goes to see his sister every day, for he is very fond of her. In truth, it is not surprising that Marcantonio should like his sister, for she is a very charming woman. She is beautiful, too, in a grand way, with her auburn hair, and grey eyes, and fair skin; but no one can help feeling that she might be quite as beautiful, and yet be anything but charming; so many beautiful people are vain, or shy, or utterly idiotic. Madame de Charleroi is something of a paragon, and has as many enemies as most paragons have, but they can find nothing to feed their envy. She was very unhappy years ago, but time has closed the wounds, or has hidden them from sight, and her dearest friends can only say that she was cold and showed very little heart. When the world says that a woman is a piece of ice, you may generally be sure that she is both beautiful and good, so that it can find nothing worse to say. Marcantonio Carantoni's sister is a paragon, and there are only two things to be said against her,--she did not marry Charleroi for love, and she has not done half the things in the world that she might have done. On the January afternoon which marks the opening of this story, the brother and sister sat together in a small boudoir in the Carantoni palace; there was room for all in the great house, and as Marcantonio was not married, it was natural that his sister and her husband, with their children, governesses, servants, and horses should occupy the untenanted part of the ancestral mansion. Up in the second story there is a room such as you would not expect to find within those grey and ancient walls, where the lower windows are heavily grated, and huge stone coats of arms frown forbiddingly from above. It is a room all sun and flowers and modern furniture, though not of the more hideous type of newness,--modern in the sense of comfortable, well padded and well aired. The afternoon sun was pouring in through the closed windows, and there was a small wood fire in the narrow fireplace. The Vicomtesse de Charleroi sat warming her toes, and her brother was rolling a cigarette as he looked at her. A short silence had succeeded a somewhat animated discussion. She looked at the fire, and he looked at her. "My dear Diana," said Marcantonio at last, rising to get himself a match, "what in the world can you have against her? We are not Hindoos, you know, to talk about caste in these days; and even if that were the objection, she comes of very proper people, I am sure, though they are foreigners." Madame moved her feet impatiently. "Oh, you know it is not that!" she said petulantly. "As if I had not married a foreigner myself! But then, if you had felt about it as I feel about this, I would have thought twice"-- "Have I not thought twice--and three times?" "Of course, yes--while your head is hot with this fancy. Yes, you have probably thought a hundred times, at least, this very day. Listen to me, my dear boy, and do what I tell you. Go away to Paris, or London, or Vienna, for a fortnight, and then come back and tell me what you think about it. Will you not do that--to please me?" "But why?" objected Marcantonio, looking very uncomfortable, for he hated to refuse his sister anything. "Seriously, why should I not marry her? Is there anything against her? If there is, tell me." Donna Diana rose rather wearily and went to the window. "I wish you would abandon the whole idea," she said. "I am quite sure you will repent when it is too late. I do not believe in these young girls who occupy themselves with philosophy and the good of the human race. Politics--well, we all have a finger in politics; but this dreadful progressive thought--it is turning the world upside down." "Oh--it is the philosophy that you do not like about her? Well, my dear sister, that is exactly what I think so interesting. This young English Hypatia"-- "Hypatia, indeed!" cried Donna Diana rather scornfully. "Yes. Is she not learned?" "Perhaps." "And beautiful?" "No,--certainly not. She is simply a little pretty." Marcantonio shrugged his shoulders. "Of course," he said, "you will not allow it." His sister looked round quickly. "That is rude," she said. In a moment her brother was by her side. "Forgive me, Diana mia; you know I did not mean it. But you see I think she is beautiful, and that is everything, after all." "Yes," answered she, "I suppose it is everything, now. But philosophy is not everything. Put her out of your head, dear boy, and do not say any more rude things." Marcantonio had the power to avoid being rude, but he was not able to follow the other piece of advice. He could not put her out of his head. On the contrary, he went out and shut himself up in his own rooms and thought of her for a whole hour. He was not at all like his sister in appearance, though he resembled her somewhat in character. He was of middle height, sparely built, dark of skin, and aquiline of feature; neither handsome nor ugly, but very decidedly refined,--gentle of speech and kind of face. Without any more vanity than most people, he was yet always a little more carefully dressed than other men, and consequently passed for a dandy. Altogether, he was a pleasant person to look at, but not especially remarkable at first sight. As regards his position, he bore an ancient name, dignified with the title of marquis; he was an only son, and his parents were dead; he owned the fine old palace in Rome and a good deal of land elsewhere; he never gambled, and was generally considered to be rich, as fortunes go in modern Italy. Of course, he was a good match, and many were the hints he received, from time to time, to the effect that he would be very acceptable as a son-in-law. Nevertheless he was not married, and he did not particularly care for the society of women. In truth, women did not find him very amenable, for he would not marry, and could not play adoration well enough to please them. So they left him alone. Grave old gentlemen nodded approvingly when they spoke of him, and his uncle the cardinal regarded him as one of the mainstays of the clerical party. As a matter of fact, he did not aspire to anything of the kind, and was merely a very honest young nobleman of good education, who had not made for himself any interest in life, but who nevertheless found life very agreeable. Possessing many good qualities, he yet knew very well that he had never been put to the test, nor required to show much strength of character; and he did not wish to be put into any such position. His sister was very fond of him, but she sometimes caught herself wishing he would do something a little out of the everlasting common round of social respectability. He was twenty-nine years old, and she was a year younger. Of late, however, it had become apparent that Marcantonio, Marchese Carantoni, had not only found an interest in life, but had also discovered in himself the strength of will necessary to its prosecution. The dull regularity of his existence was shaken to its foundations, and out of the vast social sea a figure had risen which was destined to destroy the old order of things with him, and to create a new one. There was no doubt about it; not so much because he himself said so, as because his whole manner and being proclaimed the fact. He was seriously in love. Worse than that, he was in love with a lady of whom his sister did not approve, and he evidently meant to marry, whether she liked it or not. He was seriously in love; and, indeed, love ought always to be a serious thing, or else it should be called by another name. There is a great deal of very poor nonsense talked and written about love by persons only vicariously acquainted with it; and it is a great pity, because there is absolutely no subject so permanently interesting to humanity as love, whether in life or in fiction. And there is no subject which deserves more tenderness and delicacy, or which requires more strength in the handling. The relation of brother and sister is unlike any other. It represents the only possible absolutely permanent and platonic affection between young men and young women. Its foundation is in identity of blood instead of in the spontaneous sympathy of the heart, and even when brother and sister quarrel they understand each other. Lovers frequently do not understand each other when they are on the best of terms, and the small difference of opinion grows by that misunderstanding until it makes an impassable gulf. Brothers and sisters may be estranged, separated, divided by family quarrels or by the bloody exigencies of civil war, but if once they are thrown together again the mysterious attraction of consanguinity shows itself, and their life begins again where it had been broken off by untoward fate. Madame de Charleroi was inclined to be angry with Marcantonio, and when he was gone she sat by the fire, wondering what he would be like when he should be married. Somehow she had never thought of him as married, certainly not as married to a pernicious young English girl, with all sorts of queer ideas in her brain, and a tendency to sympathise with the dynamite party. He might surely have chosen better than that. Donna Diana was not a woman of narrow prejudices, but she really could not be expected to be pleased at seeing her brother, a Catholic gentleman, bent on uniting himself to a foreign girl with no fortune, no beauty--well, not much--and a taste for explosives. He might surely have chosen better. Donna Diana thought of her father, and fancied what he would have said to such a match, the strict old nobleman. And so, between her thoughts and her memories the afternoon wore on, and she bethought herself that it was time to go out. The horses spun along the streets through the crisp golden air, and now and then a ray of the lowering sun caught them as they dashed through some open place on the way, making them look like burnished metal. And the light touched Madame de Charleroi's beautiful face and auburn hair, so that the people stood still to look at her as she passed,--for every Roman knew Donna Diana Carantoni by sight, just as every Roman knows every other Roman, man, woman and child, distinguishing lovingly between the Romans of Rome and the Romans of the north. By and by the carriage rolled through the iron gates of the Pincio, and along the drive to the open terrace where the band plays, till it stood still behind the row of stone posts, within hearing of the music. The place has been absolutely described to death, and everybody knows exactly how it looks. There are flowers, and a band-stand, and babies, and a view of St. Peter's. The first person Donna Diana saw was her brother, standing disconsolately by one of the short pillars and looking at each carriage as it drove up. He was evidently waiting for some one who did not come. His black moustache drooped sadly, and his face was so melancholy that his sister smiled as she watched him. Marcantonio was soon aware of her presence, but he had no intention of showing it, and studiously kept his head turned towards the drive, watching the line of carriages. Madame de Charleroi was quickly surrounded by a crowd of men, all dressed precisely alike, and all anxious to say something that might attract the attention of the famous beauty. Presently they bored her, and her carriage moved on; whereupon they pulled their hats off and began to chatter scandal amongst themselves, after the manner of their kind. They nodded to Marcantonio as they passed him in a body, and he was left alone. The sun was setting, and there was a purple light over the flats behind the Vatican, recently flooded by a rise in the Tiber. There was no longer any object in waiting, and the young man sauntered slowly down the steps and the steep drive to the Piazza del Popolo, and entered the Corso. To tell the truth, he was disappointed, bored, annoyed, and angry, all at once. He had fully expected to see her, and to find consolation in some sweet words for the hard things his sister had said to him. Perhaps also he had enjoyed the prospect of exhibiting himself to his sister in the society of the lady in question,--for Marcantonio was obstinate, and had just discovered the fact, so that he was anxious to show it. Men who are new in fighting are sure to press every advantage, not having yet learned their strength; but in the course of time they become more generous. Marcantonio was therefore grievously chagrined at being cheated of his small demonstration of independence, besides being a little wounded in his pride, and honestly disappointed at not meeting the young lady he meant to marry. In this state of mind he strolled down the Corso, looked up at her windows, passed and repassed before the house, and ultimately inquired of the confidential porter, who knew him, whether she were at home. The porter said he had not seen the signorina, but that one of the servants had told him she was indisposed. The marchese bit his black moustache and went away in a sad mood. CHAPTER II. Miss Leonora Carnethy was suffering from an acute attack of philosophical despair, which accounted for her not appearing with her mother on the Pincio. The immediate cause of the fit was the young lady's inability to comprehend Hegel's statement that "Nothing is the same as Being;" and as it was not only necessary to understand it, but also, in Miss Carnethy's view, to reconcile it with some dozens of other philosophical propositions all diametrically opposed to it and to each other, the consequence of the attempt was the most chaotic and hopeless failure on record in the annals of thought. Under these circumstances, Miss Carnethy shut herself up in a dark room, went to bed, and agreed with Hegel that Nothing was precisely the same as Being. She thus scattered all the other philosophies to the angry airts of heaven at one fell sweep, and she felt sure she was going to be a Hindoo. This sounds a little vague, but nothing could be vaguer than Miss Carnethy's state of mind. Having agreed with Mr. Herbert Spencer that the grand main-spring of life is the pursuit of happiness, and that no other motive has any real influence in human affairs, it was a little hard to find that there was nothing in anything, after all. But then, since her own being was also nothing, why should she trouble herself? Evidently it was impossible for nothing to trouble itself, and so the only possible peace must lie in realising her own nothingness, which could be best accomplished by going to bed in a dark room. It was very dreary, of course, but she felt it was good logic, and must tell in the long run. It had happened before. There had been days when she had reached the same point by a different road, and had been satisfactorily roused by a flash of intelligence shedding enough light in her darkened course to give her a new direction. To-day, however, it was quite different. She had certainly now reached the absolute end of all speculation, for she was convinced of the general nothingness of all created strength and life. "For," said she, "I am quite sure that if I saw a train coming down upon me now, I would not get out of the way,--unless, the train being nothing, and I also nothing, two nothings should make something. But Hegel does not say that, and of course he knew, or he would not have understood that Nothing is the same as Being." This kind of argument is irreproachable. It is like the old lady who said she was so glad that she did not like spinach, because if she did she would eat it, and, as she detested it, that would be very unpleasant. There is no answer possible to a properly grounded philosophical argument of this kind. On the whole, Miss Carnethy did the right thing when she tried to realise the physical being of nothing. This Leonora was no ordinary girl. She belonged to a small class of young women who take a certain delight in being different from "the rest"--higher, of course. She had the misfortune to be of a mixed race, so far as blood was concerned, for her father was English and her mother was a Russian. It would probably be hard to find people more utterly unlike than these two, for the beef-eating conqueror is one, and the fire-eating Tartar is quite another, while this unlucky child of an international parentage had something of each. Her history--she was twenty-two years of age, then--might be summed up in a very few words. An English child, an Italian girl, a Russian woman. Her father had many prejudices, and did not believe in much; her mother had no prejudices at all, and believed in everything under the sun, and in a few things besides, so that certain evilly disposed persons had even said of her that she was superstitious. There is something infinitely pathetic about such a growing to maturity as had made Leonora Carnethy what she was. Imagine such an anomaly as a poor little seed, of which no one can say whether it is a rose or a nightshade, alternately treated as a fair blossom and as a poisonous weed. Imagine a young girl, full of a certain fierce courage and impatience of restraint, chafing under the moral flat iron of a hopelessly proper father, whose mind is of the great levelling type and his prejudices as mountains of stone in the midst, reared to heaven like pyramids to impose a personal moral geography on the human landscape; and imagine the same girl further possessed of certain truly British instincts of continuity and unreasonable perseverance, eternally offending by her persistence a mother whose strong point is a kind of gymnastic superstition, a strange perversity of exuberant belief, forcing itself into the place of principle where there is none,--imagine a young girl in such a situation, in such a childhood, and it will not seem strange that she should grow up to be a very odd woman. The father and mother understood each other after a fashion, but neither of them ever understood Leonora, and so Leonora tried to understand herself. To this laudable end she devoured books and ideas of all sorts and kinds, not always perceiving whether she took the poison first and the antidote afterwards, or the contrary, or even whether she fed entirely on poisons or entirely on antidotes. Poor child! she found truth very hard to define, and the criticism exercised by pure reason a very insufficient weapon. Moreover, like Job of old, she had friends and comforters to help in making life hideous. She wondered to-day, as she lay in her darkened room, whether any of them would come, and the thought was unpleasant. She had just made up her mind to ring the bell and tell her maid that no one should be admitted, when the door opened after the least possible apology for a knock, and she realised that she had thought of the contingency too late. "Dear Leonora!" "Dearest Leonora!" The room was so dark that the young ladies stood still at the door, as they fired off the first shots of their brimming affection. Leonora moved so as to see their dark figures against the light. "Oh," she said, "is it you?" She was not glad to see her dear friends, for her fits of philosophical despair were real while they lasted, and she hated to be disturbed in them. But as these two young women were her companions in the study of universal hollowness, she felt that she must bear with them. So, after a little hesitation she allowed them to let some light into the room, and they sat down and held her hands. "We want to talk to you about Infinite Time!" "And Infinite Space!" "I am persuaded," said the first young lady, "that our ideas of Time are quite mistaken. This system of hours and minutes is not adapted to the larger view." "No," said Leonora, "for Time is evidently a portion of universal pure Being, and is therefore Nothing. I am sure of it." "No. Time is not Nothing,--it is Colour." "How do you mean, dear?" asked Leonora in some surprise. "I do not quite know, dearest, but I am sure it must be. It is quite certain that Colour is a fundamental conception." "Of course." There was a pause. Apparently the identity of Infinite Time with Colour did not interest Miss Carnethy, who stared at the light through the blinds between her two friends. "It seems to me that we girls have no field nowadays," said she, rather irrelevantly. "An infinite field, dear." "And infinite time, dearest." "I would give anything I possess to be able to do anything for anybody," began Leonora. "We know so much about life in theory, and we know nothing about it in practice. I wish mamma would even let me order the dinner sometimes; it would be something. But of course it is all an illusion, and nothing, and very infinite." Poor Miss Carnethy turned on her pillow with a dreary look in her eyes. "It will be different when you are married, dear," suggested one. "Of course," acquiesced the other. "But can you not see," objected Miss Carnethy, "that we shall never marry men whose ideas are so high and beautiful as ours? And then, to be tied forever to some miserable creature! Fancy not being understood! What do these wretched society men care about the really great questions of life?" "About Time--" "And Infinite Space--" "Nothing, nothing, nothing!" cried Miss Carnethy in real distress. "And yet it would be dreadful to be an old maid"-- "Perfectly dreadful, of course!" exclaimed all three, in a breath. Then there was a short silence, during which Leonora moved uneasily, and finally sat up, her heavy red hair falling all about her. "By the bye," she said at last, "have you been out to-day, dears? What have you been doing? Tell me all about it." "We have been to Lady Smyth-Tompkins's tea. It was very empty." "You mean very hollow, for there were many people there." "Yes," said the other, "it was very hollow--empty--everything of that sort. Then we went to drive on the Pincio." "So very void." "Yes. We saw Carantoni leaning against a post. I am sure he was thinking of nothing. He looks just like a stuffed glove,--such an inane dandy!" Miss Carnethy's blue eyes suddenly looked as though they were conscious of something more than mere emptiness in the world. Her strong, well-shaped red lips set themselves like a bent bow, and the shaft was not long in flying. "He is very pleasant to talk to," said she, "and besides--he really dances beautifully." It was probably a standing grievance with her two friends that Marcantonio did not dance with them, or Leonora could scarcely have produced such an impression in so few words. "What does he talk about?" asked one, with an affectation of indifference. "Oh, all sorts of things," answered Leonora. "He does not believe at all in the greatest good of the greatest number. He says he has discovered the Spencerian fallacy, as he calls it." "Alas, then that also is nothing!" "Absolutely nothing, dear," continued Leonora. "He says that, if there is no morality beyond happiness"-- "Of course!" --"then every individual has as much right to be happy as the whole human race put together, since he is under no moral obligation to anybody or anything, there being no abstract morality. Do you see? It is very pretty. And then he says it follows that there is no absolute good unless from a divine standard, which of course is pure nonsense, or ought to be, if Hegel is right." "Dear me! Of course it is!" "And so, dears," concluded Leonora triumphantly, "we are all going to the Devil do you see?" The association of ideas seemed exhilarating to Miss Carnethy, and in truth the conclusion was probably suggested more by her feelings than by her logic, if she really possessed any. She felt better, and would put off the further consideration of Nothing and Being to some more convenient season. She therefore gave her friends some tea in her bedroom, and the conversation became more and more earthly, and the subjects more and more minute, until they seemed to be thoroughly within the grasp of the three young ladies. At last they went, these two charming damsels, very much impressed with Leonora's cleverness, and very much interested in her future,--which she would only refer to in the vaguest terms possible. They were both extremely fashionable young persons, possessed of dowries, good looks, and various other charms, such as good birth, good manners, and the like; and it would be futile to deny that they took a lively interest in the doings of their world, however hollow and vain the cake appeared to them between two bites. "Are you going to-night, Leonora dear?" they inquired as they left her. "Of course," answered Miss Carnethy. "I must hear the rest of the 'Spencerian fallacy' you know!" When Leonora was alone she had a great many things to think of. The atmosphere had cleared during the last hour, so far as philosophy was concerned, and as she looked at herself in the glass, she was wondering how she should look in the evening. Not vainly,--at least, not so vainly as most girls with her advantages might have thought,--but reflectively, the English side of her twofold nature having gained the upper hand. For as she gazed into her own blue eyes, trying to search and fathom her own soul, she was conscious of something that gave her pleasure and hope,--something which she had treated scornfully enough in her thoughts that very afternoon. She knew, for her mother had told her, that Marcantonio Carantoni had written to her parents, had called, had an interview, and had been told that he should be an acceptable son-in-law, provided that he could obtain Leonora's consent. She knew also that in the natural course of things he would this very evening ask her to be his wife; and, lastly, she knew very well that she would accept him. She wondered vaguely how all those strange unsettled ideas of hers would harmonise in a married life. How far should she and her husband ever agree? She had a photograph of him in her desk, which he had given to her mother, and which she had naturally stolen and hidden away. Now she took it out and brought it to the window, and looked at it minutely, wonderingly, as she had looked at herself in the mirror a moment earlier. Yes, he was a proper husband enough, with his bright honest eyes and his brave aristocratic nose and black moustache. Not very intelligent, perhaps, by the higher standard,--that everlasting "higher standard" again,--but withal goodly and noble as a lover should be. A lover? What weal and woe of heart-stirring romance that word used to suggest! And so this was her lover, the one man of all others dreamed of as a future divinity throughout her passionate girlhood. A creature of sighs and stolen glances--ay, perhaps of stolen kisses--a lover should be; breathing soft things and glancing hot glances. Was Marcantonio really her lover? He was so honest--and so rich! He could hardly want her for her dower's sake,--no, she knew that was impossible. For her beauty's sake, then? No, she was not so beautiful as that, and never could be, though the fashion had changed and red hair was in vogue. A pretty conceit, that mankind should make one half of creation fashionable at the expense of the other! But it is so all the same, and always will be. However, even with red hair, and an immense quantity of it, she was not a great beauty. Perhaps Marcantonio would have married a great beauty if he could have met one who would accept him. It would not be nice, she thought, to marry a man who could not have the best if he chose. To think that he might ever look back and wish she were as beautiful as some one else! But after much earnest consideration of the matter no image of "some one else" rose to her mind, and she confessed with some triumph that she was not jealous of any one; that he had chosen her for herself, and that she was without rival so far as he was concerned. Not even her friends, the one dark and classic, the other fair and dreamy, could boast of having roused his interest. That was a great advantage. But did she care for him--did she love him? Of course; how else should it be possible for her, with her high ideas of man's goodness, to think of ever consenting to marry him? Of course she loved him. It was not exactly the kind of thing she expected, when she used to think of love a year ago; when love was a detached ideal with wings and arrows, and all manner of romantic and mythical attributes. But considering how very hollow and barren she had demonstrated the world to be, this thing had a certain life about it. It was a real sensation, beyond a doubt, and not an unhappy one either. The room grew dark and she sat a few moments, the photograph lying idly in her hand. Out of the dusk, coming from the fairyland of her girl's fancy, rose a figure, the figure of the ideal lover she used to evoke before she knew Marcantonio Carantoni. He was a different sort of person altogether, much taller and broader and fiercer; a very impossibility of a man, coming towards her, and upsetting everything in his course; trampling rough-shod over the mangled fragments of her former idols, over society, over Marcantonio, over everything till he was close and near her, touching her hand, touching her lips, clasping her to him in fierce triumph, and bearing her away in a whirlwind of strength. A quick sigh, and she let the photograph fall to the ground, sinking back in her chair with a light in her eyes that overcame the darkness. Dreamland, dreamland, what fools you make of us all! What strange characters there are among the slides of your theatre, only awaiting the nod of Sleep, the manager, to issue forth, and rant and rave, make love and mischief, do battle and murder, play the scoundrel and the hero, till our poor brains reel and the daylight is turned on again, and all the players vanish into the thinnest of thin air! Miss Carnethy rang for her maid, who brought lights and closed the shutters and let down the curtains preparatory to dressing her mistress for dinner. Leonora looked down and saw Marcantonio's photograph lying where it had fallen. She picked it up and looked at it once more by the candle light. "Perhaps I shall refuse him after all," she thought, coldly enough, and she put it back into the drawer of her desk. Perhaps you are right, Miss Carnethy, and the world is stuffed with sawdust. CHAPTER III. The soft thick air of the ball-room swayed rhythmically to the swell and fall of the violins; the perfume of roses and lilies was whirled into waves of sweetness, and the beating of many young hearts seemed to tremble musically through the nameless harmony of instrument and voice, and rustling silk, and gliding feet. In the passionately moving symphony of sound and sight and touch, the whole weal and woe and longing of life throbbed in a threefold pace. The dwellers in an older world did well to call the dance divine, and to make it the gift of a nimble goddess; truly, without a waltz the world would have lacked a very divine element. Few people can really doubt what the step was that David danced before the ark. The ball was at a house where members of various parties met by common consent as on neutral ground. There are few such houses in Rome, or, indeed, anywhere else, as there are very few people clever enough, or stupid enough, to manage such an establishment. Men of entirely inimical convictions and associations will occasionally go to the house of a great genius or a great fool, out of sheer curiosity, and are content to enjoy themselves and even to talk to each other a little, when no one is looking. It is neutral ground, and the white flag of the ball-dress keeps the peace as it sweeps past the black cloth legs of clericals and the grey cloth legs of the military contingent, past the legs of all sorts and conditions of men elbowing each other for a front place with the ladies. Conspicuous by her height and rare magnificence of queenly beauty was Madame de Charleroi, moving stately along as she rested her fingers on the arm of a minister less than half her size. But there was a look of weariness and preoccupation on her features that did not escape her dear friends. "Diana is certainly going to be thin and scraggy," remarked a black-browed dame of Rome, fat and solid, a perfect triumph of the flesh. She said it behind her fan to her neighbour. "It is sad," said the other, "she is growing old." "Ah yes," remarked her husband, who chanced to be standing by and was in a bad humour, "she was born in 1844, the year you left school, my dear." The black-browed lady smiled sweetly at her discomfited friend, who looked unutterable scorn at her consort. Donna Diana glanced uneasily about the room, expecting every moment to see her brother appear with Miss Carnethy. She was very unhappy about the whole affair, though she could not exactly explain to herself the reason of what she felt. Miss Carnethy was rich, had a certain kind of distinguished beauty about her, was young, well-born,--but all that did not compensate in Madame de Charleroi's mind for the fact that she was a heretic, a freethinker, a dabbler in progressist ideas, and--and--what? She could not tell. It must be prejudice of the most absurd kind! She would not submit to it a moment longer, and if the opportunity offered she would go to Miss Carnethy and say something pleasant to her. Donna Diana had a very kind and gentle Italian heart hidden away in her proud bosom, and she had also a determination to be just and honest in all situations,--most of all when she feared that her personal sympathies were leading her away. The diplomat at her side chatted pleasantly, perceiving that she was wholly preoccupied; he talked quite as much to himself as to her, after he had discovered that she was not listening. And Donna Diana determined to do a kind action, and the swinging rhythm of the straining, surging waltz was in her ears. She was just wondering idly enough what the little diplomat had been saying to her during the last ten minutes, when she saw her brother enter the room with Miss Carnethy on his arm. They had met in one of the outer drawing-rooms and had come in to dance. Donna Diana watched them as they caught the measure and whirled away. "She is terribly interesting," remarked the little man beside her as he noticed where she was looking. "She is also decidedly a beauty," answered Madame de Charleroi, with the calm authority of a woman whose looks have never been questioned. People who are in love are proverbially amusing objects to the general public. There is an air of shyness about them, or else a ridiculous incapacity for perceiving the details of life, or at least an absurd infatuation for each other, most refreshing to witness. There is no mistaking the manner of them, if the thing is genuine. The sadness that had been on Donna Diana's face, and which the resolution to be civil to Miss Carnethy had momentarily dispelled, returned now, as she watched the young couple. She remembered her own courtship, and she fancied she saw similar conditions in the wooing now going on under her eyes. Marcantonio was furiously in love, after his manner, but she thought Leonora's face looked hard. How could she let her brother marry a woman who did not love him? Her resolution to be civil wavered. But just then, as luck would have it, the waltz brought the pair near to her. Marcantonio was talking pleasantly, with a quick smile that came and went at every minute. Leonora stood looking down and toying with her fan. One instant she looked up at him, and Donna Diana saw the look and the quick-caught heave of the snowy neck. "I do not know what it is," she said to herself, "but it is certainly love of some kind." She moved towards them, steering her little diplomat through the sea of silk and satin, jewels and lace. "How do you do, Mademoiselle Carnethy?" she said, in a voice that was meant to be kind, and was at least very civil. Leonora stood somewhat in awe of the Vicomtesse de Charleroi, who was so stately and beautiful and cold. But she was very much pleased at the mark of attention. It was an approval, and an approval of the most public kind. The few words they exchanged were therefore all that could be desired. The vicomtesse nodded, smiled, nodded again, and sailed away in the easy swinging cadence of the waltz. Marcantonio looked gratefully after her. The air was warm and soft, and the light fluff from the linen carpet hung like a summer haze over the people, and the hundreds of candles, and the masses of flowers. Marcantonio was silent. Something in the air told him that the time had come for him to speak,--something in Miss Carnethy's look told him plainly enough, he thought, that he was not to speak in vain. The last notes of the waltz chased each other away and died, and the people fell to walking about and talking. Marcantonio gave Leonora his arm, and the pair moved off with the stream, and on through the great rooms till they reached an apartment less crowded than the rest, and sat down near a doorway. The young man did not lack courage, and he was honestly in love with Leonora. He felt little hesitation about speaking, and only wished to put the question as frankly and as courteously as might be. As for her, she was obliged to acknowledge that she was agitated, although she had said to herself a hundred times that she would be as calm as though she were talking about the weather. But now that the supreme moment had come, a strange beating rose in her breast, and her face was as white as her throat. She looked obstinately before her, seeing nothing, and striving to appear to the world as though nothing were happening. Marcantonio sat by her side, and glanced quickly at her two or three times, with a very slight feeling of uncertainty as to the result of his wooing,--very slight, but enough to make waiting impossible, where the stake was so high. "Mademoiselle," he said, in low and earnest tones, "I have the permission of monsieur your father, and of madame your mother, to address you upon a subject which very closely concerns my happiness. Mademoiselle, will you be my wife?" He sat leaning a little towards her, his hands folded together, and his face illuminated for a moment with intense love and anxiety. But Miss Carnethy did not see the look, and only heard the formal proposition his words conveyed. She saw a man standing in the door near them; she knew him--a Mr. Batiscombe, an English man of letters--and she wondered a little whether he would have used the same phrases in asking a woman to marry him,--whether all men would speak alike in such a case. She had looked forward to this scene--more than once. Again the figure of the ideal lover of her dreams came to her, and seemed to pour out strong speech of love. Again she involuntarily drew a comparison in her mind between Marcantonio and some one, something she could not define. On a sudden all the honesty of her conscience sprang up and showed her what she really felt. A thousand times she had said to herself that she would never marry a man she did not love; and for once that she had said it to herself, she had said it ten times over to her friends, feeling that she was inculcating a good and serviceable lesson. And now her conscience told her that she did not love Marcantonio,--at least not truly, certainly not as much as she would have liked to love. Then she remembered what she had thought that afternoon. How was it possible that she could have thought of him for a moment as her husband, if she did not love him,--especially with her high standard about such things? Oh, that high standard! With a quick transition of thought she made up her mind; but there was a strange little feeling of pain in her, such as the prince might have felt in the fairy tale when the ring pricked him. Nevertheless, her mind was made up. "Yes," she said very suddenly, turning so that she could almost see his eyes, but not quite, for she instinctively dreaded to look him in the face; "yes, I will be your wife." "Merci, mademoiselle," he said. The room was nearly empty at the moment, and Marcantonio took her passive hand and touched her fingers with his lips, being quite sure that no one was looking. But the man who stood at the door saw it. "Such a good match, you know!" said some people, who had no prejudices. "Such a special grace!" said the resident Anglo-American Catholics; "he is quite sure to convert her!" "Such a special grace!" exclaimed the resident Anglo-American Protestants; "she is quite sure to lead him back!" "Il faut toujours se méfier des saints," remarked Marcantonio's uncle, concerning his nephew. "Never trust red-haired women," said the man who had stood at the door. The engagement made a sensation in Rome, a consummation very easily attained, and very little to be desired. In places where the intercourse between young marriageable men and young marriageable women is so constrained as it is in modern Europe, a man's inclinations do not escape comment, and a very small seed of truth grows, beneath the magic incantations of society tea parties, to a very large bush of gossip. Nevertheless these good people are always astonished when their prophecies are fulfilled, and the bush bears fruit instead of vanishing into emptiness; which shows that there is some capacity left in them for distinguishing truth and untruth. Marcantonio's marriage had long been a subject in every way to the taste of the chatterers, and though Madame de Charleroi had accused her brother of hastiness, for lack of a better reproach, it was nearly a year since his admiration for Miss Carnethy had been first noticed. During that time every particular of her parentage and fortune had been carefully sought after, especially by those who had the least interest in the matter; and the universal verdict had been that the Marchese Carantoni might, could, should, and probably would, marry Miss Leonora Carnethy. And now that the engagement was out, society grunted as a pig may when among the crab-oaks of Périgord he has discovered a particularly fat and unctuous truffle. Probably the happiest person was Marcantonio himself. He was an honest, whole-souled man, and in his eyes Leonora was altogether the most beautiful, the most accomplished, and the most charming woman in the world. That he expressed himself with so much self-control and propriety when he asked her to marry him was wholly due to the manner of his education and training in the social proprieties. That a man should use any language warmer or less guarded than that of absolutely respectful and distant courtesy toward the lady he intended to make his wife was not conceivable to him. In the privacy of his own rooms he worshipped and adored her with all his might and main, but when he addressed her in person it was as a subject addresses his sovereign; a tone of respectful and submissive reverence and obedience pervaded his actions and his words. He would have pleased a woman who loved sovereignty, better than a woman who dreamed of a sovereign love. But she was never out of his thoughts, and if he wooed her humbly, he anticipated some submission on her part after marriage. He had no idea of always allowing her mind to wander in the strange channels it seemed to prefer. He thought such an intelligence capable of better things, and he determined, half unconsciously at first, and as a matter of course, that Miss Carnethy, the philosopher, should be known before long as the Marchesa Carantoni, the Catholic. Gradually the idea grew upon him, until he saw it as the grand object of his life, the great good deed he was to do. His love consented to it, and was purified and beautified to him in the thought that by it he should lead a great soul like hers to truth and light. He was perfectly in earnest, as he always was in matters of importance; for of all nations and peoples Italians have been most accused of frivolity, heartlessness, and inconstancy, and of all races they perhaps deserve the accusation least. They are the least imaginative people on earth, apart from the creative arts, and the most simple and earnest men in the matter of love. Northern races hate Italians, and they fasten triumphantly on that unlucky Latin sinner who falls first in their way as the prototype of his nation, and as the butt of their own prejudice. In the eyes of most northern people all Italians are liars; just as a typical Frenchman calls England "perfide Albion," and all Englishmen traitors and thieves. Who shall decide when such doctors disagree? And is it not a proverb that there is honour among thieves? Marcantonio never spoke of these ideas of his to his friends when they congratulated him on his engagement. He only looked supremely happy, and told every one that he was, which was quite true. But his sister was to him a great difficulty, for she evidently was disappointed and displeased. He debated within himself how he should appease her, and he determined to lay before her his views about Leonora's future. To that intent he visited her in the boudoir, where they had so often talked before the engagement. Madame de Charleroi received him as usual, but there was a look in her eyes that he was not accustomed to see there,--an expression of protest, just inclining to coldness, which had the effect of rousing his instinct of opposition. With his other friends he had found no occasion for being combative, and his old manner had sufficed; but with his sister he found himself involuntarily preparing for war, though his intentions were in reality pacific enough. Marcantonio was very young, in spite of his nine and twenty years. His manner now, as he met his sister, was a trifle more formal than usual, and he bent his brows and pulled his black moustache as he sat down. "Carissima Diana," he began, "I must speak with you about my marriage, and many things." "Yes,--what is it?" asked his sister, calmly, as she turned a piece of tapestry on her knee to finish the end of a needleful of silk. Marcantonio had somehow expected her to say something that he could take hold of and oppose. Her bland question confused him. "You are not pleased," he began awkwardly. "What would you have?" she asked, still busy with her work. "I am sure I told you what I thought about it long ago." "I want you to change your mind," said Marcantonio, delighted at the first show of opposition. Madame de Charleroi raised her eyebrows, gave a little sigh of annoyance, and turned towards him. "I will always treat your wife with the highest consideration," she said, as though that settled the matter and she wished to drop the subject. But her brother was not satisfied. "I wish you to love her, Diana; I wish you to treat her as your sister." Donna Diana was silent, and Marcantonio shifted his position uneasily, for he did not know exactly what to do, and he saw that he was failing in his mission. But in a moment his heart guided him. He went and sat beside her, and laid his hand on hers. "We cannot quarrel, dear," he said. "But will you love her if I make her like you--if I make her thoughts as beautiful as yours?" Donna Diana's face softened as she turned to him and affectionately pressed his hand. "I will try to love her for your sake, dear boy," she answered gently; and he kissed her fingers in thanks. "Dear Diana," he said, "you are so good! But you know she is really not at all like what you fancy her. She is full of heart, and so wonderfully delicate and lovely,--and so marvellously intelligent. There is nothing she does not know. She has read all the philosophies"-- "Yes, I know she has," interrupted his sister, as though deprecating the discussion of Miss Carnethy's wisdom. "But not as you think," he protested, catching the meaning of her tone. "She has read them all, but she will take what is best from each, and I am quite sure she will be a good Catholic before long." "I really hope so," said Donna Diana seriously. "Not that I should love her any the less if she were not," continued Marcantonio, who was loth to feel that there could be any condition to his love. "I should love her just as much if she were a Chinese,--just as much, I am sure. But of course it would be much better." "Of course," assented Diana, smiling a little at his enthusiasm. Somehow the peace was made,--it is so easy to make peace when each can trust the other, and knows it! Just as Madame de Charleroi had determined to say something pleasant on the evening when her brother offered himself to Leonora, so now she made up her mind to stand by Marcantonio, and to help him in his married life by being as sympathetic and as kind as possible. In due time Marcantonio obtained the permission of the Church to unite himself with his Protestant wife, and after a great many formalities the wedding took place in the late spring, after Easter. Weddings are tiresome things to talk about, and even the principal persons concerned in them always wish them over as soon as possible. What can be more trying for a young girl than to be set up to be stared at by the hour, be-feathered and be-rigged in a multiplicity of ornaments, made flimsy with tulle and lace, and ghastly with the accumulation of white things, when she is pale enough already with the acute fever of an exceedingly complicated state of mind? Or how can a man possibly enjoy being envied, hated, loved, despised, and considered a fool, by his rivals, his bride, the woman he has not married, and his bachelor friends,--all in a breath? It is absurd to suppose that any one with an intelligence above that of the average peacock can enjoy playing a leading part in a matrimonial parade. Marcantonio Carantoni and Leonora Carnethy were married, and one of her intimate friends shed a tear as she observed how extremely empty a form it was. But the other looked a little pale, and said she was quite sure she could have chosen someone "better than that." CHAPTER IV. "Needles and pins, needles and pins,"--the rhyme is obvious, and very old,--"When a man marries his trouble begins." Marcantonio is an Italian, and his native language contains no precise equivalent of this piece of wisdom, with which every English baby is made acquainted as soon as it can know anything. The real difficulty seems to be that there are as many different ways of looking at marriage as there are people in the world. Marriage is described as being either a holy bond or a social contract. Obviously a holy bond implies at least a certain modicum of holiness on the part of the bound; and it is not likely that a single and very simple form of contract can ever cover the multifarious requirements and exigencies of a thousand million human beings. A contract, in order to be satisfactory, must be thoroughly understood and appreciated by the parties who undertake it, and this seems to be a very unusual case in the world. When Marcantonio Carantoni married, he was possessed of very noble and exalted ideas, totally unformulated, but, as he supposed, only requiring the seal of experience to define, cement, and consolidate them. He believed that his wife was to be the stately queen of his household, the gentle partner of his deeds and thoughts, a loving listener to his words. He pictured to himself a magnificence of goodness unattainable for a man alone, but within easy reach of a man and a woman together; he imagined a broad perfection of human relations which should be a paradise on earth and an example of beatific possibility to the world. He dreamed of that kind of happiness, which, as it undoubtedly passes the bounds of experience, is aptly termed by poets transcendent, and is regarded by men of the world as a nonsensical fiction. He saw visions in his sleep, and waking believed them real, for he had a great capacity for believing in all that was good; and as he was human he found ceaseless delight in believing in these good things, more especially as in store for himself. He had always been fond of the pleasant side of life, and found no difficulty in conceiving of an infinite series of pleasant situations, culminating in his union with Miss Leonora Carnethy. He never analysed. Only pessimists analyse, and the best they can accomplish thereby is to make other men even as themselves, critical to see the darns in other people's clothes, and learned to spy out infinitesimal mud-specks upon the garments of saints. Marcantonio was young. There is a faculty which men acquire from mixing with the world, which is not pessimism, nor analysis, nor indifference; it is rather a knowledge of good and evil with a fair appreciation of their proportion in human affairs. Nothing is more necessary to thought than the generalising of laws; nothing is more pernicious than the generalising of humanity into types, the torturing application of the nineteenth century boot to the feet of all,--men, women, and children alike. If men are only interesting for what they are, regardless of what they may be, a day of any one's actual experience must be a thousand times more interesting than all the fictions that ever were written. If art consists in the accurate presentation of detail, then the highest art is the petrifaction of nature, and the wax-works of an anatomical museum are more artistically beautiful than all the marbles of Phidias and Praxiteles. True art depends upon an a priori capacity for distinguishing the beautiful from the ugly, and the grand from the grotesque; and true knowledge of the world lies in the knowledge of good and evil, not confounding the noble with the ignoble under one smearing of mud, nor yet whitewashing the devil into an ill-gotten reputation for cleanliness. The temptation of Saint Anthony may convey a righteous moral lesson, but the temptation of Saint Anthony as described by his namesake's pig would risk being too unsavoury to be wholesome. But Marcantonio was young, and he troubled himself about none of these things, supposing everything to be good, beautiful, and enduring, excepting such things as were evidently bad, inasmuch as they were ugly and disagreeable. Now Miss Leonora Carnethy had long been given over to a sort of sleek, cynic philosophy,--the kind of cynicism that uses lavender water in its tub. Her dissatisfaction with the world was genuine, but she found means to alleviate it in the small luxuries and amenities of her daily life. She and her friends had talked the kernel out of life, or thought that they had, but the shell was still fresh and well favoured. Leonora herself was indeed subject to moods and fits of real unhappiness, for she was far too intelligent a person not to long for something beautiful, even when she was most convinced that life was ugly. There were times when she dreamed of an ideal man who should win her, and love her, and give her all the happiness she had missed. And again she would dream of the freedom of the earth-bound soul from ills, and cares, and thorns, and she would enter some silent Roman church and kneel for hours before a dimly lighted altar, praying for rest, and peace, and inspiration of holiness. But there was too much poetic feeling in her religious outpourings. If religion is to be poetic, a very little thing will destroy its harmony; some careless sacristan chatting with a crony in the corner of the church, or a couple of thoughtless children wrangling over a half-penny by the door, or any such little thing, destroyed instantly the fair illusion that lay as balm upon her unrestful soul. Religion must be real to every man if it is to stand the test of reality. Leonora's views of marriage were therefore more or less subject to her moods. There were days, indeed, few and far between, when her better intelligence got the upper hand of the fictitious fabric of so-called philosophy which she had erected for herself. Then for a brief space she thought of life very much as Marcantonio did, and she contemplated her marriage as a noble and worthy career,--for marriage is a career to most women of the world. But then, again, all her uncertainty returned twofold upon her, and the only real thing was the dream of love, the vision of a lover, and the hope of a realised passion. She was so strong and radiantly human, that from the moment when her mind fell into abeyance the material beauty of life sprang up in her heart, until, being disappointed and cast down through not attaining the end of her passionate dreams, she once more sank into a half-religious, half-poetic melancholy. Nevertheless, the strongest element in her character was the desire to be loved, not by every one, but by some one manly man, and loved with all the strength he had, overwhelmingly. Her studies were a refuge when she saw how improbable such a piece of sweet fortune was, and, as might have been expected, they were far from regular and systematic. She read a great deal, especially of such authors as had a reputation for being profound rather than clear, and, as her mind had received no kind of preliminary training, the result was eminently unsatisfactory to herself. To Marcantonio, who knew more about the opera than about philosophy, she seemed a miracle of learning, and she loved to talk with him about theories, generally finding that, in spite of his ignorance, he made extremely sensible remarks upon them. But he always tried to lead her to different subjects, for, in spite of his immense admiration for what he supposed to be her wisdom, he was aware that it seemed very vague, and that it even occasionally bored him. Leonora had acquired the unfortunate faculty of deceiving herself, and when the fit was upon her she saw things obliquely. In spite of the little prick of conscience that hurt her when she accepted Marcantonio's offer, she had soon persuaded herself that she loved him, on the principle that, since her "standard" was so very "high," she could not possibly have demeaned herself to accepting a man she did not love. It is a very fine thing to believe that we are so far removed from evil that we cannot do wrong, and therefore that whatever we do is infallibly right, no matter how our instincts may cry out against it. It is a most comforting and comfortable vicious circle which we convert into a crown of glory for ourselves on the smallest provocation. So when Leonora was finally married to Marcantonio, she made herself believe that she loved him, and all her vague theories were temporarily cast aside and trampled upon in her determination to realise in him all the happiness she had dreamed of in her ideal. She had got a husband who did most truly love her, and whose one and absorbing thought would be her happiness, but he was not exactly what she had longed for. She mistook his courtesy for coldness, and his deference for indifference, and since she had persuaded herself that she loved him she wanted to find him a perfect fiery volcano of love and jealousy. Marcantonio was nothing of the kind; he was calm, courteous, and affectionate; he had not the slightest cause for jealousy, and, not in the least understanding his wife, he was perfectly happy. Of all tests of true love a honeymoon is the severest, and by every right of sensible sequence ought to come last of all in the history of married couples. It is the great destroyer of illusions, and the more illusions there are the greater the destruction. Two people have seen each other occasionally, perhaps for an hour every day,--and that is a great deal in Europe,--during which meetings they have become more or less deeply enamoured, each of the qualities of the other. People notoriously behave very differently to the people they love and to the world at large; but their behaviour to the world at large is the outcome of their character, whereas their conduct to each other is the result, or the concomitant, of a passion which may or may not be real, profound, and good. But each has a great number of characteristics which practically never appear during those hours of courtship. Suddenly the two are married, and the lid of Pandora's box is hoisted high with a vicious jerk that scares the little imps inside to the verge of distraction, and they fly out incontinent, with an ill savour. If the lid had been gently raised, the evil spirits would probably have issued forth stealthily, and one at a time, without any great fuss, and might not have been noticed. The two condemned ones travel together, eat together, talk together, until in a single month they have exhausted a list of bad qualities that should have lasted at least half a dozen years under ordinary circumstances. Marcantonio and Leonora travelled for a time, and at last agreed to spend the remainder of the summer in some quiet seaside place in Southern Italy. They soon discovered the fallacy of wandering about Europe with a maid and a quantity of luggage, and they both hoped that under the clear sky of the south they might find exactly what they wanted. So they gravitated to Sorrento and hired a villa overhanging the sea, and Marcantonio suggested vaguely that they might have some one to stay with them if they found it dull. At this Leonora felt injured. The idea of his finding life dull in her company! "How can you possibly suggest such a thing?" she asked, in a hurt tone. "Not for myself, my dear," said Marcantonio, with an affectionate smile. "It struck me that you might not find it very amusing. I could never find it dull where you are, ma bien aimée." And indeed he never did. Leonora was pacified, as she almost always was when he was particularly affectionate. "But, of course," he continued, "you will enjoy the being able to read and study your favourite books." "I never want to read them now," said Leonora, who chanced that day to be not very philosophically disposed. She had been perusing the latest French impossibility,--she found it rather amusing to be allowed to have what she liked now that she was married. "I should be glad if you never read any more philosophy," said Marcantonio, unwisely saying what was uppermost in his thoughts. "Really, though," answered Leonora, "I know it all so very superficially that I feel I must go back and be much more thorough. I think I shall take a sound course of Voltaire and Hegel, and that sort of thing, this summer." Her husband was silent. He began to suspect his wife of being capable of an occasional contradiction for the mere love of it. Besides, he saw no particular connection between the two authors she named. But then he knew very little about them. He looked at Leonora. There was not a trace of unpleasant expression in her face, and she seemed to have merely made the remark in the air, without the least intention of being contradictory or captious. He liked to look at her, she was so fresh and fair. Neither heat nor cold seemed to touch her delicate white skin,--her hair was so thick and strong, and her blue eyes so bright. She was the very incarnation of life. What if her features were not quite classic in their proportion? "I am not so beautiful as Diana," she said laughingly one day to Marcantonio, "but I am sure I am much more alive than she is." He laughed too, well pleased at the distinction drawn. He was glad that his sister should be thought cold, and he believed that his wife loved him. He kissed her hand tenderly. They had been married two months when they came to stay in Sorrento. It is a beautiful place. Perhaps in all the orange-scented south there is none more perfect, more sweet with gardens and soft sea-breath, more rich in ancient olive-groves, or more tenderly nestled in the breast of a bountiful nature. A little place it is, backed and flanked by the volcanic hills, but having before it the glory of the fairest water in the world. Straight down from the orange gardens the cliffs fall to the sea, and every villa and village has a descent, winding through caves and by stairways to its own small sandy cove, where the boats lie in the sun through the summer's noontide heat, to shoot out at morning and evening into the coolness of the breezy bay. Among the warm, green fruit trees the song-birds have their nests, and about the eaves of the scattered houses the swallows wheel and race in quick, smooth circles. Far along through the groves echoes the ancient song of the southern peasant, older than the trees, older than the soil, older than poor old Pompeii lying off there in the eternal ashes of her gorgeous sins. And ever the sapphire sea kisses the feet of the cliffs as though wooing the rocks to come down, and plunge in, and taste how good a thing it is to be cool and wet all over. To this place Marcantonio and his wife came at the beginning of July, having picked up numerous possessions and a few servants in Rome. They both had a taste for comfort, though they enjoyed the small privations of travelling for a time. To luxurious people it is pleasant to be uncomfortable when the fancy takes them, in order that they may the better enjoy the tint of their purple and the softness of their fine linen by the contrast. For contrast is the magnifying glass of the senses. At sunset they walked side by side in their terraced garden overlooking the sea. They had travelled all night and had rested all day in consequence, and now they were refreshed and alive to the magic things about them. "How green it is!" said Leonora, stopping to look at the thick trees. "Yes," answered Marcantonio, "it is very green." He was thinking of something else, and Leonora's very natural and simple remark did not divert his thoughts. The cook had arrived with a touch of the fever, and he was debating whether to send for the doctor at once or to wait till the next day. For he was very good to his servants, and took care of them. But Leonora wanted something more enthusiastic. "But it is so very fresh and green!" she repeated. "Do you not see how lovely it all is?" She laid her hand on his arm. "Oui, chérie," said he, getting rid of the cook by an effort, "and green is the colour of hope." Then it struck him that the saying was rather commonplace, and he began to realise what she wanted. "It is a perfect fairyland," he went on, "and we will enjoy it as long as we please. Are you fond of sailing, my dear?" "Oh, of all things!" exclaimed Leonora, enthusiastically. "I love the sea and the beautiful colours, and everything"-- She stopped short and put her arm through his and made him walk again. She was conscious, perhaps, that she was making an effort,--why, she could not tell,--and that she had not much to say. "Marcantoine"--she began. They spoke French together, though she knew Italian better. She thought his name long, but had not yet decided how to abbreviate it. "Yes, what would you say, my dear?" he asked pleasantly. "I think I could--no--Marcantoine, now that we are married, are you quite sure that you love me--quite, quite?" Marcantonio's face turned strangely earnest and quiet. He looked into her eyes as he answered. "Yes, my very dear wife, I am quite sure. And you, are you sure, Leonora?" "How serious you are!" she exclaimed, laughingly. "Well, perhaps I am not so sure as you are,--but I think I could." Somehow he did not smile; he took some things so seriously. Honeymoon conversations are insignificant enough, but it would be well if they were still more so. They should be limited by an international law to the phrases contained in the works of M. Ollendorff. "Is it a fine day, sir?" "Yes, madam, it is a very fine day, but the baker has the green hat of the officer." "Has the baker also the red cow of the general's wife?" "No, madam, the baker has not the red cow of the general's wife, but the undertaker has the penknife of the aunt of the good butcher." It would be hard for the most ill-disposed couple to quarrel if confined to this simple elegance of dialectics, where truths of the broadest kind are clothed in the purest and most energetic words. Young married people are allowed too much latitude when they are turned loose upon a whole language with a sort of standing order to make conversation. When they have exhausted a certain fund of stock poetry and enthusiasm, they have very little to fall back upon, except their personal relation to each other; and unless they are equally serious or equally frivolous, the discussion of such matters is apt to get them into trouble. Like most Italians Marcantonio had difficulty in understanding English humour. When Leonora said she was not quite sure she loved him, she had meant it for a jest, and if the jest had a deeper meaning and a possibility of truth for herself, that was no reason, she thought, why Marcantonio should consider it no jest at all. She was somewhat annoyed, and she made up her mind that there must be an element of Philistinism in his character. She hated and feared Philistines, partly because they were bores, and partly because she had met one or two of them who had known vastly more than she did, and who had not scrupled to show it. But, after all, how could Marcantonio be really like them? He did not know very much, nor did he pretend to, and he had very good taste and was altogether very nice,--no, he was not a Philistine; he loved her, and that was the reason he was serious. All this she thought, springing from one idea to another, and ending by drawing her arm closer through his and moving along the terrace by his side. The sun had set over there in front of them, and the air was cool and purple with the afterglow. They stood by the wall and looked out silently, without any further effort at conversation. Talking had been a failure, probably because they were tired, and for a brief space they were content to watch the clouds, and to listen to the swift rush of the swallows and the faint, soft fall of the small waves on the sand far below them. There they were, linked together, for better for worse, to meet the joys and the sorrows of life hand in hand; to stand before the world as representatives of their class, to play a part in public, and in their homes to be all in all to each other, man and wife. Man and wife! Ah me! for the greatness and the littleness of the bonds those names stand for! Is there a man so poor and thin-souled in the world that he has not dreamed of calling some woman "wife"? Is there any wretch so mean and miserable in spirit that he has not looked on some maiden and said, "I would marry her, if I could"? Or has any woman, beautiful or ugly, fair or dark, straight or crooked, not thought once, and more than once, that a man would come, and love her, and take her, and marry her? But have all the woes and ills of humanity, massed together and piled up in their dismal weight, ever called forth one half the sorrow that has ensued from this wedding and being wedded? Alas and alack for the tears that have fallen thick and fast from women's eyes,--and for the tears that have stood and burned in the eyes of strong men, good and bad! Who shall count them, or who shall measure them? Who shall ever tell the griefs that are beyond words, the sorrows that all earthly language, wielded by all earthly genius, cannot tell? Will any man make bold to say that he can describe what pain his neighbour feels? He may tell us what he does, for he can see it; he may tell us what he thinks, for perhaps he can guess it; but he cannot tell us what he suffers. The most he can do is to strike the sad minor chord that in every man's heart leads to a dirge and a death-song of his own. A man who tries to tell of great suffering is rebuked. "No human creature," says the critic, "could suffer as this man describes, and live. There can therefore be no such suffering in the world." But does any critic or reader or other intelligent person say, when he reads about great happiness, "This joy is too much for humanity; there is no such joy in the world"? We shrink from suffering, in others as in ourselves, and we turn to happiness and cannot get enough of it, so that however the tale ends, we would have made it end yet more joyfully; for so would we do with our own lives if we could. The strength of half mankind is spent in trying to remedy mistakes made at the outset, and I suppose that there is not one man in ten millions who is not striving to make himself happier, in his own fashion. A man is only happy when he believes himself to be so, in whatever way the proposition be turned, and no man believes himself so happy but what he might be happier. Marcantonio Carantoni was in just such a position. He was more than contented, for he looked forward to much in the future that he had not yet attained, and he looked forward to it with certainty. His wife Leonora was trying hard to be as happy as he, but there had been a doubt--a cruel, hot little doubt--in her soul from the first. She had deceived herself--with the best intention--until she could hardly ever be sure that what she felt was genuine. She had asked questions of her heart until it was weary of answering them, and would as soon speak false to her as true. And here ends the prologue of this story. CHAPTER V. A few days after the arrival of the Carantoni establishment in Sorrento, Leonora was sitting alone on a terrace of the villa with a book and a great variety of small possessions in the way of needle-work, shawls, cushions, flowers, parasols, fans, and a white cat. Marcantonio was gone to the town alone, intending to buy more possessions; for Sorrento is famous for its silk-weaving and its exquisite carved work of olive wood, and Leonora loved knickknacks. "I would give anything in the world for a sensation," she thought, as she looked out over the sea. It was towards evening, and the water was as smooth as glass and tinged with red. Marcantonio was right after all. It was very dull in Sorrento, with no one but one's husband to speak to,--and he had made such a fuss about the cook's illness. Of course, it was very beautiful and all that; but life with the beauties of nature is so very tiresome after a time. She longed for some of her friends,--even her mother, she thought, would be a relief. But no one had called, excepting some very proper people of the Roman set, who all had gout and rheumatism and a dictionary-ful of diseases, and were taking sulphur baths at Castellamare. She was wishing with all her might that some amusing person would call, when, as though in answer to her thoughts, a servant brought her a card. Then she yawned slightly, supposing it to be some toothless old princess of Rome or some other wearisome bore. But as she looked at the name,--"Mr. Julius Batiscombe,"--she gave a little start and her light fingers touched her lace and ribbons, and her thick hair, and she said she would receive. Mr. Julius Batiscombe was a man of five and thirty years of age, and a person sure to attract attention anywhere. He was tall and looked strong, but he trod as lightly as a woman; none of his movements were clumsy or awkward. Not that he stepped daintily or affected any feminine grace of movement; there was something in his build and proportion that made it always seem easy for him to move, as though his strength were perfectly under control. People were divided in opinion concerning his appearance. Some said he was handsome and some said he was coarse. Some said he was refined and some said he looked ill-tempered. As a matter of fact he had a rather small head, set upon a strong neck. His nose was large and broad, and decidedly aquiline, and he had a remarkably clean-cut and determined jaw. His mouth was comparatively too small for his face, but well shaped and well closed, shaded by a black moustache of very moderate dimensions. His blue eyes were set deep in his head and far apart. Of hair he had an unusual quantity, of a blue black colour, and he brushed it carefully. A single deep line scored its mark across, just above his brows. He had an odd way of looking at things, hiding the half of the iris under the upper lid, showing the white of the eye a little beneath the coloured portion. His complexion was of that brilliant kind which sometimes goes with black hair and blue eyes, and is known as an especial characteristic of the Irish race. Moreover he was noticeably well dressed, in a broad, neat fashion of quiet colour, and he wore no jewelry nor ornament except an old seal ring. Opinions varied almost as much about Mr. Julius Batiscombe's character and reputation as about his claims to be thought good-looking. He had no intimate friends, or was supposed to have none; and he never answered many questions, because he asked none. It was known that he was an Englishman or an Irishman by birth, but that he had never lived long in his own country, whereas he seemed to have lived everywhere else under the sun. "I am so glad you came to-day, Mr. Batiscombe," said Leonora after he was seated, and looking at him rather curiously. He was the man who had stood in the doorway at the ball when Marcantonio offered himself to her. She knew him as well as she knew most of the stray foreigners who from time to time frequented Roman society. He had been in Rome all that winter, and she had met him two years earlier, when she first went out. He interested her, however, by a certain reserve of manner and by an air of "having a story about him"--as young ladies put it--which was unusual. "I am very fortunate," he answered, with a slight inclination and a polite smile. "I called entirely at random. Somebody said you were coming here, and so I came to see if you had arrived." "Yes," said Leonora, "we have been here several days, with all sorts of troubles on our hands. It is such very hard work to settle down, you know." "What has been the trouble?" inquired Mr. Batiscombe, glancing at the evidences of comfort that were scattered about. "Oh--it is the cook," said Leonora with a little laugh; she was just beginning to feel the novelty of housekeeping, and she laughed at the mention of the cook, as though the idea amused her. "He has had a little fever, and my husband was dreadfully anxious about him. But he is quite recovered." "I am very glad," said Mr. Batiscombe. "It must be a terrible bore to have one's cook ill. Did you get anything to eat in the meanwhile?" And so forth, and so on, through a few dozen inanities. He would not make an original remark, being quite sure that Leonora would ultimately turn the conversation to some congenial subject. "Shall you be in Rome next winter, Mr. Batiscombe?" she asked at length rather suddenly. "It is rather doubtful," he answered slowly. "I am a great wanderer, you know, Marchesa. I can never say with any certainty where I shall be next." He was looking at her and thinking what a splendid living thing she was, with the evening sun on her red hair. That was all he thought, but it gave him pleasure, and his glance lingered contentedly upon her, as upon a picture or a statue. He supposed from her remark that she wanted him to talk about himself, and he was willing to please her; but he was in no hurry, for he feared she would move and show herself in a less favourable light. She was so good to look at, that it was worth a visit to see her; and yet she was not a great beauty. "I was thinking a little of going to the East," he added presently. "But you have been there, have you not?" "Not for a long time; and it will bear revisiting often,--very often. I mean to go there and study again as I did years ago. You have no idea how interesting those things are." Mr. Batiscombe looked thoughtfully out towards the sea. "What are those things, as you call them?" asked Leonora. "What many people call the 'wisdom of the East.' They make us the compliment of implying that there is a 'wisdom of the West' also, which seems unlikely." "Dear me, what a sweeping remark!" exclaimed Leonora, rather startled. "I will prove it," said Mr. Batiscombe. "It seems to me that in the West no two wise men think alike; whereas in the East no two wise men think differently. Is not that a kind of proof?" "Not a very valuable proof," said the marchesa. "But I do not know much about it." "You have the reputation of knowing more about it than most people, Marchesa," answered Batiscombe. "I have been told that you know everything." Leonora blushed very slightly. "What nonsense!" said she; "I might say the same of you." "I observe that you do not, however," said he, laughing. "I never flatter any one," she answered calmly. "Obviously, there is but one thing for me to say," said Batiscombe still smiling. "What is that?" "That no one could possibly flatter you, Marchesa,--since the truth is no flattery." "No, but imitation is," retorted Leonora, well pleased at having got a small advantage of him. "Very good," said Batiscombe; "but do you know who said so?" "Shakespeare"--began Leonora, but she stopped. "No--I cannot tell." "A man called Colton said it. He wrote a book called 'Lacon,' containing innumerable reflections on things in general. He was a wandering sea-parson and wrote books of travels. He died of a complication of nautical and religious disorders--he confused the spirituous with the spiritual--but he was a wise man for all that." "I suppose you remembered all that for the sake of showing that you really know everything," said Leonora, looking up from behind the fan that shaded her eyes. The last rays of the sun shone horizontally across the terrace. The book she had been reading slipped from her lap. With a quick movement Batiscombe caught it before it fell and laid it on the little table. Leonora noticed the action and admired the ease of it. She was altogether disposed to admire the man, though she would have confessed that his conversation hitherto had not been at all remarkable. But there was something in his manner that attracted her. He was quick and gentle, and yet he looked so big and strong. "Thanks," she said. "By the bye, are you going to spend the summer here, or are you only passing?" "I am only passing--literally passing, for I have come from the north, and am going southward. I believe I am doing rather an original thing." "You are generally supposed to be always doing original things," said Leonora. "At all events I am never bored," he answered, "which cannot be said of most people. At present I am going round Italy in an open boat. It is great fun. I started from Nice six weeks ago." "How delightful! I should like it immensely!" "Are you fond of sailing?" "I enjoy it of all things," she answered. In spite of her remark to the same effect made to Marcantonio on the day of their arrival, she had not yet been on the water. He had been so anxious about the cook. "There is a man-of-war to be launched at Castellamare the day after to-morrow," said Batiscombe. "May I have the pleasure of taking you over in my boat?" At this moment Marcantonio appeared at the extremity of the terrace and came towards them. "Should you like to go?" asked Batiscombe quickly, in a lower voice. "If so I will propose it at once." Leonora nodded, and her husband approached. "Marcantonio," she said, "you know Monsieur Batiscombe?" "Mais certainement," cried Marcantonio cordially, and the two men shook hands. Batiscombe was at least as much at home in French as his host, and immediately attacked the subject. "I came to propose to Madame la Marquise," he said, "that you should come over to Castellamare in my boat the day after to-morrow to see the launch. I trust the plan meets your approval?" Marcantonio turned to his wife to inquire. She nodded to him; he nodded to her. "We should be charmed," said he. And so the matter was arranged; they agreed about the hour, and Leonora said she would bring the luncheon. "Yes," said Marcantonio, "I am glad to say the cook"-- At this point Mr. Batiscombe rose to go, and the remark about the cook's health was lost in the stir. Batiscombe bowed, smiled, bowed again, and moved smoothly away across the terrace, disappearing with a final inclination, and a sweep of his straw hat. "He walks like a cat, that gentleman," said Marcantonio as he sat himself down beside his wife. "He is charming," said Leonora. "He has been so amusing." She looked at her husband furtively to see how he took the remark. "Perhaps," thought she, "he is one of those men who have to be managed by being made jealous. I have read about them in novels." But Marcantonio was very glad that she had been amused, and he merely smiled pleasantly and said so. It never entered his head to suppose that Leonora was not satisfied with his show of affection, because he knew in himself that his love was perfectly real. There is a little vanity in such men as Marcantonio, together with a great deal of honesty. Their vanity makes them quite sure that the woman they love is satisfied, and their honesty makes them think the woman would speak out if she were not, just as they themselves would do. Leonora had vanity enough of a certain kind, but it was not personal. She doubted her own powers and gifts more than she need have done, and there was enough uncertainty about her own affection to make her uncertain of her husband's love. In the meanwhile she was bored since Mr. Batiscombe had gone, and she wished Marcantonio would talk and amuse her. But when he did begin to say something it was about local Roman politics, and she understood nothing about that sort of thing. She longed more and more for "a sensation." It would probably be different to-morrow, for her moods seldom lasted long. But this evening it was intolerable. She made the most absent-minded answers to her husband's remarks, and seemed so impatient that he suggested she must be tired and had better go to bed. "But I am not tired at all--on the contrary," she objected. "There is nothing to tire me here,--a little driving, a great deal of sitting on the terrace, a great deal of reading, and very little conversation"-- "Very little conversation!" exclaimed Marcantonio. "Mais, ma chère, here it is two hours we have been talking, without counting the visit of the gentleman who walks like a cat--Bat--Botis--I cannot say his name, but I know him." "Ah, yes--Mr. Batiscombe. Yes," said Leonora languidly, "he was very amusing. He talked about all sorts of things." "Shall we ask him to pass a few days with us? I should be very glad, if you like him." Marcantonio was really delighted to do anything his wife might wish. Leonora was touched. He was sitting beside her, and she put her arms round his neck and laid her head on his shoulder. "You are so good," she said in a low voice. "Oh, I do not want anybody else here at all. I only want you--but all of you--and I feel as though I had not all yet." For the moment she really loved him. He gently smoothed her hair with his delicate, olive-tinted hand. Meanwhile Mr. Julius Batiscombe had gone to his hotel, and, having eaten his dinner, was sitting on the tiled terrace over the sea, with a cup of coffee at his elbow, and a cigarette in his mouth. There were lamps on the terrace, and there was starlight on the water, and Mr. Batiscombe was alone at his small table. "I wish I had not gone there. I wish I had not asked them to go to Castellamare. I wish I were at sea in my boat." He said these things over and over to himself, and now and again he smiled a little scornfully, and sipped his coffee. Julius Batiscombe was generally in trouble. He was a strong man in all respects save one. He had conquered many difficulties in his life, and by sheer determination had turned evil fortune into good, winning himself a name and a position, and such a proportion of wealth as he needed. Of good family, and brought up in luxury and refinement, he had been left at twenty years of age without parents, without much money, and without a profession. He knew some half dozen languages, ancient and modern, and he had a certain premature knowledge of the world. But that was his whole stock-in-trade excepting an indomitable will and perseverance, combined with exceedingly good health, and a great desire for the luxuries of life. He had lived in all sorts of ways and places, getting his pen under control by endless literary hack-work. By and by he tried his hand at journalism, and was successively addicted to three or four papers, published in three or four languages in three or four countries. Last of all he wrote a book which unexpectedly succeeded. Since then the aspect of life had changed for him, and though he still wandered, from force of habit, so to say, he no longer wandered in search of a fortune. A pen and a few sheets of paper can be got anywhere, and Julius Batiscombe set up his itinerary literary forge wherever it best pleased him to work. He had fought with ill-luck, and had conquered it, and now he felt the confidence of a man who has swum through rough water and feels at last the smooth, clean sand beneath his feet. His success had not turned his head in the least; he was too much of an artist for that, striving always in his work to attain something that ever seemed to escape him. But he now felt that he might some day get nearer to what he aimed at, and there were moments, brief moments, of genuine happiness, when he believed that there was wrought by his pen some stroke of worth that should not perish. Ten minutes later he was dissatisfied with it all, and collected his strength for a new effort, still hoping, and striving, and labouring on, with his whole soul in his work. Strong in body and strong in determination, he was yet very weak in one respect. He was eternally falling in love, everlastingly throwing himself at the feet of some woman and making mischief which he afterwards bitterly regretted. It seemed as though it were impossible for him to live six months without some affair of a more or less serious character. It made no difference whether he wandered off into the recesses of the Italian mountains, or went into hermitage in the Black Forest, or steamed and sweltered under a tropical sun; there was always a feminine element at hand to make trouble for him. It was not only the universal woman calling to him to follow, it was the universal woman seizing him and carrying him away by main force. For it was no matter of inclination. He struggled hard enough to deserve victory, but without any perceptible result. What gave him most pain was the dreary consciousness of his own insincerity in his love-making, the consciousness that came to him after the affair was over. While it lasted he was carried away and blinded by a sort of madness that took possession of him and allowed him no time for thought. But when it was over he remembered, bitterly enough, how untrue it had all been, to himself and to the one woman whom he had loved, and whom, down in the depths of his turbulent heart, he loved still. His other loves were like horrible creations of black magic, bodies with no soul, when he looked back on them. And yet while they lasted they seemed to him real, and high, and noble. At first he fought against every new inclination, and cursed his folly in advance; and sometimes he conquered, but not always. If once the fatal point were passed there was no salvation, for then he deceived himself and the deception was complete. It was no wonder people thought so differently about him. He had been known to do brave and generous things, and things that showed the utmost delicacy of feeling and courtesy of temper; and he had been known to act with a sheer, massive, selfish disregard of other people, that made cynics look grave and mild-eyed society idiots stare with horror. The fact was that Julius Batiscombe in love was one person, and Julius Batiscombe out of love, repentant and trying to make up to the world for the mischief he had done, was quite another; and he knew it himself. He was perfectly conscious of his own duality, and liked the one state,--the state of no love,--and he loathed and detested the other both before and after. And now he sat over his coffee, and the prophetic warning of his soul told him that he was in danger, so that he was angry at himself and feared the future. He had known Miss Carnethy, as has been said, for some time, and had danced with her and sat beside her at dinner more than once, without giving her a thought; he therefore had found it perfectly natural to call when he discovered that she was at Sorrento. But his impression after his visit was very different. The Marchesa Carantoni was not Miss Carnethy at all. She had looked so magnificent as she sat in the evening sunshine, and he had gazed contentedly at her with a sense of artistic satisfaction, thinking no evil. But now he could think of nothing else. The sun seemed to rise again out of the dark sea, turning back on its course till it was just above the horizon, with a warm golden light; by his side sat the figure of a woman with glorious red hair, and he was speaking to her; the whole scene was present to him as he sat there, and he knew very well what it was that he felt. Why had he not known it at first? He would surely have had the sense not to propose such a thing as a day together. "A day together" had so often entailed so much misery. Nevertheless he would not invent an excuse, nor go away suddenly. It would be quite possible, he knew, and perhaps also he knew in his heart that it would be altogether right. But it seemed so uncourteous, he was really anxious to see the launch of the great ship and--and--he would not be such a fool as to fancy he could not look at a woman without falling in love with her on the spot. At his age! Five and thirty--he seemed so old when he thought of all he had done in that time. No. He would not only go with them, but he would be as agreeable as he could, if only to show himself that he was at last above that kind of thing. Some human hearts are like a great ship that has no anchor, nor any means of making fast to moorings. The brave vessel sails through the stormy ocean, straining and struggling fiercely, till she lies at last within a fair harbour. But she has no anchor, and by and by the soft, smooth tide washes her out to sea, so gently and cruelly, out among the crests and the squalls and the rushing currents, and she must fain beat to windward again or perish on the grim lee shore. Julius Batiscombe went to bed that night knowing that he was adrift, and yet denying it to himself; knowing that in a month, a week perhaps, he should be in trouble--in love--pah! how he hated the idea! CHAPTER VI. During the time that elapsed between Mr. Batiscombe's visit and the expedition to see the launch, Leonora had an access of the religious humour. The little scene with her husband had made a deep impression on her mind, and as was usual when she received impressions, she tried to explain it and understand it and reason about it, until there was little of it left. That is generally the way with those people who make a study of themselves; when they have a good thought or a good impulse, they dissect the life out of it and crow over the empty shell. It was clear, thought Leonora, that the sudden outburst of affection which made her tell her husband that she wanted "all of him" was the result of some sensation of dissatisfaction, of some unfulfilled necessity for a greater sympathy. But, if at the very beginning she had not the key to his heart, if he did not wholly love her now, it was clear that he never would at all. Why was it clear? Oh! never mind the "why,"--it was quite clear. Moreover, if he could never love her wholly as she wished and desired, she was manifestly a misunderstood woman, a most unhappy wife, a condemned existence,--loving and not being loved in return. And he, the heartless wretch, was anxious about the cook! Good heavens! the cook--when his wife's happiness was in danger! In this frame of mind there was evidently nothing more appropriate for her to do than to take a prayer-book and to hide her face in a veil, and slip away to the little church on the road, a hundred yards from the house. For a wrecked existence, thought Leonora, there is no refuge like the Church. She was not a Catholic, but that made no difference; in great distress like this, she could very well be comforted by any kind of religion short of her father's, which latter, to her exalted view, consisted of four walls and a bucket of whitewash, seasoned with pious discourses and an occasional psalm-tune. What she could not see, what was really at the bottom of the small tempest she rashly whirled up in her over-sensitive soul, was her own disillusionment. She had deceived herself into believing that she loved her husband, and the deception had cost her an effort. She was beginning to realise that the time was at hand when she might strive in vain to believe in her own sincerity, when her heart would not submit to any further equivocation, and when she should know in earnest what hollowness and weariness meant. As yet this was half unconscious, for it seemed so easy to make herself the injured party. Poor Marcantonio was not to blame. He was the happiest of mortals, and went calmly on his way, doubting nothing and thinking that he was of all mortal men the most supremely fortunate. Meanwhile Leonora kneeled in the rough little church, solacing herself with the catalogue of those ills she thought she was suffering. The stones were hard; there was a wretched little knot of country people, squalid and ill-savoured, who stared at the great lady for a moment, and then went on with their rosaries. A dirty little boy with a cane twenty feet long was poking a taper about and lighting lamps, and he dropped some of the wax on Leonora's gown. But she never shrank nor looked annoyed. "All these things are very delightful," she said to herself, "if you only consider them as mortifications of the flesh." She remembered how often just such little annoyances had sent her out of other churches disgusted and declaring that religion was a vain and hollow thing; and now, because she could bear with them and was not angry, she felt quite sure it was genuine. "Yes," said she piously, as, an hour later, she picked her way home through the dusty road, "yes, the Church is a great refuge. I will go there every day." Indeed, she was so resigned and subdued that evening at dinner, that Marcantonio asked whether she had a headache. "Oh no," she answered, "I am perfectly well, thank you." "Because if you are indisposed, ma bien-aimée," continued her husband with some anxiety, "we will not go to Castellamare to-morrow." "I will certainly go," she said. "I would go if I had twenty headaches," she might have added, for it would have been true. "The occasion will be so much the more brilliant, ma très chère," remarked Marcantonio gallantly, as they went out into the garden under the stars. "It is a hollow sham," said Leonora to herself. "He does not mean it." But whether it was the effect of the morning, or the magic influence of Mr. Batiscombe's personality, is not certain; at all events when that gentleman appeared at the appointed hour to announce that his boat was in readiness, Leonora looked as though she had never known what care meant. She doubtless still remembered all she had thought on the previous afternoon, and she was still quite sure that her existence was a wreck and a misery,--but then, she argued, why should we poor misunderstood women not take such innocent pleasures as come in our way? It would be very wrong not to accept humbly the little crumbs of happiness,--and so on. So they went to Castellamare. It is not far, but the wind seldom serves in the morning, and it was an hour and a half before the six stout men in white clothes and straw hats pulled the boat round the breakwater of the arsenal. Everything was ready for the ceremony. Half a dozen Italian ironclads lay in the harbour, decked from stem to stern with flags; the royal personages had arrived, and were boring each other to death in a great temporary balcony, gaudily decorated with red and gold, which had been reared on the shore within reach of the nose of the new ship. The ship herself, a huge, ungainly thing, painted red and bearing three enormous national flags, lay like a stranded monster in the cradle, looking for all the world like a prehistoric boiled lobster with its claws taken off. The small water room opposite the arsenal was crowded with every kind of craft, and little steamers arrived every few minutes from Naples to swell the throng. The July sun beat fiercely down and there was not a breath of air. The boatmen were all wrangling in a dozen southern dialects, and no one seemed to know why the ceremony was delayed any longer. Nevertheless, as is usual in such cases, there was half an hour to wait before the thing could be done. "I am afraid you will find this a dreadful bore," said Batiscombe to Leonora in English, while Marcantonio was busy trying to make out some of his friends on shore through a field-glass. Batiscombe had sat in the stern-sheets to steer during the trip, and having Leonora on one side of him and her husband on the other, had gone through an endless series of polite platitudes. If it had not been that Leonora attracted him so much he must himself have been bored to extinction. But then in that case he would probably not have put himself in such a position at all. "Oh, nothing of this kind bores me," said Leonora cheerfully. "You say that as though there were many kinds of things that did, though," observed Batiscombe, looking at her. It was a natural remark, without any intention. "Dear me, yes!" exclaimed Leonora. "Life is not all roses, you know." She therewith assumed a thoughtful expression and looked away. "I should not have supposed there were many thorns in your path, Marchesa. Would it be indiscreet to inquire of what nature they may be?" Leonora was silent, and put up her glass to examine the proceedings on shore. Batiscombe, who had come out that day with the sworn determination not to say or do anything to increase the interest he felt in the Marchesa, found himself wondering whether she were unhappy. The first and most natural conclusion was that she had been married to Marcantonio by designing parents, and that she did not care for him. Society said it had been a love-match, but what will society not say? "Poor thing," he thought, "I suppose she is miserable!" "Forgive me," he said, in a low voice. "I did not know you were in earnest." Leonora blushed faintly and glanced quickly at him. He had the faculty of saying little things to women that attracted their attention. "What lots of poetry one might make about a launch," he said laughing,--for it was necessary to change the subject,--"ship--dip; ocean--motion; keel--feel; the rhymes are perfectly endless." "Yes," said Leonora; "you might make a sonnet on the spot. Besides, there is a great deal of sentiment about the launching of a great man-of-war. The voyage of life--and that sort of thing--don't you know? How hot it is!" "I will have another awning up in a minute," and he directed the sailors, helping to do the work himself. He stood upon the gunwale to do it. "I am sure you will fall," said Leonora, nervously. "Do sit down!" "If I had a millstone round my neck there would be some object in falling," said Batiscombe. "As it is, I should not even have the satisfaction of drowning." "What an idea! Should you like to be drowned?" she said, looking up to him. "Sometimes," he answered, still busy with the awning. Then he sat down again. "You should not say that sort of thing," said Leonora. "Besides, it is rude to say you should like to be drowned when I am your guest." "Great truths are not always pretty. But how could any man die better than at your feet?" He laughed a little, and yet his voice had an earnest ring to it. He had judged rightly when he foresaw that he must fall in love with Leonora. Marcantonio, who did not understand English, was watching the proceedings on shore. "Ah! it is magnificent!" he cried, with great enthusiasm. The royal personage who was to christen the ship had just broken the bottle of wine, and the little crowd of courtiers, officers, and maids of honour clapped their hands and grinned. They all looked hot and miserable and exhausted, but they grinned right nobly, like so many Cheshire cats. There was a sound of knocking and hammering, a final shout of warning from the dock officers, a slight trembling of the great hull, and then the ship began to move, slowly at first, and ever more quickly, till with a mighty rush and a plunge and a swirl she was out in the water. The people yelled till they were hoarse, the boatmen cursed each other by all the maledictions ever invented to meet the exigencies of a lost humanity, the royal personages stood together on their platform looking like a troupe of marionettes in a toy theatre, and congratulating each other furiously as though they had done it all themselves; everything was noise and sunshine and tepid water; Marcantonio was flourishing his hat, and Leonora waved a little lace handkerchief, while Batiscombe sat looking at her and wondering why he had never thought her beautiful before. Indeed, she was superb in her simple, raw silk gown, with fresh-cut roses at her waist. "It seems to me, Marchese, that you are very enthusiastic," said Batiscombe to Marcantonio. "Mon Dieu!" exclaimed the other, shrugging his shoulders, "one cheers these things as one would cheer fireworks, or a race. It signifies nothing." "Oh, of course," said Leonora; "and besides, it is so pretty." "I think it is horrible," said Batiscombe, suddenly. "Why--what?" "To see a nation squandering money in this way, when the taxes on land are at sixty per cent. and more, and the people emigrating by the shipload because they cannot live in their own homes." "Oh, for that matter, you are right," said Marcantonio, turning grave in a moment. "I could tell you a story about taxes." "What is it?" asked Leonora. "Those things are so interesting." "Last autumn I was in the Sabines; I have a place up there, altogether ancient and dilapidated--a mere ruin. I own some of the land, and the peasants own little vineyards. One day I saw by the roadside a poor old man, a sort of village crétin, whom every one knew quite well. We used to call him Cupido; he was half idiotic and quite old. He was weeping bitterly, poor wretch, and I asked him what was the matter. He pointed to a little plot of land by the road, inclosed by a stone wall, and said the tax-gatherer had taken it from him. And then he cried again, and I could not get anything more out of him." "Poor creature!" exclaimed Leonora, sympathetically. "Well," continued Marcantonio, "I made inquiries, and I found that he had owned the little plot, and that the tax-gatherer had first seized the wretched crop of maize--perhaps a bushel basket full--to pay the tax; and then, as that did not cover his demands, he seized the land itself and sold it or offered it for sale." "Infamous!" cried Leonora, and the tears were in her eyes. "A cheerful state of things," remarked Batiscombe, "when the whole crop does not suffice to pay the taxes on the soil!" "N'est-ce pas?" said Marcantonio. "Well, I provided for the poor old man, but he died in the winter. It broke his heart."[1] [Footnote 1: The author witnessed the facts here described in 1880.] "I love the Italians," said Batiscombe; "but their ideas of economy are peculiar. I suppose that without much metaphor or exaggeration one might say that the poor crétin's bushel of corn is gone into that ridiculous ironclad over there." "But of course it is," said Marcantonio. "The whole thing probably paid for one rivet. You, who write books, Monsieur Batiscombe, put that into a book and render it very pathetic." "It needs little rendering to make it that," said Batiscombe, and he looked at Leonora's eyes that were not yet dry. By this time the royal marionettes had been bundled off to their boats, and the crowd of small craft on the water began to disperse. Batiscombe's six men fell to their oars and the boat shot out from the breakwater. Presently they hoisted the bright lateen sails to the breeze. Batiscombe perched himself on the weather rail, and took the tiller, as the brave little craft heeled over and began to cut the water. The wind fanned Leonora's cheek, and she said it was delightful. Batiscombe suggested that they should run into one of the great green caves that honeycomb the cliffs near Sorrento, and make it their dining-room. So away they went, rejoicing to be out of the heat and the noise. It was twelve o'clock, and far up among the orange groves the little church bells rang out their midday chime, laughing together in the white belfries for joy of the sunshine and the fair summer's day. "I should like to be always sailing," said Leonora, who had now quite forgotten her woes and enjoyed the change. "Ma chère," said her husband, "there is nothing simpler." "You always say that," she answered rather reproachfully; "but this is the very first time I have been on the water since we came." "My boat and my men are always at your disposal, Marchesa," said Batiscombe, looking down at her, "and myself, too, if you will condescend to employ me as your skipper." "Thanks, you are very good," said she. "But I thought you were only passing, and were to be off in a few days?" She glanced up at him, as though she meant to be answered. "Oh, it is very uncertain," said Batiscombe. "It depends," he added in a lower voice and in English, "upon whether you will use the boat." It was rather a bold stroke, but it told, and he was rewarded. "I should like very much to go out again some day," she said. Those little words and sentences, what danger signals they ought to be to people about to fall in love! Batiscombe knew it; he knew well that every such speech, in her native language and in a half voice, was one step nearer to the inevitable end. But he was fast getting to the point when, as far as he himself was concerned, the die would be cast. His manner changed perceptibly during the day, as the influence gained strength. His voice grew lower and he laughed less, while his eyes shone curiously, even in the midday sun. The boat ran into the cave, which was the largest on the shore, and would admit the mast and the long yards without difficulty. Within the light was green, and the water now and again plashed on the rocks. The men steadied the craft with their oars and the party proceeded to lunch. Most of "society" has a most excellent appetite, and when one reflects how very hard society works to amuse itself, it is not surprising that it should need generous nourishment. The unlucky cook had done his best, and the result was satisfactory. There were all manner of things, and some bottles of strong Falerno wine. Batiscombe drank water and very little of it. "Somebody has said," remarked Marcantonio with a laugh, "that one must distrust the man who drinks water when other people drink wine. We shall have to beware of you, Monsieur Batiscombe." He had learned the name very well by this time. "Perhaps there is truth in it," said Batiscombe, "but it is not my habit I can assure you. The origin of the saying lies in the good old custom of doctoring other people's draughts. The man who drank water at a feast two hundred years ago was either afraid of being poisoned himself, or was engaged in poisoning his neighbours." "Oh, the dear, good old time!" exclaimed Leonora, eating her salad daintily. "Do you wish it were back again?" asked Batiscombe. "Are there many people you would like to poison?" "Oh, not that exactly," and she laughed. "But life must have been very exciting and interesting then." "Enfin," remarked Marcantonio, "I am very well pleased with it as it is. There was no opera, no election, no launching of war-ships; and when you went out you had to wear a patent safe on your head, in case anybody wanted to break it for you. And then, there was generally some one who did. Yes, indeed, it must have been charming, altogether ravishing. Allez! give me the nineteenth century." "I assure you, Marchesa," said Batiscombe, "life can be exceedingly exciting and interesting now." "I dare say," retorted Leonora, "for people who go round the world in boats in search of adventures, and write books abusing their enemies. But we--what do we ever do that is interesting or exciting? We stay at home and pour tea." "And in those days," answered Batiscombe, "the ladies stayed at home and knit stockings, or if they were very clever they worked miles and miles of embroidery and acres of tapestry. About once a month they were allowed to look out of the window and see their relations beating each other's brains out with iron clubs, and running each other through the body with pointed sticks. As the Marchese says, it was absolutely delightful, that kind of life." "You are dreadfully prejudiced," said Leonora. "But I am sure it was very nice." And so they talked, and the men smoked a little, till they decided that they had had enough of it, and the oars plashed in the water together, sending the boat out again into the bright sun. In five minutes they were at the landing belonging to the Carantoni villa. There was a deep cleft in the cliffs just there, and the descent wound curiously in and out of the rock, so that in many places you could only trace it from below by the windows hewn in the solid stone to give light and air to the passage. The rocks ran out a little at the base, and there were steps carved for landing. There are few places so strikingly odd as this landing to the Carantoni villa. Leonora said it was "eerie." When it came to parting, the young couple were profuse in their thanks to Mr. Batiscombe for the enchanting trip. "I hope," said Marcantonio, "that you will come and dine with us very soon, and change your mind about the water-drinking, and give us another opportunity of thanking you." "I have enjoyed it very, very much," said Leonora, giving Batiscombe her hand. Their eyes met, and for the first time she noticed the curious light in his glance. But he bowed very low and very elaborately, so to say. "You will keep your promise," he said, "and use the boat again?" "Thanks so very much. But of course we will have a boat of our own now, and so I should not think of asking you." She smiled a little at him. Somehow he understood perfectly that he could nevertheless induce her to accept his offer. He stood hat in hand on the rocks as they disappeared into the dark stairway. Then he sprang into the boat, and the men pulled lustily away. He leaned back in the stern with his hand on the tiller and his eyes half closed. In the bottom of the boat were the luncheon baskets, and one of Leonora's roses had fallen from the stem and lay withering in the hot July sun. Batiscombe picked it up, looked at it, pulled a leaf or two, and threw it overboard, with a half sneer of dissatisfaction. "They have forgotten the baskets, though," he thought to himself. "If they had asked me to go up with them, as they should have done, I would have had them carried up. As it is I will--I will wait till they write for them. I could hardly take them myself." And he lighted a cigarette. As Leonora mounted the stairway, leaning on her husband's arm, she turned to get a glimpse of the boat gliding away in the distance. She could just see it through one of the windows in the rock. "Why did you not ask him to come up?" she inquired. "Why did you not ask him, my angel?" returned Marcantonio. "I thought you might not like it," she answered. "Comment donc! He is very amiable, I am sure. But I thought you were tired and had had enough of him,--in short, that you did not want him." "Ah!" ejaculated Leonora. She felt a little curious sense of pleasure, that was quite new to her, at the idea that her husband could have seriously thought she did not want Mr. Batiscombe. "Naturally," added Marcantonio, "we ought to have asked him." "I suppose so," said she, indifferently enough. "I will call on him to-morrow, and we will have him to dinner, if it is agreeable to you, my dear." "Oh yes--I do not mind at all," said Leonora. She was thinking about something, and did not speak again till they reached the house. It was very frivolous, but she was really thinking about the curious expression of Mr. Batiscombe's eyes. She did not remember to have ever seen anything exactly like it. Besides, she had known him, more or less, for some time, and had never noticed it before. Perhaps it was the reflection from the water. But she dreamed that night that she saw those eyes very close to her, and the expression of them frightened her a little, but was not altogether disagreeable. CHAPTER VII. Julius Batiscombe was a restless man by day and night, after the trip to Castellamare. Marcantonio called upon him, but he was out, and then he received an invitation to dinner from Leonora, with a postscript about the unlucky baskets. He accepted the invitation. What else could he do? But when the day came he regretted it. He wished he had refused and had gone away. Then he made a fine resolution. "I will not go to this dinner," he said to himself, savagely, as he walked quickly up and down his room. "I will not go near her again. It is not right, and I will not do it. I will sail over to Naples at once, and send back a telegram of excuse, saying that a matter of the most urgent importance keeps me there. So it is--I should think so--a matter of very urgent importance. Oh! Julius Batiscombe, what an ass you are, to be sure!" With that he crammed some things into a bag, sent for his man, and descended in hot haste to the shore. There was no time to be lost, for it was already four o'clock in the afternoon and the invitation was for eight. He could just reach Naples and send his telegram in time to prevent the Carantoni from waiting for him. The lazy breeze was dying away, and he wished he had had the sense to make up his mind sooner. But his men rowed lustily, and kept time, so that the boat spun along fairly enough. "I shall do it," said Julius Batiscombe to himself. He was happy enough in the sensation that he was cheating his fate and was about to escape a serious affection. Then he laughed at the comic side of the case, and lit a cigar and blew great clouds of smoke over his shoulder. But fate and Batiscombe were old enemies, and fate generally got the better of it. It chanced that on this very day Leonora and Marcantonio had determined to go out in the new boat. For Marcantonio had wanted to give his wife a surprise, and had got from Naples a beautiful clean-built launch. He had said nothing about it, and had patiently borne her reproaches at his indifference to sailing, until on the previous evening he had taken her down the descent to the rocks and had shown her his purchase, which had just arrived by the steamer. Of course she was enchanted, and determined to make the most of it, for she was really fond of the water. Accordingly, on this very day, she and her husband sallied forth with six men,--for he had not dared to give her a smaller crew than Mr. Batiscombe's. She was in such a hurry to go that she said she did not mind the sun in the least,--oh dear, no! she rather liked it. And so it came to pass that a few minutes after Julius had given his men the word to fall to their oars at the little beach of the town of Sorrento, a long low craft, painted in dark green and gold, and looking exceedingly trim and "fit" with its long lateen yards and raking masts, shot out from the cleft beneath Leonora's villa. Batiscombe looked straight before him, steering by the Naples shore, and intent on wasting neither time nor distance. He might have been out half an hour or more when a remark from one of his crew made him look round, and he was aware of a dark green boat two or three hundred yards astern, but rapidly pulling up to him. He started, for though he could not see the faces of the occupants, he recognised a parasol that Leonora had taken to Castellamare. "It is the new boat of the Marchese Carantoni," said the sailor who had first spoken to Batiscombe. The man had seen it arrive by the steamer on the previous evening, and had helped to put it into the water to be rowed down to the villa. Batiscombe gave one more look and groaned inwardly. He would make a fight for it, though, he thought. He encouraged his men not to allow themselves to be overtaken by a parcel of Neapolitans, as he derisively called the crew of Carantoni's boat. His own men were tough fellows from the north of Italy, bearded, and broad, and bronzed; but his boat, built for rougher weather and rougher work than pleasure-rowing in the bay of Naples, was twice as heavy as the slight green craft astern. His sturdy men set their teeth and tugged hard, but the others gained on them. Leonora and Marcantonio had recognised the cut of Batiscombe's boat and crew from a distance; and, in profound ignorance of his amiable intentions of flight, they imagined nothing more amusing than to race him. "If we cannot beat him," said Leonora, breathless with excitement, "I will never come out in your boat again!" She strained her eyes to make out if they were gaining way. Marcantonio spoke to the men:-- "Corraggio, Corraggio! Maccaroni con formaggio!" The men repeated the rhyme to each other with a grin, and bent hard to their work. They were not Neapolitans as Batiscombe called them, but strong-backed, slim fishermen from the southern coast, as dark as Arabs and as merry as thieves, enjoying a race of all things best in the world, and well able to row it. Swiftly the dark green boat crept up to her rival, and soon Batiscombe could hear the remarks of the men. His own crew did their best, but it was a hopeless case. "Monsieur Batiscombe, Monsieur Batiscombe," shouted Marcantonio, almost as much excited as his wife, "we shall conquer you immediately!" Julius turned and waved his hat, and made a gesture of submission. A few lengths more and they were beside him. He raised his hand, and his men hung on their oars. "Kismet! it is my portion," he said to himself as he gave up the fight. "But where are you going in such a hurry, Mr. Batiscombe?" asked Leonora, who was delighted at having won the race. "You see it is no use running away; we can catch you so easily." "Yes," said Batiscombe, laughing recklessly at the hidden truth of her words, "I see it is of no use, but I tried hard. It was a good race." He turned in his seat and leaned over, looking at his friends. The boats drifted together, and the men held them side by side, unshipping their oars. Batiscombe admired the whole turnout, and complimented Leonora upon it. Marcantonio was pleased with everything and everybody; he was delighted that his wife should have had the small satisfaction of victory, and he was proud that his boat had fulfilled his expectations. So they floated along side by side, saying the pleasantest manner of things possible to each other. Time flew by, and presently they turned homewards. "I wonder how long it will be," thought Batiscombe as he held the tiller hard over and his boat swung about, "before I tell her where I was going 'in such a hurry'?" And he smiled in a grim sort of irony at himself, for he knew that he was lost. "Eight o'clock--don't forget!" cried Leonora. She had a pleasant voice that carried far over the water. Batiscombe waved his hat, and smiled and bowed. They were soon separated, and their courses became more and more divergent as they neared the land. Batiscombe swore a little over his dressing, quite quietly and to himself, but he bestowed much care upon his appearance. He knew just how much always depends on appearance at the outset, and how little it is to be relied on at a later stage. So he gave an unusual amount of thought to his tie, and was extremely fastidious about the flower in his coat. As for Leonora, she was on the point of a change of mood. She had been very gay and happy all day long, and the adventure with the boat had still further raised her spirits. But that was all the more reason why they should sink again before long, for her humours were mostly of short duration, though of strong impulse. This evening she felt as though there were something the matter, or as though something were going to happen, and her gayety seemed to be the least bit fictitious to herself. She and her husband stood on the terrace in the sunset, awaiting their guest. "My dear," said Marcantonio, "I am in despair. I shall be obliged to go to Rome to-morrow or the next day. My uncle, the cardinal, writes me that it is very important." Leonora's face fell; she had a sharp little sense of pain. "Oh, Marcantoine," she said, "do not go away now!" "It is only for a day or two, my angel," he said, drawing her arm through his. "Must you really go?" she asked, not looking at him. "Hélas, yes." "Then I will go with you," said she, in a determined tone. "Ah, I thank you for the wish, chérie," he answered. "But you will tire yourself, and be so hot and uncomfortable. See, I will only be away a day and a half." "But I do not want to be alone here without you," she pleaded. She could not for her life have told why she was so distressed at the idea, but it gave her pain, and she insisted. "As you wish," said Marcantonio, kissing her hand. "I will make every arrangement for your comfort, and do what I can to make the journey pleasant." He was a little surprised, but, manlike, he was flattered at his wife's show of affection. There are moments in a woman's life when, whether she loves her husband or not, she turns to him and holds to him with an instinctive sense of reliance. A moment later Julius Batiscombe was announced, and the three went in to dinner. It was a strange position, though it is by no means an uncommon one. A man, his wife, and another man, an outsider; the outsider loving the woman, the husband supremely happy and unconscious, and the woman feeling the evil influence, not altogether opposing it, and yet clinging desperately to her husband's love. Three lives, all trembling in the balance of weal and woe. But no one could have suspected it from their appearance, for they were apparently the gayest and most thoughtless of mortals. The adventure in the afternoon, the expedition to Castellamare, the baskets and even the cook,--then, the events of the past winter, their many mutual acquaintances, and the whole unfathomable cyclopædia of society facts and fictions,--everything was reviewed in turn, and talked of with witty comments, good-natured or ill-natured as the case might be. Batiscombe was full of strange stories, generally about people they all knew, but he was not a gossip by nature, and he avoided saying disagreeable things. Leonora, on the other hand, would be gay and brilliant for a few moments, and then would let fall some bitter saying that sounded oddly to Batiscombe, though it made her husband laugh. "You would have us believe you terribly disillusioned, Marchesa," said Batiscombe, after one of these sallies. Leonora laughed, and her eyes flashed again as she looked at him across the table. "You, who are so fond of Eastern magic," she said, "should give back to this age all the illusions we have lost." "Were I to do so," answered Batiscombe, looking into her eyes as he spoke, "I fear that you, who are so fond of Western philosophy, would tear them all to pieces." "My poor philosophy," exclaimed Leonora, "you will not let it alone. You seem to think it is to blame for everything,--as if one could not try, ever so humbly, to learn a little something for one's self, without being always held up for it as an exception to the whole human race. It is as if I were to attribute everything you say and do to the fact of your having written a book--how many--two? three?" She laughed gayly. "I do not know," she continued, "and I will never read anything more that you write, because you laugh at my philosophy." "It is better to laugh at it than to cry at it," said Marcantonio, without meaning anything. "Why should I cry at it?" asked Leonora quickly. Her husband did not know how honestly she had shed tears and made herself miserable over it all. "You laugh now," he answered, "but imagine a little. All philosophers are old and hideous, and wear"-- "For goodness' sake, Marchese," broke in Batiscombe, "do not paint the devil on the wall, as the Germans say." "The Germans need not paint the devil," retorted Marcantonio, irrelevantly. "They need only look into the glass." He hated the whole race. "You might as well say that Italians need not go to the theatre," put in Leonora, "because they are all actors." Her husband laughed good-humouredly. "You might as well say," said Batiscombe, "that Englishmen need not keep horses because they are all donkeys. But please do not say it." "No," said Leonora, "we will spare you. But you might say anything in the world of that kind. It has no bearing on my philosophy." "That is true," answered Marcantonio. "I said that philosophers were old and hideous, but not that they were devils, actors, or donkeys. You suggest the idea. I think they are probably all three." "Provided you do not think so after I have become a philosopher," said Leonora, "you may think what you please at present, mon ami." "I think that you are altogether the most charming woman in the world," replied her husband, looking at her affectionately. "Is it permitted to remark that the Marchese is not alone in that opinion?" inquired Batiscombe, politely. "No," said Leonora, demurely, "it is not permitted. And observe that an English husband would not say that kind of thing in public, mon cher." "Perhaps because they do not believe it in private," objected Marcantonio. "More likely for the reason I suggested," observed Batiscombe, "that we are all donkeys." "All?" asked Leonora. "But some of you are authors"-- "It is the same thing," said Batiscombe. "Mon Dieu! there are times"--began Marcantonio. "When you believe it?" inquired Batiscombe, laughing. "Ah, no! you are unkind; but times when I should like to be an Englishman." "I have heard of such people," said Batiscombe, gravely, "but I have never met one. You interest me, Marchese." "You must not be so terribly disloyal," said Leonora. "You know I am English, too,--at least, I was," she added, looking at Marcantonio. "Precisely," said he. "The wife takes the nationality of the husband." "I am not disloyal," answered Batiscombe. "I am very glad to be an Englishman, but I cannot fancy any one else wishing to be one. I should think every one would be perfectly contented with his own country. I cannot imagine wanting to change my nationality any more than my person." "Evidently, you are well satisfied," said Leonora. "Perfectly, thank you, for the present. When I am tired of myself I will retire gracefully--or perhaps gracelessly; but I will retire. I am sure I should never find another personality half as much in sympathy with my ideas." As they followed Leonora from the dining-room out upon the terrace, Batiscombe watched her intently. There was a strength and ease about her carriage that pleased his strong love of life and beauty. He noticed what he had hardly noticed before, that her figure was a marvel of proportion,--no wasp-waisted impossibility of lacing and high shoulders, but strong and lithe, and instinct with elastic motion. He had seen her lately always in some wrap, or lace, or mazy summer garment, whereas this evening she was clad in close silk of a deep-red colour, with the least possible trimming or marring line. The masses of her hair, too, rich in red lights and deep shadows, were coiled close to her noble head, and her dazzling throat just showed at the square cutting of her dress. "People must be wonderfully mistaken," thought Batiscombe. "She is certainly, undeniably a great beauty, in her very peculiar way. Gad! I should think so indeed!" which was the strongest expression of affirmation in Julius Batiscombe's vocabulary. It was no wonder she attracted him. For nearly two months he had been wandering, chiefly in his boat on the salt water, and in that time he had not so much as spoken to a woman. His conversation had been with himself during all that time; and if he had enjoyed intensely the freedom of heart and thought in the intellectual point of view, his strong nature, always drawn to women when not plunged deep in work or adventure, could not withstand the sudden magnetism now thrown upon it. He knew and felt the evil of it, and he struggled as best he could, but each fresh meeting made the chances of escape fewer and the danger more desperate. "Marry," said his best friend to him, when, now and then, in the course of years, they met. "How can I marry?" he would ask. "How can I ever hope to love one woman again as a woman deserves to be loved?" "Then go into a monastery and do no more mischief," returned the friend. She was a woman. "I am no saint," Julius would say, "but I will try to be." And ever he tried and failed again. They sat upon the terrace in the cool of the early night, with their coffee and their cigarettes. There was a lull in their conversation, the result of having talked so much at table. "A propos of contentment," said Marcantonio, "we are very discontented people. We are going to Rome to-morrow, or the next day." Batiscombe was surprised. He paused with his coffee cup in one hand and his cigarette in the other, as though expecting more. "Of course it is only for a day or two," continued Marcantonio. "We shall return immediately." "Seriously, Marcantoine," said Leonora, "how long shall we have to stay?" "Oh--not very long," he said. "I will get the letter. Monsieur Batiscombe will pardon me?" Batiscombe murmured something polite and Marcantonio rose quickly and entered the house. "Are you really going so soon?" Julius asked in English, when they were alone, and Leonora could see the light in his eyes as he spoke. She looked away, over the starlit sea. "I am not quite sure," she said. "I think I ought to go." "I hope you will not," said Batiscombe boldly. She turned and looked at him again, with a little surprise in her face. Marcantonio came back,--it was only a step to his study. "Here it is," said Marcantonio, sitting down. "He says he thinks that a day should do, if I could be with him all the time. You see, he is old and wishes to put his affairs in order." "I cannot see"--began Leonora, but stopped. "Enfin," said Marcantonio, "it might happen to any one, I should think." "Let us hope it may happen to all of us," remarked Batiscombe, for the sake of saying something. When it came to parting, Batiscombe made some polite remark about the pleasure he had enjoyed. "When do you go?" he asked, as he shook hands with Marcantonio. "I think we will go to-morrow night,--n'est-ce-pas, Léonore?" He turned to his wife, as though inquiring. She looked up from her seat in her deep, cane arm-chair. "To-morrow night? Oh yes--one day is like another--let us go then to-morrow night." She spoke indifferently enough, as was natural. Batiscombe supposed she meant to go. He took his leave with many wishes to his hosts for a pleasant journey. Marcantonio lighted a cigarette and stood looking out over the water, by his wife's side. She was quite silent, and fanned herself indolently with a little straw fan decked with ribbons. "Will you really go to-morrow night?" asked Marcantonio at last. He had a way of dwelling on things that wearied Leonora. What possible difference could it make whether they went to-morrow, or the day after? "Because," he continued, "if you will be ready, I will make arrangements." "What arrangements?" asked Leonora languidly. "I will write to the cardinal to say I am coming,--one must do that." "You can telegraph." "What is the use, when there is time for writing? Why should one waste a franc in a telegram?" He had curious little economies of his own. "A franc!" she exclaimed with a little laugh. "And besides," he continued, not heeding her remark, "old gentlemen do not like to receive telegrams. It gives on their nerves." "Enfin," said she, weary of the question, "you can write that you will go to-morrow night, if you like." "And you--will you go then?" he asked. "It depends," she answered. "I may be too tired." Marcantonio knew very well that his wife was not easily fatigued; but he said nothing, and by his silence closed the discussion. She was very changeable, he thought; but then, he loved her very much, and she had a right to be as changeable as she pleased. It was very good of her to have wanted to go at all, and he would not think of pressing her to it. He was a very sensible and unimaginative man, not at all given to thinking about things he could not see, nor troubling himself about them in the least. So he did not press Leonora now, and did not make himself unhappy because she was a little changeable. The one thing he really objected to was her pursuance of what he considered fruitless objects of study; she had not opened a book of philosophy since their marriage, and he was perfectly satisfied. Before he went to bed he wrote a line to his uncle, Cardinal Carantoni, to say that he should arrive on the next day but one. Batiscombe strolled back to the town through the narrow lanes, fenced into right and left by high walls. His thoughts were agreeable enough, and he now and then hummed snatches of tunes with evident satisfaction. What a magnificent creature she was! And clever too,--at least she looked intelligent, and said very cutting things, as though she could say many more if she liked; and she knew about most things that were discussed, and was altogether exactly what her husband called her,--the most charming woman in the world. Besides, he thought he could make a friend of her. How foolish of him, he reflected, to suppose that very afternoon that he must needs fall in love with her! Where was the necessity? He had evidently been mistaken, too, about her relations with her husband. It was clear that they adored each other, could not be separated for a moment, since when he went to Rome on business she must needs accompany him,--in July, too! Would she go? Probably. At all events, he would not call for a week, when they would certainly have come back. This he thought as he walked home. But when he sat in his room at the hotel he remembered what he had thought as he followed her out of the dining-room. He had not thought then as he had an hour later. The magnetism of her glorious vitality had been upon him, and he had envied Marcantonio with all his heart, right sinfully. "Some people call women changeable," he reflected as he blew out his candles; "they are not half so changeable as we are, and some day I will write a book to prove it." CHAPTER VIII. Leonora would not go to Rome when the moment came to decide. She was so sorry, she said, but the weather had grown suddenly hotter and she really did not feel as though it were possible. She tried to make up for it to Marcantonio by being all that day a very model of devotion and tenderness. She affected a practical mood, and listened with attention while he explained to her the reasons for his going. She insisted on seeing herself that he had a small package of sandwiches, and a bottle of wine, and plenty of cigarettes to last him through the night; and when he finally drove away, she would have driven with him to Castellamare, but that she must have come back over the lonely road alone. To tell the truth, she was a little ashamed of herself; she had been so anxious to accompany him, and now she feared he might be disappointed. Marcantonio saw it all, and was grateful and affectionate, though he begged her not to take so much trouble. "En vérité, mon ange," he said more than once, "I might be sailing for Peru, you give yourself so much thought." But she busied herself none the less, going about with a queer little air of resignation that sat strangely on her face. He took an affectionate leave of her. "I will not receive any one, if any one calls," she said, as he was going. He looked at her in some surprise. "But why in the world?" he asked. "Who should call particularly? Not even Monsieur Batiscombe,--he thinks you will go with me." Leonora felt the least faint blush mount to her cheeks, but it was dark in the hall of the villa, though it was only just dusk, and Marcantonio could not see. "Oh, not him," said Leonora. "Only I want to be alone when you are not here." For a moment again she wished she were going. "Enfin, my dear," he answered; "do as you prefer; it is very amiable--very gentil--of you. Adieu, chérie!" and he got into the carriage and rolled away. But her words lay in his memory and would not be forgotten. Why should she not want to see any one? Was there any one? Why had she been so very anxious to accompany him, begging so hard that he would not leave her? After all, the only person she could be afraid of was Batiscombe. He wondered for one moment whether there had ever been anything between them; he could remember to have seen them together more than once in the winter, at balls. But then, they always met with such perfect frankness. He had not watched them, to be sure, but he must have noticed anything out of the way,--bah! it was ridiculous. Not that he wanted Batiscombe as an intimate, for the man was certainly called dangerous. He had known him for years, and had of course heard some of the stories about him,--but then, there are stories about every one, and Batiscombe had evidently become very serious since he had got himself a reputation. Besides, to see him a little, as they did in Sorrento, it could do no harm; it meant nothing, and he would think no more about it. He was not going to begin life with the ridiculous whims of a jealous husband, when he had married such an angel as Leonora--not he! Besides, Batiscombe--of all people! If it had been his sister Diana, it would have been different. Everybody knew that poor Batiscombe had loved her ten years ago, when he was as poor as Job, and had nothing but a fair position in society. But Marcantonio had been away then on his travels, being just nineteen, and having been sent out into the world to learn French and spend a little money on his own account. Strange that he should almost have forgotten it! Not that it mattered in the least. The man had loved his sister to distraction, but had soon recognised the impossibility of such a match, and had gone away to make his fortune. He had come to see Madame de Charleroi now and then of late; Marcantonio knew that, but it was perfectly natural that they should be the best of friends after so many years. How they had first met, or what had passed between them, Marcantonio did not know, and never troubled himself to ask; perhaps he feared lest it should pain his sister to speak of it. But the whole story invested Batiscombe with a sort of air of safety as regarded Leonora. He had certainly behaved well about Diana, and nobody denied it. Nevertheless, it was best that he should not see Diana too often, especially if he intended to live in Rome, now that he had made his fortune. But Leonora--he might call if he pleased, and amuse her in the dull summer days. Carantoni would not begin life by playing the jealous husband. It was certainly odd, though, that he should have thought so little about that old story. The fact was, he had never seen so much of Batiscombe in his life as during the last week or ten days. Meanwhile, he rolled along the road to Castellamare, and, after a great deal of shifting, found himself in the night train from Naples for Rome. He ate his sandwiches and thought affectionately of his wife as he did so; and then he lay down and slept the sleep of the just until morning. When he reached the Palazzo Carantoni, the first piece of news he received was that Madame de Charleroi was in the house, having arrived the previous day alone,--that is to say, with her courier and her maid. The old servant volunteered the information that the vicomtesse was going to stay a week, or thereabouts, and had sent a note to the house of his Eminence, Cardinal Carantoni, the night before. Marcantonio gave instructions that she should be informed of his arrival, and that he would come and see her later in the morning, and he retired to dress and refresh himself. He hated family councils, and he saw himself condemned to one, for there was no doubt of the cardinal's intention, since Madame de Charleroi had come, and had communicated with him. The cardinal was old, and felt the need of settling his affairs and of talking them over with his only near relations,--his nephew and his niece. For he was rich, and had money to leave. Marcantonio and his sister greeted each other affectionately, for they were always glad to be together, and their meeting seemed to have been unexpected. His Eminence had sent for each separately, and they had arrived within twenty-four hours of each other,--Diana from Pegli and Marcantonio from Sorrento. Of course, they talked of trivial matters, for now that Diana had accepted the marriage there was nothing more to be said about it. At twelve o'clock they drove to the cardinal's house, through the hot, glaring streets of Rome, fringed with the red and white awnings of the shops. The carriage rolled under the dark porch of the palace, and the pair mounted the cool stairway and were soon ushered through a succession of dusky halls and swinging red baize doors to their uncle's study,--a curious, old-fashioned room in an inner angle of the building. The blinds were drawn, and the occasional chirp of the lazy little birds came up from the acacia trees in the courtyard. The room was carpetless, with bright, smooth, red tiles; in the middle was a huge writing table, covered with papers and books; on one end of it stood a large black crucifix with a bronze Christ, and there was an enormous inkstand of glass and brown wood. Around the walls were mahogany bookcases, ornamented with light brass-work in the style of the first empire, and filled with books and pamphlets. The room was cool and dark and high, and as the brother and sister entered, their steps clicked sharply on the clean, hard tiles. His Eminence sat in an arm-chair at the writing table, clad in a loose, purple gown, and wearing a minute scarlet skull cap. He looked, indeed, as though his life were nearly spent; for, though his dark eyes shone bright and penetrating from under the heavy brows, his cheeks were thin and sunken, of the hue of wax, and his white hands were transparent and discoloured between the knuckles. Marcantonio and Diana touched the great sapphire on his finger with their lips, and then the old man laid his hand on the head of each. They were his brother's children, and he loved them dearly, after his crabbed old fashion; for all the Carantoni are people of heart and kindness. "My dear children," he began, when they were seated by his side on straight-backed chairs that Marcantonio brought up to the table,--"my dear children, I am growing very old and infirm, and I wanted to see you here together before I leave you all." A kind smile played fitfully over the waxen features, like the memory of life that haunts a plaster mask. Diana laid her fingers gently on his arm, and Marcantonio broke out into solicitous protestations. His uncle was not yet sixty,--he had many years of life,--this was a passing indisposition, a black humour, a melancholy. One should never expect to live less than seventy years at the very least, he said, and that would not be reached for a long time. "Ah! no, dear uncle," he concluded, "you will surely live to see my sons growing up to be men, and to marry Diana's little girls!" The cardinal shook his head. That was not the way of it, he said. He might die any day now, he said, in his meek voice; and it really sounded as though he might, so that Donna Diana felt her eyes growing dim and her heart big. She took one of the old man's thin hands in both of hers, and he with the other pushed back the rich, heavy hair and smoothed it tenderly. A marvellous picture in sooth they made,--the dying prelate in his purple and scarlet, and the great unspeakable freshness and life of the fair woman. Marcantonio passed his hand over his eyes and sighed as he sat watching them. Then his Eminence explained to the two what his chief plan was in calling them to him now. He had made a deed, he said, which he wished them both to understand. There were certain estates which he had inherited from his mother,--their grandmother,--as being the second son. These he earnestly desired to see incorporated in the property of the Carantoni family. To that end he had made an act of gift, transferring the lands to Marcantonio at once, on the condition that the cardinal should continue to receive a certain income from them during his life. This he insisted upon doing, as he feared lest after his death the lands should be sold by the executors in order to divide the proceeds between the two heirs. In order to make the present arrangement a fair one, however, he at the same time gave to his niece Diana de Charleroi a sum of money from his personal estate which was equal to the value of the lands given to Marcantonio. Whatever they found after his death could then be divided and distributed,--the lands being safe in the male line; they might find something left after all. Diana protested; she was very glad that the lands should be settled, but she did not wish to accept a large sum of money in that way. In fact, she begged her uncle to reconsider the matter. As for Marcantonio, he looked grave and wished himself well out of it. He was practically to be administrator of his uncle's property during the remainder of the latter's lifetime, and he did not like it. However, as the arrangement was for the ultimate good of his children, and as he had not Diana's excuse for refusing on the ground of not wishing to take a gift,--since it hardly was one,--there was nothing for him to do but to accept the situation with a good grace. "You do not deserve anything at all, my boy," said the cardinal, half kindly, half in earnest, "because you married a heretic. But as I helped you to obtain the permission, I must do something for you." "But I," said Diana,--"I cannot take all this. It is not fair to Marcantonio, for I ought to pay you the income of it, just as he is to do." "Nonsense, figlia mia," said the old man. "You need money more than he does or ever will, with that husband of yours, who is always going from one court to another on his nonsensical diplomatic errands. Ah! my children, diplomacy is not what it used to be! Altri tempi--altri tempi!" The end of it was that the two young people agreed to their uncle's provisions, and he insisted on their hearing and understanding all the papers, to which end he sent for his secretary, a wizened little Roman with grey hair and bright eyes and a fondness for snuff; and the secretary read on for two good hours. The old man from time to time nodded his head to Marcantonio or to Diana, as the one or the other was referred to in the documents, and waved his pale thin hand in appreciation of the completeness and simplicity of his arrangements. At last the various deeds were signed, and a notary, whom the secretary had provided, was called in from the antechamber where he had waited, and attested the signatures and the general legality of the proceedings. The cardinal was satisfied, and leaned back in his chair. He was one of those old-fashioned noblemen who still believe in the divine right of primogeniture and in the respectability of land as a possession. With the modern laws concerning the division of estates,--the keen Napoleonic knives that cut the strings of succession at every knot,--these conservative aristocrats have infinite trouble; but they generally manage to evade the spirit of the law, and to conform as little to the letter of it as they can. "Cara mia, one must submit," said Marcantonio to his sister, when they were alone together. "Old men have strange fancies, and he has always been good to us. What he said about my marriage was quite true. If he had not helped me, I should have made a fiasco of it,--or done something rash." "I suppose so," said Diana, thoughtfully. "By the bye, are you comfortable at Sorrento? How is Leonora?" She was rather ashamed of not having asked the question before, but Marcantonio was good-natured, and was glad that she had not said anything hard. And, of course, the moment she mentioned his wife, he was delighted at the chance to speak of what was nearest to his heart. "Leonora is well and more than well," he answered. "Ah, she is an angel! She has not read any philosophy since we married,--imagine! And she was crazy to come with me to Rome--in this heat!--because she did not wish to stay in Sorrento alone without me." "Why did you not let her come, then?" asked Donna Diana. "She was tired," he said, "and as I told her how fatiguing it was, she made up her mind to stay. I shall go back to-morrow, I suppose. I wish I could go to-night." "So soon?" asked Diana. "But I have seen nothing of you, dear boy!" "Why not come with me to Sorrento? Do come,--there is room for us all, and for all your servants into the bargain, if you like to bring them." Marcantonio was charmed with his idea; it seemed the most natural thing in the world. Besides, he had longed for an opportunity of bringing Diana and Leonora together. He was quite sure they would become bosom friends. Diana hung back, however, and was less enthusiastic. "I do not see how I could manage it," she said. "I have so many things to do, and I must go back to Pegli, before long." Marcantonio sat down beside her and took her hand affectionately. "Cara Diana," he said coaxingly, "will you not come and make friends with Leonora? It would be so kind of you, and she would feel it so much!" Madame de Charleroi hesitated; not so much on account of her reluctance to stay with Leonora as because she knew that Julius Batiscombe was somewhere in the neighbourhood of Naples. She avoided him always, though she was his best and most faithful friend; for though she had loved him once, there was not a trace of that left in her heart, and yet she knew well enough that he loved her still. Her high and noble nature could not understand so earthly a man as he; she could not conceive how it was that through all his many affairs he still looked on her as the one woman in the world; but nevertheless she knew that it was so, and she therefore avoided him, not wishing to fan a hopeless passion. He came to see her sometimes, and she was very kind to him, giving him the best of advice, but she never encouraged him to come. So she was not anxious to meet him. But the question of her relations with her brother in the future seemed to make it now desirable that she should go with him and "make friends" with his wife, as he expressed it. "Well," she said at last, "I will go with you, and do what you wish." Marcantonio was very grateful. He felt that his young wife must have friends--young wives have so few--and he could desire no better friend for her than his sister, the model of all goodness, gentleness, and honour. "Dearest sister," he said, "you are so good! And if you have much to do here, I can put off going for a day, you know. You can do your little errands in a day, can you not?" "I might, perhaps," said she; "but must you not take some steps about all this land of yours--or of our uncle's? Do you realise what a position you have assumed, my dear boy? From this day you are absolutely master of the estate, if you like,--but you are also absolutely responsible for the payment of the income. You positively must see the lawyers about it, and you may as well see them at once." "It is not the whole income of the place that he takes," remarked Marcantonio. "That makes no difference," said Diana. "If you were to have it all, it would be the same. You are bound to take care of it. Your own lawyer knows nothing about this transaction. You may not be in Rome again for three months. Make some provision for your absence. Who is to collect your rents, in the first place?" "I suppose somebody would," said Marcantonio laughing. "But you have a much better head for business than I, Diana mia. Perhaps you are right." "You manage things very well, caro mio, so long as they are under your hand. But you hate to go and look after business when you want to be doing something else." "After all," he argued, "when a man is just married"-- "He ought to be specially careful of his affairs, for his children's sake," interrupted Donna Diana with remarkable good sense. She wanted a day or two in Rome, and she thought he was really remiss in his management. She had rather a contempt for a man who cast everything to the winds in order to be one more day with his wife. She did not believe that his wife would have done as much for him. The end of it was that he agreed to stay a little longer, at least one day more than he had at first proposed; and he wrote an affectionate letter to Leonora, half loving, half playful, explaining his position, and telling her of his sister's coming, that she might be ready to receive her. He added that he hoped to see them very affectionate and intimate, for that Diana was the best friend his wife could have. If Batiscombe had wanted to make a friendship between two women he would not have gone about it in that way. Marcantonio was very young and inexperienced, though he was also very good and honest. His sister saw both sides of his character and understood them. Leonora saw, but only understood the honesty of him. His inexperience she supposed to be a sort of paternal, philistine, prosaic, humdrum capacity for harping on unimportant things, and she already felt the most distinct aversion for that phase of his nature. Diana and Marcantonio went down by the night train, having stayed the better half of a week in Rome. Marcantonio sent a telegram to Leonora in the afternoon, to say that they would come. They had a compartment to themselves, and as they sat with the windows all open, rushing along through the quiet night, they fell into conversation about Sorrento. Madame de Charleroi had taken off her hat, and the breeze fanned the smooth masses of her hair into rough gold under the light of the lamp, like the ripple on the sea at sunset. She was a little tired with the many doings that had occupied her in Rome, and her face was pale as she leaned back in the corner. Her brother looked at her as he spoke. 'Of course,' he thought, 'there was never any one so beautiful as Diana.' What he said was different. "You should see Leonora; she is a perfect miracle,--more beautiful every day. And though she has been on the water several times, she is not the least sunburnt." "Have you sailed much?" inquired Diana. "A good deal. I bought Leonora a very good boat in Naples, and had it fitted. It is so pretty. And before it came Monsieur Batiscombe took us to Castellamare." "Ah!" ejaculated Diana half interrogatively. "Yes," answered Marcantonio. "He was very amiable, and then we had him to dinner. You know him, Diana?" he asked, as one often asks questions of which one knows the answer. He did not remember having ever mentioned Batiscombe to her, but his solitary journey to Rome a week earlier had set him thinking, in a lazy fashion, and he wondered whether his sister ever thought of the man after all these years. "Oh yes," answered Madame de Charleroi. "I have known Batiscombe a long time,--long before he was famous." "Yes," said her brother, "I remember to have heard that he was once so bold as to want you to marry him. Imagine to yourself a little! The wife of an author." There was nothing ill-natured in what Marcantonio said. In the prejudice of his ancient name he was simply unable to imagine such a match. Diana turned her grey eyes full upon him. "My dear boy, do not say such absurd things. We are not in the age of Colonna and Orsini any more. I came very near to marrying Julius Batiscombe, in spite of your fifty titles, my dear brother." Diana was a loyal woman, from the outer surface that the world saw, down to the very core and holy of holies of her noble soul. She would not let her brother believe that, if she had chosen it, she would have feared to marry a poor literary hack. "Do you mean to say, Diana, that you loved him?" asked Marcantonio in great surprise. "Even you must not ask me questions like that," said Diana, a little coldly. "But this I will tell you,--it was not for any consideration of birth, nor out of any regard of our dear father's anger, that I did not marry Batiscombe. Once I was very near it. We are very good friends now." She turned a little in her seat and drew the blue woollen curtain across the window to shield her from the draught. "You do not mind meeting him?" asked Marcantonio, rather doubtfully. To tell the truth he feared he had committed a mortal error, and was taking his sister into the jaws of danger and unhappiness. He had never suspected that she had entertained any idea of marrying Batiscombe. Julius was a very agreeable man, very amiable, as Marcantonio would have said. What a fearful thing if Diana were to take a fancy to him! Loyal as she was to Charleroi, she did not care a straw for him,--her brother knew it very well. Italian brothers are very watchful and Argus-eyed about their sisters. "Why should I mind?" asked Diana, looking at him again. "We are very good friends. He comes to see me in Rome, every now and then. I do not object in the least, and he is really very agreeable." 'Worse and worse!' thought Marcantonio. 'She wants to meet him and is glad of the chance. But then, she is so good--what harm can it do?' Between his idea that he ought to keep them apart, and his knowledge of his sister's upright character, Marcantonio was in a sad quandary. It always took him some time to grasp new situations,--and the idea that Diana had ever loved Batiscombe was utterly new to him. True, she had not said it; she had only said that she had been near to marrying him. CHAPTER IX. When Leonora was alone, she resolved to have a good fit of thinking. Accordingly, the next morning after Marcantonio's departure she sat by herself in a cool room, surrounded with books and dainty writing materials,--thinking. The little white cat that her husband had procured, because she liked animals, climbed to the back of her chair and made passes at her head with its small, soft paws, seeming to delight in touching her. She put up her hand and pulled the little creature down to her lap. "Pussy," said she, talking English to it, "were you ever in love?" She kissed it softly and held it up to her fair cheek. "I wonder what it is like," she said to herself. "I wonder whether being in love is always like this! People who love always say they would die for each other. I am not sure whether I would die for Marcantonio. He is very good. Yes--of course--one's husband! Any woman would die for her husband. And yet--if the knife were very sharp and cold,--or the poison very dreadful to take,--I am not sure. Perhaps there might be some other way out of it, and one would not have to die after all." Poor Leonora, she made herself think she loved him, and then she applied all kinds of tests to her love which it would not bear, being but a very thin and pitiful little ghost of a love. "I really believe," she said at last, kissing the cat and half closing her eyes, "that there is not anything much in anything after all. Things are not much more real than the shadows in the cave that Plato talks about. Oh dear me! And then to have people think that one is clever! They have such an absurd idea about it,--Marcantonio, I mean. Of course it is the nicest thing in the world to be loved more than one deserves,--but, on the other hand, it is just as terrible a bore to have other people forever thinking you really worth more than you are. And then, to have him think that my little bit of knowledge is dangerous! As if so very little could help or hurt any one! I must know a great deal more before it can do me any good. I think I will read something hard to-day,--how pleasant it is to be alone!" The last reflection came quite naturally, and she did not even pause and think about it, the sudden interest she anticipated in reading having chased away the dutifully affectionate ideas she made it her business to build up concerning her husband. With characteristic quickness of determination she rose, got herself a volume of Hegel's "Æsthetics," and buried her whole mind in the question of subjective and objective art. To a woman--or a man either--who has not what is called an interest in life, all manner of things temporarily take the place which should be occupied by the leading, absorbing thought. The things that are but relaxations, amusements, or even unimportant bits of usefulness to the thoroughly busy woman, to a woman like Leonora become in turn objects of intense study and care, only to be cast aside and forgotten when the next day brings in a new era of speculation, weariness, or excitement. It is good to read many kinds of books, it is good to do many pleasant and agreeable things, but it is emphatically not good to think many kinds of thoughts. If a woman must change her opinions, it is well that the change should be gradual and the result of careful study and examination, instead of taking place according to the weather, the cut of a gown, or the conversation of a stray caller. Men change their minds as completely as women, but not so often, and above all not so quickly. To be unchangeable is the quality of the idiot; to change too easily belongs to children and lunatics; and the happy faculty of a sensible judgment permitting a change for the better and forbidding a change for the worse is the high privilege of the comparatively small class of humanity who are neither fools nor madmen. With Leonora to live was to change, and to change often. Brimming over and exulting in strength of physical life, neither her mind nor her nerves could keep pace with her vitality, and the result was the inevitable one. After great excitement there was morbid reaction, and in the state of rest there was a restless, insatiable craving for motion. A strong man, ruthlessly ruling her by sheer superiority of massive power, would have brought out all that was best in her, and would have driven her to her very best weapons for defence. But her husband was quite another sort of person. His love for her was by far the best thing about him; save for that, he was not an interesting man. He was young and very tactless, though full of good impulses and gentle courtesy to her and to every one. But he wearied her with useless details, and made her doubt whether his affectionate manner meant love or mere good breeding. He had an entire incapacity for making any one believe that he was capable of great things. His sister knew how real was his goodness of heart and how generous he could be, and she knew also how much he loved his wife. But she had no power to put into him the passionate, burning romance which was precisely what Leonora most longed for; and Diana did not believe that such a woman as Leonora would long be satisfied with such a husband as Marcantonio. Meanwhile the day wore on, and she read seriously, and had her midday breakfast in solitude and tried to read again. But by and by she nodded over her book and fell asleep in the humming heat of the summer's afternoon. As she slept she dreamed of a strong, black-browed man who kneeled there beside her in her own house, and who presently took her in his arms and bore her fast down the dark stairs and passages through the rocks to the sea, where a boat lay; and as he carried her his eyes gleamed like burning stars, and she felt that her own grew big and bright. And suddenly he would have leapt into the boat with her, but he stumbled and fell, and she heard the deep roar of the waters in her ears as they sank together. She woke with a start. The white cat had climbed up and lay on her shoulder, purring with all its might. That was evidently where the sound of the sea came from. She laughed, a little startled at the dream and amused at its cause. It had been so strange--so--so wicked. She was shocked. How could her thoughts, of themselves unaided, have gone to such a subject! Besides, it was not the first time. She had dreamed of Julius Batiscombe before, and always of that strange look in his eyes, gleaming wildly with something she could not understand. "It is dreadful!" she exclaimed, rising and going to the window. She had slept long, for the sun was low, and when she looked at her watch it was six o'clock. She reflected that she had not been out all day, and that she wanted a walk. She wrapped something thin and dark over her white summer dress and left the house. The white kitten followed her to the door, mewing sorrowfully, and wistfully waving its little tail. She walked slowly down the road musing on the odd thing she had dreamed, and seeking in her mind for the reason and cause of it, finding fault with herself for being able to dream such things. It is one thing to be able to call up images of ideal men, and to tell the truth she strove even against that; but it is quite another matter to find one particular man so much in your thoughts that you dream of his running away with you. She looked up, and a little church was before her, the door being open. She hesitated a moment; she had come out to walk, but it would be so pleasant to kneel in the cool, quiet place, in the half lights and deep shadows; to think, and think, and to pray sweet wordless heart-prayers, half mystic, half religious; to pour out the confessions of her soul's suffering, and to find, even for a brief space, that trust in something unseen, which her troubled spirit could not give to earthly wisdom or earthly love. She raised the curtain and entered. It was a simple little church, with a floor of green and white tiles, whereon stood rows of green benches and a few straw chairs. The light was high, and the sun did not penetrate into the building. Everything was very clean and cool. Over the altar was a great picture, neither bad nor good, of a monk saint, dark in colour and inoffensive in composition; there were two or three small chapels at the sides, and the plain white arch of the roof was supported by two rows of square masonry pillars. When Leonora entered she saw that she was alone, and the anticipated pleasure of religious exaltation was heightened by the sensation of solitude. She stood one moment, and then, being sure that no one saw her, she touched with her fingers the holy water in the basin by the door and made the sign of the cross, bending her knee slightly towards the altar. Had there been any one in the church she would perhaps not have done so; but being alone she loved to experience the forms of a religion in which she did not seriously believe, but in which she trusted far more than she knew. She went forward, took a straw chair, turned it round and kneeled on the tiles, burying her face in her hands. At first, as she knelt there, she trembled with a strange emotion that she loved,--a sort of wave of contrition, of faith, of penitence, and of uncertainty, half painful and yet wholly delicious, that seemed to her the sweetest and most salutary sensation in the world. It was just painful enough to make the pleasure of it keener and rarer. She could not have described it, but she loved it and sought it, when she was in the humour. Gradually her troubles, real and fancied, would answer to her command, and array themselves in rank and file for her inspection; the domestic difficulties, small and snappish little knots of mosquito-like annoyance, biting tiny bites to right and left, and with little stings stinging their way to notice in the foreground; then the troubles of the heart, the temptations of a wild, unspoken and ideal love, streaming by her in the sweep of tempest and storm, stretching out sweet faces and fierce hands to take her with them, and to bear her away from hope of salvation or thought of heaven to the strange unknown space beyond; then again the shapeless and awful host of her fancied philosophies, now towering in fearful strength and menace to the sky, and rending and tearing each other to empty nothing and howling hollowness, now falling down to earth in miserable shapes and slinking insignificantly away; but last and worst of all, there was a deep dark shadow, the trouble of her heart, the certainty that she had made the great mistake and done the irretrievable sin against truth, that she had married a man she could never love, but whom--God forbid the thought!--whom she might hate for the very lack he had of anything that could deserve hating. And then all the pleasure of her exultation was gone; and the dull, uncertain pain, that would not take shape because it had no remedy, filled all her soul and mind and body; she had never felt it as she felt it to-day, but she knew that each time she came to the church to let her heart talk to her in the silence, this same pain had come, sooner or later, and that each time it was stronger and more real. She bent low under its weight, and the tears gathered and fell upon her hands and on the rough straw chair. * * * * * Julius Batiscombe had passed the day after the dinner in his boat, sailing far out to sea in the early morning, among the crested waves and the dancing sunbeams, smelling the salt smell gladly, and enjoying the sharp, cool spray that flew up over the bows. And at noon, when the west wind sprang up, he went about and ran homewards over the rolling water. All that day he was thinking of Leonora, but he was persuading himself that he could and would make her his friend, and that the sudden attraction he had felt for her was nothing but a little natural sympathy of minds, striving to assert itself. He found these thoughts so agreeable and edifying that he determined to repeat the experience on the following day, and test their reality by their durability. But somehow the hours seemed longer, and before the wind turned, as it does every day in summer on the southern coast, he put the helm down, furled sail, and bade his men pull home. He was discontented, and, having no one but himself to consult, he thought he would try something else. Once in his room at the hotel he tried to sleep, but he could not; he tried to read, but everything disgusted him; he tried to write, and wrote nonsense. At six o'clock he went out for a walk. It was not unnatural, perhaps, that he should take the road toward Leonora's villa, between the high walls of the narrow lanes, for it was still hot, and the dust lay thick in the road. Besides, he knew that Leonora was away, and that consequently there would not be the temptation to call upon her. For in spite of his visions of friendship he felt an instinctive conviction that he ought not to see her. Consequently, as he strolled along the road, smoking a cigarette and studying the extremely varied types of the Sorrento beggar, he was conscious of a comforting assurance that he was not in mischief. At the end of half an hour he was passing the gate of the Carantoni villa. He stopped a moment to look at the little vision of flowers and orange-trees that gleamed so pleasantly through the iron rails, in contrast to the dead monotony of stone walls in the lane. A servant was coming toward the gate, and seeing Batiscombe standing there, opened it wide and took off his hat. Batiscombe carelessly asked if the Signora Marchesa were at home, expecting to be told that she was gone to Rome. "No, Signore," returned the man; "the Signora Marchesa is this minute gone out, it may be a quarter of an hour. Your excellency"--everybody is an excellency in the south--"will probably find her in the little church along the road, where she often goes." The man bowed, and Batiscombe turned on his heel, not wishing to talk with him. But he turned toward the church. He walked very slowly, as though in hopes that Leonora would meet him as she came home; and when he came to the door he stopped, as she had done, hesitated, and went in. He trod softly, as Marcantonio had more than once observed, and he did not disturb the silence of the place. He stood still, holding his breath, and knowing that he ought not to stay, but unable for his very life to move. His overhanging brow bent as he watched her, and a curious look crossed his bronzed face, as though he were pained, but felt both sympathy and pity for the kneeling woman. The dead silence, the cold light from above, the half-prostrate figure of Leonora clad in white with the dark lace thing just falling from her splendid hair,--it all seemed like a strange scene in a play, and Julius looked for the sake of looking, while his heart felt something deeper than the artistic impression. Leonora was bending low upon the seat of the straw chair, the bitter tears trickling down through her white fingers, and her whole life within her convulsed in the consciousness of sorrow. It had so long been vague--this sad knowledge of an evil ever present, and yet ever eluding her attempts to see it and understand it. But now it had come upon her suddenly. After two months of wedded life she knew that she had made a mistake beyond all repairing. She had tried hard to love Marcantonio, she had tried hard to believe that she loved him, but the deception could not last in her, and yet it seemed death to lose it. Sometimes she could think almost indifferently of her marriage, talking to herself, and asking questions of which she knew the answer, but to which she hoped to find another. Did she love him? she would ask at such moments; and she would answer that she thought so, well knowing that whatever real love might be, it was not what she felt for him. But to-day it seemed as though the veil were torn and she saw the dreadful truth. He had left her for a day or two, and she had said it was so pleasant to be alone. That was not love--ah, no! And that dreadful dream, too, that haunted her still; it kept returning, with its sinful face, the face of Julius Batiscombe. The whole unfaithfulness of herself to herself rushed upon her overwhelmingly, relentlessly, till she could not bear it, but bowed herself and sobbed aloud before the altar. There was a slight noise behind her, and with an effort she controlled herself, rose till she kneeled upright and merely bent her head upon her hands, drawing the back of the chair towards her in the act. She had been disturbed, and the sense of annoyance overmastered the expression of her trouble for a moment. Gradually the consciousness of a presence took possession of her, and she knew that some one was watching her; she grew uneasy, tried to repeat a prayer mechanically for the sake of thinking of something definite, failed, touched her hair half surreptitiously with one hand, and finally rose from her knees. As she turned to leave the church she met Julius Batiscombe's eyes, and she started perceptibly. It was so precisely the expression she had seen in her dream, little more than an hour since, that she was fairly frightened, and would have turned and fled had there been any other way out. But when she looked again she saw something that reassured her. There was that which attracted, as well as that which frightened her. She had the length of the church to walk, and she made up her mind that she would not show that she was surprised, and would behave as though nothing had happened. For she was a strong woman in such ways, and could rely upon herself if not taken too much off her guard. Meanwhile Batiscombe looked on the ground; for he was often conscious of the too great boldness of his sight, and knew that it must be disagreeable to her. So he moved a step or two, hat in hand, waiting for Leonora to pass him, and prepared to follow if she showed any sign of wishing it. He feared, however, that he had offended her by his inopportune appearance, and he was prepared for a repulse. Nevertheless, after the first start was over, she came boldly towards him, smiling rather sadly and looking wonderfully beautiful; for the tears only made her eyes softer and deeper, leaving a gentle shadow in them, just as the sea is bluer and pleasanter in its blueness beneath the shade of an overhanging cliff. She smiled, and passing out half looked at him again as he lifted the green curtain for her. He smiled again, gravely, and followed her. When they were on the steps, he bowed low again. "How do you do, Mr. Batiscombe?" she said, quite naturally, holding out her hand to him. But in the open air, his hand touching hers, she could not help blushing a little when she thought of that dream an hour ago. "You did not go to Rome, after all?" he said, as they began to walk along the lane. "No," she answered, "it was too hot. Do you often go to the little church, Mr. Batiscombe? It is so nice and quiet there, is it not?" She was determined to put a bold face on the matter. Besides, he perhaps had not heard those sobs,--he had only seen her kneeling, perhaps, and had not understood that she was crying. But Julius had seen all and heard all, and was pondering deep in his heart the causes which could make her unhappy, seeing she was young and, in his opinion, beautiful,--married, as society said, to the man she loved, and not lacking the goods of this world, while praying ardently for those of the next. "I have sometimes looked in," answered Batiscombe. "It was a chance that took me there to-day." "Yes?" "Yes "--he glanced down sidelong at her face--"that is to say--not altogether." She was silent, walking serenely by his side. "No, not altogether," he continued, determining suddenly on his course. "The fact is, I was walking by your place, and a servant who was just coming out told me you were in church, and then I went in. I suppose I ought not to have done it," he added with a little laugh; "I am very sorry I disturbed you. Pray forgive me." "Not at all,--churches are free for every one. But why do you laugh?" "At my own stupidity," he answered. "I might have known that when you go to church at odd times you go to be alone, and not to have wandering callers sent there after you." "What makes you think that?" she asked, curious to know how much he had noticed. She argued that if he had heard her crying he would think the question natural, whereas, if he had not, he would not suspect anything from it. "Because you acted as though you thought you were alone," he said seriously. "I did think so," she said, blushing faintly. "Do you know? I was quite startled when I saw you there." "I saw you were," he answered, still very gravely, "and I am very sorry." "Do you remember what I said to you at Castellamare, Mr. Batiscombe?" "Yes; you said that life was not all roses, and you said it in earnest." "Yes," said Leonora. "You see I did. I am not always in earnest." "Is it rude to ask how one distinguishes between your excellency in earnest and your excellency in fun?" inquired Batiscombe, glad enough to turn the conversation to a jest, for he judged Leonora to be rather imprudent. Indeed, he wondered how she could have said what she had, unless it were from a wish to face out the situation. "You ought to be able to see," she answered, laughing lightly, "but when you cannot, perhaps I will tell you." "Pray do," said he. "I am very stupid about such things,--but then, I am always in earnest, even when I want to be funny. Perhaps you might think me most diverting when I am most in earnest." "No," said Leonora, "I should not think that. I should think you might be very unpleasant when you are in earnest--at least, from the things you write." "That is a doubtful compliment," remarked Julius, smiling. "Is it? I cannot imagine anything more delightful than having the power to be as unpleasant as you want to be." "Is there anything I can do for you, Marchesa? I should be most happy, I am sure,--short of poisoning your enemies, as you suggested the other day." "You ought not to draw the line," she said with a laugh. "Oh, very well. I will do the poisoning too, if you wish it." "Of course. What is the use of having friends if you cannot rely on them to do anything you want?" "If I could be one of your friends," he said gravely, "I am sure I would not 'draw any line,' as you call it." "With what seriousness you say that!" she exclaimed, very much amused. She was nervous from the knowledge that he had found her out in the church, and she laughed at anything rather recklessly. But Batiscombe had turned grave again. "Would you rather that one should ask such a privilege in jest?" he asked. "No indeed," said she, a little frightened at the point to which she had brought him. "Then I ask it very much in earnest," he answered. "To be my friend?" she asked, looking straight before her. "Yes, to be your friend," said he, watching her closely. "Really? In earnest?" "Really--in earnest," he answered. She stopped suddenly in the road. "I accept," she said, frankly holding out her hand. "I am very proud," he said quietly. He took off his hat and touched her fingers with his lips. Then they walked on without a word for some minutes. "What a strange thing life is!" exclaimed Leonora, at last. "Yes, it is very strange," he answered. "Here are we two, on the smallest provocation, swearing eternal friendship on the high road, as though we were going to storm a citadel, or head an Arctic expedition. But I am really very glad, and very grateful." Somehow the reflection did not sound light or flippant; and to tell the truth, Leonora was thinking precisely the same thing, wondering inwardly how she could possibly have gone to such a length with a mere acquaintance. But the land of friendship was an untried territory for Leonora, and she seemed to find in the idea a sudden rest from a sense of danger. A friend could never be a lover,--she knew that! This was the meaning of the dream. But she answered quietly enough. "If things are real at all," she said, "they are as real at one time as at another." "Yes," answered Batiscombe. "Malakoff or Sorrento, it is all the same." CHAPTER X. "You will come in?" said Leonora when they reached the gate. "Thanks; I should like to very much," answered Batiscombe, and he followed her through the gate into the garden. They passed into the house, and Leonora received from the servant a telegram which had come when she was out. It was the one Marcantonio had dispatched when he had decided to stay a few days in Rome and to bring his sister to Sorrento. Leonora opened it quickly and glanced over the message. It was very evident from her expression that she was annoyed and somewhat surprised. Batiscombe looked away. "It is too bad!" she exclaimed; her companion examined the handle of his stick, as though there were something wrong with it. He was not curious, and he had very good manners. Leonora folded the dispatch and put it away. "Let us go out again," she said, "it is so close indoors." Batiscombe followed her in silence, obediently. They sat down among the orange-trees on an old stone bench. The air was still and very warm, and the lizards were taking their last peep at the sun wherever they could, climbing up the trunks of the trees and the wall of the house to catch a glimpse of him before he set. "My husband telegraphs that he will be away some time," said Leonora after a minute. "He has business that keeps him, and his sister is in Rome." "You must be very lonely here," remarked Batiscombe in answer. "Do you know Madame de Charleroi?" asked Leonora, taking no notice of the observation. "Yes," said Batiscombe, "I know her. Somebody told me she was in Pegli." "So she was. But she had to come to Rome on business, and now my husband is going to bring her here." "Indeed?" exclaimed Batiscombe. "To pass the summer?" "Oh no; only for a week, I suppose. Do you know? I am rather glad; I hardly know her at all, and she seems so hard to know." "Hard to know?" repeated Julius. "Perhaps she is. It is always hard to know very charming women." "Is it?" asked Leonora, smiling at the frankness of the remark; it seemed to her that he had found it easy enough to swear friendship with her half an hour ago. "Is it? Is she such a very charming woman?" "Yes, indeed," he answered. "Yes to which question?" "Both," said Julius. "Madame de Charleroi is charming, and it is very hard to know women of her sort well. Think how long it is since I first met you, Marchesa, and we are just beginning to know each other." "Do you think we are?" asked Leonora. She was full of questions. "I think so--yes. At least, I hope so," he said with a pleasant smile. "If you were writing a book about us, Mr. Batiscombe, would you say that we were beginning to know each other? no one would believe that we stopped in the road and shook hands and swore to be friends. It would be very amusing, would it not? I do not know why we did it; I wish you would explain." She laughed a little, and stuck the point of her parasol into the earth. Batiscombe laughed too. "When people have known each other in society for a long time," he said, "and then begin to be friends, there is always some ice to break, and it always seems odd for a little while after it is broken." "I suppose that is the reason that such things always seem improbable in books, until you know about them yourself." "Amusing books, and interesting ones, are made up of improbabilities," answered Julius. "And the people who write them are even more improbable. It is always improbable that a man who has lived a great deal should have the talent, or the patience if you like, to make stories out of his own experience,--or that a man who has not seen a great deal of the world should be able to evolve a good novel out of his inner consciousness. The probabilities for most men are that they will eat and drink and wear out their clothes and be buried. All those things are a great bore to do, a greater bore to describe, and an intolerable bore to read about. The most amusing books are either true stories of a very exceptional kind, or else they are rank, glaring, stupendous improbabilities, invented to illustrate a great theory, or a great play of passions,--like Bulwer's 'Coming Race,' or Goethe's 'Faust.' I am sure I am boring you dreadfully." "Oh no!" cried Leonora, who was interested and taken out of herself by his talk. "But I think I prefer the 'exceptional true stories,' as you call them, like Shakespeare,--the historical part, I mean." "The worst of it is," said Batiscombe, "that the true stories are generally the ones that no one believes. Critics always say that such things are a tissue of utter impossibilities." "Oh, the critics," exclaimed Leonora; "they must be the most horrid people. I wonder you authors let them live!" "Thanks," said Batiscombe, laughing, "I was a critic myself before I was an author, and I do not think I was a very horrid person." "That is different," said Leonora. "Of course a man may do ever so many things before he finds his real vocation." "Authors owe a great deal to critics," continued Julius. "More men have come to grief at their hands by over-praise than by too much discouragement. A very little praise is often enough to ruin a man, and a man who has much talent will always survive a great deal of abuse and disappointment. If any one asked my advice about adopting literature as a career, I would certainly tell him to have nothing to do with it; I should be quite sure that if he were born to it nothing would keep him from it for long." "That is the way with other things," said Leonora, looking rather wistfully away at the setting sun, just below the green leaves of the orange grove. "It is the way with everything, good and bad. Some people are born to be saints, and some people are quite sure to turn out the most dreadful sinners, whatever they do." "What a depressing theory!" exclaimed Batiscombe, who had much more cause to think so than Leonora. "Depressing is no name for it," she answered. "One makes such mistakes in life, and then there is no way out of it but to make others." "And the worst of it is, that one knows one is making them, and cannot help it." "Yes," said she, "one always knows,--if one only knew." Then she laughed suddenly. "What a ridiculous speech!" "No," said Batiscombe, "I understand exactly what you mean. Just when one is doing the wrong thing, there is always a little instinct against it. But it is often so very little, that one does not quite know it from ever so many other instincts. And then, before one is quite sure that one knows what is right,--before one's mind has time to think it over logically,--one has done the wrong thing. At least, it seems afterwards as if that were what happened; but I suppose it is because we are weak." Leonora looked at Julius, who seemed deep in his thoughts. He had exactly put her idea into words, but she could not tell whether he believed what he said, or was merely amusing himself with his faculty for explanation. He interested her extremely. It was just this kind of introspection that most delighted her,--this cutting up and skinning of conscience and soul. Nevertheless she did not think that Batiscombe was the man to analyse his own actions. It was more likely, she thought, that he was very clever, and could talk to please his listener. But he interested her greatly, and she was curious to know how he had got his knowledge of human nature. "You must have had a wonderful life," she said, presently, saying aloud what she was thinking, rather than hoping to draw him on to talk about himself. "Oh no--very commonplace, I assure you," said he, with a laugh that sounded natural enough. "Only, you see, I have had to make capital of what I know. But it spoils one's own enjoyment to analyse anything, and I shall have to give it up, or resign myself to a miserable existence." "I wonder whether you are right," said Leonora, reflectively. "Of course I am," he answered gayly. "The man who carves the pheasant does not enjoy it, but the man who eats it does." "Then let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Is that the end of your experience?" asked Leonora, gloomily. "Oh--well--if you put it so. Only if you do not eat and drink too much, you may possibly not die until the day after to-morrow." "Or you may spend your life in cooking the dinner, and die before it is served?" suggested Leonora. "Or anything--what carnal similes!" laughed Batiscombe. "But they are very apt for any one who cares for eating. If that is really an important enjoyment, it may as well stand as the type." "Exactly--'if.' I am sure you do not think it is, nor that any material satisfaction can possibly stand as a type, nor that we should enjoy to-day without thought of to-morrow, nor a great many other things you have said." She watched him as she spoke, and he liked to feel her eyes on him. "No," he answered, "you are quite right. I do not think those things at all. But I am sure I generally do them," he added, smiling. "But what do you think--really? Is there anything really high and noble in the world? It all seems so little and so hollow, sometimes." She sighed, thinking how, formerly, she had said such things speculatively, and for the sake of raising an argument with her friends. Batiscombe turned on the stone seat, so that he faced her. "Of course there are high and noble things in the world," he answered. "It is when you look into the small workings of the mind and soul, as you have been making me do, that you lose sight of the great ones. Material nature is most interesting under a microscope, and generally most beautiful in great masses at a distance. But if you walk close to the grandest cliff in nature, and flatten your face against it, and hold your eye half an inch from the rock, the grandeur and the beauty are all gone, and without a microscope wherewith to examine your particular point, you will find the close inspection tiresome after a time. There is no microscope for the soul, any more than for the heart, or the mind. You gain nothing by looking too closely at it. It is ten to one that you hit upon a diseased spot for your examination. It may amuse you for a time to study other people's souls, because you can hardly get so near to them as to lose all impression of the whole, as you can with yourself. What does it matter what you know about your soul, so long as you do what is right?" "That sounds true," said Leonora, "but I suppose there is something wrong about it." "All good similes sound true," said Batiscombe, laughing. "That is the reason why popular orators and preachers are so fond of them. The real use of a simile is for an explanation; the moment you make an argument upon it, you are revelling in words without logic, calling illustrations facts and generally making game of your audience." "What a discouraging person you are," said Leonora. "You make one almost believe a thing, and then you turn round and tell one there is nothing to believe after all." "Not so bad as that," said Batiscombe, leaning back and clasping his brown hands over his knee. "I have not said there was nothing to believe in. Only take care you do not believe in anything because it bears a tempting resemblance to something you like." "That is ingenious, but I wish you would be positive about something. I wish you would tell me, for instance, what you yourself believe in." Her eyes turned towards him in the twilight. For the sun had gone down, and the orange-trees brought the shadows early where the two were sitting. "What I believe in?" he repeated. "I suppose that, apart from religious matters, I believe most in sympathy and antipathy." "That is not exactly a course of action or a rule of life," remarked Leonora, smiling and looking away. "No. But in nine cases out of ten they are what determine both. At all events I believe in them. They always carry the day over logic, philosophy, and all manner of calculation and forethought. You may determine that it is your duty to like a person, you may induce yourself to think that you do, and you may make every one believe you do; but if you really do not--there is an end of it. And the reverse is just as true." "I should think every one knew that," said Leonora in an indifferent way. But she was wondering why he had said it, whether he had any suspicion of her own state of mind. "It is very safe to say you believe in things of that sort--everybody does. You are a very indefinite person, Mr. Batiscombe." "What is the use of defining everything? Lots of people have been burned alive, and have had their heads cut off for defining things they knew nothing about. Of course they were quite sure they knew better; but then, is it worth while to die for your personal opinion of an abstract question?" "It is very fine and noble, though," said Leonora. "There is a tradition that it is fine and noble to 'die for' anything. It sounds well. Every one admires it. But reflect that the common murderer 'dies for' his individual views of the social state. The woman who maintained that scissors were better than a knife for cutting an apple suffered her husband to drown her rather than give up the point, and as she sank her fingers still opened and closed, to imitate the instrument she preferred. She 'died for' her opinion, just as much as Savonarola or Giordano Bruno, whom my countrymen are so fond of raving about." "You know that is not what I mean," said Leonora. "I mean it is noble to die for what is right." "The question is, what is right? There are cases when it is eminently heroic to sacrifice one's life." "For instance?" "For instance, to die for the liberty of one's own country,--for the defence and safety of one's king, who represents the embodiment of the social principle,--or for the honour of an innocent woman." "But about liberty and one's king, and that sort of thing," said Leonora, "where can you draw the line? There is no successful treason, you know, because when it succeeds it is called by other names. There must be a standard of absolute good--or something." "I should think you must be a very unhappy person, Marchesa, if you are always trying to draw a line and to define absolute good. What is the use? Every one knows that it cannot be done." Leonora was silent. It had interested her to hear the brilliant, successful man, apparently so happy and contented with his lot, talk seriously about the things she was always puzzling over. But what did it come to? What was the use? Those were his last words. The warm gloom of the night settled softly round them, laden with the sweetness of the oranges and the aromatic scent of the late carnations. Batiscombe could just see Leonora by his side, her head bent forward as she rested her chin upon her hand. The indescribable atmosphere and faint perfume that surrounds women of high beauty and degree intoxicated him. She was so English in her beauty and so Russian in her delicate exuberance of vitality; above all, she was so intensely feminine, that Batiscombe felt his senses giving way to the magnetic influence. He leaned forward in the dark till he was nearer to her, looking at the faint outline of her face. Leonora sighed, and the gentle sound seemed like the softened echo of past weeping. "Marchesa," said Julius in a low voice, "can I really be your friend? Will you let me help to make your life happier, if I can?" Leonora felt the blood rise blushing to her face in the dark, and her heart trembled in its beating. A friend! Oh, if she really could find a strong, true friend to help her! "How can you?" she asked faintly. "I do not know," he answered. "Let me try. I will try very hard. I am sure I can succeed." She let him take her hand for one moment. It was a consent, not spoken, but given and understood. Leonora rose to her feet, and they walked silently toward the house. "When may I come?" he asked, as he bade her good night. He spoke quite naturally, as though it were already a matter of course that he should see her every day. She hesitated a moment, standing in the doorway with the warm light of the lamp upon her. "Come at eleven," she said at last, and with a pleasant smile she left him and went in. The aspect of life seemed changed for her when he was gone. That afternoon she had suffered intensely. Now there was a strange, calm sense in her heart that soothed all her thoughts, and made the lonely evening sweet and restful. She asked no questions, she made no self-examination, she desired of herself no reasons for her conduct. It was enough that the storm had passed and that the calm was come, she knew not how. A man had spoken to her as no man ever spoke to her before, and the earnestness of his words still rang in her ear. He was loyal, strong, and true. He would be her friend,--he had asked it, she had granted it. She dined alone and read a little afterwards, closing her eyes now and again to enjoy the peace that had descended upon her. For the first time in many months she was happy, supremely, quietly happy, and she asked no questions. As for Batiscombe, he wandered homewards through the dark lanes, not heeding or caring where he went. He was wholly absorbed in recalling the events of the afternoon, revelling in the memory of Leonora's face and looks and words. He, too, was wholly disinclined to reflect on the possible consequences of his action; he took it as a matter of course that he should keep his word and be indeed a friend to her; at all events he thought neither of the future nor the past, but only ever and ever of herself, clinging tenderly to the images he called up, and asking nothing better than to call them up again, dreaming and waking. He might be in love, or he might not,--the question no longer entered his head. He was fascinated, charmed, and beside himself with enjoyment of his thoughts. It was the state he had dreaded a day or two ago. To avoid it he had tried to escape, by a stratagem, beyond the possibility of seeing Leonora again. He had cursed his folly in going to see her. He had promised himself that he would not go again; he had reviewed his past troubles, and had remembered how plausibly they had begun. And at last he had fallen into the ancient trap, the snare of fair friendship set out to catch men and women and to destroy them. But the mouth of the pit was garnished with roses and lilies, sweet and innocent enough. At eleven o'clock of the next day Julius was again with Leonora, and on the day following and the day after that. They walked together, read together, sailed together, and lunched together. A few stray callers came in now and then, but as they never came twice, not one of them thought it at all worthy of remark that Mr. Batiscombe should happen to be calling at the same time. Leonora found an extraordinary pleasure in his conversation. He had a fund of varied study and experience from which to draw, that amused her and made her think in new grooves; and when he talked about her ideas and interests he always succeeded in showing them to her in a new light. His comments were by turns light and sarcastic, and then again very serious; and his general readiness to make things seem amusing made his graver sayings doubly strong by contrast. He had a bold way of asserting that accumulated knowledge was of very little importance as compared with action, which would have sounded foolish enough from an ignorant man; but Julius was far from ignorant. He had studied a great many questions, and he possessed the faculty of speaking sensibly in a general way about subjects of which he did not profess to know anything. Most of all she found in him a ready sympathy and a love of human nature and of life for life's sake, that were utterly different from the artificial views she had cultivated. She found in him the strong love of enjoyment and the activity of mind and body, that best harmonised with her own real character; and in their long days together the hollowness and emptiness of life never once recalled themselves to her memory, except as things for her to wonder at and for Batiscombe to turn into jest and laugh to scorn. The whole situation was utterly new and unexpected to her. After the first few days at Sorrento with her husband she had made up her mind that the beauties of nature were very tedious, and that she would be glad to go back to Rome and begin the duties of society,--anything, rather than go on from day to day longing for a sensation, and finding only a great deal of weariness. But now, in the discovery of a new friend, a man of talent and tact, who made all gloomy musings seem ridiculous by the side of his sanguine activity, the place was transformed into a paradise for her. Not a day but brought some new thought, some witty saying, some bit of novelty with it, so that she found herself happy when she was alone in going over what they had said and done together. As for Marcantonio, she should be very glad when he came back. It seemed to her that he must be much more amusing now, and that she could say things to rouse him and make him talk. She wrote affectionate notes every day, telling him how beautiful everything was, and how he was to enjoy it, now that the first difficulties of settling were over. She even said she had sent for the cook, and had ascertained that he was very well, having had no return of the fever; she thought it must please her husband to know that she was taking care of the household and looking after the people. In the meanwhile Batiscombe fell in love, studiously consoling his conscience with the reflection that he was doing a good deed, and was acting the part of a friend in making the time pass pleasantly for Leonora in her solitude. But his conscience did not trouble him greatly, though it would be sure to, by and by. At present everything was swamped in a sea of glorious enjoyment, and he was no less really happy than Leonora. Day after day began and ended alike, but yet ever different. They never referred to the singularity of the arrangement by which Julius came every day in the morning and stayed till dark. There seemed no reason why they should not leave well alone, and enjoy each other's society to the very utmost. And they did, most fully, each wholly engrossed in the other. At the end of a week Marcantonio telegraphed that he and his sister would leave Rome by the night train and arrive in the morning. Leonora in the innocence of her heart was glad, anticipating all manner of new pleasure in her husband's society, the result of her own cure from morbid ennui. But Batiscombe felt his heart sink within him. CHAPTER XI. The sun beat down fiercely as Marcantonio and Madame de Charleroi drove up to the house at half-past ten o'clock. They had travelled all night, but the beautiful Diana was not the less fair for being a little tired, and as she descended from the carriage and went up the short steps to the door, Leonora could not help admiring the perfect smoothness and completeness of her appearance. Donna Diana did things in a stately fashion, and it would have been a hard journey indeed that could ruffle her lace or disturb the smooth coiling of her hair. Leonora herself was apt to arrive a little dusty from a night in a train, and not altogether serene, and she knew it; so that the absolutely finished completeness of Madame de Charleroi struck her as enviable and much to be admired. The two women kissed each other affectionately on either cheek, and then Marcantonio came running up and bent over his wife's hand, and, when Donna Diana was not looking, he just brushed Leonora's cheek in a rather guilty fashion. Presently Leonora led Diana away to show her the rooms destined for her, and to fuss a little over all the arrangements, as women love to do when another woman is come to stay with them. Marcantonio was busy for a few minutes, asking questions of the coachman and the men-servants concerning the health of every individual in the establishment, and then he also retired to his room, and the perspiring grooms and servants raged furiously together with the luggage and bundles for a while; and then the front door was closed again, and all was cool and quiet. Leonora left her husband and her sister-in-law to their toilet, and came down stairs through the darkened halls to the drawing-room. She was wondering whether Batiscombe would appear at his usual hour. Strange to say they had not spoken of it on the previous evening,--probably because they feared lest the mention of the subject should lead to some discussion about the singular intimacy into which they had fallen, and which neither wished to endanger. It would be just like Batiscombe to come, she thought; it would be just like him to show himself at once as her friend, and to establish the custom of coming every day. She was not mistaken; at eleven o'clock the bell rang, and he was shown in. "I was quite sure you would come," she said, holding out her hand. "Of course," said he. "I hope they have arrived safely?" "Quite, thanks. They are making themselves beautiful at this moment, though I think they must have done it on the way,--they arrived looking as fresh as possible, all smiles and lavender and sunshine. I am so glad they are come, you cannot think!" "Yes, I should think you must be," assented Julius with less enthusiasm. At that moment Marcantonio was shaving himself in the cool seclusion of his dressing-room. He was going over in his mind the past and the future, reflecting upon the absurd things he had said to Diana about Batiscombe in the train, and wondering what he could do to make her stay pleasant. Batiscombe must certainly be asked to the house, he thought, if only to show his sister that he, Marcantonio, had no objection to her meeting the man. It had been so thoroughly absurd to take up her speech about the possibility of her having married him, and to build on it the supposition that she had ever loved him. Bah! the fancy of a girl for the romantic! Batiscombe was now a perfectly serious man--decidedly so. Besides, Marcantonio began to dread very much the eternal trio between his wife, his sister, and himself, from morning till night. If only he had thought in time to ask some other man, it would have been such a charming square party. His wife was always more brilliant and good-tempered when there were outsiders present,--probably a peculiarity of all women, he thought, excepting Diana. Supposing that Leonora took it into her head to be dull or bored while Diana was there, how dreadful it would be! It was clearly necessary that Diana should have a favourable idea of the Carantoni household; that had been the whole object in bringing her down. And if Leonora did not seem in good spirits, Diana was sure to think he was not making his wife happy. The idea grew in his mind; he was terribly afraid of what his sister might think, seeing how she had opposed the match from the first. Really it was absolutely necessary to ask some one to the house while she stayed. But whom could he ask at such short notice? There was nobody but Batiscombe within reach. Marcantonio had finished shaving one side of his face, and took a fresh razor for the other. There was a pause in his thoughts while he tested the edge and applied more soap to his cheek. As he went to work again, the original train of ideas continued. Well! Batiscombe. Why not? He was a very amiable man, and Leonora liked him. She would certainly not object. As for Diana, it was probable that he would keep away from her most of the time. He would scarcely press his company on her. Monsieur Batiscombe had tact, although he was a crazy foreigner who went round the world in boats and wrote books. Bah! it was so convenient! Just the very person--he knew everything, had seen most things, and could talk like a mill-wheel. All those ridiculous prejudices about Diana were absurd, and were an insult to her. Batiscombe should be asked to stay a week. Having successfully finished his shaving operations, Marcantonio sat down to write a note to Julius while the thing was in his mind. Otherwise, he reflected, he might forget to do it, and Batiscombe could not be obtained until to-morrow. He wrote an invitation and signed it. Then he reflected that it would be as well to speak to Leonora before sending it. She did not know anything about that old story that had happened when she was a little girl, and perhaps not even in Rome. It was a mere formality, but it would be more courteous to ask her, before sending the invitation. He would not ask Diana, however. She had herself said, the night before, that she had no objection to meeting the man. Very well, she should meet him very soon. He hurriedly finished dressing and went down-stairs to find Leonora. Entering the drawing-room he found her talking quietly with the very man he was thinking about. "Mon Dieu! what a chance!" he exclaimed, cordially shaking Julius by the hand. "Imagine! I was just writing you a note, when you were in the house yourself!" "Really?" ejaculated Batiscombe, in some astonishment. "How can I serve you--since I am here in the flesh?" "By remaining!" answered Marcantonio cheerfully. "I was in the act of writing a very pressing invitation to you to stay a week with us, and thus to make up the most agreeable party of four in the world. Madame unites herself with me in the request, I am sure," added Carantoni, turning to his wife, who looked rather pale. "Mais certainement--we shall be charmed," said Leonora, utterly astonished and confused by the suddenness of the situation. She had herself thought how delightful such an arrangement would be--more than once. But coming so suddenly, from her husband, without her suggestion, it frightened her and did not seem quite natural. Her voice did not sound very cordial as she spoke, but it was sufficient, and her husband, being full of his idea, noticed nothing. "You are very kind. It will really give me very great pleasure," said Julius, controlling his voice wonderfully. For he, too, was taken off his guard. Marcantonio was delighted. It was such a wonderful piece of luck, he said, that Monsieur Batiscombe should have called at that hour. "But come with me, if madame permits," said he, "and I will show you your room. You can send for your things in the afternoon." Leonora was only too glad to be left alone for a moment, and the two men went away, Marcantonio rubbing his hands at the success of his arrangements for a pleasant week. With Batiscombe in the house the time could not fail to pass pleasantly, he thought. There are some men who seem to be pursued by an evil destiny that continually forces them to do the wrong thing out of pure goodness of heart. From an innocent desire to make his household pleasant for his sister, and to amuse the wife of his heart, he had asked the man of all others whom the one desired to avoid, and the other ought to have been kept from, simply because he wanted somebody and the man happened to be on the spot. And the whole thing had originated in a laudable desire to see pleasant relations established between his wife and his sister, the two persons in the whole world whom he most loved. Poor Marcantonio! He was under an unlucky star. Presently Batiscombe returned alone to the drawing-room, his host remaining to give some orders about the luncheon. He looked curiously at Leonora as he sat down opposite to her. "This is very charming," he said, smiling. "It is so kind of you." "I had nothing to do with it," said Leonora, avoiding his glance. "But of course I am very glad. I was dreadfully afraid of being left alone with my sister-in-law, and of course you will help me to make it pleasant for her. Really, it is just like my husband,--he is so good." "It would have been very miserable to have our good time cut short," said Julius reflectively, "and I suppose they would have thought it odd if I went on calling every day at the same hour." Leonora blushed very slightly. "Yes," she said, "I suppose so. People have such ideas about the appearances. You know I should not mind in the least if it were only my husband; you might stay from morning till night, and we should all enjoy it. But I am so afraid of Madame de Charleroi,--she is so tremendously correct, you know." From which piece of conversation it will be seen that Julius and Leonora had grown intimate of late, and regarded things from a practical point of view. All this time Madame de Charleroi was in ignorance of the amiable arrangement concluded by her brother, and was looking forward with almost as much dislike as he had done to the family trio in which she was to play a part during the week. She understood Leonora to a certain extent. She had at least a very strong presentiment that there would be trouble between her brother and his wife; not an open disagreement nor anything dramatic, but the sort of small worry and discord that begins slowly and surely, and finally embitters the whole lives of people who are not suited to each other. She had agreed to come down to Sorrento in order to "make friends" with Leonora, as her brother had expressed it, and in her wisdom and knowledge of the world she knew very well what a difficult task she had undertaken, and how small was her chance of success. She foresaw that she must be continually left alone with Leonora, for she understood her brother well enough to suppose he would adopt that method of fostering the friendship he desired. Poor dear Marcantonio had so very little tact! Consequently Diana wished very much that some other person had been asked to stay at the same time. Meanwhile she lay down for an hour upon a sofa in her sitting-room, and thought the matter over. Marcantonio, however, bethought him that in spite of Diana's expressed willingness to meet Batiscombe, it might surprise her to find herself suddenly living under the same roof with him. He therefore determined to inform her of the fact before they all met at the midday breakfast. He supposed she was busy with her toilet, and so he would not go himself; he would send his wife. That was a good idea--it would be at once a chance of throwing the two together. To this end he returned to the drawing-room, where Leonora and Batiscombe were still talking, and with an apology to the latter, he drew his wife aside for a moment. "I think, my angel," he whispered, "that it would be better to tell Diana that monsieur is here for a week. She is dressing at this moment. Would you be so amiable as to go to her and say in the course of the conversation that I have invited Monsieur Batiscombe? It would be very good of you, my dear." Leonora was not in the humour to refuse her husband anything. Everything was bright and happy to her, now that she saw a means of defence provided for her against the stately Diana, whom she feared. She had recovered from her astonishment at the sudden invitation to Julius, and she saw in it a kind intention on her husband's part, for which she was grateful. "Of course, mon ami," she answered, "I will do everything you like. Only amuse Monsieur Batiscombe for a moment, and I will run to Diana, and tell her what you wish." "A thousand thanks!" exclaimed Marcantonio, and he turned to the task of amusing Mr. Batiscombe, more delighted than ever. Leonora knocked rather timidly at the door of Diana's sitting-room. "It is I," she said, through the door; "may I come in?" "Oh, I am so glad to see you!" exclaimed Diana, rising swiftly from her couch, with a bright smile. She took Leonora's hand and led her to a chair, and arranged the curtains a little, so as to make more light, and then sat down by her side. "You must be dreadfully tired," said Leonora, "and I ought not to disturb you. I just wanted to see if you had everything you wanted." "But everything--everything, I assure you," answered Diana. "I am so very comfortable, and the view over the sea is exquisite, really de toute beauté." They made a wonderful contrast, as they sat side by side. Donna Diana's perfect features were more mature than Leonora's, her bearing was more noble, and her look more quiet and self-possessed. She wore a loose peignoir of white, with lace and white silk ribbons, such as none but perfect blondes can wear. But nothing could dim the dazzling whiteness of her skin, or detract from her marvellous beauty. She was calm, and statue-like, and it was only now and then that a glance from her deep grey eyes betrayed the warm and sympathising heart within. A grand, regal woman, fit to wear a crown or to have been the priestess of an ancient people. She had it all from her mother, who had been like her, though in a smaller mould, and had died, still young and beautiful, when Diana and her brother were little children. It was impossible to imagine her for a moment deprived of her perfect grace, and ease, and quiet. Leonora was altogether more earthly. She moved well, but often impetuously. Her extraordinary vitality, when not reduced by reaction to a state of unnatural apathy, was forever seeking an outlet. She loved the light and the stir of society life, while she amused herself with reflecting on its emptiness. She was instinct with strength, and motion, and elasticity. Her skin was always fresh, whether in heat or cold, but from the enthusiasm with which she did things, she sometimes lost the smoothness and correctness--as she would have called it--of her appearance. And yet even at such times she had a strange charm and fascination of her own. As she often said, she was far less beautiful than Diana, but much more alive,--though with a life that might perhaps be less strong and enduring than Diana's. Diana was a queen--Leonora a brilliant and irresponsible princess. They talked a little together, and Leonora found it easy to lead the conversation to the plans she was making for the amusement of her sister-in-law. "By the bye," said she, "I ought to tell you. Mr. Julius Batiscombe is staying here this week. I suppose you know him?" Leonora had no idea of anything having existed in former times in the way of sentiment between Diana and Julius. She was sent to convey a piece of information, and she did it as well as she could, not even looking at Diana as she spoke. Had she suspected anything she would have watched her, and she could have seen the least possible trembling of the eyelids, and the lightest imaginable shade of annoyance on her guest's fair face. "Oh yes," she said calmly, "I know him. I have known him a long time. So he is staying with you?" "Yes. He is so very agreeable, and Marcantonio wished it. He has been in Sorrento some time, and he took us to Castellamare to see that ironclad launched. He is so very clever." "Because he took you in his boat?" laughed Diana. "Yes, my dear, a man is clever indeed who can get such charming company." Leonora was pleased with the little speech,--it sounded kindly, and as Diana spoke she laid her hand softly on Leonora's. "How cold your hands are," said Diana. And indeed they were chilled through, though it was a very hot day in July. "'Cold hands, warm heart,' you know, as the proverb says." Leonora blushed a little. It seemed so odd to be talking about Julius Batiscombe to a stranger that it frightened her a little, and she was conscious that her heart beat faster. Nevertheless she wondered vaguely why she felt the blood rise to her cheek. He was only her friend, and the remark about the heart could have nothing to do with him. But Diana supposed she changed colour because she was thinking of Marcantonio. It was natural for a young bride to blush at the mention of her heart, of course, and altogether charming. She patted the cold little hand sympathetically and talked of something else. It is so easy to misunderstand a blush. But Leonora felt as though she were being patronised, which is the thing people of her stamp most bitterly resent of all others; and accordingly there sprang up in her breast a little breeze of opposition, which might by and by blow a gale. When the party met in the drawing-room before the midday breakfast, everything seemed arranged for the best, and Marcantonio rubbed his hands with delight, and made numerous hospitable gestures as he walked round the three lambs of his fold. Batiscombe rose and bowed low to Madame de Charleroi. She nodded pleasantly as to an old acquaintance, and gave him her hand. He turned a little pale under the sunburnt bronze of his face. "I am glad to see you," said she. "I thought you had probably been shipwrecked in that boat of yours. It was in all the papers, you know." "The sea would not be so ill-bred as to swallow me up before I had had the honour of making my homage to you, madame," said Batiscombe with a bow and a smile. It is so easy to say pretty things in French, and as every one does it no one ever knows the genuine from the spurious. Diana was well used to Batiscombe's ways, and she laughed a little. But somehow Leonora did not like the speech. The English part of her revolted against a generality of gallant language, though her Russian blood made it quite possible for her to accept such things as genuine when addressed to herself. Breakfast was announced. "Mon Dieu," exclaimed Marcantonio, smiling at everybody, "it is the most charming quartette imaginable. But there arises a terrible question of precedence. I must evidently give my arm to my wife or to my sister. It is very grave. Mesdames, I pray you, select." "Of course," said Leonora, "Diana is the guest. It is to her that you must give your arm; and Monsieur Batiscombe must console himself as he can." Everybody smiled politely, as people do over the inanities of a very cheerful and hospitable host. "Thank you," said Batiscombe in English, as he and Leonora followed the other couple into the breakfast-room at a little distance. It became the duty of Batiscombe and the two ladies to make Marcantonio believe that they were all enjoying themselves and each other immensely; their duty it was--the sacred and unavoidable duty of society towards its entertainers. Batiscombe found the situation very unpleasant. Diana wished the week well over, and bore her part with the unfaltering serenity and cheerfulness that well-bred sovereigns exhibit when they are obliged to do some of the thousand disagreeable things that make up most of their lives. Leonora was beginning to be quite sure she could never like Diana. How could she like a woman who assumed airs of superiority? Diana was not in the least like the young ladies whom she knew in Rome, and whom, she promised herself, she would rule with a rod of iron now that she was married. And Marcantonio smiled and said all the pleasantest things he could imagine; and they were many, for pleasantness was his strong point. Batiscombe seconded him to the best of his ability, and every now and then reflected for an instant on the extraordinary position in which he found himself. Indeed, he had cause to wonder at the strangeness of fate. There he sat, eating his breakfast between the woman who had dominated him all his life, and the woman who fascinated him in the present, with ample opportunity to compare them with each other, and a determination not to do it. It seemed as though Diana's coming had roused his instincts of contrariety, as it had in Leonora, though for quite different reasons. Diana knew well enough, he thought, that she ruled him and could bring him to her feet in a moment. Why, then, if she did not want him herself, did she come and disturb his peace and happiness? She need not have prevented him from enjoying the society of a charming woman, but she undoubtedly would. He knew well enough that her presence must be a check on the daily and hourly intercourse with Leonora which he just now most desired. She would not believe in the friendship which had seemed so real to Leonora and so possible to himself. She would watch him with those grey eyes of hers that knew him so well, and when she had an opportunity, she would give him a wholesome lecture on the error of his ways. He knew Diana well, and she knew him better. He was forced to confess that she was more beautiful, more stately, and more perfect now, at eight and twenty, than she had been ten years ago at eighteen; that, if she lifted her finger to him now, he would be more entirely her servant and slave than ever before; and that in the bottom of his heart he wished she would do so, as he wished no other thing in the world. At the same time he knew perfectly well that she would not, and he thought it was not fair of her to disturb an innocent friendship which had, by force of circumstances, assumed a peculiar aspect. She excited in him all the obstinacy which attends weakness--and Julius was a weak man where women were concerned. And whether he would or not, he made up his mind not to relinquish his daily enjoyment of talking to Leonora for all the Dianas in the world,--if it were only to please his own vanity. The repast was somehow or other a success so far as Marcantonio was concerned. He felt that everything was proceeding as it should, that all his little plans had turned out well, and that he was a happy husband and a happy brother. He was in complete ignorance of Julius Batiscombe's daily visits to his wife during his absence. She had meant to tell him, honestly, how pleasant it had all been, and how much she had enjoyed it; but, somehow, the invitation to Batiscombe to stay in the house had made her put it off. Marcantonio was so odd about some things, and he was sure to want so many explanations; she could tell him just as well after Diana and Batiscombe were gone; and then, of course, it could not matter so much. She knew that Julius would never refer to all those days unless she herself did. If only that terrible Diana did not see or find out! How dreadful it would be to have her say anything to Marcantonio! CHAPTER XII. A country-house is a glass house. The more people there are staying in it, the more fragile and delicate are the walls, and the more probability there is that some one will be inspired by the Evil One to throw stones. Sometimes it happens that two or three of a party fight a pitched battle, and then some lucky lovers who have nothing to do with the hostilities are forgotten and overlooked in the din of war. But if there is one thing in the world more certain to get out than murder it is love, righteous or unrighteous. Lovers who desire secrecy should never go to country-houses together. It seems to them as though each and every member of the household had especially adopted a set of vile and pernicious habits; a determination to be where they ought not, at all sorts of unexpected hours; to come skulking round corners under the empty pretext of seeking shade, and to be found lurking in wooded dells on pretence of studying natural history. There is the matutinal fiend, who shaves at the window in the grey dawn and sees people who have got up for an early walk; and, verily, they feel like worms when they glance up and see his beak and talons at the casement. There is also the demon that walketh in darkness, smoking a midnight cigar on the lawn before going to bed. There is the midday dragon, green-eyed and loathly to behold, who steals out in old gloves and a parasol immediately after luncheon, because she has left her glasses on the mossy seat under the trees, just out of sight of the house, and must needs find them. There is the vile and sickening bookworm, with his bland smile and unhealthy complexion, who dives into the library in the middle of the summer's afternoon, and ruthlessly opens the blinds to find a quotation, the eighteenth volume of an uncut rarity in vellum; and who wrinkles disagreeably all over when he observes the couple in the corner, staring like blushing owls in the sudden glare. And, besides all these, there are the low earth-spirits,--a swarm of maids, butlers, grooms, stable-boys, and nurses,--who are supposed to dwell somewhere, underground, and are everlastingly appearing, like phantoms, noiseless and awful, with ears like vast trumpets of endless capacity and eyes of incalculable magnifying power. A country-house is a terrible test of all the great virtues of mankind and a fearful reflector of all the vices. It is well to begin life in the country with an adequate certainty that, whatever you do, you will be found out, and that you will often be found out when you have done nothing. And a villa hired in the orange gardens of Sorrento, overhanging the murmuring sea and sweet with the breath of the rich south, is not different in this respect from a Yorkshire manor-house, a château in the south of France, or a "romantic retreat" on the Hudson River. For two or three days after the events just chronicled, Leonora and Batiscombe managed successfully to spend several hours out of the twenty-four in each other's society. Marcantonio was busy during a great part of the time with correspondence concerning the politics of his party, and once he went over to Naples to see an eminent person on business. The four inmates of the house met at meals, and in the late afternoon, when they generally went out in the boat. Donna Diana occasionally sat with Leonora for an hour, and they talked to each other studiously, Leonora trying her best to make the time pleasant for Diana, and Diana doing what she could to cultivate her acquaintance with Leonora. At the end of two days it was perfectly clear that the two women would never be intimate. But they both concealed the fact from Marcantonio; and he rubbed his hands, and wrote his letters, and bought cartloads of things for his wife, in the comforting assurance that she was very happy and inclined to follow his wishes in regard to his sister. But Diana was not given to looking after Leonora when she was out of her sight, and she spent a great part of the day in writing letters, in reading, and now and then in calling on a few acquaintances who lived along the shore in the villas towards Castellamare. She was glad that Batiscombe kept out of her way, but she did not exactly understand why he did so. He was generally extremely anxious to see as much as possible of her when he was in her neighbourhood. Could it be that he did not love her any longer? That after all these years he had at last put her out of his mind? Perhaps so. She was glad if it were so, most truly. She had many times prayed with her whole soul that he might forget her. It might be that the prayer was answered. At all events, he kept out of her way, and she did not regret it, nor ever give him a sign to come to her. She supposed that he spent his hours with Leonora or Marcantonio or both, and there was no reason why he should not be intimate in the house, so far as she herself was concerned. One day it chanced that the wind was in the south-east, blowing a hot blast and making everything very hazy and sultry that was out of its reach, and covering everything it touched with a disagreeable mixture of dust and hot dampness. Every one who has lived in Italy knows what the sirocco is like, and the dismal stickiness it brings. It seems as though the universe were under a press and some one were screwing it down. It was three o'clock in the afternoon, and Madame de Charleroi was sitting in her small boudoir, trying to write a letter to her husband. Unlike most Italians, she had not the habit of sleeping in the day, and used the time when other people were taking a nap during the great heat to keep up an extensive correspondence. She was a woman who had made this one interest for herself, and thoroughly enjoyed being in constant communication with a dozen intelligent people in all parts of the world. It was excessively hot. Even she, who was southern born and did not mind it, felt her brain grow dizzy and her fingers tired and clammy. Leonora's white kitten had strayed into the room after lunch, and was walking about near the door, squeaking now and then as though it did not like the quarters and wanted to get out. For the mere sake of changing her position, Diana laid down her pen and rose to open the door. As she did so the cat jumped nimbly through, and a little breath of cooler air blew in from the passage. Diana stood one moment as though enjoying it, and then went out. She took a parasol in the hall, and walked slowly down the garden. The sky was overcast with a dull leaden grey, and the south-east wind blew under the trees, bad enough in itself, but infinitely better than the close heat indoors. There was no one to be seen, and Diana paced slowly along the gravel path. At the end of it were the steps which led through the rocks to the sea. She had gone down and come up again more than once with the rest of the party in the evening, when they had been out in the boat, and she had thought each time that it would be pleasant to come and sit in some of the cool archways and look out over the sea in the heat of the day. She felt sure, too, of being alone there; it was not a likely place for any one to frequent at three o'clock in the afternoon. Diana closed her parasol, and, just lifting the skirt of her white dress off the ground, began to descend the broad stone steps, hewn out of the solid rock, through a steep vaulted tunnel in the inside of the cliff. Here and there a great arched window looked out, in which were cut wide seats. She had passed through the darkest part of the descent, carefully picking her way, when she suddenly found herself opposite to one of these windows. She was startled to see two persons there, for she had been certain that she would be alone. They were Leonora and Batiscombe, sitting side by side under the arched opening. Hearing her tread they both looked round, and Julius seemed to pick up from the floor something which had probably fallen while they were talking. Then he remained standing, and Diana, seeing she was discovered, advanced boldly toward the pair. There was nothing so extraordinary in the situation after all, but she had always supposed that Leonora slept in the afternoon while Batiscombe and Marcantonio smoked and talked politics up-stairs. They had certainly been sitting very near together, she thought, but the sudden glare of the light and the distance which separated her from them had prevented her from noticing their faces. As she came near, Leonora rose also and spoke first. She held her back to the light, for she was blushing deeply; but Batiscombe, who never blushed and rarely turned pale, stood calmly pulling his moustache, as though it were all the most natural thing in the world. "I had always meant to tell you how delightful it is here," said Leonora. "I am so glad you have found it out for yourself." "En effet," answered Madame de Charleroi calmly smiling, "it is ideal." She came under the arch and looked out, enjoying the sight of the sea after the dark passages. "And then," said Leonora, "it is strictly true that one is 'not at home' when one is here,--if people call, it is very convenient. Nobody can find one." "Excepting Madame de Charleroi," said Batiscombe, who was very angry at the interruption. But he said it so pleasantly and with such an air of paying a compliment, that Diana could not be offended; she only smiled a little bitterly in her lofty way, remembering other times when he would have given his right hand for a meeting of any kind with her. In that moment a suspicion crossed Diana's mind. She understood the meaning of his remark perfectly, in spite of the bow and the smile, knowing, as she did, every intonation of his voice and every expression of his face. She saw that he was angry, and she argued that Julius preferred being with Leonora to being with herself. That was clearly the reason why he kept out of her way; he spent his time with Leonora. If Leonora attracted him, he was certainly at liberty to talk to her if he pleased, but Diana thought it must be a strong attraction indeed that kept him away from herself. It was long since he had missed an opportunity of spending an hour with his old love. Diana sat down beside Leonora, and Batiscombe leaned against the rock and looked out over the sea, the fire dancing in his blue eyes, but his face as calm as ever. Diana began to talk to Leonora. "You are very fortunate in getting such a place," she said. "It is by far the most beautiful on the whole shore." "I wish it belonged to us," said Leonora. "I am sure I could come here every year and never grow tired of it." "Ah!" exclaimed Diana, "do you like it so very much then?" "J'en raffole!" answered Leonora enthusiastically, "I am crazy about it. And then, it is always so charming to have absolutely the best. As you say, there is nothing like this place on the whole bay. I should like always to have the best." "But, madame," remarked Batiscombe, "it appears to me that you always do. You have the talent of supremacy." "What an idea! The talent of supremacy!" "But that is precisely it," continued Julius. "It is a talent. Some people are born with it--generally women." "That is Monsieur Batiscombe's favourite theory," remarked Madame de Charleroi, just glancing at him, "but he does not believe it the least in the world." "Is it true?" asked Leonora, innocently, looking up with an expression that did not escape Diana. It was a sort of frightened look, as though it really mattered to her what Batiscombe thought about women in general. "It pleases madame to be witty," answered Julius, glancing in his turn at Diana. "I have not many theories, but I believe in them as a man who is about to be guillotined believes in death." "One cannot say more than that," laughed Leonora. "But how about the supremacy of men? There have been more men in the world who have ruled it than there have ever been women." "Mon Dieu! Men give themselves much more trouble," he replied. "Women, having the divine right given to them straight from Heaven, exercise it without difficulty. A word, a cup of tea, a glance,--and the supremacy of a woman is established. What could a man do with a cup of tea? Or, if he looked at people by the hour together, could he rule them with a glance? When a woman has the gift she finds little difficulty in using it,--whereas the more of it a man has, the more trouble it is to him. Men are so stupid!" And with this sweeping condemnation of his own sex, Julius lit a cigarette, having obtained permission of the two ladies. "You ought not to have many friends, with such ideas about men," said Leonora. "En effet," said Diana, "he has none." "Not among men, at all events," said Julius. "I do not remember ever having any. I do not sleep any the worse on that account, I assure you. It is much more agreeable to have a number of pleasant acquaintances, who expect nothing from you and from whom you expect nothing. Friendship implies mutual obligations; I detest that." Leonora laughed a little. He had such a vicious way of saying such things, as though he thoroughly meant them. But then he was courteous and gentle to every one, though she suspected he might be different if he were angry. Diana knew very well that what he said was true, and that he had led an isolated life among other men, fighting his way through with his own hand and owing no man anything. She herself had for years been his best friend and his only confidant, though he saw her rarely enough. And now she felt as though even that one bond of his were to be broken,--and whether she would or not, the thought gave her pain, and she wished it could be otherwise. "It is always far more amusing to detest things," said Leonora, "unless you happen to want them." She was forgetting some of her indifferentism. "It is certainly more blessed to abuse than to be abused," returned Julius, "and, if one has the choice, it is as well to be the hammer and not the anvil. I am an excessively good-natured person, and if I had friends, they would make an anvil of me and beat my brains out,--and then I should starve." "Good-natured people are always made to suffer," said Leonora thoughtfully. "I am not in the least good-natured." "I remember," said Diana, "that Mr. Batiscombe used to say good-nature was a mixture of laziness and vulgarity." "Yes," answered Julius. "You have a good memory, madame. Good-nature is a compound of the laziness that cannot say 'no,' and of the vulgarity which desires to please every one indiscriminately. I suppose I possess both those faults very finely developed." "Fortunately," remarked Leonora, "goodness and good-nature are not the same." "Fortunately for you, Marchesa,--unfortunately for me," said Julius. "It is too complicated--please explain," she answered. "As you are so fortunate as to possess goodness without good-nature," said he, "you should be glad that the two are not one and the same, since good-nature is not a desirable quality. I am good-natured, but not good--I wish I were!" "Ah, I see!" exclaimed Diana. "It was a compliment." "Of course," said Julius. "Of course; but your compliments are often complicated, as the Marchesa says." Diana smiled as she spoke. Batiscombe knew that she was repaying him for the remark he had made when she had unexpectedly appeared twenty minutes earlier. "I can only repeat," he retorted, "that Madame de Charleroi has a good memory." Leonora was puzzled. She saw well enough that Diana and Julius were, or had been, much more intimate than she had supposed. They understood each other at a glance, by a word, and they seemed on the verge of quarrelling politely over nothing. She devoutly wished that Diana would go away, instead of spoiling her afternoon. But Diana leaned back against the rock and crossed her feet and prepared to be comfortable. She was evidently not going. Batiscombe stood motionless, with the easy stolidity of a very strong man who does not wish to move, and Leonora could see his bold profile against the grey haze of the sky. There was a short silence after his last remark, during which Leonora felt uneasy: something was in the atmosphere that made her anxious, and she did not like the way Diana looked at Batiscombe, with an air of absolute superiority, as though she could do anything she pleased with him. "How dreadfully solemn we are," said Leonora, rather awkwardly. Julius turned quickly with a laugh. "Let us be gay," he said. "I hate solemnity, unless there is enough of it to make me laugh. I remember being at a ball once that produced that effect." "Allons!" said Diana, "give us some of your reminiscences, Monsieur Batiscombe. They ought to be interesting." "Not so much as you think. But the ball was very funny. It was in Guatemala, three years ago. I was invited to a huge thing by the president--an entirely new president, too, who had just cut the throats of the old president and of all his relations. I believe there was some sort of revolution at the time, and when it was over the victorious individual gave a ball. The refreshments were simple--brandy for the men and rosolio for the ladies; there was no compromise in the shape of a biscuit or a glass of water." Leonora laughed, being willing to laugh at anything so as to encourage Julius to talk. "En vérité, that was very amusing," remarked Diana coldly. Batiscombe took no notice. "The women sat round the room in a double row," he continued, "like a court ball, excepting that they all smoked large cigars, and industriously passed the liqueur. The men stood behind and gave their undivided attention to the brandy. Not a soul spoke, and they all scowled fiercely at the brandy, the rosolio, and each other. A ghastly and tuneless quartette of instruments doled out a melancholy dirge, slower than anything you ever heard at a funeral; and now and then some enterprising and funereal man led out a less enterprising but equally melancholy female in a strange step, like the tormented ghost of a waltz in chains. It was so hideous that I went out and laughed till I almost had a fit. I have never thought anything seemed very solemn since then--it destroyed the proportion in my brain. A pauper's burial on a rainy day in London is a wildly gay entertainment compared with that ball." Leonora laughed, and even Diana smiled; whereupon Julius was satisfied, and relapsed into silence. But Leonora wanted conversation. "What in the world took you to Guatemala, Mr. Batiscombe?" she asked. "That is a question which I cannot answer, Marchesa," he replied. "I believe I went there for some reason or other--chiefly because I could go for nothing, and wanted to see something new." "Can you always go to Guatemala for nothing?" asked Leonora. "It must be very amusing." "A steamer company offered me a free passage to any port in their service," said Batiscombe; "and as the next ship went to Guatemala, I sailed with her. It happened to be first on the list." "What a queer idea!" exclaimed Leonora. "You are too modest, Mr. Batiscombe," said Diana. "You ought to tell the whole story--it is very interesting." Her voice was less cold than when she had spoken last. "Oh, do tell the story!" cried Leonora. "I adore autobiographies!" "Mon Dieu!" said Julius, "there is very little to tell. I did a service to a ship belonging to the company, and in acknowledgment they presented me with a piece of plate and the free passage in question. Voilà tout! madame is too good when she says it was interesting." "If Monsieur Batiscombe will not be so obliging as to relate the experience, I will," said Diana. "He shall correct me if I make a mistake." Batiscombe looked annoyed. He was not fond of telling his own adventures, and he hated to hear them told by other people. He could not imagine why Diana wanted to hear the story. He was irritated already, and her conduct seemed more and more inexplicable. Leonora looked at him expectantly. Who can understand a woman? It may be that Diana, who was really fond of him in a strange fashion, was sorry for the position she had taken that afternoon, and was willing to atone by giving him the credit before Leonora of some fine action he had done. "It was three years ago or more, in the winter," began Diana. "Monsieur Batiscombe was travelling in a ship on the coast of America. There were a hundred passengers on board, or more, and a crew of thirty-five. Is that exact?" Julius bent his head and turned away. "Eh bien, there was a great storm--such as there are in the ocean. It is horrible, you may imagine. The ship was driven on the rocks, a long distance from the shore. A reef, you call it, n'est-ce-pas?" "Yes," said Batiscombe. "Fifty or sixty yards from the shore." "Good. What do they do? Six brave sailors volunteer to throw themselves into the sea in a chaloupe--a miserable boat"-- "And monsieur was one of the volunteers"--exclaimed Leonora, enthusiastically. "Not at all, my dear friend. The boat overturns; the sailors are immediately drowned; every one is in consternation. Then Monsieur Batiscombe arrives; he says he will save everybody; he ties a thin line--a mere string--to his waist; he throws himself to the sea. The passengers scream as they cling to the ropes and the side, while the vessel is beaten horribly on the reef. He struggles in the waves, swimming; he is thrown down again and again in the breakers; he rises and rushes on to the shore. Then he pulls the string, and after the string a rope. A sailor ventures down and he also reaches the land. They fasten the rope, and every one is saved--passengers, crew, captain, tout le monde. Ah, Batiscombe, why are you not always doing such things,--you, who can do them so well?" Madame de Charleroi's grey eyes were wide and bright, and a very faint colour rose to her cheeks as she told the story. The calm, regal woman took a genuine delight in great actions, and as she turned to Julius at the end there was a ring of real sympathy and friendship and regret in her voice that it gave Leonora a strange sensation to hear. "It was magnificently brave!" exclaimed Leonora in English, and she looked at Julius as though she admired him with all her heart and soul. She had always had a feeling that he had probably made himself remarkable in such ways, but he always had told her that his life had been uneventful. To think that this calm, smooth, well-dressed, fine gentleman should have saved a whole shipload of lives by sheer strength and courage! Ah, he was a man, indeed! But Batiscombe never moved. He stood looking seaward, his eyelids half closed, and a thoughtful look on his brown face. Indeed, he was thinking deeply, but not so much of the old story Diana had been telling as of herself. The strange appeal in her last words had touched the good chord in his wayward heart, and he was thinking how fair his life might have been with her,--and how dark it had been without her. And the old true love rose up for one moment, hiding Leonora and the rest, and all the intervening years, and sending hot words to his ready lips. He turned in the act to speak, forgetting where he was,--then checked himself. Both Leonora and Diana had seen that he was going to say something, for they were watching him. He hesitated. "I ought to thank you, madame," he said to Diana, "for gilding my adventure so richly. But as for the thing itself, and the doing of such things, the opportunity seldom offers, and the faculty for doing them is the result of an excellent digestion and quiet nerves. Meanwhile it is grown cooler, and the boats are below. Shall we go down, and sail a little before dinner?" The two ladies consented readily enough, and they all descended to the landing and got into one of the boats and pushed away. "I shall have quite a new sensation in future when I sail with you, Mr. Batiscombe," said Leonora. "It would be impossible to be drowned with you on board." But Diana was pale again, and settled herself among the cushions in silence. Far up above, Marcantonio was interviewing the coachman on the terrace. He looked down and saw the boat shoot out with the three members of his household. He rubbed his hands smoothly together. "Ha," he said to himself, "it is superb! What good friends they are all growing to be! En vérité, Batiscombe is a most amiable man, full of tact." CHAPTER XIII. Late that evening Julius was sitting in a corner of the broad terrace over the sea. The clouds had cleared away before the light easterly breeze that springs up at night, and the stars shone brightly. Down in the west the young moon had set, and the air was fresh and cool after the long, hot day. Julius had drawn an arm-chair away from the house and was smoking solemnly, in enjoyment of the night. He found that he had much to think of. The rest of the household had gone to bed, or at all events had retired to their rooms. It had been a day of emotions with him, and that was unusual, to begin with. His feeling for Leonora was growing to great proportions. He knew that very well; and in spite of the momentary burst of passion, which, if he had been alone with Madame de Charleroi, would have found expression in words which he would have regretted and she would have resented, he now felt that he was irritated against her and could not forgive her inopportune interruption. All his opposition was roused; and as if in despite of his old love he dwelt on the thoughts of the present, and delighted in recalling the details of the fair Marchesa's conversation, the quickly changing expression of her face, the tones of her voice, the grace of her movements. She was so strong and living that he felt his whole being permeated with the atmosphere and essence of her life. As he leaned back in his chair, he experienced a sensation by no means new to him, of intense delight in existence, and he breathed in the soft fresh air, and tasted that it was the breath of love. A small, short step sounded on the tiles of the terrace, coming toward his corner. He looked round quickly, and was aware of the tall and graceful figure of Diana de Charleroi, muffled in something dark, but unmistakable in its outline and stately presence. In a moment she was beside him; he rose and threw away his cigarette, somewhat astonished. "Get another chair," said she, in a low voice. "It is pleasant here." He obeyed quickly and noiselessly, as he did everything. She had taken his chair, and he sat down beside her, waiting for her to speak. "I thought I should find you here, Julius," she said, calling him by his Christian name without the smallest hesitation. "I wanted to speak to you alone." "You have the faculty of finding me," said Julius with a short, low laugh. "Since when is it so disagreeable to you?" asked Diana. Julius was silent, for there was nothing he could say. He wished he had said nothing at first,--it would have been much better. Diana continued. "You and I know each other well enough to talk freely," she said. "We need not beat about the bush and say pretty things to each other, and I forgive you for being rude, because I know you very well, and am willing to sacrifice something. But I will not forgive you again if you are rude in public. There are certain things one does not permit one's self, when one is a gentleman." "You are very good, Diana," said Batiscombe, humbly. "I am very sorry. I lost my temper." "Naturally," she answered coolly. "You always lose your temper,--you always did,--and yet you fancy continually that you hide it. Let that go. I have forgiven you for this time, because I am the best friend you have." "The only one," said Julius. "Perhaps. You are well hated, I can tell you. Then treat me as a friend in future, if you please, and not as an inquisitive acquaintance who makes a point of annoying you for her own ends." She spoke calmly, in a quiet, determined voice, without the slightest hesitation or affectation. Julius bent his head. "I always mean to," he said. "Now listen to me," she continued. "I came upon you this afternoon by pure accident. I do not owe you any apology for that, and you know very well that I am the last person in the world to do things in that way, by stealth. That is the reason I come to you here, at night, to tell you my mind frankly." "Yes," said Batiscombe, in a muffled voice, "I know." "I came upon you by accident," said she, "and I made a discovery. You pass your afternoons in the society of my sister-in-law, and you lose your temper with me when I find you together,--though you always wish me to understand that you prefer my society to that of any woman in the world." "Ah--how you express it!" exclaimed Julius. "I express it as plainly as I can. I cannot help it if you do not like it. It is all true. And the inference is perfectly clear. Do you see?" "No," said Batiscombe. "You do not? Very well, I will draw it for you." She leaned back in the chair and looked at him; her eyes were accustomed by this time to the gloom, and she could see him quite clearly in the starlight. He moved uneasily. "Pray go on," he said. "The inference is this. You are making love to Leonora Carantoni." "You shall not say that," said Batiscombe, between his teeth, still looking fiercely at her. "You might forbid a man to say it," answered Diana, in low, calm tones. "And for anything I care you may forbid any other woman in the world to say it. But you cannot forbid me. I have the right." "In that case," said Julius, rising, and struggling to speak quietly, "there is nothing I can do but to leave you, since I will certainly not listen." But Diana rose also, and laid her white hand on his arm, as though she could have bowed the strong man to the earth if she chose. She seemed taller than he in the power and determination of her gesture. "Sit down instantly," she said, under her breath. Julius obeyed silently and sullenly. Then Diana resumed her seat. "I have the right, Julius," she continued, "not because you pretend to have loved me for ten years,--nor because I once thought I might accept your love,--nor yet because I am sometimes weak enough to like you still, in a sisterly way. But I have the right because you are making love to my brother's wife, because she is young and innocent, and because there is not another human being in the world to stand by her, or to give her any protection in her danger." "If you think that, why do you not tell your brother so?" "Do you call yourself intelligent? Do you call yourself a gentleman?" exclaimed Diana in bitter scorn. "Would you have me destroy the peace of my brother and of his wife, because you are doing a bad action, that has not yet borne fruit? Do you think I am afraid of you? Of you?" She repeated the word almost between her teeth. "No," said Batiscombe, under his breath, "I do not. But I would like to ask you a question." "I will answer," said Diana. "Why did you tell that absurd story about me this afternoon? Did you not see it was just the very worst thing you could possibly do, from your own point? That nothing rouses a woman's interest like such tales?" "I promised to answer your question," said Diana, coldly, "and I will. I told the story thoughtlessly, because I am a woman, and admire such things quite independently of the person who has done them. Do not flatter yourself that a woman like Leonora Carantoni will fall in love with you because you are brave. But I dare say I did wrong, and I am sorry for it. You have qualities which any one may admire, but you have others which I despise." "I despise them myself, sometimes," said Julius, almost to himself. "Despise them always,--at least, and be consistent," answered Diana. "But you will not. You like them, those bad qualities, and when you like them, they make a miserable wretch of you, as they do now. You know well enough, however cleverly you may deceive yourself, that you ought not to be here. You stay,--you are a coward, besides being a great many worse things which I leave you to understand." Batiscombe's eyes flashed angrily in the starlight. "You are cruel, Diana, and unkind," he said. Diana was silent a moment, and she drew her dark lace shawl about her, as though she were cold. When she spoke her voice was infinitely soft and gentle. "Do not say that, Julius. Do not say I am ever cruel to you,--for to you, of all people in the world, I would be most kind." Julius bent down and pressed his hands to his temples, and sighed heavily. "Oh, Diana," he groaned, "I know it, I know it." "Then I will not say any more. Do this thing because it is right,--not because I ask you to. Have I ever reproached you before, when you have come to me of your own accord and told me your troubles? What right have I to reproach you?" Julius was silent. He knew in his heart that she had the right, because he still loved her best. He sat immovable, his head buried in his hands. Diana rose and stood beside him; she lightly laid her hand upon his shoulder, allowing it to linger kindly for a moment, and then she turned and moved away. The spell was broken, and Batiscombe rose swiftly and followed her. There was a light in the drawing-room that opened upon the terrace, which Batiscombe had not noticed before. As they entered they found Marcantonio with a candle, overturning books and papers as if in search of something. He looked up with a curious expression of surprise in his face, holding the candle before him. "Ah!" he cried, "good-evening, my friends. You have been taking a little air. Eh? I imagined that you were all asleep." Madame de Charleroi smiled serenely at her brother. She knew it was an accident, and that he had a habit of forgetting things and coming to look for them. She said it had been hot all day, and she and Monsieur Batiscombe had been enjoying the coolness of the terrace. Julius bowed blandly and said good-night. But he suspected Marcantonio of having come to watch his sister. They passed on, and Marcantonio stood for a moment looking after them as they went out into the hall, where lights were still burning. He shrugged his shoulders. "Eh!" he exclaimed aloud to himself, in Italian, "I do not understand anything about it--ma proprio niente." And he continued his search for the missing letter, pondering deeply. Batiscombe spent a sleepless night, which was very unusual with him. The interview with Diana had made a deep impression on him at the time. He knew that whenever she was at hand to exert her influence he should succumb to it. But as the night wore on, the strength of the impression diminished, and the old feeling of obstinate defiance gradually returned. At all events, he thought, he would show her that her suspicions were empty, and that nothing--no harm, at least--could come of his intimacy with Leonora. He would also be sure that if Diana interrupted another interview it could hardly be by accident. Such accidents did not occur every day. In the early dawn he rose and went down in his slippers to the sea, and bathed in the cool salt water, and smoked a cigarette on the rocks, and another in the archway where the scene of the previous afternoon had occurred. Then he went up to the house and walked round it, and surveyed the various angles, and terraces, and balconies, and eccentricities of patchwork architecture that made up the dwelling. Suddenly he stopped as though an idea had struck him. Houses in the south have often as many as five or six broad terraces, of various sizes and at various elevations, built from time to time to suit the taste and convenience of the owners. The strong brown vines grow up leafless from the ground till they reach the trellis, and then spread out into luxuriant foliage and a multiplicity of rich fruit-bearing branches, making a thick shade, into which even the noonday sun finds it hard to penetrate. Julius had just observed that there was a large terrace of this kind which he had not yet noticed, having been but a very few days at liberty to wander alone about the place. It was as high as the first floor, and on the side toward Castellamare, facing the sea. He had been in Marcantonio's room, and knew that it did not open upon this terrace, and Leonora's apartment was on the other side of the house. Obviously this balcony belonged to Madame de Charleroi's rooms, or was attached to some vacant part of the building. It struck him that if it were vacant, it would be a very agreeable spot in which to pass the afternoon. He thought he might mention it to Leonora that morning, and find out if it were available, since their retreat in the rocks had been invaded. It had the advantage of being large, so that people seated upon it could not be seen from below, and the thick vines would prevent their being seen from above. He spoke to the Marchesa about it as soon as they were alone for a moment after breakfast. She went quietly and surveyed the place, ascertained that it corresponded with a set of rooms which were not in use, the house being very large and irregular, and agreed that she should spend the afternoon there with Julius, since the sun would then be on the other side. There were long window-doors opening to the ground, of which the blinds were fastened, and only the middle one was left open to give access to the terrace. It was delightful, because it was in the house, so to say, and open to every one, and yet no one knew of it. Why should they not sit there? It was much better than going and hiding in the rocks with an air of secrecy, in order to be annoyed by that terrible Diana! Much better! Though, after all, they need not have troubled themselves, for Diana went out at three o'clock in the carriage to pay a visit. Accordingly, Leonora and Julius passed a very pleasant afternoon together, and when it was late they found Marcantonio, and made him go out in the boat for an hour or two, and everything was very agreeable. Marcantonio was greatly relieved at finding that his sister was away from Batiscombe, and he talked his best, and really made Leonora take an interest in his conversation. She could always find him better company when she had been with Julius for some time and had said all the things she wanted to say, and which Marcantonio would not have understood. The next day Marcantonio was obliged to go to Naples on very urgent business. An ex-royalty who sympathised with Carantoni's party, and was now in exile, had come to Naples for a day or two incognito--quite as though he had never been a royalty at all, and Marcantonio felt it his duty to go and salute the august personage according to ancient custom. He therefore left the house at an early hour, to return at dusk. He thought his sister and his wife could chaperone each other for a day without danger. But he said to himself that if he had found Diana alone with Batiscombe again he would not have gone. The morning passed away as usual. Batiscombe, relying on the afternoon for his hours with Leonora, only stayed down-stairs till she was joined by Diana, and then retired to his room, where he wrote or read in solitude, as the fancy took him. The three breakfasted together at one o'clock; then Madame de Charleroi retired to her rooms, and in the course of a quarter of an hour Leonora and Julius were installed for the afternoon in their newly-found situation on the disused terrace. Diana's boudoir was a corner room in the front of the house, facing the sea, and opening, by one window, on a narrow stone balcony running the whole length of the building; the other window was on the right side, and if she could have undone the blinds she would have seen that it opened upon the large terrace already mentioned. But the aforesaid blinds had resisted her efforts, and, as she supposed that they were closed for some purpose, she said nothing about it, merely opening the glass to admit the air. Leonora, who did not know the house thoroughly, and had a habit of leaving everything to the servants, was not aware of this, and did not realise the exact position of Diana's sitting-room. Batiscombe, of course, had taken her assurance that this side of the house was uninhabited. Accordingly, it came to pass that when he and Leonora installed themselves, they took up their position immediately outside Diana's window, under the shadow of the wall. Madame de Charleroi, on this particular day, did not go into her boudoir at once, but spent some time in her bedroom. When she was ready to begin writing, she passed through the door and sat at her desk. She at once heard the sound of voices outside, but she did not listen, nor stop to think who the talkers might be. Presently, however, the continued sound annoyed her, forced its way through the blinds, and prevented her from writing. They were speaking English. She understood the language, being a cultivated woman of the world, and the wife of a diplomatist, though she avoided speaking it. The strong, earnest voice of Julius Batiscombe,--the pleading, protesting, yet yielding tones of Leonora, always dominated by the passionate eloquence of the man, and ever answering more weakly,--all this she heard, and she sat stony and wild-eyed with horror, realising in a moment the whole hideous proportions of the phrases. Diana de Charleroi was the noblest and most honourable of women. Under other circumstances, if the voices had been those of strangers or indifferent people, she would not have hesitated an instant, but would have given some unmistakable sign of her presence. But this thing was too near her, it was a too horrible realisation of what she had dimly foreseen as possible, when she had spoken such strong words two nights earlier. It was too utterly and unspeakably awful. Her brother's wife,--not three months married,--and Julius Batiscombe, the man who had for ten years loved herself,--or had made her believe it,--whom she herself had once loved, and had never forgotten! But Diana was no weak woman, to give way to trouble or danger in the face of it. For a few minutes she bowed her head in her hands, trembling from head to foot, and no longer hearing the quickly spoken words outside. Then she rose to her feet, and made one step toward the closed blinds. No, she would not put them to open shame. Yet something must be done at once. With one movement of her strong white fingers she overturned the heavy olive-wood writing table upon the smooth tile floor with a crash that sounded through the house. In the silence that followed, she heard a moving of chairs outside, and the quick tread of departing feet. Then she went swiftly to her room, heedless of the streaming ink upon the floor, staining her long white gown, and trampling the litter of pens and paper under foot. She threw herself upon her bed and lay quite still, white as death, and staring at the ceiling. All the disgrace to her brother's name,--to her own,--came suddenly upon her, like a nightmare, a thing that no waking could cast off. All the utter baseness and unfaithfulness of her old lover was before her, making her scorn and loathe herself for ever having loved such a man, even in the foolish haste of a romantic girlhood. Her eyes strained wildly, striving to shed tears, and could not, and the whole possible pain of human agony, passing the very pains of hell, got hold upon her soul. That night, at dinner, Leonora looked desperately ill. Her face was white, save for a small red flush upon each cheek, and her eyes had a strange, furtive look about them, avoiding all meeting with the look of the other three persons at table. She said she had been in the sun, had got a bad headache, and would go to bed immediately. She had only insisted on being at dinner in order to greet her husband on his return from Naples,--but when he touched her she shrank away, and said she was nervous. Batiscombe was pale, too, beneath his tan, and though he looked every one in the face, his eyes were disagreeable to see, having an angry glare in them, like those of a wild beast at bay. He spoke little and drank more wine than usual, after the manner of Englishmen when they are unhappy. Diana was magnificent. Being often pale in the summer, no one saw any especial change in her appearance, and she threw herself nobly into the breach, asking all manner of questions of her brother concerning his trip, and showing a reasonable amount of sympathy for Leonora. The consequence was that Marcantonio was nearly satisfied, in spite of the strong impression he at first received that something unpleasant had occurred in his absence. But when he had an idea he dwelt upon it, and he promised himself that he would ask many questions of his sister when Leonora had gone to bed. He accompanied his wife to her apartment when dinner was over, with a solicitude which was perfectly genuine, but which made her tremble at every turn. His careful anxiety lest she should over-tire herself upon the stairs, lest there should be a draught in her room, or, in short, lest anything should be omitted which could conduce to her immediate recovery from the exposure to the sun--so dangerous in the south, he kept repeating--made her almost certain that she was already suspected, and that so much kindness was only preparatory to some dreadful outbreak of reproach. While Marcantonio was gone, Diana led Batiscombe out through the drawing-room to the terrace. Neither spoke till they had reached the end away from the house, where they had sat together two nights before. "Julius Batiscombe," said Diana, her voice trembling with strongly-mastered anger, "you will leave this house immediately." "Why, if you please?" he asked, defiantly. "You know very well why," she answered, turning full upon him. "Do not ask questions, but go." "I will do nothing of the kind," said he, folding his arms and facing her. "You have no earthly reason to give, save your own caprice." "I heard your conversation this afternoon outside my window. It was I who made the noise you heard, to warn you to be silent." She made the statement deliberately, choking down her anger, and looking him in the eyes. "I heard no noise--I was not outside your window," answered Julius, telling the boldest lie of his life, and, to say the truth, one of very few, for he never lied to save himself, with all his faults. "I was not outside your window," he repeated, "and I am glad I was not. For, by your own account, you heard the conversation first, and gave your signal afterwards." "Very well," said she. "I will not shame you by repeating the words I involuntarily heard before I frightened you away. But you will leave this house to-morrow all the same. You will also consider that in future you have no title to cross my threshold, nor to bow to me in the street." She turned swiftly, in utter scorn and disdain. Batiscombe followed her to the door and into the drawing-room, where Marcantonio met them, precisely as he had done before. It was too much for his newly roused suspicions. Something had gone wrong, he was sure,--and why should his sister and Batiscombe be everlastingly alone together on that terrace at night? "Ah!" he exclaimed, a little sarcastically, "you have again been taking a little air? Well, well, the evenings are very agreeable. If you will, we can sit outside, and monsieur and I will smoke a cigarette." It was dreary enough, sitting together for an hour and more in the dark. Madame de Charleroi would not speak to Batiscombe, and he confined himself to asking questions of Marcantonio and to general remarks. Marcantonio saw this, and decided that she was playing indifference in public, because she saw enough of Batiscombe in private. The latter did not force the position, but as soon as Donna Diana moved to go in, he bade them both good-night, and went to his room and to his reflections. There was a long silence after he was gone. Both the brother and sister wanted to be sure that he was out of hearing. Diana spoke first, very gently and kindly. "Marcantonio," she said, "I have something very important to say to you." She threw a light paper shade over the bright lamp, and sat herself down beside him on the sofa. CHAPTER XIV. During the four hours which had elapsed between Madame de Charleroi's involuntary discovery in the afternoon and the dinner hour, she had found time to collect her thoughts and to form a plan of action. It was absolutely necessary to do something at once, and, if possible, to understand afterwards how Leonora could have allowed herself in so short a time to fall a victim to the eloquence and personal charms of Julius Batiscombe. She wondered vaguely how it were all possible, but in the meantime she knew that the mischief existed, and that she must do her utmost to avert its growth and frightful consequences, since she alone could be of use. Her first impulse had been to go to the window and disclose herself, whereby she thought she could have put Batiscombe to flight instantly. He could hardly have stayed in the house with her after such a scene as must have followed. But a proud instinct forbade her; she would not have it appear that she could possibly stand to Julius in the position of Leonora's rival. Nor could she have found it in her heart to inflict on her sister-in-law the indelible disgrace of an exposure. All this passed through her mind in a moment, and checked her first step towards the window. She frightened the lovers away by upsetting her table, instead of coming upon them herself, and she knew an hour later that she had thereby lost the power of managing them by anything she could say to Batiscombe. She would not--she could not--go to Leonora and force a confession. Besides, what good would be gained? Leonora was a person to be protected, not attacked. As for Julius, she knew perfectly well, when she led him out to the terrace while Marcantonio was up-stairs, that he would deny everything. He could do nothing else, and he did it boldly, though it was of no use. But Diana thought it possible that he would leave the house without a struggle, and abandon the position for a time. If Julius had been a less passionate man, and a more accomplished villain, if he had loved Leonora less ardently and more designingly, or if he had been less furiously angry against Diana, he would have acted differently. He would have lied just as he had done, but blandly and with a great show of astonishment; he would have made a low bow, answering Diana that he was at all times ready to obey her, and he would have left the house in the morning, with an elaborate excuse to his hosts. But Batiscombe was quite another sort of person. One of the calmest and most diplomatic of men under ordinary circumstances, his passion when roused was wholly uncontrollable. He was madly in love, and madly angry, and he would have cheerfully fought the whole world single-handed for the sake of his love, or of his anger, separately, let alone in the present case, when both were roused to the fiercest pitch. Diana knew him well, and, after the few words she had exchanged with him on the terrace, she knew what to expect. And she had foreseen the possibility of his refusal to leave the villa, and was prepared for it. The only question of difficulty was to direct Marcantonio's whole anger against Batiscombe, and to shield Leonora as far as possible; but Marcantonio must be told of the danger, since Diana alone was unable to avert it. She sat beside him on the deep sofa in the drawing-room, and she laid her hand affectionately on his, as though to give him some strength to bear what was in store. "It is very important," she said, "and you must be very patient. You must give me your word that you will do nothing violent for at least a day, for you will be very angry." She knew that, with all his good nature, she could rely on his courage. He was not easily frightened, after all. He looked earnestly at her, and his face was drawn into a look of determination that sat oddly on his delicate and rather weak features. "Speak, Diana mia," he said simply. "I will do what I can for you." He supposed, of course, that something had occurred between herself and Batiscombe. "It is not I," she said, "it is you who are concerned." "I?" repeated her brother, in some astonishment. "Yes. You are the person who must act in the matter. You must write a little note to Batiscombe, and tell him that your wife's sudden illness"-- "What? But it is only a little sun--a mere headache," interrupted Marcantonio. "No matter;--that your wife's sudden illness is so severe that you must beg him to postpone the remainder of his visit to some future time." Marcantonio looked more and more astonished. "But I only asked him for a week. He will go of his own accord to-morrow or the day after. I am sorry, Diana, but you said you did not mind meeting him." He spoke seriously, with a puzzled expression on his face. "It makes no difference," said Diana. "He must go to-morrow morning. He has not behaved honourably to you since he has been in the house." Her brother looked suddenly very grave, and his voice dropped as he spoke. "Has he insulted you, Diana?" he asked. "Yes," said she, in low tones, "he has insulted me. But he has done worse, he has insulted your wife in my hearing." Marcantonio turned suddenly on the sofa, and grasped his sister's arm as in a vise. His face turned a ghastly colour, and his voice trembled violently. "Diana--are you telling me the truth?" Her grey eyes turned honestly and bravely to him. "You and I never learned to tell lies, Marcantonio. It is true." She knew well enough that he would never suspect his wife, nor ask a question which could lead to such a conclusion. When she said that Batiscombe had insulted Leonora, she spoke the absolute truth. What greater insult can man offer an honest woman than by wittingly forcing upon her an unlawful love? Marcantonio looked at her one moment, and then sprang to his feet. At that instant he could have killed Julius Batiscombe with his hands, as perhaps Diana herself would have done. She seized his hand as he stood, and drew him toward her. "No," she said, understanding his thought, "remember your promise. You must do nothing now--except write the note." But Carantoni was in no condition to write notes. He broke away, and walked wildly up and down the room, wringing his hands together, and muttering furious ejaculations. He was too angry, too much surprised, too much horrified at his own stupidity throughout the affair to be able to think clearly. Diana sat motionless on the sofa, as angry, perhaps, as he, in her own way, but full of pity and sympathy for him, and trying to devise some means of helping him. She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand, and her eyes followed him anxiously in his quick, irregular walk. And as she looked he seemed gradually to fall under her influence, and went and sat in a deep chair away from her, and buried his face. Then Diana rose, and went to the table in the corner and arranged the light, and wrote, herself, the note to Batiscombe, leaving a blank at the foot for a signature. She looked round, and saw her brother watching her. "Come, dear boy," she said kindly, "I have written the note for you; sign it, and I will see that he gets it in the morning." Marcantonio rose and came to her with uncertain steps. He put his hand on her shoulder a moment. Then he fell on his knees beside her, and pressed her close to him, silently. Presently he rose, she put the pen between his fingers, still trembling with his anger, and he signed the note as best he could. She put it into an envelope, sealed it, and directed it to Julius Batiscombe. "He will be out of the house before we are up," she said in a tone of certainty. "Go to bed, dear boy, and never let him trouble your peace again." "But I will trouble his peace," answered Marcantonio, bending his smooth brows. "We will see about that afterwards," said Diana. "If you think best to fight him, I will not oppose you; but we will talk about it. We cannot talk now. Good-night my dear, dear brother." She kissed him on the forehead and held both his hands for a moment, and then led him away. He obeyed mechanically, and they parted for the night. Diana often wished her brother were a stronger man in the ordinary things of life, but she knew that he was honest, and no coward in danger, and that he always spoke the truth and kept his word. It was his fault that he always imagined every one to be as honest as himself until the contrary was proved,--after which he never trusted the man again. Diana went slowly to her room and locked the door behind her. With a candle in her hand she entered the boudoir and looked round upon the scene of the catastrophe. The glass of the long window was still open, and the refractory blinds still closed, the bolts rusted in, beyond her strength to draw them. The servants had raised the desk upright and washed away the ink from the tiles; there was no trace of disorder visible. She could hardly realise that in this neat room, that very day, only a few hours ago, she had passed through one of the most terrible experiences of her life. She sat down in the chair before the desk and bent her queenly head. She had done her best for the right through that day, but it had all gone by so very quickly that she doubted whether she had done wisely. It seemed as though the burden of it all rested upon her--of the right and of the wrong; and the burden was very heavy. May God in his mercy give strength and courage to all brave women doing the right! I think that ordinary women have more moral vanity than ordinary men; but that very good men have more of it than very good women. A good man always seems to have a conviction of goodness, to be quite sure when he has done right, and to enjoy the sense of having done it. A woman's sympathies are wider and reach further than a man's. When she has done her best, there always is something more that she would do if she could, and until that is done also she can never feel the comfortable delight in godliness experienced by man, the grosser creature, who hedges his possibilities more closely, and gets rid of his superfluous aspirations by the logical demonstration of the unattainable. But the sphere of ordinary women is narrower, and their sympathies are dispersed in a greater multiplicity and divergence of small channels, so that a little goodness, a little easy charity with a pretty name, is a luscious titbit to the tongue that speaketh vanity. It was a dreary night to every one of the four,--least of all perhaps to Julius Batiscombe, whose fierce temper was thoroughly roused and would not be calmed again for days, giving him a kind of wicked satisfaction while it lasted. He spent most of the night at his window, smoking and going over the scenes of the day, and the scenes of the future. His mind ran in the direction of fighting,--to fight any one or anything would be a rare satisfaction; and ever as he fancied some struggle possible the hot blood rushed to his temples and longed for action, so that he bit his cigar through and through, and clasped his hands together till the veins stood out like ropes. He slept a little at last, and dreamed savage dreams of hand-to-hand combat, and woke with the roar of cannon in his ears. For he was a man of exaggerated fancies when his brain worked unconsciously, like many men who have ended in celebrity or in insane asylums. The roar of the guns was only a servant knocking at his door, with hot water and a note. He saw Diana's handwriting, and suspected a new move, so that he was not altogether astonished by the contents. He understood that she had made Marcantonio sign her writing--by what means he could not tell--in order to force the position. There was evidently nothing to be done but to go. He would not have left the villa for anything Diana could have said, in his present humour, but it was impossible to bid defiance to the master of the house. Besides, he supposed that since Carantoni had invited him to leave, Diana had said something which would lead to a challenge from her brother, which could naturally not be delivered under his own roof. He read the note through twice, and he went about his toilet with his usual care, looking angrily at himself in the glass as he shaved, but gradually composing his features to an appearance of calmness. Then he put his things together, rang the bell, told the servant he was going to Sorrento on business, and gave him a very handsome fee, requesting him to bring the things to the hotel in the course of the day. Julius took his hat and stick, and strolled out of the house toward the town. Donna Diana and Marcantonio met in the morning. They saluted each other with the quiet, mournful understanding of people who have a common trouble, which they know must be spoken of, though they desire to put off the evil moment. They were both pale, and Diana's eyes were shaded by great dark rings that spoke of a sleepless night. "Have you seen Leonora? How is she?" was her first question. "Dio mio! She is very poorly. Poverina! It has made a terrible impression on her. Of course I did not speak of the subject." "Of course." Diana sighed and looked drearily at the window, as though she wished she were outside, away, and beyond this trouble. She could not know what Leonora would say or do if Marcantonio ever broached the subject. "I do not think," said she, "that it will ever be necessary to say anything about it. She will understand that you sent him out of the house,--she will never see him again." "Is he gone?" asked Marcantonio. "Yes--early this morning. I sent to find out." "Then there need be no time lost," said her brother. "I have just written a note to De Lancray, at Castellamare. It is much better to have a Frenchman in dealing with foreigners. He will be here by one o'clock, and will arrange everything." Diana had expected that Marcantonio would send for a friend to arrange matters with Batiscombe. She did not look surprised. "Have you sent the man yet?" she asked. "He is getting a horse, I suppose. I have not heard him go." "Tell him to wait five minutes. This is a serious affair, and we had better act deliberately." Diana intended to prevent the duel if possible. Marcantonio was willing to humour her, and went out to stop the man. When he came back, she made him sit down beside her. She explained to him the situation very clearly. Batiscombe had insulted Leonora, had done her a mortal offence. But Batiscombe was not the important person in the case. Leonora was the important person. If matters had been different, if, for instance, a man had run away with another man's wife, then, of course, they must necessarily fight,--and the woman made no difference, since her reputation would be already destroyed. But it would be a terrible injury to a young wife to have her husband fighting a duel about her before they had been married three months. People always say there is not much smoke without a little fire; society, being generally averse to standing up to be shot at, says that a man in Marcantonio's position would not go out unless he had very serious cause. Of course it would say in this case that the cause lay with Leonora, that she should never have allowed a man enough intimacy to give him a chance of insulting her, and so forth, and so on. Diana would not use the argument of the Church's prohibition of duelling. She knew that Leonora's welfare was the chiefest thing present in her brother's mind, and that if she could show him that, for Leonora's sake, he ought to leave Batiscombe alone, he would assuredly conquer his anger and his pride. He had no sanguine and combative instincts, like Julius; he did not like fighting for the enjoyment of it, and if he could be convinced that his anger was unwise, he would ultimately get the better of it, now that the first sharp moment of wrath was over. To preserve Leonora's spotless fame was a much more important thing than to punish an insolent foreigner for vainly attempting to damage it, and thereby calling the attention of the world to the fact that her reputation was capable of damage. It was a hard fight, and Diana's patience never wearied through the hours they talked together. More than once she thought it was lost, and that Marcantonio would order the note to be dispatched. Nothing but the real affection and trust that existed between her and her brother made it possible for her to succeed. But at last he was convinced, and silently went out and got the note he had written, and tore it up before his sister. The die was cast, and he did not mention the subject again, but went to see his wife. At her door he was told by her maid that Leonora was asleep, which was not true. But he asked no questions, and retired to his own room to solace himself as he might. He was too deeply distressed to wonder why Diana did not go to Leonora and sit with her. Leonora had hardly spoken to any one since she and Batiscombe had parted on the previous evening before dinner. At table, as has been seen, she had said little, and no one had seen her since except her husband, who had gone to her in the morning. After his visit she rang for her maid and told her to see that no one disturbed her, as she was going to sleep again and would ring when she wanted anything. At the moment when her husband was told she was not visible, she was sitting in her dressing-room, just behind the closed blinds of the window, listening to the monotonous, dry hum of the locusts in the garden, and wondering whether anything would ever happen again in the world. She was utterly dishevelled, her rich hair falling to her shoulders and halfway to the ground in wildest disorder; the gay coloured ribbons of her peignoir all untied and ruffled, her bare feet half thrust into her gold-embroidered slippers, her hands lying idly in her lap, as though there were nothing more for them to do. A strange, wild figure, sitting there surrounded by all the gorgeous little properties and knickknacks of a great lady's toilet. Batiscombe was gone! Her husband had told her that he had been requested to postpone the remainder of his visit indefinitely. Of course he had gone, then. Marcantonio had supposed she would understand and be well satisfied. But she had only turned and hidden her face in the pillow,--as was perhaps natural to a very young woman when her husband mentioned anything that gave her a sense of shame. She must have been very much hurt by the insult, whatever it was, and she could not bear to hear it mentioned. Marcantonio had not told his sister of this, thinking it would be indelicate, and was nobody's business but his own and his wife's. Batiscombe was gone--when should she see him again? How could he reach her, or she him? What was life to be like without him? And then the dazed, disappointed, terrified look came again to her face, and she stared at nothing, vacantly, and like a woman beside herself. And oh, that other thought! How much did Marcantonio know? It was Diana, of course, who had made that frightful noise--she could hear the crash still sounding in her ears. She had remembered too late that corner room, cut off from all the others opening on the terrace, and communicating from within with Diana's bedroom--oh, the folly of it! If only Diana were to come to her--she could kill her, she thought! She was not so tall, perhaps, but she was much stronger--she was sure she could kill her! But how much did Marcantonio know? Diana was so truthful, she must have told him all. Those hateful people who always speak the truth! Ah, if only Batiscombe could come back--or see her one moment before he went. But he was gone already. If he could have seen her this morning, she might have arranged--it was impossible yesterday afternoon, he was so wild, so furiously, gloriously angry. It did her good to think of his blazing eyes, and strong, set teeth just showing between his parted lips. He was such a man among men! Never again--never--never, perhaps! She might be shut up--made a prisoner--Heaven only knew what was in store for her! Dreary, hopeless, no light, no life--no anything. Hollow? She laughed dismally to herself. Yes, life was hollow indeed, now--empty of all joy, or peace, or rest, forever and ever. Pray? How could she pray? Prayer was an innocent amusement for idle young women, with imaginary sins and plenty of time. But now--bah! nothing was further from her thoughts. What could Heaven do for her? Heaven would certainly not give her Batiscombe again. It would be wrong--ha! ha! of course it was wrong; but what was life without him? What had all her life been as compared with the happiness of the last fortnight, culminating in the happiness of yesterday? It might be wrong, but it was life; and all before had been mere existence--a miserable, vegetable, hopeless existence. The day dragged on; she took no thought of the hours, though she had taken neither food nor drink since the night before. And always the maid outside the door said she was asleep. At five o'clock she could bear it no longer, but rang the bell and said she would dress, as she felt much better. The maid told her that one of the men had returned from Sorrento and wished to see her excellency, as he had executed a commission for her. Leonora stared a moment, guessed there was something behind the message, and ordered the man to go into her sitting-room, whither she presently went, wrapped in a voluminous dressing-gown, that completely hid her disarranged peignoir. The man handed her a small parcel and waited. She turned her back, and, opening it, found a little olive-wood box, and inside that there was a small note with neither address nor name on it. She hastily closed the box again, and, turning carelessly, so that the man could see her, she examined it by the window, as though criticising the workmanship. She nodded to the man to go, but he stood looking at her with a queer expression that frightened her. She understood that he had examined the parcel on the way, probably; at all events, that he must be bribed. She quickly opened a drawer of her secretary, found a purse, and gave the fellow a gold piece. He grinned, bowed his thanks, and retired. He was the man who had taken Batiscombe's things to town that afternoon. Leonora had no experience. In novels, people always bribed the servants; it was most likely the proper thing--the safe thing--to do. The man would not have gone away unless she had given him something, she thought. The note was brief to terseness. It conveyed in the fewest possible words the information that the writer--name not mentioned--intended to spend the day, in future, in a small boat with green oars--underlined with a very black stroke--in the vicinity of a certain landing known to both the writer and the receiver of the note--name of latter also not mentioned. And the writer added, laconically, "No fee to bearer." She ought to have read the note through before paying the man. But what could she have done? He had stood staring at her, until he was paid. Her heart gave a great leap. It was so like him, so daring, to send her word at once. At least she should feel, now, that he was always there, waiting for her--ready to help her at a moment's notice. If only she could be with him on the soft, blue water, out in the sun! She could fight now--she could face them all--for he was out there; at least, he would be there to-morrow. She went back to her bedroom, and gave herself up to her maid, and had strong tea and bread-and-butter brought to her, while she dressed; and an hour later she sallied out, with all her usual elasticity of step and motion, and all the marvellous freshness of face that distinguished her from other women. She found her husband and Diana together on the terrace. Marcantonio's face softened and flushed with pleasure as he saw how well and beautiful she looked. She, at least, he thought, had not suffered long by all this trouble. It was so brave of her to forget it, now that the man was gone; he was so glad to think that he could have borne the brunt of it, and had saved her the pain of any discussion. But he said little, just kissing her hand, and affectionately leading her to a comfortable chair. Diana, who had really carried the heat of the battle alone, and bore the burden of the secret, was very quiet. She saw a little look of hardness in Leonora's face which she had seen long before, but rarely. She said kindly that she was very glad to see her up again, and hoped she was entirely recovered. Marcantonio, said Diana, had been very anxious. For an instant the two women faced each other, and Leonora thought she was beginning to understand her sister-in-law. CHAPTER XV. From morning till night, under the broiling sun of August, a wretched-looking boat plied slowly along the rocks in the neighbourhood of the Carantoni landing. It was a miserable old tub, big enough to hold three or four people at the most, and the solitary individual to whom it seemed to belong propelled it slowly about with a pair of old green oars. Now and then he would paddle under the shadow of the cliffs and put down a line, angling for a stray mackerel or mullet, and sometimes catching even one of those sharp-finned red fellows that the Neapolitan fishermen called "cardinals." He did not seem to care much whether he caught anything or not, but he apparently loved that particular part of the coast, for he was never seen anywhere else. A big, shabby man, in rough clothes, with bright blue eyes, and a half-grown, blue-black beard,--Julius Batiscombe as a fisherman,--brown as a berry, and growing rough-fisted from constant handling of oars and lines and nets. No one took any notice of him as he pottered about in his tub. The watermen, who passed and repassed, knew him as the crazy Englishman who found it amusing to bake himself all day in the sun for the sake of catching some wretched fish that he could buy in the market for half the trouble. What did they care? They never fished there themselves, because there were no fish,--a very good and simple reason,--and if a foolish foreigner chose to register an old boat at the little fishing harbour close by, and pay ten francs for the privilege, it was not their business. Neapolitans and their congeners do not care much for anything foreigners do, unless it happens to bring them money. And in the evening when it was dark, Julius paddled away to Sorrento, and, meeting his own boat on the way, pulled off his rough clothes, jumped into the water for a swim, and dressed himself like a Christian before going ashore. Save that he was growing a beard, and was almost black with the sun, he was as much Julius Batiscombe as ever when he was on land. He had no acquaintances in the hotel, and no one cared or asked what he did with himself all day long. It was said amongst the fishermen that he had been seen once or twice rowing a foreign lady about, and they laughed at the idea of a "signore" earning a franc by ferrying a passenger, just like one of themselves--for, of course he was paid for it; it amused him, because he was crazy, poveretto! And sometimes he was heard singing outlandish songs to himself in the heat of the day as he paddled about under the cliffs. The time had sped quickly since Batiscombe had left the Carantoni villa, and it was now the first week in August. Madame de Charleroi had stayed nearly a week longer than she had intended, but at last had gone back to Pegli, to Marcantonio's great regret, and to Leonora's unspeakable relief. So long as Diana was in the house Leonora had been obliged to steal occasions, few and far between, when she could safely go down to the rocks and signal to the shabby man with the green oars to come and take her off. Many and long and hot were the days when he pulled his poor crazy craft about from dawn to dark, without catching a sight of the strong lithe figure that he loved. But come when she would, at morning, noon, or night, he was always there, ready to take her and to slip off at a quick stroke to one of the many green caves that line the shore; and there, for an hour or two, or as long as she might safely stay, they spent happy moments together, the happier for being few, forbidden, and somewhat dangerous. As for the danger, though, there was not much of it. It would have been hard, indeed, to recognise in the ill-clad boatman, with his stubbly beard, and seedy cap of brown knitted wool, the fine gentleman whom the natives stopped to look at in the street. Leonora, if any one had met her on the landing, would have said she had taken the first passing fisherman to row her about among the caves, and no one would have suspected anything; and she used to laugh as she watched the progress of his beard, knowing that each day made the disguise more complete. Her own boat had given her some anxiety at first, but she had made Marcantonio lend the whole equipage to a friend further down the bay, telling him it was too hot to be on the water at present. And when Diana was at last gone, she had most of the day to herself; for Marcantonio was perpetually busy with letters, or trying horses, or going to Naples. He always found his wife extremely charming when he had been away all day, or shut up in his rooms, and preternaturally contradictory and capricious when he was with her for long together, and he concluded that she preferred a certain amount of solitude, and humoured her accordingly. Never hearing of Batiscombe, he supposed he had left the neighbourhood for parts unknown, and though he regretted not having had an opportunity of shooting him, he knew in his heart that Diana's advice had been good, and that it was best so. Now and then, when he thought of Julius too long, he grew angry and paced quickly up and down his room; but on the whole life was easy and pleasant enough, and his beloved Leonora was the most charming of women, not half so capricious as some of the wives of his friends. How long this state of things might have continued it is impossible to say, if a disturbing element had not been introduced. But the disturbing element is seldom far to seek in such cases, and in due time it came. There was a man in the service of the Marchesa Carantoni,--the same whom Batiscombe had employed to take his things to Sorrento, and then to convey the note to Leonora,--and the man's name was Temistocle, as arrant a knave as ever opened palm for bribe. Carantoni had taken him in Rome when he married, because he needed another man, and the fellow's face was familiar to him. He had seen him in good houses, and had noticed his extraordinary adroitness in waiting. The man's character was not altogether satisfactory. He had received no recommendation from his last place, but Marcantonio took him on trial and brought him to Sorrento. Temistocle had exceedingly sharp eyes, and Temistocle had an exceedingly smooth tongue; he was understood among the servants to have made economies, and his tastes were somewhat luxurious. He found Sorrento hot and dull, and he cast about for something refreshing and amusing. To take sea-baths had always been his chiefest ambition. It sounded well to be able to say he had taken a course of sea-bathing. But the thing was by no means easy at Sorrento. He could not bathe from his master's landing, and it was a long distance to go round by the lanes to reach another descent. At last, however, he discovered that he could climb over the little point of rocks at the foot of the Carantoni villa, and reach a small cove, where, in complete seclusion, he might enjoy himself as he pleased. Accordingly, when he had finished serving the midday breakfast he used to make a practice of going down to bathe. In his little cove he hid his clothes carefully among the rocks and crept into the water under the deep shadow of the overhanging cliff. He could not swim a stroke, but he could sit just so that the water came up to his chin, and his round black bullet head lay on the surface like a floating football, scarcely visible to any one passing outside in the sun. From this position it amused Temistocle to watch the boats and the fishermen for an hour or two, enjoying the idea that they never dreamed of his presence. It chanced often, as he sat in the water, that Julius, in his outlandish costume, paddled his old boat past Temistocle's retreat; and the sharp eyes of the Roman servant were not long in discovering that the fisherman was no fisherman at all. It was the easier to recognise Batiscombe, as the man saw him when his beard was only a few days old. From that day Temistocle watched his opportunity to descend when the boat with the green oars had just passed, and would be out of the way for some time. There was never the smallest doubt in his mind of Batiscombe's intention in thus disguising himself. The incident of the parcel, which he had carefully opened and examined, Batiscombe's sudden departure, and Leonora's simultaneous indisposition, all combined in his mind into one harmonious whole, from which he proposed to himself to extract at least a reasonable amount of money. One day he was rewarded for his pains. The boat passed very near to the mouth of his water-den, skirting the rocks at a great pace. He just saw that Leonora was seated in the stern, and he incontinently ducked his black head, and kept under water till he thought he must have drowned. When at last he was obliged from sheer suffocation to bring his mouth to the air, they were gone, and Temistocle sprang out of the water like some dark evil genius of a low order, awaiting evolution into the advanced condition of complete devildom. He was not long in dressing, and in a few minutes he had got back to the landing, clambering quickly over the rocks, and hurting himself, in his haste, at every step. After that, he became more irregular in his habits, lurking in secret places till he saw Leonora going toward the descent at the end of the garden, and presently following her at a safe distance. He ascertained, as he had expected, that Batiscombe spent his whole time within hail of the landing, in the boat with the green oars, and that Leonora went down and signalled to him, whenever she had a chance. Temistocle was so delighted with the skill of the arrangement that for a long time he could not prevail upon himself to interrupt it, even for the sake of the bribe that must inevitably follow. But, one day, he needed money, and he did not want to encroach upon his purse of savings, for he was a miserly wretch as well as a knave. He had seen something pretty in the way of a silk cap, which a stray pedlar had brought with other things, and he thought he should enjoy bargaining for it the next time the pedlar came with his wares. He knew that he should probably bargain for an hour and then not buy it after all,--but nevertheless he might be weak, and then he should like to feel that he had got the thing out of his betters by his own skill, instead of squandering money from his hoard. He seldom indulged in the luxury of buying what he fancied, but when he did he generally made some one else pay for it. There was a certain refinement of miserliness about him. At first he imagined that it might be best to drop some hint to his mistress, just enough to frighten her into paying for his silence. But his calmer reflection told him that he would be thereby killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. Batiscombe's ingenuity would make some change in the arrangements and he would have to begin all over again. Evidently the best thing was to make his master pay, and let the lovers go quietly on their course, so that he could at any time produce evidence of his veracity. He watched his opportunity. Marcantonio often inquired whether the signora were in the house, or were gone out. If she was out he supposed she had gone into the garden or to pay visits; he never disturbed her arrangements, knowing how much she enjoyed being perfectly free, and feeling sure she would not get into mischief. She made a point of calling on everybody, telling him afterwards where she had been, and the two or three hours she spent with Julius escaped notice in her clever account of the spending of the day. Now and then she would say she had been down to the rocks, in case her husband should ever take it into his head to go and find her there, and she was quite sure that by this time Julius was changed beyond recognition. Temistocle had not long to wait. One day in August, Marcantonio chanced to inquire of him where the marchesa might be. Temistocle was prepared; with the utmost gravity and respect he dealt his blow, speaking as though he were saying the most natural thing in the world. "I suppose," he said, "that her excellency is gone out in the boat with the Signor Batiscombe." He pronounced all the letters of the name, as though it had been Italian; but it was unmistakable. Marcantonio turned upon him in amazement. "Animal!" he exclaimed, "are you drunk?" "I, eccellenza?" cried Temistocle in hurt tones. "I drunk? Heaven forbid." "Then you are crazy," remarked Marcantonio, more and more astonished. "The Signor Batiscombe is no longer here." "Pardon me, eccellenza," retorted the servant respectfully. "I imagined that your excellency knew. The Signor Batiscombe comes every day, and takes the Signora Marchesa out in a boat. He is become a very strange signore, for he dresses like a fisherman, and has let his beard grow as long as this--so," the man explained, holding his hand a few inches from his face. "Mi maraviglio, io!" he exclaimed, casting his eyes to the ground. Marcantonio was speechless with amazement and horror, and turned his back upon the servant. A man less thoroughly a gentleman in every sense would have fallen upon Temistocle and beaten him, then and there. By a great effort, Marcantonio collected himself, and turned again. "You have not to make any remarks upon the appearance of the Signor Batiscombe," he said briefly. "Basta!" Temistocle had nothing left but to bow and leave the room. He did not understand his master in the least; he was just like a foreigner, he thought. But Marcantonio dropped into an arm-chair, the moment he was alone, as though all the strength and life were suddenly gone from him. He could not in the least realise the extent of the revelation contained in Temistocle's words. He did not know what to do, and for the moment it did not even strike him that there was anything to be done. In the course of half an hour he grew calmer and began to review the situation. He remembered distinctly every word of Diana's concerning the trouble when Batiscombe was in the house. Diana had said very distinctly that Julius had insulted Leonora--and Diana always spoke the truth. Marcantonio had not asked her what the insult had been. He could not bring himself to do it, and he did not want to know anything more. He would have cheerfully fought with Batiscombe on the strength of his sister's assertion, but she had dissuaded him, and now he was sorry for it. The servant had spoken with an air of conviction, as though he thought it quite natural, and only wondered at Batiscombe's strange appearance. There could not be any doubt about it, at all. A new sensation took possession of Marcantonio--an utterly new passion, which he did not recognise as part of himself. He was jealous. He did not, he would not, understand the truth, but he would prevent his wife from ever seeing Julius Batiscombe again, and then he would go in search of him and wreak his vengeance without stint. At the same time he hoped he might avoid a scene with Leonora. He was brave enough to fight the man, but he shrank from telling his wife what he knew. It seemed so brutal and uncourteous, and altogether contrary to his principles. But, after all, he ought to ascertain whether Temistocle were right--whether Julius really disguised himself. He would go and see. No, he could not do that! He could not play the spy upon his wife--it was low, ignoble, unworthy. He would find some other way. His brain swam and it seemed too much for him. He grasped the arm of the chair and rose to his feet in pure desperation, feeling that he must get out of the way into his own rooms for a while, lest any one should see him in his present state. In the hall Marcantonio paused a moment, holding his hand to his head, as though it hurt him, and as he waited the door opened, and Leonora faced him, beaming with light, and life, and happiness. Marcantonio looked at her one instant, and tried to speak; he would have said something courteous, from force of habit. But the words choked him, and losing all control of himself he turned and fled up the stairs, leaving his wife staring in blank amazement. Poor fellow! she thought, he had probably got a touch of the sun. She hastened to her room and sent to inquire if the signore were ill, and if she might come to him. They brought back word that he was dressing, and that nothing was the matter. Then Leonora felt a cold chill descend to her heart, the dreadful presentiment of a real terror, not far distant. But when she met her husband in the evening at dinner, she did not dare to refer to his strange behaviour in the hall. During dinner he talked much as usual, except that he did not laugh at all, and seemed very grave. There was a preternatural calm about him that increased Leonora's fears. She knew him so little that she could not be sure what he would do, whether anything had really occurred, or whether he were subject to fits of insanity. He had looked like a madman in the afternoon. When they were alone, he offered her his arm, and led her out into the air, and they sat down side by side in deep chairs. Marcantonio leisurely lighted a cigarette, and puffed a few minutes in silence. "Leonora," he said at last, "I have heard a curious thing, and I must tell you immediately." His voice was even and cold; his whole manner was different from anything she remembered in her experience of him; he was more imposing, altogether more of a man and stronger. Leonora trembled violently, knowing instinctively that he had discovered something. She did not speak, but let him continue. "I chanced to inquire if you were at home this afternoon, and the man said he supposed you were gone out in the boat with Mr. Batiscombe, as you did every day. Is it true? The man who told me said it as though it were quite natural, as though every one in the house knew it except myself." Leonora was dumb for a moment. The accusation came so suddenly that she was taken off her guard, besides being thoroughly frightened at her husband's terrible calmness, so unlike his manner under ordinary circumstances. She lay back in her low chair and tried to collect her thoughts. "The man had also observed," continued Marcantonio, turning his keen dark eyes upon her, "that Monsieur Batiscombe had a beard, and was dressed like a fisherman. Altogether, it was extremely curious." Marcantonio and his sister always spoke the truth. Batiscombe never lied in his life to save himself, but could do it boldly when it was absolutely necessary to save some one else. He had no principle about it, except that cowards told lies, and men did not,--that was the way he put it. He was not afraid of anything himself, but for a woman he would perjure himself by all the oaths in Christendom. It was his idea of chivalry to women, and could not altogether be blamed. But Leonora by a long apprenticeship to a very worldly mother, and owing to the singular confusion of her ideas, had acquired a moral obliquity which she defended to herself on the ground that the ultimate results she obtained were intended to be good. The telling of untruths, she argued, was in itself neither good nor bad; the consequences alone deserved to be considered. But as the consequences of lies are not easily cast up into totals of good and bad from the starting point, it sometimes occurred that she got herself into trouble. However, she was not hampered by prejudice, and she was a very clever woman, much cleverer than the great majority, and she was just now in a very hard position. In a few minutes she had made up her mind, and she answered Marcantonio fluently enough. "Why," said she calmly, "should I not go out with Mr. Batiscombe when I please? If he chooses to dress like a fisherman, I suppose he has the right." Marcantonio was rather staggered at her sudden confession. He had expected a denial; but there she sat as calmly as possible, telling him to his face that it was all true. However, he was not likely to lose his nerve again now that he was face to face with the difficulty. "It appears to me, Leonora," he said, "that when I have turned a man out of my house for insulting you, it is sufficient reason"-- "For insulting me?" exclaimed Leonora in well-feigned astonishment. "Mr. Batiscombe never insulted me! You must be dreaming." She laughed a small dry laugh. But Marcantonio was not so easily put off. "My sister," said he, "told me that Batiscombe insulted you in her hearing. I have always known my sister to speak the truth. Perhaps you will explain." "What explanation do you want? You sent Mr. Batiscombe out of the house on the pretence that I was ill. Of course Diana made you do it,--I do not know how, nor what she said. You must talk it over with her. She was probably sick of him, and wanted him out of the way." Leonora spoke scornfully, and almost brutally, and Marcantonio's blood began to grow hot. "That is absurd," he said instantly. "Perhaps Monsieur Batiscombe would not object to being confronted with me for five minutes?" "I am sure he would not object," said Leonora, without hesitation. She was quite certain of her lover's courage, at all events. She knew he would face anybody. "Meanwhile," said Marcantonio, "you will oblige me by giving up your harmless habit of going out with him every day. I should have supposed that you would at least have had the pride to deny it, after what occurred when he was here." Marcantonio was angry, but he reasoned rightly. "You would have preferred that I should lie to you, my dear," said his wife disdainfully, in the full virtue of having told half the truth--the first half. "I would not permit myself to apply such a word to anything you say," answered Marcantonio, with cold courtesy. "But I would have you observe that you are mistaken with regard to my sister, and that if she told me she heard the man insult you, he did. Perhaps you did not understand what he said. It is the same. You will not meet him again at the rocks--nor anywhere else." "Why not? Why shall I not meet him?" she inquired, raising her eyebrows in disdain. "Because I forbid you." He spoke shortly, as if that ended the matter. Leonora shrugged her shoulders a little, with an expression of pity, and shifted her position, so as to face him. "You forbid me, do you?" she asked, lowering her voice. "Mais oui! I forbid you to see him anywhere." "Do you know what you are saying?" she asked, and there was a tone of menace in her words. "Oh, perfectly," answered her husband calmly; "and I will also take care that you obey me--bien entendu!" "Then it is war?" asked Leonora, as though she hoped it might be, and to the knife. "If you disobey, it is war," said Marcantonio, "but you will not." "Why not?" "Because I will prevent you. It is useless to prolong this discussion." "Mon Dieu, I ask nothing better than to finish it as soon as possible," said Leonora. "In that case, good-night," replied Marcantonio, rising. "Good-night," answered Leonora, still seated. "I am not sleepy yet. You are not afraid that Monsieur Batiscombe will be announced after you are gone to bed?" She spoke scornfully, as though trying to drive a wound with every word. She thought she knew her husband, and she felt triumphant. Marcantonio did not answer, and withdrew in silence. In a few hours his whole character had developed, and he was a very different man from the Marcantonio of that morning. He had passed through a few hours of a desperate crisis, and had come out of it with an immovable determination to clear up the whole affair, and to force his wife to break off her intimacy with Batiscombe. Even now he could believe no evil,--only the foolish infatuation of a young woman for a man who had the romantic faculty strongly developed. It would cost an effort to break it off,--and Leonora would be very much annoyed, of course,--but it must be done. And so Marcantonio had gone about it in the boldest and simplest way, by attacking her directly. He congratulated himself, for at one stroke he had ascertained the truth of the servant's statement, and had gone through the much dreaded scene with his wife. Henceforth she knew what to expect; he had declared himself as a jealous husband, and had said he would be obeyed. He went to bed in the consciousness that he had done the best thing possible under the circumstances, and promising himself an early explanation with Batiscombe. But for all the success of this first move, he was wretchedly unhappy. He still loved Leonora, as he would always love her, whatever she did, with all his might and main, though he saw well enough that she did not love him. But he was furiously jealous, and he swore by all the saints in the calendar that she should never love any one else. His jealousy had made a man of him. CHAPTER XVI. It was clear that after what had passed between Leonora and her husband, the relations must assume the aspect described in diplomatic language as "strained," to say the least of it. The two met many times in the course of the day, and never referred to the subject of their difference; but Leonora was well aware that she was watched. If ever she sallied out into the garden, hoping to escape observation, her husband was at hand, offering to accompany her. She once even went so far as to go down some distance with him towards the rocks, she could not tell why,--perhaps because it would have been a comfort to her to catch a glimpse of Julius in the boat. But he was probably lurking behind the rocks, just out of sight, and she could not see him. She knew that he still kept his watch during half the day, not having yet invented a better plan,--for she was in correspondence with him,--and in the meanwhile, until new arrangements could be made, there was a bare chance that she might escape for a moment in the morning and be able to see him. Her husband never left her side in the afternoon. Temistocle, the knave, had failed in his attempt to gain Marcantonio's favour, as has been seen, but he now reaped a golden harvest from the lovers, who paid him handsomely for carrying letters, with a reckless feeling that if he betrayed them the deluge might come,--but that without him they were utterly cut off from each other. He had at first carefully opened one or two letters and skilfully closed them again, but had desisted on finding that they were written in English, a language he unfortunately did not understand. It was now his business to encourage the correspondence to the best of his ability, in order that whenever it should be convenient to spring the mine, he might have some letter passing through his hands, which he could show to Marcantonio. He made a bargain with an old man who had a little donkey cart, to hang about the lane leading to the villa in the afternoon hours, when Temistocle, being free from the cares of the pantry, found it convenient to play postman. As the distance was considerable, and as Batiscombe always gave him a gold piece for a letter, and Leonora another, he thought he could afford himself ten sous a day for the hire of his primitive cab, without any reckless extravagance. The first letter he had carried was to Batiscombe. Leonora informed him briefly of the scene with her husband, and begged that he would wait as usual for a few days, or until something better could be devised. But he waited in vain. Then he wrote and proposed that she should drive somewhere and meet him. But she answered that her husband always drove with her when she went out. He proposed to get into the garden at night, to scale her window,--anything. But Marcantonio had bought a brace of abominable English terriers that howled as though they had swallowed a banshee. Marcantonio also kept pistols, and slept with his windows open. Meanwhile Marcantonio would have given anything to catch Batiscombe and call upon him for an explanation,--but he was afraid to leave his wife for an hour, lest she should have an opportunity of going down to the sea. He could never be quite certain whether Batiscombe were there or not, for the latter had grown cautious and lay very quietly in his boat just out of sight, knowing that Leonora would call if she wanted him, according to the agreement, and he only came in the morning now and waited till twelve o'clock, in order to be at home to receive her letters in the afternoon. Yet Marcantonio would not employ a spy to watch whether Batiscombe were on the water. He could not do that--it was too utterly mean. Leonora grew pale and thin. She was as thoroughly in love with Julius as a woman of strong temper and impulse can be with the first man she has ever cared for. She dreamed of him, thought of him, longed for him, during every hour of the day and night. He was to her the realisation of the strongest fancy of her life, the passionate, ruthless, all-daring lover; and the consciousness of utter wrong that underlay her feelings only lent the strength of moral desperation to her passion. Having lost all right to other things, she had that left, and only that, on which to rely for all the happiness the world owed her. She would go to the end of it, and enjoy it all, now that she had found it; and then--then she would die, she said to herself, and no one should suffer by her fault. But she was long past the elementary stage, when love can be put upon a block and modelled and shaped with tools, or pulled to pieces, at will, being as yet but a fragile clay sketch and very yielding. The clay had been done into marble, and the marble set up in the inmost sanctuary of the temple,--and if the idol were broken the pieces could not be joined, and the temple must be empty and bare forever. It had come about very quickly--but what of that? Who shall say that passion born in a moment, ready armed, is not so strong and enduring as that which is evolved like man from a pitiful thing with a tail--a mere flirtation, to the semblance of humanity, to the godlike presence of true love? Or who shall tell us that love is less a real thing, because it is evil instead of being good? Devils are quite as real as angels, as I have no doubt many of us will find in due time. Do not underrate the strength of a thing because it is bad, nor doubt its reality because you do not like its looks. Leonora was in love with all her might, and it makes no difference in the effect upon the individual whether love is lawful or not, so long as it is thwarted and opposed at every turn. Her character, from being vague and indistinct, reaching out after many things, and never wholly grasping any, had suddenly become definite and full of a mature purpose--the purpose to love Julius recklessly, without consideration or question. The one real thing which remained possible for her had come, dominating and crushing down the army of her most favourite unrealities. The man she loved stood out from the chaotic darkness of the past and from the dreary shadows of the present as a glorious figure of light, magnificent in all that could be noblest; and she gave to him her soul, her life, and her strength, without hesitation and without fear. She had no remorse, no pity for her husband, no present consciousness of sin, for she was too near the wrong, and too new to it, not to enjoy it. The traditional hardened sinner, the very monstrosity and arch-deformity of complicated vice, held up by preachers as a bugbear and a moral scarecrow to the young, the creature without heart, conscience, or capacity of good, does not enjoy his wickedness in the least. It has lost its novelty for him and its sharp, peppery savour. The people who really enjoy it are young; they are those who have tasted little of life, and have yet all the sensibility and refinement of palate that can distinguish between one sauce and another--between green, red, and black pepper. They have dreamed of the pepper, have never been allowed to have it, and have been fed on a kind of moral pap that disagreed with them from childhood. Suddenly the spice is within their reach, and they make to themselves a glorious feast of hot things, vaguely hoping that they will recover from the indigestion before they are found out. And sometimes they do, though the recovery is very painful--and sometimes they do not. Leonora had subsisted on what she could get in the way of enjoyment, but her capacity far exceeded the supply that presented itself. She was not one of those people who can live for days in happiness from one sight of something beautiful, from a glimpse at a great picture, or from the memory of one strain of music. She liked all that was artistic, and especially that which was admirable for novelty, fineness of execution, or boldness of conception. She was not impressed with the beauty of small and unpretending things,--the art that amused her was necessarily of the most brilliant kind. The people she liked were the stirring, active, original people who either make history or make public fools of themselves, or both. The philosophies she had dabbled in were such as could produce in her a sensation of odd possibility rather than such as could satisfy a logical intellect, and they resolved themselves into a vast sea of aspirations, emotions, and potential passions, in which she loved to disport herself, diving and splashing and floating, like a magnificent sea-nymph in fullest enjoyment of her wild vitality,--sitting, an hour afterwards, on some lonely rock, and wringing her white hands to heaven in despair, because, being but half divine, she was less goddess-like than the great goddesses of Olympus. She could not help it if she grew pale and thin,--she was so wretched without him; and, without his letters and the sense that he was not so very far from her after all, she would have gone mad. She would sit for hours in her room staring at nothing; or she would go through elaborate processes of toilet before the glass, looking at herself and wondering if he would find her changed,--perhaps that very day some chance would offer, and she might see him. Everything was possible. That was the colour he liked best, and that bit of jewelry,--put it on, in case he should come. And again, she would change it all, because she would not wear for her husband the things she wore for her sweet lover; and then she would change once more, perhaps, and put back the colours and the ornaments he loved, so that she might the better think of him while she was with Marcantonio; she had a thousand idle thoughts and fancies which she strove hard to train into the semblance of a little happiness, the hollowest image of a little joy. The days came and went miserably for nearly a fortnight. In all that time Marcantonio watched her closely, never relaxing in his vigilance. She might have escaped, perhaps, but she would have been missed in half an hour, and she had not the courage to do anything so desperate,--the time must come, she thought, when things should change. But meanwhile she grew haggard and worn. Marcantonio had abandoned the idea of sending for a friend to deal with Batiscombe. What he had to say could, he thought, best be said directly, and there could then be no difficulty in establishing a pretext for fighting. But first of all he must keep his wife out of danger. Feeling that he held her entirely at his mercy, he was willing to take some time for deliberation. She could not see Julius, and it would be the best possible test to ascertain how she bore the trial. Marcantonio had grown hard and calculating in his jealousy, but he ground his teeth as he watched her and saw that she was falling ill,--and it was not so much for sympathy with her, as for anger that she should so love another. At last he determined upon a new course. "Leonora," he said briefly, one day, "we will leave this place immediately, since it does not suit you. Will you be so amiable as to give orders to have your things packed?" Leonora started a little, and looked at him. It was not often that she cared to look at him now. "Why do you wish to go?" she asked at last. "Because, as I said, this place does not suit you. You are ill--miserable. Ma foi! do you think I will allow you to stay in a place where you are always pale and eat nothing?" "I am not ill," said she, "and I have a very good appetite. I do not wish to go away. Besides, you have taken the villa for the whole summer. It would be such a useless waste of money to move again." "Ah! You become economical. It is very well; but economy does not enter into this case at all. We will go to Cadenabbia, or to any place in the lakes, where it is far cooler." "I do not mind the heat," said Leonora, "as you know. Why not say at once that you are tired of Sorrento, and wish to go away to please yourself? It would be much simpler and more honest." "Pardon me, my dear, I am perfectly well here. I could spend the rest of my life at Sorrento. But you are not well--whatever the cause may be--and there is a possibility that you may be better elsewhere. Donc"-- "Oh, of course," interrupted Leonora, "if you have made up your mind I must submit. If you think you can make me more miserable anywhere else than you can here, I must let you try. I hardly think you can. You might be satisfied. Nevertheless, let us go." "I do not wish to make you miserable, you know perfectly. I wish to make you happy and free." "Free?" repeated Leonora. "Indeed, you have a singular fashion of making me free, to watch me day and night, as though I intended to run away with your silver. Free, indeed! Free from what?" She laughed, scornfully enough, in his face. It was the first time they had approached any subject of this kind since the memorable night after Marcantonio's discovery. But since he had made up his mind to take her away he was willing to undergo another scene if it were absolutely necessary. "To make you free from the society of Monsieur Batiscombe," answered Marcantonio boldly. "You can never be well until you are absolutely out of his reach, and if I must go to the end of the world I will accomplish that." "You need not insult me in words," said Leonora, disdainfully. "You have done it quite enough already by your deeds." Marcantonio was silent for a moment. The speech hurt him, for he knew how he believed in her innocence, and how it was his jealousy that now prompted most of his actions. His voice changed a little as he answered, and he was more like his old self than he had been for days. "Leonora," he said, "I would not insult you for anything. But, would you rather I were not a little jealous, since I really love you?" Perhaps he spoke foolishly--perhaps he hoped to soften her heart: at all events he spoke seriously enough, and laid his hand on hers. But she did not like his touch and drew her fingers away. "A little jealous!" she cried. "So little that I am kept like a prisoner and watched like a political suspect! Be jealous--yes--since you say you love me; but behave like a sensible creature. Moreover, you might make sure that you had some cause for jealousy before coupling the name of the first man you chance to dislike with mine. Is not that an insult?" "Certainly it is--and if I did that you would be quite right," said he; "but things are a little different. You do not understand Batiscombe--I do. You have taken a fancy for him--so did I. But you push your fancy too far. I now understand him, and I do not think him a proper friend for you. You make difficulties, you insist upon seeing him. I forbid you, and prevent you. You turn pale and ill, and I am angry that you should be so foolish. Mon Dieu! I am angry--voilà." "One must certainly allow," said Leonora, with a sneer, "that you have a singularly delicate way of stating your own case." It was the best thing she could find to say, though she knew the sarcasm was not merited. He wished once for all to put the matter clearly before her, and he did it honestly and delicately, since he described her passion as a "fancy," her strategy and secret meetings as "insisting upon seeing" Mr. Batiscombe. It would be impossible to state such a case more delicately if it had to be stated at all. A cleverer man, or a less jealous man than Marcantonio, might have gone about it less directly; and that is all that can be said. But he was a half-formed character, as yet, with some good possibilities and hardly any bad ones. He was naturally good, but good as yet without much experience, and his teaching in the troubles of life had come upon him very suddenly. It had never struck him that it could be difficult to manage a woman, and he did not like the idea now that it was thrust upon him. The woman he had made his wife would, he had supposed, be like his sister, of the kind that manage themselves, and do it well; and if he had anticipated exercising any influence over Leonora, it was influence of a very different sort from that which he was now driven to exert. He had made up his mind, however, that she must obey him now, or that he should perish in the struggle, and a certain family obstinacy of purpose, inherited from his father and all his race, suddenly made its appearance and changed him from an easy-going, pleasant-spoken young fellow into a very determined man, so far as his wife was concerned. He had said that she should go at once, and go she should, without any delay whatsoever. Instead of answering her sarcastic remark about his indelicacy, he went obstinately back to his proposition. "Let us not talk any more about it," he said, to cut the difficulty short. "You will doubtless be so amiable as to give the necessary orders about your things?" Leonora shrugged her shoulders very slightly, as much as it is possible for a great lady to do, and as much as would horrify a very strict duenna. "If you wish it," she said, "I must." "Then we will start in two days, if it is agreeable to you." "It is not agreeable to me," said Leonora, wearied to death by his civility, "but we will start when you please,--in two days if you say it." She was casting about in her mind for some desperate means of seeing Julius and assuring herself that he would follow her. Of course he would do that, but she could not go without seeing him once more in Sorrento; there was so much to be said that she could not write,--so very much! The conversation with Marcantonio had taken place little more than an hour before dinner. As he left the room Leonora glanced at the clock. There was time yet,--if she could only get some conveyance. She might see Julius and be back before dinner. She could make some excuse for not dressing--if her husband noticed it, which was unlikely. He had gone to his room, contrary to his custom, for he generally did not leave her until she went to dress. His windows were towards the sea, and she could slip out through the garden. It had rained a little, but that was no matter. There would be the less dust. A garden hat she sometimes wore hung in the hall, among her husband's hats and whips and sticks; she snatched it quickly and went out, walking leisurely for a few yards, till she was hidden by the orange-trees. Then she gathered up her skirt a little and ran like a deer over the moist path, through the gate that stood ajar, and down the narrow lane between the high damp walls towards Sorrento, never looking behind her nor pausing to take breath, for she feared that if she stopped to breathe she might stop to think, and not do what she most wished to. There are always little open carriages hanging about the lanes during the height of the season, in the hope of picking up stray fares, and before she had gone two hundred yards she overtook one of these, moving lazily along. The man was all grins and alacrity at the mere sight of her and pulled up, gesticulating wildly and leaning backward over his box to arrange the cushions with one hand while he held the reins with the other. The whole conveyance is so small that the driver can touch every part of the inside with his hands from his seat. She sprang in and told the man the name of Batiscombe's hotel, promising him anything if he would drive fast. In six or seven minutes he brought her to the door, and she told him to wait. She would have dismissed him at once and taken another to return, but she found herself without money. She could borrow something from Batiscombe. He had chanced to tell her the number of his rooms one day, when she was asking about the hotel, and now she luckily remembered it. Stopping the first servant she met, she bade him show her the way. One of Batiscombe's sailors, resplendent in dark-blue serge and a scarlet silk handkerchief, was seated on a bench outside the door. He was a quick fellow, and Julius employed him as his body servant. Sailors, he said, were always cleaner than servants, and much neater. The man sprang to his feet, saw the anxious expression in Leonora's face and the general appearance of haste about her, and guessing that he could not do wrong, opened the door and almost pushed her in, closing it behind her and confronting the astonished hotel servant with a perfectly grave face. Sailors have good memories, especially for people who own boats, and the man remembered Leonora perfectly well, having helped to row her to Castellamare, and having raced her crew on the occasion when Batiscombe had attempted a precipitous flight. In his opinion the Marchesa Carantoni would not wish to be seen waiting outside his master's door, whatever might be the errand which brought her in such hot hurry. The hotel servant grumbled something about the franc he had expected for bringing the lady up, and the stalwart seaman laughed at him so that he cursed the whole race of sea-folk, and went away in anger of the serio-comic, hotel kind. Leonora found herself in Batiscombe's sitting-room. For Batiscombe was a luxurious man, excepting when he was roughing it in earnest, and he had made up his mind of late years that a human being could not exist in less than two rooms, if he lived in rooms at all. Leonora had not thought at all, from the moment when she had taken her resolution in her own drawing-room until she found herself standing before Julius Batiscombe in the hotel. At such times, women act first and think afterwards, lest perchance the thinking should interfere with the doing. But now that the thing was done, she realised at once the whole importance of the step, and at the same time she understood with what ease it had been accomplished. She saw how, with one bound, she was out of her prison, and with the man she loved, and though she was frightened at the magnitude of the deed, she knew that with him she should find strength and comfort and happiness. What mattered the past? She had not seen Julius for a fortnight, and though in that time she knew that her love had increased tenfold, yet the outline of him had lost distinctness, and she found him more than ever the man she had dreamed of, and discovered, and loved. He was one of those men whose magnificent vitality casts a sort of magnetic influence on their surroundings, just as Leonora herself sometimes did. When Batiscombe was away, his faults might be detected and criticised,--his selfishness, his combativeness, his vanities. But when he was talking to people, and chose to be agreeable, it was hard not to fall under the spell. He was so eminently a man of action as well as of thought, that even those who disliked him most were obliged to confess that he had certain large qualities,--comforting themselves by describing them as "dangerous," as perhaps they were, to himself and others. And now Leonora looked upon him and knew how wholly and truly she loved him, and how ready she was to sacrifice anything and anybody to her love, even to herself and her own reputation and honour. With heroic people that consideration of self might first be thrown to the winds; but Leonora was not heroic. She was very passionate and sometimes very foolish, but with all her "higher standard" she believed in the social regulations and distinctions of life. It was the English part of her nature, fighting for a show of Philistinism amidst so much that was the very reverse. It was a strong passion indeed that could make her throw it all away, or even think such a step possible. It was not that she had yielded weakly to a first impression of weariness after her marriage, and had at once begun to amuse herself with the first man who crossed her path. Weariness alone, the mere commonplace sensation of being bored, could never have led her to such a length. A great variety of circumstances had combined to bring about her destruction. The wild ideas of her girlhood, investing Marcantonio with just enough romance to make him barely come within the line of her "standard," but nerved and encouraged by the faculty she possessed for deceiving herself, had led her into a rash marriage, in which she had been helped and applauded by all those sensible people who think that when money and position are combined on both sides, marriage must necessarily be a good thing. Then followed the bitter disappointment and collapse of all her theories and hopes, leaving a desperate void and a certainty of misery, which gathered strength even from the command of language she had acquired in the study of the imaginary nothingness of everything. And at the very moment when there seemed nothing before her but a dreary waste of years, an individual had appeared who realised the dream she had lost. And it is indeed a noble quality so long as it is locked close within the treasury of the soul, and so long as one good woman, and one only, holds the key. But of all the unutterable baseness in this world, there is none more despicable than that of the man who makes one woman after another believe that he loves her to distraction, as he never loved any one else, well knowing, the while, that if the furies spare him to an unhonoured old age, it is out of sheer contempt for the blear-eyed Adonis, shambling weak-kneed to his grave with a flower in his button-hole and a ghastly leer at the last woman he meets before death overtakes him. Leonora was a woman who was probably incapable of a second passion, and the wholeness of the first might lend it some dignity, some simple loftiness of disregard for lesser things, making it seem nobler for being a single sin, sinned bravely for true love's sake. There were such loves in the world long before Launcelot loved Guinevere, or Héloise was laid in the grave with Abelard. But the world has no lack of men like Julius Batiscombe, men in no way worthy of the women who love them, nor ever able to be worthy. Leonora had chosen, and she would not have given him up for all the joys of paradise, any more than she would have believed a word against his faithfulness and loyalty to herself. He had sworn--how could he deceive her? CHAPTER XVII. When Leonora met her husband at dinner an hour later, her face was set, for her mind was made up, and every moment hardened her determination. Julius had said to her "come," and she would go to the very end of the world if need be. He had stated the case with a show of fairness. She must fully understand the step, he said, and that there was no return possible from such an exile as they undertook together. She must abandon everything, and not only her husband, but her mother, her father, her position before the world, her whole luxurious, aristocratic existence. She must rely on his arm alone to support her, and on his love to be her only comfort and compensation. They must live an isolated life, whether wandering, or resting in some quiet place where society never came. She must also take the chance of his being killed by Marcantonio, who would certainly make an effort to destroy him, and the chance was not small, considering the provocation. If it happened that he fell, she would certainly be left alone in the world. This was probably the strongest argument with her against flight, but it had not weight enough to hold her back, for she had the pride of a woman who had found a man ready to fight for her, in these latter days when fighting is so terribly out of fashion; and she felt in her heart that she should always be able to prevent an encounter. The resolution she had made had killed any doubt that might still have remained as to the ultimate result of her love for Julius. Henceforth it was her duty to kill doubts in order to be happy; and, indeed, there were few left, for her love was very sincere and real. But if any should arise she meant to smother them instantly. And now she remembered every word her lover had spoken in that brief stolen interview, and she felt no fear. Her face was set, and she looked defiantly at her husband. A few hours more, she thought, and she should be free from him, from the world, from everything--forever. They would have gone at once, that very minute, but Batiscombe pointed out that the time was ill chosen. She had been seen to come to the hotel,--the servant who had shown her up-stairs had noticed her, perhaps recognised her; in half an hour after the dinner hour she would be missed at the villa, and they would surely be overtaken on land, especially as there was no train at that time. Julius said his boat was moored at the foot of the cliff below the hotel, but it would be impossible to reach it without being observed by many people, some of whom might recognise her. There was also no wind, the sea was oily with a deadly calm, and the full moon, just rising, would make pursuit easy, for though his boat could beat anything on the coast under canvas, she was over heavy in the water for his six men to row at any speed. But at midnight, when the easterly breeze was blowing from the land, he would be down at the landing of her villa, ready. Marcantonio was always asleep at that hour, for he rose betimes in the morning and went to bed early. The dogs? Julius had thought of that, and sending his sailor servant to the kitchen of the hotel, he obtained in a few minutes a couple of solid lumps of meat, which he caused to be wrapped in paper and then tied up in a silk handkerchief for her to carry. She might find it hard, he said, to get anything of the kind in her own house. She was fond of animals, and was sure she could manage to quiet the terriers in a moment if she had something to give them. Besides, they knew her, and would only bark a very little at first. The moon was full, to be sure, but that could not be helped. Once on the water, nothing short of steam could catch them, and that was not available at such short notice. She should not hamper her flight with unnecessary things, he said, for if any one were roused she might have to run for her life as far as the beginning of the descent where he would be in waiting for her. These and a hundred other little directions he had given her, with the quiet forethought for details that was part of his remarkable intellect. And now she sat opposite her husband at their small dinner-table, looking hard and determined, but listening with more than usual complacency to his talk, and striving to eat something, as Julius had instructed her. She made such a good pretence that Marcantonio noticed it approvingly. "I am glad to see, my angel," he said, "that you are finding your appetite again. It is most encouraging." It was just like his want of tact, thought Leonora. It was just like him to suppose that she would eat the more because he wanted her to do so, and watched her! Dieu! What a nuisance to be always watched. It would soon be over now, however, and she could afford to be indifferent. "Oddly enough," said she, "I am hungry--I do not know why." "Does any one know why they are hungry?" said Marcantonio, with a little laugh. "It happens to me to take much exercise. I rise with the sun, I walk, I ride, I dispatch my correspondence, I work like a dog--et puis, at breakfast I eat nothing. No appetite. Good! Another day, I lie in bed till ten o'clock, rise with a cigarette, read a novel, and--voyez donc, how droll--I eat, perhaps, for four people. But I have often observed that, if I eat a mayonnaise at dinner, I have no appetite the next day at breakfast. It is extremely singular, for the cook makes the mayonnaise of great delicacy." What could it possibly matter whether Marcantonio were hungry or not, or what he ate for dinner? But Leonora was glad to have him say anything, so that she might be spared the effort of talking. "It is true," she said, absently, "his mayonnaise is not bad." She hoped he would go on; it was an easy, neutral subject--of many ingredients, concerning each of which it would be possible to differ and to raise a fresh discussion. "Apropos," said Marcantonio, "the gardener's boy cut his finger very badly this afternoon"-- "Apropos of mayonnaise?" Leonora could not help asking the question. His conversation was so absurd. "Ma foi! mayonnaise--vegetables--gardens--gardeners and the gardener's boy--all that holds together. As I was saying, he cut his finger, and I sent your maid to get something to bind it with." "I hope she did not take one of my lace handkerchiefs," remarked Leonora. "It would be just like her." "It was not lace, I am sure," said Marcantonio, with an air of conviction, as he helped himself to the salad which Temistocle handed him. "But it looked very new. I hope she made no mistake." The comic side of the situation suddenly forced itself on Leonora, as it often will happen with people on the eve of great danger. A lackey in Paris once danced a jig on the scaffold before he was broken on the wheel. Leonora laughed aloud. "Would it amuse you, for instance," inquired Marcantonio with a puzzled look, "to have a good handkerchief destroyed to tie up the boy's finger?" It seemed so funny to Leonora to think that on the morrow her entire stock of handkerchiefs would be at the disposal of all the gardeners in Sorrento if they chanced to cut their fingers. "No--not that," she said. "It is so odd that you should take so much trouble about it--or care." "Poor people," said Marcantonio, "one must do what one can for them." And so their last conversation tottered to its end in a round of domestic triviality, so that Leonora wondered how she could have borne it so long. But, in truth, Marcantonio was so much afraid of rousing her opposition that evening, after the scene that had taken place, that he purposely avoided every intelligent subject, and did violence to his own preference for the sake of keeping the peace. He liked to talk politics, he liked to talk of Rome, of society, of a hundred things, but of late he had found it very hard to talk peaceably about anything. After dinner Marcantonio smoked, and Leonora sat beside him, with a little worsted work which she did with a huge ivory needle. Her heart beat fast as the hour approached when she must part from her husband. She glanced at him from time to time, sitting there so unsuspecting of any surprise, with his cigarette and his "Fanfulla," the witty Roman paper that amused him so much. His delicate, dark features, a little weak perhaps, looked handsome enough in the lamplight, and Leonora thought for a moment that she had never seen him look so well. She was already so far from him in her thoughts that she regarded him as from a distance, with a certain abstracted consideration of his merits that was new to her. Poor Marcantonio! A certain curiosity, which would have been pity if she had allowed it, came over her. She wondered how he would look when she was gone. Ten o'clock--two hours to midnight, and he never saw her before nine in the morning now. Nine and two were eleven. In eleven hours he must know--unless something happened. Would he rage and storm, like a wild beast? Or would he break down and shed tears? Neither, she thought. He did not love her--he was only jealous. Heavens! thought she, if Julius had been in his position, and he in Julius's, could things have ever got to this pass without some fearful outbreak? Ah no! Julius was so hot-tempered and strong. Her thoughts went away with her, and she heaved a quick short breath, suddenly interrupted in the recollection of where she was. Marcantonio looked round. "What is it, my dear?" he asked. "Nothing--I was going to sneeze," said Leonora with a ready excuse. "There is too much air," said he, rising and going toward the window. He looked out for a moment. The first breath of the easterly wind was coming over the mountains and just stirring a ripple on the moonlit bay. It had rained early in the afternoon, and they had sat indoors on account of the dampness. Marcantonio sniffed the breeze, said it was damp, and closed the window. "It must be late," said he. "En vérité, it is twenty minutes to eleven! I should not have thought it." Leonora's heart beat fast. "I suppose it is time to go to bed," she said, with enough indifference to escape notice. Marcantonio had not enjoyed the evening much, and was sleepy. Leonora moved slowly about the room, touching a book here and a photograph there as though to make the room comfortable for the night. Some women always do it. Her blood was throbbing wildly--the last strong effort of conscience was upon her. A great pity sprang up in her--a terrible regret--a horror of great evil. Her resolutions, her love, her determination to fly, her better self, all struggled and reeled furiously together. She felt an irresistible impulse to throw herself at her husband's feet, to confess everything, to implore his protection, and forgiveness, and help. She turned towards him suddenly. He was in the act of ringing the bell. The sharp tinkle, sounding from far away through the open doors of the house, checked her when she was on the very point of speaking. Almost instantly, the quick tread of the servant was heard. He came, and the supreme moment was over. The reality of her situation returned, and with it the hardness it needed. The man had the candles ready in his hands, and stood waiting to accompany Leonora to her door. "Good-night, Marcantoine," said she, holding out her hand. It was cold and clammy with intense excitement, and her face was pale to the lips. "Good-night, my angel," said he, touching his lips to her fingers, and she passed from him. Just beyond the door she turned and looked back, with a touch of sadness. "Good-night," she said once more, faintly--for the last, the very last time. When Marcantonio was alone, he took his newspapers, and one or two letters which had come by the late post, he looked carefully round the room, to see that he had forgotten nothing, as he had a bad habit of doing, and he marched gloomily off to his room, which was beyond Leonora's, and separated from hers by her sitting-room. Her dressing-room was on the other side of her bedroom, and had a separate door, opening upon the head of the stairs. As soon as Leonora had dismissed her maid for the night, she began to make her preparations. She had a large silk bag, of many colours, made like an old-fashioned purse, with heavy silver rings. She used it for carrying her work, her books, or anything she needed when she went into the garden to spend the morning. It seemed the best thing to take with her now, for it would hold a good deal and was convenient. She filled it with handkerchiefs, bottles of eau-de-cologne, and hairpins, and she put in a tiny looking-glass in a silver case, which she had used all her life. It was of no use to think of taking anything else, she thought, since she must carry it all in her hand. Then she went over her jewels and took her own, carefully setting aside all that her husband had given her. She tied them up in a handkerchief with two hard knots,--the best she knew how to make,--and she put them into the bag with the rest of the things. Then she found her purse, and put into it all the money she had, for it was her own, and she thought she might as well have it,--and there was her cheque-book in the drawer of the writing-table. Of course she could draw her own money just as well when--she did not finish the sentence to herself. Presently she went into the sitting-room, and listened at the small side door which opened into Marcantonio's bedroom. She had taken an hour over her preparations; it was half past eleven, and he was asleep,--she heard his regular breathing distinctly. The full moon shone outside upon the gravel walks, and the orange-trees, and the soft wind was blowing steadily through the open windows. She paused one moment before she went back, and she looked out at the scene, so sweet and peaceful in the ivory moonlight. Far off in the town the clocks struck the half hour. Julius must be already on the water, perhaps near the landing. She hastened to her room, treading on tiptoe; her maid had left her in her loose white peignoir; she must dress again, and dress quickly, or she would be late. It did not take long,--though she put the candle before her glass, and dallied a little with a ribbon and a pin. The dress was soft and dark, fitting closely to her figure. In reality she had selected it because it had a pocket,--that would be such a convenient thing on a journey. A hat--yes, she must have a hat, for of course they must land somewhere, though a veil would be more convenient in the wind. There was a great vase of carnations, gathered that day, that stood on a little table by the window. At the last minute, Leonora stopped and took one. She went back to the glass with the candle in her hand, and pinned the flower in her dress, eying the effect critically. They were the flowers he loved best,--it was an afterthought, and would please him. She was ready, the bag hung over her arm, the package of meat for the dogs in one hand, and a candle in the other. She blew out the remaining lights as the clocks struck midnight, put the one she carried upon a chair by the door, while she softly turned the latch, looked out cautiously, and left the room. Once out of the passage and on the stairs, she had no fear of being heard, and she descended rapidly. One moment more and she was in the open air. The front door closed behind her. Something touched her feet, and, looking down, she saw that the white kitten had followed her out; she had not noticed it, poor thing, and she could not risk opening the door again to put it back. She glanced out into the moonlight from beneath the porch, and she was frightened. It was only a step--a minute's run, if she ran fast, to the beginning of the passage--but she hesitated and hung back. Oh, if the last step were not so hard! If Julius had only met her at the door instead of being down there--but he was even now at the head of the steps. She realised his presence, and the garden was no longer a solitude--she was not alone any more. The kitten mewed discontentedly. She bethought herself of the dogs, picked up the little beast, and moved quickly down the walk, running faster as she neared the end. Her running on the path roused the terriers, prowling about among the shrubbery in the warm night, and they sprang upon her not ten yards from the mouth of the descent, barking furiously and snapping at her dress. She dropped the parcel of meat instantly, but they did not see it at once, and pursued her. In one moment more she was lifted from the ground and held firmly in the mighty grasp of the strong man who stood ready, and had run forward to meet her when the dogs sprang out. But, in the quick act, the kitten fell to the ground almost between the enraged terriers. It was over in a minute. One frantic, piteous death-scream and the poor little white cat lay dead on the gravel path, and the terriers sniffed her little body disdainfully, as though congratulating each other on their brave deed. "Oh, Julius, they have killed my kitten!" cried Leonora in real distress. They were already under the archway, and Batiscombe was urging her to descend, but she clung to him, and stared back into the moonlight at the dogs and her dead pet. Julius himself was enraged at the thing--it was so wantonly cruel. "Run on," said he, in a whisper; "I will settle them." He had reflected quickly that they had only barked for a moment, and that any one who heard them must have heard the cat also and would have taken no notice of the noise. At that very moment Marcantonio turned on his pillow, and, half waking, swore to himself, as he had done every night of his life for weeks, that he would send the dogs away in the morning. But all was still, and he fell asleep again instantly. Julius went back upon the path, and the terriers growled, still scenting their vanquished prey. But he moved quickly and softly, speaking gently to them in a low voice, and holding out his hand to them. He had a sort of influence over animals, and they let him come close, pricking their ears and sniffing about his legs. Suddenly, as they smelled at his boots, he caught them by their necks in an iron grip, one in each hand, and held them up at arm's length, struggling frantically, but utterly incapable of making a sound. "You killed her cat, did you, you brutes?" he muttered, savagely. "I will kill you." He broke their necks, one after the other, and threw their quivering bodies far out under the orange-trees. Leonora had watched him from the archway. She shuddered. "They will not bark any more," said Julius, as he came to her. "What strong hands you have!" she said. A window opened, up in the house, a hundred yards away. Batiscombe's quick ear caught the sound. "Come, sweetheart," he whispered; "some one is stirring." His arm was round her as he guided her down the first steps, tenderly and strongly. She stumbled a little. "Oh, Julius, I am so frightened!" she said piteously. He stopped and took her off the ground as though she had been a child, and bore her swiftly and surely through the dark way. She could see his fiery blue eyes in the gloom, and in the flashes of white light as they passed the windows and arches where the moon streamed in, and as she looked she could feel her own grow big and dark; and she was frightened and very happy. But she thought of that strange thing she had dreamed--this very flight of hers exactly as it was to happen, so that she hid her face against his coat and clung to him nervously. "Put me down," she cried earnestly, as they emerged upon the flat rock of the landing, "put me down, Julius,--I dreamed you fell here." He obeyed her, and set her on her feet, still supporting her with his arm about her waist. One passionate kiss--only one--and then they came out from the shadow of the high cliff, and saw the boat riding lightly in the moonlight, two sailors holding her off the rocks, and the rest busy on board with the sails. The water plashed musically in the little hollows, and from near by there came a deep, mysterious murmur out of the many dark caves that lined the shore. Leonora stepped lightly in, and Julius arranged the cushions about her carefully. Neither of them spoke. With a few strong strokes of the oars the boat shot out into the breeze from the lee of the gorge. The foresail was already set, and jib and mainsail went up in a moment, wing and wing, the tapering, lateen-yards pointing to right and left, like the horns of a great, soft, white moth; the water rippled at the stern, and curled up and lapped the rudder as the sails filled, and ever swiftly and more swiftly the craft rushed down the bay in the glorious moonlight, before the steady east wind. Julius held the tiller with one hand, and the other lovingly supported Leonora's head against his breast, as she lay along the cushions in the stern. "Darling," he said presently, "what was the dream about my falling at the landing? You never told me." She did not answer, but lay quite still. "Dear one," he murmured, bending down, "are you so tired? Leonora--sweetheart--speak to me!" But the strain had been too strong, and Leonora lay in his arms, whiter than death under the white moon, unconscious of Julius or of the sea. Julius saw that she had fainted. CHAPTER XVIII. At half past eight on the following morning Temistocle found Leonora's maid at the door of her mistress's room with an expression of blank astonishment on her face that made him laugh. He often laughed, quietly, without the least noise. "You look exactly like a lay figure in a milliner's shop," he remarked. "Except, indeed, that you look much more stupid." The maid glared at him. "The signora"--she began, and then trembled and looked round timidly. "What about her?" inquired Temistocle, pricking up his ears. The maid let her voice drop to a low whisper. "She is not there," said she. "Ebbene," said Temistocle with a grin, "what has happened to you? She is probably gone out--gone to church. A good place for heretics, too." "Macchè," whispered the woman, "she has not slept in her bed, and everything is upside down in the room." "May the devil carry you off!" said Temistocle, suddenly changing his voice, and whispering hoarsely. "Let me see--let me pass." He put down the can of hot water he was taking to his master, and pushed past the maid, into Leonora's bedroom. "Bada," said the woman, going after him cautiously, "take care! The signore might come in and find you." "What harm is there?" asked the servant. And then he made a careful survey of the premises, locking all the doors except the one by which they had entered. "It is true, what you said," he remarked, pushing the maid out of the room. "An apoplexy on these foreigners who go away without telling one. Fuori! Go along with you, my child. Ci penso io--I will look after all this." And he locked the door behind him, put the key in his pocket, and took up his water-can. "What are you doing?" asked the maid. Temistocle had seen a chance, and took it. "Look here," said he, rubbing the thumb and forefinger of his hand together before the girl's eyes,--which means "money" in gesture language--"look here. The signore accompanied the signora to the early train from Castellamare this morning at half past four. They had a hired carriage. She went away and forgot her jewels on the table. She is gone to Rome on business,--they were talking about it last night. Do you understand?" "No," answered the woman looking puzzled, "you said she had gone out"-- "I said so to you," he answered with a sly grin, "but I will not say so to any one else, nor you either. Remember that she went to Rome this morning. It will be worth your while to remember that." The woman smiled a cunning smile. She had hated her mistress, and would have liked to make a scandal before all the other servants, but Temistocle's advice would be more profitable. So they arranged the matter between them and parted. Marcantonio was seated at his writing-table when Temistocle entered. He always got up very early, and did a great many things before he dressed. Temistocle busied himself a moment about the room, and when he was ready to go he came to the table and laid the key he had taken from Leonora's door at his master's elbow. "What is that?" asked Marcantonio, looking up. "It is the key of the Signora Marchesa's bedroom, eccellenza," answered Temistocle, edging away toward the door. "Her excellency must have gone away very early, and she left her room open and all her jewelry strewed about. So I locked the doors and brought you the key." He was very near the door and could escape in a moment. But Marcantonio did not move; his jaw dropped, and his colour changed to a yellow waxen hue, which terrified the servant. But he did not move. Temistocle continued. "I told the servants not to be astonished, as you had accompanied the Signora Marchesa to the early train for Rome before daybreak," he said, putting his hand on the latch. Marcantonio made as though he would rise. Temistocle slipped nimbly through the door and closed it behind him, running away as though the police were after him. But he knew that when Carantoni had recovered, he would be amply rewarded for his wisdom. It often chances that villains play a good and sensible part in life, which is quite as profitable as villainy, and is always safer. Marcantonio struggled to rise, and at last got upon his feet, staggering like a man stunned by a physical blow. The door to Leonora's sitting-room was open, but, beyond, the one to her bedroom was locked. He had to go round by the passage, feeling his way as though he were blind. At last he found the lock,--the key turned, and he entered. It was just as she had left it. The white peignoir she had taken off when she dressed for her flight lay in a heap upon the floor where she had thrown it in her haste. The dismal, half-burned candles stood on the dressing-table. The drawer from which she had taken the handkerchiefs was half open. The windows were thrown back, and the blinds had not been closed, so that the strong glare of the morning poured rudely in on the confusion, and the flies buzzed about the scented soap and the bottle of lavender and the pot of carnations in the corner. Marcantonio dragged himself from one part of the room to another till he stumbled against the table on which Leonora had left her scattered jewelry,--all the things he had given her. He stood staring down at the glittering gold and precious stones, unconsciously realising that they were all his presents that she had left behind her. There was a strange old Maltese cross of diamonds and sapphires among them, mounted in silver. It had belonged to his mother, and he had given it to Leonora with other things when he married her. His eyes fastened upon it, and his hand crept across the table and took it. He raised it to his white lips and kissed it once--twice; he would have kissed it again, but the bow of his strength was bent too far and snapped asunder. With a short, fierce cry he threw up his hands, and fell prostrate on the smooth tiled floor, as a dead man might have fallen. He lay entirely unconscious for hours, so that when he at last came to himself and struggled to move till he could sit up and stare about him, the midday sun was pouring in, and the flies angrily tormented his ghastly face, as though in derision of anything so miserable. For some minutes he sat upon the floor, dazed and stupid with the oppression of returning grief, as well as stunned from the physical pain resulting from his fall. He was not hurt seriously, but he was bruised and weak. At last he got to his feet, steadying himself by the table. He would not see what was about him any more, for he knew it all, and the full consciousness of his misfortune was on him. He regained his own room, carefully locking Leonora's door behind him, and taking with him his mother's diamond cross. But the mere sense of grief could not long hold the mastery with a man like Marcantonio. He had loved his wife too well not to resent the injury and scorn, as well as weep over it. As he pondered, lying on his bed, there arose in his breast a desperate and concentrated anger against the man who had deprived him of what he best loved in the world, the anger of a mind that has never reasoned much about anything, and will carry unreason to any length when it comes. He must find his enemy; that was the principal thought in his mind. That he would kill him when he found him was a conclusion that seemed a matter of course. But, in order to find him, it was necessary to move, to search, and turn everything over. He turned on his pillow, feeling the first restless stirrings of the demon that would by and by give him no peace by day or night till the man was found and the blow struck. He turned over and rang a bell by his bedside. "Give me some coffee, and order the carriage," he said to the servant. At the end of an hour, he found himself in the town, and inquired for Batiscombe. It seemed as though fate favoured Carantoni at the outset, for he found his name at once on the register of the hotel, and found also the man who had waited on Julius. This servant had been told that a lady had come in great haste soon after seven on the previous evening, and had stayed more than half an hour. As soon as she was gone, Mr. Batiscombe had sent for his bill and had ordered his boat to be ready at eleven,--the servant had heard the order. The man guessed there was something wrong from Marcantonio's face, but Batiscombe's sudden departure had excited no remark. He had arrived late at night in his boat, as many people had done, and as the moon was full it was natural enough that he should sail away as he had come. People arrive continually at Sorrento in yachts, and no one takes any notice of them. His luggage? Yes, he had taken most of his things with him, except one large box, which he had ordered to be sent to Turin. It had gone to Castellamare at once. Mr. Batiscombe had been in the hotel before. He was a very good signore. At this hint Marcantonio gave the man a heavy fee. Did he happen to know the address on the box? There was no address, except his name. The box was to be left at Turin until called for. It was to go by fast train, and Mr. Batiscombe had left money to pay for its carriage in advance. Mr. Batiscombe paid his bills by cheques on a banker in Rome. Marcantonio might have the name if he pleased. Before leaving he had paid his bill and given a cheque for five or six hundred francs more. The proprietor knew him very well, and was always glad to oblige him, so he had procured a little cash. Before going he had sent for a silk merchant--there are hundreds in Sorrento--and had bought a quantity of things of him. He had left the hotel at eleven by the steps to the sea, and the servant had seen him into his boat,--for which parting civility, Batiscombe had given him ten francs. The man had watched the boat for a few minutes. She did not make sail, but pulled away towards Castellamare. That was all, absolutely all, that the man could tell Marcantonio. But it was sufficient for the present. It was clear that Julius had taken Leonora from the landing of the villa. She must have slipped out soon after midnight. The barking of the dogs suddenly came back to Marcantonio's memory, and the scream of the poor cat. He sprang into his carriage, and drove furiously homeward. "Where are the dogs?" he asked, as soon as he alighted. The groom did not like to answer. He thought Marcantonio would be angry and visit their death on him. But, as his master insisted, he went away without saying a word, and brought a large basket. In it lay the two dead terriers and the dead kitten, all three side by side. "The dogs killed the cat," said the man, apologetically. "There are the marks of their teeth, eccellenza." "But the dogs? How were they killed?" asked Marcantonio savagely. "Eccellenza, their necks are broken. I cannot understand how it could have been done. We found them all dead near the descent, the cat on the path, and the dogs under the trees a few paces away." Carantoni took up one of the terriers in his hands, and looked at it. "So you killed my dogs, did you, you brute?" he muttered. "I will kill you." He unconsciously used Batiscombe's own words. His face was yellow, and his eyes bloodshot. He dropped the dead beast into the basket. "Bury them," he said aloud, and turned on his heel, going into the house. He had accomplished a great deal in a few hours. He had ascertained that they had fled by sea; that Julius had a bank account in Rome with a banker whose address he had got; that Julius had sent his box to Turin, where he would most likely be ultimately heard of. More than that he could not know for the present. It was four o'clock in the afternoon. He could still catch the train to Rome. He could do nothing more in Sorrento, and he could no more remain inactive for one moment than he could give up the whole pursuit. While his things were being hastily packed he thought of Diana. It was the first time, since the morning, that he had realised that he was not absolutely alone in the world. He sat down and wrote a telegram, intending to send it from the station. It was brief and to the point. "She has left me. Can you meet me anywhere? Answer to Rome." There are doubtless people in the world who take a morbid and unwholesome delight in the contemplation of sorrow. They can amuse themselves for many hours in studying the effect of grief upon their friends,--and they can even find a curious diversion in their own troubles, so long as they can keep them far enough away to secure their bodily comfort. They have neither the strength to sin, the honesty to be good, nor the common sense to be happy. And so they feebly paddle in their shallow puddles of woe, neither dry nor wet, and very muddy, when they might just as well sit on the clean, hard ground and enjoy the cleanliness and solidity of it, if they can enjoy nothing else. But they will not. They will lie in the mud, and kick and scream and swear that they are shipwrecked, when they are a hundred miles from the sea, and would take to their heels on the first sight of it. One of the favourite hobbies of these individuals is a mysterious thing they call a "sweet sadness." Their ideas about sorrow are not even artistic. They might at least understand that even the intensest grief, apart from its causes, has no grandeur. The contemplation of sorrow is not elevating unless it breeds a strong desire to alleviate it; nor is the study of vice and crime in the least edifying unless it exhibits the nobility and power of purity in a highly practical light. No vicious criminal was ever reformed by realistic pictures of wickedness, any more than he can be improved by daily association with other vicious criminals. And a very little realism will throw a great ideal into the shade, as far as most people are concerned. Marcantonio may therefore be allowed to go to Rome without being watched on the journey. His bitter suffering had settled about him and taken a shape and a complexion of its own, thinking its own thoughts and acting its own acts, without reference to the real Marcantonio, the easy, cheerful, happy man of a few short weeks ago. It was no change of character now, but rather the entire disappearance of the character beneath the flood of strong passions that had come from without, sweeping away the landmarks and beacons of all moral responsibility. One idea had taken possession of him, and destroyed his consciousness of good and evil, and his comprehension of the common things of life; his body and intelligence had become the mere tools of this idea, and would strain their strength to carry it out until one or the other gave way. Man is said to be a free agent, and so long as he remembers the fact, he is; but when he forgets it, the freedom is gone. That morning, when the blow first struck him, he had still some vague thought that there was a course to follow which should be right as well as brave and honourable; it was the fast vanishing outline of his former self, used always to the ways of honour; it was vague and uncertain, and he had no time nor inclination to think about it, but it was present. The day wore on, bringing a fuller realisation of his desperate case, and the possibility of good in so much evil disappeared. When he was at last in the express train on his way to Rome he was only conscious of one thing--the determination to find Julius Batiscombe, and to kill him ruthlessly, be the consequences what they might. Rome looked much as usual when he at last came out of the great ugly station upon the Piazza dei Termini. It was morning, and not yet eight o'clock, but the pitiless August sun drove its fire through everything--through flesh and bone and marrow of living things, through the glaring stones and dusty trees, and even the great jet of water looked like bright melting metal that would burn if it touched one. But Marcantonio Carantoni was past feeling heat or cold or bodily hurt. He did not even remember that he had a servant with him, and he mechanically hailed a cab and was driven to his own house. They put a telegram into his hand; it was from Diana, in answer to his of the day before. It was briefer than his and breathed authority. "Have left Pegli. Wait for me in Rome." That was all. He read it stupidly over two or three times. He would not have telegraphed to her if he had waited till to-day. Some instinct told him that she would prevent and hinder his vengeance. Yesterday he wanted help; to-day he wanted nothing but freedom from restraint and an opportunity of meeting Julius Batiscombe. She would not aid him in that, he was sure. But she could not arrive to-day,--it was a long journey from Pegli to Rome; he did not know exactly how long it took,--his memory would not serve him with any details. He should have time in Rome to do the things he meant to do, and he would go to Turin that very night and watch that box of Batiscombe's. He would send for it, of course, wherever he was, and the box would betray him at last, if all other means failed. But meanwhile there were the police--there were detectives to be had, and plenty of them; money could do much, and his high position could do more. He would set a whole pack of sharp-scented human hounds at Batiscombe's heels--they should find him, and bring word, never fear. He laughed at the idea of employing the law to hunt his prey, in order that he might bid the law defiance and destroy his man alone. He threw down the telegram and went to his room, followed closely by his servant, who had arrived in mad haste in a second cab, believing that his master was going to be insane, unless he had a stroke of apoplexy, which seemed not unlikely. The man was a skilled valet, and Marcantonio suffered himself to be dressed and combed and smoothed, in perfect silence; and when it was over he ate something that they brought him, without the slightest idea of what he was doing. He knew it was yet early, and that his business could not be done until the officials he needed were in their offices. No sooner had the clock struck ten, however, than he took his hat and left the house. He found a cab, and had himself driven from one office to another all through the heat of the day, seeing confidential detectives and stating his business with a strange lucidity, never telling any single agent that he was employing another, but giving to each one a sum of money to begin his search and to each the same precise statement of all that he knew. The consequence was that before the sun was low he had dispatched half a dozen of the best men that could be found, and had got rid of about fifty thousand francs. Each one separately might have to go to the end of the world--to America perhaps, but most probably to England--before he could give the required information. It was necessary that his men should be perfectly free to move in any direction. He himself would go to Turin, and there receive their telegrams, himself watching that box of Batiscombe's, which he was sure must some day be claimed by its owner. He was perfectly calm and self-possessed throughout all these arrangements. Only the strange ghastly colour that had overspread his face seemed to settle and become permanent, and his eyes were bloodshot and yellow, while his hand trembled violently when he held a pen or lit a match for his cigarette. But he felt no bodily ill, nor any capacity for fatigue. He had not closed his eyes for thirty-six hours, and had eaten little enough, but there was not an ache nor a sensation of pain in him, and he dreaded to pause or sit down, hating the idea of rest. When he had done all that he could think of as being at all useful in his plan, he went home and told his servant to prepare for the journey to Turin that night. The train left at half past ten--there were some hours yet to wait. He moved restlessly about the house, and ordered all the windows to be opened. The great rooms were in their summer dress. The furniture, the huge pier glasses and the chandeliers were all clothed in brown linen. The carpets had all been taken up, and the floors--some of marble, some of red brick, and some of tiles--were bare and smooth. There was the coolness and absence of all colour that seems to belong to great palaces when the owners are out of town, and the cold monotony of everything soothed him a little. After wandering aimlessly for half an hour, he settled into a regular walk, up and down the great ball-room, with its clere-story windows and vaulted ceiling. Up and down, up and down, with an even, untiring tread he paced, his eyes bent always on the floor and his hands behind him. His walk was like clockwork, absolutely even and unchanging, with its rhythmic echo and unvarying accuracy. The broad daylight softened into shadow, and the shadow deepened into gloom, but still he kept on his beat as though counting his steps and measuring the time. There was a certain relief in it, though not from his mastering thought, which held him in a vise and never relaxed for a second, but from his terrible restlessness. It was an outlet to his overwrought activity, and he did it monotonously, without any consideration, because there was nothing else to do, and it would have driven him mad to sit still for five minutes. As the night came on, strange faces seemed to look upon him from the gathering darkness. The thick, warm air took shape and substance, and he could distinguish forms moving quickly before him that he could not overtake. But there was no sensation of horror or fear with the sight--he gazed curiously at the fleeting shadows and looked into their faces as they came close to him and retreated, but he could not recognise them, and did not ask himself whence they came nor whither they were going, nor why he saw them. It seemed very natural somehow. But at last, as he turned, there was one coming toward him that had more substance than the rest, so that they all vanished but that one. It was a woman, and she seemed moving towards him; but it was almost quite dark. He came nearer; his waking senses caught the sound of her footstep; she was no shadow--it was his wife coming back to him--it had all been a fearful dream, and she was there again. He sprang forward with a quick cry. "Leonora! Oh, thank God!" and he fell forward into her arms. "No, dearest brother--it is not Leonora--would God it were!" Diana had come already--he could not tell how--and they stood together in the dark, empty ball-room, clasped in each other's arms. CHAPTER XIX. Diana had found ample time to think over the situation during the journey, and she was prepared for difficulties. Her brother could hardly be in his right mind, she thought, and would certainly be on the verge of doing something desperate, which she must prevent. As was usual with her in sudden emergencies, she had been wonderfully quiet. She was shocked and horrified at the news, but neither the shock nor the horror were uppermost in her mind. What she most felt was an unutterable and loving pity for her brother; and as she sat in the express train and looked out of the window at the interminable miles of vineyard and cornland, the kind, womanly tears gathered and fell softly. She could not help it, and she would not. Poor fellow! he deserved all her heart, and her soul's sympathy, and the tears thereof. Marcantonio was in no state to reason or to be reasoned with. He had a strange illusion for a moment, when he thought his wife had returned to him, but he at once realised his folly and understood that Diana had come to meet him--had come, doubtless, to prevent him from accomplishing his vengeance. He had been so sure that she could not arrive until the next morning that he had anticipated no interruption in his plans, and he was angry with her for being in his way. She would watch him day and night, and hinder all his movements. So long as she was with him it would be impossible to do anything. He answered her very coldly. "You have come already? I did not expect you so soon." They moved towards the door, groping in the deep gloom, and presently reached a room where there were lights. Then Diana saw her brother's face and understood that he was mad or desperately ill, or both. The ghastly colour, the bloodshot eyes, the trembling hand, she saw it all. She had not known what change his trouble would make in him, but she knew it would be great. But she was startled now that she was face to face with him. It seemed too terribly real. She could not help it, she bent her beautiful fair head on his shoulder and threw her arms about him and sobbed aloud. But Marcantonio only understood that she was there to keep him from his ends, from the one thing in the world which he wished to do, and meant to do, and surely would accomplish. As she leaned on him and shed those bitter tears for him, he stood passive and dry-eyed, staring vacantly above her at the wall, and his hands hung by his side, not offering to support her or to comfort her. He only wished she were gone again and had never come to trouble him. It was only for a moment. Such outbursts of feeling were rare with Diana; people said she was a piece of ice, heartless, and without sympathy for any human being. They judged her by her face and by the dignity of her manner, not knowing of the things she had done in her life that were neither heartless nor cold. But now she recovered herself quickly and dried her eyes, and made Marcantonio sit down. She looked at him intently as though trying to understand him. He had never met her so coldly before in his life; there must be a reason for it,--he was evidently beside himself with suffering, but his temporary madness could hardly take the form of a sudden dislike for herself unless there were some cause. "You did not expect me so soon," she said, speaking very gently. "It was by a mere chance that I managed it." "I am very sorry," said Marcantonio in a monotonous voice that had no life in it, and seemed not his own. "If you had waited a little while I could have saved you the journey." "The journey is nothing," said she. "I am not tired at all, and I would come across the world to be with you." "Yes," said Marcantonio, "I know you would. It would have been better if we had met further on." "Further on?" she repeated, hoping he would give her some clue to his intentions. The old habit of confidence was too strong for him; he wished her away, but he could not help speaking and telling her something. He had never concealed anything from her. "In Turin," he answered briefly. "Ah,--is he there?" asked Diana in a low voice. "He sent his box there,--he will go and get it." "And then?" "And then," said Marcantonio, the sullen fire burning in his reddened eyes, "we shall meet." Diana was silent for a moment, determining what to do. All this she had expected, but she had not thought to find her brother so changed. "Tell me, Marcantonio," she said earnestly, "did you think I would prevent your meeting with him?" He hesitated. She took his hand and looked into his face as though urging him to answer. "Yes," he said hoarsely. Diana understood. This was the reason of his evident annoyance at her coming. He thought she meant to prevent him from fighting Batiscombe. "You know better than that," she said gravely. Marcantonio turned upon her quickly with an angry look. "You prevented me before," he said. "If I had shot him then, this trouble would not have come. You know it,--why do you look at me like that?" "If you had shot him before," said she, "this could not have happened. But if he had shot you,--that was possible, was it not?--you gained nothing. If neither of you had killed the other, there would have been a useless scandal. The case is different." If she had found her brother overcome with his sorrow and abandoned to the suffering it brought, sensitive and shrinking from all allusion to his shame, she would have acted very differently. But she found him possessed of but one idea, how to kill Julius Batiscombe; he was hard and unyielding; he seemed to have forgotten the wife he had loved so well, in the longing to destroy the man who had stolen her away. She felt no hesitation in speaking plainly of the matter in hand, since his feelings needed no sparing. But her sympathy was so large and honest that she did not feel hurt herself because he was cold to her; she understood that he was scarcely in his right mind, and she could make all allowance for him. Marcantonio did not answer at once. But her influence on him, as she sat there, was soothing, and he was gradually yielding under it--not in the least abandoning his one idea, but feeling that she might not hinder its execution after all. "Do you mean to say," he asked suddenly, "that you will not try to prevent my meeting with him?" He turned and looked into her eyes, that met his honestly and fearlessly. "Assuredly I will not prevent you," said she. "Really and truly?" "So truly that if I thought you had meant to leave him alone, I would have tried to make you fight him." Marcantonio laughed scornfully, in a way that was bad to hear. It had never struck him that he could possibly have not wanted to fight. But in a moment he was grave again. "What a woman you are, Diana!" he exclaimed. It sounded more like himself than anything he had said yet, and Diana was encouraged. But she said nothing. In her simple code, fighting was a necessary thing in the world. She had been brought up among people who fought duels under provocation, and it never entered her head that under certain circumstances there was anything else to be done. Women often scream with terror at the mention of such a thing, but very few of them will have anything to do with men who will not fight when they are insulted. In preventing a challenge after the affair at Sorrento she had done violence to her feelings for the sake of Leonora's reputation. In the present instance that was no longer at stake. It was perfectly clear that her brother must have satisfaction from his enemy, as soon as might be. She had never hesitated, therefore, in her view of Marcantonio's situation, and when he put the question to her she answered it boldly and naturally. But, somehow, he had not understood his sister before, though he had yielded to her, and he was astonished at her readiness to agree with him. He looked at her with a sort of admiration, and his feeling towards her changed. "Then you will help me to find him?" he asked. "I will stay with you until you do," she answered. "It is the same thing," said he. "Will you come to Turin with me at once?" "I will not leave you," she said. "We can go to Turin to-morrow, if you like." "No--to-night," he said, quickly. The idea of wasting twelve hours seemed intolerable. But Diana had made up her mind that he must rest a while before doing anything more. She shuddered when she looked at his face and saw the change wrought there in six and thirty hours. "If we start now," she said, "we shall arrive in the evening. You could do nothing at night. Rest until the morning, and then we will go. You will need all the strength you have." "I cannot rest," he said gloomily. "You must try," answered Diana. "I will read to you till you are asleep." He rose and began to pace the room. The doubt that she intended to keep him back sprang up again in his unsettled mind. He stopped before her. "No," he said, "I will go to-night, and you need not come if you are too tired. You want to prevent me from going at all--I see it in your face." Diana looked up at him as she sat. No one but a madman could have doubted the faith of those grey eyes of hers, and as Marcantonio gazed on them the old influence of the stronger character began to act. He turned away impatiently. "You always make me do what you like," he said, and began to walk again. Diana forced herself to laugh a little. "Do not be so foolish, dear boy," she said. "I want you to sleep to-night, and to-morrow we will go to the world's end together. You will lose twelve hours somewhere, because there are certain things that cannot be done at night. Better make use of them now, and sleep, before you are altogether exhausted. I promise to go with you to-morrow. Do you mean to have an illness, or to go out of your mind? You will accomplish one or the other in this way, and there will be an end of the whole matter." "Very well," said Marcantonio, unable to resist her will, "since you promise it to me I will do as you please. But to-morrow morning I will start, whatever happens." "Very well," said Diana. "And now, dear brother, will you kindly give me some dinner? I have scarcely had anything to-day." "Dio mio!" cried Marcantonio, "what a brute I am!" It was like him, she thought, to be angry at himself for having forgotten to be hospitable. The words reassured her, for they sounded natural. There had been moments during the conversation when she had thought he was insane. Perhaps it was more his looks than his words, however. At all events, as he rang the bell and ordered what was necessary, she felt as though he were already better. One of her reasons for wishing him to stay a night in Rome was that he might immediately have a chance of growing calmer. Nothing distances grief like sleep. Until the first impression had become less vivid in his mind, she could not ask him questions about the circumstances of the flight. She guessed that, although he was willing, and even anxious, to talk of his future meeting with Batiscombe, it would be quite another thing to make him speak of the past fact. And yet she knew nothing of the details--not even exactly the time when it had all happened. She half fancied that they must have got away by the sea, because it would have been so simple; but she had no idea of how much Marcantonio knew, nor whether the matter had yet in any way become public property. It was necessary, she judged, that she should know something, at least, of the circumstances. No one but Marcantonio could tell her, and before he could be brought to speak he must be saved from the danger of a physical illness which seemed to threaten him. Before long dinner was ready. It was ten o'clock, and the meal had been prepared for Marcantonio at eight; but he had behaved so strangely that no one liked to go near him, and the servants supposed that if he wanted anything he would ring the bell. The two sat down opposite to each other. Diana was tired and hungry; she had taken off her bonnet on arriving, and had gone straight to Marcantonio, and now she would not leave him until she had seen him safe in his room for the night. But in spite of the long journey, the fatigue, and the great anxiety, she was the same, as queenly and unruffled as ever, as smoothly and perfectly dressed, as quiet and stately in her ways. No wonder she was the envy of half the women in Europe. The half who did not envy her were those who had never seen her. She watched Marcantonio as she sat opposite to him. It surprised her to see that he ate well,--more than usual, in fact, and she attributed it to a sudden improvement which had perhaps been brought about by her arrival. She had expected that he would refuse to eat anything, and would support his strength on strong coffee and tobacco. She thought that at all events he would not be ill,--but, again, as she looked at his face, its death-like yellowness frightened her, and the injected veins of his eyeballs made his eyes look absolutely red. They hardly spoke during the meal, for the servants came and went often, and they could not speak any language together that would not be understood. After a time they were left alone, and they prepared to part for the night. Diana laid her hand affectionately on her brother's forehead, as though to feel whether it were hot. He looked so ill that it hurt her to see him. "You are worn out, dear boy," said she. "Go to bed and sleep." "I will try," he said, rather submissively than otherwise. "But we will go to-morrow, of course," he added quickly, turning to her with a half-startled look. "Of course," said she, reassuring him. "Because," he said, "I told the detectives to telegraph to me there, and I gave them my address at the hotel." "Detectives?" repeated Diana, starting a little and looking surprised. "What do you want them for?" "Diavolo!" ejaculated Marcantonio savagely, "to find him, to be sure." "Batiscombe is not the man to run away, or to need much finding," said Diana, gravely, with an air of conviction. She did not like the idea. "When men mean to be found they leave an address," said her brother, between his teeth. There was truth in what he said. Batiscombe ought to have let Marcantonio know his whereabouts, it was the least a brave man could do, and Batiscombe was undeniably brave. Diana felt a sharp sense of pain; the idea that her brother was hunting down with detectives, like a common malefactor, the man who had once loved her so well--the idea that she was helping to find him in order that Marcantonio might kill him if he could--it was frightful to her. She was bitterly atoning for one innocent girlish fancy of long ago. "Marcantonio," she said, almost entreatingly, "do not do it. Give up the police. I am sure he will meet you without that"-- "Ah yes!" he interrupted, "you know him. Of course you will not help me! I forgot that you were come to shield him,--you--I know you will not help me!" He spoke fiercely and brutally, as he had never spoken to her before. But mad or not mad, Diana would not submit to such words from any one. She turned white, and faced him in the light of the two great lamps that burned on the table. The whole power and splendid force of her nature gleamed in her eyes, and thrilled in the low, distinct tones of her voice. "What you say is utterly base, and ignoble, and untrue," she said slowly. He hung his head, for he knew he was wrong. He did not know what he said; indeed he had hardly known what he was doing all that day. "I am sorry, Diana," he said, at last, quite humbly. "I am not myself to-day." Her anger melted away instantly. Himself! No indeed, poor fellow, he was not himself, and perhaps never would be his old self again. He was so utterly wretched as he stood there before her with his head bent and his hands clasped together, so forlorn and forsaken and pitiful, the moment the sustaining force of his anger left him, that no human creature could have seen him without giving him all sympathy and comfort. Diana went close to him and put her arms about him, and kissed him, and her tears wet his cheek. He suffered her to lead him quietly away to his rooms, and she left him in the care of his faithful old servant. "The signore is ill," she said. "Some one must watch in the outer room all night, in case he wants anything." Diana herself was exhausted, in spite of her strength and extraordinary nerve. There were times when she broke down, as she had done at Sorrento when she heard Julius and Leonora outside her window, but it was always after the struggle was over, when she was alone. Moreover she had the advantage of a perfectly serene past life, during which no serious trouble had come near her, and her strength had increased with her maturity. It all stood her in good stead now, and helped her to bear what she had to suffer. She went to bed and slept a dreamless sleep which completely restored her. It is the privilege of very calm and evenly balanced natures to take rest when it can be had, and to bear wakefulness and fatigue better in the long run than extremely active and physically energetic people. As for Marcantonio, he tossed upon his bed and dreamed broken dreams that woke him again and again with a sudden start; he dreamed he had found his man, and the excitement of the moment waked him. Then he dreamed he was quarrelling with his sister, and was suddenly wide awake at the sound of her reproachful voice. He was talking to Leonora, pleading with her, and using all his eloquence to win her back, and she laughed scornfully at him--and that waked him too. But at last he slept soundly for an hour or two, just before daybreak, and awoke feeling tired, but more restful. The dawn came stealing through the windows, and he got up and moved about a little, with a sensation of enjoyment in the cool, fresh air. He looked into the glass, and started at his own face that he saw reflected there. It seemed like a hideous mask of himself, all drawn and distorted and pale. But had he looked at himself on the previous day he might have seen an improvement now. He was deadly pale, but no longer yellow, and his eyes had lost the redness which had frightened his sister. He looked ill, but not crazy, and he felt that he could trust himself to-day not to say the things he had said yesterday. He would go to Turin of course--that was settled--unless Diana were too tired; but he would not have admitted such a condition when he went to bed the night before. He rang the bell and ordered his things to be got ready. The old servant, who had slept on a sofa outside, looked haggard and unshaved, and stared suspiciously as he heard the order. But he did not dare to make any remarks, as he would have done if his master had been well. Marcantonio had been ill once before, when he was a boy of fifteen, and had on that occasion, when he was delirious, shown a remarkable tendency to throw everything within reach at the people about him when he did not instantly get what he wanted. The old man remembered the fact, and was silently obedient, for the Signor Marchese looked as though he were ill again. The mildest people are often the most furious in the delirium of a fever. CHAPTER XX. After all, Julius was not quite certain whether Leonora had fainted, or was asleep. She had been comfortably settled in the boat at the first, and a quarter of an hour had passed in hoisting and trimming the sails, and bringing the craft before the wind. She might have fallen asleep from sheer fatigue and weariness,--Julius could not tell. He bent far down over the stern, and fetched up a few drops of water from the sea with one hand, while the other supported Leonora's drooping head,--the tiller could take care of itself for a moment,--and he sprinkled her face softly and watched her; once more--and she opened her eyes as from a pleasant dream, and looking up to his she smiled, and closed them again. He bent down and spoke almost in a whisper. "Darling, are you quite comfortable?" She moved her head in assent, the quiet smile still playing on her lips. Then she lay quite still for a while, and listened to the rush of the water, and the occasional dull, wooden sound as the rudder moved a little on its hinges. The boat rolled softly from side to side, in a long, easy motion and glided swiftly down the bay. Presently Leonora moved, sat up, and looked about her, at the sea, and the land, and the fiery-crested mountain. "Where are we going, Julius?" she asked, with a smile at the question. "I am sure I don't know," said he, laughing. "There are lots of places we can go to. Ischia, Capri,--Naples if you like. Select, dearest, there is a good boat between us and the water, and we have the world before us." "But we must go somewhere where we can get some breakfast," said she gravely. "And where I can buy things," she added, laughing again. "Do you know that this is all I have got in the world to wear?" "That is serious indeed," said Julius. "There are provisions and things to drink in the boat, but there is no millinery. We had better go to Naples." "I think I could manage for one day," said Leonora, doubtfully. "I have brought heaps of handkerchiefs, and hairpins, and cologne water,--they are all in the bag." "Handkerchiefs and hairpins!" repeated Julius, and laughed at the idea. A woman leaves her husband, who worships her, scatters trouble and tears and madness broadcast, and she thinks of handkerchiefs and hairpins, and remembers where she has put them. "Yes," said Leonora, "they will be very useful. We could go to Ischia first, and to Naples to-morrow night,--or rather to-night, I should say. That is,--if you think"-- "What, dear?" asked Julius. "If you think it is quite--far enough." "We cannot go very far. It is six or seven hours from here to Ischia, if the wind holds. We should be there between six and seven o'clock." "I think that would be best," said Leonora in a tone of decision. She was silent for a moment. Presently she looked up into Batiscombe's face, and her own was white and beautiful in the moonlight. "I wonder," she said, "whether any one heard that noise the dogs made? Oh, the poor, poor kitten,--it makes me quite cry to think of her!" "Poor thing!" said Julius sympathetically. "But its ghost will not haunt the gardens, for it was amply avenged." "Yes indeed!" said Leonora. "Oh, Julius, you are so strong,--I like you." "Thanks," said Julius, "you are awfully good to like me." He laughed, but his hand caressed her hair tenderly, and Leonora was happy. "It was just like us," said she, "to stop there at the top of the steps where we might have been seen in a moment--but I am glad. I hated those dogs." "It was just as well," said he. "They would very likely have made more noise, and followed us." "Oh yes--and just fancy the wrath when they are found to-morrow morning. But they might have bitten you dreadfully--I was terribly frightened." "I fancy there will be more wrath about you, my dear, than about the dogs," said Julius, rather gravely. "About me? Oh--I hardly know--perhaps. I do not think any one will mind very much." "What does it matter who minds, as you call it?" asked Julius, pushing her thick hair from her forehead tenderly, and looking at her with loving eyes. "What does it matter to us now? What can anything ever matter again?" "Nothing, nothing, nothing, dear," she answered softly, and her head drooped happily upon his shoulder. They were as though alone in the boat, for the broad sail was stretched right across to catch the wind, and hid the men, who sat together forward, chattering in a low voice in the incomprehensible dialect known as the lingua franca, the free tongue in which all Mediterranean sailors understand one another, from Gibraltar to Constantinople, and from Smyrna to Marseilles. They did not care a rush what their master did, nor where he went; they had some confidence in his knowledge of the sea and of the coast, and they had entire confidence in themselves, whatever wind might blow. It was nothing to them, who came from the north coast, whether their broad-shouldered "signore" took a "bella signora" from Naples or Sorrento for a midnight sail in his boat. He paid well, to every man his wages, and he often gave them a few francs to drink his health. They had never had so good a "padrone" before, and they asked no questions, wisely distinguishing the side of the bread upon which a bountiful providence had spread the most butter for their benefit. They also said that nothing ever mattered much so long as they got their pay. Leonora had found at last the desire of her heart,--the reckless, stormy passion, careless of everything but itself and its object, of which she had so often dreamed. She had found the man for her to love, and she did love him to distraction. As for the rest of the world, she was more persuaded than ever that there was nothing very much in anything after all. What she had was wholly sufficient in the present, the future was a future full of joy and love, and divested of everything that could possibly be wearisome, and the past was cut off, murdered, dead and buried out of sight. But though she had killed it and thrown it away, as Julius had done with the dogs, it had a ghost and a living memory that would haunt her for many days and weeks, and months and years. A life is not a dream to be forgotten, nor an old garment to be thrown aside at will. Life is an ever present thing, and all our past is as much a part and parcel of to-day as the marks we bear in our bodies are portions of ourselves, no matter how we came by them, nor when. Out of nothing, nothing can come. Out of confusion and vanity and pure selfishness, out of confused and incoherent fragments of half-expressed wisdom, out of the very vanity of vanities, which is the vanity of wise words wrought into foolish phrases; out of the shell of an imaginary self wrought fine and gilded to please the worst part of the real self,--out of all these things, I say, what can come that is good? Or can anything come of them which is truly evil, seeing that, one with another, they are all but so many empty nothings, melted together and lost in the great void that receives the failures of the soul-world? If anything results from such a life, it must be the realisation of nothing, which is the extinction and annihilation of that which is,--and woe be to the destroyer. We may destroy all hold and anchorage of mind and soul, we may reason ourselves into a disbelief in reality, in matter, in daily life, in good and evil. But always when we think that everything is done, and that our fabric of philosophy is faultless, there arises the strong tide of human passion and creeps across the sands to our tower. At first we may watch the waves from a long way off, and laugh to see them break and overwhelm the very foolish people who have no tower on the shore and must swim for their lives or perish. But the tide rolls on toward us, and runs cruelly up, crashing and thundering in its rising might, till it rends and tears our flimsy castle out of the sands beneath our very feet, and we fall headlong into the rushing waters. And then we too must struggle like the rest, if we can; and if we cannot, we must sink to the bottom, while those who learned when the tide was low and the water smooth, and have tried their strength in many a brave buffet with the waves, swim strongly over our drowned bodies. It is easy to moralise, it is hard to live. That is the reason that great moralists are generally either old men who have done with living and would like to teach other people, or else young men and young women who have not enough vitality to animate the most lymphatic oyster, but who manage to float about by their own inflation. These latter never save any one from drowning, and the former save very few. The people who can help others are the strong ones who can catch them just below the shoulder, by the arm, and support them and push them to land, themselves doing all the work. That is a watery simile, but most similes are but water, and can be poured into a tea-cup or into a bucket--they will take the shape of either. The night wore on, the full moon sinking slowly to the west, so that after a time she was hidden from the lovers by the sails, and there was a broad shadow behind them. Still the breeze blew fresh from the land and carried them straight towards Ischia, and the boat rocked smoothly over the rolling water. Leonora rested on the thick cushions, and her head lay nestled in Batiscombe's arm while he held the tiller carelessly with his other hand, steering by the wind, in the certainty of making the right course. He did not speak, for he wanted her to rest, and so it came about that before long she fell peacefully asleep, and Julius drew a light shawl tenderly about her, and kissed her ruddy hair, and looked out over the moonlit water, calmly as though he were sailing for his pleasure. He was thinking what strange things happened in his life, and wondering within himself whether he could ever grow old and be like other people. But he could never be like other people now, for he must live a life apart from the world, and create an existence of a new kind, utterly free from the ties and bonds and weariness of society. It would also be without the amusements, the gayety, the glitter, and the flattery of society. Batiscombe liked all that, too; but he thought he could do without it very well. Just now the fascination of the hour was upon him. The sweet sea-breeze, the moonlight on the water, the swirl of the boat's wake--and, above all, the beautiful woman by his side sleeping so gently and nestled so lovingly close to him,--it was all perfect. But with a curious duality that belonged to him, he enjoyed the moment and thought intensely of the future at the same time; not with any fear or regret or even with the anticipation of remorse for what he had done, but with a far-seeing love of combination, striving to know exactly what would happen and to provide for it. He went over in his mind the many places to which he might take Leonora, and tried to select the most beautiful and the most retired--some ideal spot, not yet invaded by society. Society, in the long run, gets the best of everything; artists and poets and adventurous tourists may seek out an inaccessible region and keep it to themselves for a while, revelling in the solitude and driving off intruders by discouraging civilisation and affecting a barbaric display of shirt-sleeves, paint, and beards. But if the place is really beautiful, really healthy or really convenient for flirting in the open air, there will surely come at last a stray princess of eccentric disposition and fond of a little discomfort. She will say it is simply too delightful, and so very natural, you know; and in the course of a summer or two the society battalion will encamp there, the houses will be newly painted, and there will be a band and a casino, and a royal personage. It is very hard to find the kind of place Julius wanted, and he thought for a long time before he hit upon it. But at last he had a happy idea and was pleased with himself for having it, as he always was. Very cautiously he got a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it with one hand, steadying the helm with his elbow. He did it so smoothly and quietly that Leonora did not wake, and he puffed in silent enjoyment of the tobacco, taking care that the smoke should not blow into her face. It was very like Julius Batiscombe to risk waking her in order that he might smoke, for he was a selfish man and knew it, and delighted in it. But it came upon him in gusts, and was not always a part of him; only, when it did come, it covered completely the better features of his nature. In carrying away Leonora, he had done one of the most absolutely selfish actions of his life, and for the time being there was nothing he would not do so long as he could keep her with him and make her sure that he loved her. He knew well enough that she loved him. He did not want to know anything about his own motives. He was in love--that was motive enough for anything. As a matter of fact, deep down in his soul there were other incentives at play; but he would not acknowledge that to himself. It was true that since he had loved Diana he had never loved another woman as he loved Leonora. There was a charm about her which he could not explain, which overcame him and filled his whole life. His lingering feeling for Diana was always real when no other passion was in the way, and it had never happened before that any one of his affairs had crossed her path. But now it had chanced at last, and the strong position she had taken against him from the first had roused a bitter opposition in him. It secretly delighted him to think of her anger, and sorrow, and humiliation at the success of his enterprise. But, nevertheless, he loved Leonora with all the strength of passion that remained to him, and that was saying much. Again, he had the vanity, in some directions, of half a dozen ordinary men, a common peculiarity of that unusual physical courage and strength which he possessed in an eminent degree. But it did not go into his work, for he was an artist at heart, besides being a man of the world, and was never long satisfied with anything he wrote. It was the sort of vanity that hankers after the admiration of women, and would not take the admiration of men as a gift,--an intensely virile characteristic of immense power. He would like to rule men, to lead them to do great things or to crush them under his heel, according to his mood; and he sometimes ground his teeth because he could do neither. But he did not want their admiration, much less their sympathy. They might flatter him, or abuse him--he was utterly indifferent. But he would sacrifice a great deal for the approbation of a woman, and he often got it; for women, generally speaking, like best the men who hang upon their words and will do anything under heaven for a smile and a word of praise--as is natural. Consequently, Leonora's evident interest in himself had pleased Julius from the very first, and he had often done things for the sake of hearing her say something flattering, which had meant more than he had realised. There was no doubt whatever that his vanity had played an important part in bringing him into his present position. Nor was he a very exceptional man in this respect, save in the degree of his qualities. Hundreds of men fall in love every day with women who flatter them, and the passion is not less strong because it is of a low order. It was over now, however, and the plunge was taken. The falling in love was accomplished, and the being in love had begun. Henceforth the two main considerations in his mind were to make life convenient and easy for Leonora, in order that she might not cease to love him out of discontent, and then to get over his inevitable meeting with Marcantonio as soon as possible and as well as possible. He easily saw that these two things were inseparable. If all question of future complication were not removed at once by a decisive meeting with Carantoni, Leonora might live in a state of fear and trembling for months to come. In order to meet him it was necessary to have some place of abode for the time, where Leonora might be happy--of course she should not know of the encounter until it was over--and at the same time the spot must be so chosen as to be tolerably accessible. He had intended to go to France when it was over, and had therefore sent his box to Turin, meaning to take it as soon as he felt free to move; Turin suggested Piedmont, and Piedmont suggested a place where he had once spent a month in the summer,--scenery, trout-fishing, considerable comfort, and not a soul there excepting some of the local society of Turin, who found it convenient and cheap. He at once determined to go thither, and to send Marcantonio information of the fact, in order that he might find him as soon as he pleased. He no more expected, or wished, to avoid a duel than Marcantonio himself. The one virtue which never deserted him was his courage. He would let his adversary have a shot at him if he liked, but he himself would fire in the air, of course. He did not think much about it, to tell the truth, for he accepted the fact as the consequence of his action, and occupied himself in providing for it without any judgment of himself, for good or evil. He had once said to Leonora that the enjoyment belonged to the man who ate, and not to the man who carved, and she had guessed rightly that however well he might analyse the lives of others, he never analysed his own. He had got the forbidden fruit and he was glad of it, and meant to keep it all for himself, inwardly rejoicing at the anger of those who would have prevented him, if they could. And with all this, the fruit gave him an intense delight, independently of the triumph of having obtained it. He was not a man who tired of anything he liked so long as the thing itself did not change and remained as sweet as ever. There he sat at the helm all through the hours from midnight to dawn, and Leonora slept peacefully in the cool sea air, at rest after all her excitement and fatigue. Gradually the moonlight seemed to lose distinctness, while gaining more strength and permeating the shadows of the boat which had before been dark and well defined. The breeze blew cooler and fresher than ever, bearing a faint chill in its breath, and the water, from being like black velvet strewn with diamonds, turned gradually grey and misty, so that the waves could all be seen with their small crests and sharp rough edges. In front the rocky height of Ischia seemed to tower to the sky, and soon it caught the first soft tinge of the dawn. Quickly the rosy light crept downwards, falling gently from tree to tree and from rock to rock, till it reached the water, and the sea rippled and laughed in the sweetness of the summer morning. Leonora moved in her sleep, and Julius, who was watching her, saw her lips tremble a little as though she were talking in her dreams. Then she started slightly, put out her hand, and opened her eyes. The blood mounted to her cheeks as she met her lover's glance, and he looked from the colour on the water to the colour on her face, and he saw that the blush of the woman was fairer than the blush of the summer sea. She sat up and turned from him a moment, and her hands were busy with her hair. "Have you slept well, my dear one?" asked Julius. "I am afraid you were terribly uncomfortable." "Oh, so well," said she, still looking away and deftly putting a hairpin in its place. "But I dreamed just as I woke up." "What did you dream, sweetheart?" asked Julius, stretching his stiffened limbs. He had scarcely moved for four hours; he could have borne it for four hours longer if he had not wanted anything,--but he had risked waking her in order to get a cigarette. "I dreamed about you," said she. "You behaved so badly, I am not sure I shall forgive you,--ever." She gave him a hesitating look as she bent her head to arrange her hair. "Tell me, darling," said he, laughing. "It is nothing to laugh at," she answered. "And besides,--I don't know whether I ought to tell you." She stopped and watched him with a little shy laugh. "Please do." "Well,--of course this is in the strictest confidence,--you will never tell any one. Do give me the bag, dear. I want the cologne water." "And the hairpins and the handkerchiefs," added Julius, laughing, as he stooped to get the bag out of the stern-sheets. "Please tell me the dream." Leonora took a handkerchief and wet it from the bottle of cologne water. Then she began to dab it on her face. "I dreamed that you"--dab--"picked me up in your arms and"--dab, dab--"carried me down the stairs,"--dab, dab, dab,--"and just as you were putting me into the"--dab--"into the boat, you dropped me into the sea." A furious succession of dabs, then more cologne water and another handkerchief. "But you said something about that last night. You made me put you down on the rocks, because you said you had dreamed I dropped you. Was that another dream?" Julius was watching her operations with a half-amused interest. "Yes," said she, drying her face, "I dreamed it all over again, just now." "But when did you dream it first, dear? Yesterday?" "Oh no! Ever so long ago,--ages ago." She looked down at the flower she had put in her dress at the last minute. It was still fresh, and she arranged it a little. "Before you knew me?" asked Julius. "Oh yes,--that is--before"--she blushed again. "When was it?" he asked, amused and delighted. "It was before that evening," she said at last, "when you met me in the church. How long ago is that?" "About ten years, I should think," said Julius gravely. It seemed an endless time. "Is it not strange?--and then, that I should dream it all again--it is so funny. Why should you have dropped me? It would have been so easy to carry me into the boat, and yet you seemed to stumble on purpose, and we both fell in and were drowned. Is it not very odd?" She seemed to have settled herself now, for the remainder of the journey; the sun had risen quickly over the land while they were talking, and she put up a parasol which lay on the opposite seat. She did it unconsciously, not realising that she had not brought one with her, but when she held it up, she looked at the handle and saw that it was not one of her own. Then she remembered. "Did you get it for me?" she asked, smiling. "Yes," said Julius; "I knew you would want it, so I sent out for it last night." "A puggia!" shouted one of the men from behind the sail. Julius put the helm up accordingly, and, as the boat fell off a little, a big fishing smack ran across her bows. A dozen rough fellows were lounging about in their woollen caps and dirty shirts. They laughed gayly at the crazy foreigners as they went by, and some of them waved their caps. "Buon viaggio, eccellenza!" they shouted. Julius waved his hand in answer to the greeting. Leonora was pleased. "At all events," said she, "some one has wished us a pleasant journey. It was sweet of you to get the parasol, dear." So they chattered together awhile, and presently the boat went round the point of the island to the north side, and they took in the sails, and the six men pulled her lustily along under the shore, until they reached the little harbour of Casamicciola. "We can stay here and rest all day," said Julius, as they entered the hotel on the hill, half an hour later. "We shall not be disturbed, and this afternoon we will sail over to Naples, and you can do your shopping when it is cool." At half past eight they sat down to a breakfast of figs and bread-and-butter and coffee. At the same moment over there in Sorrento, Temistocle laid the key of Leonora's room on Marcantonio's writing-table, and edged away to make sure of an easy escape through the door. "How perfectly lovely!" exclaimed Leonora, stopping in the consumption of a very ripe black fig, to look out at the sea and the exquisite islands that lie like jewels between Ischia and the mainland. A waiter had brought a shabby book of ruled paper, with a pen and some ink. He asked if his excellency would be good enough to write his name. Julius took the pen and wrote something, glancing up with a smile at Leonora, who finished her fig in silence. "Let me see," said she, when he had done. He handed her the book, while the servant waited respectfully. Julius had written simply, "MR. AND MRS. BATISCOMBE, ENGLAND." "Give me the pen," said Leonora. "Oh, dip it in the ink, please--thanks!" She wrote something and gave him back the book. Underneath his writing she had put in another name. "I wanted to write it," said she with a little laugh. Julius looked, and laughed too. "LEONORA BATISCOMBE," that was all. But as she wrote it, Marcantonio, over there in Sorrento, fell upon the hard tiles with his mother's diamond cross in his hand. CHAPTER XXI. Leonora did all her errands--or as many as she said could be done in so short a time. There were a great many things, she explained, which she could order when they were settled, but which would be in the way at present. Julius bought her a box, and wrote a label for it, and pasted it on the cover. She began to find out that, besides his other qualities, he was a very practical man, and understood travelling better than any courier she had ever had. They had spent a few hours in Ischia as they had intended, and had then come over to Naples in a small steamer which plied daily between the island and the city. Julius paid something to have his boat towed across, and when he was in Naples he paid the men a month's wages in advance, and told them to go back to Genoa and wait for him there. They might steal the boat--or they might not, he did not care. The thing had to be sent somewhere, and if it ever reached Genoa so much the better. He drove with Leonora up and down the Toledo for hours, stopping at all manner of shops, and buying all manner of things. Now and then he would succeed in paying for something, but she generally insisted on using her own money. It was fortunate that she had taken it, she thought, as it would have been so awkward to let him pay for everything. He remonstrated. "All that I have is yours, darling," he said. "You must not begin with such ideas." "I do not mean to be a burden to you, Julius," answered Leonora. "I am sure I must be much richer than you. Nobody ever made himself rich by writing books." She laughed, and he laughed with her. It was so very amusing to talk to each other about what they possessed. "Ideas about being rich are comparative," said Julius. "If I sent Worth two or three hundred pounds for a dress every other week, I should certainly not be very well off. But"-- "Oh, Julius--what an idea! There is no one so cheap as Worth in the long run." "I was going to say something very pretty," remarked Julius. "Oh, I would not have interrupted you if I had known. What was it?" "I was going to say that I must be richer than you--since I have got you, and you have only got me." "You always say things like that," said Leonora, laughing lightly. "Be sure that you always do--I like them very much." "Ah," said Julius, gravely, "I will sit up all night and make them for you." "They ought to be spontaneous," said Leonora. "Everything that is pretty in the world is spontaneous to you, my dear. But I have to work hard to make pretty things, because I am only a man." "That is really not bad," said she, laughing again. She wondered vaguely whether he would always be the same. Her husband used to talk much like that at first. But he grew so dull, and when he said things he never looked as if he quite meant them. Julius said sometimes a few words--just what any one might have said; but there was a tone in his voice, and his eyes were so fiery. She loved the fire; it used to frighten her at first. "We cannot stay here," said Julius, when they sat over their dinner at the hotel on the Chiaja. "It is altogether too ridiculously hot; it is a perfect caricature of a summer, with all its worst points exaggerated." "Yes; but where shall we go?" asked Leonora. "I had thought of a charming place," said Julius. "It is away in the Piedmontese Alps--all mountains and chestnut woods and waterfalls. An old convent built over a torrent. Only the people from Turin go there." "That sounds cool," said Leonora, fanning herself, though whatever she might suffer from the heat she never looked hot. "Let us go. When were you there?" "Years and years ago," said Julius. "I used to catch trout with caddis-worms, and write articles about Italian politics. You may imagine how much I knew of what was going on, shut up in an old convent in the mountains. But it made no difference. Writing about Italian politics is very like fishing with worms." "Why?" "You sit on a bank with a red, white, and green float to your line. You have not the least idea what is going on under the water. Now and then the float dips a little, and then you write that the national sentiment of honour is disturbed. That is a bite. By and by the float disappears and your line is pulled tight, and you think you have got a fine fish. Then you write that a revolution is imminent, and you haul up the line cautiously, and find that a wretched little roach or a stickleback has swallowed your hook. The red, white, and green float waves over your head like a flag while you get the hook out and bait it again. You make another cast, and you write home that order has been restored. On the other side of the bank sits another fellow, with a float painted red, white, and blue. He is the French correspondent. Sometimes you get his fish, and sometimes he gets yours. It is very lively." "You used to say that a simile was an explanation and not an argument," said Leonora, rather amused at his description. She always remembered what he said, and enjoyed quoting him against himself. "So it is. What I told you was an illustration of a correspondent's life, not an argument against the existence of very fine fish in the stream." "You are too quick," said Leonora, laughing. "One has to be quick in order not to appear too awfully slow in comparison with you, dear," answered Julius at once. "Again,--there is no stopping you!" It amused her to talk to him, he was so ready; and always with something well turned, that pleased her. There was something, too, that was refreshing in hearing the small talk of a celebrity, often a little doubtful in grammar, and interspersed now and then with a little generous exaggeration that she liked. She had read his books, and knew what he could do with the language when he pleased. And most of all she liked to speak and to be spoken to in English,--it seemed so much more natural. It was no trouble to Julius to talk to her. With some people he was as silent as the grave, which produced the impression that he was very profound. With others he was ready for a laugh and a jest at any moment, and they thought him brilliant; but there were very few with whom he talked seriously. Leonora saw all his phases in turn, for she felt that if she did not know his character, she was in sympathy with his mind and understood him. But Julius was anxious to reach the spot he had chosen, in order to let Carantoni know of his whereabouts. He suggested to Leonora that if it was quite convenient to her they might go the next day, when she had had a good night's rest. She assented readily enough. To tell the truth, with all her gayety and enjoyment of the novel situation, she disliked Naples, and she hated to feel that in the morning she should look out of her window across the bay and see Sorrento, and think of her husband as being there. She did not know that when she laid her head on her pillow that night Marcantonio would be in the station in Naples, on his way to Rome, and not half a mile away from her. "Are you ever seasick?" asked Julius suddenly. "Oh, Julius! You know I am not," she said reproachfully. He laughed. "No? I mean in a steamer. Boats are quite different." "I don't know," said Leonora. "I have often crossed the Channel, and I was never ill at all." "Oh, then of course it's all right!" he said. "You would not mind in the least. We had better go to Genoa in the steamer; it is very decent and much cooler than all those miles of rail and dust." "Oh yes, far pleasanter," said Leonora. And so they made their arrangements, and the next day--the day when Marcantonio was engaging the detectives in Rome--they went on board the "Florio" steamer and left Naples, and Sorrento, and Ischia, and all the countless reminiscences that attached to the glorious bay, and were carried up the coast. "The dear place," said Leonora, looking astern as she sat in her arm-chair under the awning on deck, "I shall always love it." "But you are glad to leave it, darling, are you not?" asked Batiscombe, who stood beside her, and was looking more at her than at the coast, though he held a glass in his hand. It was a curious question to ask, one might have thought, and yet it was natural enough, and did not jar on Leonora's thoughts. She was not sensitive in that way in the least. She did not mind his referring to the past in any way he chose. "Glad? Of course I am glad," she answered, looking up into his face. "How could I not be glad?" She seemed almost vexed at the simplicity of the question. "Then I am happy," said Julius, sitting down beside her. And he spoke the truth; for the time he was utterly and supremely happy. He felt indeed the grave and serious mood, which the bravest man must feel when he knows that in a very few days his life will be at stake. But his vanity told him he was going to fight for her, and that gave him a happiness apart; so he concealed the serious tendency of his thoughts, talking easily and gayly. It was his vanity that helped him most, telling him it was for her; and, as always in his life, the prospect of a woman's praise was a supreme incentive. He did not reflect that he was not to fight for Leonora's honour, but for the greatest dishonour the world held for her. The broad sun poured down on the water, but the west wind fanned their faces and the awning kept the heat from them. Leonora lay back with half-closed eyes, now and then carefully opening and shutting a fan she held. She was wonderful to look at, her marvellous skin, and the masses of her red hair--the true red of the Venetian women--contrasting strongly with her soft dark dress, and a Sorrento handkerchief of crimson silk, just knotted about her dazzling throat. She was a marvellous specimen of vital nature, of pure living litheness and elasticity, gloriously human and alive. And the man beside her was almost as singular in a different way: he was so quiet, and moved so easily, and his bright blue eyes were so fiery and clear, his skin so bronzed and even in colour; there was strength about him too; and the passengers as they came and went would steal a glance at the couple, and make remarks, quite audible to Julius and Leonora, about the beauty of those Inglesi. "Which do you like best, dear," asked Julius presently, "the day or the night?" "Oh--that night was so beautiful," said Leonora; "I love the moon, and the freshness, and the white sails, and all." "Does 'all' include anything especial?" asked Julius smiling. "What do you think?" asked she, instead of answering. Her red lips remained just parted with a loving smile. "I don't think," said Julius. "I leave the thinking to you, my dear. You can do it much better. But I like the sunlight, the broad, good sunlight, far more than the moon. It is so hot and splendid." "Yes; I suppose it is like you to prefer it. All men like the sun--and I suppose all women like the moon. At least I do. But you must always like what I like now, you know." "Including myself, I suppose?" "Bah, my dear," laughed Leonora, "you will find that very easy!" How very unhappy she must have been, thought Julius. She had not a regret in the world, it seemed; and the only fear she had shown had been when she stumbled on the descent, so that he took her up and carried her. "Tell me," said he, "what did you do in all those dreadful days when we could not meet?" "I did nothing but write letters to you--very nice letters too. You have never shown yourself properly grateful." "No," said Julius, "I have not had time." "What do you mean?" asked Leonora with a little frown. "Why--it must take a long time to show you how grateful I am. A long time," he added, his voice sinking to a deeper tone, that Leonora loved to hear. "It will take my whole lifetime, darling." "Thanks, dear one," said she quietly, laying her hand on his. She did not mind the passengers,--why should she? She would never mind the world again, as long as she lived, for the world would never care what she did any more. Her experience of the world--or of what she understood by the term--had not been very happy, though it had not been the reverse. She remembered chiefly the mere technicalities of society, so to speak. She had enjoyed them after a fashion, inveighing all the while against their emptiness and vanity, and now when she looked back she saw only a confused perspective of brilliantly lighted, noisy parties, of more or less solemn dinners, of endless visits to people who bored her, and of an occasional cotillion with a man she liked, in return for numberless dances with individuals who seemed to be trying to get dancing lessons gratis, or who tore furiously up and down the room till she was out of breath, or who caught their spurs in her skirts, and scratched her arms with their decorations. She did not remember how she had enjoyed motion for motion's sake, and had rarely refused to go out, in spite of the aforesaid annoyances. She did not remember the little thrills of pleasure she had felt, as Marcantonio was gradually attracted to her, till he was always the first to greet her and to put his name on her card for a turn, and was always the last to bid her good-night, devoting himself to her mother when she was engaged with some one else. She did not remember the delight she had often experienced in discussing society with her philosophical friends, bowling over institutions with a phrase and destroying characters with an adjective. There were many things which Leonora did not remember but which had given her great pleasure a few months ago; but most of them reminded her of her husband, and she did not wish to be reminded of him in the least. There was continually a sort of unconscious comparison going on between him and Julius Batiscombe; she could not help it, and it had been perhaps the earliest phase of her love. Even at the moment when Marcantonio offered himself to her, Julius was standing in the doorway, and she had wondered what he would have said if he had been making the same proposal. She knew, now. She thought she knew the difference between the intonation of the man who loved, and of the man who merely wanted to marry. Ah--if she had only known in time, things would have been different. She would have refused Marcantonio, after all his devotion, and she would have married Julius. She did not understand that Julius would never have fallen in love with her then; that the mere possibility of being led into marriage reared an impassable barrier between him and the whole of youngladydom. He had made up his mind that he would not marry, and young ladies said he was the most obstinate bore they knew; which was very unkind, for he kept out of their way, and only bored them when he was obliged to talk to them, doing it systematically and successfully in self-defence. But Leonora innocently supposed that if Julius had met her more intimately, in time, he would have fallen in love with her just as he had done now, and would have proposed after six weeks' acquaintance, and they would have been happy forever after. She chanced to think of this now, and she sighed. "What is the matter, sweetheart?" asked Julius. "Nothing," said she, "I was thinking of something,--that is all." "Tell me, dear," said he, bending towards her. She hesitated a moment, looking into his eyes. "I was thinking," she said at last, "of something that happened once. Do you remember, at that ball, when you stood in the doorway and looked so dreadfully bored, and I was sitting not far off with--with the marchese?" "Of course," said Julius, calmly, "I imagined he was just proposing to you." "Yes," said Leonora, in a low voice, "he was." "I wish he had been at the bottom of the sea," said Julius, fiercely. Indeed, the idea disgusted him, being as much in love as he was. Nevertheless, he thought she was a singular woman to refer to the thing,--so very soon. He had at first expected that she would never wish to mention her husband to him; at least, not for very long; but she seemed rather to seek the subject than to avoid it. He mused for a moment, looking out under his half-closed lids, as was his habit when he was thinking. Suddenly a smile came into his face. "Do you remember, dear, when you and he raced me in the boat on the bay, one afternoon, ever so long ago?" It was not much more than six weeks. "Yes--perfectly," said she. "Why?" "Have you any idea where I was going?" asked Julius, laughing a little. "Not the least. You were not going anywhere; you were out for a row, I suppose, because you wanted the air." She looked a little puzzled. "If you had not overtaken me, I should never have seen you again," he said, looking at her affectionately. "What do you mean?" she asked, rather startled. "Simply this, I was running away. I was engaged to dine with you that evening, and I was going to Naples to get out of it. I would have sent a telegram about urgent business--or anything." "What an idea!" she exclaimed, laughing. "Why did you do that?" "Because I knew what would happen if I stayed," said he, softly. "But you did not care for me then?" she asked, quickly. "Oh, yes, I did," he answered; "and I knew I should care a great deal more." His eyes burned in the bright light of the afternoon. "But I did not love you in the least then," said Leonora, demurely. "No, of course not--and I did not flatter myself that you would. But I knew I was going to love you with all my heart." Again their hands met for a moment, and a couple of sailors, who watched them from a distance, nudged each other and grinned. "When did you first begin to care, dear?" he said presently. "Seriously? What a silly question, Julius. How can I tell?" "It was after I found you in the church, was it not?" "Yes, indeed. Ever so long after that!" "About two days?" he suggested gravely. "How absurd, Julius," she said with a little air of offended dignity that was charming. "You know it was ever so long." "I wonder what you thought of me, when you turned round and saw me looking at you in the church," said he. He really had not an idea, and was curious to know. "I thought you were very rude," said she. "And afterwards I thought you were very nice." "I did not mean to be rude," said Julius, "but I could not help going in. I was in love with you, and I knew you were there." "In love--already?" asked Leonora. "Why--yes--it was at least a week after I tried to run away," said Julius innocently. "It was exactly two days," said Leonora. They both laughed, for it was quite true. It was very pleasant to recall the beginnings of their love, for it had all been sweet, and easy; it seemed so to them, at least, as the foreshore hid Sorrento from their sight, and with it the scene of all they were discussing. It was a beautiful voyage, along the coast in the summer sea. There was always enough breeze in the daytime, and there was the moon at night, and they always felt that if they were quite alone, on land, it would be even more charming, if possible. It is a great thing in happiness to know that there is to be more of it, and more and more, till at last the heart has its fill of joy. They reached Genoa, and rested themselves for a day and a night in the glorious rooms of an old palace, turned into an hotel by the profane requirements of modern travellers. But it is very agreeable for travellers to sleep in palaces, by whatever names they are called, and it is foolish to say that moderns should build new buildings instead of making use of old ones when they have them ready to hand. There is a set of people in the world who deal in cheap sentiments, and get themselves a reputation for taste by abusing everything modern and kneeling in rows before everything that is old. They grind out little mediæval tunes with an expression of ravished delight, and tell you there is no modern music half so good,--in fact, that there is no modern music at all! Or they garnish themselves in queer white robes and toddle through a vile travesty of some ancient drama; or they build houses of strange appearance and hideous complication of style, having neither beauty without nor comfort within: and last of all, they say to themselves, Verily, we are the most artistic people in the world! One of these persons could not have passed an hour in the old palace which the Genoese have turned into an hotel. The bare idea of such profanity would have produced artistic convulsions at once, and untold suffering in the future by the mere memory of it. But neither Batiscombe nor Leonora were people of that sort. Julius took a very different view of life, believing to some extent in the simple theory that useful things are good and useless things are bad, and that everything that really fulfils its purpose must have some beauty of its own. Moreover, Julius had very little reverence, but a profound intelligence of the comfortable; he would have slept as well in a king's tomb as in an American hotel, provided the furniture were to his taste in respect of length and breadth and upholstery. As for Leonora, she had been brought up chiefly in Italy, and never troubled herself with the intricacies of the art question in that country, taking everything to be natural so long as she always had the very best of it. And at present, being wholly in love, and having her heart's desire, she would even have been willing to put up with less luxury than usual. Her talent for supremacy, as Julius used to call it, had taken a person for its object, and found the dominion of a heart more interesting than the dominion of fashionable luxury, the finest horses, or even Mr. Worth. "I used to hate hotels," said she to Julius, late in the evening, "but they seem very pleasant after all. There is never any fuss about anything; and I always seem to get just what I want." "Oh--hotels are very well, if one understands them," he answered. He did not explain to her that her comfort was chiefly due to his forethought. "You would soon find it a great bore, though," he added. "I am sure I should not," said she. "You are so clever that you make everything seem easy for me." Julius laughed, out of sheer satisfaction. These were just the little speeches he loved most from women, and, most of all, from Leonora. It would seem a harmless vanity of itself, but it leads to doing acts of forethought and courtesy for the sake of the praise instead of for the sake of the woman. "It is very good of you to say so, my dear," he answered, modestly. "But we will change all that, by and by. When the heat is over we will go away, and live in the Greek islands. There are places worth going to, there." "Oh, of all things how delightful!" cried Leonora, carried away by the new idea. "And have a house by the sea, and a boat, and Greek servants,--how lovely!" "Meanwhile, dear," said Julius, "we will go and be cool in the old Carthusian monastery. It does not take long from here." And so they left Genoa and reached Turin, where Batiscombe found his box--the one that Marcantonio intended to watch so carefully--and took it away; thence they went to a place called Cuneo, a little southwards by the railway, in the Maritime Alps, which Leonora said were beautiful; and then they drove in an ancient diligence to the Certosa di Pesio, an old Carthusian monastery, as Julius had said, built over a wonderful mountain torrent, and surrounded with ancient chestnut-trees. Through the valley that opens away to northward you can catch a glimpse of Monte Rosa, when the setting sun gilds the snow, and the breeze brings down with it the freshness of the Alps. Leonora was enchanted with the place, with Batiscombe's choice, with him, with everything. "And to-morrow you will show me where you used to catch fish, and write your articles on Italian politics?" said she, as they came in from a short walk late in the evening. That night Batiscombe dispatched a letter to Rome. CERTOSA DI PESIO, CUNEO, MARITIME ALPS, _August 31_. The Marchese Carantoni will find Mr. Julius Batiscombe at the above address, with a friend. That was all, but it gave Julius infinite satisfaction to send it. He had grudged the days that had passed before he could send Carantoni the information. As for the "friend," he had seen two or three cavalry officers about the place as soon as he arrived, and he knew that he could rely on the assistance of some of them. Duels are easily arranged in Italy. CHAPTER XXII. When Marcantonio met Diana in the morning, she noticed at once the change in his appearance. He was still very pale, and his face was drawn in a peculiar expression; but he did not look so wild, and his eyes had regained their clearness. Diana greeted him affectionately, but made no remark about his health, thinking it would annoy him. She herself had slept soundly and began the day with a new supply of strength. "You are still determined to go to Turin?" she said, with half a question in her voice, but as though it were quite certain that he would answer in the affirmative. "Yes," he said, "I am quite determined. It is the best thing I can do." "I was wondering this morning," said Diana, "whether we ought not to let our uncle know. It seems to me that he ought not to hear it from strangers." Marcantonio eyed her suspiciously. "You cannot expect me to go and tell him now," said he. "The train leaves in an hour--there is not time." "Of course not," said Diana, seeing how quickly he suspected her of wishing to interfere with his plan. "But, if you like, I will write and tell him." "We can write from Turin," said he moodily. "No one knows yet." He hurried her to the station, and got there long before the hour of departure. He was determined not to miss the train, and until he was seated in the carriage and the train rolled out of the city he could not feel sure that Diana would not stop him. He was somewhat relieved when they passed the first station on the way to Florence, and he saw that he was fairly off. Donna Diana sat opposite to him and watched him, thinking sadly of the last journey they had made together, when he had taken her to Sorrento by the night train. He looked quiet, though, and she thanked Heaven things were no worse; he might so easily have done himself a mischief in the first outbreak of his solitary grief. She still hoped for a chance of learning how it had all happened, for she was very much in the dark, and had no means of learning anything except what he might choose to tell her. Perhaps the intense inquiry in her mind reacted on his, as often happens between brothers and sisters. At all events, he began to speak before half an hour had gone by. "I have not told you anything about it yet, Diana mia," he said. "I have been so busy, so many things to do." He passed his hand over his forehead as he spoke, as though trying to collect himself. "Of course," said Diana gently. "Do not tire yourself now, dear boy. Another time will do just as well. I know all that is absolutely necessary." Marcantonio laughed very slightly and a little foolishly, and again put his hand to his head. "Oh, no," he answered, "I shall not tire myself. You do not know anything about the--the--occurrence." "No," said she, "that is true." "They went away at night," said Marcantonio quickly, and then stopped. "Pray do not tell me about it, dear brother," said Diana, rising and seating herself near to him on the opposite side of the carriage. She laid her hand on his arm, trying to soothe him, for she feared a return of his old state. "But I must tell you," he said impatiently, and she saw it was useless to protest. "They went away at night," he continued, "in a boat. I heard the dogs barking, just for a moment, and then they stopped, and I went to sleep. I went to sleep, Diana," he cried savagely, "when she was running away with him, and I could have killed him as easily as possible. I could have killed them both--oh, so easily!" He groaned aloud and clenched his thin hands. "Hush!" said Diana, softly. "I could have killed them as easily as he killed the dogs and stopped their barking," he went on; "he killed them both, wrung their necks--poverini--as though they were not right to call me. And I never guessed anything, though I heard them!" He was working himself into a frenzy, and Diana was afraid he might go mad then and there. She tried to draw his mind to another part of the story. She was a woman of infinite tact and resource. "Yes," said she, "I am sure you could. But how long was it before you telegraphed to me?" "How long? I do not know," he said; and he seemed trying to recollect himself. "Was it in the afternoon?" asked Diana, glad to fix his attention on a detail. "Let me see--yes. I meant to send it from Castellamare--the dispatch, I mean; and instead I stopped the carriage at a little town on the way--I forget the name, but there was a telegraph office there--and so I sent it sooner." "Yes," said Diana. "I got it at about seven o'clock. My husband was very quick and got a carriage, and brought me as far as Genoa." "How good of him!" exclaimed Marcantonio. "How is he? And the children, dear little things; are they all well?" His face changed again, and a pleasant smile showed that he had forgotten his troubles for a moment. Diana was surprised at the ease with which she could distract his attention, and she determined to make use of her power to the utmost. It would be something gained if she could keep him quiet during the journey. She began immediately to speak of her children, a boy and girl of four and three years old. She told him about their games, their appearance, their nursery maids, and their French governess. She branched off into a dissertation on the beauties of the Riviera, and still he listened and made intelligent answers, and talked as though nothing had happened to him and they were travelling for their amusement. Seeing that she was accomplishing her object, she went on from one subject to another, telling him all manner of details about her life in France, in Austria, and other places where her husband's official duties had called him, during the five years since her marriage. Only about Rome she would not speak, fearing lest the smallest reference to the scenes he had recently passed through might take his mind back to his great grief. And all the while she marvelled at his calmness, and at the ease with which she could amuse him. For he was really amused, there could be no doubt. He laughed, talked in his natural way, and seemed enjoying himself very well, smoking a cigarette now and then, and commenting on the weather, which was abominably hot. "Of course," said he, "we shall find it much cooler in Pegli." Diana started quickly, and then looked away to hide her astonishment. "Of course," she answered, "it is very much cooler there." Did he really fancy he was going to Pegli? Had he forgotten Turin and his errand? Was he gone stark mad? She could not tell, and was frightened. It might have been a slip of the tongue,--but he said it very quietly, as though he were anticipating the delights of the climate. Nevertheless, she did not dare to pause, and she talked bravely on in the heat and the dust. At one of the stations the train stopped ten minutes for refreshments. Marcantonio said he would get out and buy a sandwich and a bottle of wine. He sprang nimbly from the step, and Diana watched him as she sat by the open door of the carriage. He looked more like his old self than she had seen him since the catastrophe, and she watched him with loving eyes, wondering how he would bear what was to come, and for the first time wishing that he might be kept always in this state, without the necessity of a meeting with Batiscombe. Presently he returned with the provisions,--a brace of rough-looking sandwiches, and a bottle of wine. "It is the best I could do," he remarked. "It is the last place in the world." He still looked cheerful and entirely himself. Diana watched him closely, hoping and praying with all her might that he might remain so--forever, even if he were out of his mind. Anything would be better than to see him suffer as he had been suffering that morning. She began to talk again, eating a little of the sandwich, for she was tired, and needed all her strength. He ate, too, and drank some of the wine, but he no longer listened as he had done before, and he did not answer nor make a remark of any kind. Diana had taken up what he said about the station, and was talking about travelling in France. Suddenly Marcantonio's colour changed; he grew pale again, his eyes stared, and he dropped the bread he was eating. Diana was terrified, brave as she was, for she knew that his mind had gone back to his trouble,--how, she could not tell; but it was clear that for a space he had wholly forgotten it. He seemed to take up the thread of his terrible narration at the point at which he had been led away from it. "Temistocle brought me the key," he said, and his voice sounded hollow again and far away. "He had told the servants she had gone to Rome before daybreak, and that I had gone with her,--ha! ha!--he is a cunning fellow. I gave him something for himself,--I think I did,--I am not quite certain." Again his ideas seemed to wander, and he tried to remember the detail that had escaped his grasp. Quick as thought Diana seized the opportunity. "Did you give it to him in the evening?" she asked. "I am not sure. I am not quite sure that I did give it to him after all. Oh, I cannot remember anything any more." He clasped his hands to his head as though striving to compress his brain and to compel it to action. The train moved away from the station. "You can send it to him, in any case," suggested Diana, in an agony of sympathy and suspense. She would have added "from Pegli," if she had dared; but she was not sure he would remember his stray remark, or whether he had meant it. In a moment it was too late. "Of course," cried Marcantonio, delighted with the idea. "I can send it from Turin. He deserves it well. There will be time,"--he hesitated and spoke slowly,--"there will be time,--yes, there will be time, before I find him." His voice fell almost to a whisper, barely audible to Diana in the noise of the train as it gained speed in starting. He seemed unconscious of her at the moment when he said the last words, and she sat with clasped hands and set lips, not knowing what to expect next. In a little while he began again. She had been too much struck by his quick change of manner to find the thing to say, in time to lead him off. "I went into her room," he said. He stopped and fumbled in his pockets, producing at last the cross of sapphires and diamonds. "I found this," he added, showing it to Diana. She would have taken it, but he held it nervously in his hand, more than half concealed. "Do you know it?" "Yes," said she as quietly as she could. "It belonged to our mother." "It is beautifully made," he said suddenly, looking closely at it. "It is most beautifully made, and the stones are very valuable. Should you not think that they are worth a great deal?" "They must be--the sapphires are of a very good colour and the brilliants are large," said Diana, humouring him. "I wonder where it was made?" "I do not care where it was made," said Marcantonio roughly. "I have got it again. I will give it back to her--she must have missed it." He looked at Diana with a strange pathetic inquiry in his weary eyes. "Leonora?" asked Diana, in surprise. Marcantonio started as though he had been stung. He had thought of his dead mother. "Leonora? Ah!" he cried with a sort of muffled scream. "It belonged to Leonora--Ugh!" With a quick movement he flung the jewel at the window. It chanced that the pane was raised to keep out the smoke on that side. The heavy cross cracked the plate glass and knocked a small piece out of the middle, but fell to the floor. Marcantonio remained in the very act, as he had thrown it, for one instant. Then his head sank on his breast and his hands fell to his sides helplessly. "Oh, Diana, Diana," he moaned piteously, "I am mad." Then he began to rock himself backward and forward as though in pain. It was no time to break down in horror or grief, and Diana was not the woman to waste idle tears. The cross had fallen at her feet. She had instantly stooped and picked it up and hid it away, lest he should see it again. Then she heard him say that he was mad, and she made a desperate effort. She took him strongly in her arms, almost lifting him from the ground, and laid his head upon her breast and supported it, and took his hand. He was quite passive; she could do anything with him for the moment--he might have been a child. Diana bent down as she held him in her arms and kissed him tenderly on the forehead and breathed soft words. It was a prayer. Poor woman! what could she do? Driven to the last extremity of agony and horror, sitting by and seeing her brother going mad--raving mad--before her very eyes, unable to soothe his grief or to strengthen his soul by any words of her own, not knowing but that at any moment he might turn upon herself--poor woman, what could she do? She breathed into his ear an ancient Latin prayer. What a very foolish thing to do! She was only a woman, poor thing, and knew no better. O woman, God-given helpmate of man, and noblest of God's gifts and of all created things--is there any man bold enough to say that he can make praises for you out of ink and paper that shall be worthy to rank as praise at all by the side of your good deeds? You, who bow your gentle heads to the burden, and think it sweet, out of the fulness of your own sweet sympathy--you, whose soft fingers have the strength to bind up broken limbs and rough, torn wounds--you, who feel for each living thing as you feel for your own bodily flesh, and more--you, who in love are more tender and faithful and long-suffering than we, and who, even erring, err for the sake of the over-great heart that God has given you--is it not enough that I say of you, "You are only women, and you know no better"? What greater, or higher, or nobler thing can I say of you, in all humbleness and truth, than that you are what you are, and that you know no better? What better things can any know, than to bear pain bravely, to heal the wounded, to feel for all, even for those who cannot feel for themselves, and to be tender and faithful and kind in love? And even, being given of Heaven and loved of it, that you should turn in time of need and trouble and say a prayer for strength and knowledge, even that is a part of you, and not the least divine part. So that when the man who cannot suffer what you can suffer, nor do the good that you can do, sneers and scoffs at your prayers and your religion, I could wring his cowardly neck to death. Even poor Leonora, praying philosophical prayers to a power in which she did not in the least believe, was not ridiculous. She was pathetic, mistaken, miserable, perhaps, but not ridiculous. Perhaps Diana had done the best thing, out of pure despair. The long familiar words, spoken in her soothing voice, at the very moment when he was conscious that he was on the verge of insanity, chained his faculties and gradually brought him to a calmer state. Perhaps, also, the strong magnetic power of his sister acted more forcibly on him from the moment when he suddenly abandoned himself to her influence. Like many people who possess that strange gift, she was wholly unconscious of it, and she sometimes wondered why it was that those about her yielded so easily to her will. Be that as it may, Marcantonio lay quite still in her arms, and at last his eyelids drooped, his limbs relaxed, and he fell into a deep sleep. The hot hours wore on, and the train rolled by the towns and hamlets and castle-crested hills towards Florence, and still he slept, and Diana tenderly supported him, though her arm ached as though it must break, and her eyes were dimmed from time to time with the sight and consciousness of so much misery. At length, as they entered the station, she waked him. He was quite calm again, and collected, but very sad, as she had seen him that morning. "Have I slept like this so long?" he asked. "Yes, dear boy," said Diana. "Dear, dear Diana, how good you are," he exclaimed, and he kissed her hand gratefully. "We have an hour here, to dine, before the train starts." "Will you go on at once?" she asked. She had vainly hoped that he might be induced to stay in Florence. But he had recovered himself enough to know perfectly well what he was doing. "Yes--certainly," said he. "We shall arrive in the morning." She dared not object nor make a suggestion, not knowing how soon he might break out again, in some fresh burst of madness. "Very well," she answered, as a station porter took their handbags and smaller properties, "let us dine at once." She watched him and saw that he ate with a good appetite. She had heard that lunatics always eat well, and she would almost rather have seen him too sad to care for his food; nevertheless she thought it would do him good. There is probably nothing more wearing, more racking to the nerves, than the care of an insane person. To be ever on the watch, expecting always an outbreak or a painful incoherence, to attempt to follow the sensible nonsense that madmen talk, always endeavouring to distract the attention from the forbidden subject, are efforts requiring the highest tact and the greatest coolness. Diana could accomplish much by sheer common sense and endurance, and more, perhaps, by the strong affection which had always existed between her brother and herself. But she felt instinctively that she was not equal to the task, even while she hoped that Marcantonio was not really mad. She was mistaken, however, as any indifferent person would have seen in a moment. He was insane, and on the verge of becoming violent. Nothing but her wonderful courage and strong will had kept him within any bounds, and he might at any moment become wholly uncontrollable. She would have stopped in Florence if it had been possible, but it seemed dangerous to thwart him at present, and she felt sure that in Turin she could get the help of some first-rate physician. So she submitted once more, and in an hour they were off again, in a reserved carriage, as before, flying northwards towards the mountains, where the road winds so wonderfully through a hundred tunnels, in its rapid ascent. It was a very long night for Diana. In all her many journeys she had never felt fatigue such as this. Marcantonio would sleep for an hour, and then start up suddenly and begin to talk, sometimes asking questions and sometimes volunteering remarks that showed how his mind was wandering. Once or twice he showed signs of returning to the account of his doings after Leonora had left him, but Diana was able to check him in time, for he was growing tired and yielded more easily to her will than in the daytime. At last they were safe in the hotel, and Marcantonio was in his room, intending to dress, he said, before going out. Diana was no sooner assured that she was free from the responsibility of watching him for a few minutes than she sent for the proprietor of the hotel, inquired for the address of the best physician in Turin, and dispatched a messenger with a very urgent request for his attendance. The apartment she had taken with her brother consisted of a large sitting-room, with a bedroom on each side of it. Marcantonio's room had but that one door, which she could watch as she lay on the sofa, awaiting the arrival of the doctor. When he came at last, breathless in his haste to put himself at the service of the great lady who sent for him, he talked very learnedly for half an hour, after listening to all Diana told him with grave attention. He could not see the patient of course, and the interview took place in a small antechamber, from which he could escape if Marcantonio were heard moving within. He was of opinion that it was not a case of insanity, but of temporary derangement of the faculties from the severe strain they had received. The sudden manifestations of violence were natural enough to an Italian,--if it had been the case of an Englishman, it would have been different, because, as the doctor said, half in earnest and half in jest, Inglesi were generally mad to begin with, and anything beyond that made them furious maniacs. He had a man, he said, long accustomed to dealing with lunatics. He would send him disguised as a servant, and he could be in constant attendance, thus relieving Diana of the care of watching the marchese. He himself would call every day and inquire, and would be ready at a moment's notice to remove him to a place of safety. In his present state, he said, to shut him up, and treat him as though he were insane, might very likely make a permanent madman of him. The doctor retired, leaving Diana somewhat reassured. All that he had said seemed reasonable, and she would strictly follow his advice. Meanwhile, she went to her own room, feeling sure that she could hear Marcantonio's door open, if he finished dressing and came out. But Marcantonio rang his bell at the end of an hour, and sent word to his sister that he felt tired and had gone to bed, and would not rise till midday. Poor fellow--she was pleased at the intelligence, but the fact was that his mind had strayed again; he had forgotten the object of his journey, and being worn out had gone to bed like a tired child. The new place, the strange room, and the necessity of unpacking his clothes himself had confused him, and driven everything else out of his head. Before he awoke, the confidential man had arrived, arrayed in the ordinary dress of an hotel servant. He was a quiet individual, with strong hands and iron-grey hair, neat in his appearance, and a little hesitating in his speech; but his eyes were keen and searching, and he moved quickly. Diana was pleased with him, and understood that the doctor had given her good advice, and that Marcantonio would be safely watched. The man said he would serve them in their own sitting-room, and perform the offices of valet for Marcantonio, and be altogether in the position of a private servant, which, however, was not his profession, as he took care to add. When at last Diana and Marcantonio met, each rested and refreshed, he looked the less weary of the two. Diana had suffered too much to be entirely herself, and for the first time in her life felt as though she had taxed her strength too severely. Moreover, the strain was not removed, but increased hourly. Her woman's instinct told her that, in spite of the doctor's opinion, her brother was actually out of his mind, perhaps past all recovery. His sudden cheerfulness was horrible to her, and made her shudder when she thought of the magnitude of what he was forgetting. "Let us take a carriage and see Turin, Diana," he suggested gayly, as they finished their lunch and he lit a cigarette. "I have never been in Turin with you. There are some very pretty things to see." "By all means," said she readily. "Let us go at once." The confidential servant was dispatched for a carriage. The idea of seeing sights with his sister pleased Marcantonio, and he never relapsed into his sadder self during the afternoon. Diana did not know whether to be glad or sorry; his forgetfulness was terrible, but his memory was worse. She remembered the scene with the cross on the previous day, in the railway-carriage, and she thought that if insanity brought peace it was better to be insane. They drove about and saw what was to be seen,--the great squares, the memorial statues, the armory, where the mail-clad wooden knights sit silently on their mail-clad wooden horses, and they drove out at last to Moncalieri, in the cool of the evening. The confidential servant sat on the box and directed the driver, pointing out to Diana and Marcantonio the various objects of interest, so that Carantoni suspected nothing. The man acted his part perfectly. "How charming it is here!" exclaimed Marcantonio, admiring the trees, and the life, and the gay colours at Moncalieri. "Why did we not think of coming here before, my dear?" He spoke in French, which he rarely did with his sister, though he had always done so with his wife. Diana hardly noticed it at the moment,--she was obliged to answer something. "It was hardly the right season for it before this, I suppose," said she. "But now we can stay as long as we please." "Oh yes," said he, in his old way, "if it is agreeable to you, I ask nothing better. It is infinitely more pleasant than Sorrento. I never liked Sorrento, I cannot tell why. It never wholly agreed with you, mon ange--n'est-ce-pas?" "I was always well there,--well enough, at least," answered Diana, puzzled at this new phase of his humour. "Ah no, you were never well after Diana left us. She is so good, she makes every one well!" He spoke pleasantly and naturally. It was horrible, and Diana started with a new realisation of his state. He no longer recognised persons,--he took her for Leonora! But some new object attracted his attention, and he chattered on, almost to himself, almost childishly, but with a sweet smile on his pale, delicate face. Diana could scarcely restrain her tears,--she who had not wept for years until lately! Poor Diana! Batiscombe and Leonora were sinfully, wholly, happy with each other,--Batiscombe selfishly so, perhaps, but none the less for that, and Leonora with a wild delight in her new life, that swallowed up the past and gilded the present. Even poor, crazy Marcantonio, chattering and making small French jokes about the people's dresses at Moncalieri, was happy for the moment. Only Diana, the brave woman who had fought for the right so well, seemed cut off from it all, bearing the whole burden on her shoulders, and silently bowing her queenly head to the storm of woe and grief and destruction. CHAPTER XXIII. Diana would have taken her brother away from Turin if she could, but there was a danger that the mere suggestion might revive the fixed idea that had driven him mad. His illusions had not the absolutely permanent character which is the most hopeless. For instance, on the evening of the very day when he had called his sister by his wife's name, he had known Diana perfectly well, and had sat for an hour talking about old times with her. Whether, at such moments, he had any recollection of recent occurrences, would be hard to say; and the doctor advised for the present that he should have perfect quiet and should be allowed to amuse himself and to be amused in any way which seemed best. In the course of a day or two the doctor saw him, coming on pretence of seeing Madame de Charleroi. He felt now, he said, from Marcantonio's manner, that he would recover before long, though his memory concerning the circumstances of the time when he was insane would probably be very uncertain. But Diana felt relieved at this and devoted her time to her brother from morning till night, reading to him, driving with him, or talking to him as the case might be. She could do nothing more for the present. Turin is a pleasant city enough, the weather was not excessively hot, and the hotel was large and comfortable. In the course of time it would be possible to move Carantoni and take him to Paris, but at present any sudden change of place or surroundings was to be deprecated. A week passed in this way, and Diana grew pale with the constant strain of anxiety, and the great dark rings circled her grey eyes. But she bore bravely up, and rose each day with strength to do what lay before her. She wrote to her husband, and he offered at once to come and help her to take care of Marcantonio, but she would not let him come, fearing the effect of a new face,--even that of an old friend like Charleroi. She received all the letters that came to her brother, and was surprised that there were no communications from the detectives he had employed. The fact was that Marcantonio had given a separate address to them, and as they discovered nothing, after the manner of most detectives, they only systematically telegraphed that they had confidence of being on the track. The telegrams were addressed to another hotel, and were dropped into the box for unclaimed letters and were never heard of again. Diana knew that business communications would be harmless in Marcantonio's present state, and when any came she let him have them. He would read them over and often discuss with her the information they contained, and at last he would let her answer them, saying it was very good of her to save him so much trouble. All these letters came from Rome, being forwarded by the steward who lived at the Palazzo Carantoni and managed the business of the household. Others came, re-directed over the original address, from friends in different parts of the country, and these Diana carefully put aside unopened, fearing always that some passing reference or message to Leonora might disturb him and bring on a fresh outbreak. She could always distinguish the business letters, because they were either directed in the handwriting of the steward, or they bore the outward and visible printed address of the lawyer, farmer, or merchant, from whom they came. In the week they had spent in Turin there had been already twenty or thirty communications of various kinds. Poor Marcantonio never knew that his sister sorted the mail for him. It was brought to him by the confidential servant, and he always took it and went to his room with an air of great importance to "get through his business," as he expressed it. He was evidently proud of doing it, showing that unaccountable vanity in small things which characterises so many lunatics. Indeed, he had always been proud of his attention to details, and now it became a sort of passion, though he was never able to carry out his intentions, and always left the unfinished work to Diana. On the fourth of September Julius Batiscombe's letter, directed to Marcantonio in Rome, had come back to Turin. Julius had marked it "very urgent," and the steward had looked at it, had thought Batiscombe's handwriting indistinct, and to secure greater certainty had put it into another envelope and directed it in his own business-like way. The consequence was that it was mistaken for a common business letter, and handed to Marcantonio with the rest. It seemed to be the last blow that an evil fate could strike at the unhappy man, and it was a terrible one in itself and in its consequences. He sat at his table by the window, opening one letter after another, and looking over the contents with a pleased expression, a little vacant perhaps, but not altogether without intelligence. There was a lacuna in his mind, and sometimes he was conscious of being confused by faces and things about him, but he was still capable of understanding the questions about his estates, and farms, and buildings, though he always seemed to lack the energy to write the directions with his own hand. He turned over the sheets and folded each one neatly and put it back into its particular envelope. Then he opened the one from the steward, and found in it a letter directed to Rome in a strange hand. He held it in his fingers with a puzzled look for a moment; it seemed as though one letter had suddenly become two. Then he understood and smiled a little sadly at his own weakness of comprehension, and broke the seal. The effect was not instantaneous. He read it over again, and a third time, his face still vacant, and he put his hand to his head trying and striving with all his might to remember. The week of insanity had done its work and Diana need not have feared that he could be easily recalled to an understanding of the past. But it was not wholly gone yet; he would try to remember. He rose to his feet, and perhaps the slight physical effort helped to stir his dull mind. Suddenly he trembled violently from head to foot, and his colour changed from the natural complexion it had taken of late to a deadly pallor. For an instant his whole nature seemed to be convulsed, he reeled to and fro and caught himself by the heavy frame of his bedstead, staring wildly about, and fell backwards across the pillows, clutching the counterpane to right and left of him with his two hands, his face distorted and horrible to see. It only lasted for a moment, and he regained his feet, stood still for a few seconds, and passed his hands across his eyes and seemed at once to recover his faculties. He took Batiscombe's letter again and read it over, as though fixing the few words and the address in his mind. The vacant expression of ten minutes ago had changed to a look of supernatural intelligence and cunning. He put the letter in his pocket and sat down at the table. He opened some of the envelopes again and scattered the papers about, eying the effect rather critically. He then took his dressing-case, opened it, and removed one small tray, and then a second. In the bottom of the box was a revolver, bright and ready, with all its appurtenances, a few cartridges lying loose in their little compartment. The weapon was loaded, but he carefully opened it and examined each chamber, turning it round slowly by the light. It was not a large pistol, and when he was sure that it was in order, he put it carefully into the inside pocket of his coat, and surveyed the effect in the glass. No one would have suspected that he was armed. He saw that his hat was ready in its place, and he rang the bell and sat down at his table once more, holding a letter in his hand, as though reading. The confidential servant appeared. "Will you please to bring me a lemonade?" said Marcantonio, with perfectly natural intonation. The man bowed and retired to execute the order. His master seemed better than usual, he thought; the appearance of the papers and Carantoni's bland smile had completely deceived him. As soon as he was alone he took his hat, felt that he had his purse in his pocket, and opened the door to the sitting-room. Diana was not there, for she generally wrote her own letters until Marcantonio appeared with his correspondence, asking her to answer it for him. The servant was gone to get the lemonade and Marcantonio slipped quietly out on tiptoe. Once upon the main staircase of the hotel he ran nimbly down, humming a little tune in a jaunty fashion, to show everybody that he was at his ease. Of course the people in the house had no idea that he was insane. It had been Diana's chiefest care to conceal the fact from every one; and Marcantonio walked calmly past the porter's lodge into the street, and took a cab. It was nearly midday and the thoroughfares were less crowded than in the morning and evening; the cab flew rapidly over the smooth pavement to the station. There are many trains to Cuneo in the summer season, and before very long Carantoni found himself in a smoking-carriage with three or four men, all reading the papers and smoking long, black cigars with straws in them. He lit a cigarette, bought a paper just as the guard was closing the doors, and he rolled out of the station, looking just like anybody else. He pretended to read, and no one noticed him. When the servant returned with the lemonade and found that Marcantonio was gone, he did not suspect what was the matter, but put the glass on the table and went back to the antechamber and waited at his post. He waited a few minutes and then knocked at Diana's door, and asked if the signore were with her. "No," said Diana quickly, and came out into the sitting-room in her loose morning gown. "Where is he? Is he not in his room? He never comes into mine." "He is not there," said the man, who by this time was thoroughly frightened. "He sent me for a lemonade. He looked better than usual, and was sitting just there, at his table, reading his letters. When I came back he was gone. He seemed entirely himself, better than I have ever seen him." Diana was frightened and puzzled. After all it was quite possible that Marcantonio had taken it into his head to go out by himself. He had never suggested such a thing yet, and always seemed unwilling to cross the threshold alone; but since he was so much better that day, he might have gone out. It was possible. She would not have believed that without some immediate cause he could have fallen back into a remembrance of his troubles; for she had studied his moods very carefully, and was convinced that, as the doctor said, there would always be a blank in his mind now, destroying the memory of those three or four days. She glanced hastily over the papers on the table. They were all of the usual sort, for Marcantonio had taken Batiscombe's letter with him. Nevertheless, she was very much frightened, and was angry with the confidential servant for not having sent some one else to get the lemonade. She lost no time in dispatching him to make inquiries. He was really an active man, and understood his business thoroughly, but Marcantonio's manner had completely deceived him, and he had conscientiously thought his charge perfectly safe. Maniacs have more than once deceived their keepers, and their doctors, and Marcantonio seemed to have fallen into a very different sort of madness--rather foolish and gentle than cunning and dangerous. The servant soon discovered that Marcantonio had passed the porter's lodge and had taken a cab, not many minutes earlier; but no one had heard the order he gave to the driver. There were no more carriages on the stand. The man lost no time but ran down the street till he found one, and was driven to the station, as he was, bareheaded and clothed in a dress-coat and a white tie, after the manner of hotel servants in the morning. His experience told him that crazy people generally made for the railway when they escaped. But he was too late. A train had just left--he made anxious inquiries of every one, describing Marcantonio's clothes and jewelry, which he knew by heart. No one had noticed him. He might not have come to the station after all. But a dirty little boy elbowed his way through the crowd of railway porters and guards that soon surrounded the man, and the boy listened. "Had that signore a great ring on his finger, with a black stone in it, and a red one on each side?" he asked. "Yes," cried the confidential servant. "You have seen him?" He seized the small boy by the arm and held him fast. "Yes," said the little fellow; "but you have no need to pinch me like that. I sold him a paper, and he gave me a silver half-franc, and I noticed his fingers and his ring." The servant released him. Some one else had noticed the ring, which was very large and brilliant,--a great sapphire with a ruby on each side of it. The individual remembered hearing the gentleman ask for the train to Cuneo. The confidential servant rushed back to the hotel, after ascertaining that there would not be another train for two hours. He told Diana what he had learned, and she listened attentively. She was pale and quiet, and she did not reproach the man again. It was of no use now. She had dressed herself, and she sent for a cab; and then she also was driven to the station, the man accompanying her. She did not speak except to give her orders. She went at once to the station-master, an extremely civil individual with a great deal of silver lace. "Can you give me a special train to Cuneo at once?" she asked. The station-master was in despair, he said. There was only a single track, and it would be impossible to arrange the line at such short notice. He bowed, and looked grave, and put everything in the station at the disposal of the magnificent lady who ordered special trains as other people order cabs. But he could do nothing. Diana hesitated. Something must be done at once. "My brother," she said, "took the last train to Cuneo, and I desire to stop him. He--he is insane." It was a hard thing to have to tell a stranger, a railway official, and Diana was whiter than death as she said it. She would rather have put a knife into her heart. The station-master was graver and more polite than ever. He could telegraph to all the stations to have the passengers watched as they descended. Would she give him a description,--the name, perhaps? It had to be done. She gave the details, and the telegram was sent. Meanwhile she sat in the station-master's private office, to wait for more than an hour until the next train should be ready. The consequence of all this was that when Marcantonio finally reached his destination, he was politely asked, in company with the other passengers, whether he had seen or heard of an insane gentleman called the Marchese Carantoni. But his newly-found cunning did not desert him. He shrugged his shoulders, and said he did not know the gentleman. He himself looked so quiet and dignified, that no one could have suspected him of being the person, and the short description telegraphed would have answered to hundreds of Italians all over the country. He had, of course, expected to be pursued, as lunatics often do, and he was prepared to baffle every attempt. His quiet look and frank smile were a perfect passport. He even inquired of a porter at the station how he could best reach the Certosa di Pesio; and the man told him it was an hour's drive or more, and got him a little carriage for the journey, and received a few sous for his pains. Marcantonio leaned back against the moth-eaten cushions and smoked a cigarette and looked at the scenery. He hummed a little tune occasionally, and, when the dirty driver was not looking, he put his hand into his breast pocket, and felt that his pistol was in its place, and then the cunning smile passed over his features. He had managed it all so well,--there could be no mistake about it. He chuckled as he thought how Batiscombe would expect to receive the visit of a third party, and would thus be suddenly brought face to face with the principal. He thought he could anticipate just how Batiscombe would look, and he revelled for a while in the contemplation of his hatred. He had forgotten nothing now, except that he had ever forgotten his vengeance for a moment. On and on he rolled in his rattling little cab. Through a long and gradually-ascending valley, thickly clothed with chestnut-trees of mighty growth. By the roadside ran a stream, that gradually became a torrent as the inclination of its course grew steeper, and the road wound up towards the source. Here and there the water fell over a natural weir of dark-brown rock, forming a deep pool below, where the trout lurked in the shadow. Again the thick woods receded a little on each side, and the bed of the stream, now shallow from the summer heat, grew broad and stony; and further on there was a bit of grassy bank overhung with many trees, and the small river swept smoothly round. Suddenly the carriage drew up before an old stone gateway that seemed to start out of the foliage, and there was a noise as of a deep fall of water, at once wild and smooth. Marcantonio had reached the Carthusian monastery at last. His purpose was almost accomplished. It is a strange building in a marvellous situation. Those old monks knew where to live, as they have always known in all ages and countries,--from the priests of Egypt to the monks of Buddha, from the Benedictines of Subiaco to the holy men of ancient Mexico, they have all reared spacious dwellings in chosen sites, where the body might live in peace and the soul be raised, by contemplating the beauties of the earth, to the imagination of the beauties of heaven. They were wise old men; some of them were good, and some bad, as happens in all communities in the world; but they were men who did the earth good in their day, and found out the places that have often become cities in our times, whereby hundreds of thousands of souls have profited by their choice. The Certosa di Pesio, where Julius and Leonora had taken up their abode for a time, is turned into an establishment for cold-water cures. There are generally some fifty or sixty people there from Turin and the neighbourhood who take the baths, or not, as they please, and lead a pleasant life for a few months in the great cloistered courts, and the bright gardens, and out in the endless chestnut woods. A cool breath of the Alps blows down the valley, and the rush of the water, dammed up by a strong weir of ancient masonry, and continually pouring down with a steady, musical roar, pervades all the cool rooms and the sounding halls and passages. It is an ideal place for the summer, almost unknown to foreigners. It is no wonder that Julius had thought it the very spot for Leonora to rest in until the heat was over. A little way from the buildings, up the valley, a dilapidated summer-house overhangs the stream. Sitting there you can see the whole wonderful outline of the convent buildings, crowned with chimneys which the old monk-architects seem to have delighted in greatly, giving them a variety of strange and grotesque shapes such as I never saw anywhere else. Julius and Leonora used often to come to the old summer-house in the afternoon, with their books, which were seldom called into requisition, and they would sit side by side for hours, till the evening sun warmed the colours of the pine-trees on the heights to a green-gold, and reddened the far-off snows of Monte Rosa with the last, loving touch of his departing light. An obsequious individual came forward from the archway as Marcantonio drove up to the gate. Marcantonio eyed him, and perceived that he was a functionary of the pension. "Is there an English gentleman here?" he asked,--"a certain Signor Giulio Batiscombe?" His voice was very calm, and had a certain suavity in its tones; he smiled, too, as he asked the question. "Si, signore," answered the man, bowing and gesticulating toward the building. "Certainly. A handsome signore, with his wife--both Inglesi. They arrived on the thirty-first of last month--five days. Will the signore do the favour to come in? I will inquire whether the English gentleman is at home." The slightest shade passed over Marcantonio's face at the mention of the wife in the case. But the man would not have noticed it. Marcantonio felt sure he had not betrayed himself. "I will wait here," said he, "while you inquire." The man disappeared, and Marcantonio was alone. He looked up at the windows in the grey walls, and saw no one. Nevertheless, at any moment Batiscombe might appear--from the house or from the woods--he might be taking a walk. It seemed a very long time to wait. He put his hand into his breast pocket. The stock of the revolver just curved over the edge of the cloth inside his coat; he could get at it without trouble. He longed to take it out and examine it; to see whether it were still in perfect order; and he peeped in when the driver was not looking, just to catch a sight of the lock and the bright barrel. Then he smiled to himself, and hummed a tune, assuming an air of quiet indifference--acting all the time, as only madmen can act, as though he were on the stage before a great audience. It was only for the benefit of the driver of his little carriage, a rough fellow, who had not shaved for a week, and wore a dirty linen jacket, his hands black and his eyes red with the wine of the night before--that was the audience; but Marcantonio acted his part with as much care as though he were in the presence of Batiscombe himself. There must not be the smallest chance of an interruption to his plan. At last the man returned, bowing with renewed zeal. He came forward with one hand extended, as though to help Marcantonio to alight. "The English signore is in the garden," he said. Marcantonio smiled more sweetly than ever and got out of his conveyance. "You can wait," he said to the driver, and the latter touched his battered straw hat. Marcantonio followed the man through a great court, where there were trees, into a long, tiled passage that seemed to run through the house, and, on the other side, he emerged into a garden, thick with laurel-trees and geraniums. The man led the way. Marcantonio's hand crept stealthily into his breast pocket underneath his coat, and raised the lock of the revolver very slowly. The man in front did not hear the small, sharp click. "Where is he?" asked Marcantonio, very gently, still smiling an unnaturally sweet smile. The servant had stopped and was looking about. "I was told they were here," said he; "but they must be in the summer-house outside." Again he led the way to a small door in the garden wall. It was open. "There they are, signore," said he, pointing with his finger and standing aside to let Marcantonio pass. He looked, and saw two people sitting in the dilapidated old bower above the water, not twenty yards from where he stood. It was five o'clock in the afternoon. Diana had taken the train at two, and could not reach Cuneo till six. CHAPTER XXIV. Leonora's utter recklessness of delight could not last very long. It was a strange mood, as unnatural and uncontrollable at first as her husband's madness. She could not help enjoying to the utmost the new life that had so suddenly begun for her. She knew in her heart that she had bought it at a great price, and she knew that she must make the most of it, or she would have to reproach herself with the bargain. It was easy enough at first. The quick change had thrown all her thoughts into a new channel. From the midnight departure she had no more time to think, until the long, quiet days at Pesio. There were moments when she was on the verge of thinking, of remembering the past, and wondering how her husband had acted. But she felt that it would be very unpleasant to reflect on these things. It might take her a long time to get out of the train of thought, as it used to do long ago whenever she had one of her fits of philosophical despair; she was able to put it off, and she seemed to be saying to herself, 'I shall have time to think about it, and to satisfy my conscience by feeling the proper amount of regret by and by.' Of course she did not say as much in so many words, but the unconscious excuse for what she knew an unprejudiced outsider would call her heartlessness went on presenting itself whenever she felt the beginning of a regret. Deeper even than that, and almost hidden in the sea of self-deception, and passion, and riotous love of life, lay the reef on which the ship of her happiness would some day go to pieces--the ultimate knowledge of the wrong she had done, and of her own cruelty to Marcantonio and weakness to herself. But in Pesio the time came; terribly soon, she thought, though her suffering was only at its beginning. Each morning brought a dull sense of pain, that came in her dreams and became the terror of her waking. She knew before she opened her eyes that it was there, and the first returning consciousness was the certainty of sorrow. It soon wore away, it is true, but she grew to dread it as she had never dreaded anything in her short, luxurious life. It needed all her strength and energy to shake off the impression, and it required all Batiscombe's love and thoughtful care to make it seem possible to live the hours until the evening. That was in the morning, in the brief moments when Leonora, like most of us, had not yet silenced her soul, and trodden it under for the day; and it spoke bitter truth and scorn to her, so that she could hardly bear it. Then, at last, she was honest. There was no more self-deception then, no more possibility of believing that she had done well in leaving all for Julius: she could no longer say that for so much love's sake it was right and noble to spurn away the world,--for the world came to mean her husband, her father and her mother, and she saw and knew too clearly what each and all of them must suffer. Their pale faces came to her in her dreams, and their sad voices spoke to her the reproach of all reproaches that can be uttered against a woman. Her husband she had never loved; but in spite of all her reasoning she knew that he had loved her, and she understood enough of his pride and single-hearted nobility to guess what he must suffer while she dragged his ancient name in the dust of dishonour. Her father was never to her mind, for he was a Philistine of the kind that have hard shells and very little that is soft or warm within them, but she knew that he had treasured her as the apple of his eye, and that his old heart would break for his daughter's shame. Her mother was a worldly woman, loving Leonora because she had obtained a success in society, and upbraiding her with never making the most of it; but Leonora knew how her mother's vanity must be bowed and trampled down by the deep disgrace, and that her vanity was almost all she had of happiness. And so it came to pass that after a little time the old tax-gatherer, Remorse, began to put Leonora in distress for his dues, and she was forced to pay them or have no peace. He came in the grey of the morning, when she was not yet prepared, and he sat by her head and oppressed it with heaviness and the leaden cowl of sorrow; and each day she counted the minutes until he was gone, and each day they were more. Julius saw and pondered, for he guessed what she suffered, and understood now her terrible recklessness at the first. All that a lover could do he did, and more also, employing every resource of his great mind to fight the enemy, and always with success. He could always bring the smile and the brightness of glad life to her face at last, and when once his dominion was established there was no return of sorrow possible for that day; his stupendous vitality and brilliant, overflowing strength fought down the shadows and chased them out. On the morning of the fourth of September, Leonora and Julius were walking together in the chestnut woods near the monastery. She had been less sad than usual at her first waking, and Julius hoped that the time was coming when she could at last feel accustomed to her new position and would cease to be troubled with the ghosts of the past. He was over-confident, and thought he understood her better than he really did. He was laughing and talking gayly enough, enjoying her happy mood and the freshness and beauty of the bountiful nature around him. Julius stopped from time to time and picked a few wild flowers that grew amongst the moss and the grass of the wood. Leonora loved flowers, and loved best those that grew wild. It was one of the few simple tastes she possessed. "It is not much of a nosegay," said Julius, as he put the sweet blossoms together, and tied them with a blade of grass. "It is too late for the best wild flowers here." He gave her the little bouquet with one hand, and the other stole about her waist and drew her to him. She smelled the flowers, and looked up at him over them, a little sadly. "The time will come, I suppose," said she, "when there will be no more flowers at all." "Never for you, darling," he answered lovingly. "There will always be flowers for you--everywhere, till the end of time." "What is the end of time, Julius?" she asked softly. "Time has no end for us, dear," he said. "For time is measured by love, and nothing can measure ours." They were near an old tree whose roots ran out and then struck down into the ground. The moss and the grass had grown closely about the great trunk's foot, and made a broad seat. They sat down, by common accord. "Can there be no end to our love--ever?" she said. "Should we be where we are, if either of us thought it possible?" he asked. "It must be whole--it must be endless--indeed it must," she answered--clinging to the thought which gave her most comfort. "Do you doubt that it is?" asked Julius, the strong earnestness of his passion vibrating in his deep tones. "No, darling," she answered; "I do not doubt it--only you must never let me." "Indeed, indeed, I never will!" said he. He meant what he said. Men are not all intentional deceivers, but they forget. They are less faithful than women, though they are often more earnest. Is it not the very highest power of love not to allow a doubt? And how many men can say that their lives have been so ordered toward the woman they love best, that no doubting should be reasonably possible in her mind? Few enough, I suppose. "I have been thinking a great deal lately, Julius," said Leonora presently. "Tell me your thoughts, dear one," said he, drawing her to him, so that her head rested on his shoulder, and his lips touched her hair. "You know, dear," said she, "what we have done is not right--at least"--She stopped suddenly. "Who says it is not right?" asked Julius, with a touch of scorn in his voice. "Oh, everybody says so, of course; but that makes no difference. Nobody would understand. It is not what people say. It is the thing." She stared out into the woods as she leaned against him. "How do you mean, sweetheart?" he asked. "It is not right, you know. I am sure of it." She shook her head gently, without lifting it. "It is all my fault," she added. "You shall not say that, my own one," said Julius, passionately. He was really grieved and troubled beyond measure. "Ah--but I know it so well," said she. "You must help me to make it right--quite right." "It is right--it shall be right! I will make it so," he answered. "Only trust me, darling, and you shall be the happiest woman the world holds, as you are the best. God bless you, dear one." He kissed her tenderly, but she tried to turn away from him. "Oh, no, Julius--God will not bless me. I have only you left now. You must be everything to me. Will you, dear? Say you will!" "I do say it, my own darling," he answered fervently. "I will be everything to you, now and forever and ever." He was astonished and puzzled by the sudden outbreak. She had never spoken like this to him before, though he had expected it at first, and had wondered at her indifference. But now it seemed to have come upon her suddenly with a great force, and she would not be comforted. "And I say it, too," she said, passionately. "I will be everything to you, now and forever and ever. We will give our lives to each other, and make it right." She wound her arms about him, and hid her face against his coat. "How can true love, like ours, not be right?" asked Julius, clasping her to him. "God has put it into the world, dear, and into our hearts." Oh, the blasphemy and the hollowness and the cruelty of those words! Even as Leonora lay in his arms and felt his kisses on her hair, loving her sinful love for him out to the last breath, she knew that it was not true, what he said so fervently,--and she knew that he did not believe it, that no man can believe a lie so great and wide and deep and awful. But the sun does not stand still in the heavens for a man's lie; he hears too many untrue speeches, and sees too many false faces in his daily task of shining alike upon the just and the unjust--he is used to it and goes on his way; and time follows him, striving to keep pace and to swell the puny minutes of its pulse into an eternity. Such moments--when the rising sorrow and sense of shame that a woman feels are choked down and crushed by the overwhelming energy of falseness in the man she loves--are passionate, even terrible; and they may come often, but they never last long. Half an hour later, Julius and Leonora were wandering on through the woods, and their talk had taken again its ordinary course. The morning was passing, and as Batiscombe talked and amused and interested Leonora, her doubts and fears disappeared, for the time at least, and her old sense of enjoyment returned again, sweeter to her now than ever before, in proportion as it was more difficult for her to attain it. She was happy again, and the clouds were riven away and rent to shreds by the strong breath of her stirring passion. They walked for a while, and then returned to their midday breakfast and spent an hour over it in the cool, darkened hall, which had once been the refectory of the monastery, and was now the dining-room of the people who came to the water-cure. Julius had suggested to Leonora that they should have their breakfast and dinner in their own rooms, but she said she liked to see the people. It amused her to watch their faces and to wonder about them and criticise them. They were so unlike the people she had known hitherto, that there was a freshness of amusement to her in learning their ways. And by and by they had their coffee in a little sitting-room of their own that overlooked the torrent, and Julius smoked a cigarette and read the papers a little, amusing her with his daring comments on the conduct of nations and individuals. He was a man who was never afraid to say what he meant--not only to Leonora, over a cup of coffee in the summer, but to the world at large, in his books and articles. That was one reason why the world at large always said he was an uncommonly fine fellow, with a great deal of pluck and judgment. For the world at large likes rough strength and keen wit, always understanding that the strong language is not applied to itself, but to its neighbour next door. At four o'clock Julius and Leonora went out again. Julius carried a pair of shawls and a book and Leonora's silk bag with the silver rings--the same she had used to bring her handkerchiefs when she fled from Sorrento. They went into the garden and out among the laurels and the geraniums for a few minutes, but Julius was sure there would be more breeze outside, in the old summer-house over the water; for the garden was sheltered by high walls all around, and the sun was still hot, almost at its hottest at four o'clock on the fourth of September. Accordingly Julius took the things in his hands, and the two went out of the garden by the door in the wall and left it open. They walked down the short open path to the old summer-house, and Julius made Leonora very comfortable with the shawls for cushions upon the old, wooden bench, which many generations of people had hacked with their knives and adorned with the insignificance of their unknown names. Side by side they sat in the glory of the summer's afternoon, and the birds perched on the grey old ribs of the summer-house and hopped upon the untrimmed creepers that grew thickly about it, making their small comments to each other about the two people who sat below them, and great green and pink grasshoppers skipped into the open space and out again, a perpetual astonishment in their round, red eyes; all nature was warm and peaceful and happy. The lovers talked together a little, enjoying the sense that speech was not always necessary nor even desirable. "How do you like the 'Principe'?" Julius asked at last, glancing at the book that lay open on Leonora's knee. He had given it to her to read, because she said she knew so little of Italian thought. "I hardly know," she said. "It is very wonderful, of course. But I cannot quite believe that Machiavelli believed in it himself, nor that any one ever acted on the advice he gives. It is too complicated and unhuman." "It always seems to me," said Julius, taking up the question, "that he wrote like a man who inferred a great deal from his own experience--a great deal more than it is safe to infer. He knew men and women very well. He might have been a despotic lover." "Why?" asked Leonora. "Do you notice that he always reckons, everywhere and without exception, on the heart of the people and on their personal affection for their sovereign? But he never takes into consideration the possible affection of the sovereign for his subjects." "That is true," said Leonora. "He was a very heartless individual." "Perhaps--though I hardly think it," answered Julius. "But he might have written a guide for despotic lovers much better than a book of instruction for tyrannical princes." "What an idea!" said Leonora, laughing. "But I think he was heartless all the same. He only believed in the people's hearts as a means for getting power." "He never says so," said Julius. "I rather think he loved the people, but knew them well--and he loved the ingenuities of his wit much better." "If the heart does not come first, it never comes at all," said Leonora thoughtfully. "If it does not rule it is ruled, and might as well never exist at all. Are you tyrannical, dear?" She smiled at him, knowing how he loved her. "Oh, yes, indeed," said Julius, laughing; "but only about love." "But that is just the question," said Leonora. "You ought not to be. Your heart ought to come first." "Yes, darling," he answered. "The heart comes first, and the heart is a tyrant. Supposing my heart says to yours, 'You shall love me; I will have it at any cost;' is not that tyranny?" "Perhaps," said Leonora, smiling and touching his hand. "But then it is quite a mutual tyranny, you know, because I say it to you, too,--and you do it." "I always do everything you say, darling," he answered lovingly. "Always?" "Always;--and I always will, Leonora." "Do you think, Julius--it is a foolish question--do you think you would die for me, if it were necessary?" "You know I would, dear," he said quietly. "Yes; I am sure you would," she answered. "Do you know? I used to think that one ought to be willing to die for those one loves; and I like to think that you would give your life for me. Of course it could never happen--but then--Don't laugh at me, Julius." "Why should I laugh?" he said. "What you say is serious enough, I am sure." "No--but I thought you might. You laugh at so many things--I am always afraid you will laugh at my love"-- It was five o'clock. Marcantonio, issuing from the door in the garden wall, saw Julius and Leonora some twenty yards away, in the summer-house. He gave the servant a franc for showing him the way, and the man retired. He stood alone, watching the pair, for he could see them very distinctly. They were so placed that they would see him if they turned and looked upward, but they did not move, nor hear him. Leonora was nearest to him, and was leaning back a little, so that she could not see him; Batiscombe held her hand, and was looking at it, and gently caressing the fair, white fingers as he talked. Marcantonio turned away for a moment, and got out his revolver. It was clean and bright, and he had examined it,--but he would look once more, just to be sure there was a cartridge in each chamber, especially in that one beneath the barrels. One could not be too certain of one's weapon. There was no mistake,--everything was in order. The hour was come. The hideous maniac smile played over his delicate features, and he stepped cautiously forward, holding the pistol behind him. Every step he gained before they observed him was an advantage. And besides, Leonora was between him and Batiscombe. It was not a fair shot, and it was too far. He did not want to kill her; he would take her home with him, when he had killed Julius Batiscombe. He had ordered the little carriage to wait for them. How happy she would be! Cautiously he moved on, ready for action if they saw him. He trod so softly, so softly, it was like velvet on the grass. Then, as he came nearer,--not ten paces off,--he brought his pistol before him and held it ready. So softly he had crept to them that they had not yet heard him, as the summer wind blew gently through the long grasses and the vines about the old bower, and made a sweet murmur of its own. --"I am always afraid you will laugh at my love"--Leonora was saying, but the words that were to follow were never spoken. Some slight sound caught her quick woman's ear, and she looked up in the direction whence it came. There stood her husband, not ten paces from her, with an expression in his face which would have frozen the marrow in the bones of a wild beast. The clean polished barrel of the pistol was pointed full at Batiscombe. Leonora saw that, and saw that Marcantonio's eyes were fixed on her lover and not on herself. Batiscombe saw it all as well as she, one second later. But that one second was enough. With a spring and a clutching turn, as a tigress will cover her young with herself and turn glaring on her pursuers, Leonora threw her strong, lithe body upon Julius, forcing him back to his seat, and she turned and looked Marcantonio in the face. Their eyes met for one moment. But it was too late: the finger had pulled the trigger and the ball sped true. Without a sound, without a cry, she fell upon her lover's breast. There she fell, there she died. From the death wound the heart's blood fell in great drops; it fell down to the ground. She died for his sake whom she loved; she died, she gave for him her life, the joy and the woe and the love of it for his sake. * * * * * Do you ask what is the moral of this? Ask it of yourselves. Ask it of that quiet man, with delicate features and snow-white hair, who drives in the Villa Borghese. He is well-known in Rome for his honesty, his honour, and his unaffected good sense. He is the Marchese Carantoni, he is Marcantonio, and he is not yet forty years of age. Ask it of Diana de Charleroi,--Duchesse de Charleroi now, for her husband has succeeded to the elder title. Ask it of her, the mother of brave boys and noble maidens. She has her beauty still, she is as stately as of yore, and grander in the crown of mature womanhood. But there is a streak of grey even in her fair hair, and a line of sorrow on her forehead, the masterly handwriting of a mastering grief; and her grey eyes are softer and sadder than they were ten years ago. Ask it of Julius Batiscombe,--but of him you will ask in vain. He has the mark of a bullet in his throat, Marcantonio's second shot, that was so nearly fatal to him. He stood aside from the world for a while, and lived a year or two among the monks of Subiaco; he manifested some devotion for her sake who had died for him. And now he is writing novels again, and smoking cigarettes between the phrases, to help his ideas and to stimulate his imagination. 
8723	----	and David Widger [widger@cecomet.net] THE THREE CITIES ROME BY EMILE ZOLA TRANSLATED BY ERNEST A. VIZETELLY PART III VII On the following day as Pierre, after a long ramble, once more found himself in front of the Vatican, whither a harassing attraction ever led him, he again encountered Monsignor Nani. It was a Wednesday evening, and the Assessor of the Holy Office had just come from his weekly audience with the Pope, whom he had acquainted with the proceedings of the Congregation at its meeting that morning. "What a fortunate chance, my dear sir," said he; "I was thinking of you. Would you like to see his Holiness in public while you are waiting for a private audience?" Nani had put on his pleasant expression of smiling civility, beneath which one would barely detect the faint irony of a superior man who knew everything, prepared everything, and could do everything. "Why, yes, Monsignor," Pierre replied, somewhat astonished by the abruptness of the offer. "Anything of a nature to divert one's mind is welcome when one loses one's time in waiting." "No, no, you are not losing your time," replied the prelate. "You are looking round you, reflecting, and enlightening yourself. Well, this is the point. You are doubtless aware that the great international pilgrimage of the Peter's Pence Fund will arrive in Rome on Friday, and be received on Saturday by his Holiness. On Sunday, moreover, the Holy Father will celebrate mass at the Basilica. Well, I have a few cards left, and here are some very good places for both ceremonies." So saying he produced an elegant little pocketbook bearing a gilt monogram and handed Pierre two cards, one green and the other pink. "If you only knew how people fight for them," he resumed. "You remember that I told you of two French ladies who are consumed by a desire to see his Holiness. Well, I did not like to support their request for an audience in too pressing a way, and they have had to content themselves with cards like these. The fact is, the Holy Father is somewhat fatigued at the present time. I found him looking yellow and feverish just now. But he has so much courage; he nowadays only lives by force of soul." Then Nani's smile came back with its almost imperceptible touch of derision as he resumed: "Impatient ones ought to find a great example in him, my dear son. I heard that Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo had been unable to help you. But you must not be too much distressed on that account. This long delay is assuredly a grace of Providence in order that you may instruct yourself and come to understand certain things which you French priests do not, unfortunately, realise when you arrive in Rome. And perhaps it will prevent you from making certain mistakes. Come, calm yourself, and remember that the course of events is in the hands of God, who, in His sovereign wisdom, fixes the hour for all things." Thereupon Nani offered Pierre his plump, supple, shapely hand, a hand soft like a woman's but with the grasp of a vice. And afterwards he climbed into his carriage, which was waiting for him. It so happened that the letter which Pierre had received from Viscount Philibert de la Choue was a long cry of spite and despair in connection with the great international pilgrimage of the Peter's Pence Fund. The Viscount wrote from his bed, to which he was confined by a very severe attack of gout, and his grief at being unable to come to Rome was the greater as the President of the Committee, who would naturally present the pilgrims to the Pope, happened to be Baron de Fouras, one of his most bitter adversaries of the old conservative, Catholic party. M. de la Choue felt certain that the Baron would profit by his opportunity to win the Pope over to the theory of free corporations; whereas he, the Viscount, believed that the salvation of Catholicism and the world could only be worked by a system in which the corporations should be closed and obligatory. And so he urged Pierre to exert himself with such cardinals as were favourable, to secure an audience with the Holy Father whatever the obstacles, and to remain in Rome until he should have secured the Pontiff's approbation, which alone could decide the victory. The letter further mentioned that the pilgrimage would be made up of a number of groups headed by bishops and other ecclesiastical dignitaries, and would comprise three thousand people from France, Belgium, Spain, Austria, and even Germany. Two thousand of these would come from France alone. An international committee had assembled in Paris to organise everything and select the pilgrims, which last had proved a delicate task, as a representative gathering had been desired, a commingling of members of the aristocracy, sisterhood of middle-class ladies, and associations of the working classes, among whom all social differences would be forgotten in the union of a common faith. And the Viscount added that the pilgrimage would bring the Pope a large sum of money, and had settled the date of its arrival in the Eternal City in such wise that it would figure as a solemn protest of the Catholic world against the festivities of September 20, by which the Quirinal had just celebrated the anniversary of the occupation of Rome. The reception of the pilgrimage being fixed for noon, Pierre in all simplicity thought that he would be sufficiently early if he reached St. Peter's at eleven. The function was to take place in the Hall of Beatifications, which is a large and handsome apartment over the portico, and has been arranged as a chapel since 1890. One of its windows opens on to the central balcony, whence the popes formerly blessed the people, the city, and the world. To reach the apartment you pass through two other halls of audience, the Sala Regia and Sala Ducale, and when Pierre wished to gain the place to which his green card entitled him he found both those rooms so extremely crowded that he could only elbow his way forward with the greatest difficulty. For an hour already the three or four thousand people assembled there had been stifling, full of growing emotion and feverishness. At last the young priest managed to reach the threshold of the third hall, but was so discouraged at sight of the extraordinary multitude of heads before him that he did not attempt to go any further. The apartment, which he could survey at a glance by rising on tip-toe, appeared to him to be very rich of aspect, with walls gilded and painted under a severe and lofty ceiling. On a low platform, where the altar usually stood, facing the entry, the pontifical throne had now been set: a large arm-chair upholstered in red velvet with glittering golden back and arms; whilst the hangings of the /baldacchino/, also of red velvet, fell behind and spread out on either side like a pair of huge purple wings. However, what more particularly interested Pierre was the wildly passionate concourse of people whose hearts he could almost hear beating and whose eyes sought to beguile their feverish impatience by contemplating and adoring the empty throne. As if it had been some golden monstrance which the Divinity in person would soon deign to occupy, that throne dazzled them, disturbed them, filled them all with devout rapture. Among the throng were workmen rigged out in their Sunday best, with clear childish eyes and rough ecstatic faces; ladies of the upper classes wearing black, as the regulations required, and looking intensely pale from the sacred awe which mingled with their excessive desire; and gentlemen in evening dress, who appeared quite glorious, inflated with the conviction that they were saving both the Church and the nations. One cluster of dress-coats assembled near the throne, was particularly noticeable; it comprised the members of the International Committee, headed by Baron de Fouras, a very tall, stout, fair man of fifty, who bestirred and exerted himself and issued orders like some commander on the morning of a decisive victory. Then, amidst the general mass of grey, neutral hue, there gleamed the violet silk of some bishop's cassock, for each pastor had desired to remain with his flock; whilst members of various religious orders, superiors in brown, black, and white habits, rose up above all others with lofty bearded or shaven heads. Right and left drooped banners which associations and congregations had brought to present to the Pope. And the sea of pilgrims ever waved and surged with a growing clamour: so much impatient love being exhaled by those perspiring faces, burning eyes, and hungry mouths that the atmosphere, reeking with the odour of the throng, seemed thickened and darkened. All at once, however, Pierre perceived Monsignor Nani standing near the throne and beckoning him to approach; and although the young priest replied by a modest gesture, implying that he preferred to remain where he was, the prelate insisted and even sent an usher to make way for him. Directly the usher had led him forward, Nani inquired: "Why did you not come to take your place? Your card entitled you to be here, on the left of the throne." "The truth is," answered the priest, "I did not like to disturb so many people. Besides, this is an undue honour for me." "No, no; I gave you that place in order that you should occupy it. I want you to be in the first rank, so that you may see everything of the ceremony." Pierre could not do otherwise than thank him. Then, on looking round, he saw that several cardinals and many other prelates were likewise waiting on either side of the throne. But it was in vain that he sought Cardinal Boccanera, who only came to St. Peter's and the Vatican on the days when his functions required his presence there. However, he recognised Cardinal Sanguinetti, who, broad and sturdy and red of face, was talking in a loud voice to Baron de Fouras. And Nani, with his obliging air, stepped up again to point out two other Eminences who were high and mighty personages--the Cardinal Vicar, a short, fat man, with a feverish countenance scorched by ambition, and the Cardinal Secretary, who was robust and bony, fashioned as with a hatchet, suggesting a romantic type of Sicilian bandit, who, to other courses, had preferred the discreet, smiling diplomacy of the Church. A few steps further on, and quite alone, the Grand Penitentiary, silent and seemingly suffering, showed his grey, lean, ascetic profile. Noon had struck. There was a false alert, a burst of emotion, which swept in like a wave from the other halls. But it was merely the ushers opening a passage for the /cortege/. Then, all at once, acclamations arose in the first hall, gathered volume, and drew nearer. This time it was the /cortege/ itself. First came a detachment of the Swiss Guard in undress, headed by a sergeant; then a party of chair-bearers in red; and next the domestic prelates, including the four /Camerieri segreti partecipanti/. And finally, between two rows of Noble Guards, in semi-gala uniforms, walked the Holy Father, alone, smiling a pale smile, and slowly blessing the pilgrims on either hand. In his wake the clamour which had risen in the other apartments swept into the Hall of Beatifications with the violence of delirious love; and, under his slender, white, benedictive hand, all those distracted creatures fell upon both knees, nought remaining but the prostration of a devout multitude, overwhelmed, as it were, by the apparition of its god. Quivering, carried away, Pierre had knelt like the others. Ah! that omnipotence, that irresistible contagion of faith, of the redoubtable current from the spheres beyond, increased tenfold by a /scenario/ and a pomp of sovereign grandeur! Profound silence fell when Leo XIII was seated on the throne surrounded by the cardinals and his court; and then the ceremony proceeded according to rite and usage. First a bishop spoke, kneeling and laying the homage of the faithful of all Christendom at his Holiness's feet. The President of the Committee, Baron de Fouras, followed, remaining erect whilst he read a long address in which he introduced the pilgrimage and explained its motive, investing it with all the gravity of a political and religious protest. This stout man had a shrill and piercing voice, and his words jarred like the grating of a gimlet as he proclaimed the grief of the Catholic world at the spoliation which the Holy See had endured for a quarter of a century, and the desire of all the nations there represented by the pilgrims to console the supreme and venerated Head of the Church by bringing him the offerings of rich and poor, even to the mites of the humblest, in order that the Papacy might retain the pride of independence and be able to treat its enemies with contempt. And he also spoke of France, deplored her errors, predicted her return to healthy traditions, and gave it to be understood that she remained in spite of everything the most opulent and generous of the Christian nations, the donor whose gold and presents flowed into Rome in a never ending stream. At last Leo XIII arose to reply to the bishop and the baron. His voice was full, with a strong nasal twang, and surprised one coming from a man so slight of build. In a few sentences he expressed his gratitude, saying how touched he was by the devotion of the nations to the Holy See. Although the times might be bad, the final triumph could not be delayed much longer. There were evident signs that mankind was returning to faith, and that iniquity would soon cease under the universal dominion of the Christ. As for France, was she not the eldest daughter of the Church, and had she not given too many proofs of her affection for the Holy See for the latter ever to cease loving her? Then, raising his arm, he bestowed on all the pilgrims present, on the societies and enterprises they represented, on their families and friends, on France, on all the nations of the Catholic world, his apostolic benediction, in gratitude for the precious help which they sent him. And whilst he was again seating himself applause burst forth, frantic salvoes of applause lasting for ten minutes and mingling with vivats and inarticulate cries--a passionate, tempestuous outburst, which made the very building shake. Amidst this blast of frantic adoration Pierre gazed at Leo XIII, now again motionless on his throne. With the papal cap on his head and the red cape edged with ermine about his shoulders, he retained in his long white cassock the rigid, sacerdotal attitude of an idol venerated by two hundred and fifty millions of Christians. Against the purple background of the hangings of the /baldacchino/, between the wing-like drapery on either side, enclosing, as it were, a brasier of glory, he assumed real majesty of aspect. He was no longer the feeble old man with the slow, jerky walk and the slender, scraggy neck of a poor ailing bird. The simious ugliness of his face, the largeness of his nose, the long slit of his mouth, the hugeness of his ears, the conflicting jumble of his withered features disappeared. In that waxen countenance you only distinguished the admirable, dark, deep eyes, beaming with eternal youth, with extraordinary intelligence and penetration. And then there was a resolute bracing of his entire person, a consciousness of the eternity which he represented, a regal nobility, born of the very circumstance that he was now but a mere breath, a soul set in so pellucid a body of ivory that it became visible as though it were already freed from the bonds of earth. And Pierre realised what such a man--the Sovereign Pontiff, the king obeyed by two hundred and fifty millions of subjects--must be for the devout and dolent creatures who came to adore him from so far, and who fell at his feet awestruck by the splendour of the powers incarnate in him. Behind him, amidst the purple of the hangings, what a gleam was suddenly afforded of the spheres beyond, what an Infinite of ideality and blinding glory! So many centuries of history from the Apostle Peter downward, so much strength and genius, so many struggles and triumphs to be summed up in one being, the Elect, the Unique, the Superhuman! And what a miracle, incessantly renewed, was that of Heaven deigning to descend into human flesh, of the Deity fixing His abode in His chosen servant, whom He consecrated above and beyond all others, endowing him with all power and all science! What sacred perturbation, what emotion fraught with distracted love might one not feel at the thought of the Deity being ever there in the depths of that man's eyes, speaking with his voice and emanating from his hand each time that he raised it to bless! Could one imagine the exorbitant absoluteness of that sovereign who was infallible, who disposed of the totality of authority in this world and of salvation in the next! At all events, how well one understood that souls consumed by a craving for faith should fly towards him, that those who at last found the certainty they had so ardently sought should seek annihilation in him, the consolation of self-bestowal and disappearance within the Deity Himself. Meantime, the ceremony was drawing to an end; Baron de Fouras was now presenting the members of the committee and a few other persons of importance. There was a slow procession with trembling genuflections and much greedy kissing of the papal ring and slipper. Then the banners were offered, and Pierre felt a pang on seeing that the finest and richest of them was one of Lourdes, an offering no doubt from the Fathers of the Immaculate Conception. On one side of the white, gold-bordered silk Our Lady of Lourdes was painted, while on the other appeared a portrait of Leo XIII. Pierre saw the Pope smile at the presentment of himself, and was greatly grieved thereat, as though, indeed, his whole dream of an intellectual, evangelical Pope, disentangled from all low superstition, were crumbling away. And just then his eyes met those of Nani, who from the outset had been watching him with the inquisitive air of a man who is making an experiment. "That banner is superb, isn't it?" said Nani, drawing near. "How it must please his Holiness to be so nicely painted in company with so pretty a virgin." And as the young priest, turning pale, did not reply, the prelate added, with an air of devout enjoyment: "We are very fond of Lourdes in Rome; that story of Bernadette is so delightful." However, the scene which followed was so extraordinary that for a long time Pierre remained overcome by it. He had beheld never-to-be-forgotten idolatry at Lourdes, incidents of naive faith and frantic religious passion which yet made him quiver with alarm and grief. But the crowds rushing on the grotto, the sick dying of divine love before the Virgin's statue, the multitudes delirious with the contagion of the miraculous--nothing of all that gave an idea of the blast of madness which suddenly inflamed the pilgrims at the feet of the Pope. Some bishops, superiors of religious orders, and other delegates of various kinds had stepped forward to deposit near the throne the offerings which they brought from the whole Catholic world, the universal "collection" of St. Peter's Pence. It was the voluntary tribute of the nations to their sovereign: silver, gold, and bank notes in purses, bags, and cases. Ladies came and fell on their knees to offer silk and velvet alms-bags which they themselves had embroidered. Others had caused the note cases which they tendered to be adorned with the monogram of Leo XIII in diamonds. And at one moment the enthusiasm became so intense that several women stripped themselves of their adornments, flung their own purses on to the platform, and emptied their pockets even to the very coppers they had about them. One lady, tall and slender, very beautiful and very dark, wrenched her watch from about her neck, pulled off her rings, and threw everything upon the carpet. Had it been possible, they would have torn away their flesh to pluck out their love-burnt hearts and fling them likewise to the demi-god. They would even have flung themselves, have given themselves without reserve. It was a rain of presents, an explosion of the passion which impels one to strip oneself for the object of one's cult, happy at having nothing of one's own that shall not belong to him. And meantime the clamour grew, vivats and shrill cries of adoration arose amidst pushing and jostling of increased violence, one and all yielding to the irresistible desire to kiss the idol! But a signal was given, and Leo XIII made haste to quit the throne and take his place in the /cortege/ in order to return to his apartments. The Swiss Guards energetically thrust back the throng, seeking to open a way through the three halls. But at sight of his Holiness's departure a lamentation of despair arose and spread, as if heaven had suddenly closed again and shut out those who had not yet been able to approach. What a frightful disappointment--to have beheld the living manifestation of the Deity and to see it disappear before gaining salvation by just touching it! So terrible became the scramble, so extraordinary the confusion, that the Swiss Guards were swept away. And ladies were seen to dart after the Pope, to drag themselves on all fours over the marble slabs and kiss his footprints and lap up the dust of his steps! The tall dark lady suddenly fell at the edge of the platform, raised a loud shriek, and fainted; and two gentlemen of the committee had to hold her so that she might not do herself an injury in the convulsions of the hysterical fit which had come upon her. Another, a plump blonde, was wildly, desperately kissing one of the golden arms of the throne-chair, on which the old man's poor, bony elbow had just rested. And others, on seeing her, came to dispute possession, seized both arms, gilding and velvet, and pressed their mouths to wood-work or upholstery, their bodies meanwhile shaking with their sobs. Force had to be employed in order to drag them away. When it was all over Pierre went off, emerging as it were from a painful dream, sick at heart, and with his mind revolting. And again he encountered Nani's glance, which never left him. "It was a superb ceremony, was it not?" said the prelate. "It consoles one for many iniquities." "Yes, no doubt; but what idolatry!" the young priest murmured despite himself. Nani, however, merely smiled, as if he had not heard the last word. At that same moment the two French ladies whom he had provided with tickets came up to thank him, and. Pierre was surprised to recognise the mother and daughter whom he had met at the Catacombs. Charming, bright, and healthy as they were, their enthusiasm was only for the spectacle: they declared that they were well pleased at having seen it--that it was really astonishing, unique. As the crowd slowly withdrew Pierre all at once felt a tap on his shoulder, and, on turning his head, perceived Narcisse Habert, who also was very enthusiastic. "I made signs to you, my dear Abbe," said he, "but you didn't see me. Ah! how superb was the expression of that dark woman who fell rigid beside the platform with her arms outstretched. She reminded me of a masterpiece of one of the primitives, Cimabue, Giotto, or Fra Angelico. And the others, those who devoured the chair arms with their kisses, what suavity, beauty, and love! I never miss these ceremonies: there are always some fine scenes, perfect pictures, in which souls reveal themselves." The long stream of pilgrims slowly descended the stairs, and Pierre, followed by Nani and Narcisse, who had begun to chat, tried to bring the ideas which were tumultuously throbbing in his brain into something like order. There was certainly grandeur and beauty in that Pope who had shut himself up in his Vatican, and who, the more he became a purely moral, spiritual authority, freed from all terrestrial cares, had grown in the adoration and awe of mankind. Such a flight into the ideal deeply stirred Pierre, whose dream of rejuvenated Christianity rested on the idea of the supreme Head of the Church exercising only a purified, spiritual authority. He had just seen what an increase of majesty and power was in that way gained by the Supreme Pontiff of the spheres beyond, at whose feet the women fainted, and behind whom they beheld a vision of the Deity. But at the same moment the pecuniary side of the question had risen before him and spoilt his joy. If the enforced relinquishment of the temporal power had exalted the Pope by freeing him from the worries of a petty sovereignty which was ever threatened, the need of money still remained like a chain about his feet tying him to earth. As he could not accept the proffered subvention of the Italian Government,* there was certainly in the Peter's Pence a means of placing the Holy See above all material cares, provided, however, that this Peter's Pence were really the Catholic /sou/, the mite of each believer, levied on his daily income and sent direct to Rome. Such a voluntary tribute paid by the flock to its pastor would, moreover, suffice for the wants of the Church if each of the 250,000,000 of Catholics gave his or her /sou/ every week. In this wise the Pope, indebted to each and all of his children, would be indebted to none in particular. A /sou/ was so little and so easy to give, and there was also something so touching about the idea. But, unhappily, things were not worked in that way; the great majority of Catholics gave nothing whatever, while the rich ones sent large sums from motives of political passion; and a particular objection was that the gifts were centralised in the hands of certain bishops and religious orders, so that these became ostensibly the benefactors of the papacy, the indispensable cashiers from whom it drew the sinews of life. The lowly and humble whose mites filled the collection boxes were, so to say, suppressed, and the Pope became dependent on the intermediaries, and was compelled to act cautiously with them, listen to their remonstrances, and even at times obey their passions, lest the stream of gifts should suddenly dry up. And so, although he was disburdened of the dead weight of the temporal power, he was not free; but remained the tributary of his clergy, with interests and appetites around him which he must needs satisfy. And Pierre remembered the "Grotto of Lourdes" in the Vatican gardens, and the banner which he had just seen, and he knew that the Lourdes fathers levied 200,000 francs a year on their receipts to send them as a present to the Holy Father. Was not that the chief reason of their great power? He quivered, and suddenly became conscious that, do what he might, he would be defeated, and his book would be condemned. * 110,000 pounds per annum. It has never been accepted, and the accumulations lapse to the Government every five years, and cannot afterwards be recovered.--Trans. At last, as he was coming out on to the Piazza of St. Peter's, he heard Narcisse asking Monsignor Nani: "Indeed! Do you really think that to-day's gifts exceeded that figure?" "Yes, more than three millions,* I'm convinced of it," the prelate replied. * All the amounts given on this and the following pages are calculated in francs. The reader will bear in mind that a million francs is equivalent to 40,000 pounds.--Trans. For a moment the three men halted under the right-hand colonnade and gazed at the vast, sunlit piazza where the pilgrims were spreading out like little black specks hurrying hither and thither--an ant-hill, as it were, in revolution. Three millions! The words had rung in Pierre's ears. And, raising his head, he gazed at the Vatican, all golden in the sunlight against the expanse of blue sky, as if he wished to penetrate its walls and follow the steps of Leo XIII returning to his apartments. He pictured him laden with those millions, with his weak, slender arms pressed to his breast, carrying the silver, the gold, the bank notes, and even the jewels which the women had flung him. And almost unconsciously the young priest spoke aloud: "What will he do with those millions? Where is he taking them?" Narcisse and even Nani could not help being amused by this strangely expressed curiosity. It was the young /attache/ who replied. "Why, his Holiness is taking them to his room; or, at least, is having them carried there before him. Didn't you see two persons of his suite picking up everything and filling their pockets? And now his Holiness has shut himself up quite alone; and if you could see him you would find him counting and recounting his treasure with cheerful care, ranging the rolls of gold in good order, slipping the bank notes into envelopes in equal quantities, and then putting everything away in hiding-places which are only known to himself." While his companion was speaking Pierre again raised his eyes to the windows of the Pope's apartments, as if to follow the scene. Moreover, Narcisse gave further explanations, asserting that the money was put away in a certain article of furniture, standing against the right-hand wall in the Holy Father's bedroom. Some people, he added, also spoke of a writing table or secretaire with deep drawers; and others declared that the money slumbered in some big padlocked trunks stored away in the depths of the alcove, which was very roomy. Of course, on the left side of the passage leading to the Archives there was a large room occupied by a general cashier and a monumental safe; but the funds kept there were simply those of the Patrimony of St. Peter, the administrative receipts of Rome; whereas the Peter's Pence money, the voluntary donations of Christendom, remained in the hands of Leo XIII: he alone knew the exact amount of that fund, and lived alone with its millions, which he disposed of like an absolute master, rendering account to none. And such was his prudence that he never left his room when the servants cleaned and set it in order. At the utmost he would consent to remain on the threshold of the adjoining apartment in order to escape the dust. And whenever he meant to absent himself for a few hours, to go down into the gardens, for instance, he double-locked the doors and carried the keys away with him, never confiding them to another. At this point Narcisse paused and, turning to Nani, inquired: "Is not that so, Monsignor? These are things known to all Rome." The prelate, ever smiling and wagging his head without expressing either approval or disapproval, had begun to study on Pierre's face the effect of these curious stories. "No doubt, no doubt," he responded; "so many things are said! I know nothing myself, but you seem to be certain of it all, Monsieur Habert." "Oh!" resumed the other, "I don't accuse his Holiness of sordid avarice, such as is rumoured. Some fabulous stories are current, stories of coffers full of gold in which the Holy Father is said to plunge his hands for hours at a time; treasures which he has heaped up in corners for the sole pleasure of counting them over and over again. Nevertheless, one may well admit that his Holiness is somewhat fond of money for its own sake, for the pleasure of handling it and setting it in order when he happens to be alone--and after all that is a very excusable mania in an old man who has no other pastime. But I must add that he is yet fonder of money for the social power which it brings, the decisive help which it will give to the Holy See in the future, if the latter desires to triumph." These words evoked the lofty figure of a wise and prudent Pope, conscious of modern requirements, inclined to utilise the powers of the century in order to conquer it, and for this reason venturing on business and speculation. As it happened, the treasure bequeathed by Pius IX had nearly been lost in a financial disaster, but ever since that time Leo XIII had sought to repair the breach and make the treasure whole again, in order that he might leave it to his successor intact and even enlarged. Economical he certainly was, but he saved for the needs of the Church, which, as he knew, increased day by day; and money was absolutely necessary if Atheism was to be met and fought in the sphere of the schools, institutions, and associations of all sorts. Without money, indeed, the Church would become a vassal at the mercy of the civil powers, the Kingdom of Italy and other Catholic states; and so, although he liberally helped every enterprise which might contribute to the triumph of the Faith, Leo XIII had a contempt for all expenditure without an object, and treated himself and others with stern closeness. Personally, he had no needs. At the outset of his pontificate he had set his small private patrimony apart from the rich patrimony of St. Peter, refusing to take aught from the latter for the purpose of assisting his relatives. Never had pontiff displayed less nepotism: his three nephews and his two nieces had remained poor--in fact, in great pecuniary embarrassment. Still he listened neither to complaints nor accusations, but remained inflexible, proudly resolved to bequeath the sinews of life, the invincible weapon money, to the popes of future times, and therefore vigorously defending the millions of the Holy See against the desperate covetousness of one and all. "But, after all, what are the receipts and expenses of the Holy See?" inquired Pierre. In all haste Nani again made his amiable, evasive gesture. "Oh! I am altogether ignorant in such matters," he replied. "Ask Monsieur Habert, who is so well informed." "For my part," responded the /attache/, "I simply know what is known to all the embassies here, the matters which are the subject of common report. With respect to the receipts there is, first of all, the treasure left by Pius IX, some twenty millions, invested in various ways and formerly yielding about a million a year in interest. But, as I said before, a disaster happened, and there must then have been a falling off in the income. Still, nowadays it is reported that nearly all deficiencies have been made good. Well, besides the regular income from the invested money, a few hundred thousand francs are derived every year from chancellery dues, patents of nobility, and all sorts of little fees paid to the Congregations. However, as the annual expenses exceed seven millions, it has been necessary to find quite six millions every year; and certainly it is the Peter's Pence Fund that has supplied, not the six millions, perhaps, but three or four of them, and with these the Holy See has speculated in the hope of doubling them and making both ends meet. It would take me too long just now to relate the whole story of these speculations, the first huge gains, then the catastrophe which almost swept everything away, and finally the stubborn perseverance which is gradually supplying all deficiencies. However, if you are anxious on the subject, I will one day tell you all about it." Pierre had listened with deep interest. "Six millions--even four!" he exclaimed, "what does the Peter's Pence Fund bring in, then?" "Oh! I can only repeat that nobody has ever known the exact figures. In former times the Catholic Press published lists giving the amounts of different offerings, and in this way one could frame an approximate estimate. But the practice must have been considered unadvisable, for no documents nowadays appear, and it is absolutely impossible for people to form any real idea of what the Pope receives. He alone knows the correct amount, keeps the money, and disposes of it with absolute authority. Still I believe that in good years the offerings have amounted to between four and five millions. Originally France contributed one-half of the sum; but nowadays it certainly gives much less. Then come Belgium and Austria, England and Germany. As for Spain and Italy--oh! Italy--" Narcisse paused and smiled at Monsignor Nani, who was wagging his head with the air of a man delighted at learning some extremely curious things of which he had previously had no idea. "Oh, you may proceed, you may proceed, my dear son," said he. "Well, then, Italy scarcely distinguishes itself. If the Pope had to provide for his living out of the gifts of the Italian Catholics there would soon be a famine at the Vatican. Far from helping him, indeed, the Roman nobility has cost him dear; for one of the chief causes of his pecuniary losses was his folly in lending money to the princes who speculated. It is really only from France and England that rich people, noblemen and so forth, have sent royal gifts to the imprisoned and martyred Pontiff. Among others there was an English nobleman who came to Rome every year with a large offering, the outcome of a vow which he had made in the hope that Heaven would cure his unhappy idiot son. And, of course, I don't refer to the extraordinary harvest garnered during the sacerdotal and the episcopal jubilees--the forty millions which then fell at his Holiness's feet." "And the expenses?" asked Pierre. "Well, as I told you, they amount to about seven millions. We may reckon two of them for the pensions paid to former officials of the pontifical government who were unwilling to take service under Italy; but I must add that this source of expense is diminishing every year as people die off and their pensions become extinguished. Then, broadly speaking, we may put down one million for the Italian sees, another for the Secretariate and the Nunciatures, and another for the Vatican. In this last sum I include the expenses of the pontifical Court, the military establishment, the museums, and the repair of the palace and the Basilica. Well, we have reached five millions, and the two others may be set down for the various subsidised enterprises, the Propaganda, and particularly the schools, which Leo XIII, with great practical good sense, subsidises very handsomely, for he is well aware that the battle and the triumph be in that direction--among the children who will be men to-morrow, and who will then defend their mother the Church, provided that they have been inspired with horror for the abominable doctrines of the age." A spell of silence ensued, and the three men slowly paced the majestic colonnade. The swarming crowd had gradually disappeared, leaving the piazza empty, so that only the obelisk and the twin fountains now arose from the burning desert of symmetrical paving; whilst on the entablature of the porticus across the square a noble line of motionless statues stood out in the bright sunlight. And Pierre, with his eyes still raised to the Pope's windows, again fancied that he could see Leo XIII amidst all the streaming gold that had been spoken of, his whole, white, pure figure, his poor, waxen, transparent form steeped amidst those millions which he hid and counted and expended for the glory of God alone. "And so," murmured the young priest, "he has no anxiety, he is not in any pecuniary embarrassment." "Pecuniary embarrassment!" exclaimed Monsignor Nani, his patience so sorely tried by the remark that he could no longer retain his diplomatic reserve. "Oh! my dear son! Why, when Cardinal Mocenni, the treasurer, goes to his Holiness every month, his Holiness always gives him the sum he asks for; he would give it, and be able to give it, however large it might be! His Holiness has certainly had the wisdom to effect great economies; the Treasure of St. Peter is larger than ever. Pecuniary embarrassment, indeed! Why, if a misfortune should occur, and the Sovereign Pontiff were to make a direct appeal to all his children, the Catholics of the entire world, do you know that in that case a thousand millions would fall at his feet just like the gold and the jewels which you saw raining on the steps of his throne just now?" Then suddenly calming himself and recovering his pleasant smile, Nani added: "At least, that is what I sometimes hear said; for, personally, I know nothing, absolutely nothing; and it is fortunate that Monsieur Habert should have been here to give you information. Ah! Monsieur Habert, Monsieur Habert! Why, I fancied that you were always in the skies absorbed in your passion for art, and far removed from all base mundane interests! But you really understand these things like a banker or a notary. Nothing escapes you, nothing. It is wonderful." Narcisse must have felt the sting of the prelate's delicate sarcasm. At bottom, beneath this make-believe Florentine all-angelicalness, with long curly hair and mauve eyes which grew dim with rapture at sight of a Botticelli, there was a thoroughly practical, business-like young man, who took admirable care of his fortune and was even somewhat miserly. However, he contented himself with lowering his eyelids and assuming a languorous air. "Oh!" said he, "I'm all reverie; my soul is elsewhere." "At all events," resumed Nani, turning towards Pierre, "I am very glad that you were able to see such a beautiful spectacle. A few more such opportunities and you will understand things far better than you would from all the explanations in the world. Don't miss the grand ceremony at St. Peter's to-morrow. It will be magnificent, and will give you food for useful reflection; I'm sure of it. And now allow me to leave you, delighted at seeing you in such a fit frame of mind." Darting a last glance at Pierre, Nani seemed to have observed with pleasure the weariness and uncertainty which were paling his face. And when the prelate had gone off, and Narcisse also had taken leave with a gentle hand-shake, the young priest felt the ire of protest rising within him. What fit frame of mind did Nani mean? Did that man hope to weary him and drive him to despair by throwing him into collision with obstacles, so that he might afterwards overcome him with perfect ease? For the second time Pierre became suddenly and briefly conscious of the stealthy efforts which were being made to invest and crush him. But, believing as he did in his own strength of resistance, pride filled him with disdain. Again he swore that he would never yield, never withdraw his book, no matter what might happen. And then, before crossing the piazza, he once more raised his eyes to the windows of the Vatican, all his impressions crystallising in the thought of that much-needed money which like a last bond still attached the Pope to earth. Its chief evil doubtless lay in the manner in which it was provided; and if indeed the only question were to devise an improved method of collection, his dream of a pope who should be all soul, the bond of love, the spiritual leader of the world, would not be seriously affected. At this thought, Pierre felt comforted and was unwilling to look on things otherwise than hopefully, moved as he was by the extraordinary scene which he had just beheld, that feeble old man shining forth like the symbol of human deliverance, obeyed and venerated by the multitudes, and alone among all men endowed with the moral omnipotence that might at last set the reign of charity and peace on earth. For the ceremony on the following day, it was fortunate that Pierre held a private ticket which admitted him to a reserved gallery, for the scramble at the entrances to the Basilica proved terrible. The mass, which the Pope was to celebrate in person, was fixed for ten o'clock, but people began to pour into St. Peter's four hours earlier, as soon, indeed, as the gates had been thrown open. The three thousand members of the International Pilgrimage were increased tenfold by the arrival of all the tourists in Italy, who had hastened to Rome eager to witness one of those great pontifical functions which nowadays are so rare. Moreover, the devotees and partisans whom the Holy See numbered in Rome itself and in other great cities of the kingdom, helped to swell the throng, all alacrity at the prospect of a demonstration. Judging by the tickets distributed, there would be a concourse of 40,000 people. And, indeed, at nine o'clock, when Pierre crossed the piazza on his way to the Canons' Entrance in the Via Santa Marta, where the holders of pink tickets were admitted, he saw the portico of the facade still thronged with people who were but slowly gaining admittance, while several gentlemen in evening dress, members of some Catholic association, bestirred themselves to maintain order with the help of a detachment of Pontifical Guards. Nevertheless, violent quarrels broke out in the crowd, and blows were exchanged amidst the involuntary scramble. Some people were almost stifled, and two women were carried off half crushed to death. A disagreeable surprise met Pierre on his entry into the Basilica. The huge edifice was draped; coverings of old red damask with bands of gold swathed the columns and pilasters, seventy-five feet high; even the aisles were hung with the same old and faded silk; and the shrouding of those pompous marbles, of all the superb dazzling ornamentation of the church bespoke a very singular taste, a tawdry affectation of pomposity, extremely wretched in its effect. However, he was yet more amazed on seeing that even the statue of St. Peter was clad, costumed like a living pope in sumptuous pontifical vestments, with a tiara on its metal head. He had never imagined that people could garment statues either for their glory or for the pleasure of the eyes, and the result seemed to him disastrous. The Pope was to say mass at the papal altar of the Confession, the high altar which stands under the dome. On a platform at the entrance of the left-hand transept was the throne on which he would afterwards take his place. Then, on either side of the nave, tribunes had been erected for the choristers of the Sixtine Chapel, the Corps Diplomatique, the Knights of Malta, the Roman nobility, and other guests of various kinds. And, finally, in the centre, before the altar, there were three rows of benches covered with red rugs, the first for the cardinals and the other two for the bishops and the prelates of the pontifical court. All the rest of the congregation was to remain standing. Ah! that huge concert-audience, those thirty, forty thousand believers from here, there, and everywhere, inflamed with curiosity, passion, or faith, bestirring themselves, jostling one another, rising on tip-toe to see the better! The clamour of a human sea arose, the crowd was as gay and familiar as if it had found itself in some heavenly theatre where it was allowable for one to chat aloud and recreate oneself with the spectacle of religious pomp! At first Pierre was thunderstruck, he who only knew of nervous, silent kneeling in the depths of dim cathedrals, who was not accustomed to that religion of light, whose brilliancy transformed a religious celebration into a morning festivity. Around him, in the same tribune as himself, were gentlemen in dress-coats and ladies gowned in black, carrying glasses as in an opera-house. There were German and English women, and numerous Americans, all more or less charming, displaying the grace of thoughtless, chirruping birds. In the tribune of the Roman nobility on the left he recognised Benedetta and Donna Serafina, and there the simplicity of the regulation attire for ladies was relieved by large lace veils rivalling one another in richness and elegance. Then on the right was the tribune of the Knights of Malta, where the Grand Master stood amidst a group of commanders: while across the nave rose the diplomatic tribune where Pierre perceived the ambassadors of all the Catholic nations, resplendent in gala uniforms covered with gold lace. However, the young priest's eyes were ever returning to the crowd, the great surging throng in which the three thousand pilgrims were lost amidst the multitude of other spectators. And yet as the Basilica was so vast that it could easily contain eighty thousand people, it did not seem to be more than half full. People came and went along the aisles and took up favourable positions without impediment. Some could be seen gesticulating, and calls rang out above the ceaseless rumble of voices. From the lofty windows of plain white glass fell broad sheets of sunlight, which set a gory glow upon the faded damask hangings, and these cast a reflection as of fire upon all the tumultuous, feverish, impatient faces. The multitude of candles, and the seven-and-eighty lamps of the Confession paled to such a degree that they seemed but glimmering night-lights in the blinding radiance; and everything proclaimed the worldly gala of the imperial Deity of Roman pomp. All at once there came a premature shock of delight, a false alert. Cries burst forth and circulated through the crowd: "Eccolo! eccolo! Here he comes!" And then there was pushing and jostling, eddying which made the human sea whirl and surge, all craning their necks, raising themselves to their full height, darting forward in a frenzied desire to see the Holy Father and the /cortege/. But only a detachment of Noble Guards marched by and took up position right and left of the altar. A flattering murmur accompanied them, their fine impassive bearing with its exaggerated military stiffness, provoking the admiration of the throng. An American woman declared that they were superb-looking fellows; and a Roman lady gave an English friend some particulars about the select corps to which they belonged. Formerly, said she, young men of the aristocracy had greatly sought the honour of forming part of it, for the sake of wearing its rich uniform and caracoling in front of the ladies. But recruiting was now such a difficult matter that one had to content oneself with good-looking young men of doubtful or ruined nobility, whose only care was for the meagre "pay" which just enabled them to live. When another quarter of an hour of chatting and scrutinising had elapsed, the papal /cortege/ at last made its appearance, and no sooner was it seen than applause burst forth as in a theatre--furious applause it was which rose and rolled along under the vaulted ceilings, suggesting the acclamations which ring out when some popular, idolised actor makes his entry on the stage. As in a theatre, too, everything had been very skilfully contrived so as to produce all possible effect amidst the magnificent scenery of the Basilica. The /cortege/ was formed in the wings, that is in the Cappella della Pieta, the first chapel of the right aisle, and in order to reach it, the Holy Father, coming from his apartments by the way of the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, had been stealthily carried behind the hangings of the aisle which served the purpose of a drop-scene. Awaiting him in all readiness in the Cappella della Pieta were the cardinals, archbishops, and bishops, the whole pontifical prelacy, hierarchically classified and grouped. And then, as at a signal from a ballet master, the /cortege/ made its entry, reaching the nave and ascending it in triumph from the closed Porta Santa to the altar of the Confession. On either hand were the rows of spectators whose applause at the sight of so much magnificence grew louder and louder as their delirious enthusiasm increased. It was the /cortege/ of the olden solemnities, the cross and sword, the Swiss Guard in full uniform, the valets in scarlet simars, the Knights of the Cape and the Sword in Renascence costumes, the Canons in rochets of lace, the superiors of the religious communities, the apostolic prothonotaries, the archbishops, and bishops, all the pontifical prelates in violet silk, the cardinals, each wearing the /cappa magna/ and draped in purple, walking solemnly two by two with long intervals between each pair. Finally, around his Holiness were grouped the officers of the military household, the chamber prelates, Monsignor the Majordomo, Monsignor the Grand Chamberlain, and all the other high dignitaries of the Vatican, with the Roman prince assistant of the throne, the traditional, symbolical defender of the Church. And on the /sedia gestatoria/, screened by the /flabelli/ with their lofty triumphal fans of feathers and carried on high by the bearers in red tunics broidered with silk, sat the Pope, clad in the sacred vestments which he had assumed in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, the amict, the alb, the stole, and the white chasuble and white mitre enriched with gold, two gifts of extraordinary sumptuousness that had come from France. And, as his Holiness drew near, all hands were raised and clapped yet more loudly amidst the waves of living sunlight which streamed from the lofty windows. Then a new and different impression of Leo XIII came to Pierre. The Pope, as he now beheld him, was no longer the familiar, tired, inquisitive old man, leaning on the arm of a talkative prelate as he strolled through the loveliest gardens in the world. He no longer recalled the Holy Father, in red cape and papal cap, giving a paternal welcome to a pilgrimage which brought him a fortune. He was here the Sovereign Pontiff, the all-powerful Master whom Christendom adored. His slim waxen form seemed to have stiffened within his white vestments, heavy with golden broidery, as in a reliquary of precious metal; and he retained a rigid, haughty, hieratic attitude, like that of some idol, gilded, withered for centuries past by the smoke of sacrifices. Amidst the mournful stiffness of his face only his eyes lived--eyes like black sparkling diamonds gazing afar, beyond earth, into the infinite. He gave not a glance to the crowd, he lowered his eyes neither to right nor to left, but remained soaring in the heavens, ignoring all that took place at his feet. And as that seemingly embalmed idol, deaf and blind, in spite of the brilliancy of his eyes, was carried through the frantic multitude which it appeared neither to hear nor to see, it assumed fearsome majesty, disquieting grandeur, all the rigidity of dogma, all the immobility of tradition exhumed with its /fascioe/ which alone kept it erect. Still Pierre fancied he could detect that the Pope was ill and weary, suffering from the attack of fever which Nani had spoken of when glorifying the courage of that old man of eighty-four, whom strength of soul alone now kept alive. The service began. Alighting from the /sedia gestatoria/ before the altar of the Confession, his Holiness slowly celebrated a low mass, assisted by four prelates and the pro-prefect of the ceremonies. When the time came for washing his fingers, Monsignor the Majordomo and Monsignor the Grand Chamberlain, accompanied by two cardinals, poured the water on his august hands; and shortly before the elevation of the host all the prelates of the pontifical court, each holding a lighted taper, came and knelt around the altar. There was a solemn moment, the forty thousand believers there assembled shuddered as if they could feel the terrible yet delicious blast of the invisible sweeping over them when during the elevation the silver clarions sounded the famous chorus of angels which invariably makes some women swoon. Almost immediately an aerial chant descended from the cupola, from a lofty gallery where one hundred and twenty choristers were concealed, and the enraptured multitude marvelled as though the angels had indeed responded to the clarion call. The voices descended, taking their flight under the vaulted ceilings with the airy sweetness of celestial harps; then in suave harmony they died away, reascended to the heavens as with a faint flapping of wings. And, after the mass, his Holiness, still standing at the altar, in person started the /Te Deum/, which the singers of the Sixtine Chapel and the other choristers took up, each party chanting a verse alternately. But soon the whole congregation joined them, forty thousand voices were raised, and a hymn of joy and glory spread through the vast nave with incomparable splendour of effect. And then the scene became one of extraordinary magnificence: there was Bernini's triumphal, flowery, gilded /baldacchino/, surrounded by the whole pontifical court with the lighted tapers showing like starry constellations, there was the Sovereign Pontiff in the centre, radiant like a planet in his gold-broidered chasuble, there were the benches crowded with cardinals in purple and archbishops and bishops in violet silk, there were the tribunes glittering with official finery, the gold lace of the diplomatists, the variegated uniforms of foreign officers, and then there was the throng flowing and eddying on all sides, rolling billows after billows of heads from the most distant depths of the Basilica. And the hugeness of the temple increased one's amazement; and even the glorious hymn which the multitude repeated became colossal, ascended like a tempest blast amidst the great marble tombs, the superhuman statues and gigantic pillars, till it reached the vast vaulted heavens of stone, and penetrated into the firmament of the cupola where the Infinite seemed to open resplendent with the gold-work of the mosaics. A long murmur of voices followed the /Te Deum/, whilst Leo XIII, after donning the tiara in lieu of the mitre, and exchanging the chasuble for the pontifical cope, went to occupy his throne on the platform at the entry of the left transept. He thence dominated the whole assembly, through which a quiver sped when after the prayers of the ritual, he once more rose erect. Beneath the symbolic, triple crown, in the golden sheathing of his cope, he seemed to have grown taller. Amidst sudden and profound silence, which only feverish heart-beats interrupted, he raised his arm with a very noble gesture and pronounced the papal benediction in a slow, loud, full voice, which seemed, as it were, the very voice of the Deity, so greatly did its power astonish one, coming from such waxen lips, from such a bloodless, lifeless frame. And the effect was prodigious: as soon as the /cortege/ reformed to return whence it had come, applause again burst forth, a frenzy of enthusiasm which the clapping of hands could no longer content. Acclamations resounded and gradually gained upon the whole multitude. They began among a group of ardent partisans stationed near the statue of St. Peter: /"Evviva il Papa-Re! evviva il Papa-Re/! Long live the Pope-King!" as the /cortege/ went by the shout rushed along like leaping fire, inflaming heart after heart, and at last springing from every mouth in a thunderous protest against the theft of the states of the Church. All the faith, all the love of those believers, overexcited by the regal spectacle they had just beheld, returned once more to the dream, to the rageful desire that the Pope should be both King and Pontiff, master of men's bodies as he was of their souls--in one word, the absolute sovereign of the earth. Therein lay the only truth, the only happiness, the only salvation! Let all be given to him, both mankind and the world! "/Evviva il Papa-Re! evviva il Papa-Re/! Long live the Pope-King!" Ah! that cry, that cry of war which had caused so many errors and so much bloodshed, that cry of self-abandonment and blindness which, realised, would have brought back the old ages of suffering, it shocked Pierre, and impelled him in all haste to quit the tribune where he was in order that he might escape the contagion of idolatry. And while the /cortege/ still went its way and the deafening clamour of the crowd continued, he for a moment followed the left aisle amidst the general scramble. This, however, made him despair of reaching the street, and anxious to escape the crush of the general departure, it occurred to him to profit by a door which he saw open and which led him into a vestibule, whence ascended the steps conducting to the dome. A sacristan standing in the doorway, both bewildered and delighted at the demonstration, looked at him for a moment, hesitating whether he should stop him or not. However, the sight of the young priest's cassock combined with his own emotion rendered the man tolerant. Pierre was allowed to pass, and at once began to climb the staircase as rapidly as he could, in order that he might flee farther and farther away, ascend higher and yet higher into peace and silence. And the silence suddenly became profound, the walls stifled the cry of the multitude. The staircase was easy and light, with broad paved steps turning within a sort of tower. When Pierre came out upon the roofs of nave and aisles, he was delighted to find himself in the bright sunlight and the pure keen air which blew there as in the open country. And it was with astonishment that he gazed upon the huge expanse of lead, zinc, and stone-work, a perfect aerial city living a life of its own under the blue sky. He saw cupolas, spires, terraces, even houses and gardens, houses bright with flowers, the residences of the workmen who live atop of the Basilica, which is ever and ever requiring repair. A little population here bestirs itself, labours, loves, eats, and sleeps. However, Pierre desired to approach the balustrade so as to get a near view of the colossal statues of the Saviour and the Apostles which surmount the facade on the side of the piazza. These giants, some nineteen feet in height, are constantly being mended; their arms, legs, and heads, into which the atmosphere is ever eating, nowadays only hold together by the help of cement, bars, and hooks. And having examined them, Pierre was leaning forward to glance at the Vatican's jumble of ruddy roofs, when it seemed to him that the shout from which he had fled was rising from the piazza, and thereupon, in all haste, he resumed his ascent within the pillar conducting to the dome. There was first a staircase, and then came some narrow, oblique passages, inclines intersected by a few steps, between the inner and outer walls of the cupola. Yielding to curiosity, Pierre pushed a door open, and suddenly found himself inside the Basilica again, at nearly 200 feet from the ground. A narrow gallery there ran round the dome just above the frieze, on which, in letters five feet high, appeared the famous inscription: /Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram oedificabo ecclesiam meam et tibi dabo claves regni coelorum.* And then, as Pierre leant over to gaze into the fearful cavity beneath him and the wide openings of nave, and aisles, and transepts, the cry, the delirious cry of the multitude, yet clamorously swarming below, struck him full in the face. He fled once more; but, higher up, yet a second time he pushed another door open and found another gallery, one perched above the windows, just where the splendid mosaics begin, and whence the crowd seemed to him lost in the depths of a dizzy abyss, altar and /baldacchino/ alike looking no larger than toys. And yet the cry of idolatry and warfare arose again, and smote him like the buffet of a tempest which gathers increase of strength the farther it rushes. So to escape it he had to climb higher still, even to the outer gallery which encircles the lantern, hovering in the very heavens. * Thou art Peter (Petrus) and on that rock (Petram) will I build my church, and to thee will I give the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. How delightful was the relief which that bath of air and sunlight at first brought him! Above him now there only remained the ball of gilt copper into which emperors and queens have ascended, as is testified by the pompous inscriptions in the passages; a hollow ball it is, where the voice crashes like thunder, where all the sounds of space reverberate. As he emerged on the side of the apse, his eyes at first plunged into the papal gardens, whose clumps of trees seemed mere bushes almost level with the soil; and he could retrace his recent stroll among them, the broad /parterre/ looking like a faded Smyrna rug, the large wood showing the deep glaucous greenery of a stagnant pool. Then there were the kitchen garden and the vineyard easily identified and tended with care. The fountains, the observatory, the casino, where the Pope spent the hot days of summer, showed merely like little white spots in those undulating grounds, walled in like any other estate, but with the fearsome rampart of the fourth Leo, which yet retained its fortress-like aspect. However, Pierre took his way round the narrow gallery and abruptly found himself in front of Rome, a sudden and immense expanse, with the distant sea on the west, the uninterrupted mountain chains on the east and the south, the Roman Campagna stretching to the horizon like a bare and greenish desert, while the city, the Eternal City, was spread out at his feet. Never before had space impressed him so majestically. Rome was there, as a bird might see it, within the glance, as distinct as some geographical plan executed in relief. To think of it, such a past, such a history, so much grandeur, and Rome so dwarfed and contracted by distance! Houses as lilliputian and as pretty as toys; and the whole a mere mouldy speck upon the earth's face! What impassioned Pierre was that he could at a glance understand the divisions of Rome: the antique city yonder with the Capitol, the Forum, and the Palatine; the papal city in that Borgo which he overlooked, with St. Peter's and the Vatican gazing across the city of the middle ages--which was huddled together in the right angle described by the yellow Tiber--towards the modern city, the Quirinal of the Italian monarchy. And particularly did he remark the chalky girdle with which the new districts encompassed the ancient, central, sun-tanned quarters, thus symbolising an effort at rejuvenescence, the old heart but slowly mended, whereas the outlying limbs were renewed as if by miracle. In that ardent noontide glow, however, Pierre no longer beheld the pure ethereal Rome which had met his eyes on the morning of his arrival in the delightfully soft radiance of the rising sun. That smiling, unobtrusive city, half veiled by golden mist, immersed as it were in some dream of childhood, now appeared to him flooded with a crude light, motionless, hard of outline and silent like death. The distance was as if devoured by too keen a flame, steeped in a luminous dust in which it crumbled. And against that blurred background the whole city showed with violent distinctness in great patches of light and shade, their tracery harshly conspicuous. One might have fancied oneself above some very ancient, abandoned stone quarry, which a few clumps of trees spotted with dark green. Of the ancient city one could see the sunburnt tower of the Capitol, the black cypresses of the Palatine, and the ruins of the palace of Septimius Severus, suggesting the white osseous carcase of some fossil monster, left there by a flood. In front, was enthroned the modern city with the long, renovated buildings of the Quirinal, whose yellow walls stood forth with wondrous crudity amidst the vigorous crests of the garden trees. And to right and left on the Viminal, beyond the palace, the new districts appeared like a city of chalk and plaster mottled by innumerable windows as with a thousand touches of black ink. Then here and there were the Pincio showing like a stagnant mere, the Villa Medici uprearing its campanili, the castle of Sant' Angelo brown like rust, the spire of Santa Maria Maggiore aglow like a burning taper, the three churches of the Aventine drowsy amidst verdure, the Palazzo Farnese with its summer-baked tiles showing like old gold, the domes of the Gesu, of Sant' Andrea della Valle, of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, and yet other domes and other domes, all in fusion, incandescent in the brazier of the heavens. And Pierre again felt a heart-pang in presence of that harsh, stern Rome, so different from the Rome of his dream, the Rome of rejuvenescence and hope, which he had fancied he had found on his first morning, but which had now faded away to give place to the immutable city of pride and domination, stubborn under the sun even unto death. And there on high, all alone with his thoughts, Pierre suddenly understood. It was as if a dart of flaming light fell on him in that free, unbounded expanse where he hovered. Had it come from the ceremony which he had just beheld, from the frantic cry of servitude still ringing in his ears? Had it come from the spectacle of that city beneath him, that city which suggested an embalmed queen still reigning amidst the dust of her tomb? He knew not; but doubtless both had acted as factors, and at all events the light which fell upon his mind was complete: he felt that Catholicism could not exist without the temporal power, that it must fatally disappear whenever it should no longer be king over this earth. A first reason of this lay in heredity, in the forces of history, the long line of the heirs of the Caesars, the popes, the great pontiffs, in whose veins the blood of Augustus, demanding the empire of the world, had never ceased to flow. Though they might reside in the Vatican they had come from the imperial abodes on the Palatine, from the palace of Septimius Severus, and throughout the centuries their policy had ever pursued the dream of Roman mastery, of all the nations vanquished, submissive, and obedient to Rome. If its sovereignty were not universal, extending alike over bodies and over souls, Catholicism would lose its /raison d'etre/; for the Church cannot recognise any empire or kingdom otherwise than politically--the emperors and the kings being purely and simply so many temporary delegates placed in charge of the nations pending the time when they shall be called upon to relinquish their trust. All the nations, all humanity, and the whole world belong to the Church to whom they have been given by God. And if real and effective possession is not hers to-day, this is only because she yields to force, compelled to face accomplished facts, but with the formal reserve that she is in presence of guilty usurpation, that her possessions are unjustly withheld from her, and that she awaits the realisation of the promises of the Christ, who, when the time shall be accomplished, will for ever restore to her both the earth and mankind. Such is the real future city which time is to bring: Catholic Rome, sovereign of the world once more. And Rome the city forms a substantial part of the dream, Rome whose eternity has been predicted, Rome whose soil has imparted to Catholicism the inextinguishable thirst of absolute power. And thus the destiny of the papacy is linked to that of Rome, to such a point indeed that a pope elsewhere than at Rome would no longer be a Catholic pope. The thought of all this frightened Pierre; a great shudder passed through him as he leant on the light iron balustrade, gazing down into the abyss where the stern mournful city was even now crumbling away under the fierce sun. There was, however, evidence of the facts which had dawned on him. If Pius IX and Leo XIII had resolved to imprison themselves in the Vatican, it was because necessity bound them to Rome. A pope is not free to leave the city, to be the head of the Church elsewhere; and in the same way a pope, however well he may understand the modern world, has not the right to relinquish the temporal power. This is an inalienable inheritance which he must defend, and it is moreover a question of life, peremptory, above discussion. And thus Leo XIII has retained the title of Master of the temporal dominions of the Church, and this he has done the more readily since as a cardinal--like all the members of the Sacred College when elected--he swore that he would maintain those dominions intact. Italy may hold Rome as her capital for another century or more, but the coming popes will never cease to protest and claim their kingdom. If ever an understanding should be arrived at, it must be based on the gift of a strip of territory. Formerly, when rumours of reconciliation were current, was it not said that the papacy exacted, as a formal condition, the possession of at least the Leonine City with the neutralisation of a road leading to the sea? Nothing is not enough, one cannot start from nothing to attain to everything, whereas that Civitas Leonina, that bit of a city, would already be a little royal ground, and it would then only be necessary to conquer the rest, first Rome, next Italy, then the neighbouring states, and at last the whole world. Never has the Church despaired, even when, beaten and despoiled, she seemed to be at the last gasp. Never will she abdicate, never will she renounce the promises of the Christ, for she believes in a boundless future and declares herself to be both indestructible and eternal. Grant her but a pebble on which to rest her head, and she will hope to possess, first the field in which that pebble lies, and then the empire in which the field is situated. If one pope cannot achieve the recovery of the inheritance, another pope, ten, twenty other popes will continue the work. The centuries do not count. And this explains why an old man of eighty-four has undertaken colossal enterprises whose achievement requires several lives, certain as he is that his successors will take his place, and that the work will ever and ever be carried forward and completed. As these thoughts coursed through his mind, Pierre, overlooking that ancient city of glory and domination, so stubbornly clinging to its purple, realised that he was an imbecile with his dream of a purely spiritual pope. The notion seemed to him so different from the reality, so out of place, that he experienced a sort of shame-fraught despair. The new pope, consonant to the teachings of the Gospel, such as a purely spiritual pope reigning over souls alone, would be, was virtually beyond the ken of a Roman prelate. At thought of that papal court congealed in ritual, pride, and authority, Pierre suddenly understood what horror and repugnance such a pastor would inspire. How great must be the astonishment and contempt of the papal prelates for that singular notion of the northern mind, a pope without dominions or subjects, military household or royal honours, a pope who would be, as it were, a spirit, exercising purely moral authority, dwelling in the depths of God's temple, and governing the world solely with gestures of benediction and deeds of kindliness and love! All that was but a misty Gothic invention for this Latin clergy, these priests of light and magnificence, who were certainly pious and even superstitious, but who left the Deity well sheltered within the tabernacle in order to govern in His name, according to what they considered the interests of Heaven. Thence it arose that they employed craft and artifice like mere politicians, and lived by dint of expedients amidst the great battle of human appetites, marching with the prudent, stealthy steps of diplomatists towards the final terrestrial victory of the Christ, who, in the person of the Pope, was one day to reign over all the nations. And how stupefied must a French prelate have been--a prelate like Monseigneur Bergerot, that apostle of renunciation and charity--when he lighted amidst that world of the Vatican! How difficult must it have been for him to understand and focus things, and afterwards how great his grief at finding himself unable to come to any agreement with those men without country, without fatherland, those "internationals," who were ever poring over the maps of both hemispheres, ever absorbed in schemes which were to bring them empire. Days and days were necessary, one needed to live in Rome, and he, Pierre himself, had only seen things clearly after a month's sojourn, whilst labouring under the violent shock of the royal pomp of St. Peter's, and standing face to face with the ancient city as it slumbered heavily in the sunlight and dreamt its dream of eternity. But on lowering his eyes to the piazza in front of the Basilica he perceived the multitude, the 40,000 believers streaming over the pavement like insects. And then he thought that he could hear the cry again rising: "/Evviva il Papa-Re! evviva il Papa-Re/! Long live the Pope-King!" Whilst ascending those endless staircases a moment previously it had seemed to him as if the colossus of stone were quivering with the frantic shout raised beneath its ceilings. And now that he had climbed even into cloudland that shout apparently was traversing space. If the colossal pile beneath him still vibrated with it, was it not as with a last rise of sap within its ancient walls, a reinvigoration of that Catholic blood which formerly had demanded that the pile should be a stupendous one, the veritable king of temples, and which now was striving to reanimate it with the powerful breath of life, and this at the very hour when death was beginning to fall upon its over-vast, deserted nave and aisles? The crowd was still streaming forth, filling the piazza, and Pierre's heart was wrung by frightful anguish, for that throng with its shout had just swept his last hope away. On the previous afternoon, after the reception of the pilgrimage, he had yet been able to deceive himself by overlooking the necessity for money which bound the Pope to earth in order that he might see nought but the feeble old man, all spirituality, resplendent like the symbol of moral authority. But his faith in such a pastor of the Gospel, free from all considerations of earthly wealth, and king of none other than a heavenly kingdom, had fled. Not only did the Peter's Pence impose hard servitude upon Leo XIII but he was also the prisoner of papal tradition--the eternal King of Rome, riveted to the soil of Rome, unable either to quit the city or to renounce the temporal power. The fatal end would be collapse on the spot, the dome of St. Peter's falling even as the temple of Olympian Jupiter had fallen, Catholicism strewing the grass with its ruins whilst elsewhere schism burst forth: a new faith for the new nations. Of this Pierre had a grandiose and tragical vision: he beheld his dream destroyed, his book swept away amidst that cry which spread around him as if flying to the four corners of the Catholic world "/Evviva il Papa-Re! evviva il Papa-Re! Long live the Pope-King!" But even in that hour of the papacy's passing triumph he already felt that the giant of gold and marble on which he stood was oscillating, even as totter all old and rotten societies. At last he took his way down again, and a fresh shock of emotion came to him as he reached the roofs, that sunlit expanse of lead and zinc, large enough for the site of a town. Monsignor Nani was there, in company with the two French ladies, the mother and the daughter, both looking very happy and highly amused. No doubt the prelate had good-naturedly offered to conduct them to the dome. However, as soon as he recognised the young priest he went towards him: "Well, my dear son," he inquired, "are you pleased? Have you been impressed, edified?" As he spoke, his searching eyes dived into Pierre's soul, as if to ascertain the present result of his experiments. Then, satisfied with what he detected, he began to laugh softly: "Yes, yes, I see--come, you are a sensible fellow after all. I begin to think that the unfortunate affair which brought you here will have a happy ending." VIII WHEN Pierre remained in the morning at the Boccanera mansion he often spent some hours in the little neglected garden which had formerly ended with a sort of colonnaded /loggia/, whence two flights of steps descended to the Tiber. This garden was a delightful, solitary nook, perfumed by the ripe fruit of the centenarian orange-trees, whose symmetrical lines were the only indication of the former pathways, now hidden beneath rank weeds. And Pierre also found there the acrid scent of the large box-shrubs growing in the old central fountain basin, which had been filled up with loose earth and rubbish. On those luminous October mornings, full of such tender and penetrating charm, the spot was one where all the joy of living might well be savoured, but Pierre brought thither his northern dreaminess, his concern for suffering, his steadfast feeling of compassion, which rendered yet sweeter the caress of the sunlight pervading that atmosphere of love. He seated himself against the right-hand wall on a fragment of a fallen column over which a huge laurel cast a deep-black shadow, fresh and aromatic. In the antique greenish sarcophagus beside him, on which fauns offered violence to nymphs, the streamlet of water trickling from the mask incrusted in the wall, set the unchanging music of its crystal note, whilst he read the newspapers and the letters which he received, all the communications of good Abbe Rose, who kept him informed of his mission among the wretched ones of gloomy Paris, now already steeped in fog and mud. One morning however, Pierre unexpectedly found Benedetta seated on the fallen column which he usually made his chair. She raised a light cry of surprise on seeing him, and for a moment remained embarrassed, for she had with her his book "New Rome," which she had read once already, but had then imperfectly understood. And overcoming her embarrassment she now hastened to detain him, making him sit down beside her, and frankly owning that she had come to the garden in order to be alone and apply herself to an attentive study of the book, in the same way as some ignorant school-girl. Then they began to chat like a pair of friends, and the young priest spent a delightful hour. Although Benedetta did not speak of herself, he realised that it was her grief alone which brought her nearer to him, as if indeed her own sufferings enlarged her heart and made her think of all who suffered in the world. Patrician as she was, regarding social hierarchy as a divine law, she had never previously thought of such things, and some pages of Pierre's book greatly astonished her. What! one ought to take interest in the lowly, realise that they had the same souls and the same griefs as oneself, and seek in brotherly or sisterly fashion to make them happy? She certainly sought to acquire such an interest, but with no great success, for she secretly feared that it might lead her into sin, as it could not be right to alter aught of the social system which had been established by God and consecrated by the Church. Charitable she undoubtedly was, wont to bestow small sums in alms, but she did not give her heart, she felt no true sympathy for the humble, belonging as she did to such a different race, which looked to a throne in heaven high above the seats of all the plebeian elect. She and Pierre, however, found themselves on other mornings side by side in the shade of the laurels near the trickling, singing water; and he, lacking occupation, weary of waiting for a solution which seemed to recede day by day, fervently strove to animate this young and beautiful woman with some of his own fraternal feelings. He was impassioned by the idea that he was catechising Italy herself, the queen of beauty, who was still slumbering in ignorance, but who would recover all her past glory if she were to awake to the new times with soul enlarged, swelling with pity for men and things. Reading good Abbe Rose's letters to Benedetta, he made her shudder at the frightful wail of wretchedness which ascends from all great cities. With such deep tenderness in her eyes, with the happiness of love reciprocated emanating from her whole being, why should she not recognise, even as he did, that the law of love was the sole means of saving suffering humanity, which, through hatred, incurred the danger of death? And to please him she did try to believe in democracy, in the fraternal remodelling of society, but among other nations only--not at Rome, for an involuntary, gentle laugh came to her lips whenever his words evoked the idea of the poor still remaining in the Trastevere district fraternising with those who yet dwelt in the old princely palaces. No, no, things had been as they were so long; they could not, must not, be altered! And so, after all, Pierre's pupil made little progress: she was, in reality, simply touched by the wealth of ardent love which the young priest had chastely transferred from one alone to the whole of human kind. And between him and her, as those sunlit October mornings went by, a tie of exquisite sweetness was formed; they came to love one another with deep, pure, fraternal affection, amidst the great glowing passion which consumed them both. Then, one day, Benedetta, her elbow resting on the sarcophagus, spoke of Dario, whose name she had hitherto refrained from mentioning. Ah! poor /amico/, how circumspect and repentant he had shown himself since that fit of brutal insanity! At first, to conceal his embarrassment, he had gone to spend three days at Naples, and it was said that La Tonietta, the sentimental /demi-mondaine/, had hastened to join him there, wildly in love with him. Since his return to the mansion he had avoided all private meetings with his cousin, and scarcely saw her except at the Monday receptions, when he wore a submissive air, and with his eyes silently entreated forgiveness. "Yesterday, however," continued Benedetta, "I met him on the staircase and gave him my hand. He understood that I was no longer angry with him and was very happy. What else could I have done? One must not be severe for ever. Besides, I do not want things to go too far between him and that woman. I want him to remember that I still love him, and am still waiting for him. Oh! he is mine, mine alone. But alas! I cannot say the word: our affairs are in such sorry plight." She paused, and two big tears welled into her eyes. The divorce proceedings to which she alluded had now come to a standstill, fresh obstacles ever arising to stay their course. Pierre was much moved by her tears, for she seldom wept. She herself sometimes confessed, with her calm smile, that she did not know how to weep. But now her heart was melting, and for a moment she remained overcome, leaning on the mossy, crumbling sarcophagus, whilst the clear water falling from the gaping mouth of the tragic mask still sounded its flutelike note. And a sudden thought of death came to the priest as he saw her, so young and so radiant with beauty, half fainting beside that marble resting-place where fauns were rushing upon nymphs in a frantic bacchanal which proclaimed the omnipotence of love--that omnipotence which the ancients were fond of symbolising on their tombs as a token of life's eternity. And meantime a faint, warm breeze passed through the sunlit, silent garden, wafting hither and thither the penetrating scent of box and orange. "One has so much strength when one loves," Pierre at last murmured. "Yes, yes, you are right," she replied, already smiling again. "I am childish. But it is the fault of your book. It is only when I suffer that I properly understand it. But all the same I am making progress, am I not? Since you desire it, let all the poor, all those who suffer, as I do, be my brothers and sisters." Then for a while they resumed their chat. On these occasions Benedetta was usually the first to return to the house, and Pierre would linger alone under the laurels, vaguely dreaming of sweet, sad things. Often did he think how hard life proved for poor creatures whose only thirst was for happiness! One Monday evening, at a quarter-past ten, only the young folks remained in Donna Serafina's reception-room. Monsignor Nani had merely put in an appearance that night, and Cardinal Sarno had just gone off. Even Donna Serafina, in her usual seat by the fireplace, seemed to have withdrawn from the others, absorbed as she was in contemplation of the chair which the absent Morano still stubbornly left unoccupied. Chatting and laughing in front of the sofa on which sat Benedetta and Celia were Dario, Pierre, and Narcisse Habert, the last of whom had begun to twit the young Prince, having met him, so he asserted, a few days previously, in the company of a very pretty girl. "Oh! don't deny it, my dear fellow," continued Narcisse, "for she was really superb. She was walking beside you, and you turned into a lane together--the Borgo Angelico, I think." Dario listened smiling, quite at his ease and incapable of denying his passionate predilection for beauty. "No doubt, no doubt; it was I, I don't deny it," he responded. "Only the inferences you draw are not correct." And turning towards Benedetta, who, without a thought of jealous anxiety, wore as gay a look as himself, as though delighted that he should have enjoyed that passing pleasure of the eyes, he went on: "It was the girl, you know, whom I found in tears six weeks ago. Yes, that bead-worker who was sobbing because the workshop was shut up, and who rushed along, all blushing, to conduct me to her parents when I offered her a bit of silver. Pierina her name is, as you, perhaps, remember." "Oh! yes, Pierina." "Well, since then I've met her in the street on four or five occasions. And, to tell the truth, she is so very beautiful that I've stopped and spoken to her. The other day, for instance, I walked with her as far as a manufacturer's. But she hasn't yet found any work, and she began to cry, and so, to console her a little, I kissed her. She was quite taken aback at it, but she seemed very well pleased." At this all the others began to laugh. But suddenly Celia desisted and said very gravely, "You know, Dario, she loves you; you must not be hard on her." Dario, no doubt, was of Celia's opinion, for he again looked at Benedetta, but with a gay toss of the head, as if to say that, although the girl might love him, he did not love her. A bead-worker indeed, a girl of the lowest classes, pooh! She might be a Venus, but she could be nothing to him. And he himself made merry over his romantic adventure, which Narcisse sought to arrange in a kind of antique sonnet: A beautiful bead-worker falling madly in love with a young prince, as fair as sunlight, who, touched by her misfortune, hands her a silver crown; then the beautiful bead-worker, quite overcome at finding him as charitable as handsome, dreaming of him incessantly, and following him everywhere, chained to his steps by a link of flame; and finally the beautiful bead-worker, who has refused the silver crown, so entreating the handsome prince with her soft, submissive eyes, that he at last deigns to grant her the alms of his heart. This pastime greatly amused Benedetta; but Celia, with her angelic face and the air of a little girl who ought to have been ignorant of everything, remained very grave and repeated sadly, "Dario, Dario, she loves you; you must not make her suffer." Then the Contessina, in her turn, was moved to pity. "And those poor folks are not happy!" said she. "Oh!" exclaimed the Prince, "it's misery beyond belief. On the day she took me to the Quartiere dei Prati* I was quite overcome; it was awful, astonishingly awful!" * The district of the castle meadows--see /ante/ note.--Trans. "But I remember that we promised to go to see the poor people," resumed Benedetta, "and we have done wrong in delaying our visit so long. For your studies, Monsieur l'Abbe Froment, you greatly desired to accompany us and see the poor of Rome--was that not so?" As she spoke she raised her eyes to Pierre, who for a moment had been silent. He was much moved by her charitable thought, for he realised, by the faint quiver of her voice, that she desired to appear a docile pupil, progressing in affection for the lowly and the wretched. Moreover, his passion for his apostolate had at once returned to him. "Oh!" said he, "I shall not quit Rome without having seen those who suffer, those who lack work and bread. Therein lies the malady which affects every nation; salvation can only be attained by the healing of misery. When the roots of the tree cannot find sustenance the tree dies." "Well," resumed the Contessina, "we will fix an appointment at once; you shall come with us to the Quartiere dei Prati--Dario will take us there." At this the Prince, who had listened to the priest with an air of stupefaction, unable to understand the simile of the tree and its roots, began to protest distressfully, "No, no, cousin, take Monsieur l'Abbe for a stroll there if it amuses you. But I've been, and don't want to go back. Why, when I got home the last time I was so upset that I almost took to my bed. No, no; such abominations are too awful--it isn't possible." At this moment a voice, bitter with displeasure, arose from the chimney corner. Donna Serafina was emerging from her long silence. "Dario is quite right! Send your alms, my dear, and I will gladly add mine. There are other places where you might take Monsieur l'Abbe, and which it would be far more useful for him to see. With that idea of yours you would send him away with a nice recollection of our city." Roman pride rang out amidst the old lady's bad temper. Why, indeed, show one's sores to foreigners, whose visit is possibly prompted by hostile curiosity? One always ought to look beautiful; Rome should not be shown otherwise than in the garb of glory. Narcisse, however, had taken possession of Pierre. "It's true, my dear Abbe," said he; "I forgot to recommend that stroll to you. You really must visit the new district built over the castle meadows. It's typical, and sums up all the others. And you won't lose your time there, I'll warrant you, for nowhere can you learn more about the Rome of the present day. It's extraordinary, extraordinary!" Then, addressing Benedetta, he added, "Is it decided? Shall we say to-morrow morning? You'll find the Abbe and me over there, for I want to explain matters to him beforehand, in order that he may understand them. What do you say to ten o'clock?" Before answering him the Contessina turned towards her aunt and respectfully opposed her views. "But Monsieur l'Abbe, aunt, has met enough beggars in our streets already, so he may well see everything. Besides, judging by his book, he won't see worse things than he has seen in Paris. As he says in one passage, hunger is the same all the world over." Then, with her sensible air, she gently laid siege to Dario. "You know, Dario," said she, "you would please me very much by taking me there. We can go in the carriage and join these gentlemen. It will be a very pleasant outing for us. It is such a long time since we went out together." It was certainly that idea of going out with Dario, of having a pretext for a complete reconciliation with him, that enchanted her; he himself realised it, and, unable to escape, he tried to treat the matter as a joke. "Ah! cousin," he said, "it will be your fault; I shall have the nightmare for a week. An excursion like that spoils all the enjoyment of life for days and days." The mere thought made him quiver with revolt. However, laughter again rang out around him, and, in spite of Donna Serafina's mute disapproval, the appointment was finally fixed for the following morning at ten o'clock. Celia as she went off expressed deep regret that she could not form one of the party; but, with the closed candour of a budding lily, she really took interest in Pierina alone. As she reached the ante-room she whispered in her friend's ear: "Take a good look at that beauty, my dear, so as to tell me whether she is so very beautiful--beautiful beyond compare." When Pierre met Narcisse near the Castle of Sant' Angelo on the morrow, at nine o'clock, he was surprised to find him again languid and enraptured, plunged anew in artistic enthusiasm. At first not a word was said of the excursion. Narcisse related that he had risen at sunrise in order that he might spend an hour before Bernini's "Santa Teresa." It seemed that when he did not see that statue for a week he suffered as acutely as if he were parted from some cherished mistress. And his adoration varied with the time of day, according to the light in which he beheld the figure: in the morning, when the pale glow of dawn steeped it in whiteness, he worshipped it with quite a mystical transport of the soul, whilst in the afternoon, when the glow of the declining sun's oblique rays seemed to permeate the marble, his passion became as fiery red as the blood of martyrs. "Ah! my friend," said he with a weary air whilst his dreamy eyes faded to mauve, "you have no idea how delightful and perturbing her awakening was this morning--how languorously she opened her eyes, like a pure, candid virgin, emerging from the embrace of the Divinity. One could die of rapture at the sight!" Then, growing calm again when he had taken a few steps, he resumed in the voice of a practical man who does not lose his balance in the affairs of life: "We'll walk slowly towards the castle-fields district--the buildings yonder; and on our way I'll tell you what I know of the things we shall see there. It was the maddest affair imaginable, one of those delirious frenzies of speculation which have a splendour of their own, just like the superb, monstrous masterpiece of a man of genius whose mind is unhinged. I was told of it all by some relatives of mine, who took part in the gambling, and, in point of fact, made a good deal of money by it." Thereupon, with the clearness and precision of a financier, employing technical terms with perfect ease, he recounted the extraordinary adventure. That all Italy, on the morrow of the occupation of Rome, should have been delirious with enthusiasm at the thought of at last possessing the ancient and glorious city, the eternal capital to which the empire of the world had been promised, was but natural. It was, so to say, a legitimate explosion of the delight and the hopes of a young nation anxious to show its power. The question was to make Rome a modern capital worthy of a great kingdom, and before aught else there were sanitary requirements to be dealt with: the city needed to be cleansed of all the filth which disgraced it. One cannot nowadays imagine in what abominable putrescence the city of the popes, the /Roma sporca/ which artists regret, was then steeped: the vast majority of the houses lacked even the most primitive arrangements, the public thoroughfares were used for all purposes, noble ruins served as store-places for sewage, the princely palaces were surrounded by filth, and the streets were perfect manure beds which fostered frequent epidemics. Thus vast municipal works were absolutely necessary, the question was one of health and life itself. And in much the same way it was only right to think of building houses for the newcomers, who would assuredly flock into the city. There had been a precedent at Berlin, whose population, after the establishment of the German empire, had suddenly increased by some hundreds of thousands. In the same way the population of Rome would certainly be doubled, tripled, quadrupled, for as the new centre of national life the city would necessarily attract all the /vis viva/ of the provinces. And at this thought pride stepped in: the fallen government of the Vatican must be shown what Italy was capable of achieving, what splendour she would bestow on the new and third Rome, which, by the magnificence of its thoroughfares and the multitude of its people, would far excel either the imperial or the papal city. True, during the early years some prudence was observed; wisely enough, houses were only built in proportion as they were required. The population had doubled at one bound, rising from two to four hundred thousand souls, thanks to the arrival of the little world of employees and officials of the public services--all those who live on the State or hope to live on it, without mentioning the idlers and enjoyers of life whom a Court always carries in its train. However, this influx of newcomers was a first cause of intoxication, for every one imagined that the increase would continue, and, in fact, become more and more rapid. And so the city of the day before no longer seemed large enough; it was necessary to make immediate preparations for the morrow's need by enlarging Rome on all sides. Folks talked, too, of the Paris of the second empire, which had been so extended and transformed into a city of light and health. But unfortunately on the banks of the Tiber there was neither any preconcerted general plan nor any clear-seeing man, master of the situation, supported by powerful financial organisations. And the work, begun by pride, prompted by the ambition of surpassing the Rome of the Caesars and the Popes, the determination to make the eternal, predestined city the queen and centre of the world once more, was completed by speculation, one of those extraordinary gambling frenzies, those tempests which arise, rage, destroy, and carry everything away without premonitory warning or possibility of arresting their course. All at once it was rumoured that land bought at five francs the metre had been sold again for a hundred francs the metre; and thereupon the fever arose--the fever of a nation which is passionately fond of gambling. A flight of speculators descending from North Italy swooped down upon Rome, the noblest and easiest of preys. Those needy, famished mountaineers found spoils for every appetite in that voluptuous South where life is so benign, and the very delights of the climate helped to corrupt and hasten moral gangrene. At first, too; it was merely necessary to stoop; money was to be found by the shovelful among the rubbish of the first districts which were opened up. People who were clever enough to scent the course which the new thoroughfares would take and purchase buildings threatened with demolition increased their capital tenfold in a couple of years. And after that the contagion spread, infecting all classes--the princes, burgesses, petty proprietors, even the shop-keepers, bakers, grocers, and boot-makers; the delirium rising to such a pitch that a mere baker subsequently failed for forty-five millions.* Nothing, indeed, was left but rageful gambling, in which the stakes were millions, whilst the lands and the houses became mere fictions, mere pretexts for stock-exchange operations. And thus the old hereditary pride, which had dreamt of transforming Rome into the capital of the world, was heated to madness by the high fever of speculation--folks buying, and building, and selling without limit, without a pause, even as one might throw shares upon the market as fast and as long as presses can be found to print them. * 1,800,000 pounds. See /ante/ note.--Trans. No other city in course of evolution has ever furnished such a spectacle. Nowadays, when one strives to penetrate things one is confounded. The population had increased to five hundred thousand, and then seemingly remained stationary; nevertheless, new districts continued to sprout up more thickly than ever. Yet what folly it was not to wait for a further influx of inhabitants! Why continue piling up accommodation for thousands of families whose advent was uncertain? The only excuse lay in having beforehand propounded the proposition that the third Rome, the triumphant capital of Italy, could not count less than a million souls, and in regarding that proposition as indisputable fact. The people had not come, but they surely would come: no patriot could doubt it without being guilty of treason. And so houses were built and built without a pause, for the half-million citizens who were coming. There was no anxiety as to the date of their arrival; it was sufficient that they should be expected. Inside Rome the companies which had been formed in connection with the new thoroughfares passing through the old, demolished, pestiferous districts, certainly sold or let their house property, and thereby realised large profits. But, as the craze increased, other companies were established for the purpose of erecting yet more and more districts outside Rome--veritable little towns, of which there was no need whatever. Beyond the Porta San Giovanni and the Porta San Lorenzo, suburbs sprang up as by miracle. A town was sketched out over the vast estate of the Villa Ludovisi, from the Porta Pia to the Porta Salaria and even as far as Sant' Agnese. And then came an attempt to make quite a little city, with church, school, and market, arise all at once on the fields of the Castle of Sant' Angelo. And it was no question of small dwellings for labourers, modest flats for employees, and others of limited means; no, it was a question of colossal mansions three and four storeys high, displaying uniform and endless facades which made these new excentral quarters quite Babylonian, such districts, indeed, as only capitals endowed with intense life, like Paris and London, could contrive to populate. However, such were the monstrous products of pride and gambling; and what a page of history, what a bitter lesson now that Rome, financially ruined, is further disgraced by that hideous girdle of empty, and, for the most part, uncompleted carcases, whose ruins already strew the grassy streets! The fatal collapse, the disaster proved a frightful one. Narcisse explained its causes and recounted its phases so clearly that Pierre fully understood. Naturally enough, numerous financial companies had sprouted up: the Immobiliere, the Society d'Edilizia e Construzione, the Fondaria, the Tiberiana, and the Esquilino. Nearly all of them built, erected huge houses, entire streets of them, for purposes of sale; but they also gambled in land, selling plots at large profit to petty speculators, who also dreamt of making large profits amidst the continuous, fictitious rise brought about by the growing fever of agiotage. And the worst was that the petty speculators, the middle-class people, the inexperienced shop-keepers without capital, were crazy enough to build in their turn by borrowing of the banks or applying to the companies which had sold them the land for sufficient cash to enable them to complete their structures. As a general rule, to avoid the loss of everything, the companies were one day compelled to take back both land and buildings, incomplete though the latter might be, and from the congestion which resulted they were bound to perish. If the expected million of people had arrived to occupy the dwellings prepared for them the gains would have been fabulous, and in ten years Rome might have become one of the most flourishing capitals of the world. But the people did not come, and the dwellings remained empty. Moreover, the buildings erected by the companies were too large and costly for the average investor inclined to put his money into house property. Heredity had acted, the builders had planned things on too huge a scale, raising a series of magnificent piles whose purpose was to dwarf those of all other ages; but, as it happened, they were fated to remain lifeless and deserted, testifying with wondrous eloquence to the impotence of pride. So there was no private capital that dared or could take the place of that of the companies. Elsewhere, in Paris for instance, new districts have been erected and embellishments have been carried out with the capital of the country--the money saved by dint of thrift. But in Rome all was built on the credit system, either by means of bills of exchange at ninety days, or--and this was chiefly the case--by borrowing money abroad. The huge sum sunk in these enterprises is estimated at a milliard, four-fifths of which was French money. The bankers did everything; the French ones lent to the Italian bankers at 3 1/2 or 4 per cent.; and the Italian bankers accommodated the speculators, the Roman builders, at 6, 7, and even 8 per cent. And thus the disaster was great indeed when France, learning of Italy's alliance with Germany, withdrew her 800,000,000 francs in less than two years. The Italian banks were drained of their specie, and the land and building companies, being likewise compelled to reimburse their loans, were compelled to apply to the banks of issue, those privileged to issue notes. At the same time they intimidated the Government, threatening to stop all work and throw 40,000 artisans and labourers starving on the pavement of Rome if it did not compel the banks of issue to lend them the five or six millions of paper which they needed. And this the Government at last did, appalled by the possibility of universal bankruptcy. Naturally, however, the five or six millions could not be paid back at maturity, as the newly built houses found neither purchasers nor tenants; and so the great fall began, and continued with a rush, heaping ruin upon ruin. The petty speculators fell on the builders, the builders on the land companies, the land companies on the banks of issue, and the latter on the public credit, ruining the nation. And that was how a mere municipal crisis became a frightful disaster: a whole milliard sunk to no purpose, Rome disfigured, littered with the ruins of the gaping and empty dwellings which had been prepared for the five or six hundred thousand inhabitants for whom the city yet waits in vain! Moreover, in the breeze of glory which swept by, the state itself took a colossal view of things. It was a question of at once making Italy triumphant and perfect, of accomplishing in five and twenty years what other nations have required centuries to effect. So there was feverish activity and a prodigious outlay on canals, ports, roads, railway lines, and improvements in all the great cities. Directly after the alliance with Germany, moreover, the military and naval estimates began to devour millions to no purpose. And the ever growing financial requirements were simply met by the issue of paper, by a fresh loan each succeeding year. In Rome alone, too, the building of the Ministry of War cost ten millions, that of the Ministry of Finances fifteen, whilst a hundred was spent on the yet unfinished quays, and two hundred and fifty were sunk on works of defence around the city. And all this was a flare of the old hereditary pride, springing from that soil whose sap can only blossom in extravagant projects; the determination to dazzle and conquer the world which comes as soon as one has climbed to the Capitol, even though one's feet rest amidst the accumulated dust of all the forms of human power which have there crumbled one above the other. "And, my dear friend," continued Narcisse, "if I could go into all the stories that are current, that are whispered here and there, you would be stupefied at the insanity which overcame the whole city amidst the terrible fever to which the gambling passion gave rise. Folks of small account, and fools and ignorant people were not the only ones to be ruined; nearly all the Roman nobles lost their ancient fortunes, their gold and their palaces and their galleries of masterpieces, which they owed to the munificence of the popes. The colossal wealth which it had taken centuries of nepotism to pile up in the hands of a few melted away like wax, in less than ten years, in the levelling fire of modern speculation." Then, forgetting that he was speaking to a priest, he went on to relate one of the whispered stories to which he had alluded: "There's our good friend Dario, Prince Boccanera, the last of the name, reduced to live on the crumbs which fall to him from his uncle the Cardinal, who has little beyond his stipend left him. Well, Dario would be a rich man had it not been for that extraordinary affair of the Villa Montefiori. You have heard of it, no doubt; how Prince Onofrio, Dario's father, speculated, sold the villa grounds for ten millions, then bought them back and built on them, and how, at last, not only the ten millions were lost, but also all that remained of the once colossal fortune of the Boccaneras. What you haven't been told, however, is the secret part which Count Prada--our Contessina's husband--played in the affair. He was the lover of Princess Boccanera, the beautiful Flavia Montefiori, who had brought the villa as dowry to the old Prince. She was a very fine woman, much younger than her husband, and it is positively said that it was through her that Prada mastered the Prince--for she held her old doting husband at arm's length whenever he hesitated to give a signature or go farther into the affair of which he scented the danger. And in all this Prada gained the millions which he now spends, while as for the beautiful Flavia, you are aware, no doubt, that she saved a little fortune from the wreck and bought herself a second and much younger husband, whom she turned into a Marquis Montefiori. In the whole affair the only victim is our good friend Dario, who is absolutely ruined, and wishes to marry his cousin, who is as poor as himself. It's true that she's determined to have him, and that it's impossible for him not to reciprocate her love. But for that he would have already married some American girl with a dowry of millions, like so many of the ruined princes, on the verge of starvation, have done; that is, unless the Cardinal and Donna Serafina had opposed such a match, which would not have been surprising, proud and stubborn as they are, anxious to preserve the purity of their old Roman blood. However, let us hope that Dario and the exquisite Benedetta will some day be happy together." Narcisse paused; but, after taking a few steps in silence, he added in a lower tone: "I've a relative who picked up nearly three millions in that Villa Montefiori affair. Ah! I regret that I wasn't here in those heroic days of speculation. It must have been very amusing; and what strokes there were for a man of self-possession to make!" However, all at once, as he raised his head, he saw before him the Quartiere dei Prati--the new district of the castle fields; and his face thereupon changed: he again became an artist, indignant with the modern abominations with which old Rome had been disfigured. His eyes paled, and a curl of his lips expressed the bitter disdain of a dreamer whose passion for the vanished centuries was sorely hurt: "Look, look at it all!" he exclaimed. "To think of it, in the city of Augustus, the city of Leo X, the city of eternal power and eternal beauty!" Pierre himself was thunderstruck. The meadows of the Castle of Sant' Angelo, dotted with a few poplar trees, had here formerly stretched alongside the Tiber as far as the first slopes of Monte Mario, thus supplying, to the satisfaction of artists, a foreground or greenery to the Borgo and the dome of St. Peter's. But now, amidst the white, leprous, overturned plain, there stood a town of huge, massive houses, cubes of stone-work, invariably the same, with broad streets intersecting one another at right angles. From end to end similar facades appeared, suggesting series of convents, barracks, or hospitals. Extraordinary and painful was the impression produced by this town so suddenly immobilised whilst in course of erection. It was as if on some accursed morning a wicked magician had with one touch of his wand stopped the works and emptied the noisy stone-yards, leaving the buildings in mournful abandonment. Here on one side the soil had been banked up; there deep pits dug for foundations had remained gaping, overrun with weeds. There were houses whose halls scarcely rose above the level of the soil; others which had been raised to a second or third floor; others, again, which had been carried as high as was intended, and even roofed in, suggesting skeletons or empty cages. Then there were houses finished excepting that their walls had not been plastered, others which had been left without window frames, shutters, or doors; others, again, which had their doors and shutters, but were nailed up like coffins with not a soul inside them; and yet others which were partly, and in a few cases fully, inhabited--animated by the most unexpected of populations. And no words could describe the fearful mournfulness of that City of the Sleeping Beauty, hushed into mortal slumber before it had even lived, lying annihilated beneath the heavy sun pending an awakening which, likely enough, would never come. Following his companion, Pierre walked along the broad, deserted streets, where all was still as in a cemetery. Not a vehicle nor a pedestrian passed by. Some streets had no foot ways; weeds were covering the unpaved roads, turning them once more into fields; and yet there were temporary gas lamps, mere leaden pipes bound to poles, which had been there for years. To avoid payment of the door and window tax, the house owners had generally closed all apertures with planks; while some houses, of which little had been built, were surrounded by high palings for fear lest their cellars should become the dens of all the bandits of the district. But the most painful sight of all was that of the young ruins, the proud, lofty structures, which, although unfinished, were already cracking on all sides, and required the support of an intricate arrangement of timbers to prevent them from falling in dust upon the ground. A pang came to one's heart as though one was in a city which some scourge had depopulated--pestilence, war, or bombardment, of which these gaping carcases seem to retain the mark. Then at the thought that this was abortment, not death--that destruction would complete its work before the dreamt-of, vainly awaited denizens would bring life to the still-born houses, one's melancholy deepened to hopeless discouragement. And at each corner, moreover, there was the frightful irony of the magnificent marble slabs which bore the names of the streets, illustrious historical names, Gracchus, Scipio, Pliny, Pompey, Julius Caesar, blazing forth on those unfinished, crumbling walls like a buffet dealt by the Past to modern incompetency. Then Pierre was once more struck by this truth--that whosoever possesses Rome is consumed by the building frenzy, the passion for marble, the boastful desire to build and leave his monument of glory to future generations. After the Caesars and the Popes had come the Italian Government, which was no sooner master of the city than it wished to reconstruct it, make it more splendid, more huge than it had ever been before. It was the fatal suggestion of the soil itself--the blood of Augustus rushing to the brain of these last-comers and urging them to a mad desire to make the third Rome the queen of the earth. Thence had come all the vast schemes such as the cyclopean quays and the mere ministries struggling to outvie the Colosseum; and thence had come all the new districts of gigantic houses which had sprouted like towns around the ancient city. It was not only on the castle fields, but at the Porta San Giovanni, the Porta San Lorenzo, the Villa Ludovisi, and on the heights of the Viminal and the Esquiline that unfinished, empty districts were already crumbling amidst the weeds of their deserted streets. After two thousand years of prodigious fertility the soil really seemed to be exhausted. Even as in very old fruit gardens newly planted plum and cherry trees wither and die, so the new walls, no doubt, found no life in that old dust of Rome, impoverished by the immemorial growth of so many temples, circuses, arches, basilicas, and churches. And thus the modern houses, which men had sought to render fruitful, the useless, over-huge houses, swollen with hereditary ambition, had been unable to attain maturity, and remained there sterile like dry bushes on a plot of land exhausted by over-cultivation. And the frightful sadness that one felt arose from the fact that so creative and great a past had culminated in such present-day impotency--Rome, who had covered the world with indestructible monuments, now so reduced that she could only generate ruins. "Oh, they'll be finished some day!" said Pierre. Narcisse gazed at him in astonishment: "For whom?" That was the cruel question! Only by dint of patriotic enthusiasm on the morrow of the conquest had one been able to indulge in the hope of a mighty influx of population, and now singular blindness was needed for the belief that such an influx would ever take place. The past experiments seemed decisive; moreover, there was no reason why the population should double: Rome offered neither the attraction of pleasure nor that of gain to be amassed in commerce and industry for those she had not, nor of intensity of social and intellectual life, since of this she seemed no longer capable. In any case, years and years would be requisite. And, meantime, how could one people those houses which were finished; and for whom was one to finish those which had remained mere skeletons, falling to pieces under sun and rain? Must they all remain there indefinitely, some gaunt and open to every blast and others closed and silent like tombs, in the wretched hideousness of their inutility and abandonment? What a terrible proof of error they offered under the radiant sky! The new masters of Rome had made a bad start, and even if they now knew what they ought to have done would they have the courage to undo what they had done? Since the milliard sunk there seemed to be definitely lost and wasted, one actually hoped for the advent of a Nero, endowed with mighty, sovereign will, who would take torch and pick and burn and raze everything in the avenging name of reason and beauty. "Ah!" resumed Narcisse, "here are the Contessina and the Prince." Benedetta had told the coachman to pull up in one of the open spaces intersecting the deserted streets, and now along the broad, quiet, grassy road--well fitted for a lovers' stroll--she was approaching on Dario's arm, both of them delighted with their outing, and no longer thinking of the sad things which they had come to see. "What a nice day it is!" the Contessina gaily exclaimed as she reached Pierre and Narcisse. "How pleasant the sunshine is! It's quite a treat to be able to walk about a little as if one were in the country!" Dario was the first to cease smiling at the blue sky, all the delight of his stroll with his cousin on his arm suddenly departing. "My dear," said he, "we must go to see those people, since you are bent on it, though it will certainly spoil our day. But first I must take my bearings. I'm not particularly clever, you know, in finding my way in places where I don't care to go. Besides, this district is idiotic with all its dead streets and dead houses, and never a face or a shop to serve as a reminder. Still I think the place is over yonder. Follow me; at all events, we shall see." The four friends then wended their way towards the central part of the district, the part facing the Tiber, where a small nucleus of a population had collected. The landlords turned the few completed houses to the best advantage they could, letting the rooms at very low rentals, and waiting patiently enough for payment. Some needy employees, some poverty-stricken families--had thus installed themselves there, and in the long run contrived to pay a trifle for their accommodation. In consequence, however, of the demolition of the ancient Ghetto and the opening of the new streets by which air had been let into the Trastevere district, perfect hordes of tatterdemalions, famished and homeless, and almost without garments, had swooped upon the unfinished houses, filling them with wretchedness and vermin; and it had been necessary to tolerate this lawless occupation lest all the frightful misery should remain displayed in the public thoroughfares. And so it was to those frightful tenants that had fallen the huge four and five storeyed palaces, entered by monumental doorways flanked by lofty statues and having carved balconies upheld by caryatides all along their fronts. Each family had made its choice, often closing the frameless windows with boards and the gaping doorways with rags, and occupying now an entire princely flat and now a few small rooms, according to its taste. Horrid-looking linen hung drying from the carved balconies, foul stains already degraded the white walls, and from the magnificent porches, intended for sumptuous equipages, there poured a stream of filth which rotted in stagnant pools in the roads, where there was neither pavement nor footpath. On two occasions already Dario had caused his companions to retrace their steps. He was losing his way and becoming more and more gloomy. "I ought to have taken to the left," said he, "but how is one to know amidst such a set as that!" Parties of verminous children were now to be seen rolling in the dust; they were wondrously dirty, almost naked, with black skins and tangled locks as coarse as horsehair. There were also women in sordid skirts and with their loose jackets unhooked. Many stood talking together in yelping voices, whilst others, seated on old chairs with their hands on their knees, remained like that idle for hours. Not many men were met; but a few lay on the scorched grass, sleeping heavily in the sunlight. However, the stench was becoming unbearable--a stench of misery as when the human animal eschews all cleanliness to wallow in filth. And matters were made worse by the smell from a small, improvised market--the emanations of the rotting fruit, cooked and sour vegetables, and stale fried fish which a few poor women had set out on the ground amidst a throng of famished, covetous children. "Ah! well, my dear, I really don't know where it is," all at once exclaimed the Prince, addressing his cousin. "Be reasonable; we've surely seen enough; let's go back to the carriage." He was really suffering, and, as Benedetta had said, he did not know how to suffer. It seemed to him monstrous that one should sadden one's life by such an excursion as this. Life ought to be buoyant and benign under the clear sky, brightened by pleasant sights, by dance and song. And he, with his naive egotism, had a positive horror of ugliness, poverty, and suffering, the sight of which caused him both mental and physical pain. Benedetta shuddered even as he did, but in presence of Pierre she desired to be brave. Glancing at him, and seeing how deeply interested and compassionate he looked, she desired to persevere in her effort to sympathise with the humble and the wretched. "No, no, Dario, we must stay. These gentlemen wish to see everything--is it not so?" "Oh, the Rome of to-day is here," exclaimed Pierre; "this tells one more about it than all the promenades among the ruins and the monuments." "You exaggerate, my dear Abbe," declared Narcisse. "Still, I will admit that it is very interesting. Some of the old women are particularly expressive." At this moment Benedetta, seeing a superbly beautiful girl in front of her, could not restrain a cry of enraptured admiration: "/O che bellezza!" And then Dario, having recognised the girl, exclaimed with the same delight: "Why, it's La Pierina; she'll show us the way." The girl had been following the party for a moment already without daring to approach. Her eyes, glittering with the joy of a loving slave, had at first darted towards the Prince, and then had hastily scrutinised the Contessina--not, however, with any show of jealous anger, but with an expression of affectionate submission and resigned happiness at seeing that she also was very beautiful. And the girl fully answered to the Prince's description of her--tall, sturdy, with the bust of a goddess, a real antique, a Juno of twenty, her chin somewhat prominent, her mouth and nose perfect in contour, her eyes large and full like a heifer's, and her whole face quite dazzling--gilded, so to say, by a sunflash--beneath her casque of heavy jet-black hair. "So you will show us the way?" said Benedetta, familiar and smiling, already consoled for all the surrounding ugliness by the thought that there should be such beautiful creatures in the world. "Oh yes, signora, yes, at once!" And thereupon Pierina ran off before them, her feet in shoes which at any rate had no holes, whilst the old brown woollen dress which she wore appeared to have been recently washed and mended. One seemed to divine in her a certain coquettish care, a desire for cleanliness, which none of the others displayed; unless, indeed, it were simply that her great beauty lent radiance to her humble garments and made her appear a goddess. "/Che bellezza! the bellezza!/" the Contessina repeated without wearying. "That girl, Dario /mio/, is a real feast for the eyes!" "I knew she would please you," he quietly replied, flattered at having discovered such a beauty, and no longer talking of departure, since he could at last rest his eyes on something pleasant. Behind them came Pierre, likewise full of admiration, whilst Narcisse spoke to him of the scrupulosity of his own tastes, which were for the rare and the subtle. "She's beautiful, no doubt," said he; "but at bottom nothing can be more gross than the Roman style of beauty; there's no soul, none of the infinite in it. These girls simply have blood under their skins without ever a glimpse of heaven." Meantime Pierina had stopped, and with a wave of the hand directed attention to her mother, who sat on a broken box beside the lofty doorway of an unfinished mansion. She also must have once been very beautiful, but at forty she was already a wreck, with dim eyes, drawn mouth, black teeth, broadly wrinkled countenance, and huge fallen bosom. And she was also fearfully dirty, her grey wavy hair dishevelled and her skirt and jacket soiled and slit, revealing glimpses of grimy flesh. On her knees she held a sleeping infant, her last-born, at whom she gazed like one overwhelmed and courageless, like a beast of burden resigned to her fate. "/Bene, bene,/" said she, raising her head, "it's the gentleman who came to give me a crown because he saw you crying. And he's come back to see us with some friends. Well, well, there are some good hearts in the world after all." Then she related their story, but in a spiritless way, without seeking to move her visitors. She was called Giacinta, it appeared, and had married a mason, one Tomaso Gozzo, by whom she had had seven children, Pierina, then Tito, a big fellow of eighteen, then four more girls, each at an interval of two years, and finally the infant, a boy, whom she now had on her lap. They had long lived in the Trastevere district, in an old house which had lately been pulled down; and their existence seemed to have then been shattered, for since they had taken refuge in the Quartiere dei Prati the crisis in the building trade had reduced Tomaso and Tito to absolute idleness, and the bead factory where Pierina had earned as much as tenpence a day--just enough to prevent them from dying of hunger--had closed its doors. At present not one of them had any work; they lived purely by chance. "If you like to go up," the woman added, "you'll find Tomaso there with his brother Ambrogio, whom we've taken to live with us. They'll know better than I what to say to you. Tomaso is resting; but what else can he do? It's like Tito--he's dozing over there." So saying she pointed towards the dry grass amidst which lay a tall young fellow with a pronounced nose, hard mouth, and eyes as admirable as Pierina's. He had raised his head to glance suspiciously at the visitors, a fierce frown gathering on his forehead when he remarked how rapturously his sister contemplated the Prince. Then he let his head fall again, but kept his eyes open, watching the pair stealthily. "Take the lady and gentlemen upstairs, Pierina, since they would like to see the place," said the mother. Other women had now drawn near, shuffling along with bare feet in old shoes; bands of children, too, were swarming around; little girls but half clad, amongst whom, no doubt, were Giacinta's four. However, with their black eyes under their tangled mops they were all so much alike that only their mothers could identify them. And the whole resembled a teeming camp of misery pitched on that spot of majestic disaster, that street of palaces, unfinished yet already in ruins. With a soft, loving smile, Benedetta turned to her cousin. "Don't you come up," she gently said; "I don't desire your death, Dario /mio/. It was very good of you to come so far. Wait for me here in the pleasant sunshine: Monsieur l'Abbe and Monsieur Habert will go up with me." Dario began to laugh, and willingly acquiesced. Then lighting a cigarette, he walked slowly up and down, well pleased with the mildness of the atmosphere. La Pierina had already darted into the spacious porch whose lofty, vaulted ceiling was adorned with coffers displaying a rosaceous pattern. However, a veritable manure heap covered such marble slabs as had already been laid in the vestibule, whilst the steps of the monumental stone staircase with sculptured balustrade were already cracked and so grimy that they seemed almost black. On all sides appeared the greasy stains of hands; the walls, whilst awaiting the painter and gilder, had been smeared with repulsive filth. On reaching the spacious first-floor landing Pierina paused, and contented herself with calling through a gaping portal which lacked both door and framework: "Father, here's a lady and two gentlemen to see you." Then to the Contessina she added: "It's the third room at the end." And forthwith she herself rapidly descended the stairs, hastening back to her passion. Benedetta and her companions passed through two large rooms, bossy with plaster under foot and having frameless windows wide open upon space; and at last they reached a third room, where the whole Gozzo family had installed itself with the remnants it used as furniture. On the floor, where the bare iron girders showed, no boards having been laid down, were five or six leprous-looking palliasses. A long table, which was still strong, occupied the centre of the room, and here and there were a few old, damaged, straw-seated chairs mended with bits of rope. The great business had been to close two of the three windows with boards, whilst the third one and the door were screened with some old mattress ticking studded with stains and holes. Tomaso's face expressed the surprise of a man who is unaccustomed to visits of charity. Seated at the table, with his elbows resting on it and his chin supported by his hands, he was taking repose, as his wife Giacinta had said. He was a sturdy fellow of five and forty, bearded and long-haired; and, in spite of all his misery and idleness, his large face had remained as serene as that of a Roman senator. However, the sight of the two foreigners--for such he at once judged Pierre and Narcisse to be, made him rise to his feet with sudden distrust. But he smiled on recognising Benedetta, and as she began to speak of Dario, and to explain the charitable purpose of their visit, he interrupted her: "Yes, yes, I know, Contessina. Oh! I well know who you are, for in my father's time I once walled up a window at the Palazzo Boccanera." Then he complaisantly allowed himself to be questioned, telling Pierre, who was surprised, that although they were certainly not happy they would have found life tolerable had they been able to work two days a week. And one could divine that he was, at heart, fairly well content to go on short commons, provided that he could live as he listed without fatigue. His narrative and his manner suggested the familiar locksmith who, on being summoned by a traveller to open his trunk, the key of which was lost, sent word that he could not possibly disturb himself during the hour of the siesta. In short, there was no rent to pay, as there were plenty of empty mansions open to the poor, and a few coppers would have sufficed for food, easily contented and sober as one was. "But oh, sir," Tomaso continued, "things were ever so much better under the Pope. My father, a mason like myself, worked at the Vatican all his life, and even now, when I myself get a job or two, it's always there. We were spoilt, you see, by those ten years of busy work, when we never left our ladders and earned as much as we pleased. Of course, we fed ourselves better, and bought ourselves clothes, and took such pleasure as we cared for; so that it's all the harder nowadays to have to stint ourselves. But if you'd only come to see us in the Pope's time! No taxes, everything to be had for nothing, so to say--why, one merely had to let oneself live." At this moment a growl arose from one of the palliasses lying in the shade of the boarded windows, and the mason, in his slow, quiet way, resumed: "It's my brother Ambrogio, who isn't of my opinion. "He was with the Republicans in '49, when he was fourteen. But it doesn't matter; we took him with us when we heard that he was dying of hunger and sickness in a cellar." The visitors could not help quivering with pity. Ambrogio was the elder by some fifteen years; and now, though scarcely sixty, he was already a ruin, consumed by fever, his legs so wasted that he spent his days on his palliasse without ever going out. Shorter and slighter, but more turbulent than his brother, he had been a carpenter by trade. And, despite his physical decay, he retained an extraordinary head--the head of an apostle and martyr, at once noble and tragic in its expression, and encompassed by bristling snowy hair and beard. "The Pope," he growled; "I've never spoken badly of the Pope. Yet it's his fault if tyranny continues. He alone in '49 could have given us the Republic, and then we shouldn't have been as we are now." Ambrogio had known Mazzini, whose vague religiosity remained in him--the dream of a Republican pope at last establishing the reign of liberty and fraternity. But later on his passion for Garibaldi had disturbed these views, and led him to regard the papacy as worthless, incapable of achieving human freedom. And so, between the dream of his youth and the stern experience of his life, he now hardly knew in which direction the truth lay. Moreover, he had never acted save under the impulse of violent emotion, but contented himself with fine words--vague, indeterminate wishes. "Brother Ambrogio," replied Tomaso, all tranquillity, "the Pope is the Pope, and wisdom lies in putting oneself on his side, because he will always be the Pope--that is to say, the stronger. For my part, if we had to vote to-morrow I'd vote for him." Calmed by the shrewd prudence characteristic of his race, the old carpenter made no haste to reply. At last he said, "Well, as for me, brother Tomaso, I should vote against him--always against him. And you know very well that we should have the majority. The Pope-king indeed! That's all over. The very Borgo would revolt. Still, I won't say that we oughtn't to come to an understanding with him, so that everybody's religion may be respected." Pierre listened, deeply interested, and at last ventured to ask: "Are there many socialists among the Roman working classes?" This time the answer came after a yet longer pause. "Socialists? Yes, there are some, no doubt, but much fewer than in other places. All those things are novelties which impatient fellows go in for without understanding much about them. We old men, we were for liberty; we don't believe in fire and massacre." Then, fearing to say too much in presence of that lady and those gentlemen, Ambrogio began to moan on his pallet, whilst the Contessina, somewhat upset by the smell of the place, took her departure, after telling the young priest that it would be best for them to leave their alms with the wife downstairs. Meantime Tomaso resumed his seat at the table, again letting his chin rest on his hands as he nodded to his visitors, no more impressed by their departure than he had been by their arrival: "To the pleasure of seeing you again, and am happy to have been able to oblige you." On the threshold, however, Narcisse's enthusiasm burst forth; he turned to cast a final admiring glance at old Ambrogio's head, "a perfect masterpiece," which he continued praising whilst he descended the stairs. Down below Giacinta was still sitting on the broken box with her infant across her lap, and a few steps away Pierina stood in front of Dario, watching him with an enchanted air whilst he finished his cigarette. Tito, lying low in the grass like an animal on the watch for prey, did not for a moment cease to gaze at them. "Ah, signora!" resumed the woman, in her resigned, doleful voice, "the place is hardly inhabitable, as you must have seen. The only good thing is that one gets plenty of room. But there are draughts enough to kill me, and I'm always so afraid of the children falling down some of the holes." Thereupon she related a story of a woman who had lost her life through mistaking a window for a door one evening and falling headlong into the street. Then, too, a little girl had broken both arms by tumbling from a staircase which had no banisters. And you could die there without anybody knowing how bad you were and coming to help you. Only the previous day the corpse of an old man had been found lying on the plaster in a lonely room. Starvation must have killed him quite a week previously, yet he would still have been stretched there if the odour of his remains had not attracted the attention of neighbours. "If one only had something to eat things wouldn't be so bad!" continued Giacinta. "But it's dreadful when there's a baby to suckle and one gets no food, for after a while one has no milk. This little fellow wants his titty and gets angry with me because I can't give him any. But it isn't my fault. He has sucked me till the blood came, and all I can do is to cry." As she spoke tears welled into her poor dim eyes. But all at once she flew into a tantrum with Tito, who was still wallowing in the grass like an animal instead of rising by way of civility towards those fine people, who would surely leave her some alms. "Eh! Tito, you lazy fellow, can't you get up when people come to see you?" she called. After some pretence of not hearing, the young fellow at last rose with an air of great ill-humour; and Pierre, feeling interested in him, tried to draw him out as he had done with the father and uncle upstairs. But Tito only returned curt answers, as if both bored and suspicious. Since there was no work to be had, said he, the only thing was to sleep. It was of no use to get angry; that wouldn't alter matters. So the best was to live as one could without increasing one's worry. As for socialists--well, yes, perhaps there were a few, but he didn't know any. And his weary, indifferent manner made it quite clear that, if his father was for the Pope and his uncle for the Republic, he himself was for nothing at all. In this Pierre divined the end of a nation, or rather the slumber of a nation in which democracy has not yet awakened. However, as the priest continued, asking Tito his age, what school he had attended, and in what district he had been born, the young man suddenly cut the questions short by pointing with one finger to his breast and saying gravely, "/Io son' Romano di Roma/." And, indeed, did not that answer everything? "I am a Roman of Rome." Pierre smiled sadly and spoke no further. Never had he more fully realised the pride of that race, the long-descending inheritance of glory which was so heavy to bear. The sovereign vanity of the Caesars lived anew in that degenerate young fellow who was scarcely able to read and write. Starveling though he was, he knew his city, and could instinctively have recounted the grand pages of its history. The names of the great emperors and great popes were familiar to him. And why should men toil and moil when they had been the masters of the world? Why not live nobly and idly in the most beautiful of cities, under the most beautiful of skies? "/Io son' Romano di Roma/!" Benedetta had slipped her alms into the mother's hand, and Pierre and Narcisse were following her example when Dario, who had already done so, thought of Pierina. He did not like to offer her money, but a pretty, fanciful idea occurred to him. Lightly touching his lips with his finger-tips, he said, with a faint laugh, "For beauty!" There was something really pretty and pleasing in the kiss thus wafted with a slightly mocking laugh by that familiar, good-natured young Prince who, as in some love story of the olden time, was touched by the beautiful bead-worker's mute adoration. Pierina flushed with pleasure, and, losing her head, darted upon Dario's hand and pressed her warm lips to it with unthinking impulsiveness, in which there was as much divine gratitude as tender passion. But Tito's eyes flashed with anger at the sight, and, brutally seizing his sister by the skirt, he threw her back, growling between his teeth, "None of that, you know, or I'll kill you, and him too!" It was high time for the visitors to depart, for other women, scenting the presence of money, were now coming forward with outstretched hands, or despatching tearful children in their stead. The whole wretched, abandoned district was in a flutter, a distressful wail ascended from those lifeless streets with high resounding names. But what was to be done? One could not give to all. So the only course lay in flight--amidst deep sadness as one realised how powerless was charity in presence of such appalling want. When Benedetta and Dario had reached their carriage they hastened to take their seats and nestle side by side, glad to escape from all such horrors. Still the Contessina was well pleased with her bravery in the presence of Pierre, whose hand she pressed with the emotion of a pupil touched by the master's lesson, after Narcisse had told her that he meant to take the young priest to lunch at the little restaurant on the Piazza of St. Peter's whence one obtained such an interesting view of the Vatican. "Try some of the light white wine of Genzano," said Dario, who had become quite gay again. "There's nothing better to drive away the blues." However, Pierre's curiosity was insatiable, and on the way he again questioned Narcisse about the people of modern Rome, their life, habits, and manners. There was little or no education, he learnt; no large manufactures and no export trade existed. The men carried on the few trades that were current, all consumption being virtually limited to the city itself. Among the women there were bead-workers and embroiderers; and the manufacture of religious articles, such as medals and chaplets, and of certain popular jewellery had always occupied a fair number of hands. But after marriage the women, invariably burdened with numerous offspring, attempted little beyond household work. Briefly, the population took life as it came, working just sufficiently to secure food, contenting itself with vegetables, pastes, and scraggy mutton, without thought of rebellion or ambition. The only vices were gambling and a partiality for the red and white wines of the Roman province--wines which excited to quarrel and murder, and on the evenings of feast days, when the taverns emptied, strewed the streets with groaning men, slashed and stabbed with knives. The girls, however, but seldom went wrong; one could count those who allowed themselves to be seduced; and this arose from the great union prevailing in each family, every member of which bowed submissively to the father's absolute authority. Moreover, the brothers watched over their sisters even as Tito did over Pierina, guarding them fiercely for the sake of the family honour. And amidst all this there was no real religion, but simply a childish idolatry, all hearts going forth to Madonna and the Saints, who alone were entreated and regarded as having being: for it never occurred to anybody to think of God. Thus the stagnation of the lower orders could easily be understood. Behind them were the many centuries during which idleness had been encouraged, vanity flattered, and nerveless life willingly accepted. When they were neither masons, nor carpenters, nor bakers, they were servants serving the priests, and more or less directly in the pay of the Vatican. Thence sprang the two antagonistic parties, on the one hand the more numerous party composed of the old Carbonari, Mazzinians, and Garibaldians, the /elite/ of the Trastevere; and on the other the "clients" of the Vatican, all who lived on or by the Church and regretted the Pope-King. But, after all, the antagonism was confined to opinions; there was no thought of making an effort or incurring a risk. For that, some sudden flare of passion, strong enough to overcome the sturdy calmness of the race, would have been needed. But what would have been the use of it? The wretchedness had lasted for so many centuries, the sky was so blue, the siesta preferable to aught else during the hot hours! And only one thing seemed positive--that the majority was certainly in favour of Rome remaining the capital of Italy. Indeed, rebellion had almost broken out in the Leonine City when the cession of the latter to the Holy See was rumoured. As for the increase of want and poverty, this was largely due to the circumstance that the Roman workman had really gained nothing by the many works carried on in his city during fifteen years. First of all, over 40,000 provincials, mostly from the North, more spirited and resistant than himself, and working at cheaper rates, had invaded Rome; and when he, the Roman, had secured his share of the labour, he had lived in better style, without thought of economy; so that after the crisis, when the 40,000 men from the provinces were sent home again, he had found himself once more in a dead city where trade was always slack. And thus he had relapsed into his antique indolence, at heart well pleased at no longer being hustled by press of work, and again accommodating himself as best he could to his old mistress, Want, empty in pocket yet always a /grand seigneur/. However, Pierre was struck by the great difference between the want and wretchedness of Rome and Paris. In Rome the destitution was certainly more complete, the food more loathsome, the dirt more repulsive. Yet at the same time the Roman poor retained more ease of manner and more real gaiety. The young priest thought of the fireless, breadless poor of Paris, shivering in their hovels at winter time; and suddenly he understood. The destitution of Rome did not know cold. What a sweet and eternal consolation; a sun for ever bright, a sky for ever blue and benign out of charity to the wretched! And what mattered the vileness of the dwelling if one could sleep under the sky, fanned by the warm breeze! What mattered even hunger if the family could await the windfall of chance in sunlit streets or on the scorched grass! The climate induced sobriety; there was no need of alcohol or red meat to enable one to face treacherous fogs. Blissful idleness smiled on the golden evenings, poverty became like the enjoyment of liberty in that delightful atmosphere where the happiness of living seemed to be all sufficient. Narcisse told Pierre that at Naples, in the narrow odoriferous streets of the port and Santa Lucia districts, the people spent virtually their whole lives out-of-doors, gay, childish, and ignorant, seeking nothing beyond the few pence that were needed to buy food. And it was certainly the climate which fostered the prolonged infancy of the nation, which explained why such a democracy did not awaken to social ambition and consciousness of itself. No doubt the poor of Naples and Rome suffered from want; but they did not know the rancour which cruel winter implants in men's hearts, the dark rancour which one feels on shivering with cold while rich people are warming themselves before blazing fires. They did not know the infuriated reveries in snow-swept hovels, when the guttering dip burns low, the passionate need which then comes upon one to wreak justice, to revolt, as from a sense of duty, in order that one may save wife and children from consumption, in order that they also may have a warm nest where life shall be a possibility! Ah! the want that shivers with the bitter cold--therein lies the excess of social injustice, the most terrible of schools, where the poor learn to realise their sufferings, where they are roused to indignation, and swear to make those sufferings cease, even if in doing so they annihilate all olden society! And in that same clemency of the southern heavens Pierre also found an explanation of the life of St. Francis,* that divine mendicant of love who roamed the high roads extolling the charms of poverty. Doubtless he was an unconscious revolutionary, protesting against the overflowing luxury of the Roman court by his return to the love of the humble, the simplicity of the primitive Church. But such a revival of innocence and sobriety would never have been possible in a northern land. The enchantment of Nature, the frugality of a people whom the sunlight nourished, the benignity of mendicancy on roads for ever warm, were needed to effect it. And yet how was it possible that a St. Francis, glowing with brotherly love, could have appeared in a land which nowadays so seldom practises charity, which treats the lowly so harshly and contemptuously, and cannot even bestow alms on its own Pope? Is it because ancient pride ends by hardening all hearts, or because the experience of very old races leads finally to egotism, that one now beholds Italy seemingly benumbed amidst dogmatic and pompous Catholicism, whilst the return to the ideals of the Gospel, the passionate interest in the poor and the suffering comes from the woeful plains of the North, from the nations whose sunlight is so limited? Yes, doubtless all that has much to do with the change, and the success of St. Francis was in particular due to the circumstance that, after so gaily espousing his lady, Poverty, he was able to lead her, bare-footed and scarcely clad, during endless and delightful spring-tides, among communities whom an ardent need of love and compassion then consumed. * St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the famous order of mendicant friars.--Trans. While conversing, Pierre and Narcisse had reached the Piazza of St. Peter's, and they sat down at one of the little tables skirting the pavement outside the restaurant where they had lunched once before. The linen was none too clean, but the view was splendid. The Basilica rose up in front of them, and the Vatican on the right, above the majestic curve of the colonnade. Just as the waiter was bringing the /hors-d'oeuvre/, some /finocchio/* and anchovies, the young priest, who had fixed his eyes on the Vatican, raised an exclamation to attract Narcisse's attention: "Look, my friend, at that window, which I am told is the Holy Father's. Can't you distinguish a pale figure standing there, quite motionless?" * Fennel-root, eaten raw, a favourite "appetiser" in Rome during the spring and autumn.--Trans. The young man began to laugh. "Oh! well," said he, "it must be the Holy Father in person. You are so anxious to see him that your very anxiety conjures him into your presence." "But I assure you," repeated Pierre, "that he is over there behind the window-pane. There is a white figure looking this way." Narcisse, who was very hungry, began to eat whilst still indulging in banter. All at once, however, he exclaimed: "Well, my dear Abbe, as the Pope is looking at us, this is the moment to speak of him. I promised to tell you how he sunk several millions of St. Peter's Patrimony in the frightful financial crisis of which you have just seen the ruins; and, indeed, your visit to the new district of the castle fields would not be complete without this story by way of appendix." Thereupon, without losing a mouthful, Narcisse spoke at considerable length. At the death of Pius IX the Patrimony of St. Peter, it seemed, had exceeded twenty millions of francs. Cardinal Antonelli, who speculated, and whose ventures were usually successful, had for a long time left a part of this money with the Rothschilds and a part in the hands of different nuncios, who turned it to profit abroad. After Antonelli's death, however, his successor, Cardinal Simeoni, withdrew the money from the nuncios to invest it at Rome; and Leo XIII on his accession entrusted the administration of the Patrimony to a commission of cardinals, of which Monsignor Folchi was appointed secretary. This prelate, who for twelve years played such an important /role/, was the son of an employee of the Dataria, who, thanks to skilful financial operations, had left a fortune of a million francs. Monsignor Folchi inherited his father's cleverness, and revealed himself to be a financier of the first rank in such wise that the commission gradually relinquished its powers to him, letting him act exactly as he pleased and contenting itself with approving the reports which he laid before it at each meeting. The Patrimony, however, yielded scarcely more than a million francs per annum, and, as the expenditure amounted to seven millions, six had to be found. Accordingly, from that other source of income, the Peter's Pence, the Pope annually gave three million francs to Monsignor Folchi, who, by skilful speculations and investments, was able to double them every year, and thus provide for all disbursements without ever breaking into the capital of the Patrimony. In the earlier times he realised considerable profit by gambling in land in and about Rome. He took shares also in many new enterprises, speculated in mills, omnibuses, and water-services, without mentioning all the gambling in which he participated with the Banca di Roma, a Catholic institution. Wonderstruck by his skill, the Pope, who, on his own side, had hitherto speculated through the medium of a confidential employee named Sterbini, dismissed the latter, and entrusted Monsignor Folchi with the duty of turning his money to profit in the same way as he turned that of the Holy See. This was the climax of the prelate's favour, the apogee of his power. Bad days were dawning, things were tottering already, and the great collapse was soon to come, sudden and swift like lightning. One of Leo XIII's practices was to lend large sums to the Roman princes who, seized with the gambling frenzy, and mixed up in land and building speculations, were at a loss for money. To guarantee the Pope's advances they deposited shares with him, and thus, when the downfall came, he was left with heaps of worthless paper on his hands. Then another disastrous affair was an attempt to found a house of credit in Paris in view of working off the shares which could not be disposed of in Italy among the French aristocracy and religious people. To egg these on it was said that the Pope was interested in the venture; and the worst was that he dropped three millions of francs in it.* The situation then became the more critical as he had gradually risked all the money he disposed of in the terrible agiotage going on in Rome, tempted thereto by the prospect of huge profits and perhaps indulging in the hope that he might win back by money the city which had been torn from him by force. His own responsibility remained complete, for Monsignor Folchi never made an important venture without consulting him; and he must have been therefore the real artisan of the disaster, mastered by his passion for gain, his desire to endow the Church with a huge capital, that great source of power in modern times. As always happens, however, the prelate was the only victim. He had become imperious and difficult to deal with; and was no longer liked by the cardinals of the commission, who were merely called together to approve such transactions as he chose to entrust to them. So, when the crisis came, a plot was laid; the cardinals terrified the Pope by telling him of all the evil rumours which were current, and then forced Monsignor Folchi to render a full account of his speculations. The situation proved to be very bad; it was no longer possible to avoid heavy losses. And so Monsignor Folchi was disgraced, and since then has vainly solicited an audience of Leo XIII, who has always refused to receive him, as if determined to punish him for their common fault--that passion for lucre which blinded them both. Very pious and submissive, however, Monsignor Folchi has never complained, but has kept his secrets and bowed to fate. Nobody can say exactly how many millions the Patrimony of St. Peter lost when Rome was changed into a gambling-hell, but if some prelates only admit ten, others go as far as thirty. The probability is that the loss was about fifteen millions.** * The allusion is evidently to the famous Union Generale, on which the Pope bestowed his apostolic benediction, and with which M. Zola deals at length in his novel /Money/. Certainly a very brilliant idea was embodied in the Union Generale, that of establishing a great international Catholic bank which would destroy the Jewish financial autocracy throughout Europe, and provide both the papacy and the Legitimist cause in several countries with the sinews of war. But in the battle which ensued the great Jew financial houses proved the stronger, and the disaster which overtook the Catholic speculators was a terrible one.--Trans. ** That is 600,000 pounds. Whilst Narcisse was giving this account he and Pierre had despatched their cutlets and tomatoes, and the waiter was now serving them some fried chicken. "At the present time," said Narcisse by way of conclusion, "the gap has been filled up; I told you of the large sums yielded by the Peter's Pence Fund, the amount of which is only known by the Pope, who alone fixes its employment. And, by the way, he isn't cured of speculating: I know from a good source that he still gambles, though with more prudence. Moreover, his confidential assistant is still a prelate. And, when all is said, my dear Abbe, he's in the right: a man must belong to his times--dash it all!" Pierre had listened with growing surprise, in which terror and sadness mingled. Doubtless such things were natural, even legitimate; yet he, in his dream of a pastor of souls free from all terrestrial cares, had never imagined that they existed. What! the Pope--the spiritual father of the lowly and the suffering--had speculated in land and in stocks and shares! He had gambled, placed funds in the hands of Jew bankers, practised usury, extracted hard interest from money--he, the successor of the Apostle, the Pontiff of Christ, the representative of Jesus, of the Gospel, that divine friend of the poor! And, besides, what a painful contrast: so many millions stored away in those rooms of the Vatican, and so many millions working and fructifying, constantly being diverted from one speculation to another in order that they might yield the more gain; and then down below, near at hand, so much want and misery in those abominable unfinished buildings of the new districts, so many poor folks dying of hunger amidst filth, mothers without milk for their babes, men reduced to idleness by lack of work, old ones at the last gasp like beasts of burden who are pole-axed when they are of no more use! Ah! God of Charity, God of Love, was it possible! The Church doubtless had material wants; she could not live without money; prudence and policy had dictated the thought of gaining for her such a treasure as would enable her to fight her adversaries victoriously. But how grievously this wounded one's feelings, how it soiled the Church, how she descended from her divine throne to become nothing but a party, a vast international association organised for the purpose of conquering and possessing the world! And the more Pierre thought of the extraordinary adventure the greater was his astonishment. Could a more unexpected, startling drama be imagined? That Pope shutting himself up in his palace--a prison, no doubt, but one whose hundred windows overlooked immensity; that Pope who, at all hours of the day and night, in every season, could from his window see his capital, the city which had been stolen from him, and the restitution of which he never ceased to demand; that Pope who, day by day, beheld the changes effected in the city--the opening of new streets, the demolition of ancient districts, the sale of land, and the gradual erection of new buildings which ended by forming a white girdle around the old ruddy roofs; that Pope who, in presence of this daily spectacle, this building frenzy, which he could follow from morn till eve, was himself finally overcome by the gambling passion, and, secluded in his closed chamber, began to speculate on the embellishments of his old capital, seeking wealth in the spurt of work and trade brought about by that very Italian Government which he reproached with spoliation; and finally that Pope losing millions in a catastrophe which he ought to have desired, but had been unable to foresee! No, never had dethroned monarch yielded to a stranger idea, compromised himself in a more tragical venture, the result of which fell upon him like divine punishment. And it was no mere king who had done this, but the delegate of God, the man who, in the eyes of idolatrous Christendom, was the living manifestation of the Deity! Dessert had now been served--a goat's cheese and some fruit--and Narcisse was just finishing some grapes when, on raising his eyes, he in turn exclaimed: "Well, you are quite right, my dear Abbe, I myself can see a pale figure at the window of the Holy Father's room." Pierre, who scarcely took his eyes from the window, answered slowly: "Yes, yes, it went away, but has just come back, and stands there white and motionless." "Well, after all, what would you have the Pope do?" resumed Narcisse with his languid air. "He's like everybody else; he looks out of the window when he wants a little distraction, and certainly there's plenty for him to look at." The same idea had occurred to Pierre, and was filling him with emotion. People talked of the Vatican being closed, and pictured a dark, gloomy palace, encompassed by high walls, whereas this palace overlooked all Rome, and the Pope from his window could see the world. Pierre himself had viewed the panorama from the summit of the Janiculum, the /loggie/ of Raffaelle, and the dome of St. Peter's, and so he well knew what it was that Leo XIII was able to behold. In the centre of the vast desert of the Campagna, bounded by the Sabine and Alban mountains, the seven illustrious hills appeared to him with their trees and edifices. His eyes ranged also over all the basilicas, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Giovanni in Laterano, the cradle of the papacy, San Paolo-fuori-le-Mura, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Sant' Agnese, and the others; they beheld, too, the domes of the Gesu of Sant' Andrea della Valle, San Carlo and San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, and indeed all those four hundred churches of Rome which make the city like a /campo santo/ studded with crosses. And Leo XIII could moreover see the famous monuments testifying to the pride of successive centuries--the Castle of Sant' Angelo, that imperial mausoleum which was transformed into a papal fortress, the distant white line of the tombs of the Appian Way, the scattered ruins of the baths of Caracalla and the abode of Septimius Severus; and then, after the innumerable columns, porticoes, and triumphal arches, there were the palaces and villas of the sumptuous cardinals of the Renascence, the Palazzo Farnese, the Palazzo Borghese, the Villa Medici, and others, amidst a swarming of facades and roofs. But, in particular, just under his window, on the left, the Pope was able to see the abominations of the unfinished district of the castle fields. In the afternoon, when he strolled through his gardens, bastioned by the wall of the fourth Leo like the plateau of a citadel, his view stretched over the ravaged valley at the foot of Monte Mario, where so many brick-works were established during the building frenzy. The green slopes are still ripped up, yellow trenches intersect them in all directions, and the closed works and factories have become wretched ruins with lofty, black, and smokeless chimneys. And at any other hour of the day Leo XIII could not approach his window without beholding the abandoned houses for which all those brick-fields had worked, those houses which had died before they even lived, and where there was now nought but the swarming misery of Rome, rotting there like some decomposition of olden society. However, Pierre more particularly thought of Leo XIII, forgetting the rest of the city to let his thoughts dwell on the Palatine, now bereft of its crown of palaces and rearing only its black cypresses towards the blue heavens. Doubtless in his mind he rebuilt the palaces of the Caesars, whilst before him rose great shadowy forms arrayed in purple, visions of his real ancestors, those emperors and Supreme Pontiffs who alone could tell him how one might reign over every nation and be the absolute master of the world. Then, however, his glances strayed to the Quirinal, and there he could contemplate the new and neighbouring royalty. How strange the meeting of those two palaces, the Quirinal and the Vatican, which rise up and gaze at one another across the Rome of the middle ages and the Renascence, whose roofs, baked and gilded by the burning sun, are jumbled in confusion alongside the Tiber. When the Pope and the King go to their windows they can with a mere opera-glass see each other quite distinctly. True, they are but specks in the boundless immensity, and what a gulf there is between them--how many centuries of history, how many generations that battled and suffered, how much departed greatness, and how much new seed for the mysterious future! Still, they can see one another, and they are yet waging the eternal fight, the fight as to which of them--the pontiff and shepherd of the soul or the monarch and master of the body--shall possess the people whose stream rolls beneath them, and in the result remain the absolute sovereign. And Pierre wondered also what might be the thoughts and dreams of Leo XIII behind those window-panes where he still fancied he could distinguish his pale, ghostly figure. On surveying new Rome, the ravaged olden districts and the new ones laid waste by the blast of disaster, the Pope must certainly rejoice at the colossal failure of the Italian Government. His city had been stolen from him; the newcomers had virtually declared that they would show him how a great capital was created, and their boast had ended in that catastrophe--a multitude of hideous and useless buildings which they did not even know how to finish! He, the Pope, could moreover only be delighted with the terrible worries into which the usurping /regime/ had fallen, the political crisis, and the financial crisis, the whole growing national unrest amidst which that /regime/ seemed likely to sink some day; and yet did not he himself possess a patriotic soul? was he not a loving son of that Italy whose genius and ancient ambition coursed in the blood of his veins? Ah! no, nothing against Italy; rather everything that would enable her to become once more the mistress of the world. And so, even amidst the joy of hope, he must have been grieved to see her thus ruined, threatened with bankruptcy, displaying like a sore that overturned, unfinished Rome which was a confession of her impotency. But, on the other hand, if the House of Savoy were to be swept away, would he not be there to take its place, and at last resume possession of his capital, which, from his window, for fifteen years past, he had beheld in the grip of masons and demolishers? And then he would again be the master and reign over the world, enthroned in the predestined city to which prophecy has ensured eternity and universal dominion. But the horizon spread out, and Pierre wondered what Leo XIII beheld beyond Rome, beyond the Campagna and the Sabine and Alban mountains. What had he seen for eighteen years past from that window whence he obtained his only view of the world? What echoes of modern society, its truths and certainties, had reached his ears? From the heights of the Viminal, where the railway terminus stands, the prolonged whistling of engines must have occasionally been carried towards him, suggesting our scientific civilisation, the nations brought nearer together, free humanity marching on towards the future. Did he himself ever dream of liberty when, on turning to the right, he pictured the sea over yonder, past the tombs of the Appian Way? Had he ever desired to go off, quit Rome and her traditions, and found the Papacy of the new democracies elsewhere? As he was said to possess so clear and penetrating a mind he ought to have understood and trembled at the far-away stir and noise that came from certain lands of battle, from those United States of America, for instance, where revolutionary bishops were conquering, winning over the people. Were they working for him or for themselves? If he could not follow them, if he remained stubborn within his Vatican, bound on every side by dogma and tradition, might not rupture some day become unavoidable? And, indeed, the fear of a blast of schism, coming from afar, must have filled him with growing anguish. It was assuredly on that account that he had practised the diplomacy of conciliation, seeking to unite in his hands all the scattered forces of the Church, overlooking the audacious proceedings of certain bishops as far as possible, and himself striving to gain the support of the people by putting himself on its side against the fallen monarchies. But would he ever go any farther? Shut up in that Vatican, behind that bronze portal, was he not bound to the strict formulas of Catholicism, chained to them by the force of centuries? There obstinacy was fated; it was impossible for him to resign himself to that which was his real and surpassing power, the purely spiritual power, the moral authority which brought mankind to his feet, made thousands of pilgrims kneel and women swoon. Departure from Rome and the renunciation of the temporal power would not displace the centre of the Catholic world, but would transform him, the head of the Catholic Church, into the head of something else. And how anxious must have been his thoughts if the evening breeze ever brought him a vague presentiment of that something else, a fear of the new religion which was yet dimly, confusedly dawning amidst the tramp of the nations on the march, and the sound of which must have reached him at one and the same time from every point of the compass. At this precise moment, however, Pierre felt that the white and motionless shadow behind those windowpanes was held erect by pride, by the ever present conviction of victory. If man could not achieve it, a miracle would intervene. He, the Pope, was absolutely convinced that he or some successor would recover possession of Rome. Had not the Church all eternity before it? And, moreover, why should not the victor be himself? Could not God accomplish the impossible? Why, if it so pleased God, on the very morrow his city would be restored to him, in spite of all the objections of human reason, all the apparent logic of facts. Ah! how he would welcome the return of that prodigal daughter whose equivocal adventures he had ever watched with tears bedewing his paternal eyes! He would soon forget the excesses which he had beheld during eighteen years at all hours and in all seasons. Perhaps he dreamt of what he would do with those new districts with which the city had been soiled. Should they be razed, or left as evidence of the insanity of the usurpers? At all events, Rome would again become the august and lifeless city, disdainful of such vain matters as material cleanliness and comfort, and shining forth upon the world like a pure soul encompassed by the traditional glory of the centuries. And his dream continued, picturing the course which events would take on the very morrow, no doubt. Anything, even a republic was preferable to that House of Savoy. Why not a federal republic, reviving the old political divisions of Italy, restoring Rome to the Church, and choosing him, the Pope, as the natural protector of the country thus reorganised? But his eyes travelled beyond Rome and Italy, and his dream expanded, embracing republican France, Spain which might become republican again, Austria which would some day be won, and indeed all the Catholic nations welded into the United States of Europe, and fraternising in peace under his high presidency as Sovereign Pontiff. And then would follow the supreme triumph, all the other churches at last vanishing, and all the dissident communities coming to him as to the one and only pastor, who would reign in the name of Jesus over the universal democracy. However, whilst Pierre was immersed in this dream which he attributed to Leo XIII, he was all at once interrupted by Narcisse, who exclaimed: "Oh! my dear Abbe, just look at those statues on the colonnade." The young fellow had ordered a cup of coffee and was languidly smoking a cigar, deep once more in the subtle aesthetics which were his only preoccupation. "They are rosy, are they not?" he continued; "rosy, with a touch of mauve, as if the blue blood of angels circulated in their stone veins. It is the sun of Rome which gives them that supra-terrestrial life; for they live, my friend; I have seen them smile and hold out their arms to me during certain fine sunsets. Ah! Rome, marvellous, delicious Rome! One could live here as poor as Job, content with the very atmosphere, and in everlasting delight at breathing it!" This time Pierre could not help feeling surprised at Narcisse's language, for he remembered his incisive voice and clear, precise, financial acumen when speaking of money matters. And, at this recollection, the young priest's mind reverted to the castle fields, and intense sadness filled his heart as for the last time all the want and suffering rose before him. Again he beheld the horrible filth which was tainting so many human beings, that shocking proof of the abominable social injustice which condemns the greater number to lead the joyless, breadless lives of accursed beasts. And as his glance returned yet once more to the window of the Vatican, and he fancied he could see a pale hand uplifted behind the glass panes, he thought of that papal benediction which Leo XIII gave from that height, over Rome, and over the plain and the hills, to the faithful of all Christendom. And that papal benediction suddenly seemed to him a mockery, destitute of all power, since throughout such a multitude of centuries it had not once been able to stay a single one of the sufferings of mankind, and could not even bring a little justice for those poor wretches who were agonising yonder beneath the very window. IX THAT evening at dusk, as Benedetta had sent Pierre word that she desired to see him, he went down to her little /salon/, and there found her chatting with Celia. "I've seen your Pierina, you know," exclaimed the latter, just as the young priest came in. "And with Dario, too. Or rather, she must have been watching for him; he found her waiting in a path on the Pincio and smiled at her. I understood at once. What a beauty she is!" Benedetta smiled at her friend's enthusiasm; but her lips twitched somewhat painfully, for, however sensible she might be, this passion, which she realised to be so naive and so strong, was beginning to make her suffer. She certainly made allowances for Dario, but the girl was too much in love with him, and she feared the consequences. Even in turning the conversation she allowed the secret of her heart to escape her. "Pray sit down, Monsieur l'Abbe," she said, "we are talking scandal, you see. My poor Dario is accused of making love to every pretty woman in Rome. People say that it's he who gives La Tonietta those white roses which she has been exhibiting at the Corso every afternoon for a fortnight past." "That's certain, my dear," retorted Celia impetuously. "At first people were in doubt, and talked of little Pontecorvo and Lieutenant Moretta. But every one now knows that La Tonietta's caprice is Dario. Besides, he joined her in her box at the Costanzi the other evening." Pierre remembered that the young Prince had pointed out La Tonietta at the Pincio one afternoon. She was one of the few /demi-mondaines/ that the higher-class society of Rome took an interest in. For a month or so the rich Englishman to whom she owed her means had been absent, travelling. "Ah!" resumed Benedetta, whose budding jealousy was entirely confined to La Pierina, "so my poor Dario is ruining himself in white roses! Well, I shall have to twit him about it. But one or another of these beauties will end by robbing me of him if our affairs are not soon settled. Fortunately, I have had some better news. Yes, my suit is to be taken in hand again, and my aunt has gone out to-day on that very account." Then, as Victorine came in with a lamp, and Celia rose to depart, Benedetta turned towards Pierre, who also was rising from his chair: "Please stay," said she; "I wish to speak to you." However, Celia still lingered, interested by the mention of the divorce suit, and eager to know if the cousins would soon be able to marry. And at last throwing her arms round Benedetta, she kissed her passionately. "So you are hopeful, my dear," she exclaimed. "You think that the Holy Father will give you back your liberty? Oh! I am so pleased; it will be so nice for you to marry Dario! And I'm well pleased on my own account, for my father and mother are beginning to yield. Only yesterday I said to them with that quiet little air of mine, 'I want Attilio, and you must give him me.' And then my father flew into a furious passion and upbraided me, and shook his fist at me, saying that if he'd made my head as hard as his own he would know how to break it. My mother was there quite silent and vexed, and all at once he turned to her and said: 'Here, give her that Attilio she wants, and then perhaps we shall have some peace!' Oh yes! I'm well pleased, very well pleased indeed!" As she spoke her pure virginal face beamed with so much innocent, celestial joy that Pierre and Benedetta could not help laughing. And at last she went off attended by a maid who had waited for her in the first /salon/. When they were alone Benedetta made the priest sit down again: "I have been asked to give you some important advice, my friend," she said. "It seems that the news of your presence in Rome is spreading, and that bad reports of you are circulated. Your book is said to be a fierce appeal to schism, and you are spoken of as a mere ambitious, turbulent schismatic. After publishing your book in Paris you have come to Rome, it is said, to raise a fearful scandal over it in order to make it sell. Now, if you still desire to see his Holiness, so as to plead your cause before him, you are advised to make people forget you, to disappear altogether for a fortnight or three weeks." Pierre was stupefied. Why, they would end by maddening him with all the obstacles they raised to exhaust his patience; they would actually implant in him an idea of schism, of an avenging, liberating scandal! He wished to protest and refuse the advice, but all at once he made a gesture of weariness. What would be the good of it, especially with that young woman, who was certainly sincere and affectionate. "Who asked you to give me this advice?" he inquired. She did not answer, but smiled, and with sudden intuition he resumed: "It was Monsignor Nani, was it not?" Thereupon, still unwilling to give a direct reply, she began to praise the prelate. He had at last consented to guide her in her divorce affair; and Donna Serafina had gone to the Palace of the Inquisition that very afternoon in order to acquaint him with the result of certain steps she had taken. Father Lorenza, the confessor of both the Boccanera ladies, was to be present at the interview, for the idea of the divorce was in reality his own. He had urged the two women to it in his eagerness to sever the bond which the patriotic priest Pisoni had tied full of such fine illusions. Benedetta became quite animated as she explained the reasons of her hopefulness. "Monsignor Nani can do everything," she said, "and I am very happy that my affair should be in his hands. You must be reasonable also, my friend; do as you are requested. I'm sure you will some day be well pleased at having taken this advice." Pierre had bowed his head and remained thoughtful. There was nothing unpleasant in the idea of remaining for a few more weeks in Rome, where day by day his curiosity found so much fresh food. Of course, all these delays were calculated to discourage him and bend his will. Yet what did he fear, since he was still determined to relinquish nothing of his book, and to see the Holy Father for the sole purpose of proclaiming his new faith? Once more, in silence, he took that oath, then yielded to Benedetta's entreaties. And as he apologised for being a source of embarrassment in the house she exclaimed: "No, no, I am delighted to have you here. I fancy that your presence will bring us good fortune now that luck seems to be changing in our favour." It was then agreed that he would no longer prowl around St. Peter's and the Vatican, where his constant presence must have attracted attention. He even promised that he would virtually spend a week indoors, desirous as he was of reperusing certain books, certain pages of Rome's history. Then he went on chatting for a moment, lulled by the peacefulness which reigned around him, since the lamp had illumined the /salon/ with its sleepy radiance. Six o'clock had just struck, and outside all was dark. "Wasn't his Eminence indisposed to-day?" the young man asked. "Yes," replied the Contessina. "But we are not anxious: it is only a little fatigue. He sent Don Vigilio to tell me that he intended to shut himself up in his room and dictate some letters. So there can be nothing much the matter, you see." Silence fell again. For a while not a sound came from the deserted street or the old empty mansion, mute and dreamy like a tomb. But all at once the soft somnolence, instinct with all the sweetness of a dream of hope, was disturbed by a tempestuous entry, a whirl of skirts, a gasp of terror. It was Victorine, who had gone off after bringing the lamp, but now returned, scared and breathless: "Contessina! Contessina!" Benedetta had risen, suddenly quite white and cold, as at the advent of a blast of misfortune. "What, what is it? Why do you run and tremble?" she asked. "Dario, Monsieur Dario--down below. I went down to see if the lantern in the porch were alight, as it is so often forgotten. And in the dark, in the porch, I stumbled against Monsieur Dario. He is on the ground; he has a knife-thrust somewhere." A cry leapt from the /amorosa's/ heart: "Dead!" "No, no, wounded." But Benedetta did not hear; in a louder and louder voice she cried: "Dead! dead!" "No, no, I tell you, he spoke to me. And for Heaven's sake, be quiet. He silenced me because he did not want any one to know; he told me to come and fetch you--only you. However, as Monsieur l'Abbe is here, he had better help us. We shall be none too many." Pierre listened, also quite aghast. And when Victorine wished to take the lamp her trembling hand, with which she had no doubt felt the prostrate body, was seen to be quite bloody. The sight filled Benedetta with so much horror that she again began to moan wildly. "Be quiet, be quiet!" repeated Victorine. "We ought not to make any noise in going down. I shall take the lamp, because we must at all events be able to see. Now, quick, quick!" Across the porch, just at the entrance of the vestibule, Dario lay prone upon the slabs, as if, after being stabbed in the street, he had only had sufficient strength to take a few steps before falling. And he had just fainted, and lay there with his face very pale, his lips compressed, and his eyes closed. Benedetta, recovering the energy of her race amidst her excessive grief, no longer lamented or cried out, but gazed at him with wild, tearless, dilated eyes, as though unable to understand. The horror of it all was the suddenness and mysteriousness of the catastrophe, the why and wherefore of this murderous attempt amidst the silence of the old deserted palace, black with the shades of night. The wound had as yet bled but little, for only the Prince's clothes were stained. "Quick, quick!" repeated Victorine in an undertone after lowering the lamp and moving it around. "The porter isn't there--he's always at the carpenter's next door--and you see that he hasn't yet lighted the lantern. Still he may come back at any moment. So the Abbe and I will carry the Prince into his room at once." She alone retained her head, like a woman of well-balanced mind and quiet activity. The two others, whose stupor continued, listened to her and obeyed her with the docility of children. "Contessina," she continued, "you must light us. Here, take the lamp and lower it a little so that we may see the steps. You, Abbe, take the feet; I'll take hold of him under the armpits. And don't be alarmed, the poor dear fellow isn't heavy." Ah! that ascent of the monumental staircase with its low steps and its landings as spacious as guardrooms. They facilitated the cruel journey, but how lugubrious looked the little /cortege/ under the flickering glimmer of the lamp which Benedetta held with arm outstretched, stiffened by determination! And still not a sound came from the old lifeless dwelling, nothing but the silent crumbling of the walls, the slow decay which was making the ceilings crack. Victorine continued to whisper words of advice whilst Pierre, afraid of slipping on the shiny slabs, put forth an excess of strength which made his breath come short. Huge, wild shadows danced over the big expanse of bare wall up to the very vaults decorated with sunken panels. So endless seemed the ascent that at last a halt became necessary; but the slow march was soon resumed. Fortunately Dario's apartments--bed-chamber, dressing-room, and sitting-room--were on the first floor adjoining those of the Cardinal in the wing facing the Tiber; so, on reaching the landing, they only had to walk softly along the corridor, and at last, to their great relief, laid the wounded man upon his bed. Victorine vented her satisfaction in a light laugh. "That's done," said she; "put the lamp on that table, Contessina. I'm sure nobody heard us. It's lucky that Donna Serafina should have gone out, and that his Eminence should have shut himself up with Don Vigilio. I wrapped my skirt round Monsieur Dario's shoulders, you know, so I don't think any blood fell on the stairs. By and by, too, I'll go down with a sponge and wipe the slabs in the porch--" She stopped short, looked at Dario, and then quickly added: "He's breathing--now I'll leave you both to watch over him while I go for good Doctor Giordano, who saw you come into the world, Contessina. He's a man to be trusted." Alone with the unconscious sufferer in that dim chamber, which seemed to quiver with the frightful horror that filled their hearts, Benedetta and Pierre remained on either side of the bed, as yet unable to exchange a word. The young woman first opened her arms and wrung her hands whilst giving vent to a hollow moan, as if to relieve and exhale her grief; and then, leaning forward, she watched for some sign of life on that pale face whose eyes were closed. Dario was certainly breathing, but his respiration was slow and very faint, and some time went by before a touch of colour returned to his cheeks. At last, however, he opened his eyes, and then she at once took hold of his hand and pressed it, instilling into the pressure all the anguish of her heart. Great was her happiness on feeling that he feebly returned the clasp. "Tell me," she said, "you can see me and hear me, can't you? What has happened, good God?" He did not at first answer, being worried by the presence of Pierre. On recognising the young priest, however, he seemed content that he should be there, and then glanced apprehensively round the room to see if there were anybody else. And at last he murmured: "No one saw me, no one knows?" "No, no; be easy. We carried you up with Victorine without meeting a soul. Aunt has just gone out, uncle is shut up in his rooms." At this Dario seemed relieved, and he even smiled. "I don't want anybody to know, it is so stupid," he murmured. "But in God's name what has happened?" she again asked him. "Ah! I don't know, I don't know," was his response, as he lowered his eyelids with a weary air as if to escape the question. But he must have realised that it was best for him to confess some portion of the truth at once, for he resumed: "A man was hidden in the shadow of the porch--he must have been waiting for me. And so, when I came in, he dug his knife into my shoulder, there." Forthwith she again leant over him, quivering, and gazing into the depths of his eyes: "But who was the man, who was he?" she asked. Then, as he, in a yet more weary way, began to stammer that he didn't know, that the man had fled into the darkness before he could recognise him, she raised a terrible cry: "It was Prada! it was Prada, confess it, I know it already!" And, quite delirious, she went on: "I tell you that I know it! Ah! I would not be his, and he is determined that we shall never belong to one another. Rather than have that he will kill you on the day when I am free to be your wife! Oh! I know him well; I shall never, never be happy. Yes, I know it well, it was Prada, Prada!" But sudden energy upbuoyed the wounded man, and he loyally protested: "No, no, it was not Prada, nor was it any one working for him. That I swear to you. I did not recognise the man, but it wasn't Prada--no, no!" There was such a ring of truth in Dario's words that Benedetta must have been convinced by them. But terror once more overpowered her, for the hand she held was suddenly growing soft, moist, and powerless. Exhausted by his effort, Dario had fallen back, again fainting, his face quite white and his eyes closed. And it seemed to her that he was dying. Distracted by her anguish, she felt him with trembling, groping hands: "Look, look, Monsieur l'Abbe!" she exclaimed. "But he is dying, he is dying; he is already quite cold. Ah! God of heaven, he is dying!" Pierre, terribly upset by her cries, sought to reassure her, saying: "He spoke too much; he has lost consciousness, as he did before. But I assure you that I can feel his heart beating. Here, put your hand here, Contessina. For mercy's sake don't distress yourself like that; the doctor will soon be here, and everything will be all right." But she did not listen to him, and all at once he was lost in amazement, for she flung herself upon the body of the man she adored, caught it in a frantic embrace, bathed it with tears and covered it with kisses whilst stammering words of fire: "Ah! if I were to lose you, if I were to lose you! And to think that I repulsed you, that I would not accept happiness when it was yet possible! Yes, that idea of mine, that vow I made to the Madonna! Yet how could she be offended by our happiness? And then, and then, if she has deceived me, if she takes you from me, ah! then I can have but one regret--that I did not damn myself with you--yes, yes, damnation rather than that we should never, never be each other's!" Was this the woman who had shown herself so calm, so sensible, so patient the better to ensure her happiness? Pierre was terrified, and no longer recognised her. He had hitherto seen her so reserved, so modest, with a childish charm that seemed to come from her very nature! But under the threatening blow she feared, the terrible blood of the Boccaneras had awoke within her with a long heredity of violence, pride, frantic and exasperated longings. She wished for her share of life, her share of love! And she moaned and she clamoured, as if death, in taking her lover from her, were tearing away some of her own flesh. "Calm yourself, I entreat you, madame," repeated the priest. "He is alive, his heart beats. You are doing yourself great harm." But she wished to die with her lover: "O my darling! if you must go, take me, take me with you. I will lay myself on your heart, I will clasp you so tightly with my arms that they shall be joined to yours, and then we must needs be buried together. Yes, yes, we shall be dead, and we shall be wedded all the same--wedded in death! I promised that I would belong to none but you, and I will be yours in spite of everything, even in the grave. O my darling, open your eyes, open your mouth, kiss me if you don't want me to die as soon as you are dead!" A blaze of wild passion, full of blood and fire, had passed through that mournful chamber with old, sleepy walls. But tears were now overcoming Benedetta, and big gasping sobs at last threw her, blinded and strengthless, on the edge of the bed. And fortunately an end was put to the terrible scene by the arrival of the doctor whom Victorine had fetched. Doctor Giordano was a little old man of over sixty, with white curly hair, and fresh-looking, clean-shaven countenance. By long practice among Churchmen he had acquired the paternal appearance and manner of an amiable prelate. And he was said to be a very worthy man, tending the poor for nothing, and displaying ecclesiastical reserve and discretion in all delicate cases. For thirty years past the whole Boccanera family, children, women, and even the most eminent Cardinal himself, had in all cases of sickness been placed in the hands of this prudent practitioner. Lighted by Victorine and helped by Pierre, he undressed Dario, who was roused from his swoon by pain; and after examining the wound he declared with a smile that it was not at all dangerous. The young Prince would at the utmost have to spend three weeks in bed, and no complications were to be feared. Then, like all the doctors of Rome, enamoured of the fine thrusts and cuts which day by day they have to dress among chance patients of the lower classes, he complacently lingered over the wound, doubtless regarding it as a clever piece of work, for he ended by saying to the Prince in an undertone: "That's what we call a warning. The man didn't want to kill, the blow was dealt downwards so that the knife might slip through the flesh without touching the bone. Ah! a man really needs to be skilful to deal such a stab; it was very neatly done." "Yes, yes," murmured Dario, "he spared me; had he chosen he could have pierced me through." Benedetta did not hear. Since the doctor had declared the case to be free from danger, and had explained that the fainting fits were due to nervous shock, she had fallen in a chair, quite prostrated. Gradually, however, some gentle tears coursed from her eyes, bringing relief after her frightful despair, and then, rising to her feet, she came and kissed Dario with mute and passionate delight. "I say, my dear doctor," resumed the Prince, "it's useless for people to know of this. It's so ridiculous. Nobody has seen anything, it seems, excepting Monsieur l'Abbe, whom I ask to keep the matter secret. And in particular I don't want anybody to alarm the Cardinal or my aunt, or indeed any of our friends." Doctor Giordano indulged in one of his placid smiles. "/Bene, bene/," said he, "that's natural; don't worry yourself. We will say that you have had a fall on the stairs and have dislocated your shoulder. And now that the wound is dressed you must try to sleep, and don't get feverish. I will come back to-morrow morning." That evening of excitement was followed by some very tranquil days, and a new life began for Pierre, who at first remained indoors, reading and writing, with no other recreation than that of spending his afternoons in Dario's room, where he was certain to find Benedetta. After a somewhat intense fever lasting for eight and forty hours, cure took its usual course, and the story of the dislocated shoulder was so generally believed, that the Cardinal insisted on Donna Serafina departing from her habits of strict economy, to have a second lantern lighted on the landing in order that no such accident might occur again. And then the monotonous peacefulness was only disturbed by a final incident, a threat of trouble, as it were, with which Pierre found himself mixed up one evening when he was lingering beside the convalescent patient. Benedetta had absented herself for a few minutes, and as Victorine, who had brought up some broth, was leaning towards the Prince to take the empty cup from him, she said in a low voice: "There's a girl, Monsieur, La Pierina, who comes here every day, crying and asking for news of you. I can't get rid of her, she's always prowling about the place, so I thought it best to tell you of it." Unintentionally, Pierre heard her and understood everything. Dario, who was looking at him, at once guessed his thoughts, and without answering Victorine exclaimed: "Yes, Abbe, it was that brute Tito! How idiotic, eh?" At the same time, although the young man protested that he had done nothing whatever for the girl's brother to give him such a "warning," he smiled in an embarrassed way, as if vexed and even somewhat ashamed of being mixed up in an affair of the kind. And he was evidently relieved when the priest promised that he would see the girl, should she come back, and make her understand that she ought to remain at home. "It was such a stupid affair!" the Prince repeated, with an exaggerated show of anger. "Such things are not of our times." But all at once he ceased speaking, for Benedetta entered the room. She sat down again beside her dear patient, and the sweet, peaceful evening then took its course in the old sleepy chamber, the old, lifeless palace, whence never a sound arose. When Pierre began to go out again he at first merely took a brief airing in the district. The Via Giulia interested him, for he knew how splendid it had been in the time of Julius II, who had dreamt of lining it with sumptuous palaces. Horse and foot races then took place there during the carnival, the Palazzo Farnese being the starting-point, and the Piazza of St. Peter's the goal. Pierre had also lately read that a French ambassador, D'Estree, Marquis de Coure, had resided at the Palazzo Sacchetti, and in 1638 had given some magnificent entertainments in honour of the birth of the Dauphin,* when on three successive days there had been racing from the Ponte Sisto to San Giovanni dei Fiorentini amidst an extraordinary display of sumptuosity: the street being strewn with flowers, and rich hangings adorning every window. On the second evening there had been fireworks on the Tiber, with a machine representing the ship Argo carrying Jason and his companions to the recovery of the Golden Fleece; and, on another occasion, the Farnese fountain, the Mascherone, had flowed with wine. Nowadays, however, all was changed. The street, bright with sunshine or steeped in shadow according to the hour, was ever silent and deserted. The heavy, ancient palatial houses, their old doors studded with plates and nails, their windows barred with huge iron gratings, always seemed to be asleep, whole storeys showing nothing but closed shutters as if to keep out the daylight for evermore. Now and again, when a door was open, you espied deep vaults, damp, cold courts, green with mildew, and encompassed by colonnades like cloisters. Then, in the outbuildings of the mansions, the low structures which had collected more particularly on the side of the Tiber, various small silent shops had installed themselves. There was a baker's, a tailor's, and a bookbinder's, some fruiterers' shops with a few tomatoes and salad plants set out on boards, and some wine-shops which claimed to sell the vintages of Frascati and Genzano, but whose customers seemed to be dead. Midway along the street was a modern prison, whose horrid yellow wall in no wise enlivened the scene, whilst, overhead, a flight of telegraph wires stretched from the arcades of the Farnese palace to the distant vista of trees beyond the river. With its infrequent traffic the street, even in the daytime, was like some sepulchral corridor where the past was crumbling into dust, and when night fell its desolation quite appalled Pierre. You did not meet a soul, you did not see a light in any window, and the glimmering gas lamps, few and far between, seemed powerless to pierce the gloom. On either hand the doors were barred and bolted, and not a sound, not a breath came from within. Even when, after a long interval, you passed a lighted wine-shop, behind whose panes of frosted glass a lamp gleamed dim and motionless, not an exclamation, not a suspicion of a laugh ever reached your ear. There was nothing alive save the two sentries placed outside the prison, one before the entrance and the other at the corner of the right-hand lane, and they remained erect and still, coagulated, as it were, in that dead street. * Afterwards Louis XIV.--Trans. Pierre's interest, however, was not merely confined to the Via Giulia; it extended to the whole district, once so fine and fashionable, but now fallen into sad decay, far removed from modern life, and exhaling a faint musty odour of monasticism. Towards San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, where the new Corso Vittorio Emanuele has ripped up every olden district, the lofty five-storeyed houses with their dazzling sculptured fronts contrasted violently with the black sunken dwellings of the neighbouring lanes. In the evening the globes of the electric lamps on the Corso shone out with such dazzling whiteness that the gas lamps of the Via Giulia and other streets looked like smoky lanterns. There were several old and famous thoroughfares, the Via Banchi Vecchi, the Via del Pellegrino, the Via di Monserrato, and an infinity of cross-streets which intersected and connected the others, all going towards the Tiber, and for the most part so narrow that vehicles scarcely had room to pass. And each street had its church, a multitude of churches all more or less alike, highly decorated, gilded, and painted, and open only at service time when they were full of sunlight and incense. In the Via Giulia, in addition to San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, San Biagio della Pagnotta, San Eligio degli Orefici, and three or four others, there was the so-called Church of the Dead, Santa Maria dell' Orazione; and this church, which is at the lower end behind the Farnese palace, was often visited by Pierre, who liked to dream there of the wild life of Rome, and of the pious brothers of the Confraternita della Morte, who officiate there, and whose mission is to search for and bury such poor outcasts as die in the Campagna. One evening he was present at the funeral of two unknown men, whose bodies, after remaining unburied for quite a fortnight, had been discovered in a field near the Appian Way. However, Pierre's favourite promenade soon became the new quay of the Tiber beyond the Palazzo Boccanera. He had merely to take the narrow lane skirting the mansion to reach a spot where he found much food for reflection. Although the quay was not yet finished, the work seemed to be quite abandoned. There were heaps of rubbish, blocks of stone, broken fences, and dilapidated tool-sheds all around. To such a height had it been necessary to carry the quay walls--designed to protect the city from floods, for the river bed has been rising for centuries past--that the old terrace of the Boccanera gardens, with its double flight of steps to which pleasure boats had once been moored, now lay in a hollow, threatened with annihilation whenever the works should be finished. But nothing had yet been levelled; the soil, brought thither for making up the bank, lay as it had fallen from the carts, and on all sides were pits and mounds interspersed with the abandoned building materials. Wretched urchins came to play there, workmen without work slept in the sunshine, and women after washing ragged linen spread it out to dry upon the stones. Nevertheless the spot proved a happy, peaceful refuge for Pierre, one fruitful in inexhaustible reveries when for hours at a time he lingered gazing at the river, the quays, and the city, stretching in front of him and on either hand. At eight in the morning the sun already gilded the vast opening. On turning to the left he perceived the roofs of the Trastevere, of a misty, bluish grey against the dazzling sky. Then, just beyond the apse of San Giovanni, on the right, the river curved, and on its other bank the poplars of the Ospedale di Santo Spirito formed a green curtain, while the castle of Sant' Angelo showed brightly in the distance. But Pierre's eyes dwelt more particularly on the bank just in front of him, for there he found some lingering vestiges of old Rome. On that side indeed between the Ponte Sisto and the Ponte Sant' Angelo, the quays, which were to imprison the river within high, white, fortress-like walls, had not yet been raised, and the bank with its remnants of the old papal city conjured up an extraordinary vision of the middle ages. The houses, descending to the river brink, were cracked, scorched, rusted by innumerable burning summers, like so many antique bronzes. Down below there were black vaults into which the water flowed, piles upholding walls, and fragments of Roman stone-work plunging into the river bed; then, rising from the shore, came steep, broken stairways, green with moisture, tiers of terraces, storeys with tiny windows pierced here and their in hap-hazard fashion, houses perched atop of other houses, and the whole jumbled together with a fantastic commingling of balconies and wooden galleries, footbridges spanning courtyards, clumps of trees growing apparently on the very roofs, and attics rising from amidst pinky tiles. The contents of a drain fell noisily into the river from a worn and soiled gorge of stone; and wherever the houses stood back and the bank appeared, it was covered with wild vegetation, weeds, shrubs, and mantling ivy, which trailed like a kingly robe of state. And in the glory of the sun the wretchedness and dirt vanished, the crooked, jumbled houses seemed to be of gold, draped with the purple of the red petticoats and the dazzling white of the shifts which hung drying from their windows; while higher still, above the district, the Janiculum rose into all the luminary's dazzlement, uprearing the slender profile of Sant' Onofrio amidst cypresses and pines. Leaning on the parapet of the quay wall, Pierre sadly gazed at the Tiber for hours at a time. Nothing could convey an idea of the weariness of those old waters, the mournful slowness of their flow along that Babylonian trench where they were confined within huge, bare, livid prison-like walls. In the sunlight their yellowness was gilded, and the faint quiver of the current brought ripples of green and blue; but as soon as the shade spread over it the stream became opaque like mud, so turbid in its venerable old age that it no longer even gave back a reflection of the houses lining it. And how desolate was its abandonment, what a stream of silence and solitude it was! After the winter rains it might roll furiously and threateningly, but during the long months of bright weather it traversed Rome without a sound, and Pierre could remain there all day long without seeing either a skiff or a sail. The two or three little steam-boats which arrived from the coast, the few tartanes which brought wine from Sicily, never came higher than the Aventine, beyond which there was only a watery desert in which here and there, at long intervals, a motionless angler let his line dangle. All that Pierre ever saw in the way of shipping was a sort of ancient, covered pinnace, a rotting Noah's ark, moored on the right beside the old bank, and he fancied that it might be used as a washhouse, though on no occasion did he see any one in it. And on a neck of mud there also lay a stranded boat with one side broken in, a lamentable symbol of the impossibility and the relinquishment of navigation. Ah! that decay of the river, that decay of father Tiber, as dead as the famous ruins whose dust he is weary of laving! And what an evocation! all the centuries of history, so many things, so many men, that those yellow waters have reflected till, full of lassitude and disgust, they have grown heavy, silent and deserted, longing only for annihilation. One morning on the river bank Pierre found La Pierina standing behind an abandoned tool-shed. With her neck extended, she was looking fixedly at the window of Dario's room, at the corner of the quay and the lane. Doubtless she had been frightened by Victorine's severe reception, and had not dared to return to the mansion; but some servant, possibly, had told her which was the young Prince's window, and so she now came to this spot, where without wearying she waited for a glimpse of the man she loved, for some sign of life and salvation, the mere hope of which made her heart leap. Deeply touched by the way in which she hid herself, all humility and quivering with adoration, the priest approached her, and instead of scolding her and driving her away as he had been asked to do, spoke to her in a gentle, cheerful manner, asking her for news of her people as though nothing had happened, and at last contriving to mention Dario's name in order that she might understand that he would be up and about again within a fortnight. On perceiving Pierre, La Pierina had started with timidity and distrust as if anxious to flee; but when she understood him, tears of happiness gushed from her eyes, and with a bright smile she kissed her hand to him, calling: "/Grazie, grazie/, thanks, thanks!" And thereupon she darted away, and he never saw her again. On another morning at an early hour, as Pierre was going to say mass at Santa Brigida on the Piazza Farnese, he was surprised to meet Benedetta coming out of the church and carrying a small phial of oil. She evinced no embarrassment, but frankly told him that every two or three days she went thither to obtain from the beadle a few drops of the oil used for the lamp that burnt before an antique wooden statue of the Madonna, in which she had perfect confidence. She even confessed that she had never had confidence in any other Madonna, having never obtained anything from any other, though she had prayed to several of high repute, Madonnas of marble and even of silver. And so her heart was full of ardent devotion for the holy image which refused her nothing. And she declared in all simplicity, as though the matter were quite natural and above discussion, that the few drops of oil which she applied, morning and evening, to Dario's wound, were alone working his cure, so speedy a cure as to be quite miraculous. Pierre, fairly aghast, distressed indeed to find such childish, superstitious notions in one so full of sense and grace and passion, did not even venture to smile. In the evenings, when he came back from his strolls and spent an hour or so in Dario's room, he would for a time divert the patient by relating what he had done and seen and thought of during the day. And when he again ventured to stray beyond the district, and became enamoured of the lovely gardens of Rome, which he visited as soon as they opened in the morning in order that he might be virtually alone, he delighted the young prince and Benedetta with his enthusiasm, his rapturous passion for the splendid trees, the plashing water, and the spreading terraces whence the views were so sublime. It was not the most extensive of these gardens which the more deeply impressed his heart. In the grounds of the Villa Borghese, the little Roman Bois de Boulogne, there were certainly some majestic clumps of greenery, some regal avenues where carriages took a turn in the afternoon before the obligatory drive to the Pincio; but Pierre was more touched by the reserved garden of the villa--that villa dazzling with marble and now containing one of the finest museums in the world. There was a simple lawn of fine grass with a vast central basin surmounted by a figure of Venus, nude and white; and antique fragments, vases, statues, columns, and /sarcophagi/ were ranged symmetrically all around the deserted, sunlit yet melancholy, sward. On returning on one occasion to the Pincio Pierre spent a delightful morning there, penetrated by the charm of this little nook with its scanty evergreens, and its admirable vista of all Rome and St. Peter's rising up afar off in the soft limpid radiance. At the Villa Albani and the Villa Pamphili he again came upon superb parasol pines, tall, stately, and graceful, and powerful elm-trees with twisted limbs and dusky foliage. In the Pamphili grounds, the elm-trees steeped the paths in a delicious half-light, the lake with its weeping willows and tufts of reeds had a dreamy aspect, while down below the /parterre/ displayed a fantastic floral mosaic bright with the various hues of flowers and foliage. That which most particularly struck Pierre, however, in this, the noblest, most spacious, and most carefully tended garden of Rome, was the novel and unexpected view that he suddenly obtained of St. Peter's, whilst skirting a low wall: a view whose symbolism for ever clung to him. Rome had completely vanished, and between the slopes of Monte Mario and another wooded height which hid the city, there only appeared the colossal dome which seemed to be poised on an infinity of scattered blocks, now white, now red. These were the houses of the Borgo, the jumbled piles of the Vatican and the Basilica which the huge dome surmounted and annihilated, showing greyly blue in the light blue of the heavens, whilst far away stretched a delicate, boundless vista of the Campagna, likewise of a bluish tint. It was, however, more particularly in the less sumptuous gardens, those of a more homely grace, that Pierre realised that even things have souls. Ah! that Villa Mattei on one side of the Coelius with its terraced grounds, its sloping alleys edged with laurel, aloe, and spindle tree, its box-plants forming arbours, its oranges, its roses, and its fountains! Pierre spent some delicious hours there, and only found a similar charm on visiting the Aventine, where three churches are embowered in verdure. The little garden of Santa Sabina, the birthplace of the Dominican order, is closed on all sides and affords no view: it slumbers in quiescence, warm and perfumed by its orange-trees, amongst which that planted by St. Dominic stands huge and gnarled but still laden with ripe fruit. At the adjoining Priorato, however, the garden, perched high above the Tiber, overlooks a vast expanse, with the river and the buildings on either bank as far as the summit of the Janiculum. And in these gardens of Rome Pierre ever found the same clipped box-shrubs, the same eucalypti with white trunks and pale leaves long like hair, the same ilex-trees squat and dusky, the same giant pines, the same black cypresses, the same marbles whitening amidst tufts of roses, and the same fountains gurgling under mantling ivy. Never did he enjoy more gentle, sorrow-tinged delight than at the Villa of Pope Julius, where all the life of a gay and sensual period is suggested by the semi-circular porticus opening on the gardens, a porticus decorated with paintings, golden trellis-work laden with flowers, amidst which flutter flights of smiling Cupids. Then, on the evening when he returned from the Farnesina, he declared that he had brought all the dead soul of ancient Rome away with him, and it was not the paintings executed after Raffaelle's designs that had touched him, it was rather the pretty hall on the river side decorated in soft blue and pink and lilac, with an art devoid of genius yet so charming and so Roman; and in particular it was the abandoned garden once stretching down to the Tiber, and now shut off from it by the new quay, and presenting an aspect of woeful desolation, ravaged, bossy and weedy like a cemetery, albeit the golden fruit of orange and citron tree still ripened there. And for the last time a shock came to Pierre's heart on the lovely evening when he visited the Villa Medici. There he was on French soil.* And again what a marvellous garden he found with box-plants, and pines, and avenues full of magnificence and charm! What a refuge for antique reverie was that wood of ilex-trees, so old and so sombre, where the sun in declining cast fiery gleams of red gold amidst the sheeny bronze of the foliage. You ascend by endless steps, and from the crowning belvedere on high you embrace all Rome at a glance as though by opening your arms you could seize it in its entirety. From the villa's dining-room, decorated with portraits of all the artists who have successfully sojourned there, and from the spacious peaceful library one beholds the same splendid, broad, all-conquering panorama, a panorama of unlimited ambition, whose infinite ought to set in the hearts of the young men dwelling there a determination to subjugate the world. Pierre, who came thither opposed to the principle of the "Prix de Rome," that traditional, uniform education so dangerous for originality, was for a moment charmed by the warm peacefulness, the limpid solitude of the garden, and the sublime horizon where the wings of genius seemed to flutter. Ah! how delightful, to be only twenty and to live for three years amidst such infinite sweetness, encompassed by the finest works of man; to say to oneself that one is as yet too young to produce, and to reflect, and seek, and learn how to enjoy, suffer, and love! But Pierre afterwards reflected that this was not a fit task for youth, and that to appreciate the divine enjoyment of such a retreat, all art and blue sky, ripe age was needed, age with victories already gained and weariness following upon the accomplishment of work. He chatted with some of the young pensioners, and remarked that if those who were inclined to dreaminess and contemplation, like those who could merely claim mediocrity, accommodated themselves to this life cloistered in the art of the past, on the other hand artists of active bent and personal temperament pined with impatience, their eyes ever turned towards Paris, their souls eager to plunge into the furnace of battle and production. * Here is the French Academy, where winners of the "Prix de Rome" in painting, sculpture, architecture, engraving, and music are maintained by the French Government for three years. The creation dates from Louis XIV.--Trans. All those gardens of which Pierre spoke to Dario and Benedetta with so much rapture, awoke within them the memory of the garden of the Villa Montefiori, now a waste, but once so green, planted with the finest orange-trees of Rome, a grove of centenarian orange-trees where they had learnt to love one another. And the memory of their early love brought thoughts of their present situation and their future prospects. To these the conversation always reverted, and evening after evening Pierre witnessed their delight, and heard them talk of coming happiness like lovers transported to the seventh heaven. The suit for the dissolution of Benedetta's marriage was now assuming a more and more favourable aspect. Guided by a powerful hand, Donna Serafina was apparently acting very vigorously, for almost every day she had some further good news to report. She was indeed anxious to finish the affair both for the continuity and for the honour of the name, for on the one hand Dario refused to marry any one but his cousin, and on the other this marriage would explain everything and put an end to an intolerable situation. The scandalous rumours which circulated both in the white and the black world quite incensed her, and a victory was the more necessary as Leo XIII, already so aged, might be snatched away at any moment, and in the Conclave which would follow she desired that her brother's name should shine forth with untarnished, sovereign radiance. Never had the secret ambition of her life, the hope that her race might give a third pope to the Church, filled her with so much passion. It was as if she therein sought a consolation for the harsh abandonment of Advocate Morano. Invariably clad in sombre garb, ever active and slim, so tightly laced that from behind one might have taken her for a young girl, she was so to say the black soul of that old palace; and Pierre, who met her everywhere, prowling and inspecting like a careful house-keeper, and jealously watching over her brother the Cardinal, bowed to her in silence, chilled to the heart by the stern look of her withered wrinkled face in which was set the large, opiniative nose of her family. However she barely returned his bows, for she still disdained that paltry foreign priest, and only tolerated him in order to please Monsignor Nani and Viscount Philibert de la Choue. A witness every evening of the anxious delight and impatience of Benedetta and Dario, Pierre by degrees became almost as impassioned as themselves, as desirous for an early solution. Benedetta's suit was about to come before the Congregation of the Council once more. Monsignor Palma, the defender of the marriage, had demanded a supplementary inquiry after the favourable decision arrived at in the first instance by a bare majority of one vote--a majority which the Pope would certainly not have thought sufficient had he been asked for his ratification. So the question now was to gain votes among the ten cardinals who formed the Congregation, to persuade and convince them, and if possible ensure an almost unanimous pronouncement. The task was arduous, for, instead of facilitating matters, Benedetta's relationship to Cardinal Boccanera raised many difficulties, owing to the intriguing spirit rife at the Vatican, the spite of rivals who, by perpetuating the scandal, hoped to destroy Boccanera's chance of ever attaining to the papacy. Every afternoon, however, Donna Serafina devoted herself to the task of winning votes under the direction of her confessor, Father Lorenza, whom she saw daily at the Collegio Germanico, now the last refuge of the Jesuits in Rome, for they have ceased to be masters of the Gesu. The chief hope of success lay in Prada's formal declaration that he would not put in an appearance. The whole affair wearied and irritated him; the imputations levelled against him as a man, seemed to him supremely odious and ridiculous; and he no longer even took the trouble to reply to the assignations which were sent to him. He acted indeed as if he had never been married, though deep in his heart the wound dealt to his passion and his pride still lingered, bleeding afresh whenever one or another of the scandalous rumours in circulation reached his ears. However, as their adversary desisted from all action, one can understand that the hopes of Benedetta and Dario increased, the more so as hardly an evening passed without Donna Serafina telling them that she believed she had gained the support of another cardinal. But the man who terrified them all was Monsignor Palma, whom the Congregation had appointed to defend the sacred ties of matrimony. His rights and privileges were almost unlimited, he could appeal yet again, and in any case would make the affair drag on as long as it pleased him. His first report, in reply to Morano's memoir, had been a terrible blow, and it was now said that a second one which he was preparing would prove yet more pitiless, establishing as a fundamental principle of the Church that it could not annul a marriage whose nonconsummation was purely and simply due to the action of the wife in refusing obedience to her husband. In presence of such energy and logic, it was unlikely that the cardinals, even if sympathetic, would dare to advise the Holy Father to dissolve the marriage. And so discouragement was once more overcoming Benedetta when Donna Serafina, on returning from a visit to Monsignor Nani, calmed her somewhat by telling her that a mutual friend had undertaken to deal with Monsignor Palma. However, said she, even if they succeeded, it would doubtless cost them a large sum. Monsignor Palma, a theologist expert in all canonical affairs, and a perfectly honest man in pecuniary matters, had met with a great misfortune in his life. He had a niece, a poor and lovely girl, for whom, unhappily, in his declining years he conceived an insensate passion, with the result that to avoid a scandal he was compelled to marry her to a rascal who now preyed upon her and even beat her. And the prelate was now passing through a fearful crisis, weary of reducing himself to beggary, and indeed no longer having the money necessary to extricate his nephew by marriage from a very nasty predicament, the result of cheating at cards. So the idea was to save the young man by a considerable pecuniary payment, and then to procure him employment without asking aught of his uncle, who, as if offering complicity, came in tears one evening, when night had fallen, to thank Donna Serafina for her exceeding goodness. Pierre was with Dario that evening when Benedetta entered the room, laughing and joyfully clapping her bands. "It's done, it's done!" she said, "he has just left aunt, and vowed eternal gratitude to her. He will now be obliged to show himself amiable." However Dario distrustfully inquired: "But was he made to sign anything, did he enter into a formal engagement?" "Oh! no; how could one do that? It's such a delicate matter," replied Benedetta. "But people say that he is a very honest man." Nevertheless, in spite of these words, she herself became uneasy. What if Monsignor Palma should remain incorruptible in spite of the great service which had been rendered him? Thenceforth this idea haunted them, and their suspense began once more. Dario, eager to divert his mind, was imprudent enough to get up before he was perfectly cured, and, his wound reopening, he was obliged to take to his bed again for a few days. Every evening, as previously, Pierre strove to enliven him with an account of his strolls. The young priest was now getting bolder, rambling in turn through all the districts of Rome, and discovering the many "classical" curiosities catalogued in the guide-books. One evening he spoke with a kind of affection of the principal squares of the city which he had first thought commonplace, but which now seemed to him very varied, each with original features of its own. There was the noble Piazza del Popolo of such monumental symmetry and so full of sunlight; there was the Piazza di Spagna, the lively meeting-place of foreigners, with its double flight of a hundred and thirty steps gilded by the sun; there was the vast Piazza Colonna, always swarming with people, and the most Italian of all the Roman squares from the presence of the idle, careless crowd which ever lounged round the column of Marcus Aurelius as if waiting for fortune to fall from heaven; there was also the long and regular Piazza Navona, deserted since the market was no longer held there, and retaining a melancholy recollection of its former bustling life; and there was the Campo dei Fiori, which was invaded each morning by the tumultuous fruit and vegetable markets, quite a plantation of huge umbrellas sheltering heaps of tomatoes, pimentoes, and grapes amidst a noisy stream of dealers and housewives. Pierre's great surprise, however, was the Piazza del Campidoglio--the "Square of the Capitol"--which to him suggested a summit, an open spot overlooking the city and the world, but which he found to be small and square, and on three sides enclosed by palaces, whilst on the fourth side the view was of little extent.* There are no passers-by there; visitors usually come up by a flight of steps bordered by a few palm-trees, only foreigners making use of the winding carriage-ascent. The vehicles wait, and the tourists loiter for a while with their eyes raised to the admirable equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, in antique bronze, which occupies the centre of the piazza. Towards four o'clock, when the sun gilds the left-hand palace, and the slender statues of its entablature show vividly against the blue sky, you might think yourself in some warm cosy square of a little provincial town, what with the women of the neighbourhood who sit knitting under the arcade, and the bands of ragged urchins who disport themselves on all sides like school-boys in a playground. * The Piazza del Campidoglio is really a depression between the Capitolium proper and the northern height called the Arx. It is supposed to have been the exact site of Romulus's traditional Asylum.--Trans. Then, on another evening Pierre told Benedetta and Dario of his admiration for the Roman fountains, for in no other city of the world does water flow so abundantly and magnificently in fountains of bronze and marble, from the boat-shaped Fontana della Barcaccia on the Piazza di Spagna, the Triton on the Piazza Barberini, and the Tortoises which give their name to the Piazza delle Tartarughe, to the three fountains of the Piazza Navona where Bernini's vast central composition of rock and river-gods rises so triumphantly, and to the colossal and pompous fountain of Trevi, where King Neptune stands on high attended by lofty figures of Health and Fruitfulness. And on yet another evening Pierre came home quite pleased, relating that he had at last discovered why it was that the old streets around the Capitol and along the Tiber seemed to him so strange: it was because they had no footways, and pedestrians, instead of skirting the walls, invariably took the middle of the road, leisurely wending their way among the vehicles. Pierre was very fond of those old districts with their winding lanes, their tiny squares so irregular in shape, and their huge square mansions swamped by a multitudinous jumble of little houses. He found a charm, too, in the district of the Esquiline, where, besides innumerable flights of ascending steps, each of grey pebbles edged with white stone, there were sudden sinuous slopes, tiers of terraces, seminaries and convents, lifeless, with their windows ever closed, and lofty, blank walls above which a superb palm-tree would now and again soar into the spotless blue of the sky. And on yet another evening, having strolled into the Campagna beside the Tiber and above the Ponte Molle, he came back full of enthusiasm for a form of classical art which hitherto he had scarcely appreciated. Along the river bank, however, he had found the very scenery that Poussin so faithfully depicted: the sluggish, yellow stream fringed with reeds; low riven cliffs, whose chalky whiteness showed against the ruddy background of a far-stretching, undulating plain, bounded by blue hills; a few spare trees with a ruined porticus opening on to space atop of the bank, and a line of pale-hued sheep descending to drink, whilst the shepherd, with an elbow resting on the trunk of an ilex-tree, stood looking on. It was a special kind of beauty, broad and ruddy, made up of nothing, sometimes simplified into a series of low, horizontal lines, but ever ennobled by the great memories it evoked: the Roman legions marching along the paved highways across the bare Campagna; the long slumber of the middle ages; and then the awakening of antique nature in the midst of Catholicism, whereby, for the second time, Rome became ruler of the world. One day when Pierre came back from seeing the great modern cemetery, the Campo Verano, he found Celia, as well as Benedetta, by the side of Dario's bed. "What, Monsieur l'Abbe!" exclaimed the little Princess when she learnt where he had been; "it amuses you to visit the dead?" "Oh those Frenchmen," remarked Dario, to whom the mere idea of a cemetery was repulsive; "those Frenchmen seem to take a pleasure in making their lives wretched with their partiality for gloomy scenes." "But there is no escaping the reality of death," gently replied Pierre; "the best course is to look it in the face." This made the Prince quite angry. "Reality, reality," said he, "when reality isn't pleasant I don't look at it; I try never to think of it even." In spite of this rejoinder, Pierre, with his smiling, placid air, went on enumerating the things which had struck him: first, the admirable manner in which the cemetery was kept, then the festive appearance which it derived from the bright autumn sun, and the wonderful profusion in which marble was lavished in slabs, statues, and chapels. The ancient atavism had surely been at work, the sumptuous mausoleums of the Appian Way had here sprung up afresh, making death a pretext for the display of pomp and pride. In the upper part of the cemetery the Roman nobility had a district of its own, crowded with veritable temples, colossal statues, groups of several figures; and if at times the taste shown in these monuments was deplorable, it was none the less certain that millions had been expended on them. One charming feature of the place, said Pierre, was that the marbles, standing among yews and cypresses were remarkably well preserved, white and spotless; for, if the summer sun slowly gilded them, there were none of those stains of moss and rain which impart an aspect of melancholy decay to the statues of northern climes. Touched by the discomfort of Dario, Benedetta, hitherto silent, ended by interrupting Pierre. "And was the hunt interesting?" she asked, turning to Celia. The little Princess had been taken by her mother to see a fox-hunt, and had been speaking of it when the priest entered the room. "Yes, it was very interesting, my dear," she replied; "the meet was at noon near the tomb of Caecilia Metella, where a buffet had been arranged under a tent. And there was such a number of people--the foreign colony, the young men of the embassies, and some officers, not to mention ourselves--all the men in scarlet and a great many ladies in habits. The 'throw-off' was at one o'clock, and the gallop lasted more than two hours and a half, so that the fox had a very long run. I wasn't able to follow, but all the same I saw some extraordinary things--a great wall which the whole hunt had to leap, and then ditches and hedges--a mad race indeed in the rear of the hounds. There were two accidents, but nothing serious; one gentleman, who was unseated, sprained his wrist badly, and another broke his leg."* * The Roman Hunt, which counts about one hundred subscribers, has flourished since 1840. There is a kennel of English hounds, an English huntsman and whip, and a stable of English hunters.--Trans. Dario had listened to Celia with passionate interest, for fox-hunting is one of the great pleasures of Rome, and the Campagna, flat and yet bristling with obstacles, is certainly well adapted to the sport. "Ah!" said the young Prince in a despairing tone, "how idiotic it is to be riveted to this room! I shall end by dying of /ennui/!" Benedetta contented herself with smiling; neither reproach nor expression of sadness came from her at this candid display of egotism. Her own happiness at having him all to herself in the room where she nursed him was great indeed; still her love, at once full of youth and good sense, included a maternal element, and she well understood that he hardly amused himself, deprived as he was of his customary pleasures and severed from his friends, few of whom he was willing to receive, for he feared that they might think the story of the dislocated shoulder suspicious. Of course there were no more /fetes/, no more evenings at the theatre, no more flirtations. But above everything else Dario missed the Corso, and suffered despairingly at no longer seeing or learning anything by watching the procession of Roman society from four to five each afternoon. Accordingly, as soon as an intimate called, there were endless questions: Had the visitor seen so and so? Had such a one reappeared? How had a certain friend's love affair ended? Was any new adventure setting the city agog? And so forth; all the petty frivolities, nine days' wonders, and puerile intrigues in which the young Prince had hitherto expended his manly energy. After a pause Celia, who was fond of coming to him with innocent gossip, fixed her candid eyes on him--the fathomless eyes of an enigmatical virgin, and resumed: "How long it takes to set a shoulder right!" Had she, child as she was, with love her only business, divined the truth? Dario in his embarrassment glanced at Benedetta, who still smiled. However, the little Princess was already darting to another subject: "Ah! you know, Dario, at the Corso yesterday I saw a lady--" Then she stopped short, surprised and embarrassed that these words should have escaped her. However, in all bravery she resumed like one who had been a friend since childhood, sharing many a little love secret: "Yes, a very pretty person whom you know. Well, she had a bouquet of white roses with her all the same." At this Benedetta indulged in a burst of frank merriment, and Dario, still looking at her, also laughed. She had twitted him during the early days because no young woman ever sent to make inquiries about him. For his part, he was not displeased with the rupture, for the continuance of the connection might have proved embarrassing; and so, although his vanity may have been slightly hurt, the news that he was already replaced in La Tonietta's affections was welcome rather than otherwise. "Ah!" he contented himself with saying, "the absent are always in the wrong." "The man one loves is never absent," declared Celia with her grave, candid air. However, Benedetta had stepped up to the bed to raise the young man's pillows: "Never mind, Dario /mio/," said she, "all those things are over; I mean to keep you, and you will only have me to love." He gave her a passionate glance and kissed her hair. She spoke the truth: he had never loved any one but her, and she was not mistaken in her anticipation of keeping him always to herself alone, as soon as they should be wedded. To her great delight, since she had been nursing him he had become quite childish again, such as he had been when she had learnt to love him under the orange-trees of the Villa Montefiori. He retained a sort of puerility, doubtless the outcome of impoverished blood, that return to childhood which one remarks amongst very ancient races; and he toyed on his bed with pictures, gazed for hours at photographs, which made him laugh. Moreover, his inability to endure suffering had yet increased; he wished Benedetta to be gay and sing, and amused her with his petty egotism which led him to dream of a life of continual joy with her. Ah! how pleasant it would be to live together and for ever in the sunlight, to do nothing and care for nothing, and even if the world should crumble somewhere to heed it not! "One thing which greatly pleases me," suddenly said the young Prince, "is that Monsieur l'Abbe has ended by falling in love with Rome." Pierre admitted it with a good grace. "We told you so," remarked Benedetta. "A great deal of time is needed for one to understand and love Rome. If you had only stayed here for a fortnight you would have gone off with a deplorable idea of us, but now that you have been here for two full months we are quite at ease, for you will never think of us without affection." She looked exceedingly charming as she spoke these words, and Pierre again bowed. However, he had already given thought to the phenomenon, and fancied he could explain it. When a stranger comes to Rome he brings with him a Rome of his own, a Rome such as he dreams of, so ennobled by imagination that the real Rome proves a terrible disenchantment. And so it is necessary to wait for habituation, for the mediocrity of the reality to soften, and for the imagination to have time to kindle again, and only behold things such as they are athwart the prodigious splendour of the past. However, Celia had risen and was taking leave. "Good-bye, dear," she said; "I hope the wedding will soon take place. You know, Dario, that I mean to be betrothed before the end of the month. Oh yes, I intend to make my father give a grand entertainment. And how nice it would be if the two weddings could take place at the same time!" Two days later, after a long ramble through the Trastevere district, followed by a visit to the Palazzo Farnese, Pierre felt that he could at last understand the terrible, melancholy truth about Rome. He had several times already strolled through the Trastevere, attracted towards its wretched denizens by his compassion for all who suffered. Ah! that quagmire of wretchedness and ignorance! He knew of abominable nooks in the faubourgs of Paris, frightful "rents" and "courts" where people rotted in heaps, but there was nothing in France to equal the listless, filthy stagnation of the Trastevere. On the brightest days a dank gloom chilled the sinuous, cellar-like lanes, and the smell of rotting vegetables, rank oil, and human animality brought on fits of nausea. Jumbled together in a confusion which artists of romantic turn would admire, the antique, irregular houses had black, gaping entrances diving below ground, outdoor stairways conducting to upper floors, and wooden balconies which only a miracle upheld. There were crumbling fronts, shored up with beams; sordid lodgings whose filth and bareness could be seen through shattered windows; and numerous petty shops, all the open-air cook-stalls of a lazy race which never lighted a fire at home: you saw frying-shops with heaps of polenta, and fish swimming in stinking oil, and dealers in cooked vegetables displaying huge turnips, celery, cauliflowers, and spinach, all cold and sticky. The butcher's meat was black and clumsily cut up; the necks of the animals bristled with bloody clots, as though the heads had simply been torn away. The baker's loaves, piled on planks, looked like little round paving stones; at the beggarly greengrocers' merely a few pimentoes and fir-apples were shown under the strings of dry tomatoes which festooned the doorways; and the only shops which were at all attractive were those of the pork butchers with their salted provisions and their cheese, whose pungent smell slightly attenuated the pestilential reek of the gutters. Lottery offices, displaying lists of winning numbers, alternated with wine-shops, of which latter there was a fresh one every thirty yards with large inscriptions setting forth that the best wines of Genzano, Marino, and Frascati were to be found within. And the whole district teemed with ragged, grimy denizens, children half naked and devoured by vermin, bare-headed, gesticulating and shouting women, whose skirts were stiff with grease, old men who remained motionless on benches amidst swarms of hungry flies; idleness and agitation appearing on all sides, whilst cobblers sat on the sidewalks quietly plying their trade, and little donkeys pulled carts hither and thither, and men drove turkeys along, whip in hand, and hands of beggars rushed upon the few anxious tourists who had timorously ventured into the district. At the door of a little tailor's shop an old house-pail dangled full of earth, in which a succulent plant was flowering. And from every window and balcony, as from the many cords which stretched across the street from house to house, all the household washing hung like bunting, nameless drooping rags, the symbolical banners of abominable misery. Pierre's fraternal, soul filled with pity at the sight. Ah! yes, it was necessary to demolish all those pestilential districts where the populace had wallowed for centuries as in a poisonous gaol! He was for demolition and sanitary improvement, even if old Rome were killed and artists scandalised. Doubtless the Trastevere was already greatly changed, pierced with several new thoroughfares which let the sun stream in. And amidst the /abattis/ of rubbish and the spacious clearings, where nothing new had yet been erected, the remaining portions of the old district seemed even blacker and more loathsome. Some day, no doubt, it would all be rebuilt, but how interesting was this phase of the city's evolution: old Rome expiring and new Rome just dawning amidst countless difficulties! To appreciate the change it was necessary to have known the filthy Rome of the past, swamped by sewage in every form. The recently levelled Ghetto had, over a course of centuries, so rotted the soil on which it stood that an awful pestilential odour yet arose from its bare site. It was only fitting that it should long remain waste, so that it might dry and become purified in the sun. In all the districts on either side of the Tiber where extensive improvements have been undertaken you find the same scenes. You follow some narrow, damp, evil-smelling street with black house-fronts and overhanging roofs, and suddenly come upon a clearing as in a forest of ancient leprous hovels. There are squares, broad footways; lofty white carved buildings yet in the rough, littered with rubbish and fenced off. On every side you find as it were a huge building yard, which the financial crisis perpetuates; the city of to-morrow arrested in its growth, stranded there in its monstrous, precocious, surprising infancy. Nevertheless, therein lies good and healthful work, such as was and is absolutely necessary if Rome is to become a great modern city, instead of being left to rot, to dwindle into a mere ancient curiosity, a museum show-piece. That day, as Pierre went from the Trastevere to the Palazzo Farnese, where he was expected, he chose a roundabout route, following the Via di Pettinari and the Via dei Giubbonari, the former so dark and narrow with a great hospital wall on one side and a row of wretched houses on the other, and the latter animated by a constant stream of people and enlivened by the jewellers' windows, full of big gold chains, and the displays of the drapers' shops, where stuffs hung in bright red, blue, green, and yellow lengths. And the popular district through which he had roamed and the trading district which he was now crossing reminded him of the castle fields with their mass of workpeople reduced to mendicity by lack of employment and forced to camp in the superb, unfinished, abandoned mansions. Ah! the poor, sad people, who were yet so childish, kept in the ignorance and credulity of a savage race by centuries of theocracy, so habituated to mental night and bodily suffering that even to-day they remained apart from the social awakening, simply desirous of enjoying their pride, indolence, and sunlight in peace! They seemed both blind and deaf in their decadence, and whilst Rome was being overturned they continued to lead the stagnant life of former times, realising nought but the worries of the improvements, the demolition of the old favourite districts, the consequent change in habits, and the rise in the cost of food, as if indeed they would rather have gone without light, cleanliness, and health, since these could only be secured by a great financial and labour crisis. And yet, at bottom, it was solely for the people, the populace, that Rome was being cleansed and rebuilt with the idea of making it a great modern capital, for democracy lies at the end of these present day transformations; it is the people who will inherit the cities whence dirt and disease are being expelled, and where the law of labour will end by prevailing and killing want. And so, though one may curse the dusting and repairing of the ruins and the stripping of all the wild flora from the Colosseum, though one may wax indignant at sight of the hideous fortress like ramparts which imprison the Tiber, and bewail the old romantic banks with their greenery and their antique dwellings dipping into the stream, one must at the same time acknowledge that life springs from death, and that to-morrow must perforce blossom in the dust of the past. While thinking of all these things Pierre had reached the deserted, stern-looking Piazza Farnese, and for a moment he looked up at the bare monumental facade of the heavy square Palazzo, its lofty entrance where hung the tricolour, its rows of windows and its famous cornice sculptured with such marvellous art. Then he went in. A friend of Narcisse Habert, one of the /attaches/ of the embassy to the King of Italy, was waiting for him, having offered to show him over the huge pile, the finest palace in Rome, which France had leased as a lodging for her ambassador.* Ah! that colossal, sumptuous, deadly dwelling, with its vast court whose porticus is so dark and damp, its giant staircase with low steps, its endless corridors, its immense galleries and halls. All was sovereign pomp blended with death. An icy, penetrating chill fell from the walls. With a discreet smile the /attache/ owned that the embassy was frozen in winter and baked in summer. The only part of the building which was at all lively and pleasant was the first storey, overlooking the Tiber, which the ambassador himself occupied. From the gallery there, containing the famous frescoes of Annibale Caracci, one can see the Janiculum, the Corsini gardens, and the Acqua Paola above San Pietro in Montorio. Then, after a vast drawing-room comes the study, peaceful and pleasant, and enlivened by sunshine. But the dining-room, the bed-chambers, and other apartments occupied by the /personnel/ look out on to the mournful gloom of a side street. All these vast rooms, twenty and four-and-twenty feet high, have admirable carved or painted ceilings, bare walls, a few of them decorated with frescoes, and incongruous furniture, superb pier tables mingling with modern /bric-a-brac/. And things become abominable when you enter the gala reception-rooms overlooking the piazza, for there you no longer find an article of furniture, no longer a hanging, nothing but disaster, a series of magnificent deserted halls given over to rats and spiders. The embassy occupies but one of them, where it heaps up its dusty archives. Near by is a huge hall occupying the height of two floors, and thus sixty feet in elevation. Reserved by the owner of the palace, the ex-King of Naples, it has become a mere lumber-room where /maquettes/, unfinished statues, and a very fine sarcophagus are stowed away amidst all kinds of remnants. And this is but a part of the palace. The ground floor is altogether uninhabited; the French "Ecole de Rome" occupies a corner of the second floor; while the embassy huddles in chilly fashion in the most habitable corner of the first floor, compelled to abandon everything else and lock the doors to spare itself the useless trouble of sweeping. No doubt it is grand to live in the Palazzo Farnese, built by Pope Paul III and for more than a century inhabited by cardinals; but how cruel the discomfort and how frightful the melancholy of this huge ruin, three-fourths of whose rooms are dead, useless, impossible, cut off from life. And the evenings, oh! the evenings, when porch, court, stairs, and corridors are invaded by dense gloom, against which a few smoky gas lamps struggle in vain, when a long, long journey lies before one through the lugubrious desert of stone, before one reaches the ambassador's warm and cheerful drawing-room! * The French have two embassies at Rome: one at the Palazzo Farnese, to the Italian Court, and the other at the Palazzo Rospigliosi, to the Vatican.--Trans. Pierre came away quite aghast. And, as he walked along, the many other grand palaces which he had seen during his strolls rose before him, one and all of them stripped of their splendour, shorn of their princely establishments, let out in uncomfortable flats! What could be done with those grandiose galleries and halls now that no fortune could defray the cost of the pompous life for which they had been built, or even feed the retinue needed to keep them up? Few indeed were the nobles who, like Prince Aldobrandini, with his numerous progeny, still occupied their entire mansions. Almost all of them let the antique dwellings of their forefathers to companies or individual tenants, reserving only a storey, and at times a mere lodging in some dark corner, for themselves. The Palazzo Chigi was let: the ground floor to bankers and the first floor to the Austrian ambassador, while the Prince and his family divided the second floor with a cardinal. The Palazzo Sciarra was let: the first floor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the second to a senator, while the Prince and his mother merely occupied the ground floor. The Palazzo Barberini was let: its ground floor, first floor, and second floor to various families, whilst the Prince found a refuge on the third floor in the rooms which had been occupied by his ancestors' lackeys. The Palazzo Borghese was let: the ground floor to a dealer in antiquities, the first floor to a Lodge of Freemasons, and the rest to various households, whilst the Prince only retained the use of a small suite of apartments. And the Palazzo Odescalchi, the Palazzo Colonna, the Palazzo Doria were let: their Princes reduced to the position of needy landlords eager to derive as much profit as possible from their property in order to make both ends meet. A blast of ruin was sweeping over the Roman patriziato, the greatest fortunes had crumbled in the financial crisis, very few remained wealthy, and what a wealth it was, stagnant and dead, which neither commerce nor industry could renew. The numerous princes who had tried speculation were stripped of their fortunes. The others, terrified, called upon to pay enormous taxes, amounting to nearly one-third of their incomes, could henceforth only wait and behold their last stagnant millions dwindle away till they were exhausted or distributed according to the succession laws. Such wealth as remained to these nobles must perish, for, like everything else, wealth perishes when it lacks a soil in which it may fructify. In all this there was solely a question of time: eventual ruin was a foregone and irremediable conclusion, of absolute, historical certainty. Those who resigned themselves to the course of letting their deserted mansions still struggled for life, seeking to accommodate themselves to present-day exigencies; whilst death already dwelt among the others, those stubborn, proud ones who immured themselves in the tombs of their race, like that appalling Palazzo Boccanera, which was falling into dust amidst such chilly gloom and silence, the latter only broken at long intervals when the Cardinal's old coach rumbled over the grassy court. The point which most struck Pierre, however, was that his visits to the Trastevere and the Palazzo Farnese shed light one on the other, and led him to a conclusion which had never previously seemed so manifest. As yet no "people," and soon no aristocracy. He had found the people so wretched, ignorant, and resigned in its long infancy induced by historic and climatic causes that many years of instruction and culture were necessary for it to become a strong, healthy, and laborious democracy, conscious of both its rights and its duties. As for the aristocracy, it was dwindling to death in its crumbling palaces, no longer aught than a finished, degenerate race, with such an admixture also of American, Austrian, Polish, and Spanish blood that pure Roman blood became a rare exception; and, moreover, it had ceased to belong either to sword or gown, unwilling to serve constitutional Italy and forsaking the Sacred College, where only /parvenus/ now donned the purple. And between the lowly and the aristocracy there was as yet no firmly seated middle class, with the vigour of fresh sap and sufficient knowledge, and good sense to act as the transitional educator of the nation. The middle class was made up in part of the old servants and clients of the princes, the farmers who rented their lands, the stewards, notaries, and solicitors who managed their fortunes; in part, too, of all the employees, the functionaries of every rank and class, the deputies and senators, whom the new Government had brought from the provinces; and, in particular, of the voracious hawks who had swooped down upon Rome, the Pradas, the men of prey from all parts of the kingdom, who with beak and talon devoured both people and aristocracy. For whom, then, had one laboured? For whom had those gigantic works of new Rome been undertaken? A shudder of fear sped by, a crack as of doom was heard, arousing pitiful disquietude in every fraternal heart. Yes, a threat of doom and annihilation: as yet no people, soon no aristocracy, and only a ravenous middle class, quarrying, vulture-like, among the ruins. On the evening of that day, when all was dark, Pierre went to spend an hour on the river quay beyond the Boccanera mansion. He was very fond of meditating on that deserted spot in spite of the warnings of Victorine, who asserted that it was not safe. And, indeed, on such inky nights as that one, no cutthroat place ever presented a more tragic aspect. Not a soul, not a passer-by; a dense gloom, a void in front and on either hand. At a corner of the mansion, now steeped in darkness, there was a gas lamp which stood in a hollow since the river margin had been banked up, and this lamp cast an uncertain glimmer upon the quay, level with the latter's bossy soil. Thus long vague shadows stretched from the various materials, piles of bricks and piles of stone, which were strewn around. On the right a few lights shone upon the bridge near San Giovanni and in the windows of the hospital of the Santo Spirito. On the left, amidst the dim recession of the river, the distant districts were blotted out. Then yonder, across the stream, was the Trastevere, the houses on the bank looking like vague, pale phantoms, with infrequent window-panes showing a blurred yellow glimmer, whilst on high only a dark band shadowed the Janiculum, near whose summit the lamps of some promenade scintillated like a triangle of stars. But it was the Tiber which impassioned Pierre; such was its melancholy majesty during those nocturnal hours. Leaning over the parapet, he watched it gliding between the new walls, which looked like those of some black and monstrous prison built for a giant. So long as lights gleamed in the windows of the houses opposite he saw the sluggish water flow by, showing slow, moire-like ripples there where the quivering reflections endowed it with a mysterious life. And he often mused on the river's famous past and evoked the legends which assert that fabulous wealth lies buried in its muddy bed. At each fresh invasion of the barbarians, and particularly when Rome was sacked, the treasures of palaces and temples are said to have been cast into the water to prevent them from falling into the hands of the conquerors. Might not those golden bars trembling yonder in the glaucous stream be the branches of the famous candelabrum which Titus brought from Jerusalem? Might not those pale patches whose shape remained uncertain amidst the frequent eddies indicate the white marble of statues and columns? And those deep moires glittering with little flamelets, were they not promiscuous heaps of precious metal, cups, vases, ornaments enriched with gems? What a dream was that of the swarming riches espied athwart the old river's bosom, of the hidden life of the treasures which were said to have slumbered there for centuries; and what a hope for the nation's pride and enrichment centred in the miraculous finds which might be made in the Tiber if one could some day dry it up and search its bed, as had already been suggested! Therein, perchance, lay Rome's new fortune. However, on that black night, whilst Pierre leant over the parapet, it was stern reality alone which occupied his mind. He was still pursuing the train of thought suggested by his visits to the Trastevere and the Farnese palace, and in presence of that lifeless water was coming to the conclusion that the selection of Rome for transformation into a modern capital was the great misfortune to which the sufferings of young Italy were due. He knew right well that the selection had been inevitable: Rome being the queen of glory, the antique ruler of the world to whom eternity had been promised, and without whom the national unity had always seemed an impossibility. And so the problem was a terrible one, since without Rome Italy could not exist, and with Rome it seemed difficult for it to exist. Ah! that dead river, how it symbolised disaster! Not a boat upon its surface, not a quiver of the commercial and industrial activity of those waters which bear life to the very hearts of great modern cities! There had been fine schemes, no doubt--Rome a seaport, gigantic works, canalisation to enable vessels of heavy tonnage to come up to the Aventine; but these were mere delusions; the authorities would scarcely be able to clear the river mouth, which deposits were continually choking. And there was that other cause of mortal languishment, the Campagna--the desert of death which the dead river crossed and which girdled Rome with sterility. There was talk of draining and planting it; much futile discussion on the question whether it had been fertile in the days of the old Romans; and even a few experiments were made; but, all the same, Rome remained in the midst of a vast cemetery like a city of other times, for ever separated from the modern world by that /lande/ or moor where the dust of centuries had accumulated. The geographical considerations which once gave the city the empire of the world no longer exist. The centre of civilisation has been displaced. The basin of the Mediterranean has been divided among powerful nations. In Italy all roads now lead to Milan, the city of industry and commerce, and Rome is but a town of passage. And so the most valiant efforts have failed to rouse it from its invincible slumber. The capital which the newcomers sought to improvise with such extreme haste has remained unfinished, and has almost ruined the nation. The Government, legislators, and functionaries only camp there, fleeing directly the warm weather sets in so as to escape the pernicious climate. The hotels and shops even put up their shutters, and the streets and promenades become deserts, the city having failed to acquire any life of its own, and relapsing into death as soon as the artificial life instilled into it is withdrawn. So all remains in suspense in this purely decorative capital, where only a fresh growth of men and money can finish and people the huge useless piles of the new districts. If it be true that to-morrow always blooms in the dust of the past, one ought to force oneself to hope; but Pierre asked himself if the soil were not exhausted, and since mere buildings could no longer grow on it, if it were not for ever drained of the sap which makes a race healthy, a nation powerful. As the night advanced the lights in the houses of the Trastevere went out one by one: yet Pierre for a long time lingered on the quay, leaning over the blackened river and yielding to hopelessness. There was now no distance to the gloom; all had become dense; no longer did any reflections set a moire-like, golden quiver in the water, or reveal beneath its mystery-concealing current a fantastic, dancing vision of fabulous wealth. Gone was the legend, gone the seven-branched golden candelabrum, gone the golden vases, gone the golden jewellery, the whole dream of antique treasure that had vanished into night, even like the antique glory of Rome. Not a glimmer, nothing but slumber, disturbed solely by the heavy fall of sewage from the drain on the right-hand, which could not be seen. The very water had disappeared, and Pierre no longer espied its leaden flow through the darkness, no longer had any perception of the sluggish senility, the long-dating weariness, the intense sadness of that ancient and glorious Tiber, whose waters now rolled nought but death. Only the vast, opulent sky, the eternal, pompous sky displayed the dazzling life of its milliards of planets above that river of darkness, bearing away the ruins of wellnigh three thousand years. Before returning to his own chamber that evening Pierre entered Dario's room, and found Victorine there preparing things for the night. And as soon as she heard where he had been she raised her voice in protest: "What! you have again been to the quay at this time of night, Monsieur l'Abbe? You want to get a good knife thrust yourself, it seems. Well, for my part, I certainly wouldn't take the air at such a late hour in this dangerous city." Then, with her wonted familiarity, she turned and spoke to the Prince, who was lying back in an arm-chair and smiling: "That girl, La Pierina," she said, "hasn't been back here, but all the same I've lately seen her prowling about among the building materials." Dario raised his hand to silence her, and, addressing Pierre, exclaimed: "But you spoke to her, didn't you? It's becoming idiotic! Just fancy that brute Tito coming back to dig his knife into my other shoulder--" All at once he paused, for he had just perceived Benedetta standing there and listening to him; she had slipped into the room a moment previously in order to wish him good-night. At sight of her his embarrassment was great indeed; he wished to speak, explain his words, and swear that he was wholly innocent in the affair. But she, with a smiling face, contented herself with saying, "I knew all about it, Dario /mio/. I am not so foolish as not to have thought it all over and understood the truth. If I ceased questioning you it was because I knew, and loved you all the same." The young woman looked very happy as she spoke, and for this she had good cause, for that very evening she had learnt that Monsignor Palma had shown himself grateful for the service rendered to his nephew by laying a fresh and favourable memoir on the marriage affair before the Congregation of the Council. He had been unwilling to recall his previous opinions so far as to range himself completely on the Contessina's side, but the certificates of two doctors whom she had recently seen had enabled him to conclude that her own declarations were accurate. And gliding over the question of wifely obedience, on which he had previously laid stress, he had skilfully set forth the reasons which made a dissolution of the marriage desirable. No hope of reconciliation could be entertained, so it was certain that both parties were constantly exposed to temptation and sin. He discreetly alluded to the fact that the husband had already succumbed to this danger, and praised the wife's lofty morality and piety, all the virtues which she displayed, and which guaranteed her veracity. Then, without formulating any conclusion of his own, he left the decision to the wisdom of the Congregation. And as he virtually repeated Advocate Morano's arguments, and Prada stubbornly refused to enter an appearance, it now seemed certain that the Congregation would by a great majority pronounce itself in favour of dissolution, a result which would enable the Holy Father to act benevolently. "Ah! Dario /mio/!" said Benedetta, "we are at the end of our worries. But what a lot of money, what a lot of money it all costs! Aunt says that they will scarcely leave us water to drink." So speaking she laughed with the happy heedlessness of an impassioned /amorosa/. It was not that the jurisdiction of the Congregations was in itself ruinous; indeed, in principle, it was gratuitous. Still there were a multitude of petty expenses, payments to subaltern employees, payments for medical consultations and certificates, copies of documents, and the memoirs and addresses of counsel. And although the votes of the cardinals were certainly not bought direct, some of them ended by costing considerable sums, for it often became necessary to win over dependants, to induce quite a little world to bring influence to bear upon their Eminences; without mentioning that large pecuniary gifts, when made with tact, have a decisive effect in clearing away the greatest difficulties in that sphere of the Vatican. And, briefly, Monsignor Palma's nephew by marriage had cost the Boccaneras a large sum. "But it doesn't matter, does it, Dario /mio/?" continued Benedetta. "Since you are now cured, they must make haste to give us permission to marry. That's all we ask of them. And if they want more, well, I'll give them my pearls, which will be all I shall have left me." He also laughed, for money had never held any place in his life. He had never had it at his pleasure, and simply hoped that he would always live with his uncle the cardinal, who would certainly not leave him and his young wife in the streets. Ruined as the family was, one or two hundred thousand francs represented nothing to his mind, and he had heard that certain dissolutions of marriage had cost as much as half a million. So, by way of response, he could only find a jest: "Give them my ring as well," said he; "give them everything, my dear, and we shall still be happy in this old palace even if we have to sell the furniture!" His words filled her with enthusiasm; she took his head between both hands and kissed him madly on the eyes in an extraordinary transport of passion. Then, suddenly turning to Pierre, she said: "Oh! excuse me, Monsieur l'Abbe. I was forgetting that I have a commission for you. Yes, Monsignor Nani, who brought us that good news, bade me tell you that you are making people forget you too much, and that you ought to set to work to defend your book." The priest listened in astonishment; then replied: "But it was he who advised me to disappear." "No doubt--only it seems that the time has now come for you to see people and plead your cause. And Monsignor Nani has been able to learn that the reporter appointed to examine your book is Monsignor Fornaro, who lives on the Piazza Navona." Pierre's stupefaction was increasing, for a reporter's name is never divulged, but kept quite secret, in order to ensure a free exercise of judgment. Was a new phase of his sojourn in Rome about to begin then? His mind was all wonderment. However, he simply answered: "Very good, I will set to work and see everybody." 
44827	----	Transcriber's Note: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal signs=. Under the Witches' Moon THE ROMANCES OF NATHAN GALLIZIER * * * * * _Each, one volume, 12mo, cloth, illustrated. Net $1.35; carriage paid, $1.50_ Castel del Monte The Sorceress of Rome The Court of Lucifer The Hill of Venus The Crimson Gondola * * * * * Under the Witches' Moon _12mo, cloth, illustrated. Net $1.50; carriage paid, $1.65_ * * * * * THE PAGE COMPANY 53 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. [Illustration: "It was that of a man coming towards her" (_See page 143_)] Under the Witches' Moon A Romantic Tale _of_ Mediaeval Rome _BY Nathan Gallizier_ Author of "The Crimson Gondola," "The Hill of Venus," "The Court of Lucifer," "The Sorceress of Rome," "Castel del Monte," Etc. [Illustration] THE PAGE COMPANY BOSTON MDCCCCXVII _Copyright, 1917,_ BY THE PAGE COMPANY _All rights reserved_ First Impression, October, 1917 THE COLONIAL PRESS C. H. SIMONDS CO., BOSTON, U. S. A. _"To some Love comes so splendid and so soon, With such wide wings and steps so royally, That they, like sleepers wakened suddenly, Expecting dawn, are blinded by his noon. "To some Love comes so silently and late, That all unheard he is, and passes by, Leaving no gift but a remembered sigh, While they stand watching at another gate. "But some know Love at the enchanted hour, They hear him singing like a bird afar, They see him coming like a falling star, They meet his eyes--and all their world's in flower." ETHEL CLIFFORD_ CONTENTS BOOK THE FIRST Chapter Page I. The Fires of St. John 3 II. The Weaving of the Spell 13 III. The Dream Lady of Avalon 20 IV. The Way of the Cross 30 V. On the Aventine 38 VI. The Coup 46 VII. Masks and Mummers 60 VIII. The Shrine of Hekaté 67 IX. The Game of Love 79 X. A Spirit Pageant 90 XI. The Denunciation 97 XII. The Confession 102 BOOK THE SECOND I. The Grand Chamberlain 115 II. The Call of Eblis 128 III. The Crystal Sphere 134 IV. Persephoné 146 V. Magic Glooms 152 VI. The Lure of the Abyss 160 VII. The Face in the Panel 167 VIII. The Shadow of Asrael 173 IX. The Feast of Theodora 187 X. The Chalice of Oblivion 204 BOOK THE THIRD I. Wolfsbane 221 II. Under the Saffron Scarf 230 III. Dark Plottings 240 IV. Face to Face 250 V. The Cressets of Doom 259 VI. A Meeting of Ghosts 269 VII. A Bower of Eden 279 VIII. An Italian Night 289 IX. The Net of the Fowler 299 X. Devil Worship 307 XI. By Lethe's Shores 314 XII. The Death Watch 323 XIII. The Convent in Trastevere 335 XIV. The Phantom of the Lateran 341 BOOK THE FOURTH I. The Return of the Moor 351 II. The Escape from San Angelo 356 III. The Lure 367 IV. A Lying Oracle 377 V. Bitter Waters 384 VI. From Dream to Dream 389 VII. A Roman Medea 402 VIII. In Tenebris 413 IX. The Conspiracy 419 X. The Broken Spell 427 XI. The Black Mass 440 XII. Sunrise 453 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page "It was that of a man coming towards her." (_See page 143_) _Frontispiece_ "A strange look passed into Theodora's eyes" 83 "Pelting the dancing girls for idle diversion" 192 "Thrown her saffron scarf over the prostrate youth" 236 BOOK THE FIRST UNDER THE WITCHES' MOON CHAPTER I THE FIRES OF ST. JOHN It was the eve of St. John in the year of our Lord Nine Hundred Thirty-Five. High on the cypress-clad hills of the Eternal City the evening sun had flamed valediction, and the last lights of the dying day were fading away on the waves of the Tiber whose changeless tide has rolled down through centuries of victory and defeat, of pride and shame, of glory and disgrace. The purple dusk began to weave its phantom veil over the ancient capital of the Cæsars and a round blood-red moon was climbing slowly above the misty crests of the Alban Hills, draining the sky of its crimson sunset hues. The silvery chimes of the Angelus, pealing from churches and convents, from Santa Maria in Trastevere to Santa Maria of the Aventine, began to sing their message of peace into the heart of nature and of man. As the hours of the night advanced and the moon rose higher in the star-embroidered canopy of the heavens, a vast concourse of people began to pour from shadowy lanes and thoroughfares, from sanctuaries and hostelries, into the Piazza Navona. Romans and peasants from the Campagna, folk from Tivoli, Velletri, Corneto and Terracina, pilgrims from every land of the then known world, Africans and Greeks, Lombards and Franks, Sicilians, Neapolitans, Syrians and Kopts, Spaniards and Saxons, men from the frozen coast of Thulé and the burning sands of Arabia, traders from the Levant, sorcerers from the banks of the Nile, conjurers from the mythical shores of the Ganges, adventurers from the Barbary coast, gypsies from the plains of Sarmatia, monks from the Thebaide, Normans, Gascons and folk from Aquitaine. In the Piazza Navona booths and stalls had been erected for the sale of figs and honey, and the fragrant products of the Roman osterié. Strings of colored lanterns danced and quivered in the air. The fitful light from the torches, sending spiral columns of resinous smoke into the night-blue ether, shed a lurid glow over the motley, fantastic crowd that increased with every moment, recruited from fishermen, flower girls, water-carriers and herdsmen from the Roman Campagna. Ensconced in the shadow of a roofless portico, a relic of the ancient Circus Agonalis, which at one time occupied the site of the Piazza Navona, and regarding the bewildering spectacle which presented itself to his gaze, with the air of one unaccustomed to such scenes, stood a stranger whose countenance revealed little of the joy of life that should be the heritage of early manhood. His sombre and austere bearing, the abstracted mood and far-away look of the eyes would have marked him a dreamer in a society of men who had long been strangers to dreams. For stern reality ruled the world and the lives of a race untouched alike by the glories of the past and the dawn of the Pre-Renaissance. He wore the customary pilgrim's habit, almost colorless from the effects of wind and weather. Now and then a chance passer-by would cast shy glances at the lone stranger, endeavoring to reconcile his age and his garb, and wondering at the nature of the transgression that weighed so heavily upon one apparently so young in years. And well might his countenance give rise to speculation, were it but for the determined and stolid air of aloofness which seemed to render futile every endeavor to entice him into the seething maelstrom of humanity on the part of those who took note of his dark and austere form as they crossed the Piazza. Tristan of Avalon was in his thirtieth year, though the hardships of a long and tedious journey, consummated entirely afoot, made him appear of maturer age. The face, long exposed to the relentless rays of the sun, had taken on the darker tints of the Southland. The nose was straight, the grey eyes tinged with melancholy, the hair was of chestnut brown, the forehead high and lofty. The ensemble was that of one who, unaccustomed to the pilgrim's garb, moves uneasily among his kind. Yet the atmosphere of frivolity, while irritating and jarring upon his senses, did not permit him to avert his gaze from the orgy of color, the pandemonium of jollity, that whirled and piped and roared about him as the flow of mighty waters. One of many strange wayfarers bound upon business of one sort or another to the ancient seat of empire, whose worldly sceptre had long passed from her palsied grip to the distant shores of the Bosporus, Tristan had arrived during the early hours of the day in the feudal and turbulent witches' cauldron of the Rome of the Millennium. And with him constituents of many peoples, from far and near, had reached the Leonine quarter from the Tiburtine road, after months of tedious travel, to worship at the holy shrines, to do penance and to obtain absolution for real or imaginary transgressions. From Bosnia, from Servia and Hungary, from Negropont and the islands of the Greek Archipelago, from Trebizond and the Crimea it came endlessly floating to the former capital of the Cæsars, a waste drift of palaces and temples and antique civilizations, for the End of Time was said to be nigh, and the dread of impending judgment lay heavily upon the tottering world of the Millennium. A grotesque and motley crowd it was, that sought and found a temporary haven in the lowly taverns, erected for the accommodation of perennial pilgrims, chiefly mean ill-favored dwellings of clay and timber, divided into racial colonies, so that pilgrims of the same land and creed might dwell together. A very Babel of voices assailed Tristan's ear, for the ancient sonorous tongue had long degenerated into the lingua Franca of bad Latin, though there were some who could still, though in a broken and barbarous fashion, make themselves understood, when all other modes of expression failed them. All about him throbbed the strange, weird music of zitherns and lutes and the thrumming of the Egyptian Sistrum. The air of the summer night was heavy with the odor of incense, garlic and roses. The higher risen moon gleamed pale as an alabaster lamp in the dark azure of the heavens, trembling luminously on the waters of a fountain which occupied the centre of the Piazza Navona. Here lolled some scattered groups of the populace, discussing the events of the day, jesting, gesticulating, drinking or love-making. Others roamed about, engaged in conversation or enjoying the antics of two Smyrniote tumblers, whose contortions elicited storms of applause from an appreciative audience. A crowd of maskers had invaded the Piazza Navona, and the uncommon spectacle at last drew Tristan from his point of vantage and caused him to mingle with the crowds, which increased with every moment, their shouts and gibes and the clatter of their tongues becoming quite deafening to his ears. Richly decorated chariots, drawn by spirited steeds, rolled past in a continuous procession. The cries of the wine-venders and fruit-sellers mingled with the acclaim of the multitudes. Now and then was heard the fanfare of a company of horsemen who clattered past, bound upon some feudal adventure. Weary of walking, distracted by the ever increasing clamor, oppressed with a sense of loneliness amidst the surging crowds, whose festal spirit he did not share, Tristan made his way towards the fountain and, seating himself on the margin, regardless of the chattering groups, which intermittently clustered about it, he felt his mood gradually calm in the monotony of the gurgling flow of the water, which spurted from the grotesque mouths of lions and dolphins. The stars sparkled in subdued lustre above the dark, towering cypresses which crowned the adjacent eminence of Monte Testaccio, and the distant palaces and ruins stood forth in distinctness of splendor and desolation beneath the luminous brightness of the moonlit heavens. White shreds of mist, like sorrowing spirits, floated above the winding course of the Tiber, and enveloped in a diaphanous haze the cloisters upon St. Bartholomew's Island at the base of Mount Aventine. For a time Tristan's eyes roamed over the kaleidoscopic confusion which met his gaze on every turn. His ear was assailed by the droning sound of many voices that filled the air about him, when he was startled by the approach of two men, who, but for their halting gait, might have passed unheeded in the rolling sea of humanity that ebbed and flowed over the Piazza. Basil, the Grand Chamberlain, was endowed with the elegance of the effeminate Roman noble of his time. Supple as an eel, he nevertheless suggested great physical strength. The skin was of a deep olive tinge. The black, beady eyes were a marked feature of the countenance. Inscrutable and steadfast in regard, with a hint of mockery and cynicism, coupled with an abiding alertness, they seemed to penetrate the very core of matter. He wore a black mantle reaching almost to his feet. Of his features, shaded by a hood, little was to be seen, save his glittering minx-eyes. These he kept alternately fixed upon the crowds that surged around him and on his companion, a hunchback garbed entirely in black, from the Spanish hat, which he wore slouched over his face, to the black hose and sandals that encased his feet. A large red scar across the low forehead heightened the repulsiveness of his countenance. There was something strangely sinister in his sunken, cadaverous cheeks, the low brow, the inflamed eyelids, and his limping gait. Without perceiving or heeding the presence of Tristan they paused as by some preconcerted signal. As the taller of the two pushed back the hood of his pilgrim garb, as if to cool his brow in the night breeze, Tristan peered into a face not lacking in sensuous refinement. Dark supercilious eyes roved from one object to another, without dwelling long on any particular one. There was somewhat of a cynical look in the downward curve of the eyebrows, the thin straight lips and the slightly aquiline nose, which seemed to imbue him with an air of recklessness and daring, that ill consorted with his monkish garb. Their discourse was at first almost unintelligible to Tristan. The language of the common people had, at this period of the history of Rome, not only lost its form, but almost the very echo of the Latin tongue. After a time, however, Tristan distinguished a name, and, upon listening more attentively, the burden of the message began to unfold itself. "Why then have you ventured out of your hell-hole of iniquity, when discovery means death or worse?" said Basil, the Grand Chamberlain. "Do the keeps and dungeons of the Emperor's Tomb so allure you? Or do you trust in some miraculous delivery from its vermin-haunted vaults?" At these words Rome's most dreaded bravo, Il Gobbo of the Catacombs, snarled contemptuously. "You are needlessly alarmed, my lord. They will not look for Il Gobbo in this company, though even a mole may walk in the shadow of a saint." Basil regarded the speaker with mingled pity and contempt. "There is room for all the world in Rome and the devil to boot." Il Gobbo chuckled unpleasantly. "Besides--folk about here show a great reverence for a holy garb--" "Always with fitting reservations," interposed the Grand Chamberlain sardonically. "I have had it in mind at some time or other to relieve the Grand Penitentiary. The good man's lungs must be well nigh bursting with the foul air down there by the Tomb of the Apostle. He will welcome a rest!" "Requiescat," chanted the bravo, imitating the nasal tone of the clergy. Basil nodded approval. "He at one time did me the honor of showing some concern in my spiritual welfare. Know you what I replied?"-- The bravo gave a shrug. "'Father,' I said, when he urged me to confess, 'pray shrive some one worthier than myself. But--if you must needs have a confession--I shall whisper into your holy ear so many interesting little episodes, so many spicy peccadillos, and--to enhance their interest--mention some names so high in the grace of God--'" "And the reverend father?" "Looked anathema and vanished"-- Basil paused for a moment, after which he continued with a sigh: "It is too late! The Church is to be purified. Not even the pale shade of Marozia will henceforth be permitted to haunt the crypts of Castel San Angelo--merely for the sake of decorum. There is nothing less well bred than memory!" For a moment they relapsed into silence, watching the shifting crowds, then Basil continued: "Compared with this virtuous boredom the last days of Ugo of Tuscany were a carnival. One could at least speed the travails of some one who required swift absolution." "Can you contrive to bring about this happy state?" queried Il Gobbo. "It is always the unexpurgated that happens," Basil replied sardonically. "I hope to advance in your school," Il Gobbo interposed with a smile. "I have long had you in mind. If you are in favor with yourself you will become an apt pupil. Remember! He who is dead is dead and long live the survivor." "In very truth, my lord, breath is the first and last thing we draw--" rejoined the bravo, evidently not relishing the thought that death might be standing unseen at his elbow. "Who would end one's days in odious immaculacy," Basil interposed grandiloquently, "even though you will not incur that reproach from those who know you from report, or who have visited your haunts? But to the point. There are certain forces at work in Rome which make breathing in this fetid air a rather cumbersome process." "I doubt me if they could teach your lordship any new tricks," Il Gobbo replied, somewhat dubiously. The Grand Chamberlain smiled darkly. "Good Il Gobbo, the darkest of my tricks you have not yet fathomed." "Perchance then the gust of rumor blows true about my lord's palace on the Pincian Hill?" "What say they about my palatial abode?" Basil turned suavely to the speaker. There was something in the gleam of his interrogator's eyes that caused Il Gobbo to hesitate. But his native insolence came to the rescue of his failing courage. "Ask rather, what do they not say of it, my lord! It would require less time to recite--" "Nevertheless, I am just now in a frame of mind to shudder soundly. These Roman nights, with their garlic and incense, are apt to befuddle the brain,--rob it of its power to plot. Perchance the recital of these mysteries would bring to mind something I have omitted." The bravo regarded the speaker with a look of awe. "They whisper of torture chambers, where knife and screw and pulley never rest--of horrors that make the blood freeze in the veins--of phantoms of fair women that haunt the silent galleries--strange wails of anguish that sound nightly from the subterranean vaults--" "A goodly account that ought vastly to interest the Grand Penitentiary--were it--with proper decorum--whispered in his ear. It would make him forget--for the time at least--the dirty Roman gossip. Deem you not, good Il Gobbo?" "I am not versed in such matters, my lord," replied the bravo, ill at ease. "Perhaps your lordship will now tell me why this fondness for my society?" "To confess truth, good Il Gobbo, I did not join you merely to meditate upon the pleasant things of life. Rather to be inspired to some extraordinary adventure such as my hungry soul yearns for. As for the nature thereof, I shall leave that to the notoriously wicked fertility of your imagination." The lurid tone of the speaker startled the bravo. "My lord, you would not lay hands on the Lord's anointed?" Il Gobbo met a glance that made the blood freeze in his veins. "Is it the thing you call your conscience that ails you, or some sudden indigestion? Or is the bribe not large enough?" The bravo doggedly shook his head. "Courage lieth not always in bulk," he growled. "May my soul burn to a crisp in the everlasting flames if I draw steel against the Lord's anointed." "Silence, fool! What you do in my service shall not burden your soul! Have you forgotten our compact?" "That I have not, my lord! But since the Senator of Rome has favored me with his especial attention, I too have something to lose, which some folk hereabout call their honor." "Your honor!" sneered the Grand Chamberlain. "It is like the skin of an onion. Peel off one, there's another beneath." "My skin then--" the bravo growled doggedly. "However--if the lord Basil will confide in me--" "Pray lustily to your patron saint and frequent the chapel of the Grand Penitentiary," replied Basil suavely, beckoning to Il Gobbo to follow him. "But beware, lest in your zeal to confess you mistake my peccadillos for your own." With these words the two worthies slowly retraced their steps in the direction of Mount Aventine and were soon lost to sight. CHAPTER II THE WEAVING OF THE SPELL After they had disappeared Tristan stood at gaze, puzzled where to turn, for the spectacle had suddenly changed. New bands of revellers had invaded the Piazza Navona, and it seemed indeed as if the Eve of St. John were assuming the character of the ancient Lupercalia, for the endless variety of costumes displayed by a multitude assembled from every corner of Italy, Spain, Greece, Africa, and the countries of the North, was now exaggerated by a wild fancifulness and grotesque variety of design. Tristan himself did not escape the merry intruders. He was immediately beset by importunate revellers, and not being able to make himself understood, they questioned and lured him on, imploring his good offices with the Enemy of Mankind. Satyrs, fauns and other sylvan creatures accosted him, diverting their antics, when they found themselves but ill repaid for their efforts, and leaving the solitary stranger pondering the expediency of remaining, or wending his steps toward the Inn of the Golden Shield, where he had taken lodging upon his arrival. These doubts were to be speedily dispelled by a spectacle which attracted the crowds that thronged the Piazza, causing them to give way before a splendid procession that had entered the Navona from the region of Mount Aventine. Down the Navona came a train of chariots, preceded by a throng of persons, clad in rich and fantastic Oriental costumes, leaping, dancing and making the air resound with tambourines, bells, cymbals and gongs. They kept up an incessant jingle, which sounded weirdly above the droning chant of distant processions of pilgrims, hermits and monks, traversing the city from sanctuary to sanctuary. The occupants of these chariots consisted of a number of young women in the flower of youth and beauty, whose scant apparel left little to the imagination either as regarded their person or the trade they plied. The charioteers were youths, scarcely arrived at the age of puberty, but skilled in their profession in the highest degree. The first chariot, drawn by two milk-white steeds of the Berber breed, was inlaid with mother-of-pearl, with gilded spokes and trappings that glistened in the light of a thousand colored lanterns and torches, like a vehicle from fairyland. The reins were in the hands of a youth hardly over sixteen years of age, garbed in a snow white tunic, but the skill with which he drove the shell-shaped car through the surging crowds argued for uncommon dexterity. Tristan, from his station by the fountain, was enabled to take in every detail of the strange pageant which moved swiftly towards him, a glittering, fantastic procession, as if drawn out of dreamland; and so enthralled were his senses that he did not note the terrible silence which had suddenly fallen upon the multitude. As a half-slumbering man may note a sudden brilliant gleam of sunshine flashing on the walls of his chamber, Tristan gazed in confused bewilderment, when suddenly his stupefied senses were aroused to hot life and pulsation, as he fixed his straining gaze on the supreme fair form of the woman in the first car, standing erect like a queen, surveying her subjects. In the silence of a great multitude there is always something ominous. But Tristan noted it not. Indeed he was deaf and blind to everything, save the apparition in the shell-shaped car, as it bounded lightly over the unevenly laid tufa of the Navona. Was it a woman, or a goddess? A rainbow flame in mortal shape, a spirit of earth, air, water or fire? He saw before him a woman combining the charm of the girl with the maturity of the thirties, dark-haired, exquisitely proportioned, with clear-cut features and dark slumbrous eyes. She wore a diaphanous robe of pale silk gauze. Her wonderful arms, white as the fallen snow, were encircled by triple serpentine coils of gold. Else, she was unadorned, save for a circlet of rubies which crowned the dusky head. Her sombre eyes rested drowsily on the swarming crowds, while a smile of disdain curved the small red mouth, as her chariot proceeded through the frozen silence. Suddenly her eye caught the admiring gaze of Tristan, who had indeed forgotten heaven and earth in the contemplation of this supremest handiwork of the Creator. A word to the charioteer and the chariot came to a stop. Tristan and the woman faced each other in silence, the man with an ill-concealed air of uneasiness, such as one may experience who finds himself face to face with some unknown danger. With utter disregard for the gaping crowds which had gathered around the fountain she bent her gaze upon him, surveying him from head to foot. "Who are you?" she spoke at last, and he, confused, bewildered, trembling, gazed into the woman's supremely fair face and stammered: "A pilgrim!" Her lips parted in a smile that revealed two rows of small white, even teeth. There was something unutterable in that smile which brought the color to Tristan's brow. "A Roman?" "From the North!" "Why are you here?" "For the salvation of my soul!" He blushed as he spoke. Again the strange smile curved the woman's lips, again the inscrutable look shone in her eyes. "For the salvation of your soul!" she repeated slowly after him. "And you so young and fair. Ah! You have done some little wickedness, no doubt?" He started to reply, but she checked him with a wave of her hand. "I do not wish to be told. Do you repent?" Tristan's throat was dry. His lips refused utterance. He nodded awkwardly. "So much the worse! These little peccadillos are the spice of life! What is your name?" She repeated it lingeringly after him. "From the North--you say--to do penance in Rome!" She watched him with an expression of amusement. When he started back from her, a strange fear in his heart, a wave of her hand checked him. "Let me whisper a secret to you!" she said with a smile. He felt her perfumed breath upon his cheek. Inclining his ear he staggered away from her dizzy, bewildered. Presently, with a dazzling smile, she extended one white hand and Tristan, trembling as one under a spell, bent over and kissed it. He felt the soft pressure of her fingers and his pulse throbbed with a strange, insidious fire, as reluctantly he released it at last. Raising his eyes, he now met her gaze, absorbing into his innermost soul the mesmeric spell of her beauty, drinking in the warmth of those dark, sleepy orbs that flashed on him half resentfully, half mockingly. Then the charioteer jerked up the reins, the chariot began to move. Like a dream the pageant vanished--and slowly, like far-away thunder, the voice of the multitudes began to return, as they regarded the lone pilgrim with mingled doubt, fear and disdain. With a start Tristan looked about. He was as one bewitched. He felt he must follow her at all risks, ascertain her name, her abode. Dashing through the crowds that gave way before him, wondering and commenting upon the unseemly haste of one wearing so austere a garb, Tristan caught a last glimpse of the procession as it entered the narrow gorge that lies between Mount Testaccio and Mount Aventine. With a sense of great disappointment he slowly retraced his steps, walking as in the thrall of a strange dream, and, after inquiring the direction of his inn of some wayfarers he chanced to meet, he at last reached the Inn of the Golden Shield, situated near the Flaminian Gate, and entered the great guest-chamber. The troubled light of a melancholy dusk was enhanced by the glimmer of stone lamps suspended from the low and dirty ceiling. Notwithstanding the late hour, the smoky precincts were crowded with guests from many lands, who were discussing the events of the day. If Tristan's wakeful ear had been alive to the gossip of the tavern he might have heard the incident in the Navona, in which he played so prominent a part, discussed in varied terms of wonder and condemnation. Tristan took his seat near an alcove usually reserved for guests of state. The unaccustomed scene began to exercise a singular fascination upon him, stranger as he was among strangers from all the earth, their faces dark against the darker background of the room. Brooding over a tankard of Falernian of the hue of bronze, which his oily host had placed before him, he continued to absorb every detail of the animated picture, while the memory of his strange adventure dominated his mind. Tristan's meagre fund of information was to be enriched by tidings of an ominous nature. He learned that the Pontiff, John XI, was imprisoned in the Lateran Palace, by his step-brother Alberic, the Senator of Rome. While this information came to him, a loyal son of the Church, as a distinct shock, Tristan felt, nevertheless, strangely impressed with the atmosphere of the place. Even in the period of her greatest decay, Rome seemed still the centre of the universe. Thus he sat brooding for hours. When, with a start, he roused himself at last, he found the vast guest-chamber well-nigh deserted. The pilgrims had retired to their respective quarters, small, dingy cells, teeming with evil odors, heat and mosquitoes, and the oily Calabrian host was making ready for the morrow. The warmth of the Roman night and the fatigue engendered after many leagues of tedious travel on a dusty road, under the scorching rays of an Italian sky, at last asserted itself and, wishing a fair rest to his host, who was far from displeased to see his guest-chamber cleared for the night, Tristan climbed the crooked and creaking stairs leading to the chamber assigned to him, which looked out upon the gate of Castello and the Tiber, where it is spanned by the Bridge of San Angelo. The window stood open to the night air, on which floated the perfumes from oleander and almond groves. The roofs of the Eternal City formed a dark, shadowy mass in the deep blue dusk, and the cylindrical masonry of the Flavian Emperor's Tomb rose ominously against the deep turquoise of the night sky. Soon the events of the day and the scenes of the evening began to melt into faint and indistinct memories. Sleep, deep and tranquil, encompassed Tristan's weary limbs, but in his dreams the events of the evening were obliterated before scenes of the past. CHAPTER III THE DREAM LADY OF AVALON Like a disk of glowing gold the sun had set upon hill and dale. The gardens of Avalon lay wrapt in the mists of evening. Like flowers seemed the fair women who thronged the winding paths. From fragrant bosquets, borne on the wings of the night wind came the faint sounds of zitherns and lutes. He, too, was there, mingling joyous, carefree, with the rest, gathering the white roses for the one he loved. Dimly he recalled his delight, as he saw her approach in the waning light through the dim ilex avenue, an apparition wondrous fair in the crimson haze of slowly departing day, entering his garden of dreams. With strangely aching heart he saw them throng about her in homage and admiration. At last he knelt before her, kissing the white hand that lay passive within his own. How wonderful she was! Never had he seen anything like her, not even in this land of flowers and of beautiful women. Her hair was warm as if the sun had entered into it. Her skin had the tints of ivory. The violet eyes with the long drooping lashes seemed to hold the memories of a thousand love thoughts. And the small, crimson mouth, so witch-like, so alluring, seemed to hold out promise of fulfilment of dizzy hopes and desires. "It is our golden hour," she smiled down at him, and the white fingers twined the rose in her hair, wove a girdle of blossoms round her exquisite, girlish form. To Tristan she seemed an enchantment, an embodied rose. Never had he seen her so fair, so beautiful. On her lips quivered a smile, yet there was a strange light in her eyes, that gave him pause, a light he had never seen therein before. She beckoned him away from the throng. "Come where the moonlight dreams." Her smile and her wonderful eyes were his beacon light. He rose to his feet and took her hand. And away they strayed from the rest of the crowd, far away over green lawns, emerald in the moonlight, with, here and there, the dark shadow of a cypress falling across the silvery brightness of their path. Little by little the gardens were deserted. Fainter and fainter came the sounds of lutes and harps. The shadows of the grove now encompassed them, as silently they strode side by side. "This is my Buen Retiro," she spoke at last. "Here we may rest--for awhile--far from the world." They entered the rose-bower, a wilderness, blossoming with roses and hyacinths and fragrant shrubs--a very paradise for lovers.-- The bells of a remote convent began to chime. They smote the silence with their silvery peals. The castle of Avalon lay dark in the distance, shadowy against the deep azure of the night sky. When the chimes of the Angelus had died away, she spoke. "How wonderful is this peace!" Her tone brought a sudden chill to his heart. As she moved forward, he dropped his wealth of flowers and held out his hands entreatingly. "Dearest Hellayne," he said, "tarry but a little longer--" She seemed to start at his words, and leaned over the back of the stone bench, which was covered with climbing roses. And suddenly under this new light, sad and silent, she seemed no longer his fair companion of the afternoon, all youth, all beauty, all light. Motionless, as if shadowed by some dire foreboding, she stood there and he dared not approach. Once he raised his hand to take her own. But something in her eyes caused the hand to fall as with its own weight. He could not understand what stayed him, what stayed the one supreme impulse of his heart. He did not understand what checked the words that hovered on his lips. Was it the clear pure light of the eyes he loved so well? Was it some dark power he wot not of? At last he broke through his restraint. "Hellayne--" he whispered low. "Hellayne--I love you!" She did not move. There was a deep silence. Then she answered. "Oh, why have you said the word!" What did she mean? He cried, trembling, within himself. And now he was no longer in the moonlit rose-bower in the gardens of Avalon, but in a dense forest. The trees meeting overhead made a night so black, that he saw nothing, not even their gnarled trunks. Hellayne was standing beside him. A pale moonbeam flickered through the interwoven branches. She pointed to the castle of Avalon, dim in the distance. He made a quick forward step to see her face. Her eyes were very calm. "Let us go, Tristan!" she said. "My answer first," he insisted, gazing longingly, wistfully into the eyes that held a night of mystery. "You have it," she said calmly. "It was no answer," he pleaded, "from lover to lover--" "Ah!" she replied, in her voice a great weariness which he had never noted before. "But here are neither loves nor lovers.--Look!" And he looked. Before them lay a colorless and lifeless sea, under the arch of a threatening sky. Across that sky dark clouds, with ever-changing shapes, rolled slowly, and presently condensed into a vague shadowy form, while the torpid waves droned a muffled and unearthly dirge. He covered his eyes, overcome by a mastering fear of that dread shape which he knew, yet knew not. He knelt before her, took the hands he loved so well into his own and pressed upon them his fevered lips. "I do not understand--" he moaned. She regarded him fixedly. "I am another's wife--" His head drooped. "When my eyes first met yours they begged that my love for you might find response in your heart," he said, still holding on to those marvellous white hands. "Did you not accept my worship?" She neither encouraged nor repulsed him by word or gesture. And he covered her hands with burning kisses. After his passionate outburst had died to silence she spoke quietly, tremulously. "Tristan," she began, and paused as if she were summoning courage to do that which she must. "Tristan, this may not be." "I love you," he sobbed. "I love you! This is all I know! All I shall ever know. How can I support life without you? heart of my heart--soul of my soul?--What must I do, to win you for my own--to give you happiness?" A negative gesture came in response. "Is sin ever happiness?" "The priests say not! And yet--our love is not sinful--" "The priests say truth." Hellayne interposed calmly. He felt as if an immense darkness, the chaos of a thousand spheres, suddenly encompassed him, threatening to plunge him into a bottomless abyss of despair. Then he made a quick forward step. Her face was close to his. Wide eyes fastened upon him in a compelling gaze. "Tell me!" he urged, his own eyes lost in those unfathomable wells of dreams. "When love is with you--does aught matter? Does sin--discovery--God himself--matter?" With a frightened cry she drew back. But those steady, questioning eyes, sombre, yet aflame, compelled the shifting violet orbs. "Tell me!" he urged again, his face very close to her face. "Naught matters," she whispered faintly, as if under a spell. Then her gaze relinquished his, as she looked dreamily out upon the woods. There was absolute silence, lasting apace. It was the stillness of a forest where no birds sing, no breezes stir. Then a twig snapped beneath Hellayne's foot. He had taken her to his heart and, his strong arms about her, kissed her eyes, her mouth, her hair. She suffered his caresses dreamily, passively, her white arms encircling his neck. Suddenly he stiffened. His form was as that of one turned to stone. In the shadow of the forest beneath a great oak, hooded, motionless, stood a man. His eyes seemed like glowing coals, as they stared at them. Hellayne did not see them, but she felt the tremor that passed through Tristan's frame. The mantle's hood was pulled far down over the man's face. No features were visible. And yet Tristan knew that cowled and muffled form. He knew the eyes that had surprised their tryst. It was Count Roger de Laval. The muffled shadow was gone as quickly as it had come. It was growing ever darker in the forest, and when he looked up again he saw that Hellayne's white roses were scattered on the ground. Her scarf of blue samite had fallen heedlessly beside them. He lifted it and pressed it to his lips. "Will you give it to me?" he said tremulously. "That it may be with me always--" There was no immediate response. At last she said slowly: "You shall have it--a parting gift--" He seized her hands. They lay passively within his own. There was a great fear in his eyes. "I do not understand--" She loosened the roses from her hair and garb before she made reply. Silently, like dead leaves in autumn, the fragrant petals dropped one by one to earth. Hellayne watched them with weary eyes as they drifted to their sleep, then, as she held the last spray in her hand, gazing upon it she said: "When you gave them to me, Tristan, they were sweet and fresh, the fairest you could find. Now they have faded, perished, died--" He started to plead, to protest, to silence her, but she continued: "Ah! Can you not see? Can you not understand? Perchance," she added bitterly, "I was created to adorn the fleeting June afternoon of your life, and when this scarf is torn and faded as these flowers, let the wind carry it away,--like these dead petals at our feet--" She let fall the withered spray, but he snatched it ere it touched the ground. "I love you," he stammered passionately. "I love you! Love you as no woman was ever loved. You are my world--my fate-- Hellayne! Hellayne! Know you what you say?"-- She gazed at him, with eyes from which all life had fled. "I am another's," she said slowly. "I have sinned in loving you, in giving to you my soul. And even as you stood there and held me in your arms, it flashed upon me, like lightning in a dark stormy night--I saw the abyss, at the brink of which we stand, both, you and I."-- "But we have done no wrong--we have not sinned," he protested wildly. She silenced him with a gesture of her beautiful hands. "Who may command the waters of the cataract, go here,--or go there? Who may tell them to return to their lawful bed? I have neither power nor strength, to resist your pleading. You have been life and love to me, all,--all,--and all this you are to-day. And therefore must we part,--part, ere it be too late--" she concluded with a wild cry of anguish, "ere we are both engulfed in the darkness."-- And he fell at her feet as if stunned by a thunderbolt. "Do not send me away--" he pleaded, his voice choked with anguish. "Do not send me from you." "You will go," she said softly, deaf to his prayers. "It is the supreme test of your love, great as I know it is." "But I cannot leave you, I cannot go, never to see you more--" and he grasped the cool white hands of the woman as a drowning man will grasp a straw. She did not attempt, for the time, to take them from him. She looked down upon him wistfully. "Would you make me the mock of Avalon?" she said. "Once my lord suspects we are lost. And, I fear, he does even now. For his gaze has been dark and troubled. And I cannot, will not, expose you to his cruelty. You know him not as I do--" "Even therefore will I not leave you," he interposed, looking into the sweet face. "He has not been kind to you. His pride was flattered by your ready surrender, and your great beauty is but one of the many dishes that go to satiate his varied appetites. Of the others you know naught--" She gave a shrug. "If it be so," she said wearily, "so let it be. Nevertheless, I know whereof I speak. This thing has stolen over us like a madness. And, like a madness, it will hurl us to our doom." Though he had seen the dark, glowering face among the branches, he said nothing, not to alarm her, not to cause her fear and misgiving. He loved her spotless purity as dearly as herself. To him they were inseparable. His head fell forward on her hands. Her fingers played in his soft brown hair. "What would you have me do?" he said, his voice choked by his anguish. "Go on a pilgrimage to Rome, to obtain forgiveness, as I shall visit the holy shrines of Mont Beliard and do likewise," she said, steadying her voice with an effort. "Let us forget that we have ever met--that we have ever loved,--or remember that we loved--a dream."-- "Can love forget so readily?" he said, bitter anguish and reproach in his tones. She shook her head. "It is my fate,--for better--or worse--no matter what befall. As for you--life lies before you. Love another, happier woman, one that is free to give--and to receive. As for me--" She paused and covered her face with her hands. "What will you do?" he cried in his over-mastering anguish. A faint, far-off voice made reply. "I shall do that which I must!" He staggered away from her. She should not see the scalding tears that coursed down his cheeks. But, as he turned, he again saw the dark and glowering face, the brow gloomy as a thunder-cloud, of the Count de Laval. But again it was not he. It was the black-garbed, lithe stranger, the companion of the hunchback, who was regarding Hellayne with evil, leering eyes. He wanted to cry out, warn her, entreat her to fly.-- But it was too late. Like a bird that watches spellbound the approach of the snake, Hellayne stood pale and trembling--her cheeks white as death--her eyes riveted on the evil shape that seemed the fiend. But he, Tristan, also was encompassed by the same spell. He could not move--he could not cry out. With a bound, swift and noiseless as the panther's, he saw the sinewy stranger hurl himself upon Hellayne, picking her up like a feather and disappear in the gloom of the forest. With a cry of horror, bathed from head to foot in perspiration, Tristan started from his slumber. The moonbeams flooded the chamber. The soft breeze of the summer night stole through the open casement. With a moan as of mortal pain he sat up and looked about. Was he indeed in Rome? Had it been but a dream, this echo of the past, this visualized parting from the woman he had loved better than life? Was he indeed in Rome, to do as she had bid him do, not in the misty, flower-scented rose-gardens of Avalon in far Provence?-- And she--Hellayne--where was she at this hour? Tristan stroked his clammy brow with a hot, dry hand. For a moment the memories evoked by the magic wand of the God of Sleep seemed to banish all consciousness of the present. He cast a fleeting, bewildered glance at the dim, distant housetops, then fell back among his cushions, his lips muttering the name of her who had filled his dream with her never-to-be-forgotten presence, wondering and questioning if they would ever meet again. Thus he tossed and tossed. After a time he became still. Once again consciousness was blotted out and the dream realm reigned supreme. CHAPTER IV THE WAY OF THE CROSS It was late on the following morning when Tristan waked. The sun was high in the heavens and the perfumes from a thousand gardens were wafted to his nostrils. He looked about bewildered. The dream phantoms of the night still held his senses captive, and it was some time ere he came to a realization of the present. In the dream of the night he had lived over a scene in the past, conjuring back the memory of one who had sent him on the Way of the Cross. The pitiless rays of the Roman sun, which began to envelop the white houses and walls, brought with them the realization of the present hour. He had come to Rome to do penance, to start life anew and to forget. So she had bade him do on that never-to-be forgotten eve of their parting. So she had willed it, and he had obeyed. How it all flooded back to him again in waves of anguish, the memory of those days when the turrets of Avalon had faded from his aching sight, when, together with a motley pilgrims' throng, he had tramped the dusty sun-baked road, dead to all about him save the love that was cushioned in his heart. How that parting from Hellayne still dominated all other events, even though life and the world had fallen away from him and he had only prayer for oblivion, for obliteration. Yet even Hellayne's inexorable decree would not have availed to speed him on a pilgrimage so fraught with hopelessness, that during all that long journey Tristan hardly exchanged word or greeting with his fellow pilgrims. It was her resolve, unfalteringly avowed, to leave the world and enter a convent, if he refused to obey, which had eventually compelled. Her own self-imposed penance should henceforth be to live, lonely and heartbroken, by the side of an unbeloved consort, while Tristan atoned far away, in the city of the popes, at the shrines of the saints. At night, when Tristan retired, at dawn, when he arose, Hellayne's memory was with him, and every league that increased the distance between them seemed to heighten his love and his anguish. But human endurance has its limits, and at last he was seized by a great torpor, a chill indifference that swept away and deadened every other feeling. There was no longer a To-day, no longer a Yesterday, no longer a To-morrow. Such was Tristan's state of mind, when from the Tiburtine road he first sighted the walls and towers of Rome, without definite purpose or aim, drawn along, as it were, towards an uncertain goal by Fate's invisible hand. Utterly indifferent as to what might befall among the Seven Hills, he was at times dimly conscious of a presentiment that ultimately he would end up his own days in one of those silent places where all earthly hopes and desires are forever stilled. So much was clear to him. Like the rest of the pilgrims who had wended their way to St. Peter's seat, he would complete the circuit of the holy shrines, kiss the feet of the Father of Christendom, do such penance as the Pontiff should impose, and then attach himself to one party or another in the pontifical city which held out hope for action, since the return to his own native land was barred to him for evermore. How he would bear up under the ordeal he did not know. How he would support life away from Hellayne, without a word, a message, without the assurance that all was well with her, whether now, his own fate accomplished, others thronged about her in love and adulation,--he knew not. For the nonce he was resolved to let new scenes, new impressions sweep away the great void of an aching heart, lighten the despair that filled his soul. In approaching the Eternal City he had felt scarcely any of the elevation of spirit which has affected so many devout pilgrims. He knew it was the seat of God's earthly Vice-regent, the capital of the universal kingdom of the Church. He reminded himself of this and of the priceless relics it contained, the tombs of the Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, the tombs of so many other martyrs, pontiffs and saints. But in spite of all these memories he drew near the place with a sinking dread, as if, by some instinct of premonition, he felt himself dragged to the Cross on which at last he was to be crucified. Many a pilgrim may have seen Rome for the first time with an involuntary recollection of her past, with the hope that for him, too, the future might hold the highest greatness. Certainly no ambitious fancy cast a halo of romantic hope over the great city as Tristan first saw her ancient walls. He felt safe enough from any danger of greatness. He had nothing to recommend him. On the contrary, something in his character would only serve to isolate him, creating neither admiration nor sympathy. All the weary road to Rome, the Rome he dreaded, had he prayed for courage to cast himself at the feet of the Vicar of Christ. He did not think then of the Pope, as of one of the great of the earth, but simply as of one who stood in the world in God's place. So he would have courage to seek him, confess to him and ask him what it was it behooved him to do. Thus he had walked on--with stammering steps, bruising his feet against stones, tearing himself through briars--heeding nothing by the way. And now, the journey accomplished, he was here in supreme loneliness, without guidance, human or divine, thrown upon himself, not knowing how to still the pain, how to fill the void of an aching heart. Would the light of Truth come to him out of the encompassing realms of Doubt? When Tristan descended into the great guest-chamber he found it almost deserted. The pilgrims had set out early in the day to begin their devotions before the shrines. The host of the Golden Shield placed before his sombre and silent guest such viands as the latter found most palatable, consisting of goat's milk, stewed lamb, barley bread and figs, and Tristan did ample justice to the savory repast. The heat of the day being intense, he resolved to wait until the sun should be fairly on his downward course before he started out upon his own business, a resolution which was strengthened by a suggestion from the host, that few ventured abroad in Rome during the Siesta hours, the Roman fever respecting neither rank nor garb. Thus Tristan composed himself to patience, watching the host upon his duties, and permitting his gaze to roam now and then through the narrow windows upon the object he had first encountered upon his arrival: the brown citadel, drowsing unresponsive in the noon-tide glow, a monument of mystery and dark deeds, the Mausoleum of the Flavian Emperor--or, as it was styled at the period of our story, the Castle of the Archangel. From this stronghold, less than a decade ago, a woman had lorded it over the city of Rome, as renowned for her evil beauty as for the profligacy and licentiousness of her court. In time her regime had been swept away, yet there were rumors, dark and sinister, of one who had succeeded to her evil estate. None dared openly avow it, but Tristan had surprised guarded whispers during his long journey. Some accounted her a sorceress, some a thing wholly evil, some the precursor of the Anti-Christ. And he had never ceased to wonder at the tales which enlivened the camp-fires, the reports of her beauty, her daring, her unscrupulous ambition. On the whole, Tristan's prospects in Rome seemed barren enough. Service might perchance be obtained with the Senator, who would doubtlessly welcome a stout arm and a true heart. This alternative failing, Tristan was utterly at sea as to what he would do, the prescribed rounds of obediences before the shrines and the penances accomplished. He felt as one who has lost his purpose in life, even before he had been conscious of his goal. The strange incidents of his first night in Rome had gradually faded from Tristan's mind with the re-awakening memory of Hellayne, never once forgotten, but for the moment drowned in the deluge of strange events that had almost swept him off his feet. As the sun was veering towards the west and the lengthening shadows, presaging dusk, began to roll down from the hills it suffered Tristan no longer in the Inn of the Golden Shield. He strode out and made for the heart of Rome. The desolate aspect of high-noon had changed materially. Tristan began to note the evidences of life in the Pontifical City. Merchants, beggars, monks, men-at-arms, condottieri, sbirri,--the followers of the great feudal houses, hurried to and fro, bent upon their respective pursuits, and above them, silent and fateful in the evening glow, towered the Archangel's Castle, the tomb of a former Master of the World. It reared its massive honey-colored bulk on the edge of the yellow Tiber and beyond rose the dark green cypresses of the Pincian Hill. Innumerable spires, domes, pinnacles and towers rose, red-litten by the sunset, into the stilly evening air. Bells were softly tolling and a distant hum like the bourdon note of a great organ, rose up from the other side of the Tiber, where the multitudes of the Eternal City trod the dust of the Cæsars into the churches of the Cross. Interminable processions traversed the city amidst anthems and chants, for, on this day, masses were being sung and services offered up in the Lateran Basilica, the Mother Church of Rome, in honor of Him who cried in the wilderness. In silent awe and wonder Tristan pursued his way towards the heart of the city. And, as he did so, the spectacle which had unfolded itself to his gaze became more varied and manifold on every turn. The lone pilgrim could not but admit that the shadows of worldly empire, which had deserted her, still clung to Rome in her ruins, even though to him the desolation which dominated all sides had but a vague and dreamlike meaning. Even at this period of deepest darkness and humiliation the world still converged upon Rome, and in the very centre of the web sat the successor of St. Peter, the appointed guardian of Heaven and Earth. The chief pagan monuments still existed: the Pantheon of Agrippa and the Septizonium of Alexander Severus; the mighty remains of the ancient fanes about the Forum and the stupendous ruins of the Colosseum. But among them rose the fortress towers of the Roman nobles. Right there, before him, dominating the narrow thoroughfare, rose the great fortress pile of the Frangipani, behind the Arch of the Seven Candles. Farther on the Tomb of Cæcilia Metella presented an aspect at once sinister and menacing, transformed as it now was into the stronghold of the Cenci, while the Cætani castle on the opposite side attracted a sort of wondering attention from him. This then was the Rome of which he had heard such marvelous tales! The city of palaces, basilicas and shrines had sunk to this! Her magnificent thoroughfares had become squalid streets, her monuments were crumbled and forgotten, or worse, they were abused by every lawless wretch who cared to seize upon them and build thereon his fortress or palace. A dismal fate indeed to have fallen to the former mistress of the world! Far better, he thought, to be deserted and forgotten utterly, like many a former seat of empire, far better to be overgrown with grass and dock and nettle, to be left to dream and oblivion than to survive in low estate as had this city on the banks of the Tiber. With these reflections, engendered no less by the air of desolation than by the occasional appearance of armed bands of feudal soldiery who hurled defiance at each other, Tristan found himself drawn deeper and deeper into the heart of Rome, a hotbed of open and silent rebellion against the rule of any one who dared to lord it over the degenerate descendants of the former masters of the world. Here representatives of the nations of all the earth jostled one another and the poor dregs of Romulus; or peoples of wilder aspect from Persia or Egypt, within whose mind floated mysterious Oriental wisdom, bequeathed from the dawn of Time. And as the scope of Tristan's observation widened, the demon of disillusion unfolded gloomy wings over the far horizon of his soul. And the Tiber rolled calmly on below, catching in its turbid waves the golden sunset glow. Now and then he encountered the armed retinue of some feudal baron clattering along the narrow ill-paved streets, chasing pedestrians into adjacent doorways and porticoes and pursuing their precipitate retreat with outbursts of banter and mirth. Unfamiliar as Tristan was with the factions that usurped the dominion of the Seven Hills, the escutcheons and coats-of-arms of these marauding parties meant little to him. Now and then however it would chance that two rival factions clashed, each disputing the other's passage. Then, only, did he become alive to the dangers that beset the unwary in the city of the Pontiff, and a sudden spirit of recklessness and daring, born of the moment, prompted the desire to plunge into this seething vortex, if but to purchase temporary oblivion and relief. He faced the many dangers of the streets, loitering here and there and curiously eyeing all things, and would eventually have lost himself, when the mantle of night began to fall on the Seven Hills, had he not instinctively remarked that the ascending road removed him from the river. CHAPTER V ON THE AVENTINE When Tristan at last regained his bearings, he found himself among the convents and cloisters on Mount Aventine. His eyes rested wearily on the eddying gleam of the Tiber as it wound its coils round the base of the Mount of Cloisters, thence they roamed among the grass and weed-grown ruins of ancient temples and crumbling porticoes, which rose on all sides in the silent desolation. Just then a last gleam of the disappearing sun touched the bronze figure of the Archangel on the summit of Castel San Angelo, imbuing it for an instant with a weird effect, as though the ghost of some departed watchman were waving a lighted torch aloft in the heavens. Then the glow faded before a dead grey twilight, which settled solemnly over the melancholy landscape. The full moon was rising slowly. Round and large she hung, like a yellow shield, on the dark, dense wall of the heavens. In the distance the faint outlines of the Alban Hills and the snow-capped summit of Monte Soracté were faintly discernible in the night mists. In the background the ill-famed ruins of the ancient temple of Isis rose into the purple dusk. The Tiber, in the light of the higher rising moon, gleamed like a golden ribbon. The gaunt masonry of the Septizonium of Alexander Severus was dimly rimmed with light, and streaks of amber radiance were wandering up and down the shadowy slopes of the Mount of Cloisters, like sorrowing ghosts bound upon some sorrowful errand. All sense of weariness had suddenly left Tristan. A compelling influence, stronger than himself, seemed to urge him on as to the fulfillment of some hidden purpose. Once or twice he paused. As he did so, he became aware of the extraordinary, almost terrible stillness, that encompassed him. He felt it enclosing him like a thick wall on all sides. Earth and the air seemed breathless, as if in the throes of some mysterious excitement. The stars, flashing out with the brilliant lustre of the south, were as so many living eyes eagerly gazing down on the solitary human being whose steps led him into these deserted places. The moon herself seemed to stare at him in open wonderment. At last he found himself before the open portals of the great Church of Santa Maria of the Aventine. From the gloom within floated the scent of incense and the sound of chanting. He could see tapers gleaming on the high altar in the choir. Women were passing in and out, and a blind beggar sat at the gate. Moved more by curiosity than the desire for worship, Tristan entered and uncovered his head. The Byzantine cupola was painted in vermilion and gold. The slender pillars of white marble were banded with silver and inlaid with many colored stones. The basins for holy water were of black marble, their dark pools gleaming with the colors of the vault. Side chapels opened on either hand, dim sanctuaries steeped in mystery of incense-saturated dusk. The saints and martyrs in their stiff, golden Byzantine dalmaticas seemed to endow each relic with an air of mystery. The beauty and the mystery of the place touched Tristan's soul. As in a haze he seemed again to see the pomp and splendor of the sanctuaries of far-away, dream-lost Avalon. Tristan took his stand by one of the great pillars, and, setting his back to it, looked round the place. There were some women in the sanctuary, engaged in prayer. Tristan watched them with vacant eyes. Suddenly he became conscious that one of these worshippers was not wholly absorbed in prayer under her hood. Two watchful eyes seemed to consider him with a suggestiveness that no man could mistake, and her thoughts seemed to be very far from heaven. Once or twice Tristan started to leave the sanctuary, but some invisible hand seemed to detain him as with a magic hold. In due season the woman finished her devotions and stood with her hood turned back, looking at Tristan across the church. Her women had gathered about her and outside the gates Tristan saw the spear points of her guard. Turning, with a glance cast at him over her shoulder, she swept in state out of the church, her women following her, all save one tall girl, who loitered at the door. Suddenly it flashed upon Tristan, as he stood there with his back leaning against the pillar. Was not this the woman he had met by the fountain, the woman who had spoken strange words to him in the Navona? Had she recognized him? Her eyes had challenged him unmistakably when first they had met his own, and now again, as she left the church. They puzzled Tristan, these same eyes. Far in their depths lurked secrets he dreaded to fathom. Her scented garments perfumed the very aisles. Tristan was roused from his reverie by a woman's hand plucking at his sleeve. By his side stood a tall girl. She was very beautiful, but her eyes were evil. She looked boldly at Tristan and gave her message. "Follow my mistress," were her words. Tristan looked at her, his face almost invisible in the gloom. Only the moonlight touched his hair. "Whom do you serve?" he replied. "The Lady Theodora!" came the answer. Tristan's heart froze within him. Theodora--the woman who had succeeded to Marozia's dread estate! In order to conceal his emotions he brought his face closer to the fair messenger, forcing his voice to appear calm as he spoke. "What would your mistress with me?" The girl glanced up at him, as if she regarded the question strangely superfluous. "You are to come with me!" she persisted, touching his arm. Tristan's mouth hardened as he considered the message, without relinquishing his station by the pillar. What was he to Theodora--Theodora to him? She was a woman, evil, despite her ravishing beauty, so he had gathered during the days of his journey. The spell she had cast over him on the previous evening had vanished before the memory of Hellayne. Her sudden appearance, her witch-like beauty had, for the time, unmanned him. The hardships and privations of a long journey had, for the moment, caused his senses to run rampant, and almost hurled him into the arms of perdition. Yet he had not then known. And now he remembered how they all had fallen away from him, as from one bearing on his person the germs of some dread disease. The terrible silence in the Navona seemed visualized once again in the silence which encompassed him here. Yet she was all powerful, so he had heard. She ruled the men and the factions. In some vague way, he thought, she might be of service to him. Tossed between two conflicting impulses, Tristan slowly followed the girl from the church and, crossing the great, moonlit court that lay without, entered the gardens which seemed to divide the sanctuary from some hidden palace. Mulberry trees towered above the lawns, studded with thick, ripening fruit. Weeping ashes glittered in the moonlight. Cedars and oaks cast their shade over broad beds of mint and thyme. The girl watched Tristan closely, as she walked beside him, making no effort to conceal her own charms before eyes which she deemed endowed with the power of judgment in matters of this kind. Her mistress had not put her trust in her in vain. She studied Tristan's race in order to determine, whether or not he would waver in his resolve and--she began to speak to him as they crossed the gardens with a simplicity, an interest that was well assumed. "A good beginning indeed!" she said. "You are in favor, my lord! To have seen her fair face is no small boast, but to be summoned to her presence--I cannot remember her so gracious to any one, since--" she paused suddenly, deliberately. Tristan regarded her slantwise over his shoulder, without making response. At last, irritated, he knew not why, he asked curtly: "What is your mistress?" The girl's glance wandered over the great trees and flowers that overshadowed the plaisaunce. "She bears her mother's name," she replied with a shrug, "and, like her mother, the blood that flows in her veins is mingled with the fire that glitters in the stars in heaven, a fire affording neither light nor heat, but serving to dazzle, to bewilder.--I am but a woman, but--had I your chance of fortune, my lord, I should think twice, ere I bartered it for a vow, an empty dream." He gave her a swift glance, wondering at her woman's wit, yet resenting her speech. "You would prosper?" she queried tentatively at last, casting about in her mind, how she might win his confidence. "I have business of my own," he replied, evading her question. She looked up at him, her eyes trembling into his. "How tall and strong you are! I could almost find it in my heart to love you myself!" The flattery seemed so spontaneous that it would have puzzled one possessed of greater guile than Tristan to have uncovered her cunning. Nor was Tristan unwilling to seem strong to her; for the moment he was almost tempted to continue questioning her regarding her mistress. "You may make your fortune in Rome," the girl said with a meaning smile. "How so?" "Are you blind? Do you not know a woman's ways? My mistress loves a strong arm. You may serve her." "That is not possible!" The girl stared at him and for the moment dropped the mask of innocence. "What was possible once, is possible again," she said. Then she added: "Are you not ambitious?" "I have a task to perform that may not permit of two masters! Why are you so concerned?" The question came almost abruptly. "I serve my lady!" she said, edging towards him. "Is it so strange a thing to serve a woman?" They had left the garden and had arrived before a high stone wall that skirted the precincts of Theodora's palace. Cypresses and bays raised their tops above the stones. Great cedars cast deep shadows. In the wall there was a door studded with heavy iron nails. The girl took a key that dangled from her girdle, unlocked the door and beckoned to Tristan to enter. Tristan stood and gazed. In the light of the moon which drenched all things he saw a garden in which emerald grass plots alternated with beds of strange-tinted orchids, flowers purple and red. At the end of the plaisaunce there opened an orange thicket and under the trees stood a woman clad in crimson, her white arms bare. She wore sandals of silver, and her dusky hair was confined in a net of gold. As Tristan was about to yield to the overmastering temptation the memory of Hellayne conquered all other emotions. He turned back from the door and looked full into the girl's dark eyes. "You will speak to your mistress for me," he said to her, casting a swift glance into the moonlit garden. The girl looked at him with a puzzled air, but did not stir. "What am I to say to her?" she said. "That I will not enter these gates!" "You will not?" "No!" He snapped curtly. "Fool! How you will regret your speech!" Her face changed suddenly like a fickle sky, and there was something in her eyes too wicked for words. Without vouchsafing a reply, Tristan turned and lost himself in the desolation of Mount Aventine. The night marched on majestically. The moon and her sister planets passed through their appointed spheres of harmonious light and law, and from all cloisters and convents prayers went up to heaven for pity, pardon and blessing on sinful humanity that had neither pity, pardon nor blessing for itself, till, with magic suddenness, the dense purple skies changed to a pearly grey, the moon sank pallidly beneath the earth's dark rim and the stars were extinguished one by one. Morning began to herald its approach in the freshening air. Tristan still slept on his improvised couch, a marble slab he had chosen when he discovered that he had lost his way in the wilderness of the Aventine. His head on his arm he lay quite still among the flowers, wrapt in a sort of dizzy delirium in which the forms of Theodora and Hellayne strangely intermingled, until the riddles of life were blotted out together with the riddles of Fate. CHAPTER VI THE COUP Tristan spent the greater part of the day visiting the churches and sanctuaries, offering up prayers for oblivion and peace. His heart was heavy within him. Like the stray leaf that has been torn from its native branch and flutters resistlessly, aimlessly hither and thither, at the mercy of the chance breeze, nevermore to return to its sheltering bough, so the lone wanderer felt himself tossed about by the waves of destiny, a human derelict without a haven where he might escape the storms of life. Guiltless in his own conscience of an imputed sin, in that his love for Hellayne had been pure and holy, Tristan could find little comfort in the enforced penance, while his hungry heart cried out for her who had so willed it. And, as with weary feet he dragged himself through the streets of the pontifical city, he vaguely wondered, if his would ever be the peace of the goal. In the darkness in which he walked, in the perturbation of his mind, he longed more than ever to open his heart to some one who would understand and counsel and guide his steps. The Pontiff being a prisoner in the Lateran, Tristan's ardent wish to confide in the successor of St. Peter had suffered a sudden and a keen disappointment. There were but Odo of Cluny, Benedict of Soracté or the Grand Penitentiary, holding forth in the subterranean chapel at St. Peter's, to whom he might turn for ease of mind, and a natural reluctance to lay bare the holiest thoughts man may give to woman, restrained him for the nonce from seeking these channels. Thus three days had sped, yet naught had happened to indicate that events would shape the course so ardently desired by Tristan. It was there, on one of the terraces crowning the splendid heights of immortal Rome, with a view of the distant Sabine and Alban hills, fading into the evening dusk, that the memory of the golden days of Avalon returned to him in waves of anguish that almost mastered his resolve to begin life anew under conditions that seemed insupportable. Again Hellayne was by his side, as in dream-forgotten Avalon. Again side by side they wandered where the shattered columns of old grey temples, all that remained of a sunny Greek civilization of which they knew nothing, crowned the heights above the lazy lapping waves of the tideless Tyrrhenian sea. There, for whole hours would they sit, the air full of the scent of orange and myrtle; under almond trees, covered with blossoms that sprinkled the emerald ground like rosy snowflakes, and watch the white sails of the far feluccas that trailed the waves in monotonous rhythm to or from the sunlit shores of Africa. The distant headlands looked faint and dreamy, and the sparkling sea broke, gurgling, foaming among the rocks at their feet, as it had broken at the feet of other lovers who had sat there centuries ago, when those shattered columns had been white in their freshness and the temples had been wreathed with the garlands of youth. And the eternal waves said to them what they had said to the dead and forgotten; and the fickle winds sang to them what they had sung to the fair and the nameless, and they stretched forth their hands, and saw but the sea and the sun. And they knew not the deity to whom those temple columns had been raised, just as he knew not to whose worship those fallen columns had been erected, nor guessed they who had knelt at the holy shrines. And as they sat there, the man and the woman, their eyes probing the depths of living sapphire, they would watch the restless sea-weed that seemed to coil and uncoil like innumerable blue snakes upon a bed of bright blue flames, and the luminous mosses that trembled like blue stars ceaselessly towards the surface that they never, never reached. And down there in the crystal palaces they would fancy that they saw faces as of glancing mermen, even as the lovers of older days had seen passing Tritons and the scaly children of Poseidon. And again she would croon those sad melancholy songs that came from her lips like faint echoes of Aeolian harps. Now she flung them upon the air in bursts of weird music, to the accompaniment of a breaking wave, songs so passionate and elemental that they seemed the cry of these same radiant waters when churned by the storm into fury. Or they might have been such wailings as spirits imprisoned in old sea caves would utter to the hollow walls, or which the ghosts of ship-wrecked crews might send forth from the rocks where they had perished. Or again they might suggest some earthly passion, love, jealousy, the cry of a longing heart, till the dirge seemed to wear itself out and the soul of the listener seemed to sail out of the tempest into bright and peaceful waters like those that skirted dream-lost Avalon, scarcely rippled by the faint breeze of summer, breaking in long unfurling waves among the rocks at their feet. Thus they used to sit long hours, heart listening to heart, soul clinging to soul, while she bared her throat to the scent-laden breezes that fanned her and looked out on the dazzling horizon--till a lightning flash from the clear azure splintered the dream and broke two lives. For a long time Tristan gazed about, vainly trying to order his thoughts. Could he but forget! Would but the present engulf the past!-- His adventure at the Church of Santa Maria of the Aventine and his chance meeting with Theodora recurred to him at intervals throughout the day, and he could not but admit that the reports of the woman's beauty were far from exaggerated. Perchance, if the memory of Hellayne had been less firmly rooted in his soul, he, too, might, like many another, have sought solace at the forbidden fount. However, he was resolved to avoid her, for he had seen something in the swift glance she had bestowed upon him that discoursed of matters it behooved him to beware of. And yet he wondered how she had received his denial, she, whom no man had denied before. Then this memory also faded before the exigencies of the hour. The sun had sunk to rest in a sky of turquoise, crimson and gold, when Tristan found himself standing on the eminence where seven decades later Crescentius, the Senator of Rome, was to build the Church of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli. Leaning on a broken pillar, Tristan watched the evening light as it spread a veil of ethereal splendor over the Seven Hills and there came to him a strange feeling of remoteness as to one standing upon some hill-set shrine. Far beneath him lay the Forum. White columns shone roseate in the dying light of day. Wrapt in deep thoughts and meditations, Tristan descended the stairs leading from the summit whence in after time the name of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli--Holy Mother at the Altar of Heaven--was to ring in the ears of thousands like a beautiful rhythmic chant, and after a time he found himself in the Piazza fronting the Lateran. Seized with a sudden impulse he entered the church. Slowly the worshippers began to assemble. Their numbers increased to almost a hundred, though they seemed but as so many shadows in the vast nave. There was something in their faces, touched by the uncertain glimmer of the tapers and lamps, that filled him with awe, as if he were standing among the ghosts of the past. At last the holy office commenced. A very old priest, whose features Tristan could not distinguish, began to chant the Introitus, in deep long drawn notes. Through the narrow windows filtered the light of the rising moon. It did little more than stain the dusk. Over the sombre high altar hung the white ivory figure of the Christ, bowed, sagged, in the last agony. A few blood-red poppies were the only flowers upon the altar. The fumes of incense rose in spiral columns to the vaulted ceiling. The Kyrie had been chanted, the Gloria in Excelsis Deo. Later the Host was consecrated and the cup before the kneeling worshippers, and the priest was turning to those near him who, as was still the custom in those days, were present to communicate in both kinds. To each came from his lips the solemn words: "Corpus Domini Nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam ad Vitam aeternam!" He dipped his fingers in the cup, cleansing them with a little wine. He consumed the cleansings and turned to read the antiphony with resonant voice. "I saw the heavens opened and Jesus at the right hand of God. Lord Jesus receive their spirit and lay not this sin to their charge!" Then, with hands folded over his breast, he moved towards the altar in the centre, touched it with his lips, and, turning once more to the people, said: "Dominus Vobiscum!" "Et cum spiritu tuo," was not answered. For at that moment rough shouts were heard and through a side door, near a chapel, a body of ruffians rushed into the Basilica, their faces vizored and masked. With shouts and oaths they made their way towards the altar. The worshippers scattered, the mail-clad ruffians smiting their way through their kneeling ranks up to the altar where stood the form of a youth clad in pontifical vestments, pale but calm in the face of the impending storm. It was Pope John XI., held prisoner in the Lateran by Alberic, the Senator of Rome. Tristan had not noted his presence during the ceremony. Now, like a revelation, the import of the scene flashed upon his mind. Bearing Tristan down by the sheer weight of their numbers, they rushed upon the Pontiff, stripped him of his pallium and chasuble, leaving him but one sacred vestment, the white albe. Unable to reach the Pontiff's side, unable to aid him, Tristan stood rooted to the spot, an impotent witness of the most heinous sacrilege his mind could picture, almost turned to stone. Before Tristan's very eyes, before the eyes of the worshippers, who outnumbered the ruffians ten to one, an outrage was being committed at which the fiends themselves would shudder. Violence was being done to the Father of Christendom in his own city, and the craven cowards had but their own safety in mind. Just what happened Tristan could not immediately remember. For, as he rushed towards the spot where he saw the Pontiff struggling helplessly against his assailants, he was violently thrust back and the ruffians made their way towards a side chapel with their captive. Thus he found himself helplessly borne along in the darkness, and thrust out into the night. Tristan fell beneath their feet and was for a moment so utterly stunned that he could not rise. As in a dream he heard the leader of the band give a command to his followers. They mounted their steeds which were tethered outside and tramped away into the night. The sudden appearance of an armed band in the sacred precincts of the Lateran had so terrified and cowed the crowd of worshippers that even when the doors of the Basilica were left unguarded, not one ventured to give assistance. Like shadows they fled into the night. When Tristan regained some sort of consciousness he looked about in vain for aid. Dimly he remembered that the ruffians were mounted, and by the time he summoned succor they would have stowed their captive safely away in one of their castellated fortresses, where one might search for him in vain forever more. The Piazza in front of the Lateran was deserted. Not a human being was to be seen. Tristan pursued his way through waste spaces that offered no clue. He rushed through narrow and deserted streets, abandoned of the living. He felt like shouting at the top of his voice: "Romans awake! They have abducted the Pontiff." But, stranger as he was, and dreading lest he might share John's fate or worse, he withstood the impulse and at last found himself upon the Bridge of San Angelo before the fortress tomb of the former master of the world, dreaming in the surrounding desolation. Before the massive bronze gate cowered a man-at-arms, drowsing over his pike. Without a moment's hesitation, Tristan shook the drowsy guardian of the Angel's Castle into blaspheming alertness. "They have abducted the Pontiff!" he shouted, without releasing his clutch on the gaping Burgundian. "Sound the alarums! Even now it may be too late!" The man in the brown leather jerkin and steel casque stared open-mouthed at the speaker. "The Lord Alberic is within--" he stammered at last, with an effort to shake off the drowsiness that held his senses captive. "Then rouse him in the devil's name," shouted Tristan. The last words had their effect upon the stolid Northman. After the elapse of some precious moments Alberic himself emerged from the Emperor's Tomb and Tristan repeated his account of the outrage, little guessing the rank of him with whom he was standing face to face. But now they were confronted with a dilemma which it seemed would put all Tristan's efforts to naught. Who were the leaders of the party that had abducted the Pontiff? For thereon hinged their success of intercepting the outlaws. Tristan's description of the leader did not seem to make any marked impression on the Senator of Rome. He questioned Tristan with regard to their coat-of-arms or other heraldic emblems. But the author of the outrage had shown sufficient foresight to avoid a hazardous display. There seemed but one alternative; to scour the city of Rome in the uncertain hope of intercepting the outlaws, if they were still within the walls. Tristan attached himself to the senatorial party, joining in the pursuit. At first their task seemed hopeless indeed. Those they met and questioned had seen no armed band, or, if they had, denied all knowledge thereof. The frowning masonry of the Cenci, Savelli, Frangipani, and Odescalchi, which they passed in turn, returned but an inscrutable reply to their questioning glances. For a time they continued their fruitless quest. But as if an outrage so horrible had ignited the very air about them, they soon found people stirring, shutters opening and shadowy figures issuing from dark doorways, while folk were running and shouting to one another: "The Pontiff has been abducted!" Between cries of rage and shouts of command and indecision on the part of the leader, who knew not in which direction to pursue, an hour had elapsed, when they suddenly heard the clatter of hoofs. A company of horsemen came galloping down the street. Alberic's suspicions that the ruffians would prefer carrying their victim by devious byways to one or the other of their Roman lairs, rather than attempt to leave the city in the teeth of the Senator's guard, seemed realized. Oaths and sharp orders broke the silence of the night. It was amongst a gigantic pile of ruins, apart from all habitations of the living, that they came to a halt. To a gaunt brick-built tower they drew close, knocking against the iron-studded door, but ere those within could open, they were surrounded, outnumbered ten to one. Tristan was the first to bound in amongst them. His eyes quivered upon the steel-clad form of the leader of the band. At the next moment a blow from Tristan's fist struck him down and, ere he could recover himself, he had been bound, hand and foot, and turned over to the Senator's guards. His followers, despairing of success, made a sudden dash through the ranks of the people who had been attracted by the melee, riding down a number, injuring and maiming many. The Senator of Rome ranged his men, now re-inforced by the Prefect's guard, round the drooping form of John, while a howling and shouting mob, ready to wreak vengeance on the first object it encountered in its path, followed in their wake as they made their way towards the Lateran. An hour later, in a high vaulted, dimly lighted chamber of the Archangel's Castle, Tristan, the pilgrim, and Alberic, the Senator of Rome, faced each other for the second time. In the course of the pursuit of the ruffians in which he participated, Tristan had been casually informed of the rank of him who led the Senatorial guard in person and when, their object accomplished, he started to detach himself from the men-at-arms, Alberic had foiled his intention by commanding him to accompany him to the fortress-tomb where he himself held forth. Seated opposite each other, each seemed to scan the other's countenance before a word was spoken between them. Alberic's regard of the man who seemed utterly unconscious of the importance of the service he had rendered the Senator betokened approval, and his eyes dwelt for some moments on the frank and open countenance of this stranger, perchance contrasting it inwardly with the complex nature of those about his person in whom he could trust but so long as he could tempt them with earthly dross, and who would turn against him should a higher bidder for their favor appear. Tristan's first impression of the son of Marozia was that of one born to command. Dark piercing eyes were set in a face, stern, haughty, yet strangely beautiful. Alberic's tall, slender figure, dressed in black velvet, relieved by slashes of red satin, added to the impressiveness of his personality. Upon closer scrutiny Tristan could discover a marked resemblance between the man before him and his half-brother, the ill-fated Pontiff, whom, for political reasons, or considerations of his personal safety, he kept prisoner in the pontifical palace. But there was yet another present, who apparently took little heed of the stranger, engaged as he seemed in the perusal of a parchment, spread out upon a table before him,--Basil, the Grand Chamberlain. A whispered conversation had taken place between the Senator and his confidential adviser, for this was Basil's true station in the senatorial household. In the evil days of Marozia's regime he had occupied the same favored position at the Roman court, and, when Alberic's revolt had swept the regime of Ugo of Tuscany and Marozia from Roman soil, the son had attached to himself the man who had shown a marked sagacity and ability in the days that had come to a close. Basil's complex countenance proved somewhat more of an enigma to the silent on-looker than did the Senator's stern, though frank face. He was garbed in black, a color to which he seemed partial. A flat cap of black velvet with a feather curled round the brim, above a doublet of black velvet, close fitting, the sleeves slashed, to show the crimson tunic underneath. The trunk hose round the muscular legs were of black silk and gold thread, woven together and lined with sarsenet. His feet were encased in black buskins with silver buckles, and puffed silk inserted in the slashings of the leather. The whole suggestion of the dark, sable figure was odd. It was exotic, and the absence of a beard greatly intensified the impression. The face, as Tristan saw it by the light of the taper, was expressionless--a physical mask. At last Alberic broke the silence, turning his eyes full upon the man who met his gaze without flinching. "You have--at your own risk--saved Rome and Holy Church from a calamity the whole extent of which we may not even surmise, had the Pontiff been carried away by the lawless band of Tebaldo Savello. We owe you thanks--and we shall not shirk our duty. You are a stranger. Who are you and why are you here?" To the same questions that another had put to him on the memorable eve of his arrival, in the Piazza Navona, Tristan replied with equal frankness. His words bore the stamp of truth, and Alberic listened to a tale passing strange to Roman ears. And, unseen by Tristan, something began to stir in the dark, unfathomable eyes of Basil, as some unknown thing stirs in deep waters, and the hidden thing therein, to him who saw, was hidden no longer. Some nameless being was looking out of these windows of the soul. One looking at him now would have shrank away, cold fear gripping his heart. For a moment, after Tristan had finished his tale, there was silence. Alberic had risen and, seemingly unconscious of the presences in his chamber, was perambulating its narrow confines until, of a sudden, he stopped directly before Tristan. "These penances completed, whereof you speak--do you intend returning to the land of your birth?" A blank dismay shone in Tristan's eyes. Not having referred to the nature of the transgression, for which he was to do penance, and obtain absolution, he found it somewhat difficult to answer Alberic's question. "This is a matter I had not considered," he replied with some hesitancy, which remained not unremarked by the Senator. Alberic was a man of few words, and he possessed a discernment far beyond his years. At the first glance at this stranger whom fate had led across his path, he had known that here was one he might trust, could he but induce him to become his man. He held out his hand. "I am going to be your friend and I mean to requite the service you have done the Senator, ere the dawn of another day breaks in the sky. There is a vacancy in the Senator's guard. I appoint you captain of Castel San Angelo." Ere Tristan could sufficiently recover from his surprise to make reply, another voice was audible, a voice, soft and insinuating--the voice of Basil, the Grand Chamberlain. "My lord--the chain of evidence against Gamba is not completed. In fact, later developments seem to point to an intrigue of which he is but the unwitting victim--" Alberic turned to the speaker. "The proofs, my Lord Basil, are conclusive. Gamba is a traitor convicted of having conspired with an emissary of Ugo of Tuscany, to deliver the Archangel's Castle into his hands. He is sentenced--he shall die--as soon as we discover his abode--" Basil's face had turned to ashen hues. "What mean you, my lord? Gamba is awaiting sentence in the dungeon where he has been confined, ever since his trial--" "The cage is still there," Alberic interposed sardonically. "The bird has flown." "Escaped?" stammered the Grand Chamberlain, rising from his seat and raising his furtive eyes to those of the Senator. "Then he has confederates in our very midst--" "We shall know more of this anon," came the laconic reply. "Will you accept the trust which the Senator of Rome offers you?" Alberic turned from the Grand Chamberlain to Tristan. The latter found his voice at last. "How shall I thank you, my lord!" he said, grasping the Senator's hand. "Grant me but a week, wherein to absolve the business upon which I came--and I shall prove myself worthy of the lord Alberic's trust!" "So be it," the son of Marozia replied. "A long deferred pilgrimage to the shrines of the Archangel at Monte Gargano will take me from Rome for the space of a month or more. I should like to be assured that this keep is in the hands of one who will not fail me in the hour of need! My Lord Basil--greet the new captain of Castel San Angelo--" Approaching almost soundlessly over the tiled floor, the Grand Chamberlain extended his hand to Tristan, offering his congratulations upon his sudden advancement. Whatever it was that flashed in Basil's eyes, it was gone as quickly as it had come. His thin lips parted in an inscrutable smile as Tristan, with a bend of the head, acknowledged the courtesy. For a moment, following his acceptance, Tristan was startled at his own decision. Another would have felt it to be an amazing streak of luck. Tristan was frightened, though his misgivings vanished after a time. Owing to the lateness of the hour and the insecurity of the streets Alberic offered Tristan the hospitality of his future abode for the night and the latter gladly accepted. After Basil had departed, he remained closeted with the Senator for the space of an hour or more. What transpired between these two remained guarded from the outer world, and it was late ere the sentinel on the ramparts saw the light in the Senator's chamber extinguished, wondering at the nature of the business which detained the lord Alberic and the tall stranger in the pilgrim's garb. CHAPTER VII MASKS AND MUMMERS Amid the ruin of cities and the din of strife during the tenth century darkness closed in upon the Romans, while the figures of strange despots emerged from obscurity only to disappear as quickly into the night of oblivion. Little of them is known, save that they ruled the people and the pope with merciless severity, and that the first one of them was a woman. The beautiful Theodora the older was the wife of Theophylactus, Consul and Patricius of Rome, but the permanence of her power seemed to have been due entirely to her own charm and personality. Her daughter Marozia, with even greater beauty, greater fascination and greater gift of daring, played even a more conspicuous part in the history of her time. She married Alberic, Count of Spoleto, whose descendants, the Counts of Tusculum, gave popes and mighty citizens to Rome. One of their palaces is said to have adjoined the Church of S. S. Apostoli, and came later into the possession of the powerful house of Colonna. Alberic of Spoleto soon died and Marozia, as the chronicles tell us, continued as the temporal ruler of the city and the arbitress of pontifical elections. She held forth in Castel San Angelo, the indomitable stronghold of mediaeval Rome. In John X. who, in the year 914, had gained the tiara through Theodora, she found a man of character, whose aim and ambition were the dominion of Rome, the supremacy of the Church. By the promise of an imperial crown, the pope gained Count Ugo of Tuscany to his party, but Marozia outwitted him, by giving her hand to his more powerful half-brother Guido, then Margrave of Tuscany. John X., after trying for two years, in spite of his enemies, to maintain his regime from the Lateran, at last fell into their hands and was either strangled or starved to death in the dungeons of Castel San Angelo. After the death of Guido, Marozia married his half-brother Ugo. The strange wedding took place in the Mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian, where a bridal hall and nuptial chamber had been arranged and adorned for them. From the fortress tomb of the Flavian Emperor, Ugo lorded it over the city of Rome, earning thereby the hatred of the people and especially of young Alberic, his ambitious step-son, the son of Marozia and Count Alberic of Spoleto. The proud youth, forced one day to serve him as a page, with intentional awkwardness, splashed some water over him and in return received a blow. Mad with fury, Alberic rushed from Castel San Angelo and summoned the people to arms. The clarions sounded and the fortress tomb was surrounded by a blood-thirsty mob. In no time the actors changed places. Ugo escaped by means of a rope from a window in the castello and returned to Tuscany, leaving behind him his honor, his wife and his imperial crown, while the youth Alberic became master of Rome, cast Marozia into a prison in Castel San Angelo and kept his half-brother, John XI., a close prisoner in the Lateran. But the imprisonment of Marozia, and her mysterious disappearance from the scenes of her former triumphs and baleful activity did not end the story of the woman regime in Rome. There lived in a palace, built upon the ruins of nameless temples and sanctuaries, and embellished with all the barbarous splendor of Byzantine and Moorish arts, in the remote wilderness of Mount Aventine, a woman, who, in point of physical charms, ambition and daring had not her equal in Rome since the death of Marozia. Theodora the younger, as she is distinguished from her mother, the wife of Theophylactus, by contemporary chroniclers, was the younger sister of Marozia. The boundless ambition of the latter had left nothing to achieve for the woman who had reached her thirtieth year when Alberic's revolution consigned her sister to a nameless doom. Strange rumors concerning her were afloat in Rome. Strange things were whispered of her palace on Mount Aventine, where she assembled about her the nobility of the city and the surrounding castelli, and soon her court vied in point of sumptuousness and splendor with the most splendid and profligate of her time. Her admirers numbered by thousands, and her exotic beauty caused new lovers to swell the ranks of the old with every day that passed down the never returning tide of time. Some came openly and some came under the cover of night, heavily muffled and cloaked: spendthrifts, gamblers, gallants, men of fashion, officers of the Senator's Court, poets, philosophers, and the feudal lords of the Campagna. Wealthy debauchees from the provinces, princes from the shores of the Euxine, Lombard and Tuscan chiefs, Northmen from Scandinavia and Iceland, wearing over their gnarled limbs the soft silken tunics of Rome, Greeks, sleek, furtive-eyed, rulers from far-off Cathay, wearing coats of crimson with strange embroidery from the scented East, men from the isles of Venetia and the stormy plains of Thessaly, men with narrow slanting eyes from the limitless steppes of Sarmatia, blond warriors from the amber coasts of the Baltic, Persian princes who worshipped the Sun, and Moors from the Spanish Caliphate of Cordova; chieftains from the Lybian desert, as restive as their fiery steeds; black despots from the hidden heart of Africa, with thick lips and teeth like ivory, effete youths from Sicily and the Ionian isles, possessed of the insidious beauty of the Lesbian women, adventurers from Samarkand and Bokhara, trading in strange wares and steeped in odor of musk and spices; Hyperboreans from the sea-skirt shores of an ever frozen unimaginable ocean;--from every land under the sun they came to Rome, for the sinister fame of Theodora's beauty, the baleful mystery that surrounded her, and her dark repute proved powerful incentives to curiosity, which soon gave way to overmastering passion, once the senses had been steeped in the intoxicating atmosphere of the woman's presence. And, indeed, her physical charms were such as no mortal had yet resisted whom she had willed to make her own. Her body, tall as a column, was lustrous, incomparable. The arms and hands seemed to have been chiselled of ivory by a master creator who might point with pride to the perfection of his handiwork--the perfection of Aphrodité, Lais and Phryné melted into one. The features were of such rare mould and faultless type that even Marozia had to concede to her younger sister the palm of beauty. The wonderful, deep set eyes, with their ever changing lights, now emerald, now purple, now black; the straight, pencilled brows, the broad smooth forehead and the tiny ears, hidden in the wealth of her raven hair, tied into a Grecian knot and surmounted by a circlet of emeralds, skillfully worked into the twining bodies of snakes with ruby eyes; the satin sheen of the milk-white skin whose ivory pallor was tinted with the faintest rose-light that never changed either in heat or in cold, in anger or in joy: such was the woman whose long slumbering, long suppressed ambition, coupled with a daring that had not its equal, was to be fanned into a raging holocaust after Marozia's untimely demise. Concealing her most secret hopes and ambitions so utterly that even Alberic became her dupe, Theodora threw herself into the whirl of life with a keen appreciation of all its thrilling excitement. Vitally alive with the pride of her sex and the sense of its power, she found in her existence all the zest of some breathlessly fascinating game. Men to her were mere pawns. She regarded them almost impersonally, as creatures to taunt, to tempt, to excite, to play upon. Deliberately and unstintingly she applied her arts. She delighted to see them at her feet, but to repel them as the mood changed, with exasperating disdain. Love to her was a word she knew but from report,--or, from what she had read. She knew not its meaning, nor had she ever fathomed its depths. To revel through delirious nights with some newly-chosen favorite of the moment, who would soon thereafter mysteriously disappear, to be tossed from the embrace of one into the arms of another; in the restless, fruitless endeavor to kill the pain of life, the memory of consciousness, to fill the void of a heart, that, alive to the shallowness of existence, clutches at the saving hope of power, to rule and to crush the universe beneath her feet, a dream, vague, vain, unattainable: this desire filled Theodora's soul. Her soul was burning itself to cinders in its own fires,--those baleful fires that had proven the undoing of her equally beautiful sister. Alone she would pace her gilded chambers, feverishly, unable to think, driven hither and thither by the demons of unrest, by the disquietude of her heart. Desperately she threw herself into whatever excitement offered. But it was always in vain. She found no respite. Ever and ever a reiterant, restless craving gnawed, like a worm, at her heart. As she approached the thirtieth year of her life, Theodora had grown more dazzling in beauty. Her body had assumed the wonderful plasticity of marble. Her eyes had become more unfathomable, more wondrously changeful in hues, like the iridescent waters of the sea. Living as she did in an age where a morbid trend pervaded the world, where the approach of the Millennium, though no one of the present generation would see the day, was heralded as the End of Time; living as she did in the darkest epoch of Roman history, Theodora felt the utter inadequacy of her life, a hunger which nothing but power could assuage. Slowly this desire began to grow and expand. She wished to wield her will, not only on men's emotions, but upon their lives as well. Perhaps even the death of Marozia, with its paralyzing influence over her soul, the captivity in the Lateran of her sister's son, and the hateful rule of Alberic, would not have brought matters to a focus, had not the appearance upon the stage of a woman, who, in point of beauty, spirit and daring bade fair to constitute a terrible rival, roused all the dormant passions in Theodora's soul and when Roxana openly boasted that she would wrest the power from the hands of her rival and rule in the Emperor's Tomb in spite of the Pontiff, of Alberic and Marozia's blood-kin, the soul of Theodora leaped to the challenge of the other woman and she craved for the conflict as she had never longed for anything in her life, save perchance, a love of which she had but possessed the base counterfeit. No one knew whence Roxana had come, nor how long she had been in Rome, when an incident at San Lorenzo in Lucina had brought the two women face to face. Both, with their trains, had simultaneously arrived before the portals of the sanctuary when Roxana barred Theodora's way. Some mysterious instinct seemed to have informed each of the person and ambition of the other. For a moment they faced each other white to the lips. Then Roxana and her train had entered the church, and as she passed the other woman, a deadly challenge had flashed from her blue eyes into Theodora's dark orbs. The populace applauded Roxana's daring, and, in order to taunt her rival, she had established her court on desert Aventine, assembling about her the disgruntled lovers of Theodora and others, whom her disdain had driven to seek oblivion and revenge. The land of Roxana's birth was shrouded in mystery. Some reported her from the icy regions of the North, others credited her with being the fugitive odalisque of some Eastern despot, a native of Kurdistan, the beauty and fire of whose women she possessed to a high degree. Such was Roxana, who had challenged Theodora for the possession of the Emperor's Tomb. CHAPTER VIII THE SHRINE OF HEKATÉ Athwart the gleaming balconies of the east the morning sun shone golden and the shadows of the white marble cornices and capitals and jutting friezes were blue with the reflection of the cloudless sky. Far below Mount Aventine the soft mists of dawn still hovered over the seven-hilled city, whence the distant cries of the water carriers and fruit venders came echoing up from the waking streets. A fugitive sunbeam stole through a carelessly closed lattice of a chamber in the palace of Theodora, and danced now on the walls, bright with many a painted scene, now on the marble inlaid mosaic of the floor. Now and then a bright blade or the jewelled rim of a wine cup of eastern design would flash back the wayward ray, until its shaft rested on a curtained recess wherein lay a faintly outlined form. Tenderly the sunbeams stole over the white limbs that veiled their chiselled roundness under the blue shot webs of their wrappings, which, at the capricious tossing of the sleeper, bared two arms, white as ivory and wonderful in their statuesque moulding. The face of the sleeper showed creamy white under a cloud of dark, silken hair, held back in a net of gold from the broad smooth forehead. Dark, exquisitely pencilled eyebrows arched over the closed, transparent lids, fringed with lashes that now and then seemed to flicker on the marble pallor of the cheeks, and the proudly poised head lay back, half buried in the cushions, supported by the gleaming white arms that were clasped beneath it. Then, as if fearful of intruding on the charms that his ray had revealed, the sunbeam turned and, kissing the bosom that swelled and sank with the sleeper's gentle breathing, descended till it rested on an overhanging foot, from which a carelessly fastened sandal hung by one vermilion strap. Of a sudden a light footfall was audible without and in an instant the sleeper had heard and awakened, her dark eyes heavy with drowsiness, the red lips parted, revealing two rows of small, pearly teeth, with the first deep breath of returning consciousness. At the sound one white hand drew the silken wrappings over the limbs, that a troubled slumber and the warmth of the Roman summer night had bared, while the other was endeavoring to adjust the disordered folds of the saffron gossamer web that clung like a veil to her matchless form. "Ah! It is but you! Persephoné," she said with a little sigh, as a curtain was drawn aside, revealing the form of a girl about twenty-two years old, whose office as first attendant to Theodora had been firmly established by her deep cunning, a thorough understanding of her mistress' most hidden moods and desires, her utter fearlessness and a native fierceness, that recoiled from no consideration of danger. Persephoné was tall, straight as an arrow, lithe and sinuous as a snake. Her face was beautiful, but there was something in the gleam of those slightly slanting eyes that gave pause to him who chanced to cross her path. She claimed descent from some mythical eastern potentate and was a native of Circassia, the land of beautiful women. No one knew how she had found her way to Rome. The fame of Marozia's evil beauty and her sinister repute had in time attracted Persephoné, and she had been immediately received in Marozia's service, where she remained till the revolt of Alberic swept her mistress into the dungeons of Castel San Angelo. Thereupon she had attached herself to Theodora who loved the wild and beautiful creature and confided in her utterly. "Evil and troubled have been my dreams," Theodora continued, as the morning light fell in through the parted curtains. "At the sound of your footfall I started up--fearing--I knew not what--" "For a long time have I held out against his pleadings and commands," Persephoné replied in a subdued voice, "knowing that my lady slept. But he will not be denied,--and his insistence had begun to frighten me. So at last I dared brave my lady's anger and disturb her--" "Frighten you, Persephoné?" Theodora's musical laughter resounded through the chamber. "You--who braved death at these white hands of mine without flinching?" She extended her hands as if to impress Persephoné with their beauty and strength. Whatever the circumstance referred to, Persephoné made no reply. Only her face turned a shade more pale. The draped figure had meanwhile arisen to her full height, as she stretched the sleep from her limbs, then, her question remaining unanswered, she continued: "But--of whom do you speak? A new defiance from Roxana? A new insult from the Senator of Rome? I would have it understood," this with a slight lift of the voice, "that even were the end of the world at hand, of which they prate so much of late, and heaven and earth to crumble into chaos, I would not be disturbed to listen to shallow plaints and mock heroics." "It is neither the one nor the other," replied Persephoné with an apprehensive glance of her slanting eyes over her shoulder, "but my Lord Basil, the Grand Chamberlain. He waits without where the eunuchs guard your slumber, and his eyes are aflame with something more than impatience--" At the mention of the name a subtle change passed over the listener's face, and a sombre look crept into her eyes as she muttered: "What can he be bringing now?" Then, with a sudden flash, she added, tossing back her beautiful head: "Let the Lord Basil wait! And now, Persephoné, remove from me the traces of sleep and set the couches in better order." Silently and quickly the Circassian sprang forward and rolled back the curtains from the lattices, letting a stronger but still subdued light enter the chamber, revealing, as it did, many a chased casket, and mirrors of polished steel and bronze, and lighting up exquisite rainbow hued fabrics, thrown carelessly over lion-armed chairs, with here and there an onyx table wonderfully carved. The chamber itself looked out upon a terrace and garden, a garden filled with such a marvellous profusion of foliage and flowers, that, looking at it from between the glistening marble columns surrounding the palace, it seemed as though the very sky above rested edgewise on towering pyramids of red and white bloom. Awnings of softest pale blue stretched across the entire width of the spacious outer colonnade, where a superb peacock strutted majestically to and fro, with boastfully spreading tail and glittering crest, as brilliant as the gleam of the hot sun on the silver fringe of the azure canopies, amidst the gorgeousness of waving blossoms that seemed to surge up like a sea to the very windows of the chamber. Filling an embossed bowl with perfumed water, Persephoné bathed the hands of her mistress, who had sunk down upon a low, tapestried couch. Then, combing out her luxuriant hair, she bound it in a jewelled netting that looked like a constellation of stars against the dusky masses it confined. Taking a long, sleeveless robe of amber, Persephoné flung it about her subtle form and bound it over breast and shoulders with a jewelled band. But Theodora's glance informed her that something was still wanting and, following the direction of her gaze, Persephoné's eye rested on a life-size statue of Hekaté that stood with deadly calm on its inexorable face and slightly raised hands, from one of which hung something that glittered strangely in the subdued light of the recess. Obeying Theodora's silent gesture, Persephoné advanced to the image and took from its raised arm a circlet fashioned of two golden snakes with brightly enamelled scales, bearing in their mouths a single diamond, brilliant as summer lightning. This she gently placed on her mistress' head, so that the jewel flamed in the centre of the coronet, then, kneeling down, she drew together the unlatched sandals. Persephoné's touch roused her mistress from a day dream that had set her features as rigid as ivory, as she surveyed herself for a moment intently in a great bronze disk whose burnished surface gave back her flawless beauty line for line. In Persephoné's gaze she read her unstinted admiration, for, beautiful as the Circassian was, she loved beauty in her own sex, wherever she found it. Theodora seemed to have utterly forgotten the presence of the Grand Chamberlain in the anteroom, yet, in an impersonal way, her thoughts occupied themselves with the impending tete-a-tete. Her life had been one constant round of pleasure and amusement, yet she was not happy, nor even contented. Day by day she felt the want of some fresh interest, some fresh excitement, and it was this craving probably, more than innate depravity, which plunged her into those disgraceful and licentious excesses that were nightly enacted in the sunken gardens behind her palace. Lovers she had had by the scores. Yet each new face possessed for her but the attraction of novelty. The favorite of the hour had small cause to plume himself on his position. No sooner did he believe himself to be secure in the possession of Theodora's love, than he found himself hurled into the night of oblivion. A strange pagan wave held Rome enthralled. Italy was in the throes of a dark revulsion. A woman, beautiful as she was evil, had exercised within the past decade her baleful influence from Castel San Angelo. Theodora had taken up Marozia's tainted inheritance. Members of a family of courtesans, they looked upon their trade as a hereditary privilege and, like the ancient Aspasias, these Roman women of the tenth century triumphed primarily by means of their feminine beauty and charms over masculine barbarism and grossness. It was an age of feudalism, when brutal force and murderous fury were the only divinities whom the barbarian conqueror was compelled to respect. Lombards and Huns, Franks and Ostrogoths, Greeks and Africans, the savage giants issuing from the deep Teutonic forests, invading the classic soil of Rome, became so many Herculeses sitting at the feet of Omphalé, and the atmosphere of the city by the Tiber--the atmosphere that had nourished the Messalinas of Imperial Rome--poured the flame of ambition into the soul of a woman whose beauty released the strongest passions in the hearts of those with whom she surrounded herself, in order to attain her soul's desire. To rule Rome from the fortress tomb of the Flavian emperor was the dream of Theodora's life. It had happened once. It would happen again, as long as men were ready to sacrifice at the shrines of Hekaté. Unbridled in her passions as she was strong in her physical organization, an unbending pride and an intensity of will came to her aid when she had determined to win the object of her desire. In Theodora's bosom beat a heart that could dare, endure and defy the worst. She was a woman whom none but a very bold or ignorant suitor would have taken to his heart. Perchance the right man, had he appeared on the stage in time, might have made her gentle and quelled the wild passions that tossed her resistlessly about, like a barque in a hurricane. Suddenly something seemed to tell her that she had found such a one. Tristan's manly beauty had made a strong appeal upon her senses. The anomaly of his position had captivated her imagination. There was something strangely fascinating in the mystery that surrounded him, there was even a wild thrill of pleasure in the seeming shame of loving one whose garb stamped him as one claimed by the Church. He had braved her anger in refusing to accompany Persephoné. He had closed his eyes to Theodora's beauty, had sealed his ears to the song of the siren. "A man at last!" she said half aloud, and Persephoné, looking up from her occupation, gave her an inquisitive glance. The splash of hidden fountains diffused a pleasant coolness in the chamber. Spiral wreaths of incense curled from a bronze tripod into the flower-scented ether. The throbbing of muted strings from harps and lutes, mingling with the sombre chants of distant processions, vibrated through the sun-kissed haze, producing a weird and almost startling effect. After a pause of some duration, apparently oblivious of the fact that the announced caller was waiting without, Theodora turned to Persephoné, brushing with one white hand a stray raven lock from the alabaster forehead. "Can it be the heat or the poison miasma that presages our Roman fever? Never has my spirit been so oppressed as it is to-day, as if the gloomy messengers from Lethé's shore were enfolding me in their shadowy pinions. I saw his face in the dream of the night"--she spoke as if soliloquizing--"it was as the face of one long dead--" She paused with a shudder. "Of whom does my lady speak?" Persephoné interposed with a swift glance at her mistress. "The pilgrim who crossed my path to his own or my undoing. Has he been heard from again?" A negative gesture came in response. "His garb is responsible for much," replied the Circassian. "The city fairly swarms with his kind--" The intentional contemptuous sting met its immediate rebuke. "Not his kind," Theodora flashed back. "He has nothing in common with those others save the garb--and there is more beneath it than we wot of--" "The Lady Theodora's judgment is not to be gainsaid," the Circassian replied, without meeting her mistress' gaze. "Do they not throng to her bowers by the legion--" "A pilgrimage of the animals to Circé's sty--each eager to be transformed into his own native state," Theodora interposed contemptuously. "Perchance this holy man is in reality a prince from some mythical, fabled land--come to Rome to resist temptation and be forthwith canonized--" Persephoné's mirth suffered a check by Theodora's reply. "Stranger things have happened. All the world comes to Rome on one business or another. This one, however, has not his mind set on the Beatitudes--" "Nevertheless he dared not enter the forbidden gates," the Circassian ventured to object. "It was not fear. On that I vouch. Perchance he has a vow. Whatever it be--he shall tell me--face to face--and here!" "But if the holy man refuse to come?" Theodora's trained ear did not miss the note of irony in the Circassian's question. "He will come!" she replied laconically. "A task worthy the Lady Theodora's renown." "You deem it wonderful?" "If I have read the pilgrim's eyes aright--" "Perchance your own sweet eyes, my beautiful Persephoné, discoursed to him something on that night that caused misgivings in his holy heart, and made him doubt your errand?" Theodora purred, extending her white arms and regarding the Circassian intently. Persephoné flushed and paled in quick succession. "On that matter I left no doubt in his mind," she said enigmatically. There was a brief pause, during which an inscrutable gaze passed between Theodora and the Circassian. "Were you not as beautiful as you are evil, my Persephoné, I should strangle you," Theodora at last said very quietly. The Circassian's face turned very pale and there was a strange light in her eyes. Her memory went back to an hour when, during one of the periodical feuds between Marozia and her younger sister, the former had imprisoned Theodora in one of the chambers of Castel San Angelo, setting over her as companion and gaoler in one Persephoné, then in Marozia's service. The terrible encounter between Theodora and the Circassian in the locked chamber, when only the timely appearance of the guard saved each from destruction at the hands of the other, as Theodora tried to take the keys of her prison from Persephoné, had never left the latter's mind. Brave as she was, she had nevertheless, after Marozia's fall, entered Theodora's service, and the latter, admiring the spirit of fearlessness in the girl, had welcomed her in her household. "I am ever at the Lady Theodora's service," Persephoné replied, with drooping lids, but Theodora caught a gleam of tigerish ferocity beneath those silken lashes that fired her own blood. "Beware--lest in some evil hour I may be tempted to finish what I left undone in the Emperor's Tomb!" she flashed with a sudden access of passion. "The Lady Theodora is very brave," Persephoné replied, as, stirred by the memory, her eyes sank into those of her mistress. For a moment they held each other's gaze, then, with a generosity that was part of her complex nature, Theodora extended her hand to Persephoné. "Forgive the mood--I am strangely wrought up," she said. "Cannot you help me in this dilemma, where I can trust in none?" "There dwells in Rome one who can help my lady," Persephoné replied with hesitation; "one deeply versed in the lore and mysteries of the East." "Who is this man?" Theodora queried eagerly. "His name is Hormazd. By his spells he can change the natural event of things, and make Fate subservient to his decrees." "Why have you never told me of him before?" "Because the Lady Theodora's will seemed to do as much for her as could, to my belief, the sorcerer's art!" The implied compliment pleased Theodora. "Where does he abide?" "In the Trastevere." "What does he for those who seek him?" "He reads the stars--foretells the future--and, with the aid of strange spells of which he is master, can bring about that which otherwise would be unattainable--" "You rouse my curiosity! Tell me more of him." An inscrutable expression passed over Persephoné's face. "He was Marozia's trusted friend." A frozen silence reigned apace. "Did he foretell that which was to happen?" Theodora spoke at last. "To the hour!" "And yet--forewarned--" "Marozia, grown desperate in the hatred of her lord, derided his warnings." "It was her Fate. Tell me more!" "He has visited every land under the sun. From Thulé to Cathay his fame is known. Strange tales are told of him. No one knows his age. He seems to have lived always. As he appears now he hath ever been. They say he has been seen in places thousand leagues apart at the same time. Sometimes he disappears and is not heard of for months. But--whoever he may be--whatever he may be engaged in--at the stroke of midnight that he must suspend. Then his body turns rigid as a corpse, bereft of animation, and his spirit is withdrawn into realms we dare not even dream of. At the first hour of the morning life will slowly return. But no one has yet dared to question him, where he has spent those dread hours." Theodora had listened to Persephoné's tale with a strange new interest. "How long has this Hormazd--or whatever his name--resided in Rome?" she turned to the Circassian. "I met him first on the night on which the lady Marozia summoned him to the summit of the Emperor's Tomb. There he abode with her for hours, engaged in some unholy incantation and at last conjured up such a tempest over the Seven Hills, as the city of Rome had not experienced since it was founded by the man from Troy--" Persephoné's historical deficiency went hand in hand with a superstition characteristic of the age, and evoked no comment from one perchance hardly better informed with regard to the past. "I well remember the night," Theodora interposed. "We crept down into the crypts, where the dog-headed Egyptian god keeps watch over the dead Emperor," Persephoné continued. "The lady Marozia alone remained on the summit with the wizard--amidst such lightnings and crashing peals of thunder and a hurricane the like of which the oldest inhabitants do not remember--" "I shall test his skill," Theodora spoke after a pause. "Perchance he may give me that which I have never known--" "My lady would consult the wizard?" Persephoné interposed eagerly. "Such is my intent." "Shall I summon him to your presence?" "I shall go to him!" In Persephoné's countenance surprise and fear struggled for mastery. "Then I shall accompany my lady--" "I shall go alone and unattended--" "It is an ill-favored region, where the sorcerer dwells--" An inscrutable look passed into Theodora's eyes. "Can he but give me that which I desire I shall brave the hazard, be it ever so great." The last words were uttered in an undertone. Then she added imperiously: "Go and summon the lord Basil and bid two eunuchs attend him hither! And do you wait with them within call behind those curtains." Then, as Persephoné silently piled cushions behind her in the lion-armed chair and withdrew bowing, Theodora murmured to herself: "Hardly can I trust even him in an hour so fraught with darkness and peril. Yet strive as he will, he may not break the chains his passion has woven around his senses." CHAPTER IX THE GAME OF LOVE The pattering of footsteps resounded on the marble floor of the corridor and the hangings once more parted, revealing the form of a man sombre even in the shadows which seemed part of the darkness that framed his white face. With eyes that never left the woman's graceful form the visitor slowly advanced and, concealing his chagrin at having been kept waiting like a slave in the anteroom, bent low over Theodora's hand and raised it to his lips. She had seated herself on a divan which somewhat shaded her face and invited him with a mute gesture to take his seat beside her. Persephoné and the eunuchs had left the chamber. "Fain would I have departed, Lady Theodora, when the maid Persephoné, who has the devil in her eyes, told me that the Lady Theodora slept," Basil spoke as, with the light of a fierce passion in his eyes, he sank down beside the wondrous form, and his hot breath fanned her shoulder. "But my tidings brook no delay. Closer, fairest lady, that your ear alone may hear this new perplexity that does beset us, for it concerns that which lies closest to our heart, and the time is brief--" "I cannot even guess your tidings," replied Theodora, withdrawing herself a little from his burning gaze. "For days mischance has emptied all her quivers at me, leaving me not a dart wherewith to strike." "It is as a bolt from the clear blue," interposed the Grand Chamberlain. "Yet--how were we to reckon with that which did happen? Every detail had been carefully planned. In the excitement and turmoil which roared and surged over the Navona the task could not fail of its accomplishment and he who was to speed the holy man to his doom had but to plunge into that seething vortex of humanity to make his escape. Surely the foul fiend was abroad on that night and stalked about visibly to our undoing. For not a word have I been able to get out of Il Gobbo who raves that at the very moment when he was about to strike, St. John himself towered over him, paralyzed his efforts, and gave him such a blow as sent him reeling upon the turf. Some say,"--the speaker added meditatively, "it was a pilgrim--" "A pilgrim?" Theodora interposed, a sudden gleam in her eyes. "A pilgrim? What was he like?" "To Il Gobbo he appeared no doubt of superhuman height, else had he not affrighted him. For the bravo is no coward--" "A pilgrim, you say," Theodora repeated, meditatively. "Whosoever he is," Basil continued after a pause, "he seems to scent ample entertainment in this godly city. For, no doubt it was the same who thwarted by his timely appearance the abduction of the Pontiff by certain ruffians, earning thereby much distinction in the eyes of the Senator of Rome who has appointed him captain of Castel San Angelo--and Gamba in whom we placed our trust has fled. If he is captured--if he should confess--" The color had died out of Theodora's cheeks and she sat bolt upright as a statue of marble, gazing into the shadows with great wide eyes, as in a low voice, hardly audible even to her visitor, she said: "God! Will this uncertainty never cease? What is to be done? Speak!--For I confess, I am not myself today."-- Basil hesitated, and a sudden flame leaped into his eyes as they devoured the beauty of the woman beside him, and raising to his lips the hand that lay inert on the saffron-hued cushion, he replied: "The lady Theodora has many who do her bidding, yet is the heart of none as true as his, who is even now sitting beside her. Therefore ask of me whatever you will and, if a blade be needed, your slightest favor will fire me to any deed,--however unnameable."-- Lower the man bent, until his hot breath scorched her pale cheeks. But neither by word nor gesture did she betray that she was conscious of his nearer approach as, in a calm voice, she replied: "Full well do I know your zeal and devotion, my lord Basil. Yet there hangs in the balance the keen and timely stroke that shall secure for me the dominion of the Seven Hills and the Emperor's Tomb. For failure would bring in its wake that which would be harder to endure than death itself. Therefore," she added slowly, "I would choose one whose devotion is only equalled by his blind indifference to that which I am minded to bring about; not one only fired with a passion, which when cooled might leave nothing but fear and hesitation behind."-- "Has all that has passed between us left you with so ill an opinion of me?" Basil replied, drawing back somewhat ostentatiously. "There are few that can be trusted with that which must be done--and trusted blades are scarce." "The more reason that we choose wisely and well," came the reply in deliberate tones. "How much longer must I suffer the indignity which this stripling dares to put upon his own flesh and blood,--upon myself, who has striven for this dominion with all the fire of this restless soul? How much longer must I sit idly by, pondering over the mystery that enshrouds Marozia's untimely end? How much longer must I tremble in abject fear of him whom the Tuscan's churlishness has set up in yonder castello and who conspires with my rival to gain his sinister ends?" "By what sorcery she holds him captive, I cannot tell," Basil interposed. "Yet, if we are not on our guard, we shall awaken one day to the realization that even the faint chance which remains to us now has passed from our hands. I doubt not but that Roxana will enlist the services of the stranger who in the space of a week, during the lord Alberic's absence, will lord it over the city of Rome!" With a smothered cry of hate, that drove from Theodora's face every trace of her former mood, she bounded upright. "What demon of madness possesses you, my lord Basil, to taunt me with your suspicions?" she flashed. Basil had sped his shaft at random, but he had hit the mark. In suave and insinuating tones, without relinquishing his gaze upon the woman, he replied: "I voice but my fears, Lady Theodora, and the urgency of assembling your friends under the banners of your house. What is more natural," he continued with slow and sinister emphasis, "than for a beautiful woman to harbor the desire for conquest, and to profit from so auspicious a throw of fate as the stranger's espousing her part against an equally beautiful, hated rival? Is not the inference justified, that, ignorant of the merits of the feud, which has been raging these many months, he will take the part of the one whose beauty had compelled the Senator's unwitting tribute--as it were?" He paused for a moment, watching the woman before him from under half-shut lids, then continued slowly: "Roxana is consumed with the desire to stake soul and body upon attaining her ends, humbling her rival in the dust and set her foot upon her neck. Time and again has she defied you! At the banquet she gave in honor of the Senator of Rome, when one of the guests lamented the Lady Theodora's absence from the festal board, she openly boasted, that in youth as well as in beauty, in strength as in love, she would vanquish Marozia's sister utterly--and when one of the guests, commenting upon her boast, suggested with a smile that in the time of the Emperor Gallus women fought in the arena, she bared her arms and replied: 'Are there no chambers in this demesne where a woman may strangle her rival?'" [Illustration: "A strange look passed into Theodora's eyes"] Theodora had listened to Basil's recital, white to the lips. Her bosom heaved and a strange fire burnt in her eyes as she replied: "Dares she utter this boast, woman to woman?"-- Basil, checking himself, gave a shrug. "Misinterpret not my words, dearest lady," he said solicitously. "It is to warn you that I came. Alberic's attitude is no longer a secret. Roxana is leaving no stone unturned to drive you from the city, to encompass your death--and Alberic is swayed by strange moods. Roxana is growing bolder each day and the woman who dares challenge the Lady Theodora is no coward." A strange look passed into Theodora's eyes. "Three days hence," she said, "I mean to give a feast to my friends, if," she continued with lurid mockery, "I can still number such among those who flock to my bowers. I shall ask the Lady Roxana to grace the feast with her presence--" A puzzled look passed into Basil's eyes. "Deem you she will come?" Theodora's lips curved in a smile. "You said but just now, my lord, the woman who dares challenge Theodora is no coward--" "Yet--as your guest--suspecting--knowing--" "I doubt not, my lord, she is well informed," Theodora interposed with the same inscrutable smile. "Yet--if she is as brave as she is beautiful--she will come--doubt not, my lord--she will come--" "Nevertheless, I question the wisdom," Basil ventured to interpose. "A sudden spark--from nowhere--who will quench the holocaust?" "When Roxana and Theodora meet,--woman to woman--ah, trust me, my lord, it will be a festive occasion--one long to be remembered. Perchance you, my lord, who boast of a large circle know young Fabio of the Cavalli--a comely youth with the air and manners of a girl. Persephoné, my Circassian, could strangle him." "I know the youth, Lady Theodora," Basil interposed with a puzzled air. "What of him?" "He once did me the honor to imagine himself in love with me. Did he not pursue me with amorous sighs and burning glances and oaths--my lord--such oaths! Cerberus would wince in Tartarus could he hear but one of them--" Basil's lips straightened and his eyelids narrowed. "Pardon, Lady Theodora, if I do not quite follow the trend of your reminiscent mood--" Theodora smiled. "You will presently, my lord--believe me--you will presently. When I became satiated with him I sent him on his way and straightway he sought my beautiful rival. I am told she is very fond of him--" A strange nervousness had seized Basil. "I shall bid him to the feast," Theodora continued. "'Twere scant courtesy to request the Lady Roxaná's presence without that of her lover. And more, my lord. Since you boast your devotion to me in such unequivocal terms--your task it shall be to bring as your honored guest the valiant stranger who took so brave a part in aiding the Lord Alberic to regain his prisoner, and who, within a week, is to be the new captain of Castel San Angelo."-- Basil was twitching nervously. "Lady Theodora, without attempting to fathom the mood which prompts the request, am I to traverse the city in quest of a churl who has hypnotized the Lord Alberic and has destroyed our fondest hopes?"-- "That it shall be for myself to decide, my Lord Basil," Theodora replied with her inscrutable smile. "I do not desire you to fathom my mood, but to bring to me this man. And believe me, my Lord Basil--as you value my favor--you will find and bring him to me!" Half turning she flung a light vesture from off her bosom and the faint light showed not the set Medusa face that meditated unnameable things, but eyes alight with desire and a mouth quivering for kisses. As he gazed, Basil was suddenly caught in the throes of his passion. He clutched at the ottoman's carved arms, striving to resist the tide of emotion that tossed him like a helpless bark in its clutches and, suddenly bearing down every restraint, his arms went round the supple form as he crushed her to him with a wild uncontrolled passion, bending her back, and his eyes blazed with a baleful fire into her own, while his hot kisses scorched her lips. She struggled violently, desperately in his embrace, and at last succeeded, bruised and crushed, in releasing herself. "Beast! Coward!" she flashed, "Can you not bridle the animal within you? I have it in mind to kill you here and now." Basil's face was ashen. His eyes were bloodshot. The touch of her lips, of her hands, had maddened him. He groaned, and his arms fell limply by his side. Presently he raised his head and, his eyes aflame with the madness of jealousy, he snarled: "So I did not go amiss, when I long suspected another in the bower of roses. Who is he? Tell me quickly, that I may at least assuage this hatred of mine, for its measure overflows." His hand closed on his dagger's hilt that was hidden by his tunic, but Theodora rose and her own eyes flashed like naked swords as with set face she said: "Have you not yet learned, my lord, how vain it is to probe the clouds of my mind for the unseen wind that stirs behind its curtains? Aye--crouch at my feet, you miserable slave, gone mad with the dream of my favor possessed and wake to learn, that, as Theodora's enchantments compel all living men, nevertheless she gives herself unto him she pleases. I tell you, you jealous fool, that, although I serve the goddess of night yonder, never till yesterday was my heart touched by the divine enchantments of Venus, nor have the lips ever closed on mine, that could kindle the spark to set my breast afire with longing." "Ah me!" she continued, speaking as though she thought aloud. "Will Hekaté ever grant me to find amongst these husks of passion and plotting that great love whereof once I dreamed, that love which I am seeking and which ever flits before me, disembodied and unattainable, like a ghost in the purple twilight? Or, must I wander, ever loved yet unloving, until I am gathered to the realms of shadows, robbed of my desire by Death's cold hand?" She paused, her lips a-quiver, the while Basil watched her with half-closed eyes, filled with sudden and ominous brooding. "Who is the favored one?" he queried darkly, "who came and saw and conquered, while others of long-tried loyalty are starving at the fount?" She gave him an inscrutable glance, then answered quickly: "A man willing to risk life and honor and all to serve me as I would be served." Basil gave her a baffled look. "Can he achieve the impossible?" Theodora gave a shrug. "To him who truly loves nothing is impossible. You are the trusted friend of the Senator who encompasses my undoing--need I say more?" "Were I not, Lady Theodora, in seeming,--who knows, but that your blood would long have dyed this Roman soil, or some dark crypt contained your wonderful beauty? Bide but the time--" An impatient wave of Theodora's hand interrupted the speaker. "Time has me now! Will there ever be an end to this uncertainty?" "You have not yet told me the name of him whose sudden advent on the stage has brought about so marvellous a transformation," Basil said with an air of baffled passion and rage. "What matters the name, my lord?" Theodora interposed with a sardonic smile. "A nameless stranger then," he flashed with a swiftness that staggered even the woman, astute as she was. "I said not so--" "A circumstance that should recommend him to our consideration," he muttered darkly. "I shall find him--and bring him to the feast--" There was something in his voice that roused the tigress in the woman. "By the powers of hell," she turned on the man whose fatal guess had betrayed her secret, "if you but dare touch one hair of his head--" Basil raised his hand disdainfully. "Be calm, Lady Theodora! The Grand Chamberlain soils not his steel with such carrion," he said with a tone of contempt that struck home. "And now I will be plain with you, Lady Theodora. All things have their price. Will you grant to me what I most desire in return for that which is ever closest to your heart?" Theodora gave a tantalizing shrug. "Like the Fata Morgana of the desert, I am all things to all men," she said. "Remember, my lord, I must look for that which I desire wherever I may find it, since life and the future are uncertain." There was a silence during which each seemed intent upon fathoming the secret thoughts of the other. It was Basil who spoke. "What of that other?" Theodora had arisen. "Bring him to me--three days hence--as my guest. Thrice has he crossed my path.--Thrice has he defied me!--I have that in store for him at which men shall marvel for all time to come!" Basil bent over the white hand and kissed it. Then he took his leave. Had he seen the expression in the woman's eyes as the heavy curtains closed behind him, it would have made the Grand Chamberlain pause. Theodora passed to where the bronze mirror hung and stood long before it, with hands clasped behind her shapely head, wrapt in deepest thought. And while she gazed on her mirrored loveliness, an evil light sprang up in her eyes and all her mouth's soft lines froze to a mould of dreaming evil, as she turned to where the image of Hekaté gazed down upon her with inhuman calm upon its face, and, holding out shimmering, imploring arms, she cried: "Help me now, dread goddess of darkness, if ever you looked with love upon her whose prayers have been directed to you for good and for evil. Fire the soul of him I desire, as he stands before me, that he lose reason, honor, and manhood, as the price of my burning kisses--that he become my utter slave." She clapped her hands and Persephoné appeared from behind the curtains. "For once Fate is my friend," she turned with flashing eyes to the Circassian. "Before his departure to the shrines of the Archangel, Alberic has appointed this nameless stranger captain of Castel San Angelo. Go--find him and bring him to me! Now we shall see," she added, "if all this beauty of mine shall prevail against his manhood. Your eyes express doubt, my sweet Persephoné?" Theodora had raised herself to her full height. She looked regal indeed--a wonderful apparition. What man lived there to resist such loveliness of face and form? Persephoné, too, seemed to feel the woman's magic, for her tone was less confident when she replied: "Such beauty as the Lady Theodora's surely the world has never seen." "I shall conquer--by dread Hekaté," Theodora flashed, flushed by Persephoné's unwitting tribute. "He shall open for me the portals of the Emperor's Tomb, he shall sue at my feet for my love--and obtain his guerdon. Not a word of this to anyone, my Persephoné--least of all, the Lord Basil. Bring the stranger to me by the postern--" "But--if he refuse?" There was something in Persephoné's tone that stung Theodora's soul to the quick. "He will not refuse." Persephoné bowed and departed, and for some time Theodora's dark inscrutable eyes brooded on the equally inscrutable face of the goddess of the Underworld, which was just then touched by a fugitive beam of sunlight and seemed to nod mysteriously. CHAPTER X A SPIRIT PAGEANT When, on the day succeeding his appointment Tristan returned to the Inn of the Golden Shield he felt as one in a trance. Like a puppet of Fate he had been plunged into the seething maelstrom of feudal Rome. He hardly realized the import of the scene in which he had played so prominent a part. He had acted upon impulse, hardly knowing what it was all about. Dimly at intervals it flashed through his consciousness, dimly he remembered facing two youths, the one the Senator of Rome--the other the High Priest of Christendom, even though a prisoner in the Lateran. Vaguely he recalled the words that had been spoken between them, vaguely he recalled the fact that the Senator of Rome had commended him for having saved the city, offering him appointment, holding out honor and preferment, if he would enter his service. Vaguely he remembered bending his knee before the proud son of Marozia and accepting his good offices. In the guest-chamber Tristan found pilgrims from every land assembled round the tables discoursing upon the wonders and perils hidden in the strange and shifting corridors of Rome. Not a few had witnessed the scene in which he had so conspicuously figured and, upon recognizing him, regarded him with shy glances, while commenting upon the prevailing state of unrest, the periodical seditions and outbreaks of the Romans. Tristan listened to the buzz and clamor of their voices, gleaning here and there some scattered bits of knowledge regarding Roman affairs. He could now review more calmly the events of the preceding day. Fortune seemed to have favored him indeed, in that she had led him across the path of the Senator of Rome. Thus Tristan set out once again, to make the rounds of worship and obedience. These absolved, he wandered aimlessly about the great city, losing himself in her ruins and gardens, while he strove in vain to take an interest in what he beheld, rather distracted than amused by the Babel-like confusion which surrounded him on all sides. Nevertheless, once more upon the piazzas and tortuous streets of Rome, his pace quickened. His pulses beat faster. At times he did not feel his feet upon those stony ways which Peter and Paul had trod, and many another who, like himself, had come to Rome to be crucified. People stared at his dark and sombre form as he passed. Now and then he was retarded by chanting processions, that wound their interminable coils through the tortuous streets, pilgrims from all the world, the various orders of monks in the habits peculiar to their orders, wine-venders, water-carriers, men-at-arms, sbirri, and men of doubtful calling. Sacred banners floated in the sunlit air and incense curled its graceful spiral wreaths into the cloudless Roman ether. Surely Rome offered a wide field for ambition. A man might raise himself to a certain degree by subservience to some powerful prince, but he must continue to serve that prince, or he fell and would never aspire to independent domination, where hereditary power was recognized by the people and lay at the foundation of all acknowledged authority. It was only in Central Italy, and especially in Romagna and the States of the Church, where a principle antagonistic to all hereditary claims existed in the very nature of the Papal power, so that any adventurer might hope, either by his individual genius or courage, or by services rendered to those in authority, to raise himself to independent rule or to that station which was only attached to a superior by the thin and worn-out thread of feudal tenure. Rome was the field still open to the bold spirit, the keen and clear-seeing mind. Rome was the table on which the boldest player was sure to win the most. With every change of the papacy new combinations, and, consequently, new opportunities must arise. Here a man may, as elsewhere, be required to serve, in order at length to command. But, if he did not obtain power at length, it was his fault or Fortune's, and in either event he must abide the consequences. Revolving in his mind these matters, and wondering what the days to come would hold, Tristan permitted himself to wander aimlessly through the desolation which arose on all sides about him. Passing by the Forum and the Colosseum, ruins piled upon ruins, he wandered past San Gregorio, where, in the garden, lie the remains of the Servian Porta Capena, by which St. Paul first entered Rome. The Via Appia, lined with vineyards and fruit-trees, shedding their blossoms on many an ancient tomb, led the solitary pilgrim from the memories of the present to the days, when the light of the early Christian Church burned like a flickering taper hidden low in Roman soil. The ground sweeping down on either side in gentle, but well-defined curves, led the vision over the hills of Rome and into her valleys. Beneath a cloudless, translucent sky the city was caught in bold shafts of crystal light, revealing her in so strong a relief that it seemed like a piece of exquisite sculpture. Fronting the Coelian, crowned with the temple church of San Stefano in Rotondo, fringed round with tall and graceful poplars, rose the immeasurable ruins of Caracalla's Baths, seeming more than ever the work of titans, as Tristan saw them, shrouded in deep shadows above the old churches of San Nereo and San Basilio, shining like white huts, a stone's throw from the mighty walls. Beyond, as a beacon of the Christian world in ages to come, on the site of the ancient Circus of Nero, arose the Basilica of Constantine, still in its pristine simplicity, ere the genius of Michel Angelo, Bramanté and Sangallo transformed it into the magnificence of the present St. Peter's. For miles around stretched the Aurelian walls, here fallen in low ruins, there still rising in their proud strength. Weathered to every shade of red, orange, and palest lemon, they still showed much of their ancient beauty near the closed Latin gate. High towers, arched galleries and battlements cast a broad band of shade upon a line of peach trees whose blossoms had opened out to the touch of the summer breeze. Beneath Tristan's feet, unknown to him, lay the sepulchral chambers of pagan patricians, and the winding passage tombs of the Scipios. Out of the sunshine of the vineyard Tristan's curiosity led him into the dusk of the Columbaria of Pomponius Hylas, full of stucco altar tombs. He descended into the lower chambers with arched corridors and vaulted roofs where, in the loculi, stood terra-cotta jars holding the ashes of the freedmen and musicians of Tiberius with their servants, even to their cook. Returning full of wonder to the golden light of day, Tristan retraced his steps once again over the Appian Way. Passing the ruined Circus of Maxentius, across smooth fields of grass, he saw the fortress tomb of Cæcilia Metella, set grandly upon the hill. It appeared to break through the sunshine, its marble surface of a soft cream color, looking more like the shrine of some immortal goddess of the Campagna than the tomb of a Roman matron. And, as he wandered along the Appian Way, past the site of lava pools from Mount Alba, remains of ancient monuments lay thicker by the roadside. Prostrate statues appeared in a setting of wild flowers. Sculptured heads gazed out from half-hidden tombs, while one watch-tower after another rose out of the undulating expanse of the Campagna. To Tristan the memories of an ancient empire which clung to the place held but little significance. Here emperors had been carried by in their litters to Albano. Victorious generals returning in their chariots from the south, drove between these avenues of cypress-guarded tombs to Rome. The body of the dead Augustus had been brought with great following from Bovilæ to the Palatine, as before him Sulla had been borne along to Rome amid the sound of trumpets and tramp of horsemen. Near the fourth milestone stood Seneca's villa, where he received his death warrant from an emissary of Nero, and nearby was that of his wife who, by her own desire, bravely shared his fate. And, last to haunt the Appian Way in the spirit pageant of the Golden Age, a memory destined to lie dormant till the dawn of the Renaissance, was Paul the Apostle, the tent-maker from Tarsus, who entered Rome while Nero reigned in the white marble city of Augustus and suffered martyrdom for the Faith. It was verging towards evening when Tristan's feet again bore him past the stupendous ruins of the Colosseum, through the roofless upper galleries of which streamed the light of the sinking sun. After reaching the Forum, almost deserted by this hour, save for a few belated ramblers, he seated himself on a marble block and tried to collect his thoughts, at the same time drinking in the picture which unrolled itself before his gaze. If Rome was indeed, as the chroniclers of the Middle Ages styled her, "Caput Mundi," the Forum was the centre of Rome. From this centre Rome threw out and informed her various feelers, farther and farther radiating in all directions, as she swelled out with greatness, drawing her sustenance first from her sacred hills and groves, then from the very marbles and granites of the mountains of Asia and Africa, from the lives of all sorts of peoples, races and nations. And like the Emperor Constantine, as we are told by Ammianus Marcellinus, on beholding the Forum from the Rostra of Domitian, stood wonder-stricken, so Tristan, even at this period of decay, was amazed at the grandeur of the ruins which bore witness to Rome's former greatness. The sound of the Angelus, whose silvery chimes permeated the tomb-like stillness, roused Tristan from his reveries. He arose and continued upon his way, until he found himself in the square fronting the ancient Basilica of Constantine. Notwithstanding the fact that it was a Vigil of the Church, popular exhibitions of all sorts were set upon the broad flagstones before St. Peter's. Street dancing girls indulged on every available spot in those gliding gyrations, so eloquently condemned by the worthy Ammianus Marcellinus of orderly and historical memory. Booths crammed with relics of doubtful authenticity, baskets filled with fruits or flowers, pictorial representations of certain martyrs of the Church, basking in haloes of celestial light, tempted in every direction the worldly and unworldly spectators. Cooks perambulated, their shops upon their backs, merchants shouted their wares, wine-sellers taught Bacchanalian philosophy from the tops of their casks; poets recited spurious compositions which they offered for sale; philosophers indulged in argumentations destined to convert the wavering, or to perplex the ignorant. Incessant motion and noise seemed to be the sole aim and purpose of the crowd which thronged the square. Nothing could be more picturesque than the distant view of the joyous scene, this Carnival in Midsummer, as it were. The deep red rays of the westering sun cast their radiance, partly from behind the Basilica, over the vast multitude in the piazza. In unrivalled splendor the crimson light tinted the water that purled from the fountain of Bishop Symmachus. Its roof of gilded bronze, supported by six porphyry columns, was enclosed by small marble screens on which griffins were carved, its corners ornamented by gilded dolphins and peacocks in bronze. The water flowed into a square basin from out of a bronze pine cone which may have come from Hadrian's Mausoleum. Bathed in the brilliant glow the smooth porphyry colonnades reflected, chameleon-like, ethereal and varying hues. The white marble statues became suffused with delicate rose, and the trees gleamed in the innermost of their leafy depths as if steeped in the exhalations of a golden mist. Contrasting strangely with the wondrous radiance around it, the bronze pine-tree in the centre of the piazza rose up in gloomy shadow, indefinite and exaggerated. The wide facade of the Basilica cast its great depth of shade into the midst of the light which dominated the scene. Tristan stood for a time gazing into the glowing sky, then he slowly made his way towards the Basilica, the edifice which commemorated the establishment of Christianity as the state religion of Rome, as in its changes it has reflected every change wrought in the spirit of the new worship up to the present hour. CHAPTER XI THE DENUNCIATION The Basilica of Constantine no longer retained its pristine splendor, its pristine purity as in the days, ere the revival of paganism by the Emperor Julian the Apostate had put a sudden and impressive check upon the meretricious defilement of the glory, for which it was built. The exterior began to show signs of decay. The interior, too, had changed with the inexorable trend of the times. The solemn recesses were filled with precious relics. Many hued tapers surrounded the glorious pillars, and eastern tapestries wreathed their fringes round the massive altars. As Tristan entered the incense-saturated dusk of St. Peter's, the first part of the service had just been concluded. The last faint echoes from the voices in the choir still hovered upon the air, and the silent crowds of worshippers were still grouped in their listening attitudes and absorbed in their devotions. The only light was bestowed by the evening sun, duskily illuminating the emblazoned windows, or by the glimmer of lamps in distant shrines, hung with sable velvet and attended each by its own group of ministering priests. Struck with an indefinable awe Tristan looked about. At first he only realized the great space, the four long rows of closely set columns, and the great triumphal arch which framed the mosaics of the apse, where Constantine stood in the clouds offering his Basilica to the Saviour and St. Peter. Then he looked towards the sacred shrines above the Apostle's grave, where lamps burned incessantly and cast a dazzling halo above the high altar, reflected in the silver paving of the presbytery and on the golden gates and images of the Confessio. Immediately behind the altar was revealed a long panel of gold, studded with gems and ornaments, with figures of Christ and the Apostles, a native offering from the Emperor Valentinian III. The high altar and its brilliant surroundings were seen from the nave between a double row of twisted marble columns, white as snow. A beam covered with plates of silver united them and supported great silver images of the Saviour, the Virgin and the Apostles with lilies and candelabra. To their shrines, to do homage, had in time come the Kings from all the earth: Oswy, King of the Northumbrians, Cædwalla, King of the West Saxons, Coenred, King of the Mercians, and with him his son Sigher, King of the East Saxons. Even Macbeth is said to have made the pilgrimage. Ethelwulf came in the middle of the ninth century, and with him came his son Alfred. In the arcades beneath the columned vestibule of the Basilica, tomb succeeded tomb. Here the popes were buried, Leo I, the Great, being first in line, the Saxon Pilgrim Kings, the Emperors Honorius III and Theodosius II, regarding whom St. John Chrysostomus has written: "Emperors were proud to stand in the hall keeping guard at the fisherman's door." During the interval between the divisions of the service, Tristan, like many of those present, found his interest directed towards the relics, which were inclosed in a silver cabinet with crystal doors and placed above the high altar. Although it was impossible to obtain a satisfactory view of these ecclesiastical treasures, they nevertheless occupied his attention till it was diverted by the appearance of a monk in the habit of the Benedictines, who had mounted the richly carved pulpit fixed between two pillars. As far as Tristan was enabled to follow the trend of the sermon it teemed with allusions to the state of society and religion as it prevailed throughout the Christian world, and especially in the city of the Pontiff. By degrees the monk's eloquence took on darker and more terrible tints, as he seemed slowly to pass from generalities to personal allusions, which increased the fear and mortification of the great assembly with every moment. From the shadows of the shrine, where he had chosen his station, Tristan was enabled to mark every shade of the emotions which swayed the multitudes and, as his eyes roamed inadvertently towards the chapel of the Father Confessor, he saw a continuous stream of penitents enter the dark passage leading towards the crypts, many of whom were masked. Turning his head by chance, Tristan's glance fell upon two men who had apparently just entered the Basilica and paused a few paces away, to listen to the words which the monk hurled like thunderbolts across the heads of his listeners. Despite their precaution to wear masks, Tristan recognized the Grand Chamberlain in the one, while his companion, the hunchback, appeared rather uncomfortable in the sanctified air of the Basilica. Hitherto Odo of Cluny's attacks on the existing state had been general. Now he glanced over the crowd, as if in quest of some special object, as with strident voice he declaimed: "Repent! Death stands behind you! The flag of your glory shall cease to wave on the towers of your strong citadel. Destruction clamors at your palace gates, and the enemy that cometh upon you unaware is an enemy that none shall vanquish or subdue, not even they who are the mightiest among the mighty. Blood stains the earth and the sky. Its red waves swallow up the land! The heavens grow pale and tremble! The silver stars blacken and decay, and the winds of the desert make lament for that which shall come to pass, ere ever the grapes be pressed or the harvest gathered. It is a scarlet sea wherein, like a broken and deserted ship, Rome flounders, never to rise again--" He paused for a moment and caught his breath hard. "The Scarlet Woman of Babylon is among us!" he cried. "Hence! accursed tempter. Thou poisoner of peace, thou quivering sting in the flesh, destroyer of the strength of manhood! Theodora!--thou abomination--thou tyrannous treachery! What shall be done unto thee in the hour of darkness? Put off the ornaments of gold, the jewels, wherewith thou adornest thy beauty, and crown thyself with the crown of endless affliction. For thou shalt be girdled about with flame and fire shall be thy garment. Thy lips that have drunk sweet wine shall be steeped in bitterness! Vainly shalt thou make thyself fair and call upon thy legion of lovers. They shall be as dead men, deaf to thine entreaties, and none shall respond to thy call! None shall hide thee from shame and offer thee comfort! In the midst of thy lascivious delights shalt thou suddenly perish, and my soul shall be avenged on thy sins, queen-courtesan of the earth!" Scarcely had the last word died to silence when a blinding flash of lightning rent the gloom followed by a tremendous crash of thunder that shook the great edifice to its foundation. The bronze portals opened as of their own accord and a terrific gust of wind extinguished every light in the thousand-jetted candelabrum. Impenetrable darkness reigned--thick, suffocating darkness, as the thunder rolled away in grand, sullen echoes. There was a momentary lull, then, piercing the profound gloom, came the cries and shrieks of frightened women, the horrible, selfish scrambling, struggling and pushing of a bewildered multitude. A veritable frenzy of fear seemed to possess every one. Groans and sobs, entreaties and curses from those, who, intent on saving themselves, were brutally trying to force a passage to the door, the heart-rending, frantic appeals of the women--all these sounds increased the horror of the situation, and Tristan, blind, giddy and confused, listened to the uproar about him with somewhat of the affrighted, panic-stricken compassion that a stranger in hell might feel, while hearkening to the ceaseless plaints of the self-tortured damned. Lost in a dim stupefaction of wonderment, Tristan remained where he stood, while the crowds rushed from the Basilica. As he was about to follow in their wake, his gaze was attracted towards the chapel of the Grand Penitentiary, from which came a number of masked personages while he, to whose keeping were confided crimes of a magnitude that seemed beyond the extensive powers of absolution, was barely visible under the cowl, which was drawn deeply over his forehead. The thought occurred to Tristan to seek the ear of the Confessor, in as much as the Pontiff to whom he had hoped to lay bare his heart could not grant him an audience. The lateness of the hour and the uncertainty of the fate of the Monk of Cluny prevented him from following the prompting of the moment and, staggering rather than walking, Tristan made for the portals of St. Peter's and walked unseeing into the gathering dusk. CHAPTER XII THE CONFESSION The storm had abated, but the sheen of white lightnings to southward and the menacing growl of distant thunder that seemed to come from the bowels of the earth held out promise of renewed upheavals of disturbed nature. The streets of Rome were comparatively deserted with the swiftly approaching dusk, and it occurred to Tristan to seek the Monk of Cluny in his abode on Mount Aventine whither he had doubtlessly betaken himself after his sermon in the Basilica of St. Peter's. For ever and ever the memory of lost Hellayne dominated his thoughts, and, while he poured out prayers for peace at the shrines of the saints, with the eyes of the soul he saw not the image of the Virgin, but of the woman for the sake of whom he had come hither and, having come, knew not where to find that which he sought. From a passing friar Tristan learned the direction of Mount Aventine, where, among the ruins near the newly erected Church of Santa Maria of the Aventine, Odo of Cluny abode. Tristan could not but marvel at the courage of the man whose life was in hourly jeopardy and who, in the face of an ever present menace could put his trust so completely in Heaven as to brave the danger without even a guard.-- Taking the road indicated by the friar, Tristan pursued his solitary path. In seeking the Monk of Cluny his purpose was a twofold one, certainty with regard to his own guilt, in having loved where love was a crime, and counsel with regard to the woman who, he instinctively felt, would not stop at her first innuendos. As Tristan proceeded on his way his feelings and motives became more and more perplexed, and so lost was he in thought that, without heeding his way or noting the scattered arches and porticoes, he lost himself in the wilderness of the Mount of Cloisters. The hush was intensified rather than broken by the ever louder peals of thunder, which reverberated through the valleys, and the Stygian darkness, broken at intervals by vivid flashes of lightning, seemed to hem him in, as a wall of basalt. Gradually all traces of a road vanished. On both sides rose woody acclivities, covered with ruins and melancholy cypresses, whose spectral outlines seemed to stretch into gaunt immensity, in the sheen of the lightnings which grew more and more frequent. The wind rose sobbingly among the trees, and a few scattered rain-drops began to warn Tristan that a shelter of any sort would be preferable to exposing himself to the onslaught of the elements. Entering the first group of ruins he came to, he penetrated through a series of roofless corridors and chambers into what seemed a dark cylindrical well at the farther extremity of which there gleamed an infinitesimal light. Even through the clamor of the storm that raged outside there came to him the sound of voices from the interior. Impelled as much by curiosity as by the consideration of his own safety Tristan crept slowly towards the aperture. As he did so, the light vanished, but a crimson glow, as of smouldering embers, succeeded, and heavy fumes of incense, wafted to his nostrils, informed him that his fears regarding the character of the abode were but too well founded. He cowered motionless in the gloom until the storm had abated, determined to return at some time to discover what mysteries the place concealed. A fresher breeze had sprung up, driving the thunderclouds to northward, and from a clear azure the stars shone in undimmed lustre upon the dreaming world beneath. For a moment Tristan stood gazing at the immense desolation, the wilderness of arches, shattered columns and ivy-covered porticoes. The hopelessness of finding among these relics of antiquity the monk's hermitage impressed itself at once upon him. Pausing irresolutely, he would probably have retraced his steps, had he not chanced to see some one emerge from the adjacent ruins, apparently bound in the same direction. Whether it was a presentiment of evil, or whether the fear bred of the region and the hour of the night prompted the precaution, Tristan receded into the shadows and watched the approaching form, in whom he recognized Basil, the Grand Chamberlain. He at once resolved to follow him and the soft ground aided the execution of his design. The way wound through a veritable labyrinth of ruins, nevertheless he kept his eyes on the tall dark form, stalking through the night before him. At times an owl or bat whirled over his head. With these exceptions he encountered no living thing among the ruins to break the hush of the sepulchral desolation. The distance between them gradually diminished. Tristan saw the other turn to the right into a wilderness of grottoes, the tortuous corridors of which were at times almost choked up with weeds and wild flowers, but when he reached the spot, there was no vestige of a human presence. Basil had disappeared as if the earth had swallowed him. Possessed by a sudden fear that some harm might be intended the monk and remembering certain veiled threats he had overheard against his life, he proceeded more slowly and cautiously by the dim light of the stars. Before long he found himself before a flight of grass grown steps that led up to a series of desolate chambers which, although roofless and choked with rank vegetation, still bore traces of their ancient splendor. These corridors led to a clumsy door, standing half ajar, from beyond which shone the faint glimmer of a light. After having reached the threshold Tristan paused. High, oval-shaped apertures admitted light and air at once, and the dying embers of a charcoal fire revealed a chamber, singularly void of all the comforts of existence. Almost in the centre of this chamber, before a massive stone table, upon which was spread a huge tome, sat the Monk of Cluny, shading his eyes with his right hand and reading half aloud. For a few moments Tristan regarded the recluse breathlessly, as if he dreaded disturbing his meditations, when Odo suddenly raised his eyes and saw the dark form standing in the frame of the door. The look which he bestowed upon Tristan convinced the latter immediately of the doubt which the monk harbored regarding the quality of his belated caller, a doubt which he deemed well to disperse before venturing into the monk's retreat. Therefore, without abandoning his position, he addressed the inmate of the chamber and, as he spoke, the tone of his voice seemed to carry conviction, that the speaker was sincere. "Your pardon, father," Tristan stammered, "for one who is seeking you in an hour of grave doubt and misgiving." The monk's ear had caught the accent of a foreign tongue. He beckoned to Tristan to enter, rising from the bench on which he had been seated. "You come at a strange hour," he said, not without a note of suspicion, which did not escape Tristan. "Your business must be weighty indeed to embolden one, a stranger on Roman soil, to penetrate the desolate Aventine when the world sleeps and murder stalks abroad." "I am here for a singular purpose, father,--having obeyed the impulse of the moment, after listening to your sermon at St. Peter's." "But that was hours ago," interposed the monk, resting his hand on the stone table, as he faced his visitor. "I lost my way--nor did I meet any one to point it," Tristan replied, as he advanced and kissed the monk's hand reverently. "What is your business, my son?" asked the monk. Tristan hesitated a moment. At last he spoke. "I came to Rome not of my own desire,--but obeying the will of another that imposed the pilgrimage. I have sinned, father--and yet there are moments, when I would almost glory in that which I have done. It was my purpose, while at St. Peter's to confess to the Grand Penitentiary. But--I know not why--I chose you instead, knowing that you would give truth for truth." The monk regarded his visitor, wondering what one so young and possessed of so frank a countenance might have done amiss. "You are a pilgrim?" he queried at last. "For my sins--" "Of French descent, yet not a Frenchman--" Tristan started at the monk's penetration. "From Provence, father," he stammered, "the land of songs and flowers--" "And women--" the monk interposed gravely. "There are women everywhere, father." "There are women and women. Perchance I should say 'Woman.'" Tristan bowed his head in silence. The monk cast a penetrating glance at his visitor. He understood the gesture and the silence with that quick comprehension that came to him who was to reform Holy Catholic Church from the abuse of decades--as an intuition. "But now, my son, speak of yourself," said the monk after a pause. "I lived at the court of Avalon, the home of Love and Troubadours." "Of Troubadours?" the monk interposed dreamily. "A worldly lot--given to extolling free love and what not--" "They may sing of love and passion, father, but their lives are pure and chaste," Tristan ventured to remonstrate. "You are a Troubadour?" came the swift query. "In my humble way." Tristan replied with bowed head. The monk nodded. "Go on--go on!" "At the court of Avalon I met the consort of Count Roger de Laval. He was much absent, on one business or another,--the chase--feuds with neighboring barons.--He chose me to help the Lady Hellayne to while away the long hours during his absence--" "His wife! What folly!" "The Count de Laval is one of those men who would tempt the heavens themselves to fall upon him rather than to air himself beneath them. That his fair young wife, doing his will among men given to the chase and drinking bouts, and the society of tainted damsels, should long for something higher, she, whom he regarded with the high air of the lord of creation--that she should dare dream of some intangible something, for which she hungered, and craved and starved--" "If you are about to confess, as I conceive, to a wrong you have done to this same lord," interposed the monk, "your sin is not less black if you paint him you have wronged in odious tints." "Nevertheless I am most sorry to do so, father," Tristan interposed, "else could I not make you understand to its full extent his folly and conceit by placing me, a creature of emotion, day by day beside so fair a being as his young wife. Therefore I would explain." "It needs some explanation truly!" the monk said sternly. "The Count de Laval is a man whose conceit is so colossal, father, that he would never think it possible that any one could fail in love and admiration at the shrine which he built for himself. A man of supreme arrogance and self-righteousness." "Sad, indeed--" mused the monk. "Our thoughts were pagan, drifting back to the days when the world was peopled with sylvan creatures--with the deities of field and stream--" "Mere heathen dreams," interposed the monk. "Go on! Go on!" "I then felt within myself the impulse to throw forth a minstrelsy prophetic of a new world resembling that old which had vanished. It was not to be a mere chant of wrath or exultation--it was to sound the joy of the earth, of the air, of the sun, of the moon and the stars,--the song of the birds, the perfume of the flowers--" "Words that have but little meaning left in this stern world wherein we dwell--" "They had meaning for me, father. Also for her. They were to both of us a bright and mystical ideal, in the fumes of which we steeped our souls,--our very selves, till our natures seemed to know no hurt, seemed incapable of evil--" "Alas--the greater the pity!" "I was sure of myself. She was sure of me. I loved her. Her presence was to me as some intoxication of the soul--some rare perfume that captivates the senses, raising the spirit to heights too rarefied for breath--" "And you fell?" The words came from the monk's lips, slowly, inexorably, as the knell of fate. "I--all, but fell!" stammered Tristan. "One day in a chamber far removed from the inhabited part of the castle we sat and read. And suddenly she laid her face close to mine and with eyes in whose mystic depths lurked something more than I had ever seen in them before asked why, through Fate's high necessity, two should forever wander side by side, longing for each other--their longing unsatisfied--when the hour was theirs--" Again Tristan paused. The monk regarded him in silence. "You fell?" the question came again. "In that moment, father, I was no more myself, no more the one whose art is sacred and alone upon the mountain summit of his soul. Its freedom and aspirations were no more. I was undone, a tumbled, wingless thing. My pride had fled. Long, long I looked into her eyes, and when she put her wonderful white arms about me, I, in a dizzy moment of desire, dropped my face to hers. Then was love all uttered. Straightway I arose. I clasped her in my arms. I kissed--I kissed her--" The monk regarded him sternly, yet not unkindly. "It was a sin. Yet--there is more?" Tristan's hands were clasped. "One evening in the rose garden--at dusk--the evening on which she sent me from her--bade me go to Rome to obtain forgiveness for a sin of which I could not repent." The monk nodded. "Go on! Go on!" "The world had fallen away from us. We stood in a grove, our arms about each other. Suddenly I saw a face. I withdrew my arm, overwhelmed by all the shame of guilt. The face vanished and, passion overmastering once more, we touched our lips anew. It was the last time we were to see each other. I left behind the wondrous silken hair my hands had touched in our last mad caress. I left behind that tender face and form. She made no attempt to follow, or to call me back. I hastened to my chamber, and there I fought anew with all that evil impulse of my youth, to face the shame, as long as joy endured. If I had sinned in mind against my high ideal might I not some day recover it and be purified?" "What of God and Holy Church?" queried the monk. "To them I gave no heed, but to my honor. This upheld me." The monk gave a nod. "I left Avalon. It seemed as if without her my life were ebbing away. I joined a pilgrim party, and now my pilgrimage is ended. What must I do to still this inward craving that will not leave my soul at peace?" He ended in a sob. The monk had relapsed into deep thought, and Tristan's eyes were riveted on the ascetic form in silent dread, as to what would be the verdict. At last Odo broke the heavy silence. "You have committed a grievous sin--adultery--nay, speak not!" he said, as Tristan attempted to remonstrate against the dire accusation. "The seed of every act slumbers in the mind ere its pernicious shoots are manifest in deeds. He who looks upon a woman with the desire to possess her has already committed adultery with her. Yet--not one in a thousand would have done so nobly under such temptation!" The monk's voice betrayed some feeling as he placed his hand on Tristan's bowed head. "I shall consider what penances are most fit for one who has transgressed as you have, my son. It is for your future life--perchance Holy Orders--" Tristan raised his head imploringly. "Not that, father,--not that! I am not fit!" The monk regarded him quizzically. "The lust of the eye is mighty and the fever of the world still burns in your veins, my son, rebelling against the passion that chastens and purifies. Nevertheless, the Church desires no enforced service. She wishes to be served through love, not with aversion and fear. Continue to do penance, implore His forgiveness, and that He may take from you this worldly desire." Kissing anew the hand which the monk extended, Tristan arose, after Odo had made upon him the holy sign. "I shall obey your behest," he said in a low, broken voice, then withdrew, while the Monk of Cluny returned to his former pursuit, unconscious that another had witnessed and overheard the strange confession from a recess in the wall. As one in a trance Tristan left the Monk of Cluny, his heart filled with gratitude for the man who, in the midst of a world of strife and unrest, had listened to his tale and had not dealt harshly with him, but had received him sympathetically, even while rebuking the offence. While the penances imposed upon him were not severe, Tristan chafed nevertheless under the restraint they laid upon his soul. What was his future life to be? What new vistas would open before him? What new impressions would superimpose themselves upon the memories of the past--the memory of Hellayne? As he passed the church of Santa Maria of the Aventine, Tristan saw the portals open. Puzzled over the problems he was face in the days to come, he entered the dim shadows of the sanctuary. All that night Tristan knelt in solitary prayer. The great church was empty and silent, unlit save for the lamp upon the altar. There Tristan kept his vigil, his tired, tearful eyes upon the crucifixion, searching his own heart. The night of silence brought him no vision and shed no light upon his path. The pale dawn found him still upon his knees before the altar, his eyes upon the drooping form of the crucified Christ. Thus the monks found him when they entered for early Matins. At last he arose, in his sombre eyes a touching resignation and infinite regret. END OF BOOK THE FIRST BOOK THE SECOND CHAPTER I THE GRAND CHAMBERLAIN Castel San Angelo, the Tomb of the Flavian Emperor, seemed rather to have been built for a great keep, a breakwater as it were to stem the rush of barbarian seas which were wont to come storming down from the frozen north, than for the resting-place of the former master of the world. Its constructors had aimed at nothing less than its everlastingness. So thick were its bastioned walls, so thick the curtains which divided its inner and outer masonry, that no force of nature seemed capable of honeycombing or weakening them. Hidden within its screens and vaults, like the gnawings of a foul and intricate cancer, ran dark passages which discharged themselves here and there into dreadful dungeons, or secret places not guessed at in the common tally of its rooms. These oubliettes were hideous with blotched and spotted memories, rotten with the dew of suffering, eloquent in their terror and corruption and darkness of the cruelty which turned to these walls for security. The hiss and purr of subterranean fires, the grinding of low, grated jaws, the flop and echo of stagnant water that oozed from a stagnant inner moat into vermin-swarming, human-haunted cellars: these sounds spoke even less of grief than the hellish ferment in the souls of those who had lorded it in this keep since the fall of the Western Empire. On this night there hung an air of menace about the Mausoleum of the Flavian Emperor which seemed enhanced by the roar and clatter of the tempest that raged over the seven-hilled city. Snaky twists of lightning leaped athwart the driving darkness, and deafening peals of thunder reverberated in deep, booming echoes through the inky vault of the heavens. In one of the upper chambers of the huge granite pile, which seemed to defy the very elements, in a square room, dug out of the very rock, containing but one window that appeared as a deep wedge in the wall, piercing to the sheer flank of the tower, there sat, brooding over a letter he held in his hand, Basil, the Grand Chamberlain. The drowsy odor of incense, smouldering in the little purple shrine lamp, robbed the air of its last freshness. A tunic of dark velvet, fur bound and girt with a belt of finest Moorish steel, was relieved by an undervest of deepest crimson. Woven hose to match the tunic ended in crimson buskins of soft leather. The mantle and the skull cap which he had discarded lay beside him on the floor, guarded by a tawny hound of the ancient Molossian breed. By the fitful light of the two waxen tapers, which flickered dismally under the onslaught of the elements, the inmate of the chamber slowly and laboriously deciphered the letter. Then he placed it in his doublet, lapsing into deep rumination, as one who is vainly seeking to solve a problem that defies solution. Rising at last from his chair Basil paced the narrow confines of the chamber, whose crimson walls seemed to form a fitting background for the dark-robed occupant. Outside, the storm howled furiously, flinging gusty dashes of rain and hail against the stone masonry and clattering noisily with every blow inflicted upon the solid rock. When, spent by its own fury, the hurricane abated for a moment, the faint sound of a bell tolling the Angelus could be heard whimpering through the night. When Basil had left Theodora after their meeting at the palace, there had been a darker light in his eyes, a something more ominous of evil in his manner. While his passion had utterly enslaved him, making him a puppet in the hands of the woman whose boundless ambition must inevitably lead her either to the heights of the empire whereof she dreamed, or to the deepest abyss of hell, Basil was far from being content to occupy a position which made him merely a creature of her will and making. To mount the throne with the woman whose beauty had set his senses aflame, to rule the city of Rome from the ramparts of Castel San Angelo, as Ugo of Tuscany by the side of Marozia, this was the dream of the man who would leave no stone unturned to accomplish the ambition of his life. In an age where certain dark personalities appeared terribly sane to their contemporaries, their occult dealings with powers whose existence none questioned must have seemed terribly real to themselves and to those who gazed from afar. When the mad were above the sane in power, and beyond the reach of observation, there was no limit to their baleful activity. Basil, from the early days of his youth, had lived in a world of evil spirits, imaginary perhaps for us, but real enough for those who might at any moment be at his mercy. Stimulating his mad desire with the potent drug which the Saracens had brought with them from the scented East, he pushed his hashish-born imaginings to the very throne of Evil. His ambition, which was boundless, and centred in the longed for achievement of a hope too stupendous even for thought, had intimately connected him with those whose occult researches put them outside the pale of the Church, and the power he wielded in the shadowy world of demons was as unchallenged as that which he felt himself wielding in the tangible world of men. Among the people there was no end to the dark stories of magic and poison, some of them real enough, that were whispered about him, and many a belated rambler looked with a shudder up to the light that burned in a chamber of his palace on the Pincian Hill till the wee, small hours of the night. Had he been merely a practitioner of the Black Arts he would probably long since have ended his career in the dungeons of Castel San Angelo. But he was safe enough as one of the great ones of the world, the confidant of the Senator of Rome; safe, because he was feared and because none dared to oppose his baleful influence. Basil pondered, as if the solution of the problem in his mind had at last presented itself, but had again left him, unsatisfied, in the throes of doubt and fear. Rising from his seat he again unfolded the letter and peered over its contents. "Can we regain the door by which we have entered?" he soliloquized. "Can we conquer the phantom that haunts the silent chambers of the brain? Were it an eye, or a hand, I could pluck it off. However, if I cannot strangle it, I can conquer it! Shall it forever blot the light of heaven from my path? Shall I forever suffer and tremble at this impalpable something--this shade from the abyss--of hell--that is there--yet not there?" He paused for a moment in his perambulation, gazing through the narrow unglazed window into the storm-tossed night without. Now and then a flash of lightning shot athwart the inky darkness, lighting up dark recesses and deep embrasures. The sullen roar of the thunder seemed to come from the bowels of the earth. And as the Grand Chamberlain walked, as if driven by some invisible demon, the great Molossian hound followed him about with a stealthy, noiseless gait, raising its head now and then as if silently inquiring into its master's mood. When at length he reseated himself, the huge hound cowered at his feet and licked its huge paws. The mood of the woman for whom his lust-bitten soul yearned as it had never yearned for anything on earth, her words of disdain, which had scorched his very brain, and, above all, the knowledge that she read his inmost thoughts, had roused every atom of evil within his soul. This state of mind was accentuated by the further consideration that she, of all women whom he had sent to their shame and death, was not afraid of him. She had even dared to hint at the existence of a rival who might indeed, in time, supersede him, if he were not wary. For some time Basil had been vaguely conscious of losing ground in the favor of the woman whom no man might utterly trust save to his undoing. The rivalry of Roxaná, who, like her tenth-century prototypes, was but too eager to enter the arena for Marozia's fateful inheritance, had poured oil on the flames when Theodora had learned that the Senator of Rome himself was frequenting her bowers, and she was not slow to perceive the agency that was at work to defeat and destroy her utterly. By adding ever new fuel to the hatred of the two women for each other Basil hoped to clear for himself a path that would carry him to the height of his aspirations, by compelling Theodora to openly espouse him her champion. Sooner or later he knew they would ignite under each other's taunts, and upon the ruins of the conflagration he hoped to build his own empire, with Theodora to share with him the throne. Alberic had departed for the shrines of the Archangel at Monte Gargano. Intent upon the purification of the Church and upon matters pertaining to the empire, he was an element that needed hardly be reckoned with seriously. A successful coup would hurl him into the dungeons of his own keep, perchance, by some irony of fate, into the very cell where Marozia had so mysteriously and ignominiously ended her career. Once in possession of the Mausoleum, the Germans and Dalmatians bought and bribed, he would be the master--unless-- Suddenly the huge beast at his feet raised its muzzle, sniffing the air and uttering a low growl. A moment later Maraglia, the Castellan of Castel San Angelo, entered through a winding passage. "What brings you here at this hour, with your damned butcher's face?" Basil turned upon the newcomer who had paused when his gaze fell upon the Molossian. The brutal features of Maraglia looked ghastly enough in the flickering light of the tapers and Basil's temper seemed to deepen their ashen pallor. "My lord--it is there again,--in the lower gallery--near the cell where the Lady Marozia was strangled--" "By all the furies of Hell! Since when are you in the secrets of the devil?" "Since I held the noose, my Lord Basil," replied the warden of the Emperor's Tomb doggedly. "Though I knew not at the time whose breath was being shortened. It was all too dark--a night just like this--" "Perchance your memory, going back to that hour, has retained something more than the mere surmise," Basil glowered from under the dark, straight brows. "How many were there?" "There were three--all masked, my lord. But their voices were their own--" "You possess a keen ear, my man, as one, accustomed to dark deeds and passages, well should," Basil interposed sardonically. "Deem you, in your undoubted wisdom, the lady has returned and is haunting her former abode? Once upon a time she was not wont to abide in estate so lowly. And, they say, she was beautiful--even to her death." "And well they may," Maraglia interposed. "I saw her but twice. When she came, and before she died." "Before she died?" "And the look she bent upon him who led the execution," Maraglia continued thoughtfully. "She spoke not once. Dumb and silent she went to the fishes. When the Lord Alberic arrived, it was all too late--" "All too late!" Basil interposed sardonically. "The fishes too were dumb. Profit by their example, Maraglia. Too much wisdom engenders death." "The death rattle of one sounds to my ears just like that of another, my lord," Maraglia replied, quaking under the look that was upon him. "And the voices of the few who still abide are growing weaker day by day." "They shall not much longer annoy your delicate ears," Basil replied. "The Senator who has found this abode somewhat too draughty has departed for the holy shrines, to do penance for the death of his mother. He suspects all was not well. He would know more. Perchance the Archangel may grant him a revelation. Meanwhile, we must to work. The new captain appointed by the Senator enters his service on the morrow. A holy man, much given to contemplation over the mysteries of love. His attention must be diverted. Every trace of life must be extinct--this very night. No proofs must be allowed to remain. Meanwhile, what of the apparition whereof you rave?" "It is there, my lord, as sure as my soul lives," replied the castellan. "A shapeless something, preceded by a breath, cold as from a newly dug grave." "A shapeless something, say you? Whence comes it and where goes it? For whose diversion does it perambulate?" "The astrologer monk perchance who improvises prophecies." "Then let his improvising damn himself," replied Basil sullenly. "To call himself inspired and pretend to read the stars! How about his prophecy now?" "He holds to it!" "What! That I have less than one month to live?" "Just that--no more!"-- Basil gave the speaker a quick glance. "What niggardly dispensation and presumption withal! This fellow to claim kinship with the stars! To profess to be in their confidence, to share the secrets of the heavens while he is smothered by darkness, utter and everlasting. The heavens mind you, Maraglia! My star! It is a star of darker red than Mars and crosses Hell--not Heaven! In thought I watch it every night with sleepless eyes. Is it not well to cleanse the earth of such lying prophets that truth may have standing room? Where have you lodged him?" "In the Hermit's cell--" "Well done! Thereby he shall prove his asceticism. Let practised abstinence save him in such a pass! He shall eat his words--an everlasting banquet. A fat astrologer--by the token--as I hear, was he not?" "He was fat when he entered." "Wretch! Would you starve him? Remember the worms and the fishes--your friends. Would you cheat them? Hath he foretold his end?" "Ay--by starvation." "He lies! You shall take him in extremis and, with your knife in his throat, give him the lie. An impostor proved. What of the night?" "It rains and thunders." "Why should we mind rain and thunder? Lead me to this madman, and, incidentally, to this phantom that keeps him company. Why do you gape, Maraglia? Move on! I follow!" Maraglia was ill at ease, but he dared not disobey. Taking up one of the candles, he led the way, trembling, his face ashen, his teeth chattering, as if in the throes of a chill. Through a panel door in the wall they descended a winding stairway, leaving the dog behind. The flight conducted them to a private postern, well secured and guarded inside and out. As they issued from this the howl of blown rain met and staggered them. Looking up at the cupola of basalt from the depths of that well of masonry, it seemed to crack and split in a rush of fusing stars. Basil's mad soul leapt to the call of the hour. He was one with this mighty demonstration of nature. His brain danced and flickered with dark visions of power. He appeared to himself as an angel, a destroying angel, commissioned from on high to purge the world of lies. "Take me to this monk!" he screamed through the thunder. Deep in the foundation of the northeastern crypts the miserable creature was embedded in a stone chamber as utterly void and empty as despair. The walls, the floor, the roof were all chiselled as smooth as glass. There was not a foothold anywhere even for a cat, neither door, nor traps, nor egress, nor window of any kind save where, just under the ceiling, the grated opening by which he had been lowered, admitted by day a haggard ghost of light. And even that wretched solace was withdrawn as night fell, became a phantom, a diluted whisp of memory, sank like water into the blackness, and left the fancy suddenly naked in the self-consciousness of hell. Then the monk screamed like a madman and threw himself towards the flitting spectre. He fell on the smooth surface of the polished rock and bruised his limbs horribly. Yet the very pain was a saving occupation. He struck his skull and revelled in the agonizing dance of lights the blow procured him. But one by one they blew out; and in a moment dead negation had him by the throat again, rolling him over and over, choking him under enormous slabs of darkness. Gasping, he cursed his improvidence, in not having glued his vision to the place of the light's going. It would have been something gained from madness to hold and gloat upon it, to watch hour by hour for its feeble redawn. Among all the spawning monstrosities of that pit, with only the assured prospect of a lingering death before him, the prodigy of eternal darkness quite overcrowded that other of thirst or starvation. Yet the black gloom broke, it would seem, before its due. Had he annihilated time and was this death? He rose rapturously to his feet and stood staring at the grating, the tears gushing down his sunken cheeks. The bars were withdrawn, in their place a dim lamp was intruded and a face looked down. "Barnabo--are you hungry and a-thirst?" The voice spoke to him of life. It was the name he had borne in the world and he wondered who from that world could be addressing him. He answered quaveringly. "Of a truth, I am hungry and a-thirst." "It is a beatitude," replied the voice suavely. "You shall have your fill of justice." "Justice!" screamed the prisoner. "I fear it is but an empty phrase." "Comfort yourself," said the other. "I shall make a full measure of it! It shall bubble and sparkle to the brim like a goblet of Cyprian. Know you the wine, monk? A cool fragrant liquid, that gurgles down the arid throat and brings visions of green meadows and sparkling brooks--" "I ask no mercy," cried the monk, falling on his knees and stretching out his lean arms. "Only make an end of it--of this hellish torment." "Torment?" came the voice from above. "What torment is there in the vision of the wine cup--or, for that matter, a feast on groaning tables under the trees? Are you not rich in experiences, Barnabo,--both of the board and of love? Remember the hours when she lay in your arms, innocent, save of original sin? Ah! Could she see you now, Barnabo--how you have changed! No more the elegant courtier that wooed Theodora ere despair drove you to don the penitential garb and, like Balaam's ass, to raise your voice and prophesy! Deem you--as fate has thrown her into these arms of mine--memory will revive the forgotten joys of the days of long ago?" "Mercy--demon!" gasped the monk. His swollen throat could hardly shape the words. Basil laughed and bent lower. "Answer me then--you who boast of being inspired from above--you who listen to the music of the spheres in the dead watches of the night--tell me then, you man of God--how long am I to live?" "Monster, relieve me of your sight!" shrieked the unhappy wretch. "It is the light," mocked Basil. "The light from above. Raise your voice, monk, and prophesy. You who would hurl the anathema upon Basil, the Grand Chamberlain, who arrogated to yourself the mission to purge the universe and to summon me--me--before the tribunal of the Church--tell me, you, who aspired to take to his bed the spouse of the devil, till the white lightnings of her passion seared and blasted your carcass,--tell me--how long am I to live?" An inarticulate shriek came from within. "By justice--till the dead rise from their graves." "Live forever--on an empty phrase?" Basil mocked. "Are you, too, provisioned for eternity?" He held out his hand as if he were offering the starving wretch food. The monk fell on his knees. His lips moved, but no sound was audible. "Perchance he hath a vision," Basil turned to Maraglia who stood sullenly by. "Oh, dull this living agony." "How long am I to live?" "Now, hear me, God," screamed the monk. "Let not this man ever again know surcease from torment in bed, at board, in body or in mind. Let his lust devour him, let the worm burrow in his entrails, the maggot in his brain! May death seize and damnation wither him at the moment when he is nearest the achievement of his fondest hopes!" Basil screamed him down. An uncontrollable terror had seized him. "Silence, beast, or I shall strangle you!" "Libertine, traitor, assassin--may heaven's lightnings blast you--" For a moment the two battled in a war of screeching blasphemy. At the next moment the grate was flung into place, the light whisked and vanished, a door slammed and the Stygian blackness of the cell closed once more upon the moaning heap in its midst. Basil's eyes gleamed like live coals as he turned to Maraglia, who, quaking and ashen, was babbling a prayer between white lips. "Make an end of him!" he snarled. "He has lived too long. And now, in the devil's name, lead the way above!" A flash of lightning that seemed to rend the very heavens illumined for a moment the dark and tortuous passage, its sheen reflected through the narrow port-holes on the blackness of the walls. It was followed by a peal of thunder so terrific that it shook the vast pile of the Emperor's Tomb to its foundations, clattering and roaring, as if a thousand worlds had been rent in twain. Maraglia, who had preceded the Grand Chamberlain with the taper, uttered a wild shriek of terror, dropped the light, causing it to be extinguished and his fleeting steps carried him down a night-wrapped gallery as fast as his limbs would carry him, utterly indifferent to Basil's fate in the Stygian gloom. Paralyzed with terror, the Grand Chamberlain stared into the inky blackness. For a moment it had seemed to him as if a breath from an open grave had indeed been wafted to his nostrils. But it was neither the thunder, nor the lightning, neither the swish of the rain nor the roar of the hurricane, that had prompted Maraglia's outcry and precipitate flight and his abject terror, as we shall see. CHAPTER II THE CALL OF EBLIS In the lurid flash that had illumined the gallery, lighting up rows of cells and deep recesses, Basil had seen, as if risen from the floor, a black, indefinable shape, wrapped in a long black mantle, the hood of which was drawn over its face. Through its slits gleamed two eyes, like live coals. Of small stature and apparently great age, the bent apparition supported itself by a crooked staff, the fleshless fingers barely visible under the cover of the ample sleeve, and resembling the claws of some bird of prey. At last the terror which the uncanny apparition inspired changed to its very counterpart, as, defiance in his tone, the Grand Chamberlain made a forward step. "Who goes there?--Friend or foe of the Lord Basil?"-- His voice sounded strange in his own ears. A gibbering response quavered out of the gloom. "What matters friend or foe as long as you grasp the tenure of power?" Basil breathed a sigh of relief. "I ought to know that voice. You are Bessarion?" "I have waited long," came the drawling reply. There was a pause brief as the intake of a breath. "What do you demand?"-- "You shall know in time." "In time comes death!" "And more!" "It is the hour that calls!" "Are you prepared?" "Show me what you can do!" "For this I am here! Are you afraid?" The air of mockery in the questioner's tone cut the speaker to the quick. In the intermittent flashes of lightning Basil saw the shapeless form cowering before him in the dusk of the gallery, barring the way. But again it mingled quickly with the darkness. "Of whom?" Basil queried. There was another pause. "Of the Presence!" "That craven hound Maraglia has upset the light," muttered Basil. "I cannot see you." "Can you not feel my presence?" came the gibbering reply. "Even so!" "Know you what high powers of night control your life--what dark-winged messengers of evil fly about you?" "Your words make my soul flash like a thunder cloud." "And yet does your power stand firm?" "It rests on deep dug dungeons, where the light of heaven does not intrude. I spread such fear in men's white hearts as the craven have never known." A faint chuckle came in reply. "Only last night I saw you in the magic crystal sphere in which I read the dire secrets of Fate. Above your head flew evil angels. Beneath your horse's hoofs a corpse-strewn path." "The time is not yet ripe." "Time does not wait for him who waits to dare." An evil light flashed from Basil's eyes. "What can you do?" Response came as from the depths of a grave. "I shall conjure such shapes from the black caves of fear as have not ventured forth since madness first began to prowl among the human race, when the torturing dusk drowns every helpless thing in livid waves of shadow. It is the spirit of your sire that draws the evil legions to you." Basil straightened in surprise. "What know you of him?" he exclaimed. "Dull prayers and fasts and penances, not such freaks as this, were the only things he thought of." From the cowled form came a hiss. "Fool! Not that grunting and omnivorous swine who took the cowl, begat you! Your veins run with fiery evil direct from its fountainhead. No, no,--not he!" "Not he?" shrieked the Grand Chamberlain. "If I am not his progeny, then whose?" "Some mighty lord's." "The Duke of Beneventum?" "One greater yet." "King Berengar?" "One adored by him as his liege." "Ha! I guess it now! It was Otto the Great, he whose fury gored the heart of the Romans." "One greater still." "Earth hath no greater lord." "Is there not heaven above and hell below? Your sire rules the millions who have donned fear's stole forever. He is lord of lords, where all the lips implore and none reply." A flash of lightning gleamed through the gallery. A shadow passed over Basil's countenance, like a swift sailing cloud. Darkness supervened, impenetrable, sepulchral. "Well may you cower," gibbered the shape in its inexorable monotone. "For you came into this life among the death-fed mushrooms that grow where murder rots. The moon-struck wolves howled for three nights, and ill-omened birds flapped for three days around the tower where she who gave you life breathed her last." A fitful muttering as of souls in pain seemed to pervade the night-wrapped galleries, with sultry storm gusts breathing inarticulate evil. No light save the white flash of the lightning revealed now and then the uncanny form of the speaker. The smell of rotting weeds came through the crevices of the wall. When Basil, spell-bound, found no tongue, the dark shape continued: "Wrapped in midnight's cloak, nine witches down in the castle moat sang a baptismal hymn of horror as you saw the light. As mighty brazen wings sounded the roaring of the tempest-churned seas. And above you stood he who holds the keys to thought's dark chambers, he in whose ranks the sullen angels serve, whose shadowy dewless wings cast evil on the world. And I am he whose palace rings with the eternal Never!" Frozen with terror Basil listened. The thunder growled ever louder. A vampire's bark stabbed the darkness; the shriek of witches rose above the tempest, there was a rattling of bones as if skeletons were rising from their graves. All round the Emperor's Tomb the ghouls were prowling, and the soulless corpses were as restless as the fleshless souls that whimpered and moaned in the night. Giant bats flew to and fro like evil spirits. The great peals shook the huge pile from vault to summit. The running finger of the storm scribbled fiery, cabalistical zigzags on the firmament's black page. And in every peal, louder and louder as the echoes spread, Basil seemed to hear his name shrieked by the weird powers of darkness, till, half mad with terror, he cried: "Away! Away! Your presence flings dark glare like glowing lava--" "I come across the night," replied the voice, "ere death has made you mine! Deserve the doom that is prepared for those who do my bidding. You have shot into my heart a ray of blackest light--" Basil held out his hands, as if to ward off some unseen assailant. "Whirl back into the night--" he shrieked, but the voice resumed, mocking and gibbering. "Only a coward will shrink from the dreadful boundaries between things of this earth and things beyond this earth. I have sought you by night and by day--as fiercely as any of those athirst pant round hell's mock springs! In the great vaults of wrath, in the sleepless caverns, whose eternal darkness is only lighted by pools of molten stone that bathe the lost, where, in the lurid light, the shadows dance--I sit and watch the lakes of torment, taciturn and lone. I summon you to earthly power--to the fulfillment of all your heart desires!"-- The voice ceased. All the elements of hell seemed to roar and shriek around the battlemented walls. There was a pause during which Basil regained his composure. At last the dread shadow was looming across his path. An undefined awe crept over him, such as dark chasms instill; an awe at his own self. He would fain have been screened from his own substance. By degrees he welcomed the tidings with a dark rapture. In himself lay the substance of Evil. It was not the Angel of Light that ruled the reeling universe. It was the shadow of Eblis looming dark and terrible over the lives of men. Long before he had ever guessed what rills of flaming Phlegethon ran riot in his veins, had he not felt his pulses swell with joy at human pain, had he not played the fiend untaught? Could not the Fiend, as well as God, live incarnate in human clay? Was not the earth the meeting ground of Heaven and Hell? And why should not he, Basil, defying Heaven, be Hell's incarnation?-- Ay--but the day of death and the day of reckoning! Would his parentage entail eternal fire, or princely power and sway in the dark vaults of nameless terror? Should he quail or thrill with awful exaltation? "And--in return for that which I offer up--King of the dark red glare--will you give to me what I crave--boundless power and the woman for which my soul is on fire?" "Have you the courage to snatch them from the talons of Fate?" came back the gibbering reply. A blinding flash of lightning was succeeded by an appalling crash of thunder. "From Hell itself!" shrieked Basil frenzied. "Give me Theodora and I will fill the cup of torture that I have seized on your shadowy altars, and quaff your health at the terrific banquet board of Evil in toasts of torment--in wine of boundless pain!" In the quickly succeeding flashes of lightning the dark form seemed to rise and to expand. "I knew you would not fail me! Come!" For a moment Basil hesitated, fingering the hilt of his poniard. "Where would you lead me?" he queried, his tone far from steady. "How many of these twilights must I traverse before I see him whom you serve?" "That you shall know to-night!" In the deep and frozen silence which succeeded the terrible peals of thunder their retreating footsteps died to silence in the labyrinthine galleries of the Emperor's Tomb. Only the dog-headed Anubis seemed to stare and nod mysteriously. CHAPTER III THE CRYSTAL SPHERE Outwardly and in daylight there was nothing noticeable about the sixth house in the Lane of the Sclavonians in Trastevere beyond the fact that it was a dwelling of a superior kind to those immediately surrounding it, which were chiefly ill-favored cottages of fishermen and boatmen, and had about it an air of almost sombre retirement. It stood alone within a walled court, containing a few shrubs. The windows were few, high and narrow, and the front bore a rather forbidding appearance. One ascending to the flat roof would have found it to command on the left a desolate view of a square devoted to executions, and on the right a scarcely more cheerful prospect over the premises belonging to the convent of Santa Maria in Trastevere. Had the visitor been farther able to penetrate into the principal chamber of the first floor, on the night of the scene about to be related, he might indeed have found himself well repaid for his trouble. This chamber, which was of considerable size and altogether devoid of windows, being lighted during the daytime by a skylight, carefully blinded from within, was now duskily illumined by a transparent device inlaid into the end wall and representing the beams of the rising moon gleaming from a sky of azure. The extremity of the room, which fronted the symbol, was semi-circular and occupied by a narrow table, before which moved a tall, shadowy form that paused now and then before a fire of fragrant sandal wood, which burned in a brazen tripod, passing his fingers mechanically, as it would seem, through the bluish flame. In its unsteady flicker the strange figures on the walls, which had defied the decree of Time, seemed to nod fantastically when touched by a fitful ray. This was Hormazd, the Persian, the former confidant and counsellor of Marozia, in the heyday of her glory. In those days he had held forth in a turret chamber on the summit of Castel San Angelo, where he would read the stars and indulge his studies in the black arts to his heart's content. Driven forth by Alberic, after Marozia's fall, the Persian had taken up his abode in the Trastevere, where he continued to serve those who came to him for advice, or on business that shunned the light of day. Now and then the Oriental bent his tall, spare form over a huge tome which lay open upon the table, the inscrutable, ascetic countenance with the deep, brilliant eyes seemingly plunged in deep, engrossing thought, but in reality listening intently, as for the approach of some belated caller. The soft patter of hurried footsteps on the floor of the corridor without soon rewarded his attention. The rustle of a woman's silken garments caused him to give a start of surprise. A heavy curtain was raised and she glided noiselessly into his presence. The woman's face was covered with a silken vizor, but her coronet of raven hair no less than the matchless figure, outlined against the crimson glow, at once proclaimed her rank. The first ceremony of silent greeting absolved, the Persian's visitor permitted the black silken cloak which had enveloped her from head to toe, to fall away, revealing a form exquisitely proportioned. The ivory pallor of the throat, which rose like a marble column from matchless shoulders, and the whiteness of the bare arms, seemed even enhanced by the dusky background whose incense-laden pall seemed to oppress the very walls. "I am trusting you to-night with unreserved confidence," the woman spoke in her rich, vibrant voice. "Many serve me from motives of selfishness and fear. Do you serve me, because I trust you." She laid her white hand frankly upon his arm and the Persian, isolated above and below the strongest impulses of humanity, shivered under her touch. "What is it you desire?" he questioned after a pause. "If you possess the knowledge with which the vulgar credit you," the woman said slowly, not without an air of mockery in her tone, "I hardly need reveal to you the motives which prompted this visit! You knew them, ere I came, even as you knew of my coming!" "You speak truly," said Hormazd slowly, now completely master of himself. "For even to the hour it was revealed to me!" The woman scanned him with a searching look. "Yet I had confided in none!" she said musingly. "Tell me then who I am!" "You are Theodora!" "When have we met before?"-- "Not in this life, but in a previous existence. Our souls touched then, predestined to cross each other on a future plane." She removed her silken vizor and faced him. The dark eyes at once challenged and besought. No sculptor could have chiselled those features on which a divinity had recklessly squandered all it had to bestow for good or for evil. No painter could have reproduced the face which had wrought such havoc in the hearts of men. Like summer lightnings in a dark cloudbank, all the emotions of the human soul seemed to have played therein and left it again, forging it in the fires of passion, but leaving it more beautiful, more mysterious than before. The Oriental regarded her in silence, as she stood before him in the flickering flame of the brazier. "In some previous existence, you say?" she said with dreamy interest. "Who was I then--and who were you?" "Two driftless spirits on the driftless sea of eternity," he replied calmly. "Foredoomed to continue our passage till our final destiny be fulfilled." "And this destiny is known to you?" "Else I had watched in vain. But you--queen and sorceress--do you believe in the message?" She pondered. "I believe," she said slowly, "that we make for ourselves the destiny to which hereafter we must submit. I believe that some dark power can foretell that destiny, and more--compel it!"-- Hormazd bowed ever so slightly. There was a dawning gleam of satire in his brilliant eyes, a glimpse which was not lost on her. Again the question came. "What is it you desire?" Theodora gave an inscrutable smile that imparted to her features a singular softness and beauty, as a ray of sunlight falling on a dark picture will brighten the tints with a momentary warmth of seeming life. "I was told," she spoke slowly, as if trying to overcome an inward dread, "that you are known in Rome chiefly as being the possessor of some mysterious internal force which, though invisible, is manifest to all who place themselves under your spell! Is it not so?" The Persian bowed slightly. "It may be that I have furnished the Romans with something to talk about besides the weather; that I have made a few friends, and an amazing number of enemies--" "The latter argues in your favor," Theodora interposed. "They say, furthermore, that by this same force you are enabled to disentangle the knots of perplexity that burden the overtaxed brain." Hormazd nodded again and the sinister gleam of his eyes did not escape Theodora's watchful gaze. "If this be so," the woman continued, "if you are not an impostor who exhibits his tricks for the delectation of the rabble, or for sordid gain--exert your powers upon me, for something, I know not what, has frozen up the once overflowing fountain of life." The Oriental regarded her intently. "You have the wish to be deluded--even into an imaginary happiness?" Theodora gave a start. "You have expressed what I but vaguely hinted. It may be that I am tired"--she passed her hand across her brow with a troubled gesture--"or puzzled by some infinite distress of living things. Perchance I am going mad--who knows? But, whatever the cause, you, if report be true, possess the skill to ravish the mind away from its trouble, to transport it to a radiant Elysium of illusions and ecstasies. Do this for me, as you have done it for another, and, whatever payment you demand, it shall be yours!" She ceased. Faintly through the silence came the chimes of convent bells from the remote regions of the Aventine, pealing through the fragrant summer night above the deep boom of distant thunder that seemed to come as from the bowels of the earth. Hormazd gave his interrogator a swift, searching glance, half of pity, half of disdain. "The great eastern drug should serve your turn," he replied sardonically. "I know of no other means wherewith to stifle the voice of conscience." Theodora flushed darkly. "Conscience?" she flashed in resentful accents. The Persian nodded. "There is such a thing. Do you profess to be without one?" Theodora's eyes endeavored to pierce the inscrutable mask before her. The ironical curtness of the question annoyed her. "Your opinion of me does little honor to your wisdom," she said after a pause. "A foul wound festers equally beneath silk and sack-cloth," came the dark reply. "How know you that I desire relief from this imaginary malady?" The Oriental gave a shrug. "Why does Theodora come to the haunts of the Persian? Why does she ask him to mock and delude her, as if it were his custom to make dupes of those who appeal to him?" "And are they not your dupes?" Theodora interposed, her face a deeper pallor than before. "Of that you shall judge after I have answered your questions," Hormazd returned darkly. "There are but two things in life that will prompt a woman like Theodora to seek aid of one like myself."-- "You arouse my curiosity!" "Disappointment in power--or love!" There was a silence. "Will you help me?" She was pleading now. The Oriental sparred for time. It was not his purpose to commit himself at once. "I am but one who, long severed from the world, has long recognized its vanities. My cures are for the body rather than the soul." Theodora's face hardened into an expression of scorn. "Am I to understand that you will do nothing for me?" she said in a tone which convinced the Persian that the time for dallying was past. The words came slowly from his lips. "I can promise you neither self-oblivion nor visionary joys. I possess an internal force, it is true, a force which, under proper control, overpowers and subdues the material, and by exerting this I can, if I think it well to do so, release your soul, that inner intelligence which, deprived of its mundane matter, is yourself, from its house of clay and allow it a brief interval of freedom. But--what in that state its experience may be, whether joy or sorrow, I cannot foretell." "Then you are not the master of the phantoms you evoke?" "I am merely their interpreter!" She looked at him steadfastly as if pondering his words. "And you profess to be able to release the soul from its abode of clay?" "I do not profess," he said quietly. "I can do so!" "And with the success of this experiment your power ceases? You cannot tell whether the imprisoned creature will take its course to the netherworld of suffering, or a heaven of delight?" "The liberated soul must shift for itself." "Then begin your incantations," Theodora exclaimed recklessly. "Send me, no matter where, so long as I escape from this den of the world, this dungeon with one small window through which, with the death rattle in our throats, we stare vacantly at the blank, unmeaning horror of life. Prove to me that the soul you prattle of exists, and if mine can find its way straight to the mainsprings of this revolving creation, it shall cling to the accursed wheels and stop them, that they may grind out the torture of life no more." She stood there, dark, defiant, beautiful with the beauty of the fallen angel. Her breath came and went quickly. She seemed to challenge some invisible opponent. The tall sinewy form by her side watched her as a physician might watch in his patient the workings of a new disease, then Hormazd said in low and tranquil tones: "You are in the throes of your own overworked emotions. You are seeking to obtain the impossible--" "Why taunt me?" she flashed. "Cannot your art supply the secret in whose quest I am?" The Persian bowed, but kept silent. Again, with the shifting mood, the rare, half-mournful smile shone in Theodora's face. "Though you may not be conscious of it," she said, laying her white hand on his trembling arm, "something impels me to unburden my heart to you. I have kept silence long." Hormazd nodded. "In the world one must always keep silence, veil one's grief and force a smile with the rest. Is it not lamentable to think of all the pent-up suffering, the inconceivably hideous agonies that remain forever unrevealed? Youth and innocence--" Theodora raised her arm. "Was I ever--what they call--innocent?" she interposed musingly. "When I was young--alas, how long it seems, though I am but thirty--the dream of my life was love! Perchance I inherited it from my mother. She was a Greek, and she possessed that subtle quality that can never die. What I was--it matters not. What I am--you know!" She raised herself to her full height. "I long for power. Men are my puppets. And I long for love! I have sought it in all shapes, in every guise. But I found it not. Only disillusion--disappointment have been my share. Will my one desire be ever fulfilled?" "Some day you shall know," he said quietly, keeping his dark gaze upon her. "I doubt me not I shall! But--when and where? Tell me then, you who know so much! When and where?" Hormazd regarded her quizzically, but made no immediate reply. After a time she continued. "Some say you are the devil's servant! Show me then your power. Read for me my fate!" She looked at him with an air of challenge. "It was not for this you came," the Persian said calmly, meeting the gaze of those mysterious wells of light whose appeal none had yet resisted whom she wished to bend to her desires. The woman turned a shade more pale. "Then call it a whim!" "What will it avail?" Her eyes flashed. "My will against--that other." A flash of lightning was reflected on the dark walls of the chamber. The thunder rolled in grand sullen echoes down the heavens. She heard it not. "What are you waiting for?" she turned to Hormazd. There was a note of impatience in her tone. "You are of to-day--yet not of to-day! Not of yesterday, nor to-morrow. To some in time comes love--" "But to me?" His voice sank to a frozen silence. She stood, gazing at him steadily. She was very pale, but the smile of challenge still lingered on her lips. "But to me?" she repeated. He regarded her darkly. "To you? Who knows?--Some day--" "Ah! When my fate has chanced! Are you a cheat then, like the rest?" He was silent, as one in the throes of some great emotion. She took a step towards him. He raised both hands as if to ward her off. His eyes saw shapes and scenes not within the reach of other's ken. "Tell me the truth," she said calmly. "You cannot deceive me!" Hormazd sprinkled the cauldron with some white powder that seethed and hissed as it came in contact with the glowing metal and began to emit a dense smoke, which filled the interior of the chamber with a strange, pungent odor. Then he slowly raised one hand until it touched Theodora. Dauntless in spirit, her body was taken by surprise, and as his clammy fingers closed round her own she gave an involuntary start. With a compelling glance, still in silence, he looked into her face. A strange transformation seemed to take place. She was no longer in the chamber, but in a grove dark with trees and shrubbery. A dense pall seemed to obscure the skies. The atmosphere was breathless. Even as she looked he was no longer there. Great clouds of greenish vapor rolled in through the trees and enveloped her so utterly as to shut out all vision. It was as if she were alone in some isolated spot, far removed from the ken of man. She was conscious of nothing save the insistent touch of his hand upon her arm. Gradually, as she peered into the vapors, they seemed to condense themselves into a definite shape. It was that of a man coming towards her, but some invisible agency seemed ever to retard his approach. In fact the distance seemed not to lessen, and suddenly she saw her own self standing by, vainly straining her gaze into space, indescribable longing in her eyes. A flash of lightning that seemed to rend the vault of heaven was followed by so terrific a peal of thunder that it seemed to shake the very earth. A shriek broke from Theodora's lips. "It is he! It is he!" she cried pointing to the curtain. Hormazd turned, hardly less amazed than the woman. He distinctly saw, in the recurrent flash, a face, pale and brooding, framed by the darkness, of which it seemed a part. At the next moment it was gone, as if it had melted into air. Theodora's whole body was numb, as if every nerve had been paralyzed. The Persian was hardly less agitated. "Is it enough?" she heard Hormazd's deep voice say beside her. She turned, but, though straining her eyes, she could not see him. The flame in the tripod had died down. She was trembling from head to foot. But her invincible will was unshaken. "Nay," she said, and her voice still mocked. "Having seen the man my soul desires, I must know more. The end! I have not seen the end! Shall I possess him? Speak!" "Seek no more!" warned the voice by her side. "Seek not to know the end!" She raised herself defiantly. "The end!" He made no reply. She saw the white vapors forming into faces. The hour and the place of the last vision were not clear. She saw but the man and herself, standing together at some strange point, where time seemed to count for naught. Between them lay a scarf of blue samite. After a protracted silence a moan broke from Theodora's lips. The Persian took no heed thereof. He did not even seem to hear. But, beneath those half-closed lids, not a movement of the woman escaped his penetrating gaze. Though possessed with a vague assurance of his own dark powers, controlled by his nerve and coolness, Hormazd could read in that fair, inscrutable face far more than in the magic scrolls. And as he scanned it now, from under half-shut lids, it was fixed and rigid as marble, pale, too, with an unearthly whiteness. She seemed to have forgotten his presence. She seemed to look into space, yet even as he gazed, the expression of that wonderfully fair face changed. Theodora's eyes were fierce, her countenance bore a rigid expression, bright, cold, unearthly, like one who defies and subdues mortal pain. The tools of love and ambition are sharp and double-edged, and Hormazd knew it was safer to trust to wind and waves than to the whims of woman. But already her mood had changed and her face had resumed its habitual expression of inscrutable repose. "Is it the gods or the devil who sway and torture us and mock at our helplessness?" she turned to the Oriental, then, without waiting his reply, she concluded with a searching glance that seemed to read his very heart. "Report speaks true of you. Unknowingly, unwittingly you have pointed the way. Farewell!" Long after she had disappeared Hormazd stared at the spot where her swiftly retiring form had been engulfed by the darkness. Then, weighing the purse, which she had left as an acknowledgment of his services, and finding it sufficiently heavy to satisfy his avarice, the Persian stood for a time wrapped in deep thoughts. "That phantom at least I could not evoke!" he muttered to himself. "Who dares to cross the path of Hormazd?" The thunder seemed to answer, for a crash that seemed to split the seven hills asunder caused the house to rock as with the force of an earthquake. With a shudder the Persian extinguished the fire in the brazier and retreated to his chamber, while outside thunder and lightning and rain lashed the summer night with the force of a tropical hurricane. CHAPTER IV PERSEPHONÉ It was not Tristan's other self, conjured by the Persian from the mystic realms of night which Theodora had seen outlined against the dark curtain that screened the entrance into the Oriental's laboratory. The object of her craving had, indeed, been present in the body, seeking in the storm that suddenly lashed the city the shelter of an apparently deserted abode. Thus he had unwittingly strayed into the domain of the astrologer, finding the door of his abode standing ajar after Theodora had entered. A superstition which was part and parcel of the Persian's character, caused the latter to regard the undesired presence in the same light as did Theodora, the more so as, for the time, it served his purpose, although, when the woman had departed, he was puzzled no little over a phenomenon which his skill could not have conjured up. Tristan had precipitately retreated, so soon as the woman's outcry had reached his ear, convinced that he had witnessed some unholy incantation which must counteract the effect of the penances he had just concluded and during the return from which the tempest had overtaken him. Thoroughly drenched he arrived at the Inn of the Golden Shield and retired forthwith, wondering at the strange scene which he had witnessed and its import. Tristan arose early on the following day. On the morrow he was to enter the service of the Senator of Rome, who had departed on his pilgrimage to the shrines of Monte Gargano. Tristan resolved to make the most of his time, visiting the sanctuaries and fitly preparing himself to be worthy of the trust which Alberic had reposed in him. Yet his thoughts were not altogether of the morrow. Once again memory wandered back to the sunny days in Provence, to the rose garden of Avalon, and to one who perchance was walking alone in the garden, along the flower-bordered paths where he had found and lost his greatest happiness.-- Persephoné meanwhile had not been idle. It pleased her for once to propitiate her mistress, and through her own spies she had long been informed of Tristan's movements, being not altogether averse to starting an intrigue on her own account, if her mistress should fail sufficiently to impress the predestined victim. Her own beauty could achieve no less. Drawing a veil about her head and shoulders so as effectually to conceal her features, she proceeded to thread her way through the intricate labyrinth of Roman thoroughfares. When she reached her destination she concealed herself in a convenient lurking place from which she took care not to emerge till she had learned all she wished from one who had dogged Tristan's footsteps all these weary days. "What do you want with me?" asked the latter somewhat disturbed by her sudden appearance, as he came out of the little temple church of San Stefano in Rotondo on the brow of the Cælian Hill. Persephoné had raised her veil and in doing so had taken care to reveal her beautiful white arms. "I am unwelcome doubtless," she replied, after a swift glance had convinced her that there was no one near to witness their meeting. "Nevertheless you must come with me--whether you will or no. We Romans take no denial. We are not like your pale, frozen women of the North." Subscribing readily to this opinion, Tristan felt indignant, nevertheless, at her self-assurance. "I have neither time nor inclination to attend upon your fancies," he said curtly, trying to pass her. But she barred his passage. "As for your inclination to follow me," Persephoné laughed--"that is a matter for you to decide, if you intend to prosper in your new station." She paused a moment, with a swift side glance at the man. Persephoné had not miscalculated the effect of her speech, for Tristan had started visibly at her words and the knowledge they implied. "As for your time," Persephoné continued sardonically, "that is another matter. No doubt there are still a few sanctuaries to visit," she said suggestively, with tantalizing slowness and a tinge of contempt in her tones that was far from assumed. "Though I am puzzled to know why one of your good looks and courage should creep like a criminal from shrine to shrine, when hot life pulsates all about us. Are your sins so grievous indeed?" She could see that the thrust had pierced home. "This is a matter you do not understand," he said, piqued at her persistence. "Perchance my sins are grievous indeed." "Ah! So much the better," Persephoné laughed, showing her white teeth and approaching a step closer. "The world loves a sinner. What it dislikes is the long-faced repentant transgressor. You are a man after all--it is time enough to become a saint when you can no longer enjoy. Come!" And the white arm stole forth and a white hand took hold of his mantle. Every word of the Circassian seemed to sting Tristan like a wasp. His whole frame quivered with anger at her taunts, but he scorned to show it, and putting a strong constraint upon his feelings he only asked quietly: "What would you with me? Surely it was not to tell me this that you have tracked me hither." Persephoné thought she had now brought the metal to a sufficiently high temperature for fusion. She proceeded to mould it accordingly. Nevertheless she was determined to gain some advantage for herself in executing her mistress' behest. "I tracked you here," she said slowly, "because I wanted you! I wanted you, because it is in my power to render you a great service. Listen, my lord,--you must come with me! It is not every man in Rome who would require so much coaxing to follow a good-looking woman--" She looked very tempting as she spoke, but her physical charms were indeed sadly wasted on the pre-occupied man before her, and if she expected to win from him any overt act of admiration or encouragement, she was to be woefully disappointed. "I cannot follow you," he said. "My way lies in another direction. Besides--you have said it yourself--I am now in the service of another." "That is the very reason," she interposed. "Have you ever stopped to consider the thousand and one pitfalls which your unwary feet will encounter when you--a stranger--unknown--hated perchance--attempt to wield the authority entrusted to you? What do you know of Rome that you should hope to succeed when he, who set you in this hazardous place, cannot quell the disturbances that break out between the factions periodically?" "And why should you be disposed to confer upon me such a favor?" Tristan asked with instinctive caution. "I am a stranger to you. What have we in common?" Persephoné laughed. "Perchance I am in love with you myself--ever since that night when you would not enter the forbidden gates. Perchance you may be able to serve me in turn--some day. How cold you are! Like the frozen North! Come! Waste no more time, if you would not regret it forevermore."-- There was something compelling in her words that upset Tristan's resolution. Still, he wavered. "You have seen my mistress," Persephoné resumed, "the fairest woman and the most powerful in Rome--a near kinswoman, too, of your new master--the Senator." The words startled Tristan. "It needs but a word from her to make you what she pleases," she continued, as they delved into the now darkening streets. "She is headstrong and imperious and does not brook resistance to her will." Tristan remembered certain words Alberic had spoken to him at their final parting. It behooved him to be on his guard, yet without making of Theodora an open enemy. "Be wary and circumspect," had been the Senator's parting words. "Did the Lady Theodora send you for me?" he asked, with some anxiety in his tone. "And how did you know where to find me in a city like this?" "I know a great many things--and so does my mistress," Persephoné made smiling reply. "But she does not choose every one to be as wise as she is. I will answer both your questions though, if you will answer one of mine in return. The Lady Theodora did not mention you by name," Persephoné prevaricated, "yet I do not think there is another man in Rome who would serve her as would you.--And now tell me in turn.--Deem you not, she is very beautiful?" "The Lady Theodora is very beautiful," Tristan replied with a hesitation that remained not unremarked. "Yet, what is there in common between two strangers from the farthest extremities of the earth?" "What is there in common?" Persephoné smiled. "You will know ere an hour has sped. But, if you would take counsel from one who knows, you will do wisely to ponder twice before you choose--your master. Silence now! Step softly, but follow close behind me! It is very dark under the trees." They had arrived on Mount Aventine. Before them, in the dusk, towered the great palace of Theodora. After cautioning him, Persephoné led Tristan through a narrow door in a wall and they emerged in a garden. They were now in a fragrant almond grove where the branches of the trees effectually excluded the rays of the rising moon, making it hardly possible to distinguish Persephoné's tall and lithe form. Presently they emerged upon a smooth and level lawn, shut in by a black group of cedars, through the lower branches of which peeped the crescent moon and, turning the corner of a colonnade, they entered another door which opened to Persephoné's touch and admitted them into a long dark passage with a lamp at the farther end. "Stay here, while I fetch a light," Persephoné whispered to Tristan and, gliding away, she presently returned, to conduct him through a dark corridor into another passage, where she stopped abruptly and, raising some silken hangings, directed him to enter. "Wait here. I will announce you."-- CHAPTER V MAGIC GLOOMS Floods of soft and mellow light dazzled Tristan's eyes at first, but he soon realized the luxurious beauty of the retreat into which he had been ushered. It was obvious that, despite a decadent age, all the resources of wealth had been drawn upon for its decoration. The walls were painted in frescoes of the richest colorings and represented the most alluring scenes. Around the cornices, relics of imperial Rome, nymphs and satyrs in bas-relief danced hand in hand, wild woodland creatures, exultant in all the luxuriance of beauty and redundancy of strength; and yonder, where the lamp cast its softest glow upon her, stood a marble statue of Venus Anadyomené, her attitude expressive of dormant passion lulled by the languid insolence of power and tinged with an imperious coquetry, the most alluring of all her charms. Tristan moved uneasily in his seat, wishing that he had not come, wondering how he had allowed himself to be thus beguiled, wondering what it was all about, when a rustling of the hangings caused him to turn his head. There was no more attraction now in bounding nymph or marble enchantress. The life-like statue of Venus was no longer the masterpiece of the chamber for there, in the doorway, appeared Theodora herself. Tristan rose to his feet, and thus they stood, confronting each other in the subdued light--the hostess and her guest--the assailant and the assailed. Theodora trembled in every limb, yet she should have remained the calmer of the two, inasmuch as hers could scarcely have been the agitation of surprise. Such a step indeed, as she had taken, she had not ventured upon without careful calculation of its far reaching effect. Determined to make this obstinate stranger pliable to her desires, to instill a poison into his veins which must, in time, work her will, she had deliberately commanded Persephoné to conduct him to this bower, the seductive air of which no one had yet withstood. Theodora was the first to speak, though for once she hardly knew how to begin. For the man who stood before her was not to be moulded by a glance and would match his will against her own. Such methods as she would have employed under different circumstances would here and now utterly fail in their intent. For once she must not appear the dominant factor in Rome, rather a woman wronged by fate, mankind and report. Let her beauty do the rest. "I have sent for you," she said, "because something tells me that I can rely implicitly on your secrecy. From what I have seen of you, I believe you are incapable of betraying a trust." Theodora's words had the intended effect. Tristan, expecting reproach for his intentional slight of her advances, was thrown off his guard by the appeal to his honor. His confusion at the sight of the woman's beauty, enhanced by her gorgeous surroundings, was such that he did but bow in acknowledgment of this tribute to his integrity. Theodora watched him narrowly, never relinquishing his gaze, which wandered unconsciously over her exquisite form, draped in a diaphanous gown which left the snowy arms and hands, the shoulders and the round white throat exposed. "I have been told that you have accepted service with the Lord Alberic, who has offered to you, a stranger, the most important trust in his power to bestow." Tristan bowed assent. "The Lord Alberic has rewarded me, far beyond my deserts, for ever so slight a service," he replied, without referring to the nature of the service. Theodora nodded. "And you--a stranger in the city, without counsellor--without friend. Great as the honor is, which the Senator has conferred upon you--great are the pitfalls that lurk in the hidden places. Doubtlessly, the Lord Alberic did not bestow his trust unworthily. And, in enjoining above all things watchfulness--he has doubtlessly dropped a word of warning regarding his kinswoman," here Theodora dropped her lids, as if she were reluctantly touching upon a distasteful subject, "the Lady Theodora?" As suddenly as she had dropped her lids as suddenly her eyes sank into the unwary eyes of Tristan. The scented atmosphere of the room and the woman's nearness were slowly creeping into his brain. "The Lord Alberic did refer to the Lady Theodora," he stammered, loth to tell an untruth, and equally loth to wound this beautiful enigma before him. "I thought so!" Theodora interposed with a smile, without permitting him to commit himself. "He has warned you against me. Admit it, my Lord Tristan. He has put you on your guard. And yet--I fain would be your friend--" "The Lord Alberic seems to count you among his enemies," Tristan replied. The mention of an accepted fact could not, to his mind, be construed into betraying a confidence. Theodora smiled sadly. "The Lord Alberic has been beguiled into this sad attitude by one who was ever my foe, perchance, even his. Time will tell. But it was not to speak of him that I summoned you hither. It is because I would appear lovable in your eyes. It is, because I am not indifferent to your opinion, my Lord Tristan. Am I not rash, foolish, impulsive, in thus placing myself in the power of one who may even now be planning my undoing? One who on a previous occasion so grievously misjudged my motives as to wound me so cruelly?" The woman's appeal knocked at the portals of Tristan's heart. Would she but state her true purpose, relieve this harrowing suspense. She had propounded the question with a deepening color, and glances that conveyed a tale. And it was a question somewhat difficult to answer. At last he spoke, stammeringly, incoherently: "I shall try to prove myself worthy of the Lady Theodora's confidence." She seemed somewhat disappointed at the coldness of his answer, nevertheless her quick perception showed her where she had scored a point, in making an inroad upon his heart. And her critical eye could not but approve of the proud attitude he assumed, the look that had come into his face. She edged a little closer to him and continued in a subdued tone. "A woman is always lonely and helpless--no matter what may be her station. How liable we are to be deceived or--misjudged. But I knew from the first that I could trust you. Do you remember when we first met in the Navona?" Again the warm crimson of the cheek, again the speaking flash from those luring eyes. Tristan's heart began to beat with a strange sensation of excitement and surprise. To love this wonder of all women--to be loved by her in return--life would indeed be one mad delirium. "How could I forget it?" he said, more warmly than he intended, meeting her gaze. "It was on the day when I arrived in Rome." Her eyes beamed on him more benevolently than ever. "I saw you again at Santa Maria of the Aventine. I sent for you," she said, with drooping lids, "because I so wanted some one to confide in. I have no counsellor,--no champion--no friend. The object of hatred to the rabble which stones those to-day before whom it cringed yesterday--I am paying the penalty of the name I bear--kinship to one no longer among the living. But you scorned my messenger. Why did you?" She regarded Tristan with expectant, almost imploring eyes. She saw him struggling for adequate utterance. Continuing, she held out to him her beautiful hands. Her tone was all appeal. "I want you to feel that Theodora is your friend. That you may turn to her in any perplexity that may beset you, that you may call upon her for counsel whenever you are in doubt and know not what to do. And oh! I want you to know above all things how much you could be to me, did you but trust--had not the drop of poison instilled by the Senator set you against the one woman who would make you great, envied above all men on earth!" Tristan bent over Theodora's hands and kissed them. Cool and trusting, yet with a firm grasp, they encircled his burning palms and their whiteness caused his senses to reel. "In what manner can I be of service to the Lady Theodora?" he spoke at last, unable to let go of those wonderful hands that sent the hot blood hurtling to his brain. Theodora's face was very close to his. As she spoke, her perfumed breath softly fanned his cheeks. She spoke with well-studied hesitancy, like a child that, in preferring an overbold request, fears denial in the very utterance. "It is a small thing, I would ask," she said in her wonderfully melodious voice. "I would once again visit the places where I have spent the happy days of my childhood, the galleries and chambers of the Emperor's Tomb. You start, my Lord Tristan! Perchance this speech may sound strange to the ears of one who, though newly arrived in Rome, has heard but vituperations showered upon the head of a defenceless woman, who, if not better, is at least not worse than the rest of her kind. Yes--" she continued, returning the pressure of his fingers and noting, not without inward satisfaction, a soft gleam that had dispelled the sterner look in his eyes, "those were days of innocence and peace, broken only when the older sister, my equal in beauty, began to regard me as a possible rival. Stung by her taunts I leaped to her challenge and the fight for the dominion of Rome was waged between us with all the hot passion of our blood, Marozia conquered, but Death stood by unseen to crown her victory. The Mount of Cloisters is my asylum. The gates of the Emperor's Tomb are sealed to me forever more. Why should Alberic, disregarding the ties of blood, fear a woman--unless he hath deeply wronged her, even as he has wronged another who wears the crown of thorns upon earth?" Theodora paused, her lids half-shut as if to repress a tear; in reality to scan the face of him who found her tale most strange indeed. And, verily, Tristan was beginning to feel that he could not depend upon himself much longer. The subdued lights, the heavy perfume, the room itself, the seductive beauty of this sorceress so near to him that her breath fanned his cheeks, the touch of her hands, which had not relinquished his own, were making wild havoc with his senses and reason. Like many a gentle and inexperienced nature, Tristan shrank from offending a woman's delicacy, by even appearing to question the truth of her words, and he doubted not but that here was a woman who had been sinned against much more than she had sinned, a woman capable of gentler, nobler impulses than were credited to her in the common reckoning. It required indeed a powerful constraint upon his feelings not to give way to the starved impulse that drove him to forget past, present and future in her embrace. A sad smile played about the small crimson mouth as Theodora, with a sigh, continued: "I have quaffed the joys of life. There is nothing that has remained untasted. And yet--I am not happy. The fires of unrest drive me hither and thither. After years of fiercest conflict, with those of my own sex and age, who consider Rome the lawful prey of any one that may usurp Marozia's fateful inheritance, I have had a glimpse of Heaven--a Heaven that perchance is not for me. Yet it aroused the desire for peace--happiness--love! Yes, my Lord Tristan, love! For though I have searched for it in every guise, I found it not. Will the hour every toll--even for me? Deem you, my Lord Tristan, that even one so guilt lost as Theodora might be loved?" "How were it possible," he stammered, "for mortal eyes to resist such loveliness?" His words sounded stilted in his ears. Yet he knew if he permitted the impulse to master him he would be swept away by the torrent. The woman also knew, and woman-like she felt that the poison rankled in his veins. She must give it time to work. She must not precipitate a scene that might leave him sobered, when the fumes had cleared from his brain. Putting all the witchery of her beauty into her words she said, with a tinge of sadness: "I fear I am trespassing, my Lord Tristan. It is so long, since I have unveiled the depths of my heart. Forget the request I have made. It may conflict with your loyalty to my Lord Alberic. I shall try to foster the memories of the place which I dare not enter--" She had ventured all upon the last throw, and she had conquered. "Nay, Lady Theodora," Tristan interposed, with a seriousness that even staggered the woman. "There is no such clause or condition in the agreement between the Lord Alberic and myself. It is true," he added in a solemn tone, "he has warned me of you, as his enemy. Report speaks ill of you. Nevertheless I believe you." "I thank you, my Lord Tristan," she said, releasing his hands. "Theodora never forgets a service. Three nights hence I am giving a feast to my friends. You will not fail me?" "I am happy to know," he said, "that the Lady Theodora thinks kindly of me. I shall not fail her. And now"--he added, genuine regret in his tone--"will the Lady Theodora permit me to depart? The hour waxes late and there is much to be done ere the morrow's dawn." Theodora clapped her hands and Persephoné appeared between the curtains. "Farewell, my Lord Tristan. We shall speak of this again," she said, beaming upon him with all the seductive fire of her dark eyes, and he, bowing, took his leave. When Persephoné returned, she was as much puzzled at the inscrutable smile that played about her mistress' lips as she had been at Tristan's abstracted state of mind, for, hardly noting her presence, he had walked in silence beside her to the gate, and had there taken silent leave.-- CHAPTER VI THE LURE OF THE ABYSS The sun had sunk to rest in fleecy clouds of crimson and gold. The clear and brilliant moonlight of Italy enveloped hill and dale, bathing in its effulgence the groves, palaces and ruins of the Eternal City. The huge pile of the Colosseum was bathed in its rosy glow, raising itself in serene majesty towards the beaming night sky. A few hours later a great change had come over the heavens. The wind had sprung up and had driven the little downy clouds of sunset into a great, black mass, which it again tore into flying tatters that it swept before it. The moon rose and raced through the dun and silver. Below it, in the vast spaces of the deserted amphitheatre, from whose vomitories pale ghosts seemed to flit, the big boulders and rain-left pools looked dim and misty. Night had cast her leper's cloak on nature and the moon seemed the leprous face. Deepest silence reigned, broken only by the occasional hoot of an owl, or the swishing of a bat that whirled its crazy flight in and out the labyrinthine corridors. By the largest of these boulders stood the dark cloaked form of a man. As the moon-thrown shadows of the clouds swept over him and the rude rock by which he stood looking up at the sky, his black mantle flapped in the wind and clung to his limbs, making him look even taller than he was. At the feet of Basil cowered the huge Molossian hound. As the wind grew stronger and the clouds above assumed more fantastic shapes, it raised its head and gave voice to a low whine. On the distant hillocks a myriad dusky flames seemed to writhe and hiss and dart through tinted moon-gleams. Three times he whistled--and in the misty, moonlit expanse countless forms, as weird as himself, seemed to rise and form a great circle about him. Were they the creatures of his brain which had at last given way in the excitement of the hour? Were they phantoms of mist and moon, wreathing round him from the desolate marshes? Or were they real beings of flesh and blood, congregations of crime and despair, mad with the misery of a starving century, the horrors of serfdom and oppression that had united in the great reel of a Witches' Sabbat? Round him they circled, at first slowly,--like the curls of a marsh, then faster and ever faster, till his eyes could scarcely follow them as they rotated about him in their horrible dance of madness and sin. Black clouds raced over the moon. The reddish gleam of a forked tongue of fire illumined the dark heavens, and thunder went pealing down the hills. Suddenly out of the underbrush arose a black form, about the height and breadth of a man, but without the distinct outlines of one. Basil's face grew white as death, and his gaze became fixed as he clutched at the rock for support. But the next moment he seemed to gain his reassurance from the knowledge that he had seen this phantom before. The dog lay at his feet and continued its low tremulous whine. "You have kept the tryst," gibbered the bent form as it slowly approached, supporting itself upon a crooked staff of singular height. "Else were I not the man to compel fate to do my bidding," responded the Grand Chamberlain. "Fear can have no part in the compact which binds us. I have live things under my feet that clog my steps and grow more stubborn day by day."-- "Deem you, you can keep your footing in the black lobbies of hell?" gibbered the cowled form. "For you will need all your courage, if you would reach the goal!" Basil, for a moment, faced his shadowy interlocutor in silence. There was a darker light in his eyes when he spoke. "Give me but that which my soul desires and I shall run the gauntlet unflinchingly. I shall brace my courage to the dread experiment." A fierce gust of wind shook the cypresses and holm oaks into shuddering anxiety. "You are about to embark upon an enterprise more perilous than any man now living has ever ventured upon," spoke the cowled form. "Your soul will travel through the channels, through which the red and fiery tide rolls up when the volcano wakes. Each time it wakes the lava washes over the lost souls, which, chained to rings in the black rock, glow like living coals, but leaves them whole, to undergo their fate anew. Do you persist?" "Give me what I desire--" "Ay--so say they all--but to grovel in the dust before the Unknown Presence which they have defied." "Who are you to taunt me with a fear my soul knows not?" Basil turned to the black-robed form, stretching out his hand as if to touch his mantle. A magnetic current passed through his limbs that caused him to drop his arm with a cry of pain. Forked lightnings leaped from one cloud-bank to another. Distant thunder growled and died among the hills. "I have seen the fall of Nineveh and Babylon. I was present at the destruction of the Holy City by the legions of Titus, I witnessed the burning of Rome by Nero and the fall of the temple of Serapis. I stood upon Mount Calvary under the shadow of the world's greatest tragedy." The voice of the speaker died to silence. Basil's hand went to his head, as if he wished to assure himself whether he was awake or in the throes of some mad dream. It is a narrow boundary line, that divides the two great realms of sanity and madness. And the limits are as restless as those of two countries divided from each other by a network of shifting rivers. What belonged to the one overnight may belong to the other to-morrow. An overmastering dread had seized upon Basil at the speech of the uncanny apparition. Was not he, too, pushing his excursions now into the one realm, now into the other? And who would know in which of the two to seek for him? "Have you indeed wandered upon earth ever since those days?" he stammered, once more slave to his superstition. The apparition nodded. "I have drunk deep from the black wells of despair. I have raised the shadowy altars of him who was cast out of the heavens, higher and higher, till they almost touch the throne of the Father." "Your master then is Lucifer--" "Cannot the Fiend as well as God live incarnate in human clay? Is not the earth the meeting ground of Heaven and Hell? Why should not Basil, the Grand Chamberlain, be Hell's incarnation?"-- "What then must I do to deserve the crimson aureole?" "Espouse the cause of him who rules the shadows. He will give to you what your soul desires. One of the shadowy congregation that rules the world through fear, make quick wings for Time, that crawls through eternity like a monstrous snake, while with starved desire your eyes glare at the fleeting things of life--dominion, power and love, that you may snatch from fate! Only by becoming one of us can your soul slake its thirst. Speak--for my time is brief--" When Basil turned towards the bent form of the speaker his gaze fell upon a gleaming knife which Bessarion had produced from under the loose folds of his gown. For a moment the two stood face to face. Neither spoke, each seemingly intent upon fathoming the thoughts of the other. The wind hissed and screamed through the corridors of the Colosseum. It was Basil who broke the silence. "What is it, you want?" "Bare your left arm!" There was a natural hollow in the rock, that the weather had scooped out in the stone altar. Basil obeyed. The gibbering voice rose again above the silence. "Hold it over the basin!" The lightnings twisted and streamed like silvery adders through the dark vaults of the heavens, and terrific peals of thunder shook the shuddering world in its foundations. The bent form raised the knife. Three drops of blood dripped, one by one, into the hollow of the stone. Bessarion chanted some words in an unintelligible jargon as, with a claw-like hand, he bound up the wound in Basil's arm. "At midnight--in the Catacombs of St. Calixtus--you will stand face to face with the Presence," the apparition spoke once more. The next moment, after a fantastic salutation, he had vanished, as if the earth had swallowed him, behind a projecting rock. Basil remained for a time in deep rumination. The Molossian hound rose up from the ground as soon as the adept of the black arts had disappeared, and, sitting on its haunches, gazed inquisitively into its master's face. Suddenly it uttered a growl. At the next moment the misshapen form of an African Moor crouched at the feet of the Grand Chamberlain. Noiselessly and swiftly as a panther he had sped through the waste spaces of the amphitheatre, and even Basil could not overcome a feeling of revulsion as he gazed into the hairy, bestial features of Daoud, whom he employed when secrecy and despatch were essential to the success of a venture. Red inflamed eyelids gleamed from a face whose cadaverous tints seemed enhanced by wiry black hair that hung in disordered strands from under a broad Spanish hat. Daoud was undersized in stature, but possessed prodigious strength, and the size of his hands argued little in favor of him who had incurred the disfavor of his master or his own. This monster in human guise Basil had acquired from a certain nobleman in the suite of the Byzantine ambassador extraordinary to the Holy See. Basil looked up at the moon which just then emerged from the shadow of a cloud. Then he gave a nod of satisfaction. "Your promptness argues well for your success," he turned to his runner who was cowering at his feet, the ashen face with the blinking and inflamed eyes raised to his master. "Know you the road to southward, my good Daoud?" The Moor gave a nod and Basil proceeded. "You must depart this very night. Take the road that leads by Benevento to the Shrines of the Archangel. You will overtake the Senator and deliver into his hands this token. You will return forthwith and bring to me--his answer. Do I make myself quite clear to your understanding, my good Daoud?" The Moor fell prostrate and touched Basil's buskin with his forehead. "Up!" the latter spurned the kneeling brute. "To-morrow night must find you in the Witches' City." With these words he placed into the Moor's hand a small article, carefully tied and sealed. The twain exchanged a mute glance of mutual understanding, then Daoud gave a bound, darted forward and shot away like an arrow from the bow. Almost instantly he was out of sight. The hound bounded after him but, obedient to his master's call, instantly returned to the latter's feet. For some time Basil remained near the rock where the weird ceremony had taken place. "The Rubicon is passed," he muttered. "The stars--or the abyss." Then, slowly quitting the stupendous ruins of the Amphitheatre, he took the direction of the Catacombs of St. Calixtus. CHAPTER VII THE FACE IN THE PANEL On the following day Tristan entered upon his duties as captain of the Senator's guard. The first person upon whom he chanced on his rounds at the Lateran was the Grand Chamberlain, who inquired affably how his penitences were progressing and expressed the hope that he had received final absolution, and that his sins would not weigh too heavily upon his soul. Basil commended him for his zeal in the cause of the Senator, hinting incidentally that his duties between the Lateran and Castel San Angelo need not deprive him of the society of the fair Roman ladies, who would welcome the stranger from Provence and would doubtlessly enmesh his heart, if it were not well guarded. He then proceeded to caution Tristan with respect to his exalted prisoner. Numerous attempts at abduction had been made from time to time, Tristan having, by his prowess and daring, prevented the last, emanating doubtlessly from the Pontiff's nearest kith and kin. The men under him could be fully relied upon. Nevertheless, it behooved him to be circumspect. After a time Basil departed, and Tristan went about his business, inspecting the guard and familiarizing himself with the place where he was to keep his first watch. The level beams of the evening sun filled the Basilica of St. John in Laterano. There were pearl lights and lights of sapphire; falling radiances of emerald and blood-red; vague translucent greens, that seemed to tremble under spiral clouds of incense. Now the sun was sinking behind Mount Janiculum. The clouds at the zenith of the heavens were rose-hued, but it was growing dark in the valleys, and the great church began to take on sombre hues. It seemed to frown upon him, to warn him not to enter, an impression he was long afterwards to remember, as he strode through the high-vaulted corridors. He hesitated, till the sound of a distant chant reached his ear. With a sort of fascination he could not account for, he watched the advance of the slowly gathering gloom, as an increasing greyness stole into the chapels. Evening was about to take the veil of night. The light left the stained-glass windows and the church grew darker and darker. The altar steps lay now in purple shadows that were growing deeper and denser each moment. Shadowy forms seemed to be moving about in the sanctuaries. Soon a monk entered with a taper, lighting the lights before some remote shrines. Tristan could not distinguish his features, for the light was very dim. Yet it enabled him to see that there were a few belated worshippers in the church. After a time the great nave was deserted. As the lone monk passed quickly through a sphere of thin light, Tristan gave a start. It seemed a ghost in a cassock that had vanished in the sacristy. He told himself that the impression was absurd, but he could not throw it off. He had caught a momentary glimpse of a face that had no human likeness, and the way in which the cassock had flapped about the limbs of the fleeting form seemed to suggest that it clothed a frame that had lost its flesh. Superstitious fear began to creep over him. He felt that he must seek the open, escape the haunting incense-saturated pall, these dim sepulchral chapels. Such light as there was, save what emanated from the candles on the altar, came from a stone lamp which cast its glimmer on the vanishing form. In every corner of the vast nave now lay fast gathering darkness. The figures of the saints seemed vague and formless. The altar loomed dim in the shadows. All these things Tristan noted. The whole interior of the church was now steeped in the dense pall of night, illumined only by the faint radiance of the lamp upon the altar, which seemed rather to intensify than to lift the gloom. A faint footfall was audible behind the carven screen, near the entrance to the chapels. A figure, almost lost in the gloom, glided into the nave, and shadows were falling about him like thin veils. It was an unusual hour for monks to be abroad. None the less, he seemed sure of himself, for he proceeded without hesitation to the altar, shrouded as it was in utter darkness, but for the light of one faint taper, which gleamed afar, like a star in the nocturnal heavens, driving the gloom a few paces from the carven stone. There the shrouded form seemed to melt into the very pall of night that weighed heavily upon the time-stained walls of the Mother Church of Rome. At first Tristan thought it was some belated penitent seeking forgiveness for his sins, but when the dark-robed form did not return he strode towards the altar to see if he might perchance be of assistance to him. When Tristan reached the altar steps he could discover no trace of a human being, though he searched every nook and corner and peered into every chapel, examined every shrine. Seized with a strange restiveness he began to pace up and down before the altar steps. He was far from feeling at ease. He remembered the warning of the Grand Chamberlain. He remembered the strange tales he had heard whispered of the Pontiff's prison house. Tristan suddenly paused. He thought he heard sibilant whispers and the low murmur of voices from behind the screen at the eastern transept of the Capella, and at once he began assembling the things in his mind which might beset him in the hour of darkness. The Chapel of the Most Holy Saviour of the Holy Stairs, the Scala Santa of the present day, adjoins the Lateran Church. At the period of which we write it was still the private chapel of the popes in the Patriarchium, and was called the Sancta Sanctorum on account of the great number of precious relics it enshrines. To this chapel Tristan directed his steps, oppressed by some mysterious sense of evil. By a judicious disposition of the men under his command he had, after a careful survey of the premises, placed them in such a manner that it would be impossible for any one to gain access to the stairs leading to the Pontiff's chamber. Had it been a hallucination of his senses conjured up by his sudden fear? Not a sound broke the stillness. Only the echoes of his own footsteps reverberated uncannily from the worn mosaics of the floor. In the dim distance of the corridors he saw a shadow moving to and fro. It was the guard before the entrance to a side-chapel of the Basilica. What caused Tristan to pause in the night gloom of the corridor leading to the Pontifical Chapel he did not know. He seemed as under a strange spell. At a distance from him of some five feet, in the decorated wall, there was a dark panel some two feet in height and of corresponding breadth, looking obliquely towards the Pontifical Chapel. The panel contained a small round opening, a spy-hole which communicated with a secret chamber in the thickness of the wall. A slight rustling noise came from behind the masonry. Tristan heard it quite distinctly. It suggested the passing of naked feet over marble. Suddenly, noiselessly the panel parted. A sudden gleam of white, blinding light shot into the chapel like a spear of silver. Tristan paused with a start, looking swiftly and inquiringly at the black slit in the wall and as he did so the spear of light shifted a little in its passing. A face, white with the pallor of death, ghastly and hideous as a corpse that has retained upon its set features the agony of dying, peered out from blackness into blackness. A tremor shook Tristan's frame from head to toe. He could not have cried out, had he wished to. He felt as one grazed by a lightning bolt. Then, in a flash that made his heart and soul shudder within him, he knew. He had seen looking at him a face--the clean shaven face of a man. But it was not human. It bore the terrible stigmata of the unquenchable fire; an abominable vision of the lust that cannot be satiated, the utter, unconquerable, fiendish malevolence of Hell. A harsh, raven-like croak broke the stillness, and at the sound of that cry the terrible face vanished with the swiftness of a trick. Instead, a long arm, clothed in a black sleeve, stole through the opening. A flash, keen as that of the lightning, cut the air and a dagger struck the mosaic floor at Tristan's feet with such force that its point snapped after shattering the stone, drawing fire from the impact. Bounding back, Tristan uttered a shrill cry of terror, but when he looked in the direction of the panel only dim dun dusk met his eyes. Rushing frantically from the corridor he now called with all his might. His outcries brought the guards to the scene. Briefly, incoherently, almost mad with terror, he told his tale. They listened with an air of amazement in which surprise held no small share. Then they accompanied him back to the chapel. Arriving near the spot he was about to point to the dagger, to corroborate his wild tale. But the dagger had disappeared. Only the shattered marble of the floor lent testimony and credence to his words. On the following morning an outcry of horror arose from all quarters of Rome. On the night which preceded it, the Holy Host had been taken from the Pontifical Chapel in the Lateran. CHAPTER VIII THE SHADOW OF ASRAEL It was ten in the morning. Deep silence reigned in the strange walled garden on the Pincian Hill that surrounded the marble villa of the Grand Chamberlain. Only the murmur of the city below and the soft sounds of bells from tower and campanile seemed to break the dreamlike stillness as they began to toll for High Mass. In a circular chamber lighted only by lamps, for there were no windows, and daylight never penetrated there, before an onyx table covered with strange globes and philtres, sat Basil. The walls of the chamber were of wood stained purple. The far wall was hidden by shelves on which were many rolls of vellum and papyrus, spoils of pagan libraries of the past. There were the works of monks from all the monasteries of Europe, illuminated by master hands, the black letter pages glowing with red and gold, almost priceless even then. In one corner of the room stood an iron chest, secured by locks. What this contained no one even dared to guess. As the chimes from churches and convents reached his ears, Basil's face paled. Something began to stir in the dark unfathomable eyes as some unknown thing stirs in deep water. Some nameless being was looking out of those windows of the soul. Yet the rest of the face was unruffled and expressionless, and the contrast was so horrible that a spectator would have shrank away, cold fear gripping his heart, and perhaps a cry upon his lips. Basil had closed the heavy bronze doors behind him when he had entered from the atrium. The floor of colored marbles was flooded with the light from the bronze lamps. Before him was a short passage, hardly more than an alcove, terminating in a door of cedarwood behind a purple curtain. In the dull yellow gleam of the lamps the chamber seemed cold, full of chill and musty air. In a moment however the lamps seemed to burn more brightly, as Basil's eyes became adjusted to their lights. There was the silence of the tomb. The lamps burnt without a flicker, for there was not a breath of air to disturb their steady glow. The plan of the room, its yellow lights, its silence, its entire lack of correspondence with the outside world, was Basil's own. He had designed it as a port, as it were, whence to put out to sea upon the tide of his ever-changing moods in the black barque of sin. For some time he remained alone in the silent room, dreaming and brooding over greatness and power, that terrible megalomania that is the last and rarest madness of all. He had read of Caligula, Nero, and Domitian, of Heliogabalus, whose madness passed the bounds of the imaginable. Like gold and purple clouds, bursting with sombre light and power, they had passed over Rome and were gone. Then thoughts of the popes came to him, those supreme rulers of the temporal and spiritual world whose dominion had been so superb, since they first began to crown the emperors, one hundred and thirty-five years ago. In a monstrous and swiftly moving panorama they passed through a brain that worked as if it were packed in ice. And yet one and all had gone into the dark. The power of none had been lasting and complete. But into his reverie stole a secret glow, into his blood an intense, ecstatic quickening. For them the hour had tolled. Each step in life was but one nearer the grave. Not so was it to be with him. A black fire began to burn round his heart, coiling there like a serpent, as he thought of the illumination that was his, the promise he had received--deep down in the crypts of the Emperor's Tomb and again in the Catacombs of St. Calixtus. And he had fallen down and worshipped, had given his soul to Darkness and abjured the Light. Satan should rule again on earth. For this had been revealed to him by the High Priest of Satan himself, then in a vision by the Lord of Evil. To penetrate the mysteries of Hell with his whole heart and soul, to strike chill terror into the hearts of those who worshipped at the altars of Christ, had become Basil's ambition for which he would live and die. Basil sat dreaming and gloating over his coming glory; a glory in which the woman whose beauty had stung him with maddening desire should share, even if he had to drag her before the dark throne upon which sat the Unspeakable Presence. The yellow light of the lamps fell upon his unnatural and mask-like face as he sat rigid in his chair hypnotized by Hell. Christ had thrown his great Cross upon the feasts and banquets of the gods. On his head was a crown of thorns and the Stigmata upon his hands and feet. And the goblets of red gold had lost their brightness. The pagan gods were stricken dumb. They had faded away in vapor and were gone. And with them the fierce joy of living had left the world. Christ reigned upon earth, implanting conscience in the souls of men, that robbed ecstasy of its fruition and infused the most delicious cup touched with the Aliquid Amari of the poet. Basil paced the narrow confines of the room, and from his lips came the opening stanza of that dreadful parody of the Good Friday hymn sung by the votaries of Satan: "Vexilla Regis Prodeunt Inferni." Already the banners of the advancing hosts were in the sky. Soon--soon would he appear himself--the Lord of Darkness! The room suddenly grew very chill, as if the three dread winds of Cocytus were blowing through the chamber. There was a slim rod of copper suspended from the wall, close to the couch of dull grey damask upon which he had been reclining. He pulled it and somewhere away in the villa a gong sounded. A moment later a drab man, lean as a skeleton and bald as an egg, with slanting eyes in an ashen face and a stooping gait, came gliding noiselessly into the lamplit room. He wore a long black cassock, which covered his fleshless form from head to toe. "Has no one called?" Basil turned to his factotum. "A stranger," came the sepulchral reply. "He bade me give you this!" Basil took the scroll which his famulus handed to him and cut the cord. A fiendish smile passed over his face and lighted up the dark, sinister eyes. But quickly as the mood had come it left. It fell from him as a dropped cloak. He stood upright, supporting himself on the onyx table, while Horus, who only understood in a dull dim way his master's moods, assisting him in all his villainies, but confessing his own share to a household priest, stood impassively by. "Give me some wine!" Basil turned to the sinister Major Domo, and the latter disappeared and returned with a jug of Malvasian. The Grand Chamberlain grasped the jug which Horus had brought him and held it with shaking fingers to his mouth. When he had drank deep he dismissed his famulus, struck a flint and burnt the scroll to pallid ashes. Then he staggered out into the hall of colored marbles and through it to the garden doors. The bronze gates trembled as they swung back upon their hinges, and as the full noon of the quiet garden burst upon Basil's eyes he fancied he saw the fold of a dark robe disappear among the cypresses. And now the hot air of high noon wrapped him round with its warm southern life, flowing over the lithe body within the silken doublet, drawing away the inward darkness and the vaulting flames within his soul and reminding his sensuous nature that the future held gigantic promise of love and power. The great tenor and alto bells of St. John in Lateran were beating the echoes to silver far away. The roofs and palaces, domes and towers of Rome, were bathed in sunlight as he advanced to the embrasure in the wall and once more surveyed the city. The heat shimmered down and, through the quivering sunlit air, the colors of the buildings shone like pebbles at the bottom of a pool and the white ruins glowed like a mirage of the desert. An hour later, regardless of the vertical sun rays that beat down upon the tortuous streets of the city with unabated fervor, the Grand Chamberlain rode through the streets of Rome, attended by a group of men-at-arms with the crest of the Broken Spear in a Field of Azure embroidered upon their doublets. As the cavalcade swept through the crowded streets, with their pilgrims from all parts of the world, the religious in their habits, men-at-arms, flower-sellers, here and there the magnificent chariot of a cardinal, many of the people lowered their eyes as Basil cantered past on his black Neapolitan charger, trapped with crimson. More than one made the sign of the horn, to avert the spell of the evil eye. When Basil reached the Lateran he found a captain of the noble guard with two halberdiers in their unsightly liveries guarding the doors. They saluted and Basil inquired whether the new captain of the guard was within. "The Lord Tristan is within," came the reply, and Basil entered, motioning to his escort to await his return outside. The Grand Chamberlain traversed several anterooms, speaking to one or the other of the senatorial guard, and on every face he read consternation and fear. Little groups of priests stood together in corners, whispering among each other; the whole of the Lateran was aroused as by a secret dread. Such deeds, though they were known to have occurred, were never spoken of, and the priests of the various churches that had suffered desecration wisely kept their own counsel. In this, the darkest age in the history of Rome, when crime and lust and murder lurked in every corner, an outrage such as this struck every soul with horror and awe. It was unthinkable, unspeakable almost, suggesting dark mysteries and hidden infamies of Hell, which caused the blood to run cold and the heart to freeze. When Basil had made his way through the crowded corridors, receiving homage, though men looked askance at him as he passed, he came to a chamber usually reserved for a waiting room in times when the Pontiff received foreign envoys or members of the priesthood and nobility; a privilege from which the unfortunate prisoner in the Lateran was to be forever debarred. Basil entered this chamber, giving orders that he was to be in no wise disturbed until he called and those outside heard him lock and bar the door from within. In the exact centre of the wall, reaching within two feet of the ground, there was a large picture of St. Sebastian, barbarously painted by some unknown artist. Basil approached the picture and pressed upon the flat frame with all his strength. There was a sudden click, a whirring, as of the wheels of a clock. Then the picture swung inward, revealing a circular stairway of stone, mounting upward. Without replacing the panel door, Basil mounted the stairs for nearly a hundred steps, until he came to a door upon which he beat with the hilt of his poniard. An answering knock came from within, and the door opened. Basil entered a small chamber, lighted from above by a window in a small dome. A bat-like figure stood before a table covered with strange manuscripts. As Basil entered, a thin black arm emerged from the folds of the gown, which the inmate of the chamber wore. Then, with a quick bird-like movement, an immensely thin hand twisted like a claw, wrinkled, yellow and of incredible age, was stretched out toward the newcomer. On the second finger of this claw was a certain ring. Basil bent and kissed the ring. There was another deft and almost imperceptible movement. When the hand reappeared the ring was gone. "It has been done?" Basil turned to the dark-robed form in bated whispers. The voice that answered seemed to come from a great distance. The lips in the waxen face scarcely moved. They parted, that was all. Yet the words were audible and distinct. "It was done. Last night." "You were not seen?" "I wore the mask." "Is it here?" Basil queried, his eyes flickering with a faint reflection of that hate which had blazed in them earlier in the day. "It is not here." "Where is it?" "You shall know to-night!" The light faded out of Basil's eyes. "What of the new captain?" "His presence is a menace." In Basil's eyes gleamed a sombre fire. "I, too, owe him a grudge. In good time!" "The time is Now!" "Patience!" replied the Grand Chamberlain. "He will work his own undoing. We dare not harm him yet." "Only a miracle saved him last night." "Are there not other churches in Rome?"-- "Ay!" mouthed the black form. "But the time of the great sacrifice draws near--" "I knew not it was so near at hand," interposed Basil with a start. "The Becco Notturno demands a bride!" "How am I to help you in these matters?" "Am I to counsel the Lord Basil?" sneered the shape. "You drew the crimson ball." "When is it to be?" "Three weeks from to-night. Mark you--a stainless dove!" Basil nodded, an evil smile upon his lips. "It shall be as you say! As for that other--I am minded to try his mettle--" "So be it!" said the shape. "Leave me now! You will hear from me. My familiars are everywhere." Without another word Basil arose and left the chamber. In the corridor below he met Tristan. "I know all," he cut short the speech of the new captain of the guard. "All Rome is full of it. How did it happen? And where?" "Attracted by a noise as of slippered feet passing over marble, I entered the corridor of the Sacred Stairs, when one of the panels parted. A devilish apparition stood within, throwing the beam of its lantern into the chapel. When a chance ray of light disclosed my presence the shape of darkness hurled a poniard. It missed me, thanks be to Our Lady, struck the mosaic of the floor and broke in two." "You have the pieces?" Basil queried affably and with much concern. "I ran to the end of the gallery, shouting to my men," Tristan replied. "When we returned the blade had disappeared." "Where was it?" Basil queried with much concern and soon they faced the shattered mosaic. Basil examined the spot minutely. "From yonder panel, you say?" he turned to Tristan. "The third from the Capella," came the ready reply. "Have you searched the premises?" "From cellar to garret."-- "And discovered nothing?" "Nothing." "What of the panel?" "It defies our combined efforts." "Strange, indeed." Basil strode to the wall and struck the spot indicated by Tristan with the hilt of his poniard. Then he tested the wall on either side. "Can your ear detect any difference in sound?" A negative gesture came in response, and with it a puzzled look passed into Tristan's eyes. "Have you seen the Pontiff?" "We reported the matter to His Holiness." "And?" "His Holiness raised his eyes to heaven and said: 'Even God's Vicar has no jurisdiction in Hell!'" "Was that all he said?" "That was all!" There was a silence during which Basil seemed to commune with himself. "It is indeed a matter of grave concern," he said at last. "Treason stalks everywhere. I will send for my Spanish Captain, Don Garcia. He may be of assistance to you." And Basil turned and walked down the corridor. After a time Tristan walked out upon the terrace looking toward the Coelian Hill. A brilliant light beat upon domes and spires and pinnacles, and flooded the august ruins of the Cæsars on the distant Palatine and the thousand temples of the Holy Cross with scintillating radiance which poured down from the intense blue of heaven.-- The long lights of the afternoon were shifting towards the eventide, giving place to a limpid and colorless light that silvered the adjacent olive groves. Tristan roused himself with a start. The sense of moving like a ghost among a world of ghosts had left him. He was once more awake and aware. But even now his sorrow, his fears, his hopes of winning again to some safe harbor in the storm tossed Odyssey of his life, were numbed. They lay heavy within him, but without urgency or appeal. What did it matter after all? Life was a little thing, a forlorn minstrel that evoked melancholy strains from a pipe of oaten straw. Life was a little thing, nor death a great one. For his part he would not be loth to take his poppies and fall asleep. At one time or another such moods must come to all of us and be endured. We must enter into the middle country, that dull Sahara of the soul, a broad belt of barren land where no angels seem to walk by our side, nor can the false voices of demons lure us to our harm. This is the land where we are imprisoned by the deeds of others and never by our own. What we do ourselves will send us to Heaven or to Hell; but not to the middle country where the plains of disillusion are. At last the sunset came. The ashen color of the olive-trees flashed out into silver, the undulating peaks of the Sabine Mountains became faintly flushed and phantom fair, as in a tempest of fire the sun sank to rest. The groves of ilex and arbutus seemed to tremble with delight, as the long red heralds touched their topmost boughs. The whole landscape seemed to smile a farewell to departing day. The chimes of the Angelus trembled on the purple dusk. Night came on apace. Tristan re-entered the Lateran Basilica, set the watch and arranged with Don Garcia to spend the night in the sacristy, while Don Garcia was to guard the approaches to the Pontifical Chapel to prevent a recurrence of the horrible sacrilege of the preceding night. One by one the worshippers left the vast nave of the church. After a time the sacristans closed the heavy bronze doors and extinguished the lights, all but the one upon the altar. When they, too, had departed, and deepest silence filled the sacred spaces, Tristan emerged from a side chapel and took his station near the entrance to the sacristy, where, on the preceding night, he had seen the shadow disappear. How long he had been there in dread and wonder he did not know, when two cloaked and hooded figures emerged slowly out of the gloom. He could not tell whence they came or whether they had been there all the time. They bent their steps towards the sacristy and, as they were about to pass Tristan in his hiding-place, they paused as if conscious of another presence. "As we proceed in this matter," whispered the one voice, "I grow fearful. You know my relations to the Senator--" "Your anxiety moves me not," croaked the other voice. "Deem you to attain your ends by mortal means?" The voice caused Tristan to shudder as with an ague, though he saw not him who spoke. "What of yourself?" whispered the first speaker. "Have you forgotten," came the hoarse reply, "that either I am soulless, or else my spirit, damned from its beginning, will scarce be saved by the grace of Him I dare not name! You are defiled in the very conversing with me." The tone in which these words were spoken, either defied answer, or, if a response was made, it did not reach Tristan's ears as they slowly, noiselessly, proceeded upon their way. Tristan vaguely listened for the echo of their retreating footsteps as, passing behind the altar, they disappeared, as if the earth had swallowed them. Now he was seized with a terrible fear. What, if they were to repeat the sacrilege? He thought he recognized the voice of the first speaker; but this no doubt was but a trick of his excited imagination. Determined to prevent so terrible a crime, he crept cautiously down the narrow passage through which they had disappeared. Six steps he counted, then he found himself in a room which seemed to be part of the sacristy, yet not a part, for a postern stood open through which gleamed the misty moonlight. There was little doubt in Tristan's mind that they had passed out through this postern which had been left unguarded, and he found his conjectures confirmed, when his eye, accustoming itself to the radiance without, saw two misty figures passing along the road that leads past the Coelian Hill through fields of ruins. Taking care so they would not be attracted by the sound of his steps, Tristan crept in the shadows of roofless columns, shattered porticoes and dismantled temples, half hidden amid the dark foliage that sprang up among the very fanes and palaces of old. At times he lost sight of his quarry. Again they would rise up before him like evil spirits wandering through space. As Tristan continued in his pursuit, he began to be beset by dire misgivings. The twain had vanished as utterly as if the earth had swallowed them and he paused in his pursuit to gain his bearings. Had he followed two phantoms or two beings in the flesh? Had he abandoned his watch for two penitents who had perchance been locked in the church? What might not be happening at the Lateran at this very moment! How would Don Garcia construe his absence? A tremor passed through his limbs. He started to retrace his steps, but some unknown agency compelled him onward. Penetrating the gloomy foliage, Tristan found himself before a large ruin, grey and roofless, from the interior of which came, muffled and indistinct, the sound of voices. Two men were stealthily creeping beneath the shadow of a wall that extended for some distance from the ruin. Both wore long monkish garbs and were muffled from head to toe. Over their faces they wore vizors with slits for eyes and mouth. One of the twain was spare, yet muscular. His companion walked with a stooping gait and supported himself by a staff. The light which had attracted Tristan, emanated from a lantern which they had placed on the ground and which they could shade at will, but which cast its fitful glimmer over the grass plot, revealing what appeared to be a grave, from which the mould had been thrown up. At a short distance there stood a black and stunted yew tree. Before this they paused. Now, from under his black cassock, the taller produced a strange object, the nature of which Tristan was unable to discover by the fitful light of the moon. No sooner was it revealed to his companion, than the latter began to chant a weird incantation, in which he who held the strange object joined. Louder and more strident grew their voices, and, notwithstanding the warmth of the summer night, Tristan felt an icy shudder permeate his whole being while, with a strange fascination, he watched the twain. Now he who supported himself by a staff uttered a shrill inarticulate outcry, and, producing a long, gleaming knife from under his cassock, stabbed the thing viciously, while his voice rose in mad, strident screams: "Emen Hetan! Emen Hetan! Palu! Baalberi! Emen Hetan!" The fit of madness seemed to have caught his companion. Producing a knife similar to that of the other he, too, stabbed the object he held in his hand, shrieking deliriously: "Agora! Agora! Patrisa! Agora!" An hour was to come when Tristan was to learn the terrible import of the apparently meaningless jumble which struck his ear with mad discordance. Suddenly he felt upon himself the insane gleam of two eyes, peering from the slits of the bent figure's mask. There was a death-like stillness, as both looked towards the intruder. Tristan would have fled, but his feet seemed rooted to the spot. His energies were paralyzed as under the influence of a terrible spell. The stooping form raised aloft a small phial. A bluish vapor floated upward, in thin spiral curls. The effect was instantaneous. Tristan was seized by a great drowsiness. His limbs refused to support him. He no longer felt the ground under his feet. His hand went to his head and, reeling like a drunken man, he fell among the tall weeds that grew in riotous profusion around the ancient masonry. The setting moon shone out from behind a fleecy cloud, and in the pallid crimson of her light the ill-famed ruins of the ancient temple of Isis rose weird and ghostly in the summer night. CHAPTER IX THE FEAST OF THEODORA A fairy-like radiance pervaded the great pavilion in the sunken gardens of Theodora on Mount Aventine. It was a vast circular hall, roofed in by a lofty dome of richest malachite, from the centre of which was suspended a huge globe of fire, flinging blood-red rays on the amber colored silken carpets and tapestries that covered floors and walls. The dome was supported by rows upon rows of tall tapering crystal columns, clear as translucent water and green as the grass in spring, and between and beyond these columns were large oval shaped casements set wide open to the summer night, through which the gleam of a broad lake, laden with water lilies, could be seen shimmering in the yellow radiance of the moon. The centre of the hall was occupied by a long table in the form of a horseshoe, upon which glittered vessels of gold, crystal and silver in the sheen of the revolving globe of fire, heaped with all the accessories of a sumptuous banquet, such as might have been spread before the ancient gods of Olympus in the heyday of their legendary prime. Strange scents assailed the nostrils: pomegranate and frankincense, myrrh, spikenard and saffron, cinnamon and calamus mingled their perfume with the insidious distillations of the jasmine, and spiral clouds of incense rose from tripods of bronze to the vaulted ceiling. Inside the horseshoe, black African slaves, attired in fantastic liveries of yellow and blue, crimson and white, orange and green, carried aloft jewelled flagons and goblets, massive gold dishes and great platters of painted earthenware. There were wines from Cyprus and Malvasia, from Montepulciano and the sunny slopes of Hymettus, Chianti and Lacrymae Christi. The almost incredible brilliancy of the assembled company, contrasting with the fantastic background, caught the eye as with a stab of pain, held the gaze for a single instant of frozen incredulity, then gripped the throat in a choking sensation by reason of its wonder. Lounging on divans of velvet and embroidered satin from the looms of fabled Cathay, set in the old Roman fashion round the table, eating, drinking, gossiping and occasionally bursting into wild snatches of song, were a company of distinguished looking personages, richly and brilliantly attired, bent upon enjoying the pleasures offered by the immediate hour. All who laid claim to any distinction in the seven-hilled city were there, the lords of the Campagna and of the adjacent fiefs of the Church. Strangers from all parts of the inhabited globe were there, steeping their bewildered brain in the splendors that assailed their eyes on every point; from Africa and Iceland, from Portugal and India, from Burgundy and Aquitaine, from Granada and from Greece, from Germania and Provence, from Persia and the Baltic shores. Their fantastic and semi-barbaric costumes seemed to enhance the grotesque splendor of the banquet hall. The Romans were acquainting their guests with the exalted rank of the woman who ruled the city as surely as ever had Marozia from the Emperor's Tomb. And the strangers listened wide-eyed and with bated breath. Near the raised dais which Theodora was to occupy, at the head of the table, there were three couches reserved for guests who, like the hostess, had not yet arrived. Below these, by the side of a martial stranger with the air of one who would fain sweep the board clear of his neighbors on either hand, devouring his food in fierce silence, sat the Prefect of Rome, endeavoring to expound the qualities of his countrymen to the silent guest, interspersing his encomiums now and then with a rapturous eulogy of Theodora. "Monstrous times have robbed us Romans of the power of the sword. But they cannot rob us of the power of the spirit, which will endure forever." The stranger replied with a stony stare of contempt. Beside the Lord Atenulf of Benevento sat a tall girl with heavy coils of blue black hair, eyes that smouldered with a sombre light, curved carnation lips set in a perfect, oval face, and seeming more scarlet than they were, owing to her ivory pallor, the tint of the furled magnolia bud which is, perhaps, only seen to perfection in Italy and especially in Rome. She looked at the grave-faced guest with quickened eyes. Snatching some vine leaves from a pyramid of grapes, as purple as the tapestries of Tyre, she arose and laying her hand on the stranger's arm, said laughingly: "Oh, what a brow! Dark as a thundercloud in June. Let me crown you with the leaves of the vine! Perchance the hour will evoke the mood!" She twisted the leaves into a wreath and dropped them lightly on his head. The eyes of the silent guest, set in a face of sanguine color, leered viciously, with the looks of one who believes himself, however mistakenly, master of himself. There was a contemptuous curl about his lips. They were thick lips and florid. "Ah!" he turned to the girl in a barbarous jargon, "you are one of those who go veiled in the streets." And as he spoke his eyes leered with yet livelier malice. The girl shrank back. "Those who go veiled know more than ordinary folk," she replied, then mingled with the other guests. A young woman of great beauty, with light hair and blue eyes, sat beside young Fabio of the Cavalli. Her bare arms, white as snow, and of exquisite contour, encircled his neck, while he drank and drank. Now and then she sipped of the wine, Lacrymae Christi from Viterbo, of the greenish straw color of the chrysoberyl. Some one had put red poppy leaves in Roxana's hair, and as she sat by the side of the youth, she had the air and appearance of a Corybante. Now and then she gave a glance at the purple curtain in the background, and one who watched her closely might have seen a strange sparkle in the depths of her clear blue eyes. With a look of disappointment she turned away, as not a ripple of air stirred the curtain's heavy fold. Then her arms stole anew round the youth, who drained one goblet after another, as if each succeeding one yielded up a new secret to him. Roxana marked it well. Her eyes danced to his, whenever Fabio's gaze stole towards the purple curtain which screened the mysterious garden beyond, in which the spray of a fountain cast silvery showers into branch-shadowed thickets, hidden retreats and silent, leafy alcoves, where flowers swooned in the moonlight and gave up their perfume for love. From the immobile sable hangings the youth's eyes wandered back to Roxana's face, but there lurked something strange in their depths. "Am I not more beautiful than Theodora?" whispered the woman by his side, extending her marble arms before her lover. "You are beautiful, my Roxana," he stammered. "But Theodora is the most beautiful woman on earth." Roxana turned very white at his words. "She has challenged me to come to her feast," she said in a low tone, audible only to Fabio. "Let her look to herself!" And her eyes were alight with the desire of the meeting. On an adjoining couch reclined the huge jelly of a man who looked like Pan, enormously swollen and bloated. His paunch bellied out over the table like a full blown sail. His face was stained with many a night of wine. The mulberry eyes twinkled merrily. The swollen lips babbled incessantly. It was the Lord Boso of Caprara. "They say that seven devils were cast out of Magdalene--" he turned to Roxana-- The Lord of Norba interposed. "De mortuis nil nisi bene! Natura abhorret vacuum! I drink to the thirst to come!" And he raised his goblet and tossed it off. The Lord Atenulf rose to his feet, swaying and supporting himself with one hand on the table. His great swollen face, big as a ham, creased itself into merriment. "Let the wine ferret out the thirst!" he shouted, and drained off his tankard. "Argus hath a hundred eyes! A butler ought to have a hundred hands!" shouted the Lord of Camerino. "Wine,--slaves! Wine,--fill up in the name of Lucifer!" "My tongue is peeling!" "Wine! Wine!" The Africans filled up the empty tankards. "Privatio praesupponit habitum!" opined the Prefect of Rome. "We drink to Life and the fleeting Hour." "Pereat Mors." And the goblets clanged. "Who speaks of Death?" shrieked young Fabio of the Cavalli, attempting to rise. The wine was taking effect on his brain. Roxana drew him back on the couch beside her. "Fill the goblets! A brimmer of Chianti, red as blood--" "Or the poppies in Roxana's hair!" "Wine from Samos--sweetened with honey." "A decoction of Nectar and Ambrosia." The strangers who crowded the vast hall began to join in the mirth and jollity of their Roman hosts, their Oriental apathy or frozen stolidity melting slowly in the fumes of the wines. A curtain had parted and a bevy of girls clad in diaphanous gowns of finest silver gauze made their way into the banquet hall and took their seats, as choice directed, beside the guests. Peals of laughter echoed through the vaulted dome, and excited voices were raised in clamorous disputations and contentious arguments. The wine began to flow more lavishly. The assembled guests grew more and more careless of their utterances. They flung themselves full length upon their luxurious couches, now pulling out handfuls of flowers from the tall malachite jars that stood near, and pelting the dancing girls for idle diversion, now summoning the attendant slaves to refill their wine cups, while they lay lounging at ease among the silken cushions. There was a moment's silence, sudden, unexplained, like the presage of some dark event. The slow solemn boom of a bell sounded the hour of midnight. The voices had ceased. With one accord, as though drawn by some magnetic spell, all turned their eyes towards the purple curtain through which Theodora had just entered, and, rising from their seats, they broke into boisterous welcome and acclaim. Young Fabio of the Cavalli whose flushed face had all the wanton, effeminate beauty of a pictured Dionysos, reeled forward, goblet in hand and, tossing the wine in the air, so that it splashed down at his feet, staining his garments, he shouted: "Vanish dull moon and be ashamed, for a fairer planet rules the midnight sky! To Theodora--the Queen of Love!" [Illustration: "Pelting the dancing girls for idle diversion"] He staggered a few paces towards her, holding the empty goblet in his hand. His hair tossed back from his brows and entangled in a half-crushed wreath of vine-leaves, his garments disordered, his demeanor that of one possessed of a delirium of the senses, he stared at the wonderful apparition when, meeting Theodora's icy glance, he started as if he had been suddenly stabbed. The goblet fell from his hand and a shudder ran through his supple frame. By the side of the Grand Chamberlain, who was garbed in black from head to toe, Theodora descended the steps that led from the raised platform into the brilliant hall. Greeting her guests with her inscrutable smile, she moved as a queen through a crowd of courtiers, the changing lights of crimson and green playing about her like living flame, her head, wreathed with jewelled serpents, rising proudly erect from her golden mantle, her eyes scintillating with a gleam of mockery which made them look so lustrous, yet so cold. Thus she strode towards the dais, draped in carnation-colored silks and surmounted by an arch of ebony. For the space of a moment she paused, surveying her guests. A film seemed to pass over her eyes as her gaze rested upon one who had slowly arisen and was facing her in white silence. With a slight bend of the head Roxana acknowledged Theodora's silent greeting; then, amidst loud shouts of acclaim she sank languidly upon her couch, trying to soothe young Fabio, who had raised his fallen goblet and held it out to a passing slave. The latter refilled it with wine, which he gulped down thirstily, though the purple liquid brought no color to his drawn and ashen cheek. Theodora paid no heed to the youth's discomfiture, but Roxana's face was white as death, and her lips were set as the lips of a marble mask as she gazed towards the ebony arch, upon which the eyes of all present were riveted. With a rustle as of falling leaves Theodora's gorgeous mantle had released itself from its jewelled clasps, and had slowly fallen on the perfumed carpet at her feet. A sigh quivered audibly through the hall, whether of joy, hope, desire or despair it was difficult to tell. The pride and peril of matchless loveliness was revealed in all its fatal seductiveness and invincible strength. In irresistible perfection she stood revealed before her guests in a robe of diaphanous silver gauze, which clung like a pale mist about the wonderful curves of her form and seemed to float about her like a summer cloud. Her dazzling white arms were bare to the shoulders. A silver serpent with a head of sapphires girdled her waist. Sinking indolently among the silken cushions of the dais, where she gleamed in her wonderful whiteness like a glistening pearl, set in ebony, Theodora motioned to her guests to resume their places at the board. She was instantly obeyed. The Grand Chamberlain took what appeared to be his accustomed seat at her right, the seat at her left remaining vacant. For a moment Theodora's gaze rested thereon with a puzzled air, then she seemed to pay no farther heed. But a close observer might have noted a shade of displeasure on the brow of the Grand Chamberlain, which no attempt at dissimulation could dispel. A triumphant peal of music, the clash of mingled flutes, hautboys, tubas and harps rushed through the dome like a wind sweeping in from tropical seas. Basil turned to Theodora with a searching glance. "One couch still awaits its guest." She nodded languidly. "Tristan--the pilgrim. He is late. Know you aught of him, my lord?" There was an air of mockery in her tone, not unmingled with concern. Basil's thin lips straightened. "Perchance the holy man hath other sheep in mind. What is he to you, Lady Theodora? Your concern for him seems of the suddenest." "What is it to you, my lord?" she flashed in return. "Am I accountable to you for the moods that sway my soul?" A mocking laugh startled both the Grand Chamberlain and Theodora. Low as the words between them had been spoken, they had reached the ear of Roxana. Watchful of every shade of expression in Theodora's face, she was resolved to take up the gauntlet her hated rival had thrown to her, to draw her out of her defences into open conflict, for which she longed with all the fire of her soul. Determined to wrest the dominion of Rome from Marozia's beautiful sister, she was resolved to stake her all, counting upon the effect of her wonderful beauty and her physical perfection, which was a match for Theodora's in every point. This desire on Roxana's part was precipitated by the strange demeanor of young Fabio of the Cavalli. From the moment Theodora had entered the banquet hall his fevered gaze had devoured her wonderful beauty. A feverish restlessness had taken possession of the youth and he had rudely repelled Roxana when she tried to soothe his wine-besotten brain. "Perchance," she turned to Theodora, "remembering how Circé of old changed her lovers into swine, the sainted pilgrim no longer worships at Santa Maria of the Aventine." Theodora started at the sound of her rival's hated voice as if an asp had stung her. "Perchance the well-known blandishments of our fair Roxana might accomplish as much, if report speaks true," she replied, returning the smouldering challenge in the other woman's eyes. "And why not?" came the purring response. "Am I not your match in body and soul?" Every vestige of color had faded from Theodora's cheeks. For a moment the two women seemed to search each other's souls, their bosoms heaving, their eyes alight with the desire for the conflict. Roxana slowly arose and strode toward the vacant seat at Theodora's left. "When you circled the Rosary on yesternight, fairest Theodora," she purred, "was he not there--waiting for you?" Instead of Theodora, it was Basil who made reply. "Of whom do you speak?" Again the silvery ripple of Roxana's laughter floated above the din. "Perchance, my Lord Basil, our fair Theodora should be able to enlighten you on that point--" "Of whom do you speak?" Basil turned to the woman. There was something ominous in his eyes. His face was pale. Theodora regarded him contemptuously, her dark slumbrous eyes turning from him to the woman. "Beware lest I be tempted to strangle you," she spoke in a low tone, her white hands opening and closing convulsively. "Like Persephoné, your Circassian,--in the Emperor's Tomb?" came the taunting reply. Theodora's face was white as lightning. "I should not leave the work undone!" "Neither should I," came the purring reply, as Roxana extended her wonderful hands and arms. "Meanwhile--will you not inform your guests of the story of the pilgrim, who wellnigh caused Marozia's sister to enter a nunnery?" A group of listeners had gathered about. Basil was swaying to and fro in his seat with suppressed fury. "One convent at least would be damned from gable to refectory," he muttered, emptying the tankard which one of the Africans had just replenished. Theodora regarded him icily. Her inscrutable countenance gave no hint of her thoughts. She did not even seem to hear the questions which fell thick and fast about her, but there was something in the velvet depths of her eyes that would have caused even the boldest to tremble in the consciousness of having incurred her anger. The Lord of Norba reeled towards the couch, where Roxana had taken her seat, blinking out of small watery eyes and flirting with his lordly buskins. "How came it about?" "What was he like?" Theodora turned slowly from the one to the other. Then with a voice vibrant with contempt she said: "A man!" "And you were counting your beads?" shouted the Lord Atenulf in so amazed a tone, that the guests broke out into peals of laughter. "It was then it happened," Roxana related, without relating. "How mysterious," shivered some one. "Will you not tell us?" Roxana challenged Theodora anew. Their eyes met. Roxana turned to her auditors. "Our fair Theodora had been suddenly touched by the spirit," she began in her low musical voice. "Withdrawing from the eyes of man she gave herself up to holy meditations. In this mood she nightly circled the Penitent's Rosary at Santa Maria of the Aventine, praying that the saint might take compassion upon her and deliver unto her keeping a perfect, saintly man, pure and undefiled. And to add weight to her own prayers, we, too, circled the Rosary; Gisla, Adelhita, Pamela and myself. And we prayed very earnestly." She paused for a moment and looked about, as if to gauge the impression her tale was producing on the assembled guests. Her smiling eyes swept the face of Theodora who was listening as intently as if the incident about to be related had happened to another, her sphinx-like face betraying not a sign of emotion. "And then?" It was Basil's voice, hoarse and constrained. "Then," Roxana continued, "the miracle came to pass before our very eyes. Behind one of the monolith pillars there stood one in a pilgrim's garb, young and tall of stature. His gaze followed our rotations, and each time we circled about him our fair Theodora offered thanks to the saint for granting her prayer--" She paused and again her gaze mockingly swept Theodora's sphinx-like face. "And then?" spoke the voice of Basil. "When our devotions had come to a close," Roxana turned to the speaker, "Theodora sent Persephoné to conduct the saintly stranger to her bowers. And then the unlooked for happened. The saintly stranger fled, like Joseph of old. He did not even leave his garb." There was an outburst of uproarious mirth. "But do these things ever happen?" fluted the Poet Bembo. "In the realms of fable," shouted the Lord of Norba. "Now men have become wiser." "And women more circumspect." Theodora turned to the speaker. "Perchance traditions have been merely reversed." "Some recent events do not seem to support the theory," drawled the Grand Chamberlain. Theodora regarded him with her strange inscrutable smile. "Who knows,--if all were told?" "The fact remains," Roxana persisted in her taunts, "that our fair Theodora's power has its limits; that there is one man at least whom she may not drug with the poison sweetness of her song." In Theodora's eyes gleamed a smouldering fire, as she met the insufferable taunts of the other woman. "Why do you not try your own charms upon him, fairest Roxana?" she turned to her tormentor. "Charms which, I grant you, are second not even to mine." Roxana's bosom heaved. A strange fire smouldered in her eyes. "And deem you I could not take him from you, if I choose?" she replied, the pupils of her eyes strangely dilated. "Not if I choose to make him mine!" flashed Theodora. Roxana's contemptuous mirth cut her to the quick. "You have tried and failed!" "I have neither tried nor have I failed." "Then you mean to try again, fairest Theodora?" came the insidious, purring reply. "That is as I choose!" "It shall be as I choose." "What do you mean, fairest Roxana?" "I mean to conquer him--to make him mine--to steep his senses in so wild a delirium that he shall forget his God, his garb, his honor. And, when I have done with him, I shall send him to the devil--or to you, fairest Theodora--to finish, what I began. This to prove you a vain boaster, who has failed to make good every claim you have put forth--" Theodora was very pale. In her voice there was an unnatural calm as she turned to the other woman. "You have boasted, you will make this austere pilgrim your own, body and soul--you will cast the tatters of his soiled virtue at my feet. I did not desire him. But now"--her eyes sank into those of the other woman, "I mean to have him,--and I shall--with you, fairest Roxana, and all your power of seduction against me! I shall have him--and when I have done with him, not even you shall desire him--nor that other, whom you serve--" Both women had risen to their feet and challenged each other with their eyes. "By the powers of darkness, you shall not!" Roxana returned, pale to the lips. "Take him from me--if you can!" Theodora flashed. "I shall conquer you--and him!" At this point the Grand Chamberlain interposed. "Were it not wise," he drawled, looking from the one to the other, "to acquaint this holy man with the perils that beset his soul, since the two most beautiful and virtuous ladies in Rome seem resolved to guide him on his Way of the Cross?" There was a moment of silence, then he continued in the same drawl, which veiled emotions he dared not reveal in this assembly. "Deem you, the man who journeyed hundreds of leagues to obtain absolution for having kissed a woman in wedlock has aught to fear from such as you?" Ere Theodora could make reply the tantalizing purring voice of Roxana struck her ear. "Surely this is no man--" "A man he is, nevertheless," Basil retorted hotly. "One night I wandered out upon the silent Aventine. Losing myself among the ruins, I heard voices in the abode of the Monk of Cluny. Fearing, lest some one should attempt to harm this holy friar," he continued, with a side glance at Theodora, "I entered unseen. I overheard his confession." There was profound silence. It seemed too monstrously absurd. Absolution for a kiss! Roxana spoke at last, and her veiled mockery strained her rival's temper to the breaking point. Her words stung, as needles would the naked flesh. "Then," she said with deliberate slowness, "if our fair Theodora persist in her unholy desire, what else is there for me to do but to take him from her just to save the poor man's soul?" Theodora's white hands yearned for the other woman's throat. "Deem you, your charms would snare the good pilgrim, should I will to make him mine?" she flashed. "Why not?" Roxana purred. "Shall we try? Are you afraid?"-- "Of you?" Theodora shrilled. A strange fire burnt in Roxana's eyes. "Of the ordeal! Once upon a time you took from me the boy I loved. Now I shall take from you the man you desire!" "I challenge you!" "To the death!" Roxana flashed, appraising her rival's charms against her own. Her further utterance was checked by the sudden entrance of one of the Africans, who prostrated himself before Theodora, muttering some incoherent words at which both the woman and Basil gave a start. "Have him thrown into the street," Basil turned to Theodora. "Have him brought in," Theodora commanded. For the space of a few moments intense silence reigned throughout the pavilion. Then the curtains at the farther end parted, admitting two huge Africans, who carried between them the seemingly lifeless form of a man. An imperious gesture of Theodora directed them to approach with their burden, and a cry of surprise and dismay broke from her lips as she gazed into the white, still features of Tristan. He was unconscious, but faintly breathing, and upon his garb were strange stains, that looked like blood. The Africans placed their burden on the couch from which Roxana had arisen, and Theodora summoned the Moorish physician Bahram from the lower end of the table, where he had indulged in a learned dispute with a Persian sage. The other guests thronged about, curious to see and to hear. The Grand Chamberlain changed color when his gaze first lighted on the prostrate form and he felt inclined to make light of the matter hinting at the effect of Italian wines upon strangers unaccustomed to the vintage. The ashen pallor of Tristan's cheeks had not remained unremarked by Theodora, as she turned from the unconscious victim of a villainy to the man beside her, whom in some way she connected with the deed. Basil's comment elicited but a glance of contempt as, approaching the couch whereon he lay, Theodora eagerly watched the Moorish physician in his efforts to revive the unconscious man. Tristan's teeth were so tightly set that it required the insertion of a steel bar to pry them apart. Bahram poured some strong wine down the throat of the still unconscious man, then placed him in a sitting position and continued his efforts until, with a violent fit of coughing, Tristan opened his eyes. It was some time, however, until he regained his faculties sufficiently to manifest his emotions, and the bewilderment with which his gaze wandered from one face to the other, would have been amusing had not the mystery which encompassed his presence inspired a feeling of awe. The Moorish physician, upon being questioned by Theodora, stated, some powerful poison had caused the coma which bound Tristan's limbs and added, in another hour he would have been beyond the pale of human aid. More than this he would not reveal and, his task accomplished, he withdrew among the guests. From the Grand Chamberlain, whose stony gaze was riveted upon him, Tristan turned to the woman who reclined by his side on the divan. His vocal chords seemed paralyzed, but his other faculties were keenly alive to the strangeness of his surroundings. Perceiving his inability to reply to her questions, Theodora soothed him to silence. Vainly endeavoring to speak, Tristan partook but sparingly of the refreshments which she offered to him with her own hands. She was now deliberately endeavoring to enmesh his senses, and her exotic, wonderful beauty could not but accomplish with him what it had accomplished with all who came under its fatal spell. An insidious, sensuous perfume seemed to float about her, which caused Tristan's brain to reel. Her bare arms and wonderful hands made him dizzy. Her eyes held his own by their strange, subtle spell. Unfathomed mysteries seemed to lurk in their hidden depths. Without endeavoring to engage him in conversation, much as she longed to question him on certain points, she tried to soothe him by passing her cool white hands over his fevered brow. And all the time she was pondering on the nature of his infliction and the author thereof, as her gaze pensively swept the banquet hall. The guests had, one by one, returned to their seats. Theodora also had arisen, after having made Tristan comfortable on the couch assigned to him. Unseen, the heavy folds of the curtain behind her parted. A face peered for a moment into her own, that seemed to possess no human attributes. Theodora gave a hardly perceptible nod and the face disappeared. The Grand Chamberlain took his seat by her side and Roxana flinging Theodora a glittering challenge seated herself beside Tristan. CHAPTER X THE CHALICE OF OBLIVION A delirium of the senses such as he had never experienced to this hour began to steal over Tristan, as he found himself seated between Theodora, the fairest sorceress that ever triumphed over the frail spirit of man--and Roxana, who was whispering strange words into his bewildered ears. Across the board the gloomy form of the Grand Chamberlain in his sombre attire loomed up like a shadow of evil in a garden of strangely tinted orchids. How the time passed on, he could not tell. Peals of laughter resounded now and then through the vaulted dome and voices were raised in clamorous disputations that just sheered off the boundary-line of actual quarrel. Theodora seemed to pay but little heed to Tristan. Roxana had coiled her white arms about him and, whenever he raised his goblet, their hands touched and a stream of fire coursed through his veins. Only now and then Theodora's drowsy eyes shot forth a fiery gleam from under their heavily fringed lids. Roxana smiled into her rival's eyes and, raising a goblet of wine to her lips, kissed the brim and gave it to Tristan with an indescribably graceful swaying motion of her whole form that reminded one of a tall white lily, bowing to the breeze. Tristan seized the cup eagerly, drank from it and returned it and, as their hands touched again, he could hardly restrain himself from giving way to a transport of passion. He was no longer himself. His brain seemed to reel. He felt as if he would plunge into the crater of a seething volcano without heeding the flames. Even Hellayne's pale image seemed forgotten for the time. The guests waxed more and more noisy, their merriment more and more boisterous. Many were now very much the worse for their frequent libations, and young Fabio particularly seemed to display a desire to break away from all bonds of prudent reserve. He lay full length on his silken divan, singing little snatches of song to himself and, pulling the vine-wreath from his tumbled locks, as though he found it too cumbersome, he flung it on the ground amid the other debris of the feast. Then, folding his arms lazily behind his head, he stared straight and fixedly at Theodora, surveying every curve of her body, every slight motion of her head, every faint smile that played upon her lips. She was listening with an air of ill-disguised annoyance to Basil, whose wine-inflamed countenance and passion-distorted features left little to the surmise regarding his state of mind. On the couch adjoining the one of Fabio of the Cavalli reclined a nobleman from Gades, who, having partaken less lavishly of the wine than the rest of the guests, was engaged in a dispute with the burly stranger from the North, whose temper seemed to have undergone little change for the better for his having filled his paunch. In the barbarous jargon of tenth century Latin they commented upon Theodora, upon the banquet, upon the guests and upon Rome in general, and the Spaniard expressed surprise that Marozia's sister had failed to revenge Marozia's death, contenting herself to spend her life in the desert wastes of Aventine, among hermits, libertines and fools. Notwithstanding his besotten mood Fabio had heard and understood every word the stranger uttered. Before he, to whom his words was addressed could make reply, he shouted insolently: "Ask Theodora why she is content to live in her enchanted groves instead in the Emperor's Tomb, haunted by the spectre of strangled Marozia!" A terrible silence followed this utterance. The eyes of all present wandered towards the speaker. The Grand Chamberlain ground his teeth. Every vestige of color had faded from his face. "Are you afraid?" shouted Fabio, raising himself upon his elbows and nodding towards Theodora. The woman turned her splendid, flashing orbs slowly upon him. A chill, steely glitter leaped from their velvety depths. "Pray, Fabio, be heedful of your speech," said she with a quiver in her voice, curiously like the suppressed snarl of a tigress. "Most men are fools, like yourself, and by their utterance shall they be judged!" Fabio broke out into boisterous mirth. "And Theodora rules with a rod of iron. Even the Lord Basil is but a toy in her hands! Behold him,--yonder." Basil had arisen, his hand on the hilt of his poniard. Theodora laid her white hand upon his arm. "Nay--" she said sweetly, "this is a matter for myself to settle." "A very anchorite," the mocking voice of Fabio rose above the silence. A young noble of the Cætani tried to quiet him, but in vain: "The Lord Basil is no monk." "Wherefore then his midnight meditations in the devil's own chapel yonder, in which our fair Theodora officiates as Priestess of Love?" "Midnight meditations?" interposed the Spaniard, not knowing that he was treading on dangerous ground. "Ask Theodora," shouted Fabio, "how many lovers are worshipping at her midnight shrine!" The silence of utter consternation prevailed. Glances of absolute dismay went round the table, and the stillness was as ominous as the hush before a thunderclap. Fabio, apparently struck by the sudden silence, gazed lazily from out the tumbled cushions, a vacant, besotten smile upon his lips. "What fools you are!" he shouted thickly. "Did you not hear me? I bade you ask Theodora," and suddenly he sat bolt upright, his face crimsoning as with an access of passion, "why the Lord Basil creeps in and out her palace at midnight like a skulking slave? Ask him why he creeps in disguise through the underground passage. Ay--stranger," he shouted to Tristan, "you are near enough to our lady of Witcheries. Ask her how many lovers have tasted of the chalice of oblivion?" Another death-like silence ensued. Even the attendants seemed to move with awed tread among the guests. Theodora and Roxana had risen almost at the same time, facing each other in a white silence. Roxana extended her snow-white arms towards Theodora. "Why do you not reply to your discarded lover?" she taunted her rival. "Shall I reply for him? You have challenged me, and I return your challenge! I am your match in all things, Lady Theodora. In my veins flows the blood of kings--in yours the blood of courtesans. There is not room on earth for both of us. Does not your coward soul quail before the issue?" Theodora turned to Roxana a face, white as marble, her eyes preternaturally brilliant. "You shall have your wish--even to the death. But--before the dark-winged messenger enfolds you with his sable wings you shall know Theodora as you have never known her--nor ever shall again." From the woman Theodora turned to the man. "Fabio," she said in her sweet mock-caressing tone, "I fear you have grown altogether too wise for this world. It were a pity you should linger in so narrow and circumscribed a sphere." She paused and beckoned to a giant Nubian who stood behind her chair. "Refill the goblets!" Her behest executed she clinked goblets with Roxana. An undying hate shone in the eyes of the two women as they raised the crystal goblets to their lips. Theodora hardly tasted of the purple beverage. Roxana eagerly drained her cup, then she kissed the brim and offered the fragrant goblet to Tristan, as her eyes challenged Theodora anew. Ere he could raise it to his lips, Theodora dashed the goblet from Tristan's hands and the purple wine dyed the orange colored carpet like dark stains of blood. White as lightning, her eyes ablaze with hidden fires, her white hands clenched, Roxana straightened herself to her full height, ready to bound at Theodora's throat, to avenge the insult and to settle now and here, woman to woman, the question of supremacy between them, when she reeled as if struck by a thunderbolt. Her hands went to her heart and without a moan she fell, a lifeless heap, upon the floor. Ere Tristan and the other guests could recover from their consternation, or fathom the import of the terrible scene, a savage scream from the couch upon which Fabio reclined, turned the attention of every one in that direction. Fabio, suddenly sobered, had risen from his couch and drained his goblet. It rolled upon the carpet from his nerveless grasp. For a moment his arms wildly beat the air, then he reeled and fell prone upon the floor. His staring eyes and his face, livid with purple spots, proclaimed him dead, even ere the Moorish physician could come to his aid. Theodora clapped her hands, and at the signal four giant Nubians appeared and, taking up the lifeless bodies, disappeared with them in the moonlit garden outside. The Grand Chamberlain, rising from his seat, informed the guests that a sudden ailment had befallen the woman and the man. They were being removed to receive care and attention. Though a lingering doubt hovered in the minds of those who had witnessed the scene, some kept silent through fear, others whose brains were befuddled by the fumes of the wine gave utterance to inarticulate sounds, from which the view they took of the matter, was not entirely clear. The shock had restored to Tristan the lost faculty of speech. For a moment he stared horrified at Theodora. Her impassive calm roused in him a feeling of madness. With an imprecation upon his lips he rushed upon her, his gleaming dagger raised aloft. But ere he could carry out his intent, Theodora's clear, cold voice smote the silence. "Disarm him!" One of the Africans had glided stealthily to his side, and the steel was wrenched from Tristan's grip. "Be silent,--for your life!" some one whispered into his ear. Suddenly he grew weak. Theodora's languid eyes met his own, utterly paralyzing his efforts. A smile parted her lips as, without a trace of anger, she kissed the ivory bud of a magnolia and threw it to him. As one in a trance he caught the flower. Its fragrance seemed to creep into his brain, rob his manhood of its strength. Sinking submissively into his seat he gazed up at her in wondering wistfulness. Was there ever woman so bewilderingly beautiful? A strange enervating ecstasy took him captive, as he permitted his eyes to dwell on the fairness of her face, the ivory pallor of her skin, the supple curves of her form. As one imprisoned in a jungle exhaling poison miasmas loses all control over his faculties, feeling a drowsy lassitude stealing over him, so Tristan gave himself up to the spell that encompassed him, heedless of the memories of the past. Now Theodora touched a small bell and suddenly the marble floor yawned asunder and the banquet table with all its accessories vanished underground with incredible swiftness. Then the floor closed again. The broad centre space of the hall was now clear of obstruction and the guests roused themselves from their drowsy postures of half-inebriated languor. Tristan drank in the scene with eager, dazzled eyes and heavily beating heart. Love and hate strangely mingled stole over him more strongly than ever, in the sultry air of this strange summer night, this night of sweet delirium in which all that was most dangerous and erring in his nature waked into his life and mastered his better will. Outside the water lilies nodded themselves to sleep among their shrouding leaves. Like a sheet of molten gold spread the lake over the spot where Roxana and Fabio had found a common grave. Surrounding this lake spread a garden, golden with the sleepy radiance of the late moon, and peacefully fair in the dreaminess of drooping foliage, moss-covered turf and star-sprinkled violet sky. In full view, and lighted by the reflected radiance flung out from within, a miniature waterfall tumbled headlong into a rocky recess, covered and overgrown with lotus-lilies and plumy ferns. Here and there golden tents glimmered through the shadows cast by the great magnolia trees, whose half-shut buds wafted balmy odors through the drowsy summer night. The sounds of flutes, of citherns and cymbals floated from distant bosquets, as though elfin shepherds were guarding their fairy flocks in some hidden nook. By degrees the light grew warmer and more mellow in tint till it resembled the deep hues of an autumn sunset, flecked through the emerald haze, in the sunken gardens of Theodora. Another clash of cymbals, stormily persistent, then the chimes of bells, such as bring tears to the eyes of many a wayfarer, who hears the silvery echoes when far away from home and straightway thinks of his childhood days, those years of purest happiness. A curious, stifling sensation began to oppress Tristan as he listened to those bells. They reminded him of strange things, things to which he could not give a name, odd suggestions of fair women who were wont to pray for those they loved, and who believed that their prayers would be heard in heaven and would be granted! With straining eyes he gazed out into the languorous beauty of the garden that spread its emerald glamour around him, and a sob broke from his lips as the peals of the chiming bells, softened by degrees into subdued and tremulous semitones, the clarion clearness of the cymbals again smote the silent air. Ere Tristan, in his state of bewilderment, could realize what was happening, the great fire globe in the dome was suddenly extinguished and a firm hand imperiously closed on his own, drawing him along, he knew not whither. He glanced about him. In the semi-darkness he was able to discern the sheen of the lake with its white burden of water lilies, and the dim, branch-shadowed outlines of the moonlit garden. Theodora walked beside him, Theodora, whose lovely face was so perilously near his own, Theodora, upon whose lips hovered a smile of unutterable meaning. His heart beat faster; he strove in vain to imagine what fate was in store for him. He drank in the beauty of the night that spread her star-embroidered splendors about him, he was conscious of the vital youth and passion that throbbed in his veins, endowing him with a keen headstrong rapture which is said to come but once in a lifetime, and which in the excess of its folly will bring endless remorse in its wake. Suddenly he found himself in an exquisitely adorned pavilion of painted silk, lighted by a lamp of tenderest rose lustre and carpeted with softest amber colored pile. It stood apart from the rest, concealed as it were in a grove of its own, and surrounded by a thicket of orange-trees in full bloom. The fragrance of the white waxen flowers hung heavily upon the air, breathing forth delicate suggestions of languor and sleep. The measured cadence of the waterfall alone broke the deep stillness, and now and then the subdued and plaintive thrill of a nightingale, soothing itself to sleep with its own song in some deep-shadowed copse. Here, on a couch, such as might have been prepared for Titania, Theodora seated herself, while Tristan stood gazing at her in a sort of mad, fascinated wonderment, and gradually increasing intensity of passion. The alluring smile and the quick brightening of the eyes, so rare a thing with him who, since he had left Avalon, was used to wear so calm and subdued a mask, changed his aspect in an extraordinary manner. In an instant he seemed more alive, more intensely living, pulsing with the joy of the hour. He felt as if he must let the natural youth in his veins run riot, as Theodora's beauty and the magic of the night began to sting his blood. Theodora's eyes danced to his. She had marked the symptoms and knew. Her eyes had lost their mocking glitter and swam in a soft languor, that was strangely bewitching. Her lips parted in a faint sigh and a glance like are shot from beneath her black silken lashes. "Tristan!" she murmured tremulously and waited. Then again: "Tristan!" He knelt before her, passion sweeping over him like a hurricane, and took her unresisting hands in his. "Theodora!" he said, bending over her, and his voice, even to his own ears had a strange sound, as if some one else were speaking. "Theodora! What would you have of me? Speak! For my heart aches with a burden of dark memories conjured up by the wizard spell of your eyes!" She gently drew him down beside her on the couch. "Foolish dreamer!" she murmured, half mockingly, half tenderly. "Are love and passion so strange a thing that you wonder--as you sit here beside me?" "Love!" he said. "Is it love indeed?" He uttered the words as if he spoke to himself, in a hushed, awe-struck tone. But she had heard, and a flash of triumph brightened her beautiful face. "Ah!" and she dropped her head lower and lower, till the dark perfumed tresses touched his brow. "Then you do love me?" He started. A dull pang struck his heart, a chill of vague uncertainty and dread. He longed to take her in his arms, forget the past, the present, the future, life and all it held. But suddenly a vague thought oppressed him. There was the sense that he was dishonoring that other love. However unholy it had been, it was yet for him a real and passionate reality of his past life, and he shrank in shame from suppressing it. Would it not have been far nobler to have fought it down as the pilgrim he had meant to be than to drown its memory in a delirium of the senses? And--was this love indeed for the woman by his side? Was it not mere passion and base desire? As he remained silent the silken voice of the fairest woman he had ever seen once more sent its thrill through his bewildered brain in the fateful question: "Do you love me, Tristan?" Softly, insidiously, she entwined him with her wonderful white arms. Her perfumed breath fanned his cheeks; her dark tresses touched his brow. Her lips were thirstily ajar. He put his arms about her. Hungrily, passionately, his gaze wandered over her matchless form, from the small feet, encased in golden sandals, to the crowning masses of her dusky hair. His heart beat with loud, impatient thuds, like some wild thing struggling in its cage, but though his lips moved, no utterance came. Her arms tightened about him. "You are of the North," she said, "though you have hotter blood in your veins. Now under our yellow sun, and in our hot nights, when the moon hangs like an alabaster lamp in the sky, a beaten shield of gold trembling over our dreams--forget the ice in your blood. Gather the roses while you may! A time will come when their soft petals will have lost their fragrance! I love you--be mine!" And, bending towards him, she kissed him with moist, hungry lips. He fevered in her embrace. He kissed her eyes--her hair--her lips--and a strange dizziness stole over him, a delirium in which he was no longer master of himself. "Can you not be happy, Tristan?" she whispered gently. "Happy as other men when loved as I love you!" With a cold sinking of the heart he looked into the woman's perfect face. His upturned gaze rested on the glittering serpent heads that crowned the dusky hair, and the words of Fabio of the Cavalli knocked on the gates of his memory. "Happy as other men when they love--and are deceived," he said, unable to free himself of her entwining arms. "You shall not be deceived," she returned quickly. "You shall attain that which your heart desires. Your dearest hope shall be fulfilled,--all shall be yours--all--if you will be mine--to-night." Tristan met her burning gaze, and as he did so the strange dread increased. "What of the Grand Chamberlain?" he queried. "What of Basil, your lover?" Her answer came swift and fierce, as the hiss of a snake. "He shall die--even as Roxana--even as Fabio, he who boasted of my love! You shall be lord of Rome--and I--your wife--" Her words leaped into his brain with the swift, fiery action of a burning drug. A red mist swam before his eyes. "Love!" he cried, as one seized with sudden delirium. "What have I to do with love--what have you, Theodora, who make the lives of men your sport, and their torments your mockery? I know no name for the fever that consumes me, when I look upon you--no name for the ravishment that draws me to you in mingled bliss and agony. I would perish, Theodora. Kill me, and I shall pray for you! But love--love--it recalls to my soul a glory I have lost. There can be no love between you and me!" He spoke wildly, incoherently, scarcely knowing what he said. The woman's arms had fallen from him. He staggered to his feet. A low laugh broke from her lips, which curved in an evil smile. "Poor fool!" she said in her low, musical tones, "to cast away that for which hundreds would give their last life's blood. Madman! First to desire, then to spurn. Go! And beware!" She stood before him in all her white glory and loveliness, one white arm stretched forth, her bosom heaving, her eyes aflame. And Tristan, seized with a sudden fear, fled from the pavilion, down the moonlit path as if pursued by an army of demons. A man stepped from a thicket of roses, directly into his path. Heedless of everything, of every one, Tristan endeavored to pass him, but the other was equally determined to bar his way. "So I have found you at last," said the voice, and Tristan, starting as if the ground had opened before him, stared into the face of the stranger at Theodora's board. "You have found me, my Lord Roger," he said, after recovering from his first surprise. "Here I may injure no one--you, my lord, least of all! Leave me in peace!" The stranger gave a sardonic laugh. "That I may perchance, when you have told me the truth--the whole truth!" "Ask, my lord, and I will answer," Tristan replied. "Where is the Lady Hellayne?"-- The questioning voice growled like far off thunder. Tristan recoiled a step, staring into the questioner's face as if he thought he had gone mad. "The Lady Hellayne?" he stammered, white to the lips and with a dull sinking of the heart. "How am I to know? I have not seen her since I left Avalon--months ago. Is she not with you?" The Lord Laval's brow was dark as a thunder cloud. "If she were with me--would I be wasting my time asking you concerning her?" he barked. "Where is she, then?" Tristan gasped. "That you shall tell me--or I have forgotten the use of this knife!" And he laid his hand on the hilt of a long dagger that protruded from his belt. Tristan's eyes met those of the other. "My lord, this is unworthy of you! I have never committed a deed I dared not confess--and I despise your threat and your accusation as would the Lady Hellayne, were she here." Steps were heard approaching from the direction of the pavilion. "I am a stranger in Rome. Doubtless you are familiar with its ways. Some one is coming. Where shall we meet?" Tristan pondered. "At the Arch of the Seven Candles. Every child can point the way. When shall it be?" "To-morrow,--at the second hour of the night. And take care to speak the truth!" Ere Tristan could reply the speaker had vanished among the thickets. For a moment he paused, amazed, bewildered. Roger de Laval in Rome! And Hellayne--where was she? She had left Avalon--had left her consort. Had she entered a convent? Hellayne--where was Hellayne? Before this dreadful uncertainty all the events of the night vanished as if they had never been. For a long time Tristan remained where Roger de Laval had left him. The cool air from the lake blew refreshingly on his heated brow. A thousand odors from orange and jessamine floated caressingly about him. The night was very still. There, in the soft sky-gloom, moved the majestic procession of undiscovered worlds. There, low on the horizon, the yellow moon swooned languidly down in a bed of fleecy clouds. The drowsy chirp of a dreaming bird came softly now and again from branch shadowed thickets, and the lilies on the surface of the lake nodded mysteriously to each other, as if they were whispering a secret of another world. At last the moon sank out of sight and from afar, softened by the distance, the chimes of convent bells from the remote regions of the Aventine were wafted through the flower scented summer night. END OF BOOK THE SECOND BOOK THE THIRD CHAPTER I WOLFSBANE The early summer dawn was creeping over the silent Campagna when Tristan reached the Inn of The Golden Shield. As one dazed he had traversed the deserted, echoing streets in the mysterious half-light which flooded the Eternal City; a light in which everything was sharply defined yet seemed oddly spectral and ghostlike. Deep down in his heart two emotions were contending, appalling in their intensity and appeal. One was an agonized fear for the woman he loved with a love so unwavering that his love was actually himself, his whole being, the sacrament that consecrated his life and ruled his destiny. She had left Avalon; she had left him to whom she had plighted her troth. Where was she and why was Roger de Laval in Rome? An icy fear gripped his heart at the thought; a nameless dread and horror of the terrible scene he had witnessed at the midnight feast of Theodora. For a time he was as one obsessed, hardly master of himself and his actions. In an age where scenes such as those he had witnessed were quickly forgotten the death of Roxana and young Fabio created but little stir. Rome, just emerging from under the dark cloud of Marozia's regime, in the throes of ever-recurring convulsions, without a helmsman to guide the tottering ship of state, received the grim tidings with a shrug of apathy; and the cowed burghers discussed in awed whispers the dread power of one whose vengeance none dared to brave. Tristan's unsophisticated mind could not so easily forget. He had stood at the brink of the abyss, he had looked down into the murky depths from which there was no escape once the fumes had conquered the senses and vanquished resistance. With a shudder he called to mind, how utterly and completely he had abandoned himself to the lure of the sorceress, how little short of a miracle had saved him. She had led him on step by step, and the struggle had but begun. No one was astir at the inn. He ascended the stairs leading to his chamber. The chill of the night was still lingering in the dusky passages. He lighted the taper of a tiny lamp that burnt before an image of the Mother of Sorrows in a niche. Then he sank upon his couch. His vitality seemed to be ebbing and his mind clouding before the problems that began to crowd in upon him. Nothing since he left Avalon, nothing external or merely human, had stirred him as had his meeting with Theodora. It had roused in him a dormant, embryonic faculty, active and vivid. What it called into his senses was not a mere series of pictures. It created a visual representation of the horrified creature, roused from the flattering oblivion of death to memory and shame and dread, nothing really forgotten, nothing past, the old lie that death ends all pitifully unmasked. He shuddered as he thought of the consequences of surrender from which a silent voice out of the far off past had saved him--just in time. His life lay open before him as a book, every fact recorded, nothing extenuated. A calm, relentless voice bade him search his own life, if he had done aught amiss. He had never taken or desired that which was another's. Yet his years had been a ceaseless perturbation. There had been endless and desperate clutchings at bliss, followed by the swift discovery that the exquisite light had faded, leaving a chill gloaming that threatened a lonely night. And if the day had failed in its promise what would the night do? His soul cried out for rest, for peace from the enemy; peace, not this endless striving. He was terrified. In the ignominious lament there was desertion, as if he were too small for the fight. He was demanding happiness, and that his own burden should rest on another's shoulders. How silent was the universe around him! He stood in tremendous, eternal isolation. Pale and colorless as a moonstone at first the ghostly dawn had quickened to the iridescence of the opal, flaming into a glory of gold and purple in the awakening east. And now the wall in the courtyard was no longer grey. A faint, clear, golden light was beginning to flow and filter into it, dispelling, one by one, the dark shadows that lurked in the corners. Somewhere in the distance the dreamer heard the shrill silver of a lark, and a dull monotonous sound, felt rather than heard, suggested that sleeping Rome was about to wake. And then came the sun. A long golden ray stabbed the mists and leaped into his chamber like a living thing. The little sanctuary lamp before the image of the Blessed Virgin glowed no more. After a brief rest Tristan arose, noting for the first time with a degree of chagrin that his dagger had not been restored to him. It was day now. The sun was high and hot. The streets and thoroughfares were thronged. A bright, fierce light beat down upon dome and spire and pinnacle, flooding the august ruins of the Cæsars and the thousand temples of the Holy Cross with brilliant radiance from the cloudless azure of the heavens. Over the Tiber white wisps of mist were rising. Beyond, the massive bulk of the Emperor's Tomb was revealed above the roofs of the houses, and the olive groves of Mount Janiculum glistened silvery in the rays of the morning sun. It was only when, refreshed after a brief rest and frugal refreshments, Tristan quitted the inn, taking the direction of Castel San Angelo, that the incidents leading up to his arrival at the feast of Theodora slowly filtered through his mind. Withal there was a link missing in the chain of events. From the time he had left the Lateran in pursuit of the two strangers everything seemed an utter blank. What mysterious forces had been at work conveying him to his destiny, he could not even fathom and, in a state of perplexity, such as he had rarely experienced, he pursued his way, paying little heed to the life and turmoil that seethed around him. Upon entering Castel San Angelo he was informed that the Grand Chamberlain had arrived but a few moments before and he immediately sought the presence of the man whose sinister countenance held out little promise of the solution of the mystery. In an octagon chamber, the small windows of which, resembling port-holes, looked out upon the Campagna, Basil was fretfully perambulating as Tristan entered. After a greeting which was frosty enough on both sides, Tristan briefly stated the matter which weighed upon his mind. The Grand Chamberlain watched him narrowly, nodding now and then by way of affirmation, as Tristan related the experience at the Lateran, referring especially to two mysterious strangers whom he had followed to a distant part of the city, believing they might offer some clue to the outrage committed at the Lateran on the previous night. Basil regarded the new captain with a mixture of curiosity and gloom. Perchance he was as much concerned in discovering what Tristan knew as the latter was in finding a solution of the two-fold mystery. After having questioned him on his experience, without offering any suggestion that might clear up his visitor's mind, Basil touched upon the precarious state of the city and its hidden dangers. Tristan listened attentively to the sombre account, little guessing its purpose. "Much have I heard of the prevailing lawless state," he interposed at last, "of dark deeds hidden in the silent bosom of the night, of feud and rebellion against the Church which is powerless to defend herself for the want of a master-hand that would evoke order out of chaos." The dark-robed figure by his side gave a grim nod. "Men are closely allied to beasts, giving rein to their desires and appetites as the tigers and hyenas. It is only fear that will restrain them, fear of some despotic invisible force that pervades the universe, whose chiefest attribute is not so much creative as destructive. It is only through fear you can rule the filthy rabble that reviles to-day its idol of yesterday." There was an undercurrent of scorn in Basil's voice and Tristan saw, as it were, the lightning of an angry or disdainful thought flashing through the sombre depths of his eyes. "What of the Lady Theodora?" Tristan interposed bluntly. Basil gave a nameless shrug. "She bends men's hearts to her own desires, taking from them their will and soul. The hot passion of love is to her a toy, clasped and unclasped in the pink hollow of her hand." And, as he spoke, Basil suited the gesture to the word, closing his fingers in the air and again unclosing them. "As long as she retains the magic of her beauty so long will her sway over the Seven Hills endure," he added after a brief pause. "What of the woman who paid the penalty of her daring?" Tristan ventured to inquire. Basil regarded the questioner quizzically. "There have been many disturbances of late," he spoke after a pause. "Roxana's lust for Theodora's power proved her undoing. Theodora will suffer no rival to threaten her with Marozia's fate." "I have heard it whispered she is assembling about her men who are ready to go to any extreme," Tristan interposed tentatively, thrown off his guard by Basil's affability of manner. The latter gave a start, but recovered himself. "Idle rumors. The Romans must have something to talk about. Odo of Cluny is thundering his denunciations with such fervid eloquence that they cannot but linger in the rabble's mind." "The hermit of Mount Aventine?" Tristan queried. "Even he! He has a strange craze, a doctrine of the End of Time, to be accomplished when the cycle of the sæculum has run its course. A doctrine he most furiously proclaims in language seemingly inspired, and which he promulgates to farther his own dark ends." "A theory most dark and strange," Tristan replied with a shudder, for he was far from free of the superstition of the times. Basil gave a shrug. His tone was lurid. "What shall it matter to us, who shall hardly tread this earth when the fateful moment comes?" "If it were true nevertheless?" Tristan replied meditatively. A sombre fire burnt in the eyes of the Grand Chamberlain. "Then, indeed, should we not pluck the flowers in our path, defying darkness and death and the fiery chariot of the All-destroyer that is to sweep us to our doom?" Tristan shuddered. Some such words he had indeed heard among the pilgrim throngs without clearly grasping their import. They had haunted his memory and had, for the time at least, laid a restraining hand upon his impulses. But the mystery of the Monk of Cluny weighed lightly against the mystery of the woman who held in the hollow of her hand the destinies of Rome. Basil seemed to read Tristan's thoughts. Reclining in his chair, he eyed him narrowly. "You, too, but narrowly escaped the blandishments of the Sorceress, blandishments to which many another would have succumbed. I marvel at your self-restraint, not being bound by any vow." The speaker paused and waited, his eyes lying in ambush under the dark straight brows. The memory still oppressed Tristan and the mood did not escape Basil, who stored it up for future reckoning. "Perchance I, too, might have succumbed to the Lady Theodora's beauty, had not something interposed at the crucial moment." "The memory of some earlier love, perchance?" Basil queried with a smile. Tristan gave a sigh. He thought of Hellayne and the impending meeting with Roger de Laval. His questioner abandoned the subject. Master in dissimulation he had read the truth on Tristan's brow. "Pray then to your guardian saint, if of such a one you boast," he continued after a pause, "to intervene, should temptation in its most alluring form face you again," he said with deliberate slowness. "You witnessed the end of Fabio of the Cavalli?"-- Tristan shuddered. "And yet there was a time when he called all these charms his own, and his command was obeyed in Theodora's gilded halls." "Can love so utterly vanish?" Tristan queried with an incredulous glance at the speaker. Basil gave a soundless laugh. "Love!" he said. "Hearts are but pawns in Theodora's hands. Her ambition is to rule, and he who can give to her what her heart desires is the favorite of the hour. Beware of her! Once the poison of her kisses rankles in your blood nothing can save you from your doom." Basil watched the effect of his words upon his listener and for the nonce he seemed content. Tristan would take heed. When Tristan had taken his leave a panel in the wall opened noiselessly and Il Gobbo peered into the chamber. Basil locked and bolted the door which led into the corridor, and the sinister, bat-like form stepped out of its dark frame and approached the inmate of the chamber with a fawning gesture. "If your lordship will believe me," he said in a husky undertone, "I am at last on the trail." "What now?" "I may not tell your nobility as yet." "Do you want another bezant, dog?" "It is not that, my lord." "Then, who does he consort with?" "I have tracked him as a panther tracks its prey--he consorts with no one." "Then continue to follow him and see if he consorts with any--woman." "A woman?" "Why not, fool?" "But had your nobility said there was a woman--" "There always is." "Your nobility let him go--and yet--one word--" "I must know more, before I strike. I knew he would come. There is more to this than we wot of. Theodora is infatuated with his austerity. He has jilted her and she smarts under the blow. She will move heaven and earth to bring him to her feet. Meanwhile there are weightier matters to be considered. Perchance I shall pay you an early call in your noble abode. Prepare fitly and bid the ghosts troop from their haunted caves. And now be off! Your quarry has the start!" Il Gobbo bowed grotesquely and receded backward towards the panel which closed soundlessly behind him. Basil remained alone in the octagon cabinet. He strode slowly towards one of the windows that faced to southward and gazed long and pensively out upon the undulating expanse of the Roman Campagna. "Three messengers, yet none has returned," he muttered darkly. "Can it be that I have lost my clutch on destiny?" CHAPTER II UNDER THE SAFFRON SCARF Once again the pale planets of night ruled the sky, when Tristan emerged from his inn and took the direction of the Palatine. All memories of his meeting with the Lord Basil had faded before the import of the coming hour, when he was to stand face to face with him who held in his hand the fate of two beings destined for each other from the beginning of time and torn asunder by the ruthless hand of Fate. There was not a sound, save the echo of his own footsteps, as Tristan wound his way through the narrow streets, high cliffs of ancient houses on either side, down which the white disk of the moon penetrated but a yard or two. At the foot of the Palatine Hill, cutting into the moonlight, the Colosseum rose before him, gaunt, vast, sinister, a silhouette of enormous blackness, pierced as with innumerable empty eyes flooded by greenish, ghostly moonlight. Necromancers and folk practising the occult arts dwelled in ancient houses built with the honey-colored Travertine, stolen from the Hill of the Cæsars. It was said that strange sounds echoed from the arena at night; that the voices of those who had died for the faith in the olden days could be heard screaming in agony at certain periods of the moon. Gigantic masses of gaunt masonry rose around him as, with fleet steps, he traversed the deserted thoroughfares. In the greenish moonlight he could discern the tumbled ruins of arches and temples scattered about the dark waste. His gaze also encountered the frowning masonry of more recent buildings. The castellated palace of one of the Frescobaldi had been reared right across that ancient site, including in its massive bulk more than one monument of imperial days. As he approached the region of the Arch of the Seven Candles, as the Arch of Titus with its carving of the Jewish Candelabrum borne in triumph was then called, Tristan walked more warily. The reputed dangers of the Campo Vaccino knocking at the gates of his memory, he loosened the sword in his scabbard. He had, by this time, arrived at the end of the street, that curves towards the Arch of Titus, which commands the avenue of lone holm-oaks, leading towards the Appian Way. Suddenly a man emerged from the shadows. He was armed with sword and buckler, his body was covered with hauberk of mail and he wore the conical steel casque in vogue since Norman arms served as the military model. Roger and Tristan confronted each other, the former's face tense, drawn, white; the latter with calm eyes in which there was the light of a great regret. An expression not easy to read lay in Laval's eyes, eyes that scanned Tristan from under half-shut lids. "So you have come?" the stranger said brutally, after a brief and painful pause. "I have never broken my word," Tristan replied. "Well spoken! I shall be plain and brief, if you will own the truth." "I have nothing to conceal, my lord." Roger's eyes gleamed with yet livelier malice. "Where is the Lady Hellayne? Where is my wife?" "As God lives, I know not. Yet--I would give my life, to know." "Indeed! You may be given that chance. You are frank at least--" "I may have wronged you in heart, my lord,--but never in deed--" Tristan replied. "What I have seen, I have seen," the other snarled viciously. "Perchance this silent devotion accounts also for many other things." "I do not understand, my lord." "Soon after your flight the Lady Hellayne departed, without a word." "So you were pleased to inform me." "I was not pleased," spat out Laval. "How do you explain her flight?" "I do not explain, my lord. I have not seen or heard from the Lady Hellayne since I left Avalon." "Then you still aver the lie?" Tristan raised himself to his full height. "I am speaking truth, my lord. Why, indeed, should she have left you without even a word?" Roger eyed the man before him as a cat eyes a captured bird at a foot's distance of mock freedom. "Why, indeed, save for love of you?" Tristan raised his hands. "Deep in my heart and soul I worship the Lady Hellayne," he said. "For me she had but friendship. Else were I not here!" "A sainted pilgrim," sneered the Count, "in the Groves of Enchantment. And for such a one she left her liege lord." His mocking laughter resounded through the ruins. "You wrong the Lady Hellayne and myself. Of myself I will not speak. As concerns her--" "Of her you shall not speak! Save to tell me her abode." "Of her I shall speak," Tristan flashed. "You are insulting your wife--" "Take care lest worse befall yourself," snarled Laval, advancing towards the object of his wrath. Tristan's look of contempt cut him to the quick. "You think to bully me as you bully your menials," he said quietly. "I do not fear you!" "Why, then, did you leave Avalon, if it was not fear that drove you?" drawled Laval, his eyes a mere slit in the face, drawn and white. The utter baseness and conceit in the speaker's nature were so plainly revealed in his utterance that Tristan replied contemptuously: "It was not fear of you, my lord, but the Lady Hellayne's expressed desire that brought me to Rome." "The Lady Hellayne's desire? Then it was she who feared for you?" "It was not fear for my body, but my soul." "Your soul? Why your soul?" "Because my love for her was a wrong to you, my lord,--even though I loved her but in thought."-- "On that night in the garden--you embraced in thought?" The leer had deepened on the speaker's face. "A resistless something impelled--" "And you a fair and pleasant-featured youth, beside Roger de Laval--her husband. And now you are here doing penance at the shrines, at the Lady Theodora's shrine?" "What I am doing in Rome does not concern you, my lord," Tristan interposed firmly. "I did not attend the Lady Theodora's feast of my own choice--" "Nor were you in her pavilion of your own choice. Yet a pinch more of penance will set that right also." "I take it, my lord, that I have satisfied your anxiety," Tristan replied, as he started to pass the other. Laval caught him roughly by the shoulder. "Not so fast," he cried. "I shall inform you when I have done with you--" Tristan's face was white, as he peered into the mask of cunning that leered from the other's countenance. Perchance he would not have heeded the threat had it not been for his anxiety on Hellayne's account. He suspected that Laval knew more than he cared to tell. "For the last time I ask, where is the Lady Hellayne?" The Count's form rose towering above him, as he threw the words in Tristan's face. "For the last time I tell you, my lord, I know not," Tristan replied, eye in eye. "Though I would gladly give my life to know." "Perchance you may. I have been told the Lady Hellayne is here in Rome. Wherefore is she here? Can it be the spirit that prompted the pilgrimage to her lost lover? Will you take oath, that you have not seen her?" The speaker's eyes blazed ominously. Tristan raised his head. "I will, my lord, upon the Cross!" Roger's heavy hand smote his cheek. "Liar!"-- A woman who at that moment crept in the shadows of the Arch of Titus saw Tristan, sword in hand, defending himself against a man apparently much more powerful than himself. For a moment or two she gazed, bewildered, not knowing what to do. Tristan at first seemed to stand entirely on the defensive, but soon his blood grew hot and, in answer to his adversary's lunge, he lunged again. But the other held a dagger in his left hand and with it easily parried the blade. The next pass she saw Tristan reel. She could bear no more and rushed screaming towards some footmen with torches who were standing outside a dark and heavily shuttered building. Tristan and Roger de Laval rushed at each other with redoubled fury. Both had heard the cry and their blows rang out with echoing clatter, filling the desolate spaces with a sound not seldom heard there in those days. It was a struggle of sheer strength, in which the odds were all against Tristan. He began to yield step by step. Soon a yet fiercer blow of his antagonist must bring him down to his knees, and he fell back farther, as a veritable rain of blows fell upon him. Four men followed by a woman rushed to the scene. "Haste! Haste!" she cried frantically. "There is murder abroad!" She fancied she should behold the younger man already vanquished by his more vigorous enemy. On the contrary, he seemed to have regained his strength and was now pressing the other with an agility and vigor that outweighed the strength of maturity on the part of his adversary. All was clear in the bright moonlight, as if the sun had been blazing down upon them, and, as the woman leaped forward, she beheld Tristan's assailant gain some advantage. He was pressed back along the Arch towards the spot where she stood. What now followed she could not see. It was all the work of a moment. But the next instant she saw the elder man raise his arm as if to strike with his dagger. Tristan staggered and fell, and the other was about to strike him through when, with a wild, frantic outcry of terror, she rushed between them, arresting the blow ere it could fall. "Hellayne!" A cry in which Tristan's smothered feelings broke through every restraint winged itself from the mouth of the fallen man. "Tristan!" came the hysterical response. Roger had hurled his wife aside, his eyes flaming like live coals under their bushy brows. Those whom Hellayne had summoned to Tristan's aid, when she first arrived on the scene of the conflict, unacquainted with the cause of the quarrel and doubtful which side to aid, stood idly by, since with Tristan's fall there seemed to be no farther demand for their services, nor did Roger's towering stature invite interference. In the heat of the conflict with its attendant turmoil none of those immediately concerned had remarked a procession approaching from the distance which now emerged from the shadow of the great arch into the moonlit thoroughfare. It was headed by four giant Nubians, carrying a litter on silver poles, from between the half-shut silken curtains of which peered the face of a woman. In its wake marched a score of Ethiopians in fantastic livery, their broad, naked scimitars glistening ominously in the moonlight. The litter and its escort arrived but just in time. Ere Laval's blade could pierce the heart of his prostrate victim, Theodora had leaped from her litter and thrown her saffron scarf over the prostrate youth. With all the outlines of her beautiful form revealed through the thin robe of spangled gauze she faced the irate aggressor and her voice cut like steel as she said: "Dare to touch him beneath this scarf! This man is mine." Laval drew back, but his glaring eyes, his parted lips and his labored breath argued little in favor of the fallen man, even though the blow was, for the moment, averted. With foam-flecked lips he turned to Theodora. "This man is mine! His life is forfeit. Stand back, that I may wipe this blot from my escutcheon." Theodora faced the speaker undauntedly. Ere he could reply, a woman's voice shrieked. "Save him! Save him! He is innocent! He has done naught amiss!" Hellayne, whom the Count had hurled against the masonry of the arch, bruising her until she was barely able to support herself, at this moment threw herself between them. [Illustration: "Thrown her saffron scarf over the prostrate youth"] "Who is this woman?" Theodora turned to Tristan's assailant. "Who is this woman?" Hellayne's eyes silently questioned Tristan. Laval's sardonic laughter pealed through the silence. "This lady is my wife, the Countess Hellayne de Laval, noble Theodora, who has followed her perjured lover to Rome, so they may do penance in company," he replied sardonically. "His life is forfeit. His offence is two-fold. Within the hour he swore he knew naught of her abode. But--since you claim him,--by ties this scarf proclaims--take him and welcome! I shall not anticipate the fate you prepare for your noble lovers!" The two women faced each other in frozen silence, in the consciousness of being rivals. Each knew instinctively it would be a fight between them to the death. Theodora surveyed Hellayne's wonderful beauty, appraising her charms against her own, and Hellayne's gaze swept the face and form of the Roman. Tristan had scrambled to his feet, his face white with shame and rage. From Theodora, in whose eyes he read that which caused him to tremble in his inmost soul, he turned to Hellayne. "Oh, why have you done this thing, Hellayne, why?--oh, why?" Roger de Laval laughed viciously. "It was indeed not to be expected that the Lady Hellayne would find her recalcitrant lover in the arms of the Lady Theodora." With an inarticulate outcry of rage Tristan was about to hurl himself upon his opponent, had not Theodora placed a restraining hand upon him, while her dark eyes challenged Hellayne. All the revulsion of his nature against this man rose up in him and rent him. All the love for Hellayne, which in these days had been floating on the wings of longing, soared anew. But his efforts at vindication in this strangest of all predicaments were put to naught by the woman herself. "Hear me, Hellayne--it is not true!" he cried, and paused with a choking sensation. Hellayne stood as if turned to stone. Then her eyes swept Tristan with a look of such incredulous misery that it froze the words that were about to tumble from his lips. With a wail of anguish she turned and fled down the moonlit path like a hunted deer. "Up and after her!" Laval shouted to the men whom Hellayne had summoned to the scene and these, eager to demonstrate their usefulness, started in pursuit, Roger leading, ere Tristan could even make a move to interfere. Hellayne had fled into the open portals of a church at the end of the street. She tottered and fell. Crawling through the semi-darkness she gasped and leaned against a pillar. She saw a small side chapel, where, before an image of the Virgin, guttered a brace of tapers. But ere she reached the shrine her pursuers were upon her. As, with a shriek of mortal fear she fell, she gazed into the brutal features of Roger de Laval. His lips were foam-flecked, revealing his wolfish teeth. It was then her strength forsook her. She fell fainting upon the hard stone floor of the church.-- For a pace Tristan and Theodora faced each other in silence. It was the woman who spoke. Her voice was cold as steel. "I have saved your life, Tristan! The weapon which my slaves have taken from you awaits the call of its rightful claimant." She reentered her litter while Tristan stood by, utterly dazed. But, when the slaves raised the silver poles, she gave him a parting glance from within the curtains that seemed to electrify his whole being. After the litter-bearers and their retinue had trooped off, Tristan remained for a time in the shadow of the Arch of the Seven Candles. He knew not where to turn in his misery, nor what to do. In the same hour he had found and lost his love anew. CHAPTER III DARK PLOTTINGS It was past the hour of midnight. In a dimly lighted turret chamber in the house of Hormazd the Persian there sat two personages whose very presence seemed to enhance the sinister gloom that brooded over the circular vault. The countenance of the Grand Chamberlain was paler than usual and there was a slight gathering of the eyebrows, not to say a frown, which in an ordinary mortal might have signified little, but in one who had so habitual a command of his emotions, would indicate to those who knew him well an unusual degree of restlessness. His voice was calm however, and now and then a bland smile belied the shadows on his brow. At times his gaze stole towards a dimly lighted alcove wherein moved a dark cowled figure, its grotesque shadow reflected in distorted outlines upon the floor. "The Moor tarries over long," Basil spoke at last. "So do the ends of destiny," replied a voice that seemed to come from the bowels of the earth. "He is fleeter than a deer and more ferocious than a tiger," the Grand Chamberlain interposed. "Nothing has ever daunted him, nor lives the man who would thwart him and live. Can you tell me where he is now?" "Patience!" came the sepulchral reply. "The magic disk reveals all things! Anon you shall know." Informed by daily gossip and the reports of his innumerable spies, Basil was aware of a growing belief among the people that the power he wielded was not altogether human, and he would have viewed it with satisfaction even had he not shared it. Seeing in it an additional force helpful to the realization of his ambition, he had thrown himself blindly into the vortex of black magic which was to give to him that which his soul desired. In this chamber, filled with strange narcotic scents and the mysterious rustling of unseen presences, by which he believed it to be peopled, with the aid of one who seemed the personified Principle of Evil, Basil assembled about him the forces that would ultimately launch him at the goal of his ambition. This devil's kitchen was the portal to the Unseen, the shrine of the Unknown, the observatory of the Past and the Future, and the laboratory of the Forbidden. There were dim and mysterious mirrors, before which stood brazen tripods whose fumes, as they wreathed upward, gleamed with dusky fires. It was in these mirrors that the wizard could summon the dead and the distant to appear darkly, in scarcely definable glimpses. But he could also produce apparitions more vivid, more startling and more beautiful. Once, in the dark depths of the chamber, Basil had seen a woman's phantom apparition suddenly become strangely luminous, her garments glowing like flames of many colors, that shifted and blent and alternated in ceaseless dance and play, waving and trembling in unearthly glory, till she seemed to be of the very flame herself. The reflection of the world of shadows was upon her; its splendors were wrapping her round like a mantle. He watched her with bated breath, not daring to speak. And brighter, ever brighter, dazzling, ever more dazzling, had grown the flaming phantom, till the wondrous transfiguration reached the height of its beauty and its terror. Then the phantom of murdered Marozia, evoked at his expressed desire from the land of shadows, had faded, dying slowly away in the mysterious depths of the mirror, as the fires that produced it sank and died in white ashes. There could be no doubt. It was the emissary of Darkness himself who held forth in this dim, demon-haunted chamber where he had so often listened to the record of his awful visions. He had made him see in his dreadful ravings the great vaults of wrath, where dwelt the dread power of Evil. He had made him see the King of the Hopeless Throngs on his black basaltic throne in the terrific glare-illumined caves, where Michael had cast him and where Pain's roar rises eternally night and day. He had made him see the great Lord of the Doomed Shadows, receiving the homage of those dreadful slaves, those terror-spreading angels of woe whose hand flings destruction over the earth and sea and air, while flames were fawning and licking his feet with countless tongues. And then he had shown to him a spirit mightier and more subtle than any of those great wild destroyers who rush blindly through nature, a spirit who starts in silence on her errand, whom none behold as, creeping through the gloom, she undermines, unties and loosens all the pillars of creation, with no more sign nor sound than a black snake in the tangled grass, till with a thunder that stuns the world the house of God comes crashing down--dread Hekaté herself. Was there any crime he had left undone? His subterranean prisons in which limbs unlearned to bend and eyes to see concealed things whose screams would make the flesh of a ghost creep, if flesh one had. But now there was a darker light in Basil's eyes, a something more ominous of evil in his manner. The wizard's revelation had possessed his soul and his whole terrible being seemed intensified. With the patience of one conscious of a superhuman destiny he waited the summons that was to come to him, even though his soul was consumed by devouring flames. For he had come yet upon another matter; an inner voice, whose appeal he dared not ignore, had informed him long ago of his waning power with Theodora. From the man wont to command he had fallen to the level of the whimpering slave, content to pick up such morsels as the woman saw fit to throw at his feet. Only on the morning of this day, which had gone down the never returning tide of time, a terrible scene had passed between them. And he knew he had lost. Basil had been an unseen witness of Theodora's and Tristan's meeting in the sunken gardens on the Aventine. Every moment he had hoped to see the man succumb to charms which no mortal had yet withstood upon whom she had chosen to exert them, and on the point of his poniard sat Death, ready to step in and finish the game. From the fate he had decreed him some unknown power had saved Tristan. But Basil, knowing that Theodora, once she was jilted by the object of her desire, would leave nothing undone to conquer and subdue, was resolved to remove from his path one who must, sooner or later, become a successful rival. By some miraculous interposition of Providence Tristan had escaped the fate he had prepared for him on the night when he had tracked the two strangers from the Lateran. He had had him conveyed for dead to the porch of Theodora's palace. But Fate had made him her mock. Never had Basil met Theodora in a mood so fierce and destructive as on the morning after she had destroyed Roxana and her lover, and had, in turn, been jilted by Tristan. And, verily, Basil could not have chosen a more inopportune time to press his suit or to voice his resentment and disapprobation. Theodora had driven every one from her presence and the unwelcome suitor shared the fate of her menials. Her dark hints had driven the former favorite to madness, for his passion-inflamed brain could not bear the thought that the love he craved, the body he had possessed, should be another's, while he was drifting into the silent ranks of the discarded. He knew for a surety that Theodora was not confiding in him as of old. Had she somehow guessed the dread mystery of the crypts in the Emperor's Tomb, or had some demon of Hell whispered it into her ear during the dark watches of the night? A flash of lightning followed by a terrific peal of thunder roused him from his reveries. The storm which had threatened during the early hours of the evening now roared and shrieked round the tower and the very elements seemed in accord with the dark plottings in Hormazd's chamber. "How much longer must I wait ere the fiends will reveal their secrets?" Basil at last turned to the exponent of the black arts. The wizard paused before the questioner. "To what investigation shall we first proceed?" "You must already have divined my thoughts." "I knew the instant you arrived. But there is an incompleteness which makes my perceptions less exact than usual." "Where are my messengers? To the number of three have I sped. None has returned." The Oriental touched a knob and the lamps were suddenly extinguished, leaving the room illumined by the red glow of the oven. Then he bade his visitor fix his eyes on the surface of the disk. "Upon this you will presently behold two scenes." He poured a few drops of something resembling black oil upon the disk, which at once spread in a mirror-like surface. Then he began to mutter some words in an Oriental tongue, and lighted a few grains of a chemical preparation which emitted an odor of bitter aloë. This, when the flames had subsided, he threw upon the oil which at the contact became iridescent. Basil looked and waited in vain. The conjurer exhausted all the selections which he thought appropriate. The oil gradually lost the changing aspect it had acquired from the burning substance, and returned to its dull murky tints, and the interest which had appeared on Basil's features gave place to a contemptuous sneer. "Are you, after all, but a trickster who would impose his art upon the unwary?" The magician did not reply to this insult, nor did it seem to affect him visibly. "We must try a mightier spell," he said, "for hostile forces are in conjunction against us." By a small tongs he raised from the fire the metallic plate that had been lying upon it. Its surface presented the appearance of oxidized silver with a deep glow of heat. Upon this he claimed to be able to produce the picture of past or future events, and many scenes had been reflected upon the magic shield. He now poured upon it a spoonful of liquid which spread simmering and became quickly dissipated in light vapors. Then he busied himself with scattering over the plate some grains that looked like salt which the heated metal instantly consumed. At the end of a few moments he experienced what resembled an electric or magnetic shock. His frame quivered, his lips ceased to repeat the muttered incantations, his hand firmly grasped the tongs by which he raised the metal aloft, now made brighter by the drugs just consumed, and upon which appeared a white spot, which enlarged till it filled the lower half of the plate. What it represented it was difficult to say. It might have been a sheet or a snow drift. Basil felt an indefinable dread, as above it shimmered forth the vague resemblance of a man on horseback, apparently riding at breakneck speed. Slowly his contour became more distinct. Now the horseman appeared to have reached a ford. Spurring his steed, he plunged into the stream whose waters seemed for a time to carry horse and rider along with the swift current. But he gained the opposite shore, and the apparition faded slowly from sight. "It is the Moor!" cried Basil in a paroxysm of excitement. "He has forded the rapids of the Garigliano. Now be kind to me O Fate--let this thing come to pass!" He gave a gasp of relief, wiping the beads from his brow. The cowled figure now walked up to the central brazier, muttering words in a language his visitor could not understand. Then he bade Basil walk round and round it, fixing his eyes steadily upon the small blue flame which danced on the surface of the burning charcoal. When giddiness prevented his continuing his perambulation he made him kneel beside the brazier with his eyes riveted upon it. Its fumes enveloped him and dulled his brain. The wizard crooned a slow, monotonous chant. Basil felt his senses keep pace with it, and presently he felt himself going round and round in an interminable descent. The glare of the brazier shrank and diminished, invaded from outside by an overpowering blackness. Slowly it became but a single point of fire, a dark star, which at length flamed into a torch. Beside him, with white and leering face, stood the dark cowled figure, and below him there seemed to stretch intricate galleries, strangled, interminable caves. "Where am I?" shrieked the Grand Chamberlain, overpowered by the fumes and the fear that was upon him. "Unless you reach the pit," came the dark reply, "farewell forever to your schemes. You will never see a crown upon your head." "What of Theodora?" Basil turned to his companion, choking and blinded. "If the bat-winged fiends will carry you safely across the abyss you shall see," came the reply. A rush as of wings resounded through the room, as of monstrous bats. "Gehenna's flame shall smoothe her brow," the wizard spoke again. "When Death brings her here, she shall stand upon the highest steps, in her dark magnificence she shall command--a shadow among shadows. Are you content?" There was a pause. The storm howled with redoubled fury, flinging great hailstones against the time-worn masonry of the wizard's tower. "Then," Basil spoke at last, his hands gripping his throat with a choking sensation, "give me back the love for which my soul thirsts and wither the bones of him who dares to aspire to Theodora's hand." The wizard regarded him with an inscrutable glance. "The dark and silent angels, once divine, now lost, who do my errands, shall ever circle round your path. Everlasting ties bind us, the one to the other. Keep but the pact and that which seems but a wild dream shall be fulfilled anon. They shall guide you through the dark galleries of fear, till you reach the goal." "Your words are dark as the decrees of Fate," Basil replied, as the fumes of the brazier slowly cleared in his brain and he seemed to emerge once more from the endless caverns of night, staring about him with dazed senses. "You heed but what your passion prompts," the cowled figure interposed sternly, "oblivious of that greater destiny that awaits you! It is a perilous love born in the depths of Hell. Will you wreck your life for that which, at best, is but a fleeting passion--a one day's dream?" "Well may you counsel who have never known the hell of love!" Basil cried fiercely. "The fiery torrent that rushes through my veins defies cold reason." The cowled figure nodded. "Many a ruler in whose shadow men have cowered, has obeyed a woman's whim and tamely borne her yoke. Are you of those, my lord?" "I have set my soul upon this thing and Fate shall give to me that which I crave!" Basil cried fiercely. The wizard nodded. "Fate cannot long delay the last great throw." "What would you counsel?" the Grand Chamberlain queried eagerly, peering into the cowled and muffled face, from which two eyes sent their insane gleam into his own. "Send her soul into the dark caverns of fear--surround her with unceasing dread--let the ghosts of those you have sent butchered to their doom surround her nightly pillow, whispering strange tales into her ears,--then, when fear grips the maddened brain and there seems no rescue but the grave--then peals the hour." Basil gazed thoughtfully into the wizard's cowled face. "When may that be?" "I will gaze into the silent pools of my forbidden knowledge with the dark spirits that keep me company. I have mysterious rules for finding day and hour." "I cannot expel the passion that rankles in my blood," Basil interposed darkly. "But I will tear out my heart strings ere I shirk the call. An emperor's crown were worth a tenfold price, and ere I, too, descend to the dread shadows, I mean to see it won." "These thoughts are idle," said the wizard. "Only the weak plumb the depths of their own soul. The strong man's bark sails lightly on victorious tides. Your soul is pledged to the Powers of Darkness." "And by the fiends that sit at Hell's dark gate, I mean to do their bidding," Basil replied fiercely. "Else were I indeed the mock of destiny. Tell me but this--how did you obtain a knowledge at which the fiend himself would pale?" The wizard regarded him for a moment in silence. "You who have peered behind the curtain that screens the dreadful boundaries--you who have seen the pale phantom of Marozia, whom you have sent to her doom,--how dare you ask?" Basil had raised both hands as if to ward off an evil spirit. "This, too, then is known to you? Tell me! Was what I saw a dream?" "What you have seen--you have seen," the cowled form replied enigmatically. "The cocks are crowing--and the pale dawn glimmers in the East." Throwing his mantle about him, Basil left the turret chamber and, after creeping down a narrow winding stair, he made for his villa on the Pincian Hill. CHAPTER IV FACE TO FACE Roger de Laval had chosen for his abode in Rome a sombre and frowning building not far from the grim ways of the Campo Marzo, half palace half fortalice, constructed about a huge square tower with massive doors. Like all palace fortresses of the time which might at any moment have to stand a siege, either at the hands of a city mob or at those of some rapacious noble, it contained in its vaulted halls and tower chambers all the requisites for protracted resistance as well as aggression. On the walls between flaunting banners hung the many quartered shields and the dark coats of chain, the tabards of the heralds and the leathern jerkins of the bowmen. On the shelves between the arches stood long rows of hauberks and shining steel caps. Dark tapestries covered the walls and the bright light of the Roman day fell muted through the narrow slits in the sombre masonry which served as windows. It was not to seek his wife that Roger had come to Rome, and his meeting with Tristan in the gardens of Theodora had been purely accidental. While his vanity and selfishness had received a severe shock in Hellayne's departure, without even a farewell, he had not allowed an incident in itself so trifling to disturb the even tenor of his ways. He had loved to display her at his feasts as one displays some exceeding handsome plaything that gives pleasure to the senses; otherwise he and the countess had no common bond of interest. Hellayne was the only child of one of the most powerful barons of Provence, and had been given in marriage to the older man before she even realized what the bonds implied. Only after meeting Tristan had the awakening come, and youth sought youth. That which brought every one to Rome in an age when Rome was still by common consent the centre of the universe, such as the Saxon Chronicles of the Millennium pronounce it, had also caused Roger de Laval to seek the Holy Shrines, not in quest of spiritual benefit, but of temporal aggrandizement, in the character of an investiture from the Vicar of Christ himself. His disappointment at finding the head of Christendom a prisoner in his own palace was perhaps only mitigated by the disclosure that he should have to rely upon his own fertility of mind for the realization of a long-fostered ambition. On one of his visits to the Lateran, hoping to obtain an interview with the Pontiff, he had met Basil as representative of the Roman government, in the absence of Alberic, and a sinister attraction had sprung up between them in the consciousness that each had something to give the other lacked. This bond was even strengthened by Basil's promise to aid the stranger in the attainment of his desires, and at last Roger had confided in Basil the story of the shadow that had spread its gloomy pinions over the castle of Avalon. Basil had listened and suggested that the Lord Laval drown his sorrows at the board of Theodora. Therein the latter had acquiesced, with the result that he met Tristan on that night. Hellayne was sitting alone by the window in a long silent gallery. She could not take her eyes off the restless outline of the clouds where head on head and face on face continued taking shape. In vain her teased brain tried to see but clouds. Two nights ago had not a horrid face grinned at her from out of these same clouds? The face of a wolf it had seemed. And it had taken human shape and changed to the face of the man who had brought her to this abode from the sanctuary where she had fallen by the shrine. And yet, as she looked at the sun, whose beams were fast dwindling on the bar of the horizon, how she yearned to keep the light a little longer, if only a few short minutes. She could have cried out to the sun not to leave her so soon, again to wage her lonely war with the Twilight and with Fear. For during the hours of day her lord was away. Business of state he termed what took him from her side. With a leer he left and with a leer he was wont to return. And with him the memory of his meeting with Tristan! She had found him again, the man she loved! Found him--but how? And Hellayne covered her burning eyes with her white hands. This other woman who had stepped in between her and Tristan, who had laid a detaining hand upon his arm and had silently challenged her for his possession--what was she to him? For three days and three nights the thought had tormented her even to the verge of madness. Had she sacrificed everything but to find him she loved in the arms of another? Silently she had borne the taunts of her lord, his insults, his vile insinuations. He did not understand. He never understood. What of it? In the great balance what mattered it after all? She must see Tristan. She must hear the truth from his own lips. In vain she puzzled her brain how to reach him. She remembered his last outcry of protest. There was a mystery she must solve. Come what might, she was once more the woman who loved. And she was going to claim the payment of love! As regarded that other, to whom she had bound herself, her conscience had long absolved her of an obligation that had been forced upon her. Had fate and fact not proved the thing impossible? Had fate not cast them again and again into each other's arms and made mock of their conscience? Nature had made them lovers, let it be the will of God or the devil. And lovers till death should they be henceforth. He belonged to her. Away with faith--away with fear of this world, or the next. Away with all but the dear present, in which the brutality of others had set her free. For a moment her thoughts turned almost pagan. Was she to return to the old, loveless life in that far corner of the earth, while he whom she loved took up a new existence in the centre of the world, loving another to whose ambition he might owe a great career? She needed indeed to sit in silence, she who had done daring things without a misgiving, as if impelled by a power not her own. She had done them, marvelling at her own courage, at her own faith in him she loved, and she had not faltered. The torturing dusk was drowning every living thing in pallid waves of shadow. One by one, through the wan gallery in which she was locked, the motley spectres of night would pass in all their horrors, and begin their crazy, soundless nods and becks. Suddenly she cowered back, shuddering, with her eyes fixed on the darkening depths of the gallery and her day dreams died, like pale ashes crumbling on the hearth. Roger de Laval had entered and was regarding her with a malignant leer that almost froze the blood in her veins. She knew not what business had taken him abroad. Nevertheless was assured that some dark deed was slumbering in the depths of his soul. "Are you thinking of your fine lover?" he said as he slowly advanced towards her. "You are grieved to have your thoughts broken into by your husband? No doubt you wish me dead--" "Spare me this torture, my lord," she entreated. "I have answered a thousand times--" "Then answer again--" "I swear before God and the Saints he is guiltless. He knew not I was in Rome." "Swear what you will! A woman's oath is but a wind upon one's cheek on a warm summer day--gone ere you have felt it. The oath of a woman who has followed her lover--" "I have not done so!" "You have done your best to make the world believe it." "What of yourself?" There was a ring of scorn in her voice. "You have brought me to shame!" "What of the women you have shared with me?" Hellayne's eyes met those of her tormentor. "It is a man's part!" "And you are a man!" "One at least shall have cause to think so." "Perchance you will have him murdered. Why not kill me, too? That, too, is a man's part." He gave a great roar. "And who says that I shall not?" An icy fear, not for herself, but for Tristan, gripped her heart. She tried to hide it under a mantle of indifference. "What have you ever done to make yourself beloved?" "By Beelzebub--you--the runaway mistress of a fop--dares to question me--her rightful lord?" "Who made the laws that bound me to your keeping? They are man-made, and God knows as little of them as he knows of you. It was your measureless conceit, your boundless egotism, that whispered to you that any woman should feel honored, should deem it the height of glory, to be your wife." "And is it not?" She shuddered. "You never dreamed there might be something in the depths of my soul that cried out for more than the mere comforts and exigencies of existence! Something that craved love, companionship, and, above all, friendship. What have you done to waken this little slumbering voice which died in the shadow of your tremendous egotism?" He stared at her. "He has taught you this speech, by God!" "He has awakened my true self! What was I to you but part of your magnificence, a thing to make your fellows envious--" He roared. She continued: "The one decent woman of your life--your world--" His eyes glared. "So then, this low-born churl is a better man than I?" "At least he knew I had a soul of my own." "Skillfully cultivated to his own sweet ends." "His ends were innocent, else had he not fled." "Knowing that you would follow him." "He knew naught." "That remains to be seen." "It was you who brought us together!" she said with quiet scorn. "You were so sure in your pride and your power and of my own timidity that you thought it impossible that something might defy them. And you could not understand that another might be so much closer to my nature, or that I had a nature of my own. In those days I well remember, ere my heart had strayed too far, I tried to waken you to the great danger. I tried to speak of mine. But you would not be apprised of aught that would seem a concession to your pride. So we are come to this!" Her eyes filled with tears. "Come to what?" he thundered. "My ruin--and your disgrace!" His breast heaved. "Of you I know nothing. As for myself--I suffer no disgrace. I am too much a man of sense for that. Not a soul but thinks that you are absent with my consent. A pilgrimage to Rome! Many a woman has, for her soul's good gone alone. Not a soul, I warrant, has thought of your connection with that fellow's plight. Not a soul but thinks that this is the sole cause of your disappearance. And when I, too, went I was careful to leave the rumor behind." He stepped closer, his breath fanning her pale cheeks. She looked almost like a ghost in the grey twilight. "And now--" he continued, licking his sensuous lips, "you are found--you are found--my beautiful wife--you are found--and--to the eyes of the world at least--unstained. One alone whose lips are sealed, knows." Hellayne's lips tightened. "And a woman." A strange expression came into his face. "Have you spied upon me, too?" "You forget the meeting at the Arch." "No woman will spread the story of a rival's claims!" There was a pause, then he continued, with deliberate slowness: "You shall come back with me--my beautiful Hellayne--my wife in name, if not in deed! And you shall submit to my caresses, knowing, as I do, how loathsome they are. And you shall smile--smile--and appear happy--my wife henceforth in name only. And you shall smile no less at what henceforth your lord's pleasure may be with other women--fair as yourself--and you shall grow old and grey, and the thing you call your soul shall die and wither up your beauty--and never a word shall pass your lips anent this chastisement. And at last you shall die--and be laid by--and not a soul shall ever be the wiser for your shame." Hellayne covered her face with her hands. "And if I should refuse to accept this fate?" "Then you shall be flung into a nunnery." "And if I refuse to become a nun?" "Then your lover shall pay the price--with his blood instead of yours. Know you the woman he so madly loves?" "It is a lie!" she shrieked. There was a moment's silence. "Her name is Theodora. Saw you ever fairer creature?" "God!" "I want your answer!" leered the man. "I do not refuse!" An evil smile curved his lips. "I knew you would be reasonable--my fair Hellayne!" His lips were parted in a fatuous smile. He pictured to himself the pain at the parting and indeed his satisfaction was so great that he decided to prolong it yet a little longer. How amusing it would be to watch the face of him who had dared to love Hellayne. Knowing as now he did all the motives for his actions, it gave him pleasure to think that he could mar the astonishing good fortune of this adventurer who had found employment in the service of Alberic by the intrusion of this passion for another woman. It would be real joy to see this creature of sentiment thus torn and tortured. And it was yet a greater joy to force Hellayne to witness the struggle, forced to smile at the conquest of her lover by another woman. And he would watch the pangs of their suffering till the day of his departure. With her own blue eyes Hellayne should witness the love of him she had so madly followed, estranged by the beauty of Theodora, whose lure no mortal might resist. After he had entered his own chamber, Hellayne flew like a mad thing down the gloom-haunted gallery. Could she but escape from this humiliation--even through death's doors--she would not shrink. She felt, if she remained, she would go mad. It was true, then! Tristan loved another. The old love had been forgotten and cast aside! All her fears and misgivings returned in one mad whirl. Frantically she tried to remove the heavy bolt when she was paralyzed by a demoniacal laugh that issued behind her and swooning she fell at the feet of the man whose name she bore. CHAPTER V THE CRESSETS OF DOOM Never had Tristan's feelings been more hopelessly involved than since that eventful night by the Arch of the Seven Candles when, like a ghost of the past, Hellayne had once more crossed his path and had given his solemn pledge the lie. And the more Tristan's thoughts reverted to that fateful hour, when his oath seemed like so many words written upon water, and the man who believed him guilty held his life in the hollow of his hand, the greater grew his misery and unrest. Physically exhausted, mentally startled at the vehemence of his own feelings, he was suffering the relapse of a passion which he thought had burnt itself out, letting his mind drift back to the memory of happier days--days now gone forever. Why had she followed him? What was she doing here? Was the old fight to be renewed? And withal happiness mingled with the pain. In the midst of these thoughts came others. Had she accompanied the Count Laval to Rome and were his questionings mere pretense, to surprise the unguarded confession of a wrong of which he knew himself sinless? Had she been here all these days, seeking him perchance, yet not daring to make her presence known? And now where was she? Hardly found had he lost her? And see her he must--whatever the hazard, even to death. How much he had to say to her. How much he had to ask. Her presence had undone everything. Was the old life to begin again, only with a change of scenes? He had read her love for him in her eyes, and he could have almost wished that moment to have been his last, ere the untimely arrival of Theodora saved him from the death stroke of his enraged enemy. For he had seen the light fade from Hellayne's blue eyes when she faced the other woman, and Laval's taunts had found receptive ears. Everything had conspired against him on that night, even to seeming the thing he was not, and with a heart heavy to breaking Tristan scoured the city of Rome for three days in quest of the woman, but to no avail. His duties were not onerous and the city was quiet. No farther attempts had been made to liberate the Pontiff and the feuds between the rival factions seemed for the nonce suspended. Nevertheless Tristan felt instinctively, that all was not well. Night after night Basil descended into the crypts of the Emperor's Tomb, sometimes alone, sometimes with one or two companions, men Tristan had never seen. Ostensibly the Grand Chamberlain visited the cells of certain prisoners of state, and one night Tristan ventured to follow him. But he was seized with so great a terror that he resolved to confide in Odo of Cluny, who possessed the entire confidence of the Senator of Rome, and be guided by his counsel. In the meantime, like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, the terrible thing had happened again. From the churches of Santa Maria in Trastevere and Santa Sabina of the Aventine, the Holy Host had been taken, notwithstanding the increased number of guards keeping watch in the sanctuaries. Rome shivered in the throes of abject terror. People whispered in groups along the thoroughfares, hardly daring to raise their voices, and many asserted that the Antichrist had returned once more to earth and that the End of Time was nigh. Like a dread foreboding of evil it gripped Tristan's soul. And day and night interminable processions of hermits and monks traversed the city with crosses and banners and smouldering incense. Their chants could be heard from the ancient Flaminian to the Appian Gate. Once more the shades of evening laid their cool touch upon the city's fevered brow, and as the distant hills rose into a black mass against the sunset two figures emerged on the battlements of the Emperor's Tomb and gazed down on the dimmed outlines of the Pontifical City. Before them lay a prospect fit to rouse in the hearts of all who knew its history an indescribable emotion. There, before them, lay the broad field of Rome, whereon the first ominous activities of the Old World's conquerors had been enacted. There in the mellow light of eve, lay the Latin land, once popular and rich beyond all quarters of the earth since the plain of Babylon became a desert, and now no less deserted and forlorn. And from the height from which these two looked down upon it, its shallow hills and ridges were truly minimized to the aspect of one mighty plain, increasing the vast sense of desolation. Rome--Rome alone--denied the melancholy story of disaster, utter and complete, the work of Goth and Hun and of malarial terror. But now over all this solemn prospect was the luminous blue light of evening, fading to violet and palest yellow in the farthest west, where lay the Tyrrhene Sea. Presently one of the two laid aside his cloak and, baring his arms to the kiss of the wind that crept softly about them, said in weary accents: "Never in all my life, Father, have I known a day to pass as tardily as this, for to me the coming hour is fraught with evil that may abide with me forever, and my soul is eager to know its doom, yet shrinks from the sentence that may be passed." Odo of Cluny looked into Tristan's weary face. "I, too, have a presentiment of Evil, as never before," the monk replied, laying a gentle hand on his companion's shoulder. "There are things abroad in Rome--one dares not even whisper. The Lord Alberic chose an evil hour for his pilgrimage to Monte Gargano. Have you no tidings?" "No tidings," reechoed Tristan gloomily. Odo of Cluny nodded pensively. "It seems passing strange. I know not why--" his voice sank to a whisper. "I mistrust the Grand Chamberlain. Whom can we trust? A poison wind is blowing over these hills--withering--destroying. The awful sacrilege at Santa Maria in Trastevere, following so closely upon the one at the Lateran, is but another proof that dark powers are at work--powers defying human ken--devils in human shape, doomed to burn to a crisp in the eternal fires." "Meanwhile--what can we do?" "Have you seen the Lord Basil?"-- "He was much concerned, examined the place in person, but found no clue." "Are your men trustworthy?" "I know not, Father! For a slight service I chanced to do the Lord Alberic he made me captain of the guard in place of one who had incurred his displeasure. My men are Swiss and Lombards, a Spaniard or two--some Calabrians--no Romans." "Therein lies your salvation," interposed the Benedictine. "How many guard this tomb?" "Some four score men--why do you ask?" "I hardly know--save that there lurks some dark mystery behind the curtain. Let no man--nor woman--relax your watchfulness. There are tempests that destroy even the cedars of Lebanon," the monk continued with meaning. "And such a one may burst one night." "Your words are dark, Father, and fill me with misgivings." "And well they should," Odo interposed with a penetrating glance at the young captain. "For rumor hath it that another bird has strayed into the Lady Theodora's bower--" Tristan colored under the monk's scrutiny. "I was present at her feast. Yet I know not how I got there!" The monk looked puzzled. "Now that you have crossed the dark path of Marozia's sister I fear the ambushed gorge and the black arrow that sings from the hidden depths. Why seek the dark waters of Satan, when the white walls of Christ rise luminously before you?" "What is the import of these strange words so strangely uttered?" Tristan turned to the monk with a puzzled air. "That shall be made known to you in time. Treason lurks everywhere. Seal your ears against the Siren's song. Some say she is a vampire returned to earth, doomed to live on, as long as men are base enough to barter their soul for her kisses. And yet--how much longer? The Millennium draws nigh. The End of Time is near." There was a pause. Tristan tried to speak, but the words would not come from his lips. At last with an effort he stammered: "At the risk of incurring your censure, Father--even to the palace of Theodora must I wend my steps to recover that which is my own." And he informed the Monk of Cluny how he had lost his poniard and his scarf of blue Samite. "Why not send one you trust to fetch them back?" protested the monk. "It is not well to brave the peril twice." "Myself must I go, Father. For once and all time I mean to break her spell." "Deem you to accomplish that which no man hath--and live?" "There is that which shall keep my honor inviolate," Tristan replied. The cloudless sky was shot with dreamy stars, and cooling breezes were wafted over the Roman Campagna. Through the stillness came the muffled challenges of the guard. The twain crossed the ramparts of the Mausoleum in silence, holding to their way which led towards a postern, when suddenly, out of the battlements' embrazure, peered two gray, ghastly faces, which disappeared as suddenly. But Tristan's quick eye had marked them and, plucking at the monk's sleeve, he whispered: "Look yonder, Father--where stand two forms that scan us eagerly. My bewildered brain refuses me the knowledge I seek, yet I could vouch the sight of them is somehow familiar to my eyes." "That may well be," replied the monk. "For all this day long have I been haunted by the consciousness that our movements are being watched. Yet, I marvel not, for until Purgatory receive the soul of this accursed wanton, there is neither peace nor security for us. Her devilish hand may even now be informing all this dark plot, that seethes about us," Odo of Cluny concluded in apprehensive tones. Presently they drew near the great gateway, before which the flicker of cressets showed a company of the guard, with breast plates and shields, their faces hidden by the lowered visors of their Norman casks. Among them they noted a wizened eunuch, who, after peering at them with his ferret-like eyes, pointed to a door sunk in the wall, the while he whispered something in Tristan's ear. Thereupon Odo and Tristan entered the guard chamber. It was deserted. Beneath the cressets' uncertain gleam, as they emerged beyond, stood the eunuch with the same ferret-like glance, pointing across the dim passage, to, where could be made out the entrance to a gallery. The group behind them stood immobile in the flickering light and the space about them was naught but a shadowy void. Yet, as they went, their ears caught the clink of unseen mail, the murmur of unseen voices, and Tristan gripped the monk's arm and said in husky tones: "By all the saints,--we are fairly in the midst of Basil's creatures. An open foe I can face without shrinking, but I tell you this peril, ambushed in impenetrable night, saps my courage as naught else would. If but one battle-cry would shatter this numbing silence, one simple sword would flash, as it leaps from its scabbard, I should be myself again, ready to face any foe!" They entered the half gloom of a painted gallery where dog-headed deities held forth in grotesque representation beside the crucified Christ. They stole along its whole deserted length until they reached a door, hardly discernible in the pictured wall. The lamps burned low, but in the centre of the marble floor a brazier sent up a brighter flame, filling the air with a fragrance as of sandal wood. Tristan's hand groped for a spring along the outer edge of the door. At his touch a panel receded. Both he and the monk entered and the door closed noiselessly behind them. Tristan produced a candle and two flints from under his coat of mail. But ere he could light it by striking the flints, the approach of a dim light from the farther end of the tortuous gallery caused him to start, and both watched its approach with dread and misgiving. Soon a voice fell on their ear, answered by another, and Tristan swiftly drew his companion into a shadowy recess which concealed them while it yet enabled them to hear every word spoken by the two. "Thus we administer justice in Rome," said the one speaker, in whom Tristan recognized the voice of the Grand Chamberlain. "Somewhat like in our own feudal chateaux," came back the surly reply. Tristan started as the voice reached his ear. How came Roger de Laval here in that company? "You approve?" said the silken voice. "There is nothing like night and thirst to make the flesh pliable." "Then why not profit thereby?--But are you still resolved upon this thing?"-- There was a pause. The voice barked reply: "It is a fair exchange." Their talk died to a vague murmur till presently the harsher voice rose above the silence. "Well, then, my Lord Basil, if these matters be as you say,--if you will use your good offices with the Lady Theodora--" "Can you doubt my sincerity--my desire to promote your interests--even to the detriment of my own?" His companion spat viciously. "He who sups with the devil must needs have a long spoon. What is to be your share?" "Your meaning is not quite clear, my lord." "Naught for naught!" Roger snarled viciously. "Shall we say--the price of your services?" "My lord," piped Basil with an injured air, "you wrong me deeply. It is but my interest in you, my desire to see you reconciled to your beautiful wife--" "How know you she is beautiful?" came the snarling reply. "I, too, was an unseen witness of your meeting at the Arch of the Seven Candles," Basil replied suavely. "Was all Rome abroad to gaze upon my shame?" growled Basil's companion. "Though--in a manner--I am revenged," he continued, through his clenched teeth. "Instead of giving her her freedom, I shall use her shrinking body for my plaything--I shall use her so that no other lover shall desire her. As for that low-born churl--" With a low cry Tristan, sword in hand, made a forward lunge. The monk's grip restrained him. "Madman!" Odo whispered in his ear. "Would you court certain death?" The words of the twain had died to a whisper. Thus they were lost to Tristan's ear, though he strained every nerve, a deadly fear for Hellayne weighting down his soul. The two continued their walk, passing so near that Tristan could have touched the hem of their garbs. Basil was importuning his companion on some matter which the latter could not hear. Laval's reply seemed not in accord with the Grand Chamberlain's plans, for his voice became more insistent. "But you will come--my lord--and you will bring your beautiful Countess? Remember, her presence in Rome is no longer a secret. And--whatever the cause which prompted her--pilgrimage, would you have the Roman mob point sneering fingers at Roger de Laval?"-- "By God, they shall not!" "Then the wisdom of my counsel speaks for itself," Basil interposed soothingly. "It is the one reward I crave." There was a pause. Whatever of evil brooded in that brief space of time only these two knew. "It shall be as you say," Roger replied at last, and from their chain mail the gleam of the lantern they carried evoked intermittent answer. When their steps had died to silence Tristan turned to the monk. His voice was unsteady and there was a great fear in his eyes. "Father, I need your help as have I never needed human help before. There is some devil's stew simmering in the Lord Basil's cauldron. I fear the worst for her--" Odo shot a questioning glance at the speaker. "The wife of the Count Laval?" he returned sharply. "Father--you know why I am here--and how I have striven to tear this love from my heart and soul. Would she had not come! Would I had never seen her more--for where is it all to lead? For, after all, she is his wife--and I am the transgressor. But now I fear for her life. You have heard, Father. I must see her! I must have speech with her. I must warn her. Father--I promise--that shall be all--if you will but consent and find her--for I know not her abode." "You promise--" interposed the monk. "Promise nothing. For if you meet, it will not be all. All flesh is weak. Entrust your message to my care and I shall try to do your bidding. But see her no more! Your souls are in grave peril--and Death stands behind you, waiting the last throw." "Even if our souls should be forever stamped with their dark errors I must see her. I must know why she came hither--I must know the worst. Else should I never find rest this side of the grave. Father, in mercy, do my bidding, for gloom and misery hold my soul in their clutches, and I must know, ere the twilight of Eternity engulfs us both." "We will speak of this anon," the Monk of Cluny interposed, as together they left the gallery, now sunk in the deepest gloom and, passing through the vaulted corridors, emerged upon the ramparts. No sign of life appeared in the twilight, cast by the towering walls, save where in the shadowy passages the dimmed lights of cressets marked the passing of armed men. Below, the city of Rome began to take shape in the dim and ghostly starlight, thrusting shadowy domes and towers out of her dark slumber. In the distance the undulating crests of the Alban Hills mingled with the night mists, and from the nearby Neronian Field came the croaking of the ravens, intensifying rather than breaking the stillness. CHAPTER VI A MEETING OF GHOSTS A voice whose prompting he could not resist, impelled Tristan, after his parting from the Monk of Cluny, to follow the Grand Chamberlain, who had taken the direction of the Pincian Hill. His retreating form became more phantom-like in the misty moonlight, as viewed from the ramparts of the Emperor's Tomb. Nevertheless, mindful of the parting words of the monk, and filled with dire misgivings, Tristan set out at once. True to his determination, he procured a small lantern and a piece of coarse thick cloth, which he concealed under his cloak, then, by a solitary pathway, he followed the direction he had seen Basil take. The Bridge of San Angelo was deserted and not a human being was abroad. After a time he arrived at a small copse, where Basil's form had disappeared from sight. Clearing away the underbrush, Tristan came to what seemed a fissure in a wall, which cast a tremendous shadow over the surrounding trees and bushes. Creeping in as far as he dared, he paused, then, with mingled emotions of expectancy and apprehension which affected him so powerfully that for a moment he was hardly master of his actions, he slowly and carefully uncovered his lantern, struck two flints and lighted the wick. His first glance was intuitively directed to the cavity that opened beneath him. Of Basil he saw no trace, notwithstanding he had seen him enter the cavity at the point where he himself had entered. Ere long however, he heard a thin, long-drawn sound, now louder, now softer; now approaching, now receding, now verging toward shrillness, now returning to a faint, gentle swell. This strange, unearthly music was interrupted by a succession of long, deep rolling sounds, which rose grandly about the fissures above, like prisoned thunderbolts striving to escape. Roused by the mystery of the place and the uncertainty of his own purpose, Tristan was, for a moment, roused to a pitch of such excitement that almost threatened to unsteady his reason. Conscious of the danger attending his venture, and the fearful legends of invisible beings and worlds, he was constrained to believe that demons were hovering around him in viewless assemblies, calling to him in unearthly voices, in an unknown tongue, to proceed upon his enterprise and take the consequences of his daring. Thus he remained for a time, fearful of advancing or retracing his steps, looking fixedly into the trackless gloom and listening to the strange sounds which, alternately rising and falling, still floated around him. The fitful light of his lantern suddenly fell upon a shape that seemed to creep through one of the stone galleries. In the unsteady gleam it appeared from the distance like a gnome wandering through the bowels of the earth, or a forsaken spirit from purgatory. Had it been but a trick of his imagination, or had his mortal eyes seen a denizen of the beyond? At last he aroused himself, trimmed with careful hand his guiding wick and set forth to penetrate the great rift. He moved on in an oblique direction for several feet, now creeping over the tops of the foundation arches, now skirting the extremities of the protrusions in the ruined brickwork, now descending into dark, slimy, rubbish-choked chasms, until the rift suddenly diminished in all directions. For a moment Tristan paused and considered. He was almost tempted to retrace his steps, abandoning the purpose upon which he had come. Before him stretched interminable gloom, brooding, he knew not over what caverns and caves, inhabited by denizens of night. He moved onward, with less caution than he had formerly employed, when suddenly and without warning a considerable portion of brickwork fell with lightning suddenness from above. It missed him, else he should never had known what happened. But some stray bricks hurled him prostrate on the foundation arch, dislocating his right shoulder, and shattering his lantern into atoms. A groan of anguish rose to his lips. He was left in impenetrable darkness. For a short time Tristan lay as one stunned in his dark solitude. Then, trying to raise himself, he began to experience in all their severity the fierce spasms, the dull gnawings that were the miserable consequences of the injury he had sustained. His arm lay numbed by his side, and for the space of some moments he had neither the strength nor the will to even move the sound limbs of his body. But gradually the anguish of his body awakened a wilder and strange distemper in his mind, and then the two agonies, physical and mental, rioted over him in fierce rivalry, divesting him of all thoughts, save such as were aroused by their own agency. At length, however, the pangs seemed to grow less frequent. He hardly knew now from what part of his body they proceeded. Insensibly his faculties of thinking and feeling grew blank; he remained for a time in a mysterious, unrefreshing repose of body and mind, and at last his disordered senses, left unguided and unrestrained, became the victims of a sudden and terrible illusion. The black darkness about him appeared, after an interval, to be dawning into a dull, misty light, like the reflection on clouds which threaten a thunderstorm at the close of day. Soon this atmosphere seemed to be crossed and streaked with a fantastic trellis work of white, seething vapor. Then the mass of brickwork which had fallen in, grew visible, enlarged to an enormous bulk and endowed with the power of locomotion, by which it mysteriously swelled and shrank, raised and depressed itself, without quitting for a moment its position near him. And then, from its dark and toiling surface, there rose a long array of dusky shapes, which twined themselves about the misty trellis work above and took the palpable forms of human countenances. There were infantile faces wreathed with grave worms that hung round them like locks of slimy hair; aged faces dabbled with gore and slashed with wounds; youthful faces, seamed with livid channels along which ran unceasing tears; lovely faces distorted into the fixed coma of despairing gloom. Not one of these countenances exactly resembled the other. Each was stigmatized by a revolting character of its own. Yet, however deformed their other features, the eyes of all were preserved unimpaired. Speechless and bodiless they floated in unceasing myriads up to the fantastic trellis work, which seemed to swell its wild proportions to receive them. There they clustered in their goblin amphitheatre, and fixedly and silently they glared down, without exception, on the intruder's face. Meanwhile the walls at the side began to gleam out with a light of their own, making jaded boundaries to the midway scenes of phantom faces. Then the rifts in their surface widened, and disgorged misshapen figures of priests and idols of the olden time, which came forth in every hideous deformity of aspect, mocking at the faces of the trellis work, while behind and over the whole soared shapes of gigantic darkness. From this ghastly assemblage there came not the slightest sound. The stillness of a dead and ruined world was about him, possessed of appalling mysteries, veiled in quivering vapors and glooming shadows. Days, years, centuries seemed to pass, as Tristan lay gazing up in a trance of horror into this realm of peopled and ghostly darkness. At last he staggered to his feet. He must find an egress or go mad. Slowly raising himself upon his uninjured arm, he looked vainly about for the faintest glimmer of light. Not a single object was discernible about him. Darkness hemmed him in, in rayless and triumphant obscurity. The first agony of the pain having resolved itself into a dull changeless sensation, the vision that had possessed his senses was now, in a vast and shadowy form, present only to his memory, filling the darkness with fearful recollections and urging him on, in a restless, headlong yearning, to effect his escape from this lonely and unhallowed sepulchre. "I must pass into light. I must breathe the air of the sky, or I shall perish in this vault," he muttered in a hoarse voice, which the fitful echoes mocked by throwing his words as it were, to each other, even to the faintest whisper of its last recipient. Gradually and painfully he commenced his meditated retreat. Tristan's brain still whirled with the emotion that had so entirely overwhelmed his mind, as, staggering through the interminable gloom, he set forth on his toilsome, perilous journey. Suddenly however he paused, bewildered, in the darkness. He had no doubt mistaken the direction, and a gleam of light, streaming through the fissure of the rock, informed him that there were others in this abode of darkness, beside himself. Had he come upon the object of his quest? For a moment Tristan's heart stood still, then, with all the caution which the darkness, the danger of secret pitfalls and the risk of discovery suggested, he crept toward the crevice until the glow gradually increased. From the bowels of the earth, as it were, voices were now audible; they seemed to issue from the depths of a cavern directly below where Tristan stood. Groping his way carefully along the wall of rock, he at last reached the spot whence the light issued and presently started at finding himself before an aperture just wide enough to admit the body of a single man. A sort of perpendicular ladder was formed in the wall of narrow juttings of stone, and below these was the rock chamber from which the voices proceeded. It was some time ere the confusion of his ideas and the darkness allowed Tristan to form any notion of the character of the locality, when it suddenly dawned upon him that he had strayed into a place regarding which he had heard and wondered much: the Catacombs of St. Calixtus. This revelation was by no means reassuring, although the presence of others held out hope that he would discover an exit from this shadowy labyrinth. For a moment Tristan remained as one transfixed, as he gazed from his lofty pinnacle into the shadowy vault below. He saw a stone table, lighted with a single taper, in the centre of which lay an unsheathed dagger, and an object the exact character of which he could not determine in the half gloom, also a brazen bowl. About a dozen men in cloaks with black vizors stood around, and one, taller than the rest, the gleam of whose eyes shone through the slits of his mask, appeared to be concluding an address to his companions. The words were indistinguishable to Tristan but, when the speaker had concluded, a dark murmur arose which subsided anon. Then those present crowded around the stone table. The taper was momentarily obscured by the intervening throng, and Tristan could not see the ceremony, though he could hear the muttered formula of an oath they seemed to be taking. What he did see caused the chill of death to run through his veins. The group again receding, the man bared his left arm, raised the dagger on high and let it descend. Tristan saw the blood weltering slowly from the self-inflicted wound, trickling drop by drop into the brazen bowl, which another muffled figure was holding. Then each one present repeated the ceremony, he who was presenting the bowl being the last to mingle his blood with that of the rest. Then another stepped forth and, raising the bloody knife on high, stabbed the object that lay upon the table. Some mysterious signs passed between them, meaningless words that struck Tristan's ear with the vague memory of a dimly remembered dream. Then he who seemed to be the speaker raised the object on high and, walking to a niche, concealed in the shadows, placed it in, what seemed to Tristan, a fissure in the rock. Like ghosts returning to the bowels of the earth, they glided away, silently, soundlessly, and soon the silence of death hovered once again in the rock caverns of the Catacombs of St. Calixtus. In breathless suspense, utterly oblivious of the injury he had sustained, Tristan gazed into the deserted rock chamber where the dim light of the taper still flickered in a faint breath of air wafted from without. Hardly did the hearts of the Magi when the vision of the Star in the East first dawned upon their eyes experience a transport more vivid than that which animated Tristan when he found his terrible stress relieved. But almost immediately a reaction set in and a dire misgiving extinguished the quick ray of hope that had lighted his heart, luring him on to escape from these caverns of Death. By a strange mischance they had neglected to extinguish the taper. They might return at any moment and, his presence discovered, the doom in store for the intruder on their secret rites was not a matter of surmise. Composing himself to patience, Tristan waited, glaring as a caged tiger at the gates whose opening or closing might spell freedom or doom. At last, after a considerable lapse of time, moments that seemed eternity, he resolved to hazard the descent. Slowly and painfully moving, with the pace and perseverance of a turtle, he writhed downward upon his unguided course until he reached the bottom of the cavern. Breathless with exhaustion after his breakneck descent, he waited in the shadow of a projecting rock. When the deep sepulchral silence remained undisturbed, he advanced toward the fissure in the rock where one of the muffled company had placed the mysterious object. Tristan's quest was not at once rewarded. The shelving in the rock cavern, being irregular and almost indistinguishable, offered no clue to the mystery. A great fear was upon him, but he was determined, to discover the meaning of it all. Suddenly he paused. A small cabinet of sandal wood, concealed behind the jutting stone, had caught his eye. It was painted to resemble the rock and the untrained eye would not linger upon it. A small keyhole was revealed, but the key had been taken away. Tristan stood irresolute, with straining eyes and listening ear. Not a sound was audible. Even the piping of the night wind in the rock fissures seemed to have died to silence. With quick resolution he inserted one of the sharp-edged flints and gave a wrench. When the top receded he could not repress an outcry. A chill coursed coldly through his veins. His breath came and went in sobs, as from one half drowned. He only glanced at what was before him for the fraction of a second. But he knew what had made the very soul within him shudder and his bones grind, as if in mortal agony. It was as though Hell itself had opened the gates. He staggered back in a paroxysm of horror.-- With a grim, set face Tristan closed the top of the cabinet and replaced it on the rocky ledge. Thus he stood, his face buried in his hands. Could the All-seeing God permit such an outrage and let the perpetrators live? But there was no time for reflection. At any moment one of the muffled phantoms might return, and indeed he thought he heard steps approaching through one of the rock galleries. He crouched in breathless, agonized suspense, for it did not suffer him longer in these caverns of crime and death. He dimly remembered the direction in which the nocturnal company had departed and, after some research, he discovered a narrow corridor that seemed to slope upward through the gloom. His lantern having been broken to atoms, the taper held out little promise of life beyond a brief space of time during which he must find the entrance of the cavern, if he did not wish to meet a fate even worse than death in the event of discovery. Grimly resolved Tristan raised the flickering taper and entered the gallery on his left. The Stygian gloom almost extinguished the feeble light, though he noted every object he passed, every turn in the tortuous ascent. After some time which seemed eternity he at last perceived a dim glow at the extremity of the gallery, and soon found himself before the outer cavity of the stone wall, in a region of the city that seemed miles removed from the place where he had entered. It was near daybreak. The moon shone faintly in the grey heavens and a vaporous mist was sinking from shapeless clouds that hovered over the course of the Tiber. Tristan looked about his solitary lurking place, but beheld no human being in its lonely recesses. Then his eyes fixed themselves with a shudder upon the glooming vault from which he had made his escape. He was on the track of a terrible mystery, a mystery which shunned the light of day and of heaven. He must fathom it, whatever the risk. A strange new energy possessed him. His life at last seemed to have a purpose. He was no longer a rolling stone. There was work ahead. His future course stood out clearly defined, as Tristan turned his back upon the Catacombs of St. Calixtus and took the direction of the Aventine. To Odo, the Monk of Cluny, he must confide the terrible discovery he had made in the mephitic caverns of the Catacombs. To him he must turn for counsel, of which he stood sorely in need. And in some way which he could not account for to himself, Tristan felt as if the fate of Hellayne was bound up in these dreadful mysteries. At first the thought seemed absurd, but somehow it gained upon him and began to add new weight to his burden. Could he but see her! Could he but have speech with her. A great dread seized him at the thought of what might be her fate at the present hour. What would she think of him who seemed to have abandoned her in the hour of dire distress, when she needed him above all men on earth? Did her intuition, did her heart inform her that he had roamed the city for days in the hope of finding her? Had her heart informed her that, like a spirit judged and condemned, he found neither rest nor peace in his vain endeavors to discover her abode? Was she sinking under her loneliness, perishing from uncertainty of her fate, doubts of his allegiance? To what perils and miseries had he exposed her, and to what end? He groaned in despair, as his mind reverted from the dark present to the happy past. A past, forever gone!-- A faint streak of light crept across the East, permeating the grey dawn with roseate hues as Tristan re-entered the Emperor's Tomb to partake of an hour or two of much needed rest, ere the business of the new-born day claimed him its own. CHAPTER VII A BOWER OF EDEN After some hours of much needed rest Tristan started out to find the Monk of Cluny. The task he had set himself was not one easy of execution, since the Benedictine friar was wont to visit the Roman sanctuaries following the promptings of the spirit without adhering to a definite routine. Thus the greater part of the day was consumed in a futile quest of him of whose counsel he stood sorely in need. At the hour of sunset Tristan set anew upon his quest. His feet carried him to a remote region of the city, and when he regained his bearings he found himself before the convent of Santa Maria del Priorata with its environing groves of oleander and almond trees. The moon was floating like a huge pearl of silver through vast seas of blue. The sleeping flowers were closed, like half-extinguished censers, breathing faint incense on the night's pale brow. From some dark bough a nightingale was shaking down a flood of song. The fountains from their stone basins leaped moonward in the passion of their love and seemed to fall sobbing back to earth. The night air breathed hot and languorous across the gardens of the Pincian Mount. Lutes tinkled here and there. And the magic of the night thrilled Tristan's soul. As in a trance his gaze followed the white figure that was moving noiselessly down a moss grown path. A thick hedge of laurel concealed her now. Then she paused as if she, too, were enraptured by the magic of the night. The moon illumined the central lawn and the whispering fountains. Tall cypresses seemed to intensify the shade. In the distance he could faintly discern the white balustrade, crowning a terrace where green alleys wound obscurely beneath the canopy of darkest oak, and moss and violet made their softest bed. In the very centre of it was a small domed temple, a shrine to Love. Tristan's senses began to swoon. Was it a hallucination--was it reality? A moon maiden she seemed, made mortal for a night, to teach all comers love in the sacred grove. "Hellayne! Hellayne!" His voice sounded strange to his own ears. As in a dream he saw her come towards him. She came so silent and so pale in the spectral light that he feared lest it was the spectre of his mind that came to meet him. And once more the voice cried "Hellayne!" and then they lay in each other's arms. All her reluctance, all her doubts seemed to have flown at the sound of her name from his lips. "Hellayne! Hellayne!" he whispered deliriously, kissing her eyes, her hair, her sweet lips, and folding her so close to him, as if he would never again part from her he loved better than life. "At last I have found you! How came you here? Speak! Is it indeed yourself, or is it some mocking spirit that has borrowed your form?" And again he kissed her and their eyes held silent commune. "It is I who have just refound you!" she whispered, as he looked enraptured into the sweet girlish face, the face that had not changed since he had left Avalon, though she seemed to have become more womanly, and in her eyes lay a pathetic sorrow. What a rapture there was in that clear tone. But she trembled as she spoke. Would he understand? Would he believe? "But--why--why--are you here?" he stammered. "I have sought you long." "You have followed me? You are not then a nun?" "You see I am not." "But why--oh why,--have you done this thing?" She made no answer. "You are here in Rome--and he is here. And you did not know?" "I knew!" she replied with a little nod, like a questioned child. "You knew! And he believes that I knew!" "That is a small matter, dear. For he knows, that you knew not." The endearment startled him. It seemed to cast her faith upon him. "What are you doing here?" he said. "I came because I had to come! I had no choice--!" "No choice! Then why did you send me away?" She gave a little shrug. "I knew not how much I loved you." "And yet, dearest, you cannot remain here. You know his moods better than any one else--and you know if he finds us--for your own sake, dearest, you cannot remain." In the warmth of his entreaty he had used as endearing words as she. They were precious to her ears. "Let him come!" she said, nestling close to him. "Let him come and kill me!" She glanced about. He pointed to the castellated building that rose darkly beyond the holm-oaks. "Yonder--is yonder your abode?" he stammered. Suddenly the woman in her gained the mastery. "Oh no! No! No! Let us hide! Wretch that I am, to risk your life with mine." She had flung herself upon him. Around them rioted roses in wild profusion. To him it seemed like a bosquet of Eden. Upon his breast she sobbed. But no consideration of past or present could restrain his hand from gently soothing her silken hair. "Oh, why did you leave me?" she cried. "Why could we not have loved without all this? Surely two souls can love--if love they must--without doing wrong to any one." His arms stole about her. "Speak to me! Speak to me!" she whispered with upturned face. "Had I known that this would happen, I should have known that I did foolishly," he replied. "You should have known, dearest. You thought to kill our love by cutting it to earth. You have but made its roots grow deeper down into the present and the future!" She nodded dreamily. "Perchance you speak truth!" she said. "You see me here by your side, having crossed leagues and leagues to seek your soul, my home--my only home forever. And as surely as the bee goes back to its one hallowed oak have I refound you. And as surely as the ocean knows that every breath of vapor lifted from its face shall some day come back to its breast, so surely did you know that your love must return to you." "Unless," he said, "it sinks into the unseen springs that are so deep that they are lost from sight forever." "Lost--nothing is lost. The deepest water shall break out some day and reach the lake--the river. Then, why not now? I am one who cannot wait for eternity." "And yet, eternity I fear, is waiting for us!" There was a deep silence, lasting apace. "Ah, I know," she said at last. "I know I ought to think as you do. I should be conscience stricken now, as I was then. I should be glad that you left me. But I am not--I am not. I am here, dearest, to ask you if you love me still?"-- "Love you?" he replied in a transport, holding her close, while he covered her eyes and her upturned face with kisses. "I love you as never woman was loved--as the night loves the dew in the cups of the upturned flowers--as the nightingale loves the dream that weaves its phantom webs about her bowers. I love you above everything in heaven or on earth. You knew the answer, dearest. Why did you ask?" "I see it in your eyes. You love me still," she crooned, her beautiful white arms about his neck, "notwithstanding--" He started. And yet, after the scene she had witnessed on that night, her doubts were but too well-founded. Yet she had not queried before. "Strange fortunes crossed my path since I came here," he said. "Ambition lured--I followed, as one who lost his way. Would you have had me do otherwise?" In his eyes she read the truth. Yet the shadow of that other woman had come between them as a phantom. "Oh, no,--although I never thought that you were made for statecraft." "I am in the service of the Senator. And the Senator of Rome is her foe." "And you?" "I am his servant." She laughed nervously. "I never thought you would come to this, my love." "Nor ever should I have thought so. But fate is strange. The Holy Father is imprisoned in the Lateran. To him I wended my way. But the only service I did him was to prevent his escape--unwittingly. I visited the sanctuaries. But though prayers hovered on my lips, repentance was not in my heart. And then it came to pass. And I feel like one borne in a bark that has neither sail nor rudder. And if, instead of being far-floated to these Roman shores, I am headed for a port where all is security and peace, can I prevent it? I am borne on! I close my eyes and try to think that Fate has intended it for my good." "For your good!" she said bitterly. "For yours no less, perchance." "How so, dearest? What good can come to me from your soul's security? To me, who believe our love is rightful?" "And yet you sent me from you--into darkness--loneliness--despair?" She stroked his hair. "It was fear as well as conscience that prompted. You once said that all things are right, that may not be escaped. You said, that if God was at the back of all things, all things were pure--" "I know I said it! But, what I meant, I know not now. I saw things strangely then." "There were days when I, too, lost my vision," she said softly, "when I said to myself: there is truth and truth--the higher and the lower. It was the higher, if you like to call it so, Tristan, that prompted the deed. Since then I have come down to earth, and the lower truth, more fit for beings of clay, proclaims my presence here--" "What will you do?" he queried anxiously. "I know not--I know not! I came here to be with you--without ever a thought of meeting him again whom I have wronged--if wronged indeed I have. He has vowed to kill you! Oh, to what a pass have I brought you--my love--my love! Let us fly from Rome! Let us leave this city. He will never know. And as for me--he but loves me because I am fair to look upon, and lovable in the eyes of another. What I have suffered in the silence, in the darkness, you will never know. You shall take me with you--anywhere will I go--so we shake the dust of this city from our feet." She leapt at him again and flung her arms about his neck, her face upturned. He had neither will nor power to release himself. He scarcely had the strength to speak the words which he knew would stab her to the heart. Even ere he spoke she fell away from him as if she had read his mind. "So you persuaded him of your repentance," she cried. "You are friends over the body of your murdered love! And I--who gave all--am left alone,--the foe of either. It was nobly done." He stared at her as if he thought she had gone mad. "Listen, Hellayne," he urged, taking her hands in his, in the endeavor to soothe her. "What spirit of evil has whispered this madness into your ears? Even just now you said, he has sworn to kill me. How could there be reconciliation between Roger de Laval and myself--who love his wife?" "Then what is it?" she queried, her eyes upon his lips as if she were waiting sentence to be pronounced upon her. "I am the Senator's man!" The words fell upon her ears like the knell of doom. "He will release you! I will go to him--if your pride is greater, than your love." She was all woman now, deaf to reason and entreaty, thinking of nothing but her great love of him. He drew her down beside him on the marble seat. "Listen, Hellayne! You do not understand--you wrong me cruelly. Naught is there in this world that I would not do to make you happy--you, whose love and happiness are my one concern while life endures. But this thing may not be. The Senator of Rome is away on a pilgrimage. He has chosen me to watch over this city till his return. Danger lurks about me in every guise. Its nature I know not. But I do know that there is some dark power at work plotting evil. There is one I do not trust--the Lord Basil." Hellayne gave a start. "The bosom friend, so it would seem, of the Count Laval." The color had left Tristan's face. "You have met?" "He appears to have taken a great liking to my lord. Almost daily does he call, and they seem to have some secret matter between them." Tristan gripped Hellayne's hand so fiercely that she hardly suppressed an outcry. "Have you surprised any utterance?" "Only a name. They thought I was out of earshot." "What name?" "Theodora!" She watched him narrowly as she spoke the word. He gave a start. "Theodora," Hellayne repeated slowly. "She who saved your life when my poor efforts failed." There was a tinge of bitterness in her tone which did not escape Tristan's ear. Ere he could make reply, she followed it up with the question: "What is there between you and her?" "For aught I know it is some strange whim of the woman, call it infatuation if you will," he replied, "which, though I have repelled her, still maintains. It was at her feast I first met the Lord Roger face to face." "How came you there?" she questioned with pained voice. Tristan recounted the circumstances, concealing nothing from the time of his arrival in Rome to the present hour. Hellayne listened wearily, but the account he gave seemed rather to irritate than to reconcile her to him, who thus laid bare his heart before her. "And so soon was I forgot?" she crooned. "Never for a moment were you forgot, my Hellayne," he replied with all the fervor of persuasion at his command. "At all times have I loved you, at all times was your image enshrined in my heart. Theodora is all-powerful in Rome, as was Marozia before her. The magistrates, the officers of the Senator's court, are her creatures,--Basil no less than the rest. Would that the Lord Alberic returned, for the burden he has placed upon my shoulders is exceeding heavy. But you, my Hellayne, what will you do? I cannot bear the thought of knowing you with him who has wrecked your life, your happiness." In Hellayne's blue eyes there was a great pain. "Why mind such trifles since you but think of yourself?" "You do not understand!" he protested. "Can I with honor abandon the trust which the Senator has imposed? What if the dreadful thing should happen? What if sudden sedition should sweep his power into the night of oblivion? Could I stand face to face with him, should he ask: 'How have you kept your trust?'" Steps were approaching on the greensward. Hellayne turned pale and Tristan's arm closed about her, determined to defend her to the death against whosoever should dare intrude. Then it was as if some impalpable barrier had arisen between the man and the woman. It seemed the last hard malice of Fate to have brought them so near to what was not to be. Hardly had Tristan drawn her throbbing bosom to his embrace when a dark shadow fell athwart their path and, looking up, he became aware of a forbidding form that stood hard by, wrapped in a black mantle that reached to his heels. From under a hood which was drawn over his face two beady eyes gleamed with smouldering fire, while the hooked nose gave the face the semblance of a bird of prey, which illusion the cruel mouth did little to dispel. Hellayne, too, had seen this phantom of ill omen and was about to release herself from Tristan's arms, her face white as her robe, when the speech of the intruder arrested her movement. "A message from the Lady Theodora." A hot flush passed over Tristan's face, giving way to a deadly pallor as, hesitating to take the proffered tablet, he replied with ill-concealed vexation: "Whom does the Lady Theodora honor by sending so ill-favored a messenger?" The cowled figure fixed his piercing eyes first upon Tristan then upon Hellayne. "The Lord Tristan will do well to pay heed to the summons, if he values that which lies nearest his heart." But ere he, for whom the message was intended, could take it, Hellayne had snatched it from the messenger, had broken the seal and devoured its contents by the light of the moon which made the night as bright as day. Then, with a shrill laugh, she cast it at Tristan's feet and, ere the latter could recover himself, both the woman and the messenger had gone and he stood alone in the bosquet of roses, vainly calling the name of her who had left him without a word to his misery and despair. CHAPTER VIII AN ITALIAN NIGHT The palace of Theodora on Mount Aventine was aglow with life and movement for the festivities of the evening. The lights of countless cressets were reflected from the marble floor of the great reception hall and shone on the rich panelling, and the many-hued tapestries which decked the walls. In the shadow of the little marble kiosk which rose, a relic of a happier age, among oleander and myrtles, shadowed by tall cypresses, silent guardians of the past, Theodora and Basil faced each other. The white, livid face of the man gave testimony to the passions that consumed him, as his burning gaze swept the woman before him. "I have spoken, my Lord Basil! Should some unforeseen mischance befall him I have summoned hither, look to it that I require not his blood at your hands." Theodora's tone silenced all further questioning. After a pause she continued: "And if you desire farther proof that this man shall not stand against my enchantments, pass into yonder kiosk and through its carven windows shall you be able to witness all that passes between us." She ceased with quivering lips, the while Basil regarded her from under half-shut lids, filled with sudden brooding, and for a space there was silence. At last he said in a low, unsteady voice: "So I did not err when my hatred rose against this puppet of the Senator's, who came to Rome to do penance for a kiss. You love him, your foe, while I, your utter slave, must stand by and, with aching heart, see your mad desire bring all our schemes to naught." His hand closed on his dagger hilt, but Theodora's eyes flashed like bared swords as with set face she said: "Fool!--to see but that which lies in your path, not the intricate nets which are spread in the darkness. I mean to make this man my very own! His fevered lips shall close on mine, and in my embrace he shall climb to the heaven of the Gods. He shall be mine! He shall do my bidding utterly. He shall open for me the gates of the Emperor's Tomb. He shall stand beside me when I am proclaimed mistress of Rome! For my love he shall defy the world that is--and the world that is not." "And what of the woman he loves?" Basil snarled venomously, and the pallor of Theodora's face informed him that the arrow he had sped had hit the mark. She held out her wonderful statuesque arms, then, raising herself to her full height, she said: "Is the pale woman from his native land a match for me? What rare sport it shall be to make of this Hellayne a mock, and of her name a memory, and put Theodora's in its high place. Do you doubt my power to do as I say?" "Verily I do believe that you love this pilgrim," Basil said sullenly. "And while I am preparing the quake that shall tumble Alberic's dominion into dust and oblivion, you are making him the happiest of mortals. And deem you I will stand by and see yon dotard reap the fruits of my endeavors and revel where I, your slave, am starving for a look?" "Well have you chosen the word, my lord--my slave! For then were Theodora indeed the puppet of a lust-bitten subject did she heed his mad ravings and his idle plaints. Know, my lord, that my love is his to whom I choose to give it, his who gives to me that in return which I desire. And though I have drunk deep of the goblet of passion, never has my heart beat one jot the faster, nor has the fire in my soul been kindled until I met him whom this night I have summoned." "And deem you, fairest Theodora, that the sainted pilgrim will come?" Basil interposed with an evil leer. An inscrutable smile curved Theodora's crimson lips. "Let that be my affair, my lord, but--that everything may be clear between us--know this: when I summoned him, after he had spurned me on the night when I intended to make him the happiest of men, it was to torture him, to make a mock of him, to arouse his passions till they overmastered all else, till in very truth he forgot his God, his honor, and the woman for whose kisses he does such noble penance--but now--" "But now?" came the echo from Basil's lips. "Who says I shall not?" Theodora replied with her inscrutable smile. "Who shall gainsay me? You--my lord?" There was a strange light in Basil's eyes, kindled by her mockery. "And when he kneels at your feet, drunk with passion--laying bare his soul in his mad infatuation--who shall prevent this dagger from drinking his heart's blood, even as he peers into the portals of bliss?" Theodora's eyes flashed lightnings. "I shall kill you with my own hands, if you but dare but touch one hair of his head," she said with a calm that was more terrible than any outburst of rage would have been. "He is mine, to do with as I choose, and look well to it, my lord, that your shadow darken not the path between us.--Else I shall demand of you such a reckoning as none who may hear of it in after days shall dare thwart Theodora--either in love or in hate." Basil's writhing form swayed to and fro; passion-tossed he tried in vain to speak when she raised her hand. With a gesture of baffled wrath and rage Basil bowed low. A sudden light leaped into his eyes as he raised her hand to his lips. Then he retreated into the shadow of the kiosk. A moment later Tristan came within view, walking as one in a trance. Mechanically he passed towards the banquet hall. Then he paused, seeming to wait for some signal from within. A hand stole into his and drew him resistlessly into the shadows. "Why do you linger here? Behold where the moonlight calls." "Where is your mistress?" Tristan turned to the Circassian. A strange smile played on Persephoné's lips. "She awaits you in yonder kiosk," she replied, edging close to him. "Take care you do not thwart her though--for to-day she strikes to kill." "It is well," Tristan replied. "It must come, and will be no more torture now than any other time." Persephoné gave a strange smile, then she led him through a cypress avenue, at the remote end of which the marble kiosk gleamed white in the moonlight. Pointing to it with white outstretched arm she gave him a mock bow and returned to the palace. His lips grimly set, Tristan, insensible to the beauty of the summer night, strode down the flower-bordered path. Woven sheets of silvery moonlight, insubstantial and unreal, lay upon the greensward. The sounds of distant lutes and harps sank down through the hot air. The sky was radiant with the magic lustre of a great white moon, suspended like an alabaster lamp in the deep azure overhead. Her rays invaded the sombre bosquets, lighted the trellised rose-walks and cast into bold relief against the deep shadows of palm and ilex many feathery fountain sprays, crowning flower-filled basins of alabaster with whispering coolness. The path was strewn with powdered sea shells and bordered on either side with rare plants, filling the air with exquisite perfume. Between thickets of yellow tufted mimosa and leafy bowers of acacia shimmered the crystal surface of the marble cinctured lake, tinted with pale gold and shrouded by pearl-hued vapors.--Pink and white myrtles, golden-hued jonquils, rainbow tinted chrysanthema, purple rhododendrons, iris, lilac and magnolia mingled their odors in an almost disconcerting orgy, and rare orchids raised their glowing petals with tropical gorgeousness from vases of verdigris bronze in the moonlight. At the entrance of the marble kiosk, there stood the immobile form of a woman, half hidden behind a cluster of blooming orchids. The silver light of the moon fell upon the pale features of Theodora. Her gaze was fixed upon the dark avenue of cypress trees, through which Tristan was swiftly approaching. She stood there waiting for him, clad in misty white, like the moonbeams, yet the byssus of her garb was no whiter than was the throat that rose from the faultless trunk of her body, no whiter than her wonderful hands and arms. Tristan's lips tightened. He had come to claim the scarf and dagger. To-night should end it all. There was no place in his life for this woman whose beauty would be the undoing of him who gave himself up to its fatal spell. As he stood before her, a gleam of moonlight on his broad shoulders, Theodora felt the blood recede to her heart, the while she gazed on his set, yet watchful face. His silence seemed to numb her faculties and her voice sounded strange as, extending her hand, she said: "Welcome, my Lord Tristan." He bowed low, barely touching the soft white fingers. "The Lady Theodora has been pleased to summon me and I have obeyed. I am here to claim the dagger which was taken from me and the scarf of blue samite." Theodora glanced at him for a moment, the blood drumming in her ears and driving a coherent answer from her mind, while Tristan met her gaze without flinching, with the memory of Hellayne in his heart. "Presently will I reveal this matter to you, my Lord Tristan," she said at last. "Meanwhile sit you here beside me--for the night is hot, and I have waited long for your coming." For a moment Tristan hesitated, then he took his seat beside her on the marble bench, his brain afire, as he mused on all the treachery her soft bosom held. "You look strangely at me, Tristan," she said in a low tone, dropping all formality, "almost as if it gave you pain to sit beside me. Yet I cannot think that a man like you has never rested beside a beautiful woman in an hour of solitude and passion." A laugh, soft as the music of the Castalian fountain, fell on Tristan's ear, but as he sat without answer, she continued, her face very close to his: "Strange, indeed, my words may sound in your ears, Tristan--and yet--can it be that you are blind as well as deaf to the call of the Goddess of Love, who rules us all?" She paused, her lips ajar, her eyes alight with a strange fire, such as he had seen therein on the night in the sunken gardens, beyond the glimmering lake. "And what have I to give to you, Lady Theodora," he said at length. "What can you expect from me, the giving of which would not turn my honor to disgrace and my strength to water?" At his words she rose up and, towering her glorious womanhood above him, glided behind the marble bench and, leaning hot hands upon his shoulders, bent low her head, till strands of perfumed hair rested on his tense features. "Do you love power, Tristan?" she said with low, yet vibrant voice. "I tell you that, if you give yourself to me, there are no heights to which the lover of Theodora may not climb. The way lies open from camp to palace, from sword to sceptre, and, though the aim be high, at least it is worth the risk. Steep is the path, but, though attainment seems impossible, I tell you it is the wings of love that shall raise you and bid you soar to flights of glory and rapture. I offer you a kingdom, if you will but lay your sword at my feet and yet more besides, for, Tristan, I offer you myself." The perfumed head bent lower and the scented cloud fell more thickly upon him as he sat there, dazed and enchanted out of all powers of resistance by the misty sapphire eyes that gleamed amid it, and seemed to drag his soul from out of him. Now his head was pillowed on her soft bosom and her white arms were about him, while lingering kisses burnt on his unresponsive lips, when suddenly she faced round with a cry, for there, directly before them in the clearing, stood a woman, whose gleaming white robe, untouched by any color, save that of the violet band that bound it round her shoulders, seemed one with the sun-kissed hair, tied into a simple knot. Hellayne stood there as if deprived of motion, her blue eyes wide with horror and pain, her curved lips parted, as if to speak, though no sound came from them, until Tristan turned and, as their glances met, he gave a strangled groan and buried his face in his hands. Theodora stood immobile, with blazing eyes and terrible face, then she clapped her hands twice and at the sound two eunuchs appeared and stood motionless awaiting their mistress' behest. For apace there was silence, while Theodora glanced from the one to the other, quivering from head to foot with the violence of the passion that possessed her, casting anon a glance at Tristan who stood silent, with bowed head. At length she glided up to him and, as she laid her two white hands on his broad shoulders, Tristan shuddered and felt a longing to make an end of all her evil beauty and devilish cunning. Then, deliberately, she took the scarf of blue samite, which lay beside her and put her foot upon it. "This is very precious to you, Tristan, is it not?" she said in her sweet voice, while her witching eyes sank into his. "I was about to tell you how you might serve me, and deserve all the happiness that is in store for you when I was interrupted by the appearance of this woman. Can you tell me, who she is, and why she is regarding you so strangely?" As she spoke she turned slowly towards Hellayne whose face was pale as death. A spasm of rage shook Tristan, at the sight of the woman who regarded him out of wide, pitiful eyes, but even as he longed to pierce the heart of her who was striving to wreck all he held dear, Odo of Cluny's warning seemed to clear his brain of the rage and hate that was clouding it, and in that instant he knew, if he played his part, he held in his hand the last throw in the dread game, of which Rome was the pawn. "In all things will I do your bidding, Lady Theodora,--for who can withstand your beauty and your enchantment?" said a voice that seemed not part of himself. Theodora turned to Hellayne. "You have heard the words the Lord Tristan has spoken," she said in veiled tone of mockery. "Tell me now, did you not know that I was engaged upon matters of state when you intruded yourself into our presence?" For a moment the blue eyes of Hellayne flashed swords with the dark orbs of Theodora. There was a silence and the two women read each other's inmost thoughts, Hellayne meeting Theodora's contemptuous scorn with the keen look of one who has seen her peril and has nerved herself to meet it. To Tristan she did not even vouchsafe a glance. "I followed one, perjured and forsworn," she said in tones that cut Tristan's very soul, while a look of immeasurable contempt flashed from her blue eyes. "You are welcome to him, Lady Theodora. I do not even envy you his memory." Ere Theodora could reply, Hellayne, with a choking sob, turned and fled down the moonlit path like some hunted thing, and ere either realized what had happened she had vanished in the night. Tristan, dreading the worst, his soul bruised in its innermost depths, cursing himself for having permitted any consideration except Hellayne's life to interfere with his preconceived plans, started to follow, when Theodora, guessing his purpose, suddenly barred his way. Ere he could prevent, she had thrown her arms about him and her face upturned to his stormy brow she whispered deliriously, utterly oblivious of two eyes that burnt from their sockets like live coals: "I love you! I love you!" and her whole being seemed ablaze with the fire of an all-devouring passion. "Tristan, I love you with a love so idolatrous, that I could slay you with these hands rather than be spurned, be denied by you. Love me Tristan--love me! And I shall give you such love in return as mortals have never known. I am as one in a trance--I cannot see--I cannot think! I, the woman born to command--am begging--imploring--I care not what you do with me--what becomes of me. Take me!--I am yours--body and soul!" Her face was lighted up by the pale rays of the moon. But, though his senses were steeped in a delirium that almost took from him his manhood, the gloom but deepened on Tristan's brow, while with moist hungry lips she kissed him, again and again. At last, seemingly on the verge of merging his whole being into her own, he succeeded in extricating himself from the steely coils of those white arms. "Lady Theodora," he said in cold and constrained tones, "I am too poor to return even in part such priceless favors of the Lady Theodora's love!" Stung in her innermost soul by his words, trembling from head to foot with the violence of her emotions, she panted in a passion of anger and shame. "You dare? This to me? Since then you will not love me--take this--" Above him, in her hand, gleamed his own unsheathed dagger. Tristan with a supple movement caught the white wrist and wrenched the weapon from her. "The Lady Theodora is always true to herself," he said with cutting irony, retreating from her in the direction of the lake. She threw out her arms. "Tristan--Tristan--forgive me! Come back--I am not myself." He paused. "And were you Aphrodite, I should spurn your love,--I should refuse to kiss the lips, which a slave, a churl has defiled." "You spurn me," she laughed deliriously. "Perchance, you are right. And yet," she added in a sadder tone, "how often does fate but grant us the dream and destroy the reality. Go--ere I forget, and do what I may repent of. Go! My brain is on fire. I know not what I am saying. Go!" As Tristan turned without response, a gleam of deadly hatred shone from her eyes. For a long time she stood motionless by the kiosk, staring as one in a trance down the long cypress avenue, whose shadows had swallowed up Tristan's retreating form. The spectral rays of the moon broke here and there through the dense, leafy canopy, and dream-like the distant sounds of harps and flutes were wafted through the stillness of the starlit southern night. CHAPTER IX THE NET OF THE FOWLER The appearance of Basil who had emerged from the kiosk and regarded Theodora with a look in his pale, passion distorted features that seemed to light up recesses in his own heart and soul which he himself had never fathomed, caused the woman to turn. But she looked at the man with an almost unknowing stare. Notwithstanding a self-control which she rarely lost, she had not found herself. The incredible had happened. When she seemed absolutely sure of the man, he had denied her. Her ruse had been her undoing. For Hellayne's presence had been neither accidental, nor had Hellayne herself brought it about. The messenger who had summoned Tristan had skillfully absolved both commissions. He was to have brought the woman to the tryst, that she might, with her own eyes, witness her rival's triumph. In her flight she had vanquished Theodora. Stealthily as a snake moves in the grass, Basil came nearer and nearer. When he had reached Theodora's side he took the white hand and raised it, unresisting, to his lips. His eyes sought those of the woman, but a moment or two elapsed ere she seemed even to note his presence. He bent low. There was love, passion, adoration in his eyes and there was more. Theodora had over-acted her part. He had seen the fire in her eyes and he knew. It was more than the determination to make Tristan pliable to her desires in the great hour when she was to enter Castel San Angelo as mistress of Rome. He saw the abyss that yawned at his own feet, and in that moment two resolves had shaped themselves in Basil's mind, shadowy, but gaining definite shape with each passing moment, and, while his fevered lips touched Theodora's hand, all the evil passions in his nature leaped into his brain. Suddenly Theodora, glancing down at him, as if she for the first time noted his presence, spoke. "Acknowledge, my lord, that I have attained my ends! For, had it not been for the appearance of that woman, I should have conquered--ay--conquered beyond a doubt." But when she looked at him she hardly recognized in him the man she knew, so terribly had rage and jealousy distorted his countenance. "How can I gainsay that you have conquered, fairest Theodora," he said, "when I heard the soft accents of your endearments and your panting breath, as you drowned his soul in fiery kisses? 'Tis but another poor fool swallowed up in the unsatisfied whirlpool of your desires, another victim marked for the holocaust that is to be. But why did the Lady Theodora cry out and bring the tender love scene to a close all unfinished?" "By pale Hekaté, I had almost forgot the woman! Why did I permit her to go without strangling her on the spot?" she cried, the growing anger which the man's speech had aroused, brought to white heat in the reminder. "The honor of being strangled by the fair hands of the Lady Theodora may be great," sneered Basil. "Yet I question if the Lady Hellayne would submit without a struggle even to so fair an opponent." "Why do you taunt me?" Theodora flashed. "Why?" he cried. "Because I witnessed another reaping the fruit of the deeds I have sown--another stealing from me the love of the woman I have possessed,--one, too, held in silken bondage by another's wife. Rather would I plunge this knife into my own heart and--" Theodora's bosom heaved convulsively. "Put up your dagger, my lord," she said, with a wave of her hand. "For, ere long, it shall drink its fill. Strange it is that I--the like of whose beauty, as they tell me, is not on earth--should be conquered by a woman from the North--that the fires of the South should be quenched by Northern ice. I could almost wish that matters had run differently between her and myself, for she is brave, else had she not faced me as she did." "What else can you look for, Lady Theodora, from one sprung from such a race?" replied the man sullenly. "I tell you, Lady Theodora, if you do not ward yourself against her, she will vanquish you utterly, body and soul." "The future shall decide between us. I am still Theodora, and it will go hard with you, if you interpret my will according to your own desires. I foresee that we shall have need of all our resources when the hour tolls that shall see Theodora set upon the throne that is her own, and then--let deeds speak, not words." "Since when have you found occasion to doubt the sureness of my blade, Lady Theodora?" answered Basil, a dark look in his furtive eyes. "Peace, my lord!" interposed Theodora. "Why do you raise up the ghost of that which has been between us? Bury the past, for the last throw that is in the hands of destiny ends the game which has been played round this city of Rome these many weary days." "And had you, Theodora, of a truth won over this Tristan," came the dark reply, "so that one hour's delight in your arms would have caused him to forget the world about him--what of me who has given to you the love, the devotion of a slave?" At the words Theodora flung wide her shimmering arms and cried: "I tell you, my lord, that as I hold you and every man captive on whom my charms have fallen, so shall I hold in chains the soul of this Tristan, even though he resist--to the last." "Full well do I know the potency of your spell," answered Basil with lowering eyes, "and, I doubt me, if such is the case. Nevertheless, I warn you, Lady Theodora, not to place too great a share of this desperate venture on the shoulders of one you have never proved." A contemptuous smile curved Theodora's lips as she rose from her seat. With a single sweep her draperies fell from her like mist from a snow-clad peak, and for the space of a moment there was silence, broken only by Basil's panting breath. At last Theodora spoke. "Man's honor is so much chaff for the burning, when the darts of love pierce his brain. With beauty's weapons I have fought before, and once again the victory shall be mine!" There was an ominous light in Basil's eyes. "Beware, lest the victory be not purchased with the blood of one whom your fickleness has chosen to sit in the empty seat of the discarded. At the bidding of a mad passion have you been defeated." A flood of words surged irresistibly to Basil's lips, but at the sight of Theodora's set face the words froze in the utterance. But when the woman stared into space, her face showing no sign that she had even heard his speech, he continued: "And when you are stretched out on a bed of torment and call for death to ease your pain, let the bitterest pang be that, had you enlisted my blade and cherished the devotion I bore you, this night's work would have set the seal of victory on our perilous venture." "Blinded I have been," said Theodora, a strange light leaping to her eyes, "to all the devotion which now I begin to fathom more clearly. Answer me then, my lord! Is it only to slake the pangs of mad jealousy that you taunt me with words which no man has dared to speak--and live?" The sheen of a drawn dagger flashed above his head. Basil faced the death that lurked in Theodora's uplifted arm and he replied in an unmoved voice: "Lady Theodora, if you harbor one single doubt in your mind of him who has worked your will on those you consigned to their doom and laid their proud heads low in the dust of the grave, let your blade descend and quit me according to what I have deserved. Nay--Lady Theodora," he continued, as her white arm still hovered tense above him, "it is quite evident your love I never had, your trust I have lost! Therefore send my soul to the dim realms of the underworld, for I have no longer any desire for life." He was gazing up at her with eyes full of passionate devotion, when of a sudden the blade dropped from her grasp, tinkling on the stone beneath, and, burying her face in her hands, Theodora burst into an agony of tears that shook her form with piteous sobbing. "By all the saints, dear lady, weep not," Basil pleaded, placing gentle hands upon her shoulders. "Rather let your dagger do its work and drink my blood, than that grief should thus undo you." "Truly had some evil spirit entered into me," she spoke at length in broken accents, "else had I not so madly suspected one whose devotion to me has never wavered. Can you forgive me, my lord, most trusted and doubted of my friends?" With a fierce outcry the man cast himself at her feet, and, bending low, kissed her hands, while, in tones, hoarse with passion, he stammered: "Let me then prove my love, Lady Theodora, most beautiful of all women on earth! Set the task! Show me how to win back that which I have lost! Let me become your utter slave." And, so saying, he swept the unresisting woman into his grasp, and as her body lay motionless against his breast the sight of her lips so close to his own sent the hot blood hurtling through his fevered brain. Theodora shuddered in his embrace. He kissed her, again and again, and her wet lips roused in him all the demoniacal passions of his nature. "Speak," he stammered, "what must I do to prove to you the love which is in my heart--the passion that burns my soul to crisp, as the fires of hell the souls of the damned?" Theodora's eyes were closed, as if she hesitated to speak the words that her lips had framed. He, Tristan, had brought her to this pass. He had denied, insulted her, he had made a mock of her in the eyes of this man, who was kneeling at her feet, bond slave of his passions. By his side no task would have seemed too great of accomplishment. And whatever the fruits of her plotting he was to have shared them. How she hated him; and how she hated that woman who had come between them. As for him whose stammering words of love tumbled from his drunken lips, Theodora could have driven her poniard through his heart without wincing in the act. "If you love me then, as you say," she whispered at last, "revenge me on him who has put this slight upon me!" A baleful light shone in Basil's eyes. "He dies this very night." She raised her hands with a shudder. "No--no! Not a quick death! He would die as another changes his garment--with a smile.--No! Not a quick death! Let him live, but wish he were dead a thousand times. Strike him through his honor. Strike him through the woman he loves." For a pace Basil was silent. Could Theodora have read his thoughts at this moment the weapon would not have dropped from her nerveless grasp. "Ah!" he said, and a film seemed to pass over his eyes in the utterance. "There is nothing that shall be left undone--through his honor--through the woman he loves." She utterly abandoned herself to him now, suffering his endearments and kisses like a thing of stone and thereby rousing his passions to their highest pitch. She could have strangled him like a poisonous reptile that defiled her body, but, after having suffered his embrace for a time, she suddenly shook herself free of him. "My lord--what of our plans? How much longer must I wait ere the clarions announce to Rome that the Emperor's Tomb harbors a new mistress? What of Alberic? What of Hassan Abdullah, the Saracen?" Basil was regarding her with a mixture of savage passion, doubt, incredulity and something like fear. "The death-hounds are on Alberic's scent," he said at last, with an effort to steady his voice, and hold in leash his feelings, which threatened to master him, as his eyes devoured the woman's beauty.--"Hassan Abdullah is even now in Rome." "Can we rely upon him and his Saracens when the hour tolls that shall see Theodora mistress of Rome?" "Weighing a sack of gold against the infidel's treachery, it is safe to predict that the scales will tip in favor of the bribe--so it be large enough." "Be lavish with him, and if his heart be set on other matters--" She paused, regarding the man with an inscrutable look. Shrewd as he was, he caught not its meaning. "Why not entrust to his care the Lady Hellayne?" The devilish suggestion seemed to find not as enthusiastic a reception as she had anticipated. "After having seen the Lady Theodora," Basil said, his eyes avoiding those of the woman, "I fear the Lady Hellayne will appear poor in Hassan Abdullah's eyes." Theodora had grown pensive. "I do not think so. To me she seemed like a snow-capped volcano. All ice without, all fire within. Perchance I should bow to your better judgment, my lord, and perchance to Hassan Abdullah's, whose good taste in preferring the Lady Theodora cannot be gainsaid. But, our guests are becoming impatient. Take me to the palace." Basil barred the woman's way. "And when you have reached the summit of your desire, will you remember certain nuptials consummated in a certain chamber in the Emperor's Tomb, between two placed as we are and mated as we?" Theodora's lips curved in one of those rare smiles which brought him to whom she gave it to her feet, her abject slave. "I shall remember, my lord," she said, and, linking her arm in his, they strode towards the palace. CHAPTER X DEVIL WORSHIP The dawn of the following day brought in its wake consternation and terror. From the churches of the two Egyptian Martyrs, Sts. Cosmas and Damian, the Holy Host had been taken during the preceding night. Frightened beyond measure, the ministering priests had suffered the terrible secret to leak out, and this circumstance, coupled with the unexplained absence of the Senator, the tardiness of the Prefect to start his investigations, and the captivity of the Pontiff, threw the Romans into a panic. It was impossible to guard every church in Rome against a similar outrage, as the guards of the Senator were inadequate in number, and, consisting chiefly of foreign elements, could not be relied upon. The early hours of the morning found Tristan in the hermitage of Odo of Cluny. To him he confided the incidents of the night and his adventure in the Catacombs. To him he also imparted the terrible discovery he had made. Odo of Cluny listened in silence, his face betraying no sign of the emotion he felt. When Tristan had concluded his account he regarded him long and earnestly. "I, too, have long known that all is not well, that there is something brewing in this witches' cauldron which may not stand the light of day.--" "But what is it?" cried Tristan. "Tell me, Father, for a great fear as of some horrible danger is upon me; a fear I cannot define and which yet will not leave me." Odo's face was calm and grave. The Benedictine monk had been listening intently, but with a detached interest, as to some tale which, even if it concerned himself, could not in the least disturb his equanimity. With his supernormal quickness of perception he knew at once the powers with which he had to cope. Tristan had told him of the devilish face in the panel during the night of his first watch at the Lateran. "The powers of Evil at work are so great that only a miracle from heaven can save us," he said at last. "Listen well, and lose not a word of what I am about to say. Have you ever heard of one Mani, who lived in Babylonia some seven hundred years ago and founded a religion in which he professed to blend the teachings of Christ with the cult of the old Persian Magi?" A negative gesture came in response. Tristan's face was tense with anxiety. Odo continued: "According to his teachings there exist two kingdoms: the kingdom of Light and the kingdom of Darkness. Light represents the beneficent primal spirit: God. Darkness is likewise a spiritual kingdom: Satan and his demons were born from the kingdom of Darkness. These two kingdoms have stood opposed to each other from all eternity--touching each other's boundaries, yet remaining unmingled. At last Satan began to rage and made an incursion into the kingdom of Light. Now, the God of Light begat the primal man and sent him, equipped with the five pure elements, to fight against Satan. But the latter proved himself the stronger, and the primal man was, for the time, vanquished. In time the cult of the Manichæans spread. The seat of the Manichæan pope was for centuries at Samarkand. From there, defying persecutions, the sect spread, and obtained a foothold in northern Africa at the time of St. Augustine. Thence it slowly invaded Italy." Tristan listened with deep attention. "The original creed had meanwhile been split up into numerous sects," Odo of Cluny continued. "The followers of Mani believed there were two Gods,--the one of Light, the other of Darkness, both equally powerful in their separate kingdoms. But lately one by the name of Bogumil proclaims that God never created the world, that Christ had not an actual body, that he neither could have been born, nor that he died, that our bodies are evil, a foul excrescence, as it were, of the evil principle. Maintaining that God had two sons--Satan the older and Christ the younger--they refuse homage to the latter, Regent of the Celestial World, and worship Lucifer. And they hold meetings and perform diabolical ceremonies, in which they make wafers of ashes and drink the blood of a goat, which their devil-priests administer to them in communion." Odo of Cluny paused and took a long breath, fixing Tristan with his dark eyes. And when Tristan, stark with horror, dared not trust himself to speak, Odo concluded: "This is the peril that confronts us! And Holy Church is without a head, and the cardinals cannot cope with the terrible scourge. It is this you saw, my son, and, had your presence been discovered, you would never again have greeted the light of day." At last Tristan found his tongue. "God forbid that there should be such a thing, that men should worship the Fiend." "Nevertheless they do," Odo replied, "and other things too awful for mortal mind to credit." The perspiration came out on Tristan's brow. Although he was prepared for matters of infinite moment and knew that this interview might well be one of the decisive moments of his life, he yet possessed the detached attitude of mind which was curious of strange learning and information, even in a crisis. "And you have known this, Father?" he said at last, "and you have done nothing to check the evil?" "We are living in evil times, my son," Odo replied. "I have long known of the existence of this black heresy, which has slowly spread its baleful cult, until it has reached our very shores. But that they would dare to establish themselves in the city of the Apostle, this I was not prepared to accept, until the terrible crime at the Lateran removed the last doubt. And now I know that the foul thing has obtained a footing here, and more than that, I know that some high in power are affiliated with this society of Satan, that would establish the reign of Lucifer among the Seven Hills. Did you not tell me, my son, of one, terrible of aspect, who peered through the panel in the Capella Palatina on the night of that first and most horrible outrage?" "One who looked as the Fiend might look, did he assume human guise," Tristan confirmed with a nod. "The high priest of Satan," Odo returned, "a familiar of black magic--the most terrible of all heinous crimes against Holy Church. A wave of crime is rolling its crimson tide over the Eternal City such as the annals of the Church have never recorded. It started in the reign of Marozia, and Theodora is leagued with the fiend, as was her sister before her." Odo paused for a moment, breathing deep, while Tristan listened spellbound. "Have you ever pondered," he continued with slow emphasis, "why the Lord Alberic entrusted to you, a stranger, so important a post as the command of the Emperor's Tomb? That there may be one he does not trust and who that one may be?" Tristan gave a start. "There is one I do not trust--one who seems to wrap himself in a poison mist of evil--the Lord Basil." "Be wary and circumspect. Has he of late come to the Tomb?" "Three days ago--in company with a stranger from the North--one I may not meet and again look upon heaven." "The woman's husband?" Odo queried with a penetrating glance. Tristan colored. "How these two met I cannot fathom." "Remember one thing, my son, their alliance portends evil to some one. What did they in the crypts?" "The Lord Basil seems to have taken a fancy to exploring the cells," Tristan replied. "Those who have followed him report that he holds strange converse with the ghost of some mad monk whom he starved into eternity." "And this converse--what is its subject?" Odo queried with awakening interest. "A prophecy and a woman," Tristan replied. "Though those who heard them were so terror stricken at their infectious madness that they fled--not daring to tarry longer lest they would find themselves in the clutches of the fiend." "A prophecy and a woman," Odo repeated pensively. "The Lord Alberic has confided much in me--his fears--his doubts! For even he knows not, how his mother came to her untimely end." "The Lady Marozia?" "The tale is known to you?" "Rumors--flimsy--intangible--" "One night she was mysteriously strangled. The Lord Alberic was almost beside himself. But the mystery remained unsolved." After a pause Odo continued: "I, too, have not been idle. We must lull them in security! We must appear utterly paralyzed. Our terror will increase their boldness. Their ultimate object is still hidden. We must be wary. The Lord Alberic must be informed. We must spike the bait." "I have despatched a trusty messenger in the guise of a peasant to the shrine of the Archangel," Tristan interposed. "God grant that he arrive not too late," Odo replied. "And now, my son, listen to my words. A great soul and a stout heart must he have who sets himself to such a task as is before you! We are surrounded by the very fiends of Hell in human guise. Speak to no one of what you have seen. If you are in need of counsel, come to me!" Odo raised his hands, pronouncing a silent blessing over the kneeling visitor and Tristan departed, dazed and trembling, wide-eyed and with pallid lips. As he passed Mount Aventine the dark-robed form of a hunchback suddenly rose like a ghost from the ground beside him and, approaching Tristan, muttered some words in an unintelligible jargon. Believing he was dealing with a beggar, Tristan was about to dismiss the ill-favored gnome with a gift, which the latter refused, motioning to Tristan to incline his ear. With an ill-concealed gesture of impatience Tristan complied, but his strange interlocutor had hardly delivered himself of his message when Tristan recoiled as if he had seen a snake in the grass before him, every vestige of color fading from his face. "At the Lateran?" he chokingly replied to the whispered confidence of the hunchback. The latter nodded. "At the Lateran." Ere Tristan could recover from his surprise, his informant had disappeared among the ruins. For some time he stood as if rooted to the spot. It was too monstrous--too unbelievable and yet--what could prompt his informant to invent so terrible a tale? At midnight, two nights hence, the consecrated wafer was to be taken from the tabernacle in the Lateran! Perchance he had spoken even to one of the sect who had, at the last moment, repented of his share in the contemplated outrage. If it were granted to him to deliver Rome and the world from this terror! A strange fire gleamed in his eyes as he returned to Castel San Angelo. Himself, he would keep the watch at the Lateran and foil the plot. CHAPTER XI BY LETHE'S SHORES Basil the Grand Chamberlain was giving one of his renowned feasts in his villa on the Pincian Mount. But on this evening he had limited the number of his guests to two score. On his right sat Roger de Laval, the guest of honor, on his left the Lady Hellayne. Over the company stretched a canopy of cloth of gold. The chairs were of gilt bronze, their arms were carved in elaborate arabesques. The dishes were of gold; the cups inlaid with jewels. There was gayety and laughter. Far into the night they caroused. Hellayne's face was the only apprehensive one at the board. She was pale and worn, and her countenance betrayed her reluctance to be present at a feast into the spirit of which she could not enter. She was dimly conscious of the fact that Basil devoured her with his eyes and her lord seemed to find more suited entertainment with the other women who were present than with his own wife. Only by threats and coercion had he prevailed upon her to attend the Grand Chamberlain's banquet. With a brutality that was part of his coarse nature he now left her to shift for herself, and she tolerated Basil's unmistakable insinuations only from a sense of utter helplessness. Her beauty had indeed aroused the host's passion to a point where he threw caution to the winds. The exquisite face, framed in a wealth of golden hair, the deep blue eyes, the marble whiteness of the skin, the faultless contours of her form--an ensemble utterly opposed to the darker Roman type--had aroused in him desires which soon swept away the thin veneer of dissimulation and filled Hellayne with a secret dread which she endeavored to control. Her thoughts were with the man by whom she believed herself betrayed, and while life seemed to hold nothing that would repay her for enduring any longer the secret agonies that overwhelmed her, it was to guard her honor that her wits were sharpened and, believing in the adage that danger, when bravely faced, disappears, she entered, though with a heavy heart, into the vagaries of Basil, but, like a premonition of evil, her dread increased with every moment. And now the host announced to his guests his intention of leaving Rome on the morrow for his estate in the Rocca, where an overpunctilious overseer demanded his presence. Raising his goblet he pledged the beautiful wife of the Count de Laval. It was a toast that was eagerly received and responded to, and even Hellayne was forced to appear joyous, for all that her heart was on the point of breaking. She raised her goblet, a beautiful chased cup of gold, in acknowledgment. But she did not see the ill-omened smile that flitted over the thin lips of Basil, and she wished for Tristan as she had never wished for him before. After a time the guests quitted the banquet hall for the moonlit garden, and Basil's attentions became more and more insistent. It was in vain Hellayne's eyes strained for her lord. He was not to be found.-- It was on the following morning when the horrible news aroused the Romans that the young wife of the strange lord from Provence had, during the night, suddenly died at the banquet of the Grand Chamberlain. From a friar whom he chanced to pass on his way to the Lateran Tristan received the first news. Fra Geronimo's face was white as death, and his limbs shook as with a palsy. He had been the confessor of the Lady Hellayne, the only visitor allowed to come near her. "Have you heard the tidings?" he cried in a quavering voice, on beholding Tristan. "What tidings?" Tristan returned, struck by the horror in the friar's face. "The Lady Hellayne is dead!" he said with a sob. Tristan stared at him as if a thunderbolt had cleft the ground beside him. For a moment he seemed bereft of understanding. "Dead?" he gasped with a choking sensation. "What is it you say?" "Well may you doubt your ears," the friar sobbed. "But Mater Sanctissima, it is the truth! Madonna Hellayne is dead. They found her dead--early this morning--in the vineyard of the Lord Basil." "In the vineyard of the Lord Basil?" came back the echo from Tristan's lips. "There was a feast, lasting well into the night. The Lady Hellayne took suddenly ill. They fetched a mediciner. When he arrived it was all over." "God of Heaven! Where is she now?" "They conveyed her to the palace of the Lord Laval, to prepare her for interment." Without a word Tristan started to break away from the friar, his head in a whirl, his senses benumbed. The latter caught him betime. "What would you do?" Tristan stared at him as one suddenly gone mad. "I will see her." "It is impossible!" the friar replied. "You cannot see her." From Tristan's eyes came a glare that would have daunted many a one of greater physical prowess than his informant. "Cannot? Who is to prevent me?" "The man whom fate gave her for mate," replied the friar. "That dog--" "A brawl in the presence of death? Would you thus dishonor her memory? Would she wish it so?" For a moment Tristan stared at the man before him as if he heard some message from afar, the meaning of which he but faintly guessed. Then a blinding rush of tears came to his eyes. He shook with the agony of his grief regardless of those who passed and paused and wondered, while the friar's words of comfort and solace fell on unmindful ears. At last, heedless of his companion, heedless of his surroundings, heedless of everything, he rushed away to seek solitude, where he would not see a human face, not hear a human voice. He must be alone with his grief, alone with his Maker. It seemed to him he was going mad. It was all too monstrous, too terrible, too unbelievable. How was it possible that one so young, so strong, so beautiful, should die? Friar Geronimo knew not. But his gaze had caused Tristan to shiver as in an ague. He remembered the discourse of Basil and his companion in the galleries of the Emperor's Tomb. Twice was he on the point of warning Hellayne not to attend Basil's banquet. Each time something had intervened. The warning had remained unspoken. Would she have heeded it? He gave a groan of anguish. Hellayne was dead! That was the one all absorbing fact which had taken possession of him, blotting out every other thought, every other consideration. She was dead--dead--dead! The hideous phrase boomed again and again through his distracted mind. Compared with that overwhelming catastrophe what signified the Hour, the Why and the When. She was dead--dead--dead! For hours he sat alone in the solitudes of Mount Aventine, where no prying eyes would witness his grief. And the storm which had arisen and swept the Seven Hilled City with the vehemence of a tropical hurricane seemed but a feeble echo of the tempest that raged within his soul. She was dead--dead--dead. The waves of the Tiber seemed to shout it as they leapt up and dashed their foam against the rocky declivities of the Mount of Cloisters. The wind seemed now to moan it piteously, now to shriek it fiercely, as it scudded by, wrapping its invisible coils about him and seeming intent on tearing him from his resting place. Towards evening he rose and, skirting the heights, descended into the city, dishevelled and bedraggled, yet caring nothing what spectacle he might afford. And presently a grim procession overtook the solitary rambler, and at the sight of the black, cowled and visored forms that advanced in the lurid light of the waxen tapers, Tristan knelt in the street with head bowed till her body had been borne past. No one heeded him. They carried her to the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, and thither he followed presently, and, in the shadow of one of the pillars of the aisle, he crouched, while the monks chanted the funeral psalms. The singing ended the friars departed, and those who had formed the cortege began to leave the church. In an hour he was alone, alone with the beloved dead, and there on his knees he remained, and no one knew whether, during that horrid hour, he prayed or blasphemed. It may have been toward the third hour of the night when Tristan staggered up, stiff and cramped, from the cold stone. Slowly, in a half-dazed condition, he walked down the aisle and gained the door of the church. He tried to open it, but it resisted his efforts, and he realized it was locked for the night. The appreciation of his position afforded him not the slightest dismay. On the contrary, his feelings were rather of relief. At least there was none other to share his grief! He had not known whither he should repair, so distracted was his mind, and now chance or fate had settled the matter for him by decreeing that he should remain. Tristan turned and slowly paced back, until he stood beside the great, black catafalque, at each corner of which a tall wax taper was burning. His steps rang with a hollow sound through the vast, gloomy spaces of the cold and empty church. But these were not matters to occupy his mind in such a season, no more than the damp, chill air which permeated every nook and corner. Of all of these he remained unconscious in the absorbing anguish that possessed his soul. Near the foot of the bier there was a bench, and there he took his seat and, resting his elbows on his knees, took his dishevelled head between his trembling hands. His thoughts were all of her whose poor, murdered clay lay encased above him. In turn he reviewed each scene of his life where it had touched upon her own. He evoked every word she had spoken to him since they had again met on that memorable night. Thus he sat, clenching his hands and torturing his dull inert brain while the night wore slowly on. Later a still more frenzied mood obsessed him, a burning desire to look once more upon the sweet face he had loved so well. What was there to prevent him? Who was there to gainsay him? He arose and uttered aloud the challenge in his madness. His voice echoed mournfully along the aisles and the sound of the echoes chilled him, though his purpose gathered strength. Tristan advanced, and, after a moment's pause, with the silver embroidered hem of the pall in his hands, suddenly swept off that mantle of black cloth, setting up such a gust of wind as all but quenched the tapers. He caught up the bench upon which he had been sitting and, dragging it forward, mounted it and stood, his chest on a level with the coffin lid. His trembling hands fumbled along its surface. He found it unfastened. Without thought or care how he went about the thing, he raised it and let it crash to the ground. It fell on the stone flags with a noise like thunder, booming and reverberating through the gloomy vaults. A form all in purest white lay there beneath his gaze, the face covered by a white veil. With deepest reverence, and a prayer to her departed soul to forgive the desecration of his loving hands, he tremblingly drew the veil aside. How beautiful she was in the calm peace of death! She lay there like one gently sleeping, the faintest smile upon her lips, and, as he gazed, it was hard to believe that she was truly dead. Her lips had lost nothing of their natural color. They were as red as he had ever seen them in life. How could this be? The lips of the dead are wont to assume a livid hue. Tristan stared for a moment, his awe and grief almost effaced by the intensity of his wonder. This face, so ivory pale, wore not the ashen aspect of one that would never wake again. There was a warmth about that pallor. And then he bit his nether lip until it bled, and it seemed a miracle that he did not scream, seeing how overwrought were his senses. For it had seemed to him that the draperies on her bosom had slightly moved, in a gentle, almost imperceptible heave, as if she breathed. He looked--and there it came again! God! What madness had seized upon him, that his eyes should so deceive him! It was the draught that stirred the air about the church, and blew great shrouds of wax down the taper's yellow sides. He manned himself to a more sober mood and looked again. And now his doubts were all dispelled. He knew that he had mastered any errant fancy, and that his eyes were grown wise and discriminating, and he knew, too, that she lived! Her bosom slowly rose and fell; the color of her lips, the hue of her cheek, confirmed the assurance that she breathed! He paused a second to ponder. That morning her appearance had been such that the mediciner had been deceived by it and had pronounced her dead. Yet now there were signs of life! What could it portend, but that the effects of a poison were passing off and that she was recovering? In the first wild excess of joy, that sent the blood tingling and beating through his brain, his first impulse was to run for help. Then Tristan bethought himself of the closed doors and he realized that, no matter how loudly he shouted, no one would hear him. He must succour her himself as best he could, and meanwhile she must be protected from the chill night air of the church, cold as the air of a tomb. He had his cloak, a heavy serviceable garment, and, if more were needed, there was the pall which he had removed, and which lay in a heap about the legs of the bench. Leaning forward Tristan slowly passed his hand under her head and gently raised it. Then, slipping it downward, he thrust his arm after it, until he had her round the waist in a firm grip. Thus he raised her from the coffin, and the warmth of her body on his arms, the ready bending of her limbs, were so many added proofs that she lived. Gently and reverently Tristan raised the supple form in his arms, an intoxication of almost divine joy pervading him as the prayers fell faster from his lips than they had ever since he had recited them on his mother's knee. He laid her on the bench, while he divested himself of the cloak. Suddenly he paused and stood listening with bated breath. Steps were approaching from without. Tristan's first impulse was to rush towards the door, shouting his tidings and imploring assistance. Then, a sudden, almost instinctive dread caught and chilled him. Who was it that came at such an hour? What would any one seek in the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin at dead of night? Was the church indeed their goal, or were they but chance passers-by? That last question remained not long unanswered. The steps came nearer. They paused before the door. Something heavy was hurled against it. Then some one spoke. "It is locked, Tebaldo! Get out your tools and force it!" Tristan's wits were working at fever pace. It may have been that he was swift of thought beyond any ordinary man, or it may have been a flash of inspiration, or a conclusion to which he leapt by instinct. But in that moment the whole problematical plot was revealed to him. Poisoned forsooth she had been, but by a drug that but produced for a time the outward appearance of death, so truly simulated as even to deceive the most learned of doctors. Tristan had heard of such poisons, and here, in very truth, was one of them at work. Some one, no doubt, intended secretly to bear her off. And to-morrow, when men found a broken church door and a violated bier, they would set the sacrilege down to some wizard who had need of the body for his dark practices. Tristan cursed himself in that dark hour. Had he but peered earlier into her coffin while yet there might have been time to save her. And now? The sweat stood out in beads upon his brow. At that door there were, to judge by the sound of their footsteps and voices, some five or six men. For a weapon he had only his dagger. What could he do to defend her? Basil's plans would suffer no defeat through his discovery when to-morrow the sacrilege was revealed. His own body, lying cold and stark beside the desolated bier, would be but an incident in the work of profanation they would find; an item that in no wise could modify the conclusion at which they would naturally arrive. CHAPTER XII THE DEATH WATCH A strange and mysterious thing is the working of terror on the human mind. Some it renders incapable of thought or action, paralyzing their limbs and stagnating the blood in their veins; such creatures die in anticipating death. Others, under the stress of that grim emotion have their wits preternaturally sharpened. The instinct of self-preservation assumes command and urges them to swift and feverish action. After a moment of terrible suspense Tristan's hands fell limply beside him. At the next he was himself again. His cheeks were livid, his lips bloodless. But his hands were steady and his wits under control. Concealment--concealment for Hellayne and himself--was the thing that now imported, and no sooner was the thought conceived than the means were devised. Slender means they were, yet since they were the best the place afforded, he must trust to them without demurring, and pray to God that the intruders might lack the wit to search. And with that fresh hope it came to him that he must find a way as to make them believe that to search would be a waste of effort. The odds against him lay in the little time at his disposal. Yet a little time there was. The door was stout, and those outside might not resort to violent means to break it open lest the noise arouse the street. With what tools the sbirri were at work he could not guess, but surely they must be such as to leave him but a few moments. Already they had begun. He could distinguish a crunching sound as of steel biting into wood. Swiftly and silently Tristan set to work. Like a ghost he glided round the coffin's side, where the lid was lying. He raised it and, after he had deposited Hellayne on the ground, mounted the bench and replaced it. Next he gathered up the cumbrous pall and, mounting the bench once more, spread it over the coffin. This way and that he pulled it, until it appeared undisturbed as when he had entered. What time he toiled, the half of his mind intent upon his task, the other half was as intent upon the progress of the workers at the door. At last it was done. Tristan replaced the bench at the foot of the catafalque and, gathering up the woman in his arms, as though her weight had been that of a feather, he bore her swiftly out of the radius of the four tapers into the black, impenetrable gloom beyond. On he sped towards the high altar, flying now as men fly in evil dreams, with the sensation of an enemy upon them, and their progress a mere stand still. Thus he gained the chancel, stumbling against the railing as he passed, and pausing for an instant, wondering whether those outside had heard. But the grinding sound continued and he breathed more freely. He mounted the altar stairs, the distant light behind him feebly guiding him on, then he ran round to the right and heaved a great sigh of relief upon finding his hopes realized. The altar stood a pace or so from the wall, and behind it there was just such a concealment as he had hoped to find. Tristan paused at the mouth of that black well, and even as he paused something that gave out a metallic sound, dropped at the far end of the church. Intuition informed him that it was the lock which the miscreants had cut from the door. He waited no longer, but like a deer scudding to cover, plunged into the dark abyss. Hellayne, wrapped in his cloak, as she was, he placed on the ground, then crept forward on hands and knees and thrust out his head, trusting to the darkness to conceal him. He waited thus for a time, his heart beating almost audibly in the intermittent silence, his head and face on fire with the fever of sudden reaction. From his point of vantage it was impossible for Tristan to see the door that was hidden in the black gloom. Away in the centre of the church, an island of light in that vast well of blackness, stood the catafalque with its four waxen tapers. Something creaked, and almost immediately he saw the flames of those tapers bend toward him, beaten over by the gust that smote them from the door. Thus he surmised that Tebaldo and his men had entered. Their soft foot-fall, for they were treading lightly now, succeeded, and at last they took shape, shadowy at first, then clearly defined, as they emerged within the circle of the light. For a moment they stood in half whispered conversation, their voices a mere boom of sound in which no words were to be distinguished. Then Tristan saw Tebaldo step forward, and by his side another he knew by his great height--Gamba, the deposed captain. Tebaldo dragged away, even as Tristan had done, the pall that hid the coffin. Next he seized the bench and gave a brisk order to his men. "Spread a cloth!" In obedience to his command, the four who were with him spread a cloak among them, each holding one of its corners. Apparently they intended to carry away the dead body in this manner. The sbirro now mounted the bench and started to remove the coffin lid, when a blasphemous cry of rage broke from his lips that defied utterly the sanctity of the place. "By the body of Christ! The coffin is empty!"-- It was the roar of an enraged beast and was succeeded by a heavy crash, as he let fall the coffin lid. A second later a second crash waked the midnight echoes of that silent place. In a burst of maniacal fury he had hurled the coffin from its trestles. Then he leaped down from the bench and flung all caution to the winds in the rage that possessed him. "It is a trick of the devil," he shouted. "They have laid a trap for us, and you have never even informed yourselves." There was foam about the corners of his mouth, the veins had swollen on his forehead, and from the mad bulging of his eyes spoke fury and abject terror. Bully as Tebaldo was, he could, on occasion, become a coward. "Away!" he shouted to his men. "Look to your weapons! Away!" Gamba muttered something under his breath, words the listener's ear could not catch. If it were a suggestion that the church should be searched, ere they abandoned it! But Tebaldo's answer speedily relieved his fears. "I'll take no chances," he barked. "Let us go separately. Myself first and do you follow and get clear of this quarter as best you may." Scarcely had the echoes of his footsteps died away, ere the others followed in a rush, fearful of being caught in some trap that was here laid for them, and restrained from flying on the instant but by their still greater fear of their master. Thanking Heaven for this miraculous deliverance, and for his own foresight in so arranging matters as to utterly mislead the ravishers, Tristan now devoted his whole attention to Hellayne. Her breathing had become deeper and more regular, so that in all respects she resembled one sunk into healthful slumber. He hoped she would waken before the elapse of many moments, for to try to bear her away in his arms would have been sheer madness. And now it occurred to him that he should have restoratives ready for the time of her regaining consciousness. Inspiration suggested to him the wine that should be stored in the sacristy for altar purposes. It was unconsecrated, and there could be no sacrilege in using it. He crept round to the front of the altar. At the angle a candle branch protruded at the height of his head. It held some three or four tapers and was so placed as to enable the priest to read his missal at early Mass on dark winter mornings. Tristan plucked one of the candles from its socket and, hastening down the church, lighted it from one of the burning tapers of the bier. Screening it with his hand he retraced his steps and regained the chancel. Then, turning to the left, he made for a door which gave access to the sacristy. It yielded and he passed down a short, stone flagged passage and entered a spacious chamber beyond. An oak settle was placed against one wall, and above it hung an enormous, rudely carved crucifix. On a bench in a corner stood a basin and ewer of metal, while a few vestments, suspended beside these, completed the appointments of the austere and white-washed chamber. Placing his candle on a cupboard, he opened one of the drawers. It was full of garments of different kinds, among which he noticed several monks' habits. Tristan rummaged to the bottom, only to find therein some odd pairs of sandals. Disappointed, Tristan closed the drawer and tried another, with no better fortune. Here were undervests of fine linen, newly washed and fragrant with rosemary. He abandoned the chest and gave his attention to the cupboard. It was locked, but the key was there. Tristan's candle reflected a blaze of gold and silver vessels, consecrated chalices, and several richly carved ciboria of solid gold, set with precious stones. But in a corner he discovered a dark brown, gourd-shaped object. It was a skin of wine and, with a half-suppressed cry of joy, he seized upon it. At that moment a piercing scream rang through the stillness of the church and startled him so that for some moments he stood frozen with terror, a hundred wild conjectures leaping into his brain. Had the ruffians remained hidden in the church? Had they returned? Did the screams imply that Hellayne had been awakened by their hands? A second time it came, and now it seemed to break the hideous spell that its first utterance had cast over him. Dropping the leathern bottle he sped back, down the stone passage to the door that abutted on the church. There, by the high altar, Tristan saw a form that seemed at first but a phantom, in which he presently recognized Hellayne, the dim rays of the distant tapers searching out the white robe with which her limbs were draped. She was alone, and he knew at once that it was but the natural fear consequent upon awakening in such a place, that had evoked the cry he had heard. "Hellayne!" he called, advancing swiftly to reassure her. "Hellayne!" There was a gasp, a moment's silence. "Tristan?" she cried questioningly. "What has happened? Why am I here?" He was beside her now and found her trembling like an aspen. "Something horrible has happened, my Hellayne," he replied. "But it is over now, and the evil is averted." "What is it?" she insisted, pale as death. "Why am I here?" "You shall learn presently." He stooped, to gather up the cloak, which had slipped from her shoulders. "Do you wrap this about you," he urged, assisting her with his own hands. "Are you faint, Hellayne?" "I scarce know," she answered, in a frightened voice. "There is a black horror upon me. Tell me," she implored again, "Why am I here? What does it all mean?" He drew her away now, promising to tell her everything once she were out of these forbidding surroundings. He assisted her to the sacristy and, seating her upon a settle, produced the wine skin. At first she babbled like a child, of not being thirsty, but he insisted. "It is not a matter of quenching your thirst, dearest Hellayne. The wine will warm and revive you! Come, dearest--drink!" She obeyed him now, and having got the first gulp down her throat, she took a long draught, which soon produced a healthier color, driving the ashen pallor from her cheeks. "I am cold, Tristan," she shuddered. He turned to the drawer in which he had espied the monks' habits and pulling one out, held it for her to put on. She sat there now in that garment of coarse black cloth, the cowl flung back upon her shoulder, the fairest postulant that ever entered upon a novitiate. "You are good to me, Tristan," she murmured plaintively, "and I have used you very ill! You do not love that other woman?" She paused, passing her hand across her brow. "Only you, dearest--only you!" "What is the hour?" she turned to him suddenly. It was a matter he left unheeded. He bade her brace herself, and take courage to listen to what he was about to tell. He assured her that the horror of it all was passed and that she had naught to fear. "But--how came I here?" she cried. "I must have lain in a swoon, for I remember nothing." And then her quick mind, leaping to a reasonable conclusion, and assisted perhaps by the memory of the shattered catafalque which she had seen, her eyes dilating with a curious affright as they were turned upon his own, she asked of a sudden: "Did you believe that I was dead?" "Yes," he replied with an unnatural calm in his voice. "Every one believed you were dead, Hellayne." And with this he told her the entire story of what had befallen, saving only his own part therein, nor did he try to explain his own opportune presence in the church. When he spoke of the coming of Tebaldo and his men she shuddered and closed her eyes. Only after he had concluded his tale did she turn them full upon him. Their brightness seemed to increase, and now he saw that she was weeping. "And you were there to save me, Tristan?" she murmured brokenly. "Oh, Tristan, it seems that you are ever at hand when I have need of you! You are, indeed, my one true friend--the one true friend that never fails me!" "Are you feeling stronger, Hellayne?" he asked abruptly. "Yes--I am stronger!" She rose as if to test her strength. "Indeed little ails me save the horror of this thing. The thought of it seems to turn me sick and dizzy." "Sit then and rest!" he enjoined. "Presently, when you feel equal to it, we shall start out!" "Whither shall we go?" she asked. "Why--to the abode of your liege lord." "Why--yes--" she answered at length, as though it had been the last suggestion she had expected. "And when he returns," she added, after a pause, "he will owe you no small thanks for your solicitude on my behalf." There was a pause. A hundred thoughts thronged Tristan's mind. Presently she spoke again. "Tristan," she inquired very gently, "what was it that brought you to the church?" "I came with the others, Hellayne," he replied, and, fearing such questions as might follow--questions he had been dreading ever since he brought her to the sacristy, he said: "If you are recovered, we had better set out." "I am not yet sufficiently recovered," she replied. "And, before we go, there are a few points in this strange adventure that I would have you make clear to me! Meanwhile we are very well here! If the good fathers do come upon us, what shall it signify?"-- Tristan groaned inwardly and grew more afraid than when Basil's men had broken into the church an hour ago. "What detained you after all had gone?" "I remained to pray," he answered, with a sense of irritation at her persistence. "What else was there to do in a church?" "To pray for me?" "Assuredly." "Dear, faithful heart," she murmured. "And I have used you so cruelly. But you merited my cruelty--Tristan! Say that you did, else must I perish of remorse." "Perchance I deserved it," he replied. "But perchance not so much as you bestowed, had you understood my motives," he said unguardedly. "If I had understood your motives?" she mused. "Ay--there is much I do not understand! Even in this night's business there are not wanting things that remain mysterious, despite the elucidations you have supplied. Tell me, Tristan--what was it that caused you to believe, that I still lived?" "I did not believe it," he blundered like a fool, never seeing whither her question led. "You did not?" she cried, with deep surprise, and now, when it was too late, he understood. "What was it then that induced you, to lift the coffin lid?"-- "You ask me more than I can tell you," he answered almost roughly, for fear lest the monks would come at any moment. She looked at him with eyes that were singularly luminous. "But I must know," she insisted. "Have I not the right? Tell me now! Was it that you wished to see my face once more before they gave me over to the grave?" "Perchance it was, Hellayne," he answered. Then he suggested their going, but she never heeded his anxiety. "Do you love me then so much, dearest Tristan?" He swung round to her now, and he knew that his face was white, whiter than the woman's had been when he had seen her in the coffin. His eyes seemed to burn in their sockets. A madness seized upon him and completely mastered him. He had undergone so much that day of grief, and that night the victim of a hundred emotions, that he no longer controlled himself. As it was, her words robbed him of the last lingering restraint. "Love you?" he replied, in a voice that was unlike his own. "You are dearer to me than all I have, all I am, all I ever hope to be! You are the guardian angel of my existence, the saint to whom I have turned mornings and evenings in my prayers! I love you more than life!" He paused, staggered by his own climax. The thought of what he had said and what the consequences must be, rushed suddenly upon him. He shivered as a man may shiver in waking from a trance. He dropped upon his knees before her. "Forgive," he entreated. "Forgive--and forget!" "Neither forgive nor forget will I," came her voice, charged with an ineffable sweetness, such as he had never before heard from her lips, and her hands lay softly on his bowed head as if she would bless and soothe him. "I am conscious of no offence that craves forgiveness, and what you have said to me I would not forget if I could. Whence springs this fear of yours, dear Tristan? Has not he to whom I once bound myself in a thoughtless moment, he who never understood, or cared to understand my nature, he whose cruelty and neglect have made me what I am to-day, lost every right, human or divine? Am I more than a woman and are you less than a man that you should tremble for the confession which, in a wild moment, I have dragged from you? For that wild moment I shall be thankful to my life's end, for your words have been the sweetest that my poor ears have ever listened to. I count you the truest friend and the noblest lover the world has ever known. Need it surprise you then, that I love you, and that mine would be a happy life if I might spend it in growing worthy of this noble love of yours?" There was a choking sensation in his throat and tears in his eyes. Transport the blackest soul from among the damned in Hell, wash it white of its sins and seat it upon one of the glorious thrones of Heaven,--such were the emotions that surged through his soul. At last he found his tongue. "Dearest," he said, "bethink yourself of what you say! You are still his wife--and the Church grants no severance of the bonds that have united two for better or worse." "Then shall we see the Holy Father. He is just and he will be merciful. Will you take me, Tristan, no matter to what odd shifts a cruel Fortune may drive us? Will you take me?" She held his face between her palms and forced his eyes to meet her eyes. "Will you take me, Tristan?" she said again. "Hellayne--" It was all he could say. Then a great sadness overwhelmed him, a tide that swept the frail bark of happiness high and dry upon the shores of black despair. "To-morrow, Hellayne, you will be what you were yesterday." "I have thought of that," she said, a slight flutter in her tone. "But--Hellayne is dead.--We must so dispose that they will let her rest in peace."-- CHAPTER XIII THE CONVENT IN TRASTEVERE He stared at her speechless, so taken was he with the immensity of the thing she had suggested. Fear, wonder, joy seemed to contend for the mastery. "Why do you look at me so, Tristan?" she said at last. "What is it that daunts you?" "But how is this thing possible?" he stammered, still in a state of bewilderment. "What difficulty does it present?" she returned. "The Lord Basil himself has rendered very possible what I suggest. We may look on him to-morrow as our best friend--" "But Tebaldo knows," he interposed. "True! Deem you, he will dare to tell the world what he knows? He might be asked to tell how he came by his knowledge. And that might prove a difficult question to answer. Tell me, Tristan," she continued, "if he had succeeded in carrying me away, what deem you would have been said to-morrow in Rome when the coffin was found empty?"-- "They would naturally assume that your body had been stolen by some wizard or some daring doctor of anatomy." "Ah! And if we were quietly to quit the church and be clear of Rome before morning--would not the same be said?" He pondered a while, staggered by the immensity of the risk, when suddenly a memory flashed through his mind that left his limbs numb as if they had been paralyzed by a thunderbolt. It was the night on which the terrible crime at the Lateran was to be committed. Even now it could not be far from the midnight hour. Did he dare, even for the consideration of the greatest happiness which the world and life had to give, to forego his duty towards the Church and the Senator of Rome? Hellayne noted his hesitancy. "Why do you waste precious moments, Tristan?" she queried. "Is it that you do not love me enough?" A negative gesture came in response, and his eyes told her more than words could have expressed. At last he spoke. "If I hesitate," he said, trying to avoid the real issue, instead of stating it without circumlocution, "it is because I would not have you do now of what, hereafter, you might repent. I would not have you be misled by the impulse of a moment into an act whose consequences must endure while life endures." "Is that the reasoning of love?" she said very quietly. "Is this cold argument, this weighing of issues consistent with the hot passion you professed so lately?" "It is," he replied. "It is because I love you more than I love myself, that I would have you ponder, ere you adventure your life upon a broken raft such as mine. You are still the wife of another." "No!" she replied, her eyes preternaturally brilliant in the intensity of her emotion. "Hellayne, the wife of Roger de Laval, is dead--as dead to him, as if she in reality were bedded in the coffin. Where is he? Where is the man who should have been where you are, Tristan? I venture to say his grief did not overburden him. He will find ready consolation in the arms of another for the wife who was to him but the plaything of his idle hours. He never loved me! He even threatened to shut me up within convent walls for the rest of my days if I did not return with him--his mistress,--his wife but in a name, a thing to submit to his loathsome kisses and caresses, while her soul is another's. He himself and death, which perchance he himself decreed, have severed bonds no persuasion would have tempted me to break. Tristan, I am yours--take me." She held out her beautiful arms. He was in mortal torment. "Nevertheless, Hellayne, to-night of all nights it may not be--" he stammered. "Listen, dearest--" "Enough!" she silenced him, as she rose. She swept towards him and, before he knew it, her hands were on his shoulders, her face upturned, her blue eyes holding his own, depriving him of will and resistance. "Tristan," she said, and there was an intensity almost fierce in her tones, "moments are fleeting, and you stand there reasoning with me and bidding me weigh what already is weighed for all time. Will you wait until escape is rendered impossible, until we are discovered, before you will decide to save me and to grasp with both hands the happiness that is yours; this happiness that is not twice offered in a lifetime?" She was so close to him that he could almost feel the beating of her heart. He was now as wax in her hands. Forgotten were all considerations of rank and station. They were just man and woman whose fates were linked together irrevocably. Under the sway of an impulse he could not resist, he kissed her upturned face, her lips, her eyes. Then he broke from her clasp and, bracing himself for the task to which they stood committed by that act, he said, the words tumbling from his lips: "Hellayne, we know not who is abroad to-night. We know not what dangers are lurking in the shadows. Tebaldo and his men may even now be scouring the streets of Rome for a fugitive, and once in their power all the saints could not save us from our doom. I know not the object of this plot of which you were the victim, and even the Lord Roger may be but the dupe of another. I will take you to the convent of the Blessed Sisters of Santa Maria in Trastevere, that you may dwell there in safety until I have ascertained that all danger is past. You shall enter as my sister, trying to escape the attention of an unwelcome suitor. But the thing that chiefly exercises my mind now is how to make our escape unobserved." Hellayne nodded dreamily. "I have thought of it already." "You have thought of it?" he replied. "And of what have you thought?" For answer she stepped back a pace and drew the cowl of the monk's habit over her head until her features were lost in the shadows. Her meaning was clear to him at once. With a cry of relief he turned to the drawer whence he had taken the habit in which she was arrayed and, selecting another, he hastily donned it above the garments he wore. No sooner was it done than he caught her by the arm. There was no time to be lost. Moments were flying. If he should be too late at the Lateran! "Come!" he said in an urgent voice. At the first step she stumbled. The habit was so long that it cumbered her feet. But that was a difficulty soon overcome. Without regarding the omen, he cut with his dagger a piece from the skirt, enough to leave her freedom of movement and, this accomplished, they set out. They crossed the church swiftly and silently, then entered the porch, where he left her in order to peer out upon the street. All was quiet. Rome was wrapt in sleep. From the moon he gleaned it wanted less than an hour to midnight. Drawing their cowls about their faces, they abandoned the main streets, Tristan conducting his charge through narrow alleys, deserted of the living. These lanes were dark and steep, the moonlight being unable to penetrate the chasms formed between the tall, ill-favored houses. They stumbled frequently, and in some places he carried her almost bodily, to avoid the filth of the quarter they were traversing. The night was solemn and beautiful. Myriads of stars paved the deep vault of heaven. The moon, now in her zenith, hung like a silver lamp in the midst of them; a stream of quivering, rosy light, issuing from the north, traversed the sky like the tail of some stupendous comet, sending forth, ever and anon, corruscations like flaming meteors. At last they reached the Transtiberine region and the convent of Santa Maria in Trastevere hove into sight. The range of habitations around were in a ruinous state and the whole aspect of the region was so dismal as to encourage but few ramblers to venture there after nightfall. Passing through the ill-famed quarter of the Sclavonians, where, in after time, one of the blackest crimes in history was committed, Tristan and Hellayne at last arrived before the gates of the convent. They had spoken but little, dreading even the faintest echo of their footsteps might bring a pursuer on their track. Their summons for admission was, after a considerable wait, answered by the porter of the gate, who, upon seeing two monks, relinquished his station by the wicket and descended to inquire into their behest. Hellayne shrank up to Tristan, as the latter stated their purpose and the old monk, unable to understand the jargon of his belated caller, withdrew, mumbling some equally unintelligible reply. Hellayne's eyes were those of a frightened deer. "What will he do, Tristan?" she whispered, "Oh, Tristan, do not leave me! I feel I shall never see you again, Tristan--my love--take me away--I am afraid--" He held her close to him. "There is nothing to fear, my Hellayne! To-morrow night I shall return and place you safely where we may see each other till I have absolved my duties to the Senator. Do not fear, sweetheart! Of all the abodes in Rome the sanctity of the convent is inviolate! But I hear steps approaching--some one is coming. Courage, dearest--remember how much is at stake!" Another moment and they stood before the Abbess of Santa Maria in Trastevere. Summoning all his presence of mind, Tristan told his tale and made his request. Danger lurking in the infatuation of a Roman noble was threatening his sister. She had fled from his innuendos and begged the convent's asylum for a brief space of time, when he, Tristan, would claim her. He explained Hellayne's attire, and the Abbess, raising the woman's head, looked long and earnestly into her face. What she saw seemed to confirm of the truth of Tristan's speech, and she agreed readily to his request. Tristan kissed Hellayne on the brow, then, after a brief and affectionate farewell and the assurance that he would return on the following day, he left her in charge of the Blessed Sisters. With a sob she followed the Abbess and the gates shut behind them. For a moment Tristan felt as if all the world about him was sinking into a dark bottomless pit. Then, suppressing an outcry of anguish, his winged feet bore him across Rome towards the Basilica of St. John in Lateran. CHAPTER XIV THE PHANTOM OF THE LATERAN It still lacked a few minutes of midnight when Tristan arrived at the Lateran. The guard had been set in all the chapels, as on the night when he had kept the watch before. Without confiding his purpose to any one, he traversed the silent corridors until he came to the chapel where he was to watch all night. The men-at-arms were posted outside the door. A lamp was burning in the corridor, and strict orders had been given that no person whatsoever was to pass into the chapel. After assuring himself that all was secure, Tristan seated himself in a chair which stood in the centre of the chapel. The place was dim and ghostly. A red lamp burnt before the Blessed Sacrament, and from the roof of the chapel hung another lamp of bronze. The light was turned low, but it threw a slight radiance upon portions of the mosaic of the floor. Tristan unbuckled his sword and placed it ready to hand. The whole of the Basilica was hushed in sleep. There was a heaviness and oppression in the air, and no sound broke the stillness in the courts of the palace. Memory flared up and down like the light of a lamp, as Tristan pondered over the changes and vicissitudes of his life, with all its miseries and heart-aches, as he thought of the future and of Hellayne. Danger encompassed them on every side. But there had been even greater terrors when he had plucked her from the very grip of Death, from the midst of her foes. And then he began to pray, pray for Hellayne's happiness and safety, and his whispering voice sounded as if a dry leaf was being blown over the marble floor, and when it ceased the silence fell over him like a cloak, enveloping him in its heavy, stifling folds. He had been on guard in the Lateran before, but the silence had never seemed so deep as it was now. His mind, heated and filled with the events of the past days, would not be tranquil. And yet there was a deadly fascination in this profound silence, in which it seemed his own mind and the riot of his thoughts were living and awake. What, if even now some lurking danger were approaching through the thousand corridors and anterooms of the palace! For on this night the enemies of Christ were abroad, silently unfurling the sable banners of Hell. The thought was almost unbearable. It was not fear which Tristan felt, rather a restlessness he was unable to control. Although the night was no hotter than usual, perspiration began to break out upon his face, and he felt athirst. The fumes of incense that permeated the chapel, increased his drowsiness. With something of an effort Tristan strode to the door and opened it. In the corridor two men-at-arms were on guard, one standing against the wall, the other walking slowly to and fro. The men reported that all was well, and that no one had passed that way. Tristan closed the door and returned inside. He walked up the chapel's length and then, his drawn sword beside him on the marble, knelt in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament which he had come to guard. There, for a little, his confused and restless mind found peace. But not for long. A drowsiness more heavy and insistent than any he had ever known began to assail him. It billowed into his brain, wave after wave. It assailed him with an irresistible, physical assault. He fought against it despairingly and hopelessly, knowing that he would be vanquished. Once, twice, sword in hand, as though the long blade could help him in the fight, he staggered up and down the chapel. Then, with a smothered groan, he sank into the chair, the sword slipping from his grasp. He felt as if deep waters were closing over him. There was a sound like dim and distant drums in his ears, a sensation of sinking, lower, ever lower,--then utter oblivion. And now silence reigned, silence more intense than his mind had ever known. The red lamp burned before the Host. The lamp in the centre of the chapel threw a dim radiance upon the bowed form of Tristan, whose sword crossed the mosaics of the floor. Silence there was in the whole circuit of the Lateran. Even the Blessed Father, prisoner in his own chamber, was asleep. The domestic prelates, the whole vast ecclesiastical court were wrapt in deep repose. In the chapel of St. Luke the silence was broken by the deep breathing of Tristan. It was not the breathing of a man in healthy sleep. It was a long-drawn catching at the breath, then once more a difficult inhalation. The men-at-arms outside in the corridor heard nothing of it. The sound was confined to the interior alone. The ceiling of the chapel was painted, and the various panels were divided by gilded oak beadings. Almost in the centre, directly above where Tristan reposed in leaden slumber, was a panel some two feet square, which represented in faint and faded colors the martyrdom of St. Sebastian. Suddenly, without a sound, the panel parted. If the sleeper had been awake he would have seen almost at his feet a swaying ladder of silk rope, which for a moment or two hissed back and forth over the tesselated floor. Now the dark square in the painted ceiling became faintly illumined. In its dim oblong a formless shape centred itself. The faint hiss from the end of the silken rope ladder recommenced and down the ladder from the roof of the chapel descended a formless spectre, with incredible swiftness, with incredible silence. The spider had dropped from the centre of its web. It had chosen the time well. It was upon its business. The trembling of the rope ladder ceased. Without a sound the black figure emerged into the pale light thrown by the central lamp. The figure was horrible. It was robed in deepest black, and as it made a quick bird-like movement of the head, the face, plucked as from some deadly nightmare, was so awful that it seemed well that Tristan was unconscious. The High Priest of Satan stood in the chapel of the Lateran. His quick, dexterous fingers ran over Tristan's sleeping form. Then he nodded approvingly. There was a soft pattering of steps and now the black form passed out of the circle of light and emerged into the red light of the lamp, which burned before the altar. Above, upon the embroidered frontal, were the curtains of white silk edged with gold--the gates of the tabernacle. A long, lean arm, hardly more than a bone, drew apart the curtains. Mingling with the heavy breathing of the sleeping man there was a sharp sound, most startling in the intense silence. It was a bestial snarl of satisfaction. It was followed by abominable chirpings of triumph, cold, inhuman, but real. Tristan slept on. The men-at-arms kept their faithful watch. In the whole of the Lateran Palace no one knew that the High Priest of Satan was prowling through the precincts and had seized upon his awful prey. He thrust the Holy Host into a silver box, and placed it next to his bosom. Then he drew a wafer of the exact size and shape of the stolen Host from the pocket of his robe. Gliding over to Tristan he thrust this unconsecrated wafer into his doublet. Then the black bat-like thing mounted to the ceiling. The lemon-colored light reappeared for a moment. In its glare the dark phantom looked terrific, like a fiend from Hell. The rope ladder moved silently upwards, and the painted panel with the arrow-pierced Sebastian dropped soundlessly into its place. The red lamp burnt in front of the tabernacle. But the chapel was empty now. At dawn the unexpected happened. The guards, expecting to be relieved, found themselves face to face with a special commission, come to visit the Lateran. It consisted of the Cardinal-Archbishop of Ravenna, the Cardinal of Orvieto, the Prefect of the Camera and Basil the Grand Chamberlain. After having made the rounds they at last arrived before the chapel of St. Luke. They found the two men-at-arms stationed at the door, alert at their post. The men were exhausted; their faces appeared grey and drawn in the morning light, but they reported that no one had passed into the chapel, nor had they seen anything of Tristan since midnight, when he had questioned them. The doors of the chapel were locked. Tristan held the keys. Repeated knocks elicited no response. The Archbishop of Ravenna looked anxiously at the Prefect of the Camera. "I do not like this, Messer Salviati," he said in a low voice. "I fear there is something wrong here." "Beat upon the door more loudly," the Prefect turned to one of the halberdiers, and the man struck the solid oak with the staff of his axe, till the whole corridor, filled with the ghostly advance light of dawn, rang and echoed with the noise. The Prefect of the Camera turned to the Archbishop. "It would seem the Capitano has fallen asleep. That is not a thing he ought to have done--but as the chapel seems inviolate we need hardly remain longer." And he looked inquiringly at the Grand Chamberlain. The latter shook his head dubiously. "I fear the Capitano can hardly be asleep, since we have called him so loudly," he said, looking from the one to the other. "I would suggest that the door of the chapel be forced." They were some time about it. The door was of massive oak, the lock well made and true. A man-at-arms had been despatched to another part of the Lateran to bring a locksmith who, for nearly half an hour, toiled at his task. It was accomplished at last and the four entered the chapel. It stretched before them, long, narrow, almost fantastic in the grey light of morning. The painted ceiling above held no color now. The mosaics of the floor were dead and lifeless. In the centre of the chapel, with face unnaturally pale, sat Tristan, huddled up in the velvet chair. By his side lay his naked sword. The lamp which was suspended from the centre of the ceiling had almost expired. In front of the altar the wick, floating on the oil, in its bowl of red glass, gave almost the only note of color against the grey. As they entered the chapel, the four genuflected to the altar. And while the Prefect and Basil went over to where Tristan was sleeping in his chair, and stood about with alarmed eyes, the Cardinal of Orvieto and the Archbishop of Ravenna approached the tabernacle with the proper reverences, parted the curtains and staggered back, indescribable horror in their faces. The Holy Host had disappeared. The priests stared at each other in terror. What did it mean? Again the Body of Our Lord had been taken from His resting-place. The captain of the guard was asleep in his chair. Verily the demons were at work once more and Hell was loosed again. The Archbishop of Ravenna began to weep. He covered his face with his hands. As he knelt upon the altar steps, great tears trickled through his trembling fingers, while he sent up prayers to the Almighty that this sacrilege might be discovered and its perpetrators brought to justice. On either side of him knelt the priests who had come into the chapel after them. Their hearts were filled with fear and sorrow. The Cardinal of Ravenna rose at last. His old, lean face shone with holy anger and sorrow. "An expiatory service will be held in this chapel before noon," he addressed those present. "I shall myself say Mass here. Meanwhile the whole of the palace must be aroused. Somewhere the emissaries of Satan have in their possession the Blessed Sacrament. See that the secret Judas does not escape us!" Almost upon his words there came a loud wail of anguish from the centre of the chapel where Tristan was still huddled in his chair. Basil had opened the doublet at his neck, as if to give him air, and the Prefect of the Camera, who was standing by, clapped his hands to his temples, and groaned like a soul in torment. The two ecclesiastics hurried down from the altar steps. Upon the lining of Tristan's doublet there lay the large round wafer, which every one present believed to be the consecrated Host. The Cardinal-Archbishop reverently took the wafer from Tristan and held it up in two hands. The men-at-arms sank to their knees with a rattle and ring of accoutrement. Every one knelt. Then in improvised procession, His Eminence restored the wafer to the tabernacle. Tristan was dragged out of the chapel. In the corridor horror-stricken men-at-arms buffeted him into some sort of consciousness. His bewildered ears caught the words: "To San Angelo," as he staggered between the men-at-arms as one in the thrall of an evil dream, leaving behind him a nameless fear and horror among the monks, priests and attendants at the Lateran. END OF BOOK THE THIRD BOOK THE FOURTH CHAPTER I THE RETURN OF THE MOOR In a domed chamber of the Emperor's Tomb there sat two personages engaged in whispered conversation, Basil and a weird hooded phantom that seemed part of the dread shadows which crowded in upon the room, quenching the dying light of day. Deep silence reigned. Only the monotonous tread of the sentries broke the stillness as they made the rounds above them. It was Basil who spoke. "All is going well! We shall prevail! We shall set up the throne of Ebony in the stead of the Cross. I bow to your wisdom, my master! The promised reward shall not fail you!" As he spoke, the thin, black arm of his vis-a-vis trembled for a moment in the ample folds of his black gown. Then, with a quick, bird-like movement, a thin hand, twisted like a claw, wrinkled and yellow, was stretched out towards the Grand Chamberlain. On the second finger of this claw there was a ring. Basil bent and kissed it. Basil began to speak in his ordinary, conversational tone, but there was a strange gleam in his eyes. "It has been accomplished," he said. "They tell me all Rome is astir!" The voice that replied seemed to come from a great distance; the lips of the waxen face hardly moved. They parted, that was all. "It has been done! I took it myself! It was the Host which the Cardinal of Ravenna had consecrated on that morning." "And you were not seen?" "I was not," came the whispered reply. "As a measure of precaution I wore the mask which I use to go about the churches at night. I met no one." "Is it here?" Basil queried eagerly. "It is not here," replied the voice. "It must be kept until the night of the great consecration, when Lucifer himself shall sit upon the ebony throne and demand his bride--his stainless dove. Where is she now?" The light had faded out of Basil's eyes, and his face was ashen. "One has been found, worthy of even as fastidious a master as he, whom we both serve. Well-nigh had she escaped us, had not one who never fails me tracked her on that fatal night, when her body lay in her coffin ready to be consecrated to the Nameless one." From the eyeless sockets of the shadow-mask a phosphorescent gleam shot towards the Grand Chamberlain. "What of the man?" "The wafer was discovered on a certain captain of the guard who hath crossed my path to his undoing once too often. The Church herself shall pronounce sentence upon him--through me!" "And--that other?" There was a pause. "Her husband!--He deems her dead, nor grieves he overmuch, believing, as he does, that her love was another's--even his whom I have marked for certain doom. I have it in my mind to try what a jest will do for him." The lurid tone of the speaker seemed to impress even his shadowy companion. "A jest?" "He shall attend the great ceremony," Basil explained. "And he shall behold the stainless dove. When is it to be?" he added after a pause. "When is it to be?" "Six nights hence--on the night of the full moon." "And then you shall give to me that which I crave, and the forfeit shall be paid." "The forfeit shall be paid," the voice re-echoed from the shadows, and to Basil it seemed as if the damp, cold breath from an open grave had been wafted to his cheeks. Like a phantom that sinks back into the night of the grave, whence it had emerged, Bessarion vanished from the chamber. In his place stood Hormazd, who had noiselessly entered through a panel in the wall. Basil greeted him with a silent nod. "What of the messenger?" he turned to the Oriental. "He returns within the hour," replied the voice. "What are his tidings?" Basil queried eagerly. "Is Alberic in the land of shadows, where she dwells who gave him birth?" "Sent by the same relentless hand across the Styx," the cowled figure spoke, yet Basil knew not whether it was a question or a statement. He gave a start. "Tell me, how are secrets known to you at which Hell itself would pale?" he turned with unsteady tone to his companion. "Those of the shadows commune with the shadows," came the enigmatical reply. "Is everything prepared?" "When the brazen tongue from the Capitol tolls the hour, the blow shall fall," Basil replied. "Hassan Abdullah and his Saracens are anchored off the port of Ostia. The Epirotes and Albanians in the Senator's service are bribed to our cause. Rome is in the throes of mortal terror. Even the Monk of Cluny is under the spell, and has ceased to arraign the Scarlet Woman of Babylon. The dread of the impending judgment day will succor our cause. And--once installed within these walls as master of Rome--with Theodora by my side--you shall have full sway, to do whatever your dark fancies may prompt. You shall have a chamber and a laboratory and be at liberty to roam at will through your devil's kitchen." The cowled figure gave a silent nod, but, before he could speak, the door leading into the chamber opened as from the effect of a violent gust of wind, and a shapeless form, that seemed half human, half ape, flew at Basil's feet, who recoiled as if a ghost had arisen before him from the floor. For a moment Basil stared from Daoud the Moor to his shadowy visitor, then he bade the runner arise and commanded him in some Eastern tongue to unburden himself. With many protestations of his devotion the monster produced a bundle which Basil had not noted, owing to the swiftness with which the African had entered the chamber. Panting, with deft, though trembling fingers, Daoud untied the cords and a bloody head, severed from its trunk, rolled upon the floor of the chamber, and lay still at Basil's feet. It had lost all human semblance and exhaled the putrid odor of the grave. Basil started to his feet, staring from the Moor to Hormazd. "Dead--" his pale lips stammered. Then, turning to his dark companion, he added by way of encouragement to himself: "You gave me truth!" Daoud was cowering on the floor, his eyes staring into the shadows, where hovered the Persian's almost invisible form. A nod from Basil caused him to rise. "Away with it!" shrieked the Grand Chamberlain overcome with terror. "See that no one sets eyes upon it!" The Moor wrapped the severed head into the blood-stained cloth and darted from the chamber. Then Basil turned to his visitor. "In six days Rome shall hail a new master! Let then the sable banners of Hell be unfurled and the Nameless Presence rejoice upon his ebony throne! And now do you come with me into the realms of doom that gape below, that your eyes may be gladdened by that which is in store for you!" Taking up a torch, Basil lighted it with the aid of two flints and the twain trooped out of the chamber into the shadowy corridor leading into the crypts of the Emperor's Tomb. CHAPTER II THE ESCAPE FROM SAN ANGELO Hidden away in some secret vault of the great honey-colored Mausoleum Tristan found himself when the men-at-arms had departed, and he had regained his full senses. Color had faded out of everything. The rock walls were lifeless and grey. The immense silence of the tomb surrounded him. The rayless gloom was without relief, save what sparse light filtered through a narrow grated window so high in the wall that nothing could be seen from below, save the sky. The torture of it all he could have endured very well. There was something greater. It was the thought of Hellayne. This dreadful uncertainty swung like a bell in his brain, cut through the fibre of his being. And when these thoughts came over him in his lone confinement he beat his hands upon the stone and wept. They had placed him in a cell, which seemed to have been hollowed out of the Travertine rock. It was small, built in the thickness of the mighty Roman walls. Tristan set his teeth hard, prepared to endure. He knew well enough what it meant. He would be confined in this living tomb till his enemies thought his spirit was broken, and then he would be summoned before a tribunal of the Church. Once a day, and once only, the door of his cell opened. By the smoky light of a torch, his gaoler pushed a pitcher of water and a machet of bread into his prison. Then the red light died and darkness and silence supervened. Yet it was not the ordinary darkness which men know. Through the haunted chambers of Tristan's mind fantastic forms began to chase each other, evil things to uncoil themselves and raise their heads. More and more drearily the burden of the days began to press upon him. What availed heroic endurance? But it was not only darkness, nor was it only despair. Nor was it only silence. It was a strange impalpable something which haunted his restless, enforced vigil; a dim inchoate nothingness, that drove him to the verge of madness. Though day draped the sky with blue and golden banners, to tell the sons of men that Night was past and they need not longer fear, for Tristan darkness was not a transient thing, but an awful negation of hope. All of this Tristan could have endured, had not the thought of Hellayne unnerved him utterly. She was safe--so he hoped--in the Convent of Santa Maria in Trastevere. But, as hour succeeded hour, his assurance began to pale. Everything had been arranged with the Abbess. But--had she indeed eluded her pursuers? The empty coffin had no doubt long been discovered. Did they believe she was dead, or did the hand who had dealt the blow in the dark, the vigilant eye that had pursued her every step, plot further mischief? He thought of Odo of Cluny. The monk was influential, but there was, at this hour, in Rome, one even more powerful, and he doubted not but that by his agency the wafer had been placed into his doublet, though the events of that fateful night from the time he had entered the Lateran, were like a black blot upon his memory. Had Odo even sought admission to his cell? Did he, too, believe him guilty? Had his ears, too, been poisoned by the monstrous lie? To him he might indeed have turned; of him he might have received assurance of Hellayne's fate; and in return he might have reassured her who was pining at the Convent of Santa Maria in Trastevere. But, was she ignorant indeed of what was happening in the seven-hilled city of Rome? Would not the rumor of the terrible outrage committed at the Lateran knock even at the silent walls of the convent? A captain of the Senator's guard caught red-handed in the perpetration of a crime too heinous for the human mind to conceive! He reviewed his own life, the close of which seemed very near at hand. Free from cunning and that secret conceit which is peculiarly alarming to natures that know themselves to be, in all practical matters, confounded and confused, he had, in a short time, found himself placed upon the world's greatest stage, a world little fit for dreamers and for dreams. He had been plunged into the inner circles of the mighty struggle, impending between Powers of Light and the Powers of Darkness, upon a sea he knew not how to navigate, and upon whose cliffs his ship had stranded. One evening, when the cold greyness of an early twilight had enveloped the city, and from the darkening sky every now and then was heard a sound of approaching thunder, Tristan, counting the weary hours of his unbroken solitude, which he could but measure by the appearance and departure of his gaoler, had been more restless than usual. He had hoped to be summoned for early trial before those high in the Church, when, in Odo of Cluny, he would find an advocate, who alone might save him from his doom. But nothing had happened. Nothing had broken the dreary, maddening monotony, save now and then the shriek and curses of a maddened fellow-prisoner, or the moans of a wretch who was dying of thirst or hunger. Whoever the powers that dominated his life, they evidently had not decreed his immediate death, as if they were rejoicing in the torture of false hopes which each recurrent day waked in his breast, and which each departing day extinguished. The food never varied, and the water intended for the cleansing of his body was so sparse that he had to husband it as a precious possession till the gaoler refilled the bronze ewer on the succeeding day. When waking from feverish, troubled slumbers, broken by the squeaking of the rats that scurried over the filthy floor of his dungeon, and other presences that caused him to pray for a speedy death from this slow torture, he found himself nevertheless listening for the approach of the gaoler who, after dispensing his bounty, departed as he had come, silent as the tomb, without making reply to Tristan's queries. Escape, to all appearances, seemed quite beyond the scope of possibility. Yet, with failing hopes, the spirit of Tristan seemed to rise. Had not his good fortune been with him ever since he arrived at Rome? Had he not, by some miraculous decree of destiny, again met the woman he loved better than all the world? And then, they had left him his dagger. After all, not such wretched company in his present plight. It was on the eve of the third day when the voices of men coming down the night-wrapt passage struck his wakeful ear. In one of the speakers he recognized Basil. "And you are quite sure no one saw you enter?" he said to his companion. "No one!" came the snarling reply. "Nevertheless--they are on my track. I breathe the air of the gibbet which burns my throat." "And you are positive no one recognized you?" spoke the silken voice. "No one." "Take courage, Hormazd. Then there is little danger, yet you should take care that no one may see you. We are surrounded by spies." "Do you not trust Maraglia?" "I trust none! You will therefore remain a short time concealed in this subterranean passage." "Subterranean?" There was a note of terror in the Oriental's voice. "That is to say--the vaults! Here you will find honorable and pleasant company, who will not betray you. You will find straw in abundance and each day Maraglia will bring you something to eat. Go slowly. How do you like the abode?" "Not even the devil can find me here." "No one will find you here!" "No one knows where I am," Hormazd interposed dubiously. "Nor ever shall." "It is of no consequence. So I am safe." "You are safe enough. Lower your head and take care not to stumble over the threshold. Here--this side--enter." "Enter," re-echoed the other. Then there was a pause. "It is very evident, you are afraid--" "Afraid? No--but I am thinking we always know when we enter such places--never when we shall leave them." "How? Did I not say to-morrow night?" "But if you should not come for me?" "What profit would your death be to me? Where shall I find another wizard to bring to foretell the death of another Alberic?" Tristan gave an audible gasp at these words. He felt his limbs grow numb. Had his ears heard aright? Surely they had not. Some demon had mocked him, to drive him mad. Ere he could regain his mental balance, the voice of the Grand Chamberlain's companion again struck his ear. "But if you should not come, my lord?" "You could scream!" "What would that avail?" "Mind you--I might have to stay here myself for sheltering such a patriarch as you." "Nevertheless--to guard against all risks--leave the door open--" He entered, but the door turned immediately upon its hinges. "My Lord Basil--" shrieked Hormazd, "the door is shut--" "I stumbled against it." "Bring a light--open the door--" came a muffled voice from within. "I shall soon return." "Do not forget the light." "Light!--Ay! You shall not want for light,--if what I say be not false: Et lux perpetua luceat eis," chanted the Grand Chamberlain in Requiem measure, as he strode away. Silence, deep and sepulchral, succeeded. Tristan cowered on the floor, his face covered with his hands. If what he had overheard was true, he, too, was lost. What had happened? Who was the Grand Chamberlain's companion? Now Hormazd began to scream and rave in the darkness. Terrible execrations broke from the Oriental's lips, as he hurled his body against the iron bars of his prison cell. Demoniacal yells waked the silent echoes. The other prisoners, alarmed and rendered restless, soon joined in, and soon the dark vaults of the Emperor's Tomb resounded with a veritable pandemonium, a chorus of the damned that caused Tristan to put his fingers to his ears lest he, too, go mad. At nine o'clock that night the last visit was to be paid the prisoners. At nine o'clock Maraglia, the Castellan, came, attended by the guard, which waited outside. The Castellan was in a state of nervous excitement. As he entered Tristan's cell he looked about, as if he dreaded a listener, then he approached his prisoner and whispered something into his ear. For a moment Tristan knew not what has happening to him. Was he alone with a mad man and was Maraglia too possessed?-- The Castellan, to prove his assertion that he was a bat, began forthwith to squeak, and waved his arms, as if they were wings. Curious stories were told about Maraglia. No one knew, why he had retained his post so long amidst ever recurring changes, and it was whispered that he was subject to strange possessions of the mind. He faced his prisoner nervously, fingering a poniard in his belt. Tristan watched his every gesture. A little foam came out of the corners of Maraglia's lips. He wrung his hands and his voice rose into a sort of shriek. He jerked his head half round towards the men-at arms outside in the gallery. The screams of Hormazd continued. "It is the Ape of Antichrist," he whispered to Tristan. "I have a mind to try conclusions with him. Close the door." Tristan's wits, preternaturally sharpened in his predicament put words in his mouth which he seemed unable to account for. He had heard rumors of the Castellan. Perchance he might turn his madness to account. "I can tell you much," he said. "But not here! But one thing I perceive. You are approaching one of your bad spells." Maraglia shrank back against the door. His face was pale as death. "Then you know?" he squeaked. Tristan nodded. The torch which the Castellan had placed in an iron holder that projected from the wall, was burning low and the resinous fumes filled the cell. "Something I know--but not all! Yet, I believe I can cure you--" "I am about to turn into a bat! And when I go abroad I scream like a bat--in a thin, high pitched tone. And I flap my arms--and fly away--thus--" Tristan nodded wisely. "I know the symptoms--they are of Satan. Nevertheless, I can cure you." "Without conference with the evil powers?" Tristan pondered. "You shall not imperil your soul! But--take heed! It is well that you have spoken to me of these matters. For, from feeling that you are a bat, a bat you will become." Maraglia was pale as a ghost. "Then I was just in the nick of time?" "You are already half immersed," Tristan replied in a deep and menacing tone. "Take heed lest you be utterly drowned." The Castellan shivered as one in an ague. "Every Friday at midnight the Black Mass is said by one Bessarion, that is of unthinkable age--a hideous wizard and High Priest of Satan. It is he who has cast the spell over me." Hope mounted high in Tristan. The alert confidence of his companion animated him and he felt almost as if the great ordeal was over. A distant bell was tolling. Its tones came in muffled cadence into the night wrapt corridors of the Emperor's Tomb. Nevertheless he shivered at the Castellan's confession. Maraglia, then, was under the spell of this Wizard of Hell. "I have seen him stalking through these galleries," he turned to his gaoler. "But I possess a spell which renders him harmless. He cannot touch me--nor breathe his evil breath into my soul. I can compel him to take away the spell he has cast over you--that is, if you so wish it." The Castellan squeaked and waved his arms. "You would do this for me?" "If you will not betray me. For only a more powerful spell than that which he possesses can take away the curse he has put upon you." "Ah! If you would do this! It is coming upon me now. I am going mad. I am a bat!" And Maraglia squeaked like a whole company of dusky mice, and flapped his arms as if he were about to fly away. "This very night will I do it," Tristan replied. "But you must help me." "What can I do?" Tristan cast all upon one throw. "Remove your guards from this corridor and leave me a light and a rope." "It is but reasonable," Maraglia returned. "I will fetch them. When appears the wizard?" "At midnight! See that I am not disturbed." Maraglia nodded. Fear had almost deprived him of his senses. "Last time I saw him he came from yonder corridor," Tristan informed the Castellan. "That may not be!" the latter replied. "Unless he hath wings. This passage leads to the ramparts." "It is possible I have been confused by the darkness," Tristan replied pensively. "Nevertheless, I will oblige you, Messer Maraglia." The Castellan retired with many manifestations of his gratitude, leaving Tristan in possession of a lantern, a candle and a coil of rope. It was midnight. The sharp click of a flint upon steel was repeated several times before a spark fell upon the tinder and it caught with a blue, ghostly flicker. There were strange reflections in Tristan's cell. Curious steely lights played upon him. Then the candle ignited. The glow widened out. Tristan peered about cautiously. The door of his cell had been left unfastened by Maraglia. He had no fear of his prisoner escaping. No one had ever escaped from these vaults, except to certain death. He crept out into the corridor. It was dark as in the realms of the underworld. The silence of the tomb prevailed. After a time the passage made a sharp turn at right angles. A cooler air blew upon his face, wafted through an unbarred embrasure, beyond which showed a star-lit night without a moon, but not wholly dark. Drawing himself up into the embrasure he stood at last upon a broad sill of stone. A cool breeze eddied around him. He was at an immense height. A vast portion of Rome lay below. The Tiber seemed like a river of lead. Far away to the left the dark cypresses of the Pincian Hill cut into the night sky in sombre silhouette. He was above the tombs of Hadrian and Caracalla. Tristan shivered despite himself as he fastened the rope he had secured from the unwary Castellan to the stone ledge. It was not fear; but that actual, physical shrinking, which induces nausea, had him in its grip. "There is Rome," he said to himself with a savage chuckle. He made a stirrup loop and curved it round a boss of antique tile, which stretched above the abyss like a gargoyle. Then, with infinite precaution, he lowered the coil of rope. Dawn was already heralded in the East. A faint grey light appeared in the direction of the Alban Hills. From over the Esquiline came the shrill trumpeting of a cock. There was a horrible moment as Tristan's hands left the roof edge and he fell a foot to grasp the rope. He curled his legs about it, got it between his crossed feet and began to let himself down. The sinews of his arms seemed to creak. Once he passed an open window and distinctly heard the snores of the men-at-arms who were sleeping within. The descent seemed interminable. As seen from above, had there been any one to watch him, his form grew less and less. From a man it seemed to turn into an ape; from an ape as a night bird groping down the Mausoleum's side; from a bird it dwindled to a spider, spinning downward on a taut thread. Up there, on the height, the rope groaned and creaked upon the curved tile from which it hung. But tile and fibre held. Once his feet rested upon a leaden water pipe and he clung and swayed, glad of a momentary release from the frightful strain upon his arms. That was almost the last conscious sensation. Clinging to the rope he came down quick and more quickly. His arms rose and fell with the precision of a machine. At last he felt his feet upon solid ground, where he reeled and staggered like a drunken man. He had traversed a hundred thirty-five feet of air. CHAPTER III THE LURE For three whole days Hellayne consumed herself waiting for Tristan, and she began to feel listless and dispirited. She had long acknowledged to herself the necessity of his presence, and how much his love had influenced her thoughts and actions ever since she had known him--a period that now seemed of infinite length. She found herself perpetually recalling the origin and growth of this love. She dwelt with a strange pleasure on her terrible plight, when, believing she was dead, he had remained with her body. As evening approached she strolled down to the Tiber, with a strange persistency and the vague expectation of Tristan's return. She now trusted him utterly, since that last and most potent proof of his love for her. On the first day this dreamy, imaginative existence was delightful. The region of the Trastevere at the period of our story was but sparsely populated, and the great convent, with its church of Santa Maria, dominated the lowly fisher huts, scattered over its precincts. Hellayne, during these quiet evening hours, when only the sounds of far-off chimes from churches and convents smote the silence with their silver tongues, and during which hours the Abbess of Santa Maria permitted her to leave the silent walls of her asylum for a short walk to the Tiber's edge, rarely ever saw a human being. Only at dusk, when the fishermen and boatmen returned from their daily routine, she saw them pass in the distance, like phantoms that come and go and vanish in the evening glow. On the second day there came a feeling of want; the consciousness that there was a void which it would be a great happiness to fill. This grew to a longing for those hours which had glided by so quickly and sweetly. At intervals there came the startling thought: if she should never see him again! Then her heart stopped beating, and her cheek paled with the thought of the bare possibility. Thus the third day sped, and when Hellayne still remained without tidings from Tristan her anxiety slowly changed to a great fear. She could hardly contain herself during the long hours of the day, and though she spent hours and hours in prayer for his return, her heart seemed to sink under the weight of her fear and sorrow. She was alone--alone in Rome--exposed to dangers which her great beauty rendered even more grave than those that beset an ordinary person. She feared lest Basil was scouring the city for the woman who had so mysteriously baffled his desires, and she dreaded the hatred of Theodora, whose infatuation for her lover had rather increased than diminished in the face of Tristan's resistance. How long would he be able to withstand, if Theodora had decreed his undoing? There were moments when a mad jealousy and despair surged up in Hellayne's heart, yet she hesitated to confide her fears and anxiety to the Abbess, voicing only her disquietude at Tristan's prolonged absence. Then only the latter informed Hellayne of a strange rumor which had found its way into the Trastevere. Three nights ago a terrible sacrilege had been committed at the Lateran, during the small hours of the night, and on the following morning, during an inspection by some high prelates of the Church, the criminal had been discovered in the person of a captain of the Senator's guard, who had but recently arrived in Rome, and had been placed in high command by the Senator himself, whom he had so cruelly betrayed. Three nights ago! It was on the night of the terrible crime from whose consequences she had been saved just in the nick of time. With painful minuteness Hellayne recalled, or tried to recall, every incident, every detail, every utterance of her lover. But there was nothing at which she could clutch save--but it was sheer madness. Surely it was some horrid nightmare. Again she sought the Abbess, later in the day, questioning her regarding the name of him who had been taken in the commission of so heinous an offence. It was some time ere the Abbess could recall a name strange in her own land, and Hellayne, with the persistency of desperation, withheld any aid, so as not to offer a clue to the one she dreaded to hear. But the strain proved too great. Almost with a shriek she demanded to know if, perchance, the name was Tristan. The Abbess regarded her questioner strangely. "Tristan is the name. Do you know this man, my child?" Hellayne was on the point of fainting. Everything grew black before her eyes, and she would have fallen, had not the Abbess supported her. "A countryman of mine," she said, dreading lest by revealing their connection she might herself be held in custody. "He came to Rome on a pilgrimage. Surely there is some horrible mistake! He could not! He could not!" The Abbess placed an arm round the trembling girl. "If he can prove that he is innocent, the Cardinal-Archbishop will not suffer a hair of his head to be touched," she tried to console Hellayne whose head rested on her shoulder. She seemed utterly crushed. Surely--it was too monstrous--too unbelievable. Yet as the moments sped on, an icy, sickening fear gripped her heart. She recalled an incident of that last evening with Tristan which, but for what had happened or was rumored to have happened, she would have utterly ignored. She had noted her lover's restlessness, and his apparent haste in leaving her at the convent gates. She recalled now that he repeatedly glanced at the moon and did, at one time, comment upon the lateness of the hour. He had not seemed anxious to prolong their tete-a-tete, and he had not been heard from in three days. Surely, no matter where he was, he could have sent a message, verbal or otherwise. And the crime had happened during the small hours of the night--after he had left her! It was too horrible to ponder upon! That there was some dreadful mystery which surrounded this deed of darkness and Tristan's share therein, Hellayne did not question. But how was she, a woman, a stranger, alone in Rome, to aid in clearing it up and reveal her lover's innocence? There was no doubt in her mind, but that he was the victim of some devilish conspiracy--perchance a thread of that same web which had entangled her to her undoing. But how to convince the Cardinal-Archbishop of Tristan's innocence, when the facts surrounding the terrible discovery were unknown to her? "This man is, no doubt, very dear to you," said the Abbess at last. Hellayne shrank before the questioner and averted her face. But the Abbess was resolved to know more, once her suspicions were aroused. "Could it perchance be he who brought you here three nights ago--your brother?" she queried with a kind, though penetrating glance at the woman who was trembling like an aspen, her face colorless, her eyes dimmed with tears. A silent nod convinced the Abbess of the truth of her surmise. She stroked Hellayne's silken hair. "It is a dreadful crime of which he stands accused, one for which there is no remission--no pardon here or hereafter," she said sorrowfully. "He is innocent," sobbed Hellayne. "He is as pure as the light, as the flowers. There is some dreadful mistake. He must be saved before it is too late! Oh--dear mother--could you not intercede for him with His Eminence?" The Abbess regarded her as if she thought her protege had suddenly lost her reason. To intercede with the Cardinal-Archbishop for one who stood committed of so heinous an offence, taken in the very act,--one who, perchance, was implicated in all those other terrible outrages committed in the various sanctuaries of Rome! Nevertheless she made allowance for Hellayne's hysterical plea. "Has he never mentioned these matters to you?" She queried kindly, hoping to draw the girl out. "What matters?" Hellayne queried, with wide eyes, and the question convinced the Abbess that the woman knew nothing. "These dark practices," replied the Abbess. "For this is not the first offence. Even within this very moon cycle the Holy Host has been taken from the Church of Our Blessed Lady yonder. And all efforts to discover the guilty one have failed." "I had not heard of it," said Hellayne. "I have not been long in Rome. Nor has he. About a month, I should say." "A month?" "And he knew nothing of this. Nor knew he even one person in this whole city." "Wherefore then came he?" Hellayne explained and the Abbess listened. Hellayne's account, which was impersonal, impressed her protectress in so far as she knew she spoke truth. For, if here was an impostor, it was the cleverest she had ever faced and, while a stranger to the world and to worldly affairs, the stamp of truth was too indelibly written upon Hellayne's brow to even permit of the shadow of a doubt. Perhaps it was for this reason the Abbess refrained from questioning her farther, for she had been somehow curious of the relation between the woman and the man who had brought her here. Here was matter for thought indeed. For, if the man was guilty and, notwithstanding Hellayne's protestations, the Abbess was in her own mind convinced that the Cardinal-Archbishop of Ravenna could not be deceived in matters of this kind, what was to become of the woman he had placed in her charge? There were also other matters equally grave which oppressed the Abbess' mind. Hellayne's connection with one who had committed the unspeakable crime might militate against her remaining at the convent. Yet she hesitated to send her out into the world, unprotected and alone. For a time there was silence. Hellayne, utterly exhausted from the recital of a past, which had reopened every wound in her heart, causing it to bleed anew, anxious, afraid, doubting and wondering how far her protectress might go, stood before the woman who seemed to hold in her hand both her own fate and that of her lover. "I will retire to my cell and pray to the Blessed Virgin for light to guide my steps," the Abbess said at last, laying her hand on Hellayne's head. "Do not venture away too far," she enjoined, "and come to me after the Ave Maria. Perchance I may then know what to counsel." Hellayne bowed her head and kissed the hem of the Abbess' robe. After she had left, Hellayne remained standing where she was, transfixed with anxiety and grief. What forces of gloom and evil encompassed her on all sides? The man to whom she had given her youth and beauty, who had plucked the flower which others had vainly desired, instead of cherishing the gift she had bestowed upon him, had trampled the delicate blossom in the dust. He, to whom her heart belonged ever since she had power to think, was doomed for a deed too terrible to name. She had been ruthlessly sacrificed by the one, and now the other had failed her, and a third tried to encompass her ruin. And she was alone--utterly alone! What was she to do? To request an audience of the Cardinal-Archbishop was little short of madness. In her own heart Hellayne doubted seriously that the Abbess would concern herself any further about her or her distress. Nevertheless she felt that something must be done. This inertia which was creeping over her would drive her mad. But first of all she must know the nature of the charge placed against the man she loved before she would determine what to do. In vain she taxed her tired brain for a ray of hope in the encompassing gloom. The long lights of the afternoon crossed and recrossed the sanctuary of Santa Maria in Trastevere when Hellayne, after an hour of fervent prayer, emerged from its portals and took the direction of the Tiber, where she sat on her accustomed seat and brooded over her misery. At last the sunset came. The ashen color of the olive trees flashed out into silver. The mountain peaks of distant Alba became faintly flushed and phantom fair as, in a tempest of fire, the sun sank to rest. The forests of ilex and arbutus on the Janiculum Hill seemed to tremble with delight as the long red heralds touched their topmost boughs. The whole landscape seemed to smile farewell to departing day. As she sat there, Hellayne's attention was attracted to a woman who had paused near the river's edge. There was nothing remarkable either in her carriage or apparel. It was a wrinkled hag, swart, snake-locked, cowled, her dress jingling with sequins, her right hand clawed upon a crooked staff. She appeared, in fact, just an old Levantine hoodie-crow of the breed which was familiar enough in Rome in those cataclysmic days, when all sorts of queer, tragic fowl were being driven northward from over seas before the tidal wave of invading Islam. Her speech as well as her manners and dress betrayed Oriental origin. As she hobbled up to where Hellayne was seated she stopped and asked some trifling question about her way, which Hellayne pointed with some hesitation, explaining that she was herself a stranger in Rome, and knew not the direction of the city. The old crone seemed interested. "In yonder cloister--yet not of it?" she queried, pointing with the crooked staff to the convent walls that towered darkly behind them in the evening dusk. Her penetration startled Hellayne. "How did you guess, old mother?" she queried with a look of awe, which was not unremarked by the other. "Ay--there is lore enough under these faded locks of mine to turn the foulest cesspool in Rome as clear as crystal, or to change this staff whereon I lean into a thing that creeps and hisses," she said with a low laugh. Hellayne shrank back from her with a gesture of dismay. Believing implicitly in their power, she felt a deadly fear of those who professed the black arts. The old woman read her thoughts. "My daughter," she said, "be not afraid of the old woman's secret gifts. Mine is a harmless knowledge, gained by study of the scrolls of wise men, in my own native land. Fear not, I say, for I, who have pored over those mystic characters till me eyes grew dim, can read your sweet pale face as plainly as the brazen tablets in the Forum, and I can see in it sorrow and care and anxiety for one you love." Hellayne gave a start. It was true! But how had the old crone found it out! She glanced wistfully at her companion, and the latter, satisfied she was on the right track, proceeded to answer that questioning glance.-- "You think he is in danger, or in grief," she continued mysteriously, "and you wonder why he does not come. What would you not give, my poor child, to see him this very moment--to look into his face--his eyes. And I can show him to you, if you will. I am not ungrateful, even for a slight service." The blood mounted to Hellayne's brow, and a strange light kindled in her eyes, while a soft radiance swept over her face such as comes into every countenance when the heart vibrates with an illusion to its happiness, as though the silver cord thrilled to the touch of an angel's wing. It was no clumsy guess of the wise woman to infer that the woman before her loved. "What mean you?" asked Hellayne eagerly. "How can you show him to me? What do you know of him? Where is he? Is he safe?" The wise woman smiled. Here was a bird flying blindly into the net. Take her by her affections, there would be little difficulty in the capture. "He is in danger--in grave danger," she replied. "But you could save him, if you only knew how. He might be happy, too, if he would. But--with another!" To do Hellayne justice, she heard only the first sentence. "In grave danger," she repeated. "I knew it! And I could save him! Oh, tell me where he is, and what I can do for him?" The wise woman pulled a small mirror from her bosom. "I cannot tell you," she replied. "But I can show him to you. Only not here, where the shadow of any chance passer-by might destroy the charm. Let us turn aside into yonder ruins. There is no one near, and you shall gaze without interruption into the face of him you love--" It was but a short way off, though the ruins which surrounded it made the place lonely and secluded. Had it been twice the distance however, Hellayne would have accompanied her new acquaintance for Tristan's sake, in the eagerness to obtain tidings of his fate. As she approached the ruins she could not repress a faint sigh, which was not lost on her companion. "It was here you parted," she said. "It is here you shall see him again." This was scarcely a random shaft, for it required little penetration to discover that Hellayne had some tender association connected with a spot, the solitude of which appealed to her in so great a degree. Nevertheless the utterance convinced Hellayne of her companion's supernatural power and, though it roused alarm, it excited curiosity to a still greater degree. "Take the mirror in your hand," whispered the wise woman, when they reached the portico, casting a searching glance around. "Shut your eyes while I speak the charm that calls him three times over, and then look steadily on its surface till I have counted ten." Hellayne obeyed these instructions implicitly. Standing in the centre of the ruin with the mirror in her hand, she shut her eyes and listened intently to the low solemn tones of the woman's chanting, while from the deep shadows of the ruin there stole out a muffled form and at the same time a half dozen sbirri rose from their different hiding places among the ruins. Ere the incantation had been twice repeated, the leader threw a scarf over Hellayne's head, muffling her so completely that an outcry was impossible. Resistlessly she felt herself taken up and carried to a chariot, which was waiting a short space away. A moment later the driver whipped the horses into a gallop and the vehicle with its occupants and burden disappeared in the gathering dusk. CHAPTER IV A LYING ORACLE It was an eventful night in Rome and, although for that reason well adapted to deeds of violence, the tumult and confusion exacted great caution from those who wished to proceed without interruption along the streets. A storm had burst as out of a clear sky, and was sweeping in its fury throughout a large portion of the city. Like all similar outbreaks, it gathered force from many sources unconnected with its original course. Rome was the theatre that night of a furious strife between the great feudal houses which lorded it over the city. The Leonine city with its protecting walls did not exist until some decades later. Thus, not only hordes of marauding Saracens, but Franks and Teutons used to make occasional inroads to the very gates of the city. On this evening Pandulph of Benevento, having taken umbrage at some decision of the Sacred Consistory regarding the lands he held as fief of the Church, conferring upon him a title which was disputed by Wido of Prænesté, had broken into the city and a bloody and obstinate conflict was being waged between his forces and the soldiers of the Church. The Roman nobles, ever restless and ready to revolt alike from the authority of the Emperor or of the Church, would not let this glorious opportunity pass without reminding those in power that they had built upon a volcano. They joined in the fray, some taking the part of the invader, others of the Church. An hour or two before sunset an undisciplined horde of mercenaries, armed cap-a-pie, and formidable chiefly for the wild fury with which they seemed inspired, attacked the Mausoleum of the Flavian Emperor. The assailants, having no engines of war either for protection or assault, suffered severely from the missiles showered upon them by the besieged. Being repulsed after repeated assaults, they threw flaming torches into the houses that lined the river on the opposite shore and withdrew. From another quarter of the city a large body of Epirotes, who had hoisted the standard of the Lord Gisulph of Salerno and had already suffered one defeat, which rather roused their animosity than quelled their ardor, were advancing in good order. Before the Lateran they met the forces of Pandulph of Benevento, and a terrible hand-to-hand encounter ensued. Nor was man the only demon on the scene. Unsexed women with bare bosoms, wild eyes and streaming hair, the very outcast of the Roman scum, their feet stained with blood, flew to and fro, stimulating each other to fresh atrocities with wine, caresses and ribald mirth. It was a feast of Death and Sin. She had wreathed her white arms about the spectral king and crowned his fleshless head with her gaudy garlands, wrapped him in a mantle of flame and pressed the blood-red goblet to his lips, maddening him with her shrieks of wild, mocking mirth, the while mailed feet trampled out the lives of their victims on the flagstones of Rome. Through a town in such a state of turmoil and confusion Tebaldo took it upon himself to conduct in safety the prize he had succeeded in capturing, not, it must be confessed, without many hearty regrets that he had ever embarked on the enterprise. It was indeed a difficult and perilous task. He had been compelled to dismiss his men long ago, in order not to attract attention. There was but room for himself and one stout slave, beside the charioteer and his captive. The latter had struggled violently and required to be held down by sheer force, nor, in muffling her screams, was it easy to observe the happy medium between silence and suffocation. Also, it was indispensable in the present state of lawlessness to avoid observation, and the spectacle of a golden chariot with a woman prisoner, gagged and veiled, the whole drawn by four spirited black steeds, was not calculated to avoid suspicion and comment. Stefano, Tebaldo's underling, had indeed suggested a litter, but this had been overruled by his comrade on the score of speed, and now the congestion of the streets made speed impossible. To be sure, this enabled his escort to keep up with them at a distance, but a fight at this present moment was little to Tebaldo's taste. The darkness which should have favored him was dispelled by the numerous conflagrations in the various parts of the city, and when the chariot was stopped and forced to run into a by-street, to avoid a crowd running toward the Campo Marzo, Tebaldo felt his heart sink within him in an access of terror such as even he had rarely felt before. Up one street, down another, avoiding the main thoroughfares, now rendered impassable by the throngs, the charioteer directed his steeds towards Basil's palace on the Pincian Hill. Hellayne seemed to have either fainted, or resigned herself to her fate, for she had ceased to struggle and cowered on the floor of the chariot, silent and motionless. Tebaldo hoped his difficulties were over, and promised himself never again to be concerned in such an affair. Already he imagined himself safe on his patron's porch, claiming his reward, when his advance was stopped by a pageant, which promised a protracted and hazardous delay. Winding its slow way along, with all the pomp and splendor attending it, a procession of chariots crossed in front of Tebaldo's steeds, and not a man in Rome would have dared to break in upon the train of Theodora, who was abroad to view the strife of the factions, utterly indifferent to the perils of the venture. It may be that something whispered to Hellayne that, of the two perils confronting her, what she contemplated was the lesser, and no sooner did the car stop to let the chariots pass, than, tearing away the bandage, she uttered a piercing scream, which brought it to a halt at once, while Tebaldo, trying to wear a bold front, quaked in every limb. At a signal from the woman in the first chariot her giant Africans seized the shaking Tebaldo and surrounded his chariot. Already a crowd of curious spectators was gathering, and the glare of the bonfires, kindled here and there, shed its light on their dark, eager faces, contrasting strangely with the veiled form of a woman, cold and immobile as marble. Two of the Africans seized Tebaldo, and buffeted him unceremoniously to within a few paces of the occupant of the chariot. Here he stood, speechless and trembling, anger and fear contending for the mastery, which changed to dismay as the woman raised her veil with a hand gleaming white as ivory. "Do you know me?" Whatever he had intended to say, the words died on Tebaldo's lips. "The Lady Theodora!" "You still have your wits about you," replied the woman. "Whom have you there?" The cold sweat stood on the brow of Basil's henchman. "The run-away mistress of my lord," he said, looking from right to left for some one to prompt him, some escape from the dilemma. "Who is your master?" Theodora queried curtly. "The Lord Basil--" "The Lord Basil!" shrilled Theodora. "Indeed I knew not he had lost a mistress. Yet I saw him within the hour and had speech with him."-- Stefano had meanwhile come up, composed and sedate, little guessing the quality of his companion's interlocutor, with the air of a man confident in the justice of his case. "Where are you taking this woman?" Theodora queried. Tebaldo attempted to speak, but Stefano anticipated him. "To the palace of my Lord Basil on the Pincian Hill, noble lady," he said with many obese bows. "Suffer us to proceed, for the streets are becoming more unsafe every moment and our lord will not be trifled with in matters of this kind." "Indeed," Theodora interposed. "Is his heart so much set upon this prize? Ho there, Bahram--Yussuff--bring the woman here!" Tebaldo tried to worm himself out of the clutch of the black giants, in order to prevent them from obeying Theodora's order, but he found the situation hopeless and was about to address Theodora when the latter bade him be silent.-- "The woman shall speak for herself," she said in a tone that suffered no contradiction and, in another moment, Hellayne, lifted by four muscular arms from the chariot of her abductors, stood, released of her bandages, before Theodora. All color left the Roman's face as she gazed into the pallid and anguished features of the woman whom of all women on earth she feared and hated most, the woman who dared to enter the arena with her for the love of the one man whom she was determined to possess, if the universe should crumble to atoms. Hellayne's fear upon beholding Theodora gave way to her pride as she met the dark eyes of the Roman in which there might have been a gleam of pity or a flash of scorn. But, ere Hellayne could speak, finding herself, caught like a poor hunted bird, in one net, ere she had well escaped the other, Theodora turned to Tebaldo. "Tell the Lord Basil, the woman he craves is under Theodora's roof, and--if so he be inclined--he may claim her at my hands--" The gleaming white arm went out, and ere Hellayne knew what happened, she found herself raised into the second chariot, where sat a tall girl of great beauty, Persephoné, the Circassian. A signal to the charioteer and the pageant moved with slightly increased speed towards the Aventine, while Tebaldo and Stefano, out-witted and non-plussed, stared after the vanishing procession as if they were encompassed by a nightmare. Then, simultaneously, they broke out into such a chorus of vituperation that the by-standers shrank back from them in horror, and they soon found themselves, their chariot and its driver, almost the only human beings in the now deserted thoroughfare. Hellayne meanwhile sat, utterly dazed, next to Persephoné. Terrified by the danger she had escaped, and scarcely reassured by the manner of her rescue she seemed as one in a stupor, unable to think, unable to speak. Persephoné regarded her with a strange fascination, not unmingled with curiosity. Hellayne's fair and wonderful beauty appealed strangely to the Circassian, while, with her native intuition, she wondered whether Theodora's act was prompted by kindness or revenge. Hellayne seemed, for the first time, to note her companion. Looking into Persephoné's eyes she shuddered. "Where are we going?" she whispered, gazing about in a state of bewilderment, as the procession slowly wound up the slopes of the Mount of Cloisters, and the broad ribbon of the Tiber gleamed below in the moonlight. A strange smile curved Persephoné's lips. "To the Groves of Enchantment," she replied. "You are the guest of the Lady Theodora." Hellayne brushed back the silken hair from her brow as if she were waking from a troubled dream. She gave a swift glance to her companion, another to the winding road and, suddenly rising from her seat, started to leap from the chariot. Ere she could carry out her intent, she was caught in the Circassian's arms. A silent, but terrible struggle ensued. Notwithstanding her harrowing experiences of the past days, despair had given back to Hellayne the strength of youth. But in the lithe Circassian she found her match and, after a few moments, she sank back exhausted, Persephoné's arms encircling her like coils of steel, while her smiling eyes sank into her own. The palace of Theodora rose phantom-like from among its environing groves in the moonlight, and the chariots dashed through the portals of the outer court, which closed upon the fantastic procession. CHAPTER V BITTER WATERS The dawn was creeping over the Sabine mountains when Tristan, after having made good his escape from the dungeons of Castel San Angelo, reached the hermitage of Odo of Cluny on distant Aventine. Fatigued almost to the point of death, bleeding and bruised, only his unconquerable will had urged him on towards safety. His first impulse, after crossing the bridge of San Angelo, was to go to the Convent of Santa Maria in Trastevere. He abandoned this plan upon saner reflection. Doubtlessly all Rome was instructed regarding the crime of which he stood accused. Recognition meant arrest and a fate he dared not think of. Tears forced themselves into Tristan's eyes, tears of sheer despair and hopelessness. Now, that he was free, he dared not follow the all-compelling impulse of his heart, assuage the craving of his soul, to learn if Hellayne was safe. After a few moments rest in the shadow of a doorway he set out to seek the one man in all Rome to whom he dared reveal himself. Not a soul seemed astir. Dim dusk hovered above the high houses beyond the Tiber, between whose silent chasms Tristan, dreading the echo of his own footsteps, made his way towards the Church of the Trespontine. Thus, after a circuitous route through waste and desert spaces, he reached the Benedictine's hermitage. Odo stared at the early visitor as if a ghost had arisen from the floor before him. He had just concluded his devotions and Tristan, fearing lest the Monk of Cluny might believe in his guilt, lost no time in stating his case, pouring forth a tale so fantastic and wild that his host could not but listen in mingled horror and amaze. Beginning with the moment when he had been informed of Hellayne's sudden death, he omitted not a detail up to the time of his escape from the dungeon, which to him meant nothing less than the antechamber of death. Minutely he dwelt upon his watch in the Lateran, laying particular stress upon the deadly drowsiness, which had gradually overtaken him, binding his limbs as with cords of steel. Graphically he depicted his awakening, when he found himself surrounded by the high prelates of the Church who faced him with the supposed evidence of a crime of which he knew nothing. And lastly he repeated almost word for word the strange discourse he had overheard in his dungeon between Basil and the Oriental. A ghastly pallor flitted over the features of Odo of Cluny at the latter intelligence. "If this be true indeed--if Alberic is dead--woe be to Rome! It is too monstrous for belief, and yet--I have suspected it long." For a time Odo relapsed into silence, brooding over the tidings of doom, and Tristan, though many questions struggled for utterance, waited in anxious suspense. At last the monk resumed. "I see in this the hand of one who never strikes but to destroy. The blow falls unseen, yet the aim is sure. I have not been idle, yet do I not hold in my hand all the threads of the dark web that encompasses us. Of the crime of which you stand accused I know you to be innocent. Nevertheless--you dare not show yourself in Rome. Your escape from your dungeon once discovered, not a nook or corner of Rome will remain unsearched. They dare not let you live, for your existence spells their doom. They will not look for you in this hermitage. It has many secret winding passages, and it will be easy for you to elude them. Therefore, my son, school your soul to patience, for here you must remain till we have assembled around the banner of the Cross the forces of Light against the legions of Hell." "What of the woman, Father, who is awaiting my return at the Convent of Santa Maria in Trastevere?" Tristan turned to the monk in a pleading, stifled voice. "Doubtless the terrible rumor has reached her ear." He covered his face with his hands, while convulsive sobs shook his whole frame. Odo tried to soothe him. "This is hardly the spirit I expected of one who has hitherto shown so brave a front, and whose aim it is not to anticipate the blows of chance." "Nevertheless, Father, it is more than I can bear. I have no lust for life, and care not what fate has in store for me, for my heart is heavy within me, and all the fountains of my hopes are dried up, until I know the fate of the Lady Hellayne--and know from her own lips that she does not believe this devilish calumny." A troubled look passed into Odo's face. "If she still is at the convent of the Blessed Sisters of Trastevere she is undoubtedly safe," he said, but there was something in his tone which struck Tristan's ear with dismay. "You are keeping something from me, Father," he said falteringly. "Tell me the worst! For this anxiety is worse than death. Where is the Lady Hellayne? Is she--dead?" "Would she were," replied the monk gloomily. "I wished to spare you the tidings! She was taken from the convent on some pretext--the nature of which I know not. At present she is at the palace of Theodora on Mount Aventine." Tristan sat up as if electrified. "At the palace of Theodora?" he cried. "How is this known to you?" "Little transpires in Rome which I do not know," Odo replied darkly. "It seems that those whom the Lord Basil entrusted with the task of abducting the woman were in turn outwitted by Theodora who, in rescuing her from a fate worse than death at the hands of the Grand Chamberlain, has perchance consigned her to one equally, if not more, cruel." A moan broke from Tristan's lips. Then he was seized with a terrible fit of rage. "Then it is Theodora's hand that has sundered us in the flesh as her witches' beauty had estranged our hearts. More merciless than a beast of prey she did not strike Hellayne with death, so that I might have sentinelled her hallowed tomb, and with her sweet memory for company might have watched for the coming of my own hour to join her again! I have lost my love--my honor--my manhood--at the hands of a wanton." Odo tried for a time, though in vain, to calm him by reminding him that Hellayne would rather suffer death than dishonor. As regarded himself, he was convinced that Theodora would have moved heaven and earth to have set him free, had not his supposed crime concerned the Church and the Cardinal-Archbishop was adamant. "Oft, in my visions," he concluded, speaking lower, as if his mind strove with some vague elusive memory, "have I heard the voice of Theodora's doom cried aloud. A cruel fate is yours indeed--and we can but pray to the saints that the worst may be averted from the woman who has suffered so much." "Something must be done," Tristan interposed, his fierce mood gaining the mastery over every other feeling. "I care not if the minions of the devil take me back to the prison that leads to death, so I snatch her prey from this arch-courtesan of the Aventine." Odo laid a detaining hand upon his arm. "Madman! You are but planning your own destruction. And, if you die, wherein will it benefit the woman who is left to her fate? You are weak from the night's work and your nerves are overwrought. Follow me into the adjoining room even though the repast be meagre. We will devise some means to rescue the Lady Hellayne from the powers of darkness and, trusting in Him who died that we may live, we shall succeed." Pointing to the drooping form of the crucified Christ on the opposite wall of his improvised oratory, Odo beckoned to Tristan to follow him, and the latter accompanied the Benedictine into the adjoining rock chamber, where he did ample justice to the frugal repast which Odo placed before him, and of which the monk himself partook but sparingly. CHAPTER VI FROM DREAM TO DREAM Theodora's sleep had been broken and restless. She tossed and turned upon her pillow. It was weary work to lie gazing with eyes wide open at the fantastic shadows cast by the flickering night lamp. It was still less productive of sleep to shut them tight and abandon herself to the visions thus created which stood out in life-like colors and refused to be dispelled. Do what she would to forget him, Tristan ever and ever stood before her, towering like a demigod above the mean, effeminate throng that surrounded her. She could no longer analyze her feelings. She believed herself to be bewitched. She had not reached the prime of womanhood without having sounded, as she thought, every chord of the human heart. Descendant from a family of courtesans, such as had ruled Rome during the tenth century, she had tasted every cup, as she thought, that promised gratification and excitement. She had been flattered, courted, loved, admired. Yet she had remained utterly cold to all these experiences, and none of her lovers could boast that her passion had endured beyond the hour. The terrible fascination she exercised over all men made them slaves in her hands, blind instruments of her will. But, as the years went by, the utter disgust she felt with these hordes of beasts that thronged her bowers, was only equalled by a mad desire for power, a struggle, which alone could bring to her oblivion. To rule had become a passion with the woman, who had no heart interest that made life worth living. The fleeting passion for Basil had long ceased to kindle a responsive fire in her veins. Fit but to be her tool, she was determined to rid herself of him as soon as her ambition should have been realized. Suddenly the unbelievable had come to pass. She had met a man. Not one of those crawling, fawning reptiles who nightly desecrated her groves, but a man who might have steered her life into different channels, who might have directed the flight of her soul to regions of light, instead of chaining it to the dark abyss among the shadows. It was a new sensation altogether. This intense and passionate longing she had never felt before. But in its novelty it was absolutely painful. For the man whom she craved with all the fibres of her being, to whom her soul went out as it had never gone out to mortal, had scorned her. Her fame had proved more potent than her beauty. Tristan's continued indifference had roused in her all the demons in her nature. Her first impulse had been revenge at any price. Her compact with Basil was the fruit of her first madness. Even now she would have rescinded it had Tristan but shown a softer, kindlier feeling towards her. Some incongruous whim had prompted her to choose for her instrument the very man whom in her heart she loathed, whose attentions were an insult to her. For, in her own heart, Theodora held herself to be some God-decreed thing, like the Laides and Thaides and Phrynes of old. She could not escape her destiny. With all her self-command Theodora's feelings had almost overpowered her. Ever since the tidings of Tristan's supposed crime and captivity had reached her ear, she had taxed her brain, though in vain, to bring about his rescue. For once her efforts were baffled and she met a resistance which all the tigerish ferocity of her nature could not overcome. Tristan was in the custody of the Church. In his guilt Theodora did not believe, rather did she suspect foul play at the hands of one of whom she would demand a terrible reckoning. She thought of Tristan night and day, and she was determined to save him, whatever the hazard,--save him for herself and her love. Her spies were at work, but meanwhile she must sit idly by and wait--wait, though the blood coursed like lava through her veins. She dared confide in none, nor could she even have speech with the man she loved. She had managed to curb her feelings and to preserve an outward calm, while Persephoné prepared her for repose. The latter was much puzzled by her mistress's mood, but she retired to her own couch carefree, while Theodora writhed in an agony such as she had never known before. Yet, fate had been kind to her,--kinder than she had dared to hope. By some fatal throw of chance the woman Tristan loved--her rival--had fallen into her hands. While this circumstance did not in itself take the sting of Tristan's insult from the wound, she would, at least, be revenged upon the cause of her suffering. When, on that memorable evening at the Arch of the Seven Candles, she had first met Hellayne face to face, when first the truth had flashed upon her and she knew herself rejected for that white lily from the North, a hatred such as she had never known had crept into her heart, a hatred to which fresh fuel was added from the consciousness of her rival's beauty, her strength, her youth. With all the fire of her southern temperament she longed to meet this woman, to conquer her, to take from her the man she loved. Morning brought in its wake its unfailing accession of clear-sightedness and practical resolve. Long before she rose she had made up her mind where and how to strike. Nothing remained but to choose the weapon and to put a keener edge upon the steel. When Persephoné came to assist her mistress, she wondered how the mood of the evening had passed. While attiring Theodora, the Circassian could not but wonder at the marvellous beauty of this woman who had bent the hearts of men to her desires like wind blown reeds, only to break them and cast them at their feet. Only on the previous day a new wooer had entered the lists; a man rude of speech and manner, vain withal and self-satisfied, had laid gifts at Theodora's feet. Roger de Laval was the great man's name. He came from some far away, fabled land, and it was rumored that he had come to Rome to seek his truant wife. Having surprised her in the arms of her lover, whom she had followed, he had killed both. Such a temper was to the liking of Persephoné, and, as her soft white fingers played around her mistress' throat, in the endeavor to fasten her rose-colored tunic, she could hardly restrain herself from encircling that white throat and strangling the woman who had spurned the attentions of one for whose love she would have sacrificed her soul. "What of the Lady Hellayne?" Theodora broke the heavy silence. "She remains in the chamber which the Lady Theodora has assigned to her." Persephoné replied. "Are the eunuchs at their post?" "Before her door and beneath her windows." Theodora gave a nod. "Bring the Lady Hellayne here!" "The Lady Theodora has not breakfasted." "I know! Yet I would not delay this meeting longer." Persephoné hesitated. "The Lady Hellayne is in a perilous mood--" "I should love nothing better than to find her so," Theodora replied, extending her two snowy arms, whose steely strength Persephoné knew so well. "I long for the conflict with this marble statue as I have never longed for anything in my life. I could find it in my heart to be happy if she destroyed me with those white hands that rival mine, if she but stepped out of her reserve, her marble calm, if her soul ignited from mine." "If I know aught about her kind, the Lady Theodora will do well to be wary," Persephoné replied demurely. The covert taunt had its instantaneous effect. "Deem you I fear this white siren from the North?" Theodora flashed, regarding herself in the bronze mirror and brushing a stray lock of hair from her white brow. "What will you do with her, Lady Theodora?" Persephoné purred. Theodora's face was very white. "There are times when nothing but the physical touch will satisfy. And now go and fetch hither the Lady Hellayne that I may hear from her own lips how she fared under the roof of her rival." Persephoné departed from the room, while Theodora arose and, stepping to the casement, looked out into the blossoming gardens that encircled her palace. Her beauty was regal indeed, as she stood there brooding, her bare arms dropping by her side. But for the expression of the eyes, in which a turmoil of passion seemed to seethe, the wonderful face in repose would have seemed that of an angel rather than a woman meditating the destruction of another. After a time Persephoné returned. By her side walked Hellayne. Her beauty seemed even enhanced by the expression of suffering revealed in the depths of her blue eyes. She wore a dark robe, almost severe in its straight lines. The loose sleeves revealed her white arms. Her hair was tied in a Grecian knot. At a sign from Theodora Persephoné left the room. For a moment the two women faced each other in silence, fixing each other with their gaze, each trying to read the thoughts of the other. It was Hellayne who spoke. "The Lady Theodora has desired my presence." "It was my anxiety for your welfare, Lady Hellayne," Theodora replied, inviting her to a seat, while she seated herself opposite her visitor. "After the trying experiences of yesterday I do not wonder at the shadows that creep under your eyes. They but prove that my anxiety was well founded. May I ask if you rested well?" "I owe you thanks, Lady Theodora, for your timely aid," Hellayne replied in cold, passionless accents. "They tell me I was in dire straits, though I cannot conceive who should care to abduct one who would so little repay the effort." "Enough to infatuate him, whoever he was, with a beauty as rare as it is wonderful," Theodora replied, forced to an expression of her own admiration at the sight of the exquisite face, the white throat, the wonderful arms and hands of her rival. "I but did what any woman would do for another whose life she saw imperilled. Your wonderful youth and strength will soon restore you to your former self. Deign then to accept the hospitality of this abode until such a time." There was a pause during which each seemed to search the soul of the other. It was Hellayne who spoke. "I thank you, Lady Theodora. Nevertheless I intend to depart at the earliest. I can picture to myself the anxiety of the Blessed Sisters of Santa Maria in Trastevere at my mysterious disappearance." "You intend taking holy orders?" Theodora's question was pregnant with a strange wonder. A negative gesture came in response. "The convent proved a haven of refuge to me when I was sorely tried." "Yet--you cannot return there," Theodora interposed. "You would not be safe. Know you from whose minions my Africans rescued you on yester eve?" Hellayne's wide eyes were silent questioners. "Then listen well and ponder. You were in the power of the Lord Basil. And that which he desires he usually obtains." Hellayne covered her face with her hands. "The Lord Basil!" "You know him, Lady Hellayne?" "Slightly. He was wont to call upon the man I once called my husband." "The man you deserted for another." Hellayne's eyes glittered like steel. "That is a matter which concerns only myself, Lady Theodora," she said coldly. "You saved my honor--perchance my life. For this I thank you. I shall depart at once." She walked to the door, opened it and recoiled. Before it stood two Africans with gleaming scimitars. White to the lips, Hellayne closed the door and faced Theodora. "Lady Theodora--why are these there?" Theodora's smouldering gaze met the fire in the other woman's eyes. "Those who come to the bowers of Theodora, remain," she said slowly. "Am I to understand that you will detain me by force within these walls of infamy?" "Your language is a trifle harsh, fairest Lady Hellayne," Theodora replied mockingly. "Your over-wrought nerves must bear the burden of the blame. Yet, whatever it may please you to call the place where Theodora dwells, always remember, I am Theodora. You have heard of me before." "Yes--I have heard of you before!" The calm and cutting contempt which lingered in these words stung Theodora like a whip-lash. "You know then, Lady Hellayne, it is your will against mine! We have met before!" "You mean to detain me here, against my will?" "Whether I detain you or no--shall depend upon yourself. We are two women--young,--beautiful--passionate--determined to win that which we deem our happiness. I will be plain with you. All the reverses and heartaches of months and days are wiped out in this glorious moment when I hold you here in my power. For once my guardian angel, if I can still boast of one, has been kind to me. He has delivered you into my hands--and I shall bend or break you!" Hellayne listened to this outburst of passion with outward calm, though her heart beat so wildly that she thought the other woman must hear it through the deadly silence which prevailed for a space. "You will bend or break me, Lady Theodora?" Hellayne replied with a pathetic shrug. "There is nothing that you could do that would even leave a memory. I have suffered that in life which makes you to me but the nightmare of an evil dream." "We shall see, Lady Hellayne," Theodora replied, her passion kindling at the other woman's calm. "What then is the ransom you desire, Lady Theodora?" Hellayne continued sardonically. "A woman of your kind desires but one thing--and gold I do not possess--" Theodora's eyes scanned Hellayne's pale face. "Lady Hellayne," she said slowly, "of all the things in heaven or on earth there is but one I desire: Tristan,--the man you love--the man who loves you with a passion so idolatrous that, did I possess but the one thousandth atom of what he gives to your ice cold heart, I should deem myself blessed above all women on earth. Give him to me--renounce him--and you are free to go wherever your fancy may lead you." Hellayne regarded the speaker as if she thought she had gone mad. "Give him to you?" she said, hardly above a whisper, but her tone stung Theodora to the quick. "To me!" she said. "Look at me! Am I not beautiful? Am I not created to make man happy? What woman may match herself with me? Even your pale beauty, Lady Hellayne, is but as a disembodied wraith as compared to mine. To me! To me! You are young, Lady Hellayne. What can the sacrifice matter to you? To you it can mean little. There are other men with whom you may be happy. For me it spells salvation--or eternal doom! For I love him, I love him with my whole heart and soul, love him as never I loved the thing called man before! He has shown to me one glimpse of heaven, and now I mean to have him, to atone for a past that was my evil inheritance, to taste life ere I too descend to those shadowy regions whence there is no return. Lady Hellayne," she continued, hardly noting the expression of horror and loathing that had crept into Hellayne's countenance. "You have heard of me--you know who I am--and what! Those who went before me were the same, generations, perchance. It rankles in our blood. But there is salvation--even for such as myself. To few it comes, but I have seen the star. It is the love of a man, pure and true. Where such a one is found, even the darkness of the grave is dispelled. I have lived and loved, Lady Hellayne! I have been loved as few women have. I have hurled myself into this mad whirlpool to forget--but forget I could not. Man, the beast, is ever ready to drag the woman who cries for life and its true meaning back into the mire. He alone of all has spurned me--he alone has resisted the deadly lure of my charms. Never have I spoken to woman before as I am speaking to you, Lady Hellayne. Hear my prayer!--Renounce him!" Hellayne stared mute at the speaker, as if her tongue refused her utterance. Was she going mad? Theodora, the courtesan queen of Rome, trying to obtain salvation by taking from her her lover? She could almost have found it in her heart to laugh aloud. A death-bed repentance that made the devils laugh! In her virginal purity Hellayne could not fathom what was going on in the soul of a woman who had suddenly awakened to the terror of her life and was snatching at the last straw to save herself from drowning in the cesspool of vice. Theodora, with her woman's intuition, saw what was going on in the other woman's soul. She noted the slow transformation from amazement to horror, and from horror to defiance. She saw Hellayne slowly raising herself to her full height, and approaching her, who had risen, until her breath fanned her cheek. "Give him to you, Lady Theodora? Surely you must be mad to even dream of so monstrous a thing." She was very white, and her hands were clenched as if she forcibly restrained herself from flying at her opponent's throat. Theodora's self-restraint was slowly waning. She knew she had pleaded in vain. She knew Hellayne did not understand, or, if she understood, did not believe. She spoke calmly, yet there was something in her voice that warned Hellayne of the impending storm. "Listen, Lady Hellayne," she said. "You are alone in Rome! At the mercy of any one who desires you! Your lover is accused of the most heinous crime. He has taken the consecrated wafer from the chapel in the Lateran and, who knows, from how many other churches in Rome." Hellayne's eyes sank into those of the other woman. "No one knows better than yourself, Lady Theodora, how utterly false and infamous this accusation is. Tristan is a devout son of the Church. His whole life bears testimony thereof." "If the Consistory pronounce him guilty, who will believe him innocent?" came the mocking reply. "His God--his conscience--and I," Hellayne replied quietly. "Will that save his life--which is forfeit?" Theodora interposed. "Where is he? Oh, where is he?" For a moment Hellayne gave way to her emotions. "He lies in the vaults of Castel San Angelo," Theodora replied, "awaiting his doom." "Oh, God! Oh, God!" Hellayne moaned, covering her face with her hands and sobbing convulsively. "His rescue--though difficult of achievement--lies with you," Theodora said, veiling her inmost feelings. She was staking all on the last throw. "With me?" Hellayne turned to her piteously. "I will tell you," Theodora interposed, placing her white hands on Hellayne's shoulders. "The Consistory has spoken--" she lied--"and no power on earth can save your lover from his doom save--myself!" "How may that be?" "I know the ways of the Emperor's Tomb. Its denizens obey me! If you love him as I do you will bring the sacrifice and save his life." "Oh, save him if you can, Lady Theodora," Hellayne prayed, her hands closing round Theodora's wrists. "Save him--save him." "I shall, if you will do this thing, I ask," Theodora replied, sinking her dark orbs into the blue depths of Hellayne's. "What am I to do?" "It is easy. Here are stylus and tablet. Write to the Lord Basil to meet you at the Groves of Theodora. A hint of love, passion, promise--fulfillment of his desires--then give it to me. It shall save your lover." For a moment Hellayne stared wild-eyed at the woman. It was as if she had heard a voice, the meaning of which she no longer understood. Then, in her unimpassioned voice, she turned to Theodora. "Only the fiend himself and Theodora could ask as much!" The blood was coursing like a stream of lava through Theodora's veins. Would Hellayne but step out of her reserve! Would she but abandon her icy calm! "Then you refuse?" she flashed. "I defy you," Hellayne replied. "Do your worst! Rather would I see him dead than defiled by such as you!" "Would you, indeed?" Theodora returned with a deadly calm. "Nevertheless, when first we met, he, for the mere asking, gave to me a scarf of blue samite, a chased dagger, tokens from the woman he had loved." Theodora paused, to watch the effect of the poison shaft she had sped. She saw by Hellayne's agonized expression that it had struck home. "For the last time, Lady Hellayne, do my bidding!" Hellayne had regained her self-possession. With a supreme effort she fought down the pain in her heart. "Never!" came the firm reply. "Then I shall take him from you!" "Deem you, I have aught to fear from such as you?" Hellayne said slowly, the blue fire of her eyes burning on the pale face of Theodora. "Deem you, that Tristan would defile his manhood with the courtesan queen of Rome?" A gasp, a choking outcry, and Theodora's white hands closed round Hellayne's throat. Though their touch burnt her like fire, Hellayne did not even raise her hands. Fearlessly she gazed into Theodora's face. "I am waiting," she said with the same passionless voice, but there was something in her eyes that gave the other woman pause. Theodora's hands fell limply by her side. What she read in Hellayne's eyes had caused her, perchance, for the first time, to blanch. She clapped her hands. The door opened and Persephoné stood on the threshold. She had listened, and not a word of their discourse had escaped her watchful ears. "The Lady Hellayne desires to return to her chamber," Theodora turned to the Circassian, and without another word Hellayne followed her guide. Yet, as she did so, her head was turned towards Theodora and in her eyes was an expression so inscrutable that Theodora turned away with a shudder, as the door closed behind their retreating forms, leaving her alone with her overmastering agony. CHAPTER VII A ROMAN MEDEA It was a moonless night.-- Deep repose was upon the seven hilled city. The sky was intensely dark, but the stars shone out full and lustrous. Venus was almost setting. Mars glowed red and fiery towards the zenith; the constellations seemed to stand out from the infinite spaces behind them. Orion glittered like a giant in golden armour; Cassiopeia shone out in her own peculiar radiance and the Pleiades in their misty brightness. A litter, borne by four stalwart Nubians, and preceded by two torch bearers, slowly emerged from the gates of Theodora's palace and took the direction of the gorge which divides the Mount of Cloisters from Mount Testaccio. Owing to the prevailing darkness which made all objects, moving and immobile, indistinguishable, the inmates of the litter had not drawn the curtains, so as to admit the cooling night air. There was a fixedness in Theodora's look and a recklessness in her manner that showed anger and determination. It struck Persephoné, who was seated by her side, with a sort of terror, and for once she did not dare to accost her mistress with her usual banter and freedom. Theodora had spent the early hours of the evening in a half obscured room, whose sable hangings seemed to reflect the unrest of her soul. She had forbidden the lamps to be lighted, brooding alone in darkness and solitude. Then she had summoned Persephoné, ordered her litter-bearers and commanded them to take her to the house of Sidonia, a woman versed in all manner of lore that shunned the light of day. "It must be done! It shall be done!" she muttered, her white face tense, her white hands clenched. Suddenly her hand closed round Persephoné's wrist. "She defies me, knowing herself in my power," she said. "We shall see who shall conquer." "The Lady Hellayne is as fearless of death, as yourself, Lady Theodora," Persephoné replied. "Indeed, she seemed rather to desire it, for no woman ever faced you with such defiance as did she when you put before her the fatal choice." Theodora's face shone ghostly in the nocturnal gloom. "We shall see! She shall desire death a thousand fold ere she quits the abode I have assigned to her. God! Not even Roxana had dared to say to me what this one did." "Nor would her shafts have struck so deep a wound," Persephoné interposed with studied insolence. Theodora's grip tightened round the girl's wrist. "You admire the Lady Hellayne?" she said softly, but there was a gleam in her eyes like liquid fire. "As one brave woman admires another!" Persephoné replied fearlessly, turning her beautiful face to the speaker. "You may require all your courage some day to face another task," Theodora replied. "Beware, lest you tempt me to do what I might regret." Persephoné turned white. Her bosom heaved. Her eyes met Theodora's. "I shall welcome the ordeal with all my heart!" Theodora relapsed into silence, oppressed by dark thoughts, the memory of unresisted temptations, a chaotic world where black unscalable rocks, like circles of the Inferno, hemmed her in on every side, while devils whispered into her ears the words that gave shape and substance to her desire to destroy her rival in the love of the one man whom, in all her changeable life, she had truly desired. "Deem you, that I have aught to fear from such as you? Deem you, that Tristan would defile his manhood with the courtesan queen of Rome?" The words still boomed in her ears, the words and the tone in which they had been hurled in her face. Even to this moment she knew not what restrained her from strangling Hellayne. It seemed to her that only in a physical encounter could she quench the hatred she bore this white, beautiful statue who never raised her voice while the fire of her blue eyes seared her very soul. A thousand frightful forms of evil, stalking shapes of death, came and went before her imagination, which caused her to clutch first at one, then at another of the dire suggestions that came in crowds which overwhelmed her powers of choice. Then, like an inspiration from the very depths of Hell, a thought flashed into her mind, and, no sooner conceived, than she determined upon its execution. The laboratory of the woman whom Theodora was seeking on this night was in an old house midway in the gorge. In a deep hollow, almost out of sight, stood a square structure of stone, gloomy and forbidding, with narrow windows and an uninviting door. Tall pines shadowed it on one side, a small rivulet twisted itself, like a live snake, half round it on the other. A plot of green grass, ill-kept and teeming with noxious weeds, fennel, thistle and foul stramonium, was surrounded by a rough wall of loose stone; and here lived the woman who supplied all those who desired her wares, and plied her nocturnal trade. Sidonia was tall and straight, of uncertain age, though she might have been reckoned at forty. The whiteness of her skin was enhanced by her blue black hair and lustrous black eyes. Far from forbidding, she exercised a sinister charm upon those who called upon her, and who vainly tried to reconcile her trade with the traces of a great beauty. Yet her thin, cruel lips never smiled, unless she had an object to gain by assuming a disguise as foreign to her as light is to an angel of darkness. Hardly any known poison there was, which was not obtainable at her hands. In a sombre chest, carved with fantastic figures from Etruscan designs, were concealed the subtle drugs, cabalistical formulas and alchemic preparations which were so greatly in demand during those years of darkness. In the most secret place of all were deposited, ready for use, a few phials of a crystal liquid, every single drop of which contained the life of a man, and which, administered in due proportion of time and measure, killed and left no trace. Here was the sublimated dust of the deadly night-shade which kindles the red fires of fever and rots the roots of the tongue. Here was the fetid powder of stramonium that grips the lungs like an asthma, and quinia that shakes its victims like the cold hand of the miasma in the Pontine Marshes. The essence of poppies, ten times sublimated, a few grains of which bring on the stupor of apoplexy, and the sardonic plant that kills its victims with the frightful laughter of madness upon their countenance, were here. The knowledge of these and many other cursed herbs, once known to Medea in the Colchian land, and transplanted to Greece and Rome with the enchantments of their use, had been handed down by a long succession of sorcerers and poisoners to the woman, who seemed endowed by nature as the legitimate inheritrix of this lore of Hell. At last the litter of Theodora was set down by its swarthy bearers before the threshold of Sidonia's house. Theodora alighted and, after commanding the Africans to await her return, ascended the narrow stone steps alone and knocked at the door. After a brief wait, shuffling steps were heard from within, and a bent, lynx-eyed individual of Oriental origin opened the door, inviting the visitor to enter. She was ushered into a dusky hallway, in which brooded strange odors, thence into a dimly lighted room, the laboratory of Sidonia. Hardly had she seated herself when the woman entered and stood face to face with Theodora. The eyes of the two women instantly met in a searching glance that took in the whole ensemble, bearing, dress and almost the very thoughts of each other. In that one glance each knew and understood; each knew that she could trust the other, in evil, if not in good. And there was trust between them. The evil spirits that possessed their hearts clasped hands, and a silent league was formed in their souls ere a word had been spoken. Sidonia wore a long, purple robe, totally unadorned. The sleeves were wide, and revealed her white, bare arms. Her finely cut features were crossed with thin lines of cruelty and cunning. No mercy was in her eyes, still less on her lips, and none in her heart, cold to every human feeling. "The Lady Theodora is fair to look upon," Sidonia broke the silence. "All women admit it; all men confess it." And her gaze swept the other woman, who was clad in an ample black mantle which ended in a hood. "Can you guess why I am here?" Theodora replied. "You are wise and know a woman's desire better than she dares avow." "Can I guess?" replied Sidonia, returning Theodora's scrutiny. "You have many lovers, Lady Theodora, but there is one who does not return your passion. And, you have a rival. A woman, more potent than yourself, has, notwithstanding your beauty, entangled the man you love, and you are here to win him back and to triumph over your rival. Is it not so, Lady Theodora?" "More than that," replied the other, clenching her white hands and gazing into the eyes that met her own with a look of merciless triumph at what she saw reflected therein. "It is all that--and more--" Sidonia met her eager gaze. "You would kill your rival!" she said with a smile upon her lips. "There is death in your eyes--in your voice--in your heart! You would kill the woman. It is good in the eyes of a woman to kill her rival--and women like you are rare!" "Your reward shall be great," Theodora said with an inquisitive glance at the woman who had read her inmost thoughts. "To kill woman or man were a pleasure even without the profit," replied Sidonia, darkly. "I come from a race, ancient and terrible as the Cæsars, and I hate the puny rabble. I have my own joy in making my hand felt in a world I hate and which hates me!" She held out her hands, as if the ends of her fingers were trickling poison. "Death drops on whomsoever I send it," she continued, "subtly, secretly. The very spirits of air cannot trace whence it comes." "I know you are the possessor of terrible secrets," Theodora replied, fascinated beyond all her experiences with the woman and her trade. "Such secrets never die," said the poisoner. "Few men, still fewer women, are there who would not listen at the door of Hell to learn them. Let me see your hand!" Theodora complied with her abrupt demand and laid her beautiful white hand into the no less beautiful one of the woman before her. Her touch, though the hand was cool, seemed to burn, but Theodora's touch affected the other woman likewise for she said: "There is evil enough in the palm of your hand to destroy the world! We are well met, you and I. You are worthy of my confidence. These fingers would pick the fruit off the forbidden tree, for men to eat and die! Lady Theodora--I may some day teach you the great secret--meanwhile I will show you that I possess it!" With these words she walked to the chest, took from it an ebony casket and laid it upon the table. "There is death enough in this casket," she said, "to kill every man and woman in Rome!" Theodora fastened her gaze upon it, as if she would have drawn out the secret of its contents by the very magnetism of her eyes. For, even while Sidonia was speaking, a thought flashed through her visitor's mind--a thought which almost made her forget the purpose on which she had come. She laid her hands upon it caressingly, trembling, eager to see its contents. "Open it!" said Sidonia. "Touch the spring and look!" Theodora touched the little spring. The lid flew back and there flashed from it a light which for a moment dazzled her by its very brilliancy. She thrust the cabinet from her in alarm, imagining she inhaled the odor of some deadly perfume. "Its glitter terrifies me!" she said. "Its odor sickens." "Your conscience frightens you," sneered Sidonia. Theodora rose to her feet, her face pale, her eyes alight with a strange fire. "This to me?" she flashed. For a moment the two women faced each other in a white silence. A strange smile played upon Sidonia's lips. "The Aqua Tofana in the hands of a coward is a gift as fatal to its possessor as to its victim!" "You are brave to speak such words to Theodora!" Sidonia gave her an inscrutable glance. "Why should I fear you? Even without these,--woman to woman," she replied, as she drew the casket to herself and took out a phial, gilt and chased with strange symbols. Sidonia took it up and immediately the liquid was filled with a million sparks of fire. It was the Aqua Tofana, undiluted, instantaneous in its effect, and not medicable by antidotes. Once administered there was no more hope for its victim than for the souls of the damned who have received the final judgment. One drop of the sparkling water upon the tongue of a Titan would blast him like Jove's thunderbolt, shrivel him up to a black, unsightly cinder. This terrible water was rarely used alone by the poisoners, but it formed the basis of a hundred slower potions which ambition, fear or hypocrisy, mingled with the element of time, and colored with the various hues and aspects of natural disease. Theodora had again taken her seat and leaned towards Sidonia, supporting her chin in the palm of her hands, as she bent eagerly over the table, drinking in every word as the hot sand of the desert drinks in the water that falls upon it. "What is that?" she pointed to a phial, white as milk and seemingly harmless, and while she questioned, her busy brain worked with feverish activity. The Aqua Tofana she had used when she struck down Roxana and her too talkative lover on the night of the feast in her garden. But now she required a different concoction to complete the vengeance on her rival. "This is called Lac Misericordiae," replied Sidonia. "It brings on painless consumption and decay! It eats the life out of man or woman, while the moon empties and fills. The strong man becomes a skeleton. Blooming maidens sink to their graves blighted and bloodless. Neither saint or sacrament can arrest its doom. This phial"--and she took another from the cabinet, replacing the first--"contains innumerable griefs that wait upon the pillows of rejected and heartbroken lovers, and the wisest mediciner is mocked by the lying appearances of disease that defy his skill and make a mock of his wisdom." There was a moment's silence. At last Theodora spoke. "Have you nothing that will cause fear--dread--madness--ere it strikes the victim dumb forever more? Something that produces in the brain those dreadful visions--horrid shapes--peopling its chambers where reason once held sway?" For a moment Sidonia and Theodora held each other's gaze, as if each were wondering at the wickedness of the other. "This," Sidonia said at last, taking out a curiously twisted bottle, containing a clear crimson liquid and sealed with the mystic Pentagon, "contains the quintessence of mandrakes, distilled in the alembic, when Scorpio rules the hour. It will produce what you desire." "How much of it is required to do this thing?" "Three drops. Within six hours the unfailing result will appear." "Give it to me!" "You possess rare ingenuity, Lady Theodora," said Sidonia, placing her hand in that of her caller. "If Satan prompts you not, it is because he can teach you nothing, either in love or stratagem." She shut up her infernal casket, leaving the phial of distilled mandrakes, shining like a ruby in the lamp light, upon the table. By its side lay a bag of gold. Theodora arose. The eyes of the two women flashed in lurid sympathy as they parted, and Sidonia accompanied her visitor to the door. As she did so a heavy curtain in the background parted and the white face of Basil peered into the empty room. After a brief interval Sidonia returned. Her face had again assumed its forbidding aspect as, removing the phials and seemingly addressing no one, she said: "We are alone now!" At the next moment Basil stood in the chamber. His eyes burned with a feverish lustre, and there was a horror in his countenance which he strove in vain to conceal. "This must not be," he said hoarsely. "Why did you give her this devil's brew?" And staggering up to the table he gripped the soft white wrist of the woman with fingers of steel. Sidonia's eyes narrowed as she gazed into those of the man. "Do you love that one, too?" she said, wrenching herself free. "Or have you lied to her as you have lied to me?" "Your voice sounds like the cry from a dark gallery that leads to Hell," Basil replied. "You, alone, have I loved all these years, and for your fell beauty have I risked all I have done and am about to do!" "Fear speaks in your voice," Sidonia replied with a cruel smile upon her lips. "You are in my power, else had you long ago consigned me to a place whence there is no return. With me the secret of another's death would go to the grave." "Nay, you do not understand!" Basil interposed. "The woman who has aroused Theodora's maddened jealousy is nothing to me. But I have other plans concerning her--she must be saved!" "Other plans?" replied Sidonia darkly. "What other plans? What sort of woman is she who can arouse the jealousy of Theodora?" "White and cold as the snows of the North." "A stranger in Rome?" "The wife of one whose days are numbered, if I rightly read the oracle." "What is this plan?" Sidonia insisted. "She is to be delivered to Hassan Abdullah, as reward for his aid in the great stroke that is about to fall." In the distance whimpered a bell. "And, when the hour tolls--the hour of which you have so often prated--when you sit in the high seat of the Senator of Rome--where then will I be, who have watched your power grow and have aided it in its upward flight?" Basil's face lighted up with the fires within. "Where else but by my side? Who dares defy us and the realms of the Underworld?" "Who, indeed?" Sidonia replied with a dark, inscrutable glance into Basil's face. "Perchance I should not love you as I do were you not as evil as you are good to look upon! I love you, even though I know your lying lips have professed love to many others, even though I know that Theodora has kindled in you all the evil passions of your soul. Beware how you play with me!" She threw back her wide sleeves and two dazzling white arms encircled Basil's neck. "Await me yonder," she then turned to her visitor, pointing to a chamber situated beyond the curtain. "We will talk this matter over!" Basil retired and Sidonia busied herself, replacing the different phials in the ebony chest. After having assured herself that everything was in its place, she picked up the lamp and disappeared behind the curtain in the background. Deep midnight silence reigned in the gorge of Mount Aventine. CHAPTER VIII IN TENEBRIS Another day had gone down the never returning tide of time. The sun was sinking in a rosy bed of quilted clouds. All day long Hellayne had sat brooding in her chamber, unable to shake off the lethargy of despair that bound and benumbed her limbs, rousing herself at long intervals just sufficiently to wring her hands for very anguish, without even the faintest ray of hope to pierce the black night of her misery. Just as a white border of light had been visible on the edge of the dark cloud that hung over her, just as she had refound the man whose love was the very breath of her existence, her evil star had again flamed in the ascendant and, losing him anew, she had utterly lost herself. She struggled with her thoughts, as a drowning man amid tossing waves, groping about in the dark for a plank to float upon, when all else has sunk in the seas around him. She had hardly touched the food which Persephoné herself had brought to her. Yet it seemed to her the Circassian had regarded her strangely, as she placed the viands before her. She had tried to frame a question, but her lips seemed to refuse the utterance, and at last Persephoné had departed, with the mocking promise to return later, to inquire how the Lady Hellayne had spent the day. Now it seemed to her as if a poison breath of evil was slowly permeating the narrow confines of her chamber. Something she had never before experienced was floating before her vision, was creeping into her brain, was booming in her ears, was turning her blood to ice. Was it the voiceless echo of an ill-omened incantation, handed down through generations of poisoners and witches from the time of pagan Rome? "Hecaten voco, Voco Tisiphonem, Spargens avernales aquas, Te morti devoveo; te diris ago." Was she going mad? Hellayne's hands went to her forehead. "I think I am sane," she said to herself, "at least--as yet." Would Heaven not come to her aid? She was but a weak woman who in vain--too often in vain--had tried to snatch a few moments of happiness from life. Ah! If Death knew what a service he would render her! But no! She would brace her heart strings more than ever. She would renew her fight with dusk and madness. She would face and challenge each mad phantom--make it speak--reveal itself,--or she would break the silence of that monstrous place at least with her own voice. Though flesh was weak she would be strong to-night--but--ah God! here they came trooping out of the night. She cowered back, shuddering, her eyes fixed on the dusky depths of the chamber. It was the blue one--the one whose limbs and cheeks seemed made of pale blue ice. She felt her limbs growing numb. But she would bar its way. The finger of the freezing shape was on its lip. Did it mean that it was dumb? Well, then, let it speak by signs. The dim blue rays that draped its silence quaked like aspens. "Who are you?" she forced herself to speak. "Are you Hate? You shake your head? Are you Despair? No? Not that? Then you must be Fear!" The figure nodded with a horrible grin. "Fear of what?" The phantom passed its finger slowly across its throat. She held on to the panelling to keep from falling. Her woman's strength had bounds. But she recovered herself and forced herself to speak. "Ah!" she said, "it is this she contemplates? How soon? I needs must know. How many twilights have I still to live, before they sink my body in yonder lotus pond?" The phantom held up three fingers. "Only three," Hellayne babbled like a child, talking to herself. "Well--pass upon your way, phantom.--You have given me all you had to give--three dusks to rise to Heaven." She raised her eyes in prayer and a strange rapture came into her face. But it vanished suddenly--and once more she stared, shuddering, into the gloom. For craze and hell still prevailed. Look, there it came! What new and monstrous phantom was swaying and groping towards her? A headless monk!--The air grew black with horror. Horror shrivelled her skin, was raising the roots of her hair. It was for her he was groping. Her wits were beginning to leave her. She had to move this way and that to avoid him. She felt, if he only touched her, madness would win the day. And he groped and groped, and she seemed to feel him near to her. "Away! Away!" she shrieked. But she was wasting her breath. He had neither eyes to see nor ears to hear. And he groped and groped, as if he felt her already under his vague, white hands. "Help--God!" she shrieked. Nature could not cope with such shapes as these! And Hellayne fell forward in a swoon. It was late in the night when she regained consciousness. She opened her eyes. The shapes of dusk had gone. She was alone--alone on the stone floor of the chamber. Everything was still in the long dusky gallery beyond. Perhaps it was all over for the night, and yet--what was there upon the threshold? "Oh, my God! my God!" she cried. "Let me die--only not this horror!" There the phantom stood. Its scarlet mantle glimmered almost black. She dared not turn her back. She dared not shut her eyes. He made neither sign, nor beck, nor nod. But, like a crazy shadow, he circled round and round her, soundlessly, as if he were treading on velvet. "Keep off--keep off!" she shrieked. "Protect me, oh my God! Madness is closing in upon me!" And with a sudden, desperate movement she rushed at the phantom to tear the crimson mask from its face. Her arms penetrated empty air. With a moan she sank upon the floor. Her arms spread out, she lay upon her face. The swoon held her captive once more. But the dream was kinder to Hellayne than life. She stood upon a rocky promontory in her own far-off land of Provence. Before her spread the peace of the wide, glimmering sea. What are these golden columns through which the water glistens? A man stood within the ruins of a great temple, the sea before him, violet hills behind. From the summit of an island mountain in the bay the lilt of a tender song was drifting upwards. And, as he sang, the great sea stirred. It heaved, it writhed, it rose. With onward movement, as of a coiling serpent, the whole vast liquid brilliance rushed upon the temple. Mighty billows of beryl curved and broke in sheets of white foam. "Fear nothing," said the man. "Your river has found the sea!" It was Tristan's voice. From the distance came the faint tolling of a bell, forlorn, as from a forest chapel, infinitely sweet and tremulous. In a faint light, like a mountain mist at dawn, the whole scene faded away, and Hellayne was in a garden--a rose garden. She had been there before, but how different it all was. She was being smothered in roses. Flame roses every one--curled into fiery petal whorls, dancing in the garden dusk under a red, red sky. Ah! There it is again, the terrible face, leering from among the branches, the face that froze the blood in her veins, that made her heart turn cold as ice and filled her soul with horror. It is the Count Laval. He is seeking her, seeking her everywhere. Horns are peering out from under his scarlet cap, and he has long claws. Now she is fleeing through the rose garden, faster, faster, ever faster. But he is gaining upon her. From bosquet to bosquet, from thicket to thicket; she hears his approaching steps. Now she can almost feel his breath upon her neck. At last he has overtaken her. Now he is circling round her, nearer and nearer, extending his hands towards her, while she follows his movement with horror-stricken eyes. But her strength, her body, are paralyzed. As his hands close round her throat, his eyes gloating with dull malice, she covers her face with her hands and falls with a shriek. And as she lies there before him, dead, he looks down upon her with a strange smile upon his lips and casts his scarlet mantle over her. Once more Hellayne is in the throes of a swoon. CHAPTER IX THE CONSPIRACY It was a night, moonless and starless. Deep silence brooded over the city. Not a ray of light was in the sky. A dense fog hung like a funeral pall over the Seven Hills, and a ceaseless, changeless drizzle was sinking from the heavy clouds whose contours were indistinguishable in the nocturnal gloom. The Tiber hardly moaned within his banks. The city fires hissed and smouldered away under the descending rain, soon to be extinguished altogether. It was about the second watch of the night when two men, wrapped in dark mantles that covered them from head to foot, quitted the monastery of San Lorenzo and were immediately swallowed up by the darkness. The night by this time was more dismal than ever. The wind began to rise, and its fitful gusts howled round the stern old walls of the monastery, or rustled in the laurels and cypresses by which it was surrounded. The great gates were shut and barred. Hardly a light was to be seen along the entire range of buildings. Suddenly a postern gate opened, and what appeared to be a monk, drawing his black cowl completely over his head, came forth and hurried along in the direction of the river. Tristan and his companion, emerging from their hiding-place, followed at the farthest possible distance which allowed them to retain sight of their quarry. Through a succession of the worst and narrowest by-lanes of the city they tracked him to the Tiber's edge. Here, dark as it was, a boat was ready for launching. Five or six persons were standing by, who seemed to recognize and address the monk. Keeping in the shadows of the tall, ill-favored houses, the twain contrived to approach near enough to hear somewhat that was said. "The light over yonder has been burning this half hour," said one of the men. "I could not come before," said he in the monk's habit. "I was followed by two men. I threw them out, however, before I reached the monastery of San Lorenzo. But--by all the saints--lose no more time! We have lost too much, as it is." He entered the boat as he spoke. It was pushed out into the water, and in another moment the measured sound of oars came to their ears. Odo of Cluny turned to his companion. "Tell me, did he who spoke first and mentioned the light yonder on St. Bartholomew's Island--a light there is yonder, sure enough--did he resemble, think you, one we know?" "Both in voice and form," replied Tristan. "My thoughts point the same way as yours!" "I should know that voice wherever I heard it," Tristan muttered under his breath. "But what of the light?" Dimly through the mist the red glow was discernible. "It beams from the deserted monastery," Odo replied after a pause. "Can we put across?" Tristan queried. "The question is not so much to find a boat as a landing-place, where we shall not be seen." "There is a boat lying yonder. If my eyes do not deceive me, the boatman lies asleep on the poop." "Know you aught of the men who rowed down the river?" Odo turned to the boatman, after he had aroused him. The latter stared uncomprehendingly into the speaker's face. "I know of no men. I fell asleep for want of custom. It is a God-forsaken spot," he added, rubbing his eyes. "Who would want a boat on a night like this?" "We require even such a commodity," Odo replied. The boatman returned a dull, unresponsive glance and did not move from his improvised couch. "Take your oars and row us to the Tiber Island," Odo said sternly, "unless you would bring upon yourself the curse of the Church. We have a weighty matter that brooks no delay. And have a care to avoid that other boat which has preceded yours. We must not be seen." Something in Odo's voice seemed to compel, and soon they were afloat, the boatman bending to his oars. They drifted through the dense mist and soon a dilapidated flight of landing stairs hove in sight, leading up to the deserted monastery. "Had we chosen the usual landing-place, we should have found two boats moored there--I saw them as we turned." Odo turned to his companion. "Yet we dare not land here. We should be seen from the shore." Directing their Charon to row his craft higher up, Odo soon discovered the place of which he was in quest. It was a little cove. The rocks which bordered it were slippery with seaweed, and in that misty obscurity offered no very safe footing. Here the boat was moored, and Odo and his companion clambered slowly, but steadily, over the rocks and, in a few moments, had made good their landing. Having directed the boatman to await their call in the shadow of the opposite bank, where he might remain unseen, they continued to grope their way upward, till they reached the angles of a wall which converged here, sheltered by a projecting pent house. Voices were heard issuing from within. "We must have ample security, my lord," said a speaker, whose voice Odo recognized as the voice of Basil. "You require of us to do everything. You exact ties and pledges and hostages, and you offer nothing." "I am desirous of sparing, as much as may be, the blood of my men," replied the person addressed. "Rome must be my lord's without conflict." "That may--or may not be," said the first speaker. "But so much you may say to the Lord Ugo. If he expects to reconquer Rome, he will need all the forces he can summon." "A wiser man than you or I, my lord, has said: 'Never force a foe to stand at bay,'" interposed a third. "Reject our offers, and we, whom you might have for your friends, you will have for your most bitter and determined foes. Accept our terms, and Rome, together with the Emperor's Tomb, is yours!" "What terms are contained in this paper?" queried Ugo's emissary. "They are not very difficult to remember!" returned the Grand Chamberlain. "But I might as well repeat them here. First--the revenues of all the churches to flow to the Holy See." "Proceed." "Utmost security of life, person and property to those who are aiding our enterprise." "It is well," said the voice. "So much I can vouch for, my lord. Is that all?" "All--as far as conditions go," returned the third speaker. "It is not all, by St. Demetrius," cried Basil. "I claim the office I am holding with all its privileges and appurtenances, to give no account to any one of the past or the future." "What of the present?" interposed the voice. "You never could imagine that I perilled my neck only to secure your lord in his former possessions, which he so cowardly abandoned," said Basil contemptuously. "I claim the hand of the Lady Theodora--" "Theodora?" cried the envoy of Ugo of Tuscany, turning fiercely upon the speaker. "Surely you are mad, my lord, to imagine that the Lord Ugo would peril his reign with the presence of this woman within the same walls that witnessed the regime of her sister--" "Mind your own business, my lord," interposed Basil. "What the man thinks who fled from Castel San Angelo at the first cry of revolt, the man who slunk away like a thief in the night, is nothing to me. We make the conditions. It is for him to accept or reject them, as he sees fit." A rasping voice, speaking a villainous jargon, made itself heard at this juncture. "What of my Saracens, mighty lord?" Hassan Abdullah, for no lesser than the great Mahometan chieftain was the speaker, turned to the Grand Chamberlain. "I, too, am desirous of sparing the blood of my soldiers and, insofar as lies within my power, that of the Nazarenes also. For it is written in the book: Slavery for infidels--but death only for apostates." "Our compact is sealed beyond recall," Basil made reply. "Then you will deliver the woman into my hands?" There was a pause. "She shall be delivered into the hands of Hassan Abdullah! And he will sail away with his white-plumed bird--the fairest flower of the North--and the ransom of a city." "Yet I do not know the lady's name," said the Saracen. "This I should know--else how may she heed my call?" "Those who love her call her Hellayne." At the name Tristan started so violently that the monk caught his arm in a grip of steel. "Silence--if you value your life," Odo enjoined. "When and where is she to be delivered into my hands?" Hassan Abdullah continued. "The place will be made known to you, my lord," Basil replied, "when the Emperor's Tomb hails its new master." "Here is an infernal plot," Odo whispered into Tristan's ear, "spawned up by the very Prince of Darkness." "What can we do?" came back the almost soundless reply. "Hellayne to be delivered over to this infidel dog! Nay, do not restrain me, Father--" "There are six to two of us," Odo interposed. "Silence! Some one speaks." It was the voice of the envoy of Ugo of Tuscany. "Although it seems like a taunt, to fling into the face of my lord the sister of the woman who was the cause of his defeat--" "His coward soul was the cause of the Lord Ugo's defeat," Basil interposed hotly. "In the dark of night, by means of a rope he let himself down from his lair, to escape the wrath of the fledgling he had struck for an unintentional affront. Did the Lord Ugo even inquire into the fate of the woman who perished miserably in the dungeons of the Emperor's Tomb?" "Let us not be hasty," interposed another. "The Lord Ugo will listen to reason." "The conditions are settled," Basil replied. "On the third night from to-night!" The conspirators rose and, emerging from the ruined refectory, made their way down to their boat. Soon the sound of oars, becoming fainter and fainter, informed the listeners that the company had departed. Tristan's face was very white. "What is to be done?" he turned pathetically to the monk who stood brooding by his side. "I almost wish I had let my fate overtake me--" "Do not blaspheme," Odo interposed. "Sometimes divine aid is nearest when it seems farthest removed. In three days the blow is to fall! In three days Rome is to be turned over to the infidels who are ravaging our southern coasts, and the Tuscan is once more to hold sway in the Tomb of the former Master of the World. But not he--Basil will rule, for Ugo has his hands full in Ivrea. With Basil Theodora will lord it from yonder castello. He will let the Lord Ugo burn his hands and he will snatch the golden fruit. I will pray that this feeble hand may undo their dark plotting." "What is Rome to me? What the universe?" Tristan interposed, "if she whom I love better than life is lost to me?" The monk turned to him laying his hand upon his shoulder. "You have been miraculously delivered from the very jaws of death. You will save the woman you love from dishonor and shame." Odo pondered for a pace then he continued: "There is one in Rome--who is encompassing your destruction. The foul crime in the Lateran of which you were the victim is but another proof of the schemes of the Godless, who have desecrated the churches of Christ for their hellish purposes. We must find their devil's chapel, hidden somewhere beneath the soil of Rome. None shall escape." "How will you bring this about, Father?" Tristan queried despairingly. "The soldiers of the Church have not been bribed," Odo replied. "Listen, my son, and do you as I direct. On to-morrow's eve Theodora gives one of her splendid feasts. Go you disguised. Watch--but speak not. Listen--but answer not. Who knows but that you may receive tidings of your lost one? As for myself, I shall seek one whose crimes lie heavily upon him, one who trembles with the fear of death, at whose door he lies--Il Gobbo--the bravo. His master has dealt him a mortal wound to remove the last witness of his crimes. Come to me on the second day at dusk." Emerging from the shadows of the wall, Tristan hailed the boatman, and a few moments later they were being rowed towards a solitary spot near the base of the Aventine, where they paid and dismissed their Charon and disappeared among the ruins. CHAPTER X THE BROKEN SPELL Again there was feasting and high revels in the palace of Theodora on Mount Aventine. Colored lanterns were suspended between the interstices of orange and oleander trees; and incense rose in spiral coils from bronze and copper vessels, concealed among leafy bowers. The great banquet hall was thronged with a motley crowd of Romans, Greeks, men from the coasts of Africa and Iceland, Spaniards, Persians, Burgundians, Lombards, men from the steppes of Sarmatia, and the amber coast of the Baltic. Here and there groups were discussing the wines or the viands or the gossip of the day. The guests marvelled at the splendor, wealth and the variegated mosaics, the gilded walls, the profusion of beautiful marble columns and the wonderfully groined ceiling. It was a veritable banquet of the senses. The fairylike radiance of the hall with its truly eastern splendor captivated the eye. From remote grottoes came the sounds of flutes, citherns and harps, quivering through the dreaming summer night. On ebony couches upon silver frames, covered with rare tapestries and soft cushions, the guests reclined. Between two immense, crescent-shaped tables, made of citron wood and inlaid with ivory, rose a miniature bronze fountain, representing Neptune. From it spurted jets of scented water, which cooled and perfumed the air. Not in centuries had there been such a feast in Rome. Mountain, plain and the sea had been relentlessly laid under tribute, to surrender their choicest towards supplying the sumptuous board. Nubian slaves in spotless white kept at the elbows of the guests and filled the golden flagons as quickly as they were emptied. A powerful Cyprian wine, highly spiced, was served. Under its stimulating influence the revellers soon gave themselves up to the reckless enjoyment of the hour. As the feast proceeded the guests cried more loudly for flagons of the fiery ecobalda. They quaffed large quantities of this wine and their faces became flushed, their eyes sparkled and their tongues grew more and more free. The temporary restraint they had imposed upon themselves gradually vanished. In proportion as they partook of the fiery vintage their conviviality increased. The roll-call was complete. None was found missing. Here was the Lord of Norba and Boso, Lord of Caprara. Here was the Lord Atenulf of Benevento, the Lord Amgar, from the coasts of the Baltic; here was Bembo the poet, Eugenius the philosopher and Alboin, Lord of Farfa. Here was the Prefect of Rome and Roger de Laval. He, too, had joined the throng of idolators at the shrine of Theodora. The Lord Guaimar of Salerno was there, and Guido, Duke of Spoleto. The curtain at the far end of the banquet hall slowly parted. On the threshold stood Theodora. Silent, rigid, she gazed into the hall. Like a sudden snow on a summer meadow, a white silence fell from her imagination across that glittering, gleaming tinselled atmosphere. Everywhere the dead seemed to sit around her, watching, as in a trance, strange antics of the grimacing dead. A vision of beauty she appeared, radiantly attired, a jewelled diadem upon her brow. By her side appeared Basil, the Grand Chamberlain. When her gaze fell upon the motley crowd, a disgust, such as she had never known, seized her. She seated herself on the dais, reserved for her, and with queenly dignity bade her guests welcome. Basil occupied the seat of honor at her right, Roger de Laval at her left. Had any one watched the countenances of Theodora and of Basil he would have surprised thereon an expression of ravening anxiety. To themselves they appeared like two players, neither knowing the next move of his opponent, yet filled with the dire assurance that upon this move depended the fate of the house of cards each has built upon a foundation of sand. At last the Count de Laval arose and whirled his glass about his head. "Twine a wreath about your cups," he shouted, "and drink to the glory of the most beautiful woman in the world--the Lady Theodora." They rose to their feet and shouted their endorsement till the very arches seemed to ring with the echoes. His initiative was received with such favor by the others that, fired with the desire to emulate his example, they fell to singing and shouting the praise of the woman whose beauty had not its equal in Rome. Theodora viewed the scene of dissipation with serenity and composure, and, by her attitude she seemed, in a strange way, even tacitly to encourage them to drink still deeper. Faster, ever faster, the wine coursed among the guests. Some of them became more and more boisterous, others were rendered somnolent and fell forward in a stupor upon the silken carpets. Theodora, whose restlessness seemed to increase with every moment, and who seemed to hold herself in leash by a strenuous effort of the will, suddenly turned to Basil and whispered a question into his ear. A silent nod came in response and the next moment a clash of cymbals, stormily persistent, roused the revellers from their stupor. Then, like a rainbow garmented Peri, floating easefully out of some far-off sphere of sky-wonders, an aerial maiden shape glided into the full lustre of the varying light, a dancer nude, save for the glistening veil that carelessly enshrouded her limbs, her arms and hands being adorned with circlets of tiny golden bells which kept up a melodious jingle as she moved. And now began the strangest music, music that seemed to hover capriciously between luscious melody and harsh discord, a wild and curious medley of fantastic minor suggestions in which the imaginative soul might discover hints of tears and folly, love and madness. To this uncertain yet voluptuous measure the glittering girl dancer leaped forward with a startling abruptness and, halting as it were on the boundary line between the dome and the garden beyond, raised her rounded arms in a snowy arch above her head. Her pause was a mere breathing spell in duration. Dropping her arms with a swift decision, she hurled herself into the giddy mazes of a dance. Round and round she floated, like an opal-winged butterfly in a net of sunbeams, now seemingly shaken by delicate tremors, as aspen leaves are shaken by the faintest wind, now assuming the most voluptuous eccentricities of posture, sometimes bending down wistfully as though she were listening to the chanting of demon voices underground, and again, with her waving white hands, appearing to summon spirits to earth from their wanderings in the upper air. Her figure was in perfect harmony with the seductive grace of her gestures; not only her feet, but her whole body danced, her very features bespoke abandonment to the frenzy of her rapid movement. Her large black eyes flashed with something of fierceness as well as languor; and her raven hair streamed behind her like a darkly spread wing. Wild outbursts of applause resounded uproariously through the hall. Count Roger had drawn nearer to Theodora. His arms encircled her body. Theodora bent over him. "Not to-night! Not to-night! There are many things to consider. To-morrow I shall give you my answer." He looked up into her eyes. "Do you not love me?" His hot breath fanned her cheeks. Theodora gave a shrug and turned away, sick with disgust. "Love--I hardly know what it means. I do not think I have ever loved." Laval sucked in his breath between his teeth. "Then you shall love me! You shall! Ever since I have come to Rome have I desired you! And the woman lives not who may gainsay my appeal." She smiled tauntingly. He had seized her hand. The fierceness of his grip made her gasp with pain. "And whatever brought you to Rome?" she turned to him. "I came in quest of one who had betrayed my honor." "And you found her?" "Both!" came the laconic reply. "How interesting," purred Theodora, suffering his odious embrace, although she shuddered at his touch. "And, man-like, you were revenged?" "She has met the fate I had decreed upon her who wantonly betrayed the honor of her lord." "Then she confessed?" "She denied her guilt. What matter? I never loved her. It is you I love! You, divine Theodora." And, carried away by a gust of passion, he drew her to him, covering her brow, her hair, her cheeks with kisses. But she turned away her mouth. She tried to release herself from his embrace. Roger uttered an oath. "I have tamed women before--ay--and I shall tame you," he sputtered, utterly disregarding her protests. She drew back as far as his encircling arms permitted. "Release me, my lord!" she said, her dark eyes flashing fire. "You are mad!" "No heroics--fair Theodora-- Has the Wanton Queen of Rome turned into a haloed saint?" He laughed. His mouth was close to her lips. Revulsion and fury seized her. Disengaging her hands she struck him across the face. There was foam on his lips. He caught her by the throat. Now he was forcing her beneath his weight with the strength of one insane with uncontrollable passion. "Help!" she screamed with a choking sensation. A shadow passed before her eyes. Everything seemed to swim around her in eddying circles of red. Then a gurgling sound. The grip on her throat relaxed. Laval rolled over upon the floor in a horrible convulsion, gasped and expired. Basil's dagger had struck him through, piercing his heart. Slowly Theodora arose. She was pale as death. Her guests, too much engaged with their beautiful partners, had been attracted to her plight but by her sudden outcry. They stared sullenly at the dead man and turned to their former pursuits. Theodora clapped her hands. Two giant Nubians appeared. She pointed to the corpse at her feet. They raised it up between them, carried it out and sank it in the Lotus lake. Others wiped away the stains of blood. Basil bent over Theodora's hands, and covered them with kisses, muttering words of endearment which but increased the discord in her heart. She released herself, resuming her seat on the dais. "It is the old fever," she turned to the man beside her. "You purchase and I sell! Nay"--she added as his lips touched her own--"there is no need for a lover's attitude when hucksters meet." Though the guests had returned to their seats, a strange silence had fallen upon the assembly. The rhythmical splashing of the water in the fountain and the labored breathing of the distressed wine-Bibbie's seemed the only sounds that were audible for a time. "But I love you, Theodora," Basil spoke with strangely dilated eyes. "I love you for what you are, for all the evil you have wrought! You, alone! For you have I done this thing! For you Alberic lies dead in some unknown glen. For you have I summoned about us those who shall seat you in the high place that is yours by right of birth." Theodora was herself again. With upraised hand, that shone marble white in the ever-changing light, she enjoined silence. "What of that other?" she said, while her eyes held those of the man with their magic spell. "What other?" he stammered, turning pale. "That one!" she flashed. At that moment the curtain parted again and into the changing light, emitted by the great revolving globe, swayed a woman. At first it seemed a statue of marble that had become animated and, ere consciousness had resumed its sway, was slowly gaining life and motion, still bound up in the dream existence into which some unknown power had plunged her. As one petrified, Basil stared at the swaying form of Hellayne. A white transparent byssus veil enveloped the beautiful limbs. Her wonderful bare arms were raised above her head, which was slightly inclined, as in a listening attitude. She seemed to move unconsciously as under a spell or as one who walks in her sleep. Her eyes were closed. The pale face showed suffering, yet had not lost one whit of its marvellous beauty. The revellers stared spellbound at what, to their superstitious minds, seemed the wraith of slain Roxana returned to earth to haunt her rival. Suddenly, without warning, the dark-robed form of a man dashed from behind a pillar. No one seemed to have noted his presence. Overthrowing every impediment, he bounded straight for Hellayne, when he saw the lithe form snatched up before his very eyes and her abductor disappear with his burden, as if the ground had swallowed them. It seemed to Tristan that he was rushing through an endless succession of corridors and passages, crossing each other at every conceivable angle, in his mad endeavor to snatch his precious prey from her abductor when, in a rotunda in which these labyrinthine passages converged, he found himself face to face with an apparition that seemed to have risen from the floor. Before him stood Theodora. Her dark shadow was wavering across the moonlit network of light. The red and blue robes of the painted figures on the wall glowed about her like blood and azure, while the moonlight laid lemon colored splashes upon the varied mosaics of the floor. His pulses beating furiously, a sense of suffocation in his throat, Tristan paused as the woman barred his way. "Let me pass!" he said imperiously, trying to suit the action to the word. But he had not reckoned with the woman's mood. "You shall not," Theodora said, a strange fire gleaming in her eyes. "Where is Hellayne? What have you done with her?" Theodora regarded him calmly from under drooping lashes. "That I will tell you," she said with a mocking voice. "It was my good fortune to rescue her from the claws of one who has again got her into his power. Her mind is gone, my Lord Tristan! Be reconciled to your fate!" "Surely you cannot mean this?" Tristan gasped, his face under the monk's cowl pale as death, while his eyes stared unbelievingly into those of the woman. "Is not what you have seen, proof that I speak truth?" Theodora interposed, slightly veiled mockery in her tone. "Then this is your deed," Tristan flashed. Theodora gave a shrug. "What if it were?" "She is in Basil's power?" "An experienced suitor." "Woman, why have you done this thing to me?" His hands went to his head and he reeled like a drunken man. Theodora laid her hands on Tristan's shoulders. "Because I want you--because I love you, Tristan," she said slowly, and her wonderful face seemed to become illumined as it were, from within. "Nay--do not shrink from me! I know what you would say! Theodora--the courtesan queen of Rome! You deem I have no heart--no soul. You deem that these lips, defiled by the kisses of beasts, cannot speak truth. Yet, if I tell you, Tristan, that this is the first and only time in my life that I have loved, that I love you with a love such as only those know who have thirsted for it all their lives, yet have never known but its base counterfeit; if I tell you--that upon your answer depends my fate--my life--Tristan--will you believe--will you save the woman whom nothing else on earth can save?" "I do not believe you," Tristan replied. Theodora's face had grown white to the lips. "You shall stay--and you shall listen to me!" she said, without raising her voice, as if she were discoursing upon some trifling matter, and Tristan obeyed, compelled by the look in her eyes. Theodora felt Tristan's melancholy gaze resting upon her, as it had rested upon her at their first meeting. Was not he, too, like herself, a lone wanderer in this strange country called the world! But his manhood had remained unsullied. How she envied and how she hated that other woman to whom his love belonged. Softly she spoke, as one speaks in a dream. She had gone forth in quest of happiness--happiness at any price. And she had paid the forfeit with a poisoned life. The desire to conquer had eclipsed every other. The lure of the senses was too mighty to be withstood. Yet how short are youth and life! One should snatch its pleasures while one may. How fleet had been the golden empty days of joy. She had drained the brimming goblet to the dregs. If he misjudged her motive, her self-abasement, if he spurned the love she held out to him, the one supreme sacrifice of her life had been in vain. She would fight for it. Soul and body she would throw herself into the conflict. Her last chance of happiness was at stake. The poison, rankling in her veins, she knew could not be expelled by idle sophisms. Life, the despot, claimed his dues. Had she lived utterly in vain? Not altogether! She would atone, even though the bonds of her own forging, which bound her to an ulcered past, could be broken but by the hand of that crowned phantom: Death. Now she was kneeling before him. She had grasped his hands. "I love you!" she wailed. "Tristan, I love you and my love is killing me! Be merciful. Have pity on me. Love me! Be mine--if but for an hour! It is not much to ask! After, do with me what you will! Torture me--curse me before Heaven--I care not--I am yours--body and soul.--I love you!" Her voice vibrated with mad idolatrous pleading. He tried to release himself. She dragged herself yet closer to him. "Tristan! Tristan!" she murmured. "Have you a heart? Can you reject me when I pray thus to you? When I offer you all I have? All that I am, or ever hope to be? Am I so repellent to you? Many men would give their lives if I were to say to them what I say to you. They are nothing to me--you alone are my world, the breath of my existence. You, alone, can save me from myself!" Tristan felt his senses swooning at the sight of her beauty. He tried to speak, but the words froze on his lips. It was too impossible, too unbelievable. Theodora, the most beautiful, the most powerful woman in Rome was kneeling before him, imploring that which any man in Rome would have deemed himself a thousand fold blessed to receive. And he remained untouched. She read his innermost thoughts and knew the supreme moment when she must win or lose him forever was at hand. "Tristan--Tristan," she sobbed--and in the distant grove sobbed flutes and sistrum and citherns--"say what you will of me; it is true. I own it. Yet I am not worse than other women who have sold their souls for power or gold. Am I not fair to look upon? And is all this beauty of my face and form worthless in your eyes, and you no more than man? Kill me--destroy me--I care naught. But love me--as I love you!" and in a perfect frenzy of self-abandonment she rose to her feet and stood before him, a very bacchante of wild loveliness and passion. "Look upon me! Am I not more beautiful than the Lady Hellayne? You shall not--dare not--spurn such love as mine!" Deep silence supervened. The expression of her countenance seemed quite unearthly; her eyes seemed wells of fire and the tense white arms seemed to seek a victim round which they might coil themselves to its undoing. The name she had uttered in her supreme outburst of passion had broken the spell she had woven about him. Hellayne--his white dove! What was her fate at this moment while he was listening to the pleadings of the enchantress? Theodora advanced towards him with outstretched arms. He stayed her with a fierce gesture. "Stand back!" he said. "Such love as yours--what is it? Shame to whosoever shall accept it! I desire you not." "You dare not!" she panted, pale as death. "Dare not?" But she was now fairly roused. All the savagery in her nature was awakened and she stood before him like some beautiful wild animal at bay, trembling from head to foot with the violence of her passion. "You scorn me!" she said in fierce, panting accents, that scarcely rose above an angry whisper. "You make a mockery of my anguish and despair--holding yourself aloof with your prated virtue! But you shall suffer for it! I am your match! You shall not spurn me a third time! I have humbled myself in the dust before you, I, Theodora--and you have spurned the love I have offered you--you have spurned Theodora--for that white marble statue whom I should strangle before your very eyes were she here! You shall not see her again, my Lord Tristan. Her fate is sealed from this moment. On the altars of Satan is she to be sacrificed on to-morrow night!" Tristan listened like paralyzed to her words, unable to move. She saw her opportunity. She sprang at him. Her arms coiled about him. Her moist kisses seared his lips. "Oh Tristan--Tristan," she pleaded, "forgive me, forgive! I know not what I say! I hunger for the kisses of your lips, the clasp of your arms! Do you know--do you ever think of your power? The cruel terrible power of your eyes, the beauty that makes you more like an angel than man? Have you no pity? I am well nigh mad with jealousy of that other whom you keep enshrined in your heart! Could she love, like I? She was not made for you--I am! Tristan--come with me--come--" Tighter and tighter her arms encircled his neck. The moonbeams showed him her eyes alight with rapture, her lips quivering with passion, her bosom heaving. The blood surged up in his brain and a red mist swam before his eyes. With a supreme effort Tristan released himself. Flinging her from him, he rushed out of the rotunda as if pursued by an army of demons. If he remained another moment he knew he was lost. A lightning bolt shot down from the dark sky vault close beside him as he reached the gardens, and a peal of thunder crashed after in quick succession. It drowned the delirious outburst of laughter that shrilled from the rotunda where Theodora, with eyes wide with misery and madness, stared as transfixed down the path where Tristan had vanished in the night. CHAPTER XI THE BLACK MASS The night was sultry and dismal. Dense black clouds rolled over the Roman Campagna, burning blue in the flashes of jagged lightnings and the low boom of distant thunder reverberated ominously among the hills and valleys of Rome, when three men, cloaked and wearing black velvet masks, skirted the huge mediæval wall with which Pope Leo IV had girdled the gardens of the Vatican and, passing along the fortified rampart which surrounded the Vatican Hill, plunged into the trackless midnight gloom of deep, branch-shadowed thickets. Not a word was spoken between them. Silently they followed their leader, whose tall, dark form was revealed to them only among the dense network of trees and the fantastic shapes of the underbrush, when a flash of white lightning flamed across the limitless depths of the midnight horizon. Not a sound broke the stillness, save the menacing growl of the thunder, the intermittent soughing of the wind among the branches, or the occasional drip-drip of dewy moisture trickling tearfully from the leaves, mingling with the dreamy, gurgling sound of the fountains, concealed among bosquets of orange and almond trees. From time to time, as they proceeded upon their nocturnal errand, the sounds of their footsteps being swallowed up by the soft carpet of moss, they caught fleet glimpses of marble statues, gleaming white, like ghosts, from among the tall dark cypresses, or the shimmering surface of a marble-cinctured lake, mirrored in the sheen of the lightnings. The grove they traversed assumed by degrees the character of a tropical forest. Untrodden by human feet, it seemed as though nature, grown tired of the iridescent floral beauty of the environing gardens, had, in a sudden malevolent mood, torn and blurred the fair green frondage and twisted every bud awry, till the awkward, misshapen limbs resembled the contorted branches of wind-blown trees. Great jagged leaves covered with prickles and stained with blotches as of spilt poison, thick brown stems, glistening with slimy moisture and coiled up like the sleeping bodies of snakes, masses of blue and purple fungi, and blossoms seemingly of the orchid-species, some like fleshly tongues, others like the waxen yellow fingers of a dead hand, protruded spectrally through the matted foliage, while all manner of strange overpowering odors increased the swooning oppressiveness of the sultry, languorous air. Arrived at a clearing they paused. In the distance the Basilica of Constantine was sunk in deep repose. All about them was the pagan world. Goat-footed Pan seemed to peer through the interstices of the branches. The fountains crooned in their marble basins. Centaurs and Bacchantes disported themselves among the flowering shrubs and, dark against the darker background of the night, the vast ramparts of Leo IV seemed to shut out light and life together. The Prefect of the Camera turned to his companions, after peering cautiously into the thickets. "We must wait for the guards," he said in a whisper. "It were perilous to proceed farther without them." Tristan's hand tightened upon his sword-hilt. There were tears in his eyes when he thought of Hellayne and all that was at stake, the overthrow of the enemies of Christ. He had, in a manner, conquered the terrible fear that had palsied heart and soul as they had started out after nightfall. Now, taking his position as he found it, since he felt that his fate was ruled by some unseen force which he might not resist, he was upheld by a staunch resolution to do his part in the work assigned to him and thereby to merit forgiveness and absolution. Notwithstanding the enforced calm that filled his soul, there were moments when, assailed by a terrible dread, lest he might be too late to prevent the unspeakable crime, his energies were almost paralyzed. Silent as a ghost he had traversed the grove by the side of his equally silent companions, more intent upon his quarry than the patient, velvet-footed puma that follows in the high branches of the trees the unsuspecting traveller below. Was it his imagination, was it the beating of his own heart in the silence that preceded the breaking of the storm; or did he indeed hear the dull throbbing of the drums that heralded the approach of the crimson banners of Satan? The wind increased with every moment. The thunder growled ever nearer. The heavens were one sheet of flame. The trees began to bend their tops to the voice of the hurricane. The air was hot as if blown from the depths of the desert. As the uproar of the elements increased, strange sounds seemed to mingle with the voices of the storm. Black shadows as of dancing witches darkened the clearing, spread and wheeled, interlaced and disentwined. In endless thousands they seemed to fly, like the withered and perishing leaves of autumn. Involuntarily Tristan grasped the arm of the Monk of Cluny. "Are these real shapes--or do my eyes play me false?" he faltered, an expression of terror on his countenance, such as no consideration of earthly danger could have evoked. "To-night, my son, we are invincible," replied the monk. "Trust in the Crucified Christ!" Across the plaisaunce, washed white by the sheen of the lightnings, there was a stir as of an approaching forest. Tristan watched as in the throes of a dream. A few moments later the little band was joined by the newcomers, masked, garbed in sombre black and heavily armed, three-score Spaniards, trusted above their companions for their loyalty and allegiance to Holy Church. Among them Tristan recognized the Cardinal-Archbishop of Ravenna, the Bishop of Orvieto and the Prefect of Rome. Odo of Cluny noted Tristan's shrinking at the sight of the two men who had been present when the terrible accusation had been hurled against him on that fatal morning--the accusation in the Lateran, which had launched him in the dungeons of Castel San Angelo. He comforted the trembling youth. "They know now that the charge was false," he said. "To-night we shall conquer. We shall set our foot upon Satan's neck." Withdrawing under the shelter of the trees, regardless of the increasing fury of the storm, the leaders held whispered consultation. Before them, set in the massive wall, appeared a door not more than five feet high, studded with large nails. The Prefect of Rome bent forward and inserted a gleaming piece of steel in the keyhole. After a wrench or two, which convinced the onlookers that the door had been long in disuse, it swung inward with a groan. The Prefect, with a muttered imprecation, beckoned his followers to enter, and when they were assembled in what appeared to be a courtyard, he took pains to close the door himself, to avoid the least noise that might reach the ear of those within the enclosure. At the far end of this courtyard a shadowy pavilion arose, culled from the Stygian gloom by the sheen of the lightnings. It seemed to have been erected in remote antiquity. A circular structure of considerable extent, its ruinous exterior revealed traces of Etruscan architecture. No one dared set foot in it, for it was rumored to be the abode of evil spirits. Its interior was reported to be a network of intricate galleries, leading into subterranean chambers, secret and secluded places into which human foot never strayed, for, not unlike the catacombs, it was well-nigh impossible to find the exit from its labyrinthine passages without the saving thread of Ariadné. At a signal from the Prefect of the Camera all stopped. Heavy drops of rain were falling. The hurricane increased in fury. It was a weird scene and one the memory of which lingered long after that eventful night with Tristan. Black cypresses and holm-oaks formed a dense wall around the pavilion on two sides. In the distance the white limbs of some pagan statues could be seen gleaming through the dark foliage. And, as from a subterranean cavern, a distant droning chant struck the ear now and then with fateful import. Now the Prefect of Rome threw off his cloak. The others did likewise. Their masks they retained. "There is a secret entrance, unknown even to these spawns of hell, behind the pavilion," he addressed his companions in a subdued tone, hardly audible in the shrieking of the storm. "It is concealed among tall weeds and has long been in disuse. The door is almost invisible and they think themselves safe in the performance of their iniquities below." "How can we reach this pit of hell?" Tristan, quivering with ill-repressed excitement interposed at this juncture. He could hardly restrain himself. On every moment hung the life of the being dearer to him than all the world, and he chafed under the restraint like a restive steed. If they should be too late, even now! But the Prefect retained his calm demeanor knowing what was at stake. It was not enough to locate the chapel of Satan. Those participating in the unholy rites must not be given the chance to escape. They must be taken, dead or alive, to the last man. "We have with us one who is familiar with every nook in the city of Rome," the Prefect turned to the Cardinal-Archbishop of Ravenna. "Long have we suspected that all is not well in the deserted pavilion. But though we watched by day and by night nothing seemed to reward our efforts, until one stormy night a dreadful shape with the face of a devil came forth, and the sight so paralyzed those who watched from afar that they fled in dismay, believing it was the Evil One in person who had come forth from the bowels of the earth. From yonder door a dark corridor leads to a shaft whence it winds in a slight incline into the devil's chapel below. The latter is so situated that we can watch these outcasts at their devotions, unseen, our presence unguessed. This way! Let silence be the password. Keep in touch with each other, for the darkness is as that of the grave." A flash of lightning that seemed to rend the very heavens enveloped them for a moment in its sulphureous glare, followed by a crash of thunder that shook the very earth. The hurricane shrieked, and the rain came down in torrents. They had advanced to the very edge of the underbrush, stumbling over the heads and torsos of broken statues that lay among parasitic herbage. Monstrous decaying leaves curled upward, leprous in the lightnings. A poison mist seemed to hover over this lonely and deserted pleasure-house of ancient Pelasgian days. Skirting the haunted pavilion, unmindful of the onslaught of the elements, they took a path so narrow that they could but advance in single file. This path had been cut and beaten by the Prefect's guards, for the weeds and underbrush luxuriated, until they mounted some ten feet against the walls of the pavilion. They had now reached the back wall and proceeded in utter darkness broken only by the flashes of lightning. They passed through a half-ruined archway and at last came to a halt, prompted by those in front, whose progress had been stopped by, what the others guessed to be, the door. They had to work warily, to keep it from falling inward. At last the movement continued and they entered the night-wrapt corridor. Tristan had taken his station directly behind the Prefect of Rome. The ecclesiastics, for their own protection, had been assigned the rear. By the sheen of lightnings a pile of brushwood was revealed to the sight, which the Prefect, in a low tone, ordered to be cleared away, whereupon a circular opening appeared, like the entrance of a well. The Prefect summoned the leaders around him. For a moment they stood in silence and listened. Between the peals of the thunder which rolled in terrifying echoes over the Seven Hills, the trained ear could distinguish a strange, droning sound that seemed to come from the bowels of the earth. "Even now the Black Mass is commencing," he turned to Tristan. "We are but just in time." After a pause he continued: "We must proceed in darkness. The faintest glimmer might betray our presence. I shall lead the way. Let each follow warily. Let each be in touch with the other. Let all stop when I stop. We shall arrive in a circular gallery, whence we may all witness the abomination below. From this gallery several flights of winding stairs lead into the devil's chapel. Let us descend in silence. When you hear the signal--down the quick descent and--upon them!" One by one they disappeared in the dark aperture. Their feet touched ground while they still supported themselves on their arms. They found themselves in a subterranean chamber, in impenetrable darkness, whose hot, damp murk almost suffocated the intruders. Slowly, with infinite caution, in infinite silence, they proceeded. Every man stretched his hand before him to touch a companion. The passage began to slant, yet the incline was gradual. Their feet touched soft earth which swallowed the sound of their steps. There was neither echo nor vibration, only murky silence and the night of the grave. A low, droning sound, infinitely remote, a sound not unlike that of swarming bees heard at a great distance, was now wafted to their ears. A shudder ran through that long chain of living men, who were carrying the Cross into the very abyss of Hell. For they knew they were listening to the infernal choir, they were approaching the hidden chapel of Satan. The chant began to swell. Still they continued upon their descent. The imprisoned air became hotter and murkier, almost suffocating in its miasmatic waves that assailed the senses and seemed to weigh like lead upon the brain. Now the tunnel turned sharply at right angles and after proceeding some twenty or thirty paces in Stygian darkness, a faint crimson glow began suddenly to drive the nocturnal gloom before it, and they emerged in a gallery, terminating in a number of dark archways, from which narrow winding stairs led into the hall below. Small round apertures, resembling port-holes, permitted a glimpse into the chapel of Satan, and a weird, droning chant was rising rhythmically from the night-wrapt depths of the pavilion. Following the example of the leader, they stole on tiptoe to the unglazed port-holes and gazed below, and eager, yet trembling, with the anticipation of the dread mysteries they were about to witness. At first they could not see anything distinctly, owing to the crimson mist that seemed to come rolling into the chapel as from some furnace and their eyes, after having been long in the darkness, refused to focus themselves. But, by degrees, the scene became more distinct. In the circular chapel below dim figures, robed in crimson, moved to and fro, bearing aloft perfumed cressets on metal poles, and in its flickering light an altar became visible, hung with crimson, the summit of which was lost in the gloom overhead. Here and there indistinct shapes were stretched in hideous contortions on the pavement, and as others drew nigh, these rose and, throwing back their heads, made the vault re-echo with deep-chested roaring. Suddenly the metal bound gates of a low arched doorway, faintly discernible in the uncertain light, seemed to be unclosing with a slow and majestic movement, letting loose a flood of light in which the ghostly faces of the worshippers leapt into sudden clearness, men and women, all seemingly belonging to the highest ranks of society. The crimson garbs of the officiating priests showed like huge stains of blood against the dark-veined marble. Tristan gazed with the rest, stark with terror. The blood seemed to freeze in his veins as his eyes swept the circular vault and rested at the shrine's farther end, where branching candlesticks flanked each the foot of two short flights of stairs that led up to the summit of the great altar, garnished at the corner with hideous masks, and sending up from time to time eddies of smoke, through the reek of which some two score of men watched the ceremony from above. Dim shapes passed to and fro. The droning chant continued. At length a shapeless form evolved itself from the crimson mist, approached the altar and cast something upon it. Instantly a blaze of light flooded the shrine, and in its radiance a weazened, bat-like creature was revealed, garbed in the fantastic imitation of a priest's robes. Approaching the infernal altar, upon which lay obscene symbols of horror, he mounted the steps and his figure melted into the gloom. With the cold sweat streaming from his brow, with a shudder that almost turned him dizzy, Tristan recognized Bessarion. The High Priest of Satan sat upon the Devil's altar. There was stir and movement in the chapel. Then a deep silence supervened. Petrifaction fell upon the assembly. All voices were hushed, all movement arrested. From the black throne, surrounded by terror, where sat the great Unknown, came a dull hoarse roar, like the roar of an earthquake. The words were unintelligible to the champions of the Cross. They were answered by the Sorcerer's Confession, the hideous, terrible contortion of the Credo, and then Tristan's ears were assailed by the sounds he had heard on that fatal night, ere he lost consciousness, and again in the Catacombs of St. Calixtus, sounds meaningless in themselves, but fraught with terrible import to him now! "Emen Hetan! Emen Hetan! Palu! Baalberi! Emen Hetan!"-- Pandemonium broke loose. "Agora! Agora! Patrisa! Agora!" There was screeching of pipes, made of dead men's bones. A drum stretched with the skin of the hanged was beaten with the tail of a wolf. Like leaves in a howling storm the fantastic red robed forms whirled about, from left to right, from right to left. And in their midst, immobile and terrible, sat the Hircus Nocturnus, enthroned upon the shrine. When at last they stopped, panting, exhausted, the same voice, deafening as an earthquake, roared: "Bring hither the bride--the stainless dove!" A chorus of hideous laughter, a swelling, bleating cacophony of execration, so furious and real that it froze the listeners' blood, answered the summons. Then, from an arch in the apse of the infernal chapel, came four chanting figures, hideously masked and draped in crimson. With slow, measured steps they approached. The arch was black again. Deep silence supervened. Now into the centre came two figures. One was that of a man robed in doublet and hose of flaming scarlet. The figure he supported was that of a woman, though she seemed a corpse returned to earth. A long white robe covered her from head to toe, like the winding sheet of death. Her eyes were bound with a white cloth. She seemed unable to walk, and was being urged forward, step by step, by the scarlet man at her side. Again pandemonium reigned, heightened by the crashing peals of the thunder that rolled in the heavens overhead. "Emen Hetan! Emen Hetan! Palu! Baalberi! Emen Hetan!" The bleating of goats, the shrieks of the tortured damned, the howling of devils in the nethermost pit of Hell, delirious laughter, gibes and execrations mingled in a deafening chorus, which was followed by a dead silence, as anew the voice of the Unseen roared through the vault: "Bring hither the bride, the stainless dove!" There was a tramp of mailed feet. Like a human whirlwind it came roaring down the winding stairs, through the vomitories into the vault. The rattling of weapons, shouts of rage, horror and dismay mingled, resounding from the vaulted roof, beaten back from the marble walls. With drawn sword Tristan, well in advance of his companions, leaped into the chapel of Satan. When the identity of the staggering white form beside the scarlet man had been revealed to him, no power in heaven or earth could have restrained him. Without awaiting the signal he bounded with a choking outcry down the shaft. But, when he reached the floor of the chapel, he recoiled as if the Evil One had arisen from the floor before him, barring his advance. Before him stood Theodora. She wore a scarlet robe, fastened at the throat with a clasp of rubies, representing the heads of serpents. Her wonderful white arms were bare, her hands were clenched as if she were about to fly at the throat of a hated rival and a preternatural lustre shone in her eyes. "You!" Tristan's words died in the utterance as he surveyed her for the space of a moment with a glance so full of horror and disdain that she knew she had lost. "Yes--it is I," she replied, hardly above a whisper, hot flush and deadly pallor alternating in her beautiful face, terrible in its set calm. "And--though I may not possess you--that other shall not! See!" Maddened beyond all human endurance at the sight that met his eyes Tristan hurled Theodora aside as she attempted to bar his way, as if she had been a toy. Rushing straight through the press towards the spot, where the scarlet man, his arms still about the drooping form of Hellayne, had stopped in dismay at the sudden inrush of the guards, Tristan pierced the Grand Chamberlain through and through. Almost dragging the woman with him he fell beside the devil's altar. His head struck the flagstones and he lay still. The Prefect himself dashed up the steps of the ebony shrine and hurled the High Priest of Satan on the flagstones below. Bessarion's neck was broken and, with the squeak of a bat, his black soul went out. While the guards, giving no quarter, were mowing down all those of the devil's congregation who did not seek salvation in flight or concealment, Tristan caught the swooning form of Hellayne in his arms, calling her name in despairing accents, as he stroked the silken hair back from the white clammy brow. She was breathing, but her eyes were closed. Then he summoned two men-at-arms to his side, and between them they carried her to the world of light above. CHAPTER XII SUNRISE The thunder clouds had rolled away to eastward. A rosy glow was creeping over the sky. The air was fresh with the coming of dawn. Softly they laid Hellayne by the side of a marble fountain and splashed the cooling drops upon her pale face. After a time she opened her eyes. The first object they encountered was Tristan who was bending over her, fear and anxiety in his face. Her colorless lips parted in a whisper, as her arms encircled his neck. "You are with me!" she said, and the transparent lids drooped again. Those who had not been slain of the congregation of Hell had been bound in chains. Among the dead was Theodora. The contents of a phial she carried on her person had done its work instantaneously. Suddenly alarums resounded from the region of Castel San Angelo. There was a great stir and buzz, as of an awakened bee hive. There were shouts at the Flaminian gate, the martial tread of mailed feet and, as the sun's first ray kissed the golden Archangel on the summit of the Flavian Emperor's mausoleum, a horseman, followed by a glittering retinue, dashed up the path, dismounted and raised his visor. Before the astounded assembly stood Alberic, the Senator of Rome. Just then they brought the body of Theodora from the subterranean chapel and laid it silently on the greensward, beside that of Basil, the Grand Chamberlain. The Cardinal-Archbishop of Ravenna was the first to speak. "My lord, we hardly trust our eyes. All Rome is mourning you for dead." Alberic turned to the speaker. "With the aid of the saint I have prevailed against the foulest treason ever committed by a subject against his trusting lord. The bribed hosts of Hassan Abdullah, which were to sack Rome, are scattered in flight. The attempt upon my own life has been prevented by a miracle from Heaven. But--what of these dead?" Odo of Cluny approached the Senator of Rome. "The awful horror which has gripped the city is passed. Christ rules once more and Satan is vanquished. This is a matter for your private ear, my lord." Odo pointed to the kneeling form of Tristan, who was supporting Hellayne in his arms, trying to soothe her troubled spirit, to dispel the memory of the black horrors which held her trembling soul in thrall. Approaching Tristan, Alberic laid his hand upon his head. "We knew where to trust, and we shall know how to reward! My lords and prelates of the Church! Matters of grave import await you. We meet again in the Emperor's Tomb." Beckoning to his retinue, Alberic remounted his steed, as company upon company of men-at-arms filed past--a host, such as the city of Rome had not beheld in decades, with drums and trumpets, pennants and banderols, long lines of glittering spears, gorgeous surcoats, and splendid suits of mail. The forces of the Holy Roman Empire were passing into the Eternal City. At their head the Senator of Rome was returning into his own. At last they were alone, Tristan and Hellayne. His companions had departed. With them they had taken their dead. Hellayne opened her eyes. They were sombre, yet at peace. "Tristan!" He bent over her. "My own Hellayne!" "It is beautiful to be loved," she whispered. "I have never been loved before." "You shall be," he replied, "now and forever, before God and the world!" The old shadow came again into her eyes. "What of the Lord Roger?" She read the answer in his silence. A tear trickled from the violet pools of her eyes. Then she raised herself in his arms. "I thought I should go mad," she crooned. "But I knew you would come. And you are here--here--with me,--Tristan." He took her hands in his, his soul in his eyes. The sun had risen higher through the gold bars of the east, dispelling the grey chill of dawn. She nestled closer to him. "Take me back to Avalon, to my rose garden," she crooned. "Life is before us--yonder--where first we loved." He took her in his arms and kissed her eyes and the small sweet mouth. A lark began to sing in the silence. THE END WHAT ALLAH WILLS _By Irwin L. Gordon_ _Author of "The Log of The Ark"_ _Illustrated, net, $1.35; carriage paid, $1.50_ Take Morocco for a background--that quaint and mysterious land of mosques and minarets, where the _muezzin_ still calls to prayer at sundown the faithful. Imagine a story written with power and intensity and the thrill of adventure in the midst of fanatical Moslems. Add to this a wealthy young medical student, a red-blooded American, who gives up his life to helping the lepers of Arzilla, and the presence of a beautiful American girl who, despite her love for the hero, is induced to take up the Mohammedan faith, and you have some idea of what this remarkable story presents. WHAT ALLAH WILLS is a big story of love and adventure. Mr. Gordon is the author of two notable non-fiction successes, but he scores heavily in this, his first work of fiction. UNDER THE WITCHES' MOON _By Nathan Gallizier_ _Author of "The Sorceress of Rome," "The Court of Lucifer," "The Hill of Venus," etc._ _Illustrated by The Kinneys, cloth 12mo, net, $1.50; carriage paid, $1.65_ This romantic tale of tenth-century Rome concerns itself with the fortunes and adventures of Tristan of Avalon while in the Eternal City on a pilgrimage to do penance for his love of Hellayne, the wife of his liege lord, Count Roger de Laval. Tristan's meeting with the Queen Courtesan of the Aventine; her infatuation for the pilgrim; Tristan's rounds of obediences, cut short by his appointment as Captain of Sant' Angelo by Alberic, Senator of Rome; the intrigues of Basil, the Grand Chamberlain, who aspires to the dominion of Rome and the love of Theodora; the trials of Hellayne, who alternately falls into the power of Basil and Theodora; the scene between the Grand Chamberlain and Bessarion in the ruins of the Coliseum; the great feud between Roxana and Theodora and the final overthrow of the latter's regime constitute some of the dramatic episodes of the romance. "This new book adds greater weight to the claim that Mr. Gallizier is the greatest writer of historical novels in America today."--_Cincinnati Times-Star._ "In many respects we consider Mr. Gallizier the most versatile and interesting writer of the day."--_Saxby's Magazine._ _A third CHEERFUL BOOK_ Trade--------Mark SYLVIA ARDEN DECIDES By Margaret R. Piper _A Sequel to "Sylvia's Experiment: The Cheerful Book"_ Trade--------Mark _and "Sylvia of the Hill Top"_ _Illustrated, decorative jacket, net, $1.35; carriage paid, $1.50_ In the original CHEERFUL BOOK, with its rippling play of incident, Sylvia proved herself a bringer of tidings of great joy to many people. In the second book devoted to her adventures, she was a charming heroine--urbane, resourceful and vivacious--with an added shade of picturesqueness due to her environment. In this third story Sylvia is a little older grown, deep in the problem of just-out-of-college adjustment to the conditions of the "wide, wide world," and in the process of learning, as she puts it, "to live as deep and quick as I can." The scene of the new story is laid partly at Arden Hall and partly in New York and, in her sincere effort to find herself, Sylvia finds love in real fairy tale fashion. "There is a world of human nature, and neighborhood contentment and quaint, quiet humor in Margaret R. Piper's books of good cheer. Her tales are well proportioned and subtly strong in their literary aspects and quality."--_North American, Philadelphia._ A PLACE IN THE SUN _By Mrs. Henry Backus_ _Author of "The Career of Dr. Weaver," "The Rose of Roses," etc._ _12mo, cloth, illustrated by Wm. Van Dresser, net, $1.35; carriage paid, $1.50_ Gunda Karoli is a very much alive young person with a zest for life and looking-forward philosophy which helps her through every trial. She is sustained in her struggles against the disadvantage of her birth by a burning faith in the great American ideal--that here in the United States every one has a chance to win for himself a place in the sun. Gunda takes for her gospel the Declaration of Independence, only to find that, although this democratic doctrine is embodied in the constitution of the country, it does not manifest itself outwardly in its social life. Nevertheless, she succeeds in mounting step by step in the social scale, from the time she first appears at Skyland on the Knobs as a near-governess, to her brief season in the metropolis as a danseuse. How she wins the interest of Justin Arnold, the fastidious descendant of a fine old family, and brings into his self-centered existence a new life and fresh charm, provides a double interest to the plot. VIRGINIA OF ELK CREEK VALLEY _By Mary Ellen Chase_ _12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated by R. Farrington Elwell, net, $1.35; carriage paid, $1.50_ A sequel to last year's success, THE GIRL FROM THE BIG HORN COUNTRY (sixth printing). This new story is more western in flavor than the first book--since practically all of the action occurs back in the Big Horn country, at Virginia's home, to which she invites her eastern friends for a summer vacation. The vacation in the West proves "the best ever" for the Easterners, and in recounting their pleasures they tell of the hundreds of miles of horseback riding, how they climbed mountains, trapped a bear, shot gophers, fished, camped, homesteaded, and of the delightful hospitality of Virginia and her friends. "The story is full of life and movement and presents a variety of interesting characters."--_St. Paul Despatch._ "This is most gladsome reading to all who love healthfulness of mind, heart and body."--_Boston Ideas._ Selections from The Page Company's List of Fiction WORKS OF ELEANOR H. PORTER POLLYANNA: The GLAD Book (360,000) Trade Mark Trade----Mark Cloth decorative, illustrated by Stockton Mulford. _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50 Mr. Leigh Mitchell Hodges, The Optimist, in an editorial for the _Philadelphia North American_, says: "And when, after Pollyanna has gone away, you get her letter saying she is going to take 'eight steps' to-morrow--well, I don't know just what you may do, but I know of one person who buried his face in his hands and shook with the gladdest sort of sadness and got down on his knees and thanked the Giver of all gladness for Pollyanna." POLLYANNA GROWS UP: The Second GLAD Book Trade Mark (180,000) Trade----Mark Cloth decorative, illustrated by H. Weston Taylor. _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50 When the story of POLLYANNA told in The _Glad_ Book was ended a great cry of regret for the vanishing "Glad Girl" went up all over the country--and other countries, too. Now POLLYANNA appears again, just as sweet and joyous-hearted, more grown up and more lovable. "Take away frowns! Put down the worries! Stop fidgeting and disagreeing and grumbling! Cheer up, everybody! POLLYANNA has come back!"--_Christian Herald._ _The GLAD Book Calendar_ Trade----Mark THE POLLYANNA CALENDAR Trade Mark (_This calendar is issued annually; the calendar for the new year being ready about Sept. 1st of the preceding year. Note: in ordering please specify what year you desire._) Decorated and printed in colors. _Net_, $1.50; _carriage paid_, $1.65 "There is a message of cheer on every page, and the calendar is beautifully illustrated."--_Kansas City Star._ MISS BILLY (18th printing) Cloth decorative, with a frontispiece in full color from a painting by G. 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She disseminates joy so naturally that we wonder why all girls are not like her."--_Boston Transcript._ SIX STAR RANCH (19th Printing) Cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated by R. Farrington Elwell. _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50 "'Six Star Ranch' bears all the charm of the author's genius and is about a little girl down in Texas who practices the 'Pollyanna Philosophy' with irresistible success. The book is one of the kindliest things, if not the best, that the author of the Pollyanna books has done. It is a welcome addition to the fast-growing family of _Glad_ Books."--_Howard Russell Bangs in the Boston Post._ CROSS CURRENTS Cloth decorative, illustrated. _Net_, $1.00; _carriage paid_, $1.15 "To one who enjoys a story of life as it is to-day, with its sorrows as well as its triumphs, this volume is sure to appeal."--_Book News Monthly._ THE TURN OF THE TIDE Cloth decorative, illustrated. _Net_, $1.25; _carriage paid_, $1.40 "A very beautiful book showing the influence that went to the developing of the life of a dear little girl into a true and good woman."--_Herald and Presbyter, Cincinnati, Ohio._ WORKS OF L. M. MONTGOMERY THE FOUR ANNE BOOKS ANNE OF GREEN GABLES (40th printing) Cloth decorative, illustrated by M. A. and W. A. J. Claus. _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50 "In 'Anne of Green Gables' you will find the dearest and most moving and delightful child since the immortal Alice."--_Mark Twain in a letter to Francis Wilson._ ANNE OF AVONLEA (24th printing) Cloth decorative, illustrated by George Gibbs. _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50 "A book to lift the spirit and send the pessimist into bankruptcy!"--_Meredith Nicholson._ CHRONICLES OF AVONLEA (6th printing) Cloth decorative, illustrated by George Gibbs. _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50 "A story of decidedly unusual conception and interest."--_Baltimore Sun._ ANNE OF THE ISLAND (10th printing) Cloth decorative, with a frontispiece in full color from a painting by H. 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HENRY BACKUS THE CAREER OF DOCTOR WEAVER Cloth decorative, illustrated by William Van Dresser. _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50 "High craftsmanship is the leading characteristic of this novel, which, like all good novels, is a love story abounding in real palpitant human interest. The most startling feature of the story is the way its author has torn aside the curtain and revealed certain phases of the relation between the medical profession and society."--_Dr. Charles Reed in the Lancet Clinic._ THE ROSE OF ROSES Cloth decorative, with a frontispiece in full color. _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50 The author has achieved a thing unusual in developing a love story which adheres to conventions under unconventional circumstances. "Mrs. Backus' novel is distinguished in the first place for its workmanship."--_Buffalo Evening News._ NOVELS BY MARGARET R. PIPER SYLVIA'S EXPERIMENT: The Cheerful Book Trade------Mark Cloth decorative, with a frontispiece in full color from a painting by Z. P. Nikolaki. _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50 "An atmosphere of good spirits pervades the book; the humor that now and then flashes across the page is entirely natural, and the characters are well individualized."--_Boston Post._ SYLVIA OF THE HILL TOP: The Second Cheerful Book Trade----Mark Cloth decorative, with a frontispiece in full color, from a painting by Gene Pressler. _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50 "There is a world of human nature and neighborhood contentment and quaint quiet humor in Margaret R. Piper's second book of good cheer."--_Philadelphia North American._ MISS MADELYN MACK, DETECTIVE By HUGH C. WEIR. Cloth decorative, illustrated. _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50 "Clever in plot and effective in style, the author has seized on some of the most sensational features of modern life, and the result is a detective novel that gets away from the beaten track of mystery stories."--_New York Sun._ WORKS OF CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS HAUNTERS OF THE SILENCES Cloth decorative, with many drawings by Charles Livingston Bull, four of which are in full color . . . . $2.00 The stories in Mr. Roberts's new collection are the strongest and best he has ever written. He has largely taken for his subjects those animals rarely met with in books, whose lives are spent "In the Silences," where they are the supreme rulers. "As a writer about animals, Mr. Roberts occupies an enviable place. He is the most literary, as well as the most imaginative and vivid of all the nature writers."--_Brooklyn Eagle._ RED FOX THE STORY OF HIS ADVENTUROUS CAREER IN THE RINGWAAK WILDS, AND OF HIS FINAL TRIUMPH OVER THE ENEMIES OF HIS KIND. With fifty illustrations, including frontispiece in color and cover design by Charles Livingston Bull. Square quarto, cloth decorative . . . . . $2.00 "True in substance but fascinating as fiction. It will interest old and young, city-bound and free-footed, those who know animals and those who do not."--_Chicago Record Herald._ THE KINDRED OF THE WILD A BOOK OF ANIMAL LIFE. With fifty-one full-page plates and many decorations from drawings by Charles Livingston Bull. Square quarto, cloth decorative . . . . . $2.00 "Is in many ways the most brilliant collection of animal stories that has appeared; well named and well done."--_John Burroughs._ THE WATCHERS OF THE TRAILS A companion volume to "The Kindred of the Wild." With forty-eight full-page plates and many decorations from drawings by Charles Livingston Bull. Square quarto, cloth decorative $2.00 "These stories are exquisite in their refinement, and yet robust in their appreciation of some of the rougher phases of woodcraft. Among the many writers about animals, Mr. Roberts occupies an enviable place."--_The Outlook._ WORKS OF GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO Signor d'Annunzio is known throughout the world as a poet and a dramatist, but above all as a novelist, for it is in his novels that he is at his best. In poetic thought and graceful expression he has few equals among the writers of the day. He is engaged on a most ambitious work--nothing less than the writing of nine novels which cover the whole field of human sentiment. This work he has divided into three trilogies, and five of the nine books have been published. It is to be regretted that other labors have interrupted the completion of the series. "This book is realistic. Some say that it is brutally so. But the realism is that of Flaubert, and not of Zola. There is no plain speaking for the sake of plain speaking. Every detail is justified in the fact that it illuminates either the motives or the actions of the man and woman who here stand revealed. It is deadly true. The author holds the mirror up to nature, and the reader, as he sees his own experiences duplicated in passage after passage, has something of the same sensation as all of us know on the first reading of George Meredith's 'Egoist.' Reading these pages is like being out in the country on a dark night in a storm. Suddenly a flash of lightning comes and every detail of your surroundings is revealed."--_Review of "The Triumph of Death" in the New York Evening Sun._ The volumes published are as follows. Each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth . . . . . . . . $1.50 _THE ROMANCES OF THE ROSE_ =THE CHILD OF PLEASURE= (IL PIACERE). =THE INTRUDER= (L'INNOCENTE). =THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH= (IL TRIONFO DELLA MORTE). _THE ROMANCES OF THE LILY_ =THE MAIDENS OF THE ROCKS= (LE VERGINI DELLE ROCCE). _THE ROMANCES OF THE POMEGRANATE_ =THE FLAME OF LIFE= (IL FUOCO). * * * * * Transcriber's Note: Some words appear in both hyphenated and non-hyphenated forms in the original; these variations have been edited for the sake of consistency. Minor punctuation errors have been corrected. 
23430	----	ROLLO IN ROME, BY JACOB ABBOTT. BOSTON: BROWN, TAGGARD & CHASE, (SUCCESSORS TO W. J. REYNOLDS & CO.) 25 & 29 CORNHILL. 1858. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by JACOB ABBOTT, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. ELECTROTYPED AT THE BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY. [Illustration: THE VATICAN BY TORCHLIGHT. See page 204.] [Illustration: ROLLO'S TOUR IN EUROPE. Publishers. Boston.] CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I.--THE DILIGENCE OFFICE, 13 II.--THE JOURNEY, 34 III.--THE ARRIVAL AT ROME, 56 IV.--A RAMBLE, 68 V.--GETTING LOST, 88 VI.--THE COLISEUM, 105 VII.--THE GLADIATOR, 127 VIII.--THE TARPEIAN ROCK, 147 IX.--GOING TO OSTIA, 167 X.--THE VATICAN, 192 XI.--CONCLUSION, 208 ENGRAVINGS. THE VATICAN BY TORCHLIGHT, (Frontispiece.) THE MOSAIC SHOP, 12 PREPARING FOR THE JOURNEY, 21 THE PONTINE MARSHES, 49 DOING PENANCE, 59 RIDING AMONG THE RUINS, 91 LOOKING DOWN FROM THE COLISEUM, 109 VIEW OF THE LOWER CORRIDORS, 123 ASCENT TO THE CAPITOL, 139 STATUE OF THE GLADIATOR, 143 INTERIOR OF THE PANTHEON, 163 THE COLISEUM BY TORCHLIGHT, 209 ROLLO'S TOUR IN EUROPE. ORDER OF THE VOLUMES. ROLLO ON THE ATLANTIC. ROLLO IN PARIS. ROLLO IN SWITZERLAND. ROLLO IN LONDON. ROLLO ON THE RHINE. ROLLO IN SCOTLAND. ROLLO IN GENEVA. ROLLO IN HOLLAND. ROLLO IN NAPLES. ROLLO IN ROME. [Illustration: THE MOSAIC SHOP. See page 73.] ROLLO IN ROME. CHAPTER I. THE DILIGENCE OFFICE. Rollo went to Rome in company with his uncle George, from Naples. They went by the diligence, which is a species of stage coach. There are different kinds of public coaches that ply on the great thoroughfares in Italy, to take passengers for hire; but the most common kind is the diligence. The diligences in France are very large, and are divided into different compartments, with a different price for each. There are usually three compartments below and one above. In the Italian diligences, however, or at least in the one in which Mr. George and Rollo travelled to Rome, there were only three. First there was the _interior_, or the body of the coach proper. Directly before this was a compartment, with a glass front, containing one seat only, which looked forward; there were, of course, places for three persons on this seat. This front compartment is called the _coupé_.[1] It is considered the best in the diligence. [Footnote 1: Pronounced _coupay_.] There is also a seat up above the _coupé_, in a sort of second story, as it were; and this was the seat which Mr. George and Rollo usually preferred, because it was up high, where they could see better. But for the present journey Mr. George thought the high seat, which is called the _banquette_, would not be quite safe; for though it was covered above with a sort of chaise top, still it was open in front, and thus more exposed to the night air. In ordinary cases he would not have been at all afraid of the night air, but the country between Naples and Rome, and indeed the country all about Rome, in every direction, is very unhealthy. So unhealthy is it, in fact, that in certain seasons of the year it is almost uninhabitable; and it is in all seasons considered unsafe for strangers to pass through in the night, unless they are well protected. There is, in particular, one tract, called the _Pontine Marshes_, where the road, with a sluggish canal by the side of it, runs in a straight line and on a dead level for about twenty miles. It so happened that in going to Rome by the diligence, it would be necessary to cross these marshes in the night, and this was an additional reason why Mr. George thought it better that he and Rollo should take seats inside. The whole business of travelling by diligence in Europe is managed in a very different way from stage coach travelling in America. You must engage your place several days beforehand; and when you engage it you have a printed receipt given you, specifying the particular seats which you have taken, and also containing, on the back of it, all the rules and regulations of the service. The different seats in the several compartments of the coach are numbered, and the prices of them are different. Rollo went so early to engage the passage for himself and Mr. George that he had his choice of all the seats. He took Nos. 1 and 2 of the _coupé_. He paid the money and took the receipt. When he got home, he sat down by the window, while Mr. George was finishing his breakfast, and amused himself by studying out the rules and regulations printed on the back of his ticket. Of course they were in Italian; but Rollo found that he could understand them very well. "If we are not there at the time when the diligence starts, we lose our money, uncle George," said he. "It says here that they won't pay it back again." "That is reasonable," said Mr. George. "It will be our fault if we are not there." "Or our misfortune," said Rollo; "something might happen to us." "True," said Mr. George; "but the happening, whatever it might be, would be _our_ misfortune, and not theirs, and so we ought to bear the loss of it." "If the baggage weighs more than thirty _rotolos_, we must pay extra for it," continued Rollo. "How much is a _rotolo_, uncle George?" "I don't know," said Mr. George, "but we have so little baggage that I am sure we cannot exceed the allowance." "The baggage must be at the office two hours before the time for the diligence to set out," continued Rollo, passing to the next regulation on his paper. "What is that for?" asked Mr. George. "So that they may have time to load it on the carriage, they say," said Rollo. "Very well," said Mr. George, "you can take it to the office the night before." "They don't take the risk of the baggage," said Rollo, "or at least they don't guarantee it, they say, against unavoidable accidents or superior force. What does that mean?" "Why, in case the diligence is struck by lightning, and our trunk is burned up," replied Mr. George, "or in case it is attacked by robbers, and carried away, they don't undertake to pay the damage." "And in case of _smarrimento_," continued Rollo, "they say they won't pay damages to the amount of more than nine dollars, and so forth; what is a _smarrimento_, uncle George?" "I don't know," said Mr. George. "It may mean a smash-up," said Rollo. "Very likely," said Mr. George. "Every traveller," continued Rollo, looking again at his paper, "is responsible, personally, for all violations of the custom-house regulations, or those of the police." "That's all right," said Mr. George. "And the last regulation is," said Rollo, "that the travellers cannot smoke in the diligence, nor take any dogs in." "Very well," said Mr. George, "we have no dogs, and we don't wish to smoke, either in the diligence or any where else." "They are very good regulations," said Rollo; and so saying, he folded up the paper, and put it back into his wallet. On the evening before the day appointed for the journey, Rollo took the valise which contained the principal portion of his own and his uncle's clothes, and went with it in a carriage to the office. Mr. George offered to accompany him, but Rollo said it was not necessary, and so he took with him a boy named Cyrus, whom he had become acquainted with at the hotel. The carriage, when it arrived at the diligence station, drove in under an archway, and entered a spacious court surrounded by lofty buildings. There was a piazza, with columns, all around the court. Along this piazza, on the four sides of the building, were the various offices of the different lines of diligences, with the diligences themselves standing before the doors. "Now, Cyrus," said Rollo, "we have got to find out which is our office." But Rollo was saved any trouble on this score, for the coachman drove the carriage directly to the door of the office for Rome. Rollo had told him that that was his destination, before leaving the hotel. There was a man in a sort of uniform at the door of the office. Rollo pointed to his valise, and said, in Italian, "For Rome to-morrow morning." The man said, "Very well," and taking the valise out of the carriage, he put it in the office. Then Rollo and Cyrus got into the carriage again, and rode away. The next morning Mr. George and Rollo went down to breakfast before six o'clock. While they were eating their breakfast, the waiter came in with a cold roast chicken upon a plate, which he set down upon the table. "Ah!" said Mr. George, "that is for us to eat on the way." "Don't the diligence stop somewhere for us to dine?" asked Rollo. "Yes," said Mr. George, "I presume it stops for us to dine, but as we are going to be out all night, I thought perhaps that we might want a supper towards morning. Besides, having a supper will help keep us awake in going across the Pontine Marshes." "Must we keep awake?" asked Rollo. "So they say," replied Mr. George. "They say you are more likely to catch the fever while you are asleep than while you are awake." "I don't see why we should be," said Rollo. "Nor do I," said Mr. George. If Mr. George really did not know or understand a thing, he never pretended to know or understand it. "It may be a mere notion," said Mr. George, "but it is a very prevailing one, at any rate; so I thought it would be well enough for us to have something to keep us awake." "We will take some bread and butter too," said Rollo. Mr. George said that that would be an excellent plan. So they each of them cut one of the breakfast rolls which were on the table in two, and after spreading the inside surfaces well with butter, they put the parts together again. The waiter brought them a quantity of clean wrapping paper, and with this they wrapped up both the chicken and the rolls, and Rollo put the three parcels into his bag. "And now," said Rollo, "what are we to do for drink?" "We might take some oranges," suggested Mr. George. "So we will," said Rollo. "I will go out into the square and buy some." Rollo, accordingly, went out into the square, and for what was equivalent to three cents of American money he bought six oranges. He put the oranges into his pockets, and returned to the hotel. He found Mr. George filling a flat bottle with coffee. He had poured some coffee out of the coffee pot into the pitcher of hot milk, which had still a considerable quantity of hot milk remaining in it, and then, after putting some sugar into it, and waiting for the sugar to dissolve, he had commenced pouring it into the flat bottle. [Illustration: PREPARING FOR THE JOURNEY.] "We may like a little coffee too," said Mr. George, "as well as the oranges. We can drink it out of my drinking cup." Rollo put his oranges into Mr. George's bag, for his own bag was now full. When all was ready, and the hotel bill was paid, Mr. George and Rollo got into a carriage which the waiter had sent for to come to the door, and set off for the diligence office. It was only half past seven when they arrived there. Rollo saw what time it was by the great clock which was put up on the front of one of the buildings towards the court yard. "We are too early by half an hour," said Rollo. "Yes," said Mr. George, "in travelling over new ground we must always plan to be too early, or we run great risk of being too late." "Never mind," said Rollo, "I am glad that we are here before the time, for now I can go around and see the other diligences getting ready to go off." So Rollo began to walk about under the portico, or piazza, to the various diligences which were getting ready to set out on the different roads. There was one where there was a gentleman and two ladies who were quite in trouble. I suppose that among the girls who may read this book there may be many who may think that it must necessarily be a very agreeable thing to travel about Europe, and that if they could only go,--no matter under what circumstances,--they should experience an almost uninterrupted succession of pleasing sensations. But the truth is, that travelling in Europe, like every other earthly source of pleasure, is very far from being sufficient of itself to confer happiness. Indeed, under almost all the ordinary circumstances in which parties of travellers are placed, the question whether they are to enjoy themselves and be happy on any particular day of their journey, or to be discontented and miserable, depends so much upon little things which they did not at all take into the account, or even foresee at all in planning the journey, that it is wholly uncertain when you look upon a party of travellers that you meet on the road, whether they are really having a good time or not. You cannot tell at all by the outward circumstances. There was a striking illustration of this in the case of the party that attracted Rollo's attention in the court of the diligence office. The gentleman's name was Howland. One of the ladies was his young wife, and the other lady was her sister. The sister's name was Louise. Mr. Howland intended to have taken the whole _coupé_ for his party; but when he went to the office, the day before, to take the places, he found that one of the seats of the _coupé_ had been engaged by a gentleman who was travelling alone. "How unlucky!" said Mr. Howland to himself. "We must have three seats, and it won't do for us to be shut up in the interior, for there we cannot see the scenery at all." So he went home, and asked his wife what it would be best to do. "We cannot have three seats together," said he, "unless we go up upon the _banquette_." But the bride said that she could not possibly ride on the _banquette_. She could not climb up to such a high place. Now, Mrs. Howland's real reason for not being willing to ride on the banquette, was not the difficulty of climbing up, for at all the diligence offices they have convenient step ladders for the use of the passengers in getting up and down. The real reason was, she thought it was not genteel to ride there. And in fact it is not genteel. There is no part of the diligence where people who attach much importance to the fashion of the thing are willing to go, except the coupé. "And we don't want to ride in the interior," said Mr. Howland. "No," said the bride, "that is worse than the banquette." "Nor to wait till another day," added Mr. Howland. "No," said Mrs. Howland. "We must go to-morrow, and we must have the _coupé_. The gentleman who has engaged the third seat will give it up to us, I am sure, when he knows that it is to oblige a lady. You can engage the two seats in the coupé, and one more, either on the banquette or in the interior, and then when the time comes to set out we will get the gentleman to let us have his seat. You can pay him the difference." "But, Angelina," said Mr. Howland, "I should not like to ask such a thing of the gentleman. He has taken pains to go a day or two beforehand to engage his seat, so as to make sure of a good one, and I don't think we ought to expect him to give it up to accommodate strangers." "O, he won't mind," said Mrs. Howland. "He would as lief change as not. And if he won't, we can arrange it in some way or other." So Mr. Howland engaged the two places in the coupé, and one on the banquette. When the morning came, he brought his two ladies to the diligence station in good season. He was very unwilling to ask the gentleman to give up his seat; but his wife, who was a good deal accustomed to have her own way, and who, besides, being now a bride, considered herself specially entitled to indulgences, declared that if her husband did not ask the gentleman, she would ask him herself. "Very well," said Mr. Howland, "I will ask him then." So Mr. Howland went to the gentleman, and asked him. He was standing at the time, with his umbrella and walking stick in his hand, near one of the pillars of the portico, smoking a cigar. He looked at Mr. Howland with an expression of some surprise upon his countenance on hearing the proposition, took one or two puffs from his cigar before replying, and then said quietly that he preferred the seat that he had taken in the coupé. "It would be a very great favor to us, if you would exchange with us," said Mrs. Howland, who had come up with her husband, and stood near. "We are three, and we want very much to be seated together. We will very gladly pay the difference of the fare." The gentleman immediately, on being thus addressed by Mrs. Howland, took the cigar out of his mouth, raised his hat, and bowed very politely. "Are you and this other lady the gentleman's party?" he asked. "Yes, sir," said Mrs. Howland. "Then I cannot possibly think of giving up my seat in the coupé," replied the gentleman. "I am a Russian, it is true, but I am not a bear, as I should very justly be considered, if I were to leave a compartment in the coach when _two_ such beautiful ladies as you were coming into it, especially under the influence of any such consideration as that of saving the difference in the fare." The gentleman said this in so frank and good-natured a way that it was impossible to take offence at it, though Mr. Howland felt, that by making the request and receiving such a reply, he had placed himself in a very ridiculous position. "I prize my seat more than ever," said the Russian, still addressing the ladies; "I prize it incalculably, and so I cannot think of going up upon the banquette. But if the gentleman will go up there, I will promise to take the very best care of the ladies possible, while they are in the coupé." Mrs. Howland then took Louise aside, and asked, in a whisper, whether she should have any objection to ride in the interior, in case Mr. Howland could exchange the place on the banquette for one within. Louise was quite troubled that her sister should make such a proposal. She said she should not like very well to go in there among so many strangers, and in a place, too, where she could not see the scenery at all. Besides, Louise thought that it would have been more generous in Angelina, if she thought it necessary for one or the other of them to ride inside, to have offered to take a seat there herself, instead of putting it off upon her sister, especially since it was not so proper, she thought, for her, being a young lady, to ride among strangers, as for one who was married. Mr. Howland then suggested that they should all ascend to the banquette. The persons who had the other two seats there would of course be willing to change for the coupé; or at least, since the coupé was considered the best place, there would be no indelicacy in asking them to do it. But the bride would not listen to this proposal. She never could climb up there, in the world, she said. By this time the coach was ready, and the conductor began to call upon the passengers to take their places, so that there was no more time for deliberation. They were all obliged to take their seats as the conductor called off the names from his way bill. The two ladies entered the coupé in company with the Russian, while Mr. Howland ascended by the step ladder to his seat on the banquette. While the passengers were thus getting seated the postilions were putting in the horses, and in a moment more the diligence set off. Now, here were four persons setting out on a pleasant morning, in a good carriage, to take the drive from Naples to Rome--one of the most charming drives that the whole tour of Europe affords, and yet not one of them was in a condition to enjoy it. Every one was dissatisfied, out of humor, and unhappy. The Russian gentleman was displeased with Mr. Howland for asking him to give up his seat, and he felt uncomfortable and ill at ease in being shut up with two ladies, who he knew were displeased with him for not giving it up. The bride was vexed with the Russian for insisting on his place in the coupé, and with her sister for not being willing to go into the interior, so that she might ride with her husband. Miss Louise was offended at having been asked to sit in the interior, which request, she said to herself, was only part of a systematic plan, which her sister seemed to have adopted for the whole journey, to make herself the principal personage in every thing, and to treat her, Louise, as if she was of no consequence whatever. And last of all, Mr. Howland, on the banquette above, was out of humor with himself for having asked the Russian to give up his seat, and thus subjected himself to the mortification of a refusal, and with his wife for having required him to ask it. Thus they were all at heart uncomfortable and unhappy, and as the horses trotted swiftly on along the smooth and beautiful road which traverses the rich campagna of Naples, on the way to Capua, the splendid scenery was wholly disregarded by every one of them. Now, it is very often so with parties travelling in Europe. The external circumstances are all perhaps extremely favorable, and they are passing through scenes or visiting places which they have thought of and dreamed of at home with beating hearts for many years. And yet now that the time has come, and the enjoyment is before them, there is some internal source of disquiet, some mental vexation or annoyance, some secret resentment or heart-burning, arising out of the circumstances in which they are placed, or the relations which they sustain to one another, which destroys their peace and quiet of mind, and of course incapacitates them for any real happiness. So that, on the whole, judging from what I have seen of tourists in Europe, I should say that those that travel do not after all, in general, really pass their time more happily than those who remain at home. I have two reasons for saying these things. One is, that those of you who have no opportunity to travel, may be more contented to remain at home, and not imagine that those of your friends who go abroad, necessarily pass their time so much more happily than you do. The other reason is, that when you do travel, either in our own country or in foreign lands, you should be more reasonable and considerate, and pay more regard to the wishes and feelings of others, than travellers usually do. Most of the disquietudes and heart-burnings which arise to mar the happiness of parties travelling, come from the selfishness of our hearts, which seems, in some way or other, to bring itself out more into view when we are on a long journey together than at any other time. In the ordinary intercourse of life, this selfishness is covered and concealed by the veil of politeness prescribed by the forms and usages of society. This veil is, however, very thin, and it soon disappears entirely, in the familiar intercourse which is necessarily produced by the incidents and adventures of a journey. In being daily and hourly with each other for a long time, people appear just as they really are; and unless they are really reasonable, considerate, and just towards one another, they are sure sooner or later to disagree. But though the bridal party were very much out of humor with each other, as we have seen, Mr. George and Rollo were entirely free from any such uneasiness. They both felt very light-hearted and happy. They rambled about the court yard till they had seen all that there was there to interest them, and then they went to their own diligence. They opened the coupé door and looked in. "Our seats are Nos. 1 and 2," said Rollo. "Yes," said Mr. George. "One of them is next the window, and the other is in the middle. You may get in first, and take the seat by the window." "No, uncle George," said Rollo, "you had better have the seat by the window." "We will take turns for that seat," said Mr. George, "and you shall begin." Mr. George arranged it to have Rollo take his turn first, because he knew very well that, in the beginning of a journey, such a boy as Rollo was always full of enthusiasm and excitement; and that, consequently, he would enjoy riding at the window much more at first than at a later period. So Rollo got in and took his seat, and Mr. George followed him. In a very few minutes afterwards, the postilions came out with the horses. But I have something particular to say about the postilions and the horses, and I will say it in the next chapter. CHAPTER II. THE JOURNEY. There are a great many curious things to be observed in travelling by the public conveyances on the continent of Europe. One is the way of driving the horses. It is a very common thing to have them driven, not by coachmen, but by postilions. There is a postilion for each pair of horses, and he sits upon the nigh horse of the pair. Thus he rides and drives at the same time. In these cases there is no driver's seat in front of the coach. Or if there is a seat in front, it is occupied by the passengers. All the driving is done by the postilions. The postilions dress in a sort of livery, which is quite gay in its appearance, being trimmed with red. The collars and the lapels of their jackets, too, are ornamented here and there with figures of stage horns and other emblems of their profession. They also wear enormously long and stout boots. These boots come up above their knees. They carry only a short whip, for they only have to whip the horse that they are upon, and the one which is by the side of him, and so they do not have to reach very far. When there are four horses, there are two postilions, and when there are six, three. A large diligence, with six horses, and a gayly dressed postilion mounted on one of the horses of each pair, makes a very grand appearance, you may depend, in coming, upon the gallop, into the streets of a town--the postilions cracking their whips, and making as much noise as they can, and all the boys and girls of the street coming to the doors and windows to see. "I am glad we are going to have postilions, uncle George," said Rollo, as they were getting into the coach. "Why?" asked Mr. George. "Because I like the looks of them," said Rollo; "and then we always go faster, too, when we have postilions. Besides, when there is a seat for a driver on the coach, it blocks up our front windows; but now our windows are all clear." "Those are excellent reasons--all of them," said Mr. George. The postilions did indeed drive very fast, when they once got upon the road. There was a delay of half an hour, at the gate of the city, for the examination of the passports; during which time the postilions, having dismounted from their horses, stood talking together, and playing off jokes upon each other. At length, when the passports were ready, they sprang into their saddles, and set the horses off upon the run. The road, on leaving the gates, entered a wide and beautiful avenue, which was at this time filled with peasants coming into town, for that day was market day in Naples. The people coming in were dressed in the most curious costumes. Multitudes were on foot, others rode crowded together in donkey carts. Some rode on the backs of donkeys, with a load of farming produce before or behind them. The women, in such cases, sat square upon the donkey's back, with both their feet hanging down on one side; and they banged the donkey with their heels to make him get out of the way so that the diligence could go by. The country was very rich and beautiful, and it was cultivated every where like a garden. Here and there were groves of mulberries,--the tree on which the silk worm feeds,--and there were vineyards, with the vines just bursting into leaf, and now and then a little garden of orange trees. In the mean time the postilions kept cracking their whips, and the horses galloped on at such a speed that Rollo had scarcely time to see the objects by the road side, they glided so swiftly by. "Won't the silk worms eat any kind of leaves but mulberry leaves?" he asked. "No," said Mr. George, "at least the mulberry silk worms will not. There are a great many different kinds of silk worms in the world; that is, there are a great many different kinds of caterpillars that spin a thread and make a ball to wrap up their eggs in, and each one lives on a different plant or tree. If you watch the caterpillars in a garden, you will see that each kind lives on some particular leaf, and will not touch any other." "Yes," said Rollo, "we found a big caterpillar once on the caraway in our garden, and we shut him up in a box, in order to see what sort of a butterfly he would turn into, and we gave him different kinds of leaves to eat, but he would not eat any but caraway leaves." "And what became of him at last?" asked Mr. George. "O, he turned into a butterfly," said Rollo. "First he turned into a chrysalis, and then he turned into a butterfly." "There are a great many different kinds of silk worms," said Mr. George; "but in order to find one that can be made useful, there are several conditions to be fulfilled." "What do you mean by conditions to be fulfilled?" asked Rollo. "Why, I mean that there are several things necessary, in order that the silk worm should be a good one to make silk from. In the first place, the fibre of the silk that he spins must be fine, and also strong. In the next place, it must easily unwind from the cocoon. Then the animal must be a tolerably hardy one, so as to be easily raised in great numbers. Then the plant or tree that it feeds upon must be a thrifty and hardy one, and easily cultivated. The mulberry silk worm has been found to answer to these conditions better than any hitherto known; but there are some others that I believe they are now trying, in order to see if they will not be better still. They are looking about in all parts of the world to see what they can find." "Who are looking?" asked Rollo. "The Society of Acclimatation," replied Mr. George. "That is a society founded in Paris, and extending to all parts of the world, that is employed in finding new plants and new animals that can be made useful to man, or finding some that are useful to man in one country, and so introducing them into other countries. They are trying specially to find new silk worms." "There are some kinds of caterpillars in America," said Rollo, "that wind their silk up into balls. I mean to get some of the balls when I go home, and see if I can unwind them." "That will be an excellent plan," said Mr. George. "If I can only find the end," said Rollo. "There must be some art required to find the end," rejoined Mr. George, "and then I believe there is some preparation which is necessary to make the cocoons unwind." "I wish I knew what it was," said Rollo. "You can inquire of some of the people when we stop to dine," replied Mr. George. "But I don't know enough Italian for that," said Rollo. "That's a pity," said Mr. George. In the mean time the horses trotted and galloped on until they had gone about ten miles, and then at length the postilions brought them up at the door of an inn, in a village. Fresh horses were standing all ready at the door, with new postilions. The postilions that had been driving took out their horses and led them away, and then came themselves to the window of the coupé and held out their caps for their _buono mano_, as they call it; that is, for a small present. Every body in Italy, who performs any service, expects, in addition to being paid the price regularly agreed upon for the service, to receive a present, greater or smaller according to the nature of the case. This present is called the _buono mano_.[2] [Footnote 2: Pronounced _bono mahno_.] The postilions always expect a buono mano from the passengers in the stage coach, especially from those who ride in the coupé. Rollo gave them a few coppers each, for himself and for Mr. George, and just as he had done so, a young man without any hat upon his head, but with a white napkin under his arm, came out of the hotel, and advancing to the window of the coupé asked Mr. George and Rollo, in French, if they wished to take any thing. "No," said Mr. George. "Not any thing." "Yes, uncle George," said Rollo, "let us go and see what they have got." He said this, of course, in English, but immediately changing his language into French, he asked the waiter what they could have. The waiter said that they could have some hot coffee. There would not be time for any thing else. "Let us have some hot coffee, uncle George," said Rollo, eagerly. "Very well," said Mr. George. So Rollo gave the order, and the waiter went into the house. In a moment he returned with two cups of very nice coffee, which he brought on a tray. By this time, however, the fresh horses were almost harnessed, so that it was necessary to drink the coffee quick. But there was no difficulty in doing this, for it was very nice, and not too hot. Rollo had barely time to give back the cups and pay for the coffee before the diligence began to move. The postilions started the horses with a strange sort of a cry, that they uttered while standing beside them, and then leaped into the saddles just as they were beginning to run. The journey was continued much in this way during the whole day. The country was delightful; the road was hard and smooth as a floor, and the horses went very fast. In a word, Rollo had a capital ride. After traversing a comparatively level country for some miles, the road entered a mountainous region, where there was a long ascent. At the foot of this ascent was a post house, and here they put on six horses instead of four. Of course there were now three postilions. But although the country was mountainous, the ascent was not steep, for the road was carried up by means of long windings and zigzags, in such a manner that the rise was very regular and gradual all the way. The consequence was, that the six horses took the diligence on almost as fast up the mountains as the four had done on the level ground. About five o'clock in the afternoon the diligence made a good stop, in order to allow the passengers to dine. "We will go in and take dinner with the rest," said Mr. George, "and so save the things that we have put up for a moonlight supper on the Pontine Marshes." "Yes," said Rollo, "I shall like that very much. Besides, I want to go and take dinner with them here, for I want to see how they do it." The place where the diligence stopped was a town called Mola di Gaeta. It stood in a very picturesque situation, near the sea. For though the road, in leaving Naples, had led at first into the interior of the country, and had since been winding about among the mountains, it had now come down again to the margin of the sea. The entrance to the hotel was under a great archway. There were doors to the right and left from this archway, leading to staircases and to apartments. The passengers from the diligence were conducted through one of these doors into a very ancient looking hall, where there was a table set for dinner, with plates enough for twenty persons--that being about the number of passengers contained in the various compartments of the diligence. On the opposite side of the arched way was a door leading to another hall, where there was a table set for the conductor and the postilions. After waiting a few minutes, the company of passengers took their seats at the table. Besides the plates for the guests, there was a row of dishes extending up and down the middle of the table, containing apples, pears, oranges, nuts, raisins, little cakes, and bon-bons of various kinds. There were also in this row two vases containing flowers. Excepting these fruits and sweetmeats, there was nothing eatable upon the table when the guests sat down. It is not customary in European dinners to put any thing upon the table except the dessert. The other dishes are brought round, and presented one by one to each guest. First came the soup. When the soup had been eaten, and the soup plates had been removed, then there was boiled beef. The beef was upon two dishes, one for each side of the table. It was cut very nicely in slices, and each dish had a fork and a spoon in it, for the guests to help themselves with. The dishes were carried along the sides of the table by the waiters, and offered to each guest, the guests helping themselves in succession to such pieces as they liked. After the beef had been eaten, the plates were all changed, and then came a course of fried potatoes; then, after another change of plates, a course of mutton chops; then green peas; then roast beef; then cauliflower with drawn butter; then roast chicken with salad; and lastly, some puddings. For each separate article of all this dinner there was a fresh plate furnished to each guest. After the pudding plates were removed, small plates for the dessert were furnished; and then the fruit, and the nuts, and the bon-bons were served; and the dinner was over. For every two guests there was a decanter of wine. At least it was what they called wine, though in taste it was more like sour cider. The people generally used it by pouring a little of it into their water. When the dinner was over, the passengers all paid the amount that was charged for it, and each gave, besides, a buono mano to the waiter who had waited upon his side of the table. By this time the diligence was ready, and they all went and took their seats in it again. The sun was now going down, and in the course of an hour the last of its rays were seen gilding the summits of the mountains. Soon afterwards the evening began to come on. "Before a great while," said Mr. George, "we shall begin to draw near to the frontier." "Yes," said Rollo, "the frontier between the kingdom of Naples and the dominions of the pope. They will examine the baggage there, I suppose." "No," said Mr. George; "they will not examine the baggage till we get to Rome." "I thought they always examined the baggage at the frontier, when we came into any new country," said Rollo. "They do," said Mr. George, "unless the baggage is under the charge of public functionaries; and then, to save time, they often take it into the capital, and examine it there. I asked one of the passengers at the dinner table, and he said that the trunks were not to be opened till we get to Rome." "They will examine the passports, I suppose," said Rollo. "Yes," replied Mr. George, "they will, undoubtedly, examine the passports at the frontier." You cannot pass from one country in Europe to another, any where, without stopping at the last military station of the country that you leave, to have your passport examined and stamped, in token of permission given you to go out, and also at the first military station of the country which you are about to enter, to have them examined and stamped again, in token of permission to come in. All this, as you may suppose, is very troublesome. Besides that, there are fees to pay, which, in the course of a long journey, amount to a considerable sum. Besides the passport business which was to be attended to, there was a grand change of the diligence establishment at the frontier. The coach itself, which came from Naples, and also the conductor and postilions, were all left at the border, and the passengers were transferred to a new turnout which came from Rome. Indeed, there was a double change; for the Roman diligence brought a load of passengers from Rome to meet the Neapolitan one at the border, and thus each company of travellers had to be transferred to the establishment belonging to the country which they were entering. This change was made in a post house, in a solitary place near the frontier. It caused a detention of nearly an hour, there were so many formalities to go through. It was late in the evening, and the work was done by the light of torches and lanterns. The two diligences were backed up against each other, and then all the trunks and baggage were transferred from the top of one coach to the top of the other, without being taken down at all. The baggage in these diligences is always packed upon the top. You would think that this would make the coach top heavy, and so it does in some degree; but then the body of the coach below is so large and heavy, that the extra weight above is well counterpoised; and then, besides, the roads are so smooth and level, and withal so hard, that there is no danger of an upset. The work of shifting the baggage from one diligence to the other was performed under an archway. There was a door leading from this archway into a large office, where the two companies of passengers were assembled, waiting for the coaches to be ready. All these passengers were loaded with carpet bags, knapsacks, valises, bundles of umbrellas and canes, and other such light baggage which they had had with them inside the coaches. Many of them were sitting on chairs and benches around the sides of the room, with their baggage near them. Others were walking about the room, changing money with each other; that is, those that were going from Rome to Naples were changing the Roman money, which they had left, for Neapolitan money. The money of one of these countries does not circulate well in the other country. In the middle of the room was a great table, where the conductors and other officials were at work with papers and accounts. Rollo could not understand what they were doing. Rollo walked about the office, looking at the different passengers, and observing what was going on, while Mr. George remained near the coaches, to watch the transfer of the baggage. "I want to be sure," said Mr. George, "that our trunk is there, and that they shift it over to the Roman coach." "They are changing money inside," said Rollo. "Have you got any that you want to have changed?" "No," said Mr. George. "I did not know that we could change here; and I calculated closely, and planned it so as not to have any of the Naples money left." "I have got only two or three pieces," said Rollo, "and those I am going to carry home to America for coins." At length the changes were completed, and Mr. George and Rollo, and also all the other passengers who had come in the diligence from Naples, began to take their places in the coach for Rome; while at the same time the other company got into the Naples coach, which was now going to return. The conductor came for his _buono mano_, the new horses were harnessed in, the postilions leaped into the saddles, and thus both parties set out upon their night ride. It was not far from nine o'clock. [Illustration: THE PONTINE MARSHES.] "And now," said Mr. George, "before a great while we shall come upon the Pontine Marshes." The Pontine Marshes form an immense tract of low and level land, which have been known and celebrated in history for nearly two thousand years. Though called marshes, they are so far drained by ancient canals that the land is firm enough for grass to grow upon it, and for flocks of sheep and herds of cattle to feed; but yet it is so low and so unhealthy, that it is utterly uninhabitable by man. The extent of these marshes is immense. The road traverses them in a direct line, and on a perfect level, for twenty-five or thirty miles, without passing a single habitation, except the post houses, and in the middle a solitary inn. And yet there is nothing desolate or dreary in the aspect of the Pontine Marshes. On the contrary the view on every side, in passing across them, is extremely beautiful. The road is wide, and smooth, and level, and is bordered on each side with a double row of very ancient and venerable trees, which give to it, for the whole distance, the character of a magnificent avenue. Think of a broad and handsome avenue, running straight as an arrow for twenty-five miles! Beyond the trees, on one side, there is a wide canal. This canal runs parallel to the road, and you often meet boats coming or going upon it. Beyond the canal, and beyond the trees on the other side, there extends, as far as the eye can reach, one vast expanse of living green, as smooth and beautiful as can be imagined. This immense tract of meadow is divided here and there by hedges or palings, and now and then a pretty grove appears to vary the scene. Immense flocks of sheep, and herds of horses and cattle, are seen feeding every where, and sometimes herdsmen, on horseback galloping to and fro, attending to their charge. Mr. George and Rollo had had a fine opportunity to see the scenery of the Pontine Marshes when they came to Naples, for then they crossed them by day light. Now, however, it was night, and there was not much to be seen except the gnarled and venerable trunks of the trees, on each side of the road, as the light of the diligence lanterns flashed upon them. The postilions drove exceedingly fast all the way over the marshes. The stage stopped three times to change horses. Mr. George kept up a continual conversation with Rollo all the way, in order to prevent him from going to sleep; for, as I have said before, it is considered dangerous to sleep while on the marshes. About midnight Rollo proposed that they should eat their supper. "No," said Mr. George, "we will keep our supper for the last thing. As long as we can keep awake without it we will." So they went on for two hours longer. About one o'clock the moon rose, and the moonbeams shining in through the windows of the coupé, enlivened the interior very much. "The moonlight makes it a great deal pleasanter," said Rollo. "Yes," said Mr. George, "and it will make it a great deal more convenient for us to eat our supper." The diligence stopped at a post house to change horses, a little before two, and immediately after it set out again. Mr. George said that it was time for them to take their supper. So Rollo opened the two bags, and took out from one the chicken and the two rolls, and from the other the bottle of coffee and the oranges. He placed the things, as he took them out, in a large pocket before him, in the front of the coupé. Mr. George took two newspapers out of his knapsack, one for Rollo and one for himself, to spread in their laps while they were eating. Then, with a sharp blade of his pocket knife, he began to carve the chicken. The chicken was very tender, and the rolls were very nice; and as, moreover, both the travellers were quite hungry, they found the supper in all respects excellent. For drink, they had the juice of the oranges. To drink this juice, they cut a round hole in one end of the orange, and then run the blade of the knife in, in all directions, so as to break up the pulp. They could then drink out the juice very conveniently. At the close of the supper they drank the coffee. The coffee was cold, it is true, but it was very good, and it made an excellent ending to the meal. They made the supper last as long as possible, in order to occupy the time. It was three o'clock before it was finished and the papers cleared away. At half past three, Rollo, in looking out at the window, saw a sort of bank by the side of the road; and on observing attentively, he perceived that there was a curve in the road itself, before them. "Uncle George," said he, "we have got off the marshes!" "I verily believe we have," said Mr. George. "So now we may go to sleep," said Rollo. "Yes," said Mr. George. "I'll lay my head over into the corner, and you may lie against my shoulder." So Mr. George and Rollo placed themselves in as comfortable a position as possible, and composed themselves to sleep. They slept several hours; waking up, or, rather, half waking up, once during the interval, while the diligence stopped for the purpose of changing horses. When they finally awoke, the sun was up high, and was shining in quite bright through the coupé windows. CHAPTER III. THE ARRIVAL AT ROME. When Mr. George and Rollo awoke from their sleep, they found that they were coming into the environs of Rome. The country was green and beautiful, but it seemed almost uninhabited; and in every direction were to be seen immense ruins of tombs, and aqueducts, and other such structures, now gone to decay. There was an ancient road leading out of Rome in this direction, called the _Appian Way_. It was by this road that the apostle Paul travelled, in making his celebrated journey to Rome, after appealing from the Jewish jurisdiction to that of Cæsar. Indeed, the Appii Forum and the Three Taverns, places mentioned in the account of this journey contained in the Acts, were on the very road that Mr. George and Rollo had been travelling in their journey from Naples to Rome. The remains of the Appian Way are still to be traced for many miles south of Rome. The road was paved, in ancient times, with very large blocks of an exceedingly hard kind of stone. These stones were of various shapes, but they were fitted together and flattened on the top, and thus they made a very smooth, and at the same time a very solid, pavement. In many places along the Appian Way this old pavement still remains, and is as good as ever. At length the diligence arrived at the gate of the city. It passed through an arched gateway, leading through an ancient and very venerable wall, and then stopped at the door of a sort of office just within. There were two soldiers walking to and fro before the office. "What are we stopping for here?" asked Rollo. "For the passports, I suppose," said Mr. George. The conductor of the diligence came to the door of the coupé and asked for the passports. Mr. George gave him his and Rollo's, and the conductor carried them, together with those which he had obtained from the other passengers, into the office. He then ordered the postilions to drive on. "How shall we get our passports again?" asked Rollo. "We must send for them to the police office, I suppose," said Mr. George. It is very customary, in the great capitals of Europe, for the police to take the passports of travellers, on their arrival at the gates of the city, and direct them to send for them at the central police office on the following day. After passing the gate, the diligence went on a long way, through a great many narrow streets, leading into the heart of the city. There was nothing in these streets to denote the ancient grandeur of Rome, excepting now and then an old and venerable ruin, standing neglected among the other buildings. Rollo, however, in looking out at the windows of the coupé, saw a great many curious sights, as the diligence drove along. Among these one of the most remarkable was a procession of people dressed in a most fantastic manner, and wearing masks which entirely concealed their faces. There were two round holes in the masks for the eyes. Mr. George told Rollo that these were men doing penance. They had been condemned to walk through the streets in this way, as a punishment for some of their sins. "Why, they treat them just as if they were children," said Rollo. "They _are_ children," said Mr. George, "in every thing but years." [Illustration: DOING PENANCE.] Not long after this, Rollo saw a very magnificent carriage coming along. It was perfectly resplendent with crimson and gold. The horses, too, and the coachman, and the footmen, were gorgeously caparisoned and apparelled in the same manner. Rollo pointed it out to Mr. George. Mr. George said it was a cardinal's carriage. "I wish the cardinal was in it," said Rollo. "I would like to have seen him." "I presume he would have looked very much like any other man," replied Mr. George. "Yes, but he would have been dressed differently, wouldn't he?" "Perhaps so," said Mr. George. "Perhaps he would have had his red hat on," said Rollo. "I should like to see a cardinal wearing his red hat." The badge of the cardinal's office is a hat and dress of a red color. At length the diligence passed under an archway which led into a large open court, similar to the one in Naples where the journey had been commenced. The passengers got out, the horses were unharnessed, and the baggage was taken down. The trunks were all taken into an office pertaining to the custom house, to be examined by the officers there, in order to see whether there were any contraband goods in them. Mr. George unlocked his trunk and lifted up the lid. An officer came up to the place, and patting with his hand upon the top of the clothes, as if to prevent Mr. George from lifting them up to show what was below, he said,-- "Very well; very well; it is sufficient." So saying, he shut down the top of the trunk again, and marked it, "Passed." He then touched his hat, and asked Mr. George if he would make some small present for the benefit of the custom house officers. That is to say, he evaded the performance of his duty as an officer of the customs, in expectation that the traveller would pay him for his delinquency. Most travellers are very willing to pay in such cases. They have various articles in their trunks which they have bought in other countries, and which, strictly speaking, are subject to duty in entering Rome, and they are willing to pay a fee rather than to have their trunks overhauled. Others, of more sturdy morality, refuse to pay these fees. They consider them as of the nature of bribes. So they say to the officers,-- "Examine the baggage as much as you please, and if you find any duties due, I will pay them. But I will not pay any bribes." "Now, Rollo," said Mr. George, when he had got possession of his trunk, "we want a carriage to take us and the baggage to the hotel. You may go and see if you can find one, and I will stay here and look after the baggage. Engage the carriage by the hour." So Rollo went out of the court, and soon found a carriage. Before he got into it, he said to the coachman,-- "_Per hora!_" This means, By the hour. At the same time Rollo held up his watch to the coachman, in order to let him see what o'clock it was. "_Si, signore_," said the coachman. _Si, signore_, is the Italian for Yes, sir. Rollo could not say in Italian where he wished the coachman to go, and so he stood up in the carriage and pointed. Following his indications, the coachman drove in through the archway to the court of the post office, where he found Mr. George waiting. The trunk and the bags were put upon the carriage, in front, and Mr. George got in with Rollo. "Hotel d'Amerique," said Mr. George to the coachman. "_Si, signore_," said the coachman, and immediately he began to drive away. The Hotel d'Amerique was the one where Mr. George had concluded to go. He had found the name and a description of this hotel in his guide book. "Why did you want me to take the carriage by the hour?" asked Rollo. "Because it is very probable," said Mr. George, "that we shall not get in at the Hotel d'Amerique, and in that case we shall have to go to other hotels, and unless we take him by the hour, he would charge a course for every hotel that we go to, and the charge even for _two_ courses, is more than for an hour." The event showed that Mr. George was right in his calculations. The Hotel d'Amerique was full. The waiter, who came out, as soon as he saw the carriage stop at the door, told Mr. George this in French. "Then please tell our coachman," said Mr. George, "to drive us to any other principal hotel that is near here, and if that is full, to another; and so on, until he finds a good place where they can take us in." Mr. George said this, of course, in French. The waiter delivered the message to the coachman in Italian. "Yes," said the coachman, to himself, "that I'll do. But I shall take good care that you don't find any place where you can get in this two hours, if I can help it." The reason why the coachman did not wish that his travellers should find a hotel soon was, of course, because he wished to earn as much money as possible by driving them about. He immediately began to think what hotels would be most likely to be full, and drove first to those. The first of all was a hotel, situated quite near one of the gates of the city, the one where the principal entrance is for all travellers coming from the north. It is called the "Gate of the People,"--or in Italian, _Porto del Popolo_. The gate opens into a large triangular space, which is called the _Piazza del Popolo_. _Piazza_,[3] in Italian, means a public square. [Footnote 3: Pronounced _Piatza_.] This Piazza del Popolo is one of the most celebrated places in Rome. There are three streets that radiate from it directly through the heart of the town. Between the centre and the two side streets, at the corners where they come out upon the square, are two churches exactly alike. They are called sometimes the _twin churches_, on this account. The Piazza del Popolo is a great place for public parades. On one side is a high ascent, with a broad expanse of gardens upon the top, and zigzag roads, handsomely walled up, and ornamented with statues and fountains, and with marble seats placed here and there for foot passengers to rest themselves upon, when ascending. Every year, at the end of what they call Holy Week, they have a great celebration of fireworks from the side of this hill and from the terrace above; and then all the people assemble in the Piazza below to witness them. But I must go back to Mr. George and Rollo. The coachman stopped at a large hotel, fronting upon this square. On inquiring at the bureau, (on the continent of Europe they call an office a bureau) Mr. George found that all the rooms were occupied except one large apartment, of four rooms. This was, of course, more than Mr. George wanted. At the next hotel where the coachman stopped, there were no rooms at all vacant, and at the next only one small room, with a single narrow bed in it. "If we can't find any other," said Rollo, "we will come back and take this, and I will sleep on the floor." "O, no!" said Mr. George. "Why, uncle George!" said Rollo, "I can make it very comfortable on the floor, by rolling up two coats or cloaks into two long rolls, and wedging them in under me, one on one side of me and the other on the other, and then putting a carpet bag under my head for a pillow. It feels just as if you were in a good bed." Mr. George smiled, and got into the carriage again, and the coachman drove on. After a while, he stopped at the door of a hotel which stood in rather a retired place among narrow streets, though there was an open space in front of it. Mr. George inquired for rooms here, and the waiter said that they had one left. "Are there two beds in it?" asked Mr. George. "No, sir," said the waiter, "but we can put two beds in. Would you like to go and see it, sir?" "No," said Mr. George, "I will take it without going to see it. It is the best that we can do." So the porter of the hotel took off the baggage, while Mr. George paid the coachman for an hour and a half of time. Mr. George and Rollo then followed the porter to their room. In order to reach it, they had to ascend several stories, up massive staircases of stone, and then to go out to the extreme end of a long corridor. The room, when they came to it, proved to be quite small, and there was but one bed in it. There was, however, room for another; and the waiter, who had followed them up, said that he would cause another one to be put in without any delay. CHAPTER IV. A RAMBLE. "And now, uncle George," said Rollo, "we'll get ready, and then the first thing that we will do, will be to go down into the dining room and get some breakfast." "Why, we have had our breakfast already," said Mr. George. "We had it at two o'clock this morning, on the Pontine Marshes." "O, no," said Rollo, "that was our supper for last night." "Very well," said Mr. George, "we will have some breakfast. You may go down and order it as soon as you are ready. I will come down by the time that it is on the table." "What shall I order?" asked Rollo. "Whatever you please," said Mr. George. Accordingly Rollo, as soon as he was ready, went down stairs, and looking about in the entrance hall, he saw a door with the words TABLE D'HÔTE, in gilt letters, over it. "Ah," said he to himself, "this is the place." He opened the door, and found himself in a long, narrow room, which seemed, however, more like a passage way than like a room. There was a sort of rack on one side of it for hats and coats. There were several pictures in this room, with prices marked upon them, as if they were for sale, and also a number of very pretty specimens of marble, and inlaid paper weights, and models of columns, temples, and ruins of various kinds, and other such curiosities as are kept every where in Rome to sell to visitors. Rollo looked at all these things as he passed through the room, considering, as he examined them, whether his uncle George would probably wish to buy any of them. One of them was a model of a column, with a spiral line of sculptures extending from the base to the summit. These sculptures represented figures of men and horses, sometimes in battle, sometimes crossing bridges, and sometimes in grand processions entering a town. "This must be a model of some old column in Rome, I suppose," said Rollo to himself. "Perhaps I shall find it some time or other, when I am rambling about the streets. But now I must go and see about breakfast." So saying, Rollo passed on to the end of the passage way, where there was a door with curtains hanging before it. He pushed these curtains aside, opened the door, and went in. He found himself ushered into a dining room, with a long table extending up and down the centre of it. There was a row of massive columns on each side of the table, which supported the vaultings of the ceiling above. In different parts of this table there were small parties of gentlemen and ladies, engaged in taking late breakfasts. Rollo walked down on one side of the table. There was on that side a party consisting of a lady and gentleman with two children, a girl and a boy,--all dressed in such a manner as to give them a foreign air. The gentleman was speaking to the waiter in French when Rollo passed by the party. The boy was sitting next to one of the great pillars. These pillars were so near the table that each one of them took the place of a seat. Rollo walked on and took his seat next beyond the pillar. Of course the pillar was between him and the boy. In a few minutes a waiter came to ask what Rollo would have for breakfast. He asked in French. Rollo gave an order for breakfast for two. He said that his uncle would be down in a few minutes. "Very well, sir," said the waiter. As soon as the waiter had gone, Rollo looked round the other way, and he saw that the other boy was peeping at him from behind the pillar. The boy laughed when he caught Rollo's eye, and Rollo laughed too. The boy seemed to be about nine years old. A moment afterwards the boy began to peep at Rollo from behind the pillar on the back side, and then again on the front side, thus playing a sort of bo-peep. In this way, in a few minutes the two boys began to feel quite acquainted with each other, without, however, having spoken a word. They would, perhaps, have continued this game longer, but just at this moment the breakfast for the party came in, and the boy set himself at work eating a warm roll, buttered, and drinking his coffee. "Can you speak French?" asked Rollo,--of course speaking French himself in asking the question. "Yes," said the boy, "but not very well." "Then," said Rollo to himself, "he cannot be a French boy. Perhaps he is an Italian boy." "Italian?" asked Rollo. "No," said the boy, "not at all. All I know of Italian is _grazia_."[4] [Footnote 4: Pronounced _gratzia_.] "What does that mean?" asked Rollo. "It means, Thank you," said the boy. "He must be a German boy, I think," said Rollo to himself. After pausing a moment, Rollo ventured to ask the boy what his name was. "Charles Beekman," said the boy. He pronounced the name in so English a fashion, that Rollo perceived at once that he must speak English, so he changed from French to English himself, and said,-- "So you are an English boy." "No," said Charles, "I'm an American boy." Rollo here laughed outright, to think how much trouble they had both been taking to speak to each other in French, each supposing the other to be some outlandish foreigner, when, after all, they were both Americans, and could talk perfectly well together in their own mother tongue. Such adventures as these, however, are very frequently met with, in travelling in foreign countries. After finding that they could both speak English, the two boys talked with each other like old friends, for some minutes; and at length finding that the pillar between them was very much in the way, Charles, with his mother's permission, moved his seat round to Rollo's side of it, Rollo himself moving to the next chair, to make room for him. Mrs. Beekman readily consented to this, having first observed that Rollo appeared to be a boy of agreeable and gentlemanly manners and demeanor. When Mr. George at length came down, he was at first quite surprised to find that Rollo had thus obtained a companion; but before the breakfast was completed, he had become quite well acquainted with the Beekman family himself. Towards the end of the breakfast Rollo said that he was going out to take a walk, and he asked Mrs. Beekman to let Charles go with him. Mr. George was going to finish some letters in his room, and was then going to the post office and to the bankers, where Rollo did not particularly wish to go. "It will be better for you and me to go out and take a walk by ourselves," said he to Charles, "if your mother is willing." "Yes," said Mrs. Beekman, "I am willing. Only you must take care and not get lost." "O, no," said Rollo; "I'll take care of that. Besides, if we should get lost, I know exactly what to do." "What would you do?" asked Mr. Beekman. "I would just take a carriage," replied Rollo, "and order the coachman to drive right to the hotel." "Very good," said Mr. Beekman, "that would do very well." Accordingly, after breakfast Mr. George went to his room to finish his letters, while Rollo and Charlie set out on their walk, to see what they could see of Rome. Rollo's plan of taking a carriage, in case of getting lost in a strange city, and ordering the coachman to drive to the hotel, is a very excellent one; but one thing is quite essential to the success of it, and that is, that the person lost should know the name of his hotel. Unfortunately, Rollo was going out without this requisite. Neither he himself nor Mr. George had observed the name of the hotel where the coachman whom they had employed, on their arrival, had finally left them; and in going out Rollo forgot to observe what it was. He did not even take notice of the name of the street. He did observe, however, that the hotel had a small open space, like a square, before it, with a fountain on one side. The water from the fountain flowed into a small stone basin, with curious figures sculptured on the side of it. "Let us go and look at this basin," said Charles, "and see if it would not be a good place for us to sail little boats." The basin was in a cool and pleasant place, being overshadowed by the drooping branches of a great tree. Rollo, however, did not wish to stay by it long. "Let us go now and see the streets of Rome," said he; "we can come out and look at this basin at any time." So the two boys walked along, paying little attention to the direction in which they were going. "We shall find some of the great streets pretty soon," said Rollo, "and then we will take an observation." "What do you mean by that?" asked Charles. "Why, we will take particular notice of some great building, or something else that is remarkable where we come out into the street, and by that means we shall be able to find our way back to the hotel." "Yes," said Charles, "that will be an excellent plan." So the boys went on, and presently they came out into what seemed to be quite a busy street. It was not very wide, but it was bordered with gay-looking shops on each side. These shops were for the sale of models, specimens of marbles, Etruscan vases, mosaics, cameos, and other such things which are sold to visitors in Rome. The number of mosaics and cameos was very great. They were displayed in little show cases, placed outside the shops, under the windows and before the doors, so that people could examine them as they walked along. "O, what a quantity of mosaics and _cameos_!" exclaimed Rollo. "What are mosaics and cameos?" asked Charles. As perhaps some of the readers of this book may not know precisely the meaning of these words, I will here explain to them, as Rollo did to Charles, how mosaics and cameos are made. In the first place, in respect to cameos. Imagine a small flat piece of stone, of different colors on the two sides, say white and black. We will suppose that the white extends half through the thickness of the stone, and that the remaining part of the thickness is black. Stones are often found with such a division of colors, not only white and black, but of all other hues. Now, the artist takes such a stone as this, and marks out some design upon one side of it, say upon the white side. Perhaps the design may be the figure of a man. Then he cuts away all the white of the stone except the figure; and the result is, that he has the figure of the man, or whatever else his design may be, in white, on a black ground, and the whole in one piece of stone, all solid. Besides stone, shell is often used for cameos; many shells being pink, or of some other such color on the inside, and white towards the outside. In such a case, the figures of the design would be pink, or whatever else the color of the stone might be, on a white ground. The artists of Rome are celebrated for making beautiful cameos, both in shell and in stone. The figures are very nicely drawn, and are very beautifully cut, and when finished are set as pins, bracelets, and other ornaments. The _mosaics_, on the other hand, are made in a very different way. In these, the design is represented by different colored stones or bits of glass worked in together, with great care, in an opening made in the material serving for the groundwork. Rollo and Charlie went into one of the shops, and saw a man making one of these mosaics. He was working at a table. On one side was a small painting on a card, which was his model. He was copying this painting in mosaic. The bits of glass that he was working with were in the form of slender bars, not much larger than a stiff bristle. They were of all imaginable colors--the several colors being each kept by itself, in the divisions of a box on the table. The man took up these bars, one by one, and broke off small pieces of them, of the colors that he wanted, with a pair of pincers, and set them into the work. He put them in perpendicularly, and the lower ends went into some soft composition, placed there to receive and hold them. The upper ends, of course, came together at the surface of the work. The man who was making the mosaic told Rollo, that as soon as he had finished placing the pieces for the whole design, he should grind off the surface so as to make it smooth, and polish it. It would then have the appearance of a painted picture. You would think that as the colors of the design are thus represented by separate pieces of glass, put in one after the other, the result would be a sort of mottled appearance, or at least that the gradations of hue would be sharp and harsh in their effect. But it is not so. The pieces are so small, and the different shades succeed each other so regularly, that when viewed from the ordinary distance, the junctions disappear altogether, and the shades mingle and blend together in the softest and most perfect manner. The mosaic which the workman was making in the shop where Rollo and Charles went in, was a small one, intended to form part of a bracelet. There were, however, some in the same shop that were quite large. They were framed like pictures, and were hanging up against the wall. Indeed, there was nothing but the circumstance that they were in a mosaic shop, to denote that they were not pictures, beautifully painted in oil. One was a landscape; another was a portrait of a beautiful girl; another was a basket of fruit and flowers. In some of the churches of Rome, there are mosaics of very large size, which are exact and beautiful copies of some of the most celebrated paintings in the world. Strangers coming into the churches and looking at these pictures, never imagine them to be mosaics, and when they are told that they are so, they can scarcely believe the story. But on examining them very near, or in looking at them through an opera glass,--for sometimes you cannot get very near them,--you can easily see the demarcations between the little stones. It is a very curious circumstance that the most ancient pictures in the churches of Rome and Italy are mosaics, and not paintings. Mosaics seem to have come first in the history of art, and paintings followed, in imitation of them. Indeed, the arranging of different colored stones in a pavement, or in a floor, so as to represent some ornamental design, would naturally be the first attempt at decoration made in the construction of buildings. Then would follow casing the walls with different colored marbles, arranged in pretty ways, and finally the representation of men and animals would be attempted. This we find, from an examination of ancient monuments, was the actual course of things, and painting in oil came in at the end as an imitation of pictures in stone. Rollo and Charles were induced to go into the mosaic shop by the invitation of the workman, whose table, as it happened, stood near the door. He saw the two boys looking in somewhat wistfully, as they went by, and he invited them to walk in. He saw at once from their appearance that they were visitors that had just arrived in town, and though he did not expect that they would buy any of his mosaics themselves, he thought that there might be ladies in their party who would come and buy, if he treated the boys politely. It was on that account that he invited them to come in. And when they had looked about the establishment as much as they wished, and were ready to go away, he gave them each one of his cards, and asked them to give the cards to the ladies of their party. "But there are no ladies of my party," said Rollo. "Who is of your party?" asked the workman. "Only a young gentleman," said Rollo. "O, very well," rejoined the man, "that will do just as well. He will certainly wish to buy mosaics, while he is in Rome, for some of the young ladies of his acquaintance." "I think that is very doubtful," said Rollo; "but nevertheless I will give him the card." So Rollo and Charles bade the mosaic man good by, and went away. They had been so much interested in what they had seen in the mosaic shop, and their attention, now that they had left it, was so much occupied with looking at the display of mosaics and cameos which they saw in the little show cases along the street, that Rollo forgot entirely his resolve to take an observation, so as not to lose his way. The boys walked on together until they came to a long and straight, though not very wide street, which was so full of animation and bustle, and was bordered, moreover, on each side by so many gay looking shops, that Rollo said he was satisfied it must be one of the principal streets of the town. It was, in fact, the principal street in the town. The street is called _the Corso_. It runs in a straight line from the Porto del Popolo, which I have already described, into the very heart of the city. It is near the inner end of this street that the great region of ancient ruins begins. Rollo and Charles began to walk along the Corso, looking at the shops as they went on. They were obliged, however, to walk in the middle of the street, for the sidewalks, where there were any, were so narrow and irregular as to be of very little service. Indeed, almost all the pedestrians walked in the middle of the street. Now and then a carriage came along, it is true, but the people in that case opened to the right and left, and let it go by. After going on for some distance, Charles began to look about him somewhat uneasily. "Rollo," said he, "are you sure that we can find our way home again?" "O! I forgot about the way home," said Rollo; "but never mind; I can find it easily enough. I can inquire. What is the name of the hotel?" "I don't know," said Charles. "Don't know?" repeated Rollo, in a tone of surprise. "Don't know the name of the hotel where you are lodging?" "No," said Charles, "we only came last night, and I don't know the name of the hotel at all." "Nor of the street that it is in?" asked Rollo. "No," said Charles. "Then," said Rollo, in rather a desponding tone, "I don't know what we shall do." Just then a carriage was seen coming along; and Rollo and Charles, who had stopped suddenly in the middle of the street, in their surprise and alarm, were obliged to run quick to get out of the way. The carriage was a very elegant one in red and gold, and there were two elegantly dressed footmen standing behind. "That must be a cardinal's carriage," said Rollo, when the carriage had gone by. "How do you know?" asked Charles. "Uncle George told me about them," said Rollo. "You see Rome and all the country about here is under the government of the pope, and the chief officers of his government are the cardinals; and uncle George told me that they ride about in elegant carriages, in red and gold, very splendid and gay. We saw one of them, too, when we were coming into town." Charles watched the carriage a minute or two, until it had gone some distance away, and then turning to Rollo again, he said,-- "And how about finding our way home again, Rollo?" "Ah!" said Rollo, "in regard to that I don't know. We shall have to take a carriage when we want to go home, so we may as well go on and have our walk out. We are lost now, and we can't be any more lost go where we will." So the boys walked on. Presently they came to a large square, with an immense column standing in the centre of it. This column was so similar to the little model which Rollo had seen at the hotel, that he exclaimed at once that it was the same. It had a spiral line of sculptures winding round and round it, from the base to the summit. The figures, however, were very much corroded and worn away, as were indeed all the angles and edges of the base, and of the capital of the column, by the tooth of time. The column had been standing there for eighteen or twenty centuries. "I saw a model of that very column," said Rollo, "in a little room at the hotel. It is the column of Trajan. I'll prove it to you." So Rollo asked a gentleman, who was standing on the sidewalk with a Murray's Guide Book in his hand, and who Rollo knew, by that circumstance, was an English or American visitor, if that was not the column of Trajan. "No," said the gentleman; "it is the column of Antonine." Rollo looked somewhat abashed at receiving this answer, which turned his attempt to show off his learning to Charles into a ridiculous failure. "I thought it was called the column of Trajan," said he. The gentleman, who, as it happened, was an Englishman, made no reply to this observation, but quietly took out an opera glass from a case, which was strapped over his shoulder, and began studying the sculptures on the column. So Rollo and Charles walked away. "I believe the name of it is the column of Trajan," said Rollo, "for I saw the name of it on the model at the hotel. That man has just come, and he don't know." "Are you sure it is the same column?" suggested Charles. "Yes," said Rollo, "for it was exactly of that shape, and it had the same spiral line of images going round and round it, and a statue on the top. See, how old and venerable it looks! It was built almost two thousand years ago." "What did they build it for?" asked Charles. "Why, I don't know exactly," said Rollo, looking a little puzzled; "for ornament, I suppose." "But I don't see much ornament," said Charles, "in a big column standing all by itself, and with nothing for it to keep up." "But it _has_ something to keep up," rejoined Rollo. "Don't you see, there is a statue on the top of it." "If that's what it is to keep up," said Charles, "I don't see any sense in making the column so tall as to hold up the statue so high that we can't see it." "Nor I," said Rollo, "but they often made tall columns, like these, in ancient times." After rambling about a short time longer, the boys came to another open space, where there was a second column very similar in appearance to the first. "Ah!" said Rollo, "perhaps this is the column of Trajan." Rollo was right this time. There are several large columns standing among the ruins of Rome, and among them are two with spiral lines of sculpture around them, which are extremely similar to each other, and it is not at all surprising that Rollo was at first deceived by the resemblance between them. These columns were built in honor of the victories of great generals, and the spiral lines of sculptures were representations of their different exploits. The statue upon the top of the column was, originally, that of the man in whose honor the column was erected. But in the case of the Roman columns, these original statues have been taken down, and replaced by bronze images of saints, or of the Virgin Mary. Near the column of Trajan was a large sunken space, in the middle of the square, with a railing around it. In the bottom of this sunken space was a pavement, which looked very old, and rising from it were rows of columns with the tops broken off. The old pavement was eight or ten feet below the level of the street. "This must be some old ruin or other," said Rollo; "a temple perhaps." "Only I do not see," said Charles, "why they built their temples down so low." "Nor do I," said Rollo. "But, Rollo," said Charles, "I think it is time for us to begin to try to find our way home. I don't see how you are going to find the way at all." "If I only knew the name of the hotel, or even the name of the street," said Rollo, "I should know at once what to do." CHAPTER V. GETTING LOST. "And now," said Rollo, "the first thing is to find somebody that can speak French or English, for us to inquire of." "What good will that do?" asked Charles, "as long as we don't know what to ask them for?" "True," said Rollo. "That's a real difficulty. I wish we just knew the name of the hotel. At any rate, we will walk along until we find a carriage, and I will be thinking what we had better do." The boys walked along together. Charles kept silence, so as not to interrupt Rollo in his thinking. "All I know," said Rollo, after a short pause, "is, that the long, straight street that we came through, is the Corso. I have heard of that street before. If we could only find our way to the Corso, I believe that I could follow it along, and at last find the mosaic shop, and so get back to our hotel." "Very well," said Charles, "let us try." "Or, we might get into a carriage," said Rollo, "and direct the coachman which way to drive by pointing." "So we could," said Charles. "And I should like that, for I am tired of walking so much." "Then we will get a carriage," said Rollo. "We will take the first one that we see. You shall get inside, and I will mount upon the box with the coachman, and show him which way to go." "No," said Charles, "we will both get inside, for we can stand up there and point." "So we can," said Rollo. There are carriages to be found almost every where in the streets of Rome, especially in the neighborhood of the most interesting ruins. It was not long before Rollo and Charles came in sight of one. The coachman was looking toward them, and was cracking his whip to attract their attention. Rollo and Charles walked directly towards the spot, and Rollo, taking out his watch, and showing the coachman what o'clock it was, said,-- "_Per hora._" This was to notify the coachman that he took the carriage by the hour. "_Si, signore_," said the coachman; and then Rollo and Charles got in. The carriage was entirely open,--the top being turned back,--so that it afforded an uninterrupted view in every direction; and also, by standing up and pointing forward, the boys could easily indicate to the coachman which way they wished him to drive. Rollo, however, in the first instance, directed him in words to drive to the Corso. "_Si, signore_," said the coachman; and so he drove on. The boys sat in the carriage, or stood up to look back at the various objects of interest that attracted them as they passed. The scenes through which the driver took them seemed very strange. Every thing in Rome was strange to them, and their course now lay through a part of the city which they had not been in before. Their attention was continually attracted first upon this side of the carriage and then upon the other, as they rode along; and they pointed out to each other the remarkable objects they were passing. The driver meanwhile upon his seat drove on, entirely indifferent to it all. The scenes that were so new to the boys, were perfectly familiar to him. [Illustration: RIDING AMONG THE RUINS.] He soon entered a region of dark, crooked, and winding alleys, where Rollo said that he and Charles could never have found their way, if they had undertaken it alone. They frequently passed portions of old ruins. In some places these ruins consisted of columns standing alone, or immense fragments of broken arches that had fallen down, and now lay neglected upon the ground. In other places, the remains of ancient temples stood built in with the houses of the street, with market women at their stalls below, forming a strange and incongruous spectacle of ancient magnificence and splendor, surrounded and overwhelmed with modern poverty and degradation. As the carriage drove through these places, Rollo and Charles stood up in it, supporting themselves by pressing their knees against the front seat, and holding on to each other. They stood up thus partly to be enabled to see better, and partly so as to be ready to point out the way as soon as they should enter the Corso. It was not long before they came to the Corso. The coachman then looked round, as if to inquire of the boys what he was to do next. "Go right on," said Rollo; and so saying, he stood up in the carriage, and pointed forward. The coachman, of course, did not understand the words, but the gesture was significant enough, and so he drove on. "Now watch, Charley, sharp," said Rollo; "and when you see the street that you think is the one where we came into the Corso, tell me." So the boys drove on through the Corso, standing up all the time in the middle of the carriage, and looking about them in a very eager manner. They went on in this way for some time, but they could not identify any of the branch streets as the one by which they had come into the Corso. "Never mind," said Rollo; "we will turn off into any of these streets, and perhaps we shall come upon the hotel. We will take the streets that look most like it, and at any rate, we shall have a good ride, and see the city of Rome." Rollo accordingly pointed to a side street when he wished the coachman to turn. The coachman said, "_Si, signore_," and immediately went in that direction. As he advanced in the new street, the boys looked about on all sides to see if they could recognize any signs of their approach to their hotel. After going on a little way, and seeing nothing that looked at all familiar, Rollo made signs to the coachman to turn down another street, which he thought looked promising. The coachman did as he was directed, wondering a little, however, at the strange demeanor of the boys; and feeling somewhat curious to know where they wanted to go. He, however, felt comparatively little interest in the question, after all; for, as he was paid by the hour, it was of no consequence to him where they directed him to drive. Rollo now perceived that Charles began to be somewhat anxious in respect to the situation they were in, and so he tried in every way to encourage him, and to amuse his mind. "I'll tell you what we will do," said Rollo. "This street that we are in now seems to be a good long one, and we will drive through the whole length of it, and you shall look down all the streets that open into it on the right hand, and I will on the left; and if we see any thing that looks like our hotel, we will stop." So they rode on, each boy looking out on his side, until at length they came to the end of the street, where there was a sort of opening, and a river. There was a bridge across the river, and an ancient and venerable-looking castle on the other side of it. "Ah," said Rollo, "here is the River Tiber." "How do you know that that is the name of it?" asked Charles. "Because I know it is the Tiber that Rome is built upon," replied Rollo,--"the Yellow Tiber, as they call it. Don't you see how yellow it is?" As Rollo said this, he made signs for the coachman to turn out to the side of the street at the entrance of the bridge, and to stop there. The coachman did as he was directed, and then Rollo and Charles, still standing up in the carriage, had a fine view of the bridge and of the river, and also of the Castle of St. Angelo beyond. The water of the river was quite turbid, and was of a yellow color. "That's the river," said Rollo, "that Romulus and Remus were floated down on, in that little ark." "What little ark?" asked Charles. "Why, you see," replied Rollo, "when Romulus and Remus were babies, the story is that somebody wanted to have them killed; but he did not like to kill them himself with his own hand, and therefore he put them into a sort of basket, made of bulrushes, and set them afloat on this river, up above here a little way. So they floated down the stream, and came along by here." "Under this bridge?" asked Charles. "Under where this bridge is now," said Rollo; "but of course there was no bridge here then. There was no town here then--nothing but fields and woods." "And what became of the babies?" asked Charles. "Why, they floated down below here a little way," said Rollo, "to a place where there is a turn in the river; and there the basket went ashore, and was upset, and the children crawled out on the sand, and began to cry. Pretty soon a wolf, who was in the thicket near by, heard the crying, and came down to see what it was." "And did he eat them up?" asked Charles. "It was not a he wolf," said Rollo; "it was a she wolf--an old mother wolf. She thought that the children were little wolves, and she came to them, and lay down by them, nursed them, and took care of them, just as if she had been a cat, and they had been her two kittens." "O Rollo," said Charles, "what a story! I don't believe it." "Nor I," said Rollo. "Indeed, I don't think any body nowadays believes it exactly. But that is really the story. You can read it in the history of Rome. These two children, when they grew up, laid the foundations of Rome. I don't really believe that the story is true; but if it is true, this is the very place where the basket, with the two babies in it, must have drifted along." Charles gazed for a few minutes in silence on the current of turbid water which was shooting swiftly under the bridge, and then said that it was time for them to go. "Yes," said Rollo; "and we will turn round and go back, for it is of no use to go over the bridge. I am sure that we did not come over the river when we set out from the hotel, and so we must keep on this side." Rollo concluded, however, not to go back the same way that he came; and so making signs to the coachman for this purpose, he turned into another street, and as the carriage drove along, he and Charles looked out in every direction for their hotel; but no signs of it were to be seen. After going on for some distance, Rollo's attention was attracted by a sign in English over a shop door as follows:-- MANUFACTURE OF ROMAN SCARFS. ENGLISH SPOKEN. "Ah!" he exclaimed, suddenly, "that is just what I wanted to find." And he immediately made a sign for the coachman to stop at the door. "What is it?" asked Charles. "It is a place where they make Roman scarfs," said Rollo, "and I want to get one for my cousin Lucy. She told me to be sure, if I came to Rome, to get her a Roman scarf. You can't get them in any other place." As Rollo said this, he descended from the carriage, and Charles followed him. "They speak English here," said Rollo, as he went into the shop, "and so we shall not have any difficulty." These Roman scarfs are very pretty ornaments for the necks and shoulders of ladies. They are made of silk, and are of various sizes, some being large enough to form a good wide mantle, and others not much wider than a wide ribbon. The central part of the scarf is usually of some uniform hue, such as black, blue, green, or brown; and the ends are ornamented with stripes of various colors, which pass across from side to side. Rollo wished to get a small scarf, and the ground of it was to be green. This was in accordance with the instructions which Lucy had given him. He found great difficulty, however, in making the shopman understand what he wanted. To all that Rollo said, the shopman smiled, and said only, "Yes, sir, yes, sir," and took down continually scarfs and aprons of different kinds, and showed them to Rollo, to see if any of them were what he wanted. At last, by pointing to a large one that had a green ground, and saying, "Color like that," and then to a small one of a different kind, and saying, "Small, like that," the shopman began to understand. "Yes, sir," said the shopman; "yes, sir; I understand. Must one make--make. See!" So saying, the shopman opened a door in the back side of the shop, and showed Rollo and Charles the entrance to a room in the rear, where the boys had heard before the sound of a continual thumping, and where now they saw several silk looms, with girls at work at them, weaving scarfs. "Ah, yes," said Rollo. "You mean that you can make me one. That will be a good plan, Charley," he added. "Lucy will like it all the better if I tell her it was made on purpose for her. "When can you have it done?" asked Rollo. "Yes, sir," said the shopman, bowing and smiling; "yes, sir; yes, sir." "When?" repeated Rollo. "What time?" "Ah, yes, sir," said the shopman. "The time. All time, every time. Yesterday." "Yesterday!" repeated Rollo, puzzled. "To-morrow," said the man, correcting himself. He had said yesterday by mistake for to-morrow. "To-morrow. To-morrow he will be ready--the scarf." "What time to-morrow shall I come?" asked Rollo. "Yes, sir," said the shopman, bowing again, and smiling in a very complacent manner. "Yes, sir, to-morrow." "But what _time_ to-morrow?" repeated Rollo, speaking very distinctly, and emphasizing very strongly the word _time_. "What time?" "O, every time," said the man; "all time. You shall have him every time to-morrow, because you see he will make begin the work on him this day." "Very well," said Rollo, "then I will come to-morrow, about noon." So Rollo and Charles bade the shopman good by, and went out of the shop. "Is that what they call speaking English?" asked Charles. "So it seems," said Rollo. "Sometimes they speak a great deal worse than that, and yet call it speaking English." So Rollo and Charles got into the carriage again. Rollo took out his wallet, and made a memorandum of the name of the shop where he had engaged the sash, and of the street and number. The coachman sat quietly upon his seat, waiting for Rollo to finish his writing, and expecting then to receive directions where he was to go. "If I could only find a commissioner that speaks French or English," said Rollo, "I could tell him what we want, and he could tell the coachman, and in that way we should soon get home." "Can't you find one at some hotel?" asked Charles. "Why, yes," said Rollo. "Why did not I think of that? We'll stop at the very first hotel we come to. I'll let him drive on till he comes to one. No; I'll tell him to go to the Hotel d'Amerique. That is the only name of a hotel that I know." So Rollo pronounced the words "Hotel d'Amerique" to the coachman, and the coachman, saying, "_Si, signore_," drove on. In a short time he drew up before the door of the hotel where Mr. George had stopped first, on arriving in town. A waiter came to the door. "Is there a commissioner here who speaks English or French?" asked Rollo. "Yes, sir," said a man who was standing by the side of the door when the carriage stopped, and who now came forward. "_I_ speak English." "I want you to help us find our hotel," said Rollo. "We don't know the name of it. I shall know it when I see it; and so I want you to get on the box with the coachman, and direct him to drive to one hotel after another, till I see which is the right one." "Very well," said the commissioner, "I will go. Do you remember any thing about the hotel,--how it was situated." "There was a small, open space before it," said Rollo, "and a fountain under a tree by the side of it." "It must have been the Hotel d'Angleterre," said the commissioner. "In going in at the front door, we went _down_ one or two steps, instead of up," said Rollo. "Yes," said the commissioner, "it was the Hotel d'Angleterre." Then seating himself on the box by the side of the coachman, he said to the latter, addressing him in Italian,-- "Lo canda d'Ingleterra," which is the Italian for Hotel d'Angleterre, or, as we should express it in our language, "The English Hotel." The coachman drove on, and in a few minutes came to the hotel. "Yes," said Rollo, as soon as he came in sight of it. "Yes, this is the very place." If Rollo had had any doubts of his being right, they would have been dispelled by the sight of Mr. George, who was standing at the hotel door at the time they arrived. "So you come home in a carriage," said Mr. George. "Why, we got lost," said Rollo. "I did not take notice of the name of our hotel when we went out, and so we could not find our way home again." "That's of no consequence," said Mr. George. "I am glad you had sense enough to take a commissioner. Whenever you get into any difficulty whatever in a European town, go right to a commissioner, and he will help you out." So Rollo paid the coachman and the commissioner, and then he and Charles went into the hotel. CHAPTER VI. THE COLISEUM. The grandest of all the ruins in Rome, and perhaps, indeed, of all the ruins in the world, is the Coliseum. The Coliseum was built as a place for the exhibition of games and spectacles. It was of an oval form, with seats rising one above another on all sides, and a large arena in the centre. There was no roof. The building was so immensely large, that it would have been almost impossible to have made a roof over it. The spectacles which were exhibited in such buildings as these were usually combats, either of men with men, or of men with wild beasts. These were real combats, in which either the men or the beasts were actually killed. The thousands of people that sat upon the seats all around, watched the conflict, while it was going on, with intense excitement, and shouted with ferocious joy at the end of it, in honor of the victors. The men that fought in the arena were generally captives taken in battle, in distant countries, and the wild beasts were lions, tigers, and bears, that were sent home from Africa, or from the dark forests in the north of Europe. The great generals who went out at the head of the Roman armies to conquer these distant realms and annex them to the empire, sent home these captives and wild beasts. They sent them for the express purpose of amusing the Roman people with them, by making them fight in these great amphitheatres. There was such an amphitheatre in or near almost every large town; but the greatest, or at least the most celebrated, of all these structures, was this Coliseum at Rome. Mr. George and Rollo went to the Coliseum in a carriage. After passing through almost the whole length of the Corso, they passed successively through several crooked and narrow streets, and at length emerged into the great region of the ruins. On every side were tall columns, broken and decayed, and immense arches standing meaningless and alone, and mounds of ancient masonry, with weeds and flowers waving in the air on the top of them. There were no houses, or scarcely any, in this part of the city, but only grassy slopes with old walls appearing here and there among them; and in some places enclosed fields and gardens, with corn, and beans, and garden vegetables of every kind, growing at the base of the majestic ruins. The carriage stopped at one end of the Coliseum, where there was a passage way leading through stupendous arches into the interior. They dismissed the carriage, Rollo having first paid the coachman the fare. They then, after gazing upward a moment at the vast pile of arches upon arches, towering above them, advanced towards the openings, in order to go in. There was a soldier with a musket in his hands, bayonet set, walking to and fro at the entrance. He, however, said nothing to Mr. George and Rollo; and so, passing by him, they went in. They passed in under immense arches of the most massive masonry, and between the great piers built to sustain the arches, until they reached the arena. There was a broad gravel walk passing across the arena from end to end, and another leading around the circumference of it. The rest of the surface was covered with grass, smooth and green. The form of the arena was oval, as has already been said, and on every side there ascended the sloping tiers, rising one above another to a vast height, on which the seats for the spectators had been placed. Mr. George and Rollo advanced along the central walk, and looked around them, surveying the scene,--their minds filled with emotions of wonder and awe. "What a monstrous place it was!" said Rollo. "It was, indeed," said Mr. George. "Is it here where the men fought with the lions and the tigers?" asked Rollo, pointing around him over the arena. "Yes," said Mr. George. "And up there, all around were the seats of the spectators, I suppose," said Rollo. "Yes," said Mr. George, "on those slopes." You must know that the scats, and all the inside finish of the Coliseum, were originally of marble, and people have stripped it all away, and left nothing but the naked masonry; and even that is all now going to ruin. "What did they strip the marble off for?" asked Rollo. "To build their houses and palaces with," replied Mr. George. "Half of the modern palaces of Rome are built of stone and marble plundered from the ancient ruins." "O, uncle George!" exclaimed Rollo. "Come out here where we can sit down," said Mr. George, "and I'll tell you all about it." [Illustration: LOOKING DOWN FROM THE COLISEUM.] So saying, Mr. George led the way, and Rollo followed to one side of the arena, where they could sit down on a large, flat stone, which seemed to have been an ancient step. They were over-shadowed where they sat by piers and arches, and by the masses of weeds and shrubbery that were growing on the mouldering summits of them, and waving in the wind. In the centre of the arena was a large cross, with a sort of platform around it, and steps to go up. And all around the arena, on the sides, at equal distances, there extended a range of little chapels, with crucifixes and other Catholic symbols. The arena of the Coliseum was kept in very neat order. For a wonder, there were no beggars to be seen, but instead of them there were various parties of well-dressed visitors walking about the paths, or sitting on the massive stone fragments which lay under the ruined arches. High up above these arches, the sloping platforms, on which the seats formerly were placed, were to be seen rising one above another, tier after tier, to a great height, with the ruins of galleries, corridors, and vaulted passage ways passing around among them. The upper surfaces of all these ruins were covered with grass and shrubbery. "What has become of all the seats, uncle George?" said Rollo. "Why, the seats, I suppose, were made of marble," replied Mr. George, "or some other valuable material, and so all the stones have been taken away." Presently Rollo saw a party of visitors coming into view far up among the upper stories of the ruins. "Look, uncle George! Look!" said he; "there are some people away up there, as high as the third or fourth story. How do you suppose they got up there? Couldn't you and I go?" "I presume so," said Mr. George. "I suppose that, in the way of climbing, you and I can go as high as most people." While Mr. George was saying this, Rollo was adjusting his opera glass to his eyes, in order to take a nearer view of the party among the ruins. "There are four of them," said he. "I see a gentleman, and two ladies, and a little girl. They seem to be gathering something." "Plants, perhaps," said Mr. George, "and flowers." "Plants!" said Rollo, contemptuously; "I don't believe that any thing grows out of such old stones and mortar but weeds." "We call such things weeds," said Mr. George, "when they grow in the gardens or fields, and are in the way; but when they grow in wild places where they belong, they are plants and flowers." "The gentleman is gathering them from high places all around him," said Rollo, "and is giving them to the ladies, and they are putting them in between the leaves of a book." "They are going to carry them away as souvenirs of the Coliseum, I suppose," said Mr. George. "The girl has got a white stone in her hand," said Rollo. "Perhaps it is a piece of marble that she has picked up," said Mr. George. "Now she has thrown down her white stone," said Rollo, "and has begun to gather flowers." "There is an immense number of plants that grow in and upon the Coliseum," said Mr. George. "A botanist once made a complete collection of them. How many species do you think he found?" "Twenty," said Rollo. "Guess again," said Mr. George. "Fifteen," said Rollo. "O, you must guess more, not less," said Mr. George. "Thirty," said Rollo. "More," said Mr. George. "Forty," said Rollo. "Add one cipher to it," said Mr. George, "and then you will be pretty near right." "What! four hundred?" exclaimed Rollo. "Yes," said Mr. George. "A botanist made a catalogue of four hundred and twenty plants, all growing on the ruins of this single building." "O, uncle George!" said Rollo; "I don't think that can possibly be. I mean to see." So saying, Rollo laid the opera glass down upon the seat where he had been sitting, and began to examine the masses of old ruined masonry near him, with a view of seeing how many different kinds of plants he could find. "Must I count every thing, uncle George?" said Rollo. "Yes," said Mr. George, "every thing that is a plant. Every different kind of sprig, or little weed, that you can find--mosses, lichens, and all." Rollo began to count. He very soon got up to twenty, and so he came to the conclusion that the guide book--which was the authority on which Mr. George had stated the number of plants found upon the ruins--was right. While Rollo was thus engaged, Mr. George had remained quietly in his seat, and had occupied himself with studying the guide book. "Uncle George," said Rollo, when he came back, "I give it up. I have no doubt that there are hundreds of plants in all, growing on these ruins." "Yes," said Mr. George; "whatever is stated in this book is very apt to prove true." "What else did you read about, uncle George," said Rollo, "while I was counting the plants?" "I read," said Mr. George, "that the Coliseum was begun about A. D. 72, by one of the Roman emperors." "Then it is almost eighteen hundred years old," said Rollo. "Yes," said Mr. George; "and when it was first opened after it was finished, they had a sort of inauguration of it, with great celebrations, that continued one hundred days." "That is over three months," said Rollo. "Yes," said Mr. George; "it was a very long celebration. During this time about five thousand wild beasts were killed in the combats in the arena." "This very arena right before us?" said Rollo. "Yes," said Mr. George. On hearing this, Rollo looked upon the arena with renewed interest and pleasure. He endeavored to picture to himself the lions, and tigers, and leopards, and other ferocious wild beasts, growling, snarling, and tumbling over each other there, in the desperate combats which they waged among themselves, or with the men sent in to fight with them. "It continued to be used for such fights," added Mr. George, "for four hundred years; and during this time a great many Christians were sent in to be devoured by wild beasts, for the entertainment of the populace. "After a while," continued Mr. George, "the Roman empire became Christian; and then the government put a stop to all these savage games." "And what did they do with the Coliseum then?" asked Rollo. "They did not know what to do with it for a time," said Mr. George; "but at last, when wars broke out, and Rome was besieged, they tried to turn it into a fortress." "I should think it would make an excellent fortress," said Rollo, "only there are no port-holes for the cannon." "Ah! but they had no cannon in those days," said Mr. George. "They had only bows and arrows, spears, javelins, and such sort of weapons, so that they did not require any port-holes. The men could shoot their weapons from the top of the wall." In further conversation on the subject of the Coliseum, Mr. George explained to Rollo how, in process of time, Rome was taken by the barbarians, and a great portion of the Coliseum was destroyed; and then, afterwards, when peace was restored, how the government, instead of repairing the building, pulled it to pieces still more, in order to get marble, and hewn stone, and sculptured columns, to build palaces with; and how, at a later period, there was a plan formed for converting the vast structure into a manufactory; and how, in connection with this plan, immense numbers of shops were fitted up in the arcades and arches below,--and how the plan finally failed, after having cost the pope who undertook it ever so many thousand Roman dollars; how, after this, it remained for many centuries wholly neglected, and the stones, falling in from above, together with the broken bricks and mortar, formed on the arena below, and all around the walls outside, immense heaps of rubbish; and finally, how, about one hundred years ago, people began to take an interest in the ruins, and to wish to clear away the rubbish, and to prop up and preserve what remained of the walls and arches. "It was the French that cleared away the rubbish at last," said Mr. George, "and put the ruins in order." "The French!" repeated Rollo; "how came the French here?" "I don't know," said Mr. George. "The French are every where. And wherever they go, they always take with their armies a corps of philosophers, artists, and men of science, who look up every thing that is curious, and put it in order, and preserve it if they can." "Then I am glad they came here," said Rollo. Here Mr. George shut his book, and rose from his seat, saying, as he did so,-- "The Coliseum is so large that it covers six acres of ground." "Six acres?" repeated Rollo. "Yes," said Mr. George. "It is six hundred and twenty feet long. That is monstrous for such a building; but then the steamship Great Eastern is about a hundred feet longer." "Then the Great Eastern is bigger than the Coliseum." "She is longer," said Mr. George, "but she is not so wide nor so high." "And which, all things considered, is the greatest work, do you think?" asked Rollo. "The Coliseum may have cost the most labor," said Mr. George, "but the Great Eastern is far above it, in my opinion, in every element of real greatness. The Coliseum is a most wonderful structure, no doubt; but the building of an iron ship like the Great Eastern, to be propelled by steam against all the storms and tempests of the ocean, to the remotest corners of the earth, with ten thousand tons of merchandise on board, or ten thousand men, is, in my opinion, much the greatest exploit." "At any rate," said Rollo, "the Coliseum makes the finest ruin." "I am not certain of that, even," said Mr. George. "Suppose that the Great Eastern were to be drawn up upon the shore somewhere near London, and be abandoned there; and that then the whole world should relapse into barbarism, and remain so for a thousand years, and afterwards there should come a revival of science and civilization, and people should come here to see the ruins of the Coliseum, and go to London to see those of the great ship, I think they would consider the ship the greater wonder of the two." "I think they would," said Rollo, "if they understood it all as well." "They could not be easily made to believe, I suppose," said Mr. George, "that such an immense structure, all of iron, could have been made, and launched, and then navigated all over the world just by the power of the maze of iron beams and wheels, and machinery, which they would see in ruins in the hold." "Uncle George," said Rollo, "what curious bricks the Romans used!" So saying, Rollo pointed to the bricks in a mass of masonry near where they were standing. These bricks, like all those that were used in the construction of the building, were very flat. They were a great deal longer and a great deal wider than our bricks, and were yet not much more than half as thick. This gave them a very thin and flat appearance. Instead of being red, too, they were of a yellow color. These bricks had not originally been used for outside works, but only for filling in the solid parts of the walls, and for forming the arches. But the stones with which the brick masonry had been covered and concealed having been removed, the bricks were of course in many places brought to view. After looking about for some time, Rollo found a brick with two letters stamped upon it. It was evident that the letters had been stamped upon the clay in the making of the brick, while it was yet soft. The letters were P. D. "Look, uncle George!" said Rollo; "look at those letters! What do you suppose they mean?" "That is very curious," said Mr. George; and so saying he proceeded to examine the letters very closely. "They were evidently stamped upon the brick," he said, "when it was soft. Perhaps they are the initials of the maker's name." "I mean to look and see if all the bricks are stamped so," said Rollo. So Rollo began to examine the other bricks wherever he could find any which had a side exposed to view; but though he found some which contained the letters, there were many others where no letters were to be seen. "Perhaps the letters are on the under side," said Rollo. "I mean to get a stone and knock up some of the bricks, if I can, and see." "No," said Mr. George; "that won't do." "Yes, uncle George," said Rollo; "I want to see very much. And besides, I want to get a piece of a brick with the letters on it, to carry home as a specimen." "A specimen of what?" asked Mr. George. "A specimen of the Coliseum," said Rollo. "No," said Mr. George; "I don't think that will do. They don't want to have the Coliseum knocked to pieces, and carried off any more." "Who don't?" asked Rollo. "The government," said Mr. George; "the pope." "But it's very hard," said Rollo, "if the popes, after plundering the Coliseum themselves for hundreds of years, and carrying off all the beautiful marbles, and columns, and statues, to build their palaces with, can't let an American boy like me take away a little bit of a brick to put into my museum for a specimen." Mr. George laughed and walked on. Rollo, who never persisted in desiring to do any thing which his uncle disapproved of, quietly followed him. "Uncle George," said Rollo, "how do you suppose we can get up into the upper part, among the tiers of seats?" "I think there must be a staircase somewhere," said Mr. George. "We will ramble about, and see if we do not find one." So they walked on. They went sometimes along the margin of the arena, and then at other times they turned in under immense openings in masonry, and walked along the vaulted corridors, which were built in the thickness of the walls. There were several of these corridors side by side, each going entirely round the arena. They were surmounted by stupendous arches, which were built to sustain the upper portions of the building, which contained the seats for the spectators, and the passages on the upper floors leading to them. [Illustration: VIEW OF THE LOWER CORRIDOR.] After rambling on through and among the corridors for some time, Mr. George and Rollo, on emerging again into the arena, came to a wooden gate at the foot of a broad flight of stone steps, which seemed to lead up into the higher stories of the ruin. "Ah!" exclaimed Rollo, as soon as he saw this gateway and the flight of steps beyond it, "this is the gate that leads up to the upper tiers." "Yes," replied Mr. George, "only it is shut and locked." Rollo went to the gate and took hold of it, but found, as Mr. George had said, that it was locked. "But here comes the custodian," said Mr. George. Rollo looked, and saw a man coming along the side of the arena with a key in his hand. When the man came near, he looked at Mr. George and Rollo, and also at the door, and then asked a question in Italian. "_Si, signore_," said Mr. George. So the man advanced and unlocked the door. As soon as he had unlocked it, and Mr. George and Rollo had passed through, he looked towards them again, and asked another question. "_No, signore_," said Mr. George. Mr. George and Rollo then began to go up the stairs, while the man, having locked the door after them, went away. CHAPTER VII. THE GLADIATOR. "How did you know what it was that that man asked you?" asked Rollo. "I knew from the circumstances of the case," replied Mr. George. "The first question I knew must be whether we wished to go up; and the second, whether we wished him to go with us." "What do you suppose they keep the gate locked for?" asked Rollo. "So as to _make_ us pay when we come down," said Mr. George. "Do you suppose they mean to make us pay?" asked Rollo. "They will not make us, exactly," said Mr. George; "but they will expect something, no doubt. There may be another reason, however, why they keep the gate locked; and that is, to prevent children and stragglers from going up, where they might fall and break their necks at some of the exposed and dangerous places." "Do you suppose that there are dangerous places up here?" asked Rollo. "Yes," said Mr. George; "I suppose there are a great many; and I advise you to be very careful where you go." The flight of stairs where Mr. George and Rollo were ascending was very broad; and it was formed of the long, flat bricks, such as Rollo had observed below. The bricks were placed edgewise. "I suppose that these steps were covered with slabs of marble, in old times," said Rollo. "Probably," said Mr. George; "either with marble, or some other harder stone." After ascending some distance, Rollo, who went forward, came out upon the landing which led to a range of corridors in the second story, as it were. There were several of these corridors, running side by side, all along the building. On one side, you could pass through arches, and come out to the platforms where the seats had originally been arranged, and where you could look down upon the arena. The seats themselves were all gone, and in their places nothing was left but sloping platforms, all gone to ruin, and covered now with grass, and weeds, and tall bramble bushes. On the other side, you could go out to the outer wall, and look down through immense arched openings, to the ground below.[5] [Footnote 5: See Frontispiece.] "Take care, Rollo," said Mr. George; "don't go too near." "You may go as near as you think it is safe," said Rollo, "and I will keep back an inch from where you go." "That's right," said Mr. George. "There is great pleasure and satisfaction in going into dangerous places with such a sensible boy as you." After rambling about among the arches and corridors of the second story for some time, Mr. George and Rollo mounted to a story above. They found ruins of staircases in great numbers, so that there were a great many different places where they could go up. Mr. George allowed Rollo to go about wherever he pleased, knowing that he would keep at a safe distance from all places where there was danger of falling. From time to time, they met other parties of visitors rambling about the ruins. If these persons were French or German, they generally bowed to Rollo and Mr. George as they passed, and greeted them with a pleasant smile, as if of recognition. If, on the other hand, they were English, they passed directly by, looking straight forward, as if they did not see them at all. Whenever Rollo came to a new staircase, he wished to ascend it, being seemingly desirous of getting up as high as he could. Mr. George made no objection to this. Indeed, he allowed Rollo to choose the way, and to go where he pleased. He himself followed, walking slowly, in a musing manner, filled, apparently, with wondering admiration, and contemplating the stupendous magnitude of the ruin. "Uncle George," said Rollo, "if I had my pressing book here, I would gather some of these plants and press them, to carry home." Mr. George did not answer. He was standing in an advanced position, where he had an uninterrupted survey of the whole interior of the Coliseum; and he was endeavoring to picture to his imagination the scene which must have been presented to view when the vast amphitheatre was filled with spectators. "If I had expected to find so many plants growing on the ruins of a building, I should have brought it," said Rollo. The pressing book which Rollo referred to, was one made expressly for the purpose of pressing flowers. The leaves of it were of blotting paper. Rollo was half inclined to ask Mr. George to put some specimens into the Guide Book; but he did _not_ ask him, because he knew that Mr. George did not like to have dried plants in the Guide Book. Such specimens between the leaves of a book interfere very much with the convenience of using it, by dropping out when you open the book, or impeding the turning of the leaves. "But I mean to come again," continued Rollo, "and bring my pressing book, and then I can get as many specimens as I please. Wouldn't you, uncle George?" "Wouldn't you what?" said Mr. George. Mr. George had been paying very little attention to what Rollo had been saying. "Come again some day," said Rollo, "and bring my pressing book, so as to collect specimens of some of these little plants." "Yes," said Mr. George, "that will be an excellent plan. And I wish, while you are doing it, you would gather some for me. And if you wish for some now, I can let you put them in the Guide Book." "No, I thank you," said Rollo. "I will wait till I come again." The height of the outer walls of the Coliseum is over a hundred and fifty feet, which would be the height of a house fifteen stories high. There are not many church steeples higher than that. If, therefore, you conceive of an oval-shaped field six acres in extent, with a massive wall one hundred and fifty feet high, and divided into four immense stories, surrounding it, and from the top of this wall ranges of seats, with passages between them, sloping in towards the centre, leaving about an acre of open and level space in the centre for the arena, the whole finished in the most magnificent and gorgeous manner, with columns, statues, sculptured ornaments, and all the seats, and walls, and staircases, and corridors, and vestibules, and tribunes, and pavilions for musicians, and seats for judges, designed and arranged in the highest style of architectural beauty, and encased and adorned with variegated marbles of the most gorgeous description,--if, I say, you can conceive of all this, you will have some faint idea of what the Coliseum must have been in the days of its glory. Mr. George and Rollo continued to ascend the different staircases which they met with in their wanderings, until at length they had reached a great elevation; and yet so immense was the extent of the interior of the edifice, that they were not at all too high to see the arena to advantage. Here Rollo crept out upon one of the sloping platforms, where there had formerly been seats for spectators, and calling to Mr. George to follow him, he sat down upon a great square stone, which seemed to have formed a part of the ancient foundation of the seats. "Come, uncle George," said Rollo, "let us sit down here a few minutes, and make believe that the games are going on, and that we are the spectators." "Yes," said Mr. George, "we will. In that way we can get a better idea of what the Coliseum was." "I wish we could bring it all back again," said Rollo, "just as it was in old times, by some sort of magic." "We must do it by the magic of imagination," said Mr. George. "Only," continued Rollo, "the things that they did down in the arena were so dreadful that we could not bear to look at them." "True," said Mr. George. "The spectacles must have been very dreadful, indeed." "Such as when the lions and tigers came out to tear and devour the poor Christians," said Rollo. "Yes," said Mr. George; "but generally, I suppose, when wild beasts and men were brought out together on the arena, it was the beasts that were killed, and not the men. It was a combat, and I suppose that the men were usually victorious. It was the spectacle of the fury of the combat, and of the bravery which the men displayed, and of the terrible danger that they were often exposed to, that so excited and pleased the spectators." "I should not have thought that they could have found any men that would have been willing to fight the beasts," said Rollo. "Perhaps the men were not willing," replied Mr. George, "but were compelled to fight them. Indeed, I suppose that they were generally prisoners of war or criminals. The generals used to bring home a great many prisoners of war from the different countries that they conquered, and these men were trained in Rome, and in other great cities, to fight on the arena, either with wild beasts, or with one another. They were called _gladiators_. There is a statue of one, wounded and dying, somewhere here in Rome." "I should like to see it," said Rollo. "We _shall_ see it, undoubtedly," said Mr. George. "It is one of the most celebrated statues in the world. It is called the _Dying Gladiator_. I presume the sculptor of it made it from his recollections of the posture and expression of face which were witnessed in the case of real gladiators in the arena, when they had been mortally wounded, and were sinking down to die." "We certainly must see it," said Rollo. "We certainly will," rejoined Mr. George. "It is celebrated all over the world. Byron wrote a very fine stanza describing it." "What was the stanza?" asked Rollo. "I don't remember it all," said Mr. George. "It was something about his sinking down upon the ground, leaning upon his hand, and the expression of his face showed, though he yielded to death, he conquered and triumphed over the pain. Then there is something about his wife and children, far away in Dacia, his native land, where he had been captured in fighting to protect them, and brought to Rome to fight and die in the Coliseum, to make amusement for the Roman populace." "I wish you could remember the lines themselves," said Rollo. "Perhaps I can find them in the Guide Book," said Mr. George. So saying, Mr. George opened the Guide Book, and turned to the index. "I believe," said he, "that the statue of the Dying Gladiator is in the Capitol." "We have not been there yet, have we?" asked Rollo. "Yes," replied Mr. George; "we went there the first day, to get a view from the cupola on the summit. But there is a museum of sculptures and statues there which we have not seen yet. You see the Capitol Hill was in ancient times one of the most important public places in Rome, and when the city was destroyed, immense numbers of statues, and inscribed marbles, and beautiful sculptured ornaments were buried up there in the rubbish and ruins. When, finally, they were dug out, new buildings were erected on the spot, and all the objects that were found there were arranged in a museum. Ah! here it is," he added. "I have found the lines." So Mr. George read the lines as follows. He read them in a slow and solemn manner. "I see before me the gladiator lie; He leans upon his hand; his manly brow Consents to death, but conquers agony; And his drooped head sinks gradually low; And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, Like the first of a thunder shower; and now The arena swims around him--he is gone, Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won. "He heard it, but he heeded not; his eyes Were with his heart, and that was far away. He recked not of the life he lost, nor prize, But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, There were his young barbarians all at play; There was their Dacian mother--he, their sire, Butchered to make a Roman holiday. All this rushed with his blood. Shall he expire, And unavenged? Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire." "The Goths did arise and glut their ire," said Mr. George, after he had finished reciting the lines, "for they were in great measure the authors of all this ruin and destruction." After sitting nearly half an hour in this place, Mr. George rose, and, Rollo following him, went back into the corridors again. They rambled along the corridors, and mounted the staircases to higher and higher points, until they had ascended as far as they could go. In these upper regions of the ruin Rollo had a good opportunity to procure specimens of marble and of stamped bricks, for in various places there, he found immense stores of bricks and marble, and other rubbish, piled up in square heaps under arches, or in great recesses among the ruins. Rollo selected some of the bricks which had stamps upon them, and then, with a piece of marble for a hammer, he contrived to break away all of the brick except the part which contained the stamp, and thus procured specimens of a convenient form for carrying. These specimens he wrapped separately in pieces of newspaper, and put them in his pockets. At length Mr. George said it was time for them to go home; so they began to descend. They went down by different passages and staircases from those which they had taken in coming up; but they came out at last at the same gateway. The custodian was just unlocking the gate when they arrived, in order to admit another party. Mr. George gave him a couple of pauls, and then he and Rollo set out to go home. Their way led them over the ancient site of the Roman Forum, which presented to view on every side, as they passed, broken columns and ruined arches, with the mouldering remains of ancient foundations, cropping out here and there amid grassy slopes and mounds. "Uncle George," said Rollo, as they walked along, "we are going directly by the Capitol Hill as we go home. Let us go in now and see the Dying Gladiator." "Very well," said Mr. George, "we will." Accordingly, when they reached the base of the hill, they turned to go up. There was a broad and steep paved ascent leading up the hill, somewhat like a road, only it was too steep for a carriage. Indeed, there were little steps at short intervals, with a sloping pavement between them. You see this ascent in the engraving. It is in the centre of the view. There are statues of lions at the foot of it, with water spouting from their mouths. At the top are larger statues of horses, standing on lofty pedestals, with men by the side of them, holding them by the bridles. These are ancient statues. They were found buried up in rubbish in an obscure quarter of Rome, about two hundred years ago. Beyond, you see other groups of colossal statuary raised on lofty pedestals in various parts of the great square which forms the summit of the hill. [Illustration: ASCENT TO THE CAPITOL.] On the left you see a church, standing in a very high position, with a still steeper ascent than the one I have been describing, leading up to it. On the right is a winding road for carriages, which leads up, by a tolerably gentle ascent, to the great square. The great square is surrounded with vast palaces, almost all of which are filled with paintings, statuary, sculptures, and other treasures of ancient and modern art. Mr. George and Rollo turned to the left after they had ascended into the square, and entered a door over which was an inscription denoting that it led to the museum of sculptures and statues. After ascending one or two staircases, they came to the entrance of a suit of apartments in which the statuary was contained. There was a public functionary, dressed somewhat like a soldier, standing sentinel at the door. He, however, readily allowed Mr. George and Rollo to pass in. There were various other parties of visitors going in at the same time. Mr. George and Rollo walked through one long room after another, with rows of statues, and busts, and other works of ancient sculpture on each side. These marbles were almost all more or less chipped and broken, or otherwise greatly defaced by the hard usage to which they had been subjected. "Uncle George," said Rollo, as they walked along, "how came all their ears and noses broken off in this way?" "Why, all these things were dug out from heaps of stones and rubbish," said Mr. George, "a few hundred years ago. For nearly a thousand years before that time, they were regarded as of no more value than so many old bricks. "Here's a gentleman coming," added Mr. George, interrupting himself, "who looks as if he could speak French. I mean to ask him where the hall of the Dying Gladiator is." Accordingly, when the gentleman came up, Mr. George, accosting him in French, asked him the question, and the gentleman, replying in French, gave the information in a very polite manner. It was a little farther on, he said. "Is there a special hall for the Dying Gladiator?" asked Rollo. "No," said Mr. George, "not for the Dying Gladiator alone. But many of the halls in these museums are named from the most celebrated statue that there is in them. And I knew that the room where the Dying Gladiator is placed was called by that name." So they walked on, and presently they came to the room. There were a great many large statues in it; but among them it was very easy to recognize at once the one which they had come to see, both on account of the conspicuous situation in which it was placed, and also from its form. Here is a representation of it. [Illustration: STATUE OF THE GLADIATOR.] Mr. George and Rollo both looked upon the statue for a few minutes in silence. "Yes," said Rollo, at length, "yes, I see. He is dying. He is sinking gradually down." "Do you see the wound in his side?" asked Mr. George. "Yes," replied Rollo, "and the drops of blood coming out." "He has dropped his sword," said Mr. George. "It is lying there near his hand." "What a short sword!" said Rollo. "There are some other things lying on the ground beneath him, but I do not know what they are." "Nor I," said Mr. George. "One of them seems to be a sort of trumpet. People think from that that this man was a herald." "But I thought he was a gladiator," said Rollo. "They call him a gladiator," replied Mr. George, "but nobody really knows what the statue was originally intended for. You see it was dug up out of a heap of rubbish, just as almost all these statues were, and people have to guess what they were intended for. This statue was dug up in a garden--a garden belonging to an ancient Roman villa." "What does that cord around his neck mean?" asked Rollo. "They think it means that the man was a Gaul. The Gauls used to wear such cords, I believe." "I thought he was a Dacian," said Rollo. "I suppose it is uncertain who he was," replied Mr. George; "but look at his face. See the expression of it. It is an expression of mingled suffering and rage, and yet he looks as if he were so far gone as to begin to be unconscious of every thing around him." "Yes," said Rollo; "he does not seem to notice us at all." "In that," said Mr. George, "is shown the great skill of the sculptor, to express such different, and, as one would think, almost conflicting emotions in the same face, at the same time." After looking at the statue some time longer, Rollo and Mr. George walked around the room, and looked at the other pieces of sculpture that there were there. They afterwards came back again to the gladiator, in order to take one more view of it before they went away. Mr. George advised Rollo to look at it well, and impress the image of it strongly on his mind. "It is one of the treasures of the world," said he; "and in the course of your life, though you may never see it here, in the original, again, you will meet with casts of it and drawings of it without number, and you will find descriptions of it and allusions to it continually recurring in the conversation that you hear and the books that you read. Indeed, the image of the Dying Gladiator forms a part of the mental furnishing of every highly-cultivated intellect in the civilized world." CHAPTER VIII. THE TARPEIAN ROCK. One morning while Mr. George and Rollo were taking breakfast together in the dining room of the hotel, Mr. George remarked that he had received some news that morning. "Is it good news, or bad news?" asked Rollo. "It is good for me," replied Mr. George, "but I rather think you will consider it bad for you." "Tell me what it is," said Rollo, "and then I will tell you how I consider it." So Mr. George informed Rollo that the news which he had received was, that there had been an arrival from America, and that the last night's post had brought the papers to town. "And so," said Mr. George, "I am going to spend the morning at Piale's[6] library, reading the papers, and you will be left to entertain yourself." [Footnote 6: Pronounced _Pe-ah-ly's_.] "O, that's no matter," said Rollo. "I can get Charles Beekman to go with me. We can take care of ourselves very well." "What will you do?" asked Mr. George. "I want to go and see the Tarpeian Rock," said Rollo. "I read about that rock, and about Tarpeia, in a history in America, and I want to see how the rock looks." "Do you know where it is?" asked Mr. George. "No," said Rollo; "but I can find out." "Very well," said Mr. George; "then I leave you to take care of yourself. You can get Charles to go, if his mother will trust him with you." "She will, I am sure," said Rollo. "Why, you got lost when you took him the other day," said Mr. George, "and you had ever so much difficulty in finding your way home again." "O, no, uncle George," said Rollo, "we did not have any difficulty at all. We only had a little fun." Soon after breakfast Mr. George bade Rollo good by, and went off to the bookstore and library, where he was to see and read the American papers. As soon as his uncle had gone, Rollo went up to Mrs. Beekman's room, and knocked at the door. A well-dressed man servant came to the door. It was Mr. Beekman's courier. "Walk in, Mr. Rollo," said the courier; "Mrs. Beekman and Charles will come in a minute." So Rollo went in. The room was a small parlor, very beautifully furnished. In a few minutes Mrs. Beekman and Charles came in, followed by Charles's sister, a lively young lady about twelve years of age. Her name was Almira, though they usually called her Allie. Rollo informed Mrs. Beekman, when she came into the room, that he had come to ask her to allow Charles to go and make an excursion with him. He was going, he said, to see the Tarpeian Rock. "O, I would not go to see the Tarpeian Rock," said Mrs. Beekman. "Some ladies of my acquaintance went to see it the other day, and they said it was nothing at all." "Ah, yes, mother!" said Charles, in an entreating tone of voice, "let me go with Rollo." "Why, there is nothing at all to see," said Mrs. Beekman. "It is only a small, steep face of a rock in a bank. On the Hudson River Railroad you see rocks and precipices forty times as picturesque, all along the way." Still Rollo and Charles were very desirous to go. The truth was, it was not so much what they expected to see at the end of the excursion, which made it so alluring to them, as the interest and excitement of the various adventures which they thought they would meet with on the way. Finally Mrs. Beekman said that she had not the least objection in the world to their going to see the rock, only she was herself perfectly convinced that they would not find any thing worth seeing. "I wish Allie could go too," said Rollo. "Yes, mother," said Allie, clapping her hands. "Why, do you care about seeing the Tarpeian Rock?" asked her mother. "Yes, mother," said Allie, "I wish to see it very much, though I don't know what it is. What is it, Rollo?" "I'll tell you all about it on the way," said Rollo, "if you can only go with us." "But she cannot walk there," said Mrs. Beekman. "No lady ever walks in Rome." "I will take a carriage," said Rollo. "I am afraid you don't know how to manage about a carriage," said Mrs. Beekman. "Yes, mother," replied Charles, "he knows how to manage about a carriage perfectly well. I tried him the other day." Mrs. Beekman finally gave a tardy and reluctant consent to the children's proposal. She did not manage the case very wisely. She should have considered in the first instance what her decision ought to be, and then she should have adhered to it. If she was going to consent at all, she should have consented cordially, and at once. For parents first to refuse their children's request, and then allow themselves to be induced to change their determination by the entreaties and persuasions of the children themselves, is bad management. Allie went into her mother's bed room to get ready, and in a few minutes returned, her countenance beaming with animation and pleasure. They all went down to the door of the hotel. There were several carriages standing in the square. The coachmen, as soon as they saw the party at the door, all began to hold up their whips, and to call to Rollo. Some of them began to move their horses towards him. Rollo glanced his eyes rapidly at the several coaches, and selecting the one which he thought looked the best, he beckoned to the coachman of it. The coachman immediately drew up to the door. He then jumped down from the box, and opened the carriage door. Before getting in, however, Rollo wished to make his bargain; so he said to the coachman,-- "To the Capitol. Two pauls." He spoke these words in the Italian language. He had learned the Italian for "two pauls" long before, and he had looked out the Italian name for the Capitol in his Guide Book that morning, so as to be all ready. The Italian name which he found was _Campidoglio_. The coachman hesitated a moment, and then said, holding up three fingers at the same time,-- "Three pauls." Of course he spoke in Italian. Rollo, instead of answering him, immediately began to turn away and look out towards the other carriages. "_Si, signore, si,_" said the coachman. "Two pauls let it be." So he held open the carriage door wider than ever, and Rollo assisted Allie to get in. He and Charles followed, and then the coachman drove away. "You agreed to give him too much," said Charles, as soon as they were seated. "A paul and a half is the regular fare." "I know it," said Rollo; "but I always offer a little more than the regular fare, especially when I have a lady with me, for then they have not a word to say." "But this man had a word to say," replied Charles. "He wanted you to give him three pauls." "Yes," said Rollo, "sometimes they try a little to make a dispute; but they have no chance at all, and they give right up." Rollo had ordered the coachman to drive to the Capitol, because he had found, by studying the map and the Guide Book, that the entrance to the enclosure where the Tarpeian Rock was to be seen was very near there. He had examined the map attentively, and so he knew exactly which way he must go after being set down at the foot of the Capitol stairs. Accordingly, when the carriage stopped, Rollo got out first himself, and then helped Allie and Charles out. He paid the coachman the price agreed upon, and a couple of coppers over for _buono mano_. "Now," said he to Charles and Allie, "follow me." Rollo went on a little way along a winding street, and then turning to the right, began to go up a steep ascent, formed of very broad steps, which seemed to lead to a higher street. As soon as the party began to go up these steps, they saw several children running down from above to meet them. When these children reached the place where Rollo was, they began saying something very eagerly in Italian, scrambling up the steps again at the same time, so as to keep up with Rollo and his party. "What do these children want?" asked Allie. "I don't know," said Rollo. "I have not the least idea." "I suppose they are begging," said Charles. "No," said Allie. "If they were begging, they would hold out their hands." At the top of the stairs Rollo and his party were met by half a dozen more children, so that there were now eight or ten in all. They ran on before and by the side of Rollo and his party, all looking very eager and animated, talking incessantly, and beckoning and pointing forward. "Ah!" said Rollo, "I know. They want to show us the way to the Tarpeian Rock." "But you said you knew the way," said Allie. "I said I could find it," replied Rollo, "and so I can; but I am willing to pay one of these children for showing me, but not all. Stop a minute, till I choose. Or, rather, you may choose, Allie," he added. The party now stopped, while Allie surveyed the ragged and wretched-looking group before her. "There is not a pretty child among them," said Allie. "You should not look for the best looking one, Allie," said Charles. "You should choose the _worst_ looking one. She is likely to need it most. Pretty looking girls get along well enough." "Then I choose that poor barefooted girl, that looks so pale," said Allie. "Yes," said Rollo; "she looks as if she had had a fever." So Rollo pointed to the girl, and showed her a copper, which he took for the purpose from his pocket. At the same time he made a waving motion with his hand to the rest, to denote that he did not wish for their services, and that they might go away. The barefooted girl seemed greatly pleased. Her pale and emaciated face was lighted up with a smile of pleasure. She ran along forward, beckoning to Rollo and his party to follow. The rest of the children, though they understood perfectly the signal of dismission that Rollo had made to them, were determined not to be sent off in that way; so they went on gesticulating and clamoring as much as ever. Rollo paid no attention to them, but walked on with Charles and Allie at his side. Presently their guide, and all the other children with her, stopped at a sort of gateway in a wall. By the side of the gateway there was an iron ring hanging by a chain. Two or three of the children seized this ring together and pulled it, by which means a bell was rung inside. The other children crowded together on each side of this gate, leaving room, however, for Rollo and his party to go through, and all held out their hands for money. "I am only going to pay the one that I engaged," said Rollo; "but, poor thing, I mean to give her two coppers, instead of one, she looks so sick and miserable." "So I would," said Allie. "And here," she added, putting her hand into her pocket and taking out a Roman copper coin, "I have got a penny here; you may give her that, too." "That is not a penny," said Charles. "That is a _baioccho_." "Never mind," said Allie; "_I_ call it a penny. I can't remember the other name. Besides, it is all the same thing." Rollo gave the three pieces of money to the poor girl, and the rest of the children, when they saw how generous he was, became more clamorous than ever. But Rollo paid no heed to them. Indeed, a moment after he had paid his little guide her money, the gate opened, and the party went in. The poor children were all left outside, and shut out. It was a small girl, about thirteen years old, that opened the gate. Rollo and his party found themselves ushered into a sort of garden. The girl led the way along a narrow path between beds of beans, lettuce, and other garden vegetables. Besides these vegetables, there were groups of shrubbery here and there, among which roses and other flowers were blooming. This garden seemed to be in the heart of the city, for it was bordered on three sides by buildings, and on the fourth by a low wall, which appeared to be built on the brow of a hill, for the roofs and chimneys of other houses, situated on a lower level, could be seen over it below. The girl led the way to a place by this wall, where, by looking over, there could be seen, at a distance along the hill, a small place where the rock which formed the face of it was precipitous. The precipice seemed to be about ten or fifteen feet high. "Is that the Tarpeian Rock?" asked Rollo. The girl who conducted them did not reply, not knowing any language but the Italian. "I've seen a great deal prettier rocks in America," said Allie. "Then are you sorry you came?" asked Rollo. "O, no!" said Allie; "I am very glad I came. But what is it that makes this rock so famous?" "Why, it is the place where, in old times, a very remarkable thing happened," replied Rollo. "I read the story in the history of Rome, when I was studying history in America. There was a girl named Tarpeia. She lived somewhere near the top of this rock, and the wall of the city came somewhere along here, and there was a gate. The Sabines made war against the Romans, and came to attack the city, but they could not get in on account of the walls. One day Tarpeia was on the wall looking down, and she saw some of the Sabine soldiers walking about below." "Why did not they shoot her?" asked Charles. "O, they had no motive for shooting her," replied Rollo. "She was a nice, pretty girl, I suppose, and they liked to look at her, and to talk with her. Besides, they had a cunning plan in view. They asked her whether they could not induce her to open the gates and let them into the city. She said she would do it if they would give her what they wore on their arms. She meant their bracelets. The soldiers in those days used to adorn themselves with rings, and bracelets, and other such things. But then, besides these bracelets they wore their shields and bucklers on their arms. These were very heavy things, made of iron, and covered with hides. So they agreed that they would give her what they wore on their arms, secretly meaning that they would throw their bucklers upon her; but she thought they meant that they would give her their bracelets. "So that night," continued Rollo, "the soldiers came, bringing a great many other soldiers with them, and Tarpeia opened the gate and let them in. The whole troop rushed by her into the town, as fast as they could go, and as they passed they all threw their bucklers upon poor Tarpeia, till she was crushed to death, and buried up by them. It was pretty near this rock where this happened, and so, forever after, they called it the Tarpeian Rock, and that is the reason why so many people come to see it." There was a moment's pause after Rollo had finished his story, during which Allie looked quite concerned. At length she said, in a very earnest tone,-- "I think it was a shame!" "I think they served her just right," said Charles. "O, Charles!" replied Alice, "how can you say so?" The girl who had conducted the party through the garden now began to lead the way back again, and they all followed her. As she walked along, the girl began to gather flowers from the beds and borders, and finally made quite a pretty bouquet. When she got to the gate, and was ready to open it, she presented this bouquet in a very polite and graceful manner to Allie. Rollo took some money from his pocket, and put it into her hand; and then she opened the gate, and let them all out. "How much did you pay her, Rollo?" asked Charles. "I paid her double," said Rollo, "because she was so polite as to give Allie such a pretty bouquet." Allie was now more pleased with her bouquet than before. It pleased her extremely to find that Rollo took so much interest in her receiving a bouquet as to pay something specially for it. So they all went down the steps which led to the foot of the Capitol Hill. "Shall we walk home?" asked Rollo, "or shall I find a carriage, so that we can ride?" "Let us walk," replied Allie, "and then we shall be longer on the way." Just then Rollo, looking at the sky, saw that there were some rather threatening clouds diffused over it. Indeed, on putting out his hand, he plainly felt a sprinkling of rain. "It is going to rain," said he, "and so we shall be obliged to ride. But we can make it longer by stopping to see something on the way." "Well," said Allie, "let's do it. What shall we stop to see?" "If there is going to be a shower," said Rollo, "it would be a good time to stop and see the Pantheon." "What is the Pantheon?" asked Allie. "It is an immense round church, with a great hole in the roof," replied Rollo. "Why don't they mend the hole?" asked Charles. "O, they made it so on purpose," said Rollo. "Made it on purpose!" repeated Allie. "I never heard of such a thing. I should think the rain would come in." "It does come in," said Rollo, "and that is the reason why I want to go and see the Pantheon in the time of a shower. It is so curious to see the rain falling down slowly to the pavement. You see, the church is round, and there is a dome over it, and in the centre of the dome they left a great round hole." "How big?" asked Allie. "It is twenty-eight feet across," said Rollo; "but you would not think it so big when you come to see it. It is up so high that it looks very small. We know how big it is by the size of the wet spot on the floor." By the time that the party had arrived at this point in the conversation, Rollo saw a carriage standing in the street at a little distance before him, and he made a signal to the coachman to come to him. The coachman came. Rollo made his bargain with him, and they all got in. The coachman drove immediately to the Pantheon, and they arrived there just as the shower began to come on. Before the church was an immense portico, supported by columns. The columns, and the whole entablature which they supported, were darkened by time, and cracked, and chipped, and broken in the most remarkable manner. Allie and Charles stood under the portico and looked around, while Rollo paid the coachman. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE PANTHEON.] There was a large open square before the Pantheon, with an ancient and very remarkable looking fountain in the centre of it. There was a basin around this fountain, into which monstrous mouths, carved in marble, were spouting water. When Rollo had paid the coachman, he led the way into the church. Allie and Charles followed him. They found themselves ushered into an immense circular interior, with rows of columns all around the sides, and chapels, and sculptures, and paintings, and beautiful panels of variegated marbles between them. Overhead was an immense dome. This dome is nearly a hundred and fifty feet high, and the circular opening in the centre of it is about thirty feet across. Through this opening the rain was descending in a steady but gentle shower. It was very curious to look up and see the innumerable drops falling slowly from the bright opening above, down to the marble floor. This opening is the only window. There is no other place, as you will see by the engraving, where light can come in. The margin of the opening is formed of an immense brass ring. Such a ring is necessary in a structure like this, and it must be of great thickness and strength, to resist the pressure of the stones crowding in upon it all around. This Pantheon was built by the ancient Romans, two thousand years ago. What it was built for originally nobody now knows. In modern times it has been changed into a church. It is immensely large, being nearly a hundred and fifty feet in diameter, and a hundred and fifty feet high. If you will inquire and ascertain what is the size of some large building in your vicinity, and compare it with these dimensions, you will form a clearer idea of the magnitude of this ancient edifice than you can acquire in any other way. Rollo and his party rambled about the Pantheon, looking at the statues, and paintings, and chapels, and observing the groups of pilgrims and of visitors that were continually coming and going, for nearly an hour. By this time the shower had entirely passed away, and the sun having come out bright, they all walked home. CHAPTER IX. GOING TO OSTIA. While Rollo was at Rome, he made the acquaintance of a boy named Copley. Copley was an English boy, and he was about a year older than Rollo. Rollo first saw him at the door of the hotel, as he, Copley, was dismounting from his horse, on his return from a ride which he had been taking into the country. He had been attended on his ride by a servant man named Thomas. Thomas dismounted from his horse first, and held the bridle of Copley's horse while Copley dismounted. "There!" said Copley, walking off with a very grand air, and leaving his horse in Thomas's hands; "take the horse, Thomas, and never bring me such an animal as that again. Next time I ride I shall take Jessie." "But Mr. William has forbidden me to give you Jessie," said Thomas. "He says she is not safe." "It's none of his business," said Copley. "He thinks, because he is a little older than I am, and because he is married,--though he has not been married much more than a month,--that he has a right to order me about just as he pleases. And I am determined not to submit to it--would you?" These last words were addressed to Rollo. Copley had been advancing towards the door of the hotel, while he had been speaking, and had now just reached the step where Rollo was standing. "Who is he?" asked Rollo. "Who is William?" "He is my brother," said Copley; "but that has nothing to do with it." "Are you under his care?" asked Rollo. "Why, I am travelling with him," said Copley; "but he has no business on that account to lord it over me. I have as good a right to have my way as he has to have his." Some further conversation then followed between Copley and Rollo, in which the former said that he had been for several weeks in Rome, in company with his brother. He had an uncle, too, in town, he said, at another hotel. "But I stay with my brother," said Copley, "because he is going to make a longer journey, and I want to go with him." "Where is he going?" asked Rollo. "Why, we have engaged a vetturino," replied Copley, "and are going to travel slowly to Florence, and from Florence into the northern part of Italy, to Milan and Venice, and all those places. Then, afterwards, we shall go over, by some of the passes of the Alps, into Switzerland. I like to travel in that way, I have so much fun in seeing the towns and the country. Besides, when we travel with a vetturino, I almost always ride on the outside seat with him, and he lets me drive sometimes." "Then your uncle is not going that way?" said Rollo. "No," replied Copley; "he is going directly home by water. He is going down to Civita Vecchia, to take the steamer there for Marseilles, and I don't want to go that way." Copley then asked Rollo to go out into the Corso with him. He said that he saw a shop there, as he was coming home, which had a great display of whips at the window, and he wanted to buy a whip, so that when they set out on their journey he could have a whip of his own. "The vetturino never will let me have _his_ whip," said he. "The lash is so long that he says I shall get it entangled in the harness. That's no reason, for he is always getting it entangled himself. But that's his excuse, and so I am going to have a whip of my own." "Well," said Rollo, "I rather think I will go with you; but you must wait here for me a minute or two. I must go up to my room first; but I will come directly down again." Rollo wished to go up to his room to ask his uncle's permission to go with Copley. He made it an invariable rule never to go any where without his uncle's permission. Mr. George was always ready to give permission in such cases, unless there was some really good and substantial reason for withholding it. And whenever Mr. George withheld his consent from any of Rollo's proposals, Rollo always submitted at once, without making any difficulty, even when he thought that his uncle was wrong, and that he might have consented as well as not. It was not altogether principle on the part of Rollo, that made him pursue this course; it was in a great measure policy. "I like travelling about the world with uncle George," he used to say to himself, "and in order that I may travel with him a great deal, I must make it for his interest to take me. That is, I must manage so that he will have a better time when I am with him, than when he goes alone; and in order to do this, I must take care never to give him any trouble or concern of any kind on my account. I must comply with his wishes in every thing, and be satisfied with such pleasures and enjoyments as he fully approves." Rollo did not think of this altogether of himself. It was his father that put the idea into his mind. He did it in a conversation that he had with Rollo the day before he set out on the journey. "Rollo, my boy," said he, "in going on this journey into Italy with your uncle George, there is one danger that you will have to look out for very carefully." "Getting robbed by the brigands?" asked Rollo. "No," said Mr. Holiday; "it is something very different from that, and a great deal worse. That is to say, the evil that you have to fear from it is a great deal worse than any thing that would probably happen to you by being robbed. The danger is of your having too much independence, or, rather, a wrong kind of independence. What is independence?" Rollo reflected a moment in order properly to frame his answer to his father's question. He thought he knew very well what the meaning of the word _independence_ was, but he did not readily know how to clothe the meaning in language. At last he said that he thought independence was doing what you thought was best yourself, without regard to what other people thought. "Very well," said his father. "That's a pretty good definition of it. And now, do you think it is a good quality, or a bad quality?" "A good quality," said Rollo; "that is, I suppose it is good," he added, hesitatingly, "but I don't know." "It depends upon circumstances," said Mr. Holiday. "Should you think that firing his gun when _he_ thought best, instead of when the _captain_ thought best, was a good thing in a soldier, on the field of battle?" "No, sir," said Rollo. "And so, would the independence of the colonel of a regiment," continued Mr. Holiday, "in marching when he thought best, instead of when the general ordered him, be a good quality or a bad quality?" "Bad," said Rollo; "very bad indeed." "Independence is an excellent quality in its own right and proper sphere," said Mr. Holiday; "but when it takes the form of disregarding or rebelling against right and proper authority, it is a very bad quality. It cannot be tolerated. If it were allowed generally to prevail among mankind, the whole world would be thrown into confusion, and nothing could go on. This is now the kind of independence that you must guard against. You are growing up rapidly, and increasing in strength and knowledge every day. You are becoming a young man, and in a great many of the situations in which you are placed, you are fully competent to take care of yourself. Still you are what the law calls a minor. That is, you have not arrived at an age when you can safely be your own master, and support and take care of yourself. Consequently, the law makes it your father's duty, for some years to come, to furnish money for your support, and to provide for you all necessary protection. And the same law makes it your duty to be under my direction, to conform your conduct to my judgment; or, in other words, to do, not as _you_ think best, but as I, or whomsoever I may delegate to act in my stead, thinks best. This is reasonable. As long as a boy depends upon his father for the means of his support, it is right that he should act as his father's judgment dictates. It will be time enough for him to expect that he should act according to his own judgment, in his conduct, when he is able to earn his own living, and so release his father from all responsibility on his account. In a word, the pecuniary responsibility of the father, and the moral obligation of the son, go together." "Yes, father," said Rollo; "I think that is all true." "And now," continued Mr. Holiday, "I put you, for this journey, under your uncle George's care. I delegate my parental power over you to him. It is your duty, therefore, to obey him in all things, and to comply with all his wishes, just as you would if I were in his place." "Yes, father," said Rollo, "I will." "Besides being your duty," added Mr. Holiday, "it is greatly for your interest to do so. If you begin to show your independence, as it is sometimes called, and insist on doing what you think is best, instead of what he thinks is best, so as to cause him trouble, and make him feel anxious and uneasy on your account, you will spoil the pleasure of his journey, and he will not wish to take you with him again." Mr. Holiday had some further conversation with Rollo on the subject, and the effect of what he said was to lead Rollo to think more than he otherwise would have done on the proper course which a boy ought to pursue when travelling under the charge of his uncle, and he resolved that he would, in all cases, not only obey implicitly his uncle's commands, but that he would comply readily and cordially with his wishes, whenever he could ascertain them. Accordingly, in this case, he would not go even out into the Corso without first going up to obtain his uncle's permission. He opened the door of the room, and found his uncle there, writing a letter. "Uncle George," said he, "here is a boy down below, who asks me to go out into the Corso with him." "What boy is it?" asked Mr. George. "I don't know what his name is," said Rollo. "He is an English boy, I suppose. He just came in from taking a ride on horseback." "How long shall you probably be gone?" said Mr. George. "I don't know," said Rollo, hesitating. "Perhaps about half an hour." "Very well," said Mr. George; "you can be gone two hours if you choose. If you form any plan that will require more time than that, come home first and let me know." So Rollo went down stairs again, and having joined Copley at the door, they went together out towards the Corso. In the mean time, Copley's brother William and his wife were waiting in their room for Copley to come up. They knew at what hour he would return from his ride, and they had formed a plan for going in a carriage out upon the Appian Way, to see some ancient ruins there. They knew very well that Copley would not care any thing about the ruins, but he always liked to go with them when they took drives in the environs of Rome. The special reason why Copley was so much interested in going on these excursions was, that he was accustomed, in such cases, to sit on the front seat with the coachman, as he did when travelling with the vetturins, and sometimes he obtained permission to drive a little, by secretly offering the coachman a piece of money. Mr. William had charged his brother to come up to the parlor as soon as he came home from his ride, and Copley ought to have done so. But it was never Copley's practice to pay much heed to requests of this kind from his brother. Mr. William, having waited for some time after he had seen the two horses arrive at the door, wondering all the time why Copley did not come up, went down to the door to inquire what had become of him. The concierge informed him that Copley had gone away with another boy, out to the Corso. So Mr. William ordered the carriage, and he and his wife went away on their excursion alone. Rollo and Copley had a very pleasant walk along the Corso. They were obliged, however, to walk in the middle of the street, for the sidewalks were so narrow and so irregular in shape, sometimes growing narrower and narrower, until at length there was scarcely any thing but the curb-stone left, that Rollo and Copley could not walk upon them. At last, however, they came to the place where Copley had seen the whips. Copley had plenty of money, but I do not know how he would have managed to buy one of the whips, if Rollo had not been with him; for the man who had them to sell could only speak French and Italian, and Copley did not know either of these languages. He had been studying French, it is true, for several years in school, but he had taken no interest in learning the language, and the little knowledge of it which he had acquired was not of such a character as to be of any use to him. As to the Italian, he knew nothing at all of it. Accordingly, Rollo acted as interpreter. "I might have brought our courier with us," said Copley, "only it is such a bore to have him about; and you do just as well." After having bought the whip, Copley proposed that they should go to the diligence office and see if there were any diligences there about setting out on their journeys. The diligence office which Copley referred to was not in the Corso, but in another street, at right angles to it. When the boys reached the office, they found that there were no diligences there; so they rambled on without much idea of where they were going, until at length they came to the river, near one of the bridges leading across it. A short distance below the bridge, there was a small steamboat coming up the river. "Ah, look there!" said Copley. "There's a steamer coming! Where do you suppose that steamer is coming from?" "It is coming from Ostia, I suppose," said Rollo. "At any rate, I know that there is a steamer that goes to Ostia." "Let us go there," said Copley. "Where is Ostia?" "It is at the mouth of the river," said Rollo. "You may know that from the name. _Ostia_ is the Latin word for _mouth_." "I hate Latin," said Copley. The little steamer came rounding up to a pier not far below the bridge. Copley and Rollo leaned over the parapet, and looked to see the passengers get out; but there were very few passengers to come. The boys then went down towards the pier, and on inquiring of a gentleman whom they saw there, they found that the boat went down the river to Ostia every morning, and returned every night, and Copley immediately conceived the idea of going down in her. "Let's go down to-morrow," said he. "It is just far enough for a pleasant sail." Rollo's imagination was quite taken with the idea of sailing down to Ostia. There seems to be something specially attractive to boys in the idea of sailing down to the mouths of rivers. It is so pleasant to watch the gradual widening of the stream, and to meet vessels coming up, and to see the fishermen's boats, and the nets spread on the land, and the little inlets, with the tide flowing in and out, and other indications of the approach towards the sea. Besides, Rollo wished very much to see what sort of a place Ostia was. However, he would not positively promise to go. He said he should like to go very much, but that he could not decide the question until he should go home. "I must see uncle George first," said Rollo. "It is possible that he may have formed some engagement for me to-morrow." "O, never mind what engagement he has formed," said Copley. "Tell him that you can't go with him, because you have agreed to go down the river with me." "No," said Rollo, shaking his head. "Why, what a little fool you are!" said Copley. After remaining some time on the bridge, looking at the steamer, the boys returned home. Rollo took care to arrive at the hotel before the two hours were expired. Mr. George had just finished his letter, and was folding it up and sealing it. "Well, Rollo," said Mr. George, "have you had a pleasant walk?" "Very pleasant, indeed," said Rollo. "We walked in the Corso till Copley had bought his whip, and then we went on till we came to the bridge, and there we saw a steamboat which goes to Ostia and back. Copley wants me to go down with him in her to-morrow. We shall get back about this time, I suppose." Mr. George was at this time just writing the address on the back of his letter. He did not say any thing, but Rollo observed a very slight and almost imperceptible shaking of his head. "You don't like the plan very well, uncle George," said Rollo. "Not very well," said Mr. George. "I feel a little afraid of it." "Then it is of no consequence," said Rollo. "I don't care a great deal about going." Most boys, perhaps, under these circumstances, would have asked why, in order that, after hearing their uncle's objections to their plans, they might argue against them. But Rollo knew very well that this would be very bad policy for him. "If uncle George finds that he has a long argument to maintain against me, every time that he refuses me any thing," said he to himself, "he will soon get tired of having me under his care." So he acquiesced at once in what he perceived was his uncle's opinion, and resolved to tell Copley, when he saw him, that he could not go to Ostia. Copley was to have called that evening at Rollo's room, to obtain his answer; but on further reflection, he concluded not to do so. Indeed, he had a secret feeling that neither Rollo's uncle nor his own brother would approve of the plan of two such boys going alone, in such a country, on an expedition which was entirely outside of the usual range of tourists and travellers. That this expedition _was_ outside the range was evident from the character of the steamboat that the boys had seen, which was evidently not intended for the conveyance of ladies and gentlemen, but of people of the country--and those, moreover, of the lowest class. So Copley concluded that if he were to go at all to Ostia, it would be necessary for him to go by stealth, and he resolved not to say any thing about his plan to his brother or sister. He was very sure, too, that Rollo would fail of obtaining his uncle's consent. So he concluded to say no more to Rollo on the subject, but instead of that, he proposed the plan to another boy of his acquaintance, who lodged with his friends at another hotel. "The best way will be," said he, when he made the proposal, "for us not to tell any body where we are going." "Then they'll wonder where we are," said the boy, "and be frightened half to death about us." "But we can leave word when we go, with the porter of the hotel, or the concierge," said Copley, "that we have gone down the river in the steamboat, and shall not be back till night." "Good," said the other boy; "that's what we'll do." Accordingly, the next morning, the two boys left word at their respective hotels where they were going, and set forth. They stole away very secretly, and after running round the corner, they crept along close to the wall of the hotel, until they thought they were at a safe distance. They reached the boat in good season, went on board, and in due time set sail. About ten o'clock, when the two boys had been gone about an hour, Mr. William began to miss his brother, and to wonder where he had gone. So he rang the bell, and his courier came into the room. "Pacifico," said Mr. William, "do you know where Copley is?" "No, sir," said Pacifico; "I did not see him from since it was nine o'clock." "Go down below," said Mr. William, "and inquire of the concierge and the porters if they have seen him, or know where he is." Mr. William followed Pacifico as he went out, in order to speak a moment to a friend of his who occupied the next apartment. As he came back he met Pacifico at the head of the stairs, and received his answer there. The answer was, that Copley had gone down the river to Ostia with another boy. Mr. William was greatly astonished to hear this. He, however, said nothing to Pacifico, but after pausing a moment, as if reflecting upon what he had heard, he went back into his own apartment. "Maria," said he, addressing his young wife, "where do you think Copley has gone?" "I cannot imagine," said Maria. "He has gone down the Tiber in the steamer to Ostia," replied Mr. William. "Is it possible?" exclaimed Maria, in astonishment. "Yes," said William; "and I am very glad of it." "Glad of it?" repeated Maria, surprised more and more. "Yes," said Mr. William; "for it decides me what to do. I shall send him home with his uncle. I have been half inclined to do this for some time, and this settles the question. It destroys all the peace and comfort of our journey to have a boy with us that is determined to have his own way, without regard to the inconvenience or anxiety that he occasions me." "But how will you manage to get him to go with his uncle?" said Maria. "He will refuse to go, and insist on accompanying us, for his uncle is going directly home, which is what he does not wish to do." "I'll manage that," said Mr. William. "I'll take a hint from his own way of proceeding. I will go off and leave him." "O husband," said Maria, "that will never do." "You'll see how I will manage it," said Mr. William. So saying, Mr. William rang the bell. Pacifico immediately appeared. "I wish to write a letter," said Mr. William. "Bring me some paper, and pen and ink." Pacifico brought the writing materials, and laid them on the table. "I have concluded to leave town this afternoon," said Mr. William, as he took up the pen and began to make preparations to write. "I intend to go as far as Civita Castellana to-night. We will set out at two o'clock. I wish you to go and find our vetturino, and direct him to be here half an hour before that time with the carriage, to load the baggage. He knows that we were going soon, and he will be prepared. In the mean time you may get our baggage ready. Copley's trunk, however, is not to go. Pack that, and send it by a porter over to the Hotel d'Amerique. I am going to leave him there under the care of his uncle." "Very well, sir," said Pacifico; "I shall do it." Pacifico retired, and Mr. William proceeded to write his letter. When it was finished, he read it to his wife, as follows. It was addressed to his father in England. "ROME, June 20, 1858. "DEAR FATHER: We are all well, and, on the whole, have enjoyed our residence in Rome very much. We are now, however, about ready to leave. We set off this afternoon for Florence and the north of Italy. "I have concluded, all things considered, to let Copley return to you with his uncle. Though a pretty good boy in other respects, he does not seem to be quite willing enough to submit to my direction, to make it pleasant for me, or safe for him, that we should travel together. I will not say that it is his _fault_ altogether. It is perhaps because there is not difference enough in our ages for him to feel that I ought to have any authority over him. At any rate, he is unwilling to acknowledge my authority, and he takes so many liberties that I am kept in a constant state of anxiety on his account. Besides, I do not think that it is safe for him to be so much at his own disposal. This country is full of thieves, brigands, and rogues, of the most desperate and reckless character; and young men sometimes suffer extremely in falling into their hands. Copley is not aware of the danger, and he thinks that the restraints which I feel compelled to impose upon him are unnecessary and vexatious. Often he will not submit to them. To-day, he has gone down the river on board one of the country steamers, without saying any thing to me about it; and, though I do not suppose he will get into any difficulty, in making such an excursion, still the fact that he takes the liberty of doing such things keeps me continually uneasy about him, and there is danger that, sooner or later, he will get into some serious trouble. "I have, accordingly, concluded to leave him under uncle's charge, with a view of having him return with uncle to England, by way of the Mediterranean. Uncle will leave here in a few days, and you may accordingly expect to see Copley at home again in the course of a week after receiving this. "With love from Maria and myself for all at home, I am your dutiful son, "WILLIAM GRANT." Mr. William sealed his letter, and then took it down to the "bureau," as the hotel office is called, where he left it with the secretary of the hotel, to be sent to the post office. He then went out at the front door of the hotel to the public square before it, and there taking a carriage, he ordered the coachman to drive to the Hotel d'Amerique. When arrived there, he went to his uncle's apartment, and explained the plan which he had formed, and the reason for it. His uncle said that he would very readily take Copley under his charge. Mr. William then said that he was intending to leave town that day, but he should leave Thomas at his hotel to wait for Copley, and bring him over to the Hotel d'Amerique as soon as he returned. This arrangement was carried into effect. Mr. William directed Thomas to remain in town, to take care of Copley on his return from Ostia, and deliver him safely into his uncle's hands. It occasioned Mr. William no inconvenience to leave Thomas behind for a day, since, though Thomas usually travelled in the same carriage with the family, the vetturino himself always drove. Thomas, together with Pacifico, the courier, rode on an outside seat in front, while Copley sometimes rode inside, though more frequently on the driver's seat, by the side of the vetturino. "Thomas," said Mr. Grant, in giving Thomas his instructions, "I am going to set out on my journey this afternoon, but I shall leave you behind, to come on to-night by the diligence. You will find me at the Hotel of the Post, at Civita Castellana. I wish you to wait here until Copley comes home, and then tell him that I have gone out of town, and shall not be back to-night, and that he is going to spend the night at the Hotel d'Amerique with his uncle. Do not tell him where I have gone, nor that you are coming after me. His uncle will tell him all to-morrow morning." In the mean time, while these occurrences had been taking place at the hotel, Copley and his companion had been sailing down the river on board the little steamboat. They had, on the whole, a pretty pleasant time, though they were somewhat disappointed in the scenery on the banks of the river. The country was perfectly bare of trees, and destitute of all cultivation. There were no villages, and scarcely a human habitation to be seen. The boys, however, met with no trouble, and returned safely home about four o'clock. Copley found Thomas waiting for him at the hotel door. "Mr. Copley," said Thomas, as Copley advanced towards the door, "your brother has gone out of town, and will not be back to-night, and I was to wait here for you, and tell you that you were to go and spend the night at your uncle's apartment at the Hotel d'Amerique." "Good!" said Copley. He felt quite relieved to find that his brother had gone away, as he thus escaped the danger of being called to account for his misdemeanor. "Where has he gone?" asked Copley. "I can't say," said Thomas; "but perhaps your uncle can tell you." By the phrase "I can't say," Thomas secretly meant that he was not at liberty to say, though Copley understood him to mean that he did not know. "Very well," said Copley; "I don't care where he has gone. It makes no difference to me." Copley found that it did make some difference to him, when he learned, the next morning, that his brother had set out on his journey to the north of Italy, and to Switzerland, and had left him behind to return home at once with his uncle by sea. His uncle did not tell him that night where his brother had gone, for fear that Copley might make some difficulty, by insisting on going on after him in the diligence with Thomas. Accordingly, when Copley asked the question, his uncle only answered vaguely, that his brother had gone out somewhere into the environs of Rome. The next morning, however, he handed Copley a note which his brother had left for him, which note Copley, on opening it, found to be as follows:-- "WEDNESDAY MORNING. "DEAR COPLEY: I have concluded to set out this afternoon on my journey north. I am sorry that you are not here to bid me good by. I did not know that you were going down the river. "It must be hard for a boy as old as you to be under the command of one who is, after all, only his brother,--and not a great many years older than he is himself,--for I am not quite ten years older than you. I know you have found this hard, and so I have concluded that you had better return home with uncle. One of these days, when you grow up to manhood, you can make a journey into Italy again, and then you will be your own master, and can do as you please, without any danger. Wishing you a very pleasant voyage, "I am your affectionate brother, "WILLIAM GRANT." Copley's indignation and rage at reading this letter seemed at first to know no bounds. He was, however, entirely helpless. His brother had gone, and he did not even know what road he had taken. Thomas had gone, too, so that there was no help for him whatever. In two days after that, he went with his uncle to Civita Vecchia, the port of Rome, on the Mediterranean, and there embarked on board the steamer "for Marseilles direct," and so returned to England. CHAPTER X. THE VATICAN. On the day when Rollo went with Charles and Allie to see the Tarpeian Rock, the reader will perhaps recollect that Mr. George was engaged at the reading room in reading the American papers which had that morning arrived. When Rollo returned from his excursion, he found that Mr. George had not got home, and he accordingly concluded to go to the reading room and see if he could find him. This reading room is attached to an English bookstore and library, and is a great place of resort for visitors at Rome. It is situated at the end of the Piazza di Spagna, which is one of the principal and most frequented public squares in Rome. This square contains several of the chief hotels, and a great many shops. The bookstore of Piale is the general centre of news and intelligence for all English and American visitors. Here people come to make inquiries for their friends, for there is a register kept at the library with the names of all the English and American visitors in Rome recorded in it, and the addresses of the hotels or private houses where they are lodging. Here all sorts of notices are posted up, such as advertisements of things lost or found, of parties forming for excursions, of couriers wanting places or families wanting couriers, of paintings for sale, carriages for sale or for hire,--and all such things. Piale's establishment contains a number of different rooms. The first that Rollo entered on arriving at the place was the bookstore. This was a small room. There was a desk at one end, where a clerk was sitting. There were shelves filled with books all around the room, and a large table in the centre, which was also covered with books arranged in tiers one above the other in a sloping direction. There were several doors leading off from this apartment, one of which led to a room where a circulating library was kept, and another to the reading room. When Rollo entered the bookstore, he saw several groups of visitors there. There were two or three ladies looking over the books on the shelves. There was a group of gentlemen standing near the desk, talking together, with a paper in their hands which seemed to contain a list of names. Just as Rollo entered, a carriage drove up to the door, and two ladies dismounted from it and came in. Rollo's attention was first attracted to these two ladies. One of them, on entering, accosted the clerk, and asked to look at the register. The clerk immediately gave the two ladies seats at a side table, where there was a large book full of names and addresses. The ladies sat down, and began to look over the book. They had just arrived from Naples, and they wished to know what friends and acquaintances of theirs there were in town. Rollo began to examine the books on the table, or counter, in the middle of the room, and while doing so he happened to pass near the gentlemen that were looking at the paper. "We want twelve," said one of the gentlemen, "and we have got only nine." "Yes," said the other, "we want three more. It must be that there are a great many in town who would like to go, if we could only find them out." Rollo's attention was immediately arrested by these words. It was obvious that the gentlemen were forming a party to go somewhere, or to see something, and he felt quite confident that his uncle George would like to join them. "At any rate," said he to himself, "_I_ should like to go, wherever it is." So Rollo summoned courage to accost the persons who were consulting together, and to ask them if they wished to find some gentlemen to make up a party. "Gentlemen or ladies either," said one of them, "no matter which. We are making up a party to go and see the statues in the Vatican by torch light." When Rollo heard the words "torch light," his interest in the proposed party was greatly increased, and he said he had no doubt that his uncle would like to go. "I am very sure he would like to go," said Rollo, "and to take me." "Very well," said one of the gentlemen, "that will make two. And we only want three. Where is your uncle?" "He is in the reading room," said Rollo. "Wait a moment, and I'll call him." "That's right," said the gentleman. "Tell him it will cost us a scudo and a half apiece." So Rollo, taking out half a paul from his pocket,--that being the price of admission to the reading room for a single day,--and giving it to the clerk at the desk, opened a door by the side of the desk, and passed into the reading room. Instead of being only one reading room, however, he found that there were two, with an open door leading from one to the other. There were a great number of very comfortable sofas and arm chairs all about these rooms, and great tables in the middle of them covered with newspapers and magazines. The walls of both rooms were completely covered with paintings of all sizes, most of which had been left there for sale. There were a great many gentlemen sitting around the tables and upon the sofas, reading. Among them Rollo soon found Mr. George. He had established himself in a comfortable arm chair, near a great window that looked out upon the square. But he was obliged to keep the curtain down, on account of the beggars outside, that gave him no peace as long as they could see him. "Uncle George," said Rollo, "here are some gentlemen who want to make up a party to go and see something by torch light, and I thought that perhaps you and I would like to join it." "Where is it that they are going?" asked Mr. George--"to the Vatican?" "Yes," said Rollo, "it is the Vatican. A scudo and a half apiece." "Very well," said Mr. George. "I should like to go. Where are the gentlemen?" "They are out here in the bookstore. Come out and I will show them to you." So Mr. George laid down his paper, and followed Rollo out into the bookstore. Rollo led the way to the place where the gentlemen were standing, and then introduced his uncle, in a distinct and audible voice, thus,-- "This is my uncle, gentlemen, Mr. George Holiday." The gentlemen greeted Mr. Holiday in a very polite manner, and informed him of their plan, and that they wanted three more names to make up the necessary number for a party. And here I ought to say in explanation, that what is called the "Vatican" is a vast collection of very magnificent and imposing buildings,--consisting of palaces, chapels, halls, galleries, and the like, almost without number,--and it is filled with paintings, sculptures, manuscripts, books, jewels, gems, and other curiosities and treasures of incalculable value. It is situated in close proximity to the great Church of St. Peter's--the largest and most gorgeous church in the world. Indeed, the church and the palaces form, as it were, one vast architectural pile, which is of almost inconceivable magnificence and grandeur. The various edifices which compose the Vatican were several centuries in building, and the immense magnitude and extent of the edifice, and the exhaustless wealth of the treasures of art deposited there, astonish every beholder. The buildings are so extensive that they require eight grand staircases and two hundred smaller ones to gain access to the different stories. There are twenty open courts and over four thousand different rooms. Some of these rooms are galleries nearly a quarter of a mile long, and are filled on each side with sculptures and statuary, or other works of art, from end to end. The length of these galleries is not, however, out of proportion to other parts of the structure. The church of St. Peter's, including the portico, is considerably _more_ than a quarter of a mile long. Now, among the treasures of the Vatican are an immense number of ancient statues which were dug up, in the middle ages, in and around Rome; and some of these sculptures are the most celebrated works of art in the world. They are arranged with great care in a great number of beautiful chambers and halls, and are visited during the daytime by thousands of people that have come to Rome from every part of the world. The picture galleries, the collection of ancient curiosities, and the library rooms containing the books and manuscripts, are also in the same manner thrown open, and they are thronged with visitors almost all the time. These apartments are so numerous and so extensive that in one day a person can do little else than to walk through them, and give one general gaze of bewildering wonder at the whole scene. And a very long walk it is, I can assure you. At one time, when I set out from the painting rooms, (which are far in the interior of the buildings,) with a party of friends, intending to go out, in order to go home, we walked steadily on at our ordinary pace, without stopping, or deviating from our way, and we found that it took us twenty minutes to get out to our carriage! In addition to these visits made during the day, small parties are sometimes formed to visit the galleries of statuary by night. It is found that the illumination of a torch, by the strong contrasts of light and shade which it produces, brings out the expression of the statues in a very striking manner, so as to produce sometimes a most wonderful effect. It is, however, somewhat expensive to exhibit these statues by torch light, partly on account of the cost of the torches, and partly on account of the attendants that are required. The cost is nearly twenty dollars. It is accordingly customary to make up a party, whenever an evening visit to the Vatican is proposed, in order to divide the expense. The number that can see the statues to advantage in these evening visits is from twelve to fifteen. A party of twelve is sufficient to pay the expense at the rate of a scudo and a half for each person.[7] [Footnote 7: The scudo is the Roman dollar. It is worth considerably more than the American dollar.] It was such a plan as this that the gentlemen were forming, whose party Mr. George and Rollo were now proposing to join. The gentlemen had been much pleased with Rollo's appearance and demeanor when he accosted them, and they were now still more pleased, when they saw Mr. George, to find that he was a young gentleman, of about their own age, and that he was so prepossessing in his countenance and in his air and manner. Mr. George readily agreed to join the party. They asked him if he knew of any body else that he thought would like to go. He inquired whether there were to be any ladies in the party. They said that there were to be several. "Then," said Mr. George, "I will be responsible for the twelfth place. I am quite sure that I can find some person that would like to go. "And suppose I find more than one?" said Mr. George. "That will do no harm," replied the gentlemen. "We can have from twelve to fifteen in the party." "Then I will take the three places," said Mr. George, "and I will pay my proportion now. Which of you gentlemen acts as treasurer?" One of the three gentlemen said that he had undertaken to collect and pay over the money, but he added that it was not necessary for Mr. George to pay at that time. Mr. George, however, preferred to do so, and he accordingly took out his purse and paid his four scudi and a half, which was the amount due for three persons. The gentlemen seemed to be quite pleased to find that their party was thus made up, and they told Mr. George that since he had taken and paid for the three remaining places, he might bring with him any number of persons that he pleased, so long as he did not make the party more than fifteen in all. It was agreed, too, that the party was to rendezvous that evening, at eight o'clock, at the foot of the grand staircase, leading from the portico of St. Peter's up to the principal court of the Vatican. Mr. George, as soon as he went home, sent Rollo to Mrs. Beekman's room to inform her of the proposed party, and to ask her if she would like to join it. "And may I invite Allie too?" asked Rollo. "Yes," said Mr. George, "and Charles. Though I don't think they will wish to go, for such children generally feel very little interest in statues." It is true that young persons, like Charles and Allie, generally feel little interest in sculptures and statuary; but, on the other hand, they feel a very great interest in torch light, and both Charles and Allie were exceedingly eager to join the party. It was finally agreed that all three should go. It was arranged that Mr. George and Rollo were to call for them at seven o'clock. Mr. Beekman was engaged to dine that evening with a party of gentlemen, and so he was left out of the account altogether. At seven o'clock, accordingly, Mr. George and Rollo called at Mrs. Beekman's rooms, and a few minutes afterwards they all went together down to the door of the hotel, where Mr. George beckoned to the coachman of one of the carriages that stood in the square. The whole party entered the carriage, after Mr. George had made his bargain with the coachman, and immediately set off. They rode for some distance along a pretty straight road, and then came to a bridge, which was opposite to a great round castle. They went over this bridge, and then turning to the left, under the walls of the castle, they went on towards the Vatican. "We shall arrive there some time before the hour," said Mr. George; "but I thought it was better to be too early than too late." "Yes," replied Mrs. Beekman, "we can amuse ourselves half an hour in rambling about the colonnades and porticos of St. Peter's." In front of St. Peter's there is an immense area, enclosed on each side by a magnificent semicircular colonnade. There are four rows of lofty columns in this colonnade, with a carriage way in the centre between them. The space enclosed between these colonnades is called the _piazza_,[A] and it is adorned with fountains and colossal statues, and on days of public festivities and celebrations, it is filled with an immense concourse of people. It is large enough to contain a great many thousands. [8][Footnote 8: A Pronounced _piatza_.] When Mr. George and his party arrived, they dismissed the carriage and began to walk to and fro under the colonnade and about the piazza. The time passed away very rapidly; and at length, a few minutes before eight, the other carriages began to come. All the persons who belonged to the party were anxious to arrive in time, for they were afraid that, if they were too late, the others would have gone into the Vatican, where, the building being so immense, it might be very difficult to find them. Accordingly, before the clock struck eight, all the party were assembled at the entrance door. The entrance opened from a vast covered gallery, which formed one of the approaches to St. Peter's, between the end of the colonnade and the main front of the building. There were several Swiss sentinels on guard here. They were dressed in what seemed to Rollo a very fantastic garb. In a few minutes the men who were to accompany the party through the galleries appeared. One of them carried a great number of very long candles under his arm. Another had a long pole with a socket at the top of it, and a semicircular screen of tin on one side, to screen the light of the candles from the eyes of the visitors, and to throw it upon the statues. When all was ready, these torch bearers moved on, and were followed by the whole party up the great staircase which led to the galleries of the Vatican. After going upward and onward for some time, they came at length to the entrance of one of the long galleries of sculpture. Here the torch bearers stopped and began to prepare their torches. They cut the long candles in two, so as to make pieces about eighteen inches long. Taking six or eight of these pieces, they placed them together like a bundle of sticks, and tied them, and then crowded the ends together into the socket upon the end of the pole. This socket was made large enough to receive them. They then lighted the wicks, and thus they had a large number of candles all burning together as one. The screen, which I have already spoken of, covered this blaze of light upon one side, so as to keep it from shining upon the faces of the company. Thus provided the torch bearers went on, and the company followed them. Of course, there is only time in the two hours usually appropriated to this exhibition to show a comparatively small number of the statues. The torch bearers accordingly selected such as they thought were most important to be seen, and they passed rapidly on from one to another of these, omitting all the others. When they approached a statue which they were going to exhibit, they would hold the torch up near the face of it in such a manner as to throw a strong light upon the features, and so bring out the expression in a striking manner. The screen shielded the eyes of the company from the direct rays of the flame, and yet there was sufficient light reflected from the marble walls of the gallery, and from the beautiful white surfaces of the statues arranged along them, to enable the company to discern each other very distinctly, and to see all the objects around them. The company passed in this manner through one of the long galleries, stopping here and there to look at the great masterpieces of ancient art, and then they entered into a series of comparatively smaller chambers and halls. Rollo was exceedingly interested in the exhibition, and in all the attendant circumstances of it; but he could not tell whether Allie was pleased or not. She seemed bewildered and struck dumb with amazement at the strange aspect of the scenes and spectacles which were continually presented to view. The immense extent and the gorgeous magnificence of the galleries and halls, the countless multitude of statues, and the almost spectral appearance which they assumed when the torch bearers threw the bright light of the torch upon their cold marble faces, all impressed her with a solemn awe, which seemed so entirely to subdue and silence her, that Rollo could not tell how she felt, or what she thought of the strange spectacle which he had brought her to see. After about an hour, the first set of candles that had been put into the socket of the torch pole were burned down, and then the torch bearers supplied their places with another set formed by the remaining halves of the candles which they had cut in two. These lasted another hour. By that time the company had seen all the most striking and celebrated statues in the principal halls and galleries. They had been making a sort of circuit through the palace in passing through these rooms, and now came out very near the entrance door, where they had come in. Here the torch bearers left them, and went away with their apparatus to the part of the building where they belonged, while the company, descending the grand staircase, came out into one of the porticos of the church, and issuing from the portico they found carriages in waiting upon the piazza, and ready to convey them home. Mr. George and his party reached their hotel about nine o'clock, all very much pleased with the spectacle which they had witnessed. CHAPTER XI. CONCLUSION. Rollo was so much pleased with his torch light visit to the Vatican, and he found, moreover, on talking with Charles and Allie about it the next day, so much evidence of their having been greatly pleased with it, that he planned, a few days afterwards, a torch light visit to the Coliseum. It is very common to make moonlight visits to the Coliseum, but Rollo thought a torch light view of the majestic old ruin would be better. On proposing his plan to his uncle, Mr. George said that he had no objection to it if Rollo would make all the arrangements. He did not know any thing about it himself, he said. Rollo said he had no doubt that he could arrange it, with the help of a commissioner. [Illustration: COLISEUM BY TORCHLIGHT.] So Rollo looked out a good commissioner, and the commissioner arranged the plan. I have not space to describe this visit fully, but must pass on to the conclusion of the book. I will only say that the torches which were employed on this occasion, were different from those employed in the exhibition of the statues in the Vatican, being more like those used by firemen in America. There were also more of them in number, the commissioner having provided four. With these torch bearers to light their way, Rollo's party explored the Coliseum in every part, and they found that the grandeur and sublimity of the immense corridors and vast vaulted passages of the ruin were greatly enhanced by the solemnity of the night, and by the flickering glare of the torches, shining upon the massive piers, and into the dark recesses of the ruin. I do not know how many more torch light visits to wonderful places in Rome Rollo would have planned, had not the time arrived when Mr. George thought it was necessary for them to go back to France. "It is getting late in the season," said Mr. George, "and every body is leaving Rome. I don't think it is safe for us to remain much longer here ourselves, on account of the fever." Rome is extremely unhealthy in the summer months; and in the environs there is a very wide tract of country which is almost entirely uninhabitable all the year round, on account of the prevalence of fever. "Very well," said Rollo, "we will go whenever you please." "We must take our places in the steamer and in the diligences several days beforehand," said Mr. George. "We will go to the steamboat office to-day." There are several lines of steamers that go from Rome to Marseilles, which is the port of landing for travellers going to France and England. Some of these steamers go "direct" across the sea, while others coast along the shore, sailing at night, and stopping during the day at the large towns on the route. The first night they go to Leghorn, the second to Genoa, and the third to Marseilles. At first Mr. George thought that he would take one of these coasting steamers; but he finally concluded to go "direct." "It would be very pleasant," said he to Rollo, "for us to stop at those towns, and ramble about during the day, and then in the evening set sail again, provided we could be at liberty to land at our pleasure, to ramble about unmolested wherever we wished to go, as we can do in America." "And can't we do so?" asked Rollo. "No," said Mr. George. "In the first place we must have our passports stamped here for all the places that we wish to visit, and that will cause us here a great deal of trouble, and not a little expense. Then to land we must have our passports all examined again, and stamped, and there will be more money to pay; and likely as not we should be detained half the morning in getting through all these formalities, and so our time would be passed in fruitless vexation instead of pleasure. Then, when at last we were free, and began our rambles, we should be beset by beggars every where, and have no peace." "What a foolish plan it is to plague travellers so much with all these ceremonies about passports!" said Rollo. "I am not certain that it is foolish for such governments as these," replied Mr. George. "You see, they are governments of force, maintained over the people against their will, by means of military power. The people at large hate the government, and are all the time plotting to destroy it; and if the plotters were allowed to go freely to and fro all over the country, they would be able to organize their plans, and general insurrections would be arranged, and the governments might thus be overthrown. By allowing nobody to travel without a passport, stating who he is, and where he came from, and where he is going, the government keep every thing under their control." "But I think the governments _ought_ to be overthrown," said Rollo, "and better governments, such as the people would like, set up in their places." "So do I," said Mr. George; "but it is not surprising that the governors themselves of these countries don't think so. They wish to retain their stations and their power, whether the people like it or not; and the passport system is a very cunning contrivance to help them do it. And then, besides, they have a very good pretext for keeping up the system." "What is their pretext?" asked Rollo. "They pretend that the object is to assist them in stopping and arresting robbers, and murderers, and other criminals who attempt to escape from one part of the country to another after committing their crimes. And the system is sometimes useful in this way, I have no doubt; though these criminals can often elude the authorities by procuring false passports." "And the plotters against the government, too, I suppose," said Rollo. "Yes," said Mr. George, "sometimes." This conversation took place while Mr. George and Rollo were walking towards the steamboat office, to take their passages to Marseilles. They arrived at the office. The clerk answered their inquiries in respect to the steamer with great politeness. The conversation was in the French language. He told them that the steamer started from Naples every evening, and that it stopped in the morning about eight o'clock at Civita Vecchia[9] to take in the passengers from Rome. It was necessary for the passengers to go from Rome to Civita Vecchia by diligence, or by post, or with a vetturino. [Footnote 9: Pronounced _Tchivita Vekkia_.] "Then there are no carriages from your office," said Mr. George. "No, sir," replied the clerk. "We take the passengers at Civita Vecchia. They find their own conveyances there." "Very well," said Mr. George. "I will take two berths in the steamer for Thursday morning. Can I see a plan of the steamer so as to select the berths?" "No, sir," said the clerk, "we have no plan of the steamer. And besides, we cannot positively promise you any berths. It depends upon how many passengers there are from Naples. The passengers from Rome take the berths that are left vacant. They take them in the order in which they take passage here." "Are there many that have taken passage before us?" asked Mr. George. "No, sir," said the clerk, "only two. Your numbers are 3 and 4." "Then, if there are more than two berths that are not occupied by the Naples passengers, we can have them?" "Yes, sir," said the clerk. "And suppose there are not more than two," asked Rollo, "what shall we do then?" "Why, then you will have sofas or cots," said the clerk. "O, that will do just as well," said Rollo. "I would as lief have a sofa or a cot as a berth." So Mr. George paid the money, and took tickets numbers 3 and 4, and then, having inquired the way to the diligence office, they bade the clerk good morning, and went away. "And now," said Mr. George, "we must go directly to the diligence office, and secure our places for Civita Vecchia. If we put it off, the places might all be taken, and then we should lose the passage money we have paid for the steamer." "Would not they pay us back again?" asked Rollo. "I am afraid not," said Mr. George. "But I think we are in season, for it is now Tuesday, and we do not sail till Thursday." On entering the diligence office, Mr. George saw one or two clerks standing behind a counter. They seemed busy talking with persons who had come in to engage places, and entering their names in great books. As soon as one of the clerks was at liberty Mr. George accosted him, saying that he wished to get two places in the diligence for Civita Vecchia on Wednesday. The clerk looked at the book, and said that all the places were taken for Wednesday, except one. "That's bad," said Mr. George. "We shall have to go down on Tuesday, then, and stay a day at Civita Vecchia. Are there any places for Tuesday?" The clerk looked, and said that every place for Tuesday was engaged. "But there is a coach on Wednesday night," he added, "that arrives at Civita Vecchia in the morning in time for the steamer." Then turning over to another place in his book, he looked at the list of names, and then told Mr. George that there was only one vacant place for Wednesday night. "Dear me, Rollo!" said Mr. George, "how unfortunate! We ought to have attended to this business before." "I'll tell you what we can do," said Rollo. "One of us can go on Wednesday morning, and the other wait here and come on in the night." "That is the only thing that we _can_ do," said Mr. George, "unless we hire a carriage to ourselves, and that would be expensive. Should you dare to go alone?" "O, yes, indeed," said Rollo. "But remember," said Mr. George, "that all the people will be speaking Italian. You will have to ride among them like a deaf and dumb boy." "Never mind that," said Rollo. "Deaf and dumb boys get along in travelling very well. Besides, I am almost sure that there will be somebody in the diligence that can speak French or English." "And which would you rather do," asked Mr. George, "go in the morning or in the evening? If you go in the morning coach, you will have to set out very early, before it is light, and then stay at Civita Vecchia, in a strange hotel, alone, all night. If you go in the evening, you can remain here, where you are acquainted, all day; but then you will have to ride alone in the night." "I would rather go in the morning coach," said Rollo. "Very well," said Mr. George. "That's what we'll do." This conversation between Mr. George and Rollo had been carried on in English; but now Mr. George turned to the clerk, and said in French that he would take the two places that were left, one in the morning coach and one in the evening coach of Wednesday. The place in the morning coach was upon the banquette. The one in the evening coach was in the coupé. Mr. George had scarcely uttered the words by which he engaged the seats, before two gentlemen came in in a hurried manner to ask for seats in the diligence for Wednesday. The clerk told them that the last of them had just been engaged. When Wednesday morning came, Rollo was awakened by the porter of the hotel knocking at his door before it was light. He got up, and opened the door a little way, and took in the candles which the porter handed to him. Mr. George had intended to get up too, and go with Rollo to the office; but Rollo particularly desired that he should not do so. "I have nothing to carry," said he, "but my little valise, and the porter will go with me to take that, and to see me safe through the streets. So that it is not at all necessary for you to go, and I would much rather not have you go." Mr. George perceived that Rollo felt a pride in taking care of himself on this occasion, and so he yielded to this request, and remained in his bed. If he had not been convinced that Rollo would be perfectly safe under the porter's care, he would of course have insisted on going himself. Rollo was soon dressed, and then going to his uncle's bedside, he shook hands with him, and bade him good by. "I shall be looking out for you at the diligence office in Civita Vecchia," said he, "when the diligence arrives to-morrow morning." So saying, he took his candle in one hand and his valise in the other, and sallied forth into the long corridor of the hotel. He had to walk a a great distance along this corridor, passing a great many doors, with a pair of boots or shoes before each of them, before he reached the head of the staircase. He descended the staircase, and at the bottom of it found the porter waiting for him. The porter had another candle, which was upon a table in the hall. He took Rollo's candle, and also the valise, and then unbolted and unlocked the front door. A sleepy-looking boy was ready to lock it again, after Rollo and the porter had gone out. So they sallied forth into the cool morning air. There were lamps burning in the streets, and in one direction, where there was an opening among the buildings, Rollo could see some faint signs of the dawn in the eastern sky. The porter could only speak Italian; so he and Rollo walked along together in silence through the solitary streets. They soon arrived at the diligence office, where there was a bright light of lanterns, and a bustle of people coming and going, and of postilions bringing out horses. The diligence was all ready before the door. The baggage, which had been brought for the purpose the night before, was all loaded. Rollo paid the porter, and then climbed up to his place on the banquette. The horses were soon harnessed in, and the diligence set off; but there were several stoppages necessary at police stations and passport offices before the journey was fairly commenced, so that the sun was rising when Rollo took his final leave of Rome. He had a very pleasant journey across the country, and arrived at Civita Vecchia about three o'clock. As he descended from the coach, a pleasant-looking man, in a sort of official costume, accosted him, asking him if he was going to Leghorn in the steamer that afternoon. The man spoke in English, though with a foreign accent. "No," said Rollo; "I am going to Marseilles to-morrow morning." "Ah! Then you go to the hotel," said the man. "This porter will take your valise, and show you the way." So saying, the man, who was a commissioner of the hotel, put Rollo under the charge of a porter, who conducted him to a large and very substantial-looking hotel near by. Rollo ascended by a flight of stone stairs into the second story of the hotel, and there engaged a room for the night, and ordered dinner. He had a very good dinner, all by himself, in a great dining room with long tables in it, where there were at the same time several other persons and parties dining. After dinner he went out to ramble about the town. He was surprised at the massive masonry of the piers, and breakwaters, and forts, that lined the shores, and at the number of vessels and steamers in the basin. He returned to the hotel in good season, and amused himself there till nine o'clock observing the different parties of travellers that were continually coming and going. The next morning he watched for the diligence from a piazza on the second story of the hotel--the diligence office being at the next door. The diligence arrived at the proper time, and Rollo called out to his uncle George when he saw him getting out from the coupé. This was at seven o'clock; at eight Mr. George and Rollo embarked, with a great many others, in a small boat, to go on board the steamer, and at half past eight the paddles of the steamer began to revolve, and to bear them rapidly away from the shores of Italy out over the blue waters of the Mediterranean, on the route to Marseilles. 
8725	----	and David Widger [widger@cecomet.net] THE THREE CITIES ROME BY EMILE ZOLA TRANSLATED BY ERNEST A. VIZETELLY PART V XIV THAT evening, when Pierre emerged from the Borgo in front of the Vatican, a sonorous stroke rang out from the clock amidst the deep silence of the dark and sleepy district. It was only half-past eight, and being in advance the young priest resolved to wait some twenty minutes in order to reach the doors of the papal apartments precisely at nine, the hour fixed for his audience. This respite brought him some relief amidst the infinite emotion and grief which gripped his heart. That tragic afternoon which he had spent in the chamber of death, where Dario and Benedetta now slept the eternal sleep in one another's arms, had left him very weary. He was haunted by a wild, dolorous vision of the two lovers, and involuntary sighs came from his lips whilst tears continually moistened his eyes. He had been altogether unable to eat that evening. Ah! how he would have liked to hide himself and weep at his ease! His heart melted at each fresh thought. The pitiful death of the lovers intensified the grievous feeling with which his book was instinct, and impelled him to yet greater compassion, a perfect anguish of charity for all who suffered in the world. And he was so distracted by the thought of the many physical and moral sores of Paris and of Rome, where he had beheld so much unjust and abominable suffering, that at each step he took he feared lest he should burst into sobs with arms upstretched towards the blackness of heaven. In the hope of somewhat calming himself he began to walk slowly across the Piazza of St. Peter's, now all darkness and solitude. On arriving he had fancied that he was losing himself in a murky sea, but by degrees his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness. The vast expanse was only lighted by the four candelabra at the corners of the obelisk and by infrequent lamps skirting the buildings which run on either hand towards the Basilica. Under the colonnade, too, other lamps threw yellow gleams across the forest of pillars, showing up their stone trunks in fantastic fashion; while on the piazza only the pale, ghostly obelisk was at all distinctly visible. Pierre could scarcely perceive the dim, silent facade of St. Peter's; whilst of the dome he merely divined a gigantic, bluey roundness faintly shadowed against the sky. In the obscurity he at first heard the plashing of the fountains without being at all able to see them, but on approaching he at last distinguished the slender phantoms of the ever rising jets which fell again in spray. And above the vast square stretched the vast and moonless sky of a deep velvety blue, where the stars were large and radiant like carbuncles; Charles's Wain, with golden wheels and golden shaft tilted back as it were, over the roof of the Vatican, and Orion, bedizened with the three bright stars of his belt, showing magnificently above Rome, in the direction of the Via Giulia. At last Pierre raised his eyes to the Vatican, but facing the piazza there was here merely a confused jumble of walls, amidst which only two gleams of light appeared on the floor of the papal apartments. The Court of San Damaso was, however, lighted, for the conservatory-like glass-work of two of its sides sparkled as with the reflection of gas lamps which could not be seen. For a time there was not a sound or sign of movement, but at last two persons crossed the expanse of the piazza, and then came a third who in his turn disappeared, nothing remaining but a rhythmical far-away echo of steps. The spot was indeed a perfect desert, there were neither promenaders nor passers-by, nor was there even the shadow of a prowler in the pillared forest of the colonnade, which was as empty as the wild primeval forests of the world's infancy. And what a solemn desert it was, full of the silence of haughty desolation. Never had so vast and black a presentment of slumber, so instinct with the sovereign nobility of death, appeared to Pierre. At ten minutes to nine he at last made up his mind and went towards the bronze portal. Only one of the folding doors was now open at the end of the right-hand porticus, where the increasing density of the gloom steeped everything in night. Pierre remembered the instructions which Monsignor Nani had given him; at each door that he reached he was to ask for Signor Squadra without adding a word, and thereupon each door would open and he would have nothing to do but to let himself be guided on. No one but the prelate now knew that he was there, since Benedetta, the only being to whom he had confided the secret, was dead. When he had crossed the threshold of the bronze doors and found himself in presence of the motionless, sleeping Swiss Guard, who was on duty there, he simply spoke the words agreed upon: "Signor Squadra." And as the Guard did not stir, did not seek to bar his way, he passed on, turning into the vestibule of the Scala Pia, the stone stairway which ascends to the Court of San Damaso. And not a soul was to be seen: there was but the faint sound of his own light footsteps and the sleepy glow of the gas jets whose light was softly whitened by globes of frosted glass. Up above, on reaching the courtyard he found it a solitude, whose slumber seemed sepulchral amidst the mournful gleams of the gas lamps which cast a pallid reflection on the lofty glass-work of the facades. And feeling somewhat nervous, affected by the quiver which pervaded all that void and silence, Pierre hastened on, turning to the right, towards the low flight of steps which leads to the staircase of the Pope's private apartments. Here stood a superb gendarme in full uniform. "Signor Squadra," said Pierre, and without a word the gendarme pointed to the stairs. The young man went up. It was a broad stairway, with low steps, balustrade of white marble, and walls covered with yellowish stucco. The gas, burning in globes of round glass, seemed to have been already turned down in a spirit of prudent economy. And in the glimmering light nothing could have been more mournfully solemn than that cold and pallid staircase. On each landing there was a Swiss Guard, halbard in hand, and in the heavy slumber spreading through the palace one only heard the regular monotonous footsteps of these men, ever marching up and down, in order no doubt that they might not succumb to the benumbing influence of their surroundings. Amidst the invading dimness and the quivering silence the ascent of the stairs seemed interminable to Pierre, who by the time he reached the second-floor landing imagined that he had been climbing for ages. There, outside the glass door of the Sala Clementina, only the right-hand half of which was open, a last Swiss Guard stood watching. "Signor Squadra," Pierre said again, and the Guard drew back to let him pass. The Sala Clementina, spacious enough by daylight, seemed immense at that nocturnal hour, in the twilight glimmer of its lamps. All the opulent decorative-work, sculpture, painting, and gilding became blended, the walls assuming a tawny vagueness amidst which appeared bright patches like the sparkle of precious stones. There was not an article of furniture, nothing but the endless pavement stretching away into the semi-darkness. At last, however, near a door at the far end Pierre espied some men dozing on a bench. They were three Swiss Guards. "Signor Squadra," he said to them. One of the Guards thereupon slowly rose and left the hall, and Pierre understood that he was to wait. He did not dare to move, disturbed as he was by the sound of his own footsteps on the paved floor, so he contented himself with gazing around and picturing the crowds which at times peopled that vast apartment, the first of the many papal ante-chambers. But before long the Guard returned, and behind him, on the threshold of the adjoining room, appeared a man of forty or thereabouts, who was clad in black from head to foot and suggested a cross between a butler and a beadle. He had a good-looking, clean-shaven face, with somewhat pronounced nose and large, clear, fixed eyes. "Signor Squadra," said Pierre for the last time. The man bowed as if to say that he was Signor Squadra, and then, with a fresh reverence, he invited the priest to follow him. Thereupon at a leisurely step, one behind the other, they began to thread the interminable suite of waiting-rooms. Pierre, who was acquainted with the ceremonial, of which he had often spoken with Narcisse, recognised the different apartments as he passed through them, recalling their names and purpose, and peopling them in imagination with the various officials of the papal retinue who have the right to occupy them. These according to their rank cannot go beyond certain doors, so that the persons who are to have audience of the Pope are passed on from the servants to the Noble Guards, from the Noble Guards to the honorary /Camerieri/, and from the latter to the /Camerieri segreti/, until they at last reach the presence of the Holy Father. At eight o'clock, however, the ante-rooms empty and become both deserted and dim, only a few lamps being left alight upon the pier tables standing here and there against the walls. And first Pierre came to the ante-room of the /bussolanti/, mere ushers clad in red velvet broidered with the papal arms, who conduct visitors to the door of the ante-room of honour. At that late hour only one of them was left there, seated on a bench in such a dark corner that his purple tunic looked quite black. Then the Hall of the Gendarmes was crossed, where according to the regulations the secretaries of cardinals and other high personages await their masters' return; and this was now completely empty, void both of the handsome blue uniforms with white shoulder belts and the cassocks of fine black cloth which mingled in it during the brilliant reception hours. Empty also was the following room, a smaller one reserved to the Palatine Guards, who are recruited among the Roman middle class and wear black tunics with gold epaulets and shakoes surmounted by red plumes. Then Pierre and his guide turned into another series of apartments, and again was the first one empty. This was the Hall of the Arras, a superb waiting-room with lofty painted ceiling and admirable Gobelins tapestry designed by Audran and representing the miracles of Jesus. And empty also was the ante-chamber of the Noble Guards which followed, with its wooden stools, its pier table on the right-hand surmounted by a large crucifix standing between two lamps, and its large door opening at the far end into another but smaller room, a sort of alcove indeed, where there is an altar at which the Holy Father says mass by himself whilst those privileged to be present remain kneeling on the marble slabs of the outer apartment which is resplendent with the dazzling uniforms of the Guards. And empty likewise was the ensuing ante-room of honour, otherwise the grand throne-room, where the Pope receives two or three hundred people at a time in public audience. The throne, an arm-chair of elaborate pattern, gilded, and upholstered with red velvet, stands under a velvet canopy of the same hue, in front of the windows. Beside it is the cushion on which the Pope rests his foot in order that it may be kissed. Then facing one another, right and left of the room, there are two pier tables, on one of which is a clock and on the other a crucifix between lofty candelabra with feet of gilded wood. The wall hangings, of red silk damask with a Louis XIV palm pattern, are topped by a pompous frieze, framing a ceiling decorated with allegorical figures and attributes, and it is only just in front of the throne that a Smyrna carpet covers the magnificent marble pavement. On the days of private audience, when the Pope remains in the little throne-room or at times in his bed-chamber, the grand throne-room becomes simply the ante-room of honour, where high dignitaries of the Church, ambassadors, and great civilian personages, wait their turns. Two /Camerieri/, one in violet coat, the other of the Cape and the Sword, here do duty, receiving from the /bussolanti/ the persons who are to be honoured with audiences and conducting them to the door of the next room, the secret or private ante-chamber, where they hand them over to the /Camerieri segreti/. Signor Squadra who, walking on with slow and silent steps, had not yet once turned round, paused for a moment on reaching the door of the /anticamera segreta/ so as to give Pierre time to breathe and recover himself somewhat before crossing the threshold of the sanctuary. The /Camerieri segreti/ alone had the right to occupy that last ante-chamber, and none but the cardinals might wait there till the Pope should condescend to receive them. And so when Signor Squadra made up his mind to admit Pierre, the latter could not restrain a slight nervous shiver as if he were passing into some redoubtable mysterious sphere beyond the limits of the lower world. In the daytime a Noble Guard stood on sentry duty before the door, but the latter was now free of access, and the room within proved as empty as all the others. It was rather narrow, almost like a passage, with two windows overlooking the new district of the castle fields and a third one facing the Piazza of St. Peter's. Near the last was a door conducting to the little throne-room, and between this door and the window stood a small table at which a secretary, now absent, usually sat. And here again, as in all the other rooms, one found a gilded pier table surmounted by a crucifix flanked by a pair of lamps. In a corner too there was a large clock, loudly ticking in its ebony case incrusted with brass-work. Still there was nothing to awaken curiosity under the panelled and gilded ceiling unless it were the wall-hangings of red damask, on which yellow scutcheons displaying the Keys and the Tiara alternated with armorial lions, each with a paw resting on a globe. Signor Squadra, however, now noticed that Pierre still carried his hat in his hand, whereas according to etiquette he should have left it in the hall of the /bussolanti/, only cardinals being privileged to carry their hats with them into the Pope's presence. Accordingly he discreetly took the young priest's from him, and deposited it on the pier table to indicate that it must at least remain there. Then, without a word, by a simple bow he gave Pierre to understand that he was about to announce him to his Holiness, and that he must be good enough to wait for a few minutes in that room. On being left to himself Pierre drew a long breath. He was stifling; his heart was beating as though it would burst. Nevertheless his mind remained clear, and in spite of the semi-obscurity he had been able to form some idea of the famous and magnificent apartments of the Pope, a suite of splendid /salons/ with tapestried or silken walls, gilded or painted friezes, and frescoed ceilings. By way of furniture, however, there were only pier table, stools,* and thrones. And the lamps and the clocks, and the crucifixes, even the thrones, were all presents brought from the four quarters of the world in the great fervent days of jubilee. There was no sign of comfort, everything was pompous, stiff, cold, and inconvenient. All olden Italy was there, with its perpetual display and lack of intimate, cosy life. It had been necessary to lay a few carpets over the superb marble slabs which froze one's feet; and some /caloriferes/ had even lately been installed, but it was not thought prudent to light them lest the variations of temperature should give the Pope a cold. However, that which more particularly struck Pierre now that he stood there waiting was the extraordinary silence which prevailed all around, silence so deep that it seemed as if all the dark quiescence of that huge, somniferous Vatican were concentrated in that one suite of lifeless, sumptuous rooms, which the motionless flamelets of the lamps as dimly illumined. * M. Zola seems to have fallen into error here. Many of the seats, which are of peculiar antique design, do, in the lower part, resemble stools, but they have backs, whereas a stool proper has none. Briefly, these seats, which are entirely of wood, are not unlike certain old-fashioned hall chairs.--Trans. All at once the ebony clock struck nine and the young man felt astonished. What! had only ten minutes elapsed since he had crossed the threshold of the bronze doors below? He felt as if he had been walking on for days and days. Then, desiring to overcome the nervous feeling which oppressed him--for he ever feared lest his enforced calmness should collapse amidst a flood of tears--he began to walk up and down, passing in front of the clock, glancing at the crucifix on the pier table, and the globe of the lamp on which had remained the mark of a servant's greasy fingers. And the light was so faint and yellow that he felt inclined to turn the lamp up, but did not dare. Then he found himself with his brow resting against one of the panes of the window facing the Piazza of St. Peter's, and for a moment he was thunderstruck, for between the imperfectly closed shutters he could see all Rome, as he had seen it one day from the /loggie/ of Raffaelle, and as he had pictured Leo XIII contemplating it from the window of his bed-room. However, it was now Rome by night, Rome spreading out into the depths of the gloom, as limitless as the starry sky. And in that sea of black waves one could only with certainty identify the larger thoroughfares which the white brightness of electric lights turned, as it were, into Milky Ways. All the rest showed but a swarming of little yellow sparks, the crumbs, as it were, of a half-extinguished heaven swept down upon the earth. Occasional constellations of bright stars, tracing mysterious figures, vainly endeavoured to show forth distinctly, but they were submerged, blotted out by the general chaos which suggested the dust of some old planet that had crumbled there, losing its splendour and reduced to mere phosphorescent sand. And how immense was the blackness thus sprinkled with light, how huge the mass of obscurity and mystery into which the Eternal City with its seven and twenty centuries, its ruins, its monuments, its people, its history seemed to have been merged. You could no longer tell where it began or where it ended, whether it spread to the farthest recesses of the gloom, or whether it were so reduced that the sun on rising would illumine but a little pile of ashes. However, in spite of all Pierre's efforts, his nervous anguish increased each moment, even in presence of that ocean of darkness which displayed such sovereign quiescence. He drew away from the window and quivered from head to foot on hearing a faint footfall and thinking it was that of Signor Squadra approaching to fetch him. The sound came from an adjacent apartment, the little throne-room, whose door, he now perceived, had remained ajar. And at last, as he heard nothing further, he yielded to his feverish impatience and peeped into this room which he found to be fairly spacious, again hung with red damask, and containing a gilded arm-chair, covered with red velvet under a canopy of the same material. And again there was the inevitable pier table, with a tall ivory crucifix, a clock, a pair of lamps, a pair of candelabra, a pair of large vases on pedestals, and two smaller ones of Sevres manufacture decorated with the Holy Father's portrait. At the same time, however, the room displayed rather more comfort, for a Smyrna carpet covered the whole of the marble floor, while a few arm-chairs stood against the walls, and an imitation chimney-piece, draped with damask, served as counterpart to the pier table. As a rule the Pope, whose bed-chamber communicated with this little throne-room, received in the latter such persons as he desired to honour. And Pierre's shiver became more pronounced at the idea that in all likelihood he would merely have the throne-room to cross and that Leo XIII was yonder behind its farther door. Why was he kept waiting, he wondered? He had been told of mysterious audiences granted at a similar hour to personages who had been received in similar silent fashion, great personages whose names were only mentioned in the lowest whispers. With regard to himself no doubt, it was because he was considered compromising that there was a desire to receive him in this manner unknown to the personages of the Court, and so as to speak with him at ease. Then, all at once, he understood the cause of the noise he had recently heard, for beside the lamp on the pier table of the little throne-room he saw a kind of butler's tray containing some soiled plates, knives, forks, and spoons, with a bottle and a glass, which had evidently just been removed from a supper table. And he realised that Signor Squadra, having seen these things in the Pope's room, had brought them there, and had then gone in again, perhaps to tidy up. He knew also of the Pope's frugality, how he took his meals all alone at a little round table, everything being brought to him in that tray, a plate of meat, a plate of vegetables, a little Bordeaux claret as prescribed by his doctor, and a large allowance of beef broth of which he was very fond. In the same way as others might offer a cup of tea, he was wont to offer cups of broth to the old cardinals his friends and favourites, quite an invigorating little treat which these old bachelors much enjoyed. And, O ye orgies of Alexander VI, ye banquets and /galas/ of Julius II and Leo X, only eight /lire/ a day--six shillings and fourpence--were allowed to defray the cost of Leo XIII's table! However, just as that recollection occurred to Pierre, he again heard a slight noise, this time in his Holiness's bed-chamber, and thereupon, terrified by his indiscretion, he hastened to withdraw from the entrance of the throne-room which, lifeless and quiescent though it was, seemed in his agitation to flare as with sudden fire. Then, quivering too violently to be able to remain still, he began to walk up and down the ante-chamber. He remembered that Narcisse had spoken to him of that Signor Squadra, his Holiness's cherished valet, whose importance and influence were so great. He alone, on reception days, was able to prevail on the Pope to don a clean cassock if the one he was wearing happened to be soiled by snuff. And though his Holiness stubbornly shut himself up alone in his bed-room every night from a spirit of independence, which some called the anxiety of a miser determined to sleep alone with his treasure, Signor Squadra at all events occupied an adjoining chamber, and was ever on the watch, ready to respond to the faintest call. Again, it was he who respectfully intervened whenever his Holiness sat up too late or worked too long. But on this point it was difficult to induce the Pope to listen to reason. During his hours of insomnia he would often rise and send Squadra to fetch a secretary in order that he might detail some memoranda or sketch out an encyclical letter. When the drafting of one of the latter impassioned him he would have spent days and nights over it, just as formerly, when claiming proficiency in Latin verse, he had often let the dawn surprise him whilst he was polishing a line. But, indeed, he slept very little, his brain ever being at work, ever scheming out the realisation of some former ideas. His memory alone seemed to have slightly weakened during recent times. Pierre, as he slowly paced to and fro, gradually became absorbed in his thoughts of that lofty and sovereign personality. From the petty details of the Pope's daily existence, he passed to his intellectual life, to the /role/ which he was certainly bent on playing as a great pontiff. And Pierre asked himself which of his two hundred and fifty-seven predecessors, the long line of saints and criminals, men of mediocrity and men of genius, he most desired to resemble. Was it one of the first humble popes, those who followed on during the first three centuries, mere heads of burial guilds, fraternal pastors of the Christian community? Was it Pope Damasus, the first great builder, the man of letters who took delight in intellectual matters, the ardent believer who is said to have opened the Catacombs to the piety of the faithful? Was it Leo III, who by crowning Charlemagne boldly consummated the rupture with the schismatic East and conveyed the Empire to the West by the all-powerful will of God and His Church, which thenceforth disposed of the crowns of monarchs? Was it the terrible Gregory VII, the purifier of the temple, the sovereign of kings; was it Innocent III or Boniface VIII, those masters of souls, nations, and thrones, who, armed with the fierce weapon of excommunication, reigned with such despotism over the terrified middle ages that Catholicism was never nearer the attainment of its dream of universal dominion? Was it Urban II or Gregory IX or another of those popes in whom flared the red Crusading passion which urged the nations on to the conquest of the unknown and the divine? Was it Alexander III, who defended the Holy See against the Empire, and at last conquered and set his foot on the neck of Frederick Barbarossa? Was it, long after the sorrows of Avignon, Julius II, who wore the cuirass and once more strengthened the political power of the papacy? Was it Leo X, the pompous, glorious patron of the Renascence, of a whole great century of art, whose mind, however, was possessed of so little penetration and foresight that he looked on Luther as a mere rebellious monk? Was it Pius V, who personified dark and avenging reaction, the fire of the stakes that punished the heretic world? Was it some other of the popes who reigned after the Council of Trent with faith absolute, belief re-established in its full integrity, the Church saved by pride and the stubborn upholding of every dogma? Or was it a pope of the decline, such as Benedict XIV, the man of vast intelligence, the learned theologian who, as his hands were tied, and he could not dispose of the kingdoms of the world, spent a worthy life in regulating the affairs of heaven? In this wise, in Pierre's mind there spread out the whole history of the popes, the most prodigious of all histories, showing fortune in every guise, the lowest, the most wretched, as well as the loftiest and most dazzling; whilst an obstinate determination to live enabled the papacy to survive everything--conflagrations, massacres, and the downfall of many nations, for always did it remain militant and erect in the persons of its popes, that most extraordinary of all lines of absolute, conquering, and domineering sovereigns, every one of them--even the puny and humble--masters of the world, every one of them glorious with the imperishable glory of heaven when they were thus evoked in that ancient Vatican, where their spirits assuredly awoke at night and prowled about the endless galleries and spreading halls in that tomb-like silence whose quiver came no doubt from the light touch of their gliding steps over the marble slabs. However, Pierre was now thinking that he indeed knew which of the great popes Leo XIII most desired to resemble. It was first Gregory the Great, the conqueror and organiser of the early days of Catholic power. He had come of ancient Roman stock, and in his heart there was a little of the blood of the emperors. He administered Rome after it had been saved from the Goths, cultivated the ecclesiastical domains, and divided earthly wealth into thirds, one for the poor, one for the clergy, and one for the Church. Then too he was the first to establish the Propaganda, sending his priests forth to civilise and pacify the nations, and carrying his conquests so far as to win Great Britain over to the divine law of Christ. And the second pope whom Leo XIII took as model was one who had arisen after a long lapse of centuries, Sixtus V, the pope financier and politician, the vine-dresser's son, who, when he had donned the tiara, revealed one of the most extensive and supple minds of a period fertile in great diplomatists. He heaped up treasure and displayed stern avarice, in order that he might ever have in his coffers all the money needful for war or for peace. He spent years and years in negotiations with kings, never despairing of his own triumph; and never did he display open hostility for his times, but took them as they were and then sought to modify them in accordance with the interests of the Holy See, showing himself conciliatory in all things and with every one, already dreaming of an European balance of power which he hoped to control. And withal a very saintly pope, a fervent mystic, yet a pope of the most absolute and domineering mind blended with a politician ready for whatever courses might most conduce to the rule of God's Church on earth. And, after all, Pierre amidst his rising enthusiasm, which despite his efforts at calmness was sweeping away all prudence and doubt, Pierre asked himself why he need question the past. Was not Leo XIII the pope whom he had depicted in his book, the great pontiff, who was desired and expected? No doubt the portrait which he had sketched was not accurate in every detail, but surely its main lines must be correct if mankind were to retain a hope of salvation. Whole pages of that book of his arose before him, and he again beheld the Leo XIII that he had portrayed, the wise and conciliatory politician, labouring for the unity of the Church and so anxious to make it strong and invincible against the day of the inevitable great struggle. He again beheld him freed from the cares of the temporal power, elevated, radiant with moral splendour, the only authority left erect above the nations; he beheld him realising what mortal danger would be incurred if the solution of the social question were left to the enemies of Christianity, and therefore resolving to intervene in contemporary quarrels for the defence of the poor and the lowly, even as Jesus had intervened once before. And he again beheld him putting himself on the side of the democracies, accepting the Republic in France, leaving the dethroned kings in exile, and verifying the prediction which promised the empire of the world to Rome once more when the papacy should have unified belief and have placed itself at the head of the people. The times indeed were near accomplishment, Caesar was struck down, the Pope alone remained, and would not the people, the great silent multitude, for whom the two powers had so long contended, give itself to its Father now that it knew him to be both just and charitable, with heart aglow and hand outstretched to welcome all the penniless toilers and beggars of the roads! Given the catastrophe which threatened our rotten modern societies, the frightful misery which ravaged every city, there was surely no other solution possible: Leo XIII, the predestined, necessary redeemer, the pastor sent to save the flock from coming disaster by re-establishing the true Christian community, the forgotten golden age of primitive Christianity. The reign of justice would at last begin, all men would be reconciled, there would be but one nation living in peace and obeying the equalising law of work, under the high patronage of the Pope, sole bond of charity and love on earth! And at this thought Pierre was upbuoyed by fiery enthusiasm. At last he was about to see the Holy Father, empty his heart and open his soul to him! He had so long and so passionately looked for the advent of that moment! To secure it he had fought with all his courage through ever recurring obstacles, and the length and difficulty of the struggle and the success now at last achieved, increased his feverishness, his desire for final victory. Yes, yes, he would conquer, he would confound his enemies. As he had said to Monsignor Fornaro, could the Pope disavow him? Had he not expressed the Holy Father's secret ideas? Perhaps he might have done so somewhat prematurely, but was not that a fault to be forgiven? And then too, he remembered his declaration to Monsignor Nani, that he himself would never withdraw and suppress his book, for he neither regretted nor disowned anything that was in it. At this very moment he again questioned himself, and felt that all his valour and determination to defend his book, all his desire to work the triumph of his belief, remained intact. Yet his mental perturbation was becoming great, he had to seek for ideas, wondering how he should enter the Pope's presence, what he should say, what precise terms he should employ. Something heavy and mysterious which he could hardly account for seemed to weigh him down. At bottom he was weary, already exhausted, only held up by his dream, his compassion for human misery. However, he would enter in all haste, he would fall upon his knees and speak as he best could, letting his heart flow forth. And assuredly the Holy Father would smile on him, and dismiss him with a promise that he would not sign the condemnation of a work in which he had found the expression of his own most cherished thoughts. Then, again, such an acute sensation as of fainting came over Pierre that he went up to the window to press his burning brow against the cold glass. His ears were buzzing, his legs staggering, whilst his brain throbbed violently. And he was striving to forget his thoughts by gazing upon the black immensity of Rome, longing to be steeped in night himself, total, healing night, the night in which one sleeps on for ever, knowing neither pain nor wretchedness, when all at once he became conscious that somebody was standing behind him; and thereupon, with a start, he turned round. And there, indeed, stood Signor Squadra in his black livery. Again he made one of his customary bows to invite the visitor to follow him, and again he walked on in front, crossing the little throne-room, and slowly opening the farther door. Then he drew aside, allowed Pierre to enter, and noiselessly closed the door behind him. Pierre was in his Holiness's bed-room. He had feared one of those overwhelming attacks of emotion which madden or paralyse one. He had been told of women reaching the Pope's presence in a fainting condition, staggering as if intoxicated, while others came with a rush, as though upheld and borne along by invisible pinions. And suddenly the anguish of his own spell of waiting, his intense feverishness, ceased in a sort of astonishment, a reaction which rendered him very calm and so restored his clearness of vision, that he could see everything. As he entered he distinctly realised the decisive importance of such an audience, he, a mere petty priest in presence of the Supreme Pontiff, the Head of the Church. All his religious and moral life would depend on it; and possibly it was this sudden thought that thus chilled him on the threshold of the redoubtable sanctuary, which he had approached with such quivering steps, and which he would not have thought to enter otherwise than with distracted heart and loss of senses, unable to do more than stammer the simple prayers of childhood. Later on, when he sought to classify his recollections he remembered that his eyes had first lighted on Leo XIII, not, however, to the exclusion of his surroundings, but in conjunction with them, that spacious room hung with yellow damask whose alcove, adorned with fluted marble columns, was so deep that the bed was quite hidden away in it, as well as other articles of furniture, a couch, a wardrobe, and some trunks, those famous trunks in which the treasure of the Peter's Pence was said to be securely locked. A sort of Louis XIV writing-desk with ornaments of engraved brass stood face to face with a large gilded and painted Louis XV pier table on which a lamp was burning beside a lofty crucifix. The room was virtually bare, only three arm-chairs and four or five other chairs, upholstered in light silk, being disposed here and there over the well-worn carpet. And on one of the arm-chairs sat Leo XIII, near a small table on which another lamp with a shade had been placed. Three newspapers, moreover, lay there, two of them French and one Italian, and the last was half unfolded as if the Pope had momentarily turned from it to stir a glass of syrup, standing beside him, with a long silver-gilt spoon. In the same way as Pierre saw the Pope's room, he saw his costume, his cassock of white cloth with white buttons, his white skull-cap, his white cape and his white sash fringed with gold and broidered at either end with golden keys. His stockings were white, his slippers were of red velvet, and these again were broidered with golden keys. What surprised the young priest, however, was his Holiness's face and figure, which now seemed so shrunken that he scarcely recognised them. This was his fourth meeting with the Pope. He had seen him walking in the Vatican gardens, enthroned in the Hall of Beatifications, and pontifying at St. Peter's, and now he beheld him on that arm-chair, in privacy, and looking so slight and fragile that he could not restrain a feeling of affectionate anxiety. Leo's neck was particularly remarkable, slender beyond belief, suggesting the neck of some little, aged, white bird. And his face, of the pallor of alabaster, was characteristically transparent, to such a degree, indeed, that one could see the lamplight through his large commanding nose, as if the blood had entirely withdrawn from that organ. A mouth of great length, with white bloodless lips, streaked the lower part of the papal countenance, and the eyes alone had remained young and handsome. Superb eyes they were, brilliant like black diamonds, endowed with sufficient penetration and strength to lay souls open and force them to confess the truth aloud. Some scanty white curls emerged from under the white skull-cap, thus whitely crowning the thin white face, whose ugliness was softened by all this whiteness, this spiritual whiteness in which Leo XIII's flesh seemed as it were but pure lily-white florescence. At the first glance, however, Pierre noticed that if Signor Squadra had kept him waiting, it had not been in order to compel the Holy Father to don a clean cassock, for the one he was wearing was badly soiled by snuff. A number of brown stains had trickled down the front of the garment beside the buttons, and just like any good /bourgeois/, his Holiness had a handkerchief on his knees to wipe himself. Apart from all this he seemed in good health, having recovered from his recent indisposition as easily as he usually recovered from such passing illnesses, sober, prudent old man that he was, quite free from organic disease, and simply declining by reason of progressive natural exhaustion. Immediately on entering Pierre had felt that the Pope's sparkling eyes, those two black diamonds, were fixed upon him. The silence was profound, and the lamps burned with motionless, pallid flames. He had to approach, and after making the three genuflections prescribed by etiquette, he stooped over one of the Pope's feet resting on a cushion in order to kiss the red velvet slipper. And on the Pope's side there was not a word, not a gesture, not a movement. When the young man drew himself up again he found the two black diamonds, those two eyes which were all brightness and intelligence, still riveted on him. But at last Leo XIII, who had been unwilling to spare the young priest the humble duty of kissing his foot and who now left him standing, began to speak, whilst still examining him, probing, as it were, his very soul. "My son," he said, "you greatly desired to see me, and I consented to afford you that satisfaction." He spoke in French, somewhat uncertain French, pronounced after the Italian fashion, and so slowly did he articulate each sentence that one could have written it down like so much dictation. And his voice, as Pierre had previously noticed, was strong and nasal, one of those full voices which people are surprised to hear coming from debile and apparently bloodless and breathless frames. In response to the Holy Father's remark Pierre contented himself with bowing, knowing that respect required him to wait for a direct answer before speaking. However, this question promptly came. "You live in Paris?" asked Leo XIII. "Yes, Holy Father." "Are you attached to one of the great parishes of the city?" "No, Holy Father. I simply officiate at the little church of Neuilly." "Ah, yes, Neuilly, that is in the direction of the Bois de Boulogne, is it not? And how old are you, my son?" "Thirty-four, Holy Father." A short interval followed. Leo XIII had at last lowered his eyes. With frail, ivory hand he took up the glass beside him, again stirred the syrup with the long spoon, and then drank a little of it. And all this he did gently and slowly, with a prudent, judicious air, as was his wont no doubt in everything. "I have read your book, my son," he resumed. "Yes, the greater part of it. As a rule only fragments are submitted to me. But a person who is interested in you handed me the volume, begging me to glance through it. And that is how I was able to look into it." As he spoke he made a slight gesture in which Pierre fancied he could detect a protest against the isolation in which he was kept by those surrounding him, who, as Monsignor Nani had said, maintained a strict watch in order that nothing they objected to might reach him. And thereupon the young priest ventured to say: "I thank your Holiness for having done me so much honour. No greater or more desired happiness could have befallen me." He was indeed so happy! On seeing the Pope so calm, so free from all signs of anger, and on hearing him speak in that way of his book, like one well acquainted with it, he imagined that his cause was won. "You are in relations with Monsieur le Vicomte Philibert de la Choue, are you not, my son?" continued Leo XIII. "I was struck by the resemblance between some of your ideas and those of that devoted servant of the Church, who has in other ways given us previous testimony of his good feelings." "Yes, indeed, Holy Father, Monsieur de la Choue is kind enough to show me some affection. We have often talked together, so it is not surprising that I should have given expression to some of his most cherished ideas." "No doubt, no doubt. For instance, there is that question of the working-class guilds with which he largely occupies himself--with which, in fact, he occupies himself rather too much. At the time of his last journey to Rome he spoke to me of it in the most pressing manner. And in the same way, quite recently, another of your compatriots, one of the best and worthiest of men, Monsieur le Baron de Fouras, who brought us that superb pilgrimage of the St. Peter's Pence Fund, never ceased his efforts until I consented to receive him, when he spoke to me on the same subject during nearly an hour. Only it must be said that they do not agree in the matter, for one begs me to do things which the other will not have me do on any account." Pierre realised that the conversation was straying away from his book, but he remembered having promised the Viscount that if he should see the Pope he would make an attempt to obtain from him a decisive expression of opinion on the famous question as to whether the working-class guilds or corporations should be free or obligatory, open or closed. And the unhappy Viscount, kept in Paris by the gout, had written the young priest letter after letter on the subject, whilst his rival the Baron, availing himself of the opportunity offered by the international pilgrimage, endeavoured to wring from the Pope an approval of his own views, with which he would have returned in triumph to France. Pierre conscientiously desired to keep his promise, and so he answered: "Your Holiness knows better than any of us in which direction true wisdom lies. Monsieur de Fouras is of opinion that salvation, the solution of the labour question, lies simply in the re-establishment of the old free corporations, whilst Monsieur de la Choue desires the corporations to be obligatory, protected by the state and governed by new regulations. This last conception is certainly more in agreement with the social ideas now prevalent in France. Should your Holiness condescend to express a favourable opinion in that sense, the young French Catholic party would certainly know how to turn it to good result, by producing quite a movement of the working classes in favour of the Church." In his quiet way Leo XIII responded: "But I cannot. Frenchmen always ask things of me which I cannot, will not do. What I will allow you to say on my behalf to Monsieur de la Choue is, that though I cannot content him I have not contented Monsieur de Fouras. He obtained from me nothing beyond the expression of my sincere good-will for the French working classes, who are so dear to me and who can do so much for the restoration of the faith. You must surely understand, however, that among you Frenchmen there are questions of detail, of mere organisation, so to say, into which I cannot possibly enter without imparting to them an importance which they do not have, and at the same time greatly discontenting some people should I please others." As the Pope pronounced these last words he smiled a pale smile, in which the shrewd, conciliatory politician, who was determined not to allow his infallibility to be compromised in useless and risky ventures, was fully revealed. And then he drank a little more syrup and wiped his mouth with his handkerchief, like a sovereign whose Court day is over and who takes his ease, having chosen this hour of solitude and silence to chat as long as he may be so inclined. Pierre, however, sought to bring him back to the subject of his book. "Monsieur de la Choue," said he, "has shown me so much kindness and is so anxious to know the fate reserved to my book--as if, indeed, it were his own--that I should have been very happy to convey to him an expression of your Holiness's approval." However, the Pope continued wiping his mouth and did not reply. "I became acquainted with the Viscount," continued Pierre, "at the residence of his Eminence Cardinal Bergerot, another great heart whose ardent charity ought to suffice to restore the faith in France." This time the effect was immediate. "Ah! yes, Monsieur le Cardinal Bergerot!" said Leo XIII. "I read that letter of his which is printed at the beginning of your book. He was very badly inspired in writing it to you; and you, my son, acted very culpably on the day you published it. I cannot yet believe that Monsieur le Cardinal Bergerot had read some of your pages when he sent you an expression of his complete and full approval. I prefer to charge him with ignorance and thoughtlessness. How could he approve of your attacks on dogma, your revolutionary theories which tend to the complete destruction of our holy religion? If it be a fact that he had read your book, the only excuse he can invoke is sudden and inexplicable aberration. It is true that a very bad spirit prevails among a small portion of the French clergy. What are called Gallican ideas are ever sprouting up like noxious weeds; there is a malcontent Liberalism rebellious to our authority which continually hungers for free examination and sentimental adventures." The Pope grew animated as he spoke. Italian words mingled with his hesitating French, and every now and again his full nasal voice resounded with the sonority of a brass instrument. "Monsieur le Cardinal Bergerot," he continued, "must be given to understand that we shall crush him on the day when we see in him nothing but a rebellious son. He owes the example of obedience; we shall acquaint him with our displeasure, and we hope that he will submit. Humility and charity are great virtues doubtless, and we have always taken pleasure in recognising them in him. But they must not be the refuge of a rebellious heart, for they are as nothing unless accompanied by obedience--obedience, obedience, the finest adornment of the great saints!" Pierre listened thunderstruck, overcome. He forgot himself to think of the apostle of kindliness and tolerance upon whose head he had drawn this all-powerful anger. So Don Vigilio had spoken the truth: over and above his--Pierre's--head the denunciations of the Bishops of Evreux and Poitiers were about to fall on the man who opposed their Ultramontane policy, that worthy and gentle Cardinal Bergerot, whose heart was open to all the woes of the lowly and the poor. This filled the young priest with despair; he could accept the denunciation of the Bishop of Tarbes acting on behalf of the Fathers of the Grotto, for that only fell on himself, as a reprisal for what he had written about Lourdes; but the underhand warfare of the others exasperated him, filled him with dolorous indignation. And from that puny old man before him with the slender, scraggy neck of an aged bird, he had suddenly seen such a wrathful, formidable Master arise that he trembled. How could he have allowed himself to be deceived by appearances on entering? How could he have imagined that he was simply in presence of a poor old man, worn out by age, desirous of peace, and ready for every concession? A blast had swept through that sleepy chamber, and all his doubts and his anguish awoke once more. Ah! that Pope, how thoroughly he answered to all the accounts that he, Pierre, had heard but had refused to believe; so many people had told him in Rome that he would find Leo XIII a man of intellect rather than of sentiment, a man of the most unbounded pride, who from his very youth had nourished the supreme ambition, to such a point indeed that he had promised eventual triumph to his relatives in order that they might make the necessary sacrifices for him, while since he had occupied the pontifical throne his one will and determination had been to reign, to reign in spite of all, to be the sole absolute and omnipotent master of the world! And now here was reality arising with irresistible force and confirming everything. And yet Pierre struggled, stubbornly clutching at his dream once more. "Oh! Holy Father," said he, "I should be grieved indeed if his Eminence should have a moment's worry on account of my unfortunate book. If I be guilty I can answer for my error, but his Eminence only obeyed the dictates of his heart and can only have transgressed by excess of love for the disinherited of the world!" Leo XIII made no reply. He had again raised his superb eyes, those eyes of ardent life, set, as it were, in the motionless countenance of an alabaster idol; and once more he was fixedly gazing at the young priest. And Pierre, amidst his returning feverishness, seemed to behold him growing in power and splendour, whilst behind him arose a vision of the ages, a vision of that long line of popes whom the young priest had previously evoked, the saintly and the proud ones, the warriors and the ascetics, the theologians and the diplomatists, those who had worn armour, those who had conquered by the Cross, those who had disposed of empires as of mere provinces which God had committed to their charge. And in particular Pierre beheld the great Gregory, the conqueror and founder, and Sixtus V, the negotiator and politician, who had first foreseen the eventual victory of the papacy over all the vanquished monarchies. Ah! what a throng of magnificent princes, of sovereign masters with powerful brains and arms, there was behind that pale, motionless, old man! What an accumulation of inexhaustible determination, stubborn genius, and boundless domination! The whole history of human ambition, the whole effort of the ages to subject the nations to the pride of one man, the greatest force that has ever conquered, exploited, and fashioned mankind in the name of its happiness! And even now, when territorial sovereignty had come to an end, how great was the spiritual sovereignty of that pale and slender old man, in whose presence women fainted, as if overcome by the divine splendour radiating from his person. Not only did all the resounding glories, the masterful triumphs of history spread out behind him, but heaven opened, the very spheres beyond life shone out in their dazzling mystery. He--the Pope--stood at the portals of heaven, holding the keys and opening those portals to human souls; all the ancient symbolism was revived, freed at last from the stains of royalty here below. "Oh! I beg you, Holy Father," resumed Pierre, "if an example be needed strike none other than myself. I have come, and am here; decide my fate, but do not aggravate my punishment by filling me with remorse at having brought condemnation on the innocent." Leo XIII still refrained from replying, though he continued to look at the young priest with burning eyes. And he, Pierre, no longer beheld Leo XIII, the last of a long line of popes, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, the Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, the Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the East, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the Temporal Domains of the Holy Church; he saw the Leo XIII that he had dreamt of, the awaited saviour who would dispel the frightful cataclysm in which rotten society was sinking. He beheld him with his supple, lofty intelligence and fraternal, conciliatory tactics, avoiding friction and labouring to bring about unity whilst with his heart overflowing with love he went straight to the hearts of the multitude, again giving the best of his blood in sign of the new alliance. He raised him aloft as the sole remaining moral authority, the sole possible bond of charity and peace--as the Father, in fact, who alone could stamp out injustice among his children, destroy misery, and re-establish the liberating Law of Work by bringing the nations back to the faith of the primitive Church, the gentleness and the wisdom of the true Christian community. And in the deep silence of that room the great figure which he thus set up assumed invincible all-powerfulness, extraordinary majesty. "Oh, I beseech you, Holy Father, listen to me," he said. "Do not even strike me, strike no one, neither a being nor a thing, anything that can suffer under the sun. Show kindness and indulgence to all, show all the kindness and indulgence which the sight of the world's sufferings must have set in you!" And then, seeing that Leo XIII still remained silent and still left him standing there, he sank down upon his knees, as if felled by the growing emotion which rendered his heart so heavy. And within him there was a sort of /debacle/; all his doubts, all his anguish and sadness burst forth in an irresistible stream. There was the memory of the frightful day that he had just spent, the tragic death of Dario and Benedetta, which weighed on him like lead; there were all the sufferings that he had experienced since his arrival in Rome, the destruction of his illusions, the wounds dealt to his delicacy, the buffets with which men and things had responded to his young enthusiasm; and, lying yet more deeply within his heart, there was the sum total of human wretchedness, the thought of famished ones howling for food, of mothers whose breasts were drained and who sobbed whilst kissing their hungry babes, of fathers without work, who clenched their fists and revolted--indeed, the whole of that hateful misery which is as old as mankind itself, which has preyed upon mankind since its earliest hour, and which he now had everywhere found increasing in horror and havoc, without a gleam of hope that it would ever be healed. And withal, yet more immense and more incurable, he felt within him a nameless sorrow to which he could assign no precise cause or name--an universal, an illimitable sorrow with which he melted despairingly, and which was perhaps the very sorrow of life. "O Holy Father!" he exclaimed, "I myself have no existence and my book has no existence. I desired, passionately desired to see your Holiness that I might explain and defend myself. But I no longer know, I can no longer recall a single one of the things that I wished to say, I can only weep, weep the tears which are stifling me. Yes, I am but a poor man, and the only need I feel is to speak to you of the poor. Oh! the poor ones, oh! the lowly ones, whom for two years past I have seen in our faubourgs of Paris, so wretched and so full of pain; the poor little children that I have picked out of the snow, the poor little angels who had eaten nothing for two days; the women too, consumed by consumption, without bread or fire, shivering in filthy hovels; and the men thrown on the street by slackness of trade, weary of begging for work as one begs for alms, sinking back into night, drunken with rage and harbouring the sole avenging thought of setting the whole city afire! And that night too, that terrible night, when in a room of horror I beheld a mother who had just killed herself with her five little ones, she lying on a palliasse suckling her last-born, and two little girls, two pretty little blondes, sleeping the last sleep beside her, while the two boys had succumbed farther away, one of them crouching against a wall, and the other lying upon the floor, distorted as though by a last effort to avoid death!. . . O Holy Father! I am but an ambassador, the messenger of those who suffer and who sob, the humble delegate of the humble ones who die of want beneath the hateful harshness, the frightful injustice of our present-day social system! And I bring your Holiness their tears, and I lay their tortures at your Holiness's feet, I raise their cry of woe, like a cry from the abyss, that cry which demands justice unless indeed the very heavens are to fall! Oh! show your loving kindness, Holy Father, show compassion!" The young man had stretched out his arms and implored Leo XIII with a gesture as of supreme appeal to the divine compassion. Then he continued: "And here, Holy Father, in this splendid and eternal Rome, is not the want and misery as frightful! During the weeks that I have roamed hither and thither among the dust of famous ruins, I have never ceased to come in contact with evils which demand cure. Ah! to think of all that is crumbling, all that is expiring, the agony of so much glory, the fearful sadness of a world which is dying of exhaustion and hunger! Yonder, under your Holiness's windows, have I not seen a district of horrors, a district of unfinished palaces stricken like rickety children who cannot attain to full growth, palaces which are already in ruins and have become places of refuge for all the woeful misery of Rome? And here, as in Paris, what a suffering multitude, what a shameless exhibition too of the social sore, the devouring cancer openly tolerated and displayed in utter heedlessness! There are whole families leading idle and hungry lives in the splendid sunlight; fathers waiting for work to fall to them from heaven; sons listlessly spending their days asleep on the dry grass; mothers and daughters, withered before their time, shuffling about in loquacious idleness. O Holy Father, already to-morrow at dawn may your Holiness open that window yonder and with your benediction awaken that great childish people, which still slumbers in ignorance and poverty! May your Holiness give it the soul it lacks, a soul with the consciousness of human dignity, of the necessary law of work, of free and fraternal life regulated by justice only! Yes, may your Holiness make a people out of that heap of wretches, whose excuse lies in all their bodily suffering and mental night, who live like the beasts that go by and die, never knowing nor understanding, yet ever lashed onward with the whip!" Pierre's sobs were gradually choking him, and it was only the impulse of his passion which still enabled him to speak. "And, Holy Father," he continued, "is it not to you that I ought to address myself in the name of all these wretched ones? Are you not the Father, and is it not before the Father that the messenger of the poor and the lowly should kneel as I am kneeling now? And is it not to the Father that he should bring the huge burden of their sorrows and ask for pity and help and justice? Yes, particularly for justice! And since you are the Father throw the doors wide open so that all may enter, even the humblest of your children, the faithful, the chance passers, even the rebellious ones and those who have gone astray but who will perhaps enter and whom you will save from the errors of abandonment! Be as the house of refuge on the dangerous road, the loving greeter of the wayfarer, the lamp of hospitality which ever burns, and is seen afar off and saves one in the storm! And since, O Father, you are power be salvation also! You can do all; you have centuries of domination behind you; you have nowadays risen to a moral authority which has rendered you the arbiter of the world; you are there before me like the very majesty of the sun which illumines and fructifies! Oh! be the star of kindness and charity, be the redeemer; take in hand once more the purpose of Jesus, which has been perverted by being left in the hands of the rich and the powerful who have ended by transforming the work of the Gospel into the most hateful of all monuments of pride and tyranny! And since the work has been spoilt, take it in hand, begin it afresh, place yourself on the side of the little ones, the lowly ones, the poor ones, and bring them back to the peace, the fraternity, and the justice of the original Christian communion. And say, O Father, that I have understood you, that I have sincerely expressed in this respect your most cherished ideas, the sole living desire of your reign! The rest, oh! the rest, my book, myself, what matter they! I do not defend myself, I only seek your glory and the happiness of mankind. Say that from the depths of this Vatican you have heard the rending of our corrupt modern societies! Say that you have quivered with loving pity, say that you desire to prevent the awful impending catastrophe by recalling the Gospel to the hearts of your children who are stricken with madness, and by bringing them back to the age of simplicity and purity when the first Christians lived together in innocent brotherhood! Yes, it is for that reason, is it not, that you have placed yourself, Father, on the side of the poor, and for that reason I am here and entreat you for pity and kindness and justice with my whole soul!" Then the young man gave way beneath his emotion, and fell all of a heap upon the floor amidst a rush of sobs--loud, endless sobs, which flowed forth in billows, coming as it were not only from himself but from all the wretched, from the whole world in whose veins sorrow coursed mingled with the very blood of life. He was there as the ambassador of suffering, as he had said. And indeed, at the foot of that mute and motionless pope, he was like the personification of the whole of human woe. Leo XIII, who was extremely fond of talking and could only listen to others with an effort, had twice raised one of his pallid hands to interrupt the young priest. Then, gradually overcome by astonishment, touched by emotion himself, he had allowed him to continue, to go on to the end of his outburst. A little blood even had suffused the snowy whiteness of the Pontiff's face whilst his eyes shone out yet more brilliantly. And as soon as he saw the young man speechless at his feet, shaken by those sobs which seemed to be wrenching away his heart, he became anxious and leant forward: "Calm yourself, my son, raise yourself," he said. But the sobs still continued, still flowed forth, all reason and respect being swept away amidst that distracted plaint of a wounded soul, that moan of suffering, dying flesh. "Raise yourself, my son, it is not proper," repeated Leo XIII. "There, take that chair." And with a gesture of authority he at last invited the young man to sit down. Pierre rose with pain, and at once seated himself in order that he might not fall. He brushed his hair back from his forehead, and wiped his scalding tears away with his hands, unable to understand what had just happened, but striving to regain his self-possession. "You appeal to the Holy Father," said Leo XIII. "Ah! rest assured that his heart is full of pity and affection for those who are unfortunate. But that is not the point, it is our holy religion which is in question. I have read your book, a bad book, I tell you so at once, the most dangerous and culpable of books, precisely on account of its qualities, the pages in which I myself felt interested. Yes, I was often fascinated, I should not have continued my perusal had I not felt carried away, transported by the ardent breath of your faith and enthusiasm. The subject 'New Rome' is such a beautiful one and impassions me so much! and certainly there is a book to be written under that title, but in a very different spirit to yours. You think that you have understood me, my son, that you have so penetrated yourself with my writings and actions that you simply express my most cherished ideas. But no, no, you have not understood me, and that is why I desired to see you, explain things to you, and convince you." It was now Pierre who sat listening, mute and motionless. Yet he had only come thither to defend himself; for three months past he had been feverishly desiring this interview, preparing his arguments and feeling confident of victory; and now although he heard his book spoken of as dangerous and culpable he did not protest, did not reply with any one of those good reasons which he had deemed so irresistible. But the fact was that intense weariness had come upon him, the appeal that he had made, the tears that he had shed had left him utterly exhausted. By and by, however, he would be brave and would say what he had resolved to say. "People do not understand me, do not understand me!" resumed Leo XIII with an air of impatient irritation. "It is incredible what trouble I have to make myself understood, in France especially! Take the temporal power for instance; how can you have fancied that the Holy See would ever enter into any compromise on that question? Such language is unworthy of a priest, it is the chimerical dream of one who is ignorant of the conditions in which the papacy has hitherto lived and in which it must still live if it does not desire to disappear. Cannot you see the sophistry of your argument that the Church becomes the loftier the more it frees itself from the cares of terrestrial sovereignty? A purely spiritual royalty, a sway of charity and love, indeed, 'tis a fine imaginative idea! But who will ensure us respect? Who will grant us the alms of a stone on which to rest our head if we are ever driven forth and forced to roam the highways? Who will guarantee our independence when we are at the mercy of every state? . . . No, no! this soil of Rome is ours, we have inherited it from the long line of our ancestors, and it is the indestructible, eternal soil on which the Church is built, so that any relinquishment would mean the downfall of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church. And, moreover, we could not relinquish it; we are bound by our oath to God and man." He paused for a moment to allow Pierre to answer him. But the latter to his stupefaction could say nothing, for he perceived that this pope spoke as he was bound to speak. All the heavy mysterious things which had weighed the young priest down whilst he was waiting in the ante-room, now became more and more clearly defined. They were, indeed, the things which he had seen and learnt since his arrival in Rome, the disillusions, the rebuffs which he had experienced, all the many points of difference between existing reality and imagination, whereby his dream of a return to primitive Christianity was already half shattered. And in particular he remembered the hour which he had spent on the dome of St. Peter's, when, in presence of the old city of glory so stubbornly clinging to its purple, he had realised that he was an imbecile with his idea of a purely spiritual pope. He had that day fled from the furious shouts of the pilgrims acclaiming the Pope-King. He had only accepted the necessity for money, that last form of servitude still binding the Pope to earth. But all had crumbled afterwards, when he had beheld the real Rome, the ancient city of pride and domination where the papacy can never be complete without the temporal power. Too many bonds, dogma, tradition, environment, the very soil itself rendered the Church for ever immutable. It was only in appearances that she could make concessions, and a time would even arrive when her concessions would cease, in presence of the impossibility of going any further without committing suicide. If his, Pierre's, dream of a New Rome were ever to be realised, it would only be faraway from ancient Rome. Only in some distant region could the new Christianity arise, for Catholicism was bound to die on the spot when the last of the popes, riveted to that land of ruins, should disappear beneath the falling dome of St. Peter's, which would fall as surely as the temple of Jupiter had fallen! And, as for that pope of the present day, though he might have no kingdom, though age might have made him weak and fragile, though his bloodless pallor might be that of some ancient idol of wax, he none the less flared with the red passion for universal sovereignty, he was none the less the stubborn scion of his ancestry, the Pontifex Maximus, the Caesar Imperator in whose veins flowed the blood of Augustus, master of the world. "You must be fully aware," resumed Leo XIII, "of the ardent desire for unity which has always possessed us. We were very happy on the day when we unified the rite, by imposing the Roman rite throughout the whole Catholic world. This is one of our most cherished victories, for it can do much to uphold our authority. And I hope that our efforts in the East will end by bringing our dear brethren of the dissident communions back to us, in the same way as I do not despair of convincing the Anglican sects, without speaking of the other so-called Protestant sects who will be compelled to return to the bosom of the only Church, the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church, when the times predicted by the Christ shall be accomplished. But a thing which you did not say in your book is that the Church can relinquish nothing whatever of dogma. On the contrary, you seem to fancy that an agreement might be effected, concessions made on either side, and that, my son, is a culpable thought, such language as a priest cannot use without being guilty of a crime. No, the truth is absolute, not a stone of the edifice shall be changed. Oh! in matters of form, we will do whatever may be asked. We are ready to adopt the most conciliatory courses if it be only a question of turning certain difficulties and weighing expressions in order to facilitate agreement. . . . Again, there is the part we have taken in contemporary socialism, and here too it is necessary that we should be understood. Those whom you have so well called the disinherited of the world, are certainly the object of our solicitude. If socialism be simply a desire for justice, and a constant determination to come to the help of the weak and the suffering, who can claim to give more thought to the matter and work with more energy than ourselves? Has not the Church always been the mother of the afflicted, the helper and benefactress of the poor? We are for all reasonable progress, we admit all new social forms which will promote peace and fraternity. . . . Only we can but condemn that socialism which begins by driving away God as a means of ensuring the happiness of mankind. Therein lies simple savagery, an abominable relapse into the primitive state in which there can only be catastrophe, conflagration, and massacre. And that again is a point on which you have not laid sufficient stress, for you have not shown in your book that there can be no progress outside the pale of the Church, that she is really the only initiatory and guiding power to whom one may surrender oneself without fear. Indeed, and in this again you have sinned, it seemed to me as if you set God on one side, as if for you religion lay solely in a certain bent of the soul, a florescence of love and charity, which sufficed one to work one's salvation. But that is execrable heresy. God is ever present, master of souls and bodies; and religion remains the bond, the law, the very governing power of mankind, apart from which there can only be barbarism in this world and damnation in the next. And, once again, forms are of no importance; it is sufficient that dogma should remain. Thus our adhesion to the French Republic proves that we in no wise mean to link the fate of religion to that of any form of government, however august and ancient the latter may be. Dynasties may have done their time, but God is eternal. Kings may perish, but God lives! And, moreover, there is nothing anti-Christian in the republican form of government; indeed, on the contrary, it would seem like an awakening of that Christian commonwealth to which you have referred in some really charming pages. The worst is that liberty at once becomes license, and that our desire for conciliation is often very badly requited. . . . But ah! what a wicked book you have written, my son,--with the best intentions, I am willing to believe,--and how your silence shows that you are beginning to recognise the disastrous consequences of your error." Pierre still remained silent, overcome, feeling as if his arguments would fall against some deaf, blind, and impenetrable rock, which it was useless to assail since nothing could enter it. And only one thing now preoccupied him; he wondered how it was that a man of such intelligence and such ambition had not formed a more distinct and exact idea of the modern world. He could divine that the Pope possessed much information and carried the map of Christendom with many of the needs, deeds, and hopes of the nations, in his mind amidst his complicated diplomatic enterprises; but at the same time what gaps there were in his knowledge! The truth, no doubt, was that his personal acquaintance with the world was confined to his brief nunciature at Brussels.* * That too, was in 1843-44, and the world is now utterly unlike what it was then!--Trans. During his occupation of the see of Perugia, which had followed, he had only mingled with the dawning life of young Italy. And for eighteen years now he had been shut up in the Vatican, isolated from the rest of mankind and communicating with the nations solely through his /entourage/, which was often most unintelligent, most mendacious, and most treacherous. Moreover, he was an Italian priest, a superstitious and despotic High Pontiff, bound by tradition, subjected to the influences of race environment, pecuniary considerations, and political necessities, not to speak of his great pride, the conviction that he ought to be implicitly obeyed in all things as the one sole legitimate power upon earth. Therein lay fatal causes of mental deformity, of errors and gaps in his extraordinary brain, though the latter certainly possessed many admirable qualities, quickness of comprehension and patient stubbornness of will and strength to draw conclusions and act. Of all his powers, however, that of intuition was certainly the most wonderful, for was it not this alone which, owing to his voluntary imprisonment, enabled him to divine the vast evolution of humanity at the present day? He was thus keenly conscious of the dangers surrounding him, of the rising tide of democracy and the boundless ocean of science which threatened to submerge the little islet where the dome of St. Peter's yet triumphed. And the object of all his policy, of all his labour, was to conquer so that he might reign. If he desired the unity of the Church it was in order that the latter might become strong and inexpugnable in the contest which he foresaw. If he preached conciliation, granting concessions in matters of form, tolerating audacious actions on the part of American bishops, it was because he deeply and secretly feared the dislocation of the Church, some sudden schism which might hasten disaster. And this fear explained his returning affection for the people, the concern which he displayed respecting socialism, and the Christian solution which he offered to the woes of earthly life. As Caesar was stricken low, was not the long contest for possession of the people over, and would not the people, the great silent multitude, speak out, and give itself to him, the Pope? He had begun experiments with France, forsaking the lost cause of the monarchy and recognising the Republic which he hoped might prove strong and victorious, for in spite of everything France remained the eldest daughter of the Church, the only Catholic nation which yet possessed sufficient strength to restore the temporal power at some propitious moment. And briefly Leo's desire was to reign. To reign by the support of France since it seemed impossible to do so by the support of Germany! To reign by the support of the people, since the people was now becoming the master, the bestower of thrones! To reign by means even of an Italian Republic, if only that Republic could wrest Rome from the House of Savoy and restore her to him, a federal Republic which would make him President of the United States of Italy pending the time when he should be President of the United States of Europe! To reign in spite of everybody and everything, such was his ambition, to reign over the world, even as Augustus had reigned, Augustus whose devouring blood alone upheld this expiring old man, yet so stubbornly clinging to power! "And another crime of yours, my son," resumed Leo XIII, "is that you have dared to ask for a new religion. That is impious, blasphemous, sacrilegious. There is but one religion in the world, our Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Religion, apart from which there can be but darkness and damnation. I quite understand that what you mean to imply is a return to early Christianity. But the error of so-called Protestantism, so culpable and so deplorable in its consequences, never had any other pretext. As soon as one departs from the strict observance of dogma and absolute respect for tradition one sinks into the most frightful precipices. . . . Ah! schism, schism, my son, is a crime beyond forgiveness, an assassination of the true God, a device of the loathsome Beast of Temptation which Hell sends into the world to work the ruin of the faithful! If your book contained nothing beyond those words 'a new religion,' it would be necessary to destroy and burn it like so much poison fatal in its effects upon the human soul." He continued at length on this subject, while Pierre recalled what Don Vigilio had told him of those all-powerful Jesuits who at the Vatican as elsewhere remained in the background, secretly but none the less decisively governing the Church. Was it true then that this pope, whose opportunist tendencies were so freely displayed, was one of them, a mere docile instrument in their hands, though he fancied himself penetrated with the doctrines of St. Thomas Aquinas? In any case, like them he compounded with the century, made approaches to the world, and was willing to flatter it in order that he might possess it. Never before had Pierre so cruelly realised that the Church was now so reduced that she could only live by dint of concessions and diplomacy. And he could at last distinctly picture that Roman clergy which at first is so difficult of comprehension to a French priest, that Government of the Church, represented by the pope, the cardinals, and the prelates, whom the Deity has appointed to govern and administer His mundane possessions--mankind and the earth. They begin by setting that very Deity on one side, in the depths of the tabernacle, and impose whatever dogmas they please as so many essential truths. That the Deity exists is evident, since they govern in His name which is sufficient for everything. And being by virtue of their charge the masters, if they consent to sign covenants, Concordats, it is only as matters of form; they do not observe them, and never yield to anything but force, always reserving the principle of their absolute sovereignty which must some day finally triumph. Pending that day's arrival, they act as diplomatists, slowly carrying on their work of conquest as the Deity's functionaries; and religion is but the public homage which they pay to the Deity, and which they organise with all the pomp and magnificence that is likely to influence the multitude. Their only object is to enrapture and conquer mankind in order that the latter may submit to the rule of the Deity, that is the rule of themselves, since they are the Deity's visible representatives, expressly delegated to govern the world. In a word, they straightway descend from Roman law, they are still but the offspring of the old pagan soul of Rome, and if they have lasted until now and if they rely on lasting for ever, until the awaited hour when the empire of the world shall be restored to them, it is because they are the direct heirs of the purple-robed Caesars, the uninterrupted and living progeny of the blood of Augustus. And thereupon Pierre felt ashamed of his tears. Ah! those poor nerves of his, that outburst of sentiment and enthusiasm to which he had given way! His very modesty was appalled, for he felt as if he had exhibited his soul in utter nakedness. And so uselessly too, in that room where nothing similar had ever been said before, and in presence of that Pontiff-King who could not understand him. His plan of the popes reigning by means of the poor and lowly now horrified him. His idea of the papacy going to the people, at last rid of its former masters, seemed to him a suggestion worthy of a wolf, for if the papacy should go to the people it would only be to prey upon it as the others had done. And really he, Pierre, must have been mad when he had imagined that a Roman prelate, a cardinal, a pope, was capable of admitting a return to the Christian commonwealth, a fresh florescence of primitive Christianity to pacify the aged nations whom hatred consumed. Such a conception indeed was beyond the comprehension of men who for centuries had regarded themselves as masters of the world, so heedless and disdainful of the lowly and the suffering, that they had at last become altogether incapable of either love or charity.* * The reader should bear in mind that these remarks apply to the Italian cardinals and prelates, whose vanity and egotism are remarkable.--Trans. Leo XIII, however, was still holding forth in his full, unwearying voice. And the young priest heard him saying: "Why did you write that page on Lourdes which shows such a thoroughly bad spirit? Lourdes, my son, has rendered great services to religion. To the persons who have come and told me of the touching miracles which are witnessed at the Grotto almost daily, I have often expressed my desire to see those miracles confirmed, proved by the most rigorous scientific tests. And, indeed, according to what I have read, I do not think that the most evilly disposed minds can entertain any further doubt on the matter, for the miracles /are/ proved scientifically in the most irrefutable manner. Science, my son, must be God's servant. It can do nothing against Him, it is only by His grace that it arrives at the truth. All the solutions which people nowadays pretend to discover and which seemingly destroy dogma will some day be recognised as false, for God's truth will remain victorious when the times shall be accomplished. That is a very simple certainty, known even to little children, and it would suffice for the peace and salvation of mankind, if mankind would content itself with it. And be convinced, my son, that faith and reason are not incompatible. Have we not got St. Thomas who foresaw everything, explained everything, regulated everything? Your faith has been shaken by the onslaught of the spirit of examination, you have known trouble and anguish which Heaven has been pleased to spare our priests in this land of ancient belief, this city of Rome which the blood of so many martyrs has sanctified. However, we have no fear of the spirit of examination, study St. Thomas, read him thoroughly and your faith will return, definitive and triumphant, firmer than ever." These remarks caused Pierre as much dismay as if fragments of the celestial vault were raining on his head. O God of truth, miracles--the miracles of Lourdes!--proved scientifically, faith in the dogmas compatible with reason, and the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas sufficient to instil certainty into the minds of this present generation! How could one answer that, and indeed why answer it at all? "Yes, yours is a most culpable and dangerous book," concluded Leo XIII; "its very title 'New Rome' is mendacious and poisonous, and the work is the more to be condemned as it offers every fascination of style, every perversion of generous fancy. Briefly it is such a book that a priest, if he conceived it in an hour of error, can have no other duty than that of burning it in public with the very hand which traced the pages of error and scandal." All at once Pierre rose up erect. He was about to exclaim: "'Tis true, I had lost my faith, but I thought I had found it again in the compassion which the woes of the world set in my heart. You were my last hope, the awaited saviour. But, behold, that again is a dream, you cannot take the work of Jesus in hand once more and pacify mankind so as to avert the frightful fratricidal war which is preparing. You cannot leave your throne and come along the roads with the poor and the humble to carry out the supreme work of fraternity. Well, it is all over with you, your Vatican and your St. Peter's. All is falling before the onslaught of the rising multitude and growing science. You no longer exist, there are only ruins and remnants left here." However, he did not speak those words. He simply bowed and said: "Holy Father, I make my submission and reprobate my book." And as he thus replied his voice trembled with disgust, and his open hands made a gesture of surrender as though he were yielding up his soul. The words he had chosen were precisely those of the required formula: /Auctor laudabiliter se subjecit et opus reprobavit/. "The author has laudably made his submission and reprobated his work." No error could have been confessed, no hope could have accomplished self-destruction with loftier despair, more sovereign grandeur. But what frightful irony: that book which he had sworn never to withdraw, and for whose triumph he had fought so passionately, and which he himself now denied and suppressed, not because he deemed it guilty, but because he had just realised that it was as futile, as chimerical as a lover's desire, a poet's dream. Ah! yes, since he had been mistaken, since he had merely dreamed, since he had found there neither the Deity nor the priest that he had desired for the happiness of mankind, why should he obstinately cling to the illusion of an awakening which was impossible! 'Twere better to fling his book on the ground like a dead leaf, better to deny it, better to cut it away like a dead limb that could serve no purpose whatever! Somewhat surprised by such a prompt victory Leo XIII raised a slight exclamation of content. "That is well said, my son, that is well said! You have spoken the only words that can become a priest." And in his evident satisfaction, he who left nothing to chance, who carefully prepared each of his audiences, deciding beforehand what words he would say, what gestures even he would make, unbent somewhat and displayed real /bonhomie/. Unable to understand, mistaking the real motives of this rebellious priest's submission, he tasted positive delight in having so easily reduced him to silence, the more so as report had stated the young man to be a terrible revolutionary. And thus his Holiness felt quite proud of such a conversion. "Moreover, my son," he said, "I did not expect less of one of your distinguished mind. There can be no loftier enjoyment than that of owning one's error, doing penance, and submitting." He had again taken the glass off the little table beside him and was stirring the last spoonful of syrup before drinking it. And Pierre was amazed at again finding him as he had found him at the outset, shrunken, bereft of sovereign majesty, and simply suggestive of some aged /bourgeois/ drinking his glass of sugared water before getting into bed. It was as if after growing and radiating, like a planet ascending to the zenith, he had again sunk to the level of the soil in all human mediocrity. Again did Pierre find him puny and fragile, with the slender neck of a little sick bird, and all those marks of senile ugliness which rendered him so exacting with regard to his portraits, whether they were oil paintings or photographs, gold medals, or marble busts, for of one and the other he would say that the artist must not portray "Papa Pecci" but Leo XIII, the great Pope, of whom he desired to leave such a lofty image to posterity. And Pierre, after momentarily ceasing to see them, was again embarrassed by the handkerchief which lay on the Pope's lap, and the dirty cassock soiled by snuff. His only feelings now were affectionate pity for such white old age, deep admiration for the stubborn power of life which had found a refuge in those dark black eyes, and respectful deference, such as became a worker, for that large brain which harboured such vast projects and overflowed with such innumerable ideas and actions. The audience was over, and the young man bowed low: "I thank your Holiness for having deigned to give me such a fatherly reception," he said. However, Leo XIII detained him for a moment longer, speaking to him of France and expressing his sincere desire to see her prosperous, calm, and strong for the greater advantage of the Church. And Pierre, during that last moment, had a singular vision, a strange haunting fancy. As he gazed at the Holy Father's ivory brow and thought of his great age and of his liability to be carried off by the slightest chill, he involuntarily recalled the scene instinct with a fierce grandeur which is witnessed each time a pope dies. He recalled Pius IX, Giovanni Mastai, two hours after death, his face covered by a white linen cloth, while the pontifical family surrounded him in dismay; and then Cardinal Pecci, the /Camerlingo/, approaching the bed, drawing aside the veil and dealing three taps with his silver hammer on the forehead of the deceased, repeating at each tap the call, "Giovanni! Giovanni! Giovanni!" And as the corpse made no response, turning, after an interval of a few seconds, and saying: "The Pope is dead!" And at the same time, yonder in the Via Giulia Pierre pictured Cardinal Boccanera, the present /Camerlingo/, awaiting his turn with his silver hammer, and he imagined Leo XIII, otherwise Gioachino Pecci, dead, like his predecessor, his face covered by a white linen cloth and his corpse surrounded by his prelates in that very room. And he saw the /Camerlingo/ approach, draw the veil aside and tap the ivory forehead, each time repeating the call: "Gioachino! Gioachino! Gioachino!" Then, as the corpse did not answer, he waited for a few seconds and turned and said "The Pope is dead!" Did Leo XIII remember how he had thrice tapped the forehead of Pius IX, and did he ever feel on the brow an icy dread of the silver hammer with which he had armed his own /Camerlingo/, the man whom he knew to be his implacable adversary, Cardinal Boccanera? "Go in peace, my son," at last said his Holiness by way of parting benediction. "Your transgression will be forgiven you since you have confessed and testify your horror for it." With distressful spirit, accepting humiliation as well-deserved chastisement for his chimerical fancies, Pierre retired, stepping backwards according to the customary ceremonial. He made three deep bows and crossed the threshold without turning, followed by the black eyes of Leo XIII, which never left him. Still he saw the Pope stretch his arm towards the table to take up the newspaper which he had been reading prior to the audience, for Leo retained a great fancy for newspapers, and was very inquisitive as to news, though in the isolation in which he lived he frequently made mistakes respecting the relative importance of articles. And once more the chamber sank into deep quietude, whilst the two lamps continued to diffuse a soft and steady light. In the centre of the /anticamera segreta/ Signor Squadra stood waiting black and motionless. And on noticing that Pierre in his flurry forgot to take his hat from the pier table, he himself discreetly fetched it and handed it to the young priest with a silent bow. Then without any appearance of haste, he walked ahead to conduct the visitor back to the Sala Clementina. The endless promenade through the interminable ante-rooms began once more, and there was still not a soul, not a sound, not a breath. In each empty room stood the one solitary lamp, burning low amidst a yet deeper silence than before. The wilderness seemed also to have grown larger as the night advanced, casting its gloom over the few articles of furniture scattered under the lofty gilded ceilings, the thrones, the stools, the pier tables, the crucifixes, and the candelabra which recurred in each succeeding room. And at last the Sala Clementina which the Swiss Guards had just quitted was reached again, and Signor Squadra, who hitherto had not turned his head, thereupon drew aside without word or gesture, and, saluting Pierre with a last bow, allowed him to pass on. Then he himself disappeared. And Pierre descended the two flights of the monumental staircase where the gas jets in their globes of ground glass glimmered like night lights amidst a wondrously heavy silence now that the footsteps of the sentries no longer resounded on the landings. And he crossed the Court of St. Damasus, empty and lifeless in the pale light of the lamps above the steps, and descended the Scala Pia, that other great stairway as dim, deserted, and void of life as all the rest, and at last passed beyond the bronze door which a porter slowly shut behind him. And with what a rumble, what a fierce roar did the hard metal close upon all that was within; all the accumulated darkness and silence; the dead, motionless centuries perpetuated by tradition; the indestructible idols, the dogmas, bound round for preservation like mummies; every chain which may weigh on one or hamper one, the whole apparatus of bondage and sovereign domination, with whose formidable clang all the dark, deserted halls re-echoed. Once more the young man found himself alone on the gloomy expanse of the Piazza of St. Peter's. Not a single belated pedestrian was to be seen. There was only the lofty, livid, ghost-like obelisk, emerging between its four candelabra, from the mosaic pavement of red and serpentine porphyry. The facade of the Basilica also showed vaguely, pale as a vision, whilst from it on either side like a pair of giant arms stretched the quadruple colonnade, a thicket of stone, steeped in obscurity. The dome was but a huge roundness scarcely discernible against the moonless sky; and only the jets of the fountains, which could at last be detected rising like slim phantoms ever on the move, lent a voice to the silence, the endless murmur of a plaint of sorrow coming one knew not whence. Ah! how great was the melancholy grandeur of that slumber, that famous square, the Vatican and St. Peter's, thus seen by night when wrapped in silence and darkness! But suddenly the clock struck ten with so slow and loud a chime that never, so it seemed, had more solemn and decisive an hour rung out amidst blacker and more unfathomable gloom. All Pierre's poor weary frame quivered at the sound as he stood motionless in the centre of the expanse. What! had he spent barely three-quarters of an hour, chatting up yonder with that white old man who had just wrenched all his soul away from him! Yes, it was the final wrench; his last belief had been torn from his bleeding heart and brain. The supreme experiment had been made, a world had collapsed within him. And all at once he thought of Monsignor Nani, and reflected that he alone had been right. He, Pierre, had been told that in any case he would end by doing what Monsignor Nani might desire, and he was now stupefied to find that he had done so. But sudden despair seized upon him, such atrocious distress of spirit that, from the depths of the abyss of darkness where he stood, he raised his quivering arms into space and spoke aloud: "No, no, Thou art not here, O God of life and love, O God of Salvation! But come, appear since Thy children are perishing because they know neither who Thou art, nor where to find Thee amidst the Infinite of the worlds!" Above the vast square spread the vast sky of dark-blue velvet, the silent disturbing Infinite, where the constellations palpitated. Over the roofs of the Vatican, Charles's Wain seemed yet more tilted, its golden wheels straying from the right path, its golden shaft upreared in the air; whilst yonder, over Rome towards the Via Giulia, Orion was about to disappear and already showed but one of the three golden stars which bedecked his belt. XV IT was nearly daybreak when Pierre fell asleep, exhausted by emotion and hot with fever. And at nine o'clock, when he had risen and breakfasted, he at once wished to go down into Cardinal Boccanera's rooms where the bodies of Dario and Benedetta had been laid in state in order that the members of the family, its friends and clients, might bring them their tears and prayers. Whilst he breakfasted, Victorine who, showing an active bravery amidst her despair, had not been to bed at all, told him of what had taken place in the house during the night and early morning. Donna Serafina, prude that she was, had again made an attempt to have the bodies separated; but this had proved an impossibility, as /rigor mortis/ had set in, and to part the lovers it would have been necessary to break their limbs. Moreover, the Cardinal, who had interposed once before, almost quarrelled with his sister on the subject, unwilling as he was that any one should disturb the lovers' last slumber, their union of eternity. Beneath his priestly garb there coursed the blood of his race, a pride in the passions of former times; and he remarked that if the family counted two popes among its forerunners, it had also been rendered illustrious by great captains and ardent lovers. Never would he allow any one to touch those two children, whose dolorous lives had been so pure and whom the grave alone had united. He was the master in his house, and they should be sewn together in the same shroud, and nailed together in the same coffin. Then too the religious service should take place at the neighbouring church of San Carlo, of which he was Cardinal-priest and where again he was the master. And if needful he would address himself to the Pope. And such being his sovereign will, so authoritatively expressed, everybody in the house had to bow submissively. Donna Serafina at once occupied herself with the laying-out. According to the Roman custom the servants were present, and Victorine as the oldest and most appreciated of them, assisted the relatives. All that could be done in the first instance was to envelop both corpses in Benedetta's unbound hair, thick and odorous hair, which spread out into a royal mantle; and they were then laid together in one shroud of white silk, fastened about their necks in such wise that they formed but one being in death. And again the Cardinal imperatively ordered that they should be brought into his apartments and placed on a state bed in the centre of the throne-room, so that a supreme homage might be rendered to them as to the last scions of the name, the two tragic lovers with whom the once resounding glory of the Boccaneras was about to return to earth. The story which had been arranged was already circulating through Rome; folks related how Dario had been carried off in a few hours by infectious fever, and how Benedetta, maddened by grief, had expired whilst clasping him in her arms to bid him a last farewell; and there was talk too of the royal honours which the bodies were to receive, the superb funeral nuptials which were to be accorded them as they lay clasped on their bed of eternal rest. All Rome, quite overcome by this tragic story of love and death, would talk of nothing else for several weeks. Pierre would have started for France that same night, eager as he was to quit the city of disaster where he had lost the last shreds of his faith, but he desired to attend the obsequies, and therefore postponed his departure until the following evening. And thus he would spend one more day in that old crumbling palace, near the corpse of that unhappy young woman to whom he had been so much attached and for whom he would try to find some prayers in the depths of his empty and lacerated heart. When he reached the threshold of the Cardinal's reception-rooms, he suddenly remembered his first visit to them. They still presented the same aspect of ancient princely pomp falling into decay and dust. The doors of the three large ante-rooms were wide open, and the rooms themselves were at that early hour still empty. In the first one, the servants' anteroom, there was nobody but Giacomo who stood motionless in his black livery in front of the old red hat hanging under the /baldacchino/ where spiders spun their webs between the crumbling tassels. In the second room, which the secretary formerly had occupied, Abbe Paparelli, the train-bearer, was softly walking up and down whilst waiting for visitors; and with his conquering humility, his all-powerful obsequiousness, he had never before so closely resembled an old maid, whitened and wrinkled by excess of devout observances. Finally, in the third ante-room, the /anticamera nobile/, where the red cap lay on a credence facing the large imperious portrait of the Cardinal in ceremonial costume, there was Don Vigilio who had left his little work-table to station himself at the door of the throne-room and there bow to those who crossed the threshold. And on that gloomy winter morning the rooms appeared more mournful and dilapidated than ever, the hangings frayed and ragged, the few articles of furniture covered with dust, the old wood-work crumbling beneath the continuous onslaught of worms, and the ceilings alone retaining their pompous show of gilding and painting. However, Pierre, to whom Abbe Paparelli addressed a profound bow, in which one divined the irony of a sort of dismissal given to one who was vanquished, felt more impressed by the mournful grandeur which those three dilapidated rooms presented that day, conducting as they did to the old throne-room, now a chamber of death, where the two last children of the house slept their last sleep. What a superb and sorrowful /gala/ of death! Every door wide open and all the emptiness of those over-spacious rooms, void of the throngs of ancient days and leading to the supreme affliction--the end of a race! The Cardinal had shut himself up in his little work-room where he received the relatives and intimates who desired to present their condolences to him, whilst Donna Serafina had chosen an adjoining apartment to await her lady friends who would come in procession until evening. And Pierre, informed of the ceremonial by Victorine, had in the first place to enter the throne-room, greeted as he passed by a deep bow from Don Vigilio who, pale and silent, did not seem to recognise him. A surprise awaited the young priest. He had expected such a lying-in-state as is seen in France and elsewhere, all windows closed so as to steep the room in night, and hundreds of candles burning round a /catafalco/, whilst from ceiling to floor the walls were hung with black drapery. He had been told that the bodies would lie in the throne-room because the antique chapel on the ground floor of the palazzo had been shut up for half a century and was in no condition to be used, whilst the Cardinal's little private chapel was altogether too small for any such ceremony. And thus it had been necessary to improvise an altar in the throne-room, an altar at which masses had been said ever since dawn. Masses and other religious services were moreover to be celebrated all day long in the private chapel; and two additional altars had even been set up, one in a small room adjoining the /anticamera nobile/ and the other in a sort of alcove communicating with the second anteroom: and in this wise priests, Franciscans, and members of other Orders bound by the vow of poverty, would simultaneously and without intermission celebrate the divine sacrifice on those four altars. The Cardinal, indeed, had desired that the Divine Blood should flow without pause under his roof for the redemption of those two dear souls which had flown away together. And thus in that mourning mansion, through those funeral halls the bells scarcely stopped tinkling for the elevation of the host, whilst the quivering murmur of Latin words ever continued, and consecrated wafers were continually broken and chalices drained, in such wise that the Divine Presence could not for a moment quit the heavy atmosphere all redolent of death. On the other hand, however, Pierre, to his great astonishment, found the throne-room much as it had been on the day of his first visit. The curtains of the four large windows had not even been drawn, and the grey, cold, subdued light of the gloomy winter morning freely entered. Under the ceiling of carved and gilded wood-work there were the customary red wall-hangings of /brocatelle/, worn away by long usage; and there was the old throne with the arm-chair turned to the wall, uselessly waiting for a visit from the Pope which would never more come. The principal changes in the aspect of the room were that its seats and tables had been removed, and that, in addition to the improvised altar arranged beside the throne, it now contained the state bed on which lay the bodies of Benedetta and Dario, amidst a profusion of flowers. The bed stood in the centre of the room on a low platform, and at its head were two lighted candles, one on either side. There was nothing else, nothing but that wealth of flowers, such a harvest of white roses that one wondered in what fairy garden they had been culled, sheaves of them on the bed, sheaves of them toppling from the bed, sheaves of them covering the step of the platform, and falling from that step on to the magnificent marble paving of the room. Pierre drew near to the bed, his heart faint with emotion. Those tapers whose little yellow flamelets scarcely showed in the pale daylight, that continuous low murmur of the mass being said at the altar, that penetrating perfume of roses which rendered the atmosphere so heavy, filled the antiquated, dusty room with a spirit of infinite woe, a lamentation of boundless mourning. And there was not a gesture, not a word spoken, save by the priest officiating at the altar, nothing but an occasional faint sound of stifled sobbing among the few persons present. Servants of the house constantly relieved one another, four always standing erect and motionless at the head of the bed, like faithful, familiar guards. From time to time Consistorial-Advocate Morano who, since early morning had been attending to everything, crossed the room with a silent step and the air of a man in a hurry. And at the edge of the platform all who entered, knelt, prayed, and wept. Pierre perceived three ladies there, their faces hidden by their handkerchiefs; and there was also an old priest who trembled with grief and hung his head in such wise that his face could not be distinguished. However, the young man was most moved by the sight of a poorly clad girl, whom he took for a servant, and whom sorrow had utterly prostrated on the marble slabs. Then in his turn he knelt down, and with the professional murmur of the lips sought to repeat the Latin prayers which, as a priest, he had so often said at the bedside of the departed. But his growing emotion confused his memory, and he became wrapt in contemplation of the lovers whom his eyes were unable to quit. Under the wealth of flowers which covered them the clasped bodies could scarcely be distinguished, but the two heads emerged from the silken shroud, and lying there on the same cushion, with their hair mingling, they were still beautiful, beautiful as with satisfied passion. Benedetta had kept her divinely gay, loving, and faithful face for eternity, transported with rapture at having rendered up her last breath in a kiss of love; whilst Dario retained a more dolorous expression amidst his final joy. And their eyes were still wide open, gazing at one another with a persistent and caressing sweetness which nothing would ever more disturb. Oh! God, was it true that yonder lay that Benedetta whom he, Pierre, had loved with such pure, brotherly affection? He was stirred to the very depths of his soul by the recollection of the delightful hours which he had spent with her. She had been so beautiful, so sensible, yet so full of passion! And he had indulged in so beautiful a dream, that of animating with his own liberating fraternal feelings that admirable creature with soul of fire and indolent air, in whom he had pictured all ancient Rome, and whom he would have liked to awaken and win over to the Italy of to-morrow. He had dreamt of enlarging her brain and heart by filling her with love for the lowly and the poor, with all present-day compassion for things and beings. How he would now have smiled at such a dream had not his tears been flowing! Yet how charming she had shown herself in striving to content him despite the invincible obstacles of race, education, and environment. She had been a docile pupil, but was incapable of any real progress. One day she had certainly seemed to draw nearer to him, as though her own sufferings had opened her soul to every charity; but the illusion of happiness had come back, and then she had lost all understanding of the woes of others, and had gone off in the egotism of her own hope and joy. Did that mean then that this Roman race must finish in that fashion, beautiful as it still often is, and fondly adored but so closed to all love for others, to those laws of charity and justice which, by regulating labour, can henceforth alone save this world of ours? Then there came another great sorrow to Pierre which left him stammering, unable to speak any precise prayer. He thought of the overwhelming reassertion of Nature's powers which had attended the death of those two poor children. Was it not awful? To have taken that vow to the Virgin, to have endured torment throughout life, and to end by plunging into death, on the loved one's neck, distracted by vain regret and eager for self-bestowal! The brutal fact of impending separation had sufficed for Benedetta to realise how she had duped herself, and to revert to the universal instinct of love. And therein, again once more, was the Church vanquished; therein again appeared the great god Pan, mating the sexes and scattering life around! If in the days of the Renascence the Church did not fall beneath the assault of the Venuses and Hercules then exhumed from the old soil of Rome, the struggle at all events continued as bitterly as ever; and at each and every hour new nations, overflowing with sap, hungering for life, and warring against a religion which was nothing more than an appetite for death, threatened to sweep away that old Holy Apostolic Roman and Catholic edifice whose walls were already tottering on all sides. And at that moment Pierre felt that the death of that adorable Benedetta was for him the supreme disaster. He was still looking at her and tears were scorching his eyes. She was carrying off his chimera. This time 'twas really the end. Rome the Catholic and the Princely was dead, lying there like marble on that funeral bed. She had been unable to go to the humble, the suffering ones of the world, and had just expired amidst the impotent cry of her egotistical passion when it was too late either to love or to create. Never more would children be born of her, the old Roman house was henceforth empty, sterile, beyond possibility of awakening. Pierre whose soul mourned such a splendid dream, was so grieved at seeing her thus motionless and frigid, that he felt himself fainting. He feared lest he might fall upon the step beside the bed, and so struggled to his feet and drew aside. Then, as he sought refuge in a window recess in order that he might try to recover self-possession, he was astonished to perceive Victorine seated there on a bench which the hangings half concealed. She had come thither by Donna Serafina's orders, and sat watching her two dear children as she called them, whilst keeping an eye upon all who came in and went out. And, on seeing the young priest so pale and nearly swooning, she at once made room for him to sit down beside her. "Ah!" he murmured after drawing a long breath, "may they at least have the joy of being together elsewhere, of living a new life in another world." Victorine, however, shrugged her shoulders, and in an equally low voice responded, "Oh! live again, Monsieur l'Abbe, why? When one's dead the best is to remain so and to sleep. Those poor children had enough torments on earth, one mustn't wish that they should begin again elsewhere." This naive yet deep remark on the part of an ignorant unbelieving woman sent a shudder through Pierre's very bones. To think that his own teeth had chattered with fear at night time at the sudden thought of annihilation. He deemed her heroic at remaining so undisturbed by any ideas of eternity and the infinite. And she, as she felt he was quivering, went on: "What can you suppose there should be after death? We've deserved a right to sleep, and nothing to my thinking can be more desirable and consoling." "But those two did not live," murmured Pierre, "so why not allow oneself the joy of believing that they now live elsewhere, recompensed for all their torments?" Victorine, however, again shook her head; "No, no," she replied. "Ah! I was quite right in saying that my poor Benedetta did wrong in torturing herself with all those superstitious ideas of hers when she was really so fond of her lover. Yes, happiness is rarely found, and how one regrets having missed it when it's too late to turn back! That's the whole story of those poor little ones. It's too late for them, they are dead." Then in her turn she broke down and began to sob. "Poor little ones! poor little ones! Look how white they are, and think what they will be when only the bones of their heads lie side by side on the cushion, and only the bones of their arms still clasp one another. Ah! may they sleep, may they sleep; at least they know nothing and feel nothing now." A long interval of silence followed. Pierre, amidst the quiver of his own doubts, the anxious desire which in common with most men he felt for a new life beyond the grave, gazed at this woman who did not find priests to her fancy, and who retained all her Beauceronne frankness of speech, with the tranquil, contented air of one who has ever done her duty in her humble station as a servant, lost though she had been for five and twenty years in a land of wolves, whose language she had not even been able to learn. Ah! yes, tortured as the young man was by his doubts, he would have liked to be as she was, a well-balanced, healthy, ignorant creature who was quite content with what the world offered, and who, when she had accomplished her daily task, went fully satisfied to bed, careless as to whether she might never wake again! However, as Pierre's eyes once more sought the state bed, he suddenly recognised the old priest, who was kneeling on the step of the platform, and whose features he had hitherto been unable to distinguish. "Isn't that Abbe Pisoni, the priest of Santa Brigida, where I sometimes said mass?" he inquired. "The poor old man, how he weeps!" In her quiet yet desolate voice Victorine replied, "He has good reason to weep. He did a fine thing when he took it into his head to marry my poor Benedetta to Count Prada. All those abominations would never have happened if the poor child had been given her Dario at once. But in this idiotic city they are all mad with their politics; and that old priest, who is none the less a very worthy man, thought he had accomplished a real miracle and saved the world by marrying the Pope and the King as he said with a soft laugh, poor old /savant/ that he is, who for his part has never been in love with anything but old stones--you know, all that antiquated rubbish of theirs of a hundred thousand years ago. And now, you see, he can't keep from weeping. The other one too came not twenty minutes ago, Father Lorenza, the Jesuit who became the Contessina's confessor after Abbe Pisoni, and who undid what the other had done. Yes, a handsome man he is, but a fine bungler all the same, a perfect killjoy with all the crafty hindrances which he brought into that divorce affair. I wish you had been here to see what a big sign of the cross he made after he had knelt down. He didn't cry, he didn't: he seemed to be saying that as things had ended so badly it was evident that God had withdrawn from all share in the business. So much the worse for the dead!" Victorine spoke gently and without a pause, as it relieved her, to empty her heart after the terrible hours of bustle and suffocation which she had spent since the previous day. "And that one yonder," she resumed in a lower voice, "don't you recognise her?" She glanced towards the poorly clad girl whom Pierre had taken for a servant, and whom intensity of grief had prostrated beside the bed. With a gesture of awful suffering this girl had just thrown back her head, a head of extraordinary beauty, enveloped by superb black hair. "La Pierina!" said Pierre. "Ah! poor girl." Victorine made a gesture of compassion and tolerance. "What would you have?" said she, "I let her come up. I don't know how she heard of the trouble, but it's true that she is always prowling round the house. She sent and asked me to come down to her, and you should have heard her sob and entreat me to let her see her Prince once more! Well, she does no harm to anybody there on the floor, looking at them both with her beautiful loving eyes full of tears. She's been there for half an hour already, and I had made up my mind to turn her out if she didn't behave properly. But since she's so quiet and doesn't even move, she may well stop and fill her heart with the sight of them for her whole life long." It was really sublime to see that ignorant, passionate, beautiful Pierina thus overwhelmed below the nuptial couch on which the lovers slept for all eternity. She had sunk down on her heels, her arms hanging heavily beside her, and her hands open. And with raised face, motionless as in an ecstasy of suffering, she did not take her eyes from that adorable and tragic pair. Never had human face displayed such beauty, such a dazzling splendour of suffering and love; never had there been such a portrayal of ancient Grief, not however cold like marble but quivering with life. What was she thinking of, what were her sufferings, as she thus fixedly gazed at her Prince now and for ever locked in her rival's arms? Was it some jealousy which could have no end that chilled the blood of her veins? Or was it mere suffering at having lost him, at realising that she was looking at him for the last time, without thought of hatred for that other woman who vainly sought to warm him with her arms as icy cold as his own? There was still a soft gleam in the poor girl's blurred eyes, and her lips were still lips of love though curved in bitterness by grief. She found the lovers so pure and beautiful as they lay there amidst that profusion of flowers! And beautiful herself, beautiful like a queen, ignorant of her own charms, she remained there breathless, a humble servant, a loving slave as it were, whose heart had been wrenched away and carried off by her dying master. People were now constantly entering the room, slowly approaching with mournful faces, then kneeling and praying for a few minutes, and afterwards retiring with the same mute, desolate mien. A pang came to Pierre's heart when he saw Dario's mother, the ever beautiful Flavia, enter, accompanied by her husband, the handsome Jules Laporte, that ex-sergeant of the Swiss Guard whom she had turned into a Marquis Montefiori. Warned of the tragedy directly it had happened, she had already come to the mansion on the previous evening; but now she returned in grand ceremony and full mourning, looking superb in her black garments which were well suited to her massive, Juno-like style of beauty. When she had approached the bed with a queenly step, she remained for a moment standing with two tears at the edges of her eyelids, tears which did not fall. Then, at the moment of kneeling, she made sure that Jules was beside her, and glanced at him as if to order him to kneel as well. They both sank down beside the platform and remained in prayer for the proper interval, she very dignified in her grief and he even surpassing her, with the perfect sorrow-stricken bearing of a man who knew how to conduct himself in every circumstance of life, even the gravest. And afterwards they rose together, and slowly betook themselves to the entrance of the private apartments where the Cardinal and Donna Serafina were receiving their relatives and friends. Five ladies then came in one after the other, while two Capuchins and the Spanish ambassador to the Holy See went off. And Victorine, who for a few minutes had remained silent, suddenly resumed. "Ah! there's the little Princess, she's much afflicted too, and, no wonder, she was so fond of our Benedetta." Pierre himself had just noticed Celia coming in. She also had attired herself in full mourning for this abominable visit of farewell. Behind her was a maid, who carried on either arm a huge sheaf of white roses. "The dear girl!" murmured Victorine, "she wanted her wedding with her Attilio to take place on the same day as that of the poor lovers who lie there. And they, alas! have forestalled her, their wedding's over; there they sleep in their bridal bed." Celia had at once crossed herself and knelt down beside the bed, but it was evident that she was not praying. She was indeed looking at the lovers with desolate stupefaction at finding them so white and cold with a beauty as of marble. What! had a few hours sufficed, had life departed, would those lips never more exchange a kiss! She could again see them at the ball of that other night, so resplendent and triumphant with their living love. And a feeling of furious protest rose from her young heart, so open to life, so eager for joy and sunlight, so angry with the hateful idiocy of death. And her anger and affright and grief, as she thus found herself face to face with the annihilation which chills every passion, could be read on her ingenuous, candid, lily-like face. She herself stood on the threshold of a life of passion of which she yet knew nothing, and behold! on that very threshold she encountered the corpses of those dearly loved ones, the loss of whom racked her soul with grief. She gently closed her eyes and tried to pray, whilst big tears fell from under her lowered eyelids. Some time went by amidst the quivering silence, which only the murmur of the mass near by disturbed. At last she rose and took the sheaves of flowers from her maid; and standing on the platform she hesitated for a moment, then placed the roses to the right and left of the cushion on which the lovers' heads were resting, as if she wished to crown them with those blossoms, perfume their young brows with that sweet and powerful aroma. Then, though her hands remained empty she did not retire, but remained there leaning over the dead ones, trembling and seeking what she might yet say to them, what she might leave them of herself for ever more. An inspiration came to her, and she stooped forward, and with her whole, deep, loving soul set a long, long kiss on the brow of either spouse. "Ah! the dear girl!" said Victorine, whose tears were again flowing. "You saw that she kissed them, and nobody had yet thought of that, not even the poor young Prince's mother. Ah! the dear little heart, she surely thought of her Attilio." However, as Celia turned to descend from the platform she perceived La Pierina, whose figure was still thrown back in an attitude of mute and dolorous adoration. And she recognised the girl and melted with pity on seeing such a fit of sobbing come over her that her whole body, her goddess-like hips and bosom, shook as with frightful anguish. That agony of love quite upset the little Princess, and she could be heard murmuring in a tone of infinite compassion, "Calm yourself, my dear, calm yourself. Be reasonable, my dear, I beg you." Then as La Pierina, thunderstruck at thus being pitied and succoured, began to sob yet more loudly so as to create quite a stir in the room, Celia raised her and held her up with both arms, for fear lest she should fall again. And she led her away in a sisterly clasp, like a sister of affection and despair, lavishing the most gentle, consoling words upon her as they went. "Follow them, go and see what becomes of them," Victorine said to Pierre. "I do not want to stir from here, it quiets me to watch over my two poor children." A Capuchin was just beginning a fresh mass at the improvised altar, and the low Latin psalmody went on again, while in the adjoining ante-chamber, where another mass was being celebrated, a bell was heard tinkling for the elevation of the host. The perfume of the flowers was becoming more violent and oppressive amidst the motionless and mournful atmosphere of the spacious throne-room. The four servants standing at the head of the bed, as for a /gala/ reception, did not stir, and the procession of visitors ever continued, men and women entering in silence, suffocating there for a moment, and then withdrawing, carrying away with them the never-to-be-forgotten vision of the two tragic lovers sleeping their eternal sleep. Pierre joined Celia and La Pierina in the /anticamera nobile/, where stood Don Vigilio. The few seats belonging to the throne-room had there been placed in a corner, and the little Princess had just compelled the work-girl to sit down in an arm-chair, in order that she might recover self-possession. Celia was in ecstasy before her, enraptured at finding her so beautiful, more beautiful than any other, as she said. Then she spoke of the two dead ones, who also had seemed to her very beautiful, endowed with an extraordinary beauty, at once superb and sweet; and despite all her tears, she still remained in a transport of admiration. On speaking with La Pierina, Pierre learnt that her brother Tito was at the hospital in great danger from the effects of a terrible knife thrust dealt him in the side; and since the beginning of the winter, said the girl, the misery in the district of the castle fields had become frightful. It was a source of great suffering to every one, and those whom death carried off had reason to rejoice. Celia, however, with a gesture of invincible hopefulness, brushed all idea of suffering, even of death, aside. "No, no, we must live," she said. "And beauty is sufficient for life. Come, my dear, do not remain here, do not weep any more; live for the delight of being beautiful." Then she led La Pierina away, and Pierre remained seated in one of the arm-chairs, overcome by such sorrow and weariness that he would have liked to remain there for ever. Don Vigilio was still bowing to each fresh visitor that arrived. A severe attack of fever had come on him during the night, and he was shivering from it, with his face very yellow, and his eyes ablaze and haggard. He constantly glanced at Pierre, as if anxious to speak to him, but his dread lest he should be seen by Abbe Paparelli, who stood in the next ante-room, the door of which was wide open, doubtless restrained him, for he did not cease to watch the train-bearer. At last the latter was compelled to absent himself for a moment, and the secretary thereupon approached the young Frenchman. "You saw his Holiness last night," he said; and as Pierre gazed at him in stupefaction he added: "Oh! everything gets known, I told you so before. Well, and you purely and simply withdrew your book, did you not?" The young priest's increasing stupor was sufficient answer, and without leaving him time to reply, Don Vigilio went on: "I suspected it, but I wished to make certain. Ah! that's just the way they work! Do you believe me now, have you realised that they stifle those whom they don't poison?" He was no doubt referring to the Jesuits. However, after glancing into the adjoining room to make sure that Abbe Paparelli had not returned thither, he resumed: "And what has Monsignor Nani just told you?" "But I have not yet seen Monsignor Nani," was Pierre's reply. "Oh! I thought you had. He passed through before you arrived. If you did not see him in the throne-room he must have gone to pay his respects to Donna Serafina and his Eminence. However, he will certainly pass this way again; you will see him by and by." Then with the bitterness of one who was weak, ever terror-smitten and vanquished, Don Vigilio added: "I told you that you would end by doing what Monsignor Nani desired." With these words, fancying that he heard the light footfall of Abbe Paparelli, he hastily returned to his place and bowed to two old ladies who just then walked in. And Pierre, still seated, overcome, his eyes wearily closing, at last saw the figure of Nani arise before him in all its reality so typical of sovereign intelligence and address. He remembered what Don Vigilio, on the famous night of his revelations, had told him of this man who was far too shrewd to have labelled himself, so to say, with an unpopular robe, and who, withal, was a charming prelate with thorough knowledge of the world, acquired by long experience at different nunciatures and at the Holy Office, mixed up in everything, informed with regard to everything, one of the heads, one of the chief minds in fact of that modern black army, which by dint of Opportunism hopes to bring this century back to the Church. And all at once, full enlightenment fell on Pierre, he realised by what supple, clever strategy that man had led him to the act which he desired of him, the pure and simple withdrawal of his book, accomplished with every appearance of free will. First there had been great annoyance on Nani's part on learning that the book was being prosecuted, for he feared lest its excitable author might be prompted to some dangerous revolt; then plans had at once been formed, information had been collected concerning this young priest who seemed so capable of schism, he had been urged to come to Rome, invited to stay in an ancient mansion whose very walls would chill and enlighten him. And afterwards had come the ever recurring obstacles, the system of prolonging his sojourn in Rome by preventing him from seeing the Pope, but promising him the much-desired interview when the proper time should come, that is after he had been sent hither and thither and brought into collision with one and all. And finally, when every one and everything had shaken, wearied, and disgusted him, and he was restored once more to his old doubts, there had come the audience for which he had undergone all this preparation, that visit to the Pope which was destined to shatter whatever remained to him of his dream. Pierre could picture Nani smiling at him and speaking to him, declaring that the repeated delays were a favour of Providence, which would enable him to visit Rome, study and understand things, reflect, and avoid blunders. How delicate and how profound had been the prelate's diplomacy in thus crushing his feelings beneath his reason, appealing to his intelligence to suppress his work without any scandalous struggle as soon as his knowledge of the real Rome should have shown him how supremely ridiculous it was to dream of a new one! At that moment Pierre perceived Nani in person just coming from the throne-room, and did not feel the irritation and rancour which he had anticipated. On the contrary he was glad when the prelate, in his turn seeing him, drew near and held out his hand. Nani, however, did not wear his wonted smile, but looked very grave, quite grief-stricken. "Ah! my dear son," he said, "what a frightful catastrophe! I have just left his Eminence, he is in tears. It is horrible, horrible!" He seated himself on one of the chairs, inviting the young priest, who had risen, to do the same; and for a moment he remained silent, weary with emotion no doubt, and needing a brief rest to free himself of the weight of thoughts which visibly darkened his usually bright face. Then, with a gesture, he strove to dismiss that gloom, and recover his amiable cordiality. "Well, my dear son," he began, "you saw his Holiness?" "Yes, Monseigneur, yesterday evening; and I thank you for your great kindness in satisfying my desire." Nani looked at him fixedly, and his invincible smile again returned to his lips. "You thank me. . . . I can well see that you behaved sensibly and laid your full submission at his Holiness's feet. I was certain of it, I did not expect less of your fine intelligence. But, all the same, you render me very happy, for I am delighted to find that I was not mistaken concerning you." And then, setting aside his reserve, the prelate went on: "I never discussed things with you. What would have been the good of it, since facts were there to convince you? And now that you have withdrawn your book a discussion would be still more futile. However, just reflect that if it were possible for you to bring the Church back to her early period, to that Christian community which you have sketched so delightfully, she could only again follow the same evolutions as those in which God the first time guided her; so that, at the end of a similar number of centuries, she would find herself exactly in the position which she occupies to-day. No, what God has done has been well done, the Church such as she is must govern the world, such as it is; it is for her alone to know how she will end by firmly establishing her reign here below. And this is why your attack upon the temporal power was an unpardonable fault, a crime even, for by dispossessing the papacy of her domains you hand her over to the mercy of the nations. Your new religion is but the final downfall of all religion, moral anarchy, the liberty of schism, in a word, the destruction of the divine edifice, that ancient Catholicism which has shown such prodigious wisdom and solidity, which has sufficed for the salvation of mankind till now, and will alone be able to save it to-morrow and always." Pierre felt that Nani was sincere, pious even, and really unshakable in his faith, loving the Church like a grateful son, and convinced that she was the only social organisation which could render mankind happy. And if he were bent on governing the world, it was doubtless for the pleasure of governing, but also in the conviction that no one could do so better than himself. "Oh! certainly," said he, "methods are open to discussion. I desire them to be as affable and humane as possible, as conciliatory as can be with this present century, which seems to be escaping us, precisely because there is a misunderstanding between us. But we shall bring it back, I am sure of it. And that is why, my dear son, I am so pleased to see you return to the fold, thinking as we think, and ready to battle on our side, is that not so?" In Nani's words the young priest once more found the arguments of Leo XIII. Desiring to avoid a direct reply, for although he now felt no anger the wrenching away of his dream had left him a smarting wound, he bowed, and replied slowly in order to conceal the bitter tremble of his voice: "I repeat, Monseigneur, that I deeply thank you for having amputated my vain illusions with the skill of an accomplished surgeon. A little later, when I shall have ceased to suffer, I shall think of you with eternal gratitude." Monsignor Nani still looked at him with a smile. He fully understood that this young priest would remain on one side, that as an element of strength he was lost to the Church. What would he do now? Something foolish no doubt. However, the prelate had to content himself with having helped him to repair his first folly; he could not foresee the future. And he gracefully waved his hand as if to say that sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof. "Will you allow me to conclude, my dear son?" he at last exclaimed. "Be sensible, your happiness as a priest and a man lies in humility. You will be terribly unhappy if you use the great intelligence which God has given you against Him." Then with another gesture he dismissed this affair, which was all over, and with which he need busy himself no more. And thereupon the other affair came back to make him gloomy, that other affair which also was drawing to a close, but so tragically, with those two poor children slumbering in the adjoining room. "Ah!" he resumed, "that poor Princess and that poor Cardinal quite upset my heart! Never did catastrophe fall so cruelly on a house. No, no, it is indeed too much, misfortune goes too far--it revolts one's soul!" Just as he finished a sound of voices came from the second ante-room, and Pierre was thunderstruck to see Cardinal Sanguinetti go by, escorted with the greatest obsequiousness by Abbe Paparelli. "If your most Reverend Eminence will have the extreme kindness to follow me," the train-bearer was saying, "I will conduct your most Reverend Eminence myself." "Yes," replied Sanguinetti, "I arrived yesterday evening from Frascati, and when I heard the sad news, I at once desired to express my sorrow and offer consolation." "Your Eminence will perhaps condescend to remain for a moment near the bodies. I will afterwards escort your Eminence to the private apartments." "Yes, by all means. I desire every one to know how greatly I participate in the sorrow which has fallen on this illustrious house." Then Sanguinetti entered the throne-room, leaving Pierre quite aghast at his quiet audacity. The young priest certainly did not accuse him of direct complicity with Santobono, he did not even dare to measure how far his moral complicity might go. But on seeing him pass by like that, his brow so lofty, his speech so clear, he had suddenly felt convinced that he knew the truth. How or through whom, he could not have told; but doubtless crimes become known in those shady spheres by those whose interest it is to know of them. And Pierre remained quite chilled by the haughty fashion in which that man presented himself, perhaps to stifle suspicion and certainly to accomplish an act of good policy by giving his rival a public mark of esteem and affection. "The Cardinal! Here!" Pierre murmured despite himself. Nani, who followed the young man's thoughts in his childish eyes, in which all could be read, pretended to mistake the sense of his exclamation. "Yes," said he, "I learnt that the Cardinal returned to Rome yesterday evening. He did not wish to remain away any longer; the Holy Father being so much better that he might perhaps have need of him." Although these words were spoken with an air of perfect innocence, Pierre was not for a moment deceived by them. And having in his turn glanced at the prelate, he was convinced that the latter also knew the truth. Then, all at once, the whole affair appeared to him in its intricacy, in the ferocity which fate had imparted to it. Nani, an old intimate of the Palazzo Boccanera, was not heartless, he had surely loved Benedetta with affection, charmed by so much grace and beauty. One could thus explain the victorious manner in which he had at last caused her marriage to be annulled. But if Don Vigilio were to be believed, that divorce, obtained by pecuniary outlay, and under pressure of the most notorious influences, was simply a scandal which he, Nani, had in the first instance spun out, and then precipitated towards a resounding finish with the sole object of discrediting the Cardinal and destroying his chances of the tiara on the eve of the Conclave which everybody thought imminent. It seemed certain, too, that the Cardinal, uncompromising as he was, could not be the candidate of Nani, who was so desirous of universal agreement, and so the latter's long labour in that house, whilst conducing to the happiness of the Contessina, had been designed to frustrate Donna Serafina and Cardinal Pio in their burning ambition, that third triumphant elevation to the papacy which they sought to secure for their ancient family. However, if Nani had always desired to baulk this ambition, and had even at one moment placed his hopes in Sanguinetti and fought for him, he had never imagined that Boccanera's foes would go to the point of crime, to such an abomination as poison which missed its mark and killed the innocent. No, no, as he himself said, that was too much, and made one's soul rebel. He employed more gentle weapons; such brutality filled him with indignation; and his face, so pinky and carefully tended, still wore the grave expression of his revolt in presence of the tearful Cardinal and those poor lovers stricken in his stead. Believing that Sanguinetti was still the prelate's secret candidate, Pierre was worried to know how far their moral complicity in this baleful affair might go. So he resumed the conversation by saying: "It is asserted that his Holiness is on bad terms with his Eminence Cardinal Sanguinetti. Of course the reigning pope cannot look on the future pope with a very kindly eye." At this, Nani for a moment became quite gay in all frankness. "Oh," said he, "the Cardinal has quarrelled and made things up with the Vatican three or four times already. And, in any event, the Holy Father has no motive for posthumous jealousy; he knows very well that he can give his Eminence a good greeting." Then, regretting that he had thus expressed a certainty, he added: "I am joking, his Eminence is altogether worthy of the high fortune which perhaps awaits him." Pierre knew what to think however; Sanguinetti was certainly Nani's candidate no longer. It was doubtless considered that he had used himself up too much by his impatient ambition, and was too dangerous by reason of the equivocal alliances which in his feverishness he had concluded with every party, even that of patriotic young Italy. And thus the situation became clearer. Cardinals Sanguinetti and Boccanera devoured and suppressed one another; the first, ever intriguing, accepting every compromise, dreaming of winning Rome back by electoral methods; and the other, erect and motionless in his stern maintenance of the past, excommunicating the century, and awaiting from God alone the miracle which would save the Church. And, indeed, why not leave the two theories, thus placed face to face, to destroy one another, including all the extreme, disquieting views which they respectively embodied? If Boccanera had escaped the poison, he had none the less become an impossible candidate, killed by all the stories which had set Rome buzzing; while if Sanguinetti could say that he was rid of a rival, he had at the same time dealt a mortal blow to his own candidature, by displaying such passion for power, and such unscrupulousness with regard to the methods he employed, as to be a danger for every one. Monsignor Nani was visibly delighted with this result; neither candidate was left, it was like the legendary story of the two wolves who fought and devoured one another so completely that nothing of either of them was found left, not even their tails! And in the depths of the prelate's pale eyes, in the whole of his discreet person, there remained nothing but redoubtable mystery: the mystery of the yet unknown, but definitively selected candidate who would be patronised by the all-powerful army of which he was one of the most skilful leaders. A man like him always had a solution ready. Who, then, who would be the next pope? However, he now rose and cordially took leave of the young priest. "I doubt if I shall see you again, my dear son," he said; "I wish you a good journey." Still he did not go off, but continued to look at Pierre with his penetrating eyes, and finally made him sit down again and did the same himself. "I feel sure," he said, "that you will go to pay your respects to Cardinal Bergerot as soon as you have returned to France. Kindly tell him that I respectfully desired to be reminded to him. I knew him a little at the time when he came here for his hat. He is one of the great luminaries of the French clergy. Ah! a man of such intelligence would only work for a good understanding in our holy Church. Unfortunately I fear that race and environment have instilled prejudices into him, for he does not always help us." Pierre, who was surprised to hear Nani speak of the Cardinal for the first time at this moment of farewell, listened with curiosity. Then in all frankness he replied: "Yes, his Eminence has very decided ideas about our old Church of France. For instance, he professes perfect horror of the Jesuits." With a light exclamation Nani stopped the young man. And he wore the most sincerely, frankly astonished air that could be imagined. "What! horror of the Jesuits! In what way can the Jesuits disquiet him? The Jesuits, there are none, that's all over! Have you seen any in Rome? Have they troubled you in any way, those poor Jesuits who haven't even a stone of their own left here on which to lay their heads? No, no, that bogey mustn't be brought up again, it's childish." Pierre in his turn looked at him, marvelling at his perfect ease, his quiet courage in dealing with this burning subject. He did not avert his eyes, but displayed an open face like a book of truth. "Ah!" he continued, "if by Jesuits you mean the sensible priests who, instead of entering into sterile and dangerous struggles with modern society, seek by human methods to bring it back to the Church, why, then of course we are all of us more or less Jesuits, for it would be madness not to take into account the times in which one lives. And besides, I won't haggle over words; they are of no consequence! Jesuits, well, yes, if you like, Jesuits!" He was again smiling with that shrewd smile of his in which there was so much raillery and so much intelligence. "Well, when you see Cardinal Bergerot tell him that it is unreasonable to track the Jesuits and treat them as enemies of the nation. The contrary is the truth. The Jesuits are for France, because they are for wealth, strength, and courage. France is the only great Catholic country which has yet remained erect and sovereign, the only one on which the papacy can some day lean. Thus the Holy Father, after momentarily dreaming of obtaining support from victorious Germany, has allied himself with France, the vanquished, because he has understood that apart from France there can be no salvation for the Church. And in this he has only followed the policy of the Jesuits, those frightful Jesuits, whom your Parisians execrate. And tell Cardinal Bergerot also that it would be grand of him to work for pacification by making people understand how wrong it is for your Republic to help the Holy Father so little in his conciliatory efforts. It pretends to regard him as an element in the world's affairs that may be neglected; and that is dangerous, for although he may seem to have no political means of action he remains an immense moral force, and can at any moment raise consciences in rebellion and provoke a religious agitation of the most far-reaching consequences. It is still he who disposes of the nations, since he disposes of their souls, and the Republic acts most inconsiderately, from the standpoint of its own interests, in showing that it no longer even suspects it. And tell the Cardinal too, that it is really pitiful to see in what a wretched way your Republic selects its bishops, as though it intentionally desired to weaken its episcopacy. Leaving out a few fortunate exceptions, your bishops are men of small brains, and as a result your cardinals, likewise mere mediocrities, have no influence, play no part here in Rome. Ah! what a sorry figure you Frenchmen will cut at the next Conclave! And so why do you show such blind and foolish hatred of those Jesuits, who, politically, are your friends? Why don't you employ their intelligent zeal, which is ready to serve you, so that you may assure yourselves the help of the next, the coming pope? It is necessary for you that he should be on your side, that he should continue the work of Leo XIII, which is so badly judged and so much opposed, but which cares little for the petty results of to-day, since its purpose lies in the future, in the union of all the nations under their holy mother the Church. Tell Cardinal Bergerot, tell him plainly that he ought to be with us, that he ought to work for his country by working for us. The coming pope, why the whole question lies in that, and woe to France if in him she does not find a continuator of Leo XIII!" Nani had again risen, and this time he was going off. Never before had he unbosomed himself at such length. But most assuredly he had only said what he desired to say, for a purpose that he alone knew of, and in a firm, gentle, and deliberate voice by which one could tell that each word had been weighed and determined beforehand. "Farewell, my dear son," he said, "and once again think over all you have seen and heard in Rome. Be as sensible as you can, and do not spoil your life." Pierre bowed, and pressed the small, plump, supple hand which the prelate offered him. "Monseigneur," he replied, "I again thank you for all your kindness; you may be sure that I shall forget nothing of my journey." Then he watched Nani as he went off, with a light and conquering step as if marching to all the victories of the future. No, no, he, Pierre, would forget nothing of his journey! He well knew that union of all the nations under their holy mother the Church, that temporal bondage in which the law of Christ would become the dictatorship of Augustus, master of the world! And as for those Jesuits, he had no doubt that they did love France, the eldest daughter of the Church, and the only daughter that could yet help her mother to reconquer universal sovereignty, but they loved her even as the black swarms of locusts love the harvests which they swoop upon and devour. Infinite sadness had returned to the young man's heart as he dimly realised that in that sorely-stricken mansion, in all that mourning and downfall, it was they, they again, who must have been the artisans of grief and disaster. As this thought came to him he turned round and perceived Don Vigilio leaning against the credence in front of the large portrait of the Cardinal. Holding his hands to his face as if he desired to annihilate himself, the secretary was shivering in every limb as much with fear as with fever. At a moment when no fresh visitors were arriving he had succumbed to an attack of terrified despair. "/Mon Dieu/! What is the matter with you?" asked Pierre stepping forward, "are you ill, can I help you?" But Don Vigilio, suffocating and still hiding his face, could only gasp between his close-pressed hands "Ah! Paparelli, Paparelli!" "What is it? What has he done to you?" asked the other astonished. Then the secretary disclosed his face, and again yielded to his quivering desire to confide in some one. "Eh? what he has done to me? Can't you feel anything, can't you see anything then? Didn't you notice the manner in which he took possession of Cardinal Sanguinetti so as to conduct him to his Eminence? To impose that suspected, hateful rival on his Eminence at such a moment as this, what insolent audacity! And a few minutes previously did you notice with what wicked cunning he bowed out an old lady, a very old family friend, who only desired to kiss his Eminence's hand and show a little real affection which would have made his Eminence so happy! Ah! I tell you that he's the master here, he opens or closes the door as he pleases, and holds us all between his fingers like a pinch of dust which one throws to the wind!" Pierre became anxious, seeing how yellow and feverish Don Vigilio was: "Come, come, my dear fellow," he said, "you are exaggerating!" "Exaggerating? Do you know what happened last night, what I myself unwillingly witnessed? No, you don't know it; well, I will tell you." Thereupon he related that Donna Serafina, on returning home on the previous day to face the terrible catastrophe awaiting her, had already been overcome by the bad news which she had learnt when calling on the Cardinal Secretary and various prelates of her acquaintance. She had then acquired a certainty that her brother's position was becoming extremely bad, for he had made so many fresh enemies among his colleagues of the Sacred College, that his election to the pontifical throne, which a year previously had seemed probable, now appeared an impossibility. Thus, all at once, the dream of her life collapsed, the ambition which she had so long nourished lay in dust at her feet. On despairingly seeking the why and wherefore of this change, she had been told of all sorts of blunders committed by the Cardinal, acts of rough sternness, unseasonable manifestations of opinion, inconsiderate words or actions which had sufficed to wound people, in fact such provoking demeanour that one might have thought it adopted with the express intention of spoiling everything. And the worst was that in each of the blunders she had recognised errors of judgment which she herself had blamed, but which her brother had obstinately insisted on perpetrating under the unacknowledged influence of Abbe Paparelli, that humble and insignificant train-bearer, in whom she detected a baneful and powerful adviser who destroyed her own vigilant and devoted influence. And so, in spite of the mourning in which the house was plunged, she did not wish to delay the punishment of the traitor, particularly as his old friendship with that terrible Santobono, and the story of that basket of figs which had passed from the hands of the one to those of the other, chilled her blood with a suspicion which she even recoiled from elucidating. However, at the first words she spoke, directly she made a formal request that the traitor should be immediately turned out of the house, she was confronted by invincible resistance on her brother's part. He would not listen to her, but flew into one of those hurricane-like passions which swept everything away, reproaching her for laying blame on so modest, pious, and saintly a man, and accusing her of playing into the hands of his enemies, who, after killing Monsignor Gallo, were seeking to poison his sole remaining affection for that poor, insignificant priest. He treated all the stories he was told as abominable inventions, and swore that he would keep the train-bearer in his service if only to show his disdain for calumny. And she was thereupon obliged to hold her peace. However, Don Vigilio's shuddering fit had again come back; he carried his hands to his face stammering: "Ah! Paparelli, Paparelli!" And muttered invectives followed: the train-bearer was an artful hypocrite who feigned modesty and humility, a vile spy appointed to pry into everything, listen to everything, and pervert everything that went on in the palace; he was a loathsome, destructive insect, feeding on the most noble prey, devouring the lion's mane, a Jesuit--the Jesuit who is at once lackey and tyrant, in all his base horror as he accomplishes the work of vermin. "Calm yourself, calm yourself," repeated Pierre, who whilst allowing for foolish exaggeration on the secretary's part could not help shivering at thought of all the threatening things which he himself could divine astir in the gloom. However, since Don Vigilio had so narrowly escaped eating those horrible figs, his fright was such that nothing could calm it. Even when he was alone at night, in bed, with his door locked and bolted, sudden terror fell on him and made him hide his head under the sheet and vent stifled cries as if he thought that men were coming through the wall to strangle him. In a faint, breathless voice, as if just emerging from a struggle, he now resumed: "I told you what would happen on the evening when we had a talk together in your room. Although all the doors were securely shut, I did wrong to speak of them to you, I did wrong to ease my heart by telling you all that they were capable of. I was sure they would learn it, and you see they did learn it, since they tried to kill me. . . . Why it's even wrong of me to tell you this, for it will reach their ears and they won't miss me the next time. Ah! it's all over, I'm as good as dead; this house which I thought so safe will be my tomb." Pierre began to feel deep compassion for this ailing man, whose feverish brain was haunted by nightmares, and whose life was being finally wrecked by the anguish of persecution mania. "But you must run away in that case!" he said. "Don't stop here; come to France." Don Vigilio looked at him, momentarily calmed by surprise. "Run away, why? Go to France? Why, they are there! No matter where I might go, they would be there. They are everywhere, I should always be surrounded by them! No, no, I prefer to stay here and would rather die at once if his Eminence can no longer defend me." With an expression of ardent entreaty in which a last gleam of hope tried to assert itself, he raised his eyes to the large painting in which the Cardinal stood forth resplendent in his cassock of red moire; but his attack came back again and overwhelmed him with increased intensity of fever. "Leave me, I beg you, leave me," he gasped. "Don't make me talk any more. Ah! Paparelli, Paparelli! If he should come back and see us and hear me speak. . . . Oh! I'll never say anything again. I'll tie up my tongue, I'll cut it off. Leave me, you are killing me, I tell you, he'll be coming back and that will mean my death. Go away, oh! for mercy's sake, go away!" Thereupon Don Vigilio turned towards the wall as if to flatten his face against it, and immure his lips in tomb-like silence; and Pierre resolved to leave him to himself, fearing lest he should provoke a yet more serious attack if he went on endeavouring to succour him. On returning to the throne-room the young priest again found himself amidst all the frightful mourning. Mass was following mass; without cessation murmured prayers entreated the divine mercy to receive the two dear departed souls with loving kindness. And amidst the dying perfume of the fading roses, in front of the pale stars of the lighted candles, Pierre thought of that supreme downfall of the Boccaneras. Dario was the last of the name, and one could well understand that the Cardinal, whose only sin was family pride, should have loved that one remaining scion by whom alone the old stock might yet blossom afresh. And indeed, if he and Donna Serafina had desired the divorce, and then the marriage of the cousins, it had been less with the view of putting an end to scandal than with the hope of seeing a new line of Boccaneras spring up. But the lovers were dead, and the last remains of a long series of dazzling princes of sword and of gown lay there on that bed, soon to rot in the grave. It was all over; that old maid and that aged Cardinal could leave no posterity. They remained face to face like two withered oaks, sole remnants of a vanished forest, and their fall would soon leave the plain quite clear. And how terrible the grief of surviving in impotence, what anguish to have to tell oneself that one is the end of everything, that with oneself all life, all hope for the morrow will depart! Amidst the murmur of the prayers, the dying perfume of the roses, the pale gleams of the two candies, Pierre realised what a downfall was that bereavement, how heavy was the gravestone which fell for ever on an extinct house, a vanished world. He well understood that as one of the familiars of the mansion he must pay his respects to Donna Serafina and the Cardinal, and he at once sought admission to the neighbouring room where the Princess was receiving her friends. He found her robed in black, very slim and very erect in her arm-chair, whence she rose with slow dignity to respond to the bow of each person that entered. She listened to the condolences but answered never a word, overcoming her physical pain by rigidity of bearing. Pierre, who had learnt to know her, could divine, however, by the hollowness of her cheeks, the emptiness of her eyes, and the bitter twinge of her mouth, how frightful was the collapse within her. Not only was her race ended, but her brother would never be pope, never secure the elevation which she had so long fancied she was winning for him by dint of devotion, dint of feminine renunciation, giving brain and heart, care and money, foregoing even wifehood and motherhood, spoiling her whole life, in order to realise that dream. And amidst all the ruin of hope, it was perhaps the nonfulfilment of that ambition which most made her heart bleed. She rose for the young priest, her guest, as she rose for the other persons who presented themselves; but she contrived to introduce shades of meaning into the manner in which she quitted her chair, and Pierre fully realised that he had remained in her eyes a mere petty French priest, an insignificant domestic of the Divinity who had not known how to acquire even the title of prelate. When she had again seated herself after acknowledging his compliment with a slight inclination of the head, he remained for a moment standing, out of politeness. Not a word, not a sound disturbed the mournful quiescence of the room, for although there were four or five lady visitors seated there they remained motionless and silent as with grief. Pierre was most struck, however, by the sight of Cardinal Sarno, who was lying back in an arm-chair with his eyes closed. The poor puny lopsided old man had lingered there forgetfully after expressing his condolences, and, overcome by the heavy silence and close atmosphere, had just fallen asleep. And everybody respected his slumber. Was he dreaming as he dozed of that map of Christendom which he carried behind his low obtuse-looking brow? Was he continuing in dreamland his terrible work of conquest, that task of subjecting and governing the earth which he directed from his dark room at the Propaganda? The ladies glanced at him affectionately and deferentially; he was gently scolded at times for over-working himself, the sleepiness which nowadays frequently overtook him in all sorts of places being attributed to excess of genius and zeal. And of this all-powerful Eminence Pierre was destined to carry off only this last impression: an exhausted old man, resting amidst the emotion of a mourning-gathering, sleeping there like a candid child, without any one knowing whether this were due to the approach of senile imbecility, or to the fatigues of a night spent in organising the reign of God over some distant continent. Two ladies went off and three more arrived. Donna Serafina rose, bowed, and then reseated herself, reverting to her rigid attitude, her bust erect, her face stern and full of despair. Cardinal Sarno was still asleep. Then Pierre felt as if he would stifle, a kind of vertigo came on him, and his heart beat violently. So he bowed and withdrew: and on passing through the dining-room on his way to the little study where Cardinal Boccanera received his visitors, he found himself in the presence of Paparelli who was jealously guarding the door. When the train-bearer had sniffed at the young man, he seemed to realise that he could not refuse him admittance. Moreover, as this intruder was going away the very next day, defeated and covered with shame, there was nothing to be feared from him. "You wish to see his Eminence?" said Paparelli. "Good, good. By and by, wait." And opining that Pierre was too near the door, he pushed him back to the other end of the room, for fear no doubt lest he should overhear anything. "His Eminence is still engaged with his Eminence Cardinal Sanguinetti. Wait, wait there!" Sanguinetti indeed had made a point of kneeling for a long time in front of the bodies in the throne-room, and had then spun out his visit to Donna Serafina in order to mark how largely he shared the family sorrow. And for more than ten minutes now he had been closeted with Cardinal Boccanera, nothing but an occasional murmur of their voices being heard through the closed door. Pierre, however, on finding Paparelli there, was again haunted by all that Don Vigilio had told him. He looked at the train-bearer, so fat and short, puffed out with bad fat in his dirty cassock, his face flabby and wrinkled, and his whole person at forty years of age suggestive of that of a very old maid: and he felt astonished. How was it that Cardinal Boccanera, that superb prince who carried his head so high, and who was so supremely proud of his name, had allowed himself to be captured and swayed by such a frightful creature reeking of baseness and abomination? Was it not the man's very physical degradation and profound humility that had struck him, disturbed him, and finally fascinated him, as wondrous gifts conducing to salvation, which he himself lacked? Paparelli's person and disposition were like blows dealt to his own handsome presence and his own pride. He, who could not be so deformed, he who could not vanquish his passion for glory, must, by an effort of faith, have grown jealous of that man who was so extremely ugly and so extremely insignificant, he must have come to admire him as a superior force of penitence and human abasement which threw the portals of heaven wide open. Who can ever tell what ascendency is exercised by the monster over the hero; by the horrid-looking saint covered with vermin over the powerful of this world in their terror at having to endure everlasting flames in payment of their terrestrial joys? And 'twas indeed the lion devoured by the insect, vast strength and splendour destroyed by the invisible. Ah! to have that fine soul which was so certain of paradise, which for its welfare was enclosed in such a disgusting body, to possess the happy humility of that wide intelligence, that remarkable theologian, who scourged himself with rods each morning on rising, and was content to be the lowest of servants. Standing there a heap of livid fat, Paparelli on his side watched Pierre with his little grey eyes blinking amidst the myriad wrinkles of his face. And the young priest began to feel uneasy, wondering what their Eminences could be saying to one another, shut up together like that for so long a time. And what an interview it must be if Boccanera suspected Sanguinetti of counting Santobono among his clients. What serene audacity it was on Sanguinetti's part to have dared to present himself in that house, and what strength of soul there must be on Boccanera's part, what empire over himself, to prevent all scandal by remaining silent and accepting the visit as a simple mark of esteem and affection! What could they be saying to one another, however? How interesting it would have been to have seen them face to face, and have heard them exchange the diplomatic phrases suited to such an interview, whilst their souls were raging with furious hatred! All at once the door opened and Cardinal Sanguinetti appeared with calm face, no ruddier than usual, indeed a trifle paler, and retaining the fitting measure of sorrow which he had thought it right to assume. His restless eyes alone revealed his delight at being rid of a difficult task. And he was going off, all hope, in the conviction that he was the only eligible candidate to the papacy that remained. Abbe Paparelli had darted forward: "If your Eminence will kindly follow me--I will escort your Eminence to the door." Then, turning towards Pierre, he added: "You may go in now." Pierre watched them walk away, the one so humble behind the other, who was so triumphant. Then he entered the little work-room, furnished simply with a table and three chairs, and in the centre of it he at once perceived Cardinal Boccanera still standing in the lofty, noble attitude which he had assumed to take leave of Sanguinetti, his hated rival to the pontifical throne. And, visibly, Boccanera also believed himself the only possible pope, the one whom the coming Conclave would elect. However, when the door had been closed, and the Cardinal beheld that young priest, his guest, who had witnessed the death of those two dear children lying in the adjoining room, he was again mastered by emotion, an unexpected attack of weakness in which all his energy collapsed. His human feelings were taking their revenge now that his rival was no longer there to see him. He staggered like an old tree smitten with the axe, and sank upon a chair, stifling with sobs. And as Pierre, according to usage, was about to stoop and kiss his ring, he raised him and at once made him sit down, stammering in a halting voice: "No, no, my dear son! Seat yourself there, wait--Excuse me, leave me to myself for a moment, my heart is bursting." He sobbed with his hands to his face, unable to master himself, unable to drive back his grief with those yet vigorous fingers which were pressed to his cheeks and temples. Tears came into Pierre's eyes, for he also lived through all that woe afresh, and was much upset by the weeping of that tall old man, that saint and prince, usually so haughty, so fully master of himself, but now only a poor, suffering, agonising man, as weak and as lost as a child. However, although the young priest was likewise stifling with grief, he desired to present his condolences, and sought for kindly words by which he might soothe the other's despair. "I beg your Eminence to believe in my profound grief," he said. "I have been overwhelmed with kindness here, and desired at once to tell your Eminence how much that irreparable loss--" But with a brave gesture the Cardinal silenced him. "No, no, say nothing, for mercy's sake say nothing!" And silence reigned while he continued weeping, shaken by the struggle he was waging, his efforts to regain sufficient strength to overcome himself. At last he mastered his quiver and slowly uncovered his face, which had again become calm, like that of a believer strong in his faith, and submissive to the will of God. In refusing a miracle, in dealing so hard a blow to that house, God had doubtless had His reasons, and he, the Cardinal, one of God's ministers, one of the high dignitaries of His terrestrial court, was in duty bound to bow to it. The silence lasted for another moment, and then, in a voice which he managed to render natural and cordial, Boccanera said: "You are leaving us, you are going back to France to-morrow, are you not, my dear son?" "Yes, I shall have the honour to take leave of your Eminence to-morrow, again thanking your Eminence for your inexhaustible kindness." "And you have learnt that the Congregation of the Index has condemned your book, as was inevitable?" "Yes, I obtained the signal favour of being received by his Holiness, and in his presence made my submission and reprobated my book." The Cardinal's moist eyes again began to sparkle. "Ah! you did that, ah! you did well, my dear son," he said. "It was only your strict duty as a priest, but there are so many nowadays who do not even do their duty! As a member of the Congregation I kept the promise I gave you to read your book, particularly the incriminated pages. And if I afterwards remained neutral, to such a point even as to miss the sitting in which judgment was pronounced, it was only to please my poor, dear niece, who was so fond of you, and who pleaded your cause to me." Tears were coming into his eyes again, and he paused, feeling that he would once more be overcome if he evoked the memory of that adored and lamented Benedetta. And so it was with a pugnacious bitterness that he resumed: "But what an execrable book it was, my dear son, allow me to tell you so. You told me that you had shown respect for dogma, and I still wonder what aberration can have come over you that you should have been so blind to all consciousness of your offences. Respect for dogma--good Lord! when the entire work is the negation of our holy religion! Did you not realise that by asking for a new religion you absolutely condemned the old one, the only true one, the only good one, the only one that can be eternal? And that sufficed to make your book the most deadly of poisons, one of those infamous books which in former times were burnt by the hangman, and which one is nowadays compelled to leave in circulation after interdicting them and thereby designating them to evil curiosity, which explains the contagious rottenness of the century. Ah! I well recognised there some of the ideas of our distinguished and poetical relative, that dear Viscount Philibert de la Choue. A man of letters, yes! a man of letters! Literature, mere literature! I beg God to forgive him, for he most surely does not know what he is doing, or whither he is going with his elegiac Christianity for talkative working men and young persons of either sex, to whom scientific notions have given vagueness of soul. And I only feel angry with his Eminence Cardinal Bergerot, for he at any rate knows what he does, and does as he pleases. No, say nothing, do not defend him. He personifies Revolution in the Church, and is against God." Although Pierre had resolved that he would not reply or argue, he had allowed a gesture of protest to escape him on hearing this furious attack upon the man whom he most respected in the whole world. However, he yielded to Cardinal Boccanera's injunction and again bowed. "I cannot sufficiently express my horror," the Cardinal roughly continued; "yes, my horror for all that hollow dream of a new religion! That appeal to the most hideous passions which stir up the poor against the rich, by promising them I know not what division of wealth, what community of possession which is nowadays impossible! That base flattery shown to the lower orders to whom equality and justice are promised but never given, for these can come from God alone, it is only He who can finally make them reign on the day appointed by His almighty power! And there is even that interested charity which people abuse of to rail against Heaven itself and accuse it of iniquity and indifference, that lackadaisical weakening charity and compassion, unworthy of strong firm hearts, for it is as if human suffering were not necessary for salvation, as if we did not become more pure, greater and nearer to the supreme happiness, the more and more we suffer!" He was growing excited, full of anguish, and superb. It was his bereavement, his heart wound, which thus exasperated him, the great blow which had felled him for a moment, but against which he again rose erect, defying grief, and stubborn in his stoic belief in an omnipotent God, who was the master of mankind, and reserved felicity to those whom He selected. Again, however, he made an effort to calm himself, and resumed in a more gentle voice: "At all events the fold is always open, my dear son, and here you are back in it since you have repented. You cannot imagine how happy it makes me." In his turn Pierre strove to show himself conciliatory in order that he might not further ulcerate that violent, grief-stricken soul: "Your Eminence," said he, "may be sure that I shall endeavour to remember every one of the kind words which your Eminence has spoken to me, in the same way as I shall remember the fatherly greeting of his Holiness Leo XIII." This sentence seemed to throw Boccanera into agitation again. At first only murmured, restrained words came from him, as if he were struggling against a desire to question the, young priest. "Ah yes! you saw his Holiness, you spoke to him, and he told you I suppose, as he tells all the foreigners who go to pay their respects to him, that he desires conciliation and peace. For my part I now only see him when it is absolutely necessary; for more than a year I have not been received in private audience." This proof of disfavour, of the covert struggle which as in the days of Pius IX kept the Holy Father and the /Camerlingo/ at variance, filled the latter with bitterness. He was unable to restrain himself and spoke out, reflecting no doubt that he had a familiar before him, one whose discretion was certain, and who moreover was leaving Rome on the morrow. "One may go a long way," said he, "with those fine words, peace and conciliation, which are so often void of real wisdom and courage. The terrible truth is that Leo XIII's eighteen years of concessions have shaken everything in the Church, and should he long continue to reign Catholicism would topple over and crumble into dust like a building whose pillars have been undermined." Interested by this remark, Pierre in his desire for knowledge began to raise objections. "But hasn't his Holiness shown himself very prudent?" he asked; "has he not placed dogma on one side in an impregnable fortress? If he seems to have made concessions on many points, have they not always been concessions in mere matters of form?" "Matters of form; ah, yes!" the Cardinal resumed with increasing passion. "He told you, no doubt, as he tells others, that whilst in substance he will make no surrender, he will readily yield in matters of form! It's a deplorable axiom, an equivocal form of diplomacy even when it isn't so much low hypocrisy! My soul revolts at the thought of that Opportunism, that Jesuitism which makes artifice its weapon, and only serves to cast doubt among true believers, the confusion of a /sauve-qui-peut/, which by and by must lead to inevitable defeat. It is cowardice, the worst form of cowardice, abandonment of one's weapons in order that one may retreat the more speedily, shame of oneself, assumption of a mask in the hope of deceiving the enemy, penetrating into his camp, and overcoming him by treachery! No, no, form is everything in a traditional and immutable religion, which for eighteen hundred years has been, is now, and till the end of time will be the very law of God!" The Cardinal's feelings so stirred him that he was unable to remain seated, and began to walk about the little room. And it was the whole reign, the whole policy of Leo XIII which he discussed and condemned. "Unity too," he continued, "that famous unity of the Christian Church which his Holiness talks of bringing about, and his desire for which people turn to his great glory, why, it is only the blind ambition of a conqueror enlarging his empire without asking himself if the new nations that he subjects may not disorganise, adulterate, and impregnate his old and hitherto faithful people with every error. What if all the schismatical nations on returning to the Catholic Church should so transform it as to kill it and make it a new Church? There is only one wise course, which is to be what one is, and that firmly. Again, isn't there both shame and danger in that pretended alliance with the democracy which in itself gives the lie to the ancient spirit of the papacy? The right of kings is divine, and to abandon the monarchical principle is to set oneself against God, to compound with revolution, and harbour a monstrous scheme of utilising the madness of men the better to establish one's power over them. All republics are forms of anarchy, and there can be no more criminal act, one which must for ever shake the principle of authority, order, and religion itself, than that of recognising a republic as legitimate for the sole purpose of indulging a dream of impossible conciliation. And observe how this bears on the question of the temporal power. He continues to claim it, he makes a point of no surrender on that question of the restoration of Rome; but in reality, has he not made the loss irreparable, has he not definitively renounced Rome, by admitting that nations have the right to drive away their kings and live like wild beasts in the depths of the forest?" All at once the Cardinal stopped short and raised his arms to Heaven in a burst of holy anger. "Ah! that man, ah! that man who by his vanity and craving for success will have proved the ruin of the Church, that man who has never ceased corrupting everything, dissolving everything, crumbling everything in order to reign over the world which he fancies he will reconquer by those means, why, Almighty God, why hast Thou not already called him to Thee?" So sincere was the accent in which that appeal to Death was raised, to such a point was hatred magnified by a real desire to save the Deity imperilled here below, that a great shudder swept through Pierre also. He now understood that Cardinal Boccanera who religiously and passionately hated Leo XIII; he saw him in the depths of his black palace, waiting and watching for the Pope's death, that death which as /Camerlingo/ he must officially certify. How feverishly he must wait, how impatiently he must desire the advent of the hour, when with his little silver hammer he would deal the three symbolic taps on the skull of Leo XIII, while the latter lay cold and rigid on his bed surrounded by his pontifical Court. Ah! to strike that wall of the brain, to make sure that nothing more would answer from within, that nothing beyond night and silence was left there. And the three calls would ring out: "Gioachino! Gioachino! Gioachino!" And, the corpse making no answer, the /Camerlingo/ after waiting for a few seconds would turn and say: "The Pope is dead!" "Conciliation, however, is the weapon of the times," remarked Pierre, wishing to bring the Cardinal back to the present, "and it is in order to make sure of conquering that the Holy Father yields in matters of form." "He will not conquer, he will be conquered," cried Boccanera. "Never has the Church been victorious save in stubbornly clinging to its integrality, the immutable eternity of its divine essence. And it would for a certainty fall on the day when it should allow a single stone of its edifice to be touched. Remember the terrible period through which it passed at the time of the Council of Trent. The Reformation had just deeply shaken it, laxity of discipline and morals was everywhere increasing, there was a rising tide of novelties, ideas suggested by the spirit of evil, unhealthy projects born of the pride of man, running riot in full license. And at the Council itself many members were disturbed, poisoned, ready to vote for the wildest changes, a fresh schism added to all the others. Well, if Catholicism was saved at that critical period, under the threat of such great danger, it was because the majority, enlightened by God, maintained the old edifice intact, it was because with divinely inspired obstinacy it kept itself within the narrow limits of dogma, it was because it made no concession, none, whether in substance or in form! Nowadays the situation is certainly not worse than it was at the time of the Council of Trent. Let us suppose it to be much the same, and tell me if it is not nobler, braver, and safer for the Church to show the courage which she showed before and declare aloud what she is, what she has been, and what she will be. There is no salvation for her otherwise than in her complete, indisputable sovereignty; and since she has always conquered by non-surrender, all attempts to conciliate her with the century are tantamount to killing her!" The Cardinal had again begun to walk to and fro with thoughtful step. "No, no," said he, "no compounding, no surrender, no weakness! Rather the wall of steel which bars the road, the block of granite which marks the limit of a world! As I told you, my dear son, on the day of your arrival, to try to accommodate Catholicism to the new times is to hasten its end, if really it be threatened, as atheists pretend. And in that way it would die basely and shamefully instead of dying erect, proud, and dignified in its old glorious royalty! Ah! to die standing, denying nought of the past, braving the future and confessing one's whole faith!" That old man of seventy seemed to grow yet loftier as he spoke, free from all dread of final annihilation, and making the gesture of a hero who defies futurity. Faith had given him serenity of peace; he believed, he knew, he had neither doubt nor fear of the morrow of death. Still his voice was tinged with haughty sadness as he resumed, "God can do all, even destroy His own work should it seem evil in His eyes. But though all should crumble to-morrow, though the Holy Church should disappear among the ruins, though the most venerated sanctuaries should be crushed by the falling stars, it would still be necessary for us to bow and adore God, who after creating the world might thus annihilate it for His own glory. And I wait, submissive to His will, for nothing happens unless He wills it. If really the temples be shaken, if Catholicism be fated to fall to-morrow into dust, I shall be here to act as the minister of death, even as I have been the minister of life! It is certain, I confess it, that there are hours when terrible signs appear to me. Perhaps, indeed, the end of time is nigh, and we shall witness that fall of the old world with which others threaten us. The worthiest, the loftiest are struck down as if Heaven erred, and in them punished the crimes of the world. Have I not myself felt the blast from the abyss into which all must sink, since my house, for transgressions that I am ignorant of, has been stricken with that frightful bereavement which precipitates it into the gulf which casts it back into night everlasting!" He again evoked those two dear dead ones who were always present in his mind. Sobs were once more rising in his throat, his hands trembled, his lofty figure quivered with the last revolt of grief. Yes, if God had stricken him so severely by suppressing his race, if the greatest and most faithful were thus punished, it must be that the world was definitively condemned. Did not the end of his house mean the approaching end of all? And in his sovereign pride as priest and as prince, he found a cry of supreme resignation, once more raising his hands on high: "Almighty God, Thy will be done! May all die, all fall, all return to the night of chaos! I shall remain standing in this ruined palace, waiting to be buried beneath its fragments. And if Thy will should summon me to bury Thy holy religion, be without fear, I shall do nothing unworthy to prolong its life for a few days! I will maintain it erect, like myself, as proud, as uncompromising as in the days of all its power. I will yield nothing, whether in discipline, or in rite, or in dogma. And when the day shall come I will bury it with myself, carrying it whole into the grave rather than yielding aught of it, encompassing it with my cold arms to restore it to Thee, even as Thou didst commit it to the keeping of Thy Church. O mighty God and sovereign Master, dispose of me, make me if such be Thy good pleasure the pontiff of destruction, the pontiff of the death of the world." Pierre, who was thunderstruck, quivered with fear and admiration at the extraordinary vision this evoked: the last of the popes interring Catholicism. He understood that Boccanera must at times have made that dream; he could see him in the Vatican, in St. Peter's which the thunderbolts had riven asunder, he could see him erect and alone in the spacious halls whence his terrified, cowardly pontifical Court had fled. Clad in his white cassock, thus wearing white mourning for the Church, he once more descended to the sanctuary, there to wait for heaven to fall on the evening of Time's accomplishment and annihilate the earth. Thrice he raised the large crucifix, overthrown by the supreme convulsions of the soil. Then, when the final crack rent the steps apart, he caught it in his arms and was annihilated with it beneath the falling vaults. And nothing could be more instinct with fierce and kingly grandeur. Voiceless, but without weakness, his lofty stature invincible and erect in spite of all, Cardinal Boccanera made a gesture dismissing Pierre, who yielding to his passion for truth and beauty found that he alone was great and right, and respectfully kissed his hand. It was in the throne-room, with closed doors, at nightfall, after the visits had ceased, that the two bodies were laid in their coffin. The religious services had come to an end, and in the close silent atmosphere there only lingered the dying perfume of the roses and the warm odour of the candles. As the latter's pale stars scarcely lighted the spacious room, some lamps had been brought, and servants held them in their hands like torches. According to custom, all the servants of the house were present to bid a last farewell to the departed. There was a little delay. Morano, who had been giving himself no end of trouble ever since morning, was forced to run off again as the triple coffin did not arrive. At last it came, some servants brought it up, and then they were able to begin. The Cardinal and Donna Serafina stood side by side near the bed. Pierre also was present, as well as Don Vigilio. It was Victorine who sewed the lovers up in the white silk shroud, which seemed like a bridal robe, the gay pure robe of their union. Then two servants came forward and helped Pierre and Don Vigilio to lay the bodies in the first coffin, of pine wood lined with pink satin. It was scarcely broader than an ordinary coffin, so young and slim were the lovers and so tightly were they clasped in their last embrace. When they were stretched inside they there continued their eternal slumber, their heads half hidden by their odorous, mingling hair. And when this first coffin had been placed in the second one, a leaden shell, and the second had been enclosed in the third, of stout oak, and when the three lids had been soldered and screwed down, the lovers' faces could still be seen through the circular opening, covered with thick glass, which in accordance with the Roman custom had been left in each of the coffins. And then, for ever parted from the living, alone together, they still gazed at one another with their eyes obstinately open, having all eternity before them wherein to exhaust their infinite love. XVI ON the following day, on his return from the funeral Pierre lunched alone in his room, having decided to take leave of the Cardinal and Donna Serafina during the afternoon. He was quitting Rome that evening by the train which started at seventeen minutes past ten. There was nothing to detain him any longer; there was only one visit which he desired to make, a visit to old Orlando, with whom he had promised to have a long chat prior to his departure. And so a little before two o'clock he sent for a cab which took him to the Via Venti Settembre. A fine rain had fallen all night, its moisture steeping the city in grey vapour; and though this rain had now ceased the sky remained very dark, and the huge new mansions of the Via Venti Settembre were quite livid, interminably mournful with their balconies ever of the same pattern and their regular and endless rows of windows. The Ministry of Finances, that colossal pile of masonry and sculpture, looked in particular like a dead town, a huge bloodless body whence all life had withdrawn. On the other hand, although all was so gloomy the rain had made the atmosphere milder, in fact it was almost warm, damply and feverishly warm. In the hall of Prada's little palazzo Pierre was surprised to find four or five gentlemen taking off their overcoats; however he learnt from a servant that Count Luigi had a meeting that day with some contractors. As he, Pierre, wished to see the Count's father he had only to ascend to the third floor, added the servant. He must knock at the little door on the right-hand side of the landing there. On the very first landing, however, the priest found himself face to face with the young Count who was there receiving the contractors, and who on recognising him became frightfully pale. They had not met since the tragedy at the Boccanera mansion, and Pierre well realised how greatly his glance disturbed that man, what a troublesome recollection of moral complicity it evoked, and what mortal dread lest he should have guessed the truth. "Have you come to see me, have you something to tell me?" the Count inquired. "No, I am leaving Rome, I have come to wish your father good-bye." Prada's pallor increased at this, and his whole face quivered: "Ah! it is to see my father. He is not very well, be gentle with him," he replied, and as he spoke, his look of anguish clearly proclaimed what he feared from Pierre, some imprudent word, perhaps even a final mission, the malediction of that man and woman whom he had killed. And surely if his father knew, he would die as well. "Ah! how annoying it is," he resumed, "I can't go up with you! There are gentlemen waiting for me. Yes, how annoyed I am. As soon as possible, however, I will join you, yes, as soon as possible." He knew not how to stop the young priest, whom he must evidently allow to remain with his father, whilst he himself stayed down below, kept there by his pecuniary worries. But how distressful were the eyes with which he watched Pierre climb the stairs, how he seemed to supplicate him with his whole quivering form. His father, good Lord, the only true love, the one great, pure, faithful passion of his life! "Don't make him talk too much, brighten him, won't you?" were his parting words. Up above it was not Batista, the devoted ex-soldier, who opened the door, but a very young fellow to whom Pierre did not at first pay any attention. The little room was bare and light as on previous occasions, and from the broad curtainless window there was the superb view of Rome, Rome crushed that day beneath a leaden sky and steeped in shade of infinite mournfulness. Old Orlando, however, had in no wise changed, but still displayed the superb head of an old blanched lion, a powerful muzzle and youthful eyes, which yet sparkled with the passions which had growled in a soul of fire. Pierre found the stricken hero in the same arm-chair as previously, near the same table littered with newspapers, and with his legs buried in the same black wrapper, as if he were there immobilised in a sheath of stone, to such a point that after months and years one was sure to perceive him quite unchanged, with living bust, and face glowing with strength and intelligence. That grey day, however, he seemed gloomy, low in spirits. "Ah! so here you are, my dear Monsieur Froment," he exclaimed, "I have been thinking of you these three days past, living the awful days which you must have lived in that tragic Palazzo Boccanera. Ah, God! What a frightful bereavement! My heart is quite overwhelmed, these newspapers have again just upset me with the fresh details they give!" He pointed as he spoke to the papers scattered over the table. Then with a gesture he strove to brush aside the gloomy story, and banish that vision of Benedetta dead, which had been haunting him. "Well, and yourself?" he inquired. "I am leaving this evening," replied Pierre, "but I did not wish to quit Rome without pressing your brave hands." "You are leaving? But your book?" "My book--I have been received by the Holy Father, I have made my submission and reprobated my book." Orlando looked fixedly at the priest. There was a short interval of silence, during which their eyes told one another all that they had to tell respecting the affair. Neither felt the necessity of any longer explanation. The old man merely spoke these concluding words: "You have done well, your book was a chimera." "Yes, a chimera, a piece of childishness, and I have condemned it myself in the name of truth and reason." A smile appeared on the dolorous lips of the impotent hero. "Then you have seen things, you understand and know them now?" "Yes, I know them; and that is why I did not wish to go off without having that frank conversation with you which we agreed upon." Orlando was delighted, but all at once he seemed to remember the young fellow who had opened the door to Pierre, and who had afterwards modestly resumed his seat on a chair near the window. This young fellow was a youth of twenty, still beardless, of a blonde handsomeness such as occasionally flowers at Naples, with long curly hair, a lily-like complexion, a rosy mouth, and soft eyes full of a dreamy languor. The old man presented him in fatherly fashion, Angiolo Mascara his name was, and he was the grandson of an old comrade in arms, the epic Mascara of the Thousand, who had died like a hero, his body pierced by a hundred wounds. "I sent for him to scold him," continued Orlando with a smile. "Do you know that this fine fellow with his girlish airs goes in for the new ideas? He is an Anarchist, one of the three or four dozen Anarchists that we have in Italy. He's a good little lad at bottom, he has only his mother left him, and supports her, thanks to the little berth which he holds, but which he'll lose one of these fine days if he is not careful. Come, come, my child, you must promise me to be reasonable." Thereupon Angiolo, whose clean but well-worn garments bespoke decent poverty, made answer in a grave and musical voice: "I am reasonable, it is the others, all the others who are not. When all men are reasonable and desire truth and justice, the world will be happy." "Ah! if you fancy that he'll give way!" cried Orlando. "But, my poor child, just ask Monsieur l'Abbe if one ever knows where truth and justice are. Well, well, one must leave you the time to live, and see, and understand things." Then, paying no more attention to the young man, he returned to Pierre, while Angiolo, remaining very quiet in his corner, kept his eyes ardently fixed on them, and with open, quivering ears lost not a word they said. "I told you, my dear Monsieur Froment," resumed Orlando, "that your ideas would change, and that acquaintance with Rome would bring you to accurate views far more readily than any fine speeches I could make to you. So I never doubted but what you would of your own free will withdraw your book as soon as men and things should have enlightened you respecting the Vatican at the present day. But let us leave the Vatican on one side, there is nothing to be done but to let it continue falling slowly and inevitably into ruin. What interests me is our Italian Rome, which you treated as an element to be neglected, but which you have now seen and studied, so that we can both speak of it with the necessary knowledge!" He thereupon at once granted a great many things, acknowledged that blunders had been committed, that the finances were in a deplorable state, and that there were serious difficulties of all kinds. They, the Italians, had sinned by excess of legitimate pride, they had proceeded too hastily with their attempt to improvise a great nation, to change ancient Rome into a great modern capital as by the mere touch of a wand. And thence had come that mania for erecting new districts, that mad speculation in land and shares, which had brought the country within a hair's breadth of bankruptcy. At this Pierre gently interrupted him to tell him of the view which he himself had arrived at after his peregrinations and studies through Rome. "That fever of the first hour, that financial /debacle/," said he, "is after all nothing. All pecuniary sores can be healed. But the grave point is that your Italy still remains to be created. There is no aristocracy left, and as yet there is no people, nothing but a devouring middle class, dating from yesterday, which preys on the rich harvest of the future before it is ripe." Silence fell. Orlando sadly wagged his old leonine head. The cutting harshness of Pierre's formula struck him in the heart. "Yes, yes," he said at last, "that is so, you have seen things plainly; and why say no when facts are there, patent to everybody? I myself had already spoken to you of that middle class which hungers so ravenously for place and office, distinctions and plumes, and which at the same time is so avaricious, so suspicious with regard to its money which it invests in banks, never risking it in agriculture or manufactures or commerce, having indeed the one desire to enjoy life without doing anything, and so unintelligent that it cannot see it is killing its country by its loathing for labour, its contempt for the poor, its one ambition to live in a petty way with the barren glory of belonging to some official administration. And, as you say, the aristocracy is dying, discrowned, ruined, sunk into the degeneracy which overtakes races towards their close, most of its members reduced to beggary, the others, the few who have clung to their money, crushed by heavy imposts, possessing nought but dead fortunes which constant sharing diminishes and which must soon disappear with the princes themselves. And then there is the people, which has suffered so much and suffers still, but is so used to suffering that it can seemingly conceive no idea of emerging from it, blind and deaf as it is, almost regretting its ancient bondage, and so ignorant, so abominably ignorant, which is the one cause of its hopeless, morrowless misery, for it has not even the consolation of understanding that if we have conquered and are trying to resuscitate Rome and Italy in their ancient glory, it is for itself, the people, alone. Yes, yes, no aristocracy left, no people as yet, and a middle class which really alarms one. How can one therefore help yielding at times to the terrors of the pessimists, who pretend that our misfortunes are as yet nothing, that we are going forward to yet more awful catastrophes, as though, indeed, what we now behold were but the first symptoms of our race's end, the premonitory signs of final annihilation!" As he spoke he raised his long quivering arms towards the window, towards the light, and Pierre, deeply moved, remembered how Cardinal Boccanera on the previous day had made a similar gesture of supplicant distress when appealing to the divine power. And both men, Cardinal and patriot, so hostile in their beliefs, were instinct with the same fierce and despairing grandeur. "As I told you, however, on the first day," continued Orlando, "we only sought to accomplish logical and inevitable things. As for Rome, with her past history of splendour and domination which weighs so heavily upon us, we could not do otherwise than take her for capital, for she alone was the bond, the living symbol of our unity at the same time as the promise of eternity, the renewal offered to our great dream of resurrection and glory." He went on, recognising the disastrous conditions under which Rome laboured as a capital. She was a purely decorative city with exhausted soil, she had remained apart from modern life, she was unhealthy, she offered no possibility of commerce or industry, she was invincibly preyed upon by death, standing as she did amidst that sterile desert of the Campagna. Then he compared her with the other cities which are jealous of her; first Florence, which, however, has become so indifferent and so sceptical, impregnated with a happy heedlessness which seems inexplicable when one remembers the frantic passions, and the torrents of blood rolling through her history; next Naples, which yet remains content with her bright sun, and whose childish people enjoy their ignorance and wretchedness so indolently that one knows not whether one ought to pity them; next Venice, which has resigned herself to remaining a marvel of ancient art, which one ought to put under glass so as to preserve her intact, slumbering amid the sovereign pomp of her annals; next Genoa, which is absorbed in trade, still active and bustling, one of the last queens of that Mediterranean, that insignificant lake which was once the opulent central sea, whose waters carried the wealth of the world; and then particularly Turin and Milan, those industrial and commercial centres, which are so full of life and so modernised that tourists disdain them as not being "Italian" cities, both of them having saved themselves from ruin by entering into that Western evolution which is preparing the next century. Ah! that old land of Italy, ought one to leave it all as a dusty museum for the pleasure of artistic souls, leave it to crumble away, even as its little towns of Magna Graecia, Umbria, and Tuscany are already crumbling, like exquisite /bibelots/ which one dares not repair for fear that one might spoil their character. At all events, there must either be death, death soon and inevitable, or else the pick of the demolisher, the tottering walls thrown to the ground, and cities of labour, science, and health created on all sides; in one word, a new Italy really rising from the ashes of the old one, and adapted to the new civilisation into which humanity is entering. "However, why despair?" Orlando continued energetically. "Rome may weigh heavily on our shoulders, but she is none the less the summit we coveted. We are here, and we shall stay here awaiting events. Even if the population does not increase it at least remains stationary at a figure of some 400,000 souls, and the movement of increase may set in again when the causes which stopped it shall have ceased. Our blunder was to think that Rome would become a Paris or Berlin; but, so far, all sorts of social, historical, even ethnical considerations seem opposed to it; yet who can tell what may be the surprises of to-morrow? Are we forbidden to hope, to put faith in the blood which courses in our veins, the blood of the old conquerors of the world? I, who no longer stir from this room, impotent as I am, even I at times feel my madness come back, believe in the invincibility and immortality of Rome, and wait for the two millions of people who must come to populate those dolorous new districts which you have seen so empty and already falling into ruins! And certainly they will come! Why not? You will see, you will see, everything will be populated, and even more houses will have to be built. Moreover, can you call a nation poor, when it possesses Lombardy? Is there not also inexhaustible wealth in our southern provinces? Let peace settle down, let the South and the North mingle together, and a new generation of workers grow up. Since we have the soil, such a fertile soil, the great harvest which is awaited will surely some day sprout and ripen under the burning sun!" Enthusiasm was upbuoying him, all the /furia/ of youth inflamed his eyes. Pierre smiled, won over; and as soon as he was able to speak, he said: "The problem must be tackled down below, among the people. You must make men!" "Exactly!" cried Orlando. "I don't cease repeating it, one must make Italy. It is as if a wind from the East had blown the seed of humanity, the seed which makes vigorous and powerful nations, elsewhere. Our people is not like yours in France, a reservoir of men and money from which one can draw as plentifully as one pleases. It is such another inexhaustible reservoir that I wish to see created among us. And one must begin at the bottom. There must be schools everywhere, ignorance must be stamped out, brutishness and idleness must be fought with books, intellectual and moral instruction must give us the industrious people which we need if we are not to disappear from among the great nations. And once again for whom, if not for the democracy of to-morrow, have we worked in taking possession of Rome? And how easily one can understand that all should collapse here, and nothing grow up vigorously since such a democracy is absolutely absent. Yes, yes, the solution of the problem does not lie elsewhere; we must make a people, make an Italian democracy." Pierre had grown calm again, feeling somewhat anxious yet not daring to say that it is by no means easy to modify a nation, that Italy is such as soil, history, and race have made her, and that to seek to transform her so radically and all at once might be a dangerous enterprise. Do not nations like beings have an active youth, a resplendent prime, and a more or less prolonged old age ending in death? A modern democratic Rome, good heavens! The modern Romes are named Paris, London, Chicago. So he contented himself with saying: "But pending this great renovation of the people, don't you think that you ought to be prudent? Your finances are in such a bad condition, you are passing through such great social and economic difficulties, that you run the risk of the worst catastrophes before you secure either men or money. Ah! how prudent would that minister be who should say in your Chamber: 'Our pride has made a mistake, it was wrong of us to try to make ourselves a great nation in one day; more time, labour, and patience are needed; and we consent to remain for the present a young nation, which will quietly reflect and labour at self-formation, without, for a long time yet, seeking to play a dominant part. So we intend to disarm, to strike out the war and naval estimates, all the estimates intended for display abroad, in order to devote ourselves to our internal prosperity, and to build up by education, physically and morally, the great nation which we swear we will be fifty years hence!' Yes, yes, strike out all needless expenditure, your salvation lies in that!" But Orlando, while listening, had become gloomy again, and with a vague, weary gesture he replied in an undertone: "No, no, the minister who should use such language would be hooted. It would be too hard a confession, such as one cannot ask a nation to make. Every heart would bound, leap forth at the idea. And, besides, would not the danger perhaps be even greater if all that has been done were allowed to crumble? How many wrecked hopes, how much discarded, useless material there would be! No, we can now only save ourselves by patience and courage--and forward, ever forward! We are a very young nation, and in fifty years we desired to effect the unity which others have required two hundred years to arrive at. Well, we must pay for our haste, we must wait for the harvest to ripen, and fill our barns." Then, with another and more sweeping wave of the arm, he stubbornly strengthened himself in his hopes. "You know," said he, "that I was always against the alliance with Germany. As I predicted, it has ruined us. We were not big enough to march side by side with such a wealthy and powerful person, and it is in view of a war, always near at hand and inevitable, that we now suffer so cruelly from having to support the budgets of a great nation. Ah! that war which has never come, it is that which has exhausted the best part of our blood and sap and money without the slightest profit. To-day we have nothing before us but the necessity of breaking with our ally, who speculated on our pride, who has never helped us in any way, who has never given us anything but bad advice, and treated us otherwise than with suspicion. But it was all inevitable, and that's what people won't admit in France. I can speak freely of it all, for I am a declared friend of France, and people even feel some spite against me on that account. However, explain to your compatriots, that on the morrow of our conquest of Rome, in our frantic desire to resume our ancient rank, it was absolutely necessary that we should play our part in Europe and show that we were a power with whom the others must henceforth count. And hesitation was not allowable, all our interests impelled us toward Germany, the evidence was so binding as to impose itself. The stern law of the struggle for life weighs as heavily on nations as on individuals, and this it is which explains and justifies the rupture between the two sisters, France and Italy, the forgetting of so many ties, race, commercial intercourse, and, if you like, services also. The two sisters, ah! they now pursue each other with so much hatred that all common sense even seems at an end. My poor old heart bleeds when I read the articles which your newspapers and ours exchange like poisoned darts. When will this fratricidal massacre cease, which of the two will first realise the necessity of peace, the necessity of the alliance of the Latin races, if they are to remain alive amidst those torrents of other races which more and more invade the world?" Then gaily, with the /bonhomie/ of a hero disarmed by old age, and seeking a refuge in his dreams, Orlando added: "Come, you must promise to help me as soon as you are in Paris. However small your field of action may be, promise me you will do all you can to promote peace between France and Italy; there can be no more holy task. Relate all you have seen here, all you have heard, oh! as frankly as possible. If we have faults, you certainly have faults as well. And, come, family quarrels can't last for ever!" "No doubt," Pierre answered in some embarrassment. "Unfortunately they are the most tenacious. In families, when blood becomes exasperated with blood, hate goes as far as poison and the knife. And pardon becomes impossible." He dared not fully express his thoughts. Since he had been in Rome, listening, and considering things, the quarrel between Italy and France had resumed itself in his mind in a fine tragic story. Once upon a time there were two princesses, daughters of a powerful queen, the mistress of the world. The elder one, who had inherited her mother's kingdom, was secretly grieved to see her sister, who had established herself in a neighbouring land, gradually increase in wealth, strength, and brilliancy, whilst she herself declined as if weakened by age, dismembered, so exhausted, and so sore, that she already felt defeated on the day when she attempted a supreme effort to regain universal power. And so how bitter were her feelings, how hurt she always felt on seeing her sister recover from the most frightful shocks, resume her dazzling /gala/, and continue to reign over the world by dint of strength and grace and wit. Never would she forgive it, however well that envied and detested sister might act towards her. Therein lay an incurable wound, the life of one poisoned by that of the other, the hatred of old blood for young blood, which could only be quieted by death. And even if peace, as was possible, should soon be restored between them in presence of the younger sister's evident triumph, the other would always harbour deep within her heart an endless grief at being the elder yet the vassal. "However, you may rely on me," Pierre affectionately resumed. "This quarrel between the two countries is certainly a great source of grief and a great peril. And assuredly I will only say what I think to be the truth about you. At the same time I fear that you hardly like the truth, for temperament and custom have hardly prepared you for it. The poets of every nation who at various times have written on Rome have intoxicated you with so much praise that you are scarcely fitted to hear the real truth about your Rome of to-day. No matter how superb a share of praise one may accord you, one must all the same look at the reality of things, and this reality is just what you won't admit, lovers of the beautiful as you ever are, susceptible too like women, whom the slightest hint of a wrinkle sends into despair." Orlando began to laugh. "Well, certainly, one must always beautify things a little," said he. "Why speak of ugly faces at all? We in our theatres only care for pretty music, pretty dancing, pretty pieces which please one. As for the rest, whatever is disagreeable let us hide it, for mercy's sake!" "On the other hand," the priest continued, "I will cheerfully confess the great error of my book. The Italian Rome which I neglected and sacrificed to papal Rome not only exists but is already so powerful and triumphant that it is surely the other one which is bound to disappear in course of time. However much the Pope may strive to remain immutable within his Vatican, a steady evolution goes on around him, and the black world, by mingling with the white, has already become a grey world. I never realised that more acutely than at the /fete/ given by Prince Buongiovanni for the betrothal of his daughter to your grand-nephew. I came away quite enchanted, won over to the cause of your resurrection." The old man's eyes sparkled. "Ah! you were present?" said he, "and you witnessed a never-to-be-forgotten scene, did you not, and you no longer doubt our vitality, our growth into a great people when the difficulties of to-day are overcome? What does a quarter of a century, what does even a century matter! Italy will again rise to her old glory, as soon as the great people of to-morrow shall have sprung from the soil. And if I detest that man Sacco it is because to my mind he is the incarnation of all the enjoyers and intriguers whose appetite for the spoils of our conquest has retarded everything. But I live again in my dear grand-nephew Attilio, who represents the future, the generation of brave and worthy men who will purify and educate the country. Ah! may some of the great ones of to-morrow spring from him and that adorable little Princess Celia, whom my niece Stefana, a sensible woman at bottom, brought to see me the other day. If you had seen that child fling her arms about me, call me endearing names, and tell me that I should be godfather to her first son, so that he might bear my name and once again save Italy! Yes, yes, may peace be concluded around that coming cradle; may the union of those dear children be the indissoluble marriage of Rome and the whole nation, and may all be repaired, and all blossom anew in their love!" Tears came to his eyes, and Pierre, touched by his inextinguishable patriotism, sought to please him. "I myself," said he, "expressed to your son much the same wish on the evening of the betrothal /fete/, when I told him I trusted that their nuptials might be definitive and fruitful, and that from them and all the others there might arise the great nation which, now that I begin to know you, I hope you will soon become!" "You said that!" exclaimed Orlando. "Well, I forgive your book, for you have understood at last; and new Rome, there she is, the Rome which is ours, which we wish to make worthy of her glorious past, and for the third time the queen of the world." With one of those broad gestures into which he put all his remaining life, he pointed to the curtainless window where Rome spread out in solemn majesty from one horizon to the other. But, suddenly he turned his head and in a fit of paternal indignation began to apostrophise young Angiolo Mascara. "You young rascal!" said he, "it's our Rome which you dream of destroying with your bombs, which you talk of razing like a rotten, tottering house, so as to rid the world of it for ever!" Angiolo had hitherto remained silent, passionately listening to the others. His pretty, girlish, beardless face reflected the slightest emotion in sudden flashes; and his big blue eyes also had glowed on hearing what had been said of the people, the new people which it was necessary to create. "Yes!" he slowly replied in his pure and musical voice, "we mean to raze it and not leave a stone of it, but raze it in order to build it up again." Orlando interrupted him with a soft, bantering laugh: "Oh! you would build it up again; that's fortunate!" he said. "I would build it up again," the young man replied, in the trembling voice of an inspired prophet. "I would build it up again oh, so vast, so beautiful, and so noble! Will not the universal democracy of to-morrow, humanity when it is at last freed, need an unique city, which shall be the ark of alliance, the very centre of the world? And is not Rome designated, Rome which the prophecies have marked as eternal and immortal, where the destinies of the nations are to be accomplished? But in order that it may become the final definitive sanctuary, the capital of the destroyed kingdoms, where the wise men of all countries shall meet once every year, one must first of all purify it by fire, leave nothing of its old stains remaining. Then, when the sun shall have absorbed all the pestilence of the old soil, we will rebuild the city ten times more beautiful and ten times larger than it has ever been. And what a city of truth and justice it will at last be, the Rome that has been announced and awaited for three thousand years, all in gold and all in marble, filling the Campagna from the sea to the Sabine and the Alban mountains, and so prosperous and so sensible that its twenty millions of inhabitants after regulating the law of labour will live with the unique joy of being. Yes, yes, Rome the Mother, Rome the Queen, alone on the face of the earth and for all eternity!" Pierre listened to him, aghast. What! did the blood of Augustus go to such a point as this? The popes had not become masters of Rome without feeling impelled to rebuild it in their passion to rule over the world; young Italy, likewise yielding to the hereditary madness of universal domination, had in its turn sought to make the city larger than any other, erecting whole districts for people who had never come, and now even the Anarchists were possessed by the same stubborn dream of the race, a dream beyond all measure this time, a fourth and monstrous Rome, whose suburbs would invade continents in order that liberated humanity, united in one family, might find sufficient lodging! This was the climax. Never could more extravagant proof be given of the blood of pride and sovereignty which had scorched the veins of that race ever since Augustus had bequeathed it the inheritance of his absolute empire, with the furious instinct that the world legally belonged to it, and that its mission was to conquer it again. This idea had intoxicated all the children of that historic soil, impelling all of them to make their city The City, the one which had reigned and which would reign again in splendour when the days predicted by the oracles should arrive. And Pierre remembered the four fatidical letters, the S.P.Q.R. of old and glorious Rome, which like an order of final triumph given to Destiny he had everywhere found in present-day Rome, on all the walls, on all the insignia, even on the municipal dust-carts! And he understood the prodigious vanity of these people, haunted by the glory of their ancestors, spellbound by the past of their city, declaring that she contains everything, that they themselves cannot know her thoroughly, that she is the sphinx who will some day explain the riddle of the universe, that she is so great and noble that all within her acquires increase of greatness and nobility, in such wise that they demand for her the idolatrous respect of the entire world, so vivacious in their minds is the illusive legend which clings to her, so incapable are they of realising that what was once great may be so no longer. "But I know your fourth Rome," resumed Orlando, again enlivened. "It's the Rome of the people, the capital of the Universal Republic, which Mazzini dreamt of. Only he left the pope in it. Do you know, my lad, that if we old Republicans rallied to the monarchy, it was because we feared that in the event of revolution the country might fall into the hands of dangerous madmen such as those who have upset your brain? Yes, that was why we resigned ourselves to our monarchy, which is not much different from a parliamentary republic. And now, goodbye and be sensible, remember that your poor mother would die of it if any misfortune should befall you. Come, let me embrace you all the same." On receiving the hero's affectionate kiss Angiolo coloured like a girl. Then he went off with his gentle, dreamy air, never adding a word but politely inclining his head to the priest. Silence continued till Orlando's eyes encountered the newspapers scattered on the table, when he once more spoke of the terrible bereavement of the Boccaneras. He had loved Benedetta like a dear daughter during the sad days when she had dwelt near him; and finding the newspaper accounts of her death somewhat singular, worried in fact by the obscure points which he could divine in the tragedy, he was asking Pierre for particulars, when his son Luigi suddenly entered the room, breathless from having climbed the stairs so quickly and with his face full of anxious fear. He had just dismissed his contractors with impatient roughness, giving no thought to his serious financial position, the jeopardy in which his fortune was now placed, so anxious was he to be up above beside his father. And when he was there his first uneasy glance was for the old man, to make sure whether the priest by some imprudent word had not dealt him his death blow. He shuddered on noticing how Orlando quivered, moved to tears by the terrible affair of which he was speaking; and for a moment he thought he had arrived too late, that the harm was done. "Good heavens, father!" he exclaimed, "what is the matter with you, why are you crying?" And as he spoke he knelt at the old man's feet, taking hold of his hands and giving him such a passionate, loving glance that he seemed to be offering all the blood of his heart to spare him the slightest grief. "It is about the death of that poor woman," Orlando sadly answered. "I was telling Monsieur Froment how it grieved me, and I added that I could not yet understand it all. The papers talk of a sudden death which is always so extraordinary." The young Count rose again looking very pale. The priest had not yet spoken. But what a frightful moment was this! What if he should reply, what if he should speak out? "You were present, were you not?" continued the old man addressing Pierre. "You saw everything. Tell me then how the thing happened." Luigi Prada looked at Pierre. Their eyes met fixedly, plunging into one another's souls. All began afresh in their minds, Destiny on the march, Santobono encountered with his little basket, the drive across the melancholy Campagna, the conversation about poison while the little basket was gently rocked on the priest's knees; then, in particular, the sleepy /osteria/, and the little black hen, so suddenly killed, lying on the ground with a tiny streamlet of violet blood trickling from her beak. And next there was that splendid ball at the Buongiovanni mansion, with all its /odore di femina/ and its triumph of love: and finally, before the Palazzo Boccanera, so black under the silvery moon, there was the man who lighted a cigar and went off without once turning his head, allowing dim Destiny to accomplish its work of death. Both of them, Pierre and Prada, knew that story and lived it over again, having no need to recall it aloud in order to make certain that they had fully penetrated one another's soul. Pierre did not immediately answer the old man. "Oh!" he murmured at last, "there were frightful things, yes, frightful things." "No doubt--that is what I suspected," resumed Orlando. "You can tell us all. In presence of death my son has freely forgiven." The young Count's gaze again sought that of Pierre with such weight, such ardent entreaty that the priest felt deeply stirred. He had just remembered that man's anguish during the ball, the atrocious torture of jealousy which he had undergone before allowing Destiny to avenge him. And he pictured also what must have been his feelings after the terrible outcome of it all: at first stupefaction at Destiny's harshness, at this full vengeance which he had never desired so ferocious; then icy calmness like that of the cool gambler who awaits events, reading the newspapers, and feeling no other remorse than that of the general whose victory has cost him too many men. He must have immediately realised that the Cardinal would stifle the affair for the sake of the Church's honour; and only retained one weight on his heart, regret possibly for that woman whom he had never won, with perhaps a last horrible jealousy which he did not confess to himself but from which he would always suffer, jealousy at knowing that she lay in another's arms in the grave, for all eternity. But behold, after that victorious effort to remain calm, after that cold and remorseless waiting, Punishment arose, the fear that Destiny, travelling on with its poisoned figs, might have not yet ceased its march, and might by a rebound strike down his own father. Yet another thunderbolt, yet another victim, the most unexpected, the being he most adored! At that thought all his strength of resistance had in one moment collapsed, and he was there, in terror of Destiny, more at a loss, more trembling than a child. "The newspapers, however," slowly said Pierre as if he were seeking his words, "the newspapers must have told you that the Prince succumbed first, and that the Contessina died of grief whilst embracing him for the last time. . . . As for the cause of death, /mon Dieu/, you know that doctors themselves in sudden cases scarcely dare to pronounce an exact opinion--" He stopped short, for within him he had suddenly heard the voice of Benedetta giving him just before she died that terrible order: "You, who will see his father, I charge you to tell him that I cursed his son. I wish that he should know, it is necessary that he should know, for the sake of truth and justice." And was he, oh! Lord, about to obey that order, was it one of those divine commands which must be executed even if the result be a torrent of blood and tears? For a few seconds Pierre suffered from a heart-rending combat within him, hesitating between the act of truth and justice which the dead woman had called for and his own personal desire for forgiveness, and the horror he would feel should he kill that poor old man by fulfilling his implacable mission which could benefit nobody. And certainly the other one, the son, must have understood what a supreme struggle was going on in the priest's mind, a struggle which would decide his own father's fate, for his glance became yet more suppliant than ever. "One first thought that it was merely indigestion," continued Pierre, "but the Prince became so much worse, that one was alarmed, and the doctor was sent for--" Ah! Prada's eyes, they had become so despairing, so full of the most touching and weightiest things, that the priest could read in them all the decisive reasons which were about to stay his tongue. No, no, he would not strike an innocent old man, he had promised nothing, and to obey the last expression of the dead woman's hatred would have seemed to him like charging her memory with a crime. The young Count, too, during those few minutes of anguish, had suffered a whole life of such abominable torture, that after all some little justice was done. "And then," Pierre concluded, "when the doctor arrived he at once recognised that it was a case of infectious fever. There can be no doubt of it. This morning I attended the funeral, it was very splendid and very touching." Orlando did not insist, but contented himself with saying that he also had felt much emotion all the morning on thinking of that funeral. Then, as he turned to set the papers on the table in order with his trembling hands, his son, icy cold with perspiration, staggering and clinging to the back of a chair in order that he might not fall, again gave Pierre a long glance, but a very soft one, full of distracted gratitude. "I am leaving this evening," resumed Pierre, who felt exhausted and wished to break off the conversation, "and I must now bid you farewell. Have you any commission to give me for Paris?" "No, none," replied Orlando; and then, with sudden recollection, he added, "Yes, I have, though! You remember that book written by my old comrade in arms, Theophile Morin, one of Garibaldi's Thousand, that manual for the bachelor's degree which he desired to see translated and adopted here. Well, I am pleased to say that I have a promise that it shall be used in our schools, but on condition that he makes some alterations in it. Luigi, give me the book, it is there on that shelf." Then, when his son had handed him the volume, he showed Pierre some notes which he had pencilled on the margins, and explained to him the modifications which were desired in the general scheme of the work. "Will you be kind enough," he continued, "to take this copy to Morin himself? His address is written inside the cover. If you can do so you will spare me the trouble of writing him a very long letter; in ten minutes you can explain matters to him more clearly and completely than I could do in ten pages. . . . And you must embrace Morin for me, and tell him that I still love him, oh! with all my heart of the bygone days, when I could still use my legs and we two fought like devils side by side under a hail of bullets." A short silence followed, that pause, that embarrassment tinged with emotion which precedes the moment of farewell. "Come, good-bye," said Orlando, "embrace me for him and for yourself, embrace me affectionately like that lad did just now. I am so old and so near my end, my dear Monsieur Froment, that you will allow me to call you my child and to kiss you like a grandfather, wishing you all courage and peace, and that faith in life which alone helps one to live." Pierre was so touched that tears rose to his eyes, and when with all his soul he kissed the stricken hero on either cheek, he felt that he likewise was weeping. With a hand yet as vigorous as a vice, Orlando detained him for a moment beside his arm-chair, whilst with his other hand waving in a supreme gesture, he for the last time showed him Rome, so immense and mournful under the ashen sky. And his voice came low, quivering and suppliant. "For mercy's sake swear to me that you will love her all the same, in spite of all, for she is the cradle, the mother! Love her for all that she no longer is, love her for all that she desires to be! Do not say that her end has come, love her, love her so that she may live again, that she may live for ever!" Pierre again embraced him, unable to find any other response, upset as he was by all the passion displayed by that old warrior, who spoke of his city as a man of thirty might speak of the woman he adores. And he found him so handsome and so lofty with his old blanched, leonine mane and his stubborn belief in approaching resurrection, that once more the other old Roman, Cardinal Boccanera, arose before him, equally stubborn in his faith and relinquishing nought of his dream, even though he might be crushed on the spot by the fall of the heavens. These twain ever stood face to face, at either end of their city, alone rearing their lofty figures above the horizon, whilst awaiting the future. Then, when Pierre had bowed to Count Luigi, and found himself outside again in the Via Venti Settembre he was all eagerness to get back to the Boccanera mansion so as to pack up his things and depart. His farewell visits were made, and he now only had to take leave of Donna Serafina and the Cardinal, and to thank them for all their kind hospitality. For him alone did their doors open, for they had shut themselves up on returning from the funeral, resolved to see nobody. At twilight, therefore, Pierre had no one but Victorine to keep him company in the vast, black mansion, for when he expressed a desire to take supper with Don Vigilio she told him that the latter had also shut himself in his room. Desirous as he was of at least shaking hands with the secretary for the last time, Pierre went to knock at the door, which was so near his own, but could obtain no reply, and divined that the poor fellow, overcome by a fresh attack of fever and suspicion, desired not to see him again, in terror at the idea that he might compromise himself yet more than he had done already. Thereupon, it was settled that as the train only started at seventeen minutes past ten Victorine should serve Pierre his supper on the little table in his sitting-room at eight o'clock. She brought him a lamp and spoke of putting his linen in order, but he absolutely declined her help, and she had to leave him to pack up quietly by himself. He had purchased a little box, since his valise could not possibly hold all the linen and winter clothing which had been sent to him from Paris as his stay in Rome became more and more protracted. However, the packing was soon accomplished; the wardrobe was emptied, the drawers were visited, the box and valise filled and securely locked by seven o'clock. An hour remained to him before supper and he sat there resting, when his eyes whilst travelling round the walls to make sure that he had forgotten nothing, encountered that old painting by some unknown master, which had so often filled him with emotion. The lamplight now shone full upon it; and this time again as he gazed at it he felt a blow in the heart, a blow which was all the deeper, as now, at his parting hour, he found a symbol of his defeat at Rome in that dolent, tragic, half-naked woman, draped in a shred of linen, and weeping between her clasped hands whilst seated on the threshold of the palace whence she had been driven. Did not that rejected one, that stubborn victim of love, who sobbed so bitterly, and of whom one knew nothing, neither what her face was like, nor whence she had come, nor what her fault had been--did she not personify all man's useless efforts to force the doors of truth, and all the frightful abandonment into which he falls as soon as he collides with the wall which shuts the unknown off from him? For a long while did Pierre look at her, again worried at being obliged to depart without having seen her face behind her streaming golden hair, that face of dolorous beauty which he pictured radiant with youth and delicious in its mystery. And as he gazed he was just fancying that he could see it, that it was becoming his at last, when there was a knock at the door and Narcisse Habert entered. Pierre was surprised to see the young /attache/, for three days previously he had started for Florence, impelled thither by one of the sudden whims of his artistic fancy. However, he at once apologised for his unceremonious intrusion. "Ah! there is your luggage!" he said; "I heard that you were going away this evening, and I was unwilling to let you leave Rome without coming to shake hands with you. But what frightful things have happened since we met! I only returned this afternoon, so that I could not attend the funeral. However, you may well imagine how thunderstruck I was by the news of those frightful deaths." Then, suspecting some unacknowledged tragedy, like a man well acquainted with the legendary dark side of Rome, he put some questions to Pierre but did not insist on them, being at bottom far too prudent to burden himself uselessly with redoubtable secrets. And after Pierre had given him such particulars as he thought fit, the conversation changed and they spoke at length of Italy, Rome, Naples, and Florence. "Ah! Florence, Florence!" Narcisse repeated languorously. He had lighted a cigarette and his words fell more slowly, as he glanced round the room. "You were very well lodged here," he said, "it is very quiet. I had never come up to this floor before." His eyes continued wandering over the walls until they were at last arrested by the old painting which the lamp illumined, and thereupon he remained for a moment blinking as if surprised. And all at once he rose and approached the picture. "Dear me, dear me," said he, "but that's very good, that's very fine." "Isn't it?" rejoined Pierre. "I know nothing about painting but I was stirred by that picture on the very day of my arrival, and over and over again it has kept me here with my heart beating and full of indescribable feelings." Narcisse no longer spoke but examined the painting with the care of a connoisseur, an expert, whose keen glance decides the question of authenticity, and appraises commercial value. And the most extraordinary delight appeared upon the young man's fair, rapturous face, whilst his fingers began to quiver. "But it's a Botticelli, it's a Botticelli! There can be no doubt about it," he exclaimed. "Just look at the hands, and look at the folds of the drapery! And the colour of the hair, and the technique, the flow of the whole composition. A Botticelli, ah! /mon Dieu/, a Botticelli." He became quite faint, overflowing with increasing admiration as he penetrated more and more deeply into the subject, at once so simple and so poignant. Was it not acutely modern? The artist had foreseen our pain-fraught century, our anxiety in presence of the invisible, our distress at being unable to cross the portal of mystery which was for ever closed. And what an eternal symbol of the world's wretchedness was that woman, whose face one could not see, and who sobbed so distractedly without it being possible for one to wipe away her tears. Yes, a Botticelli, unknown, uncatalogued, what a discovery! Then he paused to inquire of Pierre: "Did you know it was a Botticelli?" "Oh no! I spoke to Don Vigilio about it one day, but he seemed to think it of no account. And Victorine, when I spoke to her, replied that all those old things only served to harbour dust." Narcisse protested, quite stupefied: "What! they have a Botticelli here and don't know it! Ah! how well I recognise in that the Roman princes who, unless their masterpieces have been labelled, are for the most part utterly at sea among them! No doubt this one has suffered a little, but a simple cleaning would make a marvel, a famous picture of it, for which a museum would at least give--" He abruptly stopped, completing his sentence with a wave of the hand and not mentioning the figure which was on his lips. And then, as Victorine came in followed by Giacomo to lay the little table for Pierre's supper, he turned his back upon the Botticelli and said no more about it. The young priest's attention was aroused, however, and he could well divine what was passing in the other's mind. Under that make-believe Florentine, all angelicalness, there was an experienced business man, who well knew how to look after his pecuniary interests and was even reported to be somewhat avaricious. Pierre, who was aware of it, could not help smiling therefore when he saw him take his stand before another picture--a frightful Virgin, badly copied from some eighteenth-century canvas--and exclaim: "Dear me! that's not at all bad! I've a friend, I remember, who asked me to buy him some old paintings. I say, Victorine, now that Donna Serafina and the Cardinal are left alone do you think they would like to rid themselves of a few valueless pictures?" The servant raised her arms as if to say that if it depended on her, everything might be carried away. Then she replied: "Not to a dealer, sir, on account of the nasty rumours which would at once spread about, but I'm sure they would be happy to please a friend. The house costs a lot to keep up, and money would be welcome." Pierre then vainly endeavoured to persuade Narcisse to stay and sup with him, but the young man gave his word of honour that he was expected elsewhere and was even late. And thereupon he ran off, after pressing the priest's hands and affectionately wishing him a good journey. Eight o'clock was striking, and Pierre seated himself at the little table, Victorine remaining to serve him after dismissing Giacomo, who had brought the supper things upstairs in a basket. "The people here make me wild," said the worthy woman after the other had gone, "they are so slow. And besides, it's a pleasure for me to serve you your last meal, Monsieur l'Abbe. I've had a little French dinner cooked for you, a /sole au gratin/ and a roast fowl." Pierre was touched by this attention, and pleased to have the company of a compatriot whilst he partook of his final meal amidst the deep silence of the old, black, deserted mansion. The buxom figure of Victorine was still instinct with mourning, with grief for the loss of her dear Contessina, but her daily toil was already setting her erect again, restoring her quick activity; and she spoke almost cheerfully whilst passing plates and dishes to Pierre. "And to think Monsieur l'Abbe," said she, "that you'll be in Paris on the morning of the day after to-morrow! As for me, you know, it seems as if I only left Auneau yesterday. Ah! what fine soil there is there; rich soil yellow like gold, not like their poor stuff here which smells of sulphur! And the pretty fresh willows beside our stream, too, and the little wood so full of moss! They've no moss here, their trees look like tin under that stupid sun of theirs which burns up the grass. /Mon Dieu/! in the early times I would have given I don't know what for a good fall of rain to soak me and wash away all the dust. Ah! I shall never get used to their awful Rome. What a country and what people!" Pierre was quite enlivened by her stubborn fidelity to her own nook, which after five and twenty years of absence still left her horrified with that city of crude light and black vegetation, true daughter as she was of a smiling and temperate clime which of a morning was steeped in rosy mist. "But now that your young mistress is dead," said he, "what keeps you here? Why don't you take the train with me?" She looked at him in surprise: "Go off with you, go back to Auneau! Oh! it's impossible, Monsieur l'Abbe. It would be too ungrateful to begin with, for Donna Serafina is accustomed to me, and it would be bad on my part to forsake her and his Eminence now that they are in trouble. And besides, what could I do elsewhere? No, my little hole is here now." "So you will never see Auneau again?" "No, never, that's certain." "And you don't mind being buried here, in their ground which smells of sulphur?" She burst into a frank laugh. "Oh!" she said, "I don't mind where I am when I'm dead. One sleeps well everywhere. And it's funny that you should be so anxious as to what there may be when one's dead. There's nothing, I'm sure. That's what tranquillises me, to feel that it will be all over and that I shall have a rest. The good God owes us that after we've worked so hard. You know that I'm not devout, oh! dear no. Still that doesn't prevent me from behaving properly, and, true as I stand here, I've never had a lover. It seems foolish to say such a thing at my age, still I say it because it's the sober truth." She continued laughing like the worthy woman she was, having no belief in priests and yet without a sin upon her conscience. And Pierre once more marvelled at the simple courage and great practical common sense of this laborious and devoted creature, who for him personified the whole unbelieving lowly class of France, those who no longer believe and will believe never more. Ah! to be as she was, to do one's work and lie down for the eternal sleep without any revolt of pride, satisfied with the one joy of having accomplished one's share of toil! When Pierre had finished his supper Victorine summoned Giacomo to clear the things away. And as it was only half-past eight she advised the priest to spend another quiet hour in his room. Why go and catch a chill by waiting at the station? She could send for a cab at half-past nine, and as soon as it arrived she would send word to him and have his luggage carried down. He might be easy as to that, and need trouble himself about nothing. When she had gone off Pierre soon sank into a deep reverie. It seemed to him, indeed, as if he had already quitted Rome, as if the city were far away and he could look back on it, and his experiences within it. His book, "New Rome," arose in his mind; and he remembered his first morning on the Janiculum, his view of Rome from the terrace of San Pietro in Montorio, a Rome such as he had dreamt of, so young and ethereal under the pure sky. It was then that he had asked himself the decisive question: Could Catholicism be renewed? Could it revert to the spirit of primitive Christianity, become the religion of the democracy, the faith which the distracted modern world, in danger of death, awaits in order that it may be pacified and live? His heart had then beaten with hope and enthusiasm. After his disaster at Lourdes from which he had scarcely recovered, he had come to attempt another and supreme experiment by asking Rome what her reply to his question would be. And now the experiment had failed, he knew what answer Rome had returned him through her ruins, her monuments, her very soil, her people, her prelates, her cardinals, her pope! No, Catholicism could not be renewed: no, it could not revert to the spirit of primitive Christianity; no, it could not become the religion of the democracy, the new faith which might save the old toppling societies in danger of death. Though it seemed to be of democratic origin, it was henceforth riveted to that Roman soil, it remained kingly in spite of everything, forced to cling to the principle of temporal power under penalty of suicide, bound by tradition, enchained by dogma, its evolutions mere simulations whilst in reality it was reduced to such immobility that, behind the bronze doors of the Vatican, the papacy was the prisoner, the ghost of eighteen centuries of atavism, indulging the ceaseless dream of universal dominion. There, where with priestly faith exalted by love of the suffering and the poor, he had come to seek life and a resurrection of the Christian communion, he had found death, the dust of a destroyed world in which nothing more could germinate, an exhausted soil whence now there could never grow aught but that despotic papacy, the master of bodies as it was of souls. To his distracted cry asking for a new religion, Rome had been content to reply by condemning his book as a work tainted with heresy, and he himself had withdrawn it amidst the bitter grief of his disillusions. He had seen, he had understood, and all had collapsed. And it was himself, his soul and his brain, which lay among the ruins. Pierre was stifling. He rose, threw the window overlooking the Tiber wide open, and leant out. The rain had begun to fall again at the approach of evening, but now it had once more ceased. The atmosphere was very mild, moist, even oppressive. The moon must have arisen in the ashen grey sky, for her presence could be divined behind the clouds which she illumined with a vague, yellow, mournful light. And under that slumberous glimmer the vast horizon showed blackly and phantom-like: the Janiculum in front with the close-packed houses of the Trastevere; the river flowing away yonder on the left towards the dim height of the Palatine; whilst on the right the dome of St. Peter's showed forth, round and domineering in the pale atmosphere. Pierre could not see the Quirinal but divined it to be behind him, and could picture its long facade shutting off part of the sky. And what a collapsing Rome, half-devoured by the gloom, was this, so different from the Rome all youth and dreamland which he had beheld and passionately loved on the day of his arrival! He remembered the three symbolic summits which had then summed up for him the whole long history of Rome, the ancient, the papal, and the Italian city. But if the Palatine had remained the same discrowned mount on which there only rose the phantom of the ancestor, Augustus, emperor and pontiff, master of the world, he now pictured St. Peter's and the Quirinal as strangely altered. To that royal palace which he had so neglected, and which had seemed to him like a flat, low barrack, to that new Government which had brought him the impression of some attempt at sacrilegious modernity, he now accorded the large, increasing space that they occupied in the panorama, the whole of which they would apparently soon fill; whilst, on the contrary, St. Peter's, that dome which he had found so triumphal, all azure, reigning over the city like a gigantic and unshakable monarch, at present seemed to him full of cracks and already shrinking, as if it were one of those huge old piles, which, through the secret, unsuspected decay of their timbers, at times fall to the ground in one mass. A murmur, a growling plaint rose from the swollen Tiber, and Pierre shivered at the icy abysmal breath which swept past his face. And his thoughts of the three summits and their symbolic triangle aroused within him the memory of the sufferings of the great silent multitude of poor and lowly for whom pope and king had so long disputed. It all dated from long ago, from the day when, in dividing the inheritance of Augustus, the emperor had been obliged to content himself with men's bodies, leaving their souls to the pope, whose one idea had henceforth been to gain the temporal power of which God, in his person, was despoiled. All the middle ages had been disturbed and ensanguined by the quarrel, till at last the silent multitude weary of vexations and misery spoke out; threw off the papal yoke at the Reformation, and later on began to overthrow its kings. And then, as Pierre had written in his book, a new fortune had been offered to the pope, that of reverting to the ancient dream, by dissociating himself from the fallen thrones and placing himself on the side of the wretched in the hope that this time he would conquer the people, win it entirely for himself. Was it not prodigious to see that man, Leo XIII, despoiled of his kingdom and allowing himself to be called a socialist, assembling under his banner the great flock of the disinherited, and marching against the kings at the head of that fourth estate to whom the coming century will belong? The eternal struggle for possession of the people continued as bitterly as ever even in Rome itself, where pope and king, who could see each other from their windows, contended together like falcon and hawk for the little birds of the woods. And in this for Pierre lay the reason why Catholicism was fatally condemned; for it was of monarchical essence to such a point that the Apostolic and Roman papacy could not renounce the temporal power under penalty of becoming something else and disappearing. In vain did it feign a return to the people, in vain did it seek to appear all soul; there was no room in the midst of the world's democracies for any such total and universal sovereignty as that which it claimed to hold from God. Pierre ever beheld the Imperator sprouting up afresh in the Pontifex Maximus, and it was this in particular which had killed his dream, destroyed his book, heaped up all those ruins before which he remained distracted without either strength or courage. The sight of that ashen Rome, whose edifices faded away into the night, at last brought him such a heart-pang that he came back into the room and fell on a chair near his luggage. Never before had he experienced such distress of spirit, it seemed like the death of his soul. After his disaster at Lourdes he had not come to Rome in search of the candid and complete faith of a little child, but the superior faith of an intellectual being, rising above rites and symbols, and seeking to ensure the greatest possible happiness of mankind based on its need of certainty. And if this collapsed, if Catholicism could not be rejuvenated and become the religion and moral law of the new generations, if the Pope at Rome and with Rome could not be the Father, the arch of alliance, the spiritual leader whom all hearkened to and obeyed, why then, in Pierre's eyes, the last hope was wrecked, the supreme rending which must plunge present-day society into the abyss was near at hand. That scaffolding of Catholic socialism which had seemed to him so happily devised for the consolidation of the old Church, now appeared to him lying on the ground; and he judged it severely as a mere passing expedient which might perhaps for some years prop up the ruined edifice, but which was simply based on an intentional misunderstanding, on a skilful lie, on politics and diplomacy. No, no, that the people should once again, as so many times before, be duped and gained over, caressed in order that it might be enthralled--this was repugnant to one's reason, and the whole system appeared degenerate, dangerous, temporary, calculated to end in the worst catastrophes. So this then was the finish, nothing remained erect and stable, the old world was about to disappear amidst the frightful sanguinary crisis whose approach was announced by such indisputable signs. And he, before that chaos near at hand, had no soul left him, having once more lost his faith in that decisive experiment which, he had felt beforehand, would either strengthen him or strike him down for ever. The thunderbolt had fallen, and now, O God, what should he do? To shake off his anguish he began to walk across the room. Aye, what should he do now that he was all doubt again, all dolorous negation, and that his cassock weighed more heavily than it had ever weighed upon his shoulders? He remembered having told Monsignor Nani that he would never submit, would never be able to resign himself and kill his hope in salvation by love, but would rather reply by a fresh book, in which he would say in what new soil the new religion would spring up. Yes, a flaming book against Rome, in which he would set down all he had seen, a book which would depict the real Rome, the Rome which knows neither charity nor love, and is dying in the pride of its purple! He had spoken of returning to Paris, leaving the Church and going to the point of schism. Well, his luggage now lay there packed, he was going off and he would write that book, he would be the great schismatic who was awaited! Did not everything foretell approaching schism amidst that great movement of men's minds, weary of old mummified dogmas and yet hungering for the divine? Even Leo XIII must be conscious of it, for his whole policy, his whole effort towards Christian unity, his assumed affection for the democracy had no other object than that of grouping the whole family around the papacy, and consolidating it so as to render the Pope invincible in the approaching struggle. But the times had come, Catholicism would soon find that it could grant no more political concessions without perishing, that at Rome it was reduced to the immobility of an ancient hieratic idol, and that only in the lands of propaganda, where it was fighting against other religions, could further evolution take place. It was, indeed, for this reason that Rome was condemned, the more so as the abolition of the temporal power, by accustoming men's minds to the idea of a purely spiritual papacy, seemed likely to conduce to the rise of some anti-pope, far away, whilst the successor of St. Peter was compelled to cling stubbornly to his Apostolic and Roman fiction. A bishop, a priest would arise--where, who could tell? Perhaps yonder in that free America, where there are priests whom the struggle for life has turned into convinced socialists, into ardent democrats, who are ready to go forward with the coming century. And whilst Rome remains unable to relinquish aught of her past, aught of her mysteries and dogmas, that priest will relinquish all of those things which fall from one in dust. Ah! to be that priest, to be that great reformer, that saviour of modern society, what a vast dream, what a part, akin to that of a Messiah summoned by the nations in distress. For a moment Pierre was transported as by a breeze of hope and triumph. If that great change did not come in France, in Paris, it would come elsewhere, yonder across the ocean, or farther yet, wherever there might be a sufficiently fruitful soil for the new seed to spring from it in overflowing harvests. A new religion! a new religion! even as he had cried on returning from Lourdes, a religion which in particular should not be an appetite for death, a religion which should at last realise here below that Kingdom of God referred to in the Gospel, and which should equitably divide terrestrial wealth, and with the law of labour ensure the rule of truth and justice. In the fever of this fresh dream Pierre already saw the pages of his new book flaring before him when his eyes fell on an object lying upon a chair, which at first surprised him. This also was a book, that work of Theophile Morin's which Orlando had commissioned him to hand to its author, and he felt annoyed with himself at having left it there, for he might have forgotten it altogether. Before putting it into his valise he retained it for a moment in his hand turning its pages over, his ideas changing as by a sudden mental revolution. The work was, however, a very modest one, one of those manuals for the bachelor's degree containing little beyond the first elements of the sciences; still all the sciences were represented in it, and it gave a fair summary of the present state of human knowledge. And it was indeed Science which thus burst upon Pierre's reverie with the energy of sovereign power. Not only was Catholicism swept away from his mind, but all his religious conceptions, every hypothesis of the divine tottered and fell. Only that little school book, nothing but the universal desire for knowledge, that education which ever extends and penetrates the whole people, and behold the mysteries became absurdities, the dogmas crumbled, and nothing of ancient faith was left. A nation nourished upon Science, no longer believing in mysteries and dogmas, in a compensatory system of reward and punishment, is a nation whose faith is for ever dead: and without faith Catholicism cannot be. Therein is the blade of the knife, the knife which falls and severs. If one century, if two centuries be needed, Science will take them. She alone is eternal. It is pure /naivete/ to say that reason is not contrary to faith. The truth is, that now already in order to save mere fragments of the sacred writings, it has been necessary to accommodate them to the new certainties, by taking refuge in the assertion that they are simply symbolical! And what an extraordinary attitude is that of the Catholic Church, expressly forbidding all those who may discover a truth contrary to the sacred writings to pronounce upon it in definitive fashion, and ordering them to await events in the conviction that this truth will some day be proved an error! Only the Pope, says the Church, is infallible; Science is fallible, her constant groping is exploited against her, and divines remain on the watch striving to make it appear that her discoveries of to-day are in contradiction with her discoveries of yesterday. What do her sacrilegious assertions, what do her certainties rending dogma asunder, matter to a Catholic since it is certain that at the end of time, she, Science, will again join Faith, and become the latter's very humble slave! Voluntary blindness and impudent denial of things as evident as the sunlight, can no further go. But all the same the insignificant little book, the manual of truth travels on continuing its work, destroying error and building up the new world, even as the infinitesimal agents of life built up our present continents. In the sudden great enlightenment which had come on him Pierre at last felt himself upon firm ground. Has Science ever retreated? It is Catholicism which has always retreated before her, and will always be forced to retreat. Never does Science stop, step by step she wrests truth from error, and to say that she is bankrupt because she cannot explain the world in one word and at one effort, is pure and simple nonsense. If she leaves, and no doubt will always leave a smaller and smaller domain to mystery, and if supposition may always strive to explain that mystery, it is none the less certain that she ruins, and with each successive hour will add to the ruin of the ancient hypotheses, those which crumble away before the acquired truths. And Catholicism is in the position of those ancient hypotheses, and will be in it yet more thoroughly to-morrow. Like all religions it is, at the bottom, but an explanation of the world, a superior social and political code, intended to bring about the greatest possible sum of peace and happiness on earth. This code which embraces the universality of things thenceforth becomes human, and mortal like everything that is human. One cannot put it on one side and say that it exists on one side by itself, whilst Science does the same on the other. Science is total and has already shown Catholicism that such is the case, and will show it again and again by compelling it to repair the breaches incessantly effected in its ramparts till the day of victory shall come with the final assault of resplendent truth. Frankly, it makes one laugh to hear people assign a /role/ to Science, forbid her to enter such and such a domain, predict to her that she shall go no further, and declare that at this end of the century she is already so weary that she abdicates! Oh! you little men of shallow or distorted brains, you politicians planning expedients, you dogmatics at bay, you authoritarians so obstinately clinging to the ancient dreams, Science will pass on, and sweep you all away like withered leaves! Pierre continued glancing through the humble little book, listening to all it told him of sovereign Science. She cannot become bankrupt, for she does not promise the absolute, she is simply the progressive conquest of truth. Never has she pretended that she could give the whole truth at one effort, that sort of edifice being precisely the work of metaphysics, of revelation, of faith. The /role/ of Science, on the contrary, is only to destroy error as she gradually advances and increases enlightenment. And thus, far from becoming bankrupt, in her march which nothing stops, she remains the only possible truth for well-balanced and healthy minds. As for those whom she does not satisfy, who crave for immediate and universal knowledge, they have the resource of seeking refuge in no matter what religious hypothesis, provided, if they wish to appear in the right, that they build their fancy upon acquired certainties. Everything which is raised on proven error falls. However, although religious feeling persists among mankind, although the need of religion may be eternal, it by no means follows that Catholicism is eternal, for it is, after all, but one form of religion, which other forms preceded and which others will follow. Religions may disappear, but religious feeling will create new ones even with the help of Science. Pierre thought of that alleged repulse of Science by the present-day awakening of mysticism, the causes of which he had indicated in his book: the discredit into which the idea of liberty has fallen among the people, duped in the last social reorganisation, and the uneasiness of the /elite/, in despair at the void in which their liberated minds and enlarged intelligences have left them. It is the anguish of the Unknown springing up again; but it is also only a natural and momentary reaction after so much labour, on finding that Science does not yet calm our thirst for justice, our desire for security, or our ancient idea of an eternal after-life of enjoyment. In order, however, that Catholicism might be born anew, as some seem to think it will be, the social soil would have to change, and it cannot change; it no longer possesses the sap needful for the renewal of a decaying formula which schools and laboratories destroy more and more each day. The ground is other than it once was, a different oak must spring from it. May Science therefore have her religion, for such a religion will soon be the only one possible for the coming democracies, for the nations, whose knowledge ever increases whilst their Catholic faith is already nought but dust. And all at once, by way of conclusion, Pierre bethought himself of the idiocy of the Congregation of the Index. It had condemned his book, and would surely condemn the other one that he had thought of, should he ever write it. A fine piece of work truly! To fall tooth and nail on the poor books of an enthusiastic dreamer, in which chimera contended with chimera! Yet the Congregation was so foolish as not to interdict that little book which he held in his hands, that humble book which alone was to be feared, which was the ever triumphant enemy that would surely overthrow the Church. Modest it was in its cheap "get up" as a school manual, but that did not matter: danger began with the very alphabet, increased as knowledge was acquired, and burst forth with those /resumes/ of the physical, chemical, and natural sciences which bring the very Creation, as described by Holy Writ, into question. However, the Index dared not attempt to suppress those humble volumes, those terrible soldiers of truth, those destroyers of faith. What was the use, then, of all the money which Leo XIII drew from his hidden treasure of the Peter's Pence to subvention Catholic schools, with the thought of forming the believing generations which the papacy needed to enable it to conquer? What was the use of that precious money if it was only to serve for the purchase of similar insignificant yet formidable volumes, which could never be sufficiently "cooked" and expurgated, but would always contain too much Science, that growing Science which one day would blow up both Vatican and St. Peter's? Ah! that idiotic and impotent Index, what wretchedness and what derision! Then, when Pierre had placed Theophile Morin's book in his valise, he once more returned to the window, and while leaning out, beheld an extraordinary vision. Under the cloudy, coppery sky, in the mild and mournful night, patches of wavy mist had risen, hiding many of the house-roofs with trailing shreds which looked like shrouds. Entire edifices had disappeared, and he imagined that the times were at last accomplished, and that truth had at last destroyed St. Peter's dome. In a hundred or a thousand years, it would be like that, fallen, obliterated from the black sky. One day, already, he had felt it tottering and cracking beneath him, and had foreseen that this temple of Catholicism would fall even as Jove's temple had fallen on the Capitol. And it was over now, the dome had strewn the ground with fragments, and all that remained standing, in addition to a portion of the apse, where five columns of the central nave, still upholding a shred of entablature, and four cyclopean buttress-piers on which the dome had rested--piers which still arose, isolated and superb, looking indestructible among all the surrounding downfall. But a denser mist flowed past, another thousand years no doubt went by, and then nothing whatever remained. The apse, the last pillars, the giant piers themselves were felled! The wind had swept away their dust, and it would have been necessary to search the soil beneath the brambles and the nettles to find a few fragments of broken statues, marbles with mutilated inscriptions, on the sense of which learned men were unable to agree. And, as formerly, on the Capitol, among the buried remnants of Jupiter's temple, goats strayed and climbed through the solitude, browsing upon the bushes, amidst the deep silence of the oppressive summer sunlight, which only the buzzing flies disturbed. Then, only then, did Pierre feel the supreme collapse within him. It was really all over, Science was victorious, nothing of the old world remained. What use would it be then to become the great schismatic, the reformer who was awaited? Would it not simply mean the building up of a new dream? Only the eternal struggle of Science against the Unknown, the searching, pursuing inquiry which incessantly moderated man's thirst for the divine, now seemed to him of import, leaving him waiting to know if she would ever triumph so completely as to suffice mankind, by satisfying all its wants. And in the disaster which had overcome his apostolic enthusiasm, in presence of all those ruins, having lost his faith, and even his hope of utilising old Catholicism for social and moral salvation, there only remained reason that held him up. She had at one moment given way. If he had dreamt that book, and had just passed through that terrible crisis, it was because sentiment had once again overcome reason within him. It was his mother, so to say, who had wept in his heart, who had filled him with an irresistible desire to relieve the wretched and prevent the massacres which seemed near at hand; and his passion for charity had thus swept aside the scruples of his intelligence. But it was his father's voice that he now heard, lofty and bitter reason which, though it had fled, at present came back in all sovereignty. As he had done already after Lourdes, he protested against the glorification of the absurd and the downfall of common sense. Reason alone enabled him to walk erect and firm among the remnants of the old beliefs, even amidst the obscurities and failures of Science. Ah! Reason, it was through her alone that he suffered, through her alone that he could content himself, and he swore that he would now always seek to satisfy her, even if in doing so he should lose his happiness. At that moment it would have been vain for him to ask what he ought to do. Everything remained in suspense, the world stretched before him still littered with the ruins of the past, of which, to-morrow, it would perhaps be rid. Yonder, in that dolorous faubourg of Paris, he would find good Abbe Rose, who but a few days previously had written begging him to return and tend, love, and save his poor, since Rome, so dazzling from afar, was dead to charity. And around the good and peaceful old priest he would find the ever growing flock of wretched ones; the little fledglings who had fallen from their nests, and whom he found pale with hunger and shivering with cold; the households of abominable misery in which the father drank and the mother became a prostitute, while the sons and the daughters sank into vice and crime; the dwellings, too, through which famine swept, where all was filth and shameful promiscuity, where there was neither furniture nor linen, nothing but purely animal life. And then there would also come the cold blasts of winter, the disasters of slack times, the hurricanes of consumption carrying off the weak, whilst the strong clenched their fists and dreamt of vengeance. One evening, too, perhaps, he might again enter some room of horror and find that another mother had killed herself and her five little ones, her last-born in her arms clinging to her drained breast, and the others scattered over the bare tiles, at last contented, feeling hunger no more, now that they were dead! But no, no, such awful things were no longer possible: such black misery conducting to suicide in the heart of that great city of Paris, which is brimful of wealth, intoxicated with enjoyment, and flings millions out of window for mere pleasure! The very foundations of the social edifice were rotten; all would soon collapse amidst mire and blood. Never before had Pierre so acutely realised the derisive futility of Charity. And all at once he became conscious that the long-awaited word, the word which was at last springing from the great silent multitude, the crushed and gagged people was /Justice/! Aye, Justice not Charity! Charity had only served to perpetuate misery, Justice perhaps would cure it. It was for Justice that the wretched hungered; an act of Justice alone could sweep away the olden world so that the new one might be reared. After all, the great silent multitude would belong neither to Vatican nor to Quirinal, neither to pope nor to king. If it had covertly growled through the ages in its long, sometimes mysterious, and sometimes open contest; if it had struggled betwixt pontiff and emperor who each had wished to retain it for himself alone, it had only done so in order that it might free itself, proclaim its resolve to belong to none on the day when it should cry Justice! Would to-morrow then at last prove that day of Justice and Truth? For his part, Pierre amidst his anguish--having on one hand that need of the divine which tortures man, and on the other sovereignty of reason which enables man to remain erect--was only sure of one thing, that he would keep his vows, continue a priest, watching over the belief of others though he could not himself believe, and would thus chastely and honestly follow his profession, amidst haughty sadness at having been unable to renounce his intelligence in the same way as he had renounced his flesh and his dream of saving the nations. And again, as after Lourdes, he would wait. So deeply was he plunged in reflection at that window, face to face with the mist which seemed to be destroying the dark edifices of Rome, that he did not hear himself called. At last, however, he felt a tap on the shoulder: "Monsieur l'Abbe!" And then as he turned he saw Victorine, who said to him: "It is half-past nine; the cab is there. Giacomo has already taken your luggage down. You must come away, Monsieur l'Abbe." Then seeing him blink, still dazed as it were, she smiled and added: "You were bidding Rome goodbye. What a frightful sky there is." "Yes, frightful," was his reply. Then they descended the stairs. He had handed her a hundred-franc note to be shared between herself and the other servants. And she apologised for going down before him with the lamp, explaining that the old palace was so dark that evening one could scarcely see. Ah! that departure, that last descent through the black and empty mansion, it quite upset Pierre's heart. He gave his room that glance of farewell which always saddened him, even when he was leaving a spot where he had suffered. Then, on passing Don Vigilio's chamber, whence there only came a quivering silence, he pictured the secretary with his head buried in his pillows, holding his breath for fear lest he should speak and attract vengeance. But it was in particular on the second and first floor landings, on passing the closed doors of Donna Serafina and the Cardinal, that Pierre quivered with apprehension at hearing nothing but the silence of the grave. And as he followed Victorine, who, lamp in hand, was still descending, he thought of the brother and sister who were left alone in the ruined palace, last relics of a world which had half passed away. All hope of life had departed with Benedetta and Dario, no resurrection could come from that old maid and that priest who was bound to chastity. Ah! those interminable and lugubrious passages, that frigid and gigantic staircase which seemed to descend into nihility, those huge halls with cracking walls where all was wretchedness and abandonment! And that inner court, looking like a cemetery with its weeds and its damp porticus, where remnants of Apollos and Venuses were rotting! And the little deserted garden, fragrant with ripe oranges, whither nobody now would ever stray, where none would ever meet that adorable Contessina under the laurels near the sarcophagus! All was now annihilated in abominable mourning, in a death-like silence, amidst which the two last Boccaneras must wait, in savage grandeur, till their palace should fall about their heads. Pierre could only just detect a faint sound, the gnawing of a mouse perhaps, unless it were caused by Abbe Paparelli attacking the walls of some out-of-the-way rooms, preying on the old edifice down below, so as to hasten its fall. The cab stood at the door, already laden with the luggage, the box beside the driver, the valise on the seat; and the priest at once got in. "Oh! You have plenty of time," said Victorine, who had remained on the foot-pavement. "Nothing has been forgotten. I'm glad to see you go off comfortably." And indeed at that last moment Pierre was comforted by the presence of that worthy woman, his compatriot, who had greeted him on his arrival and now attended his departure. "I won't say 'till we meet again,' Monsieur l'Abbe," she exclaimed, "for I don't fancy that you'll soon be back in this horrid city. Good-bye, Monsieur l'Abbe." "Good-bye, Victorine, and thank you with all my heart." The cab was already going off at a fast trot, turning into the narrow sinuous street which leads to the Corso Vittoria Emanuele. It was not raining and so the hood had not been raised, but although the damp atmosphere was comparatively mild, Pierre at once felt a chill. However, he was unwilling to stop the driver, a silent fellow whose only desire seemingly was to get rid of his fare as soon as possible. When the cab came out into the Corso Vittoria Emanuele, the young man was astonished to find it already quite deserted, the houses shut, the footways bare, and the electric lamps burning all alone in melancholy solitude. In truth, however, the temperature was far from warm and the fog seemed to be increasing, hiding the house-fronts more and more. When Pierre passed the Cancelleria, that stern colossal pile seemed to him to be receding, fading away; and farther on, upon the right, at the end of the Via di Ara Coeli, starred by a few smoky gas lamps, the Capitol had quite vanished in the gloom. Then the thoroughfare narrowed, and the cab went on between the dark heavy masses of the Gesu and the Altieri palace; and there in that contracted passage, where even on fine sunny days one found all the dampness of old times, the quivering priest yielded to a fresh train of thought. It was an idea which had sometimes made him feel anxious, the idea that mankind, starting from over yonder in Asia, had always marched onward with the sun. An east wind had always carried the human seed for future harvest towards the west. And for a long while now the cradle of humanity had been stricken with destruction and death, as if indeed the nations could only advance by stages, leaving exhausted soil, ruined cities, and degenerate populations behind, as they marched from orient to occident, towards their unknown goal. Nineveh and Babylon on the banks of the Euphrates, Thebes and Memphis on the banks of the Nile, had been reduced to dust, sinking from old age and weariness into a deadly numbness beyond possibility of awakening. Then decrepitude had spread to the shores of the great Mediterranean lake, burying both Tyre and Sidon with dust, and afterwards striking Carthage with senility whilst it yet seemed in full splendour. In this wise as mankind marched on, carried by the hidden forces of civilisation from east to west, it marked each day's journey with ruins; and how frightful was the sterility nowadays displayed by the cradle of History, that Asia and that Egypt, which had once more lapsed into childhood, immobilised in ignorance and degeneracy amidst the ruins of ancient cities that once had been queens of the world! It was thus Pierre reflected as the cab rolled on. Still he was not unconscious of his surroundings. As he passed the Palazzo di Venezia it seemed to him to be crumbling beneath some assault of the invisible, for the mist had already swept away its battlements, and the lofty, bare, fearsome walls looked as if they were staggering from the onslaught of the growing darkness. And after passing the deep gap of the Corso, which was also deserted amidst the pallid radiance of its electric lights, the Palazzo Torlonia appeared on the right-hand, with one wing ripped open by the picks of demolishers, whilst on the left, farther up, the Palazzo Colonna showed its long, mournful facade and closed windows, as if, now that it was deserted by its masters and void of its ancient pomp, it awaited the demolishers in its turn. Then, as the cab at a slower pace began to climb the ascent of the Via Nazionale, Pierre's reverie continued. Was not Rome also stricken, had not the hour come for her to disappear amidst that destruction which the nations on the march invariably left behind them? Greece, Athens, and Sparta slumbered beneath their glorious memories, and were of no account in the world of to-day. Moreover, the growing paralysis had already invaded the lower portion of the Italic peninsula; and after Naples certainly came the turn of Rome. She was on the very margin of the death spot which ever extends over the old continent, that margin where agony begins, where the impoverished soil will no longer nourish and support cities, where men themselves seem stricken with old age as soon as they are born. For two centuries Rome had been declining, withdrawing little by little from modern life, having neither manufactures nor trade, and being incapable even of science, literature, or art. And in Pierre's thoughts it was no longer St. Peter's only that fell, but all Rome--basilicas, palaces, and entire districts--which collapsed amidst a supreme rending, and covered the seven hills with a chaos of ruins. Like Nineveh and Babylon, and like Thebes and Memphis, Rome became but a plain, bossy with remnants, amidst which one vainly sought to identify the sites of ancient edifices, whilst its sole denizens were coiling serpents and bands of rats. The cab turned, and on the right, in a huge gap of darkness Pierre recognised Trajan's column, but it was no longer gilded by the sun as when he had first seen it; it now rose up blackly like the dead trunk of a giant tree whose branches have fallen from old age. And farther on, when he raised his eyes while crossing the little triangular piazza, and perceived a real tree against the leaden sky, that parasol pine of the Villa Aldobrandini which rises there like a symbol of Rome's grace and pride, it seemed to him but a smear, a little cloud of soot ascending from the downfall of the whole city. With the anxious, fraternal turn of his feelings, fear was coming over him as he reached the end of his tragic dream. When the numbness which spreads across the aged world should have passed Rome, when Lombardy should have yielded to it, and Genoa, Turin, and Milan should have fallen asleep as Venice has fallen already, then would come the turn of France. The Alps would be crossed, Marseilles, like Tyre and Sidon, would see its port choked up by sand, Lyons would sink into desolation and slumber, and at last Paris, invaded by the invincible torpor, and transformed into a sterile waste of stones bristling with nettles, would join Rome and Nineveh and Babylon in death, whilst the nations continued their march from orient to occident following the sun. A great cry sped through the gloom, the death cry of the Latin races! History, which seemed to have been born in the basin of the Mediterranean, was being transported elsewhere, and the ocean had now become the centre of the world. How many hours of the human day had gone by? Had mankind, starting from its cradle over yonder at daybreak, strewing its road with ruins from stage to stage, now accomplished one-half of its day and reached the dazzling hour of noon? If so, then the other half of the day allotted to it was beginning, the new world was following the old one, the new world of those American cities where democracy was forming and the religion of to-morrow was sprouting, those sovereign queens of the coming century, with yonder, across another ocean, on the other side of the globe, that motionless Far East, mysterious China and Japan, and all the threatening swarm of the yellow races. However, while the cab climbed higher and higher up the Via Nazionale, Pierre felt his nightmare dissipating. There was here a lighter atmosphere, and he came back into a renewal of hope and courage. Yet the Banca d'Italia, with its brand-new ugliness, its chalky hugeness, looked to him like a phantom in a shroud; whilst above a dim expanse of gardens the Quirinal formed but a black streak barring the heavens. However, the street ever ascended and broadened, and on the summit of the Viminal, on the Piazza delle Terme, when he passed the ruins of Diocletian's baths, he could breathe as his lungs listed. No, no, the human day could not finish, it was eternal, and the stages of civilisation would follow and follow without end! What mattered that eastern wind which carried the nations towards the west, as if borne on by the power of the sun! If necessary, they would return across the other side of the globe, they would again and again make the circuit of the earth, until the day should come when they could establish themselves in peace, truth, and justice. After the next civilisation on the shores of the Atlantic, which would become the world's centre, skirted by queenly cities, there would spring up yet another civilisation, having the Pacific for its centre, with seaport capitals that could not be yet foreseen, whose germs yet slumbered on unknown shores. And in like way there would be still other civilisations and still others! And at that last moment, the inspiriting thought came to Pierre that the great movement of the nations was the instinct, the need which impelled them to return to unity. Originating in one sole family, afterwards parted and dispersed in tribes, thrown into collision by fratricidal hatred, their tendency was none the less to become one sole family again. The provinces united in nations, the nations would unite in races, and the races would end by uniting in one immortal mankind--mankind at last without frontiers, or possibility of wars, mankind living by just labour amidst an universal commonwealth. Was not this indeed the evolution, the object of the labour progressing everywhere, the finish reserved to History? Might Italy then become a strong and healthy nation, might concord be established between her and France, and might that fraternity of the Latin races become the beginning of universal fraternity! Ah! that one fatherland, the whole earth pacified and happy, in how many centuries would that come--and what a dream! Then, on reaching the station the scramble prevented Pierre from thinking any further. He had to take his ticket and register his luggage, and afterwards he at once climbed into the train. At dawn on the next day but one, he would be back in Paris. 
5227	----	SANT' ILARIO BY F. MARION CRAWFORD AUTHOR OF "MR. ISAACS," "DR. CLAUDIUS," "ZOROASTER," "A TALE OF A LONELY PARISH," ETC. TO My Wife THIS SECOND PART OF "SARACINESCA" IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED CHAPTER I. Two years of service in the Zouaves had wrought a change in Anastase Gouache, the painter. He was still a light man, nervously built, with small hands and feet, and a delicate face; but constant exposure to the weather had browned his skin, and a life of unceasing activity had strengthened his sinews and hardened his compact frame. The clustering black curls were closely cropped, too, while the delicate dark moustache had slightly thickened. He had grown to be a very soldierly young fellow, straight and alert, quick of hand and eye, inured to that perpetual readiness which is the first characteristic of the good soldier, whether in peace or war. The dreamy look that was so often in his face in the days when he sat upon a high stool painting the portrait of Donna Tullia Mayer, had given place to an expression of wide-awake curiosity in the world's doings. Anastase was an artist by nature and no amount of military service could crush the chief aspirations of his intelligence. He had not abandoned work since he had joined the Zouaves, for his hours of leisure from duty were passed in his studio. But the change in his outward appearance was connected with a similar development in his character. He himself sometimes wondered how he could have ever taken any interest in the half-hearted political fumbling which Donna Tullia, Ugo Del Ferice, and others of their set used to dignify by the name of conspiracy. It seemed to him that his ideas must at that time have been deplorably confused and lamentably unsettled. He sometimes took out the old sketch of Madame Mayer's portrait, and setting it upon his easel, tried to realise and bring back those times when she had sat for him. He could recall Del Ferice's mock heroics, Donna Tullia's ill-expressed invectives, and his own half-sarcastic sympathy in the liberal movement; but the young fellow in an old velveteen jacket who used to talk glibly about the guillotine, about stringing-up the clericals to street-lamps and turning the churches into popular theatres, was surely not the energetic, sunburnt Zouave who had been hunting down brigands in the Samnite hills last summer, who spent three-fourths of his time among soldiers like himself, and who had pledged his honour to follow the gallant Charette and defend the Pope as long as he could carry a musket. There is a sharp dividing line between youth and manhood. Sometimes we cross it early, and sometimes late, but we do not know that we are passing from one life to another as we step across the boundary. The world seems to us the same for a while, as we knew it yesterday and shall know it to-morrow. Suddenly, we look back and start with astonishment when we see the past, which we thought so near, already vanishing in the distance, shapeless, confused, and estranged from our present selves. Then, we know that we are men, and acknowledge, with something like a sigh, that we have put away childish things. When Gouache put on the gray jacket, the red sash and the yellow gaiters, he became a man and speedily forgot Donna Tullia and her errors, and for some time afterwards he did not care to recall them. When he tried to remember the scenes at the studio in the Via San Basilio, they seemed very far away. One thing alone constantly reminded him disagreeably of the past, and that was his unfortunate failure to catch Del Ferice when the latter had escaped from Rome in the disguise of a mendicant friar. Anastase had never been able to understand how he had missed the fugitive. It had soon become known that Del Ferice had escaped by the very pass which Gouache was patrolling, and the young Zouave had felt the bitterest mortification in losing so valuable and so easy a prey. He often thought of it and promised himself that he would visit his anger on Del Ferice if he ever got a chance; but Del Ferice was out of reach of his vengeance, and Donna Tullia Mayer had not returned to Rome since the previous year. It had been rumoured of late that she had at last fulfilled the engagement contracted some time earlier, and had consented to be called the Contessa Del Ferice; this piece of news, however, was not yet fully confirmed. Gouache had heard the gossip, and had immediately made a lively sketch on the back of a half-finished picture, representing Donna Tullia, in her bridal dress, leaning upon the arm of Del Ferice, who was arrayed in a capuchin's cowl, and underneath, with his brush, he scrawled a legend, "Finis coronat opus." It was nearly six o'clock in the afternoon of the 23d of September. The day had been rainy, but the sky had cleared an hour before sunset, and there was a sweet damp freshness in the air, very grateful after the long weeks of late summer. Anastase Gouache had been on duty at the Serristori barracks in the Borgo Santo Spirito and walked briskly up to the bridge of Sant' Angelo. There was not much movement in the streets, and the carriages were few. A couple of officers were lounging at the gate of the castle and returned Gouache's salute as he passed. In the middle of the bridge he stopped and looked westward, down the short reach of the river which caught a lurid reflection of the sunset on its eddying yellow surface. He mused a moment, thinking more of the details of his duty at the barracks than of the scene before him. Then he thought of the first time he had crossed the bridge in his Zouave uniform, and a faint smile flickered on his brown features. It happened almost every day that he stopped at the same place, and as particular spots often become associated with ideas that seem to belong to them, the same thought almost always recurred to his mind as he stood there. Then followed the same daily wondering as to how all these things were to end; whether he should for years to come wear the red sash and the yellow gaiters, a corporal of Zouaves, and whether for years he should ask himself every day the same question. Presently, as the light faded from the houses of the Borgo, he turned away with an imperceptible shrug of the shoulders and continued his walk upon the narrow pavement at the side of the bridge. As he descended the step at the end, to the level of the square, a small bright object in a crevice of the stones attracted his attention. He stooped and picked it up. It was a little gold pin, some two inches long, the head beaten out and twisted into the shape of the letter C. Gouache examined it attentively, and saw that it must have been long used, for it was slightly bent in more than one place as though it had often been thrust through some thick material. It told no other tale of its possessor, however, and the young man slipped it into his pocket and went on his way, idly wondering to whom the thing belonged. He reflected that if he had been bent on any important matter he would probably have considered the finding of a bit of gold as a favourable omen; but he was merely returning to his lodging as usual, and had no engagement for the evening. Indeed, he expected no event in his life at that time, and following the train of his meditation he smiled a little when he thought that he was not even in love. For a Frenchman, nearly thirty years of age, the position was an unusual one enough. In Gouache's case it was especially remarkable. Women liked him, he liked them, and he was constantly in the society of some of the most beautiful in the world. Nevertheless, he turned from one to another and found a like pleasure in the conversation of them all. What delighted him in the one was not what charmed him most in the next, but the equilibrium of satisfaction was well maintained between the dark and the fair, the silent beauty and the pretty woman of intelligence. There was indeed one whom he thought more noble in heart and grander in symmetry of form and feature, and stronger in mind than the rest; but she was immeasurably removed from the sphere of his possible devotion by her devoted love of her husband, and he admired her from a distance, even while speaking with her. As he passed the Apollo theatre and ascended the Via di Tordinona the lights were beginning to twinkle in the low doorways, and the gas-lamps, then a very recent innovation in Rome, shone out one by one in the distance. The street is narrow, and was full of traffic, even in the evening. Pedestrians elbowed their way along in the dusk, every now and then flattening themselves against the dingy walls to let a cab or a carriage rush past them, not without real risk of accident. Before the deep, arched gateway of the Orso, one of the most ancient inns in the world, the empty wine-carts were getting ready for the return journey by night across the Campagna, the great bunches of little bells jingling loudly in the dark as the carters buckled the harness on their horses' backs. Just as Gouache reached this place, the darkest and most crowded through which he had to pass, a tremendous clatter and rattle from the Via dell' Orso made the hurrying people draw back to the shelter of the doorsteps and arches. It was clear that a runaway horse was not far off. One of the carters, the back of whose waggon was half-way across the opening of the street, made desperate efforts to make his beast advance and clear the way; but the frightened animal only backed farther up. A moment later the runaway charged down past the tail of the lumbering vehicle. The horse himself just cleared the projecting timbers of the cart, but the cab he was furiously dragging caught upon them while going at full speed and was shivered to pieces, throwing the horse heavily upon the stones, so that he slid along several feet on his head and knees with the fragments of the broken shafts and the wreck of the harness about him. The first man to spring from the crowd and seize the beast's head was Anastase. He did not see that the same instant a large private carriage, drawn by a pair of powerful horses, emerged quickly from the Vicolo dei Soldati, the third of the streets which meet the Via di Tordinona at the Orso. The driver, who owing to the darkness had not seen the disaster which had just taken place, did his best to stop in time; but before the heavy equipage could be brought to a stand Anastase had been thrown to the ground, between the hoofs of the struggling cab-horse and the feet of the startled pair of bays. The crowd closed in as near as was safe, while the confusion and the shouts of the people and the carters increased every minute. The coachman of the private carriage threw the reins to the footman and sprang down to go to the horses' heads. "You have run over a Zouave!" some one shouted from the crowd. "Meno male! Thank goodness it was not one of us!" exclaimed another voice. "Where is he? Get him out, some of you!" cried the coachman as he seized the reins close to the bit. By this time a couple of stout gendarmes and two or three soldiers of the Antibes legion had made their way to the front and were dragging away the fallen cab-horse. A tall, thin, elderly gentleman, of a somewhat sour countenance, descended from the carriage and stooped over the injured soldier. "It is only a Zouave, Excellency," said the coachman, with a sort of sigh of relief. The tall gentleman lifted Gouache's head a little so that the light from the carriage-lamp fell upon his face. He was quite insensible, and there was blood upon his pale forehead and white cheeks. One of the gendarmes came forward. "We will take care of him, Signore," he said, touching his three-cornered hat. "But I must beg to know your revered name," he added, in the stock Italian phrase. "Capira--I am very sorry--but they say your horses--" "Put him into my carriage," answered the elderly gentleman shortly. "I am the Principe Montevarchi." "But, Excellency--the Signorina---" protested the coachman. The prince paid no attention to the objection and helped the gendarme to deposit Anastase in the interior of the vehicle. Then he gave the man a silver scudo. "Send some one to the Serristori barracks to say that a Zouave has been hurt and is at my house," he said. Therewith he entered the carriage and ordered the coachman to drive home. "In heaven's name, what has happened, papa?" asked a young voice in the darkness, tremulous with excitement. "My dear child, there has been an accident in the street, and this young man has been wounded, or killed--" "Killed! A dead man in the carriage!" cried the young girl in some terror, and shrinking away into the corner. "You should really control your nerves, Faustina," replied her father in austere tones. "If the young man is dead, it is the will of Heaven. If he is alive we shall soon find it out. Meanwhile I must beg you to be calm--to be calm, do you understand?" Donna Faustina Montevarchi made no answer to this parental injunction, but withdrew as far as she could into the corner of the back seat, while her father supported the inanimate body of the Zouave as the carriage swung over the uneven pavement. In a few minutes they rolled beneath a deep arch and stopped at the foot of a broad marble staircase. "Bring him upstairs carefully, and send for a surgeon," said the prince to the men who came forward. Then he offered his arm to his daughter to ascend the steps, as though nothing had happened, and without bestowing another look on the injured soldier. Donna Faustina was just eighteen years old, and had only quitted the convent of the Sacro Cuore a month earlier. It might have been said that she was too young to be beautiful, for she evidently belonged to that class of women who do not attain their full development until a later period. Her figure was almost too slender, her face almost too delicate and ethereal. There was about her a girlish look, an atmosphere of half-saintly maidenhood, which was not so much the expression of her real nature as the effect produced by her being at once very thin and very fresh. There was indeed nothing particularly angelic about her warm brown eyes, shaded by unusually long black lashes; and little wayward locks of chestnut hair, curling from beneath the small round hat of the period, just before the small pink ears, softened as with a breath of worldliness the grave outlines of the serious face. A keen student of women might have seen that the dim religious halo of convent life which still clung to the young girl would soon fade and give way to the brilliancy of the woman of the world. She was not tall, though of fully average height, and although the dress of that time was ill-adapted to show to advantage either the figure or the movements, it was evident, as she stepped lightly from the carriage, that she had a full share of ease and grace. She possessed that unconscious certainty in motion which proceeds naturally from the perfect proportion of all the parts, and which exercises a far greater influence over men than a faultless profile or a dazzling skin. Instead of taking her father's arm, Donna Faustina turned and looked at the face of the wounded Zouave, whom three men had carefully taken from the carriage and were preparing to carry upstairs. Poor Gouache was hardly recognisable for the smart soldier who had crossed the bridge of Sant' Angelo half an hour earlier. His uniform was all stained with mud, there was blood upon his pale face, and his limbs hung down, powerless and limp. But as the young girl looked at him, consciousness returned, and with it came the sense of acute suffering. He opened his eyes suddenly, as men often do when they revive after being stunned, and a short groan escaped from his lips. Then, as he realised that he was in the presence of a lady, he made an effort as though to release himself from the hands of those who carried him, and to stand upon his feet. "Pardon me, Madame," he began to say, but Faustina checked him by a gesture. Meanwhile old Montevarchi had carefully scrutinised the young man's face, and had recognised him, for they had often met in society. "Monsieur Gouache!" he exclaimed in surprise. At the same time he made the men move on with their burden. "You know him, papa?" whispered Donna Faustina as they followed together. "He is a gentleman? I was right?" "Of course, of course," answered her father. "But really, Faustina, had you nothing better to do than to go and look into his face? Imagine, if he had known you! Dear me! If you begin like this, as soon as you are out of the convent--" Montevarchi left the rest of the sentence to his daughter's imagination, merely turning up his eyes a little as though deprecating the just vengeance of heaven upon his daughter's misconduct. "Really, papa--" protested Faustina. "Yes--really, my daughter--I am much surprised," returned her incensed parent, still speaking in an undertone lest the injured man should overhear what was said. They reached the head of the stairs and the men carried Gouache rapidly away; not so quickly, however, as to prevent Faustina from getting another glimpse of his face. His eyes were open and met hers with an expression of mingled interest and gratitude which she did not forget. Then he was carried away and she did not see him again. The Montevarchi household was conducted upon the patriarchal principle, once general in Rome, and not quite abandoned even now, twenty years later than the date of Gouache's accident. The palace was a huge square building facing upon two streets, in front and behind, and opening inwards upon two courtyards. Upon the lower floor were stables, coach-houses, kitchens, and offices innumerable. Above these there was built a half story, called a mezzanino--in French, entresol, containing the quarters of the unmarried sons of the house, of the household chaplain, and of two or three tutors employed in the education of the Montevarchi grandchildren. Next above, came the "piano nobile," or state apartments, comprising the rooms of the prince and princess, the dining-room, and a vast suite of reception-rooms, each of which opened into the next in such a manner that only the last was not necessarily a passage. In the huge hall was the dais and canopy with the family arms embroidered in colours once gaudy but now agreeably faded to a softer tone. Above this floor was another, occupied by the married sons, their wives and children; and high over all, above the cornice of the palace, were the endless servants' quarters and the roomy garrets. At a rough estimate the establishment comprised over a hundred persons, all living under the absolute and despotic authority of the head of the house, Don Lotario Montevarchi, Principe Montevarchi, and sole possessor of forty or fifty other titles. From his will and upon his pleasure depended every act of every member of his household, from his eldest son and heir, the Duca di Bellegra, to that of Pietro Paolo, the under-cook's scullion's boy. There were three sons and four daughters. Two of the sons were married, to wit, Don Ascanio, to whom his father had given his second title, and Don Onorato, who was allowed to call himself Principe di Cantalupo, but who would have no legal claim to that distinction after his father's death. Last of the three came Don Carlo, a young fellow of twenty years, but not yet emancipated from the supervision of his tutor. Of the daughters, the two eldest, Bianca and Laura, were married and no longer lived in Rome, the one having been matched with a Neapolitan and the other with a Florentine. There remained still at home, therefore, the third, Donna Flavia, and the youngest of all the family, Donna Faustina. Though Flavia was not yet two and twenty years of age, her father and mother were already beginning to despair of marrying her, and dropped frequent hints about the advisability of making her enter religion, as they called it; that is to say, they thought she had better take the veil and retire from the world. The old princess Montevarchi was English by birth and education, but thirty-three years of life in Rome had almost obliterated all traces of her nationality. That all-pervading influence, which so soon makes Romans of foreigners who marry into Roman families, had done its work effectually. The Roman nobility, by intermarriage with the principal families of the rest of Europe, has lost many Italian characteristics; but its members are more essentially Romans than the full-blooded Italians of the other classes who dwell side by side with the aristocracy in Rome. When Lady Gwendoline Fontenoy married Don Lotario Montevarchi in the year 1834, she, no doubt, believed that her children would grow up as English as she herself, and that her husband's house would not differ materially from an establishment of the same kind in England. She laughed merrily at the provisions of the marriage contract, which even went so far as to stipulate that she was to have at least two dishes of meat at dinner, and an equivalent on fast-days, a drive every day--the traditional trottata--two new gowns every year, and a woman to wait upon her. After these and similar provisions had been agreed upon, her dowry, which was a large one for those days, was handed over to the keeping of her father-in-law and she was duly married to Don Lotario, who at once assumed the title of Duca di Bellegra. The wedding journey consisted of a fortnight's retirement in the Villa Montevarchi at Frascati, and at the end of that time the young couple were installed under the paternal roof in Rome. Before she had been in her new abode a month the young Duchessa realised the utter hopelessness of attempting to change the existing system of patriarchal government under which she found herself living. She discovered, in the first place, that she would never have five scudi of her own in her pocket, and that if she needed a handkerchief or a pair of stockings it was necessary to obtain from the head of the house not only the permission to buy such necessaries, but the money with which to pay for them. She discovered, furthermore, that if she wanted a cup of coffee or some bread and butter out of hours, those things were charged to her daily account in the steward's office, as though she had been in an inn, and were paid for at the end of the year out of the income arising from her dowry. Her husband's younger brother, who had no money of his own, could not even get a lemonade in his father's house without his father's consent. Moreover, the family life was of such a nature as almost to preclude all privacy. The young Duchessa and her husband had their bedroom in the upper story, but Don Lotario's request that his wife might have a sitting-room of her own was looked upon as an attempt at a domestic revolution, and the privilege was only obtained at last through the formidable intervention of the Duke of Agincourt, the Duchessa's own father. All the family meals, too, were eaten together in the solemn old dining-hall, hung with tapestries and dingy with the dust of ages. The order of precedence was always strictly observed, and though the cooking was of a strange kind, no plate or dish was ever used which was not of solid silver, battered indeed, and scratched, and cleaned only after Italian ideas, but heavy and massive withal. The Duchessa soon learned that the old Roman houses all used silver plates from motives of economy, for the simple reason that metal did not break. But the sensible English woman saw also that although the most rigid economy was practised in many things, there was lavish expenditure in many departments of the establishment. There were magnificent horses in the stables, gorgeously gilt carriages in the coach-houses, scores of domestics in bright liveries at every door. The pay of the servants did not, indeed, exceed the average earnings of a shoe-black in London, but the coats they wore were exceeding glorious with gold lace. It was clear from the first that nothing was expected of Don Lotario's wife but to live peaceably under the patriarchal rule, making no observations and offering no suggestions. Her husband told her that he was powerless to introduce any changes, and added, that since his father and all his ancestors had always lived in the same way, that way was quite good enough for him. Indeed, he rather looked forward to the time when he should be master of the house, having children under him whom he might rule as absolutely and despotically as he was ruled himself. In the course of years the Duchessa absorbed the traditions of her new home, so that they became part of her, and as everything went on unchanged from year to year she acquired unchanging habits which corresponded with her surroundings. Then, when at last the old prince and princess were laid side by side in the vault of the family chapel and she was princess in her turn, she changed nothing, but let everything go on in the same groove, educating her children and managing them, as her husband had been educated and as she herself had been managed by the old couple. Her husband grew more and more like his father, punctilious, rigid; a strict observant in religious matters, a pedant in little things, prejudiced against all change; too satisfied to desire improvement, too scrupulously conscientious to permit any retrogression from established rule, a model of the immutability of an ancient aristocracy, a living paradigm of what always had been and a stubborn barrier against all that might be. Such was the home to which Donna Faustina Montevarchi returned to live after spending eight years in the convent of the Sacro Cuore. During that time she had acquired the French language, a slight knowledge of music, a very limited acquaintance with the history of her own country, a ready memory for prayers and litanies--and her manners. Manners among the Italians are called education. What we mean by the latter word, namely, the learning acquired, is called, more precisely, instruction. An educated person means a person who has acquired the art of politeness. An instructed person means some one who has learnt rather more than the average of what is generally learnt by the class of people to whom he belongs. Donna Faustina was extremely well educated, according to Roman ideas, but her instruction was not, and was not intended to be, any better than that imparted to the young girls with whom she was to associate in the world. As far as her character was concerned, she herself knew very little of it, and would probably have found herself very much embarrassed if called upon to explain what character meant. She was new and the world was very old. The nuns had told her that she must never care for the world, which was a very sinful place, full of thorns, ditches, pitfalls and sinners, besides the devil and his angels. Her sister Flavia, on the contrary, assured her that the world was very agreeable, when mamma happened to go to sleep in a corner during a ball; that all men were deceivers, but that when a man danced well it made no difference whether he were a deceiver or not, since he danced with his legs and not with his conscience; that there was no happiness equal to a good cotillon, and that there were a number of these in every season; and, finally, that provided one did not spoil one's complexion one might do anything, so long as mamma was not looking. To Donna Faustina, these views, held by the nuns on the one hand and by Flavia on the other, seemed very conflicting. She would not, indeed, have hesitated in choosing, even if she had been permitted any choice; for it was clear that, since she had seen the convent side of the question, it would be very interesting to see the other. But, having been told so much about sinners, she was on the look-out for them, and looked forward to making the acquaintance of one of them with a pardonable excitement. Doubtless she would hate a sinner if she saw one, as the nuns had taught her, although the sinner of her imagination was not a very repulsive personage. Flavia probably knew a great many, and Flavia said that society was very amusing. Faustina wished that the autumn months would pass a little more quickly, so that the carnival season might begin. Prince Montevarchi, for his part, intended his youngest daughter to be a model of prim propriety. He attributed to Flavia's frivolity of behaviour the difficulty he experienced in finding her a husband, and he had no intention of exposing himself to a second failure in the case of Faustina. She should marry in her first season, and if she chose to be gay after that, the responsibility thereof might fall upon her husband, or her father-in-law, or upon whomsoever it should most concern; he himself would have fulfilled his duty so soon as the nuptial benediction was pronounced. He knew the fortune and reputation of every marriageable young man in society, and was therefore eminently fitted for the task he undertook. To tell the truth, Faustina herself expected to be married before Easter, for it was eminently fitting that a young girl should lose no time in such matters. But she meant to choose a man after her own heart, if she found one; at all events, she would not submit too readily to the paternal choice nor appear satisfied with the first tolerable suitor who should be presented to her. Under these circumstances it seemed probable that Donna Faustina's first season, which had begun with the unexpected adventure at the corner of the old Orso, would not come to a close without some passage of arms between herself and her father, even though the ultimate conclusion should lead to the steps of the altar. The men carried the wounded Zouave away to a distant room, and Faustina entered the main apartments by the side of the old prince. She sighed a little as she went. "I hope the poor man will get well!" she exclaimed. "Do not disturb your mind about the young man," answered her father. "He will be attended by the proper persons, and the doctor will bleed him and the will of Heaven will be done. It is not the duty of a well-conducted young woman to be thinking of such things, and you may dismiss the subject at once." "Yes, papa," said Faustina submissively. But in spite of the dutiful tone of voice in which she spoke, the dim light of the tall lamps in the antechambers showed a strange expression of mingled amusement and contrariety in the girl's ethereal face. CHAPTER II. "You know Gouache?" asked old Prince Saracinesca, in a tone which implied that he had news to tell. He looked from his daughter-in-law to his son as he put the question, and then went on with his breakfast. "Very well," answered Giovanni. "What about him?" "He was knocked down by a carriage last night. The carriage belonged to Montevarchi, and Gouache is at his house, in danger of his life." "Poor fellow!" exclaimed Corona in ready sympathy. "I am so sorry! I am very fond of Gouache." Giovanni Saracinesca, known to the world since his marriage as Prince of Sant' Ilario, glanced quickly at his wife, so quickly that neither she nor the old gentleman noticed the fact. The three persons sat at their midday breakfast in the dining-room of the Palazzo Saracinesca. After much planning and many discussions the young couple had determined to take up their abode with Giovanni's father. There were several reasons which had led them to this decision, but the two chief ones were that they were both devotedly attached to the old man; and secondly, that such a proceeding was strictly fitting and in accordance with the customs of Romans. It was true that Corona, while her old husband, the Duca d'Astrardente, was alive, had grown used to having an establishment exclusively her own, and both the Saracinesca had at first feared that she would be unwilling to live in her father-in-law's house. Then, too, there was the Astrardente palace, which, could not lie shut up and allowed to go to ruin; but this matter was compromised advantageously by Corona's letting it to an American millionaire who wished to spend the winter in Rome. The rent paid was large, and Corona never could have too much money for her improvements out at Astrardente. Old Saracinesca wished that the tenant might have been at least a diplomatist, and cursed the American by his gods, but Giovanni said that his wife had shown good sense in getting as much as she could for the palace. "We shall not need it till Orsino grows up--unless you marry again," said Sant' Ilario to his father, with a laugh. Now, Orsino was Giovanni's son and heir, aged, at the time of this tale, six months and a few days. In spite of his extreme youth, however, Orsino played a great and important part in the doings of the Saracinesca household. In the first place, he was the heir, and the old prince had been found sitting by his cradle with an expression never seen in his face since Giovanni had been a baby. Secondly, Orsino was a very fine child, swarthy of skin, and hard as a tiger cub, yet having already his mother's eyes, large, coal-black and bright, but deep and soft withal. Thirdly, Orsino had a will of his own, admirably seconded by an enormous lung power. Not that he cried, when he wanted anything. His baby eyes had not yet been seen to shed tears. He merely shouted, loud and long, and thumped the sides of his cradle with his little clenched fists, or struck out straight at anybody who chanced to be within reach. Corona rejoiced in the child, and used to say that he was like his grandfather, his father and his mother all put together. The old prince thought that if this were true the boy would do very well; Corona was the most beautiful dark woman of her time; he himself was a sturdy, tough old man, though his hair and beard were white as snow, and Giovanni was his father's ideal of what a man of his race should be. The arrival of the baby Orsino had been an additional argument in favour of living together, for the child's grandfather could not have been separated from him even by the quarter of a mile which lay between the two palaces. And so it came to pass that they all dwelt under the same roof, and were sitting together at breakfast on the morning of the 24th of September, when the old prince told them of the accident which had happened to Gouache. "How did you hear the news?" asked Giovanni. "Montevarchi told me this morning. He was very much disturbed at the idea of having an interesting young man in his house, with Flavia and Faustina at home." Old Saracinesca smiled grimly. "Why should that trouble him?" inquired Corona. "He has the ancient ideas," replied her father-in-law. "After all--Flavia--" "Yes Flavia, after all--" "I shall be curious to see how the other one turns out," remarked Giovanni. "There seems to be a certain unanimity in our opinion of Flavia. However, I daresay it is mere gossip, and Casa Montevarchi is not a gay place for a girl of her age." "Not gay? How do you know?" asked the old prince. "Does the girl want Carnival to last till All Souls'? Did you ever dine there, Giovannino?" "No--nor any one else who is not a member of the most Excellent Casa Montevarchi." "Then how do you know whether it is gay or not?" "You should hear Ascanio Bellegra describe their life," retorted Giovanni. "And I suppose you describe your life to him, in exchange?" Prince Saracinesca was beginning to lose his temper, as he invariably did whenever he could induce his son to argue any question with him. "I suppose you deplore each other's miserable condition. I tell you what I think, Giovanni. You had better go and live in Corona's house if you are not happy here." "It is let," replied Giovanni with imperturbable calm, but his wife bit her lip to control her rising laughter. "You might travel," growled the old gentleman. "But I am very happy here." "Then what do you mean by talking like that about Casa Montevarchi?" "I fail to see the connection between the two ideas," observed Giovanni. "You live in precisely the same circumstances as Ascanio Bellegra. I think the connection is clear enough. If his life is sad, so is yours." "For downright good logic commend me to my beloved father!" cried Giovanni, breaking into a laugh at last. "A laughing-stock for my children! I have come to this!" exclaimed his father gruffly. But his features relaxed into a good-humoured smile, that was pleasant to see upon his strong dark face. "But, really, I am very sorry to hear this of poor Gouache," said Corona at last, returning to the original subject of their conversation. "I hope it is nothing really dangerous." "It is always dangerous to be run over by a carriage," answered Giovanni. "I will go and see him, if they will let me in." At this juncture Orsino was brought in by his nurse, a splendid creature from Saracinesca, with bright blue eyes and hair as fair as any Goth's, a contrast to the swarthy child she carried in her arms. Immediately the daily ovation began, and each of the three persons began to worship the baby in an especial way. There was no more conversation, after that, for some time. The youngest of the Saracinesca absorbed the attention of the family. Whether he clenched his little fists, or opened his small fat fingers, whether he laughed and crowed at his grandfather's attempts to amuse him, or struck his nurse's rosy cheeks with his chubby hands, the result was always applause and merriment from those who looked on. The scene recalled Joseph's dream, in which the sheaves of his brethren bowed down to his sheaf. After a while, however, Orsino grew sleepy and had to be taken away. Then the little party broke up and separated. The old prince went to his rooms to read and doze for an hour. Corona was called away to see one of the numberless dressmakers whose shadows darken the beginning of a season in town, and Giovanni took his hat and went out. In those days young men of society had very little to do. The other day a German diplomatist was heard to say that Italian gentlemen seemed to do nothing but smoke, spit, and criticise. Twenty years ago their manners might have been described less coarsely, but there was even more truth in the gist of the saying. Not only they did nothing. There was nothing for them to do. They floated about in a peaceful millpool, whose placid surface reflected nothing but their own idle selves, little guessing that the dam whereby their mimic sea was confined, would shortly break with a thundering crash and empty them all into the stream of real life that flowed below. For the few who disliked idleness there was no occupation but literature, and literature, to the Roman mind of 1867, and in the Roman meaning of the word, was scholarship. The introduction to a literary career was supposed to be obtained only by a profound study of the classics, with a view to avoiding everything classical, both in language and ideas, except Cicero, the apostle of the ancient Roman Philistines; and the tendency to clothe stale truisms and feeble sentiments in high-sounding language is still found in Italian prose and is indirectly traceable to the same source. As for the literature of the country since the Latins, it consisted, and still consists, in the works of the four poets, Dante, Tasso, Ariosto, and Petrarch. Leopardi is more read now than then, but is too unhealthily melancholy to be read long by any one. There used to be Roman princes who spent years in committing to memory the verses of those four poets, just as the young Brahman of to-day learns to recite the Rig Veda. That was called the pursuit of literature. The Saracinesca were thought very original and different from other men, because they gave some attention to their estates. It seemed very like business to try and improve the possessions one had inherited or acquired by marriage, and business was degradation. Nevertheless, the Saracinesca were strong enough to laugh at other people's scruples, and did what seemed best in their own eyes without troubling themselves to ask what the world thought. But the care of such matters was not enough to occupy Giovanni all day. He had much time on his hands, for he was an active man, who slept little and rarely needed rest. Formerly he had been used to disappear from Rome periodically, making long journeys, generally ending in shooting expeditions in some half-explored country. That was in the days before his marriage, and his wanderings had assuredly done him no harm. He had seen much of the world not usually seen by men of his class and prejudices, and the acquaintance he had thus got with things and people was a source of great satisfaction to him. But the time had come to give up all this. He was now not only married and settled in his own home, but moreover he loved his wife with his whole heart, and these facts were serious obstacles against roughing it in Norway, Canada, or Transylvania. To travel with Corona and little Orsino seemed a very different matter from travelling with Corona alone. Then there was his father's growing affection for the child, which had to be taken into account in all things. The four had become inseparable, old Saracinesca, Giovanni, Corona, and the baby. Now Giovanni did not regret his old liberty. He knew that he was far happier than he had ever been in his life before. But there were days when the time hung heavily on his hands and his restless nature craved some kind of action which should bring with it a generous excitement. This was precisely what he could not find during the months spent in Rome, and so it fell out that he did very much what most young men of his birth found quite sufficient as an employment; he spent a deal of time in strolling where others strolled, in lounging at the club, and in making visits which filled the hours between sunset and dinner. To him this life was new, and not altogether tasteful; but his friends did not fail to say that Giovanni had been civilised by his marriage with the Astrardente, and was much less reserved than he had formerly been. When Corona went to see the dressmaker, Giovanni very naturally took his hat and went out of the house. The September day was warm and bright, and in such weather it was a satisfaction merely to pace the old Roman streets in the autumn sun. It was too early to meet any of his acquaintance, and too soon in the season for any regular visiting. He did not know what to do, but allowed himself to enjoy the sunshine and the sweet air. Presently, the sight of a couple of Zouaves, talking together at the corner of a street, recalled to his mind the accident which had happened to Gouache. It would be kind to go and see the poor fellow, or, at least, to ask after him. He had known him for some time and had gradually learned to like him, as most people did who met the gifted artist day after day throughout the gaiety of the winter. At the Palazzo Montevarchi Giovanni learned that the princess had just finished breakfast. He could hardly ask for Gouache without making a short visit in the drawing-room, and he accordingly submitted, regretting after all that he had come. The old princess bored him, he did not know Faustina, who was just out of the convent, and Flavia, who amused many people, did not amuse him in the least. He inwardly rejoiced that he was married, and that his visit could not be interpreted as a preliminary step towards asking for Flavia's hand. The princess looked up with an expression of inquiry in her prominent blue eyes, as Sant' Ilario entered. She was stout, florid, and not well dressed. Her yellow hair, already half gray, for she was more than fifty years old, was of the unruly kind, and had never looked neat even in her best days. Her bright, clear complexion saved her, however, as it saves hundreds of middle-aged Englishwomen, from that look of peculiar untidiness which belongs to dark-skinned persons who take no trouble about their appearance or personal adornment. In spite of thirty-three years of residence in Rome, she spoke Italian with a foreign accent, though otherwise correctly enough. But she was nevertheless a great lady, and no one would have thought of doubting the fact. Fat, awkwardly dressed, of no imposing stature, with unmanageable hair and prominent teeth, she was not a person to be laughed at. She had what many a beautiful woman lacks and envies--natural dignity of character and manner, combined with a self-possession which is not always found in exalted personages. That repose of manner which is commonly believed to be the heirloom of noble birth is seen quite as often in the low-born adventurer, who regards it as part of his stock-in-trade; and there are many women, and men too, whose position might be expected to place them beyond the reach of what we call shyness, but who nevertheless suffer daily agonies of social timidity and would rather face alone a charge of cavalry than make a new acquaintance. The Princess Montevarchi was made of braver stuff, however, and if her daughters had not inherited all her unaffected dignity they had at least received their fair share of self-possession. When Sant' Ilario entered, these two young ladies, Donna Flavia and Donna Faustina, were seated one on each side of their mother. The princess extended her hand, the two daughters held theirs demurely crossed upon their knees. Faustina looked at the carpet, as she had been taught to do in the convent. Flavia looked up boldly at Giovanni, knowing by experience that her mother could not see her while greeting the visitor. Sant' Ilario muttered some sort of civil inquiry, bowed to the two young ladies and sat down. "How is Monsieur Gouache?" he asked, going straight to the point. He had seen the look of surprise on the princess's face as he entered, and thought it best to explain himself at once. "Ah, you have heard? Poor man! He is badly hurt, I fear. Would you like to see him?" "Presently, if I may," answered Giovanni. "We are all fond of Gouache. How did the accident happen?" "Faustina ran over him," said Flavia, fixing her dark eyes on Giovanni and allowing her pretty face to assume an expression of sympathy--for the sufferer. "Faustina and papa," she added. "Flavia! How can you say such things!" exclaimed the princess, who spent a great part of her life in repressing her daughter's manner of speech. "Well, mamma--it was the carriage of course. But papa and Faustina were in it. It is the same thing." Giovanni looked at Faustina, but her thin fresh face expressed nothing, nor did she show any intention of commenting on her sister's explanation. It was the first time he had seen her near enough to notice her, and his attention was arrested by something in her looks which surprised and interested him. It was something almost impossible to describe, and yet so really present that it struck Sant' Ilario at once, and found a place in his memory. In the superstitions of the far north, as in the half material spiritualism of Polynesia, that look has a meaning and an interpretation. With us, the interpretation is lost, but the instinctive persuasion that the thing itself is not wholly meaningless remains ineradicable. We say, with a smile at our own credulity, "That man looks as though he had a story," or, "That woman looks as though something odd might happen to her." It is an expression in the eyes, a delicate shade in the features, which speak of many things which we do not understand; things which, if they exist at all, we feel must be inevitable, fatal, and beyond human control. Giovanni looked and was surprised, but Faustina said nothing. "It was very good of the prince to bring him here," remarked Sant' Ilario. "It was very unlike papa," exclaimed Flavia, before her mother could answer. "But very kind, of course, as you say," she added, with a little smile. Flavia had a habit of making rather startling remarks, and of then adding something in explanation or comment, before her hearers had recovered breath. The addition did not always mend matters very much. "Do not interrupt me, Flavia," said her mother, severely. "I beg your pardon, were you speaking, mamma?" asked the young girl, innocently. Giovanni was not amused by Flavia's manners, and waited calmly for the princess to speak. "Indeed," said she, "there was nothing else to be done. As we had run over the poor man--" "The carriage--" suggested Flavia. But her mother took no notice of her. "The least we could do, of course, was to bring him here. My husband would not have allowed him to be taken to the hospital." Flavia again fixed her eyes on Giovanni with a look of sympathy, which, however, did not convey any very profound belief in her father's charitable intentions. "I quite understand," said Giovanni. "And how has he been since you brought him here? Is he in any danger?" "You shall see him at once," answered the princess, who rose and rang the bell, and then, as the servant's footsteps were heard outside, crossed the room to meet him at the door. "Mamma likes to run about," said Flavia, sweetly, in explanation. Giovanni had risen and made as though he would have been of some assistance. The action was characteristic of the Princess Montevarchi. An Italian woman would neither have rung the bell herself, nor have committed such an imprudence as to turn her back upon her two daughters when there was a man in the room. But she was English, and a whole lifetime spent among Italians could not extinguish her activity; so she went to the door herself. Faustina's deep eyes followed her mother as though she were interested to know the news of Gouache. "I hope he is better," she said, quietly. "Of course," echoed Flavia, "So do I. But mamma amuses me so much! She is always in a hurry." Faustina made no answer, but she looked at Sant' Ilario, as though she wondered what he thought of her sister. He returned her gaze, trying to explain to himself the strange attraction of her expression, watching her critically as he would have watched any new person or sight. She did not blush nor avoid his bold eyes, as he would have expected had he realised that he was staring at her. A few minutes later Giovanni found himself in a narrow, high room, lighted by one window, which showed the enormous thickness of the walls in the deep embrasure. The vaulted ceiling was painted in fresco with a representation of Apollo in the act of drawing his bow, arrayed for the time being in his quiver, while his other garments, of yellow and blue, floated everywhere save over his body. The floor of the room was of red bricks, which had once been waxed, and the furniture was scanty, massive and very old. Anastase Gouache lay in one corner in a queer-looking bed covered with a yellow damask quilt the worse for a century or two of wear, upon which faded embroideries showed the Montevarchi arms surmounted by a cardinal's hat. Upon a chair beside the patient lay the little heap of small belongings he had carried in his pocket when hurt, his watch and purse, his cigarettes, his handkerchief and a few other trifles, among which, half concealed by the rest, was the gold pin he had picked up by the bridge on the previous evening. There was a mingled smell of dampness and of stale tobacco in the comfortless room, for the windows were closely shut, in spite of the bright sunshine that flooded the opposite side of the street. Gouache lay on his back, his head tied up in a bandage and supported by a white pillow, which somehow conveyed the impression of one of those marble cushions upon which in old-fashioned monuments the effigies of the dead are made to lean in eternal prayer, if not in eternal ease. He moved impatiently as the door opened, and then recognising Giovanni, he hailed him in a voice much more lively and sonorous than might have been expected. "You, prince!" he cried, in evident delight. "What saint has brought you?" "I heard of your accident, and so I came to see if I could do anything for you. How are you?" "As you see," replied Gouache. "In a hospitable tomb, with my head tied up like an imperfectly-resurrected Lazarus. For the rest there is nothing the matter with me, except that they have taken away my clothes, which is something of an obstacle to my leaving the house at once. I feel as if I had been in a revolution and had found myself on the wrong side of the barricade--nothing worse than that." "You are in good spirits, at all events. But are you not seriously hurt?" "Oh, nothing--a broken collar-bone somewhere, I believe, and some part of my head gone--I am not quite sure which, and a bad headache, and nothing to eat, and a general sensation as though somebody had made an ineffectual effort to turn me into a sausage." "What does the doctor say?" "Nothing. He is a man of action. He bled me because I had not the strength to strangle him, and poured decoctions of boiled grass down my throat because I could not speak. He has fantastic ideas about the human body." "But you will have to stay here several days," said Giovanni, considerably amused by Gouache's view of his own case. "Several days! Not even several hours, if I can help it." "Things do not go so quickly in Rome. You must be patient." "In order to starve, when there is food as near as the Corso?" inquired the artist. "To be butchered by a Roman phlebotomist, and drenched with infusions of hay by the Principessa Montevarchi, when I might be devising means of being presented to her daughter? What do you take me for? I suppose the young lady with the divine eyes is her daughter, is she not?" "You mean Donna Faustina, I suppose. Yes. She is the youngest, just out of the Sacro Cuore. She was in the drawing-room when I called just now. How did you see her?" "Last night, as they brought me upstairs, I was lucky enough to wake up just as she was looking at me. What eyes! I can think of nothing else. Seriously, can you not help me to get out of here?" "So that you may fall in love with Donna Faustina as soon as possible, I suppose," answered Giovanni with a laugh. "It seems to me that there is but one thing to do, if you are really strong enough. Send for your clothes, get up, go into the drawing-room and thank the princess for her hospitality." "That is easily said. Nothing is done in this house without the written permission of the old prince, unless I am much mistaken. Besides, there is no bell. I might as well be under arrest in the guard-room of the barracks. Presently the doctor will come and bleed me again and the princess will send me some more boiled grass. I am not very fat, as it is, but another day of this diet will make me diaphanous--I shall cast no shadow. A nice thing, to be caught without a shadow on parade!" "I will see what I can do," said Giovanni, rising. "Probably, the best thing would be to send your military surgeon. He will not be so tender as the other leech, but he will get you away at once. My wife wished me to say that she sympathised, and hoped you might soon be well." "My homage and best thanks to the princess," answered Gouache, with a slight change of tone, presumably to be referred to his sense of courtesy in speaking of the absent lady. So Giovanni went away, promising to send the surgeon at once. The latter soon arrived, saw Gouache, and was easily persuaded to order him home without further delay. The artist-soldier would not leave the house without thanking his hostess. His uniform had been cleansed from the stains it had got in the accident, and his left arm was in a sling. The wound on his head was more of a bruise than a cut, and was concealed by his thick black hair. Considering the circumstances he presented a very good appearance. The princess received him in the drawing-room, and Flavia and Faustina were with her, but all three were now dressed to go out, so that the interview was necessarily a short one. Gouache made a little speech of thanks and tried to forget the decoction of mallows he had swallowed, fearing lest the recollection should impart a tone of insincerity to his expression of gratitude. He succeeded very well, and afterwards attributed the fact to Donna Faustina's brown eyes, which were not cast down as they had been when Sant' Ilario had called, but appeared on the contrary to contemplate the new visitor with singular interest. "I am sure my husband will not approve of your going so soon," said the princess in somewhat anxious tones. It was almost the first time she had ever known any step of importance to be taken in her house without her husband's express authority. "Madame," answered Gouache, glancing from Donna Faustina to his hostess, "I am in despair at having thus unwillingly trespassed upon your hospitality, although I need not tell you that I would gladly prolong so charming an experience, provided I were not confined to solitude in a distant chamber. However, since our regimental surgeon pronounces me fit to go home, I have no choice but to obey orders. Believe me, Madame, I am deeply grateful to yourself as well as to the Principe Montevarchi for your manifold kindnesses, and shall cherish a remembrance of your goodness so long as I live." With these words Gouache bowed as though he would be gone and stood waiting for the princess's last word. But before her mother could speak, Faustina's voice was heard. "I cannot tell you how dreadfully we feel--papa and I--at having been the cause of such a horrible accident! Is there nothing we can do to make you forget it?" The princess stared at her daughter in the utmost astonishment at her forwardness. She would not have been surprised if Flavia had been guilty of such imprudence, but that Faustina should thus boldly address a young man who had not spoken to her, was such a shock to her belief in the girl's manners that she did not recover for several seconds. Anastase appreciated the situation, for as he answered, he looked steadily at the mother, although his words were plainly addressed to the brown-eyed beauty. "Mademoiselle is too kind. She exaggerates. And yet, since she has put the question, I will say that I should forget my broken bones very soon if I might be permitted to paint Mademoiselle's portrait. I am a painter," he added, in modest explanation. "Yes," said the princess, "I know. But, really--this is a matter which would require great consideration--and my husband's consent--and, for the present---" She paused significantly, intending to convey a polite refusal, but Gouache completed the sentence. "For the present, until my bones are mended, we will not speak of it. When I am well again I will do myself the honour of asking the prince's consent myself." Flavia leaned towards her mother and whispered into her ear. The words were quite audible, and the girl's dark eyes turned to Gouache with a wicked laugh in them while she was speaking. "Oh, mamma, if you tell papa it is for nothing he will be quite delighted!" Gouache's lip trembled as he suppressed a smile, and the elderly princess's florid cheeks flushed with annoyance. "For the present," she said, holding out her hand rather coldly, "we will not speak of it. Pray let us know of your speedy recovery, Monsieur Gouache." As the artist took his leave he glanced once more at Donna Faustina. Her face was pale and her eyes flashed angrily. She, too, had heard Flavia's stage whisper and was even more annoyed than her mother. Gouache went his way toward his lodging in the company of the surgeon, pondering on the inscrutable mysteries of the Roman household of which he had been vouchsafed a glimpse. He was in pain from his head and shoulder, but insisted that the walk would do him good and refused the cab which his companion had brought. A broken collar-bone is not a dangerous matter, but it can be very troublesome for a while, and the artist was glad to get back to his lodgings and to find himself comfortably installed in an easy chair with something to eat before him, of a more substantial nature than the Principessa Montevarchi's infusions of camomile and mallows. CHAPTER III. While Giovanni was at the Palazzo Montevarchi, and while Corona was busy with her dressmakers, Prince Saracinesca was dozing over the Osservatore Romano in his study. To tell the truth the paper was less dull than usual, for there was war and rumour of war in its columns. Garibaldi had raised a force of volunteers and was in the neighbourhood of Arezzo, beginning to skirmish with the outlying posts of the pontifical army along the frontier. The old gentleman did not know, of course, that on that very day the Italian Government was issuing its proclamation against the great agitator, and possibly if he had been aware of the incident it would not have produced any very strong impression upon his convictions. Garibaldi was a fact, and Saracinesca did not believe that any proclamations would interfere with his march unless backed by some more tangible force. Even had he known that the guerilla general had been arrested at Sinalunga and put in confinement as soon as the proclamation had appeared, the prince would have foreseen clearly enough that the prisoner's escape would be only a question of a few days, since there were manifold evidences that an understanding existed between Ratazzi and Garibaldi of much the same nature as that which in 1860 had been maintained between Garibaldi and Cavour during the advance upon Naples. The Italian Government kept men under arms to be ready to take advantage of any successes obtained by the Garibaldian volunteers, and at the same time to suppress the republican tendencies of the latter, which broke out afresh with every new advance, and disappeared, as by magic, under the depressing influence of a forced retreat. The prince knew all these things, and had reflected upon them so often that they no longer afforded enough interest to keep him awake. The warm September sun streamed into the study and fell upon the paper as it slowly slipped over the old gentleman's knees, while his head sank lower and lower on his breast. The old enamelled clock upon the chimney-piece ticked more loudly, as clocks seem to do when people are asleep and they are left to their own devices, and a few belated flies chased each other in the sunbeams. The silence was broken by the entrance of a servant, who would have withdrawn again when he saw that his master was napping, had not the latter stirred and raised his head before the man had time to get away. Then the fellow came forward with an apology and presented a visiting-card. The prince stared at the bit of pasteboard, rubbed his eyes, stared again, and then laid it upon the table beside him, his eyes still resting on the name, which seemed so much to surprise him. Then he told the footman to introduce the visitor, and a few moments later a very tall man entered the room, hat in hand, and advanced slowly towards him with the air of a person who has a perfect right to present himself but wishes to give his host time to recognise him. The prince remembered the newcomer very well. The closely-buttoned frock-coat showed the man's imposing figure to greater advantage than the dress in which Saracinesca had last seen him, but there was no mistaking the personality. There was the same lean but massive face, broadened by the high cheekbones and the prominent square jaw; there were the same piercing black eyes, set near together under eyebrows that met in the midst of the forehead, the same thin and cruel lips, and the same strongly-marked nose, set broadly on at the nostrils, though pointed and keen. Had the prince had any doubts as to his visitor's identity they would have been dispelled by the man's great height and immense breadth of shoulder, which would have made it hard indeed for him to disguise himself had he wished to do so. But though very much surprised, Saracinesca had no doubts whatever. The only points that were new to him in the figure before him were the outward manner and appearance, and the dress of a gentleman. "I trust I am not disturbing you, prince?" The words were spoken in a deep, clear voice, and with a notable southern accent. "Not at all. I confess I am astonished at seeing you in Rome. Is there anything I can do for you? I shall always be grateful to you for having been alive to testify to the falsehood of that accusation made against my son. Pray sit down. How is your Signora? And the children? All well, I hope?" "My wife is dead," returned the other, and the grave tones of his bass voice lent solemnity to the simple statement. "I am sincerely sorry--" began the prince, but his visitor interrupted him. "The children are well. They are in Aquila for the present. I have come to establish myself in Rome, and my first visit is naturally to yourself, since I have the advantage of being your cousin." "Naturally," ejaculated Saracinesca, though his face expressed considerable surprise. "Do not imagine that I am going to impose myself upon you as a poor relation," continued the other with a faint smile. "Fortune has been kind to me since we met, perhaps as a compensation for the loss I suffered in the death of my poor wife. I have a sufficient independence and can hold my own." "I never supposed--" "You might naturally have supposed that I had come to solicit your favour, though it is not the case. When we parted I was an innkeeper in Aquila. I have no cause to be ashamed of my past profession. I only wish to let you know that it is altogether past, and that I intend to resume the position which my great-grandfather foolishly forfeited. As you are the present head of the family I judged that it was my duty to inform you of the fact immediately." "By all means. I imagined this must be the case from your card. You are entirely in your rights, and I shall take great pleasure in informing every one of the fact. You are the Marchese di San Giacinto, and the inn at Aquila no longer exists." "As these things must be done, once and for always, I have brought my papers to Rome," answered the Marchese. "They are at your disposal, for you certainly have a right to see them, if you like. I will recall to your memory the facts of our history, in case you have forgotten them." "I know the story well enough," said Saracinesca. "Our great-grandfathers were brothers. Yours went to live in Naples. His son grew up and joined the French against the King. His lands were forfeited, he married and died in obscurity, leaving your father, his only son. Your father died young and you again are his only son. You married the Signora Felice--" "Baldi," said the Marchese, nodding in confirmation of the various statements. "The Signora Felice Baldi, by whom you have two children--" "Boys." "Two boys. And the Signora Marchesa, I grieve to hear, is dead. Is that accurate?" "Perfectly. There is one circumstance, connected with our great-grandfathers, which you have not mentioned, but which I am sure you remember." "What is that?" asked the prince, fixing his keen eyes on his companion's face. "It is only this," replied San Giacinto, calmly. "My great-grandfather was two years older than yours. You know he never meant to marry, and resigned the title to his younger brother, who had children already. He took a wife in his old age, and my grandfather was the son born to him. That is why you are so much older than I, though we are of the same generation in the order of descent." "Yes," assented the prince. "That accounts for it. Will you smoke?" Giovanni Saracinesca, Marchese di San Giacinto, looked curiously at his cousin as he took the proffered cigar. There was something abrupt in the answer which attracted his attention and roused his quick suspicions. He wondered whether that former exchange of titles, and consequent exchange of positions were an unpleasant subject of conversation to the prince. But the latter, as though anticipating such a doubt in his companion's mind, at once returned to the question with the boldness which was natural to him. "There was a friendly agreement," he said, striking a match and offering it to the Marchese. "I have all the documents, and have studied them with interest. It might amuse you to see them, some day." "I should like to see them, indeed," answered San Giacinto. "They must be very curious. As I was saying, I am going to establish myself in Rome. It seems strange to me to be playing the gentleman--it must seem even more odd to you." "It would be truer to say that you have been playing the innkeeper," observed the prince, courteously. "No one would suspect it," he added, glancing at his companion's correct attire. "I have an adaptable nature," said the Marchese, calmly. "Besides, I have always looked forward to again taking my place in the world. I have acquired a little instruction--not much, you will say, but it is sufficient as the times go; and as for education, it is the same for every one, innkeeper or prince. One takes off one's hat, one speaks quietly, one says what is agreeable to hear--is it not enough?" "Quite enough," replied the prince. He was tempted to smile at his cousin's definition of manners, though he could see that the man was quite able to maintain his position. "Quite enough, indeed, and as for instruction, I am afraid most of us have forgotten our Latin. You need have no anxiety on that score. But, tell me, how comes it that, having been bred in the south, you prefer to establish yourself in Rome rather than in Naples? They say that you Neapolitans do not like us." "I am a Roman by descent, and I wish to become one in fact," returned the Marchese. "Besides," he added, in a peculiarly grave tone of voice, "I do not like the new order of things. Indeed, I have but one favour to ask of you, and that is a great one." "Anything in my power--" "To present me to the Holy Father as one who desires to become his faithful subject. Could you do so, do you think, without any great inconvenience?" "Eh! I shall be delighted! Magari!" answered the prince, heartily. "To tell the truth, I was afraid you meant to keep your Italian convictions, and that, in Rome, would be against you, especially in these stormy days. But if you will join us heart and soul you will be received with open arms. I shall take great pleasure in seeing you make the acquaintance of my son and his wife. Come and dine this evening." "Thank you," said the Marchese. "I will not fail." After a few more words San Giacinto took his leave, and the prince could not but admire the way in which this man, who had been brought up among peasants, or at best among the small farmers of an outlying district, assumed at once an air of perfect equality while allowing just so much of respect to appear in his manner as might properly be shown by a younger member to the head of a great house. When he was gone Saracinesca rang the bell. "Pasquale," he said, addressing the old butler who answered the summons, "that gentleman who is just gone is my cousin, Don Giovanni Saracinesca, who is called Marchese di San Giacinto. He will dine here this evening. You will call him Eccellenza, and treat him as a member of the family. Go and ask the princess if she will receive me." Pasquale opened his mental eyes very wide as he bowed and left the room. He had never heard of this other Saracinesca, and the appearance of a new member of the family upon the scene, who must, from his appearance, have been in existence between thirty and forty years, struck him as astonishing in the extreme; for the old servant had been bred up in the house from a boy and imagined himself master of all the secrets connected with the Saracinesca household. He was, indeed, scarcely less surprised than his master who, although he had been aware for some time past that Giovanni Saracinesca existed and was his cousin, had never anticipated the event of his coming to Rome, and had expected still less that the innkeeper would ever assume the title to which he had a right and play the part of a gentleman, as he himself had expressed it. There was a strange mixture of boldness and foresight in the way the old prince had received his new relation. He knew the strength of his own position in society, and that the introduction of a humble cousin could not possibly do him harm. At the worst, people might laugh a little among themselves and remark that the Marchese must be a nuisance to the Saracinesca. On the other hand, the prince was struck from the first with the air of self-possession which he discerned in San Giacinto, and foresaw that the man would very probably play a part in Roman life. He was a man who might be disliked, but who could not be despised; and since his claims to consideration were undeniably genuine, it seemed wiser to accept him from the first as a member of the family and unhesitatingly to treat him as such. After all, he demanded nothing to which he had not a clear right from the moment he announced his intention of taking his place in the world, and it was certainly far wiser to receive him cordially at once, than to draw back from acknowledging the relationship because he had been brought up in another sphere. This was the substance of what Prince Saracinesca communicated to his daughter-in-law a few minutes later. She listened patiently to all he had to say, only asking a question now and then in order to understand more clearly what had happened. She was curious to see the man whose name had once been so strangely confounded with her husband's by the machinations of the Conte Del Ferice and Donna Tullia Mayer, and she frankly confessed her curiosity and her satisfaction at the prospect of meeting San Giacinto that evening. While she was talking with the prince, Giovanni unexpectedly returned from his walk. He had turned homewards as soon as he had sent the military surgeon to Gouache. "Well, Giovannino," cried the old gentleman, "the prodigal innkeeper has returned to the bosom of the family." "What innkeeper?" "Your worthy namesake, and cousin, Giovanni Saracinesca, formerly of Aquila." "Does Madame Mayer want to prove that it is he who has married Corona?" inquired Sant 'Ilario with a laugh. "No, though I suppose he is a candidate for marriage. I never was more surprised in my life. His wife is dead. He is rich, or says he is. He has his card printed in full, 'Giovanni Saracinesca, Marchese di San Giacinto,' in the most correct manner. He wears an excellent coat, and announces his intention of being presented to the Pope and introduced to Roman society." Sant' Ilario stared incredulously at his father, and then looked inquiringly at his wife as though to ask if it were not all a jest. When he was assured that the facts were true he looked grave and slowly stroked his pointed black beard, a gesture which was very unusual with him, and always accompanied the deepest meditation. "There is nothing to be done but to receive him into the family," he said at last. "But I do not wholly believe in his good intentions. We shall see. I shall be glad to make his acquaintance." "He is coming to dinner." The conversation continued for some time and the arrival of San Giacinto was discussed in all its bearings. Corona took a very practical view of the question, and said that it was certainly best to treat him well, thereby relieving her father-in-law of a considerable anxiety. He had indeed feared lest she should resent the introduction of a man who might reasonably be supposed to have retained a certain coarseness of manner from his early surroundings, and he knew that her consent was all-important in such a case, since she was virtually the mistress of the house. But Corona regarded the matter in much the same light as the old gentleman himself, feeling that nothing of such a nature could possibly injure the imposing position of her husband's family, and taking it for granted that no one who had good blood in his veins could ever behave outrageously. Of all the three, Sant' Ilario was the most silent and thoughtful, for he feared certain consequences from the arrival of this new relation which did not present themselves to the minds of the others, and was resolved to be cautious accordingly, even while appearing to receive San Giacinto with all due cordiality. Later in the day he was alone with his father for a few minutes. "Do you like this fellow?" he asked, abruptly. "No," answered the prince. "Neither do I, though I have not seen him." "We shall see," was the old gentleman's answer. The evening came, and at the appointed hour San Giacinto was announced. Both Corona and her husband were surprised at his imposing appearance, as well as at the dignity and self-possession he displayed. His southern accent was not more noticeable than that of many Neapolitan gentlemen, and his conversation, if neither very brilliant nor very fluent, was not devoid of interest. He talked of the agricultural condition of the new Italy, and old Saracinesca and his son were both interested in the subject. They noticed, too, that during dinner no word escaped him which could give any clue to his former occupation or position, though afterwards, when the servants were not present, he alluded more than once with a frank smile to his experiences as an innkeeper. On the whole, he seemed modest and reserved, yet perfectly self-possessed and conscious of his right to be where he was. Such conduct on the part of such a man did not appear so surprising to the Saracinesca household, as it would have seemed to foreigners. San Giacinto had said that he had an adaptable character, and that adaptability is one of the most noticeable features of the Italian race. It is not necessary to discuss the causes of this peculiarity. They would be incomprehensible to the foreigner at large, who never has any real understanding of Italians. I do not hesitate to say that, without a single exception, every foreigner, poet or prose-writer, who has treated of these people has more or less grossly misunderstood them. That is a sweeping statement, when it is considered that few men of the highest genius in our century have not at one time or another set down upon paper their several estimates of the Italian race. The requisite for accurately describing people, however, is not genius, but knowledge of the subject. The poet commonly sees himself in others, and the modern writer upon Italy is apt to believe that he can see others in himself. The reflection of an Italian upon the mental retina of the foreigner is as deceptive as his own outward image is when seen upon the polished surface of a concave mirror; and indeed the character studies of many great men, when the subject is taken from a race not their own, remind one very forcibly of what may be seen by contemplating oneself in the bowl of a bright silver spoon. To understand Italians a man must have been born and bred among them; and even then the harder, fiercer instinct, which dwells in northern blood, may deceive the student and lead him far astray. The Italian is an exceedingly simple creature, and is apt to share the opinion of the ostrich, who ducks his head and believes his whole body is hidden. Foreigners use strong language concerning the Italian lie; but this only proves how extremely transparent the deception is. It is indeed a singular fact, but one which may often be observed, that two Italians who lie systematically will frequently believe each other, to their own ruin, with a childlike faith rarely found north of the Alps. This seems to me to prove that their dishonesty has outgrown their indolent intelligence; and indeed they deceive themselves nearly as often as they succeed in deceiving their neighbours. In a country where a lie easily finds credence, lying is not likely to be elevated to the rank of a fine art. I have often wondered how such men as Cesare Borgia succeeded in entrapping their enemies by snares which a modern northerner would detect from the first and laugh to scorn as mere child's play. There is an extraordinary readiness in Italians to fit themselves and their lives to circumstances whenever they can save themselves trouble by doing so. Their constitutions are convenient to this end, for they are temperate in most things and do not easily fall into habits which they cannot change at will. The desire to avoid trouble makes them the most courteous among nations; and they are singularly obliging to strangers when, by conferring an obligation, they are able to make an acquaintance who will help them to pass an idle hour in agreeable conversation. They are equally surprised, whether a stranger suspects them of making advances for the sake of extracting money from him, or expresses resentment at having been fraudulently induced to part with any cash. The beggar in the street howls like a madman if you refuse an alms, and calls you an idiot to his fellow-mendicant if you give him five centimes. The servant says in his heart that his foreign employer is a fool, and sheds tears of rage and mortification when his shallow devices for petty cheating are discovered. And yet the servant, the beggar, the shopkeeper, and the gentleman, are obliging sometimes almost to philanthropy, and are ever ready to make themselves agreeable. The Marchese di San Giacinto differed from his relations, the Saracinesca princes, in that he was a full-blooded Italian, and not the result of a cosmopolitan race-fusion, like so many of the Roman nobles. He had not the Roman traditions, but, on the other hand, he had his full share of the national characteristics, together with something individual which lifted him above the common herd in point of intelligence and in strength. He was a noticeable man; all the more so because, with many pleasant qualities, his countrymen rarely possess that physical and mental combination of size, energy, and reserve, which inspires the sort of respect enjoyed by imposing personages. As he sat talking with the family after dinner on the evening of his first introduction to the household what passed in his mind and in the minds of his hosts can be easily stated. Sant' Ilario, whose ideas were more clear upon most subjects than those of his father or his wife, said to himself that he did not like the man; that he suspected him, and believed he had some hidden intention in coming to Rome; that it would be wise to watch him perpetually and to question everything he did; but that he was undeniably a relation, possessing every right to consideration, and entitled to be treated with a certain familiarity; that, finally and on the whole, he was a nuisance, to be borne with a good grace and a sufficient show of cordiality. San Giacinto, for his part, was deeply engaged in maintaining the exact standard of manners which he knew to be necessary for the occasion, and his thoughts concerning his relatives were not yet altogether defined. It was his intention to take his place among them, and he was doing his best to accomplish this object as speedily and quietly as possible. He had not supposed that princes and princesses were in any way different from other human beings except by the accidents of wealth and social position. Master of these two requisites there was no reason why he should not feel as much at home with the Saracinesca as he had felt in the society of the mayor and municipal council of Aquila, who possessed those qualifications also, though in a less degree. The Saracinesca probably thought about most questions very much as he himself did, or if there were any difference in their mode of thinking it was due to Roman prejudice and tradition rather than to any peculiarity inherent in the organisation of the members of the higher aristocracy. If he should find himself in any dilemma owing to his ignorance of social details he would not hesitate to apply to the prince for information, since it was by no means his fault if he had been brought up an innkeeper and was now to be a nobleman. His immediate object was to place himself among his equals, and his next purpose was to marry again, in his new rank, a woman of good position and fortune. Of this matter he intended to speak to the prince in due time, when he should have secured the first requisite to his marriage by establishing himself firmly in society. He meant to apply to the prince, ostensibly as to the head of the family, thereby showing a deference to that dignity, which he supposed would be pleasing to the old gentleman; but he had not forgotten in his calculations the pride which old Saracinesca must naturally feel in his race, and which would probably induce him to take very great pains in finding a suitable wife for San Giacinto rather than permit the latter to contract a discreditable alliance. San Giacinto left the house at half-past nine o'clock, under the pretext of another engagement, for he did not mean to weary his relations with too much of his company in the first instance. When he was gone the three looked at each other in silence for some moments. "He has surprisingly good manners, for an innkeeper," said Corona at last. "No one will ever suspect his former life. But I do not like him." "Nor I," said the prince. "He wants something," said Sant' Ilario. "And he will probably get it," he added, after a short pause. "He has a determined face." CHAPTER IV. Anastase Gouache recovered rapidly from his injuries, but not so quickly as he wished. There was trouble in the air, and many of his comrades were already gone to the frontier where the skirmishing with the irregular volunteers of Garibaldi's guerilla force had now begun in earnest. To be confined to the city at such a time was inexpressibly irksome to the gallant young Frenchman, who had a genuine love of fighting in him, and longed for the first sensation of danger and the first shower of whistling bullets. But his inactivity was inevitable, and he was obliged to submit with the best grace he could, hoping only that all might not be over before he was well enough to tramp out and see some service with his companions-in-arms. The situation was indeed urgent. The first article of the famous convention between France and Italy, ratified in September, 1864, read as follows:-- "Italy engages not to attack the actual territory of the Holy Father, and to prevent, even by force, all attack coming from outside against such territory." Relying upon the observance of this chief clause, France had conscientiously executed the condition imposed by the second article, which provided that all French troops should be withdrawn from the States of the Church. The promise of Italy to prevent invasion by force applied to Garibaldi and his volunteers. Accordingly, on the 24th of September, 1867, the Italian Government issued a proclamation against the band and its proceedings, and arrested Garibaldi at Sinalunga, in the neighbourhood of Arezzo. This was the only force employed, and it may be believed that the Italian Government firmly expected that the volunteers would disperse as soon as they found themselves without a leader; and had proper measures been taken for keeping the general in custody this would in all probability have followed very shortly, as his sons, who were left at large, did not possess any of their father's qualifications for leadership. Garibaldi, however, escaped eighteen days later, and again joined his band, which had meanwhile been defeated by the Pope's troops in a few small engagements, and had gained one or two equally insignificant advantages over the latter. As soon as it was known that Garibaldi was again at large, a simultaneous movement began, the numerous Garibaldian emissaries who had arrived in Rome stirring up an attempt at insurrection within the city, while Garibaldi himself made a bold dash and seized Monte Rotondo, another force at the same time striking at Sutbiaco, which, by a strange ignorance of the mountains, Garibaldi appears to have believed to be the southern key to the Campagna. In consequence of the protestations of the French minister to the court of Italy, and perhaps, too, in consequence of the approach of a large body of French troops by sea, the Italian Government again issued a proclamation against Garibaldi, who, however, remained in his strong position at Monte Rotondo. Finally, on the 30th of October, the day on which the French troops re-entered Rome, the Italians made a show of interfering in the Pope's favour, General Menatiea authorising the Italian forces to enter the Papal States in order to maintain order. They did not, however, do more than make a short advance, and no active measures were taken, but Garibaldi was routed on the 3d and 4th of November by the Papal forces, and his band being dispersed the incident was at an end. But for the armed intervention of France the result would have been that which actually came about in 1870, when, the same Convention being still valid, the French were prevented by their own disasters from sending a force to the assistance of the Pope. It is not yet time to discuss the question of the annexation of the States of the Church to the kingdom of Italy. It is sufficient to have shown that the movement of 1867 took place without any actual violation of the letter of the Convention. The spirit in which the Italian Government acted might be criticised at length. It is sufficient however to notice that the Italian Government was, as it still is, a parliamentary one; and to add that parliamentary government, in general, exhibits its weakest side in the emergency of war, as its greatest advantages are best appreciated in times of peace. In the Italian Parliament of that day, as in that of the present time, there was a preponderance of representatives who considered Rome to be the natural capital of the country, and who were as ready to trample upon treaties for the accomplishment of what they believed a righteous end, as most parliaments have everywhere shown themselves in similar circumstances. That majority differed widely, indeed, in opinion from Garibaldi and Mazzini, but they conceived that they had a right to take full advantage of any revolution the latter chanced to bring about, and that it was their duty to their country to direct the stream of disorder into channel which should lead to the aggrandisement of Italy, by making use of Italy's standing army. The defenders of the Papal States found themselves face to face, not with any organised and disciplined force, but with a horde of brutal ruffians and half-grown lads, desperate in that delight of unbridled license which has such attractions for the mob in all countries; and all alike, Zouaves, native troops and Frenchmen, were incensed to the highest degree by the conduct of their enemies. It would be absurd to make the Italian Government responsible for the atrocious defiling of churches, the pillage and the shocking crimes of all sorts, which marked the advance or retreat of the Garibaldians; but it is equally absurd to deny that a majority of the Italians regarded these doings as a means to a very desirable end, and, if they had not been hindered by the French, would have marched a couple of army corps in excellent order to the gates of Rome through the channel opened by a mob of lawless insurgents. Anastase Gouache was disgusted with his state of forced inaction as he paced the crowded pavement of the Corso every afternoon for three weeks after his accident, smoking endless cigarettes, and cursing the fate which kept him an invalid at home when his fellow-soldiers were enjoying themselves amidst the smell of gunpowder and the adventures of frontier skirmishing. It was indeed bad luck, he thought, to have worn the uniform during nearly two years of perfect health and then to be disabled just when the fighting began. He had one consolation, however, in the midst of his annoyance, and he made the most of it. He had been fascinated by Donna Faustina Montevarchi's brown eyes, and for lack of any other interest upon which to expend his energy he had so well employed his time that he was now very seriously in love with that young lady. Among her numerous attractions was one which had a powerful influence on the young artist, namely, the fact that she was, according to all human calculations, absolutely beyond his reach. Nothing had more charm for Gouache, as for many gifted and energetic young men, than that which it must require a desperate effort to get, if it could be got at all. Frenchmen, as well as Italians, consider marriage so much in the light of a mere contract which must be settled between notaries and ratified by parental assent, that to love a young girl seems to them like an episode out of a fairy tale, enchantingly novel and altogether delightful. To us, who consider love as a usual if not an absolutely necessary preliminary to marriage, this point of view is hardly conceivable; but it is enough to tell a Frenchman that you have married your wife because you loved her, and not because your parents or your circumstances arranged the match for you, to hear him utter the loudest exclamations of genuine surprise and admiration, declaring that his ideal of happiness, which he considers of course as quite unattainable, would be to marry the woman of his affections. The immediate result of a state in which that sort of bliss is considered to be generally beyond the grasp of humanity has been to produce the moral peculiarities of the French novel, of the French play, and of the French household, as it is usually exhibited in books and on the stage. The artist-Zouave was made of determined stuff. It was not for nothing that he had won the great prize which brought him to the Academy in Rome, nor was it out of mere romantic idleness that he had thrown over the feeble conspiracies of Madame Mayer and her set in order to wear a uniform. He had profound convictions, though he was not troubled with any great number of them. Each new one which took hold of him marked an epoch in his young life, and generally proved tenacious in proportion as he had formerly regarded it as absurd; and it was a proof of the sound balance of his mind that the three or four real convictions which he had accumulated during his short life were in no way contradictory to each other. On the contrary, each one seemed closely bound up with the rest, and appeared to bring a fresh energy to that direct action which, with Anastase, was the only possible result of any belief whatsoever. There was therefore a goodly store of logic in his madness, and though, like Childe Harold, he had sighed to many, and at present loved but one, yet he was determined, if it were possible, that this loved one should be his; seeing that to sigh for anything, and not to take it if it could be taken, was the part of a boy and not of a strong man. Moreover, although the social difficulties which lay in his way were an obstacle which would have seemed insurmountable to many, there were two considerations which gave Anastase some hope of ultimate success. In the first place Donna Faustina herself was not indifferent; and, secondly, Anastase was no longer the humble student who had come to Rome some years earlier with nothing but his pension in his pocket and his talent in his fingers. He was certainly not of ancient lineage, but since he had attained that position which enabled him to be received as an equal in the great world, and had by his skill accumulated a portion of that filthy lucre which is the platform whereon society moves and has its exclusive being, he had the advantage of talking to Donna Faustina, wherever he met her, in spite of her father's sixty-four quarterings. Nor did those meetings take place only under the auspices of so much heraldry and blazon, as will presently appear. At that period of the year, and especially during such a time of disturbance, there was no such thing as gaiety possible in Rome. People met quietly in little knots at each other's houses and talked over the state of the country, or walked and drove as usual in the villas and on the Pincio. When society cannot be gay it is very much inclined to grow confidential, to pull a long face, and to say things which, if uttered above a whisper, would be considered extremely shocking, but which, being communicated, augmented, criticised, and passed about quickly without much noise, are considered exceedingly interesting. When every one is supposed to be talking of politics it is very easy for every one to talk scandal, and to construct neighbourly biography of an imaginary character which shall presently become a part of contemporary history. On the whole, society would almost as gladly do this as dance. In those days of which I am speaking, therefore, there were many places where two or three, and sometimes as many as ten, were gathered together in council, ostensibly for the purpose of devising means whereby the Holy Father might overcome his enemies, though they were very often engaged in criticising the indecent haste exhibited by their best friends in yielding to the wiles of Satan. There were several of these rallying points, among which may be chiefly noticed the Palazzo Valdarno, the Palazzo Saracinesca, and the Palazzo Montevarchi. In the first of these three it may be observed in passing that there was a division of opinion, the old people being the most rigid of conservatives, while the children declared as loudly as they dared that they were for Victor Emmanuel and United Italy. The Saracinesca, on the other hand, were firmly united and determined to stand by the existing order of things. Lastly, the Montevarchi all took their opinions from the head of the house, and knew very well that they would submit like sheep to be led whichever way was most agreeable to the old prince. The friends who frequented those various gatherings were of course careful to say whatever was most sure to please their hosts, and after the set speeches were made most of them fell to their usual occupation of talking about each other. Gouache was an old friend of the Saracinesca, and came whenever he pleased; since his accident, too, he had become better acquainted with the Montevarchi, and was always a welcome guest, as he generally brought the latest news of the fighting, as well as the last accounts from France, which he easily got through his friendship with the young attaches of his embassy. It is not surprising therefore that he should have found so many opportunities of meeting Donna Faustina, especially as Corona di Sant' Ilario had taken a great fancy to the young girl and invited her constantly to the house. On the very first occasion when Gouache called upon the Princess Montevarchi in order to express again his thanks for the kindness he had received, he found the room half full of people. Faustina was sitting alone, turning over the pages of a book, and no one seemed to pay any attention to her. After the usual speeches to the hostess Gouache sat down beside her. She raised her brown eyes, recognised him, and smiled faintly. "What a wonderful contrast you are enjoying, Donna Faustina," said the Zouave. "How so? I confess it seems monotonous enough." "I mean that it is a great change for you, from the choir of the Sacro Cuore, from the peace of a convent, to this atmosphere of war." "Yes; I wish I were back again." "You do not like what you have seen of the world, Mademoiselle? It is very natural. If the world were always like this its attraction would not be dangerous. It is the pomps and vanities that are delightful." "I wish they would begin then," answered Donna Faustina with more natural frankness than is generally found in young girls of her education. "But were you not taught by the good sisters that those things are of the devil?" asked Gouache with a smile. "Of course. But Flavia says they are very nice." Gouache imagined that Flavia ought to know, but he thought fit to conceal his conviction. "You mean Donna Flavia, your sister, Mademoiselle?" "Yes." "I suppose you are very fond of her, are you not? It must be very pleasant to have a sister so nearly of one's own age in the world." "She is much older than I, but I think we shall be very good friends." "Your family must be almost as much strangers to you as the rest of the world," observed Gouache. "Of course you have only seen them occasionally for a long time past. You are fond of reading, I see." He made this remark to change the subject, and glanced at the book the young girl still held in her hand. "It is a new book," she said, opening the volume at the title-page. "It is Manon Lescaut. Flavia has read it--it is by the Abbe Prevost. Do you know him?" Gouache did not know whether to laugh or to look grave. "Did your mother give it to you?" he asked. "No, but she says that as it is by an abbe, she supposes it must be very moral. It is true that it has not the imprimatur, but being by a priest it cannot possibly be on the Index." "I do not know," replied Gouache, "Prevost was certainly in holy orders, but I do not know him, as he died rather more than a hundred years ago. You see the book is not new." "Oh!" exclaimed Donna Faustina, "I thought it was. Why do you laugh? Am I very ignorant not to know all about it?" "No, indeed. Only, you will pardon me, Mademoiselle, if I offer a suggestion. You see I am French and know a little about these matters. You will permit me?" Faustina opened her brown eyes very wide, and nodded gravely. "If I were you, I would not read that book yet. You are too young." "You seem to forget that I am eighteen years old, Monsieur Gouache." "No, not at all. But five and twenty is a better age to read such books. Believe me," he added seriously, "that story is not meant for you." Faustina looked at him for a few seconds and then laid the volume on the table, pushing it away from her with a puzzled air. Gouache was inwardly much amused at the idea of finding himself the moral preceptor of a young girl he scarcely knew, in the house of her parents, who passed for the most strait-laced of their kind. A feeling of deep resentment against Flavia, however, began to rise beneath his first sensation of surprise. "What are books for?" asked Donna Faustina, with a little sigh. "The good ones are dreadfully dull, and it is wrong to read the amusing ones--until one is married. I wonder why?" Gouache did not find any immediate answer and might have been seriously embarrassed had not Giovanni Sant' Ilario come up just then. Gouache rose to relinquish his seat to the newcomer, and as he passed before the table deftly turned over the book with his finger so that the title should not be visible. It jarred disagreeably on his sensibilities to think that Giovanni might see a copy of Manon Lescaut lying by the elbow of Donna Faustina Montevarchi. Sant' Ilario did not see the action and probably would not have noticed it if he had. Anastase pondered all that afternoon and part of the next morning over his short conversation, and the only conclusion at which he arrived was that Faustina was the most fascinating girl he had ever met. When he compared the result produced in his mind with his accurate recollection of what had passed between them, he laughed at his haste and called himself a fool for yielding to such nonsensical ideas. The conversation of a young girl, he argued, could only be amusing for a short time. He wondered what he should say at their next meeting, since all such talk, according to his notions, must inevitably consist of commonplaces. And yet at the end of a quarter of an hour of such meditation he found that he was constructing an interview which was anything but dull, at least in his own anticipatory opinion. Meanwhile the first ten days of October passed in comparative quiet. The news of Garibaldi's arrest produced temporary lull in the excitement felt in Rome, although the real struggle was yet to come. People observed to each other that strange faces were to be seen in the streets, but as no one could enter without a proper passport, very little anxiety gained the public mind. Gouache saw Faustina very often during the month that followed his accident. Such good fortune would have been impossible under any other circumstances, but, as has been explained, there were numerous little social confabulations on foot, for people were drawn together by a vague sense of common danger, and the frequent meetings of the handsome Zouave with the youngest of the Montevarchi passed unnoticed in the general stir. The old princess indeed often saw the two together, but partly owing to her English breeding, and partly because Gouache was not in the least eligible or possible as a husband for her daughter, she attached no importance to the acquaintance. The news that Garibaldi was again at large caused great excitement, and every day brought fresh news of small engagements along the frontier. Gouache was not yet quite recovered, though he felt as strong as ever, and applied every day for leave to go to the front. At last, on the 22d of October, the surgeon pronounced him to be completely recovered, and Anastase was ordered to leave the city on the following morning at daybreak. As he mounted the sombre staircase of the Palazzo Saracinesca on the afternoon previous to his departure, the predominant feeling in his breast was great satisfaction and joy at being on the eve of seeing active service, and he himself was surprised at the sharp pang he suffered in the anticipation of bidding farewell to his friends. He knew what friend it was whom he dreaded to leave, and how bitter that parting would be, for which three weeks earlier he could have summoned a neat speech expressing just so much of feeling as should be calculated to raise an interest in the hearer, and prompted by just so much delicate regret as should impart a savour of romance to his march on the next day. It was different now. Donna Faustina was in the room, as he had reason to expect, but it was several minutes before Anastase could summon the determination necessary to go to her side. She was standing near the piano, which faced outwards towards the body of the room, but was screened by a semicircular arrangement of plants, a novel idea lately introduced by Corona, who was weary of the stiff old-fashioned way of setting all the furniture against the wall. Faustina was standing at this point therefore, when Gouache made towards her, having done homage to Corona and to the other ladies in the room. His attention was arrested for a moment by the sight of San Giacinto's gigantic figure. The cousin of the house was standing before Flavia Montevarchi, bending slightly towards her and talking in low tones. His magnificent proportions made him by far the most noticeable person in the room, and it is no wonder that Gouache paused and looked at him, mentally observing that the two would make a fine couple. As he stood still he became aware that Corona herself was at his side. He glanced at her with something of inquiry in his eyes, and was about to speak when she made him a sign to follow her. They sat down together in a deserted corner at the opposite end of the room. "I have something to say to you, Monsieur Gouache," she said, in a low voice, as she settled herself against the cushions. "I do not know that I have any right to speak, except that of a good friend--and of a woman." "I am at your orders, princess." "No, I have no orders to give you. I have only a suggestion to make. I have watched you often during the last month. My advice begins with a question. Do you love her?" Gouache's first instinct was to express the annoyance he felt at this interrogation. He moved quickly and glanced sharply at Corona's velvet eyes. Before the words that were on his lips could be spoken he remembered all the secret reverence and respect he had felt for this woman since he had first known her, he remembered how he had always regarded her as a sort of goddess, a superior being, at once woman and angel, placed far beyond the reach of mortals like himself. His irritation vanished as quickly as it had arisen. But Corona had seen it. "Are you angry?" she asked. "If you knew how I worship you, you would know that I am not," answered Gouache with a strange simplicity. For an instant the princess's deep eyes flashed and a dark blush mounted through her olive skin. She drew back, rather proudly. A delicate, gentle smile played round the soldier's mouth. "Perhaps it is your turn to be angry, Madame," he said, quietly. "But you need not be. I would say it to your husband, as I would say it to you in his presence. I worship you. You are the most beautiful woman in the world, the most nobly good. Everybody knows it, why should I not say it? I wish I were a little child, and that you were my mother. Are you angry still?" Corona was silent, and her eyes grew soft again as she looked kindly at the man beside her. She did not understand him, but she knew that he meant to express something which was not bad. Gouache waited for her to speak. "It was not for that I asked you to come with me," she said at last. "I am glad I said it," replied Gouache. "I am going away to-morrow, and it might never have been said. You asked me if I loved her. I trust you. I say, yes, I do. I am going to say good-bye this afternoon." "I am sorry you love her. Is it serious?" "Absolutely, on my part. Why are you sorry? Is there anything unnatural in it?" "No, on the contrary, it is too natural. Our lives are unnatural. You cannot marry her. It seems brutal to tell you so, but you must know it already." "There was once a little boy in Paris, Madame, who did not have enough to eat every day, nor enough clothes when the north wind blew. But he had a good heart. His name was Anastase Gouache." "My dear friend," said Corona, kindly, "the atmosphere of Casa Montevarchi is colder than the north wind. A man may overcome almost anything more easily than the old-fashioned prejudices of a Roman prince." "You do not forbid me to try?" "Would the prohibition make any difference?" "I am not sure." Gouache paused and looked long at the princess. "No," he said at last, "I am afraid not." "In that case I can only say one thing. You are a man of honour. Do your best not to make her uselessly unhappy. Win her if you can, by any fair means. But she has a heart, and I am very fond of the child. If any harm comes to her I shall hold you responsible. If you love her, think what it would be should she love you and be married to another man." A shade of sadness darkened Corona's brow, as she remembered those terrible months of her own life. Gouache knew what she meant and was silent for a few moments. "I trust you," said she, at last. "And since you are going to-morrow, God bless you. You are going in a good cause." She held out her hand as she rose to leave him, and he bent over it and touched it with his lips, as he would have kissed the hand of his mother. Then, skirting the little assembly of people, Anastase went back towards the piano, in search of Donna Faustina. He found her alone, as young girls are generally to be found in Roman drawing-rooms, unless there are two of them present to sit together. "What have you been talking about with the princess?" asked Donna Faustina when Gouache was seated beside her. "Could you see from here?" asked Gouache instead of answering. "I thought the plants would have hindered you." "I saw you kiss her hand when you got up, and so I supposed that the conversation had been serious." "Less serious than ours must be," replied Anastase, sadly. "I was saying good-bye to her, and now--" "Good-bye? Why--?" Faustina checked herself and looked away to hide her pallor. She felt cold, and a slight shiver passed over her slender figure. "I am going to the front to-morrow morning." There was a long silence, during which the two looked at each other from time to time, neither finding courage to speak. Since Gouache had been in the room it had grown dark, and as yet but one lamp had been brought. The young man's eyes sought those he loved in the dusk, and as his hand stole out it met another, a tender, nervous hand, trembling with emotion. They did not heed what was passing near them. As though their silence were contagious, the conversation died away, and there was a general lull, such as sometimes falls upon an assemblage of people who have been talking for some time. Then, through the deep windows there came up a sound of distant uproar, mingled with occasional sharp detonations, few indeed, but the more noticeable for their rarity. Suddenly the door of the drawing-room burst open, and a servant's voice was heard speaking in a loud key, the coarse accents and terrified tone contrasting strangely with the sounds generally heard in such a place. "Excellency! Excellency! The revolution! Garibaldi is at the gates! The Italians are coming! Madonna! Madonna! The revolution, Eccellenza mia!" The man was mad with fear. Every one spoke at once. Some laughed, thinking the man crazy. Others, who had heard the distant noise from the streets, drew back and looked nervously towards the door. Then Sant' Ilario's clear, strong voice, rang like a clarion through the room. "Bar the gates. Shut the blinds all over the house--it is of no use to let them break good windows. Don't stand there shivering like a fool. It is only a mob." Before he had finished speaking, San Giacinto was calmly bolting the blinds of the drawing-room windows, fastening each one as steadily and securely as he had been wont to put up the shutters of his inn at Aquila in the old days. In the dusky corner by the piano Gouache and Faustina were overlooked in the general confusion. There was no time for reflection, for at the first words of the servant Anastase knew that he must go instantly to his post. Faustina's little hand was still clasped in his, as they both sprang to their feet. Then with a sudden movement he clasped her in his arms and kissed her passionately. "Good-bye--my beloved!" The girl's arms were twined closely about him, and her eyes looked up to his with a wild entreaty. "You are safe here, my darling--good-bye!" "Where are you going?" "To the Serristori barracks. God keep you safe till I come back--good-bye!" "I will go with you," said Faustina, with a strange look of determination in her angelic face. Gouache smiled, even then, at the mad thought which presented itself to the girl's mind. Once more he kissed her, and then, she knew not how, he was gone. Other persons had come near them, shutting the windows rapidly, one after the other, in anticipation of danger from without. With instinctive modesty Faustina withdrew her arms from the young man's neck and shrank back. In that moment he disappeared in the crowd. Faustina stared wildly about her for a few seconds, confused and stunned by the suddenness of what had passed, above all by the thought that the man she loved was gone from her side to meet his death. Then without hesitation she left the room. No one hindered her, for the Saracinesca men were gone to see to the defences of the house, and Corona was already by the cradle of her child. No one noticed the slight figure as it slipped through the door and was gone in the darkness of the unlighted halls. All was confusion and noise and flashing of passing lights as the servants hurried about, trying to obey orders in spite of their terror. Faustina glided like a shadow down the vast staircase, slipped through one of the gates just as the bewildered porter was about to close it, and in a moment was out in the midst of the multitude that thronged the dim streets--a mere child and alone, facing a revolution in the dark. CHAPTER V. Gouache made his way as fast as he could to the bridge of Sant' Angelo, but his progress was constantly impeded by moving crowds--bodies of men, women, and children rushing frantically together at the corners of the streets and then surging onward in the direction of the resultant produced by their combined forces in the shock. There was loud and incoherent screaming of women and shouting of men, out of which occasionally a few words could be distinguished, more often "Viva Pio Nono!" or "Viva la Repubblica!" than anything else. The scene of confusion baffled description. A company of infantry was filing out of the castle of Sant' Angelo on to the bridge, where it was met by a dense multitude of people coming from the opposite direction. A squadron of mounted gendarmes came up from the Borgo Nuovo at the same moment, and half a dozen cabs were jammed in between the opposing masses of the soldiers and the people. The officer at the head of the column of foot-soldiers loudly urged the crowd to make way, and the latter, consisting chiefly of peaceable but terrified citizens, attempted to draw back, while the weight of those behind pushed them on. Gouache, who was in the front of the throng, was allowed to enter the file of infantry, in virtue of his uniform, and attempted to get through and make his way to the opposite bank. But with the best efforts he soon found himself unable to move, the soldiers being wedged together as tightly as the people. Presently the crowd in the piazza seemed to give way and the column began to advance again, bearing Gouache backwards in the direction he had come. He managed to get to the parapet, however, by edging sideways through the packed ranks. "Give me your shoulder, comrade!" he shouted to the man next to him. The fellow braced himself, and in an instant the agile Zouave was on the narrow parapet, running along as nimbly as a cat, and winding himself past the huge statues at every half-dozen steps. He jumped down at the other end and ran for the Borgo Santo Spirito at the top of his speed. The broad space was almost deserted and in three minutes he was before the gates of the barracks, which were situated on the right-hand side of the street, just beyond the College of the Penitentiaries and opposite the church of San Spirito in Sassia. Meanwhile Donna Faustina Montevarchi was alone in the streets. In desperate emergencies young and nervously-organised people most commonly act in accordance with the dictates of the predominant passion by which they are influenced. Very generally that passion is terror, but when it is not, it is almost impossible to calculate the consequences which may follow. When the whole being is dominated by love and by the greatest anxiety for the safety of the person loved, the weakest woman will do deeds which might make a brave man blush for his courage. This was precisely Faustina's case. If any man says that he understands women he is convicted of folly by his own speech, seeing that they are altogether incomprehensible. Of men, it may be sufficient for general purposes to say with David that they are all liars, even though we allow that they may be all curable of the vice of falsehood. Of women, however, there is no general statement which is true. The one is brave to heroism, the next cowardly in a degree fantastically comic. The one is honest, the other faithless; the one contemptible in her narrowness of soul, the next supremely noble in broad truth as the angels in heaven; the one trustful, the other suspicious; this one gentle as a dove, that one grasping and venomous as a strong serpent. The hearts of women are as the streets of a great town--some broad and straight and clean; some dim and narrow and winding; or as the edifices and buildings of that same city, wherein there are holy temples, at which men worship in calm and peace, and dens where men gamble away the souls given them by God against the living death they call pleasure, which is doled out to them by the devil; in which there are quiet dwellings, and noisy places of public gathering, fair palaces and loathsome charnel-houses, where the dead are heaped together, even as our dead sins lie ghastly and unburied in that dark chamber of the soul, whose gates open of their own selves and shall not be sealed while there is life in us to suffer. Dost thou boast that thou knowest the heart of woman? Go to, thou more than fool! The heart of woman containeth all things, good and evil; and knowest thou then all that is? Donna Faustina was no angel. She had not that lofty calmness which we attribute to the angelic character. She was very young, utterly inexperienced and ignorant of the world. The idea which over-towers all other ideas was the first which had taken hold upon her, and under its strength she was like a flower before the wind. She was not naturally of the heroic type either, as Corona d'Astrardente had been, and perhaps was still, capable of sacrifice for the ideal of duty, able to suffer torment rather than debase herself by yielding, strong to stem the torrent of a great passion until she had the right to abandon herself to its mighty flood. Faustina was a younger and a gentler woman, not knowing what she did from the moment her heart began to dictate her actions, willing, above all, to take the suggestion of her soul as a command, and, because she knew no evil, rejoicing in an abandonment which might well have terrified one who knew the world. She already loved Anastase intensely. Under the circumstances of his farewell, the startling effect of the announcement of a revolution, the necessity under which, as a soldier, he found himself of leaving her instantly in order to face a real danger, with his first kiss warm upon her lips, and with the frightful conviction that if he left her it might be the last--under all the emotions brought about by these things, half mad with love and anxiety, it was not altogether wonderful that she acted as she did. She could not have explained it, for the impulse was so instinctive that she did not comprehend it, and the deed followed so quickly upon the thought that there was no time for reflection. She fled from the room and from the palace, out into the street, wholly unconscious of danger, like a creature in a dream. The crowd which had impeded Gouache's progress was already thinning when Faustina reached the pavement. She was born and bred in Rome, and as a child, before the convent days, had been taken to walk many a time in the neighbourhood of Saint Peter's. She knew well enough where the Serristori barracks were situated, and turned at once towards Sant' Angelo. There were still many people about, most of them either hurrying in the direction whence the departing uproar still proceeded, or running homewards to get out of danger. Few noticed her, and for some time no one hindered her progress, though it was a strange sight to see a fair young girl, dressed in the fashion of the time which so completely distinguished her from Roman women of lower station, running at breathless speed through the dusky streets. Suddenly she lost her way. Coming down the Via de' Coronari she turned too soon to the right and found herself in the confusing byways which form a small labyrinth around the church of San Salvatore in Lauro. She had entered a blind alley on the left when she ran against two men, who unexpectedly emerged from one of those underground wine-shops which are numerous in that neighbourhood. They were talking in low and earnest tones, and one of them staggered backward as the young girl rushed upon him in the dark. Instinctively the man grasped her and held her tightly by the arms. "Where are you running to, my beauty?" he asked, as she struggled to get away. "Oh, let me go! let me go!" she cried in agonised tones, twisting her slender wrists in his firm grip. The other man stood by, watching the scene. "Better let her go, Peppino," he said. "Don't you see she is a lady?" "A lady, eh?" echoed the other. "Where are you going to, with that angel's face?" "To the Serristori barrack," answered Faustina, still struggling with all her might. At this announcement both men laughed loudly and glanced quickly at each other. They seemed to think the answer a very good joke. "If that is all, you may go, and the devil accompany you. What say you, Gaetano?" Then they laughed again. "Take that chain and brooch as a ricordo--just for a souvenir," said Gaetano, who then himself tore off the ornaments while the other held Faustina's hands. "You are a pretty girl indeed!" he cried, looking at her pale face in the light of the filthy little red lamp that hung over the low door of the wine-shop. "I never kissed a lady in my life." With that he grasped her delicate chin in his foul hand and bent down, bringing his grimy face close to hers. But this was too much. Though Faustina had hitherto fought with all her natural strength against the ruffians, there was a reserved force, almost superhuman, in her slight frame, which was suddenly roused by the threatened outrage. With a piercing shriek she sprang backwards and dashed herself free, sending the two blackguards reeling into the darkness. Then, like a flash she was gone. By chance she took the right turning and in a moment more found herself in the Via di Tordinona, just opposite the entrance of the Apollo theatre. The torn white handbills on the wall, and the projecting shed over the doors told her where she was. By this time the soldiers who had intercepted Gouache's passage across the bridge, as well as the dense crowd, had disappeared, and Faustina ran like the wind along the pavement it had taken the soldier so long to traverse. Like a flitting bird she sped over the broad space beyond and up the Borgo Nuovo, past the long low hospital, wherein the sick and dying lay in their silence, tended by the patient Sisters of Mercy, while all was in excitement without. The young girl ran past the corner. A Zouave was running before her towards the gate of the barrack where a sentinel stood motionless under the lamp, his gray hood drawn over his head and his rifle erect by his shoulder. At that instant a terrific explosion rent the air, followed a moment later by the dull crash of falling fragments of masonry, and then by a long thundering, rumbling sound, dreadful to hear, which lasted several minutes, as the ruins continued to fall in, heaps upon heaps, sending immense clouds of thick dust up into the night air. Then all was still. The little piazza before San Spirito in Sassia was half filled with masses of stone and brickwork and crumbling mortar. A young girl lay motionless upon her face at the corner of the hospital, her white hands stretched out towards the man who lay dead but a few feet before her, crushed under a great irregular mound of stones and rubbish. Beneath the central heap where the barracks had stood lay the bodies of the poor Zouaves, deep buried in wreck of the main building, the greater part of which had fallen across the side street that passes between the Penitenzieri and the Serristori. All was still for many minutes, while the soft light streamed from the high windows of the hospital and faintly illuminated some portion of the hideous scene. Very slowly a few stragglers came in sight, then more, and then by degrees a great dark crowd of awestruck people were collected together and stood afar off, fearing to come near, lest the ruins should still continue falling. Presently the door of the hospital opened and a party of men in gray blouses, headed by three or four gentlemen in black coats--one indeed was in his shirt sleeves--emerged into the silent street and went straight towards the scene of the disaster. They carried lanterns and a couple of stretchers such as are used for bearing the wounded. It chanced that the straight line they followed from the door did not lead them to where the girl was lying, and it was not until after a long and nearly fruitless search that they turned back. Two soldiers only, and both dead, could they find to bring back. The rest were buried far beneath, and it would be the work of many hours to extricate the bodies, even with a large force of men. As the little procession turned sadly back, they found that the crowd had advanced cautiously forward and now filled the street. In the foremost rank a little circle stood about a dark object that lay on the ground, curious, but too timid to touch it. "Signor Professore," said one man in a low voice, "there is a dead woman." The physicians came forward and bent over the body. One of them shook his head, as the bright light of the lantern fell on her face while he raised the girl from the ground. "She is a lady," said one of the others in a low voice. The men brought a stretcher and lifted the girl's body gently from the ground, scarcely daring to touch her, and gazing anxiously but yet in wonder at the white face. When she was laid upon the coarse canvas there was a moment's pause. The crowd pressed closely about the hospital men, and the yellow light of the lanterns was reflected on many strange faces, all bent eagerly forward and down to get a last sight of the dead girl's features. "Andiamo," said one of the physicians in a quiet sad voice. The bearers took up the dead Zouaves again, the procession of death entered the gates of the hospital, and the heavy doors closed behind like the portals of a tomb. The crowd closed again and pressed forward to the ruins. A few gendarmes had come up, and very soon a party of labourers was at work clearing away the lighter rubbish under the lurid glare of pitch torches stuck into the crevices and cracks of the rent walls. The devilish deed was done, but by a providential accident its consequences had been less awful than might have been anticipated. Only one-third of the mine had actually exploded, and only thirty Zouaves were at the time within the building. "Did you see her face, Gaetano?" asked a rough fellow of his companion. They stood together in a dark corner a little aloof from the throng of people. "No, but it must have been she. I am glad I have not that sin on my soul." "You are a fool, Gaetano. What is a girl to a couple of hundred soldiers? Besides, if you had held her tight she would not have got here in time to be killed." "Eh--but a girl! The other vagabonds at least, we have despatched in a good cause. Viva la liberta!" "Hush! There are the gendarmes! This way!" So they disappeared into the darkness whence they had come. It was not only in the Borgo Nuovo that there was confusion and consternation. The first signal for the outbreak had been given in the Piazza Colonna, where bombs had been exploded. Attacks were made upon the prisons by bands of those sinister-looking, unknown men, who for several days had been noticed in various parts of the city. A compact mob invaded the capitol, armed with better weapons than mobs generally find ready to their hands. At the Porta San Paolo, which was rightly judged to be one of the weakest points of the city, a furious attack was made from without by a band of Garibaldians who had crept up near the walls in various disguises during the last two days. More than one of the barracks within the city were assaulted simultaneously, and for a short time companies of men paraded the streets, shouting their cries of "Viva Garibaldi, Viva la liberta!" A few cried "Viva Vittorio!" and "Viva l'Italia!" But a calm observer--and there were many such in Rome that night--could easily see that the demonstration was rather in favour of an anarchic republic than of the Italian monarchy. On the whole, the population showed no sympathy with the insurrection. It is enough to say that this tiny revolution broke out at dusk and was entirely quelled before nine o'clock of the same evening. The attempts made were bold and desperate in many cases, but were supported by a small body of men only, the populace taking no active part in what was done. Had a real sympathy existed between the lower classes of Romans and the Garibaldians the result could not have been doubtful, for the vigour and energy displayed by the rioters would inevitably have attracted any similarly disposed crowd to join in a fray, when the weight of a few hundreds more would have turned the scale at any point. There was not a French soldier in the city at the time, and of the Zouaves and native troops a very large part were employed upon the frontier. Rome was saved and restored to order by a handful of soldiers, who were obliged to act at many points simultaneously, and the insignificance of the original movement may be determined from this fact. It is true that of the two infernal schemes, plotted at once to destroy the troops in a body and to strike terror into the inhabitants, one failed in part and the other altogether. If the whole of the gunpowder which Giuseppe Monti and Gaetano Tognetti had placed in the mine under the Serristori barracks had exploded, instead of only one-third of the quantity, a considerable part of the Borgo Nuovo would have been destroyed; and even the disaster which actually occurred would have killed many hundreds of Zouaves if these had chanced to be indoors at the time. But it is impossible to calculate the damage and loss of life which would have been recorded had the castle of Sant' Angelo and the adjacent fortifications been blown into the air. A huge mine had been laid and arranged for firing in the vaults of one of the bastions, but the plot was betrayed at the very last moment by one of the conspirators. I may add that these men, who were tried, and condemned only to penal servitude, were liberated in 1870, three years later, by the Italian Government, on the ground that they were merely political prisoners. The attempt in which they had been engaged would, however, even in time of declared war, have been regarded as a crime against the law of nations. Rome was immediately declared under a state of siege, and patrols of troops began to parade the streets, sending all stragglers whom they met to their homes, on the admirable principle that it is the duty of every man who finds himself in a riotous crowd to leave it instantly unless he can do something towards restoring order. Persons who found themselves in other people's houses, however, had some difficulty in at once returning to their own, and as it has been seen that the disturbance began precisely at the time selected by society for holding its confabulations, there were many who found themselves in that awkward situation. As the sounds in the street subsided, the excitement in the drawing-room at the Palazzo Saracinesca diminished likewise. Several of those present announced their intention of departing at once, but to this the old prince made serious objections. The city was not safe, he said. Carriages might be stopped at any moment, and even if that did not occur, all sorts of accidents might arise from the horses shying at the noises, or running over people in the crowds. He had his own views, and as he was in his own house it was not easy to dispute them. "The gates are shut," he said, with a cheerful laugh, "and none of you can get out at present. As it is nearly dinner-time you must all dine with me. It will not be a banquet, but I can give you something to eat. I hope nobody is gone already." Every one, at these words, looked at everybody else, as though to see whether any one were missing. "I saw Monsieur Gouache go out," said Flavia Montevarchi. "Poor fellow!" exclaimed the princess, her mother. "I hope nothing will happen to him!" She paused a moment and looked anxiously round the room. "Good Heavens!" she cried suddenly, "where is Faustina?" "She must have gone out of the room with my wife," said Sant' Ilario, quietly. "I will go and see." The princess thought this explanation perfectly natural and waited till he should return. He did not come back, however, so soon as might have been expected. He found his wife just leaving the nursery. Her first impulse had been to go to the child, and having satisfied herself that he had not been carried off by a band of Garibaldians but was sound asleep in his cradle, she was about to rejoin her guests. "Where is Faustina Montevarchi?" asked Giovanni, as though it were the most natural question in the world. "Faustina?" repeated Corona. "In the drawing-room, to be sure. I have not seen her." "She is not there," said Sant' Ilario, in a more anxious tone. "I thought she had come here with you." "She must be with the rest. You have overlooked her in the crowd. Come back with me and see your son--he does not seem to mind revolution in the least!" Giovanni, who had no real doubt but that Faustina was in the house, entered the nursery with his wife, and they stood together by the child's cradle. "Is he not beautiful?" exclaimed Corona, passing her arm affectionately through her husband's, and leaning her cheek on his shoulder. "He is a fine baby," replied Giovanni, his voice expressing more satisfaction than his words. "He will look like my father when he grows up." "I would rather he should look like you," said Corona. "If he could look like you, dear, there would be some use in wishing." Then they both gazed for some seconds at the swarthy little boy, who lay on his pillows, his arms thrown back above his head and his two little fists tightly clenched. The rich blood softly coloured the child's dark cheeks, and the black lashes, already long, like his mother's, gave a singularly expressive look to the small face. Giovanni tenderly kissed his wife and then they softly left the room. As soon as they were outside Sant' Ilario's thoughts returned to Faustina. "She was certainly not in the drawing-room," he said, "I am quite sure. It was her mother who asked for her and everybody heard the question. I dare not go back without her." They stopped together in the corridor, looking at each other with grave faces. "This is very serious," said Corona. "We must search the house. Send the men. I will tell the women. We will meet at the head of the stairs." Five minutes later, Giovanni returned in pursuit of his wife. "She has left the house," he said, breathlessly. "The porter saw her go out." "Good Heavens! Why did he not stop her?" cried Corona. "Because he is a fool!" answered Sant' Ilario, very pale in his anxiety. "She must have lost her head and gone home. I will tell her mother." When it was known in the drawing-room that Donna Faustina Montevarchi had left the palace alone and on foot every one was horrorstruck. The princess turned as white as death, though she was usually very red in the face. She was a brave woman, however, and did not waste words. "I must go home at once," said she. "Please order my carriage and have the gates opened." Giovanni obeyed silently, and a few minutes later the princess was descending the stairs, accompanied by Flavia, who was silent, a phenomenon seldom to be recorded in connection with that vivacious young lady. Giovanni went also, and his cousin, San Giacinto. "If you will permit me, princess, I will go with you," said the latter as they all reached the carriage. "I may be of some use." Just as they rolled out of the deep archway, the explosion of the barracks rent the air, the tremendous crash thundering and echoing through the city. The panes of the carriage-windows rattled as though they would break, and all Rome was silent while one might count a score. Then the horses plunged wildly in the traces and the vehicle struck heavily against one of the stone pillars which stood before the entrance of the palace. The four persons inside could hear the coachman shouting. "Drive on!" cried San Giacinto, thrusting his head out of the window. "Eccellenza--" began the man in a tone of expostulation. "Drive on!" shouted San Giacinto, in a voice that made the fellow obey in spite of his terror. He had never heard such a voice before, so deep, so strong and so savage. They reached the Palazzo Montevarchi without encountering any serious obstacle. In a few minutes they were convinced that Donna Faustina had not been heard of there, and a council was held upon the stairs. Whilst they were deliberating, Prince Montevarchi came out, and with him his eldest son, Bellegra, a handsome man about thirty years old, with blue eyes and a perfectly smooth fair beard. He was more calm than his father, who spoke excitedly, with many gesticulations. "You have lost Faustina!" cried the old man in wild tones. "You have lost Faustina! And in such times as these! Why do you stand there? Oh, my daughter! my daughter! I have so often told you to be careful, Guendalina--move, in the name of God--the child is lost, lost, I tell you! Have you no heart? no feeling? Are you a mother? Signori miei, I am desperate!" And indeed he seemed to be, as he stood wringing his hands, stamping his feet, and vociferating incoherently, while the tears began to flow down his cheeks. "We are going in search of your daughter," said Sant' Ilario. "Pray calm yourself. She will certainly be found." "Perhaps I had better go too," suggested Ascanio Bellegra, rather timidly. But his father threw his arms round him and held him tightly. "Do you think I will lose another child?" he cried. "No, no, no--figlio mio--you shall never go out into the midst of a revolution." Sant' Ilario looked on gravely, though he inwardly despised the poor old man for his weakness. San Giacinto stood against the wall, waiting, with, a grim smile of amusement on his face. He was measuring Ascanio Bellegra with his eye and thought he would not care for his assistance. The princess looked scornfully at her husband and son. "We are losing time," said Sant' Ilario at last to his cousin. "I promise you to bring you your daughter," he added gravely, turning to the princess. Then the two went away together, leaving Prince Montevarchi still lamenting himself to his wife and son. Flavia had taken no part in the conversation, having entered the hall and gone to her room at once. The cousins left the palace together and walked a little way down the street, before either spoke. Then Sant' Ilario stopped short. "Does it strike you that we have undertaken rather a difficult mission?" he asked. "A very difficult one," answered San Giacinto. "Rome is not the largest city in the world, but I have not the slightest idea where to look for that child. She certainly left our house. She certainly has not returned to her own. Between the two, practically, there lies the whole of Rome. I think the best thing to do, will be to go to the police, if any of them can be found." "Or to the Zouaves," said San Giacinto. "Why to the Zouaves? I do not understand you." "You are all so accustomed to being princes that you do not watch each, other. I have done nothing but watch, you all the time. That young lady is in love with Monsieur Gouache." "Really!" exclaimed Sant' Ilario, to whom the idea was as novel and incredible as it could have been to old Montevarchi himself, "really, you must be mistaken. The thing is impossible." "Not at all. That young man took Donna Faustina's hand and held it for some time there by the piano while I was shutting the windows in your drawing-room." San Giacinto did not tell all he had seen. "What?" cried Sant' Ilario. "You are mad--it is impossible!" "On the contrary, I saw it. A moment later Gouache left the room. Donna Faustina must have gone just after him. It is my opinion that she followed him." Before Sant' Ilario could answer, a small patrol of foot-gendarmes came up, and peremptorily ordered the two gentlemen to go home. Sant' Ilario addressed the corporal in charge. He stated his name and that of his cousin. "A lady has been lost," he then said. "She is Donna Faustina Montevarchi--a young lady, very fair and beautiful. She left the Palazzo Saracinesca alone and on foot half an hour ago and has not been heard of. Be good enough to inform the police you meet of this fact and to say that a large reward will be paid to any one who brings her to her father's house--to this palace here." After a few more words the patrol passed on, leaving the two cousins to their own devices. Sant' Ilario was utterly annoyed at the view just presented to him, and could not believe the thing true, though he had no other explanation to offer. "It is of no use to stand here doing nothing," said San Giacinto rather impatiently. "There is another crowd coming, too, and we shall be delayed again. I think we had better separate. I will go one way, and you take the other." "Where will you go?" asked Sant' Ilario. "You do not know your way about---" "As she may be anywhere, we may find her anywhere, so that it is of no importance whether I know the names of the streets or not. You had best think of all the houses to which she might have gone, among her friends. You know them better than I do. I will beat up all the streets between here and your house. When I am tired I will go to your palace." "I am afraid you will not find her," replied Sant' Ilario. "But we must try for the sake of her poor mother." "It is a question of luck," said the other, and they separated at once. San Giacinto turned in the direction of the crowd which was pouring into the street at some distance farther on. As he approached, he heard the name "Serristori" spoken frequently in the hum of voices. "What about the Serristori?" he asked of the first he met. "Have you not heard?" cried the fellow. "It is blown up with gunpowder! There are at least a thousand dead. Half the Borgo Nuovo is destroyed, and they say that the Vatican will go next---" The man would have run on for any length of time, but San Giacinto had heard enough and dived into the first byway he found, intending to escape the throng and make straight for the barracks. He had to ask his way several times, and it was fully a quarter of an hour before he reached the bridge. Thence he easily found the scene of the disaster, and came up to the hospital of Santo Spirito just after the gates had closed behind the bearers of the dead. He mixed with the crowd and asked questions, learning very soon that the first search, made by the people from the hospital, had only brought to light the bodies of two Zouaves and one woman. "And I did not see her," said the man who was speaking, "but they say she was a lady and beautiful as an angel," "Rubbish!" exclaimed another. "She was a little sewing woman who lived in the Borgo Vecchio. And I know it is true because her innamorato was one of the dead Zouaves they picked up." "I don't believe there was any woman at all," said a third. "What should a woman be doing at the barracks?" "She was killed outside," observed the first speaker, a timid old man. "At least, I was told so, but I did not see her." "It was a woman bringing a baby to put into the Rota," [Footnote: The Rota was a revolving box in which foundlings were formerly placed. The box turned round and the infant was taken inside and cared for. It stands at the gate of the Santo Spirito Hospital, and is still visible, though no longer in use.] cried a shrill-voiced washerwoman. "She got the child in and was running away, when the place blew up, and the devil carried her off. And serve her right, for throwing away her baby, poor little thing!" In the light of these various opinions, most of which supported the story that some woman had been carried into the hospital, San Giacinto determined to find out the truth, and boldly rang the bell. A panel was opened in the door, and the porter looked out at the surging crowd. "What do you want?" he inquired roughly, on seeing that admittance had not been asked for a sick or wounded person. "I want to speak with the surgeon in charge," replied San Giacinto. "He is busy," said the man rather doubtfully. "Who are you?" "A friend of one of the persons just killed." "They are dead. You had better wait till morning and come again," suggested the porter. "But I want to be sure that it is my friend who is dead." "Then why do you not give your name? Perhaps you are a Garibaldian. Why should I open?" "I will tell the surgeon my name, if you will call him. There is something for yourself. Tell him I am a Roman prince and must see him for a moment." "I will see if he will come," said the man, shutting the panel in San Giacinto's face. His footsteps echoed along the pavement of the wide hall within. It was long before he came back, and San Giacinto had leisure to reflect upon the situation. He had very little doubt but that the dead woman was no other than Donna Faustina. By a rare chance, or rather in obedience to an irresistible instinct, he had found the object of his search in half an hour, while his cousin was fruitlessly inquiring for the missing girl in the opposite direction. He had been led to the conclusion that she had followed Gouache by what he had seen in the Saracinesca's drawing-room, and by a process of reasoning too simple to suggest itself to an ordinary member of Roman society. What disturbed him most was the thought of the consequences of his discovery, and he resolved to conceal the girl's name and his own if possible. If she were indeed dead, it would be wiser to convey her body to her father's house privately; if she were still alive, secrecy was doubly necessary. In either case it would be utterly impossible to account to the world for the fact that Faustina Montevarchi had been alone in the Borgo Nuovo at such an hour; and San Giacinto had a lively interest in preserving the good reputation of Casa Montevarchi, since he had been meditating for some time past a union with Donna Flavia. At last the panel opened again, and when the porter had satisfied himself that the gentleman was still without, a little door in the heavy gate was cautiously unfastened and San Giacinto went in, bending nearly double to pass under the low entrance. In the great vestibule he was immediately confronted by the surgeon in charge, who was in his shirt sleeves, but had thrown his coat over his shoulders and held it together at the neck to protect himself from the night air. San Giacinto begged him to retire out of hearing of the porter, and the two walked away together. "There was a lady killed just now by the explosion, was there not?" inquired San Giacinto. "She is not dead," replied the surgeon. "Do you know her?" "I think so. Had she anything about her to prove her identity?" "The letter M embroidered on her handkerchief. That is all I know. She has not been here a quarter of an hour. I thought she was dead myself, when we took her up." "She was not under the ruins?" "No. She was struck by some small stone, I fancy. The two Zouaves were half buried, and are quite dead." "May I see them? I know many in the corps. They might be acquaintances." "Certainly. They are close by in the mortuary chamber, unless they have been put in the chapel." The two men entered the grim place, which was dimly lighted by a lantern hanging overhead. It is unnecessary to dwell upon the ghastly details. San Giacinto bent down curiously and looked at the dead men's faces. He knew neither of them, and told the surgeon so. "Will you allow me to see the lady?" he asked. "Pardon me, if I ask a question," said the surgeon, who was a man of middle age, with a red beard and keen grey eyes. "To whom have I the advantage of speaking?" "Signor Professore," replied San Giacinto, "I must tell you that if this is the lady I suppose your patient to be, the honour of one of the greatest families in Rome is concerned, and it is important that strict secrecy should be preserved." "The porter told me that you were a Roman prince," returned the surgeon rather bluntly. "But you speak like a southerner." "I was brought up in Naples. As I was saying, secrecy is very important, and I can assure you that you will earn the gratitude of many by assisting me." "Do you wish to take this lady away at once?" "Heaven forbid! Her mother and sister shall come for her in half an hour." The surgeon thrust his hands into his pockets, and stood staring for a moment or two at the bodies of the Zouaves. "I cannot do it," he said, suddenly looking up at San. Giacinto. "I am master here, and I am responsible. The secret is professional, of course. If I knew you, even by sight, I should not hesitate. As it is, I must ask your name." San Giacinto did not hesitate long, as the surgeon was evidently master of the situation. He took a card from his case and silently handed it to the doctor. The latter took it and read the name, "Don Giovanni Saracinesca, Marchese di San Giacinto." His face betrayed no emotion, but the belief flashed through his mind that there was no such person in existence. He was one of the leading men in his profession, and knew Prince Saracinesca and Sant' Ilario, but he had never heard of this other Don Giovanni. He knew also that the city was in a state of revolution and that many suspicious persons were likely to gain access to public buildings on false pretences. "Very well," he said quietly. "You are not afraid of dead men, I see. Be good enough to wait a moment here--no one will see you, and you will not be recognised. I will go and see that there is nobody in the way, and you shall have a sight of the young lady." His companion nodded in assent and the surgeon went out through the narrow door. San Giacinto was surprised to hear the heavy key turned in the lock and withdrawn, but immediately accounted for the fact on the theory that the surgeon wished to prevent any one from finding his visitor lest the secret should be divulged. He was not a nervous man, and had no especial horror of being left alone in a mortuary chamber for a few minutes. He looked about him, and saw that the room was high and vaulted. One window alone gave air, and this was ten feet from the floor and heavily ironed. He reflected with a smile that if it pleased the surgeon to leave him there he could not possibly get out. Neither his size nor his phenomenal strength could assist him in the least. There was no furniture in the place. Half a dozen slabs of slate for the bodies were built against the wall, solid and immovable, and the door was of the heaviest oak, thickly studded with huge iron nails. If the dead men had been living prisoners their place of confinement could not have been more strongly contrived. San Giacinto waited a quarter of an hour, and at last, as the surgeon did not return, he sat down upon one of the marble slabs and, being very hungry, consoled himself by lighting a cigar, while he meditated upon the surest means of conveying Donna Faustina to her father's house. At last he began to wonder how long he was to wait. "I should not wonder," he said to himself, "if that long-eared professor had taken me for a revolutionist." He was not far wrong, indeed. The surgeon had despatched a messenger for a couple of gendarmes and had gone about his business in the hospital, knowing very well that it would take some time to find the police while the riot lasted, and congratulating himself upon having caught a prisoner who, if not a revolutionist, was at all events an impostor, since he had a card printed with a false name. CHAPTER VI. The improvised banquet at the Palazzo Saracinesca was not a merry one, but the probable dangers to the city and the disappearance of Faustina Montevarchi furnished matter for plenty of conversation. The majority inclined to the belief that the girl had lost her head and had run home, but as neither Sant' Ilario nor his cousin returned, there was much speculation. The prince said he believed that they had found Faustina at her father's house and had stayed to dinner, whereupon some malicious person remarked that it needed a revolution in Rome to produce hospitality in such a quarter. Dinner was nearly ended when Pasquale, the butler, whispered to the prince that a gendarme wanted to speak with him on very important business. "Bring him here," answered old Saracinesca, aloud. "There is a gendarme outside," he added, addressing his guests, "he will tell us all the news. Shall we have him here?" Every one assented enthusiastically to the proposition, for most of those present were anxious about their houses, not knowing what had taken place during the last two hours. The man was ushered in, and stood at a distance holding his three-cornered hat in his hand, and looking rather sheepish and uncomfortable. "Well?" asked the prince. "What is the matter? We all wish to hear the news." "Excellency," began the soldier, "I must ask many pardons for appearing thus---" Indeed his uniform was more or less disarranged and he looked pale and fatigued. "Never mind your appearance. Speak up," answered old Saracinesca in encouraging tones. "Excellency," said the man, "I must apologise, but there is a gentleman who calls himself Don Giovanni, of your revered name---" "I know there is. He is my son. What about him?" "He is not the Senior Principe di Sant' Ilario, Excellency--he calls himself by another name--Marchese di--di--here is his card, Excellency." "My cousin, San Giacinto, then. What about him, I say?" "Your Excellency has a cousin---" stammered the gendarme. "Well? Is it against the law to have cousins?" cried the prince. "What is the matter with my cousin?" "Dio mio!" exclaimed the soldier in great agitation. "What a combination! Your Excellency's cousin is in the mortuary chamber at Santo Spirito!" "Is he dead?" asked Saracinesca in a lower voice, but starting from his chair. "No," cried the man, "questo e il male! That is the trouble! He is alive and very well!" "Then what the devil is he doing in the mortuary chamber?" roared the prince. "Excellency, I beseech your pardon, I had nothing to do with locking up the Signor Marchese. It was the surgeon, Excellency, who took him for a Garibaldian. He shall be liberated at once---" "I should think so!" answered Saracinesca, savagely. "And what business have your asses of surgeons with gentlemen? My hat, Pasquale. And how on earth came my cousin to be in Santo Spirito?" "Excellency, I know nothing, but I had to do my duty." "And if you know nothing how the devil do you expect to do your duty! I will have you and the surgeon and the whole of Santo Spirito and all the patients, in the Carceri Nuove, safe in prison before morning! My hat, Pasquale, I say!" Some confusion followed, during which the gendarme, who was anxious to escape all responsibility in the matter of San Giacinto's confinement, left the room and descended the grand staircase three steps at a time. Mounting his horse he galloped back through the now deserted streets to the hospital. Within two minutes after his arrival San Giacinto heard the bolt of the heavy lock run back in the socket and the surgeon entered the mortuary chamber. San Giacinto had nearly finished his cigar and was growing impatient, but the doctor made many apologies for his long absence. "An unexpected relapse in a dangerous case, Signor Marchese," he said in explanation. "What would you have? We doctors are at the mercy of nature! Pray forgive my neglect, but I could send no one, as you did not wish to be seen. I locked the door, so that nobody might find you here. Pray come with me, and you shall see the young lady at once." "By all means," replied San Giacinto. "Dead men are poor company, and I am in a hurry." The surgeon led the way to the accident ward and introduced his companion to a small clean room in which a shaded lamp was burning. A Sister of Mercy stood by the white bed, upon which lay a young girl, stretched out at her full length. "You are too late," said the nun very quietly. "She is dead, poor child." San Giacinto uttered a deep exclamation of horror and was at the bedside even before the surgeon. He lifted the fair young creature in his arms and stared at the cold face, holding it to the light. Then with a loud cry of astonishment he laid down his burden. "It is not she, Signor Professore," he said. "I must apologise for the trouble I have given you. Pray accept my best thanks. There is a resemblance, but it is not she." The doctor was somewhat relieved to find himself freed from the responsibility which, as San Giacinto had told him, involved the honour of one of the greatest families in Rome. Before speaking, he satisfied himself that the young woman was really dead. "Death often makes faces look alike which have no resemblance to each other in life," he remarked as he turned away. Then they both left the room, followed at a little distance by the sister who was going to summon the bearers to carry away her late charge. As the two men descended the steps, the sound of loud voices in altercation reached their ears, and as they emerged into the vestibule, they saw old Prince Saracinesca flourishing his stick in dangerous proximity to the head of the porter. The latter had retreated until he stood with his back against the wall. "I will have none of this lying," shouted the irate nobleman. "The Marchese is here--the gendarme told me he was in the mortuary chamber--if he is not produced at once I will break your rascally neck---" The man was protesting as fast and as loud as his assailant threatened him. "Eh! My good cousin!" cried San Giacinto, whose unmistakable voice at once made the prince desist from his attack and turn round. "Do not kill the fellow! I am alive and well, as you see." A short explanation ensued, during which the surgeon was obliged to admit that as San Giacinto had no means of proving any identity he, the doctor in charge, had thought it best to send for the police, in view of the unquiet state of the city. "But what brought you here?" asked old Saracinesca, who was puzzled to account for his cousin's presence in the hospital. San Giacinto had satisfied his curiosity and did not care a pin for the annoyance to which he had been subjected. He was anxious, too, to get away, and having half guessed the surgeon's suspicions was not at all surprised by the revelation concerning the gendarme. "Allow me to thank you again," he said politely, turning to the doctor. "I have no doubt you acted quite rightly. Let us go," he added, addressing the prince. The porter received a coin as consolation money for the abuse he had sustained, and the two cousins found themselves in the street. Saracinesca again asked for an explanation. "Very simple," replied San Giacinto. "Donna Faustina was not at her father's house, so your son and I separated to continue our search. Chancing to find myself here--for I do not know my way about the city--I learnt the news of the explosion, and was told that two Zouaves had been found dead and had been taken into the hospital. Fearing lest one of them might have been Gouache, I succeeded in getting in, when I was locked up with the dead bodies, as you have heard. Gouache, by the bye, was not one of them." "It is outrageous---" began Saracinesca, but his companion did not allow him to proceed. "It is no matter," he said, quickly. "The important thing is to find Donna Faustina. I suppose you have no news of her." "None. Giovanni had not come home when the gendarme appeared." "Then we must continue the search as best we can," said San Giacinto. Thereupon they both got into the prince's cab and drove away. It was nearly midnight when a small detachment of Zouaves crossed the bridge of Sant' Angelo. There had been some sharp fighting at the Porta San Paolo, at the other extremity of Rome, and the men were weary. But rest was not to be expected that night, and the tired soldiers were led back to do sentry duty in the neighbourhood of their quarters. The officer halted the little body in the broad space beyond. "Monsieur Gouache," said the lieutenant, "you will take a corporal's guard and maintain order in the neighbourhood of the barracks--if there is anything left of them," he added with a mournful laugh. Gouache stepped forward and half a dozen men formed themselves behind him. The officer was a good friend of his. "I suppose you have not dined any more than I, Monsieur Gouache?" "Not I, mon lieutenant. It is no matter." "Pick up something to eat if you can, at such an hour. I will see that you are relieved before morning. Shoulder arms! March!" So Anastase Gouache trudged away down the Borgo Nuovo with his men at his heels. Among the number there was the son of a French duke, an English gentleman whose forefathers had marched with the Conqueror as their descendant now marched behind the Parisian artist, a young Swiss doctor of law, a couple of red-headed Irish peasants, and two or three others. When they reached the scene of the late catastrophe the place was deserted. The men who had been set to work at clearing away the rubbish had soon found what a hopeless task they had undertaken; and the news having soon spread that only the regimental musicians were in the barracks at the time, and that these few had been in all probability in the lower story of the building, where the band-room was situated, all attempts at finding the bodies were abandoned until the next day. Gouache and many others had escaped death almost miraculously, for five minutes had not elapsed after they had started at the double-quick for the Porta San Paolo, when the building was blown up. The news had of course been brought to them while they were repulsing the attack upon the gate, but it was not until many hours afterwards that a small detachment could safely be spared to return to their devastated quarters. Gouache himself had been just in time to join his comrades, and with them had seen most of the fighting. He now placed his men at proper distances along the street, and found leisure to reflect upon what had occurred. He was hungry and thirsty, and grimy with gunpowder, but there was evidently no prospect of getting any refreshment. The night, too, was growing cold, and he found it necessary to walk briskly about to keep himself warm. At first he tramped backwards and forwards, some fifty paces each way, but growing weary of the monotonous exercise, he began to scramble about among the heaps of ruins. His quick imagination called up the scene as it must have looked at the moment of the explosion, and then reverted with a sharp pang to the thought of his poor comrades-in-arms who lay crushed to death many feet below the stones on which he trod. Suddenly, as he leaned against a huge block, absorbed in his thoughts, the low wailing of a woman's voice reached his ears. The sound proceeded apparently from no great distance, but the tone was very soft and low. Gradually, as he listened, he thought he distinguished words, but such words as he had not expected to hear, though they expressed his own feeling well enough. "Requiem eternam dona eis!" It was quite distinct, and the accents sounded strangely familiar. He held his breath and strained every faculty to catch the sounds. "Requiem sempiternam--sempiternam--sempiternam!" The despairing tones trembled at the third repetition, and then the voice broke into passionate sobbing. Anastase did not wait for more. At first he had half believed that what he heard was due to his imagination, but the sudden weeping left no doubt that it was real. Cautiously he made his way amongst the ruins, until he stopped short in amazement not unmingled with horror. In an angle where a part of the walls was still standing, a woman was on her knees, her hands stretched wildly out before her, her darkly-clad figure faintly revealed by the beams of the waning moon. The covering had fallen back from her head upon her shoulders, and the struggling rays fell upon her beautiful features, marking their angelic outline with delicate light. Still Anastase remained motionless, scarcely believing his eyes, and yet knowing that lovely face too well not to believe. It was Donna Faustina Montevarchi who knelt there at midnight, alone, repeating the solemn words from the mass for the dead; it was for him that she wept, and he knew it. Standing there upon the common grave of his comrades, a wild joy filled the young man's heart, a joy such as must be felt to be known, for it passes the power of earthly words to tell it. In that dim and ghastly place the sun seemed suddenly to shine as at noonday in a fair country; the crumbling masonry and blocks of broken stone grew more lovely than the loveliest flowers, and from the dark figure of that lonely heart-broken woman the man who loved her saw a radiance proceeding which overflowed and made bright at once his eyes and his heart. In the intensity of his emotion, the hand which lay upon the fallen stone contracted suddenly and broke off a fragment of the loosened mortar. At the slight noise, Faustina turned her head. Her eyes were wide and wild, and as she started to her feet she uttered a short, sharp cry, and staggered backward against the wall. In a moment Anastase was at her side, supporting her and looking into her face. "Faustina!" During a few seconds she gazed horrorstruck and silent upon him, stiffening herself and holding her face away from his. It was as though his ghost had risen out of the earth and embraced her. Then the wild look shivered like a mask and vanished, her features softened and the colour rose to her cheeks for an instant. Very slowly she drew him towards her, her eyes fixed on his; their lips met in a long, sweet kiss--then her strength forsook her and she swooned away in his arms. Gouache supported her tenderly until she sat leaning against the wall, and then knelt down by her side. He did not know what to do, and had he known, it would have availed him little. His instinct told him that she would presently recover consciousness and his emotions had so wholly overcome him that he could only look at her lovely face as her head rested upon his arm. But while he waited a great fear began to steal into his heart. He asked himself how Faustina had come to such a place, and how her coming was to be accounted for. It was long past midnight, now, and he guessed what trouble and anxiety there would be in her father's house until she was found. He represented to himself in quick succession the scenes which would follow his appearance at the Palazzo Montevarchi with the youngest daughter of the family in his arms--or in a cab, and he confessed to himself that never lover had been in such straits. Faustina opened her eyes and sighed, nestled her head softly on his breast, sighing again, in the happy consciousness that he was safe, and then at last she sat up and looked him in the face. "I was so sure you were killed," said she, in her soft voice. "My darling!" he exclaimed, pressing her to his side. "Are you not glad to be alive?" she asked. "For my sake, at least! You do not know what I have suffered." Again he held her close to him, in silence, forgetting all the unheard-of difficulties of his situation in the happiness of holding her in his arms. His silence, indeed, was more eloquent than any words could have been. "My beloved!" he said at last, "how could you run such risks for me? Do you think I am worthy of so much love? And yet, if loving you can make me worthy of you, I am the most deserving man that ever lived--and I live only for you. But for you I might as well be buried under our feet here with my poor comrades. But tell me, Faustina, were you not afraid to come? How long have you been here? It is very late--it is almost morning." "Is it? What does it matter, since you are safe? You ask how I came? Did I not tell you I would follow you? Why did you run on without me? I ran here very quickly, and just as I saw the gates of the barracks there was a terrible noise and I was thrown down, I cannot tell how. Soon I got to my feet and crept under a doorway. I suppose I must have fainted, for I thought you were killed. I saw a soldier before me, just when it happened, and he must have been struck. I took him for you. When I came to myself there were so many people in the street that I could not move from where I was. Then they went away, and I came here while the workmen tried to move the stones, and I watched them and begged them to go on, but they would not, and I had nothing to give them, so they went away too, and I knew that I should have to wait until to-morrow to find you--for I would have waited--no one should have dragged me away--ah! my darling--my beloved! What does anything matter now that you are safe!" For fully half an hour they sat talking in this wise, both knowing that the situation could not last, but neither willing to speak the word which must end it. Gouache, indeed, was in a twofold difficulty. Not only was he wholly at a loss for a means of introducing Faustina into her father's house unobserved at such an hour; he was in command of the men stationed in the neighbourhood, and to leave his post under any circumstances whatever would be a very grave breach of duty. He could neither allow Faustina to return alone, nor could he accompany her. He could not send one of his men for a friend to help him, since to take any one into his confidence was to ruin the girl's reputation in the eyes of all Rome. To find a cab at that time of night was almost out of the question. The position seemed desperate. Faustina, too, was a mere child, and it was impossible to explain to her the social consequences of her being discovered with him. "I think, perhaps," said she after a happy silence, and in rather a timid voice--"I think, perhaps, you had better take me home now. They will be anxious, you know," she added, as though fearing that he should suspect her of wishing to leave him. "Yes, I must take you home," answered Gouache, somewhat absently. To her his tone sounded cold. "Are you angry, because I want to go?" asked the young girl, looking lovingly into his face. "Angry? No indeed, darling! I ought to have taken you home at once--but I was too happy to think of it. Of course your people must be terribly anxious, and the question is how to manage your entrance. Can you get into the house unseen? Is there any way? Any small door that is open?" "We can wake the porter," said Faustina, simply. "He will let us in." "It would not do. How can I go to your father and tell him that I found you here? Besides, the porter knows me." "Well, if he does, what does it matter?" "He would talk about it to other servants, and all Rome would know it to-morrow. You must go home with a woman, and to do that we must find some one you know. It would be a terrible injury to you to have such a story repeated abroad." "Why?" To this innocent question Gouache did not find a ready answer. He smiled quietly and pressed her to his side more closely. "The world is a very bad place, dearest. I am a man and know it. You must trust me to do what is best. Will you?" "How can you ask? I will always trust you." "Then I will tell you what we will do. You must go home with the Princess Sant' Ilario." "With Corona? But--" "She knows that I love you, and she is the only woman in Rome whom I would trust. Do not be surprised. She asked me if it was true, and I said it was. I am on duty here, and you must wait for me while I make the rounds of my sentries--it will not take five minutes. Then I will take you to the Palazzo Saracinesca. I shall not be missed here for an hour." "I will do whatever you wish," said Faustina. "Perhaps that is best. But I am afraid everybody will be asleep. Is it not very late?" "I will wake them up if they are sleeping." He left her to make his round and soon assured himself that his men were not napping. Then before he returned he stopped at the corner of a street and by the feeble moonlight scratched a few words on a leaf from his notebook. "Madame," he wrote, "I have found Donna Faustina Montevarchi, who had lost her way. It is absolutely necessary that you should accompany her to her father's house. You are the only person whom I can trust. I am at your gate. Bring something in the way of a cloak to disguise her with." He signed his initials and folded the paper, slipping it into his pocket where he could readily find it. Then he went back to the place where Faustina was waiting. He helped her out of the ruins, and passing through a side street so as to avoid the sentinels, they made their way rapidly to the bridge. The sentry challenged Gouache who gave the word at once and was allowed to pass on with his charge. In less than a quarter of an hour they were at the Palazzo Saracinesca. Gouache made Faustina stand in the shadow of a doorway on the opposite side of the street and advanced to the great doors. A ray of light which passed through the crack of a shutter behind the heavy iron grating on one side of the arch showed that the porter was up. Anastase drew his bayonet from his side and tapped with its point against the high window. "Who is there?" asked the porter, thrusting his head out. "Is the Principe di Sant' Ilario still awake?" asked Gouache. "He is not at home. Heaven knows where he is. What do you want? The princess is sitting up to wait for the prince." "That will do as well," replied Anastase. "I am sent with this note from the Vatican. It needs an immediate answer. Be good enough to say that I was ordered to wait." The explanation satisfied the porter, to whom the sight of a Zouave was just then more agreeable than usual. He put his arm out through the grating and took the paper. "It does not look as though it came from the Vatican," he remarked doubtfully, as he turned the scrap to the light of his lamp. "The cardinal is waiting--make haste!" said Gouache. It struck him that even if the man could read a little, which was not improbable, the initials A. G., being those of Cardinal Antonelli in reversed order would be enough to frighten the fellow and make him move quickly. This, indeed was precisely what occurred. In five minutes the small door in the gate was opened and Gouache saw Corona's tall figure step out into the street. She hesitated a moment when she saw the Zouave alone, and then closed the door with a snap behind her. Gouache bowed quickly and gave her his arm. "Let us be quick," he said, "or the porter will see us. Donna Faustina is under that doorway. You know how grateful I am--there is no time to say it." Corona said nothing but hastened to Faustina's side. The latter put her arms about her friend's neck and kissed her. The princess threw a wide cloak over the young girl's shoulders and drew the hood over her head. "Let us be quick," said Corona, repeating Gouache's words. They walked quickly away in silence, and no one spoke until they leached the Palazzo Montevarchi. Explanations were impossible, and every one was too much absorbed by the danger of the situation to speak of anything else. When they were a few steps from the gate Corona stopped. "You may leave us here," she said coldly, addressing Gouache. "But, princess, I will see you home," protested the latter, somewhat surprised by her tone. "No--I will take a servant back with me. Will you be good enough to leave us?" she asked almost haughtily, as Gouache still lingered. He had no choice but to obey her commands, though for some time he could not explain to himself the cause of the princess's behaviour. "Goodnight, Madame. Good-night, Mademoiselle," he said, quietly. Then with a low bow he turned away and disappeared in the darkness. In five minutes he had reached the bridge, running at the top of his speed, and he regained his post without his absence having been observed. When the two women were alone, Corona laid her hand upon Faustina's shoulder and looked down into the girl's face. "Faustina, my child," she said, "how could you be led into such a wild scrape?" "Why did you treat him so unkindly?" asked the young girl with flashing eyes. "It was cruel and unkind--" "Because he deserved it," answered Corona, with rising anger. "How could he dare--from my house--a mere child like you---" "I do not know what you imagine," said Faustina in a tone of deep resentment. "I followed him to the Serristori barracks, and I fainted when they were blown up. He found me and brought me to you, because he said I could not go back to my father's house with him. If I love him what is that to you?" "It is a great deal to me that he should have got you into this trouble." "He did not. If it is trouble, I got myself into it. Do you love him yourself that you are so angry?" "I!" cried Corona in amazement at the girl's audacity. "Poor Gouache!" she added with a half-scornful, half-pitying laugh. "Come, child! Let us go in. We cannot stand here all night talking. I will tell your mother that you lost your way in our house and were found asleep in a distant room. The lock was jammed, and you could not get out." "I think I will simply tell the truth," answered Faustina. "You will do nothing of the kind," said Corona, sternly. "Do you know what would happen? You would be shut up in a convent by your father for several years, and the world would say that I had favoured your meetings with Monsieur Gouache. This is no trifling matter. You need say nothing. I will give the whole explanation myself, and take the responsibility of the falsehood upon my own shoulders." "I promised him to do as he bid me," replied Faustina. "I suppose he would have me follow your advice, and so I will. Are you still angry, Corona?" "I will try not to be, if you will be sensible." They knocked at the gate and were soon admitted. The whole household was on foot, though it was past one o'clock. It is unnecessary to describe the emotions of Faustina's relations, nor their gratitude to Corona, whose explanation they accepted at once, with a delight which may easily be imagined. "But your porter said he had seen her leave your house," said the Princess Montevarchi, recollecting the detail and anxious to have it explained. "He was mistaken, in his fright," returned Corona, calmly. "It was only my maid, who ran out to see what was the matter and returned soon afterwards." There was nothing more to be said. The old prince and Ascanio Bellegra walked home with Corona, who refused to wait until a carriage could be got ready, on the ground that her husband might have returned from the search and might be anxious at her absence. She left her escort at her door and mounted the steps alone. As she was going up the porter came running after her. "Excellency," he said in low tones, "the Signor Principe came back while you were gone, and I told him that you had received a note from the Vatican and had gone away with the Zouave who brought it. I hope I did right---" "Of course you did," replied Corona. She was a calm woman and not easily thrown off her guard, but as she made her answer she was conscious of an unpleasant sensation wholly new to her. She had never done anything concerning which she had reason to ask herself what Giovanni would think of it. For the first time since her marriage with him she knew that she had something to conceal. How, indeed, was it possible to tell him the story of Faustina's wild doings? Giovanni was a man who knew the world, and had no great belief in its virtues. To tell him what had occurred would be to do Faustina an irreparable injury in his eyes. He would believe his wife, no doubt, but he would tell her that Faustina had deceived her. She cared little what he might think of Gouache, for she herself was incensed against him, believing that he must certainly have used some persuasion to induce Faustina to follow him, mad as the idea seemed. Corona had little time for reflection, however. She could not stand upon the stairs, and as soon as she entered the house she must meet her husband. She made up her mind hurriedly to do what in most cases is extremely dangerous. Giovanni was in her boudoir, pale and anxious. He had forgotten that he had not dined that evening and was smoking a cigarette with short sharp puffs. "Thank God!" he cried, as his wife entered the room. "Where have you been, my darling?" "Giovanni," said Corona, gravely, laying her two hands on his shoulders, "you know you can trust me--do you not?" "As I trust Heaven," he answered, tenderly. "You must trust me now, then," said she. "I cannot tell you where I have been. I will tell you some day, you have my solemn promise. Faustina Montevarchi is with her mother. I took her back, and told them she had followed me from the room, had lost her way in the house, and had accidentally fastened a door which she could not open. You must support the story. You need only say that I told you so, because you were out at the time. I will not lie to you, so I tell you that I invented the story." Sant' Ilario was silent for a few minutes, during which he looked steadily into his wife's eyes, which met his without flinching. "You shall do as you please, Corona," he said at last, returning the cigarette to his lips and still looking at her. "Will you answer me one question?" "If I can without explaining." "That Zouave who brought the message from the Vatican--was he Gouache?" Corona turned her eyes away, annoyed at the demand. To refuse to answer was tantamount to admitting the truth, and she would not lie to her husband. "It was Gouache," she said, after a moment's hesitation. "I thought so," answered Sant' Ilario in a low voice. He moved away, throwing his cigarette into the fireplace. "Very well," he continued, "I will remember to tell the story as you told it to me, and I am sure you will tell me the truth some day." "Of course," said Corona. "And I thank you, Giovanni, with my whole heart! There is no one like you, dear." She sat down in a chair beside him as he stood, and taking his hand she pressed it to her lips. She knew well enough what a strange thing she had asked, and she was indeed grateful to him. He stooped down and kissed her forehead. "I will always trust you," he said, softly. "Tell me, dear one, has this matter given you pain? Is it a secret that will trouble you?" "Not now," she answered, frankly. Giovanni was in earnest when he promised to trust his wife. He knew, better than any living man, how well worthy she was of his utmost confidence, and he meant what he said. It must be confessed that the situation was a trying one to a man of his temper, and the depth of his love for Corona can be judged from the readiness with which he consented to her concealing anything from him. Every circumstance connected with what had happened that evening was strange, and the conclusion, instead of elucidating the mystery, only made it more mysterious still. His cousin's point-blank declaration that Faustina and Gouache were in love was startling to all his ideas and prejudices. He had seen Gouache kiss Corona's hand in a corner of the drawing-room, a proceeding which he did not wholly approve, though it was common enough. Then Gouache and Faustina had disappeared. Then Faustina had been found, and to facilitate the finding it had been necessary that Corona and Gouache should leave the palace together at one o'clock in the morning. Finally, Corona had appealed to his confidence in her and had taken advantage of it to refuse any present explanation whatever of her proceedings. Corona was a very noble and true woman, and he had promised to trust her. How far he kept his word will appear hereafter. CHAPTER VII. When San Giacinto heard Corona's explanation of Faustina's disappearance, he said nothing. He did not believe the story in the least, but if every one was satisfied there was no reason why he should not be satisfied also. Though he saw well enough that the tale was a pure invention, and that there was something behind it which was not to be known, the result was, on the whole, exactly what he desired. He received the thanks of the Montevarchi household for his fruitless exertions with a smile of gratification, and congratulated the princess upon the happy issue of the adventure. He made no present attempt to ascertain the real truth by asking questions which would have been hard to answer, for he was delighted that the incident should be explained away and forgotten at once. Donna Faustina's disappearance was of course freely discussed and variously commented, but the general verdict of the world was contrary to San Giacinto's private conclusions. People said that the account given by the family must be true, since it was absurd to suppose that a child just out of the convent could be either so foolish or so courageous as to go out alone at such a moment. No other hypothesis was in the least tenable, and the demonstration offered must be accepted as giving the only solution of the problem. San Giacinto told no one that he thought differently. It was before all things his intention to establish himself firmly in Roman society, and his natural tact told him that the best way to accomplish this was to offend no one, and to endorse without question the opinion of the majority. Moreover, as a part of his plan for assuring his position consisted in marrying Faustina's sister, his interest lay manifestly in protecting the good name of her family by every means in his power. He knew that old Montevarchi passed for being one of the most rigid amongst the stiff company of the strait-laced, and that the prince was as careful of the conduct of his children, as his father had formerly been in regard to his own doings. Ascanio Bellegra was the result of this home education, and already bid fair to follow in his parent's footsteps. Christian virtues are certainly not incompatible with manliness, but the practice of them as maintained by Prince Montevarchi had made his son Ascanio a colourless creature, rather non-bad than good, clothed in a garment of righteousness that fitted him only because his harmless soul had no salient bosses of goodness, any more than it was disfigured by any reprehensible depressions capable of harbouring evil. There is a class of men in certain states of society who are manly, but not masculine. There is nothing paradoxical in the statement, nor is it a mere play upon the meanings of words. There are men of all ages, young, middle-aged, and old, who possess many estimable virtues, who show physical courage wherever it is necessary, who are honourable, strong, industrious, and tenacious of purpose, but who undeniably lack something which belongs to the ideal man, and which, for want of a better word, we call the masculine element. When we shall have microscopes so large and powerful that a human being shall be as transparent under the concentrated light of the lenses as the tiniest insect when placed in one of our modern instruments, then, perhaps, the scientist of the future may discover the causes of this difference. I believe, however, that it does not depend upon the fact of one man having a few ounces more of blood in his veins than another. The fact lies deeper hidden than that, and may puzzle the psychologist as well as the professor of anthropology. For us it exists, and we cannot explain it, but must content ourselves with comparing the phenomena which proceed from these differences of organisation. At the present day the society of the English-speaking races seems to favour the growth of the creature who is only manly but not masculine, whereas outside the pale of that strange little family which calls itself "society" the masculinity of man is more striking than among other races. Not long ago a French journalist said that many of the peculiarities of the English-speaking peoples proceeded from the omnipresence of the young girl, who reads every novel that appears, goes to every theatre, and regulates the tone of conversation and literature by her never-absent innocence. Cynics, if there are still representatives of a school which has grown ridiculous, may believe this if they please; the fact remains that it is precisely the most masculine class of men who show the strongest predilection for the society of the most refined women, and who on the whole show the greatest respect for all women in general. The masculine man prefers the company of the other sex by natural attraction, and would perhaps rather fight with other men, or at least strive to outdo them in the struggle for notoriety, power, or fame, than spend his time in friendly conversation with them, no matter how interesting the topic selected. This point of view may be regarded as uncivilised, but it may be pointed out that it is only in the most civilised countries that the society of women is accessible to all men of their own social position. No one familiar with Eastern countries will pretend that Orientals shut up their women because they enjoy their company so much as to be unwilling to share the privilege with their friends. San Giacinto was pre-eminently a masculine man, as indeed were all the Saracinesca, in a greater or less degree. He understood women instinctively, and, with a very limited experience of the world, knew well enough the strength of their influence. It was characteristic of him that he had determined to marry almost as soon as he had got a footing in Roman society. He saw clearly that if he could unite himself with a powerful family he could exercise a directing power over the women which must ultimately give him all that he needed. Through his cousins he had very soon made the acquaintance of the Montevarchi household, and seeing that there were two marriageable daughters, he profited by the introduction. He would have preferred Faustina, perhaps, but he foresaw that he should find fewer difficulties in obtaining her sister for his wife. The old prince and princess were in despair at seeing her still unmarried, and it was clear that they were not likely to find a better match for her than the Marchese di San Giacinto. He, on his part, knew that his past occupation was a disadvantage to him in the eyes of the world, although he was the undoubted and acknowledged cousin of the Saracinesca, and the only man of the family besides old Leone and his son Sant' Ilario. His two boys, also, were a drawback, since his second wife's children could not inherit the whole of the property he expected to leave. But his position was good, and Flavia was not generally considered to be likely to marry, so that he had good hopes of winning her. It was clear to him from the first that there must be some reason why she had not married, and the somewhat disparaging remarks concerning her which he heard from time to time excited his curiosity. As he had always intended to consult the head of his family upon the matter he now determined to do so at once. He was not willing, indeed, to let matters go any further until he had ascertained the truth concerning her, and he was sure that Prince Saracinesca would tell him everything at the first mention of a proposal to marry her. The old gentleman had too much pride to allow his cousin to make an unfitting match. Accordingly, on the day following the events last narrated San Giacinto called after breakfast and found the prince, as usual, alone in his study. He was not dozing, however, for the accounts of the last night's doings in the Osservatore Romano were very interesting. "I suppose you have heard all about Montevarchi's daughter?" asked Saracinesca, laying his paper aside and giving his hand to San Giacinto. "Yes, and I am delighted at the conclusion of the adventure, especially as I have something to ask you about another member of the family." "I hope Flavia has not disappeared now," remarked the prince. "I trust not," answered San Giacinto with a laugh. "I was going to ask you whether I should have your approval if I proposed to marry her." "This is a very sudden announcement," said Saracinesca with some surprise. "I must think about it. I appreciate your friendly disposition vastly, my dear cousin, in asking my opinion, and I will give the matter my best consideration." "I shall be very grateful," replied the younger man, gravely. "In my position I feel bound to consult you. I should do so in any case for the mere benefit of your advice, which is very needful to one who, like myself, is but a novice in the ways of Rome." Saracinesca looked keenly at his cousin, as though expecting to discover some touch of irony in his tone or expression. He remembered the fierce altercations he had engaged in with Giovanni when he had wished the latter to marry Tullia Mayer, and was astonished to find San Giacinto, over whom he had no real authority at all, so docile and anxious for his counsel. "I suppose you would like to know something about her fortune," he said at last. "Montevarchi is rich, but miserly. He could give her anything he liked." "Of course it is important to know what he would like to give," replied San Giacinto with a smile. "Of course. Very well. There are two daughters already married. They each had a hundred thousand scudi. It is not so bad, after all, when you think what a large family he has--but he could have given more. As for Flavia, he might do something generous for the sake of---" The old gentleman was going to say, for the sake of getting rid of her, and perhaps his cousin thought as much. The prince checked himself, however, and ended his sentence rather awkwardly. "For the sake of getting such a fine fellow for a husband," he said. "Why is she not already married?" inquired San Giacinto with a very slight inclination of his head, as an acknowledgment of the flattering speech whereby the prince had helped himself out of his difficulty. "Who knows!" ejaculated the latter enigmatically. "Is there any story about her? Was she ever engaged to be married? It is rather strange when one thinks of it, for she is a handsome girl. Pray be quite frank--I have taken no steps in the matter." "The fact is that I do not know. She is not like other girls, and as she gives her father and mother some trouble in society, I suppose that young men's fathers have been afraid to ask for her. No. I can assure you that there is no story connected with her. She has a way of stating disagreeable truths that terrifies Montevarchi. She was delicate as a child and was brought up at home, so of course she has no manners." "I should have thought she should have better manners for that," remarked San Giacinto. The prince stared at him in surprise. "We do not think so here," he answered after a moment's pause. "On the whole, I should say that for a hundred and twenty thousand you might marry her, if you are so inclined--and if you can manage her. But that is a matter for you to judge." "The Montevarchi are, I believe, what you call a great family?" "They are not the Savelli, nor the Frangipani--nor the Saracinesca either. But they are a good family--good blood, good fortune, and what Montevarchi calls good principles." "You think I could not do better than marry Donna Flavia, then?" "It would be a good marriage, decidedly. You ought to have married Tullia Mayer. If she had not made a fool of herself and an enemy of me, and if you had turned up two years ago--well, there were a good many objections to her, and stories about her, too. But she was rich--eh! that was a fortune to be snapped up by that scoundrel Del Ferice!" "Del Ferice?" repeated San Giacinto. "The same who tried to prove that your son was married by copying my marriage register?" "The same. I will tell you the rest of the story some day. Then at that time there was Bianca Valdarno--but she married a Neapolitan last year; and the Rocca girl, but Onorato Cantalupo got her and her dowry--Montevarchi's second son--and--well, I see nobody now, except Flavia's sister Faustina. Why not marry her? It is true that her father means to catch young Frangipani, but he will have no such luck, I can tell him, unless he will part with half a million." "Donna Faustina is too young," said San Giacinto, calmly. "Besides, as they are sisters and there is so little choice, I may say that I prefer Donna Flavia, she is more gay, more lively." "Vastly more, I have no doubt, and you will have to look after her, unless you can make her fall in love with you." Saracinesca laughed at the idea. "With me!" exclaimed San Giacinto, joining in his cousin's merriment. "With me, indeed! A sober widower, between thirty and forty! A likely thing! Fortunately there is no question of love in this matter. I think I can answer for her conduct, however." "I would not be the man to raise your jealousy!" remarked Saracinesca, laughing again as he looked admiringly at his cousin's gigantic figure and lean stern face. "You are certainly able to take care of your wife. Besides, I have no doubt that Flavia will change when she is married. She is not a bad girl--only a little too fond of making fun of her father and mother, and after all, as far as the old man is concerned, I do not wonder. There is one point upon which you must satisfy him, though--I am not curious, and do not ask you questions, but I warn you that glad as he will be to marry his daughter, he will want to drive a bargain with you and will inquire about your fortune." San Giacinto was silent for a few moments and seemed to be making a calculation in his head. "Would a fortune equal to what he gives her be sufficient?" he asked at length. "Yes. I fancy so," replied the prince looking rather curiously at his cousin. "You see," he continued, "as you have children by your first marriage, Montevarchi would wish to see Flavia's son provided for, if she has one. That is your affair. I do not want to make suggestions." "I think," said San Giacinto after another short interval of silence, "that I could agree to settle something upon any children which may be born. Do you think some such arrangement would satisfy Prince Montevarchi?" "Certainly, if you can agree about the terms. Such things are often done in these cases." "I am very grateful for your advice. May I count upon your good word with the prince, if he asks your opinion?" "Of course," answered Saracinesca, readily, if not very cordially. He had not at first liked his cousin, and although he had overcome his instinctive aversion to the man, the feeling was momentarily revived with more than its former force by the prospect of being perhaps called upon to guarantee, in a measure, San Giacinto's character as a suitable husband for Flavia. He had gone too far already however, for since he had given his approval to the scheme it would not become him to withhold his cooperation, should his assistance be in any way necessary in order to bring about the marriage. The slight change of tone as he uttered the last words had not escaped San Giacinto, however. His perceptions were naturally quick and were sharpened by the peculiarities of his present position, so that he understood Saracinesca's unwillingness to have a hand in the matter almost better than the prince understood it himself. "I trust that I shall not be obliged to ask your help," remarked San Giacinto. "I was, indeed, more anxious for your goodwill than for any more material aid." "You have it, with all my heart," said Saracinesca warmly, for he was a little ashamed of his coldness. San Giacinto took his leave and went away well satisfied with what he had accomplished, as indeed he had good cause to be. Montevarchi's consent to the marriage was not doubtful, now that San Giacinto was assured that he was able to fulfil the conditions which would be asked, and the knowledge that he was able to do even more than was likely to be required of him gave him additional confidence in the result. To tell the truth, he was strongly attracted by Flavia; and though he would assuredly have fought with his inclination had it appeared to be misplaced, he was pleased with the prospect of marrying a woman who would not only strengthen his position in society, but for whom he knew that he was capable of a sincere attachment. Marriage, according to his light, was before all things a contract entered into for mutual advantage; but he saw no reason why the fulfilment of such a contract should not be made as agreeable as possible. The principal point was yet to be gained, however, and as San Giacinto mounted the steps of the Palazzo Montevarchi he stopped more than once, considering for the last time whether he were doing wisely or not. On the whole he determined to proceed, and made up his mind that he would go straight to the point. Flavia's father was sitting in his study when San Giacinto arrived, and the latter was struck by the contrast between the personalities and the modes of life of his cousin whom he had just left and of the man to whom he was about to propose himself as a son-in-law. The Saracinesca were by no means very luxurious men, but they understood the comforts of existence better than most Romans of that day. If there was massive old-fashioned furniture against the walls and in the corners of the huge rooms, there were on the other hand soft carpets for the feet and cushioned easy-chairs to sit in. There were fires on the hearths when the weather was cold, and modern lamps for the long winter evenings. There were new books on the tables, engravings, photographs, a few objects of value and beauty not jealously locked up in closets, but looking as though they were used, if useful, or at least as if some one derived pleasure from looking at them. The palace itself was a stern old fortress in the midst of the older part of the city, but within there was a genial atmosphere of generous living, and, since Sant' Ilario's marriage with Corona, an air of refinement and good taste such as only a woman can impart to the house in which she dwells. The residence of the Montevarchi was very different. Narrow strips of carpet were stretched in straight lines across cold marble floors, from one door to another. Instead of open fires in the huge chimney-places, pans of lighted charcoal were set in the dim, empty rooms. Half a dozen halls were furnished alike. Each had three marble tables and twelve straight-backed chairs ranged against the walls, the only variety being that some were covered with red damask and some with green. Vast old-fashioned mirrors, set in magnificent frames built into the wall, reflected vistas of emptiness and acres of cold solitude. Nor were the rooms where the family met much better. There were more tables and more straight-backed chairs there than in the outer halls, but that was all. The drawing-room had a carpet, which for many years had been an object of the greatest concern to the prince, who never left Rome for the months of August and September until he had assured himself that this valuable object had been beaten, dusted, peppered, and sewn up in a linen case as old as itself, that is to say, dating from a quarter of a century back. That carpet was an extravagance to which his father had been driven by his English daughter-in-law; it was the only one of which he had ever been guilty, and the present head of the family meant that it should last his lifetime, and longer too, if care could preserve it. The princess herself had been made to remember for five and twenty years that since she had obtained a carpet she must expect nothing else in the way of modern improvements. It was the monument of a stupendous energy which she had expended entirely in that one struggle, and the sight of it reminded her of her youth. Long ago she had submitted once and for ever to the old Roman ways, and though she knew that a very little saved from the expense of maintaining a score of useless servants and a magnificent show equipage would suffice to make at least one room in the house comfortable for her use, she no longer sighed at the reflection, but consoled herself with making her children put up with the inconveniences she herself had borne so long and so patiently. Prince Montevarchi's private room was as comfortless as the rest of the house. Narrow, high, dim, carpetless, insufficiently warmed in winter by a brazier of coals, and at present not warmed at all, though the weather was chilly; furnished shabbily with dusty shelves, a writing-table, and a few chairs with leather seats, musty with an ancient mustiness which seemed to be emitted by the rows of old books and the moth-eaten baize cover of the table--the whole place looked more like the office of a decayed notary than the study of a wealthy nobleman of ancient lineage. The old gentleman himself entered the room a few seconds after San Giacinto had been ushered in, having slipped out to change his coat when his visitor was announced. It was a fixed principle of his life to dress as well as his neighbours when they could see him, but to wear threadbare garments whenever he could do so unobserved. He greeted San Giacinto with a grave dignity which contrasted strangely with the weakness and excitement he had shown on the previous night. "I wish to speak to you upon a delicate subject," began the younger man, after seating himself upon one of the high-backed chairs which cracked ominously under his weight. "I am at your service," replied the old gentleman, inclining his head politely. "I feel," continued San Giacinto, "that although my personal acquaintance with you has unfortunately been of short duration, the familiarity which exists between your family and mine will entitle what I have to say to a share of your consideration. The proposal which I have to make has perhaps been made by others before me and has been rejected. I have the honour to ask of you the hand of your daughter." "Faustina, I suppose?" asked the old prince in an indifferent tone, but looking sharply at his companion out of his small keen eyes. "Pardon me, I refer to Donna Flavia Montevarchi." "Flavia?" repeated the prince, in a tone of unmistakable surprise, which however was instantly moderated to the indifferent key again as he proceeded. "You see, we have been thinking so much about my daughter Faustina since last night that her name came to my lips quite naturally." "Most natural, I am sure," answered San Giacinto; who, however, had understood at once that his suit was to have a hearing. He then remained silent. "You wish to marry Flavia, I understand," remarked the prince after a pause. "I believe you are a widower, Marchese. I have heard that you have children." "Two boys." "Two boys, eh? I congratulate you. Boys, if brought up in Christian principles, are much less troublesome than girls. But, my dear Marchese, these same boys are an obstacle--a very serious obstacle." "Less serious than you may imagine, perhaps. My fortune does not come under the law of primogeniture. There is no fidei commissum. I can dispose of it as I please." "Eh, eh! But there must be a provision," said Montevarchi, growing interested in the subject. "That shall be mutual," replied San Giacinto, gravely. "I suppose you mean to refer to my daughter's portion," returned the other with more indifference. "It is not much, you know--scarcely worth mentioning. I am bound to tell you that, in honour." "We must certainly discuss the matter, if you are inclined to consider my proposal." "Well, you know what young women's dowries are in these days, my dear Marchese. We are none of us very rich." "I will make a proposal," said San Giacinto. "You shall give your daughter a portion. Whatever be the amount, up to a reasonable limit, which you choose to give, I will settle a like sum in such a manner that at my death it shall revert to her, and to her children by me, if she have any." "That amounts merely to settling upon herself the dowry I give her," replied Montevarchi, sharply. "I give you a scudo for your use. You settle my scudo upon your wife, that is all." "Not at all," returned San Giacinto. "I do not wish to have control of her dowry---" "The devil! Oh--I see--how stupid of me--I am indeed so old that I cannot count any more! How could I make such a mistake? Of course, it would be exactly as you say. Of course it would." "It would not be so as a general rule," said San Giacinto, calmly, "because most men would not consent to such an arrangement. That, however, is my proposal." "Oh! For the sake of Flavia, a man would do much, I am sure," answered the prince, who began to think that his visitor was in love with the girl, incredible as such a thing appeared to him. The younger man made no answer to this remark, however, and waited for Montevarchi to state his terms. "How much shall we say?" asked the latter at length. "That shall be for you to decide. Whatever you give I will give, if I am able." "Ah, yes! But how am I to know what you are able to give, dear Marchese?" The prince suspected that San Giacinto's offer, if he could be induced to make one, would not be very large. "Am I to understand," inquired San Giacinto, "that if I name the amount to be settled so that at my death it goes to my wife and her children by me for ever, you will agree to settle a like sum upon Donna Flavia in her own right? If so, I will propose what I think fair." Montevarchi looked keenly at his visitor for some moments, then looked away and hesitated. He was very anxious to marry Flavia at once, and he had many reasons for supposing that San Giacinto was not very rich. "How about the title?" he asked suddenly. "My title, of course, goes to my eldest son by my first marriage. But if you are anxious on that score I think my cousin would willingly confer one of his upon the eldest son of your daughter. It would cost him nothing, and would be a sort of compensation to me for my great-grandfather's folly." "How?" asked Montevarchi. "I do not understand." "I supposed you knew the story. I am the direct descendant of the elder branch. There was an agreement between two brothers of the family, by which the elder resigned the primogeniture in favour of the younger who was then married. The elder, who took the San Giacinto title, married late in life and I am his great-grandson. If he had not acted so foolishly I should be in my cousin's shoes. You see it would be natural for him to let me have some disused title for one of my children in consideration of this fact. He has about a hundred, I believe. You could ask him, if you please." San Giacinto's grave manner assured Montevarchi of the truth of the story. He hesitated a moment longer, and then made up his mind. "I agree to your proposal, my dear Marchese," he said, with unusual blandness of manner. "I will settle one hundred and fifty thousand scudi in the way I stated," said San Giacinto, simply. The prince started from his chair. "One--hundred--and--fifty--thousand!" he repeated slowly. "Why, it is a fortune in itself! Dear me! I had no idea you would name anything so large---" "Seven thousand five hundred scudi a year, at five per cent," remarked the younger man in a businesslike tone. "You give the same. That will insure our children an income of fifteen thousand scudi. It is not colossal, but it should suffice. Besides, I have not said that I would not leave them more, if I chanced to have more to leave." The prince had sunk back into his chair, and sat drumming on the table with his long thin fingers. His face wore an air of mingled surprise and bewilderment. To tell the truth, he had expected that San Giacinto would name about fifty thousand as the sum requisite. He did not know whether to be delighted at the prospect of marrying his daughter so well or angry at the idea of having committed himself to part with so much money. "That is much more than I gave my other daughters," he said at last, in a tone of hesitation. "Did you give the money to them or to their husbands?" inquired San Giacinto. "To their husbands, of course." "Then allow me to point out that you will now be merely settling money in your own family, and that the case is very different. Not only that, but I am settling the same sum upon your family, instead of taking your money for my own use. You are manifestly the gainer by the transaction." "It would be the same, then, if I left Flavia the money at my death, since it remains in the family," suggested the prince, who sought an escape from his bargain. "Not exactly," argued San Giacinto. "First there is the yearly interest until your death, which I trust is yet very distant. And then there is the uncertainty of human affairs. It will be necessary that you invest the money in trust, as I shall do, at the time of signing the contract. Otherwise there would be no fairness in the arrangement." "So you say that you are descended from the elder branch of the Saracinesca. How strange are the ways of Providence, my dear Marchese!" "It was a piece of great folly on the part of my great-grandfather," replied the other, shrugging his shoulders. "You should never say that a man will not marry until he is dead." "Ah no! The ways of heaven are inscrutable! It is not for us poor mortals to attempt to change them. I suppose that agreement of which you speak was made in proper form and quite regular." "I presume so, since no effort was ever made to change the dispositions established by it." "I suppose so--I suppose so, dear Marchese. It would be very interesting to see those papers." "My cousin has them," said San Giacinto. "I daresay he will not object. But, pardon me if I return to a subject which is very near my heart. Do I understand that you consent to the proposal I have made? If so, we might make arrangements for a meeting to take place between our notaries." "One hundred and fifty thousand," said Montevarchi, slowly rubbing his pointed chin with his bony lingers. "Five per cent--seven thousand five hundred--a mint of money, Signor Marchese, a mint of money! And these are hard times. What a rich man you must be, to talk so lightly about such immense sums! Well, well--you are very eloquent, I must consent, and by strict economy I may perhaps succeed in recovering the loss." "You must be aware that it is not really a loss," argued San Giacinto, "since it is to remain with your daughter and her children, and consequently with your family." "Yes, I know. But money is money, my friend," exclaimed the prince, laying his right hand on the old green tablecover and slowly drawing his crooked nails over the cloth, as though he would like to squeeze gold out of the dusty wool. There was something almost fierce in his tone, too, as he uttered the words, and his small eyes glittered unpleasantly. He knew well enough that he was making a good bargain and that San Giacinto was a better match than he had ever hoped to get for Flavia. So anxious was he, indeed, to secure the prize that he entirely abstained from asking any questions concerning San Giacinto's past life, whereby some obstacle might have been raised to the intended marriage. He promised himself that the wedding should take place at once. "It is understood," he continued, after a pause, "that we or our notaries shall appear with the money in cash, and that it shall be immediately invested as we shall jointly decide, the settlements being made at the same time and on the spot." "Precisely so," replied San Giacinto. "No money, no contract." "In that case I will inform my daughter of my decision." "I shall be glad to avail myself of an early opportunity to pay my respects to Donna Flavia." "The wedding might take place on the 30th of November, my dear Marchese. The 1st of December is Advent Sunday, and no marriages are permitted during Advent without a special licence." "An expensive affair, doubtless," remarked San Giacinto, gravely, in spite of his desire to laugh. "Yes. Five scudi at least," answered Montevarchi, impressively. "Let us by all means be economical." "The Holy Church is very strict about these matters, and you may as well keep the money." "I will," replied San Giacinto, rising to go. "Do not let me detain you any longer. Pray accept my warmest thanks, and allow me to say that I shall consider it a very great honour to become your son-in-law." "Ah, indeed, you are very good, my dear Marchese. As for me I need consolation. Consider a father's feelings, when he consigns his beloved daughter--Flavia is an angel upon earth, my friend--when, I say, a father gives his dear child, whom he loves as the apple of his eye, to be carried off by a man--a man even of your worth! When your children are grown up, you will understand what I suffer." "I quite understand," said San Giacinto in serious tones. "It shall be the endeavour of my life to make you forget your loss. May I have the honour of calling to-morrow at this time?" "Yes, my dear Marchese, yes, my dear son--forgive a father's tenderness. To-morrow at this time, and---" he hesitated. "And then--some time before the ceremony, perhaps--you will give us the pleasure of your company at breakfast, I am sure, will you not? We are very simple people, but we are hospitable in our quiet way. Hospitality is a virtue," he sighed a little. "A necessary virtue," he added with some emphasis upon the adjective. "It will give me great pleasure," replied San Giacinto. Therewith he left the room and a few moments later was walking slowly homewards, revolving in his mind the probable results of his union with the Montevarchi family. When Montevarchi was alone, he smiled pleasantly to himself, and took out of a secret drawer a large book of accounts, in the study of which he spent nearly half an hour, with evident satisfaction. Having carefully locked up the volume, and returned the sliding panel to its place, he sent for his wife, who presently appeared. "Sit down, Guendalina," he said. "I will change my coat, and then I have something important to say to you." He had quite forgotten the inevitable change in his satisfaction over the interview with San Giacinto, but the sight of the princess recalled the necessity for economy. It had been a part of the business of his life to set her a good example in this respect. When he came back he seated himself before her. "My dear, I have got a husband for Flavia," were his first words. "At last!" exclaimed the princess. "I hope he is presentable," she added. She knew that she could trust her husband in the matter of fortune. "The new Saracinesca--the Marchese di San Giacinto." Princess Montevarchi's ruddy face expressed the greatest astonishment, and her jaw dropped as she stared at the old gentleman. "A pauper!" she exclaimed when she had recovered herself enough to speak. "Perhaps, Guendalina mia--but he settles a hundred and fifty thousand scudi on Flavia and her heirs for ever, the money to be paid on the signing of the contract. That does not look like pauperism. Of course, under the circumstances I agreed to do the same. It is settled on Flavia, do you understand? He does not want a penny of it, not a penny! Trust your husband for a serious man of business, Guendalina." "Have you spoken to Flavia? It certainly looks like a good match. There is no doubt about his being of the Saracinesca, of course. How could there be? They have taken him to their hearts. But how will Flavia behave?" "What a foolish question, my dear!" exclaimed Montevarchi. "How easily one sees that you are English! She will be delighted, I presume. And if not, what difference does it make?" "I would not have married you against my will, Lotario," observed the princess. "For my part, I had no choice. My dear father said simply, 'My son, you will pay your respects to that young lady, who is to be your wife. If you wish to marry anyone else, I will lock you up.' And so I did. Have I not been a faithful husband to you, Guendalina, through more than thirty years?" The argument was unanswerable, and Montevarchi had employed it each time one of his children was married. In respect of faithfulness, at least, he had been a model husband. "It is sufficient," he added, willing to make a concession to his wife's foreign notions, "that there should be love on the one side, and Christian principles on the other. I can assure you that San Giacinto is full of love, and as for Flavia, my dear, has she not been educated by you?" "As for Flavia's Christian principles, my dear Lotario, I only hope they may suffice for her married life. She is a terrible child to have at home. But San Giacinto looks like a determined man. I shall never forget his kindness in searching for Faustina last night. He was devotion itself, and I should not have been surprised had he wished to marry her instead." "That exquisite creature is reserved for a young friend of ours, Guendalina. Do me the favour never to speak of her marrying anyone else." The princess was silent for a moment, and then began to make a series of inquiries concerning the proposed bridegroom, which it is unnecessary to recount. "And now we will send for Flavia," said Montevarchi, at last. "Would it not be best that I should tell her?" asked his wife. "My dear," he replied sternly, "when matters of grave importance have been decided it is the duty of the head of the house to communicate the decision to the persons concerned." So Flavia was sent for, and appeared shortly, her pretty face and wicked black eyes expressing both surprise and anticipation. She was almost as dark as San Giacinto himself, though of a very different type. Her small nose had an upward turn which disturbed her mother's ideas of the fitness of things, and her thick black hair waved naturally over her forehead. Her figure was graceful and her movements quick and spontaneous. The redness of her lips showed a strong vitality, which was further confirmed by the singular brightness of her eyes. She was no beauty, especially in a land where the dark complexion predominates, but she was very pretty and possessed something of that mysterious quality which charms without exciting direct admiration. "Flavia," said her father, addressing her in solemn tones, "you are to be married, my dear child. I have sent for you at once, because there was no time to be lost, seeing that the wedding must take place before the beginning of Advent. The news will probably give you pleasure, but I trust you will reflect upon the solemnity of such engagements and lay aside---" "Would you mind telling me the name of my husband?" inquired Flavia, interrupting the paternal lecture. "The man I have selected for my son-in-law is one whom all women would justly envy you, were it not that envy is an atrocious sin, and one which I trust you will henceforth endeavour---" "To drown, crush out and stamp upon in the pursuit of true Christian principles," said Flavia with a laugh. "I know all about envy. It is one of the seven deadlies. I can tell you them all, if you like." "Flavia, I am amazed!" cried the princess, severely. "I had not expected this conduct of my daughter," said Montevarchi. "And though I am at present obliged to overlook it, I can certainly not consider it pardonable. You will listen with becoming modesty and respect to what I have to say." "I am all modesty, respect and attention--but I would like to know his name, papa--please consider that pardonable!" "I do not know why I should not tell you that, and I shall certainly give you all such information concerning him as it is proper that you should receive. The fact that he is a widower need not surprise you, for in the inscrutable ways of Providence some men are deprived of their wives sooner than others. Nor should his age appear to you in the light of an obstacle--indeed there are no obstacles---" "A widower--old--probably bald--I can see him already. Is he fat, papa?" "He approaches the gigantic; but as I have often told you, Flavia, the qualities a wise father should seek in choosing a husband for his child are not dependent upon outward---" "For heaven's sake, mamma," cried Flavia, "tell me the creature's name!" "The Marchese di San Giacinto--let your father speak, and do not interrupt him." "While you both insist on interrupting me," said Montevarchi, "it is impossible for me to express myself." "I wish it were!" observed Flavia, under her breath. "You are speaking of the Saracinesca cousin, San Giacinto? Not so bad after all." "It is very unbecoming in a young girl to speak of men by their last names---" "Giovanni, then. Shall I call him Giovanni?" "Flavia!" exclaimed the princess. "How can you be so undutiful! You should speak of him as the Marchese di San Giacinto." "Silence!" cried the prince. "I will not be interrupted! The Marchese di San Giacinto will call to-morrow, after breakfast, and will pay his respects to you. You will receive him in a proper spirit." "Yes, papa," replied Flavia, suddenly growing meek, and folding her hands submissively. "He has behaved with unexampled liberality," continued Montevarchi, "and I need hardly say that as the honour of our house was concerned I have not allowed myself to be outdone. Since you refuse to listen to the words of fatherly instruction which it is natural I should speak on this occasion, you will at least remember that your future husband is entirely such a man as I would have chosen, that he is a Saracinesca, as well as a rich man, and that he has been accustomed in the women of his family to a greater refinement of manner than you generally think fit to exhibit in the presence of your father." "Yes, papa. May I go, now?" "If your conscience will permit you to retire without a word of gratitude to your parents, who in spite of the extreme singularities of your behaviour have at last provided you with a suitable husband; if, I say, you are capable of such ingratitude, then, Flavia, you may certainly go." "I was going to say, papa, that I thank you very much for my husband, and mamma, too." Thereupon she kissed her father's and her mother's hands with great reverence and turned to leave the room. Her gravity forsook her, however, before she reached the door. "Evviva! Hurrah!" she cried, suddenly skipping across the intervening space and snapping her small fingers like a pair of castanets. "Evviva! Married at last! Hurrah!" And with this parting salute she disappeared. When she was gone, her father and mother looked at each other, as they had looked many times before in the course of Flavia's life. They had found little difficulty in bringing up their other children, but Flavia was a mystery to them both. The princess would have understood well enough a thorough English girl, full of life and animal spirits, though shy and timid in the world, as the elderly lady had herself been in her youth. But Flavia's character was incomprehensible to her northern soul. Montevarchi understood the girl better, but loved her even less. What seemed odd in her to his wife, to him seemed vulgar and ill-bred, for he would have had her like the rest, silent and respectful in his presence, and in awe of him as the head of the house, if not in fact, at least in manner. But Flavia's behaviour was in the eyes of Romans a very serious objection to her as a wife for any of their sons, for in their view moral worth was necessarily accompanied by outward gravity and decorum, and a light manner could only be the visible sign of a giddy heart. "If only he does not find out what she is like!" exclaimed the princess at last. "I devoutly trust that heaven in its mercy may avert such a catastrophe from our house," replied Montevarchi, who, however, seemed to be occupied in adding together certain sums upon his fingers. San Giacinto understood Flavia better than either of her parents; and although his marriage with her was before all things a part of his plan for furthering his worldly interests, it must be confessed that he had a stronger liking for the girl than her father would have considered indispensable in such affairs. The matter was decided at once, and in a few days the preliminaries were settled between the lawyers, while Flavia exerted the utmost pressure possible upon the parental purse in the question of the trousseau. It may seem strange that at the time when all Rome was convulsed by an internal revolution, and when the temporal power appeared to be in very great danger, Montevarchi and San Giacinto should have been able to discuss so coolly the conditions of the marriage, and even to fix the wedding day. The only possible explanation of this fact is that neither of them believed in the revolution at all. It is a noticeable characteristic of people who are fond of money that they do not readily believe in any great changes. They are indeed the most conservative of men, and will count their profits at moments of peril with a coolness which would do honour to veteran soldiers. Those who possess money put their faith in money and give no credence to rumours of revolution which are not backed by cash. Once or twice in history they have been wrong, but it must be confessed that they have very generally been right. As for San Giacinto, his own interests were infinitely more absorbing to his attention than those of the world at large, and being a man of uncommonly steady nerves, it seems probable that he would have calmly pursued his course in the midst of much greater disturbances than those which affected Rome at that time. CHAPTER VIII. When Anastase Gouache was at last relieved from duty and went home in the gray dawn of the twenty-third, he lay down to rest expecting to reflect upon the events of the night. The last twelve hours had been the most eventful of his life; indeed less than that time had elapsed since he had bid farewell to Faustina in the drawing-room of the Palazzo Saracinesca, and yet the events which had occurred in that short space had done much towards making him another man. The change had begun two years earlier, and had progressed slowly until it was completed all at once by a chain of unforeseen circumstances. He realised the fact, and as this change was not disagreeable to him he set himself to think about it. Instead of reviewing what had happened, however, he did what was much more natural in his case, he turned upon his pillow and fell fast asleep. He was younger than his years, though he counted less than thirty, and his happy nature had not yet formed that horrible habit of wakefulness which will not yield even to bodily fatigue. He lay down and slept like a boy, disturbed by no dreams and troubled by no shadowy revival of dangers or emotions past. He had placed a gulf between himself and his former life. What had passed between him and Faustina, might under other circumstances have become but a romantic episode in the past, to be thought of with a certain tender regret, half fatuous, half genuine, whenever the moonlight chanced to cast the right shadow and the artist's mind was in the contemplative mood. The peculiar smell of broken masonry, when it is a little damp, would recall the impression, perhaps; an old wall knocked to pieces by builders would, through his nostrils, bring vividly before him that midnight meeting amid the ruins of the barracks, just as the savour of a certain truffle might bring back the memory of a supper at Voisin's, or as, twenty years hence, the pasty grittiness of rough maize bread would make him remember the days when he was chasing brigands in the Samnite hills. But this was not to be the case this time. There was more matter for reminiscence than a ray of moonlight on a fair face, or the smell of crumbling mortar. There was a deep and sincere devotion on both sides, in two persons both singularly capable of sincerity, and both foresaw that the result of this love could never be indifference. The end could only be exceeding happiness, or mortal sorrow. Anastase and Faustina were not only themselves in earnest; each knew instinctively that the other would be faithful, a condition extremely rare in ordinary cases. Each recognised that the obstacles were enormous, but neither doubted for a moment that means would be found to overcome them. In some countries the marriage of these two would have been a simple matter enough. A man of the world, honourable, successful, beginning to be famous, possessed of some fortune, might aspire to marry any one he pleased in lands where it is not a disgrace to have acquired the means of subsistence by one's own talent and industry. Artists and poets have sometimes made what are called great marriages. But in Rome, twenty years ago, things were very different. It is enough to consider the way in which Montevarchi arranged to dispose of his daughter Flavia to understand the light in which he would have regarded Faustina's marriage with Anastase Gouache. The very name of Gouache would have raised a laugh in the Montevarchi household had any one suggested that a woman of that traditionally correct race could ever make it her own. There were persons in Rome, indeed, who might have considered the matter more leniently. Corona Sant' Ilario was one of these; but her husband and father-in-law would have opened their eyes as wide as old Lotario Montevarchi himself, had the match been discussed before them. Their patriarchally exclusive souls would have been shocked and the dear fabric of their inborn prejudices shaken to its deepest foundations. It was bad enough, from the point of view of potential matrimony, to earn money, even if one had the right to prefix "Don" to one's baptismal name. But to be no Don and to receive coin for one's labour was a far more insurmountable barrier against intermarriage with the patriarchs than hereditary madness, toothless old age, leprosy, or lack of money. Gouache had acquired enough knowledge of Roman life to understand this, and nothing short of physical exhaustion would have prevented his spending his leisure in considering the means of overcoming such stupendous difficulties. When he awoke his situation presented itself clearly enough to his mind, however, and occupied his thoughts throughout the remainder of the day. Owing to the insurrection his departure was delayed for twenty-four hours, and his duty was likely to keep him busily engaged during the short time that remained to him. The city was in a state of siege and there would be a perpetual service of patrols, sentries and general maintenance of order. The performance of labours almost mechanical left him plenty of time for reflection, though he found it hard to spare a moment in which to see any of his friends. He was very anxious to meet the Princess Sant' Ilario, whose conduct on the previous night had seriously alarmed him. It was to her that he looked for assistance in his troubles and the consciousness that she was angry with him was a chief source of distress. In the course of the few words he had exchanged with her, she had made it sufficiently clear to him that although she disapproved in principle of his attachment to Faustina, she would do nothing to hinder his marriage if he should be able to overcome the obstinacy of the girl's parents. He was at first at a loss to explain her severity to him when she had left her house to take Faustina home. Being wholly innocent of any share in the latter's mad course, it did not at first enter his mind that Corona could attribute to him any blame in the matter. On the contrary, he knew that if the girl's visit to the ruined barracks remained a secret, this would be owing quite as much to his own discretion and presence of mind as to the princess's willingness to help him. Not a little, too, was due to good luck, since the least difference in the course of events must have led to immediate discovery. A little thought led him to a conclusion which wounded his pride while it explained Corona's behaviour. It was evident that she had believed in a clandestine meeting, prearranged between the lovers at the instigation of Gouache himself, and she had probably supposed this meeting to be only the preliminary to a runaway match. How, indeed, could Faustina have expected to escape observation, even had there been no revolution in Rome, that night? Corona clearly thought that the girl had never intended to come back, that Gouache had devised means for their departure, and that Faustina had believed the elopement possible in the face of the insurrection. Anastase, on finding himself in the small hours of the morning with Faustina on his hands and knowing that discovery must follow soon after day-break, had boldly brought her to the Palazzo Saracinesca and had demanded Corona's assistance. As the artist thought the matter over, he became more and more convinced that he had understood the princess's conduct, and the reflection made him redden with shame and anger. He determined to seize the first moment that presented itself for an explanation with the woman who had wronged him. He unexpectedly found himself at liberty towards five o'clock in the afternoon and made haste at once to reach the Palazzo Saracinesca. Knowing that no one would be allowed to be in the streets after dark, he felt sure of finding Corona without visitors, and expected the most favourable opportunity for talking over the subject which distressed him. After waiting several minutes in one of the outer halls he was ushered in, and to his extreme annoyance found himself in the midst of a family party. He had not counted upon the presence of the men of the household, and the fact that the baby was also present did not facilitate matters. Old Saracinesca greeted him warmly; Sant' Ilario looked grave; Corona herself looked up from her game with little Orsino, nodded and uttered a word of recognition, and then returned to her occupation. Conversation under these circumstances was manifestly impossible, and Gouache wished he had not had the unlucky idea of calling. There was nothing to be done, however, but to put on a brave face and make the best of it. "Well, Monsieur Gouache," inquired the old prince, "and how did you spend the night?" He could scarcely have asked a question better calculated to disturb the composure of everyone present except the baby. Anastase could not help looking at Corona, who looked instinctively at her husband, while the latter gazed at Gouache, wondering what he would say. All three turned a shade paler, and during a very few seconds there was an awkward silence. "I spent the night very uncomfortably," replied Anastase, after hesitating a little. "We were driven from pillar to post, repelling attacks, doing sentry duty, clearing the streets, marching and countermarching. It was daylight when I was relieved." "Indeed!" exclaimed Sant' Ilario. "I had supposed that you had remained all night at the Porta San Paolo. But there are many contradictory accounts. I was in some anxiety until I was assured that you had not been blown up in that infernal plot." Gouache was on the point of asking who had told Giovanni that he had escaped, but fortunately checked himself, and endeavoured to turn the conversation to the disaster at the barracks. Thereupon old Saracinesca, whose blood was roused by the atrocity, delivered a terrible anathema against the murderous wretches who had ruined the building, and expressed himself in favour of burning them alive, a fate, indeed, far too good for them. Anastase profited by the old gentleman's eloquence to make advances to the baby. Little Orsino, however, struck him a vigorous blow in the face with his tiny fist and yelled lustily. "He does not like strangers," remarked Corona, coldly. She rose with the child in her arms and moved towards the door, Gouache following her with the intention of opening it for her to go out. The prince was still thundering out curses against the conspirators, and Anastase attempted to say a word unobserved as Corona passed him. "Will you not give me a hearing?" he asked in a low tone, accompanying his words with an imploring look. Corona raised her eyebrows slightly as though surprised, but his expression of genuine contrition softened her heart a little and rendered her answer perhaps a trifle less unkind than she had meant it to be. "You should be satisfied--since I keep your secret," she said, and passed quickly out. When Gouache turned after closing the door he was aware that Sant' Ilario had been watching him, by the fixed way in which he was now looking in another direction. The Zouave wished more and more fervently that he had not come to the house, but resolved to prolong his visit in the hope that Corona might return. Sant' Ilario was unaccountably silent, but his father kept up a lively conversation, needing only an occasional remark from Gouache to give a fillip to his eloquence. This situation continued during nearly half an hour, at the end of which time Anastase gave up all hope of seeing Corona again. The two men evidently did not expect her to return, for they had made themselves comfortable and had lighted their cigarettes. "Good-bye, Monsieur Gouache," said the old prince, cordially shaking him by the hand. "I hope we shall see you back again alive and well in a few days." While he was speaking Giovanni had rung the bell for the servant to show the visitor out, an insignificant action, destined to produce a rather singular result. Sant' Ilario himself, feeling that after all he might never see Gouache alive again, repented a little of his coldness, and while the latter stood ready to go, detained him with a question as to his destination on leaving the city. This resulted in a lively discussion of Garibaldi's probable movements, which lasted several minutes. Corona in the meantime had taken Orsino back to his nurse, and had bidden her maid let her know when the visitor in the drawing-room was gone. The woman went to the hall, and when Giovanni rang the bell, returned to inform her mistress of the fact, supposing that Gouache would go at once. Corona waited a few minutes, and then went back to the sitting-room, which was at the end of the long suite of apartments. The result was that she met Anastase in one of the rooms on his way out, preceded by the footman, who went on towards the hall after his mistress had passed. Corona and Gouache were left face to face and quite alone in the huge dim drawing-room. Gouache had found his opportunity and did not hesitate. "Madame," he said, "I beg your pardon for trespassing on your time, but I have a serious word to say. I am going to the frontier and am as likely to be killed as any one else. On the faith of a man who may be dead to-morrow, I am wholly innocent of what happened last night. If I come back I will prove it to you some day. If not, will you believe me, and not think of me unkindly?" Corona hesitated and stood leaning against the heavy curtain of a window for a moment. Though the room was very dim, she could see the honest look in the young man's eyes and she hesitated before she answered. She had heard that day that two of her acquaintances had fallen fighting against the Garibaldians and she knew that Anastase was speaking of a very near possibility when he talked of being killed. There were many chances that he was telling the truth, and she felt how deeply she should regret her unbelief if he should indeed meet his fate before they met again. "You tell me a strange thing," she said at last. "You ask me to believe that this poor girl, of her own free will and out of love for you, followed you out of this room last night into the midst of a revolution. It is a hard thing to believe---" "And yet I implore you to believe it, princess. A man who should love her less than I, would be the basest of men to speak thus of her love. God knows, if things had been otherwise, I would not have let you know. But was there any other way of taking her home? Did I not do the only thing that was at all possible to keep last night's doings a secret? I love her to such a point that I glory in her love for me. If I could have shielded her last night by giving up my life, you know that I would have ended my existence that very moment. It would have done no good. I had to confide in some one, and you, who knew half my secret, since I had told you I loved her, were the only person who could be allowed to guess the remainder. If it could profit her that you should think me a villain, you might think me so--even you, whom I reverence beyond all women save her. But to let you think so would be to degrade her, and that you shall not do. You shall not think that she has been so foolish as to pin her faith on a man who would lead her to destruction--ah! if I loved her less I could tell you better what I mean." Corona was moved by his sincerity, if not by his arguments. She saw all the strangeness of the situation; how he had been forced to confide in some one, and how it seemed better in his eyes that she should know how Faustina had really behaved, than think that the young girl had agreed to a premeditated meeting. She was touched and her heart relented. "I believe you," she said. "Forgive me if I have wronged you." "Thank you, thank you, dear princess!" cried Gouache, taking her hand and touching it with his lips. "I can never thank you as I would. And now, good-bye--I am going. Will you give me your blessing, as my mother would?" He smiled, as he recalled the conversation of the previous evening. "Good-bye," answered Corona. "May all blessings go with you." He turned away and she stood a moment looking after him as he disappeared in the gloom. She was sorry for him in her heart and repented a little of having treated him so harshly. And yet, as soon as he was gone she began to doubt again, wondering vaguely whether she had not been deceived. There was an odd fascination about the soldier-artist which somehow influenced her in his favour when he was present, and of which she was not conscious until he was out of her sight. Now that she was alone, she found herself considering how this peculiar charm which he possessed would be likely to affect a young girl like Faustina, and she was obliged to acknowledge that it would account well enough for the latter's foolish doings. She could not look into Gouache's eyes and doubt what he said, but she found it hard afterwards to explain the faith she put in him. She was roused from her short reflection by her husband who, without being observed by her, had come to her side. Seeing that she did not return to the sitting-room when Gouache was gone he had come in search of her, and by the merest chance had overheard the last words which had passed between her and Anastase, and had seen how the latter fervently kissed her hand. The phrase in which she had wished him good luck rang unpleasantly in his ears and startled the inmost sensibilities of his nature. He remembered how she had blessed him once, in her calm, gentle way, on that memorable night of the Frangipani ball nearly three years before, and there was a similarity between the words she had used then and the simple expression which had now fallen from her lips. Giovanni stood beside her now and laid his hand upon her arm. It was not his nature to break out suddenly as his father did, when anything occurred to disturb his peace of mind. The Spanish blood he had inherited from his mother had imparted a profound reserve to his character, which gave it depth rather than coldness. It was hard for him to speak out violently when under the influence of emotion, but this very difficulty of finding words and his aversion to using them made him more sincere, more enduring and less forgiving than other men. He could wait long before he gave vent to his feelings, but they neither grew cool nor dull for the waiting. He detested concealment and secrecy more than most people, but his disinclination to speak of any matter until he was sure of it had given him the reputation of being both reticent and calculating. Giovanni now no longer concealed from himself the fact that he was annoyed by what was passing, but he denied, even in his heart, that he was jealous. To doubt Corona would be to upset the whole fabric of his existence, which he had founded upon her love and which had been built up to such great proportions during the past three years. His first impulse was to ask an explanation, and it carried him just far enough to lay his hand on his wife's arm, when it was checked by a multitude of reflections and unconscious arguments which altogether changed his determination. "I thought he was gone," he said, quietly enough. "So did I," replied Corona, in a cooler tone than she generally used in speaking to her husband. She, too, was annoyed, for she suspected that Giovanni had been watching her; and since, on the previous evening he had promised to trust her altogether in this affair, she looked upon his coming almost in the light of an infringement upon the treaty, and resented it accordingly. She did not reflect that it was unlikely that Giovanni should expect her to try to meet Gouache on his way out, and would therefore not think of lying in wait for her. His accidental coming seemed premeditated. He, on his side, had noticed her marked coldness to Anastase in the sitting-room and thought it contrasted very strangely with the over-friendly parting of which he had chanced to be a witness. Corona, too, knew very well that the last words spoken were capable of misinterpretation, and as she had no intention of telling her husband Faustina's story at present she saw no way of clearing up the situation, and therefore prepared to ignore it altogether. They turned together and walked slowly back in the direction of the sitting-room, neither speaking a word until they had almost reached the door. Then Giovanni stopped and looked at his wife. "Is it part of last night's secret?" he asked, almost indifferently. "Yes," answered Corona. "What could you suppose it was? I met him by accident and we exchanged a few words." "I know. I heard you say good-bye. I confess I was surprised. I thought you meant to be rude to him when we were all together, but I was mistaken. I hope your blessing will profit him, my dear!" He spoke quite naturally and without effort. "I hope so too," returned Corona. "You might have added yours, since you were present." "To tell the truth," said Giovanni, with a short laugh, "I fancy it might not have been so acceptable." "You talk very strangely, Giovanni!" "Do I? It seems to me quite natural. Shall we go into the sitting-room?" "Giovanni--you promised to trust me last night, and I promised to explain everything to you some day. You must keep your promise wholly or not at all." "Certainly," answered Sant' Ilario, opening the door for his wife and thus forcing the conversation to end suddenly, since old Saracinesca must now hear whatever was said. He would not allow the situation to last, for fear lest he should say something of which he might repent, for in spite of his words he did not wish to seem suspicious. Unfortunately, Corona's evident annoyance at having been overheard did more to strengthen the feeling of resentment which was growing in him than what he had heard and seen a few moments earlier. The way in which she had reproached him with not adding his blessing to hers showed plainly enough, he thought, that she was angry at what had occurred. They both entered the room, but before they had been long together Giovanni left his wife and father and retired to his own room under pretext of writing letters until dinner-time. When he was alone, the situation presented itself to his mind in a very disagreeable light. Corona's assurance that the mystery was a harmless one seemed wholly inadequate to account for her meeting with Gouache and for her kind treatment of him, especially after she had shown herself so evidently cold to him in the presence of the others. Either Giovanni was a very silly fellow, or he was being deceived as no man was ever deceived before. Either conclusion was exasperating. He asked himself whether he were such a fool as to invent a misconstruction upon occurrences which to any one else would have seemed void of any importance whatsoever; and his heart answered that if he were indeed so senseless he must have lost his intelligence very recently. On the other hand to suspect Corona of actually entertaining a secret passion for Gouache was an hypothesis which seemed too monstrous to be discussed. He sat down to think about it, and was suddenly startled by the host of little circumstances which all at once detached themselves from the hazy past and stood out in condemnation of his wife. Gouache, as he himself had acknowledged, had long worshipped the princess in a respectful, almost reverential way. He had taken every occasion of talking with her, and had expressed even by his outward manner a degree of devotion he never manifested to other women. Giovanni was now aware that for some time past, even as far back as the previous winter, he had almost unconsciously watched Corona and Anastase when they were together. Nothing in her conduct had excited his suspicions in the least, but he had certainly suspected that Gouache was a little inclined to idolise her, and had laughed to himself more than once at the idea of the French artist's hopeless passion, with something of that careless satisfaction a man feels who sees a less favoured mortal in dangerous proximity to a flame which burns only for himself. It was rather a contemptible amusement, and Giovanni had never indulged in it very long. He liked Gouache, and, if anything, pitied him for his hopeless passion. Corona treated the Zouave in her grand, quiet way, which had an air of protection with it, and Giovanni would have scoffed at the thought that she cared for the man. Nevertheless, now that matters had taken such a strange turn, he recollected with surprise that Gouache was undeniably the one of all their acquaintance who most consistently followed Corona wherever they met. The young man was a favourite in society. His great talent, his modesty, and above all what people were pleased to describe as his harmlessness, made everybody like him. He went everywhere, and his opportunities of meeting the princess were almost numberless. Giovanni had certainly watched him very often, though he was hardly conscious of having bestowed so much attention on the French artist-soldier, that he never failed to glance at his wife when Anastase was mentioned. Now, and all at once, a hundred details rushed to his recollection, and he was staggered by the vista of incidents that rose before his mind. Within the last twenty-four hours, especially, the evidence had assumed terrible proportions. In the first place there had been that scene in the drawing-room, enacted quietly enough and in a corner, while there were twenty persons present, but with the coolness of two people of the world who know what surprising things may be done unobserved in a room full of people. If Anastase had kissed Corona's hand a little differently, and with the evident intention of being seen, the action would have been natural. But there was a look in Gouache's face which Giovanni remembered, and an expression of kindness in Corona's eyes that he had not forgotten; above all they had both seemed as though they were sure that no one was watching them. Indeed, Sant' Ilario now asked himself how he had chanced to see what passed, and the only answer was that he generally watched them when they were together. This was a revelation to himself, and told much. Then there was her midnight expedition with Gouache, a far more serious matter. After all, he had only Corona's own assurance that Faustina Montevarchi had been in any way concerned in that extraordinary piece of rashness. He must indeed have had faith in his wife to pass over such conduct without a word of explanation. Next came the events of that very afternoon. Corona had been rude to Gouache, had then suddenly left the room, and in passing out had exchanged a few words with him in a low tone. She had met him again by accident, if it had been an accident, and fancying herself unseen had behaved very differently to the young man. There had been a parting which savoured unpleasantly of the affectionate, and which was certainly something more than merely friendly. Lastly, Corona had evidently been annoyed at Giovanni's appearance, a fact which seemed to conclude the whole argument with a terrible certainty. Finding himself face to face with a conclusion which threatened to destroy his happiness altogether, Giovanni started up from his chair and began to walk backwards and forwards in the room, pausing a moment each time he turned, as though to gather strength, or to shake off an evil thought. In the light of his present reflections an explanation seemed inevitable, but when he thought of that he saw too clearly that any explanation must begin by his accusing his wife, and he knew that if he accused her justly, it would only end in a denial from her. What woman, however guilty, would not deny her guilt when charged with it. What man either, where love was concerned? Giovanni laughed bitterly, then turned pale and sat down again. To accuse Corona of loving Gouache! It was too monstrous to be believed. And yet--what did all those doings mean? There must be a reason for them. If he called her and told her what he felt, and if she were innocent, she would tell him all, everything would be explained, and he would doubtless see that all this damning evidence was no more than the natural outward appearance of perfectly harmless circumstances of which he knew nothing. Ay, but if they were harmless, why should she implore him to ask no questions? Because the honour of some one else was concerned, of course. But was he, Giovanni Saracinesca, not to be trusted with the keeping of that other person's honour as well as Corona herself? Had they ever had secrets from each other? Would it not have been simpler for her to trust him with the story, if she was innocent, than to be silent and ask him to trust her motives? Far simpler, of course. And then, if only a third person's feelings were at stake, what necessity had there been for such a sentimental parting? She had given Gouache a blessing very like the one she had given Giovanni. Worst of all, were not the circumstances the same, the very same? Giovanni remembered the Frangipani ball. At that time Corona was married to Astrardente, who had died a few days afterwards. Giovanni had that night told Corona that he loved her, in very passionate terms. She had silenced him, and he had behaved like a gentleman, for he had asked her pardon for what he had done. She had forgiven him, and to show that she bore no malice had spoken a kind of benediction--a prayer that all might be well with him. He knew now that she had loved him even then when she repelled him. And now that she was married to Giovanni, another had come, and had talked with her, and exchanged words in a low tone even as he himself had once done. And she had treated this man roughly before her husband, and presently afterwards had allowed him to kiss her hand and had sent him away saying that she forgave him--just as she had formerly forgiven Giovanni--and praying that all blessings might go with him. Why was it not possible that she loved this man, too? Because she was so grandly beautiful, and dark and calm, and had such a noble fearlessness in her eyes? Other women had been beautiful and had deceived wiser men than Giovanni, and had fallen. Beauty was no argument for the defence, nor brave eyes, nor the magnificent dignity of movement and speech--nor words either, for that matter. Suspense was agony, and yet a twofold horror seemed the only issue, the one inevitable, the other possible. First, to accuse this woman whom he loved so dearly, and then, perhaps, to hear her deny the charge boldly and yet refuse all explanation. Once more Giovanni rose from his deep chair and paced his room with regular strides, though he scarcely saw the carpet under his feet, nor realised any longer where he was. At last he stopped and laughed. The sound was strange and false, as when a man tries to be merry who feels no mirth. He was making a desperate effort to shake off this nightmare that beset him, to say to himself that he was but a fool, and that there was no cause for all this suffering which he was inflicting on his heart, nor for all these questions he had been asking of his intelligence. It was surely not true! He would laugh now, would laugh heartily within the next half hour with Corona herself, at the mere thought of supposing that she could love Gouache, Gouache, a painter! Gouache, a Zouave! Gouache, a contemptibly good-natured, harmless little foreigner!--and Corona del Carmine, Duchessa d'Astrardente, Principessa di Sant' Ilario, mother of all the Saracinesca yet to come! It was better to laugh, truly, at such an absurd juxtaposition of ideas, of personalities, of high and low. And Giovanni laughed, but the sound, was very harsh and died away without rousing one honest echo in the vaulted room. Had Corona seen his face at that moment, or had she guessed what was passing in his mind, she would have sacrificed Faustina's secret ten times over rather than let Giovanni suffer a moment longer as he was suffering now. But Corona had no idea that he could put such a construction upon her doings. He had shown her nothing of what he felt, except perhaps a slight annoyance at not being put in possession of the secret. It was natural, she thought, that he should be a little out of temper, but as she saw no way of remedying the trouble except by exposing to him the innocent girl whom she had undertaken to protect, she held her peace and trusted that her husband's displeasure would soon be past. Had there been more time for reflection on the previous evening, in the interval between her learning from the porter that Giovanni knew of her absence, and her being confronted with Giovanni himself, she might have resolved to act differently; but having once made up her mind that he ought not to know the truth for the present, opposition only strengthened her determination. There was nothing wrong in the course she was pursuing, or her conscience would have spoken and bidden her speak out. Her nature was too like Giovanni's own, proud, reserved, and outwardly cold, to yield any point easily. It was her instinct, like his, to be silent rather than to speak, and to weigh considerations before acting upon them. This very similarity of temper in the two rendered it certain that if they were ever opposed to each other the struggle would be a serious one. They were both too strong to lead a life of petty quarrelling; if they ceased to live in perfect harmony they were only too sure to come to open hostility. There is nothing which will wound pride and raise anger so inevitably as finding unexpected but determined opposition in those who very closely resemble ourselves. In such a case a man cannot fall back upon the comfortable alternative of despising his enemy, since he has an intimate conviction that it would be paramount to despising himself; and if he is led into a pitched battle he will find his foe possessed of weapons which are exactly like his own. Giovanni and Corona were very evenly matched, as nearly resembling each other as is possible for a man and a woman. Corona was outwardly a little the colder, Giovanni a little the more resentful of the two. Corona had learned during the years of her marriage with Astrardente to wear a mask of serene indifference, and the assumed habit had at last become in some degree a part of her nature. Giovanni, whose first impulses had originally been quicker than they now were, had learned the power of waiting by constant intercourse with his father, whose fiery temper seemed to snatch at trifles for the mere pleasure of tearing them to pieces, and did injustice to the generous heart he concealed under his rough exterior. Under these circumstances it was not probable that Sant' Ilario would make any exhibition of his jealousy for some time to come. As he paced the floor of his room, the bitterness of his situation slowly sank from the surface, leaving his face calm and almost serene. He forced himself to look at the facts again and again, trying bravely to be impartial and to survey them as though he were the judge and not the plaintiff. He admitted at last that there was undoubtedly abundant matter for jealousy, but Corona still stood protected as it were by the love he bore her, a love which even her guilt would be unable to destroy. His love indeed, must outlast everything, all evil, all disgrace, and he knew it. He thought of that Latin poet who, writing to his mistress, said in the bitterness of his heart that though she were to become the best woman in the world he could never again respect her, but that he could not cease to love her, were she guilty of all crimes. He knew that if the worst turned out true that must be his case, and perhaps for the first time in his life he understood all the humanity of Catullus, and saw how a man might love even what he despised. Happily matters had not yet come to that. He knew that he might be deceived, and that circumstantial evidence was not always to be trusted. Even while his heart grew cold with the strongest and most deadly passion of which man is capable, with jealousy which is cruel as the grave, the nobility of his nature rose up and made him see that his duty was to believe Corona innocent until she were proved unfaithful. The effort to quench the flame was great, though fruitless, but the determination to cover it and hide it from every one, even from Corona herself, appealed to all that was brave and manly in his strong character. When at last he once more sat down, his face betrayed no emotion, his eyes were quiet, his hands did not tremble. He took up a book and forced his attention upon the pages for nearly an hour without interruption. Then he dressed himself, and went and sat at table with his father and his wife as though nothing had occurred to disturb his equanimity. Corona supposed that he had recovered from his annoyance at not being admitted to share the secret for which she was unconsciously sacrificing so much. She had expected this result and was more than usually cheerful. Once old Saracinesca mentioned Gouache, but both Corona and Giovanni hastened to change the subject. This time, however, Giovanni did not look at his wife when the name was pronounced. Those days were over now. CHAPTER IX. The excitement which had reigned in Rome for weeks past was destined to end almost as suddenly as it had begun. The events which followed the 22d of October have been frequently and accurately described; indeed, if we consider the small number of the troops engaged and the promptness with which a very limited body of men succeeded in quelling what at first appeared to be a formidable revolution, we are surprised at the amount of attention which has been accorded to the little campaign. The fact is that although the armies employed on both sides were insignificant, the questions at stake were enormous, and the real powers which found themselves confronted at Monte Rotondo and Mentana were the Kingdom of Italy and the French Empire. Until the ultimatum was presented to Italy by the French Minister on the 19th of October, Italy hoped to take possession of Rome on the pretext of restoring order after allowing it to be subverted by Garibaldi's guerillas. The military cordon formed by the Italian army to prevent Garibaldi's crossing the frontier was a mere show. The arrest of the leader himself, however it was intended by those who ordered it, turned out in effect to be a mere comedy, as he soon found himself at liberty and no one again attempted to seize him. When France interfered the scale turned. She asserted her determination to maintain the Convention of 1864 by force of arms, and Italy was obliged to allow Garibaldi to be defeated, since she was unable to face the perils of a war with her powerful neighbour. If a small body of French troops had not entered Rome on the 30th of the month, the events of 1870 would have occurred three years earlier, though probably with different results. It being the object of the general commanding the Pope's forces to concentrate a body of men with whom to meet Garibaldi, who was now advancing boldly, the small detachments, of which many had already been sent to the front, were kept back in Rome in the hope of getting together something like an army. Gouache's departure was accordingly delayed from day to day, and it was not until the early morning of the 3d of November that he actually quitted Rome with the whole available corps of Zouaves. Ten days elapsed, therefore, after the events last described, during which time he was hourly in expectation of orders to march. The service had become so arduous within the city that he could scarcely call a moment his own. It was no time to think of social duties, and he spent the leisure he had in trying to see Faustina Montevarchi as often as possible. This, however, was no easy matter. It was a provoking fact that his duties kept him busily occupied in the afternoon and evening, and that the hours he could command fell almost always in the morning. To visit the Palazzo Montevarchi on any pretext whatever before one o'clock in the day was out of the question. He had not even the satisfaction of seeing Faustina drive past him in the Corso when she was out with her mother and Flavia, since they drove just at the time when he was occupied. Gouache told himself again and again that the display of ingenuity was in a measure the natural duty of a man in love, but the declaration did not help him very much. He was utterly at a loss for an expedient, and suffered keenly in being deprived of the possibility of seeing Faustina after having seen her so often and so intimately. A week earlier he could have borne it better, but now the separation was intolerable. In time of peace he would have disobeyed orders and thrown up his service for the day, no matter what the consequences turned out to be for himself; but at the present moment, when every man was expected to be at his post, such conduct seemed dishonourable and cowardly. He submitted in silence, growing daily more careworn, and losing much of the inexhaustible gaiety which made him a general favourite with his comrades. There was but one chance of seeing Faustina, and even that one offered little probability of an interview. He knew that on Sunday mornings she sometimes went to church at an early hour with no one but her maid for a companion. Her mother and Flavia preferred to rise later and attended another mass. Now it chanced that in the year 1867, the 22d of October, the date of the insurrection, fell on Tuesday. Five days, therefore, must elapse before he could see Faustina on a Sunday, and if he failed to see her then he would have to wait another week. Unfortunately, Faustina's early expeditions to church were by no means certain or regular, and it would be necessary to convey a message to her before the day arrived. This was no easy matter. To send anything through the post was out of the question, and Gouache knew how hard it would be to find the means of putting a note into her hands through a servant. Hour after hour he cudgelled his brains for an expedient without success, until the idea pursued him and made him nervous. The time approached rapidly and he had as yet accomplished nothing. The wildest schemes suggested themselves to him and were rejected as soon as he thought of them. He met some of his acquaintances during the idle hours of the morning, and it almost drove him mad to think that almost any one of them could see Faustina any day he pleased. He did what he could to obtain leave in the afternoon or evening, but his exertions were fruitless. He was a man who was trusted, and knew it, and the disturbed state of affairs made it necessary that every man should do precisely what was allotted to him, at the risk of causing useless complications in the effort to concentrate and organise the troops which was now going forward. At last he actually went to the Palazzo Montevarchi in the morning and inquired if he could see the princess. The porter replied that she was not visible, and that the prince had gone out. There was nothing to be done, and he turned to go away. Suddenly he stopped as he stood under the deep arch, facing the blank wall on the opposite side of the street. That same wall was broad and smooth and dark in colour. He only looked at it a moment, and then to excuse his hesitation in the eyes of the porter, he took out a cigarette, and lit it before going out. As he passed through the Piazza Colonna a few minutes later he went into a shop and bought two large tubes of paint with a broad brush. That night, when he was relieved from duty, he went back to the Palazzo Montevarchi. It was very late, and the streets were deserted. He stood before the great closed doors of the palace and then walked straight across the street to the blank wall with his paint and brush in his hands. On the following morning when the Montevarchi porter opened the gates his eyes were rejoiced by some most extraordinary specimens of calligraphy executed upon the dark stones with red paint of a glaringly vivid hue. The letters A. G. were drawn at least four feet high in the centre, and were repeated in every size at irregular intervals for some distance above, below, and on each side. The words "Domenica," Sunday, and "Messa," mass, were scrawled everywhere in capitals, in roundhand, large and small. Then to give the whole the air of having been designed by a street-boy, there were other words, such as "Viva Pio IX.," "Viva il Papa Re," and across these, in a different manner, and in green paint, "Viva Garibaldi," "Morte a Antonelli," and similar revolutionary sentiments. The whole, however, was so disposed that Gouache's initials and the two important words stood out in bold relief from the rest, and could not fail to attract the eye. Of the many people who came and went that day through the great gate of the Palazzo Montevarchi two only attached any importance to the glaring scrawls on the opposite wall. One of these was Faustina herself, who saw and understood. The other was San Giacinto, who stared at the letters for several seconds, and then smiled faintly as he entered the palace. He, too, knew what the signs meant, and remarked to himself that Gouache was an enterprising youth, but that, in the interest of the whole tribe of Montevarchi, it would be well to put a stop to his love-making as soon as possible. It was now Saturday afternoon and there was no time to be lost. San Giacinto made a short visit, and, on leaving, went immediately to the Palazzo Saracinesca. He knew that at four o'clock Corona would probably not yet be at home. This turned out to be the case, and having announced his intention of waiting for her return he was ushered into the sitting-room. As soon as the servant was gone he went to Corona's writing-table and took from it a couple of sheets of her paper and two of her envelopes. These latter were stamped with a coronet and her initials. He folded the paper carefully and put the four bits into his pocket-book. He waited ten minutes, but no one came. Then he left the house, telling the servant to say that he had called and would return presently. In a few minutes he was at his lodgings, where he proceeded to write the following note. He had taken two sheets in case the first proved a failure:-- "I have understood, but alas! I cannot come. Oh, my beloved! when shall we meet again? It seems years since Tuesday night--and yet I am so watched that I can do nothing. Some one suspects something. I am sure of it. A TRUSTY PERSON will bring you this. I love you always--do not doubt it, though I cannot meet you to-morrow." San Giacinto, who had received a tolerable education and had conscientiously made the best of it, prided himself upon his handwriting. It was small, clear, and delicate, like that of many strong, quiet men, whose nerves do not run away with their fingers. On the present occasion he took pains to make it even more careful than usual, and the result was that it looked not unlike the "copperplate" handwriting a girl would learn at the convent, though an expert would probably have declared it disguised. It had been necessary, in order to deceive Gouache, to write the note on the paper generally used by women of society. As he could not get any of Faustina's own, it seemed the next best thing to take Corona's, since Corona was her most intimate friend. Gouache had told San Giacinto that he was engaged every afternoon, in hopes that he would in turn chance to mention the fact to Faustina. It was therefore pretty certain that Anastase would not be at home between four and five o'clock. San Giacinto drove to the Zouave's lodgings and asked for him. If he chanced to be in, the note could be given to his old landlady. He was out, however, and San Giacinto asked to be allowed to enter the room on the pretext of writing a word for his friend. The landlady was a dull old creature, who had been warming herself with a pot of coals when San Giacinto rang. In answer to his request she resumed her occupation and pointed to the door of the Zouave's apartment. San Giacinto entered, and looked about him for a conspicuous place in which to put the letter he had prepared. He preferred not to trust to the memory of the woman, who might forget to deliver it until the next day, especially if Gouache came home late that night, as was very likely. The table of the small sitting-room was littered with letters and papers, books and drawings, so that an object placed in the midst of such disorder would not be likely to attract Gouache's attention. The door beyond was open, and showed a toilet-table in the adjoining chamber, which was indeed the bedroom. San Giacinto went in, and taking the note from his pocket, laid it on an old-fashioned pincushion before the glass. The thing slipped, however, and in order to fasten it firmly he thrust a gold pin that lay on the table through the letter and pinned it to the cushion in a conspicuous position. Then he went out and returned to the Palazzo Saracinesca as he had promised to do. In doing all this he had no intention of injuring either Gouache or Faustina. He perceived clearly enough that their love affair could not come to any good termination, and as his interests were now very closely bound up with those of the Montevarchi, it seemed wisest to break off the affair by any means in his power, without complicating matters by speaking to Gouache or to Faustina's father or mother. He knew enough of human nature to understand that Gouache would be annoyed at losing the chance of a meeting, and he promised himself to watch the two so carefully as to be able to prevent other clandestine interviews during the next few days. If he could once sow the seeds of a quarrel between the two, he fancied it would be easy to break up the relations. Nothing makes a woman so angry as to wait for a man who has promised to meet her, and if he fails to come altogether her anger will probably be very serious. In the present case he supposed that Faustina would go to the church, but that Gouache, being warned that he was not to come, would not think of keeping the tryst. The scheme, if not profound, was at least likely to produce a good deal of trouble between the lovers. San Giacinto returned to the Palazzo Saracinesca, but he found only the old prince at home, though he prolonged his visit in the hope of seeing Corona or Sant' Ilario. "By the bye," he said, as he and his companion sat together in the prince's study, "I remember that you were so good as to say that you would let me see those family papers some day. They must be very interesting and I would be glad to avail myself of your offer." "Certainly," replied Saracinesca "They are in the Archives in a room of the library. It is rather late now. Do you mind waiting till to-morrow?" "Not in the least, or as long as you like. To tell the truth, I would like to show them to my future father-in-law, who loves archaeology. I was talking about them with him yesterday. After all, however, I suppose the duplicates are at the Cancelleria, and we can see them there." "I do not know," said the prince, carelessly, "I never took the trouble to inquire. There is probably some register of them, or something to prove that they are in existence." "There must be, of course. Things of that importance would not be allowed to go unregistered, unless people were very indifferent in those days." "It is possible that there are no duplicates. It may be that there is only an official notice of the deed giving the heads of the agreement. You see it was a friendly arrangement, and there was supposed to be no probability whatever that your great-grandfather would ever marry. The papers I have are all in order and legally valid, but there may have been some carelessness about registering them. I cannot be sure. Indeed it is thirty years at least since I looked at the originals." "If you would have them taken out some time before I am married, I should be glad to see them, but there is no hurry. So all this riot and revolution has meant something after all," added San Giacinto to change the subject "Garibaldi has taken Monte Rotondo, I hear to-day." "Yes, and if the French are not quick, we shall have the diversion of a siege," replied Saracinesca rather scornfully. "That same taking of Monte Rotondo was one of those gallant deeds for which Garibaldi is so justly famous. He has six thousand men, and there were only three hundred and fifty soldiers inside. Twenty to one, or thereabouts." It is unnecessary to detail the remainder of the conversation. Saracinesca went off into loud abuse of Garibaldi, confounding the whole Italian Government with him and devoting all to one common destination, while San Giacinto reserved his judgment, believing that there was probably a wide difference between the real intentions of the guerilla general and of his lawful sovereign, Victor Emmanuel the Second, King of Italy. At last the two men were informed that Corona had returned. They left the study and found her in the sitting-room. "Where is Giovanni?" she asked as soon as they entered. She was standing before the fireplace dressed as she had come in. "I have no idea where he is," replied Saracinesca. "I suppose he is at the club, or making visits somewhere. He has turned into a very orderly boy since you married him." The old man laughed a little. "I have missed him," said Corona, taking no notice of her father-in-law's remark. "I was to have picked him up on the Pincio, and when I got there he was gone. I am so afraid he will think I forgot all about it, for I must have been late. You see, I was delayed by a crowd in the Tritone--there is always a crowd there." Corona seemed less calm than usual. The fact was, that since the affair which had caused her husband so much annoyance, some small part of which she had perceived, she had been trying to make up to him for his disappointment in not knowing her secret, by being with him more than usual, and by exerting herself to please him in every way. They did not usually meet during the afternoon, as he generally went out on foot, while she drove, but to-day they had agreed that she should come to the Pincio and take him for a short drive and bring him home. The plan was part of her fixed intention to be more than usually thoughtful where he was concerned, and the idea that she had kept him waiting and that he had gone away caused her more regret than would have been natural in the ordinary course of events. In order to explain what now took place, it is necessary to return to Giovanni himself who, as Corona had said, had waited for his wife near the band-stand on the Pincio for some time, until growing weary, he had walked away and left the gardens. Though he manfully concealed what he felt, the passion that had been sown in his heart had grown apace and in a few days had assumed dominating proportions. He suspected everything and everybody while determined to appear indifferent. Even Corona's efforts to please him, which of late had grown so apparent, caused him suspicion. He asked himself why her manner should have changed, as it undoubtedly had during the last few days. She had always been a good and loving wife to him, and he was well pleased with her gravity and her dignified way of showing her affection. Why should she suddenly think it needful to become so very solicitous for his welfare and happiness during every moment of his life? It was not like her to come into his study early in the morning and to ask what he meant to do during the day. It was a new thing that she should constantly propose to walk with him, to drive with him, to read aloud to him, to make herself not only a part of his heart but a part of his occupations. Had the change come gradually, he would not have distrusted her motives. He liked his wife's company and conversation, but as they each had things to do which could not conveniently be done together, he had made up his mind to the existence which was good enough for his companions in society. Other men did not think of spending the afternoon in their wives' carriages, leaving cards or making visits, or driving round and round the Villa Borghese and the Pincio. To do so was to be ridiculous in the extreme, and besides, though he liked to be with Corona, he detested visiting, and hated of all things to stop a dozen times in the course of a drive in order to send a footman upstairs with cards. He preferred to walk or to lounge in the club or to stay at home and study the problems of his improvements for Saracinesca. Corona's manner irritated him therefore, and made him think more than ever of the subject which he would have done better to abandon from the first. Nevertheless, he would not show that he was wearied by his wife's attention, still less that he believed her behaviour to be prompted by a desire to deceive him. He was uniformly courteous and gentle, acquiescing in her little plans whenever he could do so, and expressing a suitable degree of regret when he was prevented from joining her by some previous engagement. But the image of the French Zouave was ever present with him. He could not get rid of Gouache's dark, delicate features, even in his dreams; the sound of the man's pleasant voice and of his fluent conversation was constantly in his ears, and he could not look at Corona without fancying how she would look if Anastase were beside her whispering tender speeches. All the time, he submitted with a good grace to do whatever she proposed, and on this afternoon he found himself waiting for her beside the band-stand. At first he watched the passing carriages indifferently enough, supposing that his own liveries would presently loom up in the long line of high-seated coachmen and lacqueys, and having no especial desire to see them. His position when in Corona's company grew every day more difficult, and he thought as he stood by the stone pillar at the corner that he would on the whole be glad if she did not come. He was egregiously mistaken in himself, however. As the minutes passed he grew uneasy, and watched the advancing carriages with a feverish anxiety, saying to himself that every one must bring Corona, and actually growing pale with emotion as each vehicle turned the distant corner and came into view. The time seemed interminable after he had once yielded to the excitement, and before another quarter of an hour had elapsed, Sant' Ilario turned angrily away and left the Pincio by the stairs that descend near the band-stand towards the winding drive by which the Piazza del Popolo is reached. It is not easy for a person who is calm to comprehend the workings of a brain over excited with a strong passion. To a man who has lost the sober use of his faculties in the belief that he has been foully betrayed, every circumstance, every insignificant accident, seems a link in the chain of evidence. A week earlier Giovanni would have thought himself mad if the mere idea had suggested itself to him that Corona loved Gouache. To-day he believed that she had purposely sent him to wait upon the Pincio, in order that she might be sure of seeing Gouache without fear of interruption. The conviction thrust itself upon him with overwhelming force. He fancied himself the dupe of a common imposition, he saw his magnificent love and trust made the sport of a vulgar trick. The blood mounted to his dark face and as he descended the steps a red mist seemed to be spread between his eyes and all surrounding objects. Though he walked firmly and mechanically, saluting his acquaintances as he passed, he was unconscious of his actions, and moved like a man under the influence of a superior force. Jealousy is that one of all the passions which is most sure to break out suddenly into deeds of violence when long restrained. Giovanni scarcely knew how he reached the Corso nor how it was that he found himself ascending the dusky staircase which led to Gouache's lodgings. It was less than a quarter of an hour since San Giacinto had been there, and the old woman still held her pot of coals in her hand as she opened the door. As she had pointed to the door when San Giacinto had come, so she now directed Giovanni in the same way. But Giovanni, on hearing that Anastase was out, began to ask questions. "Has any one been here?" he inquired. "Eh! There was a gentleman a quarter of an hour ago," replied the woman. "Has any lady been here?" "A lady? Macche!" The old creature laughed. "What should ladies do here?" Giovanni thought he detected some hesitation in the tone. He was in the mood to fancy himself deceived by every one. "Are you fond of money?" he asked, brutally. "Eh! I am an old woman. What would you have? Am I crazy that I should not like money? But Signor Gouache is a very good gentleman. He pays well, thank Heaven!" "What does he pay you for?" "What for? For his lodging--for his coffee. Bacchus! What should he pay me for? Strange question in truth. Do I keep a shop? I keep lodgings. But perhaps you like the place? It is a fine situation--just in the Corso and only one flight of stairs, a beautiful position for the Carnival. Of course, if you are inclined to pay more than Signor Gouache, I do not say but what---" "I do not want your lodgings, my good woman," returned Giovanni in gentler tones. "I want to know who comes to see your lodger." "Who should come? His friends of course. Who else?" "A lady, perhaps," said Giovanni in a thick voice. It hurt him to say it, and the words almost stuck in his throat. "Perhaps a lady comes sometimes," he repeated, pulling out some loose bank notes. The old woman's filmy eyes suddenly twinkled in the gloom. The sound of the crisp pieces of paper was delightful to her ear. "Well," she said after a moment's hesitation, "if a beautiful lady does come here, that is the Signore's affair. It is none of my business." Giovanni thrust the notes into her palm, which was already wide open to receive them. His heart beat wildly. "She is beautiful, you say?" "Oh! As beautiful as you please!" chuckled the hag. "Is she dark?" "Of course," replied the woman. There was no mistaking the tone in which the question was asked, for Giovanni was no longer able to conceal anything that he felt. "And tall, I suppose? Yes. And she was here a quarter of an hour ago, you say? Speak out!" he cried, advancing a step towards the old creature. "If you lie to me, I will kill you! She was here--do not deny it." "Yes--yes," answered the woman, cowering back in some terror. "Per carita! Don't murder me--I tell you the truth." With a sudden movement Giovanni turned on his heel and entered Gouache's sitting-room. It was now almost dark in the house and he struck a match and lighted a candle that stood on the stable. The glare illuminated his swarthy features and fiery eyes, and the veins stood out on his forehead and temples like strained and twisted cords. He looked about him in every direction, examining the table, strewn with papers and books, the floor, the furniture, expecting every moment to find something which should prove that Corona had been there. Seeing nothing, he entered the bedroom beyond. It was a small chamber and he had scarcely passed through the door when he found himself before the toilet-table. The note San Giacinto had left was there pinned upon the little cushion with the gold pin, as he had placed it. Giovanni stared wildly at the thing for several seconds and his face grew deadly white. There was no evidence lacking now, for the pin was Corona's own. It was a simple enough object, made of plain gold, the head being twisted into the shape of the letter C, but there was no mistaking its identity, for Giovanni had designed it himself. Corona used it for fastening her veil. As the blood sank from his head to his heart Giovanni grew very calm. He set the candle upon the toilet-table and took the note, after putting the pin in his pocket. The handwriting seemed to be feigned, and his lip curled scornfully as he looked at it and then, turning it over, saw that the envelope was one of Corona's own. It seemed to him a pitiable piece of folly in her to distort her writing when there was such abundant proof on all sides to convict her. Without the slightest hesitation he opened the letter and read it, bending down and holding it near the candle. One perusal was enough. He smiled curiously as he read the words, "I am so watched that I can do nothing. Some one suspects something." His attention was arrested by the statement that a trusty person--the words were underlined--would bring the note. The meaning of the emphasis was explained by the pin; the trusty person was herself, who, perhaps by an afterthought, had left the bit of gold as a parting gift in case Gouache marched before they met again. Giovanni glanced once more round the room, half expecting to find some other convicting piece of evidence. Then he hesitated, holding the candle in one hand and the note in the other. He thought of staying where he was and waiting for Gouache, but the idea did not seem feasible. Nothing which implied waiting could have satisfied him at that moment, and after a few seconds he thrust the note into his pocket and went out. His hand was on the outer door, when he remembered the old woman who sat crouching over her pan of coals, scarcely able to believe her good luck, and longing for Giovanni's departure in order that she might count the crisp notes again. She dared not indulge herself in that pleasure while he was present, lest he should repent of his generosity and take back a part of them, for she had seen how he had taken them from his pocket and saw that he had no idea how much he had given. "You will say nothing of my coming," said Giovanni, fixing his eyes upon her. "I, Signore? Do not be afraid! Money is better than words." "Very good," he answered. "Perhaps you will get twice as much the next time I want to know the truth." "God bless you!" chuckled the wrinkled creature. He went out, and the little bell that was fastened to the door tinkled as the latch sprang back into its place. Then the woman counted the price of blood, which had so unexpectedly fallen into her hands. The bank-notes were many and broad, and crisp and new, for Giovanni had not reckoned the cost. It was long since old Caterina Ranucci had seen so much money, and she had certainly never had so much of her own. "Qualche innamorato!" she muttered to herself as she smoothed the notes one by one and gloated over them and built castles in the air under the light of her little oil lamp. "It is some fellow in love. Heaven pardon me if I have done wrong! He seemed so anxious to know that the woman had been here--why should I not content him? Poveretto! He must be rich. I will always tell him what he wants to know. Heaven bring him often and bless him." Then she rocked herself backwards and forwards, hugging her pot of coals and crooning the words of an ancient Roman ditty-- "Io vorrei che nella luna Ci s'andasse in carrettella Per vedere la piu bella Delle donne di la su!" What does the old song mean? Who knows whether it ever meant anything? "I wish one might drive in a little cart to the moon, to see the most beautiful of the women up there!" Caterina Ranucci somehow felt as though she could express her feelings in no better way than by singing the queer words to herself in her cracked old voice. Possibly she thought that the neighbours would not suspect her good fortune if they heard her favourite song. CHAPTER X. Sant' Ilario walked home from Gouache's lodgings. The cool evening air refreshed him and helped him to think over what he had before him in the near future. Indeed the position was terrible enough, and doubly so to a man of his temperament. He would have faced anything rather than this, for there was no point in which he was more vulnerable than in his love for Corona. As he walked her figure rose before him, and her beauty almost dazzled him when he thought of it. But he could no longer think of her without bringing up that other being upon whom his thoughts of vengeance concentrated themselves, until it seemed as though the mere intention must do its object some bodily harm. The fall was tremendous in itself and in its effects. It must have been a great passion indeed which could make such a man demean himself to bribe an inferior for information against his wife. He himself was so little able to measure the force by which he was swayed as to believe that he had extracted the confession from a reluctant accomplice. He would never have allowed that the sight of the money and the prompting of his own words could have caused the old woman to invent the perfectly imaginary story which he had seemed so fully determined to hear. He did not see that Caterina Ranucci had merely confirmed each statement he had made himself and had taken his bribe while laughing to herself at his folly. He was blinded by something which destroys the mental vision more surely than anger or hatred, or pride, or love itself. To some extent he was to be pardoned. The chain of circumstantial evidence was consecutive and so convincing that many a just person would have accepted Corona's guilt as the only possible explanation of what had happened. The discoveries he had just made would alone have sufficed to set up a case against her, and many an innocent reputation has been shattered by less substantial proofs. Had he not found a letter, evidently written in a feigned hand and penned upon his wife's own writing-paper, fastened upon Gouache's table with her own pin? Had not the old woman confessed--before he had found the note, too,--that a lady had been there but a short time before? Did not these facts agree singularly with Corona's having left him to wait for her during that interval in the public gardens? Above all, did not this conclusion explain at once all those things in her conduct which had so much disturbed him during the past week? What was this story of Faustina Montevarchi's disappearance? The girl was probably Corona's innocent accomplice. Corona had left the house at one o'clock in the morning with Gouache. The porter had not seen any other woman. The fact that she had entered the Palazzo Montevarchi with Faustina and without Anastase proved nothing, except that she had met the young girl somewhere else, it mattered little where. The story that Faustina had accidentally shut herself into a room in the palace was an invention, for even Corona admitted the fact. That Faustina's flight, however, and the other events of the night of the 22d had been arranged merely in order that Corona and Gouache might walk in the moonlight for a quarter of an hour, Giovanni did not believe. There was some other mystery here which was yet unsolved. Meanwhile the facts he had collected were enough--enough to destroy his happiness at a single blow. And yet he loved Corona even now, and though his mind was made up clearly enough concerning Gouache, he knew that he could not part from the woman he adored. He thought of the grim old fortress at Saracinesca with its lofty towers and impregnable walls, and when he reflected that there was but one possible exit from the huge mass of buildings, he said to himself that Corona would be safe there for ever. He had the instincts of a fierce and unforgiving race of men, who for centuries had held the law in their own hands, and were accustomed to wield it as it seemed good in their own eyes. It was not very long since the lords of Saracinesca had possessed the right of life and death over their vassals, [Footnote: Until 1870 the right of life and death was still held, so far as actual legality was concerned, by the Dukes of Bracciano, and was attached to the possession of the title, which had been sold and subsequently bought back by the original holders of it.] and the hereditary traits of character which had been fostered by ages of power had not disappeared with the decay of feudalism. Under the circumstances which seemed imminent, it would not have been thought unnatural if Giovanni had confined his wife during the remainder of her days in his castle among the mountains. The idea may excite surprise among civilised Europeans when it is considered that the events of which I write occurred as recently as 1867, but it would certainly have evoked few expressions of astonishment among the friends of the persons concerned. To Giovanni himself it seemed the only possible conclusion to what was happening, and the determination to kill Gouache and imprison Corona for life appeared in his eyes neither barbarous nor impracticable. He did not hasten his pace as he went towards his home. There was something fateful in his regular step and marble face as he moved steadily to the accomplishment of his purpose. The fury which had at first possessed him, and which, if he had then encountered Gouache, would certainly have produced a violent outbreak, had subsided and was lost in the certainty of his dishonour, and in the immensity of the pain he suffered. Nothing remained to be done but to tell Corona that he knew all, and to inflict upon her the consequences of her crime without delay. There was absolutely no hope left that she might prove herself innocent, and in Giovanni's own breast there was no hope either, no hope of ever finding again his lost happiness, or of ever again setting one stone upon another of all that splendid fabric of his life which he had built up so confidently upon the faith of the woman he loved. As he reached the gates of his home he grew if possible paler than before, till his face was positively ghastly to see, and his eyes seemed to sink deeper beneath his brows, while their concentrated light gleamed more fiercely. No one saw him enter, for the porter was in his lodge, and on reaching the landing of the stairs Giovanni let himself into the apartments with a latch-key. Corona was in her dressing-room, a high vaulted chamber, somewhat sombrely furnished, but made cheerful by a fire that blazed brightly in the deep old-fashioned chimney-piece. Candles were lighted upon the dressing-table, and a shaded lamp stood upon a low stand near a lounge beside the hearth. The princess was clad in a loose wrapper of some soft cream-coloured material, whose folds fell gracefully to the ground as she lay upon the couch. She was resting before dressing for dinner, and the masses of her blue-black hair were loosely coiled upon her head and held together by a great Spanish comb thrust among the tresses with a careless grace. She held a book in her slender, olive-tinted hand, but she was not reading; her head lay back upon the cushions and the firelight threw her features into strong relief, while her velvet eyes reflected the flashes of the dancing flames as she watched them. Her expression was serene and calm. She had forgotten for the moment the little annoyances of the last few days and was thinking of her happiness, contrasting the peace of her present life with what she had suffered during the five years of her marriage with poor old Astrardente. Could Giovanni have seen her thus his heart might have been softened. He would have asked himself how it was possible that any woman guilty of such enormous misdeeds could lie there watching the fire with a look of such calm innocence upon her face. But Giovanni did not see her as she was. Even in the extremity of his anger and suffering his courtesy did not forsake him, and he knocked at his wife's door before entering the room. Corona moved from her position, and turned her head to see who was about to enter. "Come in," she said. She started when she saw Giovanni's face. Dazzled as she was by the fire, he looked to her like a dead man. She laid one hand upon the arm of the couch as though she would rise to meet him. He shut the door behind him and advanced towards her till only a couple of paces separated them. She was so much amazed by his looks that she sat quite still while he fixed his eyes upon her and began to speak. "You have wrecked my life," he said in a strange, low voice. "I have come to tell you my decision." She thought he was raving mad, and, brave as she was, she shrank back a little upon her seat and turned pale. "You need not be afraid of me," he continued, as he noticed the movement. "I am not going to kill you. I am sorry to say I am fool enough to love you still." "Giovanni!" cried Corona in an agonised tone. She could find no words, but sprang to her feet and threw her arms about him, gazing imploringly into his face. His features did not relax, for he was prepared for any sort of acting on her part. Without hurting her, but with a strength few men could have resisted, he forced her back to her seat, and then retreated a step before he spoke again. She submitted blindly, feeling that any attempt to thwart him must be utterly useless. "I know what you have done," he said. "You can have nothing to say. Be silent and listen to me. You have destroyed the greatest happiness the world ever knew. You have dishonoured me and mine. You have dragged my faith in you--God knows how great--into the mire of your infamous life. And worse than that--I could almost have forgiven that, I am so base--you have destroyed yourself--" Corona uttered a wild cry and sank back upon the cushions, pressing her hands over her ears so that she might not hear the fearful words. "I will not listen!" she gasped. "You are mad--mad!" Then springing up once more she again clasped him to her breast, so suddenly that he could not escape her. "Oh, my poor Giovanni!" she moaned. "What has happened to you? Have you been hurt? Are you dying? For Heaven's sake speak like yourself!" He seized her wrists and held her before him so that she was forced to hear what he said. Even then his grasp did not hurt her. His hands were like manacles of steel in which hers could turn though she could not withdraw them. "I am hurt to death," he said, between his teeth. "I have been to Gouache's rooms and have brought away your letter--and your pin--the pin I gave you, Corona. Do you understand now, or must I say more?" "My letter?" cried Corona in the utmost bewilderment. "Yes," he answered, releasing her and instantly producing the note and the gold ornament. "Is that your paper? Is this your pin? Answer me--or no! they answer for themselves. You need say nothing, for you can have nothing to say. They are yours and you know it. If they are not enough there is the woman who let you in, who saw you bring them. What more do you want?" As long as Giovanni's accusations had been vague and general, Corona had remained horrorstruck, believing that some awful and incomprehensible calamity had befallen her husband and had destroyed his reason. The moment he produced the proof of what he said, her presence of mind returned, and she saw at a glance the true horror of the situation. She never doubted for a moment that she was the victim of some atrocious plot, but having something to face which she could understand her great natural courage asserted itself. She was not a woman to moan and weep helplessly when there was an open danger to be met. She took the letter and the pin and examined them by the light, with a calmness that contrasted oddly with her previous conduct. Giovanni watched her. He supposed that she had acted surprise until he had brought forward something more conclusive than words, and that she was now exercising her ingenuity in order to explain the situation. His lip curled scornfully, as he fancied he saw the meaning of her actions. After a few seconds she looked up and held out the two objects towards him. "The paper is mine," she said, "but I did not write the letter. The pin is mine too. I lost it more than a month ago." "Of course," replied Giovanni, coldly. "I expected that you would say that. It is very natural. But I do not ask you for any explanations. I have them already. I will take you to Saracinesca to-morrow morning and you will have time to explain everything. You will have your whole life to use, until you die, for no other object. I told you I would not kill you." "Is it possible that you are in earnest?" asked Corona, her voice trembling slightly. "I am in earnest. Do you think I am a man to jest over such deeds?" "And do you think I am a woman to do such deeds?" "Since you have done them--what answer can there be? Not only are you capable of them. You are the woman who has done them. Do lifeless things, like these, lie?" "No. But men do. I believe you, Giovanni. You found these things in Monsieur Gouache's rooms. You were told I put them there. Whoever told you so uttered the most infamous falsehood that ever was spoken on earth. The person who placed them where they were did so in the hope of ruining me. Can you look back into the past and tell me that you have any other reason for believing in this foul plot?" "Reasons?" cried Giovanni, fiercely. "Do you want more reasons? We have time. I will give you enough to satisfy you that I know all you have done. Was not this man for ever near you last year, wherever you met, talking with you in low tones, showing by every movement and gesture that he distinguished you with his base love? Were you not together in a corner last Tuesday night just as the insurrection broke out? Did he not kiss your hand when you both thought no one was looking?" "He kissed my hand before every one," replied Corona, whose wrath was slowly gathering as she saw her husband's determination to prove her guilty. "There were people in the room," continued Giovanni in a tone of concentrated anger, "but you thought no one was watching you--I could see it in your manner and in your eyes. That same night I came home at one o'clock and you were out. You had gone out alone with that man, expecting that I would not return so soon--though it was late enough, too. You were forced to admit that you were with him, because the porter had seen you and had told me the man was a Zouave." "I will tell you the story, since you no longer trust me," said Corona, proudly. "I have no doubt you will tell me some very ingenious tale which will explain why, although you left my house alone, with Gouache, you reached the Palazzo Montevarchi alone with Faustina. But I have not done. He came here the next day. You treated him with unexampled rudeness before me. Half an hour later I found you together in the drawing-room. He was kissing your hand again. You were saying you forgave him and giving him that favourite benediction of yours, which you once bestowed upon me under very similar circumstances. Astrardente was alive and present at that dance in Casa Frangipani. You have me for a husband now and you have found another man whose heart will beat when you bless him. It would be almost better to kill you after all." "Have you finished?" asked Corona, white with anger. "Yes. That letter and that pin--left while I, poor fool, was waiting for you this afternoon on the Pincio--those things are my last words. They close the tale very appropriately. I wish I did not love you so--I would not wait for your answer." "Do you dare to say you love me?" "Yes--though there is no other man alive who would dare so much, who would dare to love such a woman as you are--for very shame." "And I tell you," answered Corona in ringing tones, "that, although I can prove to you that every word you say against me is an abominable calumny, so that you shall see how basely you have insulted an innocent woman, yet I shall never love you again--never, never. A man who can believe such things, who can speak such things, is worthy of no woman's love and shall not have mine. And yet you shall hear me tell the truth, that you may know what you have done. You say I have wrecked your life and destroyed your happiness. You have done it for yourself. As there is a God in Heaven--" "Do not blaspheme," said Giovanni, contemptuously. "I will hear your story." "Before God, this thing is a lie!" cried Corona, standing at her full height, her eyes flashing with just indignation. Then lowering her voice, she continued speaking rapidly but distinctly. "Gouache loves Faustina, and she loves him. When he left this house that night she followed him out into the street. She reached the Serristori barracks and was stunned by the explosion. Gouache found her there many hours later. When you saw us together a little earlier he was telling me he loved her. He is a man of honour. He saw that the only way to save her good name was to bring her here and let me take her home. He sent me a word by the porter, while she waited in the shadow. I ran down and found her there. We purposely prevented the porter from seeing her. I took her to her father's house, and sent Gouache away, for I was angry with him. I believed he had led an innocent girl into following him--that it was a pre-arranged meeting and that she had gone not realising that there was a revolution. I invented the story of her having lost herself here, in order to shield her. The next day Gouache came. I would not speak to him and went to my room. The servants told me he was gone, but as I was coming back to you I met him. He stopped me and made me believe what is quite true, for Faustina has acknowledged it. She followed him of her own accord, and he had no idea that she was not safe at home. I forgave him. He said he was going to the frontier and asked me to give him a blessing. It was a foolish idea, perhaps, but I did as he wished. If you had come forward like a man instead of listening we would have told you all. But you suspected me even then. I do not know who told you that I had been to his lodging to-day. The carriage was stopped by a crowd in the Tritone, and I reached the Pincio after you had gone. As for the pin, I lost it a month ago. Gouache may have found it, or it may have been picked up and sold, and he may have chanced to buy it. I never wrote the letter. The paper was either taken from this house or was got from the stationer who stamps it for us. Faustina may have taken it--she may have been here when I was out--it is not her handwriting. I believe it is an abominable plot. But it is as transparent as water. Take the pin and wear it. See Gouache when you have it. He will ask you where you got it, for he has not the slightest idea that it is mine. Are you satisfied? I have told you all. Do you see what you have done, in suspecting me, in accusing me, in treating me like the last of women? I have done. What have you to say?" "That you have told a very improbable story," replied Giovanni. "You have sunk lower than before, for you have cast a slur upon an innocent girl in order to shield yourself. I would not have believed you capable of that. You can no more prove your innocence than you can prove that this poor child was mad enough to follow Gouache into the street last Tuesday night. I have listened to you patiently. I have but one thing more to do and then there will be nothing left for me but patience. You will send for your servants, and order your effects to be packed for the journey to Saracinesca. If it suits your convenience we will start at eleven o'clock, as I shall be occupied until then. I advise you not to see my father." Corona stood quite still while he spoke. She could not realise that he paid no attention whatever to her story, save to despise her the more for having implicated Faustina. It was inconceivable to her that all the circumstances should not now be as clear to him as they were to herself. From the state of absolute innocence she could not transfer herself in a moment to the comprehension of all he had suffered, all he had thought, and all he had recalled before accusing her. Even had that been possible, her story seemed to her to give a perfectly satisfactory explanation of all his suspicions. She was wounded, indeed, so deeply that she knew she could never recover herself entirely, but it did not strike her as possible that all she had said should produce no effect at all. And yet she knew his look and his ways, and recognised in the tone of his voice the expression of a determination which it would be hard indeed to change. He still believed her guilty, and he was going to take her away to the dismal loneliness of the mountains for an indefinite time, perhaps for ever. She had not a relation in the world to whom she could appeal. Her mother had died in her infancy; her father, for whom she sacrificed herself in marrying the rich old Duke of Astrardente, was dead long ago. She could turn to no one, unless it were to Prince Saracinesca himself--and Giovanni warned her not to go to his father. She stood for some moments looking fixedly at him as though trying to read his thoughts, and he returned her gaze with unflinching sternness. The position was desperate. In a few hours she would be where there would be no possibility of defence or argument, and she knew the man's character well enough to be sure that where proof failed entreaty would be worse than useless. At last she came near to him and almost gently laid her hand upon his arm. "Giovanni," she said, quietly, "I have loved you very tenderly and very truly. I swear to you upon our child that I am wholly innocent. Will you not believe me?" "No," he answered, and the little word fell from his lips like the blow of a steel hammer. His eyes did not flinch; his features did not change. "Will you not ask some one who knows whether I have not spoken the truth? Will you not let me write--or write yourself to those two, and ask them to come here and tell you their story? It is much to ask of them, but it is life or death to me and they will not refuse. Will you not do it?" "No, I will not." "Then do what you will with me, and may God forgive you, for I cannot." Corona turned from him and crossed the room. There was a cushioned stool there, over which hung a beautiful crucifix. Corona knelt down, as though not heeding her husband's presence, and buried her face in her hands. Giovanni stood motionless in the middle of the room. His eyes had followed his wife's movements and he watched her in silence for a short time. Convinced, as he was, of her guilt, he believed she was acting a part, and that her kneeling down was merely intended to produce a theatrical effect. The accent of truth in her words made no impression whatever upon him, and her actions seemed to him too graceful to be natural, too dignified for a woman who was not trying all the time to make the best of her appearance. The story she had told coincided too precisely, if possible, with the doings of which he had accused her, while it failed in his judgment to explain the motives of what she had done. He said to himself that he, in her place, would have told everything on that first occasion when she had come home and had found him waiting for her. He forgot, or did not realise, that she had been taken unawares, when she expected to find time to consider her course, and had been forced to make up her mind suddenly. Almost any other woman would have told the whole adventure at once; any woman less wholly innocent of harm would have seen the risk she incurred by asking her husband's indulgence for her silence. He was persuaded that she had played upon his confidence in her and had reckoned upon his belief in her sincerity in order to be bold with half the truth. Suspicion and jealousy had made him so ingenious that he imputed to her a tortuous policy of deception, of which she was altogether incapable. Corona did not kneel long. She had no intention of making use of the appearance of prayer in order to affect Giovanni's decision, nor in order to induce him to leave her alone. He would, indeed, have quitted the room had she remained upon her knees a few moments longer, but when she rose and faced him once more he was still standing as she had left him, his eyes fixed upon her and his arms folded upon his breast. He thought she was going to renew her defence, but he was mistaken. She came and stood before him, so that a little distance separated him from her, and she spoke calmly, in her deep, musical voice. "You have made up your mind, then. Is that your last word?" "It is." "Then I will say what I have to say. It shall not be much, but we shall not often talk together in future. You will remember some day what I tell you. I am an innocent and defenceless woman. I have no relation to whom I can appeal. You have forbidden me to write to those who could prove me guiltless. For the sake of our child--for the sake of the love I have borne you--I will make no attempt at resistance. The world shall not know that you have even doubted me, the mother of your son, the woman who has loved you. The time will come when you will ask my forgiveness for your deeds. I tell you frankly that I shall never be capable of forgiving you, nor of speaking a kind word to you again. This is neither a threat nor a warning, though it may perhaps be the means of sparing you some disappointment. I only ask two things of your courtesy--that you will inform me of what you mean to do with our child, and that you will then be good enough to leave me alone for a little while." An evil thought crossed Giovanni's mind. He knew how Corona would suffer if she were not allowed either to see little Orsino or to know what became of him while she was living her solitary life of confinement in the mountains. The diabolical cruelty of the idea fascinated him for a moment, and he looked coldly into her eyes as though he did not mean to answer her. In spite of his new jealousy, however, he was not capable of inflicting this last blow. As he looked at her beautiful white face and serious eyes, he wavered. He loved her still and would have loved her, had the proofs against her been tenfold more convincing than they were. With him his love was a passion apart and by itself. It had been strengthened and made beautiful by the devotion and tenderness and faith which had grown up with it, and had surrounded it as with a wall. But though all these things were swept away the passion itself remained, fierce, indomitable and soul-stirring in its power. It stood alone, like the impregnable keep of a war-worn fortress, beneath whose shadow the outworks and ramparts have been razed to the ground, and whose own lofty walls are battered and dinted by engines of war, shorn of all beauty and of all its stately surroundings, but stern and unshaken yet, grim, massive and solitary. For an instant Giovanni wavered, unable to struggle against that mysterious power which still governed him and forced him to acknowledge its influence. The effort of resisting the temptation to be abominably cruel carried him back from his main purpose, and produced a sudden revulsion of feeling wholly incomprehensible to himself. "Corona!" he cried, in a voice breaking with emotion. He threw out his arms wildly and sprang towards her. She thrust him back with a strength of which he would not have believed her capable. Bitter words rose to her lips, but she forced them back and was silent, though her eyes blazed with an anger she had never felt before. For some time neither spoke. Corona stood erect and watchful, one hand resting upon the back of a chair. Giovanni walked to the end of the room, and then came back and looked steadily into her face. Several seconds elapsed before he could speak, and his face was very white. "You may keep the child," he said at last, in an unsteady tone. Then without another word he left the room and softly closed the door behind him. When Corona was alone she remained standing as he had last seen her, her gaze fixed on the heavy curtains through which he had disappeared. Gradually her face grew rigid, and the expression vanished from her deep eyes, till they looked dull and glassy. She tottered, lost her hold upon the chair and fell to the floor with an inarticulate groan. There she lay, white, beautiful and motionless as a marble statue, mercifully unconscious, for a space, of all she had to suffer. Giovanni went from his wife's presence to his father's study. The prince sat at his writing-table, a heap of dusty parchments and papers piled before him. He was untying the rotten strings with which they were fastened, peering through his glasses at the headings written across the various documents. He did not unfold them, but laid them carefully in order upon the table. When San Giacinto had gone away, the old gentleman had nothing to do for an hour or more before dinner. He had accordingly opened a solid old closet in the library which served as a sort of muniment room for the family archives, and had withdrawn a certain box in which he knew that the deeds concerning the cession of title were to be found. He did not intend to look them over this evening, but was merely arranging them for examination on the morrow. He looked up as Giovanni entered, and started from his chair when he saw his son's face. "Good heavens! Giovannino! what has happened?" he cried, in great anxiety. "I came to tell you that Corona and I are going to Saracinesca to-morrow," answered Sant' Ilario, in a low voice. "What? At this time of year? Besides, you cannot get there. The road is full of Garibaldians and soldiers. It is not safe to leave the city! Are you ill? What is the matter?" "Oh--nothing especial," replied Giovanni with an attempt to assume an indifferent tone "We think the mountain air will be good for my wife, that is all. I do not think we shall really have much difficulty in getting there. Half of this war is mere talk." "And the other half consists largely of stray bullets," observed the prince, eyeing his son suspiciously from under his shaggy brows. "You will allow me to say, Giovanni, that for thoughtless folly you have rarely had your equal in the world." "I believe you are right," returned the younger man bitterly. "Nevertheless I mean to undertake this journey." "And does Corona consent to it? Why are you so pale? I believe you are ill?" "Yes--she consents. We shall take the child." "Orsino? You are certainly out of your mind. It is bad enough to take a delicate woman--" "Corona is far from delicate. She is very strong and able to bear anything." "Don't interrupt me. I tell you she is a woman, and so of course she must be delicate. Can you not understand common sense? As for the boy, he is my grandson, and if you are not old enough to know how to take care of him, I am. He shall not go. I will not permit it. You are talking nonsense. Go and dress for dinner, or send for the doctor--in short, behave like a human being! I will go and see Corona myself." The old gentleman's hasty temper was already up, and he strode to the door. Giovanni laid his hand somewhat heavily upon his father's arm. "Excuse me," he said, "Corona cannot see you now. She is dressing." "I will talk to her through the door. I will wait in her boudoir till she can see me." "I do not think she will see you this evening. She will be busy in getting ready for the journey." "She will dine with us, I suppose?" "I scarcely know--I am not sure." Old Saracinesca suddenly turned upon his son. His gray hair bristled on his head, and his black eyes flashed. With a quick movement he seized Giovanni's arms and held him before him as in a vice. "Look here!" he cried savagely. "I will not be made a fool of by a boy. Something has happened which you are afraid to tell me. Answer me. I mean to know!" "You will not know from me," replied Sant' Ilario, keeping his temper as he generally did in the face of a struggle. "You will know nothing, because there is nothing to know." Saracinesca laughed. "Then there can be no possible objection to my seeing Corona," he said, dropping his hold and again going towards the door. Once more Giovanni stopped him. "You cannot see her now," he said in determined tones. "Then tell me what all this trouble is about," retorted his father. But Giovanni did not speak. Had he been cooler he would not have sought the interview so soon, but he had forgotten that the old prince would certainly want to know the reason of the sudden journey. "Do you mean to tell me or not?" "The fact is," replied Giovanni desperately, "we have consulted the doctor--Corona is not really well--he advises us to go to the mountains--" "Giovanni," broke in the old man roughly, "you never lied to me, but you are lying now. There has been trouble between you two, though I cannot imagine what has caused it." "Pray do not ask me, then. I am doing what I think best--what you would think best if you knew all. I came to tell you that we were going, and I did not suppose you would have anything to say. Since you do not like the idea--well, I am sorry--but I entreat you not to ask questions. Let us go in peace." Saracinesca looked fixedly at his son for some minutes. Then the anger faded from his face, and his expression grew very grave. He loved Giovanni exceedingly, and he loved Corona for his sake more than for her own, though he admired her and delighted in her conversation. It was certain that if there were a quarrel between husband and wife, and if Giovanni had the smallest show of right on his side, the old man's sympathies would be with him. Giovanni's sense of honour, on the other hand, prevented him from telling his father what had happened. He did not choose that even his nearest relation should think of Corona as he thought himself, and he would have taken any step to conceal her guilt. Unfortunately for his purpose he was a very truthful man, and had no experience of lying, so that his father detected him at once. Moreover, his pale face and agitated manner told plainly enough that something very serious had occurred, and so soon as the old prince had convinced himself of this his goodwill was enlisted on the side of his son. "Giovannino," he said at last very gently, "I do not want to pry into your secrets nor to ask you questions which you do not care to answer. I do not believe you are capable of having committed any serious folly which your wife could really resent. If you should be unfaithful to her, I would disown you. If, on the other hand, she has deceived you, I will do all in my power to help you." Perhaps Giovanni's face betrayed something of the truth at these words. He turned away and leaned against the chimney-piece. "I cannot tell you--I cannot tell you," he repeated. "I think I am doing what is best. That is all I can say. You may know some day, though I trust not. Let us go away without explanations." "My dear boy," replied the old man, coming up to him and laying his hand on his shoulder, "you must do as you think best. Go to Saracinesca if you will, and if you can. If not, go somewhere else. Take heart. Things are not always as black as they look." Giovanni straightened himself as though by an effort, and grasped his father's broad, brown hand. "Thank you," he said. "Good-bye. I will come down and see you in a few days. Good-bye!" His voice trembled and he hurriedly left the room. The prince stood still a moment and then threw himself into a deep chair, staring at the lamp and biting his gray moustache savagely, as though to hide some almost uncontrollable emotion. There was a slight moisture in his eyes as they looked steadily at the bright lamp. The papers and parchments lay unheeded on the table, and he did not touch them again that night. He was thinking, not of his lonely old age nor of the dishonour brought upon his house, but of the boy he had loved as his own soul for more than thirty years, and of a swarthy little child that lay asleep in a distant room, the warm blood tinging its olive cheeks and its little clinched hands thrown back above its head. For Corona he had no thought but hatred. He had guessed Giovanni's secret too well, and his heart was hardened against the woman who had brought shame and suffering upon his son. CHAPTER XI. San Giacinto had signally failed in his attempt to prevent the meeting between Gouache and Faustina Montevarchi, and had unintentionally caused trouble of a much more serious nature in another quarter. The Zouave returned to his lodging late at night, and of course found no note upon his dressing-table. He did not miss the pin, for he of course never wore it, and attached no particular value to a thing of such small worth which he had picked up in the street and which consequently had no associations for him. He lacked the sense of order in his belongings, and the pin had lain neglected for weeks among a heap of useless little trifles, dingy cotillon favours that had been there since the previous year, stray copper coins, broken pencils, uniform buttons and such trash, accumulated during many months and totally unheeded. Had he seen the pin anywhere else he would have recognised it, but he did not notice its absence. The old woman, Caterina Ranucci, hugged her money and said nothing about either of the visitors who had entered the room during the afternoon. The consequence was that Gouache rose early on the following morning and went towards the church with a light heart. He did not know certainly that Faustina would come there, and indeed there were many probabilities against her doing so, but in the hopefulness of a man thoroughly in love, Gouache looked forward to seeing her with as much assurance as though the matter had been arranged and settled between them. The parish church of Sant' Agostino is a very large building. The masses succeed each other in rapid succession from seven o'clock in the morning until midday, and a great crowd of parishioners pass in and out in an almost constant stream. It was therefore Gouache's intention to arrive so early as to be sure that Faustina had not yet come, and he trusted to luck to be there at the right time, for he was obliged to visit the temporary barrack of his corps before going to the church, and was also obliged to attend mass at a later hour with his battalion. On presenting himself at quarters he learned to his surprise that Monte Rotondo had not surrendered yet, though news of the catastrophe was expected every moment. The Zouaves were ordered to remain under arms all day in case of emergency, and it was only through the friendly assistance of one of his officers that Anastase obtained leave to absent himself for a couple of hours. He hailed a cab and drove to the church as fast as he could. In less than twenty minutes after he had stationed himself at the entrance, Faustina ascended the steps accompanied by a servant. The latter was a middle-aged woman with hard features, clad in black, and wearing a handkerchief thrown loosely over her head after the manner of maids in those days. She evidently expected nothing, for she looked straight before her, peering into the church in order to see beforehand at which chapel there was likely to be a mass immediately. Faustina was a lovely figure in the midst of the crowd of common people who thronged the doorway, and whose coarse dark faces threw her ethereal features into strong relief while she advanced. Gouache felt his heart beat hard, for he had not seen her for five days since they had parted on that memorable Tuesday night at the gate of her father's house. Her eyes met his in a long and loving look, and the colour rose faintly in her delicate pale cheek. In the press she managed to pass close to him, and for a moment he succeeded in clasping her small hand in his, her maid being on the other side. He was about to ask a question when she whispered a few words and passed on. "Follow me through the crowd, I will manage it," was what she said. Gouache obeyed, and kept close behind her. The church was very full and there was difficulty in getting seats. "I will wait here," said the young girl to her servant. "Get us chairs and find out where there is to be a mass. It is of no use for me to go through the crowd if I may have to come back again." The hard-featured woman nodded and went away. Several minutes must elapse before she returned, and Faustina with Gouache behind her moved across the stream of persons who were going out through the door in the other aisle. In a moment they found themselves in a comparatively quiet corner, separated from the main body of the church by the moving people. Faustina fixed her eyes in the direction whence her woman would probably return, ready to enter the throng instantly, if necessary. Even where they now were, so many others were standing and kneeling that the presence of the Zouave beside Faustina would create no surprise. "It is very wrong to meet you in church," said the girl, a little shy, at first, with that timidity a woman always feels on meeting a man whom she has last seen on unexpectedly intimate terms. "I could not go away without seeing you," replied Gouache, his eyes intent on her face. "And I knew you would understand my signs, though no one else would. You have made me very happy, Faustina. It would have been agony to march away without seeing your face again--you do not know what these days have been without you! Do you realise that we used to meet almost every afternoon? Did they tell you why I could not come? I told every one I met, in hopes you might hear. Did you? Do you understand?" Faustina nodded her graceful head, and glanced quickly at his face. Then she looked down, tapping the pavement gently with her parasol. The colour came and went in her cheeks. "Do you really love me?" she asked in a low voice. "I think, my darling, that no one ever loved as I love. I would that I might be given time to tell you what my love is, and that you might have patience to hear. What are words, unless one can say all one would? What is it, if I tell you that I love you with all my heart, and soul and thoughts? Do not other men say as much and forget that they have spoken? I would find a way of saying it that should make you believe in spite of yourself--" "In spite of myself?" interrupted Faustina, with a bright smile while her brown eyes rested lovingly on his for an instant. "You need not that," she added simply, "for I love you, too." Nothing but the sanctity of the place prevented Anastase from taking her in his arms then and there. There was something so exquisite in her simplicity and earnestness that he found himself speechless before her for a moment. It was something that intoxicated his spirit more than his senses, for it was utterly new to him and appealed to his own loyal and innocent nature as it could not have appealed to a baser man. "Ah Faustina!" he said at last, "God made you when he made the violets, on a spring morning in Paradise!" Faustina blushed again, faintly as the sea at dawn. "Must you go away?" she asked. "You would not have me desert at such a moment?" "Would it be deserting--quite? Would it be dishonourable?" "It would be cowardly. I should never dare to look you in the face again." "I suppose it would be wrong," she answered with a bitter little sigh. "I will come back very soon, dearest. The time will be short." "So long--so long! How can you say it will be short? If you do not come soon you will find me dead--I cannot bear it many days more." "I will write to you." "How can you write? Your letters would be seen. Oh no! It is impossible!" "I will write to your friend--to the Princess Sant' Ilario. She will give you the letters. She is safe, is she not?" "Oh, how happy I shall be! It will be almost like seeing you--no, not that! But so much better than nothing. But you do not go at once?" "It may be to-day, to-morrow, at any time. But you shall know of it. Ah Faustina! my own one--" "Hush! There is my maid. Quick, behind the pillar. I will meet her. Good-bye--good-bye--Oh! not good-bye--some other word--" "God keep you, my beloved, and make it not 'good-bye'!" With one furtive touch of the hand, one long last look, they separated, Faustina to mingle in the crowd, Gouache to follow at a long distance until he saw her kneeling at her chair before one of the side altars of the church. Then he stationed himself where he could see her, and watched through the half hour during which the low mass lasted. He did not know when he should see her again, and indeed it was as likely as not that they should not meet on this side of eternity. Many a gallant young fellow marched out in those days and was picked off by a bullet from a red-shirted volunteer. Gouache, indeed, did not believe that his life was to be cut short so suddenly, and built castles in the air with that careless delight in the future which a man feels who is not at all afraid. But such accidents happened often, and though he might be more lucky than another, it was just as possible that an ounce of lead should put an end to his soldiering, his painting and his courtship within another week. The mere thought was so horrible that his bright nature refused to harbour it, and he gazed on Faustina Montevarchi as she knelt at her devotions, wondering, indeed, what strange chances fate had in store for them both, but never once doubting that she should one day be his. He waited until she passed him in the crowd, and gave him one more look before going away. Then, when he had seen her disappear at the turning of the street, he sprang into his cab and was driven back to the barracks where he must remain on duty all day. As he descended he was surprised to see Sant' Ilario standing upon the pavement, very pale, and apparently in a bad humour, his overcoat buttoned to his throat, and his hands thrust in the pockets. There was no one in the street, but the sentinel at the doorway, and Giovanni walked quickly up to Gouache as the latter fumbled for the change to pay his driver. Anastase smiled and made a short military salute. Sant' Ilario bowed stiffly and did not extend his hand. "I tried to find you last night," he said coldly. "You were out. Will you favour me with five minutes' conversation?" "Willingly," answered the other, looking instinctively at his watch, to be sure that he had time to spare. Sant' Ilario walked a few yards up the street, before speaking, Gouache keeping close to his side. Then both stopped, and Giovanni turned sharply round and faced his enemy. "It is unnecessary to enter into any explanations, Monsieur Gouache," he said. "This is a matter which can only end in one way. I presume you will see the propriety of inventing a pretext which may explain our meeting before the world." Gouache stared at Sant' Ilario in the utmost amazement. When they had last met they had parted on the most friendly terms. He did not understand a word of what his companion was saying. "Excuse me, prince," he said at length. "I have not the least idea what you mean. As far as I am concerned this meeting is quite accidental. I came here on duty." Sant' Ilario was somewhat taken aback by the Zouave's polite astonishment. He seemed even more angry than surprised, however; and his black eyebrows bent together fiercely. "Let us waste no words," he said imperiously. "If I had found you last night, the affair might have been over by this time." "What affair?" asked Gouache, more and more mystified. "You are amazingly slow of comprehension, Monsieur Gouache," observed Giovanni. "To be plain, I desire to have an opportunity of killing you. Do you understand me now?" "Perfectly," returned the soldier, raising his brows, and then breaking into a laugh of genuine amusement. "You are quite welcome to as many opportunities as you like, though I confess it would interest me to know the reason of your good intentions towards me." If Gouache had behaved as Giovanni had expected he would, the latter would have repeated his request that a pretext should be found which should explain the duel to the world. But there was such extraordinary assurance in the Zouave's manner that Sant' Ilario suddenly became exasperated with him and lost his temper, a misfortune which very rarely happened to him. "Monsieur Gouache," he said angrily, "I took the liberty of visiting your lodgings yesterday afternoon, and I found this letter, fastened with this pin upon your table. I presume you will not think any further explanation necessary." Gouache stared at the objects which Sant' Ilario held out to him and drew back stiffly. It was his turn to be outraged at the insult. "Sir," he said, "I understand that you acted in the most impertinent manner in entering my room and taking what did not belong to you. I understand nothing else. I found that pin on the Ponte Sant' Angelo a month ago, and it was, I believe, upon my table yesterday. As for the letter I know nothing about it. Yes, if you insist, I will read it." There was a pause during which Gouache ran his eyes over the few lines written on the notepaper, while Giovanni watched him very pale and wrathful. "The pin is my wife's, and the note is written on her paper and addressed to you, though in a feigned hand. Do you deny that both came from her, were brought by her in person, for yourself?" "I deny it utterly and categorically," answered Gouache. "Though I will assuredly demand satisfaction of you for entering my rooms without my permission, I give you my word of honour that I could receive no such letter from the princess, your wife. The thing is monstrously iniquitous, and you have been grossly deceived into injuring the good name of a woman as innocent as an angel. Since the pin is the property of the princess, pray return it to her with my compliments, and say that I found it on the bridge of Sant' Angelo. I can remember the very date. It was a quarter of an hour before I was run over by Prince Montevarchi's carriage. It was therefore on the 23d of September. As for the rest, do me the favour to tell me where my friends can find yours in an hour." "At my house. But allow me to add that I do not believe a word of what you say." "Is it a Roman custom to insult a man who has agreed to fight with you?" inquired Gouache. "We are more polite in France. We salute our adversaries before beginning the combat." Therewith the Zouave saluted Giovanni courteously and turned on his heel, leaving the latter in an even worse humour than he had found him. Gouache was too much surprised at the interview to reason connectedly about the causes which had led to it, and accepted the duel with Sant' Ilario blindly, because he could not avoid it, and because whatever offence he himself had unwittingly given he had in turn been insulted by Giovanni in a way which left him no alternative but that of a resort to arms. His adversary had admitted, had indeed boasted, of having entered Gouache's rooms, and of having taken thence the letter and the pin. This alone constituted an injury for which reparation was necessary, but not content with this, Sant' Ilario had given him the lie direct. Matters were so confused that it was hard to tell which was the injured party; but since the prince had undoubtedly furnished a pretext more than sufficient, the soldier had seized the opportunity of proposing to send his friends to demand satisfaction. It was clear, however, that the duel could not take place at once, since Gouache was under arms, and it was imperatively necessary that he should have permission to risk his life in a private quarrel at such a time. It was also certain that his superiors would not allow anything of the kind at present, and Gouache for his part was glad of the fact. He preferred to be killed before the enemy rather than in a duel for which there was no adequate explanation, except that a man who had been outrageously deceived by a person or persons unknown had chosen to attack him for a thing he had never done. He had not the slightest intention of avoiding the encounter, but he preferred to see some active service in a cause to which he was devoted before being run through the body by one who was his enemy only by mistake. Giovanni's reputation as a swordsman made it probable that the issue would be unfavourable to Gouache, and the latter, with the simple fearlessness that belonged to his character, meant if possible to have a chance of distinguishing himself before being killed. Half an hour later, a couple of officers of Zouaves called upon Sant' Ilario, and found his representatives waiting for them. Giovanni had had the good fortune to find Count Spicca at home. That melancholy gentleman had been his second in an affair with Ugo del Ferice nearly three years earlier and had subsequently killed one of the latter's seconds in consequence of his dishonourable behaviour in the field. He had been absent in consequence until a few weeks before the present time, when matters had been arranged, and he had found himself free to return unmolested. It had been remarked at the club that something would happen before he had been in Rome many days. He was a very tall and cadaverous man, exceedingly prone to take offence, and exceedingly skilful in exacting the precise amount of blood which he considered a fair return for an injury. He had never been known to kill a man by accident, but had rarely failed to take his adversary's life when he had determined to do so. Spicca had brought another friend, whom it is unnecessary to describe. The interview was short and conclusive. The two officers had instructions to demand a serious duel, and Spicca and his companion had been told to make the conditions even more dangerous if they could do so. On the other hand, the officers explained that as Rome was in a state of siege, and Garibaldi almost at the gates, the encounter could not take place until the crisis was past. They undertook to appear for Gouache in case he chanced to be shot in an engagement. Spicca, who did not know the real cause of the duel, and was indeed somewhat surprised to learn that Giovanni had quarrelled with a Zouave, made no attempt to force an immediate meeting, but begged leave to retire and consult with his principal, an informality which was of course agreed to by the other side. In five minutes he returned, stating that he accepted the provisions proposed, and that he should expect twenty-four hours' notice when Gouache should be ready. The four gentlemen drew up the necessary "protocol," and parted on friendly terms after a few minutes' conversation, in which various proposals were made in regard to the ground. Spicca alone remained behind, and he immediately went to Giovanni, carrying a copy of the protocol, on which the ink was still wet. "Here it is," he said sadly, as he entered the room, holding up the paper in his hand. "These revolutions are very annoying! There is no end to the inconvenience they cause." "I suppose it could not be helped," answered Giovanni, gloomily. "No. I believe I have not the reputation of wasting time in these matters. You must try and amuse yourself as best you can until the day comes. It is a pity you have not some other affair in the meanwhile, just to make the time pass pleasantly. It would keep your hand in, too. But then you have the pleasures of anticipation." Giovanni laughed hoarsely, Spicca took a foil from the wall and played with it, looking along the thin blade, then setting the point on the carpet and bending the weapon to see whether it would spring back properly. Giovanni's eyes followed his movements, watching the slender steel, and then glancing at Spicca's long arms, his nervous fingers and peculiar grip. "How do you manage to kill your man whenever you choose?" asked Sant' Ilario, half idly, half in curiosity. "It is perfectly simple, at least with foils," replied the other, making passes in the air. "Now, if you will take a foil, I will promise to run you through any part of your body within three minutes. You may make a chalked mark on the precise spot. If I miss by a hair's-breadth I will let you lunge at me without guarding." "Thank you," said Giovanni; "I do not care to be run through this morning, but I confess I would like to know how you do it. Could not you touch the spot without thrusting home?" "Certainly, if you do not mind a scratch on the shoulder or the arm. I will try and not draw blood. Come on--so--in guard--wait a minute! Where will you be hit? That is rather important." Giovanni, who was in a desperate humour and cared little what he did, rather relished the idea of a bout which savoured of reality. There was a billiard-table in the adjoining room, and he fetched a piece of chalk at once. "Here," said he, making a small white spot upon his coat on the outside of his right shoulder. "Very well," observed Spicca. "Now, do not rush in or I may hurt you." "Am I to thrust, too?" asked Giovanni. "If you like. You cannot touch me if you do." "We shall see," answered Sant' Ilario, nettled at Spicca's poor opinion of his skill. "In guard!" They fell into position and began play. Giovanni immediately tried his special method of disarming his adversary, which he had scarcely ever known to fail. He forgot, however, that Spicca had seen him practise this piece of strategy with success upon Del Ferice. The melancholy duellist had spent weeks in studying the trick, and had completely mastered it. To Giovanni's surprise the Count's hand turned as easily as a ball in a socket, avoiding the pressure, while his point scarcely deviated from the straight line. Giovanni, angry at his failure, made a quick feint and a thrust, lunging to his full reach. Spicca parried as easily and carelessly as though the prince had been a mere beginner, and allowed the latter to recover himself before he replied. A full two seconds after Sant' Ilario had resumed his guard, Spicca's foil ran over his with a speed that defied parrying, and he felt a short sharp prick in his right shoulder. Spicca sprang back and lowered his weapon. "I think that is the spot," he said coolly, and then came forward and examined Giovanni's coat. The point had penetrated the chalked mark in the centre, inflicting a wound not more than a quarter of an inch deep in the muscle of the shoulder. "Observe," he continued, "that it was a simple tierce, without a feint or any trick whatever." On realising his absolute inferiority to such a master of the art, Giovanni broke into a hearty laugh at his own discomfiture. So long as he had supposed that some sort of equality existed between them he had been angry at being outdone; but when he saw with what ease Spicca had accomplished his purpose, his admiration for the skill displayed made him forget his annoyance. "How in the world did you do it?" he said. "I thought I could parry a simple tierce, even though I might not be a match for you!" "Many people have thought the same, my friend. There are two or three elements in my process, one of which is my long reach. Another is the knack of thrusting very quickly, which is partly natural, and partly the result of practice. My trick consists in the way I hold my foil. Look here. I do not grasp the hilt with all my fingers as you do. The whole art of fencing lies in the use of the thumb and forefinger. I lay my forefinger straight in the direction of the blade. Of course I cannot do it with a basket or a bell hilt, but no one ever objects to common foils. It is dangerous--yes--I might hurt my finger, but then, I am too quick. You ask the advantage? It is very simple. You and I and every one are accustomed from childhood to point with the forefinger at things we see. The accuracy with which we point is much more surprising than you imagine. We instinctively aim the forefinger at the object to a hair's-breadth of exactness. I only make my point follow my forefinger. The important thing, then, is to grasp the hilt very firmly, and yet leave the wrist limber. I shoot in the same way with a revolver, and pull the trigger with my middle finger. I scarcely ever miss. You might amuse yourself by trying these things while you are waiting for Gouache. They will make the time pass pleasantly." Spicca, whose main pleasure in life was in the use of weapons, could not conceive of any more thoroughly delightful occupation. "I will try it," said Giovanni, rubbing his shoulder a little, for the scratch irritated him. "It is very interesting. I hope that fellow will not go and have himself killed by the Garibaldians before I get a chance at him." "You are absolutely determined to kill him, then?" Spicca's voice, which had grown animated during his exposition of his method, now sank again to its habitually melancholy tone. Giovanni only shrugged his shoulders at the question, as though any answer were needless. He hung the foil he had used in its place on the wall, and began to smoke. "You will not have another bout?" inquired the Count, putting away his weapon also, and taking his hat to go. "Thanks--not to-day. We shall meet soon, I hope. I am very grateful for your good offices, Spicca. I would ask you to stay to breakfast, but I do not want my father to know of this affair. He would suspect something if he saw you here." "Yes," returned the other quietly, "people generally do. I am rather like a public executioner in that respect. My visits often precede a catastrophe. What would you have? I am a lonely man." "You, who have so many friends!" exclaimed Giovanni. "Bah! It is time to be off," said Spicca, and shaking his friend's hand hastily he left the room. Giovanni stood for several minutes after he had gone, wondering with a vague curiosity what this man's history had been, as many had wondered before. There was a fatal savour of death about Spicca which everybody felt who came near him. He was dreaded, as one of the worst-tempered men and one of the most remarkable swordsmen in Europe. He was always consulted in affairs of honour, and his intimate acquaintance with the code, his austere integrity, and his vast experience, made him invaluable in such matters. But he was not known to have any intimate friends among men or women. He neither gambled nor made love to other men's wives, nor did any of those things which too easily lead to encounters of arms; and yet, in his cold and melancholy way he was constantly quarrelling and fighting and killing his man, till it was a wonder that the police would tolerate him in any European capital. It was rumoured that he had a strange history, and that his life had been embittered in his early youth by some tragic circumstance, but no one could say what that occurrence had been nor where it had taken place. He felt an odd sympathy for Giovanni, and his reference to his loneliness in his parting speech was unique, and set his friend to wondering about him. Giovanni's mind was now as much at rest as was possible, under conditions which obliged him to postpone his vengeance for an indefinite period. He had passed a sleepless night after his efforts to find Gouache and had risen early in the morning to be sure of catching him. He had not seen his father since their interview of the previous evening, and had hoped not to see him again till the moment of leaving for Saracinesca. The old man had understood him, and that was all that was necessary for the present. He suspected that his father would not seek an interview any more than he did himself. But an obstacle had presented itself in the way of his departure which he had not expected, and which irritated him beyond measure. Corona was ill. He did not know whether her ailment were serious or not, but it was evident that he could not force her to leave her bed and accompany him to the country, so long as the doctor declared that she could not be moved. When Spicca was gone, he did not know what to do with himself. He would not go and see his wife, for any meeting must be most unpleasant. He had nerved himself to conduct her to the mountains, and had expected that the long drive would be passed in a disagreeable silence. So long as Corona was well and strong, he could have succeeded well enough in treating her as he believed that she deserved. Now that she was ill, he felt how impossible it would be for him to take good care of her without seeming to relent, even if he did not relent in earnest; and on the other hand his really noble nature would have prevented him from being harsh in his manner to her while she was suffering. Until he had been convinced that a duel with Gouache was for the present impossible, his anger had supported him, and had made the time pass quickly throughout the sleepless night and through the events of the morning. Now that he was alone, with nothing to do but to meditate upon the situation, his savage humour forsook him and the magnitude of his misfortune oppressed him and nearly drove him mad. He went over the whole train of evidence again and again, and as often as he reviewed what had occurred, his conviction grew deeper and stronger, and he acknowledged that he had been deceived as man was never deceived before. He realised the boundless faith he had given to this woman who had betrayed him; he recollected the many proofs she had given him of her love; he drew upon the store of his past happiness and tortured himself with visions of what could never be again; he called up in fancy Corona's face when he had led her to the altar and the very look in her eyes was again upon him; he remembered that day more than two years ago when, upon the highest tower of Saracinesca, he had asked her to be his wife, and he knew not whether he desired to burn the memory of that first embrace from his heart, or to dwell upon the sweet recollection of that moment and suffer the wound of to-day to rankle more hotly by the horror of the comparison. When he thought of what she had been, it seemed impossible that she could have fallen; when he saw what she had become he could not believe that she had ever been innocent. A baser man than Giovanni would have suffered more in his personal vanity, seeing that his idol had been degraded for a mere soldier of fortune--or for a clever artist--whichever Gouache called himself, and such a husband would have forgiven her more easily had she forsaken him for one of his own standing and rank. But Giovanni was far above and beyond the thought of comparing his enemy with himself. He was wounded in what he had held most sacred, which was his heart, and in what had grown to be the mainspring of his existence, his trust in the woman he loved. Those who readily believe are little troubled if one of their many little faiths be shaken; but men who believe in a few things, with the whole strength of their being, are hurt mortally when that on which they build their loyalty is shattered and overturned. Giovanni was a just man, and was rarely carried away by appearances; least of all could he have shown any such weakness when the yielding to it involved the destruction of all that he cared for in life. But the evidence was overwhelming, and no man could be blamed for accepting it. There was no link wanting in the chain, and the denials made by Corona and Anastase could not have influenced any man in his senses. What could a woman do but deny all? What was there for Gouache but to swear that the accusation was untrue? Would not any other man or woman have done as much? There was no denying it. The only person who remained unquestioned was Faustina Montevarchi. Either she was the innocent girl she appeared to be or not. If she were, how could Giovanni explain to her that she had been duped, and made an instrument in the hands of Gouache and Corona? She would not know what he meant. Even if she admitted that she loved Gouache, was it not clear that he had deceived her too, for the sake of making an accomplice of one who was constantly with Corona? Her love for the soldier could not explain the things that had passed between Anastase and Giovanni's wife, which Giovanni had seen with his own eyes. It could not account for the whisperings, the furtive meeting and tender words of which he had been a witness in his own house. It could not do away with the letter and the pin. But if Faustina were not innocent of assisting the two, she would deny everything, even as they had done. As he thought of all these matters and followed the cruelly logical train of reasoning forced upon him by the facts, a great darkness descended upon Giovanni's heart, and he knew that his happiness was gone from him for ever. Henceforth nothing remained but to watch his wife jealously, and suffer his ills with the best heart he could. The very fact that he loved her still, with a passion that defied all things, added a terrible bitterness to what he had to bear, for it made him despise himself as none would have dared to despise him. CHAPTER XII. As Giovanni sat in solitude in his room he was not aware that his father had received a visit from no less a personage than Prince Montevarchi. The latter found Saracinesca very much preoccupied, and in no mood for conversation, and consequently did not stay very long. When he went away, however, he carried under his arm a bundle of deeds and documents which he had long desired to see and in the perusal of which he promised himself to spend a very interesting day. He had come with the avowed object of getting them, and he neither anticipated nor met with any difficulty in obtaining what he wanted. He spoke of his daughter's approaching marriage with San Giacinto, and after expressing his satisfaction at the alliance with the Saracinesca, remarked that his son-in-law had told him the story of the ancient deed, and begged permission to see it for himself. The request was natural, and Saracinesca was not suspicious at any time; at present, he was too much occupied with his own most unpleasant reflections to attach any importance to the incident. Montevarchi thought there was something wrong with his friend, but inasmuch as he had received the papers, he asked no questions and presently departed with them, hastening homewards in order to lose no time in satisfying his curiosity. Two hours later he was still sitting in his dismal study with the manuscripts before him. He had ascertained what he wanted to know, namely, that the papers really existed and were drawn up in a legal form. He had hoped to find a rambling agreement, made out principally by the parties concerned, and copied with some improvements by the family notary of the time, for he had made up his mind that if any flaw could be discovered in the deed San Giacinto should become Prince Saracinesca, and should have possession of all the immense wealth that belonged to the family. San Giacinto was the heir in the direct line, and although his great-grand-father had relinquished his birthright in the firm expectation of having no children, the existence of his descendants might greatly modify the provisions of the agreement. Montevarchi's face fell when he had finished deciphering the principal document. The provisions and conditions were short and concise, and were contained upon one large sheet of parchment, signed, witnessed and bearing the official seal and signature which proved that it had been ratified. It was set forth therein that Don Leone Saracinesca, being the eldest son of Don Giovanni Saracinesca, deceased, Prince of Saracinesca, of Sant' Ilario and of Torleone, Duke of Barda, and possessor of many other titles, Grandee of Spain of the first class and Count of the Holy Roman Empire, did of his own free will, by his own motion and will, make over and convey to, and bestow upon, Don Orsino Saracinesca, his younger and only brother, the principalities of Saracinesca--here followed a complete list of the various titles and estates--including the titles, revenues, seigneurial rights, appanages, holdings, powers and sovereignty attached to and belonging to each and every one, to him, the aforesaid Don Orsino Saracinesca and to the heirs of his body in the male line direct for ever. Here there was a stop, and the manuscript began again at the top of the other side of the sheet. The next clause contained the solitary provision to the effect that Don Leone reserved to himself the estate and title of San Giacinto in the kingdom of Naples, which at his death, he having no children, should revert to the aforesaid Don Orsino Saracinesca and his heirs for ever. It was further stated that the agreement was wholly of a friendly character, and that Don Leone bound himself to take no steps whatever to reinstate himself in the titles and possessions which, of his own free will, he relinquished, the said agreement being, in the opinion of both parties, for the advantage of the whole house of Saracinesca. "He bound himself, not his descendants," remarked Montevarchi at last, as he again bent his head over the document and examined the last clause. "And he says 'having no children'--in Latin the words may mean in case he had none, being in the ablative absolute. Having no children, to Orsino and his heirs for ever--but since he had a son, the case is altered. Ay, but that clause in the first part says to Orsino and his heirs for ever, and says nothing about Leone having no children. It is more absolute than the ablative. That is bad." For a long time he pondered over the writing. The remaining documents were merely transfers of the individual estates, in each of which it was briefly stated that the property in question was conveyed in accordance with the conditions of the main deed. There was no difficulty there. The Saracinesca inheritance depended solely on the existence of this one piece of parchment, and of the copy or registration of it in the government offices. Montevarchi glanced at the candle that stood before him in a battered brass candlestick, and his old heart beat a little faster than usual. To burn the sheet of parchment, and then deny on oath that he had ever seen it--it was very simple. Saracinesca would find it hard to prove the existence of the thing. Montevarchi hesitated, and then laughed at himself for his folly. It would be necessary first to ascertain what there was at the Chancery office, otherwise he would be ruining himself for nothing. That was certainly the most important step at present. He pondered over the matter for some time and then rose from his chair. As he stood before the table he glanced once more at the sheet. As though the greater distance made it more clear to his old sight, he noticed that there was a blank space, capable of containing three lines of writing like what was above, while still leaving a reasonable margin at the bottom of the page. As the second clause was the shorter, the scribe had doubtless thought it better to begin afresh on the other side. Montevarchi sat down again, and took a large sheet of paper and a pen. He rapidly copied the first clause to the end, but after the words "in the male line direct for ever" his pen still ran on. The deed then read as follows:-- "... In the male line direct for ever, provided that the aforesaid Don Leone Saracinesca shall have no son born to him in wedlock, in which case, and if such a son be born, this present deed is wholly null, void and ineffectual." Montevarchi did not stop here. He carefully copied the remainder as it stood, to the last word. Then he put away the original and read what he had written very slowly and carefully. With the addition it was perfectly clear that San Giacinto must be considered to be the lawful and only Prince Saracinesca. "How well those few words would look at the bottom of the page!" exclaimed the old man half aloud. He sat still and gloated in imagination over the immense wealth which would thus be brought into his family. "They shall be there--they must be there!" he muttered at last. "Millions! millions! After all it is only common justice. The old reprobate would never have disinherited his son if he had expected to have one." His long thin fingers crooked themselves and scratched the shabby green baize that covered the table, as though heaping together little piles of money, and then hiding them under the palm of his hand. "Even if there is a copy," he said again under his breath, "the little work will look as prettily upon it as on this--if only the sheets are the same size and there is the same space," he added, his face falling again at the disagreeable reflection that the duplicate might differ in some respect from the original. The plan was simple enough in appearance, and provided that the handwriting could be successfully forged, there was no reason why it should not succeed. The man who could do it, if he would, was in the house at that moment, and Montevarchi knew it. Arnoldo Meschini, the shrivelled little secretary and librarian, who had a profound knowledge of the law and spent his days as well as most of his nights in poring over crabbed manuscripts, was the very person for such a piece of work. He understood the smallest variations in handwriting which belonged to different periods, and the minutest details of old-fashioned penmanship were as familiar to him as the common alphabet. But would he do it? Would he undertake the responsibility of a forgery of which the success would produce such tremendous responsibilities, of which the failure would involve such awful disgrace? Montevarchi had reasons of his own for believing that Arnoldo Meschini would do anything he was ordered to do, and would moreover keep the secret faithfully. Indeed, as far as discretion was concerned, he would, in case of exposure, have to bear the penalty. Montevarchi would arrange that. If discovered it would be easy for him to pretend that being unable to read the manuscript he had employed his secretary to do so, and that the latter, in the hope of reward, had gratuitously imposed upon the prince and the courts of law before whom the case would be tried. One thing was necessary. San Giacinto must never see the documents until they were produced as evidence. In the first place it was important that he, who was the person nearest concerned, should be in reality perfectly innocent, and should be himself as much deceived as any one. Nothing impresses judges like real and unaffected innocence. Secondly, if he were consulted, it was impossible to say what view he might take of the matter. Montevarchi suspected him of possessing some of the hereditary boldness of the Saracinesca. He might refuse to be a party in a deception, even though he himself was to benefit by it, a consideration which chilled the old man's blood and determined him at once to confide the secret to no one but Arnoldo Meschini, who was completely in his power. The early history of this remarkable individual was uncertain. He had received an excellent education and it is no exaggeration to call him learned, for he possessed a surprising knowledge of ancient manuscripts and a great experience in everything connected with this branch of archaeology. It was generally believed that he had been bred to enter the church, but he himself never admitted that he had been anything more than a scholar in a religious seminary. He had subsequently studied law and had practised for some time, when he had suddenly abandoned his profession in order to accept the ill-paid post of librarian and secretary to the father of the present Prince Montevarchi. Probably his love of mediaeval lore had got the better of his desire for money, and during the five and twenty years he had spent in the palace he had never been heard to complain of his condition. He lived in a small chamber in the attic and passed his days in the library, winter and summer alike, perpetually poring over the manuscripts and making endless extracts in his odd, old-fashioned handwriting. The result of his labours was never published, and at first sight it would have been hard to account for his enormous industry and for the evident satisfaction he derived from his work. The nature of the man, however, was peculiar, and his occupation was undoubtedly congenial to him, and far more profitable than it appeared to be. Arnoldo Meschini was a forger. He was one of that band of manufacturers of antiquities who have played such a part in the dealings of foreign collectors during the last century, and whose occupation, though slow and laborious, occasionally produces immense profits. He had not given up his calling with the deliberate intention of resorting to this method of earning a subsistence, but had drifted into his evil practices by degrees. In the first instance he had quitted the bar in consequence of having been connected with a scandalous case of extortion and blackmailing, in which he had been suspected of constructing forged documents for his client, though the crime had not been proved against him. His reputation, however, had been ruined, and he had been forced to seek his bread elsewhere. It chanced that the former librarian of the Montevarchi died at that time and that the prince was in search of a learned man ready to give his services for a stipend about equal to the wages of a footman. Meschini presented himself and got the place. The old prince was delighted with him and agreed to forget the aforesaid disgrace he had incurred, in consideration of his exceptional qualities. He set himself systematically to study the contents of the ancient library, with the intention of publishing the contents of the more precious manuscripts, and for two or three years he pursued his object with this laudable purpose, and with the full consent of his employer. One day a foreign newspaper fell into his hands containing an account of a recent sale in which sundry old manuscripts had brought large prices. A new idea crossed his mind, and the prospect of unexpected wealth unfolded itself to his imagination. For several months he studied even more industriously than before, until, having made up his mind, he began to attempt the reproduction of a certain valuable writing dating from the fourteenth century. He worked in his own room during the evening and allowed no one to see what he was doing, for although it was rarely that the old prince honoured the library with a visit, yet Meschini was inclined to run no risks, and proceeded in his task with the utmost secrecy. Nothing could exceed the care he showed in the preparation and use of his materials. One of his few acquaintances was a starving, but clever chemist, who kept a dingy shop in the neighbourhood of the Ponte Quattro Capi. To this poor man he applied in order to obtain a knowledge of the ink used in the old writings. He professed himself anxious to get all possible details on the subject for a work he was preparing upon mediaeval calligraphy, and his friend soon set his mind at rest by informing him that if the ink contained any metallic parts he would easily detect them, but that if it was composed of animal and vegetable matter it would be almost impossible to give a satisfactory analysis. At the end of a few days Meschini was in possession of a recipe for concocting what he wanted, and after numerous experiments, in the course of which he himself acquired great practical knowledge of the subject, he succeeded in producing an ink apparently in all respects similar to that used by the scribe whose work he proposed to copy. He had meanwhile busied himself with the preparation of parchment, which is by no means an easy matter when it is necessary to give it the colour and consistency of very ancient skin. He learned that the ligneous acids contained in the smoke of wood could be easily detected, and it was only through the assistance of the chemist that he finally hit upon the method of staining the sheets with a thin broth of untanned leather, of which the analysis would give a result closely approaching that of the parchment itself. Moreover, he made all sorts of trials of quill pens, until he had found a method of cutting which produced the exact thickness of stroke required, and during the whole time he exercised himself in copying and recopying many pages of the manuscript upon common paper, in order to familiarise himself with the method of forming the letters. It was nearly two years before he felt himself able to begin his first imitation, but the time and study he had expended were not lost, and the result surpassed his expectations. So ingeniously perfect was the facsimile when finished that Meschini himself would have found it hard to swear to the identity of the original if he had not been allowed to see either of the two for some time. The minutest stains were reproduced with scrupulous fidelity. The slightest erasure was copied minutely. He examined every sheet to ascertain exactly how it had been worn by the fingers rubbing on the corners and spent days in turning a page thousands of times, till the oft-repeated touch of his thumb had deepened the colour to the exact tint. When the work was finished he hesitated. It seemed to him very perfect, but he feared lest he should be deceiving himself from having seen the thing daily for so many months. He took his copy one day to a famous collector, and submitted it to him for examination, asking at the same time what it was worth. The specialist spent several hours in examining the writing, and pronounced it very valuable, naming a large sum, while admitting that he was unable to buy it himself. Arnoldo Meschini took his work home with him, and spent a day in considering what he should do. Then he deliberately placed the facsimile in his employer's library, and sold the original to a learned man who was collecting for a great public institution in a foreign country. His train of reasoning was simple, for he said to himself that the forgery was less likely to be detected in the shelves of the Montevarchi's palace than if put into the hands of a body of famous scientists who naturally distrusted what was brought to them. Collectors do not ask questions as to whence a valuable thing has been taken; they only examine whether it be genuine and worth the money. Emboldened by his success, the forger had continued to manufacture facsimiles and sell originals for nearly twenty years, during which he succeeded in producing nearly as many copies, and realised a sum which to him appeared enormous and which was certainly not to be despised by any one. Some of the works he sold were published and annotated by great scholars, some were jealously guarded in the libraries of rich amateurs, who treasured them with all the selfish vigilance of the bibliomaniac. In the meanwhile Meschini's learning and skill constantly increased, till he possessed an almost diabolical skill in the art of imitating ancient writings, and a familiarity with the subject which amazed the men of learning who occasionally obtained permission to enter the library and study there. Upon these, too, Meschini now and then experimented with his forgeries, not one of which was ever detected. Prince Montevarchi saw in his librarian only a poor wretch whose passion for ancient literature seemed to dominate his life and whose untiring industry had made him master of the very secret necessary in the present instance. He knew that such things as he contemplated had been done before and he supposed that they had been done by just such men as Arnoldo Meschini. He knew the history of the man's early disgrace and calculated wisely enough that the fear of losing his situation on the one hand, and the hope of a large reward on the other, would induce him to undertake the job. To all appearances he was as poor as when he had entered the service of the prince's father five and twenty years earlier. The promise of a few hundred scudi, thought Montevarchi, would have immense weight with such a man. In his eagerness to accomplish his purpose, the nobleman never suspected that the offer would be refused by a fellow who had narrowly escaped being convicted of forgery in his youth, and whose poverty was a matter concerning which no doubt could exist. Montevarchi scarcely hesitated before going to the library. If he paused at all, it was more to consider the words he intended to use than to weigh in his mind the propriety of using them. The library was a vast old hall, surrounded on all sides, and nearly to the ceiling, with carved bookcases of walnut blackened with age to the colour of old mahogany. There were a number of massive tables in the room, upon which the light fell agreeably from high clerestory windows at each end of the apartment. Meschini himself was shuffling along in a pair of ancient leather slippers with a large volume under his arm, clad in very threadbare black clothes and wearing a dingy skullcap on his head. He was a man somewhat under the middle size, badly made, though possessing considerable physical strength. His complexion was of a muddy yellow, disagreeable to see, but his features rendered him interesting if not sympathetic. The brow was heavy and the gray eyebrows irregular and bushy, but his gray eyes were singularly clear and bright, betraying a hidden vitality which would not have been suspected from the whole impression he made. A high forehead, very prominent in the upper and middle part, contracted below, so that there was very little breadth at the temples, but considerable expanse above. The eyes were near together and separated by the knifelike bridge of the nose, the latter descending in a fine curve of wonderfully delicate outline. The chin was pointed, and the compressed mouth showed little or nothing of the lips. On each side of his head the coarsely-shaped and prominent ears contrasted disagreeably with the fine keenness of the face. He stooped a little from the neck, and his shoulders sloped in a way that made them look narrower than they really were. As the prince closed the door behind him and advanced, Meschini lifted his cap a little and laid down the book he was carrying, wondering inwardly what had brought his employer to see him at that hour of the morning. "Sit down," said Montevarchi, with more than usual affability, and setting the example by seating himself upon one of the high-backed chairs which were ranged along the tables. "Sit down, Meschini, and let us have a little conversation." "Willingly, Signor Principe," returned the librarian, obeying the command and placing himself opposite to the prince. "I have been thinking about you this morning," continued the latter. "You have been with us a very long time. Let me see. How many years? Eighteen? Twenty?" "Twenty-five years, Excellency. It is a long time, indeed!" "Twenty-five years! Dear me! How the thought takes me back to my poor father! Heaven bless him, he was a good man. But, as I was saying, Meschini, you have been with us many years, and we have not done much for you. No. Do not protest! I know your modesty, but one must be just before all things. I think you draw fifteen scudi a month? Yes. I have a good memory, you see. I occupy myself with the cares of my household. But you are not so young as you were once, my friend, and your faithful services deserve to be rewarded. Shall we say thirty scudi a month in future? To continue all your life, even if--heaven avert it--you should ever become disabled from superintending the library--yes, all your life." Meschini bowed as he sat in acknowledgment of so much generosity, and assumed a grateful expression suitable to the occasion. In reality, his salary was of very little importance to him, as compared with what he realised from his illicit traffic in manuscripts. But, like his employer, he was avaricious, and the prospect of three hundred and sixty scudi a year was pleasant to contemplate. He bowed and smiled. "I do not deserve so much liberality, Signor Principe," he said. "My poor services--" "Very far from poor, my dear friend, very far from poor," interrupted Montevarchi. "Moreover, if you will have confidence in me, you can do me a very great service indeed. But it is indeed a very private matter. You are a discreet man, however, and have few friends. You are not given to talking idly of what concerns no one but yourself." "No, Excellency," replied Meschini, laughing inwardly as he thought of the deceptions he had been practising with success during a quarter of a century. "Well, well, this is a matter between ourselves, and one which, as you will see, will bring its own reward. For although it might not pass muster in a court of law--the courts you know, Meschini, are very sensitive about little things--" he looked keenly at his companion, whose eyes were cast down. "Foolishly sensitive," echoed the librarian. "Yes. I may say that in the present instance, although the law might think differently of the matter, we shall be doing a good deed, redressing a great injustice, restoring to the fatherless his birthright, in a word fulfilling the will of Heaven, while perhaps paying little attention to the laws of man. Man, my friend, is often very unjust in his wisdom." "Very. I can only applaud your Excellency's sentiments, which do justice to a man of heart." "No, no, I want no praise," replied the prince in a tone of deprecation. "What I need in order to accomplish this good action is your assistance and friendly help. To whom should I turn, but to the old and confidential friend of the family? To a man whose knowledge of the matter on hand is only equalled by his fidelity to those who have so long employed him?" "You are very good, Signor Principe. I will do my best to serve you, as I have served you and his departed Excellency, the Signor Principe, your father." "Very well, Meschini. Now I need only repeat that the reward for your services will be great, as I trust that hereafter your recompense may be adequate for having had a share in so good a deed. But, to be short, the best way to acquaint you with the matter is to show you this document which I have brought for the purpose." Montevarchi produced the famous deed and carefully unfolded it upon the table. Then, after glancing over it once more, he handed it to the librarian. The latter bent his keen eyes upon the page and rapidly deciphered the contents. Then he read it through a second time and at last laid it down upon the table and looked up at the prince with an air of inquiry. "You see, my dear Meschini," said Montevarchi in suave tones, "this agreement was made by Don Leone Saracinesca because he expected to have no children. Had he foreseen what was to happen--for he has legitimate descendants alive, he would have added a clause here, at the foot of the first page--do you see? The clause he would have added would have been very short--something like this, 'Provided that the aforesaid Don Leone Saracinesca shall have no son born to him in wedlock, in which case, and if such a son be born, this present deed is wholly null, void and ineffectual.' Do you follow me?" "Perfectly," replied Meschini, with a strange look in his eyes. He again took the parchment and looked it over, mentally inserting the words suggested by his employer. "If those words were inserted, there could be no question about the view the tribunals would take. But there must be a duplicate of the deed at the Cancellaria." "Perhaps. I leave that to your industry to discover. Meanwhile, I am sure you agree with me that a piece of horrible injustice has been caused by this document; a piece of injustice, I repeat, which it is our sacred duty to remedy and set right." "You propose to me to introduce this clause, as I understand, in this document and in the original," said the librarian, as though he wished to be quite certain of the nature of the scheme. Montevarchi turned his eyes away and slowly scratched the table with his long nails. "I mean to say," he answered in a lower voice, "that if it could be made out in law that it was the intention of the person, of Don Leone--" "Let us speak plainly," interrupted Meschini. "We are alone. It is of no use to mince matters here. The only way to accomplish what you desire is to forge the words in both parchments. The thing can be done, and I can do it. It will be successful, without a shadow of a doubt. But I must have my price. There must be no misunderstanding. I do not think much of your considerations of justice, but I will do what you require, for money." "How much?" asked Montevarchi in a thick voice. His heart misgave him, for he had placed himself in the man's power, and Meschini's authoritative tone showed that the latter knew it, and meant to use his advantage. "I will be moderate, for I am a poor man. You shall give me twenty thousand scudi in cash, on the day the verdict is given in favour of Don Giovanni Saracinesca, Marchese di San Giacinto. That is your friend's name, I believe." Montevarchi started as the librarian named the sum, and he turned very pale, passing his bony hand upon the edge of the table. "I would not have expected this of you!" he exclaimed. "You have your choice," returned the other, bringing his yellow face nearer to his employer's and speaking very distinctly. "You know what it all means. Saracinesca, Sant' Ilario, and Barda to your son-in-law, besides all the rest, amounting perhaps to several millions. To me, who get you all this, a paltry twenty thousand. Or else--" he paused and his bright eyes seemed to penetrate into Montevarchi's soul. The latter's face exhibited a sudden terror, which Meschini understood. "Or else?" said the prince. "Or else, I suppose you will try and intimidate me by threatening to expose what I have told you?" "Not at all, Excellency," replied the old scholar with sudden humility. "If you do not care for the bargain let us leave it alone. I am only your faithful servant, Signor Principe. Do not suspect me of such ingratitude! I only say that if we undertake it, the plan will be successful. It is for you to decide. Millions or no millions, it is the same to me. I am but a poor student. But if I help to get them for you--or for your son-in-law--I must have what I asked. It is not one per cent--scarcely a broker's commission! And you will have so much. Not but what your Excellency deserves it all, and is the best judge." "One per cent?" muttered Montevarchi. "Perhaps not more than half per cent. But is it safe?" he asked suddenly, his fears all at once asserting themselves with a force that bewildered him. "Leave all that to me," answered Meschini confidently. "The insertion shall be made, unknown to any one, in this parchment and in the one in the Chancery. The documents shall be returned to their places with no observation, and a month or two later the Marchese di San Giacinto can institute proceedings for the recovery of his birthright. I would only advise you not to mention the matter to him. It is essential that he should be quite innocent in order that the tribunal may suspect nothing. You and I, Signor Principe, can stay at home while the case is proceeding. We shall not even see the Signor Marchese's lawyers, for what have we to do with it all? But the Signor Marchese himself must be really free from all blame, or he will show a weak point. Now, when all is ready, he should go to the Cancellaria and examine the papers there for himself. He himself will suspect nothing. He will be agreeably surprised." "And how long will it take you to do the--the work?" asked Montevarchi in hesitating tones. "Let me see," Meschini began to make a calculation under his breath. "Ink, two days--preparing parchment for experiments, a week--writing, twice over, two days--giving age, drying and rubbing, three days, at least. Two, nine, eleven, fourteen. A fortnight," he said aloud. "I cannot do it in less time than that. If the copy in the Chancery is by another hand it will take longer." "But how can you work at the Chancery?" asked the prince, as though a new objection had presented itself. "Have no fear, Excellency. I will manage it so that no one shall find it out. Two visits will suffice. Shall I begin at once? Is it agreed?" Montevarchi was silent for several minutes, and his hands moved uneasily. "Begin at once," he said at last, as though forcing himself to make a determination. He rose to go as he spoke. "Twenty thousand scudi on the day the verdict is given in favour of the Signor Marchese. Is that it?" "Yes, yes. That is it. I leave it all to you." "I will serve your Excellency faithfully, never fear." "Do, Meschini. Yes. Be faithful as you have always been. Remember, I am not avaricious. It is in the cause of sound justice that I stoop to assume the appearance of dishonesty. Can a man do more? Can one go farther than to lose one's self-esteem by appearing to transgress the laws of honour in order to accomplish a good object; for the sake of restoring the birthright to the fatherless and the portion to the widow, or indeed to the widower, in this case? No, my dear friend. The means are more than justified by the righteousness of our purpose. Believe me, my good Meschini--yes, you are good in the best sense of the word--believe me, the justice of this world is not always the same as the justice of Heaven. The dispensations of providence are mysterious." "And must remain so, in this case," observed the librarian with an evil smile. "Yes, unfortunately, in this case we shall not reap the worldly praise which so kind an action undoubtedly deserves. But we must have patience under these trials. Good-bye, Meschini, good-bye, my friend. I must busy myself with the affairs of my household. Every man must do his duty in this world, you know." The scholar bowed his employer to the door, and then went back to the parchment, which he studied attentively for more than an hour, keeping a huge folio volume open before him, into which he might slip the precious deed in case he were interrupted in his occupation. CHAPTER XIII. Sant' Ilario could not realise that the course of events had been brought to a standstill at the very moment when his passions were roused to fury. He could not fight Gouache for the present and Corona was so ill that he could not see her. Had he wished to visit her, the old-fashioned physician would probably have forbidden him to do so, but in reality he was glad to be spared the emotions of a meeting which must necessarily be inconclusive. His first impulse had been to take her away from Rome and force her to live alone with him in the mountains. He felt that no other course was open to him, for he knew that in spite of all that had happened he could not bear to live without her, and yet he felt that he could no longer suffer her to come and go in the midst of society, where she must necessarily often meet the man she had chosen to love. Nor could he keep her in Rome and at the same time isolate her as he desired to do. If the world must talk, he would rather not be where he could hear what it said. The idea of a sudden journey, terminating in the gloomy fortress of Saracinesca, was pleasant to his humour. The old place was ten times more grim and dismal in winter than in summer, and in his savage mood he fancied himself alone with his wife in the silent halls, making her feel the enormity of what she had done, while jealously keeping her a prisoner at his mercy. But her illness had put a stop to his plans for her safety, while the revolution had effectually interfered with the execution of his vengeance upon Gouache. He could find no occupation which might distract his mind from the thoughts that beset him, and no outlet for the restless temper that craved some sort of action, no matter what, as the expression of what he suffered. He and his father met in silence at their meals, and though Giovanni felt that he had the old man's full sympathy, he could not bring himself to speak of what was nearest to his heart. He remembered that his marriage had been of his own seeking, and his pride kept him from all mention of the catastrophe by which his happiness had been destroyed. Old Saracinesca suffered in his own way almost as much as his son, and it was fortunate that he was prevented from seeing Corona at that time, for it is not probable that he would have controlled himself had he been able to talk with her alone. When little Orsino was brought in to them, the two men looked at each other, and while the younger bit his lip and suppressed all outward signs of his agony, the tears more than once stole into the old prince's eyes so that he would turn away and leave the room. Then Giovanni would take the child upon his knee and look at it earnestly until the little thing was frightened and held out its arms to its nurse, crying to be taken away. Thereupon Sant' Ilario's mood grew more bitter than before, for he was foolish enough to believe that the child had a natural antipathy for him, and would grow up to hate the sight of its father. Those were miserable days, never to be forgotten, and each morning and evening brought worse news of Corona's state, until it was clear, even to Giovanni, that she was dangerously ill. The sound of voices grew rare in the Palazzo Saracinesca and the servants moved noiselessly about at their work, oppressed by the sense of coming disaster, and scarcely speaking to each other. San Giacinto came daily to make inquiries and spent some time with the two unhappy men without wholly understanding what was passing. He was an astute man, but not possessed of the delicacy of feeling whereby real sympathy sometimes reaches the truth by its own intuitive reasoning. Moreover, he was wholly ignorant of having played a very important part in bringing about the troubles which now beset Casa Saracinesca. No one but himself knew how he had written the note that had caused such disastrous results, and he had no intention of confiding his exploit to any one of his acquaintance. He had of course not been able to ascertain whether the desired effect had been produced, for he did not know at what church the meeting between Faustina and Gouache was to take place, and he was too cunning to follow her as a spy when he had struck so bold a blow at her affection for the artist-soldier. His intellect was keen, but his experience had not been of a high order, and he naturally thought that she would reason as he had reasoned himself, if she chanced to see him while she was waiting for the man she loved. She knew that he was to marry her sister, and that he might therefore be supposed to disapprove of an affair which could only lead to a derogatory match for herself, and he had therefore carefully abstained from following her on that Sunday morning when she had met Anastase. Nevertheless he could see that something had occurred in his cousin's household which was beyond his comprehension, for Corona's illness was not alone enough to account for the manner of the Saracinesca. It is a social rule in Italy that a person suffering from any calamity must be amused, and San Giacinto used what talents he possessed in that direction, doing all he could to make the time hang less heavily on Giovanni's hands. He made a point of gathering all the news of the little war in order to repeat it in minute detail to his cousins. He even prevailed upon Giovanni to walk with him sometimes in the middle of the day, and Sant' Ilario seemed to take a languid interest in the barricades erected at the gates of the city, and in the arrangements for maintaining quiet within the walls. Rome presented a strange aspect in those days. All who were not Romans kept their national flags permanently hung from their windows, as a sort of protection in case the mob should rise, or in the event of the Garibaldians suddenly seizing the capital. Patrols marched everywhere about the streets and mounted gendarmes were stationed at the corners of the principal squares and at intervals along the main thoroughfares. Strange to say, the numerous flags and uniforms that were to be seen produced an air of festivity strongly at variance with the actual state of things, and belied by the anxious expressions visible in the faces of the inhabitants. All these sights interested San Giacinto, whose active temperament made him very much alive to what went on around him, and even Giovanni thought less of his great sorrow when he suffered himself to be led out of the house by his cousin. When at last it was known that the French troops were on their way from Civita Vecchia, the city seemed to breathe more freely. General Kanzler, the commander-in-chief of the Pontifical forces, had done all that was humanly possible to concentrate his little army, and the arrival of even a small body of Frenchmen made it certain that Garibaldi could be met with a fair chance of success. Of all who rejoiced at the prospect of a decisive action, there was no one more sincerely delighted than Anastase Gouache. So long as the state of siege lasted and he was obliged to follow the regular round of his almost mechanical duty, he was unable to take any step in the direction whither all his hopes tended, and he lived in a state of perpetual suspense. It was a small consolation that he found time to reflect upon the difficulties of his situation and to revolve in his mind the language he should use when he went to ask the hand of Montevarchi's daughter. He was fully determined to take this bold step, and though he realised the many objections which the old prince would certainly raise against the match, he had not the slightest doubt of his power to overcome them all. He could not imagine what it would be like to fail, and he cherished and reared what should have been but a slender hope until it seemed to be a certainty. The unexpected quarrel thrust upon him by Sant' Ilario troubled him very little, for he was too hopeful by nature to expect any serious catastrophe, and he more than once laughed to himself when he thought Giovanni was really jealous of him. The feeling of reverence and respectful admiration which he had long entertained for Corona was so far removed from love as to make Giovanni's wrath appear ridiculous. He would far sooner have expected a challenge from one of Faustina's brothers than from Corona's husband, but, since Sant' Ilario had determined to quarrel, there was no help for it, and he must give him all satisfaction as soon as possible. That Giovanni had insulted him by entering his lodgings unbidden, and by taking certain objects away which were practically the artist's property, was a minor consideration, since it was clear that Giovanni had acted all along under an egregious misapprehension. One thing alone puzzled Anastase, and that was the letter itself. It seemed to refer to his meeting with Faustina, but she had made no mention of it when he had seen her in the church. Gouache did not suspect Giovanni of having concocted the note for any purposes of his own, and quite believed that he had found it as he had stated, but the more the artist tried to explain the existence of the letter, the further he found himself from any satisfactory solution of the question. He interrogated his landlady, but she would say nothing about it, for the temptation of Giovanni's money sealed her lips. The week passed somehow, unpleasantly enough for most of the persons concerned in this veracious history, but Saturday night came at last, and brought with it a series of events which modified the existing situation. Gouache was on duty at the barracks when orders were received to the effect that the whole available force in Rome was to march soon after midnight. His face brightened when he heard the news, although he realised that in a few hours he was to leave behind him all that he held most dear and to face death in a manner new to him, and by no means pleasant to most men. Between two and three o'clock on Sunday morning Gouache found himself standing in the midst of a corps of fifteen hundred Zouaves, in almost total darkness and under a cold, drizzling November rain. His teeth chattered and his wet hands seemed to freeze to the polished fittings of his rifle, and he had not the slightest doubt that every one of his comrades experienced the same unenviable sensations. From time to time the clear voice of an officer was heard giving an order, and then the ranks closed up nearer, or executed a sidelong movement by which greater space was afforded to the other troops that constantly came up towards the Porta Pia. There was little talking during an hour or more while the last preparations for the march were being made, though the men exchanged a few words from time to time in an undertone. The splashing tramp of feet on the wet road was heard rapidly approaching every now and then, followed by a dead silence when the officers' voices gave the order to halt. Then a shuffling sound followed as the ranks moved into the exact places assigned to them. Here and there a huge torch was blazing and spluttering in the fine rain, making the darkness around it seem only thicker by the contrast, but lighting up fragments of ancient masonry and gleaming upon little pools of water in the open spaces between the ranks. It was a dismal night, and it was fortunate that the men who were to march were in good spirits and encouraged by the arrival of the French, who made the circuit of the city and were to join them upon the road in order to strike the final blow against Garibaldi and his volunteers. The Zouaves were fifteen hundred, and there were about as many more of the native troops, making three thousand in all. The French were two thousand. The Garibaldians were, according to all accounts, not less than twelve thousand, and were known to be securely entrenched at Monte Rotondo and further protected by the strong outpost of Mentana, which lies nearly on the direct road from Rome to the former place. Considering the relative positions of the two armies, the odds were enormously in favour of Garibaldi, and had he possessed a skill in generalship at all equal to his undoubted personal courage, he should have been able to drive the Pope's forces back to the very gates of Rome. He was, however, under a twofold disadvantage which more than counterbalanced the numerical superiority of the body he commanded. He possessed little or no military science, and his men were neither confident nor determined. His plan had been to create a revolution in Rome and to draw out the papal army at the same time, in order that the latter might find itself between two fires. His men had expected that the country would rise and welcome them as liberators, whereas they were received as brigands and opposed with desperate energy at every point by the peasants themselves, a turn of affairs for which they were by no means prepared. Monte Rotondo, defended by only three hundred and fifty soldiers, resisted Garibaldi's attacking force of six thousand during twenty-seven hours, a feat which must have been quite impracticable had the inhabitants themselves not joined in the defence. The revolution in Rome was a total failure, the mass of the people looking on with satisfaction, while the troops shot down the insurgents, and at times even demanding arms that they might join in suppressing the disturbance. The Rome of 1867 was not the Rome of 1870, as will perhaps be understood hereafter. With the exception of a few turbulent spirits, the city contained no revolutionary element, and very few who sympathised with the ideas of Italian Unification. But without going any further into political considerations for the present, let us follow Anastase Gouache and his fifteen hundred comrades who marched out of the Porta Pia before dawn on the third of November. The battle that followed merits some attention as having been the turning-point of a stirring time, and also as having produced certain important results in the life of the French artist, which again reacted in some measure upon the family history of the Saracinesca. Monte Rotondo itself is sixteen miles from Rome, but Mentana, which on that day was the outpost of the Garibaldians and became the scene of their defeat, is two miles nearer to the city. Most people who have ridden much in the Campagna know the road which branches to the left about five miles beyond the Ponte Nomentano. There is perhaps no more desolate and bleak part of the undulating waste of land that surrounds the city on all sides. The way is good as far as the turning, but after that it is little better than a country lane, and in rainy weather is heavy and sometimes almost impassable. As the rider approaches Mentana the road sinks between low hills and wooded knolls that dominate it on both sides, affording excellent positions from which an enemy might harass and even destroy an advancing force. Gradually the country becomes more broken until Mentana itself appears in view, a formidable barrier rising upon the direct line to Monte Rotondo. On all sides are irregular hillocks, groups of trees growing upon little elevations, solid stone walls surrounding scattered farmhouses and cattle-yards, every one of which could be made a strong defensive post. Mentana, too, possesses an ancient castle of some strength, and has walls of its own like most of the old towns in the Campagna, insignificant perhaps, if compared with modern fortifications, but well able to resist for many hours the fire of light field-guns. It was past midday when Gouache's column first came in view of the enemy, and made out the bright red shirts of the Garibaldians, which peeped out from among the trees and from behind the walls, and were visible in some places massed in considerable numbers. The intention of the commanding officers, which was carried out with amazing ease, was to throw the Zouaves and native troops in the face of the enemy, while the French chasseurs, on foot and mounted, made a flanking movement and cut off Garibaldi's communication with Monte Rotondo, attacking Mentana at the same time from the opposite side. Gouache experienced an odd sensation when the first orders were given to fire. His experience had hitherto been limited to a few skirmishes with the outlaws of the Samnite hills, and the idea of standing up and deliberately taking aim at men who stood still to be shot at, so far as he could see, was not altogether pleasant. He confessed to himself that though he wholly approved of the cause for which he was about to fire his musket, he felt not the slightest hatred for the Garibaldians, individually or collectively. They were extremely picturesque in the landscape, with their flaming shirts and theatrical hats. They looked very much as though they had come out of a scene in a comic opera, and it seemed a pity to destroy anything that relieved the dismal grayness of the November day. As he stood there he felt much more like the artist he was, than like a soldier, and he felt a ludicrously strong desire to step aside and seat himself upon a stone wall in order to get a better view of the whole scene. Presently as he looked at a patch of red three or four hundred yards distant, the vivid colour was obscured by a little row of puffs of smoke. A rattling report followed, which reminded him of the discharges of the tiny mortars the Italian peasants love to fire at their village festivals. Then almost simultaneously he heard the curious swinging whistle of a dozen bullets flying over his head. This latter sound roused him to an understanding of the situation, as he realised that any one of those small missiles might have ended its song by coming into contact with his own body. The next time he heard the order to fire he aimed as well as he could, and pulled the trigger with the best possible intention of killing an enemy. For the most part, the Garibaldians retired after each round, reappearing again to discharge their rifles from behind the shelter of walls and trees, while the Zouaves slowly advanced along the road, and began to deploy to the right and left wherever the ground permitted such a movement. The firing continued uninterruptedly for nearly half an hour, but though the rifles of the papal troops did good execution upon the enemy, the bullets of the latter seldom produced any effect. Suddenly the order was given to fix bayonets, and immediately afterwards came the command to charge. Gouache was all at once aware that he was rushing up hill at the top of his speed towards a small grove of trees that crowned the eminence. The bright red shirts of the enemy were visible before him amongst the dry underbrush, and before he knew what he was about he saw that he had run a Garibaldian through the calf of the leg. The man tumbled down, and Gouache stood over him, looking at him in some surprise. While he was staring at his fellow-foe the latter pulled out a pistol and fired at him, but the weapon only snapped harmlessly. "As the thing won't go off," said the man coolly, "perhaps you will be good enough to take your bayonet out of my leg." He spoke in Italian, with a foreign accent, but in a tone of voice and with a manner which proclaimed him a gentleman. There was a look of half comic discomfiture in his face that amused Gouache, who carefully extracted the steel from the wound, and offered to help his prisoner to his feet. The latter, however, found it hard to stand. "Circumstances point to the sitting posture," he said, sinking down again. "I suppose I am your prisoner. If you have anything to do, pray do not let me detain you. I cannot get away and you will probably find me here when you come back to dinner. I will occupy myself in cursing you while you are gone." "You are very kind," said Gouache, with a laugh. "May I offer you a cigarette and a little brandy?" The stranger looked up in some astonishment as he heard Gouache's voice, and took the proffered flask in silence, as well as a couple of cigarettes from the case. "Thank you," he said after a pause. "I will not curse you quite as heartily as I meant to do. You are very civil." "Do not mention it," replied Gouache. "I wish you a very good-morning, and I hope to have the pleasure of your company at dinner to-night." Thereupon the Zouave shouldered his rifle and trotted off down the hill. The whole incident had not occupied more than three minutes and his comrades were not far off, pursuing the Garibaldians in the direction of a large farmhouse, which afforded the prospect of shelter and the means of defence. Half a dozen killed and wounded remained upon the hill besides Gouache's prisoner. The Vigna di Santucci, as the farmhouse was called, was a strong building surrounded by walls and fences. A large number of the enemy had fallen back upon this point and it now became evident that they meant to make a determined resistance. As the Zouaves came up, led by Charette in person, the Reds opened a heavy fire upon their advancing ranks. The shots rattled from the walls and windows in rapid succession, and took deadly effect at the short range. The Zouaves blazed away in reply with their chassepots, but the deep embrasures and high parapets offered an excellent shelter for the riflemen, and it was no easy matter to find an aim. The colonel's magnificent figure and great fair beard were conspicuous as he moved about the ranks, encouraging the men and searching for some means of scaling the high walls. Though anxious for the safety of his troops, he seemed as much at home as though he were in a drawing-room, and paid no more attention to the whistling bullets than if they had been mere favours showered upon him in an afternoon's carnival. The firing grew hotter every moment and it was evident that unless the place could be carried by assault at once, the Zouaves must suffer terrible losses. The difficulty was to find a point where the attempt might be made with a good chance of success. "It seems to me," said Gouache, to a big man who stood next to him, "that if we were in Paris, and if that were a barricade instead of an Italian farmhouse, we should get over it." "I think so, too," replied his comrade, with a laugh. "Let us try," suggested the artist quietly. "We may as well have made the attempt, instead of standing here to catch cold in this horrible mud. Come along," he added quickly, "or we shall be too late. The colonel is going to order the assault--do you see?" It was true. A loud voice gave a word of command which was echoed and repeated by a number of officers. The men closed in and made a rush for the farmhouse, trying to scramble upon each other's shoulders to reach the top of the wall and the windows of the low first story. The attempt lasted several minutes, during which the enemies' rifles poured down a murderous fire upon the struggling soldiers. The latter fell back at last, leaving one man alone clinging to the top of the wall. "It is Gouache!" cried a hundred voices at once. He was a favourite with officers and men and was recognised immediately. He was in imminent peril of his life. Standing upon the shoulders of the sturdy comrade to whom he had been speaking a few minutes before he had made a spring, and had succeeded in getting hold of the topmost stones. Taking advantage of the slight foothold afforded by the crevices in the masonry, he drew himself up with catlike agility till he was able to kneel upon the narrow summit. He had chosen a spot for his attempt where he had previously observed that no enemy appeared, rightly judging that there must be some reason for this peculiarity, of which he might be able to take advantage. This proved to be the case, for he found himself immediately over a horse pond, which was sunk between two banks of earth that followed the wall on the inside up to the water, and upon which the riflemen stood in safety behind the parapet. The men so stationed had discharged their pieces during the assault, and were busily employed in reloading when they noticed the Zouave perched upon the top of the wall. One or two who had pistols fired them at him, but without effect. One or two threw stones from the interior of the vineyard. Gouache threw himself on his face along the wall and began quickly to throw down the topmost stones. The mortar was scarcely more solid than dry mud, and in a few seconds he had made a perceptible impression upon the masonry. But the riflemen had meanwhile finished reloading and one of them, taking careful aim, fired upon the Zouave. The bullet hit him in the fleshy part of the shoulder, causing a stinging pain and, what was worse, a shock that nearly sent him rolling over the edge. Still he clung on desperately, loosening the stones with a strength one would not have expected in his spare frame. A minute longer, during which half a dozen more balls whizzed over him or flattened themselves against the stones, and then his comrades made another rush, concentrating their force this time at the spot where he had succeeded in lowering the barrier. His left arm was almost powerless from the flesh-wound in his shoulder, but with his right he helped the first man to a footing beside him. In a moment more the Zouaves were swarming over the wall and dropping down by scores into the shallow pool on the other side. The fight was short but desperate. The enemy, driven to bay in the corners of the yard and within the farmhouse, defended themselves manfully, many of them being killed and many more wounded. But the place was carried and the great majority fled precipitately through the exits at the back and made the best of their way towards Mentana. An hour later Gouache was still on his legs, but exhausted by his efforts in scaling the wall and by loss of blood from his wound, he felt that he could not hold out much longer. The position at that time was precarious. It was nearly four o'clock and the days were short. The artillery was playing against the little town, but the guns were light field-pieces of small calibre, and though their position was frequently changed they made but little impression upon the earthworks thrown up by the enemy. The Garibaldians massed themselves in large numbers as they retreated from various points upon Mentana, and though their weapons were inferior to those of their opponents their numbers made them still formidable. The Zouaves, gendarmes, and legionaries, however, pressed steadily though slowly onward. The only question was whether the daylight would last long enough. Should the enemy have the advantage of the long night in which to bring up reinforcements from Monte Rotondo and repair the breaches in their defences the attack might last through all the next day. The fortunes of the little battle were decided by the French chasseurs, who had gradually worked out a flanking movement under cover of the trees and the broken country. Just as Gouache felt that he could stand no longer, a loud shout upon the right announced the charge of the allies, and a few minutes later the day was practically won. The Zouaves rushed forward, cheered and encouraged by the prospect of immediate success, but Anastase staggered from the ranks and sank down under a tree unable to go any farther. He had scarcely settled himself in a comfortable position when he lost consciousness and fainted away. Mentana was not taken, but it surrendered on the following morning, and as Monte Rotondo had been evacuated during the night and most of the Garibaldians had escaped over the frontier, the fighting was at an end, and the campaign of twenty-four hours terminated in a complete victory for the Roman forces. When Gouache came to himself his first sensation was that of a fiery stream of liquid gurgling in his mouth and running down his throat. He swallowed the liquor half unconsciously, and opening his eyes for a moment was aware that two men were standing beside him, one of them holding a lantern in his hand, the rays from which dazzled the wounded Zouave and prevented him from recognising the persons. "Where is he hurt?" asked a voice that sounded strangely familiar in his ears. "I cannot tell yet," replied the other man, kneeling down again beside him and examining him attentively. "It is only my shoulder," gasped Gouache. "But I am very weak. Let me sleep, please." Thereupon he fainted again, and was conscious of nothing more for some time. The two men took him up and carried him to a place near, where others were waiting for him. The night was intensely dark, and no one spoke a word, as the little party picked its way over the battle-field, occasionally stopping to avoid treading upon one of the numerous prostrate bodies that lay upon the ground. The man who had examined Gouache generally stooped down and turned the light of his lantern upon the faces of the dead men, expecting that some one of them might show signs of life. But it was very late, and the wounded had already been carried away. Gouache alone seemed to have escaped observation, an accident probably due to the fact that he had been able to drag himself to a sheltered spot before losing his senses. During nearly an hour the men trudged along the road with their burden, when at last they saw in the distance the bright lamps of a carriage shining through the darkness. The injured soldier was carefully placed among the cushions, and the two gentlemen who had found him got in and closed the door. Gouache awoke in consequence of the pain caused by the jolting of the vehicle. The lantern was placed upon one of the vacant seats and illuminated the faces of his companions, one of whom sat behind him and supported his weight by holding one arm around his body. Anastase stared at this man's face for some time in silence and in evident surprise. He thought he was in a dream, and he spoke rather to assure himself that he was awake than for any other reason. "You were anxious lest I should escape you after all," he said. "You need not be afraid. I shall be able to keep my engagement." "I trust you will do nothing of the kind, my dear Gouache," answered Giovanni Saracinesca. CHAPTER XIV. On the Saturday afternoon preceding the battle of Mentana, Sant' Ilario was alone in his own room, trying to pass the weary hours in the calculation of certain improvements he meditated at Saracinesca. He had grown very thin and careworn during the week, and he found it hard to distract his mind even for a moment from the thought of his misfortunes. Nothing but a strong mental effort in another direction could any longer fix his attention, and though any kind of work was for the present distasteful to him, it was at least a temporary relief from the contemplation of his misfortunes. He could not bring himself to see Corona, though she grew daily worse, and both the physicians and the attendants who were about her looked grave. His action in this respect did not proceed from heartlessness, still less from any wish to add to her sufferings; on the contrary, he knew very well that, since he could not speak to her with words of forgiveness, the sight of him would very likely aggravate her state. He had no reason to forgive her, for nothing had happened to make her guilt seem more pardonable than before. Had she been well and strong as usual he would have seen her often and would very likely have reproached her again and again most bitterly with what she had done. But she was ill and wholly unable to defend herself; to inflict fresh pain at such a time would have been mean and cowardly. He kept away and did his best not to go mad, though he felt that he could not bear the strain much longer. As the afternoon light faded from his chamber he dropped the pencil and paper with which he had been working and leaned back in his chair. His face was haggard and drawn, and sleepless nights had made dark circles about his deep-set eyes, while his face, which was naturally lean, had grown suddenly thin and hollow. He was indeed one of the most unhappy men in Rome that day, and so far as he could see his misery had fallen upon him through no fault of his own. It would have been a blessed relief, could he have accused himself of injustice, or of any misdeed which might throw the weight and responsibility of Corona's actions back upon his own soul. He loved her still so well that he could have imagined nothing sweeter than to throw himself at her feet and cry aloud that it was he who had sinned and not she. He tortured his imagination for a means of proving that she might be innocent. But it was in vain. The chain of circumstantial evidence was complete and not a link was missing, not one point uncertain. He would have given her the advantage of any doubt which could be thought to exist, but the longer he thought of it all, the more sure he grew that there was no doubt whatever. He sat quite still until it was nearly dark, and then with a sudden and angry movement quite unlike him, he sprang to his feet and left the room. Solitude was growing unbearable to him, and though he cared little to see any of his associates, the mere presence of other living beings would, he thought, be better than nothing. He was about to go out of the house when he met the doctor coming from Corona's apartments. "I do not wish to cause you unnecessary pain," said the physician, "but I think it would be better that you should see the princess." "Has she asked for me?" inquired Giovanni, gloomily. "No. But I think you ought to see her." "Is she dying?" Sant' Ilario spoke under his breath, and laid his hand on the doctor's arm. "Pray be calm, Signor Principe. I did not say that. But I repeat--" "Be good enough to say what you mean without repetition," answered Giovanni almost savagely. The physician's face flushed with annoyance, but as Giovanni was such a very high and mighty personage he controlled his anger and replied as calmly as he could. "The princess is not dying. But she is very ill. She may be worse before morning. You had better see her now, for she will know you. Later she may not." Without waiting for more Giovanni turned on his heel and strode towards his wife's room. Passing through an outer chamber he saw one of her women sitting in a corner and shedding copious tears. She looked up and pointed to the door in a helpless fashion. In another moment Giovanni was at Corona's bedside. He would not have recognised her. Her face was wasted and white, and looked ghastly by contrast with the masses of her black hair which were spread over the broad pillow. Her colourless lips were parted and a little drawn, and her breath came faintly. Only her eyes retained the expression of life, seeming larger and more brilliant than he had ever seen them before. Giovanni gazed on her in horror for several seconds. In his imagination he had supposed that she would look as when he had seen her last, and the shock of seeing her as she was, unstrung his nerves. For an instant he forgot everything that was past in the one strong passion that dominated him in spite of himself. His arms went round her and amidst his blinding tears he showered hot kisses on her death-like face. With a supreme effort, for she was so weak as to be almost powerless, she clasped her hands about his neck and pressed her to him, or he pressed her. The embrace lasted but a moment and her arms fell again like lead. "You know the truth at last, Giovanni," she said, feebly. "You know that I am innocent or you would not--" He did not know whether her voice failed her from weakness, or whether she was hesitating. He felt as though she had driven a sharp weapon into his breast by recalling all that separated them. He drew back a little, and his face darkened. What could he do? She was dying and it would be diabolically cruel to undeceive her. In that moment he would have given his soul to be able to lie, to put on again the expression that was in his face when he had kissed her a moment before. But the suffering of which she reminded him was too great, the sin too enormous, and though he tried bravely he could not succeed. But he made the effort. He tried to smile, and the attempt was horrible. He spoke, but there was no life in his words. "Yes, dear," he said, though the words choked him like hot dust, "I know it was all a mistake. How can I ever ask your forgiveness?" Corona saw that it was not the truth, and with a despairing cry she turned away and hid her face in the pillow. Giovanni felt an icy chill of horror descending to his heart. A more terrible moment could scarcely be imagined. There he stood beside his dying wife, the conviction of her sin burnt in upon his heart, but loving her fiercely still, willing in that supreme crisis to make her think she was forgiven, striving to tell the kind lie that nevertheless would not be told, powerless to deceive her who had so horribly betrayed him. Once more he bent over her and laid his hand on hers. The touch of her wasted fingers brought the tears to his eyes again, but the moment of passion was past. He bent down and would have comforted her had he known how, but not a word would form itself upon his lips. Her face was turned away and he could see that she was determined not to look at him. Only now and then a passionate sob shook her and made her tremble, like a thing of little weight shaken by the wind. Giovanni could bear it no longer. Once more he kissed her heavy hair and then quickly went out, he knew not whither. When he realised what he was doing he found himself leaning against a damp wall in the street. He pulled himself together and walked away at a brisk pace, trying to find some relief in rapid motion. He never knew how far he walked that night, haunted by the presence of Corona's deathly face and by the sound of that despairing cry which he had no power to check. He went on and on, challenged from time to time by the sentinels to whom he mechanically showed his pass. Striding up hill and down through the highways and through the least frequented streets of the city, it was all the same to him in his misery, and he had no consciousness of what he saw or heard. At eight o'clock in the evening he was opposite Saint Peter's; at midnight he was standing alone at the desolate cross-roads before Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, beyond the Lateran, and only just within the walls. From place to place he wandered, feeling no fatigue, but only a burning fever in his head and an icy chill in his heart. Sometimes he would walk up and down some broad square twenty or thirty times; then again he followed a long thoroughfare throughout its whole length, and retraced his steps without seeing that he passed twice through the same street. At last he found himself in a great crowd of people. Had he realised that it was nearly three o'clock in the morning the presence of such a concourse would have astonished him. But if he was not actually ill and out of his mind, he was at all events in such a confused state that he did not even ask himself what was the meaning of the demonstration. The tramp of marching troops recalled the thought of Gouache, and suddenly he understood what was happening. The soldiers were leaving Rome to attack the Garibaldians, and he was near one of the gates. By the light of flaring torches he recognised at some distance the hideous architecture of the Porta Pia. He caught sight of the Zouave uniform under the glare and pressed forward instinctively, trying to see the faces of the men. But the crowd was closely packed and he could not obtain a view, try as he might, and the darkness was so thick that the torches only made the air darker around them. He listened to the tramp of feet and the ring of steel arms and accoutrements like a man in an evil dream. Instead of passing quickly, the time now seemed interminable, for he was unable to move, and the feeling that among those thousands of moving soldiers there was perhaps that one man for whose blood he thirsted, was intolerable. At last the tramping died away in the distance and the crowd loosened itself and began to break up. Giovanni was carried with the stream, and once more it became indifferent to him whither he went. All at once he was aware of a very tall man who walked beside him, a man so large that he looked up, sure that the giant could be none but his cousin San Giacinto. "Are you here, too?" asked the latter in a friendly voice, as he recognised Giovanni by the light of a lamp, under which they were passing. "I came to see them off," replied Sant' Ilario, coldly. It seemed to him as though his companion must have followed him. "So did I," said San Giacinto. "I heard the news late last night, and only lay down for an hour or two." "What time is it?" asked Giovanni, who supposed it was about midnight. "Five o'clock. It will be daylight, or dawn at least, in an hour." Giovanni was silent, wondering absently where he had been all night. For some time the two walked on without speaking. "You had better come and have coffee with me," said San Giacinto as they passed through the Piazza Barbarini. "I made my man get up so that I might have some as soon as I got home." Giovanni assented. The presence of some one with whom he could speak made him realise that he was almost exhausted for want of food. It was morning, and he had eaten nothing since the preceding midday, and little enough then. In a few minutes they reached San Giacinto's lodging. There was a lamp burning brightly on the table of the sitting-room, and a little fire was smouldering on the hearth. Giovanni sank into a chair, worn out with hunger and fatigue, while the servant brought the coffee and set it on the table. "You look tired," remarked San Giacinto. "One lump or two?" Giovanni drank the beverage without tasting it, but it revived him, and the warmth of the room comforted his chilled and tired limbs. He did not notice that San Giacinto was looking hard at him, wondering indeed what could have produced so strange an alteration in his appearance and manner. "How is the princess?" asked the big man in a tone of sympathy as he slowly stirred the sugar in his coffee. "Thank you--she is very well," answered Giovanni, mechanically. In his mind the secret which he must conceal was so closely connected with Corona's illness that he almost unconsciously included her state among the things of which he would not speak. But San Giacinto looked sharply at him, wondering what he meant. "Indeed? I thought she was very ill." "So she is," replied Sant' Ilario, bluntly. "I forgot--I do not know what I was thinking of. I fear she is in a very dangerous condition." He was silent again, and sat leaning upon the table absently looking at the objects that lay before him, an open portfolio and writing materials, a bit of sealingwax, a small dictionary, neatly laid in order upon the dark red cloth. He did not know why he had allowed himself to be led to the place, but he felt a sense of rest in sitting there quietly in silence. San Giacinto saw that there was something wrong and said nothing, but lighted a black cigar and smoked thoughtfully. "You look as though you had been up all night," he remarked after a long pause. Giovanni did not answer. His eyes did not look up from the red blotting-paper in the open portfolio before him. As he looked down San Giacinto almost believed he was asleep, and shook the table a little to see whether his cousin would notice it. Instantly Giovanni laid his hand upon the writing book, to steady it before him. But still he did not look up. "You seem to be interested," said San Giacinto, with a smile, and he blew a cloud of smoke into the air. Giovanni was indeed completely absorbed in his studies, and only nodded his head in answer. After a few minutes more he rose and took the portfolio to a dingy mirror that stood over the chimney-piece of the lodging, and held up the sheet of red blotting-paper before the reflecting surface. Apparently not satisfied with this, he brought the lamp and set it upon the shelf, and then repeated the process. "You are an infernal scoundrel," he said in a low voice, that trembled with wrath, as he turned and faced San Giacinto. "What do you mean?" inquired the latter with a calmness that would have staggered a less angry man. Giovanni drew from his pocket-book the note he had found in Gouache's room. For a week he had kept it about him. Without paying any further attention to San Giacinto he held it in one hand and again placed the blotting-paper in front of the mirror. The impression of the writing corresponded exactly with the original. As it consisted of but a very few words and had been written quickly, almost every stroke had been reproduced upon the red paper in a reversed facsimile. Giovanni brought the two and held them before San Giacinto's eyes. The latter looked surprised but did not betray the slightest fear. "Do you mean to tell me that you did not write this note?" asked Giovanni, savagely. "Of course I wrote it," replied the other coolly. Giovanni's teeth chattered with rage. He dropped the portfolio and the letter and seized his cousin by the throat, burying his fingers in the tough flesh with the ferocity of a wild animal. He was very strong and active and had fallen upon his adversary unawares, so that he had an additional advantage. But for all that he was no match for his cousin's giant strength. San Giacinto sprang to his feet and his great hands took hold of Giovanni's arms above the elbow, lifting him from the ground and shaking him in the air as easily as a cat worries a mouse. Then he thrust him into his chair again and stood holding him so that he could not move. "I do not want to hurt you," he said, "but I do not like to be attacked in this way. If you try it again I will break some of your bones." Giovanni was so much astonished at finding himself so easily overmatched that he was silent for a moment. The ex-innkeeper relinquished his hold and picked up his cigar, which had fallen in the struggle. "I do not propose to wrestle with you for a match," said Giovanni at last. "You are stronger than I, but there are other weapons than those of brute strength. I repeat that you are an infernal scoundrel." "You may repeat it as often as you please," replied San Giacinto, who had recovered his composure with, marvellous rapidity. "It does not hurt me at all." "Then you are a contemptible coward," cried Giovanni, hotly. "That is not true," said the other. "I never ran away in my life. Perhaps I have not much reason to avoid a fight," he added, looking down at his huge limbs with a smile. Giovanni did not know what to do. He had never had a quarrel with a man who was able to break his neck, but who would not fight like a gentleman. He grew calmer, and could have laughed at the situation had it been brought about by any other cause. "Look here, cousin," said San Giacinto, suddenly and in a familiar tone, "I am as good a gentleman as you, though I have kept an inn. If it is the custom here to play with swords and such toys I will take a few lessons and we will have it out. But I confess that I would like to know why you are so outrageously angry. How did you come by that letter? It was never meant for you, nor for any of yours. I pinned it upon Gouache's dressing-table with a pin I found there. I took the paper from your wife's table a week ago yesterday. If you want to know all about it I will tell you." "And whom did you intend for the author of the letter? Whom but my wife?" "Your wife!" cried San Giacinto in genuine astonishment. "You are out of your mind. Gouache was to meet Faustina Montevarchi on Sunday morning at a church, and I invented the note to prevent the meeting, and put it on his table during the previous afternoon. I am going to marry Donna Flavia, and I do not mean to allow a beggarly Zouave to make love to my future sister-in-law. Since you took the note they must have met after all. I wish you had left it alone." Giovanni sank into a chair before the table and buried his face in his hands. San Giacinto stood looking at him in silence, beginning to comprehend what had happened, and really distressed that his comparatively harmless stratagem should have caused so much trouble. He looked at things from a lower point of view than Giovanni, but he was a very human man, after all. It was hard for him to believe that his cousin could have really suspected Corona of loving Gouache; but Giovanni's behaviour left no other explanation. On the other hand, he felt that whatever might be thought of his own part in the affair, it was Giovanni's own fault that things had turned out as they had, seeing that he had been guilty of a very serious indiscretion in entering Gouache's rooms unbidden and in reading what was meant for the Zouave. Giovanni rose and his face was pale again, but the expression had utterly changed in the course of a few seconds. He suffered horribly, but with a pain more easy to bear than that which had tortured him during the past week. Corona was innocent, and he knew it. Every word she had spoken a week ago, when he had accused her, rang again in his ears, and as though by magic the truth of her statement was now as clear as the day. He could never forgive himself for having doubted her. He did not know whether he could ever atone for the agony he must have caused her. But it was a thousand times better that he should live long years of bitter self-reproach, than that the woman he so loved should have fallen. He forgot San Giacinto and the petty scheme which had brought about such dire consequences. He forgot his anger of a moment ago in the supreme joy of knowing that Corona had not sinned, and in the bitter contrition for having so terribly wronged her. If he felt anything towards San Giacinto it was gratitude, but he stood speechless under his great emotion, not even thinking what he should say. "If you doubt the truth of my explanation," said San Giacinto, "go to the Palazzo Montevarchi. Opposite the entrance you will see some queer things painted on the wall. There are Gouache's initials scrawled a hundred times, and the words 'Sunday' and 'Mass' very conspicuous. A simple way, too, would be to ask him whether he did not actually meet Faustina last Sunday morning. When a man advertises his meetings with his lady-love on the walls of the city, no one can be blamed for reading the advertisement." He laughed at the conceit and at his own astuteness; but Giovanni scarcely heeded him or his words. "Good-bye," said the latter, holding out his hand. "You do not want to fight any more, then?" asked San Giacinto. "Not unless you do. Good-bye." Without another word he left the room and descended into the street. The cold gray dawn was over everything and the air was raw and chilly. There is nothing more dismal than early dawn in a drizzling rain when a man has been up all night, but Giovanni was unconscious of any discomfort, and there were wings under his feet as he hastened homeward along the slippery pavements. The pallor in his face had given way to a slight flush that gave colour and animation to his cheeks, and though his eyes were bright their expression was more natural than it had been for many days. He was in one of the strangest humours which can have sway over that unconsciously humorous animal, man. In the midst of the deepest self-abasement his heart was overflowing with joy. The combination of sorrow and happiness is a rare one, not found every day, but the condition of experiencing both at the same time and in the highest degree is very possible. Giovanni, indeed, could not feel otherwise than he did. Had he suspected Corona and accused her on grounds wholly frivolous and untenable, in the unreasoning outbreak of a foolish jealousy, he could not have been so persuaded of her guilt as to feel the keenest joy on finding her innocent. In that case his remorse would have outweighed his satisfaction. Had he, on the other hand, suspected her without making the accusation, he would have been happy on discovering his mistake, but could have felt little or no remorse. As it was, he had accused her upon evidence which most tribunals would have thought sufficient for a conviction, and on seeing all doubt cleared away he realised with terrible force the extent of the pain he had inflicted. While he had still believed that she had fallen, he had still so loved her as to wish that he could take the burden of her guilt upon his own shoulders. Now that her innocence was proved beyond all doubt, he had no thought but to ask her forgiveness. He let himself in with a latch-key and ran up the dim stairs. A second key opened the polished door into the dark vestibule, and in a moment more he was in the ante-chamber of Corona's apartment. Two or three women, pale with watching, were standing round a table, upon which something was heating over a spirit lamp. Giovanni stopped and spoke to them. "How is she?" he asked, his voice unsteady with anxiety. The women shook their heads, and one of them began to cry. They loved their mistress dearly and had little hope of her recovery. They had been amazed, too, at Giovanni's apparent indifference during the whole week, and seemed surprised when he went towards the door. One motioned to him to make no noise. He turned the latch very gently and advanced into the darkened chamber. Corona was lying as he had seen her on the previous evening, and there seemed to be little or no change in her state. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was scarcely perceptible. A nurse was nodding in a chair near the night light and looked up as Giovanni entered. He pointed to the door and she went out. All was so exactly as it had been twelve hours earlier that he could hardly realise the immense change that had taken place in his own heart during the interval. He stood looking at his wife, scarcely breathing for fear of disturbing her and yet wishing that she might wake to hear what he had to say. But she did not move nor show any signs of consciousness. Her delicate, thin hand lay upon the coverlet. He stooped down very slowly and cautiously, and kissed the wasted fingers. Then he drew back quickly and noiselessly as though he had done something wrong. He thought she must be asleep, and sat down in the chair the nurse had vacated. The stillness was profound. The little night light burned steadily without flickering and cast queer long shadows from the floor upwards over the huge tapestries upon the wall. The quaint figures of heroes and saints, that had seen many a Saracinesca born and many a one die in the ancient vaulted room, seemed to take the expressions of old friends watching over the suffering woman. A faint odour like that of ether pervaded the still air, an odour Giovanni never forgot during his life. Everything was so intensely quiet that he almost thought he could hear the ticking of his watch in his pocket. Corona stirred at last, and slowly opening her eyes, turned them gradually till they met her husband's gaze. At the first movement she made he had risen to his feet and now stood close beside her. "Did you kiss my hand--or did I dream it?" she asked faintly. "Yes, darling." He could not at once find words to say what he wanted. "Why did you?" Giovanni fell on his knees by the bedside and took her hand in both his own. "Corona, Corona--forgive me!" The cry came from his heart, and was uttered with an accent of despair that there was no mistaking. She knew, faint and scarcely conscious though she was, that he was not attempting to deceive her this time. But he could say no more. Many a strong man would in that moment have sobbed aloud and shed tears, but Giovanni was not as other men. Under great emotion all expression was hard for him, and the spontaneity of tears would have contradicted his nature. Corona wondered what had happened, and lay quite still, looking at his bent head and feeling the trembling touch of his hands on hers. For several seconds the stillness was almost as profound as it had been before. Then Giovanni spoke out slowly and earnestly. "My beloved wife," he said, looking up into her face, "I know all the truth now. I know what I have done. I know what you have suffered. Forgive me if you can. I will give my whole life to deserve your pardon." For an instant all Corona's beauty returned to her face as she heard his words. Her eyes shone softly, the colour mounted to her pale cheeks, and she breathed one happy sigh of relief and gladness. Her fingers contracted and closed round his with a tender pressure. "It is true," she said, scarcely audibly. "You are not trying to deceive me in order to keep me alive?" "It is true, darling," he answered. "San Giacinto wrote the letter. It was not even meant to seem to come from you. Oh, Corona--can you ever forgive me?" She turned so as to see him better, and looked long into his eyes. The colour slowly faded again from her face, and her expression changed, growing suddenly sad. "I will forgive you. I will try to forget it all, Giovanni. You should have believed me, for I have never lied to you. It will be long before I am strong again, and I shall have much time to think of it." Giovanni rose to his feet, still clasping her hand. Something told him that she was not a woman who could either forgive or forget such an injury, and her tone was colder than he had hoped. The expiation had begun and he was already suffering the punishment of his unbelief. He bore the pain bravely. What right had he to expect that she would suddenly become as she had been before? She had been, and still was, dangerously ill, and her illness had been caused by his treatment of her. It would be long before their relations could be again what they had once been, and it was not for him to complain. She might have sent him away in anger; he would not have thought her too unkind. But when he remembered her love, he trembled at the thought of living without it. His voice was very gentle as he answered her, after a short pause. "You shall live to forget it all, Corona. I will make you forget it. I will undo what I have done." "Can you, Giovanni? Is there no blood upon your hands?" She knew her husband well, and could hardly believe that he had refrained from taking vengeance upon Gouache. "There is none, thank God," replied Giovanni. "But for a happy accident I should have killed the man a week ago. It was all arranged." "You must tell him that you have been mistaken," said Corona simply. "Yes, I will." "Thank you. That is right." "It is the least I can do." Giovanni felt that words were of very little use, and even had he wished to say more he would not have known how to speak. There was that between them which was too deep for all expression, and he knew that henceforth he could only hope to bring back Corona's love by his own actions. Besides, in her present state, he guessed that it would be wiser to leave her, than to prolong the interview. "I will go now," he said. "You must rest, darling, and be quite well to-morrow." "Yes. I can rest now." She said nothing about seeing him again. With a humility almost pathetic in such a man, he bent down and touched her hand with his lips. Then he would have gone away, but she held his fingers and looked long into his eyes. "I am sorry for you, dear," she said, and paused, not taking her eyes from his. "Kiss me," she added at last, with a faint smile. A moment later, he was gone. She gazed long at the door through which he had left the room, and her expression changed more than once, softening and hardening again as the thoughts chased each other through her tired brain. At last she closed her eyes, and presently fell into a peaceful sleep. Giovanni waited in his room until his father was awake and then went to tell him what had happened. The old gentleman looked weary and sad, but his keen sight noticed the change in his son's manner. "You look better," he said. "I have been undeceived," answered Giovanni. "I have been mistaken, misled by the most extraordinary set of circumstances I have ever heard of." Saracinesca's eyes suddenly gleamed angrily and his white beard bristled round his face. "You have made a fool of yourself," he growled. "You have made your wife ill and yourself miserable in a fit of vulgar jealousy. And now you have been telling her so." "Exactly. I have been telling her so." "You are an idiot, Giovanni. I always knew it." "I have only just found it out," answered the younger man. "Then you are amazingly slow at discovery. Why do you stand there staring at me? Do you expect any sympathy? You will not get it. Go and say a litany outside your wife's door. You have made me spend the most horrible week I ever remember, just because you are not good enough for her. How could you ever dare to suspect that woman? Go away. I shall strangle you if you stay here!" "That consideration would not have much weight," replied Giovanni. "I know how mad I have been, much better than you can tell me. And yet, I doubt whether any one was ever so strangely mistaken before." "With your intelligence the wonder is that you are not always mistaken. Upon my soul, the more I think of it, the more I am amazed at your folly. You acted like a creature in the theatre. With your long face and your mystery and your stage despair, you even made a fool of me. At all events, I shall know what to expect the next time it happens. I hope Corona will have the sense to make you do penance." To tell the truth Giovanni had not expected any better treatment from his father than he actually received, and he was not in a humour to resent reproaches which he knew to be well deserved. He had only intended to tell the prince the result of what had occurred, and he relaxed nothing of his determination, even though he might have persuaded the old gentleman that the accumulated evidence had undoubtedly justified his doubts. With a short salutation he left the room and went out, hoping that Gouache had not accompanied the expedition to Mentana, improbable as that seemed. He was, of course, disappointed, for while he was making inquiries Gouache was actually on the way to the battle with his corps, as has been already seen. Giovanni spent most of the day in the house, constantly inquiring after Corona, and trying to occupy his mind in reading, though with little success. The idea that Gouache might be killed without having learned the truth began to take possession of him and caused him an annoyance he could not explain. It was not that he felt any very profound remorse for having wronged the man. His nature was not so sensitive as that. It was rather, perhaps, because he regarded the explanation with Anastase as a part of what he owed Corona, that he was so anxious to meet him alive. Partly, too, his anxiety arose from his restlessness and from the desire for action of some sort in which to forget all he had suffered, and all he was still suffering. Towards evening he went out and heard news of the engagement. It was already known that the enemy had fallen back upon Mentana, and no one doubted the ultimate result of the day's fighting. People were already beginning to talk of going out to take assistance to the wounded. The idea struck Giovanni as plausible and he determined to act upon it at once. He took a surgeon and several men with him, and drove out across the Campagna to the scene of the battle. As has been told, he found Gouache at last, after a long and difficult search. The ground was so broken and divided by ditches, walls and trees, that some of the wounded were not found until the middle of the next day. Unless Giovanni had undertaken the search Anastase might have escaped notice for a long time, and it was no wonder if he expressed astonishment on waking up to find himself comfortably installed in Saracinesca's carriage, tended by the man who a few days earlier had wanted to take his life. CHAPTER XV. Gouache's wound was by no means dangerous, and when he had somewhat recovered from the combined effects of loss of blood and excessive fatigue he did not feel much the worse for having a ball in his shoulder. Giovanni and the doctor gave him food and a little wine in the carriage, and long before they reached the gates of the city the Zouave was well enough to have heard Sant' Ilario's explanation. The presence of the surgeon, however, made any intimate conversation difficult. "I came to find you," said Giovanni in a low voice, "because everything has been set right in your absence, and I was afraid you might be killed at Mentana without receiving my apology." Gouache looked at his companion in some surprise. He knew very well that Sant' Ilario was not a man to make excuses without some very extraordinary reasons for such a step. It is a prime law of the code of honour, however, that an apology duly made must be duly accepted as putting an end to any quarrel, and Anastase saw at once that Giovanni had relinquished all intention of fighting. "I am very glad that everything is explained," answered Gouache. "I confess that I was surprised beyond measure by the whole affair." "I regret having entered your rooms without your permission," continued Giovanni who intended to go to the end of what he had undertaken. "The pin was my wife's, but the letter was written by another person with a view to influencing your conduct. I cannot explain here, but you shall know whatever is necessary when we are alone. Of course, if you still desire any satisfaction, I am at your service." "Pray do not suggest such a thing. I have no further feeling of annoyance in the matter." Gouache insisted on being taken to his own lodgings, though Sant' Ilario offered him the hospitality of the Palazzo Saracinesca. By four o'clock in the morning the ball was extracted and the surgeon took his leave, recommending sleep and quiet for his patient. Gouache, however, would not let Giovanni go without hearing the end of the story. "The facts are very few," said the latter after a moment's hesitation. "It appears that you had arranged to meet a lady on Sunday morning. A certain person whom I will not name discovered your intention, and conceived the idea of preventing the meeting by sending you a note purporting to come from the lady. As he could get none of her note-paper he possessed himself of some of my wife's. He pinned the note on your table with the pin you had chanced to find. I was foolish enough to enter your room and I recognised the pin and the paper. You understand the rest." Gouache laughed merrily. "I understand that you did me a great service. I met the lady after all, but if I had received the note I would not have gone, and she would have waited for me. Do you mind telling me the name of the individual who tried to play me the trick?" "If you will excuse my discretion, I would rather not. He knows that his plan failed. I should not feel justified in telling you his name, from other motives." "As you please," said Gouache. "I daresay I shall find him out." So the interview ended and Giovanni went home to rest at last, almost as much worn out as Gouache himself. He was surprised at the ease with which everything had been arranged, but he was satisfied with the result and felt that a weight had been taken from his mind. He slept long and soundly and awoke the next morning to hear that Corona was much better. The events of Saturday and Sunday had to all appearances smoothed many difficulties from the lives of those with whom my history is concerned. Corona and Giovanni were once more united, though the circumstances that had produced so terrible a breach between them had left a shadow on their happiness. Gouache had fought his battle and had returned with a slight wound so that as soon as he could go out he would be able to renew his visits at the Palazzo Montevarchi and see Faustina without resorting to any more ingenious stratagems. San Giacinto had failed to produce the trouble he had planned, but his own prospects were brilliant enough. His marriage with Flavia was to take place on the last of the month and the preliminaries were being arranged as quickly as possible. Flavia herself was delighted with the new dignity she assumed in the family, and if she was not positively in love with San Giacinto, was enough attracted by him to look forward with pleasure upon the prospect of becoming his wife. Old Montevarchi alone seemed preoccupied and silent, but his melancholy mood was relieved by occasional moments of anticipated triumph, while he made frequent visits to the library and seemed to find solace in the conversation of the librarian, Arnoldo Meschini. In the future of each of these persons there was an element of uncertainty which most of them disregarded. As Corona recovered, Giovanni began to think that she would really forget as well as forgive all he had made her suffer. Gouache on his part entertained the most sanguine hopes of marrying Faustina. Montevarchi looked forward with assurance to the success of his plot against the Saracinesca. San Giacinto and Flavia were engaged, indeed, but were not yet married. And yet the issue of none of these events was absolutely sure. The first matter with which we are concerned is the forgery of the clauses in the documents, which Meschini had undertaken to accomplish and actually finished in less than three weeks. It was indeed an easy task for a man so highly skilled in the manufacture of chirograhic antiquities, but he had found himself unexpectedly balked at the outset, and the ingenuity he displayed in overcoming the difficulties he met with is worth recording. It was necessary in the first place to ascertain whether there was a copy of the principal deed at the Chancery. He had no trouble in finding that such a copy existed, and was indeed fully prepared for the contingency. But when the parchment was produced, his face fell. It was a smaller sheet than the first and the writing was a little wider, so that the space at the foot of the first page was considerably less than in the original. He saw at once that it would be impossible to make the insertion, even if he could get possession of the document for a time long enough to execute the work. Moreover, though he was not actually watched while he read it, he could see that it would be almost impracticable to use writing materials in the office of the Chancery without being observed. He was able, however, to take out the original which he carried with him and to compare it with the copy. Both were by one hand, and the copy was only distinguished by the seal of the government office. It was kept, like all such documents, in a dusty case upon which were written the number and letter of the alphabet by which it was classified. Meschini hesitated only a moment, and then decided to substitute the original for the copy. Should the keeper of the archives chance to look at the parchment and discover the absence of the seal, Meschini could easily excuse himself by saying that he had mistaken the two, and indeed with that one exception they were very much alike. The keeper, however, noticed nothing and Arnoldo had the satisfaction of seeing him unsuspiciously return the cardboard case to its place on the shelves. He went back to his room and set to work. The longer he looked at the sheet the more clearly he saw that it would be impossible to make the insertion. There was nothing to be done but to forge a new document with the added words. He did not like the idea, though he believed himself fully able to carry it out. There was a risk, he thought, which he had not meant to undertake; but on the other hand the reward was great. He put forth all his skill to produce the imitation and completed it in ten days to his entire satisfaction. He understood the preparation of seals as well as the rest of his art, and had no difficulty in making a die which corresponded precisely with the wax. In the first place he took off the impression carefully with kneaded bread. From this with a little plaster of Paris he reproduced the seal, which he very carefully retouched with a fine steel instrument until it was quite perfect. Over this again he poured melted lead, thus making a hard die with which he could stamp the wax without danger of breaking the instrument. Once more he retouched the lead with a graving tool, using a lens for the work and ultimately turning out an absolutely accurate copy of the seal used in the Chancery office. He made experiments as he proceeded, and when he was at last satisfied he turned to the actual forgery, which was a longer matter and required greater skill and patience. Nothing was omitted which could make the fraud complete. The parchment assumed the exact shade under his marvellous manipulation. The smallest roughness was copied with faultless precision, and then by many hours of handling and the use of a little dust collected among the books in the library, he imparted to the whole the appearance of age which was indispensable. When he had finished he showed his work to old Montevarchi, but by an inherent love of duplicity did not tell him that the whole document was forged, merely pointing to the inserted clause as a masterpiece of imitation. First, however, he pretended that the copy had actually contained the inserted words, and the prince found it hard to believe that this was not the case. Meschini was triumphant. Again he returned to the Chancery and substituted what he had written for the first original upon which he had now to make the insertion. There was no difficulty here, and yet he hesitated before beginning. It seemed to him safer after all to forge the whole of the second as he had done the first. A slip of the pen, an unlucky drop of ink might mar the work and excite suspicion, whereas if he made a mistake upon a fresh sheet of parchment he could always begin again. There was only one danger. The Saracinesca might have made some private mark upon the original which should elude even his microscopic examination. He spent nearly a day in examining the sheet with a lens but could discover nothing. Being satisfied of the safety of the proceeding he executed the forgery with the same care he had bestowed upon the first, and showed it to his employer. The latter could scarcely believe his eyes, and was very far from imagining that the two originals were intact and carefully locked up in Meschini's room. The prince took the document and studied its contents again during many hours before he finally decided to return it to old Saracinesca. It was a moment of intense excitement. He hesitated whether he should take the manuscripts back himself or send them by a messenger. Had he been sure of controlling himself, he would have gone in person, but he knew that if Saracinesca should chance to look over the writing when they were together, it would be almost impossible to conceal emotion under such a trial of nerve. What he really hoped was that the prince would think no more of the matter, and put away the parcel without examining the contents. Montevarchi pondered long over the course he should pursue, his eyes gleaming now and then with a wild triumph, and then growing dull and glassy at the horrible thought of discovery. Then again the consciousness that he was committing a great crime overcame him, and he twisted his fingers nervously. He had embarked upon the undertaking, however, and he fully believed that it would be impossible to draw back even had he wished to do so. The insertions were made and could not be erased. It is possible that at one moment, had Montevarchi known the truth, he would have drawn back; but it is equally sure that if he had done so he would sooner or later have regretted it, and would have done all in his power to recover lost ground and to perpetrate the fraud. The dominant passion for money, when it is on the point of being satisfied, is one of the strongest incentives to evil deeds, and in the present case the stake was enormous. He would not let it slip through his fingers. He rejoiced that the thing was done and that the millions of the Saracinesca were already foredoomed to be his. It is doubtful whether he was able to form a clear conception of what would take place after the trial was over and the property awarded to his son-in-law. It was perhaps enough for his ambition that his daughter should be Princess Saracinesca, and he did not doubt his power to control some part of the fortune. San Giacinto, who was wholly innocent in the matter, would, he thought, be deeply grateful for having been told of his position, and would show his gratitude in a befitting manner. Moreover, Montevarchi's avarice was on a grand scale, and it was not so much the possession of more money for himself that he coveted, as the aggrandisement of his children and grandchildren. The patriarchal system often produces this result. He would scarcely have known what to do with a greater fortune than he possessed, but he looked forward with a wild delight to seeing his descendants masters of so much wealth. The fact that he could not hope to enjoy his satisfaction very long did not detract from its reality or magnitude. The miser is generally long-lived, and does not begin to anticipate death until the catastrophe is near at hand. Even then it is a compensation to him to feel that the heirs of his body are to be made glorious by what he has accumulated, and his only fear is that they will squander what he has spent his strength in amassing. He educates his children to be thrifty and rejoices when they spend no money, readily believing them to be as careful as himself, and seldom reflecting that, if he furnished them with the means, their true disposition might turn out to be very different. It is so intensely painful to him to think of wealth being wasted that he cultivates the belief in the thriftiness of those who must profit by his death. If he has been born to worldly state as well as to a great inheritance, he extends the desire of accumulation to the fortunes of his relations and descendants, and shows a laudable anxiety that they should possess all that he can get for them, provided it is quite impossible that he should get it for himself. The powers of the world have been to a great extent built up on this principle, and it is a maxim in many a great family that there is no economy like enriching one's relatives to the third and fourth generation. The struggle in Montevarchi's mind was so insignificant and lasted so short a time, that it might be disregarded altogether, were it not almost universally true that the human mind hesitates at the moment of committing a crime. That moment of hesitation has prevented millions of frightful deeds, and has betrayed thousands of carefully plotted conspiracies whose success seemed assured, and it is amazing to think what an influence has been exerted upon the destinies of the human race by the instinctive fear of crossing the narrow boundary between right and wrong. The time occupied in such reflection is often only infinitesimal. It has been called the psychological moment, and if the definition means that it is the instant during which the soul suggests, it is a true one. It is then that our natural repulsion for evil asserts itself; it is then that the consequences of what we are about to do rise clearly before us as in a mirror; it is then that our courage is suddenly strengthened to do the right, or deserts us and leaves us mere instruments for the accomplishment of the wrong. If humanity had not an element of good in it, there would be no hesitation in the perpetration of crime, any more than a wild beast pauses before destroying a weaker creature. Perhaps there is no clearer proof of the existence of a divine soul in man, than his intuitive reluctance to do what in the lower animals would be most natural. Circumstances, education, the accidents of life, all tend to make this psychologic moment habitually shorter or longer. The suspense created in the conscience, during which the intelligence is uncertain how to act, may last a week or a second, a year or a quarter of an hour; but it is a stage through which all must pass, both the professional criminal and the just man who is perhaps tempted to commit a crime but once during his life. Old Lotario Montevarchi had never been guilty of any misdeed subject to the provisions of the penal code; but he had done most things in his love of money which were not criminal only because the law had not foreseen the tortuous peculiarities of his mind. Even now he persuaded himself that the end was a righteous one, and that his course was morally justifiable. He had that power of deceiving himself which characterises the accomplished hypocrite, and he easily built up for San Giacinto a whole edifice of sympathy which seemed in his own view very real and moral. He reflected with satisfaction upon the probable feelings of the old Leone Saracinesca, when, after relinquishing his birthright, he found himself married and the father of a son. How the poor man must have cursed his folly and longed for some means of undoing the deed! It was but common justice after all--it was but common justice, and it was a mere accident of fate that Leone's great-grandson, who was now to be reinstated in all the glories of his princely possessions, was also to marry Flavia Montevarchi. The prospect was too alluring and the suspense lasted but a moment, though he believed that he spent much time in considering the situation. The thoughts that really occupied him were not of a nature to hinder the accomplishment of his plan, and he was not at all surprised with himself when he finally tied up the packet and rang for a messenger. Detection was impossible, for by Meschini's skilful management, the original and the official copy corresponded exactly and were such marvellous forgeries as to defy discovery. When it is considered that the greatest scientists and specialists in Europe have recently disagreed concerning documents which are undoubtedly of modern manufacture, and which were produced by just such men as Arnoldo Meschini, it need not appear surprising that the latter should successfully impose upon a court of law. The circumstances of the Saracinesca family history, too, lent an air of probability to the alleged facts. The poverty and temporary disappearance of Leone's descendants explained why they had not attempted to recover their rights. Nay, more, since Leone had died when his son was an infant, and since there was no copy of the document among his papers, it was more than probable that the child on growing up had never known the nature of the deed, and would not have been likely to suspect what was now put forward as the truth, unless his attention were called to it by some person possessed of the necessary knowledge. The papers were returned to Prince Saracinesca in the afternoon with a polite note of thanks. It will be remembered that the prince had not read the documents, as he had meant to do, in consequence of the trouble between Giovanni and Corona which had made him forget his intention. He had not looked over them since he had been a young man and the recollection of their contents was far from clear. Having always supposed the collateral branch of his family to be extinct, it was only natural that he should have bestowed very little thought upon the ancient deeds which he believed to have been drawn up in due form and made perfectly legal. When he came home towards evening, he found the sealed packet upon his table, and having opened it, was about to return the papers to their place in the archives. It chanced that he had a letter to write, however, and he pushed the documents aside before taking them to the library. While he was writing, Giovanni entered the room. As has been seen, the prince had been very angry with his son for having allowed himself to doubt Corona, and though several days had elapsed since the matter had been explained, the old man's wrath had not wholly subsided. He still felt considerable resentment against Giovanni, and his intercourse with the latter had not yet regained its former cordiality. As Sant' Ilario entered the room, Saracinesca looked up with an expression which showed clearly that the interruption was unwelcome. "Do I disturb you?" asked Giovanni, noticing the look. "Do you want anything?" "No--nothing especial." Saracinesca's eye fell upon the pile of manuscripts that lay on the table. It struck him that Giovanni might occupy himself by looking them over, while he himself finished the letter he had begun. "There are those deeds relating to San Giacinto," he said, "you might look through them before they are put away. Montevarchi borrowed them for a day or two and has just sent them back." Giovanni took the bundle and established himself in a comfortable chair beside a low stand, where the light of a lamp fell upon the pages as he turned them. He made no remark, but began to examine the documents, one by one, running his eye rapidly along the lines, as he read on mechanically, not half comprehending the sense of the words. He was preoccupied by thoughts of Corona and of what had lately happened, so that he found it hard to fix his attention. The prince's pen scratched and spattered on the paper, and irritated Giovanni, for the old gentleman wrote a heavy, nervous handwriting, and lost his temper twenty times in five minutes, mentally cursing the ink, the paper and the pen, and wishing he could write like a shopman or a clerk. Giovanni's attention was arrested by the parchment on which the principal deed was executed, and he began to read the agreement with more care than he had bestowed upon the other papers. He understood Latin well enough, but the crabbed characters puzzled him from time to time. He read the last words on the first page without thinking very much of what they meant. ".... Eo tamen pacto, quod si praedicto Domino Leoni ex legitimo matrimonio heres nasceretur, instrumentum hoc nullum, vanum atque plane invalidum fiat." Giovanni smiled at the quaint law Latin, and then read the sentence over again. His face grew grave as he realised the tremendous import of those few words. Again and again he translated the phrase, trying to extract from it some other meaning than that which was so unpleasantly clear. No other construction, however, could be put upon what was written, and for some minutes Giovanni sat staring at the fire, bewildered and almost terrified by his discovery. "Have you ever read those papers?" he asked at last, in a voice that made his father drop his pen and look up. "Not for thirty years." "Then you had better read them at once. San Giacinto is Prince Saracinesca and you and I are nobody." Saracinesca uttered a fierce oath and sprang from his chair. "What do you mean?" he asked, seizing Giovanni's arm violently with one hand and taking the parchment with the other. "Read for yourself. There--at the foot of the page, from 'eo tamen pacto.' It is plain enough. It says, 'On the understanding that if an heir be born to the aforesaid Don Leone, in lawful wedlock, the present instrument shall be wholly null, void and inefficacious.' An heir was born, and San Giacinto is that heir's grandson. You may tear up the document. It is not worth the parchment it is written upon, nor are we either." "You are mad, Giovannino!" exclaimed the prince, hoarsely, "that is not the meaning of the words. You have forgotten your Latin." "I will get you a dictionary--or a lawyer--whichever you prefer." "You are not in earnest, my boy. Look here--eo tamen pacto--that means 'by this agreement'--does it not? I am not so rusty as you seem to think." "It means 'on this understanding, however.' Go on. Quod si, that if--praedicto Domino Leoni, to the aforesaid Don Leone--ex legitimo matrimonio, from a lawful marriage--heres nasceretur, an heir should be born--hoc instrumentum, this deed--shall be null, worthless and invalid. You cannot get any other sense out of it. I have tried for a quarter of an hour. You and I are beggars. Saracinesca, Torleone, Barda, and all the rest belong to San Giacinto, the direct descendant of your great-grandfather's elder brother. You are simple Don Leone, and I am plain Don Giovanni. That is what it means." "Good God!" cried the old man in extreme horror. "If you should be right--" "I am right," replied Giovanni, very pale. With wild eyes and trembling hands the prince spread the document upon the table and read it over again. He turned it and went on to the end, his excitement bringing back in the moment such scholarship as he had once possessed and making every sentence as clear as the day. "Not even San Giacinto--not even a title!" he exclaimed desperately. He fell back in his chair, crushed by the tremendous blow that had fallen so unexpectedly upon him in his old age. "Not even San Giacinto," repeated Giovanni, stupidly. His presence of mind began to forsake him, too, and he sank down, burying his face in his hands. As in a dream he saw his cousin installed in the very chair where his father now sat, master of the house in which he, Giovanni, had been born, like his father before him, master of the fortresses and castles, the fair villas and the broad lands, the palaces and the millions to which Giovanni had thought himself heir, lord over the wealth and inheritances of his race, dignified by countless titles and by all the consideration that falls to the lot of the great in this world. For a long time neither spoke, for both were equally overwhelmed by the magnitude of the disaster that hung over their heads. They looked furtively at each other, and each saw that his companion was white to the lips. The old man was the first to break the silence. "At all events, San Giacinto does not know how the deed stands," he said. "It will make it all the harder to tell him," replied Giovanni. "To tell him? You would not be so mad--" "Do you think it would be honourable," asked the younger man, "for us to remain in possession of what clearly does not belong to us? I will not do it." "We have been in possession for more than a century." "That is no reason why we should continue to steal another man's money," said Giovanni. "We are men. Let us act like men. It is bitter. It is horrible. But we have no other course. After all, Corona has Astrardente. She will give you a home. She is rich." "Me? Why do you say me? Us both." "I will work for my living," said Giovanni, quietly. "I am young. I will not live on my wife." "It is absurd!" exclaimed the prince. "It is Quixotic. San Giacinto has plenty of money without ruining us. Even if he finds it out I will fight the case to the end. I am master here, as my father and my father's father were before me, and I will not give up what is mine without a struggle. Besides, who assures us that he is really what he represents himself to be? What proves that he is really the descendant of that same Leone?" "For that matter," answered Giovanni, "he will have to produce very positive proofs, valid in law, to show that he is really the man. I will give up everything to the lawful heir, but I will certainly not turn beggar to please an adventurer. But I say that, if San Giacinto represents the elder branch of our house, we have no right here. If I were sure of it I would not sleep another night under this roof." The old man could not withhold his admiration. There was something supremely noble and generous about Giovanni's readiness to sacrifice everything for justice which made his old heart beat with a strange pride. If he was reluctant to renounce his rights it was after all more on Giovanni's account, and for the sake of Corona and little Orsino. He himself was an old man and had lived most of his life out already. "You have your mother's heart, Giovannino," he said simply, but there was a slight moisture in his eyes, which few emotions had ever had the power to bring there. "It is not a question of heart," replied Giovanni. "We cannot keep what does not belong to us." "We will let the law decide what we can keep. Do you realise what it would be like, what a position we should occupy if we were suddenly declared beggars? We should be absolute paupers. We do not own a foot of land, a handful of money that does not come under the provisions of that accursed clause." "Wait a minute," exclaimed Giovanni, suddenly recollecting that he possessed something of his own, a fact he had wholly forgotten in the excitement of his discovery. "We shall not be wholly without resources. It does not follow from this deed that we must give to San Giacinto any of the property our branch of the family has acquired by marriage, from your great grandfather's time to this. It must be very considerable. To begin with me, my fortune came from my mother. Then there was your mother, and your father's mother, and so on. San Giacinto has no claim to anything not originally the property of the old Leone who made this deed." "That is true," replied the prince, more hopefully. "It is not so bad as it looked. You must be right about that point." "Unless the courts decide that San Giacinto is entitled to compensation and interest, because four generations have been kept out of the property." Both men looked grave. The suggestion was unpleasant. Such judgments had been given before and might be given again. "We had better send for our lawyer," said the prince, at last. "The sooner we know the real value of that bit of parchment the better it will be for us. I cannot bear the suspense of waiting a day to know the truth. Imagine that the very chair I am sitting upon may belong to San Giacinto. I never liked the fellow, from the day when I first found him in his inn at Aquila." "It is not his fault," answered Giovanni, quietly. "This is a perfectly simple matter. We did not know what these papers were. Even if we had known, we should have laughed at them until we discovered that we had a cousin. After all we shall not starve, and what is a title? The Pope will give you another when he knows what has happened. I would as soon be plain Don Giovanni as Prince of Sant' Ilario." "For that matter, you can call yourself Astrardente." "I would rather not," said Giovanni, with something like a laugh. "But I must tell Corona this news." "Wait till she is herself again. It might disturb her too much." "You do not know her!" Giovanni laughed heartily this time. "If you think she cares for such things, you are very much mistaken in her character. She will bear the misfortune better than any of us. Courage, padre mio! Things are never so black as they look at first." "I hope not, my boy, I hope not! Go and tell your wife, if you think it best. I would rather be alone." Giovanni left the room, and Saracinesca was alone. He sank back once more in his chair and folded his strong brown hands together upon the edge of the table before him. In spite of all Giovanni could say, the old man felt keenly the horror of his position. Only those who, having been brought up in immense wealth and accustomed from childhood to the pomp and circumstance of a very great position, are suddenly deprived of everything, can understand what he felt. He was neither avaricious nor given to vanity. He had not wasted his fortune, though he had spent magnificently a princely income. He had not that small affection for greatness which, strange to say, is often found in the very great. But his position was part of himself, so that he could no more imagine himself plain Don Leone Saracinesca, than he could conceive himself boasting of his ancient titles. And yet it was quite plain to him that he must either cease to be a prince altogether, or accept a new title as a charity from his sovereign. As for his fortune, it was only too plain that the greater part of it had never been his. To a man of his temperament the sensation of finding himself a mere impostor was intolerable. His first impulse had of course been to fight the case, and had the attack upon his position come from San Giacinto, he would probably have done so. But his own son had discovered the truth and had put the matter clearly before him, in such a light as to make an appeal to his honour. He had no choice but to submit. He could not allow himself to be outdone in common honesty by the boy he loved, nor could he have been guilty of deliberate injustice, for his own advantage, after he had been convinced that he had no right to his possessions. He belonged to a race of men who had frequently committed great crimes and done atrocious deeds, notorious in history, from motives of personal ambition, for the love of women or out of hatred for men, but who had never had the reputation of loving money or of stooping to dishonour for its sake. As soon as he was persuaded that everything belonged to San Giacinto, he felt that he must resign all in favour of the latter. One doubt alone remained to be solved. It was not absolutely certain that San Giacinto was the man he represented himself to be. It was quite possible that he should have gained possession of the papers he held, by some means known only to himself; such things are often sold as curiosities, and as the last of the older branch of whom there was any record preserved in Rome had died in obscurity, it was conceivable that the ex-innkeeper might have found or bought the documents he had left, in order to call himself Marchese di San Giacinto. Saracinesca did not go so far as to believe that the latter had any knowledge whatsoever of the main deed which was about to cause so much trouble, unless he had seen it in the hands of Montevarchi, in which case he could not be blamed if he brought a suit for the recovery of so much wealth. CHAPTER XVI. Giovanni was quite right in his prediction concerning Corona's conduct. He found her in her dressing-room, lying upon the couch near the fire, as he had found her on that fatal evening three weeks earlier. He sat down beside her and took her hand in his. She had not wholly recovered her strength yet, but her beauty had returned and seemed perfected by the suffering through which she had passed. In a few words he told her the whole story, to which she listened without showing any great surprise. Once or twice, while he was speaking, her dark eyes sought his with an expression he did not fully understand, but which was at least kind and full of sympathy. "Are you quite sure of all the facts?" she asked when he had finished. "Are you certain that San Giacinto is the man? I cannot tell why, but I have always distrusted him since he first came to us." "That is the only point that remains to be cleared up," answered Giovanni. "If he is not the man he will not venture to take any steps in the matter, lest he should be exposed and lose what he has." "What will you do?" "I hardly know. If he is really our cousin, we must give up everything without a struggle. We are impostors, or little better. I think I ought to tell him plainly how the deed is made out, in order that he may judge whether or not he is in a position to prove his identity." "Do you imagine that he does not know all about it as well as we ourselves?" "Probably not--otherwise he would have spoken." "The papers came back from Montevarchi to-day," said Corona. "It is gratuitous to suppose that the old man has not told his future son-in-law what they contain. Yes--you see it yourself. Therefore San Giacinto knows. Therefore, also, if he is the man he pretends to be, he will let you know his intentions soon enough. I fancy you forgot that in your excitement. If he says nothing, it is because he cannot prove his rights." "It is true," replied Giovanni, "I did not think of that. Nevertheless I would like to be beforehand. I wish him to know that we shall make no opposition. It is a point of honour." "Which a woman cannot understand, of course," added Corona, calmly. "I did not say that. I do not mean it." "Well--do you want my advice?" "Always." The single word was uttered with an accent implying more than mere trust, and was accompanied by a look full of strong feeling. But Corona's expression did not change. Her eyes returned the glance quietly, without affectation, neither lovingly nor unlovingly, but indifferently. Giovanni felt a sharp little pain in his heart as he realised the change that had taken place in his wife. "My advice is to do nothing in the matter. San Giacinto may be an impostor; indeed, it is not at all unlikely. If he is, he will take advantage of your desire to act generously. He will be forewarned and forearmed and will have time to procure all the proofs he wants. What could you say to him? 'If you can prove your birth, I give you all I possess.' He will at once see that nothing else is necessary, and if he is a rogue he will succeed. Besides, as I tell you, he knows what that deed contains as well as you do, and if he is the man he will bring an action against your father in a week. If he does not, you gain the advantage of having discovered that he is an impostor without exposing yourself to be robbed." "It goes against the grain," said Giovanni. "But I suppose you are right." "You will do as you think best. I have no power to make you follow my advice." "No power? Ah, Corona, do not say that!" A short silence followed, during which Corona looked placidly at the fire, while Giovanni gazed at her dark face and tried to read the thoughts that were passing in her mind. She did not speak, however, and his guesswork was inconclusive. What hurt him most was her indifference, and he longed to discover by some sign that it was only assumed. "I would rather do as you think best," he said at last. She glanced at him and then looked back at the blazing logs. "I have told you what I think," she answered. "It is for you to judge and to decide. The whole matter affects you more than it does me." "Is it not the same?" "No. If you lose the Saracinesca titles and property we shall still be rich enough. You have a fortune of your own, and so have I. The name is, after all, an affair which concerns you personally. I should have married you as readily had you been called anything else." The reference to the past made Giovanni's heart leap, and the colour came quickly to his face. It was almost as though she had said that she would have loved him as well had he borne another name, and that might mean that she loved him still. But her calmness belied the hasty conclusion he drew from her words. He thought she looked like a statue, as she lay there in her magnificent rest, her hands folded upon her knees before her, her eyes so turned that he could see only the drooping lids. "A personal affair!" he exclaimed suddenly, in a bitter tone. "It was different once, Corona." For the first time since they had been talking her face betrayed some emotion. There was the slightest possible quiver of the lip as she answered. "Your titles were never anything but a personal affair." "What concerns me concerns you, dear," said Giovanni, tenderly. "In so much that I am very sorry--sincerely sorry, when anything troubles you." Her voice was kind and gentle, but there was no love in the words. "Believe me, Giovanni, I would give all I possess to spare you this." "All you possess--is there not a little love left in your all?" The cry came from his heart. He took her hand in both of his, and leaned forward towards her. Her fingers lay passively in his grasp, and the colour did not change in her dark cheeks. A moment ago there had been in her heart a passionate longing for the past, which had almost betrayed itself, but when he spoke of present love his words had no power to rouse a responsive echo. And yet she could not answer him roughly, for he was evidently in earnest. She said nothing, therefore, but left her hand in his. His love, which had been as fierce and strong as ever, even while he had doubted her faith, began to take new proportions of which he had never dreamt. He felt like a man struggling with death in some visible and tangible shape. "Is it all over? Will you never love me again?" he asked hoarsely. Her averted face told no tale, and still her fingers lay inert between his broad hands. She knew how he suffered, and yet she would not soothe him with the delusive hope for which he longed so intensely. "For God's sake, Corona, speak to me! Is there never to be any love again? Can you never forgive me?" "Ah, dear, I have forgiven you wholly--there is not an unkind thought left in my heart for you!" She turned and laid the hand that was free upon his shoulder, looking into his face with an expression that was almost imploring. "Do not think it is that, oh, not that! I would forgive you again, a thousand times--" "And love me?" he cried, throwing his arms round her neck, and kissing her passionately again and again. But suddenly he drew back, for there was no response to his caresses. He turned very pale as he saw the look in her eyes. There were tears there, for the love that had been, for his present pain, perhaps, but there was not one faint spark of the fire that had burned in other days. "I cannot say it!" she answered at last. "Oh, do not make me say it, for the sake of all that was once!" In his emotion Giovanni slipped from the low chair and knelt beside his wife, one arm still around her. The shock of disappointment, in the very moment when he thought she was yielding, was almost more than he could bear. Had not her heart grown wholly cold, the sight of his agonised face would have softened her. She was profoundly moved and pitied him exceedingly, but she could not do more. "Giovanni--do not look at me so! If I could! If I only could--" "Are you made of stone?" he asked, in a voice choking with pain. "What can I do!" she cried in despair, sinking back and hiding her face in her hands. She was in almost as great distress as he himself. "Love me, Corona! Only love me, ever so little! Remember that you loved me once--" "God knows how dearly! Could I forget it, I might love you now--" "Oh, forget it then, beloved! Let it be undone. Let the past be unlived. Say that you never loved me before, and let the new life begin to-day--can you not? Will you not? It is so little I ask, only the beginning. I will make it grow till it shall fill your heart. Sweet love, dear love! love me but enough to say it--" "Do you think I would not, if I could? Ah, I would give my whole life to bring back what is gone, but I cannot. It is dead. You--no, not you--some evil thing has killed it. Say it? Yes, dear, I would say it--I will say it if you bid me. Giovanni, I love you--yes, those are the words. Do they mean anything? Can I make them sound true? Can I make the dead alive again? Is it anything but the breath of my lips? Oh, Giovanni, my lost love, why are you not Giovanni still?" Again his arms went round her and he pressed her passionately to his heart. She turned pale, and though she tried to hide it, she shrank from his embrace, while her lips quivered and the tears of pain started in her eyes. She suffered horribly, in a way she had never dreamed of as possible. He saw what she felt and let her fall back upon the cushions, while he still knelt beside her. He saw that his mere touch was repugnant to her, and yet he could not leave her. He saw how bravely she struggled to bear his kisses, and how revolting they were to her, and yet the magic of her beauty held his passionate nature under a spell, while the lofty dignity of her spirit enthralled his soul. She was able to forgive, though he had so injured her, she was willing to love him, if she could, though he had wounded her so cruelly; it was torture to think that she could go no further, that he should never again hear the thrill of passion in her voice, nor see the whole strength of her soul rise in her eyes when his lips met hers. There was something grand and tragic in her suffering, in her realisation of all that he had taken from her by his distrust. She sank back on her couch, clasping her hands together so tightly that the veins showed clearly beneath the olive skin. As she tried to overcome her emotion, the magnificent outline of her face was ennobled by her pain, the lids closed over her dark eyes, and the beautiful lips set themselves sternly together, as though resolved that no syllable should pass them which could hurt him, even though they could not formulate the words he would have given his soul to hear. Giovanni knelt beside her, and gazed into her face. He knew she had not fainted, and he was almost glad that for a moment he could not see her eyes. Tenderly, timidly, he put out his hand and laid it on her clasped fingers, then drew it back again very quickly, as though suddenly remembering that the action might pain her. Her heavy hair was plaited into a thick black coil that fell upon the arm of the couch. He bent lower and pressed his lips upon the silken tress, noiselessly, fearing to disturb her, fearing lest she should even notice it. He had lost all his pride and strength and dominating power of character and he felt himself unworthy to touch her. But he was too strong a man to continue long in such a state. Before Corona opened her eyes, he had risen to his feet and stood at some distance from her, resting his arm upon the chimney-piece, watching her still, but with an expression which showed that a change had taken place in him, and that his resolute will had once more asserted itself. "Corona!" he said at last, in a voice that was almost calm. Without changing her position she looked up at him. She had been conscious that he had left her side, and she experienced a physical sensation of relief. "Corona," he repeated, when he saw that she heard him, "I do not complain. It is all my fault and my doing. Only, let it not be hate, dear. I will not touch you, I will not molest you. I will pray that you may love me again. I will try and do such things as may make you love me as you did once. Forgive me, if my kisses hurt you. I did not know they would, but I have seen it. I am not a brute. If I were, you would put something of the human into my heart. It shall never happen again, that I forget. Our life must begin again. The old Giovanni was your husband, and is dead. It is for me to win another love from you. Shall it be so, dear? Is it not to be all different--even to my very name?" "All, all different," repeated Corona in a low voice. "Oh, how could I be so unkind! How could I show you what I felt?" Suddenly, and without the least warning, she sprang to her feet and made two steps towards him. The impulse was there, but the reality was gone. Her arms were stretched out, and there was a look of supreme anguish in her eyes. She stopped short, then turned away once more, and as she sank upon the couch, burying her face in the cushions, the long restrained tears broke forth, and she sobbed as though her heart must break. Giovanni wished that his own suffering could find such an outlet, but there was no such relief possible for his hardy masculine nature. He could not bear the sight of her grief, and yet he knew that he could not comfort her, that to lay his hand upon her forehead would only add a new sting to the galling wound. He turned his face away and leaned against the heavy chimney-piece, longing to shut out the sound of her sobs from his ears, submitting to a torture that might well have expiated a greater misdeed than his. The time was past when he could feel that an unbroken chain of evidence had justified him in doubting and accusing Corona. He knew the woman he had injured better now than he had known her then, for he understood the whole depth and breadth of the love he had so ruthlessly destroyed. It was incredible to him, now, that he should ever have mistrusted a creature so noble, so infinitely grander than himself. Every tear she shed fell like molten fire upon his heart, every sob that echoed through the quiet room was a reproach that racked his heart-strings and penetrated to the secret depths of his soul. He could neither undo what he had done nor soothe the pain inflicted by his actions. He could only stand there, and submit patiently to the suffering of his expiation. The passionate outburst subsided at last, and Corona lay pale and silent upon her cushions. She knew what he felt, and pitied him more than herself. "It is foolish of me to cry," she said presently. "It cannot help you." "Help me?" exclaimed Giovanni, turning suddenly. "It is not I, it is you. I would have died to save you those tears." "I know it--would I not give my life to spare you this? And I will. Come and sit beside me. Take my hand. Kiss me--be your own self. It is not true that your kisses hurt me--it shall not be true---" "You do not mean it, dear," replied Giovanni, sadly. "I know how true it is." "It shall not be true. Am I a devil to hurt you so? Was it all your fault? Was I not wrong too? Indeed--" "No, my beloved. There is nothing wrong in you. If you do not love me--" "I do. I will, in spite of myself." "You mean it, darling--I know. You are good enough, even for that. But you cannot. It must be all my doing, now." "I must," cried Corona, passionately. "Unless I love you, I shall die. I was wrong, too, you shall let me say it. Was I not mad to do the things I did? What man would not have suspected? Would a man be a man at all, if he did not watch the woman he loves? Would love be love without jealousy when there seems to be cause for it? Should I have married you, had I thought that you would be so careless as to let me do such things without interfering? Was it not my fault when I came back that night and would not tell you what had happened? Was it not madness to ask you to trust me, instead of telling you all? And yet," she turned her face away, "and yet, it hurt me so!" "You shall not blame yourself, Corona. It was all my fault." "Come and sit here, beside me. There--take my hand. Does it tremble? Do I draw it away? Am I not glad that it should rest in yours? Look at me--am I not glad? Giovanni--dear husband--true love! Look into my eyes. Do you not see that I love you? Why do you shake your head and tremble? It is true, I tell you." Suddenly the forced smile faded from her face, the artificial expression she tried so pathetically to make real, disappeared, and gave place to a look of horror and fear. She drew back her hand and turned desperately away. "I am lying, lying--and to you!" she moaned. "Oh God! have mercy, for I am the most miserable woman in the world!" Giovanni sat still, resting his chin upon his hand and staring at the fire. His hopes had risen for a moment, and had fallen again, if possible more completely than before. Every line of his strongly-marked face betrayed the despair that overwhelmed him. And yet he was no longer weak, as he had been the first time. He was wondering at the hidden depths of Corona's nature which had so suddenly become visible. He comprehended the magnitude of a passion which in being extinguished could leave such emotions behind, and he saw with awful distinctness the beauty of what he had lost and the depth of the abyss by which he was separated from it. Only a woman who had loved to distraction could make such desperate efforts to revive an affection that was dead; only a woman capable of the most lofty devotion could sink her pride and her own agony, in the attempt to make the man she had loved forgive himself. He could have borne her reproaches more easily than the sight of her anguish, but she would not reproach him. He could have borne her hatred almost better than such unselfish forgiveness, and yet she had forgiven him. For the first time in his life he wished that he might die--he, who loved life so dearly. Perhaps it would be easier for her to see him dead at her feet than to feel that he must always be near her and that she could not love him. "It is of no use, dear," he said, at last. "I was right. The old Giovanni is dead. We must begin our life again. Will you let me try? Will you let me do my best to live for you and to raise up a new love in your heart?" "Can you? Can we go back to the old times when we first met? Can you? Can I?" "If you will--" "If I will? Is there anything I would not do to gain that?" "Our lives may become so different from what they now are, as to make it more easy," said Giovanni. "Do you realise how everything will be changed when we have given up this house? Perhaps it is better that it should be so, after all." "Yes--far better. Oh, I am so sorry for you!" "Who pities, may yet love," he said in low tones. Corona did not make any answer, but for many minutes lay watching the dancing flames. Giovanni knew that it would be wiser to say nothing more which could recall the past, and when he spoke again it was to ask her opinion once more concerning the best course to pursue in regard to the property. "I still think," answered Corona, "that you had better do nothing for the present. You will soon know what San Giacinto means to do. You may be sure that if he has any rights he will not forget to press them. If it comes to the worst and you are quite sure that he is the man you--that is to say, your father--can give up everything without a suit. It is useless to undertake the consequences of a misfortune which may never occur. It would be reckless to resign your inheritance without a struggle, when San Giacinto, if he is an honest man, would insist upon the case being tried in law." "That is true. I will take your advice. I am so much disturbed about other things that I am inclined to go to all extremes at once. Will you dine with us this evening?" "I think not. Give me one more day. I shall be stronger to-morrow." "I have tired you," exclaimed Giovanni in a tone of self-reproach. Corona did not answer the remark, but held out her hand with a gentle smile. "Good-night, dear," she said. An almost imperceptible expression of pain passed quickly over Giovanni's face as he touched her fingers with his lips. Then he left the room without speaking again. In some respects he was glad that he had induced Corona to express herself. He had no illusions left, for he knew the worst and understood that if his wife was ever to love him again there must be a new wooing. It is not necessary to dwell upon what he felt, for in the course of the conversation he had not been able to conceal his feelings. Disappointment had come upon him very suddenly, and might have been followed by terrible consequences, had he not foreseen, as in a dream of the future, a possibility of winning back Corona's love. The position in which they stood with regard to each other was only possible because they were exceptional people and had both loved so well that they were willing to do anything rather than forego the hope of loving again. Another man would have found it hard to own himself wholly in the wrong; a woman less generous would have either pretended successfully that she still loved, or would not have acknowledged that she suffered so keenly in finding her affection dead. Perhaps, too, if there had been less frankness there might have been less difficulty in reviving the old passion, for love has strange ways of hiding himself, and sometimes shows himself in ways even more unexpected. A profound student of human nature would have seen that a mere return to the habit of pleasant intercourse could not suffice to forge afresh such a bond as had been broken, where two such persons were concerned. Something more was necessary. It was indispensable that some new force should come into play, to soften Corona's strong nature and to show Giovanni in his true light. Unfortunately for them such a happy conclusion was scarcely to be expected. Even if the question of the Saracinesca property were decided against them, an issue which, at such a time, was far from certain, they would still be rich. Poverty might have drawn them together again, but they could not be financially ruined. Corona would have all her own fortune, while Giovanni was more than well provided for by what his mother had left him. The blow would tell far more heavily upon Giovanni's pride than upon his worldly wealth, severe as the loss must be in respect of the latter. It is impossible to say whether Corona might not have suffered as much as Giovanni himself, had the prospect of such a catastrophe presented itself a few weeks earlier. At present it affected her very little. The very name of Saracinesca was disagreeable to her hearing, and the house she lived in had lost all its old charm for her. She would willingly have left Rome to travel for a year or two rather than continue to inhabit a place so full of painful recollections; she would gladly have seen another name upon the cards she left at her friends' houses--even the once detested name of Astrardente. When she had married Giovanni she had not been conscious that she became richer than before. When one had everything, what difference could a few millions more bring into life? It was almost a pity that they could not become poor and be obliged to bear together the struggles and privations of poverty. CHAPTER XVII. San Giacinto and Flavia were married on Saturday the thirtieth of November, thereby avoiding the necessity of paying a fee for being united during Advent, much to the satisfaction of Prince Montevarchi. The wedding was a brilliant affair, and if the old prince's hospitality left something to be desired, the display of liveries, coaches and family silver was altogether worthy of so auspicious an occasion. Everybody was asked, and almost everybody went, from the Saracinesca to Anastase Gouache, from Valdarno to Arnoldo Meschini. Even Spicca was there, as melancholy as usual, but evidently interested in the proceedings. He chanced to find himself next to Gouache in the crowd. "I did not expect to see you here," he remarked. "I have been preserved from a variety of dangers in order to assist at the ceremony," answered the Zouave, with a laugh. "At one time I thought it more likely that I should be the person of importance at a funeral." "So did I. However, it could not be helped." Spicca did not smile. "You seem to regret it," observed Gouache, who knew his companion's eccentric nature. "Only on general principles. For the rest, I am delighted to see you. Come and breakfast with me when this affair is over. We will drink to the happiness of two people who will certainly be very unhappy before long." "Ourselves?" "No. The bride and bridegroom. 'Ye, who enter, leave all hope behind!' How can people be so foolish as to enter into an engagement from which there is no issue? The fools are not all dead yet." "I am one of them," replied Gouache. "You will probably have your wish. Providence has evidently preserved you from sudden death in order to destroy you by lingering torture. Is the wedding day fixed?" "I wish it were." "And the bride?" "How can I tell?" "Do you mean to say that, as an opinion, you would rather be married than not? The only excuse for the folly of marrying is the still greater folly of loving a woman enough to marry her. Of course, a man who is capable of that, is capable of anything. Here comes the bride with her father. Think of being tied to her until a merciful death part you. Think of being son-in-law to that old man, until heaven shall be pleased to remove him. Think of calling that stout English lady, mother-in-law, until she is at last overtaken by apoplexy. Think of calling all those relations brothers and sisters, Ascanio, Onorato, Andrea, Isabella, Bianca, Faustina! It is a day's work to learn their names and titles. She wears a veil--to hide her satisfaction--a wreath of orange flowers, artificial, too, made of paper and paste and wire, symbols of innocence, of course, pliable and easily patched together. She looks down, lest the priest should see that her eyes are laughing. Her father is whispering words of comfort and encouragement into her ear. 'Mind your expression,' he is saying, no doubt--'you must not look as though you were being sacrificed, nor as though you were too glad to be married, for everybody is watching you. Do not say, I will, too loudly nor inaudibly either, and remember that you are my daughter.' Very good advice. Now she kneels down and he crosses to the other side. She bends her head very low. She is looking under her elbow to see the folds of her train. You see--she moves her heel to make the gown fall better--I told you so. A pretty figure, all in white, before the great altar with the lights, and the priest in his robes, and the organ playing, and that Hercules in a black coat for a husband. Now she looks up. The rings are there on the gold salver upon the altar. She has not seen hers, and is wondering whether it is of plain gold, or a band of diamonds, like the Princess Valdarno's. Now then--ego conjungo vos--the devil, my friend, it is an awful sight!" "Cynic!" muttered Gouache, with a suppressed laugh. "There--it is done now, and she is already thinking what it will be like to dine alone with him this evening, and several thousand evenings hereafter. Cynic, you say? There are no more cynics. They are all married, and must turn stoics if they can. Let us be off. No--there is mass. Well then, go down on your knees and pray for their souls, for they are in a bad case. Marriage is Satan's hot-house for poisonous weeds. If anything can make a devil of an innocent girl it is marriage. If anything can turn an honest man into a fiend it is matrimony. Pray for them, poor creatures, if there is any available praying power left in you, after attending to the wants of your own soul, which, considering your matrimonial intentions, I should think very improbable." Gouache looked at his companion curiously, for Spicca's virulence astonished him. He was not at all intimate with the man and had never heard him express his views so clearly upon any subject. Unlike most people, he was not in the least afraid of the melancholy Italian. "From the way you talk," he remarked, "one might almost imagine that you had been married yourself." Spicca looked at him with an odd expression, in which there was surprise as well as annoyance, and instead of making any answer, crossed himself and knelt down upon the marble pavement. Gouache followed his example instinctively. Half an hour later the crowd moved slowly out of the church, and those who had carriages waited in the huge vestibule while the long line of equipages moved up to the gates. Gouache escaped from Spicca in the hope of getting a sight of Faustina before she drove away with her mother in one of the numerous Montevarchi coaches. Sant' Ilario and Corona were standing by one of the pillars, conversing in low tones. "Montevarchi looked as though he knew it," said Giovanni. "What?" asked Corona, quietly. "That his daughter is the future Princess Saracinesca." "It remains to be seen whether he is right." Gouache had been pushed by the crowd into one of the angles of the pilaster while the two speakers stood before one of the four pillars of which it was built up. The words astonished him so much that he forced his way out until he could see the Princess of Sant' Ilario's beautiful profile dark against the bright light of the street. She was still speaking, but he could no longer hear her voice, some acoustic peculiarity of the columns had in all probability been the means of conveying to him the fragment of conversation he had overheard. Avoiding recognition, he slipped away through an opening in the throng and just succeeded in reaching the gate as the first of the Montevarchi carriages drew up. The numerous members of the family were gathered on the edge of the crowd, and Gouache managed to speak a few words with Faustina. The girl's delicate face lighted up when she was conscious of his presence, and she turned her eyes lovingly to his. They met often now in public, though San Giacinto did his best to keep them apart. "Here is a secret," said Gouache in a quick whisper. "I have just heard Sant' Ilario telling his wife that your sister is the future Princess Saracinesca. What does it mean?" Faustina looked at him in the utmost astonishment. It was clear that she knew nothing of the matter at present. "You must have heard wrong," she answered. "Will you come to early mass to-morrow?" he asked hurriedly, for he had no time to lose. "I will try--if it is possible. It will be easier now that San Giacinto is to be away. He knows everything, I am sure." "San Giacinto?" It was Gouache's turn to be astonished. But explanations were impossible in such a crowd, and Faustina was already moving away. "Say nothing about what I have told you," Anastase whispered as she left him. She bowed her lovely head in silence and passed on. And so the Marchese di San Giacinto took Flavia Montevarchi for his wife, and all Rome looked on and smiled, and told imaginary stories of his former life, acknowledging, nevertheless, that Flavia had done very well--the stock phrase--since there was no doubt whatever but that the gigantic bridegroom was the cousin of the Saracinesca, and rich into the bargain. Amidst all the gossip and small talk no one, however, was found who possessed enough imagination to foretell what in reality was very imminent, namely, that the Marchese might turn out to be the prince. The last person to suspect such a revelation was San Giacinto himself. He had indeed at one time entertained some hopes of pushing forward a claim which was certainly founded upon justice if not upon good law, but since Montevarchi had kept the documents relating to the case for many days, and had then returned them without mentioning the subject to his future son-in-law, the latter had thought it wiser to let the matter rest for the present, shrewdly suspecting that such a man as Montevarchi would not readily let such an opportunity of enriching his own daughter slip through his fingers. It has been already seen that Montevarchi purposely prevented San Giacinto from seeing the papers in order that he might be in reality quite innocent of any complicity in the matter when the proceedings were instituted, a point very important for the success of the suit. Half an hour afterwards San Giacinto was closeted with the old prince in the latter's study, which looked more than usually dismal by contrast with the brilliant assemblage in the drawing-rooms. "Now that we are alone, my dear son," began Montevarchi, who for a wonder had not changed his coat since the ceremony, "now that you are really my son, I have an important communication to make." San Giacinto sat down and any one might have seen from the expression of his square jaw and determined mouth that he was prepared for battle. He did not trust his father-in-law in the least, and would not have been surprised if he had made an attempt to get back the money he had paid into the lawyer's hands as Flavia's dowry. But San Giacinto had taken all precautions and knew very well that he could not be cheated. Montevarchi continued in a bland voice. "I have kept the matter as a surprise for you," he said. "You have of course been very busy during these last weeks in making your preparations for the solemn ceremony at which we have just assisted. It was therefore impossible for you to attend to the multifarious details which it has been my care, my privilege, to sift and examine. For it is a privilege we should value highly to labour for those we love, for those with whom we share our dearest affections. I am now about to communicate to you an affair of the highest importance, which, when brought to a successful termination will exercise a tremendous influence over all your life. Let me say beforehand, however, and lest you should suspect me of any unworthy motives, that I expect no thanks, nor any share in the immense triumph in store for you. Do not be surprised if I use somewhat strong language on such an occasion. I have examined everything, preserved everything, taken the best legal advice, and consulted those without whose spiritual counsel I enter upon no weighty undertaking. My dear son, you, and none other, are the real and rightful Prince Saracinesca." The climax to the long preamble was so unexpected that San Giacinto uttered a loud exclamation of surprise. "Do not be amazed at what I have told you," said Montevarchi. "The documents upon which the claims of the Saracinesca rest were drawn up by a wise man. Although he had not at that time any intention of marrying, he was aware that with heaven all things are possible, and introduced a clause to the effect that if he should marry and leave heirs direct of his body, the whole deed was to be null, void and ineffectual. I do not know enough of your family history to understand why neither he nor his son nor his grandson ever made any attempt to recover their birthright, but I know enough of law to affirm that the clause is still good. It is identical"--the prince smiled pleasantly--"it is identical in the original and in the copy preserved in the Chancery archives. In my opinion you have only to present the two documents before a competent court, in order to obtain a unanimous verdict in your favour." San Giacinto looked hard from under his overhanging brows at the old man's keen face. Then, suddenly, he stuck his heavy fist into the palm of his left hand, and rose from his chair, a gleam of savage triumph in his eyes. For some time he paced the room in silence. "I wish Giovanni no ill, nor his father either," he said at last. "Heaven forbid!" exclaimed Montevarchi, crossing himself. "And besides, as the property is all yours, that would be of no use." San Giacinto stared a minute, and then his deep voice rang out in a hearty laugh. He had an intimate conviction that his devout father-in-law was quite capable, not only of wishing evil to his neighbour, but of putting his wishes into execution if his interests could be advanced thereby. "No," he said, when his merriment had subsided, "I wish them no evil. But, after all, they must know what is contained in the papers they have in their possession, and they must know that I am the prince, and that they have kept me out of my inheritance. I will go and tell them so. Since there is no doubt about the case, I do not see why I should wait." "Nor I," answered Montevarchi, with the air of a man who has done his part and expects others to finish what he has begun. "It is fortunate that we have decided to go to Frascati instead of making a journey to the end of Europe. Not but that, as I have never seen Paris, I would have liked the trip well enough." "You will find Paris pleasanter when you are Prince Saracinesca." "That is true," replied San Giacinto, thoughtfully. There was the deep light of anticipated triumph in his eyes. "Will you see that the proper preliminary steps are taken?" he asked presently. "I will engage lawyers for you. But you will have to do the rest yourself. The lawyers might go out and talk it over with you in Frascati. After all, you are a young man of good sense, and will not have any sentiment about being alone with your wife." "For the matter of that, I anticipate much pleasure in the society of my wife, but when there is so much meat boiling, somebody must watch the pot, as we used to say in Naples. I am a practical man, you know." "Ah, that is a great quality, one of the very greatest! If I had spent my life in a perpetual honeymoon with the princess, Casa Montevarchi would not be what it is, my son. I have always given my best attention to the affairs of my household, and I expect that you will continue the tradition." "Never fear! If, by continuing the tradition, you mean that I should get what is mine, I will not disappoint you. Can you tell me when the case can be tried, and in what court it will be heard?" "With my influence," replied Montevarchi, "the case may be put through at once. A month will suffice for the preliminaries, a day for the hearing. Everything is settled at once by the exhibition of the documents which provide for you in the most explicit terms. You can come in from the country and see them for yourself if you please. But I consider that quite unnecessary. The lawyers will settle everything." "Pardon my curiosity, but I would like to know why you thought it best not to tell me anything of the matter until now." "My dear son, you were so busy with the preparations for your marriage, and the questions involved seemed at first so doubtful that I thought it best not to trouble you with them. Then, when I knew the whole truth the time was so near that I preferred to give you the information as a sort of wedding present." "A magnificent one indeed, for which I cannot find words to express my gratitude." "No, no! Do not talk of gratitude. I feel that I am fulfilling a sacred duty in restoring to the fatherless his birthright. It is an act of divine justice for the execution of which I have been chosen as the humble instrument. Do your duty by my dear daughter, and render your gratitude to heaven--quoe sunt Coesaris, Coesari, et quoe sunt Dei, Deo! Would that we could all live by that rule!" "To Saracinesca what is his, and to San Giacinto that which belongs to him--that is what you mean?" "Yes, my good son. I am glad to see that you understand Latin. It does you credit that amidst the misfortunes of your early life you should have so improved yourself as to possess the education necessary to the high rank you are about to assume. I tell you frankly that, in spite of your personal qualities, in spite of the great name and possessions which will soon be yours, if I had not distinguished in you that refinement and instruction without which no gentleman is worthy of the name, I would not have bestowed upon you the hand of that sweet creature whom I have cherished as a flower in the house of my old age." San Giacinto had made a study of old Montevarchi during a month past, and was not in the least deceived by his rounded periods and well expressed moral sentiments. But he smiled and bowed, enjoying the idea of attributing such flattery to himself in proportion as he felt that he was unworthy of it. He had indeed done his best to acquire a certain amount of instruction, as his father-in-law called it, and his tastes were certainly not so coarse as might have been expected, but he was too strong a man to be easily deceived concerning his own powers, and he knew well enough that he owed his success to his fortune. He saw, too, that Montevarchi, in giving him Flavia, had foreseen the possibility of his claiming the rights of his cousins, and if he had not been thoroughly satisfied with his choice he would have now felt that he had been deceived. He had no regrets, however, for he felt that even had he already enjoyed the titles and wealth he was so soon to claim, he would nevertheless have chosen Flavia for his wife. Of all the young girls he had seen in Rome she was the only one who really attracted him; a fact due, perhaps, to her being more natural than the rest, or at least more like what he thought a woman should naturally be. His rough nature would not have harmonised with Faustina's character; still less could he have understood and appreciated a woman like Corona, who was indeed almost beyond the comprehension of Giovanni, her own husband. San Giacinto was almost a savage, compared with the young men of the class to which he now belonged, and there was something wild and half-tamed in Flavia Montevarchi which, had fascinated him from the first, and held him by that side of his temperament by which alone savages are governed. Had the bringing of the suit been somewhat hastened it is not impossible that San Giacinto and his wife might have driven up to the ancient towers of Saracinesca on that Saturday afternoon, as Giovanni and Corona had done on their wedding day two years and a half earlier. As it was, they were to go out to Frascati to spend a week in Montevarchi's villa, as the prince and princess and all their married children had done before them. "Eh! what a satisfaction!" exclaimed Flavia, with a sigh of relief as the carriage rolled out of the deep archway under the palace. Then she laughed a little and looked up at her husband out of the corners of her bright black eyes, after which she produced a very pretty silver scent-bottle which her mother had put into her hand as a parting gift. She looked at it, turned it round, opened it and at last smelled the contents. "Ugh!" she cried, shutting it up quickly and making a wry face. "It is full of salts--horrible! I thought it was something good to smell! Did she think I was going to faint on the way?" "You do not look like fainting," remarked San Giacinto, who looked gigantic in a wide fur pelisse. He put out his great hand, which closed with a sort of rough tenderness over hers, completely hiding it as well as the smelling-bottle she held. "So it is a satisfaction, is it?" he asked, with a gleam of pleasure in his deep-set eyes. "If you had been educated under the supervision of the eccellentissima casa Montevarchi, you would understand what a blessed institution marriage is! You--what shall I call you--your name is Giovanni, is it not?" "Yes--Giovanni. Do you like the name?" "No--it reminds me of the head of John the Baptist. I will call you--let me see--Nino. Yes--that sounds so small, and you are so immensely big. You are Nino, in future. I am glad you are big. I do not like little men." She nestled close to the giant, with a laugh that pleased him. San Giacinto suddenly found that he was very much more in love than he had supposed. His life had been very full of contrasts, but this was the greatest which had yet presented itself. He remembered a bright summer's morning a few years earlier, when he had walked back from the church in Aquila with Felice Baldi by his side. Poor Felice! She had worn a very pretty black silk frock with a fine gold chain around her neck, and a veil upon her head, for she was not of the class "that wear hats," as they say in Rome. But she had forced her stout hands into gloves, and Giovanni the innkeeper had been somewhat proud of her ladylike appearance. Her face was very red and there were tears of pleasure and timidity in her eyes, which he remembered very well. It was strange that she, too, should have been proud of her husband's size and strength. Perhaps all women were very much alike. How well he remembered the wedding collation, the little yellow cakes with a drop of hard pink sugar in the middle of each, the bottles of sweet cordial of various flavours, cinnamon, clove, aniseseed and the like, the bright red japanned tray, and the cheaply gaudy plates whereon were painted all manner of impossible flowers. Felice was dead, buried in the campo santo of Aquila, with its whitewashed walls of enclosure and its appalling monuments and mortuary emblems. Poor Felice! She had been a good wife, and he had been a good husband to her. She was such a simple creature that he could almost fancy her spirit shedding tears of satisfied pride at seeing her Giovanni married to a princess, rich and about to be metamorphosed into a prince himself. She had known that he was a Marchese of a great family, and had often begged him to let her be called the Signora Marchesa. But he had always told her that for people in their position it was absurd. They were not poor for their station; indeed, they were among the wealthiest of their class in Aquila. He had promised to assert his title when they should be rich enough, but poor Felice had died too soon. Then had come that great day when Giovanni had won in the lottery--Giovanni who had never played before and had all his life called it a waste of money and a public robbery. But, playing once, he had played high, and all his numbers had appeared on the following Saturday. Two hundred thousand francs in a day! Such luck only falls to the lot of men who are born under destiny. Giovanni had long known what he should do if he only possessed the capital. The winnings were paid in cash, and in a fortnight he had taken up a government contract in the province of Aquila. Then came another and another. Everything turned to gold in his hands, and in two years he was a rich man. Alone in the world, with his two little boys, and possessed of considerable wealth, the longing had come over him to take the position to which he had a legitimate right, a position which, he supposed, would not interfere with his increasing his fortune if he wished to do so. He had left the children under the supervision of old Don Paolo, the curate, and had come to Rome, where he had lodged in an obscure hotel until he had fitted himself to appear before his cousins as a gentleman. His grave temper, indomitable energy, and natural astuteness had done the rest, and fortune had crowned all his efforts. The old blood of the Saracinesca had grown somewhat coarse by the admixture of a stream very far from blue; but if it had lost in some respects it had gained in others, and the type was not wholly low. The broad-shouldered, dark-complexioned giant was not altogether unworthy of the ancient name, and he knew it as his wife nestled to his side. He loved the wild element in her, but most of all he loved the thoroughbred stamp of her face, the delicacy of her small hands, the aristocratic ring of her laughter, for these all told him that, after three generations of obscurity he had risen again to the level whence his fathers had fallen. The change in his life became very dear to him, as all these things passed quickly through his mind; and with the consciousness of vivid contrast came the certainty that he loved Flavia far better than he had believed possible. "And what shall I call you?" he asked, rather bluntly. He did not quite know whether it would be wise to use any term of endearment or not. Indeed, this was the weak point in his experience, but he supplemented the deficiency by a rough tenderness which was far from disagreeable to Flavia. "Anything you like, dear," she answered. San Giacinto felt the blood rush to his head with pleasure as he heard the epithet. "Anything?" he asked, with a very unwonted tremour in his voice. "Anything--provided you will love me," she replied. He thought he had never seen such wicked, fascinating eyes. He drew her face to his and looked into them a moment, his own blazing suddenly with a passion wholly new to him. "I will not call you anything--instead of calling you, I will kiss you--so--is it not better than any name?" A deep blush spread over Flavia's face and then subsided suddenly, leaving her very pale. For a long time neither spoke again. "Did your father tell you the news before we left?" asked San Giacinto at last, when they were rolling over the Campagna along the Via Latina. "No--what?" "It is somewhat remarkable news. If you are afraid of fainting," he added, with rough humour, "hold your bottle of salts ready." Flavia looked up uneasily, wondering whether there were anything wrong about San Giacinto. She knew very well that her father had been glad to get rid of her. "I am not San Giacinto after all," he said quietly. Flavia started and drew back. "Who are you then?" she asked quickly. "I am Prince Saracinesca, and you are the princess." He spoke very calmly, and watched her face to see the effect of the news. "I wish you were!" she exclaimed nervously. She wondered whether he was going mad. "There seems to be no doubt about it," he answered, "your father informed me of the fact as a wedding present. He has examined all the papers and will send the lawyers out to Frascati to prepare the case with me." He told her the whole story in detail. As he proceeded, a singular expression came into Flavia's face, and when he had finished she broke out into voluble expressions of joy. "I always knew that I was born to be a princess--I mean a real one! How could I be anything else? Oh! I am so happy, and you are such a darling to be a prince! And to think that if papa had not discovered the papers, those horrid Sant' Ilario people would have had everything. Princess Saracinesca! Eh, but how it sounds! Almost as good as Orsini, and much nicer with you, you great big, splendid lion! Why did they not call you Leone? It is too good to be true! And I always hated Corona, ever since I was a little girl and she was the Astrardente, because she used to say I did not behave well and that Faustina was much prettier--I heard her say so when I was behind the curtains. Why did you not find it out ever so long ago? Think what a wedding we should have had, just like Sant' Ilario's! But it was very fine after all, and of course there is nothing to complain of. Evviva! Evviva! Do give me one of those cigarettes--I never smoked in my life, and I am so happy that I know it will not hurt me!" San Giacinto had his case in his hand, and laughed as he presented it to her. Quiet as he was in his manner he was far the happier of the two, as he was far more capable of profound feeling than the wild girl who was now his wife. He was glad, too, to see that she was so thoroughly delighted, for he knew well enough that even after he had gained the suit he would need the support of an ambitious woman to strengthen his position. He did not believe that the Saracinesca would submit tamely to such a tremendous shock of fortune, and he foresaw that their resentment would probably be shared by a great number of their friends. Flavia looked prettier than ever as she put the bit of rolled paper between her red lips and puffed away with an energy altogether unnecessary. He would not have believed that, being already so brilliant and good to see, a piece of unexpected good news could have lent her expression so much more brightness. She was positively radiant, as she looked from his eyes at her little cigarette, and then, looking back to him again, laughed and snapped her small gloved fingers. "Do you know," she said presently, with a glance that completed the conquest of San Giacinto's heart, "I thought I should be dreadfully shy with you--at first--and I am not in the least! I confess, at the very moment when you were putting the ring on my finger I was wondering what we should talk about during the drive." "You did not think we should have such an agreeable subject of conversation, did you?" "No--and it is such a pretty ring! I always wanted a band of diamonds--plain gold is so common. Did you think of it yourself or did some one else suggest the idea?" "Castellani said it was old-fashioned," answered San Giacinto, "but I preferred it." "Would you have liked one, too?" "No. It would be ridiculous for a man." "You have very good taste," remarked Flavia, eyeing him critically. "Where did you get it? You used to keep a hotel in Aquila, did you not?" San Giacinto had long been prepared for the question and did not wince nor show the slightest embarrassment. He smiled calmly as he answered her. "You would hardly have called it a hotel, it was a country inn. I daresay I shall manage Saracinesca all the better for having kept a hostelry." "Of course. Oh, I have such a delightful idea! Let us go to Aquila and keep the hotel together. It would be such fun! You could say you had married a little shop-keeper's daughter in Rome, you know. Just for a month, Nino--do let us do it! It would be such a change after society, and then we would go back for the Carnival. Oh, do!" "But you forget the lawsuit--" "That is true. Besides, it will be just as much of a change to be Princess Saracinesca. But we can do it another time. I would like so much to go about in an apron with a red cotton handkerchief on my head and see all the queer people! When are the lawyers coming?" "During the week, I suppose." "There will be a fight," said Flavia, her face growing more grave. "What will Sant' Ilario and his father say and do? I cannot believe that it will all go so smoothly as you think. They do not look like people who would give up easily what they have had so long. I suppose they will be quite ruined." "I do not know. Corona is rich in her own right, and Sant' Ilario has his mother's fortune. Of course, they will be poor compared with their present wealth. I am sorry for them--" "Sorry?" Flavia looked at her husband in some astonishment. "It is their own fault. Why should you be sorry?" "It is not exactly their fault. I could hardly have expected them to come to me and inform me that a mistake had been made in the last century, and that all they possessed was mine." "All they possessed!" echoed Flavia, thoughtfully. "What a wonderful idea it is!" "Very wonderful," assented San Giacinto, who was thinking once more of his former poverty. The carriage rolled on and both were silent for some time, absorbed in dreaming of the greatness which was before them in the near future, San Giacinto enumerating in his mind the titles and estates which were soon to be his, while Flavia imagined herself in Corona's place in Rome, grown suddenly to be a central figure in society, leading and organising the brilliant amusements of her world, and above all, rejoicing in that lavish use of abundant money which had always seemed to her the most desirable of all enjoyments. CHAPTER XVIII. Faustina Montevarchi was delighted when her sister was at last married and out of the house. The two had always been very good friends, but Faustina felt that she had an enemy in San Giacinto and was relieved when he was gone. She had no especial reason for her suspicions, since he treated her with the same quiet and amicable politeness which he showed to the rest of the household; but her perceptions were extraordinarily true and keen, and she had noticed that he watched her whenever Gouache was in the room, in a way that made her very uncomfortable. Moreover, he had succeeded of late in making Flavia accompany her to early mass on Sunday mornings on pretence of his wishing to see Flavia without the inevitable supervision of the old princess. The plan was ingenious; for Faustina, instead of meeting Gouache, was thus obliged to play chaperon while her sister and San Giacinto talked to their hearts' content. He was a discreet man, however, and Flavia was ignorant of the fact that Faustina and Anastase had sometimes met in the same way, and would have met frequently had they not been prevented. The young girl was clever enough to see why San Giacinto acted as he did; she understood that he was an ambitious man, and that, as he was about to ally himself with her family, he would naturally disapprove of her attachment to Gouache. Now that he was gone, she wondered whether he had devised any steps which would take effect after his departure. Faustina was quite as much in love as Gouache himself, and spent much time in calculating the chances of a favourable issue from the situation in which she found herself. Life without Anastase was impossible, but the probabilities of her becoming his wife in the ordinary course of events were very few, as far as she was able to judge, and she had moments of extreme depression, during which she despaired of everything. The love of a very young girl may in itself be both strong and enduring, but it generally has the effect of making her prone to extremes of hope and fear, uncertain of herself, vacillating in her ideas, and unsteady in the pursuit of the smaller ends of life. Throw two equal weights into the scales of a perfectly adjusted balance, the arm will swing and move erratically many times before it returns to its normal position, although there is a potential equilibrium in the machine which will shortly assert itself in absolute tranquillity. Love in a very young person is rarely interesting, unless it is attended by heroic or tragic circumstances. Human life is very like the game of chess, of which the openings are so limited in number that a practised player knows them all by heart, whereas the subsequent moves are susceptible of infinite variation. Almost all young people pass through the early stages of existence by some known gambit, which, has always a definite influence upon their later lives, but never determines the latter entirely. The game is played between humanity on the one side and the unforeseen on the other; but that which can really not be foretold in some measure rarely presents itself until the first effects of love have been felt, a period which, to continue the simile, may be compared in chess to the operation of castling. Then comes the first crisis, and the merest tyro knows how much may depend upon whether he castles on the king's side or on the queen's. Now the nature of Faustina's first love was such as to make it probable that it would end in some uncommon way. There was something fatal in the suddenness with which her affection had grown and had upset the balance of her judgment. It is safe to say that not one young girl in a million would have behaved as she had done on the night of the insurrection in Rome; not one in a hundred thousand would, in her position, have fallen in love with Gouache. The position of the professional artist and of the professional man of letters in modern European society is ill defined. As a man who has been brought up in a palace would undoubtedly betray his breeding sooner or later if transported to live amongst a gang of thieves, so a man who has grown to years of discretion in the atmosphere of studios or in the queer company from which most literary men have sprung, will inevitably, at one time or another, offend the susceptibilities of that portion of humanity which calls itself society. It is impossible that it should be otherwise. Among a set of people whose profession it is to do always, and in all things, precisely what their neighbours do, the man who makes his living by doing what other people cannot do, must always be a marked figure. Look at modern society. It cannot toil nor spin; it can hardly put together ten words in a grammatical sequence. But it can clothe itself. The man of letters can both toil and write good English, but his taste in tailoring frequently leaves much to be desired. If he would put himself in the hands of Poole, and hold his tongue, he might almost pass for a member of society. But he must needs talk, and his speech bewrayeth him for a Galilean. There are wits in society, both many and keen, who can say something original, cutting and neatly turned, upon almost any subject, with an easy superiority which makes the hair of the learned man stand erect upon his head. The chief characteristic of him who lives by his brains is, that he is not only able to talk consecutively upon some subject, but that he actually does so, which, in society, is accounted a monstrous crime against manners. Let him write what he wants to say, and print it; society will either not understand him at all, or will read his works with a dictionary in the secrecy of its own chamber. But if he will hold his tongue in public, society will give him a cup of tea and treat him almost like a human being for the sake of being said to patronise letters. Any one who likes society's tea may drink his fill of it in consideration of wearing a good coat and keeping his wits to himself, but he will not succeed in marrying any of society's sisters, cousins or aunts without a severe struggle. Anastase Gouache did not quite understand this. He sometimes found himself amidst a group of people who were freely discussing some person unknown to him. On such occasions he held his peace, innocently supposing that his ignorance was without any importance whatsoever, among a set of men and women with whom not to know every detail concerning every one else is to be little better than an outcast. "Now do tell me all about the Snooks and Montmorency divorce," says Lady Smyth-Tompkins with a sweetly engaging smile, as she holds out her hand. "I did not know there was such a case--I don't know the people," you answer. "Oh! I thought, of course, you knew all about it," Lady Smyth-Tompkins replies, and her features turn to stone as she realises that you do not know everybody, and leaves you to your own reflections. O Thackeray, snobissme maxime! How well you knew them! There are no snobs among the Latin races, but there is a worse animal, the sycophant, descended directly from the dinner-tables of ancient Rome. In old-fashioned houses there are often several of them, headed invariably by the "giornale ambulante," the walking newspaper, whose business it is to pick up items of news during the day in order to detail them to the family in the evening. There is a certain old princess who sits every evening with her needlework at the head of a long table in the dismal drawing-room of a gigantic palace. On each side of the board are seated the old parasites, the family doctor, the family chaplain, the family lawyer, the family librarian, the peripatetic news-sheet and the rest. "I have been out to-day," says her excellency. "Oh! Ah! Dear me! In this weather! Hear what the princess says! The princess has been out!" The chorus comes up the table, all the answers reaching her ears at once. "And I saw, as I drove by, the new monument! What a ridiculous thing it is." "Ho! ho! ho! Hah! hah! hah! Dear me! What a monument! What fine taste the princess has! Hear what the princess thinks of the monument!" "If you will believe it, the bronze horse has a crooked leg." "He! he! he! Hi! hi! hi! Dear me! A crooked leg! How the princess understands horses! The princess saw that he had a crooked leg!" And so on, for a couple of hours, in the cold, dimly-lighted room until her excellency has had enough of it and rises to go to bed, when the parasites all scuttle away and quarrel with each other in the street as they walk home. Night after night, to decades of years, the old lady recounts the little journal of her day to the admiring listeners, whose chorus of approval is performed daily with the same unvarying regularity. The times are changing now; the prince is not so easily amused, and the sycophant has accordingly acquired the art of amusing, but there still survive some wonderful monuments of the old school. Anastase Gouache was a man of great talent and of rising fame, but like other men of his stamp he preferred to believe that he was received on a friendly footing for his own sake rather than on account of his reputation. In his own eyes, he was, as a man, as good as those with whom he associated, and had as much right to make love to Faustina Montevarchi as the young Frangipani, for whom her father destined her. Faustina, on her part, was too young to appreciate the real strength of the prejudices by which she was surrounded. She could not understand that, although the man she loved was a gentleman, young, good-looking, successful, and not without prospects of acquiring a fortune, he was yet wholly ineligible as a husband. Had she seen this ever so clearly it might have made but little difference in her feelings; but she did not see it, and the disparaging remarks about Anastase, which she occasionally heard in her own family, seemed to her utterly unjust as well as quite unfounded. The result was that the two young people were preparing for themselves one of those terrible disappointments of which the consequences are sometimes felt during a score of years. Both, however, were too much in love to bear suspense very long without doing something to precipitate the course of events, and whenever they had the chance they talked the matter over and built wonderful castles in the air. About a fortnight after the marriage of San Giacinto they were seated together in a room full of people, late in the afternoon. They had been talking for some time upon indifferent subjects. When two persons meet who are very much in love with each other, and waste their time in discussing topics of little importance, it may be safely predicted that something unusual is about to occur. "I cannot endure this suspense any longer," said Gouache at last. "Nor I," answered Faustina. "It is of no use to wait any more. Either your father will consent or he will not. I will ask him and know the worst." "And if it is the worst--what then?" The young girl turned her eyes towards Anastase with a frightened look. "Then we must manage without his consent." "How is that possible?" "It must be possible," replied Gouache. "If you love me it shall be possible. It is only a question of a little courage and good-will. But, after all, your father may consent. Why should he not?" "Because--" she hesitated a little. "Because I am not a Roman prince, you mean." Anastase glanced quickly at her. "No. He wants me to marry Frangipani." "Why did you never tell me that?" "I did not know it when we last met. My mother told me of it last night." "Is the match settled?" asked Gouache. He was very pale. "I think it has been spoken of," answered Faustina in a low voice. She shivered a little and pressed her hands together. There was a short silence, during which Anastase did not take his eyes from her, while she looked down, avoiding his look. "Then there is no time to be lost," said Gouache at last. "I will go to your father to-morrow morning." "Oh--don't, don't!" cried Faustina, suddenly, with an expression of intense anxiety. "Why not?" The artist seemed very much surprised. "You do not know him! You do not know what he will say to you! You will be angry and lose your temper--he will be cruel and will insult you, and you will resent it--then I shall never see you again. You do not know--" "This is something new," said Gouache. "How can you be sure that he will receive me so badly? Have your people talked about me? After all, I am an honest man, and though I live by my profession I am not poor. It is true, I am not such a match for you as Frangipani. Tell me, do they abuse me at your house?" "No--what can they say, except that you are an artist? That is not abuse, nor calumny." "It depends upon how it is said. I suppose it is San Giacinto who says it." Gouache's face darkened. "San Giacinto has guessed the truth," answered Faustina, shaking her head. "He knows that we love each other, and just now he is very powerful with my father. It will be worse if he wins the suit and is Prince Saracinesca." "Then that is another reason for acting at once. Faustina--you followed me once--will you not go with me, away, out of this cursed city? I will ask for you first. I will behave honourably. But if he will not consent, what is there left for us to do? Can we live apart? Can you marry Frangipani? Have not many people done before what we think of doing? Is it wrong? Heaven knows, I make no pretence to sanctity. But I would not have you do anything--what shall I say? Anything against your conscience." There was a shade of bitterness in the laugh that accompanied the last words. "You do not know what things he will say," repeated Faustina, in despairing tones. "This is absurd," said Gouache. "I can bear anything he can say well enough. He is an old man and I am a young one, and have no intention of taking offence. He may say what he pleases, call me a villain, a brigand--that is your favourite Italian expression--a thief, a liar, anything he pleases. I will not be angry. There shall be no violence. But I cannot endure this state of things any longer. I must try my luck." "Wait a little longer," answered Faustina, in an imploring tone. "Wait until the suit is decided." "In order to let San Giacinto get even more influence than he has now? It would be a mistake--you almost said so yourself a moment ago. Besides, the suit may for years." "It will not last a fortnight." "Poor Sant' Ilario!" exclaimed Gouache. "Does everybody know about it?" "I suppose so. But nobody speaks of it. We all feel dreadfully about it, except my father and San Giacinto and Flavia." "If he is in a good humour this is the very time to go to him." "Please, please do not insist!" Faustina was evidently very much in earnest. With the instinct of a very young woman, she clung to the half happiness of the present which was so much greater than anything she had known before in her life. But Gouache would not be satisfied. "I must know the worst," he said again, as they parted. "But this is so much, better than the worst," answered Faustina, sadly. "Who risks nothing, wins nothing," retorted the young man with a bright smile. In spite of his hopefulness, however, he had received a severe shock on hearing the news of the intended match with young Frangipani. He had certainly never expected to find himself the rival of such a suitor, and his sense of possibility, if man may be said to possess such a faculty, was staggered by the idea. He suddenly awakened to a true understanding of his position in Roman society, and when he contemplated his discovery in all its bearings, his nerve almost forsook him. When he remembered his childhood, his youth, and the circumstances in which he had lived up to a recent time, he found it hard to realise that he was trying to marry such a girl, in spite of her family and in opposition to such a man as was now brought forward as a match for her. It was not in his nature, however, to be discouraged in the face of difficulties. He was like a brave man who has received a stunning blow, but who continues to fight until he has gradually regained his position. Gouache could no more have relinquished Faustina than he could have abandoned a half-finished picture in which he believed, any more than he had given up the attempt to break away the stones at the Vigna Santucci after he had received the bullet in his shoulder. He had acquired his position in life by indomitable perseverance and hopefulness, and those qualities would not now fail him, in one of the most critical situations through which he had ever passed. In spite of Faustina's warning and, to some extent, in spite of his own better judgment, he determined to face the old prince at once and to ask him boldly for his daughter. He had spoken confidently to Faustina of being married against the will of her father, but when he thought over this alternative he recollected a fact he had almost completely forgotten in considering his matrimonial projects. He was a soldier and had enlisted in the Zouaves for a term of years. It was true that by using the influence he possessed he might hope to be released from his engagement, but such a course was most repugnant to him. Before Mentana it would have been wholly impossible, for it would have seemed cowardly. Now that he had distinguished himself and had been wounded in the cause, the thing might be done without dishonour, but it would involve a species of self-abasement to which he was not prepared to submit. On the other hand, to wait until his term of service should have expired was to risk losing Faustina altogether. He knew that she loved him, but he was experienced enough to know that a young girl is not always able to bear the pressure exercised upon her when marriage is concerned. In Rome, and especially at that time, it was in the power of parents to use the most despotic means for subduing the will of their children. There was even a law by which a disobedient son or daughter could be imprisoned for a considerable length of time, provided that the father could prove that his child had rebelled against his just will. Though Gouache was not aware of this, the fact that a similar institution existed in his own country made him suspect that it was to be found in Rome also. Supposing that Montevarchi refused to accept him for a son-in-law, and that Faustina, on the other hand, refused to marry young Frangipani, it was only too probable that she might be locked up--in a luxuriously furnished cell of course--to reflect upon the error of her ways. It was by no means certain that in the face of such humiliation and suffering Faustina would continue her resistance; indeed, she could hardly be blamed if she yielded in the end. Gouache believed in the sincerity of her love because the case was his own; had he heard of it in the life of another man he would have laughed at the idea that a girl of eighteen could be capable of a serious passion. It is not necessary, however, to enter into an analysis of the motives and feelings of either Faustina or Anastase. Their connection with the history of the Saracinesca arose from what they did, and not from the thoughts which prompted their actions. It is sufficient to say that Gouache conceived the mad idea of asking Montevarchi's consent to his marriage and to explain the immediate consequences of the step he took. Matters were rapidly approaching a climax. San Giacinto had seen the lawyers at Frascati, and he had brought his wife back to Rome very soon in order to be on the spot while the case was being prepared. The men of the law declared that the matter was a very simple one and that no court could withhold its decision a single day after seeing the documents which constituted the claim. The only point about which any argument could arise related to the identity of San Giacinto himself, and no difficulty was found in establishing substantial proof that he was Giovanni Saracinesca and not an impostor. His father and grandfather had jealously kept all the records of themselves which were necessary, from the marriage certificate of the original Don Leone, who had signed the deed, to the register of San Giacinto's own birth. Copies were obtained, properly drawn up and certified, of the parish books and of the few government documents which were officially preserved in the kingdom of Naples before 1860, and the lawyers declared themselves ready to open the case. Up to this time the strictest secrecy was preserved, at the request of San Giacinto himself. He said that in such an important matter he wished nothing to transpire until he was ready to act; more especially as the Saracinesca themselves could not be ignorant of the true state of the case and had no right to receive notice of the action beforehand. As Corona had foreseen, San Giacinto intended to obtain the decision by means of a perfectly legal trial, and was honestly ready to court enquiry into the rights he was about to assert. When the moment came and all was ready, he went to the Palazzo Saracinesca and asked for the prince, who received him in the same room in which the two had met when the ex-innkeeper had made his appearance in Rome nearly three months earlier. As San Giacinto entered he felt that he had not wasted his time during that short interval. "I have come to talk with you upon a business which must be unpleasant to you," he began. "Unfortunately it cannot be avoided. I beg you to believe that it is my wish to act loyally and fairly." "I hope so," said Saracinesca, bending his bushy gray eyebrows and fixing his keen old eyes upon his visitor. "You need not doubt it," replied San Giacinto rather proudly. "You are doubtless acquainted with the nature of the deed by which our great-grandfathers agreed to transfer the titles and property to the younger of the two. When we first spoke of the matter I was not aware of the existence of a saving clause. I cannot suppose you ignorant of it. That clause provided that if Leone Saracinesca married and had a lawful heir, the deed should be null and void. He did marry, as you know. I am his direct descendant, and have children of my own by my first marriage. I cannot therefore allow the clause in question to remain in abeyance any longer. With all due respect to you, I am obliged to tell you quite frankly that, in law, I am Prince Saracinesca." Having thus stated his position as plainly as possible, San Giacinto folded his great hands upon his knee and leaned against the back of his chair. Saracinesca looked as though he were about to make some hasty answer, but he controlled his intention and rose to his feet. After walking twice up and down the room, he came and stood in front of his cousin. "Let us be plain in what we say," he began. "I give you my word that, until Montevarchi sent back those papers the other day, I did not know what they contained. I had not read them for thirty years, and at that time the clause escaped me. I do not remember to have noticed it. This may have been due to the fact that I had never heard that Leone had any living descendants, and should therefore have attached no importance to the words if I had seen them." "I believe you," said San Giacinto, calmly. The old man's eyes flashed. "I always take it for granted that I am believed," he answered. "Will you give me your word that you are what you assert yourself to be, Giovanni Saracinesca, the great-grandson and lawful heir of Leone?" "Certainly. I pledge my honour that I am; and I, too, expect to be believed by you." There was something in the tone of the answer that struck a sympathetic chord in Saracinesca's nature. San Giacinto had risen to his feet, and there was something in the huge, lean strength of him, in the bold look of his eyes, in the ring of his deep voice, that inspired respect. Rough he was, and not over refined or carefully trained in the ways of the world, cruel perhaps, and overbearing too; but he was every inch a Saracinesca, and the old man felt it. "I believe you," answered the prince. "You may take possession when you please. I am Don Leone, and you are the head of the house." He made a gesture full of dignity, as though resigning then and there his name and the house in which he lived, to him who was lawfully entitled to both. The action was magnificent and worthy of the man. There was a superb disregard of consequences in his readiness to give up everything rather than keep for a moment what was not his, which affected San Giacinto strangely. In justice to the latter it must be remembered that he had not the faintest idea that he was the instrument of a gigantic fraud from which he was to derive the chief advantage. He instinctively bowed in acknowledgment of his cousin's generous conduct. "I shall not take advantage of your magnanimity," he said, "until the law has sanctioned my doing so." "As you please," answered the other. "I have nothing to conceal from the law, but I am prejudiced against lawyers. Do as you think best. A family council can settle the matter as well as the courts." "Your confidence in me is generous and noble. I prefer, however, that the tribunal should examine the matter." "As you please," repeated Saracinesca. There was no reason for prolonging an interview which could not be agreeable to either party. The old man remained standing. "No opposition will be made to the suit," he said. "You will simply produce your papers in proper form, and I will declare myself satisfied." He held out his hand. "I trust you will bear me no ill-will," said San Giacinto rather awkwardly. "For taking what is yours and not mine? Not in the least. Good-evening." San Giacinto left the room. When he was gone, Saracinesca stood still for a moment, and then sank into a chair. His strong nature had sustained him through the meeting and would sustain him to the end, but he was terribly shaken, and felt a strange sensation of numbness in the back of his head, which was quite new to him. For some minutes he sat still as though dazed and only half conscious. Then he rose again, shook himself as though to get rid of a bad dream and rang the bell. He sent for Giovanni, who appeared immediately. "San Giacinto has been here," he said quickly. "He is the man. You had better tell your wife, as she will want to collect her things before we leave the house." Giovanni was staggered by his father's impetuosity. He had realised that the danger existed, but it had always seemed indefinitely far removed. "I suppose there will be some legal proceedings before everything is settled," he said with more calmness than he felt. "What is that to us? We must go, sooner or later." "And if the courts do not decide in his favour, what then?" "There is no doubt about it," answered the prince, pacing the room as his excitement returned. "You and I are nobody. We had better go and live in an inn. That man is honest. I hate him, but he is honest. Why do you stand there staring at me? Were you not the first to say that if we are impostors we should give up everything of our own free-will? And now you seem to think that I will fight the suit! That is your logic! That is all the consistency you have acquired in your travels! Go and tell your wife that you are nobody, that I am nobody! Go and tell her to give you a title, a name for men to call you by! Go into the market and see whether you can find a name for your father! Go and hire a house for us to live in, when that Neapolitan devil has brought Flavia Montevarchi to live in the palace where your mother died, where you were born--poor Giovanni! Not that I pity you any more than I pity myself. Why should I? You are young and have done this house the honour to spend most of your life out of it. But after all--poor Giovanni!" Saracinesca seized his son's hand and looked into his eyes. The young man's face was perfectly calm, almost serene in its expression of indifference to misfortune. His whole soul was preoccupied by greater and nobler emotions than any which could be caused by worldly loss. He had been with Corona again, had talked with her and had seen that look in her face which he had learned to dread more than he had ever dreaded anything in his life. What was life itself without that which her eyes refused? CHAPTER XIX. Prince Montevarchi was very much surprised when he was told that Anastase Gouache wished to see him, and as he was very much occupied with the details of the suit his first impulse was to decline the visit. Although he had no idea that matters had already gone so far between the Zouave and Faustina, he was not, however, so blind as the young girl had supposed him to be. He was naturally observant, like most men who devote their lives to the pursuit of their own interests, and it had not escaped him that Faustina and Gouache were very often to be seen talking together in the world. Had he possessed a sense of humour he might possibly have thought that it would be inexpressibly comical if Gouache should take it into his head to fall in love with the girl; but the Italians are not a humorous people, and the idea did not suggest itself to the old gentleman. He consented to receive Gouache because he thought the opportunity would be a good one for reading the young man a lecture upon the humility of his station, and upon the arrogance he displayed in devoting himself thus openly to the daughter of Casa Montevarchi. "Good-day, Monsieur Gouache," he said solemnly, as Anastase entered. "Pray be seated. To what do I owe the honour of your visit?" Anastase had put on a perfectly new uniform for the interview, and his movements were more than usually alert and his manners a shade more elaborate and formal than on ordinary occasions. He felt and behaved as young men of good birth do who are serving their year in the army, and who, having put on their smartest tunic, hope that in a half light they may be taken for officers. "Will you allow me to explain my position in the first place?" he asked, seating himself and twisting his cap slowly in his hands. "Your position? By all means, if you desire to do so. It is an excellent rule in all discourses to put the definition before the argument. Nevertheless, if you would inform me of the nature of the affair, it might help me to understand you better." "It is very delicate--but I will try to be plain. What I am, I think you know already. I am a painter and I have been successful. For the present, I am a Zouave, but my military service does not greatly interfere with my profession. We have a good deal of time upon our hands. My pictures bring me a larger income than I can spend." "I congratulate you," observed Montevarchi, opening his small eyes in some astonishment. "The pursuit of the fine arts is not generally very lucrative. For myself, I confess that I am satisfied with those treasures which my father has left me. I am very fond of pictures, it is true; but you will understand that, when a gallery is filled, it is full. You comprehend, I am sure? Much as I might wish to own some of the works of the modern French school, the double disadvantage of possessing already so many canvases, and the still stronger consideration of my limited fortune--yes, limited, I assure you---" "Pardon me," interrupted Gouache, whose face reddened suddenly, "I had no intention of proposing to sell you a picture. I am not in the habit of advertising myself nor of soliciting orders for my work." "My dear sir!" exclaimed the prince, seeing that he was on a wrong tack, "have I suggested such a thing? If my words conveyed the idea, pray accept all my excuses. Since you had mentioned the subject of art, my thoughts naturally were directed to my gallery of pictures. I am delighted to hear of your success, for you know how much interest we all feel in him who was the victim of such an unfortunate accident, due doubtless to the carelessness of my men." "Pray do not recall that! Your hospitality more than repaid me for the little I suffered. The matter concerning which I wish to speak to you is a very serious one, and I hope you will believe that I have considered it well before taking a step which may at first surprise you. To be plain, I come to ask you to confer upon me the honour of Donna Faustina Montevarchi's hand." Montevarchi leaned back in his chair, speechless with amazement. He seemed to gasp for breath as his long fingers pressed the green table-cover before him. His small eyes were wide open, and his toothless jaw dropped. Gouache feared that he was going to be taken ill. "You!" cried the old man in a cracked voice, when he had recovered himself enough to be able to speak. "Yes," answered Anastase, who was beginning to feel very nervous as he observed the first results of his proposal. He had never before quite realised how utterly absurd the match would seem to Montevarchi. "Yes," he repeated. "Is the idea so surprising? Is it inconceivable to you that I should love your daughter? Can you not understand--" "I understand that you are wholly mad!" exclaimed the prince, still staring at his visitor in blank astonishment. "No, I am not mad. I love Donna Faustina--" "You! You dare to love Faustina! You, a painter, a man with a profession and with nothing but what you earn! You, a Zouave, a man without a name, without--" "You are an old man, prince, but the fact of my having made you an honourable proposition does not give you the right to insult me." The words were spoken in a sharp, determined voice, and brought Montevarchi to his senses. He was a terrible coward and would rather go to a considerable expense than face an angry man. "Insult you, my dear sir? I would not think of it!" he answered in a very different tone. "But my dear Monsieur Gouache, I fear that this is quite impossible! In the first place, my daughter's marriage is already arranged. The negotiations have been proceeding for some time--she is to marry Frangipani--you must have heard it. And, moreover, with all due respect for the position you have gained by your immense talent--immense, my dear friend, I am the first to say it--the instability of human affairs obliges me to seek for her a fortune, which depends upon the vulgar possession of wealth rather than upon those divine gifts of genius with which you are so richly endowed." The change from anger to flattery was so sudden that Gouache was confounded and could not find words in which to answer what was said to him. Montevarchi's eyes had lost their expression of astonishment, and a bland smile played about the corners of his sour mouth, while he rubbed his bony hands slowly together, nodding his head at every comma of his elaborate speech. Anastase saw, however, that there was not the slightest hope that his proposal would ever be entertained, and by his own sensations he knew that he had always expected this result. He felt no disappointment, and it seemed to him that he was in the same position in which he had been before he had spoken. On the other hand he was outraged by the words that had fallen from Montevarchi's lips in the first moments of anger and astonishment. A painter, a man with a profession, without a name! Gouache was too human not to feel the sting of each truth as it was uttered. He would have defined himself in very much the same way without the least false pride, but to hear his own estimate of himself, given by another person as the true one, was hard to bear. A painter, yes--he was proud of it. A man with a profession, yes--was it not far nobler to earn money by good work than to inherit what others had stolen in former times? A man without a name--was not his own beginning to be famous, and was it not better to make the name Gouache glorious by his own efforts than to be called Orsini because one's ancestors had been fierce and lawless as bears, or Sciarra because one's progenitor had slapped the face of a pope? Doubtless it was a finer thing to be great by one's own efforts in the pursuit of a noble art than to inherit a greatness originally founded upon a superior rapacity, and a greater physical strength than had characterised the ordinary men of the period. Nevertheless, Gouache knew with shame that at that moment he wished that his name could be changed to Frangipani, and the fabric of his independence, of which he had so long been proud, was shaken to its foundations as he realised that in spite of all fame, all glory, all genius, he could never be what the miserly, cowardly, lying old man before him was by birth--a Roman prince. The conclusion was at once inexpressibly humiliating and supremely ludicrous. He felt himself laughable in his own eyes, and was conscious that a smile was on his face, which Montevarchi would not understand. The old gentleman was still talking. "I cannot tell you," he was saying, "how much I regret my total inability to comply with a request which evidently proceeds from the best motives, I might almost say from the heart itself. Alas! my dear friend, we are not all masters of our actions. The cares of a household like mine require a foresight, an hourly attention, an unselfish devotion which we can only hope to obtain by constant--" He was going to say "by constant recourse to prayer," but he reflected that Gouache was probably not of a religious turn of mind, and he changed the sentence. "--by constant study of the subject. Situated as I am, a Roman in the midst of Romans, I am obliged to consider the traditions of my own people in respect of all the great affairs of life. Believe me, I entreat you, that, far from having any prejudice against yourself, I should rejoice sincerely could I take you by the hand and call you my son. But how can I act? What can I do? Go to your own country, dear Monsieur Gouache, think no more of us, or of our daughters, marry a woman of your own nation, and you will not be disappointed in your dreams of matrimonial felicity!" "In other words, you refuse altogether to listen to my proposal?" By this time Gouache was able to put the question calmly. "Alas, yes!" replied the prince with an air of mock regret that exasperated the young man beyond measure. "I cannot think of it, though you are indeed a most sympathetic young man." "In that case I will not trespass upon your time any longer," said Gouache, who was beginning to fear lest his coolness should forsake him. As he descended the broad marble stairs his detestation of the old hypocrite overcame him, and his wrath broke out. "You shall pay me for this some day, you old scoundrel!" he said aloud, very savagely. Montevarchi remained in his study after Gouache had gone. A sour smile distorted his thin lips, and the expression became more and more accented until the old man broke into a laugh that rang drily against the vaulted ceiling. Some one knocked at the door, and his merriment disappeared instantly. Arnoldo Meschini entered the room. There was something unusual about his appearance which attracted the prince's attention at once. "Has anything happened?" "Everything. The case is won. Your Excellency's son-in-law is Prince Saracinesca." The librarian's bright eyes gleamed with exultation and there was a slight flush in his cheeks that contrasted oddly with his yellow skin. A disagreeable smile made his intelligent face more ugly than usual. He stood half-way between the door and his employer, his long arms hanging awkwardly by his sides, his head thrust forward, his knees a little bent, assuming by habit a servile attitude of attention, but betraying in his look that he felt himself his master's master. Montevarchi started as he heard the news. Then he leaned eagerly across the table, his fingers as usual slowly scratching the green cloth. "Are you quite sure of it?" he asked in a trembling voice. "Have you got the verdict?" Meschini produced a tattered pocket-book, and drew from it a piece of stamped paper, which he carefully unfolded and handed to the prince. "There is an attested note of it. See for yourself." Montevarchi hastily looked over the small document, and his face flushed slowly till it was almost purple, while the paper quivered in his hold. It was clear that everything had succeeded as he had hoped, and that his most sanguine expectations were fully realised. His thoughts suddenly recurred to Gouache, and he laughed again at the young man's assurance. "Was Saracinesca in the court?" he asked presently. "No. There was no one connected with the case except the lawyers on each side. It did not amount to a trial. The Signor Marchese's side produced the papers proving his identity, and the original deed was submitted. The prince's side stated that his Excellency was convinced of the justice of the claim and would make no opposition. Thereupon the court granted an order to the effect that the Signor Marchese was the heir provided for in the clause and was entitled to enjoy all the advantages arising from the inheritance; but that, as there was no opposition made by the defendants, the subsequent transactions would be left in the hands of the family, the court reserving the power to enforce the transfer in case any difficulty should arise hereafter. Of course, it will take several months to make the division, as the Signor Marchese will only receive the direct inheritance of his great-grandfather, while the Saracinesca retain all that has come to them by their marriages during the last four generations." "Of course. Who will be employed to make the division?" "Half Rome, I fancy. It will be an endless business." "But San Giacinto is prince. He will do homage for his titles next Epiphany." "Yes. He must present his ten pounds of wax and a silver bowl--cheap!" observed Meschini with a grin. It may be explained here that the families of the Roman nobility were all subject to a yearly tribute of merely nominal value, which they presented to the Pope at the Feast of the Epiphany. The custom was feudal, the Pope having been the feudal lord of all the nobles until 1870. The tribute generally consisted of a certain weight of pure wax, or of a piece of silver of a specified value, or sometimes of both. As an instance of the survival of such customs in other countries, I may mention the case of one great Irish family which to this day receives from another a yearly tribute, paid alternately in the shape of a golden rose and a golden spur. "So we have won everything!" exclaimed Montevarchi after a pause, looking hard at the librarian, as though trying to read his thoughts. "We have won everything, and the thanks are due to you, my good friend, to you, the faithful and devoted companion who has helped me to accomplish this act of true justice. Ah, how can I ever express to you my gratitude!" "The means of expression were mentioned in our agreement," answered Meschini with a servile inclination. "I agreed to do the work for your Excellency at a certain fixed price, as your Excellency may remember. Beyond that I ask nothing. I am too humble an individual to enjoy the honour of Prince Montevarchi's personal gratitude." "Yes, of course, but that is mere money!" said the old gentleman somewhat hastily, but contemptuously withal. "Gratitude proceeds from the heart, not from the purse. When I think of all the work you have done, of the unselfish way in which you have devoted yourself to this object, I feel that money can never repay you. Money is sordid trash, Meschini, sordid trash! Let us not talk about it. Are we not friends? The most delicate sensibilities of my soul rejoice when I consider what we have accomplished together. There is not another man in Rome whom I would trust as I trust you, most faithful of men!" "The Signor Principe is too kind," replied Meschini. "Nevertheless, I repeat that I am quite unworthy of such gratitude for having merely performed my part in a business transaction, especially in one wherein my own interests were so deeply concerned." "My only regret is that my son-in-law can never know the share you have had in his success. But that, alas, is quite impossible. How, indeed, would it be practicable to inform him! And my daughter, too! She would remember you in all her innocent prayers, even as I shall do henceforth! No, Meschini, it is ordained that I, and I alone, should be the means of expressing to you the heartfelt thanks of those whom you have so highly benefited, but who unfortunately can never know the name of their benefactor. Tell me now, did the men of the law look long at the documents? Did they show any hesitation? Have you any reason to believe that their attention was roused, arrested by--by the writing?" "No, indeed! I should be a poor workman if a parcel of lawyers could detect my handwriting!" "It is a miracle!" exclaimed Montevarchi, devoutly. "I consider that heaven has interposed directly to accomplish the ends of justice. An angel guided your hand, my dear friend, to make you the instrument of good!" "I am quite ready to believe it. The transaction has been as providential for me as for the Signor Marchese." "Yes," answered the prince rather drily. "And now, my dear Meschini, will you leave me for a time? I have appointed this hour to see my last remaining daughter concerning her marriage. She is the last of those fair flowers! Ah me! How sad a thing it is to part with those we love so well! But we have the consolation of knowing that it is for their good, that consolation, that satisfaction which only come to us when we have faithfully done our duty. Return to your library, therefore, Meschini, for the present. The consciousness of good well done is yours also to-day, and will soothe the hours of solitude and make your new labours sweet. The reward of righteousness is in itself and of itself. Good-bye, my friend, good-bye! Thank you, thank you--" "Would it be agreeable to your Excellency to let me have the money now?" asked the librarian. There was a firmness in the tone that startled Montevarchi. "What money?" he inquired with a well-feigned surprise. "I do not understand." "Twenty thousand scudi, the price of the work," replied Meschini with alarming bluntness. "Twenty thousand scudi!" cried the prince. "I remember that there was some mention of a sum--two thousand, I think I said. Even that is enormous, but I was carried away in the excitement of the moment. We are all liable to such weakness--" "You agreed to pay me twenty thousand scudi in cash on the day that the verdict was given in favour of your son-in-law." "I never agreed to anything of the kind. My dear friend, success has quite turned your head! I have not so much money at my disposal in the whole world." "You cannot afford to make a fool of me," cried Meschini, making a step forward. His face was red with anger, and his long arms made odd gestures. "Will you pay me the money or not?" "If you take this tone with me I will pay you nothing whatever. I shall even cease to feel any sense of gratitude--" "To hell with your gratitude!" exclaimed the other fiercely. "Either you pay me the money now, or I go at once to the authorities and denounce the whole treachery." "You will only go to the galleys if you do." "You will go with me." "Not at all. Have you any proof that I have had anything to do with the matter? I tell you that you are quite mad. If you wanted to play this trick on me you should have made me sign an agreement. Even then I would have argued that since you had forged the documents you had, of course, forged the agreement also. But you have nothing, not so much as a scrap of paper to show against me. Be reasonable and I will be magnanimous. I will give you the two thousand I spoke of in the heat of anticipation--" "You will give me the twenty thousand you solemnly promised me," said Meschini, with concentrated anger. Montevarchi rose slowly from his chair and rang the bell. He knew that Meschini would not be so foolish as to expose himself, and would continue to hope that he might ultimately get what he asked. "I cannot argue with a madman," he said calmly. He was not in the least afraid of the librarian. The idea never entered his mind that the middle-aged, round-shouldered scholar could be dangerous. A single word from Gouache, a glance of the artist's eye had cowed him less than an hour ago; but Meschini's fury left him indifferent. The latter saw that for the present there was nothing to be done. To continue such a scene before a servant would be the worst kind of folly. "We will talk the matter over at another time," he said sullenly, as he left the study by a small door which opened upon a corridor in communication with the library. Montevarchi sent the servant who answered the bell with a message begging Donna Faustina to come to the study at once. Since it was to be a day of interviews he determined to state the case plainly to his daughter, and bid her make ready to comply with his will in case the match with Frangipani turned out to be possible. He seemed no more disturbed by Meschini's anger than if the affair had not concerned him in the least. He had, indeed, long foreseen what would occur, and even at the moment when he had promised the bribe he was fully determined never to pay it. The librarian had taken the bait greedily, and it was his own fault if the result did not suit him. He had no redress, as Montevarchi had told him; there was not so much as a note to serve as a record of the bargain. Meschini had executed the forgery, and he would have to ruin himself in order to bring any pressure to bear upon his employer. This the latter felt sure that he would not do, even if driven to extremities. Meschini's nature was avaricious and there was no reason to suppose that he was tired of life, or ready to go to the galleys for a bit of personal vengeance, when, by exercising a little patience, he might ultimately hope to get some advantage out of the crime he had committed. Montevarchi meant to pay him what he considered a fair price for the work, and he did not see that Meschini had any means of compelling him to pay more. Now that the thing was done, he began to regret that he himself had not made some agreement with San Giacinto, but a moment's reflection sufficed to banish the thought as unworthy of his superior astuteness. His avarice was on a large scale and was merging into ambition. It might have been foreseen that, after having married one of his two remaining daughters to a man who had turned out to be Prince Saracinesca, his determination to match Faustina with Frangipani would be even stronger than it had been before. Hence his sudden wish to see Faustina and to prepare her mind for what was about to take place. All at once it seemed as though he could not act quickly enough to satisfy his desire of accomplishment. He felt as an old man may feel who, at the end of a busy life, sees countless things before him which he would still do, and hates the thought of dying before all are done. A feverish haste to complete this last step in the aggrandisement of his family, overcame the old prince. He could not understand why he had submitted to wasting his time with Gouache and Meschini instead of busying himself actively in the accomplishment of his purpose. There was no reason for waiting any longer. Frangipani's father had already half-agreed to the match, and what remained to be done involved only a question of financial details. As he sat waiting for Faustina a great horror of death rose suddenly and clearly before him. He was not a very old man and he would have found it hard to account for the sensation. It is a notable fact, too, that he feared death rather because it might prevent him from carrying out his intentions, than because his conscience was burdened with the recollection of many misdeeds. His whole existence had been passed in such an intricate labyrinth of duplicity towards others and towards himself that he no longer distinguished between the true and the untrue. Even in this last great fraud he had so consistently deceived his own sense of veracity that he almost felt himself to be the instrument of justice he assumed to be. The case was a delicate one, too, for the most unprejudiced person could hardly have escaped feeling sympathy for San Giacinto, the victim of his ancestor's imprudence. Montevarchi found it very easy to believe that it was permissible to employ any means in order to gain such an end, and although he might have regarded the actual work of the forgery in the light of a crime, venial indeed, though contrary to the law, his own share in the transaction, as instigator of the deed itself, appeared to be defensible by a whole multitude of reasons. San Giacinto, by all the traditions of primogeniture dear to the heart of the Roman noble, was the head of the family of Saracinesca. But for a piece of folly, hardly to be equalled in Montevarchi's experience, San Giacinto would have been in possession of the estates and titles without opposition or contradiction since the day of his father's death. The mere fact that the Saracinesca had not defended the case proved that they admitted the justice of their cousin's claims. Had old Leone foreseen the contingency of a marriage in his old age, he would either never have signed the deed at all, or else he would have introduced just such a conditional clause as had been forged by Meschini. When a great injustice has been committed, through folly or carelessness, when those who have been most benefited by it admit that injustice, when to redress it is merely to act in accordance with the spirit of the laws, is it a crime then to bring about so much good by merely sacrificing a scruple of conscience, by employing some one to restore an inheritance to its rightful possessor with a few clever strokes of the pen? The answer seemed so clear to Montevarchi that he did not even ask himself the question. Indeed it would have been superfluous to do so, for he had so often satisfied all objections to doubtful courses by a similar sophistry that he knew beforehand what reply would present itself to his self-inquiry. He did not even experience a sense of relief as he turned from the contemplation of what he had just done to the question of Faustina's marriage, in which there was nothing that could torment his conscience. He was not even aware that he ought to recognise a difference between the two affairs. He was in great haste to settle the preliminaries, and that was all. If he should die, he thought, the princess would have her own way in everything, and would doubtless let Faustina throw herself away upon some such man as Gouache. The thought roused him from his reverie, and at the same time brought a sour smile to his face. Gouache, of all people! He looked up and saw that Faustina had entered and was standing before him, as though expecting him to speak. Her delicate, angelic features were pale, and she held her small hands folded before her. She had discovered by some means that Gouache had been with her father and she feared that something unpleasant had happened and that she was about to be called to account. The vision of Frangipani, too, was present in her mind, and she anticipated a stormy interview. But her mind was made up; she would have Anastase or she would have nobody. The two exchanged a preliminary glance before either spoke. CHAPTER XX. Montevarchi made his daughter sit beside him and took her hand affectionately in his, assuming at the same time the expression of sanctimonious superiority he always wore when he mentioned the cares of his household or was engaged in regulating any matter of importance in his family. Flavia used to imitate the look admirably, to the delight of her brothers and sisters. He smiled meaningly, pressed the girl's fingers, and smiled again, attempting in vain to elicit some response. But Faustina remained cold and indifferent, for she was used to her father's ways and did not like them. "You know what I am going to say, I am sure," he began. "It concerns what must be very near your heart, my dear child." "I do not know what it can be," answered Faustina, gravely. She was too well brought up to show any of the dislike she felt for her father's way of doing things, but she was willing to make it as hard as possible for him to express himself. "Cannot you guess what it is?" asked the old man, with a ludicrous attempt at banter. "What is it that is nearest to every girl's heart? Is not that little heart of yours already a resort of the juvenile deity?" "I do not understand you, papa." "Well, well, my dear--I see that your education has not included a course of mythology. It is quite as well, perhaps, as those heathens are poor company for the young. I refer to marriage, Faustina, to that all-important step which you are soon to take." "Have you quite decided to marry me to Frangipani?" asked the young girl with a calmness that somewhat disconcerted her father. "How boldly you speak of it!" he exclaimed with a sigh of disapproval. "I will not, however, conceal from you that I hope--" "Pray talk plainly with me, papa!" cried Faustina suddenly looking up. "I cannot bear this suspense." "Ah! Is it so, little one?" Montevarchi shook his finger playfully at her. "I thought I should find you ready! So you are anxious to become a princess at once? Well, well, all women are alike!" Faustina drew herself up a little and fixed her deep brown eyes upon her father's face, very quietly and solemnly. "You misunderstand me," she said. "I only wish to know your decision in order that I may give you my answer." "And what can that answer be? Have I not chosen, wisely, a husband fit for you in every way?" "From your point of view, I have no doubt of it." "I trust you are not about to commit the unpardonable folly of differing from me, my daughter," answered Montevarchi, with a sudden change of tone indicative of rising displeasure. "It is for me to decide, for you to accept my decision." "Upon other points, yes. In the question of marriage I think I have something to say." "Is it possible that you can have any objections to the match I have found for you? Is it possible that you are so foolish as to fancy that at your age you can understand these things better than I? Faustina, I would not have believed it!" "How can you understand what I feel?" "It is not a question of feeling, it is a question of wisdom, of foresight, of prudence, of twenty qualities which you are far too young to possess. If marriage were a matter of feeling, of vulgar sentiment, I ask you, what would become of the world? Of what use is it to have all the sentiment in life, if you have not that which makes life itself possible? Can you eat sentiment? Can you harness sentiment in a carriage and make it execute a trottata in the Villa Borghese? Can you change an ounce of sentiment into good silver scudi and make it pay for a journey in the hot weather? No, no, my child. Heaven knows that I am not avaricious. Few men, I think, know better than I that wealth is perishable stuff--but so is this mortal body, and the perishable must be nourished with the perishable, lest dust return to dust sooner than it would in the ordinary course of nature. Money alone will not give happiness, but it is, nevertheless, most important to possess a certain amount of it." "I would rather do without it than be miserable all my life for having got it." "Miserable all your life? Why should you be miserable? No woman should be unhappy who is married to a good man. My dear, this matter admits of no discussion. Frangipani is young, handsome, of irreproachable moral character, heir to a great fortune and to a great name. You desire to be in love. Good. Love will come, the reward of having chosen wisely. It will be time enough then to think of your sentiments. Dear me! if we all began life by thinking of sentiment, where would our existence end?" "Will you please tell me whether you have quite decided that I am to marry Frangipani?" Faustina found her father's discourses intolerable, and, moreover, she had something to say which would be hard to express and still harder to sustain by her actions. "If you insist upon my giving you an answer, which you must have already foreseen, I am willing to tell you that I have quite decided upon the match." "I cannot marry him!" exclaimed Faustina, clasping her hands together and looking into her father's face. "My dear," answered Montevarchi with a smile, "it is absolutely decided. We cannot draw back. You must marry him." "Must, papa? Oh, think what you are saying! I am not disobedient, indeed I am not. I have always submitted to you in everything. But this--no, not this. Bid me do anything else--anything--" "But, my child, nothing else would produce the same result. Be reasonable. You tell me to impose some other duty upon you. That is not what I want. I must see you married before I die, and I am an old man. Each year, each day, may be my last. Of what use would it be that you should make another sacrifice to please me, when the one thing I desire is to see you well settled with a good husband? I have done what I could. I have procured you the best match in all Rome, and now you implore me to spare you, to reverse my decision, to tell my old friend Frangipani that you will not have his son, and to go out into the market to find you another help-meet. It is not reasonable. I had expected more dutiful conduct from you." "Is it undutiful not to be able to love a man one hardly knows, when one is ordered to do so?" "You will make me lose my patience, Faustina!" exclaimed Montevarchi, in angry tones. "Have I not explained to you the nature of love? Have I not told you that you can love your husband as much as you please? Is it not a father's duty to direct the affections of his child as I wish to do, and is it not the child's first obligation to submit to its father's will and guidance? What more would you have? In truth, you are very exacting!" "I am very unhappy!" The young girl turned away and rested her elbow on the table, supporting her chin in her hand. She stared absently at the old bookcases as though she were trying to read the titles upon the dingy bindings. Montevarchi understood her words to convey a submission and changed his tone once more. "Well, well, my dear, you will never regret your obedience," he said. "Of course, my beloved child, it is never easy to see things as it is best that we should see them. I see that you have yielded at last--" "I have not yielded in the least!" cried Faustina, suddenly facing him, with an expression he had never seen before. "What do you mean?" asked Montevarchi in considerable astonishment. "What I say. I will not marry Frangipani--I will not! Do you understand?" "No. I do not understand such language from my daughter; and as for your determination, I tell you that you will most certainly end by acting as I wish you to act." "You cannot force me to marry. What can you do? You can put me into a convent. Do you think that would make me change my mind? I would thank God for any asylum in which I might find refuge from such tyranny." "My daughter," replied the prince in bland tones, "I am fully resolved not to be angry with you. Your undutiful conduct proceeds from ignorance, which is never an offence, though it is always a misfortune. If you will have a little patience--" "I have none!" exclaimed Faustina, exasperated by her father's manner. "My undutiful conduct does not proceed from ignorance--it proceeds from love, from love for another man, whom I will marry if I marry any one." "Faustina!" cried Montevarchi, holding up his hands in horror and amazement. "Do you dare to use SUCH, language to your father!" "I dare do anything, everything--I dare even tell you the name of the man I love--Anastase Gouache!" "My child! My child! This is too horrible! I must really send for your mother." "Do what you will." Faustina had risen to her feet and was standing before one of the old bookcases, her hands folded before her, her eyes on fire, her delicate mouth scornfully bent. Montevarchi, who was really startled almost out of his senses, moved cautiously towards the bell, looking steadily at his daughter all the while as though he dreaded some fresh outbreak. There was something ludicrous in his behaviour which, at another time, would not have escaped the young girl. Now, however, she was too much in earnest to perceive anything except the danger of her position and the necessity for remaining firm at any cost. She did not understand why her mother was to be called, but she felt that she could face all her family if necessary. She kept her eyes upon her father and was hardly conscious that a servant entered the room. Montevarchi sent a message requesting the princess to come at once. Then he turned again towards Faustina. "You can hardly suppose," he observed, "that I take seriously what you have just said; but you are evidently very much excited, and your mother's presence will, I trust, have a soothing effect. You must be aware that it is very wrong to utter such monstrous untruths--even in jest--" "I am in earnest. I will marry Monsieur Gouache or I will marry no one." Montevarchi really believed that his daughter's mind was deranged. His interview with Gouache had convinced him that Faustina meant what she said, though he affected to laugh at it, but he was wholly unable to account for her conduct on any theory but that of insanity. Being at his wits' end he had sent for his wife, and while waiting for her he did not quite know what to do. "My dear child, what is Monsieur Gouache? A very estimable young man, without doubt, but not such a one as we could choose for your husband." "I have chosen him," answered Faustina. "That is enough." "How you talk, my dear! How rashly you talk! As though choosing a husband were like buying a new hat! And you, too, whom I always believed to be the most dutiful, the most obedient of my children! But your mother and I will reason with you, we will endeavour to put better thoughts into your heart." Faustina glanced scornfully at her father and turned away, walking slowly in the direction of the window. "It is of no use to waste your breath on me," she said presently. "I will marry Gouache or nobody." "You--marry Gouache?" cried the princess, who entered at that moment, and heard the last words. Her voice expressed an amazement and horror fully equal to her husband's. "Have you come to join the fray, mamma?" inquired Faustina, in English. "Pray speak in a language I can understand," said Montevarchi who, in a whole lifetime, had never mastered a word of his wife's native tongue. "Oh, Lotario!" exclaimed the princess. "What has the child been telling you?" "Things that would make you tremble, my dear! She refuses to marry Frangipani--" "Refuses! But, Faustina, you do not know what you are doing! You are out of your mind!" "And she talks wildly of marrying a certain Frenchman, a Monsieur Gouache, I believe--is there such a man, my dear?" "Of course, Lotario! The little man you ran over. How forgetful you are!" "Yes, yes, of course. I know. But you must reason with her, Guendalina--" "It seems to me. Lotario, that you should do that--" "My dear, I think the child is insane upon the subject. Where could she have picked up such an idea? Is it a mere caprice, a mere piece of impertinence, invented to disconcert the sober senses of a careful father?" "Nonsense, Lotario! She is not capable of that. After all, she is not Flavia, who always had something dreadful quite ready, just when you least expected it." "I almost wish she were Flavia!" exclaimed Montevarchi, ruefully. "Flavia has done very well." During all this time Faustina was standing with her back towards the window and her hands folded before her, looking from the one to the other of the speakers with an air of bitter contempt which was fast changing to uncontrollable anger. Some last remaining instinct of prudence kept her from interrupting the conversation by a fresh assertion of her will, and she waited until one of them chose to speak to her. She had lost her head, for she would otherwise never have gone so far as to mention Gouache's name, but, as with all very spontaneous natures, with her to break the first barrier was to go to the extreme, whatever it might be. Her clear brown eyes were very bright, and there was something luminous about her angelic face which showed that her whole being was under the influence of an extraordinary emotion, almost amounting to exaltation. It was impossible to foresee what she would say or do. "Your father almost wishes you were Flavia!" groaned the princess, shaking her head and looking very grave. Then Faustina laughed scornfully and her wrath bubbled over. "I am not Flavia!" she cried, coming forward and facing her father and mother. "I daresay you do wish I were. Flavia has done so very well. Yes, she is Princess Saracinesca this evening, I suppose. Indeed she has done well, for she has married the man she loves, as much as she is capable of loving anything. And that is all the more reason why I should do the same. Besides, am I as old as Flavia that you should be in such a hurry to marry me? Do you think I will yield? Do you think that while I love one man, I will be so base as to marry another?" "I have explained to you that love--" "Your explanations will drive me mad! You may explain anything in that way--and prove that Love itself does not exist. Do you think your saying so makes it true? There is more truth in a little of my love than in all your whole life!" "Faustina!" "What? May I not answer you? Must I believe you infallible when you use arguments that would not satisfy a child? Is my whole nature a shadow because yours cannot understand my reality?" "If you are going to make this a question of metaphysics--" "I am not, I do not know what metaphysic means. But I will repeat before my mother what I said to you alone. I will not marry Frangipani, and you cannot force me to marry him. If I marry any one I will have the man I love." "But, my dearest Faustina," cried the princess in genuine distress, "this is a mere idea--a sort of madness that has seized upon you. Consider your position, consider what you owe to us, consider--" "Consider, consider, consider! Do you suppose that any amount of consideration would change me?" "Do you think your childish anger will change us?" inquired Montevarchi, blandly. He did not care to lose his temper, for he was quite indifferent to Faustina's real inclinations, if she would only consent to marry Frangipani. "Childish!" cried Faustina, her eyes blazing with anger. "Was I childish when I followed him out into the midst of the revolution last October, when I was nearly killed at the Serristori, when I thought he was dead and knelt there among the ruins until he found me and brought me home? Was that a child's love?" The princess turned pale and grasped her husband's arm, staring at Faustina in horror. The old man trembled and for a few moments could not find strength to speak. Nothing that Faustina could have invented could have produced such a sudden and tremendous effect as this revelation of what had happened on the night of the insurrection, coming from the girl's own lips with the unmistakable accent of truth. The mother's instinct was the first to assert itself. With a quick movement she threw her arms round the young girl, as though to protect her from harm. "It is not true, it is not true," she cried in an agonised tone. "Faustina, my child--it is not true!" "It is quite true, mamma," answered Faustina, who enjoyed an odd satisfaction in seeing the effect of her words, which can only be explained by her perfect innocence. "Why are you so much astonished? I loved him--I thought he was going out to be killed--I would not let him go alone--" "Oh, Faustina! How could you do it!" moaned the princess. "It is too horrible--it is not to be believed--" "I loved him, I love him still." Princess Montevarchi fell into a chair and burst into tears, burying her face in her hands and sobbing aloud. "If you are going to cry, Guendalina, you had better go away," said her husband, who was now as angry as his mean nature would permit him to be. She was so much accustomed to obey that she left the room, crying as she went, and casting back a most sorrowful look at Faustina. Montevarchi shut the door and, coming back, seized his daughter's arm and shook it violently. "Fool!" he cried angrily, unable to find any other word to express his rage. Faustina said nothing but tried to push him away, her bright eyes gleaming with contempt. Her silence exasperated the old man still further. Like most very cowardly men he could be brutal to women when he was angry. It seemed to him that the girl, by her folly, had dashed from him the last great satisfaction of his life at the very moment when it was within reach. He could have forgiven her for ruining herself, had she done so; he could not forgive her for disappointing his ambition; he knew that one word of the story she had told would make the great marriage impossible, and he knew that she had the power to speak that word when she pleased as well as the courage to do so. "Fool!" he repeated, and before she could draw back, he struck her across the mouth with the back of his hand. A few drops of bright red blood trickled from her delicate lips. With an instinctive movement she pressed her handkerchief to the wound. Montevarchi snatched it roughly from her hand and threw it across the room. From his eyes she guessed that he would strike her again if she remained. With a look of intense hatred she made a supreme effort, and concentrating the whole strength of her slender frame wrenched herself free. "Coward!" she cried, as he reeled backwards; then, before he could recover himself, she was gone and he was left alone. He was terribly angry, and at the same time his ideas were confused, so that he hardly understood anything but the main point of her story, that she had been with Gouache on that night when Corona had brought her home. He began to reason again. Corona knew the truth, of course, and her husband knew it too. Montevarchi realised that he had already taken his revenge for their complicity, before knowing that they had injured him. His overwrought brain was scarcely capable of receiving another impression. He laughed aloud in a way that was almost hysterical. "All!" he cried in sudden exultation. "All--even to their name--but the other--" His face changed quickly and he sank into his chair and buried his face in his hands, as he thought of all he had lost through Faustina's folly. And yet, the harm might be repaired--no one knew except-- He looked up and saw that Meschini had returned and was standing before him, as though waiting to be addressed. The suddenness of the librarian's appearance made the prince utter an exclamation of surprise. "Yes, I have come back," said Meschini. "The matter we were discussing cannot be put off, and I have come back to ask you to be good enough to pay the money." Montevarchi was nervous and had lost the calm tone of superiority he had maintained before his interview with Faustina. The idea of losing Frangipani, too, made his avarice assert itself very strongly. "I told you," he replied, "that I refused altogether to talk with you, so long as you addressed me in that tone. I repeat it. Leave me, and when you have recovered your manners I will give you something for yourself. You will get nothing so long as you demand it as though it were a right." "I will not leave this room without the money," answered Meschini, resolutely. The bell was close to the door. The librarian placed himself between the prince and both. "Leave the room!" cried Montevarchi, trembling with anger. He had so long despised Meschini, that the exhibition of obstinacy on the part of the latter did not frighten him. The librarian stood before the bell and the latch of the door, his long arms hanging down by his sides, his face yellow, his eyes red. Any one might have seen that he was growing dangerous. Instead of repeating his refusal to go, he looked steadily at his employer and a disagreeable smile played upon his ugly features. Montevarchi saw it and his fury boiled over. He laid his hands on the arms of his chair as though he would rise, and in that moment he would have been capable of striking Meschini as he had struck Faustina. Meschini shuffled forwards and held up his hand. "Do not be violent," he said, in a low voice. "I am not your daughter, you know." Montevarchi's jaw dropped, and he fell back into his chair again. "You listened--you saw--" he gasped. "Yes, of course. Will you pay me? I am desperate, and I will have it. You and your miserable secrets are mine, and I will have my price. I only want the sum you promised. I shall be rich in a few days, for I have entered into an affair in which I shall get millions, as many as you have perhaps. But the money must be paid to-morrow morning or I am ruined, and you must give it to me. Do you hear? Do you understand that I will have what is mine?" At this incoherent speech, Montevarchi recovered something of his former nerve. There was something in Meschini's language that sounded like argument, and to argue was to temporise. The prince changed his tone. "But, my dear Meschini, how could you be so rash as to go into a speculation when you knew that the case might not be decided for another week? You are really the most rash man I ever knew. I cannot undertake to guarantee your speculations. I will be just. I have told you that I would give you two thousand--" "Twenty thousand'" Meschini came a little nearer. "Not a single baiocco if you are exorbitant." "Twenty thousand hard, good scudi in cash, I tell you. No more, but no less either." The librarian's hands were clenched, and he breathed hard, while his red eyes stared in a way that began to frighten Montevarchi. "No, no, be reasonable! My dear Meschini, pray do not behave in this manner. You almost make me believe that you are threatening me. I assure you that I desire to do what is just--" "Give me the money at once--" "But I have not so much--murder!! Ah--gh--gh---" Arnodo Meschini's long arms had shot out and his hands had seized the prince's throat in a grip from which there was no escape. There lurked a surprising strength in the librarian's round shoulders, and his energy was doubled by a fit of anger that amounted to insanity. The old man rocked and swayed in his chair, and grasped at the green table-cover, but Meschini had got behind him and pressed his fingers tighter and tighter. His eye rested upon Faustina's handkerchief that lay on the floor at his feet. His victim was almost at the last gasp, but the handkerchief would do the job better. Meschini kept his grip with one hand and with the other snatched up the bit of linen. He drew it tight round the neck and wrenched at the knot with his yellow teeth. There was a convulsive struggle, followed by a long interval of quiet. Then another movement, less violent this time, another and another, and then Meschini felt the body collapse in his grasp. It was over. Montevarchi was dead. Meschini drew back against the bookcases, trembling in every joint. He scarcely saw the objects in the room, for his head swam and his senses failed him, from horror and from the tremendous physical effort he had made. Then in an instant he realised what he had done, and the consequences of the deed suggested themselves. He had not meant to kill the prince. So long as he had kept some control of his actions he had not even meant to lay violent hands upon him. But he had the nature of a criminal, by turns profoundly cunning and foolishly rash. A fatal influence had pushed him onward so soon as he had raised his arm, and before he was thoroughly conscious of his actions the deed was done. Then came the fear of consequences, then again the diabolical reasoning which intuitively foresees the immediate results of murder, and provides against them at once. "Nobody knows that I have been here. Nothing is missing. No one knows about the forgery. No one will suspect me. There is no one in the library nor in the corridor. The handkerchief is not mine. If it was not his own it was Donna Faustina's. No one will suspect her. It will remain a mystery." Meschini went towards the door through which he had entered and opened it. He looked back and held his breath. The prince's head had fallen forward upon his hands as they lay on the table, and the attitude was that of a man overcome by despair, but not that of a dead body. The librarian glanced round the room. There was no trace of a struggle. The position of the furniture had not been changed, nor had anything fallen on the floor. Meschini went out and softly closed the door behind him, leaving the dead man alone. The quiet afternoon sun fell upon the houses on the opposite side of the street, and cast a melancholy reflection into the dismal chamber where Prince Montevarchi had passed so many hours of his life, and in which that life had been cut short so suddenly. On the table before his dead hands lay the copy of the verdict, the testimony of his last misdeed, of the crime for which he had paid the forfeit upon the very day it was due. It lay there like the superscription upon a malefactor's gallows in ancient times, the advertisement of the reason of his death to all who chose to inquire. Not a sound was heard save the noise that rose faintly and at intervals from the narrow street below, the cry of a hawker, the song of a street-boy, the bark of a dog. To-morrow the poor body would be mounted upon a magnificent catafalque, surrounded by the pomp of a princely mourning, illuminated by hundreds of funeral torches, an object of aversion, of curiosity, even of jest, perhaps, among those who bore the prince a grudge. Many of those who had known him would come and look on his dead face, and some would say that he was changed and others that he was not. His wife and his children would, in a few hours, be all dressed in black, moving silently and mournfully and occasionally showing a little feeling, though not more than would be decent. There would be masses sung, and prayers said, and his native city would hear the tolling of the heavy bells for one of her greatest personages. All this would be done, and more also, until the dead prince should be laid to rest beneath the marble floor of the chapel where his ancestors lay side by side. But to-day he sat in state in his shabby chair, his head lying upon that table over which he had plotted and schemed for so many years, his white fingers almost touching the bit of paper whereon was written the ruin of the Saracinesca. And upstairs the man who had killed him shuffled about the library, an anxious expression on his yellow face, glancing from time to time at his hands as he took down one heavy volume after another, practising in solitude the habit of seeming occupied, in order that he might not be taken unawares when an under-servant should be sent to tell the insignificant librarian of what had happened that day in Casa Montevarchi. CHAPTER XXI. Giovanni came home late in the afternoon and found Corona sitting by the fire in her boudoir. She had known that he would return before long, but had not anticipated his coming with any pleasure. When he entered the room she looked up quietly, without a smile, to assure herself that it was he and no one else. She said nothing, and he sat down upon the other side of the fireplace. There was an air of embarrassment about their meetings, until one or the other had made some remark which led to a commonplace conversation. On the present occasion neither seemed inclined to be the first speaker and for some minutes they sat opposite to each other in silence. Giovanni glanced at his wife from time to time, and once she turned her head and met his eyes. Her expression was cold and grave as though she wished him to understand that she had nothing to say. He thought she had never been so beautiful before. The firelight, striking her face at an upward angle, brought out clearly the noble symmetry of her features, the level brow, the wide, delicate nostrils, the even curve of her lips, the splendid breadth of her smooth forehead, shaded by her heavy black hair. She seemed to feel cold, for she sat near the flames, resting one foot upon the fender, in an attitude that threw into relief the perfect curves of her figure, as she bent slightly forward, spreading her hands occasionally to the blaze. "Corona--" Giovanni stopped suddenly after pronouncing her name, as though he had changed his mind while in the act of speaking. "What is it?" she asked indifferently enough. "Would you like to go away? I have been wondering whether it would not be better than staying here." She looked up in some surprise. She had thought of travelling more than once of late, but it seemed to her that to make a journey together would be only to increase the difficulties of the situation. There would be of necessity more intimacy, more daily converse than the life in Rome forced upon her. She shrank from the idea for the very reason which made it attractive to her husband. "No," she answered. "Why should we travel? Besides, with a child so young--" "We might leave Orsino at home," suggested Giovanni. He was not prepared for the look she gave him as she replied. "I will certainly not consent to that." "Would you be willing to take him with you, and leave me here? You could easily find a friend to go with you--even my father. He would enjoy it immensely." There was the shortest possible pause before she answered him this time. It did not escape him, for he expected it. "No. I will not do that, either. I do not care to go away. Why should I, and at such a time?" "I think I will go alone, in that case," said Giovanni quietly, but watching her face. She made no reply, but looked at him curiously as though she suspected him of laying a trap for her. "You say nothing. Is silence consent?" "I think it would be very unwise." "You do not answer me. Be frank, Corona. Would you not be glad to be left alone for a time?" "Why do you insist?" she asked with a little impatience. "Are you trying to make me say something that I shall regret?" "Would you regret it, if it were said? Why not be honest? It would be an immense relief to you if I went away. I could find an excellent excuse and nobody would guess that there was anything wrong." "For that matter--there is nothing wrong. Of course no one would say anything." "I know you will think that I have no tact," Giovanni observed with considerable justice. Corona could not repress a smile at the remark, which expressed most exactly what she herself was thinking. "Frankly--I think it would be better to leave things alone. Do you not think so, too?" "How coolly you say that!" exclaimed Giovanni. "It is so easy for you--so hard for me. I would do anything you asked, and you will not ask anything, because you would make any sacrifice rather than accept one from me. Did you ever really love me, Corona? Is it possible that love can be killed in a day, by a word? I wonder whether there is any woman alive as cold as you are! Is it anything to you that I should suffer as I am suffering, every day?" "You cannot understand--" "No--that is true. I cannot understand. I was base, cowardly, cruel--I make no defence. But if I was all that, and more too, it was because I loved you, because the least suspicion drove me mad, because I could not reason, loving you as I did, any more than I can reason now. Oh, I love you too much, too wholly, too foolishly! I will try and change and be another man--so that I may at least look at you without going mad!" He rose to his feet and went towards the door. But Corona called him back. The bitterness of his words and the tone in which they were spoken hurt her, and made her realise for a moment what he was suffering. "Giovanni--dear--do not leave me so--I am unhappy, too." "Are you?" He had come to her side and stood looking down into her eyes. "Wretchedly unhappy." She turned her face away again. She could not help it. "You are unhappy, and yet I can do nothing. Why do you call me back?" "If I only could, if I only could!" she repeated in a low voice. There was silence for a few seconds, during which Giovanni could hear his heart beat loudly and irregularly. "If I could but move you a little!" he said at last, almost inaudibly. "If I could do anything, suffer anything for you--" She shook her head sorrowfully and then, as though afraid that she had given him pain, she took his hand and pressed it affectionately--affectionately, not lovingly. It was as cold as ice. He sighed and once more turned away. Just then the door opened, and old Pasquale appeared, his face pale with fright. "Eccellenza, a note, and the man says that Prince Montevarchi has just been murdered, and that the note is from Donna Faustina, and the police are in the Palazzo Montevarchi, and that the poor princess is dying, and--" Corona had risen quickly with a cry of astonishment. Giovanni had taken the letter and stood staring at the servant as though he believed that the man was mad. Then he glanced at the address and saw that it was for his wife. "Faustina is accused of the murder!" she exclaimed. "I must go to her at once. The carriage, Pasquale, instantly!" "Faustina Montevarchi--killed her own father!" cried Giovanni in the utmost astonishment. Corona thrust the note into his hands. It only contained a few words scrawled in an irregular hand as though written in great emotion. "Of course it is some horrible mistake," said Corona, "but I must go at once." "I will go with you. I may be able to give some help." Five minutes later, they were descending the stairs. The carriage was not ready, and leaving orders for it to follow them they went out into the street and took a passing cab. Under the influence of the excitement they acted together instinctively. During the short drive they exchanged but few words, and those only expressive of amazement at the catastrophe. At the Palazzo Montevarchi everything was already in confusion, the doors wide open, the servants hurrying aimlessly hither and thither with frightened faces. They had just been released from the preliminary examination held by the prefect of police. A party of gendarmes stood together in the antechamber talking, while one of their number mounted guard at the door with a drawn sabre, allowing no one to leave the house. A terrified footman led Giovanni and Corona to the great drawing-room. The vast chamber was lighted by a single lamp which stood upon a yellow marble pier-table, and cast dim shadows on the tapestry of the walls. The old-fashioned furniture was ranged stiffly around the room as usual; the air was damp and cold, not being warmed even by the traditional copper brazier. The voices of the group of persons collected within the circle of the light sounded hollow, and echoed strangely in the huge emptiness. Dominant above the rest were heard the hard tones of the prefect of police. "I can assure you," he was saying, "that I feel the greatest regret in being obliged to assert my decision." Giovanni and Corona came forward, and the rest made way for them. The prefect stood with his back to the light and to the table, like a man who is at bay. He was of middle height, very dark, and inclining to stoutness. His aquiline features and his eyes, round in shape, but half veiled by heavy lids, gave him something of the appearance of an owl. When he spoke, his voice was harsh and mechanical, and he always seemed to be looking just over the head of the person he addressed. He made no gestures and held himself very straight. Opposite him stood Faustina Montevarchi, her face luminously pale, her eyes almost wild in their fixed expression. She held her hands clasped before her, and her fingers worked nervously. Around her stood her brothers and their wives, apparently speechless with horror, crowding together like frightened sheep before the officer of the law. Neither her mother, nor Flavia, nor San Giacinto accompanied the rest. It would be impossible to imagine a number of persons more dumb and helpless with fear. "Oh Corona, save me!" cried Faustina, throwing herself into her friend's arms as soon as she saw her face. "Will you be good enough to explain what has occurred?" said Giovanni, confronting the prefect sternly. "Do you mean to tell me that you have accused this innocent child of murdering her father? You are mad, sir!" "Pardon me, Signor Principe, I am not mad, and no one can regret more than I what has occurred here," replied the other in loud, metallic tones. "I will give you the facts in two minutes. Prince Montevarchi was found dead an hour ago. He had been dead some time. He had been strangled by means of this pocket handkerchief--observe the stains of blood--which I hold as part of the evidence. The Signora Donna Faustina is admitted to be the last person who saw the prince alive. She admits, furthermore, that a violent scene occurred between her and her father this afternoon, in the course of which his Excellency struck his daughter, doubtless in the way of paternal correction--observe the bruise upon the young lady's mouth. There is also another upon her arm. It is clear that, being young and vigorous and remarkably well grown, she opposed violence to violence. She went behind him, for the prince was found dead in his chair, leaning forward upon the table, and she succeeded in knotting the handkerchief so firmly as to produce asphyxia superinduced by strangulation without suspension. All this is very clear. I have examined every member of the household, and have reluctantly arrived at the conclusion, most shocking no doubt to these pacifically disposed persons, that this young lady allowed herself to be so far carried away by her feelings as to take the life of her parent. Upon this charge I have no course but to arrest her person, the case being very clear, and to convey her to a safe place." Giovanni could scarcely contain his wrath while the prefect made this long speech, but he was resolved to listen to the account given without interrupting it. When the man had finished, however, his anger burst out. "And do you take nothing into consideration," he cried, "but the fact that the prince was strangled with that handkerchief, and that there had been some disagreement between him and his daughter in the course of the day? Do you mean to say, that you, who ought to be a man of sense, believe it possible that this delicate child could take a hale old gentleman by the throat and throttle him to death? It is madness, I say! It is absurd!" "It is not absurd," answered the prefect, whose mechanical tone never changed throughout the conversation. "There is no other explanation for the facts, and the facts are undeniable. Would you like to see the body?" "There are a thousand explanations each ten thousand times as reasonable as the one you offer. He was probably murdered by a servant out of spite, or for the sake of robbing him. You are so sure of your idea that I daresay you did not think of searching the room to see whether anything had been taken or not." "You are under a delusion. Everything has been searched. Moreover, it is quite well known that his deceased Excellency never kept money in the house. There was consequently nothing to take." "Then it was done out of spite, by a servant, unless some one got in through the window." "No one could get in through the window. It was done out of anger by this young lady." "I tell you it was not!" cried Giovanni, growing furious at the man's obstinacy. "There is reason to believe that it was," returned the prefect, perfectly unmoved. Giovanni stamped his foot upon the floor angrily and turned away. Faustina had drawn back a little and was leaning upon Corona's arm for support, while the latter spoke words of comfort in her ear, such words as she could find at such a time. A timid murmur of approval arose from the others every time Giovanni spoke, but none of them ventured to say anything distinctly. Giovanni was disgusted with them all and turned to the young girl herself. "Donna Faustina, will you tell me what you know?" She had seemed exhausted by the struggle she had already endured, but at Sant' Ilario's question, she straightened herself and came forward again one or two steps. Giovanni thought her eyes very strange, but she spoke collectedly and clearly. "I can only say what I have said before," she answered. "My father sent for me this afternoon, I should think about three o'clock. He spoke of my marriage, which he has been contemplating some time. I answered that I would not marry Prince Frangipani's son, because--" she hesitated. "Because?" "Because I love another man," she continued almost defiantly. "A man who is not a prince but an artist." A murmur of horror ran round the little group of the girl's relations. She glanced at them scornfully. "I am not ashamed of it," she said. "But I would not tell you unless it were necessary--to make you understand how angry he was. I forgot--he had called my mother, and she was there. He sent her away. Then he came back and struck me! I put my handkerchief to my mouth because it bled. He snatched it away and threw it on the floor. He took me by the arm--he was standing--I wrenched myself out of his hands and ran away, because I was afraid of him. I did not see him again. Beyond this I know nothing." Giovanni was struck by the concise way in which Faustina told her story. It was true that she had told it for the second time, but, while believing entirely in her innocence, he saw that her manner might easily have made a bad impression upon the prefect. When she had done, she stood still a moment. Then her hands dropped by her sides and she shrank back again to Corona who put her arm round the girl's waist and supported her. "I must say that my sister's tale seems clearly true," said the feeble voice of Ascanio Bellegra. His thin, fair beard seemed to tremble as he moved his lips. "Seems!" cried Corona indignantly. "It is true! How can any one be so mad as to doubt it?" "I do not deny its truth," said the prefect, speaking in the air. "I only say that the appearances are such as to oblige me to take steps--" "If you lay a hand on her--" began Giovanni. "Do not threaten me," interrupted the other calmly. "My men are outside." Giovanni had advanced towards him with a menacing gesture. Immediately Faustina's sisters-in-law began to whimper and cry with fright, while her brothers made undecided movements as though wishing to part the two angry men, but afraid to come within arm's length of either. "Giovanni!" exclaimed Corona. "Do not be violent--it is of no use. Hear me," she added, turning towards the prefect, and at the same time making a gesture that seemed to shield Faustina. "I am at your service, Signora Principessa, but my time is valuable." "Hear me--I will not detain you long. You are doing a very rash and dangerous thing in trying to arrest Donna Faustina, a thing you may repent of. You are no doubt acting as you believe right, but your heart must tell you that you are wrong. Look at her face. She is a delicate child. Has she the features of a murderess? She is brave against you, because you represent a horrible idea against which her whole nature revolts, but can you believe that she has the courage to do such a deed, the bad heart to will it, or the power to carry it out? Think of what took place. Her father sent for her suddenly. He insisted roughly on a marriage she detests. What woman would not put out her whole strength to resist such tyranny? What woman would submit quietly to be matched with a man she loathes? She said, 'I will not.' She even told her father and mother, together, that she loved another man. Her mother left the room, her mother, the only one from whom she might have expected support. She was alone with her father, and he was angry. Was he an enfeebled invalid, confined to his chair, broken with years, incapable of an effort? Ask his children. We all knew him well. He was not very old, he was tall, erect, even strong for his years. He was angry, beside himself with disappointment. He rises from his chair, he seizes her by the arm, he strikes her in the face with his other hand. You say that he struck her when he was seated. It is impossible--could she not have drawn back, avoiding the blow? Would the blow itself have had such force? No. He was on his feet, a tall, angry man, holding her by one arm. Is it conceivable that she, a frail child, could have had the physical strength to force him back to his seat, to hold him there while she tied that handkerchief round his neck, to resist and suppress his struggles until he was dead? Do you think such a man would die easily? Do you think that to send him out of the world it would be enough to put your fingers to his throat--such little fingers as these?" she held up Faustina's passive hand in her own, before their eyes. "A man does not die in an instant by strangling. He struggles, he strikes desperate blows, he turns to the right and the left, twisting himself with all his might. Could this child have held him? I ask it of your common sense. I ask of your heart whether a creature that God has made so fair, so beautiful, so innocent, could do such terrible work. The woman who could do such things would bear the sign of her badness in her face, and the fear of what she had done in her soul. She would tremble, she would have tried to escape, she would hesitate in her story, she would contradict herself, break down, attempt to shed false tears, act as only a woman who has committed a first great crime could act. And this child stands here, submitted to this fearful ordeal, defended by none, but defending herself with the whole innocence of her nature, the glory of truth in her eyes, the self-conscious courage of a stainless life in her heart. Is this assumed? Is this put on? You have seen murderers--it is your office to see them--did you ever see one like her? Do you not know the outward tokens of guilt when they are before your eyes? You would do a thing that is monstrous in absurdity, monstrous in cruelty, revolting to reason, outrageous to every instinct of human nature. Search, inquire, ask questions, arrest whom you will, but leave this child in peace; this child, with her angel face, her fearless eyes, her guiltless heart!" Encouraged by Corona's determined manner as well as by the good sense of her arguments, the timid flock of relations expressed their approval audibly. Giovanni looked at his wife in some surprise; for he had never heard her make so long a speech before, and had not suspected her of the ability she displayed. He was proud of her in that moment and moved nearer to her, as though ready to support every word she had uttered. The prefect alone stood unmoved by her eloquence. He was accustomed in his profession to hear far more passionate appeals to his sensibilities, and he was moreover a man who, being obliged generally to act quickly, had acquired the habit of acting upon the first impulse of his intelligence. For a moment his heavy lids were raised a little, either in astonishment or in admiration, but no other feature of his face betrayed that he was touched. "Signora Principessa," he said in his usual tone, "those are arguments which may be used with propriety by the persons who will defend the accused before the tribunals--" Giovanni laughed in his face. "Do you suppose, seriously, that Donna Faustina will ever be brought to trial?" he asked scornfully. The prefect kept his temper wonderfully well. "It is my business to suppose so," he answered. "I am not the law, nor his Eminence either, and it is not for me to weigh the defence or to listen to appeals for mercy. I act upon my own responsibility, and it is for me to judge whether the facts are likely to support me. My reputation depends upon my judgment and upon nothing else. The fate of the accused depends upon a number of considerations with which I have nothing to do. I must tell you plainly that this interview must come to an end, I am very patient. I wish to overlook nothing. Arguments are of no avail. If there is any better evidence to offer against any one else in this house, I am here to take note of it." He looked coolly round the circle of listeners. Faustina's relations shrank back a little under his glance. "Not being able to find any person here who appears more likely to be guilty, and having found enough to justify me in my course, I intend to remove this young lady at once to the Termini." "You shall not!" said Giovanni, placing himself in front of him in a threatening attitude. "If you attempt anything of the sort, I will have you in prison yourself before morning." "You do not know what you are saying, Signor Principe. You cannot oppose me. I have an armed force here to obey my orders, and if you attempt forcible opposition I shall be obliged to take you also, very much against my will. Donna Faustina Montevarchi, I have the honour to arrest you. I trust you will make no resistance." The semi-comic phrase fell from his lips in the professional tone; in speaking of the arrest as an honour to himself, he was making an attempt to be civil according to his lights. He made a step forward in the direction of the young girl, but Giovanni seized him firmly by the wrist. He made no effort to release himself, however, but stood still. "Signor Principe, be good enough to let go of my hand." "You shall not touch her," answered Giovanni, not relinquishing his grasp. He was beginning to be dangerous. "Signor Principe, release me at once!" said the prefect in a commanding tone. "Very well, I will call my men," he added, producing a small silver whistle with his free hand and putting it to his lips. "If I call them, I shall have to send you to prison for hindering me in the execution of my duty," he said, fixing his eyes on Giovanni and preparing to sound the call. Giovanni's blood was up, and he would not have let the man go. At that moment, however, Faustina broke from Corona's arms and sprang forward. With one hand she pushed back Sant' Ilario; with the other she seized the whistle. "I will go with you!" she cried, speaking to the prefect. "I will go with him!" she repeated, turning to Giovanni. "It is a horrible mistake, but it is useless to oppose him any longer. I will go, I say!" An hysterical chorus of cries from her relations greeted this announcement. Giovanni made a last effort to prevent her from fulfilling her intention. He was too much excited to see how hopeless the situation really was, and his sense of justice was revolted at the thought of the indignity. "Donna Faustina, I implore you!" he exclaimed. "I can still prevent this outrage--you must not go. I will find the cardinal and explain the mistake--he will send an order at once." "You are mistaken," answered the prefect. "He will do nothing of the kind. Besides, you cannot leave this house without my permission. The doors are all guarded." "But you cannot refuse that request," objected Corona, who had not spoken during the altercation. "It will not take half an hour for my husband to see his Eminence and get the order--" "Nevertheless I refuse," replied the official firmly. "Donna Faustina must go with me at once. You are interfering uselessly and making a useless scandal. My mind is made up." "Then I will go with her," said Corona, pressing the girl to her side and bestowing a contemptuous glance on the cowering figures around her. By this time her sisters-in-law had fallen into their respective husband's arms, and it was hard to say whether the men or the women were more hopelessly hysterical. Giovanni relinquished the contest reluctantly, seeing that he was altogether overmatched by the prefect's soldiers. "I will go too," he said. "You cannot object to our taking Donna Faustina in our carriage." "I do not object to that. But male visitors are not allowed inside the Termini prison after dark. The Signora Principessa may spend the night there if it is her pleasure. I will put a gendarme in your carriage to avoid informality." "I presume you will accept my promise to conduct Donna Faustina to the place," observed Giovanni. The prefect hesitated. "It is informal," he said at last, "but to oblige you I will do it. You give your word?" "Yes--since you are able to use force. We act under protest. You will remember that." Faustina's courage did not forsake her at the last moment. She kissed each of her brothers and each of her sisters-in-law as affectionately as though they had offered to bear her company. There were many loud cries and sobs and protestations of devotion, but not one proposed to go with her. The only one who would have been bold enough was Flavia, and even if she had been present she would not have had the heart to perform such an act of unselfishness. Faustina and Corona, Giovanni and the prefect, left the room together. "I will have you in prison before morning," said Sant' Ilario fiercely, in the ear of the official, as they reached the outer hall. The prefect made no reply, but raised his shoulders almost imperceptibly and smiled for the first time, as he pointed silently to the gendarmes. The latter formed into an even rank and tramped down the stairs after the four persons whom they accompanied. In a few minutes the whole party were on their way to the Termini, Faustina with her friends in Sant' Ilario's carriage, the prefect in his little brougham, the soldiers on their horses, trotting steadily along in a close squad. Faustina sat leaning her head upon Corona's shoulder, while Giovanni looked out of the window into the dark streets, his rage boiling within him, and all the hotter because he was powerless to change the course of events. From time to time he uttered savage ejaculations which promised ill for the prefect's future peace, either in this world or in the next, but the sound of the wheels rolling upon the uneven paving-stones prevented his voice from reaching the two women. "Dear child," said Corona, "do not be frightened. You shall be free to-night or in the morning--I will not leave you." Faustina was silent, but pressed her friend's hand again and again, as though she understood. She herself was overcome by a strange wonderment which made her almost incapable of appreciating what happened to her. She felt very much as she had felt once before, on the night of the insurrection, when she had found herself lying upon the pavement before the half-ruined barracks, stunned by the explosion, unable for a time to collect her senses, supported only by her physical elasticity, which was yet too young to be destroyed by any moral shock. CHAPTER XXII. On the following morning all Rome rang with the news that the Saracinesca had lost their title, and that Faustina Montevarchi had murdered her father. No one connected the two events, but the shock to the public mind was so tremendous that almost any incredible tale would have been believed. The story, as it was generally told, set forth that Faustina had gone mad and had strangled her father in his sleep. Every one agreed in affirming that he had been found dead with her handkerchief tied round his neck. It was further stated that the young girl was no longer in the Palazzo Montevarchi, but had been transferred to the women's prison at the Termini, pending further examination into the details of the case. The Palazzo Montevarchi was draped in black, and before night funeral hatchments were placed upon the front of the parish church bearing the Montevarchi arms. No one was admitted to the palace upon any pretext whatever, though it was said that San Giacinto and Flavia had spent the night there. No member of the family had been seen by any one, and nobody seemed to know exactly whence the various items of information had been derived. Strange to say, every word of what was repeated so freely was true, excepting that part of the tale which accused Faustina of having done the deed. What had taken place up to the time when Corona and Giovanni had come may be thus briefly told. Prince Montevarchi had been found dead by the servant who came to bring a lamp to the study, towards evening, when it grew dark. As soon as the alarm was given a scene of indescribable confusion followed, which lasted until the prefect of police arrived, accompanied by a party of police officials. The handkerchief was examined and identified. Thereupon, in accordance with the Roman practice of that day, the prefect had announced his determination of taking Faustina into custody. The law took it for granted that the first piece of circumstantial evidence which presented itself must be acted upon with the utmost promptitude. A few questions had shown immediately that Faustina was the last person who had seen Montevarchi alive. The young girl exhibited a calmness which surprised every one. She admitted that her father had been angry with her and had struck her, but she denied all knowledge of his death. It is sufficient to say that she fearlessly told the truth, so fearlessly as to prejudice even her own family with regard to her. Even the blood on the handkerchief was against her, though she explained that it was her own, and although the bruise on her lip bore out the statement. The prefect was inexorable. He explained that Faustina could be taken privately to the Termini, and that the family might use its influence on the next day to procure her immediate release, but that his duty compelled him for the present to secure her person, that he was responsible, that he was only doing his duty, and so forth and so on. The consternation of the family may be imagined. The princess broke down completely under what seemed very like a stroke of paralysis. San Giacinto and Flavia were not to be found at their house, and as the carriage had not returned, nobody knew where they were. The wives of Faustina's brothers shut themselves up in their rooms and gave way to hysterical tears, while the brothers themselves seemed helpless to do anything for their sister. Seeing herself abandoned by every one Faustina had sent for Corona Saracinesca. It was the wisest thing she could have done. In a quarter of an hour Corona and her husband entered the room together. The violent scene which followed has been already described, in which Giovanni promised the prefect of police that if he persisted in his intention of arresting Faustina he should himself be lodged in the Carceri Nuove in twelve hours. But the prefect had got the better of the situation, being accompanied by an armed force which Giovanni was powerless to oppose. All that could be obtained had been that Giovanni and Corona should take Faustina to the Termini in their carriage, and that Corona should stay with the unfortunate young girl all night if she wished to do so. Giovanni could not be admitted. The prison of the Termini was under the administration of an order of nuns devoted especially to the care of prisoners. The prefect arrived in his own carriage simultaneously with the one which conveyed his prisoner and her friends. As the gate was opened and one of the sisters appeared, he whispered a few words into her ear. She looked grave at first, and then, when she saw Faustina's angel face, she shook her head incredulously. The prefect had accomplished his duty, however. The prison-gates closed after the two ladies, and the sentinel outside resumed his walk, while the carriages drove away, the one containing the officer of the law and the other Giovanni, who had himself driven at once to the Vatican, in spite of the late hour. The great cardinal received him but, to his amazement, refused an order of release. The sister who admitted Corona and Faustina took the latter's hand kindly and looked into her face by the light of the small lantern she carried. "It is some dreadful mistake, my child," she said. "But I have no course but to obey. You are Donna Faustina Montevarchi?" "Yes--this is the Princess Sant' Ilario." "Will you come with me? I will give you the best room we have--it is not very like a prison." "This is," said Faustina, shuddering at the sight of the massive stone walls, quite as much as from the dampness of the night air. "Courage, dear!" whispered Corona, drawing the girl's slight figure close to her and arranging the mantle upon her shoulders. But Corona herself was uneasy as to the result of the ghastly adventure, and she looked anxiously forward into the darkness beyond the nun's lantern. At last they found themselves in a small whitewashed chamber, so small that it was brightly lighted by the two wicks of a brass oil-lamp on the table. The nun left them alone, at Corona's request, promising to return in the course of an hour. Faustina sat down upon the edge of the little bed, and Corona upon a chair beside her. Until now, the unexpected excitement of what had passed during the last three or four hours had sustained the young girl. Everything that had happened had seemed to be a part of a dream until she found herself at last in the cell of the Termini prison, abandoned by every one save Corona. Her courage broke down. She threw herself back upon the pillow and burst into tears. Corona did not know what to do, but tried to comfort her as well as she could, wondering inwardly what would have happened had the poor child been brought to such a place alone. "What have I done, that such things should happen to me?" cried Faustina at last, sitting up and staring wildly at her friend. Her small white hands lay helplessly in her lap and her rich brown hair was beginning to be loosened and to fall upon her shoulders. The tears stood in Corona's eyes. It seemed to her infinitely pathetic that this innocent creature should have been chosen as the victim to expiate so monstrous a crime. "It will be all cleared up in the morning," she answered, trying to speak cheerfully or at least hopefully. "It is an abominable mistake of the prefect's. I will not leave you, dear--take heart, we will talk--the nun will bring you something to eat--the night will soon pass." "In prison!" exclaimed Faustina, in a tone of horror and despair, not heeding what Corona said. "Try and fancy it is not--" "And my father dead!" She seemed suddenly to realise that he was gone for ever. "Poor papa! poor papa!" she moaned. "Oh, I did not mean to be undutiful--indeed I did not--and I can never tell you so now--" "You must not reproach yourself, darling," said Corona, trying to soothe her and to draw the pitiful pale face to her shoulder, while she wound her arm tenderly about the young girl's waist. "Pray for him, Faustina, but do not reproach yourself too much. After all, dear, he was unkind to you--" "Oh, do not say that--he is dead!" She lowered her voice almost to a whisper as she spoke, and an expression of awe came over her features. "He is dead, Corona. I shall never see him again--oh, why did I not love him more? I am frightened when I think that he is dead--who did it?" The question came suddenly, and Faustina started and shuddered. Corona pressed her to her side and smoothed her hair gently. She felt that she must say something, but she hardly expected that Faustina would understand reason. She gathered her energy, however, to make the best effort in her power. "Listen to me, Faustina," she said, in a tone of quiet authority, "and try and see all this as I see it. It is not right that you should reproach yourself, for you have had no share in your father's death, and if you parted in anger it was his fault, not yours. He is dead, and there is nothing for you to do but to pray that he may rest in peace. You have been accused unjustly of a deed which any one might see you were physically incapable of doing. You will be released from this place to-morrow morning, if not during the night. One thing is absolutely necessary--you must be calm and quiet, or you will have brain fever in a few hours. Do not think I am heartless, dear. A worse thing might have happened to you. You have been suspected by an ignorant man who will pay dearly for his mistake; you might have been suspected by those you love." Corona sighed, and her voice trembled with the last words. To her, Faustina was suffering far more from the shock to her sensibilities than from any real grief. She knew that she had not loved her father, but the horror of his murder and the fright at being held accountable for it were almost enough to drive her mad. And yet she could not be suffering what Corona had suffered in being suspected by Giovanni, she had not that to lose which Corona had lost, the dominating passion of her life had not been suddenly burnt out in the agony of an hour, she was only the victim of a mistake which could have no consequences, which would leave no trace behind. But Faustina shivered and turned paler still at Corona's words. "By those I love? Ah no! Not by him--by them!" The blood rushed to her white face, and her hand fell on her friend's shoulder. Corona heard and knew that the girl was thinking of Anastase. She wondered vaguely whether the hot-headed soldier artist had learned the news and what he would do when he found that Faustina was lodged in a prison. "And yet--perhaps--oh no! It is impossible!" Her sweet, low voice broke again, and was lost in passionate sobbing. For a long time Corona could do nothing to calm her. The tears might be a relief to the girl's overwrought faculties, but they were most distressing to hear and see. "Do you love him very much, dear?" asked Corona, when the paroxysm began to subside. "I would die for him, and he would die for me," answered Faustina simply, but a happy smile shone through her grief that told plainly how much dearer to her was he who was left than he who was dead. "Tell me about him," said Corona softly. "He is a friend of mine--" "Indeed he is! You do not know how he worships you. I think that next to me in the world--but then, of course, he could not love you--besides, you are married." Corona could not help smiling, and yet there was a sting in the words, of which Faustina could not dream. Why could not Giovanni have taken this child's straight-forward, simple view, which declared such a thing impossible--because Corona was married. What a wealth of innocent belief in goodness was contained in that idea! The princess began to discover a strange fascination in finding out what Faustina felt for this man, whom she, Corona, had been suspected of loving. What could it be like to love such a man? He was good-looking, clever, brave, even interesting, perhaps; but to love him--Corona suddenly felt that interest in the analysis of his character which is roused in us when we are all at once brought into the confidence of some one who can tell by experience what we should have felt with regard to a third person, who has come very near to our lives, if he or she had really become a part of our existence. Faustina's present pain and sense of danger momentarily disappeared as she was drawn into talking of what absorbed her whole nature, and Corona saw that by leading the conversation in that direction she might hope to occupy the girl's thoughts. Faustina seemed to forget her misfortunes in speaking of Gouache, and Corona listened, and encouraged her to go on. The strong woman who had suffered so much saw gradually unfolded before her a series of pictures, constituting a whole that was new to her. She comprehended for the first time in her life the nature of an innocent girl's love, and there was something in what she learned that softened her and brought the moisture into her dark eyes. She looked at the delicate young creature beside her, seated upon the rough bed, her angelic loveliness standing out against the cold background of the whitewashed wall. The outline seemed almost vaporous, as though melting into the transparency of the quiet air; the gentle brown eyes were at once full of suffering and full of love; the soft, thick hair fell in disorder upon her shoulders, in that exquisite disorder that belongs to beautiful things in nature when they are set free and fall into the position which is essentially their own; her white fingers, refined and expressive, held Corona's slender olive hand, pressing it and moving as they touched it, with every word she spoke. Corona almost felt that some spiritual, half divine being had glided down from another world to tell her of an angel's love. The elder woman thought of her own life and compared it with what she saw. Sold to a decrepit old husband who had worshipped her in strange, pathetic fashion of his own, she had spent five years in submitting to an affection she loathed, enduring it to the very end, and sacrificing every instinct of her nature in the performance of her duty. Liberated at last, she had given herself up to her love for Giovanni, in a passion of the strong kind that never comes in early youth. She asked herself what had become of that passion, and whether it could ever be revived. In any case it was something wholly different from the love of which Faustina was speaking. She had fought against it when it came, with all her might; being gone, it had left her cold and indifferent to all she could still command, incapable of even pretending to love. It had passed through her life as a whirlwind through a deep forest, and its track was like a scar. What Faustina knew, she could never have known, the sudden growth within her of something beautiful against which there was no need to struggle, the whole-hearted devotion from the first, the joy of a love that had risen suddenly like the dawn of a fair day, the unspeakable happiness of loving intensely in perfect innocence of the world, of giving her whole soul at once and for ever, unconscious that there could be anything else to give. "I would die for him, and he would die for me," Faustina had said, knowing that her words were true. Corona would die for Giovanni now, no doubt, but not because she loved him any longer. She would sacrifice herself for what had been, for the memory of it, for the bitterness of having lost it and of feeling that it could not return. That was a state very different from Faustina's; it was pain, not happiness, despair, not joy, emptiness, not fulness. Her eyes grew sad, and she sighed bitterly as though oppressed by a burden from which she could not escape. Faustina's future seemed to her to be like a beautiful vision among the clouds of sunrise, her own like the reflection of a mournful scene in a dark pool of stagnant water. The sorrow of her life rose in her eyes, until the young girl saw it and suddenly ceased speaking. It was like a reproach to her, for her young nature had already begun to forget its trouble in the sweetness of its own dream. Corona understood the sudden silence, and her expression changed, for she felt that if she dwelt upon what was nearest to her heart she could give but poor consolation. "You are sad," said Faustina. "It is not for me--what is it?" "No. It is not for you, dear child." Corona looked at the young girl for a moment and tried to smile. Then she rose from the chair and turned away, pretending to trim the brass oil-lamp with the little metal snuffers that hung from it by a chain. The tears blinded her. She rested her hands upon the table and bent her head. Faustina watched her in surprise, then slipped from her place on the bed and stood beside her, looking up tenderly into the sad dark eyes from which the crystal drops welled up and trickled down, falling upon the rough deal boards. "What is it, dear?" asked the young girl. "Will you not tell me!" Corona turned and threw her arms round her, pressing her to her breast, almost passionately. Faustina did not understand what was happening. "I never saw you cry before!" she exclaimed in innocent astonishment, as she tried to brush away the tears from her friend's face. "Ah Faustina! There are worse things in the world than you are suffering, child!" Then she made a great effort and overcame the emotion that had taken possession of her. She was ashamed to have played such a part when she had come to the place to give comfort to another. "It is nothing," she said, after a moment's pause. "I think I am nervous--at least, I am very foolish to let myself cry when I ought to be taking care of you." A long silence followed, which was broken at last by the nun, who entered the room, bringing such poor food as the place afforded. She repeated her assurance that Faustina's arrest was the result of a mistake, and that she would be certainly liberated in the morning. Then, seeing that the two friends appeared to be preoccupied, she bade them good-night and went away. It was the longest night Corona remembered to have ever passed. For a long time they talked a little, and at length Faustina fell asleep, exhausted by all she had suffered, while Corona sat beside her, watching her regular breathing and envying her ability to rest. She herself could not close her eyes, though she could not explain her wakefulness. At last she lay down upon the other bed and tried to forget herself. After many hours she lost consciousness for a time, and then awoke suddenly, half stifled by the sickening smell of the lamp which had gone out, filling the narrow room with the odour of burning oil. It was quite dark, and the profound silence was broken only by the sound of Faustina's evenly-drawn breath. The poor child was too weary to be roused by the fumes that had disturbed Corona's rest. But Corona rose and groped her way to the window, which she opened as noiselessly as she could. Heavy iron bars were built into the wall upon the outside, and she grasped the cold iron with a sense of relief as she looked out at the quiet stars, and tried to distinguish the trees which, as she knew, were planted on the other side of the desolate grass-grown square, along the old wall that stood there, at that time, like a fortification between the Termini and the distant city. Below the window the sentry tramped slowly up and down in his beat, his steps alone breaking the intense stillness of the winter night. Corona realised that she was in a prison. There was something in the discomfort which was not repugnant to her, as she held the grating in her fingers and let the cold air blow upon her face. After all, she thought, her life would seem much the same in such a place, in a convent, perhaps, where she could be alone all day, all night, for ever. She could not be more unhappy behind those bars than she had often been in the magnificent palaces in which her existence had been chiefly passed. Nothing gave her pleasure, nothing interested her, nothing had the power to distract her mind from the aching misery that beset it. She said to herself a hundred times a day that such apathy was unworthy of her, and she blamed herself when she found that even the loss of the great Saracinesca suit left her indifferent. She did no good to herself and none to any one else, so far as she could see, unless it were good to allow Giovanni to love her, now that she no longer felt a thrill of pleasure at his coming nor at the sound of his voice. At least she had been honest. She could say that, for she had not deceived him. She had forgiven him, but was it her fault if he had destroyed that which he now most desired? Was it her fault that forgiveness did not mean love? Her suffering was not the selfish pain of wounded vanity, for Giovanni's despair would have healed such a wound by showing her the strength of his passion. There was no resentment in her heart, either, for she longed to love him. But even the habit of loving was gone, broken away and forgotten in the sharp agony of an hour. She had done her best to bring it back, she had tried to repeat phrases that had once come from her heart with the conviction of great joy, each time they had been spoken. But the words were dead and meant nothing, or if they had a meaning they told her of the change in herself. She was willing to argue against it, to say again and again that she had no right to be so changed, that there had been enough to make any man suspicious, that she would have despised him had he overlooked such convincing evidence. Could a man love truly and not have some jealousy in his nature? Could a man have such overwhelming proof given him of guilt in the woman he adored and yet show nothing, any more than if she had been a stranger? But the argument was not satisfactory, nor conclusive. If human ills could be healed by the use of logic, there would long since have been no unhappiness left in the world. Is there anything easier than to deceive one's self when one wishes to be deceived? Nothing, surely, provided that the inner reality of ourselves which we call our hearts consents to the deception. But if it will not consent, then there is no help in all the logic that has been lavished upon the philosophy of a dozen ages. Her slender fingers tightened upon the freezing bars, and once more, in the silent night, her tears flowed down as she looked up at the stars through the prison window. The new condition of her life sought an expression she had hitherto considered as weak and despicable, and against which she struggled even now. There was no relief in weeping, it brought her no sense of rest, no respite from the dull consciousness of her situation; and yet she could not restrain the drops that fell so fast upon her hands. She suffered always, without any intermittence, as people do who have little imagination, with few but strong passions and a constant nature. There are men and women whose active fancy is able to lend a romantic beauty to misfortune, which gives some pleasure even to themselves, or who can obtain some satisfaction, if they are poets, by expressing their pain in grand or tender language. There are others to whom sorrow is but a reality, for which all expression seems inadequate. Corona was such a woman, too strong to suffer little, too unimaginative to suffer poetically. There are those who might say that she exaggerated the gravity of the position, that, since Giovanni had always been faithful to her, had acknowledged his error and repented of it so sincerely, there was no reason why she should not love him as before. The answer is very simple. The highest kind of love not only implies the highest trust in the person loved, but demands it in return; the two conditions are as necessary to each other as body and soul, so that if one is removed from the other, the whole love dies. Our relations with our fellow-creatures are reciprocal in effect, whatever morality may require in theory, from the commonest intercourse between mere acquaintances to the bond between man and wife. An honest man will always hesitate to believe another unless he himself is believed. Humanity gives little, on the whole, unless it expects a return; still less will men continue to give when their gifts have been denounced to them as false, no matter what apology is offered after the mistake has been discovered. Corona was very human, and being outwardly cold, she was inwardly more sensitive to suspicion than very expansive women can ever be. With women who express very readily what they feel, the expression often assumes such importance as to deceive them into believing their passions to be stronger than they are. Corona had given all, love, devotion, faithfulness, and yet, because appearances had been against her, Giovanni had doubted her. He had cut the plant down at the very root, and she had nothing more to give. Faustina moved in her sleep. Corona softly closed the window and once more lay down to rest. The hours seemed endless as she listened for the bells. At last the little room grew gray and she could distinguish the furniture in the gloom. Then all at once the door opened, and the nun entered, bearing her little lantern and peering over it to try and see whether the occupants of the chamber were awake. In the shadow behind her Corona could distinguish the figure of a man. "The prince is here," said the sister in a low voice, as she saw that Corona's eyes were open. The latter glanced at Faustina, whose childlike sleep was not interrupted. She slipped from the bed and went out into the corridor. The nun would have led the two down to the parlour, but Corona would not go so far from Faustina. At their request she opened an empty cell a few steps farther on, and left Giovanni and his wife alone in the gray dawn. Corona looked eagerly into his eyes for some news concerning the young girl. He took her hand and kissed it. "My darling--that you should have spent the night in such a place as this!" he exclaimed. "Never mind me. Is Faustina at liberty? Did you see the cardinal?" "I saw him." Giovanni shook his head. "And do you mean to say that he would not give the order at once?" "Nothing would induce him to give it. The prefect got there before me, and I was kept waiting half an hour while they talked the matter over. The cardinal declared to me that he knew there had been an enmity between Faustina and her father concerning her love for Gouache--" "Her love for Gouache!" repeated Corona slowly, looking into his eyes. She could not help it. Giovanni turned pale and looked away as he continued. "Yes, and he said that the evidence was very strong, since no one had been known to enter the house, and the servants were clearly innocent--not one of them betrayed the slightest embarrassment." "In other words, he believes that Faustina actually did it?" "It looks like it," said Giovanni in a low voice. "Giovanni!" she seized his arm. "Do you believe it, too?" "I will believe whatever you tell me." "She is as innocent as I!" cried Corona, her eyes blazing with indignation. Giovanni understood more from the words than she meant to convey. "Will you never forgive?" he asked sadly. "I did not mean that--I meant Faustina. Giovanni--you must get her away from here. You can, if you will." "I will do much for you," he answered quietly. "It is not for me. It is for an unfortunate child who is the victim of a horrible mistake. I have comforted her by promising that she should be free this morning. She will go mad if she is kept here." "Whatever I do, I do for you, and I will do nothing for any one else. For you or for no one, but I must know that it is really for you." Corona understood and turned away. It was broad daylight now, as she looked through the grating of the window, watching the people who passed, without seeing them. "What is Faustina Montevarchi to me, compared with your love?" Giovanni asked. Something in the tone of his voice made her look at him. She saw the intensity of his feeling in his eyes, and she wondered that he should try to tempt her to love him with, such an insignificant bribe--with the hope of liberating the young girl. She did not understand that he was growing desperate. Had she known what was in his mind she might have made a supreme effort to deceive herself into the belief that he was still to her what he had been so long. But she did not know. "For the sake of her innocence, Giovanni!" she exclaimed. "Can you let a child like that suffer so? I am sure, if you really would you could manage it, with your influence. Do you not see that I am suffering too, for the girl's sake?" "Will you say that it is for your sake?" "For my sake--if you will," she cried almost impatiently. "For your sake, then," he answered. "Remember that it is for you, Corona." Before she could answer, he had left the room, without another word, without so much as touching her hand. Corona gazed sadly at the open door, and then returned to Faustina. An hour later the nun entered the cell, with a bright smile on her face. "Your carriage is waiting for you--for you both," she said, addressing the princess. "Donna Faustina is free to return to her mother." CHAPTER XXIII. When Giovanni Saracinesca had visited Cardinal Antonelli on the previous evening, he had been as firmly persuaded that Faustina was innocent, as Corona herself, and was at first very much astonished by the view the great man took of the matter. But as the latter developed the case, the girl's guilt no longer seemed impossible, or even improbable. The total absence of any ostensible incentive to the murder gave Faustina's quarrel with her father a very great importance, which was further heightened by the nature of the evidence. There had been high words, in the course of which the Princess Montevarchi had left the room, leaving her daughter alone with the old man. No one had seen him alive after that moment, and he had been found dead, evidently strangled with her handkerchief. The fact that Faustina had a bruise on her arm and a cut on her lip pointed to the conclusion that a desperate struggle had taken place. The cardinal argued that, although she might not have had the strength to do the deed if the contest had begun when both were on their feet, it was by no means impossible that so old a man might have been overcome by a young and vigorous girl, if she had attacked him when he was in his chair, and was prevented from rising by the table before him. As for the monstrosity of the act, the cardinal merely smiled when Giovanni alluded to it. Had not fathers been murdered by their children before, and in Rome? The argument had additional weight, when Giovanni remembered Faustina's wild behaviour on the night of the insurrection. A girl who was capable of following a soldier into action, and who had spent hours in searching for him after such an appalling disaster as the explosion of the Serristori barracks, might well be subject to fits of desperate anger, and it was by no means far from likely, if her father had struck her in the face from his place at the table, that she should have laid violent hands upon him, seizing him by the throat and strangling him with her handkerchief. Her coolness afterwards might be only a part of her odd nature, for she was undoubtedly eccentric. She might be mad, said the cardinal, shaking his head, but there was every probability that she was guilty. In those days there was no appeal from the statesman's decisions in such matters. Faustina would remain a prisoner until she could be tried for the crime. His Eminence was an early riser, and was not altogether surprised that Giovanni should come to him at such an hour, especially as he knew that the Princess Sant' Ilario had spent the night with Faustina in the Termini prison. He was altogether taken aback, however, by Giovanni's manner, and by the communication he made. "I had the honour of telling your Eminence last night, that Donna Faustina Montevarchi was innocent," began Giovanni, who refused the offer of a seat. "I trusted that she might be liberated immediately, but you have determined otherwise. I am not willing that an innocent person should suffer unjustly. I have come, therefore, to surrender myself to justice in this case." The cardinal stared, and an expression of unmitigated astonishment appeared upon his delicate olive features, while his nervous hands grasped the arms of his chair. "You!" he cried. "I, your Eminence. I will explain myself. Yesterday the courts delivered their verdict, declaring that my cousin San Giacinto is Prince Saracinesca, instead of my father, and transferring to him all our hereditary property. The man who found out that there was a case against us, and caused it to be brought to trial, was Prince Montevarchi. You may perhaps understand my resentment against him. If you recollect the evidence which was detailed to you last night you will see that it was quite possible for me to go to him without being observed. The door chanced to be open, and there was no one in the hall. I am perfectly acquainted with the house. Several hours elapsed between the time when Donna Faustina left her father and the moment when he was found dead in his chair. You can understand how I could enter the room unseen, how angry words naturally must have arisen between us, and how, losing my self-control, I could have picked up Donna Faustina's handkerchief which, as she says, lay upon the floor, and knotted it effectually round the old man's neck. What could he do in my hands? The study is far from the other rooms the family inhabit, and is near the hall. To go quietly out would not have been a difficult matter for any one who knew the house. Your Eminence knows as well as I the shallowness of circumstantial evidence." "And do you tell me, calmly, like this, that you murdered a helpless old man out of revenge?" asked the cardinal, half-indignantly, half-incredulously. "Would I surrender myself as the murderer, for a caprice?" inquired Giovanni, who was very pale. The cardinal looked at him and was silent for a few moments. He was puzzled by what he heard, and yet his common sense told him that he had no course but to liberate Faustina and send Giovanni to prison. He felt, too, that he ought to experience an instinctive repulsion, for the man before him, who, by his own showing, had been guilty of such a horrible crime; but he was conscious of no such sensation. He was a man of exceedingly quick and true intuitions, who judged the persons with whom he had business very accurately. There was a lack of correspondence between his intelligence and his feelings which roused his curiosity. "You have told me a very strange story," he said. "Less strange than the one your Eminence has believed since last night," returned Giovanni calmly. "I do not know. It is more easy for me to believe that the girl was momentarily out of her mind than that you, whom I have known all my life, should have done such a thing. Besides, in telling me your story, you have never once positively asserted that you did it. You have only explained that it would have been possible for a man so disposed to accomplish the murder unsuspected." "Is a man obliged to incriminate himself directly? It seems to me that in giving myself up I have done all that a man's conscience can possibly require--outside of the confessional. I shall be tried, and my lawyer will do what he can to obtain my acquittal." "That is poor logic. Whether you confess or not, you have accused yourself in a way that must tell against you very strongly. You really leave me no choice." "Your Eminence has only to do what I request, to liberate Donna Faustina and to send me to prison." "You are a very strange man," said the cardinal in a musing tone, as he leaned back in his chair and scrutinised Giovanni's pale, impenetrable face. "I am a desperate man, that is all." "Will you give me your word of honour that Faustina Montevarchi is innocent?" "Yes," answered Giovanni without the slightest hesitation, and meeting the gaze of the cardinal's bright eyes unflinchingly. The latter paused a moment, and then turned in his chair, and taking a piece of paper wrote a few words upon it. Then he rang a little hand-bell that stood beside him. His servant entered, as he was folding and sealing the note. "To the Termini prison," he said. "The messenger had better take my carriage," observed Giovanni. "I shall not need it again." "Take Prince Sant' Ilario's carriage," added the cardinal, and the man left the room. "And now," he continued, "will you be good enough to tell me what I am to do with you?" "Send me to the Carceri Nuove, or to any convenient place." "I will do nothing that can be an injury to you hereafter," answered the statesman. "Something tells me that you have had nothing to do with this dreadful murder. But you must know that though you may deceive me--I am not omniscient--I will not tolerate any contempt of the ways of justice. You have surrendered yourself as the criminal, and I intend to take you at your word." "I ask for nothing else. Put me where you please, do what you please with me. It matters very little." "You act like a man who has had an unfortunate love affair," remarked the cardinal. "It is true that you have just lost your fortune, and that may account for it. But I repeat that, whatever your motives may be, you shall not trifle with the law. You wish to be a prisoner. The law will oblige you so far as to comply with your request. I warn you that, after this, you can only obtain your freedom through a proper trial." "Pray let it be so. My motives can be of no importance. The law shall judge the facts and give its verdict." "The law will certainly do so. In the meantime, you will spend the day in a room of my apartments, and this evening, when it is dark, you will be quietly transferred to a place of safety--and secrecy. If the real murderer is ever found, I do not wish your life to have been ruined by such a piece of folly as I believe you are committing. You say you are a desperate man, and you are acting, I think, as though you were. Your family affairs may have led to this state, but they do not concern me. You will, however, be good enough to swear, here, solemnly, laying your hand upon this book, that you will not attempt to destroy yourself." "I swear," said Giovanni, touching the volume which the cardinal presented to him. "Very good. Now follow me, if you please, to the room where you must spend the day." Giovanni found himself in a small chamber which contained only a large writing-table and a couple of chairs, and which seemed to have been destined for some sort of office. The cardinal closed the door, and Giovanni heard him turn the key and remove it from the lock. Then, for the first time, he reflected upon what he had done. He had spoken the truth when he had said that he was desperate. No other word could describe his state. A sort of madness had taken possession of him while he was talking with Corona, and he was still under its influence. There had been something in her manner which had seemed to imply that he was not doing his best to liberate Faustina, and indeed, when he remembered that the girl's innocence was by no means clear to him, he ought not to have been surprised at Corona's imputation. And yet, he had now pledged his word to the cardinal that Faustina had not done the deed. Corona's unwillingness to admit that it was for her own sake she asked his help had driven him nearly out of his mind, and when she had at last said it, even reluctantly, he had immediately resolved to show her what he was willing to do for one word of hers when she chose to speak it. He had from that moment but one thought, to free Faustina at any cost, and no plan suggested itself to him but to surrender himself in the girl's place. As a matter of fact, he could not have accomplished his purpose so quickly or surely in any other way, and perhaps he could not have otherwise accomplished it at all. It had been quite clear to him from the first that the cardinal was prejudiced against Faustina, owing, no doubt, to the representations of the prefect of police. Giovanni had carried the evidence against her clearly in his mind, and as soon as he thought of the expedient he saw how it would have been quite possible for himself, or for any other man who knew the house, to commit the murder. As for the detail concerning the doors being open, there was nothing improbable in it, seeing that there were many servants in the establishment, and that each one would suspect and accuse one of his companions of the carelessness. Nothing was easier than to construct the story, and he had supposed that nothing would be simpler than to make the cardinal believe it. He had been surprised to find himself mistaken upon this point, but he felt a thrill of triumph that more than repaid him for what he had done, when he saw the messenger leave the room with the order to liberate Faustina. Corona had spoken, had asked him to do a hard thing for her sake, and her caprice was satisfied, it mattered little at what cost. She had given him an opportunity of showing what he would do for her, and that opportunity had not been thrown away. But as he sat alone in the little room the cardinal had assigned to him, he began to realise the magnitude of what he had been doing, and to see how his actions would be judged by others. He had surrendered himself as a murderer, and was to be treated as one. When the time came for the trial, might it not happen with him as with many another innocent man who has put himself into a false position? Might he not be condemned? Nothing that he could say hereafter could remove the impression created by his giving himself up to justice. Any denial hereafter would be supposed to proceed from fear and not from innocence. And if he were condemned, what would become of Corona, of his father, of little Orsino? He shuddered at the thought. What, he asked himself, would be the defence? Yesterday afternoon he had been out of the house during several hours, and had walked alone, he hardly remembered where. Since the crisis in his life which had separated him from Corona in fact, if not in appearance, he often walked alone, wandering aimlessly through the streets. Would any of his acquaintance come forward and swear to having seen him at the time Montevarchi was murdered? Probably not. And if not, how could it be proved, in the face of his own statement to the cardinal, that he might not have gone to the palace, seeking an opportunity of expending his wrath on the old prince, that he might not have lost his self-control in a fit of anger and strangled the old man as he sat in his chair? As he himself had said, there was far more reason to believe that the Saracinesca had killed Montevarchi out of revenge, than that a girl like Faustina should have strangled her own father because he had interfered in her love affairs. If the judges took this view of the case, it was clear that Giovanni would have little chance of an acquittal. The thing looked so possible that even Corona might believe it--even Corona, for whose sake he had rushed madly into such desperate danger. And to-day she would not see him; very possibly she would not know where he was. And to-morrow? And the next day? And all the days after that? He supposed that he would be allowed to write to her, perhaps to see her, but it would be hard to explain his position. She did not love him any longer, and she would not understand. He wondered how much she would care, if she really cared at all, beyond a discreet anxiety for his safety. She would certainly not comprehend a love like his, which had chosen such a sacrifice, rather than allow her wish to remain ungratified. How could she, since she did not love him? And yet, it was imperatively necessary that she should be informed of what had happened. She might otherwise suppose, naturally enough, that some accident had befallen him, and she would in that case apply to the police, perhaps to the cardinal himself, to find out where he was. Such a contingency must be prevented, by some means, before night. Until then, she would not be frightened by his absence. There would be time, perhaps, when he was removed to the prison--to the place of safety and secrecy, of which the cardinal had spoken, and which in all probability was the Holy Office. No questions were asked there. There were writing materials on the broad table, and Giovanni began a letter to his wife. After a few minutes, however, he stopped, for he saw from what he had written that he was in no condition to attempt such a task. The words came quickly and fluently, but they expressed what he had no intention of telling Corona again. His love for her was still uppermost in his mind, and instead of trying to explain what had occurred, he found himself setting down phrases that told of nothing but a mad passion. The thought of her cold face when she should read the lines arrested his hand, and he threw down the pen impatiently, and returned to his meditations for a while. What he wanted to do was to tell her in the fewest possible words that he was alive and well. What else should he tell her? The statement would allay any anxiety she might feel, and his absence would doubtless be a relief to her. The thought was bitter, but he knew that nothing exasperates a woman like the constant presence of a man she has loved, who loves her more than ever, and for whom she no longer feels anything. At last he took another sheet of paper and tried again. "Dear Corona--When you get this, Faustina will be at liberty, according to your wish. Do not be anxious if you do not see me for a few days, as I am called away on urgent business. Tell my father, and any of our friends who ask about me, that I am at Saracinesca, superintending the removal of such effects as are not to go to San Giacinto. I will let you know when I am coming back--Your affectionate GIOVANNI." He read the note over twice, and then folded it, addressing it to his wife. His face expressed the most profound dejection when he had finished his task, and for a long time he leaned back in his chair, gazing at the morning sunlight that slowly crept across the floor, while his hands lay folded passively upon the table. The end of his love seemed very bitter as he thought of the words he had written. A few weeks ago to leave Corona thus unexpectedly would have caused her the greatest pain. Now, he felt that he need say nothing, that it would be useless to say anything, more than he had said. It was nothing to her, whether he stayed in Rome or went to the ends of the earth; indeed, he suspected that she would be glad to be left alone--unless she should discover why he had gone, and whither. This last consideration recalled to him his situation, and for a moment he was horrified at his own rashness. But the thought did not hold him long, and presently he asked himself apathetically what it could matter in the end. The hours passed slowly, and still he sat motionless by the table, the folded letter lying before him. The cardinal had scarcely returned to his study when a second card was brought to him. The gentleman, said the servant, had assured him that his Eminence would receive him, as he had important information to give concerning the murder of Prince Montevarchi. The cardinal could not repress a smile as he read the name of Anastase Gouache. The young man entered the room, and advanced in obedience to the cardinal's friendly gesture. He was as pale as death, and his soft dark eyes had an expression of despair in them such as the great man had rarely seen. For the rest, he wore his uniform, and was as carefully dressed as usual. "Your Eminence has doubtless heard of this dreadful murder?" began Gouache, forgetting all formality in the extremity of his excitement. "Yes," said the cardinal, sitting down. "You have something to communicate concerning it, I understand." "Donna Faustina Montevarchi has been charged with the crime, and is in the prison of the Termini," answered the Zouave, speaking hurriedly. "I am here to ask your Eminence to order her release without delay---" "On what grounds?" inquired the statesman, raising his eyebrows a little as though surprised by the way in which the request was made. "Because she is innocent, because her arrest was due to the mistake of the prefect of police--the evidence was against her, but it was absurd to suppose that she could have done it---" "The prefect of police received my approval. Have you any means of showing that she is innocent?" "Showing it?" repeated Gouache, who looked dazed for a moment, but recovered himself immediately, turning white to the lips. "What could be easier?" he exclaimed. "The murderer is before you--I saw the prince, I asked him for his daughter's hand in marriage, he insulted me. I left the room, but I returned soon afterwards. I found him alone, and I killed him--I do not know how I did it---" "With Donna Faustina's handkerchief," suggested the cardinal. "Perhaps you do not remember that it was lying on the floor and that you picked it up and knotted it---" "Yes, yes! Round his neck," cried Gouache nervously. "I remember. But I saw red, everything swam, the details are gone. Here I am--your Eminence's prisoner--I implore you to send the order at once!" The cardinal had hitherto maintained a grave expression. His features suddenly relaxed and he put out his hand. "My dear Monsieur Gouache, I like you exceedingly," he said. "You are a man of heart." "I do not understand---" Anastase was very much bewildered, but he saw that his plan for freeing Faustina was on the point of failure. "I appreciate your motives," continued the statesman. "You love the young lady to distraction, she is arrested on a capital charge, you conceive the idea of presenting yourself as the murderer in her place--" "But I assure your Eminence, I swear--" "No," interrupted the other, raising his hand. "Do not swear. You are incapable of such a crime. Besides, Donna Faustina is already at liberty, and the author of the deed has already confessed his guilt." Anastase staggered against the projecting shelf of the bookcase. The blood rushed to his face and for a moment he was almost unconscious of where he was. The cardinal's voice recalled him to himself. "If you doubt what I tell you, you need only go to the Palazzo Montevarchi and inquire. Donna Faustina will return with the Princess Sant' Ilario. I am sorry that circumstances prevent me from showing you the man who has confessed the crime. He is in my apartments at the present moment, separated from us only by two or three rooms." "His name, Eminence?" asked Gouache, whose whole nature seemed to have changed in a moment. "Ah, his name must for the present remain a secret in my keeping, unless, indeed, you have reason to believe that some one else did the murder. Have you no suspicions? You know the family intimately, it seems. You would probably have heard the matter mentioned, if the deceased prince had been concerned in any quarrel--in any transaction which might have made him an object of hatred to any one we know. Do you recall anything of the kind? Sit down, Monsieur Gouache. You are acquitted, you see. Instead of being a murderer you are the good friend who once painted my portrait in this very room. Do you remember our charming conversations about Christianity and the universal republic?" "I shall always remember your Eminence's kindness," answered Gouache, seating himself and trying to speak as quietly as possible. His nervous nature was very much unsettled by what had occurred. He had come determined that Faustina should be liberated at any cost, overcome by the horror of her situation, ready to lay down his life for her in the sincerity of his devotion. His conduct had been much more rational than Giovanni's. He had nothing to lose but himself, no relations to be disgraced by his condemnation, none to suffer by his loss. He had only to sacrifice himself to set free for ever the woman he loved, and he had not hesitated a moment in the accomplishment of his purpose. But the revulsion of feeling, when he discovered that Faustina was already known to be innocent, and that there was no need for his intervention, was almost more than he could bear. The tears of joy stood in his eyes while he tried to be calm. "Have you any suspicions?" asked the cardinal again, in his gentle voice. "None, Eminence. The only thing approaching to a quarrel, of which I have heard, is the suit about the title of the Saracinesca. But of course that can have nothing to do with the matter. It was decided yesterday without opposition." "It could have nothing to do with the murder, you think?" inquired the statesman with an air of interest. "No. How could it?" Gouache laughed at the idea. "The Saracinesca could not murder their enemies as they used to do five hundred years ago. Besides, your Eminence has got the murderer and must be able to guess better than I what were the incentives to the crime." "That does not follow, my friend. A man who confesses a misdeed is not bound to incriminate any one else, and a man whose conscience is sensitive enough to make him surrender himself naturally assumes the blame. He suffers remorse, and does not attempt any defence, excepting such as you yourself just now gave me, when you said that the prince had insulted you. Enough to give a semblance of truth to the story. By the bye, is that true?" "It is and it is not," answered Gouache, blushing a little. "The poor man, when I began to explain my position, thought--how shall I say? He thought I wanted to sell him a picture. It was not his fault." "Poor man!" sighed the cardinal. "He had not much tact. And so, Monsieur Gouache, you think that the great Saracinesca suit has had nothing to do with the murder?" "It seems to me impossible. It looks rather as though he had been murdered by a servant, out of spite. It is hard to believe that any one not belonging to the house could have done it." "I think the public will agree with you. I will occupy myself with the matter. Perhaps I have got the man safe in that room, but who knows? If you had come first, you might have gone to the Carceri Nuove instead of him. After all, he may be in love too." The cardinal smiled, but Gouache started at the suggestion, as though it hurt him. "I doubt that," he said quickly. "So do I. It would be a strange coincidence, if two innocent men had accused themselves of the same crime, out of love, within twenty-four hours of its being committed. But now that you are calm--yes, you were beside yourself with excitement--I must tell you that you have done a very rash thing indeed. If I had not chanced to be a friend of yours, what would have become of you? I cannot help liking your courage and devotion--you have shown it in sterner matters, and in the face of the enemy--but you might have destroyed yourself. That would have been a great sin." "Is there no case in which a man may destroy himself deliberately?" "You speak of suicide? It was almost that you contemplated. No. The church teaches that a man who takes his own life goes straight to hell. So does Mohammed, for that matter." "In any case?" "In any case. It is a mortal sin." "But," objected Gouache, "let us suppose me a very bad man, exercising a destroying influence on many other people. Suppose, in short, for the sake of argument, that my life caused others to lose their own souls, and that by killing myself I knew that they would all become good again. Suppose then, that I suddenly repented and that there was no way of saving these people but by my own suicide. Would it not be more honourable in me to say, 'Very well, I will submit to damnation rather than send all those others to eternal flames?' Should I not be justified in blowing out my brains?" The cardinal did not know whether to smile or to look grave. He was neither a priest nor a theologian, but a statesman. "My dear friend," he answered at last. "The ingenuity of your suppositions passes belief. I can only say that, when you find yourself in such a bad case as you describe, I will submit the matter for you to the Holy Father himself. But I would strongly advise you to avoid the situation if you possibly can." Gouache took his leave with a light heart, little guessing as he descended the great marble staircase that Giovanni Saracinesca was the prisoner of whom the cardinal had spoken so mysteriously, still less that he, too, had falsely accused himself of having killed poor old Montevarchi. He wondered, as he walked rapidly along the streets in the bright morning sunshine, who the man was, and why he had done such a thing, but his thoughts were really with Faustina, and he longed to see her and to hear from her own lips the true version of what had happened. CHAPTER XXIV. Arnoldo Meschini was fully conscious of what he had done when he softly closed the door of the study behind him and returned to the library; but although he knew and realised that he had murdered his employer, he could not explain the act to himself. His temples throbbed painfully and there was a bright red spot in each of his sallow cheeks. He shuffled about from one bookcase to another, and his hands trembled violently as he touched the big volumes. Now and then he glanced towards one or the other of the doors expecting at every moment that some one would enter to tell him the news, if indeed any one at such a time should chance to remember the existence of the humble librarian. His brain was on fire and seemed to burn the sockets of his eyes. And yet the time passed, and no one came. The suspense grew to be unbearable, and he felt that he would do anything to escape from it. He went to the door and laid his hand upon the latch. For an instant the flush disappeared from his cheeks, as a great fear took possession of him. He was not able to face the sight of Montevarchi's body lying across that table in the silent study. His hand fell to his side and he almost ran to the other side of the library; then, as though ashamed of his weakness he came back slowly and listened at the door. It was scarcely possible that any distant echo could reach his ears, if the household had been already roused, for the passage was long and tortuous, interrupted by other doors and by a winding staircase. But in his present state he fancied that his senses must be preternaturally sharpened and he listened eagerly. All was still. He went back to the books. There was nothing to be done but to make a desperate effort to occupy himself and to steady his nerves. If any one came now, he thought, his face would betray him. There must be a light in his eyes, an uncertainty in his manner which would speak plainly enough to his guilt. He tried to imagine what would take place when the body was found. Some one would enter the room and would see the body. He, or she, would perhaps think that the prince was in a fit, or asleep--who could tell? But he would not answer the voice that called him. Then the person would come forward and touch him--Meschini forced himself to think of it--would touch the dead hand and would feel that it was cold. With a cry of horror the person would hasten from the room. He might hear that cry, if he left the door open. Again he laid his hand upon the latch. His fingers seemed paralysed and the cold sweat stood on his face, but he succeeded in mastering himself enough to turn the handle and look out. The cry came, but it was from his own lips. He reeled back from the entrance in horror, his eyes starting from his head. There stood the dead man, in the dusky passage, shaking at him the handkerchief. It was only his fancy. He passed his hand across his forehead and a sickly look of relief crept over his face. He had been frightened by his own coat, that hung on a peg outside, long and thin and limp, a white handkerchief depending from the wide pocket. There was not much light in the corridor. He crept cautiously out and took the garment from its place with a nervous, frightened gesture. Dragging it after him, he hastily re-entered the library and rolled up the coat into a shape that could not possibly resemble anything which might frighten him. He laid it upon the table in the brightest place, where the afternoon sun fell upon it. There was a sort of relief in making sure that the thing could not again look like the dead man. He looked up and saw with renewed terror that he had left the door open. There was nothing but air between him and the place where that awful shadow had been conjured up by his imagination. The door must be shut. If it remained open he should go mad. He tried to think calmly, but it was beyond his power. He attempted to say that there was nothing there and that the door might as well remain open as be shut. But even while making the effort to reason with himself, he was creeping cautiously along the wall, in the direction of the entrance. By keeping his eyes close to the wooden panelling he could advance without seeing into the corridor. He was within a foot of the opening. Convulsed with fear, he put out his hand quickly and tried to pull the heavy oak on its hinges by the projecting bevel, but it was too heavy--he must look out in order to grasp the handle. The cold drops trickled down from his brow and he breathed hard, but he could not go back and leave the door unclosed. With a suppressed sob of agony he thrust out his head and arm. In a moment it was over, but the moral effort had been terrible, and his strength failed him, so that he staggered against the wainscot and would have fallen but for its support. Some moments elapsed before he could get to a chair, and when he at last sat down in a ray of sunshine to rest, his eyes remained fixed upon the sculptured brass handle of the latch. He almost expected that it would turn mysteriously of itself and that the dead prince would enter the room. He realised that in his present condition he could not possibly face the person who before long would certainly bring him the news. He must have something to stimulate him and deaden his nerves. He had no idea how long a time had elapsed since he had done the deed, but it seemed that three or four hours must certainly have passed. In reality it was scarcely five and twenty minutes since he had left the study. He remembered suddenly that he had some spirits in his room at the top of the palace. Slowly and painfully he rose to his feet and went towards the other exit from the library, which, as in many ancient houses, opened upon the grand staircase, so as to give free access to visitors from without. He had to cross the broad marble landing, whence a masked door led to the narrow winding steps by which he ascended to the upper story. He listened to hear whether any one was passing, and then went out. Once on his way he moved more quickly than seemed possible for a man so bent and mis-shapen. The bright afternoon sun streamed in through the window of his little chamber, a relief from the sombre gloominess of the lofty library, where the straggling rays seemed to make the great hall more shadowy by contrast. But Meschini did not stop to look about him. In a closet in the wall he kept his stores, his chemicals, his carefully-composed inks, his bits of prepared parchment, and, together with many other articles belonging to his illicit business, he had a bottle of old brandy, which the butler had once given him out of the prince's cellar, in return for a bit of legal advice which had saved the servant a lawyer's fee. Arnoldo Meschini had always been a sober man, like most Italians, and the bottle had stood for years unopened in the cupboard. He had never thought of it, but, having been once placed there, it had been safe. The moment had come when the stimulant was precious. His fingers shook as he put the bottle to his lips; when he set it down they were steady. The liquor acted like an enchantment, and the sallow-faced man smiled as he sat alone by his little table and looked at the thing that had restored him. The bottle had been full when he began to drink; the level of the liquid was now a good hand's breadth below the neck. The quantity he had swallowed would have made a temperate man, in his normal state, almost half drunk. He sat still for a long time, waiting to see whether the draught would produce any other effect. He felt a pleasant warmth in his face and hands, the perspiration had disappeared from his brow, and he was conscious that he could now look out of the open door of the library without fear, even if his coat were hanging on the peg. It was incredible to him that he should have been so really terrified by a mere shadow. He had killed Prince Montevarchi, and the body was lying in the study. Yes, he could think of it without shuddering, almost without an unpleasant sensation. In the dead man's own words, it had been an act of divine justice and retribution, and since nobody could possibly discover the murderer, there was matter for satisfaction in the idea that the wicked old man no longer cumbered the earth with his presence. Strange, that he should have suffered such an agony of fear half an hour earlier. Was it half an hour? How pleasantly the sun shone in to the little room where he had laboured during so many years, and so profitably! Now that the prince was dead it would be amusing to look at those original documents for which he had made such skilfully-constructed substitutes. He would like to assure himself, however, that the deed had been well done. There was magic in that old liquor. Another little draught and he would go down to the study as though nothing had happened. If he should meet anybody his easy manner would disarm suspicion. Besides, he could take the bottle with him in the pocket of his long coat--the bottle of courage, he said to himself with a smile, as he set it to his lips. This time he drank but little, and very slowly. He was too cautious a man to throw away his ammunition uselessly. With a light heart he descended the winding stair and crossed the landing. One of Ascanio Bellegra's servants passed at that moment. Meschini looked at the fellow quietly, and even gave him a friendly smile, to test his own coolness, a civility which was acknowledged by a familiar nod. The librarian's spirits rose. He did not resent the familiarity of the footman, for, with all his learning, he was little more than a servant himself, and the accident had come conveniently as a trial of his strength. The man evidently saw nothing unusual in his appearance. Moreover, as he walked, the brandy bottle in his coat tail pocket beat reassuringly against the calves of his legs. He opened the door of the library and found himself in the scene of his terror. There lay the old coat, wrapped together on the table, as he had left it. The sun had moved a little farther during his absence, and the heap of cloth looked innocent enough. Meschini could not understand how it had frightened him so terribly. He still felt that pleasant warmth about his face and hands. That was the door before which he had been such a coward. What was beyond it? The empty passage. He would go and hang the coat where it had hung always, where he always left it when he came in the morning, unless he needed it to keep himself warm. What could be simpler, or easier? He took the thing in one hand, turned the handle and looked out. He was not afraid. The long, silent corridor stretched away into the distance, lighted at intervals by narrow windows that opened upon an inner court of the palace. Meschini suspended the coat upon the peg and stood looking before him, a contemptuous smile upon his face, as though he despised himself for his former fears. Then he resolutely walked towards the study, along the familiar way, down a flight of steps, then to the right--he stood before the door and the dead man was on the other side of it. He paused and listened. All was silent. It was clear to him, as he stood before the table and looked at the body, that no one had been there. Indeed, Meschini now remembered that it was a rule in the house never to disturb the prince unless a visitor came. He had always liked to spend the afternoon in solitude over his accounts and his plans. The librarian, paused opposite his victim and gazed at the fallen head and the twisted, whitened fingers. He put out his hand timidly and touched them, and was surprised to find that they were not quite cold. The touch, however, sent a very unpleasant thrill through his own frame, and he drew back quickly with a slight shiver. But he was not terrified as he had been before. The touch, only, was disagreeable to him. He took a book that lay at hand and pushed it against the dead man's arm. There was no sign, no movement. He would have liked to go behind the chair and untie the handkerchief, but his courage was not quite equal to that. Besides, the handkerchief was Faustina's. He had seen her father snatch it from her and throw it upon the floor, as he watched the pair through the keyhole. A strange fascination kept him in the study, and he would have yielded to it had he not been fortified against any such morbid folly by the brandy he had swallowed. He thought, as he turned to go, that it was a pity the prince never kept money in the house, for, in that case, he might have helped himself before leaving. To steal a small value was not worth while, considering the danger of discovery. He moved on tiptoe, as though afraid of disturbing the rest of his old employer, and once or twice he looked back. Then at last he closed the door and retraced his steps through the corridor till he gained the library. He was surprised at his own boldness as he went, and at the indifference with which he passed by the coat that hung, limp as ever, upon its peg. He was satisfied, too, with the result of his investigations. The prince was certainly dead. As a direct consequence of his death, the secret of the Saracinesca suit was now his own, no one had a share in it, and it was worth money. He pulled out a number of volumes from the shelves and began to make a pretence of working upon the catalogue. But though he surrounded himself with the implements and necessaries for his task, his mind was busy with the new scheme that unfolded itself to his imagination. He and he alone, knew that San Giacinto's possession of the Saracinesca inheritance rested upon a forgery. The fact that this forgery must be revealed, in order to reinstate the lawful possessors in their right, did not detract in the least from the value of the secret. Two courses were open to him. He might go to old Leone Saracinesca and offer the original documents for sale, on receiving a guarantee for his own safety. Or he might offer them to San Giacinto, who was the person endangered by their existence. Montevarchi had promised him twenty thousand scudi for the job, and had never paid the money. He had cancelled his debt with his life, however, and had left the secret behind him. Either Saracinesca or San Giacinto would give five times twenty thousand, ten times as much, perhaps, for the original documents, the one in order to recover what was his own, the other to keep what did not belong to him. The great question to be considered was the way of making the offer. Meschini sat staring at the opposite row of books, engaged in solving the problem. Just then, one of the open volumes before him slipped a little upon another and the page turned slowly over. The librarian started slightly and glanced at the old-fashioned type. The work was a rare one, which he had often examined, and he knew it to be of great value. A new thought struck him. Why should he not sell this and many other volumes out of the collection, as well as realise money by disposing of his secret? He might as well be rich as possess a mere competence. He looked about him. With a little care and ingenuity, by working at night and by visiting the sellers of old books during the day he might soon put together four or five hundred works which would fetch a high price, and replace them by so many feet of old trash which would look as well. With his enormous industry it would be a simple matter to tamper with the catalogue and to insert new pages which should correspond with the changes he contemplated. The old prince was dead, and little as he had really known about the library, his sons knew even less. Meschini could remove the stolen volumes to a safe place, and when he had realised the value of his secret, he would go to Paris, to Berlin, even to London, and dispose of his treasures one by one. He was amazed at the delights the future unfolded to him, everything seemed gilded, everything seemed ready to turn into gold. His brain dwelt with an enthusiasm wholly new to him upon the dreams it conjured up. He felt twenty years younger. His fears had gone, and with them his humility. He saw himself no longer the poor librarian in his slippers and shabby clothes, cringing to his employer, spending his days in studying the forgeries he afterwards executed during the night, hoarding his ill-gotten gains with jealous secrecy, afraid to show to his few associates that he had accumulated a little wealth, timid by force of long habit and by the remembrance of the shame in his early life. All that had disappeared under the potent spell of his new-found courage. He fancied himself living in some distant capital, rich and respected, married, perhaps, having servants of his own, astonishing the learned men of some great centre by the extent of his knowledge and erudition. All the vanity of his nature was roused from its long sleep by a new set of emotions, till he could scarcely contain his inexplicable happiness. And how had all this come to him so suddenly in the midst of his obscure life? Simply by squeezing the breath out of an old man's throat. How easy it had been. The unaccustomed energy which had been awakened in him by the spirits brought with it a pleasant restlessness. He felt that he must go again to his little room upstairs, and take out the deeds and read them over. The sight of them would give an increased reality and vividness to his anticipations. Besides, too, it was just barely possible that there might be some word, some expression which he could change, and which should increase their value. To sit still, poring over the catalogue in the library was impossible. Once more he climbed to his attic, but he could not comprehend why he felt a nervous desire to look behind him, as though he were followed by some person whose tread was noiseless. It was not possible, he thought, that the effects of his draught were already passing off. Such courage as he felt in him could not leave him suddenly. He reached his room and took the deeds from the secret place in which he had hidden them, spreading them out lovingly before him. As he sat down the bottle in his long coat touched the floor behind him with a short, dull thud. It was as though a footstep had sounded in the silent room, and he sprang to his feet before he realised whence the noise came, looking behind him with startled eyes. In a moment he understood, and withdrawing the bottle from his pocket he set it beside him on the table. He looked at it for a few seconds as though in hesitation, but he determined not to have recourse to its contents so soon. He had undoubtedly been frightened again, but the sound that had scared him had been real and not imaginary. Besides, he had but this one bottle and he knew that good brandy was dear. He pushed it away, his avarice helping him to resist the temptation. The old documents were agreeably familiar to his eye, and he read and re-read them with increasing satisfaction, comparing them carefully, and chuckling to himself each time that he reached the bottom of the sheet upon the copy, where there had been no room to introduce that famous clause. But for that accident, he reflected, he would have undoubtedly made the insertion upon the originals, and the latter would be now no longer in his possession. He did not quite understand why he derived such pleasure from reading the writing so often, nor why, when the surrounding objects in the room were clear and distinct to his eyes, the crabbed characters should every now and then seem to move of themselves and to run into each other from right to left. Possibly the emotions of the day had strained his vision. He looked up and saw the bottle. An irresistible desire seized him to taste the liquor again, even if he drank but a drop. The spirits wet his lips while he was still inwardly debating whether it were wise to drink or not. As he returned the cork to its place he felt a sudden revival within him of all he had experienced before. His face was warm, his fingers tingled. He took up one of the deeds with a firm hand and settled himself comfortably in his chair. But he could not read it through again. He laughed quietly at his folly. Did he not know every word by heart? He must occupy himself with planning, with arranging the details of his future. When that was done he could revel in the thought of wealth and rest and satisfied vanity. To his surprise, his thoughts did not flow as connectedly as he had expected. He could not help thinking of the dead man downstairs, not indeed with any terror, not fearing discovery for himself, but with a vague wonderment that made his mind feel empty. Turn over the matter as he would, he could not foresee connectedly what was likely to happen when the murder was known. There was no sequence in his imaginings, and he longed nervously for the moment when everything should be settled. The restlessness that had brought him up to his room demanded some sort of action to quiet it. He would willingly have gone out to see his friend, the little apothecary who lived near the Ponte Quattro Capi. It would be a relief to talk to some one, to hear the sound of a human voice. But a remnant of prudence restrained him. It was not very likely that he should be suspected; indeed, if he behaved prudently nothing was more improbable. To leave the house at such a time, however, would be the height of folly, unless it could be proved that he had gone out some time before the deed could have been done. The porter was vigilant, and Meschini almost always exchanged a few words with him as he passed through the gates. He would certainly note the time of the librarian's exit more or less accurately. Moreover, the body might have been found already, and even now the gendarmes might be downstairs. The latter consideration determined him to descend once more to the library. A slight chill passed over him as he closed the door of his room behind him. The great hall now seemed very gloomy and cold, and the solitude was oppressive. He felt the necessity for movement, and began to walk quickly up and down the length of the library between the broad tables, from one door to the other. At first, as he reached the one that separated him from the passage he experienced no disagreeable sensation, but turned his back upon it at the end of his walk and retraced his steps. Very gradually, however, he began to feel uncomfortable as he reached that extremity of the room, and the vision of the dead prince rose before his eyes. The coat was there again, on the other side of the door. No doubt it would take the same shape again if he looked at it. His varying courage was just at the point when he was able to look out in order to assure himself that the limp garment had not assumed the appearance of a ghost. He felt a painful thrill in his back as he turned the handle, and the cold air that rushed in as he opened the door seemed to come from a tomb. Although his eyes were satisfied when he had seen the coat in the corner, he drew back quickly, and the thrill was repeated with greater distinctness as he heard the bolt of the latch slip into its socket. He walked away again, but the next time he came back he turned at some distance from the threshold, and, as he turned, he felt the thrill a third time, almost like an electric shock. He could not bear it and sat down before the catalogue. His eyes refused to read, and after a lengthened struggle between his fears, his prudence and his economy, he once more drew the bottle from his pocket and fortified himself with a draught. This time he drank more, and the effect was different. For some seconds he felt no change in his condition. Presently, however, his nervousness disappeared, giving place now to a sort of stupid indifference. The light was fading from the clerestory windows of the library, and, within, the corners and recesses were already dark. But Meschini was past imagining ghosts or apparitions. He sat quite still, his chin leaning on his hand and his elbow on the table, wondering vaguely how long it would be before they came to tell him that the prince was dead. He did not sleep, but he fell into a state of torpor which was restful to his nerves. Sleep would certainly come in half an hour if he were left to himself as long as that. His breathing was heavy, and the silence around him was intense. At last the much-dreaded moment came, and found him dull and apathetic. The door opened and a ray of light from a candle entered the room, which was now almost dark. A foot-man and a housemaid thrust in their heads cautiously and peered into the broad gloom, holding the candle high before them. Either would have been afraid to come alone. "Sor Arnoldo, Sor Arnoldo!" the man called out timidly, as though frightened by the sound of his own voice. "Here I am," answered Meschini, affecting a cheerful tone as well as he could. Once more and very quickly he took a mouthful from the bottle, behind the table where they could not see him. "What is the matter?" he asked. "The prince is murdered!" cried the two servants in a breath. They were very pale as they came towards him. If the cry he uttered was forced they were too much terrified to notice it. As they told their tale with every species of exaggeration, interspersed with expressions of horror and amazement, he struck his hands to his head, moaned, cried aloud, and, being half hysterical with drink, shed real tears in their presence. Then they led him away, saying that the prefect of police was in the study and that all the household had been summoned to be examined by him. He was now launched in his part, and could play it to the end without breaking down. He had afterwards very little recollection of what had occurred. He remembered that the stillness of the study and the white faces of those present had impressed him by contrast with the noisy grief of the servants who had summoned him. He remembered that he had sworn, and others had corroborated his oath, to the effect that he had spent the afternoon between the library and his room. Ascanio Bellegra's footman remembered meeting him on the landing, and said that he had smiled pleasantly in an unconcerned way, as usual, and had passed on. For the rest, no one seemed even to imagine that he could have done the deed, for no one had ever heard anything but friendly words between him and the prince. He remembered, too, having seen the dead body extended upon the great table of the study, and he recalled Donna Faustina's tone of voice indistinctly as in a dream. Then, before the prefect announced his decision, he was dismissed with the other servants. After that moment all was a blank in his mind. In reality he returned to his room and sat down by his table with a candle before him. He never knew that after the examination he had begged another bottle of liquor of the butler on the ground that his nerves were upset by the terrible event. About midnight the candle burned down into the socket. Profiting by the last ray of light he drank a final draught and reeled to his bed, dressed as he was. One bottle was empty, and a third of the second was gone. Arnoldo Meschini was dead drunk. CHAPTER XXV. Corona was not much surprised when the messenger brought her carriage and presented the order for Faustina's liberation. When Giovanni had left her she had felt that he would find means to procure the young girl's liberty, and the only thing which seemed strange to her was the fact that Giovanni did not return himself. The messenger said he had seen him with the cardinal and that Sant' Ilario had given the order to use the carriage. Beyond that, he knew nothing. Corona at once took Faustina to the Palazzo Montevarchi, and then, with a promise to come back in the course of the day, she went home to rest. She needed repose even more than Faustina, who, after all, had slept soundly on her prison bed, trusting with childlike faith in her friend's promise that she should be free in the morning. Corona, on the contrary, had passed a wakeful night, and was almost worn out with fatigue. She remained in her room until twelve o'clock, the hour when the members of the family met at the midday breakfast. She found her father-in-law waiting for her, and at a glance she saw that he was in a savage humour. His bronzed face was paler than usual and his movements more sudden and nervous, while his dark eyes gleamed angrily beneath his bent and shaggy brows. Corona, on her part, was silent and preoccupied. In spite of the tragic events of the night, which, after all, only affected her indirectly at present, and in spite of the constant moral suffering which now played so important a part in her life, she could not but be disturbed by the tremendous loss sustained by her husband and by his father. It fell most heavily upon the latter, who was an old man, and whose mind was not engaged by any other absorbing consideration, but the blow was a terrible one to the other also. "Where is Giovanni?" asked Saracinesca brusquely, as they sat down to the table. "I do not know," answered Corona. "The last I heard of him was that he was with Cardinal Antonelli. I suppose that after getting the order to release Faustina he stayed there." "So his Eminence suffered himself to be persuaded that a little girl did not strangle that old tanner," remarked the prince. "Apparently." "If they had taken Flavia it would have been more natural. She would have inaugurated her reign as Princess Saracinesca by a night in the Termini. Delightful contrast! I suppose you know who did it?" "No. Probably a servant, though they say that nothing was stolen." "San Giacinto did it. I have thought the whole matter out, and I am convinced of it. Look at his hands. He could strangle an elephant. Not that he could have had any particular reason for liquidating his father-in-law. He is rich enough without Flavia's share, but I always thought he would kill somebody one of these days, ever since I met him at Aquila." "Without any reason, why should he have done it?" "My dear child, when one has no reason to give, it is very hard to say why a thing occurs. He looks like the man." "Is it conceivable that after getting all he could desire he should endanger his happiness in such a way?" "Perhaps not. I believe he did it. What an abominable omelet--a glass of water, Pasquale. Abominable, is it not, Corona? Perfectly uneatable. I suppose the cook has heard of our misfortunes and wants to leave." "I fancy we are not very hungry," remarked Corona, in order to say something. "I would like to know whether the murderer is eating his breakfast at this moment, and whether he has any appetite. It would be interesting from a psychological point of view. By the bye, all this is very like a jettatura." "What?" "Montevarchi coming to his end on the very day he had won the suit. In good old times it would have been Giovanni who would have cut his throat, after which we should have all retired to Saracinesca and prepared for a siege. Less civilised but twice as human. No doubt they will say now--even now--that we paid a man to do the work." "But it was San Giacinto who brought the suit--" "It was Montevarchi. I have seen my lawyer this morning. He says that Montevarchi sent the people out to Frascati to see San Giacinto and explained the whole matter to them beforehand. He discovered the clause in the deeds first. San Giacinto never even saw them until everything was ready. And on the evening of the very day when it was settled, Montevarchi is murdered. I wonder that it has not struck any one to say we did it." "You did not oppose the suit. If you had, it would have been different." "How could I oppose the action? It was clear from the beginning that we had no chance of winning it. The fact remains that we are turned out of our home. The sooner we leave this the better. It will only be harder to go if we stay here." "Yes," answered Corona sadly. "It will be harder." "I believe it is a judgment of heaven on Giovanni for his outrageous conduct," growled the prince, suddenly running away with a new idea. "On Giovanni?" Corona was roused immediately by the mention of her husband in such a connection. "Yes, for his behaviour to you, the young scoundrel! I ought to have disinherited him at once." "Please do not talk in that way. I cannot let you say--" "He is my own son, and I will say what I please," interrupted Saracinesca fiercely. "He treated you outrageously, I say. It is just like a woman to deny it and defend her husband." "Since there is no one else to defend him, I must. He was misled, and naturally enough, considering the appearances. I did not know that you knew about it all." "I do not know all, nor half. But I know enough. A man who suspects such a woman as you deserves to be hanged. Besides," he added irrelevantly, but with an intuitive keenness that startled Corona, "besides, you have not forgiven him." "Indeed I have--" "In a Christian spirit, no doubt. I know you are good. But you do not love him as you did. It is useless to deny it. Why should you? I do not blame you, I am sure." The prince fixed his bright eyes on her face and waited for her answer. She turned a little paler and said nothing for several moments. Then as he watched her he saw the colour mount slowly to her olive cheeks. She herself could hardly have accounted for the unwonted blush, and a man capable of more complicated reasoning than her father-in-law would have misinterpreted it. Corona had at first been angry at the thought that he could speak as he did of Giovanni, saying things she would not say to herself concerning him. Then she felt a curious sensation of shame at being discovered. It was true that she did not love her husband, or at least that she believed herself unable to love him; but she was ashamed that any one else should know it. "Why will you persist in talking about the matter?" she asked at length. "It is between us two." "It seems to me that it concerns me," returned Saracinesca, who was naturally pertinacious. "I am not inquisitive. I ask no questions. Giovanni has said very little about it to me. But I am not blind. He came to me one evening and said he was going to take you away to the mountains. He seemed very much disturbed, and I saw that there had been trouble between you, and that he suspected you of something. He did not say so, but I knew what he meant. If it had turned out true I think I would have--well, I would not have answered for my conduct. Of course I took his part, but you fell ill, and did not know that. When he came and told me that he had been mistaken I abused him like a thief. I have abused him ever since whenever I have had a chance. It was a vile, dastardly, foolish, ridiculous--" "For heaven's sake!" cried Corona, interrupting him. "Pray, pray leave the question in peace! I am so unhappy!" "So am I," answered Saracinesca bluntly. "It does not add to my happiness to know that my son has made an ass of himself. Worse than that. You do not seem to realise that I am very fond of you. If I had not been such an old man I should have fallen in love with you as well as Giovanni. Do you remember when I rode over to Astrardente, and asked you to marry him? I would have given all I am--all I was worth, I mean, to be in Giovanni's shoes when I brought back your answer. Bah! I am an old fellow and no Apollo either! But you have been a good daughter to me, Corona, and I will not let any one behave badly to you." "And you have been good to me--so good! But you must not be angry with Giovanni. He was misled. He loved me even then." "I wish I were as charitable as you." "Do not call me charitable. I am anything but that. If I were I would--" She stopped short. "Yes, I know, you would love him as you did before. Then you would not be Corona, but some one else. I know that sort of argument. But you cannot be two persons at one time. The other woman, whom you have got in your mind, and who would love Giovanni, is a weak-minded kind of creature who bears anything and everything, who will accept any sort of excuse for an insult, and will take credit to herself for being long-suffering because she has not the spirit to be justly angry. Thank heaven you are not like that. If you were, Giovanni would not have had you for a wife nor I for a daughter." "I think it is my fault. I would do anything in the world to make it otherwise." "You admit the fact then? Of course. It is a misfortune, and not your fault. It is one more misfortune among so many. You may forgive him, if you please. I will not. By the bye, I wonder why he does not come back. I would like to hear the news." "The cardinal may have kept him to breakfast." "Since seven o'clock this morning? That is impossible. Unless his Eminence has arrested him on charge of the murder." The old gentleman laughed gruffly, little guessing how near his jest lay to the truth. But Corona looked up quickly. The mere idea of such a horrible contingency was painful to her, absurd and wildly improbable as it appeared. "I was going to ask him to go up to Saracinesca to-morrow and see to the changes," continued the prince. "Must it be so soon?" asked Corona regretfully. "Is it absolutely decided? Have you not yielded too easily?" "I cannot go over all the arguments again," returned her father-in-law with some impatience. "There is no doubt about it. I expended all my coolness and civility on San Giacinto when he came to see me about it. It is of no use to complain, and we cannot draw back. I suppose I might go down on my knees to the Pope and ask his Holiness for another title--for the privilege of being called something, Principe di Cavolfiore, if you like. But I will not do it. I will die as Leone Saracinesca. You can give Giovanni your old title, if you please--it is yours to give." "He shall have it if he wants it. What does it matter? I can be Donna Corona." "Ay, what does it matter, provided we have peace? What does anything matter in this unutterably ridiculous world--except your happiness, poor child! Yes. Everything must be got ready. I will not stay in this house another week." "But in a week it will be impossible to do all there is to be done!" exclaimed Corona, whose feminine mind foresaw infinite difficulties in moving. "Possible, or impossible, it must be accomplished. I have appointed this day week for handing over the property. The lawyers said, as you say, that it would need more time. I told them that there was no time, and that if they could not do it, I would employ some one else. They talked of sitting up all night--as if I cared whether they lost their beauty sleep or not! A week from to-day everything must be settled, so that I have not in my possession a penny that does not belong to me." "And then--what will you do?" asked Corona, who saw in spite of his vehemence how much he was affected by the prospect. "And then? What then? Live somewhere else, I suppose, and pray for an easy death." No one had ever heard Leone Saracinesca say before now that he desired to die, and the wish seemed so contrary to the nature of his character that Corona looked earnestly at him. His face was discomposed, and his voice had trembled. He was a brave man, and a very honourable one, but he was very far from being a philosopher. As he had said, he had expended all his calmness in that one meeting with San Giacinto when he had been persuaded of the justice of the latter's claims. Since then he had felt nothing but bitterness, and the outward expression of it was either an unreasonable irritation concerning small matters, or some passionate outburst like the present against life, against the world in which he lived, against everything. It is scarcely to be wondered at that he should have felt the loss so deeply, more deeply even than Giovanni. He had been for many years the sole head and master of his house, and had borne all the hereditary dignities that belonged to his station, some of which were of a kind that pleased his love of feudal traditions. For the money he cared little. The loss that hurt him most touched his pride, and that generous vanity which was a part of his nature, which delighted in the honour accorded to his name, to his son, to his son's wife, in the perpetuation of his race and in a certain dominating independence, that injured no one and gave himself immense satisfaction. At his age he was not to be blamed for such feelings. They proceeded in reality far more from habit than from a vain disposition, and it seemed to him that if he bore the calamity bravely he had a right to abuse his fate in his own language. But he could not always keep himself from betraying more emotion than he cared to show. "Do not talk of death," said Corona. "Giovanni and I will make your life happy and worth living." She sighed as she spoke, in spite of herself. "Giovanni and you!" repeated the prince gloomily. "But for his folly--what is the use of talking? I have much to do. If he comes to you this afternoon please tell him that I want him." Corona was glad when the meal was ended, and she went back to her own room. She had promised to go and see Faustina again, but otherwise she did not know how to occupy herself. A vague uneasiness beset her as the time passed and her husband did not come home. It was unlike him to stay away all day without warning her, though she was obliged to confess to herself that she had of late shown very little interest in his doings, and that it would not be very surprising if he began to do as he pleased without informing her of his intentions. Nevertheless she wished he would show himself before evening. The force of habit was still strong, and she missed him without quite knowing it. At last she made an effort against her apathy, and went out to pay the promised visit. The Montevarchi household was subdued under all the outward pomp of a ponderous mourning. The gates and staircases were hung with black. In the vast antechamher the canopy was completely hidden by an enormous hatchment before which the dead prince had lain in state during the previous night and a part of the day. According to the Roman custom the body had been already removed, the regulations of the city requiring that this should be done within twenty-four hours. The great black pedestals on which the lights had been placed were still standing, and lent a ghastly and sepulchral appearance to the whole. Numbers of servants in mourning liveries stood around an immense copper brazier in a corner, talking together in low tones, their voices dying away altogether as the Princess Sant' Ilario entered the open door of the hall. The man who came forward appeared to be the person in charge of the funeral, for Corona had not seen him in the house before. "Donna Faustina expects me," she said, continuing to walk towards the entrance to the apartments. "Your Excellency's name?" inquired the man. Corona was surprised that he should ask, and wondered whether even the people of his class already knew the result of the suit. "Donna Corona Saracinesca," she answered in distinct tones. The appellation sounded strange and unfamiliar. "Donna Corona Saracinesca," the man repeated in a loud voice a second later. He had almost run into San Giacinto, who was coming out at that moment. Corona found herself face to face with her cousin. "You--princess!" he exclaimed, putting out his hand. In spite of the relationship he was not privileged to call her by her name. "You--why does the man announce you in that way?" Corona took his hand and looked quietly into his face. They had not met since the decision. "I told him to do so. I shall be known by that name in future. I have come to see Faustina." She would have passed on. "Allow me to say," said San Giacinto, in his deep, calm voice, "that as far as I am concerned you are, and always shall be, Princess Sant' Ilario. No one can regret more than I the position in which I am placed towards you and yours, and I shall certainly do all in my power to prevent any such unnecessary changes." "We cannot discuss that matter here," answered Corona, speaking more coldly than she meant to do. "I trust there need be no discussion. I even hope that you will bear me no ill will." "I bear you none. You have acted honestly and openly. You had right on your side. But neither my husband nor I will live under a borrowed name." San Giacinto seemed hurt by her answer. He stood aside to allow her to pass, and there was something dignified in his demeanour that pleased Corona. "The settlement is not made yet," he said gravely. "Until then the name is yours." When she was gone he looked after her with an expression of annoyance upon his face. He understood well enough what she felt, but he was very far from wishing to let any unpleasantness arise between him and her family. Even in the position to which he had now attained he felt that there was an element of uncertainty, and he did not feel able to dispense with the good-will of his relations, merely because he was Prince Saracinesca and master of a great fortune. His early life had made him a cautious man, and he did not underestimate the value of personal influence. Moreover, he had not a bad heart, and preferred if possible to be on good terms with everybody. According to his own view he had done nothing more than claim what was legitimately his, but he did not want the enmity of those who had resigned all into his hands. Corona went on her way and found Faustina and Flavia together. Their mother was not able to see any one. The rest of the family had gone to the country as soon as the body had been taken away, yielding without any great resistance to the entreaties of their best friends who, according to Roman custom, thought it necessary to "divert" the mourners. That is the consecrated phrase, and people of other countries may open their eyes in astonishment at the state of domestic relations as revealed by this practice. It is not an uncommon thing for the majority of the family to go away even before death has actually taken place. Speaking of a person who is dying, it is not unusual to say, "You may imagine how ill he is, for the family has left him!" The servants attend the Requiem Mass, the empty carriages follow the hearse to the gates of the city, but the family is already in the country, trying to "divert" itself. Flavia and Faustina, however, had stayed at home, partly because the old princess was really too deeply moved and profoundly shocked to go away, and partly because San Giacinto refused to leave Rome. Faustina, too, was eccentric enough to think such haste after "diversion" altogether indecent, and she herself had been through such a series of emotions during the twenty-four hours that she found rest needful. As for Flavia, she took matters very calmly, but would have preferred very much to be with her brothers and their wives. The calamity had for the time subdued her vivacity, though it was easy to see that it had made no deep impression upon her nature. If the truth were told, she was more unpleasantly affected by thus suddenly meeting Corona than by her father's tragic death. She thought it necessary to be more than usually affectionate, not out of calculation, but rather to get rid of a disagreeable impression. She sprang forward and kissed Corona on both cheeks. "I was longing to see you!" she said enthusiastically. "You have been so kind to Faustina. I am sure we can never thank you enough. Imagine, if she had been obliged to spend the night alone in prison! Such an abominable mistake, too. I hope that dreadful man will be sent to the galleys. Poor little Faustina! How could any one think she could do such a thing!" Corona was not prepared for Flavia's manner, and it grated disagreeably on her sensibilities. But she said nothing, only returning her salutation with becoming cordiality before sitting down between the two sisters. Faustina looked on coldly, disgusted with such indifference. It struck her that if Corona had not accompanied her to the Termini, it would have been very hard to induce any of her own family to do so. "And poor papa!" continued Flavia volubly. "Is it not too dreadful, too horrible? To think of any one daring! I shall never get over the impression it made on me--never. Without a priest, without any one--poor dear!" "Heaven is very merciful," said Corona, thinking it necessary to make some such remark. "Oh, I know," answered Flavia, with sudden seriousness. "I know. But poor papa--you see--I am afraid--" She stopped significantly and shook her head, evidently implying that Prince Montevarchi's chances of blessedness were but slender. "Flavia!" cried Faustina indignantly, "how can you say such things!" "Oh, I say nothing, and besides, I daresay--you see he was sometimes very kind. It was only yesterday, for instance, that he actually promised me those earrings--you know, Faustina, the pearl drops at Civilotti's--it is true, they were not so very big after all. He really said he would give them to me as a souvenir if--oh! I forgot." She stopped with some embarrassment, for she had been on the point of saying that the earrings were to be a remembrance if the suit were won, when she recollected that she was speaking to Corona. "Well--it would have been very kind of him if he had," she added. "Perhaps that is something. Poor papa! One would feel more sure about it, if he had got some kind of absolution." "I do not believe you cared for him at all!" exclaimed Faustina. Corona evidently shared this belief, for she looked very grave and was silent. "Oh, Faustina, how unkind you are!" cried Flavia in great astonishment and some anger. "I am sure I loved poor papa as much as any of you, and perhaps a great deal better. We were always such good friends!" Faustina raised her eyebrows a little and looked at Corona as though to say that her sister was hopeless, and for some minutes no one spoke. "You are quite rested now?" asked Corona at last, turning to the young girl. "Poor child! what you must have suffered!" "It is strange, but I am not tired. I slept, you know, for I was worn out." "Faustina's grief did not keep her awake," observed Flavia, willing to say something disagreeable. "I only came to see how you were," said Corona, who did not care to prolong the interview. "I hope to hear that your mother is better to-morrow. I met Saracinesca as I came in, but I did not ask him." "Your father-in-law?" asked Faustina innocently. "I did not know he had been here." "No; your husband, my dear," answered Corona, looking at Flavia as she spoke. She was curious to see what effect the change had produced upon her. Flavia's cheeks flushed quickly, evidently with pleasure, if also with some embarrassment. But Corona was calm and unmoved as usual. "I did not know you already called him so," said Flavia. "How strange it will be!" "We shall soon get used to it," replied Corona, with a smile, as she rose to go. "I wish you many years of happiness with your new name. Good-bye." Faustina went with her into one of the outer rooms. "Tell me," she said, when they were alone, "how did your husband manage it so quickly? They told me to-day that the cardinal had at first refused. I cannot understand it. I could not ask you before Flavia--she is so inquisitive!" "I do not know--I have not seen Giovanni yet. He stayed with the cardinal when the carriage came for us. It was managed in some way, and quickly. I shall hear all about it this evening. What is it, dear?" There were tears in Faustina's soft eyes, followed quickly by a little sob. "I miss him dreadfully!" she exclaimed, laying her head on her friend's shoulder. "And I am so unhappy! We parted angrily, and I can never tell him how sorry I am. You do not think it could have had anything to do with it, do you?" "Your little quarrel? No, child. What could it have changed? We do not know what happened." "I shall never forget his face. I was dreadfully undutiful--oh! I could almost marry that man if it would do any good!" Corona smiled sadly. The young girl's sorrow was genuine, in strange contrast to Flavia's voluble flippancy. She laid her hand affectionately on the thick chestnut hair. "Perhaps he sees now that you should not marry against your heart." "Oh, do you think so? I wish it were possible. I should not feel as though I were so bad if I thought he understood now. I could bear it better. I should not feel as though it were almost a duty to marry Frangipani." Corona turned quickly with an expression that was almost fierce in its intensity. She took Faustina's hands in hers. "Never do that, Faustina. Whatever comes to you, do not do that! You do not know what it is to live with a man you do not love, even if you do not hate him. It is worse than death." Corona kissed her and left her standing by the door. Was it possible, Faustina asked, that Corona did not love her husband? Or was she speaking of her former life with old Astrardente? Of course, it must be that. Giovanni and Corona were a proverbially happy couple. When Corona again entered her own room, there was a note lying upon the table, the one her husband had written that morning from his place of confinement. She tore the envelope open with an anxiety of which she had not believed herself capable. She had asked for him when she returned and he had not been heard of yet. The vague uneasiness she had felt at his absence suddenly increased, until she felt that unless she saw him at once she must go in search of him. She read the note through again and again, without clearly understanding the contents. It was evident that he had left Rome suddenly and had not cared to tell her whither he was going, since the instructions as to what she was to say were put in such a manner as to make it evident that they were only to serve as an excuse for his absence to others, and not as an explanation to herself. The note was enigmatical and might mean almost anything. At last Corona tossed the bit of paper into the fire, and tapped the thick carpet impatiently with her foot. "How coldly he writes!" she exclaimed aloud. The door opened and her maid appeared. "Will your Excellency receive Monsieur Gouache?" asked the woman from the threshold. "No! certainly not!" answered Corona, in a voice that frightened the servant. "I am not at home." "Yes, your Excellency." CHAPTER XXVI. The amount of work which Arnoldo Meschini did in the twenty-four hours of the day depended almost entirely upon his inclinations. The library had always been open to the public once a week, on Mondays, and on those occasions the librarian was obliged to be present. The rest of his time was supposed to be devoted to the incessant labour connected with so important a collection of books, and, on the whole, he had done far more than was expected of him. Prince Montevarchi had never proposed to give him an assistant, and he would have rejected any such offer, since the presence of another person would have made it almost impossible for him to carry on his business of forging ancient manuscripts. The manual labour of his illicit craft was of course performed in his own room, but a second librarian could not have failed to discover that there was something wrong. Night after night he carried the precious manuscripts to his chamber, bringing them back and restoring them to their places every morning. During the day he studied attentively what he afterwards executed in the quiet hours when he could be alone. Of the household none but the prince himself ever came to the library, no other member of the family cared for the books or knew anything about them. His employer being dead, Meschini was practically master of all the shelves contained. No one disturbed him, no one asked what he was doing. His salary would be paid regularly by the steward, and he would in all probability be left to vegetate unheeded for the rest of his natural lifetime. When he died some one else would be engaged in his place. In the ordinary course of events no other future would have been open to him. He awoke very late in the morning on the day after the murder, and lay for some time wondering why he was so very uncomfortable, why his head hurt him, why his vision was indistinct, why he could remember nothing he had done before going to bed. The enormous quantity of liquor he had drunk had temporarily destroyed his faculties, which were not hardened by the habitual use of alcohol. He turned his head uneasily upon the pillow and saw the bottles on the table, the candle burnt down in the brass candlestick and the general disorder in the room. He glanced at his own body and saw that he was lying dressed upon his bed. Then the whole truth flashed upon his mind with appalling vividness. A shock went through his system as though some one had struck him violently on the back of the head, while the light in the room was momentarily broken into flashes that pained his eyes. He got upon his feet with difficulty, and steadied himself by the bed-post, hardly able to stand alone. He had murdered his master. The first moment in which he realised the fact was the most horrible he remembered to have passed. He had killed the prince and could recall nothing, or next to nothing, that had occurred since the deed. Almost before he knew what he was doing he had locked his door with a double turn of the key and was pushing the furniture against it, the table, the chairs, everything that he could move. It seemed to him that he could already hear upon the winding stair the clank of the gens d'armes' sabres as they came to get him. He looked wildly round the room to see whether there was anything that could lead to discovery. The unwonted exertion, however, had restored the circulation of his blood, and with it arose an indistinct memory of the sense of triumph he had felt when he had last entered the chamber. He asked himself how he could have rejoiced over the deed, unless he had unconsciously taken steps for his own safety. The body must have been found long ago. Very gradually there rose before him the vision of the scene in the study, when he had been summoned thither by the two servants, the dead prince stretched on the table, the pale faces, the prefect, Donna Faustina's voice, a series of questions asked in a metallic, pitiless tone. He had not been drunk, therefore, when they had sent for him. And yet, he knew that he had not been sober. In what state, then, had he found himself? With a shudder, he remembered his terror in the library, his fright at the ghost which had turned out to be only his own coat, his visit to his room, and the first draught he had swallowed. From that point onwards his memory grew less and less clear. He found that he could not remember at all how he had come upstairs the last time. One thing was evident, however. He had not been arrested, since he found himself in his chamber unmolested. Who, then, had been taken in his place? He was amazed to find that he did not know. Surely, at the first inquest, something must have been said which would have led to the arrest of some one. The law never went away empty-handed. He racked his aching brain to bring back the incident, but it would not be recalled--for the excellent reason that he really knew nothing about the matter. It was a relief at all events to find that he had actually been examined with the rest and had not been suspected. Nevertheless, he had undoubtedly done the deed, of which the mere thought made him tremble in every joint. Or was it all a part of his drunken dreams? No, that, at least, could not be explained away. For a long time he moved uneasily from his barricade at the door to the window, from which he tried to see the street below. But his room was in the attic, and the broad stone cornice of the palace cut off the view effectually. At last he began to pull the furniture away from the entrance, slowly at first, as he merely thought of its uselessness, then with feverish haste, as he realised that the fact of his trying to entrench himself in his quarters would seem suspicious. In a few seconds he had restored everything to its place. The brandy bottles disappeared into the cupboard in the wall; a bit of candle filled the empty candlestick. He tore off his clothes and jumped into bed, tossing himself about to give it the appearance of having been slept in. Then he got up again and proceeded to make his toilet. All his clothes were black, and he had but a slender choice. He understood vaguely, however, that there would be a funeral or some sort of ceremony in which all the members of the household would be expected to join, and he arrayed himself in the best he had--a decent suit of broadcloth, a clean shirt, a black tie. He looked at himself in the cracked mirror. His face was ghastly yellow, the whites of his eyes injected with blood, the veins at the temples swollen and congested. He was afraid that his appearance might excite remark, though it was in reality not very much changed. Then, as he thought of this, he realised that he was to meet a score of persons, some of whom would very probably look at him curiously. His nerves were in a shattered condition, he almost broke down at the mere idea of what he must face. What would become of him in the presence of the reality? And yet he had met the whole household bravely enough on the very spot where he had done the murder on the previous evening. He sat down, overpowered by the revival of his fear and horror. The room swam around him and he grasped the edge of the table for support. But he could not stay there all day. Any reluctance to make his appearance at such a time might be fatal. There was only one way to get the necessary courage, and that was to drink again. He shrank from the thought. He had not acquired the habitual drunkard's certainty of finding nerve and boldness and steadiness of hand in the morning draught, and the idea of tasting the liquor was loathsome to him in his disordered state. He rose to his feet and tried to act as though he were in the midst of a crowd of persons. Ape-like, he grinned at the furniture, walked about the room, spoke aloud, pretending that he was meeting real people, tried to frame sentences expressive of profound grief. He opened the door and made a pretence of greeting an imaginary individual. It was as though a stream of cold water had fallen upon his neck. His knees knocked together, and he felt sick with fear. There was evidently no use in attempting to go down without some stimulant. Almost sorrowfully he shut the door again, and took the bottle from its place. He took several small doses, patiently testing the effect until his hand was steady and warm. Ten minutes later he was kneeling with many others before the catafalque, beneath the great canopy of black. He was dazed by the light of the great branches of candles, and confused by the subdued sound of whispering and of softly treading feet; but he knew that his outward demeanour was calm and collected, and that he exhibited no signs of nervousness. San Giacinto was standing near one of the doors, having taken his turn with the sons of the dead man to remain in the room. He watched the librarian and a rough sort of pity made itself felt in his heart. "Poor Meschini!" he thought. "He has lost a friend. I daresay he is more genuinely sorry than all the family put together, poor fellow!" Arnoldo Meschini, kneeling before the body of the man he had murdered, with a brandy bottle in the pocket of his long coat, would have come to an evil end if the giant had guessed the truth. But he looked what he was supposed to be, the humble, ill-paid, half-starved librarian, mourning the master he had faithfully served for thirty years. He knelt a long time, his lips moving mechanically with the words of an oft-repeated prayer. In reality he was afraid to rise from his knees alone, and was waiting until some of the others made the first move. But the rows of lacqueys, doubtless believing that the amount of their future wages would largely depend upon the vigour of their present mourning, did not seem inclined to desist from their orisons. To Meschini the time was interminable, and his courage was beginning to ooze away from him, as the sense of his position acquired a tormenting force. He could have borne it well enough in a church, in the midst of a vast congregation, he could have fought off his horror even here for a few minutes, but to sustain such a part for a quarter of an hour seemed almost impossible. He would have given his soul, which indeed was just then of but small value, to take a sip of courage from the bottle, and his clasped fingers twitched nervously, longing to find the way to his pocket. He glanced along the line, measuring his position, to see whether there was a possibility of drinking without being observed, but he saw that it would be madness to think of it, and began repeating his prayer with redoubled energy, in the hope of distracting his mind. Then a horrible delusion began to take possession of him; he fancied that the dead man was beginning to turn his head slowly, almost imperceptibly, towards him. Those closed eyes would open and look him in the face, a supernatural voice would speak his name. As on the previous afternoon the cold perspiration began to trickle from his brow. He was on the point of crying aloud with terror, when the man next to him rose. In an instant he was on his feet. Both bent again, crossed themselves, and retired. Meschini stumbled and caught at his companion's arm, but succeeded in gaining the door. As he passed out, his face was so discomposed that San Giacinto looked down upon him with increased compassion, then followed him a few steps and laid his hand on his shoulder. The librarian started violently and stood still. "He was a good friend to you, Signor Meschini," said the big man kindly. "But take heart, you shall not be forgotten." The dreaded moment had come, and it had been very terrible, but San Giacinto's tone was reassuring. He could not have suspected anything, though the servants said that he was an inscrutable man, profound in his thoughts and fearful in his anger. He was the one of all the family whom Meschini most feared. "God have mercy on him!" whined the librarian, trembling to his feet. "He was the best of men, and is no doubt in glory!" "No doubt," replied San Giacinto drily. He entertained opinions of his own upon the subject, and he did not like the man's tone. "No doubt," he repeated. "We will try and fulfil his wishes with regard to you." "Grazie, Eccelenza!" said Meschini with great humility, making horns with his fingers behind his back to ward off the evil eye, and edging away in the direction of the grand staircase. San Giacinto returned to the door and paid no more attention to him. Then Meschini almost ran down the stairs and did not slacken his speed until he found himself in the street. The cold air of the winter's day revived him, and he found himself walking rapidly in the direction of the Ponte Quattro Capi. He generally took that direction when he went out without any especial object, for his friend Tiberio Colaisso, the poor apothecary, had his shop upon the little island of Saint Bartholomew, which is connected with the shores of the river by a double bridge, whence the name, "the bridge of four heads." Meschini paused and looked over the parapet at the yellow swirling water. The eddies seemed to take queer shapes and he watched them for a long time. He had a splitting headache, of the kind which is made more painful by looking at quickly moving objects, which, at the same time, exercise an irresistible fascination over the eye. Almost unconsciously he compared his own life to the river--turbid, winding, destroying. The simile was incoherent, like most of his fancies on that day, but it served to express a thought, and he began to feel an odd sympathy for the muddy stream, such as perhaps no one had ever felt before him. But as he looked he grew dizzy, and drew back from the parapet. There must have been something strange in his face, for a man who was passing looked at him curiously and asked whether he were ill. He shook his head with a sickly smile and passed on. The apothecary was standing idly at his door, waiting for a custom that rarely came his way. He was a cadaverous man, about fifty years of age, with eyes of an uncertain colour set deep in his head. An ill-kept, grizzled beard descended upon his chest, and gave a certain wildness to his appearance. A very shabby green smoking cap, trimmed with tarnished silver lace, was set far back upon his head, displaying a wrinkled forehead, much heightened by baldness, but of proportions that denoted a large and active brain. That he took snuff in great quantities was apparent. Otherwise he was neither very dirty nor very clean, but his thumbs had that peculiar shape which seems to be the result of constantly rolling pills. Meschini stopped before him. "Sor Arnoldo, good-day," said the chemist, scrutinising his friend's face curiously. "Good-day, Sor Tiberio," replied the librarian. "Will you let me come in for a little moment?" There seemed to be an attempt at a jest in the question, for the apothecary almost smiled. "Padrone," he said, retiring backwards through the narrow door. "A game of scopa to-day?" "Have you the time to spare?" inquired the other, in a serious tone. They always maintained the myth that Tiberio Colaisso was a very busy man. "To-day," answered the latter, without a smile, and emphasising the word as though it defined an exception, "to-day, I have nothing to do. Besides, it is early." "We can play a hand and then we can dine at Cicco's." "Being Friday in Advent, I had intended to fast," replied the apothecary, who had not a penny in his pocket "But since you are so good as to invite me, I do not say no." Meschini said nothing, for he understood the situation, which was by no means a novel one. His friend produced a pack of Italian cards, almost black with age. He gave Meschini the only chair, and seated himself upon a three-legged stool. It was a dismal scene. The shop was like many of its kind in the poorer quarters of old Rome. There was room for the counter and for three people to stand before it when the door was shut. The floor was covered with a broken pavement of dingy bricks. As the two men began to play a fine, drizzling rain wet the silent street outside, and the bricks within at once exhibited an unctuous moisture. The sky had become cloudy after the fine morning, and there was little light in the shop. Three of the walls were hidden by cases with glass doors, containing an assortment of majolica jars which would delight a modern amateur, but which looked dingy and mean in the poor shop. Here and there, between them, stood bottles large and small, some broken and dusty, others filled with liquids and bearing paper labels, brown with age, the ink inscriptions fading into the dirty surface that surrounded them. The only things in the place which looked tolerably clean were the little brass scales and the white marble tablet for compounding solid medicines. The two men looked as though they belonged to the little room. Meschini's yellow complexion was as much in keeping with the surroundings as the chemist's gray, colourless face. His bloodshot eyes wandered from the half-defaced cards to the objects in the shop, and he was uncertain in his play. His companion looked at him as though he were trying to solve some intricate problem that gave him trouble. He himself was a man who, like the librarian, had begun life under favourable circumstances, had studied medicine and had practised it. But he had been unfortunate, and, though talented, did not possess the qualifications most necessary for his profession. He had busied himself with chemistry and had invented a universal panacea which had failed, and in which he had sunk most of his small capital. Disgusted with his reverses he had gravitated slowly to his present position. Finding him careless and indifferent to their wants, his customers had dropped away, one by one, until he earned barely enough to keep body and soul together. Only the poorest class of people, emboldened by the mean aspect of his shop, came in to get a plaster, an ointment or a black draught, at the lowest possible prices. And yet, in certain branches, Tiberio Colaisso was a learned man. At all events he had proved himself able to do all that Meschini asked of him. He was keen, too, in an indolent way, and a single glance had satisfied him that something very unusual had happened to the librarian. He watched him patiently, hoping to find out the truth without questions. At the same time, the hope of winning a few coppers made him keep an eye on the game. To his surprise he won easily, and he was further astonished when he saw that the miserly Meschini was not inclined to complain of his losses nor to accuse him of cheating. "You are not lucky to-day," he remarked at last, when his winnings amounted to a couple of pauls--a modern franc in all. Meschini looked at him uneasily and wiped his brow, leaning back in the rickety chair. His hands were trembling. "No," he answered. "I am not quite myself to-day. The fact is that a most dreadful tragedy occurred in our house last night, the mere thought of which gives me the fever. I am even obliged to take a little stimulant from time to time." So saying, he drew the bottle from his pocket and applied it to his lips. He had hoped that it would not be necessary, but he was unable to do without it very long, his nerves being broken down by the quantity he had taken on the previous night. Colaisso looked on in silence, more puzzled than ever. The librarian seemed to be revived by the dose, and spoke more cheerfully after it. "A most terrible tragedy," he said. "The prince was murdered yesterday afternoon. I could not speak of it to you at once." "Murdered?" exclaimed the apothecary in amazement. "And by whom?" "That is the mystery. He was found dead in his study. I will tell you all I know." Meschini communicated the story to his friend in a disjointed fashion, interspersing his narrative with many comments intended to give himself courage to proceed. He told the tale with evident reluctance, but he could not avoid the necessity. If Tiberio Colaisso read the account in the paper that evening, as he undoubtedly would, he would wonder why his companion had not been the first to relate the catastrophe; and this wonder might turn into a suspicion. It would have been better not to come to the apothecary's, but since he found himself there he could not escape from informing him of what had happened. "It is very strange," said the chemist, when he had heard all. Meschini thought he detected a disagreeable look in his eyes. "It is, indeed," he answered. "I am made ill by it. See how my hand trembles. I am cold and hot." "You have been drinking too much," said Colaisso suddenly, and with a certain brutality that startled his friend. "You are not sober. You must have taken a great deal last night. A libation to the dead, I suppose, in the manner of the ancients." Meschini winced visibly and began to shuffle the cards, while he attempted to smile to hide his embarrassment. "I was not well yesterday--at least--I do not know what was the matter--a headache, I think, nothing more. And then, this awful catastrophe--horrible! My nerves are unstrung. I can scarcely speak." "You need sleep first, and then a tonic," said the apothecary in a business-like tone. "I slept until late this morning. It did me no good. I am half dead myself. Yes, if I could sleep again it might do me good." "Go home and go to bed. If I were in your place I would not drink any more of that liquor. It will only make you worse." "Give me something to make me sleep. I will take it." The apothecary looked long at him and seemed to be weighing something in his judgment. An evil thought crossed his mind. He was very poor. He knew well enough, in spite of Meschini's protestations, that he was not so poor as he pretended to be. If he were he could not have paid so regularly for the chemicals and for the experiments necessary to the preparation of his inks. More than once the operations had proved to be expensive, but the librarian had never complained, though he haggled for a baiocco over his dinner at Cicco's wine shop, and was generally angry when he lost a paul at cards. He had money somewhere. It was evident that he was in a highly nervous state. If he could be induced to take opium once or twice it might become a habit. To sell opium was very profitable, and Colaisso knew well enough the power of the vice and the proportions it would soon assume, especially if Meschini thought the medicine contained only some harmless drug. "Very well," said the apothecary. "I will make you a draught. But you must be sure that you are ready to sleep when you take it. It acts very quickly." The draught which Meschini carried home with him was nothing but weak laudanum and water. It looked innocent enough, in the little glass bottle labelled "Sleeping potion." But the effect of it, as Colaisso had told him, was very rapid. Exhausted by all he had suffered, the librarian closed the windows of his room and lay down to rest. In a quarter of an hour he was in a heavy sleep. In his dreams he was happier than he had ever been before. The whole world seemed to be his, to use as he pleased. He was transformed into a magnificent being such as he had never imagined in his waking hours. He passed from one scene of splendour to another, from glory to glory, surrounded by forms of beauty, by showers of golden light in a beatitude beyond all description. It was as though he had suddenly become emperor of the whole universe. He floated through wondrous regions of soft colour, and strains of divine music sounded in his ears. Gentle hands carried him with an easy swaying motion to transcendent heights, where every breath he drew was like a draught of sparkling life. His whole being was filled with something which he knew was happiness, until he felt as though he could not contain the overflowing joy. At one moment he glided beyond the clouds through a gorgeous sunset; at another he was lying on a soft invisible couch, looking out to the bright distance--distance that never ended, never could end, but the contemplation of which was rapture, the greater for being inexplicable. An exquisite new sense was in him, corresponding to no bodily instinct, but rejoicing wildly in something that could not be defined, nor understood, nor measured, but only felt. At last he began to descend, slowly at first and then with increasing speed, till he grew giddy and unconscious in the fall. He awoke and uttered a cry of terror. It was night, and he was alone in the dark. He was chilled to the bone, too, and his head was heavy, but the darkness was unbearable, and though he would gladly have slept again he dared not remain an instant without a light. He groped about for his matches, found them, and lit a candle. A neighbouring clock tolled out the hour of midnight, and the sound of the bells terrified him beyond measure. Cold, miserable, in an agony of fear, his nervousness doubled by the opium and by a need of food of which he was not aware, there was but one remedy within his reach. The sleeping potion had been calculated for one occasion only, and it was all gone. He tried to drain a few drops from the phial, and a drowsy, half-sickening odour rose from it to his nostrils. But there was nothing left, nothing but the brandy, and little more than half a bottle of that. It was enough for his present need, however, and more than enough. He drank greedily, for he was parched with thirst, though hardly conscious of the fact. Then he slept till morning. But when he opened his eyes he was conscious that he was in a worse state than on the previous day. He was not only nervous but exhausted, and it was with feeble steps that he made his way to his friend's shop, in order to procure a double dose of the sleeping mixture. If he could sleep through the twenty-four hours, he thought, so as not to wake up in the dead of night, he should be better. When he made his appearance Tiberio Colaisso knew what he wanted, and although he had half repented of what he had done, the renewed possibility of selling the precious drug was a temptation he could not withstand. One day succeeded another, and each morning saw Arnoldo Meschini crossing the Ponte Quattro Capi on his way to the apothecary's. In the ordinary course of human nature a man does not become an opium-eater in a day, nor even, perhaps, in a week, but to the librarian the narcotic became a necessity almost from the first. Its action, combined with incessant doses of alcohol, was destructive, but the man's constitution was stronger than would have been believed. He possessed, moreover, a great power of controlling his features when he was not assailed by supernatural fears, and so it came about that, living almost in solitude, no one in the Palazzo Montevarchi was aware of his state. It was bad enough, indeed, for when he was not under the influence of brandy he was sleeping from the effects of opium. In three days he was willing to pay anything the apothecary asked, and seemed scarcely conscious of the payments he made. He kept up a show of playing the accustomed game of cards, but he was absent-minded, and was not even angry at his daily losses. The apothecary had more money in his pocket than he had possessed for many a day. As Arnoldo Meschini sank deeper and deeper, the chemist's spirits rose, and he began to assume an air of unwonted prosperity. One of the earliest results of the librarian's degraded condition was that Tiberio Colaisso procured himself a new green smoking cap ornamented profusely with fresh silver lace. CHAPTER XXVII. Sant' Ilario had guessed rightly that the place of safety and secrecy to which he was to be conveyed was no other than the Holy Office, or prison of the Inquisition. He was familiar with the interior of the building, and knew that it contained none of the horrors generally attributed to it, so that, on the whole, he was well satisfied with the cardinal's choice. The cell to which he was conveyed after dark was a large room on the second story, comfortably furnished and bearing no sign of its use but the ornamented iron grating that filled the window. The walls were not thicker than those of most Roman palaces, and the chamber was dry and airy, and sufficiently warmed by a huge brazier of coals. It was clear from the way in which he was treated that the cardinal relied upon his honour more than upon any use of force in order to keep him in custody. A silent individual in a black coat had brought him in a carriage to the great entrance, whence a man of similar discretion and of like appearance had conducted him to his cell. This person returned soon afterwards, bringing a sufficient meal of fish and vegetables--it was Friday--decently cooked and almost luxuriously served. An hour later the man came back to carry away what was left. He asked whether the prisoner needed anything else for the night. "I would like to know," said Giovanni, "whether any of my friends will be allowed to see me, if I ask it." "I am directed to say that any request or complaint you have to make will be transmitted to his Eminence by a special messenger," answered the man. "Anything," he added in explanation, "beyond what concerns your personal comfort. In this respect I am at liberty to give you whatever you desire, within reason." "Thank you. I will endeavour to be reasonable," replied Giovanni. "I am much obliged to you." The man left the room and closed the door softly, so softly that the prisoner wondered whether he had turned the key. On examining the panels he saw, however, that they were smooth and not broken by any latch or keyhole. The spring was on the outside, and there was no means whatever of opening the door from within. Giovanni wondered why a special messenger was to be employed to carry any request he made directly to the cardinal. The direction could not have been given idly, nor was it without some especial reason that he was at once told of it. Assuredly his Eminence was not expecting the prince to repent of his bargain and to send word that he wished to be released. The idea was absurd. The great man might suppose, however, that Giovanni would desire to send some communication to his wife, who would naturally be anxious about his absence. Against this contingency, however, Sant' Ilario had provided by means of the note he had despatched to her. Several days would elapse before she began to expect him, so that he had plenty of time to reflect upon his future course. Meanwhile he resolved to ask for nothing. Indeed, he had no requirements. He had money in his pockets and could send the attendant to buy any linen he needed without getting it from his home. He was in a state of mind in which nothing could have pleased him better than solitary imprisonment. He felt at once a sense of rest and a freedom from all responsibility that soothed his nerves and calmed his thoughts. For many days he had lived in a condition bordering on madness. Every interview with Corona was a disappointment, and brought with it a new suffering. Much as he would have dreaded the idea of being separated from her for any length of time, the temporary impossibility of seeing her was now a relief, of which he realised the importance more and more as the hours succeeded each other. There are times when nothing but a forcible break in the current of our lives can restore the mind to its normal balance. Such a break, painful as it may be at first, brings with it the long lost power of rest. Instead of feeling the despair we expect, we are amazed at our own indifference, which again is succeeded by a renewed capacity for judging facts as they are, and by a new energy to mould our lives upon a better plan. Giovanni neither reflected upon his position nor brooded over the probable result of his actions. On the contrary, he went to bed and slept soundly, like a strong man tired out with bodily exertion. He slept so long that his attendant at last woke him, entering and opening the window. The morning was fine, and the sun streamed in through the iron grating. Giovanni looked about him, and realised where he was. He felt calm and strong, and was inclined to laugh at the idea that his rashness would have any dangerous consequences. Corona doubtless was already awake too, and supposed that he was in the country shooting wild boar, or otherwise amusing himself. Instead of that he was in prison. There was no denying the fact, after all, but it was strange that he should not care to be at liberty. He had heard of the moral sufferings of men who are kept in confinement. No matter how well they are treated they grow nervous and careworn and haggard, wearing themselves out in a perpetual longing for freedom. Giovanni, on the contrary, as he looked round the bright, airy room, felt that he might inhabit it for a year without once caring to go out into the world. A few books to read, the means of writing if he pleased--he needed nothing else. To be alone was happiness enough. He ate his breakfast slowly, and sat down in an old-fashioned chair to smoke a cigarette and bask in the sunshine while it lasted. It was not much like prison, and he did not feel like a man arrested for murder. He was conscious for a long time of nothing but a vague, peaceful contentment. He had given a list of things to be bought, including a couple of novels, to the man who waited upon him, and after a few hours everything was brought. The day passed tranquilly, and when he went to bed he smiled as he blew out the candle, partly at himself and partly at his situation. "My friends will not say that I am absolutely lacking in originality," he reflected as he went to sleep. On the morrow he read less and thought more. In the first place he wondered how long he should be left without any communication from the outside world. He wondered whether any steps had been taken towards bringing him to a trial, or whether the cardinal really knew that he was innocent, and was merely making him act out the comedy he had himself invented and begun. He was not impatient, but he was curious to know the truth. It was now the third day since he had seen Corona, and he had not prepared her for a long absence. If he heard nothing during the next twenty-four hours it would be better to take some measures for relieving her anxiety, if she felt any. The latter reflection, which presented itself suddenly, startled him a little. Was it possible that she would allow a week to slip by without expecting to hear from him or asking herself where he was? That was out of the question. He admitted the impossibility of such indifference, almost in spite of himself. He was willing, perhaps, to think her utterly heartless rather than accept the belief in an affection which went no farther than to hope that he might be safe; but his vanity or his intuition, it matters little which of the two, told him that Corona felt more than that. And yet she did not love him. He sat for many hours, motionless in his chair, trying to construct the future out of the past, an effort of imagination in which he failed signally. The peace of his solitude was less satisfactory to him than at first, and he began to suspect that before very long he might even wish to return to the world. Possibly Corona might come to see him. The cardinal would perhaps think it best to tell her what had happened. How would he tell it? Would he let her know all? The light faded from the room, and the attendant brought his evening meal and set two candles upon the table. Hitherto it could not be said that he had suffered. On the contrary, his character had regained its tone after weeks of depression. Another day was ended, and he went to rest, but he slept less soundly than before, and on the following morning he awoke early. The monotony of the existence struck him all at once in its reality. The fourth day would be like the third, and, for all he knew, hundreds to come would be like the fourth if it pleased his Eminence to keep him a prisoner. Corona would certainly never suspect that he was shut up in the Holy Office, and if she did, she might not be able to come to him. Even if she came, what could he say to her? That he had committed a piece of outrageous folly because he was annoyed at her disbelief in him or at her coldness. He had probably made himself ridiculous for the first time in his life. The thought was the reverse of consoling. Nor did it contribute to his peace of mind to know that if he had made himself a laughing-stock, the cardinal, who dreaded ridicule, would certainly refuse to play a part in his comedy, and would act with all the rigour suitable to so grave a situation. He might even bring his prisoner to trial. Giovanni would submit to that, rather than be laughed at, but the alternative now seemed an appalling one. In his disgust of life on that memorable morning he had cared nothing what became of him, and had been in a state which precluded all just appreciation of the future. His enforced solitude had restored his faculties. He desired nothing less than to be tried for murder, because he had taken a short cut to satisfy his wife's caprice. But that caprice had for its object the liberty of poor Faustina Montevarchi. At all events, if he had made himself ridiculous, the ultimate purpose of his folly had been good, and had been accomplished. All through the afternoon he paced his room, alternately in a state of profound dissatisfaction with himself, and in a condition of anxious curiosity about coming events. He scarcely touched his food or noticed the attendant who entered half a dozen times to perform his various offices. Again the night closed in, and once more he lay down to sleep, dreading the morning, and hoping to lose himself in dreams. The fourth day was like the third, indeed, as far as his surroundings were concerned, but he had not foreseen that he would be a prey to such gnawing anxiety as he suffered, still less, perhaps, that he should grow almost desperate for a sight of Corona. He was not a man who made any exhibition of his feelings even when he was alone. But the man who served him noticed that when he entered Giovanni was never reading, as he had always been doing at first. He was either walking rapidly up and down or sitting idly in the big chair by the window. His face was quiet and pale, even solemn at times. The attendant was doubtless accustomed to sudden changes of mood in his prisoners, for he appeared to take no notice of the alteration in Giovanni's manner. It seemed as though the day would never end. To a man of his active strength to walk about a room is not exercise; it hardly seems like motion at all, and yet Giovanni found it harder and harder to sit still as the hours wore on. After an interval of comparative peace, his love for Corona had overwhelmed him again, and with tenfold force. To be shut up in a cell without the possibility of seeing her, was torture such as he had never dreamt of in his whole life. By a strange revulsion of feeling it appeared to him that by taking her so suddenly at her word he had again done her an injustice. The process of reasoning by which he arrived at this conclusion was not clear to himself, and probably could not be made intelligible to any one else. He had assuredly sacrificed himself unhesitatingly, and at first the action had given him pleasure. But this was destroyed by the thought of the possible consequences. He asked whether he had the right to satisfy her imperative demand for Faustina's freedom by doing that which might possibly cause her annoyance, even though it should bring no serious injury to any one. The time passed very slowly, and towards evening he began to feel as he had felt before he had taken the fatal step which had placed him beyond Corona's reach, restless, miserable, desperate. At last it was night, and he was sitting before his solitary meal, eating hardly anything, staring half unconsciously at the closed window opposite. The door opened softly, but he did not look round, supposing the person entering to be the attendant. Suddenly, there was the rustle of a woman's dress in the room, and at the same moment the door was shut. He sprang to his feet, stood still a moment, and then uttered a cry of surprise. Corona stood beside him, very pale, looking into his eyes. She had worn a thick veil, and on coming in had thrown it back upon her head--the veils of those days were long and heavy, and fell about the head and neck like a drapery. "Corona!" Giovanni cried, stretching out his hands towards her. Something in her face prevented him from throwing his arms round her, something not like her usual coldness and reproachful look that kept him back. "Giovanni--was it kind to leave me so?" she asked, without moving from her place. The question corresponded so closely with his own feelings that he had anticipated it, though he had no answer ready. She knew all, and was hurt by what he had done. What could he say? The reasons that had sent him so boldly into danger no longer seemed even sufficient for an excuse. The happiness he had anticipated in seeing her had vanished almost before it had made itself felt. His first emotion was bitter anger against the cardinal. No one else could have told her, for no one else knew what he had done nor where he was. Giovanni thought, and with reason, that the great man might have spared his wife such a blow. "I believed I was doing what was best when I did it," he answered, scarcely knowing what to say. "Was it best to leave me without a word, except a message of excuse for others?" "For you--was it not better? For me--what does it matter? Should I be happier anywhere else?" "Have I driven you from your home, Giovanni?" asked Corona, with a strange look in her dark eyes. Her voice trembled. "No, not you," he answered, turning away and beginning to walk up and down by the force of the habit he had acquired during the last two or three days. "Not you," he repeated more than once in a bitter tone. Corona sank down upon the chair he had left, and buried her face in her hands, as though overcome by a great and sudden grief. Giovanni stopped before her and looked at her, not clearly understanding what was passing in her mind. "Why are you so sorry?" he asked. "Has a separation of a few days changed you? Are you sorry for me?" "Why did you come here?" she exclaimed, instead of answering his question. "Why here, of all places?" "I had no choice. The cardinal decided the matter for me." "The cardinal? Why do you confide in him? You never did before. I may be wrong, but I do not trust him, kind as he has always been. If you wanted advice, you might have gone to Padre Filippo--" "Advice? I do not understand you, Corona." "Did you not go to the cardinal and tell him that you were very unhappy and wanted to make a retreat in some quiet place where nobody could find you? And did he not advise you to come here, promising to keep your secret, and authorising you to stay as long as you pleased? That is what he told me." "He told you that?" cried Giovanni in great astonishment. "Yes--that and nothing more. He came to see me late this afternoon. He said that he feared lest I should be anxious about your long absence, and that he thought himself justified in telling me where you were and in giving me a pass, in case I wanted to see you. Besides, if it is not all as he says, how did you come here?" "You do not know the truth? You do not know what I did? You do not guess why I am in the Holy Office?" "I know only what he told me," answered Corona, surprised by Giovanni's questions. But Giovanni gave no immediate explanation. He paced the floor in a state of excitement in which she had never seen him, clasping and unclasping his fingers nervously, and uttering short, incoherent exclamations. As she watched him a sensation of fear crept over her, but she did not ask him any question. He stopped suddenly again. "You do not know that I am in prison?" "In prison!" She rose with a sharp cry and seized his hands in hers. "Do not be frightened, dear," he said in an altered tone. "I am perfectly innocent. After all, you know it is a prison." "Ah, Giovanni!" she exclaimed reproachfully, "how could you say such a dreadful thing, even in jest?" She had dropped his hands again, and drew back a step as she spoke. "It is not a jest. It is earnest. Do not start. I will tell you just what happened. It is best, after all. When I left you at the Termini, I saw that you had set your heart on liberating poor Faustina. I could not find any way of accomplishing what you desired, and I saw that you thought I was not doing my best for her freedom. I went directly to the cardinal and gave myself up in her place." "As a hostage--a surety?" asked Corona, breathlessly. "No. He would not have accepted that, for he was prejudiced against her. I gave myself up as the murderer." He spoke quite calmly, as though he had been narrating a commonplace occurrence. For an instant she stood before him, dumb and horror-struck. Then with a great heart-broken cry she threw her arms round him and clasped him passionately to her breast. "My beloved! My beloved!" For some moments she held him so closely that he could neither move nor see her face, but the beating of his heart told him that a great change had in that instant come over his life. The cry had come from her soul, irresistibly, spontaneously. There was an accent in the two words she repeated which he had never hoped to hear again. He had expected that she would reproach him for his madness. Instead of that, his folly had awakened the love that was not dead, though it had been so desperately wounded. Presently she drew back a little and looked into his eyes, a fierce deep light burning in her own. "I love you," she said, almost under her breath. A wonderful smile passed over his face, illuminating the dark, stern lines of it like a ray of heavenly light. Then the dusky eyelids slowly closed, as though by their own weight, his head fell back, and his lips turned white. She felt the burden of his body in her arms, and but for her strength he would have fallen to the floor. She reeled on her feet, holding him still, and sank down until she knelt and his head rested on her knee. Her heart stood still as she listened for the sound of his faint breathing. Had his unconsciousness lasted longer she would have fainted herself. But in a moment his eyes opened again with an expression such as she had seen in them once or twice before, but in a less degree. "Corona--it is too much!" he said softly, almost dreamily. Then his strength returned in an instant, like a strong steel bow that has been bent almost to breaking. He scarcely knew how it was that the position was changed so that he was standing on his feet and clasping her as she had clasped him. Her tears were flowing FAST, but there was more joy in them than pain. "How could you do it?" she asked at length, looking up. "And oh, Giovanni! what will be the end of it? Will not something dreadful happen?" "What does anything matter now, darling?" At last they sat down together, hand in hand, as of old. It was as though the last two months had been suddenly blotted out. As Giovanni said, nothing could matter now. And yet the situation was far from clear. Giovanni understood well enough that the cardinal had wished to leave him the option of telling his wife what had occurred, and, if he chose to do so, of telling her in his own language. He was grateful for the tact the statesman had displayed, a tact which seemed also to show Giovanni the cardinal's views of the case. He had declared that he was desperate. The cardinal had concluded that he was unhappy. He had said that he did not care what became of him. The cardinal had supposed that he would be glad to be alone, or at all events that it would be good for him to have a certain amount of solitude. If his position were in any way dangerous, the great man would surely not have thought of sending Corona to his prisoner as he had done. He would have prepared her himself against any shock. And yet he was undeniably in prison, with no immediate prospect of liberty. "You cannot stay here any longer," said Corona when they were at last able to talk of the immediate future. "I do not see how I am to get out," Giovanni answered, with a smile. "I will go to the cardinal--" "It is of no use. He probably guesses the truth, but he is not willing to be made ridiculous by me or by any one. He will keep me here until there can be a trial, or until he finds the real culprit. He is obstinate. I know him." "It is impossible that he should think of such a thing!" exclaimed Corona indignantly. "I am afraid it is very possible. But, of course, it is only a matter of time--a few days at the utmost. If worst comes to worst I can demand an inquiry, I suppose, though I do not see how I can proclaim my own innocence without hurting Faustina. She was liberated because I put myself in her place--it is rather complicated." "Tell me, Giovanni," said Corona, "what did you say to the cardinal? You did not really say that you murdered Montevarchi?" "No. I said I gave myself up as the murderer, and I explained how I might have done the deed. I did more, I pledged my honour that Faustina was innocent." "But you were not sure of it yourself--" "Since you had told me it was true, I believed it," he answered simply. "Thank you, dear--" "No. Do not thank me for it. I could not help myself. I knew that you were sure--are you sure of something else, Corona? Are you as certain as you were of that?" "How can you ask? But you are right--you have the right to doubt me. You will not, though, will you? Hear me, dear, while I tell you the whole story." She slipped from her chair and knelt before him, as though she were to make a confession. Then she took his hands and looked up lovingly into his face. The truth rose in her eyes. "Forgive me, Giovanni. Yes, you have much to forgive. I did not know myself. When you doubted me, I felt as though I had nothing left in life, as though you would never again believe in me. I thought I did not love you. I was wrong. It was only my miserable vanity that was wounded, and that hurt me so. I felt that my love was dead, that you yourself were dead and that another man had taken your place. Ah, I could have helped it! Had I known you better, dear, had I been less mistaken in myself, all would have been different. But I was foolish--no, I was unhappy. Everything was dark and dreadful. Oh, my darling, I thought I could tell what I felt--I cannot! Forgive me, only forgive me, and love me as you did long ago. I will never leave you, not if you stay here for ever, only let me love you as I will!" "It is not for me to forgive, sweetheart," said Giovanni, bending down and kissing her sweet dark hair. "It is for you--" "But I would so much rather think it my fault, dear," she answered, drawing his face down to hers. It was a very womanly impulse that made her take the blame upon herself. "You must not think anything so unreasonable, Corona. I brought all the harm that came, from the first moment." He would have gone on to accuse himself, obstinate and manlike, recapitulating the whole series of events. But she would not let him. Once more she sat beside him and held his hand in hers. They talked incoherently and it is not to be wondered at if they arrived at no very definite conclusion after a very long conversation. They were still sitting together when the attendant entered and presented Giovanni with a large sealed letter, bearing the Apostolic arms, and addressed merely to the number of Giovanni's cell. "There is an answer," said the man, and then left the room. "It is probably the notice of the trial, or something of the kind," observed Giovanni, suddenly growing very grave as he broke the seal. He wished it might have come at any other time than the present. Corona held her breath and watched his face while he read the lines written upon one of the two papers he took from the envelope. Suddenly the colour came to his cheeks and his eyes brightened with a look of happiness and surprise. "I am free!" he cried, as he finished. "Free if I will sign this paper! Of course I will! I will sign anything he likes." The envelope contained a note from the cardinal, in his own hand, to the effect that suspicion had fallen upon another person and that Giovanni was at liberty to return to his home if he would sign the accompanying document. The latter was very short, and set forth that Giovanni Saracinesca bound himself upon his word to appear in the trial of the murderer of Prince Montevarchi, if called upon to do so, and not to leave Rome until the matter was finally concluded and set at rest. He took the pen that lay on the table and signed his name in a broad firm hand, a fact the more notable because Corona was leaning over his shoulder, watching the characters as he traced them. He folded the paper and placed it in the open envelope which accompanied it. The cardinal was a man of details. He thought it possible that the document might be returned open for lack of the means to seal it. He did not choose that his secrets should become the property of the people about the Holy Office. It was a specimen of his forethought in small things which might have an influence upon great ones. When Giovanni had finished, he rose and stood beside Corona. Each looked into the other's eyes and for a moment neither saw very clearly. They said little more, however, until the attendant entered again. "You are at liberty," he said briefly, and without a word began to put together the few small things that belonged to his late prisoner. Half an hour later Giovanni was seated at dinner at his father's table. The old gentleman greeted him with a half-savage growl of satisfaction. "The prodigal has returned to get a meal while there is one to be had," he remarked. "I thought you had gone to Paris to leave the agreeable settlement of our affairs to Corona and me. Where the devil have you been?" "I have been indulging in the luxury of a retreat in a religious house," answered Giovanni with perfect truth. Corona glanced at him and both laughed happily, as they had not laughed for many days and weeks. Saracinesca looked incredulously across the table at his son. "You chose a singular moment for your devotional exercises," he said. "Where will piety hide herself next, I wonder? As long as Corona is satisfied, I am. It is her business." "I am perfectly satisfied, I assure you," said Corona, whose black eyes were full of light. Giovanni raised his glass, looked at her and smiled lovingly. Then he emptied it to the last drop and set it down without a word. "Some secret, I suppose," said the old gentleman gruffly. CHAPTER XXVIII. Arnoldo Meschini was not, perhaps, insane in the ordinary sense of the word; that is to say, he would probably have recovered the normal balance of his faculties if he could have been kept from narcotics and stimulants, and if he could have been relieved from the distracting fear of discovery which tormented him when he was not under the influence of one or the other. But the latter condition was impossible, and it was the extremity of his terror which almost forced him to keep his brain in a clouded state. People have been driven mad by sudden fright, and have gradually lost their intellect through the constant presence of a fear from which there is no escape. A man who is perpetually producing an unnatural state of his mind by swallowing doses of brandy and opium may not be insane in theory; in actual fact, he may be a dangerous madman. As one day followed another Meschini found it more and more impossible to exist without his two comforters. The least approach to lucidity made him almost frantic. He fancied every man a spy, every indifferent glance a look full of meaning. Before long the belief took possession of him that he was to be made the victim of some horrible private vengeance. San Giacinto was not the man, he thought, to be contented with sending him to the galleys for life. Few murderers were executed in those days, and it would be a small satisfaction to the Montevarchi to know that Arnoldo had merely been transferred from his study of the library catalogue to the breaking of stones with a chain gang at Civitavecchia. It was more likely that they would revenge themselves more effectually. His disordered imagination saw horrible visions. San Giacinto might lay a trap for him, might simply come at dead of night and take him from his room to some deep vault beneath the palace. What could he do against such a giant? He fancied himself before a secret tribunal in the midst of which towered San Giacinto's colossal figure. He could hear the deep voice he dreaded pronouncing his doom. He was to be torn to shreds piecemeal, burnt by a slow fire, flayed alive by those enormous hands. There was no conceivable horror of torture that did not suggest itself to him at such times. It is true that when he went to bed at night he was generally either so stupefied by opium or so intoxicated with strong drink that he forgot even to lock his door. But during the day he was seldom so far under the power of either as not to suffer from his own hideous imaginings. One day, as he dragged his slow pace along a narrow street near the fountain of Trevi, his eyes were arrested by an armourer's window. It suddenly struck him that he had no weapon of defence in case San Giacinto or his agents came upon him unawares. And yet a bullet well placed would make an end even of such a Hercules as the man he feared. He paused and looked anxiously up and down the street. It was a dark day and a fine rain was falling. There was nobody about who could recognise him, and he might not have another such opportunity of providing himself unobserved with what he wanted. He entered the shop and bought himself a revolver. The man showed him how to load it and sold him a box of cartridges. He dropped the firearm into one of the pockets of his coat, and smiled as he felt how comfortably it balanced the bottle he carried in the other. Then he slunk out of the shop and pursued his walk. The idea of making capital out of the original deeds concerning the Saracinesca, which had presented itself to him soon after the murder, recurred frequently to his mind; but he felt that he was in no condition to elaborate it, and promised himself to attend to the matter when he was better. For he fancied that he was ill and that his state would soon begin to improve. To go to San Giacinto now was out of the question. It would have been easier for him to climb the cross on the summit of St. Peter's, with his shaken nerves and trembling limbs, than to face the man who inspired in him such untold dread. He could, of course, take the alternative which was open to him, and go to old Saracinesca. Indeed, there were moments when he could almost have screwed his courage to the point of making such an attempt, but his natural prudence made him draw back from an interview in which he must incur a desperate risk unless he had a perfect command of his faculties. To write what he had to say would be merely to give a weapon against himself, since he could not treat the matter by letter without acknowledging his share in the forgeries. The only way to accomplish his purpose would be to extract a solemn promise of secrecy from Saracinesca, together with a guarantee for his own safety, and to obtain these conditions would need all the diplomacy he possessed. Bad as he was, he had no experience of practical blackmailing, and he would be obliged to compose his speeches beforehand with scrupulous care, and with the wisest forethought. For the present, such work was beyond his power, but when he was half drunk he loved to look at the ancient parchments and build golden palaces in the future. When he was strong again, and calm, he would realise all his dreams, and that time, he felt sure, could not be far removed. Nevertheless the days succeeded each other with appalling swiftness, and nothing was done. By imperceptible degrees his horror of San Giacinto began to invade his mind even when it was most deadened by drink. So long as an idea is new and has not really become a habit of the brain, brandy will drive it away, but the moment must inevitably come when the stimulant loses its power to obscure the memory of the thing dreaded. Opium will do it more effectually, but even that does not continue to act for ever. The time comes when the predominant thought of the waking hours reproduces itself during the artificial sleep with fearful force, so that the mind at last obtains no rest at all. That is the dangerous period, preceding the decay and total collapse of the intellect under what is commonly called the fixed idea. In certain conditions of mind, and notably with criminals who fear discovery, the effects of opium change very quickly; the downward steps through which it would take months for an ordinary individual to pass are descended with alarming rapidity, and the end is a thousand times more horrible. Meschini could not have taken the doses which a confirmed opium-eater swallows with indifference, but the result produced was far greater in proportion to the amount of the narcotic he consumed. Before the week which followed the deed was ended, he began to see visions when he was apparently awake. Shapeless, slimy things crawled about the floor of his room, upon his table, even upon the sheets of his bed. Dark shadows confronted him, and changed their outlines unexpectedly. Forms rose out of the earth at his feet and towered all at once to the top of the room, taking the appearance of San Giacinto and vanishing suddenly into the air. The things he saw came like instantaneous flashes from another and even more terrible world, disappearing at first so quickly as to make him believe them only the effects of the light and darkness, like the ghost he had seen in his coat. In the beginning there was scarcely anything alarming in them, but as he started whenever they came, he generally took them as a warning that he needed more brandy to keep him up. In the course of a day or two, however, these visions assumed more awful proportions, and he found it impossible to escape from them except in absolute stupor. It would have been clear to any one that this state of things could not last long. There was scarcely an hour in which he knew exactly what he was doing, and if his strange behaviour escaped observation this was due to his solitary way of living. He did not keep away from the palace during the whole day, from a vague idea that his absence might be thought suspicious. He spent a certain number of hours in the library, doing nothing, although he carefully spread out a number of books before him and dipped his pen into the ink from time to time, stupidly, mechanically, as though his fingers could not forget the habit so long familiar to them. His eyes,--which had formerly been unusually bright, had grown dull and almost bleared, though they glanced at times very quickly from one part of the room to another. That was when he saw strange things moving in the vast hall, between him and the bookcases. When they had disappeared, his glassy look returned, so that his eyeballs seemed merely to reflect the light, as inanimate objects do, without absorbing it, and conveying it to the seat of vision. His face grew daily more thin and ghastly. It was by force of custom that he stayed so long in the place where he had spent so much of his life. The intervals of semi-lucidity seemed terribly long, though they were in reality short enough, and the effort to engage his attention in work helped him to live through them. He had never gone down to the apartments where the family lived, since he had knelt before the catafalque on the day after the murder. Indeed, there was no reason why he should go there, and no one noticed his absence. He was a very insignificant person in the palace. As for any one coming to find him among the books, nothing seemed more improbable. The library was swept out in the early morning and no one entered it again during the twenty-four hours. He never went out into the corridor now, but left his coat upon a chair near him, when he remembered to bring it. As a sort of precautionary measure against fear, he locked the door which opened upon the passage when he came in the morning, unlocking it again when he went away in order that the servant who did the sweeping might be able to get in. The Princess Montevarchi was still dangerously ill, and Faustina had not been willing to leave her. San Giacinto and Flavia were not living in the house, but they spent a good deal of time there, because San Giacinto had ideas of his own about duty, to which his wife was obliged to submit even if she did not like them. Faustina was neither nervous nor afraid of solitude, and was by no means in need of her sister's company, so that when the two were together their conversation was not always of the most affectionate kind. The consequence was that the young girl tried to be alone as much as possible when she was not at her mother's bedside. One day, having absolutely nothing to do, she grew desperate. It was very hard not to think of Anastase, when she was in the solitude of her own room, with no occupation to direct her mind. A week earlier she had been only too glad to have the opportunity of dreaming away the short afternoon undisturbed, letting her girlish thoughts wander among the rose gardens of the future with the image of the man she loved so dearly, and who was yet so far removed from her. Now she could not think of him without reflecting that her father's death had removed one very great obstacle to her marriage. She was by no means of a very devout or saintly character, but, on the other hand, she had a great deal of what is called heart, and to be heartless seemed to her almost worse than to be bad. In excuse of such very untheological doctrines it must be allowed that her ideas concerning wickedness in general were very limited indeed, if not altogether childish in their extreme simplicity. It is certain, however, that she would have thought it far less wrong to run away with Gouache in spite of her family than to entertain any thought which could place her father's tragic death in the light of a personal advantage. If she had nothing to do she could not help thinking of Anastase, and if she thought of him, she could not escape the conclusion that it would be far easier for her to marry him, now that the old prince was out of the way. It was therefore absolutely necessary to find some occupation. At first she wandered aimlessly about the house until she was struck, almost for the first time, by the antiquated stiffness of the arrangement, and began to ask herself whether it would be respectful to the memory of her father, and to her mother, to try and make a few changes. Corona's home was very different. She would like to take that for a model. But one or two attempts showed her the magnitude of the task she had undertaken. She was ashamed to call the servants to help her--it would look as though there were to be a reception in the house. Her ideas of what could take place in the Palazzo Montevarchi did not go beyond that staid form of diversion. She was ashamed, however, and reflected, besides, that she was only the youngest of the family and had no right to take the initiative in the matter of improvements. The time hung very heavily upon her hands. She tried to teach herself something about painting by looking at the pictures on the walls, spending a quarter of an hour before each with conscientious assiduity. But this did not succeed either. The men in the pictures all took the shape of Monsieur Gouache in his smartest uniform and the women all looked disagreeably like Flavia. Then she thought of the library, which was the only place of importance in the house which she had not lately visited. She hesitated a moment only, considering how she could best reach it without passing through the study, and without going up the grand staircase to the outer door. A very little reflection showed her that she could get into the corridor from a passage near her own room. In a few minutes she was at the entrance to the great hall, trying to turn the heavy carved brass handle of the latch. To her surprise she could not open the door, which was evidently fastened from within. Then as she shook it in the hope that some one would hear her, a strange cry reached her ears, like that of a startled animal, accompanied by the shuffling of feet. She remembered Meschini's walk, and understood that it was he. "Please let me in!" she called out in her clear young voice, that echoed back to her from the vaulted chamber. Again she heard the shuffling footsteps, which this time came towards her, and a moment afterwards the door opened and the librarian's ghastly face was close before her. She drew back a little. She had forgotten that he was so ugly, she thought, or perhaps she would not have cared to see him. It would have been foolish, moreover, to go away after coming thus far. "I want to see the library," she said quietly, after she had made up her mind. "Will you show it to me?" "Favorisca, Excellency," replied Meschini in a broken voice. He had been frightened by the noise at the door, and the contortion of his face as he tried to smile was hideous to see. He bowed low, however, and closed the door after she had entered. Scarcely knowing what he did, he shuffled along by her side while she looked about the library, gazing at the long rows of books, bound all alike, that stretched from end to end of many of the shelves. The place was new to her, for she had not been in it more than two or three times in her life, and she felt a sort of unexplained awe in the presence of so many thousands of volumes, of so much written and printed wisdom which she could never hope to understand. She had come with a vague idea that she should find something to read that should be different from the novels she was not allowed to touch. She realised all at once that she knew nothing of what had been written in all the centuries whose literature was represented in the vast collection. She hardly knew the names of twenty books out of the hundreds of millions that the world contained. But she could ask Meschini. She looked at him again, and his face repelled her. Nevertheless, she was too kindhearted not to enter into conversation with the lonely man whom she had so rarely seen, but who was one of the oldest members of her father's household. "You have spent your life here, have you not?" she asked, for the sake of saying something. "Nearly thirty years of it," answered Meschini in a muffled voice. Her presence tortured him beyond expression. "That is a long time, and I am not an old man." "And are you always alone here? Do you never go out? What do you do all day?" "I work among the books, Excellency. There are twenty thousand volumes here, enough to occupy a man's time." "Yes--but how? Do you have to read them all?" asked Faustina innocently. "Is that your work?" "I have read many more than would be believed, for my own pleasure. But my work is to keep them in order, to see that there is no variation from the catalogue, so that when learned men come to make inquiries they may find what they want. I have also to take care of all the books, to see that they do not suffer in any way. They are very valuable. There is a fortune here." Somehow he felt less nervous when he began to speak of the library and its contents and the words came more easily to him. With a little encouragement he might even become loquacious. In spite of his face, Faustina began to feel an interest in him. "It must be very hard work," she remarked. "Do you like it? Did you never want to do anything else? I should think you would grow tired of being always alone." "I am very patient," answered Meschini humbly. "And I am used to it. I grew accustomed to the life when I was young." "You say the collection is valuable. Are there any very beautiful books? I would like to see some of them." The fair young creature sat down upon one of the high carved chairs at the end of a table. Meschini went to the other side of the hall and unlocked one of the drawers which lined the lower part of the bookcases to the height of three or four feet. Each was heavily carved with the Montevarchi arms in high relief. It was in these receptacles that the precious manuscripts were kept in their cases. He returned bringing a small square volume of bound manuscript, and laid it before Faustina. "This is worth an enormous sum," he said. "It is the only complete one in the world. There is an imperfect copy in the library of the Vatican." "What is it?" "It is the Montevarchi Dante, the oldest in existence." Faustina turned over the leaves curiously, and admired the even writing though she could not read many of the words, for the ancient characters were strange to her. It was a wonderful picture that the couple made in the great hall. On every side the huge carved bookcases of walnut, black with age, rose from the floor to the spring of the vault, their dark faces reflected in the highly-polished floor of coloured marble. Across the ancient tables a ray of sunlight fell from the high clerestory window. In the centre, the two figures with the old manuscript between them; Faustina's angel head in a high light against the dusky background, as she bent forward a little, turning the yellow pages with her slender, transparent fingers, the black folds of her full gown making heavy lines of drapery, graceful by her grace, and rendered less severe by a sort of youthfulness that seemed to pervade them, and that emanated from herself. Beside her, the bent frame of the broken down librarian, in a humble and respectful attitude, his long arms hanging down by his sides, his shabby black coat almost dragging to his heels, his head bent forward as he looked at the pages. All his features seemed to have grown more sharp and yellow and pointed, and there was now a deep red flush in the upper part of his cheeks. A momentary light shone in his gray eyes, from beneath the bushy brows, a light of intelligence such as had formerly characterised them especially, brought back now perhaps by the effort to fix his attention upon the precious book. His large, coarse ears appeared to point themselves forward like those of an animal, following the direction of his sight. In outward appearance he presented a strange mixture of dilapidation, keenness, and brutality. A week had changed him very much. A few days ago most people would have looked at him with a sort of careless compassion. Now, there was about him something distinctly repulsive. Beside Faustina's youth and delicacy, and freshness, he hardly seemed like a human being. "I suppose it is a very wonderful thing," said the young girl at last, "but I do not know enough to understand its value. Do my brothers ever come to the library?" She leaned back from the volume and glanced at Meschini's face, wondering how heaven could have made anything so ugly. "No. They never come," replied the librarian, drawing the book towards him instinctively, as he would have done if his visitor had been a stranger, who might try to steal a page or two unless he were watched. "But my poor father was very fond of the books, was he not? Did he not often come to see you here?" She was thinking so little of Meschini that she did not see that he turned suddenly white and shook like a man in an ague. It was what he had feared all along, ever since she had entered the room. She suspected him and had come, or had perhaps been sent by San Giacinto to draw him into conversation and to catch him in something which could be interpreted to be a confession of his crime. Had that been her intention, his behaviour would have left little doubt in her mind as to the truth of the accusation. His face betrayed him, his uncontrollable fear, his frightened eyes and trembling limbs. But she had only glanced at him, and her sight wandered to the bookcases for a moment. When she looked again he was moving away from her, along the table. She was surprised to see that his step was uncertain, and that he reeled against the heavy piece of furniture and grasped it for support. She started a little but did not rise. "Are you ill?" she asked. "Shall I call some one?" He made no answer, but seemed to recover himself at the sound of her voice, for he shuffled away and disappeared behind the high carved desk on which lay the open catalogue. She thought she saw a flash of light reflected from some smooth surface, and immediately afterwards she heard a gurgling sound, which she did not understand. Meschini was fortifying himself with a draught. Then he reappeared, walking more steadily. He had received a severe shock, but, as usual, he had not the courage to run away, conceiving that flight would inevitably be regarded as a proof of guilt. "I am not well," he said in explanation as he returned. "I am obliged to take medicine continually. I beg your Excellency to forgive me." "I am sorry to hear that," answered Faustina kindly. "Can we do nothing for you? Have you all you need?" "Everything, thank you. I shall soon be well." "I hope so, I am sure. What was I saying? Oh--I was asking whether my poor father came often to the library. Was he fond of the books?" "His Excellency--Heaven give him glory!--he was a learned man. Yes, he came now and then." Meschini took possession of the manuscript and carried it off rather suddenly to its place in the drawer. He was a long time in locking it up. Faustina watched him with some curiosity. "You were here that day, were you not?" she asked, as he turned towards her once more. The question was a natural one, considering the circumstances. "I think your Excellency was present when I was examined by the prefect," answered Meschini in a curiously disagreeable tone. "True," said Faustina. "You said you had been here all day as usual. I had forgotten. How horrible it was. And you saw nobody, you heard nothing? But I suppose it is too far from the study." The librarian did not answer, but it was evident from his manner that he was very much disturbed. Indeed, he fancied that his worst fears were realised, and that Faustina was really trying to extract information from him for his own conviction. Her thoughts were actually very far from any such idea. She would have considered it quite as absurd to accuse the poor wretch before her as she had thought it outrageous that she herself should be suspected. Her father had always seemed to her a very imposing personage, and she could not conceive that he should have met his death at the hands of such a miserable creature as Arnoldo Meschini, who certainly had not the outward signs of physical strength or boldness. He, however, understood her words very differently and stood still, half way between her and the bookcases, asking himself whether it would not be better to take immediate steps for his safety. His hand was behind him, feeling for the revolver in the pocket of his long coat. Faustina was singularly fearless, by nature, but if she had guessed the danger of her position she would probably have effected her escape very quickly, instead of continuing the conversation. "It is a very dreadful mystery," she said, rising from her chair and walking slowly across the polished marble floor until she stood before a row of great volumes of which the colour had attracted her eye. "It is the duty of us all to try and explain it. Of course we shall know all about it some day, but it is very hard to be patient. Do you know?" she turned suddenly and faced Meschini, speaking with a vehemence not usual for her. "They suspected me, as if I could have done it, I, a weak girl! And yet--if I had the man before me--the man who murdered him--I believe I would kill him with my hands!" She moved forward a little, as she spoke, and tapped her small foot upon the pavement, as though to emphasise her words. Her soft brown eyes flashed with righteous anger, and her cheek grew pale at the thought of avenging her father. There must have been something very fierce in her young face, for Meschini's heart failed him, and his nerves seemed to collapse all at once. He tried to draw back from her, slipped and fell upon his knees with a sharp cry of fear. Even then, Faustina did not suspect the cause of his weakness, but attributed it to the illness of which he had spoken. She sprang forward and attempted to help the poor creature to his feet, but instead of making an effort to rise, he seemed to be grovelling before her, uttering incoherent exclamations of terror. "Lean on me!" said Faustina, putting out her hand. "What is the matter? Oh! Are you going to die!" "Oh! oh! Do not hurt me--pray--in God's name!" cried Meschini, raising his eyes timidly. "Hurt you? No! Why should I hurt you? You are ill--we will have the doctor. Try and get up--try and get to a chair." Her tone reassured him a little, and her touch also, as she did her best to raise him to his feet. He struggled a little and at last stood up, leaning upon the bookcase, and panting with fright. "It is nothing," he tried to say, catching his breath at every syllable. "I am better--my nerves--your Excellency--ugh! what a coward I am!" The last exclamation, uttered in profound disgust of his own weakness, struck Faustina as very strange. "Did I frighten you?" she asked in surprise. "I am very sorry. Now sit down and I will call some one to come to you." "No, no! Please--I would rather be alone! I can walk quite well now. If--if your Excellency will excuse me, I will go to my room. I have more medicine--I will take it and I shall be better." "Can you go alone? Are you sure?" asked Faustina anxiously. But even while she spoke he was moving towards the door, slowly and painfully at first, as it seemed, though possibly a lingering thought of propriety kept him from appearing to run away. The young girl walked a few steps after him, half fearing that he might fall again. But he kept his feet and reached the threshold. Then he made a queer attempt at a bow, and mumbled some words that Faustina could not hear. In another moment he had disappeared, and she was alone. For some minutes she looked at the closed door through which he had gone out. Then she shook her head a little sadly, and slowly went back to her room by the way she had come. It was all very strange, she thought, but his illness might account for it. She would have liked to consult San Giacinto, but though she was outwardly on good terms with him, and could not help feeling a sort of respect for his manly character, the part he had played in attempting to separate her from Gouache had prevented the two from becoming intimate. She said nothing to any one about her interview with Meschini in the library, and no one even guessed that she had been there. CHAPTER XXIX. In spite of his haste to settle all that remained to be settled with regard to the restitution of the property to San Giacinto, Saracinesca found it impossible to wind up the affair in a week as he had intended. It was a very complicated matter to separate from his present fortune that part of it which his cousin would have inherited from his great-grandfather. A great deal of wealth had come into the family since that time by successive marriages, and the management of the original estate had not been kept separate from the administration of the dowries which had from time to time been absorbed into it. The Saracinesca, however, were orderly people, and the books had been kept for generations with that astonishing precision of detail which is found in the great Roman houses, and which surpasses, perhaps, anything analogous which is to be found in modern business. By dint of perseverance and by employing a great number of persons in making the calculations, the notaries had succeeded in preparing a tolerably satisfactory schedule in the course of a fortnight, which both the principal parties agreed to accept as final. The day fixed for the meeting and liquidation of the accounts was a Saturday, a fortnight and two days after the murder of Prince Montevarchi. A question arose concerning the place of meeting. Saracinesca proposed that San Giacinto and the notaries should come to the Palazzo Saracinesca. He was ready to brave out the situation to the end, to face his fate until it held nothing more in store for him, even to handing over the inventory of all that was no longer his in the house where he had been born. His boundless courage and almost brutal frankness would doubtless have supported him to the last, even through such a trial to his feelings, but San Giacinto refused to agree to the proposal. He repeatedly stated that he wished the old prince to inhabit the palace through his lifetime, and that he should even make every effort to induce him to retain the title. Both of these offers were rejected courteously, but firmly. In the matter of holding the decisive meeting in the palace, however, San Giacinto made a determined stand. He would not on any account appear in the light of the conqueror coming to take possession of the spoil. His wife had no share in this generous sentiment. She would have liked to enjoy her triumph to the full, for she was exceedingly ambitious, and was, moreover, not very fond of the Saracinesca. As she expressed it, she felt when she was with any of them, from the old prince to Corona, that they must be thinking all the time that she was a very foolish young person. San Giacinto's action was therefore spontaneous, and if it needs explanation it may be ascribed to an inherited magnanimity, to a certain dignity which had distinguished him even as a young man from the low class in which he had grown up. He was, indeed, by no means a type of the perfect nobleman; his conduct in the affair between Faustina and Gouache had shown that. He acted according to his lights, and was not ashamed to do things which his cousin Giovanni would have called mean. But he was manly, for all that, and if he owed some of his dignity to great stature and to his indomitable will, it was also in a measure the outward sign of a good heart and of an innate sense of justice. There had as yet been nothing dishonest in his dealings since he had come to Rome. He had acquired a fortune which enabled him to take the position that was lawfully his. He liked Flavia, and had bargained for her with her father, afterwards scrupulously fulfilling the terms of the contract. He had not represented himself to be what he was not, and he had taken no unfair advantage of any one for his own advancement. In the matter of the suit he was the dupe of old Montevarchi, so far as the deeds were concerned, but he was perfectly aware that he actually represented the elder branch of his family. It is hard to imagine how any man in his position could have done less than he did, and now that it had come to a final settlement he was really anxious to cause his vanquished relations as little humiliation as possible. To go to their house was like playing the part of a bailiff. To allow them to come to his dwelling suggested the journey to Canossa. The Palazzo Montevarchi was neutral ground, and he proposed that the formalities should be fulfilled there. Saracinesca consented readily enough and the day was fixed. The notaries arrived at ten o'clock in the morning, accompanied by clerks who were laden with books, inventories and rolls of manuscript. The study had been selected for the meeting, both on account of its seclusion from the rest of the house and because it contained an immense table which would serve for the voluminous documents, all of which must be examined and verified. San Giacinto himself awaited the arrival of the Saracinesca in the great reception-room. He had sent his wife away, for he was in reality by no means so calm as he appeared to be, and her constant talk disturbed him. He paced the long room with regular steps, his head erect, his hands behind him, stopping from time to time to listen for the footsteps of those he expected. It was the great day of his life. Before night, he was to be Prince Saracinesca. The moments that precede a great triumph are very painful, especially if a man has looked forward to the event for a long time. No matter how sure he is of the result, something tells him that it is uncertain. A question may arise, he cannot guess whence, by which all may be changed. He repeats to himself a hundred times that failure is impossible, but he is not at rest. The uncertainty of all things, even of his own life, appears very clearly before his eyes. His heart beats fast and slow from one minute to another. At the very instant when he is dreaming of the future, the possibility of disappointment breaks in upon his thoughts. He cannot explain it, but he longs to be beyond the decisive hour. In San Giacinto's existence, the steps from obscurity to importance and fortune had, of late, been so rapidly ascended that he was almost giddy with success. For the first time since he had left his old home in Aquila, he felt as though he had been changed from his own self to some other person. At last the door opened, and Saracinesca, Giovanni, and Corona entered the room. San Giacinto was surprised to see Giovanni's wife on an occasion when the men alone of the family were concerned, but she explained that she had come to spend the morning with Faustina, and would wait till everything was finished. The meeting was not a cordial one, though both parties regarded it as inevitable. If Saracinesca felt any personal resentment against San Giacinto he knew that it was unreasonable and he had not the bad taste to show it. He was silent, but courteous in his manner. Giovanni, strange to say, seemed wholly indifferent to what was about to take place. "I hope," said San Giacinto, when all four were seated, "that you will consent to consider this as a mere formality. I have said as much through my lawyers, but I wish to repeat it myself in better words than they used." "Pardon me," answered Saracinesca, "if I suggest that we should not discuss that matter. We are sensible of your generosity in making such offers, but we do not consider it possible to accept them." "I must ask your indulgence if I do not act upon your suggestion," returned San Giacinto. "Even if there is no discussion I cannot consent to proceed to business until I have explained what I mean. If the suit has been settled justly by the courts, it has not been decided with perfect justice as regards its consequences. I do not deny, and I understand that you do not expect me to act otherwise, that it has been my intention to secure for myself and for my children the property and the personal position abandoned by my ancestor. I have obtained what I wanted and what was my right, and I have to thank you for the magnanimity you have displayed in not attempting to contest a claim against which you might have brought many arguments, if not much evidence. The affair having been legally settled, it is for us to make whatever use of it seems better in our own eyes. To deprive you of your name and of the house in which you were born and bred, would be to offer you an indignity such as I never contemplated." "You cannot be said to deprive us of what is not ours, by any interpretation of the word with which I am acquainted," said Saracinesca in a tone which showed that he was determined to receive nothing. "I am a poor grammarian," answered San Giacinto gravely, and without the slightest affectation of humility. "I was brought up a farmer, and was only an innkeeper until lately. I cannot discuss with you the subtle meanings of words. To my mind it is I who am taking from you that which, if not really yours, you have hitherto had every right to own and to make use of. I do not attempt to explain my thought. I only say that I will neither take your name nor live in your house while you are alive. I propose a compromise which I hope you will be willing to accept." "I fear that will be impossible. My mind is made up." "I propose," continued San Giacinto, "that you remain Prince Saracinesca, that you keep Saracinesca itself, and the palace here in Rome during your lifetime, which I trust may be a long one. After your death everything returns to us. My cousin Giovanni and the Princess Sant' Ilario--" "You may call me Corona, if you please," said the princess suddenly. Her eyes were fixed on his face, and she was smiling. Both Saracinesca and Giovanni looked at her in surprise. It seemed strange to them that she should choose such a moment for admitting San Giacinto to a familiarity he had never before enjoyed. But for some time she had felt a growing respect for the ex-innkeeper, which was quickened by his present generosity. San Giacinto's swarthy face grew a shade darker as the blood mounted to his lean cheeks. Corona had given him one of the first sensations of genuine pleasure he had ever experienced in his rough life. "Thank you," he said simply. "You two, I was going to say, have palaces of your own and cannot have such close associations with the old places as one who has owned them during so many years. You," he continued, turning to the old prince, "will, I hope, accept an arrangement which cannot affect your dignity and which will give me the greatest satisfaction." "I am very much obliged to you," answered Saracinesca promptly. "You are very generous, but I cannot take what you offer." "If you feel that you would be taking anything from me, look at it from a different point of view. You would be conferring a favour instead of accepting one. Consider my position, when I have taken your place. It will not be a pleasant one. The world will abuse me roundly, and will say I have behaved abominably towards you. Do you fancy that I shall be received as a substitute for the Prince Saracinesca your friends have known so long? Do you suppose that the vicissitudes of my life are unknown, and that no one will laugh behind my back and point at me as the new, upstart prince? Few people know me in Rome, and if I have any friends besides you, I have not been made aware of the fact. Pray consider that in doing what I ask, you would be saving me from very unpleasant social consequences." "I should be doing so at the cost of my self-respect," replied the old man firmly. "Whatever the consequences are to you, the means of bearing them will be in your hands. You will have no lack of friends to-morrow, or at least of amiable persons anxious to call themselves by that name. They will multiply this very night, like mushrooms, and will come about you freshly shaved and smiling to-morrow morning." "I am afraid you do not understand me," said San Giacinto. "I can leave you the title and yet take one which will serve as well. You would call yourself Prince Saracinesca and I should be Saracinesca di San Giacinto. As for the palace and the place in the mountains, they are so insignificant as compared with the rest that it could not hurt your self-respect to live in them. Can you not persuade your father?" He turned to Giovanni who had not spoken yet. "You are very good to make the proposal," he answered. "I cannot say more than that. I agree with my father." A silence followed which lasted several minutes. Corona looked from one to the other of the three men, wondering how the matter would end. She understood both parties better than they understood each other. She sympathised with the refusal of her husband and his father. To accept such an offer would put them in a position of obligation towards San Giacinto which she knew they could never endure, and which would be galling to herself. On the other hand she felt sorry for their cousin, who was evidently trying to do what he felt was right and generous, and was disappointed that his advances should be repelled. He was very much in earnest, or he would not have gone so far as to suggest that it would be a favour to him if they took what he offered. He was so simple, and yet so dignified withal, that she could not help liking him. It was not clear to her, however, that she could mend matters by interfering, nor by offering advice to the one or sympathy to the other. Saracinesca himself was the first to break the silence. It seemed to him that everything had been said, and that nothing now remained but to fulfil the requisite formalities. "Shall we proceed to business?" he inquired, as though ignoring all the previous conversation. "I believe we have a great deal to do, and the time is passing." San Giacinto made no reply, but rose gravely and made a gesture signifying that he would show the way to the study. Saracinesca made a show of refusing to go out first, then yielded and went on. San Giacinto waited at the door for Corona and Giovanni. "I will join you in a moment--I know the way," said the latter, remaining behind with his wife. When they were alone he led her towards one of the windows, as though to be doubly sure that no one could hear what he was about to say. Then he stood still and looked into her eyes. "Would you like us to accept such a favour from him?" he asked. "Tell me the truth." "No," answered Corona without the least hesitation. "But I am sorry for San Giacinto. I think he is really trying to do right, and to be generous. He was hurt by your father's answer." "If I thought it would give you pleasure to feel that we could go to Saracinesca, I would try and make my father change his mind." "Would you?" She knew very well what a sacrifice it would be to his pride. "Yes, dear. I would do it for you." "Giovanni--how good you are!" "No--I am not good. I love you. That is all. Shall I try?" "Never! I am sorry for San Giacinto--but I could no more live in the old house, or in Saracinesca, than you could. Do I not feel all that you feel, and more?" "All?" "All." They stood hand in hand looking out of the window, and there were tears in the eyes of both. The grasp of their fingers tightened slowly as though they were drawn together by an irresistible force. Slowly they turned their faces towards each other, and presently their lips met in one of those kisses that are never forgotten. Then Giovanni left her where she was. All had been said; both knew that they desired nothing more in this world, and that henceforth they were all to each other. It was as though a good angel had set a heavenly seal upon the reunion of their hearts. Corona did not leave the room immediately, but remained a few moments leaning against the heavy frame of the window. Her queenly figure drooped a little, and she pressed one hand to her side. Her dark face was bent down, and the tears that had of old come so rarely made silver lines upon her olive cheeks. There was not one drop of bitterness in that overflowing of her soul's transcendent joy, in that happiness which was so great and perfect that it seemed almost unbearable. And she had reason to be glad. In the midst of a calamity which would have absorbed the whole nature of many men, Giovanni had not one thought that was not for her. Giovanni, who had once doubted her, who had said such things to her as she dared not remember--Giovanni, suffering under a blow to his pride, that was worse almost than total ruin, had but one wish, to make another sacrifice for her. That false past, of which she hated to think, was gone like an evil dream before the morning sun, that true past, which was her whole life, was made present again. The love that had been so bruised and crushed that she had thought it dead had sprung up again from its deep, strong roots, grander and nobler than before. The certainty that it was real was overwhelming, and drowned all her senses in a trance of light. Faustina Montevarchi entered the drawing-room softly, then, seeing no one, she advanced till she came all at once upon Corona in the embrasure of the window. The princess started slightly when she saw that she was not alone. "Corona!" exclaimed the young girl. "Are you crying? What is it?" "Oh, Faustina! I am so happy!" It was a relief to be able to say it to some one. "Happy?" repeated Faustina in surprise. "But there are tears in your eyes, on your cheeks--" "You cannot understand--I do not wonder--how should you? And besides, I cannot tell you what it is." "I wish I were you," answered her friend sadly. "I wish I were happy!" "What is it, child?" asked Corona kindly. Then she led Faustina to a stiff old sofa at one end of the vast room and they sat down together. "What is it?" she repeated, drawing the girl affectionately to her side. "You know what it is, dear. No one can help me. Oh, Corona! we love each other so very much!" "I know--I know it is very real. But you must have a little patience, darling. Love will win in the end. Just now, too--" She did not finish the sentence, but she had touched a sensitive spot in Faustina's conscience. "That is the worst of it," was the answer. "I am so miserable, because I know he never would have allowed it, and now--I am ashamed to tell you, it is so heartless!" She hid her face on her friend's shoulder. "You will never be heartless, my dear Faustina," said Corona. "What you think, is not your fault, dear. Love is master of the world and of us all." "But my love is not like yours, Corona. Perhaps yours was once like mine. But you are married--you are happy. You were saying so just now." "Yes, dear. I am very, very happy, because I love very, very dearly. You will be as happy as I am some day." "Ah, that may be--but--I am dreadfully wicked, Corona!" "You, child? You do not know what it is to think anything bad!" "But I do. I am so much ashamed of it that I can hardly tell you--only I tell you everything, because you are my friend. Corona--it is horrible--it seems easier, more possible--now that he is gone--oh! I am so glad I have told you!" Faustina began to sob passionately, as though she were repenting of some fearful crime. "Is that all, darling?" asked Corona, smiling at the girl's innocence, and pressing her head tenderly to her own breast. "Is that what makes you so unhappy?" "Yes--is it not--very, very dreadful?" A fresh shower of tears accompanied the question. "Perhaps I am very bad, too," said Corona. "But I do not call that wickedness." "Oh no! You are good. I wish I were like you!" "No, do not wish that. But, I confess, it seems to me natural that you should think as you do, because it is really true. Your father, Faustina, may have been mistaken about your future. If--if he had lived, you might perhaps have made him change his mind. At all events, you can hope that he now sees more clearly, that he understands how terrible it is for a woman to be married to a man she does not love--when she is sure that she loves another." "Yes--you told me. Do you remember? It was the other day, after Flavia had been saying such dreadful things. But I know it already. Every woman must know it." There was a short pause, during which Corona wondered whether she were the same person she had been ten days earlier, when she had delivered that passionate warning. Faustina sat quite still, looking up into the princess's face. She was comforted and reassured and the tears had ceased to flow. "There is something else," she said at last. "I want to tell you everything, for I can tell no one else. I cannot keep it to myself either. He has written to me, Corona. Was it very wrong to read his letter?" This time she smiled a little and blushed. "I do not think it was very wrong," answered her friend with a soft laugh. She was so happy that she would have laughed at anything. "Shall I show you his letter?" asked the young girl shyly. At the same time her hand disappeared into the pocket of her black gown, and immediately afterwards brought out a folded piece of paper which looked as though it had been read several times. Corona did not think it necessary to express her assent in words. Faustina opened the note, which contained the following words, written in Gouache's delicate French handwriting-- "MADEMOISELLE--When you have read these lines, you will understand my object in writing them, for you understand me, and you know that all I do has but one object. A few days ago it was still possible for us to meet frequently. The terrible affliction which has fallen upon you, and in which none can feel deeper or more sincere sympathy than I, has put it out of your power and out of mine to join hands and weep over the present, to look into each other's eyes and read there the golden legend of a future happiness. To meet as we have met, alone in the crowded church--no! we cannot do it. For you, at such a time, it would seem like a disrespect to your father's memory. For myself, I should deem it dishonourable, I should appear base in my own eyes. Did I not go to him and put to him the great question? Was I not repulsed--I do not say with insult, but with astonishment--at my presumption? Shall I then seem to take advantage of his death--of his sudden and horrible death--to press forward a suit which he is no longer able to oppose? I feel that it would be wrong. Though I cannot express myself as I would, I know that you understand me, for you think as I do. How could it be otherwise? Are we not one indivisible soul, we two? Yes, you will understand me. Yes, you will know that it is right. I go therefore, I leave Rome immediately. I cannot inhabit the same city and not see you. But I cannot quit the Zouaves in this time of danger. I am therefore going to Viterbo, whither I am sent through the friendly assistance of one of our officers. There I shall stay until time has soothed your grief and restored your mother to health. To her we will turn when the moment has arrived. She will not be insensible to our tears and entreaties. Until then good-bye--ah! the word is less terrible than it looks, for our souls will be always together. I leave you but for a short space--no! I leave your sweet eyes, your angel's face, your dear hands that I adore, but yourself I do not leave. I bear you with me in a heart that loves you--God knows how tenderly." Corona read the letter carefully to the end. To her older appreciation of the world, such a letter appeared at first to be the forerunner of a definite break, but a little reflection made her change her mind. What he said was clearly true, and corresponded closely with Faustina's own view of the case. The most serious obstacle to the union of the lovers had been removed by Prince Montevarchi's death, and it was inconceivable that Gouache should have ceased to care for Faustina at the very moment when a chance of his marrying her had presented itself. Besides, Corona knew Gouache well, and was not mistaken in her estimate of his character. He was honourable to Quixotism, and perfectly capable of refusing to take what looked like an unfair advantage. Considering Faustina's strange nature, her amazing readiness to yield to first impulses, and her touching innocence of evil, it would have been an easy matter for the man she loved to draw her into a runaway match. She would have followed him as readily to the ends of the earth as she had followed him to the Serristori barracks. Gouache was not a boy, and probably understood her peculiarities as well as any one. In going away for the present he was undoubtedly acting with the greatest delicacy, for his departure showed at once all the respect he felt for Faustina, and all that devotion to an ideal honour which was the foundation of his being. Though his epistle was not a model of literary style it contained certain phrases that came from the heart. Corona understood why Faustina was pleased with it, and why instead of shedding useless tears over his absence, she had shown such willingness to let her friend read Gouache's own explanation of his departure. She folded the sheet of paper again and gave it back to the young girl. "I am glad he wrote that letter," she said after a moment's pause. "I always believed in him, and now--well, I think, he is almost worthy of you, Faustina." Faustina threw her arms around Corona's neck, and kissed her again and again. "I am so glad you know how good he is!" she cried. "I could not be happy unless you liked him, and you do." All through the morning the two friends sat together in the great drawing-room talking, as such women can talk to each other, with infinite grace about matters not worth recording, or if they spoke of things of greater importance, repeating the substance of what they had said before, finding at each repetition some new comment to make, some new point upon which to agree, after the manner of people who are very fond of each other. The hours slipped by, and they were unconscious of the lapse of time. The great clocks of the neighbouring church towers tolled eleven, twelve, and one o'clock, and yet they had more to say, and did not even notice the loud ringing of the hundred bells. The day was clear, and the bright sunlight streamed in through the high windows, telling the hour with a more fateful precision than the clocks outside. All was peace and happiness and sweet intercourse, as the two women sat there undisturbed through the long morning. They talked, and laughed, and held their hands clasped together, unconscious of the rest of the world. No sound penetrated from the rest of the house to the quiet, sunlit hall, which to Faustina's mind had never looked so cheerful before since she could remember it. And yet within the walls of the huge old palace strange things were passing, things which it was well that neither of them should see. Before describing the events which close this part of my story, it is as well to say that Faustina has made her last appearance for the present. From the point of view which would have been taken by most of her acquaintances, her marriage with Gouache was a highly improbable event. If any one desires an apology for being left in uncertainty as to her fate, I can only answer that I am writing the history of the Saracinesca and not of any one else. There are certain stages in that history which are natural halting-places for the historian himself, and for his readers if he have any; and it is impossible to make the lives of a number of people coincide so far as to wind them up together, and yet be sure that they will run down at the same moment like the clocks of his Majesty Charles the Fifth. If it were, the world would be a very different place. CHAPTER XXX. The scene in the study, while the notary read through the voluminous documents, is worth describing. At one end of the large green table sat San Giacinto alone, his form, even as he sat, towering above the rest. The mourning he wore harmonised with his own dark and massive head. His expression was calm and thoughtful, betraying neither satisfaction nor triumph. From time to time his deep-set eyes turned towards Saracinesca with a look of inquiry, as though to assure himself that the prince agreed to the various points and was aware that he must now speak for the last time, if he spoke at all. At the other end of the board the two Saracinesca were seated side by side. The strong resemblance that existed between them was made very apparent by their position, but although, allowing for the difference of their ages, their features corresponded almost line for line, their expressions were totally different. The old man's gray hair and pointed beard seemed to bristle with suppressed excitement. His heavy brows were bent together, as though he were making a great effort to control his temper, and now and then there was an angry gleam in his eyes. He sat square and erect in his seat, as though he were facing an enemy, but he kept his hands below the table, for he did not choose that San Giacinto should see the nervous working of his fingers. Giovanni, on the other hand, looked upon the proceedings with an indifference that was perfectly apparent. He occasionally looked at his watch, suppressed a yawn, and examined his nails with great interest. It was clear that he was not in the least moved by what was going on. It was no light matter for the old nobleman to listen to the documents that deprived him one by one of his titles, his estates, and his other wealth, in favour of a man who was still young, and whom, in spite of the relationship, he could not help regarding as an inferior. He had always considered himself as the representative of an older generation, who, by right of position, was entitled to transmit to his son the whole mass of those proud traditions in which he had grown up as in his natural element. Giovanni, on the contrary, possessed a goodly share of that indifference that characterises the younger men of the nineteenth century. He was perfectly satisfied with his present situation, and had been so long accustomed to depend upon his personality and his private fortune, for all that he enjoyed or required in life, that he did not desire the responsibilities that weigh heavily upon the head of a great family. Moreover, recent events had turned the current of his thoughts into a different direction. He was in his way as happy as Corona, and he knew that real happiness proceeds from something more than a score of titles and a few millions of money, more or less. He regarded the long morning's work as an intolerable nuisance, which prevented him from spending his time with his wife. In the middle of the table sat the two notaries, flanked by four clerks, all of them pale men in black, clean shaved, of various ages, but bearing on their faces the almost unmistakable stamp of their profession. The one who was reading the deeds wore spectacles. From time to time he pushed them back upon his bald forehead and glanced first at San Giacinto and then at Prince Saracinesca, after which he carefully resettled the glasses upon his long nose and proceeded with his task until he had reached the end of another set of clauses, when he repeated the former operation with mechanical regularity, never failing to give San Giacinto the precedence of the first look. For a long time this went on, with a monotony which almost drove Giovanni from the room. Indeed nothing but absolute necessity could have kept him in his place. At last the final deed was reached. It was an act of restitution drawn up in a simple form so as to include, by a few words, all the preceding documents. It set forth that Leone Saracinesca being "free in body and mind," the son of Giovanni Saracinesca deceased, "whom may the Lord preserve in a state of glory," restored, gave back, yielded, and abandoned all those goods, titles, and benefices which he had inherited directly from Leone Saracinesca, the eleventh of that name, deceased, "whom may the Lord preserve in a state of glory," to Giovanni Saracinesca, Marchese di San Giacinto, who was "free in body and mind," son of Orsino Saracinesca, ninth of that name, deceased, "whom may the Lord, etc." Not one of the quaint stock phrases was omitted. The notary paused, looked round, adjusted his spectacles and continued. The deed further set forth that Giovanni Saracinesca, Marchese di San Giacinto aforesaid, acknowledged the receipt of the aforesaid goods, titles, and benefices, and stated that he received all as the complete inheritance, relinquishing all further claims against the aforesaid Leone and his heirs for ever. Once more the reader paused, and then read the last words in a clear voice-- "Both the noble parties promising, finally, in regard to the present cession, to take account of it, to hold it as acceptable, valid, and perpetual, and, for the same, never to allow it to be spoken of otherwise." A few words followed, setting forth the name of the notary and the statement that the act was executed in his presence, with the date. When he had finished reading all, he rose and turned the document upon the table so that the two parties could stand opposite to him and sign it. Without a word he made a slight inclination and offered the pen to Saracinesca. The old gentleman pushed back his chair and marched forward with erect head and a firm step to sign away what had been his birthright. From first to last he had acknowledged the justice of his cousin's claims, and he was not the man to waver at the supreme moment. His hair bristled more stiffly than ever, and his dark eyes shot fire, but he took the pen and wrote his great strong signature as clearly as he had written it at the foot of his marriage contract five and thirty years earlier. Giovanni looked at him with admiration. Then San Giacinto, who had risen out of respect to the old man, came forward and took the pen in his turn. He wrote out his name in straight, firm characters as usual, but at the end the ink made a broad black mark that ended abruptly, as though the writer had put the last stroke to a great undertaking. "There should be two witnesses," said the notary in the awkward silence that followed. "Don Giovanni can be one," he added, giving the latter the only name that was now his, with a lawyer's scrupulous exactness. "One of your clerks can be the other," suggested Saracinesca, who was anxious to get away as soon as possible. "It is not usual," replied the notary. "Is there no one in the palace? One of the young princes would do admirably." "They are all away," said San Giacinto. "Let me see--there is the librarian. Will he answer the purpose? He must be in the library at this hour. A respectable man--he has been thirty years in the house. For that matter, the steward is probably in his office, too." "The librarian is the best person," answered the notary. "I will bring him at once--I know the way." San Giacinto left the study by the door that opened upon the passage. The others could hear his heavy steps as he went rapidly up the paved corridor. Old Saracinesca walked up and down the room unable to conceal his impatience. Giovanni resumed his seat and waited quietly, indifferent to the last. Arnoldo Meschini was in the library, as San Giacinto had anticipated. He was seated at his usual place at the upper end of the hall, surrounded by books and writing materials which he handled nervously without making any serious attempt to use them. He had lost all power of concentrating his thoughts or of making any effort to work. Fortunately for him no one had paid any attention to him during the past ten days. His appearance was dishevelled and slovenly, and he was more bent than he had formerly been. His eyes were bleared and glassy as he stared at the table before him, assuming a wild and startled expression when, looking up, he fancied he saw some horrible object gliding quickly across the sunny floor, or creeping up to him over the polished table. All his former air of humility and shabby respectability was gone. His disordered dress, his straggling grayish hair that hung from beneath the dirty black skullcap around his misshapen ears, his face, yellow in parts and irregularly flushed in others, as though it were beginning to be scorched from within, his unwashed hands, every detail of his appearance, in short, proclaimed his total degradation. But hitherto no one had noticed him, for he had lived between his attic, the deserted library and the apothecary's shop on the island of Saint Bartholomew. His mind had almost ceased to act when he was awake, except in response to the fear which the smallest circumstances now caused him. If he had dreams by night, he saw visions also in the day, and his visions generally took the shape of San Giacinto. He had not really seen him since he had met him when the prince lay in state, but the fear of him was, if anything, greater than if he had met him daily. The idea that the giant was lying in wait for him had become fixed, and yet he was powerless to fly. His energy was all gone between his potations and the constant terror that paralysed him. On that morning he had been as usual to the Ponte Quattro Capi and had returned with the means of sleep in his pocket. He had no instinct left but to deaden his sensations with drink during the hours of light, while waiting for the time when he could lie down and yield to the more potent influence of the opium. He had therefore come back as usual, and by force of habit had taken his place in the library, the fear of seeming to neglect his supposed duties forbidding him to spend all his time in his room. As usual, too, he had locked the door of the passage to separate himself from his dread of a supernatural visitation. He sat doubled together in his chair, his long arms lying out before him upon the books and papers. All at once he started in his seat. One, two, one two--yes, there were footsteps in the corridor--they were coming nearer and nearer--heavy, like those of the dead prince--but quicker, like those of San Giacinto--closer, closer yet. A hand turned the latch once, twice, then shook the lock roughly. Meschini was helpless. He could neither get upon his feet and escape by the other exit, nor find the way to the pocket that held his weapon. Again the latch was turned and shaken, and then the deep voice he dreaded was heard calling to him. "Signor Meschini!" He shrieked aloud with fear, but he was paralysed in every limb. A moment later a terrible crash drowned his cries. San Giacinto, on hearing his agonised scream, had feared some accident. He drew back a step and then, with a spring, threw his colossal strength against the line where the leaves of the door joined. The lock broke in its sockets, the panels cracked under the tremendous pressure, and the door flew wide open. In a moment San Giacinto was standing over the librarian, trying to drag him back from the table and out of his seat. He thought the man was in a fit. In reality he was insane with terror. "An easy death, for the love of heaven!" moaned the wretch, twisting himself under the iron hands that held him by the shoulders. "For God's sake! I will tell you all--do not torture me--oh! oh!--only let it be easy--and quick--yes, I tell you--I killed the prince--oh, mercy, mercy, for Christ's sake!" San Giacinto's grip tightened, and his face grew livid. He lifted Meschini bodily from the chair and set him against the table, holding him up at arm's length, his deep eyes blazing with a rage that would soon be uncontrollable. Meschini's naturally strong constitution did not afford him the relief of fainting. "You killed him--why?" asked San Giacinto through his teeth, scarcely able to speak. "For you, for you--oh, have mercy--do not--" "Silence!" cried the giant in a voice that shook the vault of the hall. "Answer me or I will tear your head from your body with my hands! Why do you say you killed him for me?" Meschini trembled all over, and then his contorted face grew almost calm. He had reached that stage which may be called the somnambulism of fear. The perspiration covered his skin in an instant, and his voice sank to a distinct whisper. "He made me forge the deeds, and would not pay me for them. Then I killed him." "What deeds?" "The deeds that have made you Prince Saracinesca. If you do not believe me, go to my room, the originals are in the cupboard. The key is here, in my right-hand pocket." He could not move to get it, for San Giacinto held him fast, and watched every attempt he made at a movement. His own face was deathly pale, and his white lips were compressed together. "You forged them altogether, and the originals are untouched?" he asked, his grasp tightening unconsciously till Meschini yelled with pain. "Yes!" he cried. "Oh, do not hurt me--an easy death--" "Come with me," said San Giacinto, leaving his arms and taking him by the collar. Then he dragged and pushed him towards the splintered door of the passage. At the threshold, Meschini writhed and tried to draw back, but he could no more have escaped from those hands that held him than a lamb can loosen the talons of an eagle when they are buried deep in the flesh. "Go on!" urged the strong man, in fierce tones. "You came by this passage to kill him--you know the way." With a sudden movement of his right hand he launched the howling wretch forward into the corridor. All through the narrow way Meschini's cries for mercy resounded, loud and piercing, but no one heard him. The walls were thick and the distance from the inhabited rooms was great. But at last the shrieks reached the study. Saracinesca stood still in his walk. Giovanni sprang to his feet. The notaries sat in their places and trembled. The noise came nearer and then the door flew open. San Giacinto dragged the shapeless mass of humanity in and flung it half way across the room, so that it sank in a heap at the old prince's feet. "There is the witness to the deeds," he cried savagely. "He forged them, and he shall witness them in hell. He killed his master in this very room, and here he shall tell the truth before he dies. Confess, you dog! And be quick about it, or I will help you." He stirred the grovelling creature with his foot. Meschini only rolled from side to side and hid his face against the floor. Then the gigantic hands seized him again and set him on his feet, and held him with his face to the eight men who had all risen and were standing together in wondering silence. "Speak!" shouted San Giacinto in Meschini's ear. "You are not dead yet--you have much to live through, I hope." Again that trembling passed over the unfortunate man's limbs, and he grew quiet and submissive. It was all as he had seen it in his wild dreams and visions, the secret chamber whence no sound could reach the outer world, the stern judges all in black, the cruel strength of San Giacinto ready to torture him. The shadow of death rose in his eyes. "Let me sit down," he said in a broken voice. San Giacinto led him to a chair in the midst of them all. Then he stood before one of the doors, and motioned to his cousin to guard the other. But Arnoldo Meschini had no hope of escape. His hour was at hand, and he knew it. "You forged the deeds which were presented as originals in the court. Confess it to those gentlemen." It was San Giacinto who spoke. "The prince made me do it," answered Meschini in low tones. "He promised me twenty thousand scudi for the work." "To be paid--when? Tell all." "To be paid in cash the day the verdict was given." "You came to get your money here?" "I came here. He denied having promised anything definite. I grew angry. I killed him." A violent shudder shook his frame from head to foot. "You strangled him with a pocket handkerchief?" "It was Donna Faustina's?" "The prince threw it on the ground after he had struck her. I saw the quarrel. I was waiting for my money. I watched them through the door." "You know that you are to die. Where are the deeds you stole when you forged the others?" "I told you--in the cupboard in my room. Here is the key. Only--for God's sake---" He was beginning to break down again. Perhaps, by the habit of the past days he felt the need for drink even in that supreme moment, for his hand sought his pocket as he sat. Instead of the bottle he felt the cold steel barrel of the revolver, which he had forgotten. San Giacinto looked towards the notary. "Is this a full confession, sufficient to commit this man to trial?" he asked. But before the notary could answer, Meschini's voice sounded through the room, not weak and broken, but loud and clear. "It is! It is!" he cried in sudden and wild excitement. "I have told all. The deeds will speak for themselves. Ah! you would have done better to leave me amongst my books!" He turned to San Giacinto. "You will never be Prince Saracinesca. But I shall escape you. You shall not give me a slow death--you shall not, I say--" San Giacinto made a step towards him. The proximity of the man who had inspired him with such abject terror put an end to his hesitation. "You shall not!" he almost screamed. "But my blood is on your head--Ah!" Three deafening reports shook the air in rapid succession, and all that was left of Arnoldo Meschini lay in a shapeless heap upon the floor. While a man might have counted a score there was silence in the room. Then San Giacinto came forward and bent over the body, while the notaries and their clerks cowered in a corner. Saracinesca and Giovanni stood together, grave and silent, as brave men are when they have seen a horrible sight and can do nothing. Meschini was quite dead. When San Giacinto had assured himself of the fact, he looked up. All the fierce rage had vanished from his face. "He is dead," he said quietly. "You all saw it. You will have to give your evidence in half an hour when the police come. Be good enough to open the door." He took up the body in his arms carefully, but with an ease that amazed those who watched him. Giovanni held the door open, and San Giacinto deposited his burden gently upon the pavement of the corridor. Then he turned back and re-entered the room. The door of the study closed for ever on Arnoldo Meschini. In the dead silence that followed, San Giacinto approached the table upon which the deed lay, still waiting to be witnessed. He took it in his hand and turned to Saracinesca. There was no need for him to exculpate himself from any charge of complicity in the abominable fraud which Montevarchi had prepared before he died. Not one of the men present even thought of suspecting him. Even if they had, it was clear that he would not have brought Meschini to confess before them a robbery in which he had taken part. But there was that in his brave eyes that told his innocence better than any evidence or argument could have proclaimed it. He held out the document to Saracinesca. "Would you like to keep it as a memento?" he asked. "Or shall I destroy it before you?" His voice never quavered, his face was not discomposed. Giovanni, the noble-hearted gentleman, wondered whether he himself could have borne such a blow so bravely as this innkeeper cousin of his. Hopes, such as few men can even aspire to entertain, had been suddenly extinguished. A future of power and wealth and honour, the highest almost that his country could give any man, had been in a moment dashed to pieces before his eyes. Dreams, in which the most indifferent would see the prospect of enormous satisfaction, had vanished into nothing during the last ten minutes, almost at the instant when they were to be realised. And yet the man who had hoped such hopes, who had looked forward to such a future, whose mind must have revelled many a time in the visions that were already becoming realities--that man stood before them all, outwardly unmoved, and proposing to his cousin that he should keep as a remembrance the words that told of his own terrible disappointment. He was indeed the calmest of those present. "Shall I tear it to pieces?" he asked again, holding the document between his fingers. Then the old prince spoke. "Do what you will with it," he answered. "But give me your hand. You are a braver man than I." The two men looked into each other's eyes as their hands met. "It shall not be the last deed between us," said Saracinesca. "There shall be another. Whatever may be the truth about that villain's work you shall have your share--" "A few hours ago, you would not take yours," answered San Giacinto quietly. "Must I repeat your own words?" "Well, well--we will talk of that. This has been a terrible morning's work, and we must do other things before we go to business again. That poor man's body is outside the door. We had better attend to that matter first, and send for the police. Giovanni, my boy, will you tell Corona? I believe she is still in the house." Giovanni needed no urging to go upon his errand. He entered the drawing-room where Corona was still sitting beside Faustina upon the sofa. His face must have been pale, for Corona looked at him with a startled expression. "Is anything the matter?" she asked. "Something very unpleasant has occurred," he answered, looking at Faustina. "Meschini, the librarian, has just died very suddenly in the study where we were." "Meschini?" cried Faustina in surprise and with some anxiety. "Yes. Are you nervous, Donna Faustina? May I tell you something very startling?" It was a man's question. "Yes--what is it?" she asked quickly. "Meschini confessed before us all that it was he who was the cause--in fact that he had murdered your father. Before any one could stop him, he had shot himself. It is very dreadful." With a low cry that was more expressive of amazement than of horror, Faustina sank into a chair. In his anxiety to tell his wife the whole truth Giovanni forgot her at once. As soon as he began to speak, however, Corona led him away to the window where they had stood together a few hours earlier. "Corona--what I told her is not all. There is something else. Meschini had forged the papers which gave the property to San Giacinto. Montevarchi had promised him twenty thousand scudi for the job. It was because he would not pay the money that Meschini killed him. Do you understand?" "You will have everything after all?" "Everything--but we must give San Giacinto a share. He has behaved like a hero. He found it all out and made Meschini confess. When he knew the truth he did not move a muscle of his face, but offered my father the deed he had just signed as a memento of the occasion." "Then he will not take anything, any more than you would, or your father. Is it quite sure, Giovanni? Is there no possible mistake?" "No. It is absolutely certain. The original documents are in this house." "I am glad then, for you, dear," answered Corona. "It would have been very hard for you to bear--" "After this morning? After the other day in Holy Office?" asked Giovanni, looking deep into her splendid eyes. "Can anything be hard to bear if you love me, darling?" "Oh my beloved! I wanted to hear you say it!" Her head sank upon his shoulder, as though she had found that perfect rest for which she had once so longed. Here ends the second act in the history of the Saracinesca. To trace their story further would be to enter upon an entirely different series of events, less unusual perhaps in themselves, but possibly worthy of description as embracing that period during which Rome and the Romans began to be transformed and modernised. In the occurrences that followed, both political and social, the Saracinesca bore a part, in that blaze of gaiety which for many reasons developed during the winter of the Oecumenical Council, in the fall of the temporal power, in the social confusion that succeeded that long-expected catastrophe, and which led by rapid degrees to the present state of things. If there are any left who still feel an interest in Giovanni and Corona, the historian may once more resume his task and set forth in succession the circumstances through which they have passed since that memorable morning they spent at the Palazzo Montevarchi. They themselves are facts, and, as such, are a part of the century in which we live; whether they are interesting facts or not, is for others to judge, and if the verdict denounces them as flat, unprofitable and altogether dull, it is not their fault; the blame must be imputed to him who, knowing them well, has failed in an honest attempt to show them as they are. THE END. 
28614	----	AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS STUDIES FROM THE CHRONICLES OF ROME BY FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 1899 _All rights reserved_ Copyright, 1898, By The Macmillan Company. Set up and electrotyped October, 1898. Reprinted November, December, 1898. _Norwood Press_ _J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith_ _Norwood, Mass., U.S.A._ TABLE OF CONTENTS VOLUME I PAGE THE MAKING OF THE CITY 1 THE EMPIRE 22 THE CITY OF AUGUSTUS 57 THE MIDDLE AGE 78 THE FOURTEEN REGIONS 100 REGION I MONTI 106 REGION II TREVI 155 REGION III COLONNA 190 REGION IV CAMPO MARZO 243 REGION V PONTE 274 REGION VI PARIONE 297 LIST OF PHOTOGRAVURE PLATES VOLUME I Map of Rome _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE The Wall of Romulus 4 Palace of the Cæsars 30 The Campagna and Ruins of the Claudian Aqueduct 50 Temple of Castor and Pollux 70 Basilica Constantine 90 Basilica of Saint John Lateran 114 Baths of Diocletian 140 Fountain of Trevi 158 Piazza Barberini 188 Porta San Lorenzo 214 Villa Borghese 230 Piazza del Popolo 256 Island in the Tiber 280 Palazzo Massimo alle Colonna 306 ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT VOLUME I PAGE Palatine Hill and Mouth of the Cloaca Maxima 1 Ruins of the Servian Wall 8 Etruscan Bridge at Veii 16 Tombs on the Appian Way 22 Brass of Tiberius, showing the Temple of Concord 24 The Tarpeian Rock 28 Caius Julius Cæsar 36 Octavius Augustus Cæsar 45 Brass of Trajan, showing the Circus Maximus 56 Brass of Antoninus Pius, in Honour of Faustina, with Reverse showing Vesta bearing the Palladium 57 Ponte Rotto, now destroyed 67 Atrium of Vesta 72 Brass of Gordian, showing the Colosseum 78 The Colosseum 87 Ruins of the Temple of Saturn 92 Brass of Gordian, showing Roman Games 99 Ruins of the Julian Basilica 100 Brass of Titus, showing the Colosseum 105 Region I Monti, Device of 106 Santa Francesca Romana 111 San Giovanni in Laterano 116 Piazza Colonna 119 Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano 126 Santa Maria Maggiore 134 Porta Maggiore, supporting the Channels of the Aqueduct of Claudius and the Anio Novus 145 Interior of the Colosseum 152 Region II Trevi, Device of 155 Grand Hall of the Colonna Palace 162 Interior of the Mausoleum of Augustus 169 Forum of Trajan 171 Ruins of Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli 180 Palazzo del Quirinale 185 Region III Colonna, Device of 190 Arch of Titus 191 Twin Churches at the Entrance of the Corso 197 San Lorenzo in Lucina 204 Palazzo Doria-Pamfili 208 Palazzo di Monte Citorio 223 Palazzo di Venezia 234 Region IV Campo Marzo, Device of 248 Piazza di Spagna 251 Trinità de Monti 257 Villa Medici 265 Region V Ponte 274 Bridge of Sant' Angelo 285 Villa Negroni 292 Region VI Parione, Device of 297 Piazza Navona 303 Ponte Sisto 307 The Cancelleria 316 WORKS CONSULTED NOT INCLUDING CLASSIC WRITERS NOR ENCYCLOPÆDIAS 1. AMPÈRE--Histoire Romaine à Rome. AMPÈRE--L'Empire Remain à Rome. 2. BARACCONI--I Rioni di Roma. 3. BOISSIER--Promenades Archéologiques. 4. BRYCE--The Holy Roman Empire. 5. CELLINI--Memoirs. 6. COPPI--Memoire Colonnesi. 7. FORTUNATO--Storia delle vite delle Imperatrici Romane. 8. GIBBON--Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 9. GNOLI--Vittoria Accoramboni. 10. GREGOROVIUS--Geschichte der Stadt Rom. 11. HARE--Walks in Rome. 12. JOSEPHUS--Life of. 13. LANCIANI--Ancient Rome. 14. LETI--Vita di Sisto V. 15. MURATORI--Scriptores Rerum Italicarum. MURATORI--Annali d'Italia. MURATORI--Antichità Italiane. 16. RAMSAY AND LANCIANI--A Manual of Roman Antiquities. 17. SCHNEIDER--Das Alte Rom. 18. SILVAGNI--La Corte e la Società Romana. [Illustration: PALATINE HILL AND MOUTH OF THE CLOACA MAXIMA] Ave Roma Immortalis I The story of Rome is the most splendid romance in all history. A few shepherds tend their flocks among volcanic hills, listening by day and night to the awful warnings of the subterranean voice,--born in danger, reared in peril, living their lives under perpetual menace of destruction, from generation to generation. Then, at last, the deep voice swells to thunder, roaring up from the earth's heart, the lightning shoots madly round the mountain top, the ground rocks, and the air is darkened with ashes. The moment has come. One man is a leader, but not all will follow him. He leads his small band swiftly down from the heights, and they drive a flock and a little herd before them, while each man carries his few belongings as best he can, and there are few women in the company. The rest would not be saved, and they perish among their huts before another day is over. Down, always downwards, march the wanderers, rough, rugged, young with the terrible youth of those days, and wise only with the wisdom of nature. Down the steep mountain they go, down over the rich, rolling land, down through the deep forests, unhewn of man, down at last to the river, where seven low hills rise out of the wide plain. One of those hills the leader chooses, rounded and grassy; there they encamp, and they dig a trench and build huts. Pales, protectress of flocks, gives her name to the Palatine Hill. Rumon, the flowing river, names the village Rome, and Rome names the leader Romulus, the Man of the River, the Man of the Village by the River; and to our own time the twenty-first of April is kept and remembered, and even now honoured, for the very day on which the shepherds began to dig their trench on the Palatine, the date of the Foundation of Rome, from which seven hundred and fifty-four years were reckoned to the birth of Christ. And the shepherds called their leader King, though his kingship was over but few men. Yet they were such men as begin history, and in the scant company there were all the seeds of empire. First the profound faith of natural mankind, unquestioning, immovable, inseparable from every daily thought and action; then fierce strength, and courage, and love of life and of possession; last, obedience to the chosen leader, in clear liberty, when one should fail, to choose another. So the Romans began to win the world, and won it in about six hundred years. By their camp-fires, by their firesides in their little huts, they told old tales of their race, and round the truth grew up romantic legend, ever dear to the fighting man and to the husbandman alike, with strange tales of their first leader's birth, fit for poets, and woven to stir young hearts to daring, and young hands to smiting. Truth there was under their stories, but how much of it no man can tell: how Amulius of Alba Longa slew his sons, and slew also his daughter, loved of Mars, mother of twin sons left to die in the forest, like Oedipus, father-slayers, as Oedipus was, wolf-suckled, of whom one was born to kill the other and be the first King, and be taken up to Jupiter in storm and lightning at the last. The legend of wise Numa, next, taught by Egeria; her stony image still weeps trickling tears for her royal adept, and his earthen cup, jealously guarded, was worshipped for more than a thousand years; legends of the first Arval brotherhood, dim as the story of Melchisedec, King and priest, but lasting as Rome itself. Tales of King Tullus, when the three Horatii fought for Rome against the three Curiatii, who smote for Alba and lost the day--Tullus Hostilius, grandson of that first Hostus who had fought against the Sabines; and always more legend, and more, and more, sometimes misty, sometimes clear and direct in action as a Greek tragedy. They hover upon the threshold of history, with faces of beauty or of terror, sublime, ridiculous, insignificant, some born of desperate, real deeds, many another, perhaps, first told by some black-haired shepherd mother to her wondering boys at evening, when the brazen pot simmered on the smouldering fire, and the father had not yet come home. But down beneath the legend lies the fact, in hewn stones already far in the third thousand of their years. Digging for truth, searchers have come here and there upon the first walls and gates of the Palatine village, straight, strong and deeply founded. The men who made them meant to hold their own, and their own was whatsoever they were able to take from others by force. They built their walls round a four-sided space, wide enough for them, scarcely big enough a thousand years later for the houses of their children's rulers, the palaces of the Cæsars of which so much still stands today. Then came the man who built the first bridge across the river, of wooden piles and beams, bolted with bronze, because the Romans had no iron yet, and ever afterwards repaired with wood and bronze, for its sanctity, in perpetual veneration of Ancus Martius, fourth King of Rome. That was the bridge Horatius kept against Porsena of Clusium, while the fathers hewed it down behind him. [Illustration: WALL OF ROMULUS] Tarquin the first came next, a stranger of Greek blood, chosen, perhaps, because the factions in Rome could not agree. Then Servius, great and good, built his tremendous fortification, and the King of Italy today, driving through the streets in his carriage, may look upon the wall of the King who reigned in Rome more than two thousand and four hundred years ago. Under those six rulers, from Romulus to Servius, from the man of the River Village to the man of walls, Rome had grown from a sheepfold to a town, from a town to a walled city, from a city to a little nation, matched against all mankind, to win or die, inch by inch, sword in hand. She was a kingdom now, and her men were subjects; and still the third law of great races was strong and waking. Romans obeyed their leader so long as he could lead them well--no longer. The twilight of the Kings gathered suddenly, and their names were darkened, and their sun went down in shame and hate. In the confusion, tragic legend rises to tell the story. For the first time in Rome, a woman, famous in all history, turned the scale. The King's son, passionate, terrible, false, steals upon her in the dark. 'I am Sextus Tarquin, and there is a sword in my hand.' Yet she yielded to no fear of steel, but to the horror of unearned shame beyond death. On the next day, when she lay before her husband and her father and the strong Brutus, her story told, her deed done, splendidly dead by her own hand, they swore the oath in which the Republic was born. While father, husband and friend were stunned with grief, Brutus held up the dripping knife before their eyes. 'By this most chaste blood, I swear--Gods be my witnesses--that I will hunt down Tarquin the Proud, himself, his infamous wife and every child of his, with fire and sword, and with all my might, and neither he nor any other man shall ever again be King in Rome.' So they all swore, and bore the dead woman out into the market-place, and called on all men to stand by them. They kept their word, and the tale tells how the Tarquins were driven out to a perpetual exile, and by and by allied themselves with Porsena, and marched on Rome, and were stopped only at the Sublician bridge by brave Horatius. Chaos next. Then all at once the Republic stands out, born full grown and ready armed, stern, organized and grasping, but having already within itself the quickened opposites that were to fight for power so long and so fiercely,--the rich and the poor, the patrician and the plebeian, the might and the right. There is a wonder in that quick change from Kingdom to Commonwealth, which nothing can make clear, except, perhaps, modern history. Say that two thousand or more years hereafter men shall read of what our grandfathers, our fathers and ourselves have seen done in France within a hundred years, out of two or three old books founded mostly on tradition; they may be confused by the sudden disappearance of kings, by the chaos, the wild wars and the unforeseen birth of a lasting republic, just as we are puzzled when we read of the same sequence in ancient Rome. Men who come after us will have more documents, too. It is not possible that all books and traces of written history should be destroyed throughout the world, as the Gauls burned everything in Rome, except the Capitol itself, held by the handful of men who had taken refuge there. So the Kingdom fell with a woman's death, and the Commonwealth was made by her avengers. Take the story as you will, for truth or truth's legend, it is for ever humanly true, and such deeds would rouse a nation today as they did then and as they set Rome on fire once more nearly sixty years later. But all the time Rome was growing as if the very stones had life to put out shoots and blossoms and bear fruit. Round about the city the great Servian wall had wound like a vast finger, in and out, grasping the seven hills, and taking in what would be a fair-sized city even in our day. They were the last defences Rome built for herself, for nearly nine hundred years. Nothing can give a larger idea of Rome's greatness than that; not all the temples, monuments, palaces, public buildings of later years can tell half the certainty of her power expressed by that one fact--Rome needed no walls when once she had won the world. But it is very hard to guess at what the city was, in those grim times of the early fight for life. We know the walls, and there were nineteen gates in all, and there were paved roads; the wooden bridge, the Capitol with its first temple and first fortress, the first Forum with the Sacred Way, were all there, and the public fountain, called the Tullianum, and a few other sites are certain. The rest must be imagined. [Illustration: RUINS OF THE SERVIAN WALL] Rome was a brown city in those days, when there was no marble and little stucco: a brown city teeming with men and women clothed mostly in grey and brown and black woollen cloaks, like those the hill shepherds wear today, caught up under one arm and thrown far over the shoulder in dark folds. The low houses without any outer windows, entered by one rough door, were built close together, and those near the Forum had shops outside them, low-browed places, dark but not deep, where the cloaked keeper sat behind a stone counter among his wares, waiting for custom, watching all that happened in the market-place, gathering in gossip from one buyer to exchange it for more with the next, altogether not unlike the small Eastern merchant of today. Yet during more than half the time, there were few young men, or men in prime, in the streets of Rome. They were fighting more than half the year, while their fathers and their children stayed behind with the women. The women sat spinning and weaving wool in their little brown houses; the boys played, fought, ran races naked in the streets; the small girls had their quiet games and, surely, their dolls, made of rags, stuffed with the soft wool waste from their mothers' spindles and looms. The old men, scarred and seamed in the battles of an age when fighting was all hand to hand, kept the shops, or sunned themselves in the market-place, shelling and chewing lupins to pass the time, as the Romans have always done, and telling old tales, or boasting to each other of their half-grown grandchildren, and of their full-grown sons, fighting far away in the hills and the plains that Rome might have more possession. Meanwhile the maidens went in pairs to the springs to fetch water, or down to the river in small companies to wash the woollen clothes and dry them in the shade of the old wild trees, lest in the sun they should shrink and thicken; black-haired, black-eyed, dark-skinned maids, all of them, strong and light of foot, fit to be mothers of more soldiers, to slay more enemies, and bring back more spoil. Then, as in our own times, the flocks of goats were driven in from the pastures at early morning and milked from door to door, for each household, and driven out again to the grass before the sun was high. In the old wall there was the Cattle Gate, the Porta Mugonia, named, as the learned say, from the lowing of the herds. Then, as in the hill towns not long ago, the serving women, who were slaves, sat cross-legged on the ground in the narrow court within the house, with the hand-mill of two stones between them, and ground the wheat to flour for the day's meal. There have been wonderful survivals of the first age even to our own time. But that which has not come down to us is the huge vitality of those men and women. The world's holders have never risen suddenly in hordes; they have always grown by degrees out of little nations, that could live through more than their neighbours. Calling up the vision of the first Rome, one must see, too, such human faces and figures of men as are hardly to be found among us nowadays,--the big features, the great, square, devouring jaws, the steadily bright eyes, the strongly built brows, coarse, shagged hair, big bones, iron muscles and starting sinews. There are savage countries that still breed such men. They may have their turn next, when we are worn out. Browning has made John the Smith a memorable type. Rome was a clean city in those days. One of the Tarquins had built the great arched drain which still stands unshaken and in use, and smaller ones led to it, draining the Forum and all the low part of the town. The people were clean, far beyond our ordinary idea of them, as is plain enough from the contemptuous way in which the Latin authors use their strong words for uncleanliness. A dirty man was an object of pity, and men sometimes went about in soiled clothes to excite the public sympathy, as beggars do today in all countries. Dirt meant abject poverty, and in a grasping, getting race, poverty was the exception, even while simplicity was the rule. For all was simple with them, their dress, their homes, their lives, their motives, and if one could see the Rome of Tarquin the Proud, this simplicity would be of all characteristics the most striking, compared with what we know of later Rome, and with what we see about us in our own times. Simplicity is not strength, but the condition in which strength is least hampered in its full action. It was easy to live simply in such a place and in such a climate, under a wise King. The check in the first straight run of Rome's history brought the Romans suddenly face to face with the first great complication of their career, which was the struggle between the rich and the poor; and again the half truth rises up to explain the fact. Men whose first instinct was to take and hold took from one another in peace when they could not take from their enemies in war, since they must needs be always taking from some one. So the few strong took all from the many weak, till the weak banded themselves together to resist the strong, and the struggle for life took a new direction. The grim figure of Lucius Junius Brutus rises as the incarnation of that character which, at great times, made history, but in peace made trouble. The man who avenged Lucretia, who drove out the Tarquins, and founded the Republic, is most often remembered as the father who sat unmoved in judgment on his two traitor sons, and looked on with stony eyes while they paid the price of their treason in torment and death. That one deed stands out, and we forget how he himself fell fighting for Rome's freedom. But still the evil grew at home, and the hideous law of creditor and debtor, which only fiercest avarice could have devised, ground the poor, who were obliged to borrow to pay the tax-gatherer, and made slaves of them almost to the ruin of the state. Just then Etruria wakes, shadowy, half Greek, the central power of Italy, between Rome and Gaul. Porsena, the Lar of Clusium, comes against the city with a great host in gilded arms. Terror descends like a dark mist over the young nation. The rich fear for their riches, the poor for their lives. In haste the fathers gather great supplies of corn against a siege; credit and debt are forgotten; patrician and plebeian join hands as Porsena reaches Janiculum, and three heroic figures of romance stand forth from a host of heroes. Horatius keeps the bridge, first with two comrades, then, at the last, alone in the glory of single-handed fight against an army, sure of immortality whether he live or die. Scævola, sworn with the three hundred to slay the Lar, stabs the wrong man, and burns his hand to the wrist to show what tortures he can bear unmoved. Cloelia, the maiden hostage, rides her young steed at the yellow torrent, and swims the raging flood back to the Palatine. Cloelia and Horatius get statues in the Forum; Scævola is endowed with great lands, which his race holds for centuries, and leaves a name so great that two thousand years later, Sforza, greatest leader of the Middle Age, coveting long ancestry, makes himself descend from the man who burned off his own hand. They are great figures, the two men and the noble girl, and real to us, in a way, because we can stand on the very ground they trod, where Horatius fought, where Scævola suffered and where Cloelia took the river. They are nearer to us than Romulus, nearer even than Lucretia, as each figure, following the city's quick life, has more of reality about it, and not less of heroism. For two hundred years the Romans strove with each other in law making; the fathers for exclusive power and wealth, the plebeians for freedom, first, and then for office in the state; a time of fighting abroad for land, and of contention at home about its division. In fifty years the poor had their Tribunes, but it took them nearly three times as long, after that, to make themselves almost the fathers' equals in power. Once they tried a new kind of government by a board of ten, and it held for a while, till again a woman's life turned the tide of Roman history, and fair young Virginia, stabbed by her father in the Forum, left a name as lasting as any of that day. Romance again, but the true romance, above doubt, at last; not at all mythical, but full of fate's unanswerable logic, which makes dim stories clear to living eyes. You may see the actors in the Forum, where it all happened,--the lovely girl with frightened, wondering eyes; the father, desperate, white-lipped, shaking with the thing not yet done; Appius Claudius smiling among his friends and clients; the sullen crowd of strong plebeians, and the something in the chill autumn air that was a warning of fate and fateful change. Then the deed. A shriek at the edge of the throng; a long, thin knife, high in air, trembling before a thousand eyes; a harsh, heartbroken, vengeful voice; a confusion and a swaying of the multitude, and then the rising yell of men overlaid, ringing high in the air from the Capitol right across the Forum to the Palatine, and echoing back the doom of the Ten. The deed is vivid still, and then there is sudden darkness. One thinks of how that man lived afterwards. Had Virginius a home, a wife, other children to mourn the dead one? Or was he a lonely man, ten times alone after that day, with the memory of one flashing moment always undimmed in a bright horror? Who knows? Did anyone care? Rome's story changed its course, turning aside at the river of Virginia's blood, and going on swiftly in another way. To defeat this time, straight to Rome's first and greatest humiliation; to the coming of the Gauls, sweeping everything before them, Etruscans, Italians, Romans, up to the gates of the city and over the great moat and wall of Servius, burning, destroying, killing everything, to the foot of the central rock; baffled at the last stronghold on a dark night by a flock of cackling geese, but not caring for so small a thing when they had swallowed up the rest, or not liking the Latin land, perhaps, and so, taking ransom for peace and marching away northwards again through the starved and harried hills and valleys of Etruria to their own country. And six centuries passed away before an enemy entered Rome again. But the Gauls left wreck and ruin and scarcely one stone upon another in the great desolation; they swept away all records of history, then and there, and the general destruction was absolute, so that the Rome of the Republic and of the Empire, the centre and capital of the world, began to exist from that day. Unwillingly the people bore back Juno's image from Veii, where they had taken refuge and would have stayed, and built houses, and would have called that place Rome. But the nobles had their own way, and the great construction began, of which there was to be no end for many hundreds of years, in peace and war, mostly while hard fighting was going on abroad. [Illustration: ETRUSCAN BRIDGE AT VEII] They built hurriedly at first, for shelter, and as best they could, crowding their little houses in narrow streets with small care for symmetry or adornment. The second Rome must have seemed but a poor village compared with the solidly built city which the Gauls had burnt, and it was long before the present could compare with the past. In haste men seized on fragments of all sorts, blocks of stone, cracked and defaced in the flames, charred beams that could still serve, a door here, a window there, and such bits of metal as they could pick up. An irregular, crowded town sprang up, and a few rough temples, no doubt as pied and meanly pieced as many of those early churches built of odds and ends of ruin, which stand to this day. It is not impossible that the motley character of Rome, of which all writers speak in one way or another, had its first cause in that second building of the city. Rome without ruins would hardly seem Rome at all, and all was ruined in that first inroad of the savage Gauls,--houses, temples, public places. When the Romans came back from Veii they must have found the Forum not altogether unlike what it is today, but blackened with smoke, half choked with mouldering humanity, strewn with charred timbers, broken roof tiles and the wreck of much household furniture; a sorrowful confusion reeking with vapours of death, and pestilential with decay. It was no wonder that the poor plebeians lost heart and would have chosen to go back to the clear streets and cleaner air of Veii. Their little houses were lost and untraceable in the universal chaos. But the rich man's ruins stood out in bolder relief; he had his lands still; he still had slaves; he could rebuild his home; and he had his way. But ever afterwards, though the Republic and the Empire spent the wealth of nations in beautifying the city, the trace of that first defeat remained. Dark and narrow lanes wound in and out, round the great public squares, and within earshot of the broad white streets, and the time-blackened houses of the poor stood huddled out of sight behind the palaces of the rich, making perpetual contrast of wealth and poverty, splendour and squalor, just as one may see today in Rome, in London, in Paris, in Constantinople, in all the mistress cities of the world that have long histories of triumph and defeat behind them. The first Rome sprang from the ashes of the Alban volcano, the second Rome rose from the ashes of herself, as she has risen again and again since then. But the Gauls had done Rome a service, too. In crushing her to the earth, they had crushed many of her enemies out of existence; and when she stood up to face the world once more, she fought not to beat the Æquians or the Etruscans at her gates, but to conquer Italy. And by steady fighting she won it all, and brought home the spoils and divided the lands; here and there a battle lost, as in the bloody Caudine pass, but always more battles won, and more, and more, sternly relentless to revolt. Brutus had seen his own sons' heads fall at his own word; should Caius Pontius, the Samnite, be spared, because he was the bravest of the brave? To her faithful friends Rome was just, and now and then half-contemptuously generous. The idle Greek fine gentlemen of Tarentum sat in their theatre one day, overlooking the sea, shaded by dyed awnings from the afternoon sun, listening entranced to some grand play,--the Oedipus King, perhaps, or Alcestis, or Medea. Ten Roman trading ships came sailing round the point; and the wind failed, and they lay there with drooping sails, waiting for the land breeze that springs up at night. Perhaps some rough Latin sailor, as is the way today in calm weather when there is no work to be done, began to howl out one of those strange, endless songs which have been sung down to us, from ear to ear, out of the primeval Aryan darkness,--loud, long drawn out, exasperating in its unfinished cadence, jarring on the refined Greek ear, discordant with the actor's finely measured tones. In sudden rage at the noise--so it must have been--those delicate idlers sprang up and ran down to the harbour, and took the boats that lay there, and overwhelmed the unarmed Roman traders, slaying many of them. Foolish, cruel, almost comic. So a sensitive musician, driven half mad by a street organ, longs to rush out and break the thing to pieces, and kill the poor grinder for his barbarous noise. But when there was blood in the harbour of Tarentum, and some of the ships had escaped on their oars, the Greeks were afraid; and when the message of war came swiftly down to them from inexorable Rome, their terror grew, and they sent to Pyrrhus of Epirus, who had set up to be a conqueror, to come and conquer Rome for the sake of certain æsthetic fine gentlemen who could not bear to be disturbed at a good play on a spring afternoon. He came with all the pomp and splendour of Eastern warfare; he won a battle, and a battle, and half a battle, and then the Romans beat him at Beneventum, famous again and again, and utterly destroyed his army, and took back with them his gold and his jewels, and the tusks of his elephants, and the mastery of all Italy to boot, but not yet beyond dispute. Creeping down into Sicily, Rome met Carthage, both giants in those days, and the greatest and last struggle began, with half the known world and all the known sea for a battle-ground. Round and round the Mediterranean, by water and land, they fought for a hundred and eighteen years, through four generations of men, as we should reckon it, both grasping and strong, both relentless, both sworn to win or perish for ever, both doing great deeds that are remembered still. The mere name of Regulus is a legion of legends in itself; the name of Hannibal is in itself a history, that of Fabius Maximus a lesson; and while history lasts, Cornelius Scipio and Scipio the African will not be forgotten. It is the story of many and terrible defeats, from each of which Rome rose, fiercely young, to win a dozen terrible little victories. It is strange that we remember the lost days best; misty Thrasymene and Cannæ's fearful slaughter rise first in the memory. Then all at once, within ten years, the scale turns, and Caius Claudius Nero hurls Hasdrubal's disfigured head high over ditch and palisade into his brother's camp, right to his brother's feet. And five years later, the battle of Zama, won almost at the gates of Carthage; and then, almost the end, as great heartbroken Hannibal, defeated, ruined and exiled, drinks up the poison and rests at last, some forty years after he led his first army to victory. But he had been dead nearly forty years, when another Scipio at last tore down the walls of Carthage, and utterly destroyed the city to the foundations, for ever. And a dozen years later than that, Rome had conquered all the civilized world round about the Mediterranean sea, from Spain to Asia. [Illustration: TOMBS ON THE APPIAN WAY] II There was a mother in Rome, not rich, but of great race, for she was daughter to Scipio of Africa; and she called her sons her jewels when other women showed their golden ornaments and their precious stones and boasted of their husbands' wealth. Cornelia's two sons, Tiberius and Caius, lost their lives successively in a struggle against the avarice of the rich men who ruled Rome, Italy and the world; against that grasping avarice which far surpassed the greed of any other race before the Romans, or after them, and which had suddenly taken new growth as the spoils of the East and South and West poured into the city. Yet the vast booty men could see was but an earnest of the wide lands which had fallen to Rome, called 'Public Lands' almost as if in derision, while they fell into the power of the few and strong, by the hundred thousand acres at a time. Three hundred and fifty years before the Gracchi, when little conquests still seemed great, Spurius Cassius had died in defence of his Agrarian Law, at the hands of the savage rich who accused him of conspiring for a crown. Tiberius Gracchus set up the rights of the people to the public land, and perished. He fell within a stone's throw of the spot on which the great tribune, Nicholas Rienzi, died. The strong, small band of nobles, armed with staves and clubs, and with that supremacy of contemptuous bearing that cows the simple, plough their way through the rioting throng, murderously clubbing to right and left. Tiberius, retreating, stumbles against a corpse and his enemies are upon him; a stave swung high in air, a dull blow, and all is finished for that day, save to throw the body into the Tiber lest the people should make a revolution of its funeral. Next came Caius, a boy of six and twenty, fighting the same fight for a few years. On his head the nobles set a price--its weight in gold. He hides on the Aventine, and the Aventine is stormed. He escapes by the Sublician bridge and the bridge is held behind him by one friend, almost as Horatius held it against an army. Yet the nobles and their hired Cretan bowmen force the way and pursue him into Furina's grove. There a Greek slave ends him, and to get more gold fills the poor head with metal--and is paid in full. Three hundred died with Tiberius, three thousand were put to death for his brother's sake. With the goods of the slain and the dowries of their wives, Opimius built the Temple of Concord on the spot where the later one still stands in part, between the Comitium and the Capitol. The poor of Rome, and Cornelia, and the widows and children of the murdered men, knew what that 'Concord' meant. [Illustration: BRASS OF TIBERIUS, SHOWING THE TEMPLE OF CONCORD] Then followed revolution, war with runaway slaves, war with the immediate allies, then civil war, while wealth and love of wealth grew side by side, the one, insatiate, devouring the other. First the slaves made for Sicily, wild, mountainous, half-governed then as it is today, and they held much of it against their masters for five years. Within short memory, almost yesterday, a handful of outlaws has defied a powerful nation's best soldiers in the same mountains. It is small wonder that many thousand men, fighting for liberty and life, should have held out so long. And meanwhile Jugurtha of Numidia had for long years bought every Roman general sent against him, had come to Rome himself and bought the laws, and had gone back to his country with contemptuous leave-taking--'Thou city where all is sold!' And still he bought, till Caius Marius, high-hearted plebeian and great soldier, brought him back to die in the Mamertine prison. Then against wealth arose the last and greatest power of Rome, her terrible armies that set up whom they would, to have their will of Senate and fathers and people. First Marius, then Sylla whom he had taught to fight, and taught to beat him in the end, after Cinna had been murdered for his sake at Ancona. Marius and Sylla, the plebeian and the patrician, were matched at first as leader and lieutenant, then both as conquerors, then as alternate despots of Rome and mortal foes, till their long duel wrecked what had been and opened ways for what was to be. First, Sylla claims that he, and not Marius, took Jugurtha, when the Numidian ally betrayed him, though the King and his two sons marched in the train of the plebeian's triumph. Marius answers by a stupendous victory over the Cimbrians and Teutons, slays a hundred thousand in one battle, comes home, triumphs again, sets up his trophies in the city and builds a temple to Honour and Courage. Next, in greed of popular power, he perjures himself to support a pair of murderous demagogues, betrays them in turn to the patricians, and Saturninus is pounded to death with roof tiles in the Capitol. Then, being made leader in the war with the allies, already old for fighting, he fails at the outset, and his rival Sylla is General in his stead. Then riot on riot in the Forum, violence after violence in the struggle for the consulship, murder after murder, blood upon blood not yet dry. Sylla gets the expedition against Mithridates; Marius, at home, undermines his enemy's influence and forces the tribes to give him the command, and sends out his lieutenants to the East. Sylla's soldiers murder them, and Sylla marches back against Rome with six legions. Marius is unprepared; Sylla breaks into the city, torch in hand, at the head of his troops, burning and slaying; the rivals meet face to face in the Esquiline market-place, Roman fights Roman, and the plebeian loses the day and escapes to the sea. The reign of terror begins, and a great slaying. Sylla declares his rival an enemy of Rome, and Marius is found hiding in the marshes of Minturnæ, is dragged out naked, covered with mud, a rope about his neck, and led into a little house of the town to be slain by a slave. 'Darest thou kill Caius Marius?' asks the old man with flashing eyes, and the slave executioner trembles before the unarmed prisoner. They let him go. He wanders to Africa and sits alone among the ruins of Carthage, while Sylla fights victoriously in the East. Rome, momentarily free of both, is torn by dissensions about the voting of the newly enfranchised. Instead of the greater rivals, Cinna and Octavius are matched for plebs and nobles. Knife-armed the parties fight it out in the Forum, the bodies of citizens lie in heaps, and the gutters are gorged with free blood, and again the patricians win the day. Cinna, fleeing from wrath, is deposed from office. Marius sees his chance again. Unshaven and unshorn since he left Rome last, he joins Cinna, leading six thousand fugitives, seizes and plunders the towns about Rome, while Cinna encamps beneath the walls. Together they enter Rome and nail Octavius' head to the Rostra. Then the vengeance of wholesale slaying, in another reign of terror, and Marius is despot of the city for a while, as Sylla had been before, till spent with age, his life goes out amid drunkenness and blood. The people tear down Sylla's house, burn his villa and drive out his wife and his children. Back he comes after four years, victorious, fighting his way right and left, against Lucanians and Samnites, back to Rome still fighting them, almost loses the battle, is saved by Crassus to take vengeance again, and again the long lists of the proscribed are written out and hung up in the Forum, and the city runs blood in a third Terror. Amid heaps of severed heads, Sylla sits before the temple of Castor and sells the lands of his dead enemies; and Catiline is first known to history as the executioner of Caius Gratidianus, whom he slices to death, piecemeal, beyond the Tiber. [Illustration: THE TARPEIAN ROCK] Sylla, cold, aristocratic, sublimely ironical monster, was Rome's first absolute and undisputed military lord. Tired of blood, he tried reform, invented an aristocratic constitution, saw that it must fail, and then, to the amazement of his friends and enemies, abdicated and withdrew to private life, protected by a hundred thousand veterans of his army, and many thousands of freedmen, to die at the last without violence. Of the chaos he left behind him, Cæsar made the Roman Empire. The Gracchi, champions of the people, were foully done to death. Marius and Sylla, tearing the proud Republic to pieces for their own greatness, both died in their beds, the one of old age, the other of disease. There is no irony like that which often ended the lives of great Romans. Marcus Manlius, who saved the Capitol from the Gauls, was hurled to his death from the same rock, by the tribunes of the people, and Rome's citadel and sanctuary was desecrated by the blood of its preserver. Scipio of Africa breathed his last in exile, but Appius Claudius, the Decemvir, died rich and honoured. One asks, naturally enough, how Rome could hold the civilized nations in subjection while she was fighting out a civil war that lasted fifty years. We have but little idea of her great military organization, after arms became a profession and a career. We can but call up scattered pictures to show us rags and fragments of the immense host that patrolled the world with measured tread and matchless precision of serried rank, in tens and scores and hundreds of thousands, for centuries, shoulder to shoulder and flank to flank, learning its own strength by degrees, till it suddenly grasped all power, gave it to one man, and made Caius Julius Cæsar Dictator of the earth. The greatest figure in all history suddenly springs out of the dim chaos and shines in undying glory, the figure of a man so great that the office he held means Empire, and the mere name he bore means Emperor today in four empires,--Cæsar, Kaiser, Czar, Kaisár,--a man of so vast power that the history of humanity for centuries after him was the history of those who were chosen to fill his place--the history of nearly half the twelve centuries foretold by the augur Attus, from Romulus, first King, to Romulus Augustulus, last Emperor. He was a man whose deeds and laws have marked out the life of the world even to this far day. Before him and with him comes Pompey, with him and after him Mark Antony, next to him in line and greatness, Augustus--all dwarfs compared with him, while two of them were failures outright, and the third could never have reached power but in his steps. [Illustration: PALACE OF THE CÆSARS] In that long tempest of parties wherein the Republic went down for ever, it is hard to trace the truth, or number the slain, or reckon up account of gain and loss. But when Cæsar rises in the centre of the storm the end is sure and there can be no other, for he drives it before him like a captive whirlwind, to do his bidding and clear the earth for his coming. Other men, and great men, too, are overwhelmed by it, dashed down and stunned out of all sense and judgment, to be lost and forgotten like leaves in autumn, whirled away before the gale. Pompey, great general and great statesman, conqueror in Spain, subduer of Spartacus and the Gladiators, destroyer of pirates and final victor over Mithridates, comes back and lives as a simple citizen. Noble of birth, but not trusted by his peers, he joins with Cæsar, leader of all the people, and with Crassus, for more power, and loses the world by giving Cæsar an army, and Gaul to conquer. Crassus, brave general, too, is slain in battle in far Parthia, and Pompey steals a march by getting a long term in Spain. Cæsar demands as much and is refused by Pompey's friends. Then the storm breaks and Cæsar comes back from Gaul to cross the Rubicon, and take all Italy in sixty days. Pompey, ambitious, ill-starred, fights losing battles everywhere. Murdered at last in Egypt, he, too, is dead, and Cæsar stands alone, master of Rome and of the world. One year he ruled, and then they slew him; but no one of them that struck him died a natural death. Creation presupposes chaos, and it is the divine prerogative of genius to evolve order from confusion. Julius Cæsar found the world of his day consisting of disordered elements of strength, all at strife with each other in a central turmoil, skirted and surrounded by the relative peace of an ancient and long undisturbed barbarism. It was out of these elements that he created what has become modern Europe, and the direction which he gave to the evolution of mankind has never wholly changed since his day. Of all great conquerors he was the least cruel, for he never sacrificed human life without the direct intention of benefiting mankind by an increased social stability. Of all great lawgivers, he was the most wise and just, and the truths he set down in the Julian Code are the foundation of modern justice. Of all great men who have leaped upon the world as upon an unbroken horse, who have guided it with relentless hands, and ridden it breathless to the goal of glory, Cæsar is the only one who turned the race into the track of civilization and, dying, left mankind a future in the memory of his past. He is the one great man of all, without whom it is impossible to imagine history. We cannot take him away and yet leave anything of what we have. The world could have been as it is without Alexander, without Charlemagne, without Napoleon; it could not have been the world we know without Caius Julius Cæsar. That fact alone places him at the head of mankind. In Cæsar's life there is the same matter for astonishment as in Napoleon's; there is the vast disproportion between beginnings and climax, between the relative modesty of early aims and the stupendous magnitude of the climacteric result. One asks how in a few years the impecunious son of the Corsican notary became the world's despot, and how the fashionable young spendthrift lawyer of Rome, dabbling in politics and almost ignorant of warfare, rose in a quarter of a century to be the world's conqueror, lawgiver and civilizer. The daily miracle of genius is the incalculable speed at which it simultaneously thinks and acts. Nothing is so logical as creation, and creation is the first sign as well as the only proof that genius is present. Hitherto the life of Cæsar has not been logically presented. His youth appears almost always to be totally disconnected from his maturity. The first success, the conquest of Gaul, comes as a surprise, because its preparation is not described. After it everything seems natural, and conquest follows victory as daylight follows dawn; but when we try to think backwards from that first expedition, we either see nothing clearly, or we find Cæsar an insignificant unit in a general disorder, as hard to identify as an individual ant in a swarming ant-hill. In the lives of all 'great men,' which are almost always totally unlike the lives of the so-called 'great,'--those born, not to power, but in power,--there is a point which must inevitably be enigmatical. It may be called the Hour of Fate--the time when in the suddenly loosed play of many circumstances, strained like springs and held back upon themselves, a man who has been known to a few thousands finds himself the chief of millions and the despot of a nation. Things which are only steps to great men are magnified to attainments in ordinary lives, and remembered with pride. The man of genius is sure of the great result, if he can but get a fulcrum for his lever. What strikes one most in the careers of such men as Cæsar and Napoleon is the tremendous advance realized at the first step--the difference between Napoleon's half-subordinate position before the first campaign in Italy and his dominion of France immediately after it, or the distance which separated Cæsar, the impeached Consul, from Cæsar, the conqueror of Gaul. It must not be forgotten that Cæsar came of a family that had held great positions, and which, though impoverished, still had credit, subsequently stretched by Cæsar to the extreme limit of its borrowing power. At sixteen, an age when Bonaparte was still an unknown student, Cæsar was Flamen Dialis, or high priest of Jupiter, and at one and twenty, the 'ill-girt boy,' as Sylla called him from his way of wearing his toga, was important enough to be driven from Rome, a fugitive. His first attempt at a larger notoriety had failed, and Dolabella, whom he had impeached, had been acquitted through the influence of friends. Yet the young lawyer had found the opportunity of showing what he could do, and it was not without reason that Sylla said of him, 'You will find many a Marius in this one Cæsar.' Twenty years passed before the prophecy began to be realized with the commencement of Cæsar's career in Gaul, and more than once during that time his life seemed a failure in his own eyes, and he said scornfully and sadly of himself that he had done nothing to be remembered at an age when Alexander had already conquered the world. Those twenty years which, to the thoughtful man, are by far the most interesting of all, appear in history as a confused and shapeless medley of political, military and forensic activity, strongly coloured by social scandals, which rested upon a foundation of truth, and darkened by accusations of worse kind, for which there is no sort of evidence, and which may be safely attributed to the jealousy of unscrupulous adversaries. The first account of him, which we have in the seventeenth year of his age, evokes a picture of youthful beauty. The boy who is to win the world is appointed high priest of Jove in Rome,--by what strong influence we know not,--and we fancy the splendid youth with his tall figure, full of elastic endurance, the brilliant face, the piercing, bold, black eyes; we see him with the small mitre set back upon the dark and curling locks that grow low on the forehead, as hair often does that is to fall early, clad in the purple robe of his high office, summoning all his young dignity to lend importance to his youthful grace as he moves up to Jove's high altar to perform his first solemn sacrifice with his young consort; for the high priesthood of Jove was held jointly by man and wife, and if the wife died the husband lost his office. He was about twenty when he cast his lot with the people, and within the year he fled from Sylla's persecution. The life of sudden changes and contrasts had begun. Straight from the sacred office, with all its pomp, and splendour, and solemnity, Cæsar is a fugitive in the Sabine hills, homeless, wifeless, fever-stricken, a price on his head. Such quick chances of evil fell to many in the days of the great struggle between Marius and Sylla, between the people and the nobles. Then as Sylla yielded to the insistence of the young 'populist' nobleman's many friends, the quick reverse is turned to us. Cæsar has a military command, sees some fighting and much idleness by the shores of the Bosphorus, in Bithynia--then in a fit of sudden energy, the soldier's spirit rises; he dashes to the attack on Mytilene, and shows himself a man. [Illustration: CAIUS JULIUS CÆSAR After a statue in the Palazzo dei Conservatori] One or two unimportant campaigns, as a subordinate officer, a civic crown won for personal bravery, an unsuccessful action brought against a citizen of high rank in the hope of forcing himself into notice, a trip to Rhodes made to escape the disgrace of failure, and an adventure with pirates--there, in a few words, is the story of Julius Cæsar's youth, as history tells it. But then suddenly, when his projected studies in quiet Rhodes were hardly begun, he crosses to the mainland, raises troops, seizes cities, drives Mithridates' governor out of the province, returns to Rome and is elected military tribune. The change is too quick, and one does not understand it. Truth should tell that those early years had been spent in the profound study of philosophy, history, biography, languages and mankind, of the genesis of events from the germ to the branching tree, of that chemistry of fate which brews effect out of cause, and distils the imperishable essence of glory from the rougher liquor of vulgar success. What strikes one most in the lives of the very great is that every action has a cumulative force beyond what it ever has in the existence of ordinary men. Success moves onward, passing through events on the same plane, as it were, and often losing brilliancy till it fades away, leaving those who have had it to outlive it in sorrow and weakness. Genius moves upward, treading events under its feet, scaling Olympus, making a ladder of mankind, outlasting its own activity for ever in a final and fixed glory more splendid than its own bright path. The really great man gathers power in action, the average successful man expends it. And so it must be understood that Cæsar, in his early youth, was not wasting his gifts in what seemed to be a half-voluptuous, half-adventurous, wholly careless life, but was accumulating strength by absorbing into himself the forces with which he came in contact, exhausting the intelligence of his companions in order to stock his own, learning everything simultaneously, forgetting nothing he learned till he could use all he knew to the extreme limit of its value. There is something mysterious in the almost unlimited credit which Cæsar seems to have enjoyed when still a very young man; and if the control of enormous sums of money by which he made himself beloved among the people explains, in a measure, his rapid rise from office to office, it is, on the other hand, hard to account for the trust which his creditors placed in his promises, and to explain why, when he was taken by pirates, the cities of Asia Minor should have voluntarily contributed money to make up the ransom demanded, seeing that he had never served in Asia, except as a subordinate. The only possible explanation is that while there, his real energies were devoted to the attainment of the greatest possible popularity in the shortest possible time, and that he was making himself beloved by the Asiatic cities, while his enemies said of him that he was wasting his time in idleness and dissipation. In any case, it was the control of money that most helped him in obtaining high offices in Rome, and from the very first he seems to have acted on the principle that in great enterprises economy spells ruin, and that to check expenditure is to trip up success. And this is explained, if not justified, by his close association with the people, from his very childhood. Until he was made Pontifex Maximus he seems to have lived in a small house in the Suburra, in one of the most crowded and least fashionable quarters of Rome; and as a mere boy, it was his influence with the common people that roused Sylla's anxiety. To live with the people, to take their part against the nobles, to give them of all he had and of all he could borrow, were the chief rules of his conduct, and the fact that he obtained such enormous loans proves that there were rich lenders who were ready to risk fortunes upon his success. And it was in dealing with the Roman plebeian that he learned to command the Roman soldier, with the tact of a demagogue and the firmness of an autocrat. He knew that a man must give largely, even recklessly, to be beloved, and that in order to be respected he must be able to refuse coldly and without condition, and that in all ages the people are but as little children before genius, though they may rise against talent like wild beasts and tear it to death. He knew also that in youth ten failures are nothing compared with one success, while in the full meridian of power one failure undoes a score of victories; hence his recklessness at first, his magnificent caution in his latter days; his daring resistance of Sylla's power before he was twenty, and his mildness towards the ringleaders of popular conspiracies against him when he was near his end; his violence upon the son of King Juba, whom he seized by the beard in open court when he himself was but a young lawyer, and his moderation in bearing the most atrocious libels, to punish which might have only increased their force. Cæsar's career divides itself not unnaturally into three periods, corresponding with his youth, his manhood and his maturity; with the absorption of force in gaining experience, the lavish expenditure of force in conquest, the calm employment of force in final supremacy. The man who never lost a battle in which he commanded in person, began life by failing in everything he attempted, and ended it as the foremost man of all humanity, past and to come, the greatest general, the greatest speaker, the greatest lawgiver, the greatest writer of Latin prose whom the great Roman people ever produced, and also the bravest man of his day, as he was the kindest. In an age when torture was a legitimate part of justice, he caused the pirates who had taken him, and whom he took in turn, to be mercifully put to death before he crucified their dead bodies for his oath's sake, and when his long-trusted servant tried to poison him he would not allow the wretch to be hurt save by the sudden stroke of instant death; nor ever in a long career of conquest did he inflict unnecessary pain. Never was man loved of women as he was, and his sins were many even for those days, yet in them we find no unkindness, and when his own wife should have been condemned for her love of Clodius, Cæsar would not testify against her. He divorced her, he said, not because he knew anything, but because his family should be above suspicion. He plundered the world, but he gave it back its gold in splendid gifts and public works, keeping its glory alone for himself. He was hated by the few because he was beloved by the many, and it was not revenge, but envy, that slew the benefactor of mankind. The weaknesses of the supreme conqueror were love of woman and trust of man, and as the first Brutus made his name glorious by setting his people free, the second disgraced it and blackened the name of friendship with a stain that will outlast time, and by a deed second only in infamy to that of Judas Iscariot. The last cry of the murdered master was the cry of a broken heart--'And thou, too, Brutus, my son!' Alexander left chaos behind him; Cæsar left Europe, and it may be truly said that the crowning manifestation of his sublime wisdom was his choice of Octavius--of the young Augustus--to complete the carving of a world which he himself had sketched and blocked out in the rough. The first period of his life ended with his election to the military tribuneship on his return to Rome after his Asian adventures, and his first acts were directed towards the reconstruction of what Sylla had destroyed, by reëstablishing the authority of tribunes and recalling some of Sylla's victims from their political exile. From that time onward, in his second period, he was more or less continually in office. Successively a tribune, a quæstor, governor of Farther Spain, ædile, pontifex maximus, prætor, governor of Spain again, and consul with the insignificant Bibulus, a man of so small importance that people used to date documents, by way of a jest, 'in the Consulship of Julius and Cæsar.' Then he obtained Gaul for his province, and lived the life of a soldier for nine years, during which he created the army that gave him at last the mastery of Rome. And in the tenth year Rome was afraid, and his enemies tried to deprive him of his power and passed bills against him, and drove out the tribunes of the people who took his part; and if he had returned to Rome then, yielding up his province and his legions, as he was called upon to do, he would have been judged and destroyed by his enemies. But he knew that the people loved him, and he crossed the Rubicon in arms. This second period of his life closed with the last triumph decreed to him for his victories in Spain. The third and final period had covered but one year when his assassins cut it short. Nothing demonstrates Cæsar's greatness so satisfactorily as this, that at his death Rome relapsed at once into civil war and strife as violent as that to which Cæsar had put an end, and that the man who brought lasting peace and unity into the distracted state, was the man of Cæsar's choice. But in endeavouring to realize his supreme wisdom, nothing helps us more than the pettiness of the accusations brought against him by such historians as Suetonius--that he once remained seated to receive the whole body of Conscript fathers, that he had a gilded chair in the Senate house, and appointed magistrates at his own pleasure to hold office for terms of years, that he laughed at an unfavourable omen and made himself dictator for life; and such things, says the historian, 'are of so much more importance than all his good qualities that he is considered to have abused his power and to have been justly assassinated.' But it is the people, not the historian, who make history, and when Caius Julius Cæsar was dead, the people called him God. Beardless Octavius, his sister's daughter's son, barely eighteen years old, brings in by force the golden age of Rome. As Triumvir, with Antony and Lepidus, he hunts down the murderers first, then his rebellious colleagues, and wins the Empire back in thirteen years. He rules long and well, and very simply, as commanding general of the army and by no other power, taking all into his hands besides, the Senate, the chief priesthood, and the Majesty of Rome over the whole earth, for which he was called Augustus, the 'Majestic.' And his strength lay in this, that by the army, he was master of Senate and people alike, so that they could no longer strive with each other in perpetual bloodshed, and the everlasting wars of Rome were fought against barbarians far away, while Rome at home was prosperous and calm and peaceful. Then Virgil sang, and Horace gave Latin life to Grecian verse, and smiled and laughed, and wept and dallied with love, while Livy wrote the story of greatness for us all to this day, and Ovid touched another note still unforgotten. Then temple rose by temple, and grand basilicas reared their height by the Sacred Way; the gold of the earth poured in and Art was queen and mistress of the age. Julius Cæsar was master in Rome for one year. Augustus ruled nearly half a century. Four and forty years he was sole monarch after Antony's fall at Actium. About the thirtieth year of his reign, Christ was born. All men have an original claim to be judged by the standard of their own time. Counting one by one the victims of the proscription proclaimed by the triumvirate in which Augustus was the chief power, some historians have brought down his greatness in quick declination to the level of a cold-blooded and cruel selfishness; and they account for his subsequent just and merciful conduct on the ground that he foresaw political advantage in clemency, and extension of power in the exercise of justice. The death of Cicero, sacrificed to Antony's not unreasonable vengeance, is magnified into a crime that belittles the Augustan age. Yet compared with the wholesale murders done by Marius and Sylla, and by the patricians themselves in their struggles with the people, the few political executions ordered by Augustus sink into comparative insignificance, and it will generally be seen that those who most find fault with him are ready to extol the murderers of Julius Cæsar as devoted patriots, if not as glorious martyrs to the divine cause of liberty. [Illustration: OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS CÆSAR After a bust in the British Museum] It is easier, perhaps, to describe the growth of Rome from the early Kings to Augustus, than to account for the change from the Rome of the Empire at the beginning of our era to the Rome of the Popes in the year eight hundred. Probably the easiest and truest way of looking at the transition is to regard it according to the periods of supremacy, decadence and ultimate disappearance from Rome of the Roman Army. For the Army made the Emperors, and the Emperors made the times. The great military organization had in it the elements of long life, together with all sudden and terrible possibilities. The Army made Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, the Julian Emperors; then destroyed Nero and set up Vespasian after one or two experiments. The Army chose such men as Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, and such monsters as Domitian and Commodus; the Army conquered the world, held the world and gave the world to whomsoever it pleased. The Army and the Emperor, each the other's tool, governed Rome for good and ill, for ill and good, by fear and bounty and largely by amusement, but ultimately to their own and Rome's destruction. For all the time the two great adversaries of the Empire, the spiritual and material, the Christian and the men of the North, were gaining strength and unity. Under Augustus, Christ was born. Under Augustus, Hermann the German chieftain destroyed Varus and his legions. By sheer strength and endurance, the Army widened and broadened the Empire, forcing back the Northmen upon themselves like a spring that gathers force by tension. Unnoticed, at first, Christianity quietly grew to power. Between Christians and Northmen, the Empire of Rome went down at last, leaving the Empire of Constantinople behind it. The great change was wrought in about five hundred years, by the Empire, from the City of the Republic to what had become the City of the Middle Age; between the reign of Augustus, first Emperor, and the deposition of the last Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, by Odoacer, Rome's hired Pomeranian general. In that time Rome was transubstantiated in all its elements, in population, in language, in religion and in customs. To all intents and purposes, the original Latin race utterly disappeared, and the Latin tongue became the broken dialect of a mixed people, out of which the modern Italian speech was to grow, decadent in form, degenerate in strength but renascent in a grace and beauty which the Latin never possessed. First the vast population of slaves brought in their civilized and their barbarous words--Greek, Hebrew and Arabic, or Celtic, German and Slav; then came the Goth, and filled all Italy with himself and his rough language for a hundred years. The Latin of the Roman Mass is the Latin of slaves in Rome between the first and fifth centuries, from the time of the Apostles to that of Pope Gelasius, whose prayer for peace and rest is the last known addition to the Canon, according to most authorities. Compare it with the Latin of Livy and Tacitus; it is not the same language, for to read the one by no means implies an understanding of the other. Or take the dress. It is told of Augustus, as a strange and almost unknown thing, that he wore breeches and stockings, or leg swathings, because he suffered continually with cold. Men went barelegged and wrapped themselves in the huge toga which came down to their feet. In the days of Augustulus the toga was almost forgotten; men wore leggings, tunics and the short Greek cloak. In the change of religion, too, all customs were transformed, private and public, in a way impossible to realize today. The Roman household, with the father as absolute head, lord and despot, gradually gave way to a sort of half-patriarchal, half-religious family life, resembling the first in principle but absolutely different from it in details and result, and which, in a measure, has survived in Italy to the present time. In the lives of men, the terror of one man, as each despot lost power, began to give way to the fear of half-defined institutions, of the distant government in Constantinople and of the Church as a secular power, till the time came when the title of Emperor raised a smile, whereas the name of the Pope--of the 'Father-Bishop'--was spoken with reverence by Christians and with respect even by unbelievers. The time came when the army that had made Emperors and unmade them at its pleasure became a mere band of foreign mercenaries, who fought for wages and plunder when they could be induced to fight for Rome at all. So the change came. But in the long five hundred years of the Western Empire Rome had filled the world with the results of her own life and had founded modern Europe, from the Danube to England and from the Rhine to Gibraltar; so that when the tide set towards the south again, the Northmen brought back to Italy some of the spirit and some of the institutions which Rome had carried northwards to them in the days of conquest; and they came not altogether as strangers and barbarians, as the Huns had come, to ravage and destroy, and be themselves destroyed and scattered and forgotten, but, in a measure, as Europeans against Europeans, hoping to grasp the remnants of a civilized power. Theodoric tried to make a real kingdom, Totila and Teias fell fighting for one; the Franks established one in Gaul, and at last it was a Frank who gave the Empire life again, and conquests and laws, and was crowned by the Christian Pontifex Maximus in Rome when Julius Cæsar had been dead more than eight hundred years. One of the greatest of the world's historians has told the story of the change, calling it the 'Decline and Fall of the Empire,' and describing it in some three thousand pages, of which scarcely one can be spared for the understanding of the whole. Thereby its magnitude may be gauged, but neither fairly judged nor accurately measured. The man who would grasp the whole meaning of Rome's name, must spend a lifetime in study and look forward to disappointment in the end. It was Ampère, I believe, who told a young student that he might get a superficial impression of the city in ten years, but that twenty would be necessary in order to know anything about it worthy to be written. And perhaps the largest part of the knowledge worth having lies in the change from the ancient capital of the Empire to the mediæval seat of ecclesiastic domination. And, indeed, nothing in all history is more extraordinary than the rise of Rome's second power under the Popes. In the ordinary course of human events, great nations appear to have had but one life. When that was lived out, and when they had passed through the artistic period so often coincident with early decadence, they were either swept away, or they sank to the insignificance of mere commercial prosperity, thereafter deriving their fashions, arts, tastes, and in fact almost everything except their wealth, from nations far gone in decay. [Illustration: THE CAMPAGNA And Ruins of the Claudian Aqueduct] But in Rome it was otherwise. The growth of the faith which subjected the civilized world was a matter of first importance to civilization, and Rome was the centre of that growing. Moreover, that development and that faith had one head, chosen by election, and the headship itself became an object of the highest ambition, whereby the strength and genius of individuals and families were constantly called into activity, and both families and isolated individuals of foreign race were attracted to Rome. It was no small thing to hold the kings of the earth in spiritual subjection, to be the arbiter of the new Empire founded by Charlemagne, the director of the kingdoms built up in France and England, and, almost literally, the feudal lord over all other temporal powers. The force of a predominant idea gave Rome new life, vivifying new elements with the vitality of new ambitions. The theatre was the same. The actors and the play had changed. The world was no longer governed by one man as monarch; it was directed by one man, who was the chief personage in the vast and intricate feudal system by which strong men agreed to live, and to which they forced the weak to submit. The Barons came into existence, and Rome was a city of fortresses and towers, as well as churches. Orsini and Colonna, Caetani and Vitelleschi, Savelli and Frangipani, fought with each other for centuries among ruins, built strongholds of the stones of temples, and burned the marble treasures of the world to make lime. And fiercely they held their own. Nicholas Rienzi wanders amid the deserted places, deciphers the broken inscriptions, gathers a little crowd of plebeians about him and tells them of ancient Rome, and of the rights of the people in old times. All at once he rises, a grand shadow of a Roman, a true tribune, brave, impulsive, eloquent. A little while longer and he is half mad with vanity and ambition, a public fool in a high place, decking himself in silks and satins, and ornaments of gold, and the angry nobles slay him on the steps of the Aracoeli, as other nobles long ago slew Tiberius Gracchus, a greater and a better man, almost on the same spot. Meanwhile the great schism of the Church rages, before and after Rienzi. The Empire and its Kingdoms join issue with each other and with the Barons for the lordship of Christendom; there are two Popes, waging war with nations on both sides, and Rome is reduced to a town of barely twenty thousand souls. Then comes Hildebrand, Pope Gregory the Seventh, friend of the Great Countess, humbler of the Emperor, a restorer of things, the Julius Cæsar of the Church, and from his day there is stability again, as Urban the Second follows, like an Augustus; Nicholas the Fifth, the next great Pontiff, comes in with the Renascence. Last of destroyers Charles, the wild Constable of Bourbon, marches in open rebellion against King, State and Church, friend to the Emperor, straight to his death at the walls, his work of destruction carried out to the terrible end by revengeful Spaniards who spare only the churches and the convents. Out of those ashes Rome rose again, for the last time, the Rome of Sixtus the Fifth, which is, substantially, the Rome we see today; less powerful in the world after that time, but more beautiful as she grew more peaceful by degrees; flourishing in a strange, motley way, like no other city in the world, as the Empire of the Hapsburgs and the Kingdoms of Europe learned to live apart from her, and she was concentrated again upon herself, still and always a factor among nations, and ever to be. But even in latter days, Napoleon could not do without her, and Francis the Second of Austria had to resign the Empire, in order that Pius the Seventh might call the self-crowned Corsican soldier, girt with Charlemagne's huge sword, the anointed Emperor of Christendom. Once more a new idea gives life to fragments hewn in pieces and scattered in confusion. A dream of unity disturbs Italy's sleep. Never, in truth, in all history, has Italy been united save by violence. By the sword the Republic brought Latins, Samnites and Etruscans into subjection; by sheer strength she crushed the rebellion of the slaves and then forced the Italian allies to a second submission; by terror Marius and Sylla ruled Rome and Italy; and it was the overwhelming power of a paid army that held the Italians in check under the Empire, till they broke away from each other as soon as the pressure was removed, to live in separate kingdoms and principalities for thirteen or fourteen hundred years, from Romulus Augustulus--or at least from Justinian--to Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy, in whose veins ran not one drop of Italian blood. One asks whence came the idea of unity which has had such power to move these Italians, in modern times. The answer is plain and simple. Unity is the word; the interpretation of it is the name of Rome. The desire is for all the romance and the legends and the visions of supreme greatness which no other name can ever call up. What will be called hereafter the madness of the Italian people took possession of them on the day when Rome was theirs to do with as they pleased. Their financial ruin had its origin at that moment, when they became masters of the legendary Mistress of the world. What the end will be, no one can foretell, but the Rome of old was not made great by dreams. Her walls were founded in blood, and her temples were built with the wealth of conquered nations, by captives and slaves of subject races. The Rome we see today owes its mystery, its sadness and its charm to six and twenty centuries of history, mostly filled with battle, murder and sudden death, deeds horrible in that long-past present which we try to call up, but alternately grand, fascinating and touching now, as we shape our scant knowledge into visions and fill out our broken dreams with the stuff of fancy. In most men's minds, perhaps, the charm lies in that very confusion of suggestions, for few indeed know Rome so well as to divide clearly the truth from the legend in her composition. Such knowledge is perhaps altogether unattainable in any history; it is most surely so here, where city is built on city, monument upon monument, road upon road, from the heart of the soil upwards--the hardened lava left by many eruptions of life; where the tablets of Clio have been shattered again and again, where fire has eaten, and sword has hacked, and hammer has bruised ages of records out of existence, where even the race and type of humanity have changed and have been forgotten twice and three times over. Therefore, unless one have half a lifetime to spend in patient study and deep research, it is better, if one come to Rome, to feel much than to try and know a little, for in much feeling there is more human truth than in that dangerous little knowledge which dulls the heart and hampers the clear instincts of natural thought. Let him who comes hither be satisfied with a little history and much legend, with rough warp of fact and rich woof of old-time fancy, and not look too closely for the perfect sum of all, where more than half the parts have perished for ever. It matters not much whether we know the exact site of Virgil's Laurentum; it is more interesting to remember how Commodus, cruel, cowardly and selfish, fled thither from the great plague, caring not at all that his people perished by tens of thousands in the city, since he himself was safe, with the famous Galen to take care of him. We can leave the task of tracing the enclosures of Nero's golden house to learned archælogists, and let our imagination find wonder and delight in their accounts of its porticos three thousand feet long, its game park, its baths, its thousands of columns with their gilded capitals, and its walls encrusted with mother-of-pearl. And we may realize the depth of Rome's abhorrence for the dead tyrant, as we think of how Vespasian and his son Titus pulled down the enchanted palace for the people's sake, and built the Colosseum where the artificial lake had been, and their great baths on the very foundations of Nero's gorgeous dwelling. [Illustration: BRASS OF TRAJAN, SHOWING THE CIRCUS MAXIMUS] [Illustration: BRASS OF ANTONINUS PIUS, IN HONOUR OF FAUSTINA, WITH REVERSE SHOWING VESTA BEARING THE PALLADIUM] III It is impossible to conceive of the Augustan age without Horace, nor to imagine a possible Horace without Greece and Greek influence. At the same time Horace is in many ways the prototype of the old-fashioned, cultivated, gifted, idle, sarcastic, middle-class Roman official, making the most of life on a small salary and the friendship of a great personage; praising poverty, but making the most of the good things that fell in his way; extolling pristine austerity of life and yielding with a smile to every agreeable temptation; painting the idyllic life of a small gentleman farmer as the highest state of happiness, but secretly preferring the town; prudently avoiding marriage, but far too human to care for an existence in which woman had no share; more sensible in theory than in practice, and more religious in manner than in heart; full of quaint superstitions, queer odds and ends of knowledge, amusing anecdotes and pictures of personal experience; the whole compound permeated with a sort of indolent sadness at the unfulfilled promises of younger years, in which there had been more of impulse than of ambition, and more of ambition than real strength. The early struggles for Italian unity left many such half-disappointed patriots, and many less fortunate in their subsequent lives than Horace. Born in the far South, and the son of a freed slave, brought to Rome as a boy and carefully taught, then sent to Athens to study Greek, he was barely twenty years of age when he joined Brutus after Cæsar's death, was with him in Asia, and, in the lack of educated officers perhaps, found himself one day, still a mere boy, tribune of a Legion--or, as we should say, in command of a brigade of six thousand men, fighting for what he believed to be the liberty of Rome, in the disastrous battle of Philippi. Brutus being dead, the dream of glory ended, after the amnesty, in a scribe's office under one of the quæstors, and the would-be liberator of his country became a humble clerk in the Treasury, eking out his meagre salary with the sale of a few verses. Many an old soldier of Garibaldi's early republican dreams has ended in much the same way in our own times under the monarchy. But Horace was born to other things. Chaucer was a clerk in the Custom House, and found time to be the father of English poetry. Horace's daily work did not hinder him from becoming a poet. His love of Greek, acquired in Athens and Asia Minor, and the natural bent of his mind made him the greatest imitator and adapter of foreign verses that ever lived; and his character, by its eminently Italian combination of prim respectability and elastic morality, gave him a two-sided view of men and things that has left us representations of life in three dimensions instead of the flat, though often violent, pictures which prejudice loves best to paint. In his admiration of Greek poetry, Horace was not a discoverer; he was rather the highest expression of Rome's artistic want. If Scipio of Africa had never conquered the Carthaginians at Zama, he would be notable still as one of the first and most sincere lovers of Hellenic literature, and as one of the earliest imitators of Athenian manners. The great conqueror is remembered also as the first man in Rome who shaved every day, more than a hundred and fifty years before Horace's time. He was laughed at by some, despised by others and disliked by the majority for his cultivated tastes and his refined manners. The Romans had most gifts excepting those we call creative. Instead of creating, therefore, Rome took her art whole, and by force, from the most artistic nation the world ever produced. Sculptors, architects, painters and even poets, such as there were, came captive to Rome in gangs, were sold at auction as slaves, and became the property of the rich, to work all their lives at their several arts for their master's pleasure; and the State rifled Greece and Asia, and even the Greek Italy of the south, and brought back the masterpieces of an age to adorn Rome's public places. The Roman was the engineer, the maker of roads, of aqueducts, of fortifications, the layer out of cities, and the planner of harbours. In a word, the Roman made the solid and practical foundation, and then set the Greek slave to beautify it. When he had watched the slave at work for a century or two, he occasionally attempted to imitate him. That was as far as Rome ever went in original art. But her love of the beautiful, though often indiscriminating and lacking in taste, was profound and sincere. It does not appear that in all her conquests her armies ever wantonly destroyed beautiful things. On the contrary, her generals brought home all they could with uncommon care, and the consequence was that in Horace's day the public places of the city were vast open-air museums, and the great temples picture galleries of which we have not the like now in the whole world. And with those things came all the rest; the manners, the household life, the necessaries and the fancies of a conquering and already decadent nation, the thousands of slaves whose only duty was to amuse their owners and the public; the countless men and women and girls and boys, whose souls and bodies went to feed the corruption of the gorgeous capital, or to minister to its enormous luxuries; the companies of flute-players and dancing-girls, the sharp-tongued jesters, the coarse buffoons, the play-actors and the singers. And then, the endless small commerce of an idle and pleasure-seeking people, easily attracted by bright colours, new fashions and new toys; the drug-sellers and distillers of perfumes, the venders of Eastern silks and linens and lace, the barbers and hairdressers, the jewellers and tailors, the pastry cooks and makers of honey-sweetmeats; and everywhere the poor rabble of failures, like scum in the wake of a great ship; the beggars everywhere, and the pickpockets and the petty thieves. It is no wonder that Horace was fond of strolling in Rome. In contrast, the great and wonderful things of the Augustan city stand out in high relief, above the varied crowd that fills the streets, with all the dignity that centuries of power can lend. To the tawdry is opposed the splendid, the Roman general in his chiselled corselet and dyed mantle faces the Greek actor in his tinsel; the band of painted, half-clad, bedizened dancing-girls falls back cowering in awestruck silence as the noble Vestal passes by, high-browed, white-robed, untainted, the incarnation of purity in an age of vice. And the old Senator in his white cloak with its broad purple hem, his smooth-faced clients at his elbows, his silent slaves before him and behind, meets the low-chattering knot of Hebrew money-lenders, making the price of short loans for the day, and discussing the assets of a famous spendthrift, as their yellow-turbaned, bearded fathers had talked over the chances of Julius Cæsar when he was as yet but a fashionable young lawyer of doubtful fortune, with an unlimited gift of persuasion and an equally unbounded talent for amusement. Between the contrasts lived men of such position as Horace occupied, but not many. For the great middle element of society is a growth of later centuries, and even Horace himself, as time went on, became attached to Mæcenas and then, more or less, to the person of the Emperor, by a process of natural attraction, just as his butt, Tigellius, gravitated to the common herd that mourned his death. The 'golden mean' of which Horace wrote was a mere expression, taught him, perhaps, by his father, a part of his stock of maxims. Where there were only great people on the one side, and a rabble on the other, the man of genius necessarily rose to the level of the high, by his own instinct and their liking. What was best of Greek was for them, what was worst was for the populace. But the Greek was everywhere, with his keen weak face, his sly look and his skilful fingers. Scipio and Paulus Emilius had brought him, and he stayed in Rome till the Goth came, and afterwards. Greek poetry, Greek philosophy, Greek sculpture, Greek painting, Greek music everywhere--to succeed at all in such society, Virgil and Horace and Ovid must needs make Greek of Latin, and bend the stiff syllables to Alcaics and Sapphics and Hexameters. The task looked easy enough, though it was within the powers of so very few. Thousands tried it, no doubt, when the three or four had set the fashion, and failed, as the second-rate fail, with some little brief success in their own day, turned into the total failure of complete disappearance when they had been dead awhile. Supreme of them all, for his humanity, Horace remains. Epic Virgil, appealing to the traditions of a living race of nobles and to the carefully hidden, sober vanity of the world's absolute monarch, does not appeal to modern man. The twilight of the gods has long deepened into night, and Ovid's tales of them and their goddesses move us by their own beauty rather than by our sympathy for them, though we feel the tender touch of the exiled man whose life was more than half love, in the marvellous Letters of Heroes' Sweethearts--in the complaint of Briseïs to Achilles, in the passionately sad appeal of Hermione to Orestes. Whoever has not read these things does not know the extreme limit of man's understanding of woman. Yet Horace, with little or nothing of such tenderness, has outdone Ovid and Virgil in this later age. He strolled through life, and all life was a play of which he became the easy-going but unforgetful critic. There was something good-natured even in his occasional outbursts of contempt and hatred for the things and the people he did not like. There was something at once caressing and good-humouredly sceptical in his way of addressing the gods, something charitable in his attacks on all that was ridiculous,--men, manners and fashions. He strolled wherever he would, alone; in the market, looking at everything and asking the price of what he saw, of vegetables and grain and the like; in the Forum, or the Circus, at evening, when 'society' was dining, and the poor people and slaves thronged the open places for rest and air, and there he used to listen to the fortune-tellers, and among them, no doubt, was that old hag, Canidia, immortalized in the huge joke of his comic resentment. He goes home to sup on lupins and fritters and leeks,--or says so,--though his stomach abhorred garlic; and his three slaves--the fewest a man could have--wait on him as he lies before the clean white marble table, leaning on his elbow. He does not forget the household gods, and pours a few drops upon the cement floor in libation to them, out of the little earthen saucer filled from the slim-necked bottle of Campanian earthenware. Then to sleep, careless of getting up early or late, just as he might feel, to stay at home and read or write, or to wander about the city, or to play the favourite left-handed game of ball in the Campus Marius before his bath and his light midday meal. With a little change here and there, it is the life of the idle middle-class Italian today, which will always be much the same, let the world wag and change as it will, with all its extravagances, its fashions and its madnesses. Now and then he exclaims that there is no average common sense left in the world, no half-way stopping-place between extremes. One man wears his tunic to his heels, another is girt up as if for a race; Rufillus smells of perfumery, Gargonius of anything but scent; and so on--and he cries out that when a fool tries to avoid a mistake he will run to any length in the opposite direction. And Horace had a most particular dislike for fools and bores, and has left us the most famous description of the latter ever set down by an accomplished observer. By chance, he says, he was walking one morning along the Sacred Street with one slave behind him, thinking of some trifle and altogether absorbed in it, when a man whom he barely knew by name came up with him in a great hurry and grasped his hand. 'How do you do, sweet friend?' asks the Bore. 'Pretty well, as times go,' answers Horace, stopping politely for a moment; and then beginning to move on, he sees to his horror that the Bore walks by his side. 'Can I do anything for you?' asks the poet, still civil, but hinting that he prefers his own company. The Bore plunges into the important business of praising himself, with a frankness not yet forgotten in his species, and Horace tries to get rid of him, walking very fast, then very slowly, then turning to whisper a word to his slave, and in his anxiety he feels the perspiration breaking out all over him, while his Tormentor chatters on, as they skirt the splendid Julian Basilica, gleaming in the morning sun. Horace looks nervously and eagerly to right and left, hoping to catch sight of a friend and deliverer. Not a friendly face was in sight, and the Bore knew it, and was pitilessly frank. 'Oh, I know you would like to get away from me!' he exclaimed. 'I shall not let you go so easily! Where are you going?' 'Across the Tiber,' answered Horace, inventing a distant visit. 'I am going to see someone who lives far off, in Cæsar's gardens--a man you do not know. He is ill.' 'Very well,' said the other; 'I have nothing to do, and am far from lazy. I will go all the way with you.' Horace hung his head, as a poor little Italian donkey does when a heavy load is piled upon his back, for he was fairly caught, and he thought of the long road before him, and he had moreover the unpleasant consciousness that the Bore was laughing at his imaginary errand, since they were walking in a direction exactly opposite from the Tiber, and would have to go all the way round the Palatine by the Triumphal Road and the Circus Maximus and then cross by the Sublician bridge, instead of turning back towards the Velabrum, the Provision Market and the Bridge of Æmilius, which we have known and crossed as the Ponte Rotto, but of which only one arch is left now, in midstream. [Illustration: PONTE ROTTO, NOW DESTROYED After an engraving made about 1850] Then, pressing his advantage, the Bore began again. 'If I am any judge of myself,' he observed, 'you will make me one of your most intimate friends. I am sure nobody can write such good verses as fast as I can. As for my singing, I know it for a fact that Hermogenes is decidedly jealous of me!' 'Have you a mother, Sir?' asked Horace, gravely. 'Have you any relations to whom your safety is a matter of importance?' 'No,' answered the other, 'no one. I have buried them all!' 'Lucky people!' said the poet to himself, and he wished he were dead, too, at that moment, and he thought of all the deaths he might have died. It was evidently not written that he should die of poison nor in battle, nor of a cough, nor of the liver, nor even of gout. He was to be slowly talked to death by a bore. By this time they were before the temple of Castor and Pollux, where the great Twin Brethren bathed their horses at Juturna's spring. The temple of Vesta was before them, and the Sacred Street turned at right angles to the left, crossing over between a row of shops on one side and the Julian Rostra on the other, to the Courts of Law. The Bore suddenly remembered that he was to appear in answer to an action on that very morning, and as it was already nine o'clock, he could not possibly walk all the way to Cæsar's gardens and be back before noon, and if he was late, he must forfeit his bail, and the suit would go against him by default. On the other hand, he had succeeded in catching the great poet alone, after a hundred fruitless attempts, and the action was not a very important one, after all. He stopped short. 'If you have the slightest regard for me,' he said, 'you will just go across with me to the Courts for a moment.' Horace looked at him curiously, seeing a chance of escape. 'You know where I am going,' he answered with a smile; 'and as for law, I do not know the first thing about it.' The Bore hesitated, considered what the loss of the suit must cost him, and what he might gain by pushing his acquaintance with the friend of Mæcenas and Augustus. 'I am not sure,' he said doubtfully, 'whether I had better give up your company, or my case,' 'My company, by all means!' cried Horace, with alacrity. 'No!' answered the other, looking at his victim thoughtfully, 'I think not!' And he began to move on again by the Nova Via towards the House of the Vestals. Having made up his mind to sacrifice his money, however, he lost no time before trying to get an equivalent for it. 'How do you stand with Mæcenas?' he asked suddenly, fixing his small eyes on Horace's weary profile, and without waiting for an answer he ran on to praise the great man. 'He is keen and sensible,' he continued, 'and has not many intimate friends. No one knows how to take advantage of luck as he does. You would find me a valuable ally, if you would introduce me. I believe you might drive everybody else out of the field--with my help, of course.' 'You are quite mistaken there!' answered Horace, rather indignantly. 'He is not at all that kind of man! There is not a house in Rome where any sort of intrigue would be more utterly useless!' 'Really, I can hardly believe it!' 'It is a fact, nevertheless,' retorted Horace, stoutly. 'Well,' said the Bore, 'if it is, I am of course all the more anxious to know such a man!' Horace smiled quietly. 'You have only to wish it, my dear Sir,' he answered, with the faintest modulation of polite irony in his tone. 'With such gifts at your command, you will certainly charm him. Why, the very reason of his keeping most people at arm's length is that he knows how easily he yields!' 'In that case, I will show you what I can do,' replied the Bore, delighted. 'I shall bribe the slaves; I will not give it up, if I am not received at first! I will bide my time and catch him in the street, and follow him about. One gets nothing in life without taking trouble!' As the man was chattering on, Horace's quick eyes caught sight of an old friend at last, coming towards him from the corner of the Triumphal Road, for they had already almost passed the Palatine. Aristius, sauntering along and enjoying the morning air, with a couple of slaves at his heels, saw Horace's trouble in a moment, for he knew the Bore well enough, and realized at once that if he delivered his friend, he himself would be the next victim. He was far too clever for that, and with a cold-blooded smile pretended not to understand Horace's signals of distress. 'I forget what it was you wished to speak about with me so particularly, my dear Aristius,' said the poet, in despair. 'It was something very important, was it not?' 'Yes,' answered the other, with another grin, 'I remember very well; but this is an unlucky day, and I shall choose another time. Today is the thirtieth Sabbath,' he continued, inventing a purely imaginary Hebrew feast, 'and you surely would not risk a Jew's curse for a few moments of conversation, would you?' 'I have no religion!' exclaimed Horace, eagerly. 'No superstition! Nothing!' 'But I have,' retorted Aristius, still smiling. 'My health is not good--perhaps you did not know? I will tell you about it some other time.' And he turned on his heel, with a laugh, leaving Horace to his awful fate. Even the sunshine looked black. But salvation came suddenly in the shape of the man who had brought the action against the Bore, and who, on his way to the Court, saw his adversary going off in the opposite direction. 'Coward! Villain!' yelled the man, springing forward and catching the poet's tormentor by his cloak. 'Where are you going now? You are witness, Sir, that I am in my right,' he added, turning to look for Horace. But Horace had disappeared in the crowd that had collected to see the quarrel, and his gods had saved him after all. [Illustration: TEMPLE OF CASTOR AND POLLUX] A part of the life of the times is in the little story, and anyone may stroll today along the Sacred Street, past the Basilica and the sharp turn that leads to the block of old houses where the Court House stood, between St. Adrian's and San Lorenzo in Miranda. Anyone may see just how it happened, and many know exactly how Horace felt from the moment when the Bore buttonholed him at the corner of the Julian Basilica till his final deliverance near the corner of the Triumphal Road, which is now the Via di San Gregorio. [Illustration: ATRIUM OF VESTA] There was much more resemblance to our modern life than one might think at first sight. Perhaps, after his timely escape, Horace turned back along the Sacred Street, followed by his single slave, and retraced his steps, past the temple of Vesta, the temple of Julius Cæsar, skirting the Roman Forum to the Golden Milestone at the foot of the ascent to the Capitol, from which landmark all the distances in the Roman Empire were reckoned, the very centre of the known world. Thence, perhaps, he turned up towards the Argiletum, with something of that instinct which takes a modern man of letters to his publisher's when he is in the neighbourhood. There the 'Brothers Sosii' had their publishing establishment, among many others of the same nature, and employed a great staff of copyists in preparing volumes for sale. All the year round the skilled scribes sat within in rows, with pen and ink, working at the manufacture of books. The Sosii Brothers were rich, and probably owned their workmen as slaves, both the writers and those who prepared the delicate materials, the wonderful ink, of which we have not the like today, the fine sheets of papyrus,--Pliny tells how they were sometimes too rough, and how they sometimes soaked up the ink like a cloth, as happens with our own paper,--and the carefully cut pens of Egyptian reed on which so much of the neatness in writing depended, though Cicero says somewhere that he could write with any pen he chanced to take up. It was natural enough that Horace should look in to ask how his latest book was selling, or more probably his first, for he had written but a few Epodes and not many Satires at the time when he met the immortal Bore. Later in his life, his books were published in editions of a thousand, as is the modern custom in Paris, and were sold all over the Empire, like those of other famous authors. The Satires did him little credit, and probably brought him but little money at their first publication. It seems certain that they have come down to us through a single copy. The Greek form of the Odes pleased people better. Moreover, some of the early Satires made distinguished people shy of his acquaintance, and when he told the Bore that Mæcenas was difficult of access he remembered that nine months had elapsed from the time of his own introduction to the great man until he had received the latter's first invitation to dinner. More than once he went almost too far in his attacks on men and things and then tried to remove the disagreeable impression he had produced, and wrote again of the same subject in a different spirit--notably when he attacked the works of the dead poet Lucilius and was afterwards obliged to explain himself. No doubt he often idled away a whole morning at his publisher's, looking over new books of other authors, and very probably borrowing them to take home with him, because he was poor, and he assuredly must have talked over with the Sosii the impression produced on the public by his latest poems. He was undoubtedly a quæstor's scribe, but it is more than doubtful whether he ever went near the Treasury or did any kind of clerk's work. If he ever did, it is odd that he should never speak of it, nor take anecdotes from such an occupation and from the clerks with whom he must have been thrown, for he certainly used every other sort of social material in the Satires. Among the few allusions to anything of the kind in his works are his ridicule of the over-dressed prætor of the town of Fundi, who had been a government clerk in Rome, and in the same story, his jest at one of Mæcenas' parasites, a freedman, and nominally a Treasury clerk, as Horace had been. In another Satire, the clerks in a body wish him to be present at one of their meetings. Perhaps what strikes one most in the study of Horace, which means the study of the Augustan age, is the vivid contrast between the man who composed the Carmen Sæculare, the sacred hymn sung on the Tenth anniversary of Augustus' accession to the imperial power, besides many odes that breathe a pristine reverence for the gods, and, on the other hand, the writer of satirical, playfully sceptical verses, who comments on the story of the incense melting without fire at the temple of Egnatia, with the famous and often-quoted 'Credat Judæus'! The original Romans had been a believing people, most careful in all ceremonies and observances, visiting anything like sacrilege with a cool ferocity worthy of the Christian religious wars in later days. Horace, at one time or another, laughs at almost every god and goddess in the heathen calendar, and publishes his jests, in editions of a thousand copies, with perfect indifference and complete immunity from censorship, while apparently bestowing a certain amount of care on household sacrifices and the like. The fact is that the Romans were a religious people, whereas the Italians were not. It is a singular fact that Rome, when left long to herself, has always shown a tendency to become systematically devout, whereas most of the other Italian states have exhibited an equally strong inclination to a scepticism not unfrequently mixed with the grossest superstition. It must be left to more profound students of humanity to decide whether certain places have a permanent influence in one determined direction upon the successive races that inhabit them; but it is quite undeniably true that the Romans of all ages have tended to religion of some sort in the most marked manner. In Roman history there is a succession of religious epochs not to be found in the annals of any other city. First, the early faith of the Kings, interrupted by the irruption of Greek influences which began approximately with Scipio Africanus; next, the wild Bacchic worship that produced the secret orgies on the Aventine, the discovery of which led to a religious persecution and the execution of thousands of persons on religious grounds; then the worship of the Egyptian deities, brought over to Rome in a new fit of belief, and at the same time, or soon afterwards, the mysterious adoration of the Persian Mithras, a gross and ignorant form of mysticism which, nevertheless, took hold of the people, at a time when other religions were almost reduced to a matter of form. Then, as all these many faiths lost vitality, Christianity arose, the terribly simple and earnest Christianity of the early centuries, sown first under the Cæsars, in Rome's secure days, developing to a power when Rome was left to herself by the transference of the Empire to the East, culminating for the first time in the crowning of Charlemagne, again in the Crusades, sinking under the revival of mythology and Hellenism during the Renascence, rising again, by slow degrees, to the extreme level of devotion under Pius the Ninth and the French protectorate, sinking suddenly with the movement of Italian unity, and the coming of the Italians in 1870, then rising again, as we see it now, with undying energy, under Leo the Thirteenth, and showing itself in the building of new churches, in the magnificent restoration of old ones, and in the vast second growth of ecclesiastical institutions, which are once more turning Rome into a clerical city, now that she is again at peace with herself, under a constitutional monarchy, but threatened only too plainly by an impending anarchic revolution. It would be hard to find in the history of any other city a parallel to such periodical recurrences of religious domination. Nor, in times when belief has been at its lowest ebb, have outward religious practices anywhere continued to hold so important a place in men's lives as they have always held in Rome. Of all Rome's mad tyrants, Elagabalus alone dared to break into the temple of Vesta and carry out the sacred Palladium. During more than eleven hundred years, six Vestal Virgins guarded the sacred fire and the Holy Things of Rome, in peace and war, through kingdom, republic, revolution and empire. For fifteen hundred years since then, the bones of Saint Peter have been respected by the Emperors, by Goths, by Kings, revolutions and short-lived republics. [Illustration: BRASS OF GORDIAN, SHOWING THE COLOSSEUM] IV There was a surprising strength in those early institutions of which the fragmentary survival has made Rome what it is. Strongest of all, perhaps, was the patriarchal mode of life which the shepherds of Alba Longa brought with them when they fled from the volcano, and of which the most distinct traces remain to the present day, while its origin goes back to the original Aryan home. Upon that principle all the household life ultimately turned in Rome's greatest times. The Senators were Patres, conscript fathers, heads of strong houses; the Patricians were those who had known 'fathers,' that is, a known and noble descent. Horace called Senators simply 'Conscripts,' and the Roman nobles of today call themselves the 'Conscript' families. The chain of tradition is unbroken from Romulus to our own time, while everything else has changed in greater or less degree. It is hard for Anglo-Saxons to believe that, for more than a thousand years, a Roman father possessed the absolute legal right to try, condemn and execute any of his children, without witnesses, in his own house and without consulting anyone. Yet nothing is more certain. 'From the most remote ages,' says Professor Lanciani, the highest existing authority, 'the power of a Roman father over his children, including those by adoption as well as by blood, was unlimited. A father might, without violating any law, scourge or imprison his son, or sell him for a slave, or put him to death, even after that son had risen to the highest honours in the state.' During the life of the father, a child, no matter of what age, could own no property independently, nor keep any private accounts, nor dispose of any little belongings, no matter how insignificant, without the father's consent, which was never anything more than an act of favour, and was revocable at any moment, without notice. If a son became a public magistrate, the power was suspended, but was again in force as soon as the period of office terminated. A man who had been Dictator of Rome became his father's slave and property again, as soon as his dictatorship ended. But if the son married with his father's consent, he was partly free, and became a 'father' in his turn, and absolute despot of his own household. So, if a daughter married, she passed from her father's dominion to that of her husband. A Priest of Jupiter for life was free. So was a Vestal Virgin. There was a complicated legal trick by which the father could liberate his son if he wished to do so for any reason, but he had no power to set any of his children free by a mere act of will, without legal formality. The bare fact that the men of a people should be not only trusted with such power, but that it should be forcibly thrust upon them, gives an idea of the Roman character, and it is natural enough that the condition of family life imposed by such laws should have had pronounced effects that may still be felt. As the Romans were a hardy race and long-lived, when they were not killed in battle, the majority of men were under the absolute control of their fathers till the age of forty or fifty years, unless they married with their parents' consent, in which case they advanced one step towards liberty, and at all events, could not be sold as slaves by their fathers, though they still had no right to buy or sell property nor to make a will. There are few instances of the law being abused, even in the most ferocious times. Brutus had the right to execute his sons, who conspired for the Tarquins, without any public trial. He preferred the latter. Titus Manlius caused his son to be publicly beheaded for disobeying a military order in challenging an enemy to single combat, slaying him, and bringing back the spoils. He might have cut off his head in private, so far as the law was concerned, for any reason whatsoever, great or small. As for the condition of real slaves, it was not so bad in early times as it became later, but the master's power was absolute to inflict torture and death in any shape. In slave-owning communities, barbarity has always been, to some extent, restrained by the actual value of the humanity in question, and slaves were not as cheap in Rome as might be supposed. A perfectly ignorant labourer of sound body was worth from eighty to a hundred dollars of our money, which meant much more in those days, though in later times twice that sum was sometimes paid for a single fine fish. The money value of the slave was, nevertheless, always a sort of guarantee of safety to himself; but men who had right of life and death over their own children, and who occasionally exercised it, were probably not, as a rule, very considerate to creatures who were bought and sold like cattle. Nevertheless, the number of slaves who were freed and enriched by their masters is really surprising. The point of all this, however, is that the head of a Roman family was, under protection of all laws and traditions, an absolute tyrant over his wife, his children, and his servants; and the Roman Senate was a chosen association of such tyrants. It is astonishing that they should have held so long to the forms of a republican government, and should never have completely lost their republican traditions. In this household tyranny, existing side by side with certain general ideas of liberty and constitutional government, under the ultimate domination of the Emperors' despotism as introduced by Augustus, is to be found the keynote of Rome's subsequent social life. Without those things, the condition of society in the Middle Age would be inexplicable, and the feudal system could never have developed. The old Roman principle that 'order should have precedence over order, not man over man,' rules most of Europe at the present day, though in Rome and Italy it is now completely eclipsed by a form of government which can only be defined as a monarchic democracy. The mere fact that under Augustus no man was eligible to the Senate who possessed less than a sum equal to a quarter of a million dollars, shows plainly enough what one of the most skilful despots who ever ruled mankind wisely, thought of the institution. It was intended to balance, by its solidity, the ever-unsettled instincts of the people, to prevent as far as possible the unwise passage of laws by popular acclamation, and, so to say, to regulate the pulse of the nation. It has been imitated, in one way or another, by all the nations we call civilized. But the father of the family was in his own person the despot, the senate, the magistrate and the executive of the law; his wife, his children and his slaves represented the people, constantly and eternally in real or theoretical opposition, while he was protected by all the force of the most ferocious laws. A father could behead his son with impunity; but the son who killed his father was condemned to be all but beaten to death, and then to be sewn up in a leathern sack and drowned. The father could take everything from the son; but if the son took the smallest thing from his father he was a common thief and malefactor, and liable to be treated as one, at his father's pleasure. The conception of justice in Rome never rested upon any equality, but always upon the precedence of one order over another, from the highest to the lowest. There were orders even among the slaves, and one who had been allowed to save money out of his allowances could himself buy a slave to wait on him, if he chose. Hence the immediate origin of European caste, of different degrees of nobility, of the relative standing of the liberal professions, of the mediæval guilds of artisans and tradesmen, and of the numerous subdivisions of the agricultural classes, of which traces survive all over Europe. The tendency to caste is essentially and originally Aryan, and will never be wholly eliminated from any branch of the Aryan race. One may fairly compare the internal life of a great nation to a building which rises from its foundations story by story until the lower part can no longer carry the weight of the superstructure, and the first signs of weakness begin to show themselves in the oldest and lowest portion of the whole. Carefully repaired, when the weakness is noticed at all, it can bear a little more, and again a little, but at last the breaking strain is reached, the tall building totters, the highest pinnacles topple over, then the upper story collapses, and the end comes either in the crash of a great falling or, by degrees, in the irreparable ruin of ages. But when all is over, and wind and weather and time have swept away what they can, parts of the original foundation still stand up rough and heavy, on which a younger and smaller people must build their new dwelling, if they build at all. The aptness of the simile is still more apparent when we confront the material constructions of a nation with the degree of the nation's development or decadence at the time when the work was done. It is only by doing something of that sort that we can at all realize the connection between the settlement of the shepherds, the Rome of the Cæsars, and the desolate and scantily populated fighting ground of the Barons, upon which, with the Renascence, the city of the later Popes began to rise under Nicholas the Fifth. And lastly, without a little of such general knowledge it would be utterly impossible to call up, even faintly, the lives of Romans in successive ages. Read the earlier parts of Livy's histories and try to picture the pristine simplicity of those primeval times. Read Cæsar's Gallic War, the marvellously concise reports of the greatest man that ever lived, during ten years of his conquests. Read Horace, and attempt to see a little of what he describes in his good-natured, easy way. Read the correspondence of the younger Pliny when proconsul in Bithynia under Trajan, and follow the extraordinary details of administration which, with ten thousand others, the Spanish Emperor of Rome carried in his memory, and directed and decided. Take Petronius Arbiter's 'novel' next, the Satyricon, if you be not over-delicate in taste, and glance at the daily journal of a dissolute wretch wandering from one scene of incredible vice to another. And so on, through the later writers; and from among the vast annals of the industrious Muratori pick out bits of Roman life at different periods, and try to piece them together. At first sight it seems utterly impossible that one and the same people should have passed through such social changes and vicissitudes. Every educated man knows the main points through which the chain ran. Scholars have spent their lives in the attempt to restore even a few of the links and, for the most part, have lost their way in the dry quicksands that have swallowed up so much. 'I have raised a monument more enduring than bronze!' exclaimed Horace, in one of his rare moments of pardonable vanity. The expression meant much more then than it does now. The golden age of Rome was an age of brazen statues apparently destined to last as long as history. Yet the marble outlasted the gilded metal, and Horace's verse outlived both, and the names of the artists of that day are mostly forgotten, while his is a household word. In conquering races, literature has generally attained higher excellence than painting or sculpture, or architecture, for the arts are the expression of a people's tastes, often incomprehensible to men who live a thousand years later; but literature, if it expresses anything, either by poetry, history, or fiction, shows the feeling of humanity; and the human being, as such, changes very little in twenty or thirty centuries. Achilles, in his wrath at being robbed of the lovely Briseïs, brings the age of Troy nearer to most men in its living vitality than the matchless Hermes of Olympia can ever bring the century of Greece's supremacy. One line of Catullus makes his time more alive today than the huge mass of the Colosseum can ever make Titus seem. We see the great stones piled up to heaven, but we do not see the men who hewed them, and lifted them, and set them in place. The true poet gives us the real man, and after all, men are more important than stones. Yet the work of men's hands explains the working of men's hearts, telling us not what they felt, but how the feelings which ever belong to all men more particularly affected the actors at one time or another during the action of the world's long play. Little things sometimes tell the longest stories. [Illustration: THE COLOSSEUM] Pliny, suffering from sore eyes, going about in a closed carriage, or lying in the darkened basement portico of his house, obliged to dictate his letters, and unable to read, sends his thanks--by dictation--to his friend and colleague, Cornutus, for a fowl sent him, and says that although he is half blind, his eyes are sharp enough to see that it is a very fat one. The touch of human nature makes the whole picture live. Horace, journeying to Brindisi, and trying to sleep a little on a canal boat, is kept awake by mosquitoes and croaking frogs, and by the long-drawn-out, tipsy singing of a drunken sailor, who at last turns off the towing mule to graze, and goes to sleep till daylight. It is easier to see all this than to call up one instant of a chariot race in the great circus, or one of the ten thousand fights in the Colosseum, wherein gladiators fought and died, and left no word of themselves. Yet, without the setting, the play is imperfect, and we must have some of the one to understand the other. For human art is, in the first place, a progressive commentary on human nature, and again, in quick reaction, stimulates it with a suggestive force. Little as we really know of the imperial times, we cannot conceive of Rome without the Romans, nor of the Romans without Rome. They belonged together; when the seat of Empire became cosmopolitan, the great dominion began to be weakened; and when a homogeneous power dwelt in the city again, a new domination had its beginning, and was built up on the ruins of the old. Napoleon is believed to have said that the object of art is to create and foster agreeable illusions. Admitting the general truth of the definition, it appears perfectly natural that since the Romans had little or no art of their own, they should have begun to import Greek art just when they did, after the successful issue of the Second Punic War. Up to that time the great struggle had lasted. When it was over, the rest was almost a foregone conclusion. Rome and Carthage had made a great part of the known world their fighting ground in the duel that lasted a hundred and eighteen years; and the known world was the portion of the victor. Spoil first, for spoil's sake, he brought home; then spoil for the sake of art; then art for what itself could give him. In the fight for Empire, as in each man's struggle for life, success means leisure, and therefore civilization, which is the growth of people who have time at their disposal--time to 'create and foster agreeable illusions.' When the Romans conquered the Samnites they were the least artistic people in the world; when Augustus Cæsar died, they possessed and valued the greater part of the world's artistic treasures, many of these already centuries old, and they owned literally, and as slaves, a majority of the best living artists. Augustus had been educated in Athens; he determined that Rome should be as Athens, magnified a hundred times. Athens had her thousand statues, Rome should have her ten thousand; Rome should have state libraries holding a score of volumes for every one that Greece could boast; Rome's temples should be galleries of rare paintings, ten for each that Athens had. Rome should be so great, so rich, so gorgeous, that Greece should be as nothing beside her; Egypt should dwindle to littleness, and the memory of Babylon should be forgotten. Greece had her Homer, her Sophocles, her Anacreon; Rome should have her immortals also. Greatly Augustus laboured for his thought, and grandly he carried out his plan. He became the greatest 'art-collector' in all history, and the men of his time imitated him. Domitius Tullus, a Roman gentleman, had collected so much, that he was able to adorn certain extensive gardens, on the very day of the purchase, with an immense number of genuine ancient statues, which had been lying, half neglected, in a barn--or, as some read the passage, in other gardens of his. [Illustration: BASILICA CONSTANTINE] Augustus succeeded in one way. Possibly he was successful in his own estimation. 'Have I not acted the play well?' they say he asked, just before he died. The keynote is there, whether he spoke the words or not. He did all from calculation, nothing from conviction. The artist, active and creative or passive and appreciative, calculates nothing except the means of expressing his conviction. And in the over-calculating of effects by Augustus and his successors, one of the most singular weaknesses of the Latin race was thrust forward; namely, that giantism or megalomania, which has so often stamped the principal works of the Latins in all ages--that effort to express greatness by size, which is so conspicuously absent from all that the Greeks have left us. Agrippa builds a threefold temple and Hadrian rears the Pantheon upon its charred ruins; Constantine builds his Basilica; Michelangelo says, 'I will set the Pantheon upon the Basilica of Constantine.' He does it, and the result is Saint Peter's, which covers more ground than that other piece of giantism, the Colosseum; in Rome's last and modern revival, the Palazzo delle Finanze is built, the Treasury of the poorest of the Powers, which, incredible as it may seem, fills a far greater area than either the Colosseum or the Church of Saint Peter's. What else is such constructive enormity but 'giantism'? For the great Cathedral of Christendom, it may be said, at least, that it has more than once in history been nearly filled by devout multitudes, numbering fifty or sixty thousand people; in the days of public baths, nearly sixty-three thousand Romans could bathe daily with every luxury of service; when bread and games were free, a hundred thousand men and women often sat down in the Flavian Amphitheatre to see men tear each other to pieces; of the modern Ministry of Finance there is nothing to be said. The Roman curses it for the millions it cost; but the stranger looks, smiles and passes by a blank and hideous building three hundred yards long. There is no reason why a nation should not wish to be great, but there is every reason why a small nation should not try to look big; and the enormous follies of modern Italy must be charitably attributed to a defect of judgment which has existed in the Latin peoples from the beginning, and has by no means disappeared today. The younger Gordian began a portico which was to cover forty-four thousand square yards, and intended to raise a statue of himself two hundred and nineteen feet high. The modern Treasury building covers about thirty thousand square yards, and goes far to rival the foolish Emperor's insane scheme. [Illustration: RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF SATURN] Great contrasts lie in the past, between his age and ours. One must guess at them at least, if one have but little knowledge, in order to understand at all the city of the Middle Age and the Rome we see today. Imagine it at its greatest, a capital inhabited by more than two millions of souls, filling all that is left to be seen within and without the walls, and half the Campagna besides, spreading out in a vast disc of seething life from the central Golden Milestone at the corner of the temple of Saturn--the god of remote ages, and of earth's dim beginning; see, if you can, the splendid roads, where to right and left the ashes of the great rested in tombs gorgeous with marble and gold and bronze; see the endless villas and gardens and terraces lining both banks of the Tiber, with trees and flowers and marble palaces, from Rome to Ostia and the sea, and both banks of the Anio, from Rome to Tivoli in the hills; conceive of the vast commerce, even of the mere business of supply to feed two millions of mouths; picture the great harbour with its thousand vessels--and some of those that brought grain from Egypt were four hundred feet long; remember its vast granaries and store-barns and offices; think of the desolate Isola Sacra as a lovely garden, of the ruins of Laurentum as an imperial palace and park; reckon up roughly what all that meant of life, of power, of incalculable wealth. Mark Antony squandered, in his short lifetime, eight hundred millions of pounds sterling, four thousand millions of dollars. Guess, if possible, at the myriad million details of the vast city. Then let twelve hundred years pass in a dream, and look at the Rome of Rienzi. Some twenty thousand souls, the remnant and the one hundredth part of the two millions, dwell pitifully in the ruins of which the strongest men have fortified bits here and there. The walls of Aurelian, broken and war-worn and full of half-repaired breaches, enclose a desert, a world too wide for its inhabitants, a vast straggling heterogeneous mass of buildings in every stage of preservation and decay, splendid temples, mossy and ivy-grown, but scarcely injured by time, then wastes of broken brick and mortar; stern dark towers of Savelli, and Frangipani, and Orsini, and Colonna, dominating and threatening whole quarters of ruins; strange small churches built of odds and ends and remnants not too heavy for a few workmen to move; broken-down aqueducts sticking up here and there in a city that had to drink the muddy water of the Tiber because not a single channel remained whole to feed a single fountain, from the distant springs that had once filled baths for sixty thousand people every day. And round about all, the waste Campagna, scratched here and there by fever-stricken peasants to yield the little grain that so few men could need. The villas gone, the trees burned or cut down, the terraces slipped away into the rivers, the tombs of the Appian Way broken and falling to pieces, or transformed into rude fortresses held by wild-looking men in rusty armour, who sallied out to fight each other or, at rare intervals, to rob some train of wretched merchants, riding horses as rough and wild as themselves. Law gone, and order gone with it; wealth departed, and self-respect forgotten in abject poverty; each man defending his little with his own hand against the many who coveted it; Rome a den of robbers and thieves; the Pope, when there was one,--there was none in the year of Rienzi's birth,--either defended by one baron against another, or forced to fly for his life. Men brawling in the streets, ill clad, savage, ready with sword and knife and club for any imaginable violence. Women safe from none but their own husbands and sons, and not always from them. Children wild and untaught, growing up to be fierce and unlettered like their fathers. And in the midst of such a city, Cola di Rienzi, with great heart and scanty learning, labouring to decipher the inscriptions that told of dead and ruined greatness, dreaming of a republic, of a tribune's power, of the humiliation of the Barons, of a resurrection for Italy and of her sudden return to the dominion of the world. Rome, then, was like a field long fallow, of rich soil, but long unploughed. Scarcely below the surface lay the treasures of ages, undreamt of by the few descendants of those who had brought them thither. Above ground, overgrown with wild creepers and flowers, there still stood some such monuments of magnificence as we find it hard to recall by mere words, not yet voluntarily destroyed, but already falling to pieces under the slow destruction of grinding time, when violence had spared them. Robert Guiscard had burned the city in 1084, but he had not destroyed everything. The Emperors of the East had plundered Rome long before that, carrying off works of art without end to adorn their city of Constantinople. Builders had burned a thousand marble statues to lime for their cement, for the statues were ready to hand and easily broken up to be thrown into the kiln, so that it seemed a waste of time and tools to quarry out the blocks from the temples. The Barbarians of Genseric and the Jews of Trastevere had seized upon such of the four thousand bronze statues as the Emperors had left, and had melted many of them down for metal, often hiding them in strange places while waiting for an opportunity of heating the furnace. And some have been found, here and there, piled up in little vaults, most generally near the Tiber, by which it was always easy to ship the metal away. Already temples had been turned into churches, in a travesty only saved from the ridiculous by the high solemnity of the Christian faith. Other temples and buildings, here and there, had been partly stripped of columns and marble facings to make other churches even more nondescript than the first. Much of the old was still standing, but nothing of the old was whole. The Colosseum had not yet been turned into a quarry. The Septizonium of Septimius Severus, with its seven stories of columns and its lofty terrace, nearly half as high as the dome of Saint Peter's, though beginning to crumble, still crowned the south end of the Palatine; Minerva's temple was almost entire, and its huge architrave had not been taken to make the high altar of Saint Peter's; and the triumphal arch of Marcus Aurelius was standing in what was perhaps not yet called the Corso in those days, but the Via Lata--'Broad Street.' The things that had not yet fallen, nor been torn down, were the more sadly grand by contrast with the chaos around them. There was also the difference between ruins then, and ruins now, which there is between a king just dead in his greatness, in whose features lingers the smile of a life so near that it seems ready to come back, and a dried mummy set up in a museum and carefully dusted for critics to study. In even stronger and rougher contrast, in the wreck of all that had been, there was the fierce reality of the daily fight for life amid the seething elements of the new things that were yet to be; the preparation for another time of domination and splendour; the deadly wrestling of men who meant to outlive one another by sheer strength and grim power of killing; the dark ignorance, darkest just before the waking of new thought, and art, and learning; the universal cruelty of all living things to each other, that had grown out of the black past; and, with all this, the undying belief in Rome's greatness, in Rome's future, in Rome's latent power to rule the world again. That was the beginning of the new story, for the old one was ended, the race of men who had lived it was gone, and their works were following them, to the universal dust. Out of the memories they left and the departed glory of the places wherein they had dwelt, the magic of the Middle Age was to weave another long romance, less grand but more stirring, less glorious but infinitely more human. Perhaps it is not altogether beyond the bounds of reason to say that Rome was masculine from Romulus to the dark age, and that with the first dawn of the Renascence she began to be feminine. As in old days the Republic and the Empire fought for power and conquest and got both by force, endurance and hardness of character, so, in her second life, others fought for Rome, and courted her, and coveted her, and sometimes oppressed her and treated her cruelly, and sometimes cherished her and adorned her, and gave her all they had. In a way, too, the elder patriots reverenced their city as a father, and those of after-times loved her as a woman, with a tender and romantic love. Be that as it may, for it matters little how we explain what we feel. And assuredly we all feel that what we call the 'charm,' the feminine charm, of Rome, proceeds first from that misty time between two greatnesses, when her humanity was driven back upon itself, and simple passions, good and evil, suddenly felt and violently expressed, made up the whole life of a people that had ceased to rule by force, and had not yet reached power by diplomacy. It is fair, moreover, to dwell a little on that time, that we may not judge too hardly the men who came afterwards. If we have any virtues ourselves of which to boast, we owe them to a long growth of civilization, as a child owes its manners to its mother; the men of the Renascence had behind them chaos, the ruin of a slave-ridden, Hun-harried, worm-eaten Empire, in which law and order had gone down together, and the whole world seemed to the few good men who lived in it to be but one degree better than hell itself. Much may be forgiven them, and for what just things they did they should be honoured, for the hardship of having done right at all against such odds. [Illustration: BRASS OF GORDIAN, SHOWING ROMAN GAMES] [Illustration: RUINS OF THE JULIAN BASILICA] V Here and there, in out-of-the-way places, overlooked in the modern rage for improvement, little marble tablets are set into the walls of old houses, bearing semi-heraldic devices such as a Crescent, a Column, a Griffin, a Stag, a Wheel and the like. Italian heraldry has always been eccentric, and has shown a tendency to display all sorts of strange things, such as comets, trees, landscapes and buildings in the escutcheon, and it would naturally occur to the stranger that the small marble shields, still visible here and there at the corners of old streets, must be the coats of arms of Roman families that held property in that particular neighbourhood. But this is not the case. They are the distinctive devices of the Fourteen Rioni, or wards, into which the city was divided, with occasional modifications, from the time of Augustus to the coming of Victor Emmanuel, and which with some further changes survive to the present day. The tablets themselves were put up by Pope Benedict the Fourteenth, who reigned from 1740 to 1758, and who finally brought them up to the ancient number of fourteen; but from the dark ages the devices themselves were borne upon flags on all public occasions by the people of the different Regions. For 'Rione' is only a corruption of the Latin 'Regio,' the same with our 'Region,' by which English word it will be convenient to speak of these divisions that played so large a part in the history of the city during many successive centuries. For the sake of clearness, it is as well to enumerate them in their order and with the numbers that have always belonged to each. They are: I. Monti, II. Trevi, III. Colonna, IV. Campo Marzo, V. Ponte VI. Parione, VII. Regola, VIII. Sant' Eustachio, IX. Pigna, X. Campitelli, XI. Sant' Angelo, XII. Ripa, XIII. Trastevere, XIV. Borgo. Five of these names, that is to say, Ponte, Parione, Regola, Pigna and Sant' Angelo, indicate in a general way the part of the city designated by each. Ponte, the Bridge, is the Region about the Bridge of Sant' Angelo, on the left bank at the sharp bend of the river seen from that point; but the original bridge which gave the name was the Pons Triumphalis, of which the foundations are still sometimes visible a little below the Ælian bridge leading to the Mausoleum of Hadrian. Parione, the Sixth ward, is the next division to the preceding one, towards the interior of the city, on both sides of the modern Corso Vittorio Emmanuele, taking in the ancient palace of the Massimo family, the Cancelleria, famous as the most consistent piece of architecture in Rome, and the Piazza Navona. Regola is next, towards the river, comprising the Theatre of Pompey and the Palazzo Farnese. Pigna takes in the Pantheon, the Collegio Romano and the Palazzo di Venezia. Sant' Angelo has nothing to do with the castle or the bridge, but takes its name from the little church of Sant' Angelo in the Fishmarket, and includes the old Ghetto with some neighbouring streets. The rest explain themselves well enough to anyone who has even a very slight acquaintance with the city. At first sight these more or less arbitrary divisions may seem of little importance. It was, of course, necessary, even in early times, to divide the population and classify it for political and municipal purposes. There is no modern city in the world that is not thus managed by wards and districts, and the consideration of such management and of its means might appear to be a very flat and unprofitable study, tiresome alike to the reader and to the writer. And so it would be, if it were not true that the Fourteen Regions of Rome were fourteen elements of romance, each playing its part in due season, while all were frequently the stage at once, under the collective name of the people, in their ever-latent opposition and in their occasional violent outbreaks against the nobles and the popes, who alternately oppressed and spoiled them for private and public ends. In other words, the Regions with their elected captains under one chief captain were the survival of the Roman People, for ever at odds with the Roman Senate. In times when there was no government, in any reasonable sense of the word, the people tried to govern themselves, or at least to protect themselves as best they could by a rough system which was all that remained of the elaborate municipality of the Empire. Without the Regions the struggles of the Barons would probably have destroyed Rome altogether; nine out of the twenty-four Popes who reigned in the tenth century would not have been murdered and otherwise done to death; Peter the Prefect could not have dragged Pope John the Thirteenth a prisoner through the streets; Stefaneschi could never have terrorized the Barons, and half destroyed their castles in a week; Rienzi could not have made himself dictator; Ludovico Migliorati could not have murdered the eleven captains of Regions in his house and thrown their bodies to the people from the windows, for which Giovanni Colonna drove out the Pope and the cardinals, and sacked the Vatican; in a word, the strangest, wildest, bloodiest scenes of mediæval Rome could not have found a place in history. It is no wonder that to men born and bred in the city the Regions seem even now to be an integral factor in its existence. There were two other elements of power, namely, the Pope and the Barons. The three are almost perpetually at war, two on a side, against the third. Philippe de Commines, ambassador of Lewis the Eleventh in Rome, said that without the Orsini and the Colonna, the States of the Church would be the happiest country in the world. He forgot the People, and was doubtless too politic to speak of the Popes to his extremely devout sovereign. Take away the three elements of discord, and there would certainly have been peace in Rome, for there would have been no one to disturb the bats and the owls, when everybody was gone. The excellent advice of Ampère, already quoted, is by no means easy to follow, since there are not many who have the time and the inclination to acquire a 'superficial knowledge' of Rome by a ten years' visit. If, therefore, we merely presuppose an average knowledge of history and a guide-book acquaintance with the chief points in the city, the simplest and most direct way of learning more about it is to take the Regions in their ancient order, as the learned Baracconi has done in his invaluable little work, and to try as far as possible to make past deeds live again where they were done, with such description of the places themselves as may serve the main purpose best. To follow any other plan would be either to attempt a new history of the city of Rome, or to piece together a new archæological manual. In either case, even supposing that one could be successful where so much has already been done by the most learned, the end aimed at would be defeated, for romance would be stiffened to a record, and beauty would be dissected to an anatomical preparation. [Illustration: BRASS OF TITUS, SHOWING THE COLOSSEUM] [Illustration] REGION I MONTI 'Monti' means 'The Hills,' and the device of the Region represents three, figuring those enclosed within the boundaries of this district; namely, the Quirinal, the Esquiline and the Coelian. The line encircling them includes the most hilly part of the mediæval city; beginning at the Porta Salaria, it runs through the new quarter, formerly Villa Ludovisi, to the Piazza Barberini, thence by the Tritone to the Corso, by the Via Marforio, skirting the eastern side of the Capitoline Hill and the eastern side of the Roman Forum to the Colosseum, which it does not include; on almost to the Lateran, back again, so as to include the Basilica, by San Stefano Rotondo, and out by the Navicella to the now closed Porta Metronia. The remainder of the circuit is completed by the Aurelian wall, which is the present wall of the city, though the modern Electoral Wards extend in some places beyond it. The modern gates included in this portion are the Porta Salaria, the Porta Pia, the new gate at the end of the Via Montebello, the next, an unnamed opening through which passes the Viale Castro Pretorio, then the Porta Tiburtina, the Porta San Lorenzo, the exit of the railway, Porta Maggiore, and lastly the Porta San Giovanni. The Region of the Hills takes in by far the largest area of the fourteen districts, but also that portion which in later times has been the least thickly populated, the wildest districts of mediæval and recent Rome, great open spaces now partially covered by new though hardly inhabited buildings, but which were very lately either fallow land or ploughed fields, or cultivated vineyards, out of which huge masses of ruins rose here and there in brown outline against the distant mountains, in the midst of which towered the enormous basilicas of Santa Maria Maggiore and Saint John Lateran, the half-utilized, half-consecrated remains of the Baths of Diocletian, the Baths of Titus, and over against the latter, just beyond the southwestern boundary, the gloomy Colosseum, and on the west the tall square tower of the Capitol with its deep-toned bell, the 'Patarina,' which at last was sounded only when the Pope was dead, and when Carnival was over on Shrove Tuesday night. It must first be remembered that each Region had a small independent existence, with night watchmen of its own, who dared not step beyond the limits of their beat; defined by parishes, there were separate charities for each Region, separate funds for giving dowries to poor girls, separate 'Confraternite' or pious societies to which laymen belonged, and, in a small way, a sort of distinct nationality. There was rivalry between each Region and its neighbours, and when the one encroached upon the other there was strife and bloodshed in the streets. In the public races, of which the last survived in the running of riderless horses through the Corso in Carnival, each Region had its colours, its right of place, and its separate triumph if it won in the contest. There was all that intricate opposition of small parties which arose in every mediæval city, when children followed their fathers' trades from generation to generation, and lived in their fathers' houses from one century to another; and there was all the individuality and the local tradition which never really hindered civilization, but were always an insurmountable barrier against progress. Some one has called democracy Rome's 'Original Sin.' It would be more just and true to say that most of Rome's misfortunes, and Italy's too, have been the result of the instinct to oppose all that is, whether good or bad, as soon as it has existed for a while; in short, the original sin of Italians is an original detestation of that unity of which the empty name has been a fetish for ages. Rome, thrown back upon herself in the dark times, when she was shorn of her possessions, was a true picture of what Italy was before Rome's iron hand had bound the Italian peoples together by force, of what she became again as soon as that force was relaxed, of what she has grown to be once more, now that the delight of revolution has disappeared in the dismal swamp of financial disappointment, of what she will be to all time, because, from all time, she has been populated by races of different descent, who hated each other as only neighbours can. The redeeming feature of a factional life has sometimes been found in a readiness to unite against foreign oppression; it has often shown itself in an equal willingness to submit to one foreign ruler in order to get rid of another. Circumstances have made the result good or bad. In the year 799, the Romans attacked and wounded Pope Leo the Third in a solemn procession, almost killed him and drove him to flight, because he had sent the keys of the city to Charles the Great, in self-protection against the splendid, beautiful, gifted, black-hearted Irene, Empress of the East, who had put out her own son's eyes and taken the throne by force. Two years later the people of Rome shouted "Life and Victory to Charles the Emperor," when the same Pope Leo, his scars still fresh, crowned Charlemagne in Saint Peter's. One remembers, for that matter, that Napoleon Bonaparte, crowned in French Paris by another Pope, girt on the very sword of that same Frankish Charles, whose bones the French had scattered to the elements at Aix. Savonarola, of more than doubtful patriotism, to whom Saint Philip Neri prayed, but whom the English historian, Roscoe, flatly calls a traitor, would have taken Florence from the Italian Medici and given it to the French king. Dante was for German Emperors against Italian Popes. Modern Italy has driven out Bourbons and Austrians and given the crown of her Unity to a house of Kings, brave and honourable, but in whose veins there is no drop of Italian blood, any more than their old Dukedom of Savoy was ever Italian in any sense. The glory of history is rarely the glory of any ideal; it is more often the glory of success. The Roman Republic was the result of internal opposition, and the instinct to oppose power, often rightly, sometimes wrongly, will be the last to survive in the Latin race. In the Middle Age, when Rome had shrunk from the boundaries of civilization to the narrow limits of the Aurelian walls, it produced the hatred between the Barons and the people, and within the people themselves, the less harmful rivalry of the Regions and their Captains. [Illustration: SANTA FRANCESCA ROMANA] These Captains held office for three months only. At the expiration of the term, they and the people of their Region proceeded in procession, all bearing olive branches, to the temple of Venus and Rome, of which a part was early converted into the Church of Santa Maria Nuova, now known as Santa Francesca Romana, between the Forum and the Colosseum, and just within the limits of 'Monti.' Down from the hills on the one side the crowd came; up from the regions of the Tiber, round the Capitol from Colonna, and Trevi, and Campo Marzo, as ages before them the people had thronged to the Comitium, only a few hundred yards away. There, before the church in the ruins, each Region dropped the names of its own two candidates into the ballot box, and chance decided which of the two should be Captain next. In procession, then, all round the Capitol, they went to Aracoeli, and the single Senator, the lone shadow of the Conscript Fathers, ratified each choice. Lastly, among themselves, they used to choose the Prior, or Chief Captain, until it became the custom that the captain of the First Region, Monti, should of right be head of all the rest, and in reality one of the principal powers in the city. And the principal church of Monti also held preëminence over others. The Basilica of Saint John Lateran was entitled 'Mother and Head of all Churches of the City and of the World'; and it took its distinctive name from a rich Roman family, whose splendid house stood on the same spot as far back as the early days of the Empire. Even Juvenal speaks of it. Overthrown by earthquake, erected again at once, twice burned and immediately rebuilt, five times the seat of Councils of the Church, enlarged even in our day at enormous cost, it seems destined to stand on the same spot for ages, and to perpetuate the memory of the Laterans to all time, playing monument to an obscure family of rich citizens, whose name should have been almost lost, but can never be forgotten now. Constantine, sentimental before he was great, and great before he was a Christian, gave the house of the Roman gentleman to Pope Sylvester. He bought it, or it fell to the crown at the extinction of the family, for he was not the man to confiscate property for a whim; and within the palace he made a church, which was called by more than one name, till after nearly six hundred years it was finally dedicated to Saint John the Baptist; until then it had been generally called the church 'in the Lateran house,' and to this day it is San Giovanni in Laterano. Close by it, in the palace of the Annii, Marcus Aurelius, last of the so-called Antonines, and last of the great emperors, was born and educated; and in his honour was made the famous statue of him on horseback, which now stands in the square of the Capitol. The learned say that it was set up before the house where he was born, and so found itself also before the Lateran in later times, with the older Wolf, at the place of public justice and execution. In the wild days of the tenth century, when the world was boiling with faction, and trembling at the prospect of the Last Judgment, clearly predicted to overtake mankind in the thousandth year of the Christian era, the whole Roman people, without sanction of the Emperor and without precedent, chose John the Thirteenth to be their Pope. The Regions with their Captains had their way, and the new Pontiff was enthroned by their acclamation. Then came their disappointment, then their anger. Pope John, strong, high-handed, a man of order in days of chaos, ruled from the Lateran for one short year, with such wisdom as he possessed, such law as he chanced to have learnt, and all the strength he had. Neither Barons nor people wanted justice, much less learning. The Latin chronicle is brief: 'At that time, Count Roffredo and Peter the Prefect,'--he was the Prior of the Regions' Captains,--'with certain other Romans, seized Pope John, and first threw him into the Castle of Sant' Angelo, but at last drove him into exile in Campania for more than ten months. But when the Count had been murdered by one of the Crescenzi,'--in whose house Rienzi afterwards lived,--'the Pope was released and returned to his See.' Back came Otto the Great, Saxon Emperor, at Christmas time, as he came more than once, to put down revolution with a strong hand and avenge the wrongs of Pope John by executing all but one of the Captains of the Regions. Twelve of them he hanged. Peter the Prefect, or Prior, was bound naked upon an ass with an earthen jar over his head, flogged through the city, and cruelly put to death; and at last his torn body was hung by the hair to the head of the bronze horse whereon the stately figure of Marcus Aurelius sat in triumph before the door of the Pope's house, as it sits today on the Capitol before the Palace of the Senator. And Otto caused the body of murdered Roffredo to be dragged from its grave and quartered by the hangman and scattered abroad, a warning to the Regions and their leaders. They left Pope John in peace after that, and he lived five years and held a council in the Lateran, and died in his bed. Possibly after his rough experience, his rule was more gentle, and when he was dead he was spoken of as 'that most worthy Pontiff.' Who Count Roffredo was no one can tell surely, but his name belongs to the great house of Caetani. [Illustration: BASILICA OF ST JOHN LATERAN] It is hard to see past terror in present peace; it is not easy to fancy the rough rabble of Rome in those days, strangely clad, more strangely armed, far out in the waste fields about the Lateran, surging up like demons in the lurid torchlight before the house of the Pope, pressing upon the mailed Count's stout horse, and thronging upon the heels of the Captains and the Prefect, pounding down the heavy doors with stones, and with deep shouts for every heavy blow, while white-robed John and his frightened priests cower together within, expecting death. Down goes the oak with a crash like artillery, that booms along the empty corridors; a moment's pause, and silence, and then the rush, headed by the Knight and the leaders who mean no murder, but mean to have their way, once and for ever, and buffet back their furious followers when they have reached the Pope's room, lest he should be torn in pieces. Then, the subsidence of the din, and the old man and his priests bound and dragged out and forced to go on foot by all the long dark way through the city to the black dungeons of Sant' Angelo beyond the rushing river. [Illustration: SAN GIOVANNI IN LATERANO] It seems far away. Yet we who have seen the Roman people rise, overlaid with burdens and maddened by the news of a horrible defeat, can guess at what it must have been. Those who saw the sea of murderous pale faces, and heard the deep cry, 'Death to Crispi,' go howling and echoing through the city can guess what that must have been a thousand years ago, and many another night since then, when the Romans were roused and there was a smell of blood in the air. But today there is peace in the great Mother of Churches, with an atmosphere of solemn rest that one may not breathe in Saint Peter's nor perhaps anywhere else in Rome within consecrated walls. There is mystery in the enormous pillars that answer back the softest whispered word from niche to niche across the silent aisle; there is simplicity and dignity of peace in the lofty nave, far down and out of jarring distance from the over-gorgeous splendour of the modern transept. In Holy Week, towards evening at the Tenebræ, the divine tenor voice of Padre Giovanni, monk and singer, soft as a summer night, clear as a silver bell, touching as sadness itself, used to float through the dim air with a ring of Heaven in it, full of that strange fatefulness that followed his short life, till he died, nearly twenty years ago, foully poisoned by a layman singer in envy of a gift not matched in the memory of man. Sometimes, if one wanders upward towards the Monti when the moon is high, a far-off voice rings through the quiet air--one of those voices which hardly ever find their way to the theatre nowadays, and which, perhaps, would not satisfy the nervous taste of our Wagnerian times. Perhaps it sounds better in the moonlight, in those lonely, echoing streets, than it would on the stage. At all events, it is beautiful as one hears it, clear, strong, natural, ringing. It belongs to the place and hour, as the humming of honey bees to a field of flowers at noon, or the desolate moaning of the tide to a lonely ocean coast at night. It is not an exaggeration, nor a mere bit of ill nature, to say that there are thousands of fastidiously cultivated people today who would think it all theatrical in the extreme, and would be inclined to despise their own taste if they felt a secret pleasure in the scene and the song. But in Rome even such as they might condescend to the romantic for an hour, because in Rome such deeds have been dared, such loves have been loved, such deaths have been died, that any romance, no matter how wild, has larger probability in the light of what has actually been the lot of real men and women. So going alone through the winding moonlit ways about Tor de' Conti, Santa Maria dei Monti and San Pietro in Vincoli, a man need take no account of modern fashions in sensation; and if he will but let himself be charmed, the enchantment will take hold of him and lead him on through a city of dreams and visions, and memories strange and great, without end. Ever since Rome began there must have been just such silvery nights; just such a voice rang through the same air ages ago; just as now the velvet shadows fell pall-like and unrolled themselves along the grey pavement under the lofty columns of Mars the Avenger and beneath the wall of the Forum of Augustus. [Illustration: PIAZZA COLONNA] Perhaps it is true that the impressions which Rome makes upon a thoughtful man vary more according to the wind and the time of day than those he feels in other cities. Perhaps, too, there is no capital in all the world which has such contrasts to show within a mile of each other--one might almost say within a dozen steps. One of the most crowded thoroughfares of Rome, for instance, is the Via del Tritone, which is the only passage through the valley between the Pincian and the Quirinal hills, from the region of Piazza Colonna towards the railway station and the new quarter. During the busy hours of the day a carriage can rarely move through its narrower portions any faster than at a foot pace, and the insufficient pavements are thronged with pedestrians. In a measure, the Tritone in Rome corresponds to Galata bridge in Constantinople. In the course of the week most of the population of the city must have passed at least once through the crowded little street, which somehow in the rain of millions that lasted for two years, did not manage to attract to itself even the small sum which would have sufficed to widen it by a few yards. It is as though the contents of Rome were daily drawn through a keyhole. In the Tritone are to be seen magnificent equipages, jammed in the line between milk carts, omnibuses and dustmen's barrows, preceded by butcher's vans and followed by miserable cabs, smart dogcarts and high-wheeled country vehicles driven by rough, booted men wearing green-lined cloaks and looking like stage bandits; even saddle horses are led sometimes that way to save time; and on each side flow two streams of human beings of every type to be found between Porta Angelica and Porta San Giovanni. A prince of the Holy Roman Empire pushes past a troop of dirty school children, and is almost driven into an open barrel of salt codfish, in the door of a poor shop, by a black-faced charcoal man carrying a sack on his head more than half as high as himself. A party of jolly young German tourists in loose clothes, with red books in their hands, and their field-glasses hanging by straps across their shoulders, try to rid themselves of the flower-girls dressed in sham Sabine costumes, and utter exclamations of astonishment and admiration when they themselves are almost run down by a couple of the giant Royal Grenadiers, each six feet five or thereabouts, besides nine inches, or so, of crested helmet aloft, gorgeous, gigantic and spotless. Clerks by the dozen and liveried messengers of the ministries struggle in the press; ladies gather their skirts closely, and try to pick a dainty way where, indeed, there is nothing 'dain' (a word which Doctor Johnson confesses that he could not find in any dictionary, but which he thinks might be very useful); servant girls, smart children with nurses and hoops going up to the Pincio, black-browed washerwomen with big baskets of clothes on their heads, stumpy little infantry soldiers in grey uniforms, priests, friars, venders of boot-laces and thread, vegetable sellers pushing hand-carts of green things in and out among the horses and vehicles with amazing dexterity, and yelling their cries in super-humanly high voices--there is no end to the multitude. If the day is showery, it is a sight to see the confusion in the Tritone when umbrellas of every age, material and colour are all opened at once, while the people who have none crowd into the codfish shop and the liquor seller's and the tobacconist's, with traditional 'con permesso' of excuse for entering when they do not mean to buy anything; for the Romans are mostly civil people and fairly good-natured. But rain or shine, at the busy hours, the place is always crowded to overflowing with every description of vehicle and every type of humanity. Out of Babel--a horizontal Babel--you may turn into the little church, dedicated to the 'Holy Guardian Angel.' It stands on the south side of the Tritone, in that part which is broader, and which a little while ago was still called the Via dell' Angelo Custode--Guardian Angel Street. It is an altogether insignificant little church, and strangers scarcely ever visit it. But going down the Tritone, when your ears are splitting, and your eyes are confused with the kaleidoscopic figures of the scurrying crowd, you may lift the heavy leathern curtain, and leave the hurly-burly outside, and find yourself all alone in the quiet presence of death, the end of all hurly-burly and confusion. It is quite possible that under the high, still light in the round church, with its four niche-like chapels, you may see, draped in black, that thing which no one ever mistakes for anything else; and round about the coffin a dozen tall wax candles may be burning with a steady yellow flame. Possibly, at the sound of the leathern curtain slapping the stone door-posts, as it falls behind you, a sad-looking sacristan may shuffle out of a dark corner to see who has come in; possibly not. He may be asleep, or he may be busy folding vestments in the sacristy. The dead need little protection from the living, nor does a sacristan readily put himself out for nothing. You may stand there undisturbed as long as you please, and see what all the world's noise comes to in the end. Or it may be, if the departed person belonged to a pious confraternity, that you chance upon the brothers of the society--clad in dark hoods with only holes for their eyes, and no man recognized by his neighbour--chanting penitential psalms and hymns for the one whom they all know because he is dead, and they are living. Such contrasts are not lacking in Rome. There are plenty of them everywhere in the world, perhaps, but they are more striking here, in proportion as the outward forms of religious practice are more ancient, unchanging and impressive. For there is nothing very impressive or unchanging about the daily outside world, especially in Rome. Rome, the worldly, is the capital of one of the smaller kingdoms of the world, which those who rule it are anxious to force into the position of a great power. One need not criticise their action too hardly; their motives can hardly be anything but patriotic, considering the fearful sacrifices they impose upon their country. But they are not the men who brought about Italian unity. They are the successors of those men; they are not satisfied with that unification, and they have dreamed a dream of ambition, beside which, considering the means at their disposal, the projects of Alexander, Cæsar and Napoleon sink into comparative insignificance. At all events, the worldly, modern, outward Italian Rome is very far behind the great European capitals in development, not to say wealth and magnificence. 'Lay' Rome, if one may use the expression, is not in the least a remarkable city. 'Ecclesiastic' Rome is the stronghold of a most tremendous fact, from whatever point of view Christianity may be considered. If one could, in imagination, detach the head of the Catholic Church from the Church, one would be obliged to admit that no single living man possesses the far-reaching and lasting power which in each succeeding papal reign belongs to the Pope. Behind the Pope stands the fact which confers, maintains and extends that power from century to century; a power which is one of the hugest elements of the world's moral activity, both in its own direct action and in the counteraction and antagonism which it calls forth continually. It is the all-pervading presence of this greatest fact in Christendom which has carried on Rome's importance from the days of the Cæsars, across the chasm of the dark ages, to the days of the modern popes; and its really enormous importance continually throws forward into cruel relief the puerilities and inanities of the daily outward world. It is the consciousness of that importance which makes old Roman society what it is, with its virtues, its vices, its prejudices and its strange, old-fashioned, close-fisted kindliness; which makes the contrast between the Saturnalia of Shrove Tuesday night and the cross signed with ashes upon the forehead on Ash Wednesday morning, between the careless laughter of the Roman beauty in Carnival, and the tragic earnestness of the same lovely face when the great lady kneels in Lent, before the confessional, to receive upon her bent head the light touch of the penitentiary's wand, taking her turn, perhaps, with a score of women of the people. It is the knowledge of an always present power, active throughout the whole world, which throws deep, straight shadows, as it were, through the Roman character, just as in certain ancient families there is a secret that makes grave the lives of those who know it. The Roman Forum and the land between it and the Colosseum, though strictly within the limits of Monti, were in reality a neutral ground, the chosen place for all struggles of rivalry between the Regions. The final destruction of its monuments dates from the sacking of Rome by Robert Guiscard with his Normans and Saracens in the year one thousand and eighty-four, when the great Duke of Apulia came in arms to succour Hildebrand, Pope Gregory the Seventh, against the Emperor Henry the Fourth, smarting under the bitter humiliation of Canossa; and against his Antipope Clement, more than a hundred years after Otto had come back in anger to avenge Pope John. There is no more striking picture of the fearful contest between the Church and the Empire. [Illustration: PIAZZA DI SAN GIOVANNI IN LATERANO] Alexis, Emperor of the East, had sent Henry, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, one hundred and forty-four thousand pieces of gold, and one hundred pieces of woven scarlet, as an inducement to make war upon the Norman Duke, the Pope's friend. But the Romans feared Henry and sent ambassadors to him, and on the twenty-first of March, being the Thursday before Palm Sunday, the Lateran gate was opened for him to enter in triumph. The city was divided against itself, the nobles were for Hildebrand, the people were against him. The Emperor seized the Lateran palace and all the bridges. The Pope fled to the Castle of Sant' Angelo, an impregnable fortress in those times, ever ready and ever provisioned for a siege. Of the nobles Henry required fifty hostages as earnest of their neutrality. On the next day he threw his gold to the rabble and they elected his Antipope Gilbert, who called himself Clement the Third, and certain bishops from North Italy consecrated him in the Lateran on Palm Sunday. Meanwhile Hildebrand secretly sent swift riders to Apulia, calling on Robert Guiscard for help, and still the nobles were faithful to him, and though Henry held the bridges, they were strong in Trastevere and the Borgo, which is the region between the Castle of Sant' Angelo and Saint Peter's. So it turned out that when Henry tried to bring his Antipope in solemn procession to enthrone him in the Pontifical chair, on Easter day, he found mailed knights and footmen waiting for him, and had to fight his way to the Vatican, and forty of his men were killed and wounded in the fray, while the armed nobles lost not one. Yet he reached the Vatican at last, and there he was crowned by the false Pope he had made, with the crown of the Holy Roman Empire. The chronicler apologizes for calling him an emperor at all. Then he set to work to destroy the dwellings of the faithful nobles, and laid siege to the wonderful Septizonium of Severus, in which the true Pope's nephew had fortified himself, and began to batter it down with catapults and battering-rams. Presently came the message of vengeance, brought by one man outriding a host, while the rabble were still building a great wall to encircle Sant' Angelo and starve Hildebrand to death or submission, working day and night like madmen, tearing down everything at hand to pile the great stones one upon another. Swiftly came the terrible Norman from the south, with his six thousand horse, Normans and Saracens, and thirty thousand foot, forcing his march and hungry for the Emperor. But Henry fled, making pretext of great affairs in Lombardy, promising great and wonderful gifts to the Roman rabble, and entrusting to their care his imperial city. Like a destroying whirlwind of fire and steel Robert swept on to the gates and into Rome, burning and slaying as he rode, and sparing neither man, nor woman, nor child, till the red blood ran in rivers between walls of yellow flame. And he took Hildebrand from Sant' Angelo, and brought him back to the Lateran through the reeking ruins of the city in grim and fearful triumph of carnage and destruction. That was the end of the Roman Forum, and afterwards, when the blood-soaked ashes and heaps of red-hot rubbish had sunk down and hardened to a level surface, the place where the shepherd fathers of Alba Longa had pastured their flocks was called the Campo Vaccino, the Cattle Field, because it was turned into the market for beeves, and rows of trees were planted, and on one side there was a walk where ropes were made, even to our own time. It became also the fighting ground of the Regions. Among the strangest scenes in the story of the city are those regular encounters between the Regions of Monti and Trastevere which for centuries took place on feast days, by appointment, on the site of the Forum, or occasionally on the wide ground before the Baths of Diocletian. They were battles fought with stones, and far from bloodless. Monti was traditionally of the Imperial or Ghibelline party; Trastevere was Guelph and for the Popes. The enmity was natural and lasting, on a small scale, as it was throughout Italy. The challenge to the fray was regularly sent out by young boys as messengers, and the place and hour were named and the word passed in secret from mouth to mouth. It was even determined by agreement whether the stones were to be thrown by hand or whether the more deadly sling was to be used. At the appointed time, the combatants appear in the arena, sometimes as many as a hundred on a side, and the tournament begins, as in Homeric times, with taunts and abuse, which presently end in skirmishes between the boys who have come to look on. Scouts are placed at distant points to cry 'Fire' at the approach of the dreaded Bargello and his men, who are the only representatives of order in the city and not, indeed, anxious to face two hundred infuriated slingers for the sake of making peace. One boy throws a stone and runs away, followed by the rest, all prudently retiring to a safe distance. The real combatants wrap their long cloaks about their left arms, as the old Romans used their togas on the same ground, to shield their heads from the blows; a sling whirls half a dozen times like lightning, and a smooth round stone flies like a bullet straight at an enemy's face, followed by a hundred more in a deadly hail, thick and fast. Men fall, blood flows, short deep curses ring through the sunny air, the fighters creep up to one another, dodging behind trees and broken ruins, till they are at cruelly short range; faster and faster fly the stones, and scores are lying prostrate, bleeding, groaning and cursing. Strength, courage, fierce endurance and luck have it at last, as in every battle. Down goes the leader of Trastevere, half dead, with an eye gone, down goes the next man to him, his teeth broken under his torn lips, down half a dozen more, dead or wounded, and the day is lost. Trastevere flies towards the bridge, pursued by Monti with hoots and yells and catcalls, and the thousands who have seen the fight go howling after them, women and children screaming, dogs racing and barking and biting at their heels. And far behind on the deserted Campo Vaccino, as the sun goes down, women weep and frightened children sob beside the young dead. But the next feast day would come, and a counter-victory and vengeance. That has always been the temper of the Romans; but few know how fiercely it used to show itself in those days. It would have been natural enough that men should meet in sudden anger and kill each other with such weapons as they chanced to have or could pick up, clubs, knives, stones, anything, when fighting was half the life of every grown man. It is harder to understand the murderous stone throwing by agreement and appointment. In principle, indeed, it approached the tournament, and the combat of champions representing two parties is an expression of the ancient instinct of the Latin peoples; so the Horatii and Curiatii fought for Rome and Alba--so Francis the First of France offered to fight the Emperor Charles the Fifth for settlement of all quarrels between the Kingdom and the Empire--and so the modern Frenchman and Italian are accustomed to settle their differences by an appeal to what they still call 'arms,' for the sake of what modern society is pleased to dignify by the name of 'honour.' But in the stone-throwing combats of Campo Vaccino there was something else. The games of the circus and the bloody shows of the amphitheatre were not forgotten. As will be seen hereafter, bull-fighting was a favourite sport in Rome as it is in Spain today, and the hand-to-hand fights between champions of the Regions were as much more exciting and delightful to the crowd as the blood of men is of more price than the blood of beasts. The habit of fighting for its own sake, with dangerous weapons, made the Roman rabble terrible when the fray turned quite to earnest; the deadly hail of stones, well aimed by sling and hand, was familiar to every Roman from his childhood, and the sight of naked steel at arm's length inspired no sudden, keen and unaccustomed terror, when men had little but life to lose and set small value on that, throwing it into the balance for a word, rising in arms for a name, doing deeds of blood and flame for a handful of gold or a day of power. Monti was both the battlefield of the Regions and also, in times early and late, the scene of the most splendid pageants of Church and State. There is a strange passage in the writings of Ammianus Marcellinus, a pagan Roman of Greek birth, contemporary with Pope Damasus in the latter part of the fourth century. Muratori quotes it, as showing what the Bishopric of Rome meant even in those days. It is worth reading, for a heathen's view of things under Valens and Valentinian, before the coming of the Huns and the breaking up of the Roman Empire, and, indeed, before the official disestablishment, as we should say, of the heathen religion; while the High Priest of Jupiter still offered sacrifices on the Capitol, and the six Vestal Virgins still guarded the Seven Holy Things of Rome, and held their vast lands and dwelt in their splendid palace in all freedom of high privilege, as of old. 'For my part,' says Ammianus, 'when I see the magnificence in which the Bishops live in Rome, I am not surprised that those who covet the dignity should use force and cunning to obtain it. For if they succeed, they are sure of becoming enormously rich by the gifts of the devout Roman matrons; they will drive about Rome in their carriages, as they please, gorgeously dressed, and they will not only keep an abundant table, but will give banquets so sumptuous as to outdo those of kings and emperors. They do not see that they could be truly happy if instead of making the greatness of Rome an excuse for their excesses, they would live as some of the Bishops of the Provinces do, who are sparing and frugal, poorly clad and modest, but who make the humility of their manners and the purity of their lives at once acceptable to their God and to their fellow worshippers.' So much Ammianus says. And Saint Jerome tells how Prætextatus, Prefect of the City, when Pope Damasus tried to convert him, answered with a laugh, 'I will become a Christian if you will make me Bishop of Rome.' Yet Damasus, famous for the good Latin and beautiful carving of the many inscriptions he composed and set up, was undeniably also a good man in the evil days which foreshadowed the great schism. [Illustration: SANTA MARIA MAGGIORE] And here, in the year 366, in the Region of Monti, in the church where now stands Santa Maria Maggiore, a great and terrible name stands out for the first time in history. Orsino, Deacon of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, rouses a party of the people, declares the election of Damasus invalid, proclaims himself Pope in his stead, and officiates as Pontiff in the Basilica of Sicininus. Up from the deep city comes the roaring crowd, furious and hungry for fight; the great doors are closed and Orsino's followers gather round him as he stands on the steps of the altar; but they are few, and those for Damasus are many; down go the doors, burst inward with battering-rams, up shoot the flames to the roof, and the short, wild fray lasts while one may count five score, and is over. Orsino and a hundred and thirty-six of his men lie dead on the pavement, the fire licks the rafters, the crowd press outward, and the great roof falls crashing down into wide pools of blood. And after that Damasus reigns eighteen years in peace and splendour. No one knows whether the daring Deacon was of the race that made and unmade popes afterwards, and held half Italy with its fortresses, giving its daughters to kings and taking kings' daughters for its sons, till Vittoria Accoramboni of bad memory began to bring down a name that is yet great. But Orsino he was called, and he had in him much of the lawless strength of those namesakes of his who outfought all other barons but the Colonna, for centuries; and romance may well make him one of them. Three hundred years later, and a little nearer to us in the dim perspective of the dark ages, another scene is enacted in the same cathedral. Martin the First was afterwards canonized as Saint Martin for the persecutions he suffered at the hands of Constans, who feared and hated him and set up an antipope in his stead, and at last sent him prisoner to die a miserable death in the Crimea. Olympius, Exarch of Italy, was the chosen tool of the Emperor, sent again and again to Rome to destroy the brave Bishop and make way for the impostor. At last, says the greatest of Italian chroniclers, fearing the Roman people and their soldiers, he attempted to murder the Pope foully, in hideous sacrilege. To that end he pretended penitence, and begged to be allowed to receive the Eucharist from the Pope himself at solemn high Mass, secretly instructing one of his body-guards to stab the Bishop at the very moment when he should present Olympius with the consecrated bread. Up to the basilica they went, in grave and splendid procession. One may guess the picture, with its deep colour, with the strong faces of those men, the Eastern guards, the gorgeous robes, the gilded arms, the high sunlight crossing the low nave and falling through the yellow clouds of incense upon the venerable bearded head of the holy man whose death was purposed in the sacred office. First, the measured tread of the Exarch's band moving in order; then, the silence over all the kneeling throng, and upon it the bursting unison of the 'Gloria in Excelsis' from the choir. Chant upon chant as the Pontiff and his Ministers intone the Epistle and the Gospel and are taken up by the singers in chorus at the first words of the Creed. By and by, the Pope's voice alone, still clear and brave in the Preface. 'Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and all the company of Heaven,' he chants, and again the harmony of many voices singing 'Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth.' Silence then, at the Consecration, and the dark-browed Exarch bowing to the pavement, beside the paid murderer whose hand is already on his dagger's hilt. 'O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world,' sings the choir in its sad, high chant, and Saint Martin bows, standing, over the altar, himself communicating, while the Exarch holds his breath, and the slayer fixes his small, keen eyes on the embroidered vestments and guesses how they will look with a red splash upon them. As the soldier looks, the sunlight falls more brightly on the gold, the incense curls in mystic spiral wreaths, its strong perfume penetrates and dims his senses; little by little, his thoughts wander till they are strangely fixed on something far away, and he no longer sees Pope nor altar nor altar-piece beyond, and is wrapped in a sort of waking sleep that is blindness. Olympius kneels at the steps within the rail, and his heart beats loud as the grand figure of the Bishop bends over him, and the thin old hand with its strong blue veins offers the sacred bread to his open lips. He trembles, and tries to glance sideways to his left with downcast eyes, for the moment has come, and the blow must be struck then or never. Not a breath, not a movement in the church, not the faintest clink of all those gilded arms, as the Saint pronounces the few solemn words, then gravely and slowly turns, with his deacons to right and left of him, and ascends the altar steps once more, unhurt. A miracle, says the chronicler. A miracle, says the amazed soldier, and repeats it upon solemn oath. A miracle, says Olympius himself, penitent and converted from error, and ready to save the Pope by all means he has, as he was ready to slay him before. But he only, and the hired assassin beside him, had known what was to be, and the people say that the Exarch and the Pope were already reconciled and agreed against the Emperor. The vast church has had many names. It seems at one time to have been known as the Basilica of Sicininus, for so Ammianus Marcellinus still speaks of it. But just before that, there is the lovely legend of Pope Liberius' dream. To him and to the Roman patrician, John, came the Blessed Virgin in a dream, one night in high summer, commanding them to build her a church wheresoever they should find snow on the morrow. And together they found it, glistening in the morning sun, and they traced, on the white, the plan of the foundation, and together built the first church, calling it 'Our Lady of Snows,' for Damasus to burn when Orsino seized it,--but the people spoke of it as the Basilica of Liberius. It was called also 'Our Lady of the Manger,' from the relic held holy there; and Sixtus the Third named it 'Our Lady, Mother of God'; and under many popes it was rebuilt and grew, until at last, for its size, it was called, as it is today, 'The Greater Saint Mary's.' At one time, the popes lived near it, and in our own century, when the palace had long been transferred to the Quirinal, a mile to northward of the basilica, Papal Bulls were dated 'From Santa Maria Maggiore.' It is too gorgeous now, too overladen, too rich; and yet it is imposing. The first gold brought from South America gilds the profusely decorated roof, the dark red polished porphyry pillars of the high altar gleam in the warm haze of light, the endless marble columns rise in shining ranks, all is gold, marble and colour. Many dead lie there, great men and good; and one over whom a sort of mystery hangs, for he was Bartolommeo Sacchi, Cardinal Platina, historian of the Church, a chief member of the famous Roman Academy of the fifteenth century, and a mediæval pagan, accused with Pomponius Letus and others of worshipping false gods; tried, acquitted for lack of evidence; dead in the odour of sanctity; proved at last ten times a heathen, and a bad one, today, by inscriptions found in the remotest part of the Catacombs, where he and his companions met in darkest secret to perform their extravagant rites. He lies beneath the chapel of Sixtus the Fifth, but the stone that marked the spot is gone. Strange survivals of ideas and customs cling to some places like ghosts, and will not be driven away. The Esquiline was long ago the haunt of witches, who chanted their nightly incantations over the shallow graves where slaves were buried, and under the hideous crosses whereon dead malefactors had groaned away their last hours of life. Mæcenas cleared the land and beautified it with gardens, but still the witches came by stealth to their old haunts. The popes built churches and palaces on it, but the dark memories never vanished in the light; and even in our own days, on Saint John's Eve, which is the witches' night of the Latin race, as the Eve of May-day is the Walpurgis of the Northmen, the people went out in thousands, with torches and lights, and laughing tricks of exorcism, to scare away the powers of evil for the year. On that night the vast open spaces around the Lateran were thronged with men and women and children; against the witches' dreaded influence they carried each an onion, torn up by the roots with stalk and flower; all about, on the outskirts of the place, were kitchen booths, set up with boughs and bits of awnings, yellow with the glare of earthen and iron oil lamps, where snails--great counter-charms against spells--were fried and baked in oil, and sold with bread and wine, and eaten with more or less appetite, according to the strength of men's stomachs. All night, till the early summer dawn, the people came and went, and wandered round and round, and in and out, in parties and by families, to go laughing homeward at last, scarce knowing why they had gone there at all, unless it were because their fathers and mothers had done as they did for generations unnumbered. [Illustration: BATHS OF DIOCLETIAN] And the Lateran once had another half-heathen festival, on the Saturday after Easter, in memory of the ancient Floralia of the Romans, which had formerly been celebrated on the 28th of April. It was a most strange festival, now long forgotten, in which Christianity and paganism were blended together. Baracconi, from whom the following account is taken, quotes three sober writers as authority for his description. Yet there is a doubt about the very name of the feast, which is variously called the 'Coromania' and the 'Cornomania.' On the afternoon of the Saturday in Easter week, say these writers, the priests of the eighteen principal 'deaconries'--an ecclesiastical division of the city long ago abolished and now somewhat obscure--caused the bells to be rung, and the people assembled at their parish churches, where they were received by a 'mansionarius,'--probably meaning here 'a visitor of houses,'--and a layman, who was arrayed in a tunic, and crowned with the flowers of the cornel cherry. In his hand he carried a concave musical instrument of copper, by which hung many little bells. One of these mysterious personages, who evidently represented the pagan element in the ceremony, preceded each parish procession, being followed immediately by the parish priest, wearing the cope. From all parts of the city they went up to the Lateran, and waited before the palace of the Pope till all were assembled. The Pope descended the steps to receive the homage of the people. Immediately, those of each parish formed themselves into wide circles round their respective 'visitors' and priests, and the strange rite began. In the midst the priest stood still. Round and round him the lay 'visitor' moved in a solemn dance, striking his copper bells rhythmically to his steps, while all the circle followed his gyrations, chanting a barbarous invocation, half Latin and half Greek: 'Hail, divinity of this spot! Receive our prayers in fortunate hour!' and many verses more to the same purpose, and quite beyond being construed grammatically. The dance is over with the song. One of the parish priests mounts upon an ass, backwards, facing the beast's tail, and a papal chamberlain leads the animal, holding over its head a basin containing twenty pieces of copper money. When they have passed three rows of benches--which benches, by the bye?--the priest leans back, puts his hand behind him into the basin, and pockets the coins. Then all the priests lay garlands at the feet of the Pope. But the priest of Santa Maria in Via Lata also lets a live fox out of a bag, and the little creature suddenly let loose flies for its life, through the parting crowd, out to the open country, seeking cover. It is like the Hebrew scapegoat. In return each priest receives a golden coin from the Pontiff's hand. The rite being finished, all return to their respective parishes, the dancing 'visitor' still leading the procession. Each priest is accompanied then by acolytes who bear holy water, branches of laurel, and baskets of little rolls, or of those big, sweet wafers, rolled into a cylinder and baked, which are called 'cialdoni,' and are eaten to this day by Romans with ice cream. From house to house they go; the priest blesses each dwelling, sprinkling water about with the laurel, and then burning the branch on the hearth and giving some of the rolls to the children. And all the time the dancer slowly dances and chants the strange words made up of some Hebrew, a little Chaldean and a leavening of nonsense. Jaritan, jaritan, iarariasti Raphaym, akrhoin, azariasti! One may leave the interpretation of the jargon to curious scholars. As for the rite itself, were it not attested by trustworthy writers, one would be inclined to treat it as a mere invention, no more to be believed than the legend of Pope Joan, who was supposed to have been stoned to death near San Clemente, on the way to the Lateran. An extraordinary number of traditions cling to the Region of Monti, and considering that in later times a great part of this quarter was a wilderness, the fact would seem strange. As for the 'Coromania' it seems to have disappeared after the devastation of Monti by Robert Guiscard in 1084, and the general destruction of the city from the Lateran to the Capitol is attributed to the Saracens who were with him. But a more logical cause of depopulation is found in the disappearance of water from the upper Region by the breaking of the aqueducts, from which alone it was derived. The consequence of this, in the Middle Age, was that the only obtainable water came from the river, and was naturally taken from it up-stream, towards the Piazza del Popolo, in the neighbourhood of which it was collected in tanks and kept until the mud sank to the bottom and it was approximately fit to drink. In Imperial times the greater number of the public baths were situated in the Monti. The great Piazza di Termini, now re-named Piazza delle Terme, before the railway station, took its name from the Baths of Diocletian--'Thermæ,' 'Terme,' 'Termini.' The Baths of Titus, the Baths of Constantine, of Philippus, Novatus and others were all in Monti, supplied by the aqueduct of Claudius, the Anio Novus, the Aqua Marcia, Tepula, Julia, Marcia Nova and Anio Vetus. No people in the world were such bathers as the old Romans; yet few cities have ever suffered so much or so long from lack of good water as Rome in the Middle Age. The supply cut off, the whole use of the vast institutions was instantly gone, and the huge halls and porticos and playgrounds fell to ruin and base uses. Owing to their peculiar construction and being purposely made easy of access on all sides, like the temples, the buildings could not even be turned to account by the Barons for purposes of fortification, except as quarries for material with which to build their towers and bastions. The inner chambers became hiding-places for thieves, herdsmen in winter penned their flocks in the shelter of the great halls, grooms used the old playground as a track for breaking horses, and round and about the ruins, on feast days, the men of Monti and Trastevere chased one another in their murderous tournaments of stone throwing. A fanatic Sicilian priest saved the great hall of Diocletian's Baths from destruction in Michelangelo's time. [Illustration: PORTA MAGGIORE, SUPPORTING THE CHANNELS OF THE AQUEDUCT OF CLAUDIUS AND THE ANIO NOVUS] The story is worth telling, for it is little known. In a little church in Palermo, in which the humble priest Antonio Del Duca officiated, he discovered under the wall-plaster a beautiful fresco or mosaic of the Seven Archangels, with their names and attributes. Day after day he looked at the fair figures till they took possession of his mind and heart and soul, and inspired him with the apparently hopeless desire to erect a church in Rome in their honour. To Rome he came, persuaded of his righteous mission, to fail of course, after seven years of indefatigable effort. Back to Palermo then, to the contemplation of his beloved angels. And again they seemed to drive him to Rome. Scarcely had he returned when in a dream he seemed to see his ideal church among the ruins of the Baths of Diocletian, which had been built, as tradition said, by thousands of condemned Christians. To dream was to wake with new enthusiasm, to wake was to act. In an hour, in the early dawn, he was in the great hall which is now the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, 'Saint Mary of the Angels.' But it was long before his purpose was finally accomplished. Thirty years of his life he spent in unremitting labour for his purpose, and an accident at last determined his success. He had brought a nephew with him from Sicily, a certain Giacomo Del Duca, a sculptor, who was employed by Michelangelo to carve the great mask over the Porta Pia. Pope Pius the Fourth, for whom the gate was named, praised the stone face to Michelangelo, who told him who had made it. The name recalled the sculptor's uncle and his mad project, which appealed to Michelangelo's love of the gigantic. Even the coincidence of appellation pleased the Pope, for he himself had been christened Angelo, and his great architect and sculptor bore an archangel's name. So the work was done in short time, the great church was consecrated, and one of the noblest of Roman buildings was saved from ruin by the poor Sicilian,--and there, in 1896, the heir to the throne of Italy was married with great magnificence, that particular church being chosen because, as a historical monument, it is regarded as the property of the Italian State, and is therefore not under the immediate management of the Vatican. Probably not one in a thousand of the splendid throng that filled the church had heard the name of Antonio Del Duca, who lies buried before the high altar without a line to tell of all he did. So lies Bernini, somewhere in Santa Maria Maggiore, so lies Platina,--he, at least, the better for no epitaph,--and Beatrice Cenci and many others, rest unforgotten in nameless graves. From the church to the railway station stretch the ruins, continuous, massive, almost useless, yet dear to all who love old Rome. On the south side, there used to be a long row of buildings, ending in a tall old mansion of good architecture, which was the 'Casino' of the great old Villa Negroni. In that house, but recently gone, Thomas Crawford, sculptor, lived for many years, and in the long, low studio that stood before what is now the station, but was then a field, he modelled the great statue of Liberty that crowns the Capitol in Washington, and Washington's own monument which stands in Richmond, and many of his other works. My own early childhood was spent there, among the old-time gardens, and avenues of lordly cypresses and of bitter orange trees, and the moss-grown fountains, and long walks fragrant with half-wild roses and sweet flowers that no one thinks of planting now. Beyond, a wild waste of field and broken land led up to Santa Maria Maggiore; and the grand old bells sent their far voices ringing in deep harmony to our windows; and on the Eve of Saint Peter's day, when Saint Peter's was a dream of stars in the distance and the gorgeous fireworks gleamed in the dark sky above the Pincio, we used to climb the high tower above the house and watch the still illumination and the soaring rockets through a grated window, till the last one had burst and spent itself, and we crept down the steep stone steps, half frightened at the sound of our own voices in the ghostly place. And in that same villa once lived Vittoria Accoramboni, married to Francesco Peretti, nephew of Cardinal Montalto, who built the house, and was afterwards Sixtus the Fifth, and filled Rome with his works in the five years of his stirring reign. Hers also is a story worth telling, for few know it, even among Romans, and it is a tale of bloodshed, and of murder, and of all crimes against God and man, and of the fall of the great house of Orsini. But it may better be told in another place, when we reach the Region where they lived and fought and ruled, by terror and the sword. Near the Baths of Diocletian, and most probably on the site of that same Villa Negroni, too, was that vineyard, or 'villa' as we should say, where Cæsar Borgia and his elder brother, the Duke of Gandia, supped together for the last time with their mother Vanozza, on the night of the 14th of June, in the year 1497. There has always been a dark mystery about what followed. Many say that Cæsar feared his brother's power and influence with the Pope. Not a few others suggest that the cause of the mutual hatred was a jealousy so horrible to think of that one may hardly find words for it, for its object was their own sister Lucrezia. However that may be, they supped together with their mother in her villa, after the manner of Romans in those times, and long before then, and long since. In the first days of summer heat, when the freshness of spring is gone and June grows sultry, the people of the city have ever loved to breathe a cooler air. In the Region of Monti there were a score of villas, and there were wide vineyards and little groves of trees, such as could grow where there was not much water, or none at all perhaps, saving what was collected in cisterns from the roofs of the few scattered houses, when it rained. In the long June twilight the three met together, the mother and her two sons, and sat down under an arbour in the garden, for the air was dry with the south wind and there was no fear of fever. Screened lamps and wax torches shed changing tints of gold and yellow on the fine linen, and the deep-chiselled dishes and vessels of silver, and the tall glasses and beakers of many hues. Fruit was piled up in the midst, such as the season afforded, cherries and strawberries, and bright oranges from the south. One may fancy the dark-browed woman of forty years, in the beauty of maturity almost too ripe, with her black eyes and hair of auburn, her jewelled cap, her gold laces just open at her marble throat, her gleaming earrings, her sleeves slashed to show gauze-fine linen, her white, ring-laden fingers that delicately took the finely carved meats in her plate--before forks were used in Rome--and dabbled themselves clean from each touch in the scented water the little page poured over them. On her right, her eldest, Gandia, fair, weak-mouthed, sensually beautiful, splendid in velvet, and chain of gold, and deep-red silk, his blue eyes glancing now and then, half scornfully, half anxiously at his strong brother. And he, Cæsar, the man of infamous memory, sitting there the very incarnation of bodily strength and mental daring; square as a gladiator, dark as a Moor, with deep and fiery eyes, now black, now red in the lamplight, the marvellous smile wreathing his thin lips now and then, and showing white, wolfish teeth, his sinewy brown hands direct in every little action, his soft voice the very music of a lie to those who knew the terrible brief tones it had in wrath. Long they sat, sipping the strong iced wine, toying with fruits and nuts, talking of State affairs, of the Pope, of Maximilian, the jousting Emperor,--discussing, perhaps, with a smile, his love of dress and the beautiful fluted armour which he first invented;--of Lewis the Eleventh of France, tottering to his grave, strangest compound of devotion, avarice and fear that ever filled a throne; of Frederick of Naples, to whom Cæsar was to bear the crown within a few days; of Lucrezia's quarrel with her husband, which had brought her to Rome; and at her name Cæsar's eyes blazed once and looked down at the strawberries on the silver dish, and Gandia turned pale, and felt the chill of the night air, and stately Vanozza rose slowly in the silence, and bade her evil sons good-night, for it was late. Two hours later, Gandia's thrice-stabbed corpse lay rolling and bobbing at the Tiber's edge, as dead things do in the water, caught by its silks and velvets in wild branches that dipped in the muddy stream; and the waning moon rose as the dawn forelightened. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE COLOSSEUM] If the secrets of old Rome could be known and told, they would fill the world with books. Every stone has tasted blood, every house has had its tragedy, every shrub and tree and blade of grass and wild flower has sucked life from death, and blossoms on a grave. There is no end of memories, in this one Region, as in all the rest. Far up by Porta Pia, over against the new Treasury, under a modern street, lie the bones of guilty Vestals, buried living, each in a little vault two fathoms deep, with the small dish and crust and the earthen lamp that soon flickered out in the close damp air; and there lies that innocent one, Domitian's victim, who shrank from the foul help of the headsman's hand, as her foot slipped on the fatal ladder, and fixed her pure eyes once upon the rabble, and turned and went down alone into the deadly darkness. Down by the Colosseum, where the ruins of Titus' Baths still stand in part, stood Nero's dwelling palace, above the artificial lake in which the Colosseum itself was built, and whose waters reflected the flames of the great fire. To northward, in a contrast that leaps ages, rise the huge walls of the Tor de' Conti, greatest of mediæval fortresses built within the city, the stronghold of a dim, great house, long passed away, kinsmen of Innocent the Third. What is left of it helps to enclose a peaceful nunnery. There were other towers, too, and fortresses, though none so strong as that, when it faced the Colosseum, filled then by the armed thousands of the great Frangipani. The desolate wastes of land in the Monti were ever good battlefields for the nobles and the people. But the stronger and wiser and greater Orsini fortified themselves in the town, in Pompey's theatre, while the Colonna held the midst, and the popes dwelt far aloof on the boundary, with the open country behind them for ready escape, and the changing, factious, fighting city before. The everlasting struggle, the furious jealousy, the always ready knife, kept the Regions distinct and individual and often at enmity with each other, most of all Monti and Trastevere, hereditary adversaries, Ghibelline and Guelph. Trastevere has something of that proud and violent character still. Monti lost it in the short eruption of 'progress' and 'development.' In the wild rage of speculation which culminated in 1889, its desolate open lands, its ancient villas and its strange old houses were the natural prey of a foolish greediness the like of which has never been seen before. Progress ate up romance, and hundreds of acres of wretched, cheaply built, hideous, unsafe buildings sprang up like the unhealthy growth of a foul disease, between the Lateran gate and the old inhabited districts. They are destined to a graceless and ignoble ruin. Ugly cracks in the miserable stucco show where the masonry is already parting, as the hollow foundations subside, and walls on which the paint is still almost fresh are shored up with dusty beams lest they should fall and crush the few paupers who dwell within. Filthy, half-washed clothes of beggars hang down from the windows, drying in the sun as they flap and flutter against pretentious moulded masks of empty plaster. Miserable children loiter in the high-arched gates, under which smart carriages were meant to drive, and gnaw their dirty fingers, or fight for a cold boiled chestnut one of them has saved. Squalor, misery, ruin and vile stucco, with a sprinkling of half-desperate humanity,--those are the elements of the modern picture,--that is what the 'great development' of modern Rome brought forth and left behind it. Peace to the past, and to its ashes of romance and beauty. [Illustration] REGION II TREVI In Imperial times, the street now called the Tritone, from the Triton on the fountain in Piazza Barberini, led up from the Portico of Vipsanius Agrippa's sister in the modern Corso to the temple of Flora at the beginning of the Quattro Fontane. It was met at right angles by a long street leading straight from the Forum of Trajan, and which struck it close to the Arch of Claudius. Then, as now, this point was the meeting of two principal thoroughfares, and it was called Trivium, or the 'crossroads.' Trivium turned itself into the Italian 'Trevi,' called in some chronicles 'the Cross of Trevi.' The Arch of Claudius carried the Aqua Virgo, still officially called the Acqua Vergine, across the highway; the water, itself, came to be called the water 'of the crossroads' or 'of Trevi,' and 'Trevi' gave its name at last to the Region, long before the splendid fountain was built in the early part of the last century. The device of the Region seems to have nothing to do with the water, except, perhaps, that the idea of a triplicity is preserved in the three horizontally disposed rapiers. The legend that tells how the water was discovered gave it the first name it bore. A detachment of Roman soldiers, marching down from Præneste, or Palestrina, in the summer heat, were overcome by thirst, and could find neither stream nor well. A little girl, passing that way, led them aside from the high-road and brought them to a welling spring, clear and icy cold, known only to shepherds and peasants. They drank their fill and called it Aqua Virgo, the Maiden Water. And so it has remained for all ages. But it is commonly called 'Trevi' in Rome, by the people and by strangers, and the name has a ring of poetry, by its associations. For they say that whoever will go to the great fountain, when the high moon rays dance upon the rippling water, and drink, and toss a coin far out into the middle, in offering to the genius of the place, shall surely come back to Rome again, old or young, sooner or later. Many have performed the rite, some secretly, sadly, heartbroken, for love of Rome and what it holds, and others gayly, many together, laughing, while they half believe, and sometimes believing altogether while they laugh. And some who loved, and could meet only in Rome, have gone there together, and women's tears have sometimes dropped upon the silvered water that reflected the sad faces of grave men. The foremost memories of the past in Trevi centre about the ancient family of the Colonna, still numerous, distinguished and flourishing after a career of nearly a thousand years--longer than that, it may be, if one take into account the traditions of them that go back beyond the earliest authentic mention of their greatness; a race of singular independence and energy, which has given popes to Rome, and great patriots, and great generals as well, and neither least nor last, Vittoria, princess and poetess, whose name calls up the gentlest memories of Michelangelo's elder years. The Colonna were originally hill men. The earliest record of them tells that their great lands towards Palestrina were confiscated by the Church, in the eleventh century. The oldest of their titles is that of Duke of Paliano, a town still belonging to them, rising on an eminence out of the plain beyond the Alban hills. The greatest of their early fortresses was Palestrina, still the seat and title estate of the Barberini branch of the family. Their original stronghold in Rome was almost on the site of their present palace, being then situated on the opposite side of the Basilica of the Santi Apostoli, where the headquarters of the Dominicans now are, and running upwards and backwards, thence, to the Piazza della Pilotta; but they held Rome by a chain of towers and fortifications, from the Quirinal to the Mausoleum of Augustus, now hidden among the later buildings, between the Corso, the Tiber, the Via de' Pontefici and the Via de' Schiavoni. The present palace and the basilica stood partly upon the site of the ancient quarters occupied by the first Cohort of the Vigiles, or city police, of whom about seven thousand preserved order when the population of ancient Rome exceeded two millions. The 'column,' from which the Colonna take their name, is generally supposed to have stood in the market-place of the village of that name in the higher part of the Campagna, between the Alban and the Samnite hills, on the way to Palestrina. It is a peaceful and vine-clad country, now. South of it rise the low heights of Tusculum, and it is more than probable that the Colonna were originally descended from the great counts who tyrannized over Rome from that strong point of vantage and, through them, from Theodora Senatrix. Be that as it may, their arms consist of a simple column, used on a shield, or as a crest, or as the badge of the family, and it is found in many a threadbare tapestry, in many a painting, in the frescos and carved ornaments of many a dim old church in Rome. [Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF TREVI] In their history, the first fact that stands out is their adherence to the Emperors, as Ghibellines, whereas their rivals, the Orsini, were Guelphs and supporters of the Church in most of the great contests of the Middle Age. The exceptions to the rule are found when the Colonna had a Pope of their own, or one who, like Nicholas the Fourth, was of their own making. 'That Pope,' says Muratori, 'had so boundlessly favoured the aggrandizement of the Colonna that his actions depended entirely upon their dictates, and a libel was published upon him, entitled the Source of Evil, illustrated by a caricature, in which the mitred head of the Pontiff was seen issuing from a tall column between two smaller ones, the latter intended to represent the two living cardinals of the house, Jacopo and Pietro.' Yet in the next reign, when they impeached the election of Boniface the Eighth, they found themselves in opposition to the Holy See, and they and theirs were almost utterly destroyed by the Pope's partisans and kinsmen, the powerful Caetani. Just before him, after the Holy See had been vacant for two years and nearly four months, because the Conclave of Perugia could not agree upon a Pope, a humble southern hermit of the Abruzzi, Pietro da Morrone, had been suddenly elevated to the Pontificate, to his own inexpressible surprise and confusion, and after a few months of honest, but utterly fruitless, effort to understand and do what was required of him, he had taken the wholly unprecedented step of abdicating the papacy. He was succeeded by Benedict Caetani, Boniface the Eighth, keen, learned, brave, unforgiving and the mortal foe of the Colonna; 'the magnanimous sinner,' as Gibbon quotes from a chronicle, 'who entered like a fox, reigned like a lion and died like a dog.' Yet the judgment is harsh, for though his sins were great, the expiation was fearful, and he was brave as few men have been. Samson slew a lion with his hands, and the Philistines with the jaw-bone of an ass. Men have always accepted the Bible's account of the slaughter. But when an ass, without the aid of any Samson, killed a lion in the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Priori, in Florence, the event was looked upon as of evil portent, exceeding the laws of nature. For Pope Boniface had presented the Commonwealth of Florence with a young and handsome lion, which was chained up and kept in the court of the palace aforesaid. A donkey laden with firewood was driven in, and 'either from fear, or by a miracle,' as the chronicle says, at once assailed the lion with the utmost ferocity, and kicked him to death, in spite of the efforts of a number of men to drag the beast of burden off. Of the two hypotheses, the wise men of the day preferred the supernatural explanation, and one of them found an ancient Sibylline prophecy to the effect that 'when the tame beast should kill the king of beasts, the dissolution of the Church should begin.' Which saying, adds Villani, was presently fulfilled in Pope Boniface. For the Pope had a mortal quarrel with Philip the Fair of France whom he had promised to make Emperor, and had then passed over in favour of Albert, son of Rudolph of Hapsburg; and Philip made a friend and ally of Stephen Colonna, the head of the great house, who was then in France, and drove Boniface's legate out of his kingdom, and allowed the Count of Artois to burn the papal letters. The Pope retorted by a Major Excommunication, and the quarrel became furious. The Colonna being under his hand, Boniface vented his anger upon them, drove them from Rome, destroyed their houses, levelled Palestrina to the ground, and ploughed up the land where it had stood. The six brothers of the house were exiles and wanderers. Old Stephen, the idol of Petrarch, alone and wretched, was surrounded by highwaymen, who asked who he was. 'Stephen Colonna,' he answered, 'a Roman citizen.' And the thieves fell back at the sound of the great name. Again, someone asked him with a sneer where all his strongholds were, since Palestrina was gone. 'Here,' he answered, unmoved, and laying his hand upon his heart. Of such stuff were the Pope's enemies. Nor could he crush them. Boniface was of Anagni, a city of prehistoric walls and ancient memories which belonged to the Caetani; and there, in the late summer, he was sojourning for rest and country air, with his cardinals and his court and his kinsmen about him. Among the cardinals was Napoleon Orsini. [Illustration: GRAND HALL OF THE COLONNA PALACE] Then came William of Nogaret, sent by the King of France, and Sciarra Colonna, the boldest man of his day, and many other nobles, with three hundred knights and many footmen. For a long time they had secretly plotted a master-stroke of violence, spending money freely among the people, and using all persuasion to bring the country to their side, yet with such skill and caution that not the slightest warning reached the Pope's ears. In calm security he rose early on the morning of the seventh of September. He believed his position assured, his friends loyal and the Colonna ruined for ever; and Colonna was at the gate. Suddenly, from below the walls, a cry of words came up to the palace windows; long drawn out, distinct in the still mountain air. 'Long live the King of France! Death to Pope Boniface!' It was taken up by hundreds of voices, and repeated, loud, long and terrible, by the people of the town, by men going out to their work in the hills, by women loitering on their doorsteps, by children peering out, half frightened, from behind their mothers' scarlet woollen skirts, to see the armed men ride up the stony way. Cardinals, chamberlains, secretaries, men-at-arms, fled like sheep; and when Colonna reached the palace wall, only the Pope's own kinsmen remained within to help him as they could, barring the great doors and posting themselves with crossbows at the grated window. For the Caetani were always brave men. But Boniface knew that he was lost, and calmly, courageously, even grandly, he prepared to face death. 'Since I am betrayed,' he said, 'and am to die, I will at least die as a Pope should!' So he put on the great pontifical chasuble, and set the tiara of Constantine upon his head, and, taking the keys and the crosier in his hands, sat down on the papal throne to await death. The palace gates were broken down, and then there was no more resistance, for the defenders were few. In a moment Colonna in his armour stood before the Pontiff in his robes; but he saw only the enemy of his race, who had driven out his great kinsmen, beggars and wanderers on the earth, and he lifted his visor and looked long at his victim, and then at last found words for his wrath, and bitter reproaches and taunts without end and savage curses in the broad-spoken Roman tongue. And William of Nogaret began to speak, too, and threatened to take Boniface to Lyons where a council of the Church should depose him and condemn him to ignominy. Boniface answered that he should expect nothing better than to be deposed and condemned by a man whose father and mother had been publicly burned for their crimes. And this was true of Nogaret, who was no gentleman. A legend says that Colonna struck the Pope in the face, and that he afterwards made him ride on an ass, sitting backwards, after the manner of the times. But no trustworthy chronicle tells of this. On the contrary, no one laid hands upon him while he was kept a prisoner under strict watch for three days, refusing to touch food; for even if he could have eaten he feared poison. And Colonna tried to force him to abdicate, as Pope Celestin had done before him, but he refused stoutly; and when the three days were over, Colonna went away, driven out, some say, by the people of Anagni who turned against him. But that is absurd, for Anagni is a little place and Colonna had a strong force of good soldiers with him. Possibly, seeing that the old man refused to eat, Sciarra feared lest he should be said to have starved the Pope to death. They went away and left him, carrying off his treasures with them, and he returned to Rome, half mad with anger, and fell into the hands of the Orsini cardinals, who judged him not sane and kept him a prisoner at the Vatican, where he died soon afterwards, consumed by his wrath. And before long the Colonna had their own again and rebuilt Palestrina and their palace in Rome. Twenty-five years later they were divided against each other, in the wild days when Lewis the Bavarian, excommunicated and at war with the Pope, was crowned and consecrated Emperor, by the efforts of an extraordinary man of genius, Castruccio degli Interminelli, known better as Castruccio Castracane, the Ghibelline lord of Lucca who made Italy ring with his deeds for twenty years, and died of a fever, in the height of his success and glory, at the age of forty-seven years. Sciarra Colonna was for him and for Lewis. Stephen, head of the house, was against them, and in those days when Rome was frantic for an Emperor, Stephen's son Jacopo had the quiet courage to bring out the Bull of Excommunication against the chosen Emperor and nail it to the door of San Marcello, in the Corso, in the heart of Rome and in the sight of a thousand angry men, in protest against what they meant to do--against what was doing even at that moment. And he reached Palestrina in safety, shaking the dust of Rome from his feet. But on that bright winter's day, Lewis of Bavaria and his queen rode down from Santa Maria Maggiore by the long and winding ways towards Saint Peter's. The streets were all swept and strewn with yellow sand and box leaves and myrtle that made the air fragrant, and from every window and balcony gorgeous silks and tapestries were hung, and even ornaments of gold and silver and jewels. Before the procession rode standard-bearers, four for each Region, on horses most richly caparisoned. There rode Sciarra Colonna, and beside him, for once in history, Orsino Orsini, and others, all dressed in cloth of gold, and Castruccio Castracane, wearing that famous sword which in our own times was offered by Italy to King Victor Emmanuel; and many other Barons rode there in splendid array, and there was great concourse of the people. So they came to Saint Peter's; and because the Count of the Lateran should by right have been the Emperor's sponsor at the anointing, and had left Rome in anger and disdain, Lewis made Castruccio a knight of the Empire and Count of the Lateran in his stead, and sponsor; and two excommunicated Bishops consecrated the Emperor, and anointed him, and Sciarra Colonna crowned him and his queen. After which they feasted in the evening at the Aracoeli, and slept in the Capitol, because they were all weary with the long ceremony, and it was too late to go home. The chronicler's comment is curious. 'Note,' he says, 'what presumption was this, of the aforesaid damned Bavarian, such as thou shalt not find in any ancient or recent history; for never did any Christian Emperor cause himself to be crowned save by the Pope or his legate, even though opposed to the Church, neither before then nor since, except this Bavarian.' But Sciarra and Castruccio had their way, and Lewis did what even Napoleon, master of the world by violent chance, would not do. And twenty years later, in the same chronicle, it is told how 'Lewis of Bavaria, who called himself Emperor, fell with his horse, and was killed suddenly, without penitence, excommunicated and damned by Holy Church.' It is a curious coincidence that Boniface the Eighth, Sciarra's prisoner, and Lewis the Bavarian, whom he crowned Emperor, both died on the eleventh of October, according to most authorities. The Senate of Rome had dwindled to a pitiable office, held by one man. At or about this time, the Colonna and the Orsini agreed by a compromise that there should be two, chosen from their two houses. The Popes were in Avignon, and men who could make Emperors were more than able to do as they pleased with a town of twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants, so long as the latter had no leader. One may judge of what Rome was, when even pilgrims did not dare to go thither and visit the tomb of Saint Peter. The discord of the great houses made Rienzi's life a career; the defection of the Orsini from the Pope's party led to his flight; their battles suggested to the exiled Pope the idea of sending him back to Rome to break their power and restore a republic by which the Pope might restore himself; and the rage of their retainers expended itself in his violent death. For it was their retainers who fought for their masters, till the younger Stephen Colonna killed Bertoldo Orsini, the bravest man of his day, in an ambush, and the Orsini basely murdered a boy of the Colonna on the steps of a church. But Rienzi was of another Region, of the Regola by the Tiber, and it is not yet time to tell his story. And by and by, as the power of the Popes rose and they became again as the Cæsars had been, Colonna and Orsini forgot their feuds, and were glad to stand on the Pope's right and left as hereditary 'Assistants of the Holy See.' In the petty ending of all old greatnesses in modern times, the result of the greatest feud that ever made two races mortal foes is merely that no prudent host dare ask the heads of the two houses to dinner together, lest a question of precedence should arise, such as no master of ceremonies would presume to settle. That is what it has come to. Once upon a time an Orsini quarrelled with a Colonna in the Corso, just where Aragno's café is now situated, and ran him through with his rapier, wounding him almost to death. He was carried into the palace of the Theodoli, close by, and the records of that family tell that within the hour eight hundred of the Colonna's retainers were in the house to guard him. In as short space, the Orsini called out three thousand men in arms, when Cæsar Borgia's henchman claimed the payment of a tax. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE MAUSOLEUM OF AUGUSTUS From a print of the last century] Times have changed since then. The Mausoleum of Augustus, once a fortress, has been an open air theatre in our time, and there the great Salvini and Ristori often acted in their early youth; it is a circus now. And in less violent contrast, but with change as great from what it was, the palace of the Colonna suggests no thought of defence nowadays, and the wide gates and courtyard recall rather the splendours of the Constable and of his wife, Maria Mancini, niece of Cardinal Mazarin, than the fiercer days when Castracane was Sciarra's guest on the other side of the church. The Basilica of the Apostles is said to have been built by Pelagius the First, who was made Pope in the year 555, and who dedicated it to Saint Philip and Saint James. Recent advances in the study of archæology make it seem more than probable that he adapted for the purpose a part of the ancient barracks of the Vigiles, of which the central portion appears almost to coincide with the present church, at a somewhat different angle; and in the same way it is likely that the remains of the north wing were rebuilt at a later period by the Colonna as a fortified palace. In those times men would not have neglected to utilize the massive substructures and walls. However that may be, the Colonna dwelt there at a very early date, and in eight hundred years or more have only removed their headquarters from one side of the church to the other. The latter has been changed and rebuilt, and altered again, like most of the great Roman sanctuaries, till it bears no resemblance to the original building. The present church is distinctly ugly, with the worst defects of the early eighteenth century; and that age was as deficient in cultivated taste as it was abhorrent of natural beauty. Some fragments of the original frescos that adorned the apse are now preserved in a hall behind the main Sacristy of Saint Peter's. Against the flat walls, under the inquisition of the crudest daylight, the fragments of Melozzo da Forli's masterpiece are masterpieces still; the angelic faces, imprisoned in a place not theirs, reflect the sadness of art's captivity; and the irretrievable destruction of an inimitable past excites the pity and resentment of thoughtful men. The attempt to outdo the works of the great has exhibited the contemptible imbecility of the little, and the coarse-grained vanity of Clement the Eleventh has parodied the poetry of art in the bombastic prose of a vulgar tongue. Pope Pelagius took for his church the pillars and marbles of Trajan's Forum, in the belief that his acts were acceptable to God; but Clement had no such excuse, and the edifice which was a monument of faith has given place to the temple of a monumental vanity. [Illustration: FORUM OF TRAJAN] It is remarkable that the Colonna rarely laid their dead in the Church of the Apostles, for it was virtually theirs by right of immediate neighbourhood, and during their domination they could easily have assumed actual possession of it as a private property. A very curious custom, which survived in the sixteenth century, and perhaps much later, bears witness to the close connection between their family and the church. At that time a gallery existed, accessible from the palace and looking down into the basilica, so that the family could assist at Mass without leaving their dwelling. On the afternoon of the first of May, which is the traditional feast of this church, the poor of the neighbourhood assembled within. The windows of the palace gallery were then thrown open and a great number of fat fowls were thrown alive to the crowd, turkeys, geese and the like, to flutter down to the pavement and be caught by the luckiest of the people in a tumultuous scramble. When this was over, a young pig was swung out and lowered in slings by a purchase of which the block was seized to a roof beam. When just out of reach the rope was made fast, and the most active of the men jumped for the animal from below, till one was fortunate enough to catch it with his hands, when the rope was let go, and he carried off the prize. The custom was evidently similar to that of climbing the May-pole, which was set up on the same day in the Campo Vaccino. May-day was one of the oldest festivals of the Romans, for it was sacred to the tutelary Lares, or spirits of ancestors, and was kept holy, both publicly by the whole city as the habitation of the Roman people, and by each family in its private dwelling. It is of Aryan origin and is remembered in one way or another by all Aryan races in our own time, and it is not surprising that in the general conversion of Paganism to Christianity a new feast should have been intentionally made to coincide with an old one; but it is hard to understand the lack of all reverence for sacred places which could admit such a scene as the scrambling for live fowls and pigs in honour of the twelve Apostles, a pious exercise which is perhaps paralleled, though assuredly not equalled, in crudeness, by the old Highland custom of smoking tobacco in kirk throughout the sermon. At the very time when we have historical record of a Pope's presence as an amused spectator of the proceedings, Michelangelo had lately painted the ceiling of the Sixtine chapel, and had not yet begun his Last Judgment; and 'Diva' Vittoria Colonna, not yet the friend of his later years, was perhaps even then composing those strangely passionate spiritual sonnets which appeal to the soul through the heart, by the womanly pride that strove to make the heart subject to the soul. The commonplace romance which has represented Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo as in love with each other is as unworthy of both as it is wholly without foundation. They first met nine years before her death, when she was almost fifty and he was already sixty-four. She had then been widowed twelve years, and it was long since she had refused in Naples the princely suitors who made overtures for her hand. The true romance of her life was simpler, nobler and more enduring, for it began when she was a child, and it ended when she breathed her last in the house of Giuliano Cesarini, the kinsman of her people, whose descendant married her namesake in our own time. At the age of four, Vittoria was formally betrothed to Francesco d'Avalos, heir of Pescara, one of that fated race whose family history has furnished matter for more than one stirring tale. Vittoria was born in Marino, the Roman town and duchy which still gives its title to Prince Colonna's eldest son, and she was brought up in Rome and Naples, of which latter city her father was Grand Constable. Long before she was married, she saw her future husband and loved him at first sight, as she loved him to her dying day, so that although even greater offers were made for her, she steadfastly refused to marry any other man. They were united when she was seventeen years old, he loved her devotedly, and they spent many months together almost without other society in the island of Ischia. The Emperor Charles the Fifth was fighting his lifelong fight with Francis the First of France. Colonna and Pescara were for the Empire, and Francesco d'Avalos joined the imperial army; he was taken prisoner at Ravenna and carried captive to France; released, he again fought for Charles, who offered him the crown of the kingdom of Naples; but he refused it, and still he fought on, to fall at last at Pavia, in the strength of his mature manhood, and to die of his wounds in Milan when Vittoria was barely five and thirty years of age, still young, surpassingly beautiful, and gifted as few women have ever been. What their love was, their long correspondence tells,--a love passionate as youth and enduring as age, mutual, whole and faithful. For many years the heartbroken woman lived in Naples, where she had been most happy, feeding her soul with fire and tears. At last she returned to Rome, to her own people, in her forty-ninth year. There she was visited by the old Emperor for whom her husband had given his life, and there she met Michelangelo. It was natural enough that they should be friends. It is monstrous to suppose them lovers. The melancholy of their natures drew them together, and the sympathy of their tastes cemented the bond. To the woman-hating man of genius, this woman was a revelation and a wonder; to the great princess in her perpetual sorrow the greatest of creative minds was a solace and a constant intellectual delight. Their friendship was mutual, fitting and beautiful, which last is more than can be said for the absurd stories about their intercourse which are extant in print and have been made the subject of imaginary pictures by more than one painter. The tradition that they used to meet often in the little Church of Saint Sylvester, behind the Colonna gardens, rests upon the fact that they once held a consultation there in the presence of Francesco d'Olanda, a Portuguese artist, when Vittoria was planning the Convent of Saint Catherine, which she afterwards built not very far away. The truth is that she did not live in the palace of her kinsfolk after her return to Rome, but most probably in the convent attached to the other and greater Church of Saint Sylvester which stands in the square of that name not far from the Corso. The convent itself is said to have been originally built for the ladies of the Colonna who took the veil, and was only recently destroyed to make room for the modern Post-office, the church itself having passed into the hands of the English. The coincidence of the two churches being dedicated to the same saint doubtless helped the growth of the unjust fable. But in an age of great women, in the times of Lucrezia Borgia, great and bad, of Catherine Sforza, great and warlike, Vittoria Colonna was great and good; and the ascetic Michelangelo, discovering in her the realization of an ideal, laid at her feet the homage of a sexagenarian's friendship. In the battle of the archæologists the opposing forces traverse and break ground, and rush upon each other again, 'hurtling together like wild boars,'--as Mallory describes the duels of his knights,--and when learned doctors disagree it is not the province of a searcher after romance to attempt a definition of exact truths. 'Some romances entertain the genius,' quotes Johnson, 'and strengthen it by the noble ideas which they give of things; but they corrupt the truth of history.' Professor Lanciani, who is probably the greatest authority, living or dead, on Roman antiquities, places the site of the temple of the Sun in the Colonna gardens, and another writer compares the latter to the hanging gardens of Babylon, supported entirely on ancient arches and substructures rising high above the natural soil below. But before Aurelian erected the splendid building to record his conquest of Palmyra, the same spot was the site of the 'Little Senate,' instituted by Elagabalus in mirthful humour, between an attack of sacrilegious folly and a fit of cruelty. The 'Little Senate' was a woman's senate; in other words, it was a regular assembly of the fashionable Roman matrons of the day, who met there in hours of idleness under the presidency of the Emperor's mother, Semiamira. Ælius Lampridius, quoted by Baracconi, has a passage about it. 'From this Senate,' he says, 'issued the absurd laws for the matrons, entitled Semiamiran Senatorial Decrees, which determined for each matron how she might dress, to whom she must yield precedence, by whom she might be kissed, deciding which ladies might drive in chariots, and which in carts, and whether the latter should be drawn by caparisoned horses, or by asses, or by mules, or oxen; who should be allowed to be carried in a litter or a chair, which might be of leather or of bone with fittings of ivory or of silver, as the case might be; and it was even determined which ladies might wear shoes adorned only with gold, and which might have gems set in their boots.' Considering how little human nature has changed in eighteen hundred years it is easy enough to imagine what the debates in the 'Little Senate' must have been with Semiamira in the chair ruling everything 'out of order' which did not please her capricious fancy: the shrill discussions about a fashionable head-dress, the whispered intrigues for a jewel-studded slipper, the stormy divisions on the question of gold hairpins, and the atmosphere of beauty, perfumes, gossip, vanity and all feminine dissension. But the 'Little Senate' was short-lived. Some fifty years after Elagabalus, Aurelian triumphed over Zenobia of Palmyra, and built his temple of the Sun. That triumph was the finest sight, perhaps, ever seen in imperial Rome. Twenty richly caparisoned elephants and two hundred captive wild beasts led the immense procession; eight hundred pairs of gladiators came next, the glory and strength of fighting manhood, with all their gleaming arms and accoutrements, marching by the huge Flavian Amphitheatre, where sooner or later they must fight each other to the death; then countless captives of the East and South and West and North, Syrian nobles, Gothic warriors, Persian dignitaries beside Frankish chieftains, and Tetricus, the great Gallic usurper, in the attire of his nation, with his young son whom he had dared to make a Senator in defiance of the Empire. Three royal equipages followed, rich with silver, gold and precious stones, one of them Zenobia's own, and she herself seated therein, young, beautiful, proud and vanquished, loaded from head to foot with gems, most bitterly against her will, her hands and feet bound with a golden chain, and about her neck another, long and heavy, of which the end was held by a Persian captive who walked beside the chariot and seemed to lead her. Then Aurelian, the untiring conqueror, in the car of the Gothic king, drawn by four great stags, which he himself was to sacrifice to Jove that day according to his vow, and a long line of wagons loaded down and groaning under the weight of the vast spoil; the Roman army, horse and foot, the Senate and the people, a million, perhaps, all following the indescribable magnificence of the great triumph, along the Sacred Way, that was yellow with fresh strewn sand and sweet with box and myrtle. [Illustration: RUINS OF HADRIAN'S VILLA AT TIVOLI] But when it was over, Aurelian, who was generous when he was not violent, honoured Zenobia and endowed her with great fortune, and she lived for many years as a Roman Matron in Hadrian's villa at Tivoli. And the Emperor made light of the 'Little Senate' and built his Sun temple on the spot, with singular magnificence, enriching its decoration with pearls and precious stones and with fifteen thousand pounds in weight of pure gold. Much of that temple was still standing in the seventeenth century and was destroyed by Urban the Eighth, the Pope who built the heavy round tower on the south side of the Quirinal palace, facing Monte Cavallo. Monte Cavallo itself was a part of the Colonna villa, and its name, only recently changed to Piazza del Quirinale, was given to it by the great horses that stand on each side of the fountain, and which were found long ago, according to tradition, between the Palazzo Rospigliosi and the Palazzo della Consulta. In the times of Sixtus the Fifth, they were in a pitiable state, their forelegs and tails gone, their necks broken, their heads propped up by bits of masonry. When he finished the Quirinal palace he restored them and set them up, side by side, before the entrance, and when Pius the Sixth changed their position and turned them round, the ever conservative and ever discontented Roman people were disgusted by the change. On the pedestal of one of them are the words, 'Opus Phidiae,' 'the work of Phidias,' A punning placard was at once stuck upon the inscription with the legend, 'Opus Perfidiae Pii Sexti'--'the work of perfidy of Pius the Sixth.' The Quirinal palace cannot be said to have played a part in the history of Rome. Its existence is largely due to the common sense of Sixtus the Fifth, and to his love of good air. He was a shepherd by birth, and it is recorded that the first of his bitter disappointments was that the farmer whom he served set him to feed the pigs because he could not learn how to drive sheep to pasture; a disgrace which ultimately made him run away, when he fell in with a monk whose face he liked. He informed the astonished father that he meant to follow him everywhere, 'to Hell, if he chose,'--which was a forcible if not a pious resolution,--and explained that the pigs would find their way home alone. Later, when he had quarrelled with all the monks in Naples, including his superiors, he came to Rome, and, being by that time very learned, he was employed to expound the 'Formalities' of Scotus to the 'Signor' Marcantonio Colonna, abbot of the Monastery of the Apostles; and there he resided as a guest for a long time till his brilliant pupil was himself master of the subject, as well as a firm friend of the quarrelsome monk; and in their intercourse the seeds were no doubt sown of that implacable hatred against the Orsini which, under the great and just provocation of a kinsman's murder, ended in the exile and temporary ruin of the Colonna's rivals. No doubt, also, the abbot and the monk often strolled together in the Colonna gardens, and the future Pope breathed the high air of the Quirinal hill with a sense of relief, and dreamed of living up there, far above the city, literally in an atmosphere of his own. Therefore, when he was Pope, he made the great palace that crowns the eminence, completing and extending a much smaller building planned by the wise Gregory the Thirteenth, and ever since then, until 1870, the Popes lived there during some part of the year. It is modern, as age is reckoned in Rome, and it has modern associations in the memory of living men. It was from the great balcony of the Quirinal that Pius the Ninth pronounced his famous benediction to an enthusiastic and patriotic multitude in 1846. It will be remembered that a month after his election, Pius proclaimed a general amnesty in favour of all persons imprisoned for political crimes, and a decree by which all criminal prosecutions for political offences should be immediately discontinued, unless the persons accused were ecclesiastics, soldiers, or servants of the government, or criminals in the universal sense of the word. The announcement was received with a frenzy of enthusiasm, and Rome went mad with delight. Instinctively, the people began to move towards the Quirinal from all parts of the city, as soon as the proclamation was published; the stragglers became a band, and swelled to a crowd; music was heard, flags appeared and the crowd swelled to a multitude that thronged the streets, singing, cheering and shouting for joy as they pushed their way up to the palace, filling the square, the streets that led to it and the Via della Dateria below it, to overflowing. In answer to this popular demonstration the Pope appeared upon the great balcony above the main entrance; a shout louder than all the rest burst from below, the long drawn 'Viva!' of the southern races; he lifted his hand, and there was silence; and in the calm summer air his quiet eyes were raised towards the sky as he imparted his benediction to the people of Rome. Twenty-four years later, when the Italians had taken Rome, a detachment of soldiers accompanied by a smith and his assistants marched up to the same gate. Not a soul was within, and they had instructions to enter and take possession of the palace. In the presence of a small and silent crowd of sullen-looking men of the people, the doors were forced. The difference between Unity under Augustus and Unity under Victor Emmanuel is that under the Empire the Romans took Italy, whereas under the Kingdom the Italians have taken Rome. Without pretending that there can be any moral distinction between the two, one may safely admit that there is a great and vital one between the two conditions of Rome, at the two periods of history, a distinction no less than that which separates the conqueror from the conquered, and the fruits of conquest from the consequences of subjection. But thinking men do not forget that they look at the past in one way and at the present in another; and that while the actions of a nation are dictated by the impulses of contagious sentiment, the judgments of history are too often based upon an all but commercial reckoning and balancing of profit and loss. When Sixtus the Fifth was building the Quirinal palace, he was not working in a wilderness resembling the deserted fields of the outlying Monti. The hill was covered with gardens and villas. Ippolito d'Este, the son of Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, and of Lucrezia Borgia, had built himself a residence on the west side of the hill, surrounded by gardens. It was in the manner of his magnificent palace at Tivoli, that Villa d'Este of which the melancholy charm had such a mysterious attraction for Liszt, where the dark cypresses reflect their solemn beauty in the stagnant water, and a weed-grown terrace mourns the dead artist in the silence of decay. [Illustration: PALAZZO DEL QUIRINALE] Further on, along the Via Venti Settembre, stretched the pleasure grounds of Oliviero, Cardinal Carafa, who is remembered as the man who first recognized the merits of the beautiful mutilated group subsequently known as 'Pasquino,' and set it upon the pedestal which made it famous, and gave its name a place in all languages, by the witty lampoons and stinging satires almost daily affixed to the block of stone. Many other villas followed in the same direction, and in those insecure days not a few Romans, when the summer days grew hot, were content to move up from their palaces in the lower parts of the city to breathe the somewhat better air of the Quirinal and the Esquiline, instead of risking a journey to the country. Sixtus the Fifth died in the Quirinal palace, and twenty-one other Popes have died there since, all following the curious custom of bequeathing their hearts and viscera to the parish Church of the Saints Vincent and Anastasius, which is known as the Church of Cardinal Mazarin, because the tasteless front was built by him, though the rest existed much earlier. It stands opposite the fountain of Trevi, at one corner of the little square; the vault in which the urns were placed is just behind and below the high altar; but Benedict the Fourteenth built a special monument for them on the left of the apse, and a tablet on the right records the names of the Popes who left these strange legacies to the church. In passing, one may remember that Mazarin himself was born in the Region of Trevi, the son of a Sicilian,--like Crispi and Rudinì. His father was employed at first as a butler and then as a steward by the Colonna, married an illegitimate daughter of the family, and lived to see his granddaughter, Maria Mancini, married to the head of the house, and his son a cardinal and despot of France, and himself, after the death of his first wife, the honoured husband of Porzia Orsini, so that he was the only man in history who was married both to an Orsini and to a Colonna. In the light of his father's extraordinary good fortune, the success of the son, though not less great, is at least less astonishing. The magnificent Rospigliosi palace, often ascribed by a mistake to Cardinal Scipio Borghese, was the Palazzo Mazarini and Mazarin's father died there; it was inherited by the Dukes of Nevers, through another niece of the Cardinal's, and was bought from them between 1667 and 1670, by Prince Rospigliosi, brother of Pope Clement the Ninth, then reigning. Urban the Eighth, the Barberini Pope, had already left his mark on the Quirinal hill. The great Barberini palace was built by him, it is said, of stones taken from the Colosseum, whereupon a Pasquinade announced that 'the Barberini had done what the Barbarians had not.' The Barbarians did not pull down the Colosseum, it is true, but they could assuredly not have built as Urban did, and in that particular instance, without wishing to justify the vandalisms of the centuries succeeding the Renascence, it may well be asked whether the Amphitheatre is not more picturesque in its half-ruined state, as it stands, and whether the city is not richer by a great work of art in the princely dwelling which faces the street of the Four Fountains. Among the many memories of the Quirinal there is one more mysterious than the rest. The great Baths of Constantine extended over the site of the Palazzo Rospigliosi, and the ruins were in part standing at the end of the sixteenth century. It is related by a writer of those days and an eye-witness of the fact, that a vault was discovered beneath the old baths, about eighty feet long by twenty wide, closed at one end by a wall thrown up with evident haste and lack of skill, and completely filled with human bodies that fell to dust at the first touch, evidently laid there all at the same time, just after death, and probably numbering at least a thousand. In vain one conjectures the reason of such wholesale burial--one of Nero's massacres, perhaps, or a plague. No one can tell. The invaluable Baracconi, often quoted, recalls the fact that Tasso, when a child, lived with his father in some house on the Monte Cavallo, when the execrable Carafa cardinal and his brother had temporarily succeeded in seizing all the Colonna property; and he gives a letter of Bernardo, the poet's father, written in July to his wife, who was away just then. [Illustration: PIAZZA BARBERINI] 'I do not wish the children to go to the vineyard because they get too hot, and the air is bad there this summer, but in order that they may have a change, I took steps to have the use of the Boccaccio Vineyard [Villa Colonna], and the Duke of Paliano [then a Carafa, for the latter had stolen the title as well as the lands] has let me have it, and we have been here a week and shall stay all summer in this good air.' The words call up a picture of Tasso, a small boy, pale with the heat of a Roman summer, but restless and for ever running about, overheated and catching cold like all delicate children, which brings the unhappy poet a little nearer to us. Of those great villas and gardens there remain the Colonna, the Rospigliosi and the Quirinal, by far the largest of the three, and enclosing between four walls an area almost, if not quite, equal to the Pincio. The great palace where twenty-two popes died is inhabited by the royal family of Italy and crowns the height, as the Vatican, far away across the Tiber, is also on an eminence of its own. They face each other, like two principles in natural and eternal opposition,--Rome the conqueror of the world, and Italy the conqueror of Rome. And he who loves the land for its own sake can only pray that if they must oppose each other for ever in heart, they may abide in that state of civilized though unreconciled peace, which is the nation's last and only hope of prosperity. [Illustration] REGION III COLONNA When the present Queen of Italy first came to Rome as Princess Margaret, and drove through the city to obtain a general impression of it, she reached the Piazza Colonna and asked what the column might be which is the most conspicuous landmark in that part of Rome and gives a name to the square, and to the whole Region. The answer of the elderly officer who accompanied the Princess and her ladies is historical. 'That column,' he answered, 'is the Column of Piazza Colonna'--'the Column of Column Square,' as we might say--and that was all he could tell concerning it, for his business was not archæology, but soldiering. The column was erected by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, whose equestrian statue stands on the Capitol, to commemorate his victory over the Marcomanni. [Illustration: ARCH OF TITUS] It is remarkable that so many of the monuments still preserved comparatively intact should have been set up by the adoptive line of the so-called Antonines, from Trajan to Marcus Aurelius, and that the two monster columns, the one in Piazza Colonna and the one in Trajan's Forum, should be the work of the last and the first of those emperors, respectively. Among other memorials of them are the Colosseum, the Arch of Titus and the statue mentioned above. The lofty Septizonium is levelled to the ground, the Palaces of the Cæsars are a mountain of ruins, the triumphal arches of Marcus Aurelius and of Domitian have disappeared with those of Gratian, of Valens, of Arcadius and of many others; but the two gigantic columns still stand erect with their sculptured tales of victory and triumph almost unbroken, surmounted by the statues of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, whose memory was sacred to all Christians long before the monuments were erected, and to whom, respectively, they have been dedicated by a later age. There may have been a connection, too, in the minds of the people, between the 'Column of Piazza Colonna' and the Column of the Colonna family, since a great part of this Region had fallen under the domination of the noble house, and was held by them with a chain of towers and fortifications; but the pillar which is the device of the Region terminates in the statue of the Apostle Peter, whereas the one which figures in the shield of Colonna is crowned with a royal crown, in memory of the coronation of Lewis the Bavarian by Sciarra, who himself generally lived in a palace facing the small square which bears his name, and which is only a widening of the Corso just north of San Marcello, the scene of Jacopo Colonna's brave protest against his kinsman's mistaken imperialism. The straight Corso itself, or what is the most important part of it to Romans, runs through the Region from San Lorenzo in Lucina to Piazza di Sciarra, and beyond that, southwards, it forms the western boundary of Trevi as far as the Palazzo di Venezia, and the Ripresa de' Barberi--the 'Catching of the Racers.' West of the Corso, the Region takes in the Monte Citorio and the Piazza of the Pantheon, but not the Pantheon itself, and eastwards it embraces the new quarter which was formerly the Villa Ludovisi, and follows the Aurelian wall, from Porta Salaria to Porta Pinciana. Corso means a 'course,' and the Venetian Paul the Second, who found Rome dull compared with Venice, gave it the name when he made it a race-course for the Carnival, towards the close of the fifteenth century. Before that it was Via Lata,--'Broad Street,'--and was a straight continuation of the Via Flaminia, the main northern highway from the city. For centuries it has been the chief playground of the Roman Carnival, a festival of which, perhaps, nothing but the memory will remain in a few years, when the world will wonder how it could be possible that the population of the grave old city should have gone mad each year for ten days and behaved itself by day and night like a crowd of schoolboys let loose. 'Carnival' is supposed to be derived from 'Carnelevamen,' a 'solace for the flesh.' Byron alone is responsible for the barbarous derivation 'Carne Vale,' farewell meat--a philological impossibility. In the minds of the people it is probably most often translated as 'Meat Time,' a name which had full meaning in times when occasional strict fasting and frequent abstinence were imposed on Romans almost by law. Its beginnings are lost in the dawnless night of time--of Time, who was Kronos, of Kronos who was Saturn, of Saturn who gave his mysterious name to the Saturnalia in which Carnival had its origin. His temple stood at the foot of the Capitol hill, facing the corner of the Forum, and there are remains of it today, tall columns in a row, with architrave and frieze and cornice; from the golden milestone close at hand, as from the beginning of time, were measured the ways of the world to the ends of the earth; and the rites performed within it were older than any others, and different, for here the pious Roman worshipped with uncovered head, whereas in all other temples he drew up his robes as a veil lest any sight of evil omen should meet his eyes, and here waxen tapers were first burned in Rome in honour of a god. And those same tapers played a part, to the end, on the last night of Carnival. But in the coincidence of old feasts with new ones, the festival of Lupercus falls nearer to the time of Ash Wednesday, for the Lupercalia were celebrated on the fifteenth of February, whereas the Carnival of Saturn began on the seventeenth of December. Lupercus was but a little god, yet he was great among the shepherds in Rome's pastoral beginnings, for he was the driver away of wolves, and on his day the early settlers ran round and round their sheepfold on the Palatine, all dressed in skins of fresh-slain goats, praising the Faun god, and calling upon him to protect their flocks. And in truth, as the winter, when wolves are hungry and daring, was over, his protection was a foregone conclusion till the cold days came again. The grotto dedicated to him was on the northwest slope of the Palatine, nearly opposite the Church of Saint George in Velabro, across the Via di San Teodoro; and all that remains of the great festival in which Mark Antony and the rest ran like wild men through the streets of Rome, smiting men and women with the purifying leathern thong, and offering at last that crown which Cæsar thrice refused, is merged and forgotten, with the Saturnalia, in the ten days' feasting and rioting that change to the ashes and sadness of Lent, as the darkest night follows the brightest day. For the Romans always loved strong contrasts. Carnival, in the wider sense, begins at Christmas and ends when Lent begins; but to most people it means but the last ten days of the season, when festivities crowd upon each other till pleasure fights for minutes as for jewels; when tables are spread all night and lights are put out at dawn; when society dances itself into distraction and poor men make such feasting as they can; when no one works who can help it, and no work done is worth having, because it is done for double price and half its value; when affairs of love are hastened to solution or catastrophe, and affairs of state are treated with the scorn they merit in the eyes of youth, because the only sense is laughter, and the only wisdom, folly. That is Carnival, personified by the people as a riotous old red-cheeked, bottle-nosed hunchback, animated by the spirit of fun. In a still closer sense, Carnival is the Carnival in the Corso, or was; for it is dead beyond resuscitation, and such efforts as are made to give it life again are but foolish incantations that call up sad ghosts of joy, spiritless and witless. But within living memory, it was very different. In those days which can never come back, the Corso was a sight to see and not to be forgotten. The small citizens who had small houses in the street let every window to the topmost story for the whole ten days; the rich whose palaces faced the favoured line threw open their doors to their friends; every window was decorated, from every balcony gorgeous hangings, or rich carpets, or even richer tapestries hung down; the street was strewn thick with yellow sand, and wheresoever there was an open space wooden seats were built up, row above row, where one might hire a place to see the show and join in throwing flowers, and the lime-covered 'confetti' that stung like small shot and whitened everything like meal, and forced everyone in the street or within reach of it to wear a shield of thin wire netting to guard the face, and thick gloves to shield the hands; or, in older times, a mask, black, white, or red, or modelled and painted with extravagant features, like evil beings in a dream. [Illustration: TWIN CHURCHES AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE CORSO From a print of the last century] In the early afternoon of each day except Sunday it all began, day after day the same, save that the fun grew wilder and often rougher as the doom of Ash Wednesday drew near. First when the people had gathered in their places, high and low, and already thronged the street from side to side, there was a distant rattle of scabbards and a thunder of hoofs, and all fell back, crowding and climbing upon one another, to let a score of cavalrymen trot through, clearing the way for the carriages of the 'Senator' and Municipality, which drove from end to end of the Corso with their scarlet and yellow liveries, before any other vehicles were allowed to pass, or any pelting with 'confetti' began. But on the instant when they had gone by, the showers began, right, left, upwards, downwards, like little storms of flowers and snow in the afternoon sunshine, and the whole air was filled with the laughter and laughing chatter of twenty thousand men and women and children--such a sound as could be heard nowhere else in the world. Many have heard a great host cheer, many have heard the battle-cries of armies, many have heard the terrible deep yell that goes up from an angry multitude in times of revolution; but only those who remember the Carnival as it used to be have heard a whole city laugh, and the memory is worth having, for it is like no other. The sound used to flow along in great waves, following the sights that passed, and swelling with them to a peal that was like a cheer, and ebbing then to a steady, even ripple of enjoyment that never ceased till it rose again in sheer joy of something new to see. Nothing can give an idea of the picture in times when Rome was still Roman; no power of description can call up the crowd that thronged and jammed the long, narrow street, till the slowly moving carriages and cars seemed to force their way through the stiffly packed mass of humanity as a strong vessel ploughs her course up-stream through packed ice in winter. Yet no one was hurt, and an order reigned which could never have been produced by any means except the most thorough good temper and the determination of each individual to do no harm to his neighbour, though all respect of individuals was as completely gone as in any anarchy of revolution. The more respectable a man looked who ventured into the press in ordinary clothes, the more certainly he became at once the general mark for hail-storms of 'confetti.' No uniform nor distinguishing badge was respected, excepting those of the squad of cavalrymen who cleared the way, and the liveries of the Municipality's coaches. Men and women were travestied and disguised in every conceivable way, as Punch and Judy, as judges and lawyers with enormous square black caps, black robes and bands, or in dresses of the eighteenth century, or as Harlequins, or even as bears and monkeys, singly, or in twos and threes, or in little companies of fifteen or twenty, all dressed precisely alike and performing comic evolutions with military exactness. Everyone carried a capacious pouch, or a fishing-basket, or some receptacle of the kind for the white 'confetti,' and arms and hands were ceaselessly swung in air, flinging vast quantities of the snowy stuff at long range and short. At every corner and in every side street, men sold it out of huge baskets, by the five, and ten, and twenty pounds, weighing it out with the ancient steelyard balance. Every balcony was lined with long troughs of it, constantly replenished by the house servants; every carriage and car had a full supply. And through all the air the odd, clean odour of the fresh plaster mingled with the fragrance of the box-leaves and the perfume of countless flowers. For flowers were thrown, too, in every way, loose and scattered, or in hard little bunches, the 'mazzetti,' that almost hurt when they struck the mark, and in beautiful nosegays, rarely flung at random when a pretty face was within sight at a window. The cars, often charmingly decorated, were filled with men and women representing some period of fashion, or some incident in history, or some allegorical subject, and were sometimes two or three stories high, and covered all over with garlands of flowers and box and myrtle. In the intervals between them endless open carriages moved along, lined with white, filled with white dominos, drawn by horses all protected and covered with white cotton robes, against the whiter 'confetti'--everyone fighting mock battles with everyone else, till it seemed impossible that anything could be left to throw, and the long perspective of the narrow street grew dim between the high palaces, and misty and purple in the evening light. A gun fired somewhere far away as a signal warned the carriages to turn out, and make way for the race that was to follow. The last moments were the hottest and the wildest, as flowers, 'confetti,' sugar plums with comet-like tails, wreaths, garlands, everything, went flying through the air in a final and reckless profusion, and as the last car rolled away the laughter and shouting ceased, and all was hushed in the expectation of the day's last sight. Again, the clatter of hoofs and scabbards, as the dragoons cleared the way; twenty thousand heads and necks craning to look northward, as the people pushed back to the side pavements; silence, and the inevitable yellow dog that haunts all race-courses, scampering over the white street, scared by the shouts, and catcalls, and bursts of spasmodic laughter; then a far sound of flying hoofs, a dead silence, and the quick breathing of suppressed excitement; louder and louder the hoofs, deader the hush; and then, in the dash of a second, in the scud of a storm, in a whirlwind of light and colour and sparkling gold leaf, with straining necks, and flashing eyes, and wide red nostrils flecked with foam, the racing colts flew by as fleet as darting lightning, riderless and swift as rock-swallows by the sea. Then, if it were the last night of Carnival, as the purple air grew brown in the dusk, myriads of those wax tapers first used in Saturn's temple of old lit up the street like magic and the last game of all began, for every man and woman and child strove to put out another's candle, and the long, laughing cry, 'No taper! No taper! Senza moccolo!' went ringing up to the darkling sky. Long canes with cloths or damp sponges or extinguishers fixed to them started up from nowhere, down from everywhere, from window and balcony to the street below, and from the street to the low balconies above. Put out at every instant, the little candles were instantly relighted, till they were consumed down to the hand; and as they burned low, another cry went up, 'Carnival is dead! Carnival is dead!' But he was not really dead till midnight, when the last play of the season had been acted in the playhouses, the last dance danced, the last feast eaten amid song and laughter, and the solemn Patarina of the Capitol tolled out the midnight warning like a funeral knell. That was the end. The riderless race was at least four hundred years old when it was given up. The horses were always called Bárberi, with the accent on the first syllable, and there has been much discussion about the origin of the name. Some say that it meant horses from Barbary, but then it should be pronounced Barbéri, accented on the penultimate. Others think it stood for Bárbari--barbarian, that is, unridden. The Romans never misplace an accent, and rarely mistake the proper quantity of a syllable long or short. For my own part, though no scholar has as yet suggested it, I believe that the common people, always fond of easy witticisms and catchwords, coined the appellation, with an eye to the meaning of both the other derivations, out of Barbo, the family name of Pope Paul the Second, who first instituted the Carnival races, and set the winning post under the balcony of the huge Palazzo di Venezia, which he had built beside the Church of Saint Mark, to the honour and glory of his native city. He made men run foot-races, too: men, youths and boys, of all ages; and the poor Jews, in heavy cloth garments, were first fed and stuffed with cakes and then made to run, too. The jests of the Middle Age were savage compared with the roughest play of later times. The pictures of old Rome are fading fast. I can remember, when a little boy, seeing the great Carnival of 1859, when the Prince of Wales was in Rome, and the masks which had been forbidden since the revolution were allowed again in his honour; and before the flower throwing began, I saw Liszt, the pianist, not yet in orders, but dressed in a close-fitting and very fashionable grey frock-coat, with a grey high hat, young then, tall, athletic and erect; he came out suddenly from a doorway, looked to the right and left in evident fear of being made a mark for 'confetti,' crossed the street hurriedly and disappeared--not at all the silver-haired, priestly figure the world knew so well in later days. And by and by the Prince of Wales came by in a simple open carriage, a thin young man in a black coat, with a pale, face and a quiet smile, looking all about him with an almost boyish interest, and bowing to the right and left. Then in deep contrast of sadness, out of the past years comes a great funeral by night, down the Corso; hundreds of brown, white-bearded friars, two and two with huge wax candles, singing the ancient chant of the penitential psalms; hundreds of hooded lay brethren of the Confraternities, some in black, some in white, with round holes for their eyes that flashed through, now and then, in the yellow glare of the flaming tapers; hundreds of little street boys beside them in the shadow, holding up big horns of grocers' paper to catch the dripping wax; and then, among priests in cotta and stole, the open bier carried on men's shoulders, and on it the peaceful figure of a dead girl, white-robed, blossom crowned, delicate as a frozen flower in the cold winter air. She had died of an innocent love, they said, and she was borne in through the gates of the Santi Apostoli to her rest in the solemn darkness. Nor has anyone been buried in that way since then. [Illustration: SAN LORENZO IN LUCINA] In the days of Paul the Second, what might be called living Rome, taken in the direction of the Corso, began at the Arch of Marcus Aurelius, long attributed to Domitian, which stood at the corner of the small square called after San Lorenzo in Lucina. Beyond that point, northwards and eastwards, the city was a mere desert, and on the west side the dwelling-houses fell away towards the Mausoleum of Augustus, the fortress of the Colonna. The arch itself used to be called the Arch of Portugal, because a Portuguese Cardinal, Giovanni da Costa, lived in the Fiano palace at the corner of the Corso. No one would suppose that very modern-looking building, with its smooth front and conventional balconies, to be six hundred years old, the ancient habitation of all the successive Cardinals of Saint Lawrence. Its only other interest, perhaps, lies in the fact that it formed part of the great estates bestowed by Sixtus the Fifth on his nephews, and was nevertheless sold over their children's heads for debt, fifty-five years after his death. The swineherd's race was prodigal, excepting the 'Great Friar' himself, and, like the Prodigal Son, it was not long before the Peretti were reduced to eating the husks. It was natural that the palaces of the Renascence should rise along the only straight street of any length in what was then the inhabited part of the city, and that the great old Roman Barons, the Colonna, the Orsini, the Caetani, should continue to live in their strongholds, where they had always dwelt. The Caetani, indeed, once bought from a Florentine banker what is now the Ruspoli palace, and Sciarra Colonna had lived far down the Corso; but with these two exceptions, the princely habitations between the Piazza del Popolo and the Piazza di Venezia are almost all the property of families once thought foreigners in Rome. The greatest, the most magnificent private dwelling in the world is the Doria Pamfili palace, as the Doria themselves were the most famous, and became the most powerful of those many nobles who, in the course of centuries, settled in the capital and became Romans, not only in name but in fact--Doria, Borghese, Rospigliosi, Pallavicini and others of less enduring fame or reputation, who came in the train or alliance of a Pope, and remained in virtue of accumulated riches and acquired honour. Two hundred and fifty years have passed since a council of learned doctors and casuists decided for Pope Innocent the Tenth the precise limit of his just power to enrich his nephews and relations, the Pamfili, by an alliance with whom the original Doria of Genoa added another name to their own, and inherited the vast estates. But nearly four hundred years before Innocent, the Doria had been high admirals and almost despots of Genoa. For they were a race of seamen from the first, in a republic where seamanship was the first essential to distinction. Albert Doria overcame the Pisans off Meloria in 1284, slaying five thousand, and taking eleven thousand prisoners. Conrad, his son, was 'Captain of the Genoese Freedom,' and 'Captain of the People.' Lamba Doria vanquished the Venetians under the brave Andrea Dandolo, and Paganino Doria conquered them again under another Andrea Dandolo; and then an Andrea Doria took service with the Pope, and became the greatest sailor in Europe, the hero of a hundred sea-fights, at one time the ally of Francis the First of France, and the most dangerous opponent of Gonzalvo da Cordova, then high admiral of the Empire under Charles the Fifth, a destroyer of pirates, by turns the idol, the enemy and the despot of his own city, Genoa, and altogether such a type of a soldier-sailor of fortune as the world has not seen before or since. And there were others after him, notably Gian Andrea Doria, remembered by the great victory over the Turks at Lepanto, whence he brought home those gorgeous Eastern spoils of tapestry and embroideries which hang in the Doria palace today. [Illustration: PALAZZO DORIA PAMFILI] The history of the palace itself is not without interest, for it shows how property, which was not in the possession of the original Barons, sometimes passed from hand to hand, changing names with each new owner, in the rise and fall of fortunes in those times. The first building seems to have belonged to the Chapter of Santa Maria Maggiore, which somehow ceded it to Cardinal Santorio, who spent an immense sum in rebuilding, extending and beautifying it. When it was almost finished, Julius the Second came to see it, and after expressing the highest admiration for the work, observed that such a habitation was less fitting for a prince of the church than for a secular duke--meaning, by the latter, his own nephew, Francesco della Rovere, then Duke of Urbino; and the unfortunate Santorio, who had succeeded in preserving his possessions under the domination of the Borgia, was forced to offer the most splendid palace in Rome as a gift to the person designated by his master. He died of a broken heart within the year. A hundred years later, the Florentine Aldobrandini, nephew of Clement the Eighth, bought it from the Dukes of Urbino for twelve thousand measures of grain, furnished them for the purpose by their uncle, and finally, when it had fallen in inheritance to Donna Olimpia Aldobrandini, Innocent the Tenth married her to his nephew, Camillo Pamfili, from whom, by the fusion of the two families, it at last came into the hands of the Doria-Pamfili. The Doria palace is almost two-thirds of the size of Saint Peter's, and within the ground plan of Saint Peter's the Colosseum could stand. It used to be said that a thousand persons lived under the roof outside of the gallery and the private apartments, which alone surpass in extent the majority of royal residences. Without some such comparison mere words can convey nothing to a mind unaccustomed to such size and space, and when the idea is grasped, one asks, naturally enough, how the people lived who built such houses--the people whose heirs, far reduced in splendour, if not in fortune, are driven to let four-fifths of their family mansion, because they find it impossible to occupy more rooms than suffice the Emperor of Germany or the Queen of England. One often hears foreign visitors, ignorant of the real size of palaces in Rome, observe, with contempt, that the Roman princes 'let their palaces.' It would be more reasonable to inquire what use could be made of such buildings, if they were not let, or how any family could be expected to inhabit a thousand rooms, and, ultimately, for what purpose such monstrous residences were ever built at all. The first thing that suggests itself in answer to the latter question as the cause of such boundless extravagance is the inherited giantism of the Latins, to which reference has been more than once made in these pages, and to which the existence of many of the principal buildings in Rome must be ascribed. Next, we may consider that at one time or another, each of the greater Roman palaces has been, in all essentials, the court of a pope or of a reigning feudal prince. Lastly, it must be remembered that each palace was the seat of management of all its owner's estates, and that such administration in those times required a number of scribes and an amount of labour altogether out of proportion with the income derived from the land. At first sight the study of Italian life in the Middle Age does not seem very difficult, because it is so interesting. But when one has read the old chronicles that have survived, and the histories of those times, one is amazed to see how much we are told about people and their actions, and how very little about the way in which people lived. It is easier to learn the habits of the Egyptians, or the Greeks, or the ancient Romans, or the Assyrians, than to get at the daily life of an Italian family between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries, from such books as we have. There are two reasons for this. One is the scarcity of literature, excepting historical chronicles, until the time of Boccaccio and the Italian storytellers. The other is the fact that what we call the Middle Age was an age of transition from barbarism to the civilization of the Renascence, and the Renascence was reached by sweeping away all the barbarous things that had gone before it. One must have lived a lifetime in Italy to be able to call up a fairly vivid picture of the eleventh, twelfth, or thirteenth centuries. One must have actually seen the grand old castles and gloomy monasteries, and feudal villages of Calabria and Sicily, where all things are least changed from what they were, and one should understand something of the nature of the Italian people, where the original people have survived; one must try also to realize the violence of those passions which are ugly excrescences on Italian character even now, and which were once the main movers of that character. There are extant many inventories of lordly residences of earlier times in Italy, for the inventory was taken every time the property changed hands by inheritance or sale. Everyone of these inventories begins at the main gate of the stronghold, and the first item is 'Rope for giving the cord.' Now 'to give the cord' was a torture, and all feudal lords had the right to inflict it. The victim's hands were tied behind his back, the rope was made fast to his bound wrists, and he was hoisted some twenty feet or so to the heavy iron ring which is fixed in the middle of the arch of every old Italian castle gateway; he was then allowed to drop suddenly till his feet, to which heavy weights were sometimes attached, were a few inches from the ground, so that the strain of his whole weight fell upon his arms, twisted them backwards, and generally dislocated them at the shoulders. And this was usually done three times, and sometimes twenty times, in succession, to the same prisoner, either as a punishment or by way of examination, to extract a confession of the truth. As the rope of torture was permanently rove through the pulley over the front door, it must have been impossible not to see it and remember what it meant every time one went in or out. And such quick reminders of danger and torture, and sudden, painful death, give the pitch and key of daily existence in the Middle Age. Every man's life was in his hand until it was in his enemy's. Every man might be forced, at a moment's notice, to defend not only his honour, and his belongings, and his life, but his women and children, too,--not against public enemies only, but far more often against private spite and personal hatred. Nowadays, when most men only stake their money on their convictions, it is hard to realize how men reasoned who staked their lives at every turn; or to guess, for instance, at what women felt whose husbands and sons, going out for a stroll of an afternoon, in the streets of Rome, might as likely as not be brought home dead of a dozen sword-wounds before evening. A husband, a father, was stabbed in the dark by treachery; try and imagine the daily and year-long sensations of the widowed mother, bringing up her only son deliberately to kill her husband's murderer; teaching him to look upon vengeance as the first, most real and most honourable aim of life, from the time he was old enough to speak, to the time when he should be strong enough to kill. Everything was earnest then. One should remember that most of the stories told by Boccaccio, Sacchetti and Bandello--the stories from which Shakespeare got his Italian plays, his Romeo and Juliet, his Merchant of Venice--were not inventions, but were founded on the truth. Everyone has read about Cæsar Borgia, his murders, his treacheries and his end, and he is held up to us as a type of monstrous wickedness. But a learned Frenchman, Émile Gebhart, has recently written a rather convincing treatise, to show that Cæsar Borgia was not a monster at all, nor even much of an exception to the general rule among the Italian despots of his day, and his day was civilized compared with that of Rienzi, of Boniface the Eighth, of Sciarra Colonna. In order to understand anything about the real life of the Middle Age, one should begin at the beginning; one should see the dwellings, the castles, and the palaces with their furniture and arrangements, one should realize the stern necessities as well as the few luxuries of that time. And one should make acquaintance with the people themselves, from the grey-haired old baron, the head of the house, down to the scullery man and the cellarer's boy and the stable lads. And then, knowing something of the people and their homes, one might begin to learn something about their household occupations, their tremendously tragic interests and their few and simple amusements. [Illustration: PORTA SAN LORENZO] The first thing that strikes one about the dwellings is the enormous strength of those that remain. The main idea, in those days, when a man built a house, was to fortify himself and his belongings against attacks from the outside, and every other consideration was secondary to that. That is true not only of the Barons' castles in the country and of their fortified palaces in town,--which were castles, too, for that matter,--but of the dwellings of all classes of people who could afford to live independently, that is, who were not serfs and retainers of the rich. We talk of fire-proof buildings nowadays, which are mere shells of iron and brick and stone that shrivel up like writing-paper in a great fire. The only really fire-proof buildings were those of the Middle Age, which consisted of nothing but stone and mortar throughout, stone walls, stone vaults, stone floors, and often stone tables and stone seats. I once visited the ancient castle of Muro, in the Basilicata, one of the southern provinces in Italy, where Queen Joanna the First paid her life for her sins at last, and died under the feather pillow that was forced down upon her face by two Hungarian soldiers. It is as wild and lonely a place as you will meet with in Europe, and yet the great castle has never been a ruin, nor at any time uninhabited, since it was built in the eleventh century, over eight hundred years ago. Nor has the lower part of it ever needed repair. The walls are in places twenty-five feet thick, of solid stone and mortar, so that the embrasure by which each narrow window is reached is like a tunnel cut through rock, while the deep prisons below are hewn out of the rock itself. Up to what we should call the third story, every room is vaulted. Above that the floors are laid on beams, and the walls are not more than eight feet thick--comparatively flimsy for such a place! Nine-tenths of it was built for strength--the small remainder for comfort; there is not a single large hall in all the great fortress, and the courtyard within the main gate is a gloomy, ill-shaped little paved space, barely big enough to give fifty men standing room. Nothing can give any idea of the crookedness of it all, of the small dark corridors, the narrow winding steps, the dusky inclined ascents, paved with broad flagstones that echo the lightest tread, and that must have rung and roared like sea caves to the tramp of armed men. And so it was in the cities, too. In Rome, bits of the old strongholds survive still. There were more of them thirty years ago. Even the more modern palaces of the late Renascence are built in such a way that they must have afforded a safe refuge against everything except artillery. The strong iron-studded doors and the heavily grated windows of the ground floor would stand a siege from the street. The Palazzo Gabrielli, for two or three centuries the chief dwelling of the Orsini, is built in the midst of the city like a great fortification, with escarpments and buttresses and loop-holes; and at the main gate there is still a portcullis which sinks into the ground by a system of chains and balance weights and is kept in working order even now. In the Middle Age, each town palace had one or more towers, tall, square and solid, which were used as lookouts and as a refuge in case the rest of the palace should be taken by an enemy. The general principle of all mediæval towers was that they were entered through a small window at a great height above the ground, by means of a jointed wooden ladder. Once inside, the people drew the ladder up after them and took it in with them, in separate pieces. When that was done, they were comparatively safe, before the age of gunpowder. There were no windows to break, it was impossible to get in, and the besieged party could easily keep anyone from scaling the tower, by pouring boiling oil or melted lead from above, or with stones and missiles, so that as long as provisions and water held out, the besiegers could do nothing. As for water, the great rainwater cistern was always in the foundations of the tower itself, immediately under the prison, which got neither light nor air excepting from a hole in the floor above. Walls from fifteen to twenty feet thick could not be battered down with any engines then in existence. Altogether, the tower was a safe place in times of danger. It is said that at one time there were over four hundred of these in Rome, belonging to the nobles, great and small. The small class of well-to-do commoners, the merchants and goldsmiths, such as they were, who stood between the nobles and the poor people, imitated the nobles as much as they could, and strengthened their houses by every means. For their dwellings were their warehouses, and in times of disturbance the first instinct of the people was to rob the merchants, unless they chanced to be strong enough to rob the nobles, as sometimes happened. But in Rome the merchants were few, and were very generally retainers or dependants of the great houses. It is frequent in the chronicles to find a man mentioned as the 'merchant' of the Colonna family, or of the Orsini, or of one of the independent Italian princes, like the Duke of Urbino. Such a man acted as agent to sell the produce of a great estate; part of his business was to lend money to the owner, and he also imported from abroad the scanty merchandise which could be imported at all. About half of it usually fell into the hands of highwaymen before it reached the city, and the price of luxuries was proportionately high. Such men, of course, lived well, though there was a wide difference between their mode of life and that of the nobles, not so much in matters of abundance and luxury, as in principle. The chief rule was that the wives and daughters of the middle class did a certain amount of housekeeping work, whereas the wives and daughters of the nobles did not. The burgher's wife kept house herself, overlooked the cooking, and sometimes cooked a choice dish with her own hands, and taught her daughters to do so. A merchant might have a considerable retinue of men, for his service and protection, and they carried staves when they accompanied their master abroad, and lanterns at night. But the baron's men were men-at-arms,--practically soldiers,--who wore his colours, and carried swords and pikes, and lit the way for their lord at night with torches, always the privilege of the nobles. As a matter of fact, they were generally the most dangerous cutthroats whom the nobleman was able to engage, highwaymen, brigands and outlaws, whom he protected against the semblance of the law; whereas the merchant's train consisted of honest men who worked for him in his warehouse, or they were countrymen from his farms, if he had any. It is not easy to give any adequate idea of those great mediæval establishments, except by their analogy with the later ones that came after them. They were enormous in extent, and singularly uncomfortable in their internal arrangement. A curious book, published in 1543, and therefore at the first culmination of the Renascence, has lately been reprinted. It is entitled 'Concerning the management of a Roman Nobleman's Court,' and was dedicated to 'The magnificent and Honourable Messer Cola da Benevento,' forty years after the death of the Borgia Pope and during the reign of Paul the Third, Farnese, who granted the writer a copyright for ten years. The little volume is full of interesting details, and the attendant gentlemen and servants enumerated give some idea of what according to the author was not considered extravagant for a nobleman of the sixteenth century. There were to be two chief chamberlains, a general controller of the estates, a chief steward, four chaplains, a master of the horse, a private secretary and an assistant secretary, an auditor, a lawyer and four literary personages, 'Letterati,' who, among them, must know 'the four principal languages of the world, namely, Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Italian.' The omission of every other living language but the latter, when Francis the First, Charles the Fifth and Henry the Eighth were reigning, is pristinely Roman in its contempt of 'barbarians.' There were also to be six gentlemen of the chambers, a private master of the table, a chief carver and ten waiting men, a butler of the pantry with an assistant, a butler of the wines, six head grooms, a marketer with an assistant, a storekeeper, a cellarer, a carver for the serving gentlemen, a chief cook, an under cook and assistant, a chief scullery man, a water carrier, a sweeper,--and last in the list, a physician, whom the author puts at the end of the list, 'not because a doctor is not worthy of honour, but in order not to seem to expect any infirmity for his lordship or his household.' This was considered a 'sufficient household' for a nobleman, but by no means an extravagant one, and many of the officials enumerated were provided with one or more servants, while no mention is made of any ladies in the establishment nor of the numerous retinue they required. But one remembers the six thousand servants of Augustus, all honourably buried in one place, and the six hundred who waited on Livia alone; and the modest one hundred and seven which were reckoned 'sufficient' for the Lord Cola of Benevento sink into comparative insignificance. For Livia, besides endless keepers of her robes and folders of her clothes--a special office--and hairdressers, perfumers, jewellers and shoe keepers, had a special adorner of her ears, a keeper of her chair and a governess for her favourite lap-dog. The little book contains the most complete details concerning daily expenditure for food and drink for the head of the house and his numerous gentlemen, which amounted in a year to the really not extravagant sum of four thousand scudi, or dollars, over fourteen hundred being spent on wine alone. The allowance was a jug--rather more than a quart--of pure wine daily to each of the 'gentlemen,' and the same measure diluted with one-third of water to all the rest. Sixteen ounces of beef, mutton, or veal were reckoned for every person, and each received twenty ounces of bread of more or less fine quality, according to his station; and an average of twenty scudi was allowed daily as given away in charity,--which was not ungenerous, either, for such a household. The olive oil used for the table and for lamps was the same, and was measured together, and the household received each a pound of cheese, monthly, besides a multitude of other eatables, all of which are carefully enumerated and valued. Among other items of a different nature are 'four or five large wax candles daily, for his lordship,' and wax for torches 'to accompany the dishes brought to his table, and to accompany his lordship and the gentlemen out of doors at night,' and 'candles for the altar,' and tallow candles for use about the house. As for salaries and wages, the controller and chief steward received ten scudi, each month, whereas the chaplain only got two, and the 'literary men,' who were expected to know Hebrew, Greek and Latin, were each paid one hundred scudi yearly. The physician was required to be not only 'learned, faithful, diligent and affectionate,' but also 'fortunate' in his profession. Considering the medical practices of those days, a doctor could certainly not hope to heal his patients without the element of luck. The old-fashioned Roman character is careful, if not avaricious, with occasional flashes of astonishing extravagance, and its idea of riches is so closely associated with that of power as to make the display of a numerous retinue its first and most congenial means of exhibiting great wealth; so that to this day a Roman in reduced fortune will live very poorly before he will consent to exist without the two or three superfluous footmen who loiter all day in his hall, or the handsome equipage in which his wife and daughters are accustomed to take the daily drive, called from ancient times the 'trottata,' or 'trot,' in the Villa Borghese, or the Corso, or on the Pincio, and gravely provided for in the terms of the marriage contract. At a period when servants were necessary, not only for show but also for personal protection, it is not surprising that the nobles should have kept an extravagant number of them. [Illustration: PALAZZO DI MONTE CITORIO From a print of the last century] Then also, to account for the size of Roman palaces, there was the patriarchal system of life, now rapidly falling into disuse. The so-called 'noble floor' of every mansion is supposed to be reserved exclusively for the father and mother of the family, and the order of arranging the rooms is as much a matter of rigid rule as in the houses of the ancient Romans, where the vestibule preceded the atrium, the atrium the peristyle, and the latter the last rooms which looked upon the garden. So in the later palace, the door from the first landing of the grand staircase opens upon an outer hall, uncarpeted, but crossed by a strip of matting, and furnished only with a huge table and old-fashioned chests, made with high backs, on which are painted or carved the arms of the family. Here, at least two or three footmen are supposed to be in perpetual readiness to answer the door, the lineally descended representatives of the armed footmen who lounged there four hundred years ago. Next to the hall comes the antechamber, sometimes followed by a second, and here is erected the 'baldacchino,' the coloured canopy which marks the privilege of the sixty 'conscript families' of Rome, who rank as princes. It recalls the times when, having powers of justice, and of life and death, the lords sat in state under the overhanging silks, embroidered with their coats of arms, to administer the law. Beyond the antechamber comes the long succession of state apartments, lofty, ponderously decorated, heavily furnished with old-fashioned gilt or carved chairs that stand symmetrically against the walls, and on the latter are hung pictures, priceless works of old masters beside crude portraits of the last century, often arranged much more with regard to the frames than to the paintings. Stiff-legged pier-tables of marble and alabaster face the windows or are placed between them; thick curtains that can be drawn quite back cover the doors; strips of hemp carpet lead straight from one door to another; the light is dim and cold, half shut out by the window curtains, and gets a peculiar quality of sadness and chilliness, which is essentially characteristic of every old Roman house, where the reception rooms are only intended to be used at night, and the sunny side is exclusively appropriated to the more intimate life of the owners. There may be three, four, six, ten of those big drawing-rooms in succession, each covering about as much space as a small house in New York or London, before one comes to the closed door that gives access to the princess' boudoir, beyond which, generally returning in a direction parallel with the reception rooms, is her bedroom, and the prince's, and the latter's study, and then the private dining-room, the state dining-room, the great ballroom, with clear-story windows, and as many more rooms as the size of the apartment will admit. In the great palaces, the picture gallery takes a whole wing and sometimes two, the library being generally situated on a higher story. The patriarchal system required that all the married sons, with their wives and children and servants, should be lodged in the same building with their parents. The eldest invariably lived on the second floor, the second son on the third, which is the highest, though there is generally a low rambling attic, occupied by servants, and sometimes by the chaplain, the librarian and the steward, in better rooms. When there were more than two married sons, which hardly ever happened under the old system of primogeniture, they divided the apartments between them as best they could. The unmarried younger children had to put up with what was left. Moreover, in the greatest houses, where there was usually a cardinal of the name, one wing of the first floor was entirely given up to him; and instead of the canopy in the antechamber, flanked by the hereditary coloured umbrellas carried on state occasions by two lackeys behind the family coach, the prince of the Church was entitled to a throne room, as all cardinals are. The eldest son's apartment was generally more or less a repetition of the state one below, but the rooms were lower, the decorations less elaborate, though seldom less stiff in character, and a large part of the available space was given up to the children. It is clear from all this that even in modern times a large family might take up a great deal of room. Looking back across two or three centuries, therefore, to the days when every princely household was a court, and was called a court, it is easier to understand the existence of such phenomenally vast mansions as the Doria palace, or those of the Borghese, the Altieri, the Barberini and others, who lived in almost royal state, and lodged hundreds upon hundreds of retainers in their homes. And not only did all the members of the family live under one roof, as a few of them still live, but the custom of dining together at one huge table was universal. A daily dinner of twenty persons--grandparents, parents and children, down to the youngest that is old enough to sit up to its plate in a high chair, would be a serious matter to most European households. But in Rome it was looked upon as a matter of course, and was managed through the steward by a contract with the cook, who was bound to provide a certain number of dishes daily for the fixed meals, but nothing else--not so much as an egg or a slice of toast beyond that. This system still prevails in many households, and as it is to be expected that meals at unusual hours may sometimes be required, an elaborate system of accounts is kept by the steward and his clerks, and the smallest things ordered by any of the sons or daughters are charged against an allowance usually made them, while separate reckonings are kept for the daughters-in-law, for whom certain regular pin-money is provided out of their own dowries at the marriage settlement, all of which goes through the steward's hands. The same settlement, even in recent years, stipulated for a fixed number of dishes of meat daily, generally only two, I believe, for a certain number of new gowns and other clothes, and for a great variety of details, besides the use of a carriage every day, to be harnessed not more than twice, that is, either in the morning and afternoon, or once in the daytime and once at night. Everything,--a cup of tea, a glass of lemonade,--if not mentioned in the marriage settlement, had to be paid for separately. The justice of such an arrangement--for it is just--is only equalled by its inconvenience, for it requires the machinery of a hotel, combined with an honesty not usual in hotels. Undoubtedly, the whole system is directly descended from the practice of the ancients, which made every father of a family the absolute despot of his household, and made it impossible for a son to hold property or have any individual independence during his father's life, and it has not been perceptibly much modified since the Middle Age, until the last few years. Its existence shows in the strongest light the main difference between the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon races, in the marked tendency of the one to submit to despotic government, and of the other to govern itself; of the one to stay at home under paternal authority, and of the other to leave the father's house and plunder the world for itself; of the sons of the one to accept wives given them, and of the other's children to marry as they please. Roman family life, from Romulus to the year 1870, was centred in the head of the house, whose position was altogether unassailable, whose requirements were necessities, and whose word was law. Next to him in place came the heir, who was brought up with a view to his exercising the same powers in his turn. After him, but far behind him in importance, if he promised to be strong, came the other sons, who, if they took wives at all, were expected to marry heiresses, and one of whom, almost as a matter of course, was brought up to be a churchman. The rest, if there were any, generally followed the career of arms, and remained unmarried; for heiresses of noble birth were few, and their guardians married them to eldest sons of great houses whenever possible, while the strength of caste prejudice made alliances of nobles with the daughters of rich plebeians extremely unusual. It is possible to trace the daily life of a Roman family in the Middle Age from its regular routine of today, as out of what anyone may see in Italy the habits of the ancients can be reconstructed with more than approximate exactness. And yet it is out of the question to fix the period of the general transformation which ultimately turned the Rome of the Barons into the Rome of Napoleon's time, and converted the high-handed men of Sciarra Colonna's age into the effeminate fops of 1800, when a gentleman of noble lineage, having received a box on the ear from another at high noon in the Corso, willingly followed the advice of his confessor, who counselled him to bear the affront with Christian meekness and present his other cheek to the smiter. Customs have remained, fashions have altogether changed; the outward forms of early living have survived, the spirit of life is quite another; and though some families still follow the patriarchal mode of existence, the patriarchs are gone, the law no longer lends itself to support household tyranny, and the subdivision of estates under the Napoleonic code is guiding an already existing democracy to the untried issue of a problematic socialism. Without attempting to establish a comparison upon the basis of a single cause, where so many are at work, it is permissible to note that while in England and Germany a more or less voluntary system of primogeniture is admitted and largely followed from choice, and while in the United States men are almost everywhere entirely free to dispose of their property as they please, and while the population and wealth of those countries are rapidly increasing, France, enforcing the division of estates among children, though she is accumulating riches, is faced by the terrible fact of a steadily diminishing census; and Italy, under the same laws, is not only rapidly approaching national bankruptcy, but is in parts already depopulated by an emigration so extensive that it can only be compared with the westward migration of the Aryan tribes. The forced subdivision of property from generation to generation is undeniably a socialistic measure, since it must, in the end, destroy both aristocracy and plutocracy; and it is surely a notable point that the two great European nations which have adopted it as a fundamental principle of good government should both be on the road to certain destruction, while those powers that have wholly and entirely rejected any such measure are filling the world with themselves and absorbing its wealth at an enormous and alarming rate. [Illustration: VILLA BORGHESE] The art of the Renascence has left us splendid pictures of mediæval public life, which are naturally accepted as equally faithful representations of the life of every day. Princes and knights, in gorgeous robes and highly polished armour, ride on faultlessly caparisoned milk-white steeds; wondrous ladies wear not less wonderful gowns, fitted with a perfection which women seek in vain today, and embroidered with pearls and precious stones that might ransom a rajah; young pages, with glorious golden hair, stand ready at the elbows of their lords and ladies, or kneel in graceful attitude to deliver a letter, or stoop to bear a silken train, clad in garments which the modern costumer strives in vain to copy. After three or four centuries, the colours of those painted silks and satins are still richer than anything the loom can weave. In the great fresco, each individual of the multitude that fills a public place, or defiles in open procession under the noonday light, is not only a masterpiece of fashion, but a model of neatness; linen, delicate as woven gossamer, falls into folds as finely exact as an engraver's point could draw; velvet shoes tread without speck or spot upon the well-scoured pavement of a public street; men-at-arms grasp weapons and hold bridles with hands as carefully tended as any idle fine gentleman's, and there is neither fleck nor breath of dimness on the mirror-like steel of their armour; the very flowers, the roses and lilies that strew the way, are the perfection of fresh-cut hothouse blossoms; and when birds and beasts chance to be necessary to the composition of the picture, they are represented with no less care for a more than possible neatness, their coats are combed and curled, their attitudes are studied and graceful, they wear carefully made collars, ornamented with chased silver and gold. Centuries have dimmed the wall-painting, sunshine has faded it, mould has mottled the broad surfaces of red and blue and green, and a later age has done away with the dresses represented; yet, when the frescos in the library of the Cathedral at Siena, for instance, were newly finished, they were the fashion-plates of the year and month, executed by a great artist, it is true, grouped with matchless skill and drawn with supreme mastery of art, but as far from representing the ordinary scenes of daily life as those terrible coloured prints published nowadays for tailors, in which a number of beautiful young gentlemen, in perfectly new clothes, lounge in stage attitudes on the one side, and an equal number of equally beautiful young butlers, coachmen, grooms and pages, in equally perfect liveries, appear to be discussing the æsthetics of an ideal and highly salaried service, at the other end of the same room. In the comparison there is all the brutal profanity of truth that shocks the reverence of romance; but in the respective relations of the great artist's masterpiece and of the poor modern lithograph to the realities of each period, there is the clue to the daily life of the Middle Age. Living was outwardly rough as compared with the representations of it, though it was far more refined than in any other part of Europe, and Italy long set the fashion to the world in habits and manners. People kept their fine clothes for great occasions, there was a keeper of robes in every large household, and there were rooms set apart for the purpose. In every-day life, the Barons wore patched hose and leathern jerkins, stained and rusted by the joints of the armour that was so often buckled over them, or they went about their dwellings in long dressing-gowns which hid many shortcomings. When gowns, and hose, and jerkins were well worn, they were cut down for the boys of the family, and the fine dresses, only put on for great days, were preserved as heirlooms from generation to generation, whether they fitted the successive wearers or not. The beautiful tight-fitting hose which, in the paintings of the time, seem to fit like theatrical tights, were neither woven nor knitted, but were made of stout cloth, and must often have been baggy at the knees in spite of the most skilful cutting; and the party-coloured hose, having one leg of one piece of stuff and one of another, and sometimes each leg of two or more colours, were very likely first invented from motives of economy, to use up cuttings and leavings. Clothes were looked upon as permanent and very desirable property, and kings did not despise a gift of fine scarlet cloth, in the piece, to make them a gown or a cloak. As for linen, as late as the sixteenth century, the English thought the French nobles very extravagant because they put on a clean shirt once a fortnight and changed their ruffles once a week. [Illustration: PALAZZO DI VENEZIA] The mediæval Roman nobles were most of them great farmers as well as fighters. Then, as now, land was the ultimate form of property, and its produce the usual form of wealth; and then, as now, many families were 'land-poor,' in the sense of owning tracts of country which yielded little or no income but represented considerable power, and furnished the owners with most of the necessaries of life, such rents as were collected being usually paid in kind, in oil and wine, in grain, fruit and vegetables, and even in salt meat, and horses, cattle for slaughtering and beasts of burden, not to speak of wool, hemp and flax, as well as firewood. But money was scarce and, consequently, all the things which only money could buy, so that a gown was a possession, and a corselet or a good sword a treasure. The small farmer of our times knows what it means to have plenty to eat and little to wear. His position is not essentially different from that of the average landed gentry in the Middle Age, not only in Italy, but all over Europe. In times when superiority lay in physical strength, courage, horsemanship and skill in the use of arms, the so-called gentleman was not distinguished from the plebeian by the newness or neatness of his clothes so much as by the nature and quality of the weapons he wore when he went abroad in peace or war, and very generally by being mounted on a good horse. In his home he was simple, even primitive. He desired space more than comfort, and comfort more than luxury. His furniture consisted almost entirely of beds, chests and benches, with few tables except such as were needed for eating. Beds were supported by boards laid on trestles, raised very high above the floor to be beyond the reach of rats, mice and other creatures. The lower mattress was filled with the dried leaves of the maize, and the upper one contained wool, with which the pillows also were stuffed. The floors of dwelling rooms were generally either paved with bricks or made of a sort of cement, composed of lime, sand and crushed brick, the whole being beaten down with iron pounders, while in the moist state, during three days. There were no carpets, and fresh rushes were strewn everywhere on the floors, which in summer were first watered, like a garden path, to lay the dust. There was no glass in the windows of ordinary rooms, and the consequence was that during the daytime people lived almost in the open air, in winter as well as summer; sunshine was a necessity of existence, and sheltered courts and cloistered walks were built like reservoirs for the light and heat. In the rooms, ark-shaped chests stood against the walls, to contain the ordinary clothes not kept in the general 'guardaroba.' In the deep embrasures of the windows there were stone seats, but there were few chairs, or none at all, in the bedrooms. At the head of each bed hung a rough little cross of dark wood--later, as carving became more general, a crucifix--and a bit of an olive branch preserved from Palm Sunday throughout the year. The walls themselves were scrupulously whitewashed; the ceilings were of heavy beams, supporting lighter cross-beams, on which in turn thick boards were laid to carry the cement floor of the room overhead. Many hundred men-at-arms could be drawn up in the courtyards, and their horses stalled in the spacious stables. The kitchens, usually situated on the ground floor, were large enough to provide meals for half a thousand retainers, if necessary; and the cellars and underground prisons were a vast labyrinth of vaulted chambers, which not unfrequently communicated with the Tiber by secret passages. In restoring the palace of the Santacroce, a few years ago, a number of skeletons were discovered, some still wearing armour, and all most evidently the remains of men who had died violent deaths. One of them was found with a dagger driven through the skull and helmet. The hand that drove it must have been strong beyond the hands of common men. The grand staircase led up from the sunny court to the state apartments, such as they were in those days. There, at least, there were sometimes carpets, luxuries of enormous value, and even before the Renascence the white walls were hung with tapestries, at least in part. In those times, too, there were large fireplaces in almost every room, for fuel was still plentiful in the Campagna and in the near mountains; and where the houses were practically open to the air all day, fires were an absolute necessity. Even in ancient times it is recorded that the Roman Senate, amidst the derisive jests of the plebeians, once had to adjourn on account of the extreme cold. People rose early in the Middle Age, dined at noon, slept in the afternoon when the weather was warm, and supped, as a rule, at 'one hour of the night,' that is to say an hour after 'Ave Maria,' which was rung half an hour after sunset, and was the end of the day of twenty-four hours. Noon was taken from the sun, but did not fall at a regular hour of the clock, and never fell at twelve. In winter, for instance, if the Ave Maria bell rang at half-past five of our modern time, the noon of the following day fell at 'half-past eighteen o'clock' by the mediæval clocks. In summer, it might fall as early as three quarters past fifteen; and this manner of reckoning time was common in Rome thirty-five years ago, and is not wholly unpractised in some parts of Italy still. It was always an Italian habit, and a very healthy one, to get out of doors immediately on rising, and to put off making anything like a careful toilet till a much later hour. Breakfast, as we understand it, is an unknown meal in Italy, even now. Most people drink a cup of black coffee, standing; many eat a morsel of bread or biscuit with it and get out of doors as soon as they can; but the greediness of an Anglo-Saxon breakfast disgusts all Latins alike, and two set meals daily are thought to be enough for anyone, as indeed they are. The hard-working Italian hill peasant will sometimes toast himself a piece of corn bread before going to work, and eat it with a few drops of olive oil; and in the absence of tea or coffee, the people of the Middle Age often drank a mouthful of wine on rising to 'move the blood,' as they said. But that was all. Every mediæval palace had its chapel, which was sometimes an adjacent church communicating with the house, and in many families it is even now the custom to hear the short low Mass at a very early hour. But probably nothing can give an adequate idea of the idleness of the Middle Age, when the day was once begun. Before the Renascence, there was no such thing as study, and there were hardly any pastimes except gambling and chess, both of which the girls and youths of the Decameron seem to have included in one contemptuous condemnation when they elected to spend their time in telling stories. The younger men of the household, of course, when not actually fighting, passed a certain number of hours in the practice of horsemanship and arms; but the only real excitement they knew was in love and war, the latter including everything between the battles of the Popes and Emperors, and the street brawls of private enemies, which generally drew blood and often ended in a death. It does not appear that the idea of 'housekeeping' as the chief occupation of the Baron's wife ever entered into the Roman mind. In northern countries there has always been more equality between men and women, more respect for woman as an intelligent being, and less care for her as a valuable possession to be guarded against possible attacks from without. In Rome and the south of Italy the women in a great household were carefully separated from the men, and beyond the outer halls in which visitors were received, business transacted and politics discussed, there were closed doors, securely locked, leading to the women's apartments beyond. In every Roman palace and fortress there was a revolving 'dumb-waiter' between the women's quarters and the men's, called the 'wheel,' and used as a means of communication. Through this the household supplies were daily handed in, for the cooking was very generally done by women, and through the same machine the prepared food was passed out to the men, the wheel being so arranged that men and women could not see each other, though they might hear each other speak. To all intents and purposes the system was oriental and the women were shut up in a harem. The use of the dumb-waiter survived the revolution in manners under the Renascence, and the wheel itself remains as a curiosity of past times in more than one Roman dwelling today. It had its uses and was not a piece of senseless tyranny. In order to keep up an armed force for all emergencies the Baron took under his protection as men-at-arms the most desperate ruffians, outlaws and outcasts whom he could collect, mostly men under sentence of banishment or death for highway robbery and murder, whose only chance of escaping torture and death lay in risking life and limb for a master strong enough to defy the law, the 'bargello' and the executioner, in his own house or castle, where such henchmen were lodged and fed, and were controlled by nothing but fear of the Baron himself, of his sons, when they were grown up, and of his poorer kinsmen who lived with him. There were no crimes which such malefactors had not committed, or were not ready to commit for a word, or even for a jest. The women, on the other hand, were in the first place the ladies and daughters of the house, and of kinsmen, brought up in almost conventual solitude, when they were not actually educated in convents; and, secondly, young girls from the Baron's estates who served for a certain length of time, and were then generally married to respectable retainers. The position of twenty or thirty women and girls under the same roof with several hundreds of the most atrocious cutthroats of any age was undeniably such as to justify the most tyrannical measures for their protection. There are traces, even now, of the enforced privacy in which they lived. For instance, no Roman lady of today will ever show herself at a window that looks on the street, except during Carnival, and in most houses something of the old arrangement of rooms is still preserved, whereby the men and women occupy different parts of the house. One must try to call up the pictures of one day, to get any idea of those times; one must try and see the grey dawn stealing down the dark, unwindowed lower walls of the fortress that flanks the Church of the Holy Apostles,--the narrow and murky street below, the broad, dim space beyond, the mystery of the winding distances whence comes the first sound of the day, the far, high cry of the waterman driving his little donkey with its heavy load of water-casks. The beast stumbles along in the foul gloom, through the muddy ruts, over heaps of garbage at the corners, picking its way as best it can, till it starts with a snort and almost falls with its knees upon a dead man, whose thrice-stabbed body lies right across the way. The waterman, ragged, sandal-shod, stops, crosses himself, and drags his beast back hurriedly with a muttered exclamation of mingled horror, disgust and fear for himself, and makes for the nearest corner, stumbling along in his haste lest he should be found with the corpse and taken for the murderer. As the dawn forelightens, and the cries go up from the city, the black-hooded Brothers of Prayer and Death come in a little troop, their lantern still burning as they carry their empty stretcher, seeking for dead men; and they take up the poor nameless body and bear it away quickly from the sight of the coming day. Then, as they disappear, the great bell of the Apostles' Church begins to toll the morning Angelus, half an hour before sunrise,--three strokes, then four, then five, then one, according to ancient custom, and then after a moment's silence, the swinging peal rings out, taken up and answered from end to end of the half-wasted city. A troop of men-at-arms ride up to the great closed gate 'in rusty armour marvellous ill-favoured,' as Shakespeare's stage direction has it, mud-splashed, their brown cloaks half concealing their dark and war-worn mail, their long swords hanging down and clanking against their huge stirrups, their beasts jaded and worn and filthy from the night raid in the Campagna, or the long gallop from Palestrina. The leader pounds three times at the iron-studded door with the hilt of his dagger, a sleepy porter, grey-bearded and cloaked, slowly swings back one half of the gate and the ruffians troop in, followed by the waterman who has gone round the fortress to avoid the dead body. The gate shuts again, with a long thundering rumble. High up, wooden shutters, behind which there is no glass, are thrown open upon the courtyard, and one window after another is opened to the morning air; on one side, girls and women look out, muffled in dark shawls; from the other grim, unwashed, bearded men call down to their companions, who have dismounted and are unsaddling their weary horses, and measuring out a little water to them, where water is a thing of price. The leader goes up into the house to his master, to tell him of the night's doings, and while he speaks the Baron sits in a great wooden chair, in his long gown of heavy cloth, edged with coarse fox's fur, his feet in fur slippers, and a shabby cap upon his head, but a manly and stern figure, all the same, slowly munching a piece of toasted bread and sipping a few drops of old white wine from a battered silver cup. Then Mass in the church, the Baron, his kinsmen, the ladies and the women kneeling in the high gallery above the altar, the men-at-arms and men-servants and retainers crouching below on the stone pavement; a dusky multitude, with a gleam of steel here and there, and red flashing eyes turned up with greedy longing towards the half-veiled faces of the women, met perhaps, now and then, by a furtive answering glance from under a veil or hoodlike shawl, for every woman's head is covered, but of the men only the old lord wears his cap, which he devoutly lifts at 'Gloria Patri' and 'Verbum Caro,' and at 'Sanctus' and at the consecration. It is soon over, and the day is begun, for the sun is fully risen and streams through the open unglazed windows as the maids sprinkle water on the brick floors, and sweep and strew fresh rushes, and roll back the mattresses on the trestle beds, which are not made again till evening. In the great courtyard, the men lead out the horses and mount them bareback and ride out in a troop, each with his sword by his side, to water them at the river, half a mile away, for not a single public fountain is left in Rome; and the grooms clean out the stables, while the peasants come in from the country, driving mules laden with provisions for the great household, and far away, behind barred doors, the women light the fires in the big kitchen. Later again, the children of the noble house are taught to ride and fence in the open court; splendid boys with flowing hair, bright as gold or dark as night, dressed in rough hose and leathern jerkin, bright-eyed, fearless, masterful already in their play as a lion's whelps, watched from an upper window by their lady mother and their little sisters, and not soon tired of saddle or sword--familiar with the grooms and men by the great common instinct of fighting, but as far from vulgar as Polonius bade Laertes learn to be. So morning warms to broad noon, and hunger makes it dinner-time, and the young kinsmen who have strolled abroad come home, one of them with his hand bound up in a white rag that has drops of blood on it, for he has picked a quarrel in the street and steel has been out, as usual, though no one has been killed, because the 'bargello' and his men were in sight, down there near the Orsini's theatre-fortress. And at dinner when the priest has blessed the table, the young men laugh about the scrimmage, while the Baron himself, who has killed a dozen men in battle, with his own hand, rebukes his sons and nephews with all the useless austerity which worn-out age wears in the face of unbroken youth. The meal is long, and they eat much, for there will be nothing more till night; they eat meat broth, thick with many vegetables and broken bread and lumps of boiled meat, and there are roasted meats and huge earthen bowls of salad, and there is cheese in great blocks, and vast quantities of bread, with wine in abundance, poured for each man by the butler into little earthen jugs from big earthenware flagons. They eat from trenchers of wood, well scoured with ashes; forks they have none, and most of the men use their own knives or daggers when they are not satisfied with the carving done for them by the carver. Each man, when he has picked a bone, throws it under the table to the house-dogs lying in wait on the floor, and from time to time a basin is passed and a little water poured upon the fingers. The Baron has a napkin of his own; there is one napkin for all the other men; the women generally eat by themselves in their own apartments, the so-called 'gentlemen' in the 'tinello,' and the men-at-arms and grooms, and all the rest, in the big lower halls near the kitchens, whence their food is passed out to them through the wheel. After dinner, if it be summer and the weather hot, the gates are barred, the windows shut, and the whole household sleeps. Early or late, as the case may be, the lords and ladies and children take the air, guarded by scores of mounted men, riding towards that part of the city where they may neither meet their enemies nor catch a fever in the warm months. In rainy weather they pass the time as they can, with telling of many tales, short, dramatic and strong as the framework of a good play, with music, sometimes, and with songs, and with discussing of such news as there may be in such times. And at dusk the great bells ring to even-song, the oil lamp is swung up in the great staircase, the windows and gates are shut again, the torches and candles and little lamps are lit for supper, and at last, with rushlights, each finds the way along the ghostly corridors to bed and sleep. That was the day's round, and there was little to vary it in more peaceful times. Over all life there was the hopeless, resentful dulness that oppressed men and women till it drove them half mad, to the doing of desperate things in love and war; there was the everlasting restraint of danger without and of forced idleness within--danger so constant that it ceased to be exciting and grew tiresome, idleness so oppressive that battle, murder and sudden death were a relief from the inactivity of sluggish peace; a state in which the mind was no longer a moving power in man, but only by turns the smelting pot and the anvil of half-smothered passions that now and then broke out with fire and flame and sword to slash and burn the world with a history of unimaginable horror. That was the Middle Age in Italy. A poorer race would have gone down therein to a bloody destruction; but it was out of the Middle Age that the Italians were born again in the Renascence. It deserved the name. [Illustration] REGION IV CAMPO MARZO It was harvest time when the Romans at last freed themselves from the very name of Tarquin. In all the great field, between the Tiber and the City, the corn stood high and ripe, waiting for the sickle, while Brutus did justice upon his two sons, and upon the sons of his sister, and upon those 'very noble youths,' still the Tarquins' friends, who laid down their lives for their mistaken loyalty and friendship, and for whose devotion no historian has ever been brave enough, or generous enough, to say a word. It has been said that revolution is patriotism when it succeeds, treason when it fails, and in the converse, more than one brave man has died a traitor's death for keeping faith with a fallen king. Successful revolution denied those young royalists the charitable handful of earth and the four words of peace--'sit eis terra levis'--that should have laid their unquiet ghosts, and the brutal cynicism of history has handed down their names to the perpetual execration of mankind. The corn stood high in the broad field which the Tarquins had taken from Mars and had ploughed and tilled for generations. The people went out and reaped the crop, and bound it in sheaves to be threshed for the public bread, but their new masters told them that it would be impious to eat what had been meant for kings, and they did as was commanded to them, meekly, and threw all into the river. Sheaf upon sheaf, load upon load, the yellow stream swept away the yellow ears and stalks, down to the shallows, where the whole mass stuck fast, and the seeds took root in the watery mud, and the stalks rotted in great heaps, and the island of the Tiber was first raised above the level of the water. Then the people burned the stubble and gave back the land to Mars, calling it the Campus Martius, after him. There the young Romans learned the use of arms, and were taught to ride; and under sheds there stood those rows of wooden horses, upon which youths learned to vault, without step or stirrup, in their armour and sword in hand. There they ran foot-races in the clouds of dust whirled up from the dry ground, and threw the discus by the twisted thong as the young men of the hills do today, and the one who could reach the goal with the smallest number of throws was the winner,--there, under the summer sun and in the biting wind of winter, half naked, and tough as wolves, the boys of Rome laboured to grow up and be Roman men. There, also, the great assemblies were held, the public meetings and the elections, when the people voted by passing into the wooden lists that were called 'Sheepfolds,' till Julius Cæsar planned the great marble portico for voting, and Agrippa finished it, making it nearly a mile round; and behind it, on the west side, a huge space was kept open for centuries, called the Villa Publica, where the censors numbered the people. The ancient Campus took in a wide extent of land, for it included everything outside the Servian wall, from the Colline Gate to the river. All that visibly bears its name today is a narrow street that runs southward from the western end of San Lorenzo in Lucina. The Region of Campo Marzo, however, is still one of the largest in the city, including all that lies within the walls from Porta Pinciana, by Capo le Case, Via Frattina, Via di Campo Marzo and Via della Stelletta, past the Church of the Portuguese and the Palazzo Moroni,--known by Hawthorne's novel as 'Hilda's Tower,'--and thence to the banks of the Tiber. [Illustration: PIAZZA DI SPAGNA] From the Renascence until the recent extension of the city on the south and southeast, this Region was the more modern part of Rome. In the Middle Age it was held by the Colonna, who had fortified the tomb of Augustus and one or two other ruins. Later it became the strangers' quarter. The Lombards established themselves near the Church of Saint Charles, in the Corso; the English, near Saint Ives, the little church with the strange spiral tower, built against the University of the Sapienza; the Greeks lived in the Via de' Greci; the Burgundians in the Via Borgognona, and thence to San Claudio, where they had their Hospice; and so on, almost every nationality being established in a colony of its own; and the English visitors of today are still inclined to think the Piazza di Spagna the most central point of Rome, whereas to Romans it seems to be very much out of the way. The tomb of Augustus, which served as the model for the greater Mausoleum of Hadrian, dominated the Campus Martius, and its main walls are still standing, though hidden by many modern houses. The tomb of the Julian Cæsars rose on white marble foundations, a series of concentric terraces, planted with cypress trees, to the great bronze statue of Augustus that crowned the summit. Here rested the ashes of Augustus, of the young Marcellus, of Livia, of Tiberius, of Caligula, and of many others whose bodies were burned in the family Ustrinum near the tomb itself. Plundered by Alaric, and finally ruined by Robert Guiscard, when he burnt the city, it became a fortress under the Colonna, and is included, with the fortress of Monte Citorio, in a transfer of property made by one member of the family to another in the year 1252. Ruined at last, it became a bull ring in the last century and in the beginning of this one, when Leo the Twelfth forbade bull-fighting. Then it was a theatre, the scene of Salvini's early triumphs. Today it is a circus, dignified by the name of the reigning sovereign. Few people know that bull-fights were common in Rome eighty years ago. The indefatigable Baracconi once talked with the son of the last bull-fighter. So far as one may judge, it appears that during the Middle Age, and much later, it was the practice of butchers to bait animals in their own yards, before slaughtering them, in the belief that the cruel treatment made the meat more tender, and they admitted the people to see the sport. From this to a regular arena was but a step, and no more suitable place than the tomb of the Cæsars could be found for the purpose. A regular manager took possession of it, provided the victims, both bulls and Roman buffaloes, and hired the fighters. It does not appear that the beasts were killed during the entertainment, and one of the principal attractions was the riding of the maddened bull three times round the circus; savage dogs were also introduced, but in all other respects the affair was much like a Spanish bull-fight, and quite as popular; when the chosen bulls were led in from the Campagna, the Roman princes used to ride far out to meet them with long files of mounted servants in gala liveries, coming back at night in torchlight procession. And again, after the fight was over, the circus was illuminated, and there was a small display of Bengal lights, while the fashionable world of Rome met and gossiped away the evening in the arena, happily thoughtless and forgetful of all the spot had been and had meant in history. The new Rome sinks out of sight below the level of the old, as one climbs the heights of the Janiculum on the west of the city, or the gardens of the Pincio on the east. The old monuments and the old churches still rise above the dreary wastes of modern streets, and from the spot whence Messalina looked down upon the cypresses of the first Emperor's mausoleum, the traveller of today descries the cheap metallic roof which makes a circus of the ancient tomb. For it was in the gardens of Lucullus that Mark Antony's great-grandchild felt the tribune's sword in her throat, and in the neat drives and walks of the Pincio, where pretty women in smart carriages laugh over today's gossip and tomorrow's fashion, and the immaculate dandy idles away an hour and a cigarette, the memory of Messalina calls up a tragedy of shades. Less than thirty years after Augustus had breathed out his old age in peace, Rome was ruled again by terror and blood, and the triumph of a woman's sins was the beginning of the end of the Julian race. The great historian who writes of her guesses that posterity may call the truth a fable, and tells the tale so tersely and soberly from first to last, that the strength of his words suggests a whole mystery of evil. Without Tiberius, there could have been no Messalina, nor, without her, could Nero have been possible; and the worst of the three is the woman--the archpriestess of all conceivable crime. Tacitus gives Tiberius one redeeming touch. Often the old Emperor came almost to Rome, even to the gardens by the Tiber, and then turned back to the rocks of Capri and the solitude of the sea, in mortal shame of his monstrous deeds, as if not daring to show himself in the city. With Nero, the measure was full, and the world rose and destroyed him. Messalina knew no shame, and the Romans submitted to her, and but for a court intrigue and a frightened favourite she might have lived out her life unhurt. In the eyes of the historian and of the people of her time her greatest misdeed was that while her husband Claudius, the Emperor, was alive she publicly celebrated her marriage with the handsome Silius, using all outward legal forms. Our modern laws of divorce have so far accustomed our minds to such deeds that, although we miss the legal formalities which would necessarily precede such an act in our time, we secretly wonder at the effect it produced upon the men of that day, and are inclined to smile at the epithets of 'impious' and 'sacrilegious' which it called down upon Messalina, whose many other frightful crimes had elicited much more moderate condemnation. Claudius, himself no novice or beginner in horrors, hesitated long after he knew the truth, and it was the favourite Narcissus who took upon himself to order the Empress' death. Euodus, his freedman, and a tribune of the guard were sent to make an end of her. Swiftly they went up to the gardens--the gardens of the Pincian--and there they found her, beautiful, dark, dishevelled, stretched upon the marble floor, her mother Lepida crouching beside her, her mother, who in the bloom of her daughter's evil life had turned from her, but in her extreme need was overcome with pity. There knelt Domitia Lepida, urging the terror-mad woman not to wait the executioner, since life was over and nothing remained but to lend death the dignity of suicide. But the dishonoured self was empty of courage, and long-drawn weeping choked her useless lamentations. Then suddenly the doors were flung open with a crash, and the stern tribune stood silent in the hall, while the freedman Euodus screamed out curses, after the way of triumphant slaves. From her mother's hand the lost Empress took the knife at last and trembling laid it to her breast and throat, with weakly frantic fingers that could not hurt herself; the silent tribune killed her with one straight thrust, and when they brought the news to Claudius sitting at supper, and told him that Messalina had perished, his face did not change, and he said nothing as he held out his cup to be filled. [Illustration: PIAZZA DEL POPOLO] She died somewhere on the Pincian hill. Romance would choose the spot exactly where the nunnery of the Sacred Heart stands, at the Trinità de' Monti, looking down De Sanctis' imposing 'Spanish' steps; and the house in which the noble girls of modern Rome are sent to school may have risen upon the foundations of Messalina's last abode. Or it may be that the place was further west, in the high grounds of the French Academy, or on the site of the academy itself, at the gates of the public garden, just where the old stone fountain bubbles and murmurs under the shade of the thick ilex trees. Most of that land once belonged to Lucullus, the conqueror of Mithridates, the Academic philosopher, the arch feaster, and the man who first brought cherries to Italy. [Illustration: TRINITÀ DE' MONTI] The last descendant of Julia, the last sterile monster of the Julian race, Nero, was buried at the foot of the same hill. Alive, he was condemned by the Senate to be beaten to death in the Comitium; dead by his own hand, he received imperial honours, and his ashes rested for a thousand years where they had been laid by his two old nurses and a woman who had loved him. And during ten centuries the people believed that his terrible ghost haunted the hill, attended and served by thousands of demon crows that rested in the branches of the trees about his tomb, and flew forth to do evil at his bidding, till at last Pope Paschal the Second cut down with his own hands the walnut trees which crowned the summit, and commanded that the mausoleum should be destroyed, and the ashes of Nero scattered to the winds, that he might build a parish church on the spot and dedicate it to Saint Mary. It is said, too, that the Romans took the marble urn in which the ashes had been, and used it as a public measure for salt in the old market-place of the Capitol. A number of the rich Romans of the Renascence afterwards contributed money to the restoration of the church and built themselves chapels within it, as tombs for their descendants, so that it is the burial-place of many of those wealthy families that settled in Rome and took possession of the Corso when the Barons still held the less central parts of the city with their mediæval fortresses. Sixtus the Fourth and Julius the Second are buried in Saint Peter's, but their chapel was here, and here lie others of the della Rovere race, and many of the Chigi and Pallavicini and Theodoli; and here, in strange coincidence, Alexander the Sixth, the worst of the Popes, erected a high altar on the very spot where the worst of the Emperors had been buried. It is gone now, but the strange fact is not forgotten. Far across the beautiful square, at the entrance to the Corso, twin churches seem to guard the way like sentinels, built, it is said, to replace two chapels which once stood at the head of the bridge of Sant' Angelo; demolished because, when Rome was sacked by the Constable of Bourbon, they had been held as important points by the Spanish soldiers in besieging the Castle, and it was not thought wise to leave such useful outworks for any possible enemy in the future. Alexander the Seventh, the Chigi Pope, died, and left the work unfinished; and a folk story tells how a poor old woman who lived near by saved what she could for many years, and, dying, left one hundred and fifty scudi to help the completion of the buildings; and Cardinal Gastaldi, who had been refused the privilege of placing his arms upon a church which he had desired to build in Bologna, and was looking about for an opportunity of perpetuating his name, finished the two churches, his attention having been first called to them by the old woman's humble bequest. As for the Pincio itself, and the ascent to it from the Piazza del Popolo, all that land was but a grass-grown hillside, crowned by a few small and scattered villas and scantily furnished with trees, until the beginning of the present century; and the public gardens of the earlier time were those of the famous and beautiful Villa Medici, which Napoleon the First bestowed upon the French Academy. It was there that the fashionable Romans of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries used to meet, and walk, and be carried about in gilded sedan-chairs, and flirt, and gossip, and exchange views on politics and opinions about the latest scandal. That was indeed a very strange society, further from us in many ways than the world of the Renascence, or even of the Crusades; for the Middle Age was strong in the sincerity of its beliefs, as we are powerful in the cynicism of our single-hearted faith in riches; but the fabric of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was founded upon the abuse of an already declining power; it was built up in the most extraordinary and elaborate affectation, and it was guarded by a system of dissimulation which outdid that of our own day by many degrees, and possibly surpassed the hypocrisy of any preceding age. No one, indeed, can successfully uphold the idea that the high development of art in any shape is of necessity coincident with a strong growth of religion or moral conviction. Perugino made no secret of being an atheist; Lionardo da Vinci was a scientific sceptic; Raphael was an amiable rake, no better and no worse than the majority of those gifted pupils to whom he was at once a model of perfection and an example of free living; and those who maintain that art is always the expression of a people's religion have but an imperfect acquaintance with the age of Praxiteles, Apelles and Zeuxis. Yet the idea itself has a foundation, lying in something which is as hard to define as it is impossible to ignore; for if art be not a growth out of faith, it is always the result of a faith that has been, since although it is possible to conceive of religion without art, it is out of the question to think of art as a whole, without a religious origin; and as the majority of writers find it easier to describe scenes and emotions, when a certain lapse of time has given them what painters call atmospheric perspective, so the Renascence began when memory already clothed the ferocious realism of mediæval Christianity in the softer tones of gentle chivalry and tender romance. It is often said, half in jest, that, in order to have intellectual culture, a man must at least have forgotten Latin, if he cannot remember it, because the fact of having learned it leaves something behind that cannot be acquired in any other way. Similarly, I think that art of all sorts has reached its highest level in successive ages when it has aimed at recalling, by an illusion, a once vivid reality from a not too distant past. And so when it gives itself up to the realism of the present, it impresses the senses rather than the thoughts, and misses its object, which is to bring within our mental reach what is beyond our physical grasp; and when, on the other hand, it goes back too far, it fails in execution, because its models are not only out of sight, but out of mind, and it cannot touch us because we can no longer feel even a romantic interest in the real or imaginary events which it attempts to describe. The subject is too high to be lightly touched, and too wide to be touched more than lightly here; but in this view of it may perhaps be found some explanation of the miserable poverty of Italian art in the eighteenth century, foreshadowed by the decadence of the seventeenth, which again is traceable to the dissipation of force and the disappearance of individuality that followed the Renascence, as inevitably as old age follows youth. Besides all necessary gifts of genius, the development of art seems to require that a race should not only have leisure for remembering, but should also have something to remember which may be worthy of being recalled and perhaps of being imitated. Progress may be the road to wealth and health, and to such happiness as may be derived from both; but the advance of civilization is the path of thought, and its landmarks are not inventions nor discoveries, but those very great creations of the mind which ennoble the heart in all ages; and as the idea of progress is inseparable from that of growing riches, so is the true conception of civilization indivisible from thoughts of beauty and nobility. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Italy had almost altogether lost sight of these; art was execrable, fashion was hideous, morality meant hypocrisy; the surest way to power lay in the most despicable sort of intrigue, and inward and spiritual faith was as rare as outward and visible devoutness was general. That was the society which frequented the Villa Medici on fine afternoons, and it is hard to see wherein its charm lay, if, indeed, it had any. Instead of originality, its conversation teemed with artificial conventionalisms; instead of nature, it exhibited itself in the disguise of fashions more inconvenient, uncomfortable and ridiculous than those of any previous or later times; it delighted in the impossibly nonsensical 'pastoral' verses which we find too silly to read; and in place of wit, it clothed gross and cruel sayings in a thin remnant of worn-out classicism. It had not the frankly wicked recklessness of the French aristocracy between Lewis the Fourteenth and the Revolution, nor the changing contrasts of brutality, genius, affectation and Puritanical austerity which marked England's ascent, from the death of Edward the Sixth to the victories of Nelson and Wellington; still less had it any of those real motives for existence which carried Germany through her long struggle for life. It had little which we are accustomed to respect in men and women, and yet it had something which we lack today, and which we unconsciously envy--it had a colour of its own. Wandering under the ancient ilexes of those sad and beautiful gardens, meeting here and there a few silent and soberly clad strangers, one cannot but long for the brilliancy of two centuries ago, when the walks were gay with brilliant dresses, and gilded chairs, and servants in liveries of scarlet and green and gold, and noble ladies, tottering a few steps on their ridiculous high heels, and men bewigged and becurled, their useless little hats under their arms, and their embroidered coat tails flapping against their padded, silk-stockinged calves; and red-legged, unpriestly Cardinals who were not priests even in name, but only the lay life-peers of the Church; and grave Bishops with their secretaries; and laughing abbés, whose clerical dress was the accustomed uniform of government office, which they still wore when they were married, and were fathers of families. There is little besides colour to recommend the picture, but at least there is that. The Pincian hill has always been the favourite home of artists of all kinds, and many lived at one time or another in the little villas that once stood there, and in the houses in the Via Sistina and southward, and up towards the Porta Pinciana. Guido Reni, the Caracci, Salvator Rosa, Poussin, Claude Lorrain, have all left the place the association of their presence, and the Zuccheri brothers built themselves the house which still bears their name, just below the one at the corner of the Trinità de' Monti, known to all foreigners as the 'Tempietto' or little temple. But the Villa Medici stands as it did long ago, its walls uninjured, its trees grander than ever, its walks unchanged. Soft-hearted Baracconi, in love with those times more than with the Middle Age, speaks half tenderly of the people who used to meet there, calling them collectively a gay and light-hearted society, gentle, idle, full of graceful thoughts and delicate perceptions, brilliant reflections and light charms; he regrets the gilded chairs, the huge built-up wigs, the small sword of the 'cavalier servente,' and the abbé's silk mantle, the semi-platonic friendships, the jests borrowed from Goldoni, the 'pastoral' scandal, and exchange of compliments and madrigals and epigrams, and all the brilliant powdered train of that extinct world. [Illustration: VILLA MEDICI] Whatever life may have been in those times, that world died in a pretty tableau, after the manner of Watteau's paintings; it meant little and accomplished little, and though its bright colouring brings it for a moment to the foreground, it has really not much to do with the Rome we know nor with the Rome one thinks of in the past, always great, always sad, always tragic, as no other city in the world can ever be. Ignorance, tradition, imagination, romance,--call it what you will,--has chosen the long-closed Pincian Gate for the last station of blind Belisarius. There, says the tale, the ancient conqueror, the banisher and maker of Popes, the favourite and the instrument of imperial Theodora, stood begging his bread at the gate of the city he had won and lost, leaning upon the arm of the fair girl child who would not leave him, and stretching forth his hand to those that passed by, with a feeble prayer for alms, pathetic as Oedipus in the utter ruin of his life and fortune. A truer story tells how Pope Silverius, humble and gentle, and hated by Theodora, went up to the Pincian villa to answer the accusation of conspiring with the Goths, when he himself had opened the gates of Rome to Belisarius; and how he was led into the great hall where the warrior's wife, Theodora's friend, the beautiful and evil Antonina, lay with half-closed eyes upon her splendid couch, while Belisarius sat beside her feet, toying with her jewels. There the husband and wife accused the Pope, and judged him without hearing, and condemned him without right; and they caused him to be stripped of his robes, and clad as a poor monk and driven out to far exile, that they might set up the Empress Theodora's Pope in his place; and with him they drove out many Roman nobles. And it is said that when Silverius was dead of a broken heart in the little island of Palmaria, Belisarius repented of his deeds and built the small Church of Santa Maria de' Crociferi, behind the fountain of Trevi, in partial expiation of his fault, and there, to prove the truth of the story, the tablet that tells of his repentance has stood nearly fourteen hundred years and may be read today, on the east wall, towards the Via de' Poli. The man who conquered Africa for Justinian, seized Sicily, took Rome, defended it successfully against the Goths, reduced Ravenna, took Rome from the Goths again, and finally rescued Constantinople, was disgraced more than once; but he was not blinded, nor did he die in exile or in prison, for at the end he breathed his last in the enjoyment of his freedom and his honours; and the story of his blindness is the fabrication of an ignorant Greek monk who lived six hundred years later and confounded Justinian's great general with the romantic and unhappy John of Cappadocia, who lived at the same time, was a general at the same time, and incurred the displeasure of that same pious, proud, avaricious Theodora, actress, penitent and Empress, whose paramount beauty held the Emperor in thrall for life, and whose surpassing cruelty imprinted an indelible seal of horror upon his glorious reign--of her who, when she delivered a man to death, admonished the executioner with an oath, saying, 'By Him who liveth for ever, if thou failest, I will cause thee to be flayed alive.' Another figure rises at the window of the Tuscan Ambassador's great villa, with the face of a man concerning whom legend has also found much to invent and little to say that is true, a man of whom modern science has rightly made a hero, but whom prejudice and ignorance have wrongly crowned as a martyr--Galileo Galilei. Tradition represents him as languishing, laden with chains, in the more or less mythical prisons of the Inquisition; history tells very plainly that his first confinement consisted in being the honoured guest of the Tuscan Ambassador in the latter's splendid residence in Rome, and that his last imprisonment was a relegation to the beautiful castle of the Piccolomini near Siena, than which the heart of man could hardly desire a more lovely home. History affirms beyond doubt, moreover, that Galileo was the personal friend of that learned and not illiberal Barberini, Pope Urban the Eighth, under whose long reign the Copernican system was put on trial, who believed in that system as Galileo did, who read his books and talked with him; and who, when the stupid technicalities of the ecclesiastic courts declared the laws of the universe to be nonsense, gave his voice against the decision, though he could not officially annul it without scandal. 'It was not my intention,' said the Pope in the presence of witnesses, 'to condemn Galileo. If the matter had depended upon me, the decree of the Index which condemned his doctrines should never have been pronounced.' That Galileo's life was saddened by the result of the absurd trial, and that he was nominally a prisoner for a long time, is not to be denied. But that he suffered the indignities and torments recorded in legend is no more true than that Belisarius begged his bread at the Porta Pinciana. He lived in comfort and in honour with the Ambassador in the Villa Medici, and many a time from those lofty windows, unchanged since before his day, he must have watched the earth turning with him from the sun at evening, and meditated upon the emptiness of the ancient phrase that makes the sun 'set' when the day is done--thinking of the world, perhaps, as turning upon its other side, with tired eyes, and ready for rest and darkness and refreshment, after long toil and heat. * * * * * One may stand under those old trees before the Villa Medici, beside the ancient fountain facing Saint Peter's distant dome, and dream the great review of history, and call up a vast, changing picture at one's feet between the heights and the yellow river. First, the broad corn-field of the Tarquin Kings, rich and ripe under the evening breeze of summer that runs along swiftly, bending the golden surface in soft moving waves from the Tiber's edge to the foot of the wooded slope. Then, the hurried harvesting, the sheaves cast into the river, the dry, stiff stubble baking in the sun, and presently the men of Rome coming forth in procession from the dark Servian wall on the left to dedicate the field to the War God with prayer and chant and smoking sacrifice. By and by the stubble trodden down under horses' hoofs, the dusty plain the exercising ground of young conquerors, the voting place, later, of a strong Republic, whither the centuries went out to choose their consuls, to decide upon peace or war, to declare the voice of the people in grave matters, while the great signal flag waved on the Janiculum, well in sight though far away, to fall suddenly at the approach of any foe and suspend the 'comitia' on the instant. And in the flat and dusty plain, buildings begin to rise; first, the Altar of Mars and the holy place of the infernal gods, Dis and Proserpine; later, the great 'Sheepfold,' the lists and hustings for the voting, and, encroaching a little upon the training ground, the temple of Venus Victorious and the huge theatre of Pompey, wherein the Orsini held their own so long; but in the times of Lucullus, when his gardens and his marvellous villa covered the Pincian hill, the plain was still a wide field, and still the field of Mars, without the walls, broken by few landmarks, and trodden to deep white dust by the scampering hoofs of half-drilled cavalry. Under the Emperors, then, first beautified in part, as Cæsar traces the great Septa for the voting, and Augustus erects the Altar of Peace and builds up his cypress-clad tomb, crowned by his own image, and Agrippa raises his triple temple, and Hadrian builds the Pantheon upon its ruins, while the obelisk that now stands on Monte Citorio before the House of Parliament points out the brass-figured hours on the broad marble floor of the first Emperor's sun-clock and marks the high noon of Rome's glory--and the Portico of Neptune and many other splendid works spring up. Isis and Serapis have a temple next, and Domitian's race-course appears behind Agrippa's Baths, straight and white. By and by the Antonines raise columns and triumphal arches, but always to southward, leaving the field of Mars a field still, for its old uses, and the tired recruits, sweating from exercise, gather under the high shade of Augustus' tomb at midday for an hour's rest. Last of all, the great temple of the Sun, with its vast portico, and the Mithræum at the other end, and when the walls of Aurelian are built, and when ruin comes upon Rome from the north, the Campus Martius is still almost an open stretch of dusty earth on which soldiers have learned their trade through a thousand years of hard training. Not till the poor days when the waterless, ruined city sends its people down from the heights to drink of the muddy stream does Campo Marzo become a town, and then, around the castle-tomb of the Colonna and the castle-theatre of the Orsini the wretched houses begin to rise here and there, thickening to a low, dark forest of miserable dwellings threaded through and through, up and down and crosswise, by narrow and crooked streets, out of which by degrees the lofty churches and palaces of the later age are to spring up. From a training ground it has become a fighting ground, a labyrinth of often barricaded ways and lanes, deeper and darker towards the water-gates cut in the wall that runs along the Tiber, from Porta del Popolo nearly to the island of Saint Bartholomew, and almost all that is left of Rome is crowded and huddled into the narrow pen overshadowed and dominated here and there by black fortresses and brown brick towers. The man who then might have looked down from the Pincian hill would have seen that sight; houses little better than those of the poorest mountain village in the Southern Italy of today, black with smoke, black with dirt, blacker with patches made by shadowy windows that had no glass. A silent town, too, surly and defensive; now and then the call of the water-carrier disturbs the stillness, more rarely, the cry of a wandering peddler; and sometimes a distant sound of hoofs, a far clash of iron and steel, and the echoing yell of furious fighting men--'Orsini!' 'Colonna!'--the long-drawn syllables coming up distinct through the evening air to the garden where Messalina died, while the sun sets red behind the spire of old Saint Peter's across the river, and gilds the huge girth of dark Sant' Angelo to a rusty red, like battered iron bathed in blood. Back come the Popes from Avignon, and streets grow wider and houses cleaner and men richer--all for the Bourbon's Spaniards to sack, and burn, and destroy before the last city grows up, and the rounded domes raise their helmet-like heads out of the chaos, and the broad Piazza del Popolo is cleared, and old Saint Peter's goes down in dust to make way for the Cathedral of all Christendom as it stands. Then far away, on Saint Peter's evening, when it is dusk, the great dome, and the small domes, and the colonnades, and the broad façade are traced in silver lights that shine out quietly as the air darkens. The solemn bells toll the first hour of the June night; the city is hushed, and all at once the silver lines are turned to gold, as the red flame runs in magic change from the topmost cross down the dome, in rivers, to the roof, and the pillars and the columns of the square below--the grandest illumination of the grandest church the world has ever seen. [Illustration] REGION V PONTE The Region of Ponte, 'the Bridge,' takes its name from the ancient Triumphal Bridge which led from the city to the Vatican Fields, and at low water some fragments of the original piers may be seen in the river at the bend just below Ponte Sant' Angelo, between the Church of Saint John of the Florentines on the one bank, and the Hospital of Santo Spirito on the other. In the Middle Age, according to Baracconi and others, the broken arches still extended into the stream, and upon them was built a small fortress, the outpost of the Orsini on that side. The device, however, appears to represent a portion of the later Bridge of Sant' Angelo, built upon the foundations of the Ælian Bridge of Hadrian, which connected his tomb with the Campus Martius. The Region consists of the northwest point of the city, bounded by the Tiber, from Monte Brianzo round the bend, and down stream to the new Lungara bridge, and on the land side by a very irregular line running across the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, close to the Chiesa Nuova, and then eastward and northward in a zigzag, so as to take in most of the fortresses of the Orsini family, Monte Giordano, Tor Millina, Tor Sanguigna, and the now demolished Torre di Nona. The Sixth and Seventh Regions adjacent to the Fifth and to each other would have to be included in order to take in all that part of Rome once held by the only family that rivalled, and sometimes surpassed, the Colonna in power. As has been said before, the original difference between the two was that the Colonna were Ghibellines and for the Emperors, while the Orsini were Guelphs and generally adhered to the Popes. In the violent changes of the Middle Age, it happened indeed that the Colonna had at least one Pope of their own, and that more than one, such as Nicholas the Fourth, favoured their race to the point of exciting popular indignation. But, on the whole, they kept to their parties. When Lewis the Bavarian was to be crowned by force, Sciarra Colonna crowned him; when Henry the Seventh of Luxemburg had come to Rome for the same purpose, a few years earlier, the Orsini had been obliged to be satisfied with a sort of second-rate coronation at Saint John Lateran's; and when the struggle between the two families was at its height, nearly two centuries later, and Sixtus the Fourth 'assumed the part of mediator,' as the chronicle expresses it, one of his first acts of mediation was to cut off the head of a Colonna, and his next was to lay regular siege to the strongholds of the family in the Roman hills; but before he had brought this singular process of mediation to an issue he suddenly died, the Colonna returned to their dwellings in Rome 'with great clamour and triumph,' got the better of the Orsini, and proceeded to elect a Pope after their own hearts, in the person of Cardinal Cibo, of Genoa, known as Innocent the Eighth. He it is who lies under the beautiful bronze monument in the inner left aisle of Saint Peter's, which shows him holding in his hand a model of the spear-head that pierced Christ's side, a relic believed to have been sent to the Pope as a gift by Sultan Bajazet the Second. The origin of the hatred between Colonna and Orsini is unknown, for the archives of the former have as yet thrown no light upon the subject, and those of the latter were almost entirely destroyed by fire in the last century. In the year 1305, Pope Clement the Fifth was elected Pope at Perugia. He was a Frenchman, and was Archbishop of Bordeaux, the candidate of Philip the Fair, whose tutor had been a Colonna, and he was chosen by the opposing factions of two Orsini cardinals because the people of Perugia were tired of a quarrel that had lasted eleven months, and had adopted the practical and always infallible expedient of deliberately starving the conclave to a vote. Muratori calls it a scandalous and illicit election, which brought about the ruin of Italy and struck a memorable blow at the power of the Holy See. Though not a great man, Philip the Fair was one of the cleverest that ever lived. Before the election he had made his bishop swear upon the Sacred Host to accept his conditions, without expressing them all; and the most important proved to be the transference of the Papal See to France. The new Pope obeyed his master, established himself in Avignon, and the King to all intents and purposes had taken the Pontificate captive and lost no time in using it for his own ends against the Empire, his hereditary foe. Such, in a few words, is the history of that memorable transaction; and but for the previous quarrels of Colonna, Caetani and Orsini, it could never have taken place. The Orsini repented bitterly of what they had done, for one of Clement the Fifth's first acts was to 'annul altogether all sentences whatsoever pronounced against the Colonna.' But the Pope being gone, the Barons had Rome in their power and used it for a battlefield. Four years later, we find in Villani the first record of a skirmish fought between Orsini and Colonna. In the month of October, 1309, says the chronicler, certain of the Orsini and of the Colonna met outside the walls of Rome with their followers, to the number of four hundred horse, and fought together, and the Colonna won; and there died the Count of Anguillara, and six of the Orsini were taken, and Messer Riccardo degli Annibaleschi who was in their company. Three years afterwards, Henry of Luxemburg alternately feasted and fought his way to Rome to be crowned Emperor in spite of Philip the Fair, the Tuscan league and Robert, King of Naples, who sent a thousand horsemen out of the south to hinder the coronation. In a day Rome was divided into two great camps. Colonna held for the Emperor the Lateran, Santa Maria Maggiore, the Colosseum, the Torre delle Milizie,--the brick tower on the lower part of the modern Via Nazionale,--the Pantheon, as an advanced post in one direction, and Santa Sabina, a church that was almost a fortress, on the south, by the Tiber,--a chain of fortresses which would be formidable in any modern revolution. Against Henry, however, the Orsini held the Vatican and Saint Peter's, the Castle of Sant' Angelo and all Trastevere, their fortresses in the Region of Ponte, and, moreover, the Capitol itself. The parties were well matched, for, though Henry entered Rome on the seventh of May, the struggle lasted till the twenty-ninth of June. Those who have seen revolutions can guess at the desperate fighting in the barricaded streets, and at the well-guarded bridges from one end of the city to the other. Backwards and forwards the battle raged for days and weeks, by day and night, with small time for rest and refreshment. Forward rode the Colonna, the stolid Germans, Henry himself, the eagle of the Empire waving in the dim streets beside the flag that displayed the simple column in a plain field. It is not hard to hear and see it all again--the clanging gallop of armoured knights, princes, nobles and bishops, with visors down, and long swords and maces in their hands, the high, fierce cries of the light-armed footmen, the bowmen and the slingers, the roar of the rabble rout behind, the shrill voices of women at upper windows, peering down for the face of brother, husband, or lover in the dashing press below,--the dust, the heat, the fierce June sunshine blazing on broad steel, and the deep, black shadows putting out all light as the bands rush past. Then, on a sudden, the answering shout of the Orsini, the standard of the Bear, the Bourbon lilies of Anjou, the scarlet and white colours of the Guelph house, the great black horses, and the dark mail--the enemies surging together in the street like swift rivers of loose iron meeting in a stone channel, with a rending crash and the quick hammering of steel raining desperate blows on steel--horses rearing their height, footmen crushed, knights reeling in the saddle, sparks flying, steel-clad arms and long swords whirling in great circles through the air. Foremost of all in fight the Bishop of Liège, his purple mantle flying back from his corselet, trampling down everything, sworn to win the barricade or die, riding at it like a madman, forcing his horse up to it over the heaps of quivering bodies that made a causeway, leaping it alone at last, like a demon in air, and standing in the thick of the Orsini, slaying to right and left. In an instant they had him down and bound and prisoner, one man against a thousand; and they fastened him behind a man-at-arms, on the crupper, to take him into Sant' Angelo alive. But a soldier, whose brother he had slain a moment earlier, followed stealthily on foot and sought the joint in the back of the armour, and ran in his pike quickly, and killed him--'whereof,' says the chronicle, 'was great pity, for the Bishop was a man of high courage and authority.' But on the other side of the barricade, those who had followed him so far, and lost him, felt their hearts sink, for not one of them could do what he had done; and after that, though they fought a whole month longer, they had but little hope of ever getting to the Vatican. So the Colonna took Henry up to the Lateran, where they were masters, and he was crowned there by three cardinals in the Pope's stead, while the Orsini remained grimly intrenched in their own quarter, and each party held its own, even after Henry had prudently retired to Tivoli, in the hills. [Illustration: ISLAND IN THE TIBER] At last the great houses made a truce and a compromise, by which they attempted to govern Rome jointly, and chose Sciarra--the same who had taken Pope Boniface prisoner in Anagni--and Matteo Orsini of Monte Giordano, to be Senators together; and there was peace between them for a time, in the year in which Rienzi was born. But in that very year, as though foreshadowing his destiny, the rabble of Rome rose up, and chose a dictator; and somehow, by surprise or treachery, he got possession of the Barons' chief fortresses, and of Sant' Angelo, and set up the standard of terror against the nobles. In a few days he sacked and burned their strongholds, and the high and mighty lords who had made the reigning Pope, and had fought to an issue for the Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, were conquered, humiliated and imprisoned by an upstart plebeian of Trastevere. The portcullis of Monte Giordano was lifted, and the mysterious gates were thrown wide to the curiosity of a populace drunk with victory; Giovanni degli Stefaneschi issued edicts of sovereign power from the sacred precincts of the Capitol; and the vagabond thieves of Rome feasted in the lordly halls of the Colonna palace. But though the tribune and the people could seize Rome, outnumbering the nobles as ten to one, they had neither the means nor the organization to besiege the fortified towns of the great houses, which hemmed in the city and the Campagna on every side. Thither the nobles retired to recruit fresh armies among their retainers, to forge new swords in their own smithies, and to concert new plans for recovering their ancient domination; and thence they returned in their strength, from their towers and their towns and fortresses, from Palestrina and Subiaco, Genazzano, San Vito and Paliano on the south, and from Bracciano and Galera and Anguillara, and all the Orsini castles on the north, to teach the people of Rome the great truth of those days, that 'aristocracy' meant not the careless supremacy of the nobly born, but the power of the strongest hands and the coolest heads to take and hold. Back came Colonna and Orsini, and the people, who a few months earlier had acclaimed their dictator in a fit of justifiable ill-temper against their masters, opened the gates for the nobles again, and no man lifted a hand to help Giovanni degli Stefaneschi, when the men-at-arms bound him and dragged him off to prison. Strange to say, no further vengeance was taken upon him, and for once in their history, the nobles shed no blood in revenge for a mortal injury. No man could count the tragedies that swept over the Region of Ponte from the first outbreak of war between the Orsini and the Colonna, till Paolo Giordano Orsini, the last of the elder branch, breathed out his life in exile under the ban of Sixtus the Fifth, three hundred years later. There was no end of them till then, and there was little interruption of them while they lasted; there is no stone left standing from those days in that great quarter that may not have been splashed with their fierce blood, nor is there, perhaps, a church or chapel within their old holding into which an Orsini has not been borne dead or dying from some deadly fight. Even today it is gloomy, and the broad modern street, which swept down a straight harvest of memories through the quarter to the very Bridge of Sant' Angelo, has left the mediæval shadows on each side as dark as ever. Of the three parts of the city, which still recall the Middle Age most vividly, namely, the neighbourhood of San Pietro in Vincoli, in the first Region, the by-ways of Trastevere and the Region of Ponte, the latter is by far the most interesting. It was the abode of the Orsini; it was also the chief place of business for the bankers and money-changers who congregated there under the comparatively secure protection of the Guelph lords; and it was the quarter of prisons, of tortures, and of executions both secret and public. The names of the streets had terrible meaning: there was the Vicolo della Corda, and the Corda was the rope by which criminals were hoisted twenty feet in the air, and allowed to drop till their toes were just above the ground; there was the Piazza della Berlina Vecchia, the place of the Old Pillory; there was a little church known as the 'Church of the Gallows'; and there was a lane ominously called Vicolo dello Mastro; the Mastro was the Master of judicial executions, in other words, the Executioner himself. Before the Castle of Sant' Angelo stood the permanent gallows, rarely long unoccupied, and from an upper window of the dark Torre di Nona, on the hither side of the bridge, a rope hung swinging slowly in the wind, sometimes with a human body at the end of it, sometimes without. It was the place, and that was the manner, of executions that took place in the night. In Via di Monserrato stood the old fortress of the Savelli, long ago converted into a prison, and called the Corte Savella, the most terrible of all Roman dungeons for the horror of damp darkness, for ever associated with Beatrice Cenci's trial and death. Through those very streets she was taken in the cart to the little open space before the bridge, where she laid down her life upon the scaffold three hundred years ago, and left her story of offended innocence, of revenge and of expiation, which will not be forgotten while Rome is remembered. Beatrice Cenci's story has been often told, but nowhere more clearly and justly than in Shelley's famous letter, written to explain his play. There are several manuscript accounts of the last scene at the Ponte Sant' Angelo, and I myself have lately read one, written by a contemporary and not elsewhere mentioned, but differing only from the rest in the horrible realism with which the picture is presented. The truth is plain enough; the unspeakable crimes of Francesco Cenci, his more than inhuman cruelty to his children and his wives, his monstrous lust and devilish nature, outdo anything to be found in any history of the world, not excepting the private lives of Tiberius, Nero, or Commodus. His daughter and his second wife killed him in his sleep. His death was merciful and swift, in an age when far less crimes were visited with tortures at the very name of which we shudder. They were driven to absolute desperation, and the world has forgiven them their one quick blow, struck for freedom, for woman's honour and for life itself in the dim castle of Petrella. Tormented with rack and cord they all confessed the deed, save Beatrice, whom no bodily pain could move; and if Paolo Santacroce had not murdered his mother for her money before their death was determined, Clement the Eighth would have pardoned them. But the times were evil, an example was called for, Santacroce had escaped to Brescia, and the Pope's heart was hardened against the Cenci. [Illustration: BRIDGE OF SANT' ANGELO] They died bravely, there at the head of the bridge, in the calm May morning, in the midst of a vast and restless crowd, among whom more than one person was killed by accident, as by the falling of a pot of flowers from a high window, and by the breaking down of a balcony over a shop, where too many had crowded in to see. The old house opposite looked down upon the scene, and the people watched Beatrice Cenci die from those same arched windows. Above the sea of faces, high on the wooden scaffold, rises the tall figure of a lovely girl, her hair gleaming in the sunshine like threads of dazzling gold, her marvellous blue eyes turned up to Heaven, her fresh young dimpled face not pale with fear, her exquisite lips moving softly as she repeats the De Profundis of her last appeal to God. Let the axe not fall. Let her stand there for ever in the spotless purity that cost her life on earth and set her name for ever among the high constellated stars of maidenly romance. Close by the bridge, just opposite the Torre di Nona, stood the 'Lion Inn,' once kept by the beautiful Vanozza de Catanei, the mother of Rodrigo Borgia's children, of Cæsar, and Gandia, and Lucrezia, and the place was her property still when she was nominally married to her second husband, Carlo Canale, the keeper of the prison across the way. In the changing vicissitudes of the city, the Torre di Nona made way for the once famous Apollo Theatre, built upon the lower dungeons and foundations, and Faust's demon companion rose to the stage out of the depths that had heard the groans of tortured criminals; the theatre itself disappeared a few years ago in the works for improving the Tiber's banks, and a name is all that remains of a fact that made men tremble. In the late destruction, the old houses opposite were not altogether pulled down, but were sliced, as it were, through their roofs and rooms, at a safe angle; and there, no doubt, are still standing portions of Vanozza's inn, while far below, the cellars where she kept her wine free of excise, by papal privilege, are still as cool and silent as ever. Not far beyond her hostelry stands another Inn, famous from early days and still open to such travellers as deign to accept its poor hospitality. It is an inn for the people now, for wine carters, and the better sort of hill peasants; it was once the best and most fashionable in Rome, and there the great Montaigne once dwelt, and is believed to have written at least a part of his famous Essay on Vanity. It is the Albergo dell' Orso, the 'Bear Inn,' and perhaps it is not a coincidence that Vanozza's sign of the Lion should have faced the approach to the Leonine City beyond the Tiber, and that the sign of the Bear, 'The Orsini Arms,' as an English innkeeper would christen it, should have been the principal resort of the kind in a quarter which was three-fourths the property and altogether the possession of the great house that overshadowed it, from Monte Giordano on the one side, and from Pompey's Theatre on the other. The temporary fall of the Orsini at the end of the sixteenth century came about by one of the most extraordinary concatenations of events to be found in the chronicles. The story has filled more than one volume and is nevertheless very far from complete; nor is it possible, since the destruction of the Orsini archives, to reconstruct it with absolute accuracy. Briefly told, it is this. Felice Peretti, monk and Cardinal of Montalto, and still nominally one of the so-called 'poor cardinals' who received from the Pope a daily allowance known as 'the Dish,' had nevertheless accumulated a good deal of property before he became Pope under the name of Sixtus the Fifth, and had brought some of his relatives to Rome. Among these was his well beloved nephew, Francesco Peretti, for whom he naturally sought an advantageous marriage. There was at that time in Rome a notary, named Accoramboni, a native of the Marches of Ancona and a man of some wealth and of good repute. He had one daughter, Vittoria, a girl of excessive vanity, as ambitious as she was vain and as singularly beautiful as she was ambitious. But she was also clever in a remarkable degree, and seems to have had no difficulty in hiding her bad qualities. Francesco Peretti fell in love with her, the Cardinal approved the match, though he was a man not easily deceived, and the two were married and settled in the Villa Negroni, which the Cardinal had built near the Baths of Diocletian. Having attained her first object, Vittoria took less pains to play the saint, and began to dress with unbecoming magnificence and to live on a very extravagant scale. Her name became a byword in Rome and her lovely face was one of the city's sights. The Cardinal, devotedly attached to his nephew, disapproved of the latter's young wife and regretted the many gifts he had bestowed upon her. Like most clever men, too, he was more than reasonably angry at having been deceived in his judgment of a girl's character. So far, there is nothing not commonplace about the tale. At that time Paolo Giordano Orsini, the head of the house, Duke of Bracciano and lord of a hundred domains, was one of the greatest personages in Italy. No longer young and already enormously fat, he was married to Isabella de' Medici, the daughter of Cosimo, reigning in Florence. She was a beautiful and evil woman, and those who have endeavoured to make a martyr of her forget the nameless doings of her youth. Giordano was weak and extravagant, and paid little attention to his wife. She consoled herself with his kinsman, the young and handsome Troilo Orsini, who was as constantly at her side as an official 'cavalier servente' of later days. But the fat Giordano, indolent and pleasure seeking, saw nothing. Nor is there anything much more than vulgar and commonplace in all this. Paolo Giordano meets Vittoria Peretti in Rome, and the two commonplaces begin the tragedy. On his part, love at first sight; ridiculous, at first, when one thinks of his vast bulk and advancing years, terrible, by and by, as the hereditary passions of his fierce race could be, backed by the almost boundless power which a great Italian lord possessed in his surroundings. Vittoria, tired of her dull and virtuous husband and of the lectures and parsimony of his uncle, and not dreaming that the latter was soon to be Pope, saw herself in a dream of glory controlling every mood and action of the greatest noble in the land. And she met Giordano again and again, and he pleaded and implored, and was alternately ridiculous and almost pathetic in his hopeless passion for the notary's daughter. But she had no thought of yielding to his entreaties. She would have marriage, or nothing. Neither words nor gifts could move her. She had a husband, he had a wife; and she demanded that he should marry her, and was grimly silent as to the means. Until she was married to him he should not so much as touch the tips of her jewelled fingers, nor have a lock of her hair to wear in his bosom. He was blindly in love, and he was Paolo Giordano Orsini. It was not likely that he should hesitate. He who had seen nothing of his wife's doings, suddenly saw his kinsman, Troilo, and Isabella was doomed. Troilo fled to Paris, and Orsini took Isabella from Bracciano to the lonely castle of Galera. There he told her his mind and strangled her, as was his right, being feudal lord and master with powers of life and death. Then from Bracciano he sent messengers to kill Francesco Peretti. One of them had a slight acquaintance with the Cardinal's nephew. They came to the Villa Negroni by night, and called him out, saying that his best friend was in need of him, and was waiting for him at Monte Cavallo. He hesitated, for it was very late. They had torches and weapons, and would protect him, they said. Still he wavered. Then Vittoria, his wife, scoffed at him, and called him coward, and thrust him out to die; for she knew. The men walked beside him with their torches, talking as they went. They passed the deserted land in the Baths of Diocletian, and turned at Saint Bernard's Church to go towards the Quirinal. Then they put out the lights and killed him quickly in the dark. His body lay there all night, and when it was told the next day that Montalto's nephew had been murdered, the two men said that they had left him at Monte Cavallo and that he must have been killed as he came home alone. The Cardinal buried him without a word, and though he guessed the truth he asked neither vengeance nor justice of the Pope. [Illustration: VILLA NEGRONI From a print of the last century] Gregory the Thirteenth guessed it, too, and when Orsini would have married Vittoria, the Pope forbade the banns and interdicted their union for ever. That much he dared to do against the greatest peer in the country. To this, Orsini replied by plighting his faith to Vittoria with a ring, in the presence of a serving woman, an irregular ceremony which he afterwards described as a marriage, and he thereupon took his bride and her mother under his protection. The Pope retorted by a determined effort to arrest the murderers of Francesco; the Bargello and his men went in the evening to the Orsini palace at Pompey's Theatre and demanded that Giordano should give up the criminals; the porter replied that the Duke was asleep; the Orsini men-at-arms lunged out with their weapons, looked on during the interview, and considering the presence of the Bargello derogatory to their master, drove him away, killing one of his men and wounding several others. Thereupon Pope Gregory forbade the Duke from seeing Vittoria or communicating with her by messengers, on pain of a fine of ten thousand gold ducats, an order to which Orsini would have paid no attention but which Vittoria was too prudent to disregard, and she retired to her brother's house, leaving the Duke in a state of frenzied rage that threatened insanity. Then the Pope seemed to waver again, and then again learning that the lovers saw each other constantly in spite of his commands, he suddenly had Vittoria seized and imprisoned in Sant' Angelo. It is impossible to follow the long struggle that ensued. It lasted four years, at the end of which time the Duke and Vittoria were living at Bracciano, where the Orsini was absolute lord and master and beyond the jurisdiction of the Church--two hours' ride from the gates of Rome. But no further formality of marriage had taken place and Vittoria was not satisfied. Then Gregory the Thirteenth died. During the vacancy of the Holy See, all interdictions of the late Pope were suspended. Instantly Giordano determined to be married, and came to Rome with Vittoria. They believed that the Conclave would last some time and were making their arrangements without haste, living in Pompey's Theatre, when a messenger brought word that Cardinal Montalto would surely be elected Pope within a few hours. In the fortress is the small family church of Santa Maria di Grotta Pinta. The Duke sent down word to his chaplain that the latter must marry him at once. That night a retainer of the house had been found murdered at the gate; his body lay on a trestle bier before the altar of the chapel when the Duke's message came; the Duke himself and Vittoria were already in the little winding stair that leads down from the apartments; there was not a moment to be lost; the frightened chaplain and the messenger hurriedly raised a marble slab which closed an unused vault, dropped the murdered man's body into the chasm, and had scarcely replaced the stone when the ducal pair entered the church. The priest married them before the altar in fear and trembling, and when they were gone entered the whole story in the little register in the sacristy. The leaf is extant. Within a few hours, Montalto was Pope, the humble cardinal was changed in a moment to the despotic pontiff, whose nephew's murder was unavenged; instead of the vacillating Gregory, Orsini had to face the terrible Sixtus, and his defeat and exile were foregone conclusions. He could no longer hold his own and he took refuge in the States of Venice, where his kinsman, Ludovico, was a fortunate general. He made a will which divided his personal estate between Vittoria and his son, Virginio, greatly to the woman's advantage; and overcome by the infirmity of his monstrous size, spent by the terrible passions of his later years, and broken in heart by an edict of exile which he could no longer defy, he died at Salò within seven months of his great enemy's coronation, in the forty-ninth year of his age. Vittoria retired to Padua, and the authorities declared the inheritance valid, but Ludovico Orsini's long standing hatred of her was inflamed to madness by the conditions of the will. Six weeks after the Duke's death, at evening, Vittoria was in her chamber; her boy brother, Flaminio, was singing a Miserere to his lute by the fire in the great hall. A sound of quick feet, the glare of torches, and Ludovico's masked men filled the house. Vittoria died bravely with one deep stab in her heart. The boy, Flaminio, was torn to pieces with seventy-four wounds. But Venice would permit no such outrageous deeds. Ludovico was besieged in his house, by horse and foot and artillery, and was taken alive with many of his men and swiftly conveyed to Venice; and a week had not passed from the day of the murder before he was strangled by the Bargello in the latter's own room, with the red silk cord by which it was a noble's privilege to die. The first one broke, and they had to take another, but Ludovico Orsini did not wince. An hour later his body was borne out with forty torches, in solemn procession, to lie in state in Saint Mark's Church. His men were done to death with hideous tortures in the public square. So ended the story of Vittoria Accoramboni. [Illustration] REGION VI PARIONE The principal point of this Region is Piazza Navona, which exactly coincides with Domitian's race-course, and the Region consists of an irregular triangle of which the huge square is at the northern angle, the western one being the Piazza della Chiesa Nuova and the southern extremity the theatre of Pompey, so often referred to in these pages as one of the Orsini's strongholds and containing the little church in which Paolo Giordano married Vittoria Accoramboni, close to the Campo dei Fiori which was the place of public executions by fire. The name Parione is said to be derived from the Latin 'Paries,' a wall, applied to a massive remnant of ancient masonry which once stood somewhere in the Via di Parione. It matters little; nor can we find any satisfactory explanation of the gryphon which serves as a device for the whole quarter, included during the Middle Age, with Ponte and Regola, in the large portion of the city dominated by the Orsini. The Befana, which is a corruption of Epifania, the Feast of the Epiphany, is and always has been the season of giving presents in Rome, corresponding with our Christmas; and the Befana is personated as a gruff old woman who brings gifts to little children after the manner of our Saint Nicholas. But in the minds of Romans, from earliest childhood, the name is associated with the night fair, opened on the eve of the Epiphany in Piazza Navona, and which was certainly one of the most extraordinary popular festivals ever invented to amuse children and make children of grown people, a sort of foreshadowing of Carnival, but having at the same time a flavour and a colour of its own, unlike anything else in the world. During the days after Christmas a regular line of booths is erected, encircling the whole circus-shaped space. It is a peculiarity of Roman festivals that all the material for adornment is kept together from year to year, ready for use at a moment's notice, and when one sees the enormous amount of lumber required for the Carnival, for the fireworks on the Pincio, or for the Befana, one cannot help wondering where it is all kept. From year to year it lies somewhere, in those vast subterranean places and great empty houses used for that especial purpose, of which only Romans guess the extent. When needed, it is suddenly produced without confusion, marked and numbered, ready to be put together and regilt or repainted, or hung with the acres of draperies which Latins know so well how to display in everything approaching to public pageantry. At dark, on the Eve of the Epiphany, the Befana begins. The hundreds of booths are choked with toys and gleam with thousands of little lights, the open spaces are thronged by a moving crowd, the air splits with the infernal din of ten thousand whistles and tin trumpets. Noise is the first consideration for a successful befana, noise of any kind, shrill, gruff, high, low--any sort of noise; and the first purchase of everyone who comes must be a tin horn, a pipe, or one of those grotesque little figures of painted earthenware, representing some characteristic type of Roman life and having a whistle attached to it, so cleverly modelled in the clay as to produce the most hideous noises without even the addition of a wooden plug. But anything will do. On a memorable night nearly thirty years ago, the whole cornopean stop of an organ was sold in the fair, amounting to seventy or eighty pipes with their reeds. The instrument in the old English Protestant Church outside of Porta del Popolo had been improved, and the organist, who was a practical Anglo-Saxon, conceived the original and economical idea of selling the useless pipes at the night fair for the benefit of the church. The braying of the high, cracked reeds was frightful and never to be forgotten. Round and round the square, three generations of families, children, parents and even grandparents, move in a regular stream, closer and closer towards midnight and supper-time; nor is the place deserted till three o'clock in the morning. Toys everywhere, original with an attractive ugliness, nine-tenths of them made of earthenware dashed with a kind of bright and harmless paint of which every Roman child remembers the taste for life; and old and young and middle-aged all blow their whistles and horns with solemnly ridiculous pertinacity, pausing only to make some little purchase at the booths, or to exchange a greeting with passing friends, followed by an especially vigorous burst of noise as the whistles are brought close to each other's ears, and the party that can make the more atrocious din drives the other half deafened from the field. And the old women who help to keep the booths sit warming their skinny hands over earthen pots of coals and looking on without a smile on their Sibylline faces, while their sons and daughters sell clay hunchbacks and little old women of clay, the counterparts of their mothers, to the passing customers. Thousands upon thousands of people throng the place, and it is warm with the presence of so much humanity, even under the clear winter sky. And there is no confusion, no accident, no trouble, there are no drunken men and no pickpockets. But Romans are not like other people. In a few days all is cleared away again, and Bernini's great fountain faces Borromini's big Church of Saint Agnes, in the silence; and the officious guide tells the credulous foreigner how the figure of the Nile in the group is veiling his head to hide the sight of the hideous architecture, and how the face of the Danube expresses the River God's terror lest the tower should fall upon him; and how the architect retorted upon the sculptor by placing Saint Agnes on the summit of the church, in the act of reassuring the Romans as to the safety of her shrine; and again, how Bernini's enemies said that the obelisk of the fountain was tottering, till he came alone on foot and tied four lengths of twine to the four corners of the pedestal, and fastened the strings to the nearest houses, in derision, and went away laughing. It was at that time that he modelled four grinning masks for the corners of his sedan-chair, so that they seemed to be making scornful grimaces at his detractors as he was carried along. He could afford to laugh. He had been the favourite of Urban the Eighth who, when Cardinal Barberini, had actually held the looking-glass by the aid of which the handsome young sculptor modelled his own portrait in the figure of David with the sling, now in the Museum of Villa Borghese. After a brief period of disgrace under the next reign, brought about by the sharpness of his Neapolitan tongue, Bernini was restored to the favour of Innocent the Tenth, the Pamfili Pope, to please whose economical tastes he executed the fountain in Piazza Navona, after a design greatly reduced in extent as well as in beauty, compared with the first he had sketched. But an account of Bernini would lead far and profit little; the catalogue of his works would fill a small volume; and after all, he was successful only in an age when art had fallen low. In place of Michelangelo's universal genius, Bernini possessed a born Neapolitan's universal facility. He could do something of everything, circumstances gave him enormous opportunities, and there were few things which he did not attempt, from classic sculpture to the final architecture of Saint Peter's and the fortifications of Sant' Angelo. He was afflicted by the hereditary giantism of the Latins, and was often moved by motives of petty spite against his inferior rival, Borromini. His best work is the statue of Saint Teresa in Santa Maria della Vittoria, a figure which has recently excited the ecstatic admiration of a French critic, expressed in language that betrays at once the fault of the conception, the taste of the age in which Bernini lived, and the unhealthy nature of the sculptor's prolific talent. Only the seventeenth century could have represented such a disquieting fusion of the sensuous and the spiritual, and it was reserved for the decadence of our own days to find words that could describe it. Bernini has been praised as the Michelangelo of his day, but no one has yet been bold enough, or foolish enough, to call Michelangelo the Bernini of the sixteenth century. Barely sixty years elapsed between the death of the one and birth of the other, and the space of a single lifetime separates the zenith of the Renascence from the nadir of Barocco art. [Illustration: PIAZZA NAVONA] The names of Bernini and of Piazza Navona recall Innocent the Tenth, who built the palace beside the Church of Saint Agnes, his meannesses, his nepotism, his weakness, and his miserable end; how his relatives stripped him of all they could lay hands on, and how at the last, when he died in the only shirt he possessed, covered by a single ragged blanket, his sister-in-law, Olimpia Maldachini, dragged from beneath his pallet bed the two small chests of money which he had succeeded in concealing to the end. A brass candlestick with a single burning taper stood beside him in his last moments, and before he was quite dead, a servant stole it and put a wooden one in its place. When he was dead at the Quirinal, his body was carried to Saint Peter's in a bier so short that the poor Pope's feet stuck out over the end, and three days later, no one could be found to pay for the burial. Olimpia declared that she was a starving widow and could do nothing; the corpse was thrust into a place where the masons of the Vatican kept their tools, and one of the workmen, out of charity or superstition, lit a tallow candle beside it. In the end, the maggiordomo paid for a deal coffin, and Monsignor Segni gave five scudi--an English pound--to have the body taken away and buried. It was slung between two mules and taken by night to the Church of Saint Agnes, where in the changing course of human and domestic events, it ultimately got an expensive monument in the worst possible taste. The learned and sometimes witty Baracconi, who has set down the story, notes the fact that Leo the Tenth, Pius the Fourth and Gregory the Sixteenth fared little better in their obsequies, and he comments upon the democratic spirit of a city in which such things can happen. Close to the Piazza Navona stands the famous mutilated group, known as Pasquino, of which the mere name conveys a better idea of the Roman character than volumes of description, for it was here that the pasquinades were published, by affixing them to a pedestal at the corner of the Palazzo Braschi. And one of Pasquino's bitterest jests was directed against Olimpia Maldachini. Her name was cut in two, to make a good Latin pun: 'Olim pia, nunc impia,' 'once pious, now impious,' or 'Olimpia, now impious,' as one chose to join or separate the syllables. Whole books have been filled with the short and pithy imaginary conversations between Marforio, the statue of a river god which used to stand in the Monti, and Pasquino, beneath whom the Roman children used to be told that the book of all wisdom was buried for ever. In the Region of Parione stands the famous Cancelleria, a masterpiece of Bramante's architecture, celebrated for many events in the later history of Rome, and successively the princely residence of several cardinals, chief of whom was that strong Pompeo Colonna, the ally of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, who was responsible for the sacking of Rome by the Constable of Bourbon, who ultimately ruined the Holy League, and imposed his terrible terms of peace upon Clement the Seventh, a prisoner in Sant' Angelo. Considering the devastation and the horrors which were the result of that contest, and its importance in Rome's history, it is worth while to tell the story again. Connected with it was the last great struggle between Orsini and Colonna, Orsini, as usual, siding for the Pope, and therefore for the Holy League, and Colonna for the Emperor. Charles the Fifth had vanquished Francis the First at Pavia, in the year 1525, and had taken the French King prisoner. A year later the Holy League was formed, between Pope Clement the Seventh, the King of France, the Republics of Venice and Florence, and Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan. Its object was to fight the Emperor, to sustain Sforza, and to seize the Kingdom of Naples by force. Immediately upon the proclamation of the League, the Emperor's ambassadors left Rome, the Colonna retired to their strongholds, and the Emperor made preparations to send Charles, Duke of Bourbon, the disgraced relative of King Francis, to storm Rome and reduce the imprisoned Pope to submission. The latter's first and nearest source of fear lay in the Colonna, who held the fortresses and passes between Rome and the Neapolitan frontier, and his first instinct was to attack them with the help of the Orsini. But neither side was ready for the fight, and the timid Pontiff eagerly accepted the promise of peace made by the Colonna in order to gain time, and he dismissed the forces he had hastily raised against them. [Illustration: PALAZZO MASSIMO ALLE COLONNA] [Illustration: PONTE SISTO From a print of the last century] They, in the mean time, treated with Moncada, Regent of Naples for the Emperor, and at once seized Anagni, put several thousand men in the field, marched upon Rome with incredible speed, seized three gates in the night, and entered the city in triumph on the following morning. The Pope and the Orsini, completely taken by surprise, offered little or no resistance. According to some writers, it was Pompeo Colonna's daring plan to murder the Pope, force his own election to the Pontificate by arms, destroy the Orsini, and open Rome to Charles the Fifth; and when the Colonna advanced on the same day, by Ponte Sisto, to Trastevere, and threatened to attack Saint Peter's and the Vatican, Clement the Seventh, remembering Sciarra and Pope Boniface, was on the point of imitating the latter and arraying himself in his Pontifical robes to await his enemy with such dignity as he could command. But the remonstrances of the more prudent cardinals prevailed, and about noon they conveyed him safely to Sant' Angelo by the secret covered passage, leaving the Colonna to sack Trastevere and even Saint Peter's itself, though they dared not come too near to Sant' Angelo for fear of its cannons. The tumult over at last, Don Ugo de Moncada, in the Emperor's name, took possession of the Pope's two nephews as hostages for his own safety, entered Sant' Angelo under a truce, and stated the Emperor's conditions of peace. These were, to all intents and purposes, that the Pope should withdraw his troops, wherever he had any, and that the Emperor should be free to advance wherever he pleased, except through the Papal States, that the Pope should give hostages for his good faith, and that he should grant a free pardon to all the Colonna, who vaguely agreed to withdraw their forces into the Kingdom of Naples. To this humiliating peace, or armistice, for it was nothing more, the Pope was forced by the prospect of starvation, and he would even have agreed to sail to Barcelona in order to confer with the Emperor; but from this he was ultimately dissuaded by Henry the Eighth of England and the King of France, 'who sent him certain sums of money and promised him their support.' The consequence was that he broke the truce as soon as he dared, deprived the Cardinal of his hat, and, with the help of the Orsini, attacked the Colonna by surprise on their estates, giving orders to burn their castles and raze their fortresses to the ground. Four villages were burned before the surprised party could recover itself; but with some assistance from the imperial troops they were soon able to face their enemies on equal terms, and the little war raged fiercely during several months, with varying success and all possible cruelty on both sides. Meanwhile Charles, Duke of Bourbon, known as the Constable, and more or less in the pay of the Emperor, had gathered an army in Lombardy. His force consisted of the most atrocious ruffians of the time,--Lutheran Germans, superstitious Spaniards, revolutionary Italians, and such other nondescripts as would join his standard,--all fellows who had in reality neither country nor conscience, and were ready to serve any soldier of fortune who promised them plunder and license. The predominating element was Spanish, but there was not much to choose among them all so far as their instincts were concerned. Charles was penniless, as usual; he offered his horde of cutthroats the rich spoils of Tuscany and Rome, they swore to follow him to death and perdition, and he began his southward march. The Emperor looked on with an approving eye, and the Pope was overcome by abject terror. In the vain hope of saving himself and the city he concluded a truce with the Viceroy of Naples, agreeing to pay sixty thousand ducats, to give back everything taken from the Colonna, and to restore Pompeo to the honours of the cardinalate. The conditions of the armistice were forthwith carried out, by the disbanding of the Pope's hired soldiers and the payment of the indemnity, and Clement the Seventh enjoyed during a few weeks the pleasant illusion of fancied safety. He awoke from the dream, in horror and fear, to find that the Constable considered himself in no way bound by a peace concluded with the Emperor's Viceroy, and was advancing rapidly upon Rome, ravaging and burning everything in his way. Hasty preparations for defence were made; a certain Renzo da Ceri armed such men as he could enlist with such weapons as he could find, and sent out a little force of grooms and artificers to face the Constable's ruthless Spaniards and the fierce Germans of his companion freebooter, George of Fransperg, or Franzberg, who carried about a silken cord by which he swore to strangle the Pope with his own hands. The enemy reached the walls of Rome on the night of the fifth of May; devastation and famine lay behind them in their track, the plunder of the Church was behind the walls, and far from northward came rumours of the army of the League on its way to cut off their retreat. They resolved to win the spoil or die, and at dawn the Constable, clad in a white cloak, led the assault and set up the first scaling ladder, close to the Porta San Spirito. In the very act a bullet struck him in a vital part and he fell headlong to the earth. Benvenuto Cellini claimed the credit of the shot, but it is more than probable that it sped from another hand, that of Bernardino Passeri; it matters little now, it mattered less then, as the infuriated Spaniards stormed the walls in the face of Camillo Orsini's desperate and hopeless resistance, yelling 'Blood and the Bourbon,' for a war-cry. Once more the wretched Pope fled along the secret corridor with his cardinals, his prelates and his servants; for although he might yet have escaped from the doomed city, messengers had brought word that Cardinal Pompeo Colonna had ten thousand men-at-arms in the Campagna, ready to cut off his flight, and he was condemned to be a terrified spectator of Rome's destruction from the summit of a fortress which he dared not surrender and could hardly hope to defend. Seven thousand Romans were slaughtered in the storming of the walls; the enemy gained all Trastevere at a blow and the sack began; the torrent of fury poured across Ponte Sisto into Rome itself, thousands upon thousands of steel-clad madmen, drunk with blood and mad with the glitter of gold, a storm of unimaginable terror. Cardinals, Princes and Ambassadors were dragged from their palaces, and when greedy hands had gathered up all that could be taken away, fire consumed the rest, and the miserable captives were tortured into promising fabulous ransoms for life and limb. Abbots, priors and heads of religious orders were treated with like barbarity, and the few who escaped the clutches of the bloodthirsty Spanish soldiers fell into the reeking hands of the brutal German adventurers. The enormous sum of six million ducats was gathered together in value of gold and silver bullion and of precious things, and as much more was extorted as promised ransom from the gentlemen and churchmen and merchants of Rome by the savage tortures of the lash, the iron boot and the rack. The churches were stripped of all consecrated vessels, the Sacred Wafers were scattered abroad by the Catholic Spaniards and trampled in the bloody ooze that filled the ways, the convents were stormed by a rabble in arms and the nuns were distributed as booty among their fiendish captors, mothers and children were slaughtered in the streets and drunken Spaniards played dice for the daughters of honourable citizens. From the surrounding Campagna the Colonna entered the city in arms, orderly, silent and sober, and from their well-guarded fortresses they contemplated the ruin they had brought upon Rome. Cardinal Pompeo installed himself in his palace of the Cancelleria in the Region of Parione, and gave shelter to such of his friends as might be useful to him thereafter. In revenge upon John de' Medici, the Captain of the Black Bands, whose assistance the Pope had invoked, the Cardinal caused the Villa Medici on Monte Mario to be burned to the ground, and Clement the Seventh watched the flames from the ramparts of Sant' Angelo. One good action is recorded of the savage churchman. He ransomed and protected in his house the wife and the daughter of that Giorgio Santacroce who had murdered the Cardinal's father by night, when the Cardinal himself was an infant in arms, more than forty years earlier; and he helped some of his friends to escape by a chimney from the room in which they had been confined and tortured into promising a ransom they could not pay. But beyond those few acts he did little to mitigate the horrors of the month-long sack, and nothing to relieve the city from the yoke of its terrible captors. The Holy League sent a small force to the Pope's assistance and it reached the gates of Rome; but the Spaniards were in possession of immense stores of ammunition and provisions, they had more horses than they needed and more arms than they could bear; the forces of the League had traversed a country in which not a blade of grass had been left undevoured nor a measure of corn uneaten; and the avengers of the dead Constable, securely fortified within the walls, looked down with contempt upon an army already decimated by sickness and starvation. At this juncture, Clement the Seventh resolved to abandon further resistance and sue for peace. The guns of Sant' Angelo had all but fired their last shot, and the supply of food was nearly exhausted, when the Pope sent for Cardinal Colonna; the churchman consented to a parley, and the man who had suffered confiscation and disgrace entered the castle as the arbiter of destiny. He was received as the mediator of peace and a benefactor of humanity, and when he stated his terms they were not refused. The Pope and the thirteen Cardinals who were with him were to remain prisoners until the payment of four hundred thousand ducats of gold, after which they were to be conducted to Naples to await the further pleasure of the Emperor; the Colonna were to be absolutely and freely pardoned for all they had done; in the hope of some subsequent assistance the Pope promised to make Cardinal Colonna the Legate of the Marches. As a hostage for the performance of these and other conditions, Cardinal Orsini was delivered over to his enemy, who conducted him as his prisoner to the Castle of Grottaferrata, and the Colonna secretly agreed to allow the Pope to go free from Sant' Angelo. On the night of December the ninth, seven months after the storming of the city, the head of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church fled from the castle in the humble garb of a market gardener, and made good his escape to Orvieto and to the protection of the Holy League. Meanwhile a pestilence had broken out in Rome, and the spectre of a mysterious and mortal sickness distracted those who had survived the terrors of sword and flame. The Spanish and German soldiery either fell victims to the plague or deserted in haste and fear; and though Cardinal Pompeo's peace contained no promise that the city should be evacuated, it was afterwards stated upon credible authority that, within two years from their coming, not one of the barbarous horde was left alive within the walls. When all was over the city was little more than a heap of ruins, but the Colonna had been victorious, and were sated with revenge. This, in brief, is the history of the storming and sacking of Rome which took place in the year 1527, at the highest development of the Renascence, in the youth of Benvenuto Cellini, when Michelangelo had not yet painted the Last Judgment, when Titian was just fifty years old, and when Raphael and Lionardo da Vinci were but lately dead; and the contrast between the sublimity of art and the barbarity of human nature in that day is only paralleled in the annals of our own century, at once the bloodiest and the most civilized in the history of the world. The Cancelleria, wherein Pompeo Colonna sheltered the wife and daughter of his father's murderer, is remembered for some modern political events: for the opening of the first representative parliament under Pius the Ninth, in 1848, for the assassination of the Pope's minister, Pellegrino Rossi, on the steps of the entrance in the same year, and as the place where the so-called Roman Republic was proclaimed in 1849. But it is most of all interesting for the nobility of its proportions and the simplicity of its architecture. It is undeniably, and almost undeniedly, the best building in Rome today, though that may not be saying much in a city which has been more exclusively the prey of the Barocco than any other. [Illustration: THE CANCELLERIA From a print of the last century] The Palace of the Massimo, once built to follow the curve of a narrow winding street, but now facing the same great thoroughfare as the Cancelleria, has something of the same quality, with a wholly different character. It is smaller and more gloomy, and its columns are almost black with age; it was here, in 1455, that Pannartz and Schweinheim, two of those nomadic German scholars who have not yet forgotten the road to Italy, established their printing-press in the house of Pietro de' Massimi, and here took place one of those many romantic tragedies which darkened the end of the sixteenth century. For a certain Signore Massimo, in the year 1585, had been married and had eight sons, mostly grown men, when he fell in love with a light-hearted lady of more wit than virtue, and announced that he would make her his wife, though his sons warned him that they would not bear the slight upon their mother's memory. The old man, infatuated and beside himself with love, would not listen to them, but published the banns, married the woman, and brought her home for his wife. One of the sons, the youngest, was too timid to join the rest; but on the next morning the seven others went to the bridal apartment, and killed their step-mother when their father was away. But he came back before she was quite dead, and he took the Crucifix from the wall by the bed and cursed his children. And the curse was fulfilled upon them. Parione is the heart of Mediæval Rome, the very centre of that black cloud of mystery which hangs over the city of the Middle Age. A history might be composed out of Pasquin's sayings, volumes have been written about Cardinal Pompeo Colonna and the ruin he wrought, whole books have been filled with the life and teachings and miracles of Saint Philip Neri, who belonged to this quarter, erected here his great oratory, and is believed to have recalled from the dead a youth of the house of Massimo in that same gloomy palace. The story of Rome is a tale of murder and sudden death, varied, changing, never repeated in the same way; there is blood on every threshold; a tragedy lies buried in every church and chapel; and again we ask in vain wherein lies the magic of the city that has fed on terror and grown old in carnage, the charm that draws men to her, the power that holds, the magic that enthralls men soul and body, as Lady Venus cast her spells upon Tannhäuser in her mountain of old. Yet none deny it, and as centuries roll on, the poets, the men of letters, the musicians, the artists of all ages, have come to her from far countries and have dwelt here while they might, some for long years, some for the few months they could spare; and all of them have left something, a verse, a line, a sketch, a song that breathes the threefold mystery of love, eternity and death. Index A Abruzzi, i. 159; ii. 230 Accoramboni, Flaminio, i. 296 Vittoria, i. 135, 148, 289-296, 297 Agrarian Law, i. 23 Agrippa, i. 90, 271; ii. 102 the Younger, ii. 103 Alaric, i. 252; ii. 297 Alba Longa, i. 3, 78, 130 Albergo dell' Orso, i. 288 Alberic, ii. 29 Albornoz, ii. 19, 20, 74 Aldobrandini, i. 209; ii. 149 Olimpia, i. 209 Alfonso, i. 185 Aliturius, ii. 103 Altieri, i. 226; ii. 45 Ammianus Marcellinus, i. 132, 133, 138 Amphitheatre, Flavian, i. 91, 179 Amulius, i. 3 Anacletus, ii. 295, 296, 304 Anagni, i. 161, 165, 307; ii. 4, 5 Ancus Martius, i. 4 Angelico, Beato, ii. 158, 169, 190-192, 195, 285 Anguillara, i. 278; ii. 138 Titta della, ii. 138, 139 Anio, the, i. 93 Novus, i. 144 Vetus, i. 144 Annibaleschi, Riccardo degli, i. 278 Antiochus, ii. 120 Antipope-- Anacletus, ii. 84 Boniface, ii. 28 Clement, i. 126 Gilbert, i. 127 John of Calabria, ii. 33-37 Antonelli, Cardinal, ii. 217, 223, 224 Antonina, i. 266 Antonines, the, i. 113, 191, 271 Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, i. 46, 96, 113, 114, 190, 191 Appian Way, i. 22, 94 Appius Claudius, i. 14, 29 Apulia, Duke of, i. 126, 127; ii. 77 Aqua Virgo, i. 155 Aqueduct of Claudius, i. 144 Arbiter, Petronius, i. 85 Arch of-- Arcadius, i. 192 Claudius, i. 155 Domitian, i. 191, 205 Gratian, i. 191 Marcus Aurelius, i. 96, 191, 205 Portugal, i. 205 Septimius Severus, ii. 93 Valens, i. 191 Archive House, ii. 75 Argiletum, the, i. 72 Ariosto, ii. 149, 174 Aristius, i. 70, 71 Arnold of Brescia, ii. 73, 76-89 Arnulf, ii. 41 Art, i. 87; ii 152 and morality, i. 260, 261; ii. 178, 179 religion, i. 260, 261 Barocco, i. 303, 316 Byzantine in Italy, ii. 155, 184, 185 development of taste in, ii. 198 factors in the progress of art, ii. 181 engraving, ii. 186 improved tools, ii. 181 individuality, i. 262; ii. 175-177 Greek influence on, i. 57-63 modes of expression of, ii. 181 fresco, ii. 181-183 oil painting, ii. 184-186 of the Renascence, i. 231, 262; ii. 154 phases of, in Italy, ii. 188 progress of, during the Middle Age, ii. 166, 180 transition from handicraft to, ii. 153 Artois, Count of, i. 161 Augustan Age, i. 57-77 Augustulus, i. 30, 47, 53; ii. 64 Augustus, i. 30, 43-48, 69, 82, 89, 90, 184, 219, 251, 252, 254, 270; ii. 64, 75, 95,102, 291 Aurelian, i. 177, 179, 180; ii. 150 Avalos, Francesco, d', i. 174, 175 Aventine, the, i. 23, 76; ii. 10, 40, 85, 119-121, 124, 125, 126, 127, 129, 132, 302 Avignon, i. 167, 273, 277; ii. 6, 9 B Bacchanalia, ii. 122 Bacchic worship, i. 76; ii. 120 Bajazet the Second, Sultan, i. 276 Baracconi, i. 104, 141, 178, 188, 252, 264, 274, 304; ii. 41, 45, 128, 130, 138, 323 Barberi, i. 202 Barberini, the, i. 157, 187, 226, 268, 301; ii. 7 Barbo, i. 202; ii. 45 Barcelona, i. 308 Bargello, the, i. 129, 293, 296; ii. 42 Basil and Constantine, ii. 33 Basilica (Pagan)-- Julia, i. 66, 71, 106; ii. 92 Basilicas (Christian) of-- Constantine, i. 90; ii. 292, 297 Liberius, i. 138 Philip and Saint James, i. 170 Saint John Lateran, i. 107, 112, 117, 278, 281 Santa Maria Maggiore, i. 107, 135, 139, 147, 148, 166, 208, 278; ii. 118 Santi Apostoli, i. 157, 170-172, 205, 241, 242; ii. 213 Sicininus, i. 134, 138 Baths, i. 91 of Agrippa, i. 271 of Caracalla, ii. 119 of Constantine, i. 144, 188 of Diocletian, i. 107, 129, 145-147, 149, 289, 292 of Novatus, i. 145 of Philippus, i. 145 of public, i. 144 of Severus Alexander, ii. 28 of Titus, i. 55, 107, 152 Befana, the, i. 298, 299, 300; ii. 25 Belisarius, i. 266, 267, 269 Benediction of 1846, the, i. 183 Benevento, Cola da, i. 219, 220 Bernard, ii. 77-80 Bernardi, Gianbattista, ii. 54 Bernini, i. 147, 301, 302, 303; ii. 24 Bibbiena, Cardinal, ii. 146, 285 Maria, ii. 146 Bismarck, ii. 224, 232, 236, 237 Boccaccio, i. 211, 213 Vineyard, the, i. 189 Bologna, i. 259; ii. 58 Borghese, the, i. 206, 226 Scipio, i. 187 Borgia, the, i. 209 Cæsar, i. 149, 151, 169, 213, 287; ii. 150, 171, 282, 283 Gandia, i. 149, 150, 151, 287 Lucrezia, i. 149, 177, 185, 287; ii. 129, 151, 174 Rodrigo, i. 287; ii. 242, 265, 282 Vanozza, i. 149, 151, 287 Borgo, the Region, i. 101, 127; ii. 132, 147, 202-214, 269 Borroinini, i. 301, 302; ii. 24 Botticelli, ii. 188, 190, 195, 200, 276 Bracci, ii. 318 Bracciano, i. 282, 291, 292, 294 Duke of, i. 289 Bramante, i. 305; ii. 144, 145, 274, 298, 322 Brescia, i. 286 Bridge. See _Ponte_ Ælian, the, i. 274 Cestian, ii. 105 Fabrician, ii. 105 Sublician, i. 6, 23, 67; ii. 127, 294. Brotherhood of Saint John Beheaded, ii. 129, 131 Brothers of Prayer and Death, i. 123, 204, 242 Brunelli, ii. 244 Brutus, i. 6, 12, 18, 41, 58, 80; ii. 96 Buffalmacco, ii. 196 Bull-fights, i. 252 Burgundians, i. 251 C Cæsar, Julius, i. 29-33, 35-41, 250; ii. 102, 224, 297 Cæsars, the, i. 44-46, 125, 249, 252, 253; ii. 224 Julian, i. 252 Palaces of, i. 4, 191; ii. 95 Caetani, i. 51, 115, 159, 161, 163, 206, 277 Benedict, i. 160 Caligula, i. 46, 252, ii. 96 Campagna, the, i. 92, 94, 158, 237, 243, 253, 282, 312; ii. 88, 107, 120 Campitelli, the Region, i. 101; ii. 64 Campo-- dei Fiori, i. 297 Marzo (Campus Martius), i. 65, 112, 271 the Region, i. 101, 248, 250, 275; ii. 6, 44 Vaccino, i. 128-131, 173 Canale, Carle, i. 287 Cancelleria, i. 102, 305, 312, 315, 316; ii. 223 Canidia, i. 64; ii. 293 Canossa, i. 126; ii. 307 Canova, ii. 320 Capet, Hugh, ii. 29 Capitol, the, i. 8, 14, 24, 29, 72, 107, 112, 167, 190, 204, 278, 282; ii. 12, 13, 21, 22, 52, 64, 65, 67-75, 84, 121, 148, 302 Capitoline hill, i. 106, 194 Captains of the Regions, i. 110, 112, 114 Election of, i. 112 Caracci, the, i. 264 Carafa, the, ii. 46, 49, 50, 56, 111 Cardinal, i. 186, 188; ii. 56, 204 Carnival, i. 107, 193-203, 241, 298; ii. 113 of Saturn, i. 194 Carpineto, ii. 229, 230, 232, 239, 287 Carthage, i. 20, 26, 88 Castagno, Andrea, ii. 89, 185 Castle of-- Grottaferrata, i. 314 Petrella, i. 286 the Piccolomini, i. 268 Sant' Angelo, i. 114, 116, 120, 126, 127, 128, 129, 259, 278, 284, 308, 314; ii. 17, 28, 37, 40, 56, 59, 60, 109, 152, 202-214, 216, 269 Castracane, Castruccio, i. 165, 166, 170 Catacombs, the, i. 139 of Saint Petronilla, ii. 125 Sebastian, ii. 296 Catanei, Vanossa de, i. 287 Catharine, Queen of Cyprus, ii. 305 Cathedral of Siena, i. 232 Catiline, i. 27; ii. 96, 294 Cato, ii. 121 Catullus, i. 86 Cavour, Count, ii. 90, 224, 228, 237 Cellini, Benvenuto, i. 311, 315; ii. 157, 195 Cenci, the, ii. 1 Beatrice, i. 147, 285-287; ii. 2, 129, 151 Francesco, i, 285; ii. 2 Centra Pio, ii. 238, 239 Ceri, Renzo da, i. 310 Cesarini, Giuliano, i. 174; ii. 54, 89 Chapel, Sixtine. See under _Vatican_ Charlemagne, i. 32, 49, 51, 53, 76, 109; ii. 297 Charles of Anjou, i. ii. 160 Albert of Sardinia, ii. 221 the Fifth, i. 131, 174, 206, 220, 305, 306; ii. 138 Chiesa. See _Church_ Nuova, i. 275 Chigi, the, i. 258 Agostino, ii. 144, 146 Fabio, ii. 146 Christianity in Rome, i. 176 Christina, Queen of Sweden, ii. 150, 151, 304, 308 Chrysostom, ii. 104, 105. Churches of,-- the Apostles, i. 157, 170-172, 205, 241, 242; ii. 213 Aracoeli, i. 52, 112, 167; ii. 57, 70, 75 Cardinal Mazarin, i. 186 the Gallows, i. 284 Holy Guardian Angel, i. 122 the Minerva, ii. 55 the Penitentiaries, ii. 216 the Portuguese, i. 250 Saint Adrian, i. 71 Agnes, i. 301, 304 Augustine, ii. 207 Bernard, i. 291 Callixtus, ii. 125 Charles, i. 251 Eustace, ii. 23, 24, 26, 39 George in Velabro, i. 195; ii. 10 Gregory on the Aventine, ii. 129 Ives, i. 251; ii. 23, 24 John of the Florentines, i. 273 Pine Cone, ii. 56 Peter's on the Janiculum, ii. 129 Sylvester, i. 176 Saints Nereus and Achillæus, ii. 125 Vincent and Anastasius, i. 186 San Clemente, i. 143 Giovanni in Laterano, i. 113 Lorenzo in Lucina, i. 192 Miranda, i. 71 Marcello, i. 165, 192 Pietro in Montorio, ii. 151 Vincoli, i. 118, 283; ii. 322 Salvatore in Cacaberis, i. 112 Stefano Rotondo, i. 106 Sant' Angelo in Pescheria, i. 102; ii. 3, 10, 110 Santa Francesca Romana, i. 111 Maria de Crociferi, i. 267 degli Angeli, i. 146, 258, 259 dei Monti, i. 118 del Pianto, i. 113 di Grotto Pinta, i. 294 in Campo Marzo, ii. 23 in Via Lata, i. 142 Nuova, i. 111, 273 Transpontina, ii. 212 della Vittoria, i. 302 Prisca, ii. 124 Sabina, i. 278; ii. 40 Trinità dei Pellegrini, ii. 110 Cicero, i. 45, 73; ii. 96, 294 Cimabue, ii. 156, 157, 162, 163, 169, 188, 189 Cinna, i. 25, 27 Circolo, ii. 245 Circus, the, i. 64, 253 Maximus, i. 64, 66; ii. 84, 119 City of Augustus, i. 57-77 Making of the, i. 1-21 of Rienzi, i. 93; ii. 6-8 of the Empire, i. 22-56 of the Middle Age, i. 47, 78-99, 92 of the Republic, i. 47 today, i. 55, 92 Civilization, ii. 177 and bloodshed, ii. 218 morality, ii. 178 progress, ii. 177-180 Claudius, i. 46, 255, 256; ii. 102 Cloelia, i. 13 Coelian hill, i. 106 Collegio Romano, i. 102; ii. 45, 61 Colonna, the, i. 51, 94, 104, 135, 153, 157-170, 172, 176, 187, 206, 217, 251, 252, 271, 272, 275-283, 306-315; ii. 2, 6, 8, 10, 16, 20, 37, 51, 54, 60, 106, 107, 126, 204 Giovanni, i. 104 Jacopo, i. 159, 165, 192 Lorenzo, ii. 126, 204-213 Marcantonio, i. 182; ii. 54 Pietro, i. 159 Pompeo, i. 305, 310-317; ii. 205 Prospero, ii. 205 Sciarra, i. 162-166, 192, 206, 213, 229, 279, 275, 281, 307 Stephen, i. 161, 165; ii. 13, 16 the Younger, i. 168 Vittoria, i. 157, 173-177; ii. 174 the Region, i. 101, 190-192; ii. 209 War between Orsini and, i. 51, 104, 159, 168, 182, 275-283, 306-315; ii. 12, 18, 126, 204-211 Colosseum, i. 56, 86, 90, 96, 106, 107, 111, 125, 152, 153, 187, 191, 209, 278; ii. 25, 64, 66, 84, 97, 202, 203, 301 Column of Piazza Colonna i. 190, 192 Comitium, i. 112, 257, 268 Commodus, i. 46, 55; ii. 97, 285 Confraternities, i. 108, 204 Conscript Fathers, i. 78, 112 Constable of Bourbon, i. 52, 259, 273, 304, 309-311; ii. 308 Constans, i. 135, 136 Constantine, i. 90, 113, 163 Constantinople, i. 95, 119 Contests in the Forum, i. 27, 130 Convent of Saint Catharine, i. 176 Convent of Saint Sylvester, i. 176 Corneto, Cardinal of, ii. 282, 283 Cornomania, i. 141 Cornutis, i. 87 Coromania, i. 141, 144 Corsini, the, ii. 150 Corso, i. 96, 106, 108, 192, 196, 205, 206, 229, 251 Vittorio Emanuele, i. 275 Corte Savella, i. 284; ii. 52 Cosmas, the, ii. 156, 157 Costa, Giovanni da, i. 205 Court House, i. 71 Crassus, i. 27, 31; ii. 128 Crawford, Thomas, i. 147 Crescentius, ii. 40, 41 Crescenzi, i. 114; ii. 27, 40, 209 Crescenzio, ii. 28-40 Stefana, ii. 39 Crispi, i. 116, 187 Crusade, the Second, ii. 86, 105 Crusades, the, i. 76 Curatii, i. 3, 131 Customs of early Rome, i. 9, 48 in dress, i. 48 religion, i. 48 D Dante, i. 110; ii. 164, 175, 244 Decameron, i. 239 Decemvirs, i. 14; ii. 120 Decrees, Semiamiran, i. 178 Democracy, i. 108 Development of Rome, i. 7, 18 some results of, i. 154 under Barons, i. 51 Decemvirs, i. 14 the Empire, i. 29, 30 Gallic invasion, i. 15-18 Kings, i. 2-7, 14-45 Middle Age, i. 47, 92, 210-247 Papal rule, i. 46-50 Republic, i. 7-14 Tribunes, i. 14 Dictator of Rome, i. 29, 79 Dietrich of Bern, ii. 297 Dionysus, ii. 121 Dolabella, i. 34 Domenichino, ii. 147 Domestic life in Rome, i. 9 Dominicans, i. 158; ii. 45, 46, 49, 50, 60, 61 Domitian, i. 45, 152, 205; ii. 104, 114, 124, 295 Doria, the, i. 206; ii. 45 Albert, i. 207 Andrea, i. 207 Conrad, i. 207 Gian Andrea, i. 207 Lamba, i. 207 Paganino, i. 207 Doria-Pamfili, i. 206-209 Dress in early Rome, i. 48 Drusus, ii. 102 Duca, Antonio del, i. 146, 147 Giacomo del, i. 146 Dürer, Albert, ii. 198 E Education, ii. 179 Egnatia, i. 75 Elagabalus, i. 77, 177, 179; ii. 296, 297 Election of the Pope, ii. 41, 42, 277 Electoral Wards, i. 107 Elizabeth, Queen of England, ii. 47 Emperors, Roman, i. 46 of the East, i. 95, 126 Empire of Constantinople, i. 46 of Rome, i. 15, 17, 22-28, 31, 45, 47, 53, 60, 72, 99 Encyclicals, ii. 244 Erasmus, ii. 151 Esquiline, the, i. 26, 106, 139, 186; ii. 95, 131, 193 Este, Ippolito d', i. 185 Etruria, i. 12, 15 Euodus, i. 255, 256 Eustace, Saint, ii. 24, 25 square of, ii. 25, 42 Eustachio. See _Sant' Eustachio_ Eutichianus, ii. 296 Eve of Saint John, i. 140 the Epiphany, 299 F Fabius, i. 20 Fabatosta, ii. 64, 84 Farnese, the, ii. 151 Julia, ii. 324 Farnesina, the, ii. 144, 149, 151 Fathers, Roman, i. 13, 78, 79-84 Ferdinand, ii. 205 Ferrara, Duke of, i. 185 Festivals, i. 193, 298 Aryan in origin, i. 173 Befana, i. 299-301 Carnival, i. 193-203 Church of the Apostle, i. 172, 173 Coromania, i. 141 Epifania, i. 298-301 Floralia, i. 141 Lupercalia, i. 194 May-day in the Campo Vaccino, i. 173 Saturnalia, i. 194 Saint John's Eve, i. 140 Festus, ii. 128 Feuds, family, i. 168 Field of Mars. See _Campo Marzo_ Finiguerra, Maso, ii. 186-188 Flamen Dialis, i. 34 Floralia. See _Festivals_ Florence, i. 160 Forli, Melozzo da, i. 171 Fornarina, the, ii. 144, 146 Forum, i, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15, 17, 26, 27, 64, 72, 111, 126, 129, 194; ii. 64, 92-94, 97, 102, 294, 295 of Augustus, i. 119 Trajan, i. 155, 171, 172, 191 Fountains (Fontane) of-- Egeria, ii. 124 Trevi, i. 155, 156, 186, 267 Tullianum, i. 8 Franconia, Duke of, ii. 36, 53 Francis the First, i. 131, 174, 206, 219, 304 Frangipani, i. 50, 94, 153; ii. 77, 79, 84, 85 Frederick, Barbarossa, ii. 34, 85, 87 of Naples, i. 151 the Second, ii. 34 Fulvius, ii. 121 G Gabrini, Lawrence, ii. 4 Nicholas, i. 23, 93, 103, 168, 211, 281; ii. 3-23, 308 Gaeta, ii. 36 Galba, ii. 295 Galen, i. 55 Galera, i. 282, 291 Galileo, i. 268 Gardens, i. 93 Cæsar's, i. 66, 68 of Lucullus, i. 254, 270 of the Pigna, ii. 273 Pincian, i. 255 the Vatican, ii. 243, 271, 287 Gargonius, i. 65 Garibaldi, ii. 90, 219, 220, 228, 237 Gastaldi, Cardinal, i. 259 Gate. See _Porta_ the Colline, i. 250 Lateran, i. 126, 154 Septimian, ii. 144, 147 Gebhardt, Émile, i. 213 Gemonian Steps, ii. 67, 294 Genseric, i. 96; ii. 70 George of Franzburg, i. 310 Gherardesca, Ugolino della, ii. 160 Ghetto, i. 102; ii. 2, 101, 110-118 Ghibellines, the, i. 129, 153, 158; ii. 6 Ghiberti, ii. 157. Ghirlandajo, ii. 157, 172, 276 Giantism, i. 90-92, 210, 302 Gibbon, i. 160 Giotto, ii. 157, 160-165, 169, 188, 189, 200 Gladstone, ii. 231, 232 Golden Milestone, i. 72, 92, 194 Goldoni, i. 265 Goldsmithing, ii. 156, 157, 186, 187 "Good Estate" of Rienzi, ii. 10-12 Gordian, i. 91 Goths, ii. 297, 307. Gozzoli, Benozzo, ii. 190, 195 Gracchi, the, i. 22, 28 Caius, i. 23; ii. 84 Cornelia, i. 22, 24 Tiberius, i. 23; ii. 102 Gratidianus, i. 27 Guards, Noble, ii. 241, 243, 247, 248, 309, 310, 312 Palatine, ii. 247, 248 Swiss, ii. 246, 247, 310 Guelphs, i. 159; ii. 42, 126, 138 and Ghibellines, i. 129, 153, 275; ii. 160, 162, 173 Guiscard, Robert, i. 95, 126, 127, 129, 144, 252; ii. 70 H Hadrian, i. 90, 180; i. 25, 202, 203 Hannibal, i. 20 Hasdrubal, i. 21 Henry the Second, ii. 47 Fourth, i. 126, 127; ii. 307 Fifth, ii. 307 Seventh of Luxemburg, i. 273, 276-279; ii. 5 Eighth, i. 219; ii. 47, 274 Hermann, i. 46 Hermes of Olympia, i. 86 Hermogenes, i. 67 Hilda's Tower, i. 250 Hildebrand, i. 52, 126-129; ii. Honorius, ii. 323, 324 Horace, i. 44, 57-75, 85, 87; ii. 293 and the Bore, i. 65-71 Camen Seculare of, i. 75 the Satires of, i. 73, 74 Horatii, i. 3, 131 Horatius, i. 5, 6, 13, 23; ii. 127 Horses of Monte Cavallo, i. 181 Hospice of San Claudio, i. 251 Hospital of-- Santo Spirito, i. 274; ii. 214, 215 House of Parliament, i. 271 Hugh of Burgundy, ii. 30 of Tuscany, ii. 30 Huns' invasion, i. 15, 49, 132 Huxley, ii. 225, 226 I Imperia, ii. 144 Infessura, Stephen, ii. 59, 60, 204-213 Inn of-- The Bear, i. 288 Falcone, ii. 26 Lion, i. 287 Vanossa, i. 288 Inquisition, i. 286; ii. 46, 49, 52, 53, 54 Interminelli, Castruccio degli, i. 165 Irene, Empress, i. 109 Ischia, i. 175 Island of Saint Bartholomew, i. 272; ii. 1 Isola Sacra, i. 93 Italian life during the Middle Age, i. 210, 247 from 17th to 18th centuries, i. 260, 263, 264 J Janiculum, the, i. 15, 253, 270; ii. 268, 293, 294, 295 Jesuit College, ii. 61 Jesuits, ii. 45, 46, 61-63 Jews, i. 96; ii. 101-119 John of Cappadocia, i. 267, 268 Josephus, ii. 103 Juba, i. 40 Jugurtha, i. 25 Jupiter Capitolinus, ii. 324, 325 priest of, i. 80, 133 Justinian, i. 267 Juvenal, i. 112; ii. 105, 107, 124 K Kings of Rome, i. 2-7 L Lampridius, Ælius, i. 178 Lanciani, i. 79, 177 Lateran, the, i. 106, 112-114, 129, 140-142 Count of, i. 166 Latin language, i. 47 Latini Brunetto, ii. 163 Laurentum, i. 55, 93 Lazaret of Saint Martha, ii. 245 League, Holy, i. 305, 306, 313, 314 Lentulus, ii. 128 Lepida, Domitia, i. 255, 256 Letus, Pomponius, i. 139; ii. 210 Lewis of Bavaria, i. 165, 167, 192, 275 the Seventh, ii. 86, 105 Eleventh, i. 104, 151 Fourteenth, i. 253 Library of-- Collegio Romano, ii. 45 Vatican, ii. 275, 276, 282 Victor Emmanuel, ii. 45, 61 Lieges, Bishop of, i. 280 Lincoln, Abraham, ii. 231, 236 Lippi, Filippo, ii. 190, 191, 192-195, 200 Liszt, i. 185, 203; ii. 176 Livia, i. 220, 252 Livy, i. 44, 47 Lombards, the, i. 251 Lombardy, i. 309 Lorrain, i. 264 Loyola, Ignatius, ii. 46, 62 Lucilius, i. 74 Lucretia, i. 5, 12, 13 Lucullus, i. 257, 270 Lupercalia, i. 194 Lupercus, i. 194 M Macchiavelli, ii. 174 Mæcenas, i. 62, 69, 74, 140; ii. 293 Mænads, ii. 122 Maldachini, Olimpia, i. 304, 305 Mamertine Prison, i. 25; ii. 72, 293 Mancini, Maria, i. 170, 187 Mancino, Paul, ii. 210 Manlius, Cnæus, ii. 121 Marcus, i. 29; ii. 71, 84 Titus, i. 80 Mantegna, Andrea, ii. 157, 169, 188, 196-198 Marcomanni, i. 190 Marforio, i. 305 Marino, i. 174 Marius, Caius, i. 25, 29 Marius and Sylla, i. 25, 29, 36, 45, 53; ii. 69 Mark Antony, i. 30, 93, 195, 254 Marozia, ii. 27, 28 Marriage Laws, i. 79, 80 Mary, Queen of Scots, ii. 47 Masaccio, ii. 190 Massimi, Pietro de', i. 317 Massimo, i. 102, 317 Mattei, the, ii. 137, 139, 140, 143 Alessandro, ii. 140-143 Curzio, ii. 140-143 Girolamo, ii. 141-143 Marcantonio, ii. 140, 141 Olimpia, ii. 141, 142 Piero, ii. 140, 141 Matilda, Countess, ii. 307 Mausoleum of-- Augustus, i. 158, 169, 205, 251, 252, 270, 271 Hadrian, i. 102, 252; ii. 28, 202, 270. See _Castle of Sant' Angelo_ Maximilian, i. 151 Mazarin, i. 170, 187 Mazzini, ii. 219, 220 Mediævalism, death of, ii. 225 Medici, the, i. 110; ii. 276 Cosimo de', i. 289; ii. 194 Isabella de', i. 290, 291 John de', i. 313 Messalina, i. 254, 272; ii. 255, 256, 257 Michelangelo, i. 90, 146, 147, 173, 175, 177, 302, 303, 315; ii. 129, 130, 157, 159, 166, 169, 171, 172, 175, 188, 200, 276-281, 284, 317-319, 322 "Last Judgment" by, i. 173; ii. 171, 276, 280, 315 "Moses" by, ii. 278, 286 "Pietà" by, ii. 286 Middle Age, the, i. 47, 92, 210-247, 274; ii. 163, 166, 172-175, 180, 196 Migliorati, Ludovico, i. 103 Milan, i. 175 Duke of, i. 306 Milestone, golden, i. 72 Mithræum, i. 271 Mithras, i. 76 Mithridates, i. 26, 30, 37, 358 Mocenni, Mario, ii. 249 Monaldeschi, ii. 308 Monastery of-- the Apostles, i. 182 Dominicans, ii. 45, 61 Grottaferrata, ii. 37 Saint Anastasia, ii. 38 Gregory, ii. 85 Sant' Onofrio, ii. 147 Moncada, Ugo de, i. 307, 308 Mons Vaticanus, ii. 268 Montaigne, i. 288 Montalto. See _Felice Peretti_ Monte Briano, i. 274 Cavallo, i. 181, 188, 292, 293; ii. 205, 209 Citorio, i. 193, 252, 271 Giordano, i. 274, 281, 282, 288; ii. 206 Mario, i. 313; ii. 268 Montefeltro, Guido da, ii. 160 Monti-- the Region, i. 101, 106, 107, 111, 112, 125, 133, 134, 144, 150, 185, 305; ii. 133, 209 and Trastevere, i. 129, 145, 153; ii. 133, 209 by moonlight, i. 117 Morrone, Pietro da, i. 159 Muratori, i. 85, 132, 159, 277; ii. 40, 48, 76, 126, 324 Museums of Rome, i. 66 Vatican, ii. 272, 273, 283, 286, 287 Villa Borghese, i. 301 Mustafa, ii. 247 N Naples, i. 175, 182, 307, 308 Napoleon, i. 32, 34, 53, 88, 109, 258; ii. 218, 221, 298 Louis, ii. 221, 223, 237 Narcissus, i. 255 Navicella, i. 106 Nelson, i. 253 Neri, Saint Philip, i. 318 Nero, i. 46, 56, 188, 254, 257, 285; ii. 163, 211, 291 Nilus, Saint, ii. 36, 37, 40 Nogaret, i. 162, 164 Northmen, i. 46, 49 Numa, i. 3; ii. 268 Nunnery of the Sacred Heart, i. 256 O Octavius, i. 27, 30, 43, 89; ii. 291 Odoacer, i. 47; ii. 297 Olanda, Francesco d', i. 176 Oliviero, Cardinal Carafa, i. 186, 188 Olympius, i. 136, 137, 138 Opimius, i. 24 Orgies of Bacchus, i. 76; ii. 120 Orgies of the Mænads, ii. 121 on the Aventine, i. 76; ii. 121 Orsini, the, i. 94, 149, 153, 159, 167-169, 183, 216, 217, 271, 274, 306-314; ii. 16, 126, 138, 204 Bertoldo, i. 168 Camillo, i. 311 Isabella, i. 291 Ludovico, i. 295 Matteo, i. 281 Napoleon, i. 161 Orsino, i. 166 Paolo Giordano, i. 283, 290-295 Porzia, i. 187 Troilo, i. 290, 291 Virginio, i. 295 war between Colonna and, i. 51, 104, 159, 168, 182, 275-283, 306-315; ii. 18, 126, 204 Orsino, Deacon, i. 134, 135 Orvieto, i. 314 Otho, ii. 295 the Second, ii. 304 Otto, the Great, i. 114; ii. 28, 30 Second, ii. 28 Third, ii. 29-37 Ovid, i. 44, 63 P Painting, ii. 181 in fresco, ii. 181-183 oil, ii. 184-186 Palace (Palazzo)-- Annii, i. 113 Barberini, i. 106, 187 Borromeo, ii. 61 Braschi, i. 305 Cæsars, i. 4, 191; ii. 64 Colonna, i. 169, 189; ii. 205 Consulta, i. 181 Corsini, ii. 149, 308 Doria, i. 207, 226 Pamfili, i. 206, 208 Farnese, i. 102 Fiano, i. 205 della Finanze, i. 91 Gabrielli, i. 216 the Lateran, i. 127; ii. 30 Massimo alle Colonna, i. 316, 317 Mattei, ii. 140 Mazarini, i. 187 of Nero, i. 152 della Pilotta, i. 158 Priori, i. 160 Quirinale, i. 139, 181, 185, 186, 188, 189, 304 of the Renascence, i. 205 Rospigliosi, i. 181, 187, 188, 189 Ruspoli, i. 206 Santacroce, i. 237; ii. 23 of the Senator, i. 114 Serristori, ii. 214, 216 Theodoli, i. 169 di Venezia, i. 102, 192, 202 Palatine, the, i. 2, 13, 67, 69, 194, 195; ii. 64, 119 Palermo, i. 146 Palestrina, i. 156, 157, 158, 161, 165, 166, 243, 282; ii. 13, 315 Paliano, i. 282 Duke of, i. 157, 189 Palladium, i. 77 Pallavicini, i. 206, 258 Palmaria, i. 267 Pamfili, the, i. 206 Pannartz, i. 317 Pantheon, i. 90, 102, 195, 271, 278; ii. 44, 45, 146 Parione, the Region, i. 101, 297, 312, 317; ii. 42 Square of, ii. 42 Pasquino, the, i. 186, 305, 317 Passavant, ii. 285 Passeri, Bernardino, i. 313; ii. 308 Patarina, i. 107, 202 Patriarchal System, i. 223-228 Pavia, i. 175 Pecci, the, ii. 229 Joachim Vincent, ii. 229, 230. Peretti, the, i. 205 Felice, i. 149, 289-295 Francesco, i. 149, 289, 292 Vittoria. See _Accoramboni_ Perugia, i. 159, 276, 277 Perugino, ii. 157, 260, 276 Pescara, i. 174 Peter the Prefect, i. 114; ii. 230 Petrarch, i. 161 Petrella, i. 286 Philip the Fair, i. 160, 276, 278 Second of Spain, ii. 47 Phocas, column of, ii. 93. Piazza-- Barberini, i. 155 della Berlina Vecchia, i. 283 Chiesa Nuova, i. 155 del Colonna, i. 119, 190 Gesù, ii. 45 della Minerva, ii. 45 Moroni, i. 250 Navona, i. 102, 297, 298, 302, 303, 305; ii. 25, 46, 57 Pigna, ii. 55 of the Pantheon, i. 193; ii. 26 Pilotta, i. 158 del Popolo, i. 144, 206, 259, 273 Quirinale, i. 181 Romana, ii. 136 Sant' Eustachio, ii. 25 San Lorenzo in Lucina, i. 192, 205, 250 Saint Peter's, ii. 251, 309 di Sciarra, i. 192 Spagna, i. 251; ii. 42 delle Terme, i. 144 di Termini, i. 144 Venezia, i. 206 Pierleoni, the, ii. 77, 79, 82, 101, 105, 106, 109, 114 Pigna, ii. 45 the Region, i, 101, 102; ii. 44 Pilgrimages, ii. 245 Pincian (hill), i. 119, 270, 272 Pincio, the, i. 121, 189, 223, 253, 255, 256, 259, 264, 272 Pintelli, Baccio, ii. 278, 279 Pinturicchio, ii. 147 Pliny, the Younger, i. 85, 87 Pompey, i. 30 Pons Æmilius, i. 67 Cestius, ii. 102, 105 Fabricius, ii. 105 Triumphalis, i. 102, 274 Ponte. See also _Bridge_ Garibaldi, ii. 138 Rotto, i. 67 Sant' Angelo, i. 274, 283, 284, 287; ii. 42, 55, 270 Sisto, i. 307, 311; ii. 136 the Region, i. 274, 275 Pontifex Maximus, i. 39, 48 Pontiff, origin of title, ii. 127 Pope-- Adrian the Fourth, ii. 87 Alexander the Sixth, i. 258; ii. 269, 282 Seventh, i. 259 Anastasius, ii. 88 Benedict the Sixth, ii. 28-30 Fourteenth, i. 186 Boniface the Eighth, i. 159, 160, 167, 213, 280, 306; ii. 304 Celestin the First, i. 164 Second, ii. 83 Clement the Fifth, i. 275, 276 Sixth, ii. 9, 17-19 Seventh, i. 306, 307, 310, 313, 314; ii. 308 Eighth, i. 286 Ninth, i. 187; ii. 110 Eleventh, i. 171 Thirteenth, ii. 320 Damascus, i. 133, 135, 136 Eugenius the Third, ii. 85 Fourth, ii. 7, 56 Ghisleri, ii. 52, 53 Gregory the Fifth, ii. 32-37 Seventh, i. 52, 126; ii. 307 Thirteenth, i. 183, 293 Sixteenth, i. 305; ii. 221, 223 Honorius the Third, ii. 126 Fourth, ii. 126 Innocent the Second, ii. 77, 79, 82, 105 Third, i. 153; ii. 6 Sixth, ii. 19 Eighth, i. 275 Tenth, i. 206, 209,302,303 Joan, i. 143 John the Twelfth, ii. 282 Thirteenth, i. 113 Fifteenth, ii. 29 Twenty-third, ii. 269 Julius the Second, i. 208, 258; ii. 276, 298, 304 Leo the Third, i. 109; ii. 146, 297 Fourth, ii. 242 Tenth, i. 304; ii. 276, 304 Twelfth, i. 202; ii. 111 Thirteenth, i. 77; ii. 218-267, 282, 287, 308, 312, 313 Liberius, i. 138 Lucius the Second, ii. 84, 85 Martin the First, i. 136 Nicholas the Fourth, i. 159, 274 Fifth, i. 52; ii. 58, 268, 269, 298, 304 Paschal the Second, i. 258; ii. 307 Paul the Second, i. 202, 205 Third, i. 219; ii. 41, 130, 304, 323, 324 Fourth, ii. 46, 47, 48-51, 111, 112 Fifth, ii. 289 Pelagius the First, i. 170, 171; ii. 307 Pius the Fourth, i. 147, 305 Sixth, i. 181, 182 Seventh, i. 53; ii. 221 Ninth, i. 76, 183, 315; ii. 66, 110, 111, 216, 221-225, 252, 253, 255, 257, 258, 265, 298, 308, 311 Silverius, i. 266 Sixtus the Fourth, i. 258, 275; ii. 127, 204-213, 274, 278, 321 Fifth, i. 52, 139, 149, 181, 184, 186, 205, 283; ii. 43, 157, 241, 304, 323 Sylvester, i. 113; ii. 297, 298 Symmachus, ii. 44 Urban the Second, i. 52 Sixth, ii. 322, 323 Eighth, i. 181, 187, 268, 301; ii. 132, 203, 298 Vigilius, ii. 307 Popes, the, i. 125, 142, 273 at Avignon, i. 167, 273, 277; ii. 9 among sovereigns, ii. 228 election of, ii. 41, 42 hatred for, ii. 262-264 temporal power of, i. 168; ii. 255-259 Poppæa, i. 103 Porcari, the, ii. 56 Stephen, ii. 56-60, 204 Porsena of Clusium, i. 5, 6, 12 Porta. See also _Gate_-- Angelica, i. 120 Maggiore, i. 107 Metronia, i. 106 Mugonia, i. 10 Pia, i. 107, 147, 152; ii. 224 Pinciana, i. 193, 250, 264, 266, 269 del Popolo, i. 272, 299 Portese, ii. 132 Salaria, i. 106, 107, 193 San Giovanni, i. 107, 120 Lorenzo, i. 107 Sebastiano, ii. 119, 125 Spirito, i. 311; ii. 132, 152 Tiburtina, i. 107 Portico of Neptune, i. 271 Octavia, ii. 3, 105 Poussin, Nicholas, i. 264 Præneste, i. 156 Prætextatus, i. 134 Prefect of Rome, i. 103, 114, 134 Presepi, ii. 139 Prince of Wales, i. 203 Prior of the Regions, i. 112, 114 Processions of-- the Brotherhood of Saint John, ii. 130 Captains of Regions, i. 112 Coromania, i. 141 Coronation of Lewis of Bavaria, i. 166, 167 Ides of May, ii. 127-129 the Triumph of Aurelian, i. 179 Progress and civilization, i. 262; ii. 177-180 romance, i. 154 Prosper of Cicigliano, ii. 213 Q Quæstor, i. 58 Quirinal, the (hill), i. 106, 119, 158, 182, 184, 186, 187; ii. 205 R Rabble, Roman, i. 115, 128, 132, 153, 281; ii. 131 Race course of Domitian, i. 270, 297 Races, Carnival, i. 108, 202, 203 Raimondi, ii. 315 Rampolla, ii. 239, 249, 250 Raphael, i. 260, 315; ii. 159, 169, 175, 188, 200, 281, 285, 322 in Trastevere, ii. 144-147 the "Transfiguration" by, ii. 146, 281 Ravenna, i. 175 Regions (Rioni), i. 100-105, 110-114, 166 Captains of, i. 110 devices of, i. 100 fighting ground of, i. 129 Prior, i. 112, 114 rivalry of, i. 108, 110, 125 Regola, the Region, i. 101, 168; ii. 1-3 Regulus, i. 20 Religion, i. 48, 50, 75 Religious epochs in Roman history, i. 76 Renascence in Italy, i. 52, 77, 84, 98, 99, 188, 237, 240, 250, 258, 261, 262, 303; ii. 152-201, 280 art of, i. 231 frescoes of, i. 232 highest development of, i. 303, 315 leaders of, ii. 152, 157-159 manifestation of, ii. 197 palaces of, i. 205, 216 represented in "The Last Judgment," ii. 280 results of development of, ii. 199 Reni, Guido, i. 264; ii. 317 Republic, the, i. 6, 12, 15, 53, 110; ii. 291 and Arnold of Brescia, ii. 86 Porcari, ii. 56-60 Rienzi, i. 93; ii. 6-8 modern ideas of, ii. 219 Revolts in Rome-- against the nobles, ii. 73 of the army, i. 25 Arnold of Brescia, ii. 73-89 Marius and Sylla, i. 25 Porcari, ii. 56-60 Rienzi, i. 93; ii. 6-8, 73 slaves, i. 24 Stefaneschi, i. 281-283; ii. 219-222 Revolutionary idea, the, ii. 219-222 Riario, the, ii. 149, 150, 151 Jerome, ii. 205 Rienzi, Nicholas, i. 23, 93, 103, 168, 211, 281; ii. 3-23, 308 Rioni. See _Regions_ Ripa, the Region, i. 101; ii. 118 Ripa Grande, ii. 127 Ripetta, ii. 52 Ristori, Mme., i. 169 Robert of Naples, i. 278 Roffredo, Count, i. 114, 115 Rome-- a day in mediæval, i. 241-247 Bishop of, i. 133 charm of, i. 54, 98, 318 ecclesiastic, i. 124 lay, i. 124 a modern Capital, i. 123, 124 foundation of, i. 2 of the Augustan Age, i. 60-62 Barons, i. 50, 84, 104, 229-247; ii. 75 Cæsars, i. 84 Empire, i. 15, 17, 28, 31, 45, 47, 53, 60, 99 Kings, i. 2-7, 10, 11 Middle Age, i. 110, 210-247, 274; ii. 172-175 Napoleonic era, i. 229 Popes, i. 50, 77, 84, 104 Republic, i. 6, 12, 16, 53, 110 Rienzi, i. 93; ii. 6-8 today, i. 55 sack of, by Constable of Bourbon, i. 259, 273, 309-315 sack of, by Gauls, i. 15, 49, 252 Guiscard, i. 95, 126-129, 252 seen from dome of Saint Peter's, ii. 302 under Tribunes, i. 14 Decemvirs, i. 14 Dictator, i. 28 Romulus, i. 2, 5, 30, 78, 228 Rospigliosi, i. 206 Rossi, Pellegrino, i. 316 Count, ii. 223 Rostra, i. 27; ii. 93 Julia, i. 68; ii. 93 Rota, ii. 215 Rovere, the, i. 258; ii. 276, 279, 321 Rudinì, i. 187 Rudolph of Hapsburg, i. 161 Rufillus, i. 65 S Sacchi, Bartolommeo, i. 139, 147 Saint Peter's Church, i. 166, 278; ii. 202, 212, 243, 246, 268, 289, 294, 295, 326 altar of, i. 96 architects of, ii. 304 bronze doors of, ii. 299, 300 builders of, ii. 304 Chapel of the Choir, ii. 310, 313, 314 Chapel of the Sacrament, ii. 274, 306, 308, 310, 312, 313 Choir of, ii. 313-316 Colonna Santa, ii. 319 dome of, i. 96; ii. 302 Piazza of, ii. 251 Sacristy of, i. 171 Salvini, i. 169, 252 Giorgio, i. 313 Santacroce Paolo, i. 286 Sant' Angelo the Region, i. 101; ii. 101 Santorio, Cardinal, i. 208 San Vito, i. 282 Saracens, i. 128, 144 Sarto, Andrea del, ii. 157, 169 Saturnalia, i. 125, 194, 195 Saturninus, i. 25 Satyricon, the, i. 85 Savelli, the, i. 284; ii. 1, 16, 126, 206 John Philip, ii. 207-210 Savonarola, i. 110 Savoy, house of, i. 110; ii. 219, 220, 224 Scævola, i. 13 Schweinheim, i. 317 Scipio, Cornelius, i. 20 of Africa, i. 20, 22, 29, 59, 76; ii. 121 Asia, i. 21; ii. 120 Scotus, i. 182 See, Holy, i. 159, 168; ii. 264-267, 277, 294 Segni, Monseignor, i. 304 Sejanuo, ii. 294 Semiamira, i. 178 Senate, Roman, i. 167, 168, 257 the Little, i. 177, 180 Senators, i. 78, 112, 167 Servius, i. 5, 15 Severus-- Arch of, ii. 92 Septizonium of, i. 96, 127 Sforza, i. 13; ii. 89 Sforza, Catharine, i. 177; ii. 150 Francesco, i. 306 Siena, i. 232, 268; ii. 229 Signorelli, ii. 277 Slaves, i. 81, 24 Sosii Brothers, i. 72, 73 Spencer, Herbert, ii. 225, 226 Stefaneschi, Giovanni degli, i. 103, 282 Stilicho, ii. 323 Stradella, Alessandro, ii. 315 Streets, See _Via_ Subiaco, i. 282 Suburra, i. 39; ii. 95 Suetonius, i. 43 Sylla, ii. 25-29, 36-42 T Tacitus, i. 46, 254; ii. 103 Tarentum, i. 18, 19 Tarpeia, i. 29; ii. 68, 69 Tarpeian Rock, ii. 67 Tarquins, the, i. 6, 11, 12, 80, 248, 249, 269; ii. 69 Sextus, i. 5, 11 Tasso, i. 188, 189; ii. 147-149 Bernardo, i. 188 Tatius, i. 68, 69 Tempietto, the, i. 264 Temple of-- Castor, i. 27 Castor and Pollux, i. 68; ii. 92, 94 Ceres, ii. 119 Concord, i. 24; ii. 92 Flora, i. 155 Hercules, ii. 40 Isis and Serapis, i. 271 Julius Cæsar, i. 72 Minerva, i. 96 Saturn, i. 194, 201; ii. 94 the Sun, i. 177, 179, 180, 271 Venus and Rome, i. 110 Venus Victorius, i. 270 Vesta, i. 68 Tenebræ, i. 117 Tetricius, i. 179 Theatre of-- Apollo, i. 286 Balbus, ii. 1 Marcellus, ii. 1, 101, 105, 106, 119 Pompey, i. 103, 153 Thedoric of Verona, ii. 297 Theodoli, the, i. 258 Theodora Senatrix, i. 158, 266, 267; ii. 27-29, 203, 282 Tiber, i. 23, 27, 66, 93, 94, 151, 158, 168, 189, 237, 248, 249, 254, 269, 272, 288 Tiberius, i. 254, 287; ii. 102 Titian, i. 315; ii. 165, 166, 175, 188, 278 Titus, i. 56, 86; ii. 102, 295 Tivoli, i. 180, 185; ii. 76, 85 Torre (Tower)-- Anguillara, ii. 138, 139, 140 Borgia, ii. 269, 285 dei Conti, i. 118, 153 Milizie, i. 277 Millina, i. 274 di Nona, i. 274, 284, 287; ii. 52, 54, 72 Sanguigna, i. 274 Torrione, ii. 241, 242 Trajan, i. 85, 192; ii. 206 Trastevere, the Region, i. 101, 127, 129, 278, 307, 311; ii. 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 143, 151 Trevi, the Fountain, i. 155, 186 the Region, i. 155, 187; ii. 209 Tribunes, i. 14 Trinità de' Monti, i. 256, 264 dei Pellegrini, ii. 110 Triumph, the, of Aurelian, i. 179 Triumphal Road, i. 66, 69, 70, 71 Tullianum, i. 8 Tullus, i. 3 Domitius, i. 90 Tuscany, Duke of, ii. 30 Tusculum, i. 158 U Unity, of Italy, i. 53, 77, 123, 184; ii. 224 under Augustus, i. 184 Victor Emmanuel, i. 184 University, Gregorian, the, ii. 61 of the Sapienza, i. 251; ii. 24, 25 Urbino, Duke of, i. 208, 217 V Valens, i. 133 Valentinian, i. 133 Varus, i. 46 Vatican, the, i. 127, 128, 147, 165, 189, 278, 281, 307; ii. 44, 202, 207, 228, 243, 245, 249, 250, 252, 253, 269, 271 barracks of the Swiss Guard, ii. 275 chapels in, Pauline, ii. Nicholas, ii. 285 Sixtine, ii. 246, 274, 275, 276, 278-281, 285 fields, i. 274 Court of the Belvedere, ii. 269 Saint Damasus, ii. 273 finances of, ii. 253 gardens of, ii. 243, 271, 287 of the Pigna, ii. 273 library, ii. 275, 276, 282 Borgia apartments of, ii. 282 Loggia of the Beatification, ii. 245 Raphael, ii. 273, 274, 276, 285 Maestro di Camera, ii. 239, 248, 250 museums of, ii. 272, 273, 283, 286, 287 picture galleries, ii. 273-284 Pontifical residence, ii. 249 private apartments, ii. 249 Sala Clementina, ii. 248 del Concistoro, ii. 246 Ducale, ii. 245, 247 Regia, ii. 246 throne room, ii. 247 Torre Borgia, ii. 269, 285 Veii, i. 16, 17 Velabrum, i. 67 Veneziano, Domenico, ii. 185 Venice, i. 193, 296, 306; ii. 35, 205 Vercingetorix, ii. 294 Vespasian, i. 46, 56; ii. 295 Vespignani, ii. 241, 242 Vesta, i. 57 temple of, i. 71, 77 Vestals, i. 77, 80, 133, 152; ii. 99 house of, i. 69 Via-- della Angelo Custode, i. 122 Appia, i. 22, 94 Arenula, ii. 45 Borgognona, i. 251 Campo Marzo, i. 150 di Caravita, ii. 45 del Corso, i. 155, 158, 192, 193, 251; ii. 45 della Dateria, i. 183 Dogana Vecchia, ii. 26 Flaminia, i. 193 Florida, ii. 45 Frattina, i. 250 de' Greci, i. 251 Lata, i. 193 Lungara, i. 274; ii. 144, 145, 147 Lungaretta, ii. 140 della Maestro, i. 283 Marforio, i. 106 di Monserrato, i. 283 Montebello, i. 107 Nazionale, i. 277 Nova, i. 69 di Parione, i. 297 de' Poli, i. 267 de Pontefici, i. 158 de Prefetti, ii. 6 Quattro Fontane, i. 155, 187 Sacra, i. 65, 71, 180 San Gregorio, i. 71 San Teodoro, i. 195 de' Schiavoni, i. 158 Sistina, i. 260 della Stelleta, i. 250 della Tritone, i. 106, 119-122, 155 Triumphalis, i. 66, 70, 71 Venti Settembre, i. 186 Vittorio Emanuele, i. 275 Viale Castro Pretorio, i. 107 Vicolo della Corda, i. 283 Victor Emmanuel, i. 53, 166, 184; ii. 90, 221, 224, 225, 238 monument to, ii. 90 Victoria, Queen of England, ii. 263 Vigiles, cohort of the, i. 158, 170 Villa Borghese, i. 223 Colonna, i. 181, 189 d'Este, i. 185 of Hadrian, i. 180 Ludovisi, i. 106, 193 Medici, i. 259, 262, 264, 265, 269, 313 Negroni, i. 148, 149, 289, 292 Publica, i. 250 Villani, i. 160, 277; ii. 164 Villas, in the Region of Monti, i. 149, 150 Vinci, Lionardo da, i. 260, 315; ii. 147, 159, 169, 171, 175, 184, 188, 195, 200 "The Last Supper," by, ii. 171, 184 Virgil, i. 44, 56, 63 Virginia, i. 14 Virginius, i. 15 Volscians, ii. 230 W Walls-- Aurelian, i. 93, 106, 110, 193, 271; ii. 119, 144 Servian, i. 5, 7, 15, 250, 270 of Urban the Eighth, ii. 132 Water supply, i. 145 William the Silent, ii. 263 Witches on the Æsquiline, i. 140 Women's life in Rome, i. 9 Z Zama, i. 21, 59 Zenobia of Palmyra, i. 179; ii. 150. Zouaves, the, ii. 216 
28600	----	[Illustration] AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS STUDIES FROM THE CHRONICLES OF ROME BY FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. II London MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1899 _All rights reserved_ Copyright, 1898, By The Macmillan Company. Set up and electrotyped October, 1898. Reprinted November, December, 1898; January, 1899. _Norwood Press_ _J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith_ _Norwood, Mass., U.S.A._ TABLE OF CONTENTS VOLUME II PAGE REGION VII REGOLA 1 REGION VIII SANT' EUSTACHIO 23 REGION IX PIGNA 44 REGION X CAMPITELLI 64 REGION XI SANT' ANGELO 101 REGION XII RIPA 119 REGION XIII TRASTEVERE 132 REGION XIV BORGO 202 LEO THE THIRTEENTH 218 THE VATICAN 268 SAINT PETER'S 289 LIST OF PHOTOGRAVURE PLATES VOLUME II Saint Peter's _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE Palazzo Farnese 18 The Pantheon 46 The Capitol 68 General View of the Roman Forum 94 Theatre of Marcellus 110 Porta San Sebastiano 130 The Roman Forum, looking west 154 The Palatine 186 Castle of Sant' Angelo 204 Pope Leo the Thirteenth 228 Raphael's "Transfiguration" 256 Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" 274 Panorama of Rome, from the Orti Farnesiani 298 ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT VOLUME II PAGE Region VII Regola, Device of 1 Portico of Octavia 3 San Giorgio in Velabro 11 Region VIII Sant' Eustachio, Device of 23 Site of Excavations on the Palatine 31 Church of Sant' Eustachio 39 Region IX Pigna, Device of 44 Interior of the Pantheon 49 The Ripetta 53 Piazza Minerva 55 Region X Campitelli, Device of 64 Church of Aracoeli 70 Arch of Septimius Severus 83 Column of Phocas 92 Region XI Sant' Angelo, Device of 101 Piazza Montanara and the Theatre of Marcellus 106 Site of the Ancient Ghetto 114 Region XII Ripa, Device of 119 Church of Saint Nereus and Saint Achilleus 125 The Ripa Grande and Site of the Sublician Bridge 128 Region XIII Trastevere, Device of 132 Ponte Garibaldi 137 Palazzo Mattei 140 House built for Raphael by Bramante, now torn down 145 Monastery of Sant' Onofrio 147 Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius 159 Interior of Santa Maria degli Angeli 175 Palazzo dei Conservatori 189 Region XIV Borgo, Device of 202 Hospital of Santo Spirito 214 The Papal Crest 218 Library of the Vatican 235 Fountain of Acqua Felice 242 Vatican from the Piazza of St. Peter's 251 Loggie of Raphael in the Vatican 259 Biga in the Vatican Museum 268 Belvedere Court of the Vatican 272 Sixtine Chapel 279 Saint Peter's 289 Mamertine Prison 294 Interior of St. Peter's 305 Pietà of Michelangelo 318 Tomb of Clement the Thirteenth 321 Ave atque Vale. Vignette 327 [Illustration] Ave Roma Immortalis REGION VII REGOLA 'Arenula'--'fine sand'--'Renula,' 'Regola'--such is the derivation of the name of the Seventh Region, which was bounded on one side by the sandy bank of the Tiber from Ponte Sisto to the island of Saint Bartholomew, and which Gibbon designates as a 'quarter of the city inhabited only by mechanics and Jews.' The mechanics were chiefly tanners, who have always been unquiet and revolutionary folk, but at least one exception to the general statement must be made, since it was here that the Cenci had built themselves a fortified palace on the foundations of a part of the Theatre of Balbus, between the greater Theatre of Marcellus, then held by the Savelli, and the often mentioned Theatre of Pompey. There Francesco Cenci dwelt, there the childhood of Beatrice was passed, and there she lived for many months after the murder of her father, before the accusation was first brought against her. It is a gloomy place now, with its low black archway, its mouldy walls, its half rotten windows, and its ghostly court of balconies; one might guess that a dead man's curse hangs over it, without knowing how Francesco died. And he, who cursed his sons and his daughters and laughed for joy when two of them were murdered, rebuilt the little church just opposite, as a burial-place for himself and them; but neither he nor they were laid there. The palace used to face the Ghetto, but that is gone, swept away to the very last stone by the municipality in a fine hygienic frenzy, though, in truth, neither plague nor cholera had ever taken hold there in the pestilences of old days, when the Christian city was choked with the dead it could not bury. There is a great open space there now, where thousands of Jews once lived huddled together, crowding and running over each other like ants in an anthill, in a state that would have killed any other people, persecuted occasionally, but on the whole, fairly well treated; indispensable then as now to the spendthrift Christian; confined within their own quarter, as formerly in many other cities, by gates closed at dusk and opened at sunrise, altogether a busy, filthy, believing, untiring folk that laughed at the short descent and high pretensions of a Roman baron, but cringed and crawled aside as the great robber strode by in steel. And close by the Ghetto, in all that remains of the vast Portico of Octavia, is the little Church of Sant' Angelo in Pescheria where the Jews were once compelled to hear Christian sermons on Saturdays. [Illustration: PORTICO OF OCTAVIA From a print of the last century] Close by that church Rienzi was born, and it is for ever associated with his memory. His name calls up a story often told, yet never clear, of a man who seemed to possess several distinct and contradictory personalities, all strong but by no means all noble, which by a freak of fate were united in one man under one name, to make him by turns a hero, a fool, a Christian knight, a drunken despot and a philosophic Pagan. The Buddhist monks of the far East believe today that a man's individual self is often beset, possessed and dominated by all kinds of fragmentary personalities that altogether hide his real nature, which may in reality be better or worse than they are. The Eastern belief may serve at least as an illustration to explain the sort of mixed character with which Rienzi came into the world, by which he imposed upon it for a certain length of time, and which has always taken such strong hold upon the imagination of poets, and writers of fiction, and historians. Rienzi, as we call him, was in reality named 'Nicholas Gabrini, the son of Lawrence'; and 'Lawrence,' being in Italian abbreviated to 'Rienzo' and preceded by the possessive particle 'of,' formed the patronymic by which the man is best known in our language. Lawrence Gabrini kept a wine-shop somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Cenci palace; he seems to have belonged to Anagni, he was therefore by birth a retainer of the Colonna, and his wife was a washer-woman. Between them, moreover, they made a business of selling water from the Tiber, through the city, at a time when there were no aqueducts. Nicholas Rienzi's mother was handsome, and from her he inherited the beauty of form and feature for which he was famous in his youth. His gifts of mind were many, varied and full of that exuberant vitality which noble lineage rarely transmits; if he was a man of genius, his genius belonged to that order which is never far removed from madness and always akin to folly. The greatest of his talents was his eloquence, the least of his qualities was judgment, and while he possessed the courage to face danger unflinchingly, and the means of persuading vast multitudes to follow him in the realization of an exalted dream, he had neither the wit to trace a cause to its consequence, nor the common sense to rest when he had done enough. He had no mental perspective, nor sense of proportion, and in the words of Madame de Staël he 'mistook memories for hopes.' He was born in the year 1313, in the turbulent year that followed the coronation of Henry the Seventh of Luxemburg; and when his vanity had come upon him like a blight, he insulted the memory of his beautiful mother by claiming to be the Emperor's son. In his childhood he was sent to Anagni. There it must be supposed that he acquired his knowledge of Latin from a country priest, and there he lived that early life of solitude and retirement which, with ardent natures, is generally the preparation for an outburst of activity that is to dazzle, or delight, or terrify the world. Thence he came back, a stripling of twenty years, dazed with dreaming and surfeited with classic lore, to begin the struggle for existence in his native Rome as an obscure notary. It seems impossible to convey an adequate idea of the confusion and lawlessness of those times, and it is hard to understand how any city could exist at all in such absence of all authority and government. The powers were nominally the Pope and the Emperor, but the Pope had obeyed the commands of Philip the Fair and had retired to Avignon, and no Emperor could even approach Rome without an army at his back and the alliance of the Ghibelline Colonna to uphold him if he succeeded in entering the city. The maintenance of order and the execution of such laws as existed, were confided to a mis-called Senator and a so-called Prefect. The Senatorship was the property of the Barons, and when Rienzi was born the Orsini and Colonna had just agreed to hold it jointly to the exclusion of every one else. The prefecture was hereditary in the ancient house of Di Vico, from whose office the Via de' Prefetti in the Region of Campo Marzo is named to this day; the head of the house was at first required to swear allegiance to the Pope, to the Emperor, and to the Roman People, and as the three were almost perpetually at swords drawn with one another, the oath was a perjury when it was not a farce. The Prefects' principal duty appears to have been the administration of the Patrimony of Saint Peter, in which they exercised an almost unlimited power after Innocent the Third had formally dispensed them from allegiance to the Emperor, and the long line of petty tyrants did not come to an end until Pope Eugenius the Fourth beheaded the last of the race for his misdeeds in the fifteenth century; after him the office was seized upon by the Barons and finally drifted into the hands of the Barberini, a mere sinecure bringing rich endowments to its fortunate possessor. In Rienzi's time there were practically three castes in Rome,--priests, nobles, and beggars,--for there was nothing which in any degree corresponded to a citizen class; such business as there was consisted chiefly in usury, and was altogether in the hands of the Jews. Rome was the lonely and ruined capital of a pestilential desert, and its population was composed of marauders in various degrees. The priests preyed upon the Church, the nobles upon the Church and upon each other, the beggars picked the pockets of both, and such men as were bodily fit for the work of killing were enlisted as retainers in the service of the Barons, whose steady revenues from their lands, whose strong fortresses within the city, and whose possession of the coat and mail armour which was then so enormously valuable, made them masters of all men except one another. They themselves sold the produce of their estates and the few articles of consumption which reached Rome from abroad, in shops adjoining their palaces; they owned the land upon which the corn and wine and oil were grown; they owned the peasants who ploughed and sowed and reaped and gathered; and they preserved the privilege of disposing of their own wares as they saw fit. They feared nothing but an ambush of their enemies, or the solemn excommunication of the Pope, who cared little enough for their doings. The cardinals and prelates who lived in the city were chiefly of the Barons' own order and under their immediate protection. The Barons possessed everything and ruled everything for their own profit; they defended their privileges with their lives, and they avenged the slightest infringement on their powers by the merciless shedding of blood. They were ignorant, but they were keen; they were brave, but they were faithless; they were passionate, licentious and unimaginably cruel. Such was the city, and such the government, to which Rienzi returned at the age of twenty, to follow the profession of a notary, probably under the protection of the Colonna. That the business afforded occupation to many is proved by the vast number of notarial deeds of that time still extant; but it is also sufficiently clear that Rienzi spent much of his time in dreaming, if not in idleness, and much in the study of the ancient monuments and inscriptions upon which no one had bestowed a glance for generations. It was during that period of early manhood that he acquired the learning and collected the materials which earned him the title, 'Father of Archæology.' He seems to have been about thirty years old when he first began to speak in public places, to such audience as he could gather, expanding with ready though untried eloquence the soaring thoughts bred in years of solitary study. Clement the Sixth, a Frenchman, was elected Pope at Avignon, a man who, according to the chronicler, contrasted favourably by his wisdom, breadth of view, and liberality, with a weak and vacillating predecessor. Seeing that they had to do with a man at last, the Romans sent an embassy to him to urge his return to Rome. The hope had long been at the root of Rienzi's life, and he must have already attained to a considerable reputation of learning and eloquence, since he was chosen to be one of the ambassadors. Petrarch conceived the highest opinion of him at their first meeting, and never withdrew his friendship from him to the end; the great poet joined his prayers with those of the Roman envoys, and supported Rienzi's eloquence with his own genius in a Latin poem. But nothing could avail to move the Pope. Avignon was the Capua of the Pontificate,--a vast papal palace was in course of construction, and the cardinals had already begun to erect sumptuous dwellings for themselves. The Pope listened, smiled, and promised everything except return; the unsuccessful embassy was left without means of subsistence; and Rienzi, disappointed in soul, ill in body, and almost starving, was forced to seek the refuge of a hospital, whither he retired in the single garment which remained unsold from his ambassadorial outfit. But he did not languish long in this miserable condition, for the Pope heard of his misfortunes, remembered his eloquence, and sent him back to Rome, invested with the office of Apostolic Notary, and endowed with a salary of five golden florins daily, a stipend which at that time amounted almost to wealth. The office was an important one, but Rienzi exercised it by deputy, continued his studies, propagated his doctrines, and by quick degrees acquired unbounded influence with the people. His hatred of the Barons was as profound as his love of his native city was noble; and if the unavenged murder of a brother, and the unanswered buffet of a Colonna rankled in his heart, and stimulated his patriotism with the sting of personal wrong, neither the one nor the other were the prime causes of his actions. The evils of the city were enormous, his courage was heroic, and after profound reflection he resolved upon the step which determined his tragic career. To the door of the Church of Saint George in Velabro he affixed a proclamation, or a prophecy, which set forth that Rome should soon be restored to the 'Good Estate'; he collected a hundred of his friends in a meeting by night, on the Aventine, to decide upon a course of action, and he summoned all citizens to appear before the church of Sant' Angelo in Pescheria, towards evening, peacefully and without arms, to provide for the restoration of that 'Good Estate' which he himself had announced. [Illustration: SAN GIORGIO IN VELABRO] That night was the turning-point in Rienzi's life, and he made it a Vigil of Arms and Prayer. In the mysterious nature of the destined man, the pure spirit of the Christian knight suddenly stood forth in domination of his soul, and he consecrated himself to the liberation of his country by the solemn office of the Holy Ghost. All night he kneeled in the little church, in full armour, with bare head, before the altar. The people came and went, and others came after them and saw him kneeling there, while one priest succeeded another in celebrating the Thirty Masses of the Holy Spirit from midnight to early morning. The sun was high when the champion of freedom came forth, bareheaded still, to face the clear light of day. Around him marched the chosen hundred; at his right hand went the Pope's vicar; and before him three great standards displayed allegories of liberty, justice, and peace. A vast concourse of people followed him, for the news had spread from mouth to mouth, and there were few in Rome who had not heard his voice and longed for the 'Good Estate' which he so well described. The nobles heard of the assembly with indifference, for they were well used to disturbances of every kind and dreaded no unarmed rabble. Colonna and Orsini, joint senators, had quarrelled, and the Capitol was vacant; thither Rienzi went, and thence from a balcony he spoke to the people of freedom, of peace, of prosperity. The eloquence that had moved Clement and delighted Petrarch stirred ten thousand Roman hearts at once; a dissatisfied Roman count read in clear tones the laws Rienzi proposed to establish, and the appearance of a bishop and a nobleman by the plebeian's side gave the people hope and encouragement. The laws were simple and direct, and there was to be but one interpretation of them, while all public revenues were to be applied to public ends. Each Region of the city was to furnish a contingent of men-at-arms, and if any man were killed in the service of his country, Rome was to provide for his wife and children. The fortresses, the bridges, the gates, were to pass from the custody of the Barons to that of the Roman people, and the Barons themselves were to retire forthwith from the city. So the Romans made Rienzi Dictator. The nobles refused to believe in a change which meant ruin to themselves. Old Stephen Colonna laughed and said he would throw the madman from the window as soon as he should be at leisure. It was near noon when he spoke; the sun was barely setting when he rode for his life towards Palestrina. The great bell of the Capitol called the people to arms, the liberator was already the despot, and the Barons were already exiles. Rienzi assumed the title of Tribune with the authority of Dictator, and with ten thousand swords at his back exacted a humiliating oath of allegiance from the representatives of the great houses. Upon the Body and Blood of Christ they swore to the 'Good Estate,' they bound themselves to yield up their fortresses within the city, to harbour neither outlaws nor malefactors in their mountain castles, and to serve the Republic loyally in arms whenever they should be called upon to do so. The oath was taken by all, the power that could enforce it was visible to all men's eyes, and Rienzi was supreme. Had he been the philosopher that he had once persuaded himself he was; had he been the pure-hearted Christian Knight of the Holy Spirit he had believed himself when he knelt through the long Office in the little church; had he been the simple Roman Tribune of the People that he proclaimed himself, when he had seized the dictatorship, history might have followed a different course, and the virtues he imposed upon Rome might have borne fruit throughout all Italy. But with Rienzi, each new phase was the possession of a new spirit of good or evil, and with each successive change, only the man's great eloquence remained. While he was a hero, he was a hero indeed; while he was a philosopher, his thoughts were lofty and wise; so long as he was a knight, his life was pure and blameless. But the vanity which inspired him, not to follow an ideal, but to represent that ideal outwardly, and which inflamed him with a great actor's self-persuading fire, required, like all vanity, the perpetual stimulus of applause and admiration. He could have leapt into the gulf with Curtius before the eyes of ten thousand grateful citizens; but he could not have gone back with Cincinnatus to the plough, a simple, true-hearted man. The display of justice followed the assumption of power, it is true; but when justice was established, the unquiet spirit was assailed by the thirst for a new emotion which no boasting proclamation could satisfy, and no adulation could quench. The changes he wrought in a few weeks were marvellous, and the spirit in which they were made was worthy of a great reformer; Italy saw and admired, received his ambassadors and entertained them with respect, read his eloquent letters and answered them with approbation; and Rienzi's court was the tribunal to which the King of Hungary appealed the cause of a murdered brother. Yet his vanity demanded more. It was not long before he assumed the dress, the habits, and the behaviour of a sovereign and appeared in public with the emblems of empire. He felt that he was no longer in spirit the Knight of the Holy Ghost, and he required for self-persuasion the conference of the outward honours of knighthood. He purified himself according to the rites of chivalry in the font of the Lateran Baptistry, consecrated by the tradition of Constantine's miraculous recovery from leprosy, he watched his arms throughout the dark hours, and received the order from the sword of an honourable nobleman. The days of the philosopher, the hero, and the liberator were over, and the reign of the public fool was inaugurated by the most extravagant boasts, and celebrated by a feast of boundless luxury and abundance, to which the citizens of Rome were bidden with their wives and daughters. Still unsatisfied, he demanded and obtained the ceremony of a solemn coronation, and seven crowns were placed successively upon his head as emblems of the seven spiritual gifts. Before him stood the great Barons in attitudes of humility and dejection; for a moment the great actor had forgotten himself in the excitement of his part, and Rienzi again enjoyed the emotion of undisputed sovereignty. But Colonna, Orsini and Savelli were not men to submit tamely in fact, though the presence of an overwhelming power had forced them to outward submission, and in his calmer moments the extravagant tribune was haunted by the dream of vengeance. A ruffian asserted under torture that the nobles were already conspiring against their victor, and Rienzi enticed three of the Colonna and five of the Orsini to the Capitol, where he had taken up his abode. He seized them, held them prisoners all night, and led them out in the morning to be the principal actors in a farce which he dared not turn to tragedy. Condemned to death, their sins confessed, they heard the tolling of the great bell, and stood bareheaded before the executioner. The scene was prepared with the art of a consummate playwright, and the spectators were delighted by a speech of rare eloquence and amazed by the sudden exhibition of a clemency that was born of fear. Magnanimously pardoning those whom he dared not destroy, Rienzi received a new oath of allegiance from his captives and dismissed them to their homes. The humiliation rankled. Laying aside their hereditary feud, Colonna and Orsini made a desperate effort to regain their power. By a misunderstanding they were defeated, and the third part of their force, entering the city without the rest, was overwhelmed and massacred, and six of the Colonna were slain. The low-born Rienzi refused burial for their bodies, knighted his son on the spot where they had fallen, and washed his hands in water that was mingled with their blood. It was his last triumph and his basest. His power was already declining, and though the people had assembled in arms to beat off their former masters, they had lost faith in a leader who had turned out a madman, a knave, and a drunkard. They refused to pay the taxes he would have laid upon them, and resisted the measures he proposed. Clement the Sixth, who had approved his wisdom, punished his folly, and the so-called tribune was deposed, condemned for heresy, and excommunicated. A Neapolitan soldier of fortune, an adventurer and a criminal, took possession of Rome with only one hundred and fifty men, in the name of the Pope, without striking a blow, and the people would not raise a hand to help their late idol as he was led away weeping to the Castle of Sant' Angelo, while the nobles looked on in scornful silence. Rienzi was allowed to depart in peace after a short captivity and became a wanderer and an outcast in Europe. In many disguises he went from place to place, and did not fear to return to Rome in the travesty of a pilgrim. The story of his adventures would fill many pages, but Rome is not concerned with them. In vain he appealed to adventurers, to enthusiasts, and to fanatics to help in regaining what he had lost. None would listen to him, no man would draw the sword. He came to Prague at last, obtained an audience of the Emperor Charles the Fourth, appealed to the whole court, with impassioned eloquence, and declared himself to be Rienzi. The attempt cost him his freedom, for the prudent emperor forthwith sent him a captive to the Pope at Avignon, where he was at first loaded with chains and thrown into prison. But Clement hesitated to bring him to trial, his friend Petrarch spoke earnestly in his favour, and he was ultimately relegated to an easy confinement, during which he once more gave himself up to the study of his favourite classics in peaceful resignation. Meanwhile in Rome his enactments had been abolished with sweeping indifference to their character and importance, and the old misrule was reëstablished in its pristine barbarity. The feud between Orsini and Colonna broke out again in the absence of a common danger. The plague appeared in Europe and decimated a city already distracted by internal discord. Rome was again a wilderness of injustice, as the chronicle says; every one doing what seemed good in his own eyes, the Papal and the public revenues devoured by marauders, the streets full of thieves, and the country infested by outlaws. Clement died, and Innocent the Sixth, another Frenchman, was elected in his stead, 'a personage of great science, zeal, and justice,' who set about to reform abuses as well as he could, but who saw that he could not hope to return to Rome without long and careful preparation. He selected as his agent in the attempt to regain possession of the States of the Church the Cardinal Albornoz, a Spaniard of courage and experience. [Illustration: PALAZZO FARNESE] Meanwhile Rienzi enjoyed greater freedom, and assumed the character of an inspired poet; than which none commanded greater respect and influence in the early years of the Renascence. That he ever produced any verses of merit there is not the slightest evidence to prove, but his undoubted learning and the friendship of Petrarch helped him to sustain the character. He never lacked talent to act any part which his vanity suggested as a means of flattering his insatiable soul. He put on the humility of a penitent and the simplicity of a true scholar; he spoke quietly and wisely of Italy's future and he obtained the confidence of the new Pope. It was in this way that by an almost incredible turn of fortune, the outcast and all but condemned heretic was once more chosen as a means of restoring order in Rome, and accompanied Cardinal Albornoz on his mission to Italy. Had he been a changed man as he pretended to be, he might have succeeded, for few understood the character of the Romans better, and there was no name in the country of which the memories appealed so profoundly to the hearts of the people. The catalogue of his deeds during the second period of power is long and confused, but the history of his fall is short and tragic. Not without a keen appreciation of the difference between his former position as the freely chosen champion of the people, and his present mission as a reformer supported by pontifical authority, he requested the Legate to invest him with the dignity of a senator, and the Cardinal readily assented to what was an assertion of the temporal power. Then Albornoz left him to himself. He entered Rome in triumph, and his eloquence did not desert him. But he was no longer the young and inspired knight, self-convinced and convincing, who had issued from the little church long ago. In person he was bloated with drink and repulsive to all who saw him; and the vanity which had so often been the temporary basis of his changing character had grown monstrous under the long repression of circumstances. With the first moment of success it broke out and dictated his actions, his assumed humility was forgotten in an instant, as well as the well-worded counsels of wisdom by which he had won the Pope's confidence; and he plunged into a civil war with the still powerful Colonna. One act of folly succeeded another; he had neither money nor credit, and the stern Albornoz, seeing the direction he was taking, refused to send him assistance. In his extremity he attempted to raise funds for his soldiers and money for his own unbounded luxury by imposing taxes which the people could not bear. The result was certain and fatal. The Romans rose against him in a body, and an infuriated rabble besieged him at the Capitol. It has been said that the vainest men make the best soldiers. Rienzi was brave for a moment at the last. Seeing himself surrounded, and deserted by his servants, he went out upon a balcony and faced the mob alone, bearing in his hand the great standard of the Republic, and for the last time he attempted to avert with words the tempest which his deeds had called forth. But his hour had come, and as he stood there alone he was stoned and shot at, and an arrow pierced his hand. Broken in nerve by long intemperance and fanatic excitement, he burst into tears and fled, refusing the hero's death in which he might still have saved his name from scorn. He attempted to escape from the other side of the Capitol towards the Forum, and in the disguise of a street porter he had descended through a window and had almost escaped notice while the multitude was breaking down the doors of the main entrance. Then he was seen and taken, and they brought him in his filthy dress to the great platform of the Capitol, not knowing what they should do with him and almost frightened to find their tyrant in their power. They thronged round him, looked at him, spoke to him, but he answered nothing; for his hour was come, the star of his nativity was in the house of death. In that respite, had he been a man, courage might have awed them, eloquence might have touched them, and he might yet have dreamed of power. But he was utterly speechless, utterly broken, utterly afraid. A whole hour passed, and no hand was lifted against him; yet he spoke not. Then one man, tired of his pale and bloated face, silently struck a knife into his heart, and as he fell dead, the rabble rushed upon him and stabbed him to pieces, and a long yell of murderous rage told all Rome that Rienzi was dead. They left his body to the dogs and went away to their homes, for it was evening, and they were spent with madness. Then the Jews came, who hated him also; and they dragged the miserable corpse through the streets; and made a bonfire of thistles in a remote place and burned it; and what was left of the bones and ashes they threw into the Tiber. So perished Rienzi, a being who was not a man, but a strangely responsive instrument, upon which virtue, heroism, courage, cowardice, faith, falsehood and knavery played the grandest harmonies and the wildest discords in mad succession, till humanity was weary of listening, and silenced the harsh music forever. However we may think of him, he was great for a moment, yet however great we may think him, he was little in all but his first dream. Let him have some honour for that, and much merciful oblivion for the rest. [Illustration] REGION VIII SANT' EUSTACHIO The Eighth region is almost symmetrical in shape, extending nearly north and south with a tolerably even breadth from the haunted palace of the Santacroce, where the marble statue of the dead Cardinal comes down from its pedestal to pace the shadowy halls all night, to Santa Maria in Campo Marzo, and cutting off, as it were, the three Regions so long held by the Orsini from the rest of the city. Taking Rome as a whole, it was a very central quarter until the development of the newly inhabited portions. It was here, near the churches of Saint Eustace and Saint Ives, that the English who came to Rome for business established themselves, like other foreigners, in a distinct colony during the Renascence. Upon the chapel of Saint Ives, unconsecrated now and turned into a lecture room of the University, a strange spiral tower shows the talents of Borromini, Bernini's rival, at their lowest ebb. So far as one can judge, the architect intended to represent realistically the arduous path of learning; but whatever he meant, the result is as bad a piece of Barocco as is to be found in Rome. As for the Church of Saint Eustace, it commemorates a vision which tradition attributes alike to Saint Julian the Hospitaller, to Saint Felix, and to Saint Hubert. The genius of Flaubert, who was certainly one of the greatest prose writers of this century, has told the story of the first of these in very beautiful language, and the legend of Saint Hubert is familiar to every one. Saint Eustace is perhaps less known, for he was a Roman saint of early days, a soldier and a lover of the chase, as many Romans were. We do not commonly associate with them the idea of boar hunting or deer stalking, but they were enthusiastic sportsmen. Virgil's short and brilliant description of Æneas shooting the seven stags on the Carthaginian shore is the work of a man who had seen what he described, and Pliny's letters are full of allusions to hunting. Saint Eustace was a contemporary of the latter, and perhaps outlived him, for he is said to have been martyred under Hadrian, when a long career of arms had raised him to the rank of a general. It is an often-told story--how he was stalking the deer in the Ciminian forest one day, alone and on foot, when a royal stag, milk-white and without blemish, crashed through the meeting boughs before him; how he followed the glorious creature fast and far, and shot and missed and shot again, and how at last the stag sprang up a steep and jutting rock and faced him, and he saw Christ's cross between the branching antlers, and upon the Cross the Crucified, and heard a still far voice that bade him be Christian and suffer and be saved; and so, alone in the greenwood, he knelt down and bowed himself to the world's Redeemer, and rose up again, and the vision had departed. And having converted his wife and his two sons, they suffered together with him; for they were thrust into the great brazen bull by the Colosseum, and it was made red hot, and they perished, praising God. But their ashes lie under the high altar in the church to this day. The small square of Saint Eustace is not far from Piazza Navona, communicating with it by gloomy little streets, and on the great night of the Befana, the fair spreads through the narrow ways and overflows with more booths, more toys, more screaming whistles, into the space between the University and the church. And here at the southeast corner used to stand the famous Falcone, the ancient eating-house which to the last kept up the Roman traditions, and where in old days, many a famous artist and man of letters supped on dishes now as extinct as the dodo. The house has been torn down to make way for a modern building. Famous it was for wild boar, in the winter, dressed with sweet sauce and pine nuts, and for baked porcupine and strange messes of tomatoes and cheese, and famous, too, for its good old wines in the days when wine was not mixed with chemicals and sold as 'Chianti,' though grown about Olevano, Paliano and Segni. It was a strange place, occupying the whole of two houses which must have been built in the sixteenth century, after the sack of Rome. It was full of small rooms of unexpected shapes, scrupulously neat and clean, with little white and red curtains, tiled floors, and rush bottomed chairs, and the regular guests had their own places, corners in which they had made themselves comfortable for life, as it were, and were to be found without fail at dinner and at supper time. It was one of those genial bits of old Rome which survived till a few years ago, and was more deeply regretted than many better things when it disappeared. Behind the Church of Saint Eustace runs a narrow street straight up from the Square of the Pantheon to the Via della Dogana Vecchia. It used to be chiefly occupied at the lower end by poulterers' shops, but towards its upper extremity--for the land rises a little--it has always had a peculiarly dismal and gloomy look. It bears a name about which are associated some of the darkest deeds in Rome's darkest age; it is called the Via de' Crescenzi, the street and the abode of that great and evil house which filled the end of the tenth century with its bloody deeds. There is no more unfathomable mystery in the history of mediæval Rome than the origin and power of Theodora, whose name first appears in the year 914, as Lady Senatress and absolute mistress of the city. The chronicler Luitprand, who is almost the only authority for this period, heaps abuse upon Theodora and her eldest daughter, hints that they were of low origin, and brands them with a disgrace more foul than their crimes. No one can read their history and believe that they were anything but patrician women, of execrable character but of high descent. From Theodora, in little more than a hundred years, descended five Popes and a line of sovereign Counts, ending in Peter, the first ancestor of the Colonna who took the name; and, from her also, by the marriage of her second daughter, called Theodora like herself, the Crescenzi traced their descent. Yet no historian can say who that first Theodora was, nor whence she came, nor how she rose to power, nor can any one name the father of her children. Her terrible eldest child, Marozia, married three sovereigns, the Lord of Tusculum, the Lord of Tuscany, and at last Hugh, King of Burgundy, and left a history that is an evil dream of terror and bloodshed. But the story of those fearful women belongs to their stronghold, the great castle of Sant' Angelo. To the Region of Saint Eustace belongs the history of Crescenzio, consul, tribune and despot of Rome. In the street that bears the name of his family, the huge walls of Severus Alexander's bath afforded the materials for a fortress, and there Crescenzio dwelt when his kinswoman Marozia held Hadrian's tomb, and after she was dead. Those were the times when the Emperors defended the Popes against the Roman people. Not many years had passed since Otto the First had done justice upon Peter the Prefect, far away at the Lateran palace; Otto the Second reigned in his stead, and Benedict the Sixth was Pope. The race of Theodora hated the domination of the Emperor, and despised a youthful sovereign whom they had never seen. They dreamed of restoring Rome to the Eastern Empire, and of renewing the ancient office of Exarch for themselves. Benedict stood in their way and was doomed. They chose their antipope, a Roman Cardinal, one Boniface, a man with neither scruple nor conscience, and set him up in the Pontificate; and, when they had done that, Crescenzio seized Benedict and dragged him through the low black entrance of Sant' Angelo, and presently strangled him in his dungeon. But neither did Boniface please those who had made him Pope; and, within the month, lest he should die like him he had supplanted, he stealthily escaped from Rome to the sea, and it is recorded that he stole and carried away the sacred vessels and treasures of the Vatican, and took them to Constantinople. So Crescenzio first appears in the wild and confused history of that century of dread, when men looked forward with certainty and horror to the ending of the world in the year one thousand. And during a dozen years after Benedict was murdered, the cauldron of faction boiled and seethed in Rome. Then, in the year 987, when Hugh Capet took France for himself and for his descendants through eight centuries, and when John the Fifteenth was Pope in Rome, 'a new tyrant arose in the city which had hitherto been trampled down and held under by the violence of the race of Alberic,'--that is, the race of Theodora,--'and that tyrant was Crescentius.' And Crescenzio was the kinsman of Alberic's children. The second Otto was dead, and Otto the Third was a mere boy, when Crescenzio, fortified in Sant' Angelo, suddenly declared himself Consul, seized all power, and drove the Pope from Rome. This time he had no antipope; he would have no Pope at all, and there was no Emperor either, since the young Otto had not yet been crowned. So Crescenzio reigned alone for awhile, with what he called a Senate at his back, and the terror of his name to awe the Roman people. But Pope John was wiser than the unfortunate Benedict, and a better man than Boniface, the antipope and thief; and having escaped to the north, he won the graces of Crescenzio's distant kinsman by marriage and hereditary foe, Duke Hugh of Tuscany, grandson of Hugh of Burgundy the usurper; and from that strong situation he proceeded to offer the boy Otto inducements for coming to be crowned in Rome. He wisely judged from what he had seen during his lifetime that the most effectual means of opposing the boundless license of the Roman patricians was to make an Emperor, even of a child, and he knew that the name of Otto the Great was not forgotten, and that the terrible execution of Peter the Prefect was remembered with a lively dread. Crescenzio was not ready to oppose the force of the Empire; he was surrounded by jealous factions at home, which any sudden revolution might turn against himself, he weighed his strength against the danger and he resolved to yield. The 'Senate,' which consisted of patricians as greedy as himself, but less daring or less strong, had altogether recovered the temporal power in Rome, and Crescenzio easily persuaded them that it would be both futile and dangerous to quarrel with the Emperor about spiritual matters. The 'Consul' and the 'Senate'--which meant a tyrant and his courtiers--accordingly requested the Pope to return in peace and exercise his episcopal functions in the Holy See. Pope John must have been as bold as he was wise, for he did not hesitate, but came back at once. He reaped the fruit of his wisdom and his courage. Crescenzio and the nobles met him with reverence and implored his forgiveness for their ill-considered deeds; the Pope granted them a free pardon, wisely abstaining from any assertion of temporal power, and sometimes apparently submitting with patience to the Consul's tyranny. For it is recorded that some years later, when the Bishops of France sent certain ambassadors to the Pope, they were not received, but were treated with indignity, kept waiting outside the palace three days, and finally sent home without audience or answer because they had omitted to bribe Crescenzio. [Illustration: SITE OF EXCAVATIONS ON THE PALATINE] If Pope John had persuaded Otto to be crowned at once, such things might not have taken place. It was many years before the young Emperor came to Rome at last, and he had not reached the city when he was met by the news that Pope John was dead. He lost no time, designated his private chaplain, the son of the Duke of Franconia, 'a young man of letters, but somewhat fiery on account of his youth,' to be Pope, and sent him forward to Rome at once with a train of bishops, to be installed in the Holy See. In so youthful a sovereign, such action lacked neither energy nor wisdom. The young Pontiff assumed the name of Gregory the Fifth, espoused the cause of the poor citizens against the tyranny of the nobles, crowned his late master Emperor, and forthwith made a determined effort to crush Crescenzio and regain the temporal power. But he had met his match at the outset. The blood of Theodora was not easily put down. The Consul laughed to scorn the pretensions of the young Pope; the nobles were in arms, the city was his, and in the second year of his Pontificate, Gregory the Fifth was driven ignominiously from the gates in a state of absolute destitution. He was the third Pope whom Crescenzio had driven out. Gregory made his way to Pavia, summoned a council of Bishops, and launched the Major Excommunication at his adversary. But the Consul, secure in Sant' Angelo, laughed again, more grimly, and did as he pleased. At this time Basil and Constantine, joint Emperors in Constantinople, sent ambassadors to Rome to Otto the Third, and with them came a certain John, a Calabrian of Greek race, a man of pliant conscience, tortuous mind, and extraordinary astuteness, at that time Archbishop of Piacenza, and formerly employed by Otto upon a mission to Constantinople. Crescenzio, as though to show that his enmity was altogether against the Pope, and not in the least against the Emperor, received these envoys with great honour, and during their stay persuaded them to enter into a scheme which had suddenly presented itself to his ambitious intelligence. The old dream of restoring Rome to the Eastern Empire was revived, the conspirators resolved to bring it to realization, and John of Calabria was a convenient tool for their hands. He was to be Pope; Crescenzio was to be despot, under the nominal protection and sovereignty of the Greek Emperors, and the ambassadors were to conclude the treaty with the latter. Otto was on the German frontier waging war against the Slavs, and Gregory was definitely exiled from Rome. Nothing stood in the way of the plot, and it was forthwith put into execution. Certain ambassadors of Otto's were passing through Rome on their return from the East and on their way to the Emperor's presence; they were promptly seized and thrown into prison, in order to interrupt communication between the two Empires. John of Calabria was consecrated Pope, or rather antipope, Crescenzio took possession of all power, and certain legates of Pope Gregory having ventured to enter Rome were at once imprisoned with the Emperor's ambassadors. It was a daring stroke, and if it had succeeded, the history of Europe would have been different from that time forward. Crescenzio was bold, unscrupulous, pertinacious and keen. He had the Roman nobles at his back and he controlled such scanty revenues as could still be collected. He had violently expelled three Popes, he had created two antipopes, and his name was terror in the ears of the Church. Yet it would have taken more than all that to overset the Catholic Church at a time when the world was ripe for the first crusade; and though the Empire had fallen low since the days of Charles the Great, it was fast climbing again to the supremacy of power in which it culminated under Barbarossa and whence it fell with Frederick the Second. A handful of high-born murderers and marauders might work havoc in Rome for a time, but they could neither destroy that deep-rooted belief nor check the growth of that imperial law by which Europe emerged from the confusion of the dark age--to lose both law and belief again amid the intellectual excitements of the Renascence. Otto the Third was young, brave and determined, and before the treaty with the Eastern Emperors was concluded, he was well informed of the outrageous deeds of the Roman patricians. No sooner had he brought the war on the Saxon frontier to a successful conclusion than he descended again into Italy 'to purge the Roman bilge,' in the chronicler's strong words. On his way, he found time to visit Venice secretly, with only six companions, and we are told how the Doge entertained him in private as Emperor, with sumptuous suppers, and allowed him to wander about Venice all day as a simple unknown traveller, with his companions, 'visiting the churches and the other rare things of the City,' whereby it is clear that in the year 998, when Rome was a half-deserted, half-ruined city, ruled by a handful of brigands living in the tomb of the Cæsars, Venice, under the good Doge Orseolo the Second, was already one of the beautiful cities of the world, as well as mistress of the Adriatic, of all Dalmatia, and of many lovely islands. Otto took with him Pope Gregory, and with a very splendid army of Germans and Italians marched down to Rome. Neither Crescenzio nor his followers had believed that the young Emperor was in earnest; but when it was clear that he meant to do justice, Antipope John was afraid, and fled secretly by night, in disguise. Crescenzio, of sterner stuff, heaped up a vast provision of food in Sant' Angelo, and resolved to abide a siege. The stronghold was impregnable, so far as any one could know, for it had never been stormed in war or riot, and on its possession had depended the long impunity of Theodora's race. The Emperor might lay siege to it, encamp before it, and hem it in for months; in the end he must be called away by the more urgent wars of the Empire in the north, and Crescenzio, secure in his stronghold, would hold the power still. But when the Roman people knew that Otto was at hand and that the antipope had fled, their courage rose against the nobles, and they went out after John, and scoured the country till they caught him in his disguise, for his face was known to many. Because the Emperor was known to be kind of heart, and because it was remembered also that this John of Calabria, who went by many names, had by strange chance baptized both Otto and Pope Gregory, the Duke of Franconia's son, therefore the Romans feared lest justice should be too gentle; and having got the antipope into their hands, they dealt with him savagely, put out his eyes, cut out his tongue and sliced off his nose, and drove him to prison through the city, seated face backwards on an ass. And when the Emperor and the Pope came, they left him in his dungeon. Now at Gaeta there lived a very holy man, who was Saint Nilus, and who afterwards founded the monastery of Grottaferrata, where there are beautiful wall paintings to this day. He was a Greek, like John of Calabria, and though he detested the antipope he had pity on the man and felt compassion for his countryman. So he journeyed to Rome and came before Otto and Gregory, who received him with perfect devotion, as a saint, and he asked of them that they should give him the wretched John, 'who,' he said, 'held both of you in his arms at the Font of Baptism,' though he was grievously fallen since that day by his great hypocrisy. Then the Emperor was filled with pity, and answered that the saint might have the antipope alive, if he himself would then remain in Rome and direct the monastery of Saint Anastasia of the Greeks. The holy man was willing to sacrifice his life of solitary meditation for the sake of his wretched countryman, and he would have obtained the fulfilment of his request from Otto; but Pope Gregory remembered how he himself had been driven out penniless and scantily clothed, to make way for John of Calabria, and his heart was hardened, and he would not let the prisoner go. Wherefore Saint Nilus foretold that because neither the Pope nor the Emperor would have mercy, the wrath of God should overtake them both. And indeed they were both cut off in the flower of their youth--Gregory within one year, and Otto not long afterwards. Meanwhile they sent Nilus away and laid siege to the Castle of Sant' Angelo, where Crescenzio and his men had shut themselves up with a good store of food and arms. No one had ever taken that fortress, nor did any one believe that it could be stormed. But Pope and Emperor were young and brave and angry, and they had a great army, and the people of Rome were with them, every man. They used such engines as they had,--catapults, and battering-rams, and ladders; and yet Crescenzio laughed, for the stone walls were harder than the stone missiles, and higher than the tallest ladders, and so thick that fire could not heat them from without, nor battering-ram loosen a single block in a single course; and many assaults were repelled, and many a brave soldier fell writhing and broken into the deep ditch with his ladder upon him. When the time of fate was fulfilled, the end came on a fair April morning; one ladder held its place till desperate armed hands had reached the rampart, and swift feet had sprung upon the edge, and one brave arm beat back the twenty that were there to defend; and then there were two, and three, and ten, and a score, and a hundred, and the great castle was taken at last. Nor do we know surely that it was ever taken again by force, even long afterwards in the days of artillery. But Crescenzio's hour had come, and the Emperor took him and the twelve chief nobles who were with him, and cut off their heads, one by one, in quick justice and without torture, and the heads were set up on spikes, and the headless bodies were hung out from the high crenellations of the ramparts. Thus ended Crescenzio, but not his house, nor the line of Theodora, nor died he unavenged. [Illustration: CHURCH OF SANT' EUSTACHIO From a print of the last century] It is said and believed that Pope Gregory perished by the hands of the Crescenzi, who lived in the little street behind the Church of Saint Eustace. As for Otto, he came to a worse end, though he was of a pious house, and laboured for the peace of his soul against the temptations of this evil world. For he was young, and the wife of Crescenzio was wonderfully fair, and her name was Stefania. She came weeping before him and mourning her lord, and was beautiful in her grief, and knew it, as many women do. And the young Emperor saw her, and pitied her, and loved her, and took her to his heart in sin, and though he repented daily, he daily fell again, while the woman offered up her body and her soul to be revenged for the fierce man she had loved. So it came to pass, at last, that she found her opportunity against him, and poured poison into his cup, and kissed him, and gave it to him with a very loving word. And he drank it and died, and the prophecy of the holy man, Nilus, was fulfilled upon him. The story is told in many ways, but that is the main truth of it, according to Muratori, whom Gibbon calls his guide and master in the history of Italy, but whom he did not follow altogether in his brief sketch of Crescenzio's life and death, and their consequences. The Crescenzi lived on, in power and great state. They buried the terrible tribune in Santa Sabina, on the Aventine, where his epitaph may be read today, but whither he did not retire in life, as some guide-books say, to end his days in prayer and meditation. And for some reason, perhaps because they no longer held the great Castle, they seem to have left the Region of Saint Eustace; for Nicholas, the tribune's son, built the small palace by the Tiber, over against the Temple of Hercules, though it has often been called the house of Rienzi, whose name was also Nicholas, which caused the confusion. And later they built themselves other fortresses, but the end of their history is not known. In the troubles which succeeded the death of Crescentius, a curious point arises in the chronicle, with regard to the titles of the bishops depending from the Holy See. It is certainly not generally known that, as late as the tenth century, the bishops of the great cities called themselves Popes--the 'Pope of Milan,' the 'Pope of Naples,' and the like--and that Gregory the Seventh, the famous Hildebrand, was the first to decree that the title should be confined to the Roman Pontiffs, with that of 'Servus Servorum Dei'--'servant of the servants of God.' And indeed, in those changing times such a confusion of titles must have caused trouble, as it did when Gregory the Fifth, driven out by Crescentius, and taking refuge in Pavia, found himself, the Pope of Rome, confronted with Arnulf, the 'Pope' of Milan, and complained of his position to the council he had summoned. The making and unmaking of Popes, and the election of successors to those that died, brings up memories of what Rome was during the vacancy of the See, and of the general delight at the death of any reigning Pontiff, good or bad. A certain monk is reported to have answered Paul the Third, that the finest festival in Rome took place while one Pope lay dead and another was being elected. During that period, not always brief, law and order were suspended. According to the testimony of Dionigi Atanagi, quoted by Baracconi, the first thing that happened was that the prisons were broken open and all condemned persons set free, while all men in authority hid themselves in their homes, and the officers of justice fled in terror from the dangerous humour of the people. For every man who could lay hands on a weapon seized it, and carried it about with him. It was the time for settling private quarrels of long standing, in short and decisive fights, without fear of disturbance or interference from the frightened Bargello and the terrorized watchmen of the city. And as soon as the accumulated private spite of years had spent itself in a certain amount of free fighting, the city became perfectly safe again, and gave itself up to laying wagers on the election of the next Pope. The betting was high, and there were regular bookmakers, especially in all the Regions from Saint Eustace to the Ponte Sant' Angelo, where the banks had established themselves under the protection of the Pope and the Guelph Orsini, and where the most reliable and latest news was sure to be obtained fresh from the Vatican. Instead of the Piazza di Spagna and the Villa Medici, the narrow streets and gloomy squares of Ponte, Parione and Sant' Eustachio became the gathering-place of society, high, low and indiscriminate; and far from exhibiting the slightest signs of mourning for its late ruler, the city gave itself up to a sort of Carnival season, all the more delightful, because it was necessarily unexpected. Moreover, the poor people had the delight of speculating upon the wealth of the cardinal who might be elected; for, as soon as the choice of the Conclave was announced, and the cry, 'A pope, a pope!' rang through the streets, it was the time-honoured privilege of the rabble to sack and plunder the late residence of the chosen cardinal, till, literally, nothing was left but the bare walls and floors. This was so much a matter of course, that the election of a poor Pope was a source of the bitterest disappointment to the people, and was one of their principal causes of discontent when Sixtus the Fifth was raised to the Pontificate, it having been given out as certain, but a few hours earlier, that the rich Farnese was to be the fortunate man. [Illustration] REGION IX PIGNA There used to be a tradition, wholly unfounded, but deeply rooted in the Roman mind, to the effect that the great bronze pine-cone, eleven feet high, which stands in one of the courts of the Vatican, giving it the name 'Garden of the Pine-cone,' was originally a sort of stopper which closed the round aperture in the roof of the Pantheon. The Pantheon stands at one corner of the Region of Pigna, and a connection between the Region, the Pantheon and the Pine-cone seems vaguely possible, though altogether unsatisfactory. The truth about the Pine-cone is perfectly well known; it was part of a fountain in Agrippa's artificial lake in the Campus Martius, of which Pigna was a part, and it was set up in the cloistered garden of Saint Peter's by Pope Symmachus about fourteen hundred years ago. The lake may have been near the Pantheon. No one, so far as I am aware,--not even the excellent Baracconi,--offers any explanation of the name and device of the Ninth Region. Topographically it is nearly a square, of which the angles are the Pantheon, the corner of Via di Caravita and the Corso, the Palazzo di Venezia, and the corner of the new Via Arenula and Via Florida. Besides the Pantheon it contains some of the most notable buildings erected since the Renascence. Here are the palaces of the Doria, of the Altieri, and the 'Palace of Venice' built by Paul the Second, that Venetian Barbo, whose name may have nicknamed the racing horses of the Carnival. Here were the strongholds of the two great rival orders, the Dominicans and the Jesuits, the former in the Piazza della Minerva, the latter in the Piazza del Gesù, and in the Collegio Romano; and here at the present day, in the buildings of the old rivals, significantly connected by an arched passage, are collected the greatest libraries of the city. That of the Dominicans, wisely left in their care, has been opened to the public; the other, called after Victor Emmanuel, is a vast collection of books gathered together by plundering the monastic institutions of Italy at the time of the disestablishment. The booty--for it was nothing else--was brought in carts, mostly in a state of the utmost confusion, and the books and manuscripts were roughly stacked in vacant rooms on the ground floor of the Collegio Romano, in charge of a porter. Not until a poor scholar, having bought himself two ounces of butter in the Piazza Navona, found the greasy stuff wrapped in an autograph letter of Christopher Columbus, did it dawn upon the authorities that the porter was deliberately selling priceless books and manuscripts as waste paper, by the hundredweight, to provide himself with the means of getting drunk. That was about the year 1880. The scandal was enormous, a strict inquiry was made, justice was done as far as possible, and an official account of the affair was published in a 'Green Book'; but the amount of the loss was unknown, it may have been incalculable, and it was undeniably great. The names visibly recorded in the Region have vast suggestions in them,--Ignatius Loyola, the Dominicans, Venice, Doria, Agrippa, and the buildings themselves, which are the record, will last for ages; the opposition of Jesuit and Inquisitor, under one name or another, and of both by the people, will live as long as humanity itself. The crisis in the history of the Inquisition in Rome followed closely upon the first institution of the Tribunal, and seventeen years after Paul the Fourth had created the Court, by a Papal Bull of July twenty-first, 1542, the people burned the Palace of the Inquisition and threatened to destroy the Dominicans and their monastery. [Illustration: THE PANTHEON] So far as it is possible to judge the character of the famous Carafa Pope, he was ardent under a melancholic exterior, rigid but ambitious, utterly blind to everything except the matter he had in hand, proud to folly, and severe to cruelty. A chronicler says of him, that his head 'might be compared to the Vesuvius of his native city, since he was ardent in all his actions, wrathful, hard and inflexible, undoubtedly moved by an incredible zeal for religion, but a zeal often lacking in prudence, and breaking out in eruptions of excessive severity.' On the other hand, his lack of perception was such that he remained in complete ignorance of the outrageous deeds done in his name by his two nephews, the one a cardinal, the other a layman, and it was not until the last year of his life that their doings came to his knowledge. This was the man to whom Queen Elizabeth sent an embassy, in the hope of obtaining the Papal sanction for her succession to the throne. Henry the Second of France had openly espoused the cause of Mary Queen of Scots, whom Philip the Second of Spain was also inclined to support, after the failure of his attempt to obtain the hand of Elizabeth for the Duke of Savoy. With France and Spain against her, the Queen appealed to Rome, and to Paul the Fourth. In the eyes of Catholics her mother had never been the lawful wife of Henry the Eighth, and she herself was illegitimate. If the Pope would overlook this unfortunate fact and confirm her crown in the eyes of Catholic Europe, she would make an act of obedience by her ambassador. She had been brought up as a Catholic, she had been crowned by a Roman Catholic bishop, and on first ascending the throne she had shown herself favourable to the Catholic party; the request and proposition were reasonable, if nothing more. Muratori points out that if a more prudent, discreet and gentle Pope had reigned at that time, and if he had received Elizabeth's offer kindly, according to the dictates of religion, which he should have considered to the exclusion of everything else, and without entering into other people's quarrels, nor into the question of his own earthly rights, England might have remained a Catholic country. Paul the Fourth's answer, instead, was short, cold and senseless. 'England,' he said, 'is under the feudal dominion of the Roman Church. Elizabeth is born out of wedlock; there are other legitimate heirs, and she should never have assumed the crown without the consent of the Apostolic See.' This is the generally accepted account of what took place, as given by Muratori and other historians. Lingard, however, whose authority is undeniable, argues against the truth of the story on the ground that the English Ambassador in Rome at the time of Queen Mary's death never had an audience of the Pope. It seems probable, nevertheless, that Elizabeth actually appealed to the Holy See, though secretly and with the intention of concealing the step in case of failure. A child might have foreseen the consequences of the Pope's political folly. Elizabeth saw her extreme danger, turned her back upon Rome forever, and threw herself into the arms of the Protestant party as her only chance of safety. At the same time heresy assumed alarming proportions throughout Europe, and the Pope called upon the Inquisition to put it down in Rome. Measures of grim severity were employed, and the Roman people, overburdened with the taxes laid upon them by the Pope's nephews, were exasperated beyond endurance by the religious zeal of the Dominicans, in whose hands the inquisitorial power was placed. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE PANTHEON] Nor were they appeased by the fall of the two Carafa, which was ultimately brought about by the ambassador of Tuscany. The Pope enquired of him one day why he so rarely asked an audience, and he frankly replied that the Carafa would not admit him to the Pope's presence unless he would previously give a full account of his intentions, and reveal all the secrets of the Grand Duke's policy. Then some one wrote out an account of the Carafa's misdeeds and laid it in the Pope's own Breviary. The result was sudden and violent, like most of Paul's decisions and actions. He called a Consistory of cardinals, made open apology for his nephews' doings, deprived them publicly of all their offices and honours, and exiled them, in opposite directions and with their families, beyond the confines of the Papal States. But the people were not satisfied; they accused the Pope of treating his nephews as scapegoats for his own sins, and the immediate repeal of many taxes was no compensation for the terrors of the Inquisition. There were spies everywhere. No one was safe from secret accusers. The decisions of the tribunal were slow, mysterious and deadly. The Romans became the victims of a secret reign of terror such as the less brave Neapolitans had more bravely fought against and had actually destroyed a dozen years earlier, when Paul the Fourth, then only a cardinal, had persuaded their Viceroy to try his favourite method of reducing heresy. Yet such was the fear of the Dominicans and of the Pope himself that no one dared to raise his voice against the 'monks of the Minerva.' The general dissatisfaction was fomented by the nobles, and principally by the Colonna, who had been at open war with the Pope during his whole reign. Moreover, the severities of his government had produced between Colonna and Orsini one of those occasional alliances for their common safety, which vary their history without adorning it. The Pope seized the Colonna estates and conferred them upon his nephews, but was in turn often repulsed as the fighting ebbed and flowed during the four years of his Pontificate, for the Colonna as usual had powerful allies in the Emperor and in his kingdom of Naples. Changeable as the Roman people always were, they had more often espoused the cause of Colonna than that of the Pope and Orsini. Paul the Fourth fell ill in the summer, when the heat makes a southern rabble dangerous, and the certain news of his approaching end was a message of near deliverance. He lingered and died hard, though he was eighty-four years old and afflicted with dropsy. But the exasperated Romans were impatient for the end, and the nobles were willing to take vengeance upon their oppressor before he breathed his last. As the news that the Pope was dying ran through the city, the spell of terror was broken, secret murmuring turned to open complaint, complaint to clamour, clamour to riot. A vast and angry multitude gathered together in the streets and open places, and hour by hour, as the eager hope for news of death was ever disappointed, and the hard old man lived on, the great concourse gathered strength within itself, seething, waiting, listening for the solemn tolling of the great bell in the Capitol to tell them that Paul the Fourth had passed away. Still it came not. And in the streets and everywhere there were retainers and men-at-arms of the great houses, ready of tongue and hand, but friendly with the people, listening to tales of suffering and telling of their lords' angry temper against the dying Pope. A word here, a word there, like sparks amid sun-dried stubble, till the hot stuff was touched with fire and all broke out in flame. Then words were no longer exchanged between man and man, but a great cry of rage went up from all the throng, and the people began to move, some knowing what they meant to do and some not knowing, nor caring, but moving with the rest, faster and faster, till many were trampled down in the press, and they came to the prisons, to Corte Savella and Tor di Nona, and even to Sant' Angelo, and as they battered at the great doors from without, the prisoners shouted for freedom from within, and their gaolers began to loose their chains, fearing for their own lives, and drew back the bolts to let the stream of riot in. So on that day four hundred condemned men were taken out and let loose, before the Pope was dead. [Illustration: THE RIPETTA From a print of the last century] Yet the people had not enough, and they surged and roared in the streets, quivering with rage not yet half spent. And again words ran along, as fire through dry grass, and suddenly all men thought of the Inquisition, down by the Tiber at the Ripetta. Thought was motion, motion was action, action was to set men free and burn the hated prison to the ground. The prisoners of the Holy Roman Office were seventy-two, and many had lain there long unheard, for the trial of unbelief was cumbrous in argument and slow of issue, and though the Pope could believe no one innocent who was in prison, and though he was violent in his judgments, the saintly Ghislieri was wise and cautious, and would condemn no man hastily to please his master. When he in turn was Pope, the people loved him, though at first they feared him for Pope Paul's sake. When they had burned the Inquisition on that day and set free the accused persons, and it was not yet night, they turned back from the Tiber, still unsatisfied, for they had shed little blood, or none at all, perhaps, and the people of Rome always thirsted for that when their anger was hot. Through the winding streets they went, dividing where the ways were narrow and meeting again where there was room, always towards Pigna, and the Minerva, and the dwelling of the learned black and white robed fathers into whose hands the Inquisition had been given and from whose monastery the good Ghislieri had been chosen to be cardinal. For the rabble knew no difference of thought or act between him and the dying Pope. They bore torches and weapons, and beams for battering down the doors, and they reached the place, a raging horde of madmen. Suddenly before them there were five men on horseback, who were just and did not fear them. These men were Marcantonio Colonna and his kinsman Giuliano Cesarini, and a Salviati, and a Torres and Gianbattista Bernardi, who had all suffered much at the hands of the Pope and had come swiftly to Rome when they heard that he was near death. And at the sight of those calm knights, sitting there on their horses without armour and with sheathed swords, the people drew back a moment, while Colonna spoke. Presently, as he went on, they grew silent and understood his words. And when they had understood, they saw that he was right and their anger was quieted, and they went away to their homes, satisfied with having set free those who had been long in prison. So the great monastery was saved from fire and the monks from death. But the Pope was not yet dead, and while he lived the people were restless and angry by day and night, and ready for new deeds of violence; but Marcantonio Colonna rode through the city continually, entreating them to wait patiently for the end, and because he also had suffered much at Paul's hands, they listened to him and did nothing more. [Illustration: PIAZZA MINERVA] The rest is a history which all men know: how the next Pope was just, and put the Carafa to their trial for many deeds of bloodshed; how the judgment was long delayed that it might be without flaw; how it took eight hours at last to read the judges' summing up; and how Cardinal Carafa was strangled by night in Sant' Angelo, while at the same hour his brother and the two who had murdered his wife were beheaded in Tor di Nona, just opposite the Castle, across the Tiber--a grim tragedy, but the tragedy of justice. Southward a few steps from the Church of the Minerva is the little Piazza della Pigna, with a street of the same name leading out of it. And at the corner of the place is a small church, dedicated to 'Saint John of the Pine-cone,' that is, of the Region. Within lies one of the noble Porcari in a curious tomb, and their stronghold was close by, perhaps built in one block with the church itself. The name Porcari calls up another tale of devotion, of betrayal, and of death, with the last struggle for a Roman Republic at the end of the Middle Age. It was a hopeless attempt, made by a brave man of simple and true heart, a man better and nobler than Rienzi in every way, but who judged the times ill and gave his soul and body for the dream of a liberty which already existed in another shape, but which for its name's sake he would not acknowledge. Stephen Porcari failed where Rienzi partially succeeded, because the people were not with him; they were no longer oppressed, and they desired no liberator; they had freedom in fact and they cared nothing for the name of liberty; they had a ruler with whom they were well pleased, and they did not long for one of whom they knew nothing. But Stephen, brave, pure and devoted, was a man of dreams, and he died for them, as many others have died for the name of Rome and the phantom of an impossible Republic; for Rome has many times been fatal to those who loved her best. In the year 1447 Pope Eugenius the Fourth died, after a long and just reign, disturbed far more by matters spiritual than by any worldly troubles. And then, says the chronicler, a meeting of the Romans was called at Aracoeli, to determine what should be asked of the Conclave that was to elect a new Pope. And there, with many other citizens, Stephen Porcari spoke to the Council, saying some things useful to the Republic; and he declared that Rome should govern itself and pay a feudal tribute to the Pope, as many others of the Papal States did. And the Archbishop of Benevento forbade that he should say more; but the Council and the citizens wished him to go on; and there was disorder, and the meeting broke up, the Archbishop being gravely displeased, and the people afraid to support Stephen against him, because the King of Spain was at Tivoli, very near Rome. Then the Cardinals elected Pope Nicholas the Fifth, a good man and a great builder, and of gentle and merciful temper, and there was much feasting and rejoicing in Rome. But Stephen Porcari pondered the inspired verses of Petrarch and the strange history of Rienzi, and waited for an opportunity to rouse the people, while his brother, or his kinsman, was the Senator of Rome, appointed by the Pope. At last, after a long time, when there was racing, with games in the Piazza Navona, certain youths having fallen to quarrelling, and Stephen being there, and a great concourse of people, he tried by eloquent words to stir the quarrel to a riot, and a rebellion against the Pope. The people cared nothing for Petrarch's verses nor Rienzi's memory, and Nicholas was kind to them, so that Stephen Porcari failed again, and his failure was high treason, for which he would have lost his head in any other state of Europe. Yet the Pope was merciful, and when the case had been tried, the rebel was sent to Bologna, to live there in peace, provided that he should present himself daily before the Cardinal Legate of the City. But still he dreamed, and would have made action of dreams, and he planned a terrible conspiracy, and escaped from Bologna, and came back to Rome secretly. His plan was this. On the feast of the Epiphany he and his kinsmen and retainers would seize upon the Pope and the Cardinals as prisoners, when they were on their way to High Mass at Saint Peter's, and then by threatening to murder them the conspirators would force the keepers of Sant'Angelo to give up the Castle, which meant the power to hold Rome in subjection. Once there, they would call upon the people to acclaim the return of the ancient Republic, the Pope should be set free to fulfil the offices of religion, while deprived of all temporal power, and the vision of freedom would become a glorious reality. But Rome was not with Porcari, and he paid the terrible price of unpopular fanaticism and useless conspiracy. He was betrayed by the folly of his nephew, who, with a few followers, killed the Pope's equerry in a street brawl, and then, perhaps to save himself, fired the train too soon. Stephen shut the great gates of his house and defended himself as well as he could against the men-at-arms who were sent to take him. The doors were closed, says the chronicler, and within there were many armed men, and they fought at the gate, while those in the upper story threw the tables from the windows upon the heads of the besiegers. Seeing that they were lost, Stephen's men went out by the postern behind the house, and his nephew, Battista Sciarra, with four companions, fought his way through, only one of them being taken, because the points of his hose were cut through, so that the hose slipped down and he could not move freely. Those who had not cut their way out were taken within by the governor's men, and Stephen was dragged with ignominy from a chest in which he had taken refuge. The trial was short and sure, for even the Pope's patience was exhausted. Three days later, Stephen Infessura, the chronicler, saw the body of Stephen Porcari hanging by the neck from the crenellations of the tower that used to stand on the right-hand side of Sant' Angelo, as you go towards the Castle from the bridge; and it was dressed in a black doublet and black hose--the body of that 'honourable man who loved the right and the liberty of Rome, who, because he looked upon his banishment as without good cause, meant to give his life, and gave his body, to free his country from slavery.' Infessura was a retainer of the Colonna and no friend of any Pope's, of course; yet he does not call the execution of Porcari an act of injustice. He speaks, rather, with a sort of gentle pity of the man who gave so much so freely, and paid bodily death and shame for his belief in a lofty vision. Rienzi dreamed as high, rose far higher, and fell to the depths of his miserable end by his vanity and his weaknesses. Stephen Porcari accomplished nothing in his life, nor by his death; had he succeeded, no one can tell how his nature might have changed; but in failure he left after him the clean memory of an honest purpose, which was perhaps mistaken, but was honourable, patriotic and unselfish. It is strange, unless it be an accident, that the great opponents, the Dominicans and the Jesuits, should have established themselves on opposite sides of the same street, and it is characteristic that the latter should have occupied more land and built more showy buildings than the former, extending their possessions in more than one direction and in a tentative way, while the rigid Dominicans remained rooted to the spot they had chosen, throughout many centuries. Both are gone, in an official and literal sense. The Dominican Monastery is filled with public offices, and though the magnificent library is still kept in order by Dominican friars, it is theirs no longer, but confiscated to the State, and connected with the Victor Emmanuel Library, in what was the Jesuit Roman College, by a bridge that crosses the street of Saint Ignatius. And the Jesuit College, on its side, is the property of the State and a public school; the Jesuits' library is taken from them altogether, and their dwelling is occupied by other public offices. But the vitality which had survived ages was not to be destroyed by such a trifle as confiscation. Officially both are gone; in actual fact both are more alive than ever. When the Jesuits were finally expelled from their College, they merely moved to the other side of the Dominican Monastery, across the Via del Seminario, and established themselves in the Borromeo palace, still within sight of their rivals' walls, and they called their college the Gregorian University. The Dominicans, driven from the ancient stronghold at last, after occupying it exactly five hundred years, have taken refuge in other parts of Rome under the security of title-deeds held by foreigners, and consequently beyond the reach of Italian confiscation. Yet still, in fact, the two great orders face each other. It was the prayer of Ignatius Loyola that his order should be persecuted, and his desire has been most literally fulfilled, for the Jesuits have suffered almost uninterrupted persecution, not at the hands of Protestants only, but of the Roman Catholic Church itself in successive ages. Popes have condemned them, and Papal edicts have expelled their order from Rome; Catholic countries, with Catholic Spain at their head, have driven them out and hunted them down with a determination hardly equalled, and certainly not surpassed at any time, by Protestant Prussia or Puritan England. Non-Catholics are very apt to associate Catholics and Jesuits in their disapproval, dislike, or hatred, as the case may be; but neither Englishman nor German could speak of the order of Ignatius more bitterly than many a most devout Catholic. To give an idea of the feeling which has always been common in Rome against the Jesuits, it is enough to quote the often told popular legend about the windy Piazza del Gesù, where their principal church stands, adjoining what was once their convent, or monastery, as people say nowadays, though Doctor Johnson admits no distinction between the words, and Dryden called a nunnery by the latter name. The story is this. One day the Devil and the Wind were walking together in the streets of Rome, conversing pleasantly according to their habit. When they came to the Piazza del Gesù, the Devil stopped. 'I have an errand in there,' he said, pointing to the Jesuits' house. 'Would you kindly wait for me a moment?' 'Certainly,' answered the Wind. The Devil went in, but never came out again, and the Wind is waiting for him still. When one considers what the Jesuits have done for mankind, as educators, missionaries and civilizers, it seems amazing that they should be so judged by the Romans themselves. Their devotion to the cause of Christianity against paganism has led many of them to martyrdom in past centuries, and may again so long as Asia and Africa are non-Christian. Their marvellous insight into the nature and requirements of education in the highest sense has earned them the gratitude of thousands of living laymen. They have taught all over the world. Their courage, their tenacity, their wonderful organization, deserve the admiration of mankind. Neither their faults nor their mistakes seem adequate to explain the deadly hatred which they have so often roused against themselves among Christians of all denominations. All organized bodies make mistakes, all have faults; few indeed can boast of such a catalogue of truly good deeds as the followers of Saint Ignatius; yet none have been so despised, so hated, so persecuted, not only by men who might be suspected of partisan prejudice, but by the wise, the just and the good. [Illustration] REGION X CAMPITELLI Rome tends to diminutives in names as in facts. The first emperor was Augustus, the last was Augustulus; with the Popes, the Roman Senate dwindled to a mere office, held by one man, and respected by none; the ascent to the Capitol, the path of triumphs that marked the subjugation of the world, became in the twelfth century 'Fabatosta,' or 'Roast Beans Lane'; and, in the vulgar tongue, 'Capitolium' was vulgarized to 'Campitelli,' and the word gave a name to a Region of the city. Within that Region are included the Capitol, the Forum, the Colosseum and the Palatine, with the palaces of the Cæsars. It takes in, roughly, the land covered by the earliest city; and, throughout the greater part of Roman history, it was the centre of political and military life. It merited something better than a diminutive for a name; yet, in the latest revolution of things, it has fared better, and has been more respected, than many other quarters, and still the memories of great times and deeds cling to the stones that are left. In the dark ages, when a ferocious faith had destroyed the remnants of Latin learning and culture, together with the last rites of the old religion, the people invented legend as a substitute for the folklore of all the little gods condemned by the Church; so that the fairy tale is in all Europe the link between Christianity and paganism, and to the weakness of vanquished Rome her departed empire seemed only explicable as the result of magic. The Capitol, in the imagination of such tales, became a tower of wizards. High above all, a golden sphere reflected the sun's rays far out across the distant sea by day, and at night a huge lamp took its place as a beacon for the sailors of the Mediterranean, even to Spain and Africa. In the tower, too, was preserved the mystic mirror of the world, which instantly reflected all that passed in the empire, even to its furthest limits. Below the towers, also, and surmounting the golden palace, there were as many statues as Rome had provinces, and each statue wore a bell at its neck, that rang of itself in warning whenever there was trouble in the part of the world to which it belonged, while the figure itself turned on its base to look in the direction of the danger. Such tales Irving tells of the Alhambra, not more wonderful than those believed of Rome, and far less numerous. There were stories of hidden treasure, too, without end. For, in those days of plundering, men laid their hands on what they saw, and hid what they took as best they might; and later, when the men of the Middle Age and of the Renascence believed that Rome had been destroyed by the Goths, they told strange stories of Gothmen who appeared suddenly in disguise from the north, bringing with them ancient parchments in which were preserved sure instructions for unearthing the gold hastily hidden by their ancestors, because there had been too much of it to carry away. Even in our own time such things have been done. In the latter days of the reign of Pius the Ninth, some one discovered an old book or manuscript, wherein it was pointed out that a vast treasure lay buried on the northward side of the Colosseum within a few feet of the walls, and it was told that if any man would dig there he should find, as he dug deeper, certain signs, fragments of statues, and hewn tablets, and a spring of water. So the Pope gave his permission, and the work began. Every one who lived in Rome thirty years ago can remember it, and the excited curiosity of the whole city while the digging went on. And, strange to say, though the earth had evidently not been disturbed for centuries, each object was found in succession, exactly as described, to a great depth; but not the treasure, though the well was sunk down to the primeval soil. It was all filled in again, and the mystery has never been solved. Yet the mere fact that everything was found except the gold, lends some possibility to the other stories of hidden wealth, told and repeated from generation to generation. The legend of the Capitol is too vast, too varied, too full of tremendous contrasts to be briefly told or carelessly sketched. Archæologists have reconstructed it on paper, scholars have written out its history, poets have said great things of it; yet if one goes up the steps today and stands by the bronze statue in the middle of the square, seeing nothing but a paved space enclosed on three sides by palaces of the late Renascence, it is utterly impossible to call up the past. Perhaps no point of ancient Rome seems less Roman and less individual than that spot where Rienzi stood, silent and terrified, for a whole hour before the old stone lion, waiting for the curious, pitiless rabble to kill him. The big buildings shut out history, hide the Forum, the Gemonian steps, and the Tarpeian rock, and in the very inmost centre of the old city's heart they surround a man with the artificialities of an uninteresting architecture. For though Michelangelo planned the reconstruction he did not live to see his designs carried out, and they fell into the hands of little men who tried to improve upon what they could not understand, and ruined it. The truth is that half a dozen capitols have been built on the hill, destroyed, forgotten, and replaced, each one in turn, during successive ages. It is said that certain Indian jugglers allow themselves to be buried alive in a state of trance, and are taken from the tomb after many months not dead; and it is said that the body, before it is brought to life again, is quite cold, as though the man were dead, excepting that there is a very little warmth just where the back of the skull joins the neck. Yet there is enough left to reanimate the whole being in a little time, so that life goes on as before. So in Rome's darkest and most dead days, the Capitol has always held within it a spark of vitality, ready to break out with little warning and violent effect. [Illustration: THE CAPITOL] For the Capitol, not yet the Capitol, but already the sacred fortress of Rome, was made strong in the days of Romulus, and it was in his time, when he and his men had carried off the Sabine girls and were at war with their fathers and brothers, that Tarpeia came down the narrow path, her earthen jar balanced on her graceful head, to fetch spring water for a household sacrifice. Her father kept the castle. She came down, a straight brown girl with eager eyes and red lips, clad in the grey woollen tunic that left her strong round arms bare to the shoulder. Often she had seen the golden bracelets which the Sabine men wore on their left wrists, and some of them had a jewel or two set in the gold; but the Roman men wore none, and the Roman women had none to wear, and Tarpeia's eyes were eager. Because she came to get water for holy things she was safe, and she went down to the spring, and there was Tatius, of the Sabines, drinking. When he saw how her eyes were gold-struck by his bracelet, he asked her if she should like to wear it, and the blood came to her brown face, as she looked back quickly to the castle where her father was. 'If you Sabines will give me what you wear on your left arms,' she said--for she did not know the name of gold--'you shall have the fortress tonight, for I will open the gate for you.' The Sabine looked at her, and then he smiled quickly, and promised for himself and all his companions. So that night they went up stealthily, for there was no moon, and the gate was open, and Tarpeia was standing there. Tatius could see her greedy eyes in the starlight; but instead of his bracelet, he took his shield from his left arm and struck her down with it for a betrayer, and all the Sabine men threw their shields upon her as they passed. So she died, but her name remains to the rock, to this day. It was long before the temple planned by the first Tarquin was solemnly dedicated by the first consuls of the Republic, and the earthen image of Jupiter, splendidly dressed and painted red, was set up between Juno and Minerva. Many hundred years later, in the terrible times of Marius and Sylla, the ancient sanctuary took fire and was burned, and Sylla rebuilt it. That temple was destroyed also, and another, built by Vespasian, was burned too, and from the last building Genseric stole the gilt bronze tiles in the year 455, when Christianity was the fact and Jupiter the myth, one and twenty years before the final end of Rome's empire; and the last of what remained was perhaps burned by Robert Guiscard after serving as a fortress for the enemies of Gregory the Seventh. [Illustration: CHURCH OF ARACOELI] But we know, at last, that the fortress of the old city stood where the Church of Aracoeli stands, and that the temple was on the other side, over against the Palatine, and standing back a little from the Tarpeian rock, so that the open square of today is just between the places of the two. And when one goes up the steps on the right, behind the right-hand building, one comes to a quiet lane, where German students of archæology live in a little colony by themselves and have their Institute at the end of it, and a hospital of their own; and there, in a wall, is a small green door leading into a quiet garden, with a pretty view. Along the outer edge runs a low stone wall, and there are seats where one may rest and dream under the trees, a place where one might fancy lovers meeting in the moonlight, or old men sunning themselves of an autumn afternoon, or children playing among the flowers on a spring morning. But it is a place of fear and dread, ever since Tarpeia died there for her betrayal, and one may dream other dreams there than those of peace and love. The vision of a pale, strong man rises at the edge, bound and helpless, lifted from the ground by savage hands and hurled from the brink to the death below,--Manlius, who saved the Capitol and loved the people, and was murdered by the nobles,--and many others after him, just and unjust, whirled through the clear air to violent destruction for their bad or their good deeds, as justice or injustice chanced to be in the ascendant of the hour. And then, in the Middle Age, the sweet-scented garden was the place of terrible executions, and the gallows stood there permanently for many years, and men were hanged and drawn and quartered there, week by week, month by month, all the year round, the chief magistrate of Rome looking on from the window of the Senator's palace, as a duty; till one of them sickened at the sight of blood, and ordained that justice should be done at the Bridge of Sant' Angelo, and at Tor di Nona, and in the castle itself, and the summit of the fatal rock was left to the birds, the wild flowers, and the merciful purity of nature. And that happened four hundred years ago. Until our own time there were prisons deep down in the old Roman vaults. At first, as in old days, the place of confinement was in the Mamertine prison, on the southeastern slope, beneath which was the hideous Tullianum, deepest and darkest of all, whence no captive ever came out alive to the upper air again. In the Middle Age, the prison was below the vaults of the Roman Tabularium on the side of the Forum, but it is said that the windows looked inward upon a deep court of the Senator's palace. As civilization advanced, it was transferred a story higher, to a more healthy region of the building, but the Capitoline prison was not finally given up till the reign of Pius the Ninth, at which time it had become a place of confinement for debtors only. Institutions and parties in Rome have always had a tendency to cling to places more than in other cities. It is thus that during so many centuries the Lateran was the headquarters of the Popes, the Capitol the rallying-place of the ever-smouldering republicanism of the people, and the Castle of Sant' Angelo the seat of actual military power as contrasted with spiritual dominion and popular aspiration. So far as the latter is concerned its vitality is often forgotten and its vigour underestimated. One must consider the enormous odds against which the spirit of popular emancipation had to struggle in order to appreciate the strength it developed. A book has been written called 'The One Hundred and Sixty-one rebellions of papal subjects between 896 and 1859'--a title which gives an average of about sixteen to a century; and though the furious partiality of the writer calls them all rebellions against the popes, whereas a very large proportion were revolts against the nobles, and Rienzi's attempt was to bring the Pope back to Rome, yet there can be no question as to the vitality which could produce even half of such a result; and it may be remembered that in almost every rising of the Roman people the rabble first made a rush for the Capitol, and, if successful, seized other points afterwards. In the darkest ages the words 'Senate' and 'Republic' were never quite forgotten and were never dissociated from the sacred place. The names of four leaders, Arnold of Brescia, Stefaneschi, Rienzi and Porcari, recall the four greatest efforts of the Middle Age; the first partially succeeded and left its mark, the second was fruitless because permanent success was then impossible against such odds, the third miscarried because Rienzi was a madman and Cardinal Albornoz a man of genius, and the fourth, because the people were contented and wanted no revolution at all. The first three of those men seized the Capitol at once, the fourth intended to do so. It was always the immediate object of every revolt, and the power to ring the great Patarina, the ancient bell stolen by the Romans from Viterbo, had for centuries a directing influence in Roman brawls. Its solemn knell announced the death of a Pope, or tolled the last hour of condemned criminals, and men crossed themselves as it echoed through the streets; but at the tremendous sound of its alarm, rung backward till the tower rocked, the Romans ran to arms, the captains of the Regions buckled on their breastplates and displayed their banners, and the people flocked together to do deeds of sudden violence and shortlived fury. In a few hours Stefaneschi of Trastevere swept the nobles from the city; between noon and night Rienzi was master of Rome, and it was from the Capitol that the fierce edicts of both threatened destruction to the unready barons. They fled to their mountain dens like wolves at sunrise, but the night was never slow to descend upon liberty's short day, and with the next dawn the ruined towers began to rise again; the people looked with dazed indifference upon the fall of their leader, and presently they were again slaves, as they had been--Arnold was hanged and burned, Stefaneschi languished in a dungeon, Rienzi wandered over Europe a homeless exile, the straight, stiff corpse of brave Stephen Porcari hung, clad in black, from the battlement of Sant' Angelo. It was always the same story. The Barons were the Sabines, the Latins and the Æquians of Mediæval Rome; but there was neither a Romulus nor a Cincinnatus to lead the Roman people against steel-clad masters trained to fighting from boyhood, bold by inheritance, and sure of a power which they took every day by violence and held year after year by force. In imagination one would willingly sweep away the three stiff buildings on the Capitol, the bronze Emperor and his horse, the marble Castor and Pollux, the proper arcades, the architectural staircase, and the even pavement, and see the place as it used to be five hundred years ago. It was wild then. Out of broken and rocky ground rose the ancient Church of Aracoeli, the Church of the Altar of Heaven, built upon that altar which the Sibyl of Tivoli bade Augustus raise to the Firstborn of God. To the right a rude fortress, grounded in the great ruins of Rome's Archive House, flanked by rough towers, approached only by that old triumphal way, where old women slowly roasted beans in iron chafing-dishes over little fires that were sheltered from the north wind by the vast wall. Before the fortress a few steps led to the main door, and over that was a great window and a balcony with a rusty iron balustrade--the one upon which Rienzi came out at the last, with the standard in his hand. The castle itself not high, but strong, brown and battered. Beyond it, the gallows, and the place of death. Below it, a desolation of tumbling rock and ruin, where wild flowers struggled for a holding in spring, and the sharp cactus sent out ever-green points between the stones. Far down, a confusion of low, brown houses, with many dark towers standing straight up from them like charred trees above underbrush in a fire-blasted forest. Beyond all, the still loneliness of far mountains. That was the scene, and those were the surroundings, in which the Roman people reinstituted a Roman Senate, after a lapse of nearly six hundred years, in consequence of the agitation begun and long continued by Arnold of Brescia. Muratori, in his annals, begins his short account of the year 1141 by saying that the history of Italy during that period is almost entirely hidden in darkness, because there are neither writers nor chroniclers of the time, and he goes on to say that no one knows why the town of Tivoli had so long rebelled against the Popes. The fact remains, astonishing and ridiculous,--in the middle of the twelfth century imperial Rome was at war with suburban Tivoli, and Tivoli was the stronger; for when the Romans persuaded Pope Innocent the Second to lay siege to the town, the inhabitants sallied out furiously, cut their assailants to pieces, seized all their arms and provisions, and drove the survivors to ignominious flight. Hence the implacable hatred between Tivoli and Rome; and Tivoli became an element in the struggles that followed. Now for many years, Rome had been in the hands of a family of converted Jews, known as the Pierleoni, from Pietro Leone, first spoken of in the chronicles as an iniquitous usurer of enormous wealth. They became prefects of Rome; they took possession of Sant' Angelo and were the tyrants of the city, and finally they became the Pope's great enemies, the allies of Roger of Apulia, and makers of antipopes, of whom the first was either Pietro's son or his grandson. They had on their side possession, wealth, the support of a race which never looks upon apostasy from its creed as final, the alliance of King Roger and of Duke Roger, his son, and the countenance, if not the friendship, of Arnold of Brescia, the excommunicated monk of northern Italy, and the pupil of the romantic Abelard. And the Pierleoni had against them the Popes, the great Frangipani family with most of the nobles, and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who has been called the Bismarck of the Church. Arnold of Brescia was no ordinary fanatic. He was as brave as Stefaneschi, as pure-hearted as Stephen Porcari, as daring and eloquent as Rienzi in his best days. The violent deeds of his followers have been imputed to him, and brought him to his end; but it was his great adversary, Saint Bernard, who expressed a regretful wish 'that his teachings might have been as irreproachable as his life.' The doctrine for which he died at last was political, rather than spiritual, human rather than theological. In all but his monk's habit he was a layman in his later years, as he had been when he first wandered to France and sat at the feet of the gentle Abelard; but few Churchmen of that day were as spotless in their private lives. He was an agitator, a would-be reformer, a revolutionary; and the times craved change. The trumpet call of the first Crusade had roused the peoples of Europe, and the distracted forces of the western world had been momentarily concentrated in a general and migratory movement of religious conquest; forty years later the fortunes of the Latins in the East were already waning, and Saint Bernard was meditating the inspiring words that sent four hundred thousand warriors to the rescue of the Holy Places. What Bernard was about to attempt for Palestine, Arnold dreamed of accomplishing for Rome. In his eyes she was holy, too, her ruins were the sepulchre of a divine freedom, worthy to be redeemed from tyranny even at the price of blood, and he would have called from the tomb the spirit of murdered liberty to save and illuminate mankind. Where Bernard was a Christian, Arnold was a Roman in soul; where Bernard was an inspired monk, Arnold was in heart a Christian, of that first Apostolic republic which had all things in common. At such a time such a man could do much. Rome was in the utmost distress. At the election of Innocent the Second, the Jewish Pierleoni had set up one of themselves as antipope, and Innocent had been obliged to escape in spite of the protection of the still powerful Frangipani, leaving the Israelitish antipope to rule Rome, in spite of the Emperor, and in alliance with King Roger for nine years, until his death, when it required Saint Bernard's own presence and all the strength of his fiery words to dissuade the Romans from accepting another spiritual and temporal ruler imposed upon them by the masterful Pierleoni. So Innocent returned at last, a good man, much tried by misfortune, but neither wise nor a leader of men. At that time the soldiers of Rome were beaten in open battle by the people of Tivoli, a humiliation which it was not easy to forget. And it is more than probable that the Pierleoni looked on at the Pope's failure in scornful inaction from their stronghold of Sant' Angelo, which they had only nominally surrendered to Innocent's authority. From a distance, Arnold of Brescia sadly contemplated Rome's disgrace and the evil state of the Roman people. The yet unwritten words of Saint Bernard were already more than true. They are worth repeating here, in Gibbon's strong translation, for they perfect the picture of the times. 'Who,' asks Bernard, 'is ignorant of the vanity and arrogance of the Romans? a nation nursed in sedition, untractable, and scorning to obey, unless they are too feeble to resist. When they promise to serve, they aspire to reign; if they swear allegiance, they watch the opportunity of revolt; yet they vent their discontent in loud clamours, if your doors, or your counsels, are shut against them. Dexterous in mischief, they have never learnt the science of doing good. Odious to earth and heaven, impious to God, seditious among themselves, jealous of their neighbours, inhuman to strangers, they love no one, by no one are they beloved; and while they wish to inspire fear, they live in base and continual apprehension. They will not submit; they know not how to govern; faithless to their superiors, intolerable to their equals, ungrateful to their benefactors, and alike impudent in their demands and their refusals. Lofty in promise, poor in execution: adulation and calumny, perfidy and treason, are the familiar arts of their policy.' Fearless and in earnest, Arnold came to Rome, and began to preach a great change, a great reform, a great revival, and many heard him and followed him; and it was not in the Pope's power to silence him, nor bring him to any trial. The Pierleoni would support any sedition against Innocent; the Roman people were weary of masters, they listened with delight to Arnold's fierce condemnation of all temporal power, that of the Pope and that of the Emperor alike, and the old words, Republic, Senate, Consul, had not lost their life in the slumber of five hundred years. The Capitol was there, for a Senate house, and there were men in Rome to be citizens and Senators. Revolution was stirring, and Innocent had recourse to the only weapon left him in his weakness. Arnold was preaching as a Christian and a Catholic. The Pope excommunicated him in a general Council. In the days of the Crusades the Major Interdiction was not an empty form of words; to applaud a revolutionary was one thing, to attend the sermons of a man condemned to hell was a graver matter; Arnold's disciples deserted him, his friends no longer dared to protect him under the penalty of eternal damnation, and he went out from Rome a fugitive and an outcast. Wandering from Italy to France, from France to Germany, and at last to Switzerland, he preached his doctrines without fear, though he had upon him the mark of Cain; but if the temporal sovereignty against which he spoke could not directly harm him, the spiritual power pursued him hither and thither, like a sword of flame. A weaker man would have renounced his beliefs, or would have disappeared in a distant obscurity; but Arnold was not made to yield. Goaded by persecution, divinely confident of right, he faced danger and death and came back to Rome. He arrived at a moment when the people were at once elated by the submission of Tivoli, and exasperated against Innocent because he refused to raze that city to the ground. The Pierleoni were ever ready to encourage rebellion. The Romans, at the words Liberty and Republic, rose in a body, rushed to the Capitol, proclaimed the Commonwealth, and forthwith elected a Senate which assumed absolute sovereignty of the city, and renewed the war with Tivoli. The institution then refounded was not wholly abolished until, under the Italian kings, a representative government took its place. The success and long supremacy of Arnold's teaching have been unfairly called his 'reign'; yet he neither caused himself to be elected a Senator, nor at any time, so far as we can learn, occupied any office whatsoever; neither did he profit in fortune by the changes he had wrought, and to the last he wore the garb of poverty and led the simple life which had extorted the reluctant admiration of his noblest adversary. But he could not impose upon others the virtues he practised himself, nor was it in his power to direct the force his teachings had called into life. For the time being the Popes were powerless against the new order. Innocent is said to have died of grief and humiliation, almost before the revolution was complete. His successor, Celestin the Second, reigned but five months and a half, busy in a quarrel with King Roger, and still the new Senate ruled the city. [Illustration: ARCH OF SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS] But saving that it endured, it left no mark of good in Rome; the nobles saw that a new weapon was placed in their hands, they easily elected themselves to office, and the people, deluded by the name of a Republic, had exchanged the sovereignty of the Pope, or the allegiance of the Emperor, for the far more ruthless tyranny of the barons. The Jewish Pierleoni were rich and powerful still, but since Rome was strong enough to resist the Vatican, the Pontificate was no longer a prize worth seizing, and they took instead, by bribery or force, the Consulship or the Presidency of the Senate. Jordan, the brother of the antipope Anacletus, obtained the office, and the violent death of the next Pope, Lucius the Second, was one of the first events of his domination. Lucius refused to bear any longer the humiliation to which his predecessors had tamely submitted. Himself in arms, and accompanied by such followers as he could collect, the Pope made a desperate attempt to dislodge the Senate and their guards from the Capitol, and at the head of the storming party he endeavoured to ascend the old road, known then as Fabatosta. But the Pierleoni and their men were well prepared for the assault, and made a desperate and successful resistance. The Pope fell at the head of his soldiers, struck by a stone on the temple, mortally wounded, but not dead. In hasty retreat, the dying man was borne by his routed soldiers to the monastery of Saint Gregory on the Coelian, under the safe protection of the trusty Frangipani, who held the Palatine, the Circus Maximus, and the Colosseum. Of all the many Popes who died untimely deaths he was the only one, I believe, who fell in battle. And he got his deathblow on the slope of that same Capitol where Gracchus and Manlius had died before him, each in good cause. It has been wrongly said that he had all the nobles with him, and that the revolution was of the people alone, aided by the Pierleoni. This is not true. So far as can be known, the Frangipani were his only faithful friends, but it is possible that the Count of Tusculum, seventh in descent from Theodora, and nephew of the first Colonna, at that time holding a part of the Aventine, may have also been the Pope's ally. Be that as it may, the force that Lucius led was very small, and the garrison of the Capitol was overwhelmingly strong. Some say also that Arnold of Brescia was not actually in Rome at that time, that the first revolution was the result of his unforgotten teachings, bearing fruit in the hearts of the nobles and the people, and that he did not come to the city till Pope Lucius was dead. However that may be, from that time forward, till the coming of Barbarossa, Arnold was the idol of the Romans, and their vanity and arrogance knew no bounds. Pope Eugenius the Third was enthroned in the Lateran under the protection of the Frangipani, but within the week he was forced to escape by night to the mountains. The Pierleoni held Sant' Angelo; the people seized and fortified the Vatican, deprived the Pope's Prefect of his office, and forced the few nobles who resisted them to swear allegiance to Jordan Pierleone, making him in fact dictator, and in name their 'Patrician.' The Pope retorted by excommunicating him, and allying himself with Tivoli, but was forced to a compromise whereby he acknowledged the Senate and the supremacy of the Roman people, who, already tired of their dictator, agreed to restore the Prefect to office, and to express some sort of obedience, more spiritual than temporal, to the Pope's authority. But Arnold was still supreme, and after a short stay in the city Eugenius was again a fugitive. It was then that he passed into France, when Lewis the Seventh was ready armed to lead the Second Crusade to the Holy Land; and through that stirring time Rome is dark and sullen, dwelling aloof from Church and Empire in the new-found illusion of an unreal and impossible greatness. Seven hundred years later an Italian patriot exclaimed, 'We have an Italy, but we have no Italians.' And so Arnold of Brescia must many times have longed for Romans to people a free Rome. He had made a republic, but he could not make free men; he had called up a vision, but he could not give it reality; like Rienzi and the rest, he had 'mistaken memories for hopes,' and he was fore-destined to pay for his belief in his country's life with the sacrifice of his own. He had dreamed of a liberty serene and high, but he had produced only a dismal confusion: in place of peace he had brought senseless strife; instead of a wise and simple consul, he had given the Romans the keen and rapacious son of a Jewish usurer for a dictator; where he had hoped to destroy the temporal power of Pope and Emperor, he had driven the greatest forces of his age, and two of the greatest men, to an alliance against him. So he perished. Eugenius died in Tivoli, Anastasius reigned a few months, and sturdy Nicholas Breakspeare was Adrian the Fourth. Conrad the Emperor also died, poisoned by the physicians King Roger sent him from famous Salerno, and Frederick Barbarossa of Hohenstauffen, his nephew, reigned in his stead. Adrian and Frederick quarrelled at their first meeting in the sight of all their followers in the field, for the young Emperor would not hold the Englishman's stirrup on the first day. On the second he yielded, and Pope and Emperor together were invincible. Then the Roman Senate and people sent out ambassadors, who spoke hugely boasting words to the red-haired soldier, and would have set conditions on his crowning, so that he laughed aloud at them; and he and Adrian went into the Leonine city, but not into Rome itself, and the Englishman crowned the German. Yet the Romans would fight, and in the heat of the summer noon they crossed the bridge and killed such straggling guards as they could find; then the Germans turned and mowed them down, and killed a thousand of the best, while the Pierleoni, as often before, looked on in sullen neutrality from Sant' Angelo, waiting to take the side of the winner. Then the Emperor and the Pope departed together, leaving Rome to its factions and its parties. Suddenly Arnold of Brescia is with them, a prisoner, but how taken no man can surely tell. And with them also, by Soracte, far out in the northern Campagna, is Di Vico, the Prefect, to judge the leader of the people. The Pope and the Emperor may have looked on, while Di Vico judged the heretic and the rebel; but they did not themselves judge him. The Prefect, Lord of Viterbo, had been long at war with the new-formed Senate and the city, and owed Arnold bitter hatred and grudge. The end was short. Arnold told them all boldly that his teaching was just, and that he would die for it. He knelt down, lifted up his hands to heaven, and commended his soul to God. Then they hanged him, and when he was dead they burnt his body and scattered the ashes in the river, lest any relics of him should be taken to Rome to work new miracles of revolution. No one knows just where he died, but only that it was most surely far out in the Campagna, in the hot summer days, in the year 1155, and not within the city, as has been so often asserted. He was a martyr--whether in a good cause or a foolish one, let those judge who call themselves wise; there was no taint of selfishness in him, no thought of ambition for his own name, and there was no spot upon his life in an age of which the evils cannot be written down, and are better not guessed. He died for something in which he believed enough to die for it, and belief cannot be truer to itself than that. So far as the Church of today may speak, all Churchmen know that his heresies of faith, if they were real, were neither great nor vital, and that he was put to death, not for them, but because he was become the idol and the prophet of a rebellious city. His doctrine had spread over Italy, his words had set the country aflame, his mere existence was a lasting cause of bloody strife between city and city, princes and people, nobles and vassals. The times were not ripe, and in the inevitable course of fate it was foreordained that he must perish, condemned by Popes and Emperors, Kings and Princes; but of all whole-souled reformers, of all patriot leaders, of all preachers of liberty, past and living, it is not too much to say that Arnold of Brescia was the truest, the bravest and the simplest. * * * * * To them all, the Capitol has been the central object of dreams, and upon its walls the story of their failure has often been told in grotesque figures of themselves. When Rienzi was first driven out, his effigy was painted, hanged by the heels upon one of the towers, and many another 'enemy of the state' was pictured there--Giuliano Cesarini, for one, and the great Sforza, himself, with a scornful and insulting epigraph; as Andrea del Castagno, justly surnamed the 'Assassin,' painted upon the walls of the Signoria in Florence the likeness of all those who had joined in the great conspiracy of the Pazzi, hung up by the feet, as may be seen to this day. It has ever been a place of glory, a place of death and a place of shame, but since the great modern changes it is meant to be only the seat of honour, and upon the slope of the Capitol the Italians, in the first flush of victorious unity, have begun to raise a great monument to their greatest idol, King Victor Emmanuel. If it is not the best work of art of the sort in existence it will probably enjoy the distinction of being the largest, and it is by no means the worst, for the central statue of the 'Honest King' has been modelled with marvellous skill and strength by Chiaradia, whose name is worthy to be remembered; yet the vastness of the architectural theatre provided for its display betrays again the giantism of the Latin race, and when in a future century the broad flood of patriotism shall have subsided within the straight river bed of sober history, men will wonder why Victor Emmanuel, honest and brave though he was, received the greater share of praise, and Cavour and Garibaldi the less, seeing that he got Italy by following the advice of the one, if not by obeying his dictation, and by accepting the kingdom which the other had destined for a republic, but was forced to yield to the monarchy by the superior genius of the statesman. That day is not far distant. After a period of great and disastrous activity, the sleepy indifference of 1830 is again settling upon Rome, the race for imaginary wealth is over, time is a drug in the market, money is scarce, dwellings are plentiful, the streets are quiet by day and night, and only those who still have something to lose or who cherish very modest hopes of gain, still take an interest in financial affairs. One may dream again, as one dreamed thirty years ago, when all the clocks were set once a fortnight to follow the sun. Rome is restoring to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's. They are much bigger and finer things than the symmetrical, stuccoed cubes which have lately been piled up everywhere in heaven-offending masses, and one is glad to come back to them after the nightmare that has lasted twenty years. Moreover, one is surprised to find how little permanent effect has been produced by the squandering of countless millions during the building mania, beyond a cruel destruction of trees, and a few modifications of natural local accidents. To do the moderns justice, they have done no one act of vandalism as bad as fifty, at least, committed by the barons of the Middle Age and the Popes of the Renascence, though they have shown much worse taste in such new things as they have set up in place of the old. The charm of Rome has never lain in its architecture, nor in the beauty of its streets, though the loveliness of its old-fashioned gardens contributed much which is now in great part lost. Nor can it be said that the enthralling magic of the city we used to know lay especially in its historical association, since Rome has been loved to folly by half-educated girls, by flippant women of the world and by ignorant idlers without number, as well as by most men of genius who have ever spent much time there. [Illustration: COLUMN OF PHOCAS, LOOKING ALONG THE FORUM] In the Middle Age one man might know all that was to be known. Dante did; so did Lionardo da Vinci. But times have changed since a mediæval scholar wrote a book 'Concerning all things and certain others also.' We cannot all be archæologists. Perhaps when we go and stand in the Forum we have a few general ideas about the relative position of the old buildings; we know the Portico of the Twelve Gods in Council, the Temple of Concord, the Basilica Julia, the Court of Vesta, the Temple of Castor and Pollux; we have a more vague notion of the Senate Hall; the hideous arch of Septimius Severus stares us in the face; so does the lovely column of evil Phocas, the monster of the east, the red-handed centurion-usurper who murdered an Emperor and his five sons to reach the throne. And perhaps we have been told where the Rostra stood, and the Rostra Julia, and that the queer fragment of masonry by the arch is supposed to be the 'Umbilicus,' the centre of the Roman world. There is no excuse for not knowing these things any more than there is any very strong reason for knowing them, unless one be a student. There is a plan of the Forum in every guide book, with a description that changes with each new edition. And yet, without much definite knowledge,--with 'little Latin and less Greek,' perhaps,--many men and women, forgetting for one moment the guide book in their hands, have leaned upon a block of marble with half-closed, musing eyes, and breath drawn so slow that it is almost quite held in day-dream wonder, and they have seen a vision rise of past things and beings, even in the broad afternoon sunshine, out of stones that remember Cæsar's footsteps, and from walls that have echoed Antony's speech. There they troop up the Sacred Way, the shock-headed, wool-draped, beak-nosed Romans; there they stand together in groups at the corner of Saturn's temple; there the half-naked plebeian children clamber upon the pedestals of the columns to see the sights, and double the men's deep tones with a treble of childish chatter; there the noble boy with his bordered toga, his keen young face, and longing backward look, is hurried home out of the throng by the tall household slave, who carries his school tablets and is answerable with his skin for the boy's safety. The Consul Major goes by, twelve lictors marching in single file before him--black-browed, square-jawed, relentless men, with their rods and axes. Then two closed litters are carried past by big, black, oily fellows, beside whom walk freedmen and Greek slaves, and three or four curled and scented parasites, the shadows of the great men. Under their very feet the little street boys play their games of pitching at tiny pyramids of dried lupins, unless they have filberts, and lupins are almost as good; and as the dandified hanger-on of Mæcenas, straining his ear for the sound of his patron's voice from within the litter, heedlessly crushes the little yellow beans under his sandal, the particular small boy whose stake is smashed clenches his fist, and with flashing eyes curses the dandy's dead to the fourth generation of ascendants, and he and his companions turn and scatter like mice as one of the biggest slaves threateningly raises his hand. [Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF THE FORUM] Absurd details rise in the dream. An old crone is selling roasted chestnuts in the shadow of the temple of Castor and Pollux; a tipsy soldier is reeling to his quarters with his helmet stuck on wrong side foremost; a knot of Hebrew money-changers, with long curls and high caps, are talking eagerly in their own language, clutching the little bags they hide in the sleeves of their yellow Eastern gowns--the men who mourned for Cæsar and for Augustus, whose descendants were to burn Rienzi's body among the thistles by Augustus's tomb, whose offspring were to breed the Pierleoni; a bright-eyed, skinny woman of the people boxes her daughter's ears for having smiled at one of the rich men's parasites, and the girl, already crying, still looks after the fashionable good-for-nothing, under her mother's upraised arm. All about stretches the vast humming city of low-built houses covering the short steep hills and filling all the hollow between. Northeastward lies the seething Suburra; the yellow river runs beyond the Velabrum and the cattle market to the west; southward rise the enchanted palaces of Cæsar; due east is the Esquiline of evil fame, redeemed and made lovely with trees and fountains by Mæcenas, but haunted even today, say modern Romans, by the spectres of murderers and thieves who there died bloody deaths of quivering torture. All around, as the sun sinks and the cool shadows quench the hot light on the white pavements, the ever-increasing crowds of men--always more men than women--move inward, half unconsciously, out of inborn instinct, to the Forum, the centre of the Empire, the middle of the world, the boiling-point of the whole earth's riches and strength and life. Then as the traveller muses out his short space of rest, the vision grows confused, and Rome's huge ghosts go stalking, galloping, clanging, raving through the surging dream-throng,--Cæsar, Brutus, Pompey, Catiline, Cicero, Caligula, Vitellius, Hadrian,--and close upon them Gauls and Goths and Huns, and all barbarians, till the dream is a medley of school-learned names, that have suddenly taken shadows of great faces out of Rome's shadow storehouse, and gorgeous arms and streaming draperies, and all at once the sight-seer shivers as the sun goes down, and passes his hand over his eyes, and shakes himself, and goes away rather hastily, lest he should fall sick of a fever and himself be gathered to the ghosts he has seen. It matters very little whether the day-dream much resembles the reality of ages long ago, whether boys played with lupins or with hazel-nuts then, or old women roasted chestnuts in the streets, or whether such unloving spirits should be supposed to visit one man in one vision. The traveller has had an impression which has not been far removed from emotion, and his day has not been lost, if it be true that emotion is the soul's only measure of time. There, if anywhere, lies Rome's secret. The place, the people, the air, the crystal brightness of winter, the passion-stirring scirocco of autumn, the loveliness of the long spring, the deep, still heat of summer, the city, the humanity, the memories of both, are all distillers of emotion in one way or another. Above all, the night is beautiful in Rome, when the moon is high and all is quiet. Go down past the silver Forum to the Colosseum and see what it is then, and perhaps you will know what it was in the old days. Such white stillness as this fell then also, by night, on all the broad space around the amphitheatre of all amphitheatres, the wonder of the world, the chief monument of Titus, when his hand had left of Jerusalem not one stone upon another. The same moonbeams fell slanting across the same huge walls, and whitened the sand of the same broad arena when the great awning was drawn back at night to air the place of so much death. In the shadow, the steps are still those up which Dion the Senator went to see mad Commodus play the gladiator and the public fool. On one of those lower seats he sat, the grave historian, chewing laurel leaves to steady his lips and keep down his laughter, lest a smile should cost his head; and he showed the other Senators that it was a good thing for their safety, and there they sat, in their rows, throughout the long afternoon, solemnly chewing laurel leaves for their lives, while the strong madman raved on the sand below, and slew, and bathed himself in the blood of man and beast. There is a touch of frightful humour in the tale. And one stands there alone in the stillness and remembers how, on that same night, when all was over, when the corpses had been dragged away, it may have been almost as it is now. Only, perhaps, far off among the arches and on the tiers of seats, there might be still a tiny light moving here and there; the keepers of that terrible place would go their rounds with their little earthen lamps; they would search everywhere in the spectators' places for small things that might have been lost in the press--a shoulder-buckle of gold or silver or bronze, an armlet, a woman's earring, a purse, perhaps, with something in it. And the fitful night-breeze blew now and then and made them shade their lights with their dark hands. By the 'door of the dead' a torch was burning down in its socket, its glare falling upon a heap of armour, mostly somewhat battered, and all of it blood-stained; a score of black-browed smiths were picking it over and distributing it in heaps, according to its condition. Now and then, from the deep vaults below the arena, came the distant sound of a clanging gate or of some piece of huge stage machinery falling into its place, and a muffled calling of men. One of the keepers, with his light, was singing softly some ancient minor strain as he searched the tiers. That would be all, and presently even that would cease. One thinks of such things naturally enough; and then the dream runs backward, against the sun, as dreams will, and the moon rays weave a vision of dim day. Straightway tier upon tier, eighty thousand faces rise, up to the last high rank beneath the awning's shade. High in the front, under the silken canopy sits the Emperor of the world, sodden-faced, ghastly, swine-eyed, robed in purple; all alone, save for his dwarf, bull-nosed, slit-mouthed, hunch-backed, sly. Next, on the lowest bench, the Vestals, old and young, the elder looking on with hard faces and dry eyes, the youngest with wide and startled looks, and parted lips, and quick-drawn breath that sobs and is caught at sight of each deadly stab and gash of broadsword and trident, and hands that twitch and clutch each other as a man's foot slips in a pool of blood, and the heavy harness clashes in the red, wet sand. Then grey-haired senators; then curled and perfumed knights of Rome; and then the people, countless, vast, frenzied, blood-thirsty, stretching out a hundred thousand hands with thumbs reversed, commanding death to the fallen--full eighty thousand throats of men and women roaring, yelling, shrieking over each ended life. A theatre indeed, a stage indeed, a play wherein every scene of every act ends in sudden death. And then the wildest, deadliest howl of all on that day; a handful of men and women in white, and one girl in the midst of them; the clang of an iron gate thrown suddenly open; a rushing and leaping of great, lithe bodies of beasts, yellow and black and striped, the sand flying in clouds behind them; a worrying and crushing of flesh and bone, as of huge cats worrying little white mice; sharp cries, then blood, then silence, then a great laughter, and the sodden face of mankind's drunken master grows almost human for a moment with a very slow smile. The wild beasts are driven out with brands and red-hot irons, step by step, dragging backward nameless mangled things in their jaws, and the bull-nosed dwarf offers the Emperor a cup of rare red wine. It drips from his mouth while he drinks, as the blood from the tiger's fangs. "What were they?" he asks. "Christians," explains the dwarf. [Illustration] REGION XI SANT' ANGELO The Region of Sant' Angelo, as has been already said, takes its name from the small church famous in Rienzi's story. It encloses all of what was once the Ghetto, and includes the often-mentioned Theatre of Marcellus, now the palace of the Orsini, but successively a fortress of the Pierleoni, appropriately situated close to the Jews' quarter, and the home of the Savelli. The history of the Region is the history of the Jews in Rome, from Augustus to the destruction of their dwelling-place, about 1890. In other words, the Hebrew colony actually lived during nineteen hundred years at that point of the Tiber, first on one side of the river, and afterwards on the other. It is said that the first Jews were brought to Rome by Pompey, as prisoners of war, and soon afterwards set free, possibly on their paying a ransom accumulated by half starving themselves, and selling the greater part of their allowance of corn during a long period. Seventeen years later, they were a power in Rome; they had lent Julius Cæsar enormous sums, which he repaid with exorbitant interest, and after his death they mourned him, and kept his funeral pyre burning seven days and nights in the Forum. A few years after that time, Augustus established them on the opposite side of the Tiber, over against the bridge of Cestius and the island. Under Tiberius their numbers had increased to fifty thousand; they had synagogues in Rome, Genoa and Naples, and it is noticeable that their places of worship were always built upon the shore of the sea, or the bank of a river, whence their religious services came to be termed 'orationes littorales'--which one might roughly translate as 'alongshore prayers.' They were alternately despised, hated, feared and flattered. Tacitus calls them a race of men hated by the gods, yet their kings, Herod and Agrippa--one asks how the latter came by an ancient Roman name--were treated with honour and esteem. The latter was in fact brought up with Drusus, the son of the Emperor Tiberius, his son was on terms of the greatest intimacy with Claudius, and his daughter or grand-daughter Berenice was long and truly loved by Titus, who would have made her Empress had it been possible, to the great scandal of the Emperor's many detractors, as Suetonius has told. Sabina Poppæa, Nero's lowly and evil second wife, loved madly one Aliturius, a Jewish comic actor and a favourite of Nero; and when the younger Agrippa induced Nero to imprison Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and Josephus came to Pozzuoli, having suffered shipwreck like the latter, this same Josephus, the historian of the Jews, got the actor's friendship and by his means moved Poppæa, and through her, Nero, to a first liberation of those whom he describes as 'certain priests of my acquaintance, very excellent persons, whom on a small and trifling charge Felix the procurator of Judæa had put in irons and sent to Rome to plead their cause before Cæsar.' It should not be forgotten that Josephus was himself a pupil of Banus, who, though not a Christian, is believed to have been a follower of John the Baptist. And here Saint John Chrysostom, writing about the year 400, takes up the story and tells how Saint Paul attempted to convert Poppæa and to persuade her to leave Nero, since she had two other husbands living; and how Nero turned upon him and accused him of many sins, and imprisoned him, and when he saw that even in prison the Apostle still worked upon Poppæa's conscience, he at last condemned him to die. Other historians have said that Poppæa turned Jewess for the sake of her Jewish actor, and desired to be buried by the Jewish rite when she was dying of the savage kick that killed her and her child--the only act of violence Nero seems to have ever regretted. However that may be, it is sure that she loved the comedian, and that for a time he had unbounded influence in Rome. And so great did their power grow that Claudius Rutilius, a Roman magistrate and poet, a contemporary of Chrysostom, and not a Christian, expressed the wish that Judæa might never have been conquered by Pompey and subdued again by Titus, 'since the contagion of the cancer, cut out, spreads wider, and the conquered nation grinds its conquerors.' And so, with varying fortune, they survived the empire which they had seen founded, and the changes of a thousand years, they themselves inwardly unchanged and unchanging, while following many arts and many trades besides money-lending, and they outlived persecution and did not decay in prosperity. In their seven Roman synagogues they set up models of the temple Titus had destroyed, and of the seven-branched candlestick and of the holy vessels of Jerusalem which were preserved in the temple of Peace as trophies of the Jews' subjection; they made candlesticks and vessels of like shape for their synagogues, nursing their hatred, praying for deliverance, and because those sacred things were kept in Rome, it became a holy city for them, and they throve; and by and by they oppressed their victors. Then came Domitian the Jew-hater, and turned them out of their houses and laid heavy taxes upon them, and forced them for a time to live in the caves and wild places and catacombs of the Aventine, and they became dealers in spells and amulets and love philtres, which they sold dear to the ever-superstitious Romans, and Juvenal wrote scornful satires on them. Presently they returned, under Trajan, to their old dwellings by the Tiber. Thence they crept along the Cestian bridge to the island, and from the island by the Fabrician bridge to the other shore, growing rich again by degrees, and crowding their little houses upon the glorious portico of Octavia, where Vespasian and Titus had met the Senate at dawn on the day when they triumphed over the Jews and the fall of Jerusalem, and the very place of the Jews' greatest humiliation became their stronghold for ages. Then all at once, in the twelfth century, they are the masters. The Pierleoni hold Sant' Angelo, and close to their old quarters fortify the Theatre of Marcellus, and a Pierleone is antipope in name, but a real and ruling Pope in political fact, while Innocent the Second wanders helplessly from town to town, and later, while Lewis the Seventh of France leads the Second Crusade to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre, the 'Vicar of Christ' is an outcast before the race of those by whom Christ was crucified. That was the highest point of the Jews' greatness in Rome. [Illustration: PIAZZA MONTANARA AND THE THEATRE OF MARCELLUS From a print of the last century] But it is noticeable that while the Hebrew race possesses in the very highest degree the financial energy to handle and accumulate money, and the tenacity to keep it for a long time, it has never shown that sort of strength which can hold land or political power in adverse circumstances. In the twelfth century the Pierleoni were the masters of Rome; in the thirteenth, they had disappeared from history, though they still held the Theatre of Marcellus; in the fourteenth they seem to have perished altogether and are never heard of again. And it should not be argued that this was due to any overwhelming persecution and destruction of the Jews, since the Pierleoni's first step was an outward, if not a sincere, conversion to Christianity. In strong contrast with these facts stands the history of the Colonna. The researches of the learned Coppi make it almost certain that the Colonna descend from Theodora, the Senatress of Rome, who flourished in the year 914; Pietro della Colonna held Palestrina, and is known to have imprisoned there, 'in an empty cistern,' the governor of Campagna, in the year 1100; like the Orsini, the Colonna boast that during more than five hundred years no treaty was drawn up with the princes of Europe in which their two families were not specifically designated; and at the time of the present writing, in the last days of the nineteenth century, Colonna is still not only one of the greatest names in Europe, but the family is numerous and flourishing, unscathed by the terrible financial disasters which began to ruin Italy in 1888, not notably wealthy, but still in possession of its ancestral palace in Rome, and of immense tracts of land in the hills, in the Campagna, and in the south of Italy--actively engaged, moreover, in the representative government of Italy, strong, solid and full of life, as though but lately risen to eminence from a sturdy country stock--and all this after a career that has certainly lasted eight hundred years, and very probably nearer a thousand. Nor can any one pretend that it owes much to the power or protection of any sovereign, since the Colonna have been in almost constant opposition to the Popes in history, have been exiled and driven from Italy more than once, and have again and again suffered confiscation of all they possessed in the world. There have certainly not been in the same time so many confiscations proclaimed against the Jews. The question presents itself: why has a prolific race which, as a whole, has survived the fall of kingdoms and empires without end, with singular integrity of original faith and most extraordinary tenacity of tradition and custom, together with the most unbounded ambition and very superior mental gifts, never produced a single family of powerful men able to maintain their position more than a century or two, when the nations of Europe have produced at least half a dozen that have lasted a thousand years? If there be any answer to such a question, it is that the pursuit and care of money have a tendency to destroy the balance and produce degeneration by over-stimulating the mind in one direction, and that not a noble one, at the expense of the other talents; whereas the struggle for political power sharpens most of the faculties, and the acquisition and preservation of landed property during many generations bring men necessarily into a closer contact with nature, and therefore induce a healthier life, tending to increase the vitality of a race rather than to diminish it. Whether this be true or not, it is safe to say that no great family has ever maintained its power long by the possession of money, without great lands; and by 'long' we understand at least three hundred years. With regard to the Jews in Rome it is a singular fact that they have generally been better treated by the religious than by the civil authorities. They were required to do homage to the latter every year in the Capitol, and on this occasion the Senator of Rome placed his foot upon the heads of the prostrate delegates, by way of accentuating their humiliation and disgrace, but the service they were required to do on the accession of a new Pope was of a different and less degrading nature. The Israelite School awaited the Pope's passage, on his return from taking possession of the Lateran, standing up in a richly hung temporary balcony, before which he passed on his way. They then presented him with a copy of the Pentateuch, which he blessed on the spot, and took away with him. That was all, and it amounted to a sanction, or permission, accorded to the Jewish religion. As for the sumptuary laws, the first one was decreed in 1215, after the fall of the Pierleoni, and it imposed upon all Jews, and other heretics whomsoever, the wearing of a large circle of yellow cloth sewn upon the breast. In the following century, according to Baracconi, this mark was abolished by the statutes of the city and the Jews were made to wear a scarlet mantle in public; but all licensed Jewish physicians, being regarded as public benefactors, were exempted from the rule. For the profession of medicine is one which the Hebrews have always followed with deserved success, and it frequently happened in Rome that the Pope's private physician, who lived in the Vatican and was a personage of confidence and importance, was a professed Israelite from the Ghetto, who worshipped in the synagogue on Saturdays and looked with contempt and disgust upon his pontifical patient as an eater of unclean food. There was undoubtedly a law compelling a certain number of the Jews to hear sermons once a week, first in the Trinità dei Pellegrini, and afterwards in the Church of Sant' Angelo in the Fishmarket, and it was from time to time rigorously enforced; it was renewed in the present century under Leo the Twelfth, and only finally abolished, together with all other oppressive measures, by Pius the Ninth at the beginning of his reign. But when one considers the frightful persecution suffered by the race in Spain, it must be conceded that they were relatively well treated in Rome by the Popes. Their bitterest enemies and oppressors were the lower classes of the people, who were always ready to attack and rifle the Ghetto on the slightest pretext, and against whose outrageous deeds the Jews had no redress. [Illustration: THEATRE OF MARCELLUS] It was their treatment by the people, rather than the matter itself, which made the carnival races, in which they were forced to run after a hearty meal, together with a great number of Christians, an intolerable tyranny; and when Clement the Ninth exempted them from it, he did not abolish the races of Christian boys and old men. The people detested the Jews, hooted them, hissed them, and maltreated them with and without provocation. Moses Mendelssohn, the father of the composer, wrote to a friend from Berlin late in the eighteenth century, complaining bitterly that in that self-styled city of toleration, the cry of 'Jew' was raised against him when he ventured into the streets with his little children by daylight, and that the boys threw stones at them, as they passed, so that he only went out late in the evening. Things were no better in Rome under Paul the Fourth, but they were distinctly better in Rome than in Berlin at the time of Mendelssohn's writing. Paul the Fourth, the Carafa Pope, and the friend of the Inquisition, confined the Jews to the Ghetto. There can be no doubt but that the act was intended as a measure of severity against heretics, and as such Pius the Ninth considered it indefensible and abolished it. In actual fact it must have been of enormous advantage to the Jews, who were thus provided with a stronghold against the persecutions and robberies of the rabble. The little quarter was enclosed by strong walls with gates, and if the Jews were required to be within them at night, on pain of a fine, they and their property were at least in safety. This fact has never been noticed, and accounts for the serenity with which they bore their nightly imprisonment for three centuries. Once within the walls of the Ghetto they were alone, and could go about the little streets in perfect security; they were free from the contamination as well as safe from the depredations of Christians, and within their own precincts they were not forced to wear the hated orange-coloured cap or net which Paul the Fourth imposed upon the Jewish men and women. To a great extent, too, such isolation was already in the traditions of the race. A hundred years earlier Venice had created its Ghetto; so had Prague, and other European cities were not long in following. Morally speaking their confinement may have been a humiliation; in sober fact it was an immense advantage; moreover, a special law of 'emphyteusis' made the leases of their homes inalienable, so long as they paid rent, and forbade the raising of the rent under any circumstances, while leaving the tenant absolute freedom to alter and improve his house as he would, together with the right to sublet it, or to sell the lease itself to any other Hebrew; and these leases became very valuable. Furthermore, though under the jurisdiction of criminal courts, the Jews had their own police in the Ghetto, whom they chose among themselves half yearly. It has been stated by at least one writer that the church and square of Santa Maria del Pianto--Our Lady of Tears--bears witness to the grief of the people when they were first forced into the Ghetto in the year 1556. But this is an error. The church received the name from a tragedy and a miracle which are said to have taken place before it ten years earlier. It was formerly called San Salvatore in Cacaberis, the Church of the 'Saviour in the district of the kettle-makers.' An image of the Blessed Virgin stood over the door of a house close by; a frightful murder was done in broad day, and at the sight tears streamed from the statue's eyes; the image was taken into the church, which was soon afterwards dedicated to 'Our Lady of Tears,' and the name remained forever to commemorate the miraculous event. Besides mobbing the Jews in the streets and plundering them when they could, the Roman populace invented means of insulting them which must have been especially galling. They ridiculed them in the popular open-air theatres, and made blasphemous jests upon their most sacred things in Carnival. It is not improbable that 'Punch and Judy' may have had their origin in something of this sort, and 'Judy' certainly suggests 'Giudea,' a Jewess. What the Roman rabble had done against Christians in heathen days, the Christian rabble did against the Jews in the Middle Age and the Renascence. They were robbed, ridiculed, outraged, and sometimes killed; after the fall of the Pierleoni, they appear to have had no civil rights worth mentioning; they were taxed more heavily than the Christian citizens, in proportion as they were believed to be more wealthy, and were less able to resent the tax-gatherer; their daughters were stolen away for their beauty, less consenting than Jessica, and with more violence, and the Merchant of Venice is not a mere fiction of the master playwright. All these things were done to them and more, yet they stayed in Rome, and multiplied, and grew rich, being then, as when Tacitus wrote of them, 'scrupulously faithful and ever actively charitable to each other, and filled with invincible hatred against all other men.' [Illustration: SITE OF THE ANCIENT GHETTO] The old Roman Ghetto has been often described, but no description can give any true impression of it; the place where it stood is a vast open lot, waiting for new buildings which will perhaps never rise, and the memory of it is relegated to the many fast-fading pictures of old Rome. Persius tells how, on Herod's birthday, the Jews adorned their doors with bunches of violets and set out rows of little smoky lamps upon the greasy window-sills, and feasted on the tails of tunny fish--the meanest part--pickled, and eaten off rough red earthen-ware plates with draughts of poor white wine. The picture was a true one ten years ago, for the manners of the Ghetto had not changed in that absolute isolation. The name itself, 'Ghetto,' is generally derived from a Hebrew root meaning 'cut off'--and cut off the Jews' quarter was, by walls, by religion, by tradition, by mutual hatred between Hebrews and other men. It has been compared to a beehive, to an anthill, to an old house-beam riddled and traversed in all directions by miniature labyrinths of worm-holes, crossing, intercommunicating, turning to right and left, upwards and downwards, but hardly ever coming out to the surface. It has been described by almost every writer who ever put words together about Rome, but no words, no similes, no comparisons, can make those see it who were never there. In a low-lying space enclosed within a circuit of five hundred yards, and little, if at all, larger than the Palazzo Doria, between four and five thousand human beings were permanently crowded together in dwellings centuries old, built upon ancient drains and vaults that were constantly exposed to the inundations of the river and always reeking with its undried slime; a little, pale-faced, crooked-legged, eager-eyed people, grubbing and grovelling in masses of foul rags for some tiny scrap richer than the rest and worthy to be sold apart; a people whose many women, haggard, low-speaking, dishevelled, toiled half doubled together upon the darning and piecing and smoothing of old clothes, whose many little children huddled themselves into corners, to teach one another to count; a people of sellers who sold nothing that was not old or damaged, and who had nothing that they would not sell; a people clothed in rags, living among rags, thriving on rags; a people strangely proof against pestilence, gathering rags from the city to their dens, when the cholera was raging outside the Ghetto's gates, and rags were cheap, yet never sickening of the plague themselves; a people never idle, sleeping little, eating sparingly, labouring for small gain amid dirt and stench and dampness, till Friday night came at last, and the old crier's melancholy voice ran through the darkening alleys--'The Sabbath has begun.' And all at once the rags were gone, the ghostly old clothes that swung like hanged men, by the neck, in the doorways of the cavernous shops, flitted away into the utter darkness within; the old bits of iron and brass went rattling out of sight, like spectres' chains; the hook-nosed antiquary drew in his cracked old show-case; the greasy frier of fish and artichokes extinguished his little charcoal fire of coals; the slipshod darning-women, half-blind with six days' work, folded the half-patched coats and trousers, and took their rickety old rush-bottomed chairs indoors with them. Then, on the morrow, in the rich synagogue with its tapestries, its gold, and its gilding, the thin, dark men were together in their hats and long coats, and the sealed books of Moses were borne before their eyes and held up to the North and South and East and West, and all the men together lifted up their arms and cried aloud to the God of their fathers. But when the Sabbath was over, they went back to their rags and their patched clothes and to their old iron and their junk and their antiquities, and toiled on patiently again, looking for the coming of the Messiah. And there were astrologers and diviners and magicians and witches and crystal-gazers among them to whom great ladies came on foot, thickly veiled, and walking delicately amidst the rags, and men, too, who were more ashamed of themselves, and slunk in at nightfall to ask the Jews concerning the future--even in our time as in Juvenal's, and in Juvenal's day as in Saul's of old. Nor did the papal laws against witchcraft have force against Jews, since the object of the laws was to save Christian souls from the hell which no Jew could escape save by conversion. And the diviners and seers and astrologers of the Ghetto were long in high esteem, and sometimes earned fortunes when they hit the truth, and when the truth was pleasant in the realization. They are gone now, with the Ghetto and all that belonged to it. The Jews who lived there are either becoming absorbed in the population of Rome, or have transferred themselves and their rags to other places, where lodgings are cheap, but where they no longer enjoy the privilege of irrevocable leases at rents fixed for all time. A part of them are living between Santa Maria Maggiore and the Lateran, a part in Trastevere, and they exercise their ancient industries in their new homes, and have new synagogues instead of the old ones. But one can no longer see them all together in one place. Little by little, too, the old prejudices against them are disappearing, even among the poorer Romans, whose hatred was most tenacious, and by and by, at no very distant date, the Jews in Rome will cease to be an isolated and peculiar people. Then, when they live as other men, amongst other folks, as in many cities of the world, they will get the power in Rome, as they have begun to get it already, and as they have it already in more than one great capital. But a change has come over the Jewish race within the last fifty years, greater than any that has affected their destinies since Titus destroyed the Temple and brought thousands of them, in the train of Pompey's thousands, to build the Colosseum; and the wisest among them, if they be faithful and believing Jews, as many are, ask themselves whether this great change, which looks so like improvement, is really for good, or whether it is the beginning of the end of the oldest nation of us all. [Illustration] REGION XII RIPA In Italian, as in Latin, Ripa means the bank of a river, and the Twelfth Region took its name from being bounded by the river bank, from just below the island all the way to the Aurelian walls, which continue the boundary of the triangle on the south of Saint Sebastian's gate; the third side runs at first irregularly from the theatre of Marcellus to the foot of the Palatine, skirts the hill to the gas works at the north corner of the Circus Maximus, takes in the latter, and thence runs straight to the gate before mentioned. The Region includes the Aventine, Monte Testaccio, and the baths of Caracalla. The origin of the device, like that of several others, seems to be lost. The Aventine, ever since the auguries of Remus, has been especially the refuge of opposition, and more especially, perhaps, of religious opposition. In very early times it was especially the hill of the plebeians, who frequently retired to its heights in their difficulties with the patricians, as they had once withdrawn to the more distant Mons Sacer in the Campagna. The temple of Ceres stood in the immediate neighbourhood of the Circus, on the line of approach to the Aventine, and contained the archives of the plebeian Ædiles. In the times of the Decemvirs, much of the land on the hill was distributed among the people, who probably lived within the city, but went out daily to cultivate their little farms, just as the inhabitants of the hill villages do today. If this were not the case, it would be hard to explain how the Aventine could have been a solitude at night, as it was in the time of the Bacchic orgies, of which the discovery convulsed the republic, and ended in a religious persecution. That was when Scipio of Asia had been accused and not acquitted of having taken a bribe of six thousand pounds of gold and four hundred and eighty pounds of silver to favour Antiochus. It was in the first days of Rome's corruption, when the brilliant army of Asia first brought the love of foreign luxury to Rome; when the soldiers, enriched with booty, began to have brass bedsteads, rich coverlets and curtains, and other things of woven stuff in their magnificent furniture, and little Oriental tables with one foot, and decorated sideboards; when people first had singing-girls, and lute-players, and players on the sharp-strung 'triangle,' and actors, to amuse them at their feasts; when the feasts themselves began to be extravagant, and the office of a cook, once mean and despised, rose to be one of high estimation and rich emolument, so that what had been a slave's work came to be regarded as an art. It was no wonder that such changes came about in Rome, when every triumph brought hundreds and thousands of pounds of gold and silver to the city, when Marcus Fulvius brought back hundreds of crowns of gold, and two hundred and eighty-five bronze statues, and two hundred and thirty statues of marble, with other vast spoils, and when Cnæus Manlius brought home wealth in bullion and in coin, which even in these days, when the value of money is far less, would be worth any nation's having. And with it all came Greek corruption, Greek worship, Greek vice. For years the mysteries of Dionysus and the orgies of the Mænads were celebrated on the slopes of the Aventine and in those deep caves that riddle its sides, less than a mile from the Forum, from the Capitol, from the house of the rigid Cato, who found fault with Scipio of Africa for shaving every day and liking Greek verses. The evil had first come to Rome from Etruria, and had then turned Greek, as it were, in the days of the Asian triumphs; and first it was an orgy of drunken women only, as in most ancient times, but soon men were admitted, and presently a rule was made that no one should be initiated who was over twenty years of age, and that those who refused to submit to the horrid rites after being received should perish in the deepest cave of the hill, while the noise of drums and clashing cymbals and of shouting drowned their screams. And many boys and girls were thus done to death; and the conspiracy of the orgies was widespread in Rome, yet the secret was well kept. Now there was a certain youth at that time, whose father had died, and whose mother was one of the Mænads and had married a man as bad as herself. He and she were guardians of her son's fortune, and they had squandered it, and knew that when he came of age they should not be able to give an account of their guardianship. They therefore determined to initiate him at the Bacchic orgy, for he was of a brave temper, and they knew that he would not submit to the rites, and so would be torn to pieces by the Mænads, and they might escape the law in their fraud. His mother called him, and told him that once, when he had been ill, she had promised the gods that she would initiate him in the Bacchanalia if he recovered, and that it was now time to perform her vow. And doubtless she delighted his ignorance with an account of a beautiful and solemn ceremony. But this youth was dearly loved by a woman whose faith to him covered many sins. She had been a slave when a girl, and with her mistress had been initiated, and knew what the rites were, and how evil and terrible; and since she had been freed she had never gone to them. So when her lover told her he was to go, thinking it good news, she was terrified, and told him that it were better that both he and she should die that night, than that he should be so contaminated. When he knew the truth, he went home and told his mother and his stepfather boldly that he would not go; and they, being beside themselves with anger and disappointment, called four slaves and threw him out into the street. For which deed they died. For the young man went to his father's sister, and told all; and she sent him to the Consul to tell his story, who called the woman that loved him, and promised her protection, so that at last she told the truth, and he brought the matter before the Senate. Then there was great horror at what was told, and the people who had been initiated fled in haste by thousands, and the city was in a turmoil, while the Senate made new and terrible laws against the rites. Many persons were put to death, and a few were taken and imprisoned on suspicion, and many, being guilty, killed themselves. For it was found that more than seven thousand men and women had conspired in the orgies, and the contamination had spread throughout Italy. As for the youth, and the woman who had saved the State out of love for him, the Senate and the people made a noble and generous decree. For him, he received a sum of money from the public treasury in place of the fortune his mother had stolen from him, and he was exempted from military service, unless he chose to be a soldier, and from ever furnishing a horse to the State. But for the woman, whose life had been evil, it was publicly decreed that her sins should be blotted out, that she should have all rights of holding, transferring and selling property, of marrying into another gens and of choosing a guardian, as if she had received all from a husband by will; that she should be at liberty to marry a man of free descent, and that he who should marry her was to incur no degradation, and that all consuls and prætors in the future should watch over her and see that no harm came to her, as long as she lived. Her people made her an honourable Roman matron, and perhaps the stern old senators thus rewarded her in order that the man she had saved might marry her without shame. But whether he did or not, no one knows. [Illustration: CHURCH OF SAINT NEREUS AND SAINT ACHILLÆUS From a print of the last century] This is the first instance in which a religion, and the orgies were so called by the Romans, was practised upon the Aventine in opposition to that of the State. It was not the last. Under Domitian, Juvenal found a host of Jews established there, on the eastern slope and about the fountain of Egeria, and thirty years before him Saint Paul lived on the Aventine in the Jewish house of Aquila and Priscilla where Santa Prisca stands today. It is worth noting that Aquila, an eagle, the German Adler, was already then a Jewish name. Little by little, however, the Jews went back to the Tiber, and the Aventine became the stronghold of the Christians; there they built many of their oldest churches, and thence they carried out their dead to the near catacombs of Saint Petronilla, the church better known as that of Saint Nereus and Saint Achillæus. And there are many other ancient churches on the hill, and on the road that leads to Saint Sebastian's gate, and beyond the walls, on the Appian Way as far as Saint Callixtus; lonely, peaceful shrines, beautiful with the sculptures and pavements and mosaics of the Cosmas family who lived and worked between six and seven hundred years ago. On the other side of the hill, near the Circus, Saint Augustine taught rhetoric for a living, though he knew no Greek and was perhaps no great Latin scholar either--still an unbeliever then, an astrologer and a follower after strange doctrines, one whom no man could have taken for a future bishop and Father of the Church, who was to be author of two hundred and thirty-two theological treatises, as well as of an exposition of the Psalms and the Gospels. Here Saint Gregory the Great, once Prefect of Rome, preached and prayed, and here the fierce Hildebrand lived when he was young, and called himself Gregory when he was Pope, perhaps, because he had so often meditated here upon the life and acts of the wise Saint, in the places hallowed by his footsteps. Later, the Aventine was held by the Savelli, who dwelt in castles long since destroyed, even to the foundations, by the fury of their enemies; and there the two Popes of the house, Honorius the Third--a famous chronicler in his day--and Honorius the Fourth, found refuge when the restless Romans 'annoyed them,' as Muratori mildly puts it. They were brave men in their day, mostly Guelphs, and faithful friends of the Colonna, and it is told how one of them died in a great fight between Colonna and Orsini. It was in that same struggle which culminated in the execution of Lorenzo Colonna, the Protonotary, that Pope Sixtus the Fourth destroyed the last remains of the Sublician Bridge, at the foot of the Aventine. So, at least, tradition says. From that bridge the Roman pontiffs had taken their title, 'Pontifex,' a bridge-maker, because it was one of their chief duties to keep it in repair, when it was the only means of crossing the Tiber, and the safety of the city might depend upon it at any time; and for many centuries the bridge was built of oak, and without nails or bolts of iron, in memory of the first bridge which Horatius had kept. Now those who love to ponder on coincidences may see one in this, that the last remnant of the once oaken bridge, kept whole by the heathen Pontifex, was destroyed by the Christian Pontifex, whose name was 'of the oak'--for so 'della Rovere' may be translated if one please. Years ago, one might still distinctly see in the Tiber the remains of piers, when the water was low, at the foot of the Aventine, a little above the Ripa Grande; and those who saw them looked on the very last vestige of the Sublician Bridge, that is to say, of the stone structure which in later times took the place of the wooden one; and that last trace has been destroyed to deepen the little harbour. In older days there were strange superstitions and ceremonies connected with the bridge that had meant so much to Rome. Strangest of all was the procession on the Ides of May,--the fifteenth of that month,--when the Pontiffs and the Vestals came to the bridge in solemn state, with men who bore thirty effigies made of bulrushes in likeness to men's bodies, and threw them into the river, one after the other, with prayers and hymns; but what the images meant no man knows. Most generally it was believed in Rome that they took the place of human beings, once sacrificed to the river in the spring. Ovid protests against the mere thought, but the industrious Baracconi quotes Sextus Pompeius Festus to prove that in very early times human victims were thrown into the Tiber for one reason or another, and that human beings were otherwise sacrificed until the year of the city 657, when, Cnæus Cornelius Lentulus and Publius Licinius Crassus being consuls, the Senate made a law that no man should be sacrificed thereafter. The question is one for scholars; but considering the savage temper of the Romans, their dark superstitions, the abundance of victims always at hand, and the frequency of human sacrifices among nations only one degree more barbarous, there is no reason for considering the story very improbable. [Illustration: THE RIPA GRANDE AND SITE OF THE SUBLICIAN BRIDGE] Within the limits of this region the ancient Brotherhood of Saint John Beheaded have had their church and place of meeting for centuries. It was their chief function to help and comfort condemned criminals from the midnight preceding their death until the end. To this confraternity belonged Michelangelo, among other famous men whose names stand on the rolls to this day; and doubtless the great master, hooded in black and unrecognizable among the rest, and chanting the penitential psalms in the voice that could speak so sharply, must have spent dark hours in gloomy prisons, from midnight to dawn, beside pale-faced men who were not to see the sun go down again; and in the morning, he must have stood upon the very scaffold with the others, and seen the bright axe smite out the poor life. But neither he nor any others of the brethren spoke of these things except among themselves, and they alone knew who had been of the band, when they bore the dead man to his rest at last, by their little church, when they laid Beatrice Cenci before the altar in Saint Peter's on the Janiculum, and Lucrezia in the quiet church of Saint Gregory by the Aventine. They wrote down in their journal the day, the hour, the name, the death; no more than that. And they went back to their daily life in silence. But for their good deeds they obtained the right of saving one man from death each year, conceded them by Paul the Third, the Farnese Pope, while Michelangelo was painting the Last Judgment--a right perhaps asked for by him, as one of the brothers, and granted for his sake. Baracconi has discovered an account of the ceremony. At the first meeting in August, the governor of the confraternity appointed three brethren to visit all the prisons of Rome and note the names of the prisoners condemned to death, drawing up a precise account of each case, but ascertaining especially which ones had obtained the forgiveness of those whom they had injured. At the second meeting in August, the reports were read, and the brethren chose the fortunate man by ballot. [Illustration: PORTO SAN SEBASTIANO] Then the whole dark company went in procession to the prison. The beadle of the order marched first, bearing his black wand in one hand, and in the other a robe of scarlet silk and a torch for the pardoned man; two brothers followed with staves, others with lanterns, more with lighted torches, and after them was borne the crucifix, the sacred figure's arms hanging down, perhaps supposed to be in the act of receiving the pardoned man, and a crown of silvered olive hung at its feet--then more brothers, and last of all the Governor and the chaplain. The prison doors were draped with tapestries, box and myrtle strewed the ground, and the Governor received the condemned person and signed a receipt for his body. The happy man prostrated himself before the crucifix, was crowned with the olive garland, the Te Deum was intoned, and he was led away to the brotherhood's church, where he heard high mass in sight of all the people. Last, and not least, if he was a pauper, the brethren provided him with a little money and obtained him some occupation; if a stranger, they paid his journey home. But the Roman rabble, says the writer, far preferred an execution to a pardon, and would follow a condemned man to the scaffold in thousands. If he was to be hanged, the person who touched the halter was the most fortunate, and much money was often paid for bits of the rope; and at night, when the wretched corpse was carried away to the church by the brethren, the crowd followed in long procession, mumbling prayers, to kneel on the church steps at last and implore the dead man's liberated spirit to suggest to them, by some accident, numbers to be played at the lottery--custom which recalls the incantations of the witches by the crosses of executed slaves on the Esquiline. [Illustration] REGION XIII TRASTEVERE All that part of Rome which lies on the right bank of the Tiber is divided into two Regions; namely, Trastevere and Borgo. The first of these is included between the river and the walls of Urban the Eighth from Porta Portese and the new bridge opposite the Aventine to the bastions and the gate of San Spirito; and Trastevere was the last of the thirteen Regions until the end of the sixteenth century, when the so-called Leonine City was made the fourteenth and granted a captain and a standard of its own. The men of Trastevere boast that they are of better blood than the other Romans, and they may be right. In many parts of Italy just such small ancient tribes have kept alive, never intermarrying with their neighbours nor losing their original speech. There are villages in the south where Greek is spoken, and others where Albanian is the language. There is one in Calabria where the people speak nothing but Piedmontese, which is as different from the Southern dialects as German is from French. Italy has always been a land of individualities rather than of amalgamations, and a country of great men, rather than a great country. It is true that the Trasteverines have preserved their individuality, cut off as they have been by the river from the modernizing influences which spread like a fever through the length and breadth of Rome. Their quarter is full of crooked little streets and irregularly shaped open places, the houses are not high, the windows are small and old fashioned, and the entrances dark and low. There are but few palaces and not many public buildings. Yet Trastevere is not a dirty quarter; on the contrary, to eyes that understand Italians, there is a certain dignity in its poverty, which used to be in strong contrast with the slipshod publicity of household dirt in the inhabited parts of Monti. The contrast is, in a way, even more vivid now, for Monti, the first Region, has suffered most in the great crisis, and Trastevere least of all. Rome is one of the poorest cities in the civilized world, and when she was trying to seem rich, the element of sham was enormous in everything. In the architecture of the so-called new quarters the very gifts of the Italians turned against them; for they are born engineers and mathematicians, and by a really marvellous refinement of calculation they have worked miracles in the construction of big buildings out of altogether insufficient material, while the Italian workman's traditional skill in modelling stucco has covered vast surfaces of unsafe masonry with elaborately tasteless ornamentation. One result of all this has been a series of catastrophes of which a detailed account would appal grave men in other countries; another consequence is the existence of a quantity of grotesquely bad street decoration, much of which is already beginning to crumble under the action of the weather. It is sadder still, in many parts of Monti to see the modern ruins of houses which were not even finished when the crash put an end to the building mania, roofless, windowless, plasterless, falling to pieces and never to be inhabited--landmarks of bankruptcy, whole streets of dwellings built to lodge an imaginary population, and which will have fallen to dust long before they are ever needed, stuccoed palaces meant to be the homes of a rich middle class, and given over at derisory rents to be the refuge of the very poor. In the Monti, ruin stares one in the face, and poverty has battened upon ruin, as flies upon garbage. But Trastevere escaped, being despised by the builders on account of its distance from the chief centres. It has even preserved something of the ancient city in its looks and habits. Then, as now, the wine shops and cook shops opened directly upon the street, because they were, as they still often are, mere single, vaulted chambers, having no communication with the inner house by door or stairway. The little inner court, where the well is, may have been wider in those days, but it must always have been a cool, secluded place, where the women could wrangle and tear one another's hair in decent privacy. In the days when everything went to the gutter, it was a wise precaution to have as few windows as possible looking outward. In old Rome, as in Trastevere, there must have been an air of mystery about all dwelling-houses, as there is everywhere in the East. In those days, far more than now, the head of the house was lord and despot within his own walls; but something of that power remains by tradition of right at the present time, and the patriarchal system is not yet wholly dead. The business of the man was to work and fight for his wife and children, just as to fight and hunt for his family were the occupations of the American Indian. In return, he received absolute obedience and abject acknowledgment of his superiority. The government-fed Indian and the Roman father of today do very little fighting, working, or hunting, but in their several ways they still claim much of the same slavish obedience as in old times. One is inclined to wonder whether nowadays the independence of women is not due to the fall in value of men, since it is no longer necessary to pursue wild beasts for food, since fighting is reduced to a science, taught in three months, and seldom needed for a long time, and since work has become so largely the monopoly of the nimble typewriter. Women ask themselves and others, with at least a show of justice, since man's occupation is to sit still and think, whether they might not, with a little practice, sit quite as still as he and think to as good a purpose. In America, for instance, it was one thing to fell big trees, build log huts, dam rivers, plough stony ground, kill bears, and fight Indians; it is altogether another to sit in a comfortable chair before a plate-glass window, and dictate notes to a dumb and skilful stenographer. But with the development of women's independence, the air of privacy, not to say of mystery, disappears from the modern dwelling. In Trastevere things have not gone as far as that. One cannot tread the narrow streets without wondering a little about the lives of the grave, black-haired, harsh-voiced people who go in and out by the dark entrances, and stand together in groups in Piazza Romana, or close to Ponte Sisto, early in the morning, and just before midday, and again in the cool of the evening. It seems to be a part of the real simplicity of the Italian Latin to put on a perfectly useless look of mystery on all occasions, and to assume the air of a conspirator when buying a cabbage; and more than one gifted writer has fallen into the error of believing the Italian character to be profoundly complicated. One is too apt to forget that it needs much deeper duplicity to maintain an appearance of frankness under trying circumstances than to make a mystery of one's marketing and a profound secret of one's cookery. There are few things which the poor Italian more dislikes than to be watched when he is buying and preparing his food, though he will ask any one to share it with him when it is ready; but he is almost as prone to hide everything else that goes on inside his house, unless he has fair warning of a visit, and full time to make preparation for a guest. In the feeling there is great decency and self-respect, as well as a wish to show respect to others. [Illustration: PONTE GARIBALDI] To Romans, Trastevere suggests great names--Stefaneschi, Anguillara, Mattei, Raphael, Tasso. The story of the first has been told already. Straight from the end of the new bridge that bears the name of Garibaldi, stands the ancient tower of the great Guelph house of Anguillara that fought the Orsini long and fiercely, and went down at last before them, when it turned against the Pope. And when he was dead the Orsini bought the lands and strongholds he had given to his so-called nephew, and set the eel of Anguillara in their own escutcheon, in memory of a struggle that had lasted more than a hundred years. The Anguillara were seldom heard of after that; nor does anything remain of them today but the melancholy ruins of an ancient fortress on the lake of Bracciano, not far from the magnificent castle, and the single tower that bears their name in Rome. But Baracconi has discovered a story or a legend about one of them who lived a hundred years later, and who somehow was by that time lord of Cære, or Ceri, again, as some of his ancestors had been. It was when Charles the Fifth came to Rome, and there were great doings; for it was then that the old houses that filled the lower Forum were torn down in a few days to make him a triumphal street, and many other things were done. Then the Emperor gave a public audience in Rome, and out of curiosity the young Titta dell' Anguillara went in to see the imperial show. There he saw that a few of the nobles wore their caps, and he, thinking himself as good as they, put on his own. The Grand Chamberlain asked him why he was covered. 'Because I have a cold,' he answered, and laughed. He was told that only Grandees of Spain might wear their caps in the Emperor's presence. 'Tell the Emperor,' said the boy, 'that I, too, am a Grandee in my house, and that if he would take my cap from my head, he must do it with his sword,' and he laid his hand to the hilt of his own. And when the Emperor heard the story, he smiled and let him alone. Many years ago, before the change of government, the Trasteverine family, into whose possession the ancient tower had come, used to set out at Christmas-tide a little show of lay figures representing the Nativity and the Adoration of the Kings, in the highest story of the strange old place, and almost in the open air. It was a pretty and a peaceful sight. The small figures of the Holy Family, of the Kings, of the shepherds and their flocks, were modelled and coloured with wonderful skill, and in the high, bright air, with the little landscape as cleverly made up as the figures, it all stood out clearly and strangely lifelike. There were many of these Presepi, as they were called, in Rome at that season, but none so pretty as that in the gloomy old tower, of which every step had been washed with blood. Of all tales of household feud and vengeance and murder that can be found in old Rome, one of the most terrible is told of the Mattei, whose great palace used to stand almost opposite the bridge of Saint Bartholomew, leading to the island, and not more than two hundred yards from the Anguillara tower. It happened in the year 1555, about the time when Paul the Fourth, of inquisitorial memory, was elected Pope, thirty years before the sons of the Massimo murdered their father's unworthy wife, and Orsini married Victoria Accoramboni; and the deeds were done within the walls of the old house of which a fragment still remains in the Lungaretta, with a door surmounted by the chequered shield of the Mattei. [Illustration: PALAZZO MATTEI From a print of the last century] At that time there were four brothers of the name, Marcantonio, Piero, Alessandro, and Curzio; and the first two quarrelled mortally, wherefore Piero caused Marcantonio to be murdered by hired assassins. Of these men, Alessandro, who dearly loved both his murdered brother and his younger brother Curzio, slew one with his own hand, but the rest escaped, and he swore a blood feud against Piero. Yet, little by little, his anger subsided, and there was a sort of armed peace between the two. Then it happened that Piero, who was rich, fell in love with his own niece, the beautiful Olimpia, the dowerless daughter of his other brother Curzio; and Curzio, tempted by the hope of wealth, consented to the match, and the dispensation of the Church was obtained for the marriage. It is not rare, even nowadays, for a man to marry his niece in Europe, whether they be Catholics or Protestants, but the Italians are opposed to such marriages; and Alessandro Mattei, pitying the lovely girl, whose life was to be sold for money, and bitterly hating the murderer bridegroom, swore that the thing should not be. Yet he could not prevent the wedding, for Piero was rich and powerful, and of a determined character. So Piero was married, and after the wedding, in the evening, he gave a great feast in his house, and invited to it all the kinsmen of the family, with their wives. And Alessandro Mattei came also, with his son, Girolamo, and bringing with him two men whom he called his friends, but whom no one knew. These were hired murderers, but Piero smiled pleasantly and made a pretence of being well satisfied. The company feasted together, and drank old wine, with songs and rejoicings of all sorts. Then Alessandro rose to go home, for it was late, and Piero led him to the door of the hall to take leave of him courteously, so that all the kinsfolk might see that there was peace, for they were all looking on, some sitting in their places and some standing up out of respect for the elder men as they went to the door. Alessandro stood still, exchanging courtesies with his brother, while his servants brought him his cloak, and the arquebuse he carried at night for safety; for he had his palace across the Tiber, where it stands today. Then taking the hand-gun, he spoke no more words, but shot his brother in the breast, and killed him, and fled, leaving his son behind, for the young man had wished to stay till the end of the feast, and the two hired assassins had been brought by his father to protect him, though he did not know it. When they heard the shot, the women knew that there was blood, so they sprang up and put out the lights in an instant, that the men might not see to kill one another; therefore Curzio, the bride's father, did not see that his brother Alessandro had gone out after the killing. He crept about with a long knife, feeling in the dark for the embroidered doublet which Alessandro wore, and when he thought that he had found it, he struck; but it was Girolamo who was dressed like his father, and the two who were to watch him were on each side of him, and one of them feeling that Curzio was going to strike, and knowing him also by the touch of what he wore, killed him quietly before his blow went home, and dragged out Girolamo in haste, for the door was open, and there was some light in the stairs, whence the servants had fled. But others had sought Alessandro, and other blows had been dealt in the dark, and the bride herself was wounded, but not mortally. Girolamo and the man who had killed Curzio came to the Bridge of Saint Bartholomew, where Alessandro was waiting, very anxious for his son; and when he saw him in the starlight he drew a long breath. But when he knew what had happened and how the murderer had killed Curzio to save the boy, Alessandro was suddenly angry, for he had loved Curzio dearly. So he quickly drew his dagger and stabbed the man in the breast, and threw his body, yet breathing, over the bridge into the river. But that night he left Rome secretly and quickly, and he lived out his days an outlaw, while Girolamo, who was innocent of all, became the head of the Mattei in Rome. It is no wonder that the knife is a tradition in Trastevere. Even now it is the means of settling difficulties, but less often by treachery than in the other regions. For when two young men have a difference it is usual for them to go together into some quiet inner court or walled garden, and there they wind their handkerchiefs round their right wrists and round the hilt of the knife to get a good hold, and they muffle their left arms in their jackets for a shield, and face each other till one is dead. If it be barbarous, it is at least braver than stabbing in the dark. Raphael is remembered in Trastevere for the beautiful little palace of the Farnesina, which he decorated for the great and generous banker, Agostino Chigi, and for the Fornarina, whose small house with its Gothic window stands near the Septimian gate, where the old Aurelian wall crosses Trastevere and the Lungara to the Tiber. And he has made Trastevere memorable for the endless types of beauty he found there, besides the one well-loved woman, and whom he took as models for his work. He lived at the last, not in the house on the Roman side, which belonged to him and is still called his, but in another, built by Bramante, close to the old Accoramboni Palace, in the Piazza Rusticucci, before Saint Peter's, and that one has long been torn down. [Illustration: HOUSE BUILT FOR RAPHAEL BY BRAMANTE, NOW TORN DOWN] We know little enough of that Margaret, called the Fornarina from her father's profession; but we know that Raphael loved her blindly, passionately, beyond all other thoughts; as Agostino Chigi loved the magnificent Imperia for whom the Farnesina was built and made beautiful. And there was a time when the great painter was almost idle, out of love for the girl, and went about languidly with pale face and shadowed eyes, and scarcely cared to paint or draw. He was at work in the Vatican then, or should have been, and in the Farnesina, too; but each day, when he went out, his feet led him away from the Pope's palace and across the square, by the Gate of the Holy Spirit and down the endless straight Lungara towards the banker's palace; but when he reached it he went on to the Fornarina's house, and she was at the window waiting for him. For her sake he refused to marry the great Cardinal Bibbiena's well-dowered niece, Maria, and the world has not ceased to believe that for too much love of the Fornarina he died. But before that, as Fabio Chigi tells, Pope Leo the Tenth, being distressed by the painter's love sickness, asked Agostino Chigi if there were not some way to bring him back to work. And the great banker, as anxious for his Farnesina as the Pope was for his Vatican, spirited away the lovely girl for a time, she consenting for her lover's sake. And Chigi then pretended to search for her, and comforted Raphael with news of her and promises of her return, so that after being half mad with anxiety he grew calmer, and worked for a time at his painting. But soon he languished, and the cure was worse than the evil; so that one day Chigi brought the girl back to him unawares and went away, leaving them together. Of the end we know nothing, nor whether Margaret was with him when he died; we know nothing, save that she outlived him, and died in her turn, and lies in a grave which no one can find. But when all Rome was in sorrow for the dead man, when he had been borne through the streets to his grave, with his great unfinished Transfiguration for a funeral banner, when he had been laid in his tomb in the Pantheon, beside Maria Bibbiena, who had died, perhaps, because he would not love her, then the pale Margaret must have sat often by the little Gothic window near the Septimian gate, waiting for what could not come any more. For she had loved a man beyond compare; and it had been her whole life. [Illustration: MONASTERY OF SANT' ONOFRIO From an old engraving] If one comes from the Borgo by the Lungara, and if one turns up the steep hill to the right, there is the place where Tasso died, seventy-five years after Raphael was gone. The small monastery of Sant' Onofrio, where he spent the last short month of his life, used to be a lonely and beautiful place, and is remembered only for his sake, though it has treasures of its own--the one fresco painted in Rome by Lionardo da Vinci, and paintings by Domenichino and Pinturicchio in its portico and little church, as well as memories of Saint Philip Neri, the Roman-born patron saint of Rome. All these things barely sufficed to restrain the government from turning it into a barrack for the city police a few years ago, when the name of one of Italy's greatest poets should alone have protected it. It was far from the streets and thoroughfares in older times, and the quiet sadness of its garden called up the infinite melancholy of the poor poet who drew his last breath of the fresh open air under the old tree at the corner, and saw Rome the last time, as he turned and walked painfully back to the little room where he was to die. It is better to think of it so, when one has seen it in those days, than to see it as it is now, standing out in vulgar publicity upon the modern avenue. There died the man who had sung, and wandered, and loved; who had been slighted, and imprisoned for a madman; who had escaped and hidden himself, and had yet been glorious; who had come to Rome at last to receive the laureate's crown in the Capitol, as Petrarch had been crowned before him. His life is a strange history, full of discordant passages that left little or no mark in his works, so that it is a wonder how a man so torn and harassed could labour unceasingly for many years at a work so perfectly harmonious as 'Jerusalem Freed'; and it seems strange that the hot-headed, changeable southerner should have stood up as the determined champion of the Epic Unity against the school of Ariosto, the great northern poet, who had believed in diversity of action as a fundamental principle of the Epic; it is stranger still and a proof of his power that Tasso should have earned something like universal glory against the long-standing supremacy of Ariosto in the same field, in the same half-century, and living at the same court. Everything in Tasso's life was contradictory, everything in his works was harmonious. Even after he was dead, the contrasts of glory and misery followed his bones like fate. He died in the arms of Cardinal Aldobrandini, the Pope's nephew, almost on the eve of his intended crowning in the Capitol; he was honoured with a magnificent funeral, and his body was laid in an obscure corner, enclosed in a poor deal coffin. It was six years before the monks of Sant' Onofrio dug up the bones and placed them in a little lead box 'out of pity,' as the inscription on the metal lid told, and buried them again under a poor slab that bore his name, and little else; and when a monument was at last made to him in the nineteenth century, by the subscriptions of literary societies, it was so poor and unworthy that it had better not have been set up at all. A curious book might be written upon the vicissitudes of great men's bones. Opposite the Farnesina stands the great Palazzo Corsini, once the habitation of the Riario family, whose history is a catalogue of murders, betrayals, and all possible crimes, and whose only redeeming light in a long history was that splendid and brave Catherine Sforza, married to one of their name, who held the fortress of Forlì so bravely against Cæsar Borgia, who challenged him to single combat, which he refused out of shame, who was overcome by him at last, and brought captive to the Vatican in chains of gold, as Aurelian brought Zenobia. In the days of her power she had lived in the great palace for a time. It looks modern now; it was once a place of evil fame, and is said to have been one of the few palaces in Rome which contained one of those deadly shafts, closed by a balanced trap door that dropped the living victim who stepped upon it a hundred and odd feet at a fall, out of hearing and out of sight for ever. From the Riario it was bought at last, in 1738, by the Corsini, and when they began to repair it, they found the bones of the nameless dead in heaps far down among the foundations. There also lived Christina, Queen of Sweden, of romantic and execrable memory, for twenty years; and here she died, the strangest compound of greatness, heroism, vanity and wickedness that ever was woman to the destruction of man; ending her terrible life in an absorbing passion for art and literature which attracted to itself all that was most delicate and refined at the end of the seventeenth century; dabbling in alchemy, composing verses forgotten long ago, discoursing upon art with Bernini, dictating the laws of verse to the poet Guidi, collecting together a vast library of rare books and a great gallery of great pictures, and of engravings and medals and beautiful things of every sort--the only woman, perhaps, who was ever like Lucrezia Borgia, and outdid her in all ways. Long before her time, a Riario, the Cardinal of Saint George, had like tastes and drew about him the thinkers and the writers of his age, when the Renascence was at its climax and the Constable of Bourbon had not yet been shot down at the walls a few hundred yards from the Corsini palace, bequeathing the plunder of Rome to his Spaniards and Germans. Here Erasmus spent those hours of delight of which he eloquently wrote in after years, and here, to this day, in the grand old halls whence the Riario sent so many victims to their deaths below, a learned and literary society holds its meetings. Of all palaces in Rome in which she might have lived, fate chose this one for Queen Christina, as if its destiny of contrasts past and future could best match her own. Much more could be told of Trastevere and much has been told already; how Beatrice Cenci lies in San Pietro in Montorio, how the lovely Farnesina, with all its treasures, was bought by force by the Farnese for ten thousand and five hundred scudi,--two thousand and one hundred pounds,--how the Region was swept and pillaged again and again by Emperors and nobles, and people and Popes, without end. But he who should wander through the Regions in their order, knowing that the greatest is last, would tire of lingering in the long Lungara and by the Gate of the Holy Spirit, while on the other side lies the great Castle of Sant' Angelo, and beyond that the Vatican, and Saint Peter's church; and for that matter, a great part of what has not been told here may be found in precise order and ready to hand in all those modern guide books which are the traveller's first leading-strings as he learns to walk in Rome. * * * * * Yet here, on the threshold of that Region which contains many of the world's most marvellous treasures of art--at the Gate of the Holy Spirit, through which Raphael so often passed between love and work--I shall say a few words about that development in which Italy led the world, and something of the men who were leaders in the Renascence. Art is not dependent on the creations of genius alone. It is also the result of developing manual skill to the highest degree. Without genius, works of art might as well be turned out by machinery; without manual skill, genius could have no means of expression. As a matter of fact, in our own time, it is the presence of genius, without manual skill, or foolishly despising it, that has produced a sort of school called the impressionist. To go back to first principles, the word Art, as every child knows, is taken directly from the Latin ars, artis, which the best Latin dictionary translates or defines: 'The faculty of joining anything corporeal or spiritual properly or skilfully,' and therefore: 'skill, dexterity, art, ability,' and then: 'skill or faculty of the mind or body that shows itself in performing any work, trade, profession, art, science.' From the meaning of the Latin word we may eliminate what refers to spiritual things; not because literature, for instance, is not art, as well as music and the rest, but because we have to do with painting, sculpture, architecture, metal working, and the like, in which actual manual skill is a most integral element. Now it is always admitted that art grew out of handicraft, when everything was made by hand, and when the competition between workers was purely personal, because each man worked for himself and not for a company in which his individuality was lost. That is nowhere more clear than in Italy, though the conditions were similar throughout Europe until the universal introduction of machinery. The transition from handicraft to art was direct, quick and logical, and at first it appeared almost simultaneously in all the trades. The Renascence appears to us as a sort of glorious vision in which all that was beautiful suddenly sprang into being again, out of all that was rough and chaotic and barbarous. In real fact the Renascence began among carpenters, and blacksmiths, and stone masons, and weavers, when they began to take pride in their work, when they began to try and ornament their own tools, when the joiner who knew nothing of the Greeks began to trace a pattern with a red-hot nail on the clumsy wooden chest, when the smith dinted out a simple design upon the head of his hammer, when the mason chipped out a face or a leaf on the corner of the rough stone house, and when the weaver taught himself to make patterns in the stuff he wove. The true beginning of the Renascence was the first improvement of hand-work after an age in which everything people used had been rougher and worse made than we can possibly imagine. Then one thing suggested another, and each generation found some new thing to do, till the result was a great movement and a great age. But there never was, and never could have been, any art at all without hand-work. Progress makes almost everything by machinery, and dreams of abolishing hand-work altogether, and of making Nature's forces do everything, and provide everything for everybody, so that nobody need work at all, and everybody may have a like share in what is to cost nobody anything. Then, in the dream, everybody will be devoted to what we vaguely call intellectual pursuits, and the human race will be raised to an indefinitely high level. In reality, if such things were possible, we should turn into oysters, or into something about as intelligent. It is the experience of all ages that human beings will not work unless they are obliged to, and degenerate rapidly in idleness, and there have not been many exceptions to the rule. Art grew out of hand-work, but it grew in it, too, as a plant in the soil; when there is no more hand-work, there will be no more art. The two belong to each other, and neither can do without the other. [Illustration: THE FORUM Looking West] Of course, I do not mean to say that there was a succession of centuries, or even one century, during which no pictures were painted in Italy, or no sculptures carved. The tradition of the arts survived, like the tradition of Latin poetry, with the same result, that rude works were produced in the early churches and convents. But there was no life in those things; and when, after a long time, after the early Crusades, Byzantine artists came to Italy, their productions were even worse than those of the still ignorant Italians, because they were infinitely more pretentious, with their gildings and conventionalities and expressionless types, and were not really so near the truth. What I mean is that the revival of real art came from a new beginning deep down and out of sight, among humble craftsmen and hard-working artisans, who found out by degrees that their hands could do more than they had been taught to do, and that objects of daily use need not be ugly or merely plain in order to be strong and well made and serviceable. And as this knowledge grew among them with practice and by experiment, they rose to the power of using for new purposes of beauty the old methods of painting and sculpture, which had survived, indeed, but which were of no value to the old-fashioned artists who had learned them from generation to generation, without understanding and without enthusiasm. The highest of the crafts in the Middle Age was goldsmithing. When almost every other artistic taste had disappeared from daily life in that rough time, the love of personal adornment had survived, and when painters and sculptors were a small band of men, trained to represent certain things in certain ways--trained like a church choir, in fact, to the endless repetition of ancient themes--the goldsmiths had latitude and freedom to their hearts' desire and so many buyers for their work that their own numbers were not nearly so limited as those of 'artists' in the narrow sense. One chief part of their art lay in drawing and modelling, another in casting metals, another in chiselling, and they were certainly the draughtsmen of an age in which the art of drawing was practically lost among painters; and it was because they learned how to draw that so many of them became great painters when the originality of two or three men of genius had opened the way. One says 'two or three,' vaguely, but the art had grown out of infancy when they appeared, and there was an enormous distance between Cimabue, whom people call the father of painting, and the Cosmas family, of whom the last died about the time that Cimabue was born. But though Cimabue was a noble, the Cosmas family who preceded him were artisans first and artists afterwards, and men of the people; and Giotto, whom Cimabue discovered sketching sheep on a piece of slate with a pointed stone, was a shepherd lad. So was Andrea Mantegna, who dominated Italian art a hundred and fifty years later--so was David, one of the greatest poets that ever lived, and so was Sixtus the Fifth, one of the strongest popes that ever reigned--all shepherds. It is rather remarkable that although so many famous painters were goldsmiths, none of the very greatest were. Among the goldsmiths were Orcagna, Ghiberti, Ghirlandajo, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Francia, Verrocchio, Andrea del Sarto. But Benvenuto Cellini, the greatest of goldsmiths, was never a painter, and the very greatest painters were never goldsmiths, for Cimabue, Giotto, Mantegna, Lionardo da Vinci, Perugino, Raphael, Michelangelo, all began in the profession that made them the greatest artists of their age. It is very hard to get at an idea of what men thought about art in those times. Perhaps it would be near the truth to say that it was looked upon as a universal means of expression. What strikes one most in the great pictures of that time is their earnestness, not in the sense of religious faith, but in the determination to do nothing without a perfectly clear and definite meaning, which any cultivated person could understand, and at which even a child might guess. Nothing was done for effect, nothing was done merely for beauty's sake. It was as if the idea of usefulness, risen with art from the hand-crafts, underlay the intentions of beauty, or of devotion, or of history, which produced the picture. In those times, when the artist put in any accessory he asked himself: 'Does it mean anything?' whereas most painters of today, in the same case, ask themselves: 'Will it look well?' The difference between the two points of view is the difference between jesting and being in earnest--between an art that compared itself with an ideal future, and the art of today that measures itself with an ideal past. The great painters of the Renascence appealed to men and to men's selves, whereas the great painters of today appeal chiefly to men's eyes and to that much of men which can be stirred through the eye only. It was not that those early artists were religious enthusiasts, moved by a spiritual faith such as that which inspired Fra Angelico and one or two others. Few of them were religious men; several of them, like Perugino, were freethinkers. It was not, I think, because they looked upon art itself as a very sacred matter, not to be jested with, since they used their art against their enemies for revenge and ridicule. It was rather because everyone was in earnest then, and was forced to be by the nature of the times; whereas people now are only relatively in earnest, and stake their money only where men once staked their lives. That was one reason. Another may be that the greatest painters of those times were practically men of universal genius and were always men of vast reading and cultivation, the equals and often the superiors of the learned in all other branches of science, literature and art. They were not only great painters, but great men and great thinkers, and far above doing anything solely 'for effect.' Lionardo da Vinci has been called the greatest man of the fifteenth century--so has Michelangelo--so, perhaps, has Raphael. They seemed able to do everything, and they have not been surpassed in what they did as painters, sculptors, architects, engineers, fortifiers of cities, mathematicians, thinkers. No one nowadays ever thinks of a painter as being anything but a painter, and people shrug their shoulders at the idea that an artist can do anything of the kind called 'serious' in this age. [Illustration: EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF MARCUS AURELIUS] One asks what were the surroundings, the customs, the habits, in which these men grew to be already great at an age when modern boys are at college. One asks whether that system of teaching or education, whatever it may have been, was not much more likely to make great men than ours. And the answer suggests itself: our teaching is for the many, and the teaching of that day was for the few. Let anyone try and imagine the childhood of Giotto as the account of it has come down to us through almost all the authorities. He was born in the year 1276--when Dante was about eleven years old. That was the time when the wars of Guelphs and Ghibellines were at their height. That was the year in which Count Ugolino della Gherardesca got back his lordship over Pisa--where he was to be starved to death with his two sons and two grandsons some twelve years later. That was the time when four Popes died in sixteen months--the time when the Sicilian Vespers drove Charles of Anjou from Sicily for ever--when Guido da Montefeltro was fighting and betraying and fighting again--the time of Dante's early youth, in which fell most of those deeds for which he consigned the doers to hell and their names to immortality. Imagine, then, what a shepherd's hut must have been in those days, in a narrow valley of the Tuscan hills--the small cottage built of unhewn stones picked up on the hillside, fitted together one by one, according to their irregular shapes, and cemented, if at all, with clay and mud from the river bed--the roof of untrimmed saplings tied together and thatched with chestnut boughs, held down by big stones, lest the wind should blow them away. The whole, dark brown and black with the rich smoke of brushwood burned in the corner to boil the big black cauldron of sheep's milk for the making of the rank 'pecorino' cheese. One square room, lighted from the door only. The floor, the beaten earth. The beds, rough-hewn boards, lying one above the other, like bunks, on short strong lengths of sapling stuck into the wall. For mattresses, armfuls of mountain hay. The people, a man, his wife and two or three children, dressed winter and summer in heavy brown homespun woollen and sheepskins. For all furniture, a home-made bench, black with age and smoke. The food, day in, day out, coarse yellow meal, boiled thick in water and poured out to cool upon the black bench, divided into portions then with a thin hide thong, crosswise and lengthwise, for each person a yellow square, and eaten greedily with unwashed hands that left a little for the great sheep-dog. The drink, spring water and the whey left from the cheese curds, drunk out of a small earthen pot, passed from mouth to mouth. A silent bunch of ignorant human beings, full of thought for the morrow, and of care for the master's sheep that were herded together in the stone pen all round the hut; fighting the wolves in winter, and in summer time listening for the sound of war from the valley, when Guelph and Ghibelline harried all the country, and killed every stray living thing for food. And among these half-starved wretches was a boy of twelve or thirteen years, weak-jointed, short-winded, little better than a cripple and only fit to watch the sheep on summer days when the wolves were not hungry--a boy destined to be one of the greatest artists, one of the greatest architects, and one of the most cultivated men of that or any other age--Giotto. The contrast between his childhood and his manhood is so startling that one cannot realize it. It means that in those days the way from nothing to much was short and straight for great minds--impossible and impracticable for small ones. Great intelligences were not dwarfed to stumps by laborious school work, were not stuffed to a bursting point by cramming, were not artificially inflamed by the periodical blistering of examinations; but average intelligences had not the chance which a teaching planned only for the average gives them now. Talent, in the shape of Cimabue, found genius, in the form of Giotto, clothed in rags, sketching sheep with one stone on another; talent took genius and fed it and showed it the way, and presently genius overtopped talent by a mountain's head and shoulders. Cimabue took Giotto from his father, glad to be rid of the misshapen child that had to be fed and could do nothing much in return; and from the smoky hut in the little Tuscan valley the lad was taken straight to the old nobleman painter's house in the most beautiful city of Italy, was handed over to Brunetto Latini, Dante's tutor, to be taught book-learning, and was allowed to spend the other half of his time in the painting room, at the elbow of the greatest living painter. The boy was a sort of apprentice-servant, of course, as all beginners were in those times. In the big house, he probably had a pallet bed in one of those upper dormitories where the menservants slept, and he doubtless fed with them in the lower hall at first. They must have laughed at his unmannerly ways, and at his surprise over every new detail of civilized life, but he had a sharp tongue and could hold his own in a word-fight. There were three tables in a gentleman's house in the Middle Age,--the master's, which was served in different rooms, according to the weather and the time of year; secondly, the 'tinello,' or canteen, as we should call it, for the so-called gentlemen retainers--among whom, by the bye, ranked the chief butler and the head groom, besides the chaplain and the doctor; thirdly, the servants' hall, where all the lower people of the house fed together. Then, as now in old countries, the labour of a large household was indefinitely subdivided, and no servant was expected to do more than one thing, and every servant had an assistant upon whom he forced all the hard work. A shepherd lad, brought in from the hills in his sheepskin coat, sheepskin breeches, and leg swathings of rags and leather, would naturally be the butt of such an establishment. On the other hand, the shepherd boy was a genius and had a tongue like a razor, besides being the favourite of the all-powerful master; and as it was neither lawful nor safe to lay hands on him, his power of cutting speech made him feared. So he learned Latin with the man who had taught Dante,--and Dante was admitted to be the most learned man of his times,--and he ground the colours and washed the brushes for Cimabue, and drew under the master's eye everything that he saw, and became, as the chronicler Villani says of him, 'the most sovereign master of painting to be found in his time, and the one who most of all others took all figures and all action from nature.' And Villani was his contemporary, and knew him when he was growing old, and recorded his death and his splendid funeral. One-half of all permanent success in art must always lie in the mechanical part of it, in the understanding and use of the tools. They were primitive in Giotto's day, and even much later, according to our estimate. Oil painting was not dreamt of, nor anything like a lead pencil for drawing. There was no canvas on which to paint. No one had thought of making an artist's palette. Not one-tenth of the substances now used for colours were known then. A modern artist might find himself in great difficulties if he were called upon to paint a picture with Cimabue's tools. But to Giotto they must have seemed marvellous after his pointed stone pencil and his bit of untrimmed slate. Everything must have surprised and delighted him in his first days in Florence--the streets, the houses, the churches, the people, the dresses he saw; and the boy who had begun by copying the sheep that were before his eyes on the hillside, instantly longed to reproduce a thousand things that pleased him. So, when he was already old enough to understand life and its beauty, he was suddenly transported to the midst of it, just where it was most beautiful; and because he instantly saw that his master's art was unreal and far removed from truth, dead, as it were, and bound hand and foot in the graveclothes of Byzantine tradition, his first impulse was to wake the dead in a blaze of life. And this he did. And after him, from time to time, when art seemed to be stiffening again in the clumsy fingers of the little scholars of the great, there came a true artist, like Giotto, who realized the sort of deathlike trance into which art had fallen, and roused it suddenly to things undreamed of--from Giotto to Titian. And each did all that he meant to do. But afterwards came Tintoretto, who said that he would draw like Michelangelo and paint like Titian; but he could not, though he made beautiful things: and he was the first great artist who failed to go farther than others had gone before him; and because art must either advance or go backward, and no one could advance any more, it began to go backward, and the degeneration set in. About three hundred years elapsed between Giotto's birth and Titian's death, during which the world changed from the rough state of the Middle Age to a very high degree of civilization; and men's eyes grew tired of what they saw all the time, while many of the strong types which had made the change faded away. Men grew more alike, dress grew more alike, thoughts grew more alike. It was the beginning of that overspreading uniformity which we have in our time, which makes it so very easy for any one man to be eccentric, but which makes it so very hard for any one man to be really great. One might say that in those times humanity flowed in very small channels, which a strong man of genius could thwart and direct. But humanity now is a stream so broad that it is almost like an ocean, in which all have similar being, and the big fish come to the surface, and spout and blow and puff without having any influence at all on the tide. There was hardly any such thing possible as eccentricity in Giotto's time. When the dress and manners and language of every little town differed distinctly from those of the nearest village, every man dressed as he pleased, behaved as he had been taught, and spoke the dialect of his native place. There was a certain uniformity among the priesthood, whose long cassock was then the more usual dress of civilians in great cities in times of peace and who spoke Latin among themselves and wrote it, though often in a way that would make a scholar's blood run cold. But there was no uniformity among other classes of men. A fine gentleman who chose to have his cloth tights of several colours, one leg green and one blue, or each leg in quarters of four colours, attracted no attention whatever in the streets; and if one noble affected simple habits and went about in an old leathern jerkin that was rusty in patches from the joints of his armour, the next might dress himself in rich silk and gold embroidery, and wear a sword with a fine enamelled hilt. No one cared, except for himself, and it must have been hard indeed to produce much effect by any eccentricity of appearance. But there was the enormous and constantly changing variety that takes an artist's eye at every turn,--which might make an artist then of a man who nowadays would be nothing but a discontented observer with artistic tastes. I do not think that these things have ever been much noticed as factors in the development of European art. Consider what Florence, for instance, was to the eye at that time. And then consider that, until that time, art had been absolutely prohibited from painting what it saw, being altogether a traditional business in which, as Burckhardt says, the artist had quite lost all freedom of mind, all pleasure and interest in his work, in which he no longer invented, but had only to reproduce by mechanical repetition what the Church had discovered for him, in which the sacred personages he represented had shrivelled to mere emblems, and the greater part of his attention and pride was directed to the rich and almost imperishable materials in which alone he was allowed to work for the honour and glory of the Church. In the second Council of Nicea, held in the year 787, the question of sacred pictures was discussed, and in the acts of the Council the following statement is found:-- 'It is not the invention of the painter which creates the picture, but an inviolable law, a tradition of the Church. It is not the painters, but the holy fathers, who have to invent and dictate. To them manifestly belongs the composition, to the painter only the execution.' It would be hard to find a clearer definition of the artist's place and work before Giotto. Consider all these things, and then think of the sensations of the first man upon whom it flashed all at once that he might be free and might paint everything he saw, not as monks dictated to him, but as he saw it, to the best of his strength and talent. He must have felt like a creature that had been starved, suddenly turned out free to roam through a world full of the most tempting things and with a capacity to enjoy them all. He did not realize his freedom completely at first; it was impossible for him to throw off at once all the traditions in which he had been brought up and taught; but he realized enough to change the whole direction of all the art that came after him. Two things are remarkable about the early Italian artists. With the solitary exception of Cimabue--the first of the Renascence--none of them was born rich, but, on the other hand, a great many of them were not born poor either. Giotto and Mantegna were shepherd boys, it is true; but Michelangelo was the son of a small official of ancient family in the provinces, the mayor of the little city of Chiusi e Caprese; Lionardo da Vinci's father was a moderately well-to-do land-holder; Raphael's was a successful painter, and certainly not in want. Secondly, a very great number of them made what must have been thought good fortunes in those days, while they were still young men. Some, like Andrea del Sarto, squandered their money and died in misery; one or two, like Fra Angelico, refused to receive money themselves for their work and handed over their earnings to a religious community. None, so far as I can find out, toiled through half a lifetime with neither recognition nor pay, as many a great artist has done in our times--like the Frenchman Millet, for instance, whose Angelus fetched such a fabulous price after his death. The truth is that what we mean by art had just been discovered, and it met with immediate and universal appreciation, and the result was a demand for it which even a greater number of painters could not have oversatisfied. Consequently, there was plenty to do for every man of genius, and there were people not only willing to pay great sums for each work, but who disputed with each other for the possession of good paintings, and quarrelled for what was equivalent to the possession of great artists. Another element in the lives of these men, as in the lives of all who rose to any eminence in those days, was the great variety that circumstances introduced into their existence. Change and variety are favourable to creative genius as they are unfavourable to uncreative study. The scholar and the historian are best left among their books for twenty years at a time, to execute the labour of patient thought which needs perpetual concentration on one subject. If Gibbon had continued to be an amateur soldier and a man of the world, as he began, he might have written a history, but it would not have been the most astonishing history of modern times. In Macaulay's brilliant and often too creative work, one sees the influence of his changing political career, to the detriment of sober study. For the more the creative man sees and lives in his times, the more he is impelled to create. In the midst of his best years of painting, Lionardo da Vinci was called off to build canals, and Cæsar Borgia kept him busy for two years in planning and constructing fortifications. Immediately before that time he had finished his famous Last Supper, in Milan, and immediately afterwards he painted the Battle of Anghiari--now lost--which was the picture of his that most strongly impressed the men of his day. Similarly, Michelangelo was interrupted in his work when, the Constable of Bourbon having sacked Rome, the Medici were turned out of Florence, and the artist was employed by the Republic to fortify and defend the city. It was betrayed, and he escaped and hid himself--and the next great thing he did was the Last Judgment, in the Sixtine Chapel. He did stirring work in wild times, besides painting, and hewing marble, and building Saint Peter's. That brings one back to thinking how much those men knew. Their universal knowledge seems utterly unattainable to us, with all our modern machinery of education. Michelangelo grew up in a suburb of Florence, to which his father moved when he was a child, at a notary's desk, his father trying to teach him enough law to earn him a livelihood. Whenever he had a chance, he escaped to draw in a corner, or to spend forbidden hours in an artist's studio. He was taught Latin and arithmetic by an old schoolmaster, who was probably a priest, and a friend of his father's. At fourteen he earned money in Ghirlandajo's studio, which means that he was already an artist. At twenty-five he was probably the equal of any living man as sculptor, painter, architect, engineer and mathematician. Very much the same might be said of Lionardo. One asks in vain how such enormous knowledge was acquired, and because there is no answer, one falls back upon wild theories about untaught genius. But whatever may be said of painting and sculpture, neither architecture nor engineering, and least of all the mathematics so necessary to both, can be evolved from the inner consciousness. Men worked harder then than now, and their teachers and their tools helped them less, so that they learned more thoroughly what they learned at all. And there was much less to distract a man then, when he had discovered his own talent, while there was everything to spur him. Amusements were few, and mostly the monopoly of rich nobles; but success was quick and generous, and itself ennobled the men who attained to it--that is, it instantly made him the companion, and often the friend, of the most cultivated men and women of the day. Then, as now, success meant an entrance into 'society' for those whose birth had placed them outside of it. But 'society' was different then. It consisted chiefly of men who had fought their own way to power, and had won it by a superiority both intellectual and physical, and of women who often realized and carried out the unsatisfied intellectual aspirations of their husbands and fathers. For wherever men have had much to do, and have done it successfully, what we call culture has been more or less the property of the women. In those times, the men were mostly occupied in fighting and plotting, but the beautiful things produced by newly discovered art appealed to them strongly. Women, on the other hand, had nothing to do. With the end of the Middle Age, the old-fashioned occupations of women, such as spinning, weaving and embroidering with their maids, went out of existence, and the mechanical work was absorbed and better done by the guilds. Fighting was then a large part of life, but there was something less of the petty squabbling and killing between small barons, which kept their women constant prisoners in remote castles, for the sake of safety; and there was war on a larger scale between Guelph and Ghibelline, Emperor and Pope, State and State. The women had more liberty and more time. There were many women students in the universities, as there are now, in Italy, and almost always have been, and there were famous women professors, whose lectures were attended by grown men. No one was surprised at that, and there was no loud talk about women's rights. Nobody questioned the right of women to learn as much as they could, where-ever anything was taught. There were great ladies, good and bad, like Vittoria Colonna and Lucrezia Borgia, who were scholars, and even Greek scholars, and probably equal to any students of their time. Few ladies of Michelangelo's day did not know Latin, and all were acquainted with such literature as there was--Dante, Macchiavelli, Aretino, Ariosto and Petrarch,--for Tasso came later,--the Tuscan minor poets, as well as the troubadours of Provence--not to mention the many collections of tales, of which the scenes were destined to become the subjects of paintings in the later days of the Renascence. Modern society is the enemy of individuality, whether in dress, taste or criticism, and the fear of seeming different from other people is greater than the desire to rise higher than other people by purely personal means. In the same way, socialism is the enemy of all personal distinction, whatever the socialists may say to the contrary, and is therefore opposed to all artistic development and in favour of all that is wholesale, machine-made, and labour-saving. And nobody will venture to say that modern tendencies are not distinctly socialistic. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF SANTA MARIA DEGLI ANGELI The Baths of Diocletian remodelled by Michelangelo] We are almost at the opposite extreme of existence from the early Renascence. That was the age of small principalities; ours is the day of great nations. Anyone who will carefully read the history of the Middle Age and of the Renascence will come to the inevitable conclusion that the greatest artists and writers of today are very far from being the rivals of those who were great then. Shakespeare was almost the contemporary of Titian; there has been neither a Shakespeare nor a Titian since, nor any writer nor artist in the most distant manner approaching them. Yet go backward from them, and you will find Dante, as great as Shakespeare, and at least three artists, Michelangelo, Lionardo da Vinci and Raphael, quite as great as Titian. They lived in a society which was antisocialistic, and they were the growth of a period in which all the ideas of civilized mankind tended in a direction diametrically opposed to that taken by our modern theories. This is undeniable. The greatest artists, poets and literary men are developed where all conditions most develop individuality. The modern state, in which individuality is crushed by the machinery of education in order that all men may think alike, favours the growth of science alone; and scientific men have the least individuality of all men who become great, because science is not creative like art and literature, nor destructive like soldiering, but inquisitive, inventive and speculative in the first place, and secondly, in our age, financial. In old times, when a discovery was made, men asked, 'What does it mean? To what will it lead?' Now, the first question is, 'What will it be worth?' That does not detract from the merit of science, but it shows the general tendency of men's thoughts. And it explains two things, namely, why there are no artists like Michelangelo nor literary men like Shakespeare in our times--and why the majority of such artists and literary men as we have are what is commonly called reactionaries, men who would prefer to go back a century or two, and who like to live in out-of-the-way places in old countries, as Landor lived in Florence, Browning in Venice, Stevenson in Samoa, Liszt in Rome,--besides a host of painters and sculptors, who have exiled themselves voluntarily for life in Italy and France. The whole tendency of the modern world is scientific and financial, and the world is ruled by financiers and led by a financial society which honours neither art nor literature, but looks upon both as amusements which it can afford to buy, and which it is fashionable to cultivate, but which must never for a moment be considered as equal in importance to the pursuit of money for its own sake. It was the great scope for individuality, the great prizes to be won by individuality, the honour paid to individuality, that helped the early painters to their high success. It was the abundance of material, hitherto never used in art, the variety of that material, in an age when variety was the rule and not the exception, it was the richness of that material, not in quantity and variety only, but in individual quality, that made early paintings what we see. It was their genuine and true love of beauty, and of nature and of the eternal relations between nature and beauty, that made those men great artists. It was the hampering of individuality, the exhaustion and disappearance of material and the degeneration of a love of beauty to a love of effect, that put an end to the great artistic cycle in Italy, and soon afterwards in the rest of the world, with Rembrandt and Van Dyck, the last of the really great artists. Progress is not civilization, though we generally couple the two words together, and often confound their values. Progress has to do with what we call the industrial arts, their development, and the consequent increase of wealth and comfort. Civilization means, on the other hand, among many things, the growth and perfecting of art, in the singular; the increase of a general appreciation of art; the refinement of manners which follows upon a widespread improvement of taste; the general elevation of a people's thoughts above the hard conditions in which a great people's struggles for existence, preëminence and wealth take place. Progress, in its right acceptation, ought also to mean some sort of moral progress--such, for instance, as has transformed our own English-speaking race in a thousand years or more from a stock of very dangerous pirates to a law-abiding people--if we may fairly say as much as that of ourselves. Civilization has nothing to do with morality. That is rather a shocking statement, perhaps, but it is a true one. It may be balanced by saying that civilization has nothing to do with immorality either. The early Christians were looked upon as very uncivilized people by the Romans of their time, and the meanest descendants of the Greeks secretly called the Romans themselves barbarians. In point of civilization and what we call cultivation, Alcibiades was immeasurably superior to Saint Paul, Peter the Hermit or Abraham Lincoln, though Alcibiades had no morality to speak of and not much conscience. Moreover, it is a fact that great reformers of morals have often been great enemies of art and destroyers of the beautiful. Fra Bartolommeo, who is thought by many to have equalled Raphael in the latter's early days, became a follower of Savonarola, burned all his wonderful drawings and studies, and shut himself up in a monastery to lead a religious life; and though he yielded after several years to the command of his superiors, and began painting again, he confined himself altogether to devotional subjects as long as he lived, and fell far behind Raphael, who was certainly not an exemplary character, even in those days. In Europe, and in the Latin languages, there is a distinction, and a universally accepted one, between education and instruction. It is something like that which I am trying to make clear between Civilization and Progress. An 'instructed man' means a man who has learned much but who may have no manners at all, may eat with his knife, forget to wash his hands, wear outlandish clothes, and be ignorant even of the ordinary forms of politeness. An 'educated person,' on the contrary, may know very little Latin, and no Greek, and may be shaky in the multiplication table; but he must have perfect manners to deserve the designation, and tact, with a thorough knowledge of all those customs and outward forms which distinguish what calls itself civilized society from the rest of the world. Anyone can see that such instruction, on the one hand, and such education, on the other, are derived from wholly different sources, and must lead to wholly different results; and it is as common nowadays to find men who have the one without the other, as it ever was in ancient Greece or Rome. I should like to assert that it is more common, since Progress is so often mistaken for Civilization and tacitly supposed to be able to do without it, and that Diogenes would not be such a startling exception now as he was in the days of Alexander the Great. But no one would dare to say that Progress cannot go on in a high state of Civilization. All that can be stated with absolute certainty is that they are independent of each other, since Progress means 'going on' and therefore 'change'; whereas Civilization may remain at the same high level for a very long period, without any change at all. Compare our own country with China, for instance. In the arts--the plural 'arts'--in applied science, we are centuries ahead of Asia; but our manners are rough and even brutal compared with the elaborate politeness of the Chinese, and we should labour in vain to imitate the marvellous productions of their art. We may prefer our art to that of the far East, though there are many critics who place the Japanese artists much higher than our own; but no one can deny the superior skill of the Asiatics in the making of everything artistic. Nor must we undervalue in art the importance of the minor and special sort of progress which means a real and useful improvement in methods and materials. That is doubtless a part, a first step, in the general progress which tends ultimately to the invention of machinery, but which, in its development, passes through the highest perfection of manual work. The first effect of this sort of progress in art was to give men of genius new and better tools, and therefore a better means of expression. In a way, almost every painter of early times was an inventor, and had to be, because for a long time the methods and tools of painting were absurdly insufficient. Every man who succeeded had discovered some new way of grinding and mixing colours, of preparing the surface on which he worked, of using the brush and the knife, and of fixing the finished picture by means of varnishes. The question of what painters call the vehicle for colour was always of immense importance. Long before Giotto began to work there seem to have been two common ways of painting, namely, in fresco, with water-colours, and on prepared surfaces by means of wax mixed with some sort of oil. In fresco painting, the mason, or the plasterer, works with the painter. A surface as large as the artist expects to use during a few hours is covered with fresh stucco by the mason, and thoroughly smoothed with a small trowel. Stucco, as used in Italy, is a mixture of slaked lime and white marble dust, or very fine sand which has been thoroughly sifted. If stained to resemble coloured or veined marbles, and immediately ironed till it is dry with hot smooth irons, the surface of the mass is hardened and polished to such a degree that it is almost impossible to distinguish it from real marble without breaking into it. Waxing gives it a still higher polish. But if water-colours are used for painting a picture upon it, and if the colours are laid on while the stucco is still damp, they unite with the lime, and slowly dry to a surface which is durable, but neither so hard nor so polished as that produced when the stucco is ironed. The principal conditions are that the stucco must be moist, the wall behind it absolutely dry and the colours very thin and flowing. Should the artist not cover all that has been prepared for his day's work, the remainder has to be broken out again and laid on fresh the next day. It is now admitted that the wall-paintings of the ancients were executed in this way. As it was impossible for the artist at any time to have the whole surface of the freshly stuccoed wall at his disposal in order to draw his picture before painting it, he either drew the design in red upon the rough dry plaster, and then had the stucco laid over it in bits, or else he made a cartoon drawing of the work in its full size. The outlines were then generally pricked out with a stout pin, and the cartoon cut up into pieces of convenient dimensions, so that the painter could lay them against the fresh stucco and rub the design through, or pounce it, as we should say, with charcoal dust, like a stencil. He then coloured it as quickly as he could. If he made a mistake, or was not pleased with the effect, there was no remedy except the radical one of breaking off the stucco, laying it on fresh, and beginning over again. It was clearly impossible to paint over the same surface again and again as can be done in oil painting. No one knows exactly when eggs were first used in fresco painting, nor does it matter much. Some people used the yolk and the white together, some only one or the other, but the egg was, and is, always mixed with water. Some artists now put gum tragacanth into the mixture. It is then used like water in water-colour work, but is called 'tempera' or 'distemper.' The effect of the egg is to produce an easy flow of the colour with so little liquid that the paint does not run on the surface, as it easily does in ordinary water-colours. The effect of the yellow yolk of the egg upon the tints is insignificant, unless too much be used. By using egg, one may paint upon ordinary prepared canvas as easily as with oils, which is impossible with water-colour. As for the early paintings upon panels of wood, before oils were used, they were meant to be portable imitations of fresco. The wood was accordingly prepared by covering it with a thin coating of fine white cement, or stucco, which was allowed to dry and become perfectly hard, because it was of course impossible to lay it on fresh every day in such small quantities. The vehicle used could therefore not be water, which would have made the colours run. The most common practice of the Byzantine and Romanesque schools seems to have been to use warm melted wax in combination with some kind of oil, the mixture being kept ready at hand over a lighted lamp, or on a pan of burning charcoal. There are artists in Europe, still, who occasionally use wax in this way, though generally mixed with alcohol or turpentine, and the result is said to be very durable. Sir Joshua Reynolds painted many pictures in this way. With regard to using oils on a dry surface in wall painting, instead of fresco, Lionardo da Vinci tried it repeatedly with the result that many of his wall paintings were completely lost within thirty or forty years after they had been painted. The greatest of those which have survived at all, the Last Supper in Milan, has had to be restored so often that little of the original picture remains untouched. The enormous value of linseed oil and nut oil as a vehicle was apparent as soon as it was discovered in Holland. Its great advantages are that, unlike water or egg, it will carry a large quantity of colour upon the canvas at the first stroke, that it dries slowly, so that the same ground may be worked over without haste while it is still fresh, and that it has a very small effect in changing the tints of the original paints used. One may see what value was attached to its use from the fact that those who first brought it to Italy worked in secret. Andrea Castagno, surnamed the Assassin, learned the method from his best friend, Domenico Veneziano, and then murdered him while he was singing a serenade under a lady's window, in order to possess the secret alone. But it soon became universally known and made a revolution in Italian painting. In the older times, when rare and valuable pigments were used, as well as large quantities of pure gold, the materials to be employed and their value were stipulated for in the contract made between the painter and his employer before the picture was begun, and an artist's remuneration at that time was much of the nature of a salary, calculated on an approximate guess at the time he might need for the work. That was, of course, a survival from the time of the Byzantine artists, to whom gold and silver and paints were weighed out by the ecclesiastics for whom they painted, and had to be accounted for in the finished picture. There is a story told of an artist's apprentice, who made a considerable sum of money by selling the washings of his master's brushes when the latter was using a great quantity of ultramarine; and that shows the costliness of mere paints at that time. As for the more valuable materials, the great altar picture in Saint Mark's, in Venice, is entirely composed of plates of pure gold enamelled in different colours, and fastened in a sort of mosaic upon the wood panel as required, the lights and shades being produced by hatching regular lines through the hard enamel with a sharp instrument. The whole technical history of painting lies between that sort of work and the modern painter's studio. Before oil painting became general, artists were largely dependent on commissions in order to do any work except drawing. Fresco needed a wall, and work done in that manner could not be removed from place to place. The old-fashioned panel work with its gold background was so expensive that few artists could afford to paint pictures on the mere chance of selling them. But the facilities and the economy of pure tempera work, and work in oils, soon made easel pictures common. Between the time of Giotto and that of Mantegna another means of expression, besides painting, was found for artists, if not by accident, by the ingenuity of the celebrated goldsmith, Maso Finiguerra, who was the first man in Italy, and probably the first in the world, to take off upon paper impressions in ink from an engraved plate. [Illustration: THE PALATINE] The especial branch of goldsmithing which he practised was what the Italians still call 'niello' work, or the enamelling of designs upon precious metals. The method of doing such work is this. Upon the piece to be enamelled the design is first carefully drawn with a fine point, precisely as in silver chiselling, and corrected till quite perfect in all respects. This design is then cut into the metal with very sharp tools, evenly, but not to a great depth. When completely cut, the enamelling substance, which is generally sulphate of silver, is placed upon the design in just sufficient quantities, and the whole piece of work is then put into a furnace and heated to such a point that the enamel melts and fills all the cuttings of the design, while the metal itself remains uninjured. This is an easier matter than might be supposed, because gold and silver, though soft under the chisel, will not melt except at a very high temperature. When the enamel has cooled, the whole surface is rubbed down to a perfect level, and the design appears with sharp outlines in the polished metal. Now anyone who has ever worked with a steel point on bright metal knows how very hard it is to judge of the correctness of the drawing by merely looking at it, because the light is reflected in all directions into one's eyes, not only from untouched parts of the plate, but from the freshly cut lines. The best way of testing the work is to blacken it with some kind of colour that is free from acid, such as a mixture of lampblack and oil, to rub the surface clean so as to leave the ink only in the engraved lines, and then take an impression of the drawing upon damp paper. That is practically what Finiguerra did, and in so doing he discovered the art of engraving. Probably goldsmiths had done the same before him, as they have always done since, but none of them had thought of drawing upon metal merely for the sake of the impression it would make, and without any intention of using the metal afterwards. Within fifty years of Finiguerra's invention very beautiful engravings were sold all over Italy, and many famous painters engraved their own works--foremost among these, Mantegna and Botticelli. Early Italian art rose thus by regular steps, from the helpless, traditional, imitative work of the Romanesque and Byzantine artists to its highest development. It then passed a succession of climaxes in the masterpieces of Lionardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian, and thence descended gradually to the miserably low level of the eighteenth century. It is easy to trace the chief objects which painting had in view in its successive phases. Tradition, Reality and Illusion were the three. Cimabue was still a Traditionist. Giotto was the first Realist. Mantegna first aimed at the full illusion which finished art is capable of producing, and though not so great a man as Giotto, was a much greater painter. Then came Lionardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, the men of universal genius, who could make use of tradition without being commonplace, who could be realistic without being coarse, and who understood how to produce illusion without being theatrical. In the decay of Italian art what strikes one most strongly is the combination of the three faults which the great men knew how to avoid--coarseness, commonplace thought and theatrical execution. [Illustration: PALAZZO DEI CONSERVATORI From a print of the last century] Cimabue had found out that it was possible to paint sacred pictures without the dictation of priests, as prescribed by the Council of Nice. The idea discovered by Giotto, or rather the fact, namely, that nature could be copied artistically, produced a still greater revolution, and he had hosts of scholars and followers and imitators. But they were nothing more, or at the most it may be said that they developed his idea to the furthest with varying success. It was realism--sometimes a kind of mystic evocation of nature, disembodied and divinely pure, as in Beato Angelico; often exquisitely fresh and youthful, as in his pupil, Benozzo Gozzoli, whose vast series of frescoes half fills the Camposanto of Pisa--sometimes tentative and experimental, or gravely grand, as in Masaccio, impetuous and energetic as in Fra Lippo Lippi, fanciful as in Botticelli--but still, always realism, in the sense of using nature directly, without any distinct effort at illusion, the figures mostly taken from life, and generally disposed in one plane, the details minute, the landscapes faithful rather than suggestive. The lives of those men were all typical of the times in which they lived, and especially the life of the holy man we call Beato Angelico, of saintly memory, that of the fiery lay brother, Filippo Lippi, whose astounding talents all but redeemed his little less surprising sins--and lastly that of Andrea Mantegna. The first two stand out in tremendous contrast as contemporaries--the realist of the Soul, and the realist of the Flesh, the Saint and the Sinner, the Ascetic and the Sensualist. Beato Angelico--of his many names, it is easier to call him by the one we know best--was born in 1387. At that time the influence of the Empire in Italy was ended, and that of the Popes was small. The Emperors and the Popes had in fact contended for the control of municipal rights in the free Italian cities; with the disappearance of those rights under the Italian despots the cause of contention was gone, as well as the partial liberty which had given it existence. The whole country was cut up into principalities owned and ruled by tyrants. Dante had been dead about sixty years, and the great imperial idea which he had developed in his poem had totally failed. The theoretical rights of man, as usual in the world's history, had gone down before the practical strength of individuals, whose success tended, again, to call into activity other individuals, to the general exaltation of talent for the general oppression of mediocrity. In other words, that condition had been produced which is most favourable to genius, because everything between genius and brute strength had been reduced to slavery in the social scale. The power to take and hold, on the one hand, and the power to conceive and execute great works on the other, were as necessary to each other as supply and demand; and all moral worth became a matter of detail compared with success. In such a state of the world, a man of creative genius who chanced to be a saint was an anomaly; there was no fit place for him but a monastery, and no field for his powers but that of Sacred Art. It was as natural that Angelico should turn monk as that Lippo Lippi, who had been made half a monk against his will, should turn layman. In the peaceful convent of Saint Mark, among the Dominican brethren, Beato Angelico's character and genius grew together; the devout artist and the devotional mystic were inseparably blended in one man, and he who is best remembered as a famous painter was chosen by a wise Pope to be Archbishop of Florence, for his holy life, his gentle character and his undoubted learning. He could not refuse the great honour outright; but he implored the Pope to bestow it upon a brother monk, whom he judged far more worthy than himself. He was the same consistent, humble man who had hesitated to eat meat at the Pope's own table without the permission of the prior of his convent--a man who, like the great Saint Bernard, had given up a prosperous worldly existence in pure love of religious peace. It was no wonder that such a man should become the realist of the angels and a sort of angel among realists--himself surnamed by his companions the 'Blessed' and the 'Angelic.' Beside him, younger than he, but contemporary with him, stands out his opposite, Filippo Lippi. He was not born rich, like Angelico. He came into the world in a miserable by-way of Florence, behind a Carmelite convent. His father and mother were both dead when he was two years old, and a wretchedly poor sister of his father took care of him as best she could till he was eight. When she could bear the burden no longer, she took him to the door of the monastery, as orphans were taken in those days, and gave him over to the charity of the Carmelite fathers. Most of the boys brought to them in that way grew up to be monks, and some of them became learned; but the little Filippo would do nothing but scrawl caricatures in his copybook all day long, and could not be induced to learn anything. But he learned to draw so well that when the prior saw what he could do, he allowed him to paint; and at seventeen the lad who would not learn to read or write knew that he was a great artist, and turned his back on the monastery that had given him shelter, and on the partial vows he had already taken. He was the wildest novice that ever wore a frock. He had almost missed the world, since a little more inclination, a little more time, might have made a real monk of him. But he had escaped, and he took to himself all the world could give, and revelled in it with every sensation of his gifted, sensuous nature. It was only when he could not get what he wanted that he had curious returns of monkish reasoning. The historian of his life says that he would give all he possessed to secure the gratification of whatever inclination chanced to be predominant at the moment; but if he could by no means accomplish his wishes, he would then depict the object which attracted his attention and he would try, by reasoning and talking with himself, to diminish the violence of his inclination. There was no lack of adventure in his life, either. Once, at Ancona, on the Adriatic, he ventured too far out to sea in an open boat, and he and his companions were picked up by a Barbary pirate and carried off to Africa. But for his genius he might have ended his days there, instead of spending only eighteen months in slavery. A clever drawing of the pirate chief, made on a whitewashed wall with a bit of charcoal from a brazier, saved him. The Moor saw it, was delighted, set him to paint a number of portraits, in defiance of Moses, Mahomet and the Koran, and then, by way of reward, brought him safe across the water to Naples and gave him his liberty. He painted more pictures, earned money, and worked his way back to Florence. As long as he worked at all he did marvels, but a pretty face was enough to make him forget his art, his work and the Princes and Dukes who employed him. Cosimo de Medici once shut him up with his picture, to keep him at it; he tore the sheets of his bed into strips, knotted them together, escaped by the window--and was of course forgiven. The nuns of Saint Margaret employed him to paint an altar-piece for them; he persuaded them to let the most beautiful of their novices sit as a model for one of the figures; he made love to her, of course, and ran away with her, leaving the picture unfinished. It is characteristic of him that though he never forsook her, he refused the Pope's offer of a dispensation from his early vows which would have enabled him to marry her--for he hated all ties and bonds alike, and a regular marriage would have seemed to him almost as bad as slavery in Africa. Lippo represented one extreme of character, Beato Angelico the other. Between them were many men of almost equal genius, but of more common temper, such as Botticelli, who was Lippo's pupil, or Benozzo Gozzoli, the pupil of Angelico. Of Sandro Botticelli we know at least that he resembled his master in one respect--he positively refused to learn anything from books, and it was in sheer despair that his father, Filipepe, apprenticed the boy to a goldsmith, who rejoiced in the nickname of Botticello--'the little tun'--perhaps on account of his rotund figure, and it was from this first master of his that the boy came to be called 'Botticello's Sandro.' The goldsmith soon saw that the boy was a born painter, and took him to Lippo Lippi to be taught. Both Botticelli and Gozzoli, like many first-rate artists of that time, were quiet, hard-working men, devoted to their art, and not remarkable for anything else. The consequence is that little is known about their lives. It is natural that we should know most about the men who were most different from their companions, such as Michelangelo on the one hand, and Benvenuto Cellini on the other, or Beato Angelico and Lippo Lippi, or the clever Buffalmacco--whose practical jokes were told by Boccaccio and Sacchetti, and have even brought him into modern literature--and Lionardo da Vinci. Then, as now, there were two types of artists, considered as men; there were Bohemians and scholars. Lionardo and Michelangelo were grave and learned students; so was Beato Angelico in a sense limited to theology. But Benvenuto, Lippo Lippi and Buffalmacco were typical Bohemians. As for the latter, he seems scarcely ever to have painted a picture without playing off a practical jest upon his employer, and he began his career by terrifying his master, who insisted upon waking him to work before dawn. He fastened tiny wax tapers upon the backs of thirty black beetles, and as soon as he heard the old man stirring and groping in the dark, he lighted the tapers quickly, and drove the beetles into the room, through a crack under the door, and they ran wildly hither and thither on the pavement. The master took them for demons come to carry off his soul; he almost lost his senses in a fit, and he used half the holy water in Florence to exorcise the house. But ever afterwards he was too much frightened to get up before daylight, and Buffalmacco slept out the long night in peace. Andrea Mantegna, the great painter and engraver, who made the final step in the development of pictorial art in Italy, was a shepherd's son, like Giotto, born about one hundred years after Giotto's death. Similar conditions and a similar bent of genius produced different results in different centuries. Between Giotto and Mantegna the times had changed; men lived differently, thought differently and saw differently. How Mantegna got into the studio of the learned master Squarcione of Padua is not known. The shepherd lad may have strayed in on a summer's day, when the door was open, and attracted the painter's attention and interest. One of the greatest living painters today was a Bavarian peasant boy, who used to walk ten miles barefoot to the city and back on Sundays, carrying his shoes to save them, in order to go into the free galleries and look at the pictures; and somehow, without money, nor credit, nor introduction, he got into the studio of a good master, and became a great artist. Mantegna may have done the same. At all events, he became old Squarcione's favourite pupil. But when he was inside the studio, he found there a vast collection of antique fragments of sculpture, which the master had got together from all sources, and which the pupils were drawing. He was set to drawing them, too, as the best way of learning how to paint. That was the logical manifestation and characteristic expression of Renascence, which was a second birth of Greek and Roman art, science and literature--one might call it, in Italy, the second birth of civilized man. It brought with it the desire and craving for something more than realism, together with the means of raising all art to the higher level required in order to produce beautiful illusions. Men had found time to enjoy as well as to fight and pray. In other words, they fought and prayed less, and the result was that they had more leisure. The women had begun to care for artistic things much earlier, and they had taught their children to care for them, and the result was a general tendency of taste to a higher level. Genius may be an orphan and a foundling, but taste is the child of taste. Genius is the crude, creative force; but the gentle sense of appreciation, neither creative nor crude, but receptive, is most often acquired at home and in childhood. A full-grown man may learn to be a judge and a critic, but he cannot learn to have taste after he is once a man. Taste belongs to education rather than to instruction, and it is the mother that educates, not the schoolmaster. That faculty of taste was what Italy had acquired between the time of Cimabue and the time of Mantegna--roughly speaking, between the year 1200 and the year 1450--between the first emancipation of art from the old Byzantine and Romanesque thraldom and the time when the new art had so overspread the country that engravings of the most famous pictures began to be sold in the streets in every important city in Italy. Only a few years after Mantegna's death, Albert Dürer, the great painter engraver of Nüremberg, appeared before the council of Venice to try and get a copyright for his engravings, which were being so cleverly forged by the famous Raimondi that the copies were sold in the Piazza of Saint Mark as originals. In passing, it is interesting to remember that Dürer, whose engravings now sell for hundreds of dollars each, sold them himself at his own house for prices varying between the values of fifteen and twenty-five cents, according to the size of the plate. The Council of Venice refused him the copyright he asked, but interdicted the copyist from using Dürer's initials. The immense sale of prints popularized art in Italy at the very time when the first great printing houses, like the Aldine, were popularizing learning. Culture, in the same sense in which we use the word, became preëminently the fashion. Everyone wished to be thought clever, and a generation grew up which not only read Latin authors with pleasure, wrote Latin correctly, and had some acquaintance with Greek, but which took a lively interest in artistic matters, and constituted a real public for artists, a much larger and a much more critical one than could be found today among an equal population in any so-called civilized country. The era of collectors began then, and Mantegna's old master was the first of them. Every man of taste did his best to get possession of some fragment of antique sculpture, everyone bought engravings, everyone went to see the pictures of the great masters--everyone tried to get together a little library of printed books. It took two hundred and fifty or three hundred years to develop the Renascence, but what it produced in Italy alone has not been surpassed, and in many ways has not been equalled, in the four hundred years that have followed it. With its culmination, individualities, even the strongest, became less distinctly defined, and the romantic side of the art legend was ended. It is so in all things. The romance of the ocean belongs to those who first steered the perilous course that none had dared before; many have been in danger by the sea, many have perished in the desperate trial of the impossible, but none can be Columbus again; many have done brave deeds in untracked deserts, but none again can be the pioneers who first won through to our West. The last may be the greatest, but the first will always have been the first, the daring, the romantic, who did what no man had done before them. And so it is also in the peaceful ways of art. Giotto, Beato Angelico, Lippo Lippi, Botticelli, never attained to the greatness of Lionardo or Michelangelo or Raphael. Sober criticism can never admit that they did, whatever soft-hearted enthusiasts may say and write. But those earlier men had something which the later ones had not, both in merit and in genius. They fought against greater odds, with poorer weapons, and where their strength failed them, heart and feeling took the place of strength; and their truth and their tenderness went straight to the heart of their young world, as only the highest perfection of illusion could appeal to the eyes of the critical, half-sceptic generation that came after them. And so, although it be true that art is not dependent on genius alone, but also on mechanical skill, yet there is something in art which is dependent on genius and on nothing else. It is that something which touches, that something which creates, that something which itself is life; that something which belongs, in all ages, to those who grope to the light through darkness; that something of which we almost lose sight in the great completeness of the greatest artists, but which hovers like a halo of glory upon the brows of Italy's earliest, truest and tenderest painters. [Illustration] REGION XIV BORGO Borgo, the 'Suburb,' is the last of the fourteen Regions, and is one of the largest and most important of all, for within its limits stand Saint Peter's, the Vatican, and the Mausoleum of Hadrian--the biggest church, the biggest palace and the biggest tomb in the whole world. To those who know something of Rome's great drama, the Castle of Sant' Angelo is the most impressive of all her monuments. Like the Colosseum, it stands out in its round strength alone, sun-gilt and shadowy brown against the profound sky. Like the great Amphitheatre, it has been buffeted in the storms of ages and is war-worn without, to the highest reach of a mounted man, and dinted above that by every missile invented in twelve hundred years, from the slinger's pebble or leaden bullet to the cannon ball of the French artillery. Like the Colosseum, it is the crestless trunk of its former self. But it has life in it still, whereas the Colosseum died to a ruin when Urban the Eighth showed his successor how to tear down the outer wall and build a vast palace with a hundredth part of the great theatre. Sant' Angelo is a living fortress yet, and nearly a thousand years have passed, to the certain knowledge of history, since it was ever a single day unguarded by armed men. Thirty generations of men at arms have stood sentry within its gates since Theodora Senatrix, the strong and sinful, flashed upon history out of impenetrable darkness, seized the fortress and made and unmade popes at her will, till, dying, she bequeathed the domination to her only daughter, and her name to the tale of Roman tyranny. The Castle has been too often mentioned in these pages to warrant long description of it here, even if any man who has not lived for years among its labyrinthine passages could describe it accurately. The great descending corridor leads in a wide spiral downwards to the central spot where Hadrian lay, and in the vast thickness of the surrounding foundations there is but stone, again stone and more stone. From the main entrance upwards the fortress is utterly irregular within, full of gloomy chambers, short, turning staircases, dark prisons, endless corridors; and above are terraces and rooms where much noble blood has been shed, and where many limbs have been racked and tortured, and battlements from which men good and bad, guilty and innocent, have been dropped a rope's length by the neck to feed the crows. Here died Stephen Porcari, the brave and spotless; here died Cardinal Carafa for a thousand crimes; and here Lorenzo Colonna, caught and crushed in the iron hands of Sixtus the Fourth, laid his bruised head, still stately, on the block--'a new block,' says Infessura, who loved him and buried him, and could not forget the little detail. The story is worth telling, less for its historical value than for the strange exactness with which it is all set down. Pope Sixtus, backed by the Orsini, was at war with the Colonna to the end of his reign; but once, on a day when there was truce, he seems to have said in anger that he cared not whom the Colonna served nor with whom they allied themselves. And Lorenzo Colonna, Protonotary Apostolic, with his brothers, took the Pope at his word, and they joined forces with the King of Naples, fortifying themselves in their stronghold of Marino, whence the eldest son of the family still takes his title. The Pope, seeing them in earnest and fearing King Ferdinand, sent an embassy of two cardinals to them, entreating them to be reconciled with the Church. But they answered that they would not, for his Holiness had given them permission to ally themselves with whom they pleased, and refused them money for service, and they said that they could not live without pay--a somewhat ironical statement for such men as the Colonna, who lived rather by taking than by giving an equivalent for anything received. [Illustration: CASTLE OF SANT' ANGELO] Then the Pope made war upon King Ferdinand, and when there had been much bloodshed, and plundering and burning on both sides, Prospero Colonna quarrelled with the Duke of Calabria, who was on Ferdinand's side and for whom he had been fighting, and came over to the Church, and so the Colonna were restored to favour, and the Pope made a treaty with the King against Venice, and so another year passed. But after that the quarrel was renewed between Pope Sixtus and Lorenzo Colonna, on pretext that a certain part of the agreement to which they had come had not been executed by the Protonotary; and while the matter was under discussion, the Cardinal of Saint George, nephew of the great Count Jerome Riario, sent word privately to the Protonotary Colonna, warning him either to escape from Rome or to be on his guard if he remained, 'because some one was plotting against him, and hated him.' Wherefore Lorenzo shut himself up in the dwelling of Cardinal Colonna, between the Colonna palace and Monte Cavallo on the Quirinal hill, and many young men, attached to the great house, began to watch in arms, day and night, turn and turn about. And when this became known, the Orsini also began to arm themselves and keep watch at Monte Giordano. Scenting a struggle, a Savelli, siding with Colonna, struck the first blow by seizing forty horses and mules of the Orsini in a farm building on the Tivoli road; and immediately half a dozen robber Barons joined Savelli, and they plundered right and left, and one of them wrote a long and courteous letter of justification to the Pope. But Orsini retorted swiftly, 'lifting' horses and cattle that belonged to his enemies and making prisoners of their retainers. Among others he took two men who belonged to the Protonotary. And the latter, unable to leave Rome in safety, began to fortify himself in the Cardinal's house with many fighting men, and with many strange weapons, 'bombardelle, cerobottane,' and guns and catapults. Whereupon the Pope sent for Orsini, and commanded him, as the faithful adherent of the Church, to go and take the Protonotary prisoner to his house. But while Orsini was marshalling his troops with those of Jerome Riario, at Monte Giordano and in Campo de' Fiori, the Pope sent for the municipal officers of the city and explained that he meant to pardon the Protonotary if the latter would come to the Vatican humbly and of his own free will; and certain of these officers went to the Protonotary as ambassadors, to explain this. To them he answered, in the presence of Stephen Infessura, the chronicler who tells the story, that he had not fortified himself against the Church, but against private and dangerous enemies, against whom he had been warned, and that he had actually found that his house was spied upon by night; but that he was ready to carry out the terms of the old agreement, and finally, that he was ready to go freely to the Pope, trusting himself wholly to His Holiness, without any earnest or pledge for his safety, but that he begged the Pope not to deliver him into the hands of the Orsini. Yet even before he had spoken, the Orsini were moving up their men, by way of Saint Augustine's Church, which is near Piazza Navona. Nevertheless Colonna, the Protonotary, mounted his horse to ride over to the Vatican. But John Philip Savelli stood in the way, and demanded of the officers what surety they would give for Colonna; and they promised him safety upon their own lives. Then Savelli answered them that they should remember their bond, for if Colonna did not come back, or if he should be hurt, he, Savelli, would be avenged upon their bodies. And Colonna rode out, meaning to go to the Pope, but his retainers mounted their horses and rode swiftly by another way and met him, and forced him back. For they told him that if he went, his end would be near, and that they themselves would be outlawed; and some said that before they would let him go, they would cut him to pieces themselves rather than let his enemies do it. And furiously they forced him back, him and his horse, through the winding streets, and brought him again into the stronghold, and bade the officers depart in peace. And the second time two of the officers returned and told the Protonotary to come, for he should be safe. And again he mounted his horse, and struck with the flat of his blade a man who hindered him, and leaped the barrier raised for defence before the palace and rode away. And again his own men mounted and followed him, and overtook him at the cross of Trevi, near by. And one, a giant, seized his bridle and forced him back, saying, 'My Lord, we will not let you go! Rather will we cut you in quarters ourselves; for you go to ruin yourself and us also.' But when they had him safe within the walls, he wrung his hands, and cried out that it was they who, by hindering him, were destroying themselves and him. But many answered, 'If you had gone, you would never have come back.' And it was then the twenty-first hour of the day, and there were left three hours before dark. But the Pope, seeing that Colonna did not come, commanded the Orsini to bring him by force, as they might, even by slaying the people, if the people should defend him; and he ordered them to burn and pillage the regions of Monti, Trevi and Colonna. And with Orsini there were some of those fierce Crescenzi, who still lived in Rome. And they all marched through the city, bearing the standard of the Church, and they passed by Trevi and surrounded the house on Monte Cavallo, and proclaimed the ban against all men who should help the Protonotary; wherefore many of the people departed in fear. Then Orsini first leapt the barrier, and his horse was killed under him by a bombard that slew two men also; and immediately all the Colonna's men discharged their firearms and catapults and killed sixteen of their enemies. But the Orsini advanced upon the house. Then, about the twenty-third hour, the Colonna were weary of fighting against so many, and their powder was not good, so that they fell back from the main gateway, and the Orsini rushed in and filled the arched ways around the courtyard, and set fire to the hay and straw in the stables, and fought their way up the stairs, sacking the house. They found the Protonotary in his room, wounded in the hand and sitting on a chest, and Orsini told him that he was a prisoner and must come. 'Slay me, rather,' he answered. But Orsini bade him surrender and have no fear. And he yielded himself up, and they took him away through the smoking house, slippery with blood. They found also John Philip Savelli, and they stripped him of the cuirass he wore, and setting their swords to him, bade him cry, 'Long live Orsini!' And he answered, 'I will not say it.' Then they wounded him deep in the forehead and smote off both his hands, and gave him many wounds in face and body, and left him dead. And they plundered all the goods of Cardinal Colonna, his plate, his robes, his tapestries, his chests of linen, and they even carried off his cardinal's hat. So the Protonotary, on the faith of Orsini, was led away to the Pope in his doublet, but some one lent him a black cloak on the way. And as they went, Jerome Riario rode beside him and jeered at him, crying out, 'Ha, ha! thou traitor, I shall hang thee by the neck this night!' But Orsini answered Jerome, and said, 'Sir, you shall hang me first!' for he had given his word. And more than once on the way, Riario, drunk with blood, drew his dagger to thrust it into Colonna, but Orsini drove him off, and brought his prisoner safely to the Pope. And his men sacked the quarter of the Colonna; and among other houses of the Colonna's retainers which were rifled they plundered that of Paul Mancino, near by, whose descendant was to marry the sister of Mazarin; and also, among the number, the house of Pomponius Letus, the historian, from whom they took all his books and belongings and clothes, and he went away in his doublet and buskins, with his stick in his hand, to make complaint before the municipality. Then for a whole month all that part of Rome which was dominated by the Colonna was given over to be pillaged and burned by their enemies, while in still Sant' Angelo, the tormentors slowly tore Lorenzo Colonna to pieces, so that the Jewish doctor who was called in to prolong his life said that nothing could save him, for his limbs were swollen and pierced through and through, and many of his bones were broken, and he was full of many deep wounds. Yet in the end, lest he should die a natural death, they prepared the new block and the axe to cut off his head. 'Moreover,' says Infessura, in his own language, 'on the last day of June, when the people were celebrating in Rome the festivity of the most happy decapitation of Saint Paul the Apostle, whose head was cut off by the most cruel Nero--on that very day, about an hour and a half after sunrise, the aforesaid Holiness of our Sovereign Lord caused the Protonotary Colonna to be beheaded in the Castle; and there were present the Senator and the Judge of the crime. And when the Protonotary was led out of prison early in the morning to the grating above the Castle, he turned to the soldiers who were there and told them that he had been grievously tormented, wherefore he had said certain things not true. And immediately afterwards, when he was in the closed place below, where he was beheaded, the Senator and Judge sat down as a Tribunal, and caused to be read the sentence which they passed against him, although no manner of criminal procedure had been observed, since all the confessions were extorted under torture, and he had no opportunity of defending himself.' Therefore, when this sentence had been read, the Protonotary addressed those present and said: 'I wish no one to be inculpated through me. I say this in conscience of my soul, and if I lie, may the devil take me, now that I am about to go out of this life; and so thou, Notary who hast read the sentence, art witness of this, and ye all are witnesses, and I leave the matter to your conscience, that you should also proclaim it in Rome,--that those things written in this sentence are not true, and that what I have said I have said under great torture, as ye may see by my condition.' He would not let them bind his hands, but knelt down at the block, and forgave the executioner, who asked his pardon. And then he said in Latin, 'Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit,' and called thrice upon Christ the Saviour, and at the third time, the word and his head were severed together from his body. Then they placed the body in a wooden coffin and took it to Santa Maria Transpontina, the first church on the right, going from the Castle toward Saint Peter's, and when none came to take it away, they sent word to his mother. And she, white-haired and tearless, with burning eyes, came; and she took her son's head from the coffin and held it up to the people, saying, 'Behold the justice of Sixtus,' and she laid it in its place tenderly; and with torches, and the Confraternities, and many priests, the body was taken to the Church of the Holy Apostles, and buried in the Colonna Chapel near the altar. But before it was buried it was seen in the coffin, and taken out, and laid in it again, and all saw the torments which the man had suffered in his feet, which were swollen and bound up with rags; and also the fingers of his hands had been twisted, so that the inside was turned clean outwards, and on the top of his head was a wound, where priests make the tonsure, as though the scalp had been raised by a knife; and he was dressed in a cotton doublet, yet his own had been of fine black silk. Also they had put on him a miserable pair of hose, torn from the half of the leg downwards; and a red cap with a trencher was upon his head, and it was rather a long cap, and the narrator believed that the gaolers had dressed him thus as an insult. 'And I Stephen, the scribe, saw it with my eyes, and with my hands I buried him, with Prosper of Cicigliano, who had been his vassal; and no other retainers of the Colonna would have anything to do with the matter, out of fear, as I think.' Five hundred years had passed since Theodora's day, four hundred more are gone since Lorenzo the Protonotary laid his head upon the block, and still the tradition of terror and suffering clings to Sant' Angelo, and furnishes the subject of an all but modern drama. Such endurance in the character of a building is without parallel in the history of strongholds, and could be possible only in Rome, where the centuries pass as decades, and time is reckoned by the thousand years. [ILLUSTRATION: HOSPITAL OF SANTO SPIRITO From a print of the last century] The main and most important memories in the Region of Borgo, apart from the Castle, and Saint Peter's and the Vatican, are those connected with the Holy Office, the hospital and insane asylum of Santo Spirito, and with the Serristori barracks. In Rome, to go to Santo Spirito means to go mad. It is the Roman Bedlam. But there is another association with the name, and a still sadder one. There, by the gate of the long, low hospital, is still to be seen the Rota--the 'wheel'--the revolving wooden drum, with its small aperture, corresponding to an opening in the grating, through which many thousand infants have been passed by starving women to the mystery within, to a nameless death, or to grow up to a life almost as nameless and obscure. The mother, indeed, received a ticket as a sort of receipt by which she could recognize her child if she wished, but the children claimed were very few. Within, they were received by nursing Sisters, and cared for, not always wisely, but always kindly, and some of them grew up to happy lives. Modern charity, in its philistinism and well-regulated activity, condemns such wholesale readiness to take burdens which might sometimes be borne by those who lay them down. But modern charity, in such condemnation, does not take just account of a mother's love, and believes that to receive nameless children in such a way would 'encourage irresponsibility,' if not vice. And yet in Rome, where half the population could neither read nor write, infanticide was unknown, and fewer children were passed in through the Rota yearly than are murdered in many a modern city. For the last thing the worst mother will do is to kill her child; last only before that will she part with it. Which was more moral, the unrestricted charity of the Rota, or the unrestricted, legal infanticide of the old-fashioned 'baby-farm,' where superfluous children were systematically starved to death by professional harpies? On by the Borgo Santo Spirito, opposite the old church of the Penitentiaries, stands the Palazzo Serristori, memorable in the revolutionary movement of 1867. It was then the barracks of the Papal Zouaves--the brave foreign legion enlisted under Pius the Ninth, in which men of all nations were enrolled under officers of the best blood in Europe, hated more especially by the revolutionaries because they were foreigners, and because their existence, therefore, showed a foreign sympathy with the temporal power, which was a denial of the revolutionary theory which asserted the Papacy to be without friends in Europe. Wholesale murder by explosives was in its infancy then as a fine art; but the spirit was willing, and a plot was formed to blow up the castle of Sant' Angelo and the barracks of the Zouaves. The castle escaped because one of the conspirators lost heart and revealed the treachery; but the Palazzo Serristori was partially destroyed. The explosion shattered one corner of the building. It was said that the fuse burned faster than had been intended, so that the catastrophe came too soon. At all events, when it happened, about dark, only the musicians of the band were destroyed, and few of the regiment were in the building at all, so that about thirty lives were sacrificed, where the intention had been to destroy many hundreds. In the more sane condition of Europe today, it seems to us amazing that Pius the Ninth should have been generally blamed for signing the death warrant of the two atrocious villains who did the deed, and for allowing them to be executed. The fact that he was blamed, and very bitterly, gives some idea of the stupid and senseless prejudice against the popes which was the result of Antonelli's narrow and reactionary policy. [Illustration] LEO THE THIRTEENTH We commonly speak of the nineteenth century as an age of superior civilization. The truth of the assertion depends on what civilization means, but there is no denying that more blood has been shed by civilized nations during the last one hundred and twenty years than in any equal period of the world's history. Anyone may realize the fact by simply recalling the great wars which have devastated the world since the American Revolution. But the carnage was not uninterrupted. The record of death is divided in the midst by the thirty years of comparative peace which followed the battle of Waterloo and preceded the general revolution of 1848. Napoleon had harried the world, from Moscow to Cairo, from Vienna to Madrid, pouring blood upon blood, draining the world's veins dry, exhausting the destroying power of mankind in perpetual destruction. When he was gone, Europe was utterly worn out by his terrible energy, and collapsed suddenly in a state of universal nervous prostration. Then came the long peace, from 1815 to 1848. During that time the European nations, excepting England, were governed by more or less weak and timid sovereigns, and it was under their feeble rule that the great republican idea took root and grew, like a cutting from the stricken tree of the French Revolution, planted in the heart of Europe, nurtured in secret, and tended by devoted hands to a new maturity, but destined to ruin in the end, as surely as the parent stock. Those thirty and odd years were a sort of dull season in Europe--an extraordinarily uneventful period, during which the republican idea was growing, and during which the monarchic idea was decaying. Halfway through that time--about 1830--Joseph Mazzini founded the Society of Young Italy, in connection with the other secret societies of Europe, and acquired that enormous influence which even now is associated with his name. Mazzini and Garibaldi meant to make a republic of Italy. The House of Savoy did not at that time dream of a united Italian Kingdom. The most they dared hope was the acquisition of territory on the north by the expulsion of the Austrians. England and circumstances helped the Savoy family in their sudden and astonishing rise of fortune; for at that time Austria was the great military nation of Europe, while France was the naval power second to England, and through the Bourbons, Italy was largely under the influence of Austria. England saw that the creation of an independent friendly power in the Mediterranean would both tend to diminish Austria's strength by land, and would check France in her continued efforts to make the shores of the Mediterranean hers. She therefore encouraged Italy in revolution, and it is generally believed that she secretly furnished enormous sums of money, through Sir James Hudson, minister in Turin, to further the schemes of Mazzini. The profound hatred of Catholics which was so much more marked in England then than now, produced a strong popular feeling there in favour of the revolutionaries, who inveighed against all existing sovereignties in general, but were particularly bitter against the government of the Popes. The revolution thus supported by England, and guided by such men as Mazzini and Garibaldi, made progress. The legendary nature of Rome, as mistress of the world, appealed also to many Italians, and 'Rome' became the catchword of liberty. The situation was similar in other European countries; secret societies were as active, and to the revolutionaries the result seemed as certain. But the material of monarchic opposition was stronger elsewhere than in Italy. Prussia had Hohenzollerns and Austria had Hapsburgs--races that had held their own and reigned successfully for hundreds of years. The smaller German principalities had traditions of conservative obedience to a prince, which were not easily broken. On the other hand, in Italy the government of the Bourbons and their relatives was a barbarous misrule, of which the only good point was that it did not oppress the people with taxes, and in Rome the Pontifical chair had been occupied by a succession of politically insignificant Popes from Pius the Seventh, Napoleon's victim, to Gregory the Sixteenth. There was no force in Italy to oppose the general revolutionary idea, except the conservatism of individuals, in a country which has always been revolutionary. Much the same was true of France. But in both countries there were would-be monarchs waiting in the background, ready to promote any change whereby they might profit--Louis Napoleon, and the Kings of Sardinia, Charles Albert first, and after his defeat by the Austrians and his abdication, the semi-heroic, semi-legendary Victor Emmanuel. Gregory the Sixteenth died in 1846, and Pius the Ninth was elected in his stead--a man still young, full of the highest ideals and of most honest purpose; enthusiastic, a man who had begun life in military service and was destined to end it in captivity, and upon whom it was easy to impose in every way, since he was politically too credulous for any age, and too diffident, if not too timid, for the age in which he lived. His private virtues made him a model to the Christian world, while his political weakness made him the sport of his enemies. The only stable thing in him was his goodness; everything else was in perpetual vacillation. In every true account of every political action of Pius the Ninth, the first words are, 'the Pope hesitated.' And he hesitated to the last--he hesitated through a pontificate of thirty-two years, he outreigned the 'years of Peter,' and he lost the temporal power. The great movement came to a head in 1848. A year of revolutions, riots, rebellions and new constitutions. So perfectly had it been organized that it broke out almost simultaneously all over Europe--in France, Italy, Prussia and Austria. Just when the revolution was rife Pius the Ninth proclaimed an amnesty. That was soon after his election, and he vacillated into a sort of passive approval of the Young Italian party. It was even proposed that Italy should become a confederation of free states under the presidency of the Pope. No man in his senses believed in such a possibility, but at that time an unusual number of people were not in their senses; Europe had gone mad. Everyone knows the history of that year, when one Emperor, several Kings, and numerous princes and ministers scattered in all directions, like men running away from a fire that is just going to reach a quantity of explosives. The fire was the reaction after long inactivity. Pius the Ninth fled like the rest, when his favourite minister, Count Rossi, had been stabbed to death on the steps of the Cancelleria. Some of the sovereigns got safely back to their thrones. The Pope was helped back by France and kept on his throne, first by the Republic, and then, with one short intermission, by Louis Napoleon. In 1870, the French needed all their strength for their own battles, and gave up fighting those of the Vatican. During that long period, from 1849 to 1870, Pius the Ninth governed Rome in comparative security, in spite of occasional revolutionary outbreaks, and in kindness if not in wisdom. Taxation was insignificant. Work was plentiful and well paid, considering the country and the times. Charities were enormous. The only restriction on liberty was political, never civil. Reforms and improvements of every kind were introduced. When Gregory the Sixteenth died, Rome was practically a mediæval city; when the Italians took it, twenty-four years later, it was a fairly creditable modern capital. The government of Pius the Ninth was paternal, and if he was not a wise father, he was at all events the kindest of men. The same cannot be said of Cardinal Antonelli, his prime minister, who was the best hated man of his day, not only in Europe and Italy, but by a large proportion of Churchmen. He was one of those strong and unscrupulous men who appeared everywhere in Europe as reactionaries in opposition to the great revolution. On a smaller scale--perhaps because he represented a much smaller power--he is to be classed with Disraeli, Metternich, Cavour and Bismarck. In palliation of many of his doings, it should be remembered that he was not a priest; for the Cardinalate is a dignity not necessarily associated with the priesthood, and Antonelli was never ordained. He was a fighter and a schemer by nature, and he schemed and fought all his life for the preservation of the temporal power in Rome. He failed, and lived to see his defeat, and he remained till his death immured in the Vatican with Pius the Ninth. He used to live in a small and almost mean apartment, opening upon the grand staircase that leads up from the court of Saint Damasus. When the Italians entered Rome through the breach at the Porta Pia, Italy was unified. It is a curious fact that Italy was never at any time unified except by force. The difference between the unification under Julius Cæsar and Augustus, and the unification under Victor Emmanuel, is very simple. Under the first Cæsars, Rome conquered the Italians; under the House of Savoy, the Italians conquered Rome. The taking of Rome in 1870 was the deathblow of mediævalism; and the passing away of King Victor Emmanuel and of Pope Pius the Ninth was the end of romantic Italy, if one may use the expression to designate the character of the country through all that chain of big and little events which make up the thrilling story of the struggle for Italian unity. After the struggle for unity, began the struggle for life--more desperate, more dangerous, but immeasurably less romantic. There is all the difference between the two which lies between unsound banking and perilous fighting. The long Pontificate of Pius the Ninth came to a close almost simultaneously with the reign and the life of Victor Emmanuel, first King of United Italy, after the Pope and the King had faced each other during nearly a third of the century, two political enemies of whom neither felt the slightest personal rancour against the other. On his death-bed, the King earnestly desired the Pope's parting blessing, but although the Pope gave it, the message arrived too late, for the old King was dead. Little more than a month later, Pius the Ninth departed this life. That was the end of the old era. The disposition of Europe in the year 1878, when Leo the Thirteenth was crowned, was strongly anti-Catholic. England had reached the height of her power and influence, and represented to the world the scientific-practical idea in its most successful form. She was then traversing that intellectual phase of so-called scientific atheism of which Huxley and Herbert Spencer were the chief teachers. Their view seems not to have been so hostile to the Catholic Church in particular as it was distinctly antagonistic to all religion whatsoever. People were inclined to believe that all creeds were a thing of the past, and that a scientific millennium was at hand. No one who lived in those days can forget the weary air of pity with which the Huxleyites and the Spencerians spoke of all humanity's beliefs. England's enormous political power somehow lent weight to the anti-religious theories of those two leading men of science, which never really had the slightest hold upon the believing English people. Italians, for instance, readily asserted that England had attained her position among nations by the practice of scientific atheism, and classed Darwin the discoverer with Spencer the destroyer; for all Latins are more or less born Anglomaniacs, and naturally envy and imitate Anglo-Saxon character, even while finding fault with them, just as we envy and imitate Latin art and fashions. Under a German dynasty and a Prime Minister of Israelitish name and extraction, the English had become the ideal after which half of Europe hankered in vain. England's influence was then distinctly anti-Catholic. Germany, fresh in unity, and still quivering with the long-forgotten delight of conquest, was also, as an Empire, anti-Catholic, and the Kultur Kampf, which was really a religious struggle, was at its height. Germany's religions are official at the one extreme and popular at the other; but there is no intermediate religion to speak of--and what we should call cultured people, scientific men, the professorial class, are largely atheistic. For some time after the proclamation of the Empire, Germany meant Prussia to the rest of the world--Prussia officially evangelical, privately sceptical, the rigid backbone of the whole German military mammoth. The fact that about one-third of the population of the Empire is Catholic was overlooked by Prussia and forgotten by Europe. France--Catholic in the provinces--was Paris just then--republican Paris. And all French Republics have been anti-Catholic, as all French monarchies have been the natural allies of the Vatican, as institutions, though individual Kings, like Francis the First, have opposed the Popes from time to time. France, in 1878, was recovering with astonishing vitality from her defeat, but the new growth was unlike the old. The definite destruction of the old France had taken place in 1870; and the new France bore little resemblance to the old. It was, as it is now, Catholic, but anti-papal. The smaller northern powers, Scandinavia and Holland, were anti-Catholic of course. Russia has always been the natural enemy of the Catholic Church. Of the remaining European nations, only Austria could be said to have any political importance, and even she was terrorized by the new German Empire. Italy had been the scene of one of those quick comedies of national self-transformation which start trains of consequences rather than produce immediately great results. One may call it a comedy, not in a depreciating sense, but because the piece was played out to a successful issue with little bloodshed and small hindrance. It had been laid down as a principle by the playwrights that the Vatican was the natural enemy of Italian unity; and the playwrights and principal actors, Cavour, Garibaldi and others, were all atheists. The new Italy of their creation was, therefore, an anti-Catholic power, while the whole Italian people, below the artificial scientific level, were, as they are now, profoundly, and even superstitiously, religious. That was the state of the European world when Leo the Thirteenth was elected. [Illustration: POPE LEO XIII. From the Portrait by Lenbach] The Popes have always occupied an exceptional position as compared with other sovereigns. There is not, indeed, in the history of any nation or community any record of an office so anomalous. To all intents and purposes Christianity is a form of socialism, the Church is a democracy, and the government of the Popes has been despotic, in the proper sense,--that is, it has been one of 'absolute authority.' It is probably not necessary to say anything about the first statement, which few, I fancy, will be inclined to deny. Pure socialism means community of property, community of social responsibility, and community of principles. As regards the democratic rules by which the Church governs itself, there cannot be two ways of looking at them. Peasant and prince have an equal chance of wearing the triple crown; but in history it will be found that it has been more often worn by peasants than by princes, and most often by men issuing from the middle classes. Broadly, the requirements have always been those answered by personal merit rather than by any other consideration. The exceptions have perhaps been many, and the abuses not a few, but the general principle cannot be denied, and the present Pope came to the supreme ecclesiastical dignity by much the same steps as the majority of his predecessors. Since his elevation to the pontificate the Pecci family have established, beyond a doubt, their connection with the noble race of that name, long prominent in Siena, and having an ancient and historical right to bear arms and the title of count--a dignity of uncertain value in Italy, south of the Tuscan border, but well worth having when it has originated in the northern part of the country. Joachim Vincent Pecci, since 1878 Pope, under the name of Leo the Thirteenth, was born at Carpineto, in the Volscian hills, in 1810. His father had served in the Napoleonic wars, but had already retired to his native village, where he was at that time a landed proprietor of considerable importance and the father of several children. Carpineto lies on the mountain side, in the neighbourhood of Segni, in a rocky district, and in the midst of a country well known to Italians as the Ciociaria. This word is derived from 'cioce,' the sandals worn by the peasants in that part of the country, in the place of shoes, and bound by leathern thongs to the foot and leg over linen strips which serve for stockings. The sandal indeed is common enough, or was common not long ago, in the Sabine and Samnian hills and in some parts of the Abruzzi, but it is especially the property of the Volscians, all the way from Montefortino, the worst den of thieves in Italy, down to the Neapolitan frontier. Joachim Pecci was born with a plentiful supply of that rough, bony, untiring mountaineer's energy which has made the Volscians what they have been for good or evil since the beginning of history. Those who have been to Carpineto have seen the dark old pile in which the Pope was born, with its tower which tops the town, as the dwellings of the small nobles always did in every hamlet and village throughout the south of Europe. For the Pecci were good gentlefolk long ago, and the portraits of Pope Leo's father and mother, in their dress of the last century, still hang in their places in the mansion. His Holiness strongly resembles both, for he has his father's brow and eyes, and his mother's mouth and chin. In his youth he seems to have been a very dark man, as clearly appears from the portrait of him painted when he was Nuncio in Brussels at about the age of thirty-four years. The family type is strong. One of the Pope's nieces might have sat for a portrait of his mother. The extraordinarily clear, pale complexion is also a family characteristic. Leo the Thirteenth's face seems cut of live alabaster, and it is not a figure of speech to say that it appears to emit a light of its own. Born and bred in the keen air of the Volscian hills, he is a southern Italian, but of the mountains, and there is still about him something of the hill people. He has the long, lean, straight, broad-shouldered frame of the true mountaineer, the marvellously bright eye, the eagle features, the well-knit growth of strength, traceable even in extreme old age; and in character there is in him the well-balanced combination of a steady caution with an unerring, unhesitating decision, which appears in those great moments when history will not wait for little men's long phrases, when the pendulum world is swinging its full stroke, and when it is either glory or death to lay strong hands upon its weight. But when it stops for a time, and hangs motionless, the little men gather about it, and touch it boldly, and make theories about its next unrest. In the matter of physique, there is, indeed, a resemblance between Leo the Thirteenth, President Lincoln and Mr. Gladstone--long, sinewy men all three, of a bony constitution and indomitable vitality, with large skulls, high cheek-bones, and energetic jaws--all three men of great physical strength, of profound capacity for study, of melancholic disposition, and of unusual eloquence. It might almost be said that these three men represent three distinct stages of one type--the real or material, the intellectual and the spiritual. From earliest youth each of the three was, by force of circumstances, turned to the direction which he was ultimately to follow. Lincoln was thrown upon facts for his education; Gladstone received the existing form of education in its highest development, while the Pope was brought up under the domination of spiritual thoughts at a time when they had but lately survived the French Revolution. Born during the height of the conflict between belief and unbelief, Leo the Thirteenth, by a significant fatality, was raised to the pontificate when the Kultur Kampf was raging and the attention of the world was riveted on the deadly struggle between the Roman Catholic Church and Prince Bismarck--a struggle in which the great chancellor found his equal, if not his master. The Pope spent his childhood in the simple surroundings of Carpineto, than which none could be simpler, as everyone knows who has ever visited an Italian country gentleman in his home. Early hours, constant exercise, plain food and farm interests made a strong man of him, with plenty of simple common sense. As a boy he was a great walker and climber, and it is said that he was excessively fond of birding, the only form of sport afforded by that part of Italy, and practised there in those times, as it is now, not only with guns, but by means of nets. It has often been said that poets and lovers of freedom come more frequently from the mountains and the seashore than from a flat inland region. Leo the Thirteenth ranks high among the scholarly poets of our day, and is certainly conspicuous for the liberality of his views. As long as he was in Perugia, it is well known that he received the officers of the Italian garrison and any government officials of rank who chanced to be present in the city, not merely now and then, or in a formal way, but constantly and with a cordiality which showed how much he appreciated their conversation. It may be doubted whether in our country an acknowledged leader of a political minority would either choose or dare to associate openly with persons having an official capacity on the other side. But the stiff mannerism of the patriarchal system which survived until recently from the early Roman times gave him that formal tone and authoritative manner which are so characteristic of his conversation in private. His deliberate but unhesitating speech makes one think of Goethe's 'without haste, without rest.' Yet his formality is not of the slow and circumlocutory sort; on the contrary, it is energetically precise, and helps rather than mars the sound casting of each idea. The formality of strong people belongs to them naturally, and is the expression of a certain unchanging persistence; that of the weak is mostly assumed for the sake of magnifying the little strength they have. The Pope's voice is as distinctly individual as his manner of speaking. It is not deep nor very full, but, considering his great age, it is wonderfully clear and ringing, and it has a certain incisiveness of sound which gives it great carrying power. Pius the Ninth had as beautiful a voice, both in compass and richness of quality, as any baritone singer in the Sixtine choir. No one who ever heard him intone the 'Te Deum' in Saint Peter's, in the old days, can forget the grand tones. He was gifted in many ways--with great physical beauty, with a rare charm of manner, and with a most witty humour; and in character he was one of the most gentle and kind-hearted men of his day, as he was also one of the least initiative, so to say, while endowed with the high moral courage of boundless patience and political humility. Leo the Thirteenth need speak but half a dozen words, with one glance of his flashing eyes and one gesture of his noticeably long arm and transparently thin hand, and the moral distance between his predecessor and himself is at once apparent. There is strength still in every movement, there is deliberate decision in every tone, there is lofty independence in every look. Behind these there may be kindliness, charity, and all the milder gifts of virtue; but what is apparent is a sort of energetic, manly trenchancy which forces admiration rather than awakens sympathy. [Illustration: LIBRARY OF THE VATICAN] When speaking at length on any occasion he is eloquent, but with the eloquence of the dictator, and sometimes of the logician, rather than that of the persuader. His enunciation is exceedingly distinct in Latin and Italian, and also in French, a language in which he expresses himself with ease and clearness. In Latin and Italian he chooses his words with great care and skill, and makes use of fine distinctions, in the Ciceronian manner, and he certainly commands a larger vocabulary than most men. His bearing is erect at all times, and on days when he is well his step is quick as he moves about his private apartments. 'Il Papa corre sempre,'--'the Pope always runs'--is often said by the guards and familiars of the antechamber. A man who speaks slowly but moves fast is generally one who thinks long and acts promptly--a hard hitter, as we should familiarly say. It is not always true that a man's character is indicated by his daily habits, nor that his intellectual tendency is definable by the qualities of his temper or by his personal tastes. Carlyle was one instance of the contrary; Lincoln was another; Bismarck was a great third, with his iron head and his delicate feminine hands. All men who direct, control or influence the many have a right to be judged by the world according to their main deeds, to the total exclusion of their private lives. There are some whose public actions are better than their private ones, out of all proportion; and there are others who try to redeem the patent sins of their political necessities by the honest practice of their private virtues. In some rare, high types, head, heart and hand are balanced to one expression of power, and every deed is a mathematical function of all three. Leo the Thirteenth probably approaches as nearly to such superiority as any great man now living. As a statesman, his abilities are admitted to be of the highest order; as a scholar he is undisputedly one of the first Latinists of our time, and one of the most accomplished writers in Latin and Italian prose and verse; as a man, he possesses the simplicity of character which almost always accompanies greatness, together with a healthy sobriety of temper, habit and individual taste rarely found in those beings whom we might call 'motors' among men. It is commonly said that the Pope has not changed his manner of life since he was a simple bishop. He is, indeed, a man who could not easily change either his habits or his opinions; for he is of that enduring, melancholic, slow-speaking, hard-thinking temperament which makes hard workers, and in which everything tends directly to hard work as a prime object, even with persons in whose existence necessary labour need play no part, and far more so with those whose smallest daily tasks hew history out of humanity in the rough state. Of the Pope's statesmanship and Latinity the world knows much, and is sure to hear more, while he lives--most, perhaps, hereafter, when another and a smaller man shall sit in the great Pope's chair. For he is a great Pope. There has not been his equal, intellectually, for a long time, nor shall we presently see his match again. The era of individualities is not gone by, as some pretend. Men of middle age have seen in a lifetime Cavour, Louis Napoleon, Garibaldi, Disraeli, Bismarck, Leo the Thirteenth--and the young Emperor of Germany. With the possible exception of Cavour, who died, poisoned as some say, before he had lived out his life, few will deny that of all these the present Pope possesses, in many respects, the most evenly balanced and stubbornly sane disposition. That fact alone speaks highly for the judgment of the men who elected him, in Italy's half-crazed days, immediately after the death of Victor Emmanuel. At all events, there he stands, at the head of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, as wise a leader as any who in our day has wielded power; as skilled, in his own manner, as any who hold the pen; and better than all that, as straightly simple and honest a Christian man as ever fought a great battle for his faith's sake. Straight-minded, honest and simple he is, yet keen, sensitive and nobly cautious; for there is no nobility in him who risks a cause for the vanity of his own courage, and who, in blind hatred of his enemies, squanders the devotion of those who love him. In a sense, today, the greater the man the greater the peacemaker, and Leo the Thirteenth ranks highest among those who have helped the cause of peace in this century. In spite of his great age, the Holy Father enjoys excellent health, and leads a life full of occupations from morning till night. He rises very early, and when, at about six o'clock in the morning, his valet, Pio Centra, enters his little bedroom, he more often finds the Pope risen than asleep. He is accustomed to sleep little--not more than four or five hours at night, though he rests a short time after dinner. We are told that sometimes he has been found asleep in his chair at his writing-table at dawn, not having been to bed at all. Of late he frequently says mass in a chapel in his private apartments, and the mass is served by Pio Centra. On Sundays and feast-days he says it in another chapel preceding the throne-room. The little chapel is of small dimensions, but by opening the door into the neighbouring room a number of persons can assist at the mass. The permission, when given, is obtained on application to the 'Maestro di Camera,' and is generally conceded only to distinguished foreign persons. After saying mass himself, the Holy Father immediately hears a second one, said by one of the private chaplains on duty for the week, whose business it is to take care of the altar and to assist. Frequently he gives the communion with his own hand to those who are present at his mass. After mass he breakfasts upon coffee and goat's milk, and this milk is supplied from goats kept in the Vatican gardens--a reminiscence of Carpineto and of the mountaineer's early life. Every day at about ten he receives the Secretary of State, Cardinal Rampolla, and converses with him for a good hour or more upon current affairs. On Tuesdays and Fridays the Secretary of State receives the Diplomatic Corps in his own apartments, and on those days the Under Secretary confers with the Pope in his chief's place. The acting prefect of the 'Holy Apostolic Palaces' is received by the Pope when he has business to expound. On the first and third Fridays of each month the Maggiordomo is received, and so on, in order, the cardinal prefects of the several Roman congregations, the Under Secretaries, and all others in charge of the various offices. In the papal antechamber there is a list of them, with the days of their audiences. During the morning the Pope receives cardinals, bishops and ambassadors who are going away on leave, or who have just returned, princes and members of the Roman nobility, and distinguished foreigners. At ten o'clock he takes a cup of broth brought by Centra. At two in the afternoon, or a little earlier, he dines, and he is most abstemious, although he has an excellent digestion. His private physician, Doctor Giuseppe Lapponi, has been heard to say that he himself eats more at one meal than the Holy Father eats in a week. Every day, unless indisposed, some one is received in private audience. These audiences are usually for the cardinal prefects of the congregations, the patriarchs, archbishops and bishops who are in Rome at the time, and distinguished personages. When the weather is fine the Pope generally walks or drives in the garden. He is carried out of his apartments to the gate in a sedan-chair by the liveried 'sediarii,' or chair-porters; or if he goes out by the small door known as that of Paul the Fifth, the carriage awaits him, and he gets into it with the private chamberlain, who is always a monsignore. It is as well to say here, for the benefit of non-Catholics, that 'monsignori' are not necessarily bishops, nor even consecrated priests, the title being really a secular one. Two Noble Guards of the corps of fifty gentlemen known under that name ride beside the carriage doors. The closed carriage is a simple brougham, having the Pope's coat of arms painted on the door, but in summer he occasionally goes out in an open landau. He drives several times round the avenues, and when he descends, the officer of the Guards dismounts and opens the carriage door. He generally walks in the neighbourhood of the Chinese pavilion and along the Torrione, where the papal observatory is built. Leo the Thirteenth is fond of variety--and no wonder, shut up for life as he is in the Vatican; he enjoys directing work and improvements in the gardens; he likes to talk with Vespignani, the architect of the Holy Apostolic Palaces, who is also the head of the Catholic party in the Roman municipality, to go over the plans of work he has ordered, to give his opinion, and especially to see that the work itself is executed in the shortest possible time. Time is short for a pope; Sixtus the Fifth, who filled Rome and Italy with himself, reigned only five years; Rodrigo Borgia eleven years; Leo the Tenth, but nine. [Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF ACQUA FELICE] In 1893 the Pope began to inhabit the new pavilion designed and built by Vespignani in pure fifteenth-century style. It is built against the Torrione, the ancient round tower constructed by Saint Leo the Fourth about the year 850. In 1894 Leo the Thirteenth made a further extension, and joined another building to the existing one by means of a loggia, on the spot once occupied by the old barracks of the papal gendarmes, who are still lodged in the gardens, and whose duty it is to patrol the precincts by day and night. Indeed, the fact that two dynamiters were caught in the garden in 1894 proves that a private police is necessary. During the great heat of summer the Pope, after saying mass, goes into the garden about nine in the morning and spends the whole day there, receiving everyone in the garden pavilion he has built for himself, just as he would receive in the Vatican. He dines there, too, and rests afterward, guarded by the gendarmes on duty, to whom he generally sends a measure of good wine--another survival of a country custom; and in the cool of the day he again gets into his carriage, and often does not return to the Vatican till after sunset, toward the hour of Ave Maria. In the evening, about an hour later,--at 'one of the night,' according to the old Roman computation of time,--he attends at the recitation of the rosary, or evening prayers, by his private chaplain, and he requires his immediate attendants to assist also. He then retires to his room, where he reads, studies or writes verses, and at about ten o'clock he eats a light supper. While in the garden he is fond of talking about plants and flowers with the director of the gardens. He walks with the officer of the Noble Guards and with the private chamberlain on duty. He speaks freely of current topics, tells anecdotes of his own life and visits the gazelles, goats, deer and other animals kept in the gardens. From the cupola of Saint Peter's the whole extent of the grounds is visible, and when the Pope is walking, the visitors, over four hundred feet above, stop to watch him. He has keen eyes, and sees them also. 'Let us show ourselves!' he exclaims on such occasions. 'At least they will not be able to say that the Pope is ill!' The Pope's favourite poets are Virgil and Dante. He knows long passages of both by heart, and takes pleasure in quoting them. When Father Michael, the apostolic prefect to Erithrea, was taking his leave, with the other Franciscans who accompanied him to Africa, his Holiness recited to them, with great spirit, Dante's canto upon St. Francis. The Pope reads the newspapers, passages of interest being marked for him by readers in order to save time. He frequently writes letters to the bishops, and composes encyclicals in a polished and Ciceronian style of Latin. The encyclicals are printed at the private press of the Vatican, an institution founded by him and furnished with all modern improvements. They are first published in the 'Osservatore Romano,' the official daily paper of the Vatican, and then finally translated into Italian and other languages, and sent out to the bishops abroad. Leo the Thirteenth likes to see and talk with men of letters, as well as to read their books. Two years ago he requested Professor Brunelli of Perugia to buy for him the poetical works of the Abbé Zanella. The request is characteristic, for his Holiness insisted upon paying for the book, like anyone else. When great pilgrimages are to be organized, the first step taken is to form committees at the place of origin. The leader of the pilgrimage is usually the head of the diocese, who then writes to Rome to make the arrangements. The Committee on Pilgrimages provides quarters for the pilgrims, at the Lazaret of Saint Martha, or elsewhere, that they may be properly lodged and fed. On the occasion of the celebrated French workingmen's pilgrimage, the great halls in the Belvedere wing, including the old quarters of the engineer corps, and of the artillery and the riding-school, were opened as dining-halls, where the pilgrims came morning and evening to their meals; the kitchen department and the general superintendence were in charge of Sisters, and everything was directed by the Roman Committee of Pilgrimages. The visitors were received by the Circolo, or Society of Saint Peter's, and by the first Artisan Workmen's Association, the members of which waited at table, wearing aprons. The Circolo has an office for pilgrimages which facilitates arrangements with the railways, and provides lodgings in hotels, inns and private houses in Rome for the well-to-do; but the General Committee on Pilgrimages provides lodgings for the poor. The head of the pilgrimage also makes arrangements for the mass which the Holy Father celebrates for the pilgrims, and for the audience which follows. If the pilgrimage is large, the mass is said in Saint Peter's; if small, in the Vatican, either in the Loggia of the Beatification or in the Sala Ducale. At the audience the pilgrims place their offerings in the Pope's hands, and he blesses the rosaries, crosses and other objects of devotion, and gives small silver medals in memory of the occasion. Since 1870 the Pope has not conducted the solemn services either in Saint Peter's or in the Sixtine Chapel. The only services of this kind in which he takes part are those held in the Sixtine Chapel on the anniversary of the death of Pius the Ninth, and on the anniversary of his own coronation, March 3. At these two functions there are also present the Sacred College, the bishops and prelates, the Roman nobility, the Knights of Malta, the Diplomatic Corps in full dress, and any foreign Catholic royal princes who may chance to be in Rome at the time. At the 'public' consistories, held with great pomp in the Sala Regia, the Pope gives the new hat to each new cardinal; but there are also 'private' consistories held in the beautiful Sala del Concistoro, near the hall of the Swiss Guards, at the entrance to the Pope's apartments. Moreover, the Pope appears at beatifications and canonizations, and during the present pontificate these have been generally held in the Hall of Beatifications, a magnificent room with a tribune, above the portico of Saint Peter's, turned into a chapel for the occasion, with innumerable candles and lamps, the transparency of the beatified person, called the Gloria, and standards on which are painted representations of miracles. The last of these ceremonies was held in Saint Peter's, with closed doors, but in the presence of an enormous concourse, with the greatest pomp, the whole of the Noble Guard and the Palatine Guard turning out, and order being preserved by the Swiss Guards, the gendarmes, and the vergers of the basilica, known as the 'Sanpietrini.' In Holy Week, in order to meet the wants of the many eminent and devout Catholics who then flock to Rome, the Holy Father celebrates mass two or three times in the Sala Ducale, which is then turned into a chapel. During these masses motetts are sung by the famous Sixtine choir, under the direction of the old Maestro Mustafa, once the greatest soprano of the century, but at the same time so accomplished a musician as to have earned the common name of 'Palestrina redivivus.' It is to be regretted that he has never allowed any of his beautiful compositions to be published. On such occasions as Christmas Day or the feast of Saint Joachim, by whose name the Pope was christened, he receives the College of Cardinals, the bishops present in Rome, many prelates, the heads of religious bodies, some officers of the old pontifical army and of the guards, and the dignitaries of the papal court, in his own private library, where he talks familiarly with each in turn, and quite without ceremony. Reigning sovereigns, princes and distinguished persons are received in the grand throne-room, where the throne is covered with red velvet, with coats of arms at the angles of the canopy. Upon a large pier-table, in the rococo style, between the windows and opposite the throne, stands a great crucifix of ivory and ebony, between two candlesticks. The carpet used at such times was presented by Spain. Before the Emperor of Germany's visit the Pope himself gave particular directions for the dressing of the throne and the arrangement of the rooms. When great personages are received their suites are also presented, after which the Pope retires with his guest to the small private throne-room. Before coming to the Pope's presence it is necessary to pass through many anterooms, the Sala Clementina, the hall of the palfrenieri and sediarii,--that is, of the grooms and chair-porters,--the hall of the gendarmes, the antechamber of the Palatine Guard, that of the officers on duty, the hall of the Arras, that of the chamberlains and Noble Guards and at last the antechamber of the Maestro di Camera--there are eight in all. Persons received in audience are accompanied by the 'camerieri segreti,' who do the honours in full dress, wearing their chains and carrying their staves. The private library is a spacious room lined with bookcases made of a yellow wood from Brazil, some of which are curtained. Busts of several former Popes stand upon marble columns. To the Pope's bedroom, only his private valet and his secretaries have access. It is of small dimensions, and contains only a bed, in an alcove adorned with graceful marble columns, a writing-table, an arm-chair and kneeling stool, and one wardrobe. Besides these, there is his private study, in which the table and chair stand upon a little carpeted platform, other tables being placed on each side upon the floor, together with an extremely uncomfortable but magnificent straight-backed arm-chair, which is one of the gifts offered on the occasion of the episcopal jubilee. There is, moreover, a little room containing only a lounge and an old-fashioned easy-chair with 'wings' and nothing else. It is here that the Holy Father retires to take his afternoon nap, and the robust nature of his nerves is proved by the fact that he lies down with his eyes facing the broad light of the window. The private apartment occupies the second floor, according to Italian reckoning, though we Americans should call it the third; it is on a level with Raphael's loggie. The floor above it is inhabited by Cardinal Rampolla, the Secretary of State. The 'pontifical court,' as it is called, consists (1898) of Cardinal Rampolla, the Secretary of State; Cardinal Mario Mocenni, the pro-prefect of the Holy Apostolic Palaces, a personage of the highest importance, who has sole control of everything connected with the Vatican palace and all the vast mass of adjoining buildings; the Maggiordomo, who, besides many other functions, is the manager of the museums, galleries and inhabited apartments; the Maestro di Camera, who nearly corresponds to a master of ceremonies, and superintends all audiences; the almoner and manager of the papal charities, assisted by a distinguished priest, who is also a lawyer, formerly secretary to the well-known Monsignor de Merode; a monk of the Dominican order, who supervises the issuing of books printed at the Vatican; a chief steward; four private secretaries, who take turns of service lasting a week for each, and are always with the Pope, and finally the chief of the Vatican police. Moreover, his Holiness has his private preacher, who delivers sermons before him in Advent and Lent, and his confessor, both of whom are always Capuchin monks, in accordance with a very ancient tradition. It must not be supposed by the uninitiated that these few persons in any way represent the central directive administration of the Catholic Church. On the contrary, the only one of them who is occupied in that larger field is Cardinal Rampolla, the Secretary of State. The others are, strictly speaking, the chief personages of the pontifical household, as we should say. But their offices are not sinecures. The Pope's restless energy extracts work from the men about him as one squeezes water from a sponge. In the days of Pius the Ninth, after the fall of the temporal power, the Vatican was overrun and overcrowded with useless but well-paid officials, officers and functionaries great and small, who took refuge there against the advancing wave of change. When Leo the Thirteenth had been on the throne only a few weeks, there was sold everywhere a comic print representing the Pope, with a huge broom, sweeping all the useless people pell-mell down the steps of the Vatican into the Piazza of Saint Peter's. As often happens, the caricaturist saw the truth. In a reign that has lasted twenty years, Leo the Thirteenth has done away with much that was useless, worthless and old-fashioned, and much that cumbered the narrow patch of earth on which so important a part of the world's business is transacted. He is a great simplifier of details, and a strong leveller of obstructions, so that his successor in the pontificate will find it a comparatively easy thing to keep the mechanism in order in its present state. [Illustration: THE VATICAN FROM THE PIAZZA OF SAINT PETER'S] The strictest economy, even to the minutest details, is practised in the Vatican. It appears certain that the accounts of the vast household have often been inspected by the Pope, whose prime object is to prevent any waste of money where so much is needed for the maintenance of church institutions in all parts of the world. In the midst of outward magnificence the papal establishment is essentially frugal, for the splendid objects in the Pope's apartments, even to many of the articles of furniture, are gifts received from the faithful of all nations. But the money which pours into the Vatican from the contributions of Catholics all over Christendom is only held in trust, to be expended in support of missions, of poor bishoprics, and of such devout and charitable organizations as need help, wherever they may be. That nothing may be lost which can possibly be applied to a good purpose is one of Leo the Thirteenth's most constant occupations. He has that marvellous memory for little things which many great leaders and sovereigns have had; he remembers not only faces and names, but figures and facts, with surprising and sometimes discomfiting accuracy. In his private life, as distinguished from his public and political career, what is most striking is the combination of shrewdness and simplicity in the best sense of both words. Like Pius the Ninth, he has most firmly set his face against doing anything which could be construed as financially advantageous to his family, who are good gentlefolk, and well to do in the world, but no more. All that he has as Pope he holds in trust for the Church in the most literal acceptation of the term. The contributions of Catholics, on being received, are immediately invested in securities bearing interest, which securities are again sold as may be necessary for current needs, and expended for the welfare of Catholic Christianity. Every penny is most carefully accounted for. These moneys are generally invested in Italian national bonds--a curious fact, and indicative of considerable confidence in the existing state of things, as well as a significant guarantee of the Vatican's good faith towards the monarchy. It is commonly said in Rome among bankers that the Vatican makes the market price of Italian bonds. Whether this be true or not, it is an undeniable fact that the finances of the Vatican are under the direct and exceedingly thrifty control of the Pope himself. To some extent we may be surprised to find so much plain common sense surviving in the character of one who has so long followed a spiritual career. We should not have looked for such practical wisdom in Pius the Ninth. But the times are changed since then, and are most changed in most recent times. The head of the Catholic Church today must be a modern man, a statesman, and an administrator; he must be able to cope with difficulties as well as heresies; he must lead his men as well as guide his flock; he must be the Church's steward as well as her consecrated arch-head; he must be the reformer of manners as well as the preserver of faith; he must be the understander of men's venial mistakes as well as the censor of their mortal sins. Battles for belief are no longer fought only with books and dogmas, opinions and theories. Everything may serve nowadays, from money, which is the fuel of nations, to wit, which is the weapon of the individual; and the man who would lose no possible vantage must have both a heavy hand and a light touch. By his character and natural gifts, Leo the Thirteenth is essentially active rather than contemplative, and it is not surprising that the chief acts of his pontificate should have dealt rather with political matters than with questions of dogma and ecclesiastical authority. It has certainly been the object of the present Pope to impress upon the world the necessity of Christianity in general, and of the Roman Catholic Church in particular, as a means of social redemption and a factor in political stability. This seems to be his inmost conviction, as shown in all his actions and encyclical letters. One is impressed, at every turn, by the strength of his belief in religion and in his own mission to spread it abroad. In regard to forms of faith, the opinions of mankind differ very widely, but the majority of intelligent men now living seem to hold a more or less distinct faith of one sort or another, and to require faith of some sort in their fellow-men. Common atheism has had its little day, and is out of fashion. It is certainly not possible to define that which has taken the place of the pseudo-scientific materialism which plagued society twenty or thirty years ago, and it is certainly beyond the province of this book to examine into the current convictions with which we are to begin the twentieth century. Unprejudiced persons will not, however, withhold their admiration in reviewing the life of a man who has devoted his energies, his intelligence and his strength, not to mention the enormous power wielded by him as the head of the Church, to the furtherance and accomplishment of ends which so many of us believe to be good. For the pontificate of Leo the Thirteenth has differed from that of his predecessor in that it has been active rather than passive. While Pius the Ninth was the head of the Church suffering, Leo the Thirteenth is the leader of the Church militant. This seems to be the reason why he has more than once been accused of inconsistency in his actions, notably in his instructions to French Catholics, as compared with the position he has maintained towards the Italian government. People seem to forget that, whereas the question of temporal power is deeply involved in the latter case, it has nothing whatever to do with the former, and as this question is the one most often brought up against the papacy and discussed in connection with it by people who seem to have very little idea of its real meaning, it may be as well to state here at once the Pope's own view of it. 'The temporary sovereignty is not absolutely requisite for the existence of the papacy, since the Popes were deprived of it during several centuries, but it is required in order that the pontiff's independence may display itself freely, without obstacles, and be evident and apparent in the eyes of the world. It is the social form, so to say, of his guardianship, and of his manifestation. It is necessary--not to existence, but to a right existence. The Pope who is not a sovereign is necessarily a subject, because (in the social existence of a monarchy) there is no mean term between subject and sovereign. A Pope who is a subject of a given government is continually exposed to its influence and pressure, or at least to influences connected with political aims and interests.' [Illustration: RAPHAEL'S "TRANSFIGURATION"] The writer from whom these lines are quoted comes to the natural and logical conclusion that this is not the normal position which should be occupied by the head of the Church. I may remark here that the same view is held in other countries besides Italy. The Emperor of Russia is the undisputed head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Queen Victoria occupies, by the British Constitution, almost exactly the same position towards the Anglican Church. In practice, though certainly not in theory, it is the evident purpose of the young German Emperor, constitutionally or unconstitutionally, to create for himself the same dominant pontifical position in regard to the Churches of the German Empire. It seems somewhat unjust, therefore, that the Popes, whose right to the sovereignty of Rome was for ages as undisputed as that of any King or Emperor in Europe, though secondary in itself to their ecclesiastical supremacy, should be blamed for protesting against what was undoubtedly a usurpation so far as they were concerned, although others may look upon it as a mere incident in the unification of a free people. Moreover, since the unification was accomplished, the vanquished Popes have acted with a fairness and openness which might well be imitated in other countries. The Italians, as a nation, possess remarkable talent and skill in conspiracy, and there is no organization in the world better fitted than that of the Roman Catholic Church for secretly organizing and carrying out a great political conspiracy, if any such thing were ever attempted. The action of the Popes, on the contrary, has been fair and above board. Both Pius the Ninth and Leo the Thirteenth have stated their grievances in the most public manner, and so far have they been from attempting to exercise their vast influence in directing the politics of Italy that they have enjoined upon Italian Catholics to abstain from political contests altogether. Whether in so doing they have pursued a wise course or not, history will decide, probably according to the taste of the historian; but the fact itself sufficiently proves that they have given their enemies more than a fair chance. This seems to have been the form taken by their protests; and this is a fair answer to the principal accusation brought by non-Catholics against the Pope, namely, that he is ready to sacrifice everything in an unscrupulous attempt to regain possession of temporal power. In other matters Leo the Thirteenth has always shown himself to be a statesman, while Pius the Ninth was the victim of his own meek and long-suffering character. To enter into the consideration of the political action of the Pope during the last fifteen years, would be to review the history of the world during that time. To give an idea of the man's character, it would be sufficient to recall three or four of the principal situations in which he has been placed. A volume might be written, for instance, on his action in regard to the German Army Bill, his position towards Ireland, his arbitration in the question of the Caroline Islands, and his instructions to French Catholics. It is extremely hard to form a fair judgment from documents alone, and especially from those documents which most generally come before the public, namely, articles in such reviews as the _Contemporary Review_, on the one hand, and the _Civiltà Cattolica_ on the other. Indeed, the statements on either side, if accepted without hesitation, would render all criticisms futile. Devout Roman Catholics would answer that matters of faith are beyond criticism altogether; but the writers in the _Contemporary_, for instance, will, with equal assurance, declare themselves right because they believe that they cannot be wrong. It would be better to consult events themselves rather than the current opinions of opposite parties concerning them, to set aside the consideration of the aims rightly or wrongly attributed to Leo the Thirteenth, and to look only on the results brought about by his policy in our time. In cases where actions have a merely negative result, it is just to consider the motive alone, if any criticism is necessary, and here there seems to be no particular reason for doubting the Pope's statement of his own case. For instance, in connection with Ireland, the Pope said, in the document known as 'The Circular Letter of the Propaganda': 'It is just that the Irish should seek to alleviate their afflicted condition; it is just that they should fight for their rights, nor is it denied them to collect money to alleviate the condition of the Irish.' In regard to the same matter, the 'Decree of the Holy Office' reads as follows: 'The Holy See has frequently given opportune advice and counsel to the Irish people (upon whom it has always bestowed especial affection), whenever its affairs seem to require it, by which counsel and advice they might be enabled to defend and vindicate their rights without prejudice to justice, and without disturbing the public peace.' A fairer statement of the rights of men, and a more express injunction against public disturbance of any kind, could hardly be expressed in two short sentences. Outside of Italy the position of Leo the Thirteenth in Rome is not generally understood. Most people suppose that the expression 'the prisoner in the Vatican,' which he applies to himself, and which is very generally applied to him by the more ardent of Italian Catholics, is a mere empty phrase, and that his confinement within his small dominion is purely a matter of choice. This is not the case. So far as the political theory of the question is concerned, it is probable that the Pope would not in any case be inclined to appear openly on Italian territory unless he showed himself as the official guest of King Humbert, who would naturally be expected to return the visit. To make such an official visit and such an appearance would be in fact to accept the Italian domination in Rome, a course which, as has already been noticed, would be contrary to the accepted Catholic idea of the social basis necessary for the papacy. It would not necessarily be an uncatholic act, however, but it would certainly be an unpapal one. No one would expect the ex-Empress of the French, for instance, to live openly in Paris, as though the Parisians had never been her subjects, and as though she accepted the Republic in a friendly and forgiving spirit. And the case is to all intents and purposes exactly identical. [Illustration: LOGGIE OF RAPHAEL IN THE VATICAN] But this is not all. It is unfortunately true that there is another and much better reason why Leo the Thirteenth cannot show himself in the streets of Rome. It is quite certain that his life would not be safe. The enthusiastic friends of Italy who read glowing accounts of the development of the new kingdom and write eloquent articles in the same strain will be utterly horrified at this statement, and will, moreover, laugh to scorn the idea that the modern civilized Italian could conspire to take the life of a harmless and unoffending old man. They will be quite right. The modern civilized Italians would treat the Pope with the greatest respect and consideration if he appeared amongst them. Most of them would take off their hats and stand aside while he drove by, and a great many of them would probably go down upon their knees in the streets to receive his blessing. The King, who is a gentleman, and tolerant of religious practices, would treat the head of the Church with respect. The Queen, who is not only religious, but devout, would hail the reappearance of the pontiff with enthusiasm. But unfortunately for the realization of any such thing, Rome is not peopled only by modern civilized Italians, nor Italy either. There is in the city a very large body of social democrats, anarchists and the like, not to mention the small nondescript rabble which everywhere does its best to bring discredit upon socialistic principles--a mere handful, perhaps, but largely composed of fanatics and madmen, people half hysterical from failure, poverty, vice and an indigestion of so-called 'free thought.' There have not been many sovereigns nowadays whose lives have not been attempted by such men at one time or another. Within our own memory an Emperor of Russia, a President of the French Republic and two Presidents of the United States have been actually murdered by just such men. The King of Italy, and the Emperor William the First, Napoleon the Third, Queen Victoria and Alexander the Third have all been assailed by such fanatics within our own recollection, and some of them have narrowly escaped death. Not one of them, with the exception of Alexander the Third, has been so hated by a small and desperate body of men as Leo the Thirteenth is hated by the little band which undoubtedly exists in Italy today. I will venture to say that it is a matter of continual satisfaction to the royal family of Italy, and to the Italian government, that the Pope should really continue to consider himself a prisoner within the precincts of the Vatican, since it is quite certain that if he were to appear openly in Rome the Italian authorities would not, in the long run, be able to protect his life. After all that has been said and preached upon the subject by the friends of Italy, it would be a serious matter indeed if the Pope, taking a practical advantage of his theoretic liberty, should be done to death in the streets of Rome by a self-styled Italian patriot. No one who thoroughly understands Rome at the present day is ignorant that such danger really exists, though it will no doubt be promptly denied by Italian ministers, newspaper correspondents or other intelligent but enthusiastic persons. The hysterical anarchist is unfortunately to be met with all over the world at the present day, side by side with the scientific social democrat, and too often under his immediate protection. Indeed, a great number of the acts of Leo the Thirteenth, if not all of them, have been directed against the mass of social democracy in all its forms, good, bad and indifferent; and to the zeal of his partisans in endeavouring to carry out his suggestions must be attributed some of the strong utterances of the Church's adherents upon matters political. The question of 'assent and obedience' to the Holy See in matters not relating to dogma and faith is, perhaps, the most important of all those in which the papacy is now involved. There appears to be a decided tendency to believe that Catholics ascribe to the Holy See a certain degree of infallibility in regard to national policy and local elections. The Pope's own words do not inculcate a blind obedience as necessary to the salvation of the voter, though it is expressly declared a grave offence to favour the election of persons opposed to the Roman Catholic Church and whose opinions may tend to endanger its position. The idea that the Pope's political utterances can ever be considered as ex cathedrâ is too illogical to be presented seriously to the world by thinking men. Leo the Thirteenth is undoubtedly a first-rate statesman, and it might be to the advantage not only of all good Catholics but of all humanity, and of the cause of peace itself, to follow his advice in national and party politics whenever practicable. To bind oneself to follow the political dictation of Leo the Thirteenth, and to consider such obedience to the Pope as indispensable to salvation, would be to create a precedent. Pius the Ninth was no statesman at all, and there are plenty of instances in history of Popes whose political advice would have been ruinous, if followed, though it was often formulated more authoritatively and more dictatorially than the injunctions from time to time imparted to Catholics by Leo the Thirteenth. An Alexander the Sixth would be an impossibility in our day; but in theory, if another Rodrigo Borgia should be elected to the Holy See, one should be as much bound to obey his orders in voting for the election of the President of the United States as one can possibly be to obey those of Leo the Thirteenth, seeing that the divine right to direct the political consciences of Catholics, if it existed at all, would be inherent in the papacy as an institution, and not merely attributed by mistaken people to the wise, learned and conscientious man who is now the head of the Catholic Church. But the Pope's utterances have lately been interpreted by his too zealous adherents to mean that every Catholic subject or citizen throughout the world, who has the right to vote in his own country, must give that vote in accordance with the dictates of the Church as a whole, and of his bishop in particular, under pain of committing a very grave offence against Catholic principles. A state in which every action of man, public or private, should be guided solely and entirely by his own religious convictions would no doubt be an ideal one, and would approach the social perfection of a millennium. But in the mean time a condition of society in which society itself should be guided by such political opinions as any one man, human and limited, can derive from his own conscience, pure and upright though it be, would be neither logical nor desirable. There are points in the universal struggle for life which do not turn upon questions of moral right and wrong, and which every individual has a preëminent and inherent right to decide for himself. Anyone who undertakes to speak briefly of such a personage as Leo the Thirteenth, and of such a question as the 'assent and obedience' of Catholics in matters not connected with morals or belief, lays himself open to the accusation of superficiality. We are all, however, obliged to deal quickly and decisively, in these days, with practical matters of which the discussion at length would fill many volumes. Most of us cannot do more than form an opinion based upon the little knowledge we have, express it as best we may, and pass on. The man who spends a lifetime in the study of one point, the specialist in fact, is often too ignorant of all other matters to form any general opinion worth expressing. Humanity is too broad to be put under a microscope, too strong to be treated like a little child. No one man, today, in this day of many Cæsars, can say surely and exactly what should be rendered to each of them. Leo the Thirteenth is the leader of a great organization of Christian men and women spreading all over the world; the leader of a vast body of human thought; the leader of a conservative army which will play a large part in any coming struggle between anarchy and order. He may not be here to direct when the battle begins, but he will leave a strong position for his successor to defend, and great weapons for him to wield, since he has done more to simplify and strengthen the Church's organization than a dozen Popes have done in the last two centuries. Men of such character fight the campaigns of the future many times over in their thoughts while all the world is at peace around them, and when the time comes at last, though they themselves be gone, the spirit they called up still lives to lead, the sword they forged lies ready for other hands, the roads they built are broad and straight for the march of other feet, and they themselves, in their graves, have their share in the victories that save mankind from social ruin. [Illustration] THE VATICAN The Mons Vaticanus is sometimes said to have received its name from 'vaticinium,' an oracle or prophecy; for tradition says that Numa chose the Vatican hill as a sacred place from which to declare to the people the messages he received from the gods. It is not, however, one of the seven hills on which ancient Rome was built, but forms a part of a ridge beginning with the Janiculum and ending with Monte Mario, all of which was outside the ancient limits of the city. In our day the name is applied only to the immense pontifical palace adjacent to, and connected with, the basilica of Saint Peter's. The present existence of this palace is principally due to Nicholas the Fifth, the builder pope, whose gigantic scheme would startle a modern architect. His plan was to build the Church of Saint Peter's as a starting point, and then to construct one vast central 'habitat' for the papal administration, covering the whole of what is called the Borgo, from the Castle of Sant' Angelo to the cathedral. In ancient times a portico, or covered way supported on columns, led from the bridge to the church, and it was probably from this real structure that Nicholas began his imaginary one, only a small part of which was ever completed. That small portion alone comprises the basilica and the Vatican Palace, which together form by far the greatest continuous mass of buildings in the world. The Colosseum is 195 yards long by 156 broad, including the thickness of the walls. Saint Peter's Church alone is 205 yards long and 156 broad, so that the whole Colosseum would easily stand upon the ground-plan of the church, while the Vatican Palace is more than half as long again. Nicholas the Fifth died in 1455, and the oldest parts of the present Vatican Palace are not older than his reign. They are generally known as Torre Borgia, from having been inhabited by Alexander the Sixth, who died of poison in the third of the rooms now occupied by the library, counting from the library side. The windows of these rooms look upon the large square court of the Belvedere, and that part of the palace is not visible from without. Portions of the substructure of the earlier building were no doubt utilized by Nicholas, and the secret gallery which connects the Vatican with the mausoleum of Hadrian is generally attributed to Pope John the Twenty-third, who died in 1417; but on the whole it may be said that the Vatican Palace is originally a building of the period of the Renascence, to which all successive popes have made additions. The ordinary tourist first sees the Vatican from the square as he approaches from the bridge of Sant' Angelo. But his attention is from the first drawn to the front of the church, and he but vaguely realizes that a lofty, unsymmetrical building rises on his right. He pauses, perhaps, and looks in that direction as he ascends the long, low steps of the basilica, and wonders in what part of the palace the Pope's apartments may be, while the itinerant vender of photographs shakes yards of poor little views out of their gaudy red bindings, very much as Leporello unrolls the list of Don Giovanni's conquests. If the picture peddler sees that the stranger glances at the Vatican, he forthwith points out the corner windows of the second story and informs his victim that 'Sua Santità' inhabits those rooms, and promptly offers photographs of any other interior part of the Vatican but that. The tourist looks up curiously, and finally gets rid of the fellow by buying what he does not want, with the charitable intention of giving it to some dear but tiresome relative at home. And ever afterward, perhaps, he associates with his first impression of the Vatican the eager, cunning, scapegrace features of the man who sold him the photographs. To fix a general scheme of the buildings in the mind one must climb to the top of the dome of the church and look down from the balcony which surrounds the lantern. The height is so great that even the great dimensions of the biggest palace in the world are dwarfed in the deep perspective, and the wide gardens look small and almost insignificant. But the relative proportions of the buildings and grounds appear correctly, and measure each other, as it were. Moreover, it is now so hard to obtain access to the gardens at all that the usual way of seeing them is from the top of Saint Peter's, from an elevation of four hundred feet. To the average stranger 'the Vatican' suggests only the museum of sculpture, the picture-galleries and the Loggie. He remembers, besides the works of art which he has seen, the fact of having walked a great distance through straight corridors, up and down short flights of marble steps, and through irregularly shaped and unsymmetrically disposed halls. If he had any idea of the points of the compass when he entered, he is completely confused in five minutes, and comes out at last with the sensation of having been walking in a labyrinth. He will find it hard to give anyone an impression of the sort of building in which he has been, and certainly he cannot have any knowledge of the topographical relations of its parts. Yet in his passage through the museums and galleries he has seen but a very small part of the whole, and, excepting when in the Loggie, he probably could not once have stood still and pointed in the direction of the main part of the palace. [Illustration: BELVEDERE COURT OF THE VATICAN GALLERY From a print of the last century] In order to speak even superficially of it all, it is indispensable to classify its parts in some way. Vast and irregular it is at its two ends, toward the colonnade and toward the bastions of the city, but the intervening length consists of two perfectly parallel buildings, each over three hundred and fifty yards long, about eighty yards apart, and yoked in the middle by the Braccio Nuovo of the Museum and a part of the library, so as to enclose two vast courts, the one known as Belvedere,--not to be confused with the Belvedere in the Museum,--and the other called the Garden of the Pigna, from the pine-cone which stands at one end of it. Across the ends of these parallel buildings, and toward the city, a huge pile is erected, about two hundred yards long, very irregular, and containing the papal residence and the apartments of several cardinals, the Sixtine Chapel, the Pauline Chapel, the Borgia Tower, the Stanze and Loggie of Raphael, and the Court of Saint Damasus. At the other end of the parallelogram are grouped the equally irregular but more beautiful buildings of the old Museum, of which the windows look out over the walls of the city, and which originally bore the name of Belvedere, on account of the lovely view. This is said to have been a sort of summer-house of the Borgia, not then connected with the palace by the long galleries. It would be a hopeless and a weary task to attempt to trace the history of the buildings. Some account of the Pope's private apartments has already been given in these pages. They occupy the eastern wing of the part built round the Court of Damasus; that is to say, they are at the extreme end of the Vatican, nearest the city, and over the colonnade, and the windows of the Pope's rooms are visible from the square. The vast mass which rises above the columns to the right of Saint Peter's is only a small part of the whole palace, but is not the most modern, by any means. It contains, for instance, the Sixtine Chapel, which is considerably older than the present church, having been built by Sixtus the Fourth, whose beautiful bronze monument is in the Chapel of the Sacrament, in Saint Peter's. It contains, too, Raphael's Stanze, or halls, and Bramante's famous Loggie, the beautiful architecture of which is a frame for some of Raphael's best work. [Illustration: MICHELANGELO'S "LAST JUDGMENT"] But any good guide book will furnish all such information, which it would be fruitless to give in such a work as this. In the pages of Murray the traveller will find, set down in order and accurately, the ages, the dimensions, and the exact positions of all the parts of the building, with the names of the famous artists who decorated each. He will not find set down there, however, what one may call the atmosphere of the place, which is something as peculiar and unforgettable, though in a different way, as that of Saint Peter's. It is quite unlike anything else, for it is part of the development of churchmen's administration to an ultimate limit in the high centre of churchmanism. No doubt there was much of that sort of thing in various parts of Europe long ago, and in England before Henry the Eighth, and it is to be found in a small degree in Vienna to this day, where the traditions of the departed Holy Roman Empire are not quite dead. It is hard to define it, but it is in everything; in the uniforms of the attendants, in their old-fashioned faces, in the spotless cleanliness of all the Vatican--though no one is ever to be seen handling a broom--in the noiselessly methodical manner of doing everything that is to be done, in the scholarly rather than scientific arrangement of the objects in the museum and galleries--above all, in the visitor's own sensations. No one talks loudly among the statues of the Vatican, and there is a feeling of being in church, so that one is disagreeably shocked when a guide, conducting a party of tourists, occasionally raises his voice in order to be heard. It is all very hard to define, while it is quite impossible to escape feeling it, and it must ultimately be due to the dominating influence of the churchmen, who arrange the whole place as though it were a church. An American lady, on hearing that the Vatican is said to contain eleven thousand rooms, threw up her hands and laughingly exclaimed, 'Think of the housemaids!' But there are no housemaids in the Vatican, and perhaps the total absence of even the humblest feminine influence has something to do with the austere impression which everything produces. On the whole, the Vatican may be divided into seven portions. These are the pontifical residence, the Sixtine and Pauline chapels, the picture galleries, the library, the museums of sculpture and archæology, the outbuildings, including the barracks of the Swiss Guards, and, lastly, the gardens with the Pope's Casino. Of these the Sixtine Chapel, the galleries and museums, and the library, are incomparably the most important. The name Sixtine is derived from Sixtus the Fourth, as has been said, and is usually, but not correctly, spelled 'Sistine.' The library was founded by Nicholas the Fifth, whose love of books was almost equal to his passion for building. The galleries are representative of Raphael's work, which predominates to such an extent that the paintings of almost all other artists are of secondary importance, precisely as Michelangelo filled the Sixtine Chapel with himself. As for the museums, the objects they contain have been accumulated by many popes, but their existence ought, perhaps, to be chiefly attributed to Julius the Second and Leo the Tenth, the principal representatives of the Rovere and Medici families. On the walls of the Sixtine Chapel there are paintings by such men as Perugino, Luca Signorelli, Botticelli, and Ghirlandajo, as well as by a number of others; but Michelangelo overshadows them all with his ceiling and his 'Last Judgment.' There is something overpowering about him, and there is no escaping from his influence. He not only covers great spaces with his brush, but he fills them with his masterful drawing, and makes them alive with a life at once profound and restless. One does not feel, as with other painters, that a vision has been projected upon a flat surface; one rather has the impression that a mysterious reality of life has been called up out of senseless material. What we see is not imaginary motion represented, but real motion arrested, as it were, in its very act, and ready to move again. Many have said that the man's work was monstrous. It was monstrously alive, monstrously vigorous; at times over-strong and over-vital, exaggerative of nature, but never really unnatural, and he never once overreached himself in an effort. No matter how enormous the conception might be, he never lacked the means of carrying it to the concrete. No giantism of limb and feature was beyond the ability of his brush; no astounding foreshortening was too much for his unerring point; no vast perspective was too deep for his knowledge and strength. His production was limited only by the length of his life. Great genius means before all things great and constant creative power; it means wealth of resource and invention; it means quantity as well as quality. No truly great genius, unless cut short by early death, has left little of itself. Besides a man's one great masterpiece, there are always a hundred works of the same hand, far beyond the powers of ordinary men; and the men of Michelangelo's day worked harder than we work. Perhaps they thought harder, too, being more occupied with creation, at a time when there was little, than we are with the difficult task of avoiding the unintentional reinvention of things already invented, now that there is so much. The latter is a real difficulty in our century, when almost every mine of thought has been worked to a normal depth by minds of normal power, and it needs all the ruthless strength of original genius to go deeper, and hew and blast a way through the bedrock of men's limitations to new veins of treasure below. It has been said of Titian by a great French critic that 'he absorbed his predecessors and ruined his successors.' Michelangelo absorbed no one and ruined no one; for no painter, sculptor or architect ever attempted what he accomplished, either before him or after him. No sane person ever tried to produce anything like the 'Last Judgment,' the marble 'Moses,' or the dome of Saint Peter's. Michelangelo stood alone as a creator, as he lived a lonely man throughout the eighty-nine years of his life. He had envy but not competition to deal with. There is no rivalry between his paintings in the Sixtine Chapel and those of the many great artists who have left their work beside his on the same walls. The chapel is a beautiful place in itself, by its simple and noble proportions, as well as by the wonderful architectural decorations of the ceiling, conceived by Michelangelo as a series of frames for his paintings. Beautiful beyond description, too, is the exquisite marble screen. No one can say certainly who made it; it was perhaps designed by the architect of the chapel himself, Baccio Pintelli. There are a few such marvels of unknown hands in the world, and a sort of romance clings to them, with an element of mystery that stirs the imagination, in a dreamy way, far more than the gilded oak tree in the arms of Sixtus the Fourth, by which the name of Rovere is symbolized. Sixtus commanded, and the chapel was built. But who knows where Baccio Pintelli lies? Or who shall find the grave where the hand that carved the lovely marble screen is laid at rest? [Illustration: SIXTINE CHAPEL] It is often dark in the Sixtine Chapel. The tourist can rarely choose his day, and not often his hour, and, in the weary traveller's hard-driven appreciation, Michelangelo may lose his effect by the accident of a thunder shower. Yet of all sights in Rome, the Sixtine Chapel most needs sunshine. If in any way possible, go there at noon on a bright winter's day, when the sun is streaming in through the high windows at the left of the 'Last Judgment.' Everyone has heard of the picture before seeing it, and almost everybody is surprised or disappointed on seeing it for the first time. Then, too, the world's ideas about the terrific subject of the painting have changed since Michelangelo's day. Religious belief can no more be judged by the standard of realism. It is wiser to look at the fresco as a work of art alone, as the most surprising masterpiece of a master draughtsman, and as a marvellous piece of composition. In the lower part of the picture, there is a woman rising from her grave in a shroud. It has been suggested that Michelangelo meant to represent by this figure the Renascence of Italy, still struggling with darkness. The whole work brings the times before us. There is the Christian Heaven above, and the heathen Styx below. Charon ferries the souls across the dark stream; they are first judged by Minos, and Minos is a portrait of a cardinal who had ventured to judge the rest of the picture before it was finished. There is in the picture all the whirling confusion of ideas which made that age terrible and beautiful by turns, devout and unbelieving, strong and weak, scholarly upon a foundation of barbarism, and most realistic when most religious. You may see the reflected confusion in the puzzled faces of most tourists who look at the 'Last Judgment' for the first time. A young American girl smiles vaguely at it; an Englishman glares, expressionless, at it through an eyeglass, with a sort of cold inquiry--'Oh! is that all?' he might say; a German begins at Paradise at the upper left-hand corner, and works his way through the details to hell below, at the right. But all are inwardly disturbed, or puzzled, or profoundly interested, and when they go away this is the great picture which, of all they have seen, they remember with the most clearness. And as Michelangelo set his great mark upon the Sixtine, so Raphael took the Stanze and the Loggie for himself--and some of the halls of the picture-galleries too. Raphael represented the feminine element in contrast with Michelangelo's rude masculinity. There hangs the great 'Transfiguration,' which, all but finished, was set up by the young painter's body when he lay in state--a picture too large for the sentiment it should express, while far too small for the subject it presents--yet, in its way, a masterpiece of composition. For in a measure Raphael succeeded in detaching the transfigured Christ from the crowded foreground, and in creating two distinct centres of interest. The frescoes in the Stanze represent subjects of less artistic impossibility, and in painting them Raphael expended in beauty of design the genius which, in the 'Transfiguration,' he squandered in attempting to overcome insuperable difficulties. Watch the faces of your fellow-tourists now, and you will see that the puzzled expression is gone. They are less interested than they were before the 'Last Judgment,' but they are infinitely better pleased. Follow them on, to the library. They will enter with a look of expectation, and presently you will see disappointment and weariness in their eyes. Libraries are for the learned, and there are but a handful of scholars in a million. Besides, the most interesting rooms, the Borgia apartments, have been closed for many years and have only recently been opened again after being wisely and well restored under the direction of Leo the Thirteenth. Two or three bad men are responsible for almost all the evil that has been said and written against the characters of the Popes in the Middle Age. John the Twelfth, of the race of Theodora Senatrix, Farnese of Naples and Rodrigo Borgia, a Spaniard, who was Alexander the Sixth, are the chief instances. There were, indeed, many popes who were not perfect, who were more or less ambitious, avaricious, warlike, timid, headstrong, weak, according to their several characters; but it can hardly be said that any of them were, like those I have mentioned, really bad men through and through, vicious, unscrupulous and daringly criminal. According to Guicciardini, Alexander the Sixth knew nothing of Cæsar Borgia's intention of poisoning their rich friend, the Cardinal of Corneto, with whom they were both to sup in a villa on August 17, 1503. The Pope arrived at the place first, was thirsty, asked for drink, and by a mistake was given wine from a flask prepared and sent by Cæsar for the Cardinal. Cæsar himself came in next, and drank likewise. The Pope died the next day, but Cæsar recovered, though badly poisoned, to find himself a ruined man and ultimately a fugitive. The Cardinal did not touch the wine. This event ended an epoch and a reign of terror, and it pilloried the name of Borgia for ever. Alexander expired in the third room of the Borgia apartments, in the raving of a terrible delirium, during which the superstitious bystanders believed that he was conversing with Satan, to whom he had sold his soul for the papacy, and some were ready to swear that they actually saw seven devils in the room when he was dying. The fact that these witnesses were able to count the fiends speaks well for their coolness, and for the credibility of their testimony. It has been much the fashion of late years to cry down the Vatican collection of statues, and to say that, with the exception of the 'Torso' it does not contain a single one of the few great masterpieces known to exist, such as the 'Hermes of Olympia,' the 'Venus of Medici,' the 'Borghese Gladiator,' the 'Dying Gaul.' We are told that the 'Apollo' of the Belvedere is a bad copy, and that the 'Laocoön' is no better, in spite of the signatures of the three Greek artists, one on each of the figures; that the 'Antinous' is a bad Hermes; and so on to the end of the collection, it being an easy matter to demolish the more insignificant statues after proving the worthlessness of the principal ones. Much of this criticism comes to us from Germany. But a German can criticise and yet admire, whereas an Anglo-Saxon usually despises what he criticises at all. Isaac D'Israeli says somewhere that certain opinions, like certain statues, require to be regarded from a proper distance. Probably none of the statues in the Vatican is placed as the sculptor would have placed it to be seen to advantage. Michelangelo believed in the 'Laocoön,' and he was at least as good a judge as most modern critics, and he roughed out the arm that was missing,--his sketch lies on the floor in the corner,--and devoted much time to studying the group. It is true that he is said to have preferred the torso of the 'Hercules,' but he did not withhold his admiration of the other good things. Of the 'Apollo' it is argued that it is insufficiently modelled. Possibly it stood in a very high place and did not need much modelling, for the ancients never wasted work, nor bestowed it where it could not be seen. However that may be, it is a far better statue, excepting the bad restorations, than it is now generally admitted to be, though it is not so good as people used to believe that it was. Apparently there are two ways of looking at objects of art. The one way is to look for the faults; the other way is to look for the beauties. It is plain that it must be the discovery of the beauty which gives pleasure, while the criticism of shortcomings can only flatter the individual's vanity. There cannot be much doubt but that Alcibiades got more enjoyment out of life than Diogenes. The oldest decorated walls in the palace are those by Fra Angelico in the Chapel of Nicholas. For some reason or other this chapel at one time ceased to be used, the door was walled up and the very existence of the place was forgotten. In the last century Bottari, having read about it in Vasari, set to work to find it, and at last got into it through the window which looks upon the roof of the Sixtine Chapel. The story, which is undoubtedly true, gives an idea of the vastness of the palace, and certainly suggests the probability of more forgotten treasures of art shut up in forgotten rooms. One other such at least there is. High up in the Borgia Tower, above the Stanze of Raphael, is a suite of rooms once inhabited by Cardinal Bibbiena, of the Chigi family, and used since then by more than one Assistant Secretary of State. There is a small chapel there, with a window looking upon an inner court. This was once the luxurious cardinal's bath-room, and was beautifully painted by Raphael in fresco, with mythological subjects. In 1835, according to Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Passavant saw it as it had originally been, with frescoes still beautiful, though much damaged, and the marble bath still in its place in a niche painted with river gods. In one of the Vatican's periodical fits of prudery the frescoes were completely hidden with a wooden wainscot, the bath-tub was taken away and the room was turned into a chapel. It is believed, however, that the paintings still exist behind their present covering. The walk through the Museum is certainly one of the most wonderful in the world. There are more masterpieces, perhaps, in Florence; possibly objects of greater value may be accumulated in the British Museum; but nowhere in the world are statues and antiquities so well arranged as in the Vatican, and perhaps the orderly beauty of arrangement has as much to do as anything else with the charm which pervades the whole. One is brought into direct communication with Rome at its best, brilliant with the last reflections of Hellenic light; and again one is brought into contact with Rome at its worst, and beyond its worst, in its decay and destruction. Amid the ruin, too, there is the visible sign of a new growth in the beginnings of Christianity, from which a new power, a new history, a new literature and a new art were to spring up and blossom, and in the rude sculpture of the Shepherd, the Lamb and the Fishes lies the origin of Michelangelo's 'Moses' and 'Pietà.' There, too, one may read, as in a book, the whole history of death in Rome, graven in the long lines of ancient inscriptions, the tale of death when there was no hope, and its story when hope had begun in the belief in the resurrection of the dead. There the sadness of the sorrowing Roman contrasts with the gentle hopefulness of the bereaved Christian, and the sentiment and sentimentality of mankind during the greatest of the world's developments are told in the very words which men and women dictated to the stone-cutter. To those who can read the inscriptions the impression of direct communication with antiquity is very strong. For those who cannot there is still a special charm in the long succession of corridors, in the occasional glimpses of the gardens, in the magnificence of the decorations, as well as in the statues and fragments which line the endless straight walls. One returns at last to the outer chambers, one lingers here and there, to look again at something one has liked, and in the end one goes out remembering the place rather than the objects it contains, and desiring to return again for the sake of the whole sensation one has had rather than for any defined purpose. At the last, opposite the iron turnstile by which visitors are counted, there is the closed gate of the garden. It is very hard to get admission to it now, for the Pope himself is often there when the weather is fine. In the Italian manner of gardening, the grounds are well laid out, and produce the effect of being much larger than they really are. They are not, perhaps, very remarkable, and Leo the Thirteenth must sometimes long for the hills of Carpineto and the freer air of the mountains, as he drives round and round in the narrow limits of his small domain, or walks a little under the shade of the ilex trees, conversing with his gardener or his architect. Yet those who love Italy love its old-fashioned gardens, the shady walks, the deep box-hedges, the stiff little summer-houses, the fragments of old statues at the corners, and even the 'scherzi d'acqua,' which are little surprises of fine water-jets that unexpectedly send a shower of spray into the face of the unwary. There was always an element of childishness in the practical jesting of the last century. When all is seen, the tourist gets into his cab and drives down the empty paved way by the wall of the library, along the basilica, and out once more to the great square before the church. Or, if he be too strong to be tired, he will get out at the steps and go in for a few minutes to breathe the quiet air before going home, to get the impression of unity, after the impressions of variety which he has received in the Vatican, and to take away with him something of the peace which fills the cathedral of Christendom. [Illustration] SAINT PETER'S We have an involuntary reverence for all witnesses of history, be they animate or inanimate, men, animals, or stones. The desire to leave a work behind is in every man and man-child, from the strong leader who plants his fame in a nation's marrow, and teaches unborn generations to call him glorious, to the boy who carves his initials upon his desk at school. Few women have it. Perhaps the wish to be remembered is what fills that one ounce or so of matter by which modern statisticians assert that the average man's brain is heavier than the average woman's. The wish in ourselves makes us respect the satisfaction of it which the few obtain. Probably few men have not secretly longed to see their names set up for ages, like the 'Paulus V. Borghesius' over the middle of the portico of Saint Peter's, high above the entrance to the most vast monument of human hands in existence. Modesty commands the respect of a few, but it is open success that appeals to almost all mankind. Pasquin laughed:-- 'Angulus est Petri, Pauli frons tota. Quid inde? Non Petri, Paulo stat fabricata domus.' Which means:-- 'The corner is Peter's, but the whole front Paul's. Not being Peter's, the house is built for Paul.' The thing itself, the central cathedral of Christendom, is so enormous that many who gaze on it for the first time do not even notice that hugely lettered papal name. The building is so far beyond any familiar proportions that at first sight all details are lost upon its broad front. The mind and judgment are dazed and staggered. The earth should not be able to bear such weight upon its crust without cracking and bending like an overloaded table. On each side the colonnades run curving out like giant arms, always open to receive the nations that go up there to worship. The dome broods over all, like a giant's head motionless in meditation. The vastness of the structure takes hold of a man as he issues from the street by which he has come from Sant' Angelo. In the open space, in the square and in the ellipse between the colonnades and on the steps, two hundred thousand men could be drawn up in rank and file, horse and foot and guns. Excepting it be on some special occasion, there are rarely more than two or three hundred persons in sight. The paved emptiness makes one draw a breath of surprise, and human eyes seem too small to take in all the flatness below, all the breadth before, and all the height above. Taken together, the picture is too big for convenient sight. The impression itself moves unwieldily in the cramped brain. A building almost five hundred feet high produces a monstrous effect upon the mind. Set down in words, a description of it conveys no clear conception; seen for the first time, the impression produced by it cannot be put into language. It is something like a shock to the intelligence, perhaps, and not altogether a pleasant one. Carried beyond the limits of a mere mistake, exaggeration becomes caricature; but when it is magnified beyond humanity's common measures, it may acquire an element approaching to terror. The awe-striking giants of mythology were but magnified men. The first sight of Saint Peter's affects one as though, in the everyday streets, walking among one's fellows, one should meet with a man forty feet high. Involuntarily we conceive that Saint Peter's has always stood where it stands, and it becomes at once, in our imaginations, the witness of much which it really never saw. Its calm seems meant to outlast history; one thinks that, while the Republic built Rome, and Augustus adorned it, and Nero burned it on the other side of the Tiber, the cathedral of the world was here, looking on across the yellow water, conscious of its own eternity, and solemnly indifferent to the ventures and adventures of mankind. It is hard to reduce the great building in imagination to the little basilica built by Constantine the sentimentalist, on the site of Nero's circus; built by some other man perhaps, for no one knows surely; but a little church, at best, compared with many of those which Saint Peter's dwarfs to insignificance now. To remind men of him the effigy of that same Constantine sits on a marble charger there, on the left, beneath the portico, behind the great iron gate, with head thrown back, and lifted hand, and marble eyes gazing ever on the Cross. Some say that he really embraced Christianity only when dying. The names of the churches founded by him in Constantinople are all sentimentally ambiguous, from Sophia, 'wisdom,' to Anastasia, 'resurrection,' or revival, and hence 'spring.' It is strange that the places of worship built by him in Rome, if they were really his work, should bear such exceedingly definite designations and direct dedications as Saint Peter's, Saint John's, Saint Paul's and the Church of the Holy Cross. At all events, whether he believed much or little, Christianity owes him much, and romance is indebted to him for almost as much more. But for Constantine there might have been no Charlemagne, no Holy Roman Empire. In old times criminals of low degree used to be executed on the Esquiline, and were buried there, unburned, unless their bodies were left to wither upon the cross in wind and sun, as generally happened. The place was the hideous feeding ground of wild dogs and carrion birds, and witches went there by night to perform their horrid rites. It was there that Canidia and her companion buried a living boy up to the neck that they might make philters of his vitals. Everyone must remember the end of Horace's imprecation:-- "... insepulta membra different lupi, Et Esquilinæ alites." Then came Mæcenas and redeemed all that land; turned it into a garden, and beautified it; uprooted the mouldering crosses, whereon still hung the bones of dead slaves, and set out trees in their stead; piled thirty feet of clean earth upon the shallow graves of executed murderers and of generations of thieves, and planted shrubbery and flowers, and made walks and paths and shady places. Therefore it happened that the southern spur of the Janiculum became after that time a place of execution and cruel death. The city had never grown much on that side of the Tiber,--that is to say, on the right bank,--and the southern end of the long hill was a wilderness of sand and brushwood. [Illustration: MAMERTINE PRISON] In the deep Mamertine prison, behind the Tabulary of the Forum, it was customary to put to death only political misdoers, and their bodies were then thrown down the Gemonian steps. 'Vixerunt,' said Cicero, grimly, when Catiline's fellow conspirators lay there dead; and perhaps the sword that was to fall upon his own neck was even then forged. The prison is still intact. The blood of Vercingetorix and of Sejanus is on the rocky floor. Men say that Saint Peter was imprisoned here. But because he was not of high degree Nero's executioners led him out across the Forum and over the Sublician bridge, up to the heights of Janiculum. He was then very old and weak, so that he could not carry his cross, as condemned men were made to do. When they had climbed more than half-way up the height, seeing that he could not walk much farther, they crucified him. He said that he was not worthy to suffer as the Lord had suffered, and begged them to plant his cross with the head downward in the deep yellow sand. The executioners did so. The Christians who had followed were not many, and they stood apart weeping. When he was dead, after much torment, and the sentinel soldier had gone away, they took the holy body, and carried it along the hillside, and buried it at night close against the long wall of Nero's circus, on the north side, near the place where they buried the martyrs killed daily by Nero's wild beasts and in other cruel ways. They marked the spot, and went there often to pray. Lately certain learned men have said that he was crucified in the circus itself, but the evidence is slight compared with the undoubted weight of a very ancient tradition, and turns upon the translation of a single word. Within two years Nero fell and perished miserably, scarcely able to take his own life to escape being beaten to death in the Forum. In a little more than a year there were four emperors in Rome; Galba, Otho and Vitellius followed one another quickly; then came Vespasian, and then Titus, with his wars in Palestine, and then Domitian. At last, nearly thirty years after the apostle had died on the Janiculum, there was a bishop called Anacletus, who had been ordained priest by Saint Peter himself. The times being quieter then, this Anacletus built a little oratory, a very small chapel, in which three or four persons could kneel and pray over the grave. And that was the beginning of Saint Peter's Church. But Anacletus died a martyr too, and the bishops after him all perished in the same way up to Eutichianus, whose name means something like 'the fortunate one' in barbarous Greek-Latin, and who was indeed fortunate, for he died a natural death. But in the mean time certain Greeks had tried to steal the holy body, so that the Roman Christians carried it away for nineteen months to the Catacombs of Saint Sebastian, after which they brought it back again and laid it in its place. And again after that, when the new circus was built by Elagabalus, they took it once more to the same catacombs, where it remained in safety for a long time. Now came Constantine, in love with religion and inclined to think Christianity best, and made a famous edict in Milan, and it is said that he laid the deep foundations of the old Church of Saint Peter's, which afterward stood more than eleven hundred years. He built it over the little oratory of Anacletus, whose chapel stood where the saint's body had lain, under the nearest left-hand pillar of the canopy that covers the high altar, as you go up from the door. Constantine's church was founded, on the south side, within the lines of Nero's circus, outside of it on the north side, and parallel with its length. Most churches are built with the apse to the east, but Constantine's, like the present basilica, looked west, because from time immemorial the bishop of Rome, when consecrating, stood on the farther side of the altar from the people, facing them over it. And the church was consecrated by Pope Sylvester the First, in the year 326. Constantine built his church as a memorial and not as a tomb, because at that time Saint Peter's body lay in the catacombs, where it had been taken in the year 219, under Elagabalus. But at last, in the days of Honorius, disestablisher of heathen worship, the body was brought back for the last time, with great concourse and ceremony, and laid where it or its dust still lies, in a brazen sarcophagus. Then came Alaric and the Vandals and the Goths. But they respected the church and the Saint's body, though they respected Rome very little. And Odoacer extinguished the flickering light of the Western Empire, and Dietrich of Bern, as the Goths called Theodoric of Verona, founded the Gothic kingdom, and left his name in the Nibelungenlied and elsewhere. At last arose Charles, who was called the 'Great' first on account of his size, and afterwards on account of his conquests, which exceeded those of Julius Cæsar in extent; and this Charlemagne came to Rome, and marched up into the Church of Constantine, and bowed his enormous height for Leo the Third to set upon it the crown of the new empire, which was ever afterwards called the Holy Roman Empire, until Napoleon wiped out its name in Vienna, having girt on Charlemagne's sword, and founded an empire of his own, which lasted a dozen years instead of a thousand. So the ages slipped along till the church was in bad repair and in danger of falling, when Nicholas the Fifth was Pope, in 1450. He called Alberti and Rossellini, who made the first plan; but it was the great Julius the Second who laid the first stone of the present basilica, according to Bramante's plan, under the northeast pillar of the dome, where the statue of Saint Veronica now stands. The plan was changed many times, and it was not until 1626, on the thirteen hundredth anniversary of Saint Sylvester's consecration, that Urban the Eighth consecrated what we now call the Church of Saint Peter. We who have known Saint Peter's since the old days cannot go in under the portico without recalling vividly the splendid pageants we have seen pass in and out by the same gate. Even before reaching it we glance up from the vast square to the high balcony, remembering how from there Pius the Ninth used to chant out the Pontifical benediction to the city and the world, while in the silence below one could hear the breathing of a hundred thousand human beings. [Illustration: PANORAMA From the Orti Farnesiani] That is all in ghostland now, and will soon be beyond the reach of memory. In the coachhouses behind the Vatican, the old state coaches are mouldering; and the Pope, in his great sedia gestatoria, the bearers, the fan-men, the princes, the cardinals, the guards and the people will not in our time be again seen together under the Roman sky. Old-fashioned persons sigh for the pageantry of those days when they go up the steps into the church. The heavy leathern curtain falls by its own weight, and the air is suddenly changed. A hushed, half-rhythmic sound, as of a world breathing in its sleep, makes the silence alive. The light is not dim or ineffectual, but very soft and high, and it is as rich as floating gold dust in the far distance, and in the apse, an eighth of a mile from the door. There is a blue and hazy atmospheric distance, as painters call it, up in the lantern of the cupola, a twelfth of a mile above the pavement. It is all very big. The longest ship that crosses the ocean could lie in the nave between the door and the apse, and her masts from deck to truck would scarcely top the canopy of the high altar, which looks so small under the super-possible vastness of the immense dome. We unconsciously measure dwellings made with hands by our bodily stature. But there is a limit to that. No man standing for the first time upon the pavement of Saint Peter's can make even a wide guess at the size of what he sees unless he knows the dimensions of some one object. Close to Filarete's central bronze door a round disk of porphyry is sunk in the pavement. That is the spot where the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire were crowned in the old church; Charlemagne, Frederick Barbarossa and many others received the crown, the Chrism and the blessing here, before Constantine's ancient basilica was torn down lest it should fall of itself. For he did not build as Titus built--if, indeed, the old church was built by him at all. A man may well cast detail of history to the winds and let his mind stand free to the tremendous traditions of the place, since so much of them is truth beyond all question. Standing where Charles the Great was crowned eleven hundred years ago, he stands not a hundred yards from the grave where the Chief Apostle was first buried. There he has lain now for fifteen hundred years, since the 'religion of the fathers' was 'disestablished,' as we should say, by Honorius, and since the Popes became Pontifices Maximi of the new faith. This was the place of Nero's circus long before the Colosseum was dreamed of, and the foundations of Christendom's cathedral are laid in earth wet with blood of many thousand martyrs. During two hundred and fifty years every bishop of Rome died a martyr, to the number of thirty consecutive Popes. It is really and truly holy ground, and it is meet that the air, once rent by the death cries of Christ's innocent folk, should be enclosed in the world's most sacred place, and be ever musical with holy song, and sweet with incense. It needs fifty thousand persons to fill the nave and transepts in Saint Peter's. It is known that at least that number have been present in the church several times within modern memory; but it is thought that the building would hold eighty thousand--as many as could be seated on the tiers in the Colosseum. Such a concourse was there at the opening of the Oecumenical Council in December, 1869, and at the jubilees celebrated by Leo the Thirteenth; and on all those occasions there was plenty of room in the aisles, besides the broad spaces which were required for the functions themselves. To feel one's smallness and realize it, one need only go and stand beside the marble cherubs that support the holy-water basins against the first pillar. They look small, if not graceful; but they are of heroic size, and the bowls are as big as baths. Everything in the place is vast; all the statues are colossal, all the pictures enormous; the smallest detail of the ornamentation would dwarf any other building in the world, and anywhere else even the chapels would be churches. The eye strains at everything, and at first the mind is shocked out of its power of comparison. But the strangest, most extravagant, most incomprehensible, most disturbing sight of all is to be seen from the upper gallery in the cupola looking down to the church below. Hanging in mid-air, with nothing under one's feet, one sees the church projected in perspective within a huge circle. It is as though one saw it upside down and inside out. Few men could bear to stand there without that bit of iron railing between them and the hideous fall; and the inevitable slight dizziness which the strongest head feels may make one doubt for a moment whether what is really the floor below may not be in reality a ceiling above, and whether one's sense of gravitation be not inverted in an extraordinary dream. At that distance human beings look no bigger than flies, and the canopy of the high altar might be an ordinary table. And thence, climbing up between the double domes, one may emerge from the almost terrible perspective to the open air, and suddenly see all Rome at one's feet, and all the Roman mountains stretched out to south and east, in perfect grace of restful outline, shoulder to shoulder, like shadowy women lying side by side and holding hands. And the broken symmetry of the streets and squares ranges below, cut by the winding ribbon of the yellow Tiber; to the right the low Aventine, with the dark cypresses of the Protestant cemetery beyond, and the Palatine, crested with trees and ruins; the Pincian on the left, with its high gardens, and the mass of foliage of the Villa Medici behind it; the lofty tower of the Capitol in the midst of the city; and the sun clasping all to its heart of gold, the new and the old alike, past and present, youth, age and decay,--generous as only the sun can be in this sordid and miserly world, where bread is but another name for blood, and a rood of growing corn means a pound of human flesh. The sun is the only good thing in nature that always gives itself to man for nothing but the mere trouble of sitting in the sunshine; and Rome without sunshine is a very grim and gloomy town today. It is worth the effort of climbing so high. Four hundred feet in the air, you look down on what ruled half the world by force for ages, and on what rules the other half today by faith--the greatest centre of conquest and of discord and of religion which the world has ever seen. A thousand volumes have been written about it by a thousand wise men. A word will tell what it has been--the heart of the world. Hither was drawn the world's blood by all the roads that lead to Rome, and hence it was forced out again along the mighty arteries of the Cæsars' marches--to redden the world with the Roman name. Blood, blood and more blood,--that was the history of old Rome,--the blood of brothers, the blood of foes, the blood of martyrs without end. It flowed and ebbed in varying tide at the will of the just and the unjust, but there was always more to shed, and there were always more hands to shed it. And so it may be again hereafter; for the name of Rome has a heart-stirring ring, and there has always been as much blood spilled for the names of things as for the things themselves. It is wonderful to stand there and realize what every foot means, beneath that narrow standing room on the gallery outside the lantern, counting from the top downward as one counts the years of certain trees by the branches. For every division there is a pope and an architect: Sixtus the Fifth and Giacomo della Porta, Paul the Third and Michelangelo, Baldassare Peruzzi and Leo the Tenth, Julius the Second and Bramante, Nicholas the Fifth and Alberti. Then the old church of Constantine, and then the little oratory built over Saint Peter's grave by Saint Anacletus, the third or, according to some, the fourth bishop of Rome; then, even before that, Nero's circus, which was either altogether destroyed or had gone to ruins before Anacletus built his chapel. And far below all are buried the great of the earth, deep down in the crypt. There lies the chief Apostle, and there lie many martyred bishops side by side; men who came from far lands to die the holy death in Rome,--from Athens, from Bethlehem, from Syria, from Africa. There lie the last of the Stuarts, with their pitiful kingly names, James the Third, Charles the Third, and Henry the Ninth; the Emperor Otho the Second has lain there a thousand years; Pope Boniface the Eighth of the Caetani, whom Sciarra Colonna took prisoner at Anagni, is there, and Rodrigo Borgia, Alexander the Sixth, lay there awhile, and Agnes Colonna, and Queen Christina of Sweden, and the Great Countess, and many more besides, both good and bad--even to Catharine Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, of romantic memory. In the high clear air above, it chills one to think of the death silence down there in the crypt; but when you enter the church again after the long descent, and feel once more the quick change of atmosphere by which a blind man could tell that he was in Saint Peter's, you feel also the spell of the place and its ancient enchantment; you do not regret the high view you left above, and the dead under your feet seem all at once near and friendly. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF SAINT PETER'S] It is not an exaggeration or the misuse of a word to call it magic. Magic is supposed to be a means of communication with beings of another world. It is scarcely a metaphor to say that Saint Peter's is that. It is the mere truth and no more, and you can feel that it is if you will stand, with half-closed eyes, against one of the great pillars, just within hearing of the voices that sing solemn music in the chapel of the choir, and make yourself a day-dream of the people that go up the nave by seeing them a little indistinctly. If you will but remember how much humanity is like humanity in all ages, you can see the old life again as it was a hundred years--two, three, five, ten hundred years before that. If you are fortunate, just then, a score of German seminary students may pass you, in their scarlet cloth gowns, marching two and two in order, till they wheel by the right and go down upon their knees with military precision before the gate of the Chapel of the Sacrament. Or if it be the day and hour, a procession crosses the church, with lights and song and rich vestments, and a canopy over the Sacred Host, which the Cardinal Archpriest himself is carrying reverently before him with upraised hands hidden under the cope, while the censers swing high to right and left. Or the singers from the choir go by, in violet silk and lace, hurrying along the inner south aisle to the door of the sacristy, where heavy yellow cherubs support marble draperies under the monument of Pius the Eighth. If you stand by your pillar a little while, something will surely happen to help your dream, and sweep you back a century or two. And if not, and if you have a little imagination of your own which can stir itself without help from outside, you can call up the figures of those that lie dead below, and of those who in ages gone have walked the dim aisles of the ancient church. Up the long nave comes Pelagius, Justinian's pope, with Narses by his side, to swear by holy cross and sacred gospel that he has not slain Vigilius, Pope before him: and this Narses, smooth-faced, passionless, thoughtful, is the conqueror of the Goths, and having conquered them, he would not suffer that a hair of the remnant of them should be hurt, because he had given his word. High-handed Henry the Fifth, claiming power over the Church, being refused full coronation by Pope Paschal till he yields, seizes Pope and College of Cardinals then and there, and imprisons them till he has starved them to submission, and half requites the Church for Gregory's humiliation of the father whom he himself thrust from the throne--of that Henry whom the strong Hildebrand made to do penance barefoot on the snow in the courtyard of Matilda's Castle at Canossa. And Matilda herself, the Great Countess, the once all beautiful, betrayed in love, the half sainted, the all romantic, rises before you from her tomb below, in straight, rich robes and flowing golden hair, and once more makes gift of all her vast possessions to the Church of Rome. Nicholas Rienzi strides by, strange compound of heroism, vanity and high poetry, calling himself in one breath the people's tribune, and Augustus, and an emperor's son. There is a rush of armed men shouting furiously in Spanish, 'Carne! Sangre! Bourbon!' There is a clanging of steel, a breaking down of gates, and the Constable of Bourbon's horde pours in, irresistible, ravaging all, while he himself lies stark and stiff outside, pierced by Bernardino Passeri's short bolt, and Clement trembles in Sant' Angelo. Christina of Sweden, Monaldeschi's murder red upon her soul, comes next, fawning for forgiveness, to die in due time over there in the Corsini palace by the Tiber. A man may call up half the world's history in half an hour in such a place, toward evening, when the golden light streams through the Holy Dove in the apse. And, in imagination, to those who have seen the great pageants within our memory, the individual figures grow smaller as the magnificence of the display increases out of all proportion, until the church fills again with the vast throngs that witnessed the jubilees of Leo the Thirteenth in recent years, and fifty thousand voices send up a rending cheer while the most splendid procession of these late days goes by. It was in the Chapel of the Sacrament that the body of the good Pope Pius the Ninth was laid in state for several days. That was a strange and solemn sight, too. The gates of the church were all shut but one, and that was only a little opened, so that the people passed in one by one from the great wedge-shaped crowd outside--a crowd that began at the foot of the broad steps in the Piazza, and struggled upward all the afternoon, closer and closer toward the single entrance. For in the morning only the Roman nobles and the prelates and high ecclesiastics were admitted, by another way. Within the church the thin stream of men and women passed quickly between a double file of Italian soldiers. That was the first and last time since 1870 that Italian troops were under arms within the consecrated precincts. It was still winter, and the afternoon light was dim, and it seemed a long way to the chapel. The good man lay low, with his slippered feet between the bars of the closed gate. The people paused as they passed, and most of them kissed the embroidered cross, and looked at the still features, before they went on. It was dim, but the six tall waxen torches threw a warm light on the quiet face, and the white robes reflected it around. There were three torches on each side, too, and there were three Noble Guards in full dress, motionless, with drawn swords, as though on parade. But no one looked at them. Only the marble face, with its kind, far-away smile, fixed itself in each man's eyes, and its memory remained with each when he had gone away. It was very solemn and simple, and there were no other lights in the church save the little lamps about the Confession and before the altars. The long, thin stream of people went on swiftly and out by the sacristy all the short afternoon till it was night, and the rest of the unsatisfied crowd was left outside as the single gate was closed. Few saw the scene which followed, when the good Pope's body had lain four days in state, and was then placed in its coffin at night, to be hoisted high and swung noiselessly into the temporary tomb above the small door on the east side--that is, to the left--of the Chapel of the Choir. It was for a long time the custom that each pope should lie there until his successor died, when his body was removed to the monument prepared for it in the mean time, and the Pope just dead was laid in the same place. The church was almost dark, and only in the Chapel of the Choir and in that of the Holy Sacrament, which are opposite each other, a number of big wax candles shed a yellow light. In the niche over the door a mason was still at work, with a tallow dip, clearly visible below. The triple coffin stood before the altar in the Chapel of the Choir. Opposite, where the body still lay, the Noble Guards and the Swiss Guards, in their breastplates, kept watch with drawn swords and halberds. The Noble Guards carried the bier on their shoulders in solemn procession, with chanting choir, robed bishop, and tramping soldiers, round by the Confession and across the church, and lifted the body into the coffin. The Pope had been very much beloved by all who were near him, and more than one grey-haired prelate shed tears of genuine grief that night. In the coffin, in accordance with an ancient custom, a bag was placed containing ninety-three medals, one of gold, one of silver and one of bronze, for each of the thirty-one years which Pope Pius had reigned; and a history of the pontificate, written on parchment, was also deposited at the feet of the body. When the leaden coffin was soldered, six seals were placed upon it, five by cardinals, and one by the archivist. During the ceremony the Protonotary Apostolic, the Chancellor of the Apostolic Chamber and the Notary of the Chapter of Saint Peter's were busy, pen in hand, writing down the detailed protocol of the proceedings. The last absolution was pronounced, and the coffin in its outer case of elm was slowly moved out and raised in slings, and gently swung into the niche. The masons bricked up the opening in the presence of cardinals and guards, and long before midnight the marble slab, carved to represent the side of a sarcophagus, was in its place, with its simple inscription, 'Pius IX, P.M.' From time immemorial the well containing the marble staircase which leads down to the tomb of Saint Peter has been called the 'Confession.' The word, I believe, is properly applied to the altar-rail, from the ancient practice of repeating there the general confession immediately before receiving the Communion, a custom now slightly modified. But I may be wrong in giving this derivation. At all events, a marble balustrade follows the horseshoe shape of the well, and upon it are placed ninety-five gilded lamps, which burn perpetually. There is said to be no special significance in the number, and they produce very little effect by daylight. But on the eve of Saint Peter's Day, and perhaps at some other seasons, the Pope has been known to come down to the church by the secret staircase leading into the Chapel of the Sacrament, to pray at the Apostle's tomb. On such occasions a few great candlesticks with wax torches were placed on the floor of the church, two and two, between the Chapel and the Confession. The Pope, attended only by a few chamberlains and Noble Guards, and dressed in his customary white cassock, passed swiftly along in the dim light, and descended the steps to the gilded gate beneath the high altar. A marble pope kneels there too, Pius the Sixth, of the Braschi family, his stone draperies less white than Pope Leo's cassock, his marble face scarcely whiter than the living Pontiff's alabaster features. Those are sights which few have been privileged to see. There is a sort of centralization of mystery, if one may couple such words, in the private pilgrimage of the head of the Church to the tomb of the chief Apostle by night, on the eve of the day which tradition has kept from the earliest times as the anniversary of Saint Peter's martyrdom. The whole Catholic world, if it might, would follow Leo the Thirteenth down those marble steps, and two hundred million voices would repeat the prayer he says alone. Many and solemn scenes have been acted out by night in the vast gloom of the enormous church, and if events do not actually leave an essence of themselves in places, as some have believed, yet the knowledge that they have happened where we stand and recall them has a mysterious power to thrill the heart. Opposite the Chapel of the Sacrament is the Chapel of the Choir. Saint Peter's is a cathedral, and is managed by a chapter of Canons, each of whom has his seat in the choir, and his vote in the disposal of the cathedral's income, which is considerable. The chapter maintains the Choir of Saint Peter's, a body of musicians quite independent of the so-called 'Pope's Choir,' which is properly termed the 'Choir of the Sixtine Chapel,' and which is paid by the Pope. There are some radical differences between the two. By a very ancient and inviolable regulation, the so-called 'musico,' or artificial soprano, is never allowed to sing in the Chapel of the Choir, where the soprano singers are without exception men who sing in falsetto, though they speak in a deep voice. On great occasions the Choir of the Sixtine joins in the music in the body of the church, but never in the Chapel, and always behind a lattice. Secondly, no musical instruments are ever used in the Sixtine. In the Chapel of the Choir, on the contrary, there are two large organs. The one on the west side is employed on all ordinary occasions; it is over two hundred years old, and is tuned about two tones below the modern pitch. It is so worn out that an organ-builder is in attendance during every service, to make repairs at a moment's notice. The bellows leak, the stops stick, some notes have a chronic tendency to cipher, and the pedal trackers unhook themselves unexpectedly. But the Canons would certainly not think of building a new organ. Should they ever do so, and tune the instrument to the modern pitch, the consternation of the singers would be great; for the music is all written for the existing organ, and could not be performed two notes higher, not to mention the confusion that would arise where all the music is sung at sight by singers accustomed to an unusual pitch. This is a fact not generally known, but worthy of notice. The music sung in Saint Peter's, and, indeed, in most Roman churches, is never rehearsed nor practised. The music itself is entirely in manuscript, and is the property of the choir master, or, as is the case in Saint Peter's, of the Chapter, and there is no copyright in it beyond this fact of actual possession, protected by the simple plan of never allowing any musician to have his part in his hands except while he is actually performing it. In the course of a year the same piece may be sung several times, and the old choristers may become acquainted with a good deal of music in this way, but never otherwise. Mozart is reported to have learned Allegri's Miserere by ear, and to have written it down from memory. The other famous Misereres, which are now published, were pirated in a similar way. The choir master of that day was very unpopular. Some of the leading singers who had sung the Misereres during many years in succession, and had thus learned their several parts, met and put together what they knew into a whole, which was at once published, to the no small annoyance and discomfiture of their enemy. But much good music is quite beyond the reach of the public--Palestrina's best motetts, airs by Alessandro Stradella, the famous hymn of Raimondi, in short a great musical library, an 'archivio' as the Romans call such a collection, all of which is practically lost to the world. It is wonderful that under such circumstances the choir of Saint Peter's should obtain even such creditable results. At a moment's notice an organist and about a hundred singers are called upon to execute a florid piece of music which many have never seen nor heard; the accompaniment is played at sight from a mere figured bass, on a tumble-down instrument two hundred years old, and the singers, both the soloists and the chorus, sing from thumbed bits of manuscript parts written in old-fashioned characters on paper often green with age. No one has ever denied the extraordinary musical facility of Italians, but if the outside world knew how Italian church music is performed it would be very much astonished. It is no wonder that such music is sometimes bad. But sometimes it is very good; for there are splendid voices among the singers, and the Maestro Renzi, the chief organist, is a man of real talent as well as of amazing facility. His modernizing influence is counter-balanced by that of the old choir master, Maestro Meluzzi, a first-rate musician, who would not for his life change a hair of the old-fashioned traditions. Yet there are moments, on certain days, when the effect of the great old organ, with the rich voices blending in some good harmony, is very solemn and stirring. The outward persuasive force of religion lies largely in its music, and the religions that have no songs make few proselytes. Nothing, perhaps, is more striking, as one becomes better acquainted with Saint Peter's, than the constant variety of detail. The vast building produces at first sight an impression of harmony, and there appears to be a remarkable uniformity of style in all the objects one sees. There are no oil-paintings to speak of in the church, and but few frescoes. The great altar-pieces are almost exclusively fine mosaic copies of famous pictures which are preserved elsewhere. Of these reproductions the best is generally considered to be that of Guercino's 'Saint Petronilla,' at the end of the right aisle of the tribune. Debrosses praises these mosaic altar-pieces extravagantly, and even expresses the opinion that they are probably superior in point of colour to the originals from which they are copied. In execution they are certainly wonderful, and many a stranger looks at them and passes on, believing them to be oil-paintings. They possess the quality of being imperishable and beyond all influence of climate or dampness, and they are masterpieces of mechanical workmanship. But many will think them hard and unsympathetic in outline, and decidedly crude in colour. Much wit has been manufactured by the critics at the expense of Guido Reni's 'Michael,' for instance, and as many sharp things could be said about a good many other works of the same kind in the church. Yet, on the whole, they do not destroy the general harmony. Big as they are, when they are seen from a little distance they sink into mere insignificant patches of colour, all but lost in the deep richness of the whole. As for the statues and monuments, between the 'Pietà' of Michelangelo and Bracci's horrible tomb of Benedict the Fourteenth, there is the step which, according to Tom Paine, separates the sublime from the ridiculous. That very witty saying has in it only just the small ingredient of truth without which wit remains mere humour. Between the ridiculous and the sublime there may sometimes be, indeed, but one step in the execution; but there is always the enormous moral distance which separates real feeling from affectation--the gulf which divides, for instance, Bracci's group from Michelangelo's. [Illustration: PIETÀ OF MICHELANGELO] The 'Pietà' is one of the great sculptor's early works. It is badly placed. It is dwarfed by the heavy architecture above and around it. It is insulted by a pair of hideous bronze cherubs. There is a manifest improbability in the relative size of the figure of Christ and that of the Blessed Virgin. Yet in spite of all, it is one of the most beautiful and touching groups in the whole world, and by many degrees the best work of art in the great church. Michelangelo was a man of the strongest dramatic instinct even in early youth, and when he laid his hand to the marble and cut his 'Pietà' he was in deep sympathy with the supreme drama of man's history. He found in the stone, once and for all time, the grief of the human mother for her son, not comforted by foreknowledge of resurrection, nor lightened by prescience of near glory. He discovered in the marble, by one effort, the divinity of death's rest after torture, and taught the eye to see that the dissolution of this dying body is the birth of the soul that cannot die. In the dead Christ there are two men manifest to sight. 'The first man is of earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.' In the small chapel stands a strangely wrought column, enclosed in an iron cage. The Romans now call it the Colonna Santa, the holy pillar, and it is said to be the one against which Christ leaned when teaching in the temple at Jerusalem. A great modern authority believes it to be of Roman workmanship, and of the third century; but those who have lived in the East will see much that is oriental in the fantastic ornamented carving. It matters little. In actual fact, whatever be its origin, this is the column known in the Middle Age as the 'Colonna degli Spiritati,' or column of those possessed by evil spirits, and it was customary to bind to it such unlucky individuals as fell under the suspicion of 'possession' in order to exorcise the spirit with prayers and holy water. Aretino has made a witty scene about this in the 'Cortegiana,' where one of the Vatican servants cheats a poor fisherman, and then hands him over to the sacristan of Saint Peter's to be cured of an imaginary possession by a ceremonious exorcism. Such proceedings must have been common enough in those days when witchcraft and demonology were elements with which rulers and lawgivers had to count at every turn. Leave the column and its legend in the lonely chapel, with the exquisite 'Pietà'; wander hither and thither, and note the enormous contrasts between good and bad work which meet you at every turn. Up in the right aisle of the tribune you will come upon what is known as Canova's masterpiece, the tomb of Clement the Thirteenth, the Rezzonico pope, as strange a mixture of styles and ideas as any in the world, and yet a genuine expression of the artistic feeling of that day. The grave Pope prays solemnly above; on the right a lovely heathen genius of Death leans on a torch; on the left rises a female figure of Religion, one of the most abominably bad statues in the world; below, a brace of improbable lions, extravagantly praised by people who do not understand leonine anatomy, recall Canova's humble origin and his first attempt at modelling. For the sculptor began life as a waiter in a 'canova di vino,' or wine shop, whence his name; and it was when a high dignitary stopped to breakfast at the little wayside inn that the lad modelled a lion in butter to grace the primitive table. The thing attracted the rich traveller's attention, and the boy's fortune was made. The Pope is impressive, the Death is gentle and tender, the Religion, with her crown of gilded spikes for rays, and her clumsy cross, is a vision of bad taste, and the sleepy lions, when separated from what has been written about them, excite no interest. Yet somehow, from a distance, the monument gets harmony out of its surroundings. [Illustration: TOMB OF CLEMENT THE THIRTEENTH] One of the best tombs in the basilica is that of Sixtus the Fourth, the first pope of the Rovere family, in the Chapel of the Sacrament. The bronze figure, lying low on a sarcophagus placed out on upon the floor, has a quiet manly dignity about it which one cannot forget. But in the same tomb lies a greater man of the same name, Julius the Second, for whom Michelangelo made his 'Moses' in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli--a man who did more than any other, perhaps, to make the great basilica what it is, and who, by a chain of mistakes, got no tomb of his own. He who solemnly laid the foundations of the present church, and lived to see the four main piers completed, with their arches, has only a little slab in the pavement to recall his memory. The protector and friend of Bramante, of Michelangelo and of Raphael,--of the great architect, the great sculptor and the great painter,--has not so much as the least work of any of the three to mark his place of rest. Perhaps he needed nothing but his name. After all, his bones have been allowed to rest in peace, which is more than can be said of all that have been buried within the area of the church. Urban the Sixth had no such good fortune. He so much surprised the cardinals, as soon as they had elected him, by his vigorous moral reforms that they hastily retired to Anagni and elected an antipope of milder manners and less sensitive conscience. He lived to triumph over his enemies. In Piacenza he was besieged by King Charles of Naples. He excommunicated him, tortured seven cardinals whom he caught in the conspiracy and put five of them to death; overcame and slew Charles, refused him burial and had his body exposed to the derision of the crowd. The chronicler says that 'Italy, Germany, England, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, Sicily and Portugal were obedient to the Lord Pope Urban the Sixth.' He died peacefully, and was buried in Saint Peter's in a marble sarcophagus. But when Sixtus the Fifth, who also surprised the cardinals greatly, was in a fit of haste to finish the dome, the masons, wanting a receptacle for water, laid hands on Urban's stone coffin, pitched his bones into a corner, and used the sarcophagus as they pleased, leaving it to serve as a water-tank for many years afterwards. In extending the foundations of the church, Paul the Third came upon the bodies of Maria and Hermania, the two wives of Honorius, the Emperor who 'disestablished' paganism in favour of Christianity. They were sisters, daughters of Stilicho, and had been buried in their imperial robes, with many rich objects and feminine trinkets; and they were found intact, as they had been buried, in the month of February, 1543. Forty pounds of fine gold were taken from their robes alone, says Baracconi, without counting all the jewels and trinkets, among which was a very beautiful lamp, besides a great number of precious stones. The Pope melted down the gold for the expenses of the building, and set the gems in a tiara, where, if they could be identified, they certainly exist today--the very stones worn by empresses of ancient Rome. Then, as if in retribution, the Pope's own tomb was moved from its place. Despoiled of two of the four statues which adorned it, the monument is now in the tribune, and is still one of the best in the church. A strange and tragic tale is told of it. A Spanish student, it is said, fell madly in love with the splendid statue of Paul's sister-in-law, Julia Farnese. He succeeded in hiding himself in the basilica when it was closed at night, threw himself in a frenzy upon the marble and was found stone dead beside it in the morning. The ugly draperies of painted metal which now hide much of the statue owe their origin to this circumstance. Classical scholars will remember that a somewhat similar tale is told by Pliny of the Venus of Praxiteles in Cnidus. In spite of many assertions to the effect that the bronze statue of Saint Peter which is venerated in the church was originally an image of Jupiter Capitolinus, the weight of modern authority and artistic judgment is to the contrary. The work cannot really be earlier than the fifth century, and is therefore of a time after Honorius and the disestablishment. Anyone who will take the trouble to examine the lives of the early popes in Muratori may read the detailed accounts of what each one did for the churches. It is not by any means impossible that this may be one of the statues made under Saint Innocent the First, a contemporary of Honorius, in whose time a Roman lady called Vestina made gift to the church of vast possessions, the proceeds of which were used in building and richly adorning numerous places of worship. In any case, since it is practically certain that the statue was originally intended for a portrait of Saint Peter, and has been regarded as such for nearly fifteen hundred years, it commands our respect, if not our veneration. The Roman custom of kissing the foot, then bending and placing one's head under it, signifies submission to the commands of the Church, and is not, as many suppose, an act of devotion to the statue. The practice of dressing it in magnificent robes on the feast of Saint Peter is connected with the ancient Roman custom, which required censors, when entering upon office, to paint the earthen statue of Jupiter Capitolinus a bright red. But the connection lies in the Italian mind and character, which cling desperately to external practices for their hold upon inward principles. It is certainly not an inheritance of uninterrupted tradition, as Roman church music, on the contrary, most certainly is; for there is every reason to believe that the recitations now noted in the Roman missal were very like those used by the ancient Romans on solemn occasions. The church is not only a real landmark. Astronomers say that if there were a building of the same dimensions on the moon we could easily see it with our modern telescopes. It is also, in a manner, one of Time's great mile-stones, of which some trace will probably remain till the very end of the world's life. Its mere mass will insure to it the permanence of the great pyramid of Cheops. Its mere name associates it for ever with the existence of Christianity from the earliest time. It has stamped itself upon the minds of millions of men as the most vast monument of the ages. Its very defects are destined to be as lasting as its beauties, and its mighty faults are more imposing than the small perfections of the Greeks. Between it and the Parthenon, as between the Roman empire and the Athenian commonwealth, one may choose, but one dares not make comparison. The genius of the Greeks absorbed the world's beauty into itself, distilled its perfection, and gave humanity its most subtle quintessence; but the Latin arm ruled the world itself, and the imperial Latin intelligence could never find any expression fitted to its enormous measure. That is the secret of the monstrous element in all the Romans built. And that supernormal giantism showed itself almost for the last time in the building of Saint Peter's, when the Latin race had reached its last great development, and the power of the Latin popes overshadowed the whole world, and was itself about to be humbled. Before Michelangelo was dead Charles the Fifth had been Emperor forty years, Doctor Martin Luther had denied the doctrine of salvation by works, the nations had broken loose from the Popes, and the world was at war. [Illustration] Let us part here, at the threshold of Saint Peter's, not saying farewell to Rome, nor taking leave without hope of meeting on this consecrated ground again; but since the city lies behind us, region beyond region, memory over memory, legend within legend, and because we have passed through it by steps and by stations, very quickly, yet not thoughtlessly nor irreverently, let us now go each our way for a time, remembering some of those things which we have seen and of which we have talked, that we may know them better if we see them again. For a man can no more say a last farewell to Rome than he can take leave of eternity. The years move on, but she waits; the cities fall, but she stands; the old races of men lie dead in the track wherein mankind wanders always between two darknesses; yet Rome lives, and her changes are not from life to death, as ours are, but from one life to another. A man may live with Rome, laugh with her, dream with her, weep with her, die at her feet; but for him who knows her there is no good-bye, for she has taken the high seat of his heart, and whither he goes, she is with him, in joy or sorrow, with wonder, longing or regret, as the chords of his heart were tuned by his angel in heaven. But she is as a well-loved woman, whose dear face is drawn upon a man's heart by the sharp memory of a cruel parting, line for line, shadow for shadow, look for look, as she was when he saw her last; and line for line he remembers her and longs for her smile and her tender word. Yet be the lines ever so deep-graven, and the image ever so sweet and true, when the time of parting is over, when he comes back and she stands where she stood, with eyes that lighten to his eyes, then she is better loved than he knew and dearer than he had guessed. Then the heart that has steadily beaten time to months of parting, leaps like a child at the instant of meeting again; then eyes that have so long fed on memory's vision widen and deepen with joy of the living truth; then the soul that has hungered and starved through an endless waiting, is suddenly filled with life and satisfied of its faith. So he who loves Rome, and leaves her, remembers her long and well, telling himself that he knows how every stone of her walls and her streets would look again; but he comes back at last, and sees her as she is, and he stands amazed at the grandeur of all that has been, and is touched to the heart by the sad loveliness of much that is. Together, the thoughts of love and reverence rise in words, and with them comes the deep wonder at something very great and high. For he himself is grown grey and war-worn in the strife of a few poor years, while through five and twenty centuries Rome has faced war and the world; and he, a gladiator of life, bows his head before her, wondering how his own fight shall end at last, while his lips pronounce the submission of his own mortality to her abiding endurance-- AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS, MORITURUS TE SALUTAT Index A Abruzzi, i. 159; ii. 230 Accoramboni, Flaminio, i. 296 Vittoria, i. 135, 148, 289-296, 297 Agrarian Law, i. 23 Agrippa, i. 90, 271; ii. 102 the Younger, ii. 103 Alaric, i. 252; ii. 297 Alba Longa, i. 3, 78, 130 Albergo dell' Orso, i. 288 Alberic, ii. 29 Albornoz, ii. 19, 20, 74 Aldobrandini, i. 209; ii. 149 Olimpia, i. 209 Alfonso, i. 185 Aliturius, ii. 103 Altieri, i. 226; ii. 45 Ammianus Marcellinus, i. 132, 133, 138 Amphitheatre, Flavian, i. 91, 179 Amulius, i. 3 Anacletus, ii. 295, 296, 304 Anagni, i. 161, 165, 307; ii. 4, 5 Ancus Martius, i. 4 Angelico, Beato, ii. 158, 169, 190-192, 195, 285 Anguillara, i. 278; ii. 138 Titta della, ii. 138, 139 Anio, the, i. 93 Novus, i. 144 Vetus, i. 144 Annibaleschi, Riccardo degli, i. 278 Antiochus, ii. 120 Antipope-- Anacletus, ii. 84 Boniface, ii. 28 Clement, i. 126 Gilbert, i. 127 John of Calabria, ii. 33-37 Antonelli, Cardinal, ii. 217, 223, 224 Antonina, i. 266 Antonines, the, i. 113, 191, 271 Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, i. 46, 96, 113, 114, 190, 191 Appian Way, i. 22, 94 Appius Claudius, i. 14, 29 Apulia, Duke of, i. 126, 127; ii. 77 Aqua Virgo, i. 155 Aqueduct of Claudius, i. 144 Arbiter, Petronius, i. 85 Arch of-- Arcadius, i. 192 Claudius, i. 155 Domitian, i. 191, 205 Gratian, i. 191 Marcus Aurelius, i. 96, 191, 205 Portugal, i. 205 Septimius Severus, ii. 93 Valens, i. 191 Archive House, ii. 75 Argiletum, the, i. 72 Ariosto, ii. 149, 174 Aristius, i. 70, 71 Arnold of Brescia, ii. 73, 76-89 Arnulf, ii. 41 Art, i. 87; ii. 152 and morality, i. 260, 261; ii. 178, 179 religion, i. 260, 261 Barocco, i. 303, 316 Byzantine in Italy, ii. 155, 184, 185 development of taste in, ii. 198 factors in the progress of art, ii. 181 engraving, ii. 186 improved tools, ii. 181 individuality, i. 262; ii. 175-177 Greek influence on, i. 57-63 modes of expression of, ii. 181 fresco, ii. 181-183 oil painting, ii. 184-186 of the Renascence, i. 231, 262; ii. 154 phases of, in Italy, ii. 188 progress of, during the Middle Age, ii. 166, 180 transition from handicraft to, ii. 153 Artois, Count of, i. 161 Augustan Age, i. 57-77 Augustulus, i. 30, 47, 53; ii. 64 Augustus, i. 30, 43-48, 69, 82, 89, 90, 184, 219, 251, 252, 254, 270; ii. 64, 75, 95, 102, 291 Aurelian, i. 177, 179, 180; ii. 150 Avalos, Francesco, d', i. 174, 175 Aventine, the, i. 23, 76; ii. 10, 40, 85, 119-121, 124, 125, 126, 127, 129, 132, 302 Avignon, i. 167, 273, 277; ii. 6, 9 B Bacchanalia, ii. 122 Bacchic worship, i. 76; ii. 120 Bajazet the Second, Sultan, i. 276 Baracconi, i. 104, 141, 178, 188, 252, 264, 274, 304; ii. 41, 45, 128, 130, 138, 323 Barberi, i. 202 Barberini, the, i. 157, 187, 226, 268, 301; ii. 7 Barbo, i. 202; ii. 45 Barcelona, i. 308 Bargello, the, i. 129, 293, 296; ii. 42 Basil and Constantine, ii. 33 Basilica (Pagan)-- Julia, i. 66, 71, 106; ii. 92 Basilicas (Christian) of-- Constantine, i. 90; ii. 292, 297 Liberius, i. 138 Philip and Saint James, i. 170 Saint John Lateran, i. 107, 112, 117, 278, 281 Santa Maria Maggiore, i. 107, 135, 139, 147, 148, 166, 208, 278; ii. 118 Santi Apostoli, i. 157, 170-172, 205, 241, 242; ii. 213 Sicininus, i. 134, 138 Baths, i. 91 of Agrippa, i. 271 of Caracalla, ii. 119 of Constantine, i. 144, 188 of Diocletian, i. 107, 129, 145-147, 149, 289, 292 of Novatus, i. 145 of Philippus, i. 145 of public, i. 144 of Severus Alexander, ii. 28 of Titus, i. 55, 107, 152 Befana, the, i. 298, 299, 300; ii. 25 Belisarius, i. 266, 267, 269 Benediction of 1846, the, i. 183 Benevento, Cola da, i. 219, 220 Bernard, ii. 77-80 Bernardi, Gianbattista, ii. 54 Bernini, i. 147, 301, 302, 303; ii. 24 Bibbiena, Cardinal, ii. 146, 285 Maria, ii. 146 Bismarck, ii. 224, 232, 236, 237 Boccaccio, i. 211, 213 Vineyard, the, i. 189 Bologna, i. 259; ii. 58 Borghese, the, i. 206, 226 Scipio, i. 187 Borgia, the, i. 209 Cæsar, i. 149, 151, 169, 213, 287; ii. 150, 171, 282, 283 Gandia, i. 149, 150, 151, 287 Lucrezia, i. 149, 177, 185, 287; ii. 129, 151, 174 Rodrigo, i. 287; ii. 242, 265, 282 Vanozza, i. 149, 151, 287 Borgo, the Region, i. 101, 127; ii. 132, 147, 202-214, 269 Borromini, i. 301, 302; ii. 24 Botticelli, ii. 188, 190, 195, 200, 276 Bracci, ii. 318 Bracciano, i. 282, 291, 292, 294 Duke of, i. 289 Bramante, i. 305; ii. 144, 145, 274, 298, 322 Brescia, i. 286 Bridge. See _Ponte_ Ælian, the, i. 274 Cestian, ii. 105 Fabrician, ii. 105 Sublician, i. 6, 23, 67; ii. 127, 294 Brotherhood of Saint John Beheaded, ii. 129, 131 Brothers of Prayer and Death, i. 123, 204, 242 Brunelli, ii. 244 Brutus, i. 6, 12, 18, 41, 58, 80; ii. 96 Buffalmacco, ii. 196 Bull-fights, i. 252 Burgundians, i. 251 C Cæsar, Julius, i. 29-33, 35-41, 250; ii. 102, 224, 297 Cæsars, the, i. 44-46, 125, 249, 252, 253; ii. 224 Julian, i. 252 Palaces of, i. 4, 191; ii. 95 Caetani, i. 51, 115, 159, 161, 163, 206, 277 Benedict, i. 160 Caligula, i. 46, 252; ii. 96 Campagna, the, i. 92, 94, 158, 237, 243, 253, 282, 312; ii. 88, 107, 120 Campitelli, the Region, i. 101; ii. 64 Campo-- dei Fiori, i. 297 Marzo (Campus Martius), i. 65, 112, 271 the Region, i. 101, 248, 250, 275; ii. 6, 44 Vaccino, i. 128-131, 173 Canale, Carle, i. 287 Cancelleria, i, 102, 305, 312, 315, 316; ii. 223 Canidia, i. 64; ii. 293 Canossa, i. 126; ii. 307 Canova, ii. 320 Capet, Hugh, ii. 29 Capitol, the, i. 8, 14, 24, 29, 72, 107, 112, 167, 190, 204, 278, 282; ii. 12, 13, 21, 22, 52, 64, 65, 67-75, 84, 121, 148, 302 Capitoline hill, i. 106, 194 Captains of the Regions, i. 110, 112, 114 Election of, i. 112 Caracci, the, i. 264 Carafa, the, ii. 46, 49, 50, 56, 111 Cardinal, i. 186, 188; ii. 56, 204 Carnival, i. 107, 193-203, 241, 298; ii. 113 of Saturn, i. 194 Carpineto, ii. 229, 230, 232, 239, 287 Carthage, i. 20, 26, 88 Castagno, Andrea, ii. 89, 185 Castle of-- Grottaferrata, i. 314 Petrella, i. 286 the Piccolomini, i. 268 Sant' Angelo, i. 114, 116, 120, 126, 127, 128, 129, 259, 278, 284, 308, 314; ii. 17, 28, 37, 40, 56, 59, 60, 109, 152, 202-214, 216, 269 Castracane, Castruccio, i. 165, 166, 170 Catacombs, the, i. 139 of Saint Petronilla, ii. 125 Sebastian, ii. 296 Catanei, Vanossa de, i. 287 Catharine, Queen of Cyprus, ii. 305 Cathedral of Siena, i. 232 Catiline, i. 27; ii. 96, 294 Cato, ii. 121 Catullus, i. 86 Cavour, Count, ii. 90, 224, 228, 237 Cellini, Benvenuto, i. 311, 315; ii. 157, 195 Cenci, the, ii. 1 Beatrice, i. 147, 285-287; ii. 2, 129, 151 Francesco, i. 285; ii. 2 Centra Pio, ii. 238, 239 Ceri, Renzo da, i. 310 Cesarini, Giuliano, i. 174; ii. 54, 89 Chapel, Sixtine. See under _Vatican_ Charlemagne, i. 32, 49, 51, 53, 76, 109; ii. 297 Charles of Anjou, i. ii. 160 Albert of Sardinia, ii. 221 the Fifth, i. 131, 174, 206, 220, 305, 306; ii. 138 Chiesa. See _Church_ Nuova, i. 275 Chigi, the, i. 258 Agostino, ii. 144, 146 Fabio, ii. 146 Christianity in Rome, i. 176 Christina, Queen of Sweden, ii. 150, 151, 304, 308 Chrysostom, ii. 104, 105 Churches of,-- the Apostles, i. 157, 170-172, 205, 241, 242; ii. 213 Aracoeli, i. 52, 112, 167; ii. 57, 70, 75 Cardinal Mazarin, i. 186 the Gallows, i. 284 Holy Guardian Angel, i. 122 the Minerva, ii. 55 the Penitentiaries, ii. 216 the Portuguese, i. 250 Saint Adrian, i. 71 Agnes, i. 301, 304 Augustine, ii. 207 Bernard, i. 291 Callixtus, ii. 125 Charles, i. 251 Eustace, ii. 23, 24, 26, 39 George in Velabro, i. 195; ii. 10 Gregory on the Aventine, ii. 129 Ives, i. 251; ii. 23, 24 John of the Florentines, i. 273 Pine Cone, ii. 56 Peter's on the Janiculum, ii. 129 Sylvester, i. 176 Saints Nereus and Achillæus, ii. 125 Vincent and Anastasius, i. 186 San Clemente, i. 143 Giovanni in Laterano, i. 113 Lorenzo in Lucina, i. 192 Miranda, i. 71 Marcello, i. 165, 192 Pietro in Montorio, ii. 151 Vincoli, i. 118, 283; ii. 322 Salvatore in Cacaberis, i. 112 Stefano Rotondo, i. 106 Sant' Angelo in Pescheria, i. 102; ii. 3, 10, 110 Santa Francesca Romana, i. 111 Maria de Crociferi, i. 267 degli Angeli, i. 146, 258, 259 dei Monti, i. 118 del Pianto, i. 113 di Grotto Pinta, i. 294 in Campo Marzo, ii. 23 in Via Lata, i. 142 Nuova, i. 111, 273 Transpontina, ii. 212 della Vittoria, i. 302 Prisca, ii. 124 Sabina, i. 278; ii. 40 Trinità dei Pellegrini, ii. 110 Cicero, i. 45, 73; ii. 96, 294 Cimabue, ii. 156, 157, 162, 163, 169, 188, 189 Cinna, i. 25, 27 Circolo, ii. 245 Circus, the, i. 64, 253 Maximus, i. 64, 66; ii. 84, 119 City of Augustus, i. 57-77 Making of the, i. 1-21 of Rienzi, i. 93; ii. 6-8 of the Empire, i. 22-56 of the Middle Age, i. 47, 78-99, 92 of the Republic, i. 47 today, i. 55, 92 Civilization, ii. 177 and bloodshed, ii. 218 morality, ii. 178 progress, ii. 177-180 Claudius, i. 46, 255, 256; ii. 102 Cloelia, i. 13 Coelian hill, i. 106 Collegio Romano, i. 102; ii. 45, 61 Colonna, the, i. 51, 94, 104, 135, 153, 157-170, 172, 176, 187, 206, 217, 251, 252, 271, 272, 275-283, 306-315; ii. 2, 6, 8, 10, 16, 20, 37, 51, 54, 60, 106, 107, 126, 204 Giovanni, i. 104 Jacopo, i. 159, 165, 192 Lorenzo, ii. 126, 204-213 Marcantonio, i. 182; ii. 54 Pietro, i. 159 Pompeo, i. 305, 310-317; ii. 205 Prospero, ii. 205 Sciarra, i. 162-166, 192, 206, 213, 229, 275,279, 281, 307 Stephen, i. 161, 165; ii. 13, 16 the Younger, i. 168 Vittoria, i. 157, 173-177; ii. 174 the Region, i. 101, 190-192; ii. 209 War between Orsini and, i. 51, 104, 159, 168, 182, 275-283, 306-315; ii. 12, 18, 126, 204-211 Colosseum, i. 56, 86, 90, 96, 106, 107, 111, 125, 152, 153, 187, 191, 209, 278; ii. 25, 64, 66, 84, 97, 202, 203, 301 Column of Piazza Colonna, i. 190, 192 Comitium, i. 112, 257, 268 Commodus, i. 46, 55; ii. 97, 285 Confraternities, i. 108, 204 Conscript Fathers, i. 78, 112 Constable of Bourbon, i. 52, 259, 273, 304, 309-311; ii. 308 Constans, i, 135, 136 Constantine, i. 90, 113, 163 Constantinople, i. 95, 119 Contests in the Forum, i. 27, 130 Convent of Saint Catharine, i. 176 Convent of Saint Sylvester, i. 176 Corneto, Cardinal of, ii. 282, 283 Cornomania, i. 141 Cornutis, i. 87 Coromania, i. 141, 144 Corsini, the, ii. 150 Corso, i. 96, 106, 108, 192, 196, 205, 206, 229, 251 Vittorio Emanuele, i. 275 Corte Savella, i. 284; ii. 52 Cosmas, the, ii. 156, 157 Costa, Giovanni da, i. 205 Court House, i. 71 Crassus, i. 27, 31; ii. 128 Crawford, Thomas, i. 147 Crescentius, ii. 40, 41 Crescenzi, i. 114; ii. 27, 40, 209 Crescenzio, ii. 28-40 Stefana, ii. 39 Crispi, i. 116, 187 Crusade, the Second, ii. 86, 105 Crusades, the, i. 76 Curatii, i. 3, 131 Customs of early Rome, i. 9, 48 in dress, i. 48 religion, i. 48 D Dante, i. 110; ii. 164, 175, 244 Decameron, i. 239 Decemvirs, i. 14; ii. 120 Decrees, Semiamiran, i. 178 Democracy, i. 108 Development of Rome, i. 7, 18 some results of, i. 154 under Barons, i. 51 Decemvirs, i. 14 the Empire, i. 29, 30 Gallic invasion, i. 15-18 Kings, i. 2-7, 14-45 Middle Age, i. 47, 92, 210-247 Papal rule, i. 46-50 Republic, i. 7-14 Tribunes, i. 14 Dictator of Rome, i. 29, 79 Dietrich of Bern, ii. 297 Dionysus, ii. 121 Dolabella, i. 34 Domenichino, ii. 147 Domestic life in Rome, i. 9 Dominicans, i. 158; ii. 45, 46, 49, 50, 60, 61 Domitian, i. 45, 152, 205; ii. 104, 114, 124, 295 Doria, the, i. 206; ii. 45 Albert, i. 207 Andrea, i. 207 Conrad, i. 207 Gian Andrea, i. 207 Lamba, i. 207 Paganino, i. 207 Doria-Pamfili, i. 206-209 Dress in early Rome, i. 48 Drusus, ii. 102 Duca, Antonio del, i. 146, 147 Giacomo del, i. 146 Dürer, Albert, ii. 198 E Education, ii. 179 Egnatia, i. 75 Elagabalus, i. 77, 177, 179; ii. 296, 297 Election of the Pope, ii. 41, 42, 277 Electoral Wards, i. 107 Elizabeth, Queen of England, ii. 47 Emperors, Roman, i. 46 of the East, i. 95, 126 Empire of Constantinople, i. 46 of Rome, i. 15, 17, 22-28, 31, 45, 47, 53, 60, 72, 99 Encyclicals, ii. 244 Erasmus, ii. 151 Esquiline, the, i. 26, 106, 139, 186; ii. 95, 131, 193 Este, Ippolito d', i. 185 Etruria, i. 12, 15 Euodus, i. 255, 256 Eustace, Saint, ii. 24, 25 square of, ii. 25, 42 Eustachio. See _Sant' Eustachio_ Eutichianus, ii. 296 Eve of Saint John, i. 140 the Epiphany, 299 F Fabius, i. 20 Fabatosta, ii. 64, 84 Farnese, the, ii. 151 Julia, ii. 324 Farnesina, the, ii. 144, 149, 151 Fathers, Roman, i. 13, 78, 79-84 Ferdinand, ii. 205 Ferrara, Duke of, i. 185 Festivals, i. 193, 298 Aryan in origin, i. 173 Befana, i. 299-301 Carnival, i. 193-203 Church of the Apostle, i. 172, 173 Coromania, i. 141 Epifania, i. 298-301 Floralia, i. 141 Lupercalia, i. 194 May-day in the Campo Vaccino, i. 173 Saturnalia, i. 194 Saint John's Eve, i. 140 Festus, ii. 128 Feuds, family, i. 168 Field of Mars. See _Campo Marzo_ Finiguerra, Maso, ii. 186-188 Flamen Dialis, i. 34 Floralia. See _Festivals_ Florence, i. 160 Forli, Melozzo da, i. 171 Fornarina, the, ii. 144, 146 Forum, i, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15, 17, 26, 27, 64, 72, 111, 126, 129, 194; ii. 64, 92-94, 97, 102, 294, 295 of Augustus, i. 119 Trajan, i. 155, 171, 172, 191 Fountains (Fontane) of-- Egeria, ii. 124 Trevi, i. 155, 156, 186, 267 Tullianum, i. 8 Franconia, Duke of, ii. 36, 53 Francis the First, i. 131, 174, 206, 219, 304 Frangipani, i. 50, 94, 153; ii. 77, 79, 84, 85 Frederick, Barbarossa, ii. 34, 85, 87 of Naples, i. 151 the Second, ii. 34 Fulvius, ii. 121 G Gabrini, Lawrence, ii. 4 Nicholas, i. 23, 93, 103, 168, 211, 281; ii. 3-23, 308 Gaeta, ii. 36 Galba, ii. 295 Galen, i. 55 Galera, i. 282, 291 Galileo, i. 268 Gardens, i. 93 Cæsar's, i. 66, 68 of Lucullus, i. 254, 270 of the Pigna, ii. 273 Pincian, i. 255 the Vatican, ii. 243, 271, 287 Gargonius, i. 65 Garibaldi, ii. 90, 219, 220, 228, 237 Gastaldi, Cardinal, i. 259 Gate. See _Porta_ the Colline, i. 250 Lateran, i. 126, 154 Septimian, ii. 144, 147 Gebhardt, Émile, i. 213 Gemonian Steps, ii. 67, 294 Genseric, i. 96; ii. 70 George of Franzburg, i. 310 Gherardesca, Ugolino della, ii. 160 Ghetto, i. 102; ii. 2, 101, 110-118 Ghibellines, the, i. 129, 153, 158; ii. 6 Ghiberti, ii. 157. Ghirlandajo, ii. 157, 172, 276 Giantism, i. 90-92, 210, 302 Gibbon, i. 160 Giotto, ii. 157, 160-165, 169, 188, 189, 200 Gladstone, ii. 231, 232 Golden Milestone, i. 72, 92, 194 Goldoni, i. 265 Goldsmithing, ii. 156, 157, 186, 187 "Good Estate" of Rienzi, ii. 10-12 Gordian, i. 91 Goths, ii. 297, 307. Gozzoli, Benozzo, ii. 190, 195 Gracchi, the, i. 22, 28 Caius, i. 23; ii. 84 Cornelia, i. 22, 24 Tiberius, i. 23; ii. 102 Gratidianus, i. 27 Guards, Noble, ii. 241, 243, 247, 248, 309, 310, 312 Palatine, ii. 247, 248 Swiss, ii. 246, 247, 310 Guelphs, i. 159; ii. 42, 126, 138 and Ghibellines, i. 129, 153, 275; ii. 160, 162, 173 Guiscard, Robert, i. 95, 126, 127, 129, 144, 252; ii. 70 H Hadrian, i. 90, 180; ii. 25, 202, 203 Hannibal, i. 20 Hasdrubal, i. 21 Henry the Second, ii. 47 Fourth, i. 126, 127; ii. 307 Fifth, ii. 307 Seventh of Luxemburg, i. 273, 276-279; ii. 5 Eighth, i. 219; ii. 47, 274 Hermann, i. 46 Hermes of Olympia, i. 86 Hermogenes, i. 67 Hilda's Tower, i. 250 Hildebrand, i. 52, 126-129; ii. Honorius, ii. 323, 324 Horace, i. 44, 57-75, 85, 87; ii. 293 and the Bore, i. 65-71 Camen Seculare of, i. 75 the Satires of, i. 73, 74 Horatii, i. 3, 131 Horatius, i. 5, 6, 13, 23; ii. 127 Horses of Monte Cavallo, i. 181 Hospice of San Claudio, i. 251 Hospital of-- Santo Spirito, i. 274; ii. 214, 215 House of Parliament, i. 271 Hugh of Burgundy, ii. 30 of Tuscany, ii. 30 Huns' invasion, i. 15, 49, 132 Huxley, ii. 225, 226 I Imperia, ii. 144 Infessura, Stephen, ii. 59, 60, 204-213 Inn of-- The Bear, i. 288 Falcone, ii. 26 Lion, i. 287 Vanossa, i. 288 Inquisition, i. 286; ii. 46, 49, 52, 53, 54 Interminelli, Castruccio degli, i. 165. Irene, Empress, i. 109 Ischia, i. 175 Island of Saint Bartholomew, i. 272; ii. 1 Isola Sacra, i. 93 Italian life during the Middle Age, i. 210, 247 from 17th to 18th centuries, i. 260, 263, 264 J Janiculum, the, i. 15, 253, 270; ii. 268, 293, 294, 295 Jesuit College, ii. 61 Jesuits, ii. 45, 46, 61-63 Jews, i. 96; ii. 101-119 John of Cappadocia, i. 267, 268 Josephus, ii. 103 Juba, i. 40 Jugurtha, i. 25 Jupiter Capitolinus, ii. 324, 325 priest of, i. 80, 133 Justinian, i. 267 Juvenal, i. 112; ii. 105, 107, 124 K Kings of Rome, i. 2-7 L Lampridius, Ælius, i. 178 Lanciani, i. 79, 177 Lateran, the, i. 106, 112-114, 129, 140-142 Count of, i. 166 Latin language, i. 47 Latini Brunetto, ii. 163 Laurentum, i. 55, 93 Lazaret of Saint Martha, ii. 245 League, Holy, i. 305, 306, 313, 314 Lentulus, ii. 128 Lepida, Domitia, i. 255, 256 Letus, Pomponius, i. 139; ii. 210 Lewis of Bavaria, i. 165, 167, 192, 275 the Seventh, ii. 86, 105 Eleventh, i. 104, 151 Fourteenth, i. 253 Library of-- Collegio Romano, ii. 45 Vatican, ii. 275, 276, 282 Victor Emmanuel, ii. 45, 61 Lieges, Bishop of, i. 280 Lincoln, Abraham, ii. 231, 236 Lippi, Filippo, ii. 190, 191, 192-195, 200 Liszt, i. 185, 203; ii. 176 Livia, i. 220, 252 Livy, i. 44, 47 Lombards, the, i. 251 Lombardy, i. 309 Lorrain, i. 264 Loyola, Ignatius, ii. 46, 62 Lucilius, i. 74 Lucretia, i. 5, 12, 13 Lucullus, i. 257, 270 Lupercalia, i. 194 Lupercus, i. 194 M Macchiavelli, ii. 174 Mæcenas, i. 62, 69, 74, 140; ii. 293 Mænads, ii. 122 Maldachini, Olimpia, i. 304, 305 Mamertine Prison, i. 25, ii. 72, 293 Mancini, Maria, i. 170, 187 Mancino, Paul, ii. 210 Manlius, Cnæus, ii. 121 Marcus, i. 29; ii. 71, 84 Titus, i. 80 Mantegna, Andrea, ii. 157, 169, 188, 196-198 Marcomanni, i. 190 Marforio, i. 305 Marino, i. 174 Marius, Caius, i. 25, 29 Marius and Sylla, i. 25, 29, 36, 45, 53; ii. 69 Mark Antony, i. 30, 93, 195, 254 Marozia, ii. 27, 28 Marriage Laws, i. 79, 80 Mary, Queen of Scots, ii. 47 Masaccio, ii. 190 Massimi, Pietro de', i. 317 Massimo, i. 102, 317 Mattei, the, ii. 137, 139, 140, 143 Alessandro, ii. 140-143 Curzio, ii. 140-143 Girolamo, ii. 141-143 Marcantonio, ii. 140, 141 Olimpia, ii. 141, 142 Piero, ii. 140, 141 Matilda, Countess, ii. 307 Mausoleum of-- Augustus, i. 158, 169, 205, 251, 252, 270, 271 Hadrian, i. 102, 252; ii. 28, 202, 270. See _Castle of Sant' Angelo_ Maximilian, i. 151 Mazarin, i. 170, 187 Mazzini, ii. 219, 220 Mediævalism, death of, ii. 225 Medici, the, i. 110; ii. 276 Cosimo de', i. 289; ii. 194 Isabella de', i. 290, 291 John de', i. 313 Messalina, i. 254, 272; ii. 255, 256, 257 Michelangelo, i. 90, 146, 147, 173, 175, 177, 302, 303, 315; ii. 129, 130, 157, 159, 166, 169, 171, 172, 175, 188, 200, 276-281, 284, 317-319, 322 "Last Judgment" by, i. 173; ii. 171, 276, 280, 315 "Moses" by, ii. 278, 286 "Pietà" by, ii. 286 Middle Age, the, i. 47, 92, 210-247, 274; ii. 163, 166, 172-175, 180, 196 Migliorati, Ludovico, i. 103 Milan, i. 175 Duke of, i. 306 Milestone, golden, i. 72 Mithræum, i. 271 Mithras, i. 76 Mithridates, i. 26, 30, 37, 358 Mocenni, Mario, ii. 249 Monaldeschi, ii. 308 Monastery of-- the Apostles, i. 182 Dominicans, ii. 45, 61 Grottaferrata, ii. 37 Saint Anastasia, ii. 38 Gregory, ii. 85 Sant' Onofrio, ii. 147 Moncada, Ugo de, i. 307, 308 Mons Vaticanus, ii. 268 Montaigne, i. 288 Montalto. See _Felice Peretti_ Monte Briano, i. 274 Cavallo, i. 181, 188, 292, 293; ii. 205, 209 Citorio, i. 193, 252, 271 Giordano, i. 274, 281, 282, 288; ii. 206 Mario, i. 313; ii. 268 Montefeltro, Guido da, ii. 160 Monti-- the Region, i. 101, 106, 107, 111, 112, 125, 133, 134, 144, 150, 185, 305; ii. 133, 209 and Trastevere, i. 129, 145, 153; ii. 133, 209 by moonlight, i. 117 Morrone, Pietro da, i. 159 Muratori, i. 85, 132, 159, 277; ii. 40, 48, 76, 126, 324 Museums of Rome, i. 66 Vatican, ii. 272, 273, 283, 286, 287 Villa Borghese, i. 301 Mustafa, ii. 247 N Naples, i. 175, 182, 307, 308 Napoleon, i. 32, 34, 53, 88, 109, 258; ii. 218, 221, 298 Louis, ii. 221, 223, 237 Narcissus, i. 255 Navicella, i. 106 Nelson, i. 253 Neri, Saint Philip, i. 318 Nero, i. 46, 56, 188, 254, 257, 285; ii. 163, 211, 291 Nilus, Saint, ii. 36, 37, 40 Nogaret, i. 162, 164 Northmen, i. 46, 49 Numa, i. 3; ii. 268 Nunnery of the Sacred Heart, i. 256 O Octavius, i. 27, 30, 43, 89; ii. 291 Odoacer, i. 47; ii. 297 Olanda, Francesco d', i. 176 Oliviero, Cardinal Carafa, i. 186, 188 Olympius, i. 136, 137, 138 Opimius, i. 24 Orgies of Bacchus, i. 76; ii. 120 Orgies of the Mænads, ii. 121 on the Aventine, i. 76; ii. 121 Orsini, the, i. 94, 149, 153, 159, 167-169, 183, 216, 217, 271, 274, 306-314; ii. 16, 126, 138, 204 Bertoldo, i. 168 Camillo, i. 311 Isabella, i. 291 Ludovico, i. 295 Matteo, i. 281 Napoleon, i. 161 Orsino, i. 166 Paolo Giordano, i. 283, 290-295 Porzia, i. 187 Troilo, i. 290, 291 Virginio, i. 295 war between Colonna and, i. 51, 104, 159, 168, 182, 275-283, 306-315; ii. 18, 126, 204 Orsino, Deacon, i. 134, 135 Orvieto, i. 314 Otho, ii. 295 the Second, ii. 304 Otto, the Great, i. 114; ii. 28, 30 Second, ii. 28 Third, ii. 29-37 Ovid, i. 44, 63 P Painting, ii. 181 in fresco, ii. 181-183 oil, ii. 184-186 Palace (Palazzo)-- Annii, i. 113 Barberini, i. 106, 187 Borromeo, ii. 61 Braschi, i. 305 Cæsars, i. 4, 191; ii. 64 Colonna, i. 169, 189; ii. 205 Consulta, i. 181 Corsini, ii. 149, 308 Doria, i. 207, 226 Pamfili, i. 206, 208 Farnese, i. 102 Fiano, i. 205 della Finanze, i. 91 Gabrielli, i. 216 the Lateran, i. 127; ii. 30 Massimo alle Colonna, i. 316, 317 Mattei, ii. 140 Mazarini, i. 187 of Nero, i. 152 della Pilotta, i. 158 Priori, i. 160 Quirinale, i. 139, 181, 185, 186, 188, 189, 304 of the Renascence, i. 205 Rospigliosi, i. 181, 187, 188, 189 Ruspoli, i. 206 Santacroce, i. 237; ii. 23 of the Senator, i. 114 Serristori, ii. 214, 216 Theodoli, i. 169 di Venezia, i. 102, 192, 202 Palatine, the, i. 2, 13, 67, 69, 194, 195; ii. 64, 119 Palermo, i. 146 Palestrina, i. 156, 157, 158, 161, 165, 166, 243, 282; ii. 13, 315 Paliano, i. 282 Duke of, i. 157, 189 Palladium, i. 77 Pallavicini, i. 206, 258 Palmaria, i. 267 Pamfili, the, i. 206 Pannartz, i. 317 Pantheon, i. 90, 102, 195, 271, 278; ii. 44, 45, 146 Parione, the Region, i. 101, 297, 312, 317; ii. 42 Square of, ii. 42 Pasquino, the, i. 186, 305, 317 Passavant, ii. 285 Passeri, Bernardino, i. 313; ii. 308 Patarina, i. 107, 202 Patriarchal System, i. 223-228 Pavia, i. 175 Pecci, the, ii. 229 Joachim Vincent, ii. 229, 230. Peretti, the, i. 205 Felice, i. 149, 289-295 Francesco, i. 149, 289, 292 Vittoria. See _Accoramboni_ Perugia, i. 159, 276, 277 Perugino, ii. 157, 260, 276 Pescara, i. 174 Peter the Prefect, i. 114; ii. 230. Petrarch, i. 161 Petrella, i. 286 Philip the Fair, i. 160, 276, 278 Second of Spain, ii. 47 Phocas, column of, ii. 93 Piazza-- Barberini, i. 155 della Berlina Vecchia, i. 283 Chiesa Nuova, i. 155 del Colonna, i. 119, 190 Gesù, ii. 45 della Minerva, ii. 45 Moroni, i. 250 Navona, i. 102, 297, 298, 302, 303, 305; ii. 25, 46, 57 Pigna, ii. 55 of the Pantheon, i. 193; ii. 26 Pilotta, i. 158 del Popolo, i. 144, 206, 259, 273 Quirinale, i. 181 Romana, ii. 136 Sant' Eustachio, ii. 25 San Lorenzo in Lucina, i. 192, 205, 250 Saint Peter's, ii. 251, 309 di Sciarra, i. 192 Spagna, i. 251; ii. 42 delle Terme, i. 144 di Termini, i. 144 Venezia, i. 206 Pierleoni, the, ii. 77, 79, 82, 101, 105, 106, 109, 114 Pigna, ii. 45 the Region, i. 101, 102; ii. 44 Pilgrimages, ii. 245 Pincian (hill), i. 119, 270, 272 Pincio, the, i. 121, 189, 223, 253, 255, 256, 259, 264, 272 Pintelli, Baccio, ii. 278, 279 Pinturicchio, ii. 147 Pliny, the Younger, i. 85, 87 Pompey, i. 30 Pons Æmilius, i. 67 Cestius, ii. 102, 105 Fabricius, ii. 105 Triumphalis, i. 102, 274 Ponte. See also _Bridge_ Garibaldi, ii. 138 Rotto, i. 67 Sant' Angelo, i. 274, 283, 284, 287; ii. 42, 55, 270 Sisto, i. 307, 311; ii. 136 the Region, i. 274, 275 Pontifex Maximus, i. 39, 48 Pontiff, origin of title, ii. 127 Pope-- Adrian the Fourth, ii. 87 Alexander the Sixth, i. 258; ii. 269, 282 Seventh, i. 259 Anastasius, ii. 88 Benedict the Sixth, ii. 28-30 Fourteenth, i. 186 Boniface the Eighth, i. 159, 160, 167, 213, 280, 306; ii. 304 Celestin the First, i. 164 Second, ii. 83 Clement the Fifth, i. 275, 276 Sixth, ii. 9, 17-19 Seventh, i. 306, 307, 310, 313, 314; ii. 308 Eighth, i. 286 Ninth, i. 187; ii. 110 Eleventh, i. 171 Thirteenth, ii. 320 Damascus, i. 133, 135, 136 Eugenius the Third, ii. 85 Fourth, ii. 7, 56 Ghisleri, ii. 52, 53 Gregory the Fifth, ii. 32-37 Seventh, i. 52, 126; ii. 307 Thirteenth, i. 183, 293 Sixteenth, i. 305; ii. 221, 223 Honorius the Third, ii. 126 Fourth, ii. 126 Innocent the Second, ii. 77, 79, 82, 105 Third, i. 153; ii. 6 Sixth, ii. 19 Eighth, i. 275 Tenth, i. 206, 209, 302, 303 Joan, i. 143 John the Twelfth, ii. 282 Thirteenth, i. 113 Fifteenth, ii. 29 Twenty-third, ii. 269 Julius the Second, i. 208, 258; ii. 276, 298, 304 Leo the Third, i. 109; ii. 146, 297 Fourth, ii. 242 Tenth, i. 304; ii. 276, 304 Twelfth, i. 202; ii. 111 Thirteenth, i. 77; ii. 218-267, 282, 287, 308, 312, 313 Liberius, i. 138 Lucius the Second, ii. 84, 85 Martin the First, i. 136 Nicholas the Fourth, i. 159, 274 Fifth, i. 52; ii. 58, 268, 269, 298, 304 Paschal the Second, i. 258; ii. 307 Paul the Second, i. 202, 205 Third, i. 219; ii. 41, 130, 304, 323, 324 Fourth, ii. 46, 47, 48-51, 111, 112 Fifth, ii. 289 Pelagius the First, i. 170, 171; ii. 307 Pius the Fourth, i. 147, 305 Sixth, i. 181, 182 Seventh, i. 53; ii. 221 Ninth, i. 76, 183, 315; ii. 66, 110, 111, 216, 221-225, 252, 253, 255, 257, 258, 265, 298, 308, 311 Silverius, i. 266 Sixtus the Fourth, i. 258, 275; ii. 127, 204-213, 274, 278, 321 Fifth, i. 52, 139, 149, 181, 184, 186, 205, 283; ii. 43, 157, 241, 304, 323 Sylvester, i. 113; ii. 297, 298 Symmachus, ii. 44 Urban the Second, i. 52 Sixth, ii. 322, 323 Eighth, i. 181, 187, 268, 301; ii. 132, 203, 298 Vigilius, ii. 307 Popes, the, i. 125, 142, 273 at Avignon, i. 167, 273, 277; ii. 9 among sovereigns, ii. 228 election of, ii. 41, 42 hatred for, ii. 262-264 temporal power of, i. 168; ii. 255-259 Poppæa, i. 103 Porcari, the, ii. 56 Stephen, ii. 56-60, 204 Porsena of Clusium, i. 5, 6, 12 Porta. See also _Gate_-- Angelica, i. 120 Maggiore, i. 107 Metronia, i. 106 Mugonia, i. 10 Pia, i. 107, 147, 152; ii. 224 Pinciana, i. 193, 250, 264, 266, 269 del Popolo, i. 272, 299 Portese, ii. 132 Salaria, i, 106, 107, 193 San Giovanni, i. 107, 120 Lorenzo, i. 107 Sebastiano, ii. 119, 125 Spirito, i. 311; ii. 132, 152 Tiburtina, i. 107 Portico of Neptune, i. 271 Octavia, ii. 3, 105 Poussin, Nicholas, i. 264 Præneste, i. 156 Prætextatus, i. 134 Prefect of Rome, i. 103, 114, 134 Presepi, ii. 139 Prince of Wales, i. 203 Prior of the Regions, i. 112, 114 Processions of-- the Brotherhood of Saint John, ii. 130 Captains of Regions, i. 112 Coromania, i. 141 Coronation of Lewis of Bavaria, i. 166, 167 Ides of May, ii. 127-129 the Triumph of Aurelian, i. 179 Progress and civilization, i. 262; ii. 177-180 romance, i. 154 Prosper of Cicigliano, ii. 213 Q Quæstor, i. 58 Quirinal, the (hill), i. 106, 119, 158, 182, 184, 186, 187; ii. 205 R Rabble, Roman, i. 115, 128, 132, 153, 281; ii. 131 Race course of Domitian, i. 270, 297 Races, Carnival, i. 108, 202, 203 Raimondi, ii. 315 Rampolla, ii. 239, 249, 250 Raphael, i. 260, 315; ii. 159, 169, 175, 188, 200, 281, 285, 322 in Trastevere, ii. 144-147 the "Transfiguration" by, ii. 146, 281 Ravenna, i. 175 Regions (Rioni), i. 100-105, 110-114, 166 Captains of, i. 110 devices of, i. 100 fighting ground of, i. 129 Prior, i. 112, 114 rivalry of, i. 108, 110, 125 Regola, the Region, i. 101, 168; ii. 1-3 Regulus, i. 20 Religion, i. 48, 50, 75 Religious epochs in Roman history, i. 76 Renascence in Italy, i. 52, 77, 84, 98, 99, 188, 237, 240, 250, 258, 261, 262, 303; ii. 152-201, 280 art of, i. 231 frescoes of, i. 232 highest development of, i. 303, 315 leaders of, ii. 152, 157-159 manifestation of, ii. 197 palaces of, i. 205, 216 represented in "The Last Judgment," ii. 280 results of development of, ii. 199 Reni, Guido, i. 264; ii. 317 Republic, the, i. 6, 12, 15, 53, 110; ii. 291 and Arnold of Brescia, ii. 86 Porcari, ii. 56-60 Rienzi, i. 93; ii. 6-8 modern ideas of, ii. 219 Revolts in Rome-- against the nobles, ii. 73 of the army, i. 25 of Arnold of Brescia, ii. 73-89 Marius and Sylla, i. 25 Porcari, ii. 56-60 Rienzi, i. 93; ii. 6-8, 73 slaves, i. 24 Stefaneschi, i. 281-283; ii. 219-222 Revolutionary idea, the, ii. 219-222 Riario, the, ii. 149, 150, 151 Jerome, ii. 205 Rienzi, Nicholas, i. 23, 93, 103, 168, 211, 281; ii. 3-23, 308 Rioni. See _Regions_ Ripa, the Region, i. 101; ii. 118 Ripa Grande, ii. 127 Ripetta, ii. 52 Ristori, Mme., i. 169 Robert of Naples, i. 278 Rotfredo, Count, i. 114, 115 Rome-- a day in mediæval, i. 241-247 Bishop of, i. 133 charm of, i. 54, 98, 318 ecclesiastic, i. 124 lay, i. 124 a modern Capital, i. 123, 124 foundation of, i. 2 of the Augustan Age, i. 60-62 Barons, i. 50, 84, 104, 229-247; ii. 75 Cæsars, i. 84 Empire, i. 15, 17, 28, 31, 45, 47, 53. 60, 99 Kings, i. 2-7, 10, 11 Middle Age, i. 110, 210-247, 274; ii. 172-175 Napoleonic era, i. 229 Popes, i. 50, 77, 84, 104 Republic, i. 6, 12, 16, 53, 110 Rienzi, i. 93; ii. 6-8 today, i. 55 sack of, by Constable of Bourbon, i. 259, 273, 309-315 sack of, by Gauls, i. 15, 49, 252 Guiscard, i. 95, 126-129, 252 seen from dome of Saint Peter's, ii. 302 under Tribunes, i. 14 Decemvirs, i. 14 Dictator, i. 28 Romulus, i. 2, 5, 30, 78, 228 Rospigliosi, i. 206 Rossi, Pellegrino, i. 316 Count, ii. 223 Rostra, i. 27; ii. 93 Julia, i. 68; ii. 93 Rota, ii. 215 Rovere, the, i. 258; ii. 276, 279, 321 Rudini, i. 187 Rudolph of Hapsburg, i. 161 Rufillus, i. 65 S Sacchi, Bartolommeo, i. 139, 147 Saint Peter's Church, i. 166, 278; ii. 202, 212, 243, 246, 268, 289, 294, 295, 326 altar of, i. 96 architects of, ii. 304 bronze doors of, ii. 299, 300 builders of, ii. 304 Chapel of the Choir, ii. 310, 313, 314 Chapel of the Sacrament, ii. 274, 306, 308, 310, 312, 313 Choir of, ii. 313-316 Colonna Santa, ii. 319 dome of, i. 96; ii. 302 Piazza of, ii. 251 Sacristy of, i. 171 Salvini, i. 169, 252 Giorgio, i. 313 Santacroce Paolo, i. 286 Sant' Angelo the Region, i. 101; ii. 101 Santorio, Cardinal, i. 208 San Vito, i. 282 Saracens, i. 128, 144 Sarto, Andrea del, ii. 157, 169 Saturnalia, i. 125, 194, 195 Saturninus, i. 25 Satyricon, the, i. 85 Savelli, the, i. 284; ii. 1, 16, 126, 206 John Philip, ii. 207-210 Savonarola, i. 110 Savoy, house of, i. 110; ii. 219, 220, 224 Scævola, i. 13 Schweinheim, i. 317 Scipio, Cornelius, i. 20 of Africa, i. 20, 22, 29, 59, 76; ii. 121 Asia, i. 21; ii. 120 Scotus, i. 182 See, Holy, i. 159, 168; ii. 264-267, 277, 294 Segni, Monseignor, i. 304 Sejanuo, ii. 294 Semiamira, i. 178 Senate, Roman, i. 167, 168, 257 the Little, i. 177, 180 Senators, i. 78, 112, 167 Servius, i. 5, 15 Severus-- Arch of, ii. 92 Septizonium of, i. 96, 127 Sforza, i. 13; ii. 89 Catharine, i. 177; ii. 150 Francesco, i. 306 Siena, i. 232, 268; ii. 229 Signorelli, ii. 277 Slaves, i. 81, 24 Sosii Brothers, i. 72, 73 Spencer, Herbert, ii. 225, 226 Stefaneschi, Giovanni degli, i. 103, 282 Stilicho, ii. 323 Stradella, Alessandro, ii. 315 Streets. See _Via_ Subiaco, i. 282 Suburra, i. 39; ii. 95 Suetonius, i. 43 Sylla, ii. 25-29, 36-42 T Tacitus, i. 46, 254; ii. 103 Tarentum, i. 18, 19 Tarpeia, i. 29; ii. 68, 69 Tarpeian Rock, ii. 67 Tarquins, the, i. 6, 11, 12, 80, 248, 249, 269; ii. 69 Sextus, i. 5, 11 Tasso, i. 188, 189; ii. 147-149 Bernardo, i. 188 Tatius, i. 68, 69 Tempietto, the, i. 264 Temple of-- Castor, i. 27 Castor and Pollux, i. 68; ii. 92, 94 Ceres, ii. 119 Concord, i. 24; ii. 92 Flora, i. 155 Hercules, ii. 40 Isis and Serapis, i. 271 Julius Cæsar, i. 72 Minerva, i. 96 Saturn, i. 194, 201; ii. 94 the Sun, i. 177, 179, 180, 271 Venus and Rome, i. 110 Venus Victorius, i. 270 Vesta, i. 68 Tenebræ, i. 117 Tetricius, i. 179 Theatre of-- Apollo, i. 286 Balbus, ii. 1 Marcellus, ii. 1, 101, 105, 106, 119 Pompey, i. 103, 153 Thedoric of Verona, ii. 297 Theodoli, the, i. 258 Theodora Senatrix, i. 158, 266, 267; ii. 27-29, 203, 282 Tiber, i. 23, 27, 66, 93, 94, 151, 158, 168, 189, 237, 248, 249, 254, 269, 272, 288 Tiberius, i. 254, 287; ii. 102 Titian, i. 315; ii. 165, 166, 175, 188, 278 Titus, i. 56, 86; ii. 102, 295 Tivoli, i. 180, 185; ii. 76, 85 Torre (Tower)-- Anguillara, ii. 138, 139, 140 Borgia, ii. 269, 285 dei Conti, i. 118, 153 Milizie, i. 277 Millina, i. 274 di Nona, i. 274, 284, 287; ii. 52, 54, 72 Sanguigna, i. 274 Torrione, ii. 241, 242 Trajan, i. 85, 192; ii. 206 Trastevere, the Region, i. 101, 127, 129, 278, 307, 311; ii. 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 143, 151 Trevi, the Fountain, i. 155, 186 the Region, i. 155, 187; ii. 209 Tribunes, i. 14 Trinità de' Monti, i. 256, 264 dei Pellegrini, ii. 110 Triumph, the, of Aurelian, i. 179 Triumphal Road, i. 66, 69, 70, 71 Tullianum, i. 8 Tullus, i. 3 Domitius, i. 90 Tuscany, Duke of, ii. 30 Tusculum, i. 158 U Unity, of Italy, i. 53, 77, 123, 184; ii. 224 under Augustus, i. 184 Victor Emmanuel, i. 184 University, Gregorian, the, ii. 61 of the Sapienza, i. 251; ii. 24, 25 Urbino, Duke of, i. 208, 217 V Valens, i. 133 Valentinian, i. 133 Varus, i. 46 Vatican, the, i. 127, 128, 147, 165, 189, 278, 281, 307; ii. 44, 202, 207, 228, 243, 245, 249, 250, 252, 253, 269, 271 barracks of Swiss Guard, ii. 275 chapels in, Pauline, ii. Nicholas, ii. 285 Sixtine, ii. 246, 274, 275, 276, 278-281, 285 fields, i. 274 Court of the Belvedere, ii. 269 Saint Damasus, ii. 273 finances of, ii. 253 gardens of, ii. 243, 271, 287 of the Pigna, ii. 273 library, ii. 275, 276, 282 Borgia apartments of, ii. 282 Loggia of the Beatification, ii. 245 Raphael, ii. 273, 274, 276, 285 Maestro di Camera, ii. 239, 248, 250 museums of, ii. 272, 273, 283, 286, 287 picture galleries, ii. 273-284 Pontifical residence, ii. 249 private apartments, ii. 249 Sala Clementina, ii. 248 del Concistoro, ii. 246 Ducale, ii. 245, 247 Regia, ii. 246 throne room, ii. 247 Torre Borgia, ii. 269, 285 Veii, i. 16, 17 Velabrum, i. 67 Veneziano, Domenico, ii. 185 Venice, i. 193, 296, 306; ii. 35, 205 Vercingetorix, ii. 294 Vespasian, i. 46, 56; ii. 295 Vespignani, ii. 241, 242 Vesta, i. 57 temple of, i. 71, 77 Vestals, i. 77, 80, 133, 152; ii. 99 house of, i. 69 Via-- della Angelo Custode, i. 122 Appia, i. 22, 94 Arenula, ii. 45 Borgognona, i. 251 Campo Marzo, i. 150 di Caravita, ii. 45 del Corso, i. 155, 158, 192, 193, 251; ii. 45 della Dateria, i. 183 Dogana Vecchia, ii. 26 Flaminia, i. 193 Florida, ii. 45 Frattina, i. 250 de' Greci, i. 251 Lata, i. 193 Lungara, i. 274; ii. 144, 145, 147 Lungaretta, ii. 140 della Maestro, i. 283 Marforio, i. 106 di Monserrato, i. 283 Montebello, i. 107 Nazionale, i. 277 Nova, i. 69 di Parione, i. 297 de' Poli, i. 267 de Pontefici, i. 158 de Prefetti, ii. 6 Quattro Fontane, i. 155, 187 Sacra, i. 65, 71, 180 San Gregorio, i. 71 San Teodoro, i. 195 de' Schiavoni, i. 158 Sistina, i. 260 della Stelleta, i. 250 della Tritone, i. 106, 119-122, 155 Triumphalis, i. 66, 70, 71 Venti Settembre, i. 186 Vittorio Emanuele, i. 275 Viale Castro Pretorio, i. 107 Vicolo della Corda, i. 283 Victor Emmanuel, i. 53, 166, 184; ii. 90, 221, 224, 225, 238 monument to, ii. 90 Victoria, Queen of England, ii. 263 Vigiles, cohort of the, i. 158, 170 Villa Borghese, i. 223 Colonna, i. 181, 189 d'Este, i. 185 of Hadrian, i. 180 Ludovisi, i. 106, 193 Medici, i. 259, 262, 264, 265, 269, 313 Negroni, i. 148, 149, 289, 292 Publica, i. 250 Villani, i. 160, 277; ii. 164 Villas, in the Region of Monti, i. 149, 150 Vinci, Lionardo da, i. 260, 315; ii. 147, 159, 169, 171, 175, 184, 188, 195, 200 "The Last Supper," by, ii. 171, 184 Virgil, i. 44, 56, 63 Virginia, i. 14 Virginius, i. 15 Volscians, ii. 230 W Walls-- Aurelian, i. 93, 106, 110, 193, 271; ii. 119, 144 Servian, i. 5, 7, 15, 250, 270 of Urban the Eighth, ii. 132 Water supply, i. 145 William the Silent, ii. 263 Witches on the Æsquiline, i. 140 Women's life in Rome, i. 9 Z Zama, i. 21, 59 Zenobia of Palmyra, i. 179; ii. 150. Zouaves, the, ii. 216 
36817	----	Transcriber's note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. [Illustration: MARBLE RELIEF OF THE AMBARVALIA SACRIFICE, IN THE FORUM The sacrifice of the _suovetaurilia_ took place at the confines of Rome and Alba Longa after the perlustration of the Roman _ager_. See pages 15, 70.] ROME · PAINTED BY ALBERTO PISA · TEXT BY M. A. R. TUKER AND HOPE MALLESON PUBLISHED BY ADAM & CHARLES BLACK · SOHO SQUARE · LONDON · W. _Published April 1905_ The twelve chapters in this book were all written for the present volume, but Chapters III., V., VIII., part of XI., and IX. have already been published in the _Monthly Review_, _Broad Views_, _Macmillan's Magazine_, and the _Hibbert Journal_. So much has been written about Rome and Roman subjects within the last decade, good bad and indifferent, that the task of avoiding as far as possible hackneyed ground is not an easy one. We have attempted to present some aspects of Rome as we have ourselves seen it, and we have drawn on our long acquaintance with the city and above all with its inhabitants of the old school and the new. Each chapter is the work of one writer. ROME, 1905. Contents PAGE CHAPTER I ROME 1 CHAPTER II ROMAN BUILDING AND DECORATION 17 CHAPTER III THE ROMAN CATACOMBS 41 CHAPTER IV ROMAN REGIONS AND GUILDS 52 CHAPTER V THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA 69 CHAPTER VI THE ROMAN MÉNAGE 93 CHAPTER VII THE ROMAN PEOPLE-- I. The Italians 112 II. The Romans 125 CHAPTER VIII ROMAN PRINCELY FAMILIES 159 CHAPTER IX ROMAN RELIGION 180 CHAPTER X THE ROMAN CARDINAL 200 CHAPTER XI ROME BEFORE 1870 212 CHAPTER XII THE ROMAN QUESTION-- I. Before 1870 235 II. Since 1870 245 List of Illustrations 1. Marble relief of the Ambarvalia Sacrifice, in the Forum _Frontispiece_ TO FACE PAGE 2. The Forum from the Arch of Septimius Severus 4 3. The Forum, looking towards the Capitol 8 4. Temple of Saturn from the Basilica Julia in the Forum 12 5. S. Peter's and Castel Sant' Angelo from the Tiber 16 6. Temple of Saturn from the Portico of the Dii Consentes 18 7. A Corner of the Forum from the base of the Temple of Saturn 20 8. Temple of Mars Ultor 24 9. Temple of Vespasian from the Portico of the Dii Consentes 26 10. The Colosseum on a Spring Day 30 11. The Colosseum at Sunset 34 12. Arch of Titus 38 13. A Procession in the Catacomb of Callistus 42 14. Flavian Basilica on the Palatine 44 15. Library of the House of Domitian on the Palatine 50 16. Forum of Nerva 54 17. Fountain of Trevi 56 18. Column of Marcus Aurelius, Piazza Colonna 58 19. Pantheon, a flank view 62 20. Silversmiths' Arch in the Velabrum 64 21. Convent Garden of San Cosimato, Vicovaro 68 22. A Tract of the Claudian Aqueduct outside the City 72 23. Campagna Romana, from Tivoli 76 24. Subiaco from the Monastery of S. Benedict 78 25. Garden of the Monastery of Santa Scholastica, Subiaco 82 26. Holy Stairs at the Sagro Speco 86 27. Little Gleaner in the Campagna 90 28. Sea-horse Fountain in the Villa Borghese 94 29. Ornamental Water, Villa Borghese 98 30. Village Street at Anticoli, in the Sabine Hills 100 31. Villa d'Este, Tivoli 106 32. In Villa Borghese 110 33. The "Spanish Steps," Piazza di Spagna 114 34. At the Foot of the Spanish Steps, Piazza di Spagna, on a Wet Day 118 35. Roman Peasant carrying Copper Water Pot 122 36. Chapel of the Passion in the Church of San Clemente 126 37. A Rustic Dwelling in the Roman Campagna 128 38. Procession with the Host at Subiaco 130 39. Girl selling Birds in the Via del Campidoglio 134 40. Entrance to Ara Coeli from the Forum 138 41. In the Church of Ara Coeli 142 42. Doorway of the Monastery of S. Benedict (Sagro Speco) at Subiaco 146 43. Chapel of San Lorenzo Loricato at S. Benedict's, Subiaco 150 44. Steps of the Dominican Nuns' Church of SS. Domenico and Sisto 154 45. Porta San Paolo 158 46. The Colosseum in a Storm 162 47. Arch of Titus from the Arch of Constantine 166 48. Mediaeval House at Tivoli 170 49. Ilex Avenue and Fountain (_Fontana scura_) Villa Borghese 174 50. "House of Cola di Rienzo," by Ponte Rotto 178 51. San Clemente, Choir and Tribune of Upper Church 182 52. Santa Maria in Cosmedin 186 53. Chapel of San Zeno (called _orto del paradiso_) in S. Prassede 190 54. Cloisters of S. Paul's-without-the-Walls 192 55. Cloisters in Santa Scholastica, Subiaco 196 56. Santa Maria sopra Minerva 198 57. Saint Peter's 200 58. Interior of S. Peter's, the Bronze Statue of S. Peter 204 59. A Cardinal in Villa d'Este 208 60. Villa d'Este--Path of the Hundred Fountains 210 61. Theatre of Marcellus 212 62. Island of the Tiber--the Isola Sacra 216 63. The Steps of Ara Coeli 220 64. Steps of the Church of SS. Domenico and Sisto 224 65. Santa Maria Maggiore 230 66. Arch of Constantine 234 67. Castel and Ponte Sant' Angelo 238 68. Bronze Statue of Marcus Aurelius on the Capitol 240 69. S. Peter's from the Pincian Gardens 244 70. From the Terrace of the House of Domitian 252 _The Illustrations in this volume have been engraved by the Hentschel Colourtype Process._ ROME CHAPTER I ROME About seven hundred and fifty years before the Christian era some Latian settlers founded a town on the banks of the Tiber and became the Roman people. Where did they come from? Had they come across what was later to be known as the _ager romanus_ from the Latin stronghold of Alba Longa, or were they a mixed people, partly composed of those men from Etruria who were already settled in the country round? In the confused pictures which tradition has handed down to us we see Latins in conflict with Etruscans, and Romulus relegating the latter to a special quarter of the city; but we also see one of the three tribes into which he divided the people bearing an Etruscan name, an Etruscan chief as his ally, and we know that while two at least of her six kings belonged to this race, the religion, the art, and the political institutions of early Rome were borrowed from that Etruscan civilisation which was at this epoch the most advanced on Latin soil. However this may be, four legends cling round the mighty founders of Rome--the Latian, the Aenean, the Arcadian, the Etruscan. The Arcadian Evander had brought with him a colony of the indigenous people of Greece, and founded a town at the foot of the Palatine sixty years before the Trojan war. But at Alba Longa there also reigned kings descended from Aeneas, who had come to Latium after the capture of Troy bringing with him the _Palladium_, the sacred image of Pallas. His descendant, the vestal Rhea Silvia, becomes the mother of the twins Romulus and Remus by Mars. The babes of the guilty priestess are cast adrift, but their cradle is carried down the Tiber to the foot of the Palatine, where they are suckled by a wolf, and brought up by the shepherd community already established there. In the dim twilight of origins we recognise that Romulus is the type of the Roman people, whom he symbolises, who are found fighting the Sabine, the Etruscan, even the Latin, for existence as a nation. In the dim twilight we see all Roman things coming down the Tiber to the foot of the Palatine--the original _Roma Quadrata_--and we see that the nucleus of the settlement there was the cave of Lupercus, the Italian shepherds' god, identified later with the Arcadian Pan. This cave was just above the site of the present church of Santa Anastasia; here grew the wild fig-tree in whose roots the cradle of Rhea Silvia's babes became entangled, and here was the hut of Faustulus their foster-father. The Grotto of Lupercus is the oldest sanctuary of kingly Rome. For the people were shepherds. Other nations had risen under shepherd kings who led their people to war, but no other people had become world conquerors; no other people had been equally skilled in the arts of war and the arts of peace, the arts of the plough and the arts of the spear, in the self-discipline, the heroic devotion, the unity of purpose, of the men who once carried in their breast the destinies of the known world. The story is aptly figured in the person of the god Mars, who was the reputed father of Romulus and Remus. The Roman god was at first an agricultural divinity--the "spears of Mars" were the rods with which the shepherd owner marked his boundaries. When, under the influence of Greece, Mars became the god of battles, the boundary marker of the fields became his war weapons. But if the Roman knew how to beat his ploughshare into a sword, he also knew how to return from the sword to the plough. The one was never far from the other--they put him in possession of those two ways of inheriting the earth, multiplying and subduing, producing and combating. Thus the pastoral legend never died out from the land of Saturn, and in the proudest flush of victory, when the relics of the _hastae martis_ were shown to the triumphant followers of Mars, there was present to the soul of the Roman the image of the father of Romulus covering the land with gigantic strides to strike these same _hastae_ into the soil as a sign of possession, the emblem of primitive law. Two hills in Central Italy and a swamp between them provided the theatre of perhaps the greatest millennium in human history. On the one hill were the Latins--or let us call them the Roman people--the site of _Roma Quadrata_ the foster-land of Romulus, the birthplace of Augustus, the hill which has given its name to the imperial palaces of the earth. On the other were the Quirites and the site of the Sabine arx, that _Capitolium_ so-called, says Montfaucon, "because it was the head of the world, from which the consuls and senators governed the universe." Whenever the marshy ground between them was passable, the Latins and Sabines descended the steep declivities of their hills and transformed it into a battlefield. But even in these early days they felt the need of a _comitium_ where the rival chiefs could meet to decide upon terms; and in no long space this battle-ground became the nucleus and pledge of the political greatness of Rome. For the Forum symbolises all human civilisation. It is the symbol of the common meeting ground--the common sentiments and needs--of human beings, where rancours are laid aside for the business of life--its common but its noblest business, civic, "civilised," pursuits. It is the symbol of human greatness also, for the Roman never suffered the common necessities to force upon him an ignoble peace. The battle-ground became the centre of civic life, but only on condition that the interests for which men should combat were never sacrificed to the interests for which men should co-operate. Through the symbolic _trait d'union_ of the Forum, two fortresses of barbarians became the nucleus of the city which ruled the world, and their people the imperial people of history. [Illustration: THE FORUM FROM THE ARCH OF SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS In the left corner is the _lapis niger_, the traditional tomb of Romulus. Facing us is the Arch of Titus, and to the right is the Palatine.] The city on the Palatine had been extended so as to include the town of the Sabines or Quirites on the neighbouring Quirinal hill, before the first king, who was born in the Sabine country, was called to rule the Romans. The Capitol at this time was a spur of the Quirinal, and so remained until Trajan dug away a part of the latter to lay the foundations of his forum. The Etruscans lived on the Caelian and the two horns of the Esquiline hills; the former was incorporated in the primitive city, but the Esquiline and Viminal were not enclosed until the time of Servius Tullius when Rome first became "the city on Seven Hills." The Aventine where Remus had wished to build the city was colonised by the conquered Latin towns in the reign of Ancus Martius, and this isolated hill, overlooking the Tiber on one side and the campagna on the other, still haunts the imagination with its melancholy beauty, its pariah history, as though it embodied the undying protest of Remus, an unceasing claim upon Roman justice. The varied and interesting Christian memories here, which begin with the _titulus_ of Priscilla and Aquila, are continued in the Priory of the once international Order of the Knights of Malta, recording the noblest effort of the lay world during the middle ages--the institution of chivalry; and in the modern Benedictine house of Saint Anselm--our English Anselm. The Janiculum, the site of a fortress built by Ancus Martius against the Etruscans, was not enclosed within the city walls till the time of Aurelian; the Vatican hill was only enclosed in the ninth century by Leo IV. All these hills were once steep defences against enemies in the surrounding country; now that there are no longer any enemies the Romans appear bent on abolishing the hills, and the mania for planing and razing is carried to an extent which must seem nothing less than childish to the visitor. The Viminal has become almost indistinguishable since the Villa Massimo was pulled down, and only the name _Via Viminale_, which replaces the older Via Strozzi, indicates the hill which lay between the Quirinal and the Esquiline. Some idea may be gained of the original steepness of the hills when we realise that in the memory of the Romans the road past Palazzo Aldobrandini--on a slope of the Quirinal--used to be at the level of the top of the high wall which now surrounds it. The Capitol was only approachable from the Forum, and was never connected with the city on the hither side until the construction of the historic steps of Ara Coeli, one of the rare works undertaken by the Romans during the absence of the popes in Avignon. The Tiber is now but a narrow stream in the midst of its ancient bed. The Romans had never embanked the swift-flowing river, and the enormous deposits of the yellow sand which give it its traditional colour, and which threaten to completely dam the river by the island of the Tiber, may afford the explanation. The inundations of 1900 in fact reached the same level as those of 1872, as we may see recorded in the neighbouring church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin. Few spots in Rome exceed in varied interest the _isola sacra_ which with its two historic bridges the _pons Fabricius_ and the _pons Cestius_ spans the Tiber at the heart of the city. Here was the temple to Aesculapius, whose worship had been introduced into Rome during a time of pestilence in obedience to the Sibylline oracles. The island itself thereafter assumed the form of a huge stone ship, faced with travertine, the prow with the sculptured staff and serpent of the god being still clearly visible; and here Greece and Rome met a civilisation and an art still older than their own, for the mast of this great ship is formed by an Egyptian obelisk. Hard by is the district where the Romans, who had borrowed from them their gods and their cult, compelled the "_turba impia_" ("the impious crowd") of Etruscans to dwell; while the walled enclosure in which, from the eleventh century onwards, Christian Rome obliged the Jews to live, is approached by the Fabrician bridge, as we may gather from the inscription in Hebrew and Latin on the little church of San Giovanni Calibita, beneath a painting of the Crucifixion, which says: "I have spread forth my hands all the day to an unbelieving people, who walk in a way that is not good." In the early twelfth century Otho III. brought, as he believed, the body of the Hebrew apostle Saint Bartholomew to this island, as 1400 years earlier the cult of Aesculapius had been brought there from Greece. The city of Beneventum had, however, it is supposed, palmed off on the emperor the body of Saint Paulinus of Nola which rests in the church dedicated to the apostle by the side of that of Saint Adelbert the apostle of the Slavs. The Franciscans came to the _isola sacra_ in the sixteenth century, and one of the friars of Saint Bartholomew's is the popular dentist of the poor from all quarters. Here, then, in the midst of the river which determined the site of the cosmopolitan city, is a spot to whose history Egypt, Greece, Etruria, Palestine have contributed--Aesculapius, "one of the Twelve," the Christian Slavs, the Saxon Otho, Francis of Assisi. In Paulinus of Nola we are reminded of the earliest Western monasteries, and the Franciscan friars represent for us the thirteenth-century revival of the religious spirit in Italy. What more? In the red-gowned confraternity of the island we are put in touch with an institution which seems to be as old as human history, with those burial guilds, sanctioned by Roman law, under shelter of which the first Christians obtained a legal footing for themselves and their cemeteries long before their religion was tolerated. [Illustration: THE FORUM, LOOKING TOWARDS THE CAPITOL The Palatine is to the left. See pages 4, 5, 61.] The vicissitudes of the city have made certain features of its life as eternal as itself. Through the middle ages it was the sanctuary and since the renascence of classical learning it has been the museum of Europe. Long before there were any kind of facilities for travelling every one came to Rome. A procession of people from every race under heaven, in every variety--every excess and defect--of costume, has passed along the streets under the observant but unastonished eyes of the _blasé_ Roman; and when a lay pilgrim in a brown tunic, hung with rosaries, and carrying a crucifix taller than himself, walked last year out of Saint Peter's among the Easter crowd, no one noticed him. The modern city in becoming the hostess of the other provinces of Italy is approximating in size to the Rome of the early empire; but the Rome of the popes made no sort of provision for the influx of Europe. The Inn of the Bear, in the street of that name leading to Ponte Sant' Angelo, provided the best accommodation; and here, it is said, Dante himself had lodged. It is but a hundred years ago that a pavement was placed for pedestrians, and then only one side of the Corso boasted a narrow footpath. The streets were encumbered with hucksters' stalls, with refuse, dirt, and stones; the nights were dark as pitch, and hygiene was only hinted at in the marble _affiches_ which may still be seen at certain old street corners announcing that _monsignore_ the way warden would visit with a fine of 25 _scudi_ and divers bodily pains the practice of emptying every kind of refuse into the side streets. Now that the city is emerging from the chrysalis of the middle ages the cry of "Vandals!" goes up on all sides. But Rome has always been destroyed. Not even her moral vicissitudes give her a greater right to be called "the eternal city" than her survival of the material ruin to which she has over and over again been subjected. That Goth and Vandal have not wrought more havoc than emperors, people, and popes is recorded in the pasquinade on Urban VIII. (Barberini), who stripped the bronze off the Pantheon to adorn the baldacchino of Saint Peter's:--_Quod non fecerunt Barbari, fecerunt Barberini_. It is a curious coincidence that the inscription commemorating the victories of Claudius in Britain, in which our kings are irreverently spoken of as "barbarians," should now grace the garden of the Barberini palace in Rome. _Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis._ One factor only has been constant in the vicissitudes of Rome--barbarian invaders, rescuers of popes, foreign intruders, internecine brawlers, the flights and elections of popes, have each brought the opportunity for wholesale pillage. To the Roman love of destruction must be added the love of the large and superfluous: from the time of the emperors to the present hour when sites and buildings are doomed on all hands in order that the colossal monument of Victor Emmanuel II. may dominate the centre of the Roman tramway system--while the House of Augustus is unexcavated and his tomb is dishonoured--the Romans have proved themselves to be the sons of those who killed the prophets, by building or desecrating their sepulchres. But when "new Rome" is condemned let us not forget that it has given us what the learning and the riches of the most munificent popes never compassed--an excavated Forum. There is no Mayfair and no Seven Dials in Rome. The poor live, and have always lived, cheek by jowl with the rich: a palace in the Ghetto and a hovel in the Corso have each existed without offence. This brings us to another permanent feature of Roman life--the beggars. Rome has always lived on the foreigner, and it has always had troops of beggars patrolling its streets, in the time of the Antonines as in that of Gregory the Great, or as in that of the latest of the sovereign pontiffs, Pius IX.; and the cheerful-faced beggar who was licensed by this pope to sit by the statue of Saint Peter lived to the closing years of the century and gave a dowry of 200,000 francs to his daughter on her marriage. The difficulties which met the Roman of the era of Gregory the Great when pest and the transition to the agricultural system of _coloni_ threw the serfs upon the streets, met the government of Italy when after September 1870 the whole motley crowd which had been the recipient of the Christian system of alms-giving was in its turn suddenly thrown upon the streets of the city. Those who remember the "seventies" or the "eighties" in Rome remember the menacing manner in which "alms" were "asked," how near together were blessing and cursing, and how unfrequented roads and hills were beset by sturdy beggars, lineal descendants of the brigand who placing his hat in the roadway levelled his gun at you as he proffered the request: "For the love of God put something in that hat." Papal charity pauperised a whole people: notices in the streets on wet days announced the free distribution of bread in the Colosseum; doles of bread were given by all the parish clergy to the practising members of their congregations. The men women and children who had passed their time doing odd jobs in churches, following viaticum and funeral processions, and providing a church crowd on all occasions, were suddenly called upon to make some concession to the modern spirit--hawking a bunch of crumpled flowers, a box of matches or a couple of bootlaces up and down the streets, in and out of the restaurants, these latest recruits to the commercial spirit exchanged the atmosphere of the sacristy for the busy whirl of trade without ceasing to be what they had always been, beggars pure and simple. Successful attempts are now being made to put down begging. The great and real distress which exists in the city is mainly due to the excessive rents and the terrible overcrowding--in the _San Lorenzo_ quarter the modern poor of Rome may be found herded together with five, six, and even seven families living _in one room_. The mania for building in the "eighties" led to the "building crisis"; streets of unfinished houses mock the houseless poor and the "improvements" of the city are gradually demolishing the poorer dwellings. Amidst this misery it is still the old Roman population which receives most help; they are known in their parishes, and the old established subsidies and dowries come their way. [Illustration: TEMPLE OF SATURN FROM THE BASILICA JULIA IN THE FORUM The Capitol is to the left. The temple is built at the foot of the Capitol hill. See pages 3, 13, 30, 91.] The population of Rome has varied as much as its fortunes. The maximum was reached in the time of the Flavian emperors--2 millions, but even in the time of Augustus the inhabitants probably numbered 1,300,000. A period of three hundred and fifty years, which brings us to the date of the "Peace of the Church," sufficed to decrease this number by more than a million (A.D. 335). After a thousand years of Christian domination the population of the city had sunk to its minimum, 17,000 (A.D. 1377). Even in the reign of the magnificent Leo X. it was not more than 30 or 40 thousand. From the beginning of the seventeenth century when it exceeded 100,000, it steadily increased, till in 1800 the population numbered 153,000. But during the "empire," 1812, it fell to 118,000. Ten years after "the Italians" entered Rome it had increased by 79,000, to 305,000. The last census, 1900, shows a resident population of 450,000--not a third of its classical total--and Naples is still the most densely populated city of Italy. * * * * * The Greek tradition in Rome seems summed in the Palatine, the hill of "Pallas"; but the Capitol, the hill of Saturn, sums Italy itself. The one represents the Roman Empire, the other the Roman Commune--those liberties and that self-government which began with the entry of the _gentes_ and the formation from among them of the Roman Senate, and which were never to be abolished. The Palatine has not been inhabited since the officials of the Exarchate abandoned it in the eighth century; but the life of the Capitol has never been intermitted; it has never ceased to represent all the moments in the life of the Roman people. This distinction is sharply drawn to-day: the Palatine is a hill of majestic ruins visited only by the tourist, the Capitol is still the seat of the municipality of Rome, ascended by every couple for the celebration of their marriage, and its registers signalise every young life born to the city. The municipal franchises of Italy have played a large part in her history, and that of Rome is no exception. Moreover the Senate of Rome, the heads of each _gens_ from among the original settlers, and the _Populus_, who be it remembered were the _gentes_ and were never synonymous with the _plebs_, represented two constant facts and factors--a free Senate and free municipal government by the _Populus Romanus_. These flourished in the middle ages as they had flourished in the classical city, and it was thus easy for Cola di Rienzo to restore them when the popes had abandoned the city to its fate. Papal letters to Charlemagne's predecessors were indited in the name of the Senate and people of Rome--a custom which influenced the early government of the Roman Church herself, for her letters to other Christian Churches were written in the name of "the Roman Church," even when, as in the case of Clement's epistle, they were the actual handiwork of the then head of the Christian community. Again, when Pepin obliged the Lombard king to cede the exarchate of Ravenna not to the emperor but to Rome, the words employed were: "to the Holy Church and the Roman Republic." Even in the time of the proud Innocent III. the city was still governed "by the Senate and people of Rome," and when the Romans again tired of their Senate--as tradition says they had done when they made Numa king--they created in its place a supreme magistrate who was designated "the Senator," one of whose duties was to maintain the pontiff in his See, and to provide conveniently for his safe conduct and that of the Sacred College when journeying within his jurisdiction. The extent of this jurisdiction is perhaps all that now remains of the power once held by the Senate and Roman people. The municipality of Rome is the largest in the world; it is conterminous with the whole Roman _agro_, so that its history is inseparably linked with that of the Roman boundaries as well as with the life of the Roman people. The outward and visible sign of these primæval Roman liberties is the tetragram S.P.Q.R.--_Senatus Populus Que Romanus_ (the Roman Senate and People), which took the place of the earlier formula _Populus Romanus et Quirites_, and it is of the Sabines, not of the humble conjunction, that that Q still reminds us. All down the centuries we may recognise those four letters--surmounted in imperial times by an eagle--crowning the standard of the Romans, carried far and wide not only through the streets of the city and to the uttermost ends of the earth, but in that religious perlustration of the _ager_ when the ambarvalia rites were celebrated at the Cluilian Trench which separated Rome from Alba Longa, the site of the combat between the Alban Curatii and the Roman Horatii. One of the finest remains in the Forum is the marble relief which represents the _suovetaurilia_, the sow, sheep, and bull sacrificed on this occasion. That Roman greatness which came to be synonymous with confines as large as the known world, had risen with the recognition of these sacred limits, limits which still define the Roman municipality--the symbol of Roman liberties. The Pragmatic Sanction and the world power of Rome! Can two things be more disparate? Yet the version which renders S.P.Q.R. into _Si Peu Que Rien_ must surely be laid at the door of "Gallicanism"--it points to an ecclesiastical not a political _diminutio capitis_. The tract of the city which we see from the terrace on the Pincian hill, looking towards the Janiculum, has been called the most historic plot of land in the world. Is it without reason that the furthest point of this unequalled panorama is the dome which Michael Angelo erected over the tomb of S. Peter? Three mighty civilisations--the Etruscan, the Roman, the Christian--resulted in the foundation of two world empires. Rome is now entering on a third existence, its existence as the capital of Italy, but has it suffered thereby no _diminutio capitis_? Is it not a fact that the classical and the ecclesiastical represented her only world-wide destinies, the only life of Rome which penetrated as truly beyond the city as within its classic confines? Has not the papacy, with all its faults, been the actual link connecting ancient and modern Rome, preserving unbroken the tradition which gave her, beyond her ritual boundaries, the government of the world without? [Illustration: S. PETER'S AND CASTEL SANT' ANGELO FROM THE TIBER See pages 16, 32, 239, 242.] CHAPTER II ROMAN BUILDING AND DECORATION Shepherds' huts clustered upon a hill top whose base is washed by a swift yellow river rushing to the sea not far distant. This is the first faint foreshadowing of the existence of Rome which reaches us dimly across the centuries. These shepherd settlers had chosen a site propitious for the foundation of the great city which was to be raised upon those grouped hills by the skilful hands of their descendants, for the necessary building materials lay close at hand in lavish profusion. One of the neighbouring hills, known later as the Janiculum, and parts of another, the Pincian, yielded a fine yellow sand. Beneath the surface soil was volcanic rock, which, in a prehistoric age when the campagna was a sea-bed and waves lapped against Monte Cavo, had been poured out in great liquid streams from volcanoes amongst the Alban hills and at Bracciano. Close at hand in the plain lay immense beds of a chocolate-brown earth with which later builders were to manufacture cement. The makers of Rome therefore had only to quarry their building stone on the very site of their city, and we can still recognise in the few fragments that have come down to us the rectangular blocks of brown tufa used in the first period of her history. These earliest monuments, the walls of Servius Tullius and the vaults of the Mamertine prisons, were the direct outcome of a period of Etruscan dominion, and one of the first great works undertaken in the growing city, the draining of the swamps of the Forum, Campus Martius and Velabrum, was due to Tarquinius Priscus, the immense _cloacae_ built for the purpose being still in use, and their masonry as strong as when they were constructed about 603 B.C. The two Etruscan kings, Tarquinius Priscus and Tarquinius Superbus, built the first triple shrine on the Capitol dedicated to the three Etruscan gods, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, and the primitive Roman temples, consisting of a simple _cella_ with a peristyle, were doubtless Etruscan in character and were decorated with terra-cotta and bronze in the Etruscan manner. The Romans were born builders and engineers, and in these branches they quickly outstripped their predecessors and instructors. If they were deficient in artistic originality, they evinced a readiness to imitate and a power of appreciating skill and proficiency in the arts wherever they met with them, and their practical and utilitarian spirit taught them how to adopt and improve upon experience and guided them in the choice of right materials. [Illustration: TEMPLE OF SATURN FROM THE PORTICO OF THE DII CONSENTES One of the earliest monuments of Rome; originally built in the reign of the last of the Tarquins or the first years of the Republic, but twice reconstructed during the Empire. It served as the Treasury of Rome. The granite columns with marble capitals are of the Ionic order. See pages 30, 181.] A period when the influence of Greece predominated succeeded the first epoch in the building of Rome, and to this time must be ascribed the adoption of the Greek models for public buildings, for circuses, baths, and basilicas. Ionic, Corinthian, and Doric columns were imported into Rome, the latter undergoing some modification to suit the Romans' more florid taste. The temples became Hellenic in style. The small _cella_ was built within an open court surrounded by arcades from which the people assisted at the sacrifices. The altar stood in the open court. Later, windows were introduced into the building, and the openings were filled in with a bronze grating similar to that still in perfect preservation over the door of the Pantheon, or with a perforated marble screen, fragments of coloured glass being inserted in the interstices of the pattern. By the third century there were 400 temples in Rome, but the simple form of the early buildings was hidden with excessive ornamentation, and frieze and cornice were loaded with carving and figures. The basilica, or kingly hall of justice, was a rectangular building divided into a central portion or nave and side aisles by rows of columns under a horizontal architrave. The columns were in two tiers, the upper one enclosing a gallery which was reached by a flight of stairs springing either within or without the building. The entrances were at the sides, and one extremity, and in some cases both were extended to form a semicircular apse or tribune where stood the judge's seat. A marble screen, the _cancellum_, separated this portion from the rest of the building, and this constituted the bar to which the accused were brought; just beyond stood the altar, where incense burned; and here, during the persecutions, Christians were arraigned and bidden to throw incense on the fire as a sign of recantation. These great buildings served as courts of justice and for the transaction of business, and those which stood upon the _fora_ were in some instances so large that several cases could be conducted in them at once. Before the Empire the nave was probably unroofed or covered only with an awning, and the upper galleries were entirely open so that their occupants could at will attend to the proceedings within the basilica or watch the games and events without. Similarly a single rail or low partition only separated the open colonnades below from the Forum. Curtains could be drawn across these to shut out importunate onlookers and to muffle the sounds of street traffic, but it is evident that the basilica precincts were regarded as a place of familiar _rendezvous_ by the idlers in the Forum, as the gaming tables scratched in the flooring of the Julian basilica testify. [Illustration: A CORNER OF THE FORUM FROM THE BASE OF THE TEMPLE OF SATURN The column of Phocas, erected in honour of the Byzantine emperor who was the contemporary of Gregory the Great, faces us, and to the right are the columns of the temple to Antoninus Pius and Faustina, now the façade of the church of San Lorenzo in Miranda. The columns are of _cippolino_ marble. See page 32.] The era of _thermae_ or public baths began with Agrippa in 27 B.C., and by the end of the third century eleven such existed in Rome exclusive of the smaller baths or _balnae_, of which there were 850. Nero, Titus, Trajan, Septimius Severus, Caracalla, Diocletian, were all builders of _thermae_. These huge edifices were a great deal more than public baths. They were a Roman form of the _gymnasia_ of the Greeks, and the colossal ruins that remain can give but the barest idea of what they must have been at their best. They included immense halls and courts for athletic displays, vestibules, concert rooms, picture galleries and libraries, pleasure grounds decorated with statues fountains and shrubs and surrounded by open porticoes. Feasts, concerts, and entertainments were provided, and pleasant hours could be whiled away within their walls by the gilded youth of Rome. The baths of Diocletian, of which the church of S. Maria degli Angeli is a magnificent fragment, could accommodate 3600 bathers at a time, those of Caracalla 2000. An army of slaves and attendants waited upon the bathers and sped upon their errands along underground passages from one end of the building to the other. Ruins of the _thermae_ of Caracalla and of Titus are still standing. Out of the colossal vaults and walls of Diocletian's baths have been constructed two churches, a monastery, a large museum, and a variety of storehouses, warehouses, stables, and cellars. Equally remarkable was the Roman system for supplying their city, their _thermae_, and their 1350 street fountains with pure water. Appius Claudius was the first to collect the water from springs amongst the mountains in the neighbourhood of Rome and to bring it across the campagna. This was in 313 B.C., up to which date the inhabitants of the city had depended for their water supply upon the Tiber and upon sunken wells. Following in the steps of Claudius, fourteen aqueducts whose united length measured 360 miles were built at various times. They varied in length from 11 to 59 miles and their course lay sometimes under ground and sometimes 100 feet above it, while the amount of water they poured daily into Rome has been estimated at 54,000,000 cubic feet. Four of these ancient aqueducts are still in use. The Virgo, built by Agrippa in 27 B.C., and now known as the Trevi; the Alexandrina, constructed by Alexander Severus (222-235), probably to supply his own baths, and now known as the _acqua Felice_; the ancient Trajana, now Paola, and the Marcian, restored by Pius IX. The Marcian was always considered the best drinking water, and the Trevi being a softer water was preferred for bathing purposes. The amphitheatre alone was, perhaps characteristically, a building of purely Roman origin. Intended for shows and fights of gladiators and wild beasts, these were at first temporary wooden structures. The only stone predecessor to the great Flavian amphitheatre was a smaller building in the Campus Martius, the work of Statilius Taurus in 30 B.C. The Colosseum was begun by Vespasian in A.D. 72, was dedicated eight years later by Titus, and was completed by Domitian. It stands upon the site of Nero's artificial lake, is one-third of a mile in circumference, covers some 6 acres of ground, and is 160 feet in height. It could seat 87,000 spectators, and its staircases, galleries, and entrances are so admirably planned that this crowd of sight-seers must have found their seats and filed out when the show was finished with little delay and difficulty. The numbers of the entrances, cut in stone, can still be seen over each of the arches. The Colosseum is built entirely of travertine, the blocks are fitted together without mortar and are studded with holes from which the greedy despoilers of the middle ages wrenched the metal clamps. In spite of its having been used as a fortress and served as a stone quarry for centuries, it is still one of the most magnificent of the monuments of Rome. The solidity of the public buildings seems to have been in marked contrast to the flimsy nature of the common dwellings or _insulae_. In the time of Augustus these numbered 46,600, the _domui_, or houses of the rich, 1790. The former were roofed with timber or thatch. As land was dear, they were often of several stories and perilously high; many of them were built of unbaked bricks with projecting upper floors, and they were constructed with wooden framing filled in with rush and plaster, so that when a fire broke out in the city whole regions were laid waste in a few hours. As a measure of safety Augustus limited the height of the _insulae_ to 70 feet, and Trajan reduced this again to 60 feet, while a distance of 5 feet between each house was prescribed by the law of the Twelve Tables. The volcanic tufa used by the earliest Roman builders was discarded gradually in favour of better materials. _Peperino_, a grey-green volcanic stone from the Alban hills, began to take its place, and was used for the construction of the Tabularium in 78 B.C. and for Hadrian's mausoleum. It was cut in the same way in large rectangular blocks, clamped together during the Republican and early Imperial periods with iron. Mortar was not used till later, and at first served only to level the surfaces of the stones; it came into use for binding bricks together only at a later and degenerate period of architecture. Travertine was adopted towards the first century B.C. It is a cream-coloured stone hard and durable though easily calcined by fire, formed by deposit in running water. It was quarried at Tivoli and on the banks of the river Anio, where it is still plentiful. To the present day the quarries are worked at Tivoli, and the stone is brought to Rome on waggons drawn by immense white oxen which pace majestically along the dusty roads beneath the goad of their wild-looking drivers. The chocolate-brown earth imported from Pozzuoli or dug from beds in the campagna, is known as _pozzolana_, and early in the history of Rome her builders discovered that when mixed with lime it made a remarkably strong cement. As such they used it for foundations, for the lining of walls and ceilings. With pieces of brick and stone a concrete was formed which was poured in a liquid state between wooden casings, and when set proved to be one of the hardest and most durable of the materials used. It was the strength of this concrete which enabled the Roman builders to give the vaults of their baths and basilicas such an enormous span; and it could be used for the flooring of upper stories without beams or supports. When especial lightness was required, the concrete was made with broken pumice stone. [Illustration: TEMPLE OF MARS ULTOR The temple erected by Augustus in his Forum to the God of War under the title of Mars the Avenger. Only the upper part of the ancient arch of the Forum, now known as _Arco de' Pantani_, is visible. This represents the first imperial building in Rome. See pages 3, 30.] After the first century B.C. concrete became a favourite building material. The walls so made were lined with stucco and faced without in various fashions, the variety of the facing determining with considerable accuracy the date of the fabric. The earliest facing, of the first and second century B.C., was of irregular blocks of tufa set in cement, and is known as the _opus incertum_. This was replaced in the middle of the first century B.C. by tufa blocks cut in squares and set diagonally giving the appearance of a network and hence known as _opus reticulatum_. In or after the first century A.D. this fashion was superseded by a facing of triangular bricks set point inwards, and by the end of the third century bricks were mixed with the _opus reticulatum_, a style known as _opus mixtum_. To the casual observer the narrow brown bricks of the ruined buildings of ancient Rome seem to play an important part, but, with few exceptions, they are merely a brick facing upon concrete. Up to the first century B.C. there was little or no splendour or decoration introduced into the buildings of Rome, and the city of Augustus' inheritance was a city of sober-hued, volcanic rock. When marble was first sparingly used, Livy reprobates it as too showy and extravagant. Notwithstanding, the fashion rapidly spread, first in the embellishment of public buildings, then for private houses as well until in the first century of the Empire it became a common building stone. For nearly three centuries it was imported into the city in a continuous flow from the quarries of Greece and Egypt. The native Luna marble, the modern Carrara, was not at first worked, but thousands of slaves and convicts toiled in the quarries of the Roman provinces. The great blocks were numbered and stamped with the name of the reigning emperor and shipped off in the great triremes across the Mediterranean to Ostia. Thence the trading vessels were towed by oxen up the river to Rome, their slow progress ceasing with nightfall, when they were drawn up and moored to the banks till next morning, bands of _vigiles_ watching over the safety of their cargoes and restraining their lawless crews from acts of brigandage. At their journey's end, the cargoes were unloaded upon the marble wharf beneath the Aventine; here unused blocks still lie upon the site of the once busy _Marmoratum_, now a deserted quay beside a deserted river; and the harbour of Ostia, built by King Ancus Martius at the river's mouth, is now four miles inland. Occasionally a granite obelisk was brought from Thebes or Heliopolis to adorn an imperial circus. That now in the Lateran Piazza is 108 feet in height and weighs 400 tons. Ships had to be built on purpose for the task, and one of these was so enormous that after safely conveying the Vatican obelisk to Rome, it was sunk by the Emperor Claudius to serve as a breakwater for the harbour at Porto. When the laden ships arrived at the _Marmoratum_ the obelisks were hauled on shore by men and horses and then dragged and pushed on rollers along the streets by gangs of workmen. Forty-eight obelisks were once erected in Rome, of which thirty have disappeared and left no trace. [Illustration: TEMPLE OF VESPASIAN FROM THE PORTICO OF THE DII CONSENTES Built in honour of the first Flavian Emperor by his sons Titus and Domitian. The three remaining Corinthian columns are of Carrara marble. The Arch of Septimius Severus to the right was dedicated to the emperor and his sons Caracalla and Geta in A.D. 203, to commemorate their Parthian victories. It is of Pentelic marble. The church of Santa Martina in the background is near the site of the Senate House. See pages 31, 32.] While the fashion for marble lasted, no material was considered too rare or too costly. Parian marble, the most beautiful of all white marbles, from the island of Paros; Pentelic marble from Pentelicus; Hymettan marble from the mountains of Attica; rich yellow _giallo antico_ from Numidia; _cippolino_ with its beautiful green waves from Carystos; purple _pavonazzo_ from Phrygia; black marble from Cape Matapan; green and red porphyries from Egypt; alabaster from Thebes; serpentine from Sparta; jasper and fluor-spar from Asia Minor; _lapis lazuli_, with which Titus paved a chamber in his baths, from Persia, besides countless varieties of the so-called _Lumachella_ marbles and rare and beautiful _breccias_. There arose in Rome an army of marble workers, cutters and sawyers, polishers and cleaners, carvers of simple mouldings and of inscriptions, and more skilled sculptors of ornament and of statues and busts. Coloured marbles were first used in small pieces for making mosaic pavements. This art was introduced from Greece some time in the first century B.C., and in its simplest form was an arrangement of smooth pebbles in a rough pattern on a bed of cement. As the art developed, cubes, lozenges, and hexagons of travertine and grey lava were cut and fitted together in simple patterns. Then cubes of coloured marble were used, and the designs, of figures and flowers, became more elaborate. The floors were prepared with a bed of concrete, covered with several layers of cement; the last layer was carefully smoothed and levelled, and in this the cubes were fitted according to the pattern, and finally liquid cement was poured over the whole to fill in the cracks. When dry and hard the surface was polished with sand and water rubbed on with little marble blocks. Pavements of the best building period can be recognised by the size of the cubes, about three to the inch, and by the neatness and finish of the work. Two varieties of mosaic can be distinguished, that in which marbles, stones, and coloured glass are cut into cubes only and the so-called _sectile_ mosaic in which elaborate scenes and groups of figures are represented, the coloured pieces being sawn into shapes to fit in with the design. The _Tablinum_ in the house of the vestals and the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol were paved with sectile mosaic. The most brilliant mosaic which came into use during the Empire for the decoration of walls and vaults was made of fragments of coloured marble and glass, the latter specially prepared with acids to make it opaque and to give it a brilliant appearance. The art of mosaic work has never died out entirely in Rome. The Roman mosaic pavements and mosaic wall decoration were copied by the builders of mediæval churches, and even now a mosaic factory is kept up at the Vatican. Although first used in this way, coloured marbles were gradually employed for the interior decoration of houses, for columns, dados, and friezes. Lucius Crassus, the consul (176 B.C.), was the first so to adorn his house, and Lucullus (151 B.C.) paved his hall with black marble. Later, entire rooms were lined with thin slabs clamped to the concrete wall with iron. Sometimes such marble walls were given a thin coat of stucco and painted. As the passion for sumptuous interiors grew all the decorative arts were put into requisition. Walls were painted in fresco, as we can still see at Pompeii and in the house of Germanicus on the Palatine. Ceilings, walls, and cornices were ornamented in stucco in shallow relief. An extremely hard stucco was made with lime and powdered marble--it was nearly as durable as marble and could take almost as high a polish. It was even used for floors; for internal decoration, plaster of Paris was mixed with it. Mouldings, figures, arabesques, groups and scenes were worked in this stucco and delicately coloured. Examples have been preserved in the Diocletian museum and can be seen _in situ_ in the Latin tombs. The greatest plans for the building of Rome were conceived by Julius Caesar and Nero. Of Nero's buildings nothing remains except some ruins of his Golden House beneath the baths of Titus, while the designs of Caesar were destined to be carried out by his great successor Augustus. Justly could this emperor boast that he found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble. The republican period succeeding the expulsion of the Tarquins, and which his accession brought to a close, had not been so fruitful in public buildings as the epoch immediately following. Of the former, the Tabularium, the tombs of Bibulus and Cecilia Metella, the temple of Fortuna Virilis, and the ruins of the Fabrician bridge, the modern Ponte Quattro Capi, have come down to us. The city, however, was beginning to assume a more majestic appearance. On the accession of Augustus, the Capitol was crowned by the Tarquins' temple to Jupiter, which was to be restored by Domitian. The valley between the Palatine and the Aventine was occupied by the enormous Circus Maximus, built by Tarquinius Priscus and decorated by Julius Caesar, and which has so entirely disappeared that we can only trace its site along the present Via dei Cerchi. The temples of Concord and Castor and Pollux stood upon the Forum Romanum, while the temple of Saturn bounding the steep _Clivus Capitolinus_ which led upwards to the Capitol--the ancient _Mons Saturninus_--recorded the golden age when Saturn reigned in Italy. The streets of the city were paved, and beyond the walls the immense Appian causeway crossed the Pontine marshes and stretched onwards towards Brindisi and the east. In the forty years following Rome was transformed. There arose in the Campus Martius, the Pantheon with the baths and aqueduct of Agrippa, the portico of Octavia dedicated by Augustus to his sister, the theatre of Marcellus and the great mausoleum where the emperor and his kindred were to lie, and which, almost smothered in poor houses, has in modern times served the ignoble offices of a bull-ring and a third-rate theatre. Temples were restored, the Basilica Julia was completed, another Forum built with the temple of Mars Ultor in its midst. Upon the site of Augustus' birthplace on the Palatine hill a great palace was raised by himself and Tiberius, and this district of Rome became henceforth the abode of the Caesars. [Illustration: THE COLOSSEUM ON A SPRING DAY The Flavian amphitheatre, called Colosseum from the _colossus_ or colossal statue of Nero which stood on the _velia_ before it. The picture is taken from an _orto_ belonging to the Barberini on the Palatine, looking across the Arch of Constantine. See pages 22, 23, 31.] Augustus and his immediate successors were to witness the golden age of Roman building. After Hadrian came the period of decadence characterised by florid ornamentation, bad taste and workmanship, which culminated under Constantine and his sons. Following in the steps of Augustus, Caligula and Nero erected palaces on the Palatine. Caligula connected the hill with the Forum, and Nero opened up an entrance towards the Caelian. Vespasian built there the Flavian house which his son Domitian was to dedicate as the _Aedes Publica_, a gift to the people. Septimius Severus extended the Palatine towards the south by the construction of his Septizonium. Of the buildings of Tiberius, the columns of the temple of Ceres built into the church of S. Maria in Cosmedin remain to us; of those of Claudius, the beautiful ruined arches of his aqueduct. The Flavian emperors were great builders, and to this period belong the arch of Titus, built in A.D. 70 to commemorate the destruction of Jerusalem, a monument of Rome's best period, the ruined baths erected by this same emperor, and the great amphitheatre and ruins of the temple of Vespasian. Trajan's great buildings--his forum and triumphal arch, his basilica and library--are represented by a very small excavated portion of the basilica, and the column whose summit marks the height of the hill cut away by this emperor to make a roadway between the Quirinal and Capitol and thus relieve the congested traffic of the city. The only fragments left of the work of Hadrian are the ruins of a villa near Tivoli, the mausoleum and _Pons Aelius_, now the castle and bridge of S. Angelo; and behind the church of S. Francesca Romana in the Forum the ruins of the _Templum Urbis_, the temple of Venus and Rome, with its twin niches for the gods, one turned towards the convent the other looking outwards towards the Colosseum. The gilt bronze tiles from the roof of this temple were removed by Pope Honorius I. to deck the Christian _Templum Urbis_ S. Peter's. During the following 140 years there arose in Rome, amongst other monuments that have perished, the temple of Antoninus and Faustina built by Antoninus Pius in memory of his wife and now transformed into the church of S. Lorenzo in Miranda, the column of Marcus Aurelius, the triumphal arch of Septimius Severus dedicated to his sons Caracalla and Geta, the baths which bear this eldest son's name, although only begun by him and completed by Heliogabalus and Alexander Severus, the walls of Aurelian which still encompass the city and the _thermae_ of Diocletian. The latest of the imperial buildings were the temple built by Maxentius to his son Romulus, now the church of SS. Cosma and Damian in the Forum, and the baths, basilica, and triumphal arch of Constantine. A visitor to this city of the Cæsars must have been almost bewildered by what he saw. As he passes through the town great buildings meet his glance on every side, their gilded tiles and white marble walls glistening in the sun and clear atmosphere. Crowds jostle him in the narrow paved roads. He crosses one Forum after another, six in all, and finally reaches the Campus Martius. He pauses upon the steps of temples and basilicas which seem on all sides to surround these busy centres of Roman life. Open spaces are crowded with trees and shrubs, fountains and statues. He can count thirty-six triumphal arches and eight bridges that span the yellow Tiber. He passes theatres and _stadia_ for races and games, columns and obelisks. Occasionally he comes across a giant building, a colossus even in that city of marvels, the amphitheatre of Vespasian or the _thermae_ of Diocletian, or an immense circus where 285,000 spectators are seated waiting for the chariot races to begin; he has noticed groups of charioteers in their distinctive colours, and heavy betting is going on. He has walked from one end of the city to the other sheltered from sun and rain, along covered porticoes, their pavements rich mosaics, and their length decorated throughout with a continuous series of statues and pictures. He has gazed upon the stupendous palaces of the Palatine, and has noticed the streams of people passing in and out of the city gates on their way to the suburbs which extend to Veii Tivoli and Ostia, or to the villas, parks and gardens, villages and farms, which cover the outskirts of Rome to a distance of 15 miles, amongst which great roads lined by marble tombs radiate outwards towards the hills. With the decay of this mighty city began the era of church building. The origin of the Christian basilica is still a matter of controversy, but the results of careful and recent research[1] go to confirm the view that it was modelled not upon its Pagan namesake the forensic basilica, but upon the private hall found in many of the dwellings of rich Romans of consular or senatorial rank which served for those domestic tribunals for the adjudication of family disputes sanctioned by Roman law. This conclusion has been overlooked from a mistaken belief that the first Christians were recruited from the slaves and poorer classes of the population, but it is now proved that noble Romans and even members of Imperial families early embraced Christianity, and it was more than probable that the domestic basilicas in their houses should be utilised as places of assembly by members of their faith, the gathering of a large body of persons being concealed during times of persecution, by the use of the many entrances common to the Roman house. [1] _Le Basiliche Cristiane._ Mons. Pietro Crostarosa. Rome. The domestic basilica dedicated as a place of Christian assembly, became with the development of the ecclesiastical system, the Roman _titulus_, the church in the house, and as no public hall was built until after the Peace of the church, these were multiplied as the Christian population grew and numbered 40 by the second century. The Christian basilica was thus in existence and perfected in all its liturgical parts in the first three centuries, and when Constantine built his great extramural churches, he only amplified a type familiar to every Christian. S. Maria Maggiore probably existed as a domestic basilica at a time anterior to that of its reputed founders Liberius and Sixtus, and we know that S. Croce and the Lateran were constructed within the Sessorian palace and the house of the Laterani of which they probably formed the halls. [Illustration: THE COLOSSEUM AT SUNSET Taken from the _Mons Oppius_, one of the two spurs of the Esquiline hill. See pages 5, 11.] Architecturally also the earliest churches resembled more nearly the domestic hall than the public basilica. The latter were little more than a covered portion of the Forum upon which they stood. They were entered from either side through the open ambulatories which as we have seen were free to all. The extremities were walled up later and prolonged into an apse to increase the space available for legal purposes. The domestic basilica on the other hand was a rectangular building roofed and closed on all sides, its single apse at one extremity facing the main entrance. The central space was surrounded on three sides by porticoes dividing it into portions which became the aisles for the worshippers and the narthex for the use of catechumens. The domestic judge's seat standing in the apse was replaced by the bishop's throne, and the _cancellum_ became the chancel rail dividing this portion, the presbytery of the church, from the rest of the building. The ruins of the Flavian basilica in Domitian's house on the Palatine (81-96) affords us a ground plan of such a domestic hall, in this instance placed close to the _triclinium_ of the house and not in a direct line with the _vestibulum_ or entrance as was generally the case. Here a fragment of the _cancellum_ can still be seen _in situ_. The Christian altar of the earliest churches placed in front of the apse, faced the congregation, and a space before it, beyond the depressed portion or _confessio_, was reserved for the choir and was surrounded by a marble balustrade. The columns supported a horizontal architrave, above it a flat wall pierced with windows and the plain roof of cedar-wood beams. The floors were paved with a fine mosaic of marble and green serpentine alternating with slabs of white marble or discs of red porphyry. Tribune, arch, and vault, and sometimes other portions of the walls, were decorated with brilliant mosaics and examples of this work, of the fourth, sixth, ninth, and twelfth centuries, and possibly of the second or third, have happily escaped the ravishing hand of the restorer. In the twelfth century the art of marble working underwent a temporary revival under the influence of a talented family of artists, the Cosmati; and a good deal of their work and that of their school is still to be found in Rome, the carved marble and an inlay of mosaic upon marble being easily recognisable in the decoration of the cloisters of the Lateran and of S. Paul's outside the walls, upon ambones, candelabra, and tombs scattered throughout the churches. The straight architectural lines of the Christian basilicas and their subdued colouring of floor and apse produce a delicate and harmonious effect, but they were erected during a debased building period and were not designed for strength, and only a few have weathered the storms of the middle ages and escaped destruction beneath the tasteless restorations of the Renaissance. The new building epoch born in Rome was to be nourished entirely at the expense of the old. Columns and mouldings were transferred bodily from the nearest basilica to furnish the Christian church, and were there arranged haphazard. Simpler still, walls of ancient bricks were quickly run up between the solid columns of a temple; marble casings were torn off to be used as common building stone; statues, carved cornices, and friezes were thrust into lime-kilns which sprang up all over the city wherever the ancient monuments stood thickest; priceless marbles were ground into fragments for making mosaics or were mixed with cement and made into concrete. When Constantine left Rome to found his new capital the city had already degenerated into a squalid provincial town, and fifty years later Jerome could refer to its gilded squalor and its temples lined with cobweb. Already the seal had been put upon the old order when Gratian in 383 abolished the privileges of the pagan places of worship, and quickly disaster followed upon the heels of destruction. Twice Alaric despoiled the city and carried off priceless booty. Vitiges tore the marble from the mausoleum of Hadrian and destroyed the aqueducts; Genseric dismantled the temple of Jupiter; Robert Guiscard laid waste the Campus Martius and other parts of the city by fire. Sieges, sacks, earthquakes, fires, and inundations succeeded each other until the old level of the city was in places buried 50 feet beneath accumulated ruin and rubbish. The scene shifts once more; centuries have slipped by and the city of Rome has become a desolation. Marble columns and granite obelisks lie prone upon the ground, and many more have found graves beneath the soil. Enormous mounds of earth and masonry, disfigured with rude battlements, represent all that is left of the great monuments; crumbling ruins and waste land stretch away to the walls, and without the campagna has become a fever-stricken wilderness. Military fortresses, watch-towers on the walls, and bell-towers of churches are the only buildings kept in repair. Gaunt wolves snarl and fight over the refuse heaps under the walls of S. Peter's. A gibbet crowns the bare summit of the Capitol, goatherds pasture their flocks on its sides and along the green slopes of the Forum, and thus the hill and the tract of land at its foot have returned once more to their primitive pastoral state and their pastoral names, the "hill of goats" and the "field of cows." Over all broods the ominous silence of terror, bloodshed, and pestilence. Upon this scene of ruin the Renaissance and modern city of Rome was to come into being, and the mediaeval buildings were in their turn to be destroyed or overlaid with a modern garb, leaving only a few churches and convents, a few towers and palaces, a few cloisters to mark the passing of the centuries. The remains of the imperial city are described by a modern writer[2] lying like a skeleton beneath the modern town, beneath streets, villas, and public buildings; and from the fifteenth century, when Rome, which had only just escaped an extinction as complete as that of her neighbour and ancient rival Tusculum, began once more to rise from the dust, to modern times, all the building materials have been furnished by her ruins. The few monuments that have been preserved owe their safety to their consecration as churches. [2] Gabelli, _Roma e i Romani_. [Illustration: ARCH OF TITUS Erected to commemorate this Emperor's destruction of Jerusalem, A.D. 70. It is decorated with reliefs of the seven-branched candlestick and other spoils of the Temple which were carried through the city in the Emperor's triumph. See page 31.] Of all the despoilers to which Rome has fallen a victim, none have been so assiduous in their destruction as her own rulers and people. Streets have been paved with building stone, churches and palaces built with ancient materials. Monuments of the utmost artistic and historic value have been destroyed for the purpose, the Colosseum alone being robbed of 2522 cart-loads of travertine in the fifteenth century. The inadequate prohibitions issued at rare intervals proved impotent in presence of a practice so deep rooted and time honoured. Every villa garden and palace staircase is peopled with ancient statues. Fragments of inscriptions, of carved mouldings and cornices, marble pillars and antique fountains, are met with in every courtyard. Even a humble house or shop will have a marble step or a marble lintel to the front door. To the present day no piece of work is ever undertaken in Rome, no house foundation dug or gas-pipe laid, but the workmen come across some ancient masonry, an aqueduct whose underground course is unknown and unexplored, a branch of one of the great _cloacae_, or the immense concrete vault of a bath or temple whose destruction gives as much trouble as if it were solid rock. Fortunately for the student and the archaeologist a government official, a "custodian of excavations," now watches all such operations, and all "finds" of importance, fragments of inscriptions and statues, earthenware lamps, bronze or glass vessels, fragments of mosaic, and gold ornaments, are collected and reported. CHAPTER III THE ROMAN CATACOMBS From the catacombs, the subterranean burial-places of the first Roman Christians, to the basilica of S. Peter's, the greatest ecclesiastical building on earth, there is no break in the drama of history. When you come out from the cemetery of Callistus, on to the fields bordering the Appian Way, and look across to the dome of the great church commemorating Peter, you say to yourself "That is the interpretation of this": this may see in its own humble features the lineaments of that; the church which dominates the Roman country--in imperial possession of Rome--may recognise that the silent underground galleries of the Appia had already taken as effective a possession of the capital of the world. The Roman Church is founded upon three events: the apostolic preaching, the constancy of its martyrs, its position as the heir of Imperial Rome--a position early figured and represented in the persons of its bishops. All these things have their monument in the catacombs; which bear indisputable traces of the sojourn and the preaching of the Apostles, which are the earliest shrines of the Roman martyrs, and which preserve for us in the crypt in the cemetery of Callistus, set apart for the leaders of the Roman Church from Antheros to Eutychian (A.D. 235-275),[3] the veritable nucleus of papal domination. It was the successors of these men who were to fill the rôle left vacant by Constantine's departure for Byzantium; to be forced into a position of overlordship through the uncertainty of the emperor's government by lieutenants--first in Rome and then in Italy; to consolidate this power by constant accretions of Italian territory, and, finally, to acquire by spiritual conquest a universal suzerainty as real as that of the Roman emperor. If those who inscribed the proud words round the dome of S. Peter's had known that hidden in the catacombs there were frescoes representing Peter as the new Moses striking the rock from which flow forth the saving waters of Christ--the name _Petrus_ clearly written above him--even they must have thrilled with wonder and awe: the upholders of Petrine primacy could not have imagined or devised a parable of the first centuries better fitted to their hand. [3] The popes from the time of Zephyrinus, the predecessor of Callistus, to Miltiades, who lived on the eve of the "Peace," rest in this great cemetery. The burial-places of the first Christians in Rome were their only certain property. The law allowed to every corporation its _religiosus locus_, its God's acre, property seldom confiscated even in the worst hours of the great persecutions. It was thus that the Christians, though they never lived in the catacombs, came to regard them as retreats, as places where it was safe to meet for prayer, for mutual encouragement, even for the catechising of neophytes and children. Round them were their dead, their loved ones, nay, round them were their martyrs, the men and women who were to prove that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church"; whose heroic deaths had been witnessed by many; the memory of whose heroism was to prove almost as potent as ocular witness when their burial-places became the nuclei of the first Christian churches, and the abounding reverence felt for them inaugurated the Christian cult of the saints. [Illustration: A PROCESSION IN THE CATACOMB OF CALLISTUS The nucleus of the great catacomb on the Via Appia was formed by the crypts of Lucina and the _hypogaeum_ of the family of the _Caecilii_, both pagan and Christian members of which had their burial places on the Appian Way. S. Cecilia was buried here. See pages 42, 45, 46, 29.] The catacombs lie for the most part within a three mile radius of the wall of Aurelian. They number forty-five, and it is calculated that the passages, galleries, and chambers of which they consist cover several hundred miles, forming a vast underground city--"subterranean Rome." For the first 300 years, until "the Peace of the Church," this was the ordinary place of burial, certain catacombs being affiliated, from the third century, to the ecclesiastical regions in the city. Even after the "Peace" Christians were sometimes buried here, until the fifth century, after which the catacombs were visited as places of pilgrimage for another 400 years. From the ninth century they fell into complete neglect; no one visited these sanctuaries of the sufferings, these monuments of the human affections and religious beliefs of the first Christians. Visitors heard that Rome was built upon terrible underground chasms, filled with snakes, some part of which was every now and then revealed to the terrified inhabitants. No one penetrated till the fifteenth century--the first pioneer belongs to the sixteenth--and it was not till the second half of the nineteenth that a new world was laid bare to the student by the excavations of De Rossi, who rediscovered the great cemetery of Callistus, containing the now famous "papal crypt," and whose labours have resulted in restoring to us nearly twenty catacombs. The terrible underground chasms filled with snakes were found to be galleries of tombs, crypts of all sizes, lighted by shafts, some with seats for catechists, some adapted as miniature basilicas, decorated with frescoes recording biblical scenes, New Testament parables and symbolical representations of New Testament events--(in which the "apocrypha" is not distinguished from the "canon," and the history of Susanna and the Elders sustained the faith and comforted the courage of Christians by the side of the scene of Moses striking the rock or Christ feeding His disciples); eloquent with inscriptions in the epigraphy of the first four centuries, recorded in moments of simple human emotion, intended only for the dead and those who survived them sorrowing; and lastly, covered with _graffiti_, with prayers, names, acclamations, scratched on the walls of galleries leading to some favourite crypt by pilgrim visitors in later centuries. [Illustration: FLAVIAN BASILICA ON THE PALATINE See pages 31, 35, 45, and fly-leaf, page 252.] In this hidden and quiet place of the dead there is recorded a revolution parallel to a volcanic upheaval of nature. Here we have a permanent record of the meeting of classical Rome with Judaea and Christianity; here the graceful art of Pompeii meets the imagery of the Hebrew bible; here the Flavii met the Jews of the Dispersion; here as in a Titanic workshop, Rome, taking its religion from the Jew, moulded the faith which the Chosen People had discarded into the greatest religious organisation on earth--Catholic Christianity. The two arch-cemeteries are those of Callistus on the Via Appia and Priscilla on the Salaria. They are arch-cemeteries because their origin and the part they played in the early years of Roman Christianity gave them a pre-eminent importance, and having been bestowed upon the Church by their owners they became the official catacombs of the Christian community. Each bears in its bosom the record of the first Roman converts; each is rich in frescoes and inscriptions; each bears testimony to the fact that from the beginning the Roman Christians counted among them many of patrician and senatorial rank; we meet with the names of the _Aurelii_, _Caecilii_, _Maximi Caecilii_, of _Praetextatus Caecilianus_ and _Pomponius Grecinus_, and of _Cornelius_, the first bishop to belong to a Roman _gens_, in the catacomb of Callistus; and with those of the _Prisci_, _Ulpii_, and _Acilii Glabriones_ in that of Priscilla. Priscilla, with her son the Senator Pudens, is the reputed hostess of Peter on his visit to Rome, and in the catacomb which bears her name there occurs repeatedly the Apostle's name--unknown in classical nomenclature--both in its Greek and Latin forms, _Petros_, _Petrus_. It is a region of this catacomb which preserves the tradition of the _Fons sancti Petri_, "the well or font of S. Peter," "the cemetery where Peter baptized" or "where Peter first sat," still unconsciously recorded in the Roman feast of "the Chair of S. Peter" on January 18. Here too was buried the philosopher Justin, martyred under Aurelius in A.D. 165, who lived in the house of Pudens, and here, when Justin was describing the rite itself in his Apology to the emperors, was frescoed the earliest representation of the solemn moment of the breaking of bread at the Eucharist. The mystical number of the guests, seven, the fish on the table, archaic symbol of Christ, the "seven baskets full" in allusion to the miracle of the loaves, and the fact that the _agapê_ was already dissociated from the Eucharist in the time of Justin, mark this out as a typical example of that symbolical treatment of real events which is characteristic of early Christian art. The celebrant stands at one corner of the crescent-shaped table breaking the bread; five men and women sit at the table, the only other standing figure being that of a woman wearing the Jewish married woman's bonnet, filling, apparently, the office of _vidua_ or woman-elder. The catacomb of Callistus--an agglomeration of separate _hypogaea_, which originated in the _crypts of Lucina_ and the cemetery of those _Caecilii_ who were among the earliest Roman families to embrace Christianity--is no less interesting. The unique interest of these monuments lies in the fact that they are the incorruptible record of the sentiments, affections, and beliefs of the first Christians. In these frescoes and inscriptions no forgeries or interpolations could creep, no P1 and P2, no "Elohist" or "Jahvist" could confuse the issues and mystify the interpretation. The untouched story appeals to us in mute eloquence. To what side does the testimony of the Roman catacombs lean? The critical method in history has destroyed the foundations of historical Protestantism: has it laid bare the foundations of historical Catholicism? The people who frequented the catacombs did not feel or think or believe like the men who reformed Christianity in the sixteenth century, but it is as true to say that they did not think or believe like the men of the Catholic reaction. The catacombs record a period when Christian life and Christian discipline still seemed more important than Christian dogma, when this last was not yet fixed, when it was still true that "what can be prayed is the rule of what may be believed"--_lex orandi lex credendi_; and here in the place of the dead "what could be prayed" became a veritable norm of what Christians were to formulate as precious dogma later. In the first place then, the frescoes and inscriptions frequently bring before us the notions of rebirth by baptism, and of eternal life by participation in Christ through the mystical commerce of the Eucharist--the Johannine conception; new birth and new life are the keynote ideas in this place of the dead. Sacraments, conceived as material channels conveying grace, already form an integral part of the Christian consciousness; but the assumption that "the seven sacraments" are to be found in the catacombs shows as little knowledge of the history of the Church for the first twelve centuries as of the habits of belief of the Christians of the first, second, and third. If there had ever been an age of the Church before controversy, we might say that the catacombs recorded it. But there never was such an age: what can be found here, however, are the spontaneous Judaic-Gentile beliefs of Christians who learnt their faith through terrible and comforting experiences almost as much as through the first apostolic preaching or the later ministrations of those visitors between Church and Church called in the New Testament "apostles and prophets." The religion of the catacombs was partly formed in the living; it is the faith, formulated, gauged, and tested by the faithful. Hence there is not only spontaneousness, but boldness, liberty of spirit, the absence of all fear of being misunderstood, misconstrued. They did not think as we do, and centuries were to elapse before the minimisers or the maximisers would torture what they said and did with meanings they would not bear. Of these bold spontaneous doctrines none is more conspicuous than that of the intercourse between all the members of Christ, "those who have gone before us with the sign of faith" and those "who wait till their change comes, till this corruptible puts on incorruption." A Christian called upon his dead to pray for him in the realms of light, he called upon God to give to his beloved a place of light and refreshment, he besought the confessors gone to their reward to pray for both them and him. So strong was this belief in a holy and indissoluble union between the members of the one Church and the one Body of Christ, that at every celebration of the liturgy the whole body of the faithful were understood to be present--either really or mystically; and thus the Commemoration of the Living in the mass speaks of those (present) who offer and those (absent) for whom they offer the sacrifice of praise, as all equally "standing round about." And as they offered and prayed for those who were with them in the same town, so they offered and prayed for those who were already with Christ--_in bono in Christo_. The three commemorations of the Roman Canon, the _Memento Domine ... omnium circumstantium_ of the living, the _Communicantes et memoriam venerantes_ of the martyrs, and the _Memento ... qui nos praecesserunt_ of the dead, may be thought of as liturgical features crystallised in the catacombs. It is easy to see too how the funeral celebrations of the liturgy--given this initial idea of intercommunion and intercession among all Christians living and dead--extended the idea of eucharistic sacrifice. How easily the oblation of Christ--the Christian's one offering--became the means of intercessory prayer for all men and all occasions, and gave rise to the requiem mass, the mass for some special grace, the mass of thanksgiving, the mass in commemoration of a saint. Bold treatment of sacred things belongs naturally to an age when the _sentiments_ of the faith, aspiration and hope, outrun dogma--before unfaithfulness in doctrine urged upon the early Church and its leaders the necessity for stricter definition, or unfaithfulness in life had made it easier to substitute a hard and fast creed for "the weightier matters of the law." The symbolism and inscriptions of the catacombs testify how freely such elements were at work there. Take as an instance the fresco representing Christ on a throne giving a book to Peter, with the legend, _Dominus legem dat_, "the Lord gives the law." In other examples of this subject Peter is replaced by some simple but faithful disciple--"the Lord gives the law to Alexander--to Valerius." The allusion is to the "tradition of the Gospel" in baptism; it is not hierarchical. The catacombs influenced the Roman Church in another way. There are none but martyrs' names among the liturgic commemorations of the confessors of the faith (whom we now call "saints"); and these names loudly proclaimed in the _Canon_--in the solemn portion--of the eucharistic services which were held at their graves, not only on the day of deposition but on many other stated days besides, were the nucleus of that long line of "_canonised_" saints which figures in the modern calendar. When, after the "Peace," churches began to cover the city, the very grave of the confessor became the nucleus of the Christian edifice--that confession or sunk tomb which is the central point of the Roman basilica. And as the liturgy had been celebrated on the stone slab which closed the grave so when churches were built the altar was placed over the confessor's tomb: "I saw under the altar the souls of those that had been slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held." [Illustration: LIBRARY OF THE HOUSE OF DOMITIAN ON THE PALATINE Painted on a stormy day. The sombre scene of the ruined Library in the Palace of the Flavian Emperors suggests the ruin of classical learning which followed on the introduction of Christianity. The mother of Domitian's two nephews, whom he had intended to designate as his heirs, was martyred as a Christian, and their cousin of the same name--Flavia Domitilla--founded the catacomb of the Flavian House.] Thus subterranean Rome prepared, as in the hidden working of a mine, not only many affirmations of the faith which was to assert itself in the light and replace the religion of classical Rome, but also the sanctuary of those great basilicas which were to spread over the surface of the city as soon as the Christians, in no real but nevertheless in a highly suggestive sense, "came up from the catacombs." The catacombs are the link between pagan Rome "drunk with the blood of the saints" and the Christian Rome which arose in the imperial city from the ashes of her martyrs. The pagan city on the seven hills as truly sunk into the grave with the bodies of the Roman martyrs as Christian Rome eventually took possession of the same _urbs septicollis_ by carrying her dead into it. CHAPTER IV ROMAN REGIONS AND GUILDS The regions and the guilds of Rome illustrate two contradictory tendencies running parallel throughout the administrative history of the city, the one towards division and separation as first principles of organisation, the other towards union and centralisation as measures of strength. These antagonistic elements which we find at the very dawn of Roman history were at once utilised as factors in the new commonwealth. It is the tradition that King Numa organised nine guilds of handicrafts amongst the Roman people that they might sink their race animosities in an identity of interests. Similarly one of the first great works for the young community, the city wall projected by Tarquinius Priscus and built by Servius Tullius, was intended to produce a fusion of the tribes which inhabited the seven hills he thus physically linked together, and which he had already united under a common government. Another enterprise, the draining of the marshes and pools which made impassable barriers of the valleys between the hills, had the same aim and result--it was a levelling process, moral as well as physical, to minimise the separation between hill and hill, race and race. On the other hand, Servius' division of the city into four regions, and these again into six parishes or _vici_, laid the seeds of an internal disunion which lasted throughout the centuries. These four regions (1) the Suburra or Caelian, (2) the Esquiline and its spurs, (3) the Collina, comprising the Viminal and Quirinal, which were called _colles_ in distinction to the other hills, the _montes_, and (4) the Palatine, persisted until the reign of Augustus. By that time the city had grown beyond its primitive limits, a thickly populated region had sprung up on the Esquiline beyond the walls and Augustus found a new division necessary. He increased the original number of regions to fourteen, and each of these he subdivided as before into parishes, the number in each region varying from seven to twenty-eight, making 265 in all. A magistrate or curator with a set of officials under him presided over each region. Each parish had its magistrate, its officers, its chapel built upon the boundary road for the public worship of the _lares compitales_, the protecting spirits of the district. At this period the poorer quarters of the city--a network of narrow streets with high houses built of inflammable materials--had been again and again devastated by fire. At night the densest darkness descended upon the city, street lighting was unknown, shop doors were shut and barred, and it was unsafe to walk abroad; those who ventured carried lights, or were preceded by servants with staves and torches. The ubiquitous beggars haunted the byways, and brigands raided the outskirts of the town. As a remedy against these evils Augustus created a force of 7000 men who were to act both as police and firemen. The whole body he placed under the command of a prefect, who acted in conjunction with the curator of the regions in keeping order, and divided it into seven battalions or cohorts, each under a tribune, and so disposed in the city that one battalion watched over the safety of two regions. The cohorts were again subdivided into seven companies under a captain or centurion. The force was distributed over the town in seven different barracks, with outlying detached quarters or _excubitoria_. The firemen's duty was to inspect public furnaces and private kitchens, the heating apparatus and the offices where the wardrobes were kept and warmed in the public baths. If a fire broke out in the town it was the subject of an official inquiry, just as it is to-day, and if arson or willful neglect were suspected, punishment was meted out by the proper authorities. Like the modern policeman in Rome, Augustus' _vigiles_ were not a popular force, and to make it more palatable he gradually increased its privileges. He built large and luxurious stations and _excubitoria_ which were beautifully decorated with precious marbles and statues. Members of the force were granted the coveted Roman citizenship, and the captains were permitted to serve _ex officio_ in the Praetorian guard. [Illustration: FORUM OF NERVA The picture represents a portion of the ornamental enclosure of the Forum built by Nerva, near Domitian's Temple of Pallas; she is represented on the entablature. This fragment is popularly known as _Le Colonacce_. See page 33.] At a later period, perhaps sometime in the third century, the regions of Rome were reorganised on an ecclesiastical basis, and seven were formed out of the fourteen by the amalgamation of two into one, each being placed under one of the seven deacons of the city. It is not known at what precise date their number was again increased to fourteen, nor when they assumed their present names and distribution, but probably early in the middle ages. By the thirteenth century only thirteen regions are recorded, and it was not till the year 1586 that the conservators and senators of Rome and the captains of the regions consulted together and decided to include the Leonine city as a fourteenth region, granting it at the same time a captain, a standard, and an heraldic device of a lion upon a red field, his paw planted upon the three mounds of the coat of Sixtus V. These fourteen regions do not correspond in position, name, or extent with those of Augustus except that the present thirteenth, Trastevere, is identical with the ancient fourteenth, Transtiburtina. The names that they bear to-day represent either their position or some characteristic feature within their limits. Thus the first and largest region, the _Monti_, formed from the union of the fifth and sixth of Augustus, the _Esquilina_ and the _Alta Semita_, is so called from the hills, the Esquilina Viminal and Caelian, within its boundaries; the second the _Trevi_, derives its name from the famous fountain in its midst; the third, _Colonna_, from the column of Marcus Aurelius; the fourth, _Campo Marzo_, covers this historic ground; the fifth, _Ponte_, is named from the old _Pons Triumphalis_, that united Rome with the Vatican region; the sixth or _Parione_ comprises the ground of which the Chiesa Nuova is the centre, and the name was derived from the ancient wall and tower which stood close to it; the seventh, _Regola_, inhabited by some of the most wretched of the population, is a corruption of Arenula, the drift sand of the river near which this region lies; the eighth, _S. Eustachio_, behind the university, takes its name from a parish church; the ninth, _Pigna_, from the bronze pine cone now at the Vatican and which was once supposed to adorn the Pantheon (this region corresponds to a certain extent with the ancient Via Lata); the tenth region, _Campitelli_, includes the Capitol and Palatine hills and the Forum; the eleventh, the _S. Angelo_ district, a region inhabited by the very poor, by tanners, and formerly the Jews' quarter, is named after the church of S. Angelo in Pescheria; the twelfth is the _Ripa_ or river bank; and the thirteenth and fourteenth, as we have seen, are _Trastevere_ beyond the river and the Leonine city or _Borgo_. [Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF TREVI One of the numberless fountains of the city; built by Clement XII. in 1735. The red house is the _palazzo_ of the celebrated art jeweller Castellani. Visitors leaving Rome who throw a _sou_ into this fountain are sure to return to the eternal city. See pages 22, 55, 227.] Each region became a little civic and social centre complete in itself. Each had its captain, its sub-officers, its religious organisations, its separate funds for charities and dowries, its separate police and militia recruits. And the importance that accrued to these regions lay in the fact that they represented the _plebs_, the democracy of Rome. With a people so incapable of co-operation for a common end as the Roman, the spark of their civic liberties would have been trodden out or have remained for ever dormant but for this administrative setting which kept it alive and through which, given the opportunity, it could become once more a living force. The heads of the regions, the _caporioni_, heirs to the position of Augustus' tribunes but without their discipline, were the people's leaders and spokesmen, their representatives and the guardians of their liberties. They were elected by ballot and the ballot urn was carried in procession to the Capitol, where the chosen captains received their investiture at the hands of the Senate. In times of difficulty they assembled for consultation in that council chamber of the people, the church of Ara Coeli, but their counsels seldom led to measures of conciliation which were uncongenial to their fierce independence and to the arbitrary authority they assumed. In peace or in war, in sanguinary insurrections or in national rejoicings, the _caporioni_ were always to the front, their banners with the regional device upon a coloured field fluttering in the breeze. It was to them that Cola di Rienzo looked for assistance and support. When a royal visitor or one of the German Emperors of Rome entered the city in state, the _caporioni_ were amongst the officials who received them, their banners carried by their pages on horseback, and themselves clad in their gala tunics of crimson velvet, cloaks of cloth of gold, white stockings and shoes, and black bonnets jewelled and feathered. When Pope Gregory XI. returned to Rome, restoring the papacy to the land of its birth after an exile of seventy years, the _caporioni_ rode in procession to give him welcome, and at his death they hurried to the cardinals assembling in conclave at the Vatican to implore them at all costs to elect a Roman pope, and they emphasised their petition with a fierce menace which would assuredly have been carried through to its sanguinary end but for the intervention of the Colonna forces. In the carnival processions of the fifteenth century which issued from the Capitol to perambulate the city, the _caporioni_, surrounded by fifty mounted grooms wearing their distinctive livery, preceded the Senators. Representatives from each region marched with them in the order of their precedence carrying halberds, banners, and lances, and shields emblazoned with their arms, and escorted by grooms on horseback. In the same procession, in front of the regions, were delegates from all the handicraft and trade guilds in the city, shoe-makers, hatters, apothecaries, tavern keepers, and many others, each with their banners captains and sergeants; the guild of ironworkers alone numbered 300, in the midst of whom a team of horses were harnessed to a cannon of their own making. The procession was headed by municipal officers and soldiers, and as an emblem of law and justice a wretched criminal was driven along with blows. After the Renaissance the _caporioni_ degenerated into mere regional captains, retaining only a shadow of their former power and jurisdiction, and the present government has abolished the office altogether. The organisation and the spirit of the regions are, however, by no means dead. [Illustration: COLUMN OF MARCUS AURELIUS, PIAZZA COLONNA The only work of the time of the emperor-philosopher which has come down to us. The column is now crowned by a colossal bronze statue of S. Paul. See pages 32, 55.] Until the racing of riderless horses down the Corso was forbidden, each region entered a horse for the race which was decked in the regional colour, and its success or failure aroused a perfect passion of rivalry between region and region--an antagonism as old as the age of Plutarch, who relates that in the month of October chariot races were run in the Campus Martius; the victorious horse was sacrificed to the god Mars, but its head was borne in procession to the Forum, all the regions fighting for possession of the trophy until nothing was left of it, and the combatants themselves were wounded and disabled. To this day, on occasions of popular rejoicing or in patriotic demonstrations, representatives from each region form into procession, the regional banner carried by _vigili_, who march surrounded by a group of the so-called _fedeli_, inhabitants of the little town of Viturcchino, who for good services rendered to Rome in the past have earned special consideration at the hands of the Roman municipality. Such processions are headed by the standard of the Commune, S.P.Q.R. upon a red and yellow ground, and immediately behind follows the banner of the Monti, the first region, three green hills on a white field. The different devices of the regions, carved upon marble shields, were affixed to house walls in many parts of the city to mark the boundaries, by order of Benedict XIV., and can still be seen in position. All those who know Rome at all are probably familiar with the Monti escutcheon upon the wall of the Aldobrandini palace, and with the Campo Marzo crescent on a house wall at Capo le Case. The passage of time has not wholly wiped out the fierce and hereditary enmity between the inhabitants of one portion of the city and another, which has been always fostered and encouraged, though unintentionally, by the regional system. The Monticiani and the Trasteverini were the most irreconcilable of foes. The Monti was the first region to be inhabited after the barbarian invasions, but it was left in comparative isolation and neglect when the Campo Marzo became the busy centre of papal Rome, and its people have retained something of their untamed native independence. They are proud and passionate, are the quickest with the knife in a quarrel, and will not stoop to domestic service or to menial trades. They choose husbands and wives amongst their own people--they believe S. Maria Maggiore to be the most beautiful church in the world, and will brook no dissent on the subject. Even to-day they will not speak willingly to a Trasteverino. The enmity between these two may have had a Guelph and Ghibelline origin. Certainly Trastevere was a stronghold of the Ghibellines as is shown by an episode which occurred on the day of Pope Callistus III.'s coronation in 1445. A groom in the employ of the Orsinis came to words about a girl with a groom of a rival house, the Anguillara. From words they came to blows, and quickly the quarrel became general, until in a few hours 3000 men were under arms ready to fight in an Orsini cause. The inhabitants of Trastevere, separated from the rest of Rome by the river and comparatively far from its centre, have retained to the present day much of their individuality, their habits, character, and appearance. The sight of a Monticiano arouses in them all the evil passions. Even as late as the year 1838, it was their habit on every holiday to meet the Monticiani for a stoning match on the green swards of the Forum--"the field of cows" as it was then called--the historic fragments lying about serving as missiles of war. Such matches were not to revenge any particular wrong but merely for honour and glory, the victorious region bearing off the palm in triumph until the next occasion. Sometimes they met at the Navicella, sometimes in the ruined courts of Diocletian's baths; sometimes a champion from each side came forward for the contest, sometimes it was a general scrimmage, members of other regions looking on and encouraging their allies. Sometimes when the matches fell upon a market day--a market was held once a week in the Campo Vaccino--the crockery stalls were requisitioned for ammunition, and earthenware pans and pipkins flew across the Forum in company with fragments of classic statues and marble friezes. Only when heads were broken in plenty, and blood poured from wounded faces and limbs, did these fighters desist, or when the cry "al fuoco" warned them of the tardy arrival of the _sbirri_. Even these agents of law and order were powerless to separate the combatants unless they had had enough, and during Napoleon's occupation of Rome the cavalry had to be called out to disperse them, the gendarmes having entirely failed to do so. These stoning matches between Monticiani and Trasteverini were so recognised an institution in Rome, that the poet Berneri writing two centuries ago, sums up the Forum Romanum in the words: Campo Vaccino Luogo dove s'impara a fare a sassi. Field of cows The place where one learns to throw stones. The movement towards association between members of a craft or of persons of identical interests, seems to be, as we have seen, as old as Rome herself. Whether or no King Numa gave it its first impulse, it is certain that throughout the first years of the Republic trade corporations were multiplied in the city without let or hindrance, and only when their number and importance seemed to menace the tranquillity of the State were measures taken for their control. The wave of prosperity which spread over the Roman provinces during the early Empire gave a further impetus to trade in every branch, and an industrial class which had been long in the making amongst the people of Rome, awoke to its own interests and claimed if not sympathy at least recognition from the aristocratic ruling caste which held all _plebs_ in contempt. [Illustration: PANTHEON, A FLANK VIEW Designed as a Hall of the Baths of Agrippa the contemporary of Augustus, but appears to have been at once dedicated as a temple. The Black Confraternity of S. John Beheaded are seen passing the building, their cross bearer preceding them. See pages 30, 56, 67, 86; [see also pp. 8, 77, 143].] The only response given however was to prohibit the formation of trade guilds, exception only being made in favour of a few of the most ancient, and those devoted to purposes of religion and burial. They continued nevertheless to multiply under cover of this latter clause until under Marcus Aurelius and Alexander Severus they received final encouragement and recognition. At this time they had increased enormously in number wealth and importance throughout Rome and the provinces. Every group of merchants and all those engaged in handicrafts banded themselves together to form a _college_ or _university_ as they were called in Rome, as much for the social pleasures to be derived from such association as for the mutual support and protection afforded against the impositions and aggressions of outsiders. Charioteers, gladiators, disbanded soldiers, itinerant merchants, seamen, Tiber boatmen, grain weighers at Ostia, palace servants, carters and coachmen founded corporations equally with the bakers and innkeepers, dyers weavers and tanners. Every young community sought a rich patron willing to give a plot of land or the funds necessary for the building of a club-room, promising in return certain anniversary banquets in his honour, or commemorative reunions to keep his memory green after death. Each corporation placed itself under the protection of a god whose name it adopted, and as its wealth and importance increased, by members' testamentary bequests or by gifts from patrons, the club premises were increased, and shrines and chapels were built in honour of the titular deity. Some of the corporations rose to such a position of importance that senatorial and consular families sprang from them; they supported colleges of doctors sculptors and painters of their own, they contributed to the building of public monuments and made loans to the State, while on special occasions the emperor's retinue was increased by a hundred standards and five hundred lances contributed by the trade colleges of Rome from amongst their own retainers. Although democratic in constitution, in so far as every member, however humble, could serve as one of its officers, the college was founded on the civic pattern, with president, curators, fiscal officer and all the grades of rank down to its slave members. Thus each unit represented in miniature the Roman commune and contributed to its consolidation. Unlike some of the guilds of the North however which became the nurseries of civic freedom, the Roman Colleges were too ready to subject their individuality to the spirit of civil discipline which was characteristic of Roman organisations and we find them submitting to one Imperial decree after another, losing one after another of their rights until they fell altogether under State patronage and became a mere portion of State machinery, a petrifying slavery being thus imposed upon their members whose liberties they were founded to safeguard. As an integral portion of the administrative life of the State, they proved of the greatest use, not only as adding to its stability and prosperity but as affording a sort of scaffolding upon which to build its complicated daily life. To them was given the collection of taxes, the superintendence of public buildings, the development of the military system, the clothing of the militia, the provisioning of the citizens and the supplying of all their daily necessities. [Illustration: SILVERSMITHS' ARCH IN THE VELABRUM This arch stands against the Arch of Janus, and was erected to the Emperor Septimius Severus, his wife Julia Pia, and his sons, by the guilds of silversmiths and cattle merchants. When Caracalla murdered his brother the name of the murdered prince was removed from the inscription. The arch, as the inscription proves, is on the site of the _Forum Boarium_.] In return for these services they were exempt from all other obligations to the State. The livelihood and wellbeing of members of colleges were thus ensured but at the cost of their liberty. Every member was obliged to sink a portion of his estate in the funds of the college, and to contribute another to its expenses. He was forbidden to will away the remainder except to his sons or nephews who in their turn were bound to enter the same trade; no member could change his own trade for any other, the priesthood alone excepted, in which case he must furnish a substitute. The goods of the corporations were thus inalienable, and whole families were bound to the same occupation in perpetuity. During the civil wars, barbarian invasions and general disunion following upon the decadence of the Empire, the Roman colleges are lost sight of, but there seems little doubt that their privileges were left intact by the foreign conquerors of Rome and that it was their direct descendants that we find flourishing once more as trade corporations in the middle ages. As early as the eighth century, the Lombards, Saxons and Franks had formed _scholae_ for members of these nationalities resident in Rome, and a little later trade guilds, founded for the mutual support and protection of their members against oppression, had already grown prosperous and strong enough to take an active part in insurrections and civil wars. We find history repeating herself. The guilds placed under the protection of a Christian saint were constituted with the obligations to bury their dead, to succour the widows and orphans of poorer members, to lend them funds in case of need and to offer masses for their benefactors. All members swore to the articles of enrolment, the statutes were formally drawn up, and many of them are preserved to this day. As funds increased, hospitals were built for sick brethren, and schools for the children; dowries were given to the daughters, and the guild standard-bearers and men-at-arms swelled the ranks of mediæval processions just as those of their pagan predecessors had done. The colleges kept great feasts and festivals, and their messengers paraded the streets two and two bidding householders deck their windows with bunting for the coming festivities. They endowed convents and hospices and built churches, many of which still bear the name of their founders. S. Giuseppe _de' Falegnami_ was built by the carpenters' guild; S. Caterina _de' Funari_ by the ropemakers'; S. Lorenzo in Miranda in the Forum belonged to the apothecaries; S. Maria dell' Orto to the fruiterers and cheesemongers; S. Barbara to the librarians; S. Tommaso a' Cenci to the coachmen. Streets called after the cloakmakers, the ropemakers, the watchmakers and other craftsmen still mark the districts given over to these different industries. The regulations imposed within the guilds pressed heavily upon the poorer members. The chief of each guild, the _Capo d'arte_ exacted implicit obedience. He was the sole arbiter on all trade questions, on the opening of every new shop, and the examination of every new worker, and played the part of a petty tyrant. An arduous apprenticeship of seven years from the age of thirteen was followed by two or three years as worker, and the payment of heavy fees, before the position of master-worker was reached. These powerful guilds hampered the development of trade by the establishment of monopolies, and they were more than once suppressed, and finally abolished in the seventeenth century. Many of them, however, survived, taking on the form of religious confraternities. These had coexisted with the trade guilds throughout the later middle ages. They were founded with a purely religious object, were a more spontaneous creation and were not under any State control. One confraternity was founded for succouring the sick, another for feeding pilgrims three days gratuitously, a third begged about the town for the benefit of prisoners, and a fourth prayed with condemned malefactors. Up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, this confraternity had the right to liberate one prisoner each year, who was afterwards taken in triumph round the town. Another gave dowries to deserving girls, and to this day the chapter of S. Peter's conducts a procession of the _zitelle_ or maidens round the basilica on the octave of Corpus Christi. At the head of the procession the capitular umbrella is carried; those girls who are destined to a convent life wear a crown of flowers, and those to be married are accompanied each by her _fiancé_. The confraternity of blacksmiths had the privilege of blessing animals on S. Antony's day (January 17) and the space before their church of S. Eligio, patron of blacksmiths, used to be crowded with horses, mules, dogs, sheep and oxen brought for the purpose. The owners paid large sums to the confraternity, and the Pope's horses and the equipages of Roman patricians arrived decked in flowers, the Piombino and Doria coachmen driving eighteen pairs in hand to the admiration of the crowds. Since 1870 the confraternities have lost their importance and much of their amassed wealth, while such of the trade guilds as have not become purely religious confraternities, have resolved themselves into the modern trades unions and beneficent clubs. [Illustration: CONVENT GARDEN OF SAN COSIMATO, VICOVARO This convent in the Sabine hills stands on a plateau between the river _Digentia_ (now Licenza) and the Anio. Near it is the site of Horace's Sabine farm. See page 169.] CHAPTER V THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA Rome is set in the _campagna romana_. The strange beauty of this "Roman country," the birth country of the Latin League, assails the very doors of the Roman citizen, intruding its poetry, its stillness, from point after point of vantage, causing the beholder to lead every now and then a sort of dual existence, to lose his sense of time and place and personality, and with his feet planted in the city which was once the hub of the world to find himself dreaming in a cloister garden. The atmosphere, the combination of colour and light, is characteristically Roman, it suggests what is mystic but never fails in perfect clearness. With its mystic blues, its blue-greens, its silence, its vastness, the campagna presents none of the features of the _pays riant_ of Florence where little olive-crowned hills, so cared for, so laughing, convey a message like its history definite, homogeneous, cultured, charming. But here a dead city has been besieged day and night by a dead campagna, big with its speech of silence, untilled yet a cradle of civilisation, with the complex language suited to a more difficult message, not entering into your humour but taking you into its secret, beautiful, austere, massive and careless of little things, yet yielding you out of its rich secular treasure details of beauty in abundance--here before you lies a history, a power, heedless of your judgment, but century after century looking back at you [Greek: meidiasais' athanatô prosôpô], as one of the finest lines in Greek verse says of Aphrodite, and recreating your universe for you. _Latium_ was the name of this country round about Rome, Latium--as though it were wide and spacious, suggesting the civilisation which was to spread from here, with its largeness, its spaciousness, its contempt of the trivial and restricted. The campagna (between Civita Vecchia and Terracina) embraces a tract of country some ninety miles in extent, with a maximum breadth between mountain and sea of forty miles, enclosing part of ancient Sabina, Etruria, and Latium, this last lying seawards, between the Alban hills and the Tiber. The _ager antiquus_, the Roman _ager_, however, was of much smaller extent, bounded by a point five miles out on the Via Appia, by the shrine of the Dea Dia towards the sea, by the _Massa Festi_ between the seventh and eighth milestones on the Via Labicana, the farthest point eastwards, and by the primitive mouth of the Tiber six miles from Rome on the Ostian Way; and these always remained its confines for ritual purposes. From here derived the original families whose chiefs became the Roman patricians and formed the nucleus of the Roman Senate--the so-called _gentes_. The extension of the campagna beyond the _ager antiquus_ to form the _ager publicus_ was the result of conquest, the territory thus acquired being let or assigned to private persons as tenants-at-will of the State, apportioned to poorer citizens in allotments, or colonised by Roman citizens. The hill-villages and towns, the _castelli romani_, are so-called not as is popularly supposed because they are near Rome, but because they too were colonised by Romans from the _ager_ under the protection of the great feudal barons to whose fiefs they belonged in the city. Thus _castello_, the baronial castle, easily came to denote the village which clustered round it. Something of the dualism which possesses the soul of the Roman, which has I think always conveyed a message to his eyes, his ears, his heart, is derived from the scene before him. Life and death, the _va et vient_ of the world's masters, "the desolation of Tyre and Sidon"--the Roman campagna has looked on both. Chateaubriand describes it as a desolate land, "with roads where no one passes," with "tombs and aqueducts for foliage" usurping the place of trees and life and movement; the stillness is broken by no happy country sounds, the eye sees no smoke ascend from the few ruined farmsteads. No nation it would seem has ventured to succeed the world's masters on their native soil, and the fields of Latium lie "as they were left by the iron spade of Cincinnatus or the last Roman plough." Decimated by plague and pest and deserted by man, malarial, fever-bound, the smiling country-seats of the world's conquerors have given place to tiny scattered colonies--as at Veii--haunted by a people emaciated by fever, where lads of eighteen, looking like boys of twelve, are certified by the parish priest as unable to bear arms. Along the world-famous roads lined by the Romans on either hand with the monuments of their dead, that they might retain a constant place in the thoughts of the living who journeyed on these most frequented ways, the ruined tombs are left in possession of the dead alone. The tombs, the _hypogaea_ and _mausolea_ of the great families who dwelt there, often remain standing when all trace of the villas to which they belonged have disappeared, as though one further proof were needed that this is indeed the land of the dead. [Illustration: A TRACT OF THE CLAUDIAN AQUEDUCT OUTSIDE THE CITY The Sabine hills are in the distance. See pages 21-22.] Nevertheless this deserted country once teemed with life--some seventy cities, it is surmised, once covered the plain, and countless villas and farms, the property of Roman patricians, consuls, and senators, made it a veritable garden. Driving within the walls of Rome being forbidden save to the Emperor and the Vestals, the tenants of these villas met the _rheda_ outside the gates, drawn by its pair of fast-stepping horses. These light carriages were gaily painted with some classical subject, as the peasants' carts still are in Naples, and a leather hood with purple hangings protected the owner from the heat. At all the cross-roads are fountains for the use of man and beast, near which a seat shaded by ilex or olive awaits the tired traveller, as we may see it still awaiting him for example at the Porta Furba on the way to Frascati. Excellent roads kept in excellent repair honeycomb the plain, while aqueducts, temples, trees, shrines, monuments, and statues rejoice the eye and enliven the journey. Villa, dependents' dwellings, the mausoleum, the farms, are seen a long way off in this flat land, and not the least curious feature as the traveller approaches is the formal garden still known to us as "an Italian garden," an entirely artificial creation where each tree and shrub has not only its prescribed place in the scheme, but its prescribed form, giving the impression of a continuous trained English box hedge. The shrubs are tortured into the semblance of beasts and snakes, the name of the owner being sometimes cut in the foliage, a device which may still be seen in the modern grounds of the Villa Pamfili-Doria. The most conspicuous features of the campagna from classical times are the aqueducts, stretching right across the _agro_ to the walls of Rome; gigantic remains of the Claudian aqueduct extend for six miles, and the ancient _peperino_ arches of the favourite _acqua Marcia_, which cross the Claudian aqueduct at Porta Furba, still bring water to the city. As classic Rome is represented by the aqueducts and mausolea, so feudal Rome is represented by the towers which rose in the campagna between the eighth and the fifteenth centuries--the early semaphores on the coast-line to give warning of the approach of Saracen or Corsair, the vedette towers which figured in the baronial wars, and the later fortified towers of the baron's castle. Last but not least Christianity has strewed the campagna with chapels and shrines, the earliest of which supplanted the cult of the local pagan divinity in the ages when Christianity was gradually driving the religion of imperial Rome into the villages and hill retreats. So S. Sylvester replaced the woodland deities, Michael supplanted the god of war, S. George became the Christian protector against the depredations of ferocious beasts, S. Caesarius replaced the genius of the imperial Caesars. Of the same period are the basilicas erected over the _sepulcretum_ of a martyr at the mouth of a catacomb. Several causes led to the abandonment of the _agro romano_. The neglect of the roads and the ruin of the aqueducts, which cut off the water supply, the poverty of the despoiled landlords, and the general insecurity following the incursions of the barbarians in the fifth and sixth centuries, brought about a rapid depopulation and gradually turned the _agro_ into a pest-bound desert. It would seem that malarial fever is virtually indigenous to the soil of the _agro_, besetting every region as soon as man deserts it. It did not make its appearance, we may suppose, in the inhabited towns of the classical period, but that it existed before the middle ages, the popular date for its appearance, is shown by the allusions of classical writers since the time of Augustus and by the existence of several temples to the goddess Fever. In Rome itself it is the persistent belief, which appears to be abundantly confirmed by statistics, that the more building is extended and the horribly noisy paved streets are multiplied, the faster the evil diminishes; for the malarial miasma is held to be an exhalation of the soil, and where earth is freshly turned there is danger. As we all know, it has been quite recently shown that the microbe of malaria is carried by mosquitoes, mosquitoes abound where water abounds, and one of the reasons for the unhealthiness of the _agro_, one of the greatest obstacles to its reclamation, is that there are not less than ten thousand little water-courses which filter down to the valleys, creating marsh and stagnant pools. The evil may really date from the last years of the republic, which saw the displacement of the small freeholders by the large landowners, of the old free labour by slave labour, and the consequent fatal depopulation of the _agro_. But during the middle ages, from the sixth century onwards, all the causes were intensified, and the difficulties which now beset the secular problem of the restoration of agriculture in the Roman campagna and the expulsion of malaria, resolve themselves "into a vicious circle"; for men cannot live there until the malaria is exorcised, and until men live there the malaria will remain in possession. No less than seventy-nine measures for what is known in Italy as the _bonifica dell' agro romano_ have from time to time been projected; and whether Italy will succeed where the popes failed is still doubtful. The initial necessity, the drainage of the campagna, seems in itself to be a task too great for Hercules. For the last four years the military _Croce Rossa_ has perambulated the campagna during the summer and autumn months, combating the malaria with doctors and medicines. It is hoped that this will be followed by the establishment of a larger number of permanent sanitary stations. Since 1870 millions of eucalyptus trees have been planted as air purifiers especially at the little railway stations and other inhabited sites. It is not forgotten that the agricultural colonies of the classical age were once the saving of Rome, and within the last few years similar schemes have been devised in the hope that the birth-land of the Roman people may become once more the home of agriculture. Such a _colonia agricola_ for Roman lads, outside the Flaminian gate, was founded by a visitor who has since become the wife of an Italian well known for similar enterprise in Italian Africa. The moral wants of the _agro_ have appealed to the sympathies and occupied the attention of the excellent society of young Catholics, the _Circolo San Pietro_, which has opened and furnished thirty-four of the closed and neglected churches and chapels of the _agro_ for the use of the scattered population; mass is also said in the hayfields on Sunday for the haymakers, on a wain drawn by oxen, and a very charming little picture of this scene has been prepared under the auspices of the President, Prince Barberini. There are within the city many hundreds of extra-parochial clergy--monks, friars, clerks regular, missionaries, and members of the various ecclesiastical congregations, with scores of churches and chapels where hundreds of masses are daily celebrated, and where expositions of the Sacrament, novenas, and benedictions are multiplied. But just outside the walls there are people who never hear mass, who live and die without the consolation of religion, "without a priest." When the _Circolo San Pietro_ set their hand to the good work of opening the churches and chapels of the _agro_ their difficulty consisted in finding priests to minister in them without payment. "Your Indies are here" said the Pope of his day when S. Philip Neri, the Apostle of Rome, wished to go abroad as a missionary, and Pius X. has recently echoed the saying. There is only one confraternity in the city which imposes on itself the duty of seeking and burying the bodies of those who die from sudden illness or from violence in the campagna. This well-known black "Confraternity of Prayer and Death" accompanies the funerals of the poor gratuitously. It is affiliated to the Florentine _Misericordia_. [Illustration: CAMPAGNA ROMANA, FROM TIVOLI See page 78.] The _agro romano_ is divided into nearly 400 farms owned by half as many proprietors. The largest of these farms comprise between 8 and 18,000 acres, the two smallest 5 acres each. About half remains ecclesiastical property, while a third belongs to the great Roman families, one-sixth being still owned by peasant holders. The proprietors allow the big estates to be farmed by the so-called _mercanti di campagna_, who take them on a three or nine years' tenure. These large merchants of country produce keep a _fattore_ on the farm who is the actual manager; he is both farmer and bailiff. The cattle of the _agro_ are, Signor Tomassetti tells us, its most considerable inhabitants. There are 32,000 sheep, 18,000 cows, 10,000 goats, 7000 horses and mules, 6000 oxen, and 1800 buffaloes. The oxen were brought by Trajan from the basin of the Danube, the buffaloes came with the Lombards and were originally natives of India. Beyond the _agro_ are the _castelli romani_, the hill towns of the Alban and Sabine district. There above Frascati lies the site of Tusculum, the mighty rival of Rome; to the right is Monte Cavo the highest peak in the Alban range where stood the temple of the "Latian Jupiter," sanctuary and rallying point of the Latin League. Below lies Albano of which See the English Pope, Hadrian IV., was Cardinal Bishop. In the Sabine range is the famous city of Tibur (Tivoli), the villa of Hadrian, and S. Benedict's town of Subiaco. To the east is the rock Soracte, "the pyramid of the campagna" and the meeting place of Etruscans, Sabines, and Latins; while a score of little townships in both ranges of hills record the feudal families of Rome, and harbour the descendants of the Latin rural _plebs_. The life led here is not the village life of England, but the life of small, primitive townships, with a mayor, a commune, and the customs of the middle ages. There are no manufactories and no crafts, and there are no cottages, the dwellings being divided into floors as in the big towns. [Illustration: SUBIACO FROM THE MONASTERY OF S. BENEDICT] The great business of the year is the vintage, which takes place in the Roman campagna in October; in land held under manorial rights, however, the tenants must await the lord's pleasure. The vines are trained round short canes set close together, and the grapes are collected in wooden receptacles narrowing towards the base: these are emptied into the _tino_, whence they are pressed, by the old biblical method of treading with the feet, into an enormous cask below called the _botte_. Here the grapes are left for several days to ferment, the skins rising to the top. In the little yards of filthy houses one may see the grapes being boiled in a cauldron, an illegitimate substitute for fermentation. The wine of the _castelli romani_ is famous; every district makes both red and white, the latter being generally preferred in Rome itself; the white "Frascati" and white "Genzano" are famous; Albano wine is praised by Horace, and excellent "Marino" is still made in the vineyards of the Scotch college which has its summer quarters there. The Sabines yield the "Velletri," a good red wine but difficult to find pure; Genazzano and Olevano also produce an excellent grape, but the difficulty in some of these small towns is to find a vine grower to take sufficient pains with his wine making. Colouring matter is usually employed for the red wines, the least noxious resource being a plentiful admixture of elderberry. The wine made one year is not as a rule drunk till the next; it is not prepared for exportation, but is kept, or sent to Rome, in barrels, from which it is decanted for retail commerce into flasks where the wine is protected with a few drops of oil in lieu of a cork. The wine is also sold by the _barile_ (sixty litres), _mezzo barile_, and _quartarolo_ (fifteen litres), the usual price given in Roman households being about seven francs the _quartarolo_. Every _trattoria_ and restaurant, however, sells wine by the Roman half-litre measure--the _fojetta_--and the prices 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 may be seen chalked up outside the wine-shops. Outside vineyards and rural _trattorie_, where wine is sold, a bough is hung out as a sign, reminding one of the origin of the proverb "Good wine needs no bush." The olive harvest is in November or December. Nowhere is the olive more appreciated than in Italy where Minerva is said to have bestowed it, the horse, which was Vulcan's gift, coming only second in usefulness. The picked fruit is made into the finer oil, then the fallen olives are gathered by women and girls, and the occupation is very popular, as what is thus earned helps to provide the winter comforts. Fine oil has a very delicate scarcely perceptible taste and smell, and an Italian condemns the oil by saying "_L'olio si sente_" (One can taste it). Frying is generally done with oil and some vegetables and all fish are cooked with it. "_Ojo è sempre ojo, ma strutto! chi sa che struttaccio sarà?_" (Oil is always oil, but who knows what lard may be?) they say. The olive tree not only yields the fuel to feed the oil lamps, but it provides some of the best timber for the fire. Not only is it useful but it is one of the most beautiful things in the Italian country--and its grey-green colour, with the tender sheen on the leaf, is as characteristic of the Italian landscape as the deeper green and lordly shaft of the stone pine, or the blue of the hills. The seasons in Italy are two months ahead of ours in England, the wheat harvest being in June. There is seldom any cold before Christmas, and in fine years the winter may be said to be over after the middle of February. The people who inhabit the Alban and Sabine country are the same Latin _plebs_, except that they no longer serve the world's masters and take their part, if only as spectators, in a great classical civilisation: they have served for centuries a papacy which in habits of thought never belied the heredity of the middle ages. In the general outlines the same people--but more not less barbarous than of yore, because they have been arrested, literally have been brutalised, by a complete absence of that moral and intellectual growth which has been the conquest of the centuries. As in pagan Italy, the people are consulters of oracles, confiders in charms and exorcisms, slaves to the belief in "destiny," a word which is ever on their lips ("_è il destino_" absolves you from taking any action); they are cruel and coarse as the cruel are coarse. The inhabitants of the _castelli romani_ were described by a compatriot as "_pieni di superbia, debiti, e pidocchi_" (full of pride, debts, and lice); and he who ventures to hear mass in the parish church of one of these hill towns must have a bath on his return and discard all the garments he wore. Among the Sabine villages, where in our own time the public sport was the baiting of the poor beasts who were going to the slaughter-house, there are smiling olive-crowned towns whose evil reputation for deeds of blood has made it necessary to change the name of the township more than once. In one of these villages, in the "eighties," a man raised his gun and calmly shot his brother _in the presence of their mother_. The mother and son were punctual in their obligations to church and convent, and the _arciprete_ of the parish journeyed to Rome to bear witness at the trial that the murderer was "il fior del paese," (the flower of the flock). When the man was acquitted, the priest had no better lesson to inculcate for the community of which this was the "pearl," than to accompany the local band which went forth to welcome the fratricide back to the village which held the still fresh grave of the brother he had treacherously murdered. [Illustration: GARDEN OF THE MONASTERY OF SANTA SCHOLASTICA, SUBIACO This fifth-century monastery (restored five hundred years later) was dedicated to the sister of S. Benedict, the founder of Western Monasticism. The first printing press in Italy was established here.] It is commonly believed, even by the educated, that "things" happen in the campagna which happen nowhere else, possession, obsession, "overlooking," witchery. Hysterical manifestations are indeed common at all the noted shrines, and wherever the excitement of exorcism is at hand to feed the morbid preoccupation with self of the hysterical. Some sixteen years ago the government determined to check this source of hysteria, and directed the rural clergy to perform no more exorcisms. I visited a friary in the Sabines at this time and saw the work of the evil spirits in the shape of a packet of hairpins (complete with its sample pin), tresses of hair, or a good fat nail which had been swallowed by the energumen and which under the emotional stress attending the exorcism--the dim light, the monotonous droning of the _frati_ who are saying their office behind the high altar--are brought up again. I enquired of the Father Guardian what happened now that exorcism was forbidden? Well, a woman had been there only the day before, and he had explained to her that he could only pronounce "a simple benediction," which had resulted after a quarter of an hour before the altar in the ejectment of the objects shown me. Such an end to an ancient Christian ministry destined to free poor human beings from the toils of Satan gives food for reflection. The secular conflict between religion and science has set foot even in the Roman campagna. If in England we have our Christian scientists, in Italy the authorities have to cope with a people whose remedy for the bite of a rabid animal is a mass said at the shrine of some special madonna--both put faith before a trust in "dry powder," and there has never yet been an age of the world in which there have not been those who thought them right. The popular sanctuaries in Italy, indeed, help to keep up much that is undesirable. At the April festa at Genazzano a peasant will kneel down before the miraculous image of the Madonna which hangs, like Mohammad's coffin, without visible support, and having made his prayer will rise and shake his fist at the picture, exclaiming "_Bada, Maria!_" (Beware, Mary!) Many things, thin silver hearts, candles, and other dainties have been promised if the desired favour be granted, but if the Madonna be not tempted by these to accede to the wishes of her worshipper, she must look out for herself. Wax images can be laid out to melt in the sun, there to learn how agreeable is a continued drought, statuettes can be stood in the corner with their faces to the wall, a rival patron saint can be pitched into the river, by the same hand which brings gifts. "See how you like it!" Does not the primitive man create his god by looking into himself? and Caliban with his "So he!" inaugurates theology. Another Roman picture is afforded us by the lottery. It is to be found, indeed, all over Italy, but we are only concerned with its influence in Roman life, where it has always flourished, first under the popes when a prelate presided to bless the opening of the lottery and now under the State, for the Romans are born gamblers. Seventeen millions a year are raised in this way out of the pockets of the poorest of the poor. The excuse made is that as the people will gamble the only safeguard against gigantic frauds on the gamblers is to make the lottery a department of the State. Certainly it would be absolutely impossible to trust to fair play if the choice of the numbers depended on any private persons; even if they were honest, no Italian would believe it. The "Book of the Art," with its rough hideous drawings of the things represented by the lottery numbers--one to ninety--is the only book which the unlettered Italian can read. Every event national or domestic becomes the subject of play. You "play" the assassination of the King or the death of the Pope, the accident which has happened to your neighbour your master or your mistress, and you play the death of your kinsfolk. In order to get the money the people have recourse to the _monte di pietà_--the pawnshop--and the women will pawn the mattress off the bed. Sometimes the choice lies between the two chief pleasures of the Roman, eating and the lottery, and it is the best proof of the fascination of the latter that it is so often preferred to the joys of the table. In every tiny village as in every great city throughout Italy there is a _banco dell lotto_, and the winning numbers are exhibited over its doors every Saturday. Five numbers--for example, 5, 9, 27, 36, 50--appear each week. This is called the _cinquina_. But you can win the _ambo_ (two correct numbers), the _terno_ (the most usual of all), or the _quaterna_. Not more than five numbers can be played, but if you "plump" for the _cinquina_ you gain a big sum; or you can declare your intention to play for all four possible combinations. In this case you gain little if the _cinquina_ comes out. It is the same with the _terno_, if you plump for it you gain much more. But the gain also depends on the amount you put into the lottery, and any sum from six _centimes_ can be played. When Pius IX. died a Roman jeweller won 40,000 scudi (£8000). How can one expect the gambling of the poor to cease when even twelve _centimes_ (less than five farthings) may bring fifty francs? The Roman goes to the lottery with all the paraphernalia and a good deal of the sentiment of devotion. "Se ci aiuti Iddio e la Madonna," they exclaim--If God and the Madonna will help us--we shall win the _terno_. There are several "tips" for winning. One which is as awesome as it is efficacious consists in starting the _kyrie eleison_--hardly recognisable in its popular dress as _crielleisonne_--and then say on your knees thirteen _ave marias_ to as many madonnas. Having invoked Baldassare, Gasper, and _Marchionne_ (Melchoir)--though what the three wise kings have to do in that _galère_ is not very obvious--you go out of the house, taking care to answer nothing if any one calls you. You go straight to the church of S. John Beheaded, where those who suffered capital punishment used to be interred, and then whatever you see or hear inside or out, look it up in the "Book of the Art" and you are safe to win. Another _bella divozione_ for the same end is to go up the steps of Ara Coeli on your knees reciting a _requiem aeternum_ or a _de profundis_ on each step. A large number of the people praying so devoutly to the Madonna di Sant' Agostino (whose other principal care is the safety of childbirth) are praying for luck in the lottery--praying or threatening, for the one is very kin to the other in the primitive mind as it is in the magic of all primitive peoples. Some of these may have been conducting a solitary nocturnal vigil, having risen from their beds, kindled two candles, and proceeded to carry through one or other of the _belle divozioni_. [Illustration: HOLY STAIRS AT THE SAGRO SPECO The ravine (above the monastery of S. Scholastica) where S. Benedict took refuge from the corruption of Rome, became the site of the _Sagro Speco_, the sacred cavern, with the ninth-century monastery of _San Benedetto_. The peasants of Subiaco ascend the stairs here represented on their knees, as the _Scala Santa_ in Rome is ascended, and, occasionally, even the numerous stairs of _Ara Coeli_. See page 86.] In the country-places the great stand-by is the Capuchin, who has a reputation for suggesting lucky numbers. When he comes collecting alms in village or city the poor man asks him for a likely _terno_. He is not supposed to suggest these numbers, but he and the people understand each other, and every word, every allusion, which falls from his lips is thereupon eagerly noted. If he mentions a recent assassination, you "play" number _72 morto assassinato_, then the numbers indicating the day or some special circumstance, "a quarrel," "the knife" with which it was done, "jealousy," "a man," or "a woman." The element of chance, the ineradicable belief in luck, makes a man sure to play if three numbers come unbidden into his head. No pious person dreams of the "numbers of the Madonna"--6, 8, and 15--without at once "playing" them. The Madonna evidently intends "to do something" for you; indeed "if the Madonna suggests numbers" it is a safe thing, you can put five francs on it. It is popularly said that 2, 3, 5, 6 are numbers which always come out, these and their combinations. Fifty-eight is the number indicating the Pope, and 52, _morta che parla_, is played by good simple women who have dreamt of their dead mother. The industrious working middle classes and even the better classes "play," though the latter play _sub rosa_. On Saturday the people collect round the little lottery offices--some of them have waited to pay their bills until they ascertained their luck. On the appearance of the fateful numbers there is a general talk, a general lamentation: "If I had only done so-and-so." "If I had only played _morto_ instead of _ferito_" ("dead" instead of only "wounded.") For the Roman the whole known world sacred or profane is absorbed in the business of the lottery. Thus one of the popular sonnets in the Roman dialect describes how the flight into Egypt came about. On the 27th of December the Patriarch Joseph is snoring in bed, dreaming of lottery numbers, when an angel appears to him and says: "See here, old man, what a fine _festa_ there is going to be over number 28" (the 28th of December commemorates the massacre of the Innocents). Thereupon S. Joseph wakes like one crazy, hires a young donkey, and takes the Madonna and her child off to Egypt. Many English travellers to this favoured country of the gods since the days when Vulcan and Minerva vied with each other as to which should bestow the best gift on Italy, must have wished that nothing more sensitive than the olive had been placed in the hands of its countrymen. Signor Gabelli has described the burly Roman carter beating his horses or mules, the red cap which hangs over one ear matching his flaming face, afire with triumphant pride in this exercise of brute force and dominion. No one rebukes him. On the contrary the clergy delight to dwell on the distinction between the duties owed to men and the absence of all obligation towards the brutes. The distinction, of course, works no better in modern than in ancient times, and means nothing less than the systematic brutalisation of the Italian people. The doctrine that animals (like "the sun and moon") were "made for man" is held to justify all mishandling of them, all domineering and callousness. This is frankly immoral; and until priests overcome their reluctance to set forth ethics in a way that does not involve a break with the order and march of all human civilisation, theology will continue to accommodate itself to racial characteristics, and specious theological propositions will still serve as a cloak for bluntness of moral perception. Only this year a _marchese_ told me that he "could not admit that animals feel." The effect of such sentiments in a squire among an illiterate tenantry may be readily imagined; the ignorant Italian gentleman justifies theology by the astounding proposition that all sentient creatures below man have been provided with a set of non-sensitive nerves; the rustic finds in the pleasure which it affords him to know that this proposition is untrue an ampler justification of the ways of Providence. The police system of Italy has always been so ineffective that many of the great Roman families have preferred to pay tribute to the brigands in return for protection for their farms and estate to claiming assistance against them from the government. One of the best known Roman princes paid this tribute regularly to the archbrigand Tiburzi. In old days the brigands came down into the villages on the great festivals in velvet jerkin and feathered cap bearing candles and gifts for the Madonna and the presbytery. Hardly less picturesque than the brigands are the chief herdsmen called _butteri_, in blue jacket and brass buttons with a feather in the soft-felt Italian hat. Their skill as rough-riders is celebrated and the palm remained with them when Buffalo Bill's cowboys challenged them to a trial of skill. A primitive and classical feature of campagna labour is the singing with which it is enlivened. Hour after hour while sowing a field a monotonous folk-song will be kept up, verse succeeding verse at regular intervals, a woman singing and a man whistling the accompaniment--the phrase ending always with that long-drawn dying cadence peculiar to primitive song, like the chant sung to-day by the Neapolitan girls in the caves at Baiae, though it is the dirge which their predecessors made for Adonis. One of the most familiar sights which pass these workers in the fields are the wine-carts bound for Rome; a folding linen or leather hood, generally purple in colour, protects the driver, and a little dog of the common and wrathful species known as the _lupetto romano_--the Roman wolfling--balances himself on the cargo and constitutes himself the protector and companion of his master. At the back of the cart there is always a tiny barrel fixed transversely; this is the perquisite of the driver and his friends when his errand is accomplished. Occasionally a garlanded cross marks the spot where some carter was killed under the wheels of his cart, just as a stone wreathed with flowers showed where a wayfarer had died struck by lightning in the pagan campagna. These cart accidents are not infrequent: in the long silent journeys across the sunburnt plain of the _agro_ the men drop asleep, and it is then easy to fall heavily and be crushed beneath the cart, while the horse or mule pursues the accustomed route to Rome. Little wayside sanctuaries like those which stud the campagna, and which the wayfarer salutes as he passes, still exist in some of the untouched parts of Rome down by the Tiber in the region of Piazza Montanara and in the Borgo of S. Peter's. The goatherds, like the _butteri_ and the wine-carts, may also be seen by those who never leave the walls of Rome. Perhaps when we see them standing by the little herd of goats on the shady side of piazzas in May, clad in such goatskin breeches as were worn by their pagan ancestors, it is not the "Roman country" but the beginnings of the "eternal city" of which we are chiefly reminded, when figures like these with their pastoral divinities took possession of the Palatine hill. [Illustration: LITTLE GLEANER IN THE CAMPAGNA] Italy has always been the land of Saturn, the nature god. Her festivals were the festivals of the doings and events of nature, the Lupercalia of Lupercus, the Palilia of Pales; she was and she remains pagan, if pagan is to mean the natural as opposed to the supernatural attitude towards life--natural and humanistic as opposed to mystic and ideal. Under the new names lie concealed the old gods. The true Latin goddess is Pales, the earth mother, the source of grace, the real giver of gifts to her devotees--enshrined, dedicated to the gospel under a hundred aspects of what Bonghi has happily called that "gentilissimo fiore del cattolicismo," the cult of the Madonna. Some unseemly tracts and pictures have represented Christ as turning away from the leprosy of the sinner's sin, and it is Mary whose compassion for the prodigal never wavers, who persuades the Christ to have pity. That, though false enough as theology, accurately represents the Italian mind. The nature goddess, the mother, the earth and its fulness, will console, recreate, and speak to the soul of the Latin on his native soil when religion has no language which reaches him. From the heart of that soil the Latin learnt his religion, and he has never parted with it. It is the hour of the god Pan, that midday hour which Pan alone can withstand. The sun is high in the heavens, the earth exhales heat, round about are the great silences. Nothing else stirs, nothing moves, nothing breathes. The great repose is indeed tense with a great activity, but a hush of nature greets this supreme hour of the sun in its glory--the world lies dead at the feet of the giver of life. The hour of the god Pan is the mystery which is daily renewed for the Italian; what has remained constant amid all changes is the nature-myth, and the secrets it is always whispering to the children of its soil. CHAPTER VI THE ROMAN MÉNAGE As in other European towns, the custom in Rome is to live in flats. The houses are high, of no particular style of architecture, and in the older portions of the city they overshadow a labyrinth of narrow streets paved with large uneven slabs of stone. Here are no side walks for pedestrians who with an indifference born of long practice walk habitually in the middle of the roadway, moving leisurely to one side in obedience to the warning cries of the drivers, or patiently waiting and flattening themselves against the shop doors if two vehicles desire to pass one another. Long ragged grooves scraped along the house walls and at street corners by the hubs of heavy cart-wheels, testify to centuries of clumsy driving. There have always existed in Rome, however, a certain number of villas within the walls, and their timbered parks and terraced gardens ornamented with fountains and statues, have been one of the characteristic features of the city. Their wealthy owners probably possessed a sombre palace as well along the Corso, but the villas were pleasant in the warm weather, and two centuries ago wonderful Arcadian entertainments were given beneath the shade of their ilex groves. Some of these villas still exist in their original state or as public property, many have been crowded out and demolished and their gardens have been cut up into building plots. The taste for villa-building is, however, not yet dead, and of late years small dwellings in a Baroque style have been springing up like mushrooms in the new quarters, and immense rents are asked for them. Roman flats or apartments as they are called, vary from magnificent suites of thirty or forty rooms to a small domain of three or four. They can be leased even in the most princely of palaces which are so much too large for the requirements of modern life that their owners are glad to let what they cannot use. [Illustration: SEA-HORSE FOUNTAIN IN THE VILLA BORGHESE The glades of Roman villas offer us some of the rare green effects, the colouring which prevails being that in picture 27. See page 46.] The single entrance-gateway, which is locked at night, is under the charge of a porter whose appearance varies according to the social standing of his employer from an imposing figure in gold lace and a cocked hat, to a surly fellow out at heels and elbows who ekes out a precarious livelihood by cobbling or carpentering while he keeps a vigilant but no friendly eye upon the incomings and outgoings of the inhabitants of the wretched tenement under his care. Often, even in good houses, a single room by the side of the gateway serves the porter with his wife and family for bedroom, kitchen, living room, and workshop, and sometimes the same number of human beings are stowed away at night in a mere hole, windowless and doorless, under the stairs. Yet this employment is so sought after that a cabinet minister's portfolio is said to be easier to obtain than a position as house-porter. One or more public staircases lead up from the central courtyard. Before 1870 it was not obligatory to light these, and many a crime has been committed on a long dark flight, the only witness the dwindling oil-lamp before an image of the Madonna. Even now a front door will seldom be opened at once in answer to your ring; a little shutter is pushed back, and you are first inspected through a grating. Or you are greeted with a shrill _chi è_, and only when you have given the reassuring reply, _amici_, "friends," will you be admitted. A middle-class Italian household is not very approachable in the morning. Although extremely early risers--no hour seems too early in Rome for people to be up and about--the house remains _en déshabillé_ till the afternoon. The beds are unmade, the mistress shuffles about in dressing-gown and slippers, adjuring her maid-of-all-work in shrill tones; she even goes out to shop unwashed, in an old skirt and jacket. At first sight all the rooms appear to be bedrooms which are used indifferently to sit in. Nevertheless one room, generally the smallest and least attractive, is set aside as the "reception room." The family never sit in it, and never enter it except to receive their visitors. It is kept carefully closed and shuttered, and if you arrive unexpectedly the maid lets in some light for you with pretty apologies while you wait in the doorway afraid of falling in the dark over the innumerable objects, what-nots and small tables, which crowd the room. A jute-covered sofa of the most uncomfortable pattern, with a strip of carpet before it, is _de rigueur_, and a visitor would consider herself slighted if she were not ushered to this post of honour. There are no carpets on any of the stone floors, and no stoves or fireplaces. If there happens to be a chimney, it is considered unwholesome and is blocked up. There are no comfortable sofas and no lounge chairs. If the weather is fine and warm all is well with such a household. But Rome knows fog, frost, and snow, and though none last for long, wintry days may succeed each other and bitter winds blow down upon the city from the snow-capped Sabine mountains, and then the Romans, forced to stay at home, uncomplainingly wear their coats and jackets within doors to keep body and soul together, and sit warming their fingers over little pans of glowing wood-ash. Like cats, they have a constitutional horror of rain, and will prefer to remain indoors than risk a wetting in search of some place of amusement, or to keep an engagement. Every carter, every beggar, every peasant carries an umbrella; horses and draught oxen are swathed in flannel and mackintosh in the wet, and the drivers of the little open cabs cower beneath leathern aprons and enormous umbrellas, under the dripping edges of which their "fares" creep in and out as best they can. Brigands only, so it is popularly believed, carry no umbrellas, and by this you may know them. The Romans' cheerful acquiescence in what we should consider considerable hardship is nothing less than admirable. After long working hours spent in government offices for example, which are for the most part despoiled monasteries and always bitterly cold, they return to their homes where creature comforts as we understand them are unknown, not because they cannot be afforded, but because they are not desired or missed; and their gaiety or their enjoyment of one another's society is in nowise diminished because they spend the evening sitting at a dining-room table on straight-backed chairs. On the other hand much attention is devoted to the preparation of the meals. Food is daintily prepared and cooked, well flavoured and seasoned. Meat and vegetables are generally cooked in oil- or bacon-fat, and no Roman would look at a dish of food plainly boiled or roasted. Even the poor are skilful in concocting a savoury dish with _polenta_ (ground Indian corn) bread and potatoes flavoured with a dash of onion or tomatoes. All cooking and eating utensils are kept scrupulously clean, and the dirtiest _contadino_ will wipe out his glass carefully before he is satisfied as to its fitness for his use. Romans break their fast with a cup of black coffee and bread without butter, but it is quite usual for them to eat nothing at all until twelve or one o'clock. Their midday dinner begins with either soup or macaroni (_minestra_ or _minestra ascuitta_). If with the soup, then the meat which has been boiled to make it is served next with vegetable garnishings. The macaroni is served with butter, cheese, and tomatoes and there are numberless tasty ways of preparing it. Half a kilogram (eighteen ounces) is considered the portion for each person. If the meal begins with macaroni, this dish would be followed by meat _in umido_, a favourite Roman dressing of tomatoes and onions. People who live quite simply will never touch stale bread, and it is no unusual thing for a fresh batch to be delivered at the door three times a day. Salad, cheese, and eggs done in a variety of ways form the staple of the Roman's evening meal. It is a perpetual wonder to the foreigner what elaborate and excellently cooked dinners can be produced in the unpromising Roman kitchens. Larders and sculleries are almost unknown. A white marble sink--marble fills the lowliest offices in Rome--and a tap in a corner do duty for the latter. The kitchen is often a slip of a room, and the "range" is little more than a table of brick and tiles fitted with small holes for holding charcoal, and with a shaft above for carrying away the unwholesome fumes. Upon these small holes all the cooking is done; the charcoal is fanned into a glow with a feather fan, and if there are many pots and saucepans they must take their turn upon the tiny fires. Scuttles do not exist, and the stock of charcoal for use is kept on the floor beneath the range. [Illustration: ORNAMENTAL WATER, VILLA BORGHESE] Italians of all classes are very fastidious about the cleanliness of their beds, and in this particular their habits contrast favourably with the antediluvian practices prevalent in England, for not only is every article of bedding aired at the window daily, but all the mattresses are picked to pieces and the wool pulled out and beaten every year. This process is carried on generally on the flat house-roofs when the weather is sunny; a mattress-maker with his assistant, his bench and his combs, coming round to do it for you for the modest fee of one lira and a half the mattress. Beyond this the Roman's standard of cleanliness fails altogether. Floors are never washed; they serve to tramp about on in thick boots, to spit upon, and to receive matches and cigar-ash. Doors, painted woodwork, walls, are always soiled; if there is a terrace it becomes at once unsightly and the receptacle for hideous refuse. There is complete indifference to cleanliness as a first condition of hygiene, and it is not unusual to find fowls kept in the kitchen of a good bourgeois house, which take their walks abroad on the balcony and pick up their living under the table. Even in the houses of the great, where many servants are kept, there is often the same Spartan indifference to comfort. Great halls are kept unwarmed except for a brazier of glowing wood-ash, and fireplaces, if they exist, are only sparingly used in the sitting-rooms. Bathrooms are rare, and the habit of the daily bath is almost unknown in a city which once boasted the finest baths the world has seen. If the Roman does not know how to make himself comfortable indoors, no one knows better how to enjoy himself in the open air. The ragged loafer suns himself in the public squares, the workman dozes away his dinner hour at full length under the shelter of a wall; it is in the streets that a Roman holiday is spent. Parents and children of the working classes, the father carrying the baby, stroll about happily for hours, or they walk out beyond the city gates to rest and refresh themselves at one of the wayside _osterie_. Here they gather round the rude tables under a shelter of bamboo canes and eat and drink according to their means. The most forbidding country eating-house can rise to the requirements of better-class customers, and at a pinch can furnish a cleanly cooked and quite palatable dish of macaroni or eggs and vegetable fried in oil for forty or fifty centimes the plate, which is abundant for two. All day long on _festa_ in warm spring weather, chairs and benches outside every wine-shop and eating-house are crowded with a changing throng of holiday makers enjoying themselves simply and harmlessly; and on such days, at a likely corner, you may come across a country man or woman in charge of a huge wild boar roasted whole, stuffed with meat and sage and garlanded with green, from which a succulent morsel will be cut for you, then and there should you desire it, for a trifling sum. [Illustration: VILLAGE STREET AT ANTICOLI, IN THE SABINE HILLS] Out-of-door pleasures appeal no less to the better classes. Fashionable Rome drives daily in the afternoon along the Corso and round the Pincio, the carriages drawing up at intervals near the bandstand. So dear to the Roman heart is the possession of smart clothes and a showy carriage and horses, that entire families will live with parsimony within doors that they may afford these luxuries. During long afternoon hours men will congregate outside the Parliament House and along the Corso to meet and chat with their friends, and chairs and tables with their fashionable occupants block the pavements outside the cafés and restaurants, obliging the passer-by to step out into the roadway. The Roman of the poorer class carries on as much of his domestic life also as he can in the open air. Chairs, kitchen tables, and wash-tubs are dragged out into the streets. Food is prepared and eaten, clothes are washed, and the occupations of sewing, knitting, cobbling, and carpentering are conducted in the open, subject to a lively attention to what is going on in the street. Occasionally a basket attached to a string comes bobbing down from an upper window accompanied by a shrill message: Would Sor' Annunziata have the kindness to buy a copy of the _Messagero_ just being cried in the street? she will find a soldo in the basket. Or would she tell that good-for-nothing vagabond Mark Antony or Hannibal (the raggedest urchins always rejoice in some such name), who is playing _morra_ round the corner, to run at once and buy a ha'porth of white beans. The errand accomplished, the basket is drawn up with its burden, and then blissful hours of leisure slip by in desultory talk with neighbours at their doors and windows opposite, chairs tilted back comfortably against the house wall in the mellow Roman sunlight. In the quiet piazzas, and in shady nooks by the city gates, humble folk can be shaved for a small sum by barbers who ply their trade in the open and pay no shop rent. It is even quite usual in the hot weather for fashionable coiffeurs to move their client's chair outside the door and continue shaving operations there without exciting any comment. Before reading and writing were made obligatory, public letter-writers were common, and they still can be met with in Via Tor de' Specchi, in the shelter of the Salarian gate, and in other quiet places, the group of anxious clients waiting their turn round the table testifying to the inefficiency of a compulsory education Act. Girls used to dictate their love-letters to these scribes, and perhaps still do so, and even the boys did and do write to San Luigi for his _festa_ on 21st June--the letters, tied up with blue ribbon, being subsequently deposited on his altar. The fashion of open-air washing tanks, once universal, is gradually passing away. Outside the walls, the women wash their clothes in the streams and rivers, and inside the city, by the new Ponte Margherita, one of the old public washing-places may still be seen, protected only by a roof and surrounded by a crowd of women in bright-coloured cotton bodices and skirts, washing clothes in the cold turbid water and scrubbing them vigorously on the stone slabs in order that what is left of them after this heroic treatment may at least be clean. Owing to the smallness and darkness of all Roman provision shops, most of the inspection of wares and all the talking, bargaining, and quarrelling is perforce done upon the pavement. Many of the Roman shops still consist of a narrow vault, with no outlet of any sort at the further end, the whole front being closed with a shutter at night. In the early morning all the cooks in Rome and all the general servants are afoot in the streets buying provisions, and they crowd around the temporary market stalls set up in the small piazzas under gay umbrellas, filling the air with their noisy disputes. The curb-stones are occupied by peasant women and their baskets of country produce, which from this central position they extol to the passers-by. These women have walked into the city at dawn carrying their baskets on their heads, and at the gates their poor little merchandise has been overhauled with no gentle hand by the Customs officers, every egg and turnip has been counted, and its _octroi_ duty paid. It takes the foreign resident some time to grasp the idiosyncrasies of Roman shops. A linen draper looks at you with kindly pity if you ask him for ribbons or haberdashery, which can only be obtained at a mercer's devoted to this trade. A grocer only sells dry goods, the numerous shops entitled _pizzicherie_ deal exclusively with cheese, lard, butter, bacon, salted fish, and preserves. Your fishmonger will only sell fish, your butcher closes most inconveniently between twelve and five, and will seldom sell mutton and never lamb, which must be sought at a poulterer's. Macaroni is provided by your baker, or it can be bought in one of the numerous small shops licensed to sell salt and tobacco, where you may also obtain postage stamps, soap, tin tacks, china plates, and mineral waters. All the transactions of daily life have to be conducted in Rome, as every householder soon learns, at the cost of a continuous and exasperating conflict with a class to whom it is second nature to cheat and deceive, to falsify weights and measures, who have no standard of honesty in small things, and who will always say what will please you or themselves rather than what is. The visitor naturally is their peculiar prey. To exploit him is traditional in Rome. In a town with no resources of its own, there is the foreigner and his purse to look to; and he falls an easy victim to people whose language he imperfectly understands, and who are past-masters of all the deceitful arts. The seasons are short and a plentiful harvest must be raked in while they last. Shops in the best quarters will raise the value of their goods a hundred per cent at the sight of a foreign face. Unless the legend "fixed prices" appears in the window for the benefit of the customer, the shopmen will expect you to bargain over every purchase--to haggle for half an hour over a question of six sous or ten is indeed the only commercial instinct they possess. They will generally ask about twice as much as they mean ultimately to accept, and, to their credit be it said, it is not only for the sake of the francs more or less, but quite as much for the excitement of the sport. "I say 200 lire, now it is for you to say something;" or, "The price is so-and-so, what will you give?" are the preludes to some really enjoyable quarters of an hour. The foreigner who pays unquestioningly what he is asked is a poor-spirited creature not worth fleecing. Romans still reckon up their rent or their wages in the old papal currency of a _scudo_ (five francs), and food is cried about the streets at so much the _paolo_ (half a franc). Half a _paolo_ (or _giulio_) the _grosso_, two _paoli_ the _papetto_, three _paoli_ a _testone_, and the halfpenny or _baioccho_ are still the familiar names which come most easily to the tongue. The difference between the old weights and the new, the papal scales and the decimal system of united Italy, is a fruitful source of gain to the tradesman. He clings, partly from sentiment and partly from self-interest, to the old unit of weight, the pound of twelve ounces, and as it appears nowhere on the official scales, he reckons it at one-third of the kilogram (330 grams) or, if you do not watch him carefully, at 300 grams, thus profiting from 1/100 to 1/10 on every kilo (1000 grams) sold. Similarly the Roman measure for firewood is a tightly packed cart-load, but the wood-seller is an adept at making a cart look full when it is not, and your only resource is to buy wood by the weight. Even then, if you desire to receive the quantity you order and pay for, you must not only see it weighed but you must keep an eye upon it on its journey to your house, or it will become beautifully less for the benefit of the carter. The charcoal for kitchen use you buy in a measured sack of a given weight. The first time you bestow your custom you are delighted with quality and quantity, but with each order the sack shrinks in size, and when you expostulate the coal-seller will answer you unblushing that if you insist upon having the coal weighed he cannot supply it at the price! There is no doubt, moreover, that the universal custom of buying each morning the food for the day's consumption, is an extravagant system to the householder, and a source to the tradesmen of constant illegitimate gains, but as there are no larders where food can be kept there is no alternative. The _donna di servizio_ or maid-of-all-work goes out each morning to spend an enjoyable half-hour or more, meeting her friends and making shrill bargains at the shop doors. An Italian's servant will buy a halfpenny worth of bacon-fat or lard or preserved tomato, and as such small quantities cannot be weighed she receives a spoonful of lard or a dab of butter wrapped up in a leaf, and the whole is tied up and carried home in a brilliant cotton handkerchief. The man-cook will not condescend to one of these shopping handkerchiefs. He will carry a few parcels, but he generally returns, a small boy in his wake bearing a basket on his head wherein all his purchases are displayed. The prevalent custom in Rome is for the servant to give the least possible price for all she buys, and to charge her mistress a higher one, the balance going into her own pocket. Servants of unimpeachable honesty in every other respect will succumb to this temptation. If serving foreigners, they can often double their wages, and so well is the practice recognised that the mistress who is too watchful to permit it is spoken of as giving only a _mesata secca_, a dry wage. [Illustration: VILLA D'ESTE, TIVOLI Built in 1549 for Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, son of Alfonso II., Duke of Ferrara. It passed thence to the heir of this family, the Duke of Modena. See pages 172, 174.] Rome used to be one of the cheapest of European cities to live in; rents were low and food was cheap; meat was three sous the pound, and when it rose to four the Romans were indignant. Heavy taxation under the Italian Government has now changed all this. Beef is seventeen sous the pound, and rents have been almost doubled in the past twenty years. Wages are still very moderate. A woman servant gets from eighteen to thirty francs a month, a man thirty to sixty. If an English mistress engages an Italian servant, even if he or she is said to know their work, she must begin from the rudiments and even then there comes a point beyond which instruction fails to produce any result. The refinements of English service are looked upon as so many curious rites without meaning, and our standard of cleanliness and our fastidiousness are a perpetual source of wonder. The pride of the Roman prevents her, as a rule, from undertaking domestic service. When she does, she makes the roughest and worst of maids. The natural instinct of every ordinary Italian servant is to throw all refuse out of the window, as she still does in the towns of the campagna, or where her kitchen window gives upon an unfrequented courtyard, and the rest of her service is in keeping with this standard, the restrictions laid upon her by the demands of civilisation being the very thinnest veneer. She will never clean a floor on her own initiative, and very seldom on yours, and is quite capable of giving you notice should you expect it. Nevertheless if you can bring yourself to compromise with your own standard and put up with some of hers, you will find her on the whole a genial creature to deal with. She is blessed with abundant leisure, and has always time to carry on protracted conversations and even flirtations out of the kitchen window. No event in the street or in the courtyard beneath escapes her attention, yet she manages to do the housework, cook the meals, wait at table, clean the boots, iron and mend the clothes, and buy the provisions. She will, moreover, think nothing of sleeping in a mere cupboard without air or light, only fit to store boxes in, or in one of the passages on a sofa-bed which is folded up in the daytime, such plans being quite usual in a Roman household. The Italian man-servant is the most domestic of beings and is on the whole the most teachable and efficient; but he also is accustomed to lay a table by placing a knife, fork, and spoon in a bunch before each person, adding a glass, and _voilà tout_, and a higher ideal than this is a severe tax on memory and intelligence. "He certainly knew how to lay a cloth when he left me," an American lady said of her man-servant who had been with her nine years, "but perhaps he has forgotten"; and he certainly had, though he had only been out of her situation a year. A so-called finished servant, who had been years in a prince's establishment, thought nothing of receiving a basket of linen from the French laundress and depositing it on our dining-room table pending further instructions, and our disapproval only grieved without enlightening him. And no instruction will impress upon an Italian the impropriety of announcing English callers by a description rather than attempting to pronounce their foreign names: "The gentleman from the hotel," or "The young lady who married that old man!" But their charming manners and easy grace disarm criticism and win forgiveness for many shortcomings. In military households the master's orderly is often turned into a domestic drudge. Yet such situations are eagerly sought by young soldiers, for though they receive no extra pay they are excused military duty after the first ten months of their enrolment, and they compound their rations for a weekly government allowance. It is no uncommon thing to see a young man in uniform doing the whole work of an officer's house, cooking, cleaning, marketing, waiting at table, taking the children to school, wheeling the perambulator, and even doing the family washing and ironing. A measure of magnificence and pomp still obtains in the great Roman households, but it is combined with a simplicity of life and an informality of relation between employer and employed which rob it of its stiffness. The servants of a great house are not a caste apart, they are part of the family establishment. Their masters give them the familiar _tu_, and they are treated with far more intimacy and friendliness than is ever the case with us. In return the servants identify themselves with their employers' concerns, and take the greatest interest in all their doings, an interest no doubt fostered by the utter indifference to privacy existing in most households, where conversations on all subjects are carried on with widely open doors regardless of listeners. Servants and others of the same class will generally abide by an agreement clearly made, though foreigners are always advised to have even the conditions of service in black and white, and it is never safe to trust to precedent or to general rules in one's dealings with them. They are quite unfettered by the existing laws and unwritten obligations which make up their English counterpart's code of respectability, and they will be faithful to you only so long as their interest does not clash with yours. Instances to the contrary are rare. An Italian servant is quite capable of giving you instant notice for a mere whim, and departing the same day without the slightest compunction for the inconvenience he causes. Woe to the foreigner who seeks redress for conduct of this kind, or who is involved in any dispute however righteous his cause. Such cases are brought up in the district courts before magistrates who are appointed to act in each division of the city as conciliators (save the mark!). No solicitor of any standing likes to appear in these courts, they are beneath the dignity of his position, and he will only do so as a favour. An attorney of an inferior order, who is as often as not a layman masquerading as such, can be hired on the spot like a porter to see you through. Your opponent will certainly engage the services of one of these individuals, and when the case comes on to your no small amazement he will rise and make a fluent speech in favour of his client having little or no reference to the events as they occurred. If considered needful, he will also call several false witnesses who will swear entire falsehoods with perfect _sangfroid_. When your solicitor attempts to state your case the attorney on the other side interrupts him with indignant denials, and the conciliator joins in with the most injudicial display of temper. The comedy ends by all three talking at once in loud excited voices, without listening to one another, and the conciliator announces the close of the sitting. He then proceeds to give his verdict which is invariably in favour of the servant, and his socialistic tendencies in this particular are assisted by his not having paid the least attention to the evidence before him. [Illustration: IN VILLA BORGHESE A priest and one of the Austrian Seminarists, whose red dress has bestowed on them the popular nickname of "_boiled prawns_," are here seen conversing in the shade of the villa; the spring sunshine glints through the trees.] CHAPTER VII THE ROMAN PEOPLE I. _The Italians._ There are four great movements which moulded the political intellectual and moral life of other European countries without leaving their impress on Italy. Feudalism and scholasticism took less hold there than in Germany England or France; the spirit of chivalry never touched the Italian, and Puritanism, of course, left him scatheless. Feudalism had little affinity with a people democratic to the core, scholasticism had little attraction for the most open-minded and the least didactic nation on earth, and neither the chivalry of the Frank nor the Puritanism of the Anglo-Saxon awoke echoes in a people whose self-interestedness and lack of the sense of personal responsibility are only equalled by the absence of all illusions, and whose hatred of shams is as radical as their freedom from hypocrisy. Compared with the non-Latin peoples the lines of Italian development have been intellectual rather than on the side of character and conduct. The intellect of Italy has constantly spread a banquet before the spirit of Europe, as the beauty of the land from north to south has offered a feast of material beauty to every generation. Italian quickness in appropriating an idea is matched by Italian open-mindedness; you never meet in Italy the wall of thick-headed self-righteous prejudice--that array of pre-judgments which an Italian has aptly called _idols_--which the Englishman never fails to brandish when confronted by a new idea. Perhaps it is the fact that the Italians are the least prejudiced people on the face of the earth which makes living in their country delightful to Northerners. Some of our countrymen have certainly reason to be pleased that this is so; but the Italian illimitable tolerance of the foibles and eccentricities of others does not mean that they acquit us of bad manners and provincialism. Italian intellect, the familiarity with and the play of ideas in the Italian, is not the same thing as a lofty idealism; and when a Dane recently wrote that the Italians possess the highest humanistic qualities and therefore are also nearer the supernatural than other people, he made, I think, this mistake. He confused ideas with idealism. The Italian gift _par excellence_ is _le sens très vif des réalités_,[4] a vivid hold on the real; and this realism is the source at once of their qualities and their defects. The Italian has only one use for an idea, he must see it as it is. Hence he strips everything, tears away its drapery, exposes it to the garish pitiless light of fact. There is nothing which deserves in itself and always reverence--for him a spade is a spade, a fiasco a fiasco, a corpse a corpse. There is none of that prevenient idealism which in the north draws a veil over the crudities of sense, and helps to illuminate the half-truths they reveal. It is easy to see that such a quality as this is intellectually valuable, but morally disastrous. The special loveliness of the nature formed in the north is the persuasion that there are things one is not to see, not to hear. That northern "custody of the senses" which is not an ascetical exercise, but an inner illumination thrown upon them. [4] Gebhart, _L'Italie Mystique_. The intellectual limitation "thus far shalt thou go and no farther," which the Englishman willingly imposes on himself, is impossible to the Italian, whose moral qualities have to reckon with the intellectual liberty which is proper to his genius. The passionate love of intellectual truth for its own sake is one of these moral qualities, and the people who do not possess it inevitably contract certain moral defects. These are not the defects of the Italian; he is not a hypocrite in his moral relations, not a snob in social concerns, not a prig in matters of intellect, and has no faculty for the mystical self-deceptions of the Northerner. His complete democracy of sentiment is shown in many pleasant ways. It is difficult for the average Englishman to imagine that rank should make no difference, to understand the dignified and simple relations which subsist between classes in Italy. A man in a good coat is not ashamed to be seen talking with a friend in fustian; people of entirely different walks in life may be seen buttonholing each other; and a Roman prince arm in arm with a man of the lower bourgeoisie is no infrequent spectacle. "We are all people of consideration in this house," said a Roman to me--"on the floor below there is a Senator, upstairs there is a teacher of languages, and I am a shopkeeper." Sovereignty too, in spite of the heavy etiquette of the House of Savoy, is democratic in Italy. The King does not live in inaccessible _penetralia_, and the man of the people when he comes across the man to whom he invariably refers as _sua maestà_ will speak his mind to him. King Humbert assisted at the inauguration of Bocconi's big shop in the Corso and congratulated him on this new piece of commercial enterprise in the city; which is as though King Edward VII. should pay an inaugural visit to Whiteley's. Queen Margaret has always attended some Sunday lectures given in Rome by the association for the higher education of women--no Englishman could have imagined Queen Victoria attending, say, a university extension lecture at Bedford College. The Latin believes much more than we do in the principle of authority, and cares infinitely less about its representatives. [Illustration: THE "SPANISH STEPS," PIAZZA DI SPAGNA Erected for the Romans at the expense of a Frenchman in the eighteenth century. The _Piazza_ takes its name from the Spanish Embassy to the Vatican which has its residence here. At the Sacred Heart Convent attached to the church of the Trinità de' Monti, at the top of the steps, generations of girls of Roman families have been educated. The Egyptian obelisk came from the gardens of Sallust and was placed here by Pius VI. See page 141.] Italian civilisation is imperialistic and social, not individualistic. There is a greater sense of public decorum (as distinguished, however, from private decency) than among us, and more sacrifice of the individual to the society. One consequence of this is that there is less of that eccentricity, which is the individualism of the poorly endowed, less personal initiative, less enterprise, and nothing of that spirit of adventure which is the Anglo-Saxon's romance. The Italian would always, in spite of loud complainings to a just heaven, rather "bear the ills he has than fly to others that he knows not of." Just now it is the fashion in Italy to regard the "individualism" of modern Italians as the reason for their failure to co-operate. But a want of cohesion (mental and moral) is mistaken for individualism. It is certain that the Englishman is an "individualist" yet he achieves everything by co-operation; it is certain that he possesses that sign-manual of individualism--initiative, and certain that the Italian does not. Italy is not suffering from an orgy of individualism in her people but from an orgy of egotism--which is quite a different matter. It is a fact worth noting that every nation believes its own family life to be the purest and most solid. The truth is that family life plays a more important part in Italy than in England, and Latin parents everywhere sacrifice themselves more for their children than we do. So strong is the blood tie that it has been said that there is nothing at the back of the Italian character but the love of family. Children make far more difference in the life of an Italian than in the life of an Englishman; and when love and devotion and obedience are required of them, they have already seen in their parents as in a mirror how life and personal comfort and personal ambition can be squandered for love. An English parent can leave all he has away from his children, and he frequently leaves the elder provided for and the younger not provided for at all. A Latin parent cannot do this, and it is a signal witness to the sense of obligation towards those they bring into the world which subsists among the Latin races. If the blood tie is strong in Italy, friendship is very rare. As in the family relations so here it is the lack of marked individualism which is the determinant. It requires little effort to come up to the family standard; such effort, too, while it may lead to self-repression seldom brings about self-development. To come up to the standard of your peers outside the home requires on the contrary an exercise of all the individual powers; and friendship belongs to the individualistic peoples, those who prize personal rather than tribal and family character; to a people with no moral indolence, with the initiative and the power to become something on their own account, and to stand by themselves. The one "provincialism" of the Italian is--perhaps--his suspicion of all who stand without the blood tie: the adventurous spirit of the Anglo-Saxon which has colonised three continents has led him to a very different estimate of reliance on and co-operation with his fellow-men, and the capacity for genuine friendship outside the blood tie may claim to have always acted as an anti-barbaric note in Anglo-Saxon civilisation. The Italians have another strongly distinctive feature. They are a more passionate but a less sentimental people than we. I suppose the Germans are the most sentimental people of Europe, and we come next. But in Italy the Englishman is not credited with sentiment. According to the Italian press, for example, he has "the patriotism of the pound sterling." For my part I regard the Italian as the least sentimental man in Europe; we, on the contrary, both as individuals and as crowds, are governed by our sentimentality. The whole British middle class would make war to-morrow to satisfy a sentimentalism which the Latin peoples regard as exclusively their own. Those who recollect that the reception accorded to Garibaldi put into the shade the entry into London of the bride of our future King, ought not to accuse the English of lack of disinterested sentiment. The Italians have the sentiment of the beautiful the grandiose and the fit--but they are the last people in the world to be put out of their course by a scruple or an _élan_. On the other hand there is a real sense in which the Englishman is devoid of a quality which is allied to the Latin graciousness. England shows a want of pride in and sentiment towards dependencies like the Channel Islands or Ireland which we should not find in France or Italy. She forgets, neglects, has no grip, and takes no hold on the imagination. Other nations have exploited their colonies and dependencies and the British suzerain is not appealed to in vain for protection under his flag--but something lacks, and so it comes about that the foreigner frequently likes our justice but not ourselves. [Illustration: AT THE FOOT OF THE SPANISH STEPS, PIAZZA DI SPAGNA, ON A WET DAY] That sentiment which comes of a certain noble graciousness in peoples is shown in other ways in Italy. It is a moving thing to see the sons bear the coffin of father or mother, to see men of all classes follow the dead _on foot_; and then there is the Latin gracious treatment of birthdays and anniversaries, the Latin power of making a fête, of "fêteing you," surrounding you with the feeling that you are of importance for the moment, that content is really reigning round you; the many ways in which the sentiments of piety to the hearth and piety to the dead are expressed; the power of handling life lightly and of expressing feeling appropriately. The Italian though he is not so "intense," in the slang sense, as we, and gives way to less emotional sentiment, is far more impressionable. On the other hand he is not ashamed to betray emotion, or to speak of his _agitazione_; and it will astonish the Englishman to be told that although the Italian is so quick of feeling that one may think he is at the death grip with a man in the street to whom he is only narrating his unexpected meeting with a relative from the country, he studiously avoids those sentimental "scenes" which are so dear to the Anglo-Saxon. The hot-blooded Italian speaks of the "_furor francese_"--that unmatched capacity for summing the intellectual points of a case and exhausting its emotional possibilities in one lightning moment,--and it is a fact that they judge the French people to be far more mobile and inconstant than themselves. In common with other Latins, they have more vanity than we, but less self-consciousness, more simplicity, and none of that _mauvaise honte_ which betrays that the Englishman has not got his emotions under control. But there is in the best Englishman an excellent sort of simplicity which frees him from attending to the _personal point_ which is always present to the Italian whether he is dealing with matters public or private. On the other hand the Italians are completely free of the French _bête noir_, _chauvinisme_. And they have another great moral superiority: in America every one brags on his own account; in England we plump for national brag--there is a howling blast of the national trumpet always chilling the air round an Englishman. But the Italians do not brag; they have, indeed, no reason at all to act as _parvenus_. Their scepticism applies to themselves even more than to others, and no people are so ready for self-depreciation. According to them A, B, and C--the other nations of the earth--can accomplish this or that, while "_un italiano non è buono a niente_." In nothing, I believe, would Italians achieve greater distinction than in medicine, where a distinguished tradition of the art of healing goes hand in hand not only with the intellectual gifts of the people, but with an unrivalled delicacy of intuition. In no country are there better doctors, men armed at all points with the science of their age; yet as an Italian has remarked "Among us the physician counts as less than nothing while in France he takes rank as a scientific authority." The Italian and the Irishman are the only amiable men in Europe--we must go as far as Japan to find their equals. Both people have the desire to please--or is it a mark of ancient breeding?--the self-effacement, the courteous absence of self-assertion so difficult to the Englishman. The Italian will offer you the reins of his horses, and any and all of those privileges and advantages which the English owner regards as inalienably his. The traditional hospitality of cold climates is indeed nowhere greater than in England, but there is no more entirely hospitable host than the Italian when he admits you to his house. Nowhere are crowds so good-natured or so well-behaved. Yet the Italians complain louder than any other people, and have not French buoyancy in the troubles and tragedies of life. Who will believe it if we add that they have an admirable patience? The Englishman makes his holiday miserable by his indignation if the train is late, if some one steps on his toes, if he has to wait an hour while his dinner is cooking. The Italian takes all these things as part of the day's work or play, and finds his amusement in them besides. That is another great distinction--he cares for life for its own sake. The Englishman cares for it for some end he has in view, and the end may be noble or mean. With quicker sympathy and much quicker response than ours, they are a less kindly people; and what is it in the Italians that allows you to find them all at once in undress, the veneer gone, and the raw material left? The Englishman would find it hard, too, to understand a certain terrible outsideness, something callous and pitiless in the uneducated Italian: self-interest looms too large, and an apparent want of power of self-sacrifice--outside the blood tie--I take to be the great moral weakness of the Italian character. We shall already have understood that the Italian does not wait to be told these things by others--he is the first to judge himself; he has no illusions. In England we are fond of throwing a veil over our national defects or of calling them by some fine name, but the Italian of all ranks has put the defects of his qualities over and over again in the crucible of his terrible love of reality with its quick perception of shams; and to understand the defects of Italians one has only to read their own masterly appreciations of national character. [Illustration: ROMAN PEASANT CARRYING COPPER WATER POT] The Italian race is, I believe, prepotent in mixed marriages. In marriages between German and Italian or English and Italian the child shares indeed some of the mental characteristics of Angle or Teuton, but the _personality_ is an Italian personality. This prepotence of the Latin people I take to be the effect of what some one has called "a great temperament"--the one quality which we may be quite sure has belonged to every remarkable man. Of all the great races the men of modern Germany leave least trace of themselves. It is noteworthy that the instances of mixed marriages are nearly all instances of women of the English German and American races intermarrying with Italian men; but whichever way it is, it remains as true of Italy as of France that "the _ménage_ is always in the country of the Latin partner." The Italians say: "_inglese italianizzato diavolo incarnato_," and this is also true of Americans and may be true of Teutons. Two Italian girls who spent a season in London described to me their attempts to imitate what they called "_lo stiff_," the stiff reserved manner of the Englishman of breeding. They failed, it seems, woefully, for they could not acquire "_lo stiff_" and they lost their own pretty manners. So it is with the Anglo-Saxon in Italy. We have not their _finesse_, or the mental and temperamental qualities which balance their moral defects; the Englishman adopts these with interest and his national virtues are shed like a garment. It is therefore perhaps fortunate that Italian women give Englishmen small encouragement to turn themselves into _diavoli incarnati_; for it must be recorded that the English and American wife in Italy runs no such risk: she remains herself, the national character does not wear off like a poor veneer, she does not outrage native susceptibilities without acquiring native graces, and distinguished women of our race have for the past two hundred years brought their native virtues to Italy while adopting Italian causes with an enthusiasm which did not yield even to that of Italians themselves. In Rome the English wife of General La Marmora, the two Talbots who became Gwendoline Borghese and Mary Doria, the American wife of Garibaldi, and the Scotch wife of the triumvir Aurelio Saffi (still alive), all played a conspicuous Italian rôle. There are more people with great temperaments among the Latin races than among ourselves; and as it is "plenty of temperament" which is wanted for the creations of art it is not difficult to understand why the Italians are artistic and we are not. And the Italians are a people of artists. In England where one man in a thousand may possess the artistic temperament it is difficult to realise the keen observation, the appreciation of technique for its own sake, the intuitive way of gauging and grouping the data of the senses, the balance and proportion implied in a race where one man in ten judges as an artist. Wagner expresses, in a letter to Boïto, his admiration of the Italian attitude to art--the open-mindedness and delicate feeling in artistic questions which make him "understand again," after a visit there, "the matchlessly productive spirit to which the new world owes all its art since the Renaissance." When Edward VII. visited Rome the _Times_ and other English newspapers compared the consummate yet simple scheme of decoration with the tasteless and meaningless banner and bunting displays which London witnesses on similar occasions. The love of beauty--the Greek horror of deformity--is so strong with this people that its imperatives take precedence of moral considerations--of pity, delicacy, kindliness. The uneducated Italian shows his instinctive disgust at what is ugly or horrible and, as we have seen, no prevenient idealism checks the impulse. It is an important truth that Italians learn from the outside and that Northern peoples get from without only what they bring from within; that Italians have, perhaps, as little ethical awareness as they have signal and abiding æsthetical awareness. But that uninterrupted vision of reality which has relegated moral vision to the second place has bestowed on Europe not what is crude and naked and bare, but another mode of seeing, of feeling, of being--one of the great modes of human expression--art. This people who have been called "prodigals of themselves" have been so prodigal of their gifts that the hand which stripped the veil from the objects of sense is also the hand which clothed them, returning them to us with the crudity gone, replaced with new meaning, by new vision--expressed for ever in higher terms. The ruthless vision which saw so much, and suffered no illusion, saw also something which we did not see; and revealing to us what lay beyond our sight held up a mirror in which the real looks back at us as the ideal. The imagination of the Kelt, said Matthew Arnold, "with its passionate, turbulent, indomitable reaction against the despotism of fact" has never succeeded in producing a masterpiece of art. Here we have a clue to the truth--which the Greek had already taught us--that _interpretation_ is not left only to the peoples whose vision is turned inwards; that when, for such, the external seems bared of all meaning, the realist may restore it to us with the new vision in it. II. _The Romans._ In no European country has the secular conflict between race and race, province and province, been keener than in Italy--Lombards, Venetians, Tuscans, Romans, and Neapolitans have formed not only politically but morally antagonistic communities; and Italy has yet to create that moral unity which is no more a tradition of her past than is the civil unity she has already achieved. Nowhere, during the era of the _Risorgimento_, was this antagonism more keenly felt than in Rome and by the Romans who have always divided the inhabitants of that "geographical expression," Italy, into "Romans" and "Italians." To this day the difficulties of moral union are fed by the incompatibilities and the jealousies of "north" and "south." To the warm Southerner, Lombards and Piedmontese are a nation of shopkeepers; to the Northerner, the Neapolitan, the Calabrese, and the Sicilian are as brilliant impossible and mediæval Irishmen. Midway between these two, neither north nor south, stands and always has stood the Roman: by sympathy, proclivity, and geographical position a little more south than north; but by history achievement and tradition independent of either. Florence represents the fine flower of the Italian spirit, the South its poetry, Venice and the North its civil greatness. What is notable everywhere is an incomparable productiveness in all activities of the human intellect, all fineness of the human spirit. But Rome has not produced. After that one act of creation, the Roman polity, Rome has been sterile; its function has been not to create but to criticise. Like the great Church which has developed within its borders, Rome has been the lawgiver, the critic of other men's gifts, but has laid no claim--when once we cede her initial gift of an infallible _magisterium_--to _charismata_. And so the Roman possesses in its highest terms the gift of _criterion_. Some witty person--a Frenchman of course--said that England was an island and every Englishman was an island; and so we may say that Rome was arbiter of the world and every Roman possesses that keen vivid abounding gift of _arbitrament_. [Illustration: CHAPEL OF THE PASSION IN THE CHURCH OF SAN CLEMENTE The church, which is in the street leading from the Lateran to the Colosseum, belongs to the Irish Dominicans.] Rome therefore is not Italy for taste, art, delicacies of sentiment, for the great creations of the intellect the spirit and the imagination--Rome is the ancient mistress of the world; and the rôle the function and the influence of Rome must all be viewed in relation to her gift of infallible criterion, of world dominance. The Roman of to-day not only lives in the city of the Roman who gave laws to the known world, he thinks his thoughts and to a great extent lives his life. He is the result of the grandiose memories of the past playing upon such a temperament as his. He lives surrounded by vague memories, understanding that it was something exceedingly great which fell, leaving him in the midst of these ruins. And the Roman has a supreme indifference--he looks upon every event with the same tolerance, the same sentiment of Emerson's "fine Oxford gentleman" that "there is nothing new and nothing true, and no matter." One procession passes him by to honour Giordano Bruno, victim of theological bigotry; another passes to the Vatican to render homage to the power which crushed Bruno: the Roman looks out upon both with the same eyes, the same indifferent dignity. "The Roman apathy," say some; but others call it a superiority, Roman largeness of outlook, the Roman freedom from what is petty and intolerant. Who are the modern Roman people? Are they the genuine survivors of the rulers of the world? That there has been an immense influx of alien blood since the fifth century is certain. The incredible depletion of the Roman population in some periods was repaired by immigration from other parts of Italy; but Roman characteristics at the present day are too well marked to allow us to suppose that Rome has been at any time swamped by foreign admixture, or that the persistence of these characteristics can be accounted for merely by the continuity of Roman civilisation and the Roman _milieu_. The Romans of to-day, therefore, are the same people as the Romans of the great epoch--but with a difference. They are Romans with the energy sapped out; with the power of self-sacrifice for a public good gone, and with it the power to impose themselves on the nations, on their fellows. Romans with no heroes and no martyrs. [Illustration: A RUSTIC DWELLING IN THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA] Nowhere, in fact, can the Italian character be seen so unspoiled as in Rome, where fewer outside influences and neither education nor social polish have conspired to modify the characteristics of the nation who were once the _buontemponi_ of Europe. The people of classic Rome had always been men of a certain roughness, whose heroic qualities were formed at the expense of delicacy of sentiment. This rudeness of mind, of sentiment, of taste showed itself in every part of the Roman life. While Athenians watched the tragedies of Sophocles in theatres which could only hold a select audience, the Romans crowded into huge amphitheatres where a hundred thousand men and women gloated over the sufferings of sentient creatures--animals or men, it made no difference; the same hideous "practical jokes," as Walter Pater notes, being impartially meted out to both. Centuries after Athens met to applaud the periods of Pericles, the Roman ladies were turning down their thumbs that they might be sated with the spectacle of the last agony of the vanquished in the arena. The refined symposia of Greece became in Rome barbaric banquetings where the guests prolonged the pleasures of the table by vomiting what they had already eaten. The stern self-repression, the admirable power of devotion in a public cause, the contempt of pleasure and of life, the _animus lucis contemptor_ of the early Republic, were qualities which did not descend to the Romans of the Empire. _The Roman Type_ Not only Roman characteristics but the Roman type also have descended. The large round massive Roman head still contrasts with the narrow pointed head of the Tuscan. The type still admired in women is the _tipo giunonico_, the type of Juno and of the Roman matron--large massive and imposing. The Roman has a ruddy fresh complexion, the swarthy southern skin being comparatively rare; he has black hair, is burly and tends to obesity. His expression is tranquil and contented, and Signor Aristide Gabelli in his essay on Rome and the Romans bids us observe that the type has improved, that we no longer see the hard, bitter, threatening expression of the busts in the Capitol and Vatican, the prominent jaw and cheek bones have been softened; and the Roman of the city, at any rate, wears a more genial and humane expression than his classic ancestor. At a church function, among the Roman peasants--though I fear the type was more frequent in the "eighties"--one may see a face which might serve as the model for Jove, for a Roman poet or philosopher. It is such a face as could never be met with even among the best specimens of our peasantry. Muffled in his great fur-collared cloak, dirty and ragged, with eyes which seem to look from a soul that harbours every noble aspiration, our old peasant who can certainly neither read nor write, is probably cogitating why Checco refused to give him the wine at three sous the measure, or whether he would have done better to put the franc the _forastiero_ gave him into shoes, instead of following Peppe's suggestion as to lottery numbers. So much for the wonders which an old civilisation can confer without any effort or any preparation. [Illustration: PROCESSION WITH THE HOST AT SUBIACO] Many assert that the _Trasteverini_ are the only lineal descendants of the Romans. The legend is that Trastevere was colonised by the Greeks brought by Aeneas, and the Greco-Roman type may frequently be seen there in absolute perfection--women of the people having the classic features and the noble bearing of empresses. They are a more robust race than the Romans on the other side of the Tiber, the black hair of the women is still more luxuriant, the character more passionate and vindictive, the language coarser, the reputation of the women not so fair. In common with all Italians the Romans are more graceful than English men and women. The simple dignity and grace of the pose and carriage, with no stiffness or awkwardness, makes it easy to distinguish an Italian among Englishmen Germans or Americans whether he is sitting or standing. They have the small Latin bones and small hands and feet; the foot, however, is flatter than ours, and every one from the children to the soldiers drags his feet along the ground. But the walk is so unstilted that Italians form a natural procession, whereas a procession in England is achieved with much difficulty and is not really pleasing to the eye when it is achieved. Have you ever noticed the _mesquin_ gesture--the fear to let himself go which is so closely allied to the knowledge that he cannot do it gracefully--with which one commonplace Englishman bids good-bye to another? You will see nothing like this in Italy. The ample Roman gesture--that Italian gesture of reassurance which seems to the Englishman quite sacerdotal--is the property of every one; and a woman of the people will hail an omnibus with the classic gesture that her ancestor might have used when bidding Olympian Jove stay his thunderbolt. The Italians have the Latin eye and eyebrow; one never sees the unmodelled elementary eye, with its gaze _bon enfant_, of our younger civilisation. Naturally resonant, the voices of Italians are in all classes harsh and unmodulated; and there is no better evidence of the general ignorance in Rome than the uneducated speaking voices which make it impossible to distinguish a princess from a peasant at her prayers. The possession of a strong natural organ, quite untutored, is here joined to the Roman love of noise and racket; and the result is that the people scream at each other as if they were deaf, and you can only be sorry they are not also mute. It is an odd thing to hear the deep bass voice of some of the women alternating with the high thin tenor of many of the men; one may often mistake in this way the sex of unseen speakers. The deep voices of the women remind one that the contralto, and even the _contro tenore_, have been cultivated _con amore_ in Italy: on the other hand a labourer in the fields or your servant-man in the kitchen region can be heard singing in high falsetto like a girl. What one will never hear in Italy are the affected speaking voices cultivated by Englishmen: the Italian does not "put on side" either in his voice or his manners, and nothing is more noticeable perhaps on one's return to England than the absurdly affected voice of the men. There is no Roman dialect in the sense in which there is a Venetian a Piedmontese and a Neapolitan dialect--habitually spoken by all classes among themselves. The _Romanesco_ spoken in Rome by the people is a debased Italian, not a real dialect. The purest Italian is, as we all know, spoken in Tuscany, where there is no dialect, and the best pronunciation is the Roman. Hence the proverb: "The Tuscan language in the Roman mouth," _Lingua toscana in bocca romana_. _The Roman's Character_ The pride of the Roman is his chief characteristic; it keeps him from some of the pettinesses of his neighbours and is occasionally the idol to which self-interest is sacrificed. But the same people who are too proud to work are not too proud to beg. This kind of pride, indeed, is to be found a little everywhere in Italy, and I have known a distinguished Italian with a starving family who would consent to give lessons in "Italian literature" but not in "Italian grammar." In France where there is the maximum of self-respect this kind of pride is unknown. The Roman pride, however, is consistent with hearty ways and with great frankness and sincerity of nature. The Roman, indeed, is not only famous for his bad language, but for his out-spokenness in all directions: he tells you just what he thinks of you, and will by no means conceal his own humble origin when he becomes a great man; he will not insist that his ancestor was a count or at least a baron as an Italian from another province might do. But the Roman pride is a disease; it clamours for its own license and respects no one else's liberty; it plays into the hands of the Latin lawlessness, and the Roman spirit of revolt has tormented the popes ever since Constantine deserted the capital of the West. The Roman resents what he calls _prepotenza_, but a self-disciplined law-abiding people can hardly understand the stupid _prepotenza_ say of the cabmen in Rome--a majority of whom are Romans. The Roman lad or the Roman man takes it into his head to make a bee-line in your direction, to walk over that particular piece of road or pavement, and the feeble sense of righteous indignation he possesses is only kindled if you attempt to thwart him. The satyr-like--half-childish, half-malignant--cult of the _dispetto_, the miserable pleasure taken in deliberately inconveniencing you, are so many proofs of an undisciplined nature--and where shall we see so many undisciplined faces as in Rome?--albeit that here it masquerades as the just _orgoglio_ of a people descended from gods and heroes. _"Non me lo dica, perchè io sono romano"_ (Do not say it to me, for I am a Roman), is a warning phrase repeated in perfect good faith, as who should say: "Do not provoke this son of a god." [Illustration: GIRL SELLING BIRDS IN THE VIA DEL CAMPIDOGLIO The Forum in the background. The road marks the old _Clivus Capitolinus_. See page 30.] The Roman's most pleasing characteristic is his genuineness; that, and a certain magnanimity, a certain nobleness of mind. The Roman has no "jesuitry," and he will not say behind your back what he dare not say to your face. In contrast to other Italians is his roughness--a legacy of old Rome--a rudeness of spirit which is a curious compound of pride in the past, of age-long absence of mental cultivation--of a moral quality, brutal sincerity, and of a mental quality, a terrific realism. They are also, perhaps, the best hearted people in Italy; and a dear old Roman friend used to declare that the Romans and the English were the kindest hearted people in the world. Intellectually, no people in Italy have more talent: it is a key which opens many doors to say that the Roman is talented but not cultured. There is no real culture in any class, but there is a facility unmatched even in this land of natural gifts. The one exception to the general ignorance which exists by the side of an extraordinary quickness is an interesting one: every Roman is an archaeologist; to be unable to take your part in an archaeological discussion would be to write yourself down as an impossible ignoramus. On this subject every Roman is alert, and I was present when the foundations for the first houses which now lead to Porta Salara were being dug, and a marble relief was found which the workmen at once told me was "the rape of Lucretia." Imagine a bricklayer in London proffering a similar observation! With the general ignorance there is also in the upper class a widespread intellectual apathy; many of the Roman aristocracy have never visited the Palatine, and when it was suggested to a young Roman that she had never seen the Capitol, she answered: "Oh yes, I saw it the day I was married." Part of the Capitol buildings are the registry offices of Rome where the obligatory civil marriage takes place. The drive on the _Pincio_, which is not larger than the tract of the park from Hyde Park corner to the Marble Arch, satisfies the most exacting ambition; and the fussy foreigner who spends his time in museums and galleries is regarded as a harmless and well-meaning lunatic. Every human being is the product of contrasts; but the Roman is more so than other men: to explain, not what he is, but what he is not we have, I think, only to look at the contradictions, the inconsequence of a character which in the expressive Italian phrase is _sconclusionato_, it comes to no conclusion. For the Roman though he is turbulent is easily led; he is at once obstinate and teachable; he is not _fin_ but he throws a terrible light on all things; without being "_finto_" (feigned) he puts self-interest first. He is both ingenuous and suspicious; to his overweening pride he joins considerable diffidence; and the tongue which babbles of his personal affairs is the tongue of a man who has a profound distrust of his neighbour. A fine critic with a child's simplicity, he is sceptical and superstitious, credulous and incredulous, seeing the works of the oracle but allowing it to deceive him. Joined to his indifference is a faculty for staking his all on some absurd punctilio: his interest in ideas is greater than in many parts of Italy, his ambitions and pleasures more materialist. The changes which the Roman has witnessed in unchanging Rome are met in himself by changeableness and fickleness of purpose, though the conception of the majestic, the grandiose, the eternal is always there. What are we to say of a people who can unite the pettiest spite with a magnanimous tolerance? The denizen of the eternal city is proverbially _campanilista_, which may be translated "attached to the village pump"; and while on the other hand he has a sense of public decorum unequalled in Europe, the _blasé_ Roman fritters time and talents in petty preoccupations, in distractions which are neither dignified nor stately, and eats and gambles to show his distrust of human effort in general, of all human achievement since the incomparable days when his heroes walked the earth. The Roman does not merge in you, and he no longer imposes himself on you. He is not free of obsequiousness; and such customs as the _baciamano_ (hand-kissing) are said to derive from the fact that the Romans have been "the hosts of Europe" and have learnt to depend on its bounty. A readier explanation is certainly afforded in that aspect of Catholic Christianity which has always encouraged personal humiliations and servilism in the inferior clergy and the laity: but perhaps the real explanation is to be found in the fact that the present day Roman is the descendant of the Empire, not of the Republic, and Christianity, as we know, easily adopted as its own the servilisms of the later Empire, with those Byzantine proclivities for despotism and adulation which at last led the independent Roman to burn his incense before the "genius" of the most infamous of the Caesars. _The Romans and the "Italians"_ It is said that the Roman belittles things, that he is an easy despiser. Perhaps the gift of _criterion_ nourished among the grandeurs of classical and Christian Rome is a sorry preparation for enthusiasm over the sights to be seen in other men's cities. The fact too that his pride sometimes forbids his stooping to means which ensure the success of his "Italian" brother who comes fortune-seeking to Rome, joined to his sincerity and hatred of humbug are, he thinks, the reasons why as a rule he is cordially detested by other Italians. The "clericals" have another explanation; the Romans are hated, according to them, because they would take no part in the doings which led to the union of Italy and the invasion of Rome. We may give a little weight to all these reasons and yet understand that the Roman is disliked on other counts. His pride, so think other Italians, is altogether too immoderate for his achievements; and when they entered Rome they found a people devoid of the mental and moral qualities which make fine manners--a certain amount of self-forgetting and graciousness of mind. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO ARA COELI FROM THE FORUM The ever-open door of the popular Franciscan Church on the Capitol hill, which became in the middle ages the centre of the civic life of the Roman people. See pages 6, 57.] After "the Italians" entered the city, these provincial animosities waxed fast and furious. Men from the north were dubbed _buzzuri_, Neapolitans got nicknamed _cafoni_, and to this day a residence of twenty or thirty years does not preserve the hapless "_forestiere_" and his family from such epithets as _buzzuri_ and _villani_ if they presume to come to words with "a Roman of Rome." On the other hand "the Italians" returned these compliments with interest: the Romans were unlicked cubs, _maleaucati_, lazy, ignorant--the proud tetragram S.P.Q.R. was rendered by the Neapolitans _Sono Porci Questi Romani_ "these Romans are pigs"; while the Roman, finding in the Neapolitan a man still dirtier than himself, retorted that the "Neapolitans' sky is beautiful, and it is clean, because they can't reach it" ("Il cielo di Napoli è bello, ed è pulito, perchè non arrivano a sporcarlo"). At the same time it is an indubitable fact that Italians who live among the Romans come to prefer them to their other compatriots; and I have heard this preference expressed by people so far apart as an educated Piedmontese and an uneducated Calabrese. Perhaps they learn from the Romans tolerance, the smallness of small things, and the greatness of great ones. Perhaps they realise that the Roman has learnt with an admirable patience and teachableness the new lessons that have been put before him. Thrown from easy circumstances into the vortex of the struggling life of the new capital--overtaxed and underfed--he has suffered as much as the newcomers for a political change which he demanded less loudly than they; and it is to his fair credit that a revolution has taken place in Rome without bloodshed, without violence, without undue bitterness, and that the element of crime and lawlessness has not been supplied by him. The Roman is not a hero, and not a saint, but neither is he a _Camorrista_ and _mafioso_ like the men of the South, nor a _teppista_[5] like the men of the North. [5] The _Teppa_ and the _Camorra_ are respectively institutions of the north and south of the peninsula. The former is recruited exclusively from the lowest classes, and is nothing less than a league of the ill-conditioned bent on every sort of evil deed. The _Camorra_--like the _Mafia_--is more akin to a secret society, and to those factionist practices which are eminently characteristic of Italy. In this sense the _Camorra_ is a national institution, which infects every Italian enterprise, and functions in every Italian theatre. The _Mafia_, like the _Camorra_, is widespread in Naples and Sicily and counts men of all ranks among its members. None of these were ever Roman institutions; and the _teppisti_ who now afflict Rome are an importation from the north. _Roman Customs and Roman Satire_ The customs of the Romans have been depicted by the inimitable art of Pinelli, their ways of thinking and feeling by Belli in his sonnets and in the modern sonnets of Pascarella. Here the satire, the cynicism, the rude intellect, the ignorance, the self-interest, meet us in every picture. Nothing and nobody have ever escaped the Roman satire, which turns everything into ridicule and burlesque. From the end of the fifteenth century the torso called after the tailor Pasquino, and the statue of Marforio kept up a running fire of wit and mockery. When Pope Sixtus V. who was of the humblest origin made his sisters countesses, Pasquin appeared in a dirty shirt. Asked by Marforio the reason, he replied the next day, "_Perchè la mia lavandaia è diventata contessa_," "because my washerwoman has become a countess." Pius VI. encumbered Rome with inscriptions recording his "munificence"; when bread became dear Pasquin seized the occasion to exhibit a tiny loaf with the legend _munificentia Pii Sexti_; and when Urban VIII. died the following epitaph alluding to the bees in his coat of arms, recorded his nepotism: How well he fed his bees How ill he fed his sheep. All this is very unlike the ideas held by some Catholics who cry "outrage" at the least criticism, and would consider the jests of Pasquin and Marforio sufficient to keep the Pope a prisoner in the Vatican. The popes thought differently; and preserved what face they could under the stinging satire of the Romans. Pasquin gave place to the _capo-comico_ Cassandrino, who was delighting every class in Rome at Palazzo Fiano in the Corso when the Italians broke upon the scene. It must be remembered that the Roman would never accept servile occupations; the industries he chose were perforce those which required no plant and no capital, but also those which left him independent--such were the making of Roman pearls and mosaics, watchmaking, the favourite crafts of butcher, tanner, and carter, or the river industries of fisherman, boatman, and wharf porter. The most picturesque of his amusements were the dance, the mandoline, the lute, the song and serenade, and that improvisation for which he was always famous. One may still see the _tarantella_ danced on the "Spanish steps" in May by the artists' models, dressed in the old Roman costume which persisted till Napoleonic times--the half Spanish dress of the girls and the short velvet jacket, feathered hat, and knee-breeches of the youths. When the Roman railway was built, things were conducted in truly homely fashion; the train which was timed to leave at 10.30 was still in the station at 11. When at length it got under way, it might be put back again to land two peasants who had got into the wrong train. If you fumed and fretted, you were told to remember how long the journey would have taken before the day of railways. The Roman indeed had then and has now no sense of time--least of all has he learnt the proverb which he supposes is ever on the lips of our countrymen "_times_ is money." If you enquire of a Roman the hour of mass he replies "About ten, or half-past, or eleven--thereabouts." The shopkeeper, the waiter in a café, used to take no notice whatever of you when you entered his premises; he continued tranquilly to read his paper or finish his cigar, and only marvelled that there could in your opinion be any reason sufficiently urgent to warrant your disturbing these occupations. The Roman's time is as eternal as his city, and one of the lessons he has yet to learn is its value for other things than money-making. No one answers a letter; your lawyer or your banker think themselves as unobliged to satisfy your curiosity as to the fate of your cheque or your business as the butcher and the baker. The Roman learns on his moral side, but remains so obtuse on the material side as to be a perpetual illustration of the reputation he has for strong-headedness, for "putting Trajan's column in his head," and refusing to budge like a mule. The Romans indeed are haunted by the past, and they are perhaps the people of Europe who have least grip on the present. [Illustration: IN THE CHURCH OF ARA COELI See pages 57, 230-31, and interleaf, page 138.] It is in their folklore, the popular rhymes and tales, the customs and amusements of the people, that we realise that no loyalty or reverence can exist by the side of that passion for laying bare; and understand the coarseness which waits on the wide-eyed gaze of the Roman, unsparing and gross, because it is the result of what Ricasoli has called "the real poverty of the poor"--a moral poverty. The Roman goes to see some tight-rope dancers and describes the treat it was for him: Above all there's the great pleasure of the height, For if any one of them were to fall, Nothing in the world could save him. He goes to the play. This is his impression of the tragedy: The last act when he kills himself and her I can tell you was just satisfying (_M' ha proprio soddisfatto_). Or take his summary of the problems life presents: ... _a sto paese tutto er busilli_ _Sta ner magnà allo scrocco e ddì orazione._ "The whole difficulty in this life is how to eat without paying for it, and to get your prayers said." But the scene may change, and the same Roman is called upon to go forth into the campagna with the beneficent _confraternità dell' Orazione e Morte_ in search of the body of some victim of violence. He is found _pancia all' aria_ and brought back to his family; but amidst the keen observation of all that happens, of the situation, there is not a pitiful or generous sentiment; the scenes suggest nothing of interest but the faithful gross record of purely external impressions. Yet these men have trudged along the heavy roads, up and down, stumbling and struggling through the dark night to perform the act of pity which teaches them, apparently, so little. Tragedy, comedy, a funeral, a marriage, the visit to your dead, the game of hazard, the incidents of an assassination, all these things come under the same clear, coarse, unintimate, unloving observation of a people who hold, wisely enough, that "L'occhi so' fatti pe' guardà"--the eyes are made for looking--but who care as little how they look as they trouble to select what shall be looked upon. "_Che bella giornata; che peccato che non s' impicchi nessuno_" is the traditional greeting to a fine day, repeated even now with a modern humorous sense of its ghastliness. "What a fine day! what a pity no one is going to be hanged!" And the Roman's liking for distraction and noise is not sated even when he goes to bed. Before 1870 serenaders waked, and charmed, the sleeping city; but the Roman who is supposed to have been "killed between a policeman and official red tape," still reminds us that he is not so very dead after all, or that the _guardia "non s' è fatto viva,"_ for he now roars down the thoroughfares in the small hours of the night, thus procuring for himself the pleasure of disturbing you--a form of recreation with which even the police have too much sympathy to interfere. For the Roman tolerates other men's lawlessness but has no respect for their liberty. _The "Coltello" and Crime_ As with children who cannot "play the game," his games of chance degenerate into quarrelling and killing. The terrible habit of carrying, stowed away in a pocket at the back of the trousers, or up the sleeve, what the Romans call "the instrument" gives them a ready means of converting hot blood into hot deed. The _coltello_ used to be, and still is at times, the favourite gift of a girl to her lover--to have used it with deadly effect is in her eyes a necessary sign of prowess, and to feel it always ready is in his sight the welcome earnest of power to assert his virility. Italian crime is committed in hot blood; sudden rage or "love" supply the motive, and there is very little of the premeditated cold-blooded crime of which Dickens gives us an example in the details of Nancy's murder in _Oliver Twist_. The worst crimes of violence, however, are brought about from motives so futile as to seem incredible when they are mirrored in some ghastly assassination. It is enough to disagree with your comrade, to win a litre of wine from him, to refuse to withstand the police--to find yourself on the way to _Sant' Antonio_ or the _Consolazione_ with three inches of steel in your stomach, nay not unfrequently in your back. Primitive, terrible, childish, barbaric, this love of blood, this power of "seeing red" in a quarrel, has made the Italian the bravo of Europe, and makes the total of Italian homicides at the present day exceed those in England, Germany, Belgium, France, and Austria put together. Ninety-five homicides for every million of the population contrast in Italy with six for every million in England. In the time of the Venetian pope Clement XIII., in the middle of the eighteenth century, the proportion of homicides in Rome was twenty-five times higher than this. Is the Italian more cruel, more brutal, more wanton than his fellows? To the first two questions I should answer No, to the last, Yes. The cruelties of the French Revolution, the coarse brutalities of England even down to the century just passed, the horrors recently revealed in the German army, would at no time have found their counterpart in Italy. But the Italian--the Roman--is wanton, he is an egoist who sates his impulses without any reference at all to the other people and the other interests involved. He is wanton, for he lacks the sense of personal responsibility; wanton, for he carries on life and government with no regard to justice. The Italian is a child of nature, a combination of his own two conceptions of "faun"-like irresponsible grace and "satyr"-like animality; an undisciplined creature living in the conditions of modern civilisation. But although the Italians are a vital people, a people alert on the side of the self-protecting instincts, and with the egoism of the vital temperament, they are not an inhumane people: they have in abundance the imaginative sympathy which instructs and softens, and if they lack the sense of justice they are in some ways more merciful than we. [Illustration: DOORWAY OF THE MONASTERY OF S. BENEDICT (SAGRO SPECO) AT SUBIACO See interleaf, pages 82 and 86.] No one can understand the disposition of the Italian in any part of the peninsula who does not appreciate in it a certain mildness--something expressed by the Italian _mitezza_ but not by our English _meekness_--which preserves him from excesses from which other peoples are not free. The Romans of antiquity boasted no such sentiments; from that cruel period there has come down to us one story of humanity--the humanity of a dog; the compassion shown by a dog for one of a group of victims executed in the neighbouring Mamertine prison, and callously thrown out upon the steps of the highway of civilisation--the Roman Forum. But as a population the Romans of the modern city are not cruel. If you look in upon the Roman as he watches the public torture of prisoners in the first part of last century you will have the story in brief of his irresponsibility, his unstrenuous attitude towards all such matters. He shrieks with delight at the writhings of the victims, but will shout with pleasure if one of them succeeds in making good his escape. Little has been done to instruct the spirit of the ignorant Roman, yet few such scenes of repulsive cruelty to animals as Naples and Florence present are to be laid at his door; and the best of the population need fear no competitors in human and merciful sentiment. What the country cries out for is for these better sentiments to have the force of a public opinion--a civilising agent as yet completely absent in Italy. No force in the country helps the Italian to that "self-reverence" the lack of which Mrs. Barrett Browning discerned in him. Nowhere in Europe is callousness to human life so great;[6] nowhere in Europe, writes an enlightened Italian priest, is there so much cruelty to animals as here; yet so unaccustomed are the people to that best form of moral education--moral suasion--a gradual civilising of spirit, that they are incapable of putting two and two together, and still urge the ignorant argument that if you inculcate humanity to animals while there is so much to be done for men, you are somehow wronging the latter; they suggest, apparently, that by kicking a dog you are somehow helping a baby. It is to be hoped that the thesis of the priest above quoted, that the protection of animals is a real means of education, may be accepted boldly by the better clergy now that Leo. XIII. has called such protection _altamente umano e cristiano_. Visitors are outraged by the disgusting cruelties which even the children in Italy are the first to practise, and no amount of sophistry will make them believe that such conduct is decent in the superior animal. That secular Italy will be obliged to take up the subject is certain, and one hopes that then the clergy will return to the simpler spontaneous religious feeling of the country--marred by scholastic dogmas--which gave a patron saint to the lesser creation, and which still places in every stable and cattle-shed of Umbria the image of "S. Antony, protector of animals." [6] The zone which supplies the maximum of crimes of violence is Lazio (Latium). _Law and Justice_ Those who know what it is to feel "righteous indignation" must suffer in a country where justice is not understood and not appreciated by any one. The Italians still know how to make laws, and legislation here is ahead not only of the sentiment of the country but of the laws of most European peoples--what they have forgotten is how to administer them. It is no exaggeration to say that at present Italian tribunals exist for the sake of the criminal; absurd "extenuating circumstances," which can hardly be taken seriously, are always forthcoming, and as a distinguished Italian declared in the Senate the guilty man here must indeed be an unfortunate wretch (_un povero disgraziato_) if he cannot manage to escape a condemnation. In place of the inexorable penalty which would alone meet the case in a land where lawlessness has prescriptive rights and where capital punishment does not exist, there is a pleasing uncertainty about all penalties. With a poor sense of humour as conspicuous as the poor sense of justice, a bench of judges will gravely listen to a succession of false witnesses, vulgar perjurers, mere play-actors, who spring up hydra-headed in support of every villain or rascal, be the matter a murder or an affair of two francs. The terrorisation exercised by the knife and the _vendetta_ has caused the Roman for centuries to enter into a shell of reserve; if an assassination takes place--in broad daylight or in the dark, it does not matter--no one sees it; the _guardia_ arrives round the corner in time to make the "legal verifications" as soon as the misdeed is safely accomplished, and if the victim shrieked first neither he nor any one else happened to hear it. The desire to live in peace, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, making no enemies, has affected a whole people--with the result that the protected person is the malefactor. The more audacious he is, the more he affects in the city the _allures_ of the brigand, the more successful he will be in evading the law, in gaining the support rendered by the silence or the false witness of all who encounter him. The people, writes Aristide Gabelli, "seek by silence and dissimulation their own safety rather than the public safety at their own proper peril." The consequence is, of course, that there is not the least co-operation with the law. The Roman, indeed, feels humiliated by the necessity for seeking its aid; government and law are abhorrent to him, and he alludes to the former as "_questo porco di governo_"--if you are unable to defend yourself the alternative is not the arm of the law but to stop at home. The police service of Rome includes three corps--the carabineers, who hunt in couples, in three-cornered hat and cloak and sword; the municipal guard who wear a cocked hat, with cocks' feathers on feast days, and a black uniform turned up with orange; the _Guardie di Pubblica Sicurezza_, in black piped with blue, and a _capote_. These last, called _questurini_ because they depend from the _Questura_, are disliked by all Romans who call them "_avanzi di galera_," gaolbirds and assassins. As a matter of fact it is difficult to find men of civil condition to enter the corps; such work is eminently distasteful to a Roman, and "set a thief to catch a thief" is the principle on which he supposes the _governo_ acts. [Illustration: CHAPEL OF SAN LORENZO LORICATO AT S. BENEDICT'S, SUBIACO See interleaf, page 86.] Crispi tried to form one police force for the city; at present if you apply to a _guardia di P.S._ your business is sure to concern the absent municipal guard, while the carabineers do nothing but support each other in the arduous task of standing at street corners watching the follies of men, criminals and victims.[7] To the municipal guard--the popular force, called _pizzardoni_--is entrusted the maintenance of decency and order in the city, and they often brave the wrath of their fellow citizens in its accomplishment. All matters not connected with municipal legislation pertain to the State police, who arrest thieves and act in criminal affairs. Soldiers, too, have certain civil duties; they are frequently called upon to act as police, they are called out to help if a house falls down, to form the _cordon_ in case of a fire, and may in certain circumstances arrest a malefactor. [7] Very different is their rôle in the country districts, which they police entirely, and with courage and devotion. The soldiers form the most respectable and the only disciplined part of the male population in a city like Rome. One often sees, of course, battalions of men from all the Italian provinces, youths of twenty just enrolled, and among them there is seldom a vicious face. For these are the mothers' sons, and they compare very favourably with our "Tommies." The same cannot be said of the other youths who throng the city. Perhaps seven-tenths of the crime is committed by lads in their teens and early twenties; I have heard a Senator declare that there are boys of twelve in the prisons who are already _perfetti criminali_; and surely nowhere in Europe are boys and youths worse trained. The most appalling phenomenon, however, is the existence of a degraded type, of all and every age, usually belonging to the decently-clothed classes, whose outrages on decency were described by an Italian in a Roman newspaper as "enough to sicken the coarsest navvy." These practices, according to some old Romans, are one of the results of the French occupation, but such an explanation of occurrences which are to be met with nowhere else in Europe or out of it, must be taken with all reserve. Gaolbirds like these molest women with impunity; and the _amor proprio_ of the vile nature awakes just in time to heap further outrage when this molestation is resented. Women have always been hustled in the Roman streets, and as Italian ladies are only now beginning to walk unaccompanied, the foreign visitors bear the brunt of the amiable practice still in vogue of not moving on the narrow pavements, but leaving the lady to take the gutter. Such conduct from men to women contrasts strangely with the courtesy so often extended even to beggars; and a woman of the people, a servant or a porteress, will invite the beggar who is interrupting your conversation to desist, with such phrases as: "Move aside a little; Do me this pleasure." _Courtship and Marriage_ It will be astonishing to many, no doubt, to hear that courtship in Italy is a prosaic affair. Of passion there is plenty and to spare, but the tragic element does not enter every day, and then no sentiment comes in to disturb matters. After the first _etiquette_ of the situation is over, and the letters vowing that you have _il paradiso nel cuor_--which are duly discounted by the peasant _fiancée_--have been written, things run uneventfully enough. A young Abruzzese servant--from the most saving population of Italy--became enthusiastic when recounting the virtues of his proposed bride to his mistress, which culminated with: "Signorina mia, _è piena di biancheria_"--"she is full of house linen." There is among all Italian women more dignity in their relations with men than there is among English women. The Italian woman has a noble reticence, a power of self-protection, which imposes itself on lover and husband. She is not accustomed, as we are in modern times, to walking abroad unaccompanied, and there is no doubt that here the Englishwoman shows a self-respecting demeanour which is everywhere recognised as entitling her to all the respect she feels for herself. What I speak of is the Italian woman's attitude towards the man to whom she is engaged or married, in comparison with the Englishwoman's. The former will not serve her husband as an English or German _frau_ will; nor, before marriage, will she lay herself out to keep the man at any cost as the English girl of the servant class will do. Here Italian self-respect is greater than English. The Roman woman of the lowest class habitually displays this personal dignity and reticence in the streets; and nowhere in Rome will you see such scenes as are to be witnessed on any bank holiday at a seaside place in England, on Saturday evenings in London, or in country towns after dark, among men and women of the lower middle class. The Italian woman will avoid scandal to herself and hers at whatever cost; she will suffer any deprivation or loss to compass this, to keep her trouble from the eyes of the curious world. There is none of that vulgarity of soul--consummated in modern times among Anglo-Saxon peoples--which hastens to wash dirty linen in public. This is one reason why divorce is so distasteful in Italy, and especially to the women, who would one and all suffer individually in order to bind the man, to preserve the family and its honour, in preference to the enjoyment of the personal freedom which the looser bond implies. [Illustration: STEPS OF THE DOMINICAN NUNS' CHURCH OF SS. DOMENICO AND SISTO This and the church of Santa Caterina da Siena form a Dominican corner of Rome on a spur of the Quirinal. The garden of Palazzo Aldobrandini is seen in the background. See pages 6, 171.] A traditional characteristic of the Roman is that he has always given a fairer share of life to women than other Italians. Since the day when Romulus called the Roman _curiae_ after the thirty Sabine women who had thrown themselves into the breach for the Romans, and conferred on them special privileges, the Roman woman has played a dignified part in the life of the city. As priestesses the vestals possessed privileges shared by none but the emperor; and the idea of the Roman matron, the wife not "in the hand" of her husband, was a Roman contribution to social ethics two thousand years before the idea occurred to Englishmen. There is nothing that antiquity has handed down to us more dignified than the seated female figures in Roman museums. These views of women ceased, naturally enough, when Rome which had been the greatest political became the greatest clerical city in the world; but the Roman tradition was handed on in the Italian universities outside Rome, which admitted women five hundred years before they were allowed to share in the benefits of those colleges of Cambridge and Oxford which their money and influence had done so much to endow. The women of the people still, however, enjoy in Rome "an almost unlimited liberty." The Roman man shares his recreations with his wife, and the wife-kicking which is such a plague spot in the life of the common people in England, is not one of them. English fair-play to women is indeed merely a matter of class; it has never penetrated to the lower strata, and in the English middle as in the English lower class the men are still "the lords of creation." This conjugal relation in fact remains a bulwark of a certain coarseness which no one can deny to the Englishman, and which is registered in the Italian's firm opinion that English wives are bought and sold in open market. In other parts of Italy, however, in Calabria and the Abruzzi (even Piedmont is conspicuous for want of gallantry), the wife is regarded simply as a chattel, and the brutal husband aims his blow at his wife's face in order that the neighbours may recognise _il segno del marito_. The sufficient explanation _è suo_ (it is his own) is the same which will be given you if a youth maltreats a dog; and in both cases the moral quality of the argument is as ignoble as it can be. Socially, the talents of the Romans are not higher than our own. The Italian people have not the social gifts which are the _privilegium_ of their Latin neighbour. On the society of ancient Rome was superimposed clerical Rome--a city where the sex which makes society was nowhere, where the _pezzo grosso_ in every drawing-room was a Roman cardinal, not a great lady; and there can be little doubt that this has not proved a civilising influence on the Roman. But in natural gifts of disposition the Italian greatly excels us; and in no English gathering can the charm be approached which Italians will impart to an _alfresco_ party, an impromptu _festa_--often including a great mixture of classes--when the simplicity, the unfailing good humour, and the successful efforts to please are a lesson to the Englishman. The Italians by gathering together make a natural _festa_, as by walking they make a natural procession--something that is graceful and unselfconscious, absolutely simple without missing stateliness. _The Romans and Art_ The art history of Rome is as distinct from that of the rest of Italy as is its social, its religious, or its political history. We look in vain to Rome for a first-rate picture, a first-rate poem, even--with the exception of Palestrina--for a first-rate composer.[8] The fatal facility which hampers all Italians, who can achieve with little labour what less gifted peoples travail to attain, meets in the Roman that curious inconclusiveness, that strange universal sterility, which begins with the character itself. Nevertheless the Roman has not failed to give us what it is his function to give--he has always been a fine-art critic; every great thing has come before him, and of all he has been an incorruptible judge, seldom deceived, using all the powers of _finezza_, of ridicule, of satire, and of fine judgment at his command, to raise or to create a standard of fine work. If there is one art which may be said to be not only the gift of Italy but to have remained Italian, it is singing; and here the Roman has kept in the forefront both as critic and executant. The Italian really _loves a voice_--the Englishman loves the sentimental rendering of a theme; and the criterion of vocal sound which the Italian possesses, he finds, perhaps, in his own throat. "Roman throats and chests must, in some particular way, be differently constructed from those of other people" wrote Walter Pater; and the resonant voices of Italians may be due to the absence of the protruding German and English chin which captures and muffles so many of our vocal tones. [8] _Clementi_, indeed, was a Roman, and a Roman buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. The classical Roman had no taste: we wonder to-day that the Roman, dazzled with rich marbles, should adopt the expedient of painted columns in a scheme of decoration; but he did the same in the house of Germanicus on the Palatine. That there is a distinction between taste and artistic sensibility there can be no doubt whatever, and it is equally true that the former is often mistaken for the latter. The subject is an interesting one; but here we can only record the two facts--that the Roman all through the centuries has been a sensitive to artistic impressions, and a fine judge of the arts, and that he has never possessed that gift of a certain refinement of sentiment--taste. After all that has been said of the Romans, it is sad to have to record that it will soon be difficult to find genuine Roman families. The old "_Romano de Roma_"--the man whose ancestors, like himself, were born _all' ombra del Cupolone_, under the shadow of the great cupola--is disappearing, giving place to more successful, more industrious, and 'cuter men--preserving up to the last moment of his life those habits and customs which cause him and his house to suggest Noah and his ark to the more modern Italian; but also learning up to the last hour of his life new ideas, such as must also have importuned the patriarch and his family when the waters receded leaving him and the ark high and dry on Ararat, and the daughters of men began to weave their toils round the sons of God. [Illustration: PORTA SAN PAOLO Gate in the Aurelian wall rebuilt by Belisarius. This is the gate of the Ostian Way leading to the basilica of S. Paul's--one of the seven great pilgrimage churches--of which the Kings of England were Protectors.] CHAPTER VIII ROMAN PRINCELY FAMILIES To be a patrician of Rome is to possess one of the proudest of titles, and from the senator of the ancient city to the prince of to-day the aristocracy of Rome has been one of its most vital and characteristic institutions. Though the Roman cardinal as a prince of the Church has always been admitted, whatever his origin, within the pale, the Roman nobility with the rarest exceptions has never swelled its ranks with newcomers owing their tides to acquired wealth or successful public life, but, conservative and exclusive, preserves the traditions of the past and forms a society unlike any other in Europe. The greater number of the princely families whose names are familiar to every sojourner in Rome date their connection with the city from the fifteenth century and onwards, when the popes ceased to be chosen from among the Romans, and a new aristocracy grew up, the creation of successive pontiffs, who, themselves reigning but not hereditary sovereigns, wished to raise their relatives to a rank second only to their own. Others trace their descent from some mediæval chieftain, or are feudal in origin, and these alone are indigenous to the city and its surroundings, and their history is indissolubly woven into the records of Rome's past. For many dark centuries, during a barbarous period of bloodshed crime and cruelty, the history of Rome was what her great nobles made it; and they in their turn rose to fame and power or sank into oblivion, leaving no traces or but the scantiest records of their fate. The great mediæval family of Conti, Counts of Segni, whose race gave four popes to Rome, among them the great Innocent III., have disappeared from history, leaving as a magnificent monument to their greatness the huge tower which bears their name. In the twelfth century, the Sabine Savelli and the Jewish Pierleoni were great and prominent. Streets and piazzas called after them in the region near the crowded little Piazza Montanara testify to their importance. The Savelli dwelt in a castle in the Via di Monserrato. It was afterwards turned into a prison, the _Corte Savella_, and here for a time the unhappy Beatrice Cenci and her accomplices were confined. Both Savelli and Pierleoni successively occupied a stronghold erected within the ancient walls of the theatre of Marcellus, and a fortified palace which stood against it, now Orsini property. One of the Savelli popes, Honorius IV., built himself a castle on the Aventine, and at one period the whole of the hill was entrenched and fortified, the ancient temple of _Libertas_ on its summit being transformed into a citadel. These immense buildings have crumbled away, and the sole monuments that remain to record the past greatness of this family are the tombs of Pope Honorius, of his father and mother, and of other Savellis in their chapel in the church of Ara Coeli on the Capitol. The Pierleoni, a rich and prolific race, descendants of a learned Jew convert of the time of Pope Leo IX., filled important posts and made alliances with the great houses of Rome, and in 1130 a member of this Jewish family was elected and reigned several years in the Vatican as the antipope Anacletus--an event unparalleled in history. After the thirteenth century this name also slips out of historical records and is heard of no more. The ancient consular race of the Frangipani have left to Rome some fine monuments in the church of San Marcello in the Corso, and the name is still borne by a Marquess in Udine, but they are no longer numbered amongst the princely houses. They earned their appellation of _bread-breakers_ from having distributed bread in a great famine, but in the middle ages their name spelt terror rather than benevolence. They were a power not lightly to be reckoned with. Great allies of the papal party, they more than once gave sanctuary to fugitive popes in their strong _Turris Cartularia_, the ruins of which can still be seen near the church of S. Gregory. In the thirteenth century this tower fell into the hands of the Imperialists, and was utterly destroyed with all the archives which had been stored there for safety. It formed an outpost in a chain of fortifications with which the Frangipani and their allies the Corsi enclosed a large portion of the city. Their main stronghold was built amongst the ruins of the Palatine, with flanking towers on the Colosseum and on the triumphal arches of Constantine, Titus, and Janus. From this dominating position they could take the field or rush upon their foes in the city at the head of hundreds of armed retainers. Another mediæval family, the Anguillara, has been merged in the Orsini, leaving a solitary tower in Trastevere to commemorate a once great and powerful race. [Illustration: THE COLOSSEUM IN A STORM] But of all the feudal princes of Rome none played so conspicuous a part as the Orsini and Colonna, and this not alone in the history of their own city, for their names were famous throughout Europe for many centuries. These two great families were hereditary enemies and belonged to rival factions. The Colonna were Ghibellines, Imperialists, the Orsini Guelphs, supporters of the papacy, and when they were not fighting in support of their political parties they were engaged in private feuds on their own account. While in other cities of Italy feudal tyranny was gradually giving way before the more enlightened government of independent republics, Rome was too weak to struggle against her oppressors. Deserted and neglected for nearly a century by her lawful sovereigns the popes, at best ruled by a vacillating and disorderly government, the city lay at the mercy of her great barons who scorned all law and authority and asserted and maintained their complete personal independence at the point of the sword, while they swelled the ranks of their retainers with bandits and cut-throats to whom they gave sanctuary in return for military service. Great and prosperous Rome had become a small forsaken town within a desolate waste, surrounded by a girdle of ancient walls far too large for the city it protected. Amphitheatres, mausoleums of Roman Emperors, temples, theatres, were converted into strongholds. Such of the churches as were not fortified were crumbling into ruin, and everywhere bristled loop-holed towers from which the nobles could defy one another, and which commanded the entrances to dark filthy and winding streets. At frequent intervals the despondent apathy of the citizens would be rudely disturbed by a call to arms, and to the sound of hoarse battle-cries, the clashing of weapons upon steel corslet and helmet, and the waving of banners with the rival Ghibelline and Guelph devices of eagle and keys, bands of Orsini and Colonna would rush fighting through the narrow streets and across the waste spaces of the city, would fall back and advance to fight again until, with the darkness, they would retire behind their barred gateways, leaving their dead as so much carrion in the streets. These two families divided the greater part of Rome between them. The Orsini held the field of Mars and the Vatican district from their fortress in the ruins of the theatre of Pompey and their castle on Monte Giordano. This is now Palazzo Gabrielli, and it retains its portcullis and much of its mediæval appearance. Tor di Nona and Tor Sanguigna were flanking towers to the Orsini stronghold. The Quirinal hill was occupied by the Colonna, their great castle standing almost on the same ground as their present palazzo, and they had an outlying fortress in the mausoleum of Augustus near the river. Occasionally a truce was patched up between the two families that they might unite against a common enemy, and for a period they agreed that two senators, one from each family, should be appointed to govern Rome in the pope's absence. But these peaceful intervals were short lived. On the slightest provocation, barricades would be run up, new entrenchments dug, and civil war would break out afresh. Again and again in their conflict with the Church the Colonna were worsted in the struggle, their estates confiscated, and themselves, root and branch, beggared and exiled; but there was a strength and vitality about the race that no adversity could subdue. Pope Boniface VIII., whose displeasure they had incurred, oppressed them for a while. Six Colonna brothers were exiled, and their ancestral town of Palestrina was razed to the ground by the Caetani, Boniface's relatives and adherents, and a plough was driven over the site to typify its permanent devastation. But a few years later the reckless Sciarra Colonna broke into the Pope's castle at Anagni, and made him prisoner with bitter taunts and reproaches. Later, Sciarra played a conspicuous part in the coronation of Lewis the Bavarian, and in gratitude for his services the Emperor allowed the single column of the family coat of arms to be surmounted by a golden crown. Greatest amongst the six brothers of this period was Stephen, Petrarch's friend, an able man and good soldier who met prosperity and adversity, poverty banishment and danger, throughout a long troubled life, with the same calm resolution and intrepid courage. This Stephen survived the last of his line--his two sons Stephen and Peter with two grandsons being massacred after an unsuccessful skirmish against Rienzo. After Boniface's death, the Colonna came into their own again and received one hundred thousand gold florins in compensation for their losses, but Palestrina, which was later rebuilt, suffered again the same fate and was torn down by order of Eugenius IV. within one hundred and fifty years. In the reign of Sixtus IV. Rome was again distracted by faction feuds. The Pope, aided by the ever-ready Orsini, pursued the Colonna with relentless hatred. Protonotary Lorenzo Colonna fell through treachery into the hands of his enemy, and his friend Savelli was captured and murdered on the spot for refusing to rejoice with the captors. Lorenzo was tortured and beheaded, and the Orsini sacked and burnt all the Colonna property in the town. Other distinguished members of this distinguished family of a later epoch were Vittoria Colonna, the poet-friend of Michael Angelo, and Marc' Antonio, who commanded the papal fleet at Lepanto, and who was given a triumphal entry into Rome after his victory. Nothing is known of the origin of this famous race though it is believed to have come originally from the banks of the Rhine. It first appears in history in 1104, when the Lords of Colonna and Zagarolo characteristically incurred the displeasure of Pope Paschal II. They also owned part of Tusculum and were probably related to the Counts of that place. Later, Palestrina became their principal stronghold and they possessed Marino, Grotta Ferrata, Genazzano, and Paliano in the Sabines, the last giving them their princely title. The family produced many distinguished churchmen, but only one pope, Martin V. Many daughters of the house took the veil, and in the year 1318 as many as twelve had entered the convent of S. Silvestro in Capite, which had been founded by the cardinal members of the family. In 1490 a Colonna was appointed for the first time to be constable of the kingdom of Naples, and it was popularly believed in Rome that the Pope excommunicated the King of Naples every vigil of S. Peter (28th June) because he had failed to proffer the tribute of his investiture. The formula ran: "I curse and bless you," and as the curse was uttered the Colonna palace trembled. This palace stands on the slopes of the Quirinal; it is entered from the Piazza dei SS. Apostoli, but the gardens cover the slopes of the hill as far as the Via del Quirinale, bridges connecting palace and gardens crossing the Via della Pilotta at frequent intervals. It was built by Martin V. for his personal use, and contains a fine picture gallery and magnificent suite of state rooms. After nearly eight centuries of life this family is still among the greatest and most distinguished in Rome. One prince of the name is now Syndic of the city, another shares the peaceful office of Prince Assistant at the Pontifical throne with the descendant of his ancient enemies, Filippo Orsini. [Illustration: ARCH OF TITUS FROM THE ARCH OF CONSTANTINE The arch which records the plenitude and the arch which records the decadence of Roman power. See page 162, interleaf, pages 38, 234, and pictures 12 and 66.] The career of the Orsini race has been no less eventful, but this family has now died out in many of its branches. In a metrical account of the coronation of Boniface VIII., written by Cardinal St. George and quoted by Gibbon, the Orsini are said to come from Spoleto. Other writers believe them to have been of French origin, but at an early date they became identified with the history of Rome, and in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries two members of the family became popes, Celestin III. in 1191, and Nicholas III. in 1277. The last Orsini pope was the Benedictine monk Benedict XIII. (1724). In the sixteenth century the Orsini fell under the Pope's displeasure, the head of the family was banished and his estates were confiscated. This individual, Giordano Orsini Duke of Bracciano, became enamoured of Vittoria Accoramboni, wife of Francesco Peretti, Sixtus V.'s nephew. Vittoria was beautiful fascinating and unscrupulous, and Giordano, no less unscrupulous, did not hesitate to rid himself of the obstacles to his desires. His own wife he strangled in his castle at Bracciano, and Francesco was set upon and murdered in the streets of Rome by his orders and with the connivance of Vittoria and her brother. Orsini and Vittoria were married, but their union was of short duration. Sixtus V. had been meanwhile elected to the papacy, and he lost no time in disgracing and banishing Giordano whose end in exile is shrouded in mystery. Vittoria was shortly afterwards surprised and brutally killed by her husband's relatives for the sake of the Orsini inheritance. The Orsini estates were at Bracciano, Anguillara, and Galera, but the Bracciano property with the ducal title that went with it now belongs to the Odescalchi. In Rome the Orsini still own and inhabit their great palace near the portico of Octavia. It was designed by Baldassare Peruzzi and was built within the ruins of the theatre of Marcellus, the high ground upon which it stands being merely a heap of fallen débris. It is approached through a gateway flanked by stone bears, the emblem of the Orsini race. Another mediæval family, the Gaetani or Caetani, Dukes of Sermoneta and Princes of Caserta and Teano, is of Neapolitan origin. One of its members became pope as Gelasius II. in 1118 and the first of the name was military prefect under Manfred, King of Sicily, but the close union of this family with Rome only dates from the reign of the Gaetani pope, Boniface VIII. It was at this period also that the tomb of Cecilia Metella on the Appian Way was disguised with turrets and battlements to serve the Gaetani as an outlying stronghold against their enemies. Of all the princely names which figure in the records of mediæval Rome, none can claim a more venerable antiquity than the Annibaldi, the Massimo, and the Cenci. The first, of the race of the great Hannibal, are no longer extant. The Massimi, who derive their name from the ancient family of Maximus, are Dukes of Rignano, Princes of Roviano, and heirs to many other titles; they are still amongst the greatest of Rome. The present prince lives in the family palace in the Corso Vittorio Emanuele familiar to every tourist from its curved façade and rows of columns, and still keeps up much of the princely state and ceremony of a past age. The Cenci have become extinct in the male line and the name is carried on by a distant branch as Cenci-Bolognetti. This family is first heard of in the person of Marcus Cencius, Prefect of Pisa in the year 457 of Rome; and in 914 Johannes Cencius was elected Pope as John X. In 1692 the Cenci were created Princes of Vicovaro, a little mountain town in the Sabines, and in 1723 they acquired the title and estates of Bolognetti by the marriage of Virginius with an heiress of that name. With her came into the family the dower-house, the graceful Palazzo Bolognetti-Cenci still standing in the Piazza Pantaleone. The Bolognetti palace in the Piazza di Venezia was sold to Prince Torlonia, and has just been destroyed to make way for the colossal monument to Victor Emmanuel which is to preside over Rome from the Capitol hill. The old Cenci palace, a few years ago empty and deserted, but now government property, stands in what was once the Jews' quarter of Rome, a forbidding pile eloquent of its owner's tragic history. The family chapel close to it, San Tommaso a' Cenci, dates from 1113 and was built by a Cenci who was Bishop of Sabina at that time. As these old families, "pure Romans of Rome," have died out, their place has been taken by the aristocracy of papal origin, and though as a rule natives of northern provinces, these newcomers have become Roman in sympathies and have inherited the privileges and traditions of the Roman patrician. Not only did each new pope bring his own relatives to Rome in his train and grant them titles, but he also gathered round him followers from his own province among whom he distributed the great papal offices. Sometimes the period of greatness thus bestowed was short-lived, in other cases a permanent aristocracy was created and the papal offices became hereditary. Thus the Ruspoli from father to son are Masters of the Sacred Hospice; the Colonna are Assistant Princes; the Serlupi are Marshals of the Pope's Horse; the Sforza have the hereditary right to appoint the standard-bearer of the Roman people; the Chigi are Marshals of Conclave, replacing the Savelli in this office who had held it for nearly five centuries. Some of these families were nobles in their own province. The Boncompagni were a noble family of Bologna. Coming to Rome with Gregory XIII. in 1572, they were created Dukes of Sora and later Princes of Piombino and of Venosa. [Illustration: MEDIÆVAL HOUSE AT TIVOLI] The Ludovisi were nobles of Pisa, the Borghese patricians of Siena. This great family came to Rome with Paul V. in the early seventeenth century, and was granted princely rank with the title of Sulmona. In the middle of the eighteenth century, Marc' Antonio Borghese married a Salviati heiress and at that period was owner of the beautiful Villa Borghese with its museum and priceless collection of statues, of the great palace by the Tiber, of the villas Mondragone and Aldobrandini at Frascati, and of thirty-six estates in the campagna, building and endowing at the same period the rich Borghese chapel in S. Maria Maggiore. At a later date, Camillo Borghese married Pauline Bonaparte and was appointed governor of Piedmont by Napoleon I. Of late years this family has been almost ruined by reckless building speculations, and the greater portion of their magnificent possessions has been sold and alienated. The Aldobrandini and Salviati are both off-shoots from this family. The Barberini and Corsini are Florentines, and came to Rome with Urban VIII. and Clement XII. The Barberini villa at Castel Gandolfo and the palace in Rome are familiar to all visitors. The grounds of the Corsini villa on the Janiculum have been recently converted into a public drive; the Corsini palace in Trastevere on the river bank is famous for its library and picture galleries. Opposite to it is the Farnesina palace built in the sixteenth century by the rich banker Agostino Chigi. Here it was that he gave a famous banquet and, desiring to make a display of his enormous wealth, bade his lackeys throw the silver dishes into the river at the end of each course under the eyes of his astonished guests who did not guess that nets had been cunningly laid to catch them as they sank. The Albani kinsmen of Clement XI. came from Urbino; the Rospigliosi from Pistoja with Clement IX.; the Odescalchi from Como with Innocent XI.; the Doria Pamphili from Genoa. This papal aristocracy occupied a unique position. Relatives of popes, who were at the same time reigning princes, they assumed royal rank and lived with a magnificence and luxury unsurpassed in Europe. In addition to the titles of Roman nobility bestowed upon them with a lavish hand, many of them became grandees of Spain and their names were inscribed in the "golden book" of the Capitol. They bought country estates and suburban villas and built great palaces in the town. These stately Renaissance buildings, some of them larger than many royal dwellings, are grouped at the base of the Capitol and along the Corso, the most important and at one period the only great street in Rome. The Palazzo di Venezia, the home of the Venetian Paul II., the Altieri, the Grazioli, and the Bonaparte palaces, the latter originally the property of the Rinuccini, stand, a stately group, on the Piazza di Venezia and the Via del Plebiscito. The series is continued along the Piazza dei SS. Apostoli with the Colonna, the Balestra, the Odescalchi, and the Ruffo palaces. Greatest among those in the Corso is the Palazzo Doria Pamphili. Here also are the Ruspoli, Fiano, Chigi, Sciarra, Salviati, Ferraioli, and Theodoli palaces, and before its demolition to enlarge the Piazza Colonna, the Piombino. The Costaguti in the Piazza Tartaruga, the Antici-Mattei, the Longhi and the Gaetani palaces, the latter in the _Via delle Botteghe Oscure_, "the street of dark shops," are grouped at the foot of a further slope of the Capitol. More to the west, stand the huge Farnese palace the present seat of the French embassy and the Cancelleria built by Cardinal Riario nephew of Sixtus IV. and still papal property. The Simonetti and Falconieri palaces are built upon the banks of the Tiber close by, and face Via Giulia. Latest of all the great papal families to settle in Rome were the Braschi, Pius VI.'s kinsmen, and they built a palace in the Piazza Navona. Not far off are the Patrizi and Giustiniani palaces near the French church of San Luigi in the street of the same name. The Giustiniani are Earls of Newburgh in the peerage of Scotland through the marriage in 1757 of the heiress of the title and estates to the Prince Giustiniani of that date. Great was the opulence and magnificence of the Roman princes. When they issued forth into the city they were attended by mounted grooms with staves while running footmen cleared a way before them. An army of servants waited upon their needs, their stables were filled with horses, and their coaches were wonderful equipages of gilding glass and painting, costing thousands of francs. Powdered flunkeys in silk stockings stood behind on the foot board, three on a prince's coach, two on a cardinal's. One of these men carried an umbrella and a cushion. For if during his drive the prince chanced to meet his Holiness the Pope or a religious procession in which the Host was carried, he would instantly stop his coach, and alighting would kneel upon the ground, the cushion being placed by his servants under his knees and the umbrella held over his bared head to protect it from the sun. Many of the Roman nobles had private theatres in their houses; they were great collectors of books, bronzes, tapestries, and mosaics, and the Roman private galleries of pictures and statues are unsurpassed. The Borghese alone possessed four Raphaels as well as their famous collection of statues. At the same time they were generous to the city of their adoption. They threw open their beautiful parks and villas to the people, they admitted the public to their galleries museums and libraries, and they endowed hospitals asylums and orphanages. The Roman ladies had always patronised and promoted works of charity. Nevertheless the later custom, which persists to this day, of personally visiting the poor and the hospitals began with Gwendoline Talbot, the daughter of the last Catholic Earl of Shrewsbury, who as the wife of Prince Borghese was the first of the Roman ladies to walk alone at all hours, intent on her errands of mercy. The wit which made her present a gold coin to a man who on one occasion followed her, was the talk of the city. Her name is still a household word in Roman mouths, and her tragic death when only twenty-four years old, leaving four little children, one only of whom, the present Princess Piombino, survived the infection which killed their mother, moved an entire population. [Illustration: ILEX AVENUE AND FOUNTAIN (_Fontana scura_), VILLA BORGHESE] Many of the Roman palaces are as big as barracks. The Palazzo Pamphili-Doria can accommodate a thousand persons; but this was none too large for a patriarchal style of living which in a modified form survives to the present day. Much space was taken up by the great libraries, museums, picture galleries and reception and state banqueting halls. A small army of officials were housed within the walls--steward, bailiff, major-domo, secretaries, accountants, all the underlings necessary to the management of great and distant estates. A wing would be set entirely apart for the Prince Cardinal, a cadet of the house; the domestic chaplain would require a set of rooms; he would say the daily mass in the private chapel of the palace but would not dine with the family. The sons of the house would require tutors, the daughters governesses and companions. The great double gates of every Roman palace which are securely locked and barred at night, lead into a central court. Round it are open colonnades, sometimes in two stories, and in the centre a fountain splashes amidst ferns and palms. A porter presides over the palace gates, magnificent in a cocked hat knee breeches and long coat trimmed with coloured braid into which are worked the heraldic devices of the family. His rod of office is a long staff twisted with cord and crowned with an immense silver knob. This personage is the descendant of the janitor who in ancient Rome watched the house door day and night and whose fidelity was ensured when necessary by chaining him to his post. A grand staircase leads to the first floor and this, the _piano nobile_, was and still is occupied in Roman houses by the head of the family whose rule is more or less absolute and tyrannical. The second floor is given up to the eldest son upon his marriage for his own use, and similarly the second son is given the one above, while beneath the roof accommodation is found for an immense retinue of servants and attendants. It is still the custom for the whole family, married sons and their families included, to dine together, and elaborate accounts are kept of the allowances given to each son, of the quota contributed by each to the general expenses, of the dowry of each daughter-in-law, as to whether she is enjoying the number of dishes of meat per meal and the number of horses and carriages stipulated for in her marriage settlement. In the case of an English wife, a carpet used to be among the stipulations. Though the state coaches, the running footmen, much of the pomp and ceremony have disappeared, some curious relics remain of an order of things fast passing away. Every Roman prince has the right, should he wish it, to be received at the foot of the great staircase of any house he honours with his presence by two lackeys bearing lighted torches; and these should escort him to the threshold of his hostess's reception room. This ceremony is still observed for cardinals on state occasions. Again every prince has the right to, and in fact still has, a throne room and throne in his palace. This is not for his own use, but for that of the Pope should he elect to pay him a visit. In the hall of a Roman palace a shield emblazoned with the family arms may be seen affixed to the wall. In a prince's house it will be surmounted by a canopy, beside it should stand the historic umbrella and cushion. Four marquesses and these only the marquesses Patrizi, Theodoli, Costaguti and Cavalieri enjoy the princes' right to the canopy above their shield and are hence called the _marchesi di baldacchino_. A good deal of natural confusion exists in the mind of the foreigner with regard to the different ranks and the distribution of titles in the Italian peerage. These in fact follow no general rule but depend in each case upon the patent of creation. Princely titles conferred by the Holy Roman Empire affect every member of the family equally; titles conferred by the Pope, on the other hand, are as a rule restricted to the head of the family only. Thus in the Colonna family every member is a prince or princess; amongst the Ruspoli, a papal creation, only the head of the eldest branch is legally a prince. In these latter cases however it is usual to give the eldest son one of the other family titles upon his marriage, and the same with the second son. Such an act is in the father's option, but he is obliged to notify the assumption of the title to the civil authorities. In the same way a certain amount of latitude is allowed him as to the title he uses himself or grants to his sons. Prince Gaetani, for example, prefers to be known by the older title in his family, that of Duke of Sermoneta, bestowing that of Prince di Caserta upon his eldest son. The titles _Don_ and _Donna_ are only correct for the sons and daughters of princes and of the four _marchesi di baldacchino_, though they are often used for all the children of marquesses. In the same way, the distribution of the other titles of Marquess, Count or Baron amongst the various members of the family depends upon the terms of the original patent. In some cases every member bears the title, in others the head of the family only. Collaterals of a house often take the style _Giovanni dei Principi N----_, or _dei Conti N----_ as the case might be; "John of the Princes So-and-so," or "of the Counts So-and-so." The distinction again between the patrician and the noble is one that is not understood by the foreigner. A patrician belongs by ancestral prescriptive right to the governing class of his province. The names of the patricians are balloted annually, and one of the number is chosen as Prior or Governor of the province. He is in fact and history of senatorial rank. Among the districts of Italy some have and some have not a patriciate. Spoleto possesses one, but Todi, next to it, has never had one. In Rome the patrician families are called "_Coscritti_" in allusion to the _Patres conscripti_ or senators of the city. Their number was limited and defined by a constitution of Benedict XIV. but later popes have added new names. There are now sixty patrician families. [Illustration: "HOUSE OF COLA DI RIENZO," BY PONTE ROTTO The architecture of this supposed dwelling of the last of the Roman Tribunes is a _bizarre_ mixture of styles and epochs. It has been suggested that a series of initial letters which surmount a doggerel inscription are those of the many titles which Rienzo bestowed upon himself. The people know the house as that "of Pontius Pilate."] The nobles, on the other hand, often owed their titles not only to the Pope but to their respective Communes, which, until the one fount of honour was defined to be the sovereign, frequently bestowed titles on their citizens. This privilege was enjoyed by the abbots of Monte Cassino in the thirteenth century. The popes have always conferred titles of nobility, as did the Holy Roman Empire, whose heir in this matter the Pope claims to be. At present an Heraldic Commission is sitting in Rome to regulate the use of titles, many of which have been assumed for generations without any warrant. Henceforth every one will be called upon to prove his right to the title he bears, and it will be illegal for the Communes to describe any one who has not done so with "a handle to his name." Foreign titles, and among them papal titles, will in all cases have to be ratified and allowed by the sovereign of Italy. CHAPTER IX ROMAN RELIGION When we think of Rome as the cradle of more than one civilisation, we should also recollect that the Roman has matured two great religions: the religion of ancient Rome and the religion of Western Christendom. Not that we can think of the Roman as a religious people, in the sense in which the Asiatic has always been and remains to this day religious, the sense in which the Hebrew or the sense in which the Egyptian was religious. The Roman never had either the imaginative philosophy which produced the religion of Greece, nor the metaphysical mysticism which made the Hindu faiths. He had in fact in common with the Hebrew, whom he was so totally unlike, a complete absence of the metaphysical temper, of mysticism, of asceticism; and like the Hebrew he did not apply any richness of imagination to religion. What he had was a genius for bringing the other world to the support of this, and what he created was the conception of religion as _piety to the State_; and it is in this form that it survives in the sympathies and the sentiment of the Roman people. In the pagan world this State was secular, in the Christian world this State is the Catholic Church; but in both cases the spiritual came to the support of the temporal--ancient Rome deified the State by making it the subject of the Roman piety; Christian Rome moulded religion into a citizenship, and the Church became a _civitas_. _Civis romanus sum_, "I am a Roman citizen," has never ceased to be the all-embracing formula of Roman orthodoxy. The original Roman theogony was Etruscan. Behind the veil were the three great gods, the shrouded gods, answering to the Jove, Juno, and Minerva (_Menerva_) of later times. Round them were their "Senate," the twelve gods and goddesses known to the Romans as the _Dii Consentes_; and everywhere was the great Latin cult of Vesta, the cult of the hearth. But when Rome was built its first king made of these elements the Roman religion: Numa as a matter of fact appears to have been the Roman Moses, and to have led his people forth not to the worship of their one tribal god who was above all gods, God and Lord, the unique divine realisation of the Hebrew people, to become the root of the monotheism of the Western world, but to the worship of a unit which made of the State the family, of the commonwealth the family's hearth. It was, perhaps, his genius which made the hearth-divinity preside over the little polity and confuse and identify for ever the pieties of the home with the pieties of citizenship. It is these two elements--the theological unit of Judæa and the political unit of Latium--which meeting in Rome in the age of Claudius created the religion of the West. Not once but twice had the Romans come and wrested the sceptre from Judaea; under Titus, and again in the Roman organisation of Christianity _venerunt Romani et tulerunt eorum locum et gentem_. We see then that the Roman religion was never a great imaginative creation, but was always a great statecraft, and that Roman religion began to be Roman statecraft when Numa identified the affections and the piety of the hearth with the affections and the piety of the _res publica_, and made the State the social unit. The original ingredients of Roman religion however had nothing to do with statecraft; they were the ingredients of nature worship, the ingredients brought by a pastoral people. At the source was a reverence for natural things; and old Latin paganism had the peace which belongs to the pastoral life, and to the religion which is founded on the careful observance of potent rites disturbed as yet by no speculative questionings. But it was not free of the gloom of nature-worship--the obverse side of nature-cult--fearful, suspicious, weighted with destiny, as one imagines the religion of Etruria to have been. [Illustration: SAN CLEMENTE, CHOIR AND TRIBUNE OF UPPER CHURCH The present twelfth-century building was erected over a much more ancient church, and the site was probably one of the earliest meeting-places of the Christians and may have been that of the house of Clement (the fourth pope) as tradition affirms. A temple and altar to Mithras was found below the lower church. The ancient choir is in very perfect preservation, and its screen, removed from the lower church, is of the sixth century, with portions even of the fourth. See pages 35-36, 183, 186-7.] It is much later in its history that Rome was captivated by Greek religion and transferred to its crude impersonal gods the brilliant divine personifications of an imaginative people. The Latin had never been familiar with his gods, perhaps because they always remained impersonal abstractions, gods who did not use human speech, but whose language was the lightning-bolt of Jupiter and the wave-lashing triad of Neptune. Into what had really always been impersonal, the Greek came infusing warm human life, making the gods speak the language of men, and inviting men to speak to them in their own tongue. Greek religion was subtler, more individual, freer, more joyous than Latin. The pious customs which constituted the earlier Latin religion had begotten a sense of obligation in the worshipper, but it was conscience as the response to an external stimulus; and the peace it brought was a formal peace, _ex opere operato_, not a peace brought home to the individual conscience face to face with the Divine. It is because conscience implies more of individualism than ever entered into Roman religion that Roman religion has always remained without it. It was only in the jaded period of the later empire that the Romans turned altogether from the simple, natural, large elements of the religion of their soil to the fantastic, emotional, and complex cults of Isis and Mithras. The simple religion of the field and the hearth, of natural law, of orderliness and decorum, of a piety provoking and sustaining a sense of _what was owed_ to the gods, to the dead, to that State which incarnated the religion of the gods, fell away on the eve of Christianity before the foreign novelties of Greece and Egypt, better suited to the luxuriousness of mind and the growing introspection of a people who had undergone the influence of Greek thought as something indeed always alien to their nature, yet necessary to their place in the world. When Peter's successors planted a Judaic sect on the ruins of this paganism they had only to follow the genius of Numa's religion in the creation of the Catholic Church--the _civitas Dei_. Here, we may feel, an essential element of the new religion--the idea of the Kingdom of God--came naturally to supplant the older State religion; and the conception of the nation as a family was eminently germane to the fraternal maxims which grouped round the idea of the _ecclesia_. But old Rome as it had not stopped to inquire concerning small things, so it had never penetrated to interior things, and the Kingdom of God translated into the language of Rome lost in the process all its interior characters. What was delicate and subtle had never entered into Roman religion, but neither had what was petty, extravagant, or indecorous. Religion was no delicate aroma, but a concrete duty; not an individual choice, nor an individual necessity, nor an individual attraction, but a public rite, a public piety, a public decorum: and these characteristics, as we shall see, inhere in Roman religion to-day. It is in its liturgy that the mind, or if one may call it so, the temperament of the Roman Church found an ample and worthy expression; and it is in what it lacked as much as in what it put forward that the genius of the Roman rite is seen to differ entirely from that which presided at the making of the mass in every other part of Christendom. The effusion the imagery and the gracious parts added from Gaul, the mysticism of the Oriental, the philosophy of Greece, the Northern inwardness and intimacy, contributed nothing to it. Like Roman religion itself it was not a creation of the imagination or the intellect, nor the outcome of devotional sentiment; it was the creation of the Christian polity clothing its religious data, its religious certitudes, in a becoming garment--giving them a form, expression, a public characterisation. If there was no effusion there was largeness; in place of tenderness there was disengaged from the formal stately public act a perfect liberty of spirit. All through it was the public act itself which justified and consecrated, which was the sanction of the reality the criterion of the fitness of worship. Here besides, _sacramenta_ were not mere signs nor _symbola_ mere figures--they were stately vehicles of universal realities, always and everywhere adequate, worthy, co-ordinating, effectual. Roman ritual was quite bare of those things which in England and France are thought ritualistic; its only ritual consisted in the so-called "manual acts," that is, in the things which had to be done; those very things which the Eastern Church removed from the sight of the congregation, creating a "ritual" as a superfluous symbolism to engage the attention of the people. But the Roman dealt in real things, not imagery; nakedly setting forth his _sancta_ in the dry light of a realism which had no reticence joined to a great reticence of the emotions. This was the temperament of all Roman religion, pagan and Christian, a persistent rejection of all that could be described as unctuous, a setting forth of worship as a great public piety which justified itself. Unlike the Greek whose god must be behind a curtain, the Roman required the divine to be recognised, always and everywhere, in the _res publica_, in the act which had public sanction, public significance, public utility. The deacons came to the holy table bearing a cloth; one stood at one end and threw the roll across to the deacon at the other end; the oblations of the people were manipulated before the assembly; the wine collected in small phials is poured into a large chalice, repoured into a bowl; the pontiff collects the oblation bread, so do the priests, while acolytes stand at the side holding cloths to receive it; and the same things, not rites but familiar usages, are repeated at the Communion, when bishop and deacons again pour, mix, distribute, wash and put away the holy things and the sacred vessels in the presence and with the assistance of the people of God. Here was nothing "common or unclean"; it was the wisdom of Roman ritual justified of her children. [Illustration: SANTA MARIA IN COSMEDIN A very early Christian basilica, in the historic part of Rome by Ponte Rotto and the round temple of Hercules, and on the site of the temple of Ceres and Proserpine. In the sixth century it is enumerated among diaconal churches. It belonged to the Greek colony in this quarter, and its name is derived from the word _kosmos_. Pavement, ambones, choir, and canopy are of the twelfth century. It has been recently restored to its ancient basilica form, and its many closed windows have been reopened. See pages 28, 31, 35-36, 186.] It will be seen at once how widely different was such a conception of worship from that elaborated in the East or which we owe to the vague awe, the dreadful sense of mystery, of the middle age. If we compare the Roman basilica with a Greek or Gothic church this difference is immediately sensible. The former owed nothing to mystery, to dimness. The celebrant faced the people, as he still faces them in all true basilicas; he did not turn his back on them. No early building, indeed, was flooded with light while glazing was in a crude state and wind and weather had to be kept at bay; but the Christian basilica was not darker than other buildings, there was no religious twilight. And as we see it to-day, in _Santa Sabina_, _Santa Maria in Cosmedin_, _Santa Maria in Domnica_, _SS. Nereo e Achilleo_, _Santa Maria Maggiore_, or in the ruined basilicas of _Santa Domitilla_ and _San Stefano_, so it was centuries ago--flooding the mysteries with what light there was because it was the church of a people who cared for no mysteries which could not bear the light. Nevertheless, the simple realism of the Roman ritual by no means meant, for him who could see, the absence of mysticity. Rather it recalled one to the suggestive and sane mysticity which inheres in all common things, in all common uses. Whether the somewhat rugged Roman, with his inattention to small matters and to the unobvious, saw the mysticity of the early Christian service and the early Christian basilica, may be doubted; but though it is certain he had not set himself to create this mysticity it is equally certain that he could not banish it from his churches. Italian religion is not the same thing as Roman religion. Rome has not been "the most religious city in the world" because it felt religion more than those nations and provinces whose religious character differed so profoundly from its own, but because it was able to institute it on a scale as universal as its own imperialism. The Neapolitan has the superstition and poetry, the emotional impressionism, of the genuine South; but such a repulsive scene as the peasant, upheld by his friends, licking his way to the altar along the filthy church floor could not be witnessed in Rome. It would be difficult to imagine a Roman wishing to be exorcised after putting his head into the English or American church to see the stained glass windows. The "Roman of Rome" leaves such things together with the swallowing of pious-text pills to the unrestrained fervour of some of our English Catholics. The Roman has less religious passion and also much less abandonment to the external than the Southerner or even the Englishman. Rome has had--with one illustrious exception--no great saints since the sixth century; she has been evangelised by saintly visitors from Sweden, from Tuscany, from Siena, as the primitive Church had been edified by the itinerant Gospel visitors called "prophets." From Lombardy, Venice and Umbria, from Parma, Ancona, Florence, Pisa, Naples and the Abruzzi, saints, seers, missioners, mystics, reformers, have brought her their message: but the terrible proverb _Roma veduta fede perduta_ records the impression she has often made on visitors less elect than these. Not Rome but Venice counts as the "devout city" of Italy, and the well-known story of the Jew who became a Christian on the ground that no religion could have survived Roman corruption unless it were divine, was told me in Rome by a prelate as an encouraging episode. It was said by Matthew Arnold that the Latin people never cared enough for Christianity to reform it; they never thought it worth while, it is true, to break with the Church to find Christianity. The Italian, moreover, had none of the things which made the Puritan--not his fierce dogmatism, the Judaic strain of his piety, his dread of the external, his contentment with doctrinal formulas. Joined to an indubitable attachment to Catholicism--the magic of which inspired the art even of men who did not believe it--the Italian had also too keen an intuition of the real religious issues (as we understand them to-day) to exchange ecclesiastical tradition for biblical dogmatism. Christianity was for him much more of a self-justifying religious tradition and much less of a dogmatism than it was for the Protestant. The Christianity which the Italian would have liked was the Christianity of S. Francis, familiar, meek, tolerant, a genuine discipleship; and it did not irk him to add to this the forms of Catholicism. Like the Reformers, the Italian of the sixteenth century knew little of Church history, but his instinct was on the side of reintegration rather than disintegration of the religious forces enshrining the Christian revelation. The earlier Italian religious movements were almost entirely, like that of the seraphic _frate_, on the side of informing historical Christianity with the new spirit of Christ. A great horror of the ways of Rome, never echoed by the Romans, did, nevertheless, penetrate religious Italy, and few people realise that it was among the Franciscans not among the Reformers that papal Rome was first branded as the "scarlet woman," the unclean Babylon of the Apocalypse. Has Protestantism the evangelic marks which the Italian, consciously or unconsciously, lays down for Christianity, and what chance would it have in Italy? It will bear repeating that the Puritan's definition of Christianity would never at any time have found acceptance with the Italian; he never could have cared for reform in doctrine and discipline which did not necessarily, did not primarily, involve a real evangelic reform. When one remembers how very little Protestantism was, in its inception, on the side of dogmatic freedom, and that it put a theological formula before all other matters of the law, one may admit that the Italian though he did not reform may yet have loved true Christianity. In the next place the intense individualism of Protestant worship is distasteful to the Italian who, as we have already realised, does not ask or require that subordination of the society to the individual which religious subdivisions imply, and he would always be repelled by the phenomena of revivalism. It is instructive for us to realise that such things are stigmatised as "buffoonery" by the Italians, whose own elaborate ritual often appears to suggest that description to the Protestant. In the third place, he dislikes the _réclame_ of Protestantism, its self-advertisement, the distribution of tracts at church doors and in the public streets. To his mind no religion worthy of the name can have need of such support. The Sister of Charity and the _frate_, indeed, appear familiarly among them in their strange dress, not as they, yet part of themselves, reminding the people of the great ideals of their religion, tracts in their own persons but making no _réclame_. [Illustration: CHAPEL OF SAN ZENO (called _orto del paradiso_) IN S. PRASSEDE This mosaic chapel was erected by Paschal I. in 822. Its great beauty gave it the name of "Garden of Paradise." The church is near the house of Pudens, and is dedicated to Praxedis his daughter. See pages 45, 46, 240.] Indeed the way in which all external expression is regarded by the Italian differs radically from the way in which it presents itself to the Anglo-Saxon and the Teuton. Wagner declared that as soon as the German is called on to be artistic he becomes a buffoon. We in England, also, do not know how to express ourselves by means of external symbols; but the Italian experiences no such difficulty. We are not at home with them; he is. If we use them we exaggerate, he gives them their true proportion and place. He can always be taught by his senses, and he is not, as we are, deluded by them. We, in fine, do not know what to do with the external, he does. His sense of humour is active just where the Englishman's is quiescent; he is not capable, for example, of laying store by this or that little bit of ceremony. The evangelicalism of the Italian, therefore, which one hopes he may some day achieve, will be unlike Anglo-Saxon Christianity--as the catacombs are unlike a "Little Bethel"--he will always require gracious surroundings, he will always ask for the arts to assist his imagination, and prefer fine music, and even the perfume of incense, to the bids for his soul made by the preacher. That is his reticence, and as it differs from the Anglo-Saxon's the latter does not understand it. The Italian will always best respond to a service conceived in the spirit of the mass, with its mystical renewal enacted before his eyes, at once exterior and interior, public and intimate; but with no individualistic note, no dependence on the personal element. The visitor to Rome must be struck with the fact that the Italians are a more religious people than we. They take more trouble about it. Every morning, day after day, in scores of churches people are going in and out of the heavy leathern door hangings, up and down the steps of the façades; such a spectacle as the visit to the sepulchres on Holy Thursday could not be witnessed in England from one year's end to another. At the street corners, on the stairs, in the shops and the porters' lodges, oil lamps burn before images and shrines; and the deepest curse in the Italian vocabulary is to say _La mala Pasqua_--"a bad Easter to you." "In all things I perceive that ye are somewhat superstitious," said S. Paul, taking as the pretext of his appeal to the Athenians the trouble and care which he saw everywhere bestowed on the unseen world and the claims of worship: and he could make the same appeal to the Romans to-day with perhaps a greater chance of converting them than the missionary from America. For there is no "provincialism" in Italian religion; the Sunday joys of discussing the anthem, the sermon, the preacher, the details of the service and the congregation, the half mystical half sentimental joy of chewing the cud of sacred things which is so Northern, offer no attractions to the man of the South. He has endless time in the South but no long twilights. In religion as elsewhere the Roman harbours no illusions. The things--petty or precious--which are possible to a people who can maintain illusions, and have no inconvenient quickness of mind, are not to be expected from him. Chadbands in Rome would have no success and no dupes; and your transcendental emotional sentiments about the Pope are perhaps as little understood as your rejection of him. The Roman dreads death, and he refers to the anointing oil as "_quella cosa più peggio del viatico_"--"that thing which is still worse than the Viaticum." He lives familiarly with his religion and in a sort of child-like simplicity; yet he is sceptical, and we are not, he has no talent for meditative devotion, and we have. [Illustration: CLOISTERS OF S. PAUL'S-WITHOUT-THE-WALLS Erected between 1193 and 1208. The most beautiful cloisters in Rome. See interleaf, page 158, and page 36.] Again, the "respectability" of English Church religion would be as little tolerated as the _réclame_ of sheer Protestantism. There is absolutely nothing answering in the Italian temperament to that pride and pleasure in the respectability of church and chapel going which is so potent a factor in England. The sects which proselytise in Rome are the American Methodists, Baptists, and Wesleyans; many of the better educated preferring to all these the native Waldensian Church. One of the chief attractions of what I have called sheer Protestantism lies in its familiarity as compared with the stiff and terrible "respectability" of the English Church. But this is precisely where Italian Catholicism has itself never failed, and the Catholic in Italy is already accustomed to familiar and simple relations with priest monk and friar--to a complete democracy of sentiment. I was recently motioned to a vacant seat by a dignified French ecclesiastic who was giving out the usual notices from the altar after the Gospel of the mass; a Latin priest will notify the congregation by a gesture when he is about to preach and they can sit down; even an English Catholic priest I know of turns to the people before beginning the Christmas midnight mass to wish them and theirs a happy and blessed festival. These fraternal familiarities do not lack in the Nonconformist chapels, but they would most certainly be deemed out of place and not quite decorous in the English Church. Latin simplicity and human interest, the brotherhood of class, oppose themselves here to English self-consciousness, English inflexibility, the Puritan sense of propriety; and no one can have lived in Italy without seeing instances multiplied in all ranks of the clergy of that familiarity without loss of dignity to which we have not the key. Another thing little understood in England is that the Italian is not "priest-ridden"; he does not depend upon or run after the priest, and the attitude which the priest in Ireland and the minister in Scotland have been able to assume towards the people would never have been possible in Italy. The Roman, more especially, has never ceased to let his satire play upon popes and cardinals, and has known how to do so without scorning dogma and discipline. The _bigotte_ is not an Italian type; and is disliked and distrusted, in either sex, when met. The Roman peasant trudging into the city on Sunday morning halts at the big church of S. Paul in the Via Nazionale, enters, and walks up to the top. A verger at once points out to him his place in the house of God--for this is the American Episcopal church--and he returns to the door: he was uncertain about the church but he is quite certain now, this is not Latin Christianity. But if the Italian comes to London another surprise is in store for him; he goes to the Catholic church and finds he must take a ticket for his footing there--and, often, he goes no more, he has not sufficient threepences and sixpences; he does not mind being poor but he does not think it very fitting to label you from the start as a threepenny Catholic or a six-penny Catholic. These things show that certain qualities of Italian Catholicism--its familiarity, its independence (for the Italian has greater liberty of spirit though the Anglo-Saxon has greater liberty of conscience)--are the outcome of the Latin spirit and can only be enjoyed where this has sway. It has most influence in Italy and least in Germany. In the city which inherits the sour persecuting spirit of Westphalia, for example, Catholicism is a very different thing from what it is in the land of its birth. There the faithful are a regiment--human automata--standing up and kneeling down with the uniformity of clockwork; every one who enters is suspected, every one who stands at the door creates scandal, the priests are quæstors and their vergers are lictors. Such things certainly have their compensations for the Teutonic and even the Anglo-Saxon mind--but how different they are from the tolerant liberty of the _domus Dei_ in Italy which is, by the same title, the house of the people, with all that familiarity of spirit loved by S. Francis, that utter freedom from self-righteousness! Twice in the course of twelve years, in my personal knowledge, visitors to Cologne Cathedral, in both cases women and Catholics, were assaulted by the beadle in charge and hustled by physical force out of the building, their innocent desire having been to enter the chapel where they supposed the reserved Sacrament to be. The Englishman is no bully, and he does not easily feel that desire to assault which possesses the Teutonic official; moreover if there is one thing he understands it is political liberty--but I may venture on a rough guess that the vergers of some of our cathedrals--S. Paul's not excepted--have the making of a Cologne beadle in their souls. The question of racial religious characteristics apparently resolves itself into one of compensations. For those who think that Catholicism decorated with the notes of Puritanism, with the sour Teutonic or the dour Spanish accompaniments to religion, or with the florid sentimentalism of the Gaul, loses its birthright, Italian Catholicism will always retain its primacy: but they must bid good-bye in Italy to memories of religious recollection and mysticity, to the beauties and sedateness possible among an interior people who are not wooed by the senses; the beauty of holiness will have to be pictured through a mist of dirt, ignorant superstition, and slovenliness, but not athwart the haze of bigotry, cant, and self-gratulation. [Illustration: CLOISTERS IN SANTA SCHOLASTICA, SUBIACO One of the three cloisters in this Benedictine monastery; it was built by Abbot Lando in 1235, and is decorated on the vault with mosaic work by the Cosmati. See page 36, and interleaf, page 82.] The Roman skeleton of religion has been clothed upon by other races, who have filled in, expanded, and added those things which fitted Christianity for reception among more complex and introspective or more devout natures; but in the eternal city itself, from the catacombs to a solemn mass in S. Peter's, the religion of Latium and the religion of imperial Rome have set their indelible seal on Christianity. The familiar pastoral figure of Christ with his crook in catacomb frescoes, carrying a pail, the milk of the Eucharist, has its primitive counterpart in the shepherds' god Lupercus "driver away of wolves," whose worship was celebrated in _Roma Quadrata_ by the original settlers, clad in their goat skins, who offered him milk as a libation. But he who said _Ego sum pastor bonus_ is gathering the sheep (and the goats), not driving away the wolves, and he is giving the food which is himself to them, not seeking it of them. The Person of Christ had introduced as much of the intimate and personal as Roman religion was capable of assimilating; but the moral implications of this personality--after the first brilliant epoch of the planting of the Faith, with its consciousness of the Person of Christ and its realisation of the moral uses of the Eucharist--were never really appropriated by Rome. Again, the master of ceremonies at papal mass prompts the pontiff at each stage of the function as did his predecessors for Antoninus Pius or Marcus Aurelius when they too officiated as _pontifex maximus_. The very chairs of the bishops in Rome (where no bishop save the pope or a cardinal in his titular church sits on a throne) are the _curule_ chairs of the Roman magistrates. Nay more mysterious still are the roots of sacred things in Latin soil, for the Roman pontiffs were to adopt that Etruscan pontifical system in which both civil and ecclesiastical functions were vested in the _Lucomones_. Though Greek theology twice enriched Latin religion, pagan and Christian, nowhere is religion less Greek and more Roman than in Rome. It may be said to be the distinctive feature of Christianity that it is a preaching religion; in France and in England it is more a preaching religion than in Italy, but it is least of all a preaching religion in Rome; and so it has always been. There is no pulpit in the Roman basilica. In the eternal city as elsewhere Christianity in its inception was a Jewish sect, it rose there as elsewhere among the "Jews of the dispersion," and certain Hebrew things, lections, chants, and exposition of the Scriptures, at once took their place in its public worship. But Rome has, here also, preserved less of the Judaic strain of piety than any other Christian Church. The Roman has blotted out the Hebrew element. At the founts of the Roman and the Hebrew story we come indeed upon one mysterious link--the history of each people begins in a fratricide. As Cain slays Abel so Remus is slain by Romulus, but there the likeness ends; there is no reproach in the Roman story--"the voice of thy brother's blood" cries out through the whole course of Hebrew history. The act of Romulus founded what was most precious to the Roman, his Kingdom of God on earth--the Roman state, the Roman polity: the act of Cain awoke what lay at the source of Jewish theocracy, the persuasion of sin and of righteousness, the Kingdom based on the conscience. Neither has ever been able to enter freely into the sentiment of the other. Romulus is a hero, Cain is outcast humanity; but the temple to Romulus still evokes more response in Rome than the moral considerations connected with Abel. [Illustration: SANTA MARIA SOPRA MINERVA The Dominican church near the Pantheon, called "S. Mary above Minerva" because it was erected upon Pompey's temple of the goddess, was built by Florentines in the fourteenth century, and is the only instance of pointed architecture in Rome. Its unlikeness to the Roman basilica is manifest.] It is the _pax romana_, the peace of the Roman empire, which was actually established as "the Peace of the Church." The peace, juridical or religious, of a world which acknowledged the sway of Rome. Without were barbarians and heretics, within was the _civis romanus_. It was a peace consistent with all war save internecine, and Rome, whether political or religious, created in the world it conquered the ambition to live and die united to the greatest of earthly entities--to live and die as catacomb epitaphs to orthodox strangers dying in Rome record--_in pace_. The Roman citizenship becomes the Catholic citizenship through the mediation of the Apostle who could say "But I am a Roman born," while setting forth imperially a Palestinian sect to the Gentile world. The stranger Roman citizen who dies in Rome for Christ links two worlds with his blood, dedicates that new _imperium_ where Rome may claim that all homage is paid _et mihi et Petro_, confounds those two things which the master of the Gospel "of the Kingdom" had set apart, the things of Cæsar and the things of God. CHAPTER X THE ROMAN CARDINAL What is a cardinal? In the early days of the Church in Rome the presbyters and deacons of the city, the council and administrators of its bishop, were considerable personages--indeed the bench of presbyters had always been of great importance in the government of the Church in Rome as elsewhere, as Jerome testifies, and the seven deacons were even more conspicuous partly perhaps, as Jerome suggests, because they were few and the presbyters were many, and partly because the diaconate appears very early in Roman Church annals, and may indeed have been a relic of the evangelisation of the eternal city by Peter, at whose instance "the seven" were first instituted (Acts vi. 3). To the presbyters and deacons must be added the rural bishops of the Roman district who came in time to assist the Pope at the great ecclesiastical solemnities, and are an example of those parochial oversights, no larger than parishes, over which we find "bishops" presiding at a time when--except in the great metropolitan Sees--bishops were little more than rural deans. [Illustration: SAINT PETER'S] As the Church grew these presbyters of the original "titles" or parish churches of Rome, together with the regional deacons of the city, and the suburban bishops, took rank as the cardinal or principal Roman clergy, and in time the privilege of forming part, even in only a titular sense, of this body of presbyters and deacons of the great See of Rome, was coveted by other than Romans, and the Pope would create the metropolitan of a foreign See or some distinguished foreign ecclesiastic cardinal priest or cardinal deacon of the Holy Roman Church. By the eleventh century the cardinals of the Roman Church are a recognised body, the Senate of the Pope, whose election is being gradually confined to their hands alone. In the next century the popular vote--the vote of the clergy and people of Rome--is altogether abolished, and thenceforth the election of a pope is exclusively vested in the College of Cardinals, whose privileges and dignity were further enhanced at the close of the thirteenth century by Boniface VIII. Cardinals therefore are the honorary parish clergy of Rome, nominally holding the place of the presbyters of the Roman _titles_ and of the deacons of the Roman regions; and though a foreign cardinal cannot of course be also a local parish priest in Rome, he is bound to appoint a "vicar" to represent him. The six suburban Sees are always held by six of the senior cardinals _di curia_, that is the cardinals resident in Rome, among whom is always the Pope's cardinal-vicar, and they are called the cardinal bishops. Cardinal priests are usually in episcopal orders, and cardinal deacons are usually in priest's orders. Each cardinal priest or deacon takes his title from one of the Roman churches, and is styled _John Cardinal Priest_ (or deacon) _of the title of Saints John and Paul on the Caelian_. The oldest presbyteral titles are to be found in the outlying districts--as SS. Andrea and Gregorio, Archbishop Manning's title, S. Clemente, S. Prisca, SS. Bonifacio and Alessio, or S. Eusebio, on the Caelian Aventine and Esquiline, or among the old ecclesiastical foundations in Trastevere. The diaconal titles, on the contrary, are to be found in the centre, corresponding to the ancient regions--S. Maria in Aquiro behind Piazza Colonna, S. Adriano on the Forum, or S. Giorgio the title of John Henry Newman in the ancient quarter of the Velabrum. The Pope was chosen from among the deacons of Rome for eight hundred years, and was consecrated bishop on his election; later on the Pope was chosen from the bishops, but if, as has happened, a layman were elected he proceeded at once to receive the three major orders. A man in deacon's orders or a layman may similarly have the Hat conferred on him, but in this case he may remain in deacon's orders, or if a layman may take simple minor orders. The last deacon in the College of Cardinals was created by Pius IX. He had been a member of the High Council in the "forties," and as such formed one of the deputation sent by the Romans after the flight to Gaeta to beg Pius IX. to return to Rome. The deputation was not even received. Antonelli, this Pope's Secretary of State, was another cardinal who was never in priest's orders. A cardinal is called the Pope's _creatura_; at the time of Leo XIII.'s death the only surviving cardinal of Pius IX.'s creation was the Cardinal Chamberlain Oreglia di Santo Stefano, so that Leo could all but declare in the words of one of his predecessors, with an allusion to S. John xv. 16, "You have not elected me, but I have elected you." The full number of the Roman cardinals is seventy. About twenty-five of these are always resident in Rome, and form the papal _Curia_, or administrative council of the Church, with the _entrée_ at all times to the Vatican. They are the chief members of the Roman Congregations, the Congregation of Rites, of the Inquisition, the Index, the Bishops and Regulars, etc., through which all ecclesiastical affairs are administered. Cardinals _di curia_ receive a sum of twenty-four thousand francs a year, or less than one thousand pounds. A special stipend is also added for the work done as members of the various congregations. Their position before 1870 was however a very different one. Then they enjoyed large incomes and their comings and goings were attended with a certain measure of regal state; and in the preceding centuries when the Hat was often conferred, like any other secular distinction, on mere youths and on laymen, their wealth and the luxury and magnificence of their style of living was unsurpassed in Rome, while the power and position of some cardinal nephew or relative of the Pope was second only to his own. Cardinals are created--and the process is long and elaborate--in a special assembly of the Pope and his Council of Cardinals known as Consistory. In a preliminary and secret meeting, the Pope proposes the names of those he wishes to honour to his assembled councillors, and as a relic of the ancient custom of asking the consent of the people to the election of their bishop or deacon, the question: "quid quis videtur?" is put as each name is announced. No opportunity of dissent is however afforded the cardinals, and all they are expected to do is to rise, take off their _berrettas_ or stiff caps, and bow as a sign of assent. The Pope may, and often does, keep back "in his breast," _in petto_, the name of some candidate if he thinks it expedient. But this candidate comes forward nevertheless at a future consistory for the subsequent formalities. At another secret consistory, the Pope first closes the mouths of the newly created cardinals and then pronounces them open with the words: "I open your mouth that in consistory, in congregations, and in other ecclesiastical functions, you may be heard in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost." Most important of all these ceremonies is the public consistory held in one of the great halls of the Vatican, and before 1870 this was a "festa" of the first magnitude. The new _porporati_, wearers of purple, rode in triumph through the streets upon gaily decked horses, wearing their scarlet robes and hats; bands of ecclesiastics, grooms on foot and on horseback, papal guards and attendants escorted them; cannon were fired and church bells rung, and the Roman people never so happy as when a procession is afoot, crowded into the streets. On reaching the Vatican, the cardinals-elect take their oaths in the Sistine chapel and then accompanied by two cardinal deacons as sponsors, one walking on each side, they are led into the presence of the Pope. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF S. PETER'S, THE BRONZE STATUE OF S. PETER The statue, the origin of which is uncertain, is near the shrine of the apostle, and peasants and seminarists kiss the outstretched foot, and then touch it with their foreheads. See page 11.] The Pope sits enthroned in full state, surrounded by his court, all his cardinals in a great semicircle around him, cardinal bishops and priests on his right, cardinal deacons on his left--the train bearers sitting on foot-stools at their feet. Kneeling on the steps of the throne, the new cardinals kiss the Pontiff's foot, hand, and cheek; they then rise and embrace the whole college in the order of their precedence, and as a final ceremony, they kneel again before the Pope, the hoods of their cloaks are drawn over their heads by two masters of ceremonies, and a cardinal's hat is held over them while the Pope addresses a few words to each. The new cardinals now take their seats according to the rank just conferred upon them, and the proceedings close with an address of thanksgiving to the Pope made upon his return to his apartments, and a _Te Deum_ in the Sistine chapel. In the afternoon of the same day, couriers and messengers hurry through the streets of Rome. The new red hat is carried to the happy recipient by a "monsignore of the papal wardrobe," the rochet and the scarlet _berretta_ are conveyed by less important functionaries, and all and each have to be thanked and entertained and recompensed when possible. The Secretary of State, all the cardinals and papal officials, as well as personal friends and private individuals hasten to pay congratulatory visits (_visite di calore_) upon the new cardinals; and royal fashion, the state calls have to be immediately returned. If the cardinal is a foreigner and out of Rome, his hat is carried to him by a papal messenger especially appointed, and in Catholic states is presented with considerable ceremony by his sovereign. The cardinal's hat, at one time an article of attire, is now only a symbol. It is of red cloth with a wide brim and shallow crown, and on either side hang fifteen red tassels, the number denoting the ecclesiastical rank of the wearer. From the day of its presentation the hat is put by until its owner's death, when it is brought out once more to be hung up in some side chapel of his titular church, where it remains until it falls to pieces with age. One of the first duties of a new cardinal is to take possession of his titular church, and in old days this was another occasion for pomp and display, and the Pope's guards attended in full dress uniform. Now the cardinal drives quietly in his sombre closed carriage. At the church door he is divested of his cloth cloak and hat, and in flowing scarlet silk he walks up the nave bestowing benedictions on all sides. He seats himself on his throne in the chancel and the vicar of the parish reads to him an address in Latin to which he replies, he is then saluted by all the clergy of the parish in the order of their precedence ending with the acolytes, and the "taking possession" is over. He must however present the church with his portrait painted in oils which is hung with that of the reigning pope in the nave; and with a large escutcheon of his heraldic coat, emblazoned in colour and surmounted by the red hat and tassels, which is placed over the main entrance to the building, and which side by side with the papal arms is the outward and visible sign of a titular church. As princes of the Church, cardinals enjoy the princely distinction of displaying their coats of arms in the halls of their houses, affixed to the wall and sheltered beneath a silken canopy. Further they must have a throne and throne room, but unlike the secular princes of Rome who are entitled to the same privilege, their thrones are turned towards the wall, and are only reversed during a vacancy of the Holy See, when they may be used by their owners, who, for the time, become sovereigns and rulers of the Church. No great church ceremony is complete without a cardinal, who by his very presence makes a function, but except for such occasions as these little is seen of the Roman cardinals by the casual visitor to the city. Their heavy carriages, painted black, drawn by black horses their harness unrelieved by brass or plating, pass unnoticed in the streets. Only occasionally on the Janiculum or outside the city gates on fine afternoons, a cardinal may be seen taking a walk, his servant at a discreet distance behind him, and his carriage following at a foot's pace. Before 1870 the streets of Rome were enlivened by the cardinals' brilliant equipages. A cardinal possessed two or three coaches to be used according to the degree of state required. He drove to the Vatican on grand occasions with all three to convey himself and his retinue of attendants, and his gala carriage drawn by six horses with postilions and standing footmen was of brilliant scarlet and was so magnificently gilded and painted that it cost over a thousand scudi. During the period of their greatest splendour, it was no uncommon thing for a cardinal to have a household of several hundred persons, and though this number was later greatly reduced, a considerable retinue of servants, secretaries, domestic chaplains, and attendants of all sorts was always considered necessary to his princely state. Chief among these was his _gentiluomo_. This gentleman was indeed his constant "guide, philosopher and friend"; he drove with him, paid visits for him, entertained his friends, and in a wonderful Elizabethan dress of black velvet, with silk stockings, lace ruffles and a rapier, he was by his side at all state and church functions. Cardinal Wiseman's _gentiluomo_ still lives in Rome where he received the guests of the new cardinal in the palace of the Consulta opposite the Quirinal, then occupied by Pius IX., and he remembers the cardinal taking the official costume with him to England for his English substitute. At the present day when the temporal rôle of cardinals is shorn of its significance, nothing better illustrates the unworthy subordination of the civil career to the clerical than the position of a cardinal's _gentiluomo_. Dressed in his knee breeches, a sword by his side, this attendant who belongs to the good _bourgeoisie_ and may be an architect or engineer, is to be seen at every cardinal's high mass, waiting with the minor clerks, and presenting himself on one or two occasions during the ceremony with a ewer and basin which he offers kneeling on one knee while the cardinal washes the tips of his fingers. [Illustration: A CARDINAL IN VILLA D'ESTE Villa d'Este at Tivoli was the residence of the late Prince-Cardinal Hohenlohe. See interleaf, page 106.] It is fondly believed by the tourist, who will go any distance as a rule, and push through any crowd for a sight of the scarlet clothes, that a cardinal habitually lives in robes of red silk, with a white fur tippet round his shoulders. As a matter of fact his red robes are for state occasions only--either for attendance at the papal court or for great church functions. He wears a plain black cassock in ordinary life with a red sash and red buttons and silk pipings, and thus cannot be easily distinguished from other prelates whose silk trimmings vary with every shade from crimson to purple. The state robes of scarlet are very splendid indeed. The soutane of light scarlet cloth has a train; over this is worn the white rochet trimmed with deep lace and over this again the _cappa magna_ a voluminous circular cloak of red watered silk, with a single opening for the head. It is gathered up to the elbows in front and floats behind into an ample train which is carried by pages or acolytes. The stockings, gloves, skull cap and _berretta_ are of scarlet. The _cappa magna_ has a hood pointed behind and forming a sort of shoulder cape in front, which in the winter months is covered with white ermine. Canons of the Roman basilicas wear a _cappa magna_ of purple cloth, but they are not permitted to spread it out, it must be tightly coiled into a long rope and slipped through a loop at the side. At social receptions a cardinal wears his black soutane and red sash, and over it a flowing scarlet silk cloak from the shoulder. If the occasion is an important one he is received at the palace gates by two servants with lighted torches, and these accompany him up the stairs to the door of the _salon_ and there await his departure, when they escort him to his carriage again. When in this gala attire, a cardinal wears as an out-door wrap a gorgeous cloth cloak with many capes of purple and deep red, and a red priest's hat around which is twisted a red and gold cord finished with minute tassels the requisite fifteen in number. The most responsible and arduous duty of the College of Cardinals is the conclave when the election of the future head of the Church depends upon their united vote. With the death of a pope their position changes on the instant from that of subject to ruler, and for the time being the destinies of the Church lie in their hands. They receive deputations and state visits seated upon their thrones, they drive in their carriages alone upon the principal seat, no companion being of sufficiently exalted rank to sit beside them, and the first among them, the Cardinal Chamberlain, is attended by a detachment of the Swiss guard and affixes his own seal to papal documents. [Illustration: VILLA D'ESTE--PATH OF THE HUNDRED FOUNTAINS] Scarcely in accordance with this regal state are the rules still in force for conclave, which are, to say the least, antiquated. The incarceration to which the cardinals are obliged to submit is of the strictest, and for its maintenance the secular arm is called in in the shape of the Marshal of Conclave, a Roman nobleman who with his officers and subordinates assumes complete control outside the building. Accustomed to spacious rooms and numerous domestics, the cardinals are now forced to lodge in a tiny apartment of two rooms in a circumscribed portion of the Vatican palace--the rules prescribe one cell--one valet and one secretary each are allowed them, while two barbers and one confessor are considered sufficient to shave and shrive the whole college. From sumptuous living they are reduced to meals brought to their cells by their servants, and the rules permit a gradual reduction of the _menu_ to an ultimate diet of bread and water, as a means of bringing pressure to bear upon the voters and so precipitating their agreement. This rigorous treatment has been often tried in the past with various results. When assembled for the scrutiny in the Sistine chapel each cardinal is provided with a throne before which stands a small table with ink and paper. Over the throne is a canopy or _baldacchino_ the emblem of sovereignty. These are ingeniously fitted with a hinge and when the election of the new pope is announced all the canopies fold up except one, leaving the elected member of the college alone sitting enthroned beneath his _baldacchino_, a sovereign amongst his subjects. CHAPTER XI ROME BEFORE 1870 A stranger who had found himself in Rome the week before September 20, 1870 would have noticed the strange expectation, and also the strange apathy in the Romans. "The Italians" were besieging their city, and when it pleased them to enter they would enter. The Pope would not resist them, and no one in his city thought it his business to die a martyr to such a cause. Some workmen who had had orders to make a barricade had got themselves under way with much difficulty and not without many complaints, declaring as they prepared their tools and tramped along the hot road in the September sun: "_ci vuole molto vino per queste cose, molto vino_." At five o'clock on the morning of the 20th the bombardment began and at ten the white flag was hoisted in Rome. Then a great silence succeeded in the city, every one stayed within doors, and the papal brigand corps patrolled the streets. Thus ingloriously the "Patrimony of Peter," the historical sway of the popes, came to an end. [Illustration: THEATRE OF MARCELLUS Begun by Julius Caesar, and completed by Augustus who dedicated it to his sister's son. See pages 30, 160, 168, 228.] Did the Romans welcome or reprobate the entry of "the Italians"? To answer this question for ourselves we must bear in mind the political events which preceded 1870 and the various elements represented in the city. In September 1870 when the Italians entered, Rome was already won for Italy, the Pope could not have offered any effective resistance to Italian arms, Italian unity was already an accepted fact; it only remained to take possession of Rome as the centre and capital of this political unity, Victor Emmanuel having, out of consideration to the Pontiff, fixed his capital first at Turin and afterwards at Florence. And the events which led up to this result had not spelt harmony between the Pope and his subjects or been years of peace in the papal states. When Pius mounted the throne in 1846 people were tired of Gregory XVI.'s old world methods, and Giovanni Mastai-Ferretti was no sooner elected than the Romans asked him for a constitution, a parliament, the substitution of laymen for clerks in various departments of the executive. Pius IX. accorded a constitution and a parliament of laymen. He did more. Against the suffrages of his cardinals he granted a general amnesty to political offenders, and the story runs that when he saw the rows of forbidding black balls which the cardinals had cast, he lifted his little white skull cap and covering the balls with it, said "I will make them all white," and so the amnesty was granted. It is often said that the liberal impulses of Pius IX. and his ready response to popular clamour were repaid by outrageous ingratitude, and that his Romans made him fly from Rome at the risk of his life to ponder in solitude at Gaeta the futility of liberal pretences on the part of popes. But the Romans were not simply ungrateful, they wanted more, they thought they had a right to more--and what they wanted was more than any pope could concede. They asked for modern civilisation and the papacy represented ancient civilisation. The original demands had not been demands made in _bona fides_ of a prince who has power to give and to withhold what is asked. They were part of a political campaign, the end of which was to be the destruction of the temporal power. Mazzini's instructions to Young Italy to make one demonstration after another under the windows of the Quirinal, when one liberty was accorded to return the next day and demand another, until the Pope's position was rendered intolerable and impossible, are not pleasant reading; what is to be said in their favour is that the revolutionary annals of no other people afford any better. The time had come when men who lived in contact with the Italy outside the walls of Rome, in contact with the ideas which were the conquest of the nineteenth century, could not admit that the governed had only duties and the ruler only rights, or reconcile with the modern ideal of civil life the notion of a prince-bishop governing a subject people in virtue of a theocratic idea, the abstract idea that certain temporal rights fell--_mal gré bon gré_ of all concerned--to the vicar of Jehovah on earth. The time will come when the existence of such a pretension, the existence of such a government one moment after it responded to the universal sentiment, will appear the strangest fable. Will they be better or worse times? The future alone knows what it has in store, but we can only say that they cannot ever be worse times than some of those which the papacy created for the Romans. This consideration would have sufficed at any time to make the tenure of temporal power on the part of the Roman bishops, precarious--but it did not by any means stand alone. We have to add to it the rise of Italian patriotism, the passionate call for a united Italy, for the country to issue once and for all from the tyrannies, the immoralities, the crushing canker of pettiness which clung to the princely and ducal governments, and rise to its place among the nations. Thus in September 1870 the feeling was very mixed in Rome. A large part of the population had helped to prepare the _dénouement_, knew its advent was only a question of time; others, members of faithful Roman houses, had used voice and influence to induce the Pope to institute necessary reforms and had fallen into despondency when Pius on his return from Gaeta issued his _non possumus_ and settled down to a morose implacable reactionism. There remained the large army of priests, of papal functionaries and retainers, the cardinals and their numerous personnel, the religious orders and congregations of both sexes and the hundreds upon hundreds of persons dependent on them, the papal police and soldiery with their families. There were the great families which owed their titles and their fortunes to the popes, those whom common gratitude or honour kept at his side. And lastly there was the _popolino_, the ignorant poor, untouched by modern aspirations, by socialistic theories, living from day to day, from hand to mouth in the strictest sense, with no ambitions, no "standard of comfort" or of human dignity--ready to fall on their knees at any hour of the day when the Pope "_Dio in terra_" passed, agape at the latest royal visitor to the palace of their pontiff, content to encounter injustice with cunning fraud, to sweeten the hard buffets of life by the _finesse_ required for some small scheme of peculation, some dastardly scheme of revenge. Such human passions as lay outside the gratification of hunger and the greed for spectacles were satisfied by the periodical uprising and savage disloyalty habitual to the turbulent Roman people. And what applied to the populace applied in some sense also to the small _bourgeoisie_. There are always those who find it easier and pleasanter to keep within the pale of small joys and small miseries, small achievements and small risks. There were thousands of such people who stood well with the papacy, and who could only lose by a competition with the outsider for which they were, by training and talent, unprepared. [Illustration: ISLAND OF THE TIBER--THE ISOLA SACRA To the right is the Fabrician bridge, to the left the _pons Cestius_ which joins the island to Trastevere. See pages 7, 229, 240.] These then were "for the Pope." Not because he had a divine right to be in Rome but because they individually and collectively flourished under his rule. They flourished because there was no hunger, because though there were unsanitary hovels there were no haunts of starving people who could obtain neither bread nor work--if any were in need of bread they threw a _supplica_ into the Pope's carriage and he sent it to them when he got home. They flourished, because "where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise" and no wave of unrest, few of the ignobilities and none of the nobilities of a more strenuous life had passed over them. The papal government compared to a modern European government was like a blunderbuss in a modern arsenal, but though it was entirely ineffectual, though the people under its care merely lived out their lives with enough to eat and generation succeeded generation neither better nor worse than the men who went before them--it was an honest government in the financial sense. The people were not taxed, prices indeed were kept low as a means of humouring them, and the Pope's subjects were not exploited to fill his exchequer. In the strange medley of Roman ideas it seemed better to accomplish this end by the methods of the Jubilee year which exploited the soul of the foreigner. The papal government did not peculate, but the hated _sbirri_--the papal police--were often responsible for a missing bale of cloth or a burglary, and a child who had been left a fortune by her aunt only learnt when she was grown up that the _curato_ of the Pantheon who had been made _erede fiduciario_ (trustee) and executor of the testament had not thereby been constituted sole beneficiary. The administration in all departments was simpler than now, and the evils of the present bureaucracy were not known, but it was a government of privilege and patronage; "one under which a gentleman could live" said an Irishman, but the unprivileged person might find himself in prison for not kneeling when the Pope passed. A resident English sculptor who remembered the days of Gregory XVI. told me that Rome was the paradise of artists, who in their velvet jackets and squash felt hats did what seemed good in their own eyes, no man hindering them. The curious traveller of family and fortune--it was before the day of Cook's tourists--enjoyed every liberty under the hospitable papal government save only the liberty to speak or write about politics and religion, and suffered nothing save the occasional loss of a newspaper or book which the paternal government stopped at the frontier as likely to imperil the peace of mind of the Romans. They lived in a picturesque world, which recalled the middle ages at every step, where the prosaic dead level to which justice and civilisation had reduced the rest of Europe, did not penetrate, and they admired in Rome and for the Romans what they would have exposed in Parliament or the _Times_ as intolerable abuses in their own country. From 1848 onwards political rigours unworthy of the Holy See were resorted to, though these were relaxed before 1870. Some art students who had prepared Bengal fireworks to celebrate the anniversary of the victory over the French at Porta San Pancrazio, were sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment. A similar sentence was passed on a "non-smoker" (not to smoke was a protest against the papacy at the expense of its tobacco trade) who came to words with a "smoker" and this barbarous sentence was enthusiastically upheld by such a journal as the _Civiltà Cattolica_. Commendatore Silvagni who cites these and similar instances in his _Corte e Società romana_ writes indeed like a man too sore at what he has seen and too near to what he describes to present it in perspective, and he seems to the present writer a prejudiced guide to Rome before 1870. Sedition and conspiracy have met with scant ceremony at the hands of every nation and every prince in turn, and the way in which Pius IX. treated "the patriots" does not differ from that which may be read of in the history of any other country. What was peculiar to the papal states was the confusion of the spiritual and the temporal; the special scandal came from the union of these two powers in one authority, the temporal being used to enforce the "spiritual" and the spiritual being abused to assist the temporal. The spectacle of priests, your "fathers in God," your spiritual directors, ordering the public floggings, nay the public torture, of men and women could hardly edify or civilise; Gregory XVI. had abolished these public castigations which used to be suffered in the _Campo de' fiori_ (under an archway which may still be seen), but Antonelli strove to revive them in the _Piazza del Popolo_ in 1856. Other mediæval barbarisms ceased the day the Italians entered Rome, among them the _Ghetto_. The people as we see were not taxed, but neither were they taught. Some subjects were altogether taboo--modern history was among them. Obscurantism reigned supreme. Girls were taught to read in order that they might read their prayers, but they did not learn to write lest they should indite love letters. This was typical of the papal system. You took away the light lest the child should ever happen to burn itself, and you pursued the same policy with the adult. No instruction was vouchsafed, no information given, no education whatever of the intellectual or moral man. Girls were often destined from birth to the nunnery, and the veil was the never-failing remedy against a marriage distasteful to the parents or even the brothers, grand-parents, or uncles of the victim. No one denies that this compulsory enclosure was commonly practised in Rome. "Are you not ashamed to be reading, go and knit stockings" shouted a Jesuit to a poor lady who sat reading in her carriage in the Corso as the worthy father, who had been preaching a retreat to women, crossed the street. Many of the poor ladies in convents became imbecile so void were their minds, so vacuous their lives, and in our own day a Roman community of thirty nuns required the services of no fewer than thirty-one confessors. The education received by the boys of good families sent them home with the airs and gestures of so many little _abbés_. The children's games were tarred with the same brush, the same universal insipidity. The little boys dressed up as priests and said sham masses or moved about pieces of white cardboard which represented the host; explaining to their little sisters that such solemn fooling was not for "wicked girls." Occasionally, the natural talent, the natural wit and moral courage of a girl might provide her with a rôle and allow her to dominate instead of being the sport of circumstances. But the young men as a rule fell victims to that weak-kneedness which makes them the prey of the fear of derision in their school-days, intensified by a training which made self-dependence and self-development impossible. Thus one of the Doria, a family which had given heroes to its country, the younger brother of that Doria whose English wife's name _Mary_ is cut in a box hedge in the Villa Pamfili, broke the heart of the noble Vittoria Savorelli because his uncle, of whom he was independent, objected to their engagement. A Roman _marchese_ having been struck in the face by another Roman in the middle of the Corso at midday rushed off to consult his confessor as to what steps he should take, and we are not surprised to learn that he was able to follow the advice proffered, and "bear it patiently." There is a story of a _frate_ who could have taught him differently. As he was crossing a bridge a man struck him on the cheek; the good _frate_ immediately turned the other, then he picked up his man and pitched him into the river; for, as he explained, the Gospel bid him turn the other cheek to the smiter, but it did not tell him what he was to do afterwards. [Illustration: THE STEPS OF ARA COELI The church which occupies the site of the Sabine arx. See pages 6, 86, 230-31.] The fierce light of publicity has transformed the lives of the Roman clergy and religious since 1870. Those Roman priests who live without reproach themselves, confess that "the revolution" has brought about this signal benefit. The _Accademia dei Nobili Ecclesiastici_ which received impoverished nobles, ordained them, and sent them _at twenty-five years old_ to rule as prefects over the papal provinces was the fertile nursing-ground of a corrupt prelacy. The proud and affectionate interest with which the Romans, despite many lapses, regarded the popes, was not extended to the great papal officers who from the _Governatore di Roma_ downwards did not cease to provide a scandalous example to the people until the moment when "the Italians" entered the city. It will be said: these people at least were taught their religion? They were taught their religion as they were taught everything else--that is, not at all. They knew that you must obey the pope and obey the priest, that you would be damned if you did not go to confession and hear mass. But they thought one Madonna would hear their petitions better than another ("_Non andate da quella, non vale niente_" "don't go to that one, she is no good") and that exorcism was a surer remedy for a plague of bugs than cleanliness. They never heard a single verse of the Gospel explained to them, and young men of the higher _bourgeoisie_ learnt their religion if they learnt it at all, after 1870, when they were grown up and thought and read for themselves. Such men, many of whom belong to the _Circolo San Pietro_, are to-day the mainstay of intelligent and faithful religion in the city. Before 1870 there was in Rome a real ignorance of the doctrines, the beauties, and the duties, of Christianity. The one moment chosen for a great religious impression was of course the first Communion. Boys and girls were then enclosed and eight days were spent in pious exercises and instruction. The sons of the poor went to the _Cappellette di San Luigi_ at Ponte Rotto, the well to do to the same institution near Santa Maria Maggiore. On the other side of the basilica the girls of well to do families were prepared at the Bambin Gesù, the poor at San Pasquale. I am assured that at Ponte Rotto the effect of these eight days shut up in a religious house frequently changed the lives of boys with vicious tendencies. In other classes the appeal to unreal emotions was not always so successful, and the girls at the Bambin Gesù, dressed up in the stiff unaccustomed habit of the religious, often communicated with the one dread filling their minds that they might inadvertently commit "the sin" of touching the host with their teeth. Not less mistaken was the custom of the "Six Sundays," the girls and boys alike for the next six weeks communicating "in honour of the chastity of S. Lewis Gonzaga." And then _buon viaggio_, as the Italians say; they probably never communicated again except as "paschal lambs" at Easter. They communicated then of course. At the rails, the moment they had received the host, a ticket was handed to them with the name of the parish and some pious Latin verse inscribed on it. To this the communicant appended his name and address, and no succour was given, no "grazia" accorded except to those provided with this ticket. The names of those who had not communicated were posted at the church doors. Thus not only did all who could in conscience do so communicate once a year, but those who could not and would not procured the services of some woman who made it her business to communicate every day, or several times a day, during Easter tide, selling the tickets thus received for a franc or two francs each. Here was one of the inevitable degradations of a theocracy. Another was this--people found working at their trade, in their back shop, in their private room, on _festas_ were arrested and imprisoned sometimes for several days. Respectable citizens who found themselves compelled to finish a piece of work, behind closed doors, in this way, were subjected to the ignominious and futile punishment, which was certainly not calculated to educate their own religious sense or that of their families and children. Spies, under such a government, were always easy to find, and this and similar laws gave fine scope to the purveyors of private revenge. You could not ostentatiously abstain from going to mass, if you were poor you could not abstain at all, for the Roman parish priests were so many civil magistrates with definite powers, and if the answers to their numerous questions were not satisfactory it was the worse for the householder and his prospects. One means of finding out people's private affairs was through the servants who acted as spies reporting everything to the _parocco_. Pinelli the famous designer and engraver, whose bust to-day adorns the Pincio, who had never been pious or even respectable, repaid the old woman who reported his habitual absence from mass by ringing up the neighbourhood between half past four and five every morning, and in reply to the usual "_Chi è?_" calling out "_è Pinelli che va a messa_"; nor did he desist ringing at his enemy's door till she got out of bed to hear his announcement. The carabineers of the theocracy also had a mixed service. A room had to be set apart for the temerarious folk who required meat on a Friday or a fast day, and the carabineers entered the restaurants and eating houses, sequestrating the dish which smoked before the customer if this regulation was not observed. Moreover, at the head of every department was a cardinal; the Roman wife of a political exile once described to me what a _via crucis_ it was for a young woman to run the gauntlet of these clerical departments if she had to ask some favour for the exiled husband. [Illustration: STEPS OF THE CHURCH OF SS. DOMENICO AND SISTO Above the steps of _Magnanapoli_ which lead from the Forum of Trajan to the Quirinal hill. Their architect was Bernini. See page 231.] But if they were unlettered and superstitious were the people in those days better than now? The comparisons we sometimes hear urged are not really fair for two reasons. There is to be found in Rome to-day among the lower and the half educated classes all that want of moral equilibrium which a revolution of ideas brings with it. Moral Italy has yet to be made, as the moral unity of Italy is also as yet only in the making. Before 1870, on the other hand, those who were faithful to the standard then put before them, were faithful to what was never better than a poor and low ideal of conduct, sentiment, and religious duty. The papal standard required no refinement of feeling, no education of the conscience: no one was scandalised that a shop should display the barbarous notice "_Qui si castrono per la cappella papale_," or that the popular story ran that when Guido Reni was painting his picture of the Crucifixion before a living model attached to a cross, he killed him at the last moment in his frenzy to see and seize the death struggle, and fled the city; but that the holy father had absolved him because, as you who go may see, it is a _capo d'opera_. And the poor man killed to make a fine picture of Him who endured death to teach us pity for each other? _Ebbene, poveretto_.... The pope is like Nemesis, like the blind forces of nature, like an avalanche, a falling mountain, or an earthquake--not a moral force, but a weight of authority. As you can see for yourself if you go to San Lorenzo in Lucina the work is a _capo d'opera_ and the pope knows better than you. Moral judgment is silent before the weight of authority. My narrator, who only wished to magnify a great picture, not to raise a moral problem, always carried with him a paper blest by the pope, and of extraordinary efficacy, that is it was Spanish and was covered with writing, every corner had something pious in it, and no one who carried it could die unabsolved. The proof was set forth in the blest paper itself, for one man _did_ die unabsolved, they cut off his head in fact; but the head was not to be brow-beaten, it simply went off to the nearest town--and in these cases, as the witty Marquise du Deffand said to Gibbon, _Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte_--and found a priest (what priest ever shows himself the least _dérouté_ in such circumstances?) who at once confessed the head, and there the matter ended. Rome before 1870 was not even externally what we see it now. An old world city of tall palaces, the windows in the lower story grated, of monasteries and churches, of ruins in unconscious beauty, of fountains of waters, of cabbage gardens and _orti_, of orange and lemon gardens which at every turn surprised and delighted the eye. The main streets straight as Roman roads, the piazzas, in contrast to these, full of sun, intolerable from May onwards at noonday. A city of narrow squalid streets huddled together, in which the domesticities are carried on unrebuked and unabashed--in the poorer quarters every third house appeared to be a washerwoman's, the linen hung across the road on lines stretched from window to window. And everywhere an unpromising door, an open gate, may reveal a little picture, a cool garden and fountain, orange and lemon trees, a bend of the river, a view of the Janiculum or the Aventine. A Roman smell pervading everything and sufficiently characteristic to make you sure, if you were suddenly set down in any part of the town, that you were in Rome: and at night another smell, the smell of the ages, unwholesome, penetrating, coming up from the soil, or the freshly turned earth, and making one shut the windows hastily on the loveliest of moonlit evenings. A wealth of street cries, varying with the season, and the nocturnal serenades, assist that atmosphere of noise for noise' sake and movement which are essential to the Italian, the noise of the shabby two-horsed carriages grinding along on the paved streets and driven by the bad Roman drivers with a continual cracking of the whip and a constant application of the squeaking break, of wine carts lazily winding their way across the streets of the eternal city with that sense of infinite time and space born of long colloquies with the sun by day and the moon by night across a deserted _campagna_, a score of little brazen bells, perhaps, clanging and jingling at the driver's ear--the constant noise by day and night of a life-loving, loquacious, complaining, gesticulating, rebellious and keenly observant people. A city of priests and dependents of priests, here there are no industries, no great machines are set in motion every day, no factories open with daylight to give employment to hundreds of skilled workmen. Every one who is not a priest works for priests or for the monasteries. The little workshops may be seen in the Borgo of S. Peter's, in Campo Marzo, in the arches of the theatre of Marcellus--every little doorway contains a cobbler, the _piazze_ which lead to the big churches are crowded on _festas_ with vendors of religious pictures and rosaries. The convents of women make their own habits, but there is a great industry for providing the thousands of priests, the seminarists, canons, monsignori, cardinals and cardinals' retainers, and Vatican functionaries with cassocks, robes, uniforms, hats, berrettas, stocks and pumps. In the centre of this life, which is ecclesiastical even for the layman, it seems right that when we notice a stir and turn round with the rest, we should see the papal _cortège_ and the Pope round whom all this life revolves; the centre of this city of churches and cassocks, because he is the centre of a far larger world. For Rome is what it is because its sovereign bishop is the cynosure for the eyes of that Christendom which counts the largest number of adherents on the face of the globe, and their Mecca is his city, Rome. Let us follow a pedestrian who is starting on his afternoon walk, one bright day in April, from the neighbourhood of Santa Maria dell' Orto on the other side of the Tiber, and see Rome before 1870 with his eyes. Like all good Italians he is curious, and he crosses the street when he sees a man with a large oblong box covered with some black waterproof stuff ring at what is apparently a convent door--and the meanest door in Rome may give access to the scene of busiest monastic life. The door is opened by the convent porteress, and when the lid is removed our friend sees the _ostie_, the hosts for the use of the convent, which are brought round every week or every fortnight to the monasteries and churches, a hundred here, twenty there, according to the need. As he passes the convent of Santa Maria in Capella he gets a glimpse of the beautiful cool cloister garden with its lemon trees and sees the _cornette_ of the "Daughter of France" whose application for permission to remain and work on French soil was immediately granted at a time when so many companies of priests monks and friars applied in vain. While crossing the river by the island of the Tiber, he meets a procession from the church hard by with its Franciscan friars who walk next after the confraternity of the quarter in their well-known red "sacks" or gowns; the priest in his short surplice and stole is followed by the men bearing the bier, all carry lighted torches and chant the _Miserere_ or the Gradual psalms. Leaving the Ghetto well to the left he takes the street which passes the famous Roman house of the Oblates of Tor de' Specchi, and crosses in front of the Capitol and the steps of Ara Coeli. He meets many priests, monks, and friars, but the numerous _suore_ to be seen in the modern city are conspicuous by their absence. The nuns, of course, are never seen, the Oblates occasionally drive in large closed landaus like those in which the cardinals progress to-day; but new communities of women find it difficult to obtain authorisation, and a constant supervision, no longer feasible, checks the mushroom growth of "active" congregations. Just beyond he hears a bell and guesses, rightly enough, that the Viaticum is being brought from the neighbouring parish church of San Marco to some sick or dying parishioner--in a moment he sees the little familiar procession, the acolytes with incense and bell, the priest carrying the host enveloped in the humeral veil under the _ombrellino_, the women and men who were in or near the church at the time following with lighted candles, and stopping beneath the windows of the sick man while his Lord visits him--if it were wet a little dark knot of people under umbrellas would be waiting, and would accompany the host with candle and umbrella just the same. Is it for the same sick person, he wonders, that the gala carriage of Duca Torlonia next passes him carrying the _Bambin Gesù_, the little wooden painted doll from Ara Coeli. If the person whom it visits is to live the _Bambino_ will turn red, if he is to die he will turn pale. Our pedestrian crosses the Forum of Trajan and as he mounts the steps he encounters a man of the people who tells him as he hurries breathless along that he is going to fetch Monsignor B., one of the episcopal canons of Santa Maria Maggiore, to _cresimare_ his baby, three weeks old, who is dying. He and the mother are bent on their baby going to paradise with all the glory of the added sacrament. A baby of three weeks old "confirmed" will sound strange in English ears. It must be borne in mind therefore that the rite of confirmation in the English Church is a new rite unlike that in use in any ancient Christian Communion. In the Roman Church the rite of chrism is the ancient sacramental rite complementary to baptism, which always included the imposition by the bishop of the sign of the cross on the forehead of the newly baptized, "for a type of the spiritual baptism." As such it is not properly a separate ceremony at all from the baptism with water. Our friend turns to the left and as he reaches the piazza before the Quirinal palace he sees the papal _cortège_ approach. The Pope (it is Pius IX.) is coming--not in his state carriage with the gilt angels, which we may still see at the papal stables on the way to the Vatican museum of sculpture or the papal garden--but in the carriage he uses every day. Every one kneels, and a mother who holds up her baby for the apostolic blessing secretly "makes the horns" with her free hand, for Pius IX. is reputed to have the evil eye and to cast the _jettatura_. [Illustration: SANTA MARIA MAGGIORE The great façade of the Liberian basilica, the first church in the city to be dedicated to the Madonna. To the right is the Military Hospital of Sant' Antonio. The house was until 1870 the residence of the Camaldolese nuns, and here S. Francis of Assisi was received when he first arrived in Rome. The site is presumed to be that of the Temple of Diana. The column facing the basilica is one of the eight Corinthian columns which supported the vault of the basilica of Constantine. See pages 34, 60, 145, 231, and interleaf, page 252.] But it is drawing towards the _Ave Maria_, the sunset hour, and it is rather free and easy even in a monsignore's servant to be abroad after that late hour. We will therefore leave our pedestrian in the Via del Quirinale, first noticing with him a group of seminarists on their way to pay their evening visit at the church of the _Santi Apostoli_; they raise their hats as they pass the door of the _Sacramentate_, opposite the palace, where the host is constantly exposed, and then hurry on to see the Pope and receive his paternal blessing. We, however, will turn down at the Four Fountains, and follow a priest who mounts a narrow staircase to the apartment occupied by a canon of the basilica of _Santa Maria in Trastevere_ in an old granary of Palazzo Barberini, which has been converted into dwellings for faithful retainers of the princely house. It contains all that is necessary for his wants--a chapel where he says his daily mass, the kitchen regions and some slips of rooms where his food is prepared and eaten in company with the two orphan relatives who, at his invitation, arrived at his door hand in hand one winter's evening many years ago, two little girls of ten and fifteen, who had come alone all the way from a northern town. They communicate at his daily mass, but their generous guardian, who sees to their moral training, carefully hides away his copy of the Scriptures as a perilous work for two young souls. The sisters enjoy an incredible distinction among their _commari_ and _compari_--their neighbours and gossips--for in the canon's chapel there is a _corpo di santo sano_. Besides the chapel he has a bedroom and sitting-room, communicating--they are decorated with full length Magdalenes grasping skulls in evident deprecation of their want of apparel, of crucifixes painted on canvas, and of pictorial compositions consisting of a crucifix hung with a rosary, flanked by a couple of guttering church candles and enlivened with a book, a death's head, or an hour glass. These are his own handiwork, and no intimacy with the works of art in the eternal city enlighten him as to their relative merits. The priest enters the sitting-room first, and finds six or seven men, all priests, on their knees, in the various corners of the room. Presently the door beyond opens, and a priest comes in and kneels down by a vacant chair. Another rises enters the bedroom and shuts the door carefully behind him. Our canon is a favourite confessor among his brother clergy, and it is the general custom for priests to be confessed at the houses of the religious or secular clergy they select as confessors, the rule about the use of the public confessionals in the churches applying especially to the confessions of women. The men kneeling in the first room are preparing for their weekly confession or making their thanksgiving after it. When the poor canon died, leaving his orphan kinswomen unprovided for, the _corpo di santo sano_, which might have fetched something, was taken away at once because it was against ecclesiastical rules for them to keep it, but the pictures, which could fetch nothing, continued to gaze on the struggles of the little sisters, reminding them of the poor canon and also of the fickleness of the public taste in _articles de virtu_--for during his lifetime these pictures had received their full meed of respectful admiration. As our pedestrian enters his own house door, which is covered with _immagini_ and texts serving as charms--among which S. Anna the mother of the Madonna is not absent as a house-patron, and the faded rose brought from the festa of the _Divin Amore_ figures conspicuously--he may indeed have a vague sense that the _annus Domini_ will soon be too strong for the life he has just been witnessing, but he will hardly be disturbed by any speculation as to the elements which have conspired to form the atmosphere surrounding the first Bishop of Christendom in this his capital once the capital of the world. He will not think of the apotheosis of the emperor in ancient Rome, of the orientalism which crept into Western Christendom through Byzantium, imposing things which especially here in Rome were alien to its religious genius; he will scarcely remember that the Pope's temporal sovereignty added a diadem to his tiara, for he has never distinguished the temporal from the spiritual arm, or discerned the part which the former has played in determining the manifestations of the latter. [Illustration: ARCH OF CONSTANTINE Erected by the Senate in his honour A.D. 312. Eighteen years later he retired to Byzantium, leaving the Roman Bishops in virtual possession of the eternal city. See pages 32, 42, 237.] CHAPTER XII THE ROMAN QUESTION I. _Before 1870_ The "Roman Question" represents the only "religious" question in Italy. The problems which agitate other lands leave the Italian unaffected, uninterested. He has no genius for reforming, and no genius for sect-making, he is as tolerant of abuses as of diversities. So it comes about that the one and only "religious" question in Italy is a political question--the rights and wrongs of the situation created for the papacy when it was despoiled of its temporalities. It is certainly not generally remembered that ideals for a great future for Italy were not confined in the "forties" to the Italian _unità_ men. Pius IX. had read Cesare Balbo's "_Speranze d'Italia_" and had understood that it was desirable that Italy should free herself from the stranger. But he had been most strongly moved by Gioberti's "_Primato morale e civile degli Italiani_" in which "the majesty of Christianity and the destinies of Italy" were set forth as mutually interdependent, Italy gaining its pre-eminence from the Christian primacy which had grown in its midst and was of its soil. There he read that "Italy is the capital of Europe because Rome is the religious metropolis of the world," and there he gained his notion of an Italian federation under the civil headship of the Pope. That this idea was unrealisable was not the fault of Pius IX. It was the fault of the age in which he lived. He was not by temperament an obscurantist, and he began by being something of a political idealist. He had been brought up piously and carefully, and had no political arts, and he wondered that the papal government should be found opposing reforms which were demanded by modern progress. Yet his own papal career ended in political obscurantism and the absurdities of the _Syllabus_. Even had the flight to Gaeta, however, never intervened to chill the Pope's political idealism, things could not have had a different ending; for if on the one hand no European nation would have consented to place itself, even nominally, under a theocratic suzerain, on the other hand the papacy was not in the "forties" and had not been for centuries in a position to accept the civil headship of a great European state. Gioberti himself said enough to show that his golden visions for Catholicism were contingent on a complete restoration of the Church which was not undertaken then and has not been undertaken since. Now that Rome is lost to the popes it is the fashion to conceive of the temporal power as a divinely ordained instrument for the protection and free development of the Kingdom of God on earth--self-consistent, identical, uninterrupted. Such a conception does not correspond to facts. We all know that the "Donation" of Rome to the popes in the fourth century by the first Christian Emperor Constantine, is only a pious myth, but even Charlemagne in the eighth retained his imperial rights over Rome and over the person of the pontiff. It was not till the age of the renascence and the rise of the great European states with the absorption of the small principalities and duchies, that the temporal power of the popes was ideated by them in its modern sense; and it is then that they completed the territorial aggressions by which they carved out for themselves an Italian state extending north and east to Tuscany and Venetia and southwards to Naples. The history of the papacy since then has been a history not of war between the forces of the world and the forces of Satan, the efforts of princes to enslave and the efforts of popes to establish Christian freedom, but a history of the efforts of the civil power and the civil prince to curb papal encroachments on their rights--efforts which during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries attained the proportions of true Magna Chartas of civil liberties. The modern conception of the temporal power aggravated the "pre-eminent domain" which the popes claimed in temporal affairs; the conception of civil liberties which had smouldered in the middle ages burst into flame in the modern world, and less than a century in fact elapsed between the final destruction of all "home rule" in the papal states and the loss of the temporal power. When we speak of the servitude of the Pope in the King of Italy's dominions, we forget that Catholic princes have always found themselves obliged to restrain the papal arm, and to propound from time to time laws protecting the minor against the major clergy, the prelates against the pretensions of the papacy, the people against the publication of obnoxious Bulls, and the public peace by subjecting the correspondence between the Pope and the bishops to scrutiny. Thus the disciplinary canons of the Council of Trent were not published--and were never accepted--in many Catholic states. Canon law has been the constant butt of civil legislation which has denied one by one the immunities of ecclesiastics and abolished the existence of ecclesiastical courts for the trial of clerical offenders. The abstract question of the popes' relation to civil rights and to temporal power cannot be viewed apart from the sober teaching of history. [Illustration: CASTEL AND PONTE SANT' ANGELO The castle of S. Angelo, fortified in the time of the popes, was built by Hadrian as his mausoleum. The bridge is the ancient _pons Aelius_ of which the parapet is modern, and the statues of SS. Peter and Paul and of angels bearing the instruments of the Passion were added by Clements VII. and IX. It was built by Hadrian to reach his mausoleum. In the middle ages it was lined by a double row of booths, and two hundred people were crushed to death here in the Jubilee of 1450. See pages 32, 239, 242.] Already in the reign of Pius VI. the Romans had imbibed from the French some of the doctrines of the Revolution, among them that of the sovereignty of the people. From that time onwards the papal power could never have been upheld except by foreign arms; and the spirit in which the great Napoleon offered his services should be sufficient evidence that the task of preserving the patrimony of Peter was not undertaken by those whom we ought to regard as having understood better than the Italians the things which belonged to Catholic peace. Every one will admit that the pontifical states were not really independent during these foreign occupations: what appears to be less clear is that a pope-king is not necessarily more free to exercise his high office than a pope who does not rule or who may even be the subject of another government. There is a covered way from the Vatican to Castel Sant' Angelo which is itself a parable of the history of the Roman popes. It was constructed as a means of fleeing in secrecy and safety from the Vatican when the turbulent Romans or foreign invaders made the pope's life insecure and placed his city at the mercy of vandals. The "Pope's own city of Rome" should never be thought of without a mental picture of the covered passage from the episcopal palace to the fortified castle, along which popes young and old, bad and good, have hurried praying or cursing. Let us look upon some of these fugitive popes, and realise from their trembling steps, their impotent objurgations, the hunted look in their eyes, how much of dignity and liberty the possession of Rome secured to them in the exercise of their divine mission. There is a type of Catholic whose favourite theme is Canossa, as his adversary's favourite theme is the Copernican system. An emperor standing outside the Pope's castle in a penitent's shirt through weary days and icy nights beseeching him to withdraw the decree of excommunication strikes the imagination to the exclusion of the sequel of the story. Four years after the experience of Canossa, the "penitent" emperor, accompanied by his antipope, brought an army to Rome and made Gregory fly to Castel Sant' Angelo. The people abandoned the cause of the great Hildebrand, betrayed Rome to the enemy at its gates and deposed their lawful pope. But imperial vengeance for a humiliation which had been undertaken to satisfy the superstition of the vulgar did not end there. Henry V. exacted from Paschal II. a further penalty, and while Europe looked on in apathy, the Pope and his cardinals were made prisoners and a number of priests were drawn through the mud at the horses' tails as the imperial troops rode off. Gelasius II. was seized in the conclave which elected him, trampled underfoot and chained in a tower belonging to the Frangipani. Rescued by the Romans of Trastevere and the Island, he is next found hiding in the _Borgo_ from the emperor, who pursued him in his flight to Gaeta, annulled his election and proclaimed an antipope. On the Pope's return to Rome he was entrapped at a mass in S. Prassede, but escaping to the meadows by S. Paul's where he was found weeping with the women of the neighbourhood, he died an exile in a Cluniac convent in France. [Illustration: BRONZE STATUE OF MARCUS AURELIUS ON THE CAPITOL Placed here by Michael Angelo in 1538, who removed it from the Lateran Piazza. It owed its preservation to the belief that it represented Constantine. To the right and left are the museums of the Capitol. In the rear is the Palace of the Senator overlooking the Forum. See pages 13-15, 57, 58, 241.] In 1144 the Romans determined to restore their free Senate and demanded, under Arnold of Brescia's influence, the abolition of the temporal power. Lucius II. stormed the Capitol and died defending his rights, but his successor was forced to fly the eternal city. Our one English Pope, who possessed the fine old English sounding name of Nicholas Breakspear, declared on his death bed that the Pope of Rome must find means to content the sordid soul of the Roman people or quit his throne and his city a fugitive. Indeed nothing is more noticeable than the strict impartiality with which the Romans meted out violence to popes good and bad; and exactly a century before they were deposing the great Hildebrand, they could have been seen outraging the body of the infamous Boniface VII., surnamed "Francone," whose bleeding corpse was kicked and rolled down the streets of Rome to the foot of the statue of the good Marcus Aurelius. In the same century which saw the English Hadrian IV. reigning in Rome, two German archbishops led troops against a pope. The Romans, as usual, required the vanquished pope to abdicate, and accepted Barbarossa as their ruler, who gave them an antipope. Of one emperor at this time it could be truthfully said that he had "the whole College of Cardinals in his pay" which affords some notion of the spiritual dignity of conclaves, while the ups and downs to which the papal rulers of Rome were subject is illustrated in the case of Pope Alexander who in the same twelfth century was received with open arms after ten years' exile by the fickle people, who however duly stoned his coffin when he died. Clement III., himself a Roman, was obliged to sanction once more the powers of the Roman Senate, and to hand over to the people part of the tolls. Innocent IV. fled to Genoa, this time from fear of the emperor, who afterwards kept him a prisoner in his own Lateran palace. Even a Boniface VIII. narrowly escaped being kidnapped by the French King and died most miserably in the Vatican. Benedict XI., the saintly Venetian pope, attempted to punish the perpetrators of this outrage, but had to withdraw his Bulls, and retire himself to Perugia. The election of his successor the French Pope Clement V. was followed by the exile of the popes in Avignon, and since their return to Rome in 1377 the popes have not belied their character for alternately inspiring and flying from violence foreign and internecine. That mute but eloquent parable in stone is the real synthesis of the history of the papacy--the episcopal palace by the tomb of the Apostle, in the first Christian church, at one end, and at the other the fortress which was once a pagan emperor's mausoleum, with its dungeons and its history, secret and open, of crime and bloodshed; and between these the covered way along which the popes pass and repass from one to the other, symbol not of the separation but of the fateful conjunction of spiritual and temporal which has haunted their history. It would, indeed, be strange if ages of barbarism could have secured to the first Christian bishop the honour and safety which can now be assured to him by that civilisation and tolerance which we have substituted for "the ages of faith"; and United Italy must have a long future ahead of it before it can have heaped on the popes one hundredth part of the indignities and sufferings which they underwent when nominally masters of Rome. But such modern conditions have not always prevailed, and those who in all ages have waged war against the theory of the temporal power--saints and philosophers--ought to have recognised that at one period of European history territorial lordship, feudal rank and power, were a necessity. The Church did not create and did not choose the feudal system, which was indeed opposed in principle to the spirit and teaching of Christ's Gospel, and the days have long since gone by when "secular grandeur guaranteed to the Church her religious integrity"--nevertheless these days once existed, and then the Catholic Church was as a strong man armed _cap à pie_ fighting for life, and leaving to the individual--the saintly bishop, the saintly clerk or layman--the task of softening the rigours and planing the roughnesses of a Christian system which was also at war with itself. Although it is true that no form of the popes' temporal sway has at any time secured to the papacy the benefits that have been alleged for it by ultramontane writers since 1870, and conversely true that the events of 1870 did not deprive the pope of those benefits, yet it is also perfectly true that the papacy has been, through the centuries, the means of preserving for Italy its ancient character of a world power, and of preserving for Rome, abandoned by Constantine and his successors to the fate of a small provincial town, cowering in its own ruins and filth, the prestige and significance of the city which ruled the world. It is the successors of Peter who have perpetuated the meaning of its title "the Eternal City," and have carried on, through fine weather and foul, the immortality of Augustus. This surely constitutes the papacy's chief claim on Italy's consideration. There is, moreover, a curious and subtile, but perfectly comprehensible, tie between Italy and the popes, to which expression was given by the priest-philosopher Gioberti in his book on "The Primacy" already quoted. The Italian who never goes to church, nay the Italian who believes in no Church--and in Italy he is not at all necessarily the same person--contemplates the papal primacy with pleasure and pride, and considers with approval the phenomenon which brings the rest of Europe to kiss the foot of an Italian. He is perfectly aware, on the one side, that the Christian primacy--which is an Italian primacy--adds lustre and a cosmopolitan atmosphere to the city and the land which was the cradle of modern civilisation; and in some undefinable, yet I think definite, way he sees in it a compensation for the glory which has departed from his land of glories, a tangible pledge and earnest of that world-mastery whose sceptre is now wrenched from his hands. [Illustration: S. PETER'S FROM THE PINCIAN GARDENS See pages 16, 100, 135.] The modern ultramontane has accustomed the modern simple faithful to an historical picture which has had, as we see, no existence in fact: the Vatican standing solemn and decorous, at its Bronze Gate the Swiss Guard; the papal sovereignty and the papal troops--disbanded, these latter, by evil men in 1870--guaranteeing to pope and cardinal the freedom of their sacred ministry both within and without the papal confines. It is only since 1870 that such a picture can be seen, in miniature, and within the walls of the Vatican, under the respectful tutelage of a united Italy which now surrounds the solemn and decorous palace, certainly not the least turbulent centre of Europe before 1870. II. _Since 1870_ The pretension of the popes to wield "the two swords" had ever been a fruitful cause of friction in Europe; but in Rome the immense spiritual claims of the papacy joined to the claim that the Pope was _de jure divino_ monarch of monarchs, and could command the sword of princes in carrying out his ecclesiastical behests, wore a unique aspect, for here the Pope was in actual possession of the temporal sword, and ruled the bodies as well as the souls of men. The civil supremacy of the State is, indeed, a permanent conquest of the age in which we live, and the last European stronghold of the opposing theory was to be seen in Rome itself. It is interesting therefore to notice that it was for internal civil reform that the Romans were agitating during the last years before 1870. The interference of the clergy in municipal administration was an intolerable grievance, and municipal reforms were still being urged on the Pope in 1857. The agitators were chiefly to be found among the lawyers and doctors, the educated _bourgeoisie_--always a minority in Rome--who were joined by a few heads and scions of great families. But in the previous pontificate "demonstrations" in favour of the falling papacy had still been engineered in Rome. Incited by a cardinal the people would take the horses out of Gregory XVI.'s carriage, and drag the Pope in procession; but the venal demonstrators had each his own personal petition to present, and when, shortly afterwards, one of the principal demonstrators assassinated his wife and aggravated the murder by brutally locking her in a room so that she might expire without assistance, the tender conscience of his comrades was outraged to find that Gregory sent him to the gallows without hesitation. The mercenary troops--the recruited refuse of all nations--described by an eye witness as "a drunken rabble," were also a thorn in the side of the Romans. The character of these papal supporters was in general so infamous that _soldato del papa_ was a proverbial contumely: they were the defenders of Rome in September 1870, under a German Swiss colonel, appointed general for the occasion, whose opponent, Cadorna, an officer of very different standing, wrote the history of the siege. In the thirty-four years that have since elapsed, the millennium has certainly not come in Italy, nor is everything better than it was before. But at least everything has a chance of being better. Some of the things which the popes were asked to concede, especially as regards penal procedure, are not bettered to-day, for the Italian laws though in certain departments they are ideal schemes of legislation are in practice very frequently dead letters--and some of the crimes which made old Rome hideous have ceased owing to the very simple expedient of lighting the streets at night. The _Statuto_, the constitution of united Italy, begins with a declaration that the religion of the State is the Catholic religion. The Pope's relation to the State was defined by "the Law of Guarantees" in 1871. His status is not that of a subject, but of a sovereign, though of a sovereign without territorial possessions. He is, however, sovereign in his palaces of the Vatican, Lateran, and Cancelleria, which with the papal country seat of Castel Gandolfo still belong to him. Within the Vatican he can and does maintain certain companies of soldiers and guards, and _extraterritorialisation_ applies to the Vatican precinct, no Italian official having any right to enter there unless invited to do so. Foreign nations can accredit ambassadors and ministers plenipotentiary to the Pope's court, and he can maintain ambassadors, or nunzios, at foreign courts. The archbasilicas of S. Peter's, S. John Lateran, and S. Maria Maggiore, also belong to the Pope, and their possession enabled Leo XIII. to refuse any one of the great basilicas for the marriage of the present King of Italy. The palace of Santa Maria Maggiore was confirmed to the popes in compensation for the loss of the Quirinal, and this territory, like all the other palaces churches and villas named, is _papal_ territory, not Italian territory. In addition, the Law of Guarantees provides that a sum of £130,000 (three and a quarter million francs) should be paid annually to the popes as a compensation for their revenue. This has never been accepted. The Law was intended to secure the Pope's complete independence of the Italian Crown, a matter which it was felt would be jealously watched over by other Catholic States; it guarantees his complete personal and administrative independence in the government of the Church, and in his and his agents' communication with countries outside Italy. That the popes have never been satisfied with it their continued protest and invocation of the liberty and dignity of temporal sovereignty amply proves. The relation of Church and State in Italy is like that in other Catholic countries. The entire revenue of the papal States passed of course into the hands of the Italian Government, which also took over the revenues of such institutions as _Propaganda Fide_. A _Fondo Culto_ was created, and the nation continued to administer the ecclesiastical revenues of the country for the same objects as did the Pope. It pays the stipends of the parish priests, and a project has just been matured for increasing these in parishes where they are less than 1000 francs (£40) a year. Only in May of last year (1904) the _Camera_ had under discussion the relief of the lower and unbeneficed clergy, and of the poorer provincial seminaries for training priests. Bishops and canons cannot become possessed of their "temporalities" without the royal _exequatur_, and all public religious fabrics throughout the country belong to the State. Where the ecclesiastical face of Italy has been changed is in the suppression and expropriation of its monasteries and religious houses--the historical sites (with their treasures) have been declared national monuments, the gradual suppression of the communities which inhabited them has been provided for by a law forbidding the profession of new members, and the monastic revenues have been partly converted into insignificant pensions--varying from two francs to fifty centimes a day--paid to each individual of the suppressed communities. That the law has not been pressed with great severity by the tolerant Italian Government is evidenced in the fact that communities still exist who have escaped final confiscation for thirty-eight years by silently adding to their number so that it might never fall below the fatal six which spelt dissolution. At the end of the century there were still 13,875 religious who under this law were in receipt of 176,000 pounds. As to Rome itself, the Religious Congregations have proved that it has not been made an insupportable place of residence for them. The historic houses are national monuments, and the ancient communities are only recruited _sub rosa_, but new "Mother Houses" of all the great orders are taking possession of commanding sites in Rome, the illegal "professions" take place every day, and the number of monks, friars, and religious of both sexes is considerably larger than it was before 1870. So true is it that no district, hardly a street, in Rome is without its convent, that it has been wittily declared that the "temporal power" is in fact returning in this way--and Rome is again in roods and acres becoming ecclesiastical property. It is difficult to suppose that we are near a conciliation between the Pope and Italy, or that there is still time for a satisfactory coalition between the conservative forces of law and order in the country and the moral forces of Catholicism against the inrush of the subversive forces of socialism and political radicalism. Many of the best men on the Italian side would indeed deplore any reconciliation with the Pope at present on the ground that it would involve a check to the civil progress of the Italian people. Meanwhile the Italians are certainly not becoming more religious under a system which assumes that if you are a good citizen you cannot be "a good Catholic," and it is for the popes to determine whether the irreligion of the people is or is not too heavy a price to pay for the upkeep of their protest against the events of 1870. The consequent alienation of some of the better religious elements in the country is, at least, doing serious harm in that it makes the abler men outside doubt whether the religious elements which remain are worthy to be regarded as in any sense a moral force which could be invoked to co-operate with the best modern secular forces. Meanwhile the opposing factions have been face to face for thirty-four years. How have they behaved, and how have they altered since then? The official Vatican behaviour never varied until Pius X. ascended the Chair of Peter. Pius IX. had set the example of violent public utterances, and had permitted the subsidised clerical newspapers to attack Victor Emmanuel both in his private and public character. On the other hand he would never tolerate in his presence a word against the King, and his own letters to him were not only friendly but affectionate. This little comedy scandalised the Italian's sense of decorum, and as a policy has succeeded in alienating Italian sympathy. The general tendency on the secular side has been conciliatory; the Italians, indeed, began with a farce on the morrow of their entry into Rome, a farce duly recorded in the name of the street which runs past the church of the _Gesù_. The _plébiscite_ registered the will of the "whites" but not the will of the "blacks," none of whom voted; and the forty-six votes against the new _régime_ which appeared in the total, had been cast by the "whites" themselves. Nevertheless the Catholics in Rome who do not make a _politica_ of their religion, willingly allow that they enjoy a large measure of liberty. Not long since at the request of the visiting chaplain the authorities arranged for a man to be brought back to the prison where his wife was still undergoing sentence, in order that their civil marriage might be completed with the religious rite. For some years past the present Cardinal Vicar of Rome has administered the Easter Communion to the inmates of the _Regina Coeli_ prison to the joy of the prison officials and the reciprocal consolation of the cardinal and the black sheep whom he that day bears home on his shoulder rejoicing. It is well known that the officers encourage the men to attend to their religious duties at Easter, and remind them of these as the seasons come round. Every soldier may then have leave of absence for confession and communion, and a rule is made requiring all men out on leave in this way to bring back with them the Communion ticket which is given at the rails to each Easter communicant. Many of the soldiers choose to go to S. Peter's, and the carabineers in their sober black uniforms may always be seen there during Holy Week. It will readily be understood that both incongruities and accommodations are rife in such a condition of affairs as the existence of a State Church by the side of a hostile papacy. The King wants a regimental banner blest, or the Pope wants to have the roads kept while fifty thousand pilgrims flock to S. Peter's. During the latter years of Leo XIII.'s pontificate the Italian police were invited into the basilica, and headed a procession with all the decorum of its traditional vergers, the _Sampietrini_. These reciprocal interests even require telephonic communication between the Quirinal and the Vatican. In theory, the House of Savoy, the members of the Government and every person in its pay down to the _custodi_ of the ruins and museums of Rome with their families are excommunicated. In practice the Pope provides a chaplain for the Royal palace, the parish priest has of late years entered the Quirinal and penetrated to the royal bedrooms for the customary blessing of houses on Easter eve, Italian officials and their families receive absolution like any one else, and the irony of history required that the "excommunicated" Queen Margaret of Savoy was the only princely personage to fulfil the conditions of the last Jubilee year in Rome. [Illustration: FROM THE TERRACE OF THE HOUSE OF DOMITIAN Before us is the church built on the site of the Temple of Venus and Rome and dedicated to S. Francesca Romana, the greatest of Roman saints. To the left the huge ruins of the basilica of the first Christian emperor, while to the right is the Arch of Titus, commemorating the fall of Jerusalem, and the road with its _via crucis_ which leads to the church of S. Bonaventura, the biographer of S. Francis, built against the Stadium of Domitian. The view is taken from the terrace outside that domestic basilica of the Flavian House which still retains more of the form of a Christian basilica than any other pagan building. Here are brought together the old and the new, Christian and pagan, papal and imperial--the shock of the two world empires. See interleaf, pages 44, 50.] And the "blacks and the whites"? In the "eighties" the distinction between those who clung to the old _régime_ and those who adopted the new was still sufficiently marked, but in the last decade of the century the "blacks" became "gray" or as they themselves liked to express it _caffè-latte_, neither black nor white. The acceptance of invitations to the Quirinal has, up to now, entailed the forfeiture of those official invitations to the Vatican which are extended to the Roman aristocracy for every great papal function. Many of its older members still absent themselves from all official "white" receptions, and a daughter is still presented not at the Court but to the Pope, with her _fiancé_, on her engagement. But in private society the great "black" ladies now know and meet the "white" society with which many of the Roman families are related by marriage; and it is not infrequently the case that one branch of an old Roman house clings to the Pope while another attaches itself to the King. But everywhere, even where the parents absent themselves from official "white" society, their children now go to the Quirinal. Thus we are very far from the time when no member of the Roman aristocracy met the King or Queen, when the Court was entirely composed of new men, or the Piedmontese whom the King brought with him. The day has gone by when even in a ball-room the "blacks" took care to label themselves by wearing a yellow (papal) rose, and only priests and the English converts still make a point of not saluting the sovereign. One Roman prince, however, has kept up a picturesque protest--and the great door of Prince Lancellotti's palace has never been opened since the day the King of Italy entered the Pope's capital. Even when, quite recently, invitations to a ball were issued from the great silent house, all the guests crowded through the postern door. When one asks any of the old school now whether the old Government did well or ill, the best, and the wisest, answer that they can give us is "They were _altri tempi_, other times." And this is the reason why it is impossible that the two parties should continue to exist after the present generation. The cleavage has really been due to the fact that the Vatican and Quirinal parties live in two different epochs; they live in different worlds and speak a different language. The old fashioned "blacks" can only think in a circle of ideas and sentiments, political and moral, to which they were born but which has no present point of contact with reality, with the living world around them, with "things as they are." The old has its beauty and the new has its uglinesses, as always; but also they frequently change these positions. Fifteen years ago one of the most distinguished Italian diocesans wrote a pamphlet entitled "_Roma e l'Italia, e la realtà delle cose, pensieri di un prelato italiano_"--"Rome, Italy, and things as they are; thoughts of an Italian Prelate." As soon as his name was discovered, he was told to withdraw the pamphlet, publicly from his own pulpit. This was not encouraging to others who thought as he in a country where secular public opinion still counts for so little, the individual "courage of your opinions" counts for still less, and where a public opinion among ecclesiastics is simply non-existent. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, a Cardinal Secretary of State had the courage of his opinions as the following passages from his Memoirs will prove. He is known for his protection of the Jesuits against the Jansenists during his sojourn in Paris as papal Envoy Extraordinary, and by the Pacca law, which is called after him, prohibiting private owners from disposing of great works of art out of Italy. "Providence," he writes, "has taken away the temporal power from the Holy See and prepared those changes in States and Governments which shall once more render it possible for the Pope, although a subject, to rule over and govern the whole body of the faithful." "The popes, relieved from the burden of the temporal power which obliged them to devote a great part of their time to secular affairs, may now turn all their attention and all their care to the spiritual government of the Church; and when the Roman Church lacks the pomp and magnificence which temporal sovereignty has given her, then there will be numbered among her clergy only those who _bonum opus desiderant_." That pathetic combatant for papal rights in the twelfth century Gelasius II., exclaimed to his cardinals "We must leave Rome, where it is impossible to stay." That plaintive cry need, we trust, have no further echo: the ages of which Gregorovius writes that popes "were obliged to leave Rome to realise in foreign countries that they were still actually reverenced as representatives of Christ" closed, we hope, with the entry of the Italians into Rome and the consequent creation--in lieu of the elusive "_Roma intangibile_"--of what Bismarck happily called an "intangible Vatican." Index Abruzzi, Abruzzese, 153, 155, 188 Accademia dei Nobili Ecclesiastici, 221 Accoramboni, Vittoria, 167 Acilii Glabriones, 45 Adelbert, S., 8 Adonis, 90 _Aedes publica_, 31 Aeneas, 2, 130 Aesculapius, 7, 8 Agapê, 46 Ager (agro), 1, 15, 70-1, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 90 Agricultural colonies, 11, 76 Agrippa, 20, 22, 30 Alabaster, 27 Alaric, 37 Alba Longa, 1, 2, 15 Alban hills, 17, 23, 70, 78 Albani, 171 Alexander III., 241 Alexander Severus, 22, 32, 63 _Alta Semita_, 55 Altar, 19, 20, 35, 186; position of priest at, 36, 186 Altieri, 172 _Ambarvalia_, 15 Amphitheatre, 22, 31, 33, 163 Anacletus II., 161 Ancus Martius, 5, 26 Anguillara, 60, 162, 168 Animals, cruelty to, 81, 88, 129, 147-8, 155; Leo XIII. and, 148 Anio, 24 Annibaldi, 168 Anselm, S., 5 Antonelli, Cardinal, 202, 219 Antonines, 11 Antoninus Pius, 32, 197 Antony, S., 68, 148 Apostles, 42, 48, 199 Appian Way, 30, 41, 45, 70, 168 Appius Claudius, 21 Apprentice, 67 Apse, 19, 35, 36 Aqueducts, 21, 22, 30, 31, 37, 39, 73 Arabesques, 29 Arcadians, 2 Arch, 36; of Janus, 162 Arches, triumphal, 33; of Constantine, 32, 162; of Septimius Severus, 32; of Titus, 31, 162; of Trajan, 31 Architraves, 19, 36 Arenula, 56 Aristocracy, 94, 99, 109, 132, 135, 159, 160, 170, 172, 173, 174, 178, 215, 221, 245, 253 Arnold of Brescia, 240 Augustus, 4, 10, 12, 23, 25, 29, 30, 31, 53, 54, 55, 57, 74, 164, 243; house of, 10, 30; mausoleum of, 30, 164, 242 Aurelian, Emperor, 6, 32; wall, 32, 38, 43, 163 Aurelii, 45 Aurelius, Marcus, 32, 46, 55, 63, 197, 241 _Ave Maria_, 232 Aventine, 26, 30, 160, 202, 227 Avignon, exile in, 6, 14, 57, 242 _Baioccho_, 105 Balbo, Cesare, 235 _Baldacchino_, 10, 177, 211 _Balnae_, 20 Bambin Gesù, image in Ara Coeli, 230; convent of the, 223 Banners, regional, 55, 57, 58, 59 Baptism, 231 Barbarossa, 241 Barberini, 9, 10, 171 Barbers, street, 101 Baronial towers. _See_ Towers Bartholomew, S., 7 Basilica, Christian, 33, 34, 36, 50, 67, 186, 209; domestic, 34, 35; Flavian, 35; forensic, 19, 20, 24, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37; Julia, 20, 30; Ulpian, 31 Baths, public, 19-21, 24, 30, 31, 39, 54, 61, 99 Beggars, 11-12, 54, 99 Belli, Gioacchino, 140 Bell towers. _See_ Towers Benedict XI., 241 Benedict XIII., 167 Benedict XIV., 59, 178 Benedict, S., 78 Beneficent clubs, 68 Beneventum, 7 _Berretta_, 204, 205, 209 Bibulus, 29 Bismarck, 255 "Blacks" and "Whites," 252-4 Boatmen's guild, 63 Bombardment of Rome, 212 Bonaparte, 171 Boncompagni, 170 Boniface VII., 241 Boniface VIII., 164, 165, 167, 168, 201, 241 "Book of the Art," 84, 86 Borghese, 123, 170, 171, 174 Borgo, 55, 90, 228, 240 Bracciano, 17, 168; duke of, 167 Braschi, 173 Breakspear, Nicholas, 240 _Breccias_, 27 Bricks, 23, 25, 37 Brigands, 11, 54, 89, 96, 150 Buffalo Bill, 89 Building crisis, 12 Burial guilds, 8, 42, 63, 77 _Butteri_, 89, 90 _Buzzuri_, 138 Byzantium, Byzantine, 42, 137, 234 Cadorna, General, 246 Caecilia Metella, 29, 168 Caecilii, 45, 46 Caelian hill, 5, 31, 53, 202 Caesar, Julius, 29, 30 Caesarius, S., 74 Caetani, 164, 168, 177 Café, 101, 142 _Cafoni_, 138 Calabria, Calabrese, 126, 139, 155 Caligula, 31 Callistus, catacomb of, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46; Pope, 42 _n._; Callistus III. 60 _Camorra_, 139, 139 _n._ Campagna, 17, 21, 38, 69-80, 83, 89-92, 107, 228; cattle in, 77; cities, ancient, of, 72; deaths in the, 77, 90, 143; malaria in, 74-5; towns of, 78, 107 Campitelli, _rione_, 56 Campo de' Fiori, 219 Campo Marzo (Campus Martius), 18, 22, 30, 33, 37, 55, 59, 60, 163, 228 Campo Vaccino, 61, 62 _Cancellum_, 19, 35 Candelabra, 36 Canon law, 238 Canon, a, of S. M. in Trastevere, 232 Canonisation, 50 Canossa, 239 Capitol, 4, 18, 28, 30, 31, 38, 56, 57, 58, 130, 135, 161, 169, 172, 173, 240 _Capo d'arte_, 66 _Capo rione_, 57, 58 _Cappa magna_, 209 Captains, regional, 54, 55, 56, 58 Carabineers, 150, 151, 151 _n._, 225 Caracalla, 20, 21, 32 Cardinal, Bishops, 201, 205; Chamberlain, 210; deacons, 201, 202, 205; priests, 201, 202, 205; vicar, 201, 251 Cardinal's dress, 204, 206, 209, 210; hat, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 209; vicar, 201 Cardinals, 15, 58, 159, 175, 200-211, 225, 228, 240, 241 Cardinals, College of, 15, 201, 202, 205, 210, 241, 252 Carnival, 58 Carrara marble, 25 Carters, carts, 63, 72, 88, 90, 96, 228 Caserta, 168, 177 Cassandrino, 141 Castel Gandolfo, 171, 247 Castel Sant' Angelo, 56, 239, 242 _Castelli Romani_, 71, 78, 79 Catacombs, 196; art in 46; number of, 43; prayers for dead in, 48-9; testimony of the, 47-8 Catholicism and the Catholic Church, 45, 47, 137, 181, 184, 195, 199, 236, 243; and Catholic clergy, 137, 248, 254 Celestine III., 167 _Cella_, 18, 19 Cement, use of, 24, 27, 37 Cenci, Cencius, 168, 169; Beatrice, 160; Bolognetti, 169; Johannes, 169; Marcus, 169; Virginius, 169 Centurion, 54 Cestian bridge. _See pons_ Chapter of S. Peter's, 67, 209 Charioteers, 33, 63 Charities, Roman, 11, 56, 66, 174, 217, 223 Charlemagne, 14, 237 Chigi, 170; Agostino, 171 Chivalry, 5, 112 Chrism ("confirmation"), 231 Christians, early, 34, 42, 47 Church and State, 248 Churches-- S. Adriano, 202; S. Anastasia, 2; SS. Andrea and Gregorio, 161, 202; S. Angelo in Pescheria, 56; SS. Apostoli, 232; Ara Coeli, 57, 86, 161, 230; S. Barbara, 66; S. Bartholomew, 8; SS. Bonifacio and Alessio, 202; S. Caterina de' Funari, 66; Chiesa Nuova, 56; S. Clemente, 202; SS. Cosma and Damiano, 32; S. Croce, 35; S. Domitilla (catacomb), 187; S. Eligio dei Ferrai, 68; S. Eusebio, 202; S. Eustachio, 56; S. Francesca Romana, 32; S. Giorgio in Velabro, 202; S. Giovanni Calibita, 7; S. Giuseppe degli Falegnami, 66; S. John Beheaded, 86; S. John Lateran, 35, 36, 247; S. Lorenzo in Lucina, 226; S. Lorenzo in Miranda, 32, 66; S. Luigi, 173; S. Marcello, 161; S. Marco, 230; S. Maria degli Angeli, 21; S. Maria in Aquiro, 202; S. Maria Aventinense (_see_ Priory of Malta); S. Maria in Cosmedin, 7, 31, 186; S. Maria in Capella, 229; S. Maria in Domnica, 187; S. Maria Maggiore, 23, 34, 60, 171, 187, 223, 231, 247; S. Maria dell' Orto, 66, 229; SS. Nereo and Achilleo, 187; S. Paul's-without-the-Walls, 36, 240; S. Peter's, 10, 16, 32, 38, 41, 42, 67, 196, 247, 251, 252; S. Prassede, 240; S. Prisca, 202; S. Sabina, 186; S. Silvestro in Capite, 166; S. Stefano, Via Latina, 187; S. Tommaso a' Cenci, 66, 169 Cippolino, 27 Circolo San Pietro, 76, 222 Circus, 19, 26, 33; Maximus, 30 _Civis romanus_, 181, 199 Claudius, 26, 31, 181 Clement, Pope, 14 Clement III., 241 Clement V., 242 Clement IX., 172 Clement XI., 171 Clement XII., 171 Clement XIII., 146 Clementi, 156 _n._ _Clivus capitolinus_, 30 _Cloacae_, 18, 39 Cloisters, 36, 38 Cluilian Ditch, 15 Coaches, bambino's, 230; pope's, 217, 231, 245; cardinal's and prince's, 173, 207, 208, 210 Cohorts, 54 _Collegio_, 63, 64, 65, 66 _Colles_, 53 _Collina_, 53 Colonies, agricultural, 11, 76 Colonna, 55, 162, 163, 164-7, 170, 172; Lorenzo, 165; Marc' Antonio, 165; Sciarra, 164; Stephen, 165; Vittoria, 165 Colosseum, 11, 22, 32, 39, 162 Coltello, 145 Columns, 33, 38; of Marcus Aurelius, 32; of Trajan, 31, 142 _Comitium_, 4 Commemorative banquets, 63 Communes, Roman, 13, 59, 64; Italian, 14, 179 Communion, Easter, 223, 251; first, 222, 223; tickets, 223, 224, 251 Conciliation. _See_ Pope and Italy _Conciliatore_, 110-111 Conclave, 58, 210-11, 241 Concrete, use of, 24, 25, 27, 28, 37 _Confessio_, 36, 50 Confession, 222, 223, 251 Confraternities, 67, 68 Confraternity of Prayer and Death, 67, 143; red, 8, 229 Congregations, Roman, 203, 249; of women in Rome, 220, 228, 230 Consistory, secret, 204; public, 204 Constantine, 31, 32, 34, 37, 42, 162, 237, 243 Consular families, 13, 34, 63 Conti, 160 Corinthian pillars, 19 Cornelius, pope, 45 Corporations, 62, 63 Corte Savella, 160 Corsi, 161 Corsini, 171 Corso, 9, 59, 93, 100, 101, 115, 141, 161, 172, 220, 221; Vittorio Emanuele, 169 Cosmati, 36 Courtship, 152-3 Crime, 81, 139, 145-6, 149, 246 _Croce Rossa_, 75 Crostarosa, Mons., 34 _n._ Curatii and Horatii, 15 Curator, regional, 53, 54, 64 Curia, 201, 203 _Curiae_, 154 Curule chairs, 197 Customs officers, 64, 103 Dante, 9 Deacons of Rome, 55, 200, 201, 202 Decimal system, 105 Decoration, 25, 28, 29 Deffand, Marquise du, 226 Democracy, 114, 115, 194 De Rossi, 44 Destruction of city. _See_ Rome Diaconate, the, 200 Diocletian, 20, 21, 32, 33, 61; museum, 29 _Dio in terra_, 216 _Dispetto_, 134 District courts, 110 _Divin amore_ festa, 234 Doctors, guild of, 63 Dogma, 47, 50, 56, 64 Domitian, 30, 31; house of, 31, 35 _Domui_, 23 Donation of Constantine, 237 Don, 178 Donna, 178 Door charms, 234 Doria Pamphili, 68, 172, 221 Doric columns, 19 Dowries, 12, 56, 66, 67 Dress of Romans, 141 Dyers, guild of, 63 Easter. _See_ Communion Egypt, 7, 25, 180, 183 Esquilina, 55 Esquiline, 5, 53, 55, 202 Etruscans, 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 18, 70, 181, 182, 197 Eucharist, 46, 47, 49, 196, 197 Eugenius IV., 165 Evander, 2 Evil eye, 231 Exarchate, 13, 14, 42 _Excubitoria_, 56 _Exequatur_, 248 Exorcism, 81, 82-3, 187, 222 Extraterritorialisation, 247 Extreme unction, 192 Fabrician bridge. _See pons_ Family life in Italy, 116-17, 155; Rome, 97, 154, 155 Farms in the campagna, 33, 71, 72, 73, 77 Fattore, 77 Faustulus, 2 _Fedeli_, 59 _Festa_, 100, 102, 156, 204, 224, 228 Feudalism, 112, 160, 162, 243 Fever, goddess, 74 "Field of Cows," 38, 61, 62 Firemen, 54 Flavian house, 12, 31, 35, 45 Florence. _See_ Tuscany Fluor-spar, 27 _Fondo culto_, 248 Fortress, military, 23, 38 _Fortuna Virilis_. _See_ Temples Forum, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 38, 56, 59, 61, 66, 147, 231 _Forum Romanum_, 4, 15, 18, 20, 30, 31, 147 Fountains, street, 21, 33, 39, 93, 175 Francis, S., 8, 189, 195 Franciscans, 8, 189, 229 Frangipani, 161, 240 Franks, 65 Frascati, 171 French kings, 14, 241; Revolution, 146, 238 Fresco painting, 29, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47 Friezes, 19, 28, 37, 61 Gaeta, 202, 214, 215, 236 Gaetani, 164, 168, 177 Galera, 168 Gardens, 33, 39, 93 Garibaldi, 118, 123 Gates of Rome, 100, 207 Gelasius II., 168, 240, 255 Genazzano, 79, 83, 166; madonna of, 83 Genseric, 37 _Gentes_, 13, 14, 45, 70 _Gentiluomo_, 208, 209 Genzano, 79 George, S., 74 Germanicus, house of, 29, 157 Geta, 32 Ghetto, 7, 11, 56, 219, 230 Ghibellines, 60, 162, 163 _Giallo Antico_, 27 Gioberti, 235, 236, 244 _Giulio_, 105 Giustiniani, 173 Gladiators, 22, 63 Goat herd, 38 Goatskin breeches, 90 "Golden book," 172 Golden house of Nero, 29 Governor of Rome, 222 _Graffiti_, 44 Gratian, 37 Grazioli, 172 Greece, 3, 7, 8, 13, 18, 20, 25, 27, 45, 129, 130, 182, 183, 186, 197 Gregory the Great, 11 Gregory VII., 239 Gregory XI., 57 Gregory XIII., 170 Gregory XVI., 213, 218, 219, 245 _Grosso_, 105 Grotta Ferrata, 166 Grotto of Lupercus, 2 _Guardia_, 144, 149, 150, 151 Guelphs, 60, 162, 163 Guilds, trade, 52, 58, 62, 64, 65, 67, 68; conditions of membership, 64, 66; funds, 65; patrons, 63, 64; religious, 63; under State control, 64; statutes, 66 Guiscard, Robert, 37 Gymnasia, Greek, 20 Hadrian, Emperor, 23, 31, 32, 37 Hadrian's mausoleum, 23, 32, 37 Hadrian IV., pope, 78, 240, 241 Handicrafts, 52, 58, 63 Hannibal, 168 Heliogabalus, 32 Henry IV., 239 Henry V., 240 Heraldic Commission, 179 Hildebrand, 240, 241 "Hill of goats," 38 Hill villages, 71, 78 Holidays, Roman, 100 Holy See, the, 201, 207, 218, 255; vacancy of, 210 Honorius I., 32 Honorius IV., 160, 161 Horatii and Curatii, 15 House of Savoy, 115, 252 Humbert, King, 115 Hymettan marble, 27 Industrial classes, 62, 63, 66, 141, 228 Innkeepers, guild of the, 63 Innocent III., 160 Innocent IV., 241 Innocent XI., 172 Inn of the Bear, 9 _In petto_, 204 _Insulae_, 23 Ionic columns, 19 Ironworkers' guild, 58, 68 Isis, 183 Island of the Tiber, 240 _Isola sacra_, 240 Italian art, 123-5, 127, 191; Catholicism, 81, 91, 188-196; characteristics, 112-122; crowds, 121; cruelty, 81, 146-7, 155; democracy, 114, 115, 193-5; garden, 73; "individualism," 115-116, 183; women, 153-55 Italians and English, 112-124, 132, 145, 146, 151, 153-155, 157, 190, 191, 194-196; and French, 112, 119-122, 133, 145, 146; and Germans, 112, 117, 122, 123, 131, 145, 146, 153, 157, 190, 196; and Irish, 120, 126 Janiculum, the, 5, 16, 17, 171, 207, 227 Jasper, 27 Jerome, S., 37, 200 _Jettatura_, 231 Jews, in Rome, 5, 7, 45, 46, 160, 161, 180, 181-2, 183, 188, 198, 199; bonnet, 46; of the dispersion, 45; quarter, 7, 56, 169 John X., 168 Jubilee year, 217, 252 Jupiter (Jove), 18, 28, 30, 37, 78, 130, 131, 181, 182 Justin Martyr, 46 Kitchens, Roman, 54, 94, 98, 99, 101, 108 Kitchen range, 98 La Marmora, General, 123 Lancellotti, Prince, 253 _Lapis lazuli_, 27 _Lares compitales_, 53 Larva, 27 Latin league, 69, 78; religion, 91, 92, 181, 182, 183, 193, 194, 196, 197 Latium, 1, 2, 70, 71, 146, 147 _n._, 181, 196 Law of guarantees, 247 Laws, Italian, 149, 246 Leo IV., 6 Leo IX., 161 Leo X., 13 Leo XIII., 148, 203, 247, 248, 252 Leonine city, 55, 56 Letter-writers, public, 102 Lewis Gonzaga, S., 102, 223 Lewis the Bavarian, 164 Libraries, 21, 31, 35, 174, 175 Lime-kilns, 37 Livy, 25 Lombardy, Lombards, 14, 65, 77, 125, 126, 188 Lottery, the, 84-87 Lucina, crypts of, 46 Lucius Crassus, 28 Lucius II., 240 _Lucomones_, 197 Lucullus, 28 Ludovisi, 170 _Lumachella_ marble, 27 Luna marble, 25 Lupercus, 2, 91, 196 _Lupetto Romano_, 90 Macaroni, 97, 98, 100, 103 Madonna di S. Agostino, 86 Madonna, cult of the, 83, 87, 89, 91, 99 _Mafia_, 139, 139 _n._ Magistrates, 53, 110 Malaria, 74 Malta, order of, 5 Mamertine prisons, 18, 147 Manfred, 168 Marbles, 25, 26, 27, 29, 32, 33, 36, 54, 61, 98; workers, 27, 36, 37, 39 Marcellus, theatre of, 30, 160, 168, 228 _Marchesi di baldacchino_, 177, 178 Marcia, acqua, 22, 73 Marcus Aurelius, 32, 46, 55, 63, 197, 241 Marforio, 140 Margherita, queen, 115, 252 Marino, 166 _Marmoratum_, 26 Mars, 3, 59, 74; spears of, 3; Ultor, 30 Marshall of Conclave, 170, 211; of the Pope's Horse, 170 Martin V., 166 Martyrs, 41, 42, 43, 51 Mass, 3, 184, 191, 224, 232; in the Campagna, 76; commemorations in the, 49 Massimo family, 168 Master of Ceremonies, 205; of Sant'Ospizio, 170; workers, 67 Mausolea. _See_ Tombs Maxentius, 32 Maximi Caecilii, 45 Mazzini, 214 Meals, Roman, 97 Ménage, Roman, 93 Merchants, 63 _Mercanti di Campagna_, 77 _Mesata secca_, 106 Michael Angelo, 165 Michael, S., 74 Middle ages, 23, 36, 55, 65, 67, 161 Militia, Roman, 56, 64 Minerva, 18, 80, 181 Misericordia, 77 Mithras, 183 Mixed marriages, 122 Monasteries, 38, 66, 67, 96; number of, 249; suppression of, 248-9 Monastic professions, 249 Monks and nuns, 215, 220, 228, 229, 230, 249 Monopolies, 67 Monsignore of the papal wardrobe, 205; of roads and streets, 9 _Mons Saturninus_, 30 Monte Cassino, 179 Monte Cavo, 17, 78 Monte Giordano, 163 _Montes_, 53 Monti, 55, 59, 60 Monticiani, 60, 61, 62 _Morra_, 101 Mortar, 22, 23, 24 Mosaic, 36, 37, 39, 174; pavement, 27, 28, 33; sectile, 28 Moses, 45, 181; and Peter, 42 Mother houses, 249 Municipalities, Italian, 14, 15 Municipality, Roman, 13-16, 59 Municipal liberties, 14-16, 56, 64, 237, 245 Naples (Neapolitans), 72, 89, 126, 132, 138-9, 147, 166, 168, 187, 188, 237 Napoleon, 61, 141, 171, 238 Navicella, 61 Nero, 20, 22, 29, 31 Nicholas III., 167 Nobility, Roman, 63, 159, 160, 172, 173, 174, 178, 253 Numa, King, 52, 62, 181 Numidia, 27 Obelisks, 26, 28, 33, 38 Obsession, 82 _Octroi_, 103 Odescalchi, 168, 172 Olevano, 79 Olive, 80 Olive harvest, 80 _Ombrellino_, 230 Opus incertum, 25; mixtum, 25; reticulatum, 25 Orderlies, 107 Oreglia, Cardinal, 203 Orsini family, 60, 160, 162, 163, 165; Filippo, 167-168; Giordino, 167, 168 Osteria, 100 Ostia, 26, 33, 63 Ostian Way, 70 Ostie, 229 Otho III., 7, 8 Oxen, 24, 26, 68, 77, 96 Pacca, Cardinal, 255 Pacca law, 255 Palaces of Caesars, 30, 33 Palaces, 38, 39, 93, 94, 172, 174, 175; Aldobrandini, 6, 50; Antici Mattei, 172; Balestra, 172; Barberini, 171, 232; Bolognetti-Cenci, 169; Bolognetti, 169; Bonaparte, 172; Borghese, 172; Braschi, 173; Cancelleria, 173, 247; Cenci, 169; Chigi, 172; Colonna, 166, 172; Corsini, 171; Costaguti, 172; Doria Pamphili, 172, 175; Falconieri, 173; Farnese, 173; Farnesina, 171; Ferraiolo, 172; Fiano, 140, 172; Gabrielli, 163; Gaetani, 172; Giustiniani, 173; Grazioli, 173; Lancellotti, 253; Lateran, 36, 247; Longhi, 172; Massimo, 169; Odescalchi, 172; Orsini, 168; Patrizi, 173; Piombino, 172; Quirinale, 208, 214, 231, 247, 251, 252, 253, 254; Ruffo, 172; Ruspoli, 172; Rinuccini, 172; Salviati, 172; Sciarra, 172; Simonetti, 173; Theodoli, 172; Venezia, 172 Palatine, 2, 4, 5, 13, 29, 30, 31, 33, 35, 53, 56, 135, 157, 162 Pales, 91 Palestrina, 164, 165, 166 Palestrina, Pier-Luigi, 156 Paliano, 166 _Palladium_, 2 Pallas, 2, 13 Pamphili-Doria, 172 Pan, 2, 91, 92 Pantheon, 10, 19, 30, 56 Paola aqueduct, 22 _Paolo_, 105 Papacy, 16, 57, 162, 167 Papal government and theocracy, 214, 217, 218, 219, 224, 225, 236, 245, 254 Papal titles, 177, 179 _Papetto_, 105 Parian marble, 26 Parione, 56 Parishes, Roman, 53, 56, 200, 201, 206 Parliament House, 101 Paros, 27 Paschal II., 166, 240 "Paschal lambs," 223 Pasquale, convent of S., 223 Pasquinades, 140 _Pastor Bonus_, 197 _Patres conscripti_, 178 Patriarchal ménage, 175, 176 Patricians, Roman, 45, 70, 159, 170, 178 Patrimony of Peter, 237, 238; extent, 257 Patrizi, 177 Paul II., 172 Paul V., 170 Paul, S., 192, 199 Paulinus of Nola, S., 8 Pavements, mosaic, 27, 28, 33 _Pavonazzo_, 27 _Pax Romana_, 198 "Peace of the Church," the, 12, 34, 43, 198 Pensions of monks and nuns, 248-249 Pentelic marble, 27 _Peperino_, 23, 73 Pepin, 14 Peretti Francesco, 167 Peruzzi, B., 168 Persecutions, 20, 42, 51 Peter, S., 16, 42, 50, 166, 199, 200, 243; chair of, 46; and Moses, 42; primacy of, 42; statue of, 11 Petrarch, 164 Philip Neri, S., 77 _Piano nobile_, 175 Piazza SS. Apostoli, 166, 172; Colonna, 172, 202; Lateran, 26; Montanara, 90, 160; Navona, 173; Pantaleoni, 169; del Popolo, 219; Tartaruga, 172; di Venezia, 169, 172 Piedmont, Piedmontese, 126, 132, 139, 155, 171, 253 Pierleoni, 160, 161 Pigna, _rione_, 56 Pilgrims in Rome, 9, 67 Pincian hill, 16, 17, 100, 135, 224, 244 Pinelli, 140, 226 Piombino, 68, 170, 174 Pius VI., 140, 173, 238 Pius IX., 11, 22, 85, 202, 203, 208, 213, 215, 219, 231, 238; and Italy, 214, 215, 219, 235, 236; liberal impulses, 213; and the _non possumus_, 215; and the people, 222, 245; and the syllabus, 236; and Victor Emmanuel, 250 Pius X., 77, 250 Pizzardoni, 151 Plebiscite, the, 251 Plebs, the, 14, 56, 62, 78, 81 Police, 54, 55, 144, 149-151, 215 Pompeii, 29, 45 Pompey, theatre of, 163 Pomponius Grecinus, 45 Pons Aelius, 32; Fabricius, 7, 29; Cestius, 7; Triumphalis, 55 Ponte Margherita, 102; Quattro Capi, 29; Rotto, 223; S. Angelo, 9, 32 Ponte, _rione_, 55 _Pontifex Maximus_, 197 Pontine marshes, 30 Pope, 201, 202, 205; court of the, 173; presentation at, 253; and conciliation, 249; and the Catholic princes, 237, 238; election of, 202; and Italy, 246-250, 252 Popes, fugitive, 239; Senate of the, 201 Population of Rome, 12, 34 _Populus_, 14 Porphyry, 27, 36 _Porporati_, 204 _Porta Furba_, 72, 73 Porter, house, 94, 95, 110, 175 Porticoes, 33, 35 Portico of Octavia, 30, 168 Porto, 26 Possession, 82 _Pozzolana_, 24 Praetextatus, 45 Praetorian guard, 54 Prelate, Italian, pamphlet by, 254 Prefect, 54, 169 _Prepotenza_, 134 Presbyters, 200, 201 Primacy, papal, 42, 235, 244 Princes, Roman, 108, 159, 161, 170, 172, 173, 176, 177, 207 Prince Assistant, 167, 170 Priory of the Knights of Malta, 5 Priscilla and Aquila, 5 Processions, 58, 66, 67, 205, 252 _Propaganda Fide_, 248 Prophets, 48, 188 Protestantism in Rome, 47, 189, 190, 193 Provisioning of the city, 65, 103, 105 Pudens, 45, 46 Pumice stone, 24 Puritanism, 112, 188, 189, 194, 196 Quarries, 23, 24, 25 _Questura_, 150 _Questurini_, 150 Quirinal hill, 5, 6, 31, 53, 163, 166, 208 Quirites, 4, 5, 15 Regional devices, 57, 59 Regions, 43, 52-61, 201-2 Regola, _rione_, 56 Religion. _See_ Roman, and Catholicism, Italian Religious fabrics, laws about, 248 Remus, 5 Renaissance, 36, 38, 58, 124, 172, 237 Republic. _See_ Rome _Res publica_, the Roman, 180-186 Rhea Silvia, 2 _Rheda_, 72 Rienzo, Cola di, 14, 57 Rignano, duca, 168 _Rioni_. _See_ Regions Ripa, _rione_, 56 _Roma Quadrata_, 2, 4, 197 Roman art, 18, 127, 156-8, 190, 191; characteristics, 8, 9, 10, 11, 107, 126-8, 133-7, 146, 147, 150, 156, 183-5, 187, 194, 229, 240, 241; Church, 14, 41, 42, 50, 126, 184-7, 198-9, 201, 255; customs, 82-7, 99-103, 140-144, 230, 231; dialect, 132; imperialism, 64, 115, 198-9; marriage, 153-5; realism, 113-14, 124-5, 185; religion, 180-88, 192, 196-8; type, 129-132; voices, 132, 157 Romans, and agriculture 2-3, 17, 76, 91, 128-9, 147; ancient, 3-4, 78, 128-9; and English, 123, 131, 135, 174, 185, 192, 193; and French, 152, 184, 185, 238; and Greeks, 129, 130, 180, 182-4, 185, 197; and Italians, 126, 137-9, 188; and Jews, _see_ Jews; modern, 128, 130, 134, 136-7, 138-9, 225, 252-4; a pastoral people, 3, 17, 91, 182 Rome, bombardment of, 212; and Byzantium, _see_ Byzantium; destruction of city, 9, 11, 37, 39; and Greece, _see_ Greece; origin of, 1-5; imperial, 23, 25, 28, 41, 62, 65, 129, 137; kingly, 1, 2, 3, 5, 18, 52, 53; republican, 14, 23, 29, 62, 129, 137, 182, 186; world empire of, 15, 16, 42, 127, 198-9, 236 Rome before 1870, appearance of city, 9, 227 _et seq._; artists in, 210; clergy in, 217, 219, 221, 224, 245; education in, 220; government of, 213-15, 217, 219, 224-5, 246; moral notions in, 83, 87, 220, 222, 225-6, 230; people in, 11-12, 215-16, 217; spies in, 224 Romulus, 1, 2, 3, 32, 154, 198; and Remus, 2, 3, 198 Rospigliosi, 172 Roviano, _duca_, 168 Ruspoli, 169, 177 Sabine hills, 70, 78, 79, 81, 82, 96, 166, 169, 170; people, 2, 4, 5, 15, 154 _Sacramentate_, 232 Sacred College, 15 Sacrifices, 19 Sacrifice, eucharistic, 49 Saints, cult of, 43 Salaria, 45; _porta_, 102, 135 Salviati, 171 Sanctuary of a church, 51 Sanctuaries. _See_ Shrines Saturn, 30, 91; hill of, 13 Savelli, 160, 161, 165, 170 Savorelli, Vittoria, 221 Saxons, 65 _Sbirri_, 61, 217 _Schola_, 65 Scholasticism, 112 _Scudo_, 105 Sculptors, guild of, 64 Seamen, guild of, 63 See of Rome. _See_ Holy See Sees, suburban, 201 Senate, 13-15, 34, 45, 57, 70, 149, 159, 164, 240, 241 Senate and People of Rome, 13, 14, 15 "Senator, the," 14 Senators, 45, 58, 63, 159, 178; and conservators, 55 September 20th, 11, 212, 213, 215 Septimius Severus, 20, 31, 32 Septizonium, 31 Serenade, the, 141, 144 Serlupi, 170 Sermoneta, _duca_, 168, 177 Serpentine, 27 Servants, 94, 103, 106, 107, 108, 109-111, 224 Servius Tullius, 5, 18, 52, 53 Seven hills, 5, 51, 52, 53 Seven sacraments, 48 Sforza, 170 Shops, Roman, 39, 53, 67, 93, 100, 102, 103, 104, 106 Shrines and sanctuaries, 63, 73, 83, 90 Sibylline oracles, 7 Sicily (Sicilians), 126 Sistine chapel, 205, 211 Sixtus I., 35 Sixtus IV., 165, 173 Sixtus V., 55, 140, 167 Slaves, 11, 21, 25, 34, 64, 75 Soldiers, 151; papal, 215, 244, 246, 247 _Soldo_, 101, 104, 107 Sora, _duca_, 170 Spoleto, 167, 178 S.P.Q.R., 15, 59, 138 _Stadia_, 33 Staircases, 95, 176 Standard of Rome, 15 Standard-bearer, 55, 64, 66, 170 Statilius Taurus, 22 Statues of women, 154 Statutes of guilds, 66 _Statuto_, 246 Streets, Roman, 93, 105, 152; refuse in, 9 Stucco, 24, 28, 29 Subiaco, 78 Subterranean Rome. _See_ Catacombs Suburra, _rione_, 53 Sulmona, _principe_, 170 _Suovetaurilia_, 15 Superstition, 81, 83, 136, 187, 196, 222, 226, 231 Susanna and the Elders, 45 Swiss guard, 210, 244 Sylvester, S., 74 Syndic, 166 _Tablinum_, 28 _Tabularium_, 23, 29 Talbot, Gwendoline, 123, 174 Talbots in Rome, 123 Tanners, guild of, 63 _Tarantella_, 140 Tarquinius Priscus, 18, 30, 52; Superbus, 18 Tarquins, 29, 30 Taste and art, 157 Taxes, 64, 107, 139, 217, 219 Teano, _principe_, 168 Temples, 18, 19, 30, 33, 37, 39, 163; of Antoninus and Faustina, 32; Castor and Pollux, 30; Ceres, 31; Concord, 30; Dii Consentes (portico of), 181; Fortuna Virilis, 29; Libertas, 160; Mars Ultor, 30; Romulus, 198; Saturn, 30; Templum Urbis, 32; Venus and Rome, 32; Vespasian, 31 Temporal power, 42, 214, 215, 219, 235-9, 240, 242-3, 245, 255 _Teppa_, 139, 139 _n._ _Terno_, 85, 86 _Testone_, 105 Theodoli, 177 _Thermae_, 20, 21, 32, 33 Throne room, 176, 207 Tiber, 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 21, 33, 63, 70, 131, 171, 173 Tiberius, 30 Titles, patrician, 177 _Titulus_, 5, 34, 201, 202 Titus, 20, 21, 22, 27, 29, 31, 182 Tivoli, 24, 32, 33, 78 Tombs, 33, 36, 72; Bibulus, 29; Cecilia Metella, 29, 168; Latin, 29; of S. Peter, 16 Tor de' Conti, 160; di Nona, 163 Tor Sanguigna, 163; de' Specchi, 102, 230 Torlonia, 169, 230 Towers, 56, 163; baronial, 23, 38; bell, 38; semaphores, 73; vedette, 38, 73 Trades unions, 68 Tradesmen, 103, 104, 105 Trajan, 5, 20, 22, 31, 77, 142, 231 Transtiburtina, 55 Trastevere, 55, 56, 61, 62, 130, 162, 171, 240 Trasteverini, 60, 130 _Trattoria_, 79 Travertine, 22, 24, 27, 39 Trent, Council of, 238 Trevi, _rione_, 55 Tribune, 19, 36 Tribunes, 54 _Triclinium_, 35 Triumvirate, 123 Troy, 2 Tufa, 18, 23 _Turris Cartularia_, 161 Tuscans (Tuscany), 69, 125, 126, 129, 133, 188, 237 Tusculum, 39, 78, 166 Twelve Tables, 23 Ulpii, 45 Umbria, 148, 188 Unction, extreme, 192 Universities. _See_ Guilds and women, 155 Urban VIII., 9, 140, 171 Vandals, 9 Vatican, 28, 56, 58, 161, 163, 203, 205, 208, 211, 228, 230, 239, 241, 244, 247, 252, 254 Veii, 33, 72 Velabrum, 18 _Vendetta_, 149 Venice, Venetians, 125, 126, 132, 188 Venosa, _principe_, 170 Vespasian, 22, 28, 31, 33, 72, 154 Vesta, 181 Vestals, 2, 72, 154 Vestibulum, 35 Via Botteghe Oscure, 173; Julia, 173; Lata, 56; Monserrato, 160; Nazionale, 194, 160; dell' Orso, 9; Pilotta, 166; Plebiscito, 172; Quattro Fontane, 232; Quirinale, 166; Strozzi, 6; Viminale, 6 Viaticum, 12, 193, 230 _Vici_, 53 Vicovaro, 169 Victor Emmanuel II., 10, 169 _Vidua_, 46 _Vigiles_, 26, 54, 59 Villa Aldobrandini 171; Borghese, 171; Corsini, 171; Hadrian's, 32; Massimo, 6; Mondragone, 171; Pamfili-Doria, 73, 231 Villas, 33, 38, 39, 93, 94, 172, 174 Viminal hill, 5, 6, 53, 55 Vintage, 78 _Virgo, aqua_, 22 Vitiges, 37 Voices. _See_ Roman Volcanic rock, 17, 23, 25 Volcanoes, 17 Vulcan, 80, 88 Wagner and Germans, 190; and Italians, 124 Walls, 32, 38, 56, 93, 102, 163 Washing tubs, 102 Weavers, Guild of, 63 Windows in temples and churches, 19, 186 Wines, Roman, 79 Wiseman, Cardinal, 208 Wolf, the, 2 Women, Italian, 153, 155 Young Italy, 214, 215, 235, 242, 244, 246 Zagarolo, 166 Zitelle, 67 THE END _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_. 
5847	----	THE HEART OF ROME A Tale of the "Lost water" BY FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD Author of "Cecilia," "Saracinesca," "In the Palace of the King," Etc. THE HEART OF ROME CHAPTER I The Baroness Volterra drove to the Palazzo Conti in the heart of Rome at nine o'clock in the morning, to be sure of finding Donna Clementina at home. She had tried twice to telephone, on the previous afternoon, but the central office had answered that "the communication was interrupted." She was very anxious to see Clementina at once, in order to get her support for a new and complicated charity. She only wanted the name, and expected nothing else, for the Conti had very little ready money, though they still lived as if they were rich. This did not matter to their friends, but was a source of constant anxiety to their creditors, and to the good Pompeo Sassi, the steward of the ruined estate. He alone knew what the Conti owed, for none of them knew much about it themselves, though he had done his best to make the state of things clear to them. The big porter of the palace was sweeping the pavement of the great entrance, as the cab drove in. He wore his working clothes of grey linen with silver buttons bearing the ancient arms of his masters, and his third best gold-laced cap. There was nothing surprising in this, at such an early hour, and as he was a grave man with a long grey beard that made him look very important, the lady who drove up in the open cab did not notice that he was even more solemn than usual. When she appeared, he gave one more glance at the spot he had been sweeping, and then grounded his broom like a musket, folded his hands on the end of the broomstick and looked at her as if he wondered what on earth had brought her to the palace at that moment, and wished that she would take herself off again as soon as possible. He did not even lift his cap to her, yet there was nothing rude in his manner. He behaved like a man upon whom some one intrudes when he is in great trouble. The Baroness was rather more exigent in requiring respect from servants than most princesses of the Holy Roman Empire, for her position in the aristocratic scale was not very well defined. She was not pleased, and spoke with excessive coldness when she asked if Donna Clementina was at home. The porter stood motionless beside the cab, leaning on his broom. After a pause he said in a rather strange voice that Donna Clementina was certainly in, but that he could not tell whether she were awake or not. "Please find out," answered the Baroness, with impatience. "I am waiting," she added with an indescribable accent of annoyance and surprise, as if she had never been kept waiting before, in all the fifty years of her more or less fashionable life. There were speaking-tubes in the porter's lodge, communicating with each floor of the great Conti palace, but the porter did not move. "I cannot go upstairs and leave the door," he said. "You can speak to the servant through the tube, I suppose!" The porter slowly shook his massive head, and his long grey beard wagged from side to side. "There are no servants upstairs," he said. "There is only the family." "No servants? Are you crazy?" "Oh, no!" answered the man meditatively. "I do not think I am mad. The servants all went away last night after dinner, with their belongings. There were only sixteen left, men and women, for I counted them." "Do you mean to say--" The Baroness stopped in the middle of her question, staring in amazement. The porter now nodded, as solemnly as he had before shaken his head. "Yes. This is the end of the house of Conti." Then he looked at her as if he wished to be questioned, for he knew that she was not really a great lady, and guessed that in spite of her magnificent superiority and coldness she was not above talking to a servant about her friends. "But they must have somebody," she said. "They must eat, I suppose! Somebody must cook for them. They cannot starve!" "Who knows? Who knows? Perhaps they will starve." The porter evidently took a gloomy view of the case. "But why did the servants go away in a body?" asked the Baroness, descending from her social perch by the inviting ladder of curiosity. "They never were paid. None of us ever got our wages. For some time the family has paid nobody. The day before yesterday, the telephone company sent a man to take away the instrument. Then the electric light was cut off. When that happens, it is all over." The man had heard of the phenomenon from a colleague. "And there is nobody? They have nobody at all?" The Baroness had always been rich, and was really trying to guess what would happen to people who had no servants. "There is my wife," said the porter. "But she is old," he added apologetically, "and the palace is big. Can she sweep out three hundred rooms, cook for two families of masters and dress the Princess's hair? She cannot do it." This was stated with gloomy gravity. The Baroness also shook her head in sympathy. "There were sixteen servants in the house yesterday," continued the porter. "I remember when there were thirty, in the times of the old Prince." "There would be still, if the family had been wise," said the Baroness severely. "Is your wife upstairs?" "Who knows where she is?" enquired the porter by way of answer, and with the air of a man who fears that he may never see his wife again. "There are three hundred rooms. Who knows where she is?" The Baroness was a practical woman by nature and by force of circumstances; she made up her mind to go upstairs and see for herself how matters stood. The name of Donna Clementina might not just now carry much weight beside those of the patronesses of a complicated charitable organization; in fact the poor lady must be in a position to need charity herself rather than to dispense it to others. But the Baroness had a deep-rooted prejudice in favour of the old aristocracy, and guessed that it would afterwards be counted to her for righteousness if she could be the first to offer boundless sympathy and limited help to the distressed family. It would be thought distinctly smart, for instance, if she should take the Princess, or even one of the unmarried daughters, to her own house for a few days, as a refuge from the sordid atmosphere of debt and ruin, and beyond the reach of vulgar creditors, one of whom, by the way, she knew to be her own excellent husband. The Princess was probably not aware of that fact, for she had always lived in sublime ignorance of everything connected with money, even since her husband's death; and when good Pompeo Sassi tried to explain things, telling her that she was quite ruined, she never listened to what he said. If the family had debts, why did he not borrow money and pay them? That was what he was paid for doing, after all. It was true that he had not been paid for a year or two, but that was a wretched detail. Economy? Had not the Princess given up her second maid, as an extravagance? What more did the man expect? The Baroness knew all this and reflected upon what she knew, as she deliberately got out of her cab at the foot of the grand staircase. "I will go upstairs myself," she said. "Padrona," observed the porter, standing aside with his broom. He explained in a single word that she was at liberty to go upstairs if she chose, that it was not of the least use to go, and that he would not be responsible for any disappointment if she were afterwards not pleased. There is no language in the world which can say more in one word than the Italian, or less in ten thousand, according to the humour of the speaker. The Baroness took no notice as she went up the stairs. She was not very tall, and was growing slowly and surely stout, but she carried her rather large head high and had cultivated importance, as a fine art, with some success. She moved steadily, with a muffled sound as of voluminous invisible silk bellows that opened and shut at each step; her outer dress was sombre, but fashionable, and she wore a long gold chain of curious and fine workmanship to carry her hand-glass, for she was near-sighted. Her thick hair was iron-grey, her small round eyes were vaguely dark with greenish lights, her complexion was like weak coffee and milk, sallow, but smooth, even and healthy. She was a strong woman of fifty years, well used to the world and its ways; acquisitive, inquisitive and socially progressive; not knowing how to wish back anything from the past, so long as there was anything in the future to wish for; a good wife for an ambitious man. The magnificent marble staircase already looked neglected; there were deep shadows of dust in corners that should have been polished, there was a coat of grey dust on the head and shoulders of the colossal marble statue of Commodus in the niche on the first landing; in the great window over the next, the armorial crowned eagle of the Conti, cheeky, argent and sable, had a dejected look, as if he were moulting. It was in March, and though the sun was shining brightly outside, and the old porter wore his linen jacket, as if it were already spring, there was a cold draught down the staircase, and the Baroness instinctively made haste up the steps, and was glad when she reached the big swinging door covered with red baize and studded with smart brass nails, which gave access to the grand apartment. By force of habit, she opened it and went in. There used to be always two men in the outer hall, all day long, and sometimes four, ready to announce visitors or to answer questions, as the case might be. It was deserted now, a great, dismal, paved hall, already dingy with dust. One of the box-benches was open, and the tail of a footman's livery greatcoat which had been thrown in carelessly, hung over the edge and dragged on the marble floor. The Baroness realized that the porter had spoken the truth and that all the servants had left the house, as the rats leave a sinking ship. One must really have seen an old ship sink in harbour to know how the rats look, black and grey, fat and thin, old and young, their tiny beads of eyes glittering with fright as they scurry up the hatches and make for every deck port and scupper, scrambling and tumbling over each other till they flop into the water and swim away, racing for safety, each making a long forked wake on the smooth surface, with a steady quick ripple like the tearing of thin paper into strips. The strong middle-aged woman who stood alone in the empty hall knew nothing of sinking vessels or the ways of rats, but she had known incidentally of more than one catastrophe like this, in the course of her husband's ascendant career, and somehow he had always been mysteriously connected with each one. An evil-speaking old diplomatist had once said that he remembered Baron Volterra as a pawn-broking dealer in antiquities, in Florence, thirty years earlier; there was probably no truth in the story, but after Volterra was elected a Senator of the Kingdom, a member of the opposition had alluded to it with piquant irony and the result had been the exchange of several bullets at forty paces, whereby honour was satisfied without bloodshed. The seconds, who were well disposed to both parties, alone knew how much or how little powder there was in the pistols, and they were discreet men, who kept the secret. The door leading to the antechamber was wide open, and the Baroness went on deliberately, looking about through her hand-glass, in the half light, for the shutters were not all open. Dust everywhere, the dust that falls silently at night from the ancient wooden ceilings and painted beams of Roman palaces, the dust of centuries accumulated above and sifting for ever to the floors below. It was on the yellow marble pier tables, on the dim mirrors in their eighteenth century frames, on the high canopy draped with silver and black beneath which the effigy of another big cheeky eagle seemed to be silently moulting under his antique crown, the emblem of a race that had lived almost on the same spot for eight hundred years, through good and bad repute, but in nearly uninterrupted prosperity. The Baroness, who hankered after greatness, felt that the gloom was a twilight of gods. She stood still before the canopy, the symbol of princely rank and privilege, the invisible silk bellows were silent for a few seconds, and she wondered whether there were any procurable sum which she and her husband would grudge in exchange for the acknowledged right to display a crowned eagle, cheeky, argent and sable, in their hall, under a canopy draped with their own colours. She sighed, since no one could hear her, and she went on. The sigh was not only for the hopelessness of ever reaching such social greatness; it was in part the outward show of a real regret that it should have come to an untimely end. Her admiration of princes was as sincere as her longing to be one of them; she had at least the melancholy satisfaction of sympathizing with them in their downfall. It brought her a little nearer to them in imagination if not in fact. The evolution of the snob has been going on quickly of late, and quicker than ever since vast wealth has given so many of the species the balance of at least one sort of power in society. His thoughts are still the same, but his outward shape approaches strangely near to that of the human being. There are snobs now, who behave almost as nicely in the privacy of their homes as in the presence of a duchess. They are much more particular as to the way in which others shall behave to them. That is a test, by the bye. The snob thinks most of the treatment he receives from the world; the gentleman thinks first how he shall act courteously to others. The Baroness went on and entered the outer reception room, and looking before her she could see through the open doors of the succeeding drawing-rooms, where the windows had been opened or perhaps not closed on the previous evening. It was all vast, stately and deserted. Only ten days earlier she had been in the same place at a great reception, brilliant with beautiful women and handsome men, alive with the flashing of jewels and decorations in the vivid light, full of the discreet noise of society in good-humour, full of faces she knew, and voices familiar, and of the moonlight of priceless pearls and the sunlight of historic diamonds; all of which manifestations she dearly loved. Her husband had perhaps known what was coming, and how soon, but she had not. There was something awful in the contrast. As she went through one of the rooms a mouse ran from under the fringe of a velvet curtain and took refuge under an armchair. She had sat in that very chair ten days ago and the Russian ambassador had talked to her; she remembered how he had tried to extract information from her about the new issue of three and a half per cent national bonds, because her husband was one of the financiers who were expected to "manipulate" the loan. A portrait of a Conti in black velvet, by Velasquez, looked down, coldly supercilious, at the empty armchair under which the mouse was hiding. It could make no difference, great or small, to him, whether the Baroness Volterra ever sat there again to talk with an ambassador; he had sat where he pleased, undisturbed in his own house, to the end of his days, and no one can take the past from the dead, except a modern German historian. Not a sound broke the stillness, except the steady plash of the water falling into the fountain in the wide court, heard distinctly through the closed windows. The Baroness wondered if any one were awake except the old porter downstairs. She knew the house tolerably well. Only the Princess and her two unmarried daughters slept in the apartment she had entered, far off, at the very end, in rooms at the corner overlooking the small square and the narrow street. The rest of the old palace was surrounded by dark and narrow streets, but the court was wide and full of sunshine. The only son of the house, though he was now the Prince, lived on the floor above, with his young wife and their only child, in what had been a separate establishment, after the old Roman custom. The Baroness went to one of the embrasures of the great drawing-room and looked through the panes at the windows of the upper story. All that she could see were shut; there was not a sign of life in the huge building. Ruin had closed in upon it and all it held, softly, without noise and without pity. It was their own fault, of course, but the Baroness was sorry for them, for she was not quite heartless, in spite of her hard face. The gloomiest landscape must have a ray of light in it, somewhere. It was all their own fault; they should have known better; they should have counted what they had instead of spending what they had not. But their fall was great, as everything had been in their prosperity, and it was interesting to be connected with it. She faintly hoped Volterra would keep the palace now that they could certainly never pay any more interest on the mortgage, and it was barely possible that she might some day live in it herself, though she understood that it would be in very bad taste to occupy it at once. But this was unlikely, for her husband had a predilection for a new house, in the new part of the city, full of new furniture and modern French pictures. He had a pronounced dislike for old things, including old pictures and old jewellery, though he knew much about both. Possibly they reminded him of that absurd story, and of his duel at forty paces. Volterra would sell the palace to the Vatican, with everything in it, and would look about for another lucrative investment. The Vatican bought all the palaces in the market for religious institutions, and when there were not enough "it" built the finest buildings in Rome for its own purposes. Volterra was mildly anti-clerical in politics, but he was particularly fond of dealing with the Vatican for real estate. The Vatican was a most admirable house of business, in his estimation, keen, punctual and always solvent; it was good for a financier to be associated with such an institution. It drove a hard bargain, but there was never any hesitation about fulfilling its obligations to the last farthing. Dreaming over one of his enormous Havanas after a perfect dinner, Baron Volterra, Senator of the Kingdom of Italy, often wondered whether the prosperity of the whole world would not be vastly increased if the Vatican would consent to be the general financial agent for the European nations. Such stability as there would be, such order! Above all, such guarantees of good faith! Besides all that, there were its cordial relations with the United States, that is to say, with the chief source of the world's future wealth! The Senator's strongly-marked face grew sweetly thoughtful as he followed his own visions in the air, and when his wife spoke of living in an antiquated Roman palace and buying an estate with an old title attached to it, which the King might graciously be pleased to ratify, he playfully tapped his wife's sallow cheek with two fat fingers and smiled in a way that showed how superior he was to such weakness. It was not even worth while to say anything. Once more the Baroness sighed as she turned from the window. She meant to have her own way in the end, but it was hard to wait so long. She turned from the window, glanced at a beautiful holy family by Bonifazio which hung on the opposite wall above an alabaster table, estimated its value instinctively and went on into the next drawing-room. As she passed through the door, a low cry of pain made her start and hesitate, and she stood still. The degree of her acquaintance with the members of the family was just such that she would not quite dare to intrude upon them if they had given way to an expression of pardonable weakness under their final misfortune, whereas if they were bearing it with reasonable fortitude she could allow herself to offer her sympathy and even some judicious help. She stood still and the sound was repeated, the pitiful little tearless complaint of a young thing suffering alone. It was somewhere in the big room, hidden amongst the furniture; which was less stiffly arranged here than in the outer apartments. There were books and newspapers on the table, the fireplace was half-full of the ashes of a burnt-out fire, there were faded flowers in a tall vase near the window, there was the undefinable presence of life in the heavier and warmer air. At first the Baroness had thought that the cry came from some small animal, hurt and forgotten there in the great catastrophe; a moment later she was sure that there was some one in the room. She moved cautiously forward in the direction whence the sound had come. Then she saw the edge of a fawn-coloured cloth skirt on the red carpet by an armchair. She went on, hesitating no longer. She had seen the frock only a day or two ago, and it belonged to Sabina Conti. A very fair young girl was kneeling in the shadow, crouching over something on the floor. Her hair was like the pale mist in the morning, tinged with gold. She was very slight, and as she bent down, her slender neck was dazzling white above the collar of her frock. She was trembling a little. "My dear Sabina, what has happened?" asked the Baroness Volterra, leaning over her with an audible crack in the region of the waist. At the words the girl turned up her pale face, without the least start of surprise. "It is dead," she said, in a very low voice. The Baroness looked down, and saw a small bunch of yellow feathers lying on the floor at the girl's knees; the poor little head with its colourless beak lay quite still on the red carpet, turned upon one side, as if it were resting. "A canary," observed the Baroness, who had never had a pet in her life, and had always wondered how any one could care for such stupid things. But the violet eyes gazed up to hers reproachfully and wonderingly. "It is dead." That should explain everything; surely the woman must understand. Yet there was no response. The Baroness stood upright again, grasping her parasol and looking down with a sort of respectful indifference. Sabina said nothing, but took up the dead bird very tenderly, as if it could still feel that she loved it, and she pressed it softly to her breast, bending her head to it, and then kissing the yellow feathers. When it was alive it used to nestle there, almost as it lay now. It had been very tame. "I suppose a cat killed it," said the Baroness, wishing to say something. Sabina shook her head. She had found it lying there, not wounded, its feathers not torn--just dead. It was of no use to answer. She rose to her feet, still holding the tiny body against her bosom, and she looked at the Baroness, mutely asking what had brought her there, and wishing that she would go away. "I came to see your sister," said the elder woman, with something like apology in the tone. Sabina was still very pale, and her delicate lips were pressed together, but there were no tears in her eyes, as she waited for the Baroness to say more. "Then I heard the bad news," the latter continued. "I heard it from the porter." Sabina looked at her quietly. If she had heard the bad news, why had she not gone away? The Baroness began to feel uncomfortable. She almost quailed before the pale girl of seventeen, slender as a birch sapling in her light frock. "It occurred to me," she continued nervously, "that I might be of use." "You are very kind," Sabina answered, with the faintest air of surprise, "but I really do not see that you could do anything." "Perhaps your mother would allow you to spend a few days with me--until things are more settled," suggested the Baroness. "Thank you very much. I do not think she would like that. She would not wish me to be away from her just now, I am sure. Why should I leave her?" The Baroness Volterra did not like to point out that the Princess Conti might soon be literally homeless. "May I ask your mother?" she enquired. "Should you like to come to me for a few days?" "If my mother wishes it." "But should you like to come?" persisted the elder woman. "If my mother thinks it is best," answered Sabina, avoiding the Baroness's eyes, as she resolutely avoided answering the direct question. But the Baroness was determined if possible to take in one of the family, and it had occurred to her that Sabina would really be less trouble than her mother or elder sister. Clementina was the eldest and was already looked upon as an old maid. She was intensely devout, and that was always troublesome, for it meant that she would insist upon going to church at impossibly early hours, and must have fish-dinners on Fridays. But it would certainly be conferring a favour on the Princess to take Sabina off her hands at such a time. The devout Clementina could take care of herself. With her face, the Baroness reflected, she would be safe among Cossacks; besides, she could go into a retreat, and stay there, if necessary. Sabina was quite different. The Princess thought so too, as it turned out. Sabina took the visitor to her mother's door, knocked, opened and then went away, still pressing her dead canary to her bosom, and infinitely glad to be alone with it at last. There was confusion in the Princess Conti's bedroom, the amazing confusion which boils up about an utterly careless woman of the great world, if she be accidentally left without a maid for twenty-four hours. It seemed as if everything the Princess possessed in the way of clothes, necessary and unnecessary, had been torn from wardrobes and chests of drawers by a cyclone and scattered in every direction, till there was not space to move or sit down in a room which was thirty feet square. Princess Conti was a very stout woman of about the same age as her visitor, but not resembling her in the least. She had been beautiful, and still kept the dazzling complexion and magnificent eyes for which she had been famous. It was her boast that she slept eight hours every night, without waking, whatever happened, and she always advised everybody to do the same, with an airy indifference to possibilities which would have done credit to a doctor. She was dressed, or rather wrapped, in a magnificent purple velvet dressing-gown, trimmed with sable, and tied round her ample waist with a silver cord; her rather scanty grey hair stood out about her head like a cloud in a high wind; and her plump hands were encased in a pair of old white gloves, which looked oddly out of place. She was standing in the middle of the room, and she smiled calmly as the Baroness entered. On a beautiful inlaid table beside her stood a battered brass tray with an almost shapeless little brass coffee-pot, a common earthenware cup, chipped at the edges, and three pieces of doubtful-looking sugar in a tiny saucer, also of brass. The whole had evidently been brought from a small cafe near by, which had long been frequented by the servants from the palace. Judging from her smile, the Princess seemed to think total ruin rather an amusing incident. She had always complained that the Romans were very dull; for she was not a Roman herself, but came of a very great old Polish family, the members of which had been distinguished for divers forms of amiable eccentricity during a couple of centuries. She looked at the Baroness, and smiled pleasantly, showing her still perfect teeth. "I always said that this would happen," she observed. "I always told my poor husband so." As the Prince had been dead ten years, the Baroness thought that he might not be wholly responsible for the ruin of his estate, but she discreetly avoided the suggestion. She began to make a little apology for her visit. "But I am delighted to see you!" cried the Princess. "You can help me to pack. You know I have not a single maid, not a woman in the house, nor a man either. Those ridiculous servants fled last night as if we had the plague!" "So you are going out of town?" enquired the Baroness, laying down her parasol. "Of course. Clementina has decided to be a nun, and is going to the convent this morning. So sensible of her, poor dear! It is true that she has made up her mind to do it three or four times before now, but the circumstances were different, and I hope this will be final. She will be much happier." The Princess stirred the muddy coffee in the chipped earthenware cup, and then sipped it thoughtfully, sipped it again, and made a face. "You see my breakfast," she said, and then laughed, as if the shabby brass tray were a part of the train of amusing circumstances. "The porter's wife went and got it at some dirty little cafe," she added. "How dreadful!" exclaimed the Baroness, with more real sympathy in her voice than she had yet shown. "I assure you," the Princess answered serenely, "that I am glad to have any coffee at all. I always told poor dear Paolo that it would come to this." She swallowed the rest of the coffee with a grimace, and set down the cup. Then, with the most natural gesture in the world, she pushed the tray a little way across the inlaid table, towards the Baroness, as she would have pushed it towards her maid, and as if she wished the thing taken away. She did it merely from force of habit, no doubt. Baroness Volterra understood well enough, and for a moment she affected not to see. The Princess had the blood of Polish kings in her veins, mingled with that of several mediatized princes, but that was no reason why she should treat a friend like a servant; especially as the friend's husband practically owned the palace and its contents, and had lent the money with which the high and mighty lady and her son had finally ruined themselves. Yet so overpowering is the moral domination of the born aristocrat over the born snob, that the Baroness changed her mind, and humbly took the obnoxious tray away and set it down on another table near the door. "Thank you so much," said the Princess graciously. "It smells, you know." "Of course," answered the Baroness. "It is not coffee at all! It is made of chicory and acorns." "I do not know what it is made of," said the Princess, without interest, "but it has an atrociously bad smell, and it has made a green stain on my handkerchief." She looked at the bit of transparently fine linen with which she had touched her lips, and threw it under the table. "And Sabina?" began the Baroness. "What shall you do with her?" "I wish I knew! You see, my daughter-in-law has a little place somewhere in the Maremma. It is an awful hole, I believe, and very unhealthy, but we shall have to stay there for a few days. Then I shall go to Poland and see my brother. I am sure he can arrange everything at once, and we shall come back to Rome in the autumn, of course, just as usual. Sassi told me only last week that two or three millions would be enough. And what is that? My brother is so rich!" The stout Princess shrugged her shoulders carelessly, as if a few millions of francs more or less could really not be such a great matter. Somebody had always found money for her to spend, and there was no reason why obliging persons should not continue to do the same. The Baroness showed no surprise, but wondered whether the Princess might not have to lunch, and dine too, on some nauseous little mess brought to her on a battered brass tray. It was quite possible that she might not find five francs in her purse; it was equally possible that she might find five thousand; the only thing quite sure was that she had not taken the trouble to look, and did not care a straw. "Can I be of any immediate use?" asked the Baroness with unnecessary timidity. "Do you need ready money?" "Ready money?" echoed the Princess with alacrity. "Of course I do! I told you, Sassi says that two or three millions would be enough to go on with." "I did not mean that. I am afraid--" "Oh!" ejaculated the Princess with a little disappointment. "Nothing else would be of any use. Of course I have money for any little thing I need. There is my purse. Do you mind looking? I know I had two or three thousand francs the other day. There must be something left. Please count it. I never can count right, you know." The Baroness took up the mauve morocco pocket-book to which the Princess pointed. It had a clasp in which a pretty sapphire was set; she opened it and took out a few notes and silver coins, which she counted. "There are fifty-seven francs," she said. "Is that all?" asked the Princess with supreme indifference. "How very odd!" "You can hardly leave Rome with so little," observed the Baroness. "Will you not allow me to lend you five hundred? I happen to have a five hundred franc note in my purse, for I was going to pay a bill on my way home." "Thanks," said the Princess. "That will save me the trouble of sending for Sassi. He always bores me dreadfully with his figures. Thank you very much." "Not at all, dear friend," the Baroness answered. "It is a pleasure, I assure you. But I had thought of asking if you would let Sabina come and stay with me for a little while, until your affairs are more settled." "Oh, would you do that?" asked the Princess with something like enthusiasm. "I really do not know what to do with the girl. Of course, I could take her to Poland and marry her there, but she is so peculiar, such a strange child, not at all like me. It really would be immensely kind of you to take her, if your husband does not object." "He will be delighted." "Yes," acquiesced the Princess calmly. "You see," she continued in a meditative tone, "if I sent her to stay with any of our cousins here, I am sure they would ask her all sorts of questions about our affairs, and she is so silly that she would blurt out everything she fancied she knew, whether it were true or not--about my son and his wife, you know, and then, the money questions. Poor Sabina! she has not a particle of tact! It really would be good of you to take her. I shall be so grateful." "I will bring my maid to pack her things," suggested the Baroness. "Yes. If she could only help me to pack mine too! Do you think she would?" "Of course!" "You are really the kindest person in the world," said the Princess. "I was quite in despair, when you came. Just look at those things!" She pointed to the chairs and sofas, covered with clothes and dresses. "But your boxes, where are they?" asked the Baroness. "I have not the least idea! I sent the porter's wife to try and find them, but she has never come back. She is so stupid, poor old thing!" "I think I had better bring a couple of men-servants," said the Baroness. "They may be of use. Should you like my carriage to take you to the station? Anything I can do--" The Princess stared, as if quite puzzled. "Thanks, but we have plenty of horses," she said. "Yes, but you said that all your servants had left last night. I supposed the coachman and grooms were gone too." "I daresay they are!" The Princess laughed. "Then we will go in cabs. It will be very amusing. By the bye, I wonder whether those brutes of men thought of leaving the poor horses anything to eat, and water! I must really go and see. Poor beasts! They will be starving. Will you come with me?" She moved towards the door, really very much concerned, for she loved horses. "Will you go down like that?" asked the Baroness aghast, glancing at the purple velvet dressing-gown, and noticing, as the Princess moved, that her feet, on which she wore small kid slippers, were stockingless. "Why not? I shall not catch cold. I never do." The Baroness would have given anything to be above caring whether any one should ever see her, or not, on the stairs of her house in a purple dressing-gown, without stockings and with her hair standing on end; and she pondered on the ways of the aristocracy she adored, especially as represented by her Excellency Marie-Sophie-Hedwige-Zenaide-Honorine-Pia Rubomirska, Dowager Princess Conti. Ever afterwards she associated purple velvet and bare feet with the idea of financial catastrophe, knowing in her heart that even ruin would seem bearable if it could bring her such magnificent indifference to the details of commonplace existence. At that moment, however, she felt that she was in the position of a heaven-sent protectress to the Princess. "No," she said firmly. "I will go myself to the stables, and the porter shall feed the horses if there is no groom. You really must not go downstairs looking like that!" "Why not?" asked the Princess, surprised. "But of course, if you will be so kind as to see whether the horses need anything, it is quite useless for me to go myself. You will promise? I am sure they are starving by this time." The Baroness promised solemnly, and said that she would come back within an hour, with her servants, to take away Sabina and to help the Princess's preparations. In consideration of all she was doing the Princess kissed her on both her sallow cheeks as she took her leave. The Princess attached no importance at all to this mark of affectionate esteem, but it pleased the Baroness very much. Just as the latter was going away, the door opened suddenly, and a weak-looking young man put in his head. "Mamma! Mamma!" he cried, in a thin tone of distress, almost as if he were going to cry. He was nearly thirty years old, though he looked younger. He was thin, and pale, with a muddy and spotted complexion, and his scanty black hair grew far back on his poorly developed forehead. His eyes had a look that was half startled, half false. Though he was carefully dressed he had not shaved, because he could not shave himself and his valet had departed with the rest of the servants. He was the Princess's only son, himself the present Prince, and the heir of all the Conti since the year eleven hundred. "Mamma!" "What is the matter, sweetheart?" asked the Princess, with ready sympathy. "Your hands are quite cold! Are you ill?" "The child! Something has happened to it--we do not know--it looks so strange--its eyes are turned in and it is such a dreadful colour--do come--" But the Princess was already on her way, and he spoke the last words as he ran after her. She turned her head as she went on. "For heaven's sake send a doctor!" she cried to the Baroness, and in a moment she was gone, with the weak young man close at her side. The Baroness nodded quickly, and when all three reached the door she left the two to go upstairs and ran down, with a tremendous puffing of the invisible silk bellows. "The Prince's little girl is very ill," she said, as she passed the porter, who was now polishing the panes of glass in the door of his lodge, because he had done the same thing every morning for twenty years. He almost dropped the dingy leather he was using, but before he could answer, the cab passed out, bearing the Baroness on her errand. CHAPTER II Signor Pompeo Sassi sat in his dingy office and tore his hair, in the good old literal Italian sense. His elbows rested on the shabby black oilcloth glued to the table, and his long knotted fingers twisted his few remaining locks, on each side of his head, in a way that was painful to see. From time to time he desisted for an instant, and held up his open hands, the fingers quivering with emotion, and his watery eyes were turned upwards, too, as if directing an unspoken prayer to the dusty rafters of the ceiling. The furrows had deepened of late in his respectable, trust-inspiring face, and he was as thin as a skeleton in leather. His heart was broken. On the big sheet of thick hand-made paper, that lay on the desk, scribbled over with rough calculations in violet ink, there were a number of trial impressions of the old stamp he had once been so proud to use. It bore a rough representation of the Conti eagle, encircled by the legend: "Eccellentissima Casa Conti." When his eyes fell upon it, they filled with tears. The Most Excellent House of Conti had come to a pitiful end, and it had been Pompeo Sassi's unhappy fate to see its fall. Judging from his looks, he was not to survive the catastrophe very long. He loved the family, and yet he disliked every member of it personally except Sabina. He loved the "Eccellentissima Casa," the checky eagle, the Velasquez portraits and his dingy office, but he never had spoken with the Princess, her son, his wife, or his sister Clementina, without a distinct feeling of disapproving aversion. The old Prince had been different. In him Sassi had still been able to respect those traditional Ciceronian virtues which were inculcated with terrific severity in the Roman youth of fifty years ago. But the Prince had died prematurely at the age of fifty, and with him the Ciceronian traditions had ended in Casa Conti, and their place had been taken by the caprices of the big, healthy, indolent, extravagant Polish woman, by the miserable weaknesses of a degenerate heir, and the fanatic religious practices of Donna Clementina. Sassi was sure that they all three hated him or despised him, or both; yet they could not spare him. For different reasons, they all needed money, and they had long been used to believing that no one but Sassi could get it for them, since no one else knew how deeply the family was involved. He always made difficulties, he protested, he wrung his hands, he warned, he implored; but caprice, vice and devotion always overcame his objections, and year after year the exhausted estate was squeezed and pressed and mortgaged and sold, till it had yielded the uttermost farthing. Then, one day, the whole organization of Casa Conti stood still; the unpaid servants fled, the unpaid tradesmen refused to trust any longer, the unpaid holders of mortgages foreclosed, the Princess departed to Poland, the Prince slunk away to live on what was left of his wife's small estate, Donna Clementina buried herself in a convent to which she had given immense sums, the Conti palace was for sale, and Pompeo Sassi sat alone in his office, tearing his hair, while the old porter sat in his lodge downstairs peeling potatoes. It was not for himself that the old steward of the estate was in danger of being totally bald. He had done for himself what others would not allow him to do for them, a proceeding which affords some virtuous people boundless satisfaction, though it procured him none at all. He was provided for in his old age. During more than thirty years he had saved and scraped and invested and added to the little sum of money left him by his father, an honest old notary of the old school, until he possessed what was a very comfortable competence for a childless old man. He had a small house of his own near the Pantheon, in which he occupied two rooms, letting the rest, and he had a hundred thousand francs in government bonds, besides a few acres of vineyard on the slope of Monte Mario. More than once, in the sincerity of his devotion to the family he served, he had thought of sacrificing all he possessed in an attempt to stave off final ruin; but a very little reflection had convinced him that all he had would be a mere drop in the flood of extravagance, and would forthwith disappear with the rest into the bottomless pit of debt. Even that generous temptation was gone now. The house having collapsed, its members appeared to him only in their true natures, a good-for-nothing young man, tainted with a mortal disease, a foolish mother, a devout spinster threatened with religious mania, and the last descendant of the great old race, one little girl-child not likely to live, and perhaps better dead. In their several ways they had treated him as the contemptible instrument of their inclinations; they were gone from his life and he was glad of it, when he thought of each one separately. Yet, collectively, he wished them all in the palace again, even a month ago, even on the day before the exodus; good, bad, indifferent, no matter what, they had been Casa Conti still, to the end, the family he had served faithfully, honestly and hopelessly for upwards of a third of a century. That might seem to be inconsistent, but it was the only consistency he had ever known, and it was loyalty, of a kind. But there was one whom he wished back for her own sake; there was Donna Sabina. When he thought of her, his hands fell from his head at last, and folded themselves over the scrawled figures on the big sheet of paper, and he looked long and steadily at them, without seeing them at all. He wondered what would become of her. He had seen her on the last day and he should never forget it. Before going away with the Baroness Volterra she had found her way to his dark office, and had stood a few moments before the shabby old table, with a small package in her hand. He could see the slight figure still, when he closed his eyes, and her misty hair against the cold light of the window. She had come to ask him if he would bury her dead canary, somewhere under the sky where there was grass and it would not be disturbed. Where could she bury it, down in the heart of Rome? She had wrapped it in a bit of pink satin and had laid it in a little brown cardboard box which had been full of chocolates from Ronzi and Singer's in Piazza Colonna. She pushed back the lid a finger's breadth and he saw the pink satin for a second. She laid the box before him. Would he please do what she asked? Very timidly she slipped a simple little ring off her finger, one of those gold ones with the sacred monogram which foreigners insist upon calling "Pax." She said she had bought it with her own money, and could give it away. She wished to give it to him. He protested, refused, but the fathomless violet eyes gazed into his very reproachfully. He had always been so kind to her, she said; would he not keep the little ring to remember her by? So he had taken it, and that same day he had gone all the way to his lonely vineyard on Monte Mario carrying the chocolate box in his hands, and he had buried it under the chestnut-tree at the upper end, where there was some grass; and the breeze always blew there on summer afternoons. Then he had sat on the roots of the tree for a while, looking towards Rome. He would have plenty of time to go to the vineyard now, for in a little while he should have nothing to do, as the palace was going to be sold. When he got home, he wrote a formal letter to Donna Sabina, informing her that he had fulfilled the commands she had deigned to give him, and ventured to subscribe himself her Excellency's most devoted, humble and grateful servant, as indeed he was, from the bottom of his heart. In twenty-four hours he received a note from her, written in a delicate tall hand, not without character, on paper bearing the address of Baron Volterra's house in Via Ludovisi. She thanked him in few words, warmly and simply. He read the note several times and then put it away in an old-fashioned brass-bound secretary, of which he always kept the key in his pocket. It was the only word of thanks he had received from any living member of the Conti family. A month had passed since then, but as he sat at his desk it was all as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. He was in his office to-day because he had received notice that some one was coming to look at the palace with a view to buying it, and he considered it his duty to show it to possible purchasers. Baron Volterra had sent him word in the morning, and he had come early. Then, as he sat in his old place, the ruin of the great house had enacted itself again before his eyes, so vividly that the pain had been almost physical. And then, he had fallen to thinking of Sabina, and wondering what was to become of her. That was the history of one half-hour in his life, on a May afternoon; but the whole man was in it, what he had been thirty years earlier, and a month ago, what he was to-day and what he would be to the end of his life. CHAPTER III If Sabina had known what was before her when she got into the Baroness Volterra's carriage and was driven up to the Via Ludovisi, followed by a cab with her luggage, she would probably have begged leave to go with her elder sister to the convent. Her mother would most likely have refused the permission, and she would have been obliged to accept the Volterras' hospitality after all, but she would have had the satisfaction of having made an effort to keep her freedom before entering into what she soon looked upon as slavery. Her mother would have considered this another evidence of the folly inherent in all the Conti family. Sabina lived in a luxurious house, she was treated with consideration, she saw her friends, and desirable young men saw her. What more could she wish? All this was true. The Baroness was at great pains to make much of her, and the Baron's manner to her was at once flattering, respectful and paternal. During the first few days she had discovered that if she accidentally expressed the smallest wish it was instantly fulfilled, and this was so embarrassing that she had since taken endless pains never to express any wish at all. Moreover not the slightest allusion to the misfortunes of her family was ever made before her, and if she was in total ignorance of the state of affairs, she was at least spared the humiliation of hearing that the palace was for sale, and might be sold any day, to any one who would pay the price asked. From time to time the Baroness said she hoped that Sabina had good news of her mother, but showed no curiosity in the matter, and the girl always answered that she believed her mother to be quite well. Indeed she did believe it, for she supposed that if the Princess were ill some one would let her know. She wrote stiff little letters herself, every Sunday morning, and addressed them to her uncle's place in Poland; but no one ever took the least notice of these conscientious communications, and she wondered why she sent them, after all. It was a remnant of the sense of duty to her parents instilled into her in the convent, and she could not help clinging to it still, from habit. She had a few friends of her own age, and they came to see her now and then. They were mostly companions of her recent convent days, and they asked her many questions, to most of which she had no answer. She noticed that they looked surprised, but they were well brought up girls, and kept their reflections to themselves, until they were at home. The Conti had fewer near relations than most Roman families, for of late they had not been numerous. The Prince's only sister had died childless, the dowager Princess was a Pole, and her daughter-in-law was a Tuscan. Sabina and her generation had therefore no first cousins; and those who were one degree or more removed were glad that they had not been asked to take charge of the girl after the catastrophe. It would have been all very well merely to give her a room and a place at table, but the older ones shook their heads, and said that before long the Baroness Volterra would have to dress her too, and give her pocket-money. Her good-for-nothing brother would not do anything for her, if he could, and the Princess, who was amusing herself in Poland, if not in Paris, was capable of forgetting her existence for a year at a time. All these things greatly enhanced the outward and visible merit of the Volterra couple, but made Sabina's position daily less endurable. So the Baroness laid up treasures in heaven while Sabina unwillingly stored trouble on earth. She was proud, to begin with. It was bad enough to have been ordered by her mother to accept the hospitality of people she did not like, but it was almost unbearable to realize by degrees that she was living on their effusive charity. If she had been as vain as she was proud, she would probably have left their house to take refuge in her sister's convent, for her vanity could not have borne the certainty that all society knew what her position was. The foundation of pride is the wish to respect oneself, whatever others may think; the mainspring of vanity is the craving for the admiration of others, no matter at what cost to one's self-respect. In the Conti family these qualities and defects were unevenly distributed, for while pride seemed to have been left out in the character of Sabina's brother, who was vain and arrogant, she herself was as unspoilt by vanity as she was plentifully supplied with the characteristic which is said to have caused Lucifer's fall, but which has been the mainstay of many a greatly-tempted man and woman. Perhaps what is a fault in angels may seem to be almost a virtue in humanity, compared with the meanness of worse failings. Sabina was not suspicious, yet she could not help wondering why the Baroness had been so very anxious to take her in, and sometimes she thought that the object might be to marry her to one of Volterra's two sons. One was in a cavalry regiment stationed in Turin, the other was in the diplomacy and was now in Washington. They were both doing very well in their careers and their father and mother often talked of them. The Baron was inclined to be playful now and then. "Ah, my dear young lady," he would cry, shaking one fat finger at Sabina across the dinner table, "take care, take care! You will lose your heart to both my boys and sow discord in my family!" At this he never failed to laugh, and his wife responded with a smile of motherly pride, followed by a discreet side glance at Sabina's delicate face. Then the finely-pencilled eyebrows were just the least bit more arched for a second, and the slender neck grew slightly straighter, but that was all, and the Baron did not even see the change. Sometimes Sabina said nothing, but sometimes she asked if the sons were coming home on leave. No, they were not coming at present. In the spring Volterra and his wife generally spent a few weeks in Turin, to see the elder son, on their way to Aix and Paris, but his brother could hardly expect to come home for another year. Then the couple would talk about both the young men, until Sabina's attention wandered, and she no longer heard what they were saying. She did not believe that they really thought of trying to marry her to one of the sons. In her own opinion they could gain nothing by it; she had no dowry now, and her mother had always talked of marriage as a business transaction. It did not occur to her that they could care to be allied with a ruined family, and that her mere name could be worth anything in their scale of values. They were millionaires, of course, and even the dowry which she might formerly have expected would have been nothing compared with their fortune; but her mother had always said that rich people were the very people who cared the most for money. That was the reason why they were rich. This explanation was so logical that Sabina had accepted it as the true one. Her knowledge of the world was really limited to what she had learned from her mother, after she had come back from the convent six months before the crash, and it was an odd mixture of limitations and exaggerations. When the Princess was in a good humour she believed in everybody; when she was not, which was when she had no money to throw away, she attributed the basest motives to all mankind. According to her moods, she had encouraged Sabina to look forward to a life of perpetual pleasure, or had assured her with energy that all men were liars, and that the world was a wretched place after all. It was true that the Princess entertained the cheerful view more often than not, which was perhaps fortunate for her daughter; but in her heart the young girl felt that she would have to rely on her own common sense to form any opinion of life, and as her position became more difficult, while the future did not grow more defined, she tried to think connectedly about it all, and to reach some useful conclusion. It was not easy. In her native city, living under the roof of people who held a strong position in the society to which she belonged, though they had not been born to it, she was as completely isolated as if she had been suddenly taken away and set down amongst strangers in Australia. She was as lonely as she could have been on a desert island. The Volterra couple were radically, constitutionally, congenitally different from the men and women she had seen in her mother's house. She could not have told exactly where the difference lay, for she was too young, and perhaps too simple. She did not instinctively like them, but she had never really felt any affection for her mother either, and her own brother and sister had always repelled her. Her mother had sometimes treated her like a toy, but more often as a nuisance and a hindrance in life, to be kept out of the way as much, as possible, and married off on the first opportunity. Yet Sabina knew that far down in her nature there was a mysterious tie of some sort, an intuition that often told her what her mother would say or do, though she herself would have spoken and acted otherwise. She had felt it even with her brother and sister, but she could not feel it at all with the Baron or his wife. She never could guess what they might do or say under the most ordinary circumstances, nor what things they would like and dislike, nor how they would regard anything she said or did; least of all could she understand why they were so anxious to keep her with them. It was all a mystery, but life itself was mysterious, and she was little more than a child in years though she had never had what one calls a real childhood. She often used to sit by her window, the sliding blinds partly drawn together, but leaving a space through which she could look down at the city, with a glimpse of Saint Peter's in the distance against the warm haze of the low Campagna. Rome seemed as far from her then as if she saw it in a vision a thousand miles away, and the very faint sounds from the distance were like voices in a dream. Then, if she closed her eyes a moment, she could see the dark streets about the Palazzo Conti, and the one open corner of the palace, high up in the sunlight; she could smell the acrid air that used to come up to her in the early morning when the panes were opened, damp and laden with odours not sweet but familiar in the heart of Rome; odours compounded of cabbages, stables, cheese and mud, and occasionally varied by the fumes of roasting coffee, or the sour vapours from a wine cart that was unloading stained casks, all wet with red juice, at the door of the wine shop far below, a dark little wine shop with a dry bush stuck out through a smoky little grated window, and a humble sign displaying the prices of drink in roughly painted blue and red figures. For her room had looked upon the narrowest and darkest of the streets, though it had been stately enough within, and luxuriously furnished, besides containing some objects of value and beauty over which there would be much bidding and squabbling of amateurs and experts when the great sale took place. It had been gloomy and silent and loveless, the life down there; and yet she would have gone back to it if she could, from the sunshine of the Via Ludovisi, and from the overpowering freshness of the Volterra house, where everything was modern, and polished, and varnished, and in perfect condition, suggesting that things had been just paid for. She had not liked the old life, but she liked her present surroundings even less, and at times she felt a furious longing to leave them suddenly, without warning; to go out when no one would notice her, and never to come back; to go she knew not where, out into the world, risking she knew not what, a high-born, penniless, fair-haired girl not yet eighteen. What would happen, if she did? She rarely laughed, but she would laugh at that, when she thought of the consternation her flight would produce. How puzzled the fat Baron would look, how the Baroness's thin mouth would be drawn down at the corners! How the invisible silk bellows would puff as she ran up and down stairs, searching the house for Sabina! There was more than one strain of wild blood in the delicate girl's veins, and the spring had come suddenly, with a bursting out of blossom and life and colour, and a twittering of nesting birds in the old gardens, and a rush of strange longings in her heart. Then Sabina told herself that there was nothing to keep her where she was, but her own will, and that no one would really care what became of her in the wide world; certainly not her mother, who had never written her so much as a line, nor sent her a message, since they had parted on the day of the catastrophe; certainly not her brother; probably not even her sister, whose whole being was absorbed in the tyrannical government of what she called her soul. Sabina, in her thoughts, irreverently compared Clementina's soul to a race-horse, and her sister to a jockey, riding it cruelly with whip and spur to the goal of salvation, whether it liked it or not. Sabina rose from her seat by the window, when she thought of liberty, and she walked up and down her room, driven by something she could not understand, and yet withheld by something she understood even less. For it was not fear, nor reflection, nor even common sense nor the thought of giving pain to any one that hindered her from leaving the house at such moments. It was not even the memory of the one human being who had hitherto loved her, and for whom she had felt affection and gratitude,--one of the nuns at the convent school, a brave, quiet little lady who made her believe in good. She meant to do no harm if she were free, and the nun would not really blame her, if she knew the truth. It was not that. It was the secret conviction that there was harm in the world from which mere courage could not protect her; it was the sort of instinct that warns young animals not to eat plants that are poisonous; it was the maiden intuition of a strange and unknown danger. She sat down again disconsolately. It was absurd, of course, and she could not run away. Where could she go? She had no money, and she would have to starve or beg before one day was out. She would be homeless, she would be driven to some house of charity, for a meal and a place to sleep, or else to sleep out under the sky. That would be delightful for once. She had always longed to sleep out of doors, to feel the breeze playing with her feathery hair in the dark, to watch the constellations turning slowly westwards, to listen to the night sounds, to the low rhythmical piping of the tree toad, the sorrowful cry of the little southern owl and the tolling of the hour in a far-off belfry. But it might rain. At the idea, Sabina laughed again. It would be very unpleasant to be caught in a shower while napping on a bench in a public garden. Besides, if the policemen found her there, an extremely young lady, extremely well dressed but apparently belonging to no one, they would in all likelihood ask her name, and she would have to tell them who she was; and then she would be brought back to Baron Volterra's house, unless they thought it more prudent to take her to a lunatic asylum. At that stage in her imaginings it was generally time to go out with the Baroness for the daily drive, which began with the leaving of cards and notes, then led to the country or one of the villas, and generally ended in a turn or two through the Corso before coming home. The worst part of the daily round was dinner when the Baron was at home. It was then that she felt most strongly the temptation to slip out of the house and never to come back. Often, however, he and his wife dined out, and then Sabina was served alone by two solemn men-servants, so extremely correct that they reminded her a little of her old home. These were the pleasantest evenings she spent during that spring, for when dinner was over she was free to go to her own room and curl herself up in a big armchair with a book, and read or dream till bedtime, as she pleased. When she was alone, her life seemed less objectless, less inexplicably empty, less stupidly incomprehensible, less lonely than in the company of those excellent people with whom she had nothing in common, but to whom she felt that she was under a great obligation. In their company, it was as if her life had stopped suddenly at the beginning and was never to go on again, as if she had stuck fast like a fly in a drop of amber, as if nothing of interest could ever happen to her though she might live a hundred years. She could hardly remember anything which had given her great pleasure. She did not remember to have been ever radiantly happy, though she could not recall much unhappiness since she had left the convent school. The last thing that had really hurt her had been the death of her pet canary, and she had kept her feelings to herself as well as she could, with the old aristocratic instinct of hiding pain. It was all idle and strangely empty, and yet hard to understand. She would have been much surprised if she could have guessed how much its emptiness interested other people in Rome; how the dowagers chattered about her over their tea, abusing her mother and all her relations for abandoning her like a waif; how the men reasoned about Baron Volterra's deep-laid schemes, trying to make out that his semi-adoption of Sabina, as they called it, must certainly bode ruin to some one, since he had never in his life done anything without a financial object; how the young girls unanimously declared that the Baroness wanted Sabina for one of her sons, because she was such a dreadful snob; how Cardinal Della Crusca shook his wise old head knowingly, as he, who knew so much, always did on the rare occasions when he knew nothing about the matter in hand; how a romantic young English secretary of Embassy christened her the Princess in the Tower; and how old Pompeo Sassi went up to his vineyard on Monte Mario every Sunday and Thursday and sat almost all the afternoon under the chestnut-tree thinking about her and making unpractical plans of his own. CHAPTER IV If Baron Volterra did not choose to sell the Palazzo Conti to the first comer, he doubtless knew his own business best, and he was not answerable to every one for his opinion that the fine old building was worth a good deal more than the highest offer he had yet received. Everybody knew that the palace was for sale, and some of the attempts made to buy it were openly discussed. A speculator had offered four hundred thousand francs for it, a rich South American had offered half a million; it was rumoured that the Vatican would give five hundred and fifty thousand, provided that the timbers of the carved ceilings were in good condition, but Volterra steadily refused to allow any of the carvings to be disturbed in order to examine the beams. During several days a snuffy little man with a clever face poked about with a light in dark places between floors, trying to find out whether the wood were sound or rotten, and asking all sorts of questions of the old porter, and of two workmen who went with him, and who had been employed in repairs in the palace, as their fathers had been before them, perhaps for generations. But their answers were never quite satisfactory, and the snuffy man disappeared to the mysterious regions beyond the Tiber, and did not come back. Some people, knowing the ways of the Romans, might have inferred that the two workmen, a mason and a carpenter, had not been treated by Baron Volterra in such a way as to make them give a favourable report; and as he seemed perfectly indifferent about the result this is quite possible. At all events the carpenter made out that he could not get at the beams in question, without moving the decorations which covered them, and the mason affirmed that it was quite impossible to get a view of the foundations of the north-west corner of the palace, which were said to be weak, without knocking a hole through a wall upon which depended such solidity as there was. It was useless, he said. The snuffy gentleman could ask the Baron, if he pleased, and the Baron could do what he liked since the property now belonged to him: but he, the mason, would not lay hand to pick or crowbar without the Baron's express authorization. The Baron was a Senator of the Kingdom, said the mason, and could therefore of course send him to penal servitude in the galleys for life, if he pleased. That is the average Roman workman's idea of justice. The snuffy expert, who looked very much like a poor priest in plain clothes, though he evidently knew his business, made no reply, nor any attempt to help the mason's conscience with money. But he stood a little while by the wall, with his lantern in his hands, and presently put his ear to the damp stones, and listened. "There is running water somewhere not far off," he said, looking keenly at the workman. "It is certainly not wine," answered the man, with a rough laugh, for he thought it a very good joke. "Are there any 'lost waters' under the palace?" asked the expert. "I do not know," replied the mason, looking away from the lantern towards the gloom of the cellars. "I believe," said the snuffy gentleman, setting down his lantern, and taking a large pinch from a battered silver snuff-box, on which the arms of Pius Ninth were still distinguishable, "I believe that the nearest 'lost water' to this place is somewhere under the Vicolo del Soldati." "I do not know." The expert skilfully inserted the brown dust into his nostrils with his right thumb, scarcely wasting a grain in the operation. "You do not seem to know much," he observed thoughtfully, and took up his lantern again. "I know what I have been taught," replied the mason without resentment. The expert glanced at him quickly, but said nothing more. His inspection was finished, and he led the way out of the intricate cellars as if he knew them by heart, though he had only passed through them once, and he left the palace on foot when he had brushed some of the dust from his shabby clothes. The porter looked enquiringly at the two men, as they filled little clay pipes that had cane stems, standing under the deep entrance. "Not even the price of half a litre of wine," said the mason in answer to the mute question. "Church stuff," observed the carpenter discontentedly. The porter nodded gravely, and the men nodded to him as they went out into the street. They had nothing more to do that day, and they turned into the dark little wine shop, where the withered bush stuck out of the blackened grating. They sat down opposite each other, with the end of the grimy board of the table between them, and the carpenter made a sign. The host brought a litre measure of thin red wine and set it down between them with two tumblers. He was ghastly pale, flabby and sullen, with a quarter of an inch of stubbly black beard on his unhealthy face. The carpenter poured a few drops of wine into one of the tumblers, shook it about, turned it into the other, shook it again, and finally poured it on the unctuous stone floor beside him. Then he filled both glasses to the brim, and both men drank in silence. They repeated the operation, and after the second glass there was not much left in the measure. The flabby host had retired to the gloomy vaults within, where he played cards with a crony by the light of a small smoking lamp with a cracked chimney. "That was the very place, was it not?" asked the carpenter at last, in a low tone, and almost without moving his lips. The mason said nothing, but shrugged his shoulders, in a sort of enigmatic assent. Both drank again, and after a long time the carpenter smiled faintly. "He was looking for the 'lost water,'" he said, in a tone of contempt. The faint smile slowly reflected itself in the mason's face. The two finished their wine, lit their pipes again, left the price of their drink on the table without disturbing the host and went away. So far as any outsider could have judged, the expert's curiosity and the few words exchanged by the workmen referred to the so-called "lost water," which might be somewhere under the north-west corner of the Palazzo Conti, and no one unacquainted with subterranean Rome could possibly have understood what any of the three meant. The "lost waters" of Rome are very mysterious. Here and there, under old streets and far down amongst the foundations of ancient palaces, there are channels of running water which have no apparent connection with any of the aqueducts now restored and in use. It is a water that comes no one knows whence and finds its way to the Tiber, no one knows how. It is generally clear and very cold, and in the days when the aqueducts were all broken and most people drank of the river, the "lost water" was highly prized. It appears in the most unexpected places, sometimes in great quantities and seriously interfering with any attempt to lay the foundations of a new building, sometimes black and silent, under a huge flagstone in an old courtyard, sometimes running with an audible rush through hidden passages deeper than the deepest cellars. It has puzzled archaeologists, hydraulic engineers and architects for generations, its presence has never been satisfactorily explained, there seems not to be any plan of the city which shows its whereabouts, and the modern improvements of the Tiber's banks do not appear to have affected its occult courses. By tradition handed down from father to son, certain workmen, chiefly masons and always genuine Romans, claim to know more about it than other people; but that is as much as can be said. It is known as the "lost water," and it rises and falls, and seeks different levels in unaccountable ways, as water will when it is confined under the earth but is here and there confronted by the pressure of the air. But though the old-fashioned Roman workman still looks upon all traditional information about his trade as secret and never to be revealed, that fact alone might seem insufficient to account for the behaviour of Gigi the carpenter and of Toto the mason under the particular circumstances here narrated, still less for the contempt they showed for the snuffy expert who was apparently looking for the "lost water." An invisible witness would have gathered that they had something of more importance to conceal. To the expert, their conduct and answers must have been thoroughly unsatisfactory, for the Vatican was even said to have refused to pay the additional fifty thousand francs, On the ground that the state of the foundations was doubtful and that the timbers of the upper story were not sound. Baron Volterra's equanimity was not in the least disturbed by this. On the contrary, instead of setting the price lower, he frankly told all applicants, through his agent, that he was in no hurry to sell, as he had reason to believe that the land about the Palazzo Conti would soon rise in value. He had settled with the representatives of the Conti family, and it was said that he had behaved generously. The family had nothing left after the crash, which might partially account for such an exhibition of generosity; but it was hinted that Baron Volterra had given them the option of buying back the palace and some other property upon which he had foreclosed, if they should be able to pay for it in ten years. Soon after the visit of the snuffy expert, Volterra's agent informed the porter that a gentleman had taken the small apartment on the intermediate story, which had formerly been occupied by a chaplain but had been disused for years. It had been part of the Conti's folly that they had steadily refused to let any part of the vast building since the old Prince's death. On the following day, the new-comer moved in, with his belongings, consisting of a small quantity of new furniture, barely sufficient for himself and his one servant, and a number of very heavy cases, which turned out to be full of books. Gigi, the carpenter, was at once sent for to put up plain shelves for these, and he took stock of the lodger while the latter was explaining what he wanted. "He is a gentleman," said Gigi to Toto, that very evening, as they stood filling their pipes at the corner of the Vicolo del Soldati. "His name is Malipieri. He is as black as the horses at a funeral of the first-class, and he is not a Roman." "Who knows what race of animal this may be?" Toto was not in a good humour. "He is of the race of gentlemen," asserted Gigi confidently. "Then he will end badly," observed Toto. "Let us go and drink. It is better." "Let us go and drink," repeated Gigi. "You have a sensible thought sometimes. I think this man is an engineer, or an architect. He wants a draughtsman's table." "Evil befall his little dead ones, whatever he is," returned the other, by way of welcome to the young man who had moved into the palace. "He advanced me ten francs to buy wood for the shelves," said Gigi, who was by far the more cheerful of the two. "Come and drink," returned Toto, relevantly or irrelevantly. "That is much better." So they turned into the wine shop. CHAPTER V Baron Volterra introduced Marino Malipieri to the two ladies. The guest had come punctually, for the Baron had looked at his watch a moment before he was announced, and it was precisely eight o'clock. Malipieri bowed to the Baroness, who held out her hand cordially, and then to Sabina. "Donna Sabina Conti," said the Baron with extreme distinctness, in order that his guest should be quite sure of the young girl's identity. Sabina looked down modestly, as the nuns had told her to do when a young man was introduced to her. At the same moment Malipieri's eyes turned quietly and quickly to the Baron, and a look of intelligence passed between the two men. Malipieri understood that Sabina was one of the family in whose former palace he was living. Then he glanced again at the young girl for one moment, before making a commonplace remark to the Baroness, and after that Sabina felt that she was at liberty to look at him. She saw a very dark man of average height, with short black hair that grew rather far back from his very white forehead, and wearing a closely clipped black beard and moustache which did not by any means hide the firm lines of the mouth and chin. From the strongly marked eyebrows downward his face was almost of the colour of newly cast bronze, and the dusky hue contrasted oddly with the clear whiteness of his forehead. He was evidently a man who had lately been living much out of doors under a burning sun. Sabina thought that his very bright black eyes and boldly curved features suggested a young hawk, and he had a look of compact strength and a way of moving which betrayed both great energy and extreme quickness. But there was something more, which Sabina recognized at the first glance. She felt instantly that he was not like the Baron and his wife; that he belonged in some way to the same variety of humanity as herself; that she would understand him when he spoke, that she would often feel intuitively what he was going to say next, and that he would understand her. She listened while he talked to the Baroness. He had a slight Venetian accent, but his voice had not the soft Venetian ring. It was a little veiled, and though not at all loud it was somewhat harsh. Sabina did not dislike the manly tone, though it was not musical, nor the Venetian pronunciation, although that was unfamiliar. In countries like Italy and Germany, which have had many centres and many historical capital cities, almost all educated people speak with the accents of their several origins, and are rather tenacious of the habit than anxious to get rid of it, generally maintaining that their own pronunciation is the right one. "Signor Malipieri," said the Baron to Sabina, as they went in to dinner, "is the celebrated archaeologist." "Yes," Sabina answered, as if she knew all about him, though she had never heard him mentioned. Malipieri probably overheard the Baron's speech, but he took no notice of it. At dinner, he seemed inclined to be silent. The Baron asked him questions about his discoveries, to which he gave rather short answers, but Sabina gathered that he had found something extraordinary in Carthage. She did not know where Carthage was, and did not like to ask, but she remembered that Marius had sat there among some ruins. Perhaps Malipieri had found his bones, for no one had ever told her that Marius did not continue to sit among the ruins to his dying day. She connected him vaguely with AEneas and another person called Regulus. It was all rather uncertain. What she saw clearly was that the Baron wished to make Malipieri feel at his ease, but that Malipieri's idea of being at his ease was certainly not founded on a wish to talk about himself. So the conversation languished for some time. The Baroness, who knew about as much about Carthage as Sabina, made a few disconnected remarks, interspersed with laudatory allusions to the young man's immense learning, for she wished to please her husband, though she had not the slightest idea why Malipieri was asked to dinner. Finding that he was not perceptibly flattered by what she said, she began to talk about the Venetian aristocracy, for she knew that his name was historical, and she recognized in him at once the characteristics of the nobility she worshipped. Malipieri smiled politely, and in answer to a direct question admitted that his mother had been a Gradenigo. The Baroness was delighted at this information. "To think," she said, "that by a mere accident you and Donna Sabina should meet here, the descendants of two of the oldest families of the Italian aristocracy!" "I am a republican," observed Malipieri quietly. "You!" cried the Baroness in amazement. "You, the offspring of such races as the Malipieri and the Gradenigo a republican, a socialist, an anarchist!" "There is a difference," said Malipieri with a smile. "A republican is not an anarchist!" "I can never believe it," answered the Baroness solemnly. She ate a few green peas and shook her head. "I went to Carthage because I was condemned to three years' confinement in prison," replied Malipieri with calm. "Prison!" exclaimed the Baroness in horror, and she looked at her husband, mutely asking why in the world he had brought a convict to their table. The Baron smiled benignly, as he disposed of an ample mouthful of green peas, before he spoke. "Signor Malipieri," he said, when he had swallowed the last one, "founded and edited a republican newspaper in the north of Italy." "And you were sent to prison for that?" asked Sabina with indignation. "It is one thing to send a man to prison," said Malipieri. "It is another to make him go there. I escaped to Switzerland, and I came back to Italy quite lately, after the amnesty." "I am amazed!" The Baroness looked at the servants timidly, as if she expected the butler and the footman to express their disapprobation of the guest. "I have left politics for the present," Malipieri replied, looking at Sabina and smiling. "Of course!" cried the Baroness. "But--" she stopped short. "My wife," said the financier with a grin, "is afraid you have dynamite about you." "How absurd!" The Baroness felt that she was ridiculous. "But I do not understand how you can be friends," she added, glancing from her husband to Malipieri. "We are at least on good terms of acquaintance," said the younger man a little markedly. Sabina liked the speech and the way in which it was spoken. "We have a common ground for it in our interest in antiquities. Is it not true, Signer Malipieri?" The Baron looked at him and smiled again, as if there were a secret between them, and Malipieri glanced at Sabina. "It is quite true," he said gravely. "The Baron has read all I have written about Carthage." Volterra possessed a sort of rough social tact, together with the native astuteness and great knowledge of men which had made him rich and a Senator. He suddenly became voluble and led the conversation in a new direction, which it followed till the end of dinner. Several people came in afterwards, as often happened, before the coffee was taken away. They were chiefly men in politics, and two of them brought their wives with them. They were not the sort of guests whom the Baroness preferred, for they were not by any means all noble Romans, but they were of importance to her husband and she took great pains to make them welcome. To one she offered his favourite liqueur, which happened to be a Sicilian ratafia; for another she made the Baron send for some of those horribly coarse black cigars known as Tuscans, which some Italians prefer to anything else; for a third, she ordered fresh coffee to be especially made. She took endless trouble. Malipieri seemed to know none of the guests, and he took advantage of the Baroness's preoccupation for their comforts to sit down by Sabina. He did not look at her, and she thought he looked bored, as he sat a moment in silence. Then a thin deputy with a magnificent forehead and thick grey hair began to hold forth on the subject of a projected divorce law and the guests gathered round him. Sabina had never heard of Sydney Smith, but she had a suspicion that nobody could be as great as the speaker looked. While she was thinking of this, Malipieri spoke to her in a low voice. "I suppose that you are stopping in the house," he said. "Yes." Sabina turned her eyes a little, but did not look straight at him. She saw, however, that he was still watching the people in the room, and still looked bored, and she was quite unprepared for what followed. "Are the affairs of your family finally settled?" he enquired, without changing his tone. Sabina was so much surprised that she waited a moment before answering. Her first instinct was to ask him stiffly why he put such a question, and she would have replied to it in that way if it had come from any other guest in the room; but she changed her mind almost instantly. "No one has told me anything," she said simply, in a low voice. Malipieri turned his head a little with a quick movement, and clasped his brown hands over one knee. "You know nothing?" he asked. "Nothing whatever about the matter?" "Nothing." He bit his lip as if he were indignant, and were repressing an exclamation. "No one has written to me--for a long time," Sabina said, after a moment. She had been on the point of saying that she had never received a line from any member of her family since the crash, but that seemed to sound like a confidence, and what she really said was quite true. "Has not the Senator told you anything either?" Malipieri asked. "No. I suppose he does not like to speak about our misfortunes before me." "Have you, I mean you yourself, any interest in the Palazzo Conti now? Can you tell me that?" "I know nothing--nothing!" Sabina repeated the word with a slight tremor, for just then she felt her position more keenly than ever before. "Why do you ask?" She could not help putting the question which rose to her lips the second time, but there was no coldness in her voice. She was very lonely, and she felt that Malipieri was speaking from some honourable motive. "I am living in the palace," Malipieri answered. Sabina looked up quickly, with an expression of interest in her pale young face. The thought that the man beside her was living in her old home was like a bond of acquaintance. "Really?" she cried. "In which part of the house?" "Do not seem interested, please," said Malipieri, suddenly looking very bored again. "If you do, we shall not be allowed to talk. I am living in the little apartment on the intermediate story. They tell me that a chaplain once lived there." "I know where it is," answered Sabina, "but I was never in the rooms. They used to be shut up, I think." The deputy who was haranguing on the subject of divorce seemed to be approaching his peroration. His great voice filled the large room with incessant noise, and everybody seemed anxiously waiting for a chance to contradict him. Malipieri was in no danger of being overheard. "If it happens," he said, "that I wish to communicate with you on a matter of importance, how can I reach you best?" He asked the question quite naturally, as if he had known Sabina all his life. At first she was so much surprised that she could hardly speak. "I--I do not know," she stammered. She had never received letters from any one but her own family or her school friends, and a very faint colour rose in her pale cheek. Malipieri looked more bored and weary than ever. "It may be absolutely necessary for me to write to you before long," he said. "Shall I write by post?" Sabina hesitated. "Is there no one in all Rome whom you can trust to bring a note and give it to you when you are alone?" "There is Signor Sassi," Sabina answered almost instinctively. "But really, why should you--" "How can I find Sassi?" asked Malipieri, interrupting the question. "Who is he?" "He was our agent. Is he gone? The old porter will know where to find him. I think he lived near the palace. But perhaps the porter has been sent away too." "He is still there. Have you been made to sign any papers since you have been here?" "No." "Will you promise me something?" Sabina could not understand how it was that a man who had been a stranger two hours earlier was speaking to her almost as if he were an intimate friend, still less why she no longer felt that she ought to check him and assert her dignity. "If it is right, I will promise it," she answered quietly, and looking down. "It is right," he said. "If the Senator, or any one else asks you to sign a paper, will you promise to consult me before doing so?" "But I hardly know you!" she laughed, a little shyly. "It is of no use to waste time and trouble on social conventions," said Malipieri. "If you do not trust me, can you trust this Sassi?" "Oh yes!" "Then consult him. I will make him consult me, and it will be the same--and ten times more conventional and proper." He smiled. "Will you promise that?" he asked. "Yes. I promise. But I wish you would tell me more." "I wish I could. But I hardly know you!" He smiled again, as he repeated her own words. "Never mind that! Tell me!" "No. I cannot. If there is trouble I will tell you everything--through Sassi, of course." Sabina laughed, and all at once she felt as if she had known him for years. At that moment the deputy finished his speech, and all who had anything to say in answer said it at once, in order to lose no time, while the speaker relighted his villainous black cigar, puffing tremendously. The Baroness suddenly remembered Sabina and Malipieri in the corner, and after screaming out several incoherent phrases, which might have been taken for applause or dissent and were almost lost in the general din, she moved across the room. "It is atrocious!" she cried, as she reached Sabina. "I hope you have not heard a word he said!" "When a man has such a voice as that, it is impossible not to hear him," said Malipieri, rising and answering before Sabina had time to speak. Sabina rose, too, rather reluctantly. "And of course you agreed with everything he said," the Baroness replied. "All anarchists do!" "I beg your pardon. I do not agree with him at all, and I am really not an anarchist." He smiled politely, and Sabina noticed with an unaccountable little thrill of satisfaction that the smile was quite different from the one she had seen in his face more than once while they had been talking together. As for the deputy's discourse, she had not heard a word of it. The Baroness sat down on the sofa, and Sabina slipped away. She was not supposed to be in society yet, as she was not quite eighteen, and there was certainly no reason why she should stay in the drawing-room that evening, while there were many reasons why she should go away. The Baroness breathed an audible sigh of relief when she was gone, for it was never possible to predict what some excited politician might say before her in the heat of argument. In the silence of her own room she sat down to think over the unexpected events of the evening. Very young girls love to look forward to the moment when they shall be able to "think" of what has happened, after they have met men they are inclined to like, and who interest them. But when the time really comes they hardly ever think at all. They see pictures, they hear voices, they feel again what they have felt, they laugh, they shed tears all alone, and they believe they are thinking, or even reasoning. Their little joys come back to them, the little triumphs of their vanity, and also all the little hurts their sensitiveness has suffered, and which men do not often guess and still more rarely understand. There must be some original reason why all boys call girls silly, and all girls think boys stupid. It must be part of the first manifestation of that enormous difference which exists between the point of view of men and women in after life. Women are, in a sense, the embodiment of practice, while men are the representatives of theory. In practice, in a race for life, the runner who jumps everything in his way is always right, unless he breaks his neck. In theory, he is as likely to break his neck at the first jump as at the second, and the chances of his coming to grief increase quickly, always in theory, as he grows tired. So theory says that it is safer never to jump at all, but to go round through the gates, or wade ignominiously through the water. Women jump; men go round. The difference is everything. Women believe in what often succeeds in practice, and they take all risks and sometimes come down with a crash. Men theorize about danger, make elaborate calculations to avoid it and occasionally stick in the mud. When women fall at a stone wall they scream, when men are stuck in a bog they swear. The difference is fundamental. In nine cases out of ten it is the woman who enjoys the ecstatic delight of saying "I told you so," and there are plenty of women who would ask no greater joy in paradise than to say so to their husbands for ever and ever. Indeed, eternal reward and punishment could thus be at once combined and distributed in a simple manner. Sabina took her first fence that evening, for when she put out her candle she was sure that Malipieri was already her friend, and that she could trust him in any emergency. Moreover, though she would not have acknowledged it, she inwardly hoped that some emergency might not be far in the future. But Malipieri walked all the way from the Via Ludovisi to the Palazzo Conti, which is more than a mile, without noticing that he had forgotten to light the cigar he had taken out on leaving Volterra's house. CHAPTER VI Malipieri had the Palazzo Conti to himself. The main entrance was always shut now, and only a small postern, cut in one side of the great door, was left ajar. The porter loafed about in the great court with his broom and his pipe; in the morning his wife went upstairs and opened a few windows, merely as a formality, and late in the afternoon she shut them again. Malipieri's man generally went out twice every day, carrying a military dinner-pail, made in three sections, which he brought back half an hour later. Malipieri sometimes was not seen for several days, but frequently he went out in the morning and did not come back till dark. Now and then, things were delivered for him at the door,--a tin of oil for his lamps, a large box of candles, packages of odd shapes, sometimes very heavy, and which the porter was told to handle with care. The old man tried to make acquaintance with Malipieri's man, but found it less easy than he had expected. In the first place, Masin came from some outlandish part of Italy where an abominable dialect was spoken, and though he could speak school Italian when he pleased, he chose to talk to the porter in his native jargon, when he talked at all. He might just as well have spoken Greek. Secondly, he refused the porter's repeated offers of a litre at the wine shop, always saying something which sounded like a reference to his delicate health. As he was evidently as strong as an ox, and as healthy as a savage or a street dog, the excuse carried no conviction. He was a big, quiet fellow, with china-blue eyes and a reddish moustache. The porter was not used to such people, nor to servants who wore moustaches, and was inclined to distrust the man. On the other hand, though Masin would not drink, he often gave the porter a cigar, with a friendly smile. One day, in the morning, Baron Volterra came to see Malipieri, and stayed over an hour, a part of which time the two men spent in the courtyard, walking up and down in the north-west corner, and then taking some measurements with a long tape which Malipieri produced from his pocket. When the Baron went away he stopped and spoke with the porter. First he gave him five francs; then he informed him that his wages would be raised in future by that amount; and finally he told him that Signor Malipieri was an architect and would superintend the repairs necessary to the foundations at the north-west corner, that while the work was going on even the little postern door was to be kept shut all day, and no one was to be admitted on any condition without Signor Malipieri's express permission. The fat Baron fixed his eyes on the porter's with an oddly hard look, and said that he himself might come at any moment to see how the work was going on, and that if he found anybody inside the gate without Signor Malipieri's authority, it would be bad for the porter. During this conversation, Malipieri stood listening, and when it ended he nodded, as if he were satisfied, and after shaking hands with the Baron he went up the grand staircase without a word. It was all very mysterious, and the porter shook his head as he turned into his lodge after fastening the postern; but he said nothing to his wife about what had passed. From what he had been told, he now naturally expected that a number of masons would come in a day or two in order to begin the work of strengthening the foundations; but no one came, and everything went on as usual, except that the postern was kept shut. He supposed that Malipieri was not ready, but he wisely abstained from asking questions. Then Malipieri asked him for the address of Pompeo Sassi, and wrote it down in his pocket-book, and went out. That was on the morning after he had dined at the Baron's house, for it was not his habit to waste time when he wanted information. Sassi received Malipieri in a little sitting-room furnished with a heterogeneous collection of utterly useless objects, all of which the old agent treasured with jealous affection, and daily recommended to the care of the elderly woman who was his only servant. The sofa and chairs had been new forty years ago, and though the hideous red-and-green stuffs with which they were covered were still tolerably vivid in colours the legs did not look safe, and Malipieri kept his feet well under him and sat down cautiously. Two rickety but well-dusted tables were loaded with ancient nicknacks, dating from the early part of the second French Empire, with impossibly ugly little figures carved out of cheap alabaster, small decayed photograph albums, and ingeniously bad wax flowers under glass shades. On the walls hung bad lithographs of Pius Ninth, Napoleon Third and Metternich, with a large faded photograph of old Prince Conti as a young man. Malipieri looked at it curiously, for he guessed that it represented Sabina's father. The face was clean-shaven, thin and sad, with deep eyes and fair hair that looked almost white now, as if the photograph had grown old with the man, while he had lived. Sassi sat down opposite his visitor. He wore a black cloth cap with a green tassel, and rubbed his hands slowly while he waited for Malipieri to speak. The latter hesitated a moment and then went to the point at once. "You were the agent of the Conti estate for many years," he said. "I know the Senator Volterra and have met Donna Sabina. I understand that her mother has left her under the charge of the Senator's wife, and seems to have forgotten her existence. The young lady is apparently without resources of her own, and it is not clear what would become of her if the Volterra couple should not find it convenient to keep her with them. Is that the state of affairs?" Sassi nodded gravely. Then he looked keenly at the young man, and asked him a question. "May I enquire why you take an interest in Donna Sabina Conti?" Malipieri returned the other's gaze quietly. "I am an architect, called in by the Senator to superintend some work on the palace. The Senator, as you know, took over the building when he foreclosed the mortgage, and he has not yet sold it, though he has refused several good offers. I have an idea that he believes it to be very valuable property. If this should turn out to be true, and if he should have made a very profitable transaction, he ought in honour, if not in law, to make over a part of the profits to Donna Sabina, who has practically been cheated of her share in her father's estate. Her mother, and her brother and sister, spent everything they could lay hands on, whereas she never had anything. Is that true?" "Quite true, quite true," repeated Sassi sadly. "And if Donna Sabina were to call them to account, I fancy the law would take a rather unpleasant view of what they did. I have heard that sort of thing called stealing when the persons who did it were not princes and princesses, but plain people like you and me. Do you happen to think of any better word?" Sassi was silent. He had eaten the bread of the Conti all his life. He glanced at the faded photograph of the Prince, as if to explain, and Malipieri understood. "You are an honorable man," he said. "I can no more tell you why I wish to help Donna Sabina to her rights, if she has any, than I can explain a great many things I have done in my life. When I see a dog kicked, I always kick the man, if I can, and I do not remember to have regretted any momentary unpleasantness that has followed in such cases. I have only seen Donna Sabina once, but I mean to help her if possible. Now tell me this. Has she any legal claim in the value of the palace or not?" "I am afraid not," Sassi answered. "Do you know whether she was ever induced to sign any release of her guardians?" "She never did." "That might be bad for them. That is all I wished to know. Thank you." Malipieri rose to take his leave. "If anything of importance happens, can you communicate with Donna Sabina?" he asked. "I can write to her," Sassi answered. "I suppose she would receive me if I went to the house." "That would be better." "Excuse me," said the old man, before opening the door to let his visitor out, "am I right in supposing that the work the Baron wishes done is connected with the foundations?" "Yes." "At the north-west corner within the courtyard?" "Yes," answered Malipieri, looking at him attentively. "Do you happen to know anything about the condition of that part of the palace?" "Most people," Sassi replied, "have now forgotten that a good deal of work was done there long ago, under Pope Gregory Sixteenth." "Indeed? I did not know that. What was the result?" "The workmen came across the 'lost water.' It rose suddenly one day and one of them was drowned. I believe his body was never recovered. Everything was filled in again after that. For my own part I do not think the building is in any danger." "Perhaps not," said Malipieri, suddenly looking bored. "I only carry out the Senator's wishes," he added, as if with an afterthought. "It is my business to find out whether there is danger or not." He took his leave and went away, convinced that the old agent knew about other things besides Sabina's friendless condition, but unwilling to question him just then. The information Sassi had volunteered was interesting but not useful. Malipieri thought he himself knew well enough where the "lost water" was, under the Palazzo Conti. It was not far from Sassi's house to the palace, but he walked very slowly through the narrow streets, and stopped more than once, deliberately looking back, as if he were trying to keep the exact direction of some point in his mind, and he seemed interested in the gutters, and in the walls, at their base, just above the pavement. At the corner of the Vicolo dei Soldati he saw a little marble tablet let into the masonry and yellow with age. He stopped a moment and read the inscription. Then he turned away with a look of annoyance, for it set forth that "by order of the most Eminent Vicar all persons were warned not to empty garbage there, on pain of a fine." It was a forgotten document of the old papal administration, as he could have told without reading it if he had known Rome better. From the corner he counted his paces and then stopped again and examined the wall and the pavement minutely. There was nothing to be seen at all different from the pavement and the wall for many yards further on and further back, and Malipieri apparently abandoned the search, for he now walked on quickly till he reached the entrance of the palace, on the other side, and went in. From the low door of the wine shop, Toto, the mason, had seen him, and stood watching him till he was out of sight. "He does not know where it is," Toto said, sitting down again opposite Gigi. "Engineers know everything," retorted the carpenter. "If this one knew anything, he would not have stood there looking at the stones. I do not suppose the municipality is going to put up a monument to my grandfather, whom may the Lord preserve in glory!" At this Gigi laughed, for he knew that Toto's grandfather had been drowned in the "lost water" somewhere deep down under that spot, and had never been found. The two men drank in silence. After a long time Toto spoke again. "A woman," he said, with a shrug of the shoulders. "A woman drowned him?" asked Gigi. "How could a woman do it?" "A man did it. But it was for jealousy of a woman." "The man was a mason, I suppose," suggested Gigi. "Of course. He was working with the others in the morning, and he knew where they would be after dinner. He did not come back with them, and half an hour after they had gone down the water came. How many times have I told you that?" "It is always a new tale," answered Gigi. "It gives me pleasure to hear it. Your father was a young man then, was he not?" "Eighteen." Toto lighted his pipe. "And the man who did it died soon afterwards?" Gigi said. "Of course," said Toto. "What else could my father do? He killed him. It was the least he could have done. My father is also in Paradise." "Requiescat!" ejaculated the carpenter devoutly. "Amen," answered Toto. "He killed him with a mattock." "It was well done," observed Gigi with satisfaction. "I suppose," he continued after a pause, "that if anybody went down there now, you could let in the water." "Why should I? I do not care what they do. If they send for me, I may serve them. If they think they can do without me, let them try. I do not care a cabbage!" "Perhaps not," Gigi answered thoughtfully. "But it must be a fine satisfaction to know that you can drown them all, like rats in a hole." "Yes," said Toto, "it is a fine satisfaction." "And even to know that you can make the water come before they begin, so that they can never do anything without you." "That too," assented the mason. "They would pay you a great deal to help them, if they could not pump the water out. There is no one else in Rome who knows how to turn it off." Gigi made the remark tentatively, but Toto did not answer. "You will need some one to help you," suggested the carpenter in an insinuating tone. "I can do it alone." "It is somewhere in the cellars of number thirteen, is it not?" asked Gigi. He would have given all he had to know what Toto knew, and the bargain would have been a very profitable one, no doubt. But though the mason was his closest friend there were secrets of the trade which Toto would not reveal to him. "The numbers in the street were all changed ten years ago," Toto answered. He rose from his seat by the grimy table, and Gigi followed his example with a sigh of disappointment. They were moderate men, and hardly ever drank more than their litre of their wine. Toto smelt of mortar and his fustian clothes and hairy arms were generally splashed with it. Gigi smelt of glue and sawdust, and there were plentiful marks of his calling on his shiny old cloth trousers and his coarse linen shirt. Toto's face was square, stony and impenetrable; Gigi's was sharp as a bill and alive with curiosity. Gigi wore a square paper cap; Toto wore a battered felt hat of no shape at all. On Sundays and holidays they both shaved and turned out in immaculate white shirts, well brushed broadcloth and decent hats, recognizable to each other but not to their employers. Malipieri was accosted by a stranger at the gate of the palace. The porter, faithfully obedient to his orders, was standing inside the open postern, completely blocking it with his bulk, and when Malipieri came up the visitor was still parleying with him. "This gentleman is asking for you, sir," said the old man. The individual bowed politely and stepped back a little. He had a singularly worthy appearance, Malipieri thought, and he would have inspired confidence if employed in a bank; his thick grey hair was parted in the middle, and at first sight Malipieri felt perfectly sure that it was parted down the back. His brown eyes were very wide open, and steady, his slightly grizzled moustache was neither twisted straight up at the ends in the imperial German manner, nor straight out like a cat's whiskers, nor waxed to fine points in the old French fashion. It grew naturally and was rather short, but it hid his mouth almost completely. The man was extremely well dressed in half-mourning, wore dark grey gloves and carried a plain black stick. He spoke quietly and Malipieri thought he recognized the Genoese accent. "Signor Marino Malipieri?" "Yes," answered the architect, in a tone that asked the visitor's name in return. "My name is Vittorio Bruni. May I have a few words with you?" "Certainly," Malipieri answered, with considerable coolness. "Thank you. I have been much interested by your discoveries in Carthage, and if you would allow me to ask you one or two questions--" "Pray come in." "Thanks. After you." "After you," insisted Malipieri, standing aside. They went in. Before shutting the postern, the porter looked out into the street. It was almost deserted. Two men were standing together near the corner, apparently arguing some question, and stopping in their walk in order to talk more at their ease, as Romans often do. The porter shut the little door with a clang, and went back to his lodge. Malipieri and his visitor were already on the stairs. Malipieri let himself in with a small latch-key, for he had ordered a modern patent lock to be put on his door as soon as he moved into the house. Masin appeared almost at once, however, and stood waiting for his master at the door of the sitting-room, like a large, placid mastiff. Malipieri nodded to him, and went in with Signor Bruni. They sat down by the open window and Signor Bruni began to talk. In a few minutes it became evident that whether the man knew anything of the subject or not he had read everything that Malipieri had written, and remembered most of it by heart. He spoke fluently and asked intelligent questions. He had never been to Carthage, he said, but he thought of making the trip to Tunis during the following winter. Yes, he was a man of leisure, though he had formerly been in business; he had a taste for archaeology, and did not think it was too late to cultivate it, in a modest way, for his own pleasure. Of course, he could never hope to accomplish anything of importance, still less to become famous like Malipieri. It was merely a taste, and was better than nothing as an interest in life. Malipieri protested that he was not famous, but agreed with Signor Bruni about other matters. It was better to follow a serious pursuit than to do nothing with one's life. "Or to dash into politics," suggested Bruni carelessly, as if he had thought of trying that. Perhaps he had heard of Malipieri's republican newspaper, but if he had thought of drawing the young man into conversation about it, he was disappointed. Malipieri continued to agree with him, listening attentively to all he said without once looking bored. "And now," continued Bruni presently, "if it is not indiscreet, may I ask whether you have any new field of discovery in view?" The phrases ran along as if they had been all prepared beforehand. The accent was now decidedly Genoese, and Malipieri, who was a Venetian, disliked it. "Not at present," he said. "I have undertaken a little professional work in Rome, and I am trying to learn more about the Phoenician language." "That is beyond me!" Bruni smiled pleasantly. Malipieri looked at him a moment. "If you are going to look into Carthaginian antiquities," he said, with much gravity, "I strongly advise you to study Phoenician." "Dear me!" exclaimed Bruni with a sigh of regret, "I had hoped it might not be necessary." He rose to take his leave, but as if seeing the bookshelves for the first time, asked permission to look at their contents. Malipieri saw that his glance ran sharply along the titles of the volumes, and that he was reading them as quickly as he could. "I suppose you live here quite alone," he said. "Yes. I have a servant." "Of course. They tell me that Baron Volterra has not decided what he will do with the palace, and will not give a lease of it to any one." "I do not know what he means to do," answered Malipieri, looking at the straight part down the back of his worthy visitor's hair, as the latter bent to look at the books. "I suppose he lends you this apartment, as a friend," said Bruni. "No. I pay rent for it." Signor Bruni was becoming distinctly inquisitive, thought Malipieri, who answered coldly. Possibly the visitor perceived the hint, for he now finally took his leave. In spite of his protestations Malipieri went all the way downstairs with him, and let him out himself, just as the porter came out of his lodge at the sound of their footsteps. Signor Bruni bowed a last time, and then walked briskly away. By force of habit, the porter looked up and down the street before shutting the door after him, and he was somewhat surprised to see that the two men whom he had noticed half an hour earlier had only just finished their argument and turned to go on as Signor Bruni passed them. Then the porter watched them all three till they disappeared round the corner. At the same moment, from the opposite direction, Toto reached the door of the palace, and greeted the porter with a rough good-evening. "I have forgotten the name of this palace," he added, by way of a joke, meaning that he had not been called to do any work for a long time. "Perhaps you can tell me what it is called." "It used to be a madhouse," returned the porter in the same strain. "Now that the madmen are gone, a mole lives here. I kept the door open for the lunatics, and they all got out. I keep it shut for the mole, when he does not shut it himself." "I will come in and smoke a pipe with you," said Toto. "We will talk of old times." The porter shook his head, and blocked the way. "Not if you were the blessed soul of my father come back from the dead," he said. "The Baron's instructions are to let no one in without the mole's orders." "But I am an old friend," objected Toto. "Not if you were my mother, and the Holy Father, and Saint Peter, and all the souls of Purgatory at once," answered the porter. "May an apoplexy seize you!" observed Toto pleasantly, and he went off, his pipe in his mouth. The porter shrugged his shoulders at the imprecation, shut the door reluctantly, and went in to supper. Upstairs, Malipieri stood at his open window, smoking and watching the old fountain in the court. It was evening, and a deep violet light filled the air and was reflected in the young man's bronzed face. He was very thoughtful now, and was not aware that he heard the irregular splash of the water in the dark basin at the feet of the statue of Hercules, and the eager little scream of the swallows as they shot past him, upward to the high old eaves, where their young were, and downwards almost to the gravel of the court, and in wide circles and madly sudden curves. The violet light faded softly, and the dusk drank the last drop of it, and the last swallow disappeared under the eaves; but still Malipieri leaned upon the stone window-sill, looking down. For a long time he thought of Signor Bruni. He wondered whether he had ever seen the man before, or whether the face only seemed familiar because it was the type of a class of faces all more or less alike, all intensely respectable and not without refinement, expressing a grave reticence that did not agree with the fluent speech, and a polite reserve at odds with the inquisitive nature that revealed itself. Malipieri was inclined to think he had never met Bruni, but somehow the latter recalled the hot times in Milan, and his short political career, and the association was not to the man's advantage. He could not recall the name at all. It was like any other, and rather especially unobtrusive. Anybody might be called Vittorio Bruni, and Vittorio Bruni might be anybody, from a senator to a shoemaker; but if he had been a senator, or any political personage, Malipieri would have heard of him. There was something very odd, too, about his knowledge of Carthaginian antiquities, which was entirely limited to the contents of Malipieri's own pamphlets. He knew nothing of the Egyptians and very little about the Greeks, beyond what Malipieri had necessarily written about both. He had talked much as a man does who has read up an unfamiliar subject in order to make a speech about it, and though the speech is skilful, an expert can easily detect the shallowness of attainment behind it. There could be only one reason why any one should take so much trouble; the object was evidently to make Malipieri's acquaintance, in the absence of an ordinary introduction. And yet Signor Bruni had quite forgotten to give his card with his address, as almost any Italian would have done under the circumstances, whether he expected the meeting to be followed by another or not. Malipieri spent most of his time in his rooms, but he knew very well that he might go about Rome for weeks and not come across the man again. He recalled the whole conversation. He had in the first place expected that Bruni would be inquisitive about the palace, and perhaps ask to be shown over it, but it was only at the last that he had put one or two questions which suggested an interest in the building, and then he had at once taken the hint given him by Malipieri's cold tone, and had not persisted. On the other hand he had looked carefully at the titles of the books on the shelves, as if in search of something. Then Malipieri was conscious again of the association, in his own mind, between the man's personality and his own political experiences, and he suddenly laughed aloud. "What a precious fool I am!" he thought. "The man is nothing but a detective!" The echo of his laugh came back to him from across the dusky court in rather a ghostly way. The evening air was all at once chilly, and he shut his window and called for Masin, who instantly appeared with a lamp. Masin was always ready, and, indeed, possessed many qualities excellent in a faithful servant, among which gratitude to Malipieri held a high place. He had something to be grateful for, which is not, however, always a cause of gratitude in the receiver of favours and mercies. He had been a convict, and had served a term of several years in penal servitude. The sentence had been passed upon him for having stabbed a man in the back, in a drunken brawl, but Masin had steadily denied the charge, and the evidence against him had been merely circumstantial. It had happened in Rome, where Masin had worked as a mason during the construction of the new Courts of Justice. He was from the far north of Italy, and was, of course, hated by his companions, as only Italians of different parts of the country can hate one another. To shield one of themselves, they unanimously gave evidence against Masin; the jury was chiefly composed of Romans, the judge was a Sicilian, and Masin had no chance. Fortunately for him, the man lived, though much injured; if he had died, Masin would have got a life sentence. It was an old story; false witnesses, a prejudiced jury, and a judge who, though willing to put his prejudices aside, had little choice but to convict. Masin had been sent to Elba to the penitentiary, had been a "good-behaviour man" from first to last, and his term had been slightly abridged in consequence. When he was discharged, he went back to the north. Malipieri had found him working as a mason when some repairs were being made in the cathedral of Milan, and had taken a fancy to him. Masin had told his story simply and frankly, explaining that he found it hard to get a living at all since he had been a convict, and that he was trying to save enough money to emigrate to New York. Malipieri had thought over the matter for a week, speaking to him now and then, and watching him, and had at last proposed to take him into his own service. Later, Masin had helped Malipieri to escape, had followed him into exile, and had been of the greatest use to him during the excavations in Carthage, where he had acted as body-servant, foreman, and often as a trusted friend. He was certainly not an accomplished valet, but Malipieri did not care for that. He was sober, he was honest, he was trustworthy, he was cool in danger, and he was very strong. Moreover, he was an excellent and experienced mason, a fact of little or no use in the scientific treatment of shoes, trousers, silk hats, hair-brushes and coffee, but which had more than once been valuable to Malipieri during the last few years. Finally, his gratitude to the man who had believed in his innocence was deep and lasting. Masin would really have given his life to save Malipieri's, and would have been glad to give it. He set the lamp down on the table, and waited for orders, his blue eyes quietly fixed on his master. "I never saw that gentleman before," said Malipieri, setting some papers in order, under the bright light, but still standing. "Did you look at his face?" "Yes, sir," answered Masin, and waited. "What sort of man should you take him to be?" "A spy, sir," replied Masin promptly. "I think you are right," Malipieri answered. "We will begin work to-morrow morning." "Yes, sir." Malipieri ate his supper without noticing what Masin brought him, and then installed himself with his shaded lamp at his work-table. He took from the drawer a number of sketches of plans and studied them attentively, by a rather odd process. He had drawn only one plan on heavy paper, in strong black lines. An architect would have seen at once that it represented a part of the foundations of a very large building; and two or three persons then living in Rome might have recognized the plan of the cellars under the north-west corner of the Palazzo Conti--certainly not more than two or three, one of whom was the snuffy expert who had come from beyond the Tiber, and another was Baron Volterra. Toto, the mason, could have threaded the intricate ways in the dark, but could assuredly have made nothing of the drawings. On the other hand, the persons who were acquainted with them did not know what Toto knew, and he was not at all inclined to impart his knowledge to any one, for reasons best known to himself. Furthermore, an architect would have understood at a glance that the plan was incomplete, and that there was some reason why it could not be completed. A part of it was quite blank, but in one place the probable continuation of a main wall not explored, or altogether inaccessible, was indicated by dotted lines. Besides this main drawing, Malipieri had several others made on tracing paper to the same scale, which he laid over the first, and moved about, trying to make the one fit the other, and in each of these the part which was blank in the one underneath was filled in according to different imaginary plans. Lastly, he had a large transparent sheet on which were accurately laid out the walls and doors of the ground floor of the palace at the north-west corner, and in this there was marked a square piece of masonry, shaded as if to represent a solid pilaster, and which came over the unexplored part of the cellars. Sometimes Malipieri placed this drawing over the first, and then one of the others on both, trying to make the three agree. It was like an odd puzzle, and there was not a word written on any of the plans to explain what they meant. On most of the thin ones there were blue lines, indicating water, or at least its possible course. The imaginary architect, if he could have watched the real one, would have understood before long that the latter was theorizing about the probable construction of what was hitherto inaccessible, and about the probable position of certain channels through which water flowed, or might be expected to flow. He would also have gathered that Malipieri could reach no definite conclusion unless he could break through one of two walls in the cellar, or descend through an opening in the floor above, which would be by far the easiest way. He might even have wondered why Malipieri did not at once adopt the latter expedient. It is not a serious matter to make an aperture through a vault, large enough to allow the passage of a man's body, and it could not be attended with any danger to the building. It would be much less safe and far more difficult to cut a hole through one of the main foundation walls, which might be many feet thick and yet not wholly secure. Nevertheless the movements made by the point of Malipieri's pencil showed that he was contemplating that method of gaining an entrance. CHAPTER VII Sabina had been more than two months in Baron Volterra's house, when she at last received a line from her mother. The short letter was characteristic and was, after all, what the girl had expected, neither more nor less. The Princess told her that for the present she must stay with the "kind friends" who had offered her a home; that everything would be right before long; that if she needed any advice she had better send for Sassi, who had always served the family faithfully; that gowns were going to be short next year, which would be becoming to Sabina when she "came out," because she had small feet and admirable ankles; and that the weather was heavenly. The Princess added that she would send her some pocket-money before long, and that she was trying to find the best way of sending it. In spite of her position Sabina smiled at the last sentence. It was so like her mother to promise what she would never perform, that it amused her. She sat still for some time with the letter in her hand and then took it to the Baroness, for she felt that it was time to speak out and that the interview could not be put off any longer. The Baroness was writing in her boudoir. She wrote her letters on large sheets of an especial paper, stamped with her initials, over which appeared a very minute Italian baron's coronet, with seven points; it was so small that one might easily have thought that it had nine, like a count's, but it was undeniably smart and suggested an assured position in the aristocracy. No one quite remembered why the late King had made Volterra a baron, but he undoubtedly had done so, and no one disputed Volterra's right to use the title. Sabina read her letter aloud, and the Baroness listened attentively, with a grave expression. "Your dear mother--" she began in a soothing tone. "She is not my 'dear mother' at all," said Sabina, interrupting her. "She is not any more 'dear' to me than I am to her." "Oh!" exclaimed the Baroness, affecting to be shocked by the girl's heartlessness. "If it were not for my 'dear mother,' I should not be a beggar," said Sabina. "A beggar! What a word!" "There is no other, that I know of. I am living on your charity." "For heaven's sake, do not say such things!" cried the Baroness. "There is nothing else to say. If you had not taken me in and lodged me and fed me, I should like to know where I should be now. I am quite sure that my 'dear mother' would not care, but I cannot help wondering what is to become of me. Are you surprised?" "Are you not provided for here?" The question was put in a tone almost of deprecation. "Provided for! I am surrounded with every sort of luxury, when I ought to be working for my living." "Working!" The Baroness was filled with horror. "You, my dear, the daughter of a Roman Prince! You, working for your living! You, a Conti!" Sabina smiled and looked down at her delicate hands. "I cannot see what my name has to do with it," she said. "It is not much to be proud of, considering how my relatives behave." "It is a great name," said the Baroness solemnly and emphatically. "It was once," Sabina answered, leaning back in the low chair she had taken, and looking at the ceiling. "My mother and my brother have not added lustre to it, and I would much rather be called Signorina Emilia Moscetti and be a governess, than be Sabina Conti and live on charity. I have no right to what I do not possess and cannot earn." "My dear child! This is rank socialism! I am afraid you talked too long with Malipieri the other night." "There is a man who works, though he has what you call a great name," observed Sabina. "I admire that. He was poor, I suppose--perhaps not so poor as I am--and he made up his mind to earn his living and a reputation." "You are quite mistaken," said the Baroness drily. Sabina looked at her in surprise. "I thought he was a distinguished architect and engineer," she answered. "Yes. But he was never poor, and he will be very rich some day." "Indeed!" Sabina seemed rather disappointed at the information. There was a little pause, and the Baroness looted at her unfinished letter as if she wished that Sabina would go away. She had foreseen that before long the girl would make some protest against her position as a perpetual guest in the house, but had no clear idea of how to meet it. Sabina seemed so very decided. "We have done our best to make you feel at home, like one of the family," the Baroness said presently, in a rather injured tone. Sabina did not wish to be one of the family at all, but she knew that she was under great obligations to her hosts, and she did not wish to be thought ungrateful. "You have been more than kind," she answered gently, "and I shall never forget it. You have taken more trouble with me in two or three months than my mother in all my life. Please do not imagine that I am not thankful for all you have done." The words were spoken sincerely, and when Sabina was very much in earnest there was something at once convincing and touching in her voice. The Baroness's sallow cheek actually flushed with pleasure, and she was impelled to leave her seat and kiss Sabina affectionately. She was restrained by a reasonable doubt as to the consequences of such demonstrative familiarity, though she would not have hesitated to kiss the girl's mother under like circumstances. "It was the least we could do," she said, knowing very well that the phrase meant nothing. "Excuse me," Sabina objected, "but there was no reason in the world why you should do anything at all for me! In the natural course of things I should either have been sent to the country with my sister-in-law, or to the convent with Clementina." "You would have been very unhappy, my dear child." "I do not know which would have been worse," said Sabina frankly. "They both hate me, and I hate them." "Dear me!" exclaimed the Baroness, shocked again, or pretending to be. "In our family," Sabina answered calmly, "we all hate each other." "I am sure your sister Clementina is far too religious to feel hatred for any one." "You do not know her!" Sabina laughed, and looked at the ceiling. "She hates 'the wicked' with a mortal hatred!" "Perhaps you mean that she hates wickedness, my dear," suggested the Baroness in a moralizing tone. "Not at all!" laughed the young girl. "She would like to destroy everybody who is not like her, and she would begin with her own family. She used to tell me that I was doomed to eternal flames because I loved my canary better than I loved her. I did. It was quite true. As for my brother, she said he was wicked, too. I quite believe he is, but she had a friendly understanding with him, because they used to make Signor Sassi get money for them both. In the end they got so much that there was nothing left. Her share all went to convents and extraordinary charities, and his went heaven knows where!" "And yours?" asked the Baroness, to see what she would say. "I suppose it went to them too, like everything else, and to my mother, who spent a great deal of money. At all events, none of us have anything now. That is why I want to work." "It is an honourable impulse, no doubt," the Baroness said, in a tone of meditative disapproval. Sabina leaned forward, her chin on her hand. "You think I am too young," she said. "And I really know nothing, except bad French and dancing. I cannot even sew, at least, not very well, and I cannot cook." She laughed. "I once made some very good toast," she added thoughtfully. "You must marry," said the Baroness. "You must make a good marriage." "No one will marry me, because I have no dowry," answered Sabina with perfect simplicity. "Some men marry girls who have none. You are very pretty, you know." "So my mother used to tell me when she was in a good humour. But Clementina always said I was hideous, that my eyes were like a little pig's, quite inside my head, and that my hair was grey, like an old woman's, and that I was as thin as a grasshopper." "You are very pretty," the Baroness repeated with conviction; "and I am sure you would make a good wife." "I am afraid not!" Sabina laughed. "We are none of us good, you know. Why should I be?" The Baroness disapproved. "That is a flippant speech," she said severely. "I do not feel flippant at all. I am very serious. I wish to earn my living." "But you cannot--" "But I wish to," answered Sabina, as if that settled the question. "Have you always done what you wished?" asked the Baroness wisely. "No, never. That is why I mean to begin at once. I am sure I can learn to be a maid, or to make hats, or feed babies with bottles. Many girls of eighteen can." The Baroness shrugged her shoulders in a decidedly plebeian way. Sabina's talk seemed very silly to her, no doubt, but she felt slightly foolish herself just then. At close quarters and in the relative intimacy that had grown up between them, the descendant of all the Conti had turned out to be very different from what the financier's wife had expected, and it was not easy to understand her. Sometimes the girl talked like a woman of the world, and sometimes like a child. Her character seemed to be a compound of cynicism and simplicity, indifference and daring, gentleness, hardness and pride, all wonderfully amalgamated under a perfectly self-possessed manner, and pervaded by the most undeniable charm. It was no wonder that the poor Baroness was as puzzled as a hen that has hatched a swan. Sabina had behaved perfectly, so far; the Baroness admitted this, and it had added considerably to her growing social importance to be regarded as the girl's temporary guardian. Even royalty had expressed its approval of her conduct and its appreciation of her generosity, and it was one of the Baroness's chief ambitions to be noticed by royalty. She had shown a good deal of tact, too, for she was woman enough to guess what the girl must feel, and how hard it must be to accept so much without any prospect of being able to make a return. So far, however, matters had gone very well, and she had really begun to look forward to the glory of presenting Sabina in society during the following winter, and of steering her to a rich marriage, penniless though she was. But this morning she had received a new impression which disturbed her. It was not that she attached much importance to Sabina's wild talk about working for a living, for that was absurd, on the face of it; but there was something daring in the tone, something in the little careless laugh which made her feel that the delicate girl might be capable of doing very unexpected and dangerous things. The sudden conviction came upon her that Sabina was of the kind that run away and make love matches, and otherwise break through social conventions in a manner quite irreparable. And if Sabina did anything of that sort, the Baroness would not only lose all the glory she had gained, but would of course be severely blamed by Roman society, which would be an awful calamity if it did not amount to a social fall. She alone knew how hard she had worked to build up her position, and she guessed how easily an accident might destroy it. Her husband had his politics and his finance to interest him, but what would be left to his wife if she once lost her hold upon the aristocracy? Even the smile of royalty would not make up for that, and royalty would certainly not smile if Sabina, being in her charge, did anything very startlingly unconventional. Sabina was quite conscious that the Baroness did not understand; indeed, she had not really expected to be understood, and when she saw the shrug of the shoulders that answered her last speech she rose quietly and went to the window. The blinds were drawn together, for it was now late in May, but she could see down to the street, and as she looked she started a little. "There is Signor Malipieri!" she cried, and it was clear that she was glad. The Baroness uttered an exclamation of surprise. "Are you sure?" she asked. Yes, Sabina was quite sure. He had just driven up to the door in a cab. Now he was paying the cabman, too, instead of making him wait. The Baroness glanced at the showy little clock set in turquoises, which stood on her writing-table, and she put away her unfinished letter. "We will ask him to stay to luncheon," she said, in a decided tone. After sending up to ask if he would be received, Malipieri entered the room with an apology. He said that he had hoped to find the Baron in, and had been told that he might come at any moment. The Baroness thereupon asked the visitor to stay to luncheon, and Malipieri accepted, and sat down. It had always amused Sabina to watch how the Baroness's manner changed when any one appeared whom she did not know very well. Her mouth assumed a stereotyped smile, she held her head a little forward and on one side, and she spoke in quite another tone. But just now Sabina did not notice these things. She was renewing her impression of Malipieri, whom she had only seen once and in evening dress. She liked him even better now, she thought, and it would have pleased her to look at him longer. Their eyes met in a glance as he told the Baroness that he had come to see Volterra on a matter of business. He did not explain what the business was, and at once began to talk of other things, as if to escape possible questions. Sabina thought he was paler than before, or less sunburnt, perhaps; at all events, the contrast between his very white forehead and his bronzed face was less strong. She could see his eyes more distinctly, too, than she had seen them in the evening, and she liked their expression better, for he did not look at all bored now. She liked his voice, too, for the slight harshness that seemed always ready to command. She liked the man altogether, and was conscious of the fact, and wished she could talk with him again, as she had talked that evening on the sofa in the corner, without fear of interruption. That was impossible, and she listened to what he said. It was merely the small talk of a man of the world who knows that he is expected to say something not altogether dull, and takes pains to be agreeable, but Sabina felt all through it a sort of sympathy which she missed very much in the Volterra household, the certainty of fellowship which people who have been brought up in similar surroundings feel when they meet in an atmosphere not their own. A few minutes after he had come, a servant opened the door and said that the Baron wished to speak to the Baroness at the telephone. She rose, hesitated a moment and went out, leaving the two young people together. "I have seen Sassi," said Malipieri in a low voice, as soon as the door was shut. "Yes," answered Sabina, with a little interrogation. She was very much surprised to hear a slight tremor in her own voice as she uttered the one word. "I like him very much," Malipieri continued. "He is a good friend to you. He said that if anything of importance happened he would come and see you." "I shall be glad," Sabina said. "Something is happening, which may bring him. Be sure to see him alone, when he comes." "Yes, but what is it? What can possibly happen that can make a difference?" Malipieri glanced at the door, fearing that the Baroness might enter suddenly. "Can you keep a secret?" he asked quickly. "Of course! Tell me!" She leaned forward with eager interest, expecting his next words. "Did you ever hear that something very valuable is said to be hidden somewhere under the palace?" Sabina's face fell and the eagerness faded from her eyes instantly. She had often heard the story from her nurses when she had been a little girl, and she did not believe a word of it, any more than she believed that the marble statue of Cardinal Conti in the library really came down from its pedestal on the eve of All Souls' and walked through the state apartments, or the myth about the armour of Francesco Conti, of which the nurses used to tell her that on the anniversary of the night of his murder his eyes could be seen through the bars of the helmet, glowing with the infernal fire. As for any hidden treasure, she was quite positive that if it existed her brother and sister would have got at it long ago. Malipieri sank in her estimation as soon as he mentioned it. He was only a Venetian, of course, and could not be expected to know much about Rome, but he must be very weak-minded if he could be imposed upon by such nonsense. Her delicate lip curled with a little contempt. "Is that the great secret?" she asked. "I thought you were in earnest." "The Senator is," observed Malipieri drily. "If the old gentleman has made you believe that he is, he must have some very deep scheme. He does not like to seem foolish." Malipieri did not answer at once, but he betrayed no annoyance. In the short silence, he could hear the Baroness's powerful voice yelling at the telephone. It ceased suddenly, and he guessed that she was coming back. "If I find anything, I wish you to see it before any one else does," he said quickly. "That would be very amusing!" Sabina laughed incredulously, just as the door opened. The Baroness heard the light laughter, and stood still with her hand on the latch, as if she had forgotten something. She was not a woman of sudden intuitions nor much given to acting on impulses, and when a new idea crossed her mind she almost always paused to think it over, no matter what she chanced to be doing. It was as if she had accidentally run against something which stunned her a little. "What is it?" asked Sabina, very naturally. The Baroness beckoned silently to her, and she rose. "Only one moment, Signor Malipieri," said the Baroness, apologizing for leaving him alone. When she and Sabina were out of the room, she shut the door and went on a few paces before speaking. "My husband has telephoned that he cannot leave the Senate," she said. "Well?" Sabina did not understand. "But Malipieri has come expressly to see him." "He can see him at the Senate," suggested Sabina. "But I have asked Malipieri to stay to luncheon. If I tell him that my husband is not coming, perhaps he will not stay after all." "Perhaps not," echoed Sabina with great calmness. "You do not seem to care," said the Baroness. "Why should I?" "I thought you liked him. I thought it would amuse you if he lunched with us." Sabina looked at her with some curiosity. "Did you tell the Baron that Signor Malipieri is here?" she asked carelessly. "No," answered the Baroness, looking away. "As my husband said he could not come to luncheon, it seemed useless." Sabina understood now, and smiled. This was the direct consequence of the talk which had preceded Malipieri's coming; the Baroness had at once conceived the idea of marrying her to Malipieri. "What shall we do?" asked the Baroness. "Whatever you think best," answered Sabina, with sudden meekness. "I think you ought at least to tell Signor Malipieri that the Baron is not coming. He may be in a hurry, you know. He may be wasting time." The Baroness smiled incredulously. "My dear," she said, "if he had been so very anxious to see my husband, he would have gone to the Senate first. It is near the palace." She said no more, but led the way back to the morning room, while Sabina reflected upon the possible truth of the last suggestion, and wondered whether Malipieri had really made his visit for the sake of exchanging a few words with her rather than in order to see Volterra. The Baroness spoke to him as she opened the door. "My husband has not come yet," she said. "We will not wait for him." She rang the bell to order luncheon, and Malipieri glanced at Sabina's face, wondering what the Baroness had said to her, for it was not reasonable to suppose that the two had left the room in order to consult in secret upon the question of waiting for Volterra. But Sabina did not meet his look, and her pale young face was impenetrably calm, for she was thinking about what she had just discovered. She was as certain that she knew what had passed in the Baroness's thoughts, as if the latter had spoken aloud. The knowledge, for it amounted to that, momentarily chased away the recollection of what Malipieri had said. It was rather amusing to be looked upon as marriageable, and to a man she already knew. Her mother had often talked to her with cynical frankness, telling her that she was to make the best match that could be obtained for her, naming numbers of young men she had never seen and assuring her that likes and dislikes had nothing to do with matrimony. They came afterwards, the Princess said, and it generally pleased Providence to send a mild form of aversion as the permanent condition of the bond. But Sabina had never believed her mother, who had cheated her when she was a child, as many foolish and heartless women do, promising rewards which were never given, and excursions which were always put off and little joys which always turned to sorrows less little by far. Moreover, her sister Clementina had told her that there was only one way to treat the world, and that was to leave it with the contempt it deserved; and she had heard her brother tell his wife in one of his miserable fits of weakly brutal anger that marriage was hell, and nothing else; to which the young princess had coldly replied that he was only where he deserved to be. Sabina had not been brought up with the traditional pious and proper views about matrimony, and if she did not think even worse of it, the merit was due to her own nature, in which there was much good and hardly any real evil. But she could not escape from a little inherited and acquired cynicism either, and while Malipieri chatted quietly during luncheon, an explanation of the whole matter occurred to her which was not pleasant to contemplate. The story about the treasure might or might not be true, but he believed in it, and so did Volterra. The Baron was therefore employing him to discover the prize. But Malipieri showed plainly that he wished her to possess it, if it were ever found, and perhaps he meant it to be her dowry, in which case it would come into his own hands if he could marry her. This was ingenious, if it was nothing else, and though Sabina felt that there was something mean about it, she resented the idea that he should expect her to think him a model of generosity when she hardly knew him. She was therefore very quiet, and looked at him rather coldly when he spoke to her, but the Baroness put this down to her admirably correct manners, and was already beginning to consider how she could approach Malipieri on the subject of his marrying Sabina. She was quite in ignorance of the business which had brought him and her husband together, as Sabina now knew from many remarks she remembered. Volterra was accustomed to tell his wife what he had been doing when the matter was settled, and she had long ago given up trying to make him talk of his affairs when he chose to be silent. On the whole, so far as Sabina was concerned, the circumstances were not at first very favourable to the Baroness's newly formed plan on this occasion, though she did not know it. On the other hand, Malipieri discovered before luncheon was over, that Sabina interested him very much, that she was much prettier than he had realized at his first meeting with her, and that he had unconsciously thought about her a good deal in the interval. CHAPTER VIII Malipieri was convinced before long that his doings interested some one who was able to employ men to watch him, and he connected the fact with Bruni's visit. He was not much disturbed by it, however, and was careful not to show that he noticed it at all. Naturally enough, he supposed that his short career as a promoter of republican ideas had caused him to be remembered as a dangerous person, and that a careful ministry was anxious to know why he lived alone in a vast palace, in the heart of Rome, knowing very few people and seeing hardly any one except Volterra. The Baron himself was apparently quite indifferent to any risk in the matter, and yet, as a staunch monarchist and supporter of the ministry then in office, it might have been expected that he would not openly associate with the monarchy's professed enemies. That was his affair, as Malipieri had frankly told him at the beginning. For the rest, the young architect smiled as he thought of the time and money the government was wasting on the supposition that he was plotting against it, but it annoyed him to find that certain faces of men in the streets were becoming familiar to him, quiet, blank faces of respectable middle-aged men, who always avoided meeting his eyes, and were very polite in standing aside to let him pass them on the pavement. There were now three whom he knew by sight, and he saw one of them every time he went out of the house. He knew what that meant. He had not the smallest doubt but that all three reported what they saw of his movements to Signor Vittorio Bruni, every day, in some particularly quiet little office in one of the government buildings connected with the Ministry of the Interior. It troubled him very little, since he was quite innocent of any political machinations for the present. He had determined from the first not to employ any workmen to help him unless it should be absolutely necessary. He was strong and his practical experience in Carthage had taught him the use of pick and crowbar. Masin was equal to two ordinary men for such work, and could be trusted to hold his tongue. Malipieri told the porter that he was exploring the foundations before attempting to strengthen them, and from time to time he gave him a little money. At first the old man offered to call Toto, who had always served the house, he said; but Malipieri answered that no help was needed in a mere preliminary exploration, and that another man would only be in the way. He made no secret of the fact that he was working with his own hands, however. Every morning, he and his servant went down into the north-west cellars by a winding staircase that was entered from a passage between the disused stables and the empty coach-house. Like every large Roman palace, the Palazzo Conti had two arched entrances, one of which had never been opened except on important occasions, when the carriages that drove in on the one side drove out at the other after their owner had alighted. This second gate was at the west end of the court, not far from the coach-house. To reach their work Malipieri and Masin had to go down the grand staircase and pass the porter's lodge. Masin wore the rough clothes of a working mason and Malipieri appeared in overalls and a heavy canvas jacket. Very soon the garments of both were so effectually stained with mud, green mould and water that the two men could hardly have been distinguished from ordinary day labourers, even in broad daylight. They began work on the very spot at which the snuffy little expert had stopped to listen to the water. It was evidently out of the question to break through the wall at the level of the cellar floor, for the water could be heard running steadily through its hidden channel, and if this were opened the cellars might be completely flooded. Besides, Malipieri knew that the water might rise unexpectedly to a considerable height. It was therefore best to make the opening as high as possible, under the vault, which at that point was not more than ten feet from the ground. The simplest plan would have been to put up a small scaffolding on which to work, but there was no timber suitable for the purpose in the cellar, and Malipieri did not wish to endanger the secrecy of his operations by having any brought down. He therefore set to work to excavate an inclined aperture, like a tunnel, which began at a height of about five feet and was intended to slope upwards so as to reach the interior chamber at the highest point practicable. It was very hard work at first, and it was not unattended by danger. Masin declared at the outset that it was impracticable without blasting. The wall appeared to be built of solid blocks of travertine stone, rough hewn on the face but neatly fitted together. It would take two men several days to loosen a single one of these blocks, and if they finally succeeded in moving it, it must fall to the ground at once, for their united strength would not have sufficed to lower it gently. "The facing is stone," said Malipieri, "but we shall find bricks behind it. If we do not, we must try to get in by some other way." In order to get any leverage at all, it was necessary to chisel out a space between the first block to be moved and those that touched it, an operation which occupied two whole days. Masin worked doggedly and systematically, and Malipieri imitated him as well as he could, but more than once nearly blinded himself with the flying chips of stone, and though he was strong his hands ached and trembled at the end of the day, so that he could hardly hold a pen. To Masin it was easy enough, and was merely a question of time and patience. He begged Malipieri to let him do it alone, but the architect would not hear of that, since there was room for two to use their tools at the same time, at opposite ends of the block. He was in haste to get over the first obstacle, which he believed to be by far the most difficult, and he was not the kind of man to sit idly watching another at work without trying to help him. On the third day they made an attempt to use a crowbar. They had two very heavy ones, but they did not try to use both, and united their strength upon one only. They might as well have tried to move the whole palace, and it looked as if they would be obliged to cut the block itself away with hammer and chisel, a labour of a fortnight, perhaps, considering the awkward position in which they had to work. "One dynamite cartridge would do it!" laughed Malipieri, as he looked at the huge stone. "Thank you, sir," answered Masin, taking the suggestion seriously. "I have been in the galleys seven years, and that is enough for a lifetime. We must try and split it with wedges." "There is no other way." They had all the tools necessary for the old-fashioned operation; three drilling irons, of different sizes, and a small sledge-hammer, and they went to work without delay. Malipieri held the iron horizontally against the stone with both hands, turning it a little after Masin had struck it with the sledge. It was very exhausting after a time, as the whole weight of the tool was at first carried by Malipieri's uplifted hands. Moreover, if he forgot to grasp it very firmly, the vibration of the blow made the palms of his hands sting till they were numb. At regular intervals the men changed places, Masin held the drill and Malipieri took the hammer. Every now and then they raked out the dust from the deepening hole with a little round scoop made for the purpose and riveted to the end of a light iron rod a yard long. Hour after hour they toiled thus together, far down under the palace, in the damp, close air, that was cold and yet stifling to breathe. The hole was now over two feet deep. Suddenly, as Masin delivered a heavy blow, the drill ran in an inch instead of recoiling in Malipieri's tight hold. "Bricks," said Masin, resting on the haft of the long hammer. Malipieri removed the drill, took the scoop and drew out the dust and minute chips. Hitherto the stuff had been grey, but now, as he held his hand under the round hole to catch what came, a little bit of dark red brick fell into his palm. He picked it out carefully and held it close to the bright unshaded lamp. "Roman brick," he said, after a moment. "We are not in Milan," observed Masin, by way of telling his master that he did not understand. "Ancient Roman brick," said Malipieri. "It is just what I expected. This is part of the wall of an old Roman building, built of bricks and faced with travertine. If we can get this block out, the worst will be over." "It is easier to drill holes in stone than in water," said Masin, who had put his ear to the hole. "I can hear it much louder now." "Of course you can," answered Malipieri. "We are wasting time," he added, picking up the drill and holding it against the block at a point six inches higher than before. Masin took his sledge again and hammered away with dogged regularity. So the work went on all that day, and all the next. And after that they took another tool and widened the holes, and then a third till they were two inches in diameter. Masin suggested that they might drive an iron on through the brickwork, and find out how much of it there was beyond the stone, but Malipieri pointed out that if the "lost water" should rise it would pour out through the hole and stop their operations effectually. The entrance must incline upwards, he said. They made long round plugs of soft pine to fit the holes exactly, each one scored with a channel a quarter of an inch deep, which was on the upper side when they had driven the plugs into their places, and was intended to lead the water along the wood, so as to wet it more thoroughly. To do this Malipieri poked long cotton wicks into each channel with a wire, as far as possible. He made Masin buy half-a-dozen coarse sponges and tied one upon the upper end of each projecting plug. Finally he wet all the sponges thoroughly and wound coarse cloths loosely round them to keep in as much of the water as possible. By pouring on water from time to time the soft wood was to be ultimately wet through, the wicks leading the moisture constantly inward, and in the end the great block must inevitably be split into halves. It is the prehistoric method, and there never was any other way of cleaving very hard stone until gunpowder first brought in blasting. It is slow, but it is quite sure. The place where the two men had been working was many feet below the level of the courtyard, but the porter could now and then hear the sound of blows echoing underground through the vast empty cellars, even when he stood near the great entrance. Toto heard the noise too, one day, as he was standing still to light his pipe in the Vicolo dei Soldati. When it struck his ear he let the match burn out till it singed his horny fingers. His expression became even more blank than usual, but he looked up and down the street, to see if he were alone, and upward at the windows of the house opposite. Nobody was in sight, but in order to place his ear close to the wall and listen, he made a pretence of fastening his shoe-string. The sound came to him from very far beneath, regular as the panting of an engine. He knew his trade, and recognized the steady hammering on the end of a stone drill, very unlike the irregular blows of a pickaxe or a crowbar. The "moles" were at work, and knew their business; sooner or later they would break through. But Toto could not guess that the work was being actually done by Malipieri and his servant, without help. One man alone could not do it, and the profound contempt of the artisan for any outsider who attempts his trade, made Toto feel quite sure that one or more masons had been called in to make a breach in the foundation wall. As he stood up and lighted his pipe at last, he grinned all alone, and then slouched on, his heart full of very evil designs. Had he not always been the mason of the Palazzo Conti? And his father before him? And his grandfather, who had lost his life down there, where the moles were working? And now that he was turned out, and others were called in to do a particularly confidential job, should he not be revenged? He bit his pipe and thrust his rough hands deep into the pockets of his fustian trousers, and instead of turning into the wine shop to meet Gigi, he went off for a walk by himself through all the narrow and winding streets that lie between the Palazzo Conti and Monte Giordano. He came to no immediate conclusion, and moreover there was no great hurry. He knew well enough that it would take time to pierce the wall, after the drilling was over, and he could easily tell when that point was reached by listening every day in the Vicolo dei Soldati. It would still be soon enough to play tricks with the water, if he chose that form of vengeance, and he grinned again as he thought of the vast expense he could force upon Volterra in order to save the palace. But he might do something else. Instead of flooding the cellars and possibly drowning the masons who had ousted him, he could turn informer and defeat the schemes of Volterra and Malipieri, for he never doubted but that if they found anything of value they meant to keep the whole profit of it to themselves. He had the most vague notions of what the treasure might be. When the fatal accident had happened his grandfather had been the only man who had actually penetrated into the innermost hiding-place; the rest had fled when the water rose and had left him to drown. They had seen nothing, and their story had been handed down as a mere record of the catastrophe. Toto knew at least that the vaults had then been entered from above, which was by far the easier way, but a new pavement had long ago covered all traces of the aperture. There was probably gold down there, gold of the ancients, in earthen jars. That was Toto's belief, and he also believed that when it was found it would belong to the government, because the government took everything, but that somehow, in real justice, it should belong to the Pope. For Toto was not only a genuine Roman of the people, but had always regarded himself as a sort of hereditary retainer of an ancient house. His mind worked slowly. A day passed, and he heard the steady hammering still, and after a second night he reached a final conclusion. The Pope must have the treasure, whatever it might be. That, he decided, was the only truly moral view, and the only one which satisfied his conscience. It would doubtless be very amusing to be revenged on the masons by drowning them in a cellar, with the absolute certainty of never being suspected of the deed. The plan had great attractions. The masons themselves should have known better than to accept a job which belonged by right to him, and they undoubtedly deserved to be drowned. Yet Toto somehow felt that as there was no woman in the case he might some day, in his far old age, be sorry for having killed several men in cold blood. It was really not strictly moral, after all, especially as his grandfather's death had been properly avenged by the death of the murderer. As for allowing the government to have a share in the profits of the discovery, that was not to be thought of. He was a Roman, and the Italian government was his natural enemy. If he could have turned all the "lost water" in the city upon the whole government collectively, in the cellars of the Palazzo Conti, he would have felt that it was strictly moral to do so. The government had stolen more than two years of his life by making him serve in the army, and he was not going to return good for evil. With beautiful simplicity of reasoning he cursed the souls of the government's dead daily, as if it had been a family of his acquaintance. But the Pope was quite another personage. There had always been popes, and there always would be till the last judgment, and everything connected with the Vatican would last as long as the world itself. Toto was a conservative. His work had always kept him among lasting things of brick and stone, and he was proud of never having taken a day's wages for helping to put up the modern new-fangled buildings he despised. The most lasting of all buildings in the world was the Vatican, and the most permanent institution conceivable was the Pope. Gigi, who made wretched, perishable objects of wood and nails and glue, such as doors and windows, sometimes launched into modern ideas. Toto would have liked to know how many times the doors and windows of the Palazzo Conti had been renewed since the walls had been built! He pitied Gigi always, and sometimes he despised him, though they were good friends enough in the ordinary sense. The Pope should have the treasure. That was settled, and the only question remaining concerned the means of transferring it to him when it was discovered. CHAPTER IX One evening it chanced that the Volterra couple were dining out, and that Sabina, having gone up to her room to spend the evening, had forgotten the book she was reading and came downstairs half-an-hour later to get it. She opened the drawing-room door and went straight to the table on which she had left the volume. As she turned to go back she started and uttered a little cry, almost of terror. Malipieri was standing before the mantelpiece, looking at her. "I am afraid I frightened you," he said quietly. "Pray forgive me." "Not at all," Sabina answered, resting the book she held in her hand upon the edge of the table. "I did not know any one was here." "I said I would wait till the Senator came home," Malipieri said. "Yes." Sabina hesitated a moment and then sat down. She smiled, perhaps at herself. In her mother's house it would have been thought extremely improper for her to be left alone with a young man during ten minutes, but she knew that the Baroness held much more modern views, and would probably be delighted that she and Malipieri should spend an hour together. He had been asked to luncheon again, but had declined on the ground of being too busy, much to the Baroness's annoyance. Malipieri seated himself on a small chair at a discreet distance. "I happened to know that they were going out," he said, "so I came." Sabina looked at him in surprise. It was an odd way to begin a conversation. "I wanted to see you alone," he explained. "I thought perhaps you would come down." "It was an accident," Sabina answered. "I had left my book here. No one told me that you had come." "Of course not. I took the chance that a lucky accident might happen. It has, but I hope you are not displeased. If you are, you can turn me out." "I could go back to my room." Sabina laughed. "Why should I be displeased?" "I have not the least idea whether you like me or not," answered Malipieri. Sabina wondered whether all men talked like this, or whether it were not more usual to begin with a few generalities. She was really quite sure that she liked Malipieri, but it was a little embarrassing to be called upon to tell him so at once. "If I wanted you to go away, I should not sit down," she said, still smiling. "I hate conventions," answered Malipieri, "and I fancy that you do, too. We were both brought up in them, and I suppose we think alike about them." "Perhaps." Sabina turned over the book she still held, and looked at the back of it. "Exactly," continued Malipieri. "But I do not mean that what we are doing now is so dreadfully unconventional after all. Thank heaven, manners have changed since I was a boy, and even in Italy we may be allowed to talk together a few minutes without being suspected of planning a runaway marriage. I wanted to see you alone because I wish you to do something very much more 'improper,' as society calls it." Sabina looked up with innocent and inquiring eyes, but said nothing in answer. "I have found something," he said. "I should like you to see it." "There is nothing so very terrible in that," replied Sabina, looking at him steadily. "The world would think differently. But if you will trust me the world need never know anything about it. You will have to come alone. That is the difficulty." "Alone?" Sabina repeated the word, and instinctively drew herself up a little. "Yes." A short silence followed, and Malipieri waited for her to speak, but she hesitated. In years, she was but lately out of childhood, but the evil of the world had long been near her in her mother's house, and she knew well enough that if she did what he asked, and if it were known, her reputation would be gone. She was a little indignant at first, and was on the point of showing it, but as she met his eyes once more she felt certain that he meant no offence to her. "You must have a very good reason for asking me to do such a dangerous thing," she said at last. "The reasons are complicated," answered Malipieri. "Perhaps I could understand, if you explained them." "Yes, I am sure you can. I will try. In the first place, you know of the story about a treasure being concealed in the palace. I spoke of it the other day, and you laughed at it. When I began, I was not inclined to believe it myself, for it seems never to have been anything more than a tradition. One or two old chronicles speak of it. A Venetian ambassador wrote about it in the sixteenth century in one of his reports to his government, suggesting that the Republic should buy the palace if it were ever sold. I daresay you have heard that." "No. It does not matter. You say you have found something--that is the important point." "Yes; and the next thing is to keep the secret for the present, because so many people would like to know it. The third point of importance is that you should see the treasure before it is moved, before I can move it myself, or even see all of it." "What is this treasure?" asked Sabina, with a little impatience, for she was really interested. "All I have seen of it is the hand of what must be a colossal statue, of gilt bronze. On one of the fingers there is a ring with a stone which I believe to be a ruby. If it is, it is worth a great deal, perhaps as much as the statue itself." Sabina's eyes had opened very wide in her surprise, for she had never really believed the tale, and even when he had told her that he had found something she had not thought it could be anything very valuable. "Are you quite sure you have seen it?" she asked with childlike wonder. "Yes. I lowered a light into the place, but I did not go down. There may be other things. They belong to you." "To me? Why?" asked Sabina in surprise. "For a good many reasons which may or may not be good in law but which are good enough for me. You were robbed of your dowry--forgive the expression. I cannot think of another word. The Senator got possession of the palace for much less than its market value, let alone what I have found. He sent for me because I have been fortunate in finding things, and he believed it just possible that there might be something hidden in the foundations. Your family spent long ago what he lent them on the mortgage, and Sassi assures me that you never had a penny of it. I mean you to have your share now. That is all." Sabina listened quietly enough to the end. "Thank you, very much," she said gravely, when he had finished. Then there was another pause. To her imagination the possibilities of wealth seemed fabulous, and even Malipieri thought them large; but Sabina was not thinking of a fortune for its own sake. Of late none of her family had cared for money except to spend it without counting. What struck her first was that she would be free to leave the Volterras' house, that she would be independent, and that there would be an end of the almost unbearable situation in which she had lived since the crash. "If the Senator can keep it all for himself, he will," Malipieri observed, "and his wife will help him." "Do you think this had anything to do with their anxiety to have me stay with them?" asked Sabina, and as the thought occurred to her the expression of her eyes changed. "The Baroness knows nothing at all about the matter," answered Malipieri. "I fancy she only wanted the social glory of taking charge of you when your people came to grief. But her husband will take advantage of the obligation you are under. I suspect that he will ask you to sign a paper of some sort, very vaguely drawn up, but legally binding, by which you will make over to him all claim whatever on your father's estate." "But I have none, have I?" "If the facts were known to-morrow, your brother might at once begin an action to recover, on the equitable ground that by an extraordinary chain of circumstances the property has turned out to be worth much more than any one could have expected. Do you understand?" "Yes. Go on." "Very well. The Senator knows that in all probability the court would decide against your brother, who has the reputation of a spendthrift, unless your claim is pushed; but that any honest judge, if it were legally possible, would do his best to award you something. If you had made over your claim to Volterra, that would be impossible, and would only strengthen his case." "I see," said Sabina. "It is very complicated." "Of course it is. And there are many other sides to it. The Senator, on his part, is as anxious to keep the whole matter a secret as I am, for your sake. He has no idea that there is a colossal statue in the vaults. He probably hopes to find gold and jewels which could be taken away quietly and disposed of without the knowledge of the government." "What has the government to do with it?" "It has all sorts of claims on such discoveries, and especially on works of art. It reserves the right to buy them from the owners at a valuation, if they are sold at all." "Then the government will buy this statue, I suppose." "In the end, unless it allows the Vatican to buy it." "I do not see what is going to happen," said Sabina, growing bewildered. "The Senator must make everything over to you before it is sold," answered Malipieri calmly. "How can he be made to do that?" "I do not know, but he shall." "Do you mean that the law can force him to?" "The law might, perhaps, but I shall find some much shorter way." Sabina was silent for a moment. "But he employs you on this work," she said suddenly. "Not exactly." Malipieri smiled. "I would not let Volterra pay me to grub underground for his benefit, any more than I would live in his house without paying him rent." Sabina bit her lip and turned her face away suddenly, for the thoughtless words had hurt her. "I agreed to make the search merely because I am interested in archaeology," he continued. "Until I met you I did not care what might become of anything we found in the palace." "Why should you care now?" The question rose to her lips before she knew what she was saying, for what had gone before had disturbed her a little. It had been a very cruel speech, though he had not meant it. He looked at her thoughtfully. "I am not quite sure why I care," he answered, "but I do." Neither spoke for some time. "I suppose you pity me," Sabina observed at last, rather resentfully. He said nothing. "You probably felt sorry for me as soon as you saw me," she continued, leaning back in her chair and speaking almost coldly. "I am an object of pity, of course!" Malipieri laughed a little at the very girlish speech. "No," he answered. "I had not thought of you in that light. I liked you, the first time I saw you. That is much simpler than pitying." He laughed again, but it was at himself. "You treat me like a child," Sabina said with a little petulance. "You have no right to!" "Shall I treat you like a woman, Donna Sabina?" he said, suddenly serious. "Yes. I am sure I am old enough." "If you were not, I should certainly not feel as I do towards you." "What do you mean?" "If you are a woman, you probably guess." "No." "You may be offended," suggested Malipieri. "Not unless you are rude--or pity me." She smiled now. "Is it very rude to like a person?" he asked. "If you think it is, I will not go on." "I am not sure," said Sabina demurely, and she looked down. "In that case it is wiser not to run the risk of offending you past forgiveness!" It was very amusing to hear him talk, for no man had ever talked to her in this way before. She knew that he was thought immensely clever, but he did not seem at all superior now, and she was glad of it. She should have felt very foolish if he had discoursed to her learnedly about Carthage and antiquities. Instead, he was simple and natural, and she liked him very much; and the little devil that enters into every woman about the age of sixteen and is not often cast out before fifty, even by prayer and fasting, suddenly possessed her. "Rudeness is not always past forgiveness," she said, with a sweet smile. Malipieri looked at her gravely and wondered whether he had any right to take up the challenge. He had never been in love with a young girl in his life, and somehow it did not seem fair to speak as he had been speaking. It was very odd that his sense of honour should assert itself just then. It might have been due to the artificial traditions of generations without end, before him. At the same time, he knew something of women, and in her last speech he recognized the womanly cooing, the call of the mate, that has drawn men to happiness or destruction ever since the world began. She was a mere girl, of course, but since he had said so much, she could not help tempting him to go to the end and tell her he loved her. Though Malipieri did not pretend to be a model of all the virtues, he was thoroughly fair in all his dealings, according to his lights, and just then he would have thought it the contrary of fair to say what she seemed to expect. He knew instinctively that no one had ever said it to her before, which was a good reason for not saying it lightly; and he was sure that he could not say it quite seriously, and almost certain also that she had not even begun to be really in love herself, though he felt that she liked him. On the other hand--for in the flash of a second he argued the case--he did not feel that she was the hypothetical defenceless maiden, helpless to resist the wiles of an equally hypothetical wicked young man. She had been brought up by a worldly mother since she had left the convent where she had associated with other girls, most of whom also had worldly mothers; and some of the wildest blood in Europe ran in her veins. On the whole, he thought it would be justifiable to tell her exactly what he felt, and she might do as she pleased about answering him. "I think I shall fall in love with you before long," he said, with almost unnecessary calmness. Sabina had not expected that the first declaration she received in her life would take this mild form, but it affected her much more strongly than she could understand. Her hand tightened suddenly on the book she held, and she noticed a little fluttering at her heart and in her throat, and at the same time she was conscious of a tremendous determination not to show that she felt anything at all, but to act as if she had heard just such things before, and more also. "Indeed!" she said, with admirable indifference. Malipieri looked at her in surprise. An experienced flirt of thirty could not have uttered the single word more effectively. "I wonder whether you will ever like me better than you do now," he said, by way of answer. She was wondering, too, but it was not likely that she would admit it. "I am very fickle," she replied, with a perfectly self-possessed little laugh. "So am I," Malipieri answered, following her lead. "My most desperate love affairs have never lasted more than a month or two." "You have had a great many, I daresay," Sabina observed, with no show of interest. She was amazed and delighted to find how easy it was to act her new part. "And you," he asked, laughing, "how often have you been in love already?" "Let me see!" She turned her eyes to his, without turning her head, and letting the book lie in her lap she pretended to count on her fingers. He watched her gravely, and nodded as she touched each finger, as if he were counting with her. Suddenly she dropped both hands and laughed gaily. "How childish you are!" she exclaimed. "How deliciously frank you are!" he retorted, laughing with her. It was mere banter, and not witty at that, but they were growing intimate in it, much faster than either of them realized, for it was the first time they had been able to talk together quite without constraint, and it was the very first time Sabina had ever had a chance of talking as she pleased to a man whom she really thought young. Moreover they were quite modern young people, and therefore entirely devoid of all the sentimentality and "world-sorrow" which made youth so delightfully gloomy and desperately cynical, without the least real cynicism, in the middle of the nineteenth century. In those days no young man who showed a ray of belief in anything had a chance with a woman, and no woman had a chance with men unless she had a hidden sorrow. Women used to construct themselves a secret and romantic grief in those times, with as much skill as they bestowed on their figure and face, and there were men who spent hours in reading Schopenhauer in order to pick out and treasure up a few terribly telling phrases; and love-making turned upon the myth that life was not worth living. We have changed all that now; whether for better or worse, the social historians of the future will decide for us after we are dead, so we need not trouble our heads about the decision unless we set up to be moralists ourselves. The enormous tidal wave of hypocrisy is retiring, and if the shore discovered by the receding waves is here and there horribly devastated and hopelessly bare, it is at least dry land. The wave covered everything for a long time, from religion to manners, from science to furniture, and we who are old enough to remember, and not old enough to regret, are rubbing our eyes and looking about us, as on a new world, amazed at having submitted so long to what we so heartily despised, glad to be able to speak our minds at last about many things, and astounded that people should at last be allowed to be good and suffered to be bad, without the affectation of seeming one or the other, in a certain accepted manner governed by fashion, and imposed by a civilized and perfectly intolerant society. While progress advances, it really looks as if humanity were reverting to its types, with an honest effort at simplicity. There is a revival of the moral individuality of the middle ages. The despot proudly says, like Alexander, or Montrose in love, that he will reign, and he will reign alone; and he does. The financier plunders mankind and does not pretend that he is a long-lost type of philanthropist. The anarchist proclaims that it is virtuous to kill kings, and he kills them. The wicked do not even make a pretence of going to church on Sundays. If this goes on, we shall have saints before long. Hypocrisy has disappeared even from literature, since no one who now writes books fit to read can be supposed to do so out of respect for public opinion, still less from any such base motive as a desire for gain. Malipieri and Sabina both felt that they had been drawn much nearer together by what had sounded like idle chatter, and yet neither of them was inclined to continue talking in the same way. Moreover time was passing quickly, and there was a matter to be decided before they parted. Malipieri returned to the subject of his discovery, and his desire that Sabina should see it. "But I cannot possibly come to the palace alone," she objected. "It is quite out of the question. Even if--" she stopped. "What?" he asked. "Even if I were willing to do it--" she hesitated again. "You are not afraid, are you?" There was a slight intonation of irony in his question. "No, I am not afraid." She paused a moment. "I suppose that if I saw a way of coming, I would come," she said, then. "But I see no way. I cannot go out alone. Every one would know it. There would be a terrible fuss about it!" The idea evidently amused her. "Could you come with Sassi?" asked Malipieri presently. "He is respectable enough for anything." "Even that would be thought very strange," answered Sabina. "I have no good reason to give for going out alone with him." "You would not give any reason till afterwards, and when it is over there cannot really be anything to be said about it. The Baroness goes out every afternoon. You can make an excuse for staying at home to-morrow, and then you will be alone in the house. Sassi will call for you in a closed cab and bring you to the palace, and I will be at the door to receive you. The chances are that you will be at home again before the Baroness comes in, and she will never know that you have been out. Does that look very hard?" "No, it looks easy." "What time shall Sassi call for you to-morrow?" asked Malipieri, who wished to settle the matter at once. "At five o'clock," answered Sabina, after a moment's thought. "At five to-morrow, then. You had better not wear anything very new. The place where the statue lies is not a drawing-room, you know, and your frock may be spoilt." "Very well." She glanced at the clock, looked at Malipieri as if hesitating, and then rose. "I shall go back to my room now," she said. "Yes. It is better. They may come in at any moment." He had risen also. Their eyes met again, and they smiled at each other, as they realized what they were doing, that they had been nearly an hour together, unknown to any one, and had arranged something very like a clandestine meeting for the next day. Sabina put out her hand. "At five o'clock," she said again. "Good-night." He felt her touch for the first time since they had met. It was light and elastic as the pressure of a very delicate spring, perfectly balanced and controlled. But she, on her side, looked down suddenly and uttered an exclamation of surprise. "Oh! How rough your hand is!" He laughed, and held out his palm, which was callous as a day-labourer's. "My man and I have done all the work ourselves," he said, "and it has not been play." "It must be delightful!" answered Sabina with admiration. "I wish I were a man! We could have done it together." She went to the door, and she turned to smile at him again as she laid her hand on the knob. He remembered her afterwards as she stood there a single moment with the light on her misty hair and white cheeks, and the little shadow round her small bare throat. He remembered that he would have given anything to bring her back to the place where she had sat. There was much less doubt in his mind as to what he felt then than there had been a few minutes earlier. Half an hour after Sabina had disappeared Malipieri and Volterra were seated in deep armchairs in the smoking-room, the Baron having sent his wife to bed a few minutes after they had come in. She obeyed meekly as she always did, for she had early discovered that although she was a very energetic woman, Volterra was her master and that it was hopeless to oppose his slightest wish. It is true that in return for the most absolute obedience the fat financier gave her the strictest fidelity and all the affection of which he was capable. Like more than one of the great modern freebooters, the Baron's private life was very exemplary, yet his wife would have been willing to forgive him something if she might occasionally have had her own way. This evening he was not in good-humour, as Malipieri found out as soon as they were alone together. He chewed the end of the enormous Havana he had lighted, he stuck his feet out straight in front of him, resting his heels on the floor and turning his shining patent leather toes straight up, he folded his hands upon the magnificent curve of his white waistcoat, and leaning his head well back he looked steadily at the ceiling. All these were very bad signs, as his wife could have told Malipieri if she had stayed in the room. Malipieri smoked in silence for some time, entirely forgetting him and thinking of Sabina. "Well, Mr. Archaeologist," the Baron said at last, allowing his big cigar to settle well into one corner of his mouth, "there is the devil to pay." He spoke as if the trouble were Malipieri's fault. The younger man eyed him coldly. "What is the matter?" he enquired, without the least show of interest. "You are being watched," answered Volterra, still looking at the ceiling. "You are now one of those interesting people whose movements are recorded like the weather, every twelve hours." "Yes," said Malipieri. "I have known that for some time." "The next time you know anything so interesting I wish you would inform me," replied Volterra. His voice and his way of speaking irritated Malipieri. The Baroness had been better educated than her husband from the first; she was more adaptable and she had really learned the ways of the society she loved, but the Baron was never far from the verge of vulgarity, and he often overstepped it. "When you asked me to help you," Malipieri said, "you knew perfectly well what my political career had been. I believe you voted for the bill which drove me out of the country." "Did I?" The Baron watched the smoke of his cigar curling upwards. "I think you did. Not that I bear you the least malice. I only mean that you might very naturally expect that I should be thought a suspicious person, and that detectives would follow me about." "Nobody cares a straw for your politics," retorted Volterra rudely. "Then I shall be the more free to think as I please," Malipieri answered with calm. "Perfectly so. In the meantime it is not the Ministry of the Interior that is watching you. The present Ministry does not waste time and money on such nonsense. You are being watched because you are suspected of trying to get some statues or pictures out of Italy, in defiance of the Pacca law." "Oh!" Malipieri blew a whiff of smoke out with the ejaculation, for he was surprised. "I have it from one of the cabinet," Volterra continued. "He told me the facts confidentially after dinner. You see, as you are living in my house, the suspicion is reflected on me." "In your house?" "The Palazzo Conti is my house," answered the Baron, taking his cigar from his mouth for the first time since he had lighted it, and holding it out at arm's length with a possessive sweep while he leaned back and looked at the ceiling again. "It all belongs to me," he said. "I took it for the mortgage, with everything in it." "By the bye," said Malipieri, "what became of that Velasquez, and those other pictures?" "Was there a Velasquez?" enquired the Baron carelessly, without changing his attitude. "Yes. It was famous all over Europe. It was a family portrait." "I remember! It turned out to be a copy after all." "A copy!" repeated Malipieri incredulously. "Yes, the original is in Madrid," answered the Baron with imperturbable self-possession. "And all those other pictures turned out to be copies, too, I daresay," suggested Malipieri. "Every one of them. It was a worthless collection." "In that case it was hardly worth while to take so much trouble in getting them out of the country secretly." Malipieri smiled. "That was the dealer's affair," answered Volterra without the least hesitation. "Dealers are such fools! They always make a mystery of everything." Malipieri could not help admiring the proportions and qualities of the Baron's lies. The financier was well aware that Malipieri knew the pictures to be genuine beyond all doubt. The disposal of them had been well managed, for when Malipieri moved into the palace there was not a painting of value left on the walls, yet there had been no mention of them in the newspapers, nor any gossip about them, and the public at large believed them to be still in their places. As a matter of fact most of them were already in France and England, and the Velasquez was in Saint Petersburg. "I understand why you are anxious that the Palazzo Conti should not be watched just now," Malipieri said. "For my part, as I do not believe in your government, I cannot be expected to believe in its laws. It is not my business whether you respect them yourselves or not." "Who is breaking the law?" asked the Baron roughly. "It is absurd to talk in that way. But as the government has taken it into its head to suspect that you do, it is not advisable for me, who am a staunch supporter of the government, to see too much of you. I am sure you must understand that--it is so simple." "In other words?" Malipieri looked at him coldly, waiting for an explanation. "I cannot afford to have it said that you are living in the palace for the purpose of helping dealers to smuggle objects of art out of the country. That is what I mean." "I see. But what objects of art do you mean, since you have already sent away everything there was?" "It is believed that you had something to do with that ridiculous affair of the copies," said Volterra, his voice suddenly becoming oily. "They were gone when I moved in." "I daresay they were. But it would be hard to prove, and of course the people who bought the pictures from the dealer insist that they are genuine, so that there may be trouble some day, and you may be annoyed about the things if you stay here any longer." "You mean that you advise me to leave Rome. Is that it?" Malipieri now spoke with the utmost indifference, and glanced carelessly at the end of his cigar as he knocked the ash into the gold cup at his side. "You certainly cannot stay any longer in the palace," Volterra said, in an advisory and deprecatory tone. "You seem to be badly frightened," observed Malipieri. "I really cannot see why I should change my quarters until we have finished what we are doing." "I am afraid you will have to go. You are looked upon as very 'suspicious.' It would not be so bad, if your servant had not been a convict." "How do you know that?" Malipieri asked with sudden sternness. "Everything of that sort is known to the police," answered Volterra, whose manner had become very mild. "Of course you have your own reasons for employing such a person." "He is an innocent man, who was unjustly convicted." "Oh, indeed! Poor fellow! Those things happen sometimes, I know. It is more than kind of you to employ him. Nevertheless, you cannot help seeing that the association of ideas is unfortunate and gives a bad impression. The man was never proved to be innocent, and when he had served his term, he was involved as your servant in your political escapade. You do not mind my speaking of that matter lightly? It is the safest way to look at it, is it not? Yes. The trouble is that you and your man are both on the black book, and since the affair has come to the notice of the government my colleagues are naturally surprised that you should both be living in a house that belongs to me." "You can explain to your colleagues that you have let the apartment in the palace to me, and that as I pay my rent regularly you cannot turn me out without notice." Malipieri smiled indifferently. "Surely," said the Baron, affecting some surprise, "if I ask you, as a favour, to move somewhere else, you will do so!" To tell the truth, he was not prepared for Malipieri's extreme forbearance, for he had expected an outbreak of temper, at the least, and he still feared a positive refusal. Instead, the young man did not seem to care a straw. "Of course," he said, "if you ask it as a favour, I cannot refuse. When should you like me to go?" "You are really too kind!" The Baron was genuinely delighted and almost grateful--as near to feeling gratitude, perhaps, as he had ever been in his life. "I should hate to hurry you," he continued. "But really, since you are so very good, I think the sooner you can make it convenient to move, the better it will be for every one." "I could not manage to pack my books and drawings so soon as to-morrow," said Malipieri. "Oh, no! certainly not! By all means take a couple of days about it. I could not think of putting you to any inconvenience." "Thanks." Malipieri smiled pleasantly. "If I cannot get off by the day after to-morrow, I shall certainly move the day after that." "I am infinitely obliged. And now that this unpleasant matter is settled, owing to your wonderful amiability, do tell me how the work is proceeding." "Fairly well," Malipieri answered. "You had better come and see for yourself before I go. Let me see. To-morrow I shall have to look about for a lodging. Could you come the day after to-morrow? Then we can go down together." "How far have you got?" asked Volterra, with a little less interest than might have been expected. "I am positively sure that there is an inner chamber, where I expected to find it," Malipieri answered, with perfect truth. "Perhaps we can get into it when you come." "I hope so," said the Baron, watching the other's face from the corner of his eye. "I have made a curious discovery in the course of the excavation," Malipieri continued. "The pillar of masonry which you showed me is hollow after all. It was the shaft of an oubliette which must have opened somewhere in the upper part of the house. There is a well under it." "Full of water?" "No. It is dry. We shall have to pass through it to get to the inner chamber. You shall see for yourself--a very singular construction." "Was there nothing in it?" "Several skeletons," answered Malipieri indifferently. "One of the skulls has a rusty knife driven through it." "Dear me!" exclaimed the Baron, shaking his fat head. "Those Conti were terrible people! We must not tell the Baroness these dreadful stories. They would upset her nerves." Malipieri had not supposed Volterra's wife to be intensely sensitive. He moved, as if he meant to take his leave presently. "By the bye," he said, "whereabouts should you recommend me to look for a lodging?" The Baron reflected a moment. "If I were you," he said, "I would go to a hotel. In fact, I think you would be wiser to leave Rome for a time, until all these absurd stories are forgotten. The least I can do is to warn you that you may be exposed to a good deal of annoyance if you stay here. The minister with whom I was talking this evening told me as much in a friendly way." "Really? That was very kind of him. But what do you mean by the word 'annoyance'? It is rather vague. It is one thing to suspect a man of trying to evade the Pacca law; it is quite another matter to issue a warrant of arrest against him." "Oh, quite," answered Volterra readily. "I did not mean that, of course, though when one has once been arrested for anything, innocent or not, our police always like to repeat the operation as soon as possible, just as a matter of principle." "In other words, if a man has once been suspected, even unjustly, he had better leave his country for ever." The Baron shrugged his big round shoulders, and drew a final puff from his cigar before throwing the end away. "Injustice is only what the majority thinks of the minority," he observed. "If you do not happen to be a man of genius, the first step towards success in life is to join the majority." Malipieri laughed as he rose to his feet, reflecting that in delivering himself of this piece of worldly wisdom the Baron had probably spoken the truth for the first time since they had been talking. "Shall we say day after to-morrow, about five o'clock?" asked Malipieri before going. "By all means. And let me thank you again for meeting my views so very obligingly." "Not at all." So Malipieri went home to think matters over, and the Baron sat a long time in his chair, looking much pleased with himself and apparently admiring a magnificent diamond which he wore on one of his thick fingers. CHAPTER X Malipieri was convinced that Volterra not only knew exactly how far the work under the palace had proceeded, but was also acquainted with the general nature of the objects found in the inner chamber, beyond the well shaft. The apparent impossibility of such a thing was of no importance. The Baron would never have been so anxious to get rid of Malipieri unless he had been sure that the difficult part of the work was finished and that the things discovered were of such dimensions as to make it impossible to remove them secretly. Malipieri knew the man and guessed that if he could not pocket the value of everything found in the excavations by disposing of the discoveries secretly, he would take the government into his confidence at once, as the surest means of preventing any one else from getting a share. What was hard to understand was that Volterra should know how far the work had gone before Malipieri had told him anything about it. That he did know, could hardly be doubted. He had practically betrayed the fact by the mistake he had made in assuring himself that Malipieri was willing to leave the house, before even questioning him as to the progress made since they had last met. He had been a little too eager to get rid of the helper he no longer needed. It did not even occur to Malipieri that Masin could have betrayed him, yet so far as it was possible to judge, Masin was the only living man who had looked into the underground chamber. As he walked home, he recalled the conversation from beginning to end, and his conviction was confirmed. Volterra had been in a bad temper, nervous, a little afraid of the result and therefore inclined to talk in a rough and bullying tone. As soon as he had ascertained that Malipieri was not going to oppose him, he had become oily to obsequiousness. On his part Malipieri had accepted everything Volterra proposed, for two reasons. In the first place he would not for the world have had the financier think that he wanted a share of the treasure, or any remuneration for what he had done. Secondly, he knew that possession is nine points of the law, and that if anything could ever be obtained for Sabina it would not be got by making a show of violent opposition to the Baron's wishes. If Malipieri had refused to leave his lodging in the palace, Volterra could have answered by filling the house with people in his own employ, or by calling in government architects, archaeologists and engineers, and taking the whole matter out of Malipieri's hands. The first thing to be ascertained was, who had entered the vaults and reported the state of the work to Volterra. Malipieri might have suspected the porter himself, for it was possible that there might be another key to the outer entrance of the cellar; but there was a second door further in, to which Masin had put a patent padlock, and even Masin had not the key to that. The little flat bit of steel, with its irregular indentations, was always in Malipieri's pocket. As he walked, he felt for it, and it was in its place, with his silver pencil-case and the small penknife he always carried for sharpening pencils. The porter could not possibly have picked that lock; indeed, scarcely any one could have done so without injuring it, and Malipieri had locked it himself at about seven o'clock that evening. Even if the porter could have got in by any means, Malipieri doubted whether he could have reached the inner chamber of the vaults. There was some climbing to be done, and the man was old and stiff in the joints. The place was not so easy to find as might have been supposed, either, after the first breach in the Roman wall was past. Malipieri intended to improve the passage the next morning, in order to make it more practicable for Sabina. He racked his brains for an explanation of the mystery, and when he reached the door of the palace, after eleven o'clock, he had come to the conclusion that in spite of appearances there must be some entrance to the vaults of which he knew nothing, and it was all-important to find it. He regretted the quixotic impulse which had restrained him from exploring everything at once. It would have been far better to go to the end of his discovery, and he wondered why he had not done go. He would not have insulted himself by supposing that Sabina could believe him capable of taking the gem from the ring of the statue, in other words, of stealing, since whoever the rightful owner might be, nothing in the vault could possibly belong to him, and he regarded it all as her property, though he doubted whether he could ever obtain for her a tenth part of the value it represented. He had acted on an impulse, which was strengthened until it looked plausible by the thought of the intense pleasure he would take in showing her the wonderful discovery, and in leading her safely through the mysterious intricacies of the strange place. It had been a very selfish impulse after all, and if he really let her come the next day, there might even be a little danger to her. He let himself in and locked the postern door behind him. The porter and his wife were asleep and the glass window of the lodge door was quite dark. Malipieri lighted a wax taper and went upstairs. Masin was waiting, and opened when he heard his master's footsteps on the landing. As a rule, he went to bed, if Malipieri went out in the evening; both men were usually tired out by their day's work. "What is the matter?" Malipieri asked. "There is somebody in the vaults," Masin answered. "I had left my pipe on a stone close to the padlocked door and when you were gone I took a lantern and went down to get it. When I came near the door I was sure I heard some one trying it gently from the other side. I stopped to listen and I distinctly heard footsteps going away. I ran forward and tried to find a crack, to see if there were a light, but the door is swollen with the dampness and fits tightly. Besides, by the time I had reached it the person inside must have got well away." "What time was it?" asked Malipieri, slipping off his light overcoat. "You went out at nine o'clock, sir. It could not have been more than half an hour later." "Light both lanterns. We must go down at once. See that there is plenty of oil in them." In five minutes both men were ready. "You had better take your revolver, sir," suggested Masin. Malipieri laughed. "I have had that revolver since I was eighteen," he said, "and I have never needed it yet. Our tools are there, and they are better than firearms." They went down the staircase quietly, fearing to wake the porter, and kept close to the north wall till they reached the further end of the courtyard. When they had passed the outer door at the head of the winding staircase, Malipieri told Masin to lock it after them. "We cannot padlock the other door from the inside," he explained, "for there are no hasps. If the man managed to pass us he might get out this way." He led the way down, making as little noise as possible. Masin held up his lantern, peering into the gloom over Malipieri's shoulder. "No one could pass the other door without breaking it down," Malipieri said. They reached the floor of the cellars, which extended in both directions from the foot of the staircase, far to the left by low, dark vaults like railway tunnels, and a short distance to the right, where they ended at the north-west corner. The two men turned that way, but after walking a dozen yards, they turned to the left and entered a damp passage barely wide enough for them both abreast. It ended at the padlocked door, and before unlocking the latter Malipieri laid his ear to the rough panel and listened attentively. Not a sound broke the stillness. He turned the key, and took off the padlock and slipped it into his pocket before going on. Without it the door could not be fastened. The passage widened suddenly beyond, in another short tunnel ending at the outer foundation wall of the palace. In this tunnel, on the right-hand side, was the breach the two men had first made in order to gain access to the unexplored region. Now that there was an aperture, the running water on the other side could be heard very distinctly, like a little brook in a rocky channel, but more steady. Both men examined the damp floor carefully with their lanterns, in the hope of finding some trace of footsteps; but the surface was hard and almost black, and where there had been a little slime their own feet had rubbed it off, as they came and went during many days. The stones and rubbish they had taken from the wall had been piled up and hardened to form an inclined causeway by which to reach the irregular hole. This was now just big enough to allow a man to walk through it, bending almost double. Masin lighted one of the lamps, which they generally left at that place, and set it on a stone. Malipieri began to go up, his stick in his right hand, the lantern in his left. "Let me go first, sir," said Masin, trying to pass him. "Nonsense!" Malipieri answered sharply, and went on. Masin kept as close to him as possible. He had picked up the lightest of the drilling irons for a weapon. It must have weighed at least ten pounds and it was a yard long. In such a hand as Masin's a blow from it would have broken a man's bones like pipe stems. The wall was about eight feet thick, and when Malipieri got to the other end of the hole he stopped and looked down, holding out his lantern at arm's length. He could see nothing unusual, and he heard no sound, except the gurgle of the little black stream that ran ten feet below him. He began to descend. The masonry was very irregular, and sloped outwards towards the ground, so that some of the irregularities made rough steps here and there, which he knew by heart. Below, several large fragments of Roman brick and cement lay here and there, where they had fallen in the destruction of the original building. It was not hard to get down, and the space was not large. It was bounded by the old wall on one side, and most of the other was taken up by a part of a rectangular mass of masonry, of rough mediaeval construction, which projected inward. The place was familiar, but Malipieri looked about him carefully, while Masin was climbing down. Along the base of the straight wall there was a channel about two feet wide, through which the dark water flowed rapidly. It entered from the right-hand corner, by a low, arched aperture, through which it seemed out of the question that a man could crawl, or even an ordinary boy of twelve. When they had first come to this place Masin had succeeded in poking in a long stick with a bit of lighted wax taper fastened to it, and both men had seen that the channel ran on as far as it could be seen, with no widening. At the other end of the chamber it ran out again by a similar conduit. What had at first surprised Malipieri had been that the water did not enter from the side of the foundations near the Vicolo dei Soldati, but ran out that way. He had also been astonished at the quantity and speed of the current. A channel a foot deep and two feet wide carries a large quantity of water if the velocity be great, and Malipieri had made a calculation which had convinced him that if the outflow were suddenly closed, the small space in which he now stood would in a few minutes be full up to within three or four feet of the vault. He would have given much to know whence the water came and whither it went, and what devilry had made it rise suddenly and drown a man when the excavations had been made under Gregory Sixteenth. From below, the place where an entrance had then been opened was clearly visible. The vault had been broken into and had afterwards been rebuilt from above. The bits of timber which had been used for the frame during the operation were still there, a rotting and mouldy nest for hideous spiders and noisome creatures that haunt the dark. The air was very cold, and was laden with the indescribable smell of dried slime which belongs to deep wells which have long been almost quite dry. It was clearly a long time since the little stream had overflowed its channel, but at the first examination he had made Malipieri had understood that in former times the water had risen to within three feet of the vault. Up to that height there was a thin coating of the dry mud, which peeled off in irregular scales if lightly touched. The large fragments of masonry that half covered the floor were all coated in the same way with what had once been a film of slime. The air, though cold, could be breathed easily, and the lights did not grow dim in it as they do in subterranean places where the atmosphere is foul. The stream of water, flowing swiftly in its deep channel from under the little arch, brought plentiful ventilation into it. Above, there was no aperture in the vaulting, but there was one in the mediaeval masonry that projected into the chamber. There, on the side towards the right, where the water flowed in, Malipieri had found a narrow slit, barely wide enough to admit a man's open hand and wrist, but nearly five feet high, evidently a passage intended for letting the water flow into the interior of the construction when it overflowed its channel and rose above the floor of the chamber. At first Malipieri had supposed that this aperture communicated with some ancient and long-forgotten drain by which the water could escape to the Tiber; it was not until he had gained an entrance to the hollow mass of masonry that he understood the hideous use to which it had been applied. It had not been hard to enlarge it. Any one who has worked among ruins in Italy could tell, even blindfold, the difference between the work done in ancient times and that of the middle ages. Roman brickwork is quite as compact as solid sandstone, but mediaeval masonry was almost invariably built in a hurry by bad workmen, of all sorts of fragments embedded in poorly mingled cement, and it breaks up with tolerable ease under a heavy pickaxe. In half a day Malipieri and Masin had widened the slit to a convenient passage, but as soon as it had been possible to squeeze through, the architect had gone in. He never forgot what he felt when he first looked about him. Masin could not follow him until many blows of the pick had widened the way for his bulkier frame. Malipieri stopped at the entrance now, holding his lantern close to the ground, and looking for traces of footsteps. He found none, but as he was about to move forward he uttered an exclamation of surprise, and picked up a tiny object which he held close to the light. It was only a wax match, of which the head had been broken off when it had been struck, so that it had not been lighted. That was all, but neither he nor Masin carried wax matches in the vaults, because the dampness soon made them useless. They took common sulphur matches in tin match-boxes. Besides, this was an English wax light, as any one could tell at a glance, for it was thicker, and stiffer, and longer than the cheaper Italian ones. Malipieri drew back and showed it to his man, who examined it, understood, and put it into his pocket without a word. Then they both went in through the aperture in the wall. The masonry outside was rectangular, as far as it could be seen. Inside, it was built like a small circular cistern, smoothly cemented, and contracting above in a dome, that opened by a square hole to the well-shaft above. Like the stones in the outer chamber, the cement was coated with scales of dried mud. The shaft was now certainly closed at the top, for in the daytime not a ray of light penetrated into its blackness. The lanterns illuminated the place completely, and the two men looked about, searching for some new trace of a living being. The yellow light fell only on the remains of men dead long ago. Some of the bones lay as they had lain since then, when the drowned bodies had gently reached the floor as the "lost water" subsided. Malipieri had not touched them, nor Masin either. Two skeletons lay at full length, face downwards, as a drowned body always sinks at last, when decay has done its loathsome work. A third lay on its side, in a frightfully natural attitude, the skull a little raised up and resting against the cemented wall, the arms stretched out together, the hands still clutching a rusty crowbar. This one was near the entrance, and if, in breaking their way in, Malipieri and Masin had not necessarily destroyed the cement on each side of the slit, they would have found the marks where the dead man's crowbar had worked desperately for a few minutes before he had been drowned. Malipieri had immediately reflected that the unfortunate wretch, who was evidently the mason of whom Sassi had told him, had certainly not entered through the aperture formerly made from above in the outer chamber, since the narrow slit afforded no possible passage to the well. That doubtless belonged to some other attempt to find the treasure, and the fact that the mason's skeleton lay inside would alone have shown that he had got in from above, most likely through a low opening just where the dome began to curve inward. A further search had discovered some bits of wood, almost rotted to powder, which had apparently once been a ladder. A much less practised eye than the architect's would have understood at a glance that if a living man were let down through the shaft in the centre of the dome, and left on the floor, he could not possibly get up even as far as the other hole, since the smooth cement offered not the slightest hold; and that if the outflow of the stream from the first chamber were arrested, the water would immediately fill it and rise simultaneously in the well, to drown the victim, or to strip his bones by its action, if he had been allowed to die of hunger or thirst. It was clear, too, that if the latter form of death were chosen, he must have suffered to the last minute of his life the agony of hearing the stream flowing outside, not three paces from him, beyond the slit. Human imagination could hardly invent a more hideously cruel death-trap, nor one more ingeniously secret from the world without. The unhappy mason's ladder had perhaps broken with his weight, or his light had gone out, and he had then been unable to find the horizontal aperture, but he had probably entered through the latter, when he had met his fate. The fact was, as Malipieri afterwards guessed, that the hole through the vault outside had been made hastily after the accident, in the hope of recovering the man's body, but that it had been at once closed again because it appeared to open over a deep pit full of still water. A stout rope ladder now dangled from the lateral aperture in the dome, which Malipieri had immediately understood to have been made to allow the water to overflow when the well was full. He had also felt tolerably sure that the well itself had not been originally constructed for the deadly use to which it had evidently been put in later times, but for the purpose of confining the water in a reservoir that could be easily cleaned, since it could be easily emptied, and in which the supply could be kept at a permanent level, convenient for drawing it from above. In the days when all the ancient aqueducts of Rome were broken, a well of the "lost water" was a valuable possession in houses that were turned into fortresses at a moment's notice and were sometimes exposed to long and desperate sieges. In order to reach the horizontal opening, Malipieri had climbed upon Masin's sturdy shoulders, steadying himself as well as he might till he had laid his hands on the edge of the orifice. As he hung there, Masin had held up the handle of a pickaxe as high as he could reach against the smooth wall, as a crossbar on which Malipieri had succeeded in getting a slight foothold, enough for a man who was not heavy and was extraordinarily active. A moment later he had drawn himself up and inward. At the imminent risk of his life, as he afterwards found, he had crawled on in total darkness till the way widened enough for him to turn round and get back. He had then lowered a string he had with him, and had drawn up a lantern first, then the end of a coil of rope, then the tools for carrying on the exploration. The rest had been easy. Masin had climbed up by the rope, after making knots in it and when Malipieri had called out, from the inner place to which he had retired with the end, that it was made fast. But the light showed the architect that in turning round, he had narrowly escaped falling into an open shaft, of which he could not see the bottom, but which was evidently meant for the final escape of the overflowing water. There was room to pass this danger, however, and they had since laid a couple of stout boards over it, weighted with stones to keep them in place. Beyond, the passage rose till it was high enough for a man to walk upright. Judging from the elevation now reached this passage was hollowed in the thickness of one of the main walls of the palace, and it was clear that the water could not reach it. A few yards from the chasm, it inclined quickly downwards, and at the end there were half a dozen steps, which evidently descended to a greater depth than the floor of the first outer chamber. So far as it had hitherto been possible to judge, there was no way of getting to these last steps, except that opened by the two men, and leading through the dry well. In former times, there might have been an entrance through the wall at the highest level, but if it had ever existed it had been so carefully closed that no trace of it could now be found. This tedious explanation of a rather complicated construction has been necessary to explain what afterwards happened. Reducing it to its simplest terms, it becomes clear that if the water rose, a person in the passage, or anywhere beyond the overflow shaft, could not possibly get back through the well, though he would apparently be safe from drowning if he stayed where he was; and to the best of Malipieri's knowledge there was no other way out. Any one caught there would have to wait till the water subsided, and if that did not happen he would starve to death. The two men stood still and listened. They could still distinguish the faint gurgling of the water, very far off, but that was all. "I believe you heard a rat," said Malipieri, discontentedly, after a long pause. "Rats do not carry English wax matches," observed Masin. "They eat them when they can find them," answered Malipieri. "They carry them off, and hide them, and drop them, too. And a big rat running away makes a noise very like a man's footsteps." "That is true," assented Masin. "There were many of them in the prison, and I sometimes thought they were the keepers when I heard them at night." "At all events, we will go to the end," said Malipieri, beginning to walk down the inclined way, and carrying his lantern low, so as not to be dazzled by the light. Masin followed closely, grasping his drilling-iron, and still expecting to use it. The end of the passage had once been walled up, but they had found the fragments of brick and mortar lying much as they had fallen when knocked away. It was impossible to tell from which side the obstacle had been destroyed. Going further, they stepped upon the curve of a tunnel vault, and were obliged to stoop low to avoid striking against another overhead. The two vaults had been carefully constructed, one outside the other, leaving a space of about five feet between them. The one under their feet covered the inner chamber in which Malipieri had seen the bronze statue. He and Masin had made a hole a little on one side of the middle, in order not to disturb the keystones, working very carefully lest any heavy fragments should fall through; for they had at once been sure that if any thing was to be found, it must be concealed in that place. Before making the opening, they had thoroughly explored the dark curved space from end to end and from side to side, but could discover no aperture. The inner vault had never been opened since it had been built. Malipieri, reconstructing the circumstances of the accident in the last century, came to the conclusion that the mason who had been drowned had been already between the vaults, when some of the men behind had discovered that the water was rising in the well, and that they had somehow got out in time, but that their unfortunate companion had come back too late, or had perished while trying to break his way out by the slit, through which the water must have been rushing in. How they had originally entered the place was a mystery. Possibly they had been lowered from above, down the well-shaft, but it was all very hard to explain. The only thing that seemed certain was that the treasure had never been seen by any one since it had been closed in under the vault, ages ago. Malipieri had not yet found time to make a careful plan of all the places through which he had passed. There were so many turns and changes of level, that it would be impossible to get an accurate drawing without using a theodolite or some similar instrument of precision. From the measurements he had taken, however, and the rough sketches he had made, he believed that the double vault was not under the palace itself, but under the open courtyard, at the depth of about forty feet, and therefore below the level of the Tiber at average high water. Both men now knelt by the hole, and Masin thrust his lantern down to the full length of his arm. The light shone upon the vast hand of the statue, and made a deep reflection in the great ruby of the ring, as if the gem was not a stone, but a little gold cup filled with rich wine. The hand itself, the wrist and the great muscles of the chest on which it lay, seemed of pure gold. But Malipieri's eyes fixed themselves on something else. There were marks on the bright surface of the metal which had not been there when he had looked at it in the afternoon; there were patches of dust, and there were several small scratches, which might have been made by the nails of heavy shoes. "You were right after all," said Malipieri, withdrawing the lantern and setting it down beside him. "The man is here." Masin's china-blue eyes brightened at the thought of a possible fight, and his hold tightened again on his drill. "What shall we do with him?" he asked, looking down into the hole. Cunning, as the Italian peasant is by nature, Masin made a sign to his master that the man, if he were really below, could hear all that was said. "Shall I go down and kill him, sir?" Masin enquired with a quiet grin and raising his voice a little. "I am not sure," Malipieri answered, at once entering into his man's scheme. "He is caught in his own trap. It is not midnight yet, and there is plenty of time to consider the matter. Let us sit here and talk about it." He now turned himself and sat beside the hole, placing his lantern near the edge. He took out a cigar and lit it carefully. Masin sat on the other side, his drill in his hand. "If he tries to get out while we are talking," he said, "I can break his skull with a touch of this." "Yes," Malipieri answered, puffing at his cigar. "There is no hurry. Keep your iron ready." "Yes, sir." Masin made the heavy drill ring on the stones of the vault. A pause followed. "Have you got your pipe with you?" asked Malipieri presently. "We must talk over this quietly." "Yes, sir. Will you hold the iron while I get a light? He might try to jump out, and he may have firearms. Thank you, sir." Masin produced a short black pipe, filled it and lighted it. "I was thinking, sir," he said, as he threw away the wooden match, "that if we kill him here we may have trouble in disposing of his body. Thank you, sir," he added as he took over the drill again and made it clang on the stones. "There will be no trouble about that," Malipieri answered, speaking over the hole. "We can drop him down the overflow shaft in the passage." "Where do you think the shaft leads, sir?" asked Masin, grinning with delight. "To some old drain and then to the Tiber, of course. The body will be found in a week or two, jammed against the pier of some bridge, probably at the island of Saint Bartholomew." "Yes, sir. But the drain is dry now. The body will lie at the bottom of the shaft, where we drop it, and in a few days the cellars will be perfumed." He laughed roughly at his horrible joke, which was certainly calculated to affect the nerves of the intruder who was meant to hear it. Malipieri began to wonder when the man would give a sign of life. "We can fill the well by plugging the arch in the outer chamber," he suggested. "Then the water will pour down the shaft and wash the body away." "Yes, sir," assented Masin. "That is a good idea. Shall I go down and kill him now, sir?" "Not yet," Malipieri answered, knocking the ash from his cigar. "We have not finished smoking, and there is no hurry. Besides, it occurs to me that if we drive anything into the hole when the water runs out, we shall not be able to get the plug away afterwards. Then we ourselves could never get here again." A long silence followed. From time to time Masin made a little noise with the drill. "Perhaps the fellow is asleep," he observed pleasantly at last. "So much the better, he will wake in Paradise!" "It is of no use to run any risks," said Malipieri. "If we go down to kill him he may kill one of us first, especially if he has a revolver. There is no hurry, I tell you. Do you happen to know how long it takes to starve a man to death?" "Without water, a man cannot live a week, sir. That is the best idea you have had yet." "Yes. We will wall him up in the vault. That is easy enough. Those boards that are over the shaft will do to make a little frame, and the stones are all here, just as we got them out. We can fasten up the frame with ends of rope." "We have no mortar, sir." "Mud will do as well for such a small job," answered Malipieri. "We can easily make enough. Give me your iron, in case he tries to get out, and go and get the boards and the rope." Masin began to rise. "In a week we can come and take him out," he remarked in a matter-of-fact way. "By that time he will be dead, and we can have his grave ready." He laughed again, as he thought of the sensations his cheerful talk must produce in the mind of the man below. "Yes," said Malipieri. "We may as well do it at once and go to bed. It is of no use to sit up all night talking about the fellow's body. Go and get the rope and the boards." Masin was now on his feet and his heavy shoes made a grinding noise on the stones. At that moment a sound was heard from below, and Malipieri held up a finger and listened. Somebody was moving in the vault. "You had better stay where you are," said Malipieri, speaking down. "If you show yourself I will drop a stone on your head." A hollow voice answered him from the depths. "Are you Christians," it asked, "to wall a man up alive?" "That is what we are going to do," Malipieri answered coolly. "Have you anything to say? It will not take us long to do the job, so you had better speak at once. How did you get in?" "If I am to die without getting out, why should I tell you?" enquired the voice. Malipieri looked at Masin. "There is a certain sense in what the man says, sir," Masin said thoughtfully. "My good man," said Malipieri, speaking down, "we do not want anybody to know the way to this place for a few days, and as you evidently know it better than we do, we intend to keep you quiet." "If you will let me out, I can serve you," answered the man below. "There is nobody in Rome who can serve you as I can." "Who are you?" asked Malipieri. "Are you going to let me out, Signor Malipieri?" enquired the man. "If you are, I will tell you." "Oh, you know my name, do you?" "Perfectly. You are the engineer engaged by the Senator Volterra to find the treasure." "Yes. Quite right. What of that?" "You have found it," answered the other. "Of what use will it be to kill me? I cannot take that statue away in my waistcoat pocket, if you let me out, can I?" "You had better not make too many jokes, my man, or we will put the boards over this hole in five minutes. If you can really be of use to me, I will let you out. What is your name?" "Toto," answered the voice sullenly. "Yes. That means Theodore, I suppose. Now make haste, for I am tired of waiting. What are you, and how did you get in?" "I was the mason of the palace, until the devil flew away with the people who lived in it. I know all the secrets of the house. I can be very useful to you." "That changes matters, my friend. I have no doubt you can be useful if you like, though we have managed to find one of the secrets without you. It happens to be the only one we wanted to know." "No," answered Toto. "There are two others. You do not know how I got in, and you do not know how to manage the 'lost water.'" "That is true," said Malipieri. "But if I let you out you may do me harm, by talking before it is time. The government is not to know of this discovery until I am ready." "The government!" exclaimed Toto contemptuously, from his hiding-place. "May an apoplexy seize it! Do you take me for a spy? I am a Christian." "I begin to think he is, sir," put in Masin, knocking the ash from his pipe. "I think so, too," said Malipieri. "Throw away that iron, Masin. He shall show himself, at all events, and if we like his face we can talk to him here." Masin dropped the drill with a clang. Toto's hairy hand appeared, grasping the golden wrist of the statue, as he raised himself to approach the hole. "He is a mason, as he says," said Masin, catching sight of the rough fingers. "Did you take me for a coachman?" enquired Toto, thrusting his shaggy head forward cautiously, and looking up through the aperture. "Before you come up here," Malipieri answered, "tell me how you got in." "You seem to know so much about the overflow shaft that I should think you might have guessed. If you do not believe that I came that way, look at my clothes!" He now crawled upon the body of the statue, and Malipieri saw that he was covered with half-dried mud and ooze. "You got through some old drain, I suppose, and found your way up." "It seems so," answered Toto, shaking his shoulders, as if he were stiff. "Are you going to let him go free, sir?" asked Masin, standing ready. "If you do, he will be down the shaft, before you can catch him. These men know their way underground like moles." "Moles, yourselves!" answered Toto in a growl, putting his head up above the level of the vault. Masin measured him with his eye, and saw that he was a strong man, probably much more active than he looked in his heavy, mud-plastered clothes. "Get up here," said Malipieri. Toto obeyed, and in a moment he sat on the edge of the hole, his legs dangling down into it. "Not so bad," he said, settling himself with a grunt of satisfaction. "I like you, Master Toto," said Malipieri. "You might have thought that we really meant to kill you, but you did not seem much frightened." "There is no woman in the affair," answered Toto. "Why should you kill me? And I can help you." "How am I to know that you will?" asked Malipieri. "I am a man of honour," Toto replied, turning his stony face to the light of the lanterns. "I have not a doubt of it, my friend," returned Malipieri, without conviction. "Just now, the only help I need of you, is that you should hold your tongue. How can I be sure that you will do that? Does any one else know the way in through the drain?" "No. I only found it to-night. If there is a day's rain in the mountains, and the Tiber rises even a little, nobody can pass through it. The lower part is barely above the level of the river now." "How did you guess that you could get here by that way?" "We know many secrets in our trade, from father to son," answered Toto gruffly. "You must have lifted the boards, with the stones on them, to get out of the shaft. Why did you put them back in their place?" "You seem to think I am a fool! I did not mean to let you know that I had been here, so I put them back, of course. I supposed that I could get out through the cellars, but you have put a padlock on the inner door." "Is there any way of turning water into that shaft?" "Only by filling the well, I think. If the Tiber rises, the water will back up the shaft through the drain. That is why the ancients who built the well made another way for the water to run off. When the river is swollen in a flood it must be much higher in the shaft than the bottom of the well, and if the 'lost water' were running in all the time, the air would probably make it back, so that the shaft would be useless and the well would be soiled with the river water." "You evidently know your trade, Master Toto," said Masin, with some admiration for his fellow-craftsman's clear understanding. "You know yours," retorted Toto, who was seldom at a loss, "for just now you talked of killing like a professional assassin." This pleasing banter delighted Masin, who laughed heartily, and patted Toto on the back. "We shall be good friends," he said. "In this world one never knows," Toto answered philosophically. "What are you going to do?" "You must come back with as to my apartment," said Malipieri, who had been considering the matter, "You must stay there a couple of days, without going out. I will pay you for your time, and give you a handsome present, and plenty to eat and drink. After that you will be free to go where you please and say what you like, for the secret will be out." "Thank you," answered Toto without enthusiasm. "Are you going to tell the government about the treasure?" "The Senator will certainly inform the government, which has a right to buy it." To this Toto said nothing, but he lifted his legs out of the hole and stood up, ready to go. Malipieri and Masin took up their lanterns. CHAPTER XI Masin led the way back, Toto followed and Malipieri went last, so that the mason was between his two captors. They did not quite trust him, and Masin was careful not to walk too fast where the way was so familiar to him, while Malipieri was equally careful not to lag behind. In this order they reached the mouth of the overflow shaft, covered with the loaded boards. Masin bent down and examined them, for he wished to convince himself that the stones had been moved since he had himself placed them there. A glance showed that this was the case, and he was about to go on, when he bent down again suddenly and listened, holding up his hand. "There is water," he said, and began to lift off the stones, one by one. Toto helped him quickly. There were only three or four, and they were not heavy. When the mouth of the shaft was uncovered all three knelt down and listened, instinctively lowering their lanterns into the blackness below. The shaft was not wider than a good-sized old-fashioned chimney, like those in Roman palaces, up and down which sweeps can just manage to climb. The three men listened, and distinctly heard the steady falling of a small stream of water upon the stones at the bottom. "It is raining," Toto said confidently, but he was evidently as much surprised by the sound as the others. "There must be some communication with the gutters in the courtyard," he added. "There is probably a thunderstorm," answered Malipieri. "We can hear nothing down here." "If I had gone down again, I should have been drowned," Toto said, shaking his head. "Do you hear? Half the water from the courtyard must be running down there!" The sound of the falling stream increased to a hollow roar. "Do you think the water can rise in the shaft?" asked Malipieri. "Not unless the river rises and backs into it," replied Toto. "The drain is large below." "That cannot be 'lost water,' can it?" "No. That is impossible." "Put the boards in their place again," Malipieri said. "It is growing late." It was done in a few moments, but now the dismal roar of the water came up very distinctly through the covering. Malipieri had been in many excavations, and in mines, too, but did not remember that he had ever felt so strongly the vague sense of apprehension that filled him now. There is something especially gloomy and mysterious about the noise of unexplained water heard at a great depth under the earth and coming out of darkness. Even the rough men with him felt that. "It is bad to hear," observed Masin, putting one more stone upon the boards, as if the weight could keep the sound down. "You may say that!" answered Toto. "And in this tomb, too!" They went on, in the same order as before. The passage to the dry well had been so much enlarged that by bending down they could walk to the top of the rope ladder. Malipieri went down first, with his lantern. Toto followed, and while Masin was descending, stood looking at the bones of the dead mason, and at the skull that grinned horribly in the uncertain yellow glare. He took a half-burnt candle from his pocket, and some sulphur matches, and made a light for himself, with which he carefully examined the bones. Malipieri watched him. "The man who was drowned over sixty years ago," said the architect. "This," answered Toto, with more feeling than accuracy, "is the blessed soul of my grandfather." "He shall have Christian burial in a few days," Malipieri said gravely. Toto shrugged his shoulders, not irreverently, but as if to say that when a dead man has been without Christian burial sixty years, it cannot make any difference whether he gets it after all or not. "The crowbar is still good," Toto said, stooping down to disengage it from the skeleton's grasp. But Malipieri laid a hand on his shoulder, for it occurred to him that the mason, armed with an iron bar, might be a dangerous adversary if he tried to escape. "You do not need that just now," said the architect. Toto glanced at Malipieri furtively and saw that he was understood. He stood upright, affecting indifference. They went on, through the breach to which the slit had been widened. Toto moved slowly, and held his candle down to the running water in the channel. "There is plenty of it," he observed. "Where does it come from?" asked Malipieri, suddenly, in the hope of an unguarded answer. "From heaven," answered Toto without hesitation; "and everything that falls from heaven is good," he added, quoting an ancient proverb. "What would happen if we closed the entrance, so that it could not get in at all?" "The book of wisdom," Toto replied, "is buried under Pasquino. How should I know what would happen?" "You know a good many things, my friend." Malipieri understood that the man would not say more, and led the way out. "Good-bye, grandpapa," growled Toto, waving his hairy hand towards the well. "Who knows whether we shall meet again?" They went on, and in due time emerged into the upper air. It was raining heavily, as Toto had guessed, and before they had reached the other end of the courtyard they were drenched. But it was a relief to be out of doors, and Malipieri breathed the fresh air with keen delight, as a thirsty man drinks. The rain poured down steadily and ran in rivers along the paved gutters, and roared into the openings that carried it off. Malipieri could not help thinking how it must be roaring now, far down at the bottom of the old shaft, led thither through deep-buried and long-forgotten channels. Upstairs, Masin was inclined to be friendly with his fellow-craftsman, and gave him dry clothes to sleep in, and bread and cheese and wine in his own room. In spite of his experiences, Masin had never known how to be suspicious. But as Malipieri looked once more at the man's stony face and indistinguishable eyes, he thought differently of his prisoner. He locked the outer door and took the key of the patent lock with him when he went to bed at last. It does not often rain heavily in Rome, late in the spring, for any long time, but when Malipieri looked out the next morning, it was still pouring steadily, and the sky over the courtyard was uniformly grey. It is apparently a law of nature that exceptions should come when least wanted. In spite of the weather Malipieri went out, however, and did not even send for a cab. The porter was in a particularly bad humour and eyed him distrustfully, for he had been put to the trouble of cleaning the stairs where the three men had left plentiful mud in their track during the night. Malipieri nodded to the old man as usual, and was about to go out, but turned back and gave him five francs. Thus mollified the porter at once made a remark about the atrocious weather and proceeded to ask how the work was progressing. "I have explored a good deal," answered Malipieri. "The Senator is coming to-morrow, and you had better sweep carefully. He looks at everything, you know." He went out into the pouring rain, keeping a sharp lookout from under the edge of the umbrella he held low over his head. He had grown cautious of late. As he expected, he came upon one of the respectable men he now met so often, before he had turned into the Piazza Agonale. The respectable man was also carrying his umbrella low, and looking about him as he walked along at a leisurely pace. Malipieri hailed a cab. Even in wet weather there are no closed cabs in that part of Rome. One is protected from the wet, more or less, by the hood and by a high leathern apron which is hooked to it inside. The cabman, seated under a huge standing umbrella, bends over and unhooks it on one side for you to get in and out. Malipieri employed the usual means of eluding pursuit. He gave an address and told the man to drive fast, got out quickly on reaching the house, enquired for an imaginary person with a foreign name, who, he was of course told, did not live there, got in again and had himself driven to Sassi's door, sure of losing his pursuer, if the detective followed him in another cab. Then he paid the man two fares, to save time, and went in. He had never taken the trouble to do such a thing since his political adventures, but he was now very anxious not to let it be known that he had any dealings with the former agent of the Conti family. The matter was settled easily enough and to his satisfaction. Old Sassi worshipped Sabina, and was already fully persuaded that whatever could be found under the palace should belong to her, as also that she had a right to see what was discovered before Volterra did, and before anything was moved. He was at least as quixotic in his crabbed fashion as Malipieri himself; and besides, he really could not see that there was the least harm or danger in the scheme. It certainly would have been improper for Malipieri to go and fetch the young lady himself, but it was absurd to suppose that a man over sixty could be blamed for accompanying a girl of eighteen on a visit to her old home, in her own interest, especially when the man had been all his life employed by her family in a position of trust and confidence. Finally, Sassi hated Volterra with all his heart, as the faithful adherents of ruined gentlefolks often hate those who have profited by their ruin. Sassi, as an old Roman, predicted that the weather would improve in the afternoon. Malipieri advised him nevertheless to keep the hood of his cab raised when he brought Sabina to the palace. To this Sassi answered that he should of course get a closed carriage from a livery stable, and an argument followed which took some time. In the opinion of the excellent old agent, it would be almost an affront to fetch the very noble Donna Sabina in a vehicle so plebeian as a cab, and it was with the greatest difficulty that Malipieri made him understand that a cab was much safer on such an occasion. What was important was that the weather should be fine, for otherwise the Baroness might not go out, and the whole scheme would fail. In that case, it must be arranged for the following day, and Malipieri would find an excuse for putting off Volterra's visit. He left the house on foot. So far, he had not allowed himself to think too much of the future, and had found little time for such reflection. He was a man who put all his energy into what he was doing, and was inclined to let consequences take care of themselves rather than waste thought in providing for them. He believed he was doing what was just and honourable, and if there was a spice of adventure and romance in it, that only made it the more easy to do. The only danger he could think of was that Sabina might slip in one of the difficult passages and hurt her foot a little, or might catch cold in the damp vaults. Nothing else could happen. He congratulated himself on having got Toto in his power, since Toto was the only man who understood the ways of the "lost water." If he had before suspected that there was any one at large in Rome who knew as much he would have hesitated. But he had made the discovery of the man and had taken him prisoner at the same moment, and all danger in that quarter seemed to be removed. As for the material difficulty, he and Masin could smooth the way very much in two or three hours, and could substitute a solid wooden ladder for the one of rope in the well. Sabina was young, slight, and probably active, and with a little help she would have no difficulty in reaching the inner chamber. It might be well to cover the skeletons. Young girls were supposed to be sensitive about such things, and Malipieri had no experience of their ways. Nevertheless he had an inward conviction that Sabina would not go into hysterics at the sight. Old Sassi might not be able to get up the ladder, but once beyond the reach of social observation, he would trust Sabina to Malipieri and Masin for a quarter of an hour, and he could wait in the outer cellar. Malipieri had prepared him for this, and he had made no objection, only saying that he should like to see the treasure himself if it could possibly be managed. In his heart, Malipieri hoped that it would prove too much for the old man and that he might have the pleasure of showing Sabina what he had found without having the old agent at his elbow. Toto would be locked in, upstairs, for the day. He could not get out by the door, and he would not risk breaking his legs by jumping from the window. The intermediate story of the Palazzo Conti was far too high for that. Malipieri calculated that if Sassi were punctual, Sabina would be at the door of the palace at a quarter-past five. At five minutes past, he came down, and sent the porter on an errand which would occupy at least half an hour even if executed with despatch. Masin would keep the door, he said. The old man was delighted to have an excuse for going out, and promised himself to spend a comfortable hour in a wine shop if he could find a friend. His wife, as there was so little to do, had found some employment in a laundry, to which she went in the morning and which kept her out all day. No one would see Sabina and Sassi enter, and if it seemed advisable they could be got out in the same way. No one but Masin and Malipieri himself need ever know that they had been in the palace that afternoon. It was all very well prepared, by a man well accustomed to emergencies, and it was not easy to see how anything could go wrong. Even allowing more time than was necessary, Sabina's visit to the vaults could not possibly occupy much more than an hour. CHAPTER XII Malipieri was beginning to realize that his work in the vaults had been watched with much more interest than he had supposed possible, and that in some way or other news of his progress had reached various quarters. In the first place, his reputation was much wider than he knew, and many scholars and archaeologists throughout Europe had been profoundly impressed both by what he had discovered and by the learning he had shown in discussing his discoveries. It followed that many were curious to see what he would do next, and there were paragraphs about him in grave reviews, and flattering references to him in speeches made at learned conventions. He had friends whose names he had never heard, and enemies, too, ready to attack him on the one side and to defend him on the other. Some praised his modesty, and others called it affectation. His experience of the wider world was short, so far, and he did not understand that it had taken people a year to appreciate his success. He had hoped for immediate recognition of his great services to archaeology, and had been somewhat disappointed because that recognition had not been instantaneous. Like most men of superior talent, in the same situation, when praise came in due time and abundantly, he did not care for it because he was already interested in new work. To the man of genius the past is always insignificant as compared with the future. When Goethe, dying, asked for "more light," he may or may not have merely meant that he wished the window opened because the room seemed dark to his failing eyes; the higher interpretation which has been put upon his last words remains the true one, in the spirit, if not in the letter. He died, as he had lived, the man of genius looking forward, not backward, to the last, crying for light, more light, thinking not of dying and ending, but of living, hoping, doing, winning. Besides the general body of students and archaeologists, the Italian government was exceedingly interested in Malipieri's explorations. The government is rightly jealous in such matters, and does its very best to keep all artistic objects of real value in the country. It is right that this should be so. The law relating to the matter was framed by Cardinal Pacca, under the papal administration many years ago, and the modern rulers have had the intelligence to maintain it and enforce it. Like other laws it is frequently broken. In this it resembles the Ten Commandments and most other rules framed by divine or human intelligence for the good of mankind and the advancement of civilization. The most sanguine lovers of their fellow-men have always admitted the existence of a certain number of flagitious persons who obstinately object to being good. David, who was hasty, included a large proportion of humanity amongst "the wicked"; Monsieur Drumont limited the number to David's descendants; and Professor Lombroso, whatever he may really mean, conveys the impression that men of genius, criminals and lunatics are different manifestations of the same thing; as diamonds, charcoal and ham fat are all carbon and nothing else. We should be thankful for the small favours of providence in excepting us from the gifted minority of madmen, murderers and poets and making us just plain human beings, like other people. There is no international law forbidding a man from making digressions when he is telling a story. Malipieri was watched by the government, as Volterra had told him, because it was feared in high quarters that if he found anything of value under the palace, he would try to get it out of the country. He had always hated the government and had got himself into trouble by attacking the monarchy. Besides, it was known in high quarters that Senator Baron Volterra held singular views about the authenticity of works of art. It would be inconvenient to have a scandal in the Senate about the Velasquez and the other pictures; on the other hand, if anything more of the same sort should happen, it would be very convenient indeed to catch a pair of culprits in the shape of Malipieri, a pardoned political offender, and his ex-convict servant. Then, too, in quite another direction, the Vatican was very anxious to buy any really good work of art which might be discovered, and would pay quite as much for it as the government itself. Therefore the Vatican was profoundly interested in Malipieri on its own account. As if this were not enough, Sabina's brother, the ruined Prince Conti, had got wind of the excavations and scented some possible advantage to himself, with the vague chance of more money to throw away on automobiles, at Monte Carlo, and in the company of a cosmopolitan young person of semi-Oriental extraction whose varied accomplishments had made her the talk of Europe. Lastly, the Russian embassy was on the alert, for the dowager Princess had heard from her maid, who had heard it from her sister in Rome, who had learned it from the washerwoman, who had been told the secret by the porter's wife, that the celebrated Malipieri was exploring the north-west foundations of the palace. The Princess had repeated the story, and the legend which accounted for it, to her brother Prince Rubomirsky, who was a very great personage in his own country. And the Prince, though good-natured, foresaw that he might in time grow tired of giving his sister unlimited money; and it occurred to him that something might turn up under the palace, after all, to which she might have some claim. So he had used his influence in Saint Petersburg with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the latter had instructed the Russian Ambassador in Rome to find out what he could about the excavations, without attracting attention; and Russian diplomatists have ways of finding out things without attracting attention, which are extremely great and wonderful. Also, if Russia puts her paw upon anything and declares that it is the property of a Russian subject, it often happens that smaller people take their paws away hastily. It follows that there must have been a good deal of quiet talk, in Rome, not overheard in society, about what Malipieri was doing in the Palazzo Conti, and as the people who occupied themselves with his affairs were particularly anxious that he should not know what they said, he was in ignorance of it. But Volterra was not. He had valuable friends, because his influence was of value, and he was informed of much that was going on. If he was anxious to get rid of the architect, it was not so much because he wanted for himself the whole price which the statue or statues might bring, as because he feared lest the government should suddenly descend upon Malipieri and make an enquiry which would involve also the question of the pictures. So far, Volterra had created the impression that the young man had been concerned with a dealer in smuggling them out of the country; but in case of an investigation it could easily be proved that they were gone before Malipieri had arrived in Rome in answer to Volterra's invitation. Besides, the Senator had discovered that the young archaeologist was much more celebrated than was convenient. In private affairs there is nothing so tiresome and inconvenient as the presence of a celebrity. Burglars, when exercising their professional functions, are not accompanied by a brass band. Toto was very docile and quiet all that day. Masin thought him philosophical, and continued to like him, after his fashion, providing him with a plentiful supply of tobacco, a good meal at noon, and a bottle of wine. The man's stony face was almost placid. At rare intervals he made a remark. After eating he looked out of the window and said rather regretfully that he thought the rain was over for the day. Masin took this to mean that he wished he might go out, and offered him more wine by way of consolation. But Toto refused. He was a moderate man. Then he asked Masin how many rooms Malipieri occupied, and learned that the whole of the little apartment was rented by the architect. The information did not seem to interest him much. In the morning, when Malipieri had come back from his visit to Sassi, he had given Masin the keys of the vaults, and had told him to buy a stout ladder and take it into the dry well. But Toto said that this was a useless expense. "There is a strong ladder about the right length, lying along the wall at the other end of the west cellar," he said. "You had better take that." Malipieri looked at him and smiled. "For a prisoner, you are very obliging," he said, and he gave him a five-franc note, which Toto took with a grunt of thanks. Masin was gone an hour, during which time Malipieri busied himself in the next room, leaving the door open. He went out when Masin came back. When the two men were together Toto produced the five francs. "Can you change?" he enquired. "Why?" asked Masin with some surprise. "Half is two francs fifty," answered Toto. "That is your share." Masin laughed and shook his head. "No," he said. "What is given to you is not given to me. Why should I share with you?" "It is our custom," Toto replied. "Take your half." Masin refused stoutly, but Toto insisted and grew angry at last. So Masin changed the note and kept two francs and fifty centimes for himself, reflecting that he could give the money back to Malipieri, since he had no sort of right to it. Toto was at once pacified. When Malipieri returned, Masin went out and got dinner for all three, bringing it as usual in the three tin cases strapped one above the other. Toto supposed that he was not to be left alone in the apartment that day; but at half-past four Malipieri entered the room, with a padlock and a couple of screw-eyes in his hand. "You would not think it worth while to risk jumping out," he said in a good-humoured tone. "But you might take it into your head to open the window, and the porter might be there, and you might talk to him. Masin and I shall be out together for a little while." Masin shut the tall window, screwed the stout little eye-bolts into the frame and ran the bolt of the padlock through both. He gave the key to Malipieri. Toto watched the operation indifferently. "If you please," he said, "I am accustomed to have a little wine about half-past five every day. I will pay for it." He held out half a franc to Masin and nodded. "Nonsense!" interposed Malipieri, laughing. "You are my guest, Master Toto." Masin brought a bottle and a glass, and a couple of cigars. "Thank you, sir," said Toto politely. "I shall be very comfortable till you come back." "You will find the time quite as profitable as if you were working," said Malipieri. He nodded and went out followed by Masin, and Toto heard the key turned twice in the solid old lock. The door was strong, and they would probably lock the front door of the apartment too. Toto listened quietly till he heard it shut after them in the distance. Then he rose and flattened his face against the window pane. He waited some time. He could see one half of the great arched entrance, but the projecting stone jamb of the window hindered him from seeing more. It was very quiet, and he could hear footsteps below, on the gravel of the courtyard, if any one passed. At the end of ten minutes he heard a man's heavy tread, and knew that it was Masin's. Masin must have come out of the great archway on the side of it which Toto could not see. The steps went on steadily along the gravel. Masin was going to the vaults. Toto waited ten minutes, and began to think that no one else was coming, and that Malipieri had left the palace, though he had been convinced that the architect and his man meant to go down to the vaults together. Just as he was beginning to give up the idea, he saw Sassi under the archway, in a tall hat, a black coat and gloves, and Malipieri was just visible for a moment as he came out too. He was unmistakably speaking to some one on his right, who was hidden from Toto's view by the projecting stonework. His manner was also distinctly deferential. The third person was probably Baron Volterra. The footsteps took a longer time to reach the other end of the court than Masin had occupied. After all was silent, Toto listened breathlessly for five minutes more. There was not a sound. He looked about him, then took up a chair, thrust one of the legs between the bolt and the body of the padlock and quietly applied his strength. The wood of the frames was old, and the heavy strain drew the screw-eyes straight out. Toto opened the window noiselessly and looked out with caution. No one was in sight. By this time the three were in the vaults, with Masin. Toto knew every inch of the palace by heart, inside and out, and he knew that one of the cast-iron leaders that carried the rain from the roof to the ground was within reach of that particular window, on the left side. He looked out once more, up and down the courtyard, and then, in an instant, he was kneeling on the stone sill, he had grasped the iron leader with one hand, then with the other, swinging himself to it and clutching it below with his rough boots. A few moments later he was on the ground, running for the great entrance. No one was there, no one saw him. He let himself out quietly, shut the postern door after him, and slouched away towards the Vicolo dei Soldati. CHAPTER XIII Sabina had the delightful sensation of doing something she ought not to do, but which was perfectly innocent; she had moreover the rarer pleasure, quite new to her, of committing the little social misdeed in the company of the first man she had ever liked in her life. She knew very well that old Sassi would not be able to reach the inner chamber of the excavation, and she inwardly hoped that Malipieri's servant would discreetly wait outside of it, so that she might be alone with Malipieri when she first set eyes on the wonderful statue. It was amusing to think how the nuns would have scolded her for the mere wish, and how her pious sister would have condemned her to eternal flames for entertaining the temptation. Malipieri had told her to put on an old frock, as she might spoil her clothes in spite of the efforts he had made to enlarge and smooth the way for her to pass. Her mother had a way of calling everything old which she had possessed three months, and for once Sabina was of her mother's opinion. She had a very smart cloth costume, with a rather short skirt, which had come home in February, and which she had worn only four times because the spring had been warm. It was undoubtedly "old" for she could not wear it in summer, and next winter the fashion would change; and it had rained all the morning, so that the air was damp and cold. Besides, the costume fitted her slender figure to perfection--it was such a pity that it was old already, for she might never have another as smart. The least she could do was to try and wear it out when she had the chance. It was of a delicate fawn colour; it had no pocket and it was fastened in a mysterious way. The skirt was particularly successful, and, as has been said, it was short, which was a great advantage in scrambling about a damp cellar. In order to show that she was in earnest, she put on russet leather shoes. Her hat was large, because that was the fashion, but nothing could have been simpler; it matched the frock in colour, and no colour was so becoming to her clear girlish pallor and misty hair as light fawn. Malipieri had carried out his intention of getting rid of the porter, and was waiting inside the open postern when the cab drove up. Hitherto he had only seen Sabina indoors, at luncheon and in the evening, and when he saw her now he received an altogether new impression. Somehow, in her walking dress, she seemed more womanly, more "grown up" as she herself would have called it. As she got out of the wretched little cab, and came forward to greet him, her grace stirred his blood. It was final; he was in love. Her intuition told her the truth, of course. There was something in his look and voice which had not quite been in either on the previous evening. He had been glad, last night, because she had come to the drawing-room, as he had hoped that she would; but to-day he was more than glad, he was happy, merely because he saw her. There never was a woman yet that could not tell that difference at a glance. She was proud of being loved by him, and as he walked by her side, she looked up at the blue sky above the courtyard, and was glad that the clouds had passed away, for it must be sweeter to be loved when there was sunshine overhead than when it rained; but all the time, she saw his face, without looking at it, and it was after her own heart, and much to her liking. Besides, he was not only a manly man, and strong, and, of course, brave; he was already famous, and might be great some day; and she knew that he loved her, which was much to his advantage. As for being madly, wildly, desperately in love with him herself, she was not that yet; it was simply a very delicious sensation of being adored by somebody very sympathetic. Some women never get nearer to love than that, in all their lives, and are quite satisfied, and as they grow older they realize how much more convenient it is to be adored than to adore, and are careful to keep their likings within very manageable limits, while encouraging the men who love them to behave like lunatics. Sabina was not of that kind; she was only very young, which, as Pitt pointed out, is a disadvantage but not a real crime. They walked side by side, almost touching as they moved; they were drawn one to another, as all nature draws together those pairs of helpless atoms that are destined to one end. Old Sassi went gravely with them. To him, it was a sad thing to see Sabina come to the palace in a way almost clandestine, as if she had no right there, and he shook his head again and again, silently grieving over the departed glory of the Conti, and wishing that he could express his sympathy to the young girl in dignified yet tender language. But Sabina was not in need of sympathy just then. Life in the Volterra establishment had been distinctly more bearable since Malipieri's appearance on the scene, and her old existence in the palace had been almost as really gloomy as it now seemed to her to have been. Moreover, she was intensely interested in what Malipieri was going to shew her. Masin was waiting at the head of the winding stair with lanterns already lighted. When they had all entered, he turned the key. Sassi asked why he did this, and as they began to go down Malipieri explained that it was a measure of safety against the old porter's curiosity. Sabina stepped carefully on the damp steps, while Malipieri held his lantern very low so that she could see them. "I am sure-footed," she said, with a little laugh. "This is the easiest part," he answered. "There are places where you will have to be careful." "Then you will help me." She thought it would, be pleasant to rest her hand on his arm, where the way was not easy, and she knew instinctively that he hoped she would do so. They reached the floor of the cellar, and Masin walked in front, lighting the way. Sassi looked about him; he had been in the cellars two or three times before. "They did not get in by this way when the first attempt was made," he said. "No," answered Malipieri. "I cannot find out how they made an entrance." "There used to be a story of an oubliette that was supposed to be somewhere in the house," said Sabina. "I have found it. You will see it in a moment, for we have to pass through the bottom of it." "How amusing! I never saw one." They came to the first breach in the cellar wall. A small lamp had been placed on a stone in a position to illuminate the entrance, and was burning brightly. Masin had lighted two others, further on, and had covered the bones in the dry well with pieces of sacking. Malipieri went up the causeway first. At first he held out his hand to Sabina, but she shook her head and smiled. There would be no satisfaction in being helped over an easy place; she should like him to help her where it would need some strength and skill to do so. She drew her skirt round her and walked up unaided, and followed by Sassi, leaning on his stick with one hand and on Masin with the other. The descent into the first chamber was less easy. Standing at the top, Sabina looked down at Malipieri, who held his lantern to her feet. She felt a delicious little uneasiness now, and listened to the ghostly gurgle from the channel in the dark. "What is that?" she asked, and her voice was a little awed by the darkness and strangeness of the place. "The 'lost water.' It runs through here." She listened a moment longer, and began to descend, placing her feet on the stones upon which Malipieri laid his hand, one after another, to show her the way. "Perhaps you might help me a little here," she said. "If you will let me put your feet on the right step, it will be easier," he answered. "Yes. Do that, please. Show me the place first." "There. Do you see? Now!" He laid his hand firmly upon her small russet shoe, guided the little foot to a safe position and steadied it there a moment. "So," he said. "Now the next. There are only four or five more." She was rather sorry that there were so few, for they seemed delightfully safe, or just dangerous enough to be amusing; she was not quite sure which. Women never analyze the present, unless it is utterly dull. At the bottom of the descent, both looked up, and saw at a glance that poor old Sassi could never get down, even with assistance. He seemed unable to put his foot down without slipping, in spite of Masin's help. "I think you had better not try it," said Malipieri quietly. "In a few days I am sure that the Senator will have a way broken through from above, and then it will be easy enough." "Yes," answered the old man regretfully. "I will go back again to the other side and wait for you." "I am so sorry," said Sabina untruthfully, but looking up with sympathy. "Take Signor Sassi back to the cellar," said Malipieri to Masin. "Then you can follow us." Sassi and Masin disappeared through the breach. Malipieri led the way into the dry well, where there was another light. In her haste to reach the end, Sabina did not even glance at the sacking that covered the skeletons. "Can you climb a ladder?" asked Malipieri. "Of course!" Such a question was almost a slight. Malipieri went up nimbly with his lantern, and knelt on the masonry to hold the top of the ladder. Sabina mounted almost as quickly as he had done, till she reached the last few steps and could no longer hold by the uprights. Then she put out her hands; he grasped then both and slid backwards on his knees as she landed safely on the edge. She had not felt that she could possibly fall, even if her feet slipped, and she now knew that he was strong, and that it was good to lean on him. "You will have to stoop very low for a few steps," he said, taking up his lantern, and he kept his hold on one of her hands as he led her on. "It is not far, now," he added encouragingly, "and the rest is easy." He guided her past the boards and stones that covered the overflow shaft, and down the inclined passage and the steps to the space between the vaults. A third lamp was burning here, close to the hole beneath which the statue lay. Malipieri lowered his lantern for her to see it. She uttered an exclamation of surprise and delight. The pure gold that covered the bronze was as bright as if it had not lain in the vault for many centuries, twelve, fourteen, fifteen, no one could tell yet. The light fell into the huge ruby as into a tiny cup of wine. "Can one get down?" asked Sabina breathlessly, after a moment's silence. "Certainly. I have not gone down myself yet, but it is easy. I wanted you to be the first to see it all. You will have to sit on the edge and step upon the wrist of the statue." Sabina gathered her skirt neatly round her, and with a little help she seated herself as he directed. "Are you sure it will not hurt it, to step on it?" she asked, looking up. "Quite sure." Malipieri smiled, as he thought of Toto's hobnailed shoes. "When you are standing firmly, I will get down too, if there is room." "It is not a very big hole," observed Sabina, letting herself down till her feet rested on the smooth surface. She did not quite wish to be as near him as that; at least, not yet. "I will creep down over the arm," she said, "and then you can follow me. I hope there are no beasts," she added. "I hate spiders." Malipieri lowered his lantern beside her, and she crept along towards the statue's head. In a few moments he was beside her, bringing both the lantern and the lamp with him. They had both forgotten Masin's existence, as he had not yet appeared. Sabina looked about for spiders, but there were none in sight. The vault was perfectly dry, and there was hardly any dust clinging to the rough mortar that covered the stones. It was clear that the framework must have been carefully removed, and the place thoroughly cleaned, before the statue had been drawn into the vault from one end. "He is perfectly hideous," said Sabina, as they reached the huge face. "But it is magnificent," she added, passing her gloved hand over the great golden features. "I wonder who it is meant for." "A Roman emperor as Hercules, I think," Malipieri answered. "It may be Commodus. We are so near that it is hard to know how the head would look if the statue were set up." He was thinking very little of the statue just then, as he knelt on its colossal chest beside Sabina, and watched the play of the yellow light on her delicate face. There was just room for them to kneel there, side by side. It was magnificent, as Sabina had said, the great glittering thing, lying all alone in the depths of the earth, an enormous golden demigod in his tomb. "You are wonderful!" exclaimed Sabina, suddenly turning her face to Malipieri. "Why?" "To have found it," she explained. "I wish I had found something more practical," he answered. "In my opinion this thing belongs to you, and I suppose it represents a small fortune. But the only way for you to get even a share of it will be by bringing a suit against Volterra. Half a dozen rubies like the one in the ring would have been enough for you, and you could have taken them home with you in your pocket." "I am afraid I have none!" Sabina laughed. "This one will be safe in mine," Malipieri answered. "You are not going to take it?" cried Sabina, a little frightened. "Yes. I am going to take it for you. I daresay it is worth a good deal of money." "But--is it yours?" "No. It is yours." "I wonder whether I have any right to it." Sabina was perhaps justly doubtful about the proceeding. "I do not care a straw for the government, or the laws, or Volterra, where you are concerned. You shall have what is yours. Shall we get down to the ground and see if there is anything else in the vault?" He let himself slide over the left shoulder, and the lion's skin that was modelled over it, and Sabina followed him cautiously. By bending their heads they could now stand and walk, and there was a space fully five feet wide, between the statue and the perpendicular masonry from which the vault sprang. Malipieri stopped short, with both lights in his hand, and uttered an exclamation. "What is it?" asked Sabina. "Oh!" she cried, as she saw what he had come upon. For some moments neither spoke, and they stood side by side, pressed against each other in the narrow way and gazing down, for before them lay the most beautiful marble statue Sabina had ever seen. In the yellow light it was like a living woman asleep rather than a marble goddess, hewn and chipped, smoothed and polished into shape ages ago, by men's hands. She lay a little turned to one side and away; the arm that was undermost was raised, so that the head seemed to be resting against it, though it was not; the other lying along and across the body, its perfect hand just gathering up a delicately futile drapery. The figure was whole and unbroken, of cream-like marble, that made soft living shadows in each dimple and hollow and seemed to quiver along the lines of beauty, the shoulder just edging forwards, the bent arm, the marvellous sweep of the limbs from hip to heel. "It is a Venus, is it not?" asked Sabina with an odd little timidity. "Aphrodite," answered Malipieri, almost unconsciously. It was not the plump, thick-ankled, doubtfully decent Venus which the late Greeks made for their Roman masters; it was not that at all. It was their own Aphrodite, delicate, tender and deadly as the foam of the sea whence she came to them. Sabina would scarcely have wondered if she had turned and smiled, there on the ground, to brush the shadows of ages from her opening eyes, and to say "I must have slept," like a woman waked by her lover from a dream of kisses. That would have seemed natural. Malipieri felt that he was holding his breath. Sabina was so close to him that it was as if he could feel her heart beating near his own, and as fast; and for a moment he felt one of those strong impulses which strong men know when to resist, but to resist which is like wrestling against iron hands. He longed, as he had never longed for anything in his life, to draw her yet closer to him and to press his lips hard upon hers, without a word. Instead, he edged away from her, and held the lights low beside the wonderful statue so that she might see it better; and Aphrodite's longing mouth, that had kissed gods, was curved with a little scorn for men. The air was still and dry, and Sabina felt a strange little thrill in her hair and just at the back of her neck. Perhaps, in the unknown ways of fruitful nature, the girl was dimly aware of the tremendous manly impulse of possession, so near her in that narrow and silent place. Something sent a faint blush to her cheek, and she was glad there was not much light, and she did not wish to speak for a little while. "I hate to think that she has lain so long beside that gilded Roman monster," said Malipieri presently. The vast brutality of the herculean emperor had not disgusted him at first; it had merely displeased his taste. Now, it became suddenly an atrocious contrast to the secret loveliness of unveiled beauty. That was a manly instinct in him, too, and Sabina felt it. "Yes," she said softly. "And she seems almost alive." "The gods and goddesses live for ever," Malipieri answered, smiling and looking at her, in spite of himself. Her eyes met his at once, and did not turn away. He fancied that they grew darker in the shadow, and in the short silence. "I suppose we ought to be going," she said, still looking at him. "Poor old Sassi is waiting in the cellar." "We have not been all round the vault yet," he answered. "There may be something more." "No, she has been alone with the monster, all these centuries. I am sure of it. There cannot be anything else." "We had better look, nevertheless," said Malipieri. "I want you to see everything there is, and you cannot come here again--not in this way." "Well, let us go round." Sabina moved. "Besides," continued Malipieri, going slowly forward and lighting the way, "I am going to leave the palace the day after to-morrow." "Why?" asked Sabina, in surprise. "Because Volterra has requested me to go. I may have to leave Rome altogether." "Leave Rome?" Her own voice sounded harsh to her as she spoke the words. She had been so sure that he was in love with her, she had begun to know that she would soon love him; and he was going away already. "Perhaps," he answered, going on. "I am not sure." "But--" Sabina checked herself and bit her lip. "What?" "Nothing. Go on, please. It must be getting late." There was nothing more in the vault. They went all round the gilt statue without speaking, came back to the feet of the Aphrodite from the further side and stopped to look again. Still neither spoke for a long time. Malipieri held the lights in several positions, trying to find the best. "Why must you leave Rome?" Sabina asked, at last, without turning her face to him. "I am not sure that I must. I said I might, that was all." Sabina tapped the ground impatiently with her foot. "Why 'may' you have to go, then?" she asked a little sharply. "Volterra may be able to drive me away. He will try, because he is afraid I may wish to get a share in the discovery." "Oh! Then you will not leave Rome, unless you are driven away?" Malipieri tried to see her eyes, but she looked steadily down at the statue. "No," he said. "Certainly not." Sabina said nothing, but her expression changed and softened at once. He could see that, even in the play of the shadows. She raised her head, glanced at him, and moved to go on. After making a few steps in the direction of the aperture she stopped suddenly as if listening. Malipieri held his breath, and then he heard, too. It was the unmistakable sound of water trickling faster and faster over stones. For an instant his blood stood still. Then he set the lamp down, grasped Sabina's wrist and hurried her along, carrying only the lantern. "Come as fast as you can," he said, controlling his voice. She understood that there was danger and obeyed without losing her head. As he helped her up through the hole in the vault, she felt herself very light in his hands. In a moment he was beside her, and they were hurrying towards the inclined passage, bending low. CHAPTER XIV A broad stream of water was pouring down, and spreading on each side in the space between the vaults. In a flash, Malipieri understood. The dry well had filled, but the overflow shaft was covered with the weighted boards, and only a little water could get down through the cracks. The rest was pouring down the passage, and would soon fill the vault, which was at a much lower level. "Stay here! Do not move!" Sabina stood still, but she trembled a little, as he dashed up through the swift, shallow stream, not ankle deep, but steady as fate. In a moment he had disappeared from her sight, and she was all alone in the dismal place, in darkness, save for a little light that forced its way up from below through the hole. It seemed five minutes before his plashing footsteps stopped, up there in the passage; then came instantly the noise of stones thrown aside into the water, and of heavy pieces of board grating and bumping, as they floated for a moment. Almost instantly a loud roar came from the same direction, as the inflowing stream from the well thundered down the shaft. Sabina heard Malipieri's voice calling to her, and his approaching footsteps. "The water cannot reach you now!" he cried. It had already stopped running down the passage, when Malipieri emerged, dripping and holding out the lantern in front of him, as his feet slipped on the wet stones. Sabina was very pale, but quite quiet. "What has happened?" she asked mechanically. "The water has risen suddenly," he said, paler than she, for he knew the whole danger. "We cannot get out till it goes down." "How soon will that be?" Sabina asked steadily. "I do not know." They looked at each other, and neither spoke for a moment. "Do you think it may be several hours?" asked Sabina. "Yes, perhaps several hours." Something in his tone told her that matters might be worse than that. "Tell me the truth," she said. "It may be days before the water goes down. We may die here. Is that what you mean?" "Unless I can make another way out, that is what may happen. We may starve here." "You will find the other way out," Sabina said quietly. "I know you will." She would rather have died that moment than have let him think her a coward; and she was really brave, and was vaguely conscious that she was, and that she could trust her nerves, as long as her bodily strength lasted. But it would be very horrible to die of hunger, and in such a place. It was better not to think of it. He stood before her, with his lantern, a pale, courageous, strong man, whom she could not help trusting; he would find that other way. "You had better get down again," he said, after a little reflection. "It is dry below, and the lamp is there." "I can help you." Malipieri looked at the slight figure and the little gloved hands and smiled. "I am very strong," Sabina said, "much stronger than you think. Besides, I could not sit all alone down there while you are groping about. The water might come down and drown me, you know." "It cannot run down, now. If it could, I should be drowned first." "That would not exactly be a consolation," answered Sabina. "What are you going to do? I suppose we cannot break through the roof where we are, can we?" "There must be ten or fifteen feet of earth above it. We are under the courtyard here." Sabina's slight shoulders shuddered a little, for the first time, as she realized that she was perhaps buried alive, far beyond the possibility of being heard by any human being. "The water must have risen very soon after we came down," Malipieri said thoughtfully. "That is why my man could not get to us. He could not get into the well." "At all events he is not here," Sabina answered, "so it makes no difference where he is." "He will try to help us from without. That is what I am thinking of. The first thing to be done is to put out that lamp, for we must not waste light. I had forgotten that." Sabina had not thought of it either, and she waited while he went down again and brought the lamp up. He extinguished it at once and set it down. "Only three ways are possible," he said, "and two are out of the question. We cannot get up the old shaft above the well. It is of no use to think of that. We cannot get down the overflow and out by the drains because the water is pouring down there, and besides, the Tiber must have risen with the rain." "Which is the third way?" "To break an opening through the wall in the highest part of the passage. It may take a long time, for I have no idea how thick the wall may be, and the passage is narrow. But we must try it, and perhaps Masin will go to work nearly at the same spot, for he knows as much about this place as I do, and we have often talked about it. I have some tools down here. Will you come? We must not waste time." "I can hold the lantern," said Sabina. "That may be of some use." Malipieri gave her the lantern and took up the crowbar and pickaxe which lay near the hole in the vault. "You will wet your feet, I am afraid," he said, as they went up the passage, and he was obliged to speak in a louder tone to be heard above the steady roar of the water. He had marked the spot where he had expected that a breach would have to be made to admit visitors conveniently, and he had no trouble in finding it. He set the stones he had taken off the boards in a proper position, laid one of the wet boards upon them, and then took off his coat and folded it for a cushion, more or less dry. He made Sabina sit down with the lantern, though she protested. "I cannot work with my coat on," he answered, "so you may as well sit on it." He set to work, and said no more. The first thing to be done was to sound the thickness of the wall, if possible, by making a small hole through the bricks. If this could be done, and if Masin was on the other side, a communication could be established. He knew well enough that even with help from without, many hours might be necessary in order to make a way big enough for Sabina to get out; it was most important to make an opening through which food could be passed in for her. He had to begin by using his pick-axe because the passage was so narrow that he could not get his crowbar across it, much less use it with any effect. It was very slow work at first, but he did it systematically and with steady energy. Sabina watched him in silence for a long time, vaguely wondering when he would be tired and would be obliged to stop and rest. Somehow, it was impossible to feel that the situation was really horrible, while such a man was toiling before her eyes to set her free. From the first, she was perfectly sure that he would succeed, but she had not at all understood what the actual labour must be. He had used his pickaxe for more than half an hour, and had made a hollow about a foot and a half deep, when he rested on the shaft of the tool, and listened attentively. If the wall were not enormously thick, and if any one were working on the other side, he was sure that he could hear the blows, even above the roar of the water. But he could distinguish no sound. The water came in steadily from the full well, a stream filling the passage beyond the dark chasm into which it was falling, and at least six inches deep. It sent back the light of the lantern in broken reflections and shivered gleams. Sabina did not like to look that way. She was cold, now, and she felt that her clothes were damp, and a strange drowsiness came over her, brought on by the monotonous tone of the water. Malipieri had taken up his crowbar. "I wonder what time it is," Sabina said, before he struck the wall again. He looked at his watch. "It is six o'clock," he answered, trying to speak cheerfully. "It is not at all late yet. Are you hungry?" "Oh, no! We never dine till eight." "But you are cold?" "A little. It is no matter." "If you will get up I will put my waistcoat on the board for you to sit upon, and then you can put my coat over your shoulders. I am too hot." "Thank you." She obeyed, and he made her as comfortable as he could, a forlorn little figure in her fawn-coloured hat, wrapped in his grey tweed coat, that looked utterly shapeless on her. "Courage," he said, as he picked up his crowbar. "I am not afraid," she answered. "Most women would be." He went to work again, with the end of the heavy bar, striking regularly at the deepest part of the hollow, and working the iron round and round, to loosen the brick wherever that was possible. But he made slow progress, horribly slow, as Sabina realized when nearly half an hour had passed again, and he paused to listen. He was much more alarmed than he would allow her to guess, for he was now quite convinced that Masin was not working on the other side; he knew that his strength would never be equal to breaking through, unless the crowbar ran suddenly into an open space beyond, within the next half-hour. The wall might be of any thickness, perhaps as much as six or seven feet, and the bricks were very hard and were well cemented. Perhaps, too, he had made a mistake in his rough calculations and was not working at the right spot after all. He was possibly hammering away at the end of a cross wall, following it in its length. That risk had to be taken, however, for there was at least as good a chance of breaking through at this point as at any other. He believed that by resting now and then for a short time, he could use his tools for sixteen or eighteen hours, after which, if he were without food, his strength would begin to give way. There was nothing to be done but to go on patiently, doing his best not to waste time, and yet not overtaxing his energy so as to break down before he had done the utmost possible. He would not think of what must come after that, if he failed, and if the water did not subside. Sabina understood very imperfectly what had happened, and there had been no time to explain. He could not work and yet talk to her so as to be heard above the roaring of the water and the noise of the iron bar striking against the bricks. She knew that, and she expected nothing of him beyond what he was doing, which was all a man could do. She drew his coat closely round her and leaned back against the damp wall; and with half-closed eyes she watched the moving shadows of his arms cast on the wall opposite by the lantern. He worked as steadily as a machine, except when he withdrew the bar for a moment, in order to clear out the broken brick and mortar with his hand; then again the bar struck the solid stuff, and recoiled in his grasp and struck again, regularly as the swinging of a pendulum. But no echo came back from an emptiness beyond. Ignorant as Sabina was of all such things, her instinct told her that the masonry was enormously thick; and yet her faith in him made him sure that he had chosen the only spot where there was a chance at all. Sometimes she almost forgot the danger for a little while. It pleased her to watch him, and to follow the rhythmic movements of his strong and graceful body. It is a good sight to see an athletic man exerting every nerve and muscle wisely and skilfully in a very long-continued effort; and the woman who has seen a man do that to save her own life is not likely to forget it. And then, again, the drowsiness came over her, and she was almost asleep, and woke with a shiver, feeling cold. He had given her his watch to hold, when he had made her sit on his waistcoat, and she had squeezed it under her glove into the palm of her hand. It was a plain silver watch with no chain. She got it out and looked at it. Eight o'clock, now. The time had passed quickly, and she must have really been asleep. The Baron and his wife were just going to sit down to dinner, unless her disappearance had produced confusion in the house. But they would not be frightened, though they might be angry. The servants would have told them that Signor Sassi, whose card was there to prove his coming, had asked for Donna Sabina, and that she had gone out with him in a cab, dressed for walking. Signor Sassi was a highly respectable person, and though it might be a little eccentric, according to the Baroness's view, for Sabina to go out with him in a cab, especially in the afternoon, there could really be no great harm in it. The Baroness would be angry because she had stayed out so late. The Baroness would be much angrier by and by, when she knew what had really happened, and it must all be known, of course. When Sassi was sure that Masin could not get the two out of the vault himself, or with such ordinary help as he could procure, he would have to go to the Baron, who would instantly inform the authorities, and bring an engineer and a crowd of masons to break a way. There was some comfort in that, after all. It was quite impossible that she and Malipieri should be left to starve to death. Besides, she was not at all hungry, though it was dinner time. She was only cold and sleepy. She wished she could take the crowbar from Malipieri's hands and use it for a few minutes, just to warm herself. He had said that he was too hot, and by the uncertain light she fancied she could see a little moisture on his white forehead. She was right in that, for he was growing tired and knew that before long he must rest for at least a quarter of an hour. The hole was now three feet deep or more, yet no hollow sound came back from, the blows he dealt. His arms were beginning to ache, and he began to count the strokes. He would strike a hundred more, and then he would rest. He kept up the effort steadily to the end, and then laid down the bar and passed his handkerchief over his forehead. Sabina watched him and looked up into his face when he turned to her. "You are tired," she said, rising and standing beside him, so as to speak more easily. "I shall be quite rested in a few minutes," he answered, "and then I will go on." "You must be very strong," said Sabina. Then she told him what she had been thinking of, and how it was certain that the Baron would bring a large force of men to set them free. Malipieri listened to the end, and nodded thoughtfully. She was right, supposing that nothing had happened to Sassi and Masin; but he knew his own man, and judged that he must have made some desperate attempt to stop the inflowing water in the outer chamber, and it was not impossible that poor old Sassi, in his devotion to Sabina, had made a mad effort to help Masin, and that they had both lost their lives together. If that had happened, there was no one to tell Volterra where Sabina was. Enquiries at Sassi's house would be useless; all that could be known would be that he had gone out between four and five o'clock, that he had called at the house in the Via Ludovisi, and that he and Sabina had driven away together. No doubt, in time, the police could find the cab they had taken, and the cabman would remember that they had paid him at the Palazzo Conti. But all that would take a long time. The porter knew nothing of their coming, and being used to Malipieri's ways would not think of ringing at his door. In time Toto would doubtless break out, but he had not seen Sabina, for Malipieri had been very careful to make her walk close to the wall. He did not tell Sabina these things, as it was better that she should look forward to being set free in a few hours, but he had very grave doubts about the likelihood of any such good fortune. "You must sit down," said Sabina. "You cannot rest unless you sit down. I will stand for a while." "There is room for us both," Malipieri answered. They sat down side by side on the board with the lantern at their feet, and they were very close together. "But you will catch cold, now that you have stopped, working," Sabina said suddenly. "How stupid of me!" As she spoke she pulled his coat off her shoulders, and tried to throw it over his, but he resisted, saying that he could not possibly have time to catch cold, if he went back to work in a few minutes. Yet he already felt the horrible dampness that came up out of the overflow shaft and settled on everything in glistening beads. It only made him understand how cold she must be, after sitting idle for two hours. "Do you think we shall get out to-night?" Sabina asked suddenly, with the coat in her hand. "I hope so," he answered. She stood up, and looked at the cavity he had made in the wall. "Where will that lead to?" she enquired. He had risen, too. "It ought to lead into the coach-house, so far as I can judge." Instinctively, he went forward to examine the hole, and at that moment Sabina cleverly threw the coat over his shoulders and held it round his neck with both her hands. "There!" she cried. "You are caught now!" And she laughed as lightly as if there were no such thing as danger. Malipieri wondered whether she realized the gravity of the situation, or whether she were only pretending to be gay in order to make it easier for him. In either case she was perfectly brave. "You must not!" he answered, gently trying to free himself. "You need it more than I." "I wonder if it is big enough to cover us both," Sabina said, as the idea struck her. "Come! Sit down beside me and we will try." He smiled and sat down beside her, and they managed to hold the coat so that it just covered their shoulders. "Paul and Virginia," said Malipieri, and they both laughed a little. But as their laughter died away, Sabina's teeth chattered, and she drew in her breath. At the slight sound Malipieri looked anxiously into her face, and saw that her lips were blue. "This is folly," he said. "You will fall ill if you stay here any longer. It is quite dry in the vault, and warm by comparison with this place. You must go down there, while I stay here and work." He got up, and in spite of a little resistance he made her put her arms into the sleeves of the coat, and turned the cuffs back, and fastened the buttons. She was shivering from head to foot. "What a miserable little thing I am!" she cried impatiently. "You are not a miserable little thing, and you are much braver than most men," said Malipieri. "But it will be of very little use to get you out of the vault alive if you are to die of a fever in a day or two." She said nothing and he led her carefully down the inclined passage and the steps, away from the gloomy overflow, and the roaring water and the fearful dampness. He helped her down into the vault very gently, over the glittering chest of the great imperial statue. The air felt warm and dry, now that she was so badly chilled, and her lips looked a little less blue. "I will light the lamp, and turn it very low," said Malipieri. "I am not afraid of the dark," Sabina answered. "You said that we must not waste our light." "Shall you really not be nervous?" Malipieri supposed that all women were afraid to be in the dark alone. "Of course not. Why should I? There are no spiders, and I do not believe in ghosts. Besides, I shall hear you hammering at the wall." "You had better sit on the body of the Venus. I think the marble is warmer than the bronze. But there is the board--I forgot. Wait a minute." He was not gone long, and came back bringing the board and his waistcoat. To his surprise, he found her sitting on the ground, propping herself with one hand. "I felt a little dizzy in the dark," she explained, "so I sat down, for fear of falling." He glanced at her face, and his own was grave, as he placed the board on the ground, and laid the waistcoat over the curving waist of the Aphrodite, so that she could lean against it. She got up quickly when it was ready and seated herself, drawing up her knees and pulling her skirt closely round her damp shoes to keep her feet warm, if possible. He set the lamp beside her and gave her a little silver box of matches, so that she could get a light if she felt nervous. He looked at her face thoughtfully as he stood with his lantern in his hand, ready to go. "But you have nothing to put on, if you have to rest again!" she said, rather feebly. "I will come and rest here, about once an hour," he answered. Her face brightened a little, and she nodded, looking up into his eyes. "Yes. Come and rest beside me," she said. He went away, climbing over the statue and out through the hole in the vault. Just before he disappeared, he held up his lantern and looked towards her. She was watching him. "Good-night," he said. "Try to sleep a little." "Come back soon," she answered faintly, and smiled. Presently he was at work again, steadily driving the bar against the hard bricks, steadily chipping away a little at a time, steadily making progress against the enormous obstacle. The only question was whether his strength would last, for if he had been able to get food, it would have been merely a matter of time. A crowbar does not wear down much on bricks. At first, perfectly mechanical work helps a man to think, as walking generally does; but little by little it dulls the faculties and makes thought almost impossible. Senseless words begin to repeat themselves with the movement, fragments of tunes fit themselves to the words, and play a monotonous and exasperating music in the brain, till a man has the sensation of having a hurdy-gurdy in his head, though he may be working for his life, as Malipieri was. Yet the unchanging repetition makes the work easier, as a sailor's chanty helps at the topsail halliards. "We must get out before we starve, we must get out before we starve," sang the regular blows of the bar to a queer little tune which Malipieri had never heard. When he stopped to clear out the chips, the song stopped too, and he thought of Sabina sitting alone in the vault, propped against the Aphrodite; and he hoped that she might be asleep. But when he swung the bar back into position and heard it strike the bricks, the tune and the words came back with the pendulum rhythm; and went on and on, till they were almost maddening, though there no longer seemed to be any sense in them. They made the time pass. Sabina heard the dull blows, too, though not very loud. It was a comfort to hear anything in the total darkness, and she tried to amuse herself by counting the strokes up to a hundred and then checking the hundreds by turning in one finger after another. It would be something to tell him when he came back. She wondered whether there would be a thousand, and then, as she was wondering, she lost the count, and by way of a change she tried to reckon how many seconds there were in an hour. But she got into trouble with the ciphers when she tried to multiply sixty by sixty in her head, and she began counting the strokes again. They always stopped for a few seconds somewhere between thirty and forty. She wished he would come back soon, for she was beginning to feel very cold again, so cold that presently she got upon her feet and walked a dozen steps, feeling her way along the great bronze statue. It was better than sitting still. She had heard of prisoners who had kept themselves sane in a dark dungeon by throwing away a few pins they had, and finding them again. It was a famous prisoner who did that. It was the prisoner of Quillon--no, "quillon" had something to do with a sword--no, it was Chillon. Then she felt dizzy again, and steadied herself against the statue, and presently groped her way back to her seat. She almost fell, when she sat down, but saved herself and at last succeeded in getting to her original position. It was not that she was faint from hunger yet; her dizziness was probably the result of cold and weariness and discomfort, and most of all, of the unaccustomed darkness. She was ashamed of being so weak, when she listened to the steady strokes, far off, and thought of the strength and endurance it must need to do what Malipieri seemed to be doing so easily. But she was very cold indeed, chilled to the bone and shivering, and she could not think of any way of getting warm. She rose again, and struck one of the matches he had given her, and by its feeble light she walked a few seconds without feeling dizzy, and then sat down just as the little taper was going to burn her fingers. A few minutes later she heard footsteps overhead, and saw a faint light through the hole. He was coming at last, and she smiled happily before she saw him. He came down and asked how she was, and he sat on the Aphrodite beside her. "If I could only get warm!" she answered. "Perhaps you can warm your hands a little on the sides of the lantern," he said. She tried that and felt a momentary sensation of comfort, and asked him what progress he was making. "Very slow," he replied. "I cannot hear the least sound from the other side yet. Masin is not there." She did not expect any other answer, and said nothing, as she sat shivering beside him. "You are very brave," he said presently. A long pause followed. She had bent her head low, so that her face almost touched her knees. "Signor Malipieri--" she began, at last, in rather a trembling tone. "Yes? What is it?" He bent down to her, but she did not look up. "I--I--hardly know how to say it," she faltered. "Shall you think very, very badly of me if I ask you to do something--something that--" She stopped. "There is nothing in heaven or earth I will not do for you," he answered. "And I shall certainly not think anything very dreadful." He tried to speak cheerfully. "I think I shall die of the cold," she said. "There might be a way--" "Yes? Anything!" Then she spoke very low. "Do you think you could just put your arms round me for a minute or two?" she asked. Piteously cold though she was, the blood rushed to her face as she uttered the words; but Malipieri felt it in his throat and eyes. "Certainly," he answered, as if she had asked the most natural thing in the world. "Sit upon my knees, and I will hold my arms round you, till you are warm." He settled himself on the marble limbs of the Aphrodite, and the frail young girl seated herself on his knees, and nestled to him for warmth, while he held her close to him, covering her with his arms as much as he could. They went quite round her, one above the other, and she hid her face against his shoulder. He could feel her trembling with the cold like a leaf, under the coat he had made her put on. Suddenly she started a little, but not as if she wished to go; it was more like a sob than anything else. "What is the matter?" he asked, steadying his voice with difficulty. "I am so ashamed of myself!" she answered, and she buried her face against his shoulder again. "There is nothing to be ashamed of," he said gently. "Are you a little warmer now?" "Oh, much, much! Let me stay just a little longer." "As long as you will," he answered, pressing her to him quietly. He wondered if she could hear his heart, which was beating like a hammer, and whether she noticed anything strange in his voice. If she did, she would not understand. She was only a child after all. He told himself that he was old enough to be her father, though he was not; he tried not to think of her at all. But that was of no use. He would have given his body, his freedom, his soul and the life to come, to kiss her as she lay helpless in his arms; he would have given anything the world held, or heaven, if it had been his; anything, except his honour. But that he would not give. His heart might beat itself to pieces, his brain might whirl, the little fires might flash furiously in his closed eyes, his throat might be as parched as the rich man's in hell--she had trusted herself to him like a child, in sheer despair and misery, and safe as a child she should lie on his breast. She should die there, if they were to die. "I am warm now," she said at last, "really quite warm again, if you want to go back." He did not wonder. He felt as if he were on fire from his head to his feet. At her words he relaxed his arms at once, and she stood up. "You are so good to me," she said, with an impulse of gratitude for safety which she herself did not understand. "What makes you so good to me?" He shook his head, as if he could not answer then, and smiled a little sadly. "Now that you are warm, I must not lose time," he said, a moment later, taking up his lantern. She sat down in her old place, and gathered her skirt to her feet and watched him as he climbed out and the last rays of light disappeared. Then the pounding at the wall began again, far off, and she tried to count the strokes, as she had done before; but she wished him back, and whether she felt cold or not, she wished herself again quietly folded in his arms, and though she was alone and it was quite dark she blushed at the thought. It seemed to her that the blows were struck in quicker succession now than before. Was he willing to tire himself out a little sooner, so as to earn the right to come back to her? That was not it. He was growing desperate, and could not control the speed of his hands so perfectly as before. The night was advancing, he knew, though he had not looked at the watch, which was still in Sabina's glove. It was growing late, and he could distinguish no sound but that of the blows he struck at the bricks and the steady roar of the water. The conviction grew on him that Masin was drowned, and perhaps old Sassi too, and that their bodies lay at the bottom of the outer chamber, between the well and the wall of the cellar. If Masin had been able to get into the well, before the water was too high, he would have risen with it, for he was a good swimmer. So was Malipieri, and more than once he thought of making an attempt to reach the widened slit in the wall by diving. That he could find the opening he was sure, but he was almost equally sure that he could never get through it alive and up to the surface on the other side. If he were drowned too, Sabina would be left to die alone, or perhaps to go mad with horror before she was found. He had heard of such things. It was no wonder that he unconsciously struck faster as he worked, and at first he felt himself stronger than before, as men do when they are almost despairing. The sweat stood out on his forehead, and his hands tingled, when he drew back the iron to clear away the chips. He worked harder and harder. The queer little tune did not ring in his head now, for he could think of nothing but Sabina and of what was to become of her, even if he succeeded in saving her life. It was almost impossible that such a strange adventure should remain a secret, and, being once known, the injury to the girl might be irreparable. He hated himself for having brought her to the place. Yet, as he thought it over, he knew that he would have done it again. It had seemed perfectly safe. Any one could have seen that the water had not risen in the well for many years. Day after day, for a long time, he and Masin had worked in the vaults in perfect safety. The way to the statues had been made so easy that only a timid old man like Sassi could have found it impassable. There had been absolutely no cause to fear that after fifty or sixty years the course of the water should be affected, and the chances against such an accident happening during that single hour of Sabina's visit were as many millions to one. His motive in bringing her had been quixotic, no doubt, but good and just, and so far as Sabina's reputation was concerned, Sassi's presence had constituted a sufficient social protection. He hammered away at the bricks furiously, and the cavity grew deeper and wider. Surely he had made a mistake at first in wishing to husband his strength too carefully. If he had worked from the beginning as he was working now, he would have made the breach by this time. Unless that were impossible; unless, after all, he had struck the end of a cross wall and was working through the length of it instead of through its thickness. The fear of such a misfortune took possession of him, and he laid down his crowbar to examine the wall carefully. There was one way of finding out the truth, if he could only get light enough; no mason that ever lived would lay his bricks in any way except lengthwise along each course. If he had struck into a cross wall, he must be demolishing the bricks from their ends instead of across them, and he could find out which way they lay at the end of the cavity, if he could make the light of the lantern shine in as far as that. The depth was more than five feet now, and his experience told him that even in the construction of a mediaeval palace the walls above the level of the ground were very rarely as thick as that, when built of good brick and cement like this one. When he took up his lantern, he was amazed at what he had done in less than four hours; if he had been told that an ordinary man had accomplished anything approaching to it in that time, he would have been incredulous. He had hardly realized that he had made a hole big enough for him to work in, kneeling on one knee, and bracing himself with the other foot. But the end was narrow, of course, and when he held the light before it, he could not see past the body of the lantern. He opened the latter, took out the little oil lamp carefully and thrust it into the hole. He could see now, as he carefully examined the bricks; and he was easily convinced that he had not entered a cross wall. Nevertheless, when he had been working with the bar, he had not detected any change in the sound, as he thought he must have done, if he had been near the further side. Was the wall ten feet thick? He looked again. It was not a vaulting, that was clear; and it could not be anything but a wall. There was some comfort in that. He drew back a little, put the lamp into the lantern again and got out backwards. The passage was bright; he looked up quickly and started. Sabina was standing beside him, holding the large lamp. Her big hat had fallen back and her hair made a fair cloud between it and her white face. "I thought something had happened to you," she said, "so I brought the lamp. You stopped working for such a long time," she explained, "I thought you must have hurt yourself, or fainted." "No," answered Malipieri. "There is nothing the matter with me. I was looking at the bricks." "You must need rest, for it is past ten o'clock. I looked at the watch." "I will rest when I get through the wall. There is no time to be lost. Are you very hungry?" "No. I am a little thirsty." She looked at the black water, pouring down the overflow shaft. "That water is not good to drink," said Malipieri, thinking of what was at the bottom of the well. "We had better not drink it unless we are absolutely forced to. I hope to get you out in two hours." He stood leaning on his crowbar, his dark hair covered with dust, his white shirt damp and clinging to him, and all stained from rubbing against the broken masonry. "It would be better to rest for a few minutes," she said, not moving. He knew she was right, but he went with her reluctantly, and presently he was sitting beside her on the marble limbs of the Aphrodite. She turned her face to him a little shyly, and then looked away again. "Were ever two human beings in such a situation before!" "Everything has happened before," Malipieri answered. "There is nothing new." "Does it hurt very much to die of starvation?" Sabina asked after a little pause. "Not if one has plenty of water. It is thirst that drives people mad. Hunger makes one weak, that is all." "And cold, I am sure." "Very cold." They were both silent. She looked steadily at the gleaming bronze statue before her, and Malipieri looked down at his hands. "How long does it take to starve to death?" she asked at last. "Strong men may live two or three weeks if they have water." "I should not live many days," Sabina said thoughtfully. "It would be awful for you to be living on here, with me lying dead." "Horrible. Do not think about it. We shall get out before morning." "I am afraid not," she said quietly. "I am afraid we are going to die here." "Not if I can help it," answered Malipieri. "No. Of course not. I know you will do everything possible, and I am sure that if you could save me by losing your life, you would. Yes. But if you cannot break through the wall, there is nothing to be done." "The water may go down to-morrow. It is almost sure to go down before long. Then we can get out by the way we came in." "It will not go down. I am sure it will not." "It is too soon to lose courage," Malipieri said. "I am not frightened. It will not be hard to die, if it does not hurt. It will be much harder for you, because you are so strong. You will live a long time." "Not unless I can save you," he answered, rising. "I am going back to work. It will be time enough to talk about death when my strength is all gone." He spoke almost roughly, partly because for one moment she had made him feel a sort of sudden dread that she might be right, partly to make her think that he thought the supposition sheer nonsense. "Are you angry?" she asked, like a child. "No!" He made an effort and laughed almost cheerfully. "But you had better think about what you should like for supper in two or three hours! It is hardly worth while to put out that lamp," he added. "It will burn nearly twelve hours, for it is big, and it was quite full. There is a great deal of heat in it, too." He went away again. But when he was gone, she drew the lamp over to her without leaving her seat, and put it out. She was very tired and a little faint, and by and by the distant sound of the crowbar brought back the drowsiness she had felt before, and leaning her head against the Aphrodite's curving waist, she lost consciousness. He worked a good hour or more without result, came down to her, and found her in a deep sleep. As he noiselessly left her, he wondered how many men could have slept peacefully in such a case as hers. Once more he took the heavy bar, and toiled on, but he felt that his strength was failing fast for want of food. He had eaten nothing since midday, and had not even drunk water, and in six hours he had done as much hard work as two ordinary workmen could have accomplished in a day. With a certain amount of rest, he could still go on, but a quarter of an hour would no longer be enough. He was very thirsty, too, but though he might have drunk his fill from the hollow of his hand, he could not yet bring himself to taste the water. He was afraid that he might be driven to it before long, but he would resist as long as he could. Every stroke was an effort now, as he struggled on blindly, not only against the material obstacle, but against the growing terror that was taking possession of him, the hideous probability of having worked in vain after all, and the still worse certainty of what the end must be if he really failed. Effort after effort, stroke after stroke, though each seemed impossible after the last. He could not fail, and let that poor girl die, unless he could die first, of sheer exhaustion. If he were to stop now, it might be hours before he could go on again, and then he would be already weakened by hunger. There was nothing to be done but to keep at it, to strike and strike, with such half-frantic energy as was left in him. Every bone and sinew ached, and his breath came short, while the sweat ran down into his short beard, and fell in rain on his dusty hands. But do what he would, the blows followed each other in slower succession. He could not strike twenty more, not ten, not five perhaps; he would not count them; he would cheat himself into doing what could not be done; he would count backwards and forwards, one, two, three, three, two, one, one, two-- And then, all at once, the tired sinews were braced like steel, and his back straightened, and his breath came full and clear. The blow had rung hollow. He could have yelled as he sent the great bar flying against the bricks again and again, far in the shadow, and the echo rang back, louder and louder, every time. The bar ran through and the end he held shot from his hands, as the resistance failed at last, and half the iron went out on the other side. He drew it back quickly and looked to see if there were any light, but there was none. He did not care, for the rest would be child's play compared with what he had done, and easier than play now that he had the certainty of safety. The first thing to be done was to tell Sabina that the danger was past. He crept back with his light and stood upright. It hurt him to straighten himself, and he now knew how tremendous the labour had been; the last furious minutes had been like the delirium of a fever. But he was tough and used to every sort of fatigue, and hope had come back; he forgot how thirsty he had been, and did not even glance behind him at the water. Sabina was still asleep. He stood before her, and hesitated, for it seemed cruel to wake her, even to tell her the good news. He would go back and widen the breach, and when there was room to get out, he could come and fetch her. She had put out the lamp. He lighted it again quietly, and was going to place it where it could not shine in her eyes and perhaps wake her, when he paused to look at her face. It was very still, and deadly pale, and her lips were blue. He could not see that she was breathing, for his coat hung loosely over her slender figure. She looked almost dead. Her gloved hands lay with the palms upwards, the one in her lap, the other on the ground beside her. He touched that one gently with the back of his own, and it seemed to him that it was very cold, through the glove. He touched her cheek in the same way, and it felt like ice. It would surely be better to wake her, and make her move about a little. He spoke to her, at first softly, and then quite loud, but she made no sign. Perhaps she was not asleep, but had fainted from weariness and cold; he knelt beside her, and took her hand in both his own, chafing it between them, but still she gave no sign. It was certainly a fainting fit, and he knew that if a woman was pale when she fainted, she should be laid down at full length, to make the blood return to her head. Kneeling beside her, he lifted her carefully and placed her on her back beside the Aphrodite, smoothing out his waistcoat under her head, not for a pillow but for a little protection from the cold ground. Then he hesitated, and remained some time kneeling beside her. She needed warmth more than anything else; he knew that, and he knew that the best way to warm her a little was to hold her in his arms. Yet he would try something else first. He bent over her and undoing one of the buttons of the coat, he breathed into it again and again, long, warm breaths. He did this for a long time, and then looked at her face, but it had not changed. He felt the ground with his hand, and it was cold; as long as she lay there, she could never get warm. He lifted her again, still quite unconscious, and sat with her in his arms, as he had done before, laying her head against the hollow of his shoulder, and pressing her gently, trying to instil into her some of his own strong life. At last she gave a little sigh and moved her head, nestling herself to him, but it was long before she spoke. He felt the consciousness coming back in her, and the inclination to move, rather than any real motion in her delicate frame; the more perceptible breathing, and then the little sigh came again, and at last the words. "I thought we were dead," she said, so low that he could barely hear. "No, you fainted," he answered. "We are safe. I have got the bar through the wall." She turned up her face feebly, without lifting her head. "Really? Have you done it?" "Yes. In another hour, or a little more, the hole will be wide enough for us to get through it." She hid her face again, and breathed quietly. "You do not seem glad," he said. "It seemed so easy to die like this," she answered. But presently she moved in his arms, and looked up again, and smiled, though she did not try to speak again. He himself, almost worn out by what he had done, was glad to sit still for a while. His blood was not racing through him now, his head was not on fire. It seemed quite natural that he should be sitting there, holding her close to him and warming her back to life with his own warmth. It was a strange sensation, he thought afterwards, when many other things had happened which were not long in following upon the events of that night. He could not quite believe that he was almost stupid with extreme fatigue, and yet he remembered that it had been more like a calm dream than anything else, a dream of peace and rest. At the time, it all seemed natural, as the strangest things do when one has been face to face with death for a few hours, and when one is so tired that one can hardly think at all. CHAPTER XV There was less consternation in the Volterra household than might have been expected when Sabina did not return before bedtime. The servants knew that she had gone out with an old gentleman, a certain Signor Sassi, at about five o'clock, but until Volterra came in, the Baroness could not find out who Sassi was, and she insisted on searching every corner of the house, as if she were in quest of his biography, for the servants assured her that Sabina was still out, and they certainly knew. She carefully examined Sabina's room too, looking for a note, a line of writing, anything to explain the girl's unexpected absence. She could find nothing except the short letter from Sabina's mother to which reference has been made, and she read it over several times. Sabina received no letters, and had been living in something like total isolation. The Baroness had reached a certain degree of intimacy with her beloved aristocracy; but though she occasionally dropped in upon it, and was fairly well received, it rarely, if ever, dropped in upon her. It showed itself quite willing, however, to accept a formal invitation to a good dinner at her house. She telephoned to the Senate and to a club, but Volterra could not be found. Then she went to dress, giving orders that Sabina was to be sent to her the moment she came in. She was very angry, and her sallow face was drawn into severe angles; she scolded her maid for everything, and rustled whenever she moved. At last the Baron came home, and she learned who Sassi was. Volterra was very much surprised, but said that Sassi must have come for Sabina in connection with some urgent family matter. Perhaps some one of her family had died suddenly, or was dying. It was very thoughtless of Sabina not to leave a word of explanation, but Sassi was an eminently respectable person, and she was quite safe with him. The Baron ate his dinner, and repeated the substance of this to his wife before the servants, whose good opinion they valued. Probably Donna Clementina, the nun, was very ill, and Sabina was at the convent. No, Sabina did not love her sister, of course; but one always went to see one's relations when they were dying, in order to forgive them their disagreeable conduct; all Romans did that, said the Baroness, and it was very proper. By and by a note could be sent to the convent, or the carriage could go there to bring Sabina back. But the Baron did not order the carriage, and became very thoughtful over his coffee and his Havana. Sabina had been gone more than four hours, and that was certainly a longer time than could be necessary for visiting a dying relative. He said so. "Perhaps," suggested his wife, "it is the Prince who is ill, and Signor Sassi has taken Sabina to the country to see her brother." "No," answered the Baron after a moment's thought. "That family is eccentric, but the girl would not have gone to the country without a bag." "There is something in that," answered the Baroness, and they relapsed into silence. Yet she was not satisfied, for, as her husband said, the Conti were all eccentric. Nevertheless, Sabina would at least have telegraphed, or sent a line from the station, or Sassi would have done it for her, for he was a man of business. After a long time, the Baroness suggested that if her husband knew Sassi's address, some one should be sent to his house to find out if he had gone out of town. "I have not the least idea where he lives," the Baron said. "As long as I had any business with him, I addressed him at the palace." "The porter may know," observed the Baroness. "The porter is an idiot," retorted the Baron, puffing at his cigar. His wife knew what that meant, and did not enquire why an idiot was left in charge of the palace. Volterra did not intend to take that way of making enquiries about Sabina, if he made any at all, and the Baroness knew that when he did not mean to do a thing, the obstinacy of a Calabrian mule was docility compared with his dogged opposition. Moreover, she would not have dared to do it unknown to him. There was some good reason why he did not intend to look for Sassi. "Besides," he condescended to say after a long time, "she is quite safe with that old man, wherever they are." "Society might not think so, my dear," answered the Baroness in mild protest. "Society had better mind its business, and let us take care of ours." "Yes, my dear, yes, of course!" She did not agree with him at all. Her ideal of a happy life was quite different, for she was very much pleased when society took a lively interest in her doings, and nothing interested her more than the doings of society. She presently ventured to argue the case. "Yes, of course," she repeated, by way of preliminary conciliation. "I was only wondering what people will think, if anything happens to the girl while she is under our charge." "What can happen to her?" "There might be some talk about her going out in this way. The servants know it, you see, and she is evidently not coming home this evening. They know that she went out without leaving any message, and they must think it strange." "I agree with you." "Well, then, there will be some story about her. Do you see what I mean?" "Perfectly. But that will not affect us in the least. Every one knows what strange people the Conti are, and everybody knows that we are perfectly respectable. If there is a word said about the girl's character, you will put her into the carriage, my dear, and deposit her at the convent under the charge of her sister. Everybody will say that you have done right, and the matter will be settled." "You would not really send her to the convent!" "I will certainly not let her live under my roof, if she stays out all night without giving a satisfactory account of herself." "But her mother--" "Her mother is no better than she should be," observed the Baron virtuously, by way of answer. The Baroness was very much disturbed. She had been delighted to be looked upon as a sort of providence to the distressed great, and had looked forward to the social importance of being regarded as a second mother to Donna Sabina Conti. She had hoped to make a good match for her, and to shine at the wedding; she had dreamed of marrying the girl to Malipieri, who was such a fine fellow, and would be so rich some day that he might be trapped into taking a wife without a dowry. These castles in the air were all knocked to pieces by the Baron's evident determination to get rid of Sabina. "I thought you liked the girl," said the Baroness in a tone of disappointment. Volterra stuck out both his feet and crossed his hands on his stomach, after his manner, smoking vigorously. Then, with his cigar in one corner of his mouth, he laughed out of the other, and assumed a playful expression. "I do not like anybody but you, my darling," he said, looking at the ceiling. "Nobody in the whole wide world! You are the deposited security. All the other people are the floating circulation." He seemed pleased with this extraordinary view of mankind, and the Baroness smiled at her faithful husband. She rarely understood what he was doing, and hardly ever guessed what he meant to do, but she was absolutely certain of his conjugal fidelity, and he gave her everything she wanted. "The other people," he said, "are just notes, and nothing else. When a note is damaged or worn out, you can always get a new one at the bank, in exchange for it. Do you understand?" "Yes, my dear. That is very clever." "It is very true," said the Baron. "The Conti family consists chiefly of damaged notes." He had not moved his cigar from the corner of his mouth to speak. "Yes, my dear," answered the Baroness meekly, and when she thought of her last interview with the dowager Princess, she was obliged to admit the fitness of the simile. "The only one of them at all fit to remain in circulation," he continued, "was this girl. If she stays out all night she will be distinctly damaged, too. Then you will have to pass her off to some one else, as one does, you know, when a note is doubtful." "The cook can generally change them," observed the Baroness irrelevantly. "I do not think she is coming home," said the Baron, much more to the point. "I hope she will! After all, if she does not, you yourself say that she is quite safe with this Signor Sassi--" "I did not say that she would be safe from gossip afterwards, did I?" It was perfectly clear by this time that he wished Sabina to leave the house as soon as possible, and that he would take the first opportunity of obliging her to do so. Even if his wife had dared to interfere, it would have been quite useless, for she knew him to be capable of hinting to the girl herself that she was no longer welcome. Sabina was very proud, and she would not stay under the roof an hour after that. "I did not suggest that you should bring her here," Volterra continued presently. "Please remember that. I simply did not object to her coming. That was all the share I had in it. In any case I should have wished her to leave us before we go away for the summer." "I had not understood that," answered the Baroness resignedly. "I had hoped that she might come with us." "She has settled the matter for herself, my dear. After this extraordinary performance, I must really decline to be responsible for her any longer." It was characteristic of his methods that when he had begun to talk over the matter before dinner, she had not been able to guess at all how he would ultimately look at it, and that he only let her know his real intention by degrees. Possibly, he had only wished to gain time to think it over. She did not know that he had asked Malipieri to leave the Palazzo Conti, and if she had, it might not have occurred to her that there was any connection between that and his desire to get rid of Sabina. His ways were complicated, when they were not unpleasantly direct, not to say brutal. But the Baroness was much more human, and had grown fond of the girl, largely because she had no daughter of her own, and had always longed to have one. Ambitious women, if they have the motherly instinct, prefer daughters to sons. One cannot easily tell what a boy may do when he grows up, but a girl can be made to do almost anything by her own mother, or to marry almost any one. The Baroness's regret for losing Sabina took the form of confiding to her husband what she had hoped to do for the girl. "I am very sorry," she said, "but if you wish her to go, she must leave us. Of late, I had been thinking that we might perhaps marry her to that clever Malipieri." The Baron smiled thoughtfully, took his cigar from his lips at last, and looked at his wife. "To Malipieri?" he asked, as if not quite understanding the suggestion. "Yes, I am sure he would make her a very good husband. He evidently admires her, too." "Possibly. I never thought of it. But she has no dowry. That is an objection." "He will be rich some day. Is he poor now?" "No. Not at all." "And she certainly likes him very much. It would be a very good match for her." "Admirable. But I do not think we need trouble ourselves with such speculations, since she is going to leave us so soon." "I shall always take a friendly interest in her," said the Baroness, "wherever she may be." "Very well, my dear," Volterra answered, dropping the end of his cigar and preparing to rise. "That will be very charitable of you. But your friendly interest can never marry her to Malipieri." "Perhaps not. But it might have been done, if she had not been so foolish." "No," said the Baron, getting to his feet, "it never could have been done." "Why not?" asked his wife, surprised by the decision of his tone. "Because there is a very good reason why Malipieri cannot marry her, my dear." "A good reason?" "A very good reason. My dear, I am sleepy. I am going to bed." Volterra rang the bell by the fireplace, and a man appeared almost instantly. "You may put out the lights," he said. "We are going to bed." "Shall any one sit up, in case Donna Sabina should come in, Excellency?" asked the servant. "No." He went towards the door, and his wife followed him meekly. CHAPTER XVI Sabina's strength revived in the warm night air, out in the courtyard, under the stars, and the awful danger from which Malipieri had saved her and himself looked unreal, after the first few moments of liberty. She got his watch out of her glove where it had been so many hours, and by the clear starlight they could see that it was nearly twenty minutes past two o'clock. Malipieri had put out the lamp, and the lantern had gone out for lack of oil, at the last moment. It was important that Sabina should not be seen by the porter, in the very unlikely event of his being up at that hour. They had not thought that it could be so late, for it was long since Sabina had looked at the watch. The first thing that became clear to Malipieri was that it would be out of the question for him to take her home that night. The question was where else to take her. She was exhausted, too, and needed food at once, and her clothes were wet from the dampness. It would be almost a miracle if she did not fall ill, even if she were well taken care of at once. There was only one thing to be done: she must go up to his apartment, and have something to eat, and then she must rest. In the meantime they would make some plan in order to explain her absence. The porter's wife might have been of some use, if she could have been trusted with what must for ever remain a dead secret, namely, that Sabina had spent the night in Malipieri's rooms; for that would be the plain fact to-morrow morning. What had happened to Sassi and Masin was a mystery, but it was inconceivable that either of them should have been free to act during the past eight or nine hours and should have made no effort to save the two persons to whom they were respectively devoted as to no one else in the world. Exhausted though he was, Malipieri would have gone down into the cellars at once to try and find some trace of them, if he had not felt that Sabina must be cared for first; and moreover he was sure that if he found them at all, he should find them both dead. All this had been clear to him before he had at last succeeded in bringing her out into the open air. "There is no help for it," he whispered, "you must come upstairs. Do you think you can walk so far?" "Of course I can!" she answered, straightening herself bravely. "I am not at all tired." Nevertheless she gladly laid her hand on his aching arm, and they both walked cautiously along the paved gutter that separated the wall from the gravel, for their steps would have made much more noise on the latter. All was quiet, and they reached Malipieri's door, by the help of a wax light. He led her in, still carrying the match, and he shut the door softly after him. "At least," Sabina said, "no one can hear us here." "Hush!" He suspected that Toto must have got out, but was not sure. After lighting a candle, he led the way into his study, and made Sabina sit down, while he went back. He returned in a few moments, having assured himself that Toto had escaped by the window, and that Masin was not in, and asleep. "Masin has disappeared," he said. "We can talk as much as we please, while you have your supper." He had brought bread and wine and water, which he set before her, and he went off again to find something else. She ate hungrily after drinking a glass at a draught. He reappeared with the remains of some cold meat and ham. "It is all I have," he explained, "but there is plenty of bread." "Nothing ever tasted so good," answered Sabina gravely. He sat down opposite to her and drank, and began to eat the bread. His hands were grimy, and had bled here and there at the knuckles where they had grazed the broken masonry. His face was streaked with dried perspiration and dust, his collar was no longer a collar at all. As for Sabina, she had tried to take off the fawn-coloured hat, but it had in some way become entangled with her unruly hair, and it was hanging down her back. Otherwise, as she sat there her dress was not visibly much the worse for the terrible adventure. Her skirt was torn and soiled, indeed, but the table hid it, and the coat had kept the body of her frock quite clean. She did not look much more dishevelled than if she had been at a romping picnic in the country. Nor did she look at all ill, after the wine and the first mouthfuls of food had brought all the warmth back to her. If anything, she was less pale than usual now, her lips were red again, and there was light in her eyes. There are little women who look as if they had no strength at all, and seem often on the point of breaking down, but who could go through a battle or a shipwreck almost without turning a hair, and without much thought of their appearance either; nor are they by any means generally the mildest and least reckless of their sex. The two ate in silence for several minutes, but they looked at each other and smiled now and then, while they swallowed mouthful after mouthful. "I wish I had counted the slices of bread I have eaten," said Sabina at last. Malipieri laughed gaily. It did not seem possible that an hour or two earlier they had been looking death in the face. But his laughter died away suddenly, and he was very grave in a moment. "I do not know what to do now," he said. "We shall have to make the Baroness believe that you have spent the night at Sassi's house. That is the only place where you can possibly be supposed to have been. I am not good at lying, I believe. Can you help me at all?" Sabina laughed. "That is a flattering way of putting it!" she answered. "It is true that I was brought up to lie about everything, but I never liked it. The others used to ask me why I would not, and whether I thought myself better than they." "What are we to do?" "Suppose that we tell the truth," said Sabina, nibbling thoughtfully at a last slice of bread. "It is much easier, you know." "Yes." Malipieri set his elbows on the table, leaned his bearded chin upon his scarred knuckles and looked at her. He wondered whether in her innocence she even faintly guessed what people would think of her, if they knew that she had spent a night in his rooms. He had no experience at all of young girls, and he wondered whether there were many like Sabina. He thought it unlikely. "I believe in telling the truth, too," he said at last. "But when you do, you must trust the person to whom it is told. Now the person in this case will be the Baroness Volterra. I shall have to go and see her in the morning, and tell her what has happened. Then, if she believes me, she must come here in a cab and take you back. That will be absolutely necessary. You need say nothing that I have not said, and I shall say nothing that is not true." "That is the best way," said Sabina, who liked the simplicity of the plan. Her voice sounded sleepy, and she suppressed a little yawn. "But suppose that she refuses to believe me," Malipieri continued, without noticing her weariness, "what then?" "What else can she believe?" asked Sabina indifferently. Malipieri did not answer for a long time, and looked away, while he thought over the very difficult situation. When he turned to her again, he saw that she was resting her head in her hand and that her eyes were closed. "You are sleepy," he said. She looked up, and smiled, hardly able to keep her eyes open. "So sleepy!" she answered slowly. "I cannot keep awake a moment longer." "You must go to bed," he said, rising. "Yes--anywhere! Only let me sleep." "You will have to sleep in my room. Do you mind very much?" "Anywhere!" She hardly knew what she said, she hardly saw his face any longer. He led the way with one of the lights, and she followed him with her eyes half shut. "It seems to be in tolerably good order," he said, glancing round, and setting down the candle. "The key is in the inside. Turn it, please, when I am gone." The room was scrupulously neat. Malipieri shut the window carefully. When he turned, he saw that she was sitting on the edge of the bed, nodding with sleep. "Good-night," he said, in a low voice that was nevertheless harsh. "Lock your door." "Good-night," she answered, with an effort. He did not look at her again as he went out and shut the door, and he went quickly through the small room which divided the bedroom from the study, and in which he kept most of his clothes. He was very wide awake now, in spite of being tired, and he sat down in his armchair and smoked for some time. Suddenly he noticed the state of his hands, and he realized what his appearance must be. Without making any noise, though he was sure that Sabina was in a deep sleep by this time, he went back through the first door and quietly got a supply of clothes, and took them with him to Masin's room, and washed there, and dressed himself as carefully as if he were going out. Then he went back to his study and sat down wearily in his armchair. Worn out at last, he was asleep in a few minutes, asleep as men are after a battle, whether the fight has ended in victory or defeat. Even the thought of Sabina did not keep him awake, and he would not have thought of her at all as he sat down, if he could have helped it. After such a night as they had passed it was not likely that they should wake before ten o'clock on the following morning. But the porter was up early, as usual, with his broom, to sweep the stairs and the paved entrance under the arch. When he had come back from the errand on which Malipieri had sent him, it had been already dusk. He had gone up and had rung the bell several times, but as no one opened he had returned to his lodge. It was not unusual for Malipieri and Masin to be both out at the same time, and he thought it likely that they were in the vaults. He cursed them both quietly for the trouble they had given him of mounting the stairs for nothing, and went to his supper, and in due time to bed. He must go up again at eight o'clock, by which time Malipieri was always dressed, and as it was now only seven o'clock he had plenty of time to sweep. So he lit his pipe deliberately and took his broom, and went out of his lodge. The first thing that met his eye was a dark stain on the stones, close to the postern. He passed his broom over it, and saw that it was dry; and it was red, but not like wine. Wine makes a purple stain on stones. He stooped and scratched it with his thick thumbnail. It was undoubtedly blood, and nothing else. Some one had been badly hurt there, or being wounded had stood some moments on the spot to open the door and get out. The old man leaned on his broom awhile, considering the matter, and debating whether he should call his wife. His natural impulse was not to do so, but to get a bucket of water and wash the place before she could see it. The idea of going out and calling a policeman never occurred to him, for he was a real Roman, and his first instinct was to remove every trace of blood from the house in which he lived, whether it had been shed by accident or in quarrel. On the other hand, his wife might come out at any moment, to go to her work, and find him washing the pavement, and she would of course suppose that he had killed somebody or had helped to kill somebody during the night, and would begin to scream, and call him an assassin, and there would be a great noise, and much trouble afterwards. According to his view, any woman would naturally behave in this way, and as his views were founded on his own experience, he was probably right, so far as his wife was concerned. He therefore determined to call her. She came, she saw, she threw up her hands and moaned a little about the curse that was on the house, and she helped him to scrub the stones as quickly as possible. When that was done, and when they had flooded the whole pavement under the arch, in order to conceal the fact that it had been washed in one place, it occurred to them that they should look on the stairs, to see if there were any blood there, and in the courtyard, too, near the entrance; but they could not find anything, and it was time for the woman to go to the place where she worked all day at ironing fine linen, which had been her occupation before she had been married. So she went away, leaving her husband alone. He smoked thoughtfully and swept the stone gutter, towards the other end of the courtyard. He noticed nothing unusual, until he reached the door of the coach-house, and saw that it was ajar, whereas it was always locked, and he had the key in his lodge. He opened it, and looked in. The flood of morning light fell upon a little heap of broken brick and mortar, and he saw at a glance that a small breach had been made in the wall. This did not surprise him, for he knew that Malipieri and Masin had made holes in more than one place, and the architect had more than once taken the key of the coach-house. What frightened him was the steady, roaring sound that came from the breach. He would as soon have thought of trusting himself to enter the place, as of facing the powers of darkness, even if his big body could have squeezed itself through the aperture. But he guessed that the sound came from the "lost water," which he had more than once heard in the cellar below, in its own channel, and he was instinctively sure that something had happened which might endanger the palace. The cellars were probably flooded. On the mere chance that the door of the winding staircase might not be locked, he went out and turned into the passage where it was. He found it wide open. He had in his pocket one of those long wax tapers rolled into a little ball, which Roman porters generally have about them; he lit it and went down. There was water at the foot of the steps, water several feet deep. He retreated, and with more haste than he usually showed to do anything, he crossed the courtyard and went up to call Malipieri. But Malipieri was asleep in his armchair in the inner room, and the bell only rang in the outer hall. The old man rang it again and again, but no one came. Then he stood still on the landing, took off his cap and deliberately scratched his head. In former times, it would have been his duty to inform Sassi, in whom centred every responsibility connected with the palace. But the porter did not know whether Sassi were dead or alive now, and was quite sure that the Baron would not approve of sending for him. There was nothing to be done but to inform the Baron himself, without delay, since Malipieri was apparently already gone out. The Baron would take the responsibility, since the house was his. The porter went down to his lodge, took off his old linen jacket and put on his best coat and cap, put some change into his pocket, went out and turned the key of the lock in the postern, and then stumped off towards the Piazza Sant' Apollinare to get a cab, for there was no time to be lost. It was eight o'clock when he rang at the smart new house in the Via Ludovisi. Sabina and Malipieri had slept barely five hours. A footman in an apron opened the door, and without waiting to know his business, asked him why he did not go to the servants' entrance. "I live in a palace where there is a porter," answered the old man, assuming the overpowering manner that belongs to the retainers of really great old Roman houses. "Please inform the Baron that the 'lost water' has broken out and flooded the cellars of the Palazzo Conti, and that I am waiting for instructions." CHAPTER XVII Volterra went to bed early, but he did not rise late, for he was always busy, and had many interests that needed constant attention; and he had preserved the habits of a man who had enriched himself and succeeded in life by being wide awake and at work when other people were napping or amusing themselves. At eight o'clock in the morning, he was already in his study, reading his letters, and waiting for his secretary. He sent for the porter, listened to his story attentively, and without expressing any opinion about what had happened, went directly to the palace in the cab which had brought the old man. He made the latter sit beside him, because it would be an excellent opportunity of showing the world that he was truly democratic. Half of Rome knew him by sight at least, though not one in twenty thousand could have defined his political opinions. At the palace he paid the cabman instead of keeping him by the hour, for he expected to stay some time, and it was against his principles to spend a farthing for what he did not want. As he entered through the postern, he glanced approvingly at the damp pavement. He did not in the least believe that the porter washed it every morning, of course, but he appreciated the fact that the man evidently wished him to think so, and was afraid of him. "You say that you rang several times at Signor Malipieri's door," he said. "Has he not told you that he is going to live somewhere else?" "No, sir." "Does he never leave his key with you when he goes out?" "No, sir." "Did you see him come in last night? Was he at home?" "No, sir. I rang several times, about dusk, but no one opened. I did not hear him come in after that. Shall I go up and ring again?" "No." Volterra reflected for a moment. "He has left, and has taken his key by mistake," he said. "But I should think that you must have seen him go. He would have had some luggage with him." The porter explained that Malipieri had sent him on an errand on the previous afternoon, and had been gone when he returned. This seemed suspicious to Volterra, as indeed it must have looked to any one. Considering his views of mankind generally, it was not surprising if he thought that Malipieri might have absconded with something valuable which he had found in the vaults. He remembered, too, that Malipieri had been unwilling to let him visit the treasure on the previous day, and had named the coming afternoon instead. "Can you get a man to open the door?" he asked. "There is Gigi, the carpenter of the palace," answered the porter. "He is better than a locksmith and his shop is close by--but there is the water in the cellars--" "Go and get him," said the Baron. "I will wait here." The porter went out, and Volterra began to walk slowly up and down under the archway, breathing the morning air with satisfaction, and jingling a little bunch of keys in his pocket. There was a knock at the postern. He listened and stood still. He knew that the porter had the key, for he had just seen him return it to his pocket after they had both come in; he did not wish to be disturbed by any one else just then, so he neither answered nor moved. The knock was repeated, louder than before. It had an authoritative sound, and no one but Malipieri himself would have a right to knock in that way. Volterra went to the door at once, but did not open it. "Who is there?" he asked, through the heavy panel. "The police," came the answer, short and sharp. "Open at once." Volterra opened, and was confronted by a man in plain clothes, who was accompanied by two soldiers in grey uniforms, and another man, who looked like a cabman. On seeing a gentleman, the detective, who had been about to enter unceremoniously, checked himself and raised his hat, with an apology. Volterra stepped back. "Come in," he said, "and tell me what your business is. I am the owner of this palace, at present. I am Baron Volterra, and a Senator." The men all became very polite at once, and entered rather sheepishly. The cabman came in last, and Volterra shut the door. "Who is this individual?" he asked, looking at the cabman. "Tell your story," said the man in plain clothes, addressing the latter. "I am a coachman, Excellency," the man answered in a servile tone. "I have a cab, number eight hundred and seventy-six, at the service of your Excellency, and it was I who drove the gentleman to the hospital yesterday afternoon." "What gentleman?" "The gentleman who was hurt in the house of your Excellency." Volterra stared from the cabman to the man in plain clothes, not understanding. Then it occurred to him that the man in uniform might be wearing it as a disguise, and that he had to do with a party of clever thieves, and he felt for a little revolver which he always carried about with him. "I know nothing about the matter," he said. "Excellency," continued the cabman, "the poor gentleman was lying here, close to the door, bleeding from his head. You see the porter has washed the stones this morning." "Go on." Volterra listened attentively. "A big man who looked more like a workman than a servant came to call me in the square. When we got here, he unlocked the door himself, and made me help him to put the gentleman into the cab. It was about half-past five or a quarter to six, Excellency, and I waited at the hospital door till eight o'clock, but could not get any money." "What became of the big man who called you?" asked Volterra. "Why did he not pay you?" "He was arrested, Excellency." "Arrested? Why? For taking a wounded man to the hospital?" "Yes. You can imagine that I did not wish to be concerned in other people's troubles, Excellency, nor to be asked questions. So when I had seen the man and the doorkeepers take the gentleman in, I drove on about twenty paces, and waited for the man to come out. But soon two policemen came and went in, and came out again a few minutes later with the big man walking quietly between them, and they went off in the other direction, so that he did not even notice me." "What did you do then?" "May it please your Excellency, I went back to the door and asked the doorkeeper why the man had been arrested, and told him I had not been paid. But he laughed in my face, and advised me to go to the police for my fare, since the police had taken the man away. And I asked him many questions but he drove me away with several evil words." "Is that all that happened?" asked Volterra. "Do you know nothing more?" "Nothing, your Excellency," whined the man, "and I am a poor father of a family with eight children, and my wife is ill--" "Yes," interrupted Volterra, "I suppose so. And what do you know about it all?" he enquired, turning to the man in plain clothes. "This, sir. The gentleman was still unconscious this morning, but turns out to be a certain Signor Pompeo Sassi. His cards were in his pocket-book. The man who took him to the hospital was arrested because he entirely declined to give his name, or to explain what had happened, or where he had found the wounded gentleman. Of course all the police stations were informed during the night, as the affair seemed mysterious, and when this cabman came this morning and lodged a complaint of not having been paid for a fare from this palace to the hospital, it looked as if whatever had happened, must have happened here, or near here, and I was sent to make enquiries." "That is perfectly clear," the Baron said, taking out his pocket-book. "You have no complaint to make, except that you were not paid," he continued, speaking to the cabman. "There are ten francs, which is much more than is owing to you. Give me your number." The man knew that it was useless to ask for more, and as he produced his printed number and gave it, he implored the most complicated benedictions, even to miracles, including a thousand years of life and everlasting salvation afterwards, all for the Baron, his family, and his descendants. "I suppose he may go now," Volterra said to the police officer. The cabman would have liked to stay, but one of the soldiers opened the postern and stood waiting by it till he had gone out, and closed it upon his parting volley of blessings. The Senator reflected that they might mean a vote, some day, and did not regret his ten francs. "I know Signor Sassi," he said to the detective. "He was the agent of Prince Conti's estate, and of this palace. But I did not know that he had been here yesterday afternoon. I live in the Via Ludovisi and had just come here on business, when you knocked." He was very affable now, and explained the porter's absence, and the fact that a gentleman who had lived in the house, but had left it, had accidentally taken his key with him, so that it was necessary to get a workman to open the door. "And it is as well that you should be here," he added, "for the big man of whom the cabman spoke may be the servant of that gentleman. I remember seeing him once, and I noticed that he was unusually big. He may have been here yesterday after his master left, and we may find some clue in the apartment." "Excellent!" said the detective, rubbing his hands. He was particularly fond of cases in which doors had to be opened by force, and understood that part of his business thoroughly. The key turned in the lock of the postern, and the porter entered, bringing Gigi with him. They both started and turned pale when they saw the policeman and the detective. "At what time did Signor Malipieri send you out on that errand yesterday afternoon?" asked Volterra, looking hard at the porter. The old man drew himself up, wiped his forehead with a blue cotton handkerchief, and looked from the Baron to the detective, trying to make out whether his employer wished him to speak the truth. A moment's reflection told him that he had better do so, as the visit of the police must be connected with the stain of blood he had washed from the pavement, and he could prove that he had nothing to do with it. "It was about five o'clock," he answered quietly. "And when did you come back?" enquired the detective. "It was dusk. It was after Ave Maria, for I heard the bells ringing before I got here." "And you did not notice the blood on the stones when you came in, because it was dusk, I suppose," said the detective, assuming a knowing smile, as if he had caught the man. "I saw it this morning," answered the porter without hesitation, "and I washed it away." "You should have called the police," said the other severely. "Should I, sir?" The porter affected great politeness all at once. "You will excuse my ignorance." "We are wasting time," Volterra said to the detective. "The porter knows nothing about it. Let us go upstairs." He led the way, and the others followed, including Gigi, who carried a leathern bag containing a few tools. "It is of no use to ring again," observed Volterra. "There cannot be anybody in the apartment, and this is my own house. Open that door for us, my man, and do as little damage as you can." Gigi looked at the patent lock. "I cannot pick that, sir," he said. "The gentleman made me put it on for him, and it is one of those American patent locks." "Break it, then," Volterra answered. Gigi selected a strong chisel, and inserted the blade in the crack of the door, on a level with the brass disk. He found the steel bolt easily. "Take care," he said to the Baron, who was nearest to him and drew back to give him room to swing his hammer. He struck three heavy blows, and the door flew open at the third. The detective had looked at his watch, for it was his business to note the hour at which any forcible entrance was made. It was twenty minutes to nine. Malipieri and Sabina had slept a little more than five hours and a half. Malipieri, still sleeping heavily in his armchair, heard the noise in a dream. He fancied he was in the vaults again, driving his crowbar into the bricks, and that he suddenly heard Masin working from the other side. But Masin was not alone, for there were voices, and he had several people with him. Malipieri awoke with a violent start. Volterra, the detective, the two police soldiers, Gigi and the porter were all in the study, looking at him as he sat there in his armchair, in the broad light, carefully dressed as if he had been about to go out when he had sat down. "You sleep soundly, Signer Malipieri," said the fat Baron, with a caressing smile. Malipieri had good nerves, but for a moment he was dazed, and then, perhaps for the first time in his life, he was thoroughly frightened, for he knew that Sabina must be still asleep in his room, and in spite of his urgent request when he had left her, he did not believe that she had locked the door after all. The first thought that flashed upon him was that Volterra had somehow discovered that she was there, and had come to find her. There were six men in the room; he guessed that the Baron was one of those people who carry revolvers about with them, and two of the others were police soldiers, also armed with revolvers. He was evidently at their mercy. Short of throwing at least three of the party out of the window, nothing could avail. Such things are done without an effort on the stage by the merest wisp of a man, but in real life one must be a Hercules or a gladiator even to attempt them. Malipieri thought of what Sabina had said in the vault. Had any two people ever been in such a situation before? For one instant, his heart stood still, and he passed his hand over his eyes. "Excuse me," he said then, quite naturally. "I had dressed to go to your house this morning, and I fell asleep in my chair while waiting till it should be time. How did you get in? And why have you brought these people with you?" He was perfectly cool now, and the Baron regretted that he had made a forcible entrance. "I must really apologize," he answered. "The porter rang yesterday evening, several times, and again this morning, but could get no answer, and as you had told me that you were going to change your quarters, we supposed that you had left and had accidentally taken the key with you." Malipieri did not believe a word of what he said, but the tone was very apologetic. "The cellars are flooded," said the porter, speaking over Volterra's shoulder. "I know it," Malipieri answered. "I was going to inform you of that this morning," he continued, speaking to the Baron. "I do not think that the police are necessary to our conversation," he added, smiling at the detective. "I beg your pardon, sir," answered the latter, "but we are here to ask if you know anything of a grave accident to a certain Signor Sassi, who was taken from this palace unconscious, yesterday afternoon, at about a quarter to six, by a very large man, who would not give any name, nor any explanation, and who was consequently arrested." Malipieri did not hesitate. "Only this much," he replied. "With the authority of the Senator here, who is the owner of the palace, I have been making some archaeological excavations in the cellars. Signor Sassi was the agent--" "I have explained that," interrupted the Baron, turning to the detective. "I will assume the whole responsibility of this affair. Signor Sassi shall be well cared for. I shall be much obliged if you will leave us." He spoke rather hurriedly. "It is my duty to make a search in order to discover the motive of the crime," said the detective with importance. "What crime?" asked Malipieri with sudden sternness. "Signor Sassi was very badly injured in this palace," answered the other. "The man who took him to the hospital would give no account of himself, and the circumstances are suspicious. The Baron thinks that the man may be your servant." "Yes, he is my servant," Malipieri said. "Signor Sassi was trying to follow me into the excavations--" "Yes, yes--that is of no importance," interrupted Volterra. "I think it is," retorted Malipieri. "I will not let any man remain in prison suspected of having tried to murder poor old Sassi! I went on," he continued, explaining to the detective, "leaving the two together. The old gentleman must have fallen and hurt himself so badly that my man thought it necessary to carry him out at once. When I tried to get back, I found that the water had risen in the excavations and that the passage was entirely closed, and I had to work all night with a crowbar and pickaxe to break another way for myself. As for my man, if he refused to give any explanations, it was because he had express orders to preserve the utmost secrecy about the excavations. He is a faithful fellow, and he obeyed. That is all." "A very connected account, sir, from your point of view," said the detective. "If you will allow me, I will write it down. You see, the service requires us to note everything." "Write it down by all means," Malipieri answered quietly. "You will find what you need at that table." The detective sat down, pulled back the cuff of his coat, took up the pen and began his report with a magnificent flourish. "You two may go," said Malipieri to the porter and Gigi. "We shall not want you any more." "As witnesses, perhaps," said the detective, overhearing. "Pray let them stay." He went on writing, and the Baron settled himself in Malipieri's armchair, and lit a cigar. Malipieri walked slowly up and down the room, determined to keep perfectly cool. "I hope the Baroness is quite well," he said after a time. "Quite well, thank you," answered Volterra, nodding and smiling. Malipieri continued to pace the floor, trying to see some way out of the situation in which he was caught, and praying to heaven that Sabina might still be sound asleep. If she were up, she would certainly come to the study in search of him before long, as the doors opened in no other direction. All his nerves and faculties were strung to the utmost tension, and if the worst came he was prepared to attempt anything. "It is a very fine day after the rain," observed the Baron presently. "It never rains long in Rome, in the spring," answered Malipieri. The detective wrote steadily, and neither spoke again till he had finished. "Of course," he said to Malipieri, "you are quite sure of your statements." "Provided that you have written down exactly what I said," Malipieri answered. The detective rose and handed him the sheets, at which he glanced rapidly. "Yes. That is what I said." "Let me see," Volterra put in, rising and holding out his hand. He took the paper and read every word carefully, before he returned the manuscript. "You might add," he said, "that I have been most anxious to keep the excavations a secret because I do not wish to be pestered by reporters before I have handed over to the government any discoveries which may be made." "Certainly," answered the man, taking his pen again, and writing rapidly. Volterra was almost as anxious to get rid of him as Malipieri himself. What the latter had said had informed him that in spite of the water the vaults could be reached, and he was in haste to go down. He had, indeed, noted the fact that whereas Sabina had left his house with Sassi at five o'clock, the latter had been taken to the hospital only three quarters of an hour later, and he wondered where she could be; but it did not even occur to him as possible that she should be in Malipieri's apartment. The idea would have seemed preposterous. The detective rose, folded the sheets of paper and placed them in a large pocket-book which he produced. "And now, gentlemen," he said, "we have only one more formality to fulfil, before I have the honour of taking my leave." "What is that?" asked the Baron, beginning to show his impatience at last. "Signor Malipieri--is that your name, sir? Yes. Signer Malipieri will be kind enough to let me and my men walk through the rooms of the apartment." "I think that is quite unnecessary," Malipieri answered. "By this time Signor Sassi has probably recovered consciousness, and has told his own story, which will explain the accident." "In the performance of my duty," objected the detective, "I must go through the house, to see whether there are any traces of blood. I am sure that you will make no opposition." Fate was closing in upon Malipieri, but he kept his head as well as he could. He opened the door that led back to the hall. "Will you come?" he said, showing the way. The detective glanced at the other door, but said nothing and prepared to follow. "I will stay here," said the Baron, settling himself in the armchair again. "Oh, no! Pray come," Malipieri said. "I should like you to see for yourself that Sassi was not hurt here." Volterra rose reluctantly and went with the rest. His chief preoccupation was to get rid of the detective and his men as quickly as possible. Malipieri opened the doors as he went along, and showed several empty rooms, before he came to Masin's. "This is where my man sleeps," he said carelessly. The detective went in, looked about and suddenly pounced upon a towel on which there were stains of blood. "What is this?" he asked sharply. "What is the meaning of this?" Malipieri showed his scarred hands. "After I got out of the vault, I washed here," he said. "I had cut my hands a good deal, as you see. Of course the blood came off on the towels." The detective assumed his smile of professional cunning. "I understand," he said. "But do you generally wash in your servant's room?" "No. It happened to be convenient when I got in. There was water here, and there were towels." "It is strange," said the detective. Even Volterra looked curiously at Malipieri, for he was much puzzled. But he was impatient, too, and came to the rescue. "Do you not see," he asked of the detective, "that Signor Malipieri was covered with dust and that his clothes were very wet? There they are, lying on the floor. He did not wish to go to his bedroom as he was, taking all that dirt and dampness with him, so he came here." "That is a sufficient explanation, I am sure," said Malipieri. "Perfectly, perfectly," answered the detective, smiling. "Wrap up those towels in a newspaper," he said to the two soldiers. "We will take them with us. You see," he continued in an apologetic tone, "we are obliged to be very careful in the execution of our duties. If Signor Sassi should unfortunately die in the hospital, and especially if he should die unconscious, the matter would become very serious, and I should be blamed if I had not made a thorough examination." "I hope he is not so seriously injured," said Malipieri. "The report we received was that his skull was fractured," answered the detective calmly. "The hospitals report all suspicious cases to the police stations by telephone during the night, and of course, as your man refused to speak, special enquiries were made about the wounded gentleman." "I understand," said Malipieri. "And now, I suppose, you have made a sufficient search." "We have not seen your own room. If you will show me that, as a mere formality, I think I need not trouble you any further." It had come at last. Malipieri felt himself growing cold, and said nothing for a moment. Volterra again began to watch him curiously. "I fancy," the detective said, "that your room opens from the study in which we have already been. I only wish to look in." "There is a small room before it, where I keep my clothes." "I suppose we can go through the small room?" "You may see that," said Malipieri, "but I shall not allow you to go into my bedroom." "How very strange!" cried Volterra, staring at him. Then the fat Baron broke into a laugh, that, made his watch-chain dance on his smooth and rotund speckled waistcoat. "I see! I see!" he tried to say. The detective understood, and smiled in a subdued way. Malipieri knit his brows angrily, as he felt himself becoming more and more utterly powerless to stave off the frightful catastrophe that threatened Sabina. But the detective was anxious to make matters pleasant by diplomatic means. "I had not been told that Signor Malipieri was a married man," he said. "Of course, if the Signora Malipieri is not yet visible, I shall be delighted to give her time to dress." Malipieri bit his lip and made a few steps up and down. "I did not know that your wife was in Rome," Volterra said, glancing at him, and apparently confirming the detective in his mistake. "For that matter," said the detective, "I am a married man myself, and if the lady is in bed, she might allow me merely to stand at the door, and glance in." "I think she is still asleep," Malipieri answered. "I do not like to disturb her, and the room is quite dark." "My time is at your disposal," said the detective. "Shall we go back and wait in the study? You would perhaps be so kind as to see whether the Signora is awake or not, but I am quite ready to wait till she comes out of her room. I would not put her to any inconvenience for the world, I assure you." "Really," the Baron said to Malipieri, "I think you might wake her." The soldiers looked on stolidly, the porter kept his eyes and ears open, and Gigi, full of curiosity, wore the expression of a smiling weasel. To the porter's knowledge, so far as it went, no woman but his own wife had entered the palace since Malipieri had been living in it. Malipieri made no answer to Volterra's last speech, and walked up and down, seeking a solution. The least possible one seemed to be that suggested by the Baron himself. The latter, though now very curious, was more than ever in a hurry to bring the long enquiry to a close. It occurred to him that it would simplify matters if he and Malipieri and the detective were left alone together, and he said so, urging that as there was unexpectedly a lady in the case, the presence of so many witnesses should be avoided. Even now he never thought of the possibility that the lady in question might be Sabina. The detective now yielded the point willingly enough, and the soldiers were sent off with Gigi and the porter to wait in the latter's lodge. It was a slight relief to Malipieri to see them go. He and his two companions went back to the study together. The Baron resumed his seat in the armchair; he always sat down when he had time, and he had not yet finished his big cigar. The detective went to the window and looked out through the panes, as if to give Malipieri time to make up his mind what to do; and Malipieri paced the floor with bent head, his hands in his pockets, in utter desperation. At any moment Sabina might appear, yet he dared not even go to her door, lest the two men should follow him. But at least he could prevent her from coming in, for he could lock the entrance to the small room. As he reached the end of his walk he turned the key and put it into his pocket. The detective turned round sharply and Volterra moved his head at the sound. "Why do you do that?" he asked, in a tone of annoyance. "Because no one shall go in, while I have the key," Malipieri answered. "I must go in, sooner or later," said the detective, "I can wait all day, and all night, if you please, for I shall not use force where a lady is concerned. But I must see that room." Like all such men, he was obstinate, when he believed that he was doing his duty. Malipieri looked from him to Volterra, and back again, and suddenly made up his mind. He preferred the detective, of the two, if he must trust any one, the more so as the latter probably did not know Sabina by sight. "If you will be so kind as to stay there, in that armchair," he said to Volterra, "I will see what I can do to hasten matters. Will you?" "Certainly. I am very comfortable here." The Baron laughed a little. "Then," said Malipieri, turning to the detective, "kindly come with me, and I will explain as far as I can." He took the key from his pocket again, and opened the door of the small room, let in the detective and shut it after him without locking it. He had hardly made up his mind what to say, but he knew what he wished. "This is a very delicate affair," he began in a whisper. "I will see whether the lady is awake." He went to the door of the bedroom on tiptoe and listened. Not a sound reached him. The room was quite out of hearing of the rest of the apartment, and Sabina, accustomed as she was to sleep eight hours without waking, was still resting peacefully. Malipieri came back noiselessly. "She is asleep," he whispered. "Will you not take my word for it that there is nothing to be found in the room which can have the least connection with Sassi's accident?" The detective shook his head gravely, and raised his eyebrows, while he shut his eyes, as some men do when they mean that nothing can convince them. "I advise you to go in and wake your wife," he whispered, still very politely. "She can wrap herself up and sit in a chair while I look in." "That is impossible. I cannot go in and wake her." The detective looked surprised, and was silent for a moment. "This is a very strange situation," he muttered. "A man who dares not go into his wife's room when she is asleep--I do not understand." "I cannot explain," answered Malipieri, "but it is altogether impossible. I ask you to believe me, on my oath, that you will find nothing in the room." "I have already told you, sir, that I must fulfil the formalities, whatever I may wish to believe. And it is my firm belief that Signor Sassi came by the injuries of which he may possibly die, somewhere in this apartment, yesterday afternoon. My reputation is at stake, and I am a government servant. To oblige you, I will wait an hour, but if the lady is not awake then, I shall go and knock at that door and call until she answers. It would be simpler if you would do it yourself. That is all, and you must take your choice." Malipieri saw that he must wake Sabina, and explain to her through the door that she must dress. He reflected a moment, and was about to ask the detective to go back to the study, when a sound of voices came from that direction, and one was a woman's. "It seems that there is another lady in the house," said the detective. "Perhaps she can help us. Surely you will allow a lady to enter your wife's room and wake her." But Malipieri was speechless at that moment and was leaning stupidly against the jamb of the study door. He had recognized the voice of the Baroness talking excitedly with her husband. Fate had caught him now, and there was no escape. Instinctively, he was sure that the Baroness had come in search of Sabina, and would not leave the house till she had found her, do what he might. CHAPTER XVIII The Baroness had been called to the telephone five minutes after Volterra had gone out with the porter, leaving word that he was going to the Palazzo Conti and would be back within two hours. The message she received was from the Russian Embassy, and informed her that the dowager Princess Conti had arrived at midnight, was the guest of the Ambassador, and wished her daughter Sabina to come and see her between eleven and twelve o'clock. In trembling tones the Baroness had succeeded in saying that Sabina should obey, and had rung off the connection at once. Then, for the first time in her life, she had felt for a moment as if she were going to faint. The facts, which were unknown to her, were simple enough. The Ambassador had been informed that a treasure had been discovered, and had telegraphed the fact in cipher to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in St. Petersburg, who had telegraphed the news to Prince Rubomirska, who had telegraphed to the Ambassador, who was his intimate friend, requesting him to receive the Princess for a few days. As the Prince and his sister were already in the country, in Poland, not far from the Austrian frontier, it had not taken her long to reach Rome. Of all this, the poor Baroness was in ignorance. The one fact stared her in the face, that the Princess had come to claim Sabina, and Sabina had disappeared. She had learned that the porter had come to say that the cellars of the Palazzo Conti were flooded, and she knew that her husband would be there some time. She found Sassi's card, on which his address was printed, and she drove there in a cab, climbed the stairs and rang the bell. The old woman who opened was in terrible trouble, and was just going out. She showed the Baroness the news of Sassi's mysterious accident shortly given in a paragraph of the _Messaggero_, the little morning paper which is universally read greedily by the lower classes. She was just going to the accident hospital, the "Consolazione," to see her poor master. He had gone out at half past four on the previous afternoon, and she had sat up all night, hoping that he would come in. She was quite sure that he had not returned at all after he had gone out. She was quite sure, too, that he had been knocked down and robbed, for he had a gold watch and chain, and always carried money in his pocket. The Baroness looked at her, and saw that she was speaking the truth and was in real distress. It would be quite useless to search the rooms for Sabina. The old woman-servant had no idea who the Baroness was, and in her sudden trouble would certainly have confided to her that there was a young lady in the house, who had not been able to get home. "For the love of heaven, Signora," she cried, "come with me to the hospital, if you know him, for he may be dying." The Baroness promised to go later, and really intended to do so. She drove to the convent in which Donna Clementina was now a cloistered nun, and asked the portress whether Donna Sabina Conti had been to see her sister on the previous day. The portress answered that she had not, and was quite positive of the fact. The Baroness looked at her watch and hastened to the Palazzo Conti. When she got there, the porter had already returned to his lodge, and he led her upstairs and to the door of the study. Finding her husband alone, she explained what was the matter, in a few words and in a low voice. The Princess had come back, and wished to see Sabina that very morning, and Sabina could not be found. She sank into a chair, and her sallow face expressed the utmost fright and perplexity. "Sassi left our house at five o'clock with Sabina," said the Baron, "and at a quarter to six he was taken from the door of this palace to the hospital by Malipieri's man. Either Malipieri or his man must have seen her." "She is here!" cried the Baroness in a loud tone, something of the truth flashing upon her. "I know she is here!" Volterra's mind worked rapidly at the possibility, as at a problem. If his wife were not mistaken it was easy to explain Malipieri's flat refusal to let any one enter the bedroom. "You may be right," he said, rising. "If she is in the palace she is in the room beyond that one." He pointed to the door. "You must go in," he said. "Never mind Malipieri. I will manage him." At that moment the door opened. Malipieri had recovered his senses enough to attempt a final resistance, and stood there, very pale, ready for anything. But the fat Baron knew what he was about, and as he came forward with his wife he suddenly thrust out his hand at Malipieri's head, and the latter saw down the barrel of Volterra's revolver. "You must let my wife pass," cried Volterra coolly, "or I will shoot you." Malipieri was as active as a sailor. In an instant he had hurled himself, bending low, at the Baron's knees, and the fat man fell over him, while the revolver flew from his hand, half across the room, fortunately not going off as it fell on its side. While Malipieri was struggling to get the upper hand, the detective ran forward and helped Volterra. The two threw themselves upon the younger man, and between the detective's wiry strength and the Baron's tremendous weight, he lay panting and powerless on his back for an instant. The Baroness had possibly assisted at some scenes of violence in the course of her husband's checkered career. At all events, she did not stop to see what happened after the way was clear, but ran to the door of the bedroom, and threw it wide open, for it was not locked. The light that entered showed her where the window was; she opened it in an instant, and looked round. Sabina was sitting up in bed, staring at her with a dazed expression, her hair in wild confusion round her pale face and falling over her bare neck. Her clothes lay in a heap on the floor, beside the bed, Never was any woman more fairly caught in a situation impossible to explain. Even in that first moment she felt it, when she looked at the Baroness's face. The latter did not speak, for she was utterly incapable of finding words. The sound of a scuffle could be heard from the study in the distance; she quietly shut the door and turned the key. Then she came and stood by the bed, facing the window. Sabina had sunk back upon the pillows, but her eyes looked up bravely and steadily. Of the two she was certainly the one less disturbed, even then, for she remembered that Malipieri had meant to go and tell the Baroness the whole truth, early in the morning. He had done so, of course, and the Baroness had come to take her back, very angry of course, but that was all. This was what Sabina told herself, but she guessed that matters would turn out much worse. "Did he tell you how it happened that I could not get home?" she asked, almost calmly. "No one has told me anything. Your mother arrived in Rome last night. She is at the Russian Embassy and wishes to see you at eleven o'clock." "My mother?" Sabina raised herself on one hand in surprise. "Yes. And I find you here." The Baroness folded her arms like a man, her brows contracted, and her face was almost livid. "Have you the face to meet your mother, after this?" she asked sternly. "Yes--of course," answered Sabina. "But I must go home and dress. My frock is ruined." "You are a brazen creature," said the Baroness in disgust and anger. "You do not seem to know what shame means." Sabina's deep young eyes flashed; it was not safe to say such things to her. "I have done nothing to be ashamed of," she answered proudly, "and you shall not speak to me like that. Do you understand?" "Nothing to be ashamed of!" The Baroness stared at her in genuine amazement. "Nothing to be ashamed of!" she repeated, and her voice shook with emotion. "You leave my house by stealth, you let no one know where you are going, and the next morning I find you here, in your lover's house, in your lover's room, the door not even locked, your head upon your lover's pillow! Nothing to be ashamed of! Merciful heavens! And you have not only ruined yourself, but you have done an irreparable injury to honest people who took you in when you were starving!" The poor woman paused for breath, and in her horror, she hid her face in her hands. She had her faults, no doubt, and she knew that the world was bad, but she had never dreamt of such barefaced and utterly monstrous cynicism as Sabina's. If the girl had been overcome with shame and repentance, and had broken down entirely, imploring help and forgiveness, as would have seemed natural, the Baroness, for her own social sake, might have been at last moved to help her out of her trouble. Instead, being a person of rigid virtue and judging the situation in the only way really possible for her to see it, she was both disgusted and horrified. It was no wonder. But she was not prepared for Sabina's answer. "If I were strong enough, I would kill you," said the young girl, quietly laying her head on the pillow again. The Baroness laughed hysterically. She felt as if she were in the presence of the devil himself. She was not at all a hysterical woman nor often given to dramatic exhibitions of feeling, but she had never dreamt that a human being could behave with such horribly brazen shamelessness. For some moments there was silence. Then Sabina spoke, in a quietly scornful tone, while the Baroness turned her back on her and stood quite still, looking out of the window. "I suppose you have a right to be surprised," Sabina said, "but you have no right to insult me and say things that are not true. Perhaps Signor Malipieri likes me very much. I do not know. He has never told me he loved me." The Baroness's large figure shook with fury, but she did not turn round. What more was the girl going to say? That she did not even care a little for the man with whom she had ruined herself? Yes. That was what she was going on to explain. It was beyond belief. "I have only seen him a few times," Sabina said. "I daresay I shall be very fond of him if I see him often. I think he is very like my ideal of what a man should be." The Baroness turned her face half round with an expression that was positively savage. But she said nothing, and again looked through the panes. She remembered afterwards that the room smelt slightly of stale cigar smoke, soap and leather. "He wished me to see the things he has found before any one else should," Sabina continued. "So he got Sassi to bring me here. While we were in the vaults, the water came, and we could not get out. He worked for hours to break a hole, and it was two o'clock in the morning when we were free. I had not had any dinner, and of course I could not go with him to your house at that hour, even if I had not been worn out. So he brought me here and gave me something to eat, and his room to sleep in. As for the door not being locked, he told me twice to lock it, and I was so sleepy that I forgot to. That is what happened." After an ominous silence, the Baroness turned round. Her face was almost yellow now. "I do not believe a word you have told me," she said, half choking. "Then go!" cried Sabina, sitting up with flashing eyes. "I do not care a straw whether you believe the truth or not! Go! Go!" She stretched out one straight white arm and pointed to the door, in wrath. The Baroness looked at her, and stood still a moment. Then she shrugged her shoulders in a manner anything but aristocratic, and left the room without deigning to turn her head. The instant she was gone Sabina sprang out of bed and locked the door after her. Meanwhile, the struggle between Malipieri and his two adversaries had come to an end very soon. Malipieri had not really expected to prevent the Baroness from going to Sabina, but he had wished to try and explain matters to her before she went. He had upset Volterra, because the latter had pointed a revolver at his head, which will seem a sufficient reason to most hot-tempered men. The detective had suggested putting handcuffs on him, while they held him down, but Volterra was anxious to settle matters amicably. "It was my fault," he said, drawing back. "I thought that you were going to resist, and I pulled out my pistol too soon. I offer you all my apologies." He had got to his feet with more alacrity than might have been expected of such a fat man, and was adjusting his collar and tie, and smoothing his waistcoat over his rotundity. Malipieri had risen the moment he was free. The detective looked as if nothing had happened out of the common way, and the neatness of his appearance was not in the least disturbed. "I offer you my apologies, Signor Malipieri," repeated the Baron cordially and smiling in a friendly way. "I should not have drawn my pistol on you. I presume you will accept the excuses I make?" "Do not mention the matter," answered Malipieri with coolness, but civilly enough, seeing that there was nothing else to be done. "I trust you are none the worse for your fall." "Not at all, not at all," replied Volterra. "I hope," he said, turning to the detective, "that you will say nothing about this incident, since no harm has been done. It concerns a private matter,--I may almost say, a family matter. I have some little influence, and if I can be of any use to you, I shall always be most happy." The gratitude of so important a personage was not to be despised, as the detective knew. He produced a card bearing his name, and handed it to the Senator with a bow. "Always at your service, sir," he said. "It is very fortunate that the revolver did not go off and hurt one of us," he added, picking up the weapon and handing it to Volterra. "I have noticed that these things almost invariably kill the wrong person, when they kill anybody at all, which is rare." Volterra smiled, thanked him and returned the revolver to his pocket. Malipieri had watched the two in silence. Fate had taken matters out of his hands, and there was absolutely nothing to be done. In due time, Sabina would come out with the Baroness, but he could not guess what would happen then. Volterra would probably not speak out before the detective, who would not recognize Sabina, even if he knew her by sight. The Baroness would take care that he should not see the girl's face, as both Volterra and Malipieri knew. The three men sat down and waited in silence after the detective had last spoken. Volterra lit a fresh cigar, and offered one to the detective a few moments later. The latter took it with a bow and put it into his pocket for a future occasion. The door opened at last, and the Baroness entered, her face discoloured to a blotchy yellowness by her suppressed anger. She stood still a moment after she had come in, and glared at Malipieri. He and the detective rose, but Volterra kept his seat. "Were you right, my dear?" the latter enquired, looking at her. "Yes," she answered in a thick voice, turning to him for an instant, and then glaring at Malipieri again, as if she could hardly keep her hands from him in her righteous anger. He saw clearly enough that she had not believed the strange story which Sabina must have told her, and he wondered whether any earthly power could possibly make her believe it in spite of herself. During the moments of silence that followed, the whole situation rose before him, in the only light under which it could at first appear to any ordinary person. It was frightful to think that what had been a bit of romantic quixotism on his part, in wishing Sabina to see the statues which should have been hers, should end in her social disgrace, perhaps in her utter ruin if the Baroness and her husband could not be mollified. He did not know that there was one point in Sabina's favour, in the shape of the Princess's sudden return to Rome, though he guessed the Baroness's character well enough to have foreseen, had he known of the new complication, that she would swallow her pride and even overlook Sabina's supposed misdeeds, rather than allow the Princess to accuse her of betraying her trust and letting the young girl ruin herself. "I must consult with you," the Baroness said to her husband, controlling herself as she came forward into the room and passed Malipieri. "We cannot talk here," she added, glancing at the detective. "This gentleman," said Volterra, waving his hand towards the latter, "is here officially, to make an enquiry about Sassi's accident." "I shall be happy to wait outside if you have private matters to discuss," said the detective, who wished to show himself worthy of the Baron's favour, if he could do so without neglecting his duties. "You are extremely obliging," Volterra said, in a friendly tone. The detective smiled, bowed and left the room by the door leading towards the hall. "It seems to me," the Baroness said, still suppressing her anger, as she turned her face a little towards Malipieri and spoke at him over her shoulder, "it seems to me that you might go too." It was not for Malipieri to resent her tone or words just then, and he knew it, though he hated her for believing the evidence of her senses rather than Sabina's story. He made a step towards the door. "No," Volterra said, without rising, "I think he had better stay, and hear what we have to say about this. After all, the responsibility for what has happened falls upon him." "I should think it did!" cried the Baroness, breaking out at last, in harsh tones. "You abominable villain, you monster of iniquity, you snake, you viper--" "Hush, hush, my dear!" interposed the Baron, realizing vaguely that his wife's justifiable excitement was showing itself in unjustifiably vulgar vituperation. "You toad!" yelled the Baroness, shaking her fist in Malipieri's face. "You reptile, you accursed ruffian, you false, black-hearted, lying son of Satan!" She gasped for breath, and her whole frame quivered with fury, while her livid lips twisted themselves to hiss out the epithets of abuse. Volterra feared lest she should fall down in an apoplexy, and he rose from his seat quickly. He gathered her to his corpulent side with one arm and made her turn away towards the window, which he opened with his free hand. "I should be all that, and worse, if a tenth of what you believe were true," Malipieri said, coming nearer and then standing still. He was very pale, and he was conscious of a cowardly wish that Volterra's revolver might have killed him ten minutes earlier. But he was ashamed of the mere thought when he remembered what Sabina would have to face. Volterra, while holding his wife firmly against the window sill, to force her to breathe the outer air, turned his head towards Malipieri. "She is quite beside herself, you see," he said apologetically. The Baroness was a strong woman, and after the first explosion of her fury she regained enough self-control to speak connectedly. She turned round, in spite of the pressure of her husband's arm. "He is not even ashamed of what he has done!" she said. "He stands there--" The Baron interrupted her, fearing another outburst. "Let me speak," he said in the tone she could not help obeying. "What explanation have you to offer of Donna Sabina's presence here?" he asked. As he put the question, he nodded significantly to Malipieri, over his wife's shoulder, evidently to make the latter understand that he must at least invent some excuse if he had none ready. The Baron did not care a straw what became of him, or of Sabina, and wished them both out of his way for ever, but he had always avoided scandal, and was especially anxious to avoid it now. Malipieri resented the hint much more than the Baroness's anger, but he was far too much in the wrong, innocent though he was, to show his resentment. He told his story firmly and coolly, and it agreed exactly with Sabina's. "That is exactly what happened last night," he concluded. "If you will go down, you will find the breach I made, and the first vaults full of water. I have nothing more to say." "You taught her the lesson admirably," said the Baroness with withering scorn. "She told me the same story almost word for word!" "Madam," Malipieri answered, "I give you my word of honour that it is true." "My dear," Volterra said, speaking to his wife, "when a gentleman gives his word of honour, you are bound to accept it." "I hope so," said Malipieri. "Any man would perjure himself for a woman," retorted the Baroness with contempt. "No, my dear," the Baron objected, trying to mollify her. "Perjury is a crime, you know." "And what he has done is a much worse crime!" she cried. "I have not committed any crime," Malipieri answered. "I would give all I possess, and my life, to undo what has happened, but I have neither said nor done anything to be ashamed of. For Donna Sabina's sake, you must accept my explanation. In time you will believe it." "Yes, yes," urged Volterra, "I am sure you will, my dear. In any case you must accept it as the only one. I will go downstairs with Signor Malipieri and we will take the porter to the cellars. Then you can go out with Sabina, and if you are careful no one will ever know that she has been here." "And do you mean to let her live under your roof after this?" asked the Baroness indignantly. "Her mother is now in Rome," answered Volterra readily. "When she is dressed, you will take her to the Princess, and you will say that as we are going away, we are reluctantly obliged to decline the responsibility of keeping the young girl with us any longer. That is what you will do." "I am glad you admit at least that she cannot live with us any longer," the Baroness answered. "I am sure I have no wish to ruin the poor girl, who has been this man's unhappy victim--" "Hush, hush!" interposed Volterra. "You must really accept the explanation he has given." "For decency's sake, you may, and I shall have to pretend that I do. At least," she continued, turning coldly to Malipieri, "you will make such reparation as is in your power." "I will do anything I can," answered Malipieri gravely. "You will marry her as soon as possible," the Baroness said with frigid severity. "It is the only thing you can do." Malipieri was silent. The Baron looked at him, and a disagreeable smile passed over his fat features. But at that moment the door opened, and Sabina entered. Without the least hesitation she came forward to Malipieri, frankly holding out her hand. "Good morning," she said. "Before I go, I wish to thank you again for saving my life, and for taking care of me here." He held her hand a moment. "I ask your pardon, with all my heart, for having brought you into danger and trouble," he answered. "It was not your fault," she said. "It was nobody's fault, and I am glad I saw the statues before any one else. You told me last night that you were probably going away. If we never meet again, I wish you to remember that you are not to reproach yourself for anything that may happen to me. You might, you know. Will you remember?" She spoke quite naturally and without the least fear of Volterra and his wife, who looked on and listened in dumb surprise at her self-possession. She meant every word she said, and more too, but she had thought out the little speech while she was dressing, for she had guessed what must be happening in the study. Malipieri fixed his eyes on hers gratefully, but did not find an answer at once. "Will you remember?" she repeated. "I shall never forget," he answered, not quite steadily, By one of those miracles which are the birthright of certain women, she had made her dress look almost fresh again. The fawn-coloured hat was restored to its shape, or nearly. The mud that had soiled her skirt had dried and she had brushed it away, though it had left faint spots on the cloth, here and there; pins hid the little rents so cleverly that only a woman's eye could have detected anything wrong, and the russet shoes were tolerably presentable. The Baroness saw traces of the adventure to which the costume had been exposed, but Volterra smiled and was less inclined than ever to believe the story which both had told, though he did not say so. "My wife and I," he said cordially, "quite understand what has happened, and no one shall ever know about it, unless you speak of it yourself. She will go home with you now, and will then take you to the Russian Embassy to see your mother." Sabina looked at him in surprise, for she had expected a disagreeable scene. Then she glanced at the Baroness's sallow and angry face, and she partly understood the position. "Thank you," she said proudly, "but if you do not mind, I will go to my mother directly. You will perhaps be so kind as to have my things sent to the Embassy, or my mother's maid will come and get them." "You cannot go looking like that," said the Baroness severely. "On the contrary," Volterra interposed, "I think that considering your dangerous adventure, you look perfectly presentable. Of course, we quite understand that as the Princess has returned, you should wish to go back to her at once, though we are very sorry to let you go." Sabina paused a moment before answering. Then she spoke to the Baroness, only glancing at Volterra. "Until to-day, you have been very kind to me," she said with an effort. "I thank you for your kindness, and I am sorry that you think so badly of me." "My dear young lady," cried the Baron, lying with hearty cordiality, "you are much mistaken! I assure you, it was only a momentary misapprehension on the part of my wife, who had not even spoken with Signor Malipieri. His explanation has been more than satisfactory. Is it not so, my dear?" he asked, turning to the Baroness for confirmation of his fluent assurances. "Of course," she answered, half choking, and with a face like thunder; but she dared not disobey. "If my mother says anything about my frock, I shall tell her the whole story," said Sabina, glancing at her skirt. "If you do," said the Baroness, "I shall deny it from beginning to end." "I think that it would perhaps be wiser to explain that in some other way," the Baron suggested. "Signor Malipieri, will you be so very kind as to go down first, and take the porter with a light to the entrance of the cellars? He knows Donna Sabina, you see. I will come down presently, for I shall stay behind and ask the detective to look out of the window in the next room, while my wife and Donna Sabina pass through. In that way we shall be quite sure that she will not be recognized. Will you do that, Signor Malipieri? Unless you have a better plan to suggest, of course." Malipieri saw that the plan was simple and apparently safe. He looked once more at Sabina, and she smiled, and just bent her head, but said nothing. He left the room. The detective was sitting in a corner of the room beyond, and the two men exchanged a silent nod as Malipieri passed. Everything was arranged as the Baron had planned, and ten minutes later the Baroness and Sabina descended the stairs together in silence and reached the great entrance. The two soldiers were standing by the open door of the lodge, and saluted in military fashion. Gigi, the carpenter, sprang forward and opened the postern door, touching his paper cap to the ladies. They did not exchange a word as they walked to the Piazza Sant' Apollinare to find a cab. Sabina held her head high and looked straight before her, and the Baroness's invisible silk bellows were distinctly audible in the quiet street. "By the hour," said the Baroness, as they got into the first cab they reached on the stand. "Go to the Russian Embassy, in the Corso." CHAPTER XIX "So you spent last night in the rooms of a man you have not seen half a dozen times," said the Princess, speaking with a cigarette in her mouth. "And what is worse, those dreadful Volterra people found you there. No Conti ever had any common sense!" What Sabina had foreseen had happened. Her mother had looked her over, from head to foot, to see what sort of condition she was in, as a horse-dealer looks over a promising colt he has not seen for some time; and the Princess had instantly detected the signs of an accident. In answer to her question Sabina told the truth. Her mother had watched her face and her innocent eyes while she was telling the story, and needed no other confirmation. "You are a good girl," she continued, as Sabina did not reply to the last speech. "But you are a little fool. I wonder why my children are all idiots! I am not so stupid after all. I suppose it must have been your poor father." The white lids closed thoughtfully over her magnificent eyes, and opened again after a moment, as if she had called up a vision of her departed husband and had sent it away again. "I suppose it was silly of me to go at all," Sabina admitted, leaning back in her chair. "But I wanted so much to see the statues!" She felt at home. Her mother had brought her up badly and foolishly, and of late had neglected her shamefully. Sabina knew that and neither loved her nor respected her, and it was not because she was her mother that the girl felt suddenly at ease in her presence, as she never could feel with the Baroness. She did not wish to be at all like her mother in character, or even in manner, and yet she felt that they belonged to the same kind, spoke the same language, and had an instinctive understanding of each other, though these things implied neither mutual respect nor affection. "That horrible old Volterra!" said the Princess, with emphasis. "He means to keep everything he has found, for himself, if he can. I have come only just in time." Sabina did not answer. She knew nothing of the law, and though she fancied that she might have some morally just claim to a share in the treasure, she had never believed that it could be proved. "Of course," the Princess continued, smoking thoughtfully, "there is only one thing to be done. You must marry this Malipieri at once, whether you like him or not. What sort of man is he?" The faint colour rose in Sabina's cheeks and not altogether at the mere thought of marrying Malipieri; she was hurt by the way her mother spoke of him. "What kind of man is he?" the Princess repeated, "I suppose he is a Venetian, a son of the man who married the Gradenigo heiress, about the time when I was married myself. Is he the man who discovered Troy?" "Carthage, I think," said Sabina. "Troy, Carthage, America, it is all the same. He discovered something, and I fancy he will be rich. But what is he like? Dark, fair, good, bad, snuffy or smart? As he is an archaeologist, he must be snuffy, a bore, probably, and what the English call a male frump. It cannot be helped, my dear! You will have to marry him. Describe him to me." "He is dark," said Sabina. "I am glad of that. I always liked dark men--your father was fair, like you. Besides, as you are a blonde, you will always look better beside a dark husband. But of course he is dreadfully careless, with long hair and doubtful nails. All those people are." "No," said Sabina. "He is very nice-looking and neat, and wears good clothes." The Princess's brow cleared. "All the better," she said. "Well, my dear, it is not so bad after all. We have found a husband for you, rich, of good family--quite as good as yours, my child! Good-looking, smart--what more do you expect? Besides, he cannot possibly refuse to marry you after what has happened. On the whole, I think your adventure has turned out rather well. You can be married in a month. Every one will think it quite natural that it should have been kept quiet until I came, you see." "But even if I wanted to marry him, he will never ask for me," objected Sabina, who was less surprised than might be expected, for she knew her mother thoroughly. The Princess laughed, and blew a cloud of smoke from her lips, and then showed her handsome teeth. "I have only to say the word," she answered. "When a young girl of our world has spent the night in a man's rooms, he marries her, if her family wishes it. No man of honour can possibly refuse. I suppose that this Malipieri is a gentleman?" "Indeed he is!" Sabina spoke with considerable indignation. "Precisely. Then he will come to me this afternoon and tell his story frankly, just as you have done--it was very sensible of you, my dear--and he will offer to marry you. Of course I shall accept." "But, mother," cried Sabina, aghast at the suddenness of the conclusion, "I am not at all sure--" She stopped, feeling that she was much more sure of being in love with Malipieri than she had been when she had driven to the palace with Sassi on the previous afternoon. "Is there any one you like better?" asked the Princess sharply. "Are you in love with any one else?" "No! But--" "I had never seen your father when our marriage was arranged," the Princess observed. "And you were very unhappy together," Sabina answered promptly. "You always say so." "Oh, unhappy? I am not so sure, now. Certainly Hot nearly so miserable as half the people I know. After all, what is happiness, child? Doing what you please, is it not?" Sabina had not thought of this definition, and she laughed, without accepting it. In one way, everything looked suddenly bright and cheerful, since her mother had believed her story, and she knew that she was not to go back to the Baroness, who had not believed her at all, and had called her bad names. "And I almost always did as I pleased," the Princess continued, after a moment's reflection. "The only trouble was that your dear father did not always like what I did. He was a very religious man. That was what ruined us. He gave half his income to charities and then scolded me because I could not live on the other half. Besides, he turned the Ten Commandments into a hundred. It was a perfect multiplication, table of things one was not to do." Poor Sabina's recollections of her father had nothing of affection in them, and she did not feel called upon to defend his memory. Like many weak but devout men, he had been severe to his children, even to cruelty, while perfectly incapable of controlling his wife's caprices. "I remember, though I was only a little girl when he died," Sabina said. "Is Malipieri very religious?" the Princess asked "I mean, does he make a fuss about having fish on Fridays?" She spoke quite gravely. "I fancy not," Sabina answered, seeing nothing odd in her mother's implied definition of righteousness. "He never talked to me about religion, I am sure." "Thank God!" exclaimed the Princess devoutly. "He always says he is a republican," Sabina remarked, glad to talk about him. "Really?" The Princess was interested. "I adore revolutionaries," she said thoughtfully. "They always have something to say. I have always longed to meet a real anarchist." "Signor Malipieri is not an anarchist," said Sabina. "Of course not, child! I never said he was. All anarchists are shoemakers or miners, or something like that. I only said that I always longed to meet one. People who do not value their lives are generally amusing. When I was a girl, I was desperately in love with a cousin of mine who drove a four-in-hand down a flight of steps, and won a bet by jumping on a wild bear's back. He was always doing those things. I loved him dearly." The Princess laughed. "What became of him?" Sabina asked. "He shot himself one day in Geneva, poor boy, because he was bored. I was always sorry, though they would not have let me marry him, because he had lost all his money at cards." The Princess sighed. "Of course you want a lot of new clothes, my dear," she said, changing the subject rather suddenly. "Have you nothing but that to wear?" Sabina's things had not yet come from the Via Ludovisi. She explained that she had plenty of clothes. "I fancy they are nothing but rags," her mother answered incredulously. "We shall have to go to Paris in any case for your trousseau. You cannot get anything here." "But we have no money," objected Sabina. "As if that made any difference! We can always get money, somehow. What a child you are!" Sabina said nothing, for she knew that her mother always managed to have what she wanted, even when it looked quite impossible. The girl had been brought up in the atmosphere of perpetual debt and borrowing which seemed natural to the Princess, and nothing of that sort surprised her, though it was all contrary to her own instinctively conscientious and honourable nature. Her mother had always been a mystery to her, and now, as Sabina sat near her, she crossed her feet, which were encased in a pair of the Princess's slippers, and looked at her as she had often looked before, wondering how such a reckless, scatter-brained, almost penniless woman could have remained the great personage which the world always considered her to be, and that, too, without the slightest effort on her part to maintain her position. Then Sabina reflected upon the Baroness's existence, which was one long struggle to reach a social elevation not even remotely rivalling that of the Princess Conti; a struggle in which she was armed with a large fortune, with her husband's political power, with the most strictly virtuous views of life, and an iron will; a struggle which could never raise her much beyond the point she had already reached. Sabina's meditations were soon interrupted by the arrival of her belongings, in charge of her mother's maid, and the immediate necessity of dressing more carefully than had been possible when she had been so rudely roused by the Baroness. She was surprised to find herself so little tired by the desperate adventure, and without even a cold as the result of the never-to-be-forgotten chill she had felt in the vaults. In the afternoon, the Princess declared that she would not go out. She was sure that Malipieri would present himself, and she would receive him in her boudoir. The ambassador had given her a very pretty set of rooms. He was a bachelor, and was of course delighted to have her stay with him, and still more pleased that her pretty daughter should join her. It was late in the season, he was detained in Rome by an international complication, and he looked upon the arrival of the two guests as a godsend, more especially as the Princess was an old acquaintance of his and the wife of an intimate friend. Nothing could have been more delightful, and everything was for the best. The Princess herself felt that fortune was shining upon her, for she never doubted that she could lay hands on some of the money which the statues would bring, and she was sure, at least, of marrying Sabina extremely well in a few weeks, which was an advantage not to be despised. During the hours that followed her first conversation with her mother, Sabina found time to reflect upon her own future, and the more she thought of it, the more rosy it seemed. She was sure that Malipieri loved her, though he had certainly not told her so yet, and she was sure that she had never met a man whom she liked half so much. It was true that she had not met many, and none at all in even such intimacy as had established itself between him and her at their very first meeting; but that mattered little, and last night she had seen him as few women ever see a man, fighting for her life and his own for hours together, and winning in the end. Indeed, had she known it, their situation had been really desperate, for while Masin was in prison and in ignorance of what had happened, and Sassi lying unconscious at the hospital after a fall that had nearly killed him outright, it was doubtful whether any one else could have guessed that they were in the vaults or would have been able to get them out alive, had it been known. She had always expected to be married against her will by her mother, or at all events without any inclination on her own part. She had been taught that it was the way of the world, which it was better to accept. If the proposed husband had been a cripple, or an old man, she would have been capable of rebellion, of choosing the convent, of running away alone into the world, of almost anything. But if he had turned out to be an average individual, neither uglier, nor older, nor more repulsive than many others, she would probably have accepted her fate with indifference, or at least with the necessary resignation, especially if she had never met Malipieri. Instead of that, it was probably Malipieri whom she was to marry, the one of all others whom she had chosen for herself, and in place of a dreary existence, stretching out through endless blank years in the future, she saw a valley of light, carpeted with roses, opening suddenly in the wilderness to receive her and the man she loved. It was no wonder that she smiled in her sleep as she lay resting in the warm afternoon, in her own room. Her mother had made her lie down, partly because she was still tired, and partly because it would be convenient that she should be out of the way if Malipieri came. He came, as the Princess had expected, and between two and three o'clock, an hour at which he was almost sure to find her at home. From what Sabina had said to the Baroness in his presence, and from his judgment of the girl's character, he felt certain that she would tell her mother the whole story at once. As they had acknowledged to each other in the vaults, they were neither of them good at inventing falsehoods, and Sabina would surely tell the truth. In the extremely improbable case that she had not been obliged to say anything about the events of the night, his visit would not seem at all out of place. He had seen a good deal of Sabina during her mother's absence, and it was proper that he should present himself in order to make the Princess's acquaintance. He studied her face quickly as he came forward, and made up his mind that she expected him, though she looked up with an air of languid surprise as he entered. She leaned forward a little in her comfortable seat, and held out her plump hand. "I think I knew your mother, and my daughter has told me about you," she said. "I am glad to see you." "You are very kind," Malipieri answered, raising her hand to his lips, which encountered a large, cool sapphire. "I have had the pleasure of meeting Donna Sabina several times." "Yes, I know." The Princess laughed. "Sit down here beside me, and tell me all about your strange adventure. You are really the man I mean, are you not?" she asked, still smiling. "Your mother was a Gradenigo?" "Yes. My father is alive. You may have met him, though he rarely leaves Venice." "I think I have, years ago, but I am not sure. Does he never come to Rome?" "He is an invalid now," Malipieri explained gravely. "He cannot leave the house." "Indeed? I am very sorry. It must be dreadful to be an invalid. I was never ill in my life. But now that we have made acquaintance, do tell me all about last night I Were you really in danger, as Sabina thinks, or is she exaggerating?" "There was certainly no exaggeration in saying that we were in great danger, as matters have turned out," Malipieri answered. "Of the two men who knew that we were in the vault, one is lying insensible, with a fractured skull, in the hospital of the Consolazione, and the other has been arrested by a mistake and is in prison. Besides, both of them would have had every reason to suppose that we had got out." "Sabina did not tell me that. How awful! I must know all the details, please!" Malipieri told the whole story, from the time when Volterra had first invited him to come and make a search. The Princess nodded her energetic approval of his view that Sabina had a right to a large share in anything that was found. The poor girl's dowry, she said, had been eaten up by her father's absurd charities and by the bad administration of the estates which had ruined the whole family. Malipieri paid no attention to this statement, for he knew the truth, and he went on to the end, telling everything, up to the moment when Volterra had at last quitted the palace that morning and had left him free. "Poor Sassi!" exclaimed the Princess, when he had finished. "He was a foolish old man, but he always seemed very willing. Is that all?" "Yes. That is all. I think I have forgotten nothing." The Princess looked at him and smiled encouragingly, expecting him to say something more, but he was grave and silent. Gradually, the smile faded from her face, till she looked away, and took a cigarette from the table at her elbow. Still he said nothing. She lit the cigarette and puffed at it two or three times, slowly and thoughtfully. "I hope that Donna Sabina is none the worse for the fatigue," Malipieri said at last. "She seemed quite well this morning. I wondered that she had not caught cold." "She never caught cold easily, even as a child," answered the Princess indifferently. "This affair may have much more serious consequences than a cold in the head," she added, after a long pause. "I think the Volterra couple will be discreet, for their own sakes," Malipieri answered. "Their servants must know that Sabina was out all night." "They do not know that poor Sassi did not bring her to you here, and the Baroness will be careful to let them understand that she is here now, and with you. Those people dread nothing like a scandal. The secret is between them and us. I do not see how any one else can possibly know it, or guess it." "The fact remains," said the Princess, speaking out, "that my daughter spent last night in your rooms, and slept there, as if she had been in her own home. If it is ever known she will be ruined." "It will never be known, I am quite sure." "I am not, and it is a possibility I cannot really afford to contemplate." She looked fixedly at him. Malipieri was silent, and his face showed that he was trying to find some way out of the imaginary difficulty, or at least some argument which might quiet the Princess's fears. She did not understand his silence. If he was a man of honour, it was manifestly his duty at least to offer the reparation that lay in his power; but he showed no inclination to do so. It was incomprehensible. "I cannot see what is to be done," he said at last. "Is it possible that I must tell you, Signer Malipieri?" asked the Princess, and her splendid eyes flashed angrily. Malipieri's met them without flinching. "You mean, of course, that I should offer to marry Donna Sabina," he said. "What else could an honourable man do, in your position?" "I wish I knew." Malipieri passed his hand over his eyes in evident distress. "Do you mean to say that you refuse?" the Princess asked, between scorn and anger. "Are you so little one of us that you suppose this to be a question of inclination?" Malipieri looked up again. "I wish it were. I love your daughter with all my heart and soul. I did, before I saved her life last night." The Princess's anger gave way to stupefaction. "Well--but then? I do not understand. There is something else?" "Yes, there is something else. I have kept the secret a long time, and it is not all my own." "I have a right to know it," the Princess answered firmly, and bending her brows. "I never expected to tell it to any one," Malipieri said, in a low voice, and evidently struggling with himself. "I see that I shall have to trust you." "You must," insisted the Princess. "My daughter has a right to know, as well as I; and you say that you love her." "I am married." "Good heavens!" She sank back in her chair, overwhelmed with surprise at the simple statement, which, after all, need not have astonished her so much, as she reflected a moment later. She had never heard of Malipieri until that day, and since he had never told any one of his marriage, it was impossible that her daughter should have known of it. She was tolerably sure that the latter's adventure would not be known, but she had formed the determination to take advantage of it in order to secure Malipieri for Sabina, and had been so perfectly sure of the result that she fell from the clouds on learning that he had a wife already. On his part, he was not thinking of what was passing in her mind, but of what he should have thought of himself, had he, with his character, been in her position. The bald statement that he was married and his confession of his love for Sabina looked badly side by side, in the clear light of his own honour; all the more, because he knew that, without positively or directly speaking out his heart to the girl, he had let her guess that he was falling in love with her. He had said so, though in jest, on that night when he had been alone with her in Volterra's house; his going there, on the mere chance of seeing her alone, and the interest he had shown in her from their first meeting, must have made her think that he was in love. Moreover, he really was, and like most people who are consciously in love where they ought not to be, he felt as if everybody knew it; and yet he was a married man. "I am legally married under Italian law," he said, after a pause. "But that is all. My wife bears my name, and lives honourably under it, but that is all there has ever been of marriage in my life. I can honestly say that not even a word of affection ever passed between us." "How strange!" The Princess listened with interest, wondering what was coming next. "I never saw her but once," Malipieri continued. "We met in the morning, we were married at noon, at the municipality, we parted at the railway station twenty minutes later, and have never met again." "But you are not married at all!" cried the Princess. "The Church would annul such a marriage without making the least trouble." "We were not even married in church," said Malipieri. "We were married at the municipality only." "It is not a marriage at all, then." "Excuse me. It is perfectly valid in law, and my wife has a certified copy of the register to prove that she has a right to my name." "Were you mad? What made you do it? It is utterly incomprehensible--to bind yourself for life to a woman you had never seen! What possible motive--" "I will tell you," said Malipieri. "It all happened long ago, when I was little more than twenty-one. It is not a very long story, but I beg you not to tell it. You do not suppose me capable of keeping it a secret in order to make another marriage, not really legal do you?" "Certainly not," answered the Princess. "I believe you to be an honourable man. I will not tell your story to any one." "You may tell Donna Sabina as much of it as you think she need hear. This is what happened. I served my time in a cavalry regiment--no matter where, and I had an intimate friend, nearly of my own age, and a Venetian. He was very much in love with a young girl of a respectable family, but not of his own station. Of course his family would not hear of a marriage, but she loved him, and he promised that he would marry her as soon as he had finished his military service, in spite of his own people. He would have been of age by that time, for he was only a few months younger than I, and he was willing to sacrifice most of his inheritance for love of the girl. Do you understand?" "Yes. Go on." "He and I were devotedly attached to each other, said I sympathized with him, of course, and promised to help him if he made a runaway match. He used to get leave for a couple of days, to go and see her, for she lived with her parents in a small city within two hours of our garrison town. You guess what happened.--They were young, they were foolish, and they were madly in love." The Princess nodded, and Malipieri continued. "Not long afterwards, my friend was killed by a fall. His horse crushed him. It was a horrible accident, and he lived twelve hours after it, in great pain. He would not let the doctors give him morphia. He said he would die like a man, and he did, with all his senses about him. While he lay dying, I was with him, and then he told me all the truth. The girl would not be able to conceal it much longer. There was no time to bring her to his bedside and marry her while he still breathed. He could not even leave her money, for he was a minor. He could do nothing for her and her parents would turn her into the street; in any case she was ruined. He was in frightful agony of mind for her sake, he was dying before my eyes, powerless to help her and taking his suffering and his fault with him to the next world, and he was my friend. I did what I could. I gave him my word of honour that I would marry her legally, give her and her child my name, and provide for them as well as I could. He thanked me--I shall never forget how he looked--and he died quietly, half an hour afterwards. You know now. I kept my word. That is all." The Princess looked at his quiet face a moment in silence, and all that was best in her rose up through all that was artificial and worldly, and untruthful and vain. "I did not know that there were such men," she said simply. CHAPTER XX "So he got out," said Gigi to Toto, filling the latter's glass to the brim. "May he die assassinated!" answered Toto. "I will burn a candle to the Madonna every day, in order that an apoplexy may seize him. He is the devil in person, this cursed engineer. Even the earth and the water will not have him. They spit him out, like that." Toto illustrated the simile with force and noise before drinking. Gigi's cunning face was wreathed in smiles. "You know nothing," he observed. "What is it?" asked Toto, with his glass in his hand and between two sips. "There was old Sassi, who was hurt, and the engineer's gaol-bird mason-servant. They were with him. It was all in the _Messaggero_ this morning." "I know that without the newspaper, you imbecile. It was I that told you, for I saw all three pass under the window while I was locked in. Is there anything else you know?" "Oh, yes! There was another person with them." "I daresay," Toto answered, pretending blank indifference. "He must have been close to the wall as they went by. What difference does it make since that pig of an engineer got out?" "The other person was caught with him when the water rose," said Gigi, who meant to give his information by inches. "Curse him, whoever he was! He helped the engineer and that is why they got out. No man alone could have broken through that wall in a night, except one of us." "The other person was only a woman, after all," answered Gigi. "But you do not care, I suppose." "Speak, animal of a Jesuit that you are!" cried Toto. "Do not make me lose my soul!" Gigi smiled and drank some of his wine. "There are people who would pay to know," he said, "and you would never tell me whether the sluice gate of the 'lost water' is under number thirteen or not." "It is under number thirteen, Master Judas. Speak!" "It was the little fair girl of Casa Conti who was caught with the engineer in the vaults." Even Toto was surprised, and opened his eyes and his mouth at the same time. "The little Princess Sabina?" he asked in a low voice. Gigi shrugged his shoulders with a pitying air and grinned. "I told you that you knew nothing," he observed in triumph. "They were together all night, and she slept in his room, and the Senator's wife came to get her in the morning. The engineer took the porter off to the cellars before they came down, so that he should not see her pass; but he forgot me, the old carpenter of the house, and I opened the postern for the two ladies to go out. The little Princess's skirt had been torn. I saw the pins with these eyes. It was also spotted with mud which had been brushed off. But thanks be to heaven I have still my sight. I see, and am not blind." "Are you sure it was she?" asked Toto, forgetting to curse anybody. "I saw her as I see you. Have I not seen her grow up, since she used to be wheeled about in a baby carriage in Piazza Navona, like a flower in a basket? Her nurse made love with the 'woodpecker' who was always on duty there." The Romans call the municipal watchmen "woodpeckers," because they wear little pointed cocked hats with a bunch of feathers. They have nothing to do with police soldiers, nor with the carabineers. Toto made Gigi tell him everything he knew. At the porter's suggestion Volterra had sent for the mason, as the only man who knew anything about the "lost water," and Toto had agreed, with apparent reluctance, to do what he could at once, as soon as he had satisfied himself that Malipieri had really made another opening by which the statues could be reached. Toto laid down conditions, however. He pretended that he must expose himself to great danger, and insisted upon being paid fifty francs for the job. Furthermore, he obtained from Volterra, in the presence of the porter as witness, a formal promise that his grandfather's bones should have Christian burial, with a fine hearse and feathers, and a permanent grave in the cemetery of Saint Lawrence, which latter is rather an expensive luxury, beyond the means of the working people. But the Baron made no objection. The story would look very well in a newspaper paragraph, as a fine illustration of the Senator's liberality as well as of his desire to maintain the forms of religion. It would please everybody, and what will do that is cheap at any price, in politics. The result of these negotiations had of course been that the water had subsided in the vaults within a few hours, and Toto even found a way of draining the outer cellars, which had been flooded to the depth of a couple of feet, because the first breach made by Malipieri had turned out to be an inch or two lower than the level of the overflow shaft. When the two workmen had exchanged confidences, they ordered another half litre of wine, and sat in silence till the grimy host had set it down between them on the blackened table, and had retired to his den. Then they looked at each other. "There is an affair here," observed Gigi presently. "I suppose you mean the newspapers," said Toto nodding gravely. "They pay for such stories." "Newspapers!" Gigi made a face. "All journalists are pigs who are dying of hunger." Toto seemed inclined to agree with this somewhat extreme statement, on the whole, but he distinguished. There were papers, he said, which would pay as much as a hundred francs for a scandalous story about the Roman princes. A hundred francs was not a gold mine, it was not Peru. But it was a hundred francs. What did Gigi expect? The treasure of Saint Peter's? A story was a story, after all, and anybody could deny it. "It is worth more than a hundred francs," Gigi answered, with his weasel smile, "but not to the newspapers. The honour of a Roman princess is worth a hundred thousand." Toto whistled, and then looked incredulous, but it began to dawn upon him that the "affair" was of more importance than he had supposed. Gigi was much cleverer than he; that was why he always called Gigi an imbecile. The carpenter unfolded his plan. He knew as well as any one that the Conti were ruined and could not raise any such sum as he proposed to demand, even to save Sabina's good name. It would apparently be necessary to extract the blackmail from Volterra by some means to be discovered. On the other hand, Volterra was not only rich, he also possessed much power, and it would be somewhat dangerous to incur his displeasure. Toto, though dull, had a certain rough common sense and pointed this out. He said that the Princess must have jewels which she could sell to save her daughter from disgrace. She and Donna Sabina were at the Russian Embassy, for the _Messaggero_ said so. Gigi, who could write, might send her a letter there. "No doubt," assented the carpenter with a superior air. "I have some instruction, and can write a letter. But the jewels are paste. Half the Roman princesses wear sham jewellery nowadays. Do you suppose the Conti have not sold everything long ago? They had to live." "I do not see why," observed Toto. "Princes without money might as well be dead, an apoplexy on them all! Well, what do you propose to do? That old franc-eater of a Senator will not pay you for the girl's reputation, since she is not his daughter." "We must think," said Gigi. "Perhaps it would do no harm to write a letter to the Princess. The engineer is poor, of course. It is of no use to go to him." "All engineers are starving to death," Toto answered cheerfully. "I have seen them eat bread and onions and drink water, like us. Would they eat onions and dry bread if they could have meat? It is when they become contractors that they get money, by cheating the rich and strangling the poor. I know them. They are all evil people." "This is true," assented Gigi, "I have seen several, before this one." "This one is the eternal father of all assassins," growled Toto. "He talked of walling me up alive." "That was only a joke, to frighten you into holding your tongue," said Gigi. "And you did." "A fine joke! I wish you had been down there, hiding beside the gold statue instead of me, while two murderers sat by the little hole above and talked of walling it up for a week or ten days! A fine joke. The joke the cat makes to the mouse before eating it!" "I can tell the Princess that the money must be sent In thousand-franc notes," said Gigi, who was not listening. "It cannot go to the post-office registered, because it must be addressed to a false name. Somebody must bring it to us." "And bring the police to catch us at the same time," suggested Toto contemptuously. "That will not do." "She must bring it herself, to a safe place." "How?" "For instance, I can write that she must take a cab and drive out of the city on the Via Appia, and drive, and drive, until she meets two men--they will be you and me--one with a red handkerchief hanging out of his coat pocket, and the other with an old green riband for a band to his hat. I have an old green riband that will do. She must come alone in the cab. If we see any one with her, she shall not see us. She will not know how far out we shall be, so she cannot send the police to the place. It may be one mile from the gate, or five. I will write that if she does not come alone, the story will be printed in all the papers the next morning." Toto now looked at his friend with something almost like admiration. "I did not know that you had been a brigand," he remarked pleasantly. "That is well thought. Only the Princess may not be able to get the money, and if she does, she had better bring it in gold. We will then go to America." Neither of the men had the least idea that a hundred thousand francs in gold would be an uncommonly awkward and heavy load to carry. They supposed it would go into their pockets. "If she does not come, we will try the Senator before we publish the story," said Gigi. "By that time we shall have been able to think of some way of putting him under the oil-press to squeeze the gold out of him." "In any case, this is a good affair," Toto concluded, filling his pipe. "Nothing is bad which ends well, and we may both be gentlemen in America before long." So the two ruffians disposed of poor little Sabina's reputation in the reeking wine shop, very much to their own imaginary advantage; and the small yellow-and-blue clouds from their stinking pipes circled up slowly through the gloom into the darkness above their heads, as the light failed in the narrow street outside. Then Gigi, the carpenter, bought two sheets of paper and an envelope, and a pen and a wretched little bottle of ink, and a stamp, all at the small tobacconist's at the corner of Via della Scrofa, and went to Toto's lodging to compose his letter, because Toto lived alone, and there were no women in the house. Just at the same time, Volterra was leaving the Palazzo Madama, where the Senate sits, not a couple of hundred yards away. And the two workmen would have been very much surprised if they could have guessed what was beginning to grow in the fertile but tortuous furrows of his financial and political intelligence, and that in the end their schemes might possibly fall in with his. CHAPTER XXI As it had become manifestly impossible to keep the secret of the discovery in the Palazzo Conti any longer, Volterra had behaved with his accustomed magnanimity. He had not only communicated all the circumstances to the authorities at once, offering the government the refusal of the statues, which the law could not oblige him to sell if he chose to keep them in the palace, but also publicly giving full credit to the "learned archaeologist and intrepid engineer, Signer Marino Malipieri, already famous throughout Europe for his recent discoveries in Carthage." In two or three days the papers were full of Malipieri's praises. Those that were inclined to differ with the existing state of things called him a hero, and even a martyr of liberty, besides a very great man; and those which were staunch to the monarchy poked mild fun at his early political flights and congratulated him upon having descended from the skies, after burning his wings, not only to earth, but to the waters that are under the earth, returning to the upper air laden with treasures of art which reflected new glory upon Italy. All this was very fine, and much of it was undoubtedly true, but it did not in the least help Malipieri to solve the problem which had presented itself so suddenly in his life. The roads to happiness and to reputation rarely lead to the same point of the compass when he who hopes to attain both has more heart than ambition. It is not given to many, as it was to Baron Volterra, to lead an admiring, submissive and highly efficient wife up the broad steps of political power, financial success and social glory. Neither Caesar nor Bonaparte reached the top with the wife of his heart, yet Volterra, more moderately endowed, though with almost equal ambition, bade fair to climb high with the virtuous helpmeet of his choice on his arm. Malipieri slept badly and grew thinner during those days. His devotion to his dying friend had been absurdly quixotic, according to ordinary standards, but it had never seemed foolish to him, and he had never regretted it. He had always believed that a man of action and thought is freer to think and act if he remains unmarried, and it had never occurred to him that he might fall in love with a young girl, without whom life would seem empty. He was quixotic, generous and impulsive, but like many men who do extremely romantic things, he thought himself quite above sentimentality and entirely master of his heart. Hitherto the theory had worked very well, because he had never really tried to practise it. Nothing had seemed easier than not to fall in love with marriageable young women, and he had grown used to believing that he never could. With that brutality to his own feelings of which only a thoroughly sentimental man is capable, he left the Palazzo Conti on the day following the adventure, and took rooms in a hotel in the upper part of the city. Nothing would have induced him to spend a night in his room since Sabina's head had lain upon his pillow. With Volterra's powerful help, Masin had been released, though poor Sassi had not returned to consciousness, and Malipieri learned that the old man had changed his mind at the last minute, had insisted upon trying to follow Sabina after all, and had fallen heavily upon his head in trying to get down into the first chamber; while Masin, behind him, implored him to come back, or at least to wait for help where he was. The rest needs no explanation. Malipieri took a few things with him to the hotel, and left Masin to collect his papers and books on the following day, instructing him to send the scanty furniture, linen and household belongings to the nearest auction rooms, to be sold at once. Masin, none the worse for a night and day in prison, came back to his functions as if nothing had happened. He and his master had been in more than one adventure together. This one was over and he was quite ready for the next. There was probably not another man in Italy, and there are not many alive anywhere, who would have done what Malipieri did, out of pure sentiment and nothing else. To him, it seemed like a natural sacrifice to his inward honour, to refuse which would have been cowardly. He had weakly allowed himself to fall in love with a girl whom he could not possibly marry, and whom he respected as much as he loved. He guessed, though he tried to deny it, that she was more than half in love with him, since love sometimes comes by halves. To lie where she had lain, dreaming of her with his aching eyes open and his blood on fire, would be a violation of her maiden privacy, morally not much less cowardly in the spirit than it could have been in the letter, since he could not marry her. The world laughs at such refinements of delicate feeling in a man, but cannot help inwardly respecting them a little, as it respects many things at which it jeers and rails. Moreover, Malipieri did not care a fig for the world's opinion, and if he had needed to take a motto he would have chosen "Si omnes, ego non"; for if there was a circumstance which always inclined him to do anything especially quixotic, it was the conviction that other people would probably do the exact opposite. So Masin took the furniture to an auction room on a cart, and Malipieri never saw it again. While the press was ringing his praises, and he himself was preparing a carefully written paper on the two statues, while the public was pouring into the gate of the Palazzo Conti to see them, and Volterra was driving a hard bargain with the government for their sale, he lived in a state of anxiety and nervousness impossible to describe. He was haunted by the fear that some one might find out where Sabina had been on the night after she had left Volterra's house, and the mere thought of such a possibility was real torment, worse than the knowledge that he could never marry her, and that without her his life did not seem worth living. Whatever happened to Sabina would be the result of his folly in taking her to the vaults. He might recover from any wound he had himself received, but to see the good name of the innocent girl he loved utterly ruined and dragged through the mud of newspaper scandal would be a good deal worse than being flayed alive. It was horrible to think of it, and yet he could not keep it out of his thoughts. There had been too many people about the palace on the morning when Sabina had left it with the Baroness. Especially, there had been that carpenter, of whom no one had thought till it was too late. If Gigi had recognized Sabina, that would be Malipieri's fault too, for Volterra had not known that the man had been employed about the house for years. A week passed, and nothing happened. He had neither seen Sabina nor heard of her from any one. He was besieged by journalists, artists, men of letters and men of learning, and the municipal authorities had declared their intention of giving a banquet in his honour and Volterra's, to celebrate the safe removal of the two statues from the vault in which they had lain so long. He, who hated noisy feasting and speech-making above all things, could not refuse the public invitation. All sorts of people came to see him, in connection with the whole affair, and he was at last obliged to shut himself in during several hours of the day, in order to work at his dissertation. Masin alone was free to reach him in case of any urgent necessity. One morning, while he was writing, surrounded by books, drawings and papers, Masin came and stood silently at his elbow, waiting till it should please him to look up. Malipieri carefully finished the sentence he had begun, and laid down his pen. Then Masin spoke. "There is a lady downstairs, sir, who says that you will certainly receive her upon very important business. She would not give her name, but told the porter to try and get me to hand you this note." Malipieri sighed wearily and opened the note without even glancing at the address. He knew that Sabina would not write to him, and no one else interested him in the least. But he looked at the signature before reading the lines, and his expression changed. The dowager Princess Conti wrote a few words to say that she must see him at once and was waiting. That was all, but his heart sank. He sent Masin to show her the way, and sat resting his forehead in his hand until she appeared. She entered and stood before him, softly magnificent as a sunset in spring; looking as even a very stout woman of fifty can, if she has a matchless complexion, perfect teeth, splendid eyes, faultless taste, a wonderful dressmaker and a maid who does not hate her. Malipieri vaguely wondered how Sabina could be her daughter, drew an armchair into place for her, and sat down again by his writing-table. The windows were open and the blinds were drawn together to keep out the glare, for it was a hot day. A vague and delicious suggestion of Florentine orris-root spread through the warm air as the Princess sat down. Malipieri watched her face, but her expression showed no signs of any inward disturbance. "Are you sure that nobody will interrupt us?" she asked, as Masin went out and shut the door. "Quite sure. What can I do to serve you?" "I have had this disgusting letter." She produced a small, coarse envelope from the pale mauve pocket-book she carried in her hand, and held it out to Malipieri, who took it and read it carefully. It was not quite easy for him to understand, as Gigi wrote in the Roman dialect without any particular punctuation, and using capitals whenever it occurred to him, except at the beginning of a sentence. To Malipieri, as a Venetian, it was at first sight about as easy as a chorus of Aeschylus looks to an average pass-man. As the sense became clear to him, his eyelids contracted and his face was drawn as if he were in bodily pain. "When did you get this?" he asked, folding the letter and putting it back into the envelope. "Five or six days ago, I think. I am not sure of the date, but it does not matter. It says the money must be paid in ten days, does it not? Yes--something like that. I know there is some time left. I have come to you because I have tried everything else." "Everything else?" cried Malipieri, in sudden anxiety. "What in the world have you tried?" "I sent for Volterra the day after I got this." "Oh!" Malipieri was somewhat relieved. "What did he advise you to do? To employ a detective?" "O dear, no! Nothing so simple and natural. That man is an utter brute, and I am sorry I left Sabina so long with his wife. She would have been much better in the convent with her sister. I am afraid that is where she will end, poor child, and it will be all your fault, though you never meant any harm. You do not think you could divorce and marry her, do you?" Malipieri stared at her a moment, and then bit his lip to check the answer. He had no right to resent whatever she chose to say to him, for he was responsible for all the trouble and for Sabina's good name. "There is no divorce law in Italy," he answered, controlling himself. "Why do you say that Volterra is an utter brute? What did he advise you to do?" "He offered to silence the creature who wrote this letter if I would make a bargain with him. He said he would pay the money, if I would give Sabina to his second son, who is a cavalry officer in Turin, and whom none of us has ever seen." Malipieri's lips moved, but he said nothing that could be heard. A vein that ran down the middle of his forehead was swollen, and there was a bad look in his eyes. "I would rather see the child dead than married to one of those disgusting people," the Princess said. "Did you ever hear of such impertinence?" "You let her live with them for more than two months," observed Malipieri. "I know I did. It was simply impossible to think of anything better in the confusion, and as they offered to take charge of her, I consented. Yes, it was foolish, but I did not suppose that they would let her go off in a cab with that old dotard and stay out all night." Malipieri felt as if she were driving a blunt nail into his head. "Poor Sassil" he said. "He was buried yesterday." "Was he? I am not in the least sorry for him. He always made trouble, and this was the worst of all Sabina almost cried because I would not let her go and see him at the hospital. You know, he never spoke after he was taken there--he did not feel anything." Malipieri wondered whether the Princess, in another sense, had ever felt anything, a touch of real pity, or real love, for any human being. He did not remember to have ever met a woman who had struck him as so utterly heartless; and yet he could not forget the look that had come into her face, and the simple word she had spoken, when he had told her his story. "I understand that you refused Volterra's proposal," he said, returning to the present trouble. "Do you mean to say that he declined to help you unless you would accept it?" "Oh, no! He only said that as I was not disposed to accept what would make it so much easier, he would have to think it over. I have not seen him since." "But you understand what he had planned, do you not?" Malipieri asked. "It is very simple." "It is not so clear to me. I am not at all clever, you know." The Princess laughed carelessly. "He must have a very good reason for offering to pay a hundred thousand francs in order that his son may marry Sabina, who has not a penny. I confess, if it were not an impertinence, it would look like a foolish caprice. I suppose he thinks it would be socially advantageous." Her lip curled and showed her even white teeth. "His wife is a snob," Malipieri answered, "but Volterra does not care for anything but power and money, except perhaps for the sort of reputation he has, which helps him to get both." "Then of what possible use could it be to him to marry his son to Sabina, and to throw all that money away for the sake of getting her?" Malipieri hesitated, not sure whether it would be wise to tell her all he thought. "In the first place," he said slowly, "I do not believe he would really pay the blackmail, or if he did, he would catch the man, get the money back, and have him sent to penal servitude. He is very clever, and in his position he can have whatever help he asks from the government, especially in a just cause, as that would be. Perhaps he thinks that he has guessed who the man is." "Have you any idea?" asked the Princess, glancing down at the dirty little letter she still held. "In the second place," Malipieri continued, without heeding the question, "I am almost sure that when you were in difficulties, two or three months ago, he got the better of you, as he gets the better of every one. With the value of these statues, he has probably pocketed a couple of million francs by the transaction." "The wretch!" exclaimed the Princess. "I wish you were my lawyer! You have such a clear way of putting things." Even then Malipieri smiled. "I have always believed what I have just told you," he answered. "That was the reason why I hoped that Donna Sabina might yet recover what she should have had from the estate. Volterra is sure that if you can take proper steps, you will recover a large sum, and that is why he is so anxious to marry his son to your daughter. He thinks the match would settle the whole affair." "The idiot! As if I did not need the money myself!" Again Malipieri smiled. "But you will not get it," he answered. "You will certainly not get it if Volterra is interested in the matter, for it will all go to your daughter. Your other two children have had their share of their father's estate, and that of the daughters should have amounted to at least two millions each. But Donna Sabina has never had a penny. Whatever is recovered from Volterra will go to her, not to you." "It would be the same thing," observed the Princess carelessly. "Not exactly," Malipieri said, "for the court will appoint legal guardians, and the money will be paid to her intact when she comes of age. In other words, if she marries Volterra's son, the little fortune will return to Volterra's family. But of course, if you consented to the marriage, he would compromise for the money, before the suit was brought, by settling the two millions upon his daughter-in-law, and if he offered to do that, as he would, no respectable lawyer in the world would undertake to carry on the suit, because Volterra would have acted in strict justice. Do you see?" "Yes. It is very disappointing, but I suppose you are right." "I know I am, except about the exact sum involved. I am an architect by profession, I know something of Volterra's affairs and I do not think I am very far wrong. Very good. But Volterra has accidentally got hold of a terrible weapon against you, in the shape of this blackmailer's letter." "Then you advise me to accept his offer after all?" "He knows that you must, unless you can find something better. You are in his power." "But why should I, if I am to get nothing by it?" asked the Princess absent-mindedly. "There is Donna Sabina's good name at stake," Malipieri answered, with a little sternness. "I had forgotten. Of course! How stupid of me!" For a moment Malipieri knew that he should like to box her ears, woman though she was; then he felt a sort of pity for her, such as one feels for half-witted creatures that cannot help themselves nor control their instincts. "Then I must accept, and let Sabina marry that man," she said, after a moment's silence. "Tell me frankly, is that what you think I ought to do?" "If Donna Sabina wishes to marry him, it will be a safe solution," Malipieri answered steadily. "My dear man, she is in love with you!" cried the Princess in one of her sudden fits of frankness. "She told me so the other day in so many words, when she was so angry because I would not let her go to see poor old Sassi die. She said that you and he and her schoolmistress were the only human beings who had ever been good to her, or for whom she had ever cared, You may just as well know it, since you cannot marry her!" In a calmer moment, Malipieri might have doubted the logic of the last statement; but at the present moment he was not very calm, and he turned a pencil nervously in his fingers, standing it alternately on its point and its blunt end, upon the blotting-paper beside him, and looking at the marks it made. "How can she possibly wish to marry that Volterra creature?" asked the Princess, by way of conclusion. "She will have to, that is all, whether she likes it or not. After all, nobody seems to care much, nowadays," she added in a tone of reflection. "It is only the idea I always heard that Volterra kept a pawnshop in Florence, and then became a dealer in bric-a-brac, and afterwards a banker, and all sorts of things. But it may not be true, and after all, it is only prejudice. A banker may be a very respectable person, you know." "Certainly," assented Malipieri, wishing that he could feel able to smile at her absurd talk, as a sick man wishes that he could feel hungry when he sees a dish he likes very much, and only feels the worse for the mere thought of touching food. "Nothing but prejudice," the Princess repeated. "I daresay he was never really a pawnbroker and is quite respectable. By the bye, do you think he wrote this letter himself? It would be just like him." "No," Malipieri answered. "I am sure he did not. Volterra never did anything in his life which could not at least be defended in law. The letter is genuine." "Then there is some one who knows, besides ourselves and Volterra and his wife?" "Yes. I am sure of it." "You are so clever. You must be able to find out who it is." "I will try. But I am sure of one thing. Even if the money is not paid on the day, the story will not be published at once. The man will try again and again to get money from you. There is plenty of time." "Unless it is a piece of servants' vengeance," the Princess said. "Our servants were always making trouble before we left the palace, I could never understand why. If it is that, we shall never be safe. Will you come and see me, if you think of any plan?" She rose to go. "I will go to the Embassy to-morrow afternoon, between three and four." "Thanks. Do you know? I really cannot help liking you, though I think you are behaving abominably. I am sure you could get a divorce in Switzerland." "We will not talk about that," Malipieri answered, a little harshly. When she was gone, he called Masin, and then, instead of explaining what he wanted, he threw himself into an armchair and sat in silence for nearly half an hour. Masin was used to his master's ways and did not speak, but occupied himself in noiselessly dusting the mantelpiece at least a hundred times over. CHAPTER XXII Volterra had not explained to the Princess the reason why her acceptance of his offer would make it so much easier for him to help her out of her difficulty. He had only said that it would, for he never explained anything to a woman if an explanation could be avoided, and he had found that there are certain general ways of stating things to which women will assent rather than seem not to understand. If the Princess had asked questions, he would have found plausible answers, but she did not. She refused his offer, saying that she had other views for her daughter. She promptly invented a rich cousin in Poland, who had fallen in love with Sabina's photograph and was only waiting for her to be eighteen years old in order to marry her. She had gone to Malipieri as a last resource, not thinking it probable that he could help her, or that he would change his mind and try to free himself in order to marry Sabina. She came back with the certainty that he would not do the latter and could not give any real assistance. So far, she had not spoken to Sabina of her interview with the Baron, but she felt that the time had come to sound her on the subject of the marriage, since there might not be any other way. She had not lost time since her arrival, for she had at once seen one of the best lawyers in Rome, who looked after such legal business as the Russian Embassy occasionally had; and he had immediately applied for a revision of the settlement of the Conti affairs, on the ground of large errors in the estimates of the property, supporting his application with the plea that many of the proceedings in the matter had been technically faulty because certain documents should have been signed by Sabina, as a minor interested in the estate, and whose consent was necessary. He was of opinion that the revision would certainly be granted, but he would say nothing as to the amount which might be recovered by the Conti family. As a matter of fact, the settlement had been made hastily, between Volterra, old Sassi and a notary who was not a lawyer; and Volterra, who knew what he was about, and profited largely by it, had run the risk of a revision being required. For the rest, Malipieri's explanation of his motives was the true one. At the first suggestion of a marriage with Volterra's son Sabina flatly refused to entertain the thought. She made no outcry, she did not even raise her voice, nor change colour; but she planted her little feet firmly together on the footstool before her chair, folded her hands in her lap and looked straight at her mother. "I will not marry him," she said. "It is of no use to try to make me. I will not." Her mother began to draw a flattering though imaginary portrait of the young cavalry officer, and enlarged upon his fortune and future position. Volterra was immensely rich, and though he was not quite one of themselves, society had accepted him, his sons had been admirably brought up, and would be as good as any one. There was not a prince in Rome who would not be glad to make such a match for his daughter. "It is quite useless, mother," said Sabina. "I would not marry him if he were Prince Colonna and had the Rothschilds' money." "That is absurd," answered the Princess. "Just because you have taken a fancy to that Malipieri, who cannot marry you because he has done the most insane thing any one ever heard of." "It was splendid," Sabina retorted. "Besides," her mother said, "you do not know that it is true." Sabina's eyes flashed. "Whatever he says, is true," she answered, "and you know it is. He never lied in his life!" "No," said the Princess, "I really think he never did." "Then why did you suggest such a thing, when you know that I love him?" "One says things, sometimes," replied the Princess vaguely. "I did not really mean it, and I cannot help liking the man. I told him so this morning. Now listen. Volterra is a perfect beast, and if you refuse, he is quite capable of letting that story get about, and you will be ruined." "I will go into a convent." "You know that you hate Clementina," observed the Princess. "Of course I do. She used to beat me when I was small, because she said I was wicked. Of course I hate her. I shall join the Little Sisters of the Poor, or be a Sister of Charity. Even Clementina could not object to that, I should think." "You are a little fool!" To this observation Sabina made no reply, for it was not new to her, and she paid no attention to it. She supposed that all mothers called their children fools when they were angry. It was one of the privileges of motherhood. The discussion ended there, for Sabina presently went away and shut herself up in her room, leaving her mother to meditate in solitude on the incredible difficulties that surrounded her. Sabina was thinking, too, but her thoughts ran in quite another direction, as she sat bolt upright on a straight-backed chair, staring at the wall opposite. She was wondering how Malipieri looked at that moment, and how it was possible that she should not even have seen him since she had left his rooms with the Baroness a week ago, and more; and why, when every hour had dragged like an age, it seemed as if they had parted only yesterday, sure to meet again. She sat still a long time, trying to think out a future for herself, a future life without Malipieri and yet bearable. It would have been easy before the night in the vaults; it would have seemed possible a week ago, though very hard; now, it was beyond her imagination. She had talked of entering a sisterhood, but she knew that she did not mean to do it, even if her reputation were ruined. She guessed that in that event her mother would try to force her into a convent. The Princess was not the sort of woman who would devote the rest of her life to consoling her disgraced daughter, no matter how spotlessly blameless the girl might be. She would look upon her as a burden and a nuisance, would shut her up if she could, and would certainly go off to Russia or to Paris, to amuse herself as far as possible from the scene of Sabina's unfortunate adventure. "Poor child!" she would say to her intimate friends, "She was perfectly innocent, of course, but there was nothing else to be done. No decent man would have married her, you know!" And she would tell Malipieri's story to everybody, too, to explain why he had not married Sabina. She had no heart at all, for her children or for any one else. She had always despised her son for his weaknesses and miserable life, and she had always laughed at her elder daughter; if she had been relatively kind to Sabina, it was because the girl had never given any trouble nor asked for anything extravagantly inconvenient. She had never felt the least sympathy with the Roman life into which she had been brought by force, and after her husband had died she had plainly shown his quiet Roman relatives what she thought of them. She would cast Sabina off without even a careless kind word, if Sabina became a drag on her and hindered her from doing what she pleased in the world. And this would happen, if the story about the night in the Palazzo Conti were made public. Just so long, and no longer, would the Princess acknowledge her daughter's existence; and that meant so long as Volterra chose that the secret should be kept. At least, Sabina thought so. But matters turned out differently and were hurried to an issue in a terribly unexpected way. Both Volterra and Malipieri had guessed that the anonymous letter had been written by Gigi, the carpenter, but Volterra had seen it several days before the Princess had shown it to Malipieri. Not unnaturally, the Baron thought that it would be a good move to get the man into his power. Italy is probably not the only country where men powerful in politics and finance can induce the law to act with something more than normal promptitude, and Volterra, as usual, was not going to do anything illegal. The Minister of Justice, too, was one of those men who had been fighting against the Sicilian "mafia" and the Neapolitan "camorra" for many years, and he hated all blackmailers with a just and deadly hatred. He was also glad to oblige the strong Senator, who was just now supporting the government with his influence and his millions. Volterra was sure of the culprit's identity and explained that the detective who had been sent to investigate the palace after Sassi's accident had seen the carpenter and would recognize him. Nothing would be easier than to send for Gigi to do a job at the palace, towards evening, to arrest him as soon as he came, and to take him away quietly. This was done, and in twenty-four hours Gigi was safely lodged in a cell by himself, with orders that he was on no account to be allowed any communication with other prisoners. Then Volterra went to see him, and instead of threatening him, offered him his help if he would only tell the exact truth. Gigi was frightened out of his wits and grasped at the straw, though he did not trust the Baron much. He told what he had done; but with the loyalty to friends, stimulated by the fear of vengeance, which belongs to the Roman working man, he flatly denied that he had an accomplice. Yes, he had spoken in the letter of two men who would be walking on the Via Appia, and he had intended to take his brother-in-law with him, but he said that he had not meant to explain why he took him until the last minute. It was a matter for the galleys! Did his Excellency the Senator suppose that he would trust anybody with that, until it was necessary? The consequence was that Gigi was kept quietly in prison for a few days before any further steps were taken, having been arrested at the instance of the Ministry of Justice for trying to extract blackmail from the Conti family, and being undoubtedly guilty of the misdeed. Volterra's name did not even appear in the statement. Malipieri had not Volterra's influence, and intended to try more personal methods with the carpenter; but when he appeared at the palace in the afternoon, and asked the porter to go and call Gigi, the old man shook his head and said that Gigi had been in prison three days, and that nobody knew why he had been arrested. The matter had not even been mentioned by the _Messaggero_. Malipieri had never connected Toto with Gigi, and did not even know that the two men were acquainted with each other. He had not the slightest doubt but that it was Toto who had caused the water to rise in the well, out of revenge, but he knew that it would now be impossible to prove it. Strange to say, Malipieri bore him no grudge, for he knew the people well, and after all, he himself had acted in a high-handed way. Nevertheless, he asked the porter if the man were anywhere in the neighbourhood. But Toto had not been seen for some time. He had not even been to the wine shop, and was probably at work in some distant part of Rome. Perhaps he was celebrating his grandfather's funeral with his friends. Nobody could tell where he might be. Malipieri went back to his hotel disconsolately. That evening he read in the _Italie_ that after poor Sassi had been buried, the authorities had at once proceeded to take charge of his property and effects, because the old woman-servant had declared that he had no near relations in the world; and the notary who had served the Conti family had at once produced Sassi's will. He had left all his little property, valued roughly at over a hundred thousand francs, to Donna Sabina Conti. Had any one known it, the date of the will was that of the day on which he had received her little note thanking him for burying her canary, out on Monte Mario. The notary's brother and son, notaries themselves, were named as guardians. The income was to be paid to Sabina at once, the capital on her marriage. The newspaper paragraph recalled the ruin of the great family, and spoke of the will as a rare instance of devotion in an old and trusted servant. Sabina and the Princess learned the news at dinner that evening from a young attache of the Embassy who always read the _Italie_ because it is published in French, and he had not yet learned Italian. He laughingly congratulated Sabina on her accession to a vast fortune. To every one's amazement, Sabina's eyes filled with tears, though even her own mother had scarcely ever seen her cry. She tried hard to control herself, pressed her lids hastily with her fingers, bit her lips till they almost bled, and then, as the drops rolled down her cheeks in spite of all she could do, she left the table with a broken word of excuse. "She is nothing but a child, still," the Princess explained in a tone of rather condescending pity. The young attache was sorry for having laughed when he told the story. He had not supposed that Donna Sabina knew much about the old agent, and after dinner he apologized to his ambassador for his lack of tact. "That little girl has a heart of gold," answered the wise old man of the world. The Princess had a profoundly superstitious belief in luck, and was convinced that Sabina's and her own had turned with this first piece of good fortune, and that on the following day Malipieri would appear and tell her that he had caught the writer of the letter and was ready to divorce his wife in order to marry Sabina. Secure in these hopes she slept eight hours without waking, as she always did. But she was destined to the most complete disappointment of her life, and to spend one of the most horribly unpleasant days she could remember. Long before she was awake boys and men, with sheaves of damp papers, were yelling the news in the Corso and throughout Rome. "The _Messaggero!_ The great scandal in Casa Conti! The _Messaggero!_ One sou!" CHAPTER XXIII Toto had done it. In his heart, the thick-headed, practical fellow had never quite believed in Gigi's ingenious scheme, and the idea of getting a hundred thousand francs had seemed very visionary. Since Gigi had got himself locked up it would be more sensible to realize a little cash for the story from the _Messaggero_, saying nothing about the carpenter. The only lie he needed to invent was to the effect that he had been standing near the door of the palace when Sabina had come out. The porter, being relieved from the order to keep the postern shut against everybody had been quite willing to gossip with Toto about the detective's visit, the closed room and Malipieri's refusal to let any one enter it. As for what had happened in the vaults, Toto could reconstruct the exact truth much more accurately than Gigi could have done, even with his help. It was a thrilling story; the newspaper paid him well for it and printed it with reservations. There was not a suggestion of offence to Sabina, such as might have afforded ground for an action against the paper, or against those that copied the story from it. The writer was careful to extol Malipieri's heroic courage and strength, and to point out that Sabina had been half-dead of fatigue and cold, as Toto knew must have been the case. It was all a justification, and not in the least an accusation. But the plain, bald fact was proved, that Donna Sabina Conti had spent the night in the rooms of the now famous Signor Malipieri, no one else being in the apartment during the whole time. He had saved her life like a hero, and had acted like a Bayard in all he had done for the unfortunate young lady. It was an adventure worthy of the middle ages. It was magnificent. Her family, informed at once by Malipieri, had come to get her on the following morning. Toto had told the people at the office of the _Messaggero_, who it was that had represented the "family," but the little newspaper was far too worldly-wise to mention Volterra in such a connection. Donna Sabina, the article concluded, was now with her mother at the Russian Embassy. The evening papers simply enlarged upon this first story, and in the same strain. Malipieri was held up to the admiration of the public. Sabina's name was treated with profound respect, there was not a word which could be denied with truth, or resented with a show of justice. And yet, in Italy, and most of all in Rome, it meant ruin to Sabina, and the reprobation of all decent people upon Malipieri if he did not immediately marry her. It was the ambassador himself who informed the Princess of what had happened, coming himself to the sitting-room as soon as he learned that she was visible. He stayed with her a long time, and they sent for Sabina, who was by far the least disturbed of the three. It was all true, she said, and there was nothing against her in the article. Masin brought the news to Malipieri with his coffee, and the paper itself. Malipieri scarcely ever read it, but Masin never failed to, and his big, healthy face was very grave. Malipieri felt as if he were going to have brain fever, as his eye ran along the lines. "Masin," he said, when he had finished, "did you ever kill a man?" "No, sir," answered Masin. "You have always believed that I was innocent, though I had to serve my seven years." "I did not mean that," said Malipieri. Then he sat a long time with his untasted coffee at his elbow and the crumpled little sheet in his hand. "Of course, sir," Masin said at last, "I owe you everything, and if you ordered me--" He paused significantly, but his master did not understand. "What?" he asked, starting nervously. "Well, sir, if it were necessary for your safety, that somebody should be killed, I would risk the galleys for life, sir. What am I, without you?" Malipieri laughed a little wildly, and dropped the paper. "No, my friend," he said presently, "we would risk our lives for each other, but we are not murderers. Besides, there is nobody to be killed, unless you will have the goodness to put a bullet through my head." And he laughed again, in a way that frightened the quiet man beside him. What drove him almost mad was that he was powerless. He longed to lay his hands on the editor of the paper, yet there was not a word, not a suggestion, not an implied allusion for which any man in his senses could have demanded an apology. It was the plain truth, and nothing else; except that it was adorned by fragmentary panegyrics of himself, which made it even more exasperating if that were possible. He had not only wrecked Sabina's reputation by his quixotic folly; he was to be praised to the skies for doing it. His feverish anger turned into a dull pain that was much worse. The situation looked utterly hopeless. Masin stood still beside him watching him with profound concern, and presently took the cup of coffee and held it to his lips. He drank a little, like a sick man, only half consciously, and drew back, and shook his head. Masin did not know what to do and waited in mute distress, as a big dog, knowing that his master is in trouble, looks up into his face and feebly wags his sympathetic tail, just a little, at long intervals, and then keeps quite still. Malipieri gradually recovered his senses enough to think connectedly, and he tried to remember whether he had ever heard of a situation like his own. As he was neither a novelist nor a critic, he failed, and frankly asked himself whether suicide might not be a way out of the difficulty for Sabina. He was not an unbeliever, and he had always abhorred and despised the idea of suicide, as most thoroughly healthy men do when it occurs to them; but if at that time he could have persuaded himself that his death could undo the harm he had brought upon Sabina he would not have hesitated a moment. Neither his body nor his soul could matter much in comparison with her good name. Hell was full of people who had got there because they had done bad things for their own advantage; if he went there, it would at least not be for that. He did not think of hell at all, just then, nor of heaven or of anything else that was very far off. He only thought of Sabina, and if he once wished himself dead for his own sake, he drove the cowardly thought away. As long as he was alive, he could still do something for her--surely, there must be something that he could do. There must be a way out, if he could only use his wits and his strength, as he had made a way out of the vaults, for her to pass through, ten days ago. There was nothing, or at least he could think of nothing, that could help her. To try and free himself from the bond he had put upon himself would be to break a solemn promise given to a dying man whom he had dearly loved. The woman he had seen that once, to marry her and leave her, had been worthy of the sacrifice, too, as far as lay in her. He had given her a small income, enough for her and her little girl to live on comfortably. She had not only kept within it, but had learned to support herself, little by little, till she had refused to take the money that was sent to her. At regular times, she wrote to him, as to a benefactor, touching and truthful letters, with news of the growing child. He knew that it was all without affectation of any sort, and that she had turned out a thoroughly good and honest woman. The little girl knew that her father was dead, and that her own name was really and legally Malipieri, beyond a doubt. Her mother kept the copy of her certificate of birth together with the certificate of marriage. The Signora Malipieri lived as a widow in Florence and gave lessons in music and Italian. She had never asked but one thing of Malipieri, which was that he would never try to see her, nor let her daughter know that he was alive. It was easy to promise that. He knew that she had been most faithful to her lover's memory, cherishing the conviction that in the justice of heaven he was her true husband, as he would have been indeed had he lived but a few months longer. She was bringing up her child to be like herself, save for her one fault. Malipieri had settled a sufficient dowry on the girl, lest anything should happen to him before she was old enough to marry. The mere suggestion of divorcing a woman who had acted as she had done since his friend's death, was horrible to him. It was like receiving a blow in the face, it was mud upon his honour, it was an insult to his conscience, it was far worse than merely taking back a gift once given in a generous impulse. If he had felt himself capable of such baseness he could never again have looked honest men fairly in the eyes. It would mean that he must turn upon her, to insult her by accusing her of something she had never done; he knew nothing of the divorce laws in foreign countries, except that Italians could obtain divorce by a short residence and could then come back and marry again under Italian law. That was all he knew. The Princess had not asked of him a legal impossibility, but he had felt, when she spoke, that it would be easier to explain the dogma of papal infallibility to a Chinese pirate than to make her understand how he felt towards the good woman who had a right to live under his name and had borne it so honourably for many years. Sabina would understand. He wished now, with all his heart, that in the hours they had spent together he had told her the secret which he had been obliged to confide to her mother. He wondered whether she knew it, and hoped that she did. She would at least understand his silence now, she would know why he was not at the Embassy that morning as soon as he could be received by her mother. She might not forgive him, because she knew that he loved her, but she would see why he could not divorce in order to marry her. An hour passed, and two hours, and still he sat in his chair, while Masin came and went softly, as if his master were ill. Then reporters sent up cards, with urgently polite requests to be received, and he had to give orders that he was not to be disturbed on any account. He would see no one, he would answer no questions, until he had made up his mind what to do. At last he rose, shook himself, walked twice up and down the room and then spoke to Masin. "I am going out," he said. "I shall be back in an hour." He had seen that there was at least one thing which he must do at once, and after stopping short, stunned to stupor by what had happened, his life began to move on again. It was manifestly his duty to see the Princess again, and he knew that she would receive him, for she would think that he had changed his mind after all, and meant to free himself. He must see her and say something, he knew not what, to convince her that he was acting honourably. He was shown to her sitting-room, as if he were expected. It was not long since the ambassador had left her and her daughter had gone back to her room, and she was in a humour in which he had not seen her before, as he guessed when he saw her face. Her wonderful complexion was paler than usual, her brows were drawn together, her eyes were angry, there was nothing languid or careless in her attitude, and she held her head high. "I expected you," she said. "I sent word that you were to come up at once." She did not even put out her hand, but there was a chair opposite her and she nodded towards it. He sat down, feeling that a struggle was before him. "The ambassador has just been here," she said. "He brought the newspaper with him, and I have read the article. I suppose you have seen it." Malipieri bent his head, but kept his eyes upon her. "I have told the ambassador that Sabina is engaged to marry you," she said calmly. Malipieri started and sat upright in his chair. If he had known her better, he might have guessed that what she said was untrue, as yet; but she had made the statement with magnificent assurance. "Your engagement will be announced in the papers this evening," she continued. "Shall you deny it?" She looked at him steadily, and he returned her gaze, but for a long time he could not answer. She had him at a terrible advantage. "I shall not deny it publicly," he said at last. "That would be an injury to your daughter." "Shall you deny it at all?" She was conscious of her strong position, and meant to hold it. "I shall write to the lady who is living under my name, and I shall tell her the circumstances, and that I am obliged to allow the announcement to be made by you." "Give me your word that you will not deny your engagement to any one else. You know that I have a right to require that. My daughter knows that you are married." Malipieri hesitated only a moment. "I give you my word," he said. She rose at once and went towards one of the doors, without looking at him. He wondered whether she meant to dismiss him rudely, and stood looking after her. She stopped a moment, with her hand on the knob of the lock, and glanced back. "I will call Sabina," she said, and she was gone. He stood still and waited, and two or three minutes passed before Sabina entered. She glanced at him, smiled rather gravely, and looked round the room as she came forward, as if expecting to see some one else. "Where is my mother?" she asked, holding out her hand. "She said she was going to call you," Malipieri answered. "So she did, and she told me she was coming back to you, because I was not quite ready." "She did not come back." "She means us to be alone," Sabina said, and suddenly she took both his hands and pressed them a little, shaking them up and down, almost childishly. "I am so glad!" she cried. "I was longing to see you!" Even then, Malipieri could not help smiling, and for a moment he forgot all his troubles. When they sat down, side by side, upon a little sofa, the Princess was already telling the ambassador that Malipieri had come and that they were engaged to be married. She had carried the situation by a master stroke. "She has told you all about me," Malipieri said, turning his face to Sabina. "You know what my life is. Has she told you everything?" "Yes," Sabina answered softly, but not meeting his look, "everything. But I want to hear it from you. Will you tell me? Will it hurt you to tell me about what you did for your friend? You know my mother is not always very accurate in telling a story. I shall understand why you did it." He had known that she would, and he told her the story, a little less baldly than he had told her mother, yet leaving out such details as she need not hear. He hesitated a little, once or twice. "I understand," she repeated, watching him with innocent eyes. "She felt just as if they were really married, and he could not bear to die, feeling that she would be without protection, and that other men would all want to marry her, because she was beautiful. And her father and mother were angry because she loved him so much." "Yes," Malipieri answered, smiling, "that was it. They loved each other dearly." "It was splendid of you," she said. "I never dreamt that any man would do such a thing." "It cannot be undone." He was at least free to say that much, sadly. There was a pause, and they looked away from each other. At last Sabina laid her hand lightly upon his for a moment, though she did not turn her face to him. "I should not like you so much, if you wished to undo it," she said. "Thank you," he answered, withdrawing the hand she released when she had finished speaking, and folding it upon his other. "I should love you less, if you did not understand me so well." "It is more than understanding. It is much more." He remembered how he had taken her slender body in his arms to warm her when she had been almost dead of the cold and dampness, and a mad impulse was in him to press her to him now, as he had done then, and to feel her small fair head lay itself upon his shoulder peacefully, as it surely would. He sat upright and pressed one hand upon the other rather harder than before. "You believe it, do you not?" she asked. "Why is your face so hard?" "Because I am bound hand and foot, like a man who is carried to execution." "But we can always love each other just the same," Sabina said, and her voice was warm and soft. "Yes, always, and that will not make it easier to live without you," he answered rather harshly. "You need not," she said, after an instant's pause. He turned suddenly, startled, not understanding, wondering what she could mean. She met his eyes quite quietly, and he saw how deep and steady hers were, and the light in them. "You need not live without me unless you please," she said. "But I must, since I cannot marry you, and you understand that I could not be divorced--" "My mother has just told me that no decent man will marry me, because all the world knows that I stayed at the palace that night. She must be right, for she could have no object in saying it if it were not true, could she? Then what does it matter how any one talks about me now? I will go with you. We cannot marry, but we shall always be together." Malipieri's face expressed his amazement. "But it is impossible!" he cried. "You cannot do that! You do not know what you are saying!" "Oh, yes, I do! That poor, kind old Sassi has left me all he had, and I can go where I please. I will go with you. Would you rather have me shut up in a convent to die? That is what my mother will try to do with me, and she will tell people that I was 'mad, poor girl'! Do you think I do not know her? She wants this little sum of money that I am to have, too, as if she and the others had not spent all I should have had. Do you think I am bound to obey my mother, if she takes me to the convent door, and tells me that I am to stay there for the rest of my life?" The gentle voice was clear and strong and indignant now. Malipieri twisted his fingers one upon another, and sat with his head bent low. He knew that she had no clear idea of what she was saying when she proposed to join her existence with his. Her maiden thoughts could find no harm in it. "You do not know what your mother said to me, before you came in," he answered. "She told me that she would announce our engagement at once, and made me give my word that I would not deny it to any one but my legal wife." "You gave your word?" Sabina asked quickly, not at all displeased. "What could I do?" "Nothing else! I am glad you did, for we can see each other as much as we like now. But how shall we manage it in the end, since we cannot marry?" "Break the imaginary engagement, I suppose," Malipieri answered gloomily. "I see nothing else to be done." "But then my mother says that no decent man will marry me. It will be just the same, all over again. It was very clever of her; she is trying to force you to do what she wants. In the meantime you can come and see me every day--that is the best part of it. Besides, she will leave us alone together here, for hours, because she thinks that the more you fall in love with me the more you will wish to get a divorce. Oh, she is a very clever woman! You do not know her as I do!" Malipieri marvelled at the amazing combination of girlish innocence and keen insight into her mother's worldly and cynical character, which Sabina had shown during the last few minutes. There never yet was a man in love with girl or woman who did not find in her something he had never dreamt of before. "She is clever," he assented gravely, "but she cannot make me break that promise, even for your sake. I cannot help looking forward and thinking what the end must be." "It is much better to enjoy the present," Sabina answered. "We can be together every day. You will write to your--no, she is not your wife, and I will not call her so! She would not be really your wife if she could, for she made you promise never to go and see her. That was nice of her, for of course she knew that if she saw you often, she must end by falling in love with you. Any woman would; you know it perfectly well. You need not shake your head at me, like that. You will write to her, and explain, and she will understand, and then we will let things go on as long as they can till something else happens." "What can possibly happen?" "Something always happens. Things never go on very long without a change, do they? I am sure, everything in my life has changed half a dozen times in the last fortnight." "In mine, too," Malipieri answered. "And if things get worse, and if worse comes to worst," Sabina answered, "I have told you what I mean to do. I shall come to you, wherever you are, and you will have to let me stay, no matter what people choose to say. That is, if you still care for me!" She laughed softly and happily, and not in the least recklessly, though she was talking of throwing the world and all connection with it to the winds. The immediate future looked bright to her, since they were to meet every day, and after that, "something" would happen. If nothing did, and they had to face trouble again, they would meet it bravely. That was all any one could do in life. She had found happiness too suddenly after an unhappy childhood, to dream of letting it go, cost what it might to keep it. But she saw how grave he looked and the hopeless expression in his loving eyes, as he turned them to her. "Why are you sad?" she asked, smiling, and laying her hand on his. "We can be happy in the present. We love each other, and can meet often. You have made a great discovery and are much more famous than you were a few days ago. A newspaper has told our story, it is true, but there was not a word against either of us in it, for I made them let me read it myself. And now people will say that we are engaged to be married, and that we got into a foolish scrape and were nearly killed together, and that we are a very romantic couple, like lovers in a book! Every girl I know wishes she were in my place, I am sure, and half the men in Rome wish that they could have saved some girl's life as you did mine. What is there so very dreadful in all that? What is there to cry about--dear?" Half in banter, half in earnest, she spoke to him as if he were a child compared with her, and leaned affectionately towards him; and the last word, the word neither of them had spoken yet, came so softly and sweetly to him on her breath, that he caught his own, and turned a little pale; and the barriers broke all at once, and he kissed her. Then he got hold upon himself again, and gently pushed her a little further from him, while he put his other hand to his throat and closed his eyes. "Forgive me," he said, in a thick voice. "I could not help it." "What is there to forgive? We are not betraying any one. You are not breaking a promise to any other woman. What harm is there? You did not give your friend your word that you would never love any one, did you? How could you? How could you know?" "I could not know," he answered in a low voice. "But I should not have kissed you." He knew that she could not understand the point of honour that was so clear to him. "Let me think for you, sometimes," she said. Her voice was as low as his, but dreamily passionate, and the strange young magic vibrated in it, which perfect innocence wields with a destroying strength not even guessed at by itself. The door opened and the Princess entered the room in a leisurely fashion, wreathed in smiles. She had successfully done what it would be very hard for Malipieri to undo. He rose. "Have you told Sabina what I said?" she enquired. "Yes." She turned to the girl, who was leaning back in the corner of the sofa. "Of course you agree, my child?" she said, with a question in her voice, though with no intonation of doubt as to the answer. "Certainly," Sabina answered, with perfect self-possession. "I think it was by far the most sensible we could do. Signor Malipieri will come to see us, as if he and I were really engaged." "Yes," assented the Princess. "You cannot go on calling him Signor Malipieri when we are together in the family, my dear. What is your Christian name?" she asked, turning to him. "Marino." "I did not know," Sabina said, with truth, and looking at him, as if she had found something new to like in him. "Is he to call me Sabina, mother?" "Naturally. Well, my dear Marino--" Malipieri started visibly. The Princess explained. "I shall call you so, too. It looks better before people, you know. You must leave a card for the ambassador, at the porter's, when you go downstairs, He is going to ask you to dinner, with a lot of our relations, to announce the engagement. I have arranged it all beautifully--he is so kind!" CHAPTER XXIV Masin was very much relieved when his master came home, looking much calmer than when he had gone out and evidently having all his senses about him. Malipieri sent to ask at what time the mails left Rome for Florence, and he sat down to his table without remembering that he had eaten nothing that day. It was not easy to write out in a concise form the story of all that has here been told in detail. Besides, he had not the habit of writing to the Signora Malipieri, except such brief acknowledgments of her regular letters to him as were necessary and kind. For years she had been to him little more than a recollection of his youth, a figure that had crossed his life like a shadow in a dream, taking with it a promise which he had never found it hard to keep. He remembered her as she had been then, and it had not even occurred to him to consider how she looked now. She sometimes sent him photographs of the pretty little girl, and Malipieri kept them, and occasionally looked at them, because they reminded him of his friend, of whom he had no portrait. He found it very hard to tell this half-mythical woman and wholly mythical wife of all that had happened, while scrupulously avoiding the main fact, which was that he and Sabina loved each other. To have told that, too, would have seemed like a reproach, or still worse, like a request to be set at liberty. He wrote carefully, reading over his sentences, now and then correcting one, and even entertaining a vague idea of copying the whole when he had finished it. The important point was that she should fully understand the necessity of announcing his engagement to marry Donna Sabina Conti, together with his firm intention of breaking it off as soon as the story should be so far forgotten as to make it safe to do so, having due regard for Donna Sabina's reputation and good name. He laid so much stress on these points, and expressed so strongly his repentance for having led the girl into a dangerous scrape, that many a woman would have guessed at something more. But of this he was quite unaware when he read the letter over, believing that he could judge it without prejudice, as if it had been written by some one else. The explanation was thorough and logical, but there was a little too much protest in the expressions of regret. Besides, there were several references to Sabina's unhappy position as the daughter of an abominably worldly and heartless woman, who would lock her up in a convent for life rather than have the least trouble about her. He could not help showing his anxious interest in her future, much more clearly than he supposed. The consequence was that when the Signora Malipieri read the letter on the following morning, she guessed the truth, as almost any woman would, without being positively sure of it; and she was absent-minded with her pupils all that day, and looked at her watch uneasily, and was very glad when she was able to go home at last and think matters over. It was not easy to decide what to do. She could not write to Malipieri and ask him directly if he was in love with Sabina Conti and wished to marry her. She answered him at once, however, telling him that she fully understood his position, and thanking him for having written to her before she could have heard the story from any other source. He showed the letter to Sabina, and it pleased her by its frank simplicity, and perfect readiness to accept Malipieri's statement without question, and without the smallest resentment. Somehow the girl had felt that this shadowy woman, who stood between her and Malipieri, would make some claim upon him, and assert herself in some disagreeable way, or criticise his action. It was hateful to think she really had a right to call herself his wife, and was therefore legally privileged to tell him unpleasant truths. Sabina always connected that with matrimony, remembering how her father and mother used to quarrel when he was alive, and how her brother and sister-in-law continued the tradition. If the Volterra couple were always peaceful, that was because the Baroness was in mortal awe of her fat husband, a state of life to which Sabina did not wish to be called. It was true that Malipieri's position with regard to his so-called wife had nothing to do with a real marriage, but Sabina had felt the disapproving presence of the woman she had never seen, and whom she imagined to be perpetually shaking a warning finger at Malipieri and reminding him sourly that he could not call his soul his own. The letter had destroyed the impression. Meanwhile Malipieri was appalled by the publicity of a betrothal which was never to lead to marriage. The Princess took care that as much light as possible should be cast upon the whole affair, and to the Baroness Volterra's stupefaction and delight, told every one that the match had been made under her auspices, and that the Conti family owed her eternal gratitude for it and for her care of Sabina during nearly three months. The Princess told the story of the night in the vaults again and again, to her friends and relations, extolling everything that Malipieri had done, and especially his romantic determination to show the girl he was going to marry the treasures which should have belonged to her, before any one else should see them. The Princess told Volterra, laughingly and quite frankly, that her lawyer would do everything possible to get for her a share in the value of the statues discovered, and Volterra, following her clever cue, laughed with her, and said it should be a friendly suit, and that the lawyers should decide among themselves how it should be settled, without going into court. Volterra was probably the only man in Rome who entertained a profound respect for the Princess's intelligence; yet he was reckoned a good judge in such matters. He himself was far too wise to waste regrets upon the failure of his tactics, and the stake had not been large, after all, compared with his great fortune. Magnanimity was a form of commodity which could be exchanged for popularity, and popularity was ready money. A thousand votes were as good as two million francs, any day, when one was not a senator for life, and wished to be re-elected; and a reputation for spotless integrity would cover a multitude of financial sins. Since it had been impossible to keep what did not belong to him, the next best thing was to restore it to the accompaniment of a brass band and a chorus of public approval. The Princess, clever woman, knew exactly how he felt and helped him to do the inevitable in a showy way; and it all helped her to carry her daughter and herself out of a difficult position in a blaze of triumph. "My dear," she said to the girl, "you may do anything you please, if you will only do it in public. Lock your door to say your prayers, and the world will shriek out that you have a scandal to conceal." It dawned upon Sabina that her cynical, careless, spendthrift, scatter-brained mother had perhaps after all a share of the cunning and the force which rule the world to-day, and which were so thoroughly combined in Volterra's character. That would account for the way in which she sailed through storms that would have wrecked the Baroness and drowned poor little Sabina herself. Meanwhile a hundred workmen had dug down to the vault under the courtyard of the Palazzo Conti, the statues had been lifted out intact, with cranes, and had been set upon temporary pedestals, under a spacious wooden shed; and the world, the flesh and the devil, including royalty, went to see them and talked of nothing else. All Europe heard the story of Malipieri's discovery, and of his adventure with his betrothed wife, and praised him and called him and her an "ideal couple." Sabina's brother came up from the country to be present at the Embassy dinner, and of course stopped at the Grand Hotel, and made up his mind to have an automobile at once. His wife stayed in the country with the delicate little child, but sent Sabina a note of congratulation. Clementina, writing from her convent, said she hoped that Sabina might redeem the follies of her youth in a respectable married life, but the hope was not expressed with much conviction. Sabina need not disturb the peace of a religious house by coming to see her. The Princess boldly gave out that the marriage would take place in the autumn, and confided to two or three gossips that she really meant to have a quiet wedding in the summer, because it would be so much more economical, and the young couple did not like the idea of waiting so long. As for a dowry, everybody knew that Sassi, dear, kind-hearted old man, had left Sabina what he had; and there were the statues. Prince Conti came to the Embassy as soon as he arrived, and met Malipieri, to whom he was overpoweringly cordial in his weak way. On the whole, at their first interview, he judged that it would not be easy to borrow money of him, and went away disappointed. Society asked where Malipieri's father was, and learned that he was nearly seventy and was paralysed, and never left his house in Venice, but that he highly approved of his son's marriage and wished to see his future daughter-in-law as soon as possible. The Princess said that Sabina and Malipieri would live with him, but would come to Rome for the winter. Prince Rubomirsky, Sabina's uncle, sent her a very handsome diamond necklace, which the Princess showed to all her friends, and some of them began to send wedding presents likewise, because they had been privately informed that the marriage was to take place very soon. Sabina lived joyously in the moment, apparently convinced that fate would bring everything right, and doing her best to drive away the melancholy that had settled upon Malipieri. Something would happen, she said. It was impossible that heaven could be so cruel as to part them and ruin both their lives for the sake of a promise given to a man dead long ago. Malipieri wished that he could believe it. He grew almost desperate as time went on and he saw how the Princess was doing everything to make the engagement irrevocable. He grew thin, and nervous, and his eyes were restless. The deep tan of the African sun was disappearing, too, and sometimes he looked almost ill. People said he was too much in love, and laughed. Little by little Sabina understood that she could not persuade him to trust to the future, and she grew anxious about him. He wondered how she could still deceive herself as to the inevitable end. "We can go on being engaged as long as we please," she said hopefully. "There are plenty of possible excuses." "You and I are not good at lying," he answered, with a weary smile. "We told each other so, that night." "But it is perfectly true that I am almost too young to be married," said she; "and really, you know, it might be more sensible to wait till I am nineteen." "We should not think it sensible to wait a week, if there were no hindrance. You know that." "Of course! But when there is a hindrance, as you call it, it is very sensible indeed to wait," retorted Sabina, with a truly feminine sense of the value of logic. "I shall think so, and I shall say so, if I must. Then you will have to wait, too, and what will it matter, so long as we can see each other every day? Have people never waited a year to be married?" "You know that we may wait all our lives." "No. I will not do that," Sabina said with sudden energy. "If nothing happens, I will make something happen. You know what I told you. Have you forgotten? And I am sure your father will understand." "I doubt it," Malipieri answered, smiling in spite of himself. To tell the truth, since her mother had cleared away so many dangers, and showed no intention of shutting her up in a convent, Sabina had begun to see that it would be quite another matter to run away and follow Malipieri to the ideal desert island, especially after they had been openly engaged to be married and the engagement had been broken. The world would have to know the story of his marriage then, and it would call him dishonourable for having allowed himself to be engaged to her when he was not free. It would say that she had found out the truth, and that he was a villain, or something unpleasant of that sort. But she meant to keep up the illusion bravely, as long as there was any life in it at all, and then "something must happen." "It seems so strange that I should be braver than you," she said. He did not wonder at that as much as she did. Her reputation was saved now, but his honour was in the balance, and at the mercy of a worldly and unscrupulous woman. When he broke the engagement, the Princess would tell the story of his marriage and publish it on the housetops. He told Sabina so. "You are safe," he added; "but when I lose you, I shall lose my place among honourable men." "Then I shall tell the truth, and the whole truth, to every one I know," Sabina answered, in the full conviction that truth, like faith, could perform miracles, and that a grain of it could remove mountains of evil. "I shall tell the whole world!" she cried. "I do not care what my mother says." He was silent, for it was better, after all, that she should believe in her happiness as long as she could. She said nothing more for some time and they sat quite still, thinking widely opposite thoughts. At last she laid her hand on his; the loving little way had become familiar to her since it had come instinctively the first time. "Marino!" "Yes?" "You know that I love you?" "Indeed I know it." "And you love me? Just as much? In the same way?" "Perhaps more. Who knows?" "No, that is impossible," she answered. "Now listen to me. It is out of the question that we should ever be parted, loving each other as we do, is it not?" The door opened and a servant entered, with a card. "The lady told me to inform your Excellency that she is a connection of Signor Malipieri," said the man. "She hopes that she may be received, as she is in Rome for only a few hours." Sabina looked at the card and handed it silently to Malipieri, and her fingers trembled. "Angelica Malipieri." That was the name and there was the address in Florence, in Via del Mandorlo. "Ask the lady to come here," said Sabina, quietly; but her face was suddenly very white. CHAPTER XXV Sabina and Malipieri sat in silence during the minutes that followed. From time to time, they looked at each other. His self-possession and courage had returned, now that something decisive was to take place, but Sabina's heart was almost standing still. She felt that the woman had come to make a scene, to threaten a scandal and utterly to destroy the illusion of happiness. If not, and if she had merely had something of importance to communicate, why had she not gone to Malipieri first, or written to ask for this interview with Sabina? She had come suddenly, in order to take advantage of the surprise her appearance must cause. For once, Sabina wished that her mother were with her, her high and mighty, insolent, terrible mother, who was afraid of nobody in the world. The door opened, and the footman admitted a quiet little woman, about thirty years old, already inclined to be stout. She was very simply but very well dressed, she had beautiful brown hair, and when she came forward Sabina looked into a pair of luminous and trustful hazel eyes. "Donna Sabina Conti?" asked the Signora Malipieri in a gentle voice. "Yes," Sabina answered. She and Malipieri had both risen. The Signora made a timid movement with her hand, as if she expected that Sabina would offer hers, which Sabina did, rather late, when she saw that it was expected. The lady glanced at Malipieri and then at Sabina with a look of enquiry, as he held out his hand to her and she took it. He saw that she did not recognize him. "I am Marino Malipieri," he said. "You?" she cried in surprise. Then a faint flush rose in her smooth cheeks, and Sabina, who was watching her, saw that her lip trembled a little, and that tears rose in her eyes. "Forgive me," she said, in an unsteady voice. "I should have known you, after all you have done for me." "I think it is nearly thirteen years since we met," Malipieri answered. "I had no beard then." She looked at him long, evidently in strong emotion, but the tears did not overflow, and the clear light came back gradually in her gaze. Then the three sat down. "I thought I had better come," she said. "It seemed easier than to write." "Yes," Sabina answered, not knowing what to say. "You see," said the Signora, "I could not easily write to you frankly, as I had never seen you, and I did not like to write to Signor Malipieri about what I wanted to know." "Yes," said Sabina, once more, but this time she looked at Malipieri. "What is it that you wish to know, Signora?" he asked kindly, "Whether it is all exactly as my letter told you? Is that it?" She turned to him with a look of reproach. "Does a woman doubt a man who has done what you have done for me?" she asked. "I wanted to know something more--a little more than what you wrote to me. It would make a difference, perhaps." "To you, Signora?" asked Sabina quickly. "No. To you. Perhaps it would make a great difference in the way I should act." She paused an instant. "It is rather hard to ask, I know," she added shyly. She seemed to be a timid little woman. "Please tell us what it is that you wish to know, Signora," said Malipieri, in the same kind tone, trying to encourage her. "I should like to ask--I hardly know just how to say it--if you would tell me whether you are fond of each other--" "What difference can that make to you, Signora?" Malipieri asked with sudden hardness. "You know that I shall not break my word." She was hurt by the tone, and looked down meekly, as if she had deserved the words. "We love each other with all our hearts," said Sabina, before either of the others could say more. "Nothing shall ever part us, in this world or the next." There was a ring of clear defiance to fate in the girl's voice, and Signora Malipieri turned to her quickly, with a look of sympathy. She knew the cry that comes from the heart. "But you think that you can never be married," she said, almost to herself. "How can we? You know that we cannot!" It was Malipieri who answered. Then the timid little woman raised her head and looked him full in the face, and spoke without any more hesitation. "Do you think that I have never thought of this possibility, during all these years?" she asked. "Do you really believe that I would let you suffer for me, let your life be broken, let you give up the best thing that any life holds, after you have done for me what perhaps no man ever did for a woman before?" "I know you are grateful," Malipieri answered very gently. "Do not speak of what I have done. It has not been at any sacrifice, till now." But Sabina leaned forward and grasped the Signora Malipieri's hands. Her own were trembling. "You have come to help us!" she cried. "It is so easy, now that I know that you love each other." "How?" asked Sabina, breathless. "By a divorce?" "Yes." "I shall never ask for that," Malipieri said, shaking his head. "You are the best and truest gentleman that ever protected a woman in trouble, Signor Malipieri," said the little woman quietly. "I know that you will never divorce me. I know you would not even think of it." "Well, but then--" Malipieri stopped and looked at her. "I shall get a divorce from you," she said, and then she looked happily from one to the other. Malipieri covered his eyes with his hand. He had not even thought of such a solution, and the thought came upon him in his despair like a flood of dazzling light. Sabina was on her knees, and had thrown her arms wildly round the Signora Malipieri's neck, and was kissing her again and again. "But it is nothing," protested the Signora, beaming with delight. "It is so simple, so easy, and I know exactly what to do." "You?" cried Sabina between laughing and crying. "Yes. I once gave lessons in the house of a famous lawyer, and sometimes I was asked to stay to luncheon, and I heard a great case discussed, and I asked questions, until I thoroughly understood it all. You see, it was what I always meant to do. There is a little fiction about the way it is managed, but it is perfectly legal. Though Italians may naturalize themselves in a foreign country, they can regain their own nationality by a simple declaration. Now, Signor Malipieri and I must be naturalized in Switzerland. I know a place where it can be done easily. Then we can be divorced by mutual consent at once. We come back to Italy, declare our nationality wherever we please, and we are free to be married to any one else, under Italian law. The fiction is only that by paying some money, it can all be done in three months, instead of in three years." Malipieri had listened attentively. "Are you positively sure of that?" he asked. "I have the authority of one of the first lawyers in Italy." "But the Church?" asked Sabina anxiously. "I should not think it a marriage at all, if I were not married in church." "I have asked a good priest about that," answered the Signora. "I go to confession to him, and he is a good man, and wise too. He told me that the Church could make no objection at all, since there has really been no marriage at all, and since Signor Malipieri will present himself after being properly and legally married to you at the municipality. He told me, on the contrary, that it is my duty to do everything in my power to help you." "God bless you!" Sabina cried. "You are the best woman in the world!" Malipieri took the Signora's hand and pressed it to his lips fervently, for he could not find any words. "I shall only ask one thing," she said, speaking timidly again. "Ask all I have," he answered, her hand still in his. "But you may not like it. I should like to keep the name, if you do not mind very much, on account of my little girl. She need never know. I can leave her with a friend while we are in Switzerland." "It is yours," he said. "Few of my own people have borne it as worthily as you have, since I gave it to you." * * * * * * Here, therefore, ends the story of Sabina Conti and Marino Malipieri, whose marriage took place quietly during the autumn, as the Princess had confidently said that it should. It is a tale without a "purpose" and without any particular "moral," in the present appalling acceptation, of those simple words. If it has interested or pleased those who have read it, the writer is glad; if it has not, he can find some consolation in having made two young people unutterably blissful in his own imagination, whereas he manifestly had it in his power to bring them to awful grief; and when one cannot make living men and women happy in real life, it is a harmless satisfaction to do it in a novel. If this one shows anything worth learning about the world, it is that a gifted man of strong character and honourable life may do a foolish and generous thing whereby he may become in a few days the helpless toy of fate. He who has never repented of a good impulse which has brought great trouble to other people, must be indeed a selfish soul. As for the strange circumstances I have described, I do not think any of them impossible, and many of them are founded upon well-known facts. I have myself seen, within not many years, a construction like the dry well in the Palazzo Conti, which was discovered in the foundations of a Roman palace, and had been used as an oubliette. There were skeletons in it and fragments of weapons of the sixteenth century and even of the seventeenth. There was also a communication between the cellars of the palace and the Tiber. I read George Sand's fantastic novel _Consuelo_ many years ago, and I am aware that she introduced a well, in an ancient castle, in which the water could be made to rise and fall at will, in order to establish or interrupt communication with a secret chamber. I do not know whether she imagined the construction or had seen a similar one, for such wells are said to be found in more than one old fortress in Europe. The "lost water" really exists at many points under Rome; its rising and falling are sometimes unaccountable; and I know at least one old palace in which it has been used and found pure, within the memory of man. So far, the explanations suggested by engineers have neither satisfied those who have propounded them, nor those who have had practical experience of the "lost water." The subject is extremely interesting but is one of very great difficulty, as it is generally quite impossible to make explorations in the places where the water is near the surface. The older part of modern Rome was built haphazard, and often upon the enormous substructures of ancient buildings, of which the positions can be conjectured only, and of which the plans and dimensions are very vaguely guessed by archaeologists. All that can be said with approximate certainty of the "lost water" is that it must run through long-forgotten conduits, that it rises here and there in wells, and that it is mostly uncontaminated by the river. Those familiar with the Vatican museum will have at once recognized the colossal statue of gilt bronze which now stands in the circular hall known as the "Rotonda." It was accidentally found, when I was a boy, in the courtyard of the Palazzo Righetti in the Campo dei Fiori, carefully and securely concealed by a well-built vault, evidently constructed for the purpose, in the foundations of the Theatre of Pompey. I went to see it, when only a portion of the vault had been removed, and I shall never forget the vivid impression it made upon me. So far as I know, there has not been any explanation of its having been hidden there, but among the lower classes in Rome there are traditions of great treasure supposed to be buried in other parts of the city. I have taken the liberty of making the discovery over again at a point some distance from the Palazzo Righetti, and in the present time. The statue was really found in 1864, and the gem in the ring was stolen. The marble Venus which Malipieri saw with it is imaginary, but I was also taken to see the beautiful statue of Augustus, now in the Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican, on the spot where it came to light in the Villa of Livia, in 1863. The great mediaeval family of Conti became extinct long ago. The palace to which I have given their name would stand on the site of one now the property of the Vatican, but would be of a somewhat different construction. Finally, I wish to protest that there are no so-called "portraits" in this story of the heart of old Rome. Many Romans were ruined by the financial crisis of 1888 and its consequences, either at the time or later. The family to which Sabina belonged is wholly imaginary, and its fall was due to other causes. I trust that no ingenious reader will try to trace a parallel where none exists. I would not even have a certain young and famous architect and engineer, for whom I entertain the highest admiration and esteem, recognize a "portrait" of himself in Marino Malipieri, if these pages should ever come to his notice, and I have purposely made my imaginary hero as unlike him as possible, in appearance, manner and speech. Those who have noticed the increasing tendency of modern readers to bring accusations of plagiarism against novels that deal partly with facts will understand why I have said this much about my own work. To others, the few details I have given may be of some interest. 
19732	----	[Illustration: "WHAT YOU SAID SHALL BE SACRED."] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- THE ETERNAL CITY By Hall Caine Author of "The Christian," etc. "He looked for a city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God." GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS :: NEW YORK ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright, 1901, 1902 By HALL CAINE Popular Edition Published October, 1902 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PREFACE TO THIS EDITION Has a novelist a right to alter his novel after its publication, to condense it, to add to it, to modify or to heighten its situations, and otherwise so to change it that to all outward appearance it is practically a new book? I leave this point in literary ethics to the consideration of those whose business it is to discuss such questions, and content myself with telling the reader the history of the present story. About ten years ago I went to Russia with some idea (afterwards abandoned) of writing a book that should deal with the racial struggle which culminated in the eviction of the Jews from the holy cities of that country, and the scenes of tyrannical administration which I witnessed there made a painful and lasting impression on my mind. The sights of the day often followed me through the night, and after a more than usually terrible revelation of official cruelty, I had a dream of a Jewish woman who was induced to denounce her husband to the Russian police under a promise that they would spare his life, which they said he had forfeited as the leader of a revolutionary movement. The husband came to know who his betrayer had been, and he cursed his wife as his worst enemy. She pleaded on her knees that fear for his safety had been the only motive for her conduct, and he cursed her again. His cause was lost, his hopes were dead, his people were in despair, because the one being whom heaven had given him for his support had delivered him up to his enemies out of the weakness of her womanly love. I awoke in the morning with a vivid memory of this new version of the old story of Samson and Delilah, and on my return to England I wrote the draft of a play with the incident of husband and wife as the central situation. How from this germ came the novel which was published last year under the title of "The Eternal City" would be a long story to tell, a story of many personal experiences, of reading, of travel, of meetings in various countries with statesmen, priests, diplomats, police authorities, labour leaders, nihilists and anarchists, and of the consequent growth of my own political and religious convictions; but it will not be difficult to see where and in what way time and thought had little by little overlaid the humanities of the early sketch with many extra interests. That these interests were of the essence, clothing, and not crushing the human motive, I trust I may continue to believe, and certainly I have no reason to be dissatisfied with the reception of my book at the hands of that wide circle of general readers who care less for a contribution to a great social propaganda than for a simple tale of love. But when the time came to return to my first draft of a play, the tale of love was the only thing to consider, and being now on the point of producing the drama in England, America, and elsewhere, and requested to prepare an edition of my story for the use of the audiences at the theatre, I have thought myself justified in eliminating the politics and religion from my book, leaving nothing but the human interests with which alone the drama is allowed to deal. This has not been an easy thing to do, and now that it is done I am by no means sure that I may not have alienated the friends whom the abstract problems won for me without conciliating the readers who called for the story only. But not to turn my back on the work of three laborious years, or to discredit that part of it which expressed, however imperfectly, my sympathy with the struggles of the poor, and my participation in the social problems with which the world is now astir, I have obtained the promise of my publisher that the original version of "The Eternal City" shall be kept in print as long as the public calls for it. In this form of my book, the aim has been to rely solely on the humanities and to go back to the simple story of the woman who denounced her husband in order to save his life. That was the theme of the draft which was the original basis of my novel, it is the central incident of the drama which is about to be produced in New York, and the present abbreviated version of the story is intended to follow the lines of the play in all essential particulars down to the end of the last chapter but one. H. C. Isle of Man, Sept. 1902. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- THE ETERNAL CITY PROLOGUE I He was hardly fit to figure in the great review of life. A boy of ten or twelve, in tattered clothes, with an accordion in a case swung over one shoulder like a sack, and under the other arm a wooden cage containing a grey squirrel. It was a December night in London, and the Southern lad had nothing to shelter his little body from the Northern cold but his short velveteen jacket, red waistcoat, and knickerbockers. He was going home after a long day in Chelsea, and, conscious of something fantastic in his appearance, and of doubtful legality in his calling, he was dipping into side streets in order to escape the laughter of the London boys and the attentions of policemen. Coming to the Italian quarter in Soho, he stopped at the door of a shop to see the time. It was eight o'clock. There was an hour to wait before he would be allowed to go indoors. The shop was a baker's, and the window was full of cakes and confectionery. From an iron grid on the pavement there came the warm breath of the oven underground, the red glow of the fire, and the scythe-like swish of the long shovels. The boy blocked the squirrel under his armpit, dived into his pocket, and brought out some copper coins and counted them. There was ninepence. Ninepence was the sum he had to take home every night, and there was not a halfpenny to spare. He knew that perfectly before he began to count, but his appetite had tempted him to try again if his arithmetic was not at fault. The air grew warmer, and it began to snow. At first it was a fine sprinkle that made a snow-mist, and adhered wherever it fell. The traffic speedily became less, and things looked big in the thick air. The boy was wandering aimlessly through the streets, waiting for nine o'clock. When he thought the hour was near, he realised that he had lost his way. He screwed up his eyes to see if he knew the houses and shops and signs, but everything seemed strange. The snow snowed on, and now it fell in large, corkscrew flakes. The boy brushed them from his face, but at the next moment they blinded him again. The few persons still in the streets loomed up on him out of the darkness, and passed in a moment like gigantic shadows. He tried to ask his way, but nobody would stand long enough to listen. One man who was putting up his shutters shouted some answer that was lost in the drumlike rumble of all voices in the falling snow. The boy came up to a big porch with four pillars, and stepped in to rest and reflect. The long tunnels of smoking lights which had receded down the streets were not to be seen from there, and so he knew that he was in a square. It would be Soho Square, but whether he was on the south or east of it he could not tell, and consequently he was at a loss to know which way to turn. A great silence had fallen over everything, and only the sobbing nostrils of the cab-horses seemed to be audible in the hollow air. He was very cold. The snow had got into his shoes, and through the rents in his cross-gartered stockings. His red waistcoat wanted buttons, and he could feel that his shirt was wet. He tried to shake the snow off by stamping, but it clung to his velveteens. His numbed fingers could scarcely hold the cage, which was also full of snow. By the light coming from a fanlight over the door in the porch he looked at his squirrel. The little thing was trembling pitifully in its icy bed, and he took it out and breathed on it to warm it, and then put it in his bosom. The sound of a child's voice laughing and singing came to him from within the house, muffled by the walls and the door. Across the white vapour cast outward from the fanlight he could see nothing but the crystal snowflakes falling wearily. He grew dizzy, and sat down by one of the pillars. After a while a shiver passed along his spine, and then he became warm and felt sleepy. A church clock struck nine, and he started up with a guilty feeling, but his limbs were stiff and he sank back again, blew two or three breaths on to the squirrel inside his waistcoat, and fell into a doze. As he dropped off into unconsciousness he seemed to see the big, cheerless house, almost destitute of furniture, where he lived with thirty or forty other boys. They trooped in with their organs and accordions, counted out their coppers to a man with a clipped moustache, who was blowing whiffs of smoke from a long, black cigar, with a straw through it, and then sat down on forms to eat their plates of macaroni and cheese. The man was not in good temper to-night, and he was shouting at some who were coming in late and at others who were sharing their supper with the squirrels that nestled in their bosoms, or the monkeys, in red jacket and fez, that perched upon their shoulders. The boy was perfectly unconscious by this time, and the child within the house was singing away as if her little breast was a cage of song-birds. As the church clock struck nine a class of Italian lads in an upper room in Old Compton Street was breaking up for the night, and the teacher, looking out of the window, said: "While we have been telling the story of the great road to our country a snowstorm has come, and we shall have enough to do to find our road home." The lads laughed by way of answer, and cried: "Good-night, doctor." "Good-night, boys, and God bless you," said the teacher. He was an elderly man, with a noble forehead and a long beard. His face, a sad one, was lighted up by a feeble smile; his voice was soft, and his manner gentle. When the boys were gone he swung over his shoulders a black cloak with a red lining, and followed them into the street. He had not gone far into the snowy haze before he began to realise that his playful warning had not been amiss. "Well, well," he thought, "only a few steps, and yet so difficult to find." He found the right turnings at last, and coming to the porch of his house in Soho Square, he almost trod on a little black and white object lying huddled at the base of one of the pillars. "A boy," he thought, "sleeping out on a night like this! Come, come," he said severely, "this is wrong," and he shook the little fellow to waken him. The boy did not answer, but he began to mutter in a sleepy monotone, "Don't hit me, sir. It was snow. I'll not come home late again. Ninepence, sir, and Jinny is so cold." The man paused a moment, then turned to the door rang the bell sharply. II Half-an-hour later the little musician was lying on a couch in the doctor's surgery, a cheerful room with a fire and a soft lamp under a shade. He was still unconscious, but his damp clothes had been taken off and he was wrapped in blankets. The doctor sat at the boy's head and moistened his lips with brandy, while a good woman, with the face of a saint, knelt at the end of the couch and rubbed his little feet and legs. After a little while there was a perceptible quivering of the eyelids and twitching of the mouth. "He is coming to, mother," said the doctor. "At last," said his wife. The boy moaned and opened his eyes, the big helpless eyes of childhood, black as a sloe, and with long black lashes. He looked at the fire, the lamp, the carpet, the blankets, the figures at either end of the couch, and with a smothered cry he raised himself as though thinking to escape. "Carino!" said the doctor, smoothing the boy's curly hair. "Lie still a little longer." The voice was like a caress, and the boy sank back. But presently he raised himself again, and gazed around the room as if looking for something. The good mother understood him perfectly, and from a chair on which his clothes were lying she picked up his little grey squirrel. It was frozen stiff with the cold and now quite dead, but he grasped it tightly and kissed it passionately, while big teardrops rolled on to his cheeks. "Carino!" said the doctor again, taking the dead squirrel away, and after a while the boy lay quiet and was comforted. "Italiano--si?" "Si, Signore." "From which province?" "Campagna Romana, Signore." "Where does he say he comes from, doctor?" "From the country district outside Rome. And now you are living at Maccari's in Greek Street--isn't that so?" "Yes, sir." "How long have you been in England--one year, two years?" "Two years and a half, sir." "And what is your name, my son?" "David Leone." "A beautiful name, carino! David Le-o-ne," repeated the doctor, smoothing the curly hair. "A beautiful boy, too! What will you do with him, doctor?" "Keep him here to-night at all events, and to-morrow we'll see if some institution will not receive him. David Leone! Where have I heard that name before, I wonder? Your father is a farmer?" But the boy's face had clouded like a mirror that has been breathed upon, and he made no answer. "Isn't your father a farmer in the Campagna Romana, David?" "I have no father," said the boy. "Carino! But your mother is alive--yes?" "I have no mother." "Caro mio! Caro mio! You shall not go to the institution to-morrow, my son," said the doctor, and then the mirror cleared in a moment as if the sun had shone on it. "Listen, father!" Two little feet were drumming on the floor above. "Baby hasn't gone to bed yet. She wouldn't sleep until she had seen the boy, and I had to promise she might come down presently." "Let her come down now," said the doctor. The boy was supping a basin of broth when the door burst open with a bang, and like a tiny cascade which leaps and bubbles in the sunlight, a little maid of three, with violet eyes, golden complexion, and glossy black hair, came bounding into the room. She was trailing behind her a train of white nightdress, hobbling on the portion in front, and carrying under her arm a cat, which, being held out by the neck, was coiling its body and kicking its legs like a rabbit. But having entered with so fearless a front, the little woman drew up suddenly at sight of the boy, and, entrenching herself behind the doctor, began to swing by his coat-tails, and to take furtive glances at the stranger in silence and aloofness. "Bless their hearts! what funny things they are, to be sure," said the mother. "Somebody seems to have been telling her she might have a brother some day, and when nurse said to Susanna, 'The doctor has brought a boy home with him to-night,' nothing was so sure as that this was the brother they had promised her, and yet now ... Roma, you silly child, why don't you come and speak to the poor boy who was nearly frozen to death in the snow?" But Roma's privateering fingers were now deep in her father's pocket, in search of a specimen of the sugar-stick which seemed to live and grow there. She found two sugar-sticks this time, and sight of a second suggested a bold adventure. Sidling up toward the couch, but still holding on to the doctor's coat-tails, like a craft that swings to anchor, she tossed one of the sugar-sticks on to the floor at the boy's side. The boy smiled and picked it up, and this being taken for sufficient masculine response, the little daughter of Eve proceeded to proper overtures. "Oo a boy?" The boy smiled again and assented. "Oo me brodder?" The boy's smile paled perceptibly. "Oo lub me?" The tide in the boy's eyes was rising rapidly. "Oo lub me eber and eber?" The tears were gathering fast, when the doctor, smoothing the boy's dark curls again, said: "You have a little sister of your own far away in the Campagna Romana--yes?" "No, sir." "Perhaps it's a brother?" "I ... I have nobody," said the boy, and his voice broke on the last word with a thud. "You shall not go to the institution at all, David," said the doctor softly. "Doctor Roselli!" exclaimed his wife. But something in the doctor's face smote her instantly and she said no more. "Time for bed, baby." But baby had many excuses. There were the sugar-sticks, and the pussy, and the boy-brother, and finally her prayers to say. "Say them here, then, sweetheart," said her mother, and with her cat pinned up again under one arm and the sugar-stick held under the other, kneeling face to the fire, but screwing her half-closed eyes at intervals in the direction of the couch, the little maid put her little waif-and-stray hands together and said: "Our Fader oo art in Heben, alud be dy name. Dy kingum tum. Dy will be done on eard as it is in Heben. Gib us dis day our dayey bread, and forgib us our trelspasses as we forgib dem dat trelspass ayenst us. And lee us not into temstashuns, but deliber us from ebil ... for eber and eber. Amen." The house in Soho Square was perfectly silent an hour afterward. In the surgery the lamp was turned down, the cat was winking and yawning at the fire, and the doctor sat in a chair in front of the fading glow and listened to the measured breathing of the boy behind him. It dropped at length, like a pendulum that is about to stop, into the noiseless beat of innocent sleep, and then the good man got up and looked down at the little head on the pillow. Even with the eyes closed it was a beautiful face; one of the type which great painters have loved to paint for their saints and angels--sweet, soft, wise, and wistful. And where did it come from? From the Campagna Romana, a scene of poverty, of squalor, of fever, and of death! The doctor thought of his own little daughter, whose life had been a long holiday, and then of the boy whose days had been an unbroken bondage. "Yet who knows but in the rough chance of life our little Roma may not some day ... God forbid!" The boy moved in his sleep and laughed the laugh of a dream that is like the sound of a breeze in soft summer grass, and it broke the thread of painful reverie. "Poor little man! he has forgotten all his troubles." Perhaps he was back in his sunny Italy by this time, among the vines and the oranges and the flowers, running barefoot with other children on the dazzling whiteness of the roads!... Perhaps his mother in heaven was praying her heart out to the Blessed Virgin to watch over her fatherless darling cast adrift upon the world! The train of thought was interrupted by voices in the street, and the doctor drew the curtain of the window aside and looked out. The snow had ceased to fall, and the moon was shining; the leafless trees were casting their delicate black shadows on the whitened ground, and the yellow light of a lantern on the opposite angle of the square showed where a group of lads were singing a Christmas carol. "While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground, The angel of the Lord came down, and glory shone around." Doctor Roselli closed the curtain, put out the lamp, touched with his lips the forehead of the sleeping boy, and went to bed. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PART ONE--THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE TWENTY YEARS LATER I It was the last day of the century. In a Bull proclaiming a Jubilee the Pope had called his faithful children to Rome, and they had come from all quarters of the globe. To salute the coming century, and to dedicate it, in pomp and solemn ceremony, to the return of the world to the Holy Church, one and universal, the people had gathered in the great Piazza of St. Peter. Boys and women were climbing up every possible elevation, and a bright-faced girl who had conquered a high place on the base of the obelisk was chattering down at a group of her friends who were listening to their cicerone. "Yes, that is the Vatican," said the guide, pointing to a square building at the back of the colonnade, "and the apartments of the Pope are those on the third floor, just on the level of the Loggia of Raphael. The Cardinal Secretary of State used to live in the rooms below, opening on the grand staircase that leads from the Court of Damasus. There's a private way up to the Pope's apartment, and a secret passage to the Castle of St. Angelo." "Say, has the Pope got that secret passage still?" "No, sir. When the Castle went over to the King the connection with the Vatican was cut off. Ah, everything is changed since those days! The Pope used to go to St. Peter's surrounded by his Cardinals and Bishops, to the roll of drums and the roar of cannon. All that is over now. The present Pope is trying to revive the old condition seemingly, but what can he do? Even the Bull proclaiming the Jubilee laments the loss of the temporal power which would have permitted him to renew the enchantments of the Holy City." "Tell him it's just lovely as it is," said the girl on the obelisk, "and when the illuminations begin...." "Say, friend," said her parent again, "Rome belonged to the Pope--yes? Then the Italians came in and took it and made it the capital of Italy--so?" "Just so, and ever since then the Holy Father has been a prisoner in the Vatican, going into it as a cardinal and coming out of it as a corpse, and to-day will be the first time a Pope has set foot in the streets of Rome!" "My! And shall we see him in his prison clothes?" "Lilian Martha! Don't you know enough for that? Perhaps you expect to see his chains and a straw of his bed in the cell? The Pope is a king and has a court--that's the way I am figuring it." "True, the Pope is a sovereign still, and he is surrounded by his officers of state--Cardinal Secretary, Majordomo, Master of Ceremonies, Steward, Chief of Police, Swiss Guards, Noble Guard and Palatine Guard, as well as the Papal Guard who live in the garden and patrol the precincts night and day." "Then where the nation ... prisoner, you say?" "Prisoner indeed! Not even able to look out of his windows on to this piazza on the 20th of September without the risk of insult and outrage--and Heaven knows what will happen when he ventures out to-day!" "Well! this goes clear ahead of me!" Beyond the outer cordon of troops many carriages were drawn up in positions likely to be favourable for a view of the procession. In one of these sat a Frenchman in a coat covered with medals, a florid, fiery-eyed old soldier with bristling white hair. Standing by his carriage door was a typical young Roman, fashionable, faultlessly dressed, pallid, with strong lower jaw, dark watchful eyes, twirled-up moustache and cropped black mane. "Ah, yes," said the old Frenchman. "Much water has run under the bridge since then, sir. Changed since I was here? Rome? You're right, sir. 'When Rome falls, falls the world;' but it can alter for all that, and even this square has seen its transformations. Holy Office stands where it did, the yellow building behind there, but this palace, for instance--this one with the people in the balcony...." The Frenchman pointed to the travertine walls of a prison-like house on the farther side of the piazza. "Do you know whose palace that is?" "Baron Bonelli's, President of the Council and Minister of the Interior." "Precisely! But do you know whose palace it used to be?" "Belonged to the English Wolsey, didn't it, in the days when he wanted the Papacy?" "Belonged in my time to the father of the Pope, sir--old Baron Leone!" "Leone! That's the family name of the Pope, isn't it?" "Yes, sir, and the old Baron was a banker and a cripple. One foot in the grave, and all his hopes centred in his son. 'My son,' he used to say, 'will be the richest man in Rome some day--richer than all their Roman princes, and it will be his own fault if he doesn't make himself Pope.'" "He has, apparently." "Not that way, though. When his father died, he sold up everything, and having no relations looking to him, he gave away every penny to the poor. That's how the old banker's palace fell into the hands of the Prime Minister of Italy--an infidel, an Antichrist." "So the Pope is a good man, is he?" "Good man, sir? He's not a man at all, he's an angel! Only two aims in life--the glory of the Church and the welfare of the rising generation. Gave away half his inheritance founding homes all over the world for poor boys. Boys--that's the Pope's tender point, sir! Tell him anything tender about a boy and he breaks up like an old swordcut." The eyes of the young Roman were straying away from the Frenchman to a rather shabby single-horse hackney carriage which had just come into the square and taken up its position in the shadow of the grim old palace. It had one occupant only--a man in a soft black hat. He was quite without a sign of a decoration, but his arrival had created a general commotion, and all faces were turning toward him. "Do you happen to know who that is?" said the gay Roman. "That man in the cab under the balcony full of ladies? Can it be David Rossi?" "David Rossi, the anarchist?" "Some people call him so. Do you know him?" "I know nothing about the man except that he is an enemy of his Holiness." "He intends to present a petition to the Pope this morning, nevertheless." "Impossible!" "Haven't you heard of it? These are his followers with the banners and badges." He pointed to the line of working-men who had ranged themselves about the cab, with banners inscribed variously, "Garibaldi Club," "Mazzini Club," "Republican Federation," and "Republic of Man." "Your friend Antichrist," tipping a finger over his shoulder in the direction of the palace, "has been taxing bread to build more battleships, and Rossi has risen against him. But failing in the press, in Parliament and at the Quirinal, he is coming to the Pope to pray of him to let the Church play its old part of intermediary between the poor and the oppressed." "Preposterous!" "So?" "To whom is the Pope to protest? To the King of Italy who robbed him of his Holy City? Pretty thing to go down on your knees to the brigand who has stripped you! And at whose bidding is he to protest? At the bidding of his bitterest enemy? Pshaw!" "You persist that David Rossi is an enemy of the Pope?" "The deadliest enemy the Pope has in the world." II The subject of the Frenchman's denunciation looked harmless enough as he sat in his hackney carriage under the shadow of old Baron Leone's gloomy palace. A first glance showed a man of thirty-odd years, tall, slightly built, inclined to stoop, with a long, clean-shaven face, large dark eyes, and dark hair which covered the head in short curls of almost African profusion. But a second glance revealed all the characteristics that give the hand-to-hand touch with the common people, without which no man can hope to lead a great movement. From the moment of David Rossi's arrival there was a tingling movement in the air, and from time to time people approached and spoke to him, when the tired smile struggled through the jaded face and then slowly died away. After a while, as if to subdue the sense of personal observation, he took a pen and oblong notepaper and began to write on his knees. Meantime the quick-eyed facile crowd around him beguiled the tedium of waiting with good-humoured chaff. One great creature with a shaggy mane and a sanguinary voice came up, bottle in hand, saluted the downcast head with a mixture of deference and familiarity, then climbed to the box-seat beside the driver, and in deepest bass began the rarest mimicry. He was a true son of the people, and under an appearance of ferocity he hid the heart of a child. To look at him you could hardly help laughing, and the laughter of the crowd at his daring dashes showed that he was the privileged pet of everybody. Only at intervals the downcast head was raised from its writing, and a quiet voice of warning said: "Bruno!" Then the shaggy head on the box-seat slewed round and bobbed downward with an apologetic gesture, and ten seconds afterwards plunged into wilder excesses. "Pshaw!" mopping with one hand his forehead under his tipped-up billicock, and holding the bottle with the other. "It's hot! Dog of a Government, it's hot, I say! Never mind! here's to the exports of Italy, brother; and may the Government be the first of them." "Bruno!" "Excuse me, sir; the tongue breaks no bones, sir! All Governments are bad, and the worst Government is the best." A feeble old man was at that moment crushing his way up to the cab. Seeing him approach, David Rossi rose and held out his hand. The old man took it, but did not speak. "Did you wish to speak to me, father?" "I can't yet," said the old man, and his voice shook and his eyes were moist. David Rossi stepped out of the cab, and with gentle force, against many protests, put the old man in his place. "I come from Carrara, sir, and when I go home and tell them I've seen David Rossi, and spoken to him, they won't believe me. 'He sees the future clear,' they say, 'as an almanack made by God.'" Just then there was a commotion in the crowd, an imperious voice cried, "Clear out," and the next instant David Rossi, who was standing by the step of his cab, was all but run down by a magnificent equipage with two high-stepping horses and a fat English coachman in livery of scarlet and gold. His face darkened for a moment with some powerful emotion, then resumed its kindly aspect, and he turned back to the old man without looking at the occupant of the carriage. It was a lady. She was tall, with a bold sweep of fulness in figure, which was on a large scale of beauty. Her hair, which was abundant and worn full over the forehead, was raven black and glossy, and it threw off the sunshine that fell on her face. Her complexion had a golden tint, and her eyes, which were violet, had a slight recklessness of expression. Her carriage drew up at the entrance of the palace, and the porter, with the silver-headed staff, came running and bowing to receive her. She rose to her feet with a consciousness of many eyes upon her, and with an unabashed glance she looked around on the crowd. There was a sulky silence among the people, almost a sense of antagonism, and if anybody had cheered there might have been a counter demonstration. At the same time, there was a certain daring in that marked brow and steadfast smile which seemed to say that if anybody had hissed she would have stood her ground. She lifted from the blue silk cushions of the carriage a small half-clipped black poodle with a bow of blue ribbon on its forehead, tucked it under her arm, stepped down to the street, and passed into the courtyard, leaving an odour of ottar of roses behind her. Only then did the people speak. "Donna Roma!" The name seemed to pass over the crowd in a breathless whisper, soundless, supernatural, like the flight of a bat in the dark. III The Baron Bonelli had invited certain of his friends to witness the Pope's procession from the windows and balconies of his palace overlooking the piazza, and they had begun to arrive as early as half-past nine. In the green courtyard they were received by the porter in the cocked hat, on the dark stone staircase by lackeys in knee-breeches and yellow stockings, in the outer hall, intended for coats and hats, by more lackeys in powdered wigs, and in the first reception-room, gorgeously decorated in the yellow and gold of the middle ages, by Felice, in a dress coat, the Baron's solemn personal servant, who said, in sepulchral tones: "The Baron's excuses, Excellency! Engaged in the Council-room with some of the Ministers, but expects to be out presently. Sit in the Loggia, Excellency?" "So our host is holding a Cabinet Council, General?" said the English Ambassador. "A sort of scratch council, seemingly. Something that concerns the day's doings, I guess, and is urgent and important." "A great man, General, if half one hears about him is true." "Great?" said the American. "Yes, and no, Sir Evelyn, according as you regard him. In the opinion of some of his followers the Baron Bonelli is the greatest man in the country--greater than the King himself--and a statesman too big for Italy. One of those commanding personages who carry everything before them, so that when they speak even monarchs are bound to obey. That's one view of his picture, Sir Evelyn." "And the other view?" General Potter glanced in the direction of a door hung with curtains, from which there came at intervals the deadened drumming of voices, and then he said: "A man of implacable temper and imperious soul, an infidel of hard and cynical spirit, a sceptic and a tyrant." "Which view do the people take?" "Can you ask? The people hate him for the heavy burden of taxation with which he is destroying the nation in his attempt to build it up." "And the clergy, and the Court, and the aristocracy?" "The clergy fear him, the Court detests him, and the Roman aristocracy are rancorously hostile." "Yet he rules them all, nevertheless?" "Yes, sir, with a rod of iron--people, Court, princes, Parliament, King as well--and seems to have only one unsatisfied desire, to break up the last remaining rights of the Vatican and rule the old Pope himself." "And yet he invites us to sit in his Loggia and look at the Pope's procession." "Perhaps because he intends it shall be the last we may ever see of it." "The Princess Bellini and Don Camillo Murelli," said Felice's sepulchral voice from the door. An elderly aristocratic beauty wearing nodding white plumes came in with a pallid young Roman noble dressed in the English fashion. "_You_ come to church, Don Camillo?" "Heard it was a service which happened only once in a hundred years, dear General, and thought it mightn't be convenient to come next time," said the young Roman. "And you, Princess! Come now, confess, is it the perfume of the incense which brings you to the Pope's procession, or the perfume of the promenaders?" "Nonsense, General!" said the little woman, tapping the American with the tip of her lorgnette. "Who comes to a ceremony like this to say her prayers? Nobody whatever, and if the Holy Father himself were to say...." "Oh! oh!" "Which reminds me," said the little lady, "where is Donna Roma?" "Yes, indeed, where is Donna Roma?" said the young Roman. "_Who_ is Donna Roma?" said the Englishman. "Santo Dio! the man doesn't know Donna Roma!" The white plumes bobbed up, the powdered face fell back, the little twinkling eyes closed, and the company laughed and seated themselves in the Loggia. "Donna Roma, dear sir," said the young Roman, "is a type of the fair lady who has appeared in the history of every nation since the days of Helen of Troy." "Has a woman of this type, then, identified herself with the story of Rome at a moment like the present?" said the Englishman. The young Roman smiled. "Why did the Prime Minister appoint so-and-so?--Donna Roma! Why did he dismiss such-and-such?--Donna Roma! What feminine influence imposed upon the nation this or that?--Donna Roma! Through whom come titles, decorations, honours?--Donna Roma! Who pacifies intractable politicians and makes them the devoted followers of the Ministers?--Donna Roma! Who organises the great charitable committees, collects funds and distributes them?--Donna Roma! Always, always Donna Roma!" "So the day of the petticoat politician is not over in Italy yet?" "Over? It will only end with the last trump. But dear Donna Roma is hardly that. With her light play of grace and a whole artillery of love in her lovely eyes, she only intoxicates a great capital and"--with a glance towards the curtained door--"takes captive a great Minister." "Just that," and the white plumes bobbed up and down. "Hence she defies conventions, and no one dares to question her actions on her scene of gallantry." "Drives a pair of thoroughbreds in the Corso every afternoon, and threatens to buy an automobile." "Has debts enough to sink a ship, but floats through life as if she had never known what it was to be poor." "And has she?" The voices from behind the curtained door were louder than usual at that moment, and the young Roman drew his chair closer. "Donna Roma, dear sir, was the only child of Prince Volonna. Nobody mentions him now, so speak of him in a whisper. The Volonnas were an old papal family, holding office in the Pope's household, but the young Prince of the house was a Liberal, and his youth was cast in the stormy days of the middle of the century. As a son of the revolution he was expelled from Rome for conspiracy against the papal Government, and when the Pope went out and the King came in, he was still a republican, conspiring against the reigning sovereign, and, as such, a rebel. Meanwhile he had wandered over Europe, going from Geneva to Berlin, from Berlin to Paris. Finally he took refuge in London, the home of all the homeless, and there he was lost and forgotten. Some say he practised as a doctor, passing under another name; others say that he spent his life as a poor man in your Italian quarter of Soho, nursing rebellion among the exiles from his own country. Only one thing is certain: late in life he came back to Italy as a conspirator--enticed back, his friends say--was arrested on a charge of attempted regicide, and deported to the island of Elba without a word of public report or trial." "Domicilio Coatto--a devilish and insane device," said the American Ambassador. "Was that the fate of Prince Volonna?" "Just so," said the Roman. "But ten or twelve years after he disappeared from the scene a beautiful girl was brought to Rome and presented as his daughter." "Donna Roma?" "Yes. It turned out that the Baron was a kinsman of the refugee, and going to London he discovered that the Prince had married an English wife during the period of his exile, and left a friendless daughter. Out of pity for a great name he undertook the guardianship of the girl, sent her to school in France, finally brought her to Rome, and established her in an apartment on the Trinità de' Monti, under the care of an old aunt, poor as herself, and once a great coquette, but now a faded rose which has long since seen its June." "And then?" "Then? Ah, who shall say what then, dear friend? We can only judge by what appears--Donna Roma's elegant figure, dressed in silk by the best milliners Paris can provide, queening it over half the women of Rome." "And now her aunt is conveniently bedridden," said the little Princess, "and she goes about alone like an Englishwoman; and to account for her extravagance, while everybody knows her father's estate was confiscated, she is by way of being a sculptor, and has set up a gorgeous studio, full of nymphs and cupids and limbs." "And all by virtue of--what?" said the Englishman. "By virtue of being--the good friend of the Baron Bonelli!" "Meaning by that?" "Nothing--and everything!" said the Princess with another trill of laughter. "In Rome, dear friend," said Don Camillo, "a woman can do anything she likes as long as she can keep people from talking about her." "Oh, you never do that apparently," said the Englishman. "But why doesn't the Baron make her a Baroness and have done with the danger?" "Because the Baron has a Baroness already." "A wife living?" "Living and yet dead--an imbecile, a maniac, twenty years a prisoner in his castle in the Alban hills." IV The curtain parted over the inner doorway, and three gentlemen came out. The first was a tall, spare man, about fifty years of age, with an intellectual head, features cut clear and hard like granite, glittering eyes under overhanging brows, black moustaches turned up at the ends, and iron-grey hair cropped very short over a high forehead. It was the Baron Bonelli. One of the two men with him had a face which looked as if it had been carved by a sword or an adze, good and honest but blunt and rugged; and the other had a long, narrow head, like the head of a hen--a lanky person with a certain mixture of arrogance and servility in his expression. The company rose from their places in the Loggia, and there were greetings and introductions. "Sir Evelyn Wise, gentlemen, the new British Ambassador--General Morra, our Minister of War; Commendatore Angelelli, our Chief of Police. A thousand apologies, ladies! A Minister of the Interior is one of the human atoms that live from minute to minute and are always at the mercy of events. You must excuse the Commendatore, gentlemen; he has urgent duties outside." The Prime Minister spoke with the lucidity and emphasis of a man accustomed to command, and when Angelelli had bowed all round he crossed with him to the door. "If there is any suspicion of commotion, arrest the ringleaders at once. Let there be no trifling with disorder, by whomsoever begun. The first to offend must be the first to be arrested, whether he wears cap or cassock." "Good, your Excellency," and the Chief of Police went out. "Commotion! Disorder! Madonna mia!" cried the little Princess. "Calm yourselves, ladies. It's nothing! Only it came to the knowledge of the Government that the Pope's procession this morning might be made the excuse for a disorderly demonstration, and of course order must not be disturbed even under the pretext of liberty and religion." "So that was the public business which deprived us of your society?" said the Princess. "And left my womanless house the duty of receiving you in my absence," said the Baron. The Baron bowed his guests to their seats, stood with his back to a wide ingle, and began to sketch the Pope's career. "His father was a Roman banker--lived in this house, indeed--and the young Leone was brought up in the Jesuit schools and became a member of the Noble Guard: handsome, accomplished, fond of society and social admiration, a man of the world. This was a cause of disappointment to his father, who has intended him for a great career in the Church. They had their differences, and finally a mission was found for him and he lived a year abroad. The death of the old banker brought him back to Rome, and then, to the astonishment of society, he renounced the world and took holy orders. Why he gave up his life of gallantry did not appear...." "Some affair of the heart, dear Baron," said the little Princess, with a melting look. "No, there was no talk of that kind, Princess, and not a whisper of scandal. Some said the young soldier had married in England, and lost his wife there, but nobody knew for certain. There was less doubt about his religious vocation, and when by help of his princely inheritance he turned his mind to the difficult task of reforming vice and ministering to the lowest aspects of misery in the slums of Rome, society said he had turned Socialist. His popularity with the people was unbounded, but in the midst of it all he begged to be removed to London. There he set up the same enterprises, and tramped the streets in search of his waifs and outcasts, night and day, year in, year out, as if driven on by a consuming passion of pity for the lost and fallen. In the interests of his health he was called back to Rome--and returned here a white-haired man of forty." "Ah! what did I say, dear Baron? The apple falls near the tree, you know!" "By this time he had given away millions, and the Pope wished to make him President of his Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics, but he begged to be excused. Then Apostolic Delegate to the United States, and he prayed off. Then Nuncio to Spain, and he went on his knees to remain in the Campagna Romana, and do the work of a simple priest among a simple people. At last, without consulting him they made him Bishop, and afterwards Cardinal, and, on the death of the Pope, he was Scrutator to the Conclave, and fainted when he read out his own name as that of Sovereign Pontiff of the Church." The little Princess was wiping her eyes. "Then--all the world was changed. The priest of the future disappeared in a Pope who was the incarnation of the past. Authority was now his watchword. What was the highest authority on earth? The Holy See! Therefore, the greatest thing for the world was the domination of the Pope. If anybody should say that the power conferred by Christ on his Vicar was only spiritual, let him be accursed! In Christ's name the Pope was sovereign--supreme sovereign over the bodies and souls of men--acknowledging no superior, holding the right to make and depose kings, and claiming to be supreme judge over the consciences and crimes of all--the peasant that tills the soil, and the prince that sits on the throne!" "Tre-men-jous!" said the American. "But, dear Baron," said the little Princess, "don't you think there was an affair of the heart after all?" and the little plumes bobbed sideways. The Baron laughed again. "The Pope seems to have half of humanity on his side already--he has the women apparently." All this time there had risen from the piazza into the room a humming noise like the swarming of bees, but now a shrill voice came up from the crowd with the sudden swish of a rocket. "Look out!" The young Roman, who had been looking over the balcony, turned his head back and said: "Donna Roma, Excellency." But the Baron had gone from the room. "He knew her carriage wheels apparently," said Don Camillo, and the lips of the little Princess closed tight as if from sudden pain. V The return of the Baron was announced by the faint rustle of a silk under-skirt and a light yet decided step keeping pace with his own. He came back with Donna Roma on his arm, and over his coolness and calm dignity he looked pleased and proud. The lady herself was brilliantly animated and happy. A certain swing in her graceful carriage gave an instant impression of perfect health, and there was physical health also in the brightness of her eyes and the gaiety of her expression. Her face was lighted up by a smile which seemed to pervade her whole person and make it radiant with overflowing joy. A vivacity which was at the same time dignified and spontaneous appeared in every movement of her harmonious figure, and as she came into the room there was a glow of health and happiness that filled the air like the glow of sunlight through a veil of soft red gauze. She saluted the Baron's guests with a smile that fascinated everybody. There was a modified air of freedom about her, as of one who has a right to make advances, a manner which captivates all women in a queen and all men in a lovely woman. "Ah, it is you, General Potter? And my dear General Morra? Camillo mio!" (The Italian had rushed upon her and kissed her hand.) "Sir Evelyn Wise, from England, isn't it? I'm half an Englishwoman myself, and I'm very proud of it." She had smiled frankly into Sir Evelyn's face, and he had smiled back without knowing it. There was something contagious about her smile. The rosy mouth with its pearly teeth seemed to smile of itself, and the lovely eyes had their separate art of smiling. Her lips parted of themselves, and then you felt your own lips parting. "You were to have been busy with your fountain to-day...." began the Baron. "So I expected," she said in a voice that was soft yet full, "and I did not think I should care to see any more spectacles in Rome, where the people are going in procession all the year through--but what do you think has brought me?" "The artist's instinct, of course," said Don Camillo. "No, just the woman's--to see a man!" "Lucky fellow, whoever he is!" said the American. "He'll see something better than you will, though," and then the golden complexion gleamed up at him under a smile like sunshine. "But who is he?" said the young Roman. "I'll tell you. Bruno--you remember Bruno?" "Bruno!" cried the Baron. "Oh! Bruno is all right," she said, and, turning to the others, "Bruno is my man in the studio--my marble pointer, you know. Bruno Rocco, and nobody was ever so rightly named. A big, shaggy, good-natured bear, always singing or growling or laughing, and as true as steel. A terrible Liberal, though; a socialist, an anarchist, a nihilist, and everything that's shocking." "Well?" "Well, ever since I began my fountain ... I'm making a fountain for the Municipality--it is to be erected in the new part of the Piazza Colonna. I expect to finish it in a fortnight. You would like to see it? Yes? I'll send you cards--a little private view, you know." "But Bruno?" "Ah! yes, Bruno! Well, I've been at a loss for a model for one of my figures ... figures all round the dish, you know. They represent the Twelve Apostles, with Christ in the centre giving out the water of life." "But Bruno! Bruno! Bruno!" She laughed, and the merry ring of her laughter set them all laughing. "Well, Bruno has sung the praises of one of his friends until I'm crazy ... crazy, that's English, isn't it? I told you I was half an Englishwoman. American? Thanks, General! I'm 'just crazy' to get him in." "Simple enough--hire him to sit to you," said the Princess. "Oh," with a mock solemnity, "he is far too grand a person for that! A member of Parliament, a leader of the Left, a prophet, a person with a mission, and I daren't even dream of it. But this morning, Bruno tells me, his friend, his idol, is to stop the Pope's procession, and present a petition, so I thought I would kill two birds with one stone--see my man and see the spectacle--and here I am to see them!" "And who is this paragon of yours, my dear?" "The great David Rossi!" "_That_ man!" The white plumes were going like a fan. "The man is a public nuisance and ought to be put down by the police," said the little Princess, beating her foot on the floor. "He has a tongue like a sword and a pen like a dagger," said the young Roman. Donna Roma's eyes began to flash with a new expression. "Ah, yes, he is a journalist, isn't he, and libels people in his paper?" "The creature has ruined more reputations than anybody else in Europe," said the little Princess. "I remember now. He made a terrible attack on our young old women and our old young men. Declared they were meddling with everything--called them a museum of mummies, and said they were symbolical of the ruin that was coming on the country. Shameful, wasn't it? Nobody likes to be talked about, especially in Rome, where it's the end of everything. But what matter? The young man has perhaps learned freedom of speech in some free country. We can afford to forgive him, can't we? And then he is so interesting and so handsome!" "An attempt to stop the Pope's procession might end in tumult," said the American General to the Italian General. "Was that the danger the Baron spoke about?" "Yes," said General Morra. "The Government have been compelled to tax bread, and of course that has been a signal for the enemies of the national spirit to say that we are starving the people. This David Rossi is the worst Roman in Rome. He opposed us in Parliament and lost. Petitioned the King and lost again. Now he intends to petition the Pope--with what hope, Heaven knows." "With the hope of playing on public opinion, of course," said the Baron cynically. "Public opinion is a great force, your Excellency," said the Englishman. "A great pestilence," said the Baron warmly. "What is David Rossi?" "An anarchist, a republican, a nihilist, anything as old as the hills, dear friend, only everything in a new way," said the young Roman. "David Rossi is the politician who proposes to govern the world by the precepts of the Lord's Prayer," said the American. "The Lord's Prayer!" The Baron paraded on the hearthrug. "David Rossi," he said compassionately, "is a creature of his age. A man of generous impulses and wide sympathies, moved to indignation at the extremes of poverty and wealth, and carried away by the promptings of the eternal religion in the human soul. A dreamer, of course, a dreamer like the Holy Father himself, only his dream is different, and neither could succeed without destroying the other. In the millennium Rossi looks for, not only are kings and princes to disappear, but popes and prelates as well." "And where does this unpractical politician come from?" said the Englishman. "We must ask you to tell us that, Sir Evelyn, for though he is supposed to be a Roman, he seems to have lived most of his life in your country. As silent as an owl and as inscrutable as a sphinx. Nobody in Rome knows certainly who his father was, nobody knows certainly who his mother was. Some say his father was an Englishman, some say a Jew, and some say his mother was a gipsy. A self-centred man, who never talks about himself, and cannot be got to lift the veil which surrounds his birth and early life. Came back to Rome eight years ago, and made a vast noise by propounding his platonic scheme of politics--was called up for his term of military service, refused to serve, got himself imprisoned for six months and came out a mighty hero--was returned to Parliament for no fewer than three constituencies, sat for Rome, took his place on the Extreme Left, and attacked every Minister and every measure which favoured the interest of the army--encouraged the workmen not to pay their taxes and the farmers not to pay their rents--and thus became the leader of a noisy faction, and is now surrounded by the degenerate class throughout Italy which dreams of reconstructing society by burying it under ruins." "Lived in England, you say?" "Apparently, and if his early life could be traced it would probably be found that he was brought up in an atmosphere of conspiracy--perhaps under the influence of some vile revolutionary living in London under the protection of your too liberal laws." Donna Roma sprang up with a movement full of grace and energy. "Anyhow," she said, "he is young and good-looking and romantic and mysterious, and I'm head over ears in love with him already." "Well, every man is a world," said the American. "And what about woman?" said Roma. He threw up his hands, she smiled full into his face, and they laughed together. VI A fanfare of trumpets came from the piazza, and with a cry of delight Roma ran into the balcony, followed by all the women and most of the men. "Only the signal that the cortège has started," said Don Camillo. "They'll be some minutes still." "Santo Dio!" cried Roma. "What a sight! It dazzles me; it makes me dizzy!" Her face beamed, her eyes danced, and she was all aglow from head to foot. The American Ambassador stood behind her, and, as permitted by his greater age, he tossed back the shuttlecock of her playful talk with chaff and laughter. "How patient the people are! See the little groups on camp-stools munching biscuits and reading the journals. 'La Vera Roma!'" (mimicking the cry of the newspaper sellers). "Look at that pretty girl--the fair one with the young man in the Homburg hat! She has climbed up the obelisk, and is inviting him to sit on an inch and a half of corbel beside her." "Ah, those who love take up little room!" "Don't they? What a lovely world it is! I'll tell you what this makes me think about--a wedding! Glorious morning, beautiful sunshine, flowers, wreaths, bridesmaids ready; coachman all a posy, only waiting for the bride!" "A wedding is what you women are always dreaming about--you begin dreaming about it in your cradles--it's in a woman's bones, I do believe," said the American. "Must be the ones she got from Adam, then," said Roma. Meantime the Baron was still parading the hearthrug inside and listening to the warnings of his Minister of War. "You are resolved to arrest the man?" "If he gives us an opportunity--yes." "You do not forget that he is a Deputy?" "It is because I remember it that my resolution is fixed. In Parliament he is a privileged person; let him make half as much disorder outside and you shall see where he will be." "Anarchists!" said Roma. "That group below the balcony? Is David Rossi among them? Yes? Which of them? Which? Which? Which? The tall man in the black hat with his back to us? Oh! why doesn't he turn his face? Should I shout?" "Roma!" from the little Princess. "I know; I'll faint, and you'll catch me, and the Princess will cry 'Madonna mia!' and then he'll turn round and look up." "My child!" "He'll see through you, though, and then where will you be?" "See through me, indeed!" and she laughed the laugh a man loves to hear, half-raillery, half-caress. "Donna Roma Volonna, daughter of a line of princes, making love to a nameless nobody!" "Shows what a heavenly character she is, then! See how good I am at throwing bouquets at myself?" "Well, what is love, anyway? A certain boy and a certain girl agree to go for a row in the same boat to the same place, and if they pull together, what does it matter where they come from?" "What, indeed?" she said, and a smile, partly serious, played about the parted mouth. "Could _you_ think like that?" "I could! I could! I could!" The clock struck eleven. Another fanfare of trumpets came from the direction of the Vatican, and then the confused noises in the square suddenly ceased and a broad "Ah!" passed over it, as of a vast living creature taking breath. "They're coming!" cried Roma. "Baron, the cortège is coming." "Presently," the Baron answered from within. Roma's dog, which had slept on a chair through the tumult, was awakened by the lull and began to bark. She picked it up, tucked it under her arm and ran back to the balcony, where she stood by the parapet, in full view of the people below, with the young Roman on one side, the American on the other, and the ladies seated around. By this time the procession had begun to appear, issuing from a bronze gate under the right arm of the colonnade, and passing down the channel which had been kept open by the cordon of infantry. Roma abandoned herself to the fascinations of the scene, and her gaiety infected everybody. "Camillo, you must tell me who they all are. There now--those men who come first in black and red?" "Laymen," said the young Roman. "They're called the Apostolic Cursori. When a Cardinal is nominated they take him the news, and get two or three thousand francs for their trouble." "And these little fat folk in white lace pinafores?" "Singers of the Sistine Chapel. That's the Director, old Maestro Mustafa--used to be the greatest soprano of the century." "And this dear old friar with the mittens and rosary and the comfortable linsey-woolsey sort of face?" "That's Father Pifferi of San Lorenzo, confessor to the Pope. He knows all the Pope's sins." "Oh!" said Roma. At that moment her dog barked furiously, and the old friar looked up at her, whereupon she smiled down on him, and then a half-smile played about his good-natured face. "He is a Capuchin, and those Frati in different colours coming behind him...." "I know them; see if I don't," she cried, as there passed under the balcony a double file of friars and monks. "The brown ones--Capuchins and Franciscans! Brown and white--Carmelites! Black--Augustinians and Benedictines! Black with a white cross--Passionists! And the monks all white are Trappists. I know the Trappists best, because I drive out to Tre Fontane to buy eucalyptus and flirt with Father John." "Shocking!" said the American. "Why not? What are their vows of celibacy but conspiracies against us poor women? Nearly every man a woman wants is either mated or has sworn off in some way. Oh, how I should love to meet one of those anchorites in real life and make him fly!" "Well, I dare say the whisk of a petticoat would be more frightening than all his doctors of divinity." "Listen!" From a part of the procession which had passed the balcony there came the sound of harmonious voices. "The singers of the Sistine Chapel! They're singing a hymn." "I know it. '_Veni, Creator!_' How splendid! How glorious! I feel as if I wanted to cry!" All at once the singing stopped, the murmuring and speaking of the crowd ceased too, and there was a breathless moment, such as comes before the first blast of a storm. A nervous quiver, like the shudder that passes over the earth at sundown, swept across the piazza, and the people stood motionless, every neck stretched, and every eye turned in the direction of the bronze gate, as if God were about to reveal Himself from the Holy of Holies. Then in that grand silence there came the clear call of silver trumpets, and at the next instant the Presence itself. "The Pope! Baron, the Pope!" The atmosphere was charged with electricity. A great roar of cheering went up from below like the roaring of surf, and it was followed by a clapping of hands like the running of the sea off a shingly beach after the boom of a tremendous breaker. An old man, dressed wholly in white, carried shoulder-high on a chair glittering with purple and crimson, and having a canopy of silver and gold above him. He wore a triple crown, which glistened in the sunlight, and but for the delicate white hand which he upraised to bless the people, he might have been mistaken for an image. His face was beautiful, and had a ray of beatified light on it--a face of marvellous sweetness and great spirituality. It was a thrilling moment, and Roma's excitement was intense. "There he is! All in white! He's on a gilded chair under the silken canopy! The canopy is held up by prelates, and the chairmen are in knee-breeches and red velvet. Look at the great waving plumes on either side!" "Peacock's feathers!" said a voice behind her, but she paid no heed. "Look at the acolytes swinging incense, and the golden cross coming before! What thunders of applause--I can hardly hear myself speak. It's like standing on a cliff while the sea below is running mountains high. No, it's like no other sound on earth; it's human--fifty thousand unloosed throats of men! That's the clapping of ladies--listen to the weak applause of their white-gloved fingers. Now they're waving their handkerchiefs. Look! Like the wings of ten thousand butterflies fluttering up from a meadow." Roma's abandonment was by this time complete; she was waving her handkerchief and crying "_Viva il Papa Re!_" "They're bearing him slowly along. He's coming this way. Look at the Noble Guard in their helmets and jackboots. And there are the Swiss Guard in Joseph's coat of many colours! We can see him plainly now. Do you smell the incense? It's like the ribbon of Bruges. The pluviale? That gold vestment? It's studded on his breast with precious stones. How they blaze in the sunshine! He is blessing the people, and they are falling on their knees before him." "Like the grass before the scythe!" "How tired he looks! How white his face is! No, not white--ivory! No, marble--Carrara marble! He might be Lazarus who was dead and has come back from the tomb! No humanity left in him! A saint! An angel!" "The spiritual autocrat of the world!" "_Viva il Papa Re!_ He's going by! _Viva il Papa Re!_ He has gone.... Well!" She was rising from her knees and wiping her eyes, trying to cover up with laughter the confusion of her rapture. "What is that?" There was a sound of voices in the distance chanting dolorously. "The cantors intoning _Tu es Petrus_," said Don Camillo. "No, I mean the commotion down there. Somebody is pushing through the Guard." "It's David Rossi," said the American. "Is that David Rossi? Oh, dear me! I had forgotten all about him." She moved forward to see his face. "Why ... where have I ... I've seen him before somewhere." A strange physical sensation tingled all over her at that moment, and she shuddered as if with sudden cold. "What's amiss?" "Nothing! But I like him. Do you know, I really like him." "Women are funny things," said the American. "They're nice, though, aren't they?" And two rows of pearly teeth between parted lips gleamed up at him with gay raillery. Again she craned forward. "He is on his knees to the Pope! Now he'll present the petition. No ... yes ... the brutes! They're dragging him away! The procession is going on! Disgraceful!" "Long live the Workmen's Pope!" came up from the piazza, and under the shrill shouts of the pilgrims were heard the monotonous voices of the monks as they passed through the open doors of the Basilica intoning the praises of God. "They're lifting him on to a car," said the American. "David Rossi?" "Yes; he is going to speak." "How delightful! Shall we hear him? Good! How glad I am that I came! He is facing this way! Oh, yes; those are his own people with the banners! Baron, the Holy Father has gone on to St. Peter's, and David Rossi is going to speak." "Hush!" A quivering, vibrating voice came up from below, and in a moment there was a dead silence. VII "Brothers, when Christ Himself was on the earth going up to Jerusalem, He rode on the colt of an ass, and the blind and the lame and the sick came to Him, and He healed them. Humanity is sick and blind and lame to-day, brothers, but the Vicar of Christ goes on." At the words an audible murmur came from the crowd, such as goes before the clapping of hands in a Roman theatre, a great upheaval of the heart of the audience to the actor who has touched and stirred it. "Brothers, in a little Eastern village a long time ago, there arose among the poor and lowly a great Teacher, and the only prayer He taught His followers was the prayer 'Our Father who art in Heaven.' It was the expression of man's utmost need, the expression of man's utmost hope. And not only did the Teacher teach that prayer--He lived according to the light of it. All men were His brothers, all women His sisters; He was poor, He had no home, no purse, and no second coat; when He was smitten He did not smite back, and when He was unjustly accused He did not defend Himself. Nineteen hundred years have passed since then, brothers, and the Teacher who arose among the poor and lowly is now a great Prophet. All the world knows and honours Him, and civilised nations have built themselves upon the religion He founded. A great Church calls itself by His name, and a mighty kingdom, known as Christendom, owes allegiance to His faith. But what of His teaching? He said: 'Resist not evil,' yet all Christian nations maintain standing armies. He said: 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,' yet the wealthiest men are Christian men, and the richest organisation in the world is the Christian Church. He said: 'Our Father who art in Heaven,' yet men who ought to be brothers are divided into states, and hate each other as enemies. He said: 'Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is done in Heaven,' yet he who believes it ever will come is called a fanatic and a fool." Some murmurs of dissent were drowned in cries of "Go on!" "Speak!" "Silence!" "Foremost and grandest of the teachings of Christ are two inseparable truths--the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. But in Italy, as elsewhere, the people are starved that king may contend with king, and when we appeal to the Pope to protest in the name of the Prince of Peace, he remembers his temporalities and passes on!" At these words the emotion of the crowd broke into loud shouts of approval, with which some groans were mingled. Roma had turned her face aside from the speaker, and her profile was changed--the gay, sprightly, airy, radiant look had given way to a serious, almost a melancholy expression. "We have two sovereigns in Rome, brothers, a great State and a great Church, with a perishing people. We have soldiers enough to kill us, priests enough to tell us how to die, but no one to show us how to live." "Corruption! Corruption!" "Corruption indeed, brothers; and who is there among us to whom the corruptions of our rulers are unknown? Who cannot point to the wars made that should not have been made? to the banks broken that should not have broken? And who in Rome cannot point to the Ministers who allow their mistresses to meddle in public affairs and enrich themselves by the ruin of all around?" The little Princess on the balcony was twisting about. "What! Are you deserting us, Roma?" And Roma answered from within the house, in a voice that sounded strange and muffled: "It was cold on the balcony, I think." The little Princess laughed a bitter laugh, and David Rossi heard it and misunderstood it, and his nostrils quivered like the nostrils of a horse, and when he spoke again his voice shook with passion. "Who has not seen the splendid equipages of these privileged ones of fortune--their gorgeous liveries of scarlet and gold--emblems of the acid which is eating into the public organs? Has Providence raised this country from the dead only to be dizzied in a whirlpool of scandal, hypocrisy, and fraud--only to fall a prey to an infamous traffic without a name between high officials of low desires and women whose reputations are long since lost? It is men and women like these who destroy their country for their own selfish ends. Very well, let them destroy her; but before they do so, let them hear what one of her children says: The Government you are building up on the whitened bones of the people shall be overthrown--the King who countenances you, and the Pope who will not condemn you, shall be overthrown, and then--and not till then--will the nation be free." At this there was a terrific clamour. The square resounded with confused voices. "Bravo!" "Dog!" "Dog's murderer!" "Traitor!" "Long live David Rossi!" "Down with the Vampire!" The ladies had fled from the balcony back to the room with cries of alarm. "There will be a riot." "The man is inciting the people to rebellion!" "This house will be first to be attacked!" "Calm yourselves, ladies. No harm shall come to you," said the Baron, and he rang the bell. There came from below a babel of shouts and screams. "Madonna mia! What is that?" cried the Princess, wringing her hands; and the American Ambassador, who had remained on the balcony, said: "The Carabineers have charged the crowd and arrested David Rossi." "Thank God!" "They're going through the Borgo," said Don Camillo, "and kicking and cuffing and jostling and hustling all the way." "Don't be alarmed! There's the Hospital of Santo Spirito round the corner, and stations of the Red Cross Society everywhere," said the Baron, and then Felice answered the bell. "See our friends out by the street at the back, Felice. Good-bye, ladies! Have no fear! The Government does not mean to blunt the weapons it uses against the malefactors who insult the doctrines of the State." "Excellent Minister!" said the Princess. "Such canaglia are not fit to have their liberty, and I would lock them all up in prison." And then Don Camillo offered his arm to the little lady with the white plumes, and they came almost face to face with Roma, who was standing by the door hung with curtains, fanning herself with her handkerchief, and parting from the English Ambassador. "Donna Roma," he was saying, "if I can ever be of use to you, either now or in the future, I beg of you to command me." "Look at her!" whispered the Princess. "How agitated she is! A moment ago she was finding it cold in the Loggia! I'm so happy!" At the next instant she ran up to Roma and kissed her. "Poor child! How sorry I am! You have my sympathy, my dear! But didn't I tell you the man was a public nuisance, and ought to be put down by the police?" "Shameful, isn't it?" said Don Camillo. "Calumny is a little wind, but it raises such a terrible tempest." "Nobody likes to be talked about," said the Princess, "especially in Rome, where it is the end of everything." "But what matter? Perhaps the young man has learned freedom of speech in a free country!" said Don Camillo. "And then he is so interesting and so handsome," said the Princess. Roma made no answer. There was a slight drooping of the lovely eyes and a trembling of the lips and nostrils. For a moment she stood absolutely impassive, and then with a flash of disdain she flung round into the inner room. VIII Roma had taken refuge in the council-room. There had been much business that morning, and a copy of the constitutional statute lay open on a large table, which had a plate-glass top with photographs under the surface. In this passionless atmosphere, so little accustomed to such scenes, Roma sat in her wounded pride and humiliation, with her head down, and her beautiful white hands over her face. She heard measured footsteps approaching, and then a hand touched her on the shoulder. She looked up and drew back as if the touch stung her. Her lips closed sternly, and she got up and began to walk about the room, and then she burst into a torrent of anger. "Did you hear them? The cats! How they loved to claw me, and still purr and purr! Before the sun is set the story will be all over Rome! It has run off already on the hoofs of that woman's English horses. To-morrow morning it will be in every newspaper in the kingdom. Olga and Lena and every woman of them all who lives in a glass house will throw stones. 'The new Pompadour! Who is she?' Oh, I could die of vexation and shame!" The Baron leaned against the table and listened, twisting the ends of his moustache. "The Court will turn its back on me now. They only wanted a good excuse to put their humiliations upon me. It's horrible! I can't bear it. I won't. I tell you, I won't!" But the lips, compressed with scorn, began to quiver visibly, and she threw herself into a chair, took out her handkerchief, and hid her face on the table. At that moment Felice came into the room to say that the Commendatore Angelelli had returned and wished to speak with his Excellency. "I will see him presently," said the Baron, with an impassive expression, and Felice went out silently, as one who had seen nothing. The Baron's calm dignity was wounded. "Be so good as to have some regard for me in the presence of my servants," he said. "I understand your feelings, but you are much too excited to see things in their proper light. You have been publicly insulted and degraded, but you must not talk to me as if it were my fault." "Then whose is it? If it is not your fault, whose fault is it?" she said, and the Baron thought her red eyes flashed up at him with an expression of hate. He took the blow full in the face, but made no reply, and his silence broke her answer. "No, no, that was too bad," she said, and she reached over to him, and he kissed her and then sat down beside her and took her hand and held it. At the next moment her brilliant eyes had filled with tears and her head was down and the hot drops were falling on to the back of his hand. "I suppose it is all over," she said. "Don't say that," he answered. "We don't know what a day may bring forth. Before long I may have it in my power to silence every slander and justify you in the eyes of all." At that she raised her head with a smile and seemed to look beyond the Baron at something in the vague distance, while the glass top of the table, which had been clouded by her breath, cleared gradually, and revealed a large house almost hidden among trees. It was a photograph of the Baron's castle in the Alban hills. "Only," continued the Baron, "you must get rid of that man Bruno." "I will discharge him this very day--I will! I will! I will!" There was an intense bitterness in the thought that what David Rossi had said must have come of what her own servant told him--that Bruno had watched her in her own house day by day, and that time after time the two men had discussed her between them. "I could kill him," she said. "Bruno Rocco?" "No, David Rossi." "Have patience; he shall be punished," said the Baron. "How?" "He shall be put on his trial." "What for?" "Sedition. The law allows a man to say what he will about a Prime Minister, but he must not foretell the overthrow of the King. The fellow has gone too far at last. He shall go to Santo Stefano." "What good will that do?" "He will be silenced--and crushed." She looked at the Baron with a sidelong smile, and something in her heart, which she did not understand, made her laugh at him. "Do you imagine you can crush a man like that by trying and condemning him?" she said. "He has insulted and humiliated me, but I'm not silly enough to deceive myself. Try him, condemn him, and he will be greater in his prison than the King on his throne." The Baron twisted the ends of his moustache again. "Besides," she said, "what benefit will it be to me if you put him on trial for inciting the people to rebellion against the King? The public will say it was for insulting yourself, and everybody will think he was punished for telling the truth." The Baron continued to twist the ends of his moustache. "Benefit!" She laughed ironically. "It will be a double injury. The insult will be repeated in public again and again. First the advocate for the crown will read it aloud, then the advocate for the defence will quote it, and then it will be discussed and dissected and telegraphed until everybody in court knows it by heart and all Europe has heard of it." The Baron made no answer, but watched the beautiful face, now very pale, behind which conflicting thoughts seemed to wriggle like a knot of vipers. Suddenly she leaped up with a spring. "I know!" she cried. "I know! I know! I know!" "Well?" "Give the man to me, and I will show you how to escape from this humiliating situation." "Roma?" said the Baron, but he had read her thought already. "If you punish him for this speech you will injure both of us and do no good to the King." "It's true." "Take him in a serious conspiracy, and you will be doing us no harm and the King some service." "No doubt." "You say there is a mystery about David Rossi, and you want to know who he is, who his father was, and where he spent the years he was away from Rome." "I would certainly give a good deal to know." "You want to know what vile refugee in London filled him with his fancies, what conspiracies he is hatching, what secret societies he belongs to, and, above all, what his plans and schemes are, and whether he is in league with the Vatican." She spoke so rapidly that the words sputtered out of her quivering lips. "Well?" "Well, I will find it all out for you." "My dear Roma!" "Leave him to me, and within a month you shall know"--she laughed, a little ashamed--"the inmost secrets of his soul." She was walking to and fro again, to prevent the Baron from looking into her face, which was now red over its white, like a rose moon in a stormy sky. The Baron thought. "She is going to humble the man by her charms--to draw him on and then fling him away, and thus pay him back for what he has done to-day. So much the better for me if I may stand by and do nothing. A strong Minister should be unmoved by personal attacks. He should appear to regard them with contempt." He looked at her, and the brilliancy of her eyes set his heart on fire. The terrible attraction of her face at that moment stirred in him the only love he had for her. At the same time it awakened the first spasm of jealousy. "I understand you, Roma," he said. "You are splendid! You are irresistible! But remember--the man is one of the incorruptible." She laughed. "No woman who has yet crossed his path seems to have touched him, and it is the pride of all such men that no woman ever can." "I've seen him," she said. "Take care! As you say, he is young and handsome." She tossed her head and laughed again. The Baron thought: "Certainly he has wounded her in a way no woman can forgive." "And what about Bruno?" he said. "He shall stay," she answered. "Such men are easy enough to manage." "You wish me to liberate David Rossi and leave you to deal with him?" "I do! Oh, for the day when I can turn the laugh against him as he has turned the laugh against me! At the top of his hopes, at the height of his ambitions, at the moment when he says to himself, 'It is done'--he shall fall." The Baron touched the bell. "Very well!" he said. "One can sometimes catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than with a hogshead of vinegar. We shall see." A moment later the Chief of Police entered the room. "The Honourable Rossi is safely lodged in prison," he said. "Commendatore," said the Baron, pointing to the book lying open on the table, "I have been looking again at the statute, and now I am satisfied that a Deputy can be arrested by the authorisation of Parliament alone." "But, Excellency, if he is taken in the act, according to the forty-fifth article, the parliamentary immunity ceases." "Commendatore, I have given you my opinion, and now it is my wish that the Honourable David Rossi should be set at liberty." "Excellency!" "Be so good as to liberate him instantly, and let your officers see him safely through the streets to his home in the Piazza Navona." The little head like a hen's went down like a hatchet, and Commendatore Angelelli backed out of the room. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PART TWO--THE REPUBLIC OF MAN I The Piazza Navona is the heart and soul of old Rome. In other quarters of the living city you feel tempted to ask: "Is this London?" or, "Is this Paris?" or, "Is this New York or Berlin?" but in the Piazza Navona you can only tell yourself, "This is Rome!" In an apartment-house of the Piazza Navona, David Rossi had lived during the seven years since he became Member of Parliament for Rome. The ground floor is a Trattoria, half eating-house and half wine-shop, with rude frescoes on its distempered walls, representing the Bay of Naples with Vesuvius in eruption. A passage running by the side of the Trattoria leads to the apartments overhead, and at the foot of the staircase there is a porter's lodge, a closet always lighted by a lamp, which burns down the dark passage day and night, like a bloodshot eye. In this lodge lived a veteran Garibaldian, in his red shirt and pork-pie hat, with his old wife, wrinkled like a turkey, and wearing a red handkerchief over her head, fastened by a silver pin. David Rossi's apartments consisted of three rooms on the fourth floor, two to the front, the third to the back, and a lead flat opening out of them on to the roof. In one of the front rooms on the afternoon of the Pope's Jubilee, a young woman sat knitting with an open book on her lap, while a boy of six knelt by her side, and pretended to learn his lesson. She was a comely but timid creature, with liquid eyes and a soft voice, and he was a shock-headed little giant, like the cub of a young lion. "Go on, Joseph," said the woman, pointing with her knitting-needle to the line on the page. "'And it came to pass....'" But Joseph's little eyes were peering first at the clock on the mantel-piece, and then out at the window and down the square. "Didn't you say they were to be here at two, mamma?" "Yes, dear. Mr. Rossi was to be set free immediately, and papa, who ran home with the good news, has gone back to fetch him." "Oh! 'And it came to pass afterward that he loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. And the lords of the Philistines came unto her, and said unto her, Entice him and see wherein his great strength lieth....' But, mamma...." "Go on with your lesson, Joseph. 'And she made him sleep....'" "'And she made him sleep upon her knees, and she called for a man, and she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head....'" At that moment there came a knock at the door, whereupon the boy uttered a cry of delight, and with a radiant face went plunging and shouting out of the room. "Uncle David! It's Uncle David!" The tumultuous voice rolled like baby thunder through the apartment until it reached the door, and then it dropped to a dead silence. "Who is it, Joseph?" "A gentleman," said the boy. II It was the fashionable young Roman with the watchful eyes and twirled-up moustache, who had stood by the old Frenchman's carriage in the Piazza of St. Peter. "I wish to speak with Mr. Rossi. I bring him an important message from abroad. He is coming along with the people, but to make sure of an interview I hurried ahead. May I wait?" "Certainly! Come in, sir! You say he is coming? Yes? Then he is free?" The woman's liquid eyes were glistening visibly, and the man's watchful ones seemed to notice everything. "Yes, madam, he is free. I saw him arrested, and I also saw him set at liberty." "Really? Then you can tell me all about it? That's good! I have heard so little of all that happened, and my boy and I have not been able to think of anything else. Sit down, sir!" "As the police were taking him to the station-house in the Borgo," said the stranger, "the people made an attempt to rescue him, and it seemed as if they must certainly have succeeded if it had not been for his own intervention." "He stopped them, didn't he? I'm sure he stopped them!" "He did. The delegate had given his three warnings, and the Brigadier was on the point of ordering his men to fire, when the prisoner threw up his hands before the crowd." "I knew it! Well?" "'Brothers,' he said, 'let no blood be shed for my sake. We are in God's hands. Go home!'" "How like him! And then, sir?" "Then the crowd broke up like a bubble, and the officer who was in charge of him uncovered his head. 'Room for the Honourable Rossi!' he cried, and the prisoner went into the prison." The liquid eyes were running over by this time, and the soft voice was trembling: "You say you saw him set at liberty?" "Yes! I was in the public service myself until lately, so they allowed me to enter the police station, and when the order for release came I was present and heard all. 'Deputy,' said the officer, 'I have the honour to inform you that you are free.' 'But before I go I must say something,' said the Deputy. 'My only orders are that you are to be set at liberty,' said the officer. 'Nevertheless, I must see the Minister,' said Mr. Rossi. But the crowd had pressed in and surrounded him, and in a moment the flood had carried him out into the street, with shouts and the waving of hats and a whirlwind of enthusiasm. And now he is being drawn by force through the city in a mad, glad, wild procession." "But he deserves it all, and more--far, far more!" The stranger looked at the woman's beaming eyes, and said, "You are not his wife--no?" "Oh, no! I'm only the wife of one of his friends," she answered. "But you live here?" "We live in the rooms on the roof." "Perhaps you keep house for the Deputy?" "Yes--that is to say--yes, we keep house for Mr. Rossi." At that moment the room, which had been gloomy, was suddenly lighted by a shaft of sunshine, and there came from some unseen place a musical noise like the rippling of waters in a fountain. "It's the birds," said the woman, and she threw open a window that was also a door and led to a flat roof on which some twenty or thirty canaries were piping and shrilling their little swollen throats in a gigantic bird-cage. "Mr. Rossi's?" "Yes, and he is fond of animals also--dogs and cats and rabbits and squirrels, especially squirrels." "Squirrels?" "He has a grey one in a cage on the roof now. But he is not like some people who love animals--he loves children, too. He loves all children, and as for Joseph...." "The little boy who cried 'Uncle David' at the door?" "Yes, sir. One day my husband said 'Uncle David' to Mr. Rossi, and he has been Uncle David to my little Joseph ever since." "This is the dining-room, no doubt," said the stranger. "Unfortunately, yes, sir." "Why unfortunately?" "Because here is the hall, and here is the table, and there's not even a curtain between, and the moment the door is opened he is exposed to everybody. People know it, too, and they take advantage. He would give the chicken off his plate if he hadn't anything else. I have to scold him a little sometimes--I can't help it. And as for father, he says he has doubled his days in purgatory by the lies he tells, turning people away." "That will be his bedroom, I suppose," said the stranger, indicating a door which the boy had passed through. "No, sir, his sitting-room. That is where he receives his colleagues in Parliament, and his fellow-journalists, and his electors and printers and so forth. Come in, sir." The walls were covered with portraits of Mazzini, Garibaldi, Kossuth, Lincoln, Washington, and Cromwell, and the room, which had been furnished originally with chairs covered in chintz, was loaded with incongruous furniture. "Joseph, you've been naughty again! My little boy is all for being a porter, sir. He has got the butt-end of his father's fishing-rod, you see, and torn his handkerchief into shreds to make a tassel for his mace." Then with a sweep of the arm, "All presents, sir. He gets presents from all parts of the world. The piano is from England, but nobody plays, so it is never opened; the books are from Germany, and the bronze is from France, but the strangest thing of all, sir, is this." "A phonograph?" "It was most extraordinary. A week ago a cylinder came from the island of Elba." "Elba? From some prisoner, perhaps?" "'A dying man's message,' Mr. Rossi called it. 'We must save up for an instrument to reproduce it, Sister,' he said. But, look you, the very next day the carriers brought the phonograph." "And then he reproduced the message?" "I don't know--I never asked. He often turns on a cylinder to amuse the boy, but I never knew him try that one. This is the bedroom, sir; you may come in." It was a narrow room, very bright and lightsome, with its white counterpane, white bed curtains, and white veil over the looking-glass to keep it from the flies. "How sweet!" said the stranger. "It would be but for these," said the woman, and she pointed to the other end of the room, where a desk stood between two windows, amid heaps of unopened newspapers, which lay like fishes as they fall from the herring net. "I presume this is a present also?" said the stranger. He had taken from the desk a dagger with a lapis-lazuli handle, and was trying its edge on his finger-nail. "Yes, sir, and he has turned it to account as a paper-knife. A six-chamber revolver came yesterday, but he had no use for that, so he threw it aside, and it lies under the newspapers." "And who is this?" said the stranger. He was looking at a faded picture in an ebony frame which hung by the side of the bed. It was the portrait of an old man with a beautiful forehead and a patriarchal face. "Some friend of Mr. Rossi's in England, I think." "An English photograph, certainly, but the face seems to me Roman for all that." At that moment a thousand lusty voices burst on the air, as a great crowd came pouring out of the narrow lanes into the broad piazza. At the same instant the boy shouted from the adjoining room, and another voice that made the walls vibrate came from the direction of the door. "They're coming! It's my husband! Bruno!" said the woman, and the ripple of her dress told the stranger she had gone. III Laughing, crying, cheering, chaffing, singing, David Rossi's people had brought him home in triumph, and now they were crowding upon him to kiss his hand, the big-hearted, baby-headed, beloved children of Italy. The object of this aurora of worship stood with his back to the table in the dining-room, looking down and a little ashamed, while Bruno Rocco, six feet three in his stockings, hoisted the boy on to his shoulder, and shouted as from a tower to everybody as they entered by the door: "Come in, sonny, come in! Don't stand there like the Pope between the devil and the deep sea. Come in among the people," and Bruno's laughter rocked through the room to where the crowd stood thick on the staircase. "The Baron has had a lesson," said a man with a sheet of white paper in his hand. "He dreamed of getting the Collar of the Annunziata out of this." "The pig dreamed of acorns," said Bruno. "It's a lesson to the Church as well," said the man with the paper. "She wouldn't have anything to do with us. 'I alone strike the hour of the march,' says the Church." "And then she stands still!" said Bruno. "The mountains stand still, but men are made to walk," said the man with the paper, "and if the Pope doesn't advance with the people, the people must advance without the Pope." "The Pope's all right, sonny," said Bruno, "but what does he know about the people? Only what his black-gowned beetles tell him!" "The Pope has no wife and children," said the man with the paper. "Old Vampire could find him a few," said Bruno, and then there was general laughter. "Brothers," said David Rossi, "let us be temperate. There's nothing to be gained by playing battledore and shuttlecock with the name of an old man who has never done harm to any one. The Pope hasn't listened to us to-day, but he is a saint all the same, and his life has been a lesson in well-doing." "Anybody can sail with a fair wind, sir," said Bruno. "Let us be prudent. There's no need for violence, whether of the hand or of the tongue. You've found that out this morning. If you had rescued me from the police, I should have been in prison again by this time, and God knows what else might have happened. I'm proud of your patience and forbearance; and now go home, boys, and God bless you." "Stop a minute!" said the man with the paper. "Something to read before we go. While the Carabineers kept Mr. Rossi in the Borgo, the Committee of Direction met in a café and drew up a proclamation." "Read it, Luigi," said David Rossi, and the man opened his paper and read: "Having appealed in vain to Parliament and to the King against the tyrannical tax which the Government has imposed upon bread in order that the army and navy may be increased, and having appealed in vain to the Pope to intercede with the civil authorities, and call back Italy to its duty, it now behoves us, as a suffering and perishing people, to act on our own behalf. Unless annulled by royal decree, the tax will come into operation on the 1st of February. On that day let every Roman remain indoors until an hour after Ave Maria. Let nobody buy so much as one loaf of bread, and let no bread be eaten, except such as you give to your children. Then, at the first hour of night, let us meet in the Coliseum, tens of thousands of fasting people, of one mind and heart, to determine what it is our duty to do next, that our bread may be sure and our water may not fail." "Good!" "Beautiful!" "Splendid!" "Only wants the signature of the president," said the reader, and Bruno called for pen and ink. "Before I sign it," said Rossi, "let it be understood that none come armed. There is nothing our enemies would like better than to fix on us the names of rioters and rebels. We must defeat them. We must show the world that we alone are the people of law and order. Therefore I call on you to promise that none come armed." "We promise," cried several voices. "And now go home, boys, and God bless you." After a moment there was only one man left in the room. It was the fashionable young Roman with the watchful eyes and twirled-up moustache. "For you, sir!" said the young man, taking a letter from a pocket inside his waistcoat. David Rossi opened the letter and read: "The bearer of this, Charles Minghelli, is one of ourselves. He has determined upon the accomplishment of a great act, and wishes to see you with respect to it." "You come from London?" "Yes, sir." "You wish to speak to me?" "I do." "You may speak freely." The young man glanced in the direction of Bruno and of Bruno's wife, who stood beside him. "It is a delicate matter, sir," he said. "Come this way," said David Rossi, and he took the stranger into his bedroom. IV David Rossi took his seat at the desk between the windows, and made a sign to the man to take a chair that stood near. "Your name is Charles Minghelli?" said David Rossi. "Yes. I have come to propose a dangerous enterprise." "What is it?" "That somebody on behalf of the people should take the law into his own hands." The man had spoken with perfect calmness, and after a moment of silence David Rossi replied as calmly: "I will ask you to explain what you mean." The man smiled, made a deferential gesture, and answered, "You will permit me to speak plainly?" "Certainly." "Thanks! I have read your Creed and Charter. I have even signed my name to it. It is beautiful as a theory--most beautiful! And the Republic of Man is beautiful too. Beautiful!" "Well?" "But more beautiful than practical, dear sir, and the ideal thread that runs through your plan will break the moment the rough world begins to tug at it." "I will ask you to be more precise," said David Rossi. "With pleasure. You have called a meeting in the Coliseum to protest against the bread-tax. What if the Government prohibits it? Your principle of passive resistance will not permit you to rebel, and without the right of public meeting your association is powerless. Then where are you?" David Rossi had taken up his paper-knife dagger and was drawing lines with the point of it on the letter of introduction which now lay open on the desk. The man saw the impression he had produced, and went on with more vigour. "If the Governments of the world deny you the right of meeting, where are your weapons of warfare? On the one side armies on armies of men marshalled and equipped with all the arts and engines of war; on the other side a helpless multitude with their hands in their pockets, or paying a penny a week subscription to the great association that is to overcome by passive suffering the power of the combined treasuries of the world!" David Rossi had risen from his seat, and was walking backward and forward with a step that was long and slow. "Well, and what do _you_ say we ought to do?" he said. A flash came from the man's eyes, and he said in a thick voice: "Remove the one man in Rome whose hand crushes the nation." "The Prime Minister?" "Yes." There was silence. "You expect me to do that?" "No! I will do it for you.... Why not? If violence is wrong, it is right to resist violence." David Rossi returned to his seat at the desk, touched the letter of introduction, and said: "That is the great act referred to in this letter from London?" "Yes." "Why do you come to me?" he said. "Because you can help me to accomplish this act. You are a Member of Parliament, and can give me cards to the Chamber. You can show me the way to the Prime Minister's room in Monte Citorio, and tell me the moment when he is to be found alone." "I do not deny that the Prime Minister deserves death." "A thousand deaths, sir, and everybody would hail them with delight." "I do not deny that his death would be a relief to the people." "On the day he dies, sir, the people will live." "Or that crimes--great crimes--have been the means of bringing about great reforms." "You are right, sir--but it would be no crime." The stranger's face flushed up, his eyes seemed to burn, and he leaned over to the desk and took up the dagger. "See! Give me this! It's exactly what I want. I'll put it in a bouquet of flowers, and pretend to offer them. Only a way to do it, sir! Say the word--may I take it?" "But the man who assumes such a mission," said David Rossi, "must know himself free from every thought of personal vengeance." The dagger trembled in the stranger's hand. "He must be prepared to realise the futility of what he has done--to know that even when he succeeds he only changes the persons, not the things; the actors, not the parts." The man stood like one who had been stunned, with his mouth partly open, and balancing the dagger on one hand. "More than that," said David Rossi; "he must be prepared to be told by every true friend of freedom that the man who uses force is not worthy of liberty--that the conflict of intellects alone is human, and to fight otherwise is to be on the level of the brute." The man threw the dagger back on the desk and laughed. "I knew you talked like that to the people--statesmen do sometimes--that's all right--it's pretty, and it keeps the people quiet--but _we_...." David Rossi rose with a sovereign dignity, but he only said: "Mr. Minghelli, our interview is at an end." "So you dismiss me?" "I do," said David Rossi. "It is such men as you who put back the progress of the world and make it possible for the upholders of authority to describe our efforts as devilish machinations for the destruction of all order, human and divine. Besides that, you speak as one who has not only a perverted political sentiment, but a personal quarrel against an enemy." The man faced round sharply, came back with a quick step, and said: "You say I speak as one who has a personal quarrel with the Prime Minister. Perhaps I have! I heard your speech this morning about his mistress, with her livery of scarlet and gold. You meant the woman who is known as Donna Roma Volonna. What if I tell you she is not a Volonna at all, but a girl the Minister picked up in the streets of London, and has palmed off on Rome as the daughter of a noble house, because he is a liar and a cheat?" David Rossi gave a start, as if an invisible hand had smitten him. "Her name is Roma, certainly," said the man; "that was the first thing that helped me to seize the mysterious thread." David Rossi's face grew pale, and he scarcely breathed. "Oh, I'm not talking without proof," said the man. "I was at the Embassy in London ten years ago when the Ambassador was consulted by the police authorities about an Italian girl who had been found at night in Leicester Square. Mother dead, father gone back to Italy--she had been living with some people her father gave her to as a child, but had turned out badly and run away." David Rossi had fixed his eyes on the stranger with a kind of glassy stare. "I went with the Ambassador to Bow Street, and saw the girl in the magistrate's office. She pleaded that she had been ill-treated, but we didn't believe her story, and gave her back to her guardians. A month later we heard that she had run away once more and disappeared entirely." David Rossi was breathing audibly, and shrinking like an old man into his shoulders. "I never saw that girl again until a week ago, and where do you think I saw her?" David Rossi swallowed his saliva, and said: "Where?" "In Rome. I had trouble at the Embassy, and came back to appeal to the Prime Minister. Everybody said I must reach him through Donna Roma, and one of my relatives took me to her rooms. The moment I set eyes on her I knew who she was. Donna Roma Volonna is the girl Roma Roselli, who was lost in the streets of London." David Rossi seemed suddenly to grow taller. "You scoundrel!" he said, in a voice that was hollow and choked. The man staggered back and stammered: "Why ... what...." "I knew that girl. Until she was seven years of age she was my constant companion--she was the same as my sister--and her father was the same as my father--and if you tell me she is the mistress.... You infamous wretch! You calumniator! You villain! I could confound you with one word, but I won't. Out of my house this moment! And if ever you cross my path again I'll denounce you to the police as a cut-throat and an assassin." Stunned and stupefied, the man opened the door and fled. V David Rossi came out with his long slow step, looking pale but calm, and tearing a letter into small pieces, which he threw into the fire. "What was amiss, sir? They could hear you across the street," said Bruno. "A man whose room was better than his company, that's all." "What's his name?" said Bruno. "Charles Minghelli." "Why, that must be the secretary who was suspected of forgery at the Embassy in London, and got dismissed." "I thought as much!" said David Rossi. "No doubt the man attributed his dismissal to the Prime Minister, and wanted to use me for his private revenge." "That was his game, was it? Why didn't you let me know, sir? He would have gone downstairs like a falling star. Now that I remember, he's the nephew of old Polomba, the Mayor, and I've seen him at Donna Roma's." A waiter in a white smock, with a large tin box on his head, entered the hall, and behind him came the old woman from the porter's lodge, with the wrinkled face and the red cotton handkerchief. "Come in," cried Bruno. "I ordered the best dinner in the Trattoria, sir, and thought we might perhaps dine together for once." "Good," said David Rossi. "Here it is, a whole basketful of the grace of God, sir! Out with it, Riccardo," and while the women laid the table, Bruno took the dishes smoking hot from their temporary oven with its charcoal fire. "Artichokes--good. Chicken--good again. I must be a fox--I was dreaming of chicken all last night! _Gnocchi!_ (potatoes and flour baked). _Agradolce!_ (sour and sweet). _Fagioletti!_ (French beans boiled) and--a half-flask of Chianti! Who said the son of my mother couldn't order a dinner? All right, Riccardo; come back at Ave Maria." The waiter went off, and the company sat down to their meal, Bruno and his wife at either end of the table, and David Rossi on the sofa, with the boy on his right, and the cat curled up into his side on the left, while the old woman stood in front, serving the food and removing the plates. "Look at him!" said the old woman, who was deaf, pointing to David Rossi, with his two neighbours. "Now, why doesn't the Blessed Virgin give him a child of his own?" "She has, mother, and here he is," said David Rossi. "You'll let her give him a woman first, won't you?" said Bruno. "Ah! that will never be," said David Rossi. "What does he say?" said the old woman with her hand at her ear like a shell. "He says he won't have any of you," bawled Bruno. "What an idea! But I've heard men say that before, and they've been married sooner than you could say 'Hail Mary.'" "It isn't an incident altogether unknown in the history of this planet, is it, mother?" said Bruno. "A heart to share your sorrows and joys is something, and the man is not wise who wastes the chance of it," said the old woman. "Does he think parliaments will make up for it when he grows old and wants something to comfort him?" "Hush, mother!" said Elena, but Bruno made mouths at her to let the old woman go on. "As for me, I'll want somebody of my own about me to close my eyes when the time comes to put the sacred oil on them," said the old woman. "If a man has dedicated his life to work for humanity," said David Rossi, "he must give up many things--father, mother, wife, child." The corner of Elena's apron crept up to the corner of her eye, but the old woman, who thought the subject had changed, laughed and said: "That's just what I say to Tommaso. 'Tommaso,' I say, 'if a man is going to be a policeman he must have no father, or mother, or wife, or child--no, nor bowels neither,' I say. And Tommaso says, 'Francesca,' he says, 'the whole tribe of gentry they call statesmen are just policemen in plain clothes, and I do believe they've only liberated Mr. Rossi as a trap to catch him again when he has done something.'" "They won't catch _you_ though, will they, mother?" shouted Bruno. "That they won't! I'm deaf, praise the saints, and can't hear them." A knock came to the door, and seizing his mace the boy ran and opened it. An old man stood on the threshold. He was one of David Rossi's pensioners. Ninety years of age, his children all dead, he lived with his grandchildren, and was one of the poor human rats who stay indoors all day and come out with a lantern at night to scour the gutters of the city for the refuse of cigar-ends. "Come another night, John," said Bruno. But David Rossi would not send him away empty, and he was going off with the sparkling eyes of a boy, when he said: "I heard you in the piazza this morning, Excellency! Grand! Only sorry for one thing." "And what was that, sonny?" asked Bruno. "What his Excellency said about Donna Roma. She gave me a half-franc only yesterday--stopped the carriage to do it, sir." "So that's your only reason...." began Bruno. "Good reason, too. Good-night, John!" said David Rossi, and Joseph closed the door. "Oh, she has her virtues, like every other kind of spider," said Bruno. "I'm sorry I spoke of her," said David Rossi. "You needn't be, though. She deserved all she got. I haven't been two years in her studio without knowing what she is." "It was the man I was thinking of, and if I had remembered that the woman must suffer...." "Tut! She'll have to make her Easter confession a little earlier, that's all." "If she hadn't laughed when I was speaking...." "You're on the wrong track now, sir. That wasn't Donna Roma. It was the little Princess Bellini. She is always stretching her neck and screeching like an old gandery goose." Dinner was now over, and the boy called for the phonograph. David Rossi went into the sitting-room to fetch it, and Elena went in at the same time to light the fire. She was kneeling with her back to him, blowing on to the wood, when she said in a trembling voice: "I'm a little sorry myself, sir, if I may say so. I can't believe what they say about the mistress, but even if it's true we don't know _her_ story, do we?" Then the phonograph was turned on, and Joseph marched to the tune of "Swannee River" and the strains of Sousa's band. "Mr. Rossi," said Bruno, between a puff and a blow. "Yes?" "Have you tried the cylinder that came first?" "Not yet." "How's that, sir?" "The man who brought it said the friend who had spoken into it was dead." And then with a shiver, "It would be like a voice from the grave--I doubt if I dare hear it." "Like a ghost speaking to a man, certainly--especially if the friend was a close one." "He was the closest friend I ever had, Bruno--he was my father." "Father?" "Foster-father, anyway. For four years he clothed and fed and educated me, and I was the same as his own son." "Had he no children of his own?" "One little daughter, no bigger than Joseph when I saw her last--Roma." "Roma?" "Yes, her father was a Liberal, and her name was Roma." "What became of her?" "When the doctor came to Italy on the errand which ended in his imprisonment he gave her into the keeping of some Italian friends in London. I was too young to take charge of her then. Besides, I left England shortly afterward and went to America." "Where is she now?" said Elena. "When I returned to England ... she was dead." "Well, there's nothing new under the sun of Rome--Donna Roma came from London," said Bruno. David Rossi felt the muscles of his face quiver. "Her father was an exile in England, too, and when he came back on the errand that ended in Elba, he gave her away to some people who treated her badly--I've heard old Teapot, the Countess, say so when she's been nagging her poor niece." David Rossi breathed painfully. "Strange if it should be the same," said Bruno. "But Mr. Rossi's Roma is dead," said Elena. "Ah, of course, certainly! What a fool I am!" said Bruno. David Rossi had a sense of suffocation, and he went out on to the lead flat. VI The Ave Maria was ringing from many church towers, and the golden day was going down with the sun behind the dark outline of the dome of St. Peter's, while the blue night was rising over the snow-capped Apennines in a premature twilight with one twinkling star. David Rossi's ears buzzed as with the sound of a mighty wind rushing through trees at a distance. Bruno's last words on top of Charles Minghelli's had struck him like an alarum bell heard through the mists of sleep, and his head was stunned and his eyes were dizzy. He buttoned his coat about him, and walked quickly to and fro on the lead flat by the side of the cage, in which the birds were already bunched up and silent. Before he was aware of the passing of time, the church bells were tolling the first hour of night. Presently he became aware of flares burning in the Piazza of St. Peter, and of the shadows of giant heads cast up on the walls of the vast Basilica. It was the crowd gathering for the last ceremonial of the Pope's Jubilee, and at the sound of a double rocket, which went up as with the crackle of musketry, little Joseph came running on to the roof, followed by his mother and Bruno. David Rossi took the boy into his arms and tried to dispel the gloom of his own spirits in the child's joy at the illuminations. "Ever see 'luminations before, Uncle David?" said Joseph. "Once, dear, but that was long ago and far away. I was a boy myself in those days, and there was a little girl with me then who was no bigger than you are now. But it's growing cold, there's frost in the air, besides it's late, and little boys must go to bed." "Well, God is God, and the Pope is His Prophet," said Bruno, when Elena and Joseph had gone indoors. "It was like day! You could see the lightning conductor over the Pope's apartment! Pshew!" blowing puffs of smoke from his twisted cigar. "Won't keep the lightning off, though." "Bruno!" "Yes, sir?" "Donna Roma's father would be Prince Volonna?" "Yes, the last prince of the old papal name. When the Volonna estates were confiscated, the title really lapsed, but old Vampire got the lands." "Did you ever hear that he bore any other name during the time he was in exile?" "Sure to, but there was no trial and nothing was known. They all changed their names, though." "Why ... what...." said David Rossi in an unsteady voice. "Why?" said Bruno. "Because they were all condemned in Italy, and the foreign countries were told to turn them out. But what am I talking about? You know all that better than I do, sir. Didn't your old friend go under a false name?" "Very likely--I don't know," said David Rossi, in a voice that testified to jangled nerves. "Did he ever tell you, sir?" "I can't say that he ever.... Certainly the school of revolution has always had villains enough, and perhaps to prevent treachery...." "You may say so! The devil has the run of the world, even in England. But I'm surprised your old friend, being like a father to you, didn't tell you--at the end anyway...." "Perhaps he intended to--and then perhaps...." David Rossi put his hand to his brow as if in pain and perplexity, and began again to walk backward and forward. A screamer in the piazza below cried "_Trib-un-a!_" and Bruno said: "That's early! What's up, I wonder? I'll go down and get a paper." Darkness had by this time re-invaded the sky, and the stars looked down from their broad dome, clear, sweet, white, and serene, putting to shame by their immortal solemnity the poor little mimes, the paltry puppet-shows of the human jackstraws who had just been worshipping at their self-made shrine. As David Rossi returned to the house, Elena, who was undressing the boy, saw a haggard look in his eyes, but Bruno, who was reading his evening journal, saw nothing, and cried out: "Helloa! Listen to this, sir. It's Olga. She's got a pen, I can tell you. 'Madame de Pompadour. Hitherto we have had the pleasure of having Madame ----, whose pressure on the State and on Italy's wise counsellors was only incidental, but now that the fates have given us a Madame Pompadour....' Then there's a leading article on your speech in the piazza. Praises you up to the skies. Look! 'Thank God we have men like the Honourable Rossi, who at the risk of....'" But with a clouded brow David Rossi turned away from him and passed into the sitting-room, and Bruno looked around in blank bewilderment. "Shall you want the lamp, sir?" said Elena. "Not yet, thank you," he answered through the open door. The wood fire was glowing on the hearth, and in the acute state of his nerves he shuddered involuntarily as its reflection in the window opposite looked back at him like a fiery eye. He opened the case of the phonograph, which had been returned to its place on the piano, and then from a drawer in the bureau he took a small cardboard box. The wood in the fire flickered at that moment and started some ghastly shadows on the ceiling, but he drew a cylinder from the box and slid it on to the barrel of the phonograph. Then he stepped to the door, shut and locked it. VII "Well!" said Bruno. "If that isn't enough to make a man feel as small as a sardine!" There was only one thing to do, but to conceal the nature of it Bruno flourished the newspaper and said: "Elena, I must go down to the lodge and read these articles to your father. Poor Donna Roma, she'll have to fly, I'm afraid. Bye-bye, Garibaldi-Mazzini! Early to bed, early to rise, and time enough to grow old, you know!... As for Mr. Rossi, he might be a sinner and a criminal instead of the hero of the hour! It licks me to little bits." And Bruno carried his dark mystery down to the café to see if it might be dispelled by a litre of autumnal light from sunny vineyards. Meantime, Joseph, being very tired, was shooting out a pettish lip because he had to go to bed without saying good-night to Uncle David; and his mother, making terms with this pretence, consented to bring down his nightdress, thinking Rossi might be out of the sitting-room by that time, and the boy be pacified. But when she returned to the dining-room the sitting-room door was still closed, and Joseph was pleading to be allowed to lie on the sofa until Uncle David carried him to bed. "I'm not asleep, mamma," came in a drowsy voice from the sofa, but almost at the same moment the measured breath slowed down, the watch-lights blinked themselves out, and the little soul slid away into the darksome kingdom of unconsciousness. Suddenly, in the silence of the room, Elena was startled by a voice. It came from the sitting-room. Was it Mr. Rossi's voice? No! The voice was older and feebler than Mr. Rossi's, and less clear and distinct. Could it be possible that somebody was with him? If so, the visitor must have arrived while she was in the bedroom above. But why had she not heard the knock? How did it occur that Joseph had not told her? And then the lamp was still on the dining-room table, and save for the firelight the sitting-room must be dark. A chill began to run through her blood, and she tried to hear what was said, but the voice was muffled by its passage through the wall, and she could only catch a word or two. Presently the strange voice, without stopping, was broken in upon by a voice that was clear and familiar, but now faltering with the note of pain: "I swear to God I will!" That was Mr. Rossi's voice, and Elena's head began to go round. Whom was he speaking to? Who was speaking to him? He went into the room alone, he was sitting in the dark, and yet there were two voices. A light dawned on Elena, and she could have laughed. What had terrified her as a sort of supernatural thing was only the phonograph! But after a moment a fresh tremor struck upon her in the agony of the exclamations with which David Rossi broke in upon the voice that was being reproduced by the machine. She could hear his words distinctly, and he was in great trouble. Hardly knowing what she did, she crept up to the door and listened. Even then, she could only follow the strange voice in passages, which were broken and submerged by the whirring of the phonograph, like the flight of a sea-bird which dips at intervals and leaves nothing but the wash of the waves. "David," said the voice, "when this shall come to your hands ... in my great distress of mind ... do not trifle with my request ... but whatever you decide to do ... be gentle with the child ... remember that ... Adieu, my son ... the end is near ... if death does not annihilate ... those who remain on earth ... a helper and advocate in heaven ... Adieu!" And interrupting these broken words were half-smothered cries and sobs from David Rossi, repeating again and again: "I will! I swear to God I will!" Elena could bear the pain no longer, and mustering up her courage she tapped at the door. It was a gentle tap, and no answer was returned. She knocked louder, and then an angry voice said: "Who's there?" "It's I--Elena," she answered timidly. "Is anything the matter? Aren't you well, sir?" "Ah, yes," came back in a calmer voice, and after a shuffling sound as of the closing of drawers, David Rossi opened the door and came out. As he crossed the threshold he cast a backward glance into the dark room, as if he feared that some invisible hand would touch him on the shoulder. His face was pale and beads of perspiration stood on his forehead, but he smiled, and in a voice that was a little hoarse, yet fairly under control, he said: "I'm afraid I've frightened you, Elena." "You're not well, sir. Sit down, and let me run for some cognac." "No! It's nothing! Only...." "Take this glass of water, sir." "That's good! I'm better now, and I'm ashamed. Elena, you mustn't think any more of this, and whatever I may do in the future that seems to you to be strange, you must promise me never to mention it." "I needn't _promise_ you that, sir," said Elena. "Bruno is a brave, bright, loyal soul, Elena, but there are times...." "I know--and I'll never mention it to anybody. But you've taken a chill on the roof at sunset looking at the illuminations--that's all it is! The nights are frosty now, and I was to blame that I didn't send out your cloak." Then she tried to be cheerful, and turning to the sleeping boy, said: "Look! He was naughty again and wouldn't go to bed until you came out to carry him." "The dear little man!" said David Rossi. He stepped up to the couch, but his pale face was preoccupied, and he looked at Elena again and said: "Where does Donna Roma live?" "Trinità de' Monti--eighteen," said Elena. "Is it late?" "It must be half-past eight at least, sir." "We'll take Joseph to bed then." He was putting his arms about the boy to lift him when a slippery-sloppery step was heard on the stairs, followed by a hurried knock at the door. It was the old Garibaldian porter, breathless, bareheaded, and in his slippers. "Father!" cried Elena. "It's she. She's coming up." At the next moment a lady in evening dress was standing in the hall. It was Donna Roma. She had unclasped her ermine cloak, and her bosom was heaving with the exertion of the ascent. "May I speak to Mr. Rossi?" she began, and then looking beyond Elena and seeing him, where he stood above the sleeping child, a qualm of faintness seemed to seize her, and she closed her eyes for a moment. David Rossi's face flushed to the roots of his hair, but he stepped forward, bowed deeply, led the way to the sitting-room, and, with a certain incoherency in his speech, said: "Come in! Elena will bring the lamp. I shall be back presently." Then, lifting little Joseph in his arms, he carried him up to bed, tucked him in his cot, smoothed his pillow, made the sign of the cross over his forehead, and came back to the sitting-room with the air of a man walking in a dream. VIII Being left alone, Roma looked around, and at a glance she took in everything--the thin carpet, the plain chintz, the prints, the incongruous furniture. She saw the photograph on the piano, still standing open, with a cylinder exposed, and in the interval of waiting she felt almost tempted to touch the spring. She saw herself, too, in the mirror above the mantel-piece, with her glossy black hair rolled up like a tower, from which one curly lock escaped on to her forehead, and with the ermine cloak on her shoulders over the white silk muslin which clung to her full figure. Then she heard David Rossi's footsteps returning, and though she was now completely self-possessed she was conscious of a certain shiver of fear, such as an actress feels in her dressing-room at the tuning-up of the orchestra. Her back was to the door and she heard the whirl of her skirt as he entered, and then he was before her, and they were alone. He was looking at her out of large, pensive eyes, and she saw him pass his hand over them and then bow and motion her to a seat, and go to the mantel-piece and lean on it. She was tingling all over, and a certain glow was going up to her face, but when she spoke she was mistress of herself, and her voice was soft and natural. "I am doing a very unusual thing in coming to see you," she said, "but you have forced me to it, and I am quite helpless." A faint sound came from him, and she was aware that he was leaning forward to see her face, so she dropped her eyes, partly to let him look at her, and partly to avoid meeting his gaze. "I heard your speech in the piazza this morning. It would be useless to disguise the fact that some of its references were meant for me." He did not speak, and she played with the glove in her lap, and continued in the same soft voice: "If I were a man, I suppose I should challenge you. Being a woman, I can only come to you and tell you that you are wrong." "Wrong?" "Cruelly, terribly, shamefully wrong." "You mean to tell me...." He was stammering in a husky voice, and she said quite calmly: "I mean to tell you that in substance and in fact what you implied was false." There was a dry glitter in her eyes which she tried to subdue, for she knew that he was looking at her still. "If ... if...."--his voice was thick and indistinct--"if you tell me that I have done you an injury...." "You have--a terrible injury." She could hear his breathing, but she dared not look up, lest he should see something in her face. "Perhaps you think it strange," she said, "that I should ask you to accept my assurance only. But though you have done me a great wrong I believe you will accept it." "If ... if you give me your solemn word of honour that what I said--what I implied--was false, that rumour and report have slandered you, that it is all a cruel and baseless calumny...." She raised her head, looked him full in the face. "I _do_ give it," she said. "Then I believe you," he answered. "With all my heart and soul, I believe you." She dropped her eyes again, and turning with her thumb an opal ring on her finger, she began to use the blandishments which had never failed with other men. "I do not say that I am altogether without blame," she said. "I may have lived a thoughtless life amid scenes of poverty and sorrow. If so, perhaps it has been partly the fault of the men about me. When is a woman anything but what the men around have made her?" She dropped her voice almost to a whisper, and added: "You are the first man who has not praised and flattered me." "I was not thinking of you," he said. "I was thinking of another, and perhaps of the poor working women who, in a world of luxury, have to struggle and starve." She looked up, and a half-smile crossed her face. "I honour you for that," she said. "And perhaps if I had earlier met a man like you my life might have been different. I used to hope for such things long ago--that a man of high aims and noble purposes would come to meet me at the gate of life. Perhaps you have felt like that--that some woman, strong and true, would stand beside you for good or for ill, in your hour of danger and your hour of joy?" Her voice was not quite steady--she hardly knew why. "A dream! We all have our dreams," he said. "A dream indeed! Men came--he was not among them. They pampered every wish, indulged every folly, loaded me with luxuries, but my dream was dispelled. I respected few of them, and reverenced none. They were my pastime, my playthings. And they have revenged themselves by saying in secret ... what you said in public this morning." He was looking at her constantly with his wistful eyes, the eyes of a child, and through all the joy of her success she was conscious of a spasm of pain at the expression of his sad face and the sound of his tremulous voice. "We men are much to blame," he said. "In the battle of man with man we deal out blows and think we are fighting fair, but we forget that behind our foe there is often a woman--a wife, a mother, a sister, a friend--and, God forgive us, we have struck her, too." The half-smile that had gleamed on Roma's face was wiped out of it by these words, and an emotion she did not understand began to surge in her throat. "You speak of poor women who struggle and starve," she said. "Would it surprise you to hear that _I_ know what it is to do that? Yes, and to be friendless and alone--quite, quite alone in a cruel and wicked city." She had lost herself for a moment, and the dry glitter in her eyes had given way to a moistness and a solemn expression. But at the next instant she had regained her self-control, and went on speaking to avoid a painful silence. "I have never spoken of this to any other man," she said. "I don't know why I should mention it to you--to you of all men." She had risen to her feet, and he stepped up to her, and looking straight into her eyes he said: "Have you ever seen me before?" "Never," she answered. "Sit down," he said. "I have something to say to you." She sat down, and a peculiar expression, almost a crafty one, came into her face. "You have told me a little of your life," he said. "Let me tell you something of mine." She smiled again. These big children called men were almost to be pitied. She had expected a fight, but the man had thrown up the sponge from the outset, and now he was going to give himself into her hands. Only for that pathetic look in his eyes and that searching tone in his voice she could have found it in her heart to laugh. She let her cape drop back from her shoulders, revealing her round bust and swanlike arms, and crossing one leg over the other she displayed the edge of a lace skirt and the point of a red slipper. Then she coughed a little behind a perfumed lace handkerchief and prepared to listen. "You are the daughter of an ancient family," he said, "older than the house it lived in, and prouder than a line of kings. And whatever sorrows you may have seen, you knew what it was to have a mother who nursed you and a father who loved you, and a home that was your own. Can you realise what it is to have known neither father nor mother, to be homeless, nameless, and alone?" She looked up--a deep furrow had crossed his brow, which she had not seen there before. "Happy the child," he said, "though shame stands beside his cradle, who has one heart beating for him in a cruel world. That was not my case. I never knew my mother." The mocking fire had died out of Roma's face, and she uncrossed her knees. "My mother was the victim of a heartless man and a cruel law. She tied to her baby's wrist a paper on which she had written its father's name, placed it in the rota at the Foundling of Santo Spirito, and flung herself into the Tiber." Roma drew the cape over her shoulders. "She lies in an unnamed pauper's grave in the Campo Verano." "_Your_ mother?" "Yes. My earliest memory is of being put out to nurse at a farmstead in the Campagna. It was the time of revolution; the treasury of the Pope was not yet replaced by the treasury of the King, the nuns at Santo Spirito had no money with which to pay their pensions; and I was like a child forsaken by its own, a fledgling in a foreign nest." "Oh!" "Those were the days when scoundrels established abroad traded in the white slavery of poor Italian boys. They scoured the country, gathered them up, put them in railway trucks like cattle, and despatched them to foreign countries. My foster-parents parted with me for money, and I was sent to London." Roma's bosom was heaving, and tears were gathering in her eyes. "My next memory is of living in a large half-empty house in Soho--fifty foreign boys crowded together. The big ones were sent out into the streets with an organ, the little ones with a squirrel or a cage of white mice. We had a cup of tea and a piece of bread for breakfast, and were forbidden to return home until we had earned our supper. Then--then the winter days and nights in the cold northern climate, and the little southern boys with their organs and squirrels, shivering and starving in the darkness and the snow." Roma's eyes were filling frankly, and she was allowing the tears to flow. "Thank God, I have another memory," he continued. "It is of a good man, a saint among men, an Italian refugee, giving his life to the poor, especially to the poor of his own people." Roma's labouring breath seemed to be arrested at that moment. "On several occasions he brought their masters to justice in the English courts, until, finding they were watched, they gradually became less cruel. He opened his house to the poor little fellows, and they came for light and warmth between nine and ten at night, bringing their organs with them. He taught them to read, and on Sunday evenings he talked to them of the lives of the great men of their country. He is dead, but his spirit is alive--alive in the souls he made to live." Roma's eyes were blinded with the tears that sprang to them, and her throat was choking, but she said: "What was he?" "A doctor." "What was his name?" David Rossi passed his hand over the furrow in his forehead, and answered: "They called him Joseph Roselli." Roma half rose from her seat, then sank back, and the lace handkerchief dropped from her hand. "But I heard afterwards--long afterwards--that he was a Roman noble, one of the fearless few who had taken up poverty and exile and an unknown name for the sake of liberty and justice." Roma's head had fallen into her bosom, which was heaving with an emotion she could not conceal. "One day a letter came from Italy, telling him that a thousand men were waiting for him to lead them in an insurrection that was to dethrone an unrighteous king. It was the trick of a scoundrel who has since been paid the price of a hero's blood. I heard of this only lately--only to-night." There was silence for a moment. David Rossi had put one arm over his eyes. "Well?" "He was enticed back from England to Italy; an English minister violated his correspondence with a friend, and communicated its contents to the Italian Government; he was betrayed into the hands of the police, and deported without trial." "Was he never heard of again?" "Once--only once--by the friend I speak about." Roma felt dizzy, as if she were coming near to some deep places; but she could not stop--something compelled her to go on. "Who was the friend?" she asked. "One of his poor waifs--a boy who owed everything to him, and loved and revered him as a father--loves and reveres him still, and tries to follow in the path he trod." "What--what was his name?" "David Leone." She looked at him for a moment without being able to speak. Then she said: "What happened to him?" "The Italian courts condemned him to death, and the English police drove him from England." "Then he has never been able to return to his own country?" "He has never been able to visit his mother's grave except by secret and at night, and as one who was perpetrating a crime." "What became of him?" "He went to America." "Did he ever return?" "Yes! Love of home in him, as in all homeless ones, was a consuming passion, and he came back to Italy." "Where--where is he _now_?" David Rossi stepped up to her, and said: "In this room." She rose: "Then _you_ are David Leone!" He raised one hand: "_David Leone is dead!_" There was silence for a moment. She could hear the thumping of her heart. Then she said in an almost inaudible whisper: "I understand. David Leone is dead, but David Rossi is alive." He did not speak, but his head was held up and his face was shining. "Are you not afraid to tell me this?" "No." Her eyes glistened and her lips quivered. "You insulted and humiliated me in public this morning, yet you think I will keep your secret?" "I _know_ you will." She felt a sensation of swelling in her throbbing heart, and with a slow and nervous gesture she held out her hand. "May I ... may I shake hands with you?" she said. There was a moment of hesitation, and then their hands seemed to leap at each other and clasp with a clasp of fire. At the next instant he had lifted her hand to his lips and was kissing it again and again. A sensation of triumphant joy flashed through her, and instantly died away. She wished to cry out, to confess, to say something, she knew not what. But _David Leone is dead_ rang in her ears, and at the same moment she remembered what the impulse had been which brought her to that house. Then her eyes began to swim and her heart to fail, and she wanted to fly away without uttering another word. _She_ could not speak, _he_ could not speak; they stood together on a precipice where only by silence could they hold their heads. "Let me go home," she said in a breaking voice, and with downcast head and trembling limbs she stepped to the door. IX Reaching the door, she stopped, as if reluctant to leave, and said in a voice still soft, but coming more from within: "I wished to meet you face to face, but now that I have met you, you are not the man I thought you were." "Nor you," he said, "the woman I pictured you." A light came into her eyes at that, and she looked up and said: "Then you had never seen me before?" And he answered after a moment: "I had never seen Donna Roma Volonna until to-day." "Forgive me for coming to you," she said. "I thank you for doing so," he replied, "and if I have sinned against you, from this hour onward I am your friend and champion. Let me try to right the wrong I have done you. What I said was the result of a mistake--let me ask your forgiveness." "You mean publicly?" "Yes!" "You are very good, very brave," she said; "but no, I will not ask you to do that." "Ah! I understand. I know it is impossible to overtake a lie. Once started it goes on and on, like a stone rolling down-hill, and even the man who started can never stop it. Tell me what better I can do--tell me, tell me." Her face was still down, but it had now a new expression of joy. "There is one thing you can do, but it is difficult." "No matter! Tell me what it is." [Illustration: THEY STOOD TOGETHER ON A PRECIPICE.] "I thought when I came here ... but it is no matter." "Tell me, I beg of you." He was trying to look into her face again, and she was eluding his gaze as before, but now for another, a sweeter reason. "I thought if--if you would come to my house when my friends are there, your presence as my guest, in the midst of those in whose eyes you have injured me, might be sufficient of itself to wipe out everything. But...." "Is that _all_?" he said. "Then you are not afraid?" "Afraid?" For one moment they looked at each other, and their eyes were shining. "I have thought of something else," she said. "What is it?" "You have heard that I am a sculptor. I am making a fountain for the Municipality, and if I might carve your face into it...." "It would be coals of fire on my head." "You would need to sit to me." "When shall it be?" "To-morrow morning to begin with, if that is not too soon." "It will be years on years till then," he said. She bent her head and blushed. He tried again to look at her beaming eyes and golden complexion, and for sheer joy of being followed up she turned her face away. "Forgive me if I have stayed too long," she said, making a feint of opening the door. "I should have grudged every moment if you had gone sooner," he answered. "I only wished that you should not think of me with hatred and bitterness." "If I ever had such a feeling it is gone." "Mine has gone too," she said softly, and again she prepared to go. One hook of her cape had got entangled in the silk muslin at her shoulder, and while trying to free it she looked at him, and her look seemed to say, "Will you?" and his look replied, "May I?" and at the physical touch a certain impalpable bridge seemed in an instant to cross the space that had divided them. "Let me see you to the door?" he said, and her eyes said openly, "Will you?" They walked down the staircase side by side, going step by step, and almost touching. "I forgot to give you my address--eighteen Trinità de' Monti," she said. "Eighteen Trinità de' Monti," he repeated. They had reached the second storey. "I am trying to remember," she said. "After all, I think I have seen you before somewhere." "In a dream, perhaps," he answered. "Yes," she said. "Perhaps in the dream I spoke about." They had reached the street, and Roma's carriage, a hired _coupé_, stood waiting a few yards from the door. They shook hands, and at the electric touch she raised her head and gave him in the darkness the look he had tried to take in the light. "Until to-morrow then," she said. "To-morrow morning," he replied. "To-morrow morning," she repeated, and again in the eye-asking between them she seemed to say, "Come early, will you not?--there is still so much to say." He looked at her with his shining eyes, and something of the boy came back to his world-worn face as he closed the carriage door. "Adieu!" "Adieu!" She drew up the window, and as the carriage moved away she smiled and bowed through the glass. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PART THREE--ROMA I The Piazza of Trinità de' Monti takes its name from a church and convent which stand on the edge of the Pincian Hill. A flight of travertine steps, twisted and curved to mask the height, goes down from the church to a diagonal piazza, the Piazza di Spagna, which is always bright with the roses of flower-sellers, who build their stalls around a fountain. At the top of these steps there stands a house, four-square to all winds, and looking every way over Rome. The sun rises and sets on it, the odour of the flowers comes up to it from the piazza, and the music of the band comes down to it from the Pincio. Donna Roma occupied two floors of this house. One floor, the lower one, built on arches and entered from the side of the city, was used as a studio, the other was as a private apartment. Donna Roma's home consisted of ten or twelve rooms on the second floor, opening chiefly out of a central drawing-room, which was furnished in red and yellow damask, papered with velvet wall-papers, and lighted by lamps of Venetian glass representing lilies in rose-colour and violet. Her bedroom, which looked to the Quirinal, was like the nest of a bird in its pale-blue satin, with its blue silk counterpane and its embroidered cushion at the foot of the bed; and her boudoir, which looked to the Vatican, was full of vases of malachite and the skins of wild animals, and had a bronze clock on the chimney-piece set in a statue of Mephistopheles. The only other occupant of her house, besides her servants, was a distant kinswoman, called her aunt, and known to familiars as the Countess Betsy; but in the studio below, which was connected with the living rooms by a circular staircase, and hung round with masks, busts, and weapons, there was Bruno Rocco, her marble-pointer, the friend and housemate of David Rossi. On the morning after Donna Roma's visit to the Piazza Navona a letter came from the Baron. He was sending Felice to be her servant. "The man is a treasure and sees nothing," he wrote. And he added in a footnote: "Don't look at the newspapers this morning, my child; and if any of them send to you say nothing." But Roma had scarcely finished her coffee and roll when a lady journalist was announced. It was Lena, the rival of Olga both in literature and love. "I'm 'Penelope,'" she said. "'Penelope' of the _Day_, you know. Come to see if you have anything to say in answer to the Deputy Rossi's speech yesterday. Our editor is anxious to give you every opportunity; and if you would like to reply through me to Olga's shameful libels.... Haven't you seen her article? Here it is. Disgraceful insinuations. No lady could allow them to pass unnoticed." "Nevertheless," said Roma, "that is what I intend to do. Good-morning!" Lena had barely crossed the doorstep when a more important person drove up. This was the Senator Palomba, Mayor of Rome, a suave, oily man, with little twinkling eyes. "Come to offer you my sympathy, my dear! Scandalous libels. Liberty of the press, indeed! Disgraceful! It's in all the newspapers--I've brought them with me. One journal actually points at you personally. See--'A lady sculptor who has recently secured a commission from the Municipality through the influence of a distinguished person.' Most damaging, isn't it? The elections so near, too! We must publicly deny the statement. Ah, don't be alarmed! Only way out of a nest of hornets. Nothing like diplomacy, you know. Of course the Municipality will buy your fountain just the same, but I thought I would come round and explain before publishing anything." Roma said nothing, and the great man backed himself out with the air of one who had conferred a favour, but before going he had a favour to ask in return. "It's rumoured this morning, my dear, that the Government is about to organise a system of secret police--and quite right, too. You remember my nephew, Charles Minghelli? I brought him here when he came from Paris. Well, Charles would like to be at the head of the new force. The very man! Finds out everything that happens, from the fall of a pin to an attempt at revolution, and if Donna Roma will only say a word for him.... Thanks!... What a beautiful bust! Yours, of course? A masterpiece! Fit to put beside the masterpieces of old Rome." The Mayor was not yet out of the drawing-room when a third visitor was in the hall. It was Madame Sella, a fashionable modiste, with social pretensions, who contrived to live on terms of quasi-intimacy with her aristocratic customers. "Trust I am not _de trop_! I knew you wouldn't mind my calling in the morning. What a scandalous speech of that agitator yesterday! Everybody is talking about it. In fact, people say you will go away. It isn't true, is it? No? So glad! So relieved!... By the way, my dear, don't trouble about those stupid bills of mine, but ... I'm giving a little reception next week, and if the Baron would only condescend ... you'll mention it? A thousand thanks! Good-morning!" "Count Mario," announced Felice, and an effeminate old dandy came tripping into the room. He was Roma's landlord and the Italian Ambassador at St. Petersburg. "So good of you to see me, Donna Roma. Such an uncanonical hour, too, but I _do_ hope the Baron will not be driven to resign office on account of these malicious slanders. You think not? So pleased!" Then stepping to the window, "What a lovely view! The finest in Rome, and that's the finest in Europe! I'm always saying if it wasn't Donna Roma I should certainly turn out my tenant and come to live here myself.... That reminds me of something. I'm ... well, I'm tired of Petersburg, and I've written to the Minister asking to be transferred to Paris, and if somebody will only whisper a word for me.... How sweet of you! Adieu!" Roma was sick of all this insincerity, and feeling bitter against the person who had provoked it, when an unseen hand opened the door of a room on the Pincio side of the drawing-room, and the testy voice of her aunt called to her from within. The old lady, who had just finished her morning toilet and was redolent of scented soap, reclined in a white robe on a bed-sofa with a gilded mirror on one side of her and a little shrine on the other. Her bony fingers were loaded with loose rings, and a rosary hung at her wrist. A cat was sitting at her feet, with a gold cross suspended from its ribbon. "Ah, is it you at last? You come to me sometimes. Thanks!" she said in a withering whimper. "I thought you might have looked in last night, and I lay awake until after midnight." "I had a headache and went to bed," said Roma. "I never have anything else, but nobody thinks of me," said the old lady, and Roma went over to the window. "I suppose you are as headstrong as ever, and still intend to invite that man in spite of all my protests?" "He is to sit to me this morning, and may be here at any time." "Just so! It's no use speaking. I don't know what girls are coming to. When I was young a man like that wouldn't have been allowed to cross the threshold of any decent house in Rome. He would have been locked up in prison instead of sitting for his bust to the ward of the Prime Minister." "Aunt Betsy," said Roma, "I want to ask you a question." "Be quick, then. My head is coming on as usual. Natalina! Where's Natalina?" "Was there any quarrel between my father and his family before he left home and became an exile?" "Certainly not! Who said there was? Quarrel indeed! His father was broken-hearted, and as for his mother, she closed the gate of the palace, and it was never opened again to the day of her death. Natalina, give me my smelling salts. And why haven't you brought the cushion for the cat?" "Still, a man has to live his own life, and if my father thought it right...." "Right? Do you call it right to break up a family, and, being an only son, to let a title be lost and estates go to the dogs?" "I thought they went to the Baron, auntie." "Roma, aren't you ashamed to sneer at me like that? At the Baron, too, in spite of all his goodness! As for your father, I'm out of patience. He wasted his wealth and his rank, and left his own flesh and blood to the mercy of others--and all for what?" "For country, I suppose." "For fiddlesticks! For conceit and vanity and vainglory. Go away! My head is fit to split. Natalina, why haven't you given me my smelling salts? And why will you always forget to...." Roma left the room, but the voice of her aunt scolding the maid followed her down to the studio. Her dog was below, and the black poodle received her with noisy demonstrations, but the humorous voice which usually saluted her with a cheery welcome she did not hear. Bruno was there, nevertheless, but silent and morose, and bending over his work with a sulky face. She had no difficulty in understanding the change when she looked at her own work. It stood on an easel in a compartment of the studio shut off by a glass partition, and was a head of David Rossi which she had roughed out yesterday. Not yet feeling sure which of the twelve apostles around the dish of her fountain was the subject that Rossi should sit for, she had decided to experiment on a bust. It was only a sketch, but it was stamped with the emotions that had tortured her, and it showed her that unconsciously her choice had been made already. Her choice was Judas. Last night she had laughed when looking at it, but this morning she saw that it was cruel, impossible, and treacherous. A touch or two at the clay obliterated the sinister expression, and, being unable to do more until the arrival of her sitter, she sat down to write a letter. "MY DEAR BARON,--Thanks for Cardinal Felice. He will be a great comfort in this household if only he can keep the peace with Monsignor Bruno, and live in amity with the Archbishop of Porter's Lodge. Senator Tom-tit has been here to suggest some astonishing arrangement about my fountain, and to ask me to mention his nephew, Charles Minghelli, as a fit and proper person to be chief of your new department of secret police. Madame de Trop and Count Signorina have also been, but of their modest messages more anon. "As for D. R., my barometer is 'set fair,' but it is likely to be a stormier time than I expected. Last night I decked myself in my best bib and tucker, and, in defiance of all precedent, went down to his apartment. But the strange thing was that, whereas I had gone to find out all about _him_, I hadn't been ten minutes in his company before he told all about _me_--about my father, at all events, and his life in London. I believe he knew me in that connection and expected to appeal to my filial feelings. Did too, so strong is the force of nature, and then and thereafter, and all night long, I was like somebody who had been shaken in an earthquake and wanted to cry out and confess. It was not until I remembered what my father had been--or rather hadn't--and that he was no more to me than a name, representing exposure to the cruellest fate a girl ever passed through, that I recovered from the shock of D. R.'s dynamite. "He has promised to sit to me for his bust, and is to come this morning!--Affectionately, ROMA. "P. S.--My gentleman has good features, fine eyes, and a wonderful voice, and though I truly believe he trembles at the sight of a woman and has never been in love in his life, he has an astonishing way of getting at one. But I could laugh to think how little execution his fusillade will make in this direction." "Honourable Rossi!" said Felice's sepulchral voice behind her, and at that moment David Rossi stepped into the studio. II In spite of her protestations, Roma was nervous and confused. Putting David Rossi to sit in the arm-chair on the platform for sitters, she rattled on about everything--her clay, her tools, her sponge, and the water they had forgotten to change for her. He must not mind if she stared at him--that wasn't nice, but it was necessary--and he must promise not to look at her work while it was unfinished--children and fools, you know--the proverb was musty. And while she talked she told herself that Thomas was the apostle he must stand for. These anarchists were all doubters, and the chief of doubters was the figure that would represent them. David Rossi did not speak much at first, and he did not join in Roma's nervous laughter. Sometimes he looked at her with a steadfast gaze, which would have been disconcerting if it had not been so simple and childlike. At length he looked out of the window to where the city lay basking in the sunshine, and birds were swirling in the clear blue sky, and began to talk of serious subjects. "How beautiful!" he said. "No wonder the English and Americans who come to Italy for health and the pleasure of art think it a paradise where every one should be content. And yet...." "Yes?" "Under the smile of this God-blessed land there is suffering such as can hardly be found in any other country of the world. Sometimes I think I cannot bear it any longer, and must go away, as others do." "A little more this way, please--thank you! That doesn't do much for them, does it?" "For them? No! God comfort the poor exiles--their path is a bridge of sighs! Poor, friendless, forgotten, huddled together in some dingy quarter of a foreign city, one a music-master, another a teacher of languages, a third a supernumerary at a theatre, a fourth an organ-man or even a beggar in the streets, yet weapons in the hand of God and shaking the thrones of the world!" "_You_ have seen something of that, haven't you?" "I have." "In London?" "Yes. There's an old quarter on the fringe of the fashionable district. It is called Soho. Densely populated, infested with vice, the very sewer of the city, yet an asylum of liberty for all that. The refugees of Europe fly to it. Its criminals, too, perhaps; for misery, like poverty, has many bedfellows." "You lived there?" "Yes." Roma was wiping her fingers with the sponge, and looking sideways out of the window. "And your old friend, Doctor Roselli--he lived in Soho?" "In Soho Square when I knew him first. The house faced to the north, and had a porch and trees in front of it." The sponge had dropped to the floor, but Roma did not observe it. She took up a tooth-tool and began to work on the clay again. "A little more that way, please--thanks! Do you think your friend had a right to renounce his rank and to break up his family in Italy? Think of his father--he would be broken-hearted." "He was--I've heard my old friend say so. He cursed him at last and forbade him to call himself his son." "There!" "But he would never hear a word against the old man. 'He's my father--that's enough,' he would say." The tooth-tool, like the sponge, dropped out of Roma's fingers. "How stupid! But his mother...." "That was sadder still. In the early years of his exile she would pray him to come home. 'You are the best of mothers,' he would answer, 'but I cannot do so.'" "He never saw her again?" "Never, but he worshipped her very name and she was a tower of strength to him. 'Mothers!' he used to say, 'if you only knew your power! God be merciful to the wayward one who has no mother!'" Roma's throat was throbbing. "He ... he was married?" "Yes. His wife was an Englishwoman, almost as friendless as himself." "Eyes the other way, at the window--thank you!... Did she know who he was?" "Nobody knew. He was only a poor Italian doctor to all of us in Soho." "They ... they were ... happy?" "As happy as love and friendship could make them. And even when poverty came...." "He became poor--very poor?" "Very! It got known that Doctor Roselli was a revolutionary, and then his English patients began to be afraid. The house in Soho Square had to be given up at last, and we went into a side street. Only two rooms now, one to the front, the other to the back, and four of us to live in them, but the misery of that woman's outward circumstances never dimmed the radiance of her sunny soul." Roma's bosom was heaving and her voice was growing thick. "She ... died?" David Rossi bent his head and spoke in short, jerky sentences. "Her death came at the bitterest moment of want. It was Christmas time. Very cold and raw. We hadn't too much at home to keep us warm. She caught a cold and it settled on her chest. Pneumonia! Only three or four days altogether. She lay in the back room; it was quieter. The doctor nursed her constantly. How she fought for life! She was thinking of her little daughter. Just six years of age at that time, and playing with her doll on the floor." His voice had enough to do to control itself. "When it was all over we went into the front room and made our beds on a blanket spread out on the bare boards. Only three of us now--the child with her father, weeping for the mother lying cold the other side of the wall." His eyes were still looking out at the window. In Roma's eyes the tears were gathering. "We were nearly penniless, but our good angel was buried somehow. Oh, the poor are the richest people in the world! I love them! I love them!" Roma could not look at him any longer. "It was in the cemetery of Kensal Green. There was a London fog and the grave-diggers worked by torches, which smoked in the thick air. But the doctor stood all the time with his head uncovered. The child was there too, and driving home she looked out of the window and sometimes laughed at the sights in the streets. Only six--and she had never been in a coach before!" At that moment was heard the boom of the gun that is fired from the Castle of St. Angelo at mid-day, and Roma put down her tools. "If you don't mind, I'll not try to do any more to-day," she said in a husky voice. "Somehow it isn't coming right this morning. It's like that sometimes. But if you can come at this time to-morrow...." "With pleasure," said David Rossi, and a moment later he was gone. She looked at her work and obliterated the expression again. "Not Thomas," she thought. "John--the beloved disciple! That would fit him exactly." As she went upstairs to dress for lunch, Felice gave her an envelope bearing the seal of the Prime Minister, and told her the dog was missing. "He must have followed Mr. Rossi," said Roma, and without ado she read the letter. "DEAR ROMA,--A thousand thanks for suggesting Charles Minghelli. I sent for him, saw him, and appointed him immediately. Thanks, too, for the clue about your father. Highly significant! I mentioned it to Minghelli, and the dark fire in his eyes shone out instantly. Adieu, my dear! You are on the right track! I will observe your request and not come near you.--Affectionately, "BONELLI." III Next morning Roma found herself dressing with extraordinary care. After coffee she went into the Countess's room as usual. The old lady had made her toilette, and her cat was purring on a cushion by her side. "Aunt Betsy, is it true that my father was decoyed back to Italy by the police?" "How do I know that? But if he was, it was no more than he might have expected. He had been breeding sedition at the safe distance of a thousand miles, and it was time he was brought to justice. Besides...." "Well?" "There were the estates, and naturally the law could not assign them to anybody else while there was no judgment against your father." "So my father was enticed back to Italy in the interests of the next of kin." "Roma! How dare you talk like that? About your best friend, too!" "I didn't say anything against the Baron, did I?" "You would be an ungrateful girl if you did. As for your father, I'm tired of talking. Only for his exile you would have had possession of your family estates at this moment, and been a princess in your own right." "Only for this exile I shouldn't have been here at all, auntie, and somebody else would have been the princess, it seems to me." The old lady dropped the perfumed handkerchief that was at her nose and said: "What do you talk about downstairs all day long, miss? Pretty thing if you allow a man like that to fill you with his fictions. He is a nice person to take your opinions from, and you are a nice girl to stand up for a man who sold you into slavery, as I might say! Have you forgotten the baker's shop in London--or was it a pastry cook's, or what?--where they made you a drudge and a scullery-maid, after your father had given you away?" "Don't speak so loud, Aunt Betsy." "Then don't worry me by defending such conduct. Ah, how my head aches! Natalina, where are my smelling salts? Natalina!" "I'm not defending my father, but still...." "Should think not, indeed! If it hadn't been for the Baron, who went in search of you, and found you after you had run away and been forced to go back to your slave-master, and then sent you to school in Paris, and now permits you to enjoy half the revenue of your father's estates, and forbids us to say a word about his generosity, where would you be? Madonna mia! In the streets of London, perhaps, to which your father had consigned you!" The Princess Bellini was waiting for Roma when she returned to the drawing-room. The little lady was as friendly as if nothing unusual had occurred. "Just going for a walk in the Corso, my dear. You'll come? No? Ah, work, work, work!" The little lady tapped Roma's arm with her pince-nez and laughed. "Everybody has heard that _he_ is sitting to you, and everybody understands. That reminds me--I've a box at the new opera to-morrow night:--'Samson' at the Costanzi, you know. Only Gi-gi and myself, but if you would like me to take you and to ask your own particular Samson...." "Honourable Rossi," said Felice at the door, and David Rossi entered the room, with the black poodle bounding before him. "I must apologise for not sending back the dog," he said. "It followed me home yesterday, but I thought as I was coming to-day...." "Black has quite deserted me since Mr. Rossi appeared," said Roma, and then she introduced the deputy to the Princess. The little lady was effusive. "I was just saying, Honourable Rossi, that if you would honour my box at the opera to-morrow night...." David Rossi glanced at Roma. "Oh yes, Donna Roma is coming, and if you will...." "With pleasure, Princess." "That's charming! After the opera we'll have supper at the Grand Hotel. Good-day!" said the Princess, and then in a low voice at the door, "I leave you to your delightful duties, my dear. You are not looking so well, though. Must be the scirocco. My poor dear husband used to suffer from it shockingly. Adieu!" Roma was less confused but just as nervous when she settled to her work afresh. "I've been thinking all night long of the story you told me yesterday," she said. "No, that way, please--eyes as before--thank you! About your old friend, I mean. He was a good man--I don't doubt that--but he made everybody suffer. Not only his father and mother, but his wife also. Has anybody a right to sacrifice his flesh and blood to a work for the world?" "When a man has taken up a mission for humanity his kindred must reconcile themselves to that," said Rossi. "Yes, but a child, one who cannot be consulted. Your friend's daughter, for example. She was to lose everything--her father himself at last. How could he love her? I suppose you would say he did love her." "Love her? He lived for her. She was everything on earth to him, except the one thing to which he had dedicated his life." A half-smile parted her lovely lips. "When her mother was gone he was like a miser who had been robbed of all his jewels but one, and the love of father, mother, and wife seemed to gather itself up in the child." The lovely lips had a doubtful curve. "How bright she was, too! I can see her still in the dingy London house with her violet eyes and coal-black hair and happy ways--a gleam of the sun from our sunny Italy." She looked at him. His face was calm and solemn. Did he really know her after all? She felt her cheeks flush and tingle. "And yet he left her behind to come to Italy on a hopeless errand," she said. "He did." "How could he know what would happen?" "He couldn't, and that troubled him most of all. He lived in constant fear of being taken away from his daughter before her little mind was stamped with the sense of how much he loved her. Delicious selfishness! Yet it was not altogether selfish. The world was uncharitable and cruel, and in the rough chance of life it might even happen that she would be led to believe that because her father gave her away, and left her, he did not love her." Roma looked up again. His face was still calm and solemn. "He gave her away, you say?" "Yes. When the treacherous letter came from Italy he could not resist it. It was like a cry from the buried-alive calling upon him to break down the door of their tomb. But what could he do with the child? To take her with him was impossible. A neighbour came--a fellow-countryman--he kept a baker's shop in the Italian quarter. 'I'm only a poor man,' he said, 'but I've got a little daughter of the same age as yours, and two sticks will burn better than one. Give the child to me and do as your heart bids you!' It was like a light from heaven. He saw his way at last." Roma listened with head aside. "One day he took the child and washed her pretty face and combed her glossy hair, telling her she was going to see another little girl and would play with her always. And the child was in high glee and laughed and chattered and knew no difference. It was evening when we set out for the stranger's house, and in the twilight of the little streets happy-hearted mothers were calling to their children to come in to go to bed. The doctor sent me into a shop to buy a cake for the little one, and she ate it as she ran and skipped by her father's side." Roma was holding her breath. "The baker's shop was poor but clean, and his own little girl was playing on the hearthrug with her cups and saucers. And before we were aware of it two little tongues were cackling and gobbling together, and the little back-parlour was rippling over with a merry twitter. The doctor stood and looked down at the children, and his eyes shone with a glassy light. 'You are very good, sir,' he said, 'but she is good too, and she'll be a great comfort and joy to you always.' And the man said, 'She'll be as right as a trivet, doctor, and you'll be right too--you'll be made triumvir like Mazzini, when the republic is proclaimed, and then you'll send for the child, and for me too, I daresay.' But I could see that the doctor was not listening. 'Let us slip away now,' I said, and we stole out somehow." Roma's eyes were moistening, and the little tool was trembling in her hand. There was silence for some moments, and then from without, muffled by the walls it passed through, there came the sound of voices. The nuns and children of Trinità de' Monti were singing their Benediction--_Ora pro nobis!_ "I don't think I'll do any more to-day," said Roma. "The light is failing me, and my eyes...." "The day after to-morrow, then," said Rossi, rising. "But do you really wish to go to the opera to-morrow night?" He looked steadfastly into her face and answered "Yes." She understood him perfectly. He had sinned against her and he meant to atone. She could not trust herself to look at him, so she took the damp cloth and turned to cover up the clay. When she turned back he was gone. After dinner she replied to the Baron's letter of the day before. "DEAR BARON,--I have misgivings about being on the right track, and feel sorry you have set Minghelli to work so soon. Do Prime Ministers appoint people at the mere mention of their names by wards, second cousins, and lady friends generally? Wouldn't it have been wise to make inquiries? What was the fault for which Minghelli was dismissed in London? "As for D. R., I must have been mistaken about his knowing me. He doesn't seem to know me at all, and I believe his shot at me by way of my father was a fluke. At all events, I'm satisfied that it is going in the wrong direction to set Minghelli on his trail. _Leave him to me alone._--Yours, ROMA. "P.S.--Princess Potiphar and Don Saint Joseph are to take me to the new opera to-morrow night. D. R. is also to be there, so he will be seen with me in public! "I have begun work on King David for a bust. He is not so wonderfully good-looking when you look at him closely." IV The little Princess called for Roma the following night, and they drove to the opera in her magnificent English carriage. Already the theatre was full and the orchestra was tuning up. With the movement of people arriving and recognising each other there was an electrical atmosphere which affected everybody. Don Camillo came, oiled and perfumed, and when he had removed the cloaks of the ladies and they took their places in the front of the box, there was a slight tingling all over the house. This pleased the little Princess immensely, and she began to sweep the place with her opera-glass. "Crowded already!" she said. "And every face looking up at my box! That's what it is to have for your companion the most beautiful and the most envied girl in Rome. What a sensation! Nothing to what it will be, though, when your illustrious friend arrives." At that moment David Rossi appeared at the back, and the Princess welcomed him effusively. "So glad! So honoured! Gi-gi, let me introduce you--Honourable Rossi, Don Camillo Luigi Murelli." Roma looked at him--he had an air of distinction in a dress coat such as comes to one man in a thousand. He looked at Roma--she wore a white gown with violets on one shoulder and two rows of pearls about her beautiful white throat. The Princess looked at both of them, and her little eyes twinkled. "Never been here before, Mr. Rossi? Then you must allow me to explain everything. Take this chair between Roma and myself. No, you must not sit back. _You_ can't mind observation--so used to it, you know." Without further ado David Rossi took his place in front of the box, and then a faint commotion passed over the house. There were looks of surprise and whispered comments, and even some trills of laughter. He bore it without flinching, as if he had come for it and expected it, and was taking it as a penance. Roma dropped her head and felt ashamed, but the little Princess went on talking. "These boxes on the first tier are occupied by Roman society generally, those on the second tier mainly by the diplomatic corps, and the stalls are filled by all sorts and conditions of people--political people, literary people, even trades-people if they're rich enough or can pretend to be." "And the upper circles?" asked Rossi. "Oh," in a tired voice, "professional people, I think--Collegio Romano and University of Rome, you know." "And the gallery?" "Students, I suppose." Then eagerly, after bowing to somebody below, "Gi-gi, there's Lu-lu. Don't forget to ask him to supper.... All the beautiful young men of Rome are here to-night, Mr. Rossi, and presently they'll pay a round of calls on the ladies in the boxes." The voice of the Princess was suddenly drowned by the sharp tap of the conductor, followed by the opening blast of the overture. Then the lights went down and the curtain rose, but still the audience kept up a constant movement in the lower regions of the house, and there was an almost unbroken chatter. The curtain fell on the first act without anybody knowing what the opera had been about, except that Samson loved a woman named Delilah, and the lords of the Philistines were tempting her to betray him. Students in the gallery, recognisable by their thin beards, shouted across at each other for the joy of shouting, and spoke by gestures to their professors below. People all over the house talked gaily on social subjects, and there was much opening and shutting of the doors of boxes. The beautiful young man called Lu-lu came to pay his respects to the Princess, and there was a good deal of gossip and laughter. The second act was more dramatic than the first, showing Samson in his character as a warrior, and when the curtain came down again, General Morra, the Minister of War, visited the Princess's box. "So you're taking lessons in the art of war from the professor who slew an army with the jaw-bone of an ass?" said Don Camillo. "Wish we could enlist a few thousands of him--jaw-bones as well," said the General. "The gentleman might be worth having at the War Office, if it was only as a _jettatura_." And then in a low voice to the Princess, with a glance at Roma, "Your beautiful young friend doesn't look so well to-night." The Princess shrugged her shoulders. "Of the pains of love one suffers but does not die," she whispered. "You surely cannot mean...." The Princess put the tip of her fan to his lips and laughed. Roma was conscious of a strange conflict of feelings. The triumph she had promised herself by David Rossi's presence with her in public--the triumph over the envious ones who would have rejoiced in her downfall--brought her no pleasure. The third act dealt with the allurements of Delilah, and was received with a good deal of laughter. "Ah, these sweet, round, soft things--they can do anything they like with the giants," said Don Camillo. The Baron, who had dined with the King, came round at the end of the next act, wearing a sash diagonally across his breast, with crosses, stars, and other decorations. He bowed to David Rossi with ceremonious politeness, greeted Don Camillo familiarly, kissed the hand of the Princess, and offered his arm to Roma to take her into the corridor to cool--she was flushed and overheated. "I see you are getting on, my child! Excellent idea to bring him here! Everybody is saying you cannot be the person he intended, so his trumpet has brayed to no purpose." "You received my letters?" she said in a faltering voice. "Yes, but don't be uneasy. I'm neither the prophet nor the son of a prophet if we are not on the right track. What a fortunate thought about the man Minghelli! An inspiration! You asked what his fault was in London--forgery, my dear!" "That's serious enough, isn't it?" "In a Secretary of Legation, yes, but in a police agent...." He laughed significantly, and she felt her skin creep. "Has he found out anything?" she asked. "Not yet, but he is clearly on the track of great things. It is nearly certain that your King David is a person wanted by the law." Her hand twitched at his arm, but they were turning at the end of the corridor and she pretended to trip over her train. "Some clues missing still, however, and to find them we are sending Minghelli to London." "London? Anything connected with my father?" "Possibly! We shall see. But there's the orchestra and here's your box! You're wonderful, my dear! Already you've undone the mischief he did you, and one half of your task is accomplished. Diplomatists! Pshaw! We'll all have to go to school to a girl. Adieu!" All through the next act Roma seemed to feel a sting on her arm where the Baron had touched it, and she was conscious of colouring up when the Princess said: "Everybody is looking this way, my dear! See what it is to be the most talked-of girl in Rome!" And then she felt David Rossi's hand on the back of her chair, and heard his soft voice saying: "The light is in your eyes, Donna Roma. Let me change places with you for a while." After that everything passed in a kind of confusion. She heard somebody say: "He's putting a good deal of heart into it, poor thing!" And somebody answered, "Yes, of broken heart apparently." Then there was a crash and the opera was over, and she was going out in a crowd on David Rossi's arm, and feeling as if she would fall if she dropped it. The magnificent English carriage drew up under the portico and all four of them got into it. "Grand Hotel!" cried Don Camillo. Then dropping back to his place he laughed and chanted: "And the dead he slew at his death were more than he slew in his life ... and he judged Israel twenty years." V A marshy air from the Campagna shrouded the city as with a fog, and pierced through the closed windows of the carriage, but there was warmth and glow in the Grand Hotel. One woman after another came in clothed in diamonds under the fur cloak which hung over her bare arms and shoulders, until the room was a dazzling blaze of jewels. People caught each other's eyes through lorgnettes and eye-glasses, and there were constant salutations. The men chattered, the women laughed, and there was an affectation of baby-talk at nearly every table. Then supper was served, glasses were held up as signals, and bright eyes began to play about the room, until the atmosphere was tingling with electric currents and heated by human passion. Roma sat facing the Princess. She was still confused and preoccupied, but when rallied upon her silence she brightened up for a moment and tried to look buoyant and happy. David Rossi, who was on her left, was still quiet and collected, but bore the same air as before, of a man going through a penance. This was observed by Don Camillo, who sat on the right of the Princess, and led to various little scenes. "Very good company here, Mr. Rossi. Always sure of seeing some beautiful young women," said Don Camillo. "And beautiful young men, apparently," said David Rossi. The beautiful young man called Lu-lu was there, and reaching over to Don Camillo, and speaking in a whisper between the puff of a cigarette and a sip of coffee, he said: "Why doesn't the Minister buy the man up? Easy enough to buy the press these days." "He's doing better than that," said Don Camillo. "He's drawing him from opposition by the allurements of...." "Office?" "No, the lady," whispered Don Camillo, but Roma heard him. She was ashamed. The innuendoes which belittled David Rossi were belittling herself as well, and she wanted to get up and fly. Rossi himself seemed to be unconscious of anything hurtful. Although silent, he was calm and cheerful, and his manner was natural and polite. The wife of one of the royal aides-de-camp sat next to him, and talked constantly of the King. Roma found herself listening to every word that was said to David Rossi, but she also heard a conversation that was going on at the other end of the table. "Wants to be another Cola di Rienzi, doesn't he?" said Lu-lu. "Another Christ," said Don Camillo. "He'll be asking for a crown of thorns by-and-by, and calling on the world to immolate him for the sake of humanity. Look! He's talking to the little Baroness, but he is fifteen thousand miles above the clouds at this moment." "Where does he come from, I wonder?" said Lu-lu, and then the two hands of Don Camillo played the invisible accordion. "Madame de Trop says his father was Master of the House to Prince Petrolium--vice-prince, you know, and brought up in the little palace," said the Princess. "Don't believe a word of it," said Don Camillo, "and I'll wager he never supped at a decent hotel before." "I'll ask him! Listen now! Some fun," said the Princess. "Honourable Rossi!" "Yes, Princess," said David Rossi. The eyes of the little Princess swept the table with a sparkling light. "Beautiful room, isn't it?" "Beautiful." "Never been here before, I suppose?" David Rossi looked steadfastly into her eyes and answered, "Oh yes, Princess. When I first returned to Italy eight years ago I was a waiter in this house for a month." The sparkling face of the little Princess broke up like a snowball in the sun, and the two other men dropped their heads. Roma hardly knew what her own feelings were. Humiliation, shame, confusion, but above all, pride--pride in David Rossi's courage and strength. The white mist from the Campagna pierced to the bone as they came out by the glass-covered hall, and an old woman with an earthenware scaldino, crouching by the marble pillars in the street, held out a chill, damp hand and cried: "A penny for God's sake! May I die unconfessed if I've eaten anything since yesterday!... God bless you, my daughter! and the Holy Virgin and all the saints!" At the door of her house Roma parted from the Princess, and said to Rossi, as the carriage drove away, "Come early to-morrow. I've not yet been able to work properly somehow." She was restless and feverish, and she would have gone to bed immediately, but crossing the drawing-room she heard the fretful voice of her aunt saying, "Is that you, Roma?" and she had no choice but to go into the Countess's bedroom. A red lamp burned before the shrine, and the old lady was in an embroidered nightdress, but she was wide awake, and her eyes flashed and her lips trembled. "Ah, it's you at last! Sit down! I want to speak to you. Natalina!" cried the Countess. "Oh, dear me, the girl has gone to bed. Give me the cognac. There it is--on the dressing-table." She sipped the brandy, fidgeted with her cambric handkerchief, and said: "Roma, I'm surprised at you! You hadn't used to be so stupid! How? Don't you see what that woman is doing? What woman? The Princess, of course. Inviting you to share her box at the opera so that you may be seen in public with that man. She hates him like poison, but she would swallow anything to throw you and this Rossi together. Do you expect the Baron to approve of that? His enemy, and you on such terms with the man? Here, take back this cognac. I feel as if I would choke--Natalina...." "You're quite mistaken, Aunt Betsy," said Roma. "The Baron was at the opera and came into the box himself, and he approved of everything." "Tut! Don't tell me! Because he has some respect for himself and keeps his own counsel you are simple enough to think he will not be offended." The old lady's voice was dying down to a choking whisper, but she went on without a pause. "If you've no thought for yourself, you might have some for me. You are young, and anything may come to you, but I'm old and I'm tied down to this mattress, and what is to happen if the Baron takes offence? The income he allows us from your father's estates is under his own control still. He can cut it off at any moment, and if he does, what is to become of me?" Roma's bosom was swelling under her heavy breathing, her heart was beating violently and her head was dizzy. All the bitterness of the evening was boiling in her throat, and it burst out at length in a flood. "So that is all your moral protestations come to, is it?" she said. "Because the Baron is necessary to you and you cannot exist without him, you expect me to buy and sell myself according to your necessities." "Roma! What are you saying? Aren't you ashamed...." "Aren't _you_ ashamed? You've been trying to throw me into the arms of the Baron, and you haven't cared what would happen so long as I kept up appearances." "Oh, dear! I see what it is. You want to be the death of me! You will, too, before you've done. Natalina! Where is...." "More than that, you've poisoned my mind against my father, and because I couldn't remember him, you've brought me up to think of him as selfish and vain and indifferent to his own daughter. But my father wasn't that kind of man at all." "Who told you that, miss?" "Never mind who told me. My father was a saint and a martyr, and a great man, and he loved me with all his heart and soul." "Oh, my head! My poor head!... A martyr indeed! A socialist, a republican, a rebel, an anarchist, you mean!" "Never mind what his politics were. He was my father--that is enough--and you had no right to make _me_ think ill of him, whatever the world might do." Roma was superb at that moment, with her head thrown back, her eyes flaming, and her magnificent figure swelling and heaving under her clinging gown. "You'll kill me, I tell you. The cognac ... Natalina...." cried the Countess, but Roma was gone. Before going to bed Roma wrote to the Baron: "Certain you are wrong. Why waste time sending Charles Minghelli to London? Why? Why? Why? The forger will find out nothing, and if he does, it will only be by exercise of his Israelitish art of making bricks without straw. Stop him at once if you wish to save public money and spare yourself personal disappointment. Stop him! Stop him! Stop him! "P.S.--To show you how far astray your man has gone, D. R. mentioned to-night that he was once a waiter at the Grand Hotel!" VI Next morning David Rossi arrived early. "Now we must get to work in earnest," said Roma. "I think I see my way at last." It was not John the beloved disciple, John who lay in the bosom of his Lord. It was Peter, the devoted, stalwart, brave individual, human, erring but glorious Peter. "Thou art Peter, and on this rock I build my church." "Same position as before. Eyes the other way. Thank you!... Afraid you didn't enjoy yourself last night--no?" "At the theatre? I was interested. But the human spectacle was perhaps more to me than the artistic one. I am no artist, you see.... How did _you_ become a sculptor?" "Oh, I studied a little in the studios of Paris, where I went to school, you see." "But you were born in London?" "Yes." "Why did you come to Rome?" "Rome was the home of my people, you know. And then there was my name--Roma!" "I knew a Roma long ago." "Really? Another Roma?" There was a tremor in her voice. "It was the little daughter of the friend I've spoken about." "How interest ... No, at the window, please--that will do." Roma was choking with a sense of duplicity, but save for a turn of the head David Rossi gave no sign. "She was only seven when I saw her last." "That was long ago, you say?" "Seventeen years ago." "Then she will be the same age as...." "The first time I saw her she was only three, and she was in her nightdress ready for bed." Roma laughed a little, but she knew that every note in her voice was confused and false. "She said her prayers with a little lisp at that time. 'Our Fader oo art in heben, alud be dy name.'" He laughed a little now, as he mimicked the baby voice. They laughed together, then they looked at each other, and then with serious eyes they turned away. "You'll think it strange, but I date my first conscious and definite aspiration to the memory of that hour." "Really?" "Ten years afterward, when I was in America, the words of that prayer came back to me in Roma's little lisp. 'Dy kingum tum. Dy will be done on eard as it is in heben.'" For some time after that Roma worked on without speaking, feeling feverish and restless. But just as the silence was becoming painful, and she could bear it no longer, Felice came to announce lunch. "You'll stay? I want so much to work on while I'm in the mood," she said. "With pleasure," he replied. She ate hardly at all, for she was troubled by many misgivings. Did he know her? He did; he must; every word, every tone seemed to tell her that. Then why did he not speak out plainly? Because, having revealed himself to her, he was waiting for her to reveal herself to him. And why had she not done so? Because she was enmeshed in the nets of the society she lived in; because she was ashamed of the errand that had brought them together; and most of all because she had not dared to lay bare that secret of his life which, like an escaped convict, dragged behind it the broken chain of the prison-house. _David Leone is dead!_ To uncover, even to their own eyes only, the fact that lay hidden behind those words was like personating the priest and listening at the grating of the confessional! No matter! She must do it! She must reveal herself as her heart and instinct might direct. She must claim the parentage of the noblest soul that ever died for liberty, and David Rossi must trust his secret to the bond of blood which would make it impossible for her to betray the foster-son of her own father. Having come to this conclusion, the light seemed to break in her heavy sky, but the clouds were charged with electricity. As they returned to the studio she was excited and a little hysterical, for she thought the time was near. At that moment a regiment of soldiers passed along under the ilex trees to the Pincio, with their band of music playing as they marched. "Ah, the dear old days!" said David Rossi. "Everything reminds me of them! I remember that when she was six...." "Roma?" "Yes--a regiment of troops returned from a glorious campaign, and the doctor took us to see the illuminations and rejoicings. We came to a great piazza almost as large as the piazza of St. Peter's, with fountains and a tall column in the middle of it." "I know--Trafalgar Square!" "Dense crowds covered the square, but we found a place on the steps of a church." "I remember--St. Martin's Church. You see, I know London." "The soldiers came in by the big railway station close by...." "Charing Cross, isn't it." "And they marched to the tune of the 'British Grenadiers' and the thunder of fifty thousand throats. And as their general rode past, a beacon of electric lights in the centre of the square blazed out like an aureole about the statue of a great Englishman who had died long ago for the cause which had then conquered." "Gordon!" she cried--she was losing herself every moment. "'Look, darling!' said the doctor to little Roma. And Roma said, 'Papa, is it God?' I was a tall boy then, and stood beside him. 'She'll never forget that, David,' he said." "And she didn't ... she couldn't ... I mean.... Have you ever told me what became of her?" She would reveal herself in a moment--only a moment--after all, it was delicious to play with this sweet duplicity. "Have you?" she said in a tremulous voice. His head was down. "Dead!" he answered, and the tool dropped out of her hand on to the floor. "I was five years in America after the police expelled me from London, and when I returned to England I went back to the little shop in Soho." She was staring at him and holding her breath. He was looking out of the window. "The same people were there, and their own daughter was a grown-up girl, but Roma was gone." She could hear the breath in her nostrils. "They told me she had been missing for a week, and then ... her body had been found in the river." She felt like one struck dumb. "The man took me to the grave. It was the grave of her mother in Kensal Green, and under her mother's name I read her own inscription--'Sacred also to the memory of Roma Roselli, found drowned in the Thames, aged twelve years.'" The warm blood which had tingled through her veins was suddenly frozen with horror. "Not to-day," she thought, and at that moment a faint sound of the band on the Pincio came floating in by the open window. "I must go," said David Rossi, rising. Then she recovered herself and began to talk on other subjects. When would he come again? He could not say. The parliamentary session opened soon. He would be very busy. When David Rossi was gone Roma went upstairs, and Natalina met her carrying two letters. One of them was going to the post--it was from the Countess to the Baron. The other was from the Baron to herself. "MY DEAREST ROMA,--A thousand thanks for the valuable clue about the Grand Hotel. Already we have followed up your lead, and we find that the only David Rossi who was ever a waiter there gave as reference the name of an Italian baker in Soho. Minghelli has gone to London, and I am sending him this further information. Already he is fishing in strange waters, and I am sure you are dying to know if he has caught anything. So am I, but we must possess our souls in patience. "But, my dearest Roma, what is happening to your handwriting? It is so shaky nowadays that I can scarcely decipher some of it.--With love. "B." VII "DEAR GUARDIAN,--But I'm not--I'm not! I'm not in the least anxious to hear of what Mr. Minghelli is doing in London, because I know he is doing nothing, and whatever he says, either through his own mouth or the mouth of his Italian baker in Soho, I shall never believe a word he utters. As to Mr. Rossi, I am now perfectly sure that he does not identify me at all. He believes my father's daughter is dead, and he has just been telling me a shocking story of how the body of a young girl was picked out of the Thames (about the time you took me away from London) and buried in the name of Roma Roselli. He actually saw the grave and the tombstone! Some scoundrel has been at work somewhere. Who is it, I wonder?--Yours, "R. V." Having written this letter in the heat and haste of the first moment after David Rossi's departure, she gave it to Bruno to post immediately. "Just so!" said Bruno to himself, as he glanced at the superscription. Next morning she dressed carefully, as if expecting David Rossi as usual, but when he did not come she told herself she was glad of it. Things had happened too hurriedly; she wanted time to breathe and to think. All day long she worked on the bust. It was a new delight to model by memory, to remember an expression and then try to reproduce it. The greatest difficulty lay in the limitation of her beautiful art. There were so many memories, so many expressions, and the clay would take but one of them. The next day after that she dressed herself as carefully as before, but still David Rossi did not come. No matter! It would give her time to think of all he had said, to go over his words and stories. Did he know her? Certainly he knew her! He must have known from the first that she was her father's daughter, or he would never have put himself in her power. His belief in her was such a sweet thing. It was delicious. Next day also David Rossi did not come, and she began to torture herself with misgivings. Was he indifferent? Had all her day-dreams been delusions? Little as she wished to speak to Bruno, she was compelled to do so. Bruno hardly lifted his eyes from his chisel and soft iron hammer. "Parliament is to meet soon," he said, "and when a man is leader of a party he has enough to do, you know." "Ask him to come to-morrow. Say I wish for one more sitting--only one." "I'll tell him," said Bruno, with a bob of his head over the block of marble. But David Rossi did not come the next day either, and Bruno had no better explanation. "Busy with his new 'Republic' now, and no time to waste, I can tell you." "He will never come again," she thought, and then everything around and within her grew dark and chill. She was sleeping badly, and to tire herself at night she went out to walk in the moonlight along the path under the convent wall. She walked as far as the Pincio gates, where the path broadens to a circular space under a table of clipped ilexes, beneath which there is a fountain and a path going down to the Piazza di Spagna. The night was soft and very quiet, and standing under the deep shadows of the trees, with only the cruel stars shining through, and no sound in the air save the sobbing of the fountain, she heard a man's footstep on the gravel coming up from below. It was David Rossi. He passed within a few yards, yet he did not see her. She wanted to call to him, but she could not do so. For a moment he stood by the deep wall that overlooks the city, and then turned down the path which she had come by. A trembling thought that was afraid to take shape held her back and kept her silent, but the stars beat kindly in an instant and the blood in her veins ran warm. She watched him from where she stood, and then with a light foot she followed him at a distance. It was true! He stopped at the parapet before the church, and looked up at her windows. There was a light in one of them, and his eyes seemed to be steadfastly fixed on it. Then he turned to go down the steps. He went down slowly, sometimes stopping and looking up, then going on again. Once more she tried to call to him. "Mr. Rossi." But her voice seemed to die in her throat. After a moment he was gone, the houses had hidden him, and the church clock was striking twelve. When she returned to her bedroom and looked at herself in the glass, her face was flushed and her eyes were sparkling. She did not want to sleep at all that night, for the beating of her heart was like music, and the moon and stars were singing a song. "If I could only be quite, quite sure!" she thought, and next morning she tackled Bruno. Bruno was no match for her now, but he put down his shaggy head, like a bull facing a stone fence. "Tell you the honest truth, Donna Roma," he said, "Mr. Rossi is one of those who think that when a man has taken up a work for the world it is best if he has no ties of family." "Really? Is that so?" she answered. "But I don't understand. He can't help having father and mother, can he?" "He can help having a wife, though," said Bruno, "and Mr. Rossi thinks a public man should be like a priest, giving up home and love and so forth, that others may have them more abundantly." "So for that reason...." "For that reason he doesn't throw himself in the way of temptation." "And you think that's why...." "I think that's why he keeps out of the way of women." "Perhaps he doesn't care for them--some men don't, you know." "Care for them! Mr. Rossi is one of the men who think pearls and diamonds of women, and if he had to be cast on a desert island with anybody, he would rather have one woman than a hundred thousand men." "Ah, yes, but perhaps there's no 'one woman' in the world for him yet, Bruno." "Perhaps there is, perhaps there isn't," said Bruno, and his hammer fell on the chisel and the white sparks began to fly. "_You_ would soon see if there were, wouldn't you, Bruno?" "Perhaps I would, perhaps I wouldn't," said Bruno, and then he wagged his wise head and growled, "In the battle of love he wins who flies." "Does _he_ say that, Bruno?" "He does. One day our old woman was trying to lead him on a bit. 'A heart to share your joys and sorrows is something in this world,' says she." "And what did Mr. Rossi say?" "'A woman's love is the sweetest thing in the world,' he said; 'but if I found myself caring too much for anybody I should run away.'" "Did Mr. Rossi really say that, Bruno?" "He did--upon my life he did!" Bruno had the air of a man who had achieved a moral victory, and Roma, whose eyes were dancing with delight, wanted to fall on his stupid, sulky face and kiss and kiss it. During the afternoon of the day following, the Princess Bellini came in with Don Camillo. "Here's Gi-gi!" she cried. "He comes to say there's to be a meet of the foxhounds on the Campagna to-morrow. If you'd like to come I'll take you, and if you think Mr. Rossi will come too...." "If he rides and has time to spare," said Roma. "Precisely," said Don Camillo. "The worst of being a prophet is that it gives one so much trouble to agree with one's self, you know. Rumour says that our illustrious Deputy has been a little out of odour with his own people lately, and is now calling a meeting to tell the world what his 'Creed and Charter' doesn't mean. Still a flight into the country might do no harm even to the stormy petrel of politics, and if any one could prevail with him...." "Leave that to Roma, and see to everything else yourself," said the Princess. "On the way to that tiresome tea-room in the Corso, my dear. 'Charity and Work,' you know. Committee for the protection of poor girls, or something. But we must see the old aunt first, I suppose. Come in, Gi-gi!" Three minutes afterwards Roma was dressed for the street, and her dog was leaping and barking beside her. "Carriage, Eccellenza?" "Not to-day, thank you! Down, Black, down! Keep the dog from following me, Felice." As she passed the lodge the porter handed her an envelope bearing the seal of the Minister, but she did not stop to open it. With a light step she tripped along the street, hailed a _coupé_, cried "Piazza Navona," and then composed herself to read her letter. When the Princess and Don Camillo came out of the Countess's room Roma was gone, and the dog was scratching at the inside of the outer door. "Now where can she have gone to so suddenly, I wonder? And there's her poor dog trying to follow her!" "Is that the dog that goes to the Deputy's apartment?" "Certainly it is! His name is Black. I'll hold him while you open the door, Felice. There! Good dog! Good Black! Oh, the brute, he has broken away from me." "Black! Black! Black!" "No use, Felice. He'll he half way through the streets by this time." And going down the stairs the little Princess whispered to her companion: "Now, if Black comes home with his mistress this evening it will be easy to see where _she_ has been." Meantime Roma in her _coupé_ was reading her letter-- "DEAREST,--Been away from Rome for a few days, and hence the delay in answering your charming message. Don't trouble a moment about the dead-and-buried nightmare. If the story is true, so much the better. R. R. _is_ dead, thank God, and her unhappy wraith will haunt your path no more. But if Dr. Roselli knew nothing about David Rossi, how comes it that David Rossi knows so much about Dr. Roselli? It looks like another clue. Thanks again. A thousand thanks! "Still no news from London, but though I pretend neither to knowledge nor foreknowledge, I am still satisfied that we are on the right track. "Dinner-party to-night, dearest, and I shall be obliged to you if I may borrow Felice. Your Princess Potiphar, your Don Saint Joseph, your Count Signorina, your Senator Tom-tit, and--will you believe it?--your Madame de Trop! I can deny you nothing, you see, but I am cruelly out of luck that my dark house must lack the light of all drawing-rooms, the sunshine of all Rome! "How clever of you to throw dust in the eyes of your aunt herself! And these red-hot prophets in petticoats, how startled they will soon be! Adieu! "BONELLI." As the _coupé_ turned into the Piazza Navona, Roma was tearing the letter into shreds and casting them out of the window. VIII While Roma climbed the last flight of stairs to David Rossi's apartment, with the slippery-sloppery footsteps of the old Garibaldian going before her, Bruno's thunderous voice was rocking through the rooms above. "Look at him, Mr. Rossi! Republican, democrat, socialist, and rebel! Upsets the government of this house once a day regularly--dethrones the King and defies the Queen! Catch the piggy-wiggy, Uncle David! Here goes for it--one, two, three, and away!" Then shrieks and squeals of childish laughter, mingled with another man's gentler tones, and a woman's frightened remonstrance. And then sudden silence and the voice of the Garibaldian in a panting whisper, saying, "She's here again, sir!" "Donna Roma?" "Yes." "Come in," cried David Rossi, and from the threshold of the open hall she saw him, in the middle of the floor, with a little boy pitching and heaving like a young sea-lion in his arms. He slipped the boy to his feet and said, "Run to the lady and kiss her hand, Joseph." But the boy stood off shyly, and, stepping into the room, Roma knelt to the child and put her arms about him. "What a big little man, to be sure! His name is Joseph, is it? And what's his age? Six! Think of that! Have I seen him before, Mrs. Rocco? Yes? Perhaps he was here the day I called before? Was he? So? How stupid of me to forget! Ah, of course, now I remember, he was in his nightdress and asleep, and Mr. Rossi was carrying him to bed." The mother's heart was captured in a moment. "Do you love children, Donna Roma?" "Indeed, I do!" During this passage between the women Bruno had grunted his way out of the room, and was now sidling down the staircase, being suddenly smitten by his conscience with the memory of a message he had omitted to deliver. "Come, Joseph," said Elena. But Joseph, who had recovered from his bashfulness, was in no hurry to be off, and Roma said: "No, no! I've only called for a moment. It is to say," turning to David Rossi, "that there's a meet of the foxhounds on the Campagna to-morrow, and to tell you from Don Camillo that if you ride and would care to go...." "_You_ are going?" "With the Princess, yes! But there will be no necessity to follow the hounds all day long, and perhaps coming home...." "I will be there." "How charming! That's all I came to say, and so...." She made a pretence of turning to go, but he said: "Wait! Now that you are here I have something to show to you." "To me?" "Come in," he cried, and, blowing a kiss to the boy, Roma followed Rossi into the sitting-room. "One moment," he said, and he left her to go into the bedroom. When he came back he had a small parcel in his hands wrapped in a lace handkerchief. "We have talked so much of my old friend Roselli that I thought you might like to see his portrait." "His portrait? Have you really got his portrait?" "Here it is," and he put into her hands the English photograph which used to hang by his bed. She took it eagerly and looked at it steadfastly, while her lips trembled and her eyes grew moist. There was silence for a moment, and then she said, in a voice that struggled to control itself: "So this was the father of little Roma?" "Yes." "Is it very like him?" "Very." "What a beautiful face! What a reverend head! Did he look like that on the day ... the day he was at Kensal Green?" "Exactly." The excitement she laboured under could no longer be controlled, and she lifted the picture to her lips and kissed it. Then catching her breath, and looking up at him with swimming eyes, she laughed through her tears and said: "That is because he was your friend, and because ... because he loved my little namesake." David Rossi did not reply, and the silence was too audible, so she said with another nervous laugh: "Not that I think she deserved such a father. He must have been the best father a girl ever had, but she...." "She was a child," said David Rossi. "Still, if she had been worthy of a father like that...." "She was only seven, remember." "Even so, but if she had not been a little selfish ... wasn't she a little selfish?" "You mustn't abuse my friend Roma." Her eyes beamed, her cheeks burned, her nerves tingled. It would be a sweet delight to egg him on, but she dare not go any farther. "I beg your pardon," she said in a soft voice. "Of course you know best. And perhaps years afterward when she came to think of what her father had been to her ... that is to say if she lived..." Their eyes met again, and now hers fell in confusion. "I want to give you that portrait," he said. "Me?" "You would like to have it?" "More than anything in the world. But you value it yourself?" "Beyond anything I possess." "Then how can I take it from you?" "There is only one person in the world I would give it to. She has it, and I am contented." It was impossible to hear the strain any longer without crying out, and to give physical expression to her feelings she lifted the portrait to her lips again and kissed and kissed it. He smiled at her, she smiled back; the silence was hard to break, but just as they were on the edge of the precipice the big shock-head of the little boy looked in on them through the chink of the door and cried: "You needn't ask me to come in, 'cause I won't!" By the blessed instinct of the motherhood latent in her, Roma understood the boy in a moment. "If I were a gentleman, I would, though," she said. "_Would_ you?" said Joseph, and in he came, with a face shining all over. "Hurrah! A piano!" said Roma, leaping up and seating herself at the instrument. "What shall I play for you, Joseph?" Joseph was indifferent so long as it was a song, and with head aside, Roma touched the keys and pretended to think. After a moment of sweet duplicity she struck up the air she had come expressly to play. It was the "British Grenadiers." She sang a verse of it. She sang in English and with the broken pronunciation of a child-- "Some talk of Allisander, and some of Hergoles; Of Hector and Eyesander, and such gate names as these..." Suddenly she became aware that David Rossi was looking at her through the glass on the mantel-piece, and to keep herself from crying she began to laugh, and the song came to an end. At the same moment the door burst open with a bang, and the dog came bounding into the room. Behind it came Elena, who said: "It was scratching at the staircase door, and I thought it must have followed you." "Followed Mr. Rossi, you mean. He has stolen my dog's heart away from me," said Roma. "That is what I say about my boy's," said Elena. "But Joseph is going for a soldier, I see." "It's a porter he wants to be." "Then so he shall--he shall be my porter some day," said Roma, whereupon Joseph was frantic with delight, and Elena was saying to herself, "What wicked lies they tell of her--I wonder they are not ashamed!" The fire was going down and the twilight was deepening. "Shall I bring you the lamp, sir?" said Elena. "Not for me," said Roma. "I am going immediately." But even when mother and child had gone she did not go. Unconsciously they drew nearer and nearer to each other in the gathering darkness, and as the daylight died their voices softened and there were quiet questions and low replies. The desire to speak out was struggling in the woman's heart with the delight of silence. But she would reveal herself at last. "I have been thinking a great deal about the story they told you in London--of Roma's death and burial, I mean. Had you no reason to think it might be false?" "None whatever." "It never occurred to you that it might be to anybody's advantage to say that she was dead while she was still alive?" "How could it? Who was to perpetrate a crime for the sake of the daughter of a poor doctor in Soho--a poor prisoner in Elba?" "Then it was not until afterward that you heard that the poor doctor was a great prince?" "Not until the night you were here before." "And you had never heard anything of his daughter in the interval?" "Once I had! It was on the same day, though. A man came here from London on an infamous errand..." "What was his name?" "Charles Minghelli." "What did he say?" "He said Roma Roselli was not dead at all, but worse than dead--that she had fallen into the hands of an evil man, and turned out badly." "Did you ... did you believe that story?" "Not one word of it! I called the man a liar, and flung him out of the house." "Then you ... you think ... if she is still living...." "My Roma is a good woman." Her face burned up to the roots of her hair. She choked with joy, she choked with pain. His belief in her purity stifled her. She could not speak now--she could not reveal herself. There was a moment of silence, and then in a tremulous voice she said: "Will you not call _me_ Roma, and try to think I am your little friend?" When she came to herself after that she was back in her own apartment, in her aunt's bedroom, and kissing the old lady's angular face. And the Countess was breaking up the stupefaction of her enchantment with sighs and tears and words of counsel. "I only want you to preserve yourself for your proper destiny, Roma. You are the _fiancée_ of the Baron, as one might say, and the poor maniac can't last long." Before dressing for dinner Roma replied to the Minister:-- "DEAR BARON BONELLI,--Didn't I tell you that Minghelli would find out nothing? I am now more than ever sure that the whole idea is an error. Take my advice and drop it. Drop it! Drop it! I shall, at all events!--Yours, "ROMA VOLONNA. "Success to the dinner! Am sending Felice. He will give you this letter.--R. V." IX It was the sweetest morning of the Roman winter. The sun shone with a gentle radiance, and the motionless air was fragrant with the odour of herbs and flowers. Outside the gate which leads to the old Appian Way grooms were waiting with horses, blanketed and hooded, and huntsmen in red coats, white breeches, pink waistcoats, and black boots, were walking their mounts to the place appointed for the meet. In a line of carriages were many ladies, some in riding-habits, and on foot there was a string of beggars, most of them deformed, with here and there, at little villages, a group of rosy children watching the procession as it passed. The American and English Ambassadors were riding side by side behind a magnificent carriage with coachman and tiger in livery of scarlet and gold. "Who would think, to look on a scene like this, that the city is seething with dissatisfaction?" said the Englishman. "Rome?" said the American. "Its aristocratic indifference will not allow it to believe that here, as everywhere else in the world, great and fatal changes are going on all the time. These lands, for example--to whom do they belong? Nominally to the old Roman nobility, but really to the merchants of the Campagna--a company of middlemen who grew rich by leasing them from the princes and subletting them to the poor." "And the nobles themselves--how are they faring?" "Badly! Already they are of no political significance, and the State knows them not." "They don't appear to go into the army or navy--what do they go into?" "Love!" "And meantime the Italian people?" "Meantime the great Italian people, like the great English people, the great German people, and the people of every country where the privileged classes still exist, are rising like a mighty wave to sweep all this sea-wrack high and dry on to the rocks." "And this wave of the people," said the Englishman, inclining his head toward the carriage in front, "is represented by men like friend Rossi?" "Would be, if he could keep himself straight," said the American. "And where is the Tarpeian rock of friend Rossi's politics?" The American slapped his glossy boot with his whip, lowered his voice, and said, "There!" "Donna Roma?" "A fortnight ago you heard his speech on the liveries of scarlet and gold, and look! He's under them himself already." "You think there is no other inference?" The American shook his head. "Always the way with these leaders of revolution. It's Samson's strength with Samson's weakness in every mother's son of them." "Good-morning, General Potter!" said a cheerful voice from the carriage in front. It was Roma herself. She sat by the side of the little Princess, with David Rossi on the seat before them. Her eyes were bright, there was a glow in her cheeks, and she looked lovelier than ever in her close-fitting riding-habit. At the meeting-place there was a vast crowd of on-lookers, chiefly foreigners, in cabs and carriages and four-in-hand coaches from the principal hotels. The Master of the Hunt was ready, with his impatient hounds at his feet, and around him was a brilliant scene. Officers in blue, huntsmen in red, ladies in black, jockeys in jackets, a sea of feathers and flowers and sunshades, with the neighing of the horses and yapping of the dogs, the vast undulating country, the smell of earth and herbs, and the morning sunlight over all. Don Camillo was waiting with horses for his party, and they mounted immediately. The horse for Roma was a quiet bay mare with limpid eyes. General Potter helped her to the saddle, and she went cantering through the long lush grass. "What has your charming young charge been doing with herself, Princess?" said the American. "She was always beautiful, but to-day she's lovely." "She's like Undine after she had found her soul," said the Englishman. The little Princess laughed. "Love and a cough cannot be hidden, gentlemen," she whispered, with a look toward David Rossi. "You don't mean...." "Hush!" Meantime Rossi, in ordinary walking dress, was approaching the horse he was intended to ride. It was a high strong-limbed sorrel with wild eyes and panting nostrils. The English groom who held it was regarding the rider with a doubtful expression, and a group of booted and spurred huntsmen were closing around. To everybody's surprise, the deputy gathered up the reins and leaped lightly to the saddle, and at the next moment he was riding at Roma's side. Then the horn was sounded, the pack broke into music, the horses beat their hoofs on the turf and the hunt began. There was a wall to jump first, and everybody cleared it easily until it came to David Rossi's turn, when the sorrel refused to jump. He patted the horse's neck and tried it again, but it shied and went off with its head between its legs. A third time he brought the sorrel up to the wall, and a third time it swerved aside. The hunters had waited to watch the result, and as the horse came up for a fourth trial, with its wild eyes flashing, its nostrils quivering, and its forelock tossed over one ear, it was seen that the bridle had broken and Rossi was riding with one rein. "He'll be lucky if he isn't hurt," said some one. "Why doesn't he give it the whip over its quarters?" said another. But David Rossi only patted his horse until it came to the spot where it had shied before. Then he reached over its neck on the side of the broken rein, and with open hand struck it sharply across the nose. The horse reared, snorted, and jumped, and at the next moment it was standing quietly on the other side of the wall. Roma, on her bay mare, was ashen pale, and the American Ambassador turned to her and said: "Never knew but one man to do a thing like that, Donna Roma." Roma swallowed something in her throat and said: "Who was it, General Potter?" "The present Pope when he was a Noble Guard." "He can ride, by Jove!" said Don Camillo. "That sort of stuff has to be in a man's blood. Born in him--must be!" said the Englishman. And then David Rossi came up with a new bridle to his sorrel, and Sir Evelyn added: "You handle a horse like a man who began early, Mr. Rossi." "Yes," said David Rossi; "I was a stable-boy two years in New York, your Excellency." At that moment the huntsman who was leading with two English terriers gave the signal that the fox was started, whereupon the hounds yelped, the whips whistled, and the horses broke into a canter. Two hours afterwards the poor little creature that had been the origin of the holiday was tracked to earth and killed. Its head and tail were cut off, and the rest of its body was thrown to the dogs. After that flasks were taken out, healths were drunk, cheers were given, and then the hunt broke up, and the hunters began to return at an easy trot. Roma and David Rossi were riding side by side, and the Princess was a pace or two behind them. "Roma!" cried the Princess, "what a stretch for a gallop!" "Isn't it?" said Roma, and in a moment she was off. "I believe her mare has mastered her," said the Princess, and at the next instant David Rossi was gone too. "Peace be with them! They're a lovely pair!" said the Princess, laughing. "But we might as well go home. They are like Undine, and will return no more." X Meantime, with the light breeze in her ears, and the beat of her horse's hoofs echoing among the aqueducts and tombs, Roma galloped over the broad Campagna. After a moment she heard some one coming after her, and for joy of being pursued she whipped up and galloped faster. Without looking back she knew who was behind, and as her horse flew over the hillocks her heart leaped and sang. When the strong-limbed sorrel came up with the quiet bay mare, they were nearly two miles from their starting-place, and far out of the track of their fellow-hunters. Both were aglow from head to foot, and as they drew rein they looked at each other and laughed. "Might as well go on now, and come out by the English cemetery," said Roma. "Good!" said David Rossi. "But it's half-past two," said Roma, looking at her little watch, "and I'm as hungry as a hunter." "Naturally," said David Rossi, and they laughed again. There was an osteria somewhere in that neighbourhood. He had known it when he was a boy. They would dine on yellow beans and macaroni. Presently they saw a house smoking under a scraggy clump of eucalyptus. It was the osteria, half farmstead and half inn. A timid lad took their horses, an evil-looking old man bowed them into the porch, and an elderly woman, with a frightened expression and a face wrinkled like the bark of a cedar, brought them a bill of fare. They laughed at everything--at the unfamiliar menu, because it was soiled enough to have served for a year; at the food, because it was so simple; and at the prices, because they were so cheap. Roma looked over David Rossi's shoulder as he read out the bill of fare, and they ordered the dinner together. "Macaroni--threepence! Right! Trout--fourpence! Shall we have fourpennyworth of trout? Good! Lamb--sixpence! We'll take two lambs--I mean two sixpenny-worths," and then more laughter. While the dinner was cooking they went out to walk among the eucalyptus, and came upon a beautiful dell surrounded by trees and carpeted with wild flowers. "Carnival!" cried Roma. "Now if there was anybody here to throw a flower at one!" He picked up a handful of violets and tossed them over her head. "When I was a boy this was where men fought duels," said David Rossi. "The brutes! What a lovely spot! Must be the place where Pharaoh's daughter found Moses in the bulrushes!" "Or where Adam found Eve in the garden of Eden?" They looked at each other and smiled. "What a surprise that must have been to him," said Roma. "Whatever did he think she was, I wonder?" "An angel who had come down in the moonlight and forgotten to go up in the morning!" "Nonsense! He would know in a moment she was a woman." "Think of it! She was the only woman in the world for him!" "And fancy! He was the only man!" The dinner was one long delight. Even its drawbacks were no disadvantage. The food was bad, and it was badly cooked and badly served, but nothing mattered. "Only one fork for all these dishes?" asked David Rossi. "That's the best of it," said Roma. "You only get one dirty one." Suddenly she dropped knife and fork, and held up both hands. "I forgot!" "What?" "I was to be little Roma all day to-day." "Why, so you are, and so you have been." "That cannot be, or you would call her by her name, you know." "I'll do so the moment she calls me by mine." "That's not fair," said Roma, and her face flushed up, for the wine of life had risen to her eyes. In a vineyard below a girl working among the orange trees was singing _stornelli_. It was a song of a mother to her son. He had gone away from the old roof-tree, but he would come back some day. His new home was bright and big, but the old hearthstone would draw him home. Beautiful ladies loved him, but the white-haired mother would kiss him again. They listened for a short dreaming space, and their laughter ceased and their eyes grew moist. Then they called for the bill, and the old man with the evil face came up with a forced smile from a bank that had clearly no assets of that kind to draw upon. "You've been a long time in this house, landlord," said David Rossi. "Very long time, Excellency," said the man. "You came from the Ciociaria." "Why, yes, I did," said the man, with a look of surprise. "I was poor then, and later on I lived in the caves and grottoes of Monte Parioli." "But you knew how to cure the phylloxera in the vines, and when your master died you married his daughter and came into his vineyard." "Angelica! Here's a gentleman who knows all about us," said the old man, and then, grinning from ear to ear, he added: "Perhaps your Excellency was the young gentleman who used to visit with his father at the Count's palace on the hill twenty to thirty years ago?" David Rossi looked him steadfastly in the face and said: "Do you remember the poor boy who lived with you at that time?" The forced smile was gone in a moment. "We had no boy then, Excellency." "He came to you from Santo Spirito and you got a hundred francs with him at first, and then you built this pergola." "If your Excellency is from the Foundling, you may tell them again, as I told the priest who came before, that we never took a boy from there, and we had no money from the people who sent him to London." "You don't remember him, then?" "Certainly not." "Nor you?" The old woman hesitated, and the old man made mouths at her. "No, Excellency." David Rossi took a long breath. "Here is the amount of your bill, and something over. Good-bye!" The timid lad brought round the horses and the riders prepared to mount. Roma was looking at the boy with pitying eyes. "How long have you been here?" she asked. "Ten years, Excellency," he replied. He was just twelve years of age and both his parents were dead. "Poor little fellow!" said Roma, and before David Rossi could prevent her she was emptying her purse into the boy's hand. They set off at a trot, and for some time they did not exchange a word. The sun was sinking and the golden day was dying down. Over the broad swell of the Campagna, treeless, houseless, a dull haze was creeping like a shroud, and the long knotted grass was swept by the chill breath of evening. Nothing broke the wide silence of the desolate space except the lowing of cattle, the bleat of sheep that were moving in masses like the woolly waves of a sea, the bark of big white dogs, the shouts of cowherds carrying long staves, and of shepherds riding on shaggy ponies. Here and there were wretched straw huts, with groups of fever-stricken people crouching over the embers of miserable fires, and here and there were dirty pothouses, which alternated with wooden crosses of the Christ and grass-covered shrines of the Madonna. The rhythm of the saddles ceased and the horses walked. "Was that the place where you were brought up?" said Roma. "Yes." "And those were the people who sold you into slavery, so to speak?" "Yes." "And you could have confounded them with one word, and did not!" "What was the use? Besides, they were not the first offenders." "No; your father was more to blame. Don't you feel sometimes as if you could hate him for what he has made you suffer?" David Rossi shook his head. "I was saved from that bitterness by the saint who saved me from so much besides. 'Don't try to find out who your father is, David,' he said, 'and if by chance you ever do find out, don't return evil for evil, and don't avenge yourself on the world. By-and-bye the world will know you for what you are yourself, not for what your father is. Perhaps your father is a bad man, perhaps he isn't. Leave him to God!'" "It's a terrible thing to think evil of one's own father, isn't it?" said Roma, but David Rossi did not reply. "And then--who knows?--perhaps some day you may discover that your father deserved your love and pity after all." "Perhaps!" They had drawn up at another house under a thick clump of eucalyptus trees. It was the Trappist Monastery of Tre Fontane. Silence was everywhere in this home of silence. They went up on to the roof. From that height the whole world around seemed to be invaded by silence. It was the silence of all sacred things, the silence of the mass; and the undying paganism in the hearts of the two that stood there had its eloquent silence also. Roma was leaning on the parapet with David Rossi behind her, when suddenly she began to weep. She wept violently and sobbed. "What is it?" he asked, but she did not answer. After a while she grew calm and dried her eyes, called herself foolish, and began to laugh. But the heart-beats were too audible without saying something, and at length she tried to speak. "It was the poor boy at the inn," she said; "the sight of his sweet face brought back a scene I had quite forgotten," and then, in a faltering voice, turning her head away, she told him everything. "It was in London, and my father had found a little Roman boy in the streets on a winter's night, carrying a squirrel and playing an accordion. He wore a tattered suit of velveteens, and that was all that sheltered his little body from the cold. His fingers were frozen stiff, and he fainted when they brought him into the house. After a while he opened his eyes, and gazed around at the fire and the faces about him, and seemed to be looking for something. It was his squirrel, and it was frozen dead. But he grasped it tight and big tears rolled on to his cheeks, and he raised himself as if to escape. He was too weak for that, and my father comforted him and he lay still. That was when I saw him first; and looking at the poor boy at the inn I thought ... I thought perhaps he was another ... perhaps my little friend of long ago...." Her throat was throbbing, and her faltering voice was failing like a pendulum that is about to stop. "Roma!" he cried over her shoulder. "David!" Their eyes met, their hands clasped, their pent-up secret was out, and in the dim-lit catacombs of love two souls stood face to face. "How long have you known it?" she whispered. "Since the night you came to the Piazza Navona. And you?" "Since the moment I heard your voice." And then she shuddered and laughed. When they left the house of silence a blessed hush had fallen on them, a great wonder which they had never known before, the wonder of the everlasting miracle of human hearts. The sun was sitting behind Rome in a glorious blaze of crimson, with the domes of churches glistening in the horizontal rays, and the dark globe of St. Peter's hovering over all. The mortal melancholy which had been lying over the world seemed to be lifted away, and the earth smiled with flowers and the heavens shone with gold. Only the rhythmic cadence of the saddles broke the silence as they swung to the movement of the horses. Sometimes they looked at each other, and then they smiled, but they did not speak. The sun went down, and there was a far-off ringing of bells. It was Ava Maria. They drew up the horses for a moment and dropped their heads. Then they started again. The night chills were coming, and they rode hard. Roma bent over the mane of her horse and looked proud and happy. Grooms were waiting for them at the gate of St. Paul, and, giving up their horses, they got into a carriage. When they reached Trinità de' Monti the lamplighter was lighting the lamps on the steps of the piazza, and Roma said in a low voice, with a blush and a smile: "Don't come in to-night--not to-night, you know." She wanted to be alone. XI Felice met Roma at the door of her own apartment, and in more than usually sepulchral tones announced that the Countess had wished to see her as soon as she came home. Without waiting to change her riding-habit, Roma turned into her aunt's room. The old lady was propped up with pillows, and Natalina was fussing about her. Her eyes glittered, her thin lips were compressed, and regardless of the presence of the maid, she straightway fell upon Roma with bitter reproaches. "Did you wish to see me, aunt?" said Roma, and the old lady answered in a mocking falsetto: "Did I wish to see you, miss? Certainly I wished to see you, although I'm a broken-hearted woman and sorry for the day I saw you first." "What have I done now?" said Roma, and the radiant look in her face provoked the old lady to still louder denunciations. "What have you done? Mercy me!... Give me my salts, Natalina!" "Natalina," said Roma quietly, "lay out my studio things, and if Bruno has gone, tell Felice to light the lamps and see to the stove downstairs." The old lady fanned herself with her embroidered handkerchief and began again. "I thought you meant to mend your ways when you came in yesterday, miss--you were so meek and modest. But what was the fact? You had come to me straight from that man's apartments. You had! You know you had! Don't try to deny it." "I don't deny it," said Roma. "Holy Virgin! She doesn't deny it! Perhaps you admit it?" "I do admit it." "Madonna mia! She admits it! Perhaps you made an appointment?" "No, I went without an appointment." "Merciful heavens! She is on such terms with the man that she can go to his apartments without even an appointment! Perhaps you were alone with him, miss?" "Yes, we were quite alone," said Roma. The old lady, who was apparently about to faint right away, looked up at her little shrine, and said: "Goodness! A girl! Not even a married woman! And without a maid, too!" Trying not to lose control of herself, Roma stepped to the door, but her aunt followed her up. "A man like that, too! Not even a gentleman! The hypocrite! The impostor! With his airs of purity and pretence!" "Aunt Betsy," said Roma, "I was sorry I spoke to you as I did the other night, not because anything I said was wrong, but because you are weak and bedridden and suffering. Don't provoke me to speak again as I spoke before. I did go to Mr. Rossi's rooms yesterday, and if there is any fault in that, I alone am to blame." "Are you indeed?" said the old lady, with a shrill, piping cry. "Holy Saints! she admits so much! Do you know what people will call you when they hear of it? A hussy! A shameless hussy!" Roma was flaming up, but she controlled herself and put her hand on the door-handle. "They _will_ hear of it, depend on that," cried the Countess. "Last night at dinner the women were talking of nothing else. Felice heard all their chattering. That woman let the dog out to follow you, knowing it would go straight to the man's rooms. 'Whom did it come home with, Felice?' 'Donna Roma, your Excellency.' 'Then it's clear where Donna Roma had been.' Ugh! I could choke to think of it. My head is fit to split! Is there any cognac...?" Roma's bosom was visibly stirred by her breathing, but she answered quietly: "No matter! Why should I care what is thought of my conduct by people who have no morality of their own to judge me by?" "Really now?" said the Countess, twisting the wrinkles of her old face into skeins of mock courtesy. "Upon my word, I didn't think you were so simple. Understand, miss, it isn't the opinion of the Princess Bellini I am thinking about, but that of the Baron Bonelli. He has his dignity to consider, and when the time comes and he is free to take a wife, he is not likely to marry a girl who has been talked of with another man. Don't you see what that woman is doing? She has been doing it all along, and like a simpleton you've been helping her. You've been flinging away your chances with this Rossi and making yourself impossible to the Minister." Roma tossed her head and answered: "I don't care if I have, Aunt Betsy. I'm not of the same mind as I used to be, and I think no longer that the holiest things are to be bought and sold like so much merchandise." The old lady, who had been bending forward in her vehemence, fell back on the pillow. "You'll kill me!" she cried. "Where did you learn such folly? Goodness knows I've done my best by you. I have tried to teach you your duty to the baron and to society. But all this comes of admitting these anarchists into the house. You can't help it, though. It's in your blood. Your father before you...." Crimson and trembling from head to foot, Roma turned suddenly and left the room. Natalina and Felice were listening on the other side of the door. But not even this jarring incident could break the spell of Roma's enchantment, and when dinner was over, and she had gone to the studio and closed the door, the whole world seemed to be shut out, and nothing was of the slightest consequence. Taking the damp cloth from the bust, she looked at her work again. In the light of the aurora she now lived in, the head she had wrought with so much labour was poor and inadequate. It did not represent the original. It was weak and wrong. She set to work again, and little by little the face in the clay began to change. Not Peter any longer, Peter the disciple, but Another. It was audacious, it was shocking, but no matter. She was not afraid. Time passed, but she did not heed it. She was working at lightning speed, and with a power she had never felt before. Night came on, and the old Rome, the Rome of the Popes, repossessed itself of the Eternal City. The silent streets, the dark patches, the luminous piazzas, the three lights on the loggia of the Vatican, the grey ghost of the great dome, the kind stars, the sweet moon, and the church bells striking one by one during the noiseless night. At length she became aware of a streak of light on the floor. It was coming through the shutters of the window. She threw them open, and the breeze of morning came up from the orange trees in the garden below. The day was dawning over the sleepy city. Convent bells were ringing for matins, but all else was still, and the silence was sweet and deep. She turned back to her work and looked at it again. It thrilled her now. She walked to and fro in the studio and felt as if she were walking on the stars. She was happy, happy, happy! Then the city began to sound on every side. Cabs rattled, electric trams tinkled, vendors called their wares in the streets, and the new Rome, the Rome of the Kings, awoke. Somebody was singing as he came upstairs. It was Bruno, coming to his work. He looked astonished, for the lamps were still burning, although the sunlight was streaming into the room. "Been working all night, Donna Roma?" "Fear I have, Bruno, but I'm going to bed now." She had an impulse to call him up to her work and say, "Look! I did that, for I am a great artist." But no! Not yet! Not yet! She had covered up the clay, and turned the key of her own compartment, when the bell rang on the floor above. It was the porter with the post, and Natalina, in curl papers, met her on the landing with the letters. One of them was from the Mayor, thanking her for what she had done for Charles Minghelli; another was from her landlord, thanking her for his translation to Paris; a third was from the fashionable modiste, thanking her for an invitation from the Minister. A feeling of shame came over her as she glanced at these letters. They brought the implication of an immoral influence, the atmosphere of an evil life. There was a fourth letter. It was from the Minister himself. She had seen it from the first, but a creepy sense of impending trouble had made her keep it to the last. Ought she to open it? She ought, she must! "MY DARLING CHILD,--News at last, too, and success within hail! Minghelli, the Grand Hotel, the reference in London, and the dead-and-buried nightmare have led up to and compassed everything! Prepare for a great surprise--David Rossi is _not_ David Rossi, but a _condemned man who has no right to live in Italy_! Prepare for a still greater surprise--_he has no right to live at all_! "So you are avenged! The man humiliated and degraded you. He insulted me also, and did his best to make me resign my portfolio and put my private life on its defence. You set out to undo the effects of his libel and to punish him for his outrage. You've done it! You have avenged yourself for both of us! It's all your work! You are magnificent! And now let us draw the net closer ... let us hold him fast ... let us go on as we have begun...." Her sight grew dim. The letter seemed to be full of blotches. It dropped out of her helpless fingers. She sat a long time looking out on the sunlit city, and all the world grew dark and chill. Then she rose, and her face was pale and rigid. "No, I will _not_ go on!" she thought. "I will _not_ betray him! I will _save_ him! He insulted me, he humiliated me, he was my enemy, but ... I love him! I love him!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PART FOUR--DAVID ROSSI I David Rossi was in his bedroom writing his leader for next morning's paper. A lamp with a dark shade burned on the desk, and the rest of the room was in shadow. It was late, and the house was quiet. The door opened softly, and Bruno, in shirt-sleeves and slippered feet, came on tiptoe into the room. He brought a letter in a large violet envelope with a monogram on the front of it, and put it down on the desk by Rossi's side. It was from Roma. "DEAR DAVID ROSSI,--Without rhyme or reason I have been expecting to see you here to-day, having something to say which it is important that you should hear. May I expect you in the morning? Knowing how busy you are, I dare not bid you come, yet the matter is of great consequence and admits of no delay. It is not a subject on which it is safe or proper to write, and how to speak of it I am at a loss to decide. But you shall help me. Therefore come without delay! There! I have bidden you come in spite of myself. Judge from that how eager is my expectation.--In haste, "ROMA V. "P.S.--I open my envelope, to wonder if you can ever forgive me the humiliations you have suffered for my sake. To think that _I_ threw you into the way of them! And merely to wipe out an offence that is not worth considering! I am ashamed of myself. I am also ashamed of the people about me. You will remember that I told you they were pitiless and cruel. They are worse--they are heartless and without mercy. But how bravely you bore their insults and innuendoes! I almost cry to think of it, and if I were a good Catholic I should confess and do penance. See? I do confess, and if you want me to do penance you will come yourself and impose it." It was the first letter that David Rossi had received from Roma, and as he read it the air seemed to him to be filled with the sweet girlish voice. He could see the play of her large, bright, violet eyes. The delicate fragrance of the scented paper rose to his nostrils, and without being conscious of what he was doing he raised the letter to his lips. Then he became aware that Bruno was still in the room. The good fellow was in the shadow behind him, pushing things about under some pretext and trying to make a noise. "Don't let me keep you up, Bruno." "Sure you don't want anything, sir?" said Bruno with confusion. David Rossi rose and walked about the room with his slow step. "You have something to say to me?" "Well, yes, sir--yes, I have." "What is it?" Bruno scratched his shock head and looked about as if for help. His eyes fell on the letter lying open in the light on the desk. "It's about that, sir. I knew where it came from by the colour and the monogram." "Well?" Bruno began to look frightened, and then in a louder voice, that bubbled out of his mouth like water from the neck of a bottle, he said: "Tell you the truth, sir, people are talking about you." "What are they saying, Bruno?" "Saying?... Ever heard the proverb, 'Sun in the eyes, the battle lost'? Sun in the eyes--that's what they're saying, sir." "So they're saying that, are they?" "They are. And doesn't it look like it, sir? You'll allow it looks like it, anyway. When you started the Republic, sir, the people had hopes of you. But a month is gone and you haven't done a thing." David Rossi, with head down, continued to pace to and fro. "'Patience,' I'm saying. 'Go slow and sure,' says I. That's all right, sir, but the Government is going fast enough. Forty thousand men called out to keep the people quiet, and when the bread-tax begins on the first of the month the blessed saints know what will happen. Next week we hold our meeting in the Coliseum. You called it yourself, sir, yet they're laying odds you won't be there. Where will you be? In the house of a bad woman?" "Bruno!" cried Rossi in a stern voice, "what right have you to talk to me like this?" Bruno was frightened at what he had said, but he tried to carry it off with a look of passion. "Right? The right of a friend, sir, who can't stand by and see you betrayed. Yes, betrayed, that's the word for it. Betrayed! Betrayed! It's a plot to ruin the people through the weakness of their leader. A woman drawn across a man's trail. The trick is as old as the ages. Never heard what we say in Rome?--'The man is fire, the woman is tow; then comes the devil and puts them together.'" David Rossi was standing face to face with Bruno, who was growing hot and trying to laugh bitterly. "Oh, I know what I'm saying, sir. The Prime Minister is at the bottom of everything. David Rossi never goes to Donna Roma's house but the Baron Bonelli knows all about it. They write to each other every day, and I've posted her letters myself. _Her_ house is _his_ house. Carriages, horses, servants, liveries--how else could she support it? By her art, her sculpture?" Bruno was frightened to the bottom of his soul, but he continued to talk and to laugh bitterly. "She's deceiving you, sir. Isn't it as plain as daylight? You hit her hard, and old Vampire too, in your speech on the morning of the Pope's Jubilee, and she's paying you out for both of them." "That's enough, Bruno." "All Rome knows it, and everybody will be laughing at you soon." "You've said enough, I tell you. Go to bed." "Oh, I know! The heart has its reasons, but it listens to none." "Go to bed, I tell you! Isn't it sufficient that by your tittle-tattle you caused me to wrong the lady?" "_I_ did?" "_You_ did." "I did not." "You did, and if it hadn't been for the tales you told me before I knew her, or had ever seen her, I should never have spoken of her as I did." "She deserved all you said of her." "She didn't deserve one word of it, and it was your lies that made me slander her." Bruno's eyes flinched as if a blow had fallen on them. Then he tried to laugh. "Hit me again. The skin of the ass is used to blows. Only don't go too far with me, David Rossi." "Then don't _you_ go too far with your falsehoods and suspicion." "Suspicion! Holy Virgin! Is it suspicion that she has had you at her studio to make a Roman holiday for her friends and cronies? By the saints! Suspicion!" "Go on, if it becomes you." "If what becomes me?" "To eat her bread and talk against her." "That's a lie, David Rossi, and you know it. It's my own bread I'm eating. My labour belongs to me, and I sell it to my employer. But my conscience belongs to God, and she cannot buy it." David Rossi's white and angry face broke up like a snow-flake in the sun. "I was wrong when I said that, Bruno, and I ask your pardon." "Do you say that, sir? And after I've insulted you?" David Rossi held out his hand, and Bruno clasped it. "I had no right to be angry with you, Bruno, but you are wrong about Donna Roma. Believe me, dear friend, cruelly, awfully, terribly wrong." "You think she is a good woman." "I know she is, and if I said otherwise, I take it back and am ashamed." "Beautiful! If I could only believe in her as you do, sir. But I've known her for two years." "And I've known her for twenty." "_You_ have?" "I have. Shall I tell you who she is? She is the daughter of my old friend in England." "The one who died in Elba?" "Yes." "The good man who found you and fed you, and educated you when you were a boy in London?" "That was the father of Donna Roma." "Then he was Prince Volonna, after all?" "Yes, and they lied to me when they told me she was dead and buried." Bruno was silent for a moment, and then in a choking voice he said: "Why didn't you strike me dead when I said she was deceiving you? Forgive me, sir!" "I do forgive you, Bruno, but not for myself--for her." Bruno turned away with a dazed expression. "Forget what I said about going to Donna Roma's, sir." Rossi sat down and took up his pen. "No, I cannot forget it," he said. "I _will not_ forget it. I will go to her house no more." Bruno was silent for a moment, and then he said in a thick voice: "I understand! God help you, David Rossi. It's a lonely road you mean to travel." Rossi drew a long breath and made ready to write. "Good-night, Bruno." "Good-night," said Bruno, and the good fellow went out with wet eyes. II The night was far gone, and the city lay still, while Rossi replied to Roma. "MY DEAR R.,--You have nothing to reproach yourself with in regard to my poor doings, or tryings-to-do. They were necessary, and if the penalties had been worse a hundredfold I should not chew the cud of my bargain now. Besides your wish, I had another motive, a secret motive, and perhaps, if I were a good Catholic, I should confess too, although not with a view to penance. Apparently, it has come out well, and now that it seems to be all over, both your scheme and mine, now that the wrong I did you is to some extent undone, and my own object is in some measure achieved, I find myself face to face with a position in which it is my duty to you as well as to myself to bring our intercourse to an end. "The truth is that we cannot be friends any longer, for the reason that I love some one in whom you are, unhappily, too much interested, and because there are obstacles between that person and myself which are decisive and insurmountable. This alone puts it on me as a point of honour that you and I should never see each other again. Each of my visits adds to my embarrassment, to the feeling that I am doing wrong in paying them, and to the certainty that I must give them up altogether. "Thank you again and again for the more than pleasant hours we have spent together. It is not your fault that I must bury the memory of them in oblivion. This does not mean that it is any part of the painful but unavoidable result of circumstances I cannot explain, that we should not write to each other as occasion may arise. Continue to think of me as your brother--your brother far away--to be called upon for counsel in your hour of need and necessity. And whenever you call, be sure I shall be there. "What you say of an important matter suggests that something has come to your knowledge which concerns myself and the authorities; but when a man has spent all his life on the edge of a precipice, the most urgent perils are of little moment, and I beg of you not to be alarmed for my sake. Whatever it is, it is only a part of the atmosphere of danger I have always lived in--the glacier I have always walked upon--and 'if it is not now, it is to come; if it is not to come, it will be now--the readiness is all.' Good-bye!--Yours, dear R----, D." III Next day brought Roma's reply. "MY DEAR D.,--Your letter has thrown me into the wildest state of excitement and confusion. I have done no work all day long, and when Black has leapt upon me and cried, 'Come out for a walk, you dear, dear dunce,' I have hardly known whether he barked or talked. "I am sorry our charming intercourse is to be interrupted, but you can't mean that it is to be broken off altogether. You can't, you can't, or my eyes would be red with crying, instead of dancing with delight. "Yet why they should dance I don't really know, seeing you are so indefinite, and I have no right to understand anything. If you cannot write by post, or even send messages by hand, if my man F. is your enemy, and your housemate B. is mine, isn't that precisely the best reason why you should come and talk matters over? Come at once. I bid you come! In a matter of such inconceivable importance, surely a sister has a right to command. "In that character, I suppose, I ought to be glad of the news you give me. Well, I _am_ glad! But being a daughter of Eve, I have a right to be curious. I want to ask questions. You say I know the lady, and am, unhappily, too deeply interested in her--who is she? Does she know of your love for her? Is she beautiful? Is she charming? Give me one initial of her name--only one--and I will be good. I am so much in the dark, and I cannot commit myself until I know more. "You speak of obstacles, and say they are decisive and insurmountable. That's terrible, but perhaps you are only thinking of what the poets call the 'cruel madness' of love, as if its madness and cruelty were sufficient reason for flying away from it. Or perhaps the obstacles are those of circumstances; but in that case, if the woman is the right one, she will be willing to wait for such difficulties to be got over, or even to find her happiness in sharing them. "See how I plead for my unknown sister! Which is sweet of me, considering that you don't tell me who she is, but leave me to find out if she is likely to suit me. But why not let me help you? Come at once and talk things over. "Yet how vain I am! Even while I proffer assistance with so loud a voice, I am smitten cold with the fear of an impediment which you know a thousand times better than I do how to measure and to meet. Perhaps the woman you speak of is unworthy of your friendship and love. I can understand that to be an insurmountable obstacle. You stand so high, and have to think about your work, your aims, your people. And perhaps it is only a dream and a delusion, a mirage of the heart, that love lifts a woman up to the level of the man who loves her. "Then there may be some fault--some grave fault. I can understand that too. We do not love because we should, but because we must, and there is nothing so cruel as the inequality of man and woman in the way the world regards their conduct. But I am like a bat in the dark, flying at gleams of light from closely-curtained windows. Will you not confide in me? Do! Do! Do! "Besides, I have the other matter to talk about. You remember telling me how you kicked out the man M----? He turned spy as the consequence, and has been sent to England. You ought to know that he has been making inquiries about you, and appears to have found out various particulars. Any day may bring urgent news of him, and if you will not come to me I may have to go to you in spite of every protest. "To-morrow is the day for your opening of Parliament, and I have a ticket for the Court tribune, so you may expect to see me floating somewhere above you in an atmosphere of lace and perfume. Good-night!--Your poor bewildered sister, ROMA." IV Next morning David Rossi put on evening dress, in obedience to the etiquette of the opening day of Parliament. Before going to the ceremony he answered Roma's letter of the night before. "DEAR R.,--If anything could add to the bitterness of my regret at ending an intercourse which has brought me the happiest moments of my life, it would be the tone of your sweet and charming letter. You ask me if the woman I love is beautiful. She is more than beautiful, she is lovely. You ask me if she knows that I love her. I have never dared to disclose my secret, and if I could have believed that she had ever so much as guessed at it, I should have found some consolation in a feeling which is too deep for the humiliations of pride. You ask me if she is worthy of my friendship and love. She is worthy of the love and friendship of a better man than I am or can ever hope to be. "Yet even if she were not so, even if there were, as you say, a fault in her, who am I that I should judge her harshly? I am not one of those who think that a woman is fallen because circumstances and evil men have conspired against her. I reject the monstrous theory that while a man may redeem the past, a woman never can. I abhor the judgment of the world by which a woman may be punished because she is trying to be pure, and dragged down because she is rising from the dirt. And if she had sinned as I have sinned, and suffered as I have suffered, I would pray for strength enough to say, 'Because I love her we are one, and we stand or fall together.' "But she is sweet, and pure, and true, and brave, and noble-hearted, and there is no fault in her, or she would not be the daughter of her father, who was the noblest man I ever knew or ever expect to know. No, the root of the separation is in myself, in myself only, in my circumstances and the personal situation I find myself in. "And yet it is difficult for me to state the obstacle which divides us, or to say more about it than that it is permanent and insurmountable. I should deceive myself if I tried to believe that time would remove or lessen it, and I have contended in vain with feelings which have tempted me to hold on at any price to the only joy and happiness of my life. "To go to her and open my heart is impossible, for personal intercourse is precisely the peril I am trying to avoid. How weak I am in her company! Even when her dress touches me at passing, I am thrilled with an emotion I cannot master; and when she lifts her large bright eyes to mine, I am the slave of a passion which conquers all my will. "No, it is not lightly and without cause that I have taken a step which sacrifices love to duty. I love her, with all my heart and soul and strength I love her, and that is why she and I, for her sake more than mine, should never meet again. "I note what you say about the man M----, but you must forgive me if I cannot be much concerned about it. There is nobody in London who knows me in the character I now bear, and can link it to the one you are thinking of. Good-bye, again! God be with you and keep you always! D." Having written this letter, David Rossi sealed it carefully and posted it with his own hand on his way to the opening of Parliament. V The day was fine, and the city was bright with many flags in honour of the King. All the streets leading from the royal palace to the Hall of the Deputies were lined with people. The square in front of the Parliament House was kept clear by a cordon of Carabineers, but the open windows of the hotels and houses round about were filled with faces. David Rossi entered the house by the little private door for deputies in the side street. The chamber was already thronged, and as full of movement as a hive of bees. Ladies in light dresses, soldiers in uniform, diplomatists wearing decorations, senators and deputies in white cravats and gloves, were moving to their places and saluting each other with bows and smiles. Rossi slipped into the place he usually occupied among the deputies. It was the corner seat by the door on the left of the royal canopy, immediately facing the section, which had been apportioned to the Court tribune. He did not lift his eyes as he entered, but he was conscious of a tall, well-rounded yet girlish figure in a grey dress that glistened in a ray of sunshine, with dark hair under a large black hat, and flashing eyes that seemed to pierce into his own like a shaft of light. Beautiful ladies with big oriental eyes were about her, and young deputies were using their opera-glasses upon them with undisguised curiosity. There was much gossip, some laughter, and a good deal of gesticulation. The atmosphere was one of light spirits, approaching gaiety, the atmosphere of the theatre or the ballroom. The clock over the reporters' gallery showed seven minutes after the hour appointed, when the walls of the chamber shook with the vibration of a cannon-shot. It was a gun fired at the Castle of St. Angelo to announce the King's arrival. At the same moment there came the muffled strains of the royal hymn played by the band in the piazza. The little gales of gossip died down in an instant, and in dead silence the assembly rose to its feet. A minute afterwards the King entered amid a fanfare of trumpets, the shouts of many voices, and the clapping of hands. He was a young man, in the uniform of a general, with a face that was drawn into deep lines under the eyes by ill-health and anxiety. Two soldiers, carrying their brass helmets with waving plumes, walked by his side, and a line of his Ministers followed. His Queen, a tall and beautiful girl, came behind, surrounded by many ladies. The King took his seat under the baldacchino, with his Ministers on his left. The Queen sat on his right hand, with her ladies beside her. They bowed to the plaudits of the assembly, and the drawn face of the young King wore a painful smile. The Baron Bonelli, in court dress and decorations, stood at the King's elbow, calm, dignified, self-possessed--the one strong face and figure in the group under the canopy. After the cheering and the shouting had subsided he requested the assembly, at the command of His Majesty, to resume their seats. Then he handed a paper to the King. It was the King's speech to his Parliament, and he read it nervously in a voice that had not learned to control itself. But the speech was sufficiently emphatic, and its words were grandiose and even florid. It consisted of four clauses. In the first clause the King thanked God that his country was on terms of amity with all foreign countries, and invoked God's help in the preservation of peace. The second clause was about the increase of the army. "The army," said the King, "is very dear to me, as it has always been dear to my family. My illustrious grandfather, who granted freedom to the kingdom, was a soldier; my honoured father was a soldier, and it is my pride that I am myself a soldier also. The army was the foundation of our liberty and it is now the security of our rights. On the strength and stability of the army rest the power of our nation abroad and the authority of our institutions at home. It is my firm resolve to maintain the army in the future as my illustrious ancestors have maintained it in the past, and therefore my Government will propose a bill which is intended to increase still further its numbers and its efficiency." This was received with a great outburst of applause and the waving of many handkerchiefs. It was observed that some of the ladies shed tears. The third clause was about the growth and spread of anarchism. "My house," said the King, "gave liberty to the nation, and now it is my duty and my hope to give security and strength. It is known to Parliament that certain subversive elements, not in Italy alone, but throughout Europe, throughout the world, have been using the most devilish machinations for the destruction of all order, human and divine. Cold, calculating criminals have perpetrated crimes against the most innocent and the most highly placed, which have sent a thrill of horror into all humane hearts. My Government asks for an absolute power over such criminals, and if we are to bring security to the State, we must reinvigorate the authority to which society trusts the high mandate of protecting and governing." A still greater outburst of cheering interrupted the young King, who raised his head amid the shouts, the clapping of hands, and the fluttering of handkerchiefs, and smiled his painful smile. "More than that," continued the King, "I have to deplore the spread of associations, sodalities, and clubs, which, by an erroneous conception of liberty, are disseminating the germs of revolt against the State. Under the most noble propositions about the moral and economical redemption of the people is hidden a propaganda for the conquest of the public powers. "My aim is to gain the affection of my people, and to interest them in the cause of order and public security, and therefore my Government will present an urgent bill, which is intended to stop the flowering of these parasitic organisations, by revising these laws of the press and of public meeting, in whose defects agitators find opportunity for their attacks on the doctrines of the State." A prolonged outburst of applause followed this passage, mingled with a tumult of tongues, which went on after the King had begun to read again, rendering his last clause--an invocation of God's blessing on the deliberations of Parliament--almost inaudible. The end of the speech was a signal for further cheering, and when the King left the hall, bowing as before, and smiling his painful smile, the shouts of "Long live the King," the clapping of hands, and the waving of handkerchiefs followed him to the street. The entire ceremony had occupied twelve minutes. Then the clamour of voices drowned the sound of the royal hymn outside. Deputies were climbing about to join their friends among the ladies, whose light laughter was to be heard on every side. David Rossi rose to go. Without lifting his head, he had been conscious that during the latter part of the King's speech many eyes were fixed upon him. Playing with his watch-chain, he had struggled to look calm and impassive. But his heart was sick, and he wished to get away quickly. A partition, shielding the door of the corridor, stood near to his seat, and he was trying to get round it. He heard his name in the air around him, mingled with significant trills and unmistakable accents. All at once he was conscious of a perfume he knew, and of a girlish figure facing him. "Good-day, Honourable," said a voice that thrilled him like the strings of a harp drawn tight. He lifted his head and answered. It was Roma. Her face was lighted up with a fire he had never seen before. Only one glance he dared to take, but he could see that at the next instant those flashing eyes would burst into tears. The tide was passing out by the front doors where the carriages and the reporters waited, but Rossi stepped round to the back. He was on the way to the office of his newspaper, and dipping into the Corso from a lane that crossed it, he came upon the King's carriage returning to the Quirinal. It was entirely surrounded by soldiers, the military commander of Rome on the right, the commander of the Carabineers on the left, and the Cuirassiers, riding two deep, before and behind, so that the King and Queen were scarcely visible to the cheering crowd. Last in the royal procession came an ordinary cab containing two detectives in plain clothes. The office of the _Sunrise_ was in a narrow lane out of the Corso. It was a dingy building of three floors, with the machine-rooms on the ground-level, the composing-rooms at the top, and the editorial rooms between. Rossi's office was a large apartment, with three desks, that were intended for the editor and his day and night assistants. His day assistant received him with many bows and compliments. He was a small man with an insincere face. Rossi drank a cup of coffee and settled to his work. It was an article on the day's doings, more fearless and outspoken than he had ever published before. Such a day as they had just gone through, with the flying of flags and the playing of royal hymns, was not really a day of joy and rejoicing, but of degradation and shame. If the people had known what they were doing, they would have hung their flags with crape and played funeral marches. "Such a scene as we have witnessed to-day," he wrote, "like all such scenes throughout the world, whether in Germany, Russia, and England, or in China, Persia, and the darkest regions of Africa, is but proof of the melancholy fact that while man, as the individual, has been nineteen hundred years converted to Christianity, man, as the nation, remains to this day for the most part utterly pagan." The assistant editor, who had glanced over the pages of manuscript as Rossi threw them aside, looked up at last and said: "Are you sure, sir, that you wish to print this article?" "Quite sure." The man made a shrug of his shoulders, and took the copy upstairs. The short day had closed in when Rossi was returning home. Screamers in the streets were crying early editions of the evening papers, and the cafés in the Corso were full of officers and civilians, sipping vermouth and reading glowing accounts of the King's enthusiastic reception. Pitiful! Most pitiful! And the man who dared to tell the truth must be prepared for any consequences. David Rossi told himself that he _was_ prepared. Henceforth he would devote himself to the people, without a thought of what might happen. Nothing should come between him and his work--nothing whatever--not even ... but, no, he could not think of it! VI Two letters were awaiting David Rossi in his rooms at home. One was a circular from the President of the Chamber of Deputies summoning Parliament for the day after to-morrow to elect officials and reply to the speech of the King. The other was from Roma, and the address was in a large, hurried hand. David Rossi broke the seal with nervous fingers. "MY DEAR FRIEND,--I know! I know! I know now what the obstacle is. B. gave me the hint of it on one of the days of last week, when I was so anxious to see you and you did not come. It is your unflinching devotion to your mission and to your public duties. You are one of those who think that when a man has dedicated his life to work for the world, he should give up everything else--father, mother, wife, child--and live like a priest, who puts away home, and love, and kindred, that others may have them more abundantly. I can understand that, and see a sort of nobility in it too, especially in days when the career of a statesman is only a path to vainglory of every kind. It is great, it is glorious, it thrills me to think of it. "But I am losing faith in my unknown sister that is to be, in spite of all my pleading. You say she is beautiful--that's well enough, but it comes by nature. You say she is sweet, and true, and charming--and I am willing to take it all on trust. But when you say she is noble-hearted I respectfully refuse to believe it. If she were that, you would be sure that she would know that friendship is the surest part of love, and to be the friend of a great man is to be a help to him, and not an impediment. "My gracious! What does she think you are? A _cavaliere servente_ to dance attendance on her ladyship day and night? Give me the woman who wants her husband to be a man, with a man's work to do, a man's burdens to bear, and a man's triumphs to win. "Yet perhaps I am too hard on my unknown sister that is to be, or ought to be, and it is only your own distrust that wrongs her. If she is the daughter of one brave man and really loves another, she knows her place and her duty. It is to be ready to follow her husband wherever he must go, to share his fate whatever it may be, and to live his life, because it is now her own. "And since I am in the way of pleading for her again, let me tell you how simple you are to suppose that because you have never disclosed your secret she may never have guessed it. Goodness me! To think that men who can make women love them to madness itself can be so ignorant as not to know that a woman can always tell if a man loves her, and even fix the very day, and hour, and minute when he looked into her eyes and loved her first. "And if my unknown sister that ought to be knows that you love her, be sure that she loves you in return. Then trust her. Take the counsel of a woman and go to her. Remember, that if you are suffering by this separation, perhaps she is suffering too, and if she is worthy of the love and friendship of a better man than you are, or ever hope to be (which, without disparaging her ladyship, I respectfully refuse to believe), let her at least have the refusal of one or both of them. "Good-night! I go to the Chamber of Deputies again the day after to-morrow, being so immersed in public matters (and public men) that I can think of nothing else at present. Happily my bust is out of hand, and the caster (not B. this time) is hard at work on it. "You won't hear anything about the M---- doings, yet I assure you they are a most serious matter. Unless I am much mistaken there is an effort on foot to connect you with my father, which is surely sufficiently alarming. M---- is returning to Rome, and I hear rumours of an intention to bring pressure on some one _here_ in the hope of leading to identification. Think of it, I beg, I pray!--Your friend, "R." VII Next day Rossi's editorial assistant came with a troubled face. There was bad news from the office. The morning's edition of the _Sunrise_ had been confiscated by the police owing to the article on the King's speech and procession. The proprietors of the paper were angry with their editor, and demanded to see him immediately. "Tell them I'll be at the office at four o'clock, as usual," said Rossi, and he sat down to write a letter. It was to Roma. The moment he took up the pen to write to her the air of the room seemed to fill with a sweet feminine presence that banished everything else. It was like talking to her. She was beside him. He could hear her soft replies. "If it were possible to heighten the pain of my feelings when I decided to sacrifice my best wishes to my sense of duty, a letter like your last would be more than I could bear. The obstacle you deal with is not the one which chiefly weighs with me, but it is a very real impediment, not altogether disposed of by the sweet and tender womanliness with which you put it aside. In that regard what troubles me most is the hideous inequality between what the man gives and what he gets, and the splendid devotion with which the woman merges her life in the life of the man she marries only quickens the sense of his selfishness in allowing himself to accept so great a prize. "In my own case, the selfishness, if I yielded to it, would be greater far than anybody else could be guilty of, and of all men who have sacrificed women's lives to their own career, I should feel myself to be the most guilty and inexcusable. My dear and beloved girl is nobly born, and lives in wealth and luxury, while I am poor--poor by choice, and therefore poor for ever, brought up as a foundling, and without a name that I dare call my own. "What then? Shall such a man as I am ask such a woman as she is to come into the circle of his life, to exchange her riches for his poverty, her comfort for his suffering? No. "Besides, what woman could do it if I did? Women can be unselfish, they can be faithful, they can be true; but--don't ask me to say things I do not want to say--women love wealth and luxury and ease, and shrink from pain and poverty and the forced marches of a hunted life. And why shouldn't they? Heaven spare them all such sufferings as men alone should bear! "Yet all this is still outside the greater obstacle which stands between me and the dear girl from whom I must separate myself now, whatever it may cost me, as an inexorable duty. I entreat you to spare me the pain of explaining further. Believe that for her sake my resolution, in spite of all your sweet and charming pleading, is strong and unalterable. "Only one thing more. If it is as you say it may be, that she loves me, though I had no right to believe so, that will only add to my unhappiness in thinking of the wrench that she must suffer. But she is strong, she is brave, she is the daughter of her father, and I have faith in the natural power of her mind, in her youth and the chances of life for one so beautiful and so gifted, to remove the passing impression that may have been made. "Good-bye yet again! And God bless you! D. "P. S.--I am not afraid of M----, and come when he may, I shall certainly stand my ground. There is only one person in Rome who could be used against me in the direction you indicate, and I could trust her with my heart's blood." VIII Before two o'clock next day the Chamber of Deputies was already full. The royal chair and baldacchino had been removed, and their place was occupied by the usual bench of the President. When the Prime Minister took his place, cool, collected, smiling, faultlessly dressed and wearing a flower in his button-hole, he was greeted with some applause from the members, and the dry rustle of fans in the ladies' tribune was distinctly heard. The leader of the Opposition had a less marked reception, and when David Rossi glided round the partition to his place on the extreme Left, there was a momentary hush, followed by a buzz of voices. Then the President of the Chamber entered, with his secretaries about him, and took his seat in a central chair under a bust of the young King. Ushers, wearing a linen band of red, white, and green on their arms, followed with portfolios, and with little trays containing water-bottles and glasses. Conversation ceased, and the President rang a hand-bell that stood by his side, and announced that the sitting was begun. The first important business of the day was the reply to the speech of the King, and the President called on the member who had been appointed to undertake this duty. A young Deputy, a man of letters, then made his way to a bar behind the chairs of the Ministers and read from a printed paper a florid address to the sovereign. Having read his printed document, the Deputy proceeded to move the adoption of the reply. With the proposal of the King and the Government to increase the army he would not deal. It required no recommendation. The people were patriots. They loved their country, and would spend the last drop of their blood to defend it. The only persons who were not with the King in his desire to uphold the army were the secret foes of the nation and the dynasty--persons who were in league with their enemies. "That," said the speaker, "brings us to the next clause of our reply to His Majesty's gracious speech. We know that there exists among the associations aimed at a compact between strangely varying forces--between the forces of socialism, republicanism, unbelief, and anarchy, and the forces of the Church and the Vatican." At this statement there was a great commotion. Members on the Left protested with loud shouts of "It is not true," and in a moment the tongues and arms of the whole assembly were in motion. The President rang his bell, and the speaker concluded. "Let us draw the teeth of both parties to this secret conspiracy, that they may never again use the forces of poverty and discontent to disturb public order." When the speaker sat down, his friends thronged around him to shake hands with him and congratulate him. Then the eyes of the House and of the audience in the gallery turned to David Rossi. He had sat with folded arms and head down while his followers screamed their protests. But passing a paper to the President, he now rose and said: "I ask permission to propose an amendment to the reply to the King's speech." "You have the word," said the President. David Rossi read his amendment. At the feet of His Majesty it humbly expressed an opinion that the present was not a time at which fresh burdens should be laid upon the country for the support of the army, with any expectation that they could be borne. Misfortune and suffering had reached their climax. The cup of the people was full. At this language some of the members laughed. There were cries of "Order" and "Shame," and then the laughter was resumed. The President rang his bell, and at length silence was secured. David Rossi began to speak, in a voice that was firm and resolute. "If," he said, "the statement that members of this House are in alliance with the Pope and the Vatican is meant for me and mine, I give it a flat denial. And, in order to have done with this calumny once and for ever, permit me to say that between the Papacy and the people, as represented by us, there is not, and never can be, anything in common. In temporal affairs, the theory of the Papacy rejects the theory of the democracy. The theory of the democracy rejects the theory of the Papacy. The one claims a divine right to rule in the person of the Pope because he is Pope. The other denies all divine right except that of the people to rule themselves." This was received with some applause mingled with laughter, and certain shouts flung out in a shrill hysterical voice. The President rang his bell again, and David Rossi continued. "The proposal to increase the army," he said, "in a time of tranquillity abroad but of discord at home, is the gravest impeachment that could be made of the Government of a country. Under a right order of things Parliament would be the conscience of the people, Government would be the servant of that conscience, and rebellion would be impossible. But this Government is the master of the country and is keeping the people down by violence and oppression. Parliament is dead. For God's sake let us bury it!" Loud shouts followed this outburst, and some of the Deputies rose from their seats, and crowding about the speaker in the open space in front, yelled and screamed at him like a pack of hounds. He stood calm, playing with his watch-chain, while the President rang his bell and called for silence. The interruptions died down at last, and the speaker went on: "If you ask me what is the reason of the discontent which produces the crimes of anarchism, I say, first, the domination of a Government which is absolute, and the want of liberty of speech and meeting. In other countries the discontented are permitted to manifest their woes, and are not punished unless they commit deeds of violence; but in Italy alone, except Russia, a man may be placed outside the law, torn from his home, from the bedside of his nearest and dearest, and sent to _domicilio coatto_ to live or die in a silence as deep as that of the grave. Oh, I know what I am saying. I have been in the midst of it. I have seen a father torn from his daughter, and the motherless child left to the mercy of his enemies." This allusion quieted the House, and for a moment there was a dead silence. Then through the tense air there came a strange sound, and the President demanded silence from the galleries, whereupon the reporters rose and made a negative movement of the hand with two fingers upraised, pointing at the same time to the ladies' tribune. One of the ladies had cried out. David Rossi heard the voice, and, when he began again, his own voice was softer and more tremulous. "Next, I say that the cause of anarchism in Italy, as everywhere else, is poverty. Wait until the 1st of February, and you shall see such an army enter Rome as never before invaded it. I assert that within three miles of this place, at the gates of this capital of Christendom, human beings are living lives more abject than that of savage man. "Housed in huts of straw, sleeping on mattresses of leaves, clothed in rags or nearly nude, fed on maize and chestnuts and acorns, worked eighteen hours a day, and sweated by the tyranny of the overseers, to whom landlords lease their lands while they idle their days in the _salons_ of Rome and Paris, men and women and children are being treated worse than slaves, and beaten more than dogs." At that there was a terrific uproar, shouts of "It's a lie!" and "Traitor!" followed by a loud outbreak of jeers and laughter. Then, for the first time, David Rossi lost control of himself, and, turning upon Parliament with flaming eyes and quivering voice, he cried: "You take these statements lightly--you that don't know what it is to be hungry, you that have food enough to eat, and only want sleep to digest it. But _I_ know these things by bitter knowledge--by experience. Don't talk to me, you who had fathers and mothers to care for you, and comfortable homes to live in. I had none of these. I was nursed in a poorhouse and brought up in a hut on the Campagna. Because of the miserable laws of your predecessors my mother drowned herself in the Tiber, and I knew what it was to starve. And I am only one of many. At the very door of Rome, under a Christian Government, the poor are living lives of moral anæmia and physical atrophy more terrible by far than those which made the pagan poet say two thousand years ago--_Paucis vivit humanum genus_--the human race exists for the benefit of the few." The silence was breathless while the speaker made this personal reference, and when he sat down, after a denunciation of the militarism which was consuming the heart of the civilised world, the House was too dazed to make any manifestation. In the dead hush that followed, the President put the necessary questions, but the amendment fell through without a vote being taken, and the printed reply was passed. Then the Minister of War rose to give notice of his bill for increased military expenditure, and proposed to hand it over to the general committee of the budget. The Baron Bonelli rose next as Minister of the Interior, and gave notice of his bill for the greater security of the public, and the remodelling of the laws of the press and of association. He spoke incisively and bitterly, and he was obviously excited, but he affected his usual composure. "After the language we have heard to-day," he said, "and the knowledge we possess of mass meetings projected, it will not surprise the House that I treat this measure as urgent, and propose that we consider it on the principle of the three readings, taking the first of them in four days." At that there were some cries from the Left, but the Minister continued: "It will also not surprise the House that, to prevent the obstruction of members who seem ready to sing their Miserere without end, I will ask the House to take the readings without debate." Then in a moment the whole House was in an uproar and members were shaking their fists in each other's faces. In vain the President rang his bell for silence. At length he put on his hat and left the Chamber, and the sitting was at an end. IX The last post that night brought Rossi a letter from Roma. "MY DEAR, DEAR FRIEND,--It's all up! I'm done with her! My unknown and invisible sister that is to be, or rather isn't to be and oughtn't to be, is not worth thinking about any longer. You tell me that she is good and brave and noble-hearted, and yet you would have me believe that she loves wealth, and ease, and luxury, and that she could not give them up even for the sweetest thing that ever comes into a woman's life. Out on her! What does she think a wife is? A pet to be pampered, a doll to be dressed up and danced on your knee? If that's the sort of woman she is, I know what I should call her. A name is on the tip of my tongue, and the point of my finger, and the end of my pen, and I'm itching to have it out, but I suppose I must not write it. Only don't talk to me any more about the bravery of a woman like that. "The wife I call brave is a man's friend, and if she knows what that means, to be the friend of her husband to all the limitless lengths of friendship, she thinks nothing about sacrifices between him and her, and differences of class do not exist for either of them. Her pride died the instant love looked out of her eyes at him, and if people taunt her with his poverty, or his birth, she answers and says: 'It's true he is poor, but his glory is, that he was a workhouse boy who hadn't father or mother to care for him, and now he is a great man, and I'm proud of him, and not all the wealth of the world shall take me away.' "One thing I will say, though, for the sister that isn't to be, and that is, that you are deceiving yourself if you suppose that she is going to reconcile herself to your separation while she is kept in the dark as to the cause of it. It is all very well for you to pay compliments to her beauty and youth and the natural strength of her mind to remove passing impressions, but perhaps the impressions are the reverse of passing ones, and if you go out of her life, what is to become of her? Have you thought of that? Of course you haven't. "No, no, no! My poor sister! you shall not be so hard on her! In my darkness I could almost fancy that I personate her, and I am she and she is I. Conceited, isn't it? But I told you it wasn't for nothing I was a daughter of Eve. Anyhow I have fought hard for her and beaten you out and out, and now I don't say: 'Will you go to her?' You will--I know you will. "My bust is out of the caster's hand, and ought to be under mine, but I've done no work again to-day. Tried, but the glow of soul was not there, and I was injuring the face at every touch. "No further news of M----, and my heart's blood is cold at the silence. But if you are fearless, why should I be afraid?--Your friend's friend, R." X Before going to bed that night, Rossi replied to Roma. "My Dearest,--Bruno will take this letter, and I will charge him on his soul to deliver it safely into your hands. When you have read it, you will destroy it immediately, both for your sake and my own. "From this moment onward I throw away all disguises. The duplicities of love are sweet and touching, but I cannot play hide-and-seek with you any longer. "You are right--it is you that I love, and little as I understand and deserve it, I see now that you love me with all your soul and strength. I cannot keep my pen from writing it, and yet it is madness to do so, for the obstacles to our union are just as insurmountable as before. "It is not only my unflinching devotion to public work that separates us, though that is a serious impediment; it is not only the inequality of our birth and social conditions, though that is an honest difficulty. The barrier between us is not merely a barrier made by man, it is a barrier made by God--it is death. "Think what that would be in the ordinary case of death by disease. A man is doomed to die by cancer or consumption, and even while he is engaged in a desperate struggle with the mightiest and most relentless conqueror, love comes to him with its dreams of life and happiness. What then? Every hour of joy is poisoned for him henceforth by visions of the end that is so near, in every embrace he feels the arms of death about him, and in every kiss the chill breath of the tomb. "Terrible tragedy! Yet not without relief. Nature is kind. Her miracles are never-ending. Hope lives to the last. The balm of God's healing hand may come down from heaven and make all things well. Not so the death I speak of. It is pitiless and inevitable, without hope or dreams. "Remember what I told you in this room on the night you came here first. Had you forgotten it? Your father, charged with an attempt at regicide, as part of a plan of insurrection, was deported without trial, and I, who shared his views, and had expressed them in letters that were violated, being outside the jurisdiction of the courts, was tried in contumacy and condemned to death. "I am back in Italy for all that, under another name, my mother's name, which is my name too, thanks to the merciless marriage laws of my country, with other aims and other opinions, but I have never deceived myself for a moment. The same doom hangs over me still, and though the court which condemned me was a military court, and its sentence would be modified by a Court of Assize, I see no difference between death in a moment on the gallows, and in five, ten, twenty years in a cell. "What am I to do? I love you, you love me. Shall I, like the poor consumptive, to whom gleams of happiness have come too late, conceal everything and go on deluding myself with hopes, indulging myself with dreams? It would be unpardonable, it would be cruel, it would be wrong and wicked. "No, it is impossible. You cannot but be aware that my life or liberty is in serious jeopardy, and that my place in Parliament and in public life is in constant and hourly peril. Every letter that you have written to me shows plainly that you know it. And when you say your heart's blood runs cold at the thought of what may happen when Minghelli returns from England, you betray the weakness, the natural weakness, the tender and womanly weakness, which justifies me in saying that, as long as we love each other, you and I should never meet again. "Don't think that I am a coward and tremble at the death that hangs over me. I neither fear the future nor regret the past. In every true cause some one is called to martyrdom. To die for the right, for humanity, to lay down all you hold most dear for the sake of the poor and the weak and the down-trodden and God's holy justice--it is a magnificent duty, a privilege! And I am ready. If my death is enough, let me give the last drop of my blood, and be dragged through the last degrees of infamy. Only don't let me drag another after me, and endanger a life that is a thousand times dearer to me than my own. "I want you, dearest, I want you with my soul, but my doom is certain; it waits for me somewhere; it may be here, it may be there; _it may come to me to-morrow_, or next day, or next year, but it is coming, I feel it, I am sure of it, and I will not fly away. But if I go on until my beloved is my bride, and my name is stamped all over her, and she has taken up my fate, and we are one, and the world knows no difference, what then? Then death with its sure step will come in to separate us, and after death for me, danger, shame, poverty for you, all the penalties a woman pays for her devotion to a man who is down and done. "I couldn't bear it. The very thought of it would unman me. It would turn heaven into hell. It would disturb the repose of the grave itself. "Isn't it hard enough to do what is before me without tormenting myself with thoughts like these? It is true I have had my dreams like other men--dreams of the woman whom Heaven might give a man for his support--the anchor to which his soul might hold in storm and tempest, and in the very hour of death itself. But what woman is equal to a lot like that? Martyrdom is for man. God keep all women safe from it! "Have I said sufficient? If this letter gives you half the pain on reading it that I have felt in writing it, you will be satisfied at last that the obstacles to our union are permanent and insuperable. The time is come when I am forced to tell you the secrets which I have never before revealed to any human soul. You know them now. _They are in your keeping, and it is enough._ "Heaven be over you! And when you are reconciled to our separation, and both of us are strong, remember that if you want me I will come, and that as long as I live, as long as I am at liberty, I shall be always ready, always waiting, always near. God bless you, my dear one! Adieu! "DAVID LEONE." During the afternoon of the following day a letter came by a flying messenger on a bicycle. It was written in pencil in large and straggling characters. "DEAR MR. ROSSI,--Your letter has arrived and been read, and, yes, it has been destroyed, too, according to your wish, although the flames that burnt it burnt my hand also, and scorched my heart as well. "No doubt you have done wisely. You know better than I do what is best for both of us, and I yield, I submit. Only--and therefore--I must see you immediately. There is a matter of some consequence on which I wish to speak. It has nothing to do with the subject of your letter--nothing directly, at all events--or yet is it in any way related to the Minghelli mischief-making. So you may receive me without fear. And you will find me with a heart at ease. "Didn't I tell you that if you wouldn't come to me I must go to you? Expect me this evening about Ave Maria, and arrange it that I may see you alone. "ROMA V." XI As Ave Maria approached, David Rossi became still more agitated. The sky had darkened, but there was no wind; the air was empty, and he listened with strained attention for every sound from the staircase and the street. At length he heard a cab stop at the door, and a moment afterwards a light hurrying footstep in the outer room seemed to beat upon his heart. The door opened and Roma came in quickly, with a scarcely audible salutation. He saw her with her golden complexion and her large violet eyes, wearing a black hat and an astrachan coat, but his head was going round and his pulses were beating violently, and he could not control his eyes. "I have come for a minute only," she said. "You received my letter?" Rossi bent his head. "David, I want the fulfilment of your promise." "What promise?" "The promise to come to me when I stand in need of you. I need you now. My fountain is practically finished, and to-morrow afternoon I am to have a reception to exhibit it. Everybody will be there, and I want you to be present also." "Is that necessary?" he asked. "For my purposes, yes. Don't ask me why. Don't question me at all. Only trust me and come." She was speaking in a firm and rapid voice, and looking up he saw that her brows were contracted, her lips were set, her cheeks were slightly flushed, and her eyes were shining. He had never seen her like that before. "What is the secret of it?" he asked himself, but he only answered, after a brief pause: "Very well, I will be there." "That's all. I might have written, but I was afraid you might object, and I wished to make quite certain. Adieu!" He had only bowed to her as she entered, and now she was going away without offering her hand. "Roma," he said, in a voice that sounded choked. She stopped but did not speak, and he felt himself growing hot all over. "I'm relieved--so much relieved--to hear that you agree with what I said in my letter." "The last--in which you wish me to forget you?" "It is better so--far better. I am one of those who think that if either party to a marriage"--he was talking in a constrained way--"entertains beforehand any rational doubt about it, he is wiser to withdraw, even at the church door, rather than set out on a life-long voyage under doubtful auspices." "Didn't we promise not to speak of this?" she said impatiently. Then their eyes met for a moment, and he knew that he was false to himself and that his talk of renunciation was a mockery. "Roma," he said again, "if you want me in the future you must write." Her face clouded over. "For your own sake, you know...." "Oh, that! That's nothing at all--nothing now." "But people are insulting me about you, and...." "Well--and you?" The colour rushed to his cheeks and he smote the back of a chair with his clenched fist. "I tell them...." "I understand," she said, and her eyes began to shine again. But she only turned away, saying: "I'm sorry you are angry that I came." "Angry!" he cried, and at the sound of his voice as he said the word their love for each other went thrilling through and through them. The rain had begun to fall, and it was beating with smart strokes on the window panes. "You can't go now," he said, "and since you are never to come here again there is something you ought to hear." She took a seat immediately, unfastened her coat, and slipped it back on to her shoulders. The thick-falling drops were drenching the piazza, and its pavement was bubbling like a lake. "The rain will last for some time," said Rossi, looking out, "and the matter I speak of is one of some urgency, therefore it is better that you should hear it now." Taking the pins out of her hat, Roma lifted it off and laid it in her lap, and began to pull off her gloves. The young head with its glossy hair and lovely face shone out with a new beauty. Rossi hardly dared to look at her. He was afraid that if he allowed himself to do so he would fling himself at her feet. "How calm she is," he thought. "What is the meaning of it?" He went to the bureau by the wall and took out a small round packet. "Do you remember your father's voice?" he asked. "That is all I do remember about my father. Why?" "It is here in this cylinder." She rose quickly and then slowly sat down again. "Tell me," she said. "When your father was deported to the Island of Elba, he was a prisoner at large, without personal restraint but under police supervision. The legal term of _domicilio coatto_ is from one year to five, but excuses were found and his banishment was made perpetual. He saw prisoners come and go, and in the sealed chamber of his tomb he heard echoes of the world outside." "Did he ever hear of me?" "Yes, and of myself as well. A prisoner brought him news of one David Rossi, and under that name and the opinions attached to it he recognised David Leone, the boy he had brought up and educated. He wished to send me a message." "Was it about...." "Yes. The letters of prisoners are read and copied, and to smuggle out by hand a written document is difficult or impossible. But at length a way was discovered. Some one sent a phonograph and a box of cylinders to one of the prisoners, and the little colony of exiled ones used to meet at your father's house to hear the music. Among the cylinders were certain blank ones. Your father spoke on to one of them, and when the time came for the owner of the phonograph to leave Elba, he brought the cylinder back with him. This is the cylinder your father spoke on to." With an involuntary shudder she took out of his hands a circular cardboard-box, marked in print on the outside: "Selections from Faust," and in pencil on the inside of the lid: "For the hands of D. L. only--to be destroyed if Deputy David Rossi does not know where to find him." The heavy rain had darkened the room, but by the red light of a dying fire he could see that her face had turned white. "And this contains my father's voice?" she said. "His last message." "He is dead--two years dead--and yet...." "Can you bear to hear it?" "Go on," she said, hardly audibly. He took back the cylinder, put it on the phonograph, wound up the instrument, and touched the lever. Through the strokes of the rain, lashing the window like a hundred whips, the whizzing noise of the machine began. He was standing by her side, and he felt her hand on his arm. Then through the sound of the rain and of the phonograph there came a clear, full voice: "David Leone--your old friend Doctor Roselli sends you his dying message...." The hand on Rossi's arm clutched it convulsively, and, in a choking whisper, Roma said: "Wait! Give me one moment." She was looking around the darkening room as if almost expecting a ghostly presence. She bowed her head. Her breath came quick and fast. "I am better now. Go on," she said. The whirring noise began again, and after a moment the clear voice came as before: "My son, the promise I made when we parted in London I fulfilled faithfully, but the letter I wrote you never came to your hands. It was meant to tell you who I was, and why I changed my name. That is too long a story now, and I must be brief. I am Prospero Volonna. My father was the last prince of that name. Except the authorities and their spies, nobody in Italy knows me as Roselli and nobody in England _as_ Volonna--nobody but one, my poor dear child, my daughter Roma." The hand tightened on Rossi's arm, and his head began to swim. "Little by little, in this grave of a living man, I have heard what has happened since I was banished from the world. The treacherous letter which called me back to Italy and decoyed me into the hands of the police was the work of a man who now holds my estates as the payment for his treachery." "The Baron?" Rossi had stopped the phonograph. "Can you bear it?" he said. The pale young face flushed with resolution. "Go on," she said. When the voice from the phonograph began again it was more tremulous and husky than before. "After he had betrayed the father, what impulse of fear or humanity prompted him to take charge of the child, God alone, who reads all hearts, can say. He went to England to look for her, found her in the streets to which she had been abandoned by the faithlessness of the guardians to whom I left her, and shut their mouths by buying them to the perjury of burying the unknown body of an unfortunate being in the name of my beloved child." The hand on Rossi's arm trembled feebly, and slipped down to his own hand. It was cold as ice. The voice from the phonograph was growing faint. "She is now in Rome, living in the name that was mine in Italy, amid an atmosphere of danger and perhaps of shame. My son, save her from it. The man who betrayed the father may betray the daughter also. Take her from him. Rescue her. It is my dying prayer." The hand in Rossi's hand was holding it tightly, and his blood was throbbing at his heart. "David," the voice from the phonograph was failing rapidly, "when this shall come to your hands the darkness of the grave will be over me.... In my great distress of mind I torture myself with many terrors.... Do not trifle with my request. But whatever you decide to do ... be gentle with the child.... I dream of her every night, and send my heart's heart to her on the swelling tides of love.... Adieu, my son. The end is near. God be with you in all you do that I did ill or left undone. And if death's great sundering does not annihilate the memory of those who remain on earth, be sure you have a helper and an advocate in heaven." The voice ceased, the whirring of the instrument came to an end, and an invisible spirit seemed to fade into the air. The pattering of the rain had stopped, and there was the crackle of cab wheels on the pavement below. Roma had dropped Rossi's hand, and was leaning forward on her knees with both hands over her face. After a moment, she wiped her eyes with her handkerchief and began to put on her hat. "How long is it since you received this message?" she said. "On the night you came here first." "And when I asked you to come to my house on that ... that useless errand, you were thinking of ... of my father's request as well?" "Yes." "You have known all this about the Baron for a month, yet you have said nothing. _Why_ have you said nothing?" "You wouldn't have believed me at first, whatever I had said against him." "But afterwards?" "Afterwards I had another reason." "Did it concern me?" "Yes." "And now?" "Now that I have to part from you I am compelled to tell you what he is." "But if you had known that all this time he has been trying to use somebody against you...." "That would have made no difference." She lifted her head, and a look of fire, almost of fierceness, came into her face, but she only said, with a little hysterical cry, as if her throat were swelling: "Come to me to-morrow, David! Be sure you come! If you don't come I shall never, never forgive you! But you will come! You will! You will!" And then, as if afraid of breaking out into sobs, she turned quickly and hurried away. "She can never fall into that man's hands now," he thought. And then he lit his lamp and sat down to his work, but the light was gone, and the night had fallen on him. XII Next morning David Rossi had not yet risen when some one knocked at his door. It was Bruno. The great fellow looked nervous and troubled, and he spoke in a husky whisper. "You're not going to Donna Roma's to-day, sir?" "Why not, Bruno?" "Have you seen her bust of yourself?" "Hardly at all." "Just so. My case, too. She has taken care of that--locking it up every night, and getting another caster to cast it. But I saw it the first morning after she began, and I know what it is." "What is it, Bruno?" "You'll be angry again, sir." "What is it?" "Judas--that's what it is, sir; the study for Judas in the fountain for the Municipality." "Is that all?" "All?... But it's a caricature, a spiteful caricature! And you sat four days and never even looked at it! I tell you it's disgusting, sir. Simply disgusting. It's been done on purpose, too. When I think of it I forget all you said, and I hate the woman as much as ever. And now she is to have a reception, and you are going to it, just to help her to have her laugh. Don't go, sir! Take the advice of a fool, and don't go!" "Bruno," said Rossi, lying with his head on his arm, "understand me once for all. Donna Roma may have used my head as a study for Judas--I cannot deny that since you say it is so--but if she had used it as a study for Satan, I would believe in her the same as ever." "You would?" "Yes, by God! So now, like a good fellow, go away and leave her alone." The streets were more than usually full of people when Rossi set out for the reception. Thick groups were standing about the hoardings, reading a yellow placard, which was still wet with the paste of the bill-sticker. It was a proclamation, signed by the Minister of the Interior, and it ran: "ROMANS,--It having come to the knowledge of the Government that a set of misguided men, the enemies of the throne and of society, known to be in league with the republican, atheist, and anarchist associations of foreign countries, are inciting the people to resist the just laws made by their duly elected Parliament, and sanctioned by their King, thus trying to lead them into outbreaks that would be unworthy of a cultivated and generous race, and would disgrace us in the view of other nations--the Government hereby give notice that they will not allow the laws to be insulted with impunity, and therefore they warn the public against the holding of all such mass meetings in public buildings, squares, and streets, as may lead to the possibility of serious disturbances." XIII The little Piazza of Trinità de' Monti was full of carriages, and Roma's rooms were thronged. David Rossi entered with the calmness of a man who is accustomed to personal observation, but Roma met him with an almost extravagant salutation. "Ah, you have come at last," she said in a voice that was intended to be heard by all. And then, in a low tone, she added, "Stay near me, and don't go until I say you may." Her face had the expression that had puzzled him the day before, but with the flushed cheeks, the firm mouth and the shining eyes, there was now a strange look of excitement, almost of hysteria. The company was divided into four main groups. The first of them consisted of Roma's aunt, powdered and perfumed, propped up with cushions on an invalid chair, and receiving the guests by the door, with the Baron Bonelli, silent and dignified, but smiling his icy smile, by her side. A second group consisted of Don Camillo and some ladies of fashion, who stood by the window and made little half-smothered trills of laughter. The third group included Lena and Olga, the journalists, with Madame Sella, the modiste; and the fourth group was made up of the English and American Ambassadors, Count Mario, and some other diplomatists. The conversation was at first interrupted by the little pauses that follow fresh arrivals; and after it had settled down to the dull buzz of a beehive, when the old brood and her queen are being turned out, it consisted merely of hints, giving the impression of something in the air that was scandalous and amusing, but could not be talked about. "Have you heard that" ... "Is it true that" ... "No?" "Can it be possible?" "How delicious!" and then inaudible questions and low replies, with tittering, tapping of fans, and insinuating glances. But Roma seemed to hear everything that was said about her, and constantly broke in upon a whispered conversation with disconcerting openness. "That man here!" said one of the journalists at Rossi's entrance. "In the same room with the Prime Minister!" said another. "After that disgraceful scene in the House, too!" "I hear that he was abominably rude to the Baron the other day," said Madame Sella. "Rude? He has blundered shockingly, and offended everybody. They tell me the Vatican is now up in arms against him, and is going to denounce him and all his ways." "No wonder! He has made himself thoroughly disagreeable, and I'm only surprised that the Prime Minister...." "Oh, leave the Prime Minister alone. He has something up his sleeve.... Haven't you heard why we are invited here to-day? No? Not heard that...." "Really! So that explains ... I see, I see!" and then more tittering and tapping of fans. "Certainly, he is an extraordinary man, and one of the first statesmen in Europe." "It's so unselfish of you to say that," said Roma, flashing round suddenly, "for the Minister has never been a friend of journalists, and I've heard him say that there wasn't one of them who wouldn't sell his mother's honour if he thought he could make a sensation." "Love?" said the voice of Don Camillo in the silence that followed Roma's remark. "What has marriage to do with love except to spoil it?" And then, amidst laughter, and the playful looks of the ladies by whom he was surrounded, he gave a gay picture of his own poverty, and the necessity of marrying to retrieve his fortunes. "What would you have? Look at my position! A great name, as ancient as history, and no income. A gorgeous palace, as old as the pyramids, and no cook!" "Don't be so conceited about your poverty, Gi-gi," said Roma. "Some of the Roman ladies are as poor as the men. As for me, Madame Sella could sell up every stick in my house to-morrow, and if the Municipality should throw up my fountain...." "Senator Palomba," said Felice's sepulchral voice from the door. The suave, oily little Mayor came in, twinkling his eyes and saying: "Did I hear my name as I entered?" "I was saying," said Roma, "that if the Municipality should throw up my fountain...." The little man made an amusing gesture, and the constrained silence was broken by some awkward laughter. "Roma," said the testy voice of the Countess, "I think I've done my duty by you, and now the Baron will take me back. Natalina! Where's Natalina?" But half-a-dozen hands took hold of the invalid chair, and the Baron followed it into the bedroom. "Wonderful man!" "Wonderful!" whispered various voices as the Minister's smile disappeared through the door. The conversation had begun to languish when the Princess Bellini arrived, and then suddenly it became lively and general. "I'm late, but do you know, my dear," she said, kissing Roma on both cheeks, "I've been nearly torn to pieces in coming. My carriage had to plough its way through crowds of people." "Crowds?" "Yes, indeed, and the streets are nearly impassable. Another demonstration, I suppose! The poor must always be demonstrating." "Ah! yes," said Don Camillo. "Haven't you heard the news, Roma?" "I've been working all night and all day, and I have heard nothing," said Roma. "Well, to prevent a recurrence of the disgraceful scene of yesterday, the King has promulgated the Public Security Act by royal decree, and the wonderful crisis is at an end." "And now?" "Now the Prime Minister is master of the situation, and has begun by proclaiming the mass meeting which was to have been held in the Coliseum." "Good thing too," said Count Mario. "We've heard enough of liberal institutions lately." "And of the scandalous speeches of professional agitators," said Madame Sella. "And of the liberty of the press," said Senator Palomba. And then the effeminate old dandy, the fashionable dressmaker, and the oily little Mayor exchanged significant nods. "Wait! Only wait!" said Roma, in a low voice, to Rossi, who was standing in silence by her side. "Unhappy Italy!" said the American Ambassador. "With the largest array of titled nobility and the largest army of beggars. The one class sipping iced drinks in the piazzas during the playing of music, and the other class marching through the streets and conspiring against society." "You judge us from a foreign standpoint, dear friend," said Don Camillo, "and forget our love of a pageant. The Princess says our poor are always demonstrating. We are all always demonstrating. Our favourite demonstration is a funeral, with drums beating and banners waving. If we cannot have a funeral we have a wedding, with flowers and favours and floods of tears. And when we cannot have either, we put up with a revolution, and let our Radical orators tell us of the wickedness of taxing the people's bread." "Always their bread," said the Princess, with a laugh. "In America, dear General, you are so tragically sincere, but in Italy we are a race of actors. The King, the Parliament, the Pope himself...." "Shocking!" said the little Princess. "But if you had said as much of our professional agitators...." "Oh, they are the most accomplished and successful actors, Princess. But we are all actors in Italy, from the greatest to the least, and the 'curtain' is to him who can score off everybody else." "So," began the American, "to be Prime Minister in Rome...." "Is to be the chief actor in Europe, and his leading part is that in which he puts an end to his adversary amidst a burst of inextinguishable laughter." "What is he driving at?" said the English to the American Ambassador. "Don't you know? Haven't you heard what is coming?" And then some further whispering. "Wait, only wait!" said Roma. "Gi-gi," said the Princess, "how stupid you are! You're all wrong about Roma. Look at her now. To think that men can be so blind! And the Baron is no better than the rest of you. He's too proud to believe what I tell him, but he'll learn the truth some day. He is here, of course? In the Countess's room, isn't he?... How do you like my dress?" "It's perfect." "Really? The black and the blue make a charming effect, don't they? They are the Baron's favourite colours. How agitated our hostess is! She seems to have all the world here. When are we to see the wonderful work? What's she waiting for? Ah, there's the Baron coming out at last!" "They're all here, aren't they?" said Roma, looking round with flushed cheeks and flaming eyes at the jangling, slandering crew, who had insulted and degraded David Rossi. "Take care," he answered, but she only threw up her head and laughed. Then the company went down the circular iron staircase to the studio. Roma walked first with her rapid step, talking nervously and laughing frequently. The fountain stood in the middle of the floor, and the guests gathered about it. "Superb!" they exclaimed one after another. "Superb!" "Superb!" The little Mayor was especially enthusiastic. He stood near the Baron, and holding up both hands he cried: "Marvellous! Miraculous! Fit to take its place beside the masterpieces of old Rome!" "But surely this is 'Hamlet' without the prince," said the Baron. "You set out to make a fountain representing Christ and His twelve apostles, and the only figure you leave unfinished is Christ Himself." He pointed to the central figure above the dish, which was merely shaped out and indicated. "Not only one, your Excellency," said Don Camillo. "Here is another unfinished figure--intended for Judas, apparently." "I left them to the last on purpose," said Roma. "They were so important, and so difficult. But I have studies for both of them in the boudoir, and you shall give me your advice and opinion." "The saint and the satyr, the God and the devil, the betrayed and the betrayer--what subjects for the chisel of the artist!" said Don Camillo. "Just so," said the Mayor. "She must do the one with all the emotions of love, and the other with all the faculties of hate." "Not that art," said Don Camillo, "has anything to do with life--that is to say, real life...." "Why not?" said Roma sharply. "The artist has to live in the world, and he isn't blind. Therefore, why shouldn't he describe what he sees around him?" "But is that art? If so, the artist is at liberty to give his views on religion and politics, and by the medium of his art he may even express his private feelings--return insults and wreak revenge." "Certainly he may," said Roma; "the greatest artists have often done so." Saying this, she led the way upstairs, and the others followed with a chorus of hypocritical approval. "It's only human, to say the least." "Of course it is!" "If she's a woman and can't speak out, or fight duels, it's a lady-like way, at all events." And then further tittering, tapping of fans, and significant nods at Rossi when his back was turned. Two busts stood on pedestals in the boudoir. One of them was covered with a damp cloth, the other with a muslin veil. Going up to the latter first, Roma said, with a slightly quavering voice: "It was so difficult to do justice to the Christ that I am almost sorry I made the attempt. But it came easier when I began to think of some one who was being reviled and humiliated and degraded because he was poor and wasn't ashamed of it, and who was always standing up for the weak and the down-trodden, and never returning anybody's insult, however shameful and false and wicked, because he wasn't thinking of himself at all. So I got the best model I could in real life, and this is the result." With that she pulled off the muslin veil and revealed the sculptured head of David Rossi, in a snow-white plaster cast. The features expressed pure nobility, and every touch was a touch of sympathy and love. A moment of chilling silence was followed by an under-breath of gossip. "Who is it?" "Christ, of course." "Oh, certainly, but it reminds me of some one." "Who can it be?" "The Pope?" "Why, no; don't you see who it is?" "Is it really?" "How shameful!" "How blasphemous!" Roma stood looking on with a face lighted up by two flaming eyes. "I'm afraid you don't think I've done justice to my model," she said. "That's quite true. But perhaps my Judas will please you better," and she stepped up to the bust that was covered by the wet cloth. "I found this a difficult subject also, and it was not until yesterday evening that I felt able to begin on it." Then, with a hand that trembled visibly, she took from the wall the portrait of her father, and offering it to the Minister, she said: "Some one told me a story of duplicity and treachery--it was about this poor old gentleman, Baron--and then I knew what sort of person it was who betrayed his friend and master for thirty pieces of silver, and listened to the hypocrisy, and flattery, and lying of the miserable group of parasites who crowded round him because he was a traitor, and because he kept the purse." With that she threw off the damp cloth, and revealed the clay model of a head. The face was unmistakable, but it expressed every baseness--cunning, arrogance, cruelty, and sensuality. The silence was freezing, and the company began to turn away, and to mutter among themselves, in order to cover their confusion. "It's the Baron!" "No?" "Yes." "Disgraceful!" "Disgusting!" "Shocking!" "A scarecrow!" Roma watched them for a moment, and then said: "You don't like my Judas? Neither do I. You're right--it _is_ disgusting." And taking up in both hands a piece of thin wire, she cut the clay across, and the upper part of it fell face downward with a thud on to the floor. The Princess, who stood by the side of the Baron, offered him her sympathy, and he answered in his icy smile: "But these artists are all slightly insane, you know. That is an evil which must be patiently endured, without noticing too much the ludicrous side of it." Then, stepping up to Roma, and handing back the portrait, the Baron said, with a slight frown: "I must thank you for a very amusing afternoon, and bid you good-day." The others looked after him, and interpreted his departure according to their own feelings. "He is done with her," they whispered. "He'll pay her out for this." And without more ado they began to follow him. Roma, flushed and excited, bowed to them as they went out one by one, with a politeness that was demonstrative to the point of caricature. She was saying farewell to them for ever, and her face was lighted up with a look of triumphant joy. They tried to bear themselves bravely as they passed her, but her blazing eyes and sweeping curtseys made them feel as if they were being turned out of the house. When they were all gone, she shut the door with a bang, and then turning to David Rossi, who alone remained, she burst into a flood of hysterical tears, and threw herself on to her knees at his feet. XIV "David!" she cried. "Don't do that. Get up," he answered. His thoughts were in a whirl. He had been standing aside, trembling for Roma as he had never trembled for himself in the hottest moments of his public life. And now he was alone with her, and his blood was beating in his breast in stabs. "Haven't I done enough?" she cried. "You taunted me with my wealth, but I am as poor as you are now. Every penny I had in the world came from the Baron. He allowed me to use part of the revenues of my father's estates, but the income was under his control, and now he will stop it altogether. I am in debt. I have always been in debt. That was my benefactor's way of reminding me of my dependence on his bounty. And now all _I_ have will be sold to satisfy my creditors, and I shall be turned out homeless." "Roma...." he began, but her tears and passion bore down everything. "House, furniture, presents, carriages, horses, everything will go soon, and I shall have nothing whatever! No matter! You said a woman loved ease and wealth and luxury. Is that all a woman loves? Is there nothing else in the world for any of us? Aren't you satisfied with me at last?" "Roma," he answered, breathing hard, "don't talk like that. I cannot bear it." But she did not listen. "You taunted me with being a woman," she said through a fresh burst of tears. "A woman was incapable of friendship and sacrifices. She was intended to be a man's plaything. Do you think I want to be my husband's mistress? I want to be his wife, to share his fate, whatever it may be, for good or bad, for better or worse." "For God's sake, Roma!" he cried. But she broke in on him again. "You taunted me with the dangers you had to go through, as if a woman must needs be an impediment to her husband, and try to keep him back. Do you think I want my husband to do nothing? If he were content with that he would not be the man I had loved, and I should despise him and leave him." "Roma!..." "Then _you_ taunted me with the death that hangs over you. When you were gone I should be left to the mercy of the world. But that can never happen. Never! Do you think a woman can outlive the man she loves as I love you?... There! I've said it. You've shamed me into it." He could not speak now. His words were choking in his throat, and she went on in a torrent of tears: "The death that threatens you comes from no fault of yours, but only from your fidelity to my father. Therefore I have a right to share it, and I will not live when you are dead." "If I give way now," he thought, "all is over." And clenching his hands behind his back to keep himself from throwing his arms around her, he began in a low voice: "Roma, you have broken your promise to me." "I _don't_ care," she interrupted. "I would break ten thousand promises. I deceived you. I confess it. I pretended to be reconciled to your will, and I was not reconciled. I wanted you to see me strip myself of all I had, that you might have no answer and excuse. Well, you have seen me do it, and now ... what are you going to do _now_?" "Roma," he began again, trembling all over, "there have been two men in me all this time, and one of them has been trying to protect you from the world and from yourself, while the other ... the other has been wanting you to despise all his objections, and trample them under your feet.... If I could only believe that you know all you are doing, all the risk you are running, and the fate you are willing to share ... but no, it is impossible." "David," she cried, "you love me! If you didn't love me, I should know it now--at this moment. But I am braver than you are...." "Let me go. I cannot answer for myself." "I am braver than you are, for I have not only stripped myself of all my possessions, and of all my friends ... I have even compromised myself again and again, and been daring and audacious, and rude to everybody for your sake.... I, a woman ... while you, a man ... you are afraid ... yes, afraid ... you are a coward--that's it, a coward!... No, no, no! What am I saying?... David Leone!" And with a cry of passion and remorse she flung both arms about his neck. He had stood, during this fierce struggle of love and pain, holding himself in until his throbbing nerves could bear the strain no longer. "Come to me, then--come to me," he cried, and at the moment when she threw herself upon him he stretched out his arms to receive her. "You do love me?" she said. "Indeed, yes! And you?" "Yes, yes, yes!" He clasped her in his arms with redoubled ardour, and pressed her to his breast and kissed her. The love so long pent up was bursting out like a liberated cataract that sweeps the snow and the ice before it. All at once the girl who had been so brave in the great battle of her love became weak and womanish in the moment of her victory. Under the warmth of his tenderness she dropped her head on to his breast to conceal her face in her shame. "You will never think the worse of me?" she faltered. "The worse of you! For loving me?" "For telling you so and forcing myself into your life?" "My darling, no!" She lifted her head, and he kissed away the tears that were shining in her eyes. "But tell me," he said, "are you sure--quite sure? Do you know what is before you?" "I only know I love you." He folded her afresh in his strong embrace, and kissed her head as it lay on his breast. "Think again," he said. "A man's enemies can be merciless. They may watch you and put pressure upon you, and even humiliate you for my sake." "No matter, I am not afraid," she answered, and again he tightened his arms about her in a passionate embrace, and covered her hair and her neck and her hands and her finger-tips with kisses. They did not speak for a long time after that. There was no need for words. He was conquered, yet he was conqueror, and she was happy and at peace. The long fight was over, and everything was well. He put her to sit in a chair, and sat himself on the arm of it, with his face to her face, and her arms still round his neck. It was like a dream. She could scarcely believe it. He whom she had looked up to with adoration was caressing her. She was like a child in her joy, blushing and half afraid. He ran his hand through her hair and kissed her forehead. She threw back her head that she might put her lips to his forehead in return, and he kissed her full, round throat. Then they exchanged rings as the sign of their eternal union. When she put her diamond ring, set in gold, on to his finger, he looked grave and even sad; but when he put his plain silver one on to hers, she lifted up her glorified hand to the light, and kissed and kissed it. They began to talk in low tones, as if some one had been listening. It was the whispering of their hearts, for the angel of happy love has no voice louder than a whisper. She asked him to say again that he loved her, but as soon as he began to say it she stopped his mouth with a kiss. They talked of their love. She was sure she had loved him before he loved her, and when he said that he had loved her always, she protested in that case he did not love her at all. They rose at length to close the windows, and side by side, his arm about her waist, her head leaning lightly on his shoulder, they stood for a moment looking out. The mother of cities lay below in its lightsome whiteness, and over the ridge of its encircling hills the glow of the departing sun was rising in vaporous tints of amber and crimson into the transparent blue, with the dome of St. Peter's, like a balloon ready to rise into a celestial sky. "A storm is coming," he said, looking at the colours in the sunset. "It has come and gone," she whispered, and then his arm folded closer about her waist. It took him half-an-hour to say adieu. After the last kiss and the last handshake, their arms would stretch out to the utmost limit, and then close again for another and another and yet another embrace. XV When at length Rossi was gone, Roma ran into her bedroom to look at her face in the glass. The golden complexion was heightened by a bright spot on either cheek, and a teardrop was glistening in the corner of each of her eyes. She went back to the boudoir. David Rossi was no longer there, but the room seemed to be full of his presence. She sat in the chair again, and again she stood by the window. At length she opened her desk and wrote a letter:-- "DEAREST,--You are only half-an-hour gone, and here I am sending this letter after you, like a handkerchief you had forgotten. I have one or two things to say, quite matter-of-fact and simple things, but I cannot think of them sensibly for joy of the certainty that you love me. Of course I knew it all the time, but I couldn't be at ease until I had heard it from your own lips; and now I feel almost afraid of my great happiness. How wonderful it seems! And, like all events that are long expected, how suddenly it has happened in the end. To think that a month ago--only a little month--you and I were both in Rome, within a mile of each other, breathing the same air, enclosed by the same cloud, kissed by the same sunshine, and yet we didn't know it! "Soberly, though, I want you to understand that I meant all I said so savagely about going on with your work, and not letting your anxiety about my welfare interfere with you. I am really one of the women who think that a wife should further a man's aims in life if she can; and if she can't do that, she should stand aside and not impede him. So go on, dear heart, without fear for me. I will take care of myself, whatever occurs. Don't let one hour or one act of your life be troubled by the thought of what would happen to me if you should fall. Dearest, I am your beloved, but I am your soldier also, ready and waiting to follow where my captain calls: "'Teach me, only teach, Love! As I ought I will speak thy speech, Love! Think thy thought.' "And if I was not half afraid that you would think it bolder than is modest in your bride to be, I would go on with the next lines of my sweet quotation. "Another thing. You went away without saying you forgive me for the wicked duplicity I practised upon you. It was very wrong, I suppose, and yet for my life I cannot get up any real contrition on the subject. There's always some duplicity in a woman. It is the badge of every daughter of Eve, and it must come out somewhere. In my case it came out in loving you to all the lengths and ends of love, and drawing you on to loving me. I ought to be ashamed, but I'm not--I'm glad. "I _did_ love first, and, of course, I knew you from the beginning, and when you wrote about being in love with some one else, I knew quite well you meant me. But it was so delicious to pretend not to know, to come near and then to sheer off again, to touch and then to fly, to tempt you and then to run away, until a strong tide rushed at me and overwhelmed me, and I was swooning in your arms at last. "Dearest, don't think I made light of the obstacles you urged against our union. I knew all the time that the risks of marriage were serious, though perhaps I am not in a position even yet to realise how serious they may be. Only I knew also that the dangers were greater still if we kept apart, and that gave me courage to be bold and to defy conventions. "Which brings me to my last point, and please prepare to be serious, and bend your brow to that terrible furrow which comes when you are fearfully in earnest. What you said of your enemies being merciless, and perhaps watching me and putting pressure upon me to injure you, is only too imminent a danger. The truth is that I have all along known more than I had courage to tell, but I was hoping you would understand, and now I tremble to think how I have suffered myself to be silent. "The Minghelli matter is an alarming affair, for I have reason to believe that the man has lit on the name you bore in England, and that when he returns to Rome he will try to fix it upon you by means of me. This is fearful to contemplate, and my heart quakes to think of it. But happily there is a way to checkmate such a devilish design, and it is within your own power to save me from life-long remorse. "I don't think the laws of any civilized country compel a man's _wife_ to compromise him, and thinking of this gives me courage to be unmaidenly and say: Don't let it be long, dearest! I could die to bring it to pass in a moment. With all my great, great happiness, I shall have the heartache until it is done, and only when it is over shall I begin to live. "There! You didn't know what a forward hussy I could be if I tried, and really I have been surprised at myself since I began to be in love with you. For weeks and weeks I have been thin and haggard and ugly, and only to-day I begin to be a little beautiful. I couldn't be anything but beautiful to-day, and I've been running to the glass to look at myself, as the only way to understand why you love me at all. And I'm glad--so glad for your sake. "Good-bye, dearest! You cannot come to-morrow or the next day, and what a lot I shall have to live before I see you again! Shall I look older? No, for thinking of you makes me feel younger and younger every minute. How old are you? Thirty-four? I'm twenty-four and a half, and that is just right, but if you think I ought to be nearer your age I'll wear a bonnet and fasten it with a bow. "ROMA. "P.S.--Don't delay the momentous matter. Don't! Don't! Don't!" She dined alone that night that she might be undisturbed in her thoughts of Rossi. Ordinary existence had almost disappeared from her consciousness, and every time Felice spoke as he served the dishes his voice seemed to come from far away. She went to bed early, but it was late before she slept. For a long time she lay awake to think over all that had happened, and, when the night was far gone, and she tried to fall asleep in order to dream of it also, she could not do so for sheer delight of the prospect. But at last amid the gathering clouds of sleep she said "Good-night," with the ghost of a kiss, and slept until morning. When she awoke it was late, and the sun was shining into the room. She lay on her back and stretched out both arms for sheer sweetness of the sensation of health and love. Everything was well, and she was very happy. Thinking of yesterday, she was even sorry for the Baron, and told herself she had been too bold and daring. But that thought was gone in a moment. Body and soul were suffused with joy, and she leapt out of bed with a spring. A moment afterwards Natalina came with a letter. It was from the Baron himself, and it was dated the day before:-- "Minghelli has returned from London, and therefore I must see you to-morrow at eleven o'clock. Be so good as to be at home, and give orders that for half-an-hour at least we shall be quite undisturbed." Then the sun went out, the air grew dull, and darkness fell over all the world. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PART FIVE--THE PRIME MINISTER I It was Sunday. The storm threatened by the sunset of the day before had not yet come, but the sun was struggling through a veil of clouds, and a black ridge lay over the horizon. At eleven o'clock to the moment the Baron arrived. As usual, he was faultlessly dressed, and he looked cool and tranquil. "I am to show you into this room, Excellency," said Felice, leading the way to the boudoir. "Thanks!... Anything to tell me, Felice?" "Nothing, Excellency," said Felice. Then, pointing to the plaster bust on its pedestal in the corner, he added in a lower tone, "_He_ remained last night after the others had gone, and...." But at that moment there was the rustle of a woman's dress outside, and, interrupting Felice, the Baron said in a high-pitched voice: "Certainly; and please tell the Countess I shall not forget to look in upon her before I go." Roma came into the room with a gloomy and firm-set face. The smile that seemed always to play about her mouth and eyes had given place to a slight frown and an air of defiance. But the Baron saw in a moment that behind the lips so sternly set, and the straight look of the eyes, there was a frightened expression which she was trying to conceal. He greeted her with his accustomed calm and naturalness, kissed her hand, offered her the flower from his button-hole, put her to sit in the arm-chair with its back to the window, took his own seat on the couch in front of it, and leisurely drew off his spotless gloves. Not a word about the scene of yesterday, not a look of pain or reproof. Only a few casual pleasantries, and then a quiet gliding into the business of his visit. "What an age since we were here alone before! And what changes you've made! Your pretty nest is like a cell! Well, I've obeyed your mandate, you see. I've stayed away for a month. It was hard to do--bitterly hard--and many a time I've told myself it was imprudent. But you were a woman. You were inexorable. I was forced to submit. And now, what have you got to tell me?" "Nothing," she answered, looking straight before her. "Nothing whatever?" "Nothing whatever." She did not move or turn her face, and he sat for a moment watching her. Then he rose, and began to walk about the room. "Let us understand each other, my child," he said gently. "Will you forgive me if I recall facts that are familiar?" She did not answer, but looked fixedly into the fire, while he leaned on the stove and stood face to face with her. "A month ago, a certain Deputy, an obstructionist politician, who has for years made the task of government difficult, uttered a seditious speech, and brought himself within the power of the law. In that speech he also attacked me, and--shall I say?--grossly slandered you. Parliament was not in session, and I was able to order his arrest. In due course, he would have been punished, perhaps by imprisonment, perhaps by banishment, but you thought it prudent to intervene. You urged reasons of policy which were wise and far-seeing. I yielded, and, to the bewilderment of my officials, I ordered the Deputy's release. But he was not therefore to escape. You undertook his punishment. In a subtle and more effectual way, you were to wipe out the injury he had done, and requite him for his offence. The man was a mystery--you were to find out all about him. He was suspected of intrigue--you were to discover his conspiracies. Within a month, you were to deliver him into my hands, and I was to know _the inmost secrets of his soul_." It was with difficulty that Roma maintained her calmness while the Baron was speaking, but she only shook a stray lock of hair from her forehead, and sat silent. "Well, the month is over. I have given you every opportunity to deal with our friend as you thought best. Have you found out anything about him?" She put on a bold front and answered, "No." "So your effort has failed?" "Absolutely." "Then you are likely to give up your plan of punishing the man for defaming and degrading you?" "I have given it up already." "Strange! Very strange! Very unfortunate also, for we are at this moment at a crisis when it is doubly important to the Government to possess the information you set out to find. Still, your idea was a good one, and I can never be sufficiently grateful to you for suggesting it. And although _your_ efforts have failed, you need not be uneasy. You have given us the clues by which _our_ efforts are succeeding, and you shall yet punish the man who insulted you so publicly and so grossly." "How is it possible for me to punish him?" "By identifying David Rossi as one who was condemned in contumacy for high treason sixteen years ago." "That is ridiculous," she said. "Sixteen months ago I had never heard the name of David Rossi." The Baron stooped a little and said: "Had you ever heard the name of David Leone?" She dropped back in her chair, and again looked straight before her. "Come, come, my child," said the Baron caressingly, and moving across the room to look out of the window, he tapped her lightly on the shoulder: "I told you that Minghelli had returned from London." "That forger!" she said hoarsely. "No doubt! One who spends his life ferreting out crime is apt to have the soul of a criminal. But civilisation needs its scavengers, and it was a happy thought of yours to think of this one. Indeed, everything we've done has been done on your initiative, and when our friend is finally brought to justice, the deed will really be due to you, and you alone." The defiant look was disappearing from her eyes, and she rose with an expression of pain. "Why do you torture me like this?" she said. "After what has happened, isn't it quite plain that I am his friend, and not his enemy?" "Perhaps," said the Baron. His face assumed a death-like rigidity. "Sit down and listen to me." She sat down, and he returned to his place by the stove. "I say you gave us the clues we have worked upon. Those clues were three. First, that David Rossi knew the life-story of Doctor Roselli in London. Second, that he knew the story of Doctor Roselli's daughter, Roma Roselli. Third, that he was for a time a waiter at the Grand Hotel in Rome. Two minor clues came independently, that David Rossi was once a stable-boy in New York, that his mother drowned herself in the Tiber, and he was brought up in a Foundling. By these five clues the authorities have discovered eight facts. Permit me to recite them." Leaning his elbow on the stove and opening his hand, the Baron ticked off the facts one by one on his fingers. "Fact one. Some thirty odd years ago a woman carrying a child presented herself at the office in Rome for the registry of births. She gave the name of Leonora Leone, and wished her child, a boy, to be registered as David Leone. But the officer in attendance discovered that the woman's name was Leonora Rossi, and that she had been married according to the religious rites of the Church, but not according to the civil regulations of the State. The child was therefore registered as David Rossi, son of Leonora Rossi and of a father unknown." "Shameful!" cried Roma. "Shameful! shameful!" "Fact two," said the Baron, without the change of a tone. "One night a little later the body of a woman found drowned in the Tiber was recognised as the body of Leonora Rossi, and buried in the pauper part of the Campo Verano under that name. The same night a child was placed by an unknown hand in the _rota_ of Santo Spirito, with a paper attached to its wrist, giving particulars of its baptism and its name. The name given was David Leone." The Baron ticked off the third of his fingers and continued: "Fact three. Fourteen years afterwards a boy named David Leone, fourteen years of age, was living in the house of an Italian exile in London. The exile was a Roman prince under the incognito of Doctor Roselli; his family consisted of his wife and one child, a daughter named Roma, four years of age. David Leone had been adopted by Doctor Roselli, who had picked him up in the street." Roma covered her face with her hands. "Fact four. Four years later a conspiracy to assassinate the King of Italy was discovered at Milan. The chief conspirator turned out to be, unfortunately, the English exile known as Doctor Roselli. By the good offices of a kinsman, jealous of the honour of his true family name, he was not brought to public trial, but deported by one of the means adopted by all Governments when secrecy or safety is in question. But his confederates and correspondents were shown less favour, and one of them, still in England, being tried in contumacy by a military court which sat during a state of siege, was condemned for high treason to the military punishment of death. The name of that confederate and correspondent was David Leone." Roma's slippered foot was beating the floor fast, but the Baron went on in his cool and tranquil tone. "Fact five. Our extradition treaty excluded the delivery of political offenders, but after representations from Italy, David Leone left England. He went to America. There he was first employed in the stables of the Tramway Company in New York, and lived in the Italian quarter of the city, but afterwards he rose out of his poverty and low position and became a journalist. In that character he attracted attention by a new political and religious propaganda. Jesus Christ was lawgiver for the nation as well as for the individual, and the redemption of the world was to be brought to pass by a constitution based on the precepts of the Lord's Prayer. The creed was sufficiently sentimental to be seized upon by fanatics in that country of countless faiths, but it cut at the roots of order, of poverty, even of patriotism, and being interpreted into action, seemed likely to lead to riot." The Baron twisted the ends of his moustache, and said, with a smile, "David Leone disappeared from New York. From that time forward no trace of him has yet been found. He was as much gone as if he had ceased to exist. _David Leone was dead._" Roma's hands had come down from her face, and she was picking at the buttons of her blouse with twitching fingers. "Fact six," said the Baron, ticking off the thumb of his other hand. "Twenty-five or six years after the registration of the child David Rossi in Rome, a man, apparently twenty-five or six years of age, giving the name of David Rossi, arrived in England from America. He called at a baker's shop in Soho to ask for Roma Roselli, the daughter of Doctor Roselli, left behind in London when the exile returned to Italy. They told him that Roma Roselli was dead and buried." Roma's face, which had been pale until now, began to glow like a fire on a gloomy night, and her foot beat faster and faster. "Fact seven. David Rossi appeared in Rome, first as a waiter at the Grand Hotel, but soon afterwards as a journalist and public lecturer, propounding precisely the same propaganda as that of David Leone in New York, and exciting the same interest." "Well? What of it?" said Roma. "David Leone was David Leone, and David Rossi is David Rossi--there is no more in it than that." The Baron clasped his hands so tight that his knuckles cracked, and said, in a slightly exalted tone: "Eighth and last fact. About that time a man called at the office of the Campo Santo to know where he was to find the grave of Leonora Leone, the woman who had drowned herself in the Tiber twenty-six years before. The pauper trench had been dug up over and over again in the interval, but the officials gave him their record of the place where she had once been buried. He had the spot measured off for him, and he went down on his knees before it. Hours passed, and he was still kneeling there. At length night fell, and the officers had to warn him away." Roma's foot had ceased to beat on the floor, and she was rising in her chair. "That man," said the Baron, "the only human being who ever thought it worth while to look up the grave of the poor suicide, Leonora Rossi, the mother of David Leone, was David Rossi! Who was David Leone?--David Rossi! Who was David Rossi?--David Leone! The circle had closed around him--the evidence was complete." "Oh! oh! oh!" Roma had leapt up and was moving about the room. Her lips were compressed with scorn, her eyes were flashing, and she burst into a torrent of words, which spluttered out of her quivering lips. "Oh, to think of it! To think of it! You are right! The man who spends his life looking for crime must have the soul of a criminal! He has no conscience, no humanity, no mercy, no pity. And when he has tracked and dogged a man to his mother's grave--_his mother's grave_--he can dine, he can laugh, he can go to the theatre! Oh, I hate you! There, I've told you! Now, do with me as you please!" The death-like rigidity in the Baron's face decomposed into an expression of intense pain, but he only passed his hand over his brow, and said, after a moment of silence: "My child, you are not only offending me, you are offending the theory and principle of Justice. Justice has nothing to do with pity. In the vocabulary of Justice there is but one word--duty. Duty called upon me to fix this man's name upon him, that his obstructions, his slanders, and his evil influence might be at an end. And now Justice calls upon you to do the same." The Baron leaned against the stove, and spoke in a calm voice, while Roma in her agitation continued to walk about the room. "Being a Deputy, and Parliament being in session, David Rossi can only be arrested by the authorisation of the Chamber. In order to obtain that authorisation, it is necessary that the Attorney-General should draw up a statement of the case. The statement must be presented by the Attorney-General to the Government, by the Government to the President, by the President to a Committee, and by the Committee to Parliament. Towards this statement the police have already obtained important testimony, and a complete chain of circumstantial evidence has been prepared. But they lack one link of positive proof, and until that link is obtained the Attorney-General is unable to proceed. It is the keystone of the arch, the central fact, without which all other facts fall to pieces--the testimony of somebody who can swear, if need be, that she knew both David Leone and David Rossi, and can identify the one with the other." "Well?" The Baron, who had stopped, continued in a calm voice: "My dear Roma, need I go on? Dead as a Minister is to all sensibility, I had hoped to spare you. There is only one person known to me who can supply that link. That person is yourself." Roma's eyes were red with anger and terror, but she tried to laugh over her fear. "How simple you are, after all!" she said. "It was Roma Roselli who knew David Leone, wasn't it? Well, Roma Roselli is dead and buried. Oh, I know all the story. You did that yourself, and now it cuts the ground from under you." "My dear Roma," said the Baron, with a hard and angry face, "if I did anything in that matter, it was done for your welfare, but whatever it was, it need not disturb me now. Roma Roselli is _not_ dead, and it would be easy to bring people from England to say so." "You daren't! You know you daren't! It would expose them to persecution for perpetrating a crime." "In England, not in Italy." Roma's red eyes fell, and the Baron began to speak in a caressing voice: "My child, don't fence with me. It is so painful to silence you.... It is perhaps natural that you should sympathise with the weaker side. That is the sweet and tender if illogical way of all women. But you must not imagine that when David Rossi has been arrested he will be walked off to his death. As a matter of fact, he must go through a new trial, he must be defended, his sentence would in any case be reduced to imprisonment, and it may even be wiped out altogether. That's all." "All? And you ask me to help you to do that?" "Certainly." "I won't!" "Then you could if you would?" "I can't!" "Your first word was the better one, my child." "Very well, I won't! I won't! Aren't you ashamed to ask me to do such a thing? According to your own story, David Leone was my father's friend, yet you wish me to give him up to the law that he may be imprisoned, perhaps for life, and at least turned out of Parliament. Do you suppose I am capable of treachery like that? Do you judge of everybody by yourself?... Ah, I know that story too! For shame! For shame!" The Baron was silent for a moment, and then said in an impassive voice: "I will not discuss that subject with you now, my child--you are excited, and don't quite know what you are saying. I will only point out to you that even if David Leone was your father's friend, David Rossi was your own enemy." "What of that? It's my own affair, isn't it? If I choose to forgive him, what matter is it to anybody else? I _do_ forgive him! Now, whose business is it except my own?" "My dear Roma, I might tell you that it's mine also, and that the insult that went through you was aimed at me. But I will not speak of myself.... That you should change your plans so entirely, and setting out a month ago to ... to ... shall I say betray ... this man Rossi, you are now striving to save him, is a problem which admits of only one explanation, and that is that ... that you...." "That I love him--yes, that's the truth," said Roma boldly, but flushing up to the eyes and trembling with fear. There was a death-like pause in the duel. Both dropped their heads, and the silent face in the bust seemed to be looking down on them. Then the Baron's icy cheeks quivered visibly, and he said in a low, hoarse voice: "I'm sorry! Very sorry! For in that case I may be compelled to justify your conclusion that a Minister has no humanity and no pity. If David Rossi cannot be arrested by the authorisation of Parliament, he must be arrested when Parliament is not in session, and then his identity will have to be established in a public tribunal. In that event you will be forced to appear, and having refused to make a private statement in the secrecy of a magistrate's office, you will be compelled to testify in the Court of Assize." "Ah, but you can't make me do that!" cried Roma excitedly, as if seized by a sudden thought. "Why not?" "Never mind why not. You can't do it, I tell you," she cried excitedly. He looked at her as if trying to penetrate her meaning, and then said: "We shall see." At that moment the fretful voice of the Countess was heard calling to the Baron from the adjoining room. II Roma went to her bedroom when the Baron left her, and remained there until late in the afternoon. In spite of the bold front she had put on, she was quaking with terror and tortured by remorse. Never before had she realised David Rossi's peril with such awful vividness, and seen her own position in relation to him in its hideous nakedness. Was it her duty to confess to David Rossi that at the beginning of their friendship she had set out to betray him? Only so could she be secure, only so could she be honest, only so could she be true to the love he gave her and the trust he reposed in her. Yet why should she confess? The abominable impulse was gone. Something sweet and tender had taken its place. To confess to him now would be cruel. It would wound his beautiful faith in her. And yet the seeds she had sown were beginning to fructify. They might spring up anywhere at any moment, and choke the life that was dearer to her than her own. Thank God, it was still impossible to injure him except by her will and assistance. But her will might be broken and her assistance might be forced, unless the law could be invoked to protect her against itself. It could and it should be invoked! When she was married to David Rossi no law in Italy would compel her to witness against him. But if Rossi hesitated from any cause, if he delayed their marriage, if he replied unfavourably to the letter in which she had put aside all modesty and asked him to marry her soon--what then? How was she to explain his danger? How was she to tell him that he must marry her before Parliament rose, or she might be the means of expelling him from the Chamber, and perhaps casting him into prison for life? How was she to say: "I was Delilah; I set out to betray you, and unless you marry me the wicked work is done!" The afternoon was far spent; she had eaten nothing since morning, and was lying face down on the bed, when a knock came to the door. "The person in the studio to see you," said Felice. It was Bruno in Sunday attire, with little Joseph in top-boots, and more than ever like the cub of a young lion. "A letter from him," said Bruno. It was from Rossi. She took it without a word of greeting, and went back to her bedroom. But when she returned a moment afterwards her face was transformed. The clouds had gone from it and the old radiance had returned. All the brightness and gaiety of her usual expression were there as she came swinging into the drawing-room and filling the air with the glow of health and happiness. "_That's_ all right," she said. "Tell Mr. Rossi I shall expect to see him soon ... or no, don't say that ... say that as he is over head and ears in work this week, he is not to think it necessary.... Oh, say anything you like," she said, and the pearly teeth and lovely eyes broke into an aurora of smiles. Bruno, whose bushy face and shaggy head had never once been raised since he came into the room, said: "He's busy enough, anyway--what with this big meeting coming off on Wednesday, and the stairs to his room as full of people as the Santa Scala." "So you've brought little Joseph to see me at last?" said Roma. "He has bothered my life out to bring him ever since you said he was to be your porter some day." "And why not? Gentlemen ought to call on the ladies, oughtn't they, Joseph?" And Joseph, whose curly poll had been hiding behind the leg of his father's trousers, showed half of a face that was shining all over. "See! See here--do you know who _this_ is? This gentleman in the bust?" "Uncle David," said the boy. "What a clever boy you are, Joseph!" "Doesn't want much cleverness to know that, though," said Bruno. "It's wonderful! it's magnificent! And it will shut up all their damned ... excuse me, miss, excuse _me_." "And Joseph still intends to be a porter?" "Dead set on it, and says he wouldn't change his profession to be a king." "Quite right, too! And now let us look at something a little birdie brought me the other day. Come along, Joseph. Here it is. Down on your knees, gentleman, and help me to drag it out. One--two--and away!" From the knee-hole of the desk came a large cardboard box, and Joseph's eyes glistened like big black beads. "Now, what do you think is in this box, Joseph? Can't guess? Give it up? Sure? Well, listen! Are you listening? Which do you think you would like best--a porter's cocked hat, or a porter's long coat, or a porter's mace with a gilt hat and a tassel?" Joseph's face, which had gleamed at every item, clouded and cleared, cleared and clouded at the cruel difficulty of choice, and finally looked over at Bruno for help. "Choose now--which?" But Joseph only sidled over to his father, and whispered something which Roma could not hear. "What does he say?" "He says it is his birthday on Wednesday," said Bruno. "Bless him! He shall have them all, then," said Roma, and Joseph's legs as well as his eyes began to dance. The cords were cut, the box was opened, the wonderful hat and coat and mace were taken out, and Joseph was duly invested. In the midst of this ceremony Roma's black poodle came bounding into the room, and when Joseph strutted out of the boudoir into the drawing-room the dog went leaping and barking beside him. "Dear little soul!" said Roma, looking after the child; but Bruno, who was sitting with his head down, only answered with a groan. "What is the matter, Bruno?" she asked. Bruno brushed his coat-sleeve across his eyes, set his teeth, and said with a savage fierceness: "What's the matter? Treason's the matter, telling tales and taking away a good woman's character--that's what is the matter! A man who has been eating your bread for years has been lying about you, and he is a rascal and a sneak and a damned scoundrel, and I would like to kick him out of the house." "And who has been doing all this, Bruno?" "Myself! It was I who told Mr. Rossi the lies that made him speak against you on the day of the Pope's Jubilee, and when you asked him to come here, I warned him against you, and said you were only going to pay him back and ruin him." "So you said that, did you?" "Yes, I did." "And what did Mr. Rossi say to you?" "Say to me? 'She's a good woman,' says he, 'and if I have ever said otherwise, I take it all back, and am ashamed.'" Roma, who had turned to the window, heaved a sigh and said: "It has all come out right in the end, Bruno. If you hadn't spoken against me to Mr. Rossi, he wouldn't have spoken against me in the piazza, and then he and I should never have met and known each other and been friends. All's well that ends well, you know." "Perhaps so, but the miracle doesn't make the saint, and you oughtn't to keep me any longer." "Do you mean that I ought to dismiss you?" "Yes." "Bruno," said Roma, "I am in trouble just now, and I may be in worse trouble by-and-by. I don't know how long I may be able to keep you as a servant, but I may want you as a friend, and if you leave me now...." "Oh, put it like that, miss, and I'll never leave you, and as for your enemies...." Bruno was doubling up the sleeve of his right arm, when Joseph and the poodle came back to the room. Roma received them with a merry cry, and there was much noise and laughter. At length the gorgeous garments were taken off, the cardboard box was corded, and Bruno and the boy prepared to go. "You'll come again, won't you, Joseph?" said Roma, and the boy's face beamed. "I suppose this little man means a good deal to his mother, Bruno?" "Everything! I do believe she'd die, or disappear, or drown herself if anything happened to that boy." "And Mr. Rossi?" "He's been a second father to the boy ever since the young monkey was born." "Well, Joseph must come here sometimes, and let me try and be a second mother to him too.... What is he saying now?" Joseph had dragged down his father's head to whisper something in his ear. "He says he's frightened of your big porter downstairs." "Frightened of _him_! He is only a man, my precious! Tell him you are a little Roman boy, and he'll _have_ to let you up. Will you remember? You will? That's right! By-bye!" Before going to sleep that night, Roma switched on the light that hung above her head and read her letter again. She had been hoarding it up for that secret hour, and now she was alone with it, and all the world was still. "_Saturday Night._ "MY DEAR ONE,--Your sweet letter brought me the intoxication of delight, and the momentous matter you speak of is under way. It is my turn to be ashamed of all the great to-do I made about the obstacles to our union when I see how courageous you can be. Oh, how brave women are--every woman who ever marries a man! To take her heart into her hands, and face the unknown in the fate of another being, to trust her life into his keeping, knowing that if he falls she falls too, and will never be the same again! What _man_ could do it? Not one who was ever born into the world. Yet some woman does it every day, promising some man that she will--let me finish your quotation-- "'Meet, if thou require it, Both demands, Laying flesh and spirit In thy hands.' "Don't think I am too much troubled about the Minghelli matter, and yet it is pitiful to think how merciless the world can be even in the matter of a man's name. A name is only a word, but it is everything to the man who bears it--honour or dishonour, poverty or wealth, a blessing or a curse. If it is a good name, everybody tries to take it away from him, but if it's a bad name and he has attempted to drop it, everybody tries to fix it on him afresh. "The name I was compelled to leave behind me when I returned to Italy was a bad name in nothing except that it was the name of my father, and if the spies and ferrets of authority ever fix it upon me God only knows what mischief they may do. But one thing _I_ know--that if they do fix my father's name upon me, and bring me to the penalties which the law has imposed on it, it will not be by help of my darling, my beloved, my brave, brave girl with the heart of gold. "Dearest, I wrote to the Capitol immediately on receiving your letter, and to-morrow morning I will go down myself to see that everything is in train. I don't yet know how many days are necessary to the preparations, but earlier than Thursday it would not be wise to fix the event, seeing that Wednesday is the day of the great mass meeting in the Coliseum, and, although the police have proclaimed it, I have told the people they are to come. There is some risk at the outset, which it would be reckless to run, and in any case the time is short. "Good-night! I can't take my pen off the paper. Writing to you is like talking to you, and every now and then I stop and shut my eyes, and hear your voice replying. Only it is myself who make the answers, and they are not half so sweet as they would be in reality. Ah, dear heart, if you only knew how my life was full of silence until you came into it, and now it is full of music! Good-night, again! "D. R. "_Sunday Morning._ "Just returned from the Capitol. The legal notice for the celebration of a marriage is longer than I expected. It seems that the ordinary term must be twelve days at least, covering two successive Sundays (on which the act of publication is posted on the board outside the office) and three days over. Only twelve days more, my dear one, and you will be mine, mine, mine, and all the world will know!" It took Roma a good three-quarters of an hour to read this letter, for nearly every word seemed to be written out of a lover's lexicon, which bore secret meanings of delicious import, and imperiously demanded their physical response from the reader's lips. At length she put it between the pillow and her cheek, to help the sweet delusion that she was cheek to cheek with some one and had his strong, protecting arms about her. Then she lay a long time, with eyes open and shining in the darkness, trying in vain to piece together the features of his face. But in the first dream of her first sleep she saw him plainly, and then she ran, she raced, she rushed to his embrace. Next day brought a message from the Baron: "DEAR ROMA,--Come to the Palazzo Braschi to-morrow (Tuesday) morning at eleven o'clock. Don't refuse, and don't hesitate. If you do not come, you will regret it as long as you live, and reproach yourself for ever afterwards.--Yours, "BONELLI." III The Palazzo Braschi is a triangular palace, whereof one front faces to the Piazza Navona and the two other fronts to side streets. It is the official palace of the Minister of the Interior, usually the President of the Council and Prime Minister of Italy. Roma arrived at eleven o'clock, and was taken to the Minister's room immediately, by way of an outer chamber, in which colleagues and secretaries were waiting their turn for an interview. The Baron was seated at a table covered with books and papers. There was a fur rug across his knees, and at his right hand lay a small ivory-handled revolver. He rose as Roma entered, and received her with his great but glacial politeness. "How prompt! And how sweet you look to-day, my child! On a cheerless morning like this you bring the sun itself into a poor Minister's gloomy cabinet. Sit down." "You wished to see me?" said Roma. The Baron rested his elbow on the table, leaned his head on his hand, looked at her with his never-varying smile, and said: "I hear you are to be congratulated, my dear." She changed colour slightly. "Are you surprised that I know?" he asked. "Why should I be surprised?" she answered. "You know everything. Besides, this is published at the Capitol, and therefore common knowledge." His smiling face remained perfectly impassive. "Now I understand what you meant on Sunday. It is a fact that a wife cannot be called as a witness against her husband." She knew he was watching her face as if looking into the inmost recesses of her soul. "But isn't it a little courageous of you to think of marriage?" "Why courageous?" she asked, but her eyes fell and the colour mounted to her cheek. "_Why_ courageous?" he repeated. He allowed a short time to elapse, and then he said in a a low tone, "Considering the past, and all that has happened...." Her eyelids trembled and she rose to her feet. "If this is all you wish to say to me...." "No, no! Sit down, my child. I sent for you in order to show you that the marriage you contemplate may be difficult, perhaps impossible." "I am of age--there can be no impediment." "There may be the greatest of all impediments, my dear." "What do you mean?" "I mean ... But wait! You are not in a hurry? A number of gentlemen are waiting to see me, and if you will permit me to ring for my secretary.... Don't move. Colleagues merely! They will not object to _your_ presence. My ward, you know--almost a member of my own household. Ah, here is the secretary. Who now?" "The Minister of War, the Prefect, Commendatore Angelelli, and one of his delegates," replied the secretary. "Bring the Prefect first," said the Baron, and a severe-looking man of military bearing entered the room. "Come in, Senator. You know Donna Roma. Our business is urgent--she will allow us to go on. I am anxious to hear how things stand and what you are doing." The Prefect began on his report. Immediately the new law was promulgated by royal decree, he had sent out a circular to all the Mayors in his province, stating the powers it gave the police to dissolve associations and forbid public meetings. "But what can we expect in the provincial towns, your Excellency, while in the capital we are doing nothing? The chief of all subversive societies is in Rome, and the directing mind is at large among ourselves. Listen to this, sir." The Prefect took a newspaper from his pocket and began to read: "ROMANS,--The new law is an attempt to deprive us of liberties which our fathers made revolutions to establish. It is, therefore, our duty to resist it, and to this end we must hold our meeting on the 1st of February according to our original intention. Only thus can we show the Government and the King what it is to oppose the public opinion of the world.... Meet in the Piazza del Popolo at sundown and walk to the Coliseum by way of the Corso. Be peaceful and orderly, and God put it into the hearts of your rulers to avert bloodshed." "That is from the _Sunrise_?" "Yes, sir, the last of many manifestoes. And what is the result? The people are flocking into Rome from every part of the province." "And how many political pilgrims are here already?" "Fifty thousand, sixty, perhaps a hundred thousand. It cannot be allowed to go on, your Excellency." "It is a _levée-en-masse_ certainly. What do you advise?" "That the enemies of the Government and the State, whose erroneous conceptions of liberty have led to this burst of anarchist feelings, be left to the operation of the police laws." The Baron glanced at Roma. Her face was flushed and her eyes were flashing. "That," he said, "may be difficult, considering the number of the discontented. What is the strength of your police?" "Seven hundred in uniform, four hundred in plain clothes, and five hundred and fifty municipal guards. Besides these, sir, there are three thousand Carabineers and eight thousand regular troops." "Say twelve thousand five hundred armed men in all?" "Precisely, and what is that against fifty, a hundred, perhaps a hundred and fifty thousand people?" "You want the army at call?" "Exactly! but above everything else we want the permission of the Government to deal with the greater delinquents, whether Deputies or not, according to the powers given us by the statute." The Baron rose and held out his hand. "Thanks, Senator! The Government will consider your suggestions immediately. Be good enough to send in my colleague, the Minister of War." When the Prefect left the room Roma rose to go. "You cannot suppose this is very agreeable to me?" she said in an agitated voice. "Wait! I shall not be long ... Ah, General Morra! Roma, you know the General, I think. Sit down, both of you.... Well, General, you hear of this _levée-en-masse_?" "I do." "The Prefect is satisfied that the people are moved by a revolutionary organisation, and he is anxious to know what force we can put at his service to control it." The General detailed his resources. There were sixteen thousand men always under arms in Rome, and the War Office had called up the old-timers of two successive years--perhaps fifty thousand in all. "As a Minister of State and your colleague," said the General, "I am at one with you in your desire to safeguard the cause of order and protect public institutions, but as a man and a Roman I cannot but hope that you will not call upon me to act without the conditions required by law." "Indeed, no," said the Baron; "and in order to make sure that our instructions are carried out with wisdom and humanity, let these be the orders you issue to your staff: First, that in case of disturbance to-morrow night, whether at the Coliseum or elsewhere, the officers must wait for the proper signal from the delegate of police." "Good!" "Next, that on receiving the order to fire, the soldiers must be careful that their first volley goes over the heads of the people." "Excellent!" "If that does not disperse the crowds, if they throw stones at the soldiers or otherwise resist, the second volley--I see no help for it--the second volley, I say, must be fired at the persons who are leading on the ignorant and deluded mob." "Ah!" The General hesitated, and Roma, whose breathing came quick and short, gave him a look of tenderness and gratitude. "You agree, General Morra?" "I'm afraid I see no alternative. But if the blood of their leader only infuriates the people, is the third volley...." "That," said the Baron, "is a contingency too terrible to contemplate. My prediction would be that when their leader falls, the poor, misguided people will fly. But in all human enterprises the last word has to be left to destiny. Let us leave it to destiny in the present instance. Adieu, dear General! Be good enough to tell my secretary to send in the Chief of Police." The Minister of War left the room, and once more Roma rose to go. "You cannot possibly imagine that a conversation like this...." she began, but the Baron only interrupted her again. "Don't go yet. I shall be finished presently. Angelelli cannot keep me more than a moment. Ah, here is the Commendatore." The Chief of Police came bowing and bobbing at every step, with the extravagant politeness which differentiates the vulgar man from the well-bred. "About this meeting at the Coliseum, Commendatore--has any authorisation been asked for it?" "None whatever, your Excellency." "Then we may properly regard it as seditious?" "Quite properly, your Excellency." "Listen! You will put yourself into communication with the Minister of War immediately. He will place fifty thousand men at the disposition of your Prefect. Choose your delegates carefully. Instruct them well. At the first overt act of resistance, let them give the word to fire. After that, leave everything to the military." "Quite so, your Excellency." "Be careful to keep yourself in touch with me until midnight to-morrow. It may be necessary to declare a state of siege, and in that event the royal decree will have to be obtained without delay. Prepare your own staff for a general order. Ask for the use of the cannon of St. Angelo as a signal, and let it be understood that if the gun is fired to-morrow night, every gate of the city is to be closed, every outward train is to be stopped, and every telegraph office is to be put under control. You understand me?" "Perfectly, Excellency." "After the signal has been given let no one leave the city, and let no telegraphic message of any kind be despatched. In short, let Rome from that hour onward be entirely under the control of the Government." "Entirely, your Excellency." "The military have already received their orders. After the call of the delegate of police, the first volley is to be fired over the heads of the people, and the second at the ringleaders. But if any of these should escape...." The Baron paused, and then repeated in a low tone with the utmost deliberation: "I say, _if_ any of these should escape, Commendatore...." "They shall not escape, your Excellency." There was a moment of profound silence, in which Roma felt herself to be suffocating, and could scarcely restrain the cry that was rising in her throat. "Let me go," she said, when the Chief of Police had backed and bowed himself out; but again the Baron pretended to misunderstand her. "Only one more visitor! I shall be finished in a few minutes," and then Charles Minghelli was shown into the room. The man's watchful eyes blinked perceptibly as he came face to face with Roma, but he recovered himself in a moment, and began to brush with his fingers the breast of his frockcoat. "Sit down, Minghelli. You may speak freely before Donna Roma. You owe your position to her generous influence, you may remember, and she is abreast of all our business. You know all about this meeting at the Coliseum?" Minghelli bent his head. "The delegates of police have received the strictest orders not to give the word to the military until an overt act of resistance has been committed. That is necessary as well for the safety of our poor deluded people as for our own credit in the eyes of the world. But an act of rebellion in such a case is a little thing, Mr. Minghelli." Again Minghelli bent his head. "A blow, a shot, a shower of stones, and the peace is broken and the delegate is justified." A third time Minghelli bent his head. "Unfortunately, in the sorrowful circumstances in which the city is placed, an overt act of resistance is quite sure to be committed." Minghelli flecked a speck of dust from his spotless cuff and said: "Quite sure, your Excellency." There was another moment of profound silence, in which Roma felt her heart beat violently. "Adieu, Mr. Minghelli. Tell my secretary as you pass out that I wish to dictate a letter." The letter was to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. "Dear colleague," dictated the Baron, "I entirely approve of the proposal you have made to the Governments of Europe and America to establish a basis on which anarchists should be suppressed by means of an international net, through which they can hardly escape. My suggestion would be the universal application of the Belgian clause in all existing extradition treaties, whereby persons guilty of regicide may be dealt with as common murderers. In any case please say that the Government of Italy intends to do its duty to the civilised world, and will look to the Governments of other countries to allow it to follow up and arrest the criminals who are attempting to reconstruct society by burying it under ruins." Notwithstanding all her efforts to appear calm, Roma felt as if she must go out into the streets and scream. Now she knew why she had been sent for. It was in order that the Baron might talk to her in parables--in order that he might show her by means of an object lesson, as palpable as pitiless, what was the impediment which made her marriage with David Rossi impossible. The marriage could not be celebrated until after eleven days, but the meeting at the Coliseum must take place to-morrow, and as surely as it did so it must result in riot and David Rossi must be shot. The secretary gathered up his note-book and left the room, and then the Baron turned to Roma with beaming eyes and lips expanding to a smile. "Finished at last! A thousand apologies, my dear! Twelve o'clock already! Let us go out and lunch somewhere." "Let me go home," said Roma. She was trembling violently, and as she rose to her feet she swayed a little. "My dear child! you're not well. Take this glass of water." "It's nothing. Let me go home." The Baron walked with her to the head of the staircase. "I understand you perfectly," she said in a choking voice, "but there is something you have not counted upon, and you are quite mistaken." And making a great call on her resolution, she threw up her head and walked firmly down the stairs. Immediately on reaching home she wrote to David Rossi: "I _must_ see you to-night. Where can it be? To-night! Mind, to-night. To-morrow will be too late. ROMA." Bruno delivered the note by hand, and brought back an answer: "DEAREST,--Come to the office at nine o'clock. Sorry I cannot go to you. It is impossible. D. R. "P.S.--You have converted Bruno, and he would die for you. As for the 'little Roman boy,' he is in the seventh heaven over your presents, and says he must go up to Trinità de' Monti to begin work at once." IV The office of the _Sunrise_ at nine o'clock that night tingled with excitement. A supplement had already gone to press, and the machines in the basement were working rapidly. In the business office on the first floor people were constantly coming and going, and the footsteps on the stairs of the composing-room sounded through the walls like the irregular beat of a hammer. The door of the editor's room was frequently swinging open, as reporters with reports, messengers with telegrams, and boys with proofs came in and laid them on the desk at which the sub-editor sat at work. David Rossi stood by his desk at the farther end of the room. This was the last night of his editorship of the _Sunrise_, and by various silent artifices the staff were showing their sympathy with the man who had made the paper and was forced to leave it. The excitement within the office of the _Sunrise_ corresponded to the commotion outside. The city was in a ferment, and from time to time unknown persons, the spontaneous reporters of tumultuous days, were brought in from the outer office to give the editor the latest news of the night. Another trainful of people had arrived from Milan! Still another from Bologna and Carrara! The storm was growing! Soon would be heard the crash of war! Their faces were eager and their tone was one of triumph. They pitched their voices high, so as to be heard above the reverberation of the machines, whose deep thud in the rooms below made the walls vibrate like the side of a ship at sea. David Rossi did not catch the contagion of their joy. At every fresh announcement his face clouded. The unofficial head of the surging and straining democracy, which was filling itself hourly with hopes and dreams, was unhappy and perplexed. He was trying to write his last message to his people, and he could not get it clear because his own mind was confused. "_Romans_," he wrote first, "_your rulers are preparing to resist your right of meeting, and you will have nothing to oppose to the muskets and bayonets of their soldiers but the bare breasts of a brave but peaceful people. No matter. Fifty, a hundred, five hundred of you killed at the first volley, and the day is won! The reactionary Government of Italy--all the reactionary Governments of Europe--will be borne down lay the righteous indignation of the world._" It would not do! He had no right to lead the people to certain slaughter, and he tore up his manifesto and began again. "_Romans_," he wrote the second time, "_when reforms cannot be effected without the spilling of blood, the time for them has not yet come, and it is the duty of a brave and peaceful people to wait for the silent operation of natural law and the mighty help of moral forces. Therefore at the eleventh hour I call upon you, in the names of your wives and children...._" It was impossible! The people would think he was afraid, and the opportune moment would be lost. One man in the office of the _Sunrise_ was entirely outside the circle of its electric currents. This was the former day-editor, who had been appointed by the proprietors to take Rossi's place, and was now walking about with a silk hat on his head, taking note of everything and exercising a premature and gratuitous supervision. David Rossi was tearing up the second of his manifestoes when this person came to say that a lady in the outer office was asking to see him. "Show her into the private waiting-room," said Rossi. "But may I suggest," said the man, "that considering who the lady is, it would perhaps be better to see her elsewhere?" "Show her into the private room, sir," said Rossi, and the man shrugged his shoulders and disappeared. As David Rossi opened the door of a small room at his right hand, something rustled lightly in the corridor outside, and a moment afterwards Roma glided into his arms. She was pale and nervous, and after a moment she began to cry. "Dear one," said Rossi, pressing her head against his breast, "what has happened? Tell me! Something has frightened you. You look anxious." "No wonder," she said, and then she told him of her summons to the Palazzo Braschi, and of the business she saw done there. There was to be a riot at the meeting at the Coliseum, because, if need be, the Government itself would provoke violence. The object was to kill _him_, not the people, and if he stayed in Rome until to-morrow night there would be no possibility of escape. "You must fly," she said. "You are the victim marked out by all these preparations--you, you, nobody but you." "It is the best news I've heard for days," he said. "If I am the only one who runs a risk...." "Risk! My dearest, don't you understand? Your life is aimed at, and you must fly before it is quite impossible." "It is already impossible," he answered. He drew off one of her white gloves and kissed her finger-tips. "My dear one," he said, "if there were nothing else to think of, do you suppose I could go away and leave you behind me? That is just what somebody expected me to do when he permitted you to witness his preparations. But he was mistaken. I cannot and I will not leave you." Her pale face was suddenly overspread by a burning blush, and she threw both arms about his neck. "Very well," she said, "I will go with you." "Darling!" he cried, and he clasped her to his breast again. "But no! That is impossible also. Our marriage cannot take place for ten days." "No matter! I'll go without it." "My dear child, you don't know what you are saying. You are too good, too pure...." "Hush! Our marriage is nothing to anybody but ourselves, and if we choose to go without it...." "My dear girl!" "I can't hear you," she said. Loosening her hands from his neck, she had covered her ears. "Dearest, I know what you are thinking of, but it must not be." "I can't hear a word you're saying," she said, beating her hands over her ears. "I'm ready to go now, this very minute--and if you don't take me, it is because you love other things better than you love me." "My darling, don't tempt me. If you only knew what it costs me ... but I would rather die...." "I don't want you to die. That's just it! I want you to live, and I am willing to risk everything--everything...." Her warm and lovely form was quivering in his arms, and his heart was labouring wildly. "Dearest," he whispered over her head, "you are so good, so pure, so noble, that you don't know how evil tongues can wag at a woman because she is brave and true. But I must remember my mother--and if your poor father is to rest in his grave...." His voice broke and he stopped. "See how much I love you," he whispered again, "when I would rather lose you than see you lower yourself in your own esteem.... And then think of my people! my poor people who trust me and look up to me so much more than I deserve. I called them and they have come. They are here now, tens of thousands of them. And they will be here to-morrow wherever I may be. Shall I desert them in their hour of need, thinking of my own safety, my own happiness? No! You cannot wish it! You do not wish it! I know you too well!" She lifted her head from his breast. "You are right," she said. "You must stay." "My sweet girl!" "Can you ever forgive me for being frightened at the first note of danger and telling you to fly?" "I will always love you for it." "And you will never think the worse of me for offering to go with you?" "I will love you for that too." "I must be brave," she said, drawing herself up proudly, though her lips were trembling, her voice was breaking, and her eyes were wet. "Whether you are right or wrong in what you are doing it is not for me to decide, but if your heart tells you to do it you _must_ do it, and I must be your soldier, ready and waiting for my captain's call." "My brave girl!" "It is not for nothing that I am my father's daughter. _He_ risked everything and so will I, and if they come to me to-morrow night and say that ... that you ... that you are...." The proud face had fallen on his breast again. But after a moment it was raised afresh, and then it was shining all over. "That's right! How beautiful your face is when it smiles, Roma! Roma, do you know what I'm going to do when this is all over? I'm going to spend my life in making you smile all the time." She gave him a sudden kiss, and then broke out of his arms. "I must be going. I've stayed too long. I may not see you before the meeting, but I won't say 'good-bye.' I've thought of something, and now I know what I'm going to do." "What is it?" "Don't ask me." She opened the door. "Come to me to-morrow night--I shall expect you," she whispered, and waving her glove to him over her head she disappeared from the room. He stood a moment where she had left him, trying to think what she intended to do, and then he returned to his desk in the outer office. His successor was there, looking sour and stubborn. "Mr. Rossi," he said, "this afternoon I was told at the Press Club that the authorities were watching for a plausible excuse for suppressing the paper; and considering the relations of this lady to the Minister of the Interior, and the danger of spies...." "Listen to this carefully, sir," interrupted Rossi. "When you come into possession of the chair I occupy, you may do as you think well, but to-night it is mine, and I shall conduct the paper as I please." "Still, you will allow me to say...." "Not one word." "Permit me to protest...." "Leave the room immediately." When the man was gone, David Rossi wrote a third and last version of his manifesto: "_Romans.--Have no fear. Do not allow yourselves to be terrified by the military preparations of your Government. Believe a man who has never deceived you--the soldiers will not fire upon the people! Violate no law. Assail no enemy. Respect property. Above all, respect life. Do not allow yourself to be pushed into the doctrine of physical force. If any man tries to provoke violence, think him an agent of your enemies and pay no heed. Be brave, be strong, be patient, and to-morrow night you will send up such a cry as will ring throughout the world. Romans, remember your fathers and be great._" Rossi was handing his manuscript to the sub-editor, that it might be sent upstairs, when all at once the air seemed to become empty and the world to stand still. The machine in the basement had ceased to work. There was a momentary pause, such as comes on a steamship at sea when the engines are suddenly stopped, and then a sound of frightened voices and the noise of hurrying feet. Somebody ran along the corridor outside and rapped sharply at the door. At the next moment the door opened and four men entered the room. One of them was an inspector, another was a delegate, and the others were policemen in plain clothes. "The journal is sequestered," said the inspector to David Rossi. And turning to one of his men, he said, "Go up to the composing-room and superintend the distribution of the type." "Allow no one to leave the building," said the delegate to the other policeman. "Gentlemen," said the inspector, "we are charged to make a perquisition, and must ask you for the keys of your desks." "What is this?" said the delegate, taking the manifesto out of Rossi's fingers, and proceeding to read it. At that moment the editor-elect came rushing into the room with a face like the rising sun. "I demand to see a list of the things sequestered," he cried. "You shall do so at the police-office," said the inspector. "Does that mean that we are all arrested?" "Not all. The Honourable Rossi, being a Deputy, is at liberty to leave." "Thought as much," said the new editor, with a contemptuous snort. And turning to Rossi, and showing his teeth in a bitter smile, he said: "What did I say would happen? Has it followed quickly enough to satisfy you?" The inspector and the delegate opened the editors' desks and were rummaging among their papers when David Rossi put on his hat and went home. At the door of the lodge the old Garibaldian was waiting in obvious excitement. "Old John has been here, sir," he said. "Something to tell you. Wouldn't tell me. But Bruno got it out of him at last. Must be something serious, for the big booby has been drinking ever since. Hear him in the café, sir. I'll send him up." Half-an-hour afterwards Bruno staggered into Rossi's room. He had a tearful look in his drink-deadened eyes, and was clearly struggling with a desire to put his arms about Rossi's neck and weep over him. "D'ye know wha'?" he mumbled in a maudlin voice. "Ole Vampire is a villain! Ole John--'member ole John?--well, ole John heard his grandson, the d'ective, say that if you go to the Coliseum to-morrow night...." "I know all about it, Bruno. You may go to bed." "Stop a minute, sir," said Bruno, with a melancholy smile. "You don't unnerstand. They're going t' shoot you. See? Ole John--'member ole John? Well, ole John...." "I know, Bruno. But I'm going nevertheless." Bruno fought with the vapour in his brain, and said: "You don' mean t' say you inten' t' let yourself be a target...." "That's what I do mean, Bruno." Bruno burst into a loud laugh. "Well, I'll be ... wha' the devil.... But you sha'n't go. I'll ... I'll see you damned first!" "You're drunk, Bruno. Go and put yourself to bed." The drink-deadened eyes flashed, and to grief succeeded rage. "Pu' mysel t' bed! D'ye know wha' I'd like t' do t' you for t' nex' twenty-four hours? I'd jus' like--yes, by Bacchus--I'd jus' like to punch you in t' belly and put _you_ t' bed." And straightening himself up with drunken dignity, Bruno stalked out of the room. * * * * * The Baron Bonelli in the Piazza Leone was rising from his late and solitary dinner when Felice entered the shaded dining-room and handed him a letter from Roma. It ran: "This is to let you know that I intend to be present at the meeting in the Coliseum to-morrow night. Therefore, if any shots are to be fired by the soldiers at the crowd or their leader, you will know beforehand that they must also be fired at me." As the Baron held the letter under the red shade of the lamp, the usual immobility of his icy face gave way to a rapturous expression. "The woman is magnificent! And worth fighting for to the bitter end." Then, turning to Felice, he told the man to ring up the Commendatore Angelelli and tell him to send for Minghelli without delay. V Next day began with heavy clouds lying low over the city, a cold wind coming down from the mountains, and the rumbling of distant thunder. Nevertheless the people who had come to Rome for the demonstration at the Coliseum seemed to be in the streets the whole day long. From early morning they gathered in the Piazza Navona, inquired for David Rossi, stood by the fountains, and looked up at his windows. As the day wore on the crowds increased. All the public squares seemed to be full of motley, ill-clad, ill-nourished, but formidable multitudes. Towards evening the tradesmen began to shut up their shops, and a regiment of cavalry paraded the principal streets with a band that played the royal march. Meantime, the leader, to whom thousands were looking up, was miserable and alone. He had cried "Peace," but the perils of protest were so many and so near. A blow, a push, a quarrel at a street corner, and God knows what might happen! Elena came with his coffee. The timid creature kept looking at him out of her liquid eyes as if struggling with a desire to speak, but when she did so it was only on indifferent subjects. Bruno had got up with a headache and gone off to work. Little Joseph was very trying this morning, and she had threatened to whip him. Her father had been upstairs to say that countless people were asking for the Deputy, and he wished to know if anybody was to come up. "Tell him I wish to be quite alone to-day," said Rossi, and then the soft voice ceased, and the timid creature went out with a guilty look. Like a man who is going on a long and perilous journey, David Rossi spent the morning in arranging his affairs. He looked over his letters and destroyed most of them. The letters from Roma were hard to burn, but he read each of them again, as if trying to stamp their words and characters on his brain, and with a deep sigh he committed them to the flames. It was twelve o'clock by this time, and Francesca, in her red cotton handkerchief, brought up his lunch. The good old thing looked at him with a comical expression of pity on her wrinkled face, and he knew that Bruno had told his story. "Come now, my son! Put away your papers and get something on your stomach. People eat even if they're going to the gallows, you know." After lunch Rossi called upstairs for Joseph, and the shock-headed little cub was brought down, with his wet eyes twinkling and his petted lip beginning to smile. "Joseph has been naughty, Uncle David," said Elena. "He is crying for the clothes Donna Roma gave him, and he says he must go out because it is his birthday." "Does a man cry when he is seven?" said Uncle David. Thereupon Joseph, keeping his eyes upon his mother, whispered something in Uncle David's ear, and straightway the gorgeous garments were produced. "Joseph will promise not to go out to-day; won't you, Joseph?" And Joseph rolled his fists into his eyes and was understood to say "Yes." At four o'clock Bruno came home, looking grim and resolute. "I was pretty drunk last night, sir," he said, "but if there's shooting to be done this evening I'm going to be there." The time came for the two men to go, and everybody saw them to the door. "Adieu!" said Rossi. "Thank you for all you've done for me, and may God bless you! Take care of my little Roman boy. Kiss me, Joseph! Again! For the last time! Adieu!" "Ah, God is a good old saint. He'll take care of you, my son," said the old woman. "Adieu, Uncle David! Adieu, papa!" cried Joseph over the banisters, and the brave little voice, with its manly falsetto, was the last the men heard as they descended the stairs. The Piazza del Popolo was densely crowded, and seemed to be twice as large as usual. Bruno elbowed a way through for himself and Rossi until they came to the obelisk in the centre of the great circle. On the steps of the obelisk a company of artillery was stationed with a piece of cannon which commanded the three principal thoroughfares of the city, the Corso, the Ripetta, and the Babunio, which branch off from that centre like the ribs from the handle of a fan. Without taking notice of the soldiers, the people ranged themselves in order and prepared for their procession. At the ringing of Ave Maria the great crowd linked in files and turned their faces towards the Corso. Bruno walked first, carrying from his stalwart breast a standard, on which was inscribed, under the title of the "Republic of Man," the words, "Give us this day our daily bread." Rossi had meant to walk immediately behind Bruno, but he found himself encircled by a group of his followers. No sovereign was ever surrounded by more watchful guards. By the spontaneous consent of the public, traffic in the street was suspended, and crowds of the people of the city had turned out to look on. The four tiers of the Pincian Hill were packed with spectators, and every window and balcony in the Corso was filled with faces. All the shops were shut, and many of them were barricaded within and without. A regiment of infantry was ranged along the edge of the pavement, and the people passed between two lines of rifles. As the procession went on it was constantly augmented, and the column, which had been four abreast when it started from the Popolo, was eight abreast before it reached the end of the Corso. There were no bands of music, and there was no singing, but at intervals some one at the head of the procession would begin to clap, and then the clapping of hands would run down the street like the rattle of musketry. Going up the narrow streets beyond the Venezia, the people passed into the Forum--out of the living city of the present into the dead city of the past, with its desolation and its silence, its chaos of broken columns and cornices, of corbels and capitals, of wells and watercourses, lying in the waste where they had been left by the earthquake which had passed over them, the earthquake of the ages--and so on through the arch of Titus to the meeting-place in the Coliseum. All this time David Rossi's restless eyes had passed nervously from side to side. Coming down the Corso he had been dimly conscious of eyes looking at him from windows and balconies. He was struggling to be calm and firm, but he was in a furnace of dread, and beneath his breath he was praying from time to time that God would prevent accident and avert bloodshed. He was also praying for strength of spirit and feeling like a guilty coward. His face was deadly pale, the fire within seemed to consume the grosser senses, and he walked along like a man in a dream. VI Half-an-hour before Ave Maria, Roma had put on an inconspicuous cloak, a plain hat, and a dark veil, and walked down to the Coliseum. Soldiers were stationed on all the high ground about the circus, and large numbers of persons were already assembled inside. The people were poor and ill-clad, and they smelt of garlic and uncleanness. "_His_ people, though," thought Roma, and so she conquered her repulsion. Three tiers encircle the walls of the Coliseum, like the galleries of a great theatre, and the lowest of these was occupied by a regiment of Carabineers. There was some banter and chaff at the expense of the soldiers, but the people were serious for all that, and the excitement beneath their jesting was deep and strong. The low cloud which had hung over the city from early morning seemed to lie like a roof over the topmost circle of the amphitheatre, and as night came on the pit below grew dark and chill. Then torches were lit and put in prominent places--long pitch sticks covered with rags or brown paper. The people were patient and good-humoured, but to beguile the tedium of waiting they sang songs. They were songs of labour chiefly, but one man started the _Te Deum_, and the rest joined in with one voice. It was like the noise the sea makes on a heavy day when it breaks on a bank of sand. After a while there was a deep sound from outside. The procession was approaching. It came on like a great tidal wave and flowed into the vast place in the gathering darkness with the light of a hundred fresh torches. In less than half-an-hour the ruined amphitheatre was a moving mass of heads from the ground to its upmost storey. Long sinuous trails of blue smoke swept across the people's faces, and the great brown mass of circular stones was lit up in fitful gleams. Roma was lifted off her feet by the breaker of human beings that surged around. At one moment she was conscious of some one behind who was pressing the people back and making room for her. At the next moment she was aware that through the multitudinous murmur of voices that rumbled as in a vault somebody near her was trying to speak. The speaking ceased and there was a sharp crackle of applause which had the effect of producing silence. In this silence another voice, a clear, loud, vibrating voice, said, "Romans and brothers," and then there was a prolonged shout of recognition from ten thousand throats. In a moment a dozen torches were handed up, and the speaker was in a circle of light and could be seen by all. It was Rossi. He was standing bareheaded on a stone, with a face of unusual paleness. He was wearing the loose cloak of the common people of Rome, thrown across his breast and shoulder. Bruno stood by his left side holding a standard above their heads. At his right hand were two other men who partly concealed him from the crowd. Roma found herself immediately below them, and within two or three paces. After a moment the shouting died down, and there was no sound in the vast place but a soft, quick, indrawn hiss that was like the palpitating breath of an immense flock of sheep. Then Rossi began again. "First and foremost," he said, "let me call on you to preserve the peace. One false step to-night and all is lost. Our enemies would like to fix on us the name of rebels. Rebels against whom? There is no rebellion except rebellion against the people. The people are the true sovereigns, and the only rebels are the classes who oppress them." A murmur of assent broke from the crowd. Rossi paused, and looked around at the soldiers. "Romans," he said, "do not let the armed rebels of the State provoke you to violence. It is to their interest to do so. Defeat them. You have come here in the face of their rifles and bayonets to show that you are not afraid of death. But I ask you to be afraid of doing an unrighteous thing. It is on my responsibility that you are here, and it would be an undying remorse to me if through any fault of yours one drop of blood were shed. "I call on you as earnestly as if my nearest and dearest were among you, liable to be shot down by the rifles of the military, not to give any excuse for violence." Roma turned to look at the soldiers. As far as she could see in the uncertain light, they were standing passively in their circle, with their rifles by their sides. "Romans," said Rossi again, "a month ago we protested against an iniquitous tax on the first necessary of life. The answer is sixty thousand men in arms around us. Therefore we are here to-night to appeal to the mightiest force on earth, mightier than any army, more powerful than any parliament, more absolute than any king--the force of moral sympathy and public opinion throughout the world." At this there were shouts of "Bravo!" and some clapping of hands. "Romans, if your bread is moistened by tears to-day, think of the power of suffering and be strong. Think of the history of these old walls. Think of the words of Christ, 'Which of the prophets have not your fathers stoned?' The prophets of humanity have all been martyrs, and God has marked you out to be the martyr nation of the world. Suffering is the sacred flame that sanctifies the human soul. Pray to God for strength to suffer, and He will bless you from the heights of Heaven." People were weeping on every hand. "Brothers, you are hungry, and I say these things to you with a beating heart. Your children are starving, and I swear before God that from this day forward I will starve with them. If I have eaten two meals a day hitherto, for the future I will eat but one. But leave it to the powers that are over you to do their worst. If they imprison you for resisting their tyrannies, others will take your place. If they kill your leader, God will raise up another who will be stronger than he. Swear to me in this old Coliseum, sacred to the martyrs, that, come what may, you will not yield to injustice and wrong." There was something in Rossi's face at that last moment that seemed to transcend the natural man. He raised his right arm over his head and in a loud voice cried, "Swear!" The people took the oath with uplifted hands and a great shout. It was terrible. Rossi stepped down, and the excitement was overwhelming. The vast crowd seemed to toss to and fro under the smoking lights like a tumultuous sea. The simple-hearted Roman populace could not contain themselves. The crowd began to break up, and the people went off singing. Rossi and his group of friends had disappeared when Roma turned to go. She found herself weeping and singing, too, but for another reason. The danger was passed, and all was over! Going out by one of the arches, she was conscious of somebody walking beside her. Presently a voice said: "You don't recognise me in the darkness, Donna Roma?" It was Charles Minghelli. He had been told to take care of her. Could he offer her his escort home? "No, thank you," she replied, and she was surprised at herself that she experienced no repulsion. Her heart was light, a great weight had been lifted away, and she felt a large and generous charity. At the top of the hill she found a cab, and as it dipped down the broad avenue that leads out of the circle of the dead centuries into the world of living men, she turned and looked back at the Coliseum. It was like a dream. The moving lights--the shadows of great heads on the grim old walls--the surging crowds--the cheers from hoarse throats. But the tinkle of the electric tram brought her back to reality, and then she noticed that it had begun to snow. * * * * * Bruno ploughed a way for David Rossi, and they reached home at last. Elena was standing at the door of David Rossi's rooms, with an agitated face. "Have you seen anything of Joseph?" she asked. "Joseph?" "I opened the window to look if you were coming, and in a moment he was gone. On a night like this, too, when it isn't too safe for anybody to be in the streets." "Has he still got the clothes on?" said Bruno. "Yes, and the naughty boy has broken his promise and must be whipped." The men looked into each other's faces. "Donna Roma?" said Rossi. "I'll go and see," said Bruno. "I must have a rod, whatever you say. I really must!" said Elena. VII Roma reached home in a glow of joy. She told herself that Rossi would come to her in obedience to her command. He must dine with her to-night. Seven was now striking on all the clocks outside, and to give him time to arrive she put back the dinner until eight. Her aunt would dine in her own room, so they would be quite alone. The conventions of life had fallen absolutely away, and she considered them no more. Meantime she must dress and perhaps take a bath. A certain sense of soiling which she could not conquer had followed her up from that glorious meeting. She felt a little ashamed of it, but it was there, and though she told herself "They were _his_ people, poor things," she was glad to take off the clothes she had worn at the Coliseum. She combed out the curls of her glossy black hair, put herself into a loose tea gown and red slippers, took one backward glance at herself in the glass, and then going into the drawing-room, she stood by the window to dream and wait. The snow still fell in thin flakes, but the city was humming on, and the piazza down below was full of people. After a while the electric bell of the outer door was rung, and her heart beat against her breast. "It's he," she thought, and in the exquisite tumult of the moment she lifted her arms and turned to meet him. But when the door was opened it was the Baron Bonelli who was shown into the room. He was in evening dress, with black tie and studs which had a chilling effect, and his manner was as cold and calm as usual. "I regret," he said, "that we must enter on a painful interview." "As you please," she answered, and sitting on a stool by the fire she rested her elbows on her knees, and looked straight before her. "Your letter of last night, my dear, produced the result you desired. I sent for Commendatore Angelelli, invented some plausible excuses, and reversed my orders. I also sent for Minghelli and told him to take care of you on your reckless errand. The matter has thus far ended as you wished, and I trust you are satisfied." She nodded her head without turning round, and bore herself with a certain air of defiance. "But it is necessary that we should come to an understanding," he continued. "You have driven me hard, my child. With all the tenderness and sympathy possible, I am compelled to speak plainly. I wished to spare your feelings. You will not permit me to do so." The incisiveness of his speech cut the air like ice dropping from a glacier, and Roma felt herself turning pale with a sense of something fearful whirling around her. "According to your own plans, Rossi is to marry you within a week, although a month ago he spoke of you in public as an unworthy woman. Will you be good enough to tell me how this miracle has come to pass?" She laughed, and tried to carry herself bravely. "If it is a miracle, how can I explain it?" she said. "Then permit me to do so. He is going to marry you because he no longer thinks as he thought a month ago; because he believes he was wrong in what he said, and would like to wipe it out entirely." "He is going to marry me because he loves me," she answered hotly; "that's why he is going to marry me." At the next moment a faintness came over her, and a misty vapour flashed before her sight. In her anger she had torn open a secret place in her own heart, and something in the past of her life seemed to escape as from a tomb. "Then you have not told him?" said the Baron in so low a voice that he could scarcely be heard. "Told him what?" she said. "The truth--the fact." She caught her breath and was silent. "My child, you are doing wrong. There is a secret between you already. That is a bad basis to begin life upon, and the love that is raised on it will be a house built on the sand." Her heart was beating violently, but she turned on him with a burning glance. "What do you mean?" she said, while the colour increased in her cheeks and forehead. "I am a good woman. You know I am." "To me, yes! The best woman in the world." She had risen to her feet, and was standing by the chimney-piece. "Understand me, my child," he said affectionately. "When I say you are doing wrong, it is only in keeping a secret from the man you intend to marry. Between you and me ... there is no secret." She looked at him with haggard eyes. "For me you are everything that is sweet and good, but for another who knows? When a man is about to marry a woman, there is one thing he can never forgive. Need I say what that is?" The glow that had suffused her face changed to the pallor of marble, and she turned to the Baron and stood over him with the majesty of a statue. "Is it you that tell me this?" she said. "You--you? Can a woman never be allowed to forget? Must the fault of another follow her all her life? Oh, it is cruel! It is merciless.... But no matter!" she said in another voice; and turning away from him she added, as if speaking to herself: "He believes everything I tell him. Why should I trouble?" The Baron followed her with a look that pierced to the depths of her soul. "Then you have told him a falsehood?" he said. She pressed her lips together and made no answer. "That was foolish. By-and-by somebody may come along who will tell him the truth." "What can any one tell him that he has not heard already? He has heard everything, and put it all behind his back." "Could nobody bring conviction to his mind? Nobody whatever? Not even one who had no interest in slandering you?" "You don't mean that you...." "Why not? He has come between us. What could be more natural than that I should tell him so?" A look of dismay came over her face, and it was followed by an expression of terror. "But you wouldn't do that," she stammered. "You couldn't do it. It is impossible. You are only trying me." His face remained perfectly passive, and she seized him by the arm. "Think! Only think! You would do no good for yourself. You might stop the marriage--yes! But you wouldn't carry out your political purpose. You couldn't! And while you would do no good for yourself, think of the harm you would do for me. He loves me, and you would hurt his beautiful faith in me, and I should die of grief and shame." "You are cruel, my child," said the Baron, speaking with dignity. "You think _I_ am hard and unrelenting, but _you_ are selfish and cruel. You are so concerned about your own feelings that you don't even suspect that perhaps you are wounding mine." "Ah, yes, it is too bad," she said, dropping to her knees at his feet. "After all, you have been very good to me thus far, and it was partly my own fault if matters ended as they did. Yes, I confess it. I was vain and proud. I wanted all the world. And when you gave me everything, being so tied yourself, I thought I might forgive you.... But I was wrong--I was to blame--nothing in the world could excuse you--I saw that the moment afterwards. I really hadn't thought at all until then--but then my soul awoke. And then...." She turned her head aside that he might not see her face. "And then love came, and I was like a woman who had married a man thirty years older than herself--married without love--just for the sake of her pride and vanity. But love, real love, drove all that away. It is gone now; I only wish to lead a good life, however simple and humble it may be. Let me do so!... Do not take him away from me! Do not...." She stammered and stopped, with a sudden consciousness of what she was doing. "What a fool I am!" she said, leaping to her feet. "What fresh story can you tell him that he is likely to believe?" "I can tell him that, according to the law of nature and of reason, you belong to me," said the Baron. "Very well! It will be your word against mine, will it not? Tell him, and he will fling your insult in your face." The Baron rose and began to walk about the room, and there were some moments in which nothing could be heard but the slight creaking of his patent-leather boots. Then he said: "In that case I should be compelled to challenge him." "Challenge him!" She repeated the words with scorn. "Is it likely? Do you forget that duelling is a crime, that you are a Minister, that you would have to resign, and expose yourself to penalties?" "If a man insults me grievously in my affections and my honour, I will challenge him," said the Baron. "But he will not fight--it would be contrary to his principles," said Roma. "In that event he will never be able to lift his head in Italy again. But make no mistake on that point, my child. The man who is told that the woman he is going to marry is secretly the wife of another must either believe it or he must not. If he believes it, he casts her off for ever. If he does not believe it, he fights for her name and his own honour. If he does neither, he is not a man." Roma had returned to the stool, and was resting her elbows on her knees and gazing into the fire. "Have you thought of that?" said the Baron. "If the man fights a duel, it will be in defence of what you have told him. In the blindness of his belief in your word he will be ready to risk his life for it. Are you going to stand by and see him fight for a lie?" Roma hid her face in her hands. "Say he is wounded--it will be for a lie! Say he wounds his adversary--that will be for a lie too! Say that David Rossi kills me--what then? He must fly from Italy, and his career is at an end. If he is alone, he is a miserable exile who has earned what he may not enjoy. If you are with him, you are both miserable, for a lie stands between you. Every hour of your life is poisoned by the secret you cannot share with him. You are afraid of blurting it out in your sleep. At last you go to him and confess everything. What then? The idol he worshipped has turned to clay. What he thought an act of retribution is a crime. The dead man had told the truth, and he committed murder on the word of a woman who was a deceiver--a drab." Roma raised her hands to her head as if to avert a blow. "Stop! stop!" she cried in a choking voice, and lifting her face, distorted with suffering, tears rose in her eyes. To see Roma cry touched the only tenderness of which his iron nature was capable. He patted the beautiful head at his feet, and said in a caressing tone: "Why will you make me seem so hard, my child? There is really no need to talk of these things. They will not occur. How can I have any desire to degrade you since I must degrade myself at the same time? I have no wish to tell any one the secret which belongs only to you and me. In that matter you were not to blame either. It was all my doing. I was sweltering under the shameful law which tied me to a dead body, and I tried to attach you to me. And then your beauty--your loveliness...." At that moment Felice announced Commendatore Angelelli. Roma walked over to the window and leaned her face against the glass. Snow was still falling, and there were some rumblings of thunder. Sheets of light shone here and there in the darkness, but the world outside was dark and drear. Would David Rossi come to-night? She almost hoped he would not. VIII Behind her the Prime Minister, who had apologised for turning her house into a temporary Ministry of the Interior, was talking to his Chief of Police. "You were there yourself?" "I was, Excellency. I went up into a high part and looked down. It was a strange and wild sight." "How many would there be?" "Impossible to guess. Inside and outside, Romans, country people, perhaps a hundred thousand." "And Rossi's speech?" "The usual appeal to the passions of the people, Excellency. An extraordinary exhibition of the art of flying between wind and water. We couldn't have found a word that was distinctly seditious, even if we hadn't had your Excellency's order to let the man go on." "You have stopped the telegraph wires?" "Yes." "When the meeting was over, Rossi went home?" "He did, Excellency." "And the hundred thousand?" "In their excitement they began to sing and to march through the streets. They are still doing so. After going down to the Piazza Navona, they are coming up by the Piazza del Popolo and along the Babuino with banners and torches." "Men only?" "Men, women, and children." "You would say that their attitude is threatening?" "Distinctly threatening, your Excellency." "Let your delegates give the legal warning and say that the gathering of great mobs at this hour will be regarded as open rebellion. Allow three minutes' grace for the sake of the women and children, and then ... let the military do their duty." "Quite so, your Excellency." "After that you may carry out the instructions I gave you yesterday." "Certainly, your Excellency." "Keep in touch with all the leaders. Some of them will find that the air of Rome is a little dangerous to their health to-night, and may wish to fly to Switzerland or England, where it would be impossible to follow them." Roma heard behind her the thin cackle as of a hen over her nest, which always came when Angelelli laughed. "Their meeting itself was illegal, and our license has been abused." "Grossly abused, your Excellency." "The action of the Government was too conciliatory, and has rendered them audacious, but the new law is clear in prohibiting the carrying of seditious flags and emblems." "We'll deal with them according to Articles 134 and 252 of the Penal Code, your Excellency." "You can go. But come back immediately if anything happens. I must remain here for the present, and in case of riot I may have to send you to the King." Angelelli's thin voice fell to a whisper of awe at the mention of Majesty, and after a moment he bowed and backed out of the room. Roma did not turn round, and the Minister, who had touched the bell and called for pen and paper, spoke to her from behind. "I daresay you thought I was hard and inhuman at the Palazzo Braschi yesterday, but I was really very merciful. In letting you see the preparations to enclose your friend as in a net, I merely wished you to warn him to fly from the country. He has not done so, and now he must take the consequences." Felice brought the writing materials, and the Baron sat down at the table. There was a long silence in which nothing could be heard but the scratching of the Minister's pen, the snoring of the poodle, and the deadened sound through the wall of the Countess's testy voice scolding Natalina. Roma stepped into the boudoir. The room was dark, and from its unlit windows she could see more plainly into the streets. Masses of shadow lay around, but the untrodden steps were white with thin snow, and the piazza were alive with black figures which moved on the damp ground like worms on an upturned sod. She was leaning her hot forehead against the glass and looking out with haggard eyes, when a deep rumble as of a great multitude came from below. The noise quickly increased to a loud uproar, with shouts, songs, whistles, and shrill sounds blown out of door-keys. Before she was aware of his presence the Baron was standing behind her, between the window and the pedestal with the plaster bust of Rossi. "Listen to them," he said. "The proletariat indeed!... And this is the flock of bipeds to whom men in their senses would have us throw the treasures of civilisation and hand over the delicate machinery of government." He laughed bitterly, and drew back the curtain with an impatient hand. "Democracy! _Christian_ Democracy! _Vox Populi vox Dei!_ The sovereignty and infallibility of the people! Pshaw! I would as soon believe in the infallibility of the Pope!" The crowds increased in the piazza until the triangular space looked like the rapids of a swollen river, and the noise that came up from it was like the noise of falling cliffs and uprooted trees. "Fools! Rabble! Too ignorant to know what you really want, and at the mercy of every rascal who sows the wind and leaves you to reap the whirlwind." Roma crept away from the Baron with a sense of physical repulsion, and at the next moment, from the other window, she heard the blast of a trumpet. A dreadful silence followed the trumpet blast, and then a clear voice cried: "In the name of the law I command you to disperse." It was the voice of a delegate of the police. Roma could see the man on the lowest stage of the steps with his tricoloured scarf of office about him. A second blast came from the trumpet, and again the delegate cried: "In the name of the law I command you to disperse." At that moment somebody cried, "Long live the Republic of Man!" and there was great cheering. In the midst of the cheering the trumpet sounded a third time, and then a loud voice cried "Fire!" At the next moment a volley was fired from somewhere, a cloud of white smoke was coiling in front of the window at which Roma stood, and women and children in the vagueness below were uttering acute cries. "Oh! oh! oh!" "Don't be afraid, my child. Nothing has happened yet. The police had orders to fire first over the people's heads." In her fear and agitation Roma ran back to the outer room, and a moment afterwards Angelelli opened the door and stood face to face with her. "What have you done?" she demanded. "An unfortunate incident, Excellency," said Angelelli, as the Baron appeared. "After the warning of the delegate the mob laughed and threw stones, and the Carabineers fired. They were in the piazza and fired up the steps." "Well?" "Unluckily there were a few persons on the upper flights at the moment, and some of them are wounded, and a child is dead." Roma muttered a low moan and sank on to the stool. "Whose child is it?" "We don't yet know, but the father is there, and he is raging like a madman, and unless he is arrested he will provoke the people to frenzy, and there will be riot and insurrection." The Baron took from the table a letter he had written and sealed. "Take this to the Quirinal instantly. Ask for an immediate audience with the King. When you receive his written reply, call up the Minister of War and say you have the royal decree to declare a state of siege." Angelelli was going out hurriedly. "Wait! Send to the Piazza Navona and arrest Rossi. Be careful! You will arrest the Deputy under Articles 134 and 252 on a charge of using the great influence he has acquired over the people to urge the masses by speeches and writings to resist public authority and to change violently the form of government and the constitution of the State." "Good!" Angelelli disappeared, the acute cries outside died away, the scurrying of flying feet was no more heard, and Roma was still on the stool before the fire, moaning behind the hands that covered her face. The Baron came near to her and touched her with a caressing gesture. "I'm sorry, my child, very sorry. Rossi is a dreamer, not a statesman, but he is none the less troublesome on that account No wonder he has fascinated you, as he has fascinated the people, but time will wipe away an impression like that. The best thing that can happen for both of you is that he should be arrested to-night. It will save you so many ordeals and so much sorrow." At that moment a cannon-shot boomed through the darkness outside, and its vibration rattled the windows and walls. "The signal from St. Angelo," said the Baron. "The gates are closed and the city is under siege." IX When, in the commotion of the household caused by the near approach of the crowd which brought Rossi home from the Coliseum, little Joseph slipped down the stairs and made a dash for the street, he chuckled to himself as he thought how cleverly he had eluded his mother, who had been looking out of the bedroom window, and those two old watch-dogs, his grandfather and grandmother, who were nearly always at the door. It was not until he was fairly plunged into the great sea of the city, and had begun to be a little dazed by more lights than he ever saw when he closed his eyes in bed, that he remembered that he had disobeyed orders and broken his promise not to go out. But even then, he told himself, he was not responsible. He was Donna Roma's porter now. Therefore, he couldn't be Joseph, could he? So, with his magic mace in hand, the serious man of seven marched on, and reconciled himself to his disobedience by thinking nothing more about it. People looked at him and smiled as he passed through the Piazza Madama, where the Senate House stands, and that made him lift his head and walk on proudly, but as he went through the Piazza of the Pantheon a boy who was coming out of a cookshop with a tray on his head cried, "Helloa, kiddy! playing Pulcinello?" and that dashed his worshipful dignity for several minutes. It began to snow, and the white flakes on his gold braid clouded his soul at first, but when he remembered that porters had to work in all weathers, he wagged his sturdy head and strode on. He was going to Donna Roma's according to her invitation, and he found his way by his recollection of what he had seen when he made the same journey on Sunday--here a tramcar coming round a corner, there a line of posts across a narrow thoroughfare, and there a fat man with a gruff voice shouting something at the door of a trattoria. At the corner of a lane there was a shop window full of knives and revolvers. He didn't care for knives--they cut people's fingers--but he liked guns, and when he grew up to be a man he would buy one and kill somebody. Coming to the Piazza Monte Citorio, he remembered the soldiers at the door of the House of Parliament, and the cellar full of long guns with knives (bayonets) stuck on the ends of their muzzles. One of the soldiers laughed, called him "Uncle," and asked him something about enlisting, but he only struck his mace firmly on the flags and marched on. At the corner of the Piazza Colonna he had to wait some time before he could cross the Corso, for the crowds were coming both ways and the traffic frightened him. He had made various little sorties and had been driven back, when a soft hand was slipped into his fat palm and he was piloted across in safety. Then he looked up at his helper. It was a girl with big white feathers in her hat, and her face painted pink and white like the face of the little Jesus in the cradle in church at Christmas. She asked him what his name was, and he told her; also where he was going, and he told her that too. It was dark by this time, and the great little man was beginning to be glad of company. "Aren't you tired of carrying that heavy stick?" she said. It wasn't a stick, and he wasn't a bit tired of carrying it. "But aren't you tired _yourself_?" she said, and he admitted that perhaps it was so. So she picked him up, and carried him in her arms, while he carried the mace, and for some minutes both were satisfied. But presently some one in the Via Tritone cried out, "Helloa! here comes the Blessed Bambino," whereupon his worshipful dignity was again wounded, and he wriggled to the ground. It began to thunder and there were some flashes of lightning, whereupon Joseph shuddered and crept closer to the girl's side. "Are you afraid of lightning, Joseph?" she asked. He wasn't. He often saw it at home when he went to bed. His mother held his hand and he covered up his head in the clothes, and then he liked it. The girl took the wee, fat hand again, and the little feet toddled on. After vain efforts to snatch a kiss, which were defeated by a proper withdrawal of the manly head in the cocked hat, the girl with the feathers and the doll's face left him in the Via due Macelli under a bright electric lamp that hung over the door of a café-chantant. Joseph knew then that he was not far from Donna Roma's, and he began to think of what he would do when he got there. If the big porter at the door tried to stop him he would say, "I'm a little Roman boy," and the man would _have_ to let him go up. Then he would take charge of the hall, and when he had not to open the door he would play with the dog, and sometimes with Donna Roma. With sound practical sense he thought of his wages. Would it be a penny a week or twopence? He thought it would be twopence. Men didn't work for nothing nowadays. He had heard his father say so. Then he remembered his mother, and his lip began to drop. But it rose again when he told himself that of course she would come every night to put him to bed as usual. "Good-night, mamma! See you in the morning," he would say, and when he opened his eyes it would be to-morrow. He was feeling sleepy now, and do what he would he could hardly keep his eyes from closing. But he was in the Piazza di Spagna by this time, and his little feet in their top-boots began to patter up the snowy steps. There are three principal landings to the Spanish Steps, and the great little man of seven had reached the second of them when a noise in the streets below made him stop and turn his head. A great crowd, carrying hundreds of torches, was marching into the piazza. They were singing, shouting, and blowing whistles and trumpets. It was like _Befana_ in the Piazza Navona, and when Joseph blinked his eyes he almost thought he was at home in bed. All at once silence--then soldiers--then a jump all over his body like that which came to him when he was falling asleep--then a sense of something warm--then a buzzing noise--then a boom like that of the gun of St. Angelo at dinner-time ... then a deep, familiar voice calling and calling to him, and his eyes opened for a moment and saw his father's face. "Good-night, papa! So sleepy! See you in the morning!" And then nothing more. * * * * * While Elena waited for Bruno's return with little Joseph, she went up and downstairs between David Rossi's apartment and her own on all manner of invented errands. Meantime she tried to keep down her anxiety by keeping up her anger. Joseph was so worrisome. When he came home he would have to be whipped and sent to bed without his supper. It was true his _verdura_ was already on the stove, but he must not be allowed to touch it. You really must be strict with children. They would like you all the better for it when they grew up to be men and women. But every moment broke down this brave severity, until the desire to punish Joseph for his disobedience was all gone. She stood at the head of the stairs and listened for his voice and his little pattering feet. If she had heard them, her anxious expression would have given way to a cross look and she would have scolded both father and son all the way up to bed. But they did not come, and she turned to the dining-room with a downcast face. "Where can the boy be? If I could only have him back! I will never let him out of my sight again. Never!" David Rossi, who was walking in the sitting-room to calm his nerves after a trying time, tried to comfort her. It would be all right. Depend upon it, Joseph had gone up to Donna Roma's. She was to remember what Bruno told them on Sunday. "The little Roman boy." Joseph had thought of nothing else for three days, and this being his birthday.... "You think so? You really think...." "I'm sure of it. Bruno will be back presently, carrying Joseph on his back. Or perhaps Donna Roma will send the boy home in the carriage, and the great little man will come upstairs like the Mayor. Meantime she has kept him to play with, and...." "Yes, that must be it," said Elena, with shining eyes. "The Signorina must have kept him to play with! He must be playing now with the Signorina!" At that moment through the open door there came the sound of a heavy tread on the stairs, mingled with various voices. Elena's shining face suddenly clouded, and Rossi, who read her thought, went out on to the landing. Bruno was coming up the staircase with something in his arms, and behind him were the Garibaldian and his old wife and a line of strangers. Rossi ran down two flights of stairs and met them. He saw everything as by a flash of lightning. The boy lay in his father's arms. He was white and cold, with his head fallen back, and his hair matted with flakes of snow. His gay coat was open, and his little stained shirt was torn out at the breast. A stranger behind was carrying the cocked hat and mace. Elena, who was at the head of the stairs by this time, was screaming. "Keep her away, sir," said Bruno. The poor fellow was trying to be brave and strong, but his voice was like a voice from the other side of an abyss. They took the boy into the dining-room, and laid him on a sofa. There was no keeping the mother back. She forced her way through and laid hold of the child. "Get away, he's mine," she cried fiercely. And then she dropped on her knees before the boy, threw her arms about him and called on him by his name. "Joseph! Speak to me! Open your eyes and speak!... What have you been doing with my child? He is ill. Why don't you send for a doctor? Don't stand there like fools. Go for a doctor, I tell you ... Joseph! Only a word!... Have you carried him home without his hat on? And it's snowing too! He'll get his death of cold ... what's this? Blood on his shirt? And a wound? Look at this red spot. Have they shot him? No, no, it's impossible! A child! Joseph! Joseph! Speak to me!... Yes, his heart is beating." She was pressing her ear to the boy's breast. "Or is it only the beating in my head? Oh, where is the doctor? Why don't you send for him?" They could not tell her that it was useless, that a doctor had seen the child already, and that all was over. All they could do was to stand round her with awe in their faces. She understood them without words. Her hair fell from its knot, and her eyes began to blaze like the eyes of a maniac. "They've killed my child!" she cried. "He's dead! My little boy is dead! Only seven, and it was his birthday! O God! My child! What had he done that they should kill him?" And then Bruno, who was standing by with a wild lustre in his eyes, said between his teeth, "Done? Done nothing but live under a Government of murderers and assassins." The room filled with people. Neighbours who had never before set foot in the rooms came in without fear, for death was among them. They stood silent for the most part, only handing round the table the little cocked hat and the mace, with sighs and deep breathing. But some one speaking to Rossi told him what had happened. It was at the Spanish Steps. The delegate gave the word, and the Carabineers fired over the people's heads. But they hit the child and made him cold. His little heart had burst. "And I was going to whip him," said Elena. "Not a minute before I was talking about the rod, and not giving him his supper. O God! I can never forgive myself." And then the blessed tears came and she wept bitterly. David Rossi put his arms about her, and her head fell on his breast. All barriers were broken down, and she clung to him and cried. Just then cries came from the piazza--"Hurrah for the Revolution!" and "Down with the destroyers of the people!"--the woolly tones of voices shouting in the snow. Somebody on the stairs explained that a young man was going about waving a bloody handkerchief, and that the sight of it was exasperating the people to frenzy. Women were marching through the streets, and the entire city was on the point of insurrection. In the dining-room the stricken ones still stood around the couch. Presently there was a sound of singing outside. A great crowd was coming into the piazza, singing the Garibaldi Hymn. Bruno heard it, and the wild lustre in his eyes gave place to a look of savage joy. An awful oath burst from his lips, and he ran out of the house. At the next moment he was heard in the street, singing in a thundering voice: "The tombs are uncovered, The dead arise, The martyrs are rising Before our eyes." The old Garibaldian threw up his head like a warhorse at the call of battle, and his rickety limbs were going towards the door. "Stay here, father," said Rossi, and the old man obeyed him. Elena was quieter by this time. She was sitting by the child and stroking his little icy hand. David Rossi, who had hardly spoken, went into his bedroom. His lips were tightly pressed together, his eyes were bloodshot, and his breath was labouring hard in his heaving breast. He took up his dagger paper-knife, tried its point on his palm with two or three reckless thrusts and threw it back on the desk. Then he went down on his hands and knees and rummaged among the newspapers lying in heaps under the window. At last he found what he looked for. It was the six-chambered revolver which had been sent to him as a present. "I'll kill the man like a dog," he thought. He loaded the revolver, put it in his breast-pocket, went back to the sitting-room, and made ready to go out. X Ten was striking on the different clocks of the city. Felice had lit the stove in the boudoir and the wood was burning in fitful blue and red flames. There was no other light in the room, and Roma lay with her body on the floor, and her face buried in the couch. The world outside was full of fearful and unusual noises. Snow was still falling, and the voices heard through it had a peculiar sound of sobbing. The soft rolling of thunder came from a long way off, like the boom of a slow wave on a distant beach. At intervals there was the crackle of musketry, like the noise of rockets sent up in the night, and sometimes there were pitiful cries, smothered by the unreverberating snow, like the cries of a drowning man on a foundering ship at sea. Roma, face downward, heard these sounds in the lapses of a terrible memory. She was seeing, as in a nightmare, the incidents of a night that was hardly six weeks past. One by one the facts flashed back upon her with a burning sense of shame, and she felt herself to be a sinner and a criminal. It was the night of the royal ball at the Quirinal. The blaze of lights, the glitter of jewels, the brilliant throng of handsome men and lovely women, the clash of music, the whirl of dancing, and finally the smiles and compliments of the King. Then going home in the carriage in the early morning, swathed in furs over her thin white silk, with the Baron, in his decorations worn diagonally over his white breast, and through the glass the waning moon, the silent stars, the empty streets. Then this room, this couch, sinking down on it, very tired, with eyes smiling and half closed, and nearly gone already into the mists of sleep. And then the Baron at her feet, pressing his lips to her wrist where the pulse was beating, kissing her arms and shoulders.... "Oh, dear! You are mad! I must not listen to you." And then burning words of love and passion: "My wife! My wife that is to be!" And then the call of her aunt from the adjoining chamber, "Roma!" The sobbing sounds from outside broke in on Roma's nightmare, and when the chain of memory linked on again it was morning in her vision, and the Countess was comforting her in a whimpering voice: "After all, God is merciful, and things that happen to everybody can be atoned for by prayer and penance. Besides, the Baron is a man of honour, and the poor maniac cannot last much longer." The sobbing sounds in the snow, the cries far away, the crackle of the rifle-shots, the rumble of the thunder broke in again, and the elements outside seemed to whirl round her in the tempest of her trouble. For a moment she lifted her head and heard voices in the next room. The Baron was still there, and from time to time, as he wrote his despatches, messengers came to take them away, to bring replies, and to deliver the latest news of the night. The populace had risen in all parts of the city, and the soldiers had charged them. There had been several misadventures and many arrests. The large house of detention by St. Andrea delle Frate was already full, but the people continued to hold out. They had disconnected the gas at the gasometer and cut the electric wires, and the city was plunged in darkness. "Tell the electric light company to turn on the flashlight from Monte Mario," said the Baron. And when the voices ceased in the drawing-room there came the deadened sound of the Countess's frightened treble behind the wall. "O Holy Virgin, full of grace, save me! It would be a sin to let me die to-night! Holy Virgin, see! I have given thee two more candles. Art thou not satisfied? Save me from murder, Mother of God." Roma saw another phase of her vision. It was filled with a new face, which made her at once happy and unhappy, proud and ashamed. Hitherto the only condition on which she had been able to live with the secret of her life was that she should think nothing about it. Now she was compelled to think, and she was asking herself if it was her duty to confess. Before she married David Rossi she must tell him everything. She saw herself trying to do so. He was looking vacantly before him with the deep furrow that came to his forehead when he was strongly moved. She had sobbed out her story, telling all, excusing nothing, and now she was waiting for him to speak. He would take her side, he would tell her she had been more sinned against than sinning, that she had been young and alone at the mercy of an evil man, and that her will had not consented. "No, no! It is impossible!" she cried aloud, and, startled by the sound of her voice, the Baron came into the room. "My dear child!" he said, and he picked her up from the floor. "I shall never be able to forgive myself if you take things like this. Every tear you shed will burn my flesh like fire. Come now, dry these beautiful eyes and be calm." She did not listen to him, but leaning on the stove and fingering with one hand the frame of her father's picture which hung above it, she said: "I see now that happiness was not for me. There must be some punishment for every sin, however little one has been guilty of it, and perhaps this is God's way of asking for an expiation. It is very, very hard ... it seems more than I deserve ... and heavier than I can bear ... but there is no help for it." The tears she brushed from her eyes seemed to be gathering in her throat. "The bitterest part of it is that I must make others suffer for it also. He must suffer who has loved and trusted me. His love for me, my love for him, this has been dragging him down since the first day I knew him. Perhaps he is in prison by this time." Sobs interrupted her for a moment, and in a caressing tone the Baron tried to comfort her. It was natural that she should feel troubled, very natural and very womanly. But time was the great remedy for human ills. It would heal everything. "Roma, you have wounded and humiliated and insulted me, but you are the only woman in the world I would give one straw to have. I will make you the wife of the Dictator of Italy, and when all these troubles are over and you are great, and have forgotten what has taken place...." "I can never forget and I don't want to be great. I only want to be good. Leave me!" "You _are_ good. You have always been good. What happened was my fault alone, and you have nothing to reproach yourself with. I found you growing up to be a great woman, and passing out of my legal control, while I was bound down to a poor, helpless, living corpse. Some day you would meet a younger, freer man, and you would be lost to me for good. Wasn't it human to try to hold you to me until the time came when I could claim you altogether? And if meanwhile this man has interposed...." He pointed to the bust on the pedestal. She looked up at it, and then dropped her head. "Put the man out of your mind, my dear, and all will be well. Probably he is in the hands of the authorities already. God grant it may be so! No trouble about his arrest this time! It cannot be complicated by the danger of scandal. Nobody else's name and character will be concerned in it. And if it serves to dispose of a dangerous man and a subversive politician, I am willing to let everything else sleep." He paused a moment, and then added in his most incisive accents: "But if not, the law must take its course, and Roma Roselli must complete what Roma Volonna has begun." At that moment Felice's dark form stood against the light in the open door. "Commendatore Angelelli and Charles Minghelli, Excellency." As the Baron went back to the drawing-room Roma returned to the window. Scales of snow adhered to the glass, and it was difficult to see anything outside. But the masses of shadow and sheets of light were gone, and the city lay in utter darkness. The sobbing sounds, the crackle of musketry and the rumble of thunder were all gone, and the air was empty and void. At one moment there was a soft patter as of a flock of sheep passing under the window in the darkness. It was a company of riflemen going at a quick march over the snow, with torches and lanterns. Voices came from the next room, and Roma found herself listening. "Apparently the insurrection is suppressed, your Excellency." "I congratulate you." "The soldiers are patrolling the streets, and all is quiet." "Good!" "We have some hundreds of rioters in the house of detention, and the military courts will begin to sit to-morrow morning." "Excellent!" "The misadventures have been few and unimportant, the child I spoke of being the only one killed." "You have discovered whose child it was?" "Yes. Unluckily...." Roma felt dizzy. A thought had flashed upon her. "It is the child of Donna Roma's man, Bruno Rocco, and apparently...." A choking cry rang through the room. Was it herself who made it? "Go on, Commendatore. Apparently...." "The child was dressed in some carnival costume, and apparently he was on his way to this house." Roma's dizziness increased, and to save herself from falling she caught at a side-table that stood under the bust. On this table were some sculptor's tools--a chisel and a small mallet, with which she had been working. There was an interval in which the voices were deadened and confused. Then they became clear and sharp as before. "But the most important fact you have not yet given me. I trust you are only saving it up for the last. The Deputy Rossi is arrested?" "Unfortunately ... Excellency...." "No?" "He left home immediately after the outbreak and has not been seen since. Presently the flashlight will be turned on by a separate battery from Monte Mario, and every corner of the city shall be searched. But we fear he is gone." "Gone?" "Perhaps by the train that left just before the signal." Roma felt a cry rising to her throat again, but she put up her hand to keep it down. "No matter! Commendatore, send telegrams after the train to all stations up to the frontier, with orders that nobody is to alight until every carriage has been overhauled. Minghelli, go to the Consulta immediately, and ask the Minister of Foreign Affairs to despatch a portrait of Rossi to every foreign Government." "But no portrait exists, Excellency. It was a difficulty I found in England." "Yes, there is a portrait. Come this way." Roma felt the room going round as the Baron came into it and switched on the light. "_There_ is the only portrait of the illustrious Deputy, and our hostess will lend it to be photographed." "Never!" said Roma, and taking up the mallet she struck the bust a heavy blow, and it fell in fragments to the floor. Half-an-hour afterwards Roma was sitting amid the wreck of her work when the Baron, wearing his fur-lined overcoat and pulling on his gloves, came into the boudoir. "I am compelled," he said, "to inflict my presence upon you for a moment longer in order to tell you what my attitude in the future is to be, and what feelings are to guide you. I shall continue to think of you as my wife according to the law of nature, and of the man who has come between us as your lover. I will not give you up to him, whatever happens; and if he tries to take you away, or if you try to go to him, you must be prepared to find that I offer every resistance. Two passions are now engaged against the man, and I will not shrink from any course that seems necessary to subdue either him or you, or both." A moment afterwards she heard the patrol challenging him on the piazza. Then "Pardon, Excellency," and the soft swish of carriage wheels in the snow. XI When Rossi left home he was like a raging madman. He made straight for the Palazzo Braschi at the other side of the piazza, and going up the marble staircase on limbs that could scarcely support him, his thoughts went back in a broken maze to the scene he had left behind. "Our little boy dead! Dead in his mother's arms! O God! let me meet the man face to face!... Our innocent darling! The light of our eyes put out in a moment! Our sweet little Joseph!... Shall there be no retribution? God forbid! The man who has been the chief cause of this crime shall be the first to suffer punishment. No use wasting time on the hounds who executed his orders. They are only delegates of police, and over them is this Minister of the Interior. He alone is responsible, and he is here!" When he reached the green baize door to the hall, he stopped to wipe away the perspiration which stood on his forehead although his face was flecked with snow. The messengers looked scared when he stepped inside, and they answered his questions with obvious hesitation. The Minister was not in his cabinet. He had not been there that night. It was possible the Honourable might find his Excellency at home. Rossi turned on his heel instantly, and went hurriedly downstairs. He would go to the Palazzo Leone. There was no time to lose. Presently the man would hide himself in the darkness like a toad under a stone. As he left the Ministry of the Interior he heard the singing of the Garibaldi Hymn in the distance, and turning into the Corso Victor Emmanuel, he came upon crowds of people and some noisy and tumultuous scenes. One group had broken into a gun-shop and seized rifles and cartridges; another group had taken possession of two electric tram-cars, and tumbled them on their sides to make a barricade across the street; and a third group was tearing up the street itself to use the stones for missiles. "Our turn now," they were shouting, and there were screams of delirious laughter. As Rossi crossed the bridge of St. Angelo the cannon was fired from the Castle, and he knew that it was meant for a signal. "No matter!" he thought. "It will be too late when the soldiers arrive." Notwithstanding the tumult in the city the Piazza of St. Peter's was silent and deserted. Not the sound of a footfall, not the rattle of a carriage-wheel; only the swish-swish of the fountains, whose waters were playing in the lamplight through the falling snow, and the echoing hammer of the clock of the Basilica. The porter of the Palazzo Leone was asleep in his lodge, and Rossi passed upstairs. "I'll bring the man to justice now," he thought. "He imagined we were only tame cats and would submit to anything. He was wrong. We'll show him we know how to punish tyrants. Haven't we always done so, we Romans? He has a sharp tongue for the people, but I have a sharper one here for him." And he felt for the revolver in his breast-pocket to make certain it was there. The lackey in knee-breeches and yellow stockings who answered the inside bell was almost speechless at the sight of the white face which confronted him at the door. No, the Baron was not at home. He had not been there since early in the evening. Had he gone to the Prefettura? Possibly. Or the Consulta? Perhaps. "Which, man, which?" said Rossi, and to say something the lackey stammered "The Consulta," and closed the door. Rossi set his face towards the Foreign Office. There was a light in the stained-glass windows of the Pope's private chapel--the Holy Father was at his prayers. A canvas-covered barrow containing a man who had been injured by the soldiers was being wheeled into the Hospital of Santo Spirito, and a woman and a child were walking and crying beside it. The streets were covered with broken tiles which had been thrown on to the heads of the cavalry as they galloped through the principal thoroughfares. Carabineers, with revolvers in hand, were dragging themselves on their stomachs along the roofs, trying to surprise the rioters who were hiding behind chimney-stacks. Some one shouted: "Cut the electric wires," and men were clambering up the tall posts and breaking the electric lamps. The Consulta, the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, stands in the Piazza of the Quirinal, and when Rossi reached it the great square of the King was as silent as the great square of the Pope had been. Two sentries were in boxes on either side of the royal gate, and one Carabineer was in the doorway. The gardens down the long corridor lay dark in the shadows, but the fountain with sculptured horses, the splashing water, and the front of the building were white under the electric lamps as if from a dazzling moon. Before turning into the silent courtyard of the Consulta, Rossi paused and listened to the noises that came from the city. Men were singing and women were screaming. The rattle of musketry mingled with the cries of children. And over all were the steady downfall of the snow and the dull rumble of distant thunder. Rossi held his head between his hands to prevent his senses from leaving him. His rage was ebbing away, and he was beginning to tremble. Nevertheless, he forced himself to go on. As he rang the bell at the Foreign Office, he was partly conscious of a secret desire that the Prime Minister might not be there. The porter was not sure. The Baron's carriage had just gone. Let him ask on the telephone.... No, there had been a messenger from the Minister of the Interior, but the Minister himself had not been there that night. Rossi took a long breath of relief and went away. He had returned to the bright side of the piazza when the lights seemed to be wiped out as though by an invisible wing, and the whole city was plunged in darkness. At the next moment a squadron of cavalry galloped up to the Quirinal, and the gates of the royal palace and of the Consulta were closed. Midnight struck. For two hours the soldiers had been charging the crowds by the light of lanterns and torches. They had arrested hundreds of persons. Chained together, two and two, the insurgents had been taken to the places of detention, amid the cries of their women and children. "Who knows whether we shall see each other again?" said the prisoners, as they passed into the "House of Pain." One old woman went on her knees to the soldiers and begged them to have pity on the people. "They are your brothers, my sons," she cried. One o'clock struck. The streets were still dark, but a searchlight from Monte Mario was sweeping over the city like a flash of a supernatural eye. With tottering limbs and his head on his breast, David Rossi was walking down the Via due Macelli towards the column of the Immaculate Conception, when a young girl spoke to him. "Honourable," she said, "is it true that the little boy is dead?... It is? Oh, dear! I met him in the Corso, and brought him up as far as the Variétés, and if I had only taken him all the way.... Oh, I shall never forgive myself!" The city was quiet and all was hushed on every side when Rossi found himself on a flight of steps at the back of Roma's apartment. From these steps a door opened into the studio. One panel of the door was glazed, and a light was shining from within. Going cautiously forward, Rossi looked into the room. Roma was seated on a stool with her hands clasped in her lap and her hair hanging loose. She was very pale. Her face expressed unutterable sadness. Rossi listened for a moment, but there was not a sound to be heard except that of the different clocks chiming the quarter. Then he tapped lightly on the glass. "Roma!" he said in a low tone. "Roma!" She rose up and shrank back. Then coming to the door, and shielding her eyes from the light, she put her face close to the pane. At the next moment she threw the door open. "Is it you?" she said in a tremulous voice, and taking his hand she drew him hurriedly into the house. XII After the Baron was gone, Roma had sat a long time in the dark among the ruins of the broken bust. When twelve o'clock struck she was feeling hot and feverish, and, in spite of the coldness of the night, she rose and opened the window. The snow had ceased to fall, the thunder was gone, and the city was quiet. At that moment the revolving searchlight on Monte Mario passed over the room. The white flash lit up the broken fragments at her feet, and brought a new train of reflections. The bust she destroyed had been only the plaster cast; the piece-mould remained, and might be a cause of danger. She closed the window, took a candle, and went down to the studio to put the mould out of the way. She had done so, and was sitting to rest and to think when Rossi's knock came at the door. In a moment all her dreams were gone. She was clasped in his arms and had put up her mouth to be kissed. "Is it you?" "Roma!" It was not at first that she realised what was happening, but after a moment she recovered from her bewilderment, and extinguished the candle lest Rossi should be seen from outside. They were in the dark, save at intervals when the revolving light in its circuit of the city swept across the studio, and lit up their faces as by a flash of lightning. He seemed to be dazed. His weary eyes looked as if their light were almost extinct. "You are safe? You are well?" she asked. "O God! what sights!" he said. "You have heard what has happened?" "Yes, yes! But you are not injured?" "The people were peaceful and meant no evil, but the soldiers were ordered to fire, and our little boy is dead." "Don't let us speak of it.... The police were told to arrest you, but you have escaped thus far, and now...." "Bruno is taken, and hundreds of others are in prison." "But you are safe? You are well? You are uninjured?" "Yes," he answered between his teeth, and then he covered his face with his hands. "God knows I did my best to prevent this bloodshed--I would have laid down my life to prevent it." "God _does_ know it." "Take this." He drew something from his breast-pocket and put it into her hands. It was the revolver. "I cannot trust myself any longer." "You haven't used it?" "No." "Thank God!" "I should have done so if I could have met the man face to face." "The Baron?" "I searched for him everywhere, and couldn't find him. God kept him out of my way to save me from sin and shame." With a frightened cry she put down the revolver and clasped her hands about his neck. He began to recover his dazed senses and to smooth the hair on her damp forehead. "My poor Roma! You didn't think we were to part like this?" Her arms slackened, and she dropped her head on to his shoulder. "Last night you told me to fly, and I wouldn't do so. There was no man in Rome I was afraid of then. But to-night there is some one I am afraid of. I am afraid of myself." "You intend to go?" "Yes! I shall feel like a captain who deserts his sinking ship. Would to God I could have gone down with her!... Yet no! She is not lost yet. Everything is in God's hands. Perhaps there is work for me abroad, now that the paths are closed to me at home. Let us wait and see." They were both silent for a while. "Then it's all over," she said, gulping down a sob. "God forbid! This black night in Rome is only the beginning of the end. It will be the dawn of the resurrection everywhere." "But it is all over between you and me." "Indeed, no. No, no! I cannot take you with me. That is impossible. I couldn't see you suffer hunger and thirst and the privations of exile, but...." "Our marriage cannot be celebrated now, and that being so...." "The banns are good for half a year, Roma, and before that time I shall be back. Have no fear! The immortality stirring beneath the ruins of this old city will give us victory all over Italy. I will return and we shall be very happy. How happy we shall be!" "Yes, yes," she brought out at intervals. "Be brave, my girl, be brave!" "Yes, yes." The revolving searchlight flashed through the room at that moment, and she dropped her face again. "Dearest," she said faintly, "if I should not be here when you come back...." He started and seized her arm. "Roma, you cannot intend to submit to the will of that man?" She shook her head as it rested on his shoulder. "The man is a monster. He may put pressure upon you." "It is not that." "He may even make you suffer for my sake." "Nor that either." "By-and-by he may require everybody to take an oath of allegiance to the King." "I have taken mine already--to _my_ king." "Roma, if you wish me to stay I will do so in spite of everything." "I wish you to go, dearest." "Then what is it you fear?" "Nothing--only...." "But you are sad. Why is it?" "A foreboding. I feel as if we were parting for ever." He passed his hands through her hair. "It may be so. Only God can tell." "It was too sweet dreaming. I was too happy for a little while." "If it must be, it must be. But let us be brave, dear! We, who take up a life like this, must learn renunciation.... Crying, Roma?" "No! Oh, no! But renunciation! That's it--renunciation." She could feel the beating of her heart against his breast. "Love comes to every one, but to some it comes too late, and then it comes in vain." She was striving to keep down her sobs. "They have only to conquer it and renounce it, and to pray God to unite them to their loved ones in another life." She was choking, but she struggled on. "Sometimes I think it must be my lot to be like that. Other women may dream of love and home and children...." "Don't unman me, Roma." "Dearest, promise me that whatever happens you will think the best of me." "Roma!" "Promise me that whoever says anything to the contrary you will always believe I loved you." "Why should we talk of what can never happen?" "If we are parting for ever ... if we are saying a long farewell to all earthly affections, promise me...." "For God's sake, Roma!" "Promise me!" "I promise!" he said. "And you?" "I promise too--I promise that as long as I live, and wherever I am and whatever becomes of me, I will ... yes, because I cannot help it ... I will love you to the last." Saying this in passionate tones, she drew down his head and he met her kiss with his lips. "It is our marriage, David. Others are married in church and by the hand, and with a ring. We are married in our spirits and our souls." A long time passed, during which they did not speak. The searchlight flashed in on them again and again with its supernatural eye, and as often as it did so Rossi looked at her with strange looks of pity and of love. Meantime, she cut a lock from her hair, tied it with a piece of ribbon, and put it in his pocket with his watch. Then she dried her eyes with her handkerchief and pushed it in his breast. The night went on, and nothing was to be heard but the chiming of clocks outside. At length through the silence there came a muffled rumble from the streets. "You must go now," she said, and when the next flash came round she looked up at him with a steadfast gaze, as if trying to gather into her eyes her last memories of his face. "Adieu!" "Not yet." "It is still dark, but the streets are patrolled and every gate is closed, and how are you to escape?" "If the soldiers had wished to take me they could have done so a hundred times." "But the city is stirring. Be careful for my sake. Adieu!" "Roma," said Rossi, "if I do not take you with me it is partly because I want your help in Rome. Think of the poor people I leave behind me in poverty and in prison. Think of Elena when she awakes in the morning, alone with her terrible grief. Some one should be here to represent me for a time at all events--to take the messages I must send, the instructions I shall have to give. It will be a dangerous task, Roma, a task that can only be undertaken by some one who loves me, some one who...." "That is enough. Tell me what I can do," she said. They arranged a channel of correspondence, and then Roma began her farewells afresh. "Roma," said Rossi again, "since I must go away before our civil marriage can be celebrated, is it not best that our spiritual one should have the blessing of the Church?" Roma looked at him and trembled. "When I am gone God knows what may happen. The Baron may be a free man any day, and he may put pressure on you to marry him. In that case it will be strength and courage to you to know that in God's eyes you are married already. It will be happiness and comfort to me, too, when I am far away from you and alone." "But it is impossible." "Not so. A declaration before a parish priest is all that is necessary. 'Father, this is my wife.' 'This is my husband.' That is enough. It will have no value in the eye of the law, but it will be a religious marriage for all that." "There is no time. You cannot wait...." "Hush!" The clocks were striking three. "At three o'clock there is mass at St. Andrea delle Frate. That is your parish church, Roma. The priest and his acolytes are the only witnesses we require." "If you think ... that is to say ... if it will make you happy, and be a strength to me also...." "Run for your cloak and hat, dearest--in ten minutes it will be done." "But think again." She was breathing audibly. "Who knows what may happen before you return? Will you never repent?" "Never!" "But ... but there is something ... something I ought to tell you--something painful. It is about the past." "The past is past. Let us think of the future." "You do not wish to hear it." "If it is painful to you--no!" "Will nothing and nobody divide us?" "Nothing and nobody in the world." She gulped down another choking sob and threw both arms about his neck. "Take me, then. I am your wife before God and man." XIII It was still dark overhead, and the streets with their thin covering of snow were as silent as a catacomb. Through the door of the church, when the leather covering was lifted, there came the yellow light of the candles burning on the altar. The priest in his gold vestments stood with his face to the glistening shrine, and his acolytes knelt beside him. There was only one worshipper, an old woman who was kneeling before a chair in the gloom of a side chapel. The tinkle of the acolytes' bell and the faint murmur of the priest's voice were the only sounds that broke the stillness. Rossi and Roma stepped up on tiptoe, and as the Father finished his mass and turned to go they made their declaration. The old man was startled and disturbed, but the priest commits no crime who listens to the voice of conscience, and he took their names and gave them his blessing. They parted at the church door. "You will write when you cross the frontier?" "Yes." "Adieu then, until we meet again!" "If I am long away from you, Roma...." "You cannot be long away. You will be with me every day and always." She was assuming a lively tone to keep up his courage, but there was a dry glitter in her eyes and a tremor in her voice. He took her full, round form in his arms for a last embrace. "If the result of this night's work is that I am arrested and brought back and imprisoned...." "I can wait for you," she said. "If I am banished for life...." "I can follow you." "If the worst comes to the worst, and one way or another death itself should be the fate that falls to me...." "I can follow you there, too." "If we meet again we can laugh at all this, Roma." "Yes, we can laugh at all this," she faltered. "If not ... Adieu!" "Adieu!" She disengaged her clinging arms with one last caress; there was an instant of unconsciousness, and when she recovered herself he was gone. At the next moment there came through the darkness the measured tramp, tramp, tramp of the patrol. With a quivering heart Roma stood and listened. There was a slight movement among the soldiers, a scarcely perceptible pause, and then the tramp, tramp, tramp as before. Rossi looked back as he turned the corner, and saw Roma, in her light cloak, gliding across the silent street like a ghost. Three or four hundred yards inside the gate of St. John Lateran in one of the half-finished tenement houses on the outskirts of Rome, there is a cellar used as a resting-place and eating-house by the carriers from the country who bring wine into the city. This cellar was the only place that seemed to be awake when Rossi walked towards the city walls. Some eight or nine men, in the rude dress of wine-carriers, lay dozing or talking on the floor. They had been kept in Rome overnight by the closing of the gate, and were waiting for it to be opened in the morning. Without a moment's hesitation David Rossi stepped down and spoke to the men. "Gentlemen," he said, "you know who I am. I am Rossi. The police have orders to arrest me. Will you help me to get out of Rome?" "What's that?" shouted a drowsy voice from the smoky shadows of the cellar. "It's the Honourable Rossi," said a lad who had shambled up. "The oysters are after him, and will we help him to escape?" "Will we? It's not _will_ we; it's _can_ we, Honourable," said a thick-set man, who lifted his head from an upturned horse-saddle. In a moment the men were all on their feet, asking questions and discussing chances. The gate was to be opened at six, and the first train north was to go out at half-past nine. But the difficulty was that everybody in Rome knew Rossi. Even if he got through the gate he could not get on to the train within ten miles of the city without the certainty of recognition. "I have it!" said the thick-set man with the drowsy voice. "There's young Carlo. He got a scratch in the leg last night from one of the wet nurses of the Government, and he'll have to lie upstairs for a week at least. Why can't he lend his clothes to the Honourable? And why can't the Honourable drive Carlo's cart back to Monte Rotondo, and then go where he likes when he gets there?" "That will do," said Rossi, and so it was settled. * * * * * When the train which left Rome for Florence and Milan at 9.30 in the morning arrived at the country station of Monte Rotondo, eighteen miles out, a man in top-boots, blue trousers, a white waistband and a red-lined overcoat got into the people's compartment. The train was crowded with foreigners who were flying from the risks of insurrection, and even the third-class carriages were filled with well-dressed strangers. They were talking bitterly of their experiences the night before. Most of them had been compelled to barricade their bedroom doors at the hotels, and some had even passed the night at the railway station. "It all comes of letting men like this Rossi go at large," said a young Englishman with the voice of a pea-hen. "For my part, I would put all these anarchists on an uninhabited island and leave them to fight it out among themselves." "Say, Rossi isn't an anarchist," said a man with an American intonation. "What is he?" "A dreamer of dreams." "Bad dreams, then," said the voice of the pea-hen, and there was general laughter. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PART SIX--THE ROMAN OF ROME I Roma awoke next morning with a feeling of joy. The dangers of last night were over and David Rossi had escaped. Where would he be by this time? She looked at her little round watch and reckoned the hours that had passed against the speed of the train. Natalina came with the tea and the morning newspaper. The maid's tongue went faster than her hands as she rattled on about the terrors of the night and the news of the morning. Meantime Roma glanced eagerly over the columns of the paper for its references to Rossi. He was gone. The authorities were unable to say what had become of him. With boundless relief Roma turned to the other items of intelligence. The journal was the organ of the Government, and it contained an extract from the Official Gazette and the text of a proclamation by the Prefect. The first announced that the riot was at an end and Rome was quiet; the second notified the public that by royal decree the city was declared to be in a state of siege, and that the King had nominated a Royal Commissioner with full powers. Besides this news there was a general account of the insurrection. The ringleaders were anarchists, socialists, and professed atheists, determined on the destruction of both throne and altar by any means, however horrible. Their victims had been drawn, without seeing where they were going, into a vortex of disorder, and the soldiers had defended society and the law. Happily the casualties were few. The only fatal incident had been the death of a child, seven years of age, the son of a workman. The people of Rome had to congratulate themselves on the promptness of a Government which had reinstated authority with so small a loss of blood. Roma remembered what Rossi had said about Elena--"Think of Elena when she awakes in the morning, alone with her terrible grief"--and putting on a plain dark cloth dress she set off for the Piazza Navona. It was eleven o'clock, and the sun was shining on the melting snow. Rome was like a dead city. The breath of revolution had passed over it. Broken tiles lay on the pavement of the slushy streets, and here and there were the remains of abandoned barricades. The shops, which are the eyes of a city, were nearly all closed and asleep. At a flower-shop, which was opened to her knock, Roma bought a wreath of white chrysanthemums. A group of men and women stood at the door in the Piazza Navona, and she received their kisses on her hands. The Garibaldian followed her up the stairs, and his old wife, who stood at the top, called her "Little Sister," and then burst into tears. The boy lay on the couch, just where Roma had first seen him, when David Rossi was lifting him up asleep. He might have been asleep now, so peaceful was his expression under the mysterious seal of death. The blinds were drawn, and the sun came through them with a yellow light. Four candles were burning on chairs at the head and two at the feet. The little body was still dressed in the gay clothes of the festival, and the cocked hat and gilt-headed mace lay beside it. But the chubby hands were clasped over a tiny crucifix, and the hair of the shock head was brushed smooth and flat. "There he is," said Elena, in a cracked voice, and she went down on her knees between the candles. Roma, who could not speak, put the wreath of chrysanthemums on the brave little breast, and knelt by the mother's side. At that they all broke down together. The old Garibaldian wiped his rheumy eyes and began to talk of David Rossi. He was as fond of Joseph as if the boy had been his own son. But what had become of the Honourable? Before daybreak the police had made a domiciliary perquisition in the apartment, carried off his papers and sealed up his rooms. "Have no fear for him," said Roma, and then she asked about Bruno. All they knew was that Bruno had been arrested and locked up in the prison called Regina C[oe]li. "Poor Bruno! He'll be dying to know what is happening here," said Elena. "I'll see him," said Roma. It was well she had come early. In the stupefaction of their sorrow the three poor souls were like helpless children and had done nothing. Roma sent the Garibaldian to the sanitary office for the doctor who was to verify the death, to the office of health to register it, and to the municipal office to arrange for the funeral. It was to be a funeral of the third category, with a funeral car of two horses and a coach with liveried coachmen. The grave was to be one of the little vaults, the Fornelli, set apart for children. The priest was to be instructed to buy many candles and order several Frati. The expense would be great, but Roma undertook to bear it, and when she left the house the old people kissed her hands again and loaded her with blessings. II The Roman prison with the extraordinary name, "The Queen of Heaven," is a vast yellow building on the Trastevere side of the river. Behind it rises the Janiculum, in front of it runs the Tiber, and on both sides of it are narrow lanes cut off by high walls. On the morning after the insurrection a great many persons had gathered at the entrance of this prison. Old men, who were lame or sick or nearly blind, stood by a dead wall which divides the street from the Tiber, and looked on with dazed and vacant eyes. Younger men nearer the entrance read the proclamations posted up on the pilasters. One of these was the proclamation of the Prefect announcing the state of siege; another was the proclamation of the Royal Commissioner calling on citizens to consign all the arms in their possession to the Chief of Police under pain of imprisonment. In the entrance-hall there was a crowd of women, each carrying a basket or a bundle in a handkerchief. They were young and old, dressed variously as if from different provinces, but nearly all poor, untidy, and unkempt. An iron gate was opened, and an officer, two soldiers, and a warder came out to take the food which the women had brought for their relatives imprisoned within. Then there was a terrible tumult. "Mr. Officer, please!" "Please, Mr. Officer!" "Be kind to Giuseppe, and the saints bless you!" "My turn next!" "No, mine!" "Don't push!" "You're pushing yourself!" "You're knocking the basket out of my hands!" "Getaway!" "You cat! You...." "Silence! Silence! Silence!" cried the officer, shouting the women down, and meantime the men in the street outside curled their lips and tried to laugh. Into this wild scene, full of the acrid exhalations of human breath, and the nauseating odour of unclean bodies, but moved, nevertheless, by the finger of God Himself, the cab which brought Roma to see Bruno discharged her at the prison door. The officer on the steps saw her over the heads of the women with their outstretched arms, and judging from her appearance that she came on other business, he called to a Carabineer to attend to her. "I wish to see the Director," said Roma. "Certainly, Excellency," said the Carabineer, and with a salute he led the way by a side door to the offices on the floor above. The Governor of Regina C[oe]li was a middle-aged man with a kindly face, but under the new order he could do nothing. "Everything relating to the political prisoners is in the hands of the Royal Commissioner," he said. "Where can I see him, Cavaliere?" "He is with the Minister of War to-day, arranging for the military tribunals, but perhaps to-morrow at his office in the Castle of St. Angelo...." "Thanks! Meantime can I send a message into the prison?" "Yes." "And may I pay for a separate cell for a prisoner, with food and light, if necessary?" "Undoubtedly." Roma undertook the expense of these privileges and then scribbled a note to Bruno. "DEAR FRIEND,--Don't lose heart! Your dear ones shall be cared for and comforted. He whom you love is safe and your darling is in heaven. Sleep well! These days will pass. "R. V." III That night Roma wrote the first part of a letter to David Rossi: "David--my David! It is early days to call you by a dearer name, but the sweet word is on the tip of my pen, and I can hardly help myself from scribbling it. You wished me to tell you what is happening in Rome, and here I am beginning to write already, though when and how and where this letter is to reach you, I must leave it to Fate and to yourself to determine. Fancy! Only eighteen hours since we parted! It seems inconceivable! I feel as if I had lived a lifetime. "Do you know, I did not go to bed when you left me. I had so many things to think about. And, tired as I was, I slept little, and was up early. The morning dawned beautifully. It was perfectly tragic. So bright and sunny after that night of slaughter. No rattle of cars, no tinkle of trams, no calls of the water-carriers and of the pedlars in the streets. It was for all the world like that awful quiet of the sea the morning after a tempest, with the sun on its placid surface and not a hint of the wrecks beneath. "I remembered what you said about Elena, and went down to see her. The poor girl has just parted with her dead child. She did it with a brave heart, God pity her! taking comfort in the Blessed Virgin, as the mother in heaven who knows all our sorrows and asks God to heal them. Ah, what a sweet thing it must be to believe that! Do you believe it?" Here she wanted to say something about her great secret. She tried, but she could not do it. "I couldn't see Bruno to-day, but I hope to do so to-morrow, and meantime I have ordered food to be supplied to him. If I could only do something to some purpose! But five hundred of your friends are in Regina C[oe]li, and my poor little efforts are a drop of water in a mighty ocean. "Rome is a deserted city to-day, and but for the soldiers, who are everywhere, it would look like a dead one! The steps of the Piazza di Spagna are empty, not a model is to be seen, not a flower is to be bought, and the fountain is bubbling in silence. After sunset a certain shiver passes over the world, and after an insurrection something of the same kind seems to pass over a city. The churches and the hospitals are the only places open, and the doctors and their messengers are the only people moving about. "Just one of the newspapers has been published to-day, and it is full of proclamations. Everybody is to be indoors by nine o'clock and the cafés are to be closed at eight. Arms are to be consigned at the Questura, and meetings of more than four persons are strictly forbidden. Rewards of pardon are offered to all rioters who will inform on the ringleaders of the insurrection, and of money to all citizens who will denounce the conspirators. The military tribunals are to sit to-morrow and domiciliary visitations are already being made. Your own apartments have been searched and sealed and the police have carried off papers. "Such are the doings of this evil day, and yet--selfish woman that I am--I cannot for my life think it is all evil. Has it not given me you? And if it has taken you away from me as well, I can wait, I can be patient. Where are you now, I wonder? And are you thinking of me while I am thinking of you? Oh, how splendid! Think of it! Though the train may be carrying you away from me every hour and every minute, before long we shall be together. In the first dream of the first sleep I shall join you, and we shall be cheek to cheek and heart to heart. Good-night, my dear one!" Again she tried to say something about her secret. But no! "Not to-night," she thought, and after switching off the light and kissing her hand in the darkness to the stars that hung over the north, she laughed at her own foolishness and went to bed. IV Roma awoke next day with a sense of pain. Thus far she had beaten the Baron--yes! But David Rossi? Had she sinned against God and against her husband? She must confess. There was no help for it. And there must be no hesitation and no delay. Natalina came into the bedroom and threw open the shutters. She was bringing a telegram, and Roma almost snatched it out of her hands. It was from Rossi and had been sent off from Chiasso. "Crossed frontier safe and well." Roma made a cry of joy and leapt out of bed. All day long that telegram was like wings under her heels and made her walk with an elastic step. While taking her coffee she remembered the responsibilities she had undertaken the day before--for the boy's funeral and Bruno's maintenance--and for the first time in her life she began to consider ways and means. Her ready money was getting low, and it was necessary to do something. Then Felice came with a sheaf of papers. They were tradesmen's bills and required immediate payment. Some of the men were below and refused to go away without the cash. There was no help for it. She opened her purse, discharged her debts, swept her debtors out of the house, and sat down to count what remained. Very little remained. But what matter? The five words of that telegram were five bright stars which could light up a darker sky than had fallen on her yet. In this high mood she went down to the studio--silent now in the absence of the humorous voice that usually rang in it, and with Bruno's chisels and mallet lying idle, with his sack on a block of half-hewn marble. Uncovering her fountain, she looked at it again. It was good work; she knew it was good; she could be certain it was good. It should justify her yet, and some day the stupid people who were sheering away from her now would come cringing to her feet afresh. That suggested thoughts of the Mayor. She would write to him and get some money with which to meet the expenses of yesterday as well as the obligations which she might perhaps incur to-day or in the future. "Dear Senator Palomba," she wrote, "no doubt you have often wondered why your much-valued commission has not been completed before. The fact is that it suffered a slight accident a few days ago, but a week or a fortnight ought to see it finished, and if you wish to make arrangements for its reception you may count on its delivery in that time. Meantime as I am pressed for funds at the moment, I shall be glad if you can instruct your treasurer at the Municipality to let me have something on account. The price mentioned, you remember, was 15,000 francs, and as I have not had anything hitherto, I trust it may not be unreasonable to ask for half now, leaving the remainder until the fountain is in its place." Having despatched this challenge by Felice, not only to the Mayor, but also to herself, her pride, her poverty, and to the great world generally, she put on her cloak and hat and drove down to the Castle of St. Angelo. When she returned, an hour afterwards, there was a dry glitter in her eyes, which increased to a look of fever when she opened the drawing-room door and saw who was waiting there. It was the Mayor himself. The little oily man in patent-leather boots, holding upright his glossy silk hat, was clearly nervous and confused. He complimented her on her appearance, looked out of the window, extolled the view, and finally, with his back to his hostess, began on his business. "It is about your letter, you know," he said awkwardly. "There seems to be a little misunderstanding on your part. About the fountain, I mean." "None whatever, Senator. You ordered it. I have executed it. Surely the matter is quite simple." "Impossible, my dear. I may have encouraged you to an experimental trial. We all do that. Rome is eager to discover genius. But a simple member of a corporate body cannot undertake ... that is to say, on his own responsibility, you know...." Roma's breath began to come quickly. "Do you mean that you didn't commission my fountain?" "How could I, my child? Such matters must go through a regular form. The proper committee must sanction and resolve...." "But everybody has known of this, and it has been generally understood from the first." "Ah, understood! Possibly! Rumour and report perhaps." "But I could bring witnesses--high witnesses--the very highest if needs be...." The little man smiled benevolently. "Surely there is no witness of any standing in the State who would go into a witness-box and say that, without a contract, and with only a few encouraging words...." The dry glitter in Roma's eyes shot into a look of anger. "Do you call your letters to me a few encouraging words only?" she said. "My letters?" the glossy hat was getting ruffled. "Your letters alluding to this matter, and enumerating the favours you wished me to ask of the Prime Minister." "My dear," said the Mayor after a moment, "I'm sorry if I have led you to build up hopes, and though I have no authority ... if it will end matters amicably ... I think I can promise ... I might perhaps promise a little money for your loss of time." "Do you suppose I want charity?" "Charity, my dear?" "What else would it be? If I have no right to everything I will have nothing. I will take none of your money. You can leave me." The little man shuffled his feet, and bowed himself out of the room, with many apologies and praises which Roma did not hear. For all her brave words her heart was breaking, and she was holding her breath to repress a sob. The great bulwark she had built up for herself lay wrecked at her feet. She had deceived herself into believing that she could be somebody for herself. Going down to the studio, she covered up the fountain. It had lost every quality which she had seen in it before. Art was gone from her. She was nobody. It was very, very cruel. But that glorious telegram rustled in her breast like a captive song-bird, and before going to bed she wrote to David Rossi again. "Your message arrived before I was up this morning, and not being entirely back from the world of dreams, I fancied that it was an angel's whisper. This is silly, but I wouldn't change it for the greatest wisdom, if, in order to be the most wise and wonderful among women, I had to love you less. "Business first and other things afterwards. Most of the newspapers have been published to-day, and some of them are blowing themselves out of breath in abuse of you, and howling louder than the wolves of the Capitol before rain. The military courts began this morning, and they have already polished off fifty victims. Rewards for denunciations have now deepened to threats of imprisonment for non-denunciation. General Morra, Minister of War, has sent in his resignation, and there is bracing weather in the neighbourhood of the Palazzo Braschi. An editor has been arrested, many journals and societies have been suppressed, and twenty thousand of the contadini who came to Rome for the meeting in the Coliseum have been despatched to their own communes. Finally, the Royal Commissioner has written to the Pope, calling on him to assist in the work of pacifying the people, and it is rumoured that the Holy Office is to be petitioned by certain of the Bishops to denounce the 'Republic of Man' as a secret society (like the Freemasons) coming within the ban of the Pontifical constitutions. "So much for general news, and now for more personal intelligence. I went down to the Castle of St. Angelo this morning, and was permitted to speak to the Royal Commissioner. Recognised him instantly as a regular old-timer at the heels of the Baron, and tackled him on our ancient terms. The wretch--he squints, and he smoked a cigarette all through the interview--couldn't allow me to see Bruno during the private preparation of the case against him, and when I asked if the instruction would take long he said, 'Probably, as it is complicated by the case of some one else who is not yet in custody.' Then I asked if I might employ separate counsel for the defence, and he shuffled and said it was unnecessary. This decided me, and I walked straight to the office of the great lawyer Napoleon Fuselli, promised him five hundred francs by to-morrow morning, and told him to go ahead without delay. "But heigh-ho, nonny! Coming home I felt like the witches in 'Macbeth.' 'By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.' It was Senator Tom-tit, the little fat Mayor of Rome. His great ambition is to wear the green ribbon of St. Maurice and Lazarus, as none know better than myself. Wanting money on my fountain, I had written to the old wretch, but the moment we met I could see what was coming, so I braved it out, bustled about and made a noise. It was a mistake! There had been no commission at all! But if a little money would repay me for a loss of time.... "It wasn't so much that I cared about the loss of the fees, badly as I needed them. It was mainly that I had allowed the summer flies who buzzed about me for the Baron's sake to flatter me into the notion that I was an artist, when I was really nobody for myself at all. "This humour lasted all afternoon, and spoiled my digestion for dinner, which was a pity, for there was some delicious wild asparagus. But then I thought of you and your work, and the future when you will come back with all Rome at your feet, and my vexation disappeared and I was content to be nothing and nobody except somebody whom you loved and who loved you, and that was to be everything and everybody in the world. "I don't care a rush about the matter now, but what do you think I've done? Sold my carriage and horses! Actually! The little job-master, with his tight trousers, close-cropped head, and chamois-leather waistcoat, has just gone off after cheating me abominably. No matter! What do I want with a grand carriage while you are going about as an exile and an outcast? I want nothing you have not got, and all I have I wish you to have too, including my heart and my soul and everything that is in them...." She stopped. This was the place to reveal her great secret. But she could not find her way to begin. "To-morrow will do," she thought, and so laid down the pen. V Early next morning Roma received a visit from the lawyer who conducted the business of her landlord. He was a middle-aged man in pepper-and-salt tweeds, and his manner was brusque and aggressive. "Sorry to say, Excellency, that I've had a letter from Count Mario at Paris saying that he will require this apartment for his own use. He regrets to be compelled to disturb you, but having frequently apprised you of his intention to live here himself...." "When does he want to come?" said Roma. "At Easter." "That will do. My aunt is ill, but if she is fit to be moved...." "Thanks! And may I perhaps present...." A paper in the shape of a bill came from the breast-pocket of the pepper-and-salt tweeds. Roma took it, and, without looking at it, replied: "You will receive your rent in a day or two." "Thanks again. I trust I may rely on that. And meantime...." "Well?" "As I am personally responsible to the Count for all moneys due to him, may I ask your Excellency to promise me that nothing shall be removed from this apartment until my arrears of rent have been paid?" "I promise that you shall receive what is due from me in two days. Is not that enough?" The pepper-and-salt tweeds bowed meekly before Roma's flashing eyes. "Good-morning, sir." "Good-morning, Excellency." The man was hardly out of the house when a woman was shown in. It was Madame Sella, the fashionable modiste. "So unlucky, my dear! I'm driven to my wits' end for money. The people I deal with in Paris are perfect demons, and are threatening all sorts of pains and penalties if I don't send them a great sum straight away. Of course if I could get my own money in, it wouldn't matter. But the dear ladies of society are so slow, and naturally I don't like to go to their gentlemen, although really I've waited so long for their debts that if...." "Can you wait one day longer for mine?" "Donna Roma! And we've always been such friends, too!" "You'll excuse me this morning, won't you?" said Roma, rising. "Certainly. I'm busy, too. So good of you to see me. Trust I've not been _de trop_. And if it hadn't been for those stupid bills of mine...." Roma sat down and wrote a letter to one of the _strozzini_ (stranglers), who lend money to ladies on the security of their jewels. "I wish to sell my jewellery," she wrote, "and if you have any desire to buy it, I shall be glad if you can come to see me for this purpose at four o'clock to-morrow." "Roma!" cried a fretful voice. She was sitting in the boudoir, and her aunt was calling to her from the adjoining room. The old lady, who had just finished her toilet, and was redolent of perfume and scented soap, was propped up on pillows between the mirror and her Madonna, with her cat purring on the cushion at the foot of her bed. "Ah, you do come to me sometimes, don't you?" she said, with her embroidered handkerchief at her lips. "What is this I hear about the carriage and horses? Sold them! It is incredible. I will not believe it unless you tell me so yourself." "It is quite true, Aunt Betsy. I wanted money for various purposes, and among others to pay my debts," said Roma. "Goodness! It's true! Give me my salts. There they are--on the card-table beside you.... So it's true! It's really true! You've done some extraordinary things already, miss, but this ... Mercy me! Selling her horses! And she isn't ashamed of it!... I suppose you'll sell your clothes next, or perhaps your jewels." "That's just what I want to do, Aunt Betsy." "Holy Virgin! What are you saying, girl? Have you lost all sense of decency? Sell your jewels! Goodness! Your ancestral jewels! You must have grown utterly heartless as well as indifferent to propriety, or you wouldn't dream of selling the treasures that have come down to you from your own mother's breast, as one might say." "My mother never set eyes on any of them, auntie, and if some of them belonged to my grandmother, she must have been a good woman because she was the mother of my father, and she would rather see me sell them all than live in debt and disgrace." "Go on! Go on with your English talk! Or perhaps it's American, is it? You want to kill me, that's what it is! You will, too, and sooner than you expect, and then you'll be sorry and ashamed ... Go away! Why do you come to worry me? Isn't it enough ... Natalina! Nat-a-_lina_!" Late that night Roma resumed her letter to David Rossi: "DEAREST,--You are always the last person I speak to before I go to bed, and if only my words could sail away over Monte Mario in the darkness while I sleep, they would reach you on the wings of the morning. "You want to know all that is happening, and here goes again. The tyrannies of military rule increase daily, and some of its enormities are past belief. Military court sat all day yesterday and polished off eighty-five poor victims. Ten of them got ten years, twenty got five years, and about fifty got periods of one month to twelve. "Lawyer Napoleon F. was here this afternoon to say that he had seen Bruno and begun work in his defence. Strangely enough he finds a difficulty in a quarter from which it might least be expected. Bruno himself is holding off in some unaccountable way which gives Napoleon F. an idea that the poor soul is being got at. Apparently--you will hardly credit it--he is talking doubtfully about you, and asking incredible questions about his wife. Lawyer Napoleon actually inquired if there was 'anything in it,' and the thing struck me as so silly that I laughed out in his face. It was very wrong of me not to be jealous, wasn't it? Being a woman, I suppose I ought to have leapt at the idea, according to all the natural laws of love. I didn't, and my heart is still tranquil. But poor Bruno was more human, and Napoleon has an idea that something is going on inside the prison. He is to go there again to-morrow and to let me know. "Such doings at home too! I've been two years in debt to my landlord, and at the end of every quarter I've always prayed like a modest woman to be allowed to pass by unnoticed. Celebrity has fallen on me at last, though, and I'm to go at Easter. Madame de Trop, too, has put the screw on, and everybody else is following suit. Yesterday, for example, I had the honour of a call from every one in the world to whom I owed twopence. Remembering how hard it used to be to get a bill out of these people, I find their sudden business ardour humorous. They do not deceive me nevertheless. I see the die is cast, the fact is known. I have fallen from my high estate of general debtor to everybody and become merely an honest woman. "Do I suffer from these slings of fortune? Not an atom. When I was rich, or seemed to be so, I was often the most miserable woman in the world, and now I'm happy, happy, happy! "There is only one thing makes me a little unhappy. Shall I tell you what it is? Yes, I _will_ tell you because your heart is so true, and like all brave men you are so tender to all women. It is a girl friend of mine--a very close and dear friend, and she is in trouble. A little while ago she was married to a good man, and they love each other dearer than life, and there ought to be nothing between them. But there is, and it is a very serious thing too, although nobody knows about it but herself and me. How shall I tell you? Dearest, you are to think my head is on your breast and you cannot see my face while I tell you my poor friend's secret. Long ago--it seems long--she was the victim of another man. That is really the only word for it, because she did not consent. But all the same she feels that she has sinned and that nothing on earth can wash away the stain. The worst fact is that her husband knows nothing about it. This fills her with measureless regret and undying remorse. She feels that she ought to have told him, and so her heart is full of tears, and she doesn't know what it is her duty to. "I thought I would ask you to tell me, dearest. You are kind, but you mustn't spare her. I didn't. She wanted to draw a veil over her frailty, but I wouldn't let her. I think she would like to confess to her husband, to pour out her heart to him, and begin again with a clean page, but she is afraid. Of course she hasn't really been faithless, and I could swear on my life she loves her husband only. And then her sorrow is so great, and she is beginning to look worn with lying awake at nights, though some people still think she is beautiful. I dare say you will say, serve her right for deceiving a good man. So do I sometimes, but I feel strangely inconsistent about my poor friend, and a woman has a right to be inconsistent, hasn't she? Tell me what I am to say to her, and please don't spare her because she is a friend of mine." She lifted her pen from the paper. "He'll understand," she thought. "He'll remember our other letters and read between the lines. Well, so much the better, and God be good to me!" "Good-night! Good-night! Good-night! I feel like a child--as if the years had gone back with me, or rather as if they had only just begun. You have awakened my soul and all the world is different. Nearly everything that seemed right to me before seems wrong to me now, and _vice versa_. Life? That wasn't life. It was only existence. I fancy it must have been some elder sister of mine who went through everything. Think of it! When you were twenty and I was only ten! I'm glad there isn't as much difference now. I'm catching up to you--metaphorically, I mean. If I could only do so physically! But what nonsense I'm talking! In spite of my poor friend's trouble I can't help talking nonsense to-night." VI Two days later Natalina, coming into Roma's bedroom, threw open the shutters and said: "Letter with a foreign postmark, Excellency--'Sister Angelica, care of the Porter.' It was delivered at the Convent, and the porter sent it over here." "Give it to me," said Roma eagerly. "It's quite right. I know whom it is for, and if any more letters come for the same person bring them to me immediately." Almost before the maid had left the room Roma had torn the letter open. It was dated from a street in Soho. "MY DEAR WIFE,--As you see, I have reached London, and now I am thinking of you always, wondering what sufferings are being inflicted upon you for my sake and how you meet and bear them. To think of you there, in the midst of our enemies, is a spur and an inspiration. Only wait! If my absence is cruel to you it is still more hard to me. I will see your lovely eyes again before long, and there will be an end of all our sadness. Meantime continue to love me, and that will work miracles. It will make all the slings and slurs of life seem to be a long way off and of no account. Only those who love can know this law of the human heart, but how true it is and how beautiful! "We reached London in the early morning, when the grey old city was beginning to stir after its sleepless rest. I had telegraphed the time of my arrival to the committee of our association, and early as it was some hundreds of our people were at Charing Cross to meet me. They must have been surprised to see a man step out of the train in the disguise of driver of a wine-cart on the Campagna, but perhaps that helped them to understand the position better, and they formed into procession and marched to Trafalgar Square as if they had forgotten they were in a foreign country. "To me it was a strange and moving spectacle. The mist like a shroud over the great city, some stars of leaden hue paling out overhead, the day dawning over the vast square, the wide silence with the far-off hum of awakening life, the English workmen stopping to look at us as they went by to their work, and our company of dark-bearded men, emigrants and exiles, sending their hearts out in sympathy to their brothers in the south. As I spoke from the base of the Gordon statue and turned towards St. Martin's Church, I could fancy I saw your white-haired father on the steps with his little daughter in his arms. "I will write again in a day or two, telling you what we are doing. Meantime I enclose a Proclamation to the People, which I wish you to get printed and posted up. Take it to old Albert Pelegrino in the Stamperia by the Trevi. Tell him to mention the cost and the money shall follow. Call at the Piazza Navona and see what is happening to Elena. Poor girl! Poor Bruno! And my poor dear little darling! "Take care of yourself, my dear one. I am always thinking of you. It is a fearful thing to have taken up the burden of one who is branded as an outcast and an outlaw. I cannot help but reproach myself. There was a time when I saw my duty to you in another way, but love came like a hurricane out of the skies and swept all sense of duty away. My wife! my Roma! You have hazarded everything for me, and some day I will give up everything for you. D. R." VII "DEAREST,--Your letter to Sister Angelica arrived safely, and worked more miracles in her cloistered heart than ever happened to the 'Blessed Bambino.' Before it came I was always thinking, 'Where is he now? Is he having his breakfast? Or is it dinner, according to the difference of time and longitude?' All I knew was that you had travelled north, and though the sun doesn't ordinarily set in that direction, the sky over Monte Mario used to glow for my special pleasure like the gates of the New Jerusalem. "Your letters are so precious that I will ask you not to fill them with useless things. Don't tell me to love you. The idea! Didn't I say I should think of you always? I do! I think of you when I go to bed at night, and that is like opening a jewel-case in the moonlight. I think of you when I am asleep, and that is like an invisible bridge which unites us in our dreams; and I think of you when I wake in the morning, and that is like a cage of song-birds that sing in my breast the whole day long. "But you are dying to hear what is really happening in Rome, so your own special envoy must send off her budget as a set-off against those official telegrams. 'Not a day with out a line,' so my letter will look like words shaken out of a literary pepper-box. Let me bring my despatches up to date. "Military rule severer than ever, and poverty and misery on all sides. Families of reserve soldiers starving, and meetings of chief citizens to succour them. Donation from the King and from the 'Black' Charity Circle of St. Peter. Even the clergy are sending francs, so none can question their sincerity. Bureau of Labour besieged by men out of work, and offices occupied by Carabineers. People eating maize in polenta and granturco with the certainty of sickness to follow. Red Cross Society organised as in time of war, and many sick and wounded hidden in houses. "And now for more personal matters. The proclamation is in hand, and paid for, and will be posted first thing in the morning. From the printer's I went on to the Piazza Navona and found a wilderness of woe. Elena has gone away, leaving an ambiguous letter behind her, saying that she wished her Madonna to be given to me, as she would have no need of it in the place she was going to. This led the old people to believe that for the loss of her son and husband she had become demented and had destroyed herself. I pretended to think differently, and warned them to say nothing of their daughter's disappearance, thinking that Bruno might hear of it, and find food for still further suspicions. "Lawyer Napoleon F. has seen the poor soul again, and been here this evening to tell me the result. It will seem to you incredible. Bruno will do nothing to help in his own defence. Talks of 'treachery' and the 'King's pardon.' Napoleon F. thinks the Camorra is at work with him, and tells how criminals in the prisons of Italy have a league of crime, with captains, corporals, and cadets. My own reading of the mystery is different. I think the Camorra in this case is the Council, and the only design is to entrap by treachery one of the 'greater delinquents not in custody.' I want to find out where Charles Minghelli is at present. Nobody seems to know. "As for me, what do you suppose is my last performance? I've sold my jewels! Yesterday I sent for one of the _strozzini_, and the old Shylock came this evening and cheated me unmercifully. No matter! What do I want with jewellery, or a fine house, and servants to follow me about as if I were a Cardinal? If _you_ can do without them so can I. But you need not say you are anxious about what is happening to me. I'm as happy as the day is long. I am happy because I love you, and that is everything. "Only one thing troubles me--the grief of the poor girl I told you of. She follows me about, and is here all the time, so that I feel as if I were possessed by her secret. In fact, I'm afraid I'll blab it out to somebody. I think you would be sorry to see her. She tries to persuade herself that because her soul did not consent she was really not to blame. That is the thing that women are always saying, isn't it? They draw this distinction when it is too late, and use it as a quibble to gloss over their fault. Oh, I gave it her! I told her she should have thought of that in time, and died rather than yield. It was all very fine to talk of a minute of weakness--mere weakness of bodily will, not of virtue, but the world splits no straws of that sort. If a woman has fallen she has fallen, and there is no question of body or soul. "Oh dear, how she cried! When I caught sight of her red eyes, I felt she ought to get herself forgiven. And after all I'm not so sure that she should tell her husband, seeing that it would so shock and hurt him. She thinks that after one has done wrong the best thing to do next is to say nothing about it. There _is_ something in that, isn't there? "One thing I must say for the poor girl--she has been a different woman since this happened. It has converted her. That's a shocking thing to say, but it's true. I remember that when I was a girl in the convent, and didn't go to mass because I hadn't been baptized and it was agreed with the Baron that I shouldn't be, I used to read in the Lives of the Saints that the darkest moments of 'the drunkenness of sin' were the instants of salvation. Who knows? Perhaps the very fact by which the world usually stamps a woman as bad is in this case the fact of her conversion. As for my friend, she used to be the vainest young thing in Rome, and now she cares nothing for the world and its vanities. "Two days hence my letter will fall into your hands--why can't I do so too? Love me always. That will lift me up to your own level, and prove that when you fell in love with me love wasn't quite blind. I'm not so old and ugly as I was yesterday, and at all events nobody could love you more. Good-night! I open my window to say my last good-night to the stars over Monte Mario, for that's where England is! How bright they are to-night! How beautiful! ROMA." VIII Next morning the Countess was very ill, and Roma went to her immediately. "I must have a doctor," she said. "It's perfectly heartless to keep me without one all this time." "Aunt Betsy," said Roma, "you know quite well that but for your own express prohibition you would have had a doctor all along." "For mercy's sake, don't nag, but send for a doctor immediately. Let it be Dr. Fedi. Everybody has Dr. Fedi now." Fedi was the Pope's physician, and therefore the most costly and fashionable doctor in Rome. Dr. Fedi came with an assistant who carried a little case of instruments. He examined the Countess, her breast, her side, and the glands under her arms, shot out a solemn under-lip, put two fingers inside his collar, twisted his head from side to side, and announced that the patient must have a nurse immediately. "Do you hear that, Roma? Doctor says that I must have a nurse. Of course I must have a nurse. I'll have one of the English nursing Sisters. Everybody has them now. They're foreigners, and if they talk they can't do much mischief." The Sister was sent for. She was a mild and gentle creature, in blue and white, but she talked perpetually of her Mother Superior, who had been bedridden for fifteen years, yet smiled sweetly all day long. That exasperated the Countess and fretted her. When the doctor came again the patient was worse. "Your aunt must have dainties to tempt her appetite and so keep up her strength." "Do you hear, Roma?" "You shall have everything you wish for, auntie." "Well, I wish for strawberries. Everybody eats them who is ill at this season." The strawberries were bought, but the Countess scarcely touched them, and they were finally consumed in the kitchen. When the doctor came a third time the patient was much emaciated and her skin had become sallow and earthy. "It would not be right to conceal from you the gravity of your condition, Countess," he said. "In such a case we always think it best to tell a patient to make her peace with God." "Oh, don't say that, doctor," whimpered the poor withered creature on the bed. "But while there's life there's hope, you know; and meantime I'll send you an opiate to relieve the pain." When the doctor was gone, the Countess sent for Roma. "That Fedi is a fool," she said. "I don't know what people see in him. I should like to try the Bambino of Ara C[oe]li. The Cardinal Vicar had it, and why shouldn't I? They say it has worked miracles. It may be dear, but if I die you will always reproach yourself. If you are short of money you can sign a bill at six months, and before that the poor maniac woman will be gone and you'll be the wife of the Baron." "If you really think the Bambino will...." "It will! I know it will." "Very well, I will send for it." Roma sent a letter to the Superior of the Franciscans at the Friary of Ara C[oe]li asking that the little figure of the infant Christ, which is said to restore the sick, should be sent to her aunt, who was near to death. At the same time she wrote to an auctioneer in the Via due Macelli, requesting him to call upon her. The man came immediately. He had little beady eyes, which ranged round the dining-room and seemed to see everything except Roma herself. "I wish to sell up my furniture," said Roma. "All of it?" "Except what is in my aunt's room and the room of her nurse, and such things in the kitchen, the servants' apartments, and my own bedroom as are absolutely necessary for present purposes." "Quite right. When?" "Within a week if possible." The Bambino came in a carriage with two horses, and the people in the street went down on their knees as it passed. One of the friars in priest's surplice carried it in a box with the lid open, and two friars in brown habits walked before it with lifted candles. But as the painted image in its scarlet clothes and jewels entered the Countess's bedroom with its grim and ghostly procession, and was borne like a baby mummy to the foot of her bed, it terrified her, and she screamed. "Take it away!" she shrieked. "Do you want to frighten me out of my life? Take it away!" The grim and ghostly procession went out. Its visit had lasted thirty seconds and cost a hundred francs. When the doctor came again the outline of the Countess's writhing form had shrunk to the lines of a skeleton under the ruffled counterpane. "It's not the Bambino you want--it's the priest," he said, and then the poor mortal who was still afraid of dying began to whimper. "And, Sister," said the doctor, "as the Countess suffers so much pain, you may increase the opiate from a dessert-spoonful to a tablespoonful, and give it twice as frequently." That evening the Sister went home for a few hours' leave, and Roma took her place by the sick-bed. The patient was more selfish and exacting than ever, but Roma had begun to feel a softening towards the poor tortured being, and was trying her best to do her duty. It was dusk, and the Countess, who had just taken her opiate in the increased doses, was out of pain, and wished to make her toilet. Roma brought up the night-table and the mirror, the rouge-pot, the rabbit's foot, the puff, the pencil, and the other appurtenances of her aunt's toilet-box. And when the fragile thing, so soon to be swallowed up by the earth in its great earthquake, had been propped by pillows, she began to paint her wrinkled face as if going to dance a minuet with death. First the black rings about the languid eyes were whitened, then the earthen cheeks were rouged, and finally the livid lips and nostrils were pencilled with the rosy hues of health and youth. Roma had turned on the electric light, but the glare oppressed the patient, and she switched it off again. The night had now closed in, and the only light in the room came from the little red oil-lamp which burned before the shrine. The drug began to operate, and its first effect was to loosen the old lady's tongue. She began to talk of priests in a tone of contempt and braggadocio. "I hate priests," she said, "and I can't bear to have them about me. Why so? Because they are always about the dead. Their black cassocks make me think of funerals. The sight of a graveyard makes me faint. Besides, priests and confessions go together, and why should a woman confess if she can avoid it? When people confess they have to give up the thing they confess to, or they can't get absolution. Fedi's a fool. Give it up indeed! I might as well talk of giving up the bed that's under me." Roma sat on a stool by the bedside, listening intently, yet feeling she had no right to listen. The drug was rapidly intoxicating the Countess, who went on to talk as if some one else had been in the room. "A priest would be sure to ask questions about that girl. I would have to tell him why the Baron put me here to look after her, and then he would prate about the Sacraments and want me to give up everything." The Countess laughed a hard, evil laugh, and Roma felt an icy shudder pass over her. "'I'm tied,' said the Baron. 'But you must see that she waits for me. Everything depends upon you, and if all comes out well....'" The old woman's tongue was thickening, and her eyes in the dull red light were glazed and stupid. Roma sat motionless and silent, watching with her own dilated eyes the grinning sinner, as she poured out the story of the plot for her capture and corruption. At that moment she hated her aunt, the unclean, malignant, unpitying thing who had poisoned her heart against her father and tried to break down every spiritual impulse of her soul. The diabolical horse-laughter came again, and then the devil who had loosened the tongue of the dying woman in the intoxication of the drug made her reveal the worst secret of her tortured conscience. "Why did I let him torment me? Because he knew something. It was about the child. Didn't you know I had a child? It was born when my husband was away. He was coming home, and I was in terror." The red light was on the emaciated face. Roma was sitting in the shadow with a roaring in her ears. "It died, and I went to confession.... I thought nobody knew.... But the Baron knows everything.... After that I did whatever he told me." The thick voice stopped. Only the ticking of a little clock was audible. The Countess had dozed off. All her vanity of vanities, her intrigues, her life-long frenzies, her sins and sufferings were wrapt in the innocence of sleep. Roma looked down at the poor, wrinkled, rouged face, now streaked with sweat and with black lines from the pencilled eyebrows, and noiselessly rose to go. She was feeling a sense of guilt in herself that stirred her to the depths of abasement. The Countess awoke. She was again in pain, and her voice was now different. "Roma! Is that you?" "Yes, aunt." "Why are you sitting in the darkness? I have a horror of darkness. You know that quite well." Roma turned on the lights. "Have I been speaking? What have I been saying?" Roma tried to prevaricate. "You are telling me a falsehood. You know you are. You gave me that drug to make me tell you my secrets. But I know what I told you and it was all a lie. You needn't think because you've been listening.... It was a lie, I tell you...." The Sister came back at that moment, and Roma went to her room. She did not write her usual letter to David Rossi that night. Instead of doing so, she knelt by Elena's little Madonna, which she had set up on a table by her bed. Her own secret was troubling her. She had wanted to take it to some one, some woman, who would listen to her and comfort her. She had no mother, and her tears had begun to fall. It was then that she thought of the world-mother, and remembered the prayer she had heard a thousand times but never used before. "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of death--Amen!" When she rose from her knees she felt like a child who had been crying and was comforted. IX For some days after this the house was in a tumult. Men in red caps labelled "Casa di Vendita" were tearing up carpets, dragging out pieces of furniture and marking them. The catalogue was made, and bills were posted outside the street door announcing a sale of "Old and New Objects of Art" in the "Appartamento Volonna." Then came the "Grand Esposizione"--it was on Sunday morning--and the following day the auction. Roma built herself an ambush from prying eyes in one corner of the apartment. She turned her boudoir into a bedroom and sitting-room combined. From there she heard the shuffling of feet as the people assembled in the large dismantled drawing-room without. She was writing at a table when some one knocked at the door. It was the Commendatore Angelelli, in light clothes and silk hat. At that moment the look of servility in his long face prevailed over the look of arrogance. "Good-morning, Donna Roma. May I perhaps...." "Come in." The lanky person settled himself comfortably and began on a confidential communication. "The Baron, sincerely sorry to hear of your distresses, sends me to say that you have only to make a request and this unseemly scene shall come to an end. In fact, I have authority to act on his behalf--as an unknown friend, you know--and stop these proceedings even at the eleventh hour. Only a word from you--one word--and everything shall be settled satisfactorily." Roma was silent for a moment, and the Commendatore concluded that his persuasions had prevailed. Somebody else knocked at the door. "Come in," said the Commendatore largely. This time it was the auctioneer. "Time to begin the sale, Signorina. Any commands?" He glanced from Roma to Angelelli with looks of understanding. "I think her Excellency has perhaps something to say," said Angelelli. "Nothing whatever. Go on," said Roma. The auctioneer disappeared through the door, and Angelelli put on his hat. "Then you have no answer for his Excellency?" "None." "_Bene_," said the Commendatore, and he went off whistling softly. The auction began. At a table on a platform where the piano used to stand sat the chief auctioneer with his ivory hammer. Beneath him at a similar table sat an assistant. As the men in red caps brought up the goods the two auctioneers took the bidding together, repeating each other in the manner of actor and prompter at an Italian theatre. The English Sister came to say that the Countess wished to see her niece immediately. The invalid, now frightfully emaciated and no longer able to sit up, was lying back on her lace-edged pillows. She was plucking with shrivelled and bony fingers at her figured counterpane, and as Roma entered she tried to burst out on her in a torrent of wrath. But the sound that came from her throat was like a voice shouted on a windy headland, and hardly louder than the muffled voices of the auctioneers as they found their way through the walls. Roma sat down on the stool by the bedside, stroked the cat with the gold cross suspended from its neck, and listened to the words within the room and without as they fell on her ear alternately. "Roma, you are treating me shamefully. While I am lying here helpless you are having an auction--actually an auction--at the door of my very room." "Camera da letto della Signorina! Bed in _noce_, richly ornamented with fruit and flowers." "Shall I say fifty?" "Thank you, fifty." "Fifty." "Fifty-five." "Fifty-five." "No advance on fifty-five?" "Gentlemen, gentlemen! The beautiful bed of a beautiful lady, and only fifty-five offered for it!..." "If you wanted money you had only to ask the Baron, and if you didn't wish to do that, you had only to sign a bill at six months, as I told you before. But no! You wanted to humble and degrade me. That's all it is. You've done it, too, and I'm dying in disgrace...." "Secretaire in walnut! Think, ladies, of the secrets this writing-desk might whisper if it would! How much shall I say?" "Sixty lire." "Sixty." "Sixty-five." "Sixty-five." "Writing-desk in walnut with the love letters hardly out of it, and only sixty-five lire offered!..." "This is what comes of a girl going her own way. Society is not so very exacting, but it revenges itself on people who defy the respectabilities. And quite right, too! Pity they could not be the only ones to suffer, but they can't. Their friends and relations are the real sufferers; and as for me...." The Countess's voice broke down into a maudlin whimper. Without a word Roma rose up to go. As she did so she met Natalina coming into the room with the usual morning plate of forced strawberries. They had cost four francs the pound. Some time afterwards, from her writing-table in the boudoir-bedroom, Roma heard a shuffling of feet on the circular iron stairs. The people were going down to the studio. Presently the auctioneer's voice came up as from a vault. "And now what am I offered for this large and important work of modern art?" There was a ripple of derisive laughter. "A fountain worthy, when finished, to rank with the masterpieces of ancient Rome." More derisive laughter. "Now is the time for anti-clericals. Gentlemen, don't all speak at once. Every day is not a festa. How much? Nothing at all? Not even a soldo? Too bad. Art is its own reward." Still more laughter, followed by the shuffling of feet coming up the iron stairs, and a familiar voice on the landing--it was the Princess Bellini's--"Madonna mia! what a fright it is, to be sure!" Then another voice--it was Madame Bella's--"I thought so the day of the private view, when she behaved so shockingly to the dear Baron." Then a third voice--it was the voice of Olga the journalist--"I said the Baron would pay her out, and he has. Before the day is over she'll not have a stick left or a roof to cover her." Roma dropped her head on to the table. Try as she might to keep a brave front, the waves of shame and humiliation were surging over her. Some one touched her on the shoulder. It was Natalina with a telegram: "Letter received; my apartment is paid for to end of June; why not take possession of it?" From that moment onward nothing else mattered. The tumultuous noises in the drawing-room died down, and there was no sound but the voices of the auctioneer and his clerk, which rumbled like a drum in the empty chamber. It was four o'clock. Opening the window, Roma heard the music of a band. At that a spirit of defiance took possession of her, and she put on her hat and cloak. As she passed through the empty drawing-room, the auctioneer, who was counting his notes with the dry rustle of a winnowing machine, looked up with his beady eyes and said: "It has come out fairly well, Madame--better than we might have expected." On reaching the piazza she hailed a cab. "The Pincio!" she cried, and settled in her seat. When she returned an hour afterwards she wrote her usual letter to David Rossi. "High doings to-day! Have had a business on my own account, and done a roaring trade! Disposed of everything in the shop except what I wanted for myself. It isn't every trades-woman who can say that much, and I'm only a beginner to boot! "Soberly, I've sold up. Being under notice to leave this apartment, I didn't want all this useless furniture, so I thought I might as well get done with it in good time. Besides, what right had I to soft beds and fine linen while you were an exile, sleeping Heaven knows where? And then my aunt, who is very ill and wants all sorts of luxuries, is rather expensive. So for the past week my drawing-room has been as full of fluting as a frog-pond at sunset, and on Sunday morning people were banging away at my poor piano as if it had been a hurdy-gurdy at an osteria. "But, oh dear! how stupid the world is! People thought because I was selling what I didn't want I must be done. You would have laughed to hear their commentaries. To tell you the truth, I was so silly that I could have cried, but just at the moment when I felt a wee bit badly, down came your telegram like an angel from Heaven--and what do you think I did? The old Adam, or say the new Eve, took possession of me, and the minute the people were gone I hired a cab--a common garden cab, Roman variety, with a horse on its last legs and a driver in ragged tweeds--and drove off to the Pincio! I wanted to show those fine folk that I _wasn't_ done, and I did! They were all there, my dear friends and former flatterers--every one of them who has haunted my house for years, asking for this favour or that, and paying me in the coin of sweetest smiles. It seemed as if fate had gathered them all together for my personal inspection and wouldn't let a creature escape. "Did they see me? Not a soul of them! I drove through them and between them, and they bowed across and before and behind me, and I might have been as invisible as Asmodeus for all the consciousness they betrayed of my presence. Was I humiliated? Confused? Crushed? Oh, dear no! I was proud. I knew the day would come, the day was near, when they must try to forget all this and to persuade themselves it had never been, when for my own sake, even mine, and for yours, most of all for yours, they would come back humble, so humble and afraid. "So I gave them every chance. I was bold and I did not spare them. And when the sun began to sink behind St. Peter's and the band stopped, and we turned to go, I know which of us went home happy and unashamed. Oh, David Rossi! If you could have been there! "I must write again on other matters. Meantime, one item of news. Lawyer Napoleon, who continues to go to Regina C[oe]li to see the bewildering Bruno, saw Charles Minghelli there in prison clothes! If the God who settles the question of sex had only remembered to make your wife the procurator-general, think how different the history of the world would have been! The worst of it is he mightn't have remembered to make you a woman; and in any case, things being so nicely settled as they are, I don't think I want to be a man. I waft a kiss to you on the wings of the wind. It's ponente to-day, so it ought to be warm. "ROMA. "P.S.--My poor friend is still in trouble. Although not a religious woman, she has taken to saying a 'Hail Mary' every night on going to bed, and if it wasn't for that I'm afraid she would commit suicide, so frightful are the visions that enter her head sometimes. I've told her how wrong it would be to do away with herself, if only for the sake of her husband, who is away. Didn't I tell you he was away at present? It would hurt you dreadfully if _I_ were to die before _you_ return, wouldn't it? But I'm dying already to hear what you think of her. Write! Write! Write!" X When the King of Terrors could no longer be beaten back the Countess sent for the priest. Before he arrived she insisted on making her toilet and receiving him in the dressing-gown which she used to wear when people made ante-camera to her in the days of her gaiety and strength. During the time of the Countess's confession Roma sat in her own room with a tremor of the heart which she had never felt before. Something personal and very intimate was creeping over her soul. She heard the indistinct murmur of the priest's voice at intervals, followed by a sibilant sound as of whispers and sobs. The confession lasted fifteen minutes and then the priest came out of the room. "Now that your relative has made her peace with God," he said, "she must receive the Blessed Sacrament, Extreme Unction, and the Apostolic Blessing." He went away to prepare for these offices, and the English Sister came to see Roma. "The Countess is like another woman already," she said, but Roma did not go into the sickroom. The priest returned in half-an-hour. He had now two assistants, one carrying the cross and banner, the other a vessel of holy water and the volume of the Roman ritual. The Sister and Felice met them at the door with lighted candles. "Peace be to this house!" said the priest. And the assistants said, "And to all dwelling in it." Then the priest took off an outer cloak, revealing his white surplice and violet stole, and followed the candles into the Countess's room. The little card-table had been covered with a damask napkin and laid out as an altar. All the dainty articles of the dying woman's dressing-table, her scent-flasks, rouge pots and puffs, were huddled together with various medicine bottles on a chest of drawers at the back. It was two o'clock in the afternoon and the sun was shining, so the curtains were drawn and the shutters closed. In the darkened room the candles burned like stars. The ghostly viaticum being over, the priest and his assistants left the house. But the pale, grinning shadow of death continued to stand by the perfumed couch. Roma had not been present at the offices, and presently the English Sister came to say that the Countess wished to see her. "It's perfectly miraculous," said the Sister. "She's like another woman." "Has she had her opiate lately?" said Roma, and the Sister answered that she had. Roma found her aunt in a kind of mystical transport. A great light of joy, almost of pride, was shining in her face. "All my pains are gone," she said. "All my sorrows and trials too. I have laid them all on Christ, and now I am going to mount up with Him to God." Clearly she had no sense of her guilt towards Roma. She began to take a high tone with her, the tone of a saint towards a sinner. "You must conquer your worldly passions, Roma. You have been a sinner, but you must not die a bad death. For instance, you are selfish. I am sorry to say it, but you know you are. You must confess and dedicate your life to fighting the sin in your sinful heart, and commend your soul to His mercy who has washed me from all stain." But the Countess's ethereal transports did not wholly eclipse her worldly vanities when she proceeded to preparations for her funeral. "Let there be a Requiem Mass, Roma. Everybody has it. It costs a little, certainly, but we can't think of money in a case like this. And send for the Raveggi Company to do the funeral pomps, and see they don't put me on a tressel. I am a noble and have a right to be laid on the church floor. See they bury me on high ground. The little Pincio is where the best people are buried now, above the tomb of Duke Massimo." Roma continued to say "Yes," and "Yes," and "Yes," though her very heart felt sore. Two hours afterwards the Countess was in her death agony. The tortured body had prevailed over the rapturous soul, and she was calling for more and more of the opiate. Everybody was odious to her, and her angular face was snapping all round. The priest came to say the prayers for the dying. It was near to sunset, but the shutters were still closed, and the room had a grim solemnity. A band was playing on the Pincio, and the strains of an opera mingled with the petitions of the "breathing forth." Everybody knelt except Roma. She alone was standing, but her heart was on its knees and her whole soul was prostrate. The priest put a crucifix in the Countess's hand and she kissed it fervently, pronouncing all the time with gasping breath the name, "Gesù, Gesù, Gesù!" The passing bell of the parish church was tolling in slow strokes, and the priest was praying fast and loud: "May Christ who called thee receive thee, and let angels lead thee into the bosom of Abraham." At one moment the crucifix dropped from the dying woman's hands, and her diamond rings, now too large for the shrivelled fingers, fell on to the counterpane. A little later her wig fell off, and for an instant her head was bald. Her forehead was perspiring; her breath was rattling in her chest. At last she became delirious. "It's a lie!" she cried. "Everything I've said is a lie! I didn't kill it!" Then she rolled aside, and the crucifix fell on to the floor. The priest, who had been praying faster and faster every moment, rose to his feet and said in an altered tone, "We commend to Thee, O Lord, the soul of Thy handmaiden, Elizabeth, that being dead to the world she may live to Thee, and those sins which through the frailty of human life she has committed Thou by the indulgence of Thy loving kindness may wipe out, through Christ our Lord, Amen." The priest's voice died down to an inarticulate murmur and then stopped. A moment afterwards the curtains were drawn back, the shutters parted, and the windows thrown open. A flood of sunset light streamed into the room. The candles burnt yellow and went out. The mystic rites were at an end. Roma fled back to her own room. Her storm-tossed soul was foundering. The band was still playing on the Pincio, and the sun was going down behind St. Peter's, when Roma took up her pen to write. "She is dead! The life she clung to so desperately has left her at last. How she held on to it! And now she has gone to give an account of the deeds done in this body. Yet who am I to talk like this? Only a poor, unhappy fellow-sinner. "After confession she thought she was forgiven. She imagined she was pure, sinless, soulful. Perhaps she was so, and only the pains of death made her seem to fall away. But what a power in confession! Oh, the joy in her poor face when she had lifted the burden of her sins and secrets off her soul! Forgiveness! What a thing it must be to feel one's self forgiven!... "I cannot write any more to-day, my dear one, but there will be news for you next time, great and serious news." XI Roma fulfilled her promise. The funeral pomps, if the Countess could have seen them, would have satisfied her vain little mind. On going to the parish church the procession covered the entire length of the street. First the banner with skull, cross-bones, and hour-glass, then a confraternity of lay people, then twenty paid mourners in evening dress, then fifty Capuchins at two francs a head with yellow candles at three francs each, then the cross, then the secular clergy two and two, then the parish priest in surplice and black stole with servitors and acolytes, then a stately funeral car with four horses richly harnessed, and finally four coaches with coachmen and footmen in gala livery. The bier was loaded with flowers and streamers, and the cost of the cortège was nearly a thousand francs. As Roma passed out of the church with head down some one spoke to her. It was the Baron, carrying his hat, on which there was a deep black band. His tall spare figure, high forehead, straight hair, and features hard as iron, made a painful impression. "Sorry I cannot go on to the Campo Santo," he said, and then he added something about breaks in the chain of life which Roma did not hear. "I trust it is not true, as I am given to understand, that on leaving your apartment you are going to live in the house of a certain person whom I need not name. That would, I assure you, be a grave error, and I would earnestly counsel you not to commit it." She made no reply but walked on to the door of the carriage. He helped her to enter it, and then said: "Remember, my attitude is the same as ever. Do not deny me the satisfaction of serving you in your hour of need." When Roma came to full possession of herself after the Requiem Mass, the cortège was on its way to the cemetery. There was a line of carriages. Most of them were empty as the mourning of which they formed a part. The parish priest sat with his acolyte, who held a crucifix before his eyes so that his thoughts might not wander. He took snuff and said his Matins for to-morrow. The necropolis of Rome is outside the Porta San Lorenzo, by the church of that name. The bier drew up at the House of Deposit. When the coaches discharged their occupants, Roma saw that except the paid servants of the funeral she was the only mourner. The Countess's friends, like herself, disliked the sight of churchyards. The House of Deposit, a low-roofed chamber under a chapel, contained tressels for every kind and condition of the dead. One place was labelled "Reserved for distinguished corpses." The coffin of the Countess was put to rest there until the buriers should come to bury it in the morning, the wreaths and flowers and streamers were laid over it, the priest sprinkled it again with holy water, and then the funeral was at an end. "I will not go back yet," said Roma, and thereupon the priest and his assistants stepped into the carriages. The drivers lit cigarettes and started off at a brisk trot. It had been a gorgeous funeral, and the soul of the Countess would have been satisfied. But the grinning King of Terrors had stood by all the time, saying, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." Roma bought a wreath of wild flowers at a stall outside the cemetery gates, and by help of a paper given to her in the office she found the grave of little Joseph. It was in a shelf of vaults like ovens, each with its marble door, and a photograph on the front. They were all photographs of children, sweet smiling faces, a choir of little angels, now singing round the throne in heaven. The sun was shining on them, and the tall cypress trees were singing softly in the light wind overhead. Here and there a mother was trimming an oil-lamp that hung before her baby's face, and listening to the little voice that was not dead but speaking to her soul's soul. Roma hung her wreath on Joseph's vault and turned away. Going out of the gates she met a great concourse of people. At their head was a Capuchin carrying a black wooden cross with sponge, spear, hammer and nails attached. Two boys in blue and white carried candles by his side. The crowd behind were of the poorest, chiefly women and girls with shawls and handkerchiefs on their heads. It was Friday, and they were going to the Church of San Lorenzo to make the procession of the Stations of the Cross. Scarcely knowing why she did so, Roma followed them. The people filled the Basilica. Their devotion was deep and touching. As they followed the friar from station to station they sang in monotonous tones the strophes of the _Stabat Mater_. "Ah, Mother, fountain of love, make me feel the strength of sorrow that I may mourn with thee." Their prayer seemed hardly needful. They were the starving wives and daughters of men in prison, men in hospital, and reserve soldiers. Poor wrecks on life's shore, thrown up by the tide, they had turned to religion for consolation, and were sending up their cry to God. When they had finished their course and ended their canticles of grief they gathered about the pulpit and the Capuchin got up to preach. He was a bearded man with a face full of light, almost of frenzy, and a cross and a rosary hung from his girdle. He spoke of their poverty, their lost ones, their privations, of the dark hour they were passing through, and of answers to prayer in political troubles. During this time the silence was breathless; but when he told them that God had sent their sufferings upon them for their sins, that they must confess their sins, in order that their holy mother, the Church, might save them from their sins, there was a deep hum in the air like the reverberation in a great shell. A line of confessional boxes stood in each of the church aisles, and as the preacher described the sorrows of the man-God, His passion, His agony, His blood, the women and girls, weeping audibly, got up one by one and went over to confess. No sooner had one of them arisen than another took her place, and each as she rose to her feet looked calm and comforted. The emotion of the moment was swelling over Roma like a flood. If she could unburden her heart like that! If she could cast off all the trouble of her days and nights of pain! One of the confessional boxes had a penitential rod protruding from it, and going past the front of it she had seen the face of a priest. It was a soft, kindly, human face. She had seen it before somewhere--perhaps in the Pope's procession. At that moment a poor girl with a handkerchief on her head, who had knelt down crying, was getting up with shining eyes. Roma was shaken by violent tremors. An overpowering desire had come upon her to confess. For a moment she held on to a chair, lest she should fall to the floor. Then by a sudden impulse, in a kind of delirium, scarcely knowing what she was doing until it was done, she flung herself in the place the girl had risen from, and with a palpitating heart said in a tremulous voice through the little brass grating: "Father, I am a great sinner--hear me, hear me!" The measured breathing inside the confessional was arrested, and the peaceful face of the priest looked out at the hectic cheeks and blazing eyes. "Wait, my daughter, do not agitate yourself. Say the Confiteor." She tried to speak, but her words were hardly audible or coherent. "I confess ... I confess ... I cannot, Father." A pinch of snuff dropped from the old man's fingers. "Are you not a Christian?" "I have not been baptized, but I was educated in a convent, and...." "Then I cannot hear your confession. Baptism is the door of the Church, and without it...." "But I am in great trouble. For Our Lady's sake, listen to me. Oh, listen to me, Father, only listen to me." Although accustomed to the sufferings of the human heart, a measureless pity came over the old priest, and he said in a kind and tender voice: "Go on, my daughter. I cannot give you absolution, for you are not a child of the Church; but I am an old man, and if I can help your poor soul to bear its burden, God forbid that I should turn you away." In a torrent of hot words Roma poured out her trouble, hiding nothing, extenuating nothing, and naming and blaming no one. At length the throbbing breath and quivering voice died down, and there was a moment's silence, in which the dull rumble in the church seemed to come from far away. Then the voice behind the grating said in tender tones: "My daughter, you have committed no sin in this case and have nothing to repent of. That you should be troubled by scruples shows that your soul is pure and that you are living in communion with God. Your bodily health is reduced by nervousness and anxiety, and it is natural that you should imagine that you have sinned where you have not sinned. That is the sweet grace of most women, but how few men! What sin there has been is not yours; therefore go home, and God comfort you." "But, dear Father ... it is so good of you, but have you forgotten...." "Your husband? No! Whether you should tell him it is beyond my power to say. In itself I should be against it, for why should you disturb his conscience and endanger the peace of a family? Your scruples about Nature coming to convict you, being without grounds of reason, are temptations of the devil and should be put behind your back. But that your marriage was a religious one only, that the other person (you did right not to name him, my child) may use that circumstance to separate you, and that your confession to your husband, if it came too late, would come prejudiced and worse than in vain, these are facts that make it difficult to advise you for your safety and peace of mind. Let me consult some one wiser than myself. Let me, perhaps, take your secret to a high place, a kindly ear, a saintly heart, a venerable and holy head. Come again, or leave me your name if you will, and if that holy person has anything to say you shall hear of it. Meantime go home in peace and content, my daughter, and may God bring you into His true fold at last." When Roma got up from the grating of the confessional she felt like one who had passed through a great sickness and was now better. Her whole being was going through a miraculous convalescence. A great weight had been lifted off; she was renewed as with a new soul and her very body felt light as air. The preacher was still preaching in his tremulous tones, and the women and girls were still crying, as Roma passed out of the church, but now she heard all as in a dream. It was not until she reached the portico, and a blind beggar rattled his can in her face, that the spell was broken, so sudden and mysterious was the transition when she came back from heaven to earth. XII By the first post next morning "Sister Angelica" received a letter from David Rossi. "Dearest,--Your budget arrived safely and brought me great joy and perhaps a little sadness. Apart from the pain I always suffer when I think of our poor people, there was a little twinge as I read between the lines of your letter. Are you not dissimulating some of your happiness to keep up my spirits and to prevent me from rushing back to you at all hazards? You shall be really happy some day, my dear one. I shall hear your silvery laugh again as I did on that glorious day in the Campagna. Wait, only wait! We are still young and we shall live. "Pray for me, my heart, that what my hand is doing may not be done amiss. I am working day and night. Meetings, committees, correspondence early and late. A great scheme is afoot, dearest, and you shall hear all about it presently. I am proud that I judged rightly of the moral grandeur of your nature, and that it is possible to tell you everything. "We have elected a centre of action and mapped out our organisation. Everybody agrees with me on the necessity for united action. Europe seems to be ready for a complete change, but the first great act must be done in Rome. I find encouragement everywhere. The brotherly union of the peoples is going on. A power stronger than brute force is sweeping through the world. "Poor Bruno! You are no doubt right that pressure is being put upon him to betray me. It is not for myself only that I am troubled. It would be a lasting grief to me if his mind were poisoned. Charles Minghelli being in prison in the disguise of a prisoner means that anything may happen. When the man came to me after his dismissal in London, it was to ask help to assassinate the Baron. I refused it, and he went over to the other side. The secret tribunal in which cases are prepared for public trial is a hellish machine for cruelty and injustice. It has been abolished in nearly every other civilised country, but the courts and jails of our beautiful Italy continue to be the scene of plots in which helpless unfortunates are terrorised by expedients which leave not a trace of crime. A prisoner is no longer a man, but a human agent to incriminate others. His soul is corrupted, and a price is put upon treachery. See Bruno yourself if you can, and save him from himself and the people whose only occupation in life is to secure convictions. "And now, as to your friend. Comfort her. The poor girl is no more guilty than if a traction engine had run over her or a wild beast had broken on her out of his cage. She must not torture herself any longer. It is not right, it is not good. Our body is not the only part of use that is subject to diseases, and you must save her from a disease of the soul. "As to whether she should tell her husband, I can have but one opinion. I say, Yes, by all means. In the court of conscience the sin, where it exists, is not wholly or mainly in the act. That has been pardoned in secret as well as in public. God pardoned it in David. Christ pardoned it in the woman of Jerusalem. But the concealment, the lying and duplicity, these cannot be pardoned until they have been confessed. "Another point, which your pure mind, dearest, has never thought of. There is the other man. Think of the power he holds over your friend. If he still wishes to possess her in spite of herself, he may intimidate her, he may threaten to reveal all to her husband. This would make her miserable, and perhaps in the long run, her will being broken, it might even make her yield. Or the man may really tell her husband in order to insult and outrage both of them. _If he does so, where is she? Is her husband to believe her story then?_ "To meet these dangers let her speak out now. Let her trust her husband's love and tell him everything. If he is a man he will think, 'Only her purity has prompted her to tell me,' and he will love her more than ever. Some momentary spasm he may feel. Every man wishes to believe that the flower he plucks is flawless. But his higher nature will conquer his vanity and he will say, 'She loves me, I love her, she is innocent, and if any blow is to be struck at her it must go through me.' "My love to you, dearest. Your friend must be a true woman, and it was very sweet of you to be so tender with her. It was noble of you to be severe with her too, and to make her go through purgatorial fires. That is what good women always do with the injured of their own sex. It is a kind of pledge and badge of their purity, and it is a safeguard and shield, whatever the unthinking may say. I love you for your severity to the poor soiled dove, my dear one, just as much as I love you for your tenderness. It shows me how rightly I judged the moral elevation of your soul, your impeccability, your spirit of fire and heart of gold. Until we meet again, my darling, D. R." XIII "MY DEAR DAVID ROSSI,--All day long I've been carrying your letter round like a reliquary, taking a peep at it in cabs, and even, when I dare, in omnibuses and the streets. "What you say about Bruno has put me in a fever, and I have written to the Director-General for permission to visit the prison. Even Lawyer Napoleon is of opinion that Bruno is being made a victim of that secret inquisition. No Holy Inquisition was ever more unscrupulous. Lawyer N. says the authorities in Italy have inherited the traditions of a bad régime. To do evil to prevent others from doing it is horrible. But in this case it is doing evil to prevent others from doing good. I am satisfied that Bruno is being tempted to betray you. If I could only take his place! _Would their plots have any effect upon me?_ I should die first. "And now about my friend. I can hardly hold my pen when I write of her. What you say is so good, so noble. I might have known what you would think, and yet.... "Dearest, how can I go on? Can't you divine what I wish to tell you? Your letter compels me to confess. Come what may, I can hold off no longer. Didn't you guess who my poor friend was? I thought you would remember our former correspondence when you pretended to love somebody else. You haven't thought of it apparently, and that is only another proof--a bitter sweet one this time--of your love and trust. You put me so high that you never imagined that I could be speaking of myself. I was, and my poor friend is my poor self. "It has made me suffer all along to see what a pedestal of purity you placed me on. The letters you wrote before you told me you loved me, when you were holding off, made me ashamed because I knew I was not worthy. More than once when you spoke of me as so good, I couldn't look into your eyes. I felt an impulse to cry, 'No, no, no,' and to smirch the picture you were painting. Yet how could I do it? What woman who loves a man can break the idol in his heart? She can only struggle to lift herself up to it. That was what I tried to do, and it is not my fault that it is not done. "I have been much to blame. There were moments when duty should have made me speak. One such moment was before we married. Do you remember that I tried to tell you something? You were kind, and you would not listen. 'The past is past,' you said, and I was only too happy to gloss it over. You didn't know what I wished to say, or you would not have silenced me. I knew, and I have suffered ever since. I _had_ to speak, and you see how I have spoken. And now I feel as if I had tricked you. I have got you to commit yourself to opinions and to a line of conduct. Forgive me! I will not hold you to anything. Take it all back, and I shall have no right to complain. "Besides, there are features in my own case which I did not present to you in my friend's. One of them was the fear of being found out. Dearest, I must not shield myself behind the sweet excuse you find for me. I _did_ think of the other man. It wasn't that I was afraid that he would intimidate me, and so corrupt my love. Not all the tyrannies of the world could do that now. But if from revenge or a desire to wrest me away from you by making you cast me off he told you his story before I had told you mine! That was a day-long and night-long terror, and now I confess it lest you should think me better than I am. "Another thing you did not know. Dearest, I would give my life to spare you the explanation, but I must tell you everything. You know who the man is, and it is true before God that he alone was to blame. But my own fault came afterwards. Instead of cutting him off, I continued to be on good terms with him, to take the income he allowed me from my father's estate, and even to think of him as my future husband. And when your speech in the piazza seemed to endanger my prospects I set out to destroy you. "It is terrible. How can I tell you and not die of shame? Now you know how much I deceived you, and the infamy of my purpose makes me afraid to ask for pardon. To think that I was no better than a Delilah when I met you first! But Heaven stepped in and saved you. How you worked upon me! First, you re-created my father for me, and I saw him as he really was, and not as I had been taught to think of him. Then you gave me my soul, and I saw myself. Darling, do not hate me. Your great heart could not be capable of a cruelty like that if you knew what I suffered. "Last of all love came, and I wanted to hold on to it. Oh, how I wanted to hold on to it! That was how it came about that I went on and on without telling you. It was a sort of gambling, a kind of delirium. Everything that happened I took as a penance. Come poverty, shame, neglect, what matter? It was only wiping out a sinful past, and bringing me nearer to you. But when at last he who had injured me threatened to injure you _through me_, I was in despair. You could never imagine what mad notions came to me then. I even thought of killing myself, to end and cover up everything. But no, I could not break your heart like that. Besides, the very act would have told you something, and it was terrible to think that when I was dead you might find out all this pitiful story. "Now you know everything, dearest. I have kept nothing back. As you see, I am not only my poor friend, but some one worse--myself. Can you forgive me? I dare not ask it. But put me out of suspense. Write. Or better still, telegraph. One word--only one. It will be enough. "I would love to send you my love, but to-night I dare not. I have loved you from the first, and I can never do anything but love you, whatever happens. I think you would forgive me if you could realise that I am in the world only to love you, and that the worst of my offences comes of loving you more than reason or honour itself. Whatever you do, I am yours, and I can only consecrate my life to you. "It is daybreak, and the cross of St. Peter's is hanging spectral white above the mists of morning. Is it a symbol of hope, I wonder? The dawn is coming up from the south-east. It would travel quicker to the north-west if it loved you as much as I do. I have been writing this letter over and over again all night long. Do you remember the letter you made me burn, the one containing all your secrets? Here is a letter containing mine--but how much meaner and more perilous! Your poor unhappy girl, ROMA." XIV Next day Roma removed into her new quarters. A few trunks containing her personal belongings, the picture of her father and Elena's Madonna, were all she took with her. A broker glanced at the rest of her goods and gave a price for the lot. Most of the plaster casts in the studio were broken up and carted away. The fountain, being of marble, had to be put in a dark cellar under the lodge of the old Garibaldian. Only one part of it was carried upstairs. This was the mould for the bust of Rossi and the block of stone for the head of Christ. Except for her dog, Roma went alone to the Piazza Navona, Felice having returned to the Baron and Natalina being dismissed. The old woman was to clean and cook for her and Roma was to shop for herself. It didn't take the neighbours long to sum up the situation. She was Rossi's wife. They began to call her Signora. Coming to live in Rossi's home was a sweet experience. The room seemed to be full of his presence. The sitting-room with its piano, its phonograph, and its portraits brought back the very tones of his voice. The bedroom was at first a sanctuary, and she could not bring herself to occupy it until she had set upon the little Madonna. Then it became a bower, and to sleep in it brought a tingling sense which she had never felt before. Living in the midst of Rossi's surroundings, she felt as if she were discovering something new about him every minute. His squirrels on the roof made her think of him as a boy, and his birds, which were nesting, and therefore singing from their little swelling throats the whole day long, made her thrill and think of both of them. His presents from other women were a source of almost feverish interest. Some came from England and America, and were sent by women who had never even seen his face. They made her happy, they made her proud, they made her jealous. It was Rossi, Rossi, always Rossi! Every night on going to bed in her poor quarters her last thought was a love-prayer in the darkness, very simple and foolish and childlike, that he would love her always, whatever she was, and whatever the world might say or evil men might do. This mood lasted for a week and then it began to break. At the back of her happiness there lay anxiety about her letter. She counted up the hours since she posted it, and reckoned the time it would take to receive a reply. If Rossi telegraphed she might hear from him in three days. She did not hear. "He thinks it better to write," she told herself. Of course he would write immediately, and in five days she would receive his reply. On the fifth day she called on the porter at the convent. He had nothing for "Sister Angelica." "There must be snow on the Alps, and therefore the mails are delayed," she thought, and she went down to Piale's, where they post up telegrams. There _was_ snow in Switzerland. It was just as she imagined, and her letter would be delivered in the morning. It was not delivered in the morning. "How stupid of me! It would be Sunday when my letter reached London." She had not counted on the postal arrangements of the English Sabbath. One day more, only one, and she would hear from Rossi and be happy. But one day went by, then another and another, and still no letter came. Her big heart began to fail and the rainbow in the sky of her life to pale away. The singing of the birds on the roof pained her now. How could they crack their little throats like that? It was raining and the sky was dark. Then the Garibaldian and his old wife came upstairs with scared looks and with papers in their hands. They were summoned to give evidence at Bruno's trial. It was to take place in three days. "Well, I'm deaf, praise the saints! and they can't make much of me," said the old woman. Roma put on her simple black straw hat with a quill through it and set off for the office of the lawyer, Napoleon Fuselli. "Just writing to you, dear lady," said the great man, dropping back in his chair. "Sorry to say my labour has been in vain. It is useless to go further. Our man has confessed." "Confessed?" Roma clutched at the lapel of her coat. "Confessed, and denounced his accomplices." "His accomplices?" "Rossi in particular, whom he has implicated in a serious conspiracy." "What conspiracy?" "That is not yet disclosed. We shall hear all about it the day after to-morrow." "But why? With what object?" "Pardon! Apparently they have promised the clemency of the court, and hence in one sense our object is achieved. It is hardly necessary to defend the man. The authorities will see to that for us." "What will be the result?" "Probably a trial in contumacy. As soon as Parliament rises for Easter Rossi will be summoned to present himself within ten days. But you will be the first to know all about it, you know." "How so?" "The summons will be posted upon the door of the house he lived in, and on the door of any other house he is known to have frequented." "But if he never hears of it, or if he takes no heed?" "He will be tried all the same, and when he is a condemned man his sentence will be printed in black and posted up in the same places." "And then?" "Then Rossi's life in Rome will be at an end. He will be interdicted from all public offices and expelled from Parliament." "And Bruno?" "He will be a free man the following morning." Roma went home dazed and dejected. A letter was waiting for her. It was from the Director of the Roman prisons. Although the regulations stipulated that only relations should visit prisoners, except under special conditions, the Director had no objection to Bruno Rocco's former employer seeing him at the ordinary bi-monthly hour for visitors to-morrow, Sunday afternoon. At two o'clock next day Roma set off for Regina C[oe]li. XV The visiting-room of Regina C[oe]li is constructed on the principle of a rat-trap. It is an oblong room divided into three compartments longitudinally, the partition walls being composed of wire and resembling cages. The middle compartment is occupied by the armed warder in charge who walks up and down; the compartment on the prison side is divided into many narrow boxes each occupied by a prisoner, and the compartment on the world side is similarly divided into sections each occupied by a visitor. When Roma entered this room she was deafened by a roar of voices. Thirty prisoners and as many of their friends were trying to talk at the same time across the compartment in the middle, in which the warder was walking. Each batch of friends and prisoners had fifteen minutes for their interview, and everybody was shouting so as to be heard above the rest. A feeling of moral and physical nausea took possession of Roma when she was shown into this place. After some minutes of the hellish tumult she had asked to see the Director. The message was taken upstairs, and the Director came down to speak to her. "Do you expect me to speak to my friend in this place and under these conditions?" she asked. "It is the usual place, and these are the usual conditions," he answered. "If you are unable to allow me to speak to him in some other place under some other conditions, I must go to the Minister of the Interior." The Director bowed. "That will be unnecessary," he said. "There is a room reserved for special circumstances," and, calling a warder, he gave the necessary instructions. He was a good man in the toils of a vicious system. A few minutes afterwards Roma was alone in a small bare room with Bruno, except for two warders who stood in the door. She was shocked at the change in him. His cheeks, which used to be full and almost florid, were shrunken and pale; a short grizzly beard had grown over his chin, and his eyes, which had been frank and humorous, were fierce and evasive. Six weeks in prison had made a different man of him, and, like a dog which has been changed by sickness and neglect, he knew it and growled. "What do you want with me?" he said angrily, as Roma looked at him without speaking. She flushed and begged his pardon, and at that his jaw trembled and he turned his head away. "I trust you received the note I sent in to you, Bruno?" "When? What note?" "On the day after your arrest, saying your dear ones should be cared for and comforted." "And were they?" "Yes. Then you didn't receive it?" "I was under punishment from the first." "I also paid for a separate cell with food and light. Did you get that?" "No, I was nearly all the time on bread and water." His sulkiness was breaking down and he was showing some agitation. She lifted her large dark eyes on him and said in a soft voice: "Poor Bruno! No wonder they have made you say things." His jaw trembled more than ever. "No use talking of that," he said. "Mr. Rossi will be the first to feel for you." He turned his head and looked at her with a look of pity. "She doesn't know," he thought. "Why should I tell her? After all, she's in the same case as myself. What hurts me will hurt her. She has been good to me. Why should I make her suffer?" "If they've told you falsehoods, Bruno, in order to play on your jealousy and inspire revenge...." "Where's Rossi?" he said sharply. "In England." "And where's Elena?" "I don't know." He wagged his poor head with a wag of wisdom, and for a moment his clouded and stupefied brain was proud of itself. "It was wrong of Elena to go away without saying where she was going to, and Mr. Rossi is in despair about her." "You believe that?" "Indeed I do." These words staggered him, and he felt mean and small compared to this woman. "If she can believe in them why can't I?" he thought. But after a moment he smiled a pitiful smile and said largely, "You don't know, Donna Roma. But _I_ do, and they don't hoodwink me. A poor fellow here--a convict, he works on the Gazette and hears all the news--he told me everything." "What's his name?" said Roma. "Number 333, penal part. He used to occupy the next cell." "Then you never saw his face?" "No, but I heard his voice, and I could have sworn I knew it." "Was it the voice of Charles Minghelli?" "Charles Ming...." "Time's up," said one of the warders at the door. "Bruno," said Roma, rising, "I know that Charles Minghelli, who is now an agent of the police, has been in this prison in the disguise of a prisoner. I also know that after he was dismissed from the embassy in London he asked Mr. Rossi to assist him to assassinate the Prime Minister." "Right about," cried the warder, and with a bewildered expression the prisoner turned to go. Roma followed him through the open courtyard, and until he reached the iron gate he did not lift his head. Then he faced round with eyes full of tears, but full of fire as well, and raising one arm he cried in a resolute voice: "All right, sister! Leave it to me, damn me! I'll see it through." The private visiting-room had one disadvantage. Every word that passed was repeated to the Director. Later the same day the Director wrote to the Royal Commissioner: "Sorry to say the man Rocco has asked for an interview to retract his denunciation. I have refused it, and he has been violent with the chief warder. But inspired by a sentiment of justice I feel it my duty to warn you that I have been misled, that my instructions have been badly interpreted, and that I cannot hold myself responsible for the document I sent you." The Commissioner sent this letter on to the Minister of the Interior, who immediately called up the Chief of Police. "Commendatore," said the Baron, "what was the offence for which young Charles Minghelli was dismissed from the embassy in London?" "He was suspected of forgery, your Excellency." "The warrant for his arrest was drawn out but never executed?" "That is so, and we still hold it at the office...." "Commendatore!" "Your Excellency?" "Let the papers that were taken at the domiciliary visitation in the apartments of Deputy Rossi and his man Bruno be gone through again--let Minghelli go through them. You follow me?" "Perfectly, Excellency." "Let your Delegate see if there is not a letter among them from Rossi to Bruno's wife--you understand?" "I do." "If such a letter can be found let it be sent to the Under Prefect to add to his report for to-morrow's trial, and let the Public Prosecutor read it to the prisoner." "It shall be done, your Excellency." XVI At eight o'clock the next morning Roma was going into the courtyard of the Castle of St. Angelo when she met the carriage of the Prime Minister coming out. The coachman was stopped from inside, and the Baron himself alighted. "You look tired, my child," he said. "I _am_ tired," she answered. "Hardly more than a month, yet so many things have happened!" "Oh, that! That's nothing--nothing whatever." "Why should you pass through these privations? Roma, if I allowed these misfortunes to befall you it was only to let you feel what others could do for you. But I am the same as ever, and you have only to stretch out your hand and I am here to lighten your lot." "All that is over now. It is no use speaking as you spoke before. You are talking to another woman." "Strange mystery of a woman's love! That she who set out to destroy her slanderer should become his slave! If he were only worthy of it!" "He is worthy of it." "If you should hear that he is not worthy--that he has even been untrue to you?" "I should think it is a falsehood, a contemptible falsehood." "But if you had proof, substantial proof, the proof of his own pen?" "Good-morning! I must go." "My child, what have I always told you? You will give the man up at last and carry out your first intention." With a deep bow and a scarcely perceptible smile the Baron turned to the open door of his carriage. Roma flushed up angrily and went on, but the poisoned arrow had gone home. The military tribunal had begun its session. A ticket which Roma presented at the door admitted her to the well of the court where the advocates were sitting. The advocate Fuselli made a place for her by his side. It was a quiet moment and her entrance attracted attention. The judges in their red armchairs at the green-covered horse-shoe table looked up from their portfolios, and there was some whispering beyond the wooden bar where the public were huddled together. One other face had followed her, but at first she dared not look at that. It was the face of the prisoner in his prison clothes sitting between two Carabineers. The secretary read the indictment. Bruno was charged not only with participation in the riot of the 1st of February, but also with being a promoter of associations designed to change violently the constitution of the state. It was a long document, and the secretary read it slowly and not very distinctly. When the indictment came to an end the Public Prosecutor rose to expound the accusation, and to mention the clauses of the Code under which the prisoner's crime had to be considered. He was a young captain of cavalry, with restless eyes and a twirled-up moustache. His long cloak hung over his chair, his light gloves lay on the table by his side, and his sword clanked as he made graceful gestures. He was an elegant speaker, much preoccupied about beautiful phrases, and obviously anxious to conciliate the judges. "Illustrious gentlemen of the tribunal," he began, and then went on with a compliment to the King, a flourish to the name of the Prime Minister, a word of praise to the army, and finally a scathing satire on the subversive schemes which it was desired to set up in place of existing institutions. The most crushing denunciation of the delirious idea which had led to the unhappy insurrection was the crude explanation of its aims. A universal republic founded on the principles enunciated in the Lord's Prayer! Thrones, armies, navies, frontiers, national barriers, all to be abolished! So simple! So easy! So childlike! But alas, so absurd! So entirely oblivious of the great principles of political economy and international law, and of impulses and instincts profoundly sculptured in the heart of man! After various little sallies which made his fellow-officers laugh and the judges smile, the showy person wiped his big moustache with a silk handkerchief, and came to Bruno. This unhappy man was not one of the greater delinquents who, by their intelligence, had urged on the ignorant crowd. He was merely a silly and perhaps drunken person, who if taken away from the wine-shop and put into uniform would make a valiant soldier. The creature was one of the human dogs of our curious species. His political faith was inscribed with one word only--Rossi. He would not ask for severe punishment on such a deluded being, but he would request the court to consider the case as a means of obtaining proof against the dark if foolish minds (fit subjects for Lombroso) which are always putting the people into opposition with their King, their constitution, and the great heads of government. The sword clanked again as the young soldier sat down. Then for the first time Roma looked over at Bruno. His big rugged face was twisted into an expression of contempt, and somehow the "human dog of our curious species," sitting in his prison clothes between the soldiers, made the elegant officer look like a pet pug. "Bruno Rocco, stand up," said the president. "You are a Roman, aren't you?" "Yes, I am--I'm a Roman of Rome," said Bruno. The witnesses were called. First a Carabineer to prove Bruno's violence. Then another Carabineer, and another, and another, with the same object. After each of the Carabineers had given his evidence the president asked the prisoner if he had any questions to ask the witnesses. "None whatever. What they say is true. I admit it," he said. At last he grew impatient and cried out, "I admit it, I tell you. What's the good of going on?" The next witness was the Chief of Police. Commendatore Angelelli was called to prove that the cause of the revolt was not the dearness of bread but the formation of subversive associations, of which the "Republic of Man" was undoubtedly the strongest and most virulent. The prisoner, however, was not one of the directing set, and the police knew him only as a sort of watch-dog for the Honourable Rossi. "The man's a fool. Why don't you go on with the trial?" cried Bruno. "Silence," cried the usher of the court, but the prisoner only laughed out loud. Roma looked at Bruno again. There was something about the man which she had never seen before, something more than the mere spirit of defiance, something terrible and tremendous. "Francesca Maria Mariotti," cried the usher, and the old deaf mother of Bruno's wife was brought into court. She wore a coloured handkerchief on her head as usual, and two shawls over her shoulders. Being a relative of the prisoner, she was not sworn. "Your name and your father's name?" said the president. "Francesca Maria Mariotti," she answered. "I said your father's name." "Seventy-five, your Excellency." "I asked you for your father's name." "None at all, your Excellency." A Carabineer explained that the woman was nearly stone deaf, whereupon the president, who was irritated by the laughter his questions had provoked, ordered the woman to be removed. "Tommaso Mariotti," said the president, after the preliminary interrogations, "you are porter at the Piazza Navona, and will be able to say if meetings of political associations were held there, if the prisoner took part in them, and who were the organising authorities. Now answer me, were meetings ever held in your house?" The old man turned his pork-pie hat in his hand, and made no answer. "Answer me. We cannot sit here all day doing nothing." "It's the Eternal City, Excellency--we can take our time," said the old man. "Answer the president instantly," said the usher. "Don't you know he can punish you if you don't?" At that the Garibaldian's eyes became moist, and he looked at the judges. "Generals," he said, "I am only an old man, not much good to anybody, but I was a soldier myself once. I was one of the 'Thousand,' the 'Brave Thousand' they called us, and I shed my blood for my country. Now I am more than threescore years and ten, and the rest of my days are numbered. Do you want me for the sake of what is left of them to betray my comrades?" "Next witness," said the president, and at the same moment a thick, half-stifled voice came from the bench of the accused. "Why the ---- don't you go on with the trial?" "Prisoner," said the president, "if you continue to make these interruptions I shall stop the trial and order you to be flogged." Bruno answered with a peal of laughter. The president--he was a bald-headed man with the heavy jaw of a bloodhound--looked at him attentively for a moment, and then said to the men below: "Go on." The next witness was the Director of Regina C[oe]li. He deposed that the prisoner had made a statement to him which he had taken down in writing. This statement amounted to a denunciation of the Deputy David Rossi as the real author of the crime of which he with others was charged. After the denunciation had been read the president asked the prisoner if he had any questions to put to the witness, and thereupon Bruno cried in a loud voice: "Of course I have. It is exactly what I've been waiting for." He had risen to his feet, kicked over a chair which stood in front of him, and folded his arms across his breast. "Ask him," said Bruno, "if he sent for me late at night and promised my pardon if I would denounce David Rossi." "It was not so," said the Director. "All I did was to advise him not to observe a useless silence which could only condemn him to further imprisonment if by speaking the truth he could save himself and serve the interests of justice." "Ask him," said Bruno, "if the denunciation he speaks of was not dictated by himself." "The prisoner," said the Director, "made the denunciation voluntarily, and I rose from my bed to receive it at his urgent request." "Ask him if I said one word to denounce David Rossi." "The prisoner had made statements to a fellow-prisoner, and these were embodied in the document he signed." The advocate Fuselli interposed. "Then the Court is to understand that the Director who dictated this denunciation knew nothing from the prisoner himself?" The Director hesitated, stammered, and finally admitted that it was so. "I was inspired by a sentiment of justice," he said. "I acted from duty." "This man fed me on bread and water," cried Bruno. "He put me in the punishment cells and tortured me in the strait-waistcoat with pains and sufferings like Jesus Christ's, and when he had reduced my body and destroyed my soul he dictated a denunciation of my dearest friend and my unconscious fingers signed it." "Don't shout so loud," said the president. "I'll shout as loud as I like," said Bruno, and everybody turned to look at him. It was useless to protest. Something seemed to say that no power on earth could touch a man in a mood like that. The next witness was the chief warder. He deposed that he was present at the denunciation, that it was made voluntarily, and that no pressure whatever was put upon the prisoner. "Ask him," cried Bruno, "if on Sunday afternoon, when I went into his cabinet to withdraw the denunciation, he refused to let me." "It is not true," said the witness. "You liar," cried Bruno, "you know it is true; and when I told you that you were making me drag an innocent man to the galleys I struck you, and the mark of my fist is on your forehead still. There it is, as red as a Cardinal, while the rest of your face is as white as a Pope." The president no longer tried to restrain Bruno. There was something in the man's face that was beyond reproof. It was the outraged spirit of Justice. The chief warder went on to say that at various times he had received reports that Rocco was communicating important facts to a fellow-prisoner. "Where is this fellow-prisoner? Is he at the disposition of the court?" said the president. "I'm afraid he has since been set at liberty," said the witness, whereupon Bruno laughed uproariously, and pointing to some one in the well, he shouted: "There he is--there! The dandy in cuffs and collar. His name is Minghelli." "Call him," said the president, and Minghelli was sworn and examined. "Until recently you were a prisoner in Regina C[oe]li, and have just been pardoned for public services?" "That is true, your Excellency." "It's a lie," cried Bruno. Minghelli leaned on the witness's chair, caressed his small moustache, and told his story. He had occupied the next cell to the prisoner, and talked with him in the usual language of prisoners. The prisoner had spoken of a certain great man and then of a certain great act, and that the great man had gone to England to prepare for it. He understood the great man to be the Deputy Rossi, and the great act to be the overthrow of the constitution and the assassination of the King. "You son of a priest," cried Bruno, "you lie!" "Bruno Rocco," said the president, "do not agitate yourself. You are under the protection of the law. Be calm and tell us your own story." XVII "Your Excellency," said Bruno, "this man is a witness by profession, and he was put into the next cell to torture me and make me denounce my friends. I didn't see his face, and I didn't know who he was until afterwards, and so he tore me to pieces. He said he was a proof-reader on the Official Gazette and heard everything. When my heart was bleeding for the death of my poor little boy--only seven years of age, such a curly-headed little fellow, like a sunbeam in a fog, killed in the riot, your Excellency--he poisoned my mind about my wife, and said she had run away with Rossi. It was a lie, but I was brought down by flogging and bread and water and I believed it, because I was mad and my soul was exhausted and dead. But when I found out who he was I tried to take back my denunciation, and they wouldn't let me. Your Excellency, I tell you the truth. Everybody should tell the truth here. I alone am guilty, and if I have accused anybody else I ask pardon of God. As for this man, he is an assassin and I can prove it. He used to be at the embassy in London, and when he was sacked he came to Mr. Rossi and proposed to assassinate the Prime Minister. Mr. Rossi flung him out of the house, and that was the beginning of everything." "This is not true," said Minghelli, red as the gills of a turkey. "Isn't it? Give me the cross, and let me swear the man a liar," cried Bruno. Roma was breathing hard and rising to her feet, but the advocate Fuselli restrained her and rose himself. In six sentences he summarised the treatment of Bruno in prison, and denounced it as worthy of the cruellest epochs of tyrannical domination, in which men otherwise honourable could become demons in order to save the dynasty and the institutions and to make their own careers. "Mr. President," he cried, "I call on you in the name of humanity to say that justice in Italy has nothing to do with a barbarous system which aims at obtaining denunciations through jealousy and justice through revenge." The president was deeply moved. "I have made a solemn promise under the shadow of that venerable image"--he pointed to the effigy above him--"to administer justice in this case, and to the last I will do my duty." The Public Prosecutor rose again and obtained permission to interrogate the prisoner. "You say the witness Minghelli told you that your wife had fled with the Honourable Rossi?" "He did, and it was a lie, like all the rest of it." "How do you know it was a lie?" Bruno made no answer, and the young officer took up a letter from his portfolio. "Do you know the Honourable Rossi's handwriting?" "Do I know my own ugly fist?" "Is that the Honourable Rossi's writing?" said the officer, handing the envelope to the usher to be shown to Bruno. "It is," said Bruno. "Sure of it?" "Sure." "You see it is a letter addressed to your wife?" "I see. But you needn't go on washing the donkey's head, Mister--I know what you are getting at." "You must not speak like that to him, Rocco," said the president. "Remember, he is the honourable representative of the law." "Mustn't I, Excellency? Then tell his honourableness that David Rossi and my wife are like brother and sister, and anybody who makes evil of that isn't stuff to take with a pair of tongs." Saying this, Bruno flung the letter back on to the table. "Don't you want to read it?" "Not I! It's somebody else's correspondence, and I'm not an honourable representative of the law." "Then permit me to read it to you," said the Public Prosecutor, and taking the letter out of the envelope he began in a loud voice: "'Dearest Elena....'" "That's nothing," Bruno interrupted. "They're like brother and sister, I tell you." The Public Prosecutor went on reading: "'I continue to be overwhelmed with grief for the death of our poor little Joseph.'" "That's right! That's David Rossi. He loved the boy the same as if he had been his own son. Go on." "'... Our child--your child--my child, Elena.'" "Nothing wrong there. Don't try to make mischief of that," cried Bruno. "'But now that the boy is gone, and Bruno is in prison, perhaps for years, the obstacles must be removed which have hitherto prevented you from joining your life to mine and living for me, as I have always lived for you. Come to me then, my dear one, my beloved....'" Here Bruno, who had been stepping forward at every word, snatched the letter out of the Public Prosecutor's hand. "Stop that! Don't go reading out of the back of your head," he cried. No one protested, everybody felt that whatever he did this injured man must be left alone. Roma felt a roaring in her ears, and for some minutes she could scarcely command herself. In a vague way she was conscious of the same struggle in her own heart as was going on in the heart of Bruno. This, then, was what the Baron referred to when he spoke of Rossi being untrue to her, and of the proof of his disloyalty in his own handwriting. Bruno, who was running his eyes over the letter, read parts of it aloud in a low husky voice: "'And now that the boy is gone and Bruno is in prison ... perhaps for years ... the obstacles must be removed....'" He stopped, looked up, and stared about him. His face had undergone an awful change. Then he returned to the letter, and in jerky sentences he read again: "'Come to me then ... my dear one ... my beloved....'" Until that moment an evil spirit in Roma had been saying to her, in spite of herself: "Can it be possible that while you have been going through all those privations for his sake he has been consoling himself with another woman?" Impossible! The letter was a manifest imposture. She wouldn't believe a word of it. But Bruno was still in the toils of his temptation. "Look here," he said, lifting a pitiful face. "What with the bread and water and the lashes I don't know that my head isn't light, and I'm fancying I see things...." The paper of the letter was crackling in his hand, and his husky voice was breaking. Save for these sounds and the tramp--tramp--tramp of the soldiers drilling outside, there was a dead silence in the court. "You are not fancying at all, Rocco," said the Public Prosecutor. "We are all sorry for you, and I am sure the illustrious gentlemen of the tribunal pity you. Your comrade, your master, the man you have followed and trusted, is false to you. He is a traitor to his friend, his country, and his King. The denunciation you made in prison is true in substance and in fact. I advise you to adhere to it, and to cast yourself on the clemency of the court." "Here--you--shut up your head and let a man think," said Bruno. Roma tried to rise. She could not. Then she tried to cry out something, but her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth. Would Bruno break down at the last moment? Bruno, whose face was convulsed with agony, began to laugh in a delirious way. "So my friend is false to me, is he? Very well, I'll be revenged." He reeled a little and the letter dropped from his hand, floated a moment in the air, and fell to the ground a pace or two farther on. "Yes, by God, I'll be revenged," he cried, and he laughed again. He stopped, lifted one leg, seemed to pull at his boot, and again stood erect. "I always knew the hour would come when I should find myself in a tight place, and I've always kept something about me to help me to get out of it. Here it is now." In an instant, before any one could be aware of what he was doing, he had uncorked a small bottle which he held in his hand and swallowed the contents. "Long live David Rossi!" he cried, and he flung the empty bottle over his head. Everybody was on his feet in a moment. It was too late. In thirty seconds the poison had begun its work, and Bruno was reeling in the arms of the Carabineers. Somebody called for a doctor. Somebody else called for a priest. "That's all right," said Bruno. "God is a good old saint. He'll look after a poor devil like me." Then he began to sing:-- "The tombs are uncovered, The dead arise, The martyrs are rising Before our eyes." "Long live David Rossi!" he cried again, and at the next moment he was being carried out of court. In the tumult that ensued everybody was standing in the well of the judges' horse-shoe table. The deaf old woman, with her shawls slipping off her shoulders, was wringing her hands and crying. "God will think of this," she said. The Garibaldian was gazing vacantly out of his rheumy eyes and saying nothing. Roma, who had recovered control of herself, was looking at the letter, which she had picked up from the floor. [Illustration: "GOD WILL LOOK AFTER A POOR DEVIL LIKE ME."] "Mr. President," she cried over the heads of the others, "this letter is not in Mr. Rossi's handwriting. It is a forgery. I am ready to prove it." At that moment one of the Carabineers came back to tell the judges that all was over. "Gone!" said one after another, more often with a motion of the mouth than with the voice. The president was deeply agitated. "This court stands adjourned," he said, "but I take the Almighty to witness that I intend to ascertain all responsibility in this case and to bring it home to the guilty ones, whosoever and whatsoever they may be." XVIII "MY DEAR DAVID ROSSI,--You will know all about it before this letter reaches you. It is one of those scandals of the law that are telegraphed to every part of the civilised world. Poor Bruno! Yet no, not poor--great, glorious, heroic Bruno! He ended like an old Roman, and killed himself rather than betray his friend. When they played upon his jealousy, and tempted him by a forged letter, he cried, 'Long live David Rossi!' and died. Oh, it was wonderful. The memory of that moment will be with me always like the protecting and strengthening hand of God. I never knew until to-day what human nature is capable of. It is divine. "But how mean and little I feel when I think of all I went through in the court this morning! I was really undergoing the same tortures as Bruno, the same doubt and the same agony. And even when I saw through the whole miserable machination of lying and duplicity I was actually in terror for Bruno lest he should betray you in the end. Betray you! His voice when he uttered that last cry rings in my ears still. It was a voice of triumph--triumph over deception, over temptation, over jealousy, and over self. "Don't think, David Rossi, that Bruno died of a broken heart, and don't think he went out of the world believing that you were false. I feel sure he came to that court with the full intention of doing what he did. All through the trial there was something in his bearing which left the impression of a purpose unrevealed. Everybody felt it, and even the judges ceased to protest against his outbursts. The poor prisoner in convict clothes, with dishevelled hair and bare neck, made every one else look paltry and small. Behind him was something mightier than himself. It was Death. Then remember his last cry, and ask yourself what he meant by it. He meant loyalty, love, faith, fidelity. He intended to say, 'You've beaten me, but no matter; I believe in him, and follow him to the last.' "As you see, I am here in your own quarters, but I keep in touch with 'Sister Angelica,' and still have no answer to my letter. I invent all manner of excuses to account for your silence. You are busy, you are on a journey, you are waiting for the right moment to reply to me at length. If I could only continue to think so, how happy I should be! But I cannot deceive myself any longer. "It is perhaps natural that you should find it hard to forgive me, but you might at least write and put me out of suspense. I think you would do so if you knew how much I suffer. Your great soul cannot intend to torture me. To-night the burden of things is almost more than I can bear, and I am nearly heartbroken. It is my dark hour, dearest, and if you had to say you could never forgive me, I think I could easier reconcile myself to that. I have been so happy since I began to love you; I shall always love you even if I have to lose you, and I shall never, never be sorry for anything that has occurred. "Not receiving any new letters from you, I am going back on the old ones, and there is a letter of only two months ago in which you speak of just such a case as mine. May I quote what you say? "'Yet even if she were not so (i.e. worthy of your love and friendship), even if there were, as you say, a fault in her, who am I that I should judge her harshly? ... I reject the monstrous theory that while a man may redeem the past a woman never can.... And if she has sinned as I have sinned, and suffered as I have suffered, I will pray for strength to say, 'Because I love her we are one, and we stand or fall together.' "It is so beautiful that I am even happy while my pen copies the sweet, sweet words, and I feel as I did when the old priest spoke so tenderly on the day I confessed, telling me I had committed no sin and had nothing to repent of. Have I never told you about that? My confessor was a Capuchin, and perhaps I should have waited for his advice before going farther. He was to consult his General or his Bishop or some one, and to send for me again. "But all that is over now, and everything depends upon you. In any case, be sure of one thing, whatever happens. Bruno has taught me a great lesson, and there is not anything your enemies can do to me that will touch me now. They have tried me already with humiliation, with poverty, with jealousy, and even with the shadow of shame itself. There is nothing left but death. _And death itself shall find me faithful to the last._ Good-bye! Your poor unforgiven girl, ROMA." The morning after writing this letter Roma received a visit from one of the Noble Guard. It was the Count de Raymond. "I am sent by the Holy Father," he said, "to say that he wishes to see you." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PART SEVEN--THE POPE I On the morning appointed for the visit to the Vatican, Roma dressed in the black gown and veil prescribed by etiquette for ladies going to an audience with the Pope. The young Noble Guard in civilian clothes was waiting for her in the sitting-room. When she came out of the bedroom he was standing with a solemn face before the bust of David Rossi, which she had lately cast afresh and was beginning to point in marble. "This is wonderful," he said. "Perfectly wonderful! A most astonishing study." Roma smiled and bowed to him. "Christ of course, and such reality, such feeling, such love! But shall I tell you what surprises me most of all?" "What?" "What surprises me most is the extraordinary resemblance between your Christ and the Pope." "Really?" "Indeed yes! Didn't you know it? No? It is almost incredible. Younger certainly, but the same features, the same expression, the same tenderness, the same strength! Even the same vertical lines over the nose which make the shako dither on one's head when something goes wrong and His Holiness is indignant." Roma's smile was dying off her face like the sun off a field of corn, and she was looking sideways out of the window. "Has the Pope any relations?" she asked. "None whatever, not a soul. The only son of an only son. You must have been thinking of the Holy Father himself, and asking yourself what he was like thirty years ago. Come now, confess it!" Roma laughed. The soldier laughed. "Shall we go?" she said. A carriage was waiting for them, and they drove by the Tor di Nona, a narrow lane which skirts the banks of the Tiber, across the bridge of St. Angelo, and up the Borgo. Roma was nervous and preoccupied. Why had she been sent for? What could the Pope have to say to her? "Isn't it unusual," she asked, "for the Pope to send for any one--especially a woman, and a non-Catholic?" "Most unusual. But perhaps Father Pifferi...." "Father Pifferi?" "He is the Holy Father's confessor." "Is he a Capuchin?" "Yes. The General at San Lorenzo." "Ah, now I understand," said Roma. Light had dawned on her and her spirits began to rise. "The Pope is very tender and fatherly, isn't he?" "Fatherly? He is a saint on earth, that's what he is! Impetuous, perhaps, but so sweet and generous and forgiving. Makes you shake in your shoes if you've done anything amiss, but when all is over and he puts his arm on your shoulder and tells you to think no more about it, you're ready to die for him even at the stake." Roma's spirits were rising every minute, and her nervousness was fading away. Since things had fallen out so, she could take advantage of her opportunities. She would tell the Pope everything, and he would advise with her and counsel her. She would speak about David Rossi, and the Pope would tell her what to do. The great clock of the Basilica was striking ten with a solemn boom as the carriage rattled over the stones of the Piazza of St. Peter's--wet with the play of the fountains and bright with the rainbows made by the sun. They alighted at the bronze gate, ascended the grand staircase, crossed a courtyard, passed through many gorgeous chambers, and arrived finally at an apartment hung with tapestries and occupied by a Noble Guard, who wore a brass helmet and held a drawn sword. The next room was the throne room, and beyond it were the Pope's private apartments. A chaplain of the Pope's household came to say that by request of Father Pifferi the lady was to step into an anteroom; and Roma followed him into a small adjoining chamber, carpeted with cocoanut matting and furnished with a marble-topped table and two wooden chest-seats, bearing the papal arms. The little room opened on to a corridor overlooking a courtyard, a secret way to the Pope's private rooms, and it had a door to the throne room also. "The Father will be here presently," said the chaplain, "and His Holiness will not be long." Roma, who was feeling some natural tremors, tried to reassure herself by asking questions about the Pope. The chaplain's face began to gleam. He was a little man, with round red cheeks and pale grey eyes, and the usual tone of his voice was a hushed and reverent whisper. "Faint? Yes, ladies do faint sometimes--often, I may say--and they nearly always cry. But the Holy Father is so gentle, so sweet." The door to the throne room opened and there was a gleam of violet and an indistinct buzz of voices. The chaplain disappeared, and at the next moment a man in the dress of a waiter came from the corridor carrying a silver soup dish. "You're the lady the Holy Father sent for?" Roma smiled and assented. "I'm Cortis--Gaetano Cortis--the Pope's valet, you know--and of course I hear everything." Roma smiled again and bowed. "I bring the Holy Father a plate of soup every morning at ten, but I'm afraid it is going to get cold this morning." "Will he be angry?" "Angry? He's an angel, and couldn't be angry with any one." "He must indeed be good; everybody says so." "He is perfect. That's about the size of it. None of your locking up his bedroom when he goes into the garden and putting the key into the pocket of his cassock, same as in the old Pope's days. I go in whenever I like, and he lets me take whatever I please. At Christmas some rich Americans wanted a skull-cap to save a dying man, and I got it for the asking. Now an old English lady wants a stocking to cure her rheumatism, and I'll get that too. I've saved a little hair from the last cutting, and if you hear of anybody...." The valet's story of his perquisites was interrupted by the opening of the door of the throne room and the entrance of a friar in a brown habit. It was Father Pifferi. "Don't rise, my daughter," he said, and closing the door behind the valet, he gathered up the skirts of his habit and sat down on the chest-seat in front of her. "When you came to me with your confidence, my child, and I found it difficult to advise with you for your peace of mind, I told you I wished to take your case to a wiser head than mine. I took it to the Pope himself. He was touched by your story, and asked to see you for himself." "But, Father...." "Don't be afraid, my daughter. Pius the Tenth as a Pope may be lofty to sternness, but as a man he is humble and simple and kind. Forget that he is a sovereign and a pontiff, and think of him as a tender and loving friend. Tell him everything. Hold nothing back. And if you must needs reveal the confidences of others, remember that he is the Vicar of Him who keeps all our secrets." "But, Father...." "Yes." "He is so high, so holy, so far above the world and its temptations...." "Don't say that, my daughter. The Holy Father is a man like other men. Shall I tell you something of his life? The world knows it only by hearsay and report. You shall hear the truth, and when you have heard it you will go to him as a child goes to its father, and no longer be afraid." II "Thirty-five years ago," said Father Pifferi, "the Holy Father had not even dreamt of being Pope. He was the only child of a Roman banker, living in a palace on the opposite side of the piazza. The old Baron had visions, indeed, of making his son a great churchman by the power of wealth, but these were vain and foolish, and the young man did not share them. His own aims were simple but worldly. He desired to be a soldier, and to compromise with his father's disappointed ambitions he asked for a commission in the Pope's Noble Guard." The old friar put his hands into the vertical pockets in the breast of his habit, and looked up at the ceiling as he went on speaking. "All this is no secret, but what follows is less known. The soldier, who had the charm of an engaging personality, led the life of an ordinary young Roman of his day, frequenting cafés, concerts, theatres, and balls. In this character he met a poor woman of the people, and came to love her. She was a good girl, with soft and gentle manners, but a heart of gold and a soul of fire. He was a good man and he meant to marry her. He did marry her. He married her according to the rites of the Church, which are all that religion requires and God calls for." Roma was leaning forward on her seat and breathing between tightly-closed lips. "Unhappily, then as now, a godless legislature had separated a religious from a civil marriage, and the one without the other was useless. The old Baron heard of what had happened and tried to defeat it. A cardinal had just been created in Australia, and an officer of the Noble Guard had to be sent with the Ablegate to carry the biglietto and the skull-cap. At the request of the Baron his son was appointed to that mission and despatched in haste." Roma could scarcely control herself. "The young husband being gone, the father set himself to deal with the wife. He had not yet relinquished his hopes of seeing his son a churchman, and marriage was a fatal impediment. A rich man may have many instruments, and the Baron was able to use some that were evil. He played upon the conscience of the girl, who was pure and virtuous; told her she was not legally married, and that the laws of her country thought ill of her. Finally, he appealed to her love for her husband, and showed her that she was standing in his way. He was not a bad man, but he loved his son beyond truth and to the perversion of honour, and was ready to sacrifice the woman who stood between them. She allowed herself to be sacrificed. She wiped herself out that she might not be an obstacle to her husband. She drowned herself in the Tiber." Roma could not control herself any longer, and made a half-stifled exclamation. "Then the young husband returned. He had been travelling constantly, and no letters from his wife had reached him. But one letter was waiting for him at Rome, and it told him what she had done. It was then all over; there was no help for it, and he was overwhelmed with horror. He could not blame the poor dead girl, for all she had done had been done in love; he could not blame himself, for he had meant no wrong in making the religious marriage, and had hastened home to complete the civil one; and he could not reproach his father, for if the Baron's conduct had led to fearful consequences, it had been prompted by affection for himself. But the hand of God seemed to be over him, and his soul was shaken to its foundations. From that time forward he renounced society and all worldly pleasures. For eight days he went into retreat and prayed fervently. On the ninth day he joined a religious house, the Novitiate of the Capuchins at San Lorenzo. The young soldier, so gay, so handsome, so fond of social admiration, became a friar." The old Capuchin looked tenderly at Roma, whose wet eyes and burning cheeks seemed to tell of sympathy with his story. "In those days, my daughter, the nuns of Thecla served the Foundling of Santo Spirito." Roma began to look frightened and to feel faint. "It was usual for a member of our house to live in the hospital in order to baptize the children and to confess the sick and the dying. We took it in turns to do so, staying one year, two years, three years, and then going back to the monastery. I was myself at Santo Spirito for this purpose at the time I speak about, and it was not until three or four years afterwards that I became Superior of our House and returned to San Lorenzo. There I found the young Noble Guard, and, wisely or unwisely, I told him a new phase of his own story." "There was a child?" said Roma, in a strange voice. The Capuchin bent his head. "That much he knew already by the letter his wife had left for him. She had intended that the child should die when she died, and he supposed that it had been so. But pity for the little one must have overtaken the poor mother at the last moment. She had put the babe in the rota of the hospital, and thus saved the child's life before carrying out her purpose upon her own." The Capuchin crossed his knees, and one of his bare feet in its sandal showed from under the edge of his habit. "We had baptized the boy by a name which the mother had written on a paper attached to his wrist, and the identity of that name with the name of the Noble Guard led to my revelation. Nature is a mighty thing, and on hearing what I told him the young brother became restless and unhappy. The instincts of the man began to fight with the feelings of the religious, and at last he left the friary in order to fulfil the duty which he thought he owed to his child." "He did not find him?" "He was too late. According to custom, the boy had been put out to nurse on the Campagna, by means of the little dower that was all his inheritance from the State. His foster parents passed him over to other hands, and thus by the abuse of a good practice the child was already lost." Roma tried to speak, but she could not utter a word. "What happened then is a long story. The old Baron was now dead and the young friar had inherited his princely fortune. Dispensations got over canonical difficulties, and in due course he took holy orders. His first work was to establish in Rome an asylum for friendless orphans. He went out into the streets to look for them, and brought them in with his own hands. His fame for charity grew rapidly, and he knew well what he was doing. He was looking for the little fatherless one who owned his own blood and bore his name." Roma was now sitting with drooping head, and her tears were falling on her hands. "Five years passed, and at length he came upon a trace of the boy and heard that he had been sent to England. The unhappy father obtained permission and removed to London. There he set up the same work as before and spent in the same way his great wealth. He passed five years more in a fruitless search, looking for his lost one day and night, winter and summer, in cold and heat, among the little foreign boys who play organs and accordions in the streets. Then he gave up hope and returned to Rome. His head was white and his heart was humble, but in spite of himself he rose from dignity to dignity until at length the old Baron's perverted ambitions were fulfilled. For his great and abounding charity, and still greater piety, he was promoted to be Bishop; seven years afterwards he was created Cardinal; and now he is Pope Pius the Tenth, the saint, the saviour of his people, once the storm-tossed, sorrowing, stricken man...." "David Leone?" The Capuchin bowed. "That was the Holy Father's name. He committed no sin and has nothing to reproach himself with, but nevertheless he has known what it is to fall and to rise again, to suffer and be strong. Tell me, my daughter, is there anything you would be afraid to confide to him?" "Nothing! Nothing whatever!" said Roma, with tears choking her voice and streaming down her cheeks. The door to the throne room opened again and a line of Cardinals came out and passed down the secret corridor, talking together as they walked, old men in violet, most of them very feeble and looking very tired. At the next moment the chaplain came in for Roma. "The Holy Father will be ready to receive you presently," he said in a hushed and reverent whisper, and she rose to follow him. A moment later Roma was at the door of the grand throne room. A chamberlain took charge of her there, and passed her to a secret chamberlain at the door of an anteroom adjoining. This secret chamberlain handed her on to a Monsignor in a violet cassock, and the Monsignor accompanied her to the door of the room in which the Pope was sitting. "As you approach," he said in a low tone, "you will make three genuflexions--one at the door, another midway across the floor, the third at the Holy Father's feet. You feel well?" "Yes," she faltered. The door was opened, the Monsignor stepped one pace into the room, and then knelt and said-- "Donna Roma Volonna, your Holiness." Roma was on her knees at the threshold; a soft, full, kindly voice, which she could have believed she had heard before, called on her to approach; she rose and stepped forward, the Monsignor stepped back, and the door behind her was closed. She was in the Presence. III The Pope, dressed wholly in white, was seated in a simple chair by a little table in a homely room, surrounded by bookcases and some busts of former pontiffs. There were little domesticities of intimate life about him, an empty soup-dish, a cruet-stand, a plate and a spoon. He had a face of great sweetness and spirituality, and as Roma approached he bent his head and smiled a fatherly smile. She knelt and kissed his ring, and continued to kneel by his chair, putting one hand on the arm. He placed his own mittened hand over hers and patted it tenderly, while he looked into her face. The little nervous perturbation with which Roma had entered the room began to leave her, and in the awful wearer of the threefold crown she saw nothing but a simple, loving human being. A feminine sense crept over her, a sense of nursing, almost of motherhood, and at that first moment she felt as if she wanted to do something for the gentle old man. Then he began to speak. His voice had that tone which comes to the voice of a man who has the sense of sex strong in him, when a woman is with him and his accents soften perceptibly. "My daughter," he said, "Father Pifferi has spoken about you, and by your permission, as I understand it, he has repeated the story you told him. You have suffered, and you have my sympathy. And though you are not among the number of my children, I sent for you, that, as an old man to a young woman, by God's grace I might strengthen you and support you." She kissed his ring again and continued to kneel by the arm of his chair. "Long ago, my child, I knew one who was in something like the same position, and perhaps it is the memory of what befell that poor soul which impels me to speak to you.... But she is dead, her story is dead too; let time and nature cover them." His voice had a slight tremor. She looked up. There was a hush, a momentary thrill. Then he smiled again and patted her hand once more. "You must not let the world weaken you, my child, or cause you to doubt the validity of your marriage. Whether it is a good marriage, in effect as well as intention (one of you being still unbaptized), it is for the Church, not the world, to decide." Again Roma kissed the ring of the Pope, and again he patted the hand that lay under his. "Nevertheless, there is something I wish you to do, my daughter," he said, in the same low tones. "I wish you to tell your husband." "Holy Father," said Roma, "I have already told him. I had done so before I spoke to Father Pifferi, but only under the disguise of another woman's story." "And what did your husband say?" "He said what your Holiness says. He was very charitable and noble; so I took heart and told him everything." "And what did he say then?" A cloud crossed her face. "Holy Father, he has not yet said anything." "Not anything?" "He is away; he has not replied to my letter." "Has there been time?" "More than time, your Holiness, but still I hear nothing." "And what is your conclusion?" "That my letter has awakened some pity, but now that he knows _I_ am the wife I spoke about and _he_ is the husband intended, he cannot forgive me as he said the husband would forgive, and his generous soul is in distress." "My daughter, could you wish me to speak to him?" The cloud fled from her face. "It is more than I deserve, far more, but if the Holy Father would do that...." "Then I must know the names--you must tell me everything." "Yes, yes!" "Who is your father, my child?" "My father died in banishment. He was a Liberal--he was Prince Prospero Volonna." "As I thought. Who was the other man?" "He was a distant kinsman of my father's, and I have lately discovered that he was the principal instrument in my father's deportation. He was my guardian, a Minister and a great man in Italy. It is the Baron Bonelli, your Holiness." "Just so, just so!" said the Pope, tapping his foot in obvious heat. "But go on, my child. Who is your husband?" "My husband is a different kind of man altogether." "Ah!" "He has done everything for me, Holy Father--everything. Heaven knows what I should have been now without him." "God bless him! God bless both of you!" "I came to know him by the strangest accident. He is a Liberal too, and a Deputy, and thinking of the corruptions of the Government, he pointed to me as the mistress of the Minister. It was not true, but I was degraded, and ... and I set out to destroy him." "A terrible vengeance, my child. Only the Minister could have thought of it." "Then I found that my enemy was one of my father's friends, and a true and noble man. Holy Father, I had begun in hate, but I could not hate him. The darkness faded away from my soul, and something bright and beautiful came in its place. I loved him, and he loved me. With all our hearts we loved each other." "And then?" "Then _he_ came back to me. I knew all the secrets I had set out to learn, but I could not give them up, and when I refused he threatened me." "And what did you do?" "I married my husband and withstood every temptation. It wasn't so very hard, for I cared nothing for wealth and luxury now. I only wanted to be good. God Himself should see how good I could be." The Pope's eyes were moist. He was patting the young woman's trembling hand. "My blessing rest on you, my daughter, and may the man you have married be worthy of your love and trust." "Indeed, indeed he is," said Roma. "He was your father's friend, you tell me?" "Yes, your Holiness, and although we met again so recently, I had known him in England when I was a child." "A Liberal, you say?" "Yes, your Holiness." "The enmity of the Minister was the fruit of political warfare?" "Nothing but that at first, though now...." "I see, I see. And the secrets you speak of are only...." "Only the doings of twenty years ago, which are dead and done with." "Then your husband is older than you are?" The young woman broke into a sunny smile, which set the Pope smiling. "Only ten years older, your Holiness. He is thirty-four." "Where does he come from, and what was his father?" "He was born in Rome, but he does not know who his father was." "What is he like to look upon?" "He is like ... I have never seen any one so like ... will your Holiness forgive me?" The colour had mounted to her eyes, her two rows of pearly teeth seemed to be smiling, and the sunny old face of the Pope was smiling too. "Say what you please, my daughter." "I have never seen any one so like the Holy Father," she said softly. Her head was held down and there was a little nervous tremor at her heart. The Pope patted her hand affectionately. "Have I asked you his name, my child?" "His name is David Rossi." The Pope rose suddenly from his seat, and for the first time his face looked dark and troubled. "David Rossi?" he repeated in a husky voice. Roma began to tremble. "Yes," she faltered. "David Rossi, the Revolutionary?" "Indeed no, your Holiness, he is not that." "But, my child, my child, he is the founder of a revolutionary society which this very day the Holy Father has condemned." He walked across the room and she rose to her feet and looked after him. "One of the men who are conspiring against the peace of the Church--banded together to fight the Church and its head." "Don't say that, your Holiness. He is religious, deeply religious, and far more an enemy of the Government and the King." She began to talk wildly, almost aimlessly, trying to defend Rossi at all costs. "Holy Father," she said, "shall I tell you a secret? There is nobody else in the world to whom I could tell it, but I can tell it to you. My husband is now in England organising a great scheme among the exiles and refugees of Italy. What it is I don't know, but he has told me that it will lead to the conquest of the country and the downfall of the throne. Whether it is to be a conspiracy in the ordinary sense, or a constitutional plan of campaign, he has not said, but everything tells me that it is directed against the politics of Rome, and not against its religion, and is intended to overthrow the King, and not the Pope." The Pope, who had been standing with his back to Roma, turned round to her with a look of fright. His eyebrows had met over the vertical lines on his forehead, and this further reminder of another face threw Roma into still greater confusion. "'When I come back, it will be with such a force behind me as will make the prisons open their doors and the thrones of tyrants tremble.' That's what he said, your Holiness. The movement will come soon, too, I am sure it will, and then your Holiness will see that, instead of being irreligious men, the leaders of the people...." The Pope held up his hand. "Stop!" he cried. "Say no more, my child. God knows what I must do with what you have said already." Then Roma saw what she had done in the wild gust of her emotion, and in her terror she tried to take it back. "Holy Father, you must not think from what I say that David Rossi is for revolution and regicide...." "Don't speak, my child. You cannot know what an earthquake you have opened at my feet. Let me think!" There was silence for a moment, and then Roma gulped down the great lumps in her throat and said: "I am only an ignorant woman, Holy Father, and perhaps I have said too much, and do not understand. But what I have told your Holiness was told me in love and confidence. And the Holy Father is wise and good, and whatever he does will be for the best." The Pope returned to his chair with a bewildered look, and did not seem to hear. Roma sank to her knees by his side and said in a low, pleading tone: "My husband's faith in me is so beautiful, your Holiness. Oh, so beautiful. I am the only one in the world to whom he has told all his secrets, and if any of them should ever come back to him...." "Don't be afraid, my daughter. What you said in simple confidence shall be as sacred as if it had been spoken under the seal of the confessional." "If I could tell your Holiness more about him--who he is and where he comes from--a place so lowly and humble, your Holiness...." "Tell me no more, my child. It is better I should not know. Pity ought to have no place in what duty tells me to do. But I can love David Rossi for all that. I do love him. I love him as a lost and wayward son, whose hand is raised against his Father, though he knows it not." There was a bell button on the Pope's chair. He pressed it, and the Participante returned to the room without knocking. The Pope rose and took Roma's hand. "Go in peace and with my blessing, my child. I bless you! May my fatherly blessing keep you pure in heart, may it strengthen you in all temptations, comfort you in all trials, avert from you every evil omen, and bring you into the fold of Christ's children at the last." The Participante stepped forward and signed to Roma to withdraw. She rose and left the presence chamber, stepping backward and too much moved to speak. Not until the door had been closed did she realise that she was crossing the throne room, and that the Bussolante was walking beside her. IV When the Pope walked in his garden that afternoon as usual, the old Capuchin was with him. From the door of the Vatican they drove in the Pope's landau with two of the Noble Guard riding beside the carriage, and one of the chamberlains walking behind it, through lanes enshrouded in laurel and ilex, until they reached the summer-house on the top of the hill. There the old men stepped down, the Pope in his white cassock, white overcoat and red hat, the Capuchin in his brown habit, skull-cap and sandals. The Pope's cat, a creature of reddish coat, which followed him into the garden as a dog follows his master, leapt out of the carriage after them. The Pope was more than usually grave and silent. Once or twice the Capuchin said, "And how did you find my young penitent this morning?" "_Bene, bene!_" the Pope replied. But at length the Pope, scraping the gravel at his feet with the ferrule of his walking-stick, began to speak on his own initiative. "Father!" "Your Holiness?" "The inscrutable decree of God which made me your Pontiff has not altered our relations to each other as men?" The Capuchin took snuff and answered, "Your Holiness is always so good as to say so." "You are my master now just as you were thirty years ago, and there is something I wish to ask of you." "What is it, your Holiness?" "You have been a confessor many years, Father?" "Forty years, your Holiness." "In that time you have had many difficult cases?" "Very many." "Father, has it ever happened that a penitent, has revealed to you a conspiracy to commit a crime?" "More than once it has happened." "And what have you done?" "Persuaded him to reveal it to the civil authorities, or else tell it to me outside the confessional." "Has the penitent ever refused to do so?" "Never." "But if ... if the case were such as made it difficult for the penitent to reveal the conspiracy to the civil authorities, having regard to the penalties the revelation would bring with it ... if by reason of ties of blood and affection such revelation were humanly impossible, and it would even be cruel to ask for it, what would you do then?" "Nothing, your Holiness." "Not even if the crime to be committed were a serious one, and it touched you very nearly?" The Capuchin shook out his coloured print handkerchief and said, "That could make no difference, your Holiness." "But suppose you heard in confession that your brother is to be assassinated, what is your duty?" "My duty to the penitent who reveals his soul to me is to preserve his secret." "And what is your duty to God?" The handkerchief dropped from the Capuchin's hand. The Pope paused, scraped the gravel with the ferrule of his stick, and said: "Father, I am in the position of the confessor who has guilty knowledge of a conspiracy against the life of his enemy." The Capuchin pushed his handkerchief into his sleeve and dropped back into his seat. After a moment the Pope told the story of what Roma had said of Rossi's plans abroad. "A conspiracy," he said, "plainly a conspiracy." "And what do you understand the conspiracy to be?" "Who can say? Perhaps a recurrence to the custom of the Middle Ages, when citizens who had been banished by their opponents used to apply themselves in exile to attempt the reconquest of their country by stirring up the factions at home." "You think that is Rossi's object?" "I do." The Capuchin shifted uneasily the skull-cap on his crown and said: "Holy Father, I trust your Holiness will leave the matter alone." "Why so?" "In reading history I do not find that such enterprises have usually been successful. I see, rather, how commonly they have failed. And if it was so in the Middle Ages when the arts of war were primitive, how much less likely are the conspiracies of secret societies, the partial and superficial risings of refugees, to be serious now in the days of standing armies." "True. But is that a good reason for doing nothing in this instance?" "But, Holy Father, think. You cannot disclose the secrets this poor lady has revealed to you. Her confession was only a confidence, but your Holiness knows well that there is such a thing as a natural secret which it would be a great fault to reveal. Facts which of their own nature are confidential belong to this order. They are assimilated to the confessional, and as such they should be respected." "Indeed they should." "Then it is not possible for your Holiness to reveal what you heard this morning without bringing trouble to the penitent and wronging her in relation to her husband." "God forbid that I should do so, whatever happens. But is a priest forbidden to speak of a sin heard in confession if he can do so in such a way that the identity of the penitent cannot be discovered?" "Your Holiness intends to do that?" "Why not?" "The Holy Father knows best. For my own part, your Holiness, I think it a danger to tamper with the secrets of a soul, whatever the good end in view or the evil to be prevented." The Capuchin looked round to where the horses were pawing the path and the Guards stood by the carriage. "Thirty-five years ago we had a terrible lesson in such dangers, your Holiness." The Pope dropped his head and continued to scrape the gravel. "Your Holiness remembers the poor young woman who told her confessor she was about to marry a rich young man. The confessor thought it his duty to tell the young man's father in general terms that such a marriage was to be contracted. What was the result? The marriage took place in secret and ended in grief and death." The Pope rose uneasily. "We will not speak of that. It was a case of a father's pride and perverted ambition. This is a different case altogether. A man who is a prey to diabolical illusions, an enemy of the Church and of social order, is hatching a plot which can only end in mischief and bloodshed. The Holy Father knows it. Shall he keep this guilty knowledge locked in his own bosom? God forbid!" "Then you intend to warn the civil authorities?" "I must. It is my duty. How could I lay my head on my pillow and not do it? But I will do it discreetly. I will commit no one, and this poor lady shall remain unknown." The venerable old men, each leaning on his stick, walked down a path lined by clipped yews, shaded by cypresses, and almost overgrown with crocus, anemone, and violet. Suddenly from the bushes there came a flutter of wings, followed by the scream of a bird, and in a moment the Pope's cat had leapt on to a marble which stood in the midst of the jungle. It was an ancient sarcophagus, placed there as a fountain, but the spring that had fed it was dry, and in its moss-grown mouth a bird had made its nest. The cat was about to pounce down on the eggs when the Pope laid hold of it. "Ah, Meesh, Meesh," he said, "what an anarchist you are, to be sure!... Monsignor!" "Yes, your Holiness," said the chamberlain, coming up behind. "Take this _gatto rosso_ back to the carriage, and keep him in _domicilio coatto_ until we come." The Monsignor laughed and carried off the cat, and the Pope put his mittened hand gently on the little speckled eggs. "Poor things! they're warm. Listen! That's the mother bird screaming in the tree. Hark! She's watching us, and waiting for us to go. How snugly she thought she kept her secret." The Capuchin drew a long breath. "Yes, nature has the same cry for fear in all her offspring." "True," said the Pope. "It makes me think of that poor girl this morning." The Pope walked back to the carriage without saying a word. As he returned to the Vatican, the Angelus was ringing from all the church bells of Rome, the city was bathed in crimson light, the sun was sinking behind Monte Mario, and the stone pines on the crest of the hill, standing out against the reddening sky, were like the roofless columns of a ruined temple. V Next day Francesca came up with a letter. The porter from Trinità de' Monti had brought it and he was waiting below for a present. In a kind of momentary delirium Roma snatched at the envelope and emptied her purse into the old woman's hand. "Santo Dio!" cried Francesca, "all this for a letter?" "Never mind, godmother," said Roma. "Give the money to the good man and let him go." "It's from Mr. Rossi, isn't it? Yes? I thought it was. You've only to say three Ave Marias when you wake in the morning and you get anything you want. I knew the Signora was dying for a letter, so...." "Yes, yes, but the poor man is waiting, and I must get on with my work, and...." "Work? Ah, Signora, in paradise you won't have to waste your time working. A lady like you will have violins and celestial bread and...." "The man will be gone, godmother," said Roma, hustling the deaf old woman out of the room. But even when Roma was alone she could not at first find courage to open the envelope. There was a certain physical thrill in handling it, in turning it over, and in looking at the stamps and the postmark. The stamps were French and the postmark was of Paris. That fact brought a vague gleam of joy. Rossi had been travelling, and perhaps he had not yet received her letter. With a trembling kiss and a little choking prayer she broke the seal at last, and as the letter came rustling out of the envelope she glanced at the closing lines: "Your Faithful Husband." She caught her breath and waited a moment, tingling all over. Then she unfolded the paper and read:-- "DEAREST,--A telegram from Rome, published in the Paris newspapers this morning, reports the trial and death of Bruno. To say that I am shocked is to say little. I am shaken to my foundations. My heart is bursting and my hand can with difficulty hold the pen. "The news first reached me last evening, when I was in a restaurant with a group of journalists. We were at dinner, but I was compelled to rise and return to my lodgings. I must have been almost in delirium the whole night long. More than once I started from my sleep with the certainty that I heard Bruno's voice calling to me. Once I went to the window and looked out into the silent street. And yet I knew all the time that my poor friend lay dead in prison. "Poor Bruno! I do not hold with suicide under any circumstances. A man's life does not belong to himself. Each of us is a soldier, and no sentinel ought to kill himself at his post. Who knows what the next turn of the battle will be? It is our duty to the General to see the fight out. But when the sentinel dies rather than pass a false watchword, suicide is sacrifice, death is victory, and God takes His martyr under the wings of His mercy. "The poor fellow died believing I had been false to him! I knew him for eight years, and during that time he was more faithful to me than my shadow. He was the bravest, staunchest friend man ever had. And now he has left me, thinking I have wronged him at the last. Oh, my brother, do you not know the truth at last? In the world to which you are gone, does no heavenly voice tell you? Does not death reveal everything? Can you not look down and see all, tearing away the veil that clouded your vision here below? Is it only vouchsafed to him who remains on earth to know that he was true to the love you bore him? God forbid it! It cannot, cannot be. "Dearest, I came to Paris unexpectedly ten days ago...." Roma lifted her swimming eyes. "Then he hasn't received it," she thought. "Called in haste, not only to organise our Italian people for the new crusade, but to compose by a general principle the many groups of Frenchmen who, under different names, have the same aspirations--Marxists, Possibilists, Boulangists, Guesdists, and Central Revolutionists, with their varying propaganda, co-operative, trade-unionist, anti-semite, national, and I know not what--I had almost despaired of any union of interests so pitifully subdivided when the news of Bruno's death came like a trumpet-blast, and the walls of the social Jericho fell before it. Everybody feels that the moment of action has arrived, and what I thought would be an Italian movement is likely to become an international one. A great outrage on the spirit of Justice breaks down all barriers of race and nationality. "God guide us now. What did our Master say? 'The dagger of the conspirator is never so terrible as when sharpened on the tombstone of a martyr.' With all the heat of my own blood I tremble when I think what may be the effect of these tyrannies. Of course the ruling classes at home will wash their hands of this affair. When a Minister wants to play Macbeth he has no lack of grooms to dabble with Duncan's blood. But the people will make no nice distinctions. I wouldn't give two straws for the life of the King when this crime has touched the conscience of the people. He didn't do it? No, he does nothing, but he stands for all. Anarchists did not invent regicide. It has been used in all ages by people who think the spirit of Justice violated. And the names of some who practised it are written on marble monuments in letters of gold." Roma began to tremble. Had the Pope been right after all? Was it really revolution and regicide which Rossi contemplated? "Dearest, don't think that because I am so moved by all this that other and dearer things are not with me always. Never a day or an hour passes but my heart speaks to you as if you could answer. I have been anxious at not hearing from you for ten days, although I left my Paris address in London for your letters to be sent on. Sometimes I think my enemies may be tormenting you, and then I blame myself for not bringing you with me, in spite of every disadvantage. Sometimes I think you may be ill, and then I have an impulse to take the first train and fly back to Rome. I know I cannot be with you always, but this absence is cruel. Happily it will soon be over, and we shall see an end of all sadness. Don't suffer for me. Don't let my cares distress you. Whatever happens, nothing can divide us, because love has united our hearts for ever. "That's why I'm sure of you, Roma, sure of your love and sure of your loyalty. Otherwise how could I stay an hour longer after this awful event, tortured by the fear of a double martyrdom--the martyrdom of myself and of the one who is dearest to me in the world? "The spring is coming to take me home to you, darling. Don't you smell the violets? Adieu! "YOUR FAITHFUL HUSBAND." Roma slept little that night. Joy, relief, disappointment, but, above all, fear for Rossi, apprehension about his plans, and overpowering dread of the consequences kept her awake for hours. Early next day a man in a blue uniform brought a letter from the Braschi Palace. It ran:-- "DEAR ROMA,--I must ask you to come across to my office this morning, and as soon as convenient. You will not hesitate to do so when I tell you that by this friendly message I am saving you the humiliation of a summons from the police. Yours, as always, affectionately, BONELLI." VI The Minister of the Interior sat in his cabinet before a table covered with blue-books and the square sheets of his "projects of law," and the Commendatore Angelelli, with his usual extravagant politeness, was standing and bowing by his side. "And what is this about proclamations issued by Rossi?" said the Baron, fixing his eye-glasses and looking up. "We have traced the printer who published them," said Angelelli. "After he was arrested he gave the name of the person who paid him and provided the copy." The Baron bowed without speaking. "It was a certain lady, Excellency," said Angelelli in his thin voice, "so we thought it well to wait for your instructions." "You did right, Commendatore. Leave that part of the matter to me. And Rossi himself--he is still in England?" "In France, your Excellency, but we have letters from both London and Paris detailing all his movements." "Good." "The Chief Commissioner writes that during his stay in London Rossi lodged in Soho, and received visits from nearly all the representatives of revolutionary parties. Apparently he united many conflicting forces, and not only the Democratic Federations and the Socialist and Labour Leagues, but also the Radical organisations and various religious guilds and unions gathered about him." The Baron made a gesture of impatience. "It's a case of birds of a feather. London has always been the central home of anarchy under various big surnames. What does the Commissioner understand to be Rossi's plan?" "Rossi's plan, the Commissioner thinks, is to send back the Italian exiles, and to disperse them, with money and literature gathered abroad, among the excited millions at home." "Wonderful!" said the Baron. Angelelli laughed his thin laugh, like a hen cackling over its nest. Then he said: "But the Prefect of Paris has formed a more serious opinion, your Excellency." "What is it?" "That Rossi is conspiring to assassinate the King." The Baron blinked the glasses from his nose and sat upright. "Apparently he was having less success in Paris, where the moral plea has been overdone, when reports of the Rocco incident...." "A most unlucky affair, Commendatore." "Meeting at cafés in order to avoid the control of the police ... In short, although he has no exact information, the Prefect warns us to keep double guard over the person of his Majesty." The Baron rose and perambulated the hearthrug. "A pretty century, truly, for fools who pass for wise men, and for weaklings who threaten when the distance is great enough!... Commendatore, have you mentioned this matter to anybody else?" "To nobody whatever, Excellency." "Then think no more about it. It's nothing. The public mind must not be alarmed. Tighten the cord about our man in Paris. Adieu!" The Baron's next visitor was the Prefect of the Province, who looked more solemn and soldierly than ever. "Senator," said the Baron, "I sent for you to say that the Council has determined to put an end to the state of siege." The Prefect bowed again severely. "The insurrection has been suppressed, the city is quiet, and the severities of military rule begin to oppress the people." The Prefect bowed again and assented. "The Council has also resolved, dear Senator, that the country shall celebrate the anniversary of the King's accession with general rejoicings." "Excellent idea, sir," said the Prefect. "To wipe out the depression of the late unhappy times by a public festival is excellent policy. But the time is short." "Very short. The anniversary falls on Easter Monday. That is to say, a week from to-day. You will therefore take the matter in hand immediately and push it on without further delay. The details we will discuss later, and arrange all programmes of presentations and processions. Meantime I have written a proclamation announcing the event. Here it is. You can take it with you." "Good!" "The King will also sign a decree of amnesty to all the authors and accomplices of the late acts and attempts at rebellion who were not the organising and directing minds. That is also written. Here it is. But his Majesty has not yet signed it." The Prefect took a second paper from the Baron's hand, glanced his eyes over it, and read certain passages. "'Seeing that on a day of public rejoicing we could not restrain an emotion of grief ... turning a pitying eye upon the inexperienced youths drawn into a vortex of political disorder ... we therefore decree and command the following acts of sovereign clemency....' May I expect to receive this in the course of the day, your Excellency?" "Yes. And now for your own part of the enterprise, dear Senator. You will order all mayors of towns to assemble in Rome to complete the preparations. You will arrange a procession to the Quirinal, when the people will call the King on to the balcony and sing the National Hymn. You will order banners to be made bearing suitable watchwords, such as 'Long live the King,' 'May he govern as well as reign,' 'Long live the Crown,' the 'Flag,' and (perhaps) the 'Army.' You will oppose these generating ideas to 'Atheism' and 'Anarchy.' The essential point is that the people must be caused by festivals, songs, bands of music, and processions to think of the throne as their bulwark and the King as their saviour, and to take advantage of every opportunity to attest their gratitude to both. You follow me?" "Perfectly." "Then lose no time, Senator.... One moment." The Prefect had risen and reached the door. "If you can double the King's guard and change the company every day until the festival is over...." "Easily, your Excellency. But wait; the Vatican Chief of Police has asked for help on Holy Thursday." "Give it him. Let the timid old man of the Sacred College have no excuse for saying we take more care of the King than of the Pope." The Minister of Justice was the next of the Baron's visitors. He was a short man with a smiling and rubicund face, and he wore yellow kid gloves. "All goes well and wisdom is justified of her children," said the Baron, rising again and promenading the hearthrug. "The national sentiment, dear colleague, is a sword, and either we must use it on behalf of the Government and the King, or stand by and see it used by the hostile factions." "Men like Rossi are not slow to use it, sir," said the little Minister. "Tut! It's not Rossi I'm thinking of now. It's the Church, the clergy, rich in money and in the faith of the populace. That's why I wanted to do something as set-off against those mourning demonstrations which the Pope has appointed." "Yes, the old gentleman of the Vatican knows the instincts and cravings of our people, doesn't he, sir? He knows they like a show, and the seasoning of their pleasures with a little religion." "It's the rustiest old weapon in the Pope's arsenal, dear colleague, but it may serve unless we do something. If the people can be persuaded that the Pope is their one friend in adversity, there couldn't be a better feather in the Papal cap. Happily our people love to sing and to dance as well as to weep and to pray. So we needn't throw up the sponge yet." Both laughed, and the little Minister said, "Besides, it is so easy to change religious processions into political ones. And then the Vatican is always intriguing with the powers of rebellion and preaching obedience to the Pope alone." The creaking of the Baron's patent-leather boots stopped, and he drew up before his colleague. "Watch that sharply," he said, "and if you see any sign on the part of the Vatican of intriguing with men like Rossi, any complicity with conspiracy, or any knowledge of plots pointing to revolution and regicide, let the Council hear of it immediately." The Baron's face had suddenly whitened with passion, and his little colleague looked at him in alarm. A secretary entered the room and handed the Baron a card. The Baron fixed his eye-glasses and read: "MONSIGNOR MARIO, Cameriere Segreto Partecipante di Sua Santità Pio X. Vaticano." "St. Anthony! Talk of the angels...." muttered the little Minister. "Will you perhaps...." "Certainly," said the Minister, and he left the room. "Show the Monsignor in," said the Baron. VII The Monsignor was young, tall, slight, almost fragile, and had thin black hair and large spiritual eyes. As he entered in the long black overcoat, which covered his cassock, he bowed and looked slowly round the room. His subdued expression was that of a sheep going through a gate where the dogs may be, and his manner suggested that he would fly at the first alarm. The Baron looked over his eye-glasses and measured his man in a moment. "Pray sit," he said, and at the next moment the young Monsignor and the Baron were seated at opposite sides of the table. "I am sent to you by a venerable and illustrious personage...." "Let us say the Pope," said the Baron. The young Monsignor bowed and continued, "to offer on his behalf a word of counsel and of warning." "It is an unusual and distinguished honour," said the Baron. "I am instructed to inform you that the Holy Father has reason to believe a further and more serious insurrection is preparing, and to warn you to take the necessary steps to secure public order and to prevent bloodshed." The Baron did not move a muscle. "If the Holy Father has special knowledge of a plot that is impending...." "Not special, only general, but sufficient to enable him to tell you to hold yourself in readiness." "How long has the Holy Father been aware of this?" "Not long. In fact, only since yesterday morning," said the Monsignor, and fearing he had said too much he added, "I only mention this to show you that the Holy Father has lost no time." "But if the Holy Father knows that a conspiracy is afoot, he can no doubt help us to further information." The Monsignor shook his head. "You mean that he will not do so?" "No." "Am I, then, to understand that the information with which his Holiness honours me came to him secretly?" "Yes, sir, secretly, and it is, therefore, not open to further explanation." "So it reached him by the medium of the confessional?" The Monsignor rose from his seat. "Your Excellency cannot be in earnest." "You mean that it did not reach him by the medium of the confessional?" "Certainly not." "Then he is able to tell me everything, if he will?" The Monsignor became agitated. "The Holy Father's information came through a channel that is assimilated to the confessional, and is almost as sacred and inviolate." "But obedience to the Pope obliterates from all other responsibility. His Holiness has only to say 'Speak,' and his faithful child must obey." The Monsignor became confused. "His informant is not even a Catholic, and he has, therefore, no right to command her." "So it is a woman," said the Baron, and the young ecclesiastic dropped his head. "It is a woman and a non-Catholic, and she visited the Holy Father at the Vatican yesterday morning; is that so?" "I do not assert it, sir, and I do not deny it." The Baron did not speak for a moment, but he looked steadily over his eye-glasses at the flushed young face before him. Then he said in a quiet tone: "Monsignor, the relations of the Pope and the Government are delicate, and if anything occurred to carry the disagreement further it might result in a serious fratricidal struggle." The Monsignor was trying to regain his self-possession, and he remained silent. "But whatever those relations, it cannot be the wish of the Holy Father to cover with his mantle the upsetters of order who are cutting at the roots of the Church as well as the State." "Therefore I am here now, sir, thus early and thus openly," said the Monsignor. "Monsignor," said the Baron, "if anything should occur to--for example--the person of the King, it cannot be the wish of his Holiness that anybody--myself, for instance--should be in a position to say to Parliament and to the Governments of Europe, 'The Pope knew everything beforehand, and therefore, not having revealed the particulars of the plot, the venerable Father of the Vatican is an accomplice of murderers.'" The young ecclesiastic lost himself utterly. "The Pope," he said, "knows nothing more than I have told you." "Yes, Monsignor, the Pope knows one thing more. He knows who was his informant and authority. It is necessary that the Government should know that also, in order that it may judge for itself of the nature of the conspiracy and the source from which it may be expected." The Monsignor was quivering like a limed bird. "I have delivered my message, and have only to add that in sending me here his Holiness desired to prevent crime, not to help you to apprehend criminals." The Baron's eye-glasses dropped from his nose, and he spoke sharply and incisively. "The Government must at least know who the lady was who visited his Holiness at the Vatican yesterday morning, and led him to believe that a serious insurrection was impending." "That your Excellency never will, or can, or shall know." The Monsignor was bowing himself out of the room when the Baron's secretary opened the door and announced another visitor. "Donna Roma, your Excellency." The Monsignor betrayed fresh agitation, and tried to go. "Bring her in," said the Baron. "One moment, Monsignor." "I have said all I am authorised to say, sir, and I feel warned that I must say no more." "Don't say that, Monsignor.... Ah, Donna Roma!" Roma, who had entered the room, replied with reserve and dignity. "Allow me, Donna Roma, to present Monsignor Mario of the Vatican," said the Baron. "It is unnecessary," said Roma. "I met the Monsignor yesterday morning." The young ecclesiastic was overwhelmed with confusion. "My respectful reverence to his Holiness," said the Baron, smiling, "and pray tell him that the Government will do its duty to the country and to the civilised world, and count on the support of the Pope." Monsignor Mario left the room without a word. VIII The Baron pushed out an easy-chair for Roma and twisted his own to face it. "How are you, my child?" "One lives," said Roma, with a sigh. "What is the matter, my dear? You are ill and unhappy." She eluded the question and said, "You sent for me--what do you wish to say?" He told her the printer of certain seditious proclamations had been arrested, and in the judicial inquiry preparatory to his trial he had mentioned the name of the person who had employed and paid him. "You cannot but be aware, my dear, that you have rendered yourself liable to prosecution, and that nothing--nothing whatever--could have saved you from public exposure but the good offices of a powerful friend." Roma drew her lips tightly together and made no answer. "But what a situation for a Minister! To find himself ruled by his feelings for a friend, and thus weakened in the eyes of his servants, who ought to have no possible hold on him." Roma's gloomy face began to be compressed with scorn. "You have perhaps not realised the full measure of the indignity that might have befallen you. For instance--a cruel necessity--the police would have been making a domiciliary visitation in your apartment at this moment." Roma made a faint, involuntary cry, and half rose from her seat. "Your letters and most secret papers would by this time be exposed to the eyes of the police.... No, no, my child; calm yourself, be seated; thanks to my intervention, this will not occur." Roma looked at him, and found him more repulsive to her at that moment than he had ever been before. Even his daintiness repelled her--the modified perfume about his clothes, his waxed moustache, his rounded finger-nails, and all the other refinements of the man who loves himself and sets out to please the senses of women. "You will allow, my dear, that I have had sufficient to humiliate me without this further experience. A ward who persistently disregards the laws of propriety and exposes herself to criticism in the most ordinary acts of life was surely a sufficient trial. But that was not enough. Almost as soon as you have passed out of my legal control you join with those who are talking and conspiring against me." Roma continued to sit with a gloomy and defiant face. "How am I to defend myself against the humiliations you put upon me in your own mind? You give me no chance to defend myself. I cannot know what others have told you. I know no more than you repeat to me, and that is nothing at all." Roma was biting her compressed lips and breathing audibly. "How am I to defend myself against the humiliations I suffer in the minds of the public? There is only one way, and that is to allow it to be believed that, in spite of all appearances, you are still playing a part, that you are going to all lengths to punish the enemy who traduced you and publicly degraded you." Roma tried to laugh, but the laugh was broken in her throat by a rising sob. "I have only to whisper that, dear friend, and society, at all events, will credit it. Already it knows the very minute details of your life, and it will believe that when you threw away every shred of propriety and went to live in that man's apartment, it was only in order to play the old part--shall I say the Scriptural part?--of possessing yourself of _the inmost secrets of his soul_." The clear, sharp whisper in which the Baron spoke his last words cut Roma like a knife. She threw up her head with scorn. "Let it believe what it likes," she said. "If society cares to think that I have allowed my life to be turned upside down for the sake of hatred, let it do so." The Baron's secretary interrupted by opening the door. "Nazzareno, Excellency," said the secretary. "Ah! Let him come in," said the Baron. "You remember Nazzareno, Roma? My steward at Albano?" An elderly man with a bronzed face and shaggy eyebrows, bringing an odour of the fields and the farmyard, was ushered into the room. "Come in, Nazzareno! You've not forgotten Donna Roma? You planted a rosebush on her first Roman birthday, you remember. It's a great tree by this time, perhaps." "It is, Excellency," said the steward, bowing and smiling, "and nearly as full of bloom as the Signorina herself." "Well, what news from Albano?" The steward told a long story of operations on the estates--planting birch in the top fields, and eucalyptus in the low meadow, fencing, draining, and sowing. "And ... and the Baroness?" said the Baron, turning over some papers. "Ah! her Excellency is worse," said the old man. "The nurse and the doctor thought you had better be told exactly, and that is the object of my errand." "Yes?" The papers rustled in the Baron's fingers as he shuffled and sorted them. The steward told another long story. Her Excellency was weaker, or she would be quite ungovernable. And so changed! When he was called in yesterday she was so much altered that he would not have known her. It was a question of days, and all the servants were saying prayers to Mary Magdalene. "Have some dinner downstairs before you return, Nazzareno," said the Baron. "And when you see the doctor this evening, say I'll come out some time this week if I can. Good-morning!" The repulsion the Baron had inspired in Roma deepened to loathing when he began to speak affectionately the moment the door had closed on the steward. "Look at this, dearest. It's from his Majesty." She did not look at the letter he put before her, so he told her what it contained. It offered him the Collar of the Annunziata, the highest order in Italy, making him a cousin to the King. She could not contain herself any longer. "I want to tell you something," she said, "so that you may know once for all that it is useless to waste further thought on me." He looked at her with an indulgent smile. "I am married to Mr. Rossi," she said. "But that is impossible. There was no time." "We were married religiously, in the parish church, on the morning he left Rome." The indulgent smile gave way to a sarcastic one. "Then why did he leave you behind? If he thought _that_ was a good marriage, why didn't he take you with him? But perhaps he had his own reason, and the denunciation of the poor man in prison was not so far amiss." "That was an official lie, a cowardly lie," said Roma, and her eyes burned with anger. "Was it? Perhaps it was. But I have just heard something else about Mr. Rossi that is undoubtedly true. I have heard from the Prefect of Paris that he is organising a conspiracy for the assassination of the King." A look of fear which she could not restrain crossed Roma's face. "More than that, and stranger than that, I have just heard also that the Pope has some knowledge of the plot." Roma felt terror seizing her, and she said in a constrained voice, "Why? What has the Pope told you?" "Only that an insurrection is impending. It seems that his informant is a woman.... Who can she be, I wonder?" The Baron was fixing his eyes on her and she tried to elude his gaze. "Whoever she is she must know more," he said in a severe voice, "and whatever it is she must reveal it." Roma got up, looking very pale, and feeling very feeble. When she reached the door the Baron was smiling and holding out his hand. "Will you not shake hands with me?" he said. "What is the use?" she answered. "When people shake hands it means that they wish each other well. You do not wish me well. You are trying to force me to betray my husband.... _But I'll die first_," she said, and then turned and fled. When Roma was gone the Baron wrote a letter to the Pope: "YOUR HOLINESS,--Providential accident, as your chamberlain would tell you, has enabled his Majesty's Government to judge for itself of that source of your Holiness's information which your Holiness very properly refused to reveal. At the same time official channels have disclosed to his Majesty's Government the nature of the conspiracy of which your Holiness so patriotically forewarned them. This conspiracy appears to be no less serious than an attempt to assassinate the King, but as detailed knowledge of so vile a plot is necessary in order to save the life of our august sovereign, his Majesty's Government asks you to grant the Prime Minister the honour of an audience with your Holiness in the cause of order and public security. Hoping to hear of your Holiness's convenience, and trusting that your Holiness will not disappoint the hopes of those who are dreaming even yet of a reconciliation of Church and State, I am, with all reverence, your Holiness's faithful son and servant, BONELLI." IX Roma went home full of uncertainty, and wrote in a nervous and straggling hand a hasty letter to Rossi. "My dearest," she said, "your letter reached me safely last evening, and though I cannot answer it properly at the present moment, I must send a brief reply by mid-day's mail, because there are two or three things it is imperative I should say immediately. "The first is that I wrote you a very important letter to London twelve days ago, and it is clear that you have not yet received it. The contents were of the greatest seriousness and also of the greatest secrecy, and I should die if any other eye than yours were to read them; therefore do not lose a moment until you ask for the letter to be sent after you to Paris. Write to London by the first post, and when the letter has come to your hand, do telegraph to me saying so. 'Received,' that will be sufficient, but if you can add one other little word expressing your feeling on reading what I wrote--'Forgiven,' for instance--my feeling will not be happiness, it will be delirium. "The next thing I have to say, dearest, is about your letters. You know they are more precious to me than my heart's blood, and there is not a word or a line of them I would sacrifice for a queen's crown. But they are so full of perilous opinions and of hints of programmes for dangerous enterprises, that for your sake I am afraid. It is so good of you to tell me what you are thinking and doing, and I am so proud to be the woman who has the confidence as well as the love of the most-talked-of man in Europe, that it cuts at my heart to ask you to tell me no more about your political plans. Nevertheless, I must. Think what would happen if the police took it into their heads to make a domiciliary visitation in this house. And then think of what a fearful weapon it puts into the hands of your enemies, if, hearing that I know so much, they put pressure upon me that I cannot withstand! Of course, that is impossible. I would die first. But still.... "My last point, dearest...." Her pen stopped. How was she to put what she wished to say next? David Rossi was in danger--a double danger--danger from within as well as danger from without. His last letter showed plainly that he was engaged in an enterprise which his adversaries would call a plot. Roma remembered her father, doomed to a life-long exile and a lonely death, and asked herself if it was not always the case that the reformer partly reformed his age, and was partly corrupted by it. If she could only draw David Rossi away from associations that were always reeking of revolution, if she could bring him back to Rome before he was too far involved in plots and with plotters! But how could she do it? To tell him the plain truth that he was going headlong to _domicilio coatto_ was useless. She must resort to artifice. A light shot through her brain, her eyes gleamed, and she began again: "My last point, dearest, is that I am growing jealous. Yes, indeed, jealous! I know you love me, but knowing it doesn't help me to forget that you are always meeting women who must admire and love you. I tremble to think you may be happy with them. I want you to be happy, yet I feel as if it would be treason for you to be happy without me. What an illogical thing love is! But where Love reigns jealousy is always the Prime Minister, and in order to banish my jealousy you must come back immediately...." Her pen stopped again. The artifice was too trivial, too palpable, and he would certainly see through it. She tore up the sheet and began afresh. "My last point, dearest, is that I fear you are forgetting me in your work. While thinking of the revolution you are making in Europe, you forget the revolution you have already made in this poor little heart. Of course I love your glory more than I love myself, yet I am afraid it is taking you away from me, and will end by leading you up, up, up, out of a woman's reach. Why didn't I give you my portrait to put in your watch-case when you went away? Don't let this folly disgust you, dearest. A woman is a foolish thing, isn't she? But if you don't want me to make a torment of everything you will hasten back in time to...." She threw down the pen and began to cry. Hadn't she promised him that, come what would, her love for him should never stand in his way? In the midst of her tears a little stab at her heart made her think of something else, and she took up the pen again. "My last point, dearest, is that I am ill, and very, very anxious to see you soon. My health has been failing ever since you left Rome. Perhaps the anxieties I have gone through have been partly the cause of this, but I am sure that your absence is chiefly responsible, and that no doctor and no medicine would be so good for me as one rush into your arms. Therefore come and give me back all my health and happiness. Come, I beg of you. Leave it to others to do your work abroad. Come at once _before things have gone too far_; come, come, come!" She hesitated, wanting to say, "Not that I am _very_ ill...." And then, "You mustn't come if there is any risk to yourself...." And again, "I would never forgive myself if...." But she crushed down her qualms, sealed her letter, and sent the Garibaldian to post it. Then she gathered up the entire body of David Rossi's letters, and putting some light firewood into the stove she sat on the ground to burn them. It was necessary to remove all evidence that could be used against him in the event of a domiciliary visitation. One by one as the letters, were passed into the fire she read parts of them, and some of the passages seemed to stand out afresh in the flames. "Your friend must be a true woman, and it was very sweet of you to be so tender with her." ... "There is always a little twinge when I read between the lines of your letters. Are you not dissimulating?... to keep up my spirits?" ... "You shall smile and recover all your girlish spirits.... I shall hear your silvery laugh again as I did on that glorious day in the Campagna." ... "It shows how rightly I judged the moral elevation of your soul, your impeccability, your spirit of fire and your heart of gold." While the letters were burning she felt herself to be under the influence of a kind of delirium. It was almost as though she were committing murder. X The Pope had begun the day with the long task of administering the sacrament to the lay members of his household, yet at eight o'clock he was back in his library in the midst of his morning receptions surrounded by a bevy of camerieri, monsignori, and messengers. First came a Cardinal Prefect of Propaganda to report the doings of his congregation; then an ambassador from Spain to tell of the suppression of religious orders; and finally the majordomo to recite the official programme for the public ceremonies which the Pope had ordered for Holy Thursday. It was now ten o'clock, and Cortis, the valet, brought the usual plate of soup. Then came a large man with bold features and dark complexion, wearing a purple robe edged with red and a red biretta. It was the Cardinal Secretary of State. "What news this morning, your Eminence?" said the Pope. "The Government," said the Cardinal Secretary, "has just published a proclamation announcing a jubilee in honour of the King's accession. It is to begin on Monday next, and there are to be great feasts and rejoicings." "A jubilee at a time like this! What a wild mockery of the people's woes! How many poor women and children must go hungry before this royal orgy has been paid for! God be with us! Such injustice and tyranny in the Satanic guise of clemency and indulgence is almost enough to explain the homicidal theories of the demagogues and to justify men like Rossi.... Any further news of him?" "Yes. He is at present in Paris, in close intercourse with the leaders of every abominable sect." "You have seen this man Rossi, your Eminence?" "Once. I saw him on the morning of the jubilee of your Holiness, when he attempted to present a petition." "What is he like to look upon--the typical demagogue; no?" "No. I am bound to say no, your Holiness. And his conversation, though it is full of the jargon of modern Liberalism, has none of the obscenities of Voltaire." "Some one said ... who was it, I wonder?... some one said he resembled the Holy Father." "Now that you mention it, your Holiness, there is perhaps a remote resemblance." "Ah! who knows what service for God and humanity even such a man might have done if in early life his lines had been cast in better places." "They say he was an orphan from his infancy, your Holiness." "Then he never knew a father's care and guidance! Unhappy son! Unhappy father!" "Monsignor Mario," said the low voice of a chamberlain, and at the next moment the Pope's messenger to the Prime Minister was kneeling in the middle of the floor. In nervous tones and broken sentences the Monsignor told his story. The Pope listened intently, the vertical lines on his forehead deepening and darkening every moment, until at length he burst out impatiently: "But, my son, you do not say that you said all this in addition to your message?" "I was drawn into doing so in defence of your Holiness." "You told the Minister that my information came through the channel of a simple confidence?" "He insinuated that the Holy Father was perhaps breaking the seal of the confessional...." "That my informant was a non-Catholic and a woman?" "He implied that your Holiness had only to command her to reveal the conspiracy to the civil authorities, and therefore...." "And you said she was here on Saturday morning?" "He hinted that the Holy Father was an accomplice of criminals if he had known this without revealing it before, and that was why...." "And she came in at that moment, you say?" "At that very moment, your Holiness, and said she had met me on Saturday morning." "Man, man, what have you done?" cried the Pope, rising from his seat and pacing the room. The chamberlain continued to kneel in utter humility, until the Pope, recovering his composure, put both hands on his shoulders and raised him to his feet. "Forgive me, my son. I was more to blame than you were. It was wrong to trust any one with a verbal message in the cabinet of a fox. The Holy Father should have no intercourse with such persons. But this is God's hand. Let us leave everything to the Holy Spirit." At that moment the Papal Majordomo returned with a letter. It was the Baron's letter to the Pope. After the Pope had read it he stepped into a little adjoining room which contained nothing but a lounge and an easy-chair. There he lay on the lounge and turned his face to the wall. XI At four o'clock in the afternoon the Pope and Father Pifferi were again walking in the garden. The groves of Judas trees were shedding their crimson blossoms and the path had a covering of bloom; the atmosphere was full of the odour of honey-suckle and violet, and through the sunlit air the swallows were darting with shrill cries and the glitter of wings. "And what does your Holiness intend to do?" asked the Capuchin. "Providence will direct us," said the Pope with a sigh. "But your Holiness will refuse the request of the Government?" "How can I do so without exposing myself to misunderstanding? Suppose the King is assassinated, what then? The Government will tell the world that the Pope knew all and did nothing." "Let them. It will not be an incident without parallel in the history of the Church. And the world will only honour your Holiness the more for standing firm on your sanctity of the human soul." "Yes, if the confessional were in question. The world knows that the seal of the confessional is sacred, and must be observed at all costs. But this is not a case of the confessional." "Didn't your Holiness say you would observe it as such?" "And I shall. But what about the public? Accident has told the Government that this is not a case of the confessional, and the Government will tell the world. What follows? If I refuse to do anything the enemies of the Church will give it out that the Holy Father is an accomplice of a regicide, ready and willing to intrigue with the agents of rebellion to regain the temporal power." "Then you will receive the Prime Minister?" "No! Or if so, only in the company of his superior." "The King?" "Yes." The Capuchin removed his skull-cap with an uneasy hand, and walked some paces without speaking. "Will he come, your Holiness?" "If he thinks I hold the secret on which his life depends, assuredly he will come." "But you are sovereign as well as Pope--is it possible for you to receive him?" "I will receive him as the King of Sardinia, the King of Italy, if you will, but not as the King of Rome." The Capuchin took his coloured handkerchief from his sleeve and rolled it in his palms, which were hot and perspiring. "But, Holy Father," he said, "what will be the good? Say that all difficulties of etiquette can be removed, and you can meet as man to man, as David Leone and Albert Charles--why will the King come? Only to ask you to put pressure upon your informant to give more information." The Pope drew himself up on the gravel path and smote his breast with indignation. "Never! It would be an insult to the Church," he said. "It is one thing to expect the Holy Father to do his duty as a Christian even to his enemy, it is another thing to ask him to invade the sanctity of a private confidence." The Capuchin did not reply, and the two old men walked on in silence. As the light softened the swallows increased their clamour, and song-birds began to call from neighbouring trees. Suddenly a startled cry burst from the foliage, and, turning quickly, the Pope lifted up the cat which, as usual, was picking its way at his heels. "Ah, Meesh, Meesh! I've got you safely this time.... It was the poor mother-bird again, I suppose. Where is her nest, I wonder?" They found it in the old sarcophagus, which was now almost lost in leaves. The eggs had been hatched, and the fledglings, with eyes not yet opened, stretched their featherless necks and opened their beaks when the Pope put down his hand to touch them. "Monsignor," said the Pope over his shoulder, "remind me to-morrow to ask the gardener for some worms." The cat, from his prison under the Pope's arm, was watching the squirming nest with hungry eyes. "Naughty Meesh! Naughty!" said the Pope, shaking one finger in the cat's face. "But Meesh is only following the ways of his kind, and perhaps I was wrong to let him see the quarry." The Pope and the Capuchin walked back to the Vatican for joy of the sweet spring evening with its scent of flowers and song of birds. "You are sad to-day, Father Pifferi," said the Pope. "I'm still thinking of that poor lady," said the Capuchin. At the first hour of night the Pope attended the recitation of the rosary in his private chapel, and then returning to his private study, a room furnished with a table and two chairs, he took a light supper, served by Cortis in the evening dress of a civilian. His only other company was the cat, which sat on a chair on the opposite side of the table. After supper he wrote a letter. It ran: "SIRE,--Your Minister informs us that through official channels he has received warning of a plot against your life, and believing that we can give information that will help him to defeat so vile a conspiracy, he asks us for a special audience. It is not within our power to promise more assistance than we have already given; but this is to say that if your Majesty yourself should wish to see us, we shall be pleased to receive you, with or without your Minister, if you will come in private and otherwise unattended, at the hour of 21-1/2 on Holy Thursday, to the door of the Canons' House of St. Peter's, where the bearer of this message will be waiting to conduct you to the Sacristy. "Nil timendum nisi a Deo. Pius P.P.X." XII The ceremonies in St. Peter's on Maundy Thursday exceeded in pomp and magnificence anything that could be remembered in Rome. It was a great triumph for the Church. In the face of the anti-religious Governments of Europe she had proved that the mightiest sentiment of the people was the sentiment of religion. The Papal Court was proud of itself. Some of its members made no effort to conceal their delight at the blow they had struck at the ruling classes. But there was one man in Rome who felt no joy in his triumph. It was the Pope. At nine o'clock at night he visited the "urn" called the "Sepulchre." Borne amid the light of torches on his _sedia_ with his _flabelli_ waving on either hand, under a white canopy upheld by prelates, he passed through the glittering rooms of his own palace, along the dark corridors of the Vatican and down the marble stairs, accompanied by his guards in helmets and preceded by the papal cross covered with a violet veil, into the great Basilica, lit only by large candles in iron stands, and looking plain and barn-like and full of shadows in the gloom and the smoky air. But after he had visited the Sepulchre, gorgeously illuminated, while the cantors sang the _Verbum Caro_, after he had knelt in silence and had risen, and the torches of his procession had been put out, and he had returned to his chair to be borne into the Sacristy, and the poor people, lifted to a height of emotion not often reached by the human soul, had broken again into a last delirious shout of affection, he dropped his head and wept. At that moment the Sacristy was empty save for the custodian in black cassock and biretta, who was warming his hands over a large bronze scaldino; but in the Archpriest's room adjoining, with its gilt arm-chair and stools of red plush, Father Pifferi in his ordinary brown habit was waiting for the Pope. The bearers put down the chair, knelt and kissed the Pope's feet in spite of his protest, backed themselves out with deep obeisance, and left the two old men together. "Have they arrived?" asked the Pope. "Not yet, your Holiness," said the Capuchin. "Father, have you any faith in presentiments?" "Sometimes, your Holiness. When they continue and are persistent..." "I have had a presentiment which has been with me all my life--all my life as Pope, at all events. The blessed God who abases and lifts up has thought fit to raise my lowliness to the most sublime dignity that exists on earth, but I have always lived in the fear that some day I should be torn down from it, and the Church would suffer." "God forbid, your Holiness!" "That was why I refused every place and every honour. You know how I refused them, Father!" "Yes, but God knew better, your Holiness, and He preserved you to be a blessing and a comfort to His people." "His holy will be done! But the shadow which has been over me will not be lifted. Cause prayers to be said for me. Pray for me yourself, Father." "Your Holiness is in low spirits. And to-day of all days! Ah, how happy is the Church which has seen the hand of God place in the chair of St. Peter a soul capable of comprehending the necessities of His children and a heart desirous of satisfying them!" "I hardly know what is to come of this interview, Father, but I must leave myself in the hands of the Holy Spirit." "There is no help for it now, your Holiness." "Perhaps I should not have gone so far but for this wave of anarchy which is sweeping over the world.... You believe the man Rossi is secretly an anarchist?" "I am afraid he is, your Holiness, and one of the worst enemies of the Church and the Holy Father." "They say he was an orphan from his infancy, and never knew father, or mother, or home." "Pitiful, very pitiful!" "I have heard that his public life is not without a certain perverted nobility, and that his private life is pure and good." "His relation to the lady would seem to say so, your Holiness." "But the Holy Father may be sorry for a wayward son, and yet be forced to condemn him for all that. He must cut himself off from all such men, lest his adversaries should say that, while preaching peace and the moral law, he is secretly encouraging the devilish agents of atheism, anarchy, and rebellion." "Perhaps so, your Holiness." "Father, do you think the care of temporal things is ever a danger and temptation?" "Sometimes I think it is, your Holiness, and that the Holy Father would be better without lands or fleshly armies." "How late they are!" said the Pope; but at the same moment the door opened, and a Noble Guard knelt on the threshold. "Well?" "The personages you expect have come, your Holiness." "Bring them in," said the Pope. XIII The young King, who wore the uniform of a cavalry officer, with sword and long blue cloak, knelt to the Pope and kissed his ring, while the Prime Minister, who was in ordinary civilian costume, bowed deeply, but remained standing. "Pray sit," said the Pope, seating himself in the gilded arm-chair, with the Capuchin on his left. The King sat on one of the wooden stools in front of the Pope, but the Baron continued to stand by his side. Between the Pope and the King was a wooden table on which two large candles were burning. The young King was pale, and the expression of his twitching face was one of pain. "It was good of your Holiness to see us," he said, "and perhaps the gravity of our errand may excuse the informality of our visit." The Pope, who was leaning forward on the arms of his chair, only bent his head. "His Excellency," said the King, indicating the Baron, "tells me he has gained proof of an organised conspiracy against my life, and he says that your Holiness holds the secret of the conspirators." The Pope, without responding, looked steadily into the face of the young King, who became nervous and embarrassed. "Not that I'm afraid," he said, "personally afraid. But naturally I must think of others--my family--my people--even of Italy--and if your Holiness...if your...your Holiness..." The Baron, who had been standing with one arm across his breast, and the other supporting his chin, intervened at this moment. "Your Majesty," he said, "with your Majesty's permission, and that of his Holiness," he bowed to both sovereigns, "it may be convenient if I state shortly the object of our visit." The young King drew a breath of relief, and the Pope, who was still silent, bent his head again. "Some days ago your Holiness was good enough to warn his Majesty's Government that from private sources of information you had reason to fear that an assault against the public peace was to be attempted." The Pope once more assented. "Since then the Government has received corroboration of the gracious message of your Holiness, coupled with very definite predictions of the nature of the revolt intended. In short, we have been told by our correspondents abroad that a conspiracy of European proportions, involving the subversive elements of England, France, and Germany, is to be directed against Rome as a centre of revolution, and that an attempt is to be made to assail constituted society by striking at our King." "Well, sir?" "Your Holiness may have heard that it is the intention of the Government and the nation to honour the anniversary of his Majesty's accession by a festival. The anniversary falls on Monday next, and we have reason to fear that Monday is the day intended for the outbreak of this vile conspiracy." "Well?" "Your Holiness may have differences with his Majesty, but you cannot desire that the cry of suffering should mingle with the strains of the royal march." "If your Government knows all this, it has its remedy--let it alter the King's plans." "The advice with which your Holiness honours us is scarcely practicable. For the Government to alter the King's plans would be to alarm the populace, demoralise the services, and to add to the unhappy excitement which it is the object of the festival allay." "But why do you come to me?" "Because, your Holiness, our information, although conclusive, is too indefinite for effective action, and we believe your Holiness can supply the means by which we may preserve public order, and"--with an apologetic gesture--"save the life of the King." The Pope was moving uneasily in his chair. "I will ask you to be good enough to speak more plainly," he said. The Baron's heavy moustache rose at one corner to a fleeting smile. "Your Holiness," he said, "is already aware that accident disclosed to us the source of your information. It was a lady. This knowledge enabled us to judge who was the subject of her communication. It was the lady's lover. Official channels give us proof that he is engaged abroad in plots against public order, and thus..." "If you know all this, sir, what do you want with me?" "Your Holiness may not be aware that the person in question is a Deputy, and that a Deputy cannot be arrested without the fulfilment of various conditions prescribed by law. One of those conditions is that some one should be in a position to denounce him." The Pope half rose from his chair. "You ask me to denounce him?" The Baron bowed very low. "The Government does not presume so far," he said. "It only hopes that your Holiness will require your informant to do so." "Then you want me to outrage a confidence?" "It was not a confession, your Holiness, and even if it had been, as your Holiness knows better than we do, it would not be without precedent to reveal the facts which are necessary to be known in order to prevent crime." The Capuchin's sandals were scraping on the floor, but the Pope raised his left hand, and the friar fell back. "You are aware," said the Pope, "that the lady you speak of as my informant is married to the Deputy?" "We are aware that she thinks she is." "Thinks?" said the indignant voice of the Capuchin, but the Pope's left hand was raised again. "In short, sir, you ask me to require the wife to sacrifice her husband." "If your Holiness calls it so,--to perform an act that will preserve the public peace...." "I _do_ call it so." The Baron bowed, the young King was restless, and there was a moment's silence. Then the Pope said: "Putting aside the extreme unlikelihood that the lady knows more than she has said, and we have already communicated, what possible inducement do you expect us to offer her that she should sacrifice her husband?" "Her husband's life," said the Baron. "His life?" "Your Holiness may not know that the Governments of Europe, having ascertained the existence of a widespread plot against civil society, have joined in measures of repression. One of these is the extension to all countries of what is called the Belgian clause in treaties, whereby persons guilty of regicide or of plots directed against the lives of sovereigns are made liable to extradition." "Well?" "The Deputy Rossi is now in Berlin. If he were denounced with the conditions required by law as conspiring against the life of the King, we might have him arrested to-night and brought back as a common murderer." "Well?" "Your Holiness may not have heard that since the late unhappy riots the Parliament, in spite of the protests of his Majesty, has re-established capital punishment for all forms of high treason." "Therefore," said the Pope, "if the wife were to denounce her husband for participation in this conspiracy he would be sentenced to death." "For this conspiracy--yes," said the Baron. "But the present is not the only conspiracy the man Rossi has engaged in. Eighteen years ago he was condemned in contumacy for conspiracy against the life of the late King. He has not yet suffered for his crime, because of the difficulty of bringing it home. In that case, as in this, there is only one person known to the authorities who can fulfil the conditions required by law. That person is the informant of your Holiness." "Well?" "If your Holiness can prevail upon the lady to identify her lover as the man condemned for the former conspiracy, you will be helping her to save her husband's life from the penalty due for the present one." "How so?" "His Majesty is willing to promise your Holiness that, whatever the result of a new trial in assize to follow the old one in contumacy, he will grant a complete pardon." "And then?" "Then the Deputy Rossi will be banished, the threatened conspiracy will be crushed, the public peace will be preserved, and the King's life will be saved." The Pope leaned forward on the arms of his chair, but he did not speak, and there was silence for some moments. "Thus your Holiness must see," said the Baron suavely, "that, in asking you to obtain the denunciation of the man Rossi, the Government is only looking to your Holiness to fulfil the mission of mercy to which your venerated position has destined you." "And if I refused to exercise this mission of mercy?" The Baron bowed gravely. "Your Holiness will not refuse," he said. "But if I do--what then?" "Then ... your Holiness.... I was about to say something." "I am listening." "The man we speak of is the bitterest enemy of the Church. Whatever his hypocrisies, he is at once an atheist and a freemason, sworn to allow no private interests or feelings, no bonds of patriotism or blood, to turn him aside from his purpose, which is to overthrow Society and the Church." "Well?" "He is also a bitter personal enemy of the Holy Father, and knows no object so dear as that of tearing him from his place and shaking the throne of St. Peter." "Well, sir?" "The police and the army of the Government are the only forces by which the Holy Father can be protected, and without them the bad elements which lurk in every community would break out, the Holy Father would be driven from Rome, and his priests assaulted in the streets." "But what will happen if I refuse to outrage the sanctity of an immortal soul in spite of all this danger?" "Your Holiness asks me what will happen if you refuse to obtain the denunciation of a man whom your Holiness knows to be conspiring against public order?" "I do." "What will happen will be ... your Holiness, I am speaking...." "Go on." "That, if the crime is committed and the King is killed, I, the Minister of his Majesty, will be in a position to say--and to call upon this friar to witness--that the Pope knew of it beforehand, and under the most noble sentiments about the sanctity of an immortal soul gave a supreme encouragement of regicide." "And then, sir?" "The world draws no nice distinctions, your Holiness, and the Vatican is now at war with nearly all the powers and peoples of Europe. In the presence of a monstrous crime against the most innocent and the most highly placed, the world would say that what the Pope did not prevent the Pope desired, what the Pope desired the Pope designed, and that the Vicar of the Prince of Peace attempted to rebuild his temporal power by means of the plots of conspirators and the daggers of assassins." The sandals of the Capuchin were scraping the floor again, and once more the Pope put up his hand. "You come to me, sir, when you have exhausted all other means of obtaining your end?" "Naturally the Government wishes if possible to spare your Holiness an unusual and painful ordeal." "The lady has resisted all other influences?" "She has resisted all influences which can be brought to bear upon her by the proper authorities." "I have heard of it, sir. I have heard what your 'authorities' have done to humble a helpless woman. She had been the victim of a heartless man, and by knowledge of that fact your 'authorities' have tempted and tried her. They tried her with poverty, with humiliation, with jealousy and the shadow of shame. But the blessed God upheld her in the love which had awakened her soul, and she withstood them to the last." The Baron, for the first time, looked confused. "I have also heard that in order to achieve the same end one of your gaols has been the scene of a scandal which has outraged every divine and human law." "Your Holiness must not accept for truth all that is printed in the halfpenny papers." "Is it true that in the cell where a helpless unfortunate was paying the penalty of his crime your 'authorities' introduced a police agent in disguise to draw him into a denunciation of his accomplice?" "These are matters of state, your Holiness. I do not assert them and I do not deny." "In the name of humanity I ask you are such 'authorities' punished, or do they sit in the cabinets of your Ministers of the Interior?" "No doubt the officials went too far, your Holiness; but shall we, for the sake of a miserable malefactor who told one story to-day and another to-morrow, drag our public service through courts of law? Pity for such persons is morbid sentimentality, your Holiness, unworthy of a strong and enlightened Government." "Then God destroy all such Governments, sir, and the bad and unchristian system which supports them! Allow that the man _was_ a miserable malefactor, it was not he alone that was offended, but in his poor, degraded person the spirit of Justice. What did your 'authorities' do? They tortured the man by his love for his wife, by the memory of his murdered child, by all that was true and noble and divine in him. They crucified the Christ in that helpless man, and you stand here in the presence of the Vicar of Christ to excuse and defend them." The Pope had risen in his chair and lifted one hand over his head with a majestic gesture. Involuntarily the young King, who had been ashen pale for some moments, dropped to his knees, but the Baron only folded his arms and stiffened his legs. "Have you ever thought, sir, of the end of the unjust Minister? Think of his dying hour, tortured with the memory of young lives dissolved, mothers dead, widows desolate, and orphans in tears. Think of the day after his death, when he who has passed through the world like the scourge of God lies at its feet, and no one so mean but he may spurn the dishonoured carcass. You are aiming high, your Excellency, but beware, beware!" The Pope sat, and the King rose to his feet. "Your Majesty," said the Pope, "the day will come when we must both present ourselves before God to render to Him an account of our deeds, and I, being far more advanced in years, will assuredly be the first. But I would not dare to meet the eye of my Judge if I did not this day warn you of the dangers in which you stand. Only God knows by what inscrutable decree of Providence one man is made a Pope or a King, while another man, his equal or superior, is made a beggar or a slave. But God who made Popes and Kings meant them to be the fathers, not the seducers of their subjects. A sovereign may be a man of good intentions, but if he is weak, and allows himself to fall into the hands of despotic Ministers, he is a worse affliction than the cruellest tyrant. Think well, your Majesty! A throne may be a quagmire, and a man may be buried in it, and buried alive." The young King began to falter some incoherent words, but without listening the Pope rose to end the audience. "You promise me," said the Pope, "that if--I say _if_--in order to avoid bloodshed and to prevent a crime, I obtain from this lady the identification of her husband as the person condemned for the former conspiracy, you will spare and pardon him whatever happens?" "Holy Father, I give you my solemn word for it." "Then leave me! Let me think!... Wait! If she consents, where must she go to?" "To the Procura by the Ponte Ripetta, and, as time presses, at ten o'clock on Saturday morning," said the Baron. "Leave me! Leave me!" The King knelt again and kissed the Pope's hand, but the Baron only bowed as he passed out behind his sovereign. The opening of the doors let in a wave of sound that was like the roll of a great wind in a cave. Tenebræ had been going on for some time in the Basilica, and the people were singing the Miserere. "Did you hear him, Father?" said the Pope. "Isn't it almost enough to justify a man like Rossi that he has to meet a despot like that?" "We'll talk of it to-morrow," said the Capuchin. The friar touched a bell, and the _palfrenieri_ returned with the chair. XIV Next day, being Good Friday, was passed by the Pope in religious retreat, which was interrupted by indispensable business only. After Mass of the Presanctified he sat in his study with his confessor, while his chaplain in black passed through on tiptoe from the private chapel, and his chamberlains, tired out by the ceremonies of yesterday, dozed on their stools in the outer hall. The day was bright but the room was darkened, and the hearts of the two old men were heavy. Over the face of the Pope there was a cloud of trouble, and the countenance of the Capuchin was solemn to the point of sternness. The friar sat in the old-fashioned easy-chair with his bare feet showing from under the edge of his brown habit; the Pope lay on the lounge with both hands in the vertical pockets of his white woollen cassock. "Your Holiness is not well this morning?" "Not very well, Father Pifferi." "Your Holiness was disturbed by the interview in the Sacristy. But you should think no more about it. In any case, what the Minister proposed was impossible, therefore you must dismiss it from your mind. To ask a wife to reveal the secrets of her husband would be tyranny worse than the rack. Besides, it would be uncanonical, and your Holiness could never consider it." "How so?" "Didn't your Holiness promise that whatever the nature of this poor lady's confidence you would hold it as sacred as the confessional?" "Well?" "What is the confessional, your Holiness? It is a tribunal in which the priest is judge and the penitent a prisoner who pleads guilty. Is the priest to call witnesses to prove other crimes? He has no right and no power to do so." "But where the penitent wittingly or unwittingly is in the position of an accomplice, what then, Father Pifferi?" "Even then it is expressly forbidden to demand the names of others upon the plea of preventing evil. How can you hold this lady's confidence as sacred and yet ask her to denounce her husband?" The Pope rose with a face full of pain, walked to the bookcase, and took down a book. "Listen, Father," he said, and he began to read:-- "_If the penitent was obliged under pain of mortal sin to reveal his accomplices to repair a common injury, I have maintained against other theologians that even then the confessor cannot oblige him to do so._" "There!" cried the Capuchin. "What did I say? Gaume is wise, and the other theologians, who are they?" "_Only_," continued the Pope, turning a page and holding up one finger, "_he can and must oblige him to make known his accomplices to other persons who can arrest the scandal._" The Capuchin took a long breath. "Is that what the Holy Father intends to do in this instance?" "He _can_ and _must_." The Capuchin dropped his head, and there was a long pause, in which the Pope walked nervously about the room. "Poor child!" said the Capuchin. "But perhaps her heart has been too much set on human love." The Pope sighed. "Yet who are we, whose hearts are closed to earthly affection, to prescribe a limit to human love?" "Who indeed?" said the Pope. "Do you recall her resemblance to any one, your Holiness?" The Pope stopped in his walk and looked towards the curtained window. "The same soft voice and radiant smile, the same attitude of idolatry towards the husband she is devoted to, the same...." "The Sisters of the Sacred Heart will take her when all is over," said the Pope. "And the man, too, whatever his errors, has a certain grandeur of soul, that lifts him far above these chief gaolers and detectives who call themselves statesmen and diplomatists, these scavengers of civilisation." "He must go back to America and begin life again," said the Pope. Two hours later Father Pifferi went off to fetch Roma, and the Pope sat down to his mid-day meal. The room was very quiet, and in the absence of the church bells the city seemed to sit in silence. Cortis stood behind the Pope's chair, and the cat sat on a stool at the opposite side of the table. The chamberlains, lay and ecclesiastical, waited in the ante-camera, and the Swiss and Noble Guards, the Palatine Guards, and the _palfrenieri_ dotted the decorated halls that led to the royal stairs. But the saintly old man, who had a palace yet no home, servants yet no family, an army yet no empire, who was the father of all men, yet knew no longer the ordinary joys and sorrows of human life, sat alone in his little plain apartment and ate his simple dish of spinach and beans. XV Good Friday's Ministerial paper announced in its official column that late the night before the King, attended by the Minister of the Interior, had paid a surprise visit to the Mint, which was in the Via Fondamenta, a lane approached by way of the silent passage which leads to the lodging of the Canons of St. Peter's. Roma was puzzling over the inexplicable announcement, when old John, one of Rossi's pensioners, knocked at her door. His face and his lips were white, and when Roma offered him money he put it aside impatiently. "You mustn't think a gold hammer can break the gate of heaven, Eccellenza," the old man said. Then he told his story. The King had seen the Pope in secret the night before, and there was something going on about the Honourable Rossi. John knew it because his grandson had left Rome that morning for Chiasso, and another member of the secret police had started for Modane. If Donna Roma knew where the Honourable was to be found, she had better tell him not to return to Italy. "Better be a wood-bird than a cage-bird, you know," the old man whispered. Roma thanked him for his news, and then warned him of the risk he ran, being dependent on his grandson and his grandson's wife. "That's nothing," he said, "nothing at all _now_." Last night he had dreamed a dream. He thought he was a strong man again, with his children about him, and beholden to no one. How happy he had been! But when he awoke, and found it was not true, and that he was old and feeble, he felt that he could hear it no longer. "I'm in the way and taking the food of the children, so it can't last long, Eccellenza," he said in a tremulous voice, smiling with his toothless mouth, and nodding slightly as he went away. In the uneasy depths of Roma's soul only one thing was now certain. Her husband was in danger, and he must not attempt to cross the frontier. Yet how was he to be prevented? The difficulty was enormous. If only Rossi had replied to her letter by telegram, as she had asked him to do, she might have found some means of communication. At length an idea occurred to her, and she sat down to write a letter. "Dearest," she wrote, while her eyes shone with a kind of delirium and tears trickled down her cheeks, "I am very ill, and as you cannot come to me I must go to you. Don't think me too weak and womanish, after all my solemn promises to be so strong and brave. But I can only live by love, dearest, and your absence is more than I can bear. You will think I ought to be content with your letters, and certainly they have been very sweet and dear to me; but they are so few, and they come at such long intervals, and now they seem to have stopped altogether. Perhaps at the bottom of my selfish heart, too, I think your letters might be a wee bit more lover-like, but then men don't write real love letters, and nearly every woman would confess, if she told the truth, and she is a little disappointed in that regard. "I know my husband has other things to think about, great things, high and noble aims and objects, but I am only a woman in spite of my loud pretences, and I must be loved, or I shall die. Not that I am afraid of dying, because I know that if I die I shall be with you in a moment, and this cruel separation will be at an end. But I want to live, and I'm certain I shall begin to feel better after I have passed a few moments at your side. So I shall pack up immediately and start away on the wings of the morning. "Don't be alarmed if you find me looking pale and thin and old and ugly. How could I be anything else when the particular world I live in has been sunless all these weeks? I know your work is very pressing, especially now when so many things are happening; but you will put it aside for a little while, won't you, and take me up into the Alps somewhere, and nurse me back to health and happiness? Fancy! We shall be boy and girl again, as in the days when you used to catch butterflies for me, and then look sad when, like a naughty child, I scrunched them! "_Au revoir_, dearest. I shall fall into your hands nearly as soon as this letter. I tremble to think you may be angry with me for following you and interrupting your work. If you show it in your face I shall certainly expire. But you will be good to your poor pilgrim of love and comfort and strengthen her. All the time you have been away she has never forgotten you for a moment--no, not one waking moment. An ordinary woman who loved an ordinary man would not tell him this, but you are not ordinary, and if I am I don't care a pin to pretend. "Expect me, then, by the fastest train leaving Rome to-morrow morning, and don't budge from Paris until I arrive. "ROMA." The strain of this letter, with its conscious subterfuge and its unconscious truth, put Roma into a state of fever; and when she had finished it and sent it to the post, her head was light, and she was aware for the first time that she was really ill. The deaf old woman, who helped her to pack, talked without ceasing of Rossi and Bruno and Elena and little Joseph, and finally of the King and his intended jubilee. "I don't take no notice of Governments, Signora. It's the same as it used to be in the old days. One Pope died, and his soul went into the next. First an ugly Pope, then a handsome one, but the soul was the same in all. Wet soup or dry--that's all I trouble about now; and I don't care who gets the taxes so long as I can pay.... What do you say, Tommaso?" The Garibaldian had come upstairs smiling and winking, and holding out a letter. "From Trinità de' Monti," he whispered. Flushing crimson and trembling visibly, Roma took the letter out of the old man's hands with as much apprehension as if he had tried to deal her a blow, and went off to her room. "What do I say, Francesca? I say it's a good thing to be a Christian in these days, and that's why I always carry a sharp knife and a rosary." XVI The letter bore the Berlin postmark. "MY DEAR WIFE,--I left Paris rather unexpectedly three days ago and arrived here on Tuesday. The reason of this sudden flight was the announcement in the Paris papers of the festivities intended in Rome in honour of the King's accession. Such a shameless outrage on the people's sufferings in the hour of their greatest need seemed to call for immediate and effectual protest, and it was thought wise to push on the work of organisation with every possible despatch...." "There is a train north at 9.30," thought Roma. "I must leave to-night, not in the morning." "Oh, Roma, Roma, my dear Roma, I understand your father now, and can sympathise with him at last. He held that even regicide might become a necessary weapon in the warfare of humanity, and though I knew that some of the greatest spirits had recourse to it, I always thought this belief the defect of your father's quality as a prophet and the limit of his vision. But now I see that the only difference between us was that his heart was bigger than mine, and that in those cruel crises where the people are helpless and can do nothing by constitutional means, revolution, not evolution, may _seem_ to be their only hope...." Roma felt hysterical. There could no longer be any doubt of Rossi's intention. "I don't tell you anything definite about our plans, dearest, partly because of the danger of this letter going astray, and partly because I don't think it right to saddle my wife with the responsibility of knowing a programme that is weighted with issues of such immense importance to so many. I know there is not a drop of blood in her veins that isn't ready to flow for me, but that is no reason for exposing her to the danger of even the prick of her little finger. "Briefly our cry is 'Unite! Unite! Unite!' As soon as our scheme is complete, and associates all over Europe receive the word to commence concerted movement, the tyrants at the heads of the States will find the old edifices riddled and honeycombed, and ready to fall." Roma imagined she could see everything as it was intended to be--the signal, the rising, the regicide. "There is a train at 2.30; I must catch that one," she thought. "Dearest, don't attempt to reply to this letter, for I may leave Berlin at any moment, but whether for Geneva or Zürich I don't yet know. I can give you no address for letter or telegram, and perhaps it is best that at the critical moment I should cut myself off from all connection with Rome. Before many days I shall be with you; my absence will be over, and, God willing, I shall never leave your side again...." Roma was growing dizzy. Rossi was rushing on his death, and there was no help for him. It was like the awful hand of the Almighty driving him blindly on. "Adieu, my darling. Keep well. A friend writes that letters from Rome are following me from London. They must be yours, but before they overtake me I shall be holding you in my arms. How I long for it! I am more than ever full of love for you, and if I have filled my letter with business I have other things to say to you the very moment that we meet. Don't expect me until you see me in your room. Be brave! Now is the moment for all your courage. Remember you promised to be my soldier as well as my wife--'ready and waiting when her captain calls.' D." Roma was standing with Rossi's letter in her hand--her face and lips white, and her head full of a roaring noise--when a knock came to the bedroom door. Before answering she thrust the letter into the stove and set a match to it. "Donna Roma! Are you there, Signora?" "Wait ... come in." The old woman's head, in its coloured handkerchief, appeared through the half-opened door. "A Frate in the sitting-room to see you, Signora." It was Father Pifferi. The old man's gentle face looked troubled. Roma gave him a rapid, penetrating, and fearful glance. "The Holy Father wishes to see you again," he said. Roma thought for a moment; then she said, "Very well, let us go," and she went back to her room to make ready. The last of the letter was burning in the stove. XVII Roma returned to the Vatican with the Capuchin. There were the same gorgeous staircases and halls, the same soldiers, chamberlains, Bussolanti and Monsignori, the same atmosphere of the palace of an emperor. But in the little plain apartment which they entered, not as before by way of the throne room, but by a secret corridor with cocoanut matting and narrow frosted windows, the Pope stood waiting, like a simple priest, in a white woollen cassock. He smiled as Roma approached, a sad smile, and his weary eyes, when she looked timidly into his face, were full of the measureless pity that is in the eyes of the surgeon who is about to vivisect a dumb creature because it is necessary for the welfare of the human race. She knelt and kissed his ring. He raised her and put her to sit on the lounge, sitting in the arm-chair himself, and continuing to hold her hand. The Capuchin stood by the window, holding the curtain aside as if looking out on the piazza. "You believe the Holy Father would not send for you to injure you?" he said. "I am sure he would not, your Holiness," she answered. "And though I disapprove of your husband's doings, you know I would not willingly do him any harm?" "The Holy Father would not do harm to any one; and my husband is so good, and his aims are so noble, that nobody who really knew him could ever try to injure him." He looked into her face; it shone with a frightened joy, and pity grew upon him. "Your devotion to your husband is very sweet and beautiful, my daughter, and it grieves the Holy Father's heart to trouble it. But it seems to be his duty to do so, and he must do his duty." Again she looked up timidly, and again the sense came to him of dumb eyes full of entreaty. "My daughter, your husband's motives may not be bad. They may even be good and noble. It is often so with men of his sympathies. They see the disparity of wealth and poverty, and their hearts are torn with anger and with pity. But, my child, they do not know that true and lasting reforms, such as affect the whole human family, can only be accomplished by God and by the authority of His Holy Church and Pontificate, and that it must be the bell of St. Peter's which announces them to the world." As the Pope was speaking the colour ran up Roma's face like a flag of distress. She looked helplessly round at the Capuchin. The dumb eyes seemed to ask when the blow would fall. "As a consequence, what is he doing, my daughter? Ignoring the Church, which like a true mother is ever anxious to bear the burden of human weakness and suffering; he is setting up a new gospel, such as would reduce mankind to a worse barbarism than that from which Christ freed us. Is this conduct worthy of your devotion, my child?" Roma fixed her timid eyes on the Pope's face and answered: "I have nothing to do with my husband's opinions, your Holiness. I have only to be true to the friendship he gives me and the love I bear him." "My child," said the Pope, "ask yourself what your husband is doing at this moment. Not content with sowing the seeds of discord in Parliament and by the press, he is wandering through Europe, gathering up the adventurers who work in darkness in every country, and hatching a conspiracy which would lead to a state of anarchy throughout the world." Roma withdrew her hand from the hand of the Pope and made an exclamation of dissent. "Ah, I know what you would say, my daughter. He did not set out to produce anarchy. Such men never do. They begin with evolution and end with revolution. They begin with peace and end with violence. And the only sequel to your husband's aims must be the destruction of civil society, of Government, and of the Church." Roma's fingers were clasped convulsively in her lap. She lifted her timid but passionate face and said: "I know nothing about that, your Holiness. I only know that whatever he is doing his heart laid it upon him as a duty, and his heart is pure and noble." "My daughter, your husband may be the greatest of patriots in spirit and intention, but nevertheless he is one of the criminal and visionary teachers of this unhappy time who are deluding the ignorant crowd with promises that can never be realised. Anarchy, chaos, the uprooting of religion and morality, of justice, human dignity, and the purity of domestic life--these are the only possible fruits of the seed he is sowing." The timid eyes began to flash. "I did not come here to hear this, your Holiness." The Pope put his hand tenderly on her hands. "Remember, my child, what you said yourself on your former visit." Roma dropped her head. "The authorities know all about it." "Holy Father!" "It was necessary." "Then ... then somebody must have told them." "I told them. The Holy Father revealed no more than was necessary to relieve his conscience and to prevent crime. It was your own tongue that told the rest, my daughter." He recalled what had passed in the cabinet of the Prime Minister, and Roma felt as if something choked her. "No matter!" she said, with the same frightened but passionate face. "David Rossi is prepared for anything, and he will be prepared for this." "The authorities already knew more than I could tell them," said the Pope. "They knew where your husband was and what he was doing. They know where he is now, and they are preparing to arrest him." Roma's nerves grew more and more excited, the timid look gave place to a look of defiance. "They tell me that he is in Berlin at this moment. Is it true?" Roma did not reply. "They say their advices from official sources leave no doubt that he is engaged in conspiracy." Still Roma did not reply. "They say confidently that the conspiracy points to rebellion, and is intended to include regicide. Is it so?" Roma bit her lip and remained silent. "Can't you trust me, my child? Don't you know the Holy Father? Only give me some hope that these statements are untrue, and the Holy Father is ready to withstand all evil influences against you, and face the world in your defence." Roma felt as if something would snap within her brain. "I cannot say ... I do not know," she faltered. "But have you any uncertainty, my daughter? If you have the least reason to believe that these statements are slanders of malicious imaginations, tell me so, and I will give your husband the benefit of the doubt." Roma rose to her feet, but she held on to the edge of the table that stood by her side, rigid, quivering, frail and silent. The Pope looked up at her with weary eyes, and continued in a caressing tone: "If unhappily you have no doubt that your husband is engaged in dangerous enterprises, can you not dissuade him from them?" "No," said Roma, struggling with her tears, "that is impossible. Whether he is right or wrong, it is not for me to sit in judgment upon him. Besides, long ago, before we were married, I promised that I would never stand between him and his work, and I never can--never." "But if he loves you, my child, would he not wish for your sake to avoid the danger?" "I can't ask him. I told him to go on without thinking of me, and I would take care of myself whatever happened." Her eyes were now shining with her tears. The Pope patted the hand on the table. "Can you not at least go to him and warn him, and thus leave him to judge for himself, my daughter?" "Yes ... no, that is impossible also." "Why so, my child?" "Because I don't know where he is, and I shouldn't know where to find him. In his last letter he said it was better I should not know." "Then he has cut himself off from you entirely?" "Entirely. I am to see him next in Rome." "And meantime, that he may not run the risk of being traced by his enemies, he has stopped all channels of communication with his friends?" "Yes." The Pope's face whitened visibly, and an inward voice said to him, "This is God's hand. Death is waiting for the man in Rome, and he is walking blindly on to it." The weary eyes looked with compassion on Roma's quivering face. "There's no help for it," thought the Pope. "Suppose, my child ... suppose it were within your power to hinder evil consequences, would you do it?" "I am a woman, Holy Father. What can a woman do to hinder anything?" "In the history of nations it has sometimes happened that a woman has been able to save life and protect society by raising a little hand like this." The Pope lifted Roma's quivering fingers from the table. "If there is anything I can do, your Holiness, without breaking my promise or betraying my husband...." "It is a terrible ordeal, my child. For a wife, God knows how terrible." "No matter! If it will save my husband.... Tell me, your Holiness." He told her the proposal of the Prime Minister and the promise of the King. His voice vibrated. He was like a man who was wounding himself at every word. She looked at him until he had finished, without ability to speak. "You ask me to _denounce_ my husband?" "It is the only way to save him, my daughter." She looked round the room with helpless eyes, full of a dumb appeal for mercy or the chance of escape. "Holy Father," she said in a choking voice, "that is what his enemies have been asking me to do all this time, and because I have refused they have persecuted me with poverty and shame. And now that I come to you for refuge and shelter, thinking your fatherly arms will protect me, you ... even you...." She broke off as by a sudden thought, and said: "But it is impossible. He is my husband, therefore I cannot witness against him." "My heart bleeds for you, my child, and I am ashamed to gainsay you. But an oath is not necessary to a denunciation, and if it were so the law of this unchristian country would not recognise you as Rossi's wife." "But he will know who has denounced him. I am the only one in the world to whom he has told his secrets, and he will hate me and part from me." "You will have saved his life, my daughter." "What is it to me to have saved his life if he is lost to me for ever?" "Is it you that say that, my child--you that have sacrificed so much already? Doesn't the highest love remember first the welfare of the loved one and think of itself the last?" "Yes, yes; I didn't know what I was saying. But he will curse me for destroying his cause." "His cause will be destroyed in any case. It is doomed already. And when his visionary schemes are in the dust, and all is lost and vain, and your tears are powerless to bring back the past...." "But he will be banished, and I shall never see him again." "It will be the less of two evils, my child," said the Pope. And in the solemn, vibrating voice that rang in Roma's ears like the voice of Rossi, he added, "'Whosoever sheds man's blood by man shall his blood be shed.'" Again Roma held on to the table, feeling at every moment as if she might fall with a crash. "That's what would come to your husband if he were arrested and condemned for a conspiracy to kill the King. And even if the humane spirit of the age snatched him from death--what then? A cell in a prison on a volcanic rock in the sea, a stone sepulchre for the living dead, buried like a toad in a hole left by the running lava of life, guarded, watched, tortured in body and soul--a figure of tremendous tragedy, the hapless man once worshipped by the people spreading impotent hands to the outer world, until madness comes to his relief and suicide helps him to escape into eternity and leave only his wasted body on the earth." Roma could bear the nervous tension no longer. "I'll do it," she said. "My brave child!" said the Capuchin, turning from the window, with a face broken up by emotion. "It is one thing to repeat a secret if it is to harm any one, and quite another thing if it is to do good, isn't it?" said Roma. "Indeed it is," said the Capuchin. "He will never forgive me--I know that quite well. He will never imagine I would have died rather than do it. But I shall know I have done it for the best." "Indeed you will." Roma's eyes were shining with fresh tears, and she was struggling to keep back her sobs. "When we parted on the night he went away he said perhaps we were parting for ever. I promised to be faithful to death itself, but I was thinking of my own death, not his, and I didn't imagine that to save his life I must betray his...." But at that moment she broke down utterly, and the Pope, who had returned to his seat, rose again to comfort her. "Calm yourself, my daughter," he said. "What you are going to do is an act of heroic self-sacrifice. Be brave and Heaven will reward you." She grew calmer after a while, and then Father Pifferi made arrangements for the visit to the Procura. He would call for her at ten in the morning. "Wait!" said Roma. A new light had come into her face--the light of a new idea. "What is it, my daughter?" said the Pope. "Holy Father, there is something I had forgotten. But I must tell you before it is too late. It may alter your view of everything. When you hear it you may say, 'You must not speak a word. You shall not speak. It is impossible.'" "Tell me, my child." Roma hesitated and looked from the Capuchin to the Pope. "How can I tell you," she said. "It is so difficult. I hadn't meant to tell any one." "Go on, my daughter." "My husband's name...." "Well?" "Rossi is not really his name, your Holiness. It is the name he took on returning to Italy, because the one he had borne abroad had been involved in trouble." "Just so," said the Pope. "Holy Father, David Rossi was a friendless orphan." "I have heard so," said the Pope. "He never knew his father--not even by name. His mother was a poor unhappy woman who had been cruelly deceived by everybody. She drowned herself in the Tiber." "Poor soul," said the Pope. "He was nursed in the Foundling, your Holiness, and brought up in a straw hut in the Campagna, and then sold as a boy into England." The Pope moved uneasily in his seat. "My father found him on the streets of London on a winter's night, your Holiness, carrying a squirrel and an accordion. He wore a ragged suit of velveteens which used to be laughed at by the London boys, and that was all that sheltered his little body from the cold. 'Some poor man's child,' my father thought. But who can say if it was so, your Holiness?" The Pope was silent. A sudden change had come over his face. Roma's eyes were held down, her voice was agitated, she was scarcely able to speak. "My father was angry with the boy's father, I remember, and if at that time he had known where to find him I think he would have denounced him to the public or even the police." The Pope's head sank on his breast; the Capuchin looked steadfastly at Roma. "But who knows if he was really to blame, your Holiness? He may have been a good man after all--one of those who have to suffer all their lives for the sins of others. Perhaps ... perhaps that very night he was walking the streets of London, looking in vain among its waifs and outcasts for the little lost boy who owned his own blood and bore his name." The Pope's face was white and quivering. His elbows rested on the arms of his chair and his wrinkled hands were tightly clasped. Roma stopped. There was a prolonged silence. The atmosphere of the room seemed to be whirling round with frightful rapidity to one terrific focus. "Holy Father," said Roma at length, in a low tone, "if David Rossi were _your own son_, would you still ask me to denounce him?" The Pope lifted a face full of suffering and said in his deep, vibrating voice, "Yes, yes! More than ever for that--a thousand times more than ever." "Then _I will do it_," said Roma. The Pope rose up in great emotion, laid both hands on her shoulder, and said, "Go in peace, my daughter, and may God grant you at least a little repose." XVIII After recitation of the Rosary, the Pope, who had kept his religious retreat throughout the day, announced, to the astonishment of his chamberlains, his desire to walk in the garden at night. With Father Pifferi carrying a long Etruscan lamp he walked down the dark corridors with their surprised _palfrenieri_, and across the open courtyards with their startled sentinels, to where the arches of the Vatican opened upon the soft spring sky. The night was warm and quiet, and the moon, which had just risen and was near the full, shone with steady brilliance. The venerable old men walked without speaking, and only the beating of their sticks on the gravel seemed to break the empty air. At length the Pope stopped and said: "How strange it all was, Father Pifferi!" "Very strange, your Holiness," said the Capuchin. "Rossi is not his name, it seems." "'Not _really_ his name' was what she said." "His mother was deceived by every one, and she drowned herself in the Tiber." "That was so, your Holiness." "He was nursed in the Foundling, brought up in the Campagna, and then sold as a boy into England." "It is really extraordinary," said Father Pifferi. "Most extraordinary," repeated the Pope. They looked steadily at each other for a moment, and then walked on in silence. Little sparks of blue light pulsed and throbbed and floated before their faces, and the moon itself, like a greater firefly, came and went in the interstices of the thin-leaved trees. The Pope, who shuffled in his walking, stopped again. "Your Holiness?" "Who can he be, I wonder?" The Capuchin drew a deep breath. "We shall know everything to-morrow morning." "Yes," said the Pope, "we shall know everything to-morrow morning." Some dark phantom of the past was hovering about them, and they were afraid to challenge it. At that moment the silence of the listening air was broken by a long clear call, which rang out through the night without any warning, and then stopped as suddenly. "The nightingale," said the Pope. A mighty flood of melody floated down from some unseen place, in varying strains of divine music broken by many pauses, and running through every phase of jubilation, sorrow, and pain. It ended in a low wail of unutterable sadness, a pleading, yearning cry of anguish, which seemed to call on God Himself to hear. When it was over, and all was hushed around, the world seemed to have become void. The Pope's feet shuffled on the gravel. "I shall never forget it," he said. "It was wonderful," said the Capuchin. "I was thinking of that poor lady," said the Pope. "Her pleading voice will ring in my ears as long as I live." "Poor child!" said the Capuchin. "After all, we could not have acted otherwise. Don't you think so, Father Pifferi? Considering everything, we could not possibly have acted otherwise." "Perhaps we could not, your Holiness." They turned the bend of an avenue, where the path under their feet rustled with the thick blossom shed from the overhanging Judas trees. "Surely this is where the little mother bird used to be," said the Pope. "So it is," said the friar. "Strange, she has not sprung out as usual. Ah, Meesh is not here, and perhaps that's the reason." And feeling for the old sarcophagus, the Pope put his hand gently down into it. A moment afterwards he said in another tone: "Father, the young birds are gone." "Flown, no doubt," said the friar. "No. See," said the Pope, and he brought up a little nest filled with a ruin of fluff and feathers. "Meesh has been here indeed," said the friar. The venerable old men walked on in silence until they re-entered the vaulted courtyards of the Vatican. Then the Pope turned to the Capuchin and said in a breaking voice, "You'll go with the poor lady to the Procura in the morning, Father Pifferi. If the magistrates ask questions which they should not ask, you will protect her, and even forbid her to reply, and if she breaks down at the last moment you will support and comfort her. After that ... we must leave all to the Holy Spirit. God's hand is in this thing ... it is in everything. He will bring out all things well--well for us, well for the Church, well for the poor lady, and even for her husband, whoever he may be." "Whoever he may be," repeated the Capuchin. XIX Early in the morning of Holy Saturday, Roma was summoned as a witness before the Penal Tribunal of Rome. The citation, which was signed by a magistrate, required that she should present herself at the Procura at ten o'clock the same day, "to depose about facts on which she would then be interrogated," and she was warned that if she did not appear, "she would incur the punishment sanctioned by Article 176 of the Code of Penal Procedure." Roma found Father Pifferi waiting for her at the door of the Procura. The old Capuchin looked anxious. He glanced at her pale face and quivering lips and inquired if she had slept. She answered that she was well, and they turned to go upstairs. On the landing of the first floor Commendatore Angelelli, who was wearing a flower in his button-hole, approached them with smiles and quick bows to lead them to the office of the magistrate. "Only a form," said the Questore. "It will be nothing--nothing at all." Commendatore Angelelli led the way into a silent room furnished in red, with carpet, couch, armchairs, table, a stove, and two large portraits of the King and Queen. "Sit down, please. Make yourselves comfortable," said the Chief of Police, and he passed into an adjoining room. A moment afterwards he returned with two other men. One of them was an elderly gentleman, who wore with his frockcoat a close-fitting velvet cap decorated with two bands of gold lace. This was the Procurator General, and the other, a younger man, carrying a portfolio, was his private secretary. A marshal of Carabineers came to the door for a moment. "Don't be afraid, my child. No harm shall come to you," whispered Father Pifferi. But the good Capuchin himself was trembling visibly. The Procurator General was gentle and polite, but he dismissed the Chief of Police, and would have dismissed the Capuchin also, but for vehement protests. "Very well, I see no objection; sit down again," he said. It was a strange three-cornered interview. Father Pifferi, quaking with fear, thought he was there to protect Roma. The Procurator General, smiling and serene, thought she had come to complete a secret scheme of personal revenge. And Roma herself, sitting erect in her chair, in her black Eton coat and straw hat, and with her wonderful eyes turning slowly from face to face, thought only of Rossi, and was silent and calm. The secretary opened his portfolio on the table and prepared to write. The Procurator General sat in front of Roma and leaned slightly forward. "You are Donna Roma Volonna, daughter of the late Prince Prospero Volonna?" "I am." "You were born in England and lived there as a child?" "Yes." "Although you were young when you lost your father, you have a perfect recollection both of him and of his associates?" "Of some of his associates." "One of them was a young man who lived in his house as a kind of adopted son?" "Yes." "You are aware that your father was unhappily involved in political troubles?" "I am." "You know that he was arrested on a serious charge?" "I do." "You also know that, when condemned to death by a military tribunal for conspiring against the person of the late sovereign, his sentence was commuted by the King, but that one of his associates, condemned at the same time, and for the same crime, escaped all punishment because he was not then at the disposition of the law?" "Yes." "That was the young man who lived with him as his adopted son?" "It was." There was a moment's pause during which nothing could be heard but the quick breathing of the Capuchin and the scratching of the secretary's pen. "During the past few months you have made the acquaintance in Rome of the Deputy David Rossi?" "I have." The Capuchin moved in his seat. "Acquaintance! The lady is married to the Deputy." The Procurator General's eyes rose perceptibly. "Married!" "That is to say religiously married, which is all the Church thinks necessary." "Ah, I see," said the Procurator General, suppressing a smile. "Still I must ask the lady to make her statement in her natal name." "Go on, sir," said the Capuchin. "Your intimacy with the Honourable Rossi has no doubt led him to speak freely on many subjects?" "It has." "He has perhaps told you that Rossi was not his father's name." "Yes." "That it was his mother's name, and though strictly his legal name also, he has borne it only since his return to Rome?" "That is so." It was the Capuchin's turn to look surprised. His sandalled feet shuffled on the carpet, and he prepared to take snuff. "The Honourable Rossi has been some weeks abroad, and during his absence you have no doubt received letters from him?" "I have." "Can you tell me if in any of these letters he has said anything of a certain revolutionary propaganda?" The Capuchin, with his finger and thumb half raised, stopped and said, "I forbid the question, sir." "Father General!" "I mean that I counsel the lady not to answer it." The Procurator General suppressed another smile, directed this time at Roma, and said, "_Bene!_" "Be calm, my daughter," whispered the Capuchin. "At least," said the Procurator General, "you can now be certain that you had seen the Honourable Rossi before you met him in Rome?" "I can." "In fact you recognise in the illustrious Deputy the young man condemned in contumacy eighteen years ago?" "I do." "Perhaps in his letters or conversations he has even admitted the identity?" "He has." "Only one more question, Donna Roma," said the Procurator General, with another smile. "Your father's name in England was Doctor Roselli, and the name of his young confederate----" "Courage, my child," whispered the Capuchin, taking Roma's ice-cold hand in his own trembling one. "The name of his young confederate was----" "David Leone," said Roma, lifting her eyes to the face of Father Pifferi. "So David Leone and David Rossi are one and the same person?" "Yes," said Roma, and the Capuchin dropped back in his seat as if he had been dealt a blow. "Thank you. I need trouble you no more. My secretary will now prepare the _précis_." Commendatore Angelelli returned with the Carabineer, and there was some talking in low tones. "Report for the Committee of the Chamber, sir?" "That is unnecessary at this moment, the House having risen for Easter." "Warrant for the arrest, then?" "Certainly. Here is the form. Fill it up, and I will sign." While the secretary wrote his _précis_ at one side of the table, the Chief of Police prepared his _mandato_ at the other side, repeating the words to the Carabineer who stood behind his chair. "We ... considering the conclusions of the Public Minister ... according to Article 187 of the Code ... order the arrest of David Leone, commonly called David Rossi ... imputed guilty of attempted regicide in the year ... and tried and condemned in contumacy for the crime contemplated in Article.... And to such effects we require the Corps of the Royal Carabineers to conduct him before us to be interrogated on the facts above stated, and call on all officials and agents of the public force to lend a strong hand for the execution of the present warrant. Age, 34 years. Height, 1.79 metres. Forehead, lofty. Eyes, large and dark. Nose, Roman. Hair, black with short curls. Beard and moustache, clean shaven. _Corporatura_, distinguished." When the secretary had finished his _précis_ he read it aloud to Roma and his superior. "Good! Give the lady the pen. You will sign this paper, Donna Roma--and that will do." Roma and Father Pifferi had both risen. "Courage," the Capuchin tried to say, but his quivering lips emitted no sound. Roma stood a moment with the pen in her fingers, and her great eyes looked slowly round the room. Then she stooped and wrote her name rapidly. At the same moment the Procurator General signed the warrant, whereupon the Chief of Police handed it to the Carabineer, saying, "Lose no time--Chiasso," and the soldier went out hurriedly. Roma held the pen a moment longer, and then it dropped out of her fingers. "Come," said the Capuchin, and they left the room. There was a crowd on the embankment by the corner of the Ripetta bridge. The body of a beggar had been brought out of the river, and it was lying there for the formal inspection of the officials who report on cases of sudden death. Roma stopped to look at the dead man. It was Old John. He had committed suicide. XX It was said at the Vatican that the Pope had not slept all night. The attendant whose duty it was to lie awake while the Holy Father expected to sleep said he heard him praying in the dark hours, and at one moment he heard him singing a hymn. To the Pope it had been a night of searching self-examination. Pictures of his life had passed before him in swift review, pulsing and throbbing out of the darkness like the light of a firefly, now come, now gone. First the Conclave, the three scrutators, and himself as one of them. The first scrutiny, the second scrutiny, the third scrutiny and his own name going up, up, up, as he proclaimed the votes in a loud voice so that all in the chapel might hear. One vote more to his own name, another, still another; his fear, his fainting; the gentle tones of an old Cardinal, saying, "Take your time, brother; rest, repose a while." Then the election, the awful sense of being God's choice, the almost unearthly joy of the supreme moment when he became the Vicar of Christ on earth. Then the stepping forth from the dim conclave into the full light of day to be proclaimed the representative of the Almighty, the living voice of God, the infallible one. The sunless chapel, the white and crimson vestments, the fisherman's ring, the vast crowd in the blazing light of the piazza, the sudden silence, and the clear cry of the Cardinal Deacon ringing out under the blue sky, "I announce to you joyful tidings--the Most Eminent and Reverend Cardinal Leone, having taken the name of Pius X., is elected Pope." Then the call of silver trumpets, the roar of ten thousand human throats, the surging mass of living men below the balcony, and the joy-bells ringing out the glad news from every church tower in Rome, that a new King and Pontiff had been given by God to His World. Somewhere in the dark hours the Pope dozed off, and then Sleep, the maker of visions, dispelled his dream. Another picture--a picture which had pursued him at intervals both in sleeping and waking hours, ever since the great day when he stepped out on to the balcony and was saluted as a god--came to him again that night. He called it his presentiment. The scene was always the same. A darkened room, a chapel, an altar, himself on his knees, with the sense of Someone bending over him, and an awful voice saying into his ears:--"You, the Vicar of Jesus Christ; you, the rock on which the Saviour built His Church; you, the living voice of God; you, the infallible one; you, who fill the most exalted dignity on earth--_remember you are but clay_!" The Pope awoke with a start, and to break the oppression of painful thoughts he turned on the light, propped himself up in bed, and taking a book from the night table, he began to read. It was the Catholic legend of a father doomed to destroy his son, or suffer the son to destroy the father. They had been separated early in the son's life, and now that they met again they met as foes, and the son drew his sword upon his father without knowing who he was! One by one the incidents of the history linked themselves with the incidents of the day before, and the lonely old man of the Vatican--childless, kinless, homeless for all his state, and cut off from every human tie--began to think of things that were still farther back than the conclave and the proclamation--things of the dead past which nature had seemed to bury with so kind a hand, covering the grave with grass and flowers. A sweet young face, timid and trustful; a sudden shock such as makes the world crumble beneath a man's feet; a vague sense of guilt and shame, unreasonable, unmerited, unjustifiable, yet not to be put away; a blank period of humiliation; the opening of eyes in a new world; the humblest place in a religious house, the kitchen of the Noviciate. Then a great yearning, a great restlessness; coming out of the convent; dispensations; holy orders; works of charity; travels in foreign lands and searchings day and night in the streets of a cruel city for some one who had been lost and was never found. The Pope put down the book and turned out the light. It was then that he sang and prayed. When Cortis came with the Pope's breakfast in the frayed edge of the morning, the chamberlain outside the bedroom door whispered to the valet, "The Holy Father has been with the angels all night long." There was a Papal "Chapel" in St. Peter's that morning, with a procession of white vestments in honour of the Mass of the Resurrection, but the Pope did not attend. He sat alone in his simple chamber, with curtains drawn across the marble columns to obscure the bed, fingering the crucifix which hung from his neck, and waiting for the ringing of the Easter bells. The little door to the private corridor opened quietly, and Father Pifferi entered the room. "Well?" said the Pope. "It is all over," said the Capuchin. "Did the poor child ... did she bear up bravely?" "Very bravely, your Holiness." "No weakness, no hysteria? She did not faint or break down at the end?" "On the contrary, she was composed--perfectly composed and quiet." "Thank God!" "It was most extraordinary. A woman denouncing her husband, and yet so calm, so terribly calm." "God helped her to bear her burden. God help all of us in our hour of need!" The Pope lifted the crucifix to his lips, and added, "And the man?" "Rossi?" "Yes." "After she had signed the denunciation a warrant for his arrest was made out and given to the Carabineers." "It mentioned everything?" "Everything." "Who he is and all about him?" "Yes, your Holiness." The Pope fingered his crucifix again, and said, "Who is he, Father Pifferi?" The Capuchin did not reply. "Father Pifferi, I ask you who he is?" Still the Capuchin did not reply, and the Pope smiled a pitiful smile, touched the friar's arm with a caressing gesture, and said, "Don't be afraid for the Holy Father, carissimo. If that poor child, who would have died rather than sacrifice her husband, could be so calm and strong...." "Holy Father," said the Capuchin, "when you asked the lady to denounce David Rossi you thought of him only as an enemy of the Church and of its head, trying to pull down both and destroy civil society--isn't that so?" The Pope bent his head. "Holy Father, if ... if you had known that he was something more than that ... something nearer ... if, for example, you had been told that ... that he was the relative of a priest, would you have asked for his denunciation just the same?" The old Capuchin had stammered, but the Pope answered in a firm voice, "That would have made no difference, my son. The blessed Scriptures do not conceal the sin of Judas, and shall we conceal the offences of those who come within the circle of our own families?" "Holy Father," said the Capuchin, "if you had been told that he was related to a prelate of your domestic household...." He stopped, and the Pope answered in a voice that trembled slightly, "Still it would have made no difference. The enemies of the Almighty are watching day and night, and shall His holy Church be imperilled and abased by the weakness of His servant?" "Holy Father, if ... if you had been told that ... that he was the kinsman of a Cardinal?" The Pope was struggling to control himself. "Even then it would have made no difference. I am old and weak, but God would have supported me, and though I had been called upon to cut off my right hand, or give my body to be burned, still...." His voice quivered and died in his throat, and there was a moment's pause. "Holy Father," said the Capuchin, turning his eyes away, "if you had been told that he was the nearest of kin to the Pope himself...." The Pope dropped the crucifix which was trembling in his hand, and half rose from his chair. "Then ... even then ... it would have ... but the will of God be done," he said, and he could not utter another word. At that moment the Easter bells began to ring. The deep-toned bells of St. Peter's came first with its joyful peal, and then the bells of the other churches of the city took up the rapturous melody. In the Basilica the veil before the altar had been rent with a loud crash, and the Gloria in Excelsis was being sung. At the same moment a prelate vested in a white tunic entered the Pope's room, and kneeling in the middle of the floor, he said, "Holy Father, I announce to you a great joy. Hallelujah! The Lord is risen again." The Pope tried to rise from his seat, but could not do so. "Help me, Monsignor," he said faintly, and the prelate raised him to his feet. Then leaning on the prelate's arm, he walked to the door of his private chapel. On reaching it he looked back at Father Pifferi, who was going silently out of the room. "Addio, carissimo," he said, in a pitiful voice, but the Capuchin could not reply. Some moments afterwards the Pope was quite alone. The arched windows of the little chapel were covered with heavy red curtains, but the clanging of the brass tongues in the cupola, the deep throb of the organ, and the rolling waves of the voices of the people singing the grand Hallelujah, found their way into the darkened chamber. But above all other sounds in the ears of the Pope as he lay prostrate on the altar steps was the sound of a voice which said, "You, the Vicar of Jesus Christ; you, the rock on which the Saviour built His Church; you, the living voice of God; you, the infallible one; you, who fill the most exalted dignity on earth--_remember you are but clay_." XXI "Acqua Acetosa!" "Roba Vecchia!" "Rannocchie!" The street cries were ringing through the Navona, the piazza was alive with people, and strangers were saluting each other as they passed on the pavement when Roma returned home. At the lodge the Garibaldian wished her a good Easter, and at the door of the apartment the curate of the parish, who in cotta and biretta was making his Easter call to sprinkle the rooms with holy water, gave her a smile and his blessing, while old Francesca, inside the house, laying the Easter sideboard of cakes, sausages, and eggs, put both hands behind her back, like a child playing a game, and cried-- "Now, what does the Signora think I've got for her?" It was a letter, and as the old woman produced it she was glowing with happiness at the joy she was bringing to Roma. "The porter from Trinità de' Monti brought it," she said, "and he told me to tell you there's a lay sister called Sister Angelica at the convent now, and he is afraid that other letters may go astray.... Aren't you glad you've got a letter, Signora? I thought Signora would die of delight, and I gave the man six soldi." Roma was turning the envelope over and over in her hands, thinking what a call to joy a letter of Rossi's used to be, and wondering if she ought to open this one. "Well, that was the way with me too when Tommaso was at the wars. But this is Easter, Signora, and the Blessed Virgin wouldn't bring you bad news to-day. Listen! That's the Gloria. I can always hear the church bells on Holy Saturday. The first time after I was deaf Joseph was a baby, and I took the wrappings off his little feet while the bells were ringing, and he walked straight away! Ah, my poor darling!... But I'm making the Signora cry." The letter was dated from Zürich. It ran:-- "MY DEAR ROMA,--Your letters and I seem to be running a race which shall return to you first. I was compelled to leave Berlin before my long-delayed correspondence could arrive from London, and now it seems probable that I must leave Zürich before it can follow me from Berlin. As a consequence I have not heard from you for weeks--not since your letter about your friend, you remember--and I am in agonies of impatience to know what has happened to you in the interval. "I came to Switzerland the day before yesterday, pushed on by the urgency of affairs at home. Here we hold the last meeting of our international committee before I go back to Italy. This will be to-morrow (Friday) night, and according to present plans I set out for Rome on Saturday morning. "How different my return will be from my flight a few weeks ago! Then I was plunged in despair, now I am buoyed up with hope; then my soul was furrowed by doubts, now it is braced up with certainties; then my idea was a dream, now it is a practical reality. "O Roma, my Roma, it is a good thing to live. After all, the world is no Gethsemane, and when a man has a beautiful life like yours belonging to him he may be forgiven if he forgets the voices which assail him with fears. They have come to me sometimes, dearest, in this long and cruel silence, and I have asked myself hideous questions. What is happening to my dear one in the midst of my enemies? What sufferings are being inflicted upon her for my sake? She is brave, and will bear anything, but did I do right to leave her behind? Bruno died rather than betray me, and she will do more--infinitely more in her eyes--she will see _me_ die, rather than imperil a cause which is a thousand times more dear to me than my life. "Addio, carissima! Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm, for love is strong as death. If there were any possibility of our love increasing it _would_ increase after going through dangers like these. Keep well, dearest. Preserve that sweet life which is so precious to me that I cannot live without it. Do you remember, it was the 2nd of February when we parted in the darkness at the church door, and now it is Easter, and the day after to-morrow we shall hear the Easter bells! Spring is here, and in the unchangeable changeableness of nature I see the resurrection of humanity and listen to the Gloria of God. "You cannot answer this letter, dear, because I shall already be on the way to Rome before it reaches you, but you can send me a telegram to Chiasso. Do so. I shall look out for the telegraph boy the moment the train stops at the station. Say you are well and happy and waiting for me, and it will be like a smile from your lovely lips and eyes on the frontier of my native land. "My train is due to arrive on Sunday morning at seven o'clock. Meet me at the railway station, and let your face be the first I see when the train draws up in Rome. Then ... let me hear your voice, and let my heart become a King. "D.R." Roma had grown paler and paler as she read this letter. The man's love and trust were crushing her. Tears filled her eyes and flooded her face. But her soul, which had been stunned and had fallen, recovered itself and arose. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PART EIGHT--THE KING I Early on the morning of Holy Saturday a little crowd of Italians stood on the open space in front of the platform at the Bahnhof of Zürich. Most of them wore the blue smocks and peaked caps of porters and street-sweepers, but in the centre of the group was a tall man in a frockcoat and a soft felt hat. It was Rossi. He was noticeably changed since his flight from Rome. His bronzed face was paler, his cheeks thinner, his dark eyes looked larger, his figure stooped perceptibly, and he had the air of a man who was struggling to conceal a consuming nervousness. The bell rang for the starting of a train and Rossi shook hands with everybody. "Going straight through, Honourable?" "No, I shall sleep at Milan to-night and go on to Rome in the morning." "_Addio, Onorevole!_" "_Addio!_" The moment the train started, Rossi gave himself up to thoughts of Roma. Where was she now? He closed his eyes and tried to picture her. She was reading his letter. He recalled particular passages, and saw the smile with which she read them. Peace be with her! The light pressure of her soft fingers was on his hands already, and through the _tran-tran_ of the train he could hear her softest tones. Nature as well as humanity seemed to smile on Rossi that day. He thought the lakes had never looked so lovely. It was early when they ran along the shores of Lucerne, and the white mists, wrapping themselves up on the mountains, were gliding away like ghosts. One after another the great peaks looked over each other's shoulders, covered with pines as with vast armies crossing the Alps, thick at the bottom and with thinner files of daring spirits at the top. The sun danced on the waters of the lake like fairies on a floor of glass, and when the train stopped at Fluelen the sound of waterfalls mingled with the singing of birds and the ringing of the church bells. It was the Gloria. All the earth was singing its Gloria. "Glory to God in the highest." Rossi's happiness became almost boyish as the train approached Italy. When the great tunnel was passed through, the signs of a new race came thick and fast. Shrines of the Madonna, instead of shrines of the Christ; long lines of field-workers, each with his hoe, instead of little groups with the plough; grey oxen with great horns and slow step, instead of brisk horses with tinkling bells. Signs of doubtful augury for the most part, but Rossi was in no mood to think of that. He let down the carriage window that he might drink in the air of his own country. In spite of his opinions he could not help doing that. The mystic call that comes to a man's heart from the soil that gave him birth was coming to him also. He heard the voice of the vine-dresser in the vineyard singing of love--always of love. He saw the oranges and lemons, and the roses white and red. He caught a glimpse of the first of the little cities high up on the crags, with its walls and tower, and Campo Santo outside. His lips parted, his breast swelled. It was home! Home! The day waned, the sky darkened, and the passengers in the train, who had been talking incessantly, began to doze. Rossi returned to his seat, and thought more seriously about Roma. All his soul went out to the young wife who had shared his sufferings. In his mind's eye he was reading between the lines of her letters, and beginning to reproach himself in earnest. Why had he imposed his life's secret upon her, seeing the risk she ran, and the burden of her responsibility? The battle with his soul was short. If he had not trusted Roma, he would never have loved her. If he had not stripped his heart naked before her, he would never have known that she loved him. And if she had suffered in his absence he would make it all up to her on his return. He thought of their joyous day on the Campagna, and then of the unalloyed hours before them. What would she be doing now? She would be sending off the telegram he was to receive at Chiasso. God bless her! God bless everybody! The thought of Roma's telegram filled the whole of the last hour before he reached the frontier. He imagined the words it would contain: "Well and waiting. Welcome home." But was she well? It was weeks since he had heard from her, and so many things might have happened. If he had managed his personal affairs with more thought for himself, he might have received her letters. Heavy clouds began to shut out the landscape. The temperature had fallen suddenly, and the wind must have risen, for the trees, as they flashed past, were being beaten about. Rossi stood in the corridor again, feeling feverish and impatient. At length the train slackened speed, the noise of the wheels and the engine abated, and there came a clap of thunder. After a moment there was a far-off sound of church bells which were being rung to avert the lightning, and then came a downpour of rain. It was raining in torrents when the train drew up at Chiasso, but the carriages were hardly under cover of the platform when Rossi was ready to step out. "All baggage ready!" "Hand baggage out!" "Chiasso!" "The Customs!" The station hands and porters were shouting by the stopping train, and Rossi's dark eyes with their long lashes were looking through the line of men for some one who carried a yellow letter. "Facchino!" "Signore?" "Seen the telegraph boy about?" "No, Signore." Rossi leapt down to the platform, and at the same moment three Carabineers, who had been working their heads from right to left to peer into the carriages as they passed, stepped up to him and offered a folded white paper. He took it without speaking, and for a moment he stood looking at the soldiers as if he had been stunned. Then he opened the paper and read: "_Mandate di Cattura...._ We ... order the arrest of David Leone, commonly called David Rossi...." A cold sweat burst in great beads from his forehead. Again he looked into the faces of the soldiers. And then he laughed. It was a fearful laugh--the laugh of a smitten soul. The scene had been observed by passengers trooping to the Customs, and a group of English and American tourists were making apposite comments on the event. "It's Rossi." "Rossi?" "The anarchist." "Travelled in our train?" "Sure." "My!" The marshal of Carabineers, a man with shrunken cheeks and the eyes of a hawk, dressed in his little brief authority, strode with a lofty look through the spectators to telegraph the arrest to Rome. II When the train started again, Rossi was a prisoner sitting between two of the Carabineers with the marshal of Carabineers on the seat in front of him. His heart felt cold and his chin buried itself in his breast. He was asking himself how many persons knew of his identity with David Leone, and could connect him with the trial of eighteen years ago. _There was but one._ Rossi leapt to his feet with a muttered oath on his lips. The thing that had flashed through his mind was impossible, and he was himself the traitor to think of it. But even when the imagined agony had passed away, a hard lump lay at his heart and he felt sick and ashamed. The marshal of Carabineers, who had mistaken Rossi's gesture, closed the carriage window and stood with his back to it until the train arrived at Milan. A police official was waiting for them there with the latest instructions from Rome. In order to avoid the possibility of a public disturbance in the capital on the day of the King's Jubilee, the prisoner was to be detained in Milan until further notice. "Seems you're to sleep here to-night, Honourable," said the soldier. Remembering that it had been his intention to do so when he left Zürich, Rossi laughed bitterly. It was now dark. A prison van stood at the end of a line of hotel omnibuses, and Rossi was marched to it between the measured steps of the Carabineers. News of his arrest had already been published in Milan, and crowds of spectators were gathered in the open space outside the station. He tried to hold up his head when the people peered at him, telling himself that the arrest of an innocent man was not his but the law's disgrace; yet a sense of sickness surprised him again and he dropped his head as he buried himself in the van. On the dark drive to the prison in the Via Filangeri the Carabineers grumbled and swore at the hard fate which kept them out of Rome at a time of public rejoicing. There was to be a dinner on Monday night at the barracks on the Prati, and on Tuesday morning the King was to present medals. Rossi shut his eyes and said nothing. But half-an-hour later, when he had been put in the "paying" cell, and the marshal of Carabineers was leaving him, he could not forbear to speak. "Officer," he said, fumbling his copy of the warrant, "would you mind telling me where you received this paper?" "At the Procura, of course," said the soldier. "Some one had denounced me there--can you tell me who it was?" "That's no business of mine, Honourable. Still, as you wish to know...." "Well?" "A lady was there when the warrant was made out, and if I had to guess who she was...." Rossi saw the name coming in the man's face, and he flung out at him in a roar of wrath. During the long hours of the night he tried to account for his arrest to the exclusion of Roma. He thought of every woman whom he had known intimately in England and America, and finally of Elena and old Francesca. It was useless. There was only one woman in the world who knew the secrets of his early life. He had revealed some of them himself, and the rest she knew of her own knowledge. No matter! There was no traitor so treacherous as circumstance. He would not believe the lie that fate was thrusting down his throat. Roma was faithful, she would die rather than betray him, and he was a contemptible hound to allow himself to think of her in that connection. He recalled her letters, her sacrifices, her brave and cheerful renunciation, and the hard lump that had settled at his heart rose up to his throat. Morning broke at last. As the grey dawn entered the cell the Easter bells were ringing. Rossi remembered in what other conditions he had expected to hear them, and again his heart grew bitter. A good-natured warder came with his breakfast of bread and water, and a smuggled copy of a morning journal called the _Perseveranza_. It contained an account of his arrest, and a leading article on his career as a thing closed and ruined. The public would learn with astonishment that a man who had attained to great prominence in Parliament and lived several years in the fierce light of the world's eye, had all the time masqueraded in a false character, being really a criminal convicted long ago for conspiring against the person of the late King. The sun shone, the sparrows chirped, the church bells rang the whole day long. Towards evening the warder came with another newspaper, the _Corriere della Sera_. It explained that the sensational arrest of the illustrious Deputy, which had fallen on the country like a thunderbolt, was not intended as punishment for an offence long past and forgotten, but as a means of preventing a political crime that was on the eve of being committed. The Deputy had been abroad since the unhappy riots of the First of February, and advices from foreign police left no doubt whatever that he had contemplated a preposterous raid of the combined revolutionary clubs of Europe against Italy, timed with almost fiendish imagination to break out on the festival of the King's Jubilee. Rossi slept as little on Sunday night as on the night before. The horrible doubts which he had driven away were sucking at his heart like a vampire. He tried to invent excuses for Roma. She was intimidated; she was a woman and she could not help herself. Useless, and worse than useless! "I thought the daughter of Joseph Roselli would have died first," he told himself. The good-natured warder brought him another newspaper in the morning, the _Secolo_, an organ of his own party. Its tone was the bitterest of all. "We have reason to believe that the unfortunate event, which cannot but have the effect of setting back the people's cause, is due to the betrayal of one of their leaders by a certain fashionable woman who is near to the person of the President of the Council. It is the old story over again, the story of man's weakness and woman's deception, with every familiar circumstance of humiliation, folly, and shame." There could be no doubt of it. It was Roma who had betrayed him. Whatever her reasons or excuse, the result was the same. She had given up the deepest secrets of his soul, and his life's work was in the dust. The marshal of Carabineers came to say that they were to go on to Rome, and at nine o'clock they were again in the train. People in holiday dress were promenading the platform and the station was hung with flags. A gentleman in a white waistcoat was about to step into the compartment with the Carabineers and their prisoner, when, recognising his travelling companions, he bowed and stepped back. It was the Sergeant of the Chamber, returning after the Easter vacation from his villa on one of the lakes. Rossi sent a ringing laugh after the man, and that brought him back. "I'm sorry for you, Honourable, very sorry," he said. "You've deceived us all, but now you are seen in your true colours, and apparently throwing off all disguise." The Sergeant was so far right that Rossi was another man. Whatever had been tender and sweet in him was now hard and bitter. The train started for Rome, and the soldiers drew the straws out of their Tuscan cigars and smoked. Rossi coiled himself up in his corner and shut his eyes. Sometimes a sneer curled his lips, sometimes he laughed aloud. They were travelling by the coast route, and when the train ran into Genoa a military band at the foot of the monument to Mazzini was playing the royal hymn. But the festivities of the King's Jubilee were eclipsed in public interest by the arrest of Rossi and the collapse of the conspiracy which it was understood to imply. The marshal of the Carabineers bought the local papers, and one of them was full of details of "The Great Plot." An exact account was given from a semi-military standpoint of the plan of the supposed raid. It included the capture of the arsenal at Genoa and the assassination of the King at Rome. The train ran through countless tunnels like the air through a flute, now rumbling in the darkness, now whistling in the light. Rossi closed his eyes and shut out the torment of passing scenes, and straightway he was seeing Roma. He could only see her as he had always seen her, with her golden complexion, her large violet eyes and long curved lashes, her mouth which had its own gift of smiling, and her glow of health and happiness. Whatever she had done he knew that he must always love her. This worked on him like madness, and once again he leapt to his feet and made for the corridor, whereupon the Carabineers, who had been sleeping, got up and shut the door. Night fell, and the moon rose, large and blood-red as a setting sun. When the train shot on to the Roman Campagna, like a boat gliding into open sea, the great and solemn desolation seemed more than ever withdrawn from the sights and sounds of the living world. Rossi remembered the joy of joys with which he had expected to cross the familiar country. Then he looked across at the soldiers who were snoring in their seats. When the train stopped at Civita Vecchia, the Carabineers opened the door to the corridor that their prisoner might stretch his legs. Some evening papers from Rome were handed into the carriage. Rossi put out his hand to pay for them, and to his surprise it was seized with an eager grasp. The newsman, who was also carrying a tray of coffee, was a huge creature, with a white apron and a paper cap. "Caffé, sir? Caffé?" he called, and then in an undertone, "Don't you know me, old fellow? Caffé, sir? Thank you." It was one of Rossi's colleagues in the House of Deputies. "Milk, sir? With pleasure, sir. Venti centesimi, sir.... All right, old chap. Keep your eyes open at the station at Rome.... Change, sir? Certainly sir.... Coupé, waiting on the left side. Look alive. Addio!... Caffé! Caffé!" The lusty voice died away down the platform, and the train started again. Rossi felt giddy. He staggered back to his seat and tried to read his evening papers. The _Sunrise_, the paper founded by Rossi himself, seemed to be full of the Prime Minister. He had that day put the crown on a career of the highest distinction; the King had conferred the Collar of the Annunziata upon him; and in view of the continued rumblings of unrest it was even probable that he would be made Dictator. The _Avanti_ seemed to Rossi to be full of himself. When the country recovered from the delirium of that day's ridiculous doings, it would know how to judge of the infamous methods of a Minister who had condescended to use the devices of a Delilah for the defeat and confusion of a political adversary. Rossi felt as if he were suffocating. He put a hand into a side-pocket, for his copy of the warrant crinkled there under his twitching fingers. If he could only meet with Roma for a moment and thrust the damning document in her face! When the train ran along the side of the Tiber, they could see a great framework of fireworks which had been erected on the Pincio. It represented a gigantic crown and was all ablaze. At length the train slowed down and entered the terminus at Rome. Rossi remembered how he had expected to enter it, and he choked with wounded pride. There were the thumpings and clankings and the blinding flashes of white light, and then the train stopped. The station was full of people. Rossi noticed Malatesta among them, the man whose life he had spared in the duel he had been compelled to fight. "Now, then, please!" said the marshal of Carabineers, and Rossi stepped down to the platform. A soldier marched on either side of him; the marshal walked in front. The people parted to let the four men pass, and then closed up and came after them. Not a word was spoken. With pale lips and a fixed gaze which seemed to look at nobody, Rossi walked to the end of the platform, and there the crush was greatest. "Room!" cried the marshal of Carabineers, making for the gate at which a porter was taking tickets. A black van stood outside. Suddenly the marshal was struck on the shoulder by a hand out of the crowd. He turned to defend himself, and was struck on the other side. Then he tried to draw a weapon, but before he could do so he was thrown to the ground. One of the two other Carabineers stooped to lift him up, and the third laid hold of Rossi. At the next instant Rossi felt the soldier's hand fall from his arm as by a sword cut, and somebody was crying in his ear: "Now's your time, sir. Leave this to me and fly." It was Malatesta. Before Rossi fully knew what he was doing, he crossed the lines to the opposite platform, passed through the barrier by means of his Deputy's medal permitting him to travel on the railways, and stepped into a coupé that stood waiting with an open door. "Where to, signore?" "Piazza Navona--_presto_." As the carriage rattled across the end of the Piazza Margherita a company of Carabineers was going at quick march towards the station. III At ten o'clock on Saturday night the screamers in the Piazza Navona were crying the arrest of Rossi. The telegrams from the frontier gave an ugly account of his capture. He was in disguise, and he made an effort to deny himself, but thanks to the astuteness of the Carabineer charged with the warrant the device was defeated, and he was now lodged in the prison at Milan, where it was probable that he would remain some days. Roma's feelings took a new turn. Her crushing self-reproach at the degradation of David Rossi, fallen, lost, and in prison, gave way to an intense bitterness against the Baron, successful, radiant, and triumphant. She turned a bright light upon the incidents of the past months and saw that the Baron was responsible for everything. He had intimidated her. His intimidation had worked upon her conscience and driven her to the confessional. The confessional had taken her to the Pope, and the Pope in love and loyalty and fatal good faith had led her to denounce her husband. It was a chain of damning circumstances, helped out by the demon of chance, but the first link had been forged by the Baron, and he was to blame for all. On Monday morning bands of music began to promenade the streets. Before breakfast the rejoicings of the day had begun. Towards mid-day drunken fellows in the piazza were embracing and crying, "Long live the King," and then "Long live the Baron Bonelli." Roma's disgust deepened to contempt. Why were the people rejoicing? There was nothing to rejoice at. Why were they shouting and singing? It was all got-up enthusiasm, all false, all a lie. By a sort of clairvoyance, Roma could see the Baron in the midst of the scenes he had prearranged. He was sitting in the carriage with the King and Queen, smiling his icy smile, while the people bellowed by their side. And meantime David Rossi was lying in prison in Milan, in a downfall worse than death, crushed, beaten, and broken-hearted. Old Francesca brought a morning paper. It was the _Sunrise_, and it contained nothing that did not concern the Baron. His wife had died on Saturday--there were three lines for that incident. The King had made him a Knight of the Order of Annunziata--there was half a column on the new cousin to the royal family. A state dinner and ball were to be held at the Quirinal that night, when it might be expected that the President of the Council would be nominated Dictator. In another column of the _Sunrise_ she found an interview with the Baron. The journal called for exemplary punishment on the criminals who conspired against the sovereign and endangered the public peace; the Baron, in guarded words, replied that the natural tendency of the King would be to pardon such persons, where their crimes were of old date, and their present conspiracies were averted, but it lay with the public to say whether it was just to the throne that such lenity ought to be encouraged. When Roma read this a red light seemed to flash before her eyes, and in a moment she understood what she had to do. The Baron intended to make the King break his promise to save the life of David Rossi, casting the blame upon the country, to whose wish he had been forced to yield. There was no earthly tribunal, no judge or jury, for a man who could do a thing like that. He was putting himself beyond all human law. Therefore one course only was left--to send him to the bar of God! When this idea came to Roma she did not think of it as a crime. In the moral elevation of her soul it seemed like an act of retributive justice. Her heart throbbed violently, but it was only from the stress of her thoughts and the intensity of her desire to execute them. One thing troubled her, the purely material difficulties in the way. She revolved many plans in her mind. At first she thought of writing to the Baron asking him to see her, and hinting at submission to his will; but she abandoned the device as a kind of duplicity that was unworthy of her high and noble mission. At last she decided to go to the Piazza Leone late that night and wait for the Baron's return from the Quirinal. Felice would admit her. She would sit in the Council Room, under the shaded lamp, until she heard the carriage wheels in the piazza. Then as the Baron opened the door she would rise out of the red light--and do it. In the drawer of a bureau she had found a revolver which Rossi had left with her on the night he went away. His name had been inscribed on it by the persons who sent it as a present, but Roma gave no thought to that. Rossi was in prison, therefore beyond suspicion, and she was entirely indifferent to detection. When she had done what she intended to do she would give herself up. She would avow everything, seek no means of justification, and ask for no mercy even in the presence of death. Her only defence would be that the Baron, who was guilty, had to be sent to the supreme tribunal. It would then be for the court to take the responsibility of fixing the moral weight of her motive in the scales of human justice. With these sublime feelings she began to examine the revolver. She remembered that when Rossi had given it to her she had recoiled from the touch of the deadly weapon, and it had fallen out of her fingers. No such fear came to her now, as she turned it over in her delicate hands and tried to understand its mechanism. There were six chambers, and to know if they were loaded she pulled the trigger. The vibration and the deafening noise shook but did not frighten her. The deaf old woman had heard the shot, and she came upstairs panting and with a pallid face. "Mercy, Signora! What's happened? The Blessed Virgin save us! A revolver!" Roma tried to speak with unconcern. It was Mr. Rossi's revolver. She had found it in the bureau. It must be loaded--it had gone off. The words were vague, but the tone quieted the old woman. "Thank the saints it's nothing worse. But why are you so pale, Signora? What is the matter with you?" Roma averted her eyes. "Wouldn't you be pale too if a thing like this had gone off in your hands?" By this time the Garibaldian had hobbled up behind his wife, and when all was explained the old people announced that they were going out to see the illuminations on the Pincio. "They begin at eleven o'clock and go on to twelve or one, Signora. Everybody in the house has gone already, or the shot would have made a fine sensation." "Good-night, Tommaso! Good-night, Francesca!" "Good-night, Signora. We'll have to leave the street door open for the lodgers coming back, but you'll close your own door and be as safe as sardines." The Garibaldian raised his pork-pie hat and left the door ajar. It was half-past ten and the _piazza_ was very quiet. Roma sat down to write a letter. "Dearest," she wrote, "I have read in the newspapers what took place on the frontier and I am overwhelmed with grief. What can I say of my own share in it except that I did it for the best? From my soul and before God, I tell you that if I betrayed you it was only to save your life. And though my heart is breaking and I shall never know another happy hour until God gives me release, if I had to go through it all again I should have to do as I have done.... "Perhaps your great heart will be able to forgive me some day, but I shall never forgive myself or the man who compelled me to do what I have done. Before this letter reaches you in Milan a great act will be done in Rome. But you must know nothing more about it until it is done. "Good-bye, dearest. Try to forgive me as soon as you can. I shall know it if you do ... where I am going to--eventually ... and it will be so sweet and beautiful. Your loving, erring, broken-hearted ROMA." A noisy group of revellers were passing through the piazza singing a drinking song. When they were gone a church clock struck eleven. Roma put on a hat and a veil. Her impatience was now intense. Being ready to go out she took a last look round the rooms. They brought a throng of memories--of hopes and visions as well as realities and facts. The piano, the phonograph, the bust, the bed. It was all over. She knew she would never come back. Her heart was throbbing violently, and she was opening the bureau a second time when her ear caught the sound of a step on the stairs. She knew the step. It was the Baron's. She stopped, with an indescribable sense of terror, and gazed at the door. It stood partly open as the Garibaldian had left it. Through the door the Baron was about to enter. He was coming up, up, up--to his death. Some supernatural power was sending him. She grew dizzy and quaked in every limb. Still the step outside came on. At length it reached the top, and there was a knock at the door. At first she could not answer, and the knock was repeated. Then the free use of her faculties came back to her. There was more of the Almighty in all this than of her own design. It _was_ to be. God intended her to kill this guilty man. "Come in!" she cried. IV When the Baron awoke on Saturday he remembered Roma with a good deal of self-reproach, and everything that happened during the following days made him think of her with tenderness. During the morning an aide-de-camp brought him the casket containing the Collar of the Annunziata, and spoke a formal speech. He fingered the jewelled band and golden pendant as he made the answer prescribed by etiquette, but he was thinking of Roma and the joy she might have felt in hailing him cousin of the King. Towards noon he received the telegram which announced the death of his maniac wife, and he set off instantly for his castle in the Alban Hills. He remained long enough to see the body removed to the church, and then returned to Rome. Nazzareno carried to the station the little hand-bag full of despatches with which he had occupied the hour spent in the train. They passed by the tree which had been planted on the first of Roma's Roman birthdays. It was covered with white roses. The Baron plucked one of them, and wore it in his button-hole on the return journey. Before midnight he was back in the Piazza Leone, where the Commendatore Angelelli was waiting with news of the arrest of Rossi. He gave orders to have the editor of the _Sunrise_ sent to him so that he might make a tentative suggestion. But in spite of himself his satisfaction at Rossi's complete collapse and possible extermination was disturbed by pity for Roma. Sunday was given up to the interview with the journalist, the last preparations for the Jubilee, and various secular duties. Monday's ceremonials began with the Mass. The Piazza of the Pantheon was lined with a splendid array of soldiers in glistening breastplates and helmets, a tall bodyguard through which the little King passed to his place amid the playing of the national hymn. In the old Pantheon itself, roofed with an awning of white silk which bore the royal arms, flares were burning up to the topmost cornice of the round walls. A temporary altar decorated in white and gold was ablaze with candles, and the choir, conducted by a fashionable composer of opera, were in a golden cage. The King and Queen and royal princes sat in chairs under a velvet canopy, and there were tribunes for cabinet ministers, senators, deputies, and foreign ambassadors. Religion was necessary to all state functions, and the Mass was a magnificent political demonstration carried out on lines arranged by the Baron himself. He had forgotten God, but he had remembered the King, and he had thought of Roma also. She wept at all religious ceremonies, and would have shed tears if she had been present at this one. From the Pantheon they passed to the Capitol, amid the playing of bands of music which showered through the streets their hail of sound. The magnificent hall was crowded by a brilliant company in silk dresses and decorations. An address was read by the Mayor, reciting the early misfortunes of Italy, and closing with allusions to the prosperity of the nation under the reigning dynasty. In his reply the King extolled the army as the hope of peace and unity, and ended with a eulogy of the President of the Council, whose powerful policy had dispelled the vaporous dreams of unpractical politicians who were threatening the stability of the throne and the welfare of its loyal subjects. The Baron answered briefly that he had done no more than his duty to his King, who was almost a republican monarch, and to his country, which was the freest in the world. As for the visionaries and their visions, a few refugees in Zürich, cheered on by the rabble abroad, might dream of constructing a universal republic out of the various nations and races, with Rome as their capital, but these were the delirious dreams of weak minds. "Dangerous!" said the Baron, with a smile. "To think of the eternal dreamer being dangerous!" The King laughed, the senators cheered, the ladies waved their handkerchiefs, and again the Baron remembered Roma. The procession to the Quirinal was a prolonged triumph. Every house was hung with flags, every window with red and yellow damask. The clubs in the Corso were crowded with princes, nobles, diplomats, and distinguished foreigners. Civil guards by hundreds in their purple plumes lined the streets, and the pavements were packed with loyal people. It was a glorious pageant, such as Roma loved. The mayors of the province, followed by citizens under their appointed leaders and flags, came up to the Quirinal as the Baron had appointed, and called the King on to the balcony. The King accepted the call and made a sign of thanks. Returning to the house the King ordered that papers should be prepared immediately creating the Baron Bonelli by royal decree Dictator of Italy for a period of six months from that date. "If Roma were here now," thought the Baron. Then night came, and the state dinner at the royal palace was a moving scene of enchantment. One princess came after another, apparently clothed in diamonds. The Baron wore the Collar of the Annunziata, and the foreign ambassadors, who as representatives of their sovereigns were entitled to precedence, gave place to him, and he sat on the right of the Queen. After dinner he led the Queen to an embroidered throne under a velvet baldachino in a gorgeous chamber which had been the chapel of the Popes. Then the ball began. What torrents of light! What a dazzling blaze of diamonds! What lovely faces and pure white skins! What soft bosoms and full round forms! What gleams of life and love in a hundred pairs of beautiful eyes! But there was a lovelier face and form in the mind of the Baron than any his eyes could see, and excusing himself to the King on the ground of Rossi's expected arrival, he left the palace. Fireflies in the dark garden of the Quirinal were emitting drops of light as the Baron passed through the echoing courts, and the big square in front, bright with electric light, was silent save for the footfall of the sentries at the gate. The Baron walked in the direction of the Piazza Navona. His self-reproach was becoming poignant. He remembered the threats he had made, and told himself he had never intended to carry them out. They were only meant to impress the imagination of the person played upon, as might happen in any ordinary affair of public life. The Baron's memory went back to the last state ball before this one, and he felt some pangs of shame. But the disaster of that night had not been due to the cold calculation to which he had attributed it. The cause was simpler and more human--love of a beautiful woman who was slipping away from him, the girding sense of being bound body and soul to a wife that was no wife, and the mad intoxication of a moment. No matter! Roma should not lose by what had happened. He would make it up to her. Considering her unconventional conduct, it was no little thing he intended to do, but he would do it, and she would see that others were capable of sacrifice. The people were on the Pincio and the streets were quiet. When the Baron reached the Piazza Navona there was hardly anybody about, and he had difficulty in finding the house. No one saw him enter, and he met with nobody on the stairs. So much the better. He was half ashamed. After he had knocked twice a voice which he did not recognise told him to come in. When he pushed the door open Roma, in hat and veil, stood before him, with her back to a bureau. He thought she looked frightened and ill. V "My dear Roma," said the Baron, "I bring you good news. Everything has turned out well. Nothing could have been managed better, and I come to congratulate you." He was visibly excited, and spoke rapidly and even loudly. "The man was arrested on the frontier--you must have heard of that. He was coming by the night train on Saturday, and to prevent a possible disturbance they kept him in Milan until this morning." Roma continued to stand with her back to the bureau. "The news was in all the journals yesterday, my dear, and it had a splendid effect on the opening of the Jubilee. When the King went to Mass this morning the plot had received its death-blow, and our anxiety was at an end. To-night the man will arrive in Rome, and within an hour from now he will be safely locked up in prison." Every nerve in Roma's body was palpitating, but she did not attempt to speak. "It is all your doing, my child--yours, not mine. Your clever brain has brought it all to pass. 'Leave the man to me,' you said. I left him to you, and you have accomplished everything." Roma drew her lips together and tried to control herself. "But what things you have gone through in order to achieve your purpose! Slights, slurs, insults! No wonder the man was taken in by it. Society itself was taken in. And I--yes, I myself--was almost deceived." "Shall it be now?" thought Roma. The Baron was on the hearthrug directly facing her. "But you knew what you were doing, my dear. It was all a part of your scheme. You drew the man on. In due time he delivered himself up to you. He surrendered every secret of his soul. And when your great hour came you were ready. You met it as you had always intended. 'At the top of his hopes he shall fall,' you said." Roma's heart was beating as if it would burst its bounds. "He _has_ fallen. Thanks to you, this enemy of civil society, this slanderer of women, is down. Then the Pope too! And the confession to the Reverend Father! Who but a woman could have thought of a thing like that?---making your denunciation so defensible, so pardonable, so plausible, so inevitable! What skill! What patience! What diplomacy! And what will and nerve too! Who shall say now that women are incapable of great things?" The Baron had thrown open his overcoat, revealing the broad expanse of his shirt-front, crossed by the glittering collar of the Annunziata, and was promenading the hearthrug without a thought of his peril. "The journals of half Europe will have accounts of the failure of the 'Great Plot.' There was another plot, my dear, which did not fail. Europe will hear of that also, and by to-morrow morning the world will know what a woman may do to punish the man who traduces and degrades her!" "Why don't I do it?" thought Roma. She was fingering the revolver on the bureau behind her, and breathing fast and audibly. "You shall have everything back, my dear. Carriages, jewellery, apartments, exactly as you parted with them. I have kept all under my own control, and in a single day you can be reinstated." Roma's palpitating heart was hurting her. "But won't you sit down, my child? I have something to tell you. It is important news. The Baroness is dead. Yes, she died on Saturday, poor soul. Should I play the hypocrite and weep? Why should I? For fifteen years a cruel law, which I dare not attempt to repeal by divorce in a Catholic country, has tied me to a living corpse. Shall I pretend to mourn because my burden has fallen away?... Roma, sit down, my dear; don't continue to stand there.... Roma, I am free, and we can now carry out our marriage, as we always hoped and intended." "Now!" thought Roma, moving a little forward. "Ah, don't be afraid of anything. I am not afraid, and you needn't be afraid either. Certainly rumour has coupled our names already. But what matter about that? No one shall insult you, whatever has occurred. Wherever I go you shall go too. If they cannot do without me they shall not do without you, and in spite of everything you shall be received everywhere." "Is that all you had to say?" said Roma. "Not all. There is something else, and I couldn't wait for the newspapers to tell you. The King has appointed me Dictator for six months. That means that you will be more courted than the Queen. What a revenge! The women who have been turning their backs upon you will bend their backs before you. You will break down every barrier. You will...." "Wait," said Roma. The Baron had been approaching her, and she lifted her hand. "You expect me to acquiesce in this lie?" "What lie, my child?" "That I denounced David Rossi in order to destroy him. It is true that I did denounce him--unhappy woman that I am--but you know perfectly why I did it. I did it because I was forced to do it. _You_ forced me." At the sound of her own voice, her eyes had begun to fill. "And now you ask me to pretend that it was all done from an evil motive, and you offer me the rewards of guilt. Do you think I'm a murderer that you can offer me the price of blood? Have you any shame? You come here to ask me to marry you, knowing that I am married already--here of all places, in the house of my husband." Her eyes were blinded with tears, but her voice thickened with anger. "My child," said the Baron, "if I have asked you to acquiesce in the idea that what you did was from a certain motive it was only to spare you pain. I thought it would be easier for you to do so now, things being as they are. It was only going back to your original purpose, forgetting all that has intervened." His voice softened, and he said in a low tone: "If _I_ am so much to blame for what has been done, perhaps it was because you were first of all at fault! At the beginning my one offence consisted in agreeing to your proposal. It was the _statesman_ who committed that error, and the _man_ has suffered for it ever since. You know nothing of jealousy, my child--how can you?--but its pains are as the pains of hell." He tried to approach her once more. "Come, dear, try to be yourself again. Forget this moment of fascination, and rise afresh to your old strength and wisdom. I am willing to forget ... whatever has happened--I don't ask what. I am ready to wipe it all away, just as if it had never been." In spite of his soft words and gentle tones, Roma was gazing at him with an aversion she had never felt before for any human being. "Have no qualms about your marriage, my child. I assure you it is no marriage at all. In the eye of the civil law it is frankly invalid, and the Church could annul it at any moment, being no sacrament, because you are unbaptized and therefore not in her sense a Christian." He took another step towards her and said: "But if you have lost one husband another is waiting for you--a more devoted and more faithful husband--one who can give you everything in the place of one who can give you nothing.... And then that man has gone out of your life for good. Whatever happens now, it is impossible that you and he can ever come together again. But I am here still.... Don't answer hastily, Roma. Isn't it something that I am ready to face the opprobrium that will surely come of marrying the most criticised woman in Rome?" Roma felt herself to be suffocating with indignation and shame. "You see I am suing to you, Roma--I who have never sued to any human being. Even when I was a child I would not sue to my own mother. Since then I have done something in life--I have justified myself, I have given my country a place among the nations, I stand for it in the eye of the world--and yet--" "And yet I despise you," said Roma. There was a moment of silence, and then, recovering himself, the Baron tried to laugh. "As you will. I must needs accept the only possible interpretation of your words. I thought my devotion in spite of every provocation might burn away your bitterness. But if...." (he was getting excited) "if you have no respect for the past, you may have some regard for the future." She looked at him with a new fear. "Naturally, I have no desire to humiliate myself further by suing to a woman who despises me. It will be sufficient to punish the man who is responsible for my loss of esteem in the eyes of one who has so many reasons to respect me." "You mean that you will persuade the King to break his promise?" "The King need not be persuaded after he has appointed his Dictator." "So the King's promise to pardon Mr. Rossi will be set aside by his successor?" "If I leave this room without a better answer ... yes." Roma drew from behind the revolver she had held in her hand. "Then you will never leave this room," she said. The Baron stood perfectly still, and there was a moment of deadly silence. Then came the rattle of carriage wheels on the stones of the piazza, followed immediately by a hurried footstep on the stairs. Roma heard it. She was trembling all over. A moment afterwards there was a knock at the door. Then another knock, and another. It was imperative, irregular knocking. Roma, who had forgotten all about the Baron, was rooted to the spot on which she stood. The Baron, who had understood everything, was also transfixed. Then came a thick, vibrating voice, "Roma!" Roma made a faint cry, and dropped the revolver out of her graspless hand. The Baron picked it up instantly. He was the first to recover himself. "Hush!" he said in a whisper. "Let him come in. I will go into this room. I mean no harm to any one; but if he should follow me--if you should reveal my presence--remember what I said before about a challenge. And if I challenge him his shrift will have to be swift and sure." The Baron stepped into the bedroom. Then the voice came again, "Roma! Roma!" Roma staggered to the door and opened it. VI Flying from the railway station in the coupé, down the Via Nazionale and the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, Rossi had seen by the electric light the remains of the day's festoons, triumphal arches, banners, embroideries, emblems, and flowers. These things had passed before his eyes like a flash, yet they had deepened the bitterness of his desire to meet with Roma that he might thrust the evidence of her treachery into her face. But when he came to his own house and Roma opened the door to him, and he saw her, looking so ill, her cheeks so pale, her beautiful eyes so large and timid, and her whole face expressing such acute suffering, his anger began to ebb away, and he wanted to take her into his arms in spite of all. Roma knew she was opening the door to Rossi, whatever the strange chance which had brought him there, and when she saw him she made a faint cry and a helpless little run toward him, and then stopped and looked frightened. The momentary sensation of joy and relief had instantly died away. She looked at his world-worn face, so disfigured by pain and humiliation, and the arms she had outstretched to meet him she raised above her head as if to ward off a blow. He saw under the veil she wore the terror which had seized her at sight of him, and by that alone he knew the depths of the abyss between them. But this only increased the measureless pity he felt for her. And he could not look at her without feeling that whatever she had done he loved her, and must continue to love her to the last. Tears rose to his throat and choked him. He opened his mouth to speak, but at first he could not utter a word. At length he fumbled at his breast, tore at his shirt front, so that his loose neckerchief became untied, and finally drew from an inner pocket a crumpled paper. "Look!" he said with a kind of gasp. She saw at a glance what the paper was, and dared not look at it a second time. It was the warrant. She dropped into a chair with bowed head and humble attitude, as if trying to sink out of sight. "Tell me you know nothing about it, Roma." She covered her face with both hands and was silent. "Tell me." She had expected that he would flame out at her, but his voice was breaking. She lifted her head and tried to look at him. His eyes were fixed on her with an expression she had never seen before. She wanted to speak, and could not do so. Her lip trembled, and she hung her head and covered her face again, unable to say a word. By this time he knew full well that she was guilty, but he tried to persuade himself that she was innocent, to make excuses for her, and to find her a way out. "The newspapers say that the warrant was made at your instruction, Roma--that you were the informer who denounced me. It cannot be true. Tell me it is not true." She did not speak. "Look at the name on it--David Leone. There was only one person in the world who knew me by that name--only one." She began to cry beneath her hands. "I told you everything myself, Roma. It was in this very room, you remember, the night you came here first. You asked me if I wasn't afraid to tell you, and I answered no. You couldn't deceive the son of your own father. It wasn't natural. I was right, wasn't I?" She felt him take hold of her hand and draw it down from her face. "Look at the ring on your hand, dear. And look at this one on mine. You are my wife, Roma. Does a man's wife betray him?" His voice cracked at every word. "When we parted you promised that as long as you lived, wherever you might be, and whatever the world might do with us, you would be faithful to me to the last. You have kept your promise, haven't you? It isn't true that you have denounced me to the police." He paused, but she did not reply, and he dropped her hand, and it fell like a lifeless thing to her side. "I know it isn't true, dear, but I want to hear it from your own lips. One word--only one. Why shouldn't you speak? Say you know nothing of this warrant. Say that somebody else knew David Leone. It may be so--I cannot remember. Say ... say anything. Don't you see I will believe you whatever you say, Roma?" Roma could control herself no longer. "I know quite well it is impossible for you to forgive me, David." "Forgive!" "But if I could explain...." "Explain? What can there be to explain? Did you denounce me to the magistrate?" "If you could only know what happened...." "Did you denounce me to the magistrate?" She looked with frightened eyes at the bedroom door, and then dropped to her knees. "Have pity upon me." "Did you denounce me to the magistrate?" "Yes." His pale face became ashen. "Then it's true," he said in a voice that hardly passed his throat. "What my friends have been saying all along is true. They warned me against you from the first, but I wouldn't believe them. I was a fool, and _this_ is my reward." So saying he crushed the warrant in his hand and flung it at her feet. Roma could bear no more. Making a great call on her resolution, she rose, turned towards the bedroom door, and, speaking in a loud voice in order that he who was within might hear, she said: "David, I don't want to excuse myself or to blame anybody else, whoever it may be, and however wickedly he may have acted. But, from my soul and before God, I tell you that if I denounced you I did it for the best." "The best!" He laughed bitterly, but she forced herself to go on. "When you went away you warned me that your enemies could be merciless. They _have_ been merciless. First, they tempted me with the fear of poverty. I had been accustomed to wealth, comfort, luxury. Look round you, David--they are gone. Did I ever regret them? Never! I was rich enough in your love, and I would not have sacrificed that for a queen's crown." She looked up at his tortured face and saw that it was full of scorn, but still she struggled on. "Then they tempted me with jealousy. The forged letter which killed Bruno was intended to poison me. Did I believe it? No! I knew you loved me, and if you didn't, if you had deceived me, that made no difference. _I_ loved _you_, and even if I lost you I should always love you, whatever happened." Again she looked up into his face with her glistening eyes. It was not anger she saw there now, but an expression of bewilderment and of pain. "Last of all, they tempted me with love itself. The treacherous tyrants deceived and intimidated the Pope--the good and saintly Pope--and through him they told me that your arrest was certain, your life in danger, and nothing could save you from your present peril but that I should denounce you for your past offences. The phantom of conspiracy rose up before me, and I remembered my father, doomed to life-long exile and a lonely death. It was my dark hour, dearest, and when they promised me--faithfully promised me--that your life should be spared...." A faint sound came from the bedroom. Roma heard it, but Rossi, in the tumult of his emotion, heard nothing. "I know what you will say, dear--that you would have given your life a hundred times rather than save it at the loss of all you hold so dear. But I am no heroine, David. I am only a woman who loves you, and I could not see you die." He felt his soul swell with love and forgiveness, and he wanted to sob like a child, but Roma went on, and without trying to keep back her tears. "That's all, dear. Now you know everything. It is not your fault that the love you have brought home to me is dead. I hoped that before you came home I might die too. I think my soul must be dead already. I do not hope for pardon, but if your great heart _could_ pardon me...." "Roma," said Rossi at last, while tears filled his eyes and choked his voice, "when I escaped from the police I came here to avenge myself; but if you say it was your love that led you to denounce me...." "I do say so." "Your love, and nothing but your love...." "Nothing! Nothing!" "Though I am betrayed and fallen, and may be banished or condemned to death, yet...." Her heart swelled and throbbed. She held out her arms to him. "David!" she cried, and at the next moment she was clasped to his breast. Again there was a faint sound from the adjoining room. "The woman lies," said a voice behind them. The Baron stood in the bedroom door. VII The Baron's impulse on going into the bedroom had been merely to escape from one who must be a runaway prisoner, and therefore little better than a madman, whose worst madness would be provoked by his own presence; but when he realised that Rossi was self-possessed, and even magnanimous in his hour of peril, the Baron felt ashamed of his hiding-place, and felt compelled to come out. In spite of his pride he had been forced to overhear the conversation, and he was humiliated by the generosity of the betrayed man, but what humbled him most was the clear note of the woman's love. Knight of the Annunziata! Cousin of the King! President of the Council! Dictator! These things had meant something to him an hour ago. What were they now? The agony of the Baron's jealousy was intolerable. For the first time in his life his ideas, usually so clear and exact, became confused. Roma was lost to him. He was going mad. He looked at the revolver which he had snatched up when Roma let it fall, examined it, made sure it was loaded, cocked it, put it in the right-hand pocket of his overcoat, and then opened the door. The two in the other room did not at first see him. He spoke, and their arms slackened and they stood apart. After a moment of silence Rossi spoke. "Roma," he said, "what is this gentleman doing here?" The Baron laughed. "Wouldn't it be more reasonable to ask what you are doing here, sir?" he asked. Then trying to put into logical sequence the confused ideas which were besieging his tormented brain, he said, "I understand that this apartment belongs now to the lady; the lady belongs to me, and when she denounced you to the police it was merely in fulfilment of a plan we concocted together on the day you insulted both of us in your speech in the piazza." Rossi made a step forward with a threatening gesture, but Roma intervened. The Baron gripped firmly the revolver in his pocket, and said: "Take care, sir. If a man threatens me he must be prepared for the consequences. The lady knows what those consequences may be." Rossi, breathing heavily, was trying to retain the mastery of himself. "If you tell me that the lady...." "I tell you that according to the law of nature and of reason the lady is my wife." "It's a lie." "Ask her." "And so I will." Roma saw the look of triumph with which Rossi turned to her. The terrible moment she had lived in fear of had come to pass. The letters she had written to Rossi had not yet reached him, and her enemy was telling his story before she had told hers. What was she to do? She would have said anything at that moment and believed herself justified before God. But even lying itself would be of no avail. She remembered the Baron's threat and trembled. If she told the truth her confession, coming at that moment, would be worse than vain. If she told a lie, Rossi would insult the Baron, the Baron would challenge Rossi, and they would fight with all the consequences the Baron had foretold. "Roma," said Rossi, "forgive me for putting the question, but a falsehood like this, affecting the character of a good woman, ought to be stopped in the slanderer's throat. Don't be afraid, dear. You know I will believe you before anybody in the world. What the man says is a lie, isn't it?" Roma stood for a moment looking in a helpless way from Rossi to the Baron, and from the Baron back to Rossi. She made an effort to speak, but at first she could not do so. At length she said: "Can't you trust me, David?" "Trust you? Answer me on this one point and I will trust you on all the rest. Say the man speaks falsely, and I will stake my life on your word." Roma did not reply, and the Baron tried to laugh. "If the lady can deny what I say, let her do so. If she cannot, you must come to your own conclusions." "Deny it, Roma! Deny it, and I will fling the man's insult in his face." "David, if I could tell you everything...." "Everything! It's only one thing I want to know, Roma." "If you had received my letters addressed to England...." "Letters? What matter about letters now. Don't you understand, dear? This gentleman says that before you married me you ... had already belonged to him. That's what he means, and it's false, isn't it?" "My mouth is closed. If I could say anything one way or other...." "Yes or no--that is all that is necessary." Roma looked up at him with a pleading expression, but seeing nothing in his face except the magistrate who was interrogating her, she turned her back and hung her head, and cried like a helpless child. Rossi laid hold of her arm, twisted her about, and looked into her eyes. "Crying, Roma? You don't mean to tell me that I am to believe what the man says? Deny it! For God's sake deny it!" "I ... I cannot ... I cannot speak," she stammered, and then there was a dead silence. When Rossi spoke again his face was dark as a thundercloud, and his voice hoarse as a raven's. "If that is so, there is nothing more to say." She looked up at him with a pathetic remonstrance, but he met her eyes with the gaze of a relentless judge who had tried and condemned her. "I was not to blame, David--I swear before God I was not." "Yet you allowed me to go on believing that falsehood. The woman who could do a thing like that could do anything. She could pretend to be poor, pretend to be tempted, pretend...." "David, what are you saying?" Rossi broke into a peal of mad laughter. "Saying? That you have deceived me from the beginning, when you undertook to betray me to your master and paramour." "David!" She tried to protest, but he bore her down with a laugh of scorn, and then wheeled round on the Baron, who had been standing in silence behind them. "That's why you are here to-night, I suppose. You didn't expect to be disturbed, did you? You didn't expect to see me. You thought I was stowed away in a cell, and you could meet in safety.... Oh, my brain! my brain! I shall go mad!" "It isn't true," cried Roma. And turning to the Baron with flame in her eyes she said, "Tell him it isn't true. You know it isn't true." "True?" Again the Baron tried to laugh. "Of course it's true. Every word the man has uttered is true. Don't ask me to lie to him as you have done from first to last." At that Rossi's mad laughter stopped suddenly, and he stepped up to the Baron with fury in his face. "You scoundrel!" he said. "You've succeeded, you've separated us, but I understand you perfectly. You have used this unhappy lady's shame to compel her to carry out your infamous designs, and now that she is done with, she must lose the man who played with her as well as the man she has played with." Roma saw that the Baron was feeling for something in the side pocket of his overcoat, and she called to Rossi to warn him. "One doesn't quarrel with an escaped criminal," said the Baron. "It is sufficient to call the police ... Police!" he cried, lifting his voice and taking a step forward. Rossi stood between the Baron and the door. "Don't stir," he said. "Don't utter a word, I warn you. I'm a hunted dog to-night, and a hunted dog is dangerous." "Let me pass," said the Baron. "Not yet, sir," said Rossi. "You have something to do before you go. You have to go down on your knees and beg the pardon of your victim...." Roma saw the Baron draw the revolver. She saw Rossi spring upon him, and seize him by the collar of the Annunziata which hung over his shirt front. She saw the men go struggling through the door of the sitting-room into the dining-room. She covered her ears with her hands to shut out the sounds from the outer chamber, but she heard Rossi's hoarse voice that was like the growl of a wild beast. Then came the deafening report of a pistol-shot, then the vibration of a heavy fall, and then dead silence. Roma was still standing with her hands over her ears, shaking with terror and scarcely able to breathe, when footsteps resounded on the floor behind her. Giddy and dazed, with one agonising thought she turned, saw Rossi, and uttered a cry of relief. But he was coming down on her with great staring eyes, and the look of a desperate maniac. For one moment he stood over her in his ungovernable rage, and scalding and blistering words poured out of him in a torrent. "He's dead. D'you hear me? He's dead. But it's as much your work as mine, and you will never think of yourself henceforward without remorse and horror. I curse you by the love you've wronged and the heart you've broken. I curse you by the hopes you wasted and the truth you've outraged. I curse you by the memory of your father, the memory of a saint and martyr." Before his last words were spoken Roma had ceased to hear. With a feeble moan, interrupted by a faint cry, she had slowly retreated before him, and then fallen face downwards. Everything about her, Rossi, herself, the room, the lamp on the table and the shadows cast by it, had mingled and blended, and gone out in a complete obscurity. VIII When Roma regained consciousness, there was not a sound in the apartment. Even the piazza outside was quiet. Somebody was playing a mandoline a long way off, and the thin notes were trembling through the still night. A dog was barking in the distance. Save for these sounds everything was still. Roma lay for some minutes in a state of semi-consciousness. Her head was swimming with vague memories, and she was unable at first to disentangle the thread of them. At length she remembered all that had happened, and she wept bitterly. But when the first tenderness was over the one feeling which seized and held her was hatred of the Baron. Rossi had told her the man was dead, and she felt no pity. The Baron deserved his death, and if Rossi had killed him it was no crime. She was still lying where she had fallen when a noise as of some one moving came from the adjoining room. Then a voice called to her: "Roma!" It was the Baron's voice, broken and feeble. A great terror took hold of her. Then came a sense of shame, and finally a feeling of relief. The Baron was not dead. Thank God! O thank God! She got up and went into the dining-room. The Baron was on his knees struggling to climb to the couch. His shirt front was partly dragged out of his breast, and the Order of the Annunziata was torn away. There was a streak of blood over his left eyebrow, and no other sign of injury. But his eyes themselves were glassy, and his face was pale as death. "I'm dying, Roma." "I'll run for a doctor," she said. "No. Don't do that. I don't want to be found here. Besides, it's useless. In five minutes a clot of blood will have covered the lacerated brain, and I shall lose consciousness again. Stupid, isn't it?" "Let me call for a priest," said Roma. "Don't do that either. You can do me more good yourself, Roma. Give me a drink." Roma was fighting with an almost unconquerable repugnance, but she brought the Baron a drink of water, and with shaking hands held the glass to his trembling lips. "How do you feel?" she asked. "Worse," he answered. He looked into her eyes with evident contrition, and said, "I wonder if it would be fair to ask you to forgive me? Would it?" She did not answer, and he stretched himself and sighed. His breathing became laboured and stertorous, his skin hot, and his eyes dilated. "How do you feel now?" asked Roma. "I'm going," he replied, and he smiled again. The human soul was gleaming out of the wretched man at the last, and he was looking at her now with pleading eyes which plainly could not see. "Are you there, Roma?" "Yes." "Promise that you will not leave me." "I will not leave you now," she answered in a low voice. After a moment he roused himself with an effort and said, "And this is the end! How absurd! They'll find me here in any case, and what a chatter there'll be! The Chamber--the journals--all the scribblers and speechifiers. What will Europe say? Another Boulanger, perhaps! But I'm sorry for Italy. Nobody can say I did not love my country. Where her interest lay I let nothing interfere. And just when everything seemed to triumph...." He attempted to laugh. Roma shuddered. "It was the star of the Annunziata that did it. The man threw it with such force. To think that it's been the aim of my life to win that Order and now it kills me! Ridiculous, isn't it?" Again he attempted to laugh. "There's a side of justice in that, though, and I'm not going to whine. The Pope tried to paint an awful end, but his nightmare didn't frighten me. We must all bow our heads to the law of compensation--the Pope as well as everybody else. But to die stupidly like this..." He was speaking with difficulty, and dragging at his shirt front. Roma opened it at the neck, and something dropped on to the floor. It was a lock of glossy black hair tied with a red ribbon such as lawyers used to bind documents together. Dull as his sight was, he saw it. "Yours, Roma! You were ill with fever when you first came to Rome, you remember. The doctors cut off your beautiful hair. This was some of it. I've worn it ever since. Silly, wasn't it?" Tears began to shine in Roma's eyes. The cynical man who laughed at sentiment had carried the tenderest badge of it in his breast. "I used to wear some of my mother's in the same place when I was younger. She was a good woman, too. When she put me to bed she used to repeat something: 'Hold Thou my hands,' I think.... May I hold your hands, Roma?" Roma turned away her head, but she held out her hand, and the dying man kissed it. "What a beautiful hand it is! I think I should know it among all the hands in the world. How stupid! People have been afraid of me all my life, Roma; even my mother was afraid of me when I was a child; but to die without once having known what it was to have some one to love you.... I believe I'm beginning to rave." The mournful irony of the words was belied by the tremulous voice. "My little comedy is played out, I suppose, and when the curtain is down it is time to go home. Death is a solemn sort of homegoing, Roma, and if those we've injured cannot forgive us before we go...." But the battle of hate in Roma's heart was over. She had remembered Rossi and that had swept away all her bitterness. As the Baron stood to her, so she stood to her husband. They were two unforgiven ones, both guilty and ashamed. "Indeed, indeed I do forgive you, as I hope to be forgiven," she said, whereupon he laughed again, but with a different note altogether. Then he asked her to lift up his head. She placed a cushion under it, but still he called on her to lift his head higher. "Can you lift me in your arms, Roma?... Higher still. So!... Can you hold me there?" "How do you feel now?" she asked. "It won't be long," he answered. His respirations came in whiffs. Roma began to repeat as much as she could remember of the prayers for the dying which she had heard at the deathbed of her aunt. The dying man smiled an indulgent smile into the young woman's beautiful and mournful face and allowed her to go on. As she prayed faster and faster, saying the same words over and over again, she felt his breathing grow more faint and irregular. At length it seemed to stop, and thinking it was gone altogether, she made the sign of the cross and said: "We commend to Thee, O Lord, the soul of Thy servant Gabriel, that being dead to the world he may live to Thee, and those sins which through the frailty of human life he has committed, Thou by the indulgence of Thy most merciful loving-kindness may wipe out, through Christ our Lord. Amen." Then the glazed eyes opened wide and lighted up with a pitiful smile. "I'm dying in your arms, Roma." Then a long breath, and then: "Adieu!" He had tried to subdue all men to his will, and there was one man he had subdued above all others--himself. There is a greater man than the great man--the man who is too great to be great. IX There had been no light in the dining-room except the reflection from the lamp in the sitting-room, and now it fell with awful shadows on the whitening face turned upward on the couch. The pains of death had given a distorted expression, and the eyes remained open. Roma wished to close them, but dared not try, and the image of inanimate objects standing in the light was mirrored in their dull and glassy surface. The dog in the distance was still barking, and a company of tipsy revellers were passing through the piazza singing a drinking song with a laugh in it. When they were gone the clocks outside began to strike. It was one o'clock, and the hour seemed to dance over the city in single steps. Roma's terror became unbearable. Feeling herself to be a murderer, she acted on a murderer's impulse and prepared to fly. When she recalled the emotions with which she had determined to kill the Baron and then deliver herself up to justice, they seemed so remote that they might have existed only in a dream or belonged to another existence. Trembling from head to foot, and scarcely able to support herself, she fixed her hat and veil afresh, put on her coat, and, taking one last fearful look at the wide-open eyes on the couch, she went backwards to the door. She dared not turn round from a creeping fear that something might touch her on the shoulder. The door was open. No doubt Rossi had left it so, and she had not noticed the circumstance until now. She had got as far as the first landing when a poignant memory came to her--the memory of how she had first descended those stairs with Rossi, going side by side, and almost touching. The feeling that she had been fatal to the man since then nearly choked and blinded her, but it urged her on. If she remained until some one came, and the crime was discovered, what was she to say that would not incriminate her husband? Suddenly she became aware of sounds from below--the measured footsteps of soldiers. She knew who they were. They were the Carabineers, and they were coming for Rossi, who had escaped and was being pursued. Roma turned instantly, and with a noiseless step fled back to the door of the apartment, opened it with her latch-key, closed it silently, and bolted it on the inside. This was done before she knew what she was doing, and when she regained full possession of her faculties she was in the sitting-room, and the Carabineers were ringing at the electric bell. They rang repeatedly. Roma stood in the middle of the floor, listening and holding her breath. "Deuce take it!" said a voice outside. "Why doesn't the woman open the door if she doesn't want to get herself into trouble? She's at home, at all events." "So is he, if I know anything," said a second voice. "He drove here anyway--not a doubt about that." "Let's see the porter--he'll have another key." "The old fool is out at the illuminations. But listen...." (the door rattled as if some one was shaking it). "This door is fastened on the inside." There was a chuckling laugh, and then, "All right, boys! Down with it!" A moment afterwards the door was broken open and four Carabineers were in the dining-room. Roma awaited their irruption without a word. She continued to stand in the middle of the sitting-room looking straight before her. "Holy saints, what's this?" cried the voice she had heard first, and she knew that the Carabineers were bending over the body on the couch. "His Excellency!" "Lord save us!" Roma's head was dizzy, and something more was said which she did not follow. At the next moment the Carabineers had entered the sitting-room; she was standing face to face with them, and they were questioning her. "The Honourable Rossi is here, isn't he?" "No," she answered in a timid voice. "But he has been here, hasn't he?" "No," she answered more boldly. "Do you mean to say that the Honourable Rossi has not been here to-night?" "I do," she said, with exaggerated emphasis. The marshal of the Carabineers, who had been speaking, looked attentively at her for a moment, and then he called on his men to search the rooms. "What's this?" said the marshal, taking up a sealed letter from the bureau and reading the superscription: "L'on, Davide Rossi, Carceri Giudiziarie, di Milano." "That's a letter I wrote to my husband and haven't yet posted," said Roma. "But what's this?" cried a voice from the dining-room. "Presented to the Honourable David Rossi by the Italian colony in Zürich." Roma sank into a seat. It was the revolver. She had forgotten it. "That's all right," said the marshal, with the same chuckle as before. Dizzy and almost blind in her terror, Roma struggled to her feet. "The revolver belongs to me," she said. "Mr. Rossi left it in my keeping when he went away two months ago, and since that time he has never touched it." "Then who fired the shot that killed his Excellency, Signora?" "_I_ did," said Roma. Instinctively the man removed his hat. Within half-an-hour Roma had repeated her statement at the Regina C[oe]li, and the Carabineers, to prevent a public scandal, had smuggled the body of the Baron, under the cover of night, to his office in the Palazzo Braschi, on the opposite side of the piazza. X One thought was supreme in David Rossi's mind when he left the Piazza Navona--that the world in which he had lived was shaken to its foundations and his life was at an end. The unhappy man wandered about the streets without asking himself where he was going or what was to become of him. Many feelings tore his heart, but the worst of them was anger. He had taken the life of the Baron. The man deserved his death, and he felt no pity for his victim and no remorse for his crime. But that he should have killed the Minister, he who had twice stood between him and death, he who had resisted the doctrine of violence and all his life preached the gospel of peace, this was a degradation too shameful and abject. The woman had been the beginning and end of everything. "How I hate her!" he thought. He was telling himself for the hundredth time that he had never hated anybody so much before, when he became aware that he had returned to the neighbourhood of the Piazza Navona. Without knowing what he was doing, he had been walking round and round it. He began to picture Roma as he had seen her that night. The beautiful, mournful, pleading face, which he had not really seen while his eyes looked on it, now rose before the eye of his mind. This caused a wave of tenderness to pass over him against his will, and his heart, so full of hatred, began to melt with love. All the cruel words he had spoken at parting returned to his memory, and he told himself that he had been too hasty. Instead of bearing her down he should have listened to her explanation. Before the Baron entered the room she had been at the point of swearing that her love, and nothing but her love, had caused her to betray him. He told himself she had lied, but the thought was hell, and to escape from it he made for the bank of the river again. This time he crossed the bridge of St. Angelo, and passed up the Borgo to the piazza of St. Peter's. But the piazza itself awakened a crowd of memories. It was there in a balcony that he had first seen Roma, not plainly, but vaguely in a summer cloud of lace and sunshades. Then it occurred to him that it must have been on this spot that Roma was inspired with the plot which had ended with his betrayal. At that thought all the bitterness of his soul returned. He told himself she deserved every word he had said to her, and blamed himself for the humiliation he had gone through in his attempt to make excuses for what she had done. To the curse he had hurled at her at the last moment he added words of fiercer anger, and though they were spoken only in his brain, or to the dark night and the rolling river, they intensified his fury. "Oh, how I hate her!" he thought. The _piazza_, was quiet. There was a light in the Pope's windows, and a Swiss Guard was patrolling behind the open wicket of the bronze gate to the Vatican. A porter in gorgeous livery was yawning by the door of the Prime Minister's palace. The man was waiting for his master. He would _have_ to wait. The clock of St. Peter's struck one, and the silent place began to be peopled with many shadows. The scene of the Pope's jubilee returned to Rossi's mind. He saw and heard everything over again. The crowd, the gorgeous procession, the Pope, and last of all his own speech. A sardonic smile crossed his face in the darkness as he thought of what he had said. "Is it possible that I can ever have believed those fables?" He was tramping down the Trastevere, picturing his trial for the murder of the Baron, with Roma in the witness-box and himself in the dock. The cold horror of it all was insupportable, and he told himself that there was only one place in which he could escape from despair. The unhappy man had begun to think of taking his own life. He had always condemned suicide. He had even condemned it in Bruno. But it was the death grip of a man utterly borne down, and there was nothing else to hold on to. The day began to break, and he turned back towards the piazza of St. Peter's, thinking of what he intended to do and where he would do it. By the end of the Hospital of Santo Spirito there was a little blind alley bounded by a low wall. Below was the quick turn of the Tiber, and no swimmer was strong enough to live long in the turbulent waters at that point. He would do it there. The streets were silent, and in the grey dawn, that mystic hour of parturition when the day is being born and things are seen in places where they do not exist, when ships sail in the sky and mountains rise around lowland cities, David Rossi became aware in a moment that a woman was walking on the pavement in front of him. He could almost have believed that it was Roma, the figure was so tall and full and upright. But the woman's dress was poorer, and she was carrying a bundle in her arms. When he looked again he saw that her bundle was a child, and that she was weeping over it. "Taking her little one to the hospital," he thought. But on turning into the little Borgo he saw that the woman went up to the Rota, knelt before it, kissed the child again and again, put it in the cradle, pulled the bell, and then, crying bitterly, hastened away. Rossi remembered his own mother, and a great tide of simple human tenderness swept over him. What he had seen the woman do was what his mother had done thirty-five years before. He saw it all as by a mystic flash of light, which looked back into the past. Suddenly it occurred to him that the Rota had been long since closed, and therefore it was physically impossible that anybody could have put a child into the cradle. Then he remembered that he had not heard the bell, or the woman's footsteps, or the sound of her voice when she wept. He stopped and looked back. The woman was returning in the direction of the piazza of St. Peter's. By an impulse which he could not resist he followed her, overtook her, and looked into her face. Again he thought he was looking at Roma. There was the same nobility in the beautiful features, the same sweetness in the tremulous mouth, the same grandeur in the great dark eyes. But he knew perfectly who it was. It was his mother. It did not seem strange that his mother should be there. From her home in heaven she had come down to watch over her son on earth. She had always been watching over him. And now that he too was betrayed and lost, now that he too was broken-hearted and alone.... He was utterly unmanned. "Mother! Mother! I am coming to you! Every door is closed against me, and I have nowhere to go to for refuge. I am coming!... I am coming!" Then the spirit paused, and pointing to the bronze gate of the Vatican, said, with infinite tenderness: "Go there!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PART NINE--THE PEOPLE I The Pope awoke next morning in the dreary hour of cock-crow, and rang for his valet while he was still in bed. When the valet came he was greatly agitated. "What's amiss, Gaetanino?" said the Pope. "A madman, your Holiness," said the valet. "They wanted me to awaken your Holiness, and I wouldn't do it. A madman is down at the bronze gate, and insists on seeing you." At this moment the Maestro di Camera came into the room. He also was greatly agitated. "What is this about some poor madman at the bronze gate?" asked the Pope. "I have come to tell your Holiness," said the master of the household. "The man declares he is pursued, and demands sanctuary." "Who is he?" "He says he will give his name to the Holy Father only; but his face...." "The man's mad," said the valet. "Be quiet, Gaetanino." "His face," continued the Maestro di Camera, "is known to the Swiss Guard, and when they sent up word...." The Pope sat up and said, "Is it perhaps..." "It is, your Holiness." "Where is he now?" "He has forced his way in as far as the Sala Clementina, and nothing but physical force...." Sounds of voices raised in dispute could be heard in a distant room. The Pope listened and said: "Let the man come up immediately." "Here, your Holiness?" "Here." The Maestro di Camera had hardly gone from the Pope's bedroom when the Secretary of State entered it with hasty steps. "Your Holiness," he said, "you will not allow yourself to receive this person? It is sufficiently clear that he must have escaped from the police during the night, probably by the help of confederates, and to shelter him will be to come into collision with the civil authorities." "The young man demands sanctuary, your Eminence, and whatever the consequences we have no right to refuse it." "But sanctuary is obsolete, your Holiness." "Nothing can be obsolete that is of divine institution, your Eminence." "But, your Holiness, it can only exist by virtue of concession from the State, and the present relation of the Church to the State of Italy..." "Your Eminence, I will ask you to let the young man come in." "Your Holiness, I beg, I pray, reflect..." "Let the young man come in, your Em..." The Pope had not finished when the words were struck out of his mouth by an apparition which appeared at his bedroom door. It was that of a young man, whose eyes were wild, whose nostrils were quivering, and whose clothes hung about him in rags as if they had been torn in a recent struggle. He had a look of despair and suffering, yet it was the same to the Pope at that moment as if he were looking at his own features in a glass. The young man was surrounded by Swiss Guards, and the Maestro di Camera pushed in ahead of him. Coming face to face with the Pope propped up in his bed, the loud tones on which he was protesting died in his throat, and he stood in silence on the threshold of the room. The Pope was the first to speak. "What is it you wish to say to me, my son?" The young man seemed to recover his self-possession, but without a genuflexion or even a bow of the head, and with a slightly defiant manner, he said, "My name is David Leone. They call me Rossi, because that was my mother's name, and they said I had no right to my father's. I am a Roman, and I have been two months abroad. For ten years I have worked for the people, and now I am denounced and betrayed to the police. Three days ago I was arrested on returning to Italy, and to-night by the help of friends I have escaped from the Carabineers. But every gate is closed against me, and I cannot get out of Rome. This is the Vatican, and the Vatican is sanctuary. Will you take me in?" The Pope looked at the Swiss Guard, and said in a tremulous voice, "Gentlemen, you will take this young man to your own quarters, and see that no Carabineer lays hand on him without my knowledge and consent." "Your Holiness!" protested the Cardinal Secretary, but the Pope raised his hand and silenced him. Rossi's defiant manner left him. "Wait," he said. "Before you decide to take me in you must know more about me, and what I am charged with. I am the Deputy Rossi who is said to have instigated the late riots. The warrant for my arrest accuses me of treason and an attempt on the person of the late King. It is false, but you must look at it for yourself. Here it is." So saying he plunged into his pocket for the paper, and then said, "It is gone! I remember now--I flung it at the feet of my betrayer." "Gentlemen," said the Pope, still addressing the Swiss Guard, "if the civil authorities attempt to arrest this young man, you may tell them they can only do so by giving a written promise of safety for life and limb." Rossi's wild eyes began to melt. "You are very good," he said, "and I will not deceive you. Although I am innocent of the crime they charge me with, I have broken the law of God and of my country, and if you have any fear of the consequences you must turn me out while there is still time." "Gentlemen," said the Pope, "instead of taking this young man to your quarters, let him be lodged in the empty apartment below my own, which was formerly occupied by the Secretary of State." Rossi broke down utterly and fell to his knees. The Pope raised two fingers and blessed him. "Go to your room and rest, my son, and God grant you a little repose." "Father!" By an impulse he could not resist, Rossi had risen from his knees, taken two or three steps forward, knelt again by the side of the bed, and put his lips to the Pope's hand. With wet eyes that gleamed under his grey brows the Pope followed the young man out until, surrounded by the Swiss Guard, he had passed from the room. Then he rose and turned into his private chapel for his early Mass. II Less than half-an-hour afterwards a rumour swept through the Vatican like the gust of whistling wind that goes before a storm. The Pope met it as he was coming from Mass. "What is it, Gaetanino?" he asked. "Something about an assassination, your Holiness," said the valet, and the Pope stood as if thunderstruck, for he thought of Rossi and the King. After a while the vague report became more definite. It was not the King but the Prime Minister who had been assassinated. The Pope's private room began to fill with pallid faces. The Cardinal Secretary was there, the Maestro di Camera, and at length the little Majordomo. By this time a special message had reached the Vatican from one of its watchers outside, and they were able to discuss the circumstances. The Prime Minister had been found dead in his official palace in the Piazza Navona. He had dined at the Quirinal and remained there for the opening of the State Ball, therefore he could not have reached the Palazzo Braschi before eleven or twelve o'clock. Two shots had been heard about midnight, and the body had been discovered in the early morning. The Pope listened and said nothing. The Cardinal Secretary told another story. The Deputy Rossi, who had been brought to Rome by the train from Genoa, which arrived punctually at 11.45, had been rescued by a gang of ruffians at the station. The rescue had been prearranged, and the man had jumped into a coupé and driven off at a gallop. The coupé had gone down the Via Nazionale, and a few minutes before twelve o'clock it had been seen to turn into the Piazza Navona. It was by the accident that the Carabineers had followed in pursuit of the escaped prisoner that the murder had been discovered. Still the Pope said nothing. But his head was held down, and his soul was full of trouble. The group of prelates looked into each other's faces with suspicion and terror. A storm was gathering round the Vatican, and who could say what would happen if the Pope persisted in the course he had just taken? At length the Cardinal Secretary approached his Holiness, and said, with a deep genuflexion: "Holy Father, I fear the tenderness of your fatherly heart has betrayed you into sheltering a criminal. It is not merely that the man Rossi is a revolutionary accused of an attempt to overthrow the Government of his country. There cannot be a question that he is a murderer also, and if you keep him here you will violate the law of every civilised State and expose yourself to the condemnation of the world." The Pope did not reply. Other words in another voice were drumming in his ears with a new and terrible meaning: "I have broken the law of God and of my country, and if you have any fear of the consequences you must turn me out while there is still time." "Your Holiness will also remember," said the Cardinal Secretary, "that by the regulation of the civil authorities which guarantees to the Holy Father the rights of sovereignty, it is expressly stated that he holds no powers which are contrary to the laws of the State and of public order. Therefore to conceal and protect a criminal would be of itself to commit a crime, and God alone can say what the consequence might be to the Vatican and to the Church." "Oh, silence! silence!" cried the Pope, lifting a face full of suffering. "Leave me! leave me!" The Cardinal Secretary and his colleagues bowed to the Pope and backed out of the room. A moment afterwards the young Monsignor entered. He was bringing a newspaper in his hand, for as Cameriere Participante he was one of the Pope's readers. "Holy Father," he said in his nervous voice, "I bring you bad news." "What is it, my son?" said the Pope, with a pitiful expression. "The assassin of the Prime Minister turns out to be some one..." "Well?" "Some one known to your Holiness." "Don't be afraid for the Holy Father.... Tell me, Monsignor." "It is a lady, your Holiness." "A lady?" "She has been arrested and has confessed." "Confessed?" "It is Donna Roma Volonna, your Holiness. She shot the Prime Minister with a revolver, and her motive was revenge." The Pope lifted his head, and looked at the young Monsignor with an expression which no language can describe. Relief, joy, shame, and remorse were mingled in one flash on his broken and bankrupt face. He was silent for a moment, and then he said: "Say nothing of this to the young man in the room below. If he is in sanctuary let him also be in peace. Whatever he is to hear of the world without must come through me alone. Give that as my order to everybody. And may God who has had mercy on His servant be good to us all!" III In penance for the joy he had felt on learning that Roma, not Rossi, had assassinated the Minister, the Pope became her advocate in his own mind, and watched for an opportunity to save her. Every day for a week Monsignor Mario read the newspapers to the Pope that he might be fully abreast of what occurred. The first morning the journals merely reported the crime. The headless one with the fearful hands had stalked over the city in the middle of night in the shape of incarnate murder, and the citizens of Rome would awake to hear the news with consternation, horror, and shame. The evening journals contained obituary articles and appreciations of the dead man's character. He was the Richelieu of Italy, the chivalrous and devoted servant of his country, and one of the noblest figures of the age. "Extras" were published giving descriptions of the city under the first effects of the terrible news. Rome was literally draped in mourning. It was a forest of flags at half-mast. All public buildings, embassies, cafés, and places of public amusement were closed. The Pope was puzzled, and calling a member of his Noble Guard (it was the Count de Raymond) he sent him out into the city to see. When the Count de Raymond returned he told another story. The people, while deploring the crime, were not surprised at it. Baron Bonelli had refused to understand the wants of the nation. He had treated the people as slaves and shed their blood in the streets. Where such opinions were not openly expressed there was a gloomy silence. Groups could be seen under the great lamps in the Corso reading the evening papers. Sometimes a man would mount a chair in front of the Café Aragno and read aloud from the latest "extra." The crowd would listen, stand a moment, and then disperse. Next day the journals were full of the assassin. Many things were incomprehensible in her character, unless you approached it with the right key. Young and with a fatal beauty, fantastic, audacious, a great coquette, always giving out a perfume of seduction and feminine ruin, she was one of those women who live in the atmosphere of infamous intrigue, and her last victim had been her first friend. Once more the Pope was puzzled, and he sent out his Noble Guard again. The Count de Raymond returned to say that in corners of the cafés people spoke of the Baron as a dead dog, and said that if Donna Roma had killed him she did a good act, and God would reward her. Parliament opened after its Easter vacation, and the Count de Raymond was sent in plain clothes to its first sitting. The galleries and lobbies were filled, and there was suppressed but intense excitement. Rumour said the Government had resigned, and that the King, who was in despair, had been unable to form another ministry. A leader of the Right was heard to say that Donna Roma had done more for the people in a day than the Opposition could have accomplished in a hundred years. "If these agitators on the Left have any qualities of statesmen, now's their time to show it," he said. But what would Parliament say about the dead man? The President entered and took his chair. After the minutes had been read there was a moment's silence. Not a word was uttered, not a voice was raised. "Let us pass on to the next business," said the President. The assizes happened to be in session, and the opening of the trial was reported on the following day. When the prisoner was asked whether she pleaded guilty or not guilty, she answered guilty. The court, however, requested her to reconsider her plea, assigned her an advocate, and went through all the formalities of an ordinary case. A principal object of the prosecution had been to discover accomplices, but the prisoner continued to protest that she had none. She neither denied nor extenuated the crime, and she acknowledged it to have been premeditated. When asked to state her motive, she said it was hatred of the methods adopted by the dead man to wipe out political opponents, and a determination to send to the bar of the Almighty one who had placed himself above human law. The Pope sent his Noble Guard to the next day's hearing of the trial, and when the Count de Raymond came back his eyes were red and swollen. The beautiful and melancholy face of the young prisoner sitting behind iron bars that were like the cage of a wild beast had made a pitiful impression. Her calmness, her total self-abandonment, the sublime feelings that even in the presence of a charge of murder expressed themselves in her sweet voice, had moved everybody to tears. Then the prosecution had been so debasing in its questions about her visits to the Vatican and in its efforts to implicate David Rossi by means of a letter addressed to the prison at Milan. "But _I_ did it," the young prisoner had said again and again with steadfast fervour, only deepening to alarm when evidence concerning the revolver seemed to endanger the absent man. There had been some conflicting medical evidence as to whether the death could have been due to a pistol-shot, and certain astounding disclosures of police corruption and prison tyranny. A judge of the Military Tribunal had given startling proof of the Prime Minister's complicity in an infamous case, ending with the suicide of the prisoner's man-servant in open court, and an old Garibaldian among the people, packed away beyond the barrier, had cried out: "He was just a black-dyed villain, and God Almighty save us from such another." This laying bare of the machinery of statecraft had made a great sensation, and even the judge on the bench, being a just man, had lowered his eyes before the accused at the bar. As the prisoner was taken back to prison past the Castle of St. Angelo and the Military College, the crowds had cheered her again and again, and sitting in an open car with a Carabineer by her side, she had looked frightened at finding herself a heroine where she had expected to be a malefactor. "Poor child!" said the Pope. "But who knows the hidden designs of Providence, whether manifest in the path of His justice or His mercy?" Next day, when the Noble Guard returned to the Vatican, he could scarcely speak to tell his story. The trial had ended and the prisoner was condemned. Reluctantly the judge had sentenced her to life-long imprisonment. She had preserved the same lofty demeanour to the last, thanked her advocate, and even the judge and jury, and said they had taken the only true view of her act. Her great violet eyes were extraordinarily dilated and dark, and her face was transparent as alabaster. "You have done right to condemn me," she said, "but God, who sees all, will weigh my conduct in the scale of His holy justice." The entire court was in tears. When the time came to remove the lady the crowd ran out to see the last of her. There was a van and a company of Carabineers, but the emotion of the people mastered them and they tried to rescue the prisoner. This was near the Castle of St. Angelo, and the gates being open, the military rushed her into the fortress for safety. She was there now. The Pope sent his Noble Guard to the Castle of St. Angelo to inquire after the prisoner, and the young soldier brought back a pitiful tale. Donna Roma was ill and could not be removed at present. Her nervous system was completely exhausted and nobody could say what might not occur. Nevertheless, she was very brave, very sweet and very cheerful, and everybody was in love with her. The Castle was occupied by a brigade of Military Engineers, and the Major in command was a good Catholic and a faithful son of the Holy Father. He had lodged his prisoner in the bright apartments that used to be the Pope's, although the prison for persons committed by the Penal Tribunals was a dark cell in the middle of the Maschio. She had expressed a desire to be received into the Church, and had asked the Major to send for Father Pifferi. "Go back and tell the Major that I will go instead," said the Pope. "Holy Father!" "Ask him if the secret passage between the Vatican and the Castle of St. Angelo can still be opened up." Count de Raymond returned to say that the Major would open it. In the present political crisis no one could tell what a day would bring forth, and in any case he would take the consequences. The Noble Guard held four unopened letters in his hand. They were addressed to the Honourable Rossi in a woman's writing, and had been re-addressed to the Chamber of Deputies from London, Paris, and Berlin. "An official from the post-office gave me these letters, and asked me if I could deliver them," said the young soldier. "My son, my son, didn't you see that it was a trap?" said the Pope. "But no matter! Give them to me. We must leave all to the Holy Spirit." IV "The dress of a simple priest to-day, Gaetanino," said the Pope, when his valet came to his bedroom on the following morning. After Mass and the usual visit of the Cardinal Secretary, the Pope called for the young Count de Raymond. "We'll go down to our guest first," he said, putting into the side-pocket of his cassock the letters which the Noble Guard had given him. They found Rossi sitting in a large, sparsely furnished room, by an almost untouched breakfast. He lifted his head when he heard steps, and rose as the Pope entered. His pale face was a picture of despair. "Something has died in him," thought the Pope, and an aching sadness, which had been gnawing at his heart for days, returned. "They make you comfortable in this old place, my son?" "Yes, your Holiness." "And you have everything you wish for?" "More than I deserve, your Holiness." "You have suffered, my son. But, in the providence of God, who knows what may happen yet? Don't lose heart. Take an old man's word for it--life is worth living. The Holy Father has found it so in spite of many sorrows." A kind of pitying smile passed over the young man's miserable face. "Mine is a sorrow your Holiness can know nothing about--I have lost my wife," he said. There was a moment of silence. Then the Pope said in a voice that shook slightly, "You don't mean that your wife _is_ dead, but only...." "Only," said Rossi, with a curl of the lip, "that it was she who betrayed me." "It's hard, my son, very hard. But who knows what influences...." "Curse them! Curse the influences, whatever they were, which caused a wife to betray her husband." The Pope, who was sitting with both hands on the knob of his stick, quivered perceptibly. "My son," he said, "you have much to justify you, and it is not for me to gainsay you altogether. But God rules His world in righteousness, and if this had not happened, who knows but what worse might have befallen you?" "Nothing worse _could_ have befallen me, your Holiness." There was another moment of silence, and then the Pope said, "Yes, I understand what it is to build one's faith on a human foundation. The foundation fails, and then the heart sinks, the soul totters. But bad as this ... this betrayal is, you do very wrong if you refuse to see that it saved you from the consequences--the awful consequences before God and man--of your intended conduct." "What conduct, your Holiness?" "The terrible conduct which formed the basis of your plans on returning to Rome." "You mean ... what the newspapers talked about?" The Pope bent his head. "A conspiracy to kill the King?" Again the Pope bent his head. "You believed that, your Holiness?" "Unhappily I was compelled to do so." "And she ... do you suppose she believed it?" "She believed you were engaged in conspiracies. There was nothing else she could believe in the light of what you had said and written." After a moment Rossi began to laugh. "And yet you say the world is ruled in righteousness!" he said. The Pope's face was whitening. "Do you tell me it was a mistake?" he asked. "Indeed I do. The only conspiracies I was engaged in were conspiracies to found associations of freedom which had been forbidden by the tyrannical new decree. But what matter? If an error like that can lead to results like these, what's the good of trying?" And he laughed again. The Pope, who was deeply moved, looked up into the young man's tortured face, without knowing that his own tears were streaming. Old memories were astir within him, and he was carried back into the past of his own life. He was remembering the days when he too had reeled beneath the blow of a terrible fate, and all his hopes and beliefs had been mown down as by a scythe. But God had been good. His gracious hand had healed the wound and made all things well. Taking the letters from the pocket of his cassock, the Pope laid them on the table. "These are for you, my son," he said, and then he turned away. Going down the narrow roofed-in passage to the Castle of St. Angelo, with shafts of morning sunshine slanting through its lancet windows, and the voices of children at play coming up from the street below, the Pope told himself that he must be severe with Roma. The only thing irremediable in all that had happened was the assassination, and though that, in God's hands, had teen turned to the good of the people, yet it raised a barrier between two unhappy souls that might never in this life be passed. "Poor child! Poor flower broken by the storms of fate! But I must reprove her. Before I give her the Blessed Sacrament she must confess and show a full contrition." V Roma was lying on a bed-chair in the frescoed room which had once been the Pope's salon. She was wearing a white dress, and it made her unruffled brow look like alabaster. Her large eyes, which were closed, had blue rings on the lids, and her mouth, once so rosy and so gay with laughter and light words, was colourless as marble. A lay Sister, in a black and white habit, moved softly about the room. It was Bruno's widow, Elena. She was the Sister Angelica who had entered the convent of the Sacred Heart. It was there she had buried her own trouble until, hearing of Roma's, she had begged to be allowed to nurse her. A door opened and an officer, in a mixed light and dark blue uniform, entered. It was the doctor of the regiment. "Sleeping, Sister?" "Yes, sir." "Poor soul! Let her sleep as long as she can." But at that moment Roma opened her eyes, and held out her white hand. "Is it you, doctor?" she said with a smile. "And how is my patient this morning? Better, I think." "Much better. In fact, I feel no pain at all to-day." "She never does. She never feels anything if you believe her," said Elena. "Tired, Sister?" "Why should I be tired, I wonder?" "Sitting up all night with me. Your big burden is very troublesome, doctor." "Tut! You mustn't talk like that." "If all jailors were as good to their prisoners as mine are to me!" "And if all prisoners were as good to their jailors.... But I forbid that subject. I absolutely forbid it.... Ah, here comes your breakfast." A soldier in uniform trousers and a linen jacket and cap had come in with a tray on which there was a smoking basin. "You are from Sicily, aren't you, cook?" "Yes, from Sicily, Signora." Roma leaned back to Elena and said in an undertone, "That's where _he_ has gone to, isn't it?" "Some people say so, but nobody knows where he is." "No news yet?" "None whatever." "Sicily must be a lovely place, cook?" "It is, Signora. It's the loveliest place in the world." "Last night I had such a beautiful dream, doctor. Somebody who had been away came back, and all the church bells rang for him. I thought it was noon, I remember, for the big gun of the Castle had just been fired. But when I awoke it was quite dark, yet there was really something going on, for I could hear people singing in the city and bands of music playing." "Ah, that ... I'm afraid that was only ... only the sequel to the Prime Minister's funeral. Rome is not sorry that Baron Bonelli is dead, and last night a procession of men and women marched along the streets with songs and hymns, as on a night of carnival.... But I must be going. Sister, see she takes her medicine as usual, and lies quiet and does not excite herself. Good-morning!" When the cook also had gone Roma raised herself on her elbow. "Did you hear what the doctor said, Elena? The death of the Baron has altered everything. It was really no crime to kill that man, and by rights nobody should suffer for it." "Donna Roma!" "Ah! no, I didn't mean that. Yet why shouldn't I? And why shouldn't you? Didn't he kill Bruno and our poor dear little Joseph?..." Elena was crying. "I'm not thinking of myself," she said. "I'm not thinking of myself, either," said Roma, "and I'm not going to give in at the eleventh hour. But David Rossi will come back. I am sure he will, and then..." "And then... _you_, Donna Roma?" "I?" Roma fell back on her bed-chair. "No, _I_ shall not be here, that's true. It's a pity, but after all it makes no difference. And if David Rossi has to come back... over... over my dead body, as you might say... who is to know... or care... except perhaps... some day... when he..." Roma struggled on, but Elena broke down utterly. The door opened again, and a sentry on guard outside announced the English Ambassador. "Ah! Sir Evelyn, is it you?" The English gentleman held down his head. "Forgive me if I intrude upon your trouble, Donna Roma." "Sit! Give his Excellency a chair, Sister.... Times have changed since I knew you first, Sir Evelyn. I was a thoughtless, happy woman in those days. But they are gone, and I do not regret them." "You are very brave, Donna Roma. Too brave. Only for that your trial must have gone differently." "It's all for the best, your Excellency. But was there anything you wished to say to me?" "Yes. The report of your condemnation has been received with deep emotion in my country, and as the evidence given in court showed that you were born in England, I feel that I am justified in intervening on your behalf." "But I don't want you to intervene, dear friend." "Donna Roma, it is still possible to appeal to the Court of Cassation." "I have no desire to appeal--there is nothing to appeal against." "There might be much if you could be brought to see that--that.... In fact so many pleas are possible, and all of them good ones. For instance...." The Englishman dropped both eyes and voice. "Well?" "Donna Roma, you were tried and condemned on a charge of going to the Prime Minister's cabinet with the intention of killing him, and of killing him there. But if it could be proved that _he_ came to _your_ house, and that, to shield _another person not now in the hands of justice_, you...." "What are you saying, your Excellency?" "Look!" The Englishman had drawn from his breast-pocket a crumpled sheet of white paper. "Last night I visited your deserted apartment in the Piazza Navona, and there, amid other signs that were clear and convincing--the marks of two pistol-shots--I found--this." "What is it? Give it to me," cried Roma. She almost snatched it out of his hand. It was the warrant which Rossi had rolled up and flung away. "How did that warrant come there, Donna Roma? Who brought it? What other person was with you in those rooms that night? What does he say to this evidence of his presence on the scene of the crime?" Roma did not speak immediately. She continued to look at the Englishman with her large mournful eyes until his own eyes fell, and there was no sound but the crinkling of the warrant in her hand. Then she said, very softly: "Excellency, you must please let me keep this paper. As you see, it is nothing in itself, and without my testimony you can make nothing of it. I shall never appeal against my sentence, and therefore it can be no good to me or to anybody. But it may prove to be a danger to somebody else--somebody whose name should be above reproach." She stretched out a sweet white hand and touched his own. "Haven't I done enough wrong to him already, and isn't this paper a proof of it? Must I go farther still, and bring him to the galleys? You cannot wish it. Don't you see that the police would have to deny everything? And I--if you forced me to speak, I should deny everything also." A gentle, brave dauntlessness rang in her voice, and the Englishman could with difficulty keep back his tears. "Excellency, Sir Evelyn, friend ... tell me I may keep the paper." The Englishman rose and turned his head away. "It is yours, Donna Roma--you must do as you please with it." She kissed the paper and put it in her breast. "Good-bye, dear friend." He tried to answer, "Good-bye! God bless you!" But the words would not come. "The Major!" said the voice of the sentry. The Commandant of the Castle came into the room. "Ah! Major!" cried Roma. "The doctor tells me you are better this morning." "Much better." "It is my duty--my unhappy duty--to bring you a painful message. The authorities, thinking your presence in Rome a cause of excitement to the populace, have decided to send you to Viterbo." "When is it to be, Major?" "To-morrow about mid-day." "I shall be quite-ready. But have you sent for Father Pifferi?" "I came to speak about that also. Sister, return to your room for the present." Elena went out. "Donna Roma, a great personage has asked to see you in the place of the Father General. He will come in through that doorway. It leads by a passage long sealed up to the apartment of the Pope in the Vatican, and he who comes and goes by it must be unknown and unseen by any one except yourself." "Major!" But the Major was going hurriedly out of the room. A moment afterwards the Pope entered in his black cassock as a priest. VI "Rise, my child! God knows if the Holy Father ought to give you his blessing. Far be it from me to add bitterness to your remorse in finding yourself in this place and guilty of this sin, but.... Are we alone?" "Quite alone, your Holiness." "Sit down. The Holy Father will sit beside you." He was trying to be severe with her, but it was very difficult. His hand strayed down to hers, and at every hard word there was a tender pressure. "The Baron is dead. He was a cruel, heartless tyrant, without mercy or humanity. His death has altered everything, and the load that lay on Italy has been lifted away. But none the less you did wrong, very, very wrong, and by the mad act of a moment.... My child! My poor child! God help you! God help this little lost one!" He patted the hand that lay in his as if he had been quieting a crying child. "My child, I cannot save you from the consequences of your sin. You must go where I cannot follow you. But since the Holy Father induced you to make that cruel denunciation--but let us be calm--let us be calm!" Roma was perfectly calm, but the Pope could barely control himself. "I see now that we made a mistake. The conspiracies of David Rossi were not criminal, and his aims were not unrighteous. I have been instructed on this subject, and now I see everything in a different light. Yes, a great mistake, although a natural and excusable one, and if that was the cause and origin of this terrible event, the Holy Father who led you so far...." "Your Holiness!" "Nay, you must not expect too much. It is little I can do. But now that governments are falling and parliaments are being dissolved, David Rossi must come back...." Roma made a cry of joy, and the Pope raised a warning finger. "Ah, you must never think of that, my child--you must never think of it. It is a pity, a great pity, but, alas! it cannot be otherwise now. If your husband is to come back, his name must be kept clean and unblemished, and you can never rejoin him whatever happens." Dizzy with a sense of the Pope's awful error, Roma turned away her face. "But if you tell me that what you did was due to the compulsion that was put upon you to denounce David Rossi, he must come forward, whatever the consequences, to defend you and plead for you. He must say to the world and to your judges: 'It is true that this poor lady has committed a crime--an awful crime, such as shuts the guilty one out of the fold of the human family--but she was provoked to it by a falsehood. The dead man deceived her. He was her betrayer, her assassin, for he tried to slay her soul. Therefore you will have mercy upon her as you hope for mercy, you will forgive her as you hope for forgiveness, and in the peace and penance of some holy convent she will wipe out the past of her unhappy life as Mary wiped out her sins in the tears with which she washed her Master's feet.'" He had risen in the exaltation of his emotion, and raised one hand over his head, but Roma, in the toils of the terrible error, had dropped to her knees at his feet. "Oh, I cannot die with a lie on my lips. Holy Father, let me make my confession." A vague foreshadowing of the coming revelation seemed to light on the Pope, and he sat down again without a word. Mechanically he prepared to receive the penitent into the Church, questioning her, instructing her, calling on her to repeat the profession of faith, and finally baptizing her conditionally. "Baptism wipes out all your sins, my daughter," he said, "but if for your soul's comfort you wish to make a full confession before I give you the Blessed Sacrament...." "I do. I have wished it ever since the end of my trial, and that was why I asked for Father Pifferi." "Then take care--accuse nobody else, my daughter." Roma put her hands together, repeated the Confiteor, and then said: "Father, I am a great, great sinner, and when I charged myself in court with having killed the Minister, I told falsehood to shield another." "My child!" The Pope had risen to his feet. There was a moment of painful silence, and then the Pope sat down again with rigid limbs, saying in a husky voice: "Go on, my daughter." Roma went on with her confession. She told of the mad impulse that came to her to kill the Baron after he had forced her to denounce her husband. She told of her preparations for killing him, and of the incidents of the night of the crime when she was making ready to set out on her awful errand. "But he came to me in my own rooms at that very moment, your Holiness, and then...." "In ... your own rooms?" "Yes, indeed, and that was really the cause of everything." "How so?" "Somebody else came afterwards." "Somebody else?" "A friend." "A ... friend?" She hesitated for a moment, and then put her hand into her breast and drew out the warrant. "This one," she said, in a voice that was scarcely audible. The Pope took the paper, and it rustled as he opened it. There was no other sound in the prison cell except the rasping noise of his rapid breathing. "David Leone! You don't mean to say--to imply...." The Pope's eyes wandered vaguely around, but they came back to the face at his feet, and he said: "No, no! You cannot mean that, my child. Tell me I have misunderstood you and come to a wrong conclusion." Roma did not reply. Her head sunk lower and lower, and seeing this, the Pope rose again, and standing over her he cried: "Tell me! Tell me, I command you! You wish me to believe that it was he, not you, who committed the crime! Out on you! out on you!" But having said this in a hoarse and angry voice, he passed his arm over his eyes as if to brush away the clouds that had gathered there, and muttered in a broken and feeble way, "O God, Thou knowest my foolishness. I am poor and needy. Make haste unto me, O God! Hide not Thy face from Thy servant, for I am in trouble." Roma was crying at the Pope's feet, and after a moment he became aware of it, and stooped to lift her up. "My child! My poor, poor child! You must bear with me. I am an old man now. Only a weak old man. My brain is confused. Things run together in it. But I understand. I think I understand." She rose and kissed his trembling hand. He was still holding the warrant. "Where did this paper come from?" "The English Ambassador brought it this morning. He had found it in our rooms in the Piazza Navona." "The place where the crime was committed?" "Yes." The Pope straightened himself up, and said in a firm voice: "My daughter, you must permit me to keep this warrant." "No, no!" "Yes, yes! If I said before that your husband should come out and defend you, I say now that he shall come out and accuse himself." "Your Holiness!" "He shall go to the courts and say: 'This lady is innocent. She sacrificed herself to save my life. I do not ask for mercy. I ask for justice. Liberate her and arrest me.'" Roma had knelt again, and was fingering the skirt of the Pope's cassock. "But, Holy Father," she said, "there is something I have not told you. He who killed the Minister did so in self-defence...." "In self-defence!" "His act was an accident, and if it had not happened the Minister would have killed him, whereas I...." "In self-defence, you say?" "I am really guilty of the crime, because I intended to commit it." "But if it was done in self-defence it was no crime, and you must not and shall not suffer." Roma dropped the Pope's cassock and took hold of his hand. "Holy Father," she said, "how can I wish to live when he who loved me loves me no longer? I know quite well it is better that I should go, and that when he comes it should be all over. I dreamt of it last night, your Holiness. I thought my husband had come back and all the church bells were ringing. Only a dream, and perhaps you do not believe in such foolishness. But it was very sweet to think that if I could not live for my love I could die for him, and so wipe out everything." The Pope's white head was bent very low. "And then I cannot suffer very much, your Holiness. I am ill, really ill, and my trouble will not last very long. And if God is using what has happened to bring out all things well, perhaps He intends that I shall give myself in the place of some one who is better and more necessary." The Pope could bear no more. His lip quivered and his voice shook, but his eyes were shining. "It is not for me to gainsay you, my daughter. I came here to see Mary Magdalene, and find the soul of the saints themselves. The world's judgment on a woman who has sinned is merciless and cruel, but if David Rossi is worthy of his mother and his name, he will come back to you on his knees." "Bless me, your Holiness." "I bless you, my daughter. May He in whose hands are the issues of life and death cover your transgressions with the vast wings of His gracious pardon and bring you joy and peace." The Pope went out with a brightening face, and Roma staggered back to her couch. VII David Rossi sat all day in his room in the Vatican reading the letters the Pope had left with him. They were the letters which Roma had addressed to him in London, Paris, and Berlin. He read them again and again, and save for the tick of the clock there was no sound in the large gaunt room but his stifled moans. The most violently opposed feelings possessed him, and he hardly knew whether he was glad or sorry that thus late, and after a cruel fate had fallen, these messages of peace had reached him. A spirit seemed to emanate from the thin transparent sheets of paper, and it penetrated his whole being. As he read the words, now gay, now sad, now glowing with joy, now wailing with sorrow, a world of fond and tender emotions swelled up and blotted out all darker passions. He could see Roma herself, and his heart throbbed as of old under the influence of her sweet indescribable presence. Those dear features, those marvellous eyes, that voice, that smile--they swam up and tortured him with love and with remorse. How bravely she had withstood his enemies! To think of that young, ardent, brilliant, happy life sacrificed to his sufferings! And then her poor, pathetic secret--how sweet and honest she had been about it! Only a pure and courageous woman could have done as she did; while he, in his blundering passion and mad wrath, had behaved like a foul-minded tyrant and a coward. What loud protestations of heroic love he had made when he imagined the matter affected another man! And when he had learned that it concerned himself, how his vaunted constancy had failed him, and he had cursed the poor soul whose confidence he had invited! But above all the pangs of love and remorse, Rossi was conscious of an overpowering despair. It took the form of revolt against God, who had allowed such a blind and cruel sequence of events to wreck the lives of two of His innocent children. When he took refuge in the Vatican he must have been clinging to some waif and stray of hope. It was gone now, and there was no use struggling. The nothingness of man against the pitilessness of fate made all the world a blank. Rossi had rung the bell to ask for an audience with his Holiness when the door opened and the Pope himself entered. "Holy Father, I wished to speak to you." "What about, my son?" "Myself. Now I see that I did wrong to ask for your protection. You thought I was innocent, and there was something I did not tell you. When I said I was guilty before God and man, you did not understand what I meant. Holy Father, I meant that I had committed murder." The Pope did not answer, and Rossi went on, his voice ringing with the baleful sentiments which possessed him. "To tell you the truth, Holy Father, I hardly thought of it myself. What I had done was partly in self-defence, and I did not consider it a crime. And then, he whose life I had taken was an evil man, with the devil's dues in him, and I felt no more remorse after killing him than if I had trodden on a poisonous adder. But now I see things differently. In coming here I exposed you to danger at the hands of the State. I ask your pardon, and I beg you to let me go." "Where will you go to?" "Anywhere--nowhere--I don't know yet." The Pope looked at the young face, cut deep with lines of despair, and his heart yearned over it. "Sit down, my son. Let us think. Though you did not tell me of the assassination, I soon knew all about it.... Partly in self-defence, you say?" "That is so, but I do not urge it as an excuse. And if I did, who else knows anything about it?" "Is there nobody who knows?" "One, perhaps. But it is my wife, and she could have no interest in saving me now, even if I wished to be saved.... I have read her letters." "If I were to tell you it is not so, my son--that your wife is still ready to sacrifice herself for your safety...." "But that is impossible, your Holiness. There are so many things you do not know." "If I were to tell you that I have just seen her, and, notwithstanding your want of faith in her, she still has faith in you...." The deep lines of despair began to pass from Rossi's face, and he made a cry of joy. "If I were to say that she loves you, and would give her life for you...." "Is it possible? Do you tell me that? In spite of everything? And she--where is she? Let me go to her. Holy Father, if you only knew! I'll go and beg her pardon. I cursed her! Yes, it is true that in my blind, mad passion I.... But let me go back to her on my knees. The rest of my life spent at her feet will not be enough to wipe out my fault." "Stay, my son. You shall see her presently." "Can it be possible that I shall see her? I thought I should never see her again; but I counted without God. Ah! God is good after all. And you, Holy Father, you are good too. I will beg her forgiveness, and she will forgive me. Then we'll fly away somewhere--we'll escape to Africa, India, anywhere. We'll snatch a few years of happiness, and what more has anybody a right to expect in this miserable world?" Exalted in the light of his imaginary future, he seemed to forget everything else--his crime, his work, his people. "Is she at home still?" "She is only a few paces from this place, my son." "Only a few paces! Oh, let me not lose a moment more. Where is she?" "In the Castle of St. Angelo," said the Pope. A dark cloud crossed Rossi's beaming face and his mouth opened as if to emit a startling cry. "In ... in prison?" The Pope bowed. "What for?" "The assassination of the Minister." "Roma?... But what a fool I was not to think of it as a thing that might happen! I left her with the dead man. Who was to believe her when she denied that she had killed him?" "She did not deny it. She avowed it." "Avowed it? She said that she had...." The Pope bowed again. "Then ... then it was ... was it to shield me?" "Yes." Rossi's eyes grew moist. He was like another man. "But the court ... surely no court will believe her." "She has been tried and sentenced, my son." "Sentenced? Do you say sentenced? For a crime she did not commit? And to shield me? Holy Father, would you believe that the last words I spoke to that woman ... but she is an angel. The authorities must be mad, though. Did nobody think of me? Didn't it occur to any one that I had been there that night?" "There was only one piece of evidence connecting you with the scene of the crime, my son. It was this." The Pope drew from his breast the warrant he had taken from Roma. "_She_ had it?" "Yes." Rossi's emotions whirled within him in a kind of hurricane. The despair which had clamoured so loud looked mean and contemptible in the presence of the mighty passion which had put it to shame. But after a while his swimming eyes began to shine, and he said: "Holy Father, this paper belongs to me and you must permit me to keep it." "What do you intend to do, my son?" "There is only one thing to do now." "What is that?" "_To save her._" There was no need to ask how. The Pope understood, and his breast throbbed and swelled. But now that he had accomplished what he came for, now that he had awakened the sleeping soul and given it hope and faith and courage to face justice, and even death if need be, the Pope became suddenly conscious of a feeling in his own heart which he struggled in vain to suppress. "Far be it from me to excuse a crime, my son, but the merciful God who employs our poor passions to His own great purposes has used your acts to great ends. The world is trembling on the verge of unknown events and nobody knows what a day may bring forth. Let us wait a while." Rossi shook his head. "It is true that a crime will be the same to-morrow as to-day, but the dead man was a tyrant, a ferocious tyrant, and if he forced you in self-defence..." Again Rossi shook his head, but still the Pope struggled on. "You have your own life to think about, my son, and who knows but in God's good service..." "Let me go." "You intend to give yourself up?" "Yes." The Pope could say no more. He rose to his feet. His saintly face was full of a dumb yearning love and pride, which his tongue might never tell. He thought of his years of dark searching, ending at length in this meeting and farewell, and an impulse came to him to clasp the young man to his swelling and throbbing breast. But after a moment, with something of his old courageous calm of voice, he said: "I am not surprised at your decision, my son. It is worthy of your blood and name. And now that we are parting for the last time, I could wish to tell you something." David Rossi did not speak. "I knew your mother, my son." "My mother?" The Pope bowed and smiled. "She was a great soul, too, and she suffered terribly. Such are the ways of God." Still Rossi did not speak. He was looking steadfastly into the Pope's quivering face and making an effort to control himself. The Pope's voice shook and his lip trembled. "Naturally, you think ill of your father, knowing how much your mother suffered. Isn't that so?" Rossi put one hand to his forehead as if to steady his reeling brain, and said, "Who am I to think ill of any one?" The Pope smiled again, a timid smile. "David...." Rossi caught his breath. "If, in the providence of God, you were to meet your father somewhere, and he held out his hand to you, would you ... wherever you met and whatever he might be ... would you _shake hands with him_?" "Yes," said Rossi; "if I were a King on his throne, and he were the lowest convict at the galleys." The Pope fetched a long breath, took a step forward, and silently held out his hand. At the next moment the young man and the old Pope were hand to hand and eye to eye. They tried to speak and could not. "Farewell!" said the Pope in a choking voice, and turning away he tottered out of the room. VIII The doctor of the Engineers, not entirely satisfied with his diagnosis of Roma's illness, prescribed a remedy of unfailing virtue--hope. It was a happy treatment. The past of her life seemed to have disappeared from her consciousness and she lived entirely in the future. It was always shining in her eyes like a beautiful sunrise. The sunrise Roma saw was beyond the veil of this life, but the good souls about her knew nothing of that. They brought every piece of worldly intelligence that was likely to be good news to her. By this time they imagined they knew where her heart lay, and such happiness was in her white face when as soldiers of the King they whispered treason that they thought themselves rewarded. They told her of an attempted attack on the Vatican, with all its results and consequences--army disorganised, the Borgo Barracks shut up, soldiers wearing cockades and marching arm in arm, the Government helpless and the Quirinal in despair. "I'm sorry for the young King," she said, "but still...." It was the higher power working with blind instruments. Rossi would come back. His hopes, so nearly laid waste, would at length be realised. And if, as she had told Elena, he had to return over her own dead body, so to speak, there would be justice even in that. It would be pitiful, but it would be glorious also. There were mysteries in life and death, and this was one of them. She was as gentle and humble as ever, but every hour she grew more restless. This conveyed to her guards the idea that she was expecting something. Notwithstanding her plea of guilty, they thought perhaps she was looking for her liberty out of the prevailing turmoil. "I will be very good and do everything you wish, doctor. But don't forget to ask the Prefect to let me stay in Rome over to-morrow. And, Sister, do please remember to waken me early in the morning, because I'm certain that something is going to happen. I've dreamt of it three times, you know." "A pity!" thought the doctor. "Governments may fall and even dynasties may disappear, but judicial authorities remain the same as ever, and the judgment of the court must be carried out." Nevertheless he would speak to the Prefect. He would say that in the prisoner's present condition the journey to Viterbo might have serious consequences. As he was setting out on this errand early the following morning, he met Elena in the anteroom, and heard that Roma was paying the most minute attention to the making of her toilet. "Strange! You would think she was expecting some one," said Elena. "She is, too," said the doctor. "And he is a visitor who will not keep her long." The soldier who brought Roma her breakfast that morning brought something else that she found infinitely more appetising. Rossi had returned to Rome! One of the men below had seen him in the street last night. He was going in the direction of the _Piazza_ Navona, and nobody was attempting to arrest him. Roma's eyes flashed like stars, and she sent down a message to the Major, asking to be allowed to see the soldier who had seen Rossi. He was a big ungainly fellow, but in Roma's eyes who shall say how beautiful? She asked him a hundred questions. His dense head was utterly bewildered. The doctor came back with a smiling face. The Prefect had agreed to postpone indefinitely the transfer of their prisoner to the penitentiary. The good man thought she would be very grateful. "Ah, indefinitely? I only wished to remain over to-day! After that I shall be quite ready." But the doctor brought another piece of news which threw her into the wildest excitement. Both Senate and Chamber of Deputies had been convoked late last night for an early hour this morning. Rumour said they were to receive an urgent message from the King. There was the greatest commotion in the neighbourhood of the Houses of Parliament, and the public tribunes were densely crowded. The doctor himself had obtained a card for the Chamber, but he was unable to get beyond the corridors. Nevertheless, the doors being open owing to the heat and crush, he had heard something. Vaguely, for five minutes, he had heard one of their great speakers. "Was it ... was it, perhaps...." "It was." Again the big eyes flashed like stars. "You heard him speak?" "I heard his voice at all events." "It's a wonderful voice, isn't it? And you really heard him? Can it be possible?" Elena, the sad figure in the background of these bright pathetic scenes, thought Roma was hoping for a reconciliation with Rossi. She hinted as much, and then the fierce joy in the white face faded away. "Ah, no! I'm not thinking of that, Elena." Her love was too large for personal thoughts. It had risen higher than any selfish expectations. They helped her on to the loggia. The day was warm, and the fresh air would do her good. She looked out over the city with a loving gaze, first towards the Piazza Navona, then towards the tower of Monte Citorio, and last of all towards Trinità de' Monti and the House of the Four Winds. But she was seeing things as they would be when she was gone, not to Viterbo, but on a longer journey. "Elena?" "Well?" "Do you think he will ever learn the truth?" "About the denunciation?" "Yes." "I should think he is certain to do so." "Why I did it, and what tempted me, and ... and everything?" "Yes, indeed, everything." "Do you think he will think kindly of me then, and forgive me and be merciful?" "I am sure he will." A mysterious glow came into the pallid face. "Even if he never learns the truth here, he will learn it hereafter, won't he? Don't you believe in that, Elena--that the dead know all?" "If I didn't, how could I bear to think of Bruno?" "True. How selfish I am! I hadn't thought of that. We are in the same case in some things, Elena." The future was shining in the brilliant eyes with the radiance of an unseen sunrise. "Dear Elena?" "Ye-s." "Do you think it will seem long to wait until he comes?" "Don't talk like that, Donna Roma." "Why not? It's only a little sooner or later, you know. Will it?" Elena had turned aside, and Roma answered herself. "_I_ don't. I think it will pass like a dream--like going to bed at night and awaking in the morning. And then both together--there." She took a long deep breath of unutterable joy. "Oh," she said, "that I may sleep until he comes--knowing all, forgiving everything, loving me the same as before, and every cruel thought dead and gone and forgotten." She asked for pen and paper and wrote a letter to Rossi: "DEAREST,--I hear the good news, just as I am on the point of leaving Rome, that you have returned to it, and I write to ask you not to try to alter what has happened. Believe me, it is better so. The world wants you, dear, and it doesn't want me any longer. Therefore return to life, be brave and strong and great, and think of me no more until we meet again. "You will know by what I have done that what you thought was quite unfounded. Whatever people say of me, you must always believe that I loved you from the first, and that I have never loved anybody but you. "You were angry with me when we parted, but more than ever I love you now. Don't think our love has been wasted. ''Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.' How beautiful! ROMA." Having written her letter, and put her lips to the enclosure, she addressed the envelope in a bold hand and with a brave flourish: "All' Illustrissimo Signor Davide Rossi, Camera dei Deputati." "You'll post this immediately I am gone, Sister," she said. Elena pretended to put the letter away for that purpose, but she really smuggled it down to the Major, who despatched it forthwith to the Chamber of Deputies. "And now I'll go to sleep," said Roma. She slept until mid-day with the sun's reflection from the white plaster of the groined ceiling of the loggia on her still whiter face. Then the twelve o'clock gun shook the walls of the Castle, and she awoke while the church bells were ringing. "I thought it was my dream coming true, Sister," she said. The doctor came up at that moment in a high state of excitement. "Great news, Donna Roma. The King...." "I know!" "Failing to form a Government to follow that of the Baron, appealed to Parliament to nominate a successor...." "So Parliament...." "Parliament has nominated the Honourable Rossi, the King has called for him, the warrant for his arrest has been cancelled, and all persons imprisoned for the recent insurrection have been set at liberty." Roma's trembling and exultant eyelids told a touching story. "Is there anything to see?" "Only the flag on the Capitol." "Let me look at it." He helped her to rise. "Look! There it is on the clock tower." "I see it.... That will do. You can put me down now, doctor." An ineffable joy shone in her face. "It _was_ my dream after all, Elena." After a moment she said, "Doctor, tell the Prefect I am quite ready to go to Viterbo. In fact I wish to go. I should like to go immediately." "I'll tell him," said the doctor, and he went out to hide his emotion. The Major came to the open arch of the loggia. He stood there for a moment, and there was somebody behind him. Then the Major disappeared, but the other remained. It was David Rossi. He was standing like a man transfixed, looking in speechless dismay at Roma's pallid face with the light of heaven on it. Roma did not see Rossi, and Elena, who did, was too frightened to speak. Lying back in her bed-chair with a great happiness in her eyes, she said: "Sister, if he should come here when I am gone ... no, I don't mean that ... but if you should see him and he should ask about me, you will say that I went away quite cheerfully. Tell him I was always thinking about him. No, don't say that either. But he must never think I regretted what I did, or that I died broken-hearted. Say farewell for me, Elena. _Addio Carissima!_ That's his word, you know. _Addio Carissimo!_" Rossi, blinded with his tears, took a step into the loggia, and in a low voice, very soft and tremulous, as if trying not to startle her, he cried: "Roma!" She raised herself, turned, saw him, and rose to her feet. Without a word he opened his arms to her, and with a little frightened cry she fell into them and was folded to his breast. [Illustration: WITH A FRIGHTENED CRY, SHE WAS FOLDED TO HIS BREAST.] IX It was ten days later. Rossi had surrendered to Parliament, but Parliament had declined to order his arrest. Then he had called for the liberation of Roma, but Roma had neither been liberated nor removed. "It will not be necessary," was the report of the doctor at the Castle to the officers of the Prefetura. The great liberator and remover was on his way. At Rossi's request Dr. Fedi had been called in, and he had diagnosed the case exactly. Roma was suffering from an internal disease, which was probably hereditary, but certainly incurable. Strain and anxiety had developed it earlier in life than usual, but in any case it must have come. At first Rossi rebelled with all his soul and strength. To go through this long and fierce fight with life, and to come out victorious, and then, when all seemed to promise peace and a kind of tempered happiness, to be met by Death--the unconquerable, the inevitable--it was terrible, it was awful! He called in specialists; talked of a change of air; even brought himself, when he was far enough away from Roma, to the length of suggesting an operation. The doctors shook their heads. At last he bowed his own head. His bride-wife must leave him. He must live on without her. Meantime Roma was cheerful, and at moments even gay. Her gaiety was heart-breaking. Blinding bouts of headache were her besetting trouble, but only by the moist red eyes did any one know anything about that. When people asked her how she felt, she told them whatever she thought they wished to hear. It brought a look of relief to their faces, and that made her very happy. With Rossi, during these ten days, she had carried on the fiction that she was getting better. This was to break the news to him, and he on his part, to break the news to her, had pretended to believe the story. They made Elena help the little artifice, and even engaged the doctors in their mutual deception. "And how is my darling to-day?" "Splendid! There's really nothing to do with me. It's true I have suffered. That's why I look so pale. But I'm better now. Elena will tell you how well I slept last night. Didn't I sleep well, Elena? Elena.... Poor Elena is going a little deaf and doesn't always speak when she is spoken to. But I'm all right, David. In fact, I'll feel no pain at all before long, and then I shall be well." "Yes, dear, you'll feel no pain at all before long, and then you'll be well." It was pitiful. All their words seemed to be laden with double meanings. They could find none that were not. But the time had come when Roma resolved she must speak plainly. Rossi had lifted her into the loggia. He did so every day, carrying her, not on his arm as a woman carries a child, but against his breast, as a man carries his wife when he loves her. She always put her arms around his neck, pretending it was necessary for her safety, and when he had laid her gently in the bed-chair she pulled down his head and kissed him. The two little journeys were the delight of the day to Roma, but to Rossi they were a deepening trouble. It was the sweetest day of the sweet Roman spring, and Roma wore a light tea-gown with a coil of white silk about her head such as is seen in the portraits of Beatrice Cenci. The golden complexion was quite gone, there was a hard line along the cheek, a deep shadow under the chin, the nostrils were pinched and the mouth was drawn. But the large eyes, though heavy with pain, were full of joy. They did not weep any more, for all their tears were shed, and the light of another world was reflected in their depths. Rossi sat by her side, and she took one of his hands and held it on her lap between both her own. Sometimes she looked at him and then she smiled. She, who had lost him for a little while, had got him back at last. It was only just in time. A little break, and they would continue this--there. Ah, she was very happy! Rossi's free hand was supporting his head, and he was trying to look another way. Do what he would to conquer it, the spirit of rebellion was rising in his heart again. "O God, is this just? Is this right?" They were alone on the loggia. Above was the cloudless blue sky, below was the city, hardly seen or heard. "David," she began, in a faint voice. "Dearest?" "I have been so happy in having you with me again that there is something I have forgotten to tell you." "What is it, dear?" "Promise me you will not be shocked or startled." "What is it, dearest?" he repeated, although he knew too well. "It is nothing.... Yes, hold my hands tight. So!... Really it's nothing. And yet it is everything. It is ... it is death." "Roma!" Her eyelids trembled, but she tried to laugh. "Yes, dear. True! Not immediately. Oh, no! not immediately. But signed and sealed, you know, and not to be put aside that anybody may be happy much longer." She was laughing almost gaily. But all the same she was watching him closely, and now that her word was spoken she suddenly became conscious of a secret desire which she had not suspected. She wanted him to contradict her, to tell her she was quite wrong, to convince and defeat her. "Poor little me! Pity, isn't it? It would have been so sweet to go on a little longer--especially after this reconciliation. And when one has kept one's heart under bolt and bar so long...." Her sad gaiety was breaking down. "But it's better so, isn't it?" He did not reply. "Ah, yes, it's better so when you come to think of it." "It's terrible!" said Rossi. "Don't say that. It's a thing of every day. Here, there, everywhere. God wouldn't allow it to go on if it were terrible." "It's bitterly cruel for all that." "Not so cruel as life. Not nearly. For instance, if I lived you would have to put me away, and that would be harder to bear than death--far harder." "My darling! What are you saying?" "It's true, dear. You know it's true. God can forgive a woman even if she's a sinner, but the world can't if she's only a victim of sin. It's part of the cruelty of things, but there's no use repining." "Roma," said Rossi, "I take God to witness that if that were all that stood between us nothing and nobody should separate you and me. I should tell the world that you had every virtue and every heroism, and without you I could do nothing." Her eyes filled with a fresh joy. "You set me too high still, dear. Yet you know that I was far too small and weak for your great work. That was why I failed you at the end. It wasn't my fault that I betrayed you..." "Don't speak of my betrayal. I thank God for it, and see now that it was the best that could have happened." She closed her eyes. "Is it your own voice, dearest? Really yours? Hush! I shall wake and the dream will pass." A little jet from his heart of flame burst out in spite of his warning brain, and he was carried away for the moment. "My poor darling, you must get well for my sake. You must think of nothing but getting well. Then we'll go away somewhere--to Switzerland, as you said in your letter. Or perhaps to England, where you were born, and where your father lived his years of exile. Dear old England! Motherland of liberty! I'll show you all the places." She was dizzy with the beautiful vision. "Oh, if I could only go on like this for ever! But I mustn't listen to you, dearest. It's no use, you know. Now, is it?" The spirit which had exalted him for a moment took flight, and his heart rose into his throat. "Now, is it?" she repeated. He did not answer, and she dropped back with a sigh. Ah, it was cruel fencing. Every word was a sword, and it was cutting a hundred ways. At that moment a band of music passed down the street. Roma, who loved bands of music, asked Rossi to lift her up that she might look at it. A little drummer boy was marching at the head of a procession, gaily rolling his rataplan. "He reminds me of little Joseph," she said, and she laughed heartily. Strange mystery of life that robs death of all its terrors! He put his arm about her to support her as they stood by the parapet, and this brought a new tremor of affection, as well as a little of the old physical thrill and a world of fond and tender memories. She looked into his eyes, he looked into hers; they both looked across to Trinità de' Monti, and in the eye-asking between them she said plainly, "Do you remember--over there?" Roma was assisted back to the bed-chair, and then, conversation being impossible, Rossi began to read. Every day he had read something. Roma had made the selections. They were always about the great lovers--Francesca and Paolo, Dante and Beatrice, even Alfred de Musset and poor John Keats, with the skull cap which burnt his brain. To-day it was Roma's favourite poem: "Teach me, only teach, Love! As I ought I will speak thy speech, Love, Think thy thought...." His right hand held the book. His left was between Roma's hands, lying blue-veined in her lap. She was looking out on the sunlit city as if taking a last farewell of it. He stopped to stroke her glossy black hair and she reached up to his lips and kissed them. Then she closed her eyes to listen. His voice rose and swelled with the ocean of his love, and he felt as if he were pouring his life into her frail body. "Meet, if thou require it, Both demands, Laying flesh and spirit In thy hands." Her blanched lips moved. She took a deep breath and made a faint cry. He rose softly, and bent over her with a trembling heart. Her breathing seemed to have ceased. Had sleep overtaken her? Or had the tender flame expired? "Roma!" She opened her eyes and smiled. "Not yet, dear--soon," she said. THE END The illustrations in this book are from scenes of the play as produced by Messrs. LIEBLER & COMPANY, and photographed by Mr. BYRON. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- A FEW OF GROSSET & DUNLAP'S GREAT BOOKS AT LITTLE PRICES New, Clever, Entertaining. GRET: The Story of a Pagan. By Beatrice Mantle. Illustrated by C. M. Relyea. The wild free life of an Oregon lumber camp furnishes the setting for this strong original story. Gret is the daughter of the camp and is utterly content with the wild life--until love comes. A fine book, unmarred by convention. OLD CHESTER TALES. By Margaret Deland. Illustrated by Howard Pyle. A vivid yet delicate portrayal of characters in an old New England town. Dr. Lavendar's fine, kindly wisdom is brought to bear upon the lives of all, permeating the whole volume like the pungent odor of pine, healthful and life giving. "Old Chester Tales" will surely be among the books that abide. THE MEMOIRS OF A BABY. By Josephine Daskam. Illustrated by F. Y. Cory. The dawning intelligence of the baby was grappled with by its great aunt, an elderly maiden, whose book knowledge of babies was something at which even the infant himself winked. A delicious bit of humor. REBECCA MARY. By Annie Hamilton Donnell. Illustrated by Elizabeth Shippen Green. The heart tragedies of this little girl with no one near to share them, are told with a delicate art, a keen appreciation of the needs of the childish heart and a humorous knowledge of the workings of the childish mind. THE FLY ON THE WHEEL. By Katherine Cecil Thurston. Frontispiece by Harrison Fisher. An Irish story of real power, perfect in development and showing a true conception of the spirited Hibernian character as displayed in the tragic as well as the tender phases of life. THE MAN FROM BRODNEY'S. By George Barr McCutcheon. Illustrated by Harrison Fisher. An island in the South Sea is the setting for this entertaining tale, and an all-conquering hero and a beautiful princess figure in a most complicated plot. One of Mr. McCutcheon's best books. TOLD BY UNCLE REMUS. By Joel Chandler Harris. Illustrated by A. B. Frost, J. M. Conde and Frank Verbeck. Again Uncle Remus enters the fields of childhood, and leads another little boy to that non-locatable land called "Brer Rabbit's Laughing Place," and again the quaint animals spring into active life and play their parts, for the edification of a small but appreciative audience. THE CLIMBER. By E. F. Benson. With frontispiece. An unsparing analysis of an ambitious woman's soul--a woman who believed that in social supremacy she would find happiness, and who finds instead the utter despair of one who has chosen the things that pass away. LYNCH'S DAUGHTER. By Leonard Merrick. Illustrated by Geo. Brehm. A story of to-day, telling how a rich girl acquires ideals of beautiful and simple living, and of men and love, quite apart from the teachings of her father, "Old Man Lynch" of Wall St. True to life, clever in treatment. GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK ----------------------------------------------------------------------- A FEW OF GROSSET & DUNLAP'S GREAT BOOKS AT LITTLE PRICES QUINCY ADAMS SAWYER. A Picture of New England Home Life. With illustrations by C. W. Reed, and Scenes Reproduced from the Play. One of the best New England stories ever written. It is full of homely human interest * * * there is a wealth of New England village character, scenes and incidents * * * forcibly, vividly and truthfully drawn. Few books have enjoyed a greater sale and popularity. Dramatized, it made the greatest rural play of recent times. THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF QUINCY ADAMS SAWYER. By Charles Felton Pidgin. Illustrated by Henry Roth. All who love honest sentiment, quaint and sunny humor, and homespun philosophy will find these "Further Adventures" a book after their own heart. HALF A CHANCE. By Frederic S. Isham. Illustrated by Herman Pfeifer. The thrill of excitement will keep the reader in a state of suspense, and he will become personally concerned from the start, as to the central character, a very real man who suffers, dares--and achieves! VIRGINIA OF THE AIR LANES. By Herbert Quick. Illustrated by William R. Leigh. The author has seized the romantic moment for the airship novel, and created the pretty story of "a lover and his lass" contending with an elderly relative for the monopoly of the skies. An exciting tale of adventure in midair. THE GAME AND THE CANDLE. By Eleanor M. Ingram. Illustrated by P. D. Johnson. The hero is a young American, who, to save his family from poverty, deliberately commits a felony. Then follow his capture and imprisonment, and his rescue by a Russian Grand Duke. A stirring story, rich in sentiment. GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK ----------------------------------------------------------------------- GROSSET & DUNLAP'S DRAMATIZED NOVELS A Few that are Making Theatrical History MARY JANE'S PA. By Norman Way. Illustrated with scenes from the play. Delightful, irresponsible "Mary Jane's Pa" awakes one morning to find himself famous, and, genius being ill adapted to domestic joys, he wanders from home to work out his own unique destiny. One of the most humorous bits of recent fiction. CHERUB DEVINE. By Sewell Ford. "Cherub," a good hearted but not over refined young man, is brought in touch with the aristocracy. Of sprightly wit, he is sometimes a merciless analyst, but he proves in the end that manhood counts for more than ancient lineage by winning the love of the fairest girl in the flock. A WOMAN'S WAY. By Charles Somerville. Illustrated with scenes from the play. A story in which a woman's wit and self-sacrificing love save her husband from the toils of an adventuress, and change an apparently tragic situation into one of delicious comedy. THE CLIMAX. By George C. Jenks. With ambition luring her on, a young choir soprano leaves the little village where she was born and the limited audience of St. Jude's to train for the opera in New York. She leaves love behind her and meets love more ardent but not more sincere in her new environment. How she works, how she studies, how she suffers, are vividly portrayed. A FOOL THERE WAS. By Porter Emerson Browne. Illustrated by Edmund Magrath and W. W. Fawcett. A relentless portrayal of the career of a man who comes under the influence of a beautiful but evil woman; how she lures him on and on, how he struggles, falls and rises, only to fall again into her net, make a story of unflinching realism. THE SQUAW MAN. By Julie Opp Faversham and Edwin Milton Royle. Illustrated with scenes from the play. A glowing story, rapid in action, bright in dialogue with a fine courageous hero and a beautiful English heroine. THE GIRL IN WAITING. By Archibald Eyre. Illustrated with scenes from the play. A droll little comedy of misunderstandings, told with a light touch, a venturesome spirit and an eye for human oddities. THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL. By Baroness Orczy. Illustrated with scenes from the play. A realistic story of the days of the French Revolution, abounding in dramatic incident, with a young English soldier of fortune, daring, mysterious as the hero. GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK ----------------------------------------------------------------------- A FEW OF GROSSET & DUNLAP'S GREAT BOOKS AT LITTLE PRICES BRUVVER JIM'S BABY. By Philip Verrill Mighels. An uproariously funny story of a tiny mining settlement in the West, which is shaken to the very roots by the sudden possession of a baby, found on the plains by one of its residents. The town is as disreputable a spot as the gold fever was ever responsible for, and the coming of that baby causes the upheaval of every rooted tradition of the place. Its christening, the problems of its toys and its illness supersede in the minds of the miners all thought of earthy treasure. THE FURNACE OF GOLD. By Philip Verrill Mighels, author of "Bruvver Jim's Baby." Illustrations by J. N. Marchand. An accurate and informing portrayal of scenes, types, and conditions of the mining districts in modern Nevada. The book is an out-door story, clean, exciting, exemplifying nobility and courage of character, and bravery, and heroism in the sort of men and women we all admire and wish to know. THE MESSAGE. By Louis Tracy. Illustrations by Joseph C. Chase. A breezy tale of how a bit of old parchment, concealed in a figurehead from a sunken vessel, comes into the possession of a pretty girl and an army man during regatta week in the Isle of Wight. This is the message and it enfolds a mystery, the development of which the reader will follow with breathless interest. THE SCARLET EMPIRE. By David M. Parry. Illustrations by Hermann C. Wall. A young socialist, weary of life, plunges into the sea and awakes in the lost island of Atlantis, known as the Scarlet Empire, where a social democracy is in full operation, granting every man a living but limiting food, conversation, education and marriage. The hero passes through an enthralling love affair and other adventures but finally returns to his own New York world. THE THIRD DEGREE. By Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow. Illustrations by Clarence Rowe. A novel which exposes the abuses in this country of the police system. The son of an aristocratic New York family marries a woman socially beneath him, but of strong, womanly qualities that, later on, save the man from the tragic consequences of a dissipated life. The wife believes in his innocence and her wit and good sense help her to win against the tremendous odds imposed by law. THE THIRTEENTH DISTRICT. By Brand Whitlock. A realistic western story of love and politics and a searching study of their influence on character. The author shows with extraordinary vitality of treatment the tricks, the heat, the passion, the tumult of the political arena, the triumph and strength of love. GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK ----------------------------------------------------------------------- A FEW OF GROSSET & DUNLAP'S GREAT BOOKS AT LITTLE PRICES THE MUSIC MASTER. By Charles Klein. Illustrated by John Rae. This marvelously vivid narrative turns upon the search of a German musician in New York for his little daughter. Mr. Klein has well portrayed his pathetic struggle with poverty, his varied experiences in endeavoring to meet the demands of a public not trained to an appreciation of the classic, and his final great hour when, in the rapidly shifting events of a big city, his little daughter, now a beautiful young woman, is brought to his very door. A superb bit of fiction, palpitating with the life of the great metropolis. The play in which David Warfield scored his highest success. DR. LAVENDAR'S PEOPLE. By Margaret Deland. Illustrated by Lucius Hitchcock. Mrs. Deland won so many friends through Old Chester Tales that this volume needs no introduction beyond its title. The lovable doctor is more ripened in this later book, and the simple comedies and tragedies of the old village are told with dramatic charm. OLD CHESTER TALES. By Margaret Deland. Illustrated by Howard Pyle. Stories portraying with delightful humor and pathos a quaint people in a sleepy old town. Dr. Lavendar, a very human and lovable "preacher," is the connecting link between these dramatic stories from life. HE FELL IN LOVE WITH HIS WIFE. By E. P. Roe. With frontispiece. The hero is a farmer--a man with honest, sincere views of life. Bereft of his wife, his home is cared for by a succession of domestics of varying degrees of inefficiency until, from a most unpromising source, comes a young woman who not only becomes his wife but commands his respect and eventually wins his love. A bright and delicate romance, revealing on both sides a love that surmounts all difficulties and survives the censure of friends as well as the bitterness of enemies. THE YOKE. By Elizabeth Miller. Against the historical background of the days when the children of Israel were delivered from the bondage of Egypt, the author has sketched a romance of compelling charm. A biblical novel as great as any since "Ben Hur." SAUL OF TARSUS. By Elizabeth Miller. Illustrated by André Castaigne. The scenes of this story are laid in Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome and Damascus. The Apostle Paul, the Martyr Stephen, Herod Agrippa and the Emperors Tiberius and Caligula are among the mighty figures that move through the pages. Wonderful descriptions, and a love story of the purest and noblest type mark this most remarkable religious romance. GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK ----------------------------------------------------------------------- A FEW OF GROSSET & DUNLAP'S GREAT BOOKS AT LITTLE PRICES HAPPY HAWKINS. By Robert Alexander Wason. Illustrated by Howard Giles. A ranch and cowboy novel. Happy Hawkins tells his own story with such a fine capacity for knowing how to do it and with so much humor that the reader's interest is held in surprise, then admiration and at last in positive affection. COMRADES. By Thomas Dixon, Jr. Illustrated by C. D. Williams. The locale of this story is in California, where a few socialists establish a little community. The author leads the little band along the path of disillusionment, and gives some brilliant flashes of light on one side of an important question. TONO-BUNGAY. By Herbert George Wells. The hero of this novel is a young man who, through hard work, earns a scholarship and goes to London. Written with a frankness verging on Rousseau's, Mr. Wells still uses rare discrimination and the border line of propriety is never crossed. An entertaining book with both a story and a moral, and without a dull page--Mr. Wells's most notable achievement. A HUSBAND BY PROXY. By Jack Steele. A young criminologist, but recently arrived in New York city, is drawn into a mystery, partly through financial need and partly through his interest in a beautiful woman, who seems at times the simplest child and again a perfect mistress of intrigue. A baffling detective story. LIKE ANOTHER HELEN. By George Horton. Illustrated by C. M. Relyea. Mr. Horton's powerful romance stands in a new field and brings an almost unknown world in reality before the reader--the world of conflict between Greek and Turk on the Island of Crete. The "Helen" of the story is a Greek, beautiful, desolate, defiant--pure as snow. There is a certain new force about the story, a kind of master-craftsmanship and mental dominance that holds the reader. THE MASTER OF APPLEBY. By Francis Lynde. Illustrated by T. de Thulstrup. A novel tale concerning itself in part with the great struggle in the two Carolinas, but chiefly with the adventures therein of two gentlemen who loved one and the same lady. A strong, masculine and persuasive story. A MODERN MADONNA. By Caroline Abbot Stanley. A story of American life, founded on facts as they existed some years ago in the District of Columbia. The theme is the maternal love and splendid courage of a woman. GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The Novels Of GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON GRAUSTARK. A story of love behind a throne, telling how a young American met a lovely girl and followed her to a new and strange country. A thrilling, dashing narrative. BEVERLY OF GRAUSTARK. Beverly is a bewitching American girl who has gone to that stirring little principality--Graustark--to visit her friend the princess, and there has a romantic affair of her own. BREWSTER'S MILLIONS. A young man is required to spend _one_ million dollars in one year in order to inherit _seven_. How he does it forms the basis of a lively story. CASTLE CRANEYCROW. The story revolves round the abduction of a young American woman, her imprisonment in an old castle and the adventures created through her rescue. COWARDICE COURT. An amusing social feud in the Adirondacks in which an English girl is tempted into being a traitor by a romantic young American, forms the plot. THE DAUGHTER OF ANDERSON CROW. The story centers about the adopted daughter of the town marshal in a western village. Her parentage is shrouded in mystery, and the story concerns the secret that deviously works to the surface. THE MAN FROM BRODNEY'S. The hero meets a princess in a far-away island among fanatically hostile Musselmen. Romantic love making amid amusing situations and exciting adventures. NEDRA. A young couple elope from Chicago to go to London traveling as brother and sister. They are shipwrecked and a strange mix-up occurs on account of it. THE SHERRODS. The scene is the Middle West and centers around a man who leads a double life. A most enthralling novel. TRUXTON KING. A handsome good natured young fellow ranges on the earth looking for romantic adventures and is finally enmeshed in most complicated intrigues in Graustark. GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK ----------------------------------------------------------------------- LOUIS TRACY'S Captivating And Exhilarating Romances THE STOWAWAY GIRL. Illustrated by Nesbitt Benson. The story of a shipwreck, a lovely girl who shipped stowaway fashion, a rascally captain, a fascinating young officer and thrilling adventure enroute to South America. THE CAPTAIN OF THE KANSAS. A story of love and the salt sea--of a helpless ship whirled into the hands of cannibal Fuegians--of desperate fighting and a tender romance. A story of extraordinary freshness. THE MESSAGE. Illustrated by Joseph Cummings Chase. A bit of parchment many, many years old, telling of a priceless ruby secreted in ruins far in the interior of Africa is the "message" found in the figurehead of an old vessel. A mystery develops which the reader will follow with breathless interest. THE PILLAR OF LIGHT. The pillar thus designated was a lighthouse, and the author tells with exciting detail the terrible dilemma of its cutoff inhabitants and introduces the charming comedy of a man eloping with his own wife. THE RED YEAR: A Story of the Indian Mutiny. The never-to-be-forgotten events of 1857 form the background of this story. The hero who begins as lieutenant and ends as Major Malcolm, has as stirring a military career as the most jaded novel reader could wish. A powerful book. THE WHEEL O'FORTUNE. With illustrations by James Montgomery Flagg. The story deals with the finding of a papyrus containing the particulars of the hiding of some of the treasures of the Queen of Sheba. The glamour of mystery added to the romance of the lovers, gives the novel an interest that makes it impossible to leave until the end is reached. THE WINGS OF THE MORNING. A sort of Robinson Crusoe _redivivus_, with modern settings and a very pretty love story added. The hero and heroine are the only survivors of a wreck, and have adventures on their desert island such as never could have happened except in a story. GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK ----------------------------------------------------------------------- TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: 1. Punctuation normalized to comtemporary standards. 2. All illustrations in the text bear the credits: "By courtesy of Liebler & Co; from photographs by Byron." 3. Typographical errors corrected: p. 139 "Fod" replaced with "God": "For Fod's sake let us bury it!" p. 146 "use" repaced with "us": "what is best for both of use." p. 377 "donwpour" replaced with "downpour": "donwpour of rain" p. 409 "sittting-room" replaced with "sitting-room" 4. The oe ligature as used in C[oe]li is shown as "[oe]" in this document. It appears only in this proper name. 
40922	----	PIETRO GHISLERI [Illustration: Publisher's logo] PIETRO GHISLERI BY F. MARION CRAWFORD AUTHOR OF "SARACINESCA," "THE THREE FATES," ETC. New York MACMILLAN & CO. AND LONDON 1893 _All rights reserved_ COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY MACMILLAN & CO. Norwood Press: J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith. Boston, Mass., U.S.A. PIETRO GHISLERI. CHAPTER I. The relation of two step-sisters is unusual. When the Honourable Mrs. Carlyon came to Rome twenty years ago, a young widow and the mother of a little girl named Laura, she did not foresee the complications which her second marriage was to produce. She was a good woman in her way, and if she had guessed what it would mean to be the step-mother of Adele Braccio she might have hesitated before marrying Camillo of that name, commonly known as the Prince of Gerano. For the Prince had also been married before, and his first wife had left him this one child, Adele, who was only a year and a half older than little Laura Carlyon. No children were born to the Gerano couple, and the two girls were brought up together as though they were sisters. The Prince and Princess were deeply attached to each other and to them both, so that for many years Casa Gerano was justly looked upon as a model household. Mrs. Carlyon was very poor when she came to Rome. Her husband had been a careless, good-humoured, and rather reckless younger son, and when he broke his neck in coming down the Gross Glockner he left his widow about as much as men of his stamp generally leave to their families; to wit, a fearful and wonderful confusion of unpaid debts and a considerable number of promises to pay money, signed by persons whose promises were not of much consequence, even when clearly set down on paper. It seems to be a peculiarity of poor and good-natured men that they will lend whatever money they have to impecunious friends in distress rather than use it for the paying of the just debts they owe their tailors. Gerano was rich. It does not by any means follow that Mrs. Carlyon married him for his money, though she could not have married him without it. She fell in love with him. He, on his part, having made a marriage of interest when he took his first wife, and having led by no means a very peaceful existence with the deceased Princess, considered that he had earned the right to please himself, and accordingly did so. Moreover, Mrs. Carlyon was a Catholic, which singularly facilitated matters in the eyes of Gerano's numerous relations. Jack Carlyon had been of the Church of England; and though anything but a practising believer, if he believed in anything at all, he had nevertheless absolutely insisted that his daughter should be brought up in his own creed. On this one point he had displayed all the tenacity he possessed, and the supply then seemed to be exhausted so far as other matters were concerned. His wife was a very conscientious woman, altogether superior to him in character, and she continued to respect his wishes, even after his death. Laura, she said, should choose for herself when she was old enough. In the meantime she should go to the English Church. The consequence was that the little girl had an English nurse and afterwards an English governess, while Adele was taken care of and taught by Catholics. Under these circumstances, and as the step-sisters were not related by blood or even by race, it is not strange that they should have grown up to be as different as possible, while living under the same roof and calling the same persons father and mother. The question of religion alone could certainly not have brought about the events here to be chronicled, and it may be as well to say at once that this history is not in the least concerned with matters of faith, creed, or dogma, which are better left to those good men whose business it is to understand them. The main and striking points of contrast were these. Adele was barely more than pretty. Laura was all but beautiful. Adele was a great heiress, and Laura had nothing or next to nothing to expect at her mother's death. Adele was quick-witted, lively, given to exaggeration in her talk, and not very scrupulous as to questions of fact. Laura was slow to decide, but tenacious of her decisions, and, on the whole, very truthful. In appearance, so far as generalities were concerned, the contrast between the two girls was less marked. Both were of the dark type, but Laura's complexion was paler than Adele's and her hair was blacker, as well as thicker and more glossy. Laura's eyes were large, very deep set, and dark. There was something strange in their look, something quite unusual, and which might almost be called holy, if that were not too strong a word to use in connexion with a woman of the world. Spicca, the melancholy duellist, who was still alive at that time, used to say that no one could possibly be as good as Laura Carlyon looked; a remark which showed that he was acquainted with the sayings of a great English wit, and was not above making use of them. Probably some part of the effect produced by Laura's eyes was due to the evenly perfect whiteness of her skin and the straight black brows which divided them from the broad low forehead. For her hair grew low, and she wore it in a simple fashion without that abundance of little curls which even then were considered almost essential to woman's beauty. Her pallor, too, was quite natural, for she had a good constitution and had rarely even had a headache. In figure she was well proportioned, of average height and rather strongly made, with large, firm, well-shaped hands. On the whole, a graceful girl, but not in that way remarkable among others of her own age. In her face, and altogether in her presence, the chief attraction lay in the look of her eyes, which made one forget to notice the well-chiselled nose,--a little short perhaps,--the really beautiful mouth, and the perfect teeth. The chin, too, was broad and firm--too firm, some might have said, for one so young. Considering all these facts together, most people agreed that Laura was not far from being a great beauty. Adele was somewhat shorter than her step-sister, and more inclined to be stout. Her black eyes were set nearer together, and her eyebrows almost met, while her lustreless hair curled naturally in a profusion of tiny ringlets upon her forehead. The small fine nose reminded one of a ferret, and the white teeth looked sharp and pointed when the somewhat thin lips parted and showed them; but she was undoubtedly pretty, and something more than pretty. Her face had colour and animation, she carried her small head well, and her gestures were graceful and easy. She was fluent, too, in conversation and ready at all times with a quick answer. Any one could see, in spite of her plump figure, that she was of a very nervous constitution, restless, unsettled, and easily moved, capable of considerable determination when really affected. She never understood Laura, nor did Laura really understand her. In the natural course of events, social and domestic, it became necessary to choose a husband for Adele so soon as she made her first appearance in society. At that time Laura was not yet seventeen. Gerano had already looked about him and had made up his mind. He was a little dark-eyed man, grey, thin and nervous, but gifted with an unusually agreeable manner, a pleasant tone of voice, a frank glance, and an extremely upright character--a man much liked in the world and a good deal respected. He had determined that if possible his daughter should marry Don Francesco Savelli, a worthy young person, his father's eldest son, heir to a good estate and a still better name, and altogether a most desirable husband from all points of view. Gerano met with no serious difficulty in bringing about what he wished, and in due time Don Francesco was affianced to Donna Adele, and was privileged to visit at the Palazzo Braccio almost as often as he pleased. He thus saw Laura Carlyon often, and he very naturally fell in love with her. He had no particular inclination to marry Donna Adele, but obeyed his father blindly, as a matter of course, just as Adele obeyed Gerano. That was a part of the old Roman system. Laura, however, did not fall in love with Francesco. She was perhaps too young yet, or it is quite possible that Francesco was too dull and uninteresting a personage in her eyes. But Adele saw these things, and was very angry when she was quite sure that her future husband would have greatly preferred to marry her step-sister. She may be pardoned for having been jealous, for the situation was hardly bearable. Francesco did not, indeed, make love to Laura. Even had he been rash enough for that, he was in reality too much a gentleman at heart to have done such a thing. He knew very well that he was to marry Adele, whether he cared for her or not, and he behaved with great propriety and with not a little philosophy. The virtue of resignation had been carefully developed in him from his childhood, and Francesco's parents now reaped their reward: he would not have thought of opposing them by word or deed. But he could not hide what he felt. Like many good young men, he was sensitive, and if he alternately blushed and turned pale when Laura spoke to him, it was not his fault. His father and mother could assuredly not expect him to control the circulation of his blood when it chose to rise above the line of his collar, or seemed to sink to the level of his boots. Adele was, however, at first very angry, and then very jealous, and at last hated her step-sister with all her heart, as young women can hate under circumstances of great provocation. Meanwhile, Laura remained calmly unconscious of all that was happening. Francesco Savelli's outward and worldly advantages did not appeal to her in the least. The fact that he was fair had no interest for her any more than the fact that the old Prince of Gerano was dark. She talked to the young man a little, when the conversation was general, just as she talked to every one else, when she had anything to say, because she was not naturally shy. But she never attempted to manufacture remarks when nothing came to her lips, because she was not yet called upon to do so. Nor was her silence by any means golden, so far as Savelli was concerned. When she was not speaking to him, she took no notice of him. His hair might be as yellow as mustard and his eyes as blue as periwinkles, as his admirers said; she did not care. If possible, Adele hated her even more for caring so little. In due time Francesco Savelli married Adele Braccio and took her to live under his father's roof. After the great event peace descended once more upon the household for a time, and Laura Carlyon saw much less of her adorer. Not, indeed, that there had been any open conflict between the step-sisters, nor even a declaration of war. Laura had attributed Adele's coldness to her excitement about the marriage, natural enough under the circumstances, and had not been hurt by it, while Adele had carefully kept her jealousy to herself; but when the two met afterwards, Laura felt that she was immeasurably far removed from anything like intimacy or real friendship with the bride, and she was surprised that Francesco should pay so much attention to herself. The young couple came to the Palazzo Braccio at regular intervals, and at all these family gatherings Savelli spent his time in making conversation for Laura. He was a very worthy young man, as has been said, and his talents were not of the highest order, but he did his best, and succeeded at least in making Laura think him passably agreeable. She was willing to hear him talk, and Adele noted the fact. When she drove home from her father's house with her husband, he was generally abstracted and gave random answers to her questions or observations. At the end of a year it was clear that he still loved Laura in a hopeless, helpless, sentimental fashion of his own, and Adele hated her more than ever. A second year and a third went by, and Laura had been some time in society; still the situation remained unchanged. The world said that the young Savelli were a very happy couple, but it always looked at Laura Carlyon with an odd expression, as though it knew something strange about her; something not quite right, which it was willing to tolerate for the sake of the amusement to be got by watching her. The world is the generic appellation of all those who go down to the sea of society in long gowns or white ties, and live and move and have their being therein. Other people do not count, even when they are quite bad, although they may have very big names and a great deal of money. The world, therefore, wagged its head and said that Laura Carlyon was in love with her brother-in-law, or, to be quite accurate, with her step-brother-in-law, because she was dark and his hair was so exceedingly yellow. The world also went on to say that Donna Adele behaved very kindly about it, and that it was so good of Francesco Savelli to talk to Laura just as if there were nothing wrong; for, it added, if he were to avoid her, there would certainly be gossip before long. No one who does not live in society need attempt to follow this sequence of ideas. As usual, too, nobody took the least trouble to find out the origin of the story, but everybody was quite sure of having heard it at first hand from the one person who knew. The Princess of Gerano took her daughter everywhere. She had conscientiously done her duty towards Adele, and was sincerely fond of her besides; but she loved Laura almost as much as the good mother in the story-book loves her only child when the latter has done something particularly disgraceful. She was at first annoyed and then made seriously anxious by the young girl's total failure in society, from the social point of view. Laura was beautiful, good, and accomplished. Ugly, spiteful, and stupid girls succeeded better than she, though some of them had no better prospect of a dowry. The good lady sought in vain the cause of the trouble, but failed to find it out. Had she been born in Rome, she would doubtless have had many kind friends to help her in the solution of the difficulty. But though she bore a Roman name, and had adopted Roman customs and had led a Roman life for nearly twenty years, she was tacitly looked upon as a foreigner, and her daughter was treated in the same way, though she, at least, spoke the language as her own. Moreover, the girl was not a Catholic, and that was an additional disadvantage where matrimony was concerned. It became evident to the Princess that she was not likely to find a husband for her daughter--certainly not such a husband as she had dreamed that Laura might love, and who was to love her and make her happy. It must not be supposed that Gerano himself would have been indifferent if he had known the real facts of the case. But he did not. Like many elderly Romans, he hardly ever went into society and took very little interest in its doings. He was very much concerned with the administration of his fortune, and for his own daughter's welfare in her new surroundings. He spent a good deal of time at his club, and was often in the country, even in the height of the season. He supposed that no one asked for Laura's hand because she was dowerless, and he was sincerely sorry for it; but it did not enter his mind to provide her with a suitable portion out of his abundance. He was too conscientious for that. What he had inherited from his father must go down intact to his child and to her children,--a son had already been born to the young Savelli,--and to divide the property, or to take from it anything like a fortune for Laura, would be little short of actual robbery in the eyes of a Braccio. Laura herself was perhaps less disturbed by the coldness she encountered than her mother was for her sake. She had a certain contempt for young girls of her age and younger, whose sole idea was to be married as soon as possible and with the greatest advantage to themselves. She was not very vain and did not expect great admiration on the one hand, nor any particular dislike on the other. Her character, too, was one that must develop slowly, if it were ever to attain its mature growth. She doubtless had moments of annoyance and even of depression; for few young girls, and certainly no women, are wholly unconscious of neglect in society. But although she was naturally inclined to melancholy, as her eyes clearly showed, she was not by nature morbid, and assuredly not more than usually imaginative. The result of all this was, that she bore herself with considerable dignity in the world, was generally believed to be older than she was, and was to be seen more often dancing or talking with the foreigners at parties than with the Romans. "Who is that, Ghisleri?" asked Lord Herbert Arden of his old friend, one evening early in the season, as he caught sight of Laura for the first time. "An English Roman girl," answered the Italian. "The daughter of the Princess of Gerano by her first marriage--Miss Carlyon." Lord Herbert had not been in Rome for three or four years, and was, moreover, by no means acquainted with all Roman society. "Will you introduce me?" he asked, looking up at Ghisleri. Ghisleri led him across the room, introduced him and left the two together, he being at that time very particularly engaged in another quarter. The contrast between the two men was very strong. Lord Herbert Arden was almost, if not quite, a cripple, the victim in his infancy of a serving-woman's carelessness. The nurse had let him fall, had concealed the accident as long as she could, and the boy had grown up misshapen and feeble. In despite of this, however, he was eminently a man at whom every one looked twice. No one who had seen him could ever forget the extreme nobility and delicacy of his pale face. Each feature completed and gave dignity to the next--the broad, highly modelled forehead, the prominent brow, the hollows at the temples, the clear, steady brown eyes, the aquiline nose and sensitive nostrils, the calm, straight mouth, and the firm, clearly cut chin--all were in harmony. And yet in all the crowd that thronged the great drawing-rooms there was hardly a man with whom the young Englishman would not have exchanged face and figure, if only he might stand at the height of other men, straight and square, and be free forever from the halting gait which made life in the world so hard for him. He was very human, and made no great pretence of resignation, nor indeed of any other virtue. Pietro Ghisleri was a very different personage except, perhaps, in point of humanity. He had seen and enjoyed much, if he had suffered much also, and his face bore the traces of past pleasure and of past pain, though he was not more than two-and-thirty years of age. It was a strong face, too, and not without signs of superior intelligence and resolution. The keen blue eyes had that trick of fixing themselves in conversation, which belongs to combative temperaments. At other times they were sad in expression, and often wore a weary look. Ghisleri's complexion might almost have been called weather-beaten; for frequent and long exposure to sun and weather had permanently changed its original colouring, which had been decidedly fair. To adopt the simple style of his passport, he might be described as six feet high, eyes blue, hair and moustache brown, nose large, mouth normal, chin prominent, face somewhat bony,--particular sign, a scar on the left temple. Like his old friend Lord Herbert, he was one of the dozen men who always attract attention in a crowded room. But of all those who looked at him, having known him long, very few understood his character in the least, and all would have been very much surprised if they could have guessed his thoughts, especially on that particular evening when he introduced Arden to Miss Carlyon. As for the rest, he was alone in the world, his own master, the last of a Tuscan family that had refused to bear a title when titles meant something and had not seen any reason for changing its mind in the course of three or four centuries. He had a small fortune, sufficient for his wants, and a castle somewhere, considerably the worse for war and wear. "I cannot dance, you see," said Arden, seating himself beside Laura, "and I am afraid that I am not very brilliant in conversation. Are you a very good-natured person?" Laura turned her sad eyes upon her new acquaintance, and immediately felt a thrill of sympathy for him, and of interest in his remarkable face. "No one ever told me," she answered. "Do you think you could find out? I should like to know." "What form of sin do you most affect?" asked Arden, with a smile. "Do you more often do the things you ought not to do, or do you leave undone the things which you ought to do?" "Oh, I leave the good things undone, of course!" answered Laura. "I suppose everybody does, as a rule." "You are decidedly good-natured, particularly so in making that last remark. I am less afraid of you than I was when I sat down." The young girl looked at him again. His conversation was so far not like that of the Englishmen she had known hitherto. "Were you afraid of me?" she asked, beginning to smile. "A little, I confess." "Why? And if you were, why did you make Signor Ghisleri introduce you to me?" "Because nobody likes to own to being afraid. Besides, Ghisleri is a very old friend of mine, and I can trust him not to lead me into danger." "Have you known him long?" asked Laura. "I have often wondered what he is really like. I mean his character, you know, and what he thinks about." "He thinks a great deal. He is one of the most complicated characters I ever knew, and I am not at all sure that I understand him yet, though we have known each other ten years. He is a good friend and a rather indifferent enemy, I should say. His chief apparent peculiarity is that he hates gossip. You will not find it easy to get from him a disagreeable remark about any one. Yet he is not good-natured." "Perhaps he is afraid to say what he thinks," suggested the young girl. "I doubt that," answered Arden, with a smile. "He has not a particularly angelic reputation, I believe, but I never heard any one say that he was timid." "As you pretend to be," added Laura. "Do you know? You have not answered my question. Why were you afraid of me, if you really were?" Lord Herbert answered one question by another, and the conversation continued pleasantly enough. It was a relief to him to find a young and beautiful girl of his own nationality in surroundings with which neither he nor she were really in sympathy. In the course of half an hour they both felt as though they had known one another a long time. The admiration Arden had felt for Laura at first sight had considerably increased, and she on her side had half forgotten that he was a cripple. Indeed, when he was seated, his deformities were far less noticeable than when he stood or painfully moved about from place to place. The two talked of a variety of subjects, but, with the exception of the few words spoken about Ghisleri, there was no more reference to personalities for a long time. "I am keeping you away from the dancing," Arden said at last, as he realised that the room was almost empty and that he had been absorbing the beautiful Miss Carlyon's attention longer than might be pleasant to her. "Not at all," answered Laura. "I do not dance much." "Why not? Do you not like dancing?" He asked the question in a tone of surprise. "On the contrary. But I am not taken out very often--perhaps because they think me a foreigner. It is natural enough." "Very unnatural, it seems to me. Besides, I believe you are exaggerating, so as not to make me feel uncomfortable. It is of no use, you know; I am not at all sensitive. Shall we go into the ball-room?" "No; I would rather not, just yet." "Shall I go and get Ghisleri to take you back?" inquired Arden, with a little smile. "Why?" "Because I might make you look ridiculous," answered the cripple, quietly. He watched her, and saw a quick, pained look pass over her face. It was at that particular moment that he began to love her, as he afterwards remembered. She turned her eyes upon him as she answered after a moment's hesitation. "Lord Herbert, will you please never say anything like that to me again?" "Certainly not, if it offends you." "It does not offend me. I do not mean that." "What, then? Please tell me. I am not at all sensitive." "It pains me. I do not like to fancy that any one can think such things of me, much less...." she stopped short and looked down, slowly opening and shutting her fan. "Much less?" Laura hesitated for some seconds, as though choosing her words with more than ordinary care. "Much less one whom it might pain to think them," she said at last. The smile that had been on Arden's face faded away in the silence that followed, and his lips moved a little as though he felt some kind of emotion, while his large thin hands closed tightly upon his withered knee. "Have I said too much?" she asked, suddenly breaking the long pause. "Or not quite enough, perhaps," he answered in a low voice. Again they were both silent, and they both wondered inwardly that in less than an hour's acquaintance they should have reached something like a crisis. At last Laura rose slowly and deliberately, intending to give her companion time to get to his feet. "Will you give me your arm?" she said when he stood beside her. "I want to introduce you to my mother." Arden bent his head and held up his right arm for her hand. He was considerably shorter than she. Then they walked away together, she erect and easy in her girlish gait, he weak-kneed and awkward, seeming to unjoint half his body at every painful step, helping himself along at her side with the stick he held in his free hand--a strangely assorted couple, the world said, as they went by. "My mother's name is Gerano, Princess of Gerano," said Laura, by way of explanation, as they came within sight of her. "And is your father--I mean, is Prince Gerano--living?" asked Arden. He had almost forgotten her name and her nationality in the interest he felt in herself. "Yes; but he rarely goes into society. I am very fond of him," she added, scarcely knowing why. "Mother," she said, as they came up to the Princess, "Lord Herbert Arden." The Princess smiled and held out her hand. At that moment Pietro Ghisleri came up. He had not been seen since he had left Laura and Arden together. By a coincidence, doubtless, the Contessa dell' Armi had disappeared at about the same time: she had probably gone home, as she was not seen again in the ball-room that evening. But the world in its omniscience knew that there was a certain boudoir beyond the supper-room, where couples who did not care to dance were left in comparative peace for a long time. The world could have told with precision the position of the small sofa on which Ghisleri and the lovely Contessa invariably spent an hour when they met in that particular house. "Will you give me a turn, Miss Carlyon?" asked Ghisleri, as Arden began to talk with the Princess. "Yes." Laura was really fond of a certain amount of dancing when a good partner presented himself. "What do you think of my friend?" inquired Pietro, as they moved away together. "I like him very much. He interests me." "Then you ought to be grateful to me for bringing him to you." "Do you expect gratitude in a ball-room?" Laura laughed a little, more in pleasant anticipation of the waltz than at what she said. "A little more than in the average asylum for the aged and infirm, which most people call home," returned Ghisleri, carelessly. "You have no home. How can you talk about it in that way?" "For the sake of talking; shall we dance instead?" A moment later they were in the thick of the crowd. "There are too many people; please take me back," said Laura, after one turn. "Will you come and talk in the conservatory?" asked Ghisleri as they reached the door. "No; I would rather not." "You were talking a long time with Arden. I saw you come out of the drawing-room together. Why will you not sit five minutes with me?" "Lord Herbert is different," said Laura, quietly. "He is an Englishman, and I am English." "Oh! is that the reason?" He led her back and left her with her mother. Arden was still there. CHAPTER II. In spite of his own declarations to the contrary, Lord Herbert Arden was a very sensitive man. When he said he was not, he was perhaps trying to deceive himself, but the attempt was at best only partially successful. Few men in his circumstances can escape the daily sting that lies in comparing their unfortunate outward personality with the average symmetry of the human race. Women seem to feel deformity less than men, or perhaps one only thinks so because they bear it more bravely; it is hard to say. If Darwin is right, men are far more vain of their appearance than women; and there are many who believe that a woman's passive courage is greater than a man's. Be that as it may, the particular sufferer who made Laura Carlyon's acquaintance at the ball was in reality as sensitive a man in almost all respects as could be met with anywhere in ordinary life. When he discovered that he was seriously in love with Laura Carlyon, his existence changed suddenly, and for the worse, so far as his comfort was concerned. He reviewed the situation as calmly as he could, when a fortnight or more had passed and he had seen her a dozen times at her step-father's house and in the world. One main fact was now quite clear to him. She was not what is called popular in society; she had not even any intimate friends. As for his own chances, he did not like to think of them. Though only the younger brother of a peer of high rank, he was entitled to expect a large fortune from an uncle on his mother's side, who had never made any secret of his intentions in regard to his property, and who, being over eighty years of age, could not be expected to live much longer in the ordinary course of nature. At present his modest portion was quite sufficient for himself, but he doubted whether it would suffice for his needs if he married. That, however, was of minor importance. The great fortune was safe and he was an exceedingly good match from a financial point of view. Miss Carlyon was poor, as he knew from Ghisleri, and Ghisleri had very probably told her that Arden was rich, or would be before long. He refused to believe that Laura, of her own free will, might marry him for his money; but it was intolerable to think that her mother and step-father might try to force her into the match from considerations of interest. He was not just to the Princess of Gerano, but he knew her very slightly as yet and had no means of forming a positive opinion. In the meantime he had been introduced to Donna Adele Savelli, who had received him with the greatest warmth, protesting her love for the English people and everything English, and especially for her step-mother and step-sister. He had also renewed his acquaintance with young Savelli, whom he had known slightly during a former visit to Rome, and who now, he thought, met him rather coldly. He attributed Adele's gushing manner to a desire to bring about a marriage, and he did not attempt to account for Don Francesco's stiffness; but he liked neither the one manifestation nor the other, for both wounded him in different degrees. Above all other difficulties, the one which was most natural to his delicately organised nature was of a purely disinterested kind. He feared lest Laura, who evidently felt both pity and sympathy for him, should take the two together for genuine love and sacrifice herself in a life which would by and by become unbearable to her. He could not but see that at every meeting she grew more interested in his conversation, until when he was present, she scarcely paid any attention to any one else. Such a friendship, if it could have been a real friendship, might have made Arden happy so long as it lasted; but on his side, at least, nothing of the kind was possible. He knew that he was hopelessly in love, and to pretend the contrary to himself was real pain. He guessed with wonderful keenness the direction Laura's heart was taking, and he was appalled by the vision of the misery which must spread over her young life if, after she had married him, she should be roused to the great truth that pity and love are not the same, though they be so near akin as to be sometimes mistaken one for the other. His weak health suffered and he grew more and more restless. It would have been a satisfaction to speak out a hundredth part of what he felt to Ghisleri. But he was little given to making confidences, and Ghisleri was, or seemed to be, the last man to invite them. They met constantly, however, and talked upon all sorts of topics. One day Ghisleri came to breakfast with Arden in his rooms at the hotel, looking more weather-beaten than usual, for he was losing the tan from his last expedition in the south, and there were deep black shadows under his eyes. Moreover, he was in an abominably bad humour with everything and with everybody except his friend. Arden knew that he never gambled, and he also knew the man well enough to guess at the true cause of the disturbance. There was something serious the matter. They sat down to breakfast and began to talk of politics and the weather, as old friends do when they are aware that there is something wrong. Ghisleri spoke English perfectly, with an almost imperceptible accent, as many Italians do nowadays. "Come along with me, Arden," he said at last, as though losing patience with everything all at once. "Let us go to Paris or Timbuctoo. This place is not fit to live in." "What is the matter with it?" asked Arden, in a tone of amusement. "The matter with it? It is dull, to begin with. Secondly, it is a perfect witches' caldron of scandal. Thirdly, we are all as bad as we can be. There are three points at least." "My dear fellow, I do not see them in the same light. Take some more hock." "Oh, you--you are amusing yourself! Thank you--I will--half a glass. Of course you like Rome--you always did--you foreigners always will. You amuse yourselves--that is it." "I see you dancing every night as though you liked it," observed Arden. "No doubt!" Ghisleri suddenly grew thoughtful and a distant look came into his eyes, while the shadows seemed to deepen under them, till they were almost black. He had eaten hardly anything, and now, regardless of the fact that the meal was not half over, he lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair as though he had finished. "You are not looking well, Arden," he said at last. "You must take care of yourself. Take my advice. We will go somewhere together for a couple of months." "There is nothing I should like better, but not just at present. I will stay in Rome until the weather is a little warmer." Arden was not in the least conscious that his expression changed as he thought of the reason which kept him in the city and which might keep him long. But Ghisleri, who had been watching for that particular hesitation of manner and for that almost imperceptible darkening of the eyes, knew exactly what both meant. "Oh, very well," he answered indifferently. "We can go later. People always invent absurd stories if one goes away in the middle of the season without any apparent object." The remark was a little less than general, and Arden was at once confirmed in his suspicion that something unpleasant had happened in Ghisleri's life, most probably in connection with the Contessa dell' Armi. His friend was in such a savage humour that he might almost become communicative. Arden was a very keen-sighted man, and not without tact, and he thought the opportunity a good one for approaching a subject which had long been in his mind. But he had been in earnest when he had told Laura that he knew Ghisleri's character to be what he called complicated, and he was aware that Pietro's intelligence was even more penetrating than his own. He was therefore very cautious. "You say that Rome is such a great place for gossip," he began, in answer to Ghisleri's last observation. "I suppose you know it by experience, but I cannot say that we strangers hear much of it." "Perhaps not," admitted Ghisleri, rather absently. "No, we do not hear much scandal. For instance, I go rather often to the Gerano's. I do not remember to have heard there a single spiteful story, except, perhaps,"--Arden stopped cautiously. "Precisely," said Pietro, "the exceptions are rare in that house. But then, the Prince is generally away, and both the Princess and her daughter are English, and especially nice people." Arden helped himself to something that chanced to be near him, and glanced at his companion's rather impenetrable face. He knew that at the present moment the latter was perfectly sincere in what he said, but he knew also that Ghisleri spoke of most people in very much the same tone. It was something which Arden could never quite understand. "Do you think," he began presently, "that the fact of their being English has anything to do with Miss Carlyon's unpopularity here?" "My dear fellow, how should I know?" asked Ghisleri, with something almost like a laugh. "You do know, of course. I wish you would tell me. As an Englishman, the mother interests me." "From the point of view of our international relations, I see, collecting information for an article in the Nineteenth Century, or else your brother is going to speak on the subject in the Lords. What do you think about the matter yourself? If I can put you right, I will." "What an extraordinary man you are!" exclaimed Arden. "You always insist upon answering one question by another." "It gives one time to think," retorted Ghisleri. "These cigarettes are distinctly bad; give me one of yours, please. I never can understand why the government monopoly here should exist, and if it does why they should not give us Russian--" "My dear Ghisleri," said Arden, interrupting him, "we were talking about the Princess Gerano." "Were we? Oh, yes, and Miss Carlyon, too, I remember. Do you like them?" "Very much; and I think every one should. That is the reason why I am surprised that Miss Carlyon should not receive much more attention than she does. I fancy it is because she is English. Do you think I am right?" "No," said Ghisleri, slowly, at last answering the direct question, "I do not think you are." "Then what in the world is the reason? The fact is clear enough. She knows it herself." "Probably some absurd bit of gossip. Who cares? I am sorry for her, though." "How can there be any scandal about a young girl of her age?" asked Arden, incredulously. "In this place you can start a story about a baby a year old," answered Ghisleri. "It will be remembered, repeated, and properly adorned, and will ultimately ruin the innocent woman when she is grown up. Nobody seems to care for chronology here--anachronism is so much more convenient." "Why are you so absurdly reticent with me, Ghisleri?" asked Arden, with some impatience. "You talk as though we had not known each other ten years." "On the contrary," answered Pietro, "if we were acquaintances of yesterday, I would not talk at all. That is just the difference. As it is, and because we are rather good friends, I tell you what I believe to be the truth. I believe--well, I will allow that I know, that there is a story about Miss Carlyon, which is commonly credited, and which is a down-right lie. I will not tell you what it is. It does not, strictly speaking, affect her reputation, but it has made her unpopular--since you have used that word. Ask any of the gossips, if you care enough--I am not going to repeat such nonsense. It never does any good to repeat other peoples' lies." Arden was silent, and his long white fingers played uneasily upon the edge of the table. It had been a hard matter to extract the information, but such as it was he knew that it was absolutely reliable. When Ghisleri spoke at all about such things, he spoke the truth, and when he said that he would positively say no more, his decision was always final. Arden had discovered that in the early days of their acquaintance. Perhaps Pietro went to absurd lengths in this direction, and there were people who called it affectation and made him out to be an even worse man than he was, but his friend knew that it was genuine in its way. He was all the more disturbed by what he had heard, and it was a long time before he spoke again. Ghisleri smoked in silence and drank three cups of coffee while Arden was drinking one. He looked at that time like a man who was living upon his nerves, so to say, instead of upon proper nourishment. An hour later the two men went out together, Arden taking Pietro with him in his carriage. The air was bright and keen and the afternoon sunlight was already turning yellow with the gold of the coming evening. The carriage was momentarily blocked at the corner of the Pincio near the entrance, by one that was turning out of the enclosure opposite the band stand. It chanced to be the Princess of Gerano's landau, and she and her daughter were seated in it, closely wrapped in their furs. It was Arden's victoria that had to pull up to let the Princess drive across, and by a coincidence the Savelli couple were in the one which hers would have to follow in the descending line after crossing the road. Francesco Savelli bowed, smiled, and waved his hat, evidently to Laura rather than to her mother. With a rather forced smile Adele slowly bent her head. Arden bowed at the same moment, and looked from one carriage to the other. Ghisleri followed his example, and there was the very faintest expression of amusement on his face, which Arden of course could not see. A number of men on foot lined the side of the road close to the carriage. "People always come back to their first loves!" said a low voice at Arden's elbow. He turned quickly and saw several men watching the Savelli across his victoria. He knew none of them, and it was impossible to guess which had spoken. Ghisleri, being on the right side, as Arden's guest, could not have heard the words. Having just noticed the rather striking contrast between Francesco Savelli's demonstrative greeting and his wife's almost indifferent nod, it naturally struck the Englishman that the remark he had overheard might refer to the person he was himself watching at that moment. Donna Adele Savelli's expression might very well be taken for one of jealousy, but her husband's behaviour was assuredly too marked for anything more than friendship. Arden coupled the words with the facts and concluded that he had discovered the story of which Ghisleri had spoken. Francesco Savelli was said to be in love with Laura Carlyon. That was evidently the gossip; but he had seen Laura's face, too, and it was quite plain that she was wholly indifferent. On the whole, though the tale reflected little credit on Savelli, it was not at all clear why it should make Laura unpopular, unless people said that she encouraged the man, which they probably did, thought Lord Herbert Arden, who was a man of the world. The more he considered the matter the more convinced he became that he was right, and the conviction was on the whole a relief. He had been uneasy for some time, and Ghisleri's guarded words had not satisfied him; chance, however, had done what Ghisleri would not do, and the mystery was solved. The Princess of Gerano was at home that evening, and Arden of course went to the palace early, and was the last to leave. Three times between half-past ten and half-past two o'clock Laura and he installed themselves side by side at some distance from the drawing-room, and each time their conversation lasted over half an hour. It was not a set ball, but one of the regular weekly informal dances of which there are so many in Rome during the season. The first interruption of Arden's talk appeared in the shape of Don Francesco Savelli, who asked Laura for a turn. Oddly enough she glanced at Lord Herbert's face before accepting, and the action sent a strange thrill to his heart. He struggled to his feet as she rose to go away with Savelli, and then sank back again and remained some time where he was, absently watching the people who passed. His face was very pale and weary now that the excitement of conversation had subsided, and he felt that if he was not positively ill, he was losing the little strength he had with every day that passed. Late hours, heated rooms, and strong emotions were not the best tonics for his feeble physical organisation, and he knew it. At last he made an effort, got up, and moved about in the crowd, exchanging a few words now and then with a passing acquaintance, but too preoccupied and perhaps too tired to talk long with indifferent people. He nodded as Ghisleri passed him with the Contessa dell' Armi on his arm, and he thought there was a bad light in his friend's eyes, though Pietro was looking better than in the afternoon. The two had evidently been dancing together, for the Contessa's white neck heaved a little, as though she were still out of breath. She was a short, slight woman of exquisite figure, very fair, with deep violet eyes and small classic features, almost hard in their regularity; evidently wilful and dominant in character. Arden watched the pair as they went on in search of a vacant sofa just big enough for two. They had scarcely sat down and he could see that Ghisleri was beginning to talk, when Anastase Gouache appeared and stood still before them. To Arden's surprise the Contessa welcomed him with a bright smile and pointed to a chair at her side of the sofa. Anastase Gouache was a celebrated painter who had married a Roman lady of high birth, and was a very agreeable man, but Arden had not expected that he would be invited so readily to interrupt so promising a conversation. Ghisleri's face expressed nothing. He appeared to join in the talk for a few minutes and then rose and left the Contessa with Gouache. She looked after him, and Arden thought she grew a shade paler and frowned. A faint smile appeared on the Englishman's face and was gone again in an instant as Ghisleri came near him, returning again to the ball-room. Ghisleri had glanced at him as he passed and had seen that he was not talking to a lady. "May I have the next dance, Miss Carlyon?" asked Pietro, when he found Laura in a corner with Francesco Savelli. "Thanks," he said, as she nodded graciously, and he passed on. "Will you give me the dance after the next?" he inquired a few minutes later, coming up with Donna Adele, who was moving away on young Frangipani's arm. "Certainly, caro Ghisleri," she answered, with alacrity, "as many as you please." "You are very good," he said, with a slight bow, and withdrew to a window near Laura to wait until the waltz began. He could see Arden through the open door from the place where he stood. When the dance was over he led Laura out and took one turn through the rooms, making a few commonplace remarks on the way. Coming back, he stopped as though by accident close to Lord Herbert. "I am afraid you will think me very rude if I ask you to let me leave you," he said. "I am engaged for the next dance--it is a quadrille--and I must find a vis-à-vis." Arden of course heard and presented himself immediately in Ghisleri's place. Laura was quite ready to go back with him to the sofa in the corner, and they resumed their conversation almost at the point at which it had been interrupted by Francesco Savelli. Neither of them ever knew that Ghisleri had brought them together again by a little social skill, just beyond what most people possess. Arden looked after him, half believing that he had only given Laura an excuse for leaving her in order to return to the Contessa dell' Armi, who was now surrounded by half a dozen men, beginning with old Spicca, who, as has been said, was still alive in those days, and ending with the little Vicomte de Bompierre, a young French attaché with a pleasant voice, a bright smile, and an incipient black moustache. But to Arden's surprise Ghisleri took quite a different direction, and began to speak to one man after another, evidently trying to secure a vis-à-vis for the square dance. "You must not let me bore you, or rather you must not bore yourself with me," said Arden to Laura, after a short pause in the conversation. "You are altogether much too good to me." "You never bore me," answered the young girl. "You are one of the few people who do not." Arden smiled a little sadly. "I am glad to be one of the 'few people,'" he said, "even if I am the last." "You are too modest." She tried to laugh, but the effort was not very successful. "No, I am not. I have much more vanity than you would suppose, or think possible, considering how little I have to be vain of." "Opinions may differ about that," answered Laura, looking into his eyes. "You have much that many men might envy, and probably do." "What, for instance?" Laura hesitated, and then smiled, without effort this time. "You are very good looking," she said after a moment. "No one has ever told me that before," he answered. A very slight flush rose in his pale face. "It is not of much importance, either. Would you like me to enumerate your good qualities?" "Of all things!" "You are honest and kind, and you are very clever, I think, though I am not clever enough to be sure. You have no right to be unhappy, and you would not be if you were not so sensitive about--about not being so strong and big as some men are. What difference does it make?" "You will almost tempt me to think that it makes none, if you talk in that way," said Arden. "Do you mean to say that you would really and truly change places with any one? With Signor Ghisleri, for instance?" "Indeed I would, with him, and very gladly. I would rather be Ghisleri than any man I know." "I cannot understand that," answered Laura, thoughtfully. "If I were a man, I would much rather be like you. Besides, they say Signor Ghisleri has been dreadfully wild, and is anything but angelic now. You used that very word about him the first evening we met; do you remember?" "Of course I do; but what has that to do with it? Must I necessarily choose a saint for my friend, and pick out one to exchange places with me if it were possible? A woman saint may be lovable, too lovable perhaps, but a man saint about town is like a fish out of water. But you are right about Ghisleri, up to a certain point, only you do not understand him. He is an exceedingly righteous sinner, but a sinner he is." "What do you mean by a righteous sinner?" asked Laura, gravely. "Do not bring me down to definitions. I have not at all a logical mind. I mean Ghisleri--that is all I can say. I would much rather talk about you." "No, I object to that. Tell me, since you wish so much to be Signor Ghisleri, what do you think you would feel if you were?" "What he feels--everything that a man can feel!" answered Arden, with a sudden change of tone. "To be straight and strong and a match for other men. Half the happiness of life lies there." His voice shook a little, and Laura felt that the tears were almost in her eyes as she looked earnestly into his. "You see what I am," he continued, more and more bitterly, "I am a cripple. There is no denying it--why should I even try to hide it a little? Nature, or Heaven, or what you please to call it, has been good enough to make concealment impossible. If I am not quite a hunchback, I am very near it, and I can hardly walk even with a stick. And look at yourself, straight and graceful and beautiful--well, you pity me, at least. Why should I make a fool of myself? It is the first time I ever spoke like this to any one." "You are quite wrong," answered Laura, in a tone of conviction. "I do not pity you--indeed I do not think you are the least to be pitied. I see it quite differently. It hardly ever strikes me that you are not just the same as other people, and when it does--I do not know--I mean to say that when it does, it makes no painful impression upon me. You see I am quite frank." While she was speaking the colour rose in two bright spots on Arden's pale cheeks, and his bright eyes softened with a look of wonderful happiness. "Are you quite in earnest, Miss Carlyon?" he asked, in a low voice. "Quite, quite in earnest. Please believe me when I say that it would hurt me dreadfully if I thought you doubted it." "Hurt you? Why?" She turned her deep, sad eyes to him, and looked at him without speaking. He was on the point of telling her that he loved her--then he saw how beautiful she was, and he felt his withered knee under his hand, and he was ashamed to speak. It was a cruel moment, and his nerves were already overstrained by perpetual emotion, as well as tired from late hours and lack of sleep. He hesitated a moment. Then bent his head and covered his eyes with his hand. Laura said nothing for several moments, but seeing that he did not move, she touched his sleeve. "Dear Lord Herbert, do not be so unhappy," she said softly. "You really have no right to be, you know." "No right?" He looked up suddenly. "If you knew, you would not say that." "I should always say it. As long as you have friends--friends who love you, and would do anything for you, why should you make yourself so miserable?" "I want more than a friend--even than friendship." "What?" "I want love." Again she gazed into his eyes and paused. Her face was very white--whiter than his. Then she spoke. "Are you so sure you have not got that love?" she asked. Her own voice trembled now. Arden started and a look of something almost like fear came into his face. He could hardly speak. "Love?" he repeated, and he felt he could say nothing more. "Yes, I mean it." So she chose her fate. She thought there was a touch of the divine in poor Arden's expression as he heard the words. Then his face grew pale, the light faded from his eyes, and his head sank on his breast. Laura did not at first realise what had happened. She felt so strongly herself, that nothing in his manner would have surprised her. She heard nothing of the hum of the voices in the room, or if she did, she heard the harmony of a happy hymn, and the great branches of candles were the tapers upon an altar in some sacred place. Still Arden did not move. Laura bent down and looked at his face. "Lord Herbert!" She called him softly. "Herbert, what is the matter?" No answer came. She looked round wildly for help. At that moment the dance was just over and Ghisleri passed near her with Donna Adele on his arm. Laura rose and overtook him swiftly, touching his arm in her excitement. "Lord Herbert has fainted--for heaven's sake, help him!" she cried, in a low voice. Pietro Ghisleri glanced at the sofa. "Excuse me," he said hastily to Donna Adele, and left her standing in the middle of the room. He bent down and felt Arden's forehead and hands. "Yes, he has fainted," he said to Laura. "Show me the way to a quiet place." Thereupon he took his unconscious friend in his arms and followed Laura quickly through the surging crowd that already filled the room, escaping in haste from the heat as soon as the dance was over in the ball-room beyond. For a few seconds one of those total silences fell upon the party which always follow an accident. Then, as Ghisleri disappeared with his burden, every one began to talk at once, speculating upon the nature of Lord Herbert Arden's indisposition. Heart disease--epilepsy--nervous prostration--most things were suggested. "Probably too much champagne," laughed Donna Adele in the ear of the lady nearest to her. CHAPTER III. It is perhaps useless to attempt to trace and recapitulate the causes which had led Laura Carlyon to the state of mind in which she had found courage to tell Arden that she loved him. There might be harder moments in store for her, but this had been the hardest she had known hitherto. Nothing short of a real and great love, she believed, could have carried her through it, and she had been conscious for some days that if the opportunity came she meant to do what she had done. In other words, she had been quite sure that Arden loved her and that she loved him. This being granted, it was in accordance with her character to take the initiative. With far less sympathy than she felt in all her thoughts, she would have understood that a man of his instincts would never speak of his love to her unless almost directly bidden to do so. Laura was slow to make up her mind, sure of her decision when reached, and determined to act upon it without consulting any one. Many people said later that she had sacrificed herself for Lord Herbert's expected fortune, or for his position. A few said that she was a very good woman and that, finding herself neglected, she had decided to devote her life to the happiness of a very unhappy man for whom she felt a sincere friendship. That was at least the more charitable view. But neither was at all the right one. She honestly and really believed that she loved the man: she saw beyond a doubt that he loved her, and she took the shortest and most direct way of ending all doubts on the subject. On that same night when Arden had quite recovered and had gone home with Ghisleri, she spoke to her mother and told her exactly what had happened. The Princess of Gerano opened her quiet brown eyes very wide when she heard the news. She was handsome still at five and forty, a little stout, perhaps, but well proportioned. Her light brown hair was turning grey at the temples, but there were few lines in her smooth, calm face, and her complexion was still almost youthful, though with little colouring. She looked what she was, a woman of the world, very far from worldly, not conscious of half the evil that went on around her, and much given to inward contemplation of a religious kind when not actively engaged in social duty. She had seen Laura's growing appreciation of Arden and had noticed the frequency of the latter's visits to the house. But she had herself learned to like him very much during the last month, and it never suggested itself to her that he could wish to marry Laura nor that Laura could care for him, considering that he was undeniably a cripple. It was no wonder that she was surprised. "Dear child," she said, "I do not know what to say. Of course I have found out what a really good man he is, though he is so fond of that wild Ghisleri--they are always together. I have a great admiration for Lord Herbert. As far as position goes, there is nothing better, and I suppose he is rich enough to support you, though I do not know. You see, darling, you have nothing but the little I can give you. But never mind that--there is only that one other thing--I wish he were not--" She checked herself, far too delicate to hurt her daughter by too direct a reference to Arden's physical shortcomings. But Laura, strange to say, was not sensitive on that point. "I know, mother," she said, "he is deformed. It is of no use denying it, as he says himself. But if I do not mind that--if I do not think of it at all when I am with him, why should any one else care? After all, if I marry him, it is to please myself, and not the people who will ask us to dinner." The young girl laughed happily as she thought of the new life before her, and of how she would make everything easy for poor Arden, and make him quite forget that he could hardly walk. Her mother looked at her with quiet wonder. "Think well before you act, dear," she said. "Marriage is a very serious thing. There is no drawing back afterwards, and if you were to be at all unkind after you are married--" "O mother, how can you think that of me?" "No--at least, you would never mean it. You are too good for that. But it would break the poor man's heart. He is very sensitive, it is not every man who faints when he finds out that a young girl loves him--fortunately, not every man," she added with a smile. "If every one loved as we do, the world would be much happier," said Laura, kissing her mother. "Do not be afraid, I will not break his heart." "God grant you may not break your own, dear!" The Princess spoke in a lower voice, and turned away her face to hide the tears that stood in her eyes. "Mine, mother!" Laura bent over her as she sat in her dressing-chair. "What is it?" she asked anxiously, as she saw that her mother's cheek was wet. "You are very dear to me, child," murmured the Princess, drawing the young head down to her breast, and kissing the thick black hair. So the matter was settled, and Laura had her way. It is not easy to say how most mothers would have behaved under the circumstances. There are worldly ones enough who would have received the news far more gladly than the Princess of Gerano did; and there are doubtless many who would refuse a cripple for a son-in-law on any condition whatever. Laura's mother did what she thought right, which is more than most of us can say of our actions. The Prince was almost as much surprised as his wife when he learned the news, but he was convinced that he had nothing to say in the matter. Laura was quite free to do as she pleased, and, moreover, it was a good thing that she should marry a man of her own faith, and ultimately live among her own people, since nothing could make either a Catholic or a Roman of her. But he was not altogether pleased with her choice. He had an Italian's exaggerated horror of deformity, and though he liked Lord Herbert, he could never quite overcome his repulsion for his outward defects. There was nothing to be done, however, and on the whole the marriage had much in its favour in his eyes. The engagement was accordingly announced with due formality, and the wedding day was fixed for the Saturday after Easter, which fell early in that year. Not until the day before the Princess told the news to every one did Arden communicate it to Ghisleri. He had perfect confidence in his friend's discretion, but having said that he would not speak of the engagement to any one until the Princess wished it, he kept his word to the letter. He asked Pietro to drive with him, far out upon the campagna. When they had passed the last houses and were in the open country he spoke. "I am going to marry Miss Carlyon," he said simply, but he glanced at Ghisleri's face to see the look of surprise he expected. "Since you announce it, my dear friend, I congratulate you with all my heart," answered Pietro. "Of course I knew it some time ago." "You knew it?" Arden was very much astonished. "It was not very hard to guess. You loved each other, you went constantly to the house and you spent your evenings with her in other people's houses, there was no reason why you should not marry--accordingly, I took it for granted that you would be married. You see that I was right. I am delighted. Ask me to the wedding." Arden laughed. "I thought you would never enter one of our churches!" he exclaimed. "I did not know that I had such a reputation for devout obedience to general rules," answered Ghisleri. "As for your reputation, my dear fellow, it is not that of a saint. But I once saw you saying your prayers." "I dare say," replied Pietro, indifferently. "I sometimes do, but not generally in the Corso, nor on the Pincio. How long ago was that? Do you happen to remember?" "Six or seven years, I fancy--oh, yes! It was in that little church in Dieppe, just before you went off on that long cruise--you remember it, too, I fancy." "I suppose I thought I was going to be drowned, and was seized with a passing ague of premature repentance," said Ghisleri, lighting a cigarette. "What a queer fellow you are!" observed Arden, striking a light in his turn. "I was talking with Miss Carlyon about you some time ago, and I told her you were a sinner, but a righteous one." "A shade worse than others, perhaps, because I know a little better what I am doing," answered Ghisleri, with a sneer, evidently intended for himself. He was looking at the tomb of Cecilia Metella, as it rose in sight above the horses' heads at the turn of the road, and he thought of what had happened to him there years ago, and of the consequences. Arden knew nothing of the associations the ruin had for his friend, and laughed again. He was in a very happy humour on that day, as he was for many days afterwards. "I can never quite make you out," he said. "Are you good, bad, or a humbug? You cannot be both good and bad at once, you know." "No. But one may be often bad, and sometimes do decently good deeds," observed Ghisleri, with a dry laugh. "Let us talk of your marriage instead of speculating on my salvation, or more probable perdition, if there really is such a thing. When is the wedding day?" Arden was full of plans for the future, and they drove far out, talking of all that was before the young couple. On the following day the news was announced to the city and the world. The world held up its hands in wonder, and its tongue wagged for a whole week and a few days more. Laura Carlyon was to marry a penniless cripple of the most dissipated habits. How shocking! Of course every one knew that Lord Herbert had not fainted at all on that night at the Palazzo Braccio, but had succumbed, in the natural course of events, to the effects of the champagne he had taken at dinner. That was now quite certain. And the whole world was well aware that his father had cut him off with a pittance on account of his evil ways, and that his brother had twice paid his gambling debts to save the family name from disgrace. Englishmen as a race, and English cripples in particular, were given to drink and high play. The man had actually been the worse for wine when talking to Laura Carlyon in her mother's house, and Ghisleri had been obliged to carry him out for decency's sake before anything worse happened. Scandalous! It was a wonder that Ghisleri, who, after all, was a gentleman, could associate with such a fellow. After all, nobody ever liked Laura Carlyon since she had first appeared in society, soon after dear Donna Adele's marriage. It was as well that she should go to England and live with her tipsy cripple. She was good-looking, as some people admitted. She might win the heart of her brother-in-law and induce him to pay her husband's debts a third time. They were said to be enormous. The men were, on the whole, more charitable. Conscious of their own shortcomings, they did not blame Lord Herbert very severely for taking a little too much "extra dry." They did, however, abuse him somewhat roundly at the club, for having gone to the Gerano party at all when he should have known that he was not steady. Of the facts themselves they had not the slightest doubt. Unfortunately for one of them who happened to be declaiming on the subject, but who was really by no means a bad fellow, he did not notice that Ghisleri had entered the room before he had finished his speech. When he had quite done, Ghisleri came forward. "Arden is my old friend," he said quietly. "He never drinks. He has a disease of the heart and he fainted from the heat. The doctor and I took him home together. I hope that none of you will take up this disgusting story, which was started by the women. And I hope Pietrasanta, there, will do me the honour to believe what I say, and to tell you that he was mistaken." Ghisleri was not a pleasant person to quarrel with, and moreover had the reputation of being truthful. His story, too, was quite as probable as the other, to say the least of it. Don Gianbattista Pietrasanta glanced quickly from one to the other of the men who were seated around him as though to ask their advice in the matter. Several of them nodded almost imperceptibly, as though counselling him to do as Ghisleri requested. There was nothing at all aggressive in the latter's manner, either, as he quietly lit a cigarette while waiting for the other's answer. Suddenly a deep voice was heard from another corner of the room. The Marchese di San Giacinto, giant in body and fortune, had been reading the paper with the utmost indifference during all the previous conversation. All at once he spoke, deliberately and to the point. "It is no business of mine," he said, "as I do not know Lord Herbert Arden except by sight. But I was at the dance the other night, and half an hour before the occurrence you are discussing, Lord Herbert was standing beside me, talking of the Egyptian difficulty with the French ambassador. I have often seen men drunk. Lord Herbert Arden was, in my opinion, perfectly sober." Having delivered himself of this statement, San Giacinto put his very black cigar between his teeth again and took up the evening paper he had been reading. In the face of such men as Ghisleri and the Marchese, it would have been the merest folly to continue any opposition. Moreover, Pietrasanta was neither stupid nor bad, and he was not a coward. "I do not know Lord Herbert Arden myself," he said without affectation. "What I said I got on hearsay, and the whole story is evidently a fabrication which we ought to deny. For the rest, Ghisleri, if you are not quite satisfied--" He stopped and looked at Pietro. "My dear fellow," said the latter, "what more could I have to say about the affair? You all seemed to be in the dark, and I wanted to clear the matter up for the sake of my old friend. That is all. I am very much obliged to you." After this incident there was less talk at the clubs, and in a few days the subject dropped. But the world said, as usual, that all the men were afraid of Ghisleri, who was a duellist, and of San Giacinto, who was a giant, and who had taken the trouble to learn to fence when he first came to Rome, and that they had basely eaten their words. Men were such cowards, said the world. Lord Herbert and Laura lived in blissful ignorance of what was said about them. The preparations for the wedding were already begun, and Laura's modest trousseau was almost all ordered. She and Arden had discussed their future, and having realised that they must live in a very economical fashion for the present and so long as it pleased Heaven to preserve Arden's maternal uncle among the living, they decided that the wedding should be as quiet and unostentatious as possible. The old Prince, however, though far too conscientious to have settled a penny of his inherited fortune upon Laura, even if she had chosen to marry a pauper, was not ungenerous in other ways, and considered himself at liberty to offer the pair some very magnificent silver, which he was able to pay for out of his private economies. As for Donna Adele, she presented them with a couple of handsome wine-coolers--doubtless in delicate allusion to the fictitious story about the champagne Lord Herbert was supposed to have taken. The implied insult, if there was any, was not at all noticed by those who had never heard the tale, however, and Adele had to bide her time for the present. Meanwhile the season tore along at a break-neck pace, and Lent was fast approaching. Everybody saw and danced with almost everybody else every night, and some of them supped afterwards and gambled till midday, and were surprised to find that their nerves were shaky, and their livers slightly eccentric, and their eyes anything but limpid. But they all knew that the quiet time was coming, the Lent wherein no man can dance, nor woman either, and they amused themselves with a contempt for human life which would have amounted to heroism if displayed in a good cause. "They" of course means the gay set of that particular year. As the Princess of Gerano gave regular informal dances, and two balls at the end of Carnival, she and her daughter were considered to belong more or less to the company of the chief merry-makers. The Savelli couple were in it, also, as a matter of course. Gouache was in it when he pleased, a dozen or fifteen young members of the diplomatic corps, old Spicca, who always went everywhere, the Contessa dell' Armi, whose husband was in parliament and rarely went into society, Ghisleri and twenty or thirty others, men and women who were young or thought themselves so. About three weeks before Ash Wednesday, Anastase Gouache, the perennially young, had a brilliant inspiration. His studio was in an historical palace, and consisted of three halls which might have passed for churches in any other country, so far as their size was concerned. He determined to give a Shrove Tuesday supper to the gay set, with a tableau, and a long final waltz afterwards, by way of interring the mangled remains of the season, as he expressed it. The supper should be at the usual dinner hour instead of at one o'clock, because the gay set was not altogether as scarlet as it was painted, and did not, as a whole, care to dance into the morning of Ash Wednesday. The tableau should represent Carnival meeting Lent. The Contessa dell' Armi should be in it, and Ghisleri, and Donna Adele, and possibly San Giacinto might be induced to appear as a mask. His enormous stature would be very imposing. The Contessa, with her classic features and violet eyes, would make an admirable nun, and there would be no difficulty in getting together a train of revellers. Ghisleri, lean, straight, and tall, would do for a Satanic being of some kind, and could head the Carnival procession. The whole thing would not last five minutes and the dancing should begin at once. "Could you not say something, my friend?" asked Gouache, as he talked the matter over with Ghisleri. "I could, if you could find something for me to say," answered the latter. "But of what use would it be?" "The density of the public," replied the great painter, "is, to use the jargon of science, as cotton wool multiplied into cast iron. You either sink into it and make no noise at all, or you knock your head against and cannot get through it. You have never sent a picture to the Salon without naming it, or you would understand exactly what I mean. They took a picture I once painted, as an altar piece, for a scene from the Decameron, I believe--but that was when I was young and had illusions. On the whole, you had better find something to say, and say it--verse, if possible. They say you have a knack at verses." "Carnival meeting Lent," said Ghisleri, thoughtfully. Then he laughed. "I will try--though I am no poet. I will trust a little to my acting to help my lame feet." Ghisleri laughed again, as though an amusing idea had struck him. That night he went home early, and as very often happened, in a bad humour with himself and with most things. He was a very unhappy man, who felt himself to be always the centre of a conflict between opposing passions, and he had long been in the habit of throwing into a rough, impersonal shape, the thoughts that crossed his mind about himself and others, when he was alone at night. Being, as he very truly said, no poet, he quickly tore up such odds and ends of halting rhyme or stumbling prose, either as soon as they were written, or the next morning. Whatever the form of these productions might be, the ideas they expressed were rarely feeble and were indeed sometimes so strong that they might have even shocked some unusually sensitive person in the gay set. Being, as has been said, in a bad humour on that particular evening, he naturally had something to say to himself on paper, and as he took his pencil he thought of Gouache's suggestion. In a couple of hours he had got what he wanted and went to sleep. The great artist liked the verses when Ghisleri read them to him on the following day, the Contessa consented to act the part of the nun, and the affair was settled. It was a great success. Gouache's wife, Donna Faustina, had entered into her husband's plans with all her heart. She was of the Montevarchi family, sister to the Marchesa di San Giacinto, the latter's husband being a Saracinesca, as every Italian knows. Gouache did things in a princely fashion, and sixty people, including all the gay set and a few others, sat down to the dinner which Anastase was pleased to call a supper. Every one was very gay. Almost every one was in some fancy dress or mask, there was no order of precedence, and all were placed where they would have the best chance of amusing themselves. The halls of the studio, with their magnificent tapestries and almost priceless objects of art, were wonderful to see in the bright light. Many of the costumes were really superb and all were brilliant. No one knew what was to take place after supper, but every one was sure there was to be dancing, and all were aware that it was the last dance before Easter, and that the best dancers in Rome were all present. One of the halls had been hastily fitted up as a theatre, with a little stage, a row of footlights, and a background representing a dark wall, with a deep archway in the middle, like the door of a church. When every one was seated, a deep, clear voice spoke out a little prologue from behind the scenes, and the figures, as they were described, moved out from opposite sides of the stage to meet and group themselves before the painted doorway. Let prologue and verse speak for themselves. "It was nearly midnight--the midnight that ends Shrove Tuesday and begins Ash Wednesday, dividing Carnival from Lent. I left the tables, where all the world of Rome was feasting, and pretending that the feast was the last of the year. The brilliant light flashed upon silver and gold, dyed itself in amber and purple wine, ran riot amongst jewels, and blazed upon many a fair face and snowy neck. The clocks were all stopped, lest some tinkling bell should warn men and women that the day of laughter was over, and that the hour of tears had struck. But I, broken-hearted, sick in soul and weary of the two months' struggle with evil fate, turned away from them and left them to all they loved, and to all that I could never love again. "I passed through the deserted ball-room, and my heart sank as I thought of what was over and done. The polished floor was strewn with withered blossoms, with torn and crumpled favours from the dance, with shreds of gauze and lace; many chairs were overturned; the light streamed down like day upon a great desolation; the heated air was faint with the sad odour of dead flowers. There was the corner where we sat, she and I, to-night, last week, a week before that--where we shall never sit again, for neither of us would. I shivered as I went out into the night. "Through the dark streets I went, not knowing and not caring whither, nor hearing the tinkling mandolines and changing songs of the revellers who passed me on their homeward way." At this point a mandoline was really heard in the very faintest tones from behind the scenes, playing scarcely above a whisper, as it were, the famous "Tout pour l'amour" waltz of Waldteuffel. "Suddenly," the voice resumed, above the delicate notes of the instrument, "the bells rang out and I knew that my last Carnival was dead." Here deep-toned bells struck twelve, while the mandoline still continued. "Then, all at once, I was aware of two figures in the gloom, advancing towards the door of a church in front of me. The one was a woman, a nun in white robe and black hood, whose saintly violet eyes seemed to shine in the darkness. The other was a monk." The Contessa dell' Armi came slowly forward, her pale, clear face lifted and thrown into strong relief by the black head-dress, grasping a heavy rosary in her folded hands. Behind her came San Giacinto, recognisable only by his colossal stature, his face hidden in the shadow of a black cowl. Both were admirable, and a murmur of satisfaction ran through the room. "As they reached the door," continued the reader, "a wild train of maskers broke into the street." Ghisleri entered from the opposite side, arrayed somewhat in the manner of Mephistopheles, a mandoline slung over his shoulder, on which he was playing. Donna Adele and a dozen others followed him closely, in every variety of brilliant Carnival dress, dancing forward with tambourines and castanets, their eyes bright, their steps cadenced to the rhythm of the waltz tune which now broke out loud and clear--fair young women with flushed cheeks, all life, and motion, and laughter; and young men following them closely, laughing, and talking, and singing, all dancing in and out with changing steps. Then all at once the music died away to a whisper; the nun and the monk stood back as though in horror against the church door, while the revellers grouped themselves together in varied poses around them, Ghisleri the central figure in the midst, bowing with a diabolical smile before the white-robed nun. "In front of all," said the voice again, "stood one whose face I shall never forget, for it was like my own. The features were mine, but upon them were reflected all the sins of my life, and all the evil I have done. I thought the other revellers did not see him." Again the music swelled and rose, and the train of dancers passed on with song and laughter, and disappeared on the opposite side of the stage. Ghisleri alone stood still before the saint-like figure of the Contessa dell' Armi, bowing low and holding out to her a tall red glass. "He who was like me stayed behind," continued the reader, "and the light from his glass seemed to shine upon the saintly woman's face, and she drew back as though from contamination, to the monk's side for protection. I knew her face when I saw it--the face I have known too long, too well. Then he who was like me spoke to her, and the voice was my own, but as I would have had it when I have been worst." As the reader ceased Ghisleri began to speak. His voice was strong, but capable of considerable softness and passionate expression, and he did his best to render his own irregular verses both intelligible and moving to his hearers, in which effort he was much helped by the dress he wore and by the gestures he made use of. "So we meet at the last! You the saint, I the time-proved sinner; You the young, I the old; I the world-worn, you the beginner; At the end of the season here, with a glass of wine To discuss the salvation and--well--the mine and thine Of all the souls we have met this year, and dealt with, Of those you have tried to make feel, and those I've felt with: Though, after all, dear Saint, had we met in heaven Before you got saintship, or I the infernal leaven That works so hot to kill the old angel in me-- If you had seen the world then, as I was able to see Before Sergeant-Major Michael gave me that fall,-- Not a right fall, mind you, taking the facts in all,-- We might have been on the same side both. But now It is yours to cry over lost souls, as it's mine to show them how They may stumble and tumble into the infernal slough. So here we are. Now tell me--your honour true-- What do you think of our season? Which wins? I? You? Ha, ha, ha! Sweet friend, you can hardly doubt The result of this two months' hard-fought wrestling bout. I have won. You have lost the game. I drive a trade Which I invented--perhaps--but you have made. Without your heaven, friend Saint, what would be my hell? Without your goodness, could I hope to do well With the poor little peddler's pack of original sin They handed me down, when they turned me out to begin My devil's trade with souls. But now I ask Why for eternal penance they gave me so light a task? You have not condescended from heaven to taste our carnival feast, But if you had tasted it, you would admit at least That the meats were passably sweet, and might allure The nicest of angels, whose tastes are wholly pure. Old friend--I hate you! I hate your saintly face, Your holy eyes, your vague celestial grace! You are too cold for me, whose soul must smelt In fires whose fury you have never felt. But come, unbend a little. Let us chatter Of what we like best, of what our pride may flatter,-- Salvation and damnation--there's the theme-- Your trade and mine--what I am, and what you seem. Come, count the souls we have played for, you and I, The broken hearts you have lost on a careless jog of the die, Hearts that were broken in ire, by one short, sharp fault of the head, Souls lifted on pinions of fire, to sink on wings of lead. We have gambled, and I have won, while you have steadily lost, I laughing, you weeping your senseless saintly tears each time you tossed. So now--give it up! Dry your eyes; your heaven's a dream! Sell your saintship for what it is worth, and come over--the Devil's supreme! Make Judas Iscariot envy the sweets of our sin-- Poor Judas, who ended himself where I could have wished to begin! A chosen complexion--hell's fruit would not have been wasted Had he lived to eat his fill at the feast he barely tasted. Ah, my friend, you are horribly good! Oh! I know you of old; I know all your virtues, your graces, your beauties; I know they are cold! But I know that far down in the depths of your crystalline soul There's a spot the archangel physician might not pronounce whole. There's a hell in your heaven; there's a heaven in my hell. There we meet. What's perdition to you is salvation to me. Ah, the delicate sweet Of mad meetings, of broken confessions, of nights unblest! Oh, the shadowy horror of hate that haunts love's steps without rest, The desire to be dead--to see dead both the beings one hates, One's self and the other, twin victims of opposite fates! How I hate you! You thing beyond Satan's supremest temptation, You creature of light for whom God has ordained no damnation, You escape me, the being whose searing hand lovingly lingers On the neck of each sinner to brand him with five red-hot fingers! You escape me--you dare scoff at me--and I, poor old pretender, Must sue for your beautiful soul with temptation more tender Than a man can find for a woman, when night in her moonlit glory Silvers a word to a poem, makes a poem of a commonplace story! So I sue here at your feet for your soul and the gold of your heart, To break my own if I lose you--Lose you? No--do not start. You angel--you bitter-sweet creature of heaven, I love you and hate you! For I know what you are, and I know that my sin cannot mate you. I know you are better than I--by the blessing of God!-- And I hate what is better than I by the blessing of God! What right has the Being Magnificent, reigning supreme, To wield the huge might that is his, in a measure extreme? What right has God got of his strength to make you all good, And me bad from the first and weighed down in my sin's leaden hood? What right have you to be pure, my angel, when I am foul? What right have you to the light, while I, like an owl, Must blink in hell's darkness and count my sins by the bead-- While you can get all you pray for, the wine and the mead Of a heavenly blessing, showered upon you straight-- Because you chance to stand on the consecrate side of the gate? Ah! Give me a little nature, give me a human truth! Give me a heart that feels--and falls, as a heart should--without ruth! Give me a woman who loves and a man who loves again, Give me the instant's joy that ends in an age of pain, Give me the one dear touch that I love--and that you fear-- And I will give my empire for the Kingdom you hold dear! I will cease from tempting and torturing, I will let the poor sinner go, I will turn my blind eyes heavenward and forget this world below, I will change from lying to truth, and be forever true-- If you will only love me--and give the Devil his due!" It had been previously arranged that at the last words the nun should thrust back his Satanic majesty and take refuge in the church. But it turned out otherwise. As he drew near the conclusion, Ghisleri crept stealthily up to the Contessa's side, and threw all the persuasion he possessed into his voice. But it was most probably the Contessa's love of surprising the world which led her to do the contrary of what was expected. At the last line of his speech, she made one wild gesture of despair, and threw herself backward upon Ghisleri's ready arm. For one moment he looked down into her white upturned face, and his own grew pale as his gleaming eyes met hers. With characteristic presence of mind, San Giacinto, the monk, bent his head, and stalked away in holy horror as the curtain fell. CHAPTER IV. As the curtain went down, a burst of applause rang through the room. The poetry, if it could be called poetry, had assuredly not been of a high order, and as for the sentiments it expressed, a good number of the audience were more than usually shocked. But the whole thing had been effective, unexpected, and striking, especially the ending, over which the world smacked its lips. "I do not like it at all," said Laura Carlyon to Arden, as they left the seats where they had sat together through the little performance. "They looked very well," he answered thoughtfully. "As for what he said, it was Ghisleri. That is the man's character. He will talk in that way while he does not believe a word he says, or only one out of ten." "Then I do not like his character, nor him," returned the young lady, frankly. "But I should not say it to you, dear, because he is your best friend. He shows you all the good there is in him, I suppose, and he shows us all the bad." "No one ever said a truer thing of him," said Arden, limping along by her side. "But I admire the man's careless strength in what he does." "It is easy to use strong language," replied Laura, quietly. "It is quite another thing to be strong. I believe he is weak, morally speaking. But then, how should I know? One only guesses at such things, after all." "Yes, it is all guess-work. But I think I understand him better to-night than before." A moment later the sound of dance music came from the most distant and the largest of the rooms. Ghisleri and the Contessa dell' Armi were already there. She was so slight of figure, that she draped her nun's dress over her gown, and had only to drop it to be herself again. They took a first turn together, and Ghisleri talked softly all the time as he danced. "Shockingly delightful--the whole thing!" exclaimed Donna Adele, watching them. "How well they acted it! They must have rehearsed very often." "Quite often enough, I have no doubt," said the Marchesa di San Giacinto, with a laugh. An hour or two passed away and Laura Carlyon found herself walking about with Ghisleri after dancing with him. He was a very magnificent personage in his scarlet, black and gold costume, and Laura herself looked far more saintly in her evening gown than the Contessa dell' Armi had looked in the dress of a nun. The two made a fine contrast, and some one said so, unfortunately within hearing of both Adele Savelli and Maddalena dell' Armi. The latter turned her cold face quickly and looked at Laura and Ghisleri, but her expression did not change. "What a very uncertain person that dear Ghisleri is!" observed Donna Adele to Pietrasanta, as she noticed the Contessa's movement. She spoke just so loud that the latter could hear her, then turned away with her companion and walked in the opposite direction. Meanwhile Ghisleri and Laura were together. The young girl felt an odd sensation as her hand lay on his arm, as though she were doing something wrong. She did not understand his life, nor him, being far too young and innocent of life's darker thoughts and deeds. She had said that she disliked him, because that seemed best to express what she felt--a certain vague wish not to be too near him, a certain timidity when he was within hearing which she did not feel at other times. "You did not mean any of those things you said, did you, Signor Ghisleri?" she asked, scarcely knowing why she put the question. "I meant them all, and much more of the same kind," answered Pietro, with a hard laugh. "I am sorry--I would rather not believe it." "Why?" "Because it is not right to think such things, nor even to say them in a play." Ghisleri looked at her in some surprise. Laura felt a sort of impulse of conscience to say what she thought. "Ah! you are horribly good!" laughed Ghisleri, quoting his own verse. Laura felt uncomfortable as she met his glance. He really looked very Satanic just then, as his eyebrows went up and the deep lines deepened between his eyes and on his forehead. "Either one believes or one does not," she said. "If one does--" She hesitated. "If one does, does it follow that because God is good to you, He has been good to me also, Miss Carlyon?" His expression changed, and his voice was grave and almost sad. Laura sighed almost inaudibly, but said nothing. "Will you have anything?" he asked indifferently, after the short pause. "A cup of tea?" "Thanks, no. I think I will go to my mother." Ghisleri took her to the Princess's side and left her. "You seemed to be having a very interesting conversation with Miss Carlyon just now," said the Contessa dell' Armi as he sat down beside her a quarter of an hour later. "What were you talking about?" "Sin," answered Ghisleri, laconically. "With a young girl!" exclaimed the Contessa. "But then--English--" "You need not raise your eyebrows, nor talk in that tone, my dear lady," replied Ghisleri. "Miss Carlyon is quite beyond sarcasms of that sort. Since you are curious, she was telling me that it was sinful to say the things you were good enough to listen to in the tableau, even in a play." "Ah? And you will be persuaded, I dare say. What beautiful eyes she has. It is a pity she is so clumsy and heavily made. Really, has she got you to promise that you will never say any of those things again--after the way I ended the piece for you?" "No. I have not promised to be good yet. As for your ending of the performance, I confess I was surprised." "You did not show it." "It would hardly have been in keeping with my part, would it? But I can show you that I am grateful at least." "For what?" asked the Contessa, raising her eyebrows again. "Do you think I meant anything by it?" "Certainly not," replied Ghisleri, with the utmost calmness. "I suppose your instinct told you that it would be more novel and effective if the Saint yielded than if she played the old-fashioned scene of crushing the devil under her foot." "Would you have let yourself be crushed?" "By you--yes." Ghisleri spoke slowly and looked steadily into her eyes. The Contessa's face softened a little, and she paused before she answered him. "I wish I knew--I wish I were sure whether I really have any influence over you," she said softly, and then sighed and looked away. It was very late when the party broke up, though all had professed the most positive intention of going home when the clock struck twelve. The Princess of Gerano offered Arden a seat in her carriage, and Pietro Ghisleri went away alone. As he passed through the deserted dining-room, and through the hall where he had sat so long with the Contessa, he could not help glancing at the corner where they had talked, and he thought involuntarily of the prologue to the tableau. His face was set rather sternly, but he smiled, too, as he went by. "It is not my last Carnival yet," he said to himself, as he drew on a great driving-coat which covered his costume completely. Then he went out. It is very hard to say whether he was a sentimental man or not. Men who write second-rate verses when they are alone, generally are; but, on the other hand, those who knew him would not have allowed that he possessed a grain of what is commonly called sentimentality. The word probably means a sort of vague desire to experience rather fictitious emotions, with the intention of believing oneself to be passionate by nature, and in that sense the weakness could not justly be attributed to Ghisleri. But on this particular night he did a thing which many people would undoubtedly have called sentimental. He turned aside from the highway when he left the great palace in which Gouache lived, and he allowed himself to wander aimlessly on through the older part of the city, until he stopped opposite to the door of a church which stood in a broad street near the end of the last by-way he had traversed. The night was dark and gloomy and the stillness was only broken now and then by a distant snatch of song, a burst of laughter, or the careless twang of a guitar, just as Ghisleri had described it. Indeed it was by no means the first time that he had walked home in the small hours of Ash Wednesday morning, after a night of gaiety and emotion. It chanced that the church upon which he had accidentally come was the one known as the Church of Prayer and Death. It stands in the Via Giulia, behind the Palazzo Farnese. He realised the fact at once, and it seemed like a bad omen. He stood still a long time, looking at the gloomy door with steady eyes. "Just such a place as this," he said, in a low tone. "Just such a church as that, just such a man as I am. Is this the comedy and was this evening the reality? Or is it the other way?" He called up before his eyes the scene in which he had acted, and his imagination obeyed him readily enough. He could fancy how the monk and the nun would look, and the train of revellers, and their movements and gestures. But the nun's face was not that of the Contessa. Another shone out vividly in its place. "Just God!" ejaculated the lonely man. "Am I so bad as that? Not to care after so much?" He turned upon his heel as though to escape the vision, and walked quickly away, hating himself. But he was mistaken. He cared--as he expressed it--far more than he dreamed of, more deeply, perhaps, in his own self-contradictory, irregular fashion than the woman of whom he was thinking. People talked for some time of the Shrove Tuesday feast at Gouache's studio. Then they fell to talking about other things. Lent passed in the usual way, and there was not much change in the lives of the persons most concerned in this history. Ghisleri saw much less of Arden than formerly, of course, as the latter was wholly absorbed by his passion for his future wife. As for the world, it was as much occupied with dinner parties, musical evenings, and private theatricals as it had formerly been with dancing. The time sped quickly. The past season had left behind it an enormous Corpus Scandalorum Romanorum which made conversation both easy and delightful. How many of the unpleasant stories concerning Lord Herbert Arden, Laura Carlyon, Pietro Ghisleri, and Maddalena dell' Armi could have been distinctly traced to Adele Savelli, it is not easy to say. As a matter of fact, very few persons excepting Ghisleri himself took any trouble to trace them at all. To the average worldly taste it is as unpleasant to follow up the origin of a delightfully savoury lie, as it is to think, while eating, of the true history of a beefsteak, from the meadow to the table by way of the slaughter-house and the cook's fingers. Holy week came, and the muffled bells and the silence in houses at other times full and noisy, and the general air of depression which results, most probably, from a certain amount of genuine repentance and devotion which is felt in a place where by no means all are bad at heart, and many are sincerely good. The gay set felt uncomfortable, and a certain number experienced for the first time the most distinct aversion to confessing their misdeeds, as they ought to do at least once a year. As far as they were concerned, Ghisleri's verses expressed more truth than they had expected to find in them. Ghisleri himself was rarely troubled by any return of the qualm which had seized him before the door of the Church of Prayer and Death, and never again in the same degree. If he did not go on his way rejoicing, he at all events proceeded without remorse, and was wicked enough and selfish enough to congratulate himself upon the fact. Arden and Laura were perfectly happy. They, at least, had little cause to reproach themselves with any evil done in the world since they had met, and Arden had assuredly better reason for congratulating himself. It would indeed have been hard to find a happier man than he, and his happiness was perfectly legitimate and well founded. Whether it would prove durable was another matter, not so easy of decision. But the facts of the present were strong enough to crush all apprehension for the future. It was not strange that it should be so. He could not be said to have led a lonely life. His family were deeply attached to him, and from earliest boyhood everything had been done to alleviate the moral suffering inevitable in his case, and to make his material existence as bearable as possible, in spite of his terrible infirmities. But for the unvarying sympathy of many loving hearts, and the unrelaxing care of those who were sincerely devoted to him, Arden could hardly have hoped to attain to manhood at all, much less to the healthy moral growth which made him very unlike most men in his condition, or the comparative health of body whereby he was able to enjoy without danger much of what came in his way. He was in reality a much more social and sociable man than his friend Ghisleri, though he did not possess the same elements of success in society. He was, indeed, sensitive, as has been said, in spite of his denial of the fact, but he was not bitter about his great misfortune. Hitherto only one very painful thought had been connected with his deformity, beyond the constant sense of physical inferiority to other men. He had felt, and not without reason, that he must renounce the love of woman and the hope of wedded happiness, as being utterly beyond the bounds of all human possibility. And now, as though Heaven meant to compensate him to the full for the suffering inflicted and patiently borne, he had won, almost without an effort, the devoted love of the first woman for whom he had seriously cared. It was almost too good. Love had taken him, and had clothed him in a new humanity, as it seemed to him, straightening the feeble limbs, strengthening the poor ill-matched shoulders, broadening and deepening the sunken chest that never held breath enough before wherewith to speak out full words of passionate happiness. Love had dawned upon the dusk of his dark morning as the dawn of day upon a leaden sea, scattering unearthly blossoms in the path of the royal sun, breathing the sweet breeze of living joy upon the flat waters of unprofitable discontent. To those who watch the changing world with its manifold scenes and its innumerable actors, whose merest farce is ever and only the prologue to the tragedy which awaits all, there is nothing more wonderful, nothing more beautiful, nothing more touching--perhaps few things more sacred--than the awakening of a noble heart at love's first magic touch. The greater miracle of spring is done before our eyes each year, the sun shines and the grass grows, it rains and all things are refreshed, and the dead seed's heart breaks with the joy of coming life, bursts and shoots up to meet the warmth of the sunshine and be kissed by the west wind. But we do not see, or seeing, care for none of these things in the same measure in which we care for ourselves--and perhaps for others. We turn from the budding flower wearily enough at last, and we own that though it speak to us and touch us, its language is all but strange and its meaning wholly a mystery. Nature tells us little except by association with hearts that have beaten for ours, and then sometimes she tells us all. But the heart itself is the thing, the reality, the seat of all our thoughts and the stay of all our being. Selfishly we see what it does in ourselves, and in others we may see it and watch it without thought of self. It is asleep to-day, lethargic, heavy, dull, scarce moving in the breast that holds it. To-morrow it is awake, leaping, breaking, splendidly alive, the very source of action, the leader in life's fight, the conqueror of the whole opposing world, bursting to-day the chains of which only yesterday it could not lift a link, overthrowing now, with a touch, the barriers which once seemed so impenetrable and so strong, scorning the deathlike inaction of the past, tossing the mountains of impossibility before it as a child tosses pebbles by the sea. The miracle is done, and love has done it, as only love really can. But it must be the right sort of love and the heart it touches must be neither common nor unclean in the broad, true sense--such a heart, say, as Herbert Arden's, and such love as he felt for Laura, then and afterwards. "My life began on the evening when I first met you, dear," he said, as they sat by the open window on Easter Day, looking down at the flowers on the terrace behind the Palazzo Braccio. "You cannot make me believe that you loved me at first sight!" Laura laughed happily. "Why not?" he asked gravely. "No woman ever spoke to me as you did then, and I felt it. Is it strange? But it hurt me, too, at first, and I used to suffer during that first month." "Let that be the first and the last pain you ever have by me," answered the young girl. "I know you suffered, though I cannot even now tell why. Can you?" "Easily enough," said Arden, resting his chin upon his folded hands as they lay upon the white marble sill of the window, scarcely less white than they. The attitude was habitual to him when he was in that place. He could not rest his elbow on the slab as Laura could, for he was too short as he sat in his chair. "Easily?" she asked. "Then tell me." "Very easily. You can understand it too. When I knew that I loved you, I knew--I believed, at least, that another suffering had been found for me, as though I had not enough already. Of course, I was hopeless. How could I tell, how could any one guess that you--you of all women--with your beauty, your youth, your splendid woman's heart--could ever care for me? Oh, my darling--dear, dearest--is there no other word? If I could only tell you half!" "If you could tell me all, you would only have told half, love," said Laura. "There is mine to tell, too--and it is not a little." She bent down to him and softly kissed the beautiful pale forehead. The bright flush came to Arden's cheek and died away again in the happy silence that followed. But he raised his head, and his two hands took one of hers and gently covered it. "You must always be the same to me," he said, almost under his breath. "You have given me this new life--do not take it from me again--the old would be impossible now, not to be lived." "It need never be lived, it never shall be, if I live myself," answered Laura. "If only I could make you sure of that, I should be really happy. But you do not really doubt it, Herbert, do you?" "No, dear, to doubt you would be to doubt everything--though it is hard to believe that it can all be so good, and last." "It does not seem hard to me. Perhaps a woman believes everything more easily than a man does. She needs to believe more, I suppose, and so she finds it easy." "No woman ever needed to believe as much as I," answered Arden, thoughtfully. He still held her hand, and passed one of his own lightly over it, just pressing it now and then, as though to make sure that it was real. "Except yourself, dear one," he added a moment later, with a sharp, short breath, as though something hurt him. Laura was quick to understand him, and to feel all that he felt. She heard the little sigh and looked into his face and saw the expression of something like pain there. She laid her free hand upon his shoulder and gazed into his soft brown eyes. "Herbert dear," she said, "I know what you are thinking about. I was put into the world to make you forget those things, and, God willing, I will. You shall forget them as completely as I do, or if you remember them they shall be dear to you, in a way, as they are to me." A wonderful look of loving gratitude was in his face, and he pressed her fingers closely in his. "Tell me one thing, Laura--only this once and I will not speak of it again. When you touch me--when you lay your hand on my shoulder--when you kiss my forehead--tell me quite truly, dear, do you not feel anything like--like a sort of horror, a kind of repulsion, as if you were touching something--well--unpleasant to touch?" Poor Arden really did not know how much he was loved. Laura's deep eyes opened wide for an instant, as he spoke, then almost closed again, and her lips quivered. Then suddenly without warning the bright tears welled up and overflowed. She hid her face in her hands and sobbed bitterly. "Oh, Herbert," she cried, "that you should think it of me, when I love you as though my heart would break!" With a movement that would have cost him a painful effort at any other time, Arden rose and clasped her to him and tried to soothe her, caressing her thick black hair, and kissing her forehead tenderly, with a sort of passionate reverence that was his own, and speaking such words as came to his lips in the deep emotion of the moment. "Forgive me, darling, how could I hurt you? Laura--sweetheart Laura--beloved--do not cry--I know it now--I shall never think of it again. No, dear, no--there, say you have forgiven me!" "Forgiven you, dear--what is there to forgive?" She looked up with streaming eyes. "Everything, love--those tears of yours, first of all--" She dried her eyes and made him sit down again before she spoke, looking out of the window at the flowers. "It is not your fault," she said at last. "I have not shown you how I love yet--that is all. But I will, soon." "You have shown it already, dear--far more than you know." The world might have been surprised could it have seen the two together--the tipsy cripple, as it called Arden, and the girl who loved Francesco Savelli, as it unhesitatingly denominated Laura. It would have been a little surprised at first, and then, on mature reflection, it would have said that it was all a comedy, and that both acted it very well. Was it not natural that Arden should want a pretty wife and that Laura should take any husband that presented himself, since she could get no better? And in that case why should not each act a comedy to gain the other's hand? The world did that sort of thing every day, and what the world did Arden and Laura could very well afford to do; and after all, it was not of the slightest importance, since they were both going away, so why should one talk about them? The answer to that last question is so very hard to find that it may be left to those who put it. Donna Adele seemed satisfied, and that was the principal consideration for the present. "My poor sister!" she exclaimed to Ghisleri one day. "Step-sister," observed Pietro, correcting her. "Oh, we were always quite like real sisters," answered Adele. "Of course, my dear Ghisleri, I know what a splendid man Lord Herbert is, in everything but his unfortunate deformity. Any one can see that in his face, and besides, you would not have chosen him for your friend if he were not immensely superior to other men." Ghisleri puffed at his cigarette, looked at her, laughed, and puffed again. "But that one thing," continued Adele, "I cannot understand how she can overlook it, can you? I assure you if my father had told me to marry Lord Herbert, I should have done something quite desperate. I think I should almost have refused. I would almost rather have had to marry you." "Really?" Pietro showed some amusement. "Do you think you could have loved me in the end?" he inquired as though he were asking for information of the most commonplace kind. "Loved you?" Adele laughed rather unnaturally. "It would have been something definite, at all events," she added. "Either love or hate." "And you do not believe that your step-sister can ever love or hate Arden? There is more in him than you imagine." "I dare say, but not of the kind I should like. Besides, they say that though he never drinks quite too much, he is sometimes very excited and behaves and talks very strangely." "They say that, do they? Who are 'they'?" Ghisleri's eyes suddenly grew hard, and his jaw seemed to become extremely square. "They? Oh, many people, of course. The world says so. Do not be so dreadfully angry. What difference can it make to you? I never said that he drank too much." "If you should hear people talking about him in that way," said Ghisleri, quietly, "you might say that the story is not true, since there is really no truth in it at all. Arden is almost like an invalid. He drinks a glass of hock at breakfast and a glass or two of claret at dinner. I rarely see him touch champagne, and he never takes liqueurs. As for his being excited and behaving strangely, that is a pure fabrication. He is the quietest man I know." "It is really of no use to be so impressive," answered Adele. "It makes me uncomfortable." "That is almost as disagreeable a thing as to meet a looking-glass when one comes home at seven in the morning," observed Pietro. "Let us not talk about it." Donna Adele had gone as near as she dared to saying something unpleasant about Lord Herbert Arden, and Ghisleri had checked her with a wholesome shock. In his experience he had generally found that his words carried weight with them, for some reason which he did not even attempt to explain. If the truth were known, it would appear that Adele was at that time much inclined to like Ghisleri, and was willing to sacrifice even the pleasure of saying a sharp thing rather than offend him. The short conversation here reported took place in her boudoir late in the afternoon, and when Ghisleri went away his place was soon taken by the Marchesa di San Giacinto--a lady of sufficiently good heart, but of too ready tongue, with coal-black, sparkling eyes, and a dark complexion relieved by a bright and healthy colour--rather a contrast to the rest of the Montevarchi tribe. "Pietro Ghisleri has been here," observed Adele, in the course of conversation. "To meet Maddalena, I suppose," laughed the Marchesa, not meaning any harm. "No. They did it once, and I told Pietro that I would not have that sort of thing in my house," said Adele, with dignity. As a matter of fact, she had not dared to say a word to Ghisleri on the subject, but he and the Contessa had decided that Adele's drawing-room was not a safe place for meeting, and it was quite true that they had carefully avoided finding themselves there together ever since. But Adele was well aware that Flavia San Giacinto and Ghisleri were by no means intimate, and were not likely to exchange confidences; and though the Marchesa was ready enough at repeating harmless tales in the world, she was reticent with her husband, whom she really loved, and whose good opinion she valued. "Was he amusing?" asked Flavia. "He sometimes is." "He was not to-day, but the conversation was. You know how intimate he is with Laura's little lord?" "Of course! What did he say?" "And you remember the story about the champagne at the Gerano ball, when he carried Arden out of the room and put him to bed?" "Perfectly," answered the Marchesa, with a smile. "Yes. Well, I pressed him very hard to-day, to find out what the little man's habits really are. You see he is to be of the family, and we must really find out. My dear, it is quite dreadful! He says positively that Arden never touches liqueurs, but when I drove him to it, he had to admit that he drinks all sorts of wines--Rhine wine, claret, burgundy, champagne--everything! It is no wonder that it goes to his head, poor little fellow. But I am sorry for Laura." "After all," said Flavia, "one cannot blame him much, if he tries to be a little gay. He must suffer terribly." "Oh, no, one cannot blame him," assented Adele. Flavia San Giacinto was somewhat amused, knowing, as she did, that Adele had herself originated the tale about Lord Herbert. And late that evening the temptation to repeat what she had heard became too strong for her. She told it all in the strictest confidence to her dearest friend, Donna Maria Boccapaduli. But Donna Maria was a little absent-minded at the moment, her eldest boy having got a cold which threatened to turn into whooping cough, and her husband having written to her from the country, asking her to come down the next day and give her advice about some necessary repairs in the castle. On the following afternoon--it was still during Lent--she met the Contessa dell' Armi on the steps of a church after hearing a sermon. The Contessa was very pale and looked as though she had been crying. "Only think, my dear," began Donna Maria. "It is quite true that Lord Herbert drinks. Adele knows all about it." "Does she?" asked the Contessa, indifferently enough. "How did she find it out?" "Ghisleri told her ever so many stories about it yesterday afternoon--in the strictest confidence, you know." "Indeed! I did not think that Signor Ghisleri was the sort of man who gossiped about his friends. Good-bye, dear. I shall see more of you when Lent is over." Thereupon the Contessa got into the carriage with rather an odd expression on her face. As she drove away alone, she bit her lip, and looked as though she were trying to keep back certain tears that rose in her eyes. CHAPTER V. On the Saturday succeeding Easter, Lord Herbert Arden and Laura Carlyon were married. The ceremony was conducted, as they both desired, very quietly and unostentatiously, as was becoming for a young couple who must live economically. Few persons were asked to be present at the wedding service, and among them was Pietro Ghisleri. He had seen English weddings before, but he looked on with some curiosity and with rather mixed feelings of satisfaction and regret. He thought of his own life as he stood there, and for one moment he sincerely wished that he were only awaiting his turn to be dealt with as Arden was, to be taken by the hand, joined to the woman he loved, and turned out upon the world a well-behaved, proper, married man. The next moment he smiled faintly and rather bitterly. Marriage had not been instituted for men like him, thought Ghisleri. If it had been, it would hardly have been so successful an institution as it has proved itself. As for the young couple, he wished them well. Arden was almost the only man for whom he felt any attachment, and he had the most sincere admiration for Laura. Without feeling anything in the least resembling affection for the lovely English girl, he was conscious that he thought of her very often. Her eyes, which he called holy, and saintly, and sweet, and dark in his rough rhymed impressions of the day, haunted him by night, like the eyes of a sad angel following him in his unblest wanderings through life. Of love for her, he felt not the slightest thrill. His pulse never quickened when she came, nor was he at all depressed by her departure. If he had cared for her in the very least, it must have caused him some little pain to see her married to another before his eyes. Instead, the only passing regret he felt, was that he could not himself stand in some such position as Arden, but by another woman's side. To that other he gave all, as he honestly believed, which he had to give. It was long, too, since the very possibility of loving a young girl had crossed his mind, and since his early youth there had not been anything approaching to the reality of such a love in his life. And yet he knew that he was in some degree under Laura's influence, and in a way in which he was assuredly not under that of the Contessa dell' Armi. The consciousness of this fact annoyed him. There was a good deal of a certain sort of loyalty in his nature, bad as he believed himself to be, and bad as many honest and good people who read this history will undoubtedly say that he was. If such badness could be justified or even excused, it would not be hard to find some reasonable excuses for him, and after all he was probably not worse than a hundred others to be found in the society of every great city. He thought he was worse, sometimes, as he had told Arden, because he himself also thought that he was more fully aware than most men of what he was doing and of the consequences of his deeds. It is most likely, considering his character, that at that time Laura Carlyon represented to him a species of ideal such as he could admire with all his heart at a distance, and so nearly coinciding with his own as to be very often in his thoughts in the place of the one he had so long ago contracted for himself. All this sounds very complicated, while the facts in the case were broadly plain. He appreciated Laura in the highest degree, and did not love her at all. He was sincerely glad that his best if not his only intimate friend should marry her, and when he bid them good-bye he did not feel the smallest twinge of regret except as at a temporary parting from two persons whom he liked. "You must come and stop with us this summer," said Arden, looking up at him with flushed and happy face. "You know how glad my brother always is to see you. Besides, you are an old friend of my wife's, if any further reasons are necessary. She wants you to come too." "Of course I do," said Laura, promptly, as she held out her hand. Strange to say, she had felt far less of that unpleasant, half-timid, half-pained dislike for Ghisleri, since she had grown used to the idea of being Herbert Arden's wife. And now that her name was really changed, and she was forever bound to her husband, she felt it not at all. It was strange, considering the circumstances, that she should have the certainty that Arden could and would protect her, come what might. The poor little shrunken frame certainly did not suggest the manly strength to shield a woman in danger, which every woman loves to feel. The thin, white hand would have been but a bundle of threads in Ghisleri's strong grip. And yet Laura Arden, as she now was to be called, knew that she would trust her husband to take her part and win against a stronger and a worse man than Ghisleri, should she ever be in need; and, what is more, Ghisleri saw that she did, and his admiration rose still higher. There must be something magnificent in a woman who could so wholly forget such outward frailness and deformity in the man she loved, as to forget also that sometimes in life a man's hand may need that same common brute strength, just to match it against another's, for a woman's dear sake. Such love as that, thought Pietro, must be supremely noble, unselfish, and lasting. Being founded upon no outward illusion, there was no reason why anything should undermine it, nor why the foundation itself should ever crumble away. That was his view, and, on the whole, it was not an unjust one. For the facts were true. If, when they drove away to the station, Herbert Arden had suddenly, by magic, been clothed in the colossal frame and iron strength of San Giacinto himself, Laura would have felt no safer nor more perfectly shielded and guarded from earthly harm than she really did while she was pulling up the window lest her husband should catch cold even in the mild April air, and lovingly arranging the heavy silk scarf about his neck. They went southward by common consent, as indeed they did everything. They would go to England later in the year, in June perhaps, when it was warmer. In the meanwhile Arden's brother had offered them his yacht, and they could cruise for a month in the Mediterranean, almost choosing their own climate day by day, and wholly independent of all the manifold annoyances, inconveniences, and positive sufferings which beset the path of young married couples who have not yachts at their disposal. What both most desired was to be alone together, to have enough of each other at last, free from the tiresome daily little crowd of social spectators, and this they could nowhere accomplish so pleasantly and completely as in the luxuriously fitted vessel lent them by Arden's brother. The latter had not seen fit to come to the wedding, but Arden had in no way taken it amiss, though the world had found plenty to say on the subject, and not by any means to Arden's credit. The said brother was a decidedly eccentric person of enormous wealth, who hated anything at all resembling publicity or public ceremony, and was, moreover, a very bad correspondent. "I am very glad to hear of your engagement, my dear old brother," he wrote. "They say Miss Carlyon is good and beautiful. I have no doubt she is, though I do not at this moment recollect knowing any woman who was both. I have sent the yacht to Naples for you, if you care for a cruise. Keep her as long as you like, and telegraph if you want her sent anywhere else--Nice, for instance, or Venice. Ask your wife to wear the pearls by way of making acquaintance at second hand. They are what I could find. I send a man with them, as they might get lost. Now good-bye, dear boy, enjoy yourself and come to us as soon as you can. Yours ever, HARRY. "P.S. As it is often such a bore to draw money in those funny Italian towns, I enclose a few circular notes which may be useful. Bess and the children are all well and send love and lots of congratulations. I suppose you have written to Uncle Herbert." The few circular notes thus casually alluded to amounted to two thousand pounds, and it would be unsafe to speculate on the value of the pearls which the messenger brought on his person and delivered safely into Arden's hands. "Harry" was not over-lavish, except where his brother was concerned, and always inwardly regretted that Herbert needed so little and insisted upon living within his modest income. To "give things to Herbert" was one of the few real pleasures he extracted from his great fortune. On the present occasion Arden was glad to accept the money, for he had the very most vague notions of the expense of married life, and had anticipated real economy during his honeymoon, which, of course, could not be quite as pleasant to Laura as having plenty of money to spend. That last little difficulty being removed, he felt that he could give himself up light-hearted to the idyl of perfect love which Laura had brought into his existence. And forthwith the idyl began, delicate, gentle, lovely as love's life can be where soul and heart are in harmony, heart to soul, while purity teaches innocence what it is to be man and wife. The harmony was real. Laura and her husband had much in common, intellectually and morally. Not, indeed, that she made any pretence to superior intelligence or extended culture. Even had she possessed very remarkable capabilities, the surroundings in which she had been brought up had not been of a nature to develop them beyond the average. But she was not especially gifted, except perhaps in having a good memory and a somewhat unusually sound judgment in most matters. Yet she was not without taste, and such as she had was not only both healthy and refined, but coincided to an extraordinary degree with Arden's own. Both liked the same authors, the same general kind of art, the same things in nature, and very generally the same people. Both were perhaps at that time somewhat morbidly inclined to a sort of semi-transcendentalism, Arden by nature and circumstances, and Laura by attraction. It must not be supposed that they went to any lengths in that direction. They did not speculate on spiritual marriage, nor did they agree with that famous philosopher who at the last was sure that the earth was turning into a bun and the sea into lemonade in order that man might eat, drink, and be happy without effort. They did not pursue improbable theories nor offer subtle perfumes before the altar of impossibility. But they felt a certain almost unnatural indifference to the concrete world, and lived in a world of ideas, thoughts, and affections which were quite their own. It was impossible to predict whether such an existence would last, or whether it would ultimately change into one more evidently stable, if also less removed from earth. For the present, at least, both were indescribably happy. The question how far it is possible for one of two loving beings to forget and grow unconscious of very great physical defect in the other is in itself interesting as showing how far, in a well-organised nature, the immaterial can get the better of grosser things. To explain what Laura felt would be to explain the deepest impulses of humanity, and those may attempt it who feel themselves equal to the task and are attracted by it. The fact, as such, is undeniable. On the whole, too, it may be said that there is no great reason why a very refined intelligence should not overlook material considerations as completely as in the majority of cases the more coarsely planned consciousness forgets the existence of intellectual and moral deformity. Such extreme refinement may not be durable. There is a refinement of nature, inborn, delicate, and sensitive, and there is a refinement which depends for its existence upon youth and innocence. Laura possessed all the latter, and something of the former as well. She would have been shocked and deeply wounded had she been told that she had married Herbert Arden out of pity, and yet pity had undeniably given the first impulse to her love. The circumstances, too, were favourable for its growth. Neither had felt much regret in leaving Rome. Apart from her affection for her mother, Laura had never found much that was congenial in the city in which she had been brought up as though it had been her birthplace. As for Arden himself, he was too much accustomed to travelling from place to place to prefer one city to another in any great degree. So the two were alone together and desired nothing beyond what they had, which, perhaps, is the ideal condition for lovers. To most people, however, the honeymoon is a terrible trial--probably because most young couples are not very desperately in love with each other. They wander aimlessly about in all directions, a sort of joint sacrifice, perpetually tortured and daily offered up on the altar of the diabolical courier, crushed beneath the ubiquitous Juggernaut hotel-keeper, bound continually in new and arid places to be torn by the vulture guide, and ultimately sent home more or less penniless, quite temperless, and perhaps permanently disgusted with one another and with married life. And yet the absurd farce is kept up, in ninety and nine cases out of a hundred, because custom sanctions it--as though the sanction of custom were necessary when two people wish to be harmlessly happy in their own way. But with the Ardens it was quite different. They were quite beyond the regions of the guide, the courier, and the hotel-keeper, and they loved each other so much that neither ever irritated the other, a condition of existence probably closely resembling that of the saints in paradise. Nothing could exceed Laura's watchfulness and care where Arden's health was concerned, and, fortunately for her, he was not one of those men who resent being constantly taken care of. Indeed, poor man, he needed all she gave him in that way, for the winter season with its unusual gaiety and the necessary exposure to a certain amount of night air in all weathers, had severely tried his constitution. But now the sea and the southern sun strengthened him, and sometimes there was even something like healthy colour in his face. Happiness, too, is said to be a good medicine, better perhaps than any in the world, and Arden had his share of it, and a most abundant share. Never, he said to himself, had a man been so blessed as he, nor at a time when he so little expected blessings, having made up his mind that all he could hope for had already been given him in this world. He almost forgot that he was a cripple, as he sat in his deep cane chair by Laura's side, looking from her to the dancing light on the water, and from the blue water to her dark eyes again. He seemed to go every day through a round of beauty, from one delicious vision to another, returning between each to that one of all others which he loved best, and knew to be all his own. And those same eyes of Laura's grew less sad than they had been in the beginning. The sunlight got into them, as into dark jewels, and made stars of light about their central depths. The soft wind blew on her clear white cheek and lent her natural, healthy pallor a warmth it had not before. Her very step grew more elastic, and the firm, well-shaped hands seemed more than ever strong. Almost beautiful before, there were moments when she was quite beautiful indeed, as innocent girlhood changed to pure womanhood in the sweet southern air. Laura read aloud a great deal in the intervals of conversation, and the days passed almost too quickly. The vessel was a large steam-yacht, of the modern type, comfortable in the extreme, and capable of accommodating a large party--for two persons it was almost palatial. Whatever the weather, cool or hot, rainy or dry, rough or fair, there was always a place where they could install themselves in the morning or the afternoon, and talk and read to their hearts' content. They had no fixed plan either in their wanderings, but went where their fancy took them, to Palermo, to Messina, to Syracuse. They sat together in the vast ruined theatre above magic Taormina, and gazed on the sunlit sea and Etna's snowy crest. They went to Malta, they drove, side by side, through the lovely gardens of Corfu. They ran in fair weather up to the lagoons of Venice, and wandered in a gondola through the wide canals and narrow water lanes of the most beautiful city in the world. Then down the long Adriatic again, past Zara and Xanthe, round Matapan to the Piræus--then, when they had had their fill of Athens, away by one long run to Sicily again, to Algiers next, and then to Barcelona and the Spanish coast, homeward bound at last, towards England. For the weather was growing warm now, and Laura noticed that she saw less often in Arden's face the colour she had watched with such pleasure during the first weeks. There was no cause for anxiety, she thought, but it was possible that he needed always an even temperature, neither cold nor hot, and it was time to reach England, before the July sun had scorched the southern land. And throughout all this quiet time the song of happiness was ever in their ears. The world they cared so little for, and which had taken the trouble to say such disagreeable things about them, was left infinitely far behind in their new life. From time to time letters reached Laura from Rome, and Arden had one from Ghisleri, containing little detailed news, but full of angry threats at a kind of general undefined enemy, which might be humanity taken all together, or might be some one particular person whom the writer had in his mind. Pietro generally wrote in that way. Rarely, indeed, did he mention people by name, and then only when he had something to say to their credit. It was a part of what Arden called his absurd reticence, and which, absurd or not, was certainly exaggerated. Possibly Ghisleri had, at some time in his youth, experienced the extremely unpleasant consequences of being indiscreet, and had promised himself not to succumb to that form of weakness again. At all events, he found that though Arden sometimes laughed at him, he never got into trouble through being discreet, and other people were not disposed to be merry at his expense. It was a long time since he had quarrelled with any one, and, having turned peaceable, the world promptly accused him of cynicism and indifference, an accusation which did not annoy him at all. Indeed, it was rather convenient than otherwise, that people should think of him as they did, since the result was that less was expected of him than of most people. Laura's mother wrote loving letters, full of simple household news, and of solicitude for her daughter and Arden, asking many questions as to their plans for the future, and continually expressing the hope that they would spend the coming winter in Rome. "What do you think of it?" Laura asked one day, as they sat together on deck in the sunshine. "That is one of those things which you must decide, dear," answered Arden. "Of course I suppose I ought to spend the winter in the south as usual. I do not believe I could stand England in December and January. There are lots of delightful southern places where we could stay a few months, besides Rome--but then, in Rome you will have your mother. That makes a great difference." "You are first now, love," said Laura. "You come before my mother--much as I love her." "Darling--how good you are!" He took her hand and kissed it softly. "Not half as good as I ought to be. But there are two things to be considered, dear. There is the climate, as you say, and then there is a social question we have never talked about--it seems so far away now. In the first place, does Rome really suit you? Are you always well there, as you were last winter?" "Oh, yes. I have always been perfectly well in Rome, and I like the place immensely, besides." "And you have your friend, Signor Ghisleri, too. That is another point. On the other hand, I do not think either of us would ever wish to stay a whole winter with my mother and step-father. We must live somewhere by ourselves, and we shall have to live very quietly." "The more quietly the better. Is that the social question, darling?" "No," answered Laura, "but it is connected with it. There is something I never spoke of. Did it ever strike you, when you first knew me, that somehow I was not so much liked as other girls in society? Do not think I ask the question out of any sort of vanity. I want to know what your impression was. Tell me quite frankly, will you?" "Of course I will. It did strike me--I never knew whether you were aware of it. I even tried to find out the reason of it, and to some extent I believe I did." "Did you?" asked Laura, with sudden interest. "I wish I knew--I have so often thought about it all." Arden laughed, leaning back in his chair and looking at her face. "It is the most absurd story I ever heard," he said. "I ought not even to say I heard it, for I guessed it from little things that happened. People think that your step-sister's husband, Savelli, is in love with you, and I suppose they imagine that you have something to do with it--encouraged him, and that sort of thing. I am quite sure that Donna Adele--am I to call her Adele now?--is jealous, for I have witnessed the manifestation with my own eyes. It is all too utterly ridiculous, but as you are quite English you were at a disadvantage, and were not as popular as you ought to have been." He laughed again, and this time Laura joined in his laughter. "Is that it?" she cried. "Poor Francesco! To think of any one suspecting that he could be in love with me, when he is so perfectly happy with his wife! And he is always so nice, and talks to me more than any one. Whenever I am stranded at a party, he comes and takes care of me." "That is probably the origin of the gossip," observed Arden, still smiling. "But I do not think we shall have any nonsense of that sort now. Do you think your mother understood it all?" "No--and I believe she was far less conscious that there was anything wrong, than I was. Poor Francesco! I cannot help laughing." Laura was sincerely amused by the tale, as she well might be, and as Pietro Ghisleri would have been, had he heard it. The story Arden had put together out of the evidence he had was, as a matter of fact, the very converse of the one actually circulated. "I do not see," said he, "why this bit of fantastic gossip need be taken into consideration, when we are talking of our winter in Rome. What difference can it possibly make?" "For you, dear--and a little for me, too. Neither of us would care to go back to a society where there was anything to make us disliked. As you say, there are plenty of other places, and as for my mother, she could come and see us, and stop a little while, and I am sure she would if we asked her." "Do you mean to say, Laura, that you seriously believe our position would not be everything it ought to be?" asked Arden, in some surprise. "Oh, no; it would be all right, of course. Only we might not be exactly the centre of the gay set." "Which neither of us care to be in the least." "Not in the least. We are our own set, you and I--are we not?" Laura thought of what Arden had told her for a long time afterwards, and tried to explain to herself by his theory all the infinitesimal details which had formerly shown her that she was not a universal favourite. But the story did not cover all the ground. Of one thing, however, she became almost certain--Adele was her enemy, for some reason or other, and was a person to beware of, should Laura and her husband return to Rome. It had taken her long to form this conviction, but being once formed it promised to be durable, as her convictions generally were. It was with sincere regret that the couple left the yacht at last. They had grown to look upon it almost as a permanent home, and to wish that it might be so altogether. Nevertheless Laura could not but see that Arden's health improved again as they reached a cooler climate and travelled northward towards his brother's home. The season was not yet over in London, but "Harry" did not like London much, and did not like the season there at all. What the Marchioness thought about it no one knows to this day, but she appeared to resign herself with a good grace to the life her husband chose to lead. The latter welcomed his brother and Laura in his own fashion, with an odd mixture of cordiality and stiffness, the latter only superficial, the former thoroughly genuine and heartfelt, as Arden explained to his wife without delay. Existence in an English country house was quite new to her, and but for the abominable weather for which that year remained famous, she would at first have enjoyed it very much. The rain, however, seemed inexhaustible. Day after day it poured, night after night the heavy mists rose from park, and woodland, and meadow, and moor. It seemed as though the sun would never shine again. Arden never grew weary of those long days spent with Laura, nor indeed was she ever tired of being with the man she loved. But being young and strong, she would gladly have breathed the bright air again, while he, on his part, lost appetite, caught cold continually, and grew daily paler and more languid. Little by little Laura became anxious about him and her care redoubled. He had never looked as he looked now, even when most worn and wearied out with the life of society he had led in Rome before his marriage. His face was growing thin, almost to emaciation, and his hands were transparent. Laura made up her mind that something must be done at once. It was clear that he longed for the south again, and it was probable that nothing else could restore him to comparative strength. "Let us go away, Herbert," she said one day. "You are not looking well, and I believe we shall never see the sun again unless we go to the south." "No," answered Arden, "I am not well. I shall be all right again as soon as we get to Rome." He seemed to take it for granted that Rome should be their destination, and on the whole Laura was glad of it. She would be glad to see her mother, too, after so many months of separation. So it was decided, and before long they were once more on their way. It was not an easy journey for either of them. Arden was now decidedly out of health, and needed much care at all times, while Laura herself was so nervous and anxious about him that she often felt her hand tremble violently when she smoothed his cushion in the railway carriage, or poured him out something to drink. She would not hear of being helped, when her husband's man, who had been with him since his boyhood, privately entreated her to take a nurse, and to give herself rest from time to time, especially during the journey. "We must not let his lordship know how ill he is, Donald," she answered gently. "You must be very careful about that, too, when you are alone with him. He will be quite well again in Rome," she added hopefully. Donald shook his head wisely, and refrained from further expostulation. He had discovered that his new mistress did not easily change her mind upon any subject, and never changed it at all when she thought she was right in regard to Lord Herbert's health. And in due time they reached the end of their journey, and took up their quarters in the old house known as the Tempietto, which stands just where the Via Gregoriana and the Via Sistina end together in the open square of the Trinità de' Monti--a quarter and a house dear to English people since the first invasion of foreigners, but by no means liked or considered especially healthy by the Romans. CHAPTER VI. Meanwhile, the lives of some of the other persons concerned in this history were less idyllic, and very probably more satisfactory to themselves. Having survived the season, and having borne the severe Lenten mortification implied in not capering nightly to the tune of two or three fiddles and a piano, the world arose after Easter like a giant refreshed with wine, and enjoyed a final fling before breaking up for the summer. Having danced with the windows shut, it now danced with the windows open, and found the change delightful, as indeed it is. Instead of sitting in corners together, the couples who had anything to say to one another now stood or sat in the deep embrasures, glancing up at the starlit sky to see whether the dawn were yet breaking. As for the rest, there was little change at all. The little Vicomte de Bompierre had transferred his attentions from the Marchesa di San Giacinto to Donna Maria Boccapaduli, and the Marchesa, who was in love with her husband, did not seem to care at all, but remained on the best of terms with Donna Maria, to the latter's infinite satisfaction. The Contessa dell' Armi attracted more attention because some one had started the report that dell' Armi himself was in a state of jealousy bordering upon delirium, that he had repeatedly struck her, and that he spent the few hours he could spare from this unwholesome exercise and from his parliamentary duties in tearing out his hair by the handful. The picture of dell' Armi evoked by these stories was striking, dramatic, and somewhat novel, so that every one was delighted. As a matter of fact, the Count did not care a straw for his wife, rarely saw her at all, and then only to discuss the weather. He had married her in order that her fortune might help him in his political career, he had got what he wanted, and he was supremely indifferent to the rest. The sad part of the matter was--if any one had known the truth--that poor Maddalena dell' Armi had been married out of a convent, and had then and there fallen madly in love with him, her own husband. He had resented her excessive affection, as it interfered with his occupations and amusements, and after an interval of five years, during which the unhappy young wife shed endless tears and suffered intensely, he had the satisfaction of seeing that she no longer loved him in the least, and rather avoided him than otherwise. In taking a fancy to Pietro Ghisleri he thought she had shown considerable discrimination, since every one knew that Ghisleri was a very discreet man. The amazing cynicism of his view altogether escaped him. He was occupied in politics. If he had observed it, he would have undoubtedly laughed as heartily as he did when a lady on the outskirts of society told him that he was supposed to be a jealous husband. But the rest of the world watched Maddalena and Pietro with great interest. They had quarrelled--or they had made it up--they had not danced together during one whole evening--they had danced a waltz and then a quadrille, the one after the other--Maddalena had been crying--by a coincidence, Ghisleri looked unusually strong and well--Pietro, again, was looking somewhat haggard and weary, and the Contessa met the world that evening with a stony stare. There was endless matter for speculation, and accordingly the world speculated without end, and, as usual, to no purpose. Ghisleri was absolutely reticent, and Maddalena was a very proud woman, who, in spite of her past sufferings, did her best not to let any one suspect that she and her husband were on bad terms. She was also unhappy in the present about a very different matter, concerning which she was not inclined to speak with any one. Donna Adele's last decided attempt to defame Lord Herbert Arden had, to a certain extent, been successful, but it had also produced another result of which Adele did not know, but which would have given her even greater satisfaction. It had almost caused a quarrel between Ghisleri and the Contessa. It will be remembered that the latter heard the story from Donna Maria Boccapaduli on the steps of a church in Holy Week. She was at the time more unhappy than usual. Something had touched the finer chords of her nature, and she felt a sort of horror of herself and of the life she was leading--very genuine in its way, and intensely painful. Donna Maria's story was revolting to her, for just then everything and everybody seemed to be false--even Ghisleri. She did not even stop, as she would have done at any other time, to weigh the value of the story, and to ask herself whether it were likely that he could thus deliberately betray his friend, and especially to Adele Savelli whom she believed he disliked. Even with her he was reticent, and she had never quite assured herself of his opinion concerning Adele, but she had watched him narrowly and had drawn her own conclusions. And now, if he had betrayed the man whom he called his friend, he must be capable of betraying the woman he loved. "Is it true that you have been talking to Donna Adele Savelli about your friend Arden?" she asked, when they met later on the same afternoon. "Quite true," answered Ghisleri, indifferently. "We were talking about him yesterday afternoon." "Do you mind telling me what you said?" asked the Contessa, her eyes hardening and her whole face growing scornful. "I have not the least objection," said Ghisleri, coldly. He at once gave her all the details of the conversation as far as he could remember them; his memory was accurate in such matters and he scarcely omitted a word. "Am I to believe you or her?" asked the Contessa when she had listened to the end. "As I am speaking the truth, it might be as well to believe me." "And how am I to know that you are speaking the truth, now or at any other time? You would not change colour, nor look at me less frankly, if you were telling me the greatest falsehood imaginable. Why should I believe you?" "I am sure I do not know," answered Ghisleri. "I would only like to be sure whether, as a general rule, you mean to believe me in future, or not. If you do not, I need not say anything, I suppose. Conversation would be singularly simplified." "You would not be so angry with me now, if your story were true," said the Contessa, with a forced laugh. "A man may reasonably be annoyed at being called a liar even by a lady," retorted Ghisleri. "And you do not take the least trouble to defend yourself--" "Not the least. Why should you believe my defence any more than my plain statement? You have rather a logical mind--you ought to see that." "Are you trying to quarrel with me? You will succeed if you go on in this way." "No. I am doing my best to answer your questions. I should be very sorry to quarrel with you. You know it. Or are you going to doubt that too?" "From the tone in which you say it, and from the way you act, I am inclined to." "You are in a very unbelieving humour to-day." "I have reason to be." "Am I the cause?" "Yes." The Contessa was not quite sure why she said it, but for the moment she felt that it was true, as perhaps it was in an indirect way. "Do you know that although you have asked me a great many questions which I have answered as well as I could, you have not told me what it is I am accused of saying?" "You are accused of saying," answered the Contessa, looking straight into his eyes, "that your friend Lord Herbert Arden is in the habit of taking too much wine. Is that so nice a thing to have said?" Ghisleri's face darkened, and the blood throbbed in his temples. "As I have told you precisely what I really said," he replied, "I shall say nothing more. Only this--if you have any sense of justice left, which I begin to doubt, you will ask San Giacinto whether he thinks it probable that I would say such a thing. That is all. I suppose you will believe him." "I do not think I believe any one. Besides, as you say, he can only testify to your character, and say that the thing is improbable. Of course he would do that. Men always defend each other against women." "He can tell you something more if he chooses," answered Ghisleri. "If he chooses!" The Contessa's scornful expression returned. "If he tells me nothing you will remind me of that word, and say that he did not choose. How you always arrange everything beforehand to leave yourself a way of escape." "I am sorry you should think so," said Ghisleri, gravely. "I am sorry that I have to think so. It does not increase my self-respect, nor my vanity in my judgment." They parted on very bad terms that day, and two or three days more passed before they saw each other again. The Contessa had almost made up her mind that she would not speak to San Giacinto at all, and Ghisleri began to think that she wished to break with him permanently. Far more sensitive than any one supposed, he had been deeply wounded by her words and tone, so deeply indeed that he scarcely wished to meet her for the present. The world did not fail to see the coldness that had come between them, and laughed heartily over it. The Contessa, said the world, thought that the way to keep Ghisleri was to be cold to him and encourage Pietrasanta, but she did not know dear Ghisleri, who did not care in the very least, who had not a particle of sensitiveness in him, and had never really loved any one but the beautiful Princess Corleone who died of fever in Naples five years ago, and of whom he never spoke. But as chance would have it, the Contessa found herself talking to San Giacinto one evening, when she was feeling very lonely and unhappy, and her half-formed resolution broke down as suddenly as it had presented itself. The giant looked at her keenly for a moment, bent his heavy black brows, and then told her the story of what had taken place at the club. He, who saw most things, and talked little of them, noted the gradual change in her face, and how the light came back to it while he was speaking. She understood that the man whom she had accused of betraying his friend had faced a roomful of men in his defence, and on the very ground now under discussion, and she repented of what she had done. Then she swore vengeance on Adele Savelli. The world saw that a reconciliation had taken place, and concluded that Maddalena dell' Armi had abandoned her foolish plan of trying to attract Ghisleri by being cold to him. Ghisleri, indeed! As though he cared! "But I have no particular wish to be revenged on Donna Adele," objected Ghisleri, when the Contessa spoke to him on the subject. "That sort of thing is a disease of the brain. There are people who cannot see things as they are. She is one of them." "How indifferent you are!" sighed Maddalena. "I wonder whether you were always so." "Not always," answered Pietro, thoughtfully. In due time the short Easter season was over, the foreigners departed, and many of the Romans followed their example, especially those whose country places were within easy reach of the city, by carriage or by rail. The Contessa went to pay her regular annual visit at her father's, near Florence,--her mother had long been dead,--and Ghisleri remained in Rome, unable to make up his mind what to do. Something seemed to bind him to the town this year, and though he went away for a day or two from time to time, he always came back very soon. Even his damaged old castle did not attract him as it usually did, though he had begun to restore it a little during the last few years, a little at a time, as his modest fortune allowed. There was an odd sort of foresight in his character. He laughed at the idea of being married, and yet he had a presentiment that he would some day change his mind and take a wife. In case that should ever happen, Torre de' Ghisleri would be at once a beautiful and an economical retreat for the summer months. Though he had a reputation for extravagance and for living always a little beyond his income, he was in reality increasing his property. He was constantly buying small bits of land in the neighbourhood of his castle, with a vague idea that he might ultimately get the old estate together again. He generally bought on mortgage, binding himself to pay at a certain date, and as he was a very honourable man in all financial transactions, he invariably paid, though sometimes at considerable sacrifice. He said to himself that unless he were bound he would inevitably throw away the little money he had to spare. It was a curiously practical trait in such an unruly and almost lawless character, but he did such things when he could, and then thought no more about them until a fresh opportunity presented itself. He was a man whose life and whole power of interest in life were almost constantly absorbed by the two or three persons to whom he was sincerely attached, a fact never realised by those who knew him--a passionate man at heart, and one who despised himself for many reasons--a man who would have wished to be a Launcelot in fidelity, a Galahad in cleanness of heart, an Arthur for justice and frankness, but who was indeed terribly far from resembling any of the three. A man liable to most human weaknesses, but having just enough of something better to make him hate weakness in himself and understand it in others without condemning it too harshly in them. He had the wish to overcome it in his own character and life, but when the victory looked too easy it did not tempt him, for his vanity was of the kind which is only satisfied with winning hard fights, and rarely roused except by the prospect of them, while quite indifferent to small success of any kind--either for good or evil. And this year, for some reason which he did not attempt to explain to himself, he lingered on in Rome, living a lonely life, avoiding the club where many of his acquaintances still congregated, taking his meals irregularly at garden restaurants, and spending most of his evenings in wandering about Rome by himself. The old places attracted him strongly. Many associations clung to the shady streets, the huge old palaces, and the dusky churches. Ten years of such a life as he had led had left many traces behind them, many sensitive spots in his complicated nature which inanimate things had power to touch keenly and thrill again with pain or pleasure. There was much that was sad, indeed, in these recollections, but there were also many memories dear and tender and almost free from the sting of self-reproach. He was not one to crave excitement for its own sake, nor to miss it when it was past. It often chanced, indeed, that he could find the few things that pleased him, the few people he liked, in the midst of the world's noisiest fair, but he would always have preferred to be alone with them, to meet with them when he was quite sure of being altogether himself and not the overwrought, nervous being which he came to be during the rush of the season, in spite of his undeniable physical strength. Those who need excitement most are either those who have never lived in it, or those unhappily morbid beings who cannot live without it, because by force of habit it has become the only atmosphere which their lungs can breathe and in which they can act more or less normally. Ghisleri followed the Ardens in imagination as they pursued their wedding trip. He rarely knew exactly where they were, but he was familiar with all the places they were visiting, and he liked to fancy them enjoying together all there was to be seen and done. Had he not himself still been young, he would almost have fancied that he felt a fatherly interest in their doings. Then he heard that they were in England, and at last, when he had made up his mind to go away for a month or two, he learned that Arden was in bad health. He was distressed by the news, and wished he could see his old friend, if only for a day, to judge for himself of his condition. But that was impossible at present. He was not always free to dispose of his time as he pleased, and as he had been during the past months. Moreover, the world was not quite just when it said that Ghisleri did not "care," as it expressed the state of mind it attributed to him. Between going to England, and going to Vallombrosa, near Florence, he did not hesitate a moment. So the autumn came round again, and when he returned to his lodging in Rome, he found that the Ardens were already installed in the Tempietto. The Savelli couple were still out of town at the family castle in the Sabines, but the Prince and Princess of Gerano had come back. Ghisleri found both Laura and Arden greatly changed. The latter's appearance shocked him especially, and he felt almost from the first that his friend was doomed. The man who was not supposed to care spent at least one sleepless night, turning over in his mind the various possibilities of life and death. On the following morning at twelve o'clock, he climbed the steps to the Trinità de' Monti, and asked to see Lady Herbert Arden alone, a request which was easily granted, as her husband now rarely rose until one, and then only for a few hours. Laura's eyes looked preternaturally large and deep--almost sunken, Ghisleri thought--and she had grown thin, and even paler than she usually was when in good health. He took the seat she pointed to, by the open fire, and stared into the flames absently for some seconds. It was a rather dreary morning early in November, and the air in the streets was raw and damp. At last he looked up. "You are anxious about your husband, Lady Herbert?" he said. Laura sighed, and opened her white hands to the warmth, as she sat on the other side of the fireplace. But she said nothing. She could not deny what he had told her, for she was in mortal anxiety by day and night. "It is very natural," said Ghisleri, trying to speak more cheerfully. "But I do not think there is any very serious reason for anticipating danger. I have known Arden many years, and I have often known him to be ill before now." Laura glanced nervously at Pietro, and looked away again almost instantly. There was a frightened look in her face as though she feared something unexpected. Perhaps she was afraid of believing too readily in Ghisleri's comforting view. "All the same," he continued, "there is no denying that he is in very bad health. Forgive me if I seem officious. I do not love him as you do, of course, but we have been more or less good friends these many years--since very long before you knew him." "More or less good friends!" repeated Laura, in a disappointed tone. "Herbert calls you his best friend." "I dare say he has many better than I am," answered Ghisleri, quietly. "But I have certainly never liked any man as much as I like him. That is why I come to you to-day. Do you not think that he should be taken care of, or, at least thoroughly examined by the best specialist to be found?" "I have thought of it," said Laura, after a short pause. "Of course the doctor comes regularly, but I do not think he is a really great authority. I am afraid that anything like a consultation might alarm Herbert. I see how determined he is to be cheerful, but I cannot help seeing also that he is despondent about himself." "There need be nothing like a consultation. Will you trust me in this matter?" Laura looked at him. She felt, on a sudden, the old, almost inexplicable, timid dislike of him with which she had long been familiar, and she hesitated before she answered. "Could I not manage it myself?" she asked abruptly. "It would seem more natural." Ghisleri's face grew slowly cold, and his eyes fixed themselves on the fire. "I thought I might be able to help you," he said. "Have you any particular reason for distrusting me as you do, Lady Herbert?" Laura's face contracted. She was not angry, but she was sorry that she had shown him what she thought, and it was hard to answer the question truthfully, for she was not really sure whether she had any excuse for doubting his frankness or not. In the present instance she assuredly had none. "I should certainly never distrust you where Herbert is concerned," she said, after a short pause. "It is only that it seems more natural, as I said, that I should be the one to speak to him and to arrange about the specialist's visit." "Very well. Forgive me, as I begged you to at first, if I have seemed officious. I will come and see your husband this afternoon." The consequence of this conversation was that Laura, being even more seriously alarmed than before, since she realised that Ghisleri himself was anxious, spoke to Arden about the necessity for seeing a better doctor, breaking it to him with all the loving gentleness she knew how to use with him, and Arden consented without much apparent reluctance to being examined by a man who had a great reputation. The latter took a long time before he gave an opinion, and ultimately declared to Laura that her husband was consumptive and would probably not live a year. Laura suffered in that moment as she would not have believed it possible to suffer, and it was long before she could compose herself enough to go to Arden. It was of course impossible to tell him all the doctor had said. She told him that his lungs were delicate, and that he must be very careful. "It seems to me I am always very careful," said Lord Herbert, patiently. She looked at him and saw for the hundredth time how ill he seemed. She tried to turn quickly and leave the room, but she could not. Suddenly the passionate tears broke out, and she fell on her knees beside his chair and clasped the poor little body in her arms. "Oh, Herbert, my love,--my love!" she sobbed. Then he felt that he was doomed. Had she loved him less, she could have kept the secret better. But he was brave still. "Hush, darling, hush!" he said, gently stroking her coal-black hair with his transparent hand. "You must not believe these foolish doctors. I have been just as ill before." But the mischief was done, and she felt that she had done it, and her remorse knew no bounds. In spite of his courage, Arden lost heart. The next time Ghisleri saw him he was much worse. Laura went out and left the two together. "Has anything worried you?" asked Ghisleri. "You look tired." Arden was silent for a long time, and his friend knew that he was carefully weighing his answer. "Yes," he said at last, "something has worried me very much. I can trust you not to speak--never to speak, even to my wife, of what I am going to say--especially if anything should happen," he added, as though with a painful afterthought. "I will never speak of it," replied Pietro, gravely. "I know you will not. We had a consultation the other day. Of course they were very careful not to tell me what they thought, but I could not help guessing it. You know how truthful my wife is--she could not deny it when I put the question directly. It is all up with me, my dear fellow, and I know it. I am consumptive. It will last a year at the most." "I do not believe a word of it!" exclaimed Ghisleri, with unusual heat. "You are not in the least like a consumptive man!" "The doctor is a good specialist," said Arden, quietly. "But that is not all. I have been so happy--I am so happy in many ways still--that I am weak enough to cling to my life, such as it is. But there is something else, Ghisleri. I knew I was ill, and I knew there was danger--but this is different. I had hoped to see my child, even if I were to die. I do not hope to see it now--you understand? Those things are always inherited." A deadly paleness came over Arden's face, and his clear brown eyes seemed unsteady for a moment. His face twitched nervously, and his hands were strained as they grasped the arms of his chair. Ghisleri looked very grave. "I repeat that I believe the doctor to be wholly mistaken. It would hardly be the first time that doctors have made such mistakes. Consumptive people do not behave as you do. They always feel that they are getting well, until the very last, and they have a regular cough, not to be mistaken, and they eat a great deal. You are quite different." "But he examined, me so carefully," objected Arden, though he could not help seeing a ray of hope. "I cannot help that. He was mistaken." That afternoon Ghisleri telegraphed to a great European celebrity whom he knew in Paris, to come if possible at once, no matter at what sacrifice of money. Forty-eight hours later the man of genius was breakfasting with Pietro in his rooms. "I will ask leave to bring you as a friend," said the latter. "I have begged you to come on my own responsibility." He wrote a note to Laura, explaining that an old acquaintance, a man of world-wide fame, was spending a couple of days with him, and begged permission to introduce him. He might amuse Arden, he said. He did not mention the doctor's profession. It was just possible that neither Arden nor Laura had ever heard of the man who was so great in a world not theirs. Laura asked them both to tea by way of answer. As it turned out, the Ardens had a very vague idea that the Frenchman was a man of science. In the course of conversation he admitted that he had studied medicine, and then went on to talk about the latest news from Paris, social, artistic, and literary. Arden was charmed with him, and Laura was really grateful to Ghisleri for helping to amuse her husband. Would they both come to luncheon the next day? They would, with pleasure, and they went away together. "Well?" asked Ghisleri, as they walked towards the Pincio in the early dusk, just to breathe the air. "I think he may live," answered the great man. "I believe it is a trouble of the heart with an almost exhausted vitality." Laura was left alone with her husband. Whether it was the doctor's personal influence, or whether Arden was really momentarily better, she could not tell, but he looked as he had not looked for two months. "That man delights me," he said dreamily. "I do not know what there is about him, and it is very foolish--but I fancy that if he were a doctor, he might cure me--or keep me alive longer," he added, with a sort of reluctant sadness. Laura looked at him in surprise. "He said he had studied medicine," she answered. "Shall I ask Signor Ghisleri, if, as a friend, he would come and give his opinion?" "It is too much to ask of a stranger." "Nothing is too much to ask," she said quietly. In her own room she wrote a note to Pietro. With many apologies, she explained to him that her husband was so delighted with Ghisleri's friend, that she believed it might make a difference if, as a doctor--since he was one--the latter would be willing to see him once and give his opinion. Pietro smiled when he read the note. On the following day the great man went again to the Tempietto, and with many protestations of incompetence did as he was requested, assuring Lady Herbert that it was only in deference to her wishes that he did so. "You are not consumptive--in the least, and you may even become strong," he said, after a very long and thorough examination. "That, at least," he added, "is my humble opinion." Arden's face brightened suddenly. But Laura and Ghisleri remained alone together for a moment afterwards, while the doctor was already putting on his coat. "After all," said Laura, despondently, "it was to please Herbert. The man says that his opinion is not worth very much." "He is the greatest living authority on the subject," answered Ghisleri. "You may safely take his opinion." Laura's face expressed her surprise, and at the same time, an unspeakable relief. "Are you sure?" she asked, in trembling tones. "Ask your doctor. He will tell you. Will you forgive me my little trick, Lady Herbert? As he was here, I thought you might like to see him." Ghisleri put out his hand to take his leave, and Laura pressed it warmly. "If I had ever had anything to forgive, I would forgive you--for your great kindness to me," she said, and the tears were almost in her eyes. "It is you who should forgive me for not trusting you when you first spoke. How wrong I was!" "Nonsense!" exclaimed Ghisleri. "It was very natural." And so it seemed to him, perhaps. But such little tricks, as he called what he had done, cost money, and that year Ghisleri did not buy the bit of land which stood next on the list in his scheme for reacquiring the old estate. CHAPTER VII. Arden's health improved, at first very rapidly, and then more slowly, as he seemed to approach what, for him, was a normal condition of strength. The month of December was fine, and he was able to drive out constantly, to be up most of the day, and to talk with acquaintances without any great fatigue. As a natural consequence, too, Laura regained in a very short time all that she had lost, and her eyes no longer looked sunken and haggard nor her face unnaturally pale. Her gratitude to Ghisleri was boundless, and as the days went on and Arden had no relapse, she began to wonder how she could ever have felt anything approaching to dislike for the man to whom she almost owed her husband's life. Pietro, on his part, came often to the house and saw the change that had taken place in her manner towards him. He was pleased, though he had not thought of producing any impression upon her by what he had done solely for Arden's sake, for he had long admired her, and felt that she was very like a certain ideal of woman of which he never talked. But his pleasure was not very genuine, after all. He hardly believed that Laura's mood would last, because he had hitherto had little experience of lasting moods in women. For the present, at least, she believed in him and was grateful. About this time Donna Adele, her husband, and his father and mother all came back from the country, and at or near the same period the great majority of the old society stagers appeared again as forerunners of the coming season. The gay set was not yet all assembled, and it was even reported that some of them would not come at all, for there was financial trouble in the air, and many people had lost money, or found their incomes diminished by the general depression. Nevertheless, when Christmas came, few of the familiar faces of the previous year were missing, and those few have not been seen in this history. "This is the beginning," said Gouache to Ghisleri. "You may remember that charming description of chaos in the sacred writings: 'in the beginning darkness was over all the earth'--very like Rome before the season begins. The resemblance ends there, my dear friend. The sentence which follows would hardly be applicable. Are we to have another Shrove Tuesday feast this year for the sake of giving sin a last chance? Have you another diabolical production ready?" "I am afraid not," answered Ghisleri. "Besides, one should never repeat a good thing." "That is what my wife says," observed Anastase, thoughtfully. "That dear woman! But for her, I should do nothing but repeat my successful pictures--if possible by a chemical process. It would be so easy! That is the way the modern galleries of old masters are formed. There is a little man in the Via da' Falegnami who turns out the article at a fixed price, including the cost of the green wood for smoking the Rembrandts, and the genuine old panels for doing the Botticellis. I often go to see him. He knows more about grinding colours, and about vehicles and varnishes, and the price of lamp-black than any artist I ever knew. He painted that portrait of Raphael by himself--by Raphael, I mean, for Prince Durakoff last year, and found the documents to prove its existence among his papers. It took him six months, but it was well done, especially the parchments. There was even the receipt for the money paid to Raphael for the picture by the Most Excellent House of Frangipani, signed by the painter himself--I mean by Raphael. Cheap, at ten thousand francs. Durakoff paid the dealer eighty thousand without bargaining. He did not reflect that if it had been genuine it would have been worth five hundred thousand, and, if not, that it was not worth fifty centimes." "Rather like a friend," observed Ghisleri. "Friendship is a matter of fortune," said Gouache, "as love is a question of climate." "You are not usually so cynical. What has happened?" "My wife has been amusing me, this morning, with an account of society's opinions on various subjects. One-half of her friends assure her that black is white, and the other half tell her it is a vivid yellow. That is called conversation. They give it you with tea, milk, and sugar, between five and seven in the afternoon." Gouache seemed to be in a somewhat communicative frame of mind. As a matter of fact he often was with Ghisleri, whom he trusted more than most men. "What was it all about?" inquired the latter. "People, people, and then people again. What does everybody talk about? Silly stories about Lady Herbert Arden and Savelli, and about Lord Herbert himself, and his dissipated life. The Ardens do not seem to be liked. He is a great friend of yours, is he not?" "Yes, we have known each other almost ten years." Ghisleri began to smoke, rather gloomily, for he perceived that there was trouble in store for Laura. "It is Donna Adele who does all the mischief," continued Gouache, putting a dash of bright blue into the face of the portrait he was painting, a proceeding which, as Ghisleri noticed with some surprise, improved the likeness. "It is Donna Adele. You know the old story. Savelli loved Miss Carlyon but could not marry her. Donna Adele never forgave her, and she will end by doing her a great deal of harm. She pretends that Savelli has told her that Lady Herbert is already talking to him and to everybody of her own wretched married life--rather hinting that if Savelli would care to depart this life of respectability she would go with him, a proposition which, of course, Savelli scorns in the most virtuous and approved fashion, rolling his fine paternal language as in the fourth act of a tragedy at the Comedie Française. I suppose you cannot stop this sort of thing, can you?" "I will try," said Ghisleri, in a tone that made Gouache look round from his painting. He had not often witnessed even such a slight manifestation of real anger on Pietro's part, as was apparent in the enunciation of the three words. "You might, perhaps, better than any one else," observed Gouache. "From other things she has said, it is quite apparent that she would like to see you at her feet." Ghisleri looked at Anastase rather sharply, but said nothing. It was not the fact that Donna Adele wished him to pay her more attention that struck him; he was wondering what the other remarks might have been, to which Gouache alluded. They might have been directed against the Contessa--or they might have been such as to show that Adele suspected Ghisleri of an attachment for Laura Arden since he now went so often to the house. As Gouache did not volunteer any further information, however, Ghisleri thought it wiser to ask no questions, and he was inclined to infer that the aforesaid observations had been directed against Maddalena dell' Armi. Ghisleri went away in a very bad humour. So long as the gossip came from the men, he had a very simple and definite course open to him, and he knew that his personal influence was considerable. But when the worst things said were said by women, there seemed to be no remedy possible. It would not be an easy matter to go to Adele and tax her with lying, slandering, and evil speaking. She would very properly be angry, and would of course deny that she had ever spoken on the matter, her friends would support her in her denial, and he would be no further advanced than before. He could not possibly go to Francesco Savelli and demand of the latter an explanation of Donna Adele's conduct. That was out of the question. To let Donna Adele know that both Laura and Arden were quite unconscious of her attacks and, in their present life of almost enforced retirement, were likely to remain in ignorance of them, might annoy Donna Adele, but could do no good. It would be positively unkind to speak to the Princess of Gerano and ask her to use her influence with her step-daughter, but Ghisleri thought he had struck a possibility at last--he could go to old Gerano himself and explain matters. After all, Gerano was Adele's father and had some authority over her still. Ghisleri came rather hastily to the conclusion that this would be the wisest course to follow, and acted almost immediately upon his decision, for it chanced that he found the Prince at the club, and had the opportunity he needed within half an hour after forming his plan of action. He approached the subject coolly and diplomatically, while Gerano blandly listened and puffed at a cigarette. Donna Adele, he said, had of course no intention of injuring her step-sister, but she was too young to know the weight a careless tale often carried with it in the world, and had no idea of the harm she was doing. No one, not even the Prince himself, was ignorant of the fact that Don Francesco Savelli's first inclination had been rather for Miss Carlyon than for Donna Adele, but that it had been a mere young man's fancy, without any importance, and that having yielded to parental authority, Don Francesco was now a perfectly happy man. Perhaps Donna Adele had not been able to forget this apparent slight upon her beauty and charm, as far as her step-sister was concerned, though well aware that her husband thought no more about Lady Herbert. It was natural and womanly in her to resent it. But that was not a good reason why she should say--as she seemed to be saying constantly--that Lady Herbert was very much in love with Don Francesco. Here Ghisleri paused, and the Prince opened his eyes very wide at first, and then almost shut them as he scrutinised his companion's face. He knew the man well, however, and guessed that the matter must be serious indeed, since he took the trouble to treat it in such earnest. "I suppose," said Gerano, "that you are quite prepared to support your words if any question arises. This is a strange tale." "Yes," answered Ghisleri. "I am always ready." He spoke with such gravity that the Prince was impressed. Pietro went on to say that Donna Adele, doubtless out of pure carelessness, had certainly, by a foolish jest, suggested the story that Lord Herbert was very intemperate, a story which Ghisleri had last year been obliged to deny in the most formal manner in the very room in which they were now talking, to a number of men. The tale had of late been revived in a form even more virulent than before, and such untruths, even when they have originated in a harmless bit of fun, could damage a man's reputation for life. "Of course they can, and they do," asserted the Prince, who was becoming rather anxious. "As, for instance," continued Ghisleri, "it is now said that Lady Herbert Arden, your step-daughter, now talks to Don Francesco and to everybody--which probably means the few persons who circulate the myth--about her wretched married life, and other suggestions which I will not repeat are added, which are very insulting to her. For my part, my business is to defend Arden, who is my friend, and who is unfortunately too ill to defend himself should all this come to his ears. I do not say that this last addition concerning Lady Herbert's confidences comes from Donna Adele Savelli. But it is undoubtedly current, and proceeds directly from the former gossip, as its natural consequence." "Evidently," said the Prince, who kept his temper admirably, in consideration of the gravity of the case. "And now what do you expect me to do?" "You are Donna Adele's father," answered Ghisleri. "She is assuredly ignorant of the harm she has caused. It would seem quite natural if you suggested to her that it is in her power to undo what she has unintentionally done." "How, may I ask? By an apology?" Gerano did not like the idea, but Ghisleri smiled. "That would make matters worse," he said. "She could put everything right merely by saying a few pleasant things about the Ardens to half a dozen people of her acquaintance--at random. Donna Maria Boccapaduli, the Marchesa di San Giacinto, the Contessa dell' Armi--even Donna Faustina Gouache. She might ask the Ardens to dinner--" "I observe that you do not name any men," observed the Prince. "It is not the men who have been talking, so far as I know--nor if they did, would their gossip do so much damage." "That may be. As for the rest, I will say this. You have said some exceedingly unpleasant things to me this afternoon, but I know you well enough to be sure that you are not only in earnest, but wish to avert trouble rather than cause it. Otherwise I should not have listened to you as I have. I am very deeply attached to my only child, though I am also very fond of my step-daughter. However, I will take this question in hand and find out the truth, and do what I can to mend matters. If I find you have been misinformed, I will ask the favour of another interview." "I shall always be at your service." They parted rather stiffly, but without any nearer approach to hostility than was implied in the last formal words they exchanged. Gerano walked slowly homeward, revolving the situation in his mind, and wondering how he should act in order to get at the truth in the case. Being very fond of his wife, his first impulse was to tell her the whole story, and to take counsel with her before doing anything definite. It would have been better had he gone directly to Donna Adele, though he might not have accomplished anything at all, and might have believed her, and might also have quarrelled with Ghisleri afterwards. But he did not foresee the consequences. The Princess was very much overcome by the account he gave her of his interview with Ghisleri, of whom she had a high opinion as a man of truthful character, bad as he seemed to be in other respects. She knew instinctively and at once that every one of his statements must have been perfectly well founded, and that if he had erred it had assuredly not been in the direction of exaggerating the facts. She was in much the same position as her husband, except that her own daughter was the victim, while his was the aggressor. It was strange that in so many years neither should have understood Adele's character well enough to suspect that she could be capable of any treachery, and yet both were now convinced that the case against her was not by any means a fiction. The Princess was now in the gravest distress, and she could not keep back her tears as she tried to find arguments in Adele's favour, wishing to the last to defend her husband's child, while never for a moment losing sight of her own. She was an eminently good woman, but very far from worldly-wise. Indeed, as events proceeded that day, there seemed to be a diminution of wisdom in the action of each in turn as compared with that of the last person concerned. Ghisleri had not really allowed himself time to consider the situation in all its bearings before speaking to Gerano, or he might not have spoken at all. Gerano, next, had scarcely hesitated in confiding the whole affair to his wife, and she, in despair, turned to the one person of all others with whom she was really most in sympathy, to Laura Arden herself, regardless of the consequences to every one concerned. Lord Herbert was resting before dinner, and she found her daughter alone. Her heart was almost bursting, and she poured out the story in all its details, accurately, as she had heard it, though hardly knowing what she said. At first Laura was tempted to laugh. She had been so much happier of late that laughing had grown easy, but she very soon saw the real meaning of the situation, and she grew pale as she silently listened to the end. Then her mother broke down again. "And I have loved her so!" cried the poor lady. "Almost as I have loved you, my child! To think of it all--oh, it is not to be believed!" Laura was not at that moment inclined to shed tears. It was almost the first time in her life when she was really angry, for her temper was not easily roused. It was not destined to be the last. Dry-eyed and pale, she sat beside the Princess, holding her hands, then drying her fast flowing tears, then caressing her, and saying all she could to soothe and calm her, while almost choking herself to keep down the rage she felt. Her eyes had been opened at last, and she saw what the story really was at which Arden had made such a poor guess. As the Princess grew more calm, she began to look at her daughter in surprise. "What is the matter, darling?" she asked anxiously. "Are you ill, dear, you look so changed!" "I am angry, mother," answered Laura, quietly enough. "I shall get over it soon, I dare say." Even her voice did not sound like her own. It was hollow and strange. Her mother was frightened. "I have done very wrong to tell you, Laura," she said, realising too late that the revelation must have been startling in the extreme. "I do not know," answered Lady Herbert, still speaking in the same peculiar tone, and with an effort. "Adele and I meet constantly. Of course we have been brought up like real sisters, and though we were never intensely fond of one another we talk about everything as if we were. I will be careful in future. This may not be all true, but there is truth in it, if you have remembered exactly what Signor Ghisleri said--or rather, if the Prince has." The Princess started slightly. Laura had always called Gerano father, as though she had really been his daughter, but the shock had been very sudden, and she found it hard to call by that name the man whose daughter was Adele Savelli. "I hope it will turn out to be all a mistake!" exclaimed the Princess, weakly, and on the point of bursting into tears again. "Until we are sure of it, I shall try and behave as usual to Adele, if we have to meet," said Laura. "After that, if it is all true--I do not know--" When the Princess went home, she was a little frightened at what she had done, and repented bitterly of having yielded to her own unreasoning longing to talk the matter over with Laura--natural enough indeed, when it is remembered that the two loved one another so dearly. It had been a mistake, she was sure, and she would have given anything to undo it. She only hoped that she should not be obliged to explain to her husband. Laura sat alone by the fireside. Herbert was lying down and would not appear until dinner time, so that she had almost an hour in which to think over the situation. She determined to master her anger and to look the matter in the face calmly. After all, it was only gossip, town-talk, insignificant chatter, which must all be forgotten in the light of the true facts. So she tried to persuade herself, at least, but she found it a very hard matter to believe her own statement of it all. The more she thought it over, the more despicable it all seemed in her eyes, the more savagely she hated Adele. She could have borne the story about herself better, if it had come alone, but she could neither forgive nor find an excuse for what had been said against her husband. To know that people openly called him intemperate--a drunkard, that would be the word! Him, of all living men! The assertion was so monstrous that all Laura's resolution to control herself gave way suddenly, and she, in her turn, burst into a flood of tears, hot, angry, almost agonising, impossible to check. She might have been proud to shed them, for they showed how much more she loved her husband than she cared for herself, but she was conscious only of the intense desire to face Adele, and do her some grievous bodily hurt and be revenged for the foul slander cast on Herbert Arden. She opened and shut her hands convulsively, as though she were clutching some one and strangling the breath in a living throat. Every drop of blood in her young body was fire, every tear that rolled down her pale cheek was molten lead, every beat of her angry pulse brought an angry thought to her brain. How long she remained in this state she did not know. She did not hear her husband's laboured, halting step on the soft carpet, and before she was aware of his presence he was standing before her, with a look of pain and almost of horror in his delicate face. That was the most terrible moment in his life. Highly sensitive as he was, loving her almost to distraction as he did, he had always found it hard to understand her love for him. To suspect that all of it was pity, or that a part of it had grown weak of late, was almost impossible to him, and yet the possibility of doubt was there. He had entered the room as usual, without any precaution, but she had not heard him; he had seen her apparently struggling with herself and with some unseen enemy, in a paroxysm of grief and rage. Instantly the doubt rose supreme and struck him, like a sudden blow in the face. "She has found out her mistake too late--she does not love me, and she longs to be free." That was what Herbert Arden said to himself as he stood before her, and the horror of it was almost greater than he could bear. Yet there was a great and manly courage in his narrow breast. He felt that he must die, but she should not suffer any more than was necessary until then. He drew the best breath he could, as though it were his last. She started, wild-eyed, as he spoke. "Laura darling--it has been a terrible mistake--and it is all my fault. Will you forgive me, dear one? I thought that you would love me--I see how it is when you are alone. No woman could have borne this bondage of yours as you have borne it since you have found out--" "Herbert! Herbert!" cried Laura, in sudden agony. She thought he was going mad before her eyes. "No, dear," he said, with an immense effort, and making a gesture with his hand as though to keep her in her place. "It is better to say it now, and it need never be said again. Perhaps I should not have the strength. I see it all. You are so kind and good that you will never show it to me--but when you are alone--then you let yourself go--is it any wonder? Are you to blame? You see that you have made the great mistake--that it was all pity and not love--and you long to be free from me as you should be, as you shall be, dear." A wild cry broke from Laura's very heart when she realised what he meant. "Love! Darling--Herbert! I never loved you as I love you now!" She did not know that she spoke articulate words as she sprang to her feet and clasped him in her arms, half mad with grief at the thought of what he must have suffered, and loving him as she said she did, far beyond the love of earlier days. But he hardly understood yet that it was really love, and he tried to look up into her face, almost fainting with the terrible strain he had borne so bravely, and still struggling to be calm. "Laura darling," he said, in a low voice, "it was all too natural. Unless you tell me what it was that made you act as I saw you just now, how can I understand?" She turned her deep eyes straight to his. "Do you doubt me still, Herbert?" she asked. And she saw that he could not help doubting. "But if I tell you that what I was thinking of would pain you very much, and that it would be of no use--" "It cannot be like the pain I feel now," he answered simply. She realised that what he said was true. Then she told him the whole story, as she knew it. And so, in a few hours, the conversation Ghisleri had held with Gouache began to bear fruit in a direction where neither of them had suspected it possible that their words could penetrate. Arden had allowed himself to sink into a chair at Laura's side, and he listened with half-closed eyes and folded hands while she spoke. Under ordinary circumstances he would probably have betrayed some emotion, and might have interrupted her with a question or two, but the terrible excitement of the last few minutes was followed by a reaction, and he felt himself growing colder and calmer every moment, while his heart, which had been beating furiously when he had first spoken to her, seemed now about to stand still. As she proceeded, however, he was aware of the most conflicting feelings of happiness and anger--the latter of the quiet and dangerous sort. He saw at once that he had been utterly mistaken in doubting Laura's love, and from that direction peace descended upon his heart; but when he heard what the world was saying of her, he felt that weak as he was, he had the sudden strength to dare and do anything to avenge the insult. He was human enough, too, to resent bitterly the story about himself, though that, after all, was but a secondary affair in comparison with the gossip about Laura. When she had finished, he rose slowly, and sat upon the arm of her easy-chair, drawing her head to his shoulder. He kissed her hair tenderly. "My beloved--can you forgive me?" he asked, in a very gentle voice. "My darling--that I should have doubted you!" "I am glad you did, dear--this once," she answered. "You see how it is. You are all the world to me--the mere thought that any one can hurt you by word or deed--oh, it drives me mad!" And she, who was usually so very calm and collected, again made that desperate gesture with her hands, as though she had them on a woman's throat and would strangle out the life of her in the grip of her firm fingers. "As for me, it matters little enough," said Arden, taking her hands and stroking them as though to soothe her anger. "Of course it is an absurd and disgusting story, and I suppose some people believe it. But what they say of you is a very different matter." "I do not think so," broke in Laura, indignantly. "Of course every one knows that we love each other, and that it is all a lie--but when such a tale is started about a man--that he drinks--oh, it is too utterly vile!" "Dear--shall we try and forget it? At least for this evening. Let us do our best. You have made me so happy in another way--I suffered in that moment very much." She looked up into his face as he sat on the arm of the chair, and she saw that he looked very ill. The scene had been almost too much for him, and she realised that when he spoke of forgetting it was because he could bear no more. "Yes, love," she said, "we will put it all away for this evening and be happy together as we always are." Each was conscious, no doubt, that the other was making a great effort, but neither of them referred to the matter again that night. They talked of all manner of subjects, rather nervously and resolutely at first, then naturally and easily as ever, when the deep sympathy which existed between them had asserted itself. During two hours, at least, they nearly forgot what had so violently moved them both. When Arden laid his head upon his pillow, his anger had not subsided, but he knew that his love had taken greater strength and depth than ever before. He spent a sleepless night indeed, but when he rose in the morning he did not feel tired. Something within him which was quite new seemed to sustain him and nourish him. He could not tell whether it was love for Laura, or anger against the woman who slandered her, or both acting at once, and he did not waste much time in speculating upon his mental condition. He had formed a resolution upon which he meant to act without delay. It was a rainy morning, chilly and raw again, as the weather had been earlier in the year. "Give me warm clothes, Donald," he said to his man. "I am going out." "Going out, my lord! In this weather!" Donald's face expressed the greatest anxiety. "Never mind the weather," said Arden. "Give me warm clothes, and send for a closed carriage." Donald obeyed, shaking his head, and muttering in detached expressions of disapproval. He was a privileged person. CHAPTER VIII. Arden, for the first time in his life, paid no attention to Laura's remonstrances when she tried to prevent him from going out in the rain, and he would not hear of her accompanying him on any condition. He assured her that with his fur coat, and in a closed carriage with a foot-warmer, he was as safe as at home in the drawing-room, and he gave her to understand that he had a small surprise in store for her, of which all the effect would be spoiled if she went with him. Very reluctantly she let him go. Even after he was gone, when she heard the brougham rattling down the Via Gregoriana, she was tempted to open the window and call the driver back. Then she reflected that she was probably foolish in being so anxious, since he now seemed almost as well as ever. When he left the house, Arden drove to a certain studio, and then and there bought a small picture which Laura had admired very much, and had been two or three times to see. To the artist's surprise, he insisted upon carrying it away with him at once, just as it was. Then he told the coachman to drive to the Palazzo Savelli. He sent up his card and asked to see Don Francesco, and at once received an answer, begging him to go up stairs. Francesco was very much surprised by the visit, and could not conceive what had brought Lord Herbert Arden to him at eleven o'clock in the morning. He awaited him in a vast and gloomy drawing-room in which there was no fire. The walls were hung with old portraits of the Savelli in armour, the carpet was of a sombre hue, and the furniture consisted of three superb marble tables with carved and gilt feet, and sixteen chairs of the style of Louis the Fourteenth's reign, all precisely alike, and standing side by side against the walls. Francesco Savelli stood facing the door, his yellow hair, blue eyes, and fresh complexion contrasting strongly with the dark background. He was a fine-looking fellow, with a mild face, a quiet manner, and a good deal of old-fashioned formality, which latter, however, seemed to wear off every evening in society, coming back as soon as he returned to the dim and shadowy halls of his home. The connexion between him and Arden was in reality so distant, that they had never assumed even the outward forms of intimacy, though their wives called each other sister. Savelli disliked Lord Herbert because he was a cripple, and chiefly because he had married Laura Carlyon. Arden, on his side, was more or less indifferent to Francesco, but treated him always with a shade more warmth than an ordinary acquaintance, as being, in a sense, a member of his wife's family. Savelli came forward as Arden entered. The servant allowed the heavy curtain to drop, closed the door, and went out, and the two men were left alone. "Good morning, my dear Arden," said Savelli, taking his hand. "I hope you are quite well. Pray be seated." "Good morning. Thanks." Both spoke in French. They sat down, side by side, on the stiff, high-backed gilt chairs, and each looked at the other. "I have something especial to say to you," began Arden, in his calm and even voice--a man quicker-witted than Savelli would have noticed the look of determination about the smooth-shaven lips and the prominent chin--the look of a man who will not be trifled with, and will say what he means in spite of all difficulties and all opposition. "I am entirely at your service," answered Don Francesco, politely. "Thanks. I have thought it best to come to you directly, because my business concerns your wife and mine, and it is better that we should settle such matters between us without the intervention of others." Savelli opened his eyes in surprise, but said nothing, only making a slight inclination of the head in answer. Arden continued in the cool and collected manner with which he had begun. "A number of outrageous lies," he said slowly, "are in circulation concerning my wife, and some of them concern myself. May I inquire whether you have heard them?" "It would facilitate matters, if you would tell me something of their nature," observed Savelli, more and more astonished. "There is no difficulty about that. I can even repeat them to you, word for word, or nearly so. It is said, in the first place, that my wife is very much in love with you--" "With me?" cried Savelli, startled out of his formality for once. "Yes--with you--and that she has loved you long. Secondly, it is said that I am a confirmed drunkard, and that my wife leads a most unhappy existence with me in consequence. It is further stated that she makes no secret of this supposed fact, but complains loudly to her friends, and especially selects you for her confidence in the matter." "That is totally untrue," said Don Francesco, gravely. "She has never spoken of you to me except in terms of the highest praise." "I am aware that it is not true, but I am much obliged to you for your very plain statement. I will go on. It is asserted that my wife has given you to understand that she loves you, and that, if you would consent, she would be ready to leave me and Rome in your company. These things, it appears, are current gossip, and are confidently stated as positive truths." "I have not heard any of them, except some vague reports about yourself, to the effect that you once took too much wine at the Gerano's house. But Ghisleri made a scene about it at the club, and I have heard no more of the absurd story." "I did not know that Ghisleri had actively taken my part," answered Arden. "But the story has now reached the form in which I repeated it. For myself, I care very little. It is on account of its connexion with the tales about my wife that I have told it to you." "May I ask who your informant is?" "My wife." "And hers?" "A reliable and truthful person, whom I shall not name at present. The affair concerns you and me. I have not come to the most important point, which will explain why I came to you." "I supposed that you came, as to a connexion of the family, to ask advice or assistance." "No. That is not it. I do not need either, thank you. I come to you because all these stories are distinctly traceable to Donna Adele Savelli." Francesco started violently, and almost rose from his seat, his face flushing suddenly. "Lord Herbert--take care!" he cried in a loud and angry voice, and with a passionate gesture. "Be calm," said Arden, in an unnaturally quiet tone. "If you strike me, you will be disgraced for life, because I am a cripple. But I assure you that I am not in the least afraid of you." "You are wrong!" exclaimed Savelli, still furious, and turning upon him savagely. "Not at all," returned the Englishman, unmoved. "I came here to settle this business, and I have not the smallest intention of going away until I have said all I meant to say. After that, if you are inclined to demand satisfaction of me, as is the custom here, you can do so. I will consider the matter. I shall probably not exchange shots with you, because I believe that duelling is wrong. But let me say that I do not in the least mean to insult you, nor, as I think, have I been lacking in civility to-day. I have given you a number of facts which I have every reason for believing to be true. You will in all likelihood have no difficulty in finding out whether they are true or not. If we, jointly, are convinced that the statements are false, I shall be happy to offer you my best apologies; if not, and if you are convinced that Donna Adele has been slandering my wife, I shall expect you to act upon your conviction, as a man of honour should, and take measures to have these reports instantly and fully denied everywhere by Donna Adele herself. I think I have stated the case plainly, and what I have said ought not to offend you, in my opinion." "It is certainly impossible to be more plain," answered Savelli, regaining something of his outward calm. "As to what may or may not give offence, opinions may differ in England and in Italy." "They probably do," returned Arden, coolly. "It is not my intention to offend you." Francesco Savelli looked at the shrunken figure and the thin hands with an odd sensation of repulsion and respect. He had been very far from supposing that Herbert Arden possessed such undeniable courage and imperturbable coolness, and not being by any means a coward himself, he could not help admiring bravery in others. He was none the less angry, however, though he made a great effort to keep his temper. He did not love his wife, but he had all the Roman traditions concerning the sacredness of the family honour, which he now felt was really at stake, and he had all a Roman's dread of a public scandal. "I must beg you once more to tell me by whom these stories were told to Lady Herbert," he said, after a pause. "I cannot do so, without consulting that person," answered Arden. "I do not wish to drag other people into the affair. You will be able to find out for yourself, and probably through members of your own family, how much truth there is in it all." "You positively refuse to tell me?" "I have said so. If you wish to be confronted with the person in question, I will consult that person, as I said before." "And if I then, on my side, positively refuse to do anything without having previously spoken to that person--to him or to her--what then?" "In my opinion, you will be allowing a state of things to continue which will not ultimately reflect credit upon you or yours. Moreover, you will oblige me to take some still more active measures." "What measures?" "I do not know. I will think about it. And now I will wish you good morning." He got upon his feet, and stood before Savelli. "Good morning," said the latter, very stiffly. "Allow me to accompany you to the hall." "Thanks," said Arden, as he began to move towards the door in his ungainly, dislocated fashion, while Savelli walked slowly beside him, towering above him by a third of his own height. Arden shivered as he slipped on his fur coat in the hall, for it had been very cold in the drawing-room though he had scarcely noticed the fact in his preoccupied state of mind. While driving homeward, he looked at the little picture as it stood opposite to him on the seat of the carriage. It was one of those exquisite views of the Campagna, looking across the Tiber, which Sartorio does so wonderfully in pastel. "She will be glad to have it," said Arden to himself, "and she will understand why I went out alone." He was tolerably well satisfied with the morning's work. It had seemed to him that there was nothing else to be done under the circumstances, and he certainly did not choose the least wise course, in going directly to Savelli. He did not regret a word of what he had said, nor did he feel that he had said too little. As he anticipated, Laura suspected nothing, and was delighted with the picture. She scolded him a little for having insisted upon going out on such a morning, especially for her sake, but as the clouds just then were breaking and the sunshine was streaming into the room, she felt as though it could not have been a great risk after all. Before they had finished luncheon, a note was brought in. Laura laughed oddly as she read it. "It is an invitation to dinner from Adele," she said. "It is for the day after to-morrow, shall we accept?" Arden's face grew thoughtful. He could not be sure whether the invitation had been sent before his interview with Savelli, or since. It was therefore not easy to decide upon the wisest course. "Better to accept it, is it not?" asked Laura. "It is of no use to make an open breach." "No. It is of no use. Accept, dear. It is more sensible." Neither of them liked the thought of dining at the Palazzo Savelli just then, and Laura, at least, knew that she would find it hard to behave as though nothing had happened. Both would have been very much surprised, could they have known why they were asked, and that the idea had originated with Pietro Ghisleri. On the previous evening, Gerano had taken pains to see his daughter alone at her own house, on pretence of talking to her about business. With considerable skill he had led the conversation up to the required point, and had laid a trap for her. "Do you see much of the Ardens just now?" he asked. "No. We do not meet often," answered Adele, with a little movement of the shoulders. "I wish you did. I wish you saw them every day," observed the Prince, more gravely. "Do you, papa? Why?" "You might find out something that I wish very much to know. It would not be hard at all. We are rather anxious about it." "What is the matter?" asked Adele, with sudden interest. "That is it. There is a disagreeable story afloat. More than one, in fact. It has reached my ears on good authority that Arden drinks far too much. You know what a brave girl Laura is. She hides it as well as she can, but she is terribly unhappy. Have you any idea whether there is any truth in all this?" Adele hesitated a moment, and looked earnestly into her teacup, as though seeking advice. The moment was important. Her father had brought her own story back to her for confirmation, as it were. It might be dangerous to take the other side now. Suddenly she looked up with a well-feigned little smile of embarrassment. "I would rather not say what I think, papa," she said, with the evident intention of not denying the tale. "But, my dear," protested her father, "you must see how anxious we are on Laura's account. Really, my child, have a little confidence in me--tell me what you know." "If you insist--well, I suppose I must. I am afraid there is no doubt about it. Laura's husband is very intemperate." "Ah me! I feared so, from what I had heard," said the Prince, looking down, and shaking his head very sadly. "You see, the people first began to talk about it last year, when he was in such a disgraceful condition in your house, and Pietro Ghisleri had to take him home." "Yes, yes!" Gerano still shook his head sorrowfully. "I ought to have known, but they told me it was a fainting fit. And the worst of it is, my dear Adele, that there are other stories, and worse ones, too, about Laura. I hear that she is seriously in love with Francesco. Poor thing! it is no wonder--she is so unhappy at home, and Francesco is such a fine fellow, and always so kind to her everywhere." "No, it is no wonder," assented Adele, who felt that she was launched, and must go to the end, though she had no time to consider the consequences. "I suppose there is really some evidence about Arden's habits," resumed the Prince. "Of course he will deny it all, and I would like to have something to fall back upon--to convince myself more thoroughly, you understand." Adele paused a moment. "Arden has a Scotch servant," she said presently. "It appears that he is very intimate with our butler, who has often seen him going into the Tempietto with bottles of brandy hidden in an overcoat he carries on his arm." "Dear me! How shocking!" exclaimed the Prince. "So old Giuseppe has actually seen that!" "Often," replied Adele, with conviction. "But then, after all--so many men drink. If it were not for Laura--poor Laura!" "Poor Laura,--yes, as I said, it is no wonder if she has fallen in love with Francesco--such a handsome fellow, too! She has shown good taste, at least." The Prince laughed gently. "At all events, you are not jealous, Adele; I can see that." "I?" exclaimed Adele, with indignant scorn. "No, indeed!" Gerano began to feel his pockets, as though searching for something he could not find. Then he rang the bell at his elbow. "I have forgotten my cigarettes, my dear, I must have left them in my coat," he said. The old butler answered his summons in person, for Gerano knew the usage of the house and had pressed the button three times, unnoticed by Adele, which meant that Giuseppe was wanted. "I have left my cigarettes in my coat, Giuseppe," said the Prince. Then as the man turned to go, he called him back. "Giuseppe!" "Excellency!" "I want you to do a little commission for me. I have a little surprise for Donna Laura, and I do not want her to know where it comes from. It must be placed on her table, do you see? Now Donna Adele tells me that you are very intimate with Lord Herbert's Scotch servant--" "I, Excellency?" Giuseppe was very much astonished. "Yes--the man with sandy grey hair, and a big nose, and a red face--a most excellent servant, who has been with Lord Herbert since he was a child. Donna Adele says you know him very well--" "Her Excellency must be mistaken. It must have been some other servant who told her. I never saw the man." "You said Giuseppe, did you not?" asked the Prince very blandly, and turning to Adele. She bit her lip in silence. "Never mind," he continued. "It is a misunderstanding, and I will manage the surprise in quite another way. My cigarettes, Giuseppe." The man went out, and Adele and the Prince sat without exchanging a word, until he returned with the case, Gerano all the time looking very gentle. When the servant was gone a second time, the Prince's expression changed suddenly, and he spoke in a stern voice. "Now that you have sufficiently disgraced yourself, my daughter, you will begin to make reparation at once," he said. Adele started as though she had been struck, and stared at him. "I am in earnest," he added. "What do you mean, papa?" she asked, frightened by his manner. "Disgraced myself? You must be mad!" "You know perfectly well what I mean," answered her father. "I have been playing a little comedy with you, and I have found out the truth. You know as well as I that everything you have repeated to me this evening is absolutely untrue, and there is some reason to believe that you have invented these tales and set them going in the world out of jealousy, and for no other reason, with deliberate intention to do harm. Even if it were not you who began, it would still be disgraceful enough on your part to say such things even to me, and you have said them to others. That last vile little invention about the bottles was produced on the spur of the moment--I saw you hesitate. You are responsible for all this, and no one else. I will go into the world more in future than I have done hitherto, and will watch you. You are to make full reparation for what you have done. I insist upon it." "And if I deny that I originated this gossip, and refuse to obey you, what will you do?" asked Adele, defiantly. "You are aware that under the present laws I can dispose of half my property as I please," observed the Prince. "Laura has nothing--" He stopped significantly. Adele turned pale. She was terrified, not so much at the thought of losing the millions in question, but at the idea of the consequence to herself in her father-in-law's house. Casa Savelli counted upon the whole fortune as confidently as though it were already theirs. She knew very well how she should be treated during the rest of her life, if one-half of the great property were lost to her husband's family through her fault. "You are forcing me to acknowledge myself guilty of what I never did," she said, still trying to make a stand. "What do you wish me to do?" "You will everywhere say nice things about Laura and her husband. You will say that you are now positively sure that Arden does not drink. You will say that there is no truth whatever in the report that Laura is in love with Francesco, and that you are absolutely certain that the Ardens are very happy together. Those are the principal points, I believe. You will also at once ask them to dinner, and you will repeat your invitation often, and behave to both in a proper way." Adele laughed scornfully, though her mirth had something of affectation in it. "Say pretty things, and invite them to dinner!" she exclaimed. "That is not very hard. I have not the slightest objection to doing that, because I should do it in any case, even if you had not made me this absurd scene." "In future, my child, before you call anything I do or say absurd, I recommend you to think of the law regarding wills, to which I called your attention." Adele was silent, for she saw that she was completely in her father's power. Being really guilty of the social misdeeds with which she was charged, she was not now surprised by his manner. What really amazed her was the display of diplomatic talent he had made, while entrapping her into what amounted to a confession. She had never supposed him capable of anything of the kind. But he was a quiet man, much more occupied in dealing with humanity in the management of his property than most people realised. No genius--certainly,--for if he had been, he would not have told the whole story to his wife, as he had done on the previous evening, but possessing the talent to choose the wise course at least as often as not, which is more than can be said for most people. There was something of the old-fashioned father about him, too, and he showed it in the little speech he made before leaving Adele that evening. "And now, my dear daughter," he said, rising and standing before her as he spoke, "I have one word more to say before I go. You are my only child, and, in spite of all that has happened, I love you very much. I do not believe that you have ever done anything of the kind until now, and I do not think you will fall into the same fault in the future. If you do all that I have told you to do, I shall never refer to the matter after this, and we will try and forget it. But you have learned a lesson which you will remember all your life. Jealousy is a great sin, and slander is not only vile and degrading, but is also the greatest mistake possible from a worldly point of view. Remember that. If you wish to be successful in society, never speak an unkind word about any one. And now good night, my dear. Do what I have bidden you, and let us think no more about it." Having concluded his sermon, Gerano kissed Adele on the forehead, as he was accustomed to do. She bent her head in silence, for she was so angry that she could not trust herself to speak, and he left her at the door and went home. All things considered, she knew that she had reason to be grateful for his forbearance. She was quite sure that her father-in-law would have behaved differently, and the stories she had heard of old Prince Saracinesca's temper showed clearly that the race of violent fathers was by no means yet extinct. She was not even called upon to make a formal apology to Laura in her father's presence, which was what she had at first expected and feared. Nothing, in fact, was required of her except to avoid gossip and treat the Ardens with a decent show of sisterly affection. She could scarcely have got better terms of peace, had she dictated them herself. But she was far too angry to look at the affair in this light and far too deeply humiliated to forgive her father or the Ardens. If anything were necessary to complete her shame, it was the knowledge that she was utterly unable to cope with Gerano, who could disinherit her and her children of an enormous sum by a stroke of the pen, if he pleased; and he would please, if she did not obey him to the letter. With a trembling hand she wrote the invitation required of her and gave it to be taken in the morning. Then she sat down and tried to read, taking up a great French review and opening it hap-hazard. The article chanced to be one on a medical subject, written by a very eminent practitioner, but not at all likely to interest Adele Savelli. But she felt the necessity of composing herself before meeting her husband when he should come home from the club, and she followed the lines with a sort of resolute determination which belonged to her character at certain moments. It was very hard to understand a word of what she was reading, but she at last became absorbed in the effort, and ultimately reached the end of the paper. In the meantime, Francesco Savelli had spent his day in deliberately thinking over the situation, and he had determined, very wisely, that it would be a great mistake to speak to his wife on the subject. He went over in his mind all the men of his acquaintance whom he might consult with safety and with some prospect of obtaining a truthful answer to his question, and he saw that they were by no means many. Wisdom and frankness are rare enough separately, but rarer still in combination in the same person, though a few are aware that the truest wisdom is the most consistent frankness. Most of those of whom Savelli thought were men considerably older than himself, and not men with whom he had any great intimacy. The Prince of Sant' Ilario and his cousin, the Marchese di San Giacinto, Spicca, the melancholy and sarcastic, and perhaps Pietro Ghisleri--there were not many more, and the last named, who was the nearest to him in point of age, was not, as Savelli thought, very friendly to him. On the whole, he determined to wait and bide his time, watching Adele carefully, and collecting such evidence as he could while studiously keeping his own counsel. He saw very little of his wife on that day, and when he next spoke to her about the Ardens, her manner was so cordial and apparently sincere, that he at once formed an opinion in her favour, as indeed he desired to do, though it was more for the sake of his family as a whole, than for her own. "I have asked them to dinner," she said, "because we never see anything of them, any more than if they were not in Rome. Shall we have my father and the Princess, too? It will make a family party." "By all means," answered Savelli, who did not enjoy the prospect of having the Ardens as the only guests, after what had recently passed between himself and Lord Herbert. "By all means--a family party--a sort of rejoicing over Arden's recovery." "Dear Arden!" exclaimed Adele. "I like him now. I used to have the greatest antipathy for him because he is a cripple, poor fellow! I suppose that is natural, but I have quite got over it." "I am very glad," observed Francesco. "You and Laura were brought up like sisters--there ought never to be any coldness between you." "Oh, as for Laura, there never has been the least difference since we were children. We are sisters still, just as we used to be when you first came to the house. Do you remember, Francesco--four years ago? I used to think you liked Laura better than me. Indeed I did! It was so foolish, and now you are always so good to me that I see how silly I was. It never was true, carissimo, was it?" "No, indeed!" answered Savelli, with an awkward laugh, and turning away his face to hide the colour that rose in his cheeks. "Of course not. And as for Laura, she is so much in love with her husband that I believe she was dreaming of him even then, before she had ever seen him, and long before she was old enough to think of marrying any one. How she loves him! Is it not wonderful?" Francesco glanced at his wife, and he believed that he was not mistaken in her. There was a look of genuine admiration almost amounting to enthusiasm in her face. He suppressed a slight sigh, for he still loved Laura in his helpless and hopeless way. "Yes," he said, "it is wonderful, all things considered." "But then," concluded Adele, "with Arden's beautiful character--well, I am not surprised." CHAPTER IX. Adele Savelli was a very good actress, and she deceived her husband without much trouble, making him believe that she had never felt ill-disposed towards Laura, and that the repulsion she had felt for Arden had depended upon his deformity, to which she had now grown accustomed, as was quite natural. She had aways been careful not to speak out her mind upon the subject to Francesco, and had been more than cautious in other respects. She was far too clever a woman to let him hear the gossip she had originated except through outsiders, in the way of general conversation, and now she found it easy to change her tactics completely without doing anything to rouse his suspicion. She seemed very much preoccupied, however, in spite of her efforts to seem cheerful and agreeable during the two days which preceded the dinner party her father had obliged her to give. There were domestic details, too, which gave her trouble, and she had more than enough to occupy her. Her maid had been very ill, too, and was barely beginning to recover. Every woman of the world knows what it means to be suddenly deprived of a thoroughly good maid's services just at the opening of the season. That was one more annoyance among the many she encountered, and, in her opinion, not the smallest. There was, of course, no open humiliation in what she was now forced to do, but she felt the shame of defeat very keenly whenever she thought of her interview with her father. It was not surprising that her hatred of the Ardens should suddenly take greater proportions under circumstances so favourable to its growth. And she hated them both with all her heart, while preparing herself to receive them with open arms and protestations of affection. But she did everything in her power to make the meeting effective. She even went so far as to buy pretty little gifts for the Prince and Princess of Gerano, and for Laura and Arden, which she took the trouble to conceal with her own hands in the folds of each one's napkin just before dinner; pretty little chiselled silver sweetmeat boxes for the two ladies, and tiny matchboxes for the men. Both the elder Savelli being away at the time, she arranged everything according to her own taste, which was excellent, thus taking advantage of her position as temporary mistress of the house. There were flowers scattered on the table, a form of decoration of which the old butler disapproved, shaking his head mournfully as he carried out Adele's directions. She did not over-act her part when the evening came, for she knew how to be very charming when she pleased, and she meant on the present occasion to produce a very strong impression upon every one present at dinner. She succeeded well. The Ardens themselves were surprised at the pleasant feeling which seemed to pervade everything. Gerano looked at his daughter approvingly, repeatedly smiled, nodded to her, and at last drank her health. Don Francesco was delighted, for he saw in his wife's manner the strongest refutation of all that Arden had told him two days earlier. Moreover, he had Laura Arden on his left and was at liberty to talk to her as much as he pleased, which was in itself a great satisfaction, especially as she herself was more than usually cordial, being determined not to betray herself. Francesco looked across the table at Arden more than once, with a significant glance, and inwardly congratulated himself upon having said nothing to his wife about the difficulty. Arden looked ill. He had caught cold during that interview with Savelli in the icy drawing-room, and even an ordinary cold told quickly upon his appearance in his weak state of health. But he did all in his power to seem cheerful and talked more than usually well, so that his wife alone knew that he was making an effort. So the dinner passed off admirably--so well, indeed, that when all were going home, Laura and her mother looked at one another as though they could hardly believe what they had seen and heard. The Princess of Gerano began to doubt the truth of the accusations against Adele, and even Laura fancied that they must have been very much exaggerated. The Prince, himself, the only one of the party who had heard the slander from Adele's own lips, sentence by sentence, and almost word for word as Ghisleri had repeated it to him, wisely held his peace, while by no means so wisely believing that his daughter had repented and was carrying out his instructions in all sincerity. He kissed her affectionately on the forehead when he went away, and she felt that she had won a victory. "You look a little pale, my child," he said. "I have noticed it all the evening. Be very careful of your health, my dear." "Yes, papa--but I am quite well, thank you," answered Adele. Yet she did not look well. There was an odd, half-frightened look in her eyes when they were all gone and she was left alone with her husband. But he did not notice it, and made it easy for her, bestowing infinite praise upon her tact and talent as a hostess. Though she did not hear all he said, she was vaguely pleased, that, after spending the whole evening at Laura's side, he should stay at home instead of going to the club, and find so many pleasant things to say. In spite of her success, however, she spent a restless night. Laura looked anxiously at Arden's face when they got home. He looked worse, and coughed two or three times in a way she did not like. "You are very tired, dear," she said. "You had better not get up to-morrow. The rest will do you good." "I think you are right," he answered. "I need rest." The next morning his cold was worse, and he did not rise. He seemed restless and nervous, too, perhaps from the fatigue of the previous evening. The doctor came and said there was no danger, as the cold was not on the lungs, and that the best thing to be done was to stay in bed two or three days. Later in the afternoon Pietro Ghisleri called, and Laura, at Arden's express desire, received him alone, promising to bring him into the bedroom afterwards. Several days had passed since they had met. Ghisleri was looking fresher and less nervous than the last time Laura had seen him. He, on his part, saw that she was anxious again, for there were dark shadows under her eyes as there had been when she had first returned from England. "Is there anything wrong?" he asked, as soon as they met. "Herbert has a bad cold," she answered. "The doctor says it is nothing serious, but he coughs, and I am worried about him." Ghisleri reminded her that there was nothing the matter with Arden's lungs, and that a cough might be a very insignificant affair, after all. Then she told him of the dinner party on the previous evening, dwelling at length on the tact and amiability Adele had displayed. Pietro was inclined to smile, when he understood that what he had said to Gerano had borne fruit so soon. He was quite sure that before night he should hear of some even more amiable doings on Adele's part, for he guessed at once that the Prince had forced her to change her behaviour. But he kept his reflections to himself. There was no reason why any one but Gerano should ever know that he had been concerned in the matter. He had no idea that everything had been repeated through the family, till it had reached Laura herself. "Donna Adele has great social talent," he remarked, finding, as usual, the one thing to be said in her favour. "Indeed she has!" assented Laura, with a constrained little laugh, and looking into his blue eyes. Ghisleri made no sign, however, and presently began to talk of other matters. He always felt a singular satisfaction in being with Laura, and this year he noticed that it was growing upon him. The impression he had first formed of her, when she had appeared in society, was confirmed year by year, and appealed to a side of his nature of which few people suspected the existence. It depended largely on Laura's looks, no doubt, which strongly suggested the high predominance of all that was good over the ordinary instincts of average human nature. He felt a sort of reverence for her which he had never felt for any one; he knew that she was good, he imagined that she was almost saintly in her life, and he believed that she might, under certain circumstances become, in the best religious sense, a holy woman. Had he seen her on that evening when Arden had found her strangling an imaginary enemy in a fit of exceedingly human anger, he could hardly have accepted the evidence of his senses. All that was good in her appealed directly through all that was bad in him to the small remnant of the better nature which had survived through his misspent life. It did not, indeed, rouse in him the slightest active desire to imitate her virtues. The very idea that he could ever be virtuous in any sense, brought a smile to his face. But he could not help admiring what he knew to be so very far beyond his sphere--what he believed, perhaps, to be even further from his reach than it actually was. He had reached that almost morbid stage of self-contempt in which a man, while still admiring goodness in others, checks even the aspiration towards it in his own heart, because he is convinced that it cannot be really genuine, and looks upon it as one of the affectations most to be despised in himself. He had got so far sometimes as to refuse a very wretched beggar a penny, merely because he doubted the sincerity of the charitable impulse which impelled his hand towards his pocket--laughing bitterly at himself afterwards when he thought of the poor wretch's disappointed face, and going back to find him again, perhaps, and to bestow a silver coin, simply because he could not resist the temptation to be kind. Such unhealthy conditions of mind may seem inconceivable and incomprehensible to men of other nature, all whose thoughts are natural, logical, and sound. They exist, none the less, and not by any means necessarily in persons otherwise weak or morbid. The very absurdity of them, which cannot escape the man himself, makes him seem still more despicable in his own eyes, increases his distrust of himself and gives rise, completing the vicious circle, to conditions each time more senselessly self-torturing than the last. It is hard to bring such men to see how untenable their own position is. They will not even believe that a good instinct underlies the superstructure of morbid fancy, and that the latter could not exist without it. Ghisleri looked long at Laura and admired her more than ever, realising at the same time how deeply her personality was impressed in his thoughts, and how vividly he was able at all times to evoke her outward image, and the conception he had formed of her character. He almost hated old Spicca for having said that no one could possibly be as good as she looked. In her own self she was the most overwhelming refutation of that remark; but then, he reflected, Spicca did not know her well enough, and habitually believed in nothing and in nobody. At least every one supposed that was Spicca's view of the world. Before long Laura took Pietro to see Arden, and left the two together. "There is something seriously wrong with me, Ghisleri," said his friend. "I am going to be very ill. I feel it." It was not like him to speak in that way, for he was brave and generally did his best to hide his sufferings from every one. Ghisleri looked at him anxiously. His face was drawn and pinched, and there were spots of colour on his cheeks which had not been there a few hours earlier. "Perhaps you have a little fever with the cold," suggested Pietro, in a reassuring tone. "It often happens in this country." "I dare say," replied Arden. "It may be so. At all events, your specialist was right about the main thing, and I am no more consumptive than you are. But I feel--I cannot tell why--that I am going to be very ill indeed. It may be an impression, and even if I am, I shall probably weather it." "Of course you will." But Ghisleri was in reality alarmed. "I am so glad you came to-day," continued Arden, speaking more rapidly. "If I should get worse to-morrow, really ill, you know--you must write to my brother. I would not ask my wife to do it for worlds. Do you understand?" "Perfectly--but I do not believe there will be any reason--" "Never mind that!" exclaimed Arden, interrupting him almost impatiently. "If there is any reason, you will write. I cannot tell you all about it. Of course I may not be delirious, you know, but again, I may be--one is never sure, and then it would be too late. Uncle Herbert is alive still, thank God, and quite well, and if anything should happen to me, his will would be worth nothing. Laura would not get a penny and would be dreadfully poor. Henry must do something for her. Do you understand me? He must. You must see to it, too, or he will never think of it--kind as he is. Those things do not strike him. You see I have only my small portion--which is little enough, as you know, because there are so many sisters--and they are not all rich, either. We could not go on living in this way long--but Henry was very generous. He sent me two thousand pounds when we were married, and the yacht too, so that we spent very little--" "You are exhausting yourself, my dear fellow," said Ghisleri, growing more anxious as he listened to the sick man's excited talk. "You have told me all this before, and your brother knows it too; he will not allow Lady Herbert--" "One never can tell what he will do," broke in Arden, raising himself a little on his elbow, and facing his friend. His eyes were unnaturally brilliant. "He is so eccentric. And Laura must have money--she must have plenty--not that she is extravagant, but you know how she was brought up in the Gerano's house, and I should never have thought of marrying her, but for Uncle Herbert's money." "You would both have been perfectly happy on a hundred a year," observed Pietro. "People are when they love each other as you do." Arden's face softened at once, and Ghisleri saw that he was thinking of his wife. He was silent for a few moments. "That is all very well," he said, suddenly rousing himself again. "That might do so long as I should be there to make life smooth for her. But when she is left alone--especially here--Ghisleri, I do not like to think that she must live here after I am gone--" "For Heaven's sake do not begin to talk in that way, Arden! It is perfectly absurd. You only have a cold, after all!" "Perhaps so. I believe I have something worse. Never mind! I was saying that I could not bear to think of her living here without me. It is quite true. No--it is not sentiment--something much more reasonable and real. There are people here who hate us both, who positively hate us, and who will make her life unbearable when there is no one to protect her--the more so, if she is poor. And besides, you know what will happen before long--oh, I cannot think of it!" Ghisleri did not answer at once, for it was not clear to him how Arden had discovered that he had enemies. But the latter waited for no answer, and went on after a few seconds, still speaking excitedly. "You see," he said, "how necessary it is that Harry should come--that you should write to him--that he should be made to understand--he must do something for Laura, Ghisleri--he really must." There was something painful in the persistent repetition of the thought, and then, oddly enough, Pietro started as he heard his own name pronounced almost without an interval, immediately after that of Laura. It sounded very strangely--Laura Ghisleri--he had never thought of it before. A moment later he scorned himself for thinking of it at all. "My dear Arden," he said, "you are really making yourself ill about nothing. Put it all out of your mind for the present, and remember that I am always ready if you need anything. You have only to send for me, and besides, I shall come every day until you are quite well." "Thank you, my dear fellow, you are a good friend. Perhaps you are right. But as I lie here, thinking of all the possibilities--" "You are beginning again," interrupted Ghisleri. "I must go away or you will talk yourself into a fever." At that moment Laura re-entered the room. She started a little when she saw her husband's face. "How do you find him?" she asked quickly of Ghisleri. "He has a cold," answered the latter, cheerfully, "and perhaps there is a little fever with it. I am going to leave him, for he ought to keep quiet and not tire himself with too much talking." He shook hands with Arden. Laura followed him out into the passage beyond. "He is very ill!" she exclaimed, in a low voice, touching his sleeve in her excitement. "I can see it. He never looked like that." "It may not be anything serious," answered Ghisleri. "But he ought to see the doctor at once. I have a cab down stairs, and I will go and find him and bring him here. Keep him quiet; do not let him talk." "Yes. You are so kind." She left him and went back to Arden's bedside. He was tossing uneasily as though he could not find rest in any position, and the great round spots on his cheeks had deepened almost to a purple colour. He scarcely seemed to notice her entrance, but as she turned to move something on the table, after smoothing his pillow, he caught her suddenly by the skirt of her frock. "Laura! Laura! do not go away!" he cried. "Do not leave me alone." "No, love, I am not going," she answered gently, and sat down by his side. Ghisleri was not gone long. By a mere chance he found the doctor at home, and brought him back. Then he waited in the drawing-room to hear the result of the visit. The physician's face was graver when he returned, and Laura was not with him. "Is it anything serious?" asked Ghisleri. "I am afraid so. I shall be better able to tell in a couple of hours. The fever is very high, the other symptoms will develop before long, and we shall know what it is." "What do you think it might be?" "It might be scarlet fever," answered the doctor. "I am afraid it is. But say nothing at present. You should get a nurse at once, for some one must sit up with him all night. I will send him something to take immediately, and I will come back myself in about two hours." They went away together, but when the doctor returned, he found Ghisleri waiting for him in the street. It was now five o'clock and quite dark. Pietro remained down stairs while the visit lasted. "Well?" he asked, when the physician came down again. "It is scarlet fever, as I was afraid--one of the most sudden cases I ever knew. They have not got a nurse yet, the idea seems to frighten Lady Herbert." "I will see to it," said Ghisleri. "By the bye, it is contagious, is it not? I have a visit to pay before dinner; ought I to change my clothes?" The doctor smiled. He did not know Ghisleri, and fancied that he might be timid. "It is not contagious yet," he answered, "or hardly at all. I do not think there is any danger." "There might be a little--even a very little, you think?" asked Pietro, insisting. "Of course it can do no harm to change one's clothes," replied the other, somewhat surprised. "You have told Lady Herbert exactly what must be done, I suppose. In that case I shall not go up." The doctor was confirmed in his suspicion that Ghisleri was afraid of catching the fever, and got into his carriage, musing on the deceptive nature of appearances. Pietro wrote a few words on his card, telling Laura that he would be back before dinner time with the best nurse to be found, and sent it up by the porter. Then he drove home as quickly as possible, dressed himself entirely afresh, and went to see the Contessa dell' Armi. "I have come," he said, after the first greeting, "to tell you that you will not see me for several days. Arden has got the scarlet fever, and I shall be there taking care of him, more or less, until he is out of danger." "Can they not have a nurse for him?" asked Maddalena, raising her eyebrows. "There will be a nurse, too. I am going to get one now and take her there." "You do not seem anxious to consult me in the least," said the Contessa. "You never do nowadays." "What do you mean? Do you think this is a case of consulting any one? I do not understand." "Do you think you have any right to risk your life in this way? Do you think you contribute to my happiness by doing it? And yet I have heard you say that my happiness is first in your thoughts. Not that I ever believed it." "You are wrong," answered Ghisleri, gently. "I would do almost anything for you." "What a clever reservation--'almost' anything. You know that if you did not put it in that way, I should tell you not to go near the Ardens until there is no danger of catching the fever." "Of course," assented Pietro. "You ought not to be so diplomatic. You used to talk very differently. Do you remember that evening by the waterfall at Vallombrosa? You have changed since then." Her classic face began to harden in the way he knew so well. "There is no question of diplomacy," he said quietly. "Arden has been my friend these ten years, and he is in very great danger. I mean to take care of him as long as I am needed because I do not trust nurses, and because Lady Herbert is anything but strong herself at the present time, and may break down or lose her head. As for risking my life, there is no risk at all in the matter. I have very little belief in contagion, though the doctors talk about it." "I suppose you have just seen him," observed the Contessa, who was determined to find fault. "You do not seem to ask yourself whether I share your disbelief." "Since you ask," said Ghisleri, with a smile, "I admit that I changed my clothes before coming to see you, for that very reason. Some people do believe in danger of that kind." "I am glad you admit it. So I am not to see you until Lord Herbert is quite well again. I will not answer for the consequences. I have something to say to you to-day. Are you in a hurry?" "Not in the least." "It will not take long. I have discovered another proof of your desertion. You know what pleasant things Adele Savelli says about me--and you, too. I have told you more than once exactly what was repeated to me. Did you ever take any steps to prevent her talking about me?" "No, I never did. I do not even see how I could. Can I quarrel with Francesco Savelli, because his wife spreads scandalous reports about you? It would look singularly like fighting your battles." "And yet," retorted the Contessa, speaking slowly, and fixing her eyes on his, "there is no sooner something said against Lady Herbert Arden, than you show your teeth and fight in earnest. Can you deny it?" "No, I do not lie," answered Ghisleri. "But I did not know that you were aware of the fact. Some one has been indiscreet, as usual." "Of course. That sort of thing cannot be a secret long. All Rome knows that there was a dinner of reconciliation at the Palazzo Savelli last night, that every one embraced every one else, that Adele looks like death to-day, and is going about everywhere saying the most delightful things about the Ardens, in the most horribly nervous way. You see what power you have when you choose to use it." She spoke bitterly, though she was conscious that the right was not all on her side, and that Ghisleri, as he said, could defend the Ardens without fear of adverse criticism, whereas it would be a very different matter if he entered the lists in her defence. "You are not quite just to me, my dear lady," he said, after a moment's reflection. "You are not the wife of my old friend, and an otherwise indifferent person--" "Quite indifferent?" She looked keenly at him. "Quite," he answered, with perfect sincerity. "A person is indifferent whom one neither loves nor calls an intimate friend. Yet Lady Herbert is beautiful and good, and is admirable in many ways. But the world knows that I am no more in love with her than with Donna Adele, and I am quite free, therefore, to defend her." "Of course you are. The only thing that surprises me is your alacrity in doing so. You do not generally like to give yourself trouble for indifferent people. But then, as Arden really is your friend--" She stopped, with a little impatient movement of the shoulders. "I wish you could bring yourself for once to believe that I am not altogether insincere and calculating in everything I do," said Ghisleri, weary of her perpetual suspicion. "I wish I could," she answered coldly. "But how can I? There are such extraordinary inconsistencies in your character, such contradictions--it is very hard to believe in you. And yet," she added sadly, "God knows I must--for my own sake." "Then do!" exclaimed Pietro, with energy. "Make an end of all this doubting. Have I ever lied to you? Have I ever made a promise to you and not kept it? How have I deceived you? And yet you never trust me altogether, and I know it." "It is not that--it is not that!" repeated Maddalena. "What you say is all true, in its way. It is--how shall I say it--you did not deceive me, but I was deceived in you. You are not what I thought you were. You used to say that you would stand at nothing--that my word was your law--all those fine phrases you used to make to me, and they all seem to come to nothing when reality begins." "If you would tell me what you expect me to do, you would not find me slow in doing it." "That is the thing. If you loved me as you say you do, would you need any direction? Your heart would tell you." "You are angry with me now, because you do not wish me to take care of Arden--" "Can I wish that you should be willing to cut yourself off from me for a week--or two weeks? I suppose that is your idea of love. It is not mine." "Then be frank in your turn. You have the right to ask what you please of me. Say plainly that you wish me to give up the idea, to leave Arden to the doctors and the nurses, and I will obey you unhesitatingly." "I would not have the sacrifice now--not as a gift," murmured Maddalena, passionately. "If you could think of doing it, you shall do it. I will force you to it now. I will not see you until Arden does not need you any more--not even if you never go near him. If you do not think of me naturally, I would rather that you should never think of me again." Ghisleri rose and went to the fireplace, and looked at the objects on the mantelpiece for a long time, without seeing them. There was a strange conflict in his heart at that moment. He could not tell whether he loved her or not--that he had loved her a very short time since, he was sure. At the present juncture it would be very easy to tell her the truth, if his love were no longer real, and to break with her once and for ever. Did she love him? Cruelly and coldly he compared her love with that of another whom he had sacrificed long ago--a memory that haunted him still at times. That had been love indeed. Was this also love, but of another kind? Then, suddenly, he despised himself for his fickleness, and he thought of what Maddalena had done and risked for him, and for him alone. "Maddalena," he said, and his voice shook as he came to her side, and took her small white hand. "Forgive me, forgive me all there is to forgive. I am a brute sometimes. I cannot help it." Her lip trembled a little, but her face did not relax. "There is nothing to forgive," she said. "It is I who have been mistaken." CHAPTER X. Ghisleri left the Contessa's house anything but calm. To hate himself and the whole world in general, with one or two unvarying exceptions, was by no means a new sensation. He was quite familiar with it and looked upon it as a necessary condition of mind, through which he must pass from time to time, and from which he was never very far removed. But he had rarely, in his ever-changing life, been in such strange perturbation of spirit as on this particular evening. He was almost beyond reasoning, and he seemed to be staring at the facts that faced him in a day-dream horribly like reality. He knew that if he really loved Maddalena, he would sacrifice his friend, even after what the Contessa had said, and that, after a day or two, she would probably relent. Nor did the sacrifice seem a very great one. People were ill all the year round, were taken care of by the members of their own family and by nurses, and recovered or died as the case might be. He had no especial knowledge to help him in watching over Herbert Arden, though he believed himself quiet and skilful in a sick-room, and had more than once done what he could in such cases. He felt, indeed, that he was more deeply attached to the man than he had supposed himself to be, but he had not imagined that, at the critical moment, that attachment would outweigh all consideration for Maddalena Delmar. And yet, he not only clung to the belief that he loved her, but was conscious that there was a broad foundation of truth for that belief to rest upon. He asked himself in vain why he was at that moment going from her house to Arden's, and he found no answer. That Laura herself contributed in any way to strengthen his resolve was too monstrous to be believed, even by himself, against himself. He was not so bad as that yet. He laughed bitterly at his inability to comprehend his own motives and impulses, as he drove to the little convent of the French Sisters of the "Bon Secours," to ask for the best nurse they could give him. It was strange, too, that he should be coming directly from Maddalena's side to the habitation of a community of almost saintly women--stranger still, that he should be on his way to a house where, during the next few days, he expected to spend his time in the society of a woman who ranked even higher than they in his exalted estimate of her character. He got the nurse, and she was despatched in the company of another sister in a separate cab, while Ghisleri followed in his own. When they reached the house, they found that Arden was much worse. His mind was wandering, and, though he constantly called for Laura, he did not know her when she came to his side, trying to keep back the scalding tears, lest they should fall on him as she bent down to catch his words. The doctor had been sent for a third time in great haste. Meanwhile, the sister went about her duties silently and systematically, making herself thoroughly familiar with the arrangements of the room, and preparing all that could be needed during the night, so far as she could foresee the doctor's possible instructions. She smoothed Arden's pillows with a hand the practised perfection of whose touch told a wonderful tale of life-long labour among the sick. "Madame should not be here," she said to Ghisleri, in a quiet, even voice. "It may soon be contagious." Laura heard the words as she stood on the other side of the bed, watching every passing expression on Arden's flushed face. "I will not leave him," she said simply. The sister did not answer. She had done her duty in giving the warning, and she could do no more. When she had finished all her arrangements, she sat down, accustomed to husband her strength always, against the strain that must inevitably fall upon it day by day. She took out her small black book and began to read, glancing at Arden at regular intervals of about a minute. Ghisleri entreated Laura to take some rest, or at least to follow the sister's example and sit down, since nothing could be done. She did not seem to understand. He was glad he had come, for he fancied she was losing her head already. He stood beside her watching his friend and waiting for the doctor, who appeared before long. "It is one of the most extraordinarily virulent cases I ever knew," he said to Ghisleri, when the two were alone together in the drawing-room, for Laura would not leave her husband's side for a moment. "I hardly know what to make of it, though of course there can be no doubt as to what it is. It is better that you should know how serious the case is. I presume you are an intimate friend of Lord Herbert Arden's?" "Yes, an old friend." "And you are not afraid of catching the fever?" asked the doctor. "Not in the least." "Oh, I thought from a question you asked--" He hesitated. "I was going to see a friend, and I wanted to be on the safe side," said Ghisleri. "I am glad of that; it is just as well that there should be a man at hand. Shall you spend the night here?" "Yes," replied Ghisleri. "Very good. I have told the sister to send for me if the temperature rises more than two-tenths of a degree centigrade higher than it is now. It ought to go down. If I am called anywhere I will leave the address at my lodgings, where one of my servants will sit up all night. I confess that I am surprised by the case. In Rome the scarlet fever is rarely so dangerous." Thereupon the doctor took his leave and Ghisleri remained alone in the drawing-room. He sat down and took up a book. For the present it seemed best not to go back to Arden's room. His constant presence might be disagreeable to Laura, since she could not be induced to leave her husband as yet. Ghisleri's turn would come when she was exhausted, or when he had an opportunity of persuading her to take some rest. Until then there was nothing to be done but to wait. A servant came in and put wood on the fire and turned down a lamp that was smoking a little. He inquired of Ghisleri whether her ladyship would wish any dinner served, and Pietro told him to keep something in readiness in case she should be hungry. He himself rarely had much appetite, and to-night he had none at all. He tried to read, without much success, for his own thoughts crowded upon each other so quickly and tumultuously that he found it impossible to concentrate his attention. The clocks struck half-past eight, nine, ten, and half-past ten, and still he sat motionless in his place. Again the Italian servant came in, put wood on the fire and looked to the lamps. Did the Signore know what orders were to be given for the night? The Signore did not know, as her ladyship was still with his lordship, and was not to be disturbed, but some food must be kept ready in case she needed it. Eleven, half-past, twelve. Again the door opened. There was something awful in the monotony of it all, Ghisleri thought, but this time Donald appeared instead of the Italian, who had been sent to bed. After making very much the same inquiries as the latter, Donald paused. "His lordship is very ill, sir, as I understand," he said. He had known Ghisleri as his master's friend for years. "Yes, Donald, he is very ill," answered Ghisleri, gravely. "It is scarlet fever, the doctor says. We must all help to take care of him." "Yes, sir." The few insignificant words exchanged with the servant seemed to rouse Ghisleri from the reverie in which he had sat so many hours. When Donald was gone he rose from the chair and began to walk up and down the drawing-room. The inaction was irksome, and he longed to be of use. He would have gone to Arden's room, but he fancied it would be better to let Laura stay there without him, until she was very tired, and then to take her place. She would be more likely to rest if she had a long watch at first, he thought. As a matter of fact, an odd sort of delicacy influenced him, too, almost without his knowing it,--an undefined instinct which made him leave her with the man she so dearly loved in the presence only of a stranger and a woman, rather than intrude himself as the third person and the witness of her anxiety. As he turned for the fiftieth time in his short, monotonous walk, he saw Laura entering at the opposite end of the room. She was dressed all in white, in a loose robe of some soft and warm material, gathered about the waist and hanging in straight folds. Her heavy black hair was fastened in a great knot, low at the back of her head. The light fell full upon her pale face and deep, dark eyes as she caught sight of Ghisleri, and stood still at the door, her hand upon the curtain as she thrust it aside from before her. She was so really beautiful at that moment that Pietro started and stared at her. "I did not know you were here," she said softly. He came forward to meet her. "I will take my turn when you are willing to go and rest," he answered. "I have waited for that reason. How is he now?" "Much more quiet," answered Laura. "The sister persuaded me that my being there perhaps prevented his going to sleep, and so I came away. She will call me if there is any change. Oh! if he could only sleep!" Ghisleri knew how very improbable such a fortunate circumstance was at the outset of such a severe illness, but he said nothing about it. Any idea which could give Laura hope was good in itself. She sank into a deep chair by the fire and watched the flames, her chin resting on her hand. She seemed almost unconscious of Ghisleri's presence as he stood leaning against the mantelpiece and looking down at her. "I will go and see how he is," he said at last, and went towards the door. Just as he touched the handle she called him in an odd tone as though she were startled by something. "Signor Ghisleri! Please come back." He obeyed, and resumed his former attitude. "I am very nervous," she said, with a little shiver. "Please do not leave me--I--I am afraid to be alone. If you wish to go, we will go together." Ghisleri concealed his surprise, which was considerable. The wish she expressed was very foreign to her usually quiet and collected nature. He saw that her nerves were rudely shaken. "It is very weak of me," she said presently, in an apologetic tone. "But I see his face all the time, and I hear that dreadful wandering talk--I cannot bear it." "I do not wonder," answered Pietro, quietly. "You must be very tired, too. Will you not lie down on the sofa, while I sit here and wait? It would be so much better. You will need your strength to-morrow." "That is true," she said, as though struck by the truth of the last words. She crossed the room and lay down upon a large sofa at a little distance from the fire, arranged the folds of her dress with that modest, womanly dignity some women have in their smallest actions, clasped her hands, and closed her eyes. Pietro sat down and looked at her, musing over the strange combination of circumstances which formed themselves in his life. It seemed odd that he should be where he was, towards the small hours of the morning, watching over one of the women he admired most in the world, keeping his place at her especial request, when he had in reality come to help in taking care of her husband. How the world would wag its head and talk, he thought, if it could guess where he was! For a long time Laura did not move, and he was sure that she was still awake. Then, all at once, he saw her hands relax and loosen from each other, her head turned a little on the dark velvet cushion, and she sighed as she sank to sleep. She was less quiet after that. Her lips moved, and she stirred uneasily from time to time, evidently dreaming over again the painful scenes of the evening. Ghisleri rang the bell, crossed the room swiftly, and opened the door without noise. Donald appeared in the hall outside. "Her ladyship has fallen asleep on the sofa," said Pietro. "She does not wish to be left alone. Is there any woman servant awake in the house?" "No, sir. Her ladyship sent her maid to bed." "Never mind. Go and sit quietly in the drawing-room, in case she should need anything, while I go and see how Lord Herbert is." "Very good, sir." The world would have been even more surprised now than before, especially if it could have understood the meaning of what Ghisleri did, and the refined reverence implied in his unwillingness to remain in the drawing-room longer than necessary. It would not have believed in his motive, and it would have added that he was very foolish not to enjoy the artistic pleasure of watching over the beautiful woman in her sleep as long as he could, more especially as she had gone to the length of asking him to do so. But Ghisleri thought very differently. He entered the sick-room, and sat down by the bedside. Arden was in a restless state between waking and unconsciousness, moaning aloud without articulating any words, his face flushed to a deep purple hue, his eyes half open and turned up under the lids, so that only the white was visible. The sister was seated by the table, on which stood a small lamp, the light being screened from Arden by a makeshift consisting of the cover of a bandbox supported by a few heavy books. When Ghisleri had entered she had glanced at him, and explained by a sign that there was no change. Neither he nor she thought of speaking during the hour that followed. The sister had a watch before her on the table, and at regular intervals she rose, poured a spoonful of something into Arden's mouth, smoothed his pillow, saw that he was as comfortable as he could be, and went back to her seat. At the end of the hour she took Arden's temperature with the fever thermometer, and wrote down the result on a sheet of paper. It had fallen one-tenth of a degree since midnight. "It generally does towards morning," said the sister, in a low voice, in answer to Ghisleri's inquiry as to whether this was a really favourable symptom of a change for the better. The night passed wearily. Pietro felt that he was of little use, unless his presence in the house afforded Laura some sort of moral support. So far as the nursing was concerned, the sister neither needed nor expected any assistance. Towards five o'clock, Laura entered the room. On waking from her sleep, she had seen Donald seated in Ghisleri's place, and had wondered why the latter had gone away. "He seems better," she whispered, bending over her husband, and softly smoothing the thick brown hair from his forehead. "The temperature has fallen," answered Ghisleri, giving her the only encouragement he could. "Thank God!" Laura sat down by the opposite side of the bed. Presently, by a sign, she asked Ghisleri whether he would not go home. "I will wait in the drawing-room until the doctor comes, and the other sister has arrived for the day," he said, coming to her side. She merely nodded, and he quietly went out. Before long, Donald brought him some coffee, and he sat where he had sat in the early part of the night, anxiously awaiting the doctor's coming. There was little enough to be learned, when the latter actually came. A very bad case, he said, so bad that he would not be averse to asking the opinion of a colleague,--and later, the same colleague came, saw Arden, shook his head, and said that it was the worst case he had ever seen, but that the treatment so far was perfectly correct. There was nothing to be done, but to take the best care possible of the patient. Ghisleri had no hope whatever, and Laura became almost totally silent. She could not be paler than she was, but Pietro almost fancied that she was growing hourly thinner, while the sad eyes seemed to sink deeper and deeper beneath the marble brow. He went home for a few hours to dress, and returned at midday. The loss of one night's rest had not even told upon his face, but his expression was grave and reserved in the extreme, and his manner even more than usually quiet. Laura had not slept since her nap in the drawing-room, and looked exhausted, though she was not yet really tired out. Ghisleri thought it was time to speak seriously to her. "My dear Lady Herbert," he said, "forgive me for being quite frank. This is not a time for turning phrases. You must positively rest, or you will break down and you may be dangerously ill yourself." "I do not feel tired," she said. "Your nerves keep you up. I entreat you to think of what I say, and I must say it. You may risk your own life, if you please; it is natural that you should run at least the risk of contagion, but you have no right to risk another life than your own by uselessly wearing out your strength. Besides, Arden is unconscious now; when he begins to recover he will need you far more, and will not need me at all." A very slight blush rose in Laura's pale cheeks, and she turned away her face. A short pause followed. "I think you are right," she said at last. Then, without looking at him, she left the room. Ghisleri watched her until she disappeared, and there was a strange expression in his usually hard blue eyes. It seemed as though the woman could do nothing without touching some sensitive, sympathetic chord in his inner nature, though her presence left him apparently perfectly cold and indifferent. Yet he had known himself so long, that he dreaded the sensation, and his ever-ready self-contempt rose at the idea that he could possibly find himself capable of loving his friend's wife, even in the most distant future. Besides, there was nothing at all really resembling love in what he felt, so far as he could judge. If it ever developed into love, it would turn out to be a love so far nobler than anything there had been in his life, as to be at present beyond his comprehension. He did not see Laura again for several hours. He spent the day in Arden's room, and for the first time felt that he was of use when his strength was needed to lift the frail body from one bed to the other. Arden grew rapidly worse, Ghisleri thought, and the doctor confirmed his opinion when he came for the third time that day. "To be quite frank," he said gravely, as he took leave of Pietro in the hall, "I have no hope of his recovery, and I doubt whether he will last until to-morrow night." This was no surprise to Ghisleri, who knew how little strength of resistance lay in the crippled frame. He bent his head in silence as the physician went out, and he almost shivered as he thought of what was before him. He knew now that he must stand by Laura's side at the near last moment of great suffering, when she was to see the one being she loved pass away before her eyes. He was more than ever glad that he had induced her to rest. Arden's mind was still wandering, and she could be of no immediate use. So the day ended at last and the night began and wore on, much like the previous one, saving that the anxiety of all was trebled. The other sister had returned, and Ghisleri saw by her face that she had no hope. With the same faultless regularity she performed her duties through the long hours. Towards midnight Laura and Ghisleri met in the drawing-room. For several minutes she stood in silence before the fire. Pietro could see that her lips were trembling as though she were on the point of bursting into tears. He knew how proud she must be, and he moved away towards the door. She heard his step behind her, and without turning round she beckoned to him with her hand to stay. He came back and stood at a little distance from her. Still she was silent for a moment; then she spoke. "It is coming," she said unsteadily. "You must help me to bear it." "I will do my best," answered Ghisleri, earnestly. Another pause followed. Then again she made a gesture, hurried and almost violent, bidding him leave her. Before he could reach the door he heard her first sob, and as he closed it behind him the storm of her passionate grief broke upon the silence of the night. He was not a man easily moved to any outward demonstration of feeling, but the tears stood in his eyes as he went back to Arden's bedside, and they were not for the friend he was so soon to lose. The sick man was unconscious and lay quite still on his back with closed lids. The sister was on her feet, watching him intently. She shook her head sadly when Ghisleri looked at her. The end was not far off, as she in her great experience well knew. In hot haste Pietro sent for the doctor, with a message saying that Lord Herbert was dying. But when he came he admitted reluctantly that he could do nothing; there was no hope even of prolonging life until morning. "Lady Herbert should be told the truth," he said. "If you wish it I will wait in another room until the end." "I think it would be better. Lady Herbert knows that there is no hope, but she will feel less nervous if you are at hand. How long do you expect--?" "He will not live many minutes after he comes to himself, I should say. The little strength there was is all gone. There will be a lucid interval of a few moments, and then the heart will stop. It was always defective." "Then Lady Herbert ought to be with him now, in case it comes," said Ghisleri. He left the doctor in the little room which Arden had used as a study, and went back to the drawing-room, feeling that one of the hardest moments of his life had come. Laura was seated in a deep chair, leaning back, her eyes half-closed and her cheeks still wet with tears. She started as Ghisleri entered. "The doctor has seen him again," he said. "If you are able, it would be better--" He stopped, for he saw that she understood. They went back together. As they entered the room they heard Arden's weak voice. "Laura, darling, where are you?" he was asking. Ghisleri saw that he was quite in possession of his faculties and went quietly out, leaving him with his wife and the sister. "I am here, love," Laura answered, coming swiftly up to his side and supporting him as he tried to sit up. "It was so long," he said faintly. "I am so glad you have come, dear." "You must not try to talk. You must not tire yourself." "It can make no difference now," he answered, letting his head rest upon her shoulder. "I must speak, dear one--this once before I die. Yes, I know I am dying. It is better so. I have had in you all that God has to give, all the happiness of a long life, in these short months." He paused and drew a painful breath. Laura's face was like alabaster, but she did not break down again now until all was over. "I owe it all to you--my life's love. You have given me so much, and I have given you so little. But God will give it all back to you, dear, some day. There is one thing I must say--oh, my breath!" He gasped in an agonised way, and almost choked. Laura thought it was the end, but he rallied again presently. "One thing, darling--you must remember, if you have loved me--ah, and you have, dear--that no promise binds you. You must try and think that if you forego any happiness for the memory of me, you will be taking that same happiness from me as well as from yourself. It will be right and just that you should marry if you wish to." "Oh, Herbert! Herbert!" cried Laura, pressing him to her, "do not talk so!" "Promise me that you will never think yourself bound," he said earnestly, speaking with more and more effort. "I shall not die happily unless you do." Laura bowed her head. "I promise it, dear, because you wish it." "Thank you, love." He was silent for some time. He seemed to be thinking, or at least trying to collect his last thoughts. "If it is a little girl, call her Laura," he said, in a breaking voice. "Then I shall know her in heaven, if she comes to me before you." "Or else Herbert," said Laura, softly. He moved his head a little in assent. "Darling," he said presently, "always remember that my last breath is a blessing for you." Very tenderly she pressed him to her heart and kissed him. Not till long afterwards did she realise the perfect unselfishness of the man's end, nor how every word so painfully spoken was meant to forestall and soothe her coming sorrow. "Say a prayer for me, darling--it is not far off. Say something in your own words--they will be better heard." Still supporting him against her breast, Laura raised her eyes heavenwards. The sister, little used to seeing men die without comfort of Holy Church, knelt down by the table. Then Laura's soft voice was heard in the quiet chamber. "Almighty God, I beseech Thee to receive the soul of this pure and true-hearted man amongst the spotless ones that are with Thee, to forgive all his sins, if any are yet unforgiven, and to render to him in heavenly joy all the happiness he has brought her who loves him on earth, through our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen." She ceased, forcing back the tears. He moved his head a little and kissed the hand that supported him. A long silence followed. "I thought Ghisleri came to the door with you and went out again," he said very feebly. "Would you like to see him, darling?" "Yes. He is a dear friend--better in every way than any one knows." At a word from Laura the sister rose and called Pietro. He was waiting in the passage. He came to the bedside and stood opposite to Laura, bending down and pressing Arden's wasted hand; he was very pale. "Ghisleri--dear old friend--good-bye--I am going. Take care of her--you and Harry--" He gasped for breath. "So help me God, I will do my best," answered Pietro, solemnly. Arden gave him one grateful look. Then with a last effort he drew Laura's face to his and kissed her once more. "Love--love--love--" The light went out in his eyes and Herbert Arden was dead, dying as he had lived of late, and perhaps all his life, unselfish in every thought and deed. With a cry that seemed to break her heart, Laura fell forward upon the shadowy form that seemed so unnaturally small as it lay there under the white coverlet. Ghisleri knelt in silence a few minutes beside his dead friend, and then rose to his feet. "She has fainted," said the sister softly. "If you could lift her with me--" But Ghisleri needed no help as he lifted the unconscious woman in his arms and carried her swiftly from the room. He laid her upon the very sofa on which he had seen her fall asleep on the previous night, and rang for Donald as he had then done. "His lordship is dead," he said in a low voice, as the Scotchman entered. "Her ladyship has fainted. Please send me her maid." Donald turned very white and left the room without a word. When Laura came to herself the women were with her and Ghisleri was gone. With an experienced man's coolness he gave all necessary orders, and foresaw details which no one else would have remembered. Then he went back to the chamber of death. No strange, unloving hands should touch the frail body of the man he had known so well. Pietro Ghisleri, who, as the world said, "never cared," was oddly sensitive at times. On that memorable night he would let no one help him in performing the last offices for Herbert Arden. When Laura next saw her husband, the calm and beautiful face lay on its snowy pillow surrounded with masses of white flowers. That was at daybreak. Late on the following night Ghisleri followed the men who bore the heavy burden down the stairs. A quiet-looking woman of middle age met them and crossed herself as she waited for them to pass her on the landing. She came to take care of Herbert Arden's son. CHAPTER XI. The season had begun, but Pietro Ghisleri had little heart for going into the world. Apart from the very sad scenes of which he had been a witness so recently, he really mourned the loss of his friend with a sincerity for which few would have given him credit. It would, of course, have been an exaggeration to act as though Arden had been his brother and to cast himself off from society for several months; but during a fortnight after he had laid Lord Herbert in the Protestant Cemetery at Monte Testaccio, he was seen nowhere. He went, indeed, to the house of the Contessa dell' Armi, but he made his visits at hours when no one else was received, as everybody knew, and he consequently saw none of his acquaintances except in the street. Twice daily at first, and then once, he went to the door of the Tempietto and sent up for news of Laura and the child. Strange to say, after the first three or four days the news became uniformly good. Ghisleri learned that the little boy had come into the world sound and strong at all points, without the slightest apparent tendency to inherit his father's physical defects which, indeed, had been wholly the result of accident. The Princess of Gerano who, by Laura's express wish, had been kept in ignorance of Arden's illness on the first day and had not learned that he was seriously ill until he was actually dead, had now established herself permanently at the Tempietto, and her presence doubtless did much towards hastening her daughter's recovery. It was wonderful that Laura should have escaped the fever, still more so that she should rally so rapidly from a series of shocks which might have ruined an ordinary constitution; but Laura was very strong. The Princess told Ghisleri that the child seemed to have taken Herbert's place. He was to be called Herbert too, and the other dearly loved one who had borne the name was never spoken of. No one would ever know what Laura felt, but those who knew her well guessed at the depth of a sorrow beyond words or outward signs of grief. In the meanwhile life revived in her and she began to live for her child, as she had lived for her husband, loving the baby boy with a twofold love, for himself and for his father's sake. Ghisleri had written to the Marquess of Lulworth, Arden's brother, but a letter from him to Arden himself arrived on the day after the latter's death, telling him that Lord and Lady Lulworth were just starting to go round the world in their yacht. The Lulworths were people whose movements it was impossible to foretell, and after sending a number of telegrams to ports they were likely to touch at, Ghisleri abandoned all hope of hearing from them for a long time. Meanwhile, he ascertained that Laura was likely to be hampered for ready money. Her mother's private resources were very slender, and Laura was far too proud to accept any assistance from Adele Savelli's father. She could not dispose, as a matter of fact, of anything which her husband had left her except the actual ready money which happened to be in the house; for she could not even draw upon his letters of credit until the will was proved and the legal formalities all carried out. It was natural, too, that at such a time she should neither be aware of her position nor give a thought to such a trivial matter as household expenses. One morning Donald came to Ghisleri's rooms in considerable distress, to ask advice of his master's old friend. He would not disturb Lady Herbert, he said, and he was ashamed to tell the Princess that there was no money in the house. Ghisleri's first impulse was to give him all the cash he had; but he reflected that in the first place the sum might not be sufficient, for Donald, in a rather broken voice, had referred to "the necessary expenses when his lordship died," and which must now be met: and secondly, Pietro felt that when Laura came to know the truth she would not like to find herself under a serious obligation to him. "Donald," he said, after a few moments' reflection, "it is none of my business, but you have been a long time with Lord Herbert, and you are a Scotchman, and the Scotch are said to be careful; have you saved a little money?" "Well, yes sir," answered Donald; "since you ask me, I may say that I have saved a trifle. And I am sure, sir, it would be most heartily at her ladyship's disposal if I could go home and get it." "You need not go for it, Donald. I will lend you the equivalent, in our money, of a couple of hundred pounds. You can then pay everything, and when the law business is finished and you come to settle with her ladyship, you can say that you advanced the sum yourself. That will be quite true, because I lend it to you, personally, as money for your use, and when you get it back you will pay it to me. Do you see?" "Yes, sir; it is a good way, too. But if you will excuse me, sir, you might very well lend the money to her ladyship's self without pretending anything." "No, Donald, I would rather not. Do you understand? Lady Herbert would much rather borrow from you than from a stranger." "A stranger, sir! Well, well, if his poor lordship could hear you call yourself a stranger, sir!" "One who is no relation. She might feel uncomfortable about it, just as you would rather come to me than go to the Princess of Gerano." "Yes, sir. When you put it in that way. I see it." So Ghisleri took Donald with him to a banker's and drew upon his slender resources for five thousand francs, which he gave to the Scotchman in notes. It had seemed to him the simplest way of providing for Laura's immediate necessities, while keeping her in ignorance of the fact that any necessity at all really existed. The sensation of helping her with money was an odd one, he confessed to himself, as he sent Donald home and walked idly away in the opposite direction through the crowded streets. As he strolled down the Corso thinking of Laura's position, he came suddenly upon Donna Adele Savelli, alone and on foot. Even through the veil she wore he could see that she was very much changed. She had grown thin and pale, and her manner was unaccountably nervous when she stopped and spoke to him. "Have you been ill?" he inquired, scrutinising her face. "No, not ill," she answered, looking restlessly to the right and left of him and avoiding his eyes. "I cannot tell what is the matter with me. I cannot sleep of late--perhaps it is that. My husband says it is nothing, of course. I would give anything to go away for a month or two." "You, who are so fond of society! Just at the beginning of the season, too! How odd. But you should be careful of yourself if you are losing your sleep. Insomnia is a dangerous disease. Take sulphonal in small doses. It does real good, and it never becomes a habit, as chloral does." "Sulphonal? I never heard of it. Is it really good? Will you write it down for me?" Ghisleri took one of his cards and wrote the word in pencil. "Any good chemist will tell you how much to take. Even in great quantities it is not dangerous." "Thanks." Donna Adele left him rather abruptly, taking the card with her and holding it in her hand, evidently intending to make use of it at once. Ghisleri had good cause for not liking her and wondered inwardly why he had suggested a means of alleviating her sufferings. It would have been much better to let her bear them, he thought. Then he laughed at himself--any doctor would have told her what to take and would probably have given her a store of good advice besides. Nearly a month had passed when Ghisleri was at last admitted to see Laura. He found her lying upon the same sofa on which she had slept a few hours during the memorable night before her husband died. She was even thinner now, he thought, and her eyes seemed to be set deeper than ever, while her face was almost transparent in its pallor. But the look was different--it was that of a person growing stronger rather than of one breaking down under a heavy strain. She held out her hand to him and looked up with a faint smile as he came to her side. The greeting was not a very cordial one, and Ghisleri felt a slight shock as he realised the fact. She could not help it. As Herbert Arden breathed his last, the old sense of vague, uneasy dislike for Pietro returned almost with the cry she uttered when she lost consciousness. It was quite beyond her control, although it had been wholly forgotten during those hours of suffering and joint nursing which preceded her husband's death. Ghisleri was quite conscious of it, and was inwardly hurt. It was hard, too, to talk of indifferent subjects, as he felt that he must, carefully avoiding any allusion to the time when they had last been together. "How do you pass the time?" he asked, after a few words of commonplace greeting and inquiry. "It must be very tiresome for you, I should think." "I never was so busy in my life," Laura answered. "You have no idea what it is to take care of a baby!" "No," said Ghisleri, with a smile, "I have no idea. But your mother tells me he is a splendid child." "Of course I think so, and my mother does. You shall see him one of these days--he is asleep now. Would you like to know how my day is passed?" And she went on to give him an account of the baby life that so wholly absorbed her thoughts. Ghisleri listened quietly as though he understood it all. He wished, indeed, that it were possible to talk of something else, and he felt something like a sensation of pain as Laura constantly called the child "Herbert," just as she had formerly been used to speak of her husband. Nevertheless, he was conscious also of a certain sense of satisfaction. During the month which had elapsed she had learned to hide her great trouble under the joy of early motherhood. There was something very beautiful in her devotion to the child of her sorrow, and hurt though Ghisleri was by her manner to him, she seemed more lovely and more admirable than ever in his eyes. He said so when he went to see Maddalena dell' Armi late in the afternoon. "I have seen Lady Herbert to-day," he began. "It is the first time since poor Arden died." "Is she very unhappy?" asked the Contessa. "She must be, for she never speaks of him. She talks of nothing but the child." "I understand that," said Maddalena, thoughtfully. "And then, it is such a compensation." "Yes." Ghisleri sighed. He was thinking of what her life might have been if children had been born to her, and he guessed that the same thoughts were in her mind at the time. "Did you ever think," she asked after a short pause, "what would become of me if you left me? I should be quite alone; do you realise that?" Ghisleri remembered how nearly he had broken with her more than once and his conscience smote him. "I would rather not think of it," he said simply. "You should," she answered. "It will come some day. I know it. When it does I shall turn into a very bad woman, much worse than I am now." "Please do not speak so; it hurts me." "That is a phrase, my dear friend," said Maddalena. "I always tell you that you are too fond of making phrases. You ought not to do it with me. You are not really at all sensitive. I do not even believe that you have much heart, though you used to make me believe that you had." "Have I shown you that I am heartless?" "That is always your way of answering. You are a very strange compound of contradictions." "Do you know, my dear lady, that you are falling into the habit of never believing a word I say?" "I am afraid it is true," assented Maddalena, sadly. "And yet I would not be unjust to you for the world. You have given me almost the only happiness I ever knew, and yet, from having believed too much, I know that I am coming to believe too little." "And you even think it is a mere phrase when I tell you that your distrust hurts me." "Sometimes. You are not easily hurt, and I do not believe either--" She stopped suddenly in the midst of her speech. "What?" asked Ghisleri. "I will not say it. I say things to you occasionally which I regret later. I told you that I would not be unjust, and I will try not to be. Be faithful, if you can, but be honest with me. Do not pretend that you care for me one hour longer than you really do. It would be dreadful to know the truth, but it is much worse to doubt. Will you promise?" "Yes," answered Pietro, gravely. "I have promised it before now." "Then remember it. Be sure of what you mean and of yourself, if you can,--be quite, quite sure. You know what it would mean to me to break. I have not even a little child to love me, as Laura Arden has. I shall have nothing when you are gone--nothing but the memory of all the wrong I have done, all that can never be undone in this world or the next." Ghisleri was moved and his strong face grew very pale while she was speaking. He had often realised it all of late, and he knew how greatly he had wronged her. It was not the first time in his life that he had been so placed, and that remorse, real while it lasted, had taken hold of him even before love was extinct. But he had never felt so strongly as he felt to-day, and he did his best to comfort himself with the shadowy medicine of good resolutions. He had honestly hoped that he might never love woman again besides Maddalena dell' Armi, and as that hope grew fainter he felt as though the very last poor fragments of self-respect he had left were being torn from him piecemeal. She, on her part, was very far from guessing what he suffered, for she was unjust to him, in spite of her real desire not to be so, and it was in a measure this same injustice which was undermining what had been once a very sincere love--good in that one way, if sinful and guilty in all other respects. Unbelief is, perhaps, what a man's love can bear the least; as a woman's may break and die at the very smallest unfaithfulness in him she loves, and as average human nature is largely compounded of faithlessness and unbelief, it is not surprising that true love should so rarely prove lasting. Ghisleri saw no one after he left Maddalena on that day. He went home and shut himself up alone in his room, as he had done many times before that in his life, despairingly attempting to see clearly into his own heart, and to distinguish, if possible, the right course from the wrong in the dim light of the only morality left to him then, which was his sense of honour. And the position was a very hard one. He knew too well that his love for Maddalena was waning, and he even doubted whether it had ever been love at all. Most bitterly he reproached himself for the evil he had already brought into her existence, and for the suffering that awaited her in the future. Again and again he went over in his mind the hours of the past, recalling vividly each word and gesture out of the time when the truest sympathy had seemed to exist between them, and asking himself why it might not take a new life again and be all that it once had been. The answer that suggested itself was too despicable in his eyes for him to accept it, for it told him that Maddalena herself had changed and was no longer the same woman whom he had once loved, and whom he could love still, he fancied, if she were still with him. It seemed so utterly disloyal to cast any of the blame on her that the lonely man put the thought from him with an angry oath. Of that baseness at least he would not have to accuse himself. He would never, by the merest suggestion, suffer himself to think one unkind thought of Maddalena dell' Armi. But the great question remained unsolved. Was what was now left really love in any sense, or not, and if not must he keep his promise and tell her the truth, or would it be more honourable to live for her sake by a rule of devotion and faithfulness which his strong will could make real in itself and in the letter, if not in the spirit? He knew that she was in earnest in what she had said. If she knew that he had ceased to love her, she would feel utterly alone in the world, and might well be driven to almost any lengths in the desperate search for distraction. She had not said it, but he knew that in her heart she would lay all the sins of her life at his door and that in this at least she would not be wholly unjust. With such a character as Ghisleri's it is not easy to foresee what direction impulse will take when it comes at last. He was quite capable of giving up the attempt to understand himself and of leaving the whole matter to chance, with a coolness which would have seemed cruel and cynical if it had not been the result of something like despair. He was capable, if he failed to reach a conclusion by logical means, of tossing up a coin to decide whether he should tell poor Maddalena dell' Armi that he did not love her, or else stand by her in spite of every obstacle and devote his whole life to the elaborate fiction of an unreal attachment. Strangely enough Laura Arden played a part, and an important one, in bringing about his ultimate decision. He assuredly had no thought of loving her, nor of the possibility of loving her at that time. He would even have thought it an exaggeration to say that he was devotedly attached to her in the way of friendship. And yet he felt that she exercised a dominating influence over his mind. He found himself laying the matter before her in imagination, as he should never be likely to do in fact, and submitting it to her judgment as to that of a person supremely capable of distinguishing right from wrong and false from true. It was singular, too, that he should make no comparison between her and Maddalena, though possibly no such comparison could have been made. But he compared himself with her--the depth of his moral degradation in his own eyes with the lofty purity of thought and purpose which he attributed to her. The consequence could hardly fail to be a certain aspiration, vague and almost sentimental, to become such a man as might not seem to her wholly unworthy of trust. This did not help him much, however, and when at last he went to bed, having forgotten to go out and dine, and weary of the hard problem, he was not much further advanced than when he had sat down to think of it last in the afternoon. In the morning everything seemed simpler, and the necessity for immediate decision disappeared. He had not yet by any means reached the point of not loving Maddalena at all, and until he did there was no reason why he should form any plan of action. It would in any case, be very hard to act upon such a plan, for the dreaded moment would in all likelihood be a stormy one, and he could not foresee in the least what Maddalena herself would do. After that he felt for a long time much more of the old sympathy with her than he had known of late, and he tormented himself less often with the direction of his own motives and thoughts. He saw much of Laura, too, in those days, and spent long hours beside her as she lay upon her sofa. He always left her with a sensation of having been soothed and rested, though he could not say of her that she was much inclined to talk, or showed any great satisfaction at his coming. Probably, he thought, she was willing to see him so often because he had been Arden's friend. He did not understand that she did not quite like him and that his presence was often irksome to her, for she was far too kind by nature to let him suspect it. He only thought that he was in her eyes a perfectly indifferent person, and he saw no reason for depriving himself of her society so long as she consented to receive him. They rarely talked of subjects at all relating to themselves, either, and their conversation turned chiefly upon books and general topics. Ghisleri read a good deal in a desultory way, and his memory was good. It interested him, too, to propound problems for her judgment and to see how nearly she would solve them in the way he expected her to choose. He was rarely mistaken in his expectations. Little by little, though Laura's principal feeling in regard to him did not change perceptibly, she became interested in his nature, beginning to perceive that there were depths in it which she had not suspected. "Are you a happy man?" she once asked him rather abruptly, and watching the expression of his face. "Certainly not at present," he answered, looking away from her as though to hinder her from reading his thoughts. "Why do you ask that?" "Forgive me. I should not put such a question, I suppose. But you interest me." "Do I?" He glanced quickly at her as he spoke, and she saw that he was pleased. "I am very glad that you should take any interest in me,--of any kind whatever. Would you like to know why I am unhappy?" "Yes." "I can only tell you in a general way. I make no pretence to any sort of goodness or moral rectitude, beyond what we men commonly include in what we call the code of honour. But I am perpetually tormented about my own motives. Knowing myself to be what I am, I distrust every good impulse I have, merely because it is not a bad one, because my natural impulses are bad, and because I will not allow myself to act any sort of comedy, even in my own feelings. That sort of honesty, or desire for honesty, is all I have left--on it hangs the last shred of my tattered self-respect." "How dreadful!" Laura's deep eyes rested on him for the first time with a new expression. There was both pity and wonder in their look--pity for the man and wonder at a state of mind of which she had never dreamed. "Does it seem dreadful to you?" he asked. "If you really feel as you say you do," answered Laura, "I can understand that you should be very unhappy." "Why do you doubt that I feel what I have told you?" Ghisleri wondered, as he asked the question, whether he was ever to be believed again by any woman. "Do you think I am untruthful?" "No," said Laura, quickly. "Indeed I do not. On the contrary, I think you very scrupulously exact when you speak of things you know about. But any one may be mistaken in judging of himself." "That is precisely the point. I am afraid of finding myself mistaken, and so I do not trust my own motives." "Yes--I see. But then, if you do what is right, you need not let your motives trouble you. That seems so simple." "To you. Do you remember? I once told you that you were horribly good." "I am not," said Laura, "but if I were, I should not see anything horrible in it." "I should, and I do. When I see how good you are I am horrified at myself. That is what I mean." "Why do you so often talk about being bad? You will end by making me believe that you are--if I do not believe it already." "As you do, I fancy. What difference can it make to you?" "Everything makes a difference which lowers one's estimate of human nature," Laura answered, with a wisdom beyond her age or experience. "After all, to go back to the point, the choice lies with you. You know what is right; do it, and give up wasting time on useless self-examination." "Useless self-examination!" repeated Ghisleri, with rather a sour smile. "I suppose that is what it really is, after all. How you saints bowl over our wretched attempts at artificial morality!" "No; do not say that, please, and do not be so bitter. I do not like it. Tell me instead why you cannot do as I suggest. If a thing is right, do it; if it is wrong, leave it undone." "If I could tell you that, I should understand the meaning of this life and the next, instead of being quite in the dark about the one and the other." Laura was silent. She was surprised by the result of the question she had at first put to him, and was at the same time conscious that she did not feel towards him as she had hitherto felt. Not that she liked him any better. She was perhaps further than ever from that, though her likes and dislikes did not depend at all upon the moral estimate she formed of people's characters. But she understood what he meant far better than he guessed, and she pitied him and wished that she could say something to make him take a simpler and more sensible view of himself and the world. He interested her much more than half an hour earlier. They did not return to the subject the next time they met, and Ghisleri fancied she had forgotten what he had said, whereas, in reality, she often thought of it and of him. Before long she was able to go out, and they met less frequently. She began to lead the life which she supposed was in store for her during the remainder of her existence. The only difference in the future would be that by and by she would not wear black any longer, that next year she would move into a more modest apartment, and that as time went on little Herbert would grow up to be a man and Laura would be an elderly woman. Matters had been settled at last in England, and the momentary embarrassment which so much distressed Donald had ceased. The good man had felt somewhat guilty when Laura had thanked him for using what she supposed to be his savings in order to save her trouble. But he remembered what Ghisleri had told him and held his tongue, afterwards going early in the morning to Pietro's lodgings to repay the loan. Laura had heard from the Lulworths, too. Ghisleri's letter and one of his telegrams had reached them at the same time somewhere in South America. Lulworth wrote himself to Laura and there was a deep, strong feeling in his few words which made her like him better than ever. He did not speak of coming back, and she thought it quite natural that he should stay away. He only said in a postscript that if she chose to go to England his house was at her disposal, but that he himself might be in Rome during the following winter. But she would not have gone to England for anything. Her mother's presence was a quite sufficient reason for staying where she was, and she knew also that her modest income would seem less restricted in Italy. The Princess of Gerano had proposed to her to come and live in the palace, but Laura would not do that--she would never put herself under any obligation to Adele's father, much as she herself was attached to him. Her mother represented to her that she was too young to live quite alone, but Laura remained unshaken in her determination. "Herbert protects me," she said quietly, but the Princess did not feel sure what she meant by the words, nor whether the Herbert in question was poor Arden, or the baby boy asleep in his cradle in the next room. There was in either case a certain amount of truth in what she said. Great sorrow is undeniably a protection to a woman, and so is her child, under most circumstances. "And as for my living alone," added Laura, "Signor Ghisleri is the only man I receive, and people would be ingenious to couple his name with mine." CHAPTER XII. Adele Savelli followed Ghisleri's advice, and took the new medicine he had so carelessly recommended. At first it did her good and she regained something of her natural manner. But her nerves seemed to be mysteriously affected and terribly unstrung. Her husband, watching her with the cool judgment of a person neither prejudiced by dislike nor over-anxious through great affection, came to the conclusion that she was turning into one of those nervous, hysterical women whom he especially disliked, and whom she herself professed to despise. The world, for a wonder, was at a loss to find a reason for her state, and contented itself with suggesting that the family skeleton in Casa Savelli had probably grown restless of late, and was rattling his bones in his closet in a way which disturbed poor dear Adele, who was such a delicately organised being. To what particular tribe the Savellis' skeleton belonged, the world was not sure. Some said that he was called Insanity, some whispered that his name was Epilepsy, and not a few surmised that his nature was financial. As a matter of fact, no one knew anything about him, though every one was sure that he was just now in a state of abnormal activity, and that his antics accounted for Adele's pale face and startled eyes. There was no doubt of the fact that she was ill, though she would scarcely admit it, and went through the season with a sort of feverish, unnatural gaiety. Being in reality no relation at all to Laura, she merely wore black for three weeks as a token of respect, but did not especially restrict herself in the matter of amusements even during that time, and when it was over, she threw herself into the very central whirl of the gay set with a sort of desperate recklessness which people noticed and commented upon. They were careful, however, not to speak too loud. Adele Savelli was very popular in society, and a very important person altogether, so that the world did not dare to talk about her as it discussed poor Laura Arden. And it found much good to say of Adele. It was so nice of her, it remarked, to change completely in her way of speaking of her step-sister, since the latter had lost that wretched little husband of hers. He, of course, as every one knew, had fallen a victim to his abominable habit of drinking brandy. It was all very well to call it scarlet fever--the world was well aware what that meant. The name of the thing was delirium tremens, and they said the last scene was quite appalling. The cripple, in the violence of the crisis, had twice sprung up and thrown down Ghisleri, who was a very strong man, nevertheless, and who had behaved in the most admirable way. He had not allowed any one to be present except the doctor, and it was impossible to extract a word of the truth from him. That was how it happened and, well--after all, it was a great mercy, and it was no wonder that Laura should have recovered so easily from the shock, and should already be beginning to amuse herself with Ghisleri. There was no doubt about that, either, for he went there every day, as regularly as he went to see the Contessa dell' Armi. And it was really angelic of Adele to stand up so resolutely for her step-sister, considering how the latter had always behaved. Adele took so much trouble to deny the stories that were circulated, that some people learned them for the first time through her denial. In this, as in many other things, Adele was consistent. She denied everything. "It is not even true," she said to Donna Maria Boccapaduli, "that Laura has the evil eye." But as she said it, she quickly folded her two middle fingers over her bent thumb, making what Italians call "horns" with the forefinger and little finger. Donna Maria saw the action, instinctively imitated it, and fell into the habit of repeating it whenever Laura was mentioned. "Why do you do that?" asked the Marchesa di San Giacinto of her the next day. "Eh--my dear! Poor Laura Arden is a terrible jettatrice, you know. Adele says it is not true, but she makes horns behind her back all the same, just as every one else does." Thereupon the Marchesa did the same thing, wondering that she should so long have been ignorant that Laura had the evil eye. In a week's time all Rome made horns when Laura was mentioned. At a dinner party a servant broke a glass when she was being discussed, and at once every one laughed and stuck up two fingers. San Giacinto, who, lean as he was, weighed hard upon sixteen stone, sat down upon a light chair in Casa Frangipani, just as he was saying that this new story about Laura was all nonsense, and the chair collapsed into a little heap of straw and varnished sticks under his weight. It was no wonder, people said, that Arden should have fainted that night at the Palazzo Braccio, for Laura had just accepted him. They seemed to have forgotten how they had interpreted that very scene hitherto. The world was not at all surprised that he should have died in the first year of his marriage, considering that he had married a notorious jettatrice. Look at poor Adele herself! She had never been well since that dinner at which the reconciliation with Laura was sealed and ratified. Pietro Ghisleri should be careful. It was very unwise of him to go and see her every day. Something awful would happen to him. Indeed it had been noticed that he was not looking at all well of late. That dreadful woman would kill him to a certainty. Ghisleri was furious when the tale reached him, as it did before long. He knew very well how dangerous a thing it was to have the reputation of possessing the evil eye. It is a strange fact that at the present day such things should be believed, and well-nigh universally, by a cultured society of men and women. And yet it is a fact, and an undeniable one. Let it once get abroad that a man or a woman "projects"--to translate the Italian "jetta"--the baneful influence which causes accidents of every description, and he or she may as well bid farewell to society forever. Such a person is shunned as one contaminated; at his approach, every hand is hidden to make the sign of defence; no one will speak to him who can help it, and then always with concealed fingers kept rigidly bent in the orthodox fashion, or clasped upon a charm of proved efficacy. Few, indeed, are those brave enough to ask such a man to dinner, and they are esteemed almost miraculously fortunate if no misfortune befalls them during the succeeding four and twenty hours, if their houses do not burn, and their children do not develop the measles. Incredible as it may appear to northern people, a man or woman may be socially ruined by the imputation of "projecting," when it is sustained by the coinciding of the very smallest accident with their presence, or with the mention of their names, and quite enough of such coincidences were actually noted in Laura's case to make the reputation of being a jettatrice cling to her for life. Ghisleri knew this, and his wrath was kindled, and smouldered, and grew hot, till it was ready to burst out at a moment's notice and do considerable damage. "It is an abominable shame," he said to Maddalena dell' Armi. "It is all Adele Savelli's doing. She has taken a new departure. Instead of starting bad reports as true, she begins by denying things of which nobody ever heard. I am quite sure she is at the bottom of it, but I do not see how I can stop the story." "You seem to care a great deal," said Maddalena. "Yes. I do care. If it would do any good, I would call out Francesco Savelli and fight about it." "For Laura Arden's sake?" It was the first time she had ever heard Ghisleri even hint that he would do so much for any one, though she knew that he would for herself. "No," he answered, with sudden gentleness. "Not for Lady Herbert's sake, my dear lady. I would do it because, just when he was dying, Arden told me that I must take care of her, and I mean to do my best, as I promised him." "You are quite right," answered Maddalena, taking his hand and pressing it a little. "I would not have you do otherwise, if I could--if I had all the influence over you which I have not. But oh--if you can help fighting--please--for my sake, if you care--" Maddalena's cold face and small classic features expressed a great deal at that moment, and there were bright tears in her violet eyes. In her own way she loved him more than ever. He was deeply touched as he tenderly kissed the hand that held his. "For your sake, I will do all that a man can do to avoid a quarrel," he said earnestly. "I know you will," she answered. During a few moments there was silence between them, and Maddalena recovered control of herself. "That is the true reason why I ask you," she said. "There are plenty of others which you may care for more than I. You would not care to have it said that you were fighting her battles. Will you promise not to be angry if I tell you something you will not like--something I know positively?" "Yes. I promise. What is it?" "People are beginning to say already that you are making love to her, and that you are always at the house." "The brutes!" exclaimed Ghisleri, fiercely. "Who says that?" "The women, of course. The men are much too sensible, and none of them care to quarrel with you." "Oh!" Pietro contented himself with the exclamation, and controlled his anger as best he could. "Was I wrong to tell you?" asked Maddalena. "No, indeed. I am very glad you have told me. I shall be more careful in future." "It will make very little difference. You know the world as well as I do, and better. People have begun to say that you go to see Lady Herbert every day--they will still say it after you have not been to her house for months." "Yes. That is the way the world talks. I hope this will not reach her ears--though I suppose it ultimately will. Some dear kind friend will go and tell her in confidence, and give her good advice." "Probably. That is generally the way. Only, as she is in deep mourning and receives very few people, it may be a little longer than usual in such cases before the affectionate friend gets at her. Then, too, the idea that she is a jettatrice will keep many of her old acquaintances away. You know how seriously they take those things here." It will be remembered that both Maddalena and Ghisleri were from the north of Italy, where the superstition about the evil eye is much less general amongst the upper classes than in Rome and the south. Pietro himself had not the slightest belief in it, and he had so often laughed at it in conversation with the Contessa that if she had ever had any vague tendency to put faith in the jettatura, it had completely disappeared. But both of them were thoroughly familiar with the society in which they lived, and understood the position in which Laura was placed. "I will help you as much as I can," said Maddalena, "though I cannot do much. At all events, I can laugh at the whole thing and show that I do not believe in it. But as for the rest,--placed as I am, I can hardly make an intimate friend of Lady Herbert Arden, much as I like her." She spoke sadly and a little bitterly. Ghisleri made no reference to the last remark when he answered her. "I shall be very sincerely grateful for anything you can do to help the wife of my old friend," he said. "And I think you can do a good deal. You have great influence in the gay set--and that means the people who talk the most--Donna Adele, Donna Maria Boccapaduli, the Marchesa di San Giacinto, and all the rest, who are, more or less, your intimates. It is very good of you to help me--Lady Herbert needs all the help she can get. Spicca is a useful man, too. If he can be prevailed upon to say something particularly witty at the right moment, it will do good." "I rarely see him," said Maddalena. "He does not like me, I believe." "He admires you, at all events," answered Ghisleri. "I have heard him talk about your beauty in the most enthusiastic way, and he is rarely enthusiastic about anything." Maddalena was pleased, as was natural. She chanced to be in one of her best humours on that day, and indeed of late she had been much more her former self when she was with Ghisleri. A month earlier, the discussion about Laura Arden could not have passed off so peaceably, for the Contessa would then have resented anything approaching to the intimacy which now appeared to exist between Lady Herbert and Pietro. The latter wondered what change had taken place in her character, but accepted her gentle behaviour towards him very gratefully as a relief from a former phase of jealous fault-finding which had cost him many moments of bitterness. As he saw, from time to time, how her cold face softened, he almost believed that he loved her as dearly as ever, though the illusion was not of long duration. He left her, on that afternoon, with a regret which he had not felt for some time at the moment of parting, and he would gladly have stayed with her longer. They agreed to meet in the evening at one of the embassies, where there was to be a dance. In the mean time, they were to dine out at different houses, and the Contessa had a visit to make before going to the ball. Pietro was sorry that he had promised not to quarrel about the story of the evil eye. The affair irritated him to an extraordinary degree, and though he had grown calmer under Maddalena's influence, his anger revived as he walked home and thought over it all. He dined that evening in Casa San Giacinto, and found himself placed between Donna Maria Boccapaduli and Donna Christina Campodonico. The latter was a slim, dark, graceful woman of five and twenty, remarkably quiet, and reported to be very learned, a fact which contributed less to her popularity than her own beauty and her husband's rather exceptional reputation. Gianforte Campodonico was a man whom Ghisleri would have liked if they had not known each other some years previously in circumstances which made liking an impossibility. He respected him more than most people, for he had fought a rather serious duel with him in days gone by, and had seen the man's courage and determination. Campodonico was the brother of the beautiful Princess Corleone who had died in Naples shortly after the above-mentioned duel, and who was said to have been the love of Ghisleri's life. Gianforte, for his sister's sake, had made up his mind to kill Ghisleri or to die in the attempt, with a desperate energy of purpose that savoured of earlier ages. He was, moreover, a first rate swordsman, and the encounter had remained memorable in the annals of duelling. Ghisleri had done all in his power to avoid the necessity of fighting at all, but Campodonico had forced him into it at last, and the weapons had been foils. The world said that Ghisleri was not to be killed so easily. He was as good a fencer as his adversary, and was left-handed besides, which gave him a considerable advantage. The result was that he defended himself successfully throughout one of the longest duels on record, until at last he almost unintentionally ran Gianforte through the sword arm and disabled him. The latter, humiliated and furious at his defeat, had demanded pistols then and there, and Ghisleri had professed himself ready, and had placed himself in the hands of his seconds. But both his own friends and Gianforte's decided that honour was satisfied, and refused to be parties to any further fighting, so that Campodonico had been obliged to accept their verdict. He sought an opportunity of quarrelling again, however, for he was a determined man, and he would probably have succeeded in the end; but at this juncture the Princess died after a short illness, and after exacting a solemn promise from both men that they would never fight again. That was the last act of her brief life of love and unhappiness, and it was at least a good one. Loving her with all their hearts, in their different ways, both Ghisleri and Campodonico respected the obligation they had taken as something supremely sacred. Ghisleri went and lived alone in a remote village of the south for more than a year afterwards, and Gianforte spent an even longer period in almost total seclusion from the world, and in the sole society of his widowed mother. Three years before the time now reached in this chronicle, he had married, as people said, for love, and for once people were right. His elder brother bore the title, and as there was another sister besides the Princess Corleone, Gianforte's portion had been small, for the family was not rich, and he and his wife lived very modestly in a small apartment in the upper part of the city, the Palazzo Campodonico having long ago passed into the hands of the Savelli. And now, at the San Giacinto's dinner table, Ghisleri found himself seated next to Donna Christina, and nearly opposite to her husband. It had long been known and generally understood that Pietro and Gianforte had buried their enmity with the beautiful woman about whom they had fought, and that they had no objection to meeting in the world, and even to conversing occasionally on general subjects, so that there was nothing surprising in the fact that at a dinner of eighteen persons they should be asked together. It chanced that, by the inevitable law of precedence, Ghisleri sat where he did. Donna Christina of course knew the story above related, and in her eyes it lent Ghisleri a somewhat singular interest. Now it happened, towards the end of dinner, that some one mentioned Lady Herbert Arden. Instantly Donna Maria, on Pietro's right, made the sign of the horns with both hands, laughing in a foolish way at the same time. Ghisleri saw it, and a glance round the table showed him that the majority of the guests did the same thing. "How can you believe in such silly tales?" he asked, turning to Donna Maria. "Everybody does," answered the sprightly lady. "Why should not I? And besides, look at the facts--San Giacinto had the name of the lady we do not mention on his lips when he broke that chair the other day--there, I told you so!" she exclaimed suddenly. Young Pietrasanta, who, as it happened, had been the one to speak of Laura Arden, had upset a glass, which, being very delicate and falling against a piece of massive silver, was shivered instantly. The claret ran out in a broad stain. "Allegria--joy!" laughed the lady of the house. Italians very often utter this exclamation when wine is spilled. It is probably a survival of some primeval superstition. "Joy!" repeated Pietrasanta, with quite a different intonation. "If ever I mention that name again!" "You see," said Donna Maria triumphantly to Ghisleri. "There is no doubt about it." "I beg your pardon for contradicting you," answered Ghisleri, coldly, "but I think there is so much doubt that I do not believe in the possibility of the evil eye at all, much less in the ridiculous story that Lady Herbert Arden's name can upset a glass of wine or break a chair." "I agree with you," said Donna Christina, in her quiet voice, on Pietro's other side. "It is almost the only point on which my husband and I differ--is it not true, Gianforte?" she asked, speaking across the table to Campodonico. There had been a momentary lull in the conversation after the little accident, so that he had heard what had been said. "It is quite true," he answered. "I believe in the jettatura, just as most people do, but my wife is a sceptic." "And do you really believe that Pietrasanta upset his glass because he mentioned Lady Herbert?" asked Pietro. "Yes, I do." Their eyes met quietly as they looked at each other, but the whole party became silent, and listened to the remarks exchanged by the two men who had once fought such a memorable fight. Gianforte Campodonico was a very dark man, of medium height, strongly built, and not yet of an age to be stout, with bold aquiline features, keen black eyes, and a prominent chin. A somewhat too heavy moustache almost quite concealed his mouth. At first sight, most people would have taken him for a soldier. Of his type he was very handsome. "Can you give any good reason for believing in anything so improbable?" asked Ghisleri. "There are plenty of facts," answered Campodonico, calmly. "Any one here will give you fifty--a hundred instances, so many indeed, that you cannot attribute them all to coincidence. Do you not agree with me, Marchese?" he asked, appealing to the master of the house, whose opinion was often asked by men, and generally accepted. "I suppose I do," said the giant, indifferently. "I never took the trouble to think of it. Most of us believe in the evil eye. But as for this story about Lady Herbert Arden, I think it is nonsense in the first place, and a malicious lie in the second, invented by some person or persons unknown--or perhaps very well known to some of you. Half of it rests on that absurd story about the chair I broke in Casa Frangipani. If any of you can grow to be of my size, you will know how easily chairs are broken." There was a laugh at his remark, in which Campodonico joined. "But it is true that you were speaking of the lady one does not mention at the moment when the chair gave way," he said. "Yes," said San Giacinto, "I admit that." "I agree with San Giacinto, though I do not believe in the evil eye at all," said Ghisleri. "And I will go a little further, and say that I think it malicious to encourage the story about Lady Herbert. She has had trouble enough as it is, without adding to it gratuitously." "I do not see that we are doing her any harm," observed Campodonico. "The gossip may be perfectly indifferent to her now," said Ghisleri. "She is most probably quite ignorant of what is said. But in the natural course of events, two or three years hence she will go into the world again, and you know what an injury it will be to her then." "You are looking very far ahead, it seems to me. As for wishing to do her an injury, as you call it, why should I?" "Exactly. Why should you?" "I do not." "I beg your pardon. I think every one who contributes to the circulation of this fable does harm to Lady Herbert, most distinctly." "In other words, we are not of the same opinion," said Campodonico, in a tone of irritation. "And I express mine because poor Arden was my oldest friend," answered Ghisleri, with the utmost calm. "If I cannot persuade you, let us agree to differ." "By all means," replied Gianforte, and he turned and began to talk with the lady on his right. Donna Christina leaned towards Ghisleri and spoke to him in a very low voice, quite inaudible to other ears than his, as the hum of general conversation rose again. "Is it true," she asked, "that you and my husband agreed, years ago, that you would never quarrel again?" Ghisleri looked at her in cold surprise. He was amazed that she should refer to that part of his past life, of which no one ever spoke to him. "It is true," he answered briefly. "I am very glad," said Donna Christina. "I thought you were near a quarrel just now about this absurd affair. You hate each other, and Gianforte is very hot-tempered." "There is no danger. But I am sorry you think that I hate your husband. He is one of the few men whom I really respect. There are other reasons why I should not hate him, and why I should not be surprised if he hates me with all his heart, as I dare say he does, from what you say." He glanced at her, but she did not answer at once. She was still young and truthful, and it did not occur to her to be tactful at the expense of veracity. "I am glad you defended Lady Herbert as you did," she said, after a short pause. "It was nice of you." Then she turned and talked with the man on her other side. Donna Maria Boccapaduli had been waiting for her opportunity and attacked Ghisleri as soon as he had ceased talking with his other neighbour. "Tell me," she said, "you like Laura Arden very much, do you not?" Of course she made the sign at Laura's name. "Yes. She is a very charming woman." "She ought to be grateful to you. She would be, if she knew how you stood up for her just now." "I should be sorry if she ever came to know that she needed to be defended," answered Ghisleri, almost indifferently. "She will, of course. It will be all over Rome to-night that you and Campodonico almost quarrelled about her. She is sure to hear about it. Why do you take so much interest in her?" "Because her husband was my friend," Pietro replied, rather wearily. "I just said so." "You need not be so angry with me because I ask questions," said Donna Maria with a laugh. "I always do--it is the way to find out what one wants to know." "And what do you want to know?" "You will be angry if I ask you." "Then ask me something else." "But I want to know so much," objected Donna Maria, with an expression that made Ghisleri smile. "Then you must take the risk," he said. "It is not very great." "Well, then, I will." She dropped her voice almost to a whisper. "Is the lady in question--I mean--is she the sort of woman you can imagine falling in love with?" "I do not think I should ever fall in love with her," answered Ghisleri, without betraying emotion or surprise. "Why not? There must be some reason. So many men have said the same thing about her." "She is too good a woman for any of us to love. We feel that she is too far above us to be quite human as we are." "What a strange man you are, Ghisleri! I should never have dreamt that you could say such a thing as that. It is not at all like your reputation you know, and not in the least like those delightfully dreadful verses you addressed to the saint last year on Shrove Tuesday at Gouache's studio. I should think that Mephistopheles would delight in making love to saints." "In real life Mephistopheles would get the worst of it, and be shown to the door with very little ceremony." "I doubt that. Every woman likes a spice of devilry in the man she loves--and as for being shown to the door, that is ridiculous. Is there any reason in the world why you should not fall in love with a woman exactly like the unmentionable lady and marry her, too, if you love her enough--or little enough, according to your views of married life? You are quite free, and so is she, and you said yourself that in the course of time she would naturally come back to the world." "No," said Ghisleri, thoughtfully, "I suppose there is no reason why I should not ask Lady Herbert Arden to marry me in four or five years, except that I do not love her in the least, and that she would most certainly refuse me. And those are two very good reasons." The dinner was over and the party returned to the drawing-room. Ghisleri stood a little apart from the rest, examining a painting with which he had long been familiar, and slowly inhaling the smoke of a cigarette. It was a small copy of one of Zichy's famous pictures illustrating Lermontoff's "Demon"--the one in which Tamara yields at last, in the convent, and throws her arms round the Demon's neck. Prince Durakoff had ordered the copy and had presented it to the Marchesa di San Giacinto. Ghisleri had always liked it, and had a photograph of the original in his rooms. He now stood looking at it and recalling the strange, half allegorical romance of which the great Russian made such wonderful poetry. Presently he was aware that some one was standing at his elbow. He turned to see who it was, and found himself face to face with Gianforte Campodonico, who was looking at him with an expression of indescribable hatred in his black eyes. CHAPTER XIII. Pietro at once realised the situation and the meaning of the look he saw. Something was passing in his old enemy's mind which had passed through his own while he was looking at the picture, for Campodonico and Ghisleri were both thinking of the extraordinary resemblance between poor Bianca Corleone and the Tamara of Zichy's painting. That resemblance, striking in a high degree, was the reason why Ghisleri liked it, and had a photograph of it at his lodging. He regretted now that he should have been so tactless as to stand long before it when Campodonico was in the room. It was too late, however, and there was nothing to be done but to meet the man's angry look quietly, and go away. It was unfortunate that there should have been any discussion between them at dinner, too, for Campodonico, as his wife said, was hot-tempered in the extreme, and Ghisleri, though outwardly calm, had always been liable to outbreaks of dangerous anger. There was, indeed, in the present instance, a very solemn promise given to a dying woman beloved by both, to keep them from quarrelling, and both really meant to respect it as they had done in past years. But to see Ghisleri calmly contemplating a picture which seemed intended to represent Bianca Corleone falling into the arms of a demon lover, was almost too much for the equanimity of Gianforte, which was by no means at any time very stable. Moreover, he not only hated Ghisleri with his whole heart as much as ever, but he despised him quite as much as Pietro despised himself, and probably a little more. He would never have forgiven him, at the best; but he might have respected him if Ghisleri had honoured Bianca's memory by leading a different life. It made his blood sting to think that a man who had been loved to the latest breath by such a woman as Bianca should throw himself at the feet of Maddalena dell' Armi--not to mention any of the others for whom Pietro had felt an ephemeral passion during the last six years and more. And Pietro, on his side, knew that Campodonico was right in judging him as he judged himself, harshly and without mercy. Unfortunately, Pietro's judgments on himself generally came too late, when the evil he hated had already been done, and self-condemnation was of very little use. He had great temptations, too--far greater than most men, and was fatally attracted by difficulty in any shape. On the present occasion he really desired to avoid doing the least thing which could irritate Campodonico, and if the latter had not done what he did Pietro would certainly have gone quietly away. He could not help being a little surprised at the persistent stare of his old adversary, considering that for years they had met and acted with perfectly civil indifference towards one another. Nevertheless, he relit his cigarette which had gone out, and made a step towards the other side of the room. To Campodonico, the calm expression of his face seemed like scorn, and he became exasperated in a moment. He called the other back. They were at some distance from the other guests, and out of hearing if they spoke in low tones. "Ghisleri!" Campodonico pronounced the name he detested with an almost contemptuous accent. Pietro knew that an exchange of unfriendly words was inevitable. He turned instantly and came close to Gianforte, standing before him and looking down into his fierce eyes, for he was by far the taller man. "What is it?" he asked, controlling his voice wonderfully. "Do you not think there are circumstances under which one is justified in breaking a solemn promise?" asked Campodonico. "No. I do not." "I do." "I am very sorry. I suppose you mean to say that you wish to quarrel with me again. Is that it?" "Yes." "You will find it hard. I shall do my very best to be patient whatever you do or say. In the first place, I begin by telling you that I sincerely regret having irritated you twice, as I have done this evening, the second time, as I know, very seriously." "I did not ask you for an apology," said Gianforte, with contempt. "But I have offered you one which you will find it hard not to accept." "You were not formerly so ready with excuses. I dare say you have grown cautious with age, though you are not much older than I." "Perhaps I have." Ghisleri grew slowly pale, as he bore one insult after the other for the dead woman's sake. "In other words, you are a coward," said Campodonico, lowering his voice still more. Pietro opened his lips and shut them without speaking. He glanced at the passionate white face of the woman in the picture before he answered. "I do not think so," he said. "But I make no pretence of bravery. Have you done?" "No. You make a pretence of other things if not of courage. You pretend that you will not quarrel now because of the promise you gave." "It is true." "I do not believe you." "I am sorry for it," answered Pietro. "And do you mean to tell me that the promise binds us? If you had acted as a man should, if you had led a life that showed the slightest respect for that memory, it might be binding on me still." "I think it is." Ghisleri was trembling with anger from head to foot, but his voice was still steady. "I do not," answered Gianforte, scornfully. "If she were here to judge us, if she could see that the man who was loved to the last by Bianca Corleone--God give her rest!--would live down to such a level, would live to throw himself at the feet of a Maddalena dell' Armi--ah, I have touched you now!--she would--" Ghisleri's face was livid. "She whose name you are not more worthy to speak than I, never meant that I should not defend a good and helpless woman because the liar who accuses her chances to be called Gianforte Campodonico." "And the one who defends her, Pietro Ghisleri," retorted Gianforte. "Where can my friends find yours?" "At my lodging, if that suits them." "Perfectly." Campodonico turned on his heel and slowly went towards the group at the other end of the room. Ghisleri followed him at a distance, lighting a fresh cigarette as he walked. He had recovered his composure the moment he had felt himself freed from the obligation to bear the insults heaped upon him by Bianca Corleone's brother. It must not be supposed that no one had watched the two as they stood talking before the picture. More than one person had noticed the fierce look in Campodonico's eyes, and the unnatural paleness of Ghisleri's face. One of these was Donna Maria Boccapaduli. "I suppose you have been discussing that painting," she said carelessly to Pietro. "People always do." "Yes," answered Ghisleri, as indifferently as he could. "And what was the result of the discussion?" "We agreed to differ." Pietro laughed a little harshly. As soon as possible he excused himself and got away, for he had only just the time necessary to find a couple of friends and explain matters, before going to the ball to meet the Contessa, as he had promised to do. He had forgotten an important detail, however, and as he passed Campodonico who was also going away, and without his wife, on pretence of an engagement at the club, he stopped him. "By the by," he said, "I suppose we are ostensibly quarrelling about a painter, or something of that sort." "Yes--anything. Zichy, for instance. Everybody saw us looking at the picture. You like it and I do not." "Very well." So they parted, to meet, in all probability, at dawn on the following morning, in a quiet place outside the city. Ghisleri found two friends in whose hands he placed himself, telling them that he was quite indifferent to the weapons, and only desired to meet his adversary's wishes as far as possible, since the affair was very insignificant. He remarked in an indifferent tone that, as he had once fought with Campodonico, using foils, and as the latter had not seemed satisfied on that occasion, he had no objection to pistols, if the opposite side preferred them. He wished everything to be arranged as amicably as possible, he said, and without any undue publicity. He left them at his lodging and departed to keep his engagement at the embassy. As he drove through the bitter air in an open cab, he meditated on his position, and wondered what Maddalena would say when she learned that he had been out with his old adversary. She should not know anything about the encounter until it was over, if he could keep it from her. At all events, he reflected, he had done all that a man could do to keep out of a quarrel, as he had promised her he would, and he had been driven to break a promise of a far more sacred nature than the one he had given her. If she knew the truth, too, it was for her, and for her alone, that he was to fight. He wondered whether people would say it was for Laura Arden's sake, on account of the discussion about the evil eye which had taken place at table. The suggestion annoyed him very much, but he reached his destination before he had found time to reason out the whole case, or to decide what to do. In any event it would be better if people thought that he had taken the foils in defence of an unprotected widow like Laura, than for the good name of the Contessa dell' Armi. She was there before him, looking very lovely in a gown of palest green, half covered with old lace. The shade suited her fair hair and dazzling skin, and she looked taller in faint colours, as short women do. He found her seated in one of the smaller rooms through which he had to pass on his way to the great ball-room, and she was surrounded by four or five men of the gay set, all talking to her at once, all trying to be extremely witty, and all wishing that the others would go away. But the Contessa held her own with them, making no distinction, and keeping up the lively, empty, rattling conversation without any apparent difficulty. Pietro sat down in the circle, and made a remark from time to time, to which she generally gave a direct answer, until, little by little, she was talking with him alone, and the others began to drop away as they always did in the course of half an hour when Ghisleri appeared in Maddalena's neighbourhood. It was a thing perfectly understood, as a matter not even worth mentioning. "Will you get me something to drink?" she said when only Spicca was left by her side. Pietro went off towards the supper-room, which was rather distant, and as a dance was just over and the place was crowded, it was some minutes before he could get what he wanted, and go back to her with it. Spicca looked at him with an odd expression of something between amusement and sympathy as he rose and left the two together, and Ghisleri at once saw that something unusual had occurred in his absence, for Maddalena was very pale, and her hand shook violently as she took the glass he brought her. "What is the matter?" he asked anxiously, as he sat down. "Something very disagreeable has happened," she answered, looking round nervously. The sofa on which they sat stood out from one side of a marble pillar, with its back to the side of the room the guests crossed who went directly to the ball-room, and facing the side by which they went from the ball-room to the rooms beyond, and to the supper-room, for there were four doors, opposite each other, two of which opened into the great hall where the dancing was going on. Maddalena was seated at the end of the sofa which was against the pillar, so that a person passing through behind her might easily not notice her presence. "Pray tell me what it is," said Ghisleri. "Just as you went to get me the lemonade, I heard two people talking in a low voice behind me," said Maddalena. "They must have stopped first by the door--I looked round afterwards and saw them, but I do not know either of them--some new people from one of the other embassies, or merely foreigners here on a visit. They spoke rather bad French. There was a man and a lady. They saw you cross the room and the lady asked the man who you were, and the man told her, saying that he only knew you by sight. The lady uttered an exclamation, and said that you were the one man in Rome whom she wished to see because you had been loved by--you know whom I mean--I know it hurts you to speak of her, and I understand it. The man laughed and said there had been others since, and that there was especially a certain Marquise d' Armi, as he called me, who was madly in love with you. The most amusing part of the whole thing, concluded the man, was that you were perfectly indifferent to her, as everybody knew. It was horrible, and I almost fainted. Dear old Spicca went on talking, trying to prevent me from hearing them. It was just like him." The Contessa's lip trembled, and her eyes glittered strangely as she looked at Pietro. "It is horrible," he said, in a low voice. He had thought that he had felt enough emotions during that day, but he was mistaken. Even now there were more in store for him. He was deeply shocked, for he guessed what she must have suffered. "Horrible--yes! But oh--can you not tell me it is not true? Do you not see that my heart is breaking?" "No, dearest lady," he answered tenderly, trying to soothe her. "Not one word of it is true. How can you make yourself unhappy by thinking such a thing?" Maddalena drew a painful breath. He spoke very kindly, but there was no ringing note of passion in his voice as there had once been. With a sudden determination that surprised him, she rose to her feet. "Take me to the ball-room," she said hurriedly. "I shall cry if I stay here." It was almost a relief to Ghisleri to see her accept the first man who presented himself as a partner and whirl away with him into the great hall. He stood leaning against the marble door-post, watching her as she wound her way in and out among the many moving couples. He was conscious that he might very possibly never see her again. Campodonico would of course select pistols, and meant to kill him if he could. He might succeed, though duels rarely ended fatally now-a-days. And if he did, Maddalena dell' Armi would be left to her fate. He was horror-struck when he thought of it. She might never know why he had fought, and she would perhaps believe to her last day that he had sacrificed his life for Laura Arden. He could leave a letter for her, but letters often fell into the wrong hands through faithless servants when the people who had written them were dead. Besides, would she believe his words? She had very little faith in his love for her. He sighed bitterly as he thought how right she was in that. He could see the pale, small, classic features, and the half pitiful, half scornful look of the beautiful mouth. "His last bit of comedy!" she would exclaim to herself, as she tossed his last note into the fire. And again she would be right, in a measure. In the case of risking sudden death, he said to himself that it was indeed a strange bit of comedy. He knew that he did not love her as he should. Why should he fight for her, then? But his manliness rose up at this and smote his cynicism out of the field for a time. That little he owed Maddalena, at least--he could not do less than defend her, at whatever cost, and he knew well enough that he always would. As for his wish that she might know it, that was nothing but his own detestable vanity. For his own part, he wished with all his heart that the next morning might end his existence. He had never valued his life very highly, and of late it had been so little to his taste that he was more than ready to part with it, even violently. The future did not appall him, although, strangely enough, he was very far from being an unbeliever, and had been brought up to consider a sudden end, in mortal sin, as the most horrible and irreparable of misfortunes. To him, in his experience of himself, no imaginable suffering could be worse than the self-doubt, the self-contempt, and the self-hatred which had so often tormented him during the past years. If he were to be punished for his misdeeds with the same torture, even though it were to be never-ending, at least he should bear the pain of it alone, such as it was, without the necessity for hiding it and for going through the daily mummery of life with an indifferent face. And in that state there would be no more temptation of the kind he feared. What he had done up to the hour of death would close the chronicle of evil, and in all ages there would be no more. He was used to such refinements of cruelty as perdition could threaten him with, for he had practised them upon his own heart. So the man "who did not care" stood watching the ball, and people envied him his successes, and his past and present happiness, and all that he had enjoyed in his three-and-thirty years of life, little dreaming of what was even then passing in his thoughts, still less that he was waiting for the message which should inform him of the place and hour fixed for encountering the man who most hated him in the world, and who had once before vainly attempted to take his life. At the other end of the great hall the Contessa dell' Armi had paused in her waltz to take breath, and found herself next to Donna Maria Boccapaduli. "You have not heard the news," said the latter in a low voice, bending towards Maddalena, and holding up her fan before her face. "We have all been dining at Casa San Giacinto, sixteen of us besides themselves--the two Campodonico, ourselves, Pietrasanta--ever so many of us. Ghisleri was there, next to me, and there was a discussion about the evil eye, because Pietrasanta broke a glass just as he uttered the name of the lady we do not mention--you know which--Ghisleri's friend. And then, I do not know how it was, but Ghisleri and Campodonico contradicted each other about it, because Campodonico said she was a jettatrice and Ghisleri said she was not, you know. After dinner the two went and talked in whispers at the other end of the big room, and Ghisleri looked ghastly white, and Campodonico was so angry that his eyes were like coals. A few minutes later, they both went away in a great hurry--Campodonico left his wife there. It certainly looks as though there were to be a duel to-morrow. You know how they hate each other, and how they fought long ago about that wonderful Princess Corleone who died. I can remember seeing her before I was married." The Contessa listened to the end. She could not have grown paler than she was on that evening, but while Donna Maria was speaking the shadows deepened almost to black under her eyes, and the veins in her throat swelled and throbbed so that they hurt her. She succeeded in controlling all other outward signs of emotion, however, and when she spoke her voice was calm and quiet. "I hardly believe that those two will fight," she said. "But, of course, they may. We shall probably know to-morrow." Making a little sign to her partner, she began to dance with him again, and continued to waltz until the music ceased a few minutes later. She stopped near the door where Ghisleri was standing, and looked at him. He immediately came to her side, and she left the man she had been dancing with and moved away with Pietro towards a distant room, not speaking on the way. They sat down together in a quiet corner, and he saw that she was very much moved and probably very angry with him. "Will you please to tell me the truth?" she said, in a hard voice. "I have something to ask you." "Yes. I always do," he answered. "Is it true that there is a quarrel between you and Don Gianforte Campodonico?" "Yes--it is true," replied Ghisleri, after hesitating a few seconds. "And that you had a discussion with him about Lady Herbert at the San Giacinto's dinner table?" "Yes," admitted Ghisleri, who saw that his worst fears were about to be realised. "Are you going to fight?" asked Maddalena, in a metallic tone. "Yes. We are going to fight." "So you have already forgotten what you promised me this afternoon. You said you would do all a man could do to avoid a quarrel--for my sake. Six hours had not passed before you had broken your word. That is the sort of faith you keep with me." Pietro Ghisleri began to think that his misfortunes would never end. For some time he sat in silence, staring before him. Should he tell her the whole story? Should he go over the abominable scene with Campodonico, and tell her all the atrocious insults he had patiently borne for Bianca Corleone's sake, until Maddalena's own name had seemed to set him free from his obligation to the dead woman? He reflected that it would sound extremely theatrical and perhaps improbable in her ears, for she distrusted him enough already. Besides, if she believed him, to tell her would only be to afford his own vanity a base satisfaction. This last view was perhaps a false one, but with his character it was not unnatural. "I have kept my word," he said at last, "for I have borne all that a man can bear to avoid this quarrel." "I am sorry you should be able to bear so little for me," answered Maddalena, her voice as hard as ever. "I have done my best. I am only a man after all. If you had heard what passed, you would probably now say that I am right." "You always take shelter behind assertions of that kind. I know it is of no use to ask you to tell me the whole story, for if you were willing to tell it, you would have told it to me already. No one can conceal fact as you can and yet never be caught in a downright falsehood. Half an hour ago, when we were sitting in that other room, you knew just as well as you do now that you were to fight to-morrow, and you had not the slightest intention of telling me." "Not the slightest. Men do not talk about such things. It is not in good taste, and not particularly honourable, in my opinion." "Good taste and honour!" exclaimed the Contessa, scornfully. "You talk as though we were strangers! Indeed, I think we are coming to that, as fast as we can." "I trust not." "The phrase, again! What should you say, after all? You must say something when I put the matter plainly. It would not be in good taste, if you did not contradict me when I tell you that you do not love me. All things considered, perhaps you do not even think it honourable. You are very considerate, and I am immensely grateful. Perhaps you are thinking, too, that it would be more decent, and in better taste on my part, to let you go, now that I have discovered the truth. I am almost inclined to think so. I have seen it long, and I have been foolish to doubt my senses." "For Heaven's sake, do not be so bitter and unjust," said Ghisleri earnestly. "I am neither. Do you know why I have clung to you? Shall I tell you? It may hurt you, and I am bad enough to wish to hurt you to-night--to wish that you might suffer something of what I feel." "I am ready," answered Pietro. "Do you know why I have clung to you, I ask? I will tell you the truth. It was my last chance of respecting myself, my last hold on womanliness, on everything that a woman cares to be. And you have succeeded in taking that from me. You found me a good wife. You know what I am now--what you have made me. Remember that to-morrow morning, when you are risking your life for Lady Herbert Arden. Do you understand me? Have I hurt you?" "Yes." Ghisleri bowed his head, and passed his hand over his forehead. What she said was terribly, irrefutably true. The vision of true love, revived within the last few days, and delusive still that very afternoon, had vanished, and only the other, the vision of sin, remained, clear, sharp, and cruelly well-defined. He made no attempt to deny what she said, even in his own heart, for it would not be denied. "I cannot even ask you to forgive me that," he said at last in a low tone. "No. You cannot even ask that, for you knew what you were doing--I scarcely did. Not that I excuse myself. I was willing to risk everything, and I did, blindly, for the sake of a real love. You see what I have got. You cannot love me, but you shall not forget me. Heaven is too just. And so, good-bye!" "I hope it may be good-bye, indeed," said Ghisleri. "Not that--no, not that!" exclaimed Maddalena. "I wish you no evil--no harm. I had a right to say what I have said. I shall never say it again--for there will be no need. Take me back, please." She rose to go, and her finely chiselled face was as hard as steel. In silence they went back to the supper-room, and a few moments later Ghisleri left her with Francesco Savelli and went home. On his table he found a note from his seconds, as had been arranged, naming the place and hour agreed upon for the duel, and stating that they would call for him in good time. He tossed it into the fire which still smouldered on the hearth, as he did with everything in the nature of notes and letters which came to him. He never kept a scrap of writing of any sort, except such as chanced to be connected with business matters and the administration of his small estate. He hesitated long as to whether he should write to Maddalena or not, sitting for nearly half an hour at his writing-table with a pen in his fingers and a sheet of paper before him. After all, what could he write? A justification of himself in the question of fighting with Campodonico? What difference could it make now? All had been said, and the end had come, as he had of late known that it must, though it had been abrupt and unexpected at the last minute. It was all the same now whether he should afterwards be said to have fought for Laura or for Maddalena. Besides, in real truth, if it were known, he was fighting for neither. Gianforte's old hatred had suddenly flamed up again, and if he had spoken Maddalena's name it was only because he found that no other means could prevail upon the man he hated to break his solemn vow, and because he knew that no man would bear tamely an insult of that kind cast upon a woman he was bound in honour to defend. But all that had been only the result of circumstances. The quarrel was really the old one in which they had fought so desperately, long ago. The dead Bianca's memory still lived, and had power to bring two brave men face to face in a death struggle. Ghisleri rose from the table and stood before the photograph of the picture which had brought matters to the present pass. For the thousandth time he gazed at the wonderful likeness of her he had loved, perfect in all points, as chance had made it under the hand of a man who had never seen her. "I made a promise to you once," he said, in a low voice, "and I have kept it as well as I could. I will make another, for your dear sake and memory. I will not again bring unhappiness upon any woman." Sentimental and theatrical, the world would have said. But the man who could bear to be unjustly called liar and coward rather than break his oath was able to keep such a promise if he chose. And he did. So far as he was humanly able, too, in the world to which he belonged, he kept the first one also; for, when they bent over him as he lay upon the wet grass a few hours later, the pistol he held was loaded still. The world said that he had been shot before he had time to fire, because he was trying to aim too carefully. But Gianforte Campodonico bared his head and bent it respectfully as they carried Pietro Ghisleri away. "There goes the bravest man I ever knew," he said to his second. CHAPTER XIV. The report that Ghisleri had been killed by his old adversary in a quarrel about Laura Arden spread like wildfire through society. It was not until San Giacinto formally proclaimed that he had been to Ghisleri's lodging, and that, although shot through the right lung, he was alive and might recover, that the world knew the truth. It was of course perfectly evident that Laura was the cause of the difference. Even San Giacinto had no other explanation to suggest, when he was appealed to, and could only say that it seemed incredible that two men should fight with pistols at a dangerously short distance, because the one said that Lady Herbert was a jettatrice, and the other denied it. If Campodonico had been less universally liked than he was, he would have become very unpopular in consequence of the duel; for, although few persons were intimate with Ghisleri, he also was a favourite with the world. The Gerano faction was very angry with both men, though Adele was secretly delighted. It was a scandalous thing, they said, that a duel should be fought about a young widow, whose husband had not been buried much more than two months. Both should have known better. And then, Campodonico was a young married man, which made matters far worse. Duelling was an abominable sin, of course; but Ghisleri, at least, was alone in the world and could risk his soul and body without the danger of bringing unhappiness on others. Gianforte's case was different and far less pardonable. But Casa Gerano and Casa Savelli belonged rather to the old-fashioned part of society, though Adele and her husband were undeniably in the gay set, and there were many who judged the two men more leniently. The world had certainly been saying for some time that Ghisleri went very often to see Lady Herbert, and was neglecting Maddalena dell' Armi. The cruel words the Contessa had overheard at the Embassy were but part of the current gossip, for otherwise mere strangers, like those who had spoken, could not have already learned to repeat them. If, then, Ghisleri was in love with Laura Arden, it was natural enough that he should resent the story about the evil eye. Meanwhile, poor man, no one could tell whether he could ever recover from his dangerous wound. The Contessa dell' Armi was one of the very first to know the truth. She had spent a miserable and sleepless night, and it was still very early in the morning when she sent to Ghisleri's lodgings for news. She was very anxious, for she knew more than most people about the old story, and she guessed that Campodonico would do his best to hurt Pietro. But she had no idea that pistols were to be the weapons, and Ghisleri's reputation as a swordsman was very good. Short of an accident, she thought, nothing would be really dangerous to him. But then, accidents sometimes happened. The answer came back, short and decisive. He was shot through the very middle of the right lung, he had not fired upon his adversary, and he lay in great danger, between life and death, in the care of a surgeon and a Sister of Charity, neither of whom left his side for a moment. Maddalena did not hesitate. She dressed herself in an old black frock she found among her things, put on a thick veil, went out alone, and drove to Pietro's lodgings. Such rash things may be done with impunity in Paris or London, but they rarely remain long concealed in a small city like Rome. He was still unconscious from weakness and loss of blood. His eyes were half closed and his face was transparently white. Maddalena stood still at the foot of the bed and looked at him, while the doctor and the nurse gazed at her in surprise. During what seemed an endless time to them she did not move. Then she beckoned to the surgeon, and led him away to the window. "Will he live?" she asked, hardly able to pronounce the words. "He may. There is some hope, for he is very strong. I cannot say more than that for the present." For a few moments Maddalena was silent. She had never seen the doctor, and he evidently did not know her. "My place should be here," she said at last. "Would an emotion be bad for him--if he were angry, perhaps?" "Probably fatal," answered the surgeon with decision. "If he is likely to experience any emotion on seeing you, I beg you not to stay long. He may soon be fully conscious." "He cannot know me now?" she asked anxiously. "No. Not yet." "Not if I went quite near to him--if I touched him?" The doctor glanced back at the white face on the pillow. "No," he answered. "But be quick." Maddalena went swiftly to the bedside, and, bending down, kissed Ghisleri's forehead, gazed at him for a moment, and then turned away. She slipped a little gold bracelet formed of simple links without ornament or distinctive mark from her wrist, and put it into the Sister's hand. "If you think he is dying, give him this, and say I came and kissed him. If he is in no danger, sell it, and give the money to some poor person. Can I trust you, my sister?" "Yes, madame," answered the French nun quietly as she dropped the trinket into her capacious pocket. With one glance more at Ghisleri's face, the Contessa left the room. A quarter of an hour later she was at home again. The servants supposed that she had gone to an early mass, as she sometimes did, possibly to pray for the soul of the Signor Ghisleri. The man who had gone for news of him had not failed to inform the whole household of Pietro's dangerous state, and as Pietro was a constant visitor, and was generous with his five-franc notes, considerable anxiety was felt in the lower regions for his welfare, and numerous prayers were offered for his recovery. Maddalena sent to make inquiries several times in the course of the day, and towards evening was informed that there was more hope, but that if he got well at all it would be by a long convalescence. She herself saw no one, and no one ever knew what she suffered in those endless hours of solitude. Laura Arden heard of the duel through her mother, who was very angry about it, as has been seen. Laura herself was greatly shocked, for at first almost every one thought that Ghisleri must die of his wound. Having been brought up in Rome, in the midst of Roman ideas, she had not the English aversion to duelling, nor, being an Anglican, had she a Catholic's horror of sudden death. She did not even yet really like Ghisleri. But she was horror-struck, though she could hardly have told why, at the thought that the strong man who had been with her when her husband died, and whom she had talked with so often since, should be taken away without warning, in the midst of his youth and strength, for a word said in her defence. Of course the Princess told her all the details of the story as she had heard them, laying particular stress upon the fact that the duel had been fought for Laura. The seconds in the affair had gravely alleged a dispute about the painter Zichy as the true cause of the quarrel, but the world had found time to make up its mind on the previous evening, and was not to be deceived by such absurd tales. "It is not my fault, mother, if they fought about me," said Laura. "But I am dreadfully distressed. I wish I could do anything." "The best thing is to do nothing," answered the Princess, "for nothing can do any good. The harm is done, whether it has been in any way your fault or not. To think it should all have begun in that insane superstition about the evil eye!" "I never even knew that I was suspected of being a jettatrice. People must be mad to believe in such things. You are right, of course. What could any of us do except make inquiries? Poor man! I hope he will get over it." "God grant he may live to be a better man," said the Princess, devoutly. She had never had a very high opinion of Ghisleri's moral worth, and late events had confirmed her in the estimate she had made. "One thing I must say, my dear," she continued. "If he recovers, as I pray he may, you must see less of him than hitherto. You cannot let people talk about you as they will talk, especially after this dreadful affair." "I will be very careful," Laura answered. "Not that there is any danger. The poor man will be ill for weeks, at the best, and the summer will be almost here before he is out of the house. Then I shall be going away, for I do not mean to keep Herbert here during the heat." The Princess was quite used to hearing Laura speak of the little child in that way, and she had never once referred to her husband by name since his death. She meant that the one Herbert should take the place of the other, once and for always, to be cared for and loved, and thought of at every hour of the day. She had silently planned out her life during the weeks of her recovery, and she believed that nothing could prevent her from living it as she intended. Everything should be for little Herbert, from first to last. She looked at the baby face, in which she saw so plainly the father's likeness where others could see only a pair of big brown eyes, plump cheeks, and a mouth like a flower, and she promised herself that all the happiness she would have made for the one who had been taken should be the lot of the one given to her almost on the same day. Her future seemed anything but dark to her, though its greater light had gone out. The anguish, the agonising anxiety, the first moment's joy, and at last the full pride of motherhood, had come between her and the past, deadening the terrible shock at first, and making the memory of it less keen and poignant afterwards, while not in any way dimming the bright recollection of the love that had united her to her husband. She could take pleasure now in looking forward to her boy's coming years, to the time when he should be at first a companion, then a friend, and then a protector of whom she would be proud when he stood among other men. She could think of his schooldays, and she could already feel the pain of parting from him and the joy of meeting him again, taller and stronger and braver at every return. And far away in the hazy distance before her she could see a shadowy but lovely figure, yet unknown to-day--Herbert's wife that was to be, a perfect woman, and worthy of him in all ways. It might be also that somewhere there were great deeds for Herbert to do, fame for him to achieve, glory for him to win. All this was possible, but she thought little of it. Her ambition was to know him some day to be all that his father had been in heart, and to see him all that his father should have been in outward form and stature. More than that she neither hoped nor asked for, and perhaps it was enough. And so she dreamed on, while no one thought she was dreaming at all, for she was always active and busy with something that concerned the child, and her attention never wandered when it was needed. Her mother watched her and was glad of it all. To her, it seemed very merciful that Arden should have died when he did, fond as she herself had been of him. She had not believed that Laura could be permanently happy with such a sufferer, and she had never desired the marriage, though she had done nothing to oppose it when she saw how deeply her daughter loved the man she had chosen. She was very much relieved when she saw how Laura behaved in her sorrow, and realised that there was no morbid tendency in her to dwell over-long on her grief. One thing, which has already been mentioned, alone showed that Laura felt very deeply,--she never spoke of Arden, even to her mother. On this point there seemed to be a tacit understanding between her and Donald. The faithful old servant seemed to know instinctively what she wished done. When all was over, and while Laura was still far too ill to be consulted, he had taken all Arden's clothes and other little effects, even to his brushes and other dressing things, and had packed everything in his dead master's own boxes as though for a long journey. The boxes themselves he locked up in a small spare room, and laid the key in the drawer of Laura's writing-table with a label on which were written the words, "His lordship's effects." Laura found it the first time she came to the drawing-room, and was grateful to the old Scotchman for what he had done. But she could not bring herself to speak of it, even to Donald, though he knew that she was pleased by the look she gave him. Of course, her manner was greatly changed from what it had been. She never laughed now, and rarely ever smiled, except when she held the child in her arms. But there was nothing morbid nor brooding in her gravity. She had accepted her lot and was determined to make the best of it according to her light. In time she would grow more cheerful, and by and by she would be her old self again--more womanly, perhaps, and certainly more mature, but not materially altered in character or disposition. The short months which had sufficed for what had hitherto been the chief acts of her life had not been filled with violent or conflicting emotions, and it is emotion more than anything else which changes the natures of men and women for better or for worse. The love that had been born of mingled pity and sympathy of thought had risen quickly in the peaceful, remote places of her heart, and had flowed smoothly through the sweet garden of her maidenly soul, unruffled and undeviating, until it had suddenly disappeared into the abyss of eternity. It had left no wreck and no ruin behind, no devastation and no poisonous, stagnant pools, as some loves do. The soil over which it had passed had been refreshed and made fertile by it, and would bear flowers and fruit hereafter as fragrant and as sweet as it could ever have borne; and at the last, in that one great moment of pain when she had stood at the brink and seen all she loved plunge out of sight for ever in the darkness, she had heard in her ear the tender cry of a new young life calling to her to turn back and tend it, and love it, and show it the paths that lead to such happiness as the world holds for the pure in heart. She was calm, therefore, and not, in the ordinary sense, broken by her sorrow,--a fact which the world, in its omniscience, very soon discovered. It did not fail to say that she was well rid of her husband, and that she knew it, and was glad to be free, though she managed with considerable effort to keep up a sufficient outward semblance of mourning to satisfy the customs and fashions of polite society--just that much, and not a jot more. But Adele Savelli said repeatedly that all this was not true, and that only a positively angelic nature like Laura's could bear such an awful bereavement so calmly. It was a strange thing, Adele added, that very good people should always seem so much better able to resign themselves to the decrees of Providence than their less perfect neighbours. Of course it could not be that they were colder and felt less than others, and consequently could not suffer so much. Besides, Laura must have loved Arden sincerely to marry him at all, since it appeared to be certain that the rich uncle who was to have left him so much money only existed in the imagination of the gossips, and had evidently been invented by them merely in order to make out that Laura had a secret reason for marrying that uncle's favourite nephew. But then, people would talk, of course, and all that the relations of the family could do was to deny such calumnious reports consistently and at every turn. Adele was looking very ill when the season came to an end. She had grown thin, and her eyes had a restless, hunted look in them which had never been there before. Her husband noticed that she was very much overcome when she heard the first report to the effect that Ghisleri was killed. She seemed particularly horrified at the statement that the original cause of the duel had been the reputation for possessing the evil eye which Laura Arden had so suddenly acquired, and which, as she herself had been the very first to say, was so utterly unfounded. It was evidently a very great relief to her to hear, later in the day, that Pietro was not yet dead, and might even have a chance of recovery. No one could tell what Gianforte Campodonico thought of the matter. He shut himself up obstinately and awaited events. It is not probable that he felt any remorse for what he had done, or that he would have felt any if he had left Ghisleri dead on the field, instead of with a bare chance of life. He had taken the vengeance he had longed for and he was glad of it, but the impression he had of the man was not the same which he had been accustomed to for so many years. He, who generally reflected little, asked himself whether he could have found the courage to bear what Ghisleri had borne for the sake of the promise they had made together, and which he had been the first to break. He was a brave man, too, in his way, and it would not have been safe to predict that he would fail at any given point if put to the test. But he was conscious that, in the present case, Ghisleri had played the nobler part, and he was manly enough to acknowledge the fact to himself, and to respect his adversary as he had not done before. If he stayed at home and refused to be seen in the world or even at his club immediately after the duel, it was because he would not be thought willing to glory in his victory. But, before many days were gone by, it became apparent, so far as the world could judge, that Pietro Ghisleri would not die of the dangerous wound he had received. It would have killed most men, the surgeon said, but Ghisleri was not like other people. He, the doctor, had never seen a stronger constitution, nor one so perfectly untainted by any hereditary evil or weakness. Such blood was rare now, especially in the old families, and such strength would have been rare in any age. He had no longer any hesitation in saying that the patient had a very fair prospect of recovery, and might possibly be as healthy as ever before the end of the summer. The Sister of Charity went about with Maddalena's bracelet in her pocket, feeling very uncomfortable about it, since she had been quite sure from the first that there was something very sinful in the whole affair. But she was quite ready to fulfil her promise if Ghisleri showed signs of departing this life, which he did not, however, either when he first regained consciousness or later. So she, on her part, said nothing, and waited for the day when she might deliver up the trinket to the Mother Superior, to be sold for the poor, as Maddalena had directed. In that, at least, there could be no harm, and she was very thankful that she was not called upon to deliver the message to Ghisleri himself, for that, she felt sure, would have been sinful, or something very like it. The surgeon was surprised by something else in the case. As a general rule, when a man fights a desperate duel in the very middle of the season, and especially such a man as he knew Ghisleri to be, and is severely hurt, he finds himself cut off from society in the midst of some chain of events in which the whole present interest of his life is engaged. He is consequently disturbed in mind, impatient of confinement, and feverishly anxious to get back to the world,--a state of temper by no means conducive to convalescence. Ghisleri, on the contrary, seemed to have forgotten to care for anything. No preoccupation appeared to possess him; no desire to be back again in the throng made him restless. He was perfectly calm and peaceful, always patient, and always resigned to whatever treatment seemed necessary. The Sister wondered much that a man of such marvellous gentleness and resignation could have found it in him to commit mortal sin in fighting a duel, and, perhaps, far down in her woman's heart, she did not wonder at all at what Maddalena had done on that first morning. The surgeon said that Ghisleri's sweet temper had much to do with his rapid recovery. It need not be supposed from this that his character had undergone any radical change, nor that he was turning, all at once, into the saint he was never intended to be. It was very simple. The events of the night preceding the duel had brought his life to a crisis which, once past, had left little behind it to disturb him. First in his mind was the consciousness that his love for Maddalena dell' Armi was gone for ever, and that she herself expected no return of it. That alone was enough to change his whole existence in the present, and in the immediate future. Then, too, he felt that he had at least settled old scores with Campodonico and had in a measure expiated one, at least, of his past misdeeds, almost at the cost of his life. Morally speaking, too, he had kept his oath to Bianca Corleone, for under the utmost provocation he had refused to fight in the old quarrel, and even when driven to bay and forced upon new ground by Campodonico's implacable hatred, he had stood up to be killed without so much as firing at Bianca's brother. There was a deep and real satisfaction in that, and he was perhaps too ill as yet to torture himself by stigmatising it as a bit of vanity. The world might think what it pleased. Maddalena might misjudge his motives, and Gianforte might triumph in his victory--it all made no difference to him. He was conscious that to the best of his ability he had acted according to the dictates of true honour, as he understood it; and at night he closed his eyes and fell peacefully asleep, and in the morning he opened them quietly again upon the little world of his invalid's surroundings. He was not happy, however. What he felt, and what perhaps saved his life, was a momentary absence of responsibility, an absolute certainty that nothing more could be required of him, because, in the events in which he had played a part, that part had been acted out to the very end. He even went so far as to believe that, if he had died, it would not have made any difference to any one, except that his death might possibly have been an added satisfaction to Campodonico. He would have left no sorrowing heart behind to mourn him, nor any gap in any circle which another man could not fill up. Herbert Arden, the only friend who would have really regretted him, was already dead, and there was no one else who stood to him in any relation of acquaintance at all so close as to be called friendship. All this contributed materially to his peace of mind, though in one respect he was mistaken. There was one person who loved him still, for himself, though she knew well enough that his love for her was dead. And it was of her, though he was mistaken about her, that he thought the most during the long hours when he lay there quietly watching the sunbeams stealing across the room when it was fine, or listening to the raindrops pattering against the windows when the weather was stormy. In her was centred the great present regret of his life, and for her sake he felt the most sincere remorse. He asked himself, as she had asked him, what was to become of her, now that he had left her. The fact that she had been really the one to speak the word and cause the first break did not change the truth in the least. It had been his fault from the first to the last. He had not broken her heart, perhaps, because hearts are not now-a-days easily broken, if, indeed, they ever really were; but he had ruined her existence wantonly, uselessly, on the plea of a love neither pure nor lasting, and he fully realised what he had done. What chance had she ever had against him--she, young, inexperienced, trusting, wretchedly unhappy with a husband who had despised and trodden out the simple, girlish love she had offered--what chance had she against Pietro Ghisleri, the hardened, cool-headed man of the world, whose only weakness was that he sometimes believed himself sincere, as he had with her? He was not happy as he thought of it all. There had been little manliness in what he had done, and not much of the honour which he called his last shred of morality. And yet, in the world in which he had his being, few men would blame him, and none, perhaps, venture to condemn him. But that consideration did not cross his mind. He was willing to bear both condemnation and blame, and he heaped both upon himself in a plentiful measure. Nevertheless, he was conscious of being surprised at the calmness of his own repentance, as he called it rather contemptuously, and he wished himself, as usual, quite different from what he was. And yet he had not forgotten the semi-theatrical resolution to change his life, which he had made on the night before the duel, still less had he any intention of breaking it. He had always laughed at men and women who made sudden and important resolutions under the influence of emotion, and, on the whole, he had never seen any reason for looking upon such gratuitous promises as valid, unless there had been witnesses to them, and human vanity afterwards came into play. But now, in his own case, he meant to try the experiment. It made no difference whether he were vain about it or not, if he succeeded, nor, if he failed, whether he scorned his own weakness a little more than before. No one would ever know, and since by Laura Arden's rigid standard of right and wrong the end to be gained belonged distinctly to the right, he would be in a measure following her advice in regard to life in general. Deeper down in his nature, too, there lay another thought which he would not now evoke, lest he should himself condemn it as sentimental. That secret promise had been honestly intended, and had been addressed to the memory of one who, though long dead, still had a stronger influence over him than any one now living. He hardly dared to acknowledge the truth of this and the real meaning of what he had done, lest, if he failed hereafter, he should have to accuse himself of faithlessness towards the one woman to whom he had been really true, and whom, if she had lived, he would have loved till the end, in spite of obstacles, in spite of mankind, in spite, he added defiantly, of Heaven itself. All this he tried to keep out of sight, while firmly resolving, in his own cynical way, to try the experiment of goodness for once, and to do no more harm in the world if he could help it. He thought of Laura Arden, too, in his long convalescence, and her image was always pleasant to his inner vision, as the impression she had produced on him was soothing to recall. There were times when her holy eyes seemed to gaze at him out of the darker corners of the room, and he tried often to bring back her whole presence. The pleasure such useless feats of imagination gave him was artistic if it was anything, because he admired her beauty and had always delighted in it. He tried to fancy what she was doing, on certain days when he thought more of her than usual, and to follow her life a little, always trying in a vague way to fathom the secret of the character that was so wonderful in his estimation. And always, when he had been thinking of her, he came back to the contemplation of his own immediate interests with a renewed calm and with a peaceful sense that there might yet be better days in store for him--possibly days in which he should himself be better than he had been heretofore. How the world would have jeered, could it have suspected that Pietro Ghisleri was thinking almost seriously of such a very commonplace subject as moral goodness, as he lay on his back, day after day, in the quiet of his room. How gladly would Adele Savelli have changed places with the man who, as she thought, for the sake of a bit of gossip she had invented out of spite, had nearly lost his life! CHAPTER XV. When Ghisleri was at last able to go out of the house, his first visit was to Maddalena dell' Armi. He had written a line to say that he was coming, and she expected him. The meeting was a strange one, for both felt at first the constraint of their mutual position. Ghisleri looked at her face, which had been so hard when he had last seen it, and he saw that it had softened. There were no signs of suffering, however, and her expression was almost as placid as his own. He raised her hand to his lips and sat down opposite to her. Then the light fell on his face and she saw how changed he was. She remembered how he had looked when she had seen him after he was wounded, and she saw that he was almost as pale now as then, and that he was thin almost to emaciation. "Are you really growing strong again?" she asked in a tone of anxiety. "Yes, indeed," he answered with a smile. "I feel as though I were quite well--a little gaunt and weak, perhaps, but that will soon pass. And you--how have you spent your time in all these weeks since I last saw you?" "Very much as usual," replied Maddalena, and suddenly a weary look came into her eyes. "If you care to know--as long as you were really in danger I did not go out. Then I went everywhere again, and tried to amuse myself." "Did you succeed?" asked Ghisleri, trying hard to speak cheerfully. There had been something hopeless in Maddalena's tone which shocked him and pained him. "More or less. Why do you ask me that?" "Because I am interested." "Do you care for me in the least--in any way?" she asked abruptly. "You know that I do--" "How should I know it?" Ghisleri did not reply at once, for the question was not easily answered. Maddalena waited in silence until he should speak. "Perhaps you are right," he said at last. "You have no means of knowing it, and I have no means of proving it. Dearest lady, since we have both changed so much, do you not think you could believe a little in my friendship?" "We ought to be friends--you should be my best friend." "I mean to be, if you will let me." A long silence followed. Maddalena sat quite still, leaning back in a corner of the sofa and looking at a picture on the opposite wall. Ghisleri sat upright on a chair at a little distance from her. "You say that you will be my friend, if I will let you," she said slowly, after several minutes. "Even if you could imagine that I could not wish it, you ought to be my best friend just the same. If I made you suffer every hour of the day as I did on that last night, you ought to bear it, and never have one unkind thought of me. No; do not answer me yet: I have much more to say. You know that I have always told you just what I have felt, when I have told you anything about myself. I was very unhappy when we met at that ball--or, rather, when we parted--so unhappy that I hardly knew what I said. I ought to have waited and thought before I spoke. If I could have guessed that you were to be wounded--well, it is of no use now. I am very, very fond of you. In spite of everything, if you felt the least love for me still, however little, I would say, 'Let us be as we were, as long as it can last.' As it is--" She paused and looked at him. He knew what she meant. If there were a spark of love, she would forget everything and take him back on any terms. For a moment the old struggle was violently resumed in his heart. Ought he not, for her sake, to pretend love, and to live out his life as best he could in the letter of devotion if not in the true spirit of love? Or would not such an attempt necessarily be a failure, and bring her more and more unhappiness with each month and year? He only hesitated for an instant while she paused; then he determined to say nothing. That was really the turning-point in Pietro Ghisleri's life. "As it is," continued Maddalena, a little unsteadily, but with a brave effort, "nothing but friendship is possible. Let it at least be a true and honest friendship which neither of us need be ashamed of. Let all the world see it. Go your way, and I will go mine, so far as the rest is concerned. If you love Lady Herbert, marry her, if she will have you, when her mourning is over." "I do not love Lady Herbert at all," said Ghisleri with perfect truth. "Well--if you should, or any other woman. Let the world say what it will, it cannot invent anything worse than it has said of me already. You owe me nothing--nothing but that,--to be a true friend to me always, as I will be to you as long as I live." She put out her hand, and he took it and pressed it. As she felt his, the bright tears started to her eyes. "What is it?" he asked tenderly, bending towards her as he spoke. "Nothing," she answered hastily. "Your hand is so thin--how foolish of me! I suppose you will grow to be as strong as ever?" He saw how she still loved him, in spite of all. It was not too late even now to renew the comedy, but his resolution had grown strong and unalterable in a few moments. "You are much too good to me," he said softly. "I have not deserved it--but I will try to." "Do not let us speak of all this any more for the present," she replied. "Since we are friends, let us talk of other things, as friends do." It was not easy, but Ghisleri did his best, feeling that the effort must be made sooner or later and had therefore best be made at once. He kept up the conversation for nearly half an hour, and then rose to go. "Are you not very tired?" asked Maddalena, anxiously. "Not at all. I am much stronger than I look." "Indeed I hope you are!" she answered, looking at him sadly. "Good-bye. Come soon again." "Yes, I will come very soon." Ghisleri went out and had himself driven about the city for an hour in the bright spring weather. It was all new to him now, and he looked at people and things with a sort of interest he had long forgotten to feel. A few of his acquaintances recognised him at once, and waved their hats to him if they chanced to be men, or made pretty gestures with their hands if they were women. But the greater number did not know him at first, and stared after the death-like face and the gaunt figure wrapped in a fur coat that had grown far too wide. He was very glad that the first meeting with Maddalena was over, for he had looked forward to it with considerable anxiety. Something like what had actually been said about friendship had been inevitable, as he now saw, but he had not realised how much he was still loved, nor that Maddalena could so far humiliate herself as to show that she cared for him still, and to offer a renewal of their old relations. Even now, could he have seen her pale and tear-stained face as she sat motionless in the place where he had left her, he might possibly have been weak enough to yield, strong as his determination was not to do so. But that sight was spared him, and he was glad that he had held his peace when she had paused to give him an opportunity of speaking. It was far better so. To act a miserable play with her, no matter from what so-called honourable motive of consideration, would be to make her life far more unhappy than it would ultimately be if she knew the truth. He was satisfied with what he had done, therefore, when he went back to his rooms and lay down to rest after the fatigue of his first day out. But the meeting had left a very sad and painful impression, and all that he felt of remorse and regret for what he had done was doubled now. He hated to think that by his fault she was cast upon the world, with little left to save her, "trying to amuse herself," as she had said, and he wondered at her gentleness and kindness to himself, so different from her behaviour at their last meeting. That, at least, comforted him. In a woman who could thus forgive there must be depths of goodness which would ultimately come to the surface. He remembered how often he had thought her hard, unjust, unkind, and, above all, unbelieving, in the days that succeeded the first outbursts of unreasoning love, and how, even while loving her, he had not always found it easy not to judge her harshly. She was very different now. Possibly, since she felt that she had lost her old power over him, she would be less impatient with him when she did not understand him, and when he displeased her. Come what might, treat him as she would, he owed her faithful allegiance and service--and those at least he could give. He could never atone to her, but in the changing scenes of the world he might, by devoting to her interest all the skill and tact he possessed, make her life happier and easier. Before night he received a note from Laura Arden. She wrote that she had seen him driving, though he had not seen her pass, as he had been looking in the opposite direction. If he was able to bear the fatigue of making a call, she begged that he would come to her at any hour he chose to name, as she wished to speak to him. He answered at once that he would be at her house on the following day at three o'clock. He knew very well what she wanted, and why she did not wait until he came of his own accord. She meant to speak to him of the duel, and her questions would be hard to answer, since she was probably in ignorance of many details of his former life, familiar enough to people of his own age. He knew, of course, that the world said he had really fought on her account, and that he could never prevail upon the world to think otherwise. But he was very anxious that Laura herself should know the truth. She might forgive him for having let people believe that she had been concerned in the matter rather than Maddalena dell' Armi, out of womanly consideration for the latter, but she would assuredly not pardon him if she continued to suppose that he had made her the subject of useless gossip. The situation was not an easy one. At the appointed hour he entered her drawing-room. He was almost startled by her beauty when he first saw her standing opposite to him. She had developed in every way during the many weeks since he had seen her. The perfectly calm and regular life she led had produced its inevitable good effect. She, on her part, was almost as much shocked by his looks as Maddalena had been. "Have I not asked too much of you?" she inquired, pushing forward a comfortable chair for him, and arranging a cushion in it. "Not at all. Thanks," he added, as he sat down, "you are very good, but pray do not imagine that I am an invalid." "I only saw you in the street," she said, almost apologetically. "I did not realise how desperately ill you still looked. Please forgive me." "But I should have come to-day or to-morrow in any case," protested Ghisleri. "After what has happened--yes, I think I know why you sent for me. You have heard what every one is saying. The men who came to see me before I could go out told me all about it. I knew beforehand that it would turn out as it has, though we gave our seconds another excuse, as you have probably also heard, and which, if the truth were known, was much nearer to betraying the cause of the quarrel than any one supposed. Am I right? You wished to ask me why I had the impertinence to fight a duel about you. Is that it?" "I would not put it in that way," said Laura. "But I did wish to ask you why you took the matter up so violently. Please do not enter into the question now--you are not strong enough. I am very sorry indeed that I wrote to you." "You need not be, for I am quite able to tell you all about it. I have thought the matter over, and I think you will forgive me if I tell you the whole story from beginning to end. It is a confidence, and I have not the least fear that you will betray it. If you are not willing to hear it, you will always believe that I have wantonly made you the talk of the town. It is entirely to justify myself in your eyes that I ask you to listen to what I am going to say. Some points may shock you a little. Have I your leave?" "Yes--if you really wish to tell me for your own sake. For mine, I do not ask you to tell me anything." "It is for my own sake. I am quite selfish. When you have heard all, you will know more or less the history of my life, of which many people know certain details." He paused and leaned back in his deep chair, closing his eyes a moment as though he were collecting his thoughts. Laura settled herself to listen, turning in her seat so as not to face him, but so that she could look at him while he was speaking. "I have never told any one this story," he began, "for I have never had any good reason for doing so. When I was a very young man I loved the Princess Corleone, who was, by her maiden name, Donna Bianca Campodonico, the daughter of the old Duca di Norba who died of paralysis, and own sister to Gianforte Campodonico, with whom I fought this duel. I loved that lady with all my heart to the day of her death, and being young and tactless, I showed it too much. Her brother, Gianforte, hated me in consequence, because there was talk about his sister and me--and our names were constantly coupled together. I did my best to remain on civil terms with him, but at last he insulted me openly and we fought. This first duel took place a little more than six years ago, in Naples, where Donna Bianca lived after her marriage. Campodonico did his best to kill me, and at last I ran him through the arm. On the ground, without heeding the slight wound which disabled his right arm, he demanded pistols, but the seconds on both sides refused, and declared the affair terminated. As the original challenge had come from me, his position was quite untenable. He sought occasion after that to insult me again, but I avoided him. Then the Princess fell ill. Two days before she died, she had herself carried into the drawing-room, and sent for me. Her brother was already there. She made us both promise that for her sake we would never quarrel again. We joined hands and solemnly bound ourselves, for we knew she was dying. Then I took leave of her. I never saw her again, and I shall not see her hereafter." He paused a moment, but not a muscle of his face betrayed emotion. Laura had listened with breathless interest. "Do not say that," she said softly. "I lived alone for a long time," continued Ghisleri, without heeding her remark. "Then at last I came back to the world, and did many things, mostly bad, of which I need not speak. I fell a little in love, now and then, and at last somewhat more seriously with a lady of whom we will not speak, against whose good name no slander had ever been breathed. Now I come to the events which caused the duel. People have been saying that you have the evil eye and are a jettatrice. The absurd tale is repeated from mouth to mouth, and will ultimately make society here unbearable for you. You are enough of a Roman to understand that. There was a big dinner at San Giacinto's one night, and Campodonico and I sat opposite to each other. He believes in this nonsense and I do not. Pietrasanta mentioned your name, and accidentally broke a glass at almost the same moment. Then a discussion arose about the existence of such a thing as the evil eye, and Campodonico and I talked about it across the table, while everybody listened. We exchanged a few rather incisive remarks, but nothing more. That was the end of the matter so far as you were concerned, and it was owing to this discussion that people said we fought on your account." "I see," said Laura. "It was all a mistake, then?" "Yes. But I suppose Campodonico was irritated. In the drawing-room I lit a cigarette, and stood some time looking at a copy of Zichy's picture of Tamara falling into the Demon's arms. Tamara chances to be a very striking likeness of the Princess Corleone, and if I had reflected that Campodonico might have also noticed the fact, I would not have stood there looking at it as I did. But I forgot. Before I knew it, he was at my elbow, evidently very angry, for he perfectly understood why I liked the picture. He asked me whether I did not think that a solemn promise such as we had made might be broken under certain circumstances. I said I did not think so. He lost his temper completely, and said I was a coward. I still refused to quarrel with him, and he grew more and more insulting, until at last he began a sentence which I would not let him end, to the effect that, could Donna Bianca have been there to judge us both, she might wish the promise broken--I suppose that would have been his inference--if she could have seen that the man she had loved had fallen so low as to love the lady to whom I referred a little while ago. He named her. I answered that Donna Bianca never meant that our promise should shield the liar who slandered a good and defenceless woman, because his name chanced to be Campodonico. We told our seconds that we had quarrelled about the talent of Zichy, the painter of the picture, because no immediate and better excuse suggested itself. That is the whole story." "It is a very strange one," said Laura, in a low voice, and looking up at his pale face. "If people only knew the truth about what they see! Tell me, Signor Ghisleri, is it a fact that you did not fire at him?" "Yes." "Why did you not?" "Because--if you really care to know--I still felt bound to my promise, and I should never have forgiven myself if I had hurt him. Will you say that you understand the rest of the story, and will you forgive me if I let it be thought that the duel was about you?" "Indeed I forgive you," Laura answered without hesitation. "You acted splendidly all through, and I would not--" "Please do not praise me," said Ghisleri, interrupting her with word and gesture. "Whatever I did was only the consequence of former actions of mine, most of which were bad in themselves. Besides, I have told you all this by way of an apology, and I thank you very sincerely for accepting it. Let the matter end there." "Very well. That need not prevent me from thinking what I please, need it?" "I shall always be really grateful for any kind thought you give me." Laura was silent for a moment. She was surprised to find that her old feeling of dislike for him had greatly diminished. She had not even noticed it when he had entered the room, for she had been at once struck by his appearance of ill-health, and her first instinct had been that of sympathy for him. And now, whatever effect his personality produced on her, she could hardly conceal her admiration of his conduct. He had told the story very simply, and she felt that he had told it truthfully, and that she was able to judge of the man from a new point of view. She could not but appreciate the courage he had shown in bearing insult, and at last, in not returning his adversary's fire, and he rose in her estimation because he had done these things for the sake of a woman he had really loved. "May I ask you one question?" she inquired after the pause. "Of course, and I will answer it if I can." "I dare say you remember something you told me about yourself a long time ago--how you distrust yourself, and torment yourself about everything you do. Will you tell me whether you have found any fault with your own conduct in this affair, apart from everything which went before the dinner party at which you met Don Gianforte? It would interest me very much to know." Ghisleri thought over his answer for a few seconds before he gave it. "Except in so far as I involved your name in the affair," he said, "I do not think I reproach myself with anything very definite." He had hardly finished speaking when the door opened, and Donald announced Don Francesco and Donna Adele Savelli. A very slight shadow passed over Laura's face, as she rose to meet her step-sister, but Ghisleri remained cold and impassive. Adele started perceptibly, as Laura had done, when she saw him, and Ghisleri was struck by the change in her own appearance. Her expression was that of a woman who is in almost constant pain, and who has grown restless under it, and fears its return at any moment. Her eyes turned uneasily, glancing about the room in all directions, and avoiding the faces of those present. She was pale, too, and looked altogether ill. "I am so glad to see you, Ghisleri," she said, after she had kissed the air somewhere in the neighbourhood of Laura's cheek. "I had no idea you were out already, and as we are going away to-morrow, I was afraid I might not meet you." "Are you going out of town so soon?" asked Ghisleri, in some surprise. "Yes, I am ill, and they say I must go to the country. Do you remember when you met me in the street, and recommended sulphonal? I took it, and it did me good for some time. But then, all at once, I found it did not act so well, and I lost my sleep again. I want the doctors to give me something, but they say all those things become a habit--chloral, you know, and morphia, and a great many things. As if I cared! I would not mind any habit if I could only sleep--and I see things all night--ugh! it is horrible! Have you ever had insomnia? It is quite the most dreadful thing in the world." She shuddered, and Ghisleri could see well enough that the suffering to which she referred was not at all imaginary. "No," he answered. "I have never had anything of that kind. When I go to bed at all I sleep five or six hours very soundly." "How I envy you that! Even five or six hours--I, who used to sleep nine, and always ten after a ball. And now I very often do not close my eyes all night. The sulphonal did me so much good. Can you not tell me of something else?" "The best way to get over it would be to find out what causes it, and cure that," observed Ghisleri. "Generally, too, a quiet and healthy life, exercise, plain food, and a good conscience will do good." He laughed a little as he spoke, and then he noticed that Adele was looking at him rather strangely. He wondered idly whether her mind were wandering in some other direction. "Of course," he continued, "you have no idea of what produces the trouble. If you could find that out, it would be simpler." "Yes, indeed," assented Adele, with a forced smile. "If all that is necessary were to have a good conscience and walk an hour or two every day, I should soon get well." "I have no doubt you will in any case. Are you going to Gerano, or to your own place?" "To Gerano. It is warmer. Castel Savello is too high for the spring. I should freeze there. It would be a charity if you would drive out and spend a day or two with us, when you are stronger. I wish you would come out and see us, Laura," she said, turning to her step-sister, to whom Francesco was talking in a low voice. "You used to like Gerano when we were girls. Do you remember dear old Don Tebaldo, who used to shed tears because you were a Protestant?" "Indeed I do. I hear he is alive still. It is two years since I was there the last time. Francesco has been telling me all about your illness. I am so sorry. I should think you would do better to consult some good specialist. But, of course, the country can do you no harm." "I hope not," said Adele, with sudden despondency. "I have borne enough already. I could not bear much more." "Nobody can understand what is the matter with her," observed Francesco, and his tone showed that he did not care. "You have let her dance too much this winter," said Laura, addressing him. "You ought to keep her from over-tiring herself." "It is not easy to prevent Adele from doing anything she wishes to do," answered Savelli. "This winter she has insisted on going everywhere. I have warned her a hundred times, but she would not listen to me, and of course this is the result." "When did it begin?" asked Ghisleri, who seemed interested in Adele's mysterious illness. "When did you first lose your sleep?" "You remember," she answered. "We were just talking of our meeting in the street, and the sulphonal. It was about that time--a little before that, of course, for I had been suffering several days when I met you." "Ah, yes--I remember when that was," said Ghisleri, in a tone of reflection. He joined in the conversation during a few minutes longer, and then took leave of the three. Formerly he would have gone to spend an hour or two with Maddalena, but he had no inclination to do so now. He would gladly have stayed with Laura if the Savelli couple had not come. He wished to be alone, now, and to think over what he had done. It was the first time that he had ever told the story of his love for Bianca Corleone to any one, and calm as he had seemed while telling it, he had felt a very strong emotion. He was glad to be at home again, alone with his own thoughts, and with the picture that reminded him of the dead woman. He knew that she would have forgiven him for speaking of her to-day as he had spoken, and to such a woman as Laura Arden. For in his heart he compared the two. There had been grand lines in Bianca Corleone's character, as there were in that of her passionate brother, as Ghisleri believed there must be in Laura Arden's also, and great generosities, the readiness to go to any length for the sake of real passion, the power to hate honestly, to love faithfully, and to forgive wholly--all things which Pietro missed in himself. And Laura had to-day waked the memory of that great love which had once filled his existence, and which had not ended with the life that had gone out before its day, in all its beauty and freshness. He was grateful to her for that, and he sat long in his chair after his lonely meal, thinking of her and of the other, and of poor Maddalena dell' Armi, whose very name, sounding in his imagination, sent a throb of remorse through his heart. A pencil lay near him and he took a sheet of paper and began to write, as he often did when he was alone, scribbling verses without rhyme, and often with little meaning except in their connection with his thoughts. He was no poet. "A sweet, dark woman, with sad, holy eyes, Laid her cool hand upon my heart to-day, And touched the dear dead thing that's buried there. Her saintly magic cannot make it live, Nor sting once more with passionate deep thrill The bright torn flesh where my lost love breathed last. "She has no miracles for me--nor God Forgiveness, nor earth healing--nor death fear. I think I fear life more--and yet, to live Were easy work, could I but learn to die; As, if I learned to live, I should hate death. But I cannot hate death--not even death-- Since that is dead which made death hateful once; Nor hate I anything; let all live on, Just and unjust, bad, good, indifferent, Sinner and saint, man, devil, angel, martyr-- What are they all to me? Good night, sweet rest-- I wish you most what I can find the least. We meet again soon. Have you heard the talk About the latest scandal of our town? No? Nor have I. I care less than I did About the men and women I have known. Good night--and thanks for being kind to me." CHAPTER XVI. Donna Adele Savelli was ill. There was no denying the fact, though her husband had ignored it as long as possible, and was very much annoyed to find that he could not continue to do so until the usual time for moving to the country arrived. As has been said already, the world attributed her ill-health to some unexpected awakening of the family skeleton, and when the Savelli couple suddenly retired to Gerano, it was sure that Francesco had lost money and that they had gone for economy. But there was no lack of funds in Casa Savelli. That ancient and excellent house had, as a family, a keen appreciation of values great and small, and continued to put away more of its income in safe investments than any one knew of. Nor was there any other trouble to account for Adele's illness, so far as any member of the household could judge. Every one else was well, including the children. Everybody was prosperous. It was not conceivable that Adele should have taken Herbert Arden's death to heart in a way to endanger her own health. She might, perhaps, feel some remorse for having spoken of him as she had--for Savelli had discovered that something, at least, of the gossip could be traced to her--but she could not be supposed to care so much as to fall ill. What she suffered from was evidently some one of those mysterious nervous diseases which, in Francesco's opinion, modern medical science had invented expressly in order that it might deal with them. Unfortunately, the particular man of learning who could cure Adele was not forthcoming. The doctors who were consulted said that something was preying on her mind, and when she assured them that this was not the case, they shrugged their shoulders and prescribed soothing medicines, country air, and exercise. She particularly dreaded the night, and could not bear to be left alone for a moment after dark. She said she saw things; when asked what things she saw, she seemed to draw upon her imagination. Francesco began to fear that she might go mad, though there was no insanity in the Braccio family. The prospect was not pleasing, and he would have greatly preferred that she should die and leave him at liberty to marry Laura Arden. He never dreamed that the latter would refuse to wed the heir of all the Savelli, if he were free to ask her hand, and in his cautious, unenterprising fashion he loved her still, while remaining religiously faithful to his wife--and not, on the whole, treating her unkindly. The consequence of all this was that he made her try the simple cure suggested by the doctors, and accompanied her to Gerano in the early spring. The hereditary stronghold from which the head of the Braccio family took his principal title was a vast and gloomy fortress in the lower range of the Sabine mountains, situated in a beautiful country, and overlooking the broad Campagna that lay between it and the distant sea. The great dark walls were flanked by round towers, and were in some places ten and twelve feet thick, so that the deep embrasures of the windows were in themselves like little rooms opening off the great halls behind. The furniture was almost all old, and was well in keeping with the vaulted ceilings, the frescoed friezes, and the dark marble door-posts. Donna Adele's sleeping-chamber was as large as most of the drawing-rooms in the Palazzo Braccio, and her dressing-room was almost of the same size. To reach the hall in which she and her husband dined, it was necessary to traverse five other rooms and a vaulted passage fifty or sixty yards long, in which the steps of any one who passed echoed and rang on the stone pavement, and echoed again during some seconds afterwards in a rather uncanny fashion. The sitting-room was next to the dining-hall, and consequently also at a great distance from the bedrooms. There was more of comfort in it than elsewhere, for the walls were hung with tapestries, and there was a carpet on the floor, whereas in the other apartments there were only rugs thrown down here and there, where they were most needed; here, too, the doors had heavy curtains. But, on the whole, a more ghostly and gloomy place than the castle of Gerano could hardly be imagined, especially at dusk when the blackness deepened in the remote corners and recesses of the huge chambers, and the sculptured corbels of grey stone, high up at the spring of each arch, grew shadowy and alive with hideous grimaces in the gathering dimness. Adele had never been subject to any fear of the supernatural, and the old place was so familiar to her from childhood, that she had looked forward with pleasure to seeing it again. She was attached to almost everything connected with it, to the walls themselves, to her own rooms, to the ugly corbels, to the lame old warder, Giacomo, and to his wife who helped him to take care of the rooms. She was a woman quite capable of that sort of feeling, and capable, indeed, of much more, had it fallen in her path. She could not have hated as she did, if she had not had some power to love also. Circumstances, however, had developed the one far more than the other, for her first great passion had been jealousy. She and Francesco reached the castle in the afternoon of the day following their visit to Laura Arden. The weather was fine and the westering sun streamed through the broad windows and lent everything a passing air of life and almost of gaiety. During the first hours, Adele felt that she must soon be better, and that she could find some rest at last in the atmosphere which recalled her childish days and all her peaceful girlhood. But when the sun was low and the golden light turned to purple and then to fainter hues, and died away into twilight, she shivered as she sat in the deep window-seat, and she called to her husband, telling him to order the lamps. "You used to like the dusk," he observed, as he tugged at the old-fashioned bell-rope. "I cannot imagine what makes you so afraid of being in the dark." "Nor I," she said nervously. "It must be part of my illness. Please have as much light as possible, and lamps in the passage and in our rooms as well." "I suppose candles will do," answered Savelli. "I do not believe there are more than half a dozen lamps out here. Your people always bring them when they come." "Oh, candles, then--anything! Only let me have plenty of light. If there were no night, I should get well." "Unfortunately, nature has not provided that form of cure for invalids," said Savelli, with a laugh. "But we will do our best," he added, always willing to humour his wife in anything reasonable. The servants' quarters were very far away, and several minutes elapsed before a man appeared, and Francesco could give the necessary orders. The gloom deepened, and Adele came from her place at the window, evidently in some sort of distress. She sat down close to her husband--almost cowering at his side. He could not see her face clearly, but he understood that she was frightened. "I wish you would tell me what it is you see in the dark," he said, with a sort of good-natured impatience. "Oh, please do not talk about it!" she cried. "Talk to me of something else--talk, for Heaven's sake, talk, until they bring the lamps! I sometimes think I shall go mad when there is no light." It is not a particularly easy affair to comply, at short notice, with such a request for voluble conversation, especially when there is no extraordinary sympathy between two people, nor any close community of ideas. But it chanced that Savelli had been reading the papers he had brought with him, and he began to tell Adele the news he had read, so that he managed to keep up a fairly continuous series of sentences until the first lamp was placed on the table. "Thank you, Carissimo," she said. "No shade!" she exclaimed quickly, as the man was about to slip one over the light. "Do you feel better now?" inquired Francesco, with some amusement. "Yes--much better," she answered, drawing a long breath, and seating herself by the table in the full glare of the unshaded lamp. "I only ask one thing," she continued: "Do not leave me if you can help it, and go with me when we go to our room. I am ashamed of it, but I am so nervous that I am positively afraid to be alone." "Would it not be better to have a nurse out, to stay with you all the time?" inquired Francesco, who had an eye to his own liberty and comfort, and had no idea of spending several weeks in perpetual attendance on his wife. "And there is your maid, too. She might help." "I have taken such a dislike to that woman that I hate the sight of her." "I suppose that is a part of your illness," answered her husband philosophically. On that first evening he scrupulously fulfilled her wishes, and followed her closely when she went from room to room. He was in a certain degree anxious, for her allusion to possible madness coincided with his own preconceived opinion of her case, and he dreaded such a termination very greatly. He saw that what she said was quite true, and that she was unaffectedly frightened if he left her side for a moment. On the following day he sent a messenger to the city to procure a nurse, for he saw that he could not otherwise count on an hour's freedom. Being a careful man, he wished that Adele might have been contented to be followed about by her maid and a woman from the place, but she refused altogether to agree to such an arrangement. In her nervous condition, she could not bear the constant presence of a person for whom she felt an unreasoning repulsion. Moreover, she had almost decided to send Lucia away and to get some one more congenial in her place. Several days passed in this way, and if she was no better she was not worse. She drove and walked in the spring sunshine, and felt refreshed by the clear air of the country, but the nights were as unbearable as ever,--endless, ghostly, full of imaginary horrors, although the lamps burned brightly in her room till sunrise, and the patient nurse sat by her bedside reading to herself, and sometimes reading aloud when Adele desired it. Occasionally, and more often towards morning, snatches of broken sleep interrupted the monotony of the long-drawn-out suffering. Adele had implored the doctor who had charge of her case to give her opiates, or at least chloral; but he had felt great hope that the change to a country life would produce an immediate good effect, and had represented to her in terms almost exaggerated the danger of taking such remedies. The habit once formed, he said, soon became a slavery, and in nervous organisations like hers was very hard to break. People who took chloral often ended by taking morphia, and Donna Adele had doubtless heard enough about the consequences of employing this drug to dread it, as all sensible persons did. Adele was very far from being persuaded, but as she could not procure what she wanted without a doctor's order, which she could not obtain, she was obliged to fall back on the sulphonal which Ghisleri had recommended to her. She took it in large quantities, but it had almost ceased to produce any effect, though she attributed the little rest she got to its influence. The doctor was to come out and see her at the end of a week, unless sent for especially. Before the seven days were out, however, a crisis occurred, brought about by a slight accident, which made his presence imperatively necessary. One evening, immediately after dinner, Adele had seated herself in a low chair by the table in the drawing-room, and had taken up a novel. For a wonder, it had interested her when she had begun it in the afternoon, and she returned to it with unwonted delight, looking forward to the prospect of losing herself in the story during a few hours before going to bed. Not far from her Savelli sat with that day's papers, gleaning the news of the day in an idle fashion, and smoking a cigarette. He rarely smoked anything else, but for some reason or other, he had, on this particular night, discovered that only a cigar would satisfy him. Many men are familiar with that craving, but the satisfaction of it rarely leads to distinct and important results. Francesco rose from his seat, laid down his paper, and went in search of what he wanted, well knowing that he could get it much faster than by a servant, and forgetting that he must leave his wife alone for a few minutes in order to go to his dressing-room where he kept the box. As has been said, the drawing-room was carpeted, and his step made very little noise. Adele, intensely interested in what she was reading, paid less attention to his movements than usual, and indeed supposed that he had only risen to get something from another table. The heavily curtained door which opened upon the great vaulted passage before mentioned was behind her as she sat, and she did not realise that Francesco was gone until she heard his echoing footsteps on the stone pavement outside. Then she started, and almost dropped her book. She held her breath for a moment and then called him. But he walked quickly, and was already out of hearing. Only the booming echo reached her through the curtains, reverberated, and died away. There was nothing to be done but to wait, for she had not the courage to face the dim passage alone and run after him. She clutched her book tightly and tried to read again, pronouncing almost aloud the words she saw. A minute or two passed, and then she heard the echo again. Francesco was returning. No, it was not his walk. She turned very pale as she listened. It was the step of a very lame man, irregular and painful. The novel fell to the ground, and she grasped the arms of her chair. It was exactly like Arden's step; she had heard it before, in the gallery at her father's palace, where the floor was of marble. Nearer and nearer it came, in a sort of triple measure--two shorts and a long, like an anapæst--and the sharp click of the stick between. She tried to look behind her, but her blood froze in her veins, and she could not move. Every instant increased her agony of fear. A moment more and Herbert Arden would be upon her. Suddenly a second echo, that of Francesco Savelli's firm, quick step reached her ears. Then she heard voices, and as the curtain was lifted she recognised the tones of old Giacomo, the lame warder, who had met her husband in the passage, and was asking for the orders to be given to the carter who started for Rome every other night and brought back such provisions as could not be obtained in Gerano. Adele sank back in her chair, almost fainting, in her sudden relief from her ghostly fears. Savelli talked some time with Giacomo. With a great effort at self-command, Adele took up her novel again and held it before her eyes, while her heart beat with terrible violence after having almost stood still while the fright had lasted. Then Francesco came in, with a lighted cigar between his teeth. "Do you wish to send anything to Rome--any message?" he asked. "Nothing else, Giacomo," he said, as he saw that she shook her head. "Good rest, Excellency," she heard Giacomo say. Then the curtain dropped, the door was closed from without, and she listened once more to the lame man's retreating footsteps--terribly like Herbert Arden's walk, though she was not frightened now. "I asked you not to leave me alone," she said, as Savelli resumed his seat and took up the paper again. "It was only for a minute," he answered indifferently. "I wanted a cigar. I hope you were not frightened this time." "No. But I might have been. Another time, please ring for what you want." Savelli, who was already deep in the local news about Rome, made an inarticulate reply intended for assent, and nothing more was said. Adele took up her book again and did her best to read, but without understanding a word as she followed the lines. That night, in despair, she swallowed a larger dose of sulphonal than she had ever taken before. The consequence was that towards two o'clock she fell asleep and seemed more quiet than usual, as the nurse watched her. An hour passed without her waking, then another, and then the dawn stole through the panes of the deep windows, and daylight came at last. The room was quite light, and Adele was generally awake at that hour. But this morning she slept on. The nurse was accustomed to take away the lamps as soon as Adele needed them no longer, not extinguishing them in the room on account of the disagreeable smell they made. It chanced on this occasion--or fate had decreed it--that one of these gave signs of going out. The nurse rose very softly and took it away, moving noiselessly in her felt slippers, passing through the open door of the dressing-room in order to reach the corridor in which the lamps were left to be taken and cleaned at a later hour. She set the one she carried upon a deal table which stood there, and tried to put it out, so as to leave no part of the wick still smouldering, lest it should smoke. She was a very careful and methodical woman, and took pains to be neat in doing the smallest things. Just now, too, she was in no hurry, for it was broad daylight, and Adele would not be nervous if she awoke and found herself alone. And Adele was awake. She opened her eyes wearily, realised that there was no one beside her, and sat up staring at the bright window. Being nervous, restless, and never at any time languid, she got up, threw a wrapper over her, and went to the door of the dressing-room, meaning to look at the rising sun, which was visible from the window on the other side, the dressing-room itself being at one of the angles of the castle, with a door leading from the corner of it into the tower. Adele paused on the threshold, started, stared at something, turned, and uttered a piercing scream of terror. A moment later she fell in a heap upon the floor. She had distinctly seen Herbert Arden's figure standing at one of the windows, his head and hands alone concealed by the inner shutter which, by an accident, was not wide open, but was turned about half-way towards the panes. He was dressed in dark blue serge, as she had often seen him in life, with rather wide trousers almost concealing the feet, and a round jacket. She had even seen how the cloth was stretched at the place where his shoulder was most crooked, and how it hung loosely about his thin figure below that point. He was standing close to the window, with his back almost quite turned towards her, apparently looking out, though the shutter hid his face. The whole attitude was precisely as she had often noticed it when he was alive, and chanced to be looking at something in the street--the misshapen, protruding shoulder, the right leg bent in more than the other, not a detail was missing as she came upon the vision suddenly in the cold morning light. The nurse was at her side almost instantly, bending over her and raising her as well as she could. A moment later the maid rushed in,--she slept on the other side of the corridor where the nurse had left the lamp,--and then Francesco Savelli himself, who temporarily occupied a room next to Adele's and who appeared, robed in a wide dressing-gown of dark brown velvet, and showing signs of considerable anxiety. He reached the door before which his wife had fainted and lifted her in his arms. As he regained his upright position, his eyes naturally fell upon the figure standing at the window. His sight was not remarkably good, and from the fact of the shutter being half closed the dressing-room was darker than the sleeping-chamber. The impression he had was strong and distinct. "Who is that man?" he asked, staring at what he saw, while he held Adele's unconscious form in his arms. The nurse and the maid both started and looked round. The latter laughed a little, involuntarily. "It is not a man, Excellency," she said. "It is Donna Adele's serge driving cloak. I hung it there last night because there are not enough hooks in the dressing-room for all her Excellency's things." She went to the window and took the mantle, which had been hung upon the knob of the old-fashioned bolt by the two tapes sewn under the shoulders for the purpose. The folds of the lower part had taken the precise shape of a man's wide trousers, and the cape, falling half way only, hung exactly like a jacket, the fulness caused by gathering the upper portion together at one point, giving the appearance of a hump on a man's back. "That was what frightened her," said Savelli, as he turned away with his burden. "I do not wonder--the thing looked just as Lord Herbert did when he used to stand at the window." Adele came to herself in a state of the utmost prostration. Her husband explained to her carefully what had happened, and tried to persuade her that she had been the victim of an optical illusion, but though she did not deny this, he could see that the occurrence had produced a very deep impression on her mind, and had perhaps had an even more serious effect on her nerves. He despatched a messenger to Rome for the doctor, and after doing all he could left her to the care of her nurse and maid and went out for a walk in the hills, glad to be free for a while from the irksome task imposed upon him when he remained at home. While making the most desperate attempts to control herself, Adele was in a state of the wildest and most conflicting emotion. Her strength returned, indeed, in a certain measure after a few hours, but her distress seemed rather to increase than to diminish, when she was able to walk about the room and submit to being dressed. Her maid irritated her unaccountably, too, and at last, giving way to the impulse she had felt so long, she told her that she must go at the end of the month. The maid, Lucia by name, had for some time expected that her days in Casa Savelli were numbered, for Adele had shown her dislike very plainly of late, so that the woman did not show much surprise, and accepted her dismissal respectfully and quietly, promising herself to tell tales in her next place concerning Adele's toilette which, though without the slightest foundation, would be repeated and believed all over Rome. Later in the day Adele shut herself up in her room, at the time when the sunshine was streaming in and making everything look bright and cheerful. She stayed there a long time, and the thoughtful Lucia, watching her through the keyhole, saw with surprise that her mistress spent almost an hour upon her knees before the dark old crucifix which hung above the prayer-stool opposite to the door of the dressing-room. She noticed that Adele from time to time beat her breast, and then buried her face in her hands for many minutes. The nurse was asleep far away and Lucia was quite safe. At last Adele rose, and as though acting under an irresistible impulse sat down at a table on which she kept her own writing materials, and began to write rapidly. For a long time she kept her seat, and her hand moved quickly over the paper. Then, when she seemed to have finished, she took up the sheets as though she meant to read them over, and did in fact read a few lines. She dropped the paper suddenly, and Lucia saw the look of horror that was in her white face. She seemed to hesitate, rose, turned, and made two steps towards the crucifix, then returned, and hastily folded up the lengthy letter and slipped it into a large envelope, on which she wrote an address before she left the table a second time. When she opened the door of the dressing-room to call Lucia, the maid was quietly seated by a window with a piece of needle-work, and rose respectfully as her mistress entered. "Send me Giacomo," said Adele, holding the letter in her hand, but as Lucia went towards the door, she stopped her. "No," she said suddenly. "Take this to him yourself; tell him to have it registered at once, and to bring me back the receipt from the post-office. Tell him to be careful, as it is very important. I am going to lie down. Come to me some time before sunset." Lucia took the letter and went out into the corridor. Adele listened a moment, then went back into her room, bolting the door behind her, as well as turning the key in the lock. Since her fright in the morning, she instinctively barricaded herself on that side. But at present the sunshine was so bright and the place was so cheerful that her fears seemed almost groundless. She lay down and closed her eyes. In spite of all the emotions of terror she had suffered on the previous evening and to-day, and although the writing of any letter so long as the one she had just finished must necessarily be very tiring, she felt better than she had been for a long time, and would perhaps have fallen asleep if the doctor had not arrived from Rome soon afterwards. On learning all that had happened, he yielded at last to necessity, and gave her chloral to take in small doses, showing her how to use it. It was evident that unless she slept she must break down altogether before long, and it was no longer safe to let nature have her own way. He had brought the medicine with him, and gave it into Francesco's keeping, cautioning him not to let her use it in larger quantities than he had prescribed. After giving various pieces of good advice he returned to the city. Lucia gave her mistress the receipt for the registered letter, and Adele put it away in the small jewel-case she had brought with her to the country. That night she took the chloral, and fell asleep peacefully before half-past eleven o'clock, not to awake until nearly nine on the following morning. She felt so much better for the one night's rest that she went for a long walk with her husband, ate well for the first time in many weeks, and went to bed again almost without having felt a sensation of fear all day nor during the evening. Once more the chloral had the desired effect, and on the second morning she began to imagine that she was recovering. The world looked bright and cheerful, the swallows wheeled and darted before her windows, and the thrushes and blackbirds sang far down among the fruit-trees. Even Francesco was less tiresome and unsympathetic than usual. She was in such a good humour that she almost repented of having dismissed Lucia. Then the blow came. The post brought her a letter addressed in a small, even handwriting, very plain and entirely without flourish or ornament--such a hand as learned men and theologians often write. The contents read as follows: "MOST EXCELLENT PRINCESS, I have to inform you that I have just received, registered, and evidently addressed by your most excellent hand, an envelope bearing the Gerano postmark, but containing only four blank sheets of ordinary writing paper. As I cannot suppose that your Excellency has designed to make me the object of a jest, and as it is to be feared that the blank paper has been substituted for a writing of importance, by some malicious person, I have immediately informed your Excellency of what has occurred. Awaiting any instruction or enlightenment with regard to this subject which it may please you, most Excellent Princess, to communicate, I write myself "Your Excellency's most humble, obedient servant, "BONAVENTURA, R.R. P.P.O. Min." Now Padre Bonaventura of the Minor Order of St. Francis was Adele's confessor in Rome. After the long struggle which Lucia had watched through the door, Adele's conscience had got the upper hand, aided by the belief that in following its dictates she would be doing the best she could towards recovering her peace of mind. Not being willing to go to the parish priest of Gerano, who had known her and all her family from her childhood, and who was by no means a man able to give very wise advice in difficult cases, and being, moreover, afraid of rousing her husband's suspicions if she insisted upon going to Rome merely to confess, she had written out a most careful confession of those sins of which she accused herself, and, as is allowable in extreme cases, had sent it by post to Padre Bonaventura. The news that such a document had never reached its destination would have been enough to disturb most people. CHAPTER XVII. Laura Arden's plans for the summer were not by any means settled, but she was anxious to leave Rome soon, both because travelling in the heat would be bad for little Herbert, and because she wished to quit the rather expensive apartment in which she had continued to live after her husband's death. A far smaller and less pretentious dwelling would be amply sufficient for her next winter, and in the meantime she intended to go to some quiet town either in Switzerland or by the seaside, and to keep as much alone as possible. Her mother might be willing to spend a month or two with her, and Laura would be very glad of her company, but there was no one else whose society she desired. She could, of course, go to England and stay at her brother-in-law's house in solemn and solitary state, but she feared the long journey for her child, and she cared little for the sort of existence she must lead in the magnificent country-seat, in the absence of the Lulworths themselves. It would be pleasant to lead a very simple and quiet life somewhere out of the world, and as far as possible from the scene of all her sufferings. If Adele and Francesco had not appeared while Ghisleri was making his first visit, she would probably have asked his advice. He had been almost everywhere, and being himself fond of solitude, would in all likelihood have told her of some beautiful and secluded spot where she could live in the way she desired. But in the presence of her step-sister she had not cared to speak on the subject. After they had left her she thought a long time of Ghisleri and his story, and, for the first time in her life, she wished she might see him again before long. He had shown her a side of himself which she had neither seen nor guessed at before, and she began to understand, dimly at first and then more clearly, the strong liking her husband had always shown for him. He was capable of deep and earnest beliefs and of high and generous impulses, in spite of his contempt for himself and of the irregular life he led. His present existence, so far as she knew anything of it, she condemned as unworthy. She was not, however, a woman so easily shocked at the spectacle of evil in the lives of others as might have been expected. There was a great deal of sound good sense in the composition of her character, and she had seen enough of the world to have learnt that perfection is a word used to define what is a little better than the average. What she had disliked in Ghisleri from her first acquaintance with him was not connected with his reputation, of which, at that time, she had known very little. Besides, though people called him fast and wild and more or less heartless, he was liked, on the whole, as much as any unmarried man in society. He was known to be honourable, courageous, and very discreet, and the latter quality almost invariably brings its reward in the end. That he should have been entangled in more than one love affair was only what was to be expected of such a man, at two or three and thirty years of age, and no one really considered him any the worse on that account, while the great majority of women thought him vastly more interesting for that very reason. Laura was not, perhaps, so entirely different from the rest of her sex as Ghisleri was fond of believing. Her education had not been that of young Roman girls, it is true, and the singular circumstances of her short married life had not developed her character in the same direction as theirs generally was by matrimony. But in real womanliness she was as much a woman as any of them, liable to the same influences and to the same class of enthusiasms. Because she had loved and married Herbert Arden, it did not follow that she could not and did not admire all that was brave and generous and strong, independently of moral weakness and faults. Arden himself, indeed, though he had excited her pity by his physical defects, had commanded her respect by the manly courage he showed under all his sufferings. She had been able to forget his deformity in the superior gifts of intelligence and heart which had unquestionably been his, and, after all, she had loved him most because she had felt that but for an accident he would have been pre-eminently a manly man. Cripple as he was, she had always known that she could rely on him, and her instinct had always told her that he could protect her. But she had never trusted Ghisleri. He had the misfortune to show his worst side to most people, and he had shown it to her. She had seen more than once that he was ready to undertake and carry out almost anything for his friend's sake, and she had been honestly grateful to him for all he had done. But she had not been able, until now, to shake off that feeling of distrust and timid dislike she had always felt in his presence. She had, indeed, succeeded tolerably well in hiding it from him, but it had always made her cold in conversation and somewhat formal in manner, and he, being outwardly a rather formal and cold man had, so to say, put himself in harmony with her key. For the first time in their acquaintance, and under pressure of what he considered necessity, he had suddenly unbent, and had told her the principal story of his life with a frankness and simplicity that had charmed her. From that hour she judged him differently. After that first visit, he went often to see her, and on each occasion he felt drawn more closely to her than before. "You are very much changed," he said to her one day. "Do you mind my saying it?" "Not in the least," Laura answered, with a smile. "But in what way am I different?" "In one great thing, I think. You used to be very imposingly calm with me. You never seemed quite willing to speak freely about anything. Now, it is almost always you who make me talk by making me feel that you will talk yourself. That is not very clearly put, is it? I do not know whether you ever disliked me--if you did, you never showed it. But I really begin to think that you almost like me. Is there any truth in that?" "Yes--a great deal." She smiled again. "More truth than you guess--for I do not mind saying it since it is all over. I did not like you, and I used to try and hide it. But I like you now, and I am quite willing that you should know it." "That is good of you--good as everything you do is. But I would really like to know why you have changed your mind. May I?" "Because I have found out that you are not what I took you for." "Most discoveries of that kind are disappointments," observed Ghisleri, with a dry laugh. "That is just the sort of remark I used to dislike you for," said Laura. "The world is not all bad, and you know it. Yet out of ten observations you make, nine, at least, would lead one to believe that you think it is." "Excepting yourself, we are all as bad as we can be. What is the use of denying it?" "We are not all bad, and I do not choose to be made an exception of. I am just like other people, or I should be if I were placed as they are. I not only am sure that you are not a bad man, but I am quite convinced that in some ways you are a very good one." "What an odd mistake!" "Why do you persistently try to make yourself out worse than you are, and to show your worst side to the world?" "I suppose that is the side most apparent to myself," answered Ghisleri. "I cannot help seeing it." "Because you are not Launcelot, you take yourself for Cæsar Borgia--" "That would be flattering myself too much. Borgia was by far the more intelligent of the two. Say Thersites." "I know nothing about Thersites." "Then say Judas. There seems to be very little difference of opinion as to that personage's moral obliquity," Ghisleri laughed. "Very well," said Laura, gravely. "I suppose you have no doubt, then, that Judas would have acted as you did in your affair with Don Gianforte. He would, of course, have submitted to insult rather than break a promise, and would have allowed--" "Will you please stop, Lady Herbert?" Ghisleri fixed his blue eyes on her. "No, I will not," answered Laura, with decision. "What I like about you is precisely what you try the most to hide, and I mean to see it and to make you see it, if possible. You would be much happier if you could. I suppose that if the majority of people could hear us talking now, they would think our conversation utterly absurd. They would say that you were posing, in order to make yourself interesting, and that I was enough attracted by you to be deceived by the comedy. Is not that the way the world would look at it?" "Probably," assented Ghisleri. "Perhaps I am really posing. I do not pretend to know." "I am willing to believe that you are not, if you will let me, and I would much rather. In the first place, you are, at all events, not any worse than most men one knows. That is evident enough from your actions. Secondly,--you see I am arguing the case like a lawyer,--if you had not a high ideal of what you wish to be, you would not have such a poor opinion of what you are. Is that clear?" "If there were no right, there could not possibly be any wrong. But black would be black, even if you could only compare it with blue, green, and yellow, instead of with white." "I am not talking of chromolithographs," said Laura. "What I say is simple enough. If you did not wish to be good, and know what good means, and if you had not a certain amount of goodness in you, you would not think yourself so bad. And you are unhappy, as you have told me before now, because you think all your motives are insincere, or vain, or defective in some way. I suppose you wish to be happy, and if you do, you must learn to find some satisfaction in having done your best. I have said precisely what I mean, and you must not pretend to misunderstand me." "Think yourself good, and you will be happy," observed Ghisleri. "That is the modern form of the proverb." "Of course it is, and the better reason you really have for thinking yourself good, the more real and lasting your happiness will be." Ghisleri laughed to himself, and at himself, as he went away, for being so much impressed as he was by what Laura said. But he could not deny that the impression had been made and remained for some time after he had left her. There was a healthy common-sense about her mind which was beginning to act upon the tortuous and often morbid complications of his own. She seemed to know the straight paths and the short cuts to simple goodness, and never to have guessed at the labyrinthine ways by which he seemed to himself to be always trying to escape from the bugbear sent to pursue him by the demon of self-mistrust. He laughed at himself, for he realised how utterly impossible it would always be for him to think as she did, or to look upon the world as she saw it. There had been a time when he had thought more plainly, when a woman had exerted a strong influence over him, and when a few good things and a few bad ones had made up the sum of his life. But she was dead, and he had changed. Worse than that, he had fallen. As he sat in his room and glanced from time to time at the only likeness he had of Bianca Corleone, he thought of Beatrice's reproach to Dante in the thirty-first canto of the "Purgatory": "And yet, because thou'rt shamed of me in all Thy sin, and that in later days to come Thou mayst be brave, hearing the Siren's voice Sow deep the seed of tears and hear me speak. So shalt thou know how thou should'st have been moved By my dead body in ways opposite. Nor art nor nature had the power to tempt thee With such delight as that fair body could In which I lived--which now is scattered earth-- And if the highest joy was lost to thee By my young death, what mortal living thing Should have had strength to drag thee down with it?" As he repeated the last words he started for they reminded him with painful force of Gianforte Campodonico's insulting speech, and he detested himself for even allowing the thought to cross his mind--for allowing himself to repeat Beatrice's words up to that point. It was he who had dragged down Maddalena dell' Armi to his level, not she who had made him sink to hers. And yet Campodonico had said almost the same thing as Beatrice, and certainly without knowing it. In his heart he knew that Bianca might have reproached him so, but then, deeper still, he knew that the reproach, from her lips, would have fallen on himself alone, and would never have been meant for Maddalena. Ghisleri fell to thinking over his own life and the lives of others, in one of those black moods which sometimes seized him and in which he believed in no one's motives, from his own upward. In the course of his lonely and bitter meditations, he came across an idea which at first seemed wild and improbable enough, but which, little by little, took shape as he concentrated his attention upon it, and at last chased every other memory away. He was not naturally an over-suspicious man, but when his suspicions were once roused he was apt to go far in pursuit of the truth, if the matter interested him. He rose and got a book from the shelves which lined one side of the wall, and began to turn over the pages rapidly, until he stopped at the place he was looking for. He read three or four pages very carefully twice over and returned the volume to its place. Then he sat down to think, and did not move for another quarter of an hour. At the end of that time he called his servant, a quiet, hard-working fellow from the Abbruzzi, who rejoiced in the name of Bonifazio. "Do you happen to know," he asked, "if there was much scarlet fever in the city last winter? I have always wondered how poor Lord Herbert caught it." Bonifazio had known Lord Herbert for years, just as Donald had known Ghisleri, for the two friends had often made short journeys together, taking their servants with them. The Italian thought a long time before he gave an answer. "No, Signore. I do not remember hearing that there were many cases. But then, I am not in the way of knowing. It may have been." "You are a very discreet man, Bonifazio," said Ghisleri. "Lord Herbert fell ill on the day after he had dined in Casa Savelli. Do you think you could find out for me whether any one of the servants had the scarlet fever at that time?" "Perhaps, signore. I will try. I know Giuseppe, the butler, who is a very good person, but who is not fond of talking. When there is such an illness they either send the servants to the hospital, in the Roman houses, or else they put them in an attic and try not to let any one know. For the rest, I will do what I can. You say well, Signore, for it is possible that the blessed soul of the Milord caught the fever at the dinner in Casa Savelli." "That is what I think," said Ghisleri. And he thought a good deal more also, which he did not communicate to his man. Bonifazio, as his master said, was discreet. He was also very patient and very uncommunicative, as the men of the Abbruzzi often are. They make the best servants when they can be got, for, in addition to the good qualities most of them possess in a greater or less degree, they are almost always physically very strong men, though rarely above middle height, and often extremely pale. Ghisleri knew that so soon as Bonifazio had anything to tell, he would tell it without further question or reminder. Several days passed, during which Ghisleri, who gained strength rapidly, began to resume his former mode of life, went to the club, saw his friends, and made a few visits. He went more than once to Maddalena's house and stayed some time with her when he found her alone. Little by little he fancied that her look was changing and growing more indifferent. He was glad of it. He wished that he might be to her exactly what she was to him. That, indeed, could never be, but he wished it were possible. He knew that when she ceased to love him altogether, she could never feel friendly devotion, gratitude, or respect for him, and he felt all three for her in a far greater degree than she could imagine. On the whole, during that time their relations were peaceable, and altogether undisturbed by the frequent differences that had so often nearly estranged them from one another in earlier days. There was, of course, an air of constraint about their meetings, more evident in Maddalena's manner than in Ghisleri's, and the latter hardly hoped that this could ever quite wear off and leave at last a sincere and true friendship behind it. That was, indeed, the best that could be hoped for either of them, and he had no right to expect the best, nor anything approaching to it. One evening as he was dressing for dinner, Bonifazio gave him the news he desired. It had not been easy to extract any communication on the subject from old Giuseppe, the Savelli's butler, but such as he had at last given was clear, concise, and to the point. There had been a case of scarlet fever in the house. Donna Adele's maid had taken it, and was just convalescent at the time when the Ardens dined with Adele and her husband. The woman's name was Lucia, and on falling ill she had been at once removed to a distant room in the upper part of the palace. The case had been rather a severe one, Giuseppe believed, and it was only within the last few weeks that Lucia seemed to have regained her strength. She was at present at Gerano with her mistress, but had written to the wife of the Savelli's porter saying that she had been dismissed, and was to leave at the end of the month, and asking for assistance in finding a new place. Ghisleri was satisfied for the present. It was quite clear that Arden must have caught the fever that killed him so suddenly in Casa Savelli. Whether Donna Adele had in any way communicated the contagion was another matter, and not easily decided. Her inexplicable nervousness, beginning about the time that Arden died, might be accounted for on the ground that she was aware of having been the unintentional cause of his illness, and felt that by a little precaution she might have averted the catastrophe. The idea was constantly present in Ghisleri's mind, but it lacked detail and clearness, and constituted at most a rather strong suspicion. Of course it was quite possible, and, considering Adele's character, more than likely, that she had never been near the maid during her illness. If she had never had the scarlet fever herself, it was quite certain. But that was a point easily settled, and was a very important one. On the following day, Ghisleri called at the Palazzo Braccio. The Princess received him, as she always did, without any signs of satisfaction, but without marked coldness. To her he was always "that wild Ghisleri," and she thoroughly disapproved of him, wishing that he would not visit her daughter so often. He was quite aware of the feeling she entertained towards him, and was always especially careful in his conversation with her. In spite of her long residence in Rome, as a Roman, and among Romans, she had remained altogether English in nature. Laura, English on both sides by her birth, had far less of prejudice than her mother, and was altogether more of a cosmopolitan in every way. On the present occasion, Ghisleri led the conversation so as to speak of her. He began by asking the Princess where she herself meant to spend the summer, and whether she intended to be with her daughter. "I hope to be with her a great part of the time," she answered. "I do not like to think of her as travelling about the world alone. Indeed, I do not at all approve of her living without a companion, as she insists upon doing. She is far too young, and people are far too ready to talk about her." "She has such wonderful dignity," answered Ghisleri, "that she could do with impunity what most women could not do at all. Besides, her mourning protects her for the present, and her child. She is looking wonderfully well--do you not think so?" "Yes. When one thinks of all she has suffered, it is amazing. But she was always strong." "I should suppose so. Any one else would have caught the scarlet fever." "As for that," said the Princess, unsuspiciously, "people rarely have it twice." "She has had it, then." "Oh, yes. Both the girls had it at the same time, when they were little things. Let me see--Laura must have been six years old then. They had it rather badly, and I remember being terribly anxious about them." "I see," answered Ghisleri, carelessly. "That accounts for it. But to go back to what we were speaking of, I wonder that Lady Herbert does not spend the summer with you at Gerano, if you go there as usual." "I do not think she will consent to that," said the Princess, rather coldly. "She says she prefers the north for the baby. It is quite true that it is often very hot at Gerano." "Donna Adele was good enough to ask me to go out and spend a day or two while she is there. It must be very pleasant just now, in the spring weather." "Why do you not go?" asked the Princess, with more warmth, for she preferred that Ghisleri should be where he could not see Laura every day, as she believed he now did. "You would be doing them both a kindness. Poor Adele was obliged to go to the country against her will--she is in such a terribly nervous state. I really do not know what to make of it." "What news have you of her?" inquired Ghisleri, in a tone of polite solicitude. "Is she at all better?" "She was better after the first few days. Then it appears that she had a fright--I do not quite understand how it was from what Francesco wrote to my husband--but it seems to have been one of those odd accidents--optical illusions, I suppose--which sometimes terrify people." "How very unfortunate! What did she fancy she saw?" "It was absurd, of course!" answered the Princess, who had no special reason for being reticent on the subject. "It seems that there was a blue cloak of hers hanging somewhere in her dressing-room,--at a window, I believe,--and she went in suddenly very early in the morning before it was quite broad daylight, and took the cloak for a man. In fact she thought it was poor dear Arden. You know he always used to wear blue serge clothes. Francesco saw it himself afterwards and says that it was extraordinarily like. But I cannot understand how any one in their senses could be deceived in that way. Adele is dreadfully overwrought and imaginative. She has danced too much this winter, I suppose." When Ghisleri went away he was almost quite persuaded that Adele was conscious of having communicated the fever to Arden. Of course, it might all be mere coincidence, but to him the evidence seemed strong. He wrote a note to Adele, asking whether he might avail himself of her invitation, and spend a day at Gerano. Her answer came by return of post, begging him to come at once, and to stay as long as possible. The handwriting was so illegible that he had some difficulty in reading it. To judge from that, at least, Adele was no better. Before leaving Rome, he thought it best to inform Laura of his intended visit. He had never spoken of her step-sister in a way to make her suppose that he disliked her, but Laura knew very well what part he had played at the time when Adele was spreading slanderous reports, for her mother had repeated the story precisely as the Prince had told it to her. Ghisleri, of course, was not aware of this, for Arden had not mentioned the matter to him, unless his reference to the enemies he and Laura had in Rome, during the last conversation he had with his friend, could be taken as implying that Ghisleri knew as much as he himself. But in any case, he was sure that Laura would be surprised at his going to Gerano, even for a day, and it was better to warn her beforehand, and if possible give her some reasonable explanation of his conduct. He chose to refer his visit at once to motives of curiosity, together with a natural desire to breathe the purer air of the country, now that he was able to make the short journey without fatigue or danger. "I have never been to Gerano," he added. "It is said to be a wonderful place--one of the finest mediæval castles in this part of the world. I really wish to see it--they say the air is good--and since Donna Adele is so kind as to ask me, I shall go." "You would see it better if you went when my mother and step-father are there. He would show you everything and give you all sorts of historical details which Adele has forgotten and which Francesco never knew." "No doubt, but there is one objection," answered Ghisleri. "They have never asked me. I am not a favourite with the Princess. I am sure you know that." "She thinks you are very wild," said Laura, with a smile. "She disapproves of you on moral grounds--not at all in the way I used to--and still do, sometimes," she added, incautiously. "Still?" "Oh, it is very foolish! Do not talk about it. When are you going out?" Laura had undeniably felt a sudden return of her old distrust in him, when she had heard of the visit. It was natural enough that she should, considering what she knew. She suspected some new and tortuous development of his character, and would have instinctively drawn back from the intimacy she felt was growing up between him and herself, had she not by experience found out that she might be quite wrong about him after all. She tried, at the present juncture, to shake off the sensation which was now far more distasteful to her than it had formerly been, in proportion as she had fancied that she understood him better. But she could not altogether succeed. It was too strange, in her opinion, that he should willingly be Adele's guest, and put himself under even a slight obligation to her. It showed, she thought, how individual views could differ in regard to friendship. She was even rather surprised to find that she was asking herself whether, if Gianforte and Christina Campodonico possessed a habitable castle and invited her to stop with them, she would accept, considering that Gianforte had almost killed her husband's best friend. She unhesitatingly decided that she would not, and resented Ghisleri's willingness to receive hospitality from one who, as he well knew, had foully slandered both Arden and herself. Her doubts were certainly justifiable to a certain extent. But there was no immediate probability that they would be cleared away for the present. Ghisleri understood her perfectly, and wondered whether he were not risking too much in endangering a friendship so precious to him for the sake of following out a suspicion which might, in the end, prove to have been altogether without foundation. On the other hand, his natural obstinacy of purpose when once called into play was such as not to leave the smallest hesitation in his mind between doing what he had determined to do, or not doing it, when he had once made up his mind, irrespective of consequences. Having lost sight of the virtue of constancy, he clung to a vicious obstinacy as a substitute. CHAPTER XVIII. When Adele had read Padre Bonaventura's letter twice over and had realised its meaning, she behaved like a person stunned by an actual blow. She sank into the nearest chair, utterly overcome. She had barely the presence of mind to tear up the sheet of paper into minute shreds, which she gathered all in one hand, until she could find strength to scatter them out of the window. The position was a terrible one indeed, and for a long time she was unable to think connectedly about it, or of anything else. But for the two nights of sound sleep she had got by taking the chloral, she must inevitably have broken down. As it was, her strong constitution had asserted itself so soon as she had been able to rest, and she was better able to meet this new and real trouble than she had been to face the imaginary horror of Herbert Arden's presence in her dressing-room. But even so, half an hour elapsed before she was able to rise from her seat. She tossed the scraps of paper out of the window and watched them as the wind chased them in all directions, upwards and downwards, upon the castle wall. Then, all at once, she began to think, and her brain seemed to act with an accuracy and directness it had never had before. Either the letter had been opened in the house or at the post-office. It could not have been opened in Rome, or at least, the probabilities were enormously against such an hypothesis. It was scarcely more like that the man at the Gerano post-office should have ventured to tamper with a sealed envelope coming from the castle, and for which he had given a receipt before taking charge of it. He could not have the smallest interest in reading Donna Adele's correspondence, and he had everything to lose if he were caught. He would certainly not have supposed that she or her husband, having but lately left the city, were sending back a sum of money in notes large enough to make it worth his while to incur such a risk. In other words, the theft had been committed in the house, and no one but Lucia could have been the thief. Lucia had been summarily dismissed; Lucia was the only servant in the establishment who had serious cause for discontent; Lucia had guessed from the address that the letter contained something at least of the nature of a confession, and had resolved to hold her mistress in her power. Moreover, it was possible--barely possible--that Lucia knew something else. In any case, she had read every word Adele had written with her own hand, and Adele knew very well why the woman had not returned the sheets to the envelope after mastering their contents. She was utterly, hopelessly, and entirely in Lucia's power. The maid would go from her to a new situation, and wherever she might be would always be able to control Donna Adele's life by merely threatening to betray what she knew to the person or persons concerned. Adele felt that her courage was almost failing her in this extremity, at a time when she needed more than she had ever possessed. And yet it was necessary to act promptly, for the maid might even now be engaging herself with some one else. Come what might, she must never leave Casa Savelli, if it cost Adele all the money she could beg of her husband or borrow of her father to keep the woman with her. First of all, however, she must regain some sort of composure, lest Lucia should suspect that the post had brought her news of the loss of the document. She looked at herself in the glass and scrutinised every feature attentively. She was very pale, but otherwise was looking better than two days earlier. Any kind of stimulant, as she knew, sent the blood to her face in a few minutes, and she saw that what she needed was a little colour. A teaspoonful of Benedictine cordial, of which she had a small flask in her dressing-case, was enough to produce the desired effect. The doctor had formerly recommended her to take it before going to sleep, but she did not like such things, and the flask was almost full. She saw in the mirror that the result was perfectly satisfactory, and when she at last met her husband he remarked that her appearance was very much improved. "I feel so much better!" she exclaimed, knowing that she was speaking the first words of a comedy which would in all probability have to be played during the rest of her life. "I always said that if they would only give me something to make me sleep I should get well at once." She walked again on that day, and by an almost superhuman effort kept up appearances until bedtime, even succeeding in eating a moderately abundant dinner. That night she told Lucia that, on the whole, she would prefer to keep her, that she had always been more than satisfied with her services, and that if she had suddenly felt an aversion to her, it was the result of the extreme nervousness she had suffered of late. Now that she could sleep, she realised how unkind she had been. Lucia humbly thanked her, and said that she hoped to live and die in the service of the most excellent Casa Savelli. Thereupon Adele thanked her too, said very sweetly that she was a good girl and would some day be rewarded by finding a good husband, and ended by giving her five francs. She reflected that to give her more might look like the beginning of a course of bribery, and that to give nothing might be construed as proceeding from the fear of seeming to bribe. The second day could not be harder than the first, she said to herself, as she swallowed her chloral and laid her head upon the pillow, to be read to sleep by the nurse. She slept, indeed, that night, but not so well as before, and she awoke twice, each time with a start, and with the impression that Lucia was reciting the contents of the lost letter to Laura Arden and a whole roomful of the latter's friends. Under the circumstances, she behaved with a courage and determination admirable in themselves. Few women could have borne the constant strain upon the faculties at all, still fewer after such illness as she had suffered. But she was really very strong, though everything which affected her feelings and thoughts reacted upon her physical nature as such things never can in less nervously organised constitutions. She bore the excruciating anxiety about the lost confession better than the shadowy fear of the supernatural which still haunted her in the hours of the night. On the third day she begged her husband to increase the dose of chloral by a very small quantity, saying that if only she could sleep well for a whole week she would then be so much better as to be able to give it up altogether. Savelli hesitated, and at last consented. Since she had seemed so much more quiet he dreaded a return of her former state, for he was a man who loved his ease and hated everything which disturbed it. The doctor had particularly cautioned him to keep the chloral put away in a safe place, warning Francesco that the majority of persons who took it soon began to feel a craving for it in larger quantities, which must be checked to avoid the risk of considerable damage to the health in the event of its becoming a habit. It was, after all, only a palliative, he said, and could never be expected to work a cure on the nerves except as an indirect means to a good result. Francesco kept the bottle in his dressing-bag, which remained in his own room and was fitted with a patent lock. He yielded to Adele's request on the first occasion, and she went with him as he took the glass back to strengthen the dose. "Why do you keep it locked up?" she said. "Do you suppose I would go and take it without consulting you?" "The doctor told me to be careful of it," he answered. "The servants might try a dose of it out of curiosity." He took what he considered necessary and locked the bag again, returning the key to his pocket. Two or three days passed in this way. Adele began to feel that she longed for the night and the soothing influence of the chloral, as she had formerly longed for daylight to end the misery of the dark hours. The days were now made almost intolerable for her by the certainty that her maid knew her secret, and by the necessity for treating the woman with consideration. Yet she could do nothing, and she knew that she never could do anything to lessen her own anxiety, as long as she lived. She was much alone, too, during the day. She walked or drove with her husband during two or three hours in the afternoon, but the rest of the time hung idly on her hands. It is true that his society was not very congenial, and under ordinary conditions she would rather have been left alone than have been obliged to talk with him. At present, however, she thought less when she was with him, and that was a gain not to be despised. She had quite forgotten that she had asked Ghisleri to come out and spend a day or two, when his note came, reminding her of the invitation, and asking if he still might accept it. Francesco liked him, as most men did, and was glad that any one should appear to vary the monotony of the dull country life with a little city talk. He bade her write to Pietro to come and stay as long as he pleased, if she herself cared to have him. She concealed her satisfaction well enough to make Francesco suppose that she wished the guest to come for his sake rather than her own. Ghisleri started early, taking his servant with him, and reached Gerano in time for the midday breakfast. Francesco Savelli received him with considerable enthusiasm, and Adele's habitually rather forced smile became more natural. Both felt in different ways that the presence of a third person was a relief, and would have been delighted to receive a far less agreeable man than their present guest. They overwhelmed him with questions about Rome and their friends. "Of course you have seen everybody and heard everything, now that you are so much better," said Adele, as they sat down to breakfast in the vaulted dining-room. "You must tell us everything you know. We are buried alive out here, and only know a little of what happens through the papers. How are they all? Have you seen Laura again, and how is the baby? My step-mother writes that she is going to spend the summer with them in some place or places unknown. I never thought of her as a grandmother when my own children were born--of course she is not my mother, but it used to seem just the same. What is Bompierre doing? And Maria Boccapaduli? I am dying to hear all about it." Ghisleri laughed at the multitude of questions which followed each other almost without a breathing-space between them. "Donna Maria would have sent you her love if she had known that I was coming to Gerano," he answered. "As for Bompierre, he is an inscrutable mixture of devotion and fickleness. He attaches himself to the new without detaching himself from the old. He worships both the earthly and the Olympian Venus. He is a good fellow, little Bompierre, and I like him, but it is impossible for any man to adore women at the rate of six at a time. I begin to think that he must be a very deep character." "That is the last thing I should say of him," observed Savelli, who was deficient in the sense of humour. "How literal you are, Francesco," laughed his wife. "And yourself, Ghisleri--tell us about yourself. Are you quite well again? You still look dreadfully thin, but you look better than when I saw you last. What does your doctor say?" "He says that if I do not happen to catch cold, or have a choking fit, or a cough, or any of fifty things he names, and if I do not chance to get shot in the same place again, in the course of a year or two I may be as good a man as ever. It appears that I have a good constitution. I always supposed so, because I never had anything the matter with me, so far as I knew." "No one will ever forgive Gianforte!" exclaimed Adele. "If you had died, he would have had to go away for ever. Everybody says he was utterly in the wrong." "The matter is settled," said Ghisleri, "and I do not think either of us need have anything to say about the other's conduct in the affair. I suppose you have heard that the ministry has fallen," he continued, turning to Savelli. "Yesterday afternoon--the old story, of course--finance." "For Heaven's sake do not begin to talk politics at this hour," protested Adele. "To-night, when I am asleep, you can smoke all the cigars in the house, and reconstitute a dozen ministries if you like. I want to hear all about my friends. You have not told me half enough yet." "Where shall I begin? Ah, by the bye, there is an engagement, I hear. I have not left cards because it is not official. Pietrasanta and Donna Guendalina Frangipani--rather an odd match, is it not?" "Pietrasanta!" exclaimed Adele. "Who would have thought that! And Guendalina, of all people! But they will starve, my dear Ghisleri; they will positively not have twenty thousand francs a year between them." "No," said Savelli, "you are quite right, my dear--twelve--seventeen--eighteen thousand five hundred, almost exactly." Savelli was intimately acquainted with the affairs of his friends, and both parties were related to him in the present case. He prided himself upon his extreme exactness about all questions of money. So they talked and gossiped throughout the meal. Ghisleri knew just what sort of news most amused his hostess, and as usual he succeeded in telling her the truth about things and people without saying anything spiteful of any one. He had resolved, too, that he would make himself especially agreeable to the couple in their voluntary exile. He had come with a set purpose, and he meant to execute it if possible. As he was evidently not yet strong, Savelli proposed that they should drive instead of walking. Ghisleri acceded readily, though he would have preferred to stay at home after having travelled nearly thirty miles in a jolting carriage during the morning. The sensation of physical fatigue which he constantly experienced since he had been wounded was new to him and not at all pleasant. Nothing of any importance occurred during the afternoon. The conversation continued in much the same way as it had begun at breakfast, interspersed with remarks about agriculture and the probabilities of crops. Savelli understood the financial side of farming better than Ghisleri, but the latter had a much more practical acquaintance with the capabilities of different sorts of land. After they had returned to the castle, Francesco left Ghisleri with his wife in the drawing-room, and went off to his own quarters to talk with the steward of the estate. Tea was brought, but Pietro noticed that Adele did not take any. "I suppose you are afraid that it would keep you awake at night," he remarked. "How is your insomnia? Do you sleep at all?" "I am getting quite well again," Adele answered. "You know I always told you that I needed something really strong to make me sleep. The doctor has given me chloral, and I never wake up before eight or nine o'clock. It is a wonderful medicine." "Insomnia is one of the most unaccountable things," said Ghisleri, in a meditative tone. "I knew a man in Constantinople who told me that at one time he never slept at all. For three months he literally could not lose consciousness for a moment. I believe he suffered horribly. But then, he had something on his mind at the time which accounted for it to a certain extent." "I suppose he had lost money or something of that kind," conjectured Adele, stirring two lumps of sugar in a glass of water. "No, it was much worse than that. He had accidentally killed his most intimate friend on a shooting expedition in the Belgrad forest." Ghisleri heard the spoon rattle sharply against the glass, as Adele's hand shook, and he saw that she bent down her head quickly, pretending to watch the lumps of sugar as they slowly dissolved. "How terrible!" she exclaimed, in a low voice. "Yes," answered Ghisleri, in the same indifferent tone. "But if you will believe it, he had the courage to refuse chloral, or any sort of sleeping-draught, though he often sat up reading all night. He had been told, you see, that the habit of such things was much more dangerous than insomnia itself, and he was ultimately cured by taking a great deal of exercise. He had an extraordinary force of will. I believe he has never felt any bad effect from what he endured. You know one can get used to anything. Look at the people who starve in public for forty days and do not die." "We shall see Pietrasanta and his wife doing that for the next forty years," said Adele, with a tolerably natural laugh. "They ought to go into training as soon as possible if they mean to be happy. They say nothing spoils the temper like hunger. Were you ever near being starved to death on any of your travels, Ghisleri?" "No; I never got further than being obliged to live on nothing but beans and bad water for nine days. That was quite far enough, though. I got thin, and I have never eaten beans since." "I do not wonder. Fancy eating beans for nearly a fortnight. I should have died. And where was it? Were you imprisoned for a spy in South America? One never knows what may or may not have happened to you--you are such an unaccountable man!" "That never happened to me. It was at sea. I took it into my head to go to Sardinia in a small vessel that was sailing from Amalfi with a cargo of beans to bring back Sardinian wine. We were becalmed, and got short of provisions, so that we fell back on the beans. They kept us alive, but I would rather not try it again." "What endless adventures you have had! How tame this society life of ours must seem to you after what you have been accustomed to! How can you endure it?" "It is never very hard to put up with what one likes," answered Ghisleri, "nor even to endure what one dislikes for the sake of somebody to whom one is attached." "If any one else said that, it would sound like a platitude. But with you, it is quite different. One feels that you mean all you say." Adele was evidently determined to be complimentary, and even more than complimentary, to-day. She was never cold or at all unfriendly with Ghisleri, whom she liked and admired, and whom she always hoped to see ultimately established as a permanent member of her own immediate circle, but he did not remember that she had ever talked exactly as she was talking now, and he attributed her manner to her nervousness. He laughed carelessly at her last remark. "I am not used to such good treatment," he said, "though I never can understand why people take the trouble to doubt one's word. It is so much easier to believe everything--so much less trouble." "I should not have thought that you were a very credulous person," answered Adele. "You have had too much experience for that." "Experience does not always mean disillusionment. One may find out that there are honest people as well as dishonest in the world." If Laura Arden had been present she would have been more than ever inclined to distrust Ghisleri just then. She would have wondered what possessed him to make him say things so very different from those he generally said to her. As a matter of fact, he wished Adele to trust him, for especial reasons, and he knew her well enough to judge how his speeches would affect her. She had betrayed herself to him a few minutes earlier and he desired to efface the impression in her mind before leading her into another trap. "Do you think the world is such a very good place?" she asked. "Have you found it so?" "It is often very unjustly abused by those who live in it--as they are themselves by their friends. Belief on the one side must mean disbelief on the other." This time Adele gave no sign of being touched by the thrust. She was too much accustomed to whatever sensations she experienced when accidental or intentional reference was made to her astonishing talent for gossip. "As for that," she said quite naturally, "every one talks about every one else, and some things are true just as some are not. If we did not talk of people how should we make conversation? It would be quite impossible, I am sure!" "Oh, of course. But if there is to be that sort of conversation, it can always take the form of a discussion, and one can put oneself on the right side from the beginning just as easily as not. It saves so much trouble afterwards. The person who is always on the wrong side is generally the one about whom the others are talking. If we could hear a tenth of what is said about ourselves I fancy we should be very uncomfortable." "Yes, indeed. Even our servants--think how they must abuse us!" "No doubt. But they have a practical advantage over us in that way. When they really know anything particularly scandalous about us they can convert it into ready money." Ghisleri had not the least intention of conveying any hidden meaning by his words, for he was of course completely ignorant of the occurrence which had disturbed Adele's whole life more than any other hitherto. But he noticed that she again bent over her glass and looked into it, though the sugar was by this time quite dissolved. Her hand shook a little as she moved the spoon about in the sweetened water. Then she drank a little, and drew a long breath. "That is always a most disagreeable position," she said boldly. "We were talking about it the other day. I wish you had been there. Gouache was telling a foreigner--Prince Durakoff, I think it was--the old story of how Prince Montevarchi was murdered by his own librarian because he would not pay the man a sum of money in the way of blackmail. You know it, of course. The two families, the Montevarchi and the Saracinesca, kept it very quiet and no one ever knew all the details. Some people say that San Giacinto killed the librarian, and some say that the librarian killed himself. That is no matter. What would you have done? That is the question. Would you have paid the money in the hope of silencing the man? Or would you have refused as the old Prince did? Gouache said that it was always a mistake to yield, and that Montevarchi did quite right." Ghisleri considered the matter a few moments before he gave an answer. He was almost sure by this time that she actually found herself in some such position as she described, and that she really needed advice. It was characteristic of the man who had been trying to make her betray herself and had succeeded beyond his expectation, that he was unwilling to give her such counsel as might lead to her own destruction. In his complicated code, that would have savoured of treachery. He suddenly withdrew into himself as it were, and tried to look at the matter objectively, as an outsider. "It is a most difficult question to answer," he said at last. "I have often heard it discussed. If you care for my own personal opinion, I will give it to you. It seems to me that in such cases one should be guided by circumstances as they arise, but that one can follow very safely a sort of general rule. If the blackmailer, as I call the person in possession of the secret, has any positive proof, such as a written document, or any other object of the kind, without which he or she could not prove the accusation, and if the accusation is really of a serious nature, then I think it would be wiser to buy the thing, whatever it is, at any price, and destroy it at once. But if, as in most of such affairs, the secret is merely one of words which the blackmailers may speak or not at will, and at any time, I believe it is a mistake to bribe him or her, because the demand for hush-money can be renewed indefinitely so long as the person concerned lives, or has any money left with which to pay." Adele had listened with the greatest attention throughout, and the direct good sense of his answer disarmed any suspicion she might have entertained in regard to the remark which had led to her asking his advice. She reasoned naturally enough that if he knew anything of her position, and had come to Gerano to gather information, he would have suggested some course of action which would throw the advantage into his own hands. But she did not know the man. Moreover, in her extreme fear of discovery, she had for a moment been willing to admit that he might know far more than was in any way possible, if he knew anything at all; whereas in truth he was but making the most vague guesses at the actual facts. It was startling to realise how nearly she had taken him for an enemy, after inviting him as a friend, and in perfectly good faith, but as she thought over the conversation she saw how naturally the remarks which had frightened her had presented themselves. There was her own insomnia--he had an instance of a man who had suffered in the same way. A remark about unjust abuse of other people--that was quite natural, and meant nothing. Blackmail extorted by servants--she had herself led directly to it, by speculating upon what servants said of their masters. It was all very natural. She made up her mind that she had been wrong in mistrusting his sincerity. Besides, she liked him, and her judgment instinctively inclined to favour him. "I think you are quite right," she said, after a few moments' thought. "I never heard it put so directly before, and your view seems to be the only sensible one. If the secret can be kept by buying an object and destroying it, then buy it. If not, deny it boldly, and refuse to pay. Yes, that is the wisest solution I have ever heard offered." Ghisleri saw that he had produced a good effect and was well-satisfied. He turned back to a former point in order to change the subject of the conversation. "That old story of the Montevarchi has interested me," he said. "I wish I knew it all. Without being at all of an historical genius, I am fond of all sorts of family histories. Lady Herbert was saying yesterday that there are many strange legends and stories connected with this old place, and that your father knows them all. You must know a great deal about Gerano yourself, I should think." "Oh, of course I do," answered Adele, with alacrity. "I will show you all over the castle to-morrow morning. It is an enormous building, and bigger than you would ever suppose from the outside. I will show you where they used to cut off heads--it is delightful! The head fell through a hole in the floor into a heap of sawdust, they say. And then there is another place, where they threw criminals out of the window, with four seats in it, two for the executioners, one for the confessor, and one in the middle for the condemned man. They did those things so coolly and systematically in those good old days. You shall see it all; there are the dungeons, and the trap-doors through which people were made to tumble into them; there is every sort of appliance--belonging to family life in the middle ages." "I shall be very glad to see it all if you will be my guide," said Ghisleri. They continued to talk upon indifferent subjects. At dinner Pietro took much pains to be agreeable, and succeeded admirably, for he was well able to converse pleasantly when he chose. Though extremely tired, he sat up till nearly midnight talking politics with Savelli, as Adele had foreseen, and when he was at last shown to his distant room by Bonifazio, who had spent most of his day in studying the topography of the castle, he was very nearly exhausted. CHAPTER XIX. Pietro Ghisleri slept soundly that night. Of late, indeed, he had become less restless than he had formerly been, and he attributed the change to the weakness which was the consequence of his wound. There were probably other causes at work at that time of which he was hardly conscious himself, but which ultimately produced a change in him, and in his way of looking at the world. He stood at his open window early in the morning, and gazed out at the fresh, bright country. The delicate hand of spring had already touched the world with colour, and the breath of the coming warmth had waked the life in all those things which die yearly, and are yearly raised again. Ghisleri felt the morning sun upon his thin, pale face, and he realised that he also had been very near to death during the dark months, and he remembered how he had wished that he might be not near only to dying, but dead altogether, never to take up again the play that had grown so wearisome and empty in his eyes. But now a change had come. For the first time in years, he knew that if the choice were suddenly offered him at the present moment he would choose to live out all the days allotted to him, and would wish that they might be many rather than few. There was, indeed, a dark spot on the page last turned, of which he could never efface the memory, nor, in his own estimation, outlive the shame. In his day-dreams Maddalena dell' Armi's coldly perfect face was often before him with an expression upon it which he feared to see, knowing too well why it was there--and out of a deeper depth of memory dead Bianca Corleone's eyes looked at him with reproach and sometimes with scorn. There was much pain in store for him yet, of the kind at which the world never guessed, nor ever could. But he would not try to escape from it. He would not again so act or think as to call himself coward in his own heart's tribunal. He looked out at the distant hills, and down at the broad battlements and massive outworks of the ancient fortress, and fell to thinking rather idly about the people who had lived, and fought, and quarrelled, and slain each other, within and around those enormous walls, and then he thought all at once of Adele Savelli, and of his suspicions regarding her. He was in a particularly charitable frame of mind on that morning, and he suddenly felt that what he had almost believed on the previous night was utterly beyond the bounds of probability. It seemed to him that he had no manner of right to accuse any one of the crime he had imputed to her, on the most shadowy grounds, and absolutely without proof, unless the coincidence of her uneasy behaviour, with certain vague remarks of his own, could be taken as evidence. He sat down to think it all over, drinking his coffee by the open window, and enjoying the sunshine and the sweet morning air. The whole world looked so good and innocent and fresh as he gazed out upon it, that the possibilities of evil seemed to shrink away into nothing. But as he systematically reviewed the events of the past months, his suspicion returned almost with the force of conviction. The coincidences were too numerous to be attributed to chance alone. Adele's distress of mind was too evident to be denied. Altogether there was no escaping from the conclusion that willingly or unwillingly she had been consciously instrumental in bringing about Arden's illness and death. Her questions about the wisest course to pursue in cases of blackmail, pointed to the probability if not the certainty that some third person was acquainted with what had happened, and this person was in all likelihood the maid Lucia. So far his reasoning took him quickly and plausibly enough, but no further. How the scarlet fever had been communicated from Lucia to Herbert Arden was more than Ghisleri could guess, but if Adele was really in the serving woman's power, it must have been done in such a way as to make what had happened quite clear to the latter. After thinking over all the possibilities, and vainly attempting to solve the hard problem, Ghisleri found himself as much at sea as ever, and was driven to acknowledge that he must trust to chance for obtaining any further evidence in the matter. Meanwhile Adele had determined to follow his advice. Her anxiety was becoming unbearable, and she felt that she could not endure such suspense much longer. To accuse Lucia directly of having opened the letter and committed the theft would be rash and dangerous. There was a bare possibility that some one else might have done the deed. She must in any case be cautious. "Lucia," she said that morning, while the woman was doing her hair, "do you remember that some days ago I gave you a letter to be registered, and that you brought back the receipt for it from the post-office?" "Yes, Excellency, I remember very well." Lucia had been expecting for a long time that her mistress would question her and she was quite prepared. She had good nerves, and the certainty that the great lady was altogether in her power made her cool and collected. "A very extraordinary thing happened to that letter," said Adele, looking up at her own face in the glass, to give herself courage. "It was rather important. I had written to Padre Bonaventura, asking spiritual guidance, and I particularly desired an answer. But he wrote to me by return of post, saying that when he opened the envelope he found only four sheets of blank paper without a word written on them. You see somebody must have thought there was money in the letter." "They are such thieves at the post-office!" exclaimed Lucia. "But this is a terrible affair, Excellency! What is to be done? The post-master must be sent to the galleys immediately!" In Lucia's conception of the law such a summary course seemed quite practicable. "I am afraid that would be very unjust, and could do no good at all," said Adele. "I am quite sure that the post-master would not have dared to open a letter already registered, and for which he had given a receipt. As for any one in the house having done it, I cannot believe it either. I gave it into your hands myself and you brought me back the stamped bit of paper--it is there in my jewel case. I only wish you to find out for me, very quietly and without exciting suspicion, who took that letter to the post. If I could get it back I would give the person who brought it to me a handsome reward. You understand, Lucia, how disagreeable it is to feel that a letter concerning one's most sacred feelings is lost, and has perhaps been read by more than one person." "I cannot imagine anything more dreadful! But be easy, Excellency. I will do all I can, and none of the servants shall suspect that I am questioning them." "I shall be very much obliged to you, Lucia," said Adele. "Very much obliged," she repeated, with some emphasis. "It is only my duty to serve your Excellency, who has always been so good to me," answered Lucia, humbly. Adele knew that there was nothing more to be said for the present, and she congratulated herself on having been diplomatic in her way of offering the bribe. Lucia would now in all likelihood take some time to decide, but for the present she would certainly not part with the precious document. Adele felt sure that it had neither been destroyed nor sent out of the castle. Lucia probably kept it concealed in a safe corner of her own room, under lock and key, and to attempt to get possession of it by force would be out of the question. As in most Italian houses, the servants all locked their own rooms and carried the keys about with them. Lucia, of course, did like the rest. But Lucia, on her side, distrusted her mistress. Knowing what she now knew of Adele, she believed her capable of almost anything, including the picking of a lock and the skilful abstraction of the letter from its secret hiding-place. As soon as she was at liberty she went and got the paper and concealed it in her bosom, intending to keep it there until she could select some safe spot in a remote part of the castle, where she might put it away in greater safety. To carry it about with her until Adele took her back to Rome would be rash, she thought. Adele might suspect where it was at any moment, and force her to give it up. Or it might be lost, which would be even worse. Adele herself felt singularly relieved. She had very little doubt but that Lucia would come to terms. She might, indeed, ask a very large sum, and it might be very inconvenient to be obliged to find it at short notice. But the sole heiress to an enormous estate would certainly be able to get money in some way or other. In the meantime Lucia would not offer it to any one else, since of all people her mistress would be willing to make the greatest sacrifice to obtain possession of it. On the whole, therefore, Adele's anxiety diminished on that day, and she seemed better when she met her husband and Ghisleri in the great court-yard where they were sunning themselves and continuing their talk about politics. "I promised that I would show you the castle," she said to Pietro. "Would it amuse you to go with me now? Francesco does not care to come, of course, and he always has his business with the steward to attend to before breakfast." Pietro expressed his readiness to follow her from the deepest dungeon to the topmost turret of the castle. "Have you slept well?" he asked, as they moved away together. "You are looking much better this morning." "Yes. I feel better," she answered. "Do you know I think your coming has had something to do with it. You have cheered us with your talk and your news. We were fast falling into the vegetable stage, Francesco and I." Ghisleri smiled, partly out of politeness and partly at his own thoughts. "I am glad to have been of any use," he said. "I will do my best to be amusing as long as you will have me." "You need not take it as such an enormous compliment," Adele laughed. "Of course, you are very agreeable,--at least, you can be when you choose,--but the great thing is to have somebody, anybody one knows and likes a little, in this dreary place. Shall we begin at the top or the bottom? The prisons or the towers? Which shall it be?" "If there is a choice, let us begin in the lower regions," answered Ghisleri. "Do you like me a little, Donna Adele?" he asked, as she led the way along the curved and smoothly paved descent which led downwards to the subterranean part of the fortress. She laughed lightly, and glanced at him. She had always wished to make a conquest of Pietro Ghisleri, but she had found few opportunities of being alone with him, for he had never been among the assiduous at her shrine. She knew also how much he admired Laura Arden, and she suspected him of being incipiently in love. It would be delightful to detach him from that allegiance. "Yes," she said, "I like you a little. Did you expect me to like you very much? You have never done anything to deserve it." "I wish I could," answered Ghisleri, with complete insincerity. "But I am afraid I should never get so far as that." "Why not?" "When a woman loves her husband--" He did not finish the sentence, for it seemed unnecessary. "I do not want you to make love to me," Adele answered, "though I believe you know how to do it to perfection. It is often a very long way from liking very much to loving a very little. This is the place where old Gianluca kept his brother Paolo in prison for eighteen years. Then Gianluca died suddenly one fine morning, and Paolo was let out by the soldiers and immediately threw Gianluca's wife out of the window of the east tower, and cut off the heads of his two sons on the same afternoon. I will show you where that was done when we go up stairs. Paolo was an extremely energetic person." "Decidedly so, I should say," assented Ghisleri. "You are all descended from him, I suppose." "Yes, he took care that we should be, by killing all the other branches of the family. Those hollows in the stone are supposed to have been made by his footsteps. Think what a walk! It lasted eighteen years. But it is an airy place and not damp. Those windows were there then, they say. Do you see that deep channel in the wall? It leads straight up through the castle to the floor of the little passage between the old guard-room and one of the towers. There used to be a trap-door--it was still there when I was a little girl, but my father has had a slab of stone put down instead. They used to entice their dearest and most familiar enemies up there, and just as the man set foot on the board a soldier in the tower pulled a bolt in the wall and the trap-door fell. It is two hundred feet, they say. It was so cleverly managed! They say that the last person who came to grief there was a Monsignor Boccapaduli in the year sixteen hundred and something, but no one ever knew what had become of him until the next generation." Familiar from her childhood with every corner of the vast building, she led Ghisleri through one portion after another, telling such of the tales of horror as she remembered. Little by little they worked their way to the upper regions. In the guard-room, a vast hall which would have made a good-sized church, she showed him the great slab of stone the Prince had substituted for the wooden trap-door of former days, and which had merely been placed over the yawning chasm without plaster or cement, its own weight being enough to keep it in position. They passed over it and ascended the stairs in the tower, emerging at last into the bright sunshine upon one of the highest battlements. They sat down side by side on a stone bench. "It is pleasanter here," said Adele. "There is a sort of attraction about those dreadful old places down below, because one never quite realises all the things that happened there, and it is rather like an old-fashioned novel, all full of murder and sudden death. But the sunshine is much nicer, is it not? Shall we stay up here till it is time for breakfast?" "By all means. It is a delightful place for a good talk." Ghisleri was tired, and glad to sit down. "Then you must talk to me," continued his companion. "Between the stairs and playing guide, I have no voice left. What will you talk about? Tell me all about your own castle. They say it is very interesting. I wish I could see it!" "After Gerano it would seem very tame to you. It is mostly in ruins, and what there is left of it is very much the worse for wear. I would not advise you to take the trouble to stop, even if you should ever pass near it." "That is a way you have of depreciating everything connected with yourself," said Adele. "Why do you do it?" "Do I?" asked Ghisleri, carelessly. "I suppose I have the idea that it is better to let people be agreeably surprised, if there is to be any surprise at all. When you have heard that a man is insufferable, if he turns out barely tolerable you think him nice." "Then it is mere pose on your part, with the deliberate intention of producing an effect?" "Probably--mere pose." Ghisleri laughed; he looked at the woman at his side and wondered whether he could ever find out the truth about Arden's death, and the connexion with it which, as he believed, she must have had. She, on her part, did not even guess that he suspected her. The thought had crossed her mind on the previous afternoon, but she had very soon dismissed it. She found relief and change from the monotonous suffering of the past days in talking to him, and she tried to enjoy what she could without allowing her mind to wander back to its chief preoccupation. Ghisleri was very careful not to rouse her suspicion by any accidental reference to what filled his thoughts as much as it did her own, and they spent more than half an hour in aimless and more or less amusing conversation. Gerano did not offer any very great variety of amusement. After breakfast, there was the usual interval for smoking and coffee, and after that the usual drive of two or three hours in the hills. Then, tea and small talk, the dressing hour, the arrival of the post with the morning papers from Rome, dinner, more smoking, and more conversation, and bed-time was reached. It was not gay, and when he retired for the night Ghisleri was beginning to wonder how long he could endure the ordeal with equanimity. He was not generally a man very easily bored, and the reasons which had brought him to Gerano were strong enough in themselves to make him ready to sacrifice a good deal, but he realised that he was not making any advance in the direction of discovering the secret. He had learned more in the first few hours of his stay than he had learned since, and so far as he could see, he was not likely to find out anything more. He had noticed, too, the improvement in Adele's appearance on that day. It was possible that she had already acted upon the general advice he had given her, and that she had insured the silence of the person she dreaded, if any such person existed. But it was equally possible that no one knew what she had done, and that she had not meant anything by the question. The third day passed like the second, and the fourth began without promising any change. Adele appeared as usual at eleven o'clock and spent an hour with Ghisleri. They were becoming more intimate by this time than they had ever been before during their long acquaintance, and Adele flattered herself that she had made an impression. Ghisleri would not forget the hospitality she had offered him, and next year would be more often seen in the circle of her admirers. She even imagined that he might fall into a sort of mild and harmless flirtation, if she knew how to manage him. A little before the hour for breakfast she went to her room. Lucia was there, as usual, waiting in case she should be needed. As she retouched Adele's hair, and gave a final twist with the curling tongs to the ringlets at the back of her mistress's neck, she began to speak in a low voice and in a somewhat hurried manner. "I have found out who took the letter, Excellency," she said. "It is in a safe place and no one else has seen it. The person will give it to me at once if the reward is large enough." Adele's eyes sparkled, and a little colour rose in her cheeks. Lucia watched the reflection of her face in the mirror. "How much does she ask?" she inquired, without hesitation, and with a certain business-like sharpness in her tone. There was a moment's pause, as Lucia withdrew the tongs from the little curl. "She asks five thousand francs," she said, in some trepidation, for she had hardly ever in her life even spoken of so large a sum. "That is a great deal," answered Adele, pretending to be surprised, while doing her best to conceal her satisfaction. "I have not so much money out here; indeed, Don Francesco has not either. She must wait until we go to Rome." "A year, if your Excellency pleases," said the maid, blowing scent upon a transparent handkerchief from an atomizer. "In the meanwhile I should like to have the letter. I suppose she would accept my promise--written, if she requires it?" "Of course she would, and she would give me the papers at once--or instead of a promise, I have no doubt she would be perfectly satisfied with a bit of jewelry as a pledge." "That would be simpler," said Adele, coldly. She could not but be astonished at the woman's cool effrontery, though it was impossible to refuse anything she asked. "I will give you a diamond for her to keep as a pledge," she added, "but I want the letter this afternoon." "Yes, Excellency." During the midday meal Adele was by turns absent and then very gay. She seemed restless and uneasy during the coffee and cigarette stage of the afternoon. Ghisleri watched her with curiosity. Fully half an hour earlier than usual she went to her room to get ready for the regulation drive. Lucia was waiting for her, pale as death and evidently in a state of the greatest agitation. Without a word Adele unlocked her jewel case, took out a little morocco covered box, opened it, and glanced at a pair of diamond ear-rings it contained, shut it again and held it out to Lucia. To her surprise the woman drew back, clearly in great terror, and trying to get behind the long toilet table as though in fear of bodily harm. "What is the matter?" asked Adele, in surprise. "Where is the letter? Why do you not give it to me?" "A great misfortune has happened," gasped Lucia, hardly able to speak. "I cannot get it from the person." "What!" Adele's voice rang through the room. "Do you want more money now? What is this comedy?" "The letter is not there--I--she does not know where it is. It is lost--Excellency--" "Lost? Where did you hide it?" Lucia was almost too frightened by this time to tell connectedly what had happened, but Adele understood before long that the maid had looked about for a safe place in which to hide the precious document, and had at last decided to slip it under the great slab of stone which has been already mentioned as covering the opening of the oubliette between the guard-room and the tower. Lucia had found that on one side, owing to the irregularity of the old pavement, there was room to lay the folded papers, and that she could just slip her hand in so as to withdraw them again. She was, of course, quite ignorant that the stone covered a well of which the shaft penetrated to the lowest foundation of the castle, and that one touch of her hand, or a gust of wind, was enough to send the light sheets over the edge close to which she had unwittingly placed them. Adele still pretended to be angry, but she drew a long breath of relief. She knew the exact spot at which to look for what she wanted. She locked up her diamonds again, scolding Lucia for her carelessness all the time, and doing her best to be very severe. Lucia bore all that was said to her very meekly, for she had expected far worse. In her opinion some one had accidentally discovered the letter, and taken it, and would make capital out of it as she had meant to do. Her disappointment was as great, as the sum of five thousand francs had seemed to her enormous, but her fear soon vanished when she saw that Adele had no intention of doing her any bodily injury, nor, apparently, of dismissing her again. That the papers were really gone from the place of concealment she knew beyond a doubt. She had lit a taper in her effort to find them, and had thrust it under the slab, bending low and looking into the crevice. Nothing white of any sort had been visible. Adele dressed herself for going out and left the room. But instead of joining her husband and Ghisleri at once, she turned out of the main passage by the cross corridor which led to the court-yard, went out and walked quickly down the inclined road by which she had led Ghisleri to Paolo Braccio's dungeon. There, where the shaft of the oubliette came down, she was quite sure of finding the little package of sheets which meant so much to her and which had almost meant a fortune to Lucia. She crossed the worn pavement rapidly. There was plenty of light from the grated windows high up under the vault, and she could have seen the paper almost as soon as she entered the place. She stopped short as she reached the foot of the channel in the wall. There was nothing there. She stared up into the blackness above in the hope of seeing a white thing caught and sticking to the stones, but she could not distinguish the faintest reflection of anything. Yet she was convinced that the thing must have fallen all the way. The shaft, as she well knew, was quite perpendicular and the masonry compact and well finished. The object of those who had built it had been precisely to prevent the possibility of the victim catching on a projection of any sort while falling. Adele turned pale and leaned against the wall, breathing hard. If Lucia had acted differently she might have been suspected of having told a falsehood, and of keeping the letter back in order to extort a larger sum for it at some future time. But Lucia had evidently been frightened. Moreover, the woman was undoubtedly ignorant of the existence of the well under the stone, or, she would never have been so foolish as to choose such a place for hiding anything so valuable, and it was clear that she had no idea of the manner in which the package had disappeared. That it must have reached the bottom, Adele was quite sure. In that case some one had been in the dungeon before her and had picked it up, but who the some one might be she had no means of conjecturing. She hardly knew how she reached the court-yard again. It cost her a superhuman effort to walk. In the passage she met her husband. "What is the matter?" he asked, as soon as he saw her face. "I feel very ill--I wanted to breathe the air." She seemed to be gasping for breath. Francesco drew her arm through his and walked with her to her room. She was clearly not in a state in which she could think of going out. Savelli went back and explained to Ghisleri, who, if anything, was glad to escape from the monotonous drive. He got a book and shut himself up in his room to read. That evening Savelli told him that Adele was worse, and was in a state of indescribable nervous agitation. It was clearly his duty to go away, if Adele were about to be seriously ill, and he told Bonifazio to pack his things that night. If matters did not improve, he would leave on the following morning. Though Francesco was not much affected by his wife's sufferings, the dinner was anything but brilliant, for he anticipated a renewal of all the annoyance of the first few days. Moreover, if Adele was liable to sudden relapses of this kind at any moment, and without the smallest reason or warning, his life would, before long, be made a burden to him. As the husband of a permanent invalid he could hope for very little liberty or amusement. A wife may go into the world without her husband, because he is supposed to be occupied with more important affairs, but a husband who frequents parties when his wife is constantly suffering, is considered heartless in the extreme. That, at least, is society's view of the mutual obligation, and if it is not the just one, it is at least founded upon the theory of woman's convenience, as most of society's views are. Francesco was easily prevailed upon to give Adele an increased dose of chloral, in the hope that she might sleep, and consequently give him less trouble on the next day. But in this conclusion he was mistaken. She awoke in great pain, suffering, she said, from a violent headache, and so nervous that her hand trembled violently and she was hardly able to lift a cup to her lips when the nurse brought her tea. Savelli did not attempt to keep Ghisleri when the latter announced his intention of returning to town, though he pressed him to come out again, as soon as Adele should be better. The man who drove Pietro back was instructed to bring the doctor out to Gerano, with fresh horses, and especially not to forget five hundred cigarettes which Francesco wanted for himself. Ghisleri left many messages for Adele, and departed with Bonifazio, very little wiser than when he had arrived, but considerably more curious. CHAPTER XX. It was a relief to be with Laura Arden again for an hour on the day after his return, as Ghisleri felt when he was installed beside her in the chair which had come to be regarded as his. She received him just as usual, and he saw at once that if she had at all resented his visit to Adele, she was not by any means inclined to let him know it. There was a freshness and purity in the atmosphere that surrounded her which especially appealed to him after his visit to Gerano. Whatever she said she meant, and if she meant anything she took no trouble to hide it. He compared her face with her step-sister's, and the jaded, prematurely world-worn look of the one threw the calm beauty of the other into strong relief. He felt no pity for Adele. What she was, she had made herself, and if she suffered, it was as the direct and inevitable consequence of the life she had led and of the things she had done. So, at least, it seemed to him, and if he could have known the whole truth at that time, he would have seen how right he was. The ruthless logic of cause and effect had got Adele into its will and was slowly grinding her whole existence to dust. "It is strange," he said to Laura, "that you and your step-sister should be so unlike in every way. It is true that you are not related, but you were brought up in the same house, by the same people, and yet I do not believe you have a single idea in common." "No," answered Laura, "we have not. We do not like the same persons, nor the same things, nor the same thoughts. We were made to be enemies--and I suppose we are." It was the first time she had ever said so much to him, and even now there was no rancour in her tone. "If all enemies were like you, at least, this would be a very peaceful world." "You do not know me," answered Laura, with a smile. "I have a bad temper. I could tell you something about it. I once felt as though I would like to strangle a certain person, and as though I could do it. Do not imagine that I am all saint and no sinner." "I like to imagine all sorts of nice things about you," said Ghisleri. "But I could never make them nice enough." "That is just it. It would need an enormous imagination." "But I am not sure that I should like to think of you as being on very good terms with Donna Adele, and I am almost glad to hear you admit that you are enemies. There is a satisfaction in knowing that you are human, as well as in believing you to be good." "How is Adele?" Laura asked. "The last I heard was that she was much worse. She behaves in the most unaccountable way. She has the look of a woman in some very great mental distress--pursued and haunted by something very painful from which she cannot escape." "I had the same feeling about her the last time I saw her. I know that look very well. I have seen it in your face, sometimes, as well as in hers." "In mine?" Ghisleri looked keenly at her, as though to ascertain whether she meant more than she said, for the first time in his acquaintance with her. "When did I ever show you that I was in trouble?" he asked. "That was some time ago. You have changed since your illness. You used to look harassed sometimes, like a man who has a wound in the heart. Perhaps it is only something which depends on the way your eyes are made. The first time I ever noticed it was--yes, I remember very well--it was more than a year ago, that night when you spoke your poem in the Shrove Tuesday masquerade. It was not when you were talking to me. You looked perfectly diabolical then. It was later. I saw you standing alone in a doorway after a dance." "What a memory you have! I was probably in a bad humour. I generally am, even now." "Why do you say even now?" asked Laura, watching his face. "Oh, I hardly know," he answered. "All sorts of things have happened to me since then, to simplify my existence. At that time it was very particularly complicated." "And how have you simplified it?" She put the question innocently enough, and quite thoughtlessly, not even guessing at the truth. "It has been simplified for me. It came near being simplified into being no existence at all. A few inches made the difference." "Yes," said Laura, thoughtfully, "the greatest of all differences to you." "And none at all to any one else," added Ghisleri, with a dry laugh. She turned her great dark eyes upon him. The lids drooped a little as she scrutinised his face somewhat coldly, but with an odd interest. "I suppose that might be quite true," she said at last. "Perhaps it is. But I do not like you any the better for saying it in that way." Ghisleri was silent, but he met her gaze quietly and without flinching, until she looked away. She sighed a little as she took up a bit of embroidery she was doing for some garment of little Herbert's. "Why do you sigh?" he asked, not expecting that she would answer the question. "For some one," she said simply, and she began to make a few stitches. He knew that she was thinking of Maddalena dell' Armi, and his heart smote him. "I was wrong to say it," he answered, in a more gentle tone. "There was perhaps one exception to the rule." Ghisleri grew even more careful of his speech after that. But he did not see Laura often before she went away northward for the summer. The spring was going fast, and the time was coming when Rome would be its quiet old-fashioned self again for those few who loved it well enough to face the heat of July and August. Almost every one was thinking of going away. The Prince and Princess of Gerano were going out to the castle earlier than usual, for the news of Adele grew steadily worse. Francesco now had the doctor out regularly three times a week, and was forced to lead an existence he detested. His wife was by this time quite unable to get rest without taking very large quantities of chloral, and at times her sufferings were such that it seemed almost advisable to give her morphia. Every one, however, who brought intelligence from Gerano agreed in saying that she did her best to keep up, and seemed to dread the idea of an illness which might keep her permanently in her room. Whenever she felt able she insisted on driving out and on going through the regular round of monotonous country occupations. Her father and step-mother therefore determined to go out and help Francesco to take care of her, and make her existence as bearable as possible. Amongst all her friends she was spoken of with the utmost compassion, and no one ever suggested that her illness could proceed from any such cause as Ghisleri believed to be at the root of it. A few days before Laura Arden was to go away Donald came to Pietro's room in the morning, with a very grave face. Lady Herbert, he said, thought that Ghisleri would understand why she did not write, but sent Donald in person with a verbal message. She was going away, and was about to give up the apartment in which she had spent the winter, without any intention of taking it again in the following year. There were certain things that had belonged to Lord Herbert--Lady Herbert had no home and did not like to send them to Lord Lulworth--would Ghisleri take charge of them in her absence? Pietro, of course, assented, and two hours later Donald arrived with a large carriage load of boxes. Ghisleri looked on with a very unpleasant sensation in his throat as his old friend's effects were brought up stairs and deposited in a room where he kept such things of his own. When they were all piled together in a corner, he took an old green curtain and covered them with it, spreading it carefully over them with his own hands. Then he locked the door and went away. Some men and women when they die seem to leave something of life behind them, which the mere sight of anything that has belonged to them has power to recall most vividly to the perceptions of those who have known them and loved them. Ghisleri understood Laura Arden's feeling about her husband's belongings. He knew, or thought he knew, that from the moment her child had been given to her, she had desired that no material object should revive the sorrow she had felt so deeply. The memory she cherished was wholly spiritual, and upon its remaining so her peace of mind largely depended. The one Herbert was to live in the other--and there must not be two. Not every one, perhaps, would have understood her so readily. The day came for bidding her good-bye. It was with a somewhat heavy heart that he went up the stairs of her house for the last time. Much of the little happiness he had known during the past months was associated with the place and with her, and not a little of the sorrow as well. The drawing-room was bare, and had lost the comfortable, inhabited look which even a furnished lodging takes from all the little objects a woman brings to it, and which she alone knows how to dispose and arrange as though they were in constant use, thereby at once producing the impression that the habitation she has chosen has been lived in long. Once more Ghisleri sat in the familiar chair near the open window, and once more Laura took her place in the corner of the great sofa. "I have come to say good-bye," he began. "You are still decided to go to-morrow, I suppose." "Yes. I have not changed my plans. Please do not come to the station to see me off, nor send flowers, nor do any of the things which are generally done. I would rather not see any one I know after leaving this house." "May I write to you?" asked Ghisleri. "Of course. Why not?" "I do not know, I am sure. I thought it better to ask you. Some women hate correspondence except with their nearest and dearest. I will give you the news of Rome during the wild gaiety of July and August." "Are you not going away at all?" asked Laura, in some surprise. "You ought to; it will do you good." "I hardly know. I like to be alone in summer. It gives one time to think. One has a chance of leading a sensible life when nobody is here to see. The days pass pleasantly--plenty of reading, a diet of watermelon and sherbet, and a little repentance--it is magnificent treatment for the liver." Laura looked at him and then laughed very softly. "You seem amused," said Ghisleri, gravely. "What I say is quite true--the result of long experience." "I was not laughing at what you said, but at the idea that you should still think it worth while to make such speeches to me." "If I can make you laugh at all it is worth while." "At all events, it is good of you to say so. Which of the three subjects do you mean to take for your letters to me--your reading, your food, or your repentance?" "The food would be the simplest and safest topic. You can read for yourself what you please. Repentance, when it is not a habit, is rarely well done. But one can say the most charming things about strawberries, peaches, and figs, without ever offending any one's taste." "I think you grow worse as you grow older," said Laura, still smiling. "But if you would take your programme seriously, it would not be a bad thing, I fancy. Seriously, however, you ought to get away from Rome." "I should be tempted to go and stay a week near you, if I went away at all," said Ghisleri. Laura did not answer at once. She glanced at him with a vague suspicion in her eyes which disappeared almost instantly, and then took two or three stitches in her embroidery before she spoke. "I would rather you should not do that," she said at last. "I may as well tell you what I think about it. To me, and to you, it seems thoroughly absurd that you should not see me whenever we choose to meet. There are many reasons why I should look upon you as a friend, and why you should come more often than any other man I know. But the world thinks differently. My mother has spoken to me about it more than once, and in one way she is right. You know what a place this is, and how every one talks about everybody. Unfortunately, I believe that you are one of the men about whose private affairs society is most busy. I cannot help it now. I have no right to say anything about your life, past or present, but you have told me enough about yourself to make me understand why there is always gossip about you, and why there always will be. Then, too, you will never make people believe that you did not fight that duel about me, for you cannot tell any one what you told me. The consequence is, that you and I look at it all from one point of view, and the world sees it from quite another. I think it is better to say all this once, and to be done with it. As we shall not meet for several months, people will forget to talk. Am I right to speak to you?" "Perfectly right," answered Ghisleri. An expression of pain had settled on his lean face while she had been talking, and did not disappear at once. Laura saw it and was silent for a moment. "I am sorry if I have hurt you," she said presently. "Perhaps I was wrong." "No, you were quite right," Ghisleri replied. "You would have been very wrong indeed not to tell me. If you did not, who would? But I had no suspicion of all this. I believed that for once they might let me alone, considering what you are--and what I am. The contrast might protect you in the eyes of some persons. Lady Herbert Arden--and Pietro Ghisleri." He pronounced his own name with the utmost bitterness. "Please do not speak of yourself in that way," said Laura, with something like entreaty in her voice. "It is true enough," he answered. "An intelligent being might understand that I could be useful to you, but not that you--" He stopped short, and his tone changed. "I am talking nonsense," he said briefly, by way of explaining the truth. "I think you are, in a way," said Laura, quietly. "It is your old habit of exaggeration. You make me an impossible creature between an archangel and the good mamma in children's story books, and you refer to yourself as to a satanic monster whom no honest woman could call her friend. You are quite right. It is sheer nonsense. If you stay in Rome to repent, as you suggest in fun, do it in earnest. I am not talking of your sins, which are not half so bad as you pretend, but of this silly view you insist upon taking of your own life. If you must think perpetually of yourself, judge yourself by some reasonable standard. You live in the world and you have no right to expect to find that you are a saint. If that is what you wish, take vows, turn monk, and starve yourself up to heaven if you can. And if you chance to think of me, do not set me on a pedestal, and build a church over me, and pray at me. I do not like that sort of thing--it is all unnatural and absurd. I am a woman and nothing else, better than some by force of circumstances, and not so good as some others, perhaps for the same reason. All the rest that you imagine is sentimental trash, and not worth the time it takes you to think it. You will not be wasting your summer if you can get rid of it all by the time we meet in the autumn." For once in his life, Ghisleri was taken by surprise. He had not had any idea that Laura could express herself so strongly on any point, still less that she could talk so plainly about himself. He was far too manly, however, not to be pleased, and his expression changed as he listened to her. She smiled as she finished, and began to make stitches again. "No one ever gave me so much good advice in so short a time," he said, with a laugh. "You have a wonderful power of condensing your meaning. Do you often talk in that way?" "Not often. I think I never did before. Do you not think there is some sense in what I say?" "Indeed, I begin to believe that there is a great deal," Ghisleri answered. "At all events, I shall not forget it. Perhaps you will find me partially reformed when you come back. You must promise to tell me." "It will take me some time to find out. But if I succeed I will tell you." His mood had changed for the better, and he talked of Laura's plans during nearly half an hour. At last he rose to go. "Good-bye," he said, rather abruptly. She looked up quietly as she took his hand, and pressed it without affectation. "Good-bye. I wish you a very pleasant summer--and--since we are parting--I thank you with all my heart for the many kind and friendly things you have done for me." "I have done nothing. Good-bye, again." He turned and she stood looking at his retreating figure until he had disappeared through the door. "I believe there is more good in that man than any one knows," she said to herself. Then she also left the room and went to see whether little Herbert were awake, and to busy herself with the last arrangements for his comfort during the journey. Ghisleri knew that another parting was before him in the near future. As usual, Maddalena dell' Armi was going to spend a considerable part of the summer with her father in Tuscany. He went to see her tolerably often, and their relations had of late been to all appearances friendly and undisturbed. But he doubted whether the final interview before they separated for several months could pass off without some painful incident. He knew Maddalena's character well, and if he did not know his own, it was not for want of study. He almost wished that he might, on that day, choose to call at a time when some other person was present, for then, of course, there could be no show of emotion on either side, nor any words which could lead to such weakness. He went twice to the house during the week which intervened between Laura Arden's departure and the day fixed for Maddalena's, saying each time that he would come again, a promise to which the Contessa seemed indifferent enough. She would always be glad to see as much of him as possible, she said. The last day came. She was to leave for Florence on the following morning. Ghisleri rang, was admitted, and found her alone. "I knew you would come," she said, "though it is so late." "Of course. Did I not say so? I suppose you are still decided to go to-morrow." He was conscious that he was saying the very same indifferent words which he had said a few days earlier to Laura, and Maddalena answered him almost as Laura had done. "Yes. Of course you must not come to the station. That is understood, is it not?" "Since you wish it, I will certainly not come. So we are saying good-bye until next season," he continued, breaking the ice as it were, since he felt it must be broken. "I will try and not be emotional, and I ask you to believe--this once--that I am in earnest. I have something to say to you. May I? Will you listen to me? You and I cannot part with two words and a nod of the head, like common acquaintances." "I will hear all you care to say," answered Maddalena, simply. "And I will try to believe you." He looked at the pale face and the small, perfect features before he spoke, to see if they were as hard as they often were. But for the moment the expression was softened. The evening glow played softly upon the bright hair, and threw a deep, warm light into the violet eyes, as she turned towards him. "What is it?" she asked, as he seemed to hesitate. "Has anything happened? Are you going to be married?" The question shocked him in a way he could not explain. "No. I am not thinking of marrying. We have been a great deal to each other, for a long time. But for my fault--and it is, of course, my fault--we might be as much in one another's lives as ever. We used to meet in the summer, but that will not happen this year. When you come back, we may both be changed more than we think it possible to change at present." "In what way?" "I do not know. Perhaps, when we meet again, we shall feel that we are really and truly devoted friends. Perhaps you may hate me altogether--" "And you me." "No, that is not possible. I am not very sure of myself as a rule. But that, at least, I know." "I hope you are right. If you are not my friend, who should be? So you think I hate you. You are very wrong. I am still very fond of you. I told you so the other day. You should believe me. Remember, when it all ended, it was you who had changed--not I. I am not reproaching you. I might say that you should have known yourself better than to think that you could be faithful; but you might tell me--and it would be quite as just--that I, a woman, knew what I was doing and had been taught to look upon my deeds as you never could. But it was you who changed. If you had loved me, I should have loved you still. Little things showed me long ago that your love was waning. It was never what it was in those first days. And now I have changed, too. I love what was once, but if I could have your love now as it was at its strongest and best, I would not ask for it. Why should I? I could never trust it again, and anything is better than that doubt. And I want no consolation." "Indeed, I should have very little to offer you, worth your accepting," said Pietro, in a low voice. "If I needed any, the best you could give me would be what I ask,--not as consolation at all, but as something I still believe worth having from you,--and that is your honest friendship." Ghisleri was moved in spite of himself. His face grew paler and the shadows showed beneath his eyes where Maddalena had so often seen them. "You are too kind--too good," he said, in an unsteady tone. The last time he had said almost the same words had been when he made his first visit to her after his long illness. Then she had been touched, far more than he. She looked at him for a few moments and saw that he felt very strongly. "Do not distress yourself," she said gently. "Pray do not--it hurts me, too. I mean what I say. I do not believe you can be faithful in love now--to any one. You gave all you had to give long ago. But I have watched you since we became what we are now, and I will do you justice. I do not know any man who can be a more true and devoted friend. You see, I meant what I said." "If it is true--if I can be a friend to any one, I will be one to you. But that is not what I would have, if I could choose." "What would you have, then?" "What is impossible. That is what one would always like. Let us not talk of it. It does no good to wish for what is beyond wishing. I thank you for what you have said--dear. I shall not forget it. Few women could be so good as you are to me. You would have the right to be very different if you chose." "No, I should not. There are reasons--well, as you say, let us not talk about it. We have made up our minds to meet and part as we should--kindly always, lovingly as friends love, truthfully now, since there is nothing left for us to distrust." She had never spoken to him in this way in all the meetings that had followed his recovery. He wondered if there had been any real change in her nature, or whether this were not at last the assertion of her natural self. She spoke so seriously and quietly that he could not doubt her. "I have seen that you can act in that way," she continued presently. "You have done more for the sake of the mere memory of your friend than many men would do for love itself." "Not so much as I would do for the memory of love," said Ghisleri, turning his face away. "Was it so sweet as that?" she asked. "Yes." "And yet you have loved better and longer in other days." "As I was a better man," he said, finding no other answer, for he knew it was true. Maddalena sighed. Perhaps she had hoped that this last time he would say what he had never said--that he had loved her better than Bianca Corleone. "You must have been different then." She spoke a little coldly, in spite of herself. A moment later she smiled. "How foolish it is of me to think of making comparisons, now that it is all over," she said. "So you are not coming to Tuscany this summer, and I shall not see you till next autumn. Why do you not come?" "I want to be alone a long time," answered Ghisleri. "It is much better. I am bad company, and besides, I am not strong enough to wander about the world yet. I need a long rest." "It seems so strange to think of you as not being strong." "Yes--I who used to be so proud of my strength. I believe that was my greatest vanity when I was very young." "How full of contradictions you are!" Maddalena exclaimed, as she had often done before. Ghisleri said nothing, for he knew it better than she could. It was growing late, for the sun had gone down and the twilight deepened in the room. He rose to go, and took her hand as she stood up beside him. "Good-bye," he said, almost in a whisper. "May God forgive me, and bless you--always." "Good-bye--dear." He went out. It had been a strange meeting, and the parting was stranger still. Very often, throughout the long summer months which followed, Ghisleri thought of it, recalling every word and gesture of the woman who had loved him so deeply, and for whom he had nothing left but the poor friendship she was so ready to accept. But that at least he could give her, kindly, lovingly, and truthfully, as she herself had said, and he was grateful to her for asking it of him, though no kindness of hers could heal the wound he had given himself in injuring her. He thought less harshly of the world for half a year or so after that day, and began to believe that it might not be so abominable a place as he had sometimes been inclined to think it. He wrote to Maddalena from time to time, short letters, which said little, but which she was glad to receive and which she often answered in the same strain, with a small chronicle of small doings made to bear the weight of a sweeping comment now and then. Little enough of interest there was in any of those epistles, but there was a general tone in them which assured each that the other had not forgotten that last meeting. Ghisleri did not write to Laura, though he could hardly have told why, especially as he had spoken of doing so. Possibly he felt that she would not understand him through a letter as she did when they were face to face, and he feared to make a bad impression. Of Adele Savelli he had news often, through people who were in intimate correspondence with her and with her step-mother, who spent the greater part of the summer at Gerano. From all accounts she had begun to improve with the warm weather, and though she still looked ill and greatly changed from her former self, she was said to be very much better. It was commonly reported that morphia had saved her, and it was whispered that she was a slave to it in consequence. Ghisleri cared very little. He had almost given up the idea that she had been concerned in bringing on Arden's illness, and even if he sometimes still thought she had been, he saw the impossibility of going any further than he had gone already in the attempt to discover the truth. CHAPTER XXI. Before attempting to chronicle the events which were the ultimate consequences of those already described, it will be necessary to explain how it was that very little worth recording occurred during nearly three years after the day on which Pietro Ghisleri said good-bye to the Contessa dell' Armi, when she was going to make her customary visit to her father. In the natural course of things, every one returned in the following autumn, in more or less lively expectation of the season to come. Laura Arden expected nothing of it, in the way of amusement, nor did she look forward to anything of the sort in her life as possible for many seasons to come. Maddalena dell' Armi, on the other hand, expected much, and was, on the whole, disappointed. Ghisleri had grown indifferent to such a degree as to be almost unrecognizable to his friends. He went out very little, and was said to be busy with some speculation in which he was ruining himself, but of which, as a matter of fact, he had never even heard. Adele Savelli went everywhere, thin, nervous, and careworn, and apparently driven to death by the necessity for excitement. There were people who said she was going mad, and others who said she lived on morphia and that it must ultimately kill her. The division of opinions concerning the nature of her malady still existed, and the wildest stories were sent adrift at a venture down the dangerous rapids of conversation. Donna Adele had quarrelled about Laura with her father, who had disinherited her as far as he was able, and she led a life of daily torment in Casa Savelli in consequence. That was one of the tales. Then it was stated that Francesco's passion for Laura Arden had suddenly developed to heroic proportions, and that his wife was eating her heart out. Thirdly, there was a party which asserted confidently that Adele herself was in love with Pietro Ghisleri, who did not even take the trouble to go and see her more than once or twice a month. The only point upon which opinion was unanimous was Laura Arden's personal and undivided responsibility for all the evil that happened to Adele Savelli. In the first year, so long as Laura never went into the world, the reputation society had given her harmed her very little, and but for the extremely thoughtful kindness of one or two communicative friends, she might have remained in ignorance of it altogether. As it was, she was indifferent, except when she was amused by the still current accusation of possessing the evil eye. That Laura was an undoubted and dangerous jettatrice was now commonly accepted as a matter of fact. Since Ghisleri and Campodonico had fought, the men had been circumspect in their remarks, but there were few who did not make the sign when they saw her go by. If anything had been needed to prove the fact, there was the issue of the duel. The man who had taken Laura's side had nearly lost his life, though he had fought several times previously without ever receiving any serious hurt. That was proof positive. Adele's illness, too, dated almost from the day of her reconciliation with Laura, and seemed likely to end fatally. Then, almost at the same time, the Contessa had broken with Ghisleri in the most heartless way, as the world said. For the world knew something about that, too, and could have told the whole story most exactly as it had never happened, and detailed several conversations accurately which had never taken place. Poor Ghisleri! The world pitied him sincerely, and hated Laura Arden for being the evil-eyed cause of all his misfortunes. How could he still go to see her, knowing, as he must, how dangerous it was? Had she not almost killed him and Adele, as well as quite killing her husband? People who touched Laura Arden's hand would do well to shut themselves up and lie safe at home for four and twenty hours, until the power of the jettatura was past. Those black eyes of hers meant no good to any one, in spite of her inspired, nun-like looks. All these things were said, repeated, affirmed, denied, discussed, and said again in the perpetual vicious circle of gossip, while the persons most concerned lived their own lives almost altogether undisturbed by the reports affecting them. No one refused to bow to Laura Arden in the street, although she was supposed to have the power of bringing murder, pestilence, and sudden death on those who went too near her. Nobody ventured to condole with Adele Savelli upon her husband's flighty conduct, still less upon the supposed loss to her of half the Gerano estate. Nor did any one express to Ghisleri anything like sympathy for having been so abominably treated by the Contessa. Such frankness would have been reprehensible and tactless in the extreme. Adele Savelli's existence was in reality far more wretched than any one could have supposed at that time, and it was destined to be made yet more miserable before a second year had elapsed. In the spring of the year following that described in the last chapter, the Contessa Delmar surprised Ghisleri with a very startling piece of news. They were talking together in the grand stand at one of the May races. "You know I always tell you everything I hear that seems to be of any importance," she said. "We generally know what to believe. I heard a story last night which is so very odd that there may be some truth in it. As it may be nothing but a bit of mischief, I will not name the person who told me. It is said that more than a year ago, when Adele Savelli thought she was dying out at Gerano, she did not wish to confess to the parish priest, whom she had known all her life, and so she wrote out a general confession and sent it to a priest here in Rome. Is that possible, do you think?" "Such things have been done," answered Ghisleri. "I do not know what the rule is about them, but the case is possible." "I was not sure. Now they say that this confession of Adele's never reached its destination, and that a copy of it, if not the original, is in circulation in society, passing quietly from hand to hand. That is a strange story, is it not?" "A very strange story." Pietro's face was grave, for he remembered many circumstances which this tale might explain. "And what is the confession said to contain?" he asked, after a pause. "Some extraordinary revelations about Adele's social career; it is even hinted that there is something which might bring very serious consequences upon her if it were known, though what it is no one can find out. That is what I heard, and I thought it worth while to tell you. I think, so far as I am concerned, that I shall deny it. It looks improbable enough, on the face of it. One need not say that its very improbability makes one think it cannot be all an invention." "No. I think you are wise--and charitable as well. If there is any truth in it, Donna Adele will have another illness when it reaches her ears. I suppose people have not failed to say that it was Lady Herbert who had the confession stolen through a servant." "Strange to say, no one has said that yet, but they will," added Maddalena, with conviction. "Here comes Savelli--take care! Will you put fifty francs for me on the next race? Here is the note." There was no exaggeration in the Contessa's account. The story was actually in circulation, if the lost confession was not. Unlike the majority of such tales, however, this one was not openly repeated or commented upon where more than two people were present. It disappeared and reappeared in unexpected places like the river Alpheus of old, but its shape was not materially changed. It was told in whispers and under terrible oaths of secrecy, and occasionally--very rarely, indeed--the mere word "Confession," spoken in casual conversation, made people smile and look at each other. There was not even a scandalous little paragraph in any of the daily papers, referring to it. For there are moments when society can keep its secrets, strangely communicative as it is at other times. The houses of Savelli and Gerano were too important and, in a way, too powerful still, to be carelessly attacked. Indeed, society very much preferred that neither the one nor the other should be attacked at all, and behaved so carefully in this one instance, that it was very long before any one discovered that a few weeks before the rumour had been set afloat Francesco Savelli had himself summarily dismissed Adele's maid for the really serious offence of helping her mistress to procure more morphia than the doctor's orders allowed. It was longer still before any one knew that the maid's name was Lucia, and that she had immediately found a situation with Donna Maria Boccapaduli. What was never known to the public at all was that when Savelli sent her out of the house, Lucia had threatened to make certain revelations injurious to the family if he persisted, but that Francesco had not paid the slightest attention to the menace, nor even spoken of it to his wife. He was selfish, cold, and was very far from admirable as a man, but he had been brought up in good traditions, and had the instincts of a gentleman when his own comfort was not endangered by them. All Ghisleri's suspicions revived at the news Maddalena gave him. Again he took down the medical work he had consulted on the evening when the idea that Adele was in some way guilty of Arden's death had first flashed across his mind, more than a year previously. Again he read the chapter on scarlet fever carefully from beginning to end, and sat down to think over the possibilities in such a case, and once more, after several days of serious consideration, he grew sceptical, and abandoned the attempt to fathom the mystery, if mystery there were. He knew that even without that, Adele might have written many things to her confessor in confidence which, if repeated openly in the world, would do her terrible harm. He was quite sure that all the infamous slanders on Laura and her husband could ultimately be traced to Adele alone, and it was possible that the stolen document contained a full account of them, though how any sane person could be rash enough to trust such a statement to the post was beyond Ghisleri's comprehension. He did not know that Adele had hardly been responsible for her actions on that day and on many succeeding ones. He had seen, while at Gerano, that she was far from well, but she had been apparently in full possession of her senses. That she should have entrusted to paper the confession that she had wilfully and successfully attempted to make Herbert Arden catch the scarlet fever in her own house, he could not believe, though he thought it possible that the crime might have actually been committed. He saw strong reasons for thinking that the confession had either been destroyed, or had never really been shown, but that some third person had known something of its contents and had perhaps betrayed the knowledge in a fit of anger. The Contessa dell' Armi could never tell him anything further than she had communicated at the races, and she, as he knew, was intimate with many who would be acquainted with all the current gossip. Strange to say, the story neither developed nor changed; and contrary to his expectations and to Maddalena's own, no one ever suggested that Lady Herbert Arden had been instrumental in causing the confession to be stolen. The men did not talk about the story at all, or, at least, no one ever hinted at it when Ghisleri was present. Laura saw him often during that winter, though not so regularly as in the first months which had succeeded her husband's death. It was evident to Pietro that the Princess was seriously disturbed by his frequent visits to her daughter, and he willingly restricted them rather than give offence to the elderly lady. As was to be expected, he gradually became more intimate with Laura as time went on. There were strong bonds of friendship between them, and the elements of a deep sympathy. On more than one occasion each had spoken to the other the whole thoughts of the moment, as people like themselves rarely speak to more than one or two persons who come into their lives. Ghisleri felt that Laura was taking the place of everything in his existence for which he had formerly cared, and the thought of love for any woman had never been so far from him as during that year and the following summer. He began to take a pleasure in small things that concerned her, which he had rarely found in the great emotions of his former life. Occasionally, when he was in a bad temper, he sneered at himself and said that he was growing old, and was only fit to be the guardian of distressed widows and fatherless children. But in spite of such moments, he was sometimes conscious of something not unlike happiness, and he was, on the whole, far more cheerful and less discontented with himself than he had formerly been. "It is the calm before the storm," he said to Laura one day, with a laugh. "Something appalling is going to happen to me before long." "I do not believe it," she answered, confidently. "You have lived such an existence of excitement for so many years, that you cannot understand what peace means now that you have tried it. Of course if you go in search of emotions again, you will find them. They grow on every bush, and are as cheap as blackberries." Laura laughed a little, too, as she made the reply. She thought much of Ghisleri now, and she could hardly realise what her life would be without him. Little Herbert first, then her mother, then Pietro--so the three stood in their respective order when she thought of her rather lonely position in the world. For she was very lonely, even when Arden had been dead eighteen months or more. Her old acquaintances rarely came to see her, and when they did there was a constraint in their manner which told of fear, or dislike, or both. The idle tale of the evil eye which she had so heartily despised once upon a time had done its work. In the following year, when, in the natural course of events, she would have gone out occasionally in a very quiet way, she found herself almost cut off from society. Even then she did not care so much as might have been expected. But her mother was in despair. She and the Prince constantly had Laura to dine with them, and always asked at the same time two or three friends with whom she had formerly been more or less intimate. But when it became known that "to dine quite informally" meant that the person invited was to meet Laura Arden, it became very hard to find evenings when any one chanced to be free to accept an invitation to the Palazzo Braccio. Incredible as it may seem, Laura was almost ostracised. No one who has not seen the social ruin which such a reputation as hers brings with it, could believe how complete it can be. Ghisleri ground his teeth in impotent anger against the stupid and cruel superstition which possessed his fellow-citizens, and which in a year or two would inevitably drive Laura to leave Rome, as it had driven others before then. He could do nothing, for the thing was never mentioned before him, and moreover he would be far more careful now than he had ever been not to be drawn into a quarrel on Laura's account. For he was well aware that his position towards her was anomalous and might very easily be misunderstood in a society where almost all were prejudiced against her. He supposed that the world expected him to marry her when a little more time had passed, and he knew that nothing was further from his thoughts. It was at this time, just two years after Herbert Arden's death, that he began to torment himself, perhaps with better reason than in former days. Knowing as he did what might be said, and what in all likelihood was said about his friendship for Laura, the advisability of discontinuing his visits almost altogether presented itself for consideration, and would not be summarily annihilated by any specious argument. It had formerly seemed to him treacherous even to think of loving Arden's wife, though the thought had rarely crossed his mind even as the wildest hypothesis until some time after his friend had been dead and buried. It now seemed as impossible as ever to love her, but he was obliged by the commonest of common sense considerations to admit that such an affection would not imply the smallest breach of faith to Arden's memory. She was a widow, and any man who knew her had a right to love her and to ask her hand if he so pleased. That right, then, was his also, if ever he should need to avail himself of it. But it was precisely because he did not love Laura Arden that the doubt as to his own conduct arose. As he had no intention of asking her to marry him, could he and should he put her in such a position as to favour speculation in regard to her? Unquestionably he should not. But in that case, what was he to do? The old, ignoble, worldly instinct told him to create a diversion by causing gossip in other directions, where scandal would be easily manufactured, and then to procure himself the liberty of doing what he pleased behind the world's back, so to say. But to his credit it must be admitted that he did not entertain the idea for a moment. It disgusted him and he sought for a solution elsewhere, trying, in his imagination, every conceivable expedient by which he fancied that he might enjoy Laura's society without compromising her in any way. In such cases, however, it is hard to find a stratagem which shall at once satisfy the exigencies of the situation, and an honest man's conscience and sense of honour. He had long given up the custom of going to see Laura every other day, and when she was at her mother's house he was rarely invited, on account of the Princess's prejudice against him, and which no good conduct on his part seemed capable of destroying. To give up seeing Laura altogether was a sacrifice so great that he did not feel strong enough to make it; nor, perhaps, would Laura herself have understood it. Yet, unless he kept away from her for a long time, he knew that the all-wise world would continue to say that he saw her every day. The more he thought about it, the harder he found it to come to any decision. Considering the terms on which he now saw her, and that in former times they had more than once spoken of the same matter, he at last reluctantly resolved to lay the question before her, and to let her decide what he should do. He hated to ask advice of any one, and he detested even the appearance of shifting responsibility upon another. But he could see no other way. Laura found it as hard to come to a determination as he had. During the last six months he had become almost a necessary part of her life, and she would have turned to him as naturally as he now turned to her for counsel in any difficult situation. Her own character was too simple and straightforward to demand the elaborate explanations of the nature of friendship, which he required of himself; but when he put the difficulty before her she saw it plainly enough. "For myself, I am perfectly indifferent," she said at last. "I do not see why I should sacrifice anything because there are people bad enough to imagine evil where there is none. You and I need no justification of our friendship, and as I cannot see that I, at least, am much in debt to the world, it is not clear to me why I should care what it says. But I have to consider my mother." "And yourself, in spite of what you say," answered Ghisleri. "You yourself are first--your mother next." "Of course you, as a man, look at it in that light. But if it were not for my mother, do not imagine that I should take any notice of what people choose to say. They have said such vile things of me already that they can hardly invent anything worse. If it were perfectly indifferent to you, I do not say but that I might prefer to be careful." "If what were indifferent?" asked Ghisleri, who did not understand the rather enigmatic speech. "If you were quite an indifferent person to me--which you are not." Her eyes met his frankly, and she smiled as she spoke. There was not a trace of timidity or shyness in the speech. She had no reason whatever for concealing the fact that she liked him. But he, on his part, experienced an odd sensation, the meaning of which was by no means clear to him. He could not have told whether it partook more of satisfaction or of disappointment, but it was a distinct emotion of a kind which he had never expected to feel in her presence. "I am glad you like me," he said. "I should be very unhappy if you did not. I value your friendship more than anything in the world." "You have earned it if ever a man did," she answered. "It is enough that I have it. I do not know how I have deserved anything half so precious." "I know more of what you have done for me than you suppose," said Laura. "Never mind that. The facts are simple enough. We are good friends; we depend, for a certain amount of happiness, upon seeing one another often; because the world does not understand, it expects us to sacrifice our inclinations. For my part, I refuse. There is only one person to be consulted--my mother, who is dearer to me than any friend can be. I will speak to her and make her see the truth. In the mean time do nothing, and forget all this absurd complication. It is only the unreal shadow of an artificial morality which has no foundation nor true existence whatever. You know that better than I." Ghisleri laughed. "When you choose to express yourself strongly, you do not lack force," he said. "In the old days I used to fancy that if you spoke out plainly, your sentiments would take the form of a prayer, or a hymn, or something of that sort." "I am much more human than you think me," Laura answered. "I told you so once, and you would not believe me." Laura therefore took the matter into her own hands, and spoke to her mother about it. But the Princess was not easily persuaded, and when the summer came the two were still at variance. A woman like Laura's mother is hard to move when she has allowed a prejudice to take firm root in her mind, and becomes altogether obstinate when that prejudice is tolerably well founded. It was an unquestionable fact that Ghisleri had always been considered a dangerous and rather fast man, whose acquaintance did not improve a woman's reputation, and the Princess of Gerano had no means of understanding his real character. It was a constant wonder to her that Laura should like him. The excellent lady never at all realised that the blood of poor Jack Carlyon was in his daughter's veins, and that, sooner or later, it might make itself felt and produce rather unexpected results. Carlyon's chief characteristic had been his recklessness of consequences. If the Princess had remembered that, she would have understood better why Laura had married Herbert Arden in spite of his deformities, and why she made an intimate friend of Pietro Ghisleri in spite of his reputation. But Laura had never shown any subversive tendencies in childhood or early youth, and her fearless truthfulness, her rather melancholy and meditative nature when a young girl, and her really charitable heart had combined with her pale beauty and saintly eyes to make her mother suppose her infinitely more submissive, obedient, and nun-like than she actually was. After long and patient discussion Laura turned rather suddenly. "I am not a child, mother," she said. "I know Signor Ghisleri very much better than you, and better than most people can. I know enough of his past life to understand that, although he has done many foolish things and some cruel ones, he is not what I call a bad man, and he has changed very much for the better during the last two years. I will not give up his friendship for the sake of pleasing a set of people who do not even pretend to like me." "Laura, Laura, take care! You are falling in love with that man, and he is not fit to be your husband." "In love?" Laura's deep eyes flashed angrily, for the first time in her mother's recollection of her. "You do not know what you are saying, mother." The Princess sighed, and turned her face away. She attributed the extraordinary change in her daughter to Ghisleri's bad influence, and her prejudice against him increased accordingly. She could not see that the girl had developed in the course of years into a fully grown woman whose character had not turned out to be what she had expected. And Laura was very angry at the suggestion that she could possibly love Ghisleri--quite unjustifiably so, her mother considered. But here, again, the elder woman did the younger an injustice. Love was very far from Laura's thoughts just then, though her friendship for Pietro was assuming an importance it had not had before. She did not speak again for some minutes, and when she did, she spoke quietly and without any show of anger. Her tone was not hard, nor was anything she said either cutting or defiant, but the Princess felt that there was to be no appeal from the verdict. "Dearest mother," she said, "I never did anything and I never will do anything with the intention of displeasing or hurting you. But I have my own life to lead, and my own responsibilities to bear, in my own way. There are some things in which I must judge for myself, and one of them is in the matter of choosing my friends." "If you had chosen any one but that wild Ghisleri!" sighed the Princess. "A man who knew him better than either you or I can, loved him dearly, and when he was dying bade him take care of me. The promise then made has been faithfully kept. I will not shut my door to my husband's old friend, who has become mine, merely because the world is what it is--a liar, an evil speaker, and a slanderer." Laura was a little pale, and the lids drooped over her eyes as though to hide something she would not show. It was the first time she had ever spoken of Herbert Arden since her child had been born. If the world had been aware that the matter of her intimacy with Ghisleri had been under discussion, it would have been much delighted by her decision. It would really have been too unkind of Laura to deprive it of a subject of conversation full of never-flagging interest. For not a day passed without a reference to Pietro's devotion to her, and the reference was rarely made without a dash of spite and a little flavouring of social venom. Laura was not to be forgiven for having made Ghisleri prefer her company to that of a score of other women, all, in their own estimation, as good-looking as she, and infinitely more agreeable. Ghisleri himself accepted the situation, since Laura wished him to do so, though he was constantly uneasy about his own position. It seemed to him that if there were the slightest danger of giving colour to any serious slander on her name it must be his duty to disobey her and altogether discontinue his visits. And he knew also that he would naturally be the last person to hear what was common gossip. The season, however, passed on quietly enough until Lent began, bringing the period of mortification and fasting during which society uses its legs less and its tongues more. This, it may be here again said for the sake of clearness, was the Lenten season of the second year after Arden's death, and after the final break between Ghisleri and Maddalena dell' Armi. At that time several events occurred which it is necessary to chronicle in greater detail, for the better understanding of this history, and for the more complete refutation of the story which passed commonly current for some time afterwards, and which very nearly brought about the most irreparable consequences. CHAPTER XXII. During nearly a year a large number of persons had been acquainted with the story of Adele's written confession, but, as has been shown, the matter was considered so serious as to deserve secrecy--the highest social honour which can be conferred on truth. It had never reached the ears of any member of the Savelli or of the Gerano families, and but for Maddalena dell' Armi, Ghisleri himself would never have heard it. Although Adele was suffering the dire results of her evil deeds in the shape of almost incurable morphinism, the principal cause of her first fears and consequent illness no longer troubled her as it had once done. She now believed that the confession had, after all, caught upon some projection or in some crevice of the masonry in the shaft of the oubliette at Gerano, and that it would never be heard of again. It was incredible, she thought, that if any person had found it and read it, he or she should not attempt to extort a large sum of money for it. But no one appeared to demand anything. That was sufficient proof that no one possessed the document, and it must therefore have remained safely where it had fallen. Her one and only fear was lest something should happen to that part of the castle which might make repairs necessary, and possibly lead to the discovery of the letter. But that was improbable in the extreme. The massive walls had stood as they were during nearly four centuries, and did not show any signs of weakness. As for Lucia, if she ever betrayed the secret, or hinted to her present mistress that there was a secret to betray, and if any story got afloat by her agency, Adele could deny it, and her position was strong enough in the world to force most people to accept her denial. She almost laughed at the idea. The principal statement contained in the confession would seem almost grotesque in its improbability. She knew very well that if she ever heard such an action imputed to her worst enemy she would not believe it; she would not even take the trouble to repeat it, because nothing was more foolish than to get the reputation of telling incredible tales. She was quite sure of this, for when she mentally tried the position she found that she could not have given credence to such a legend even if any one had accused Laura Arden of having done the deed. And as she hated Laura with a whole-hearted hatred that did not hesitate at trifles, she considered the argument to be conclusive. Her hatred grew as the fatal effects of the morphia began to unsettle her brain and disturb the strong power of self-control which had borne her through so many dangers. The necessity for keeping up an outward show of good relations with her step-sister on pain of the severest financial punishment if she angered her father, irritated her extremely. She was well aware that, in spite of the reconciliation and of her own behaviour, the world still chose to believe most of the things she had formerly said of Laura, and that the latter's position was anything but enviable. Nevertheless, Laura seemed to survive very well, and in Adele's opinion had obtained far more than her share of good things. That she had really suffered terribly, in her own way, by the death of her husband, none knew better than Adele, and that, at least, was a satisfaction. But in other ways she was singularly fortunate. Her little boy was as sturdy and strong and sound as any mother could have wished; for deformity which is the result of accident is not inherited. Moreover, there seemed to be little doubt but that the uncle from whom Arden had expected a large fortune would now leave his money to little Herbert. Laura was, of course, decidedly poor at present, judging from Adele's point of view, but in the life she led she needed very little money, and what she had sufficed for her wants. She was evidently quite contented. Then, as though the rest were not enough, she had what Adele called a monopoly of Pietro Ghisleri, who acted as though he intended to marry her, and whom she received as though she meant to accept him. As Laura Arden, society could treat her as it pleased, but as Ghisleri's wife, society would not only open its arms to her, but would in all likelihood espouse her cause in any future difference or difficulty. Ghisleri would know how to assure her position, and would have no difficulty in making her respected, for he was a most particularly unpleasant person to quarrel with and it was not every one who had Campodonico's luck. Of course, there might yet be time to prevent the marriage, and Adele rashly resolved that if that were possible she would accomplish it. Of late she had begun to include Ghisleri in her hatred of Laura, having finally given up the attempt to attract him into her immediate circle. He was always the same with her, and never, in the course of years, had seemed willing to advance beyond the limits of ordinary and friendly acquaintance, though she had often tried to draw him further. The ordinary methods failed with him. He could not be tempted into making confidences, which step is one of the first and perhaps the most important in the ordinary, business-like flirtation. He was apparently indifferent to praise as he was to blame, except from one or two persons. He never had an enemy, to ruin whom he needed a woman's help--a short method of reaching intimacy which is not to be despised in dealing with refined bad people. Least of all, was he a man who could be led to compromise himself in a woman's eyes in such a way as to consider it his duty to make love to her. Adele had tried all these approved ways of beginning a serious flirtation with Pietro, but had failed each time, and it enraged her to see that Laura could keep him without any stratagem at all, by sheer force of attraction. For she had no belief at all in their platonic friendship. One or the other, or both, must be in love, for the very simple and well-known reason that a permanent close friendship between man and woman within certain limits of age was an utter impossibility. Laura was perhaps too foolish to realise the fact, but Ghisleri was certainly not the man to forget it. She disliked him because she had not been able to attract him herself, and she hated him for being attracted by Laura. She now made up her mind that unless she could ruin him in Laura's estimation, the marriage could not be prevented, and she began to revolve the chances for accomplishing her purpose. Her intelligence was not what it had been, for it was subject now to fits of abnormal activity and to a subsequent reaction, in which she was not always perfectly well aware of what was going on around her. In the one state she was rash, over-excited, nervous; in the other she was dull and apathetic, and lost herself in hazy dreams of a rather disconnected character. The consequence was that she found it very hard to hit upon any consecutive plan which presented even the faintest hope of success. Several times she was on the point of doing something very foolish, when she had almost lost control of herself, and she was only saved by the long habit of worldly tact which would probably survive all her other faculties if they were wrecked by the habit which was killing her. But she grew distrustful of herself and of her powers, and a new suffering was added to the many she already had to bear, as she gradually became conscious of the terrible change in herself. She tried to find out all she could about Pietro Ghisleri. At that time all Rome was going mad about making money by speculation, and all sorts of dishonest transactions necessarily went on under cover of greater ones honest in themselves. Adele did her best to ascertain whether Ghisleri were connected with any of them, or with any affair whatever of a nature which could be criticised. But she failed altogether. He looked on at the general rush for money with perfect indifference, and was quite content with the little he already possessed. It struck Adele that a card scandal would do him as much harm as anything, and she made inquiries as to his fondness for play, but was informed that he rarely played at all, and generally lost a little if he did. He was hard to catch. So far as she could learn, he had changed his mode of life very considerably during the past two years. It was quite certain that he had definitely broken with Maddalena dell' Armi, though no one was really sure of the exact date at which the rupture had taken place. They were both clever people who kept their secrets to themselves on the simple plan that, if a thing is not to be known, it should not be told. Laura was the only other woman whom he visited regularly, and his doings were far too well known to make it possible to float a scandal about him in connexion with some one else, which should reach Laura's ears. Besides, Laura would not care. She was quite capable of not taking the slightest notice, just as in former times she had not cared whether he saw Maddalena every day or not. All she wanted, thought Adele, was that Ghisleri should be at her feet--and there he was. At last she hit upon the rather wild plan of asking Ghisleri himself what she had better do. There was something diabolical in the idea of taking his own advice in order to ruin him, which appealed to her in the present state of her brain and nerves. They often met in society, and she caught sight of him that very night at a Lenten party in Casa Montevarchi--one of the last ever given in that house, by the by, for the family was ruined soon afterwards. She followed him in the crowd and touched his shoulder with her fan. "Will you give me your arm?" she asked. "Thanks. I want to sit down somewhere. There is a sofa over there." "You still come to these talking matches, I see," said Ghisleri, as they sat down. "It must be for the sake of saying something interesting, for it can certainly not be in the hope of hearing anything of the kind." "You can still make sharp speeches," laughed Adele. "I thought my step-sister had converted you, and that you were turning into a sort of Saint Propriety." "Oh, you thought so," said Pietro, coolly. "Well, you see you were mistaken. There is as little of propriety about me as usual, or of saintship either." He looked at the worn and dilapidated features of the woman beside him, at her hollow cheeks and lustreless eyes, and he almost pitied her. He wondered how she had the courage to keep up the comedy and to face the world as she did, night after night, old before her youth was half over, ugly when she had been pretty but two years earlier, weary always, and haunted by the shadow of the poison to which she was a slave. "You need not be angry," she answered. "I did not mean anything disagreeable. I wish you would say more sharp things, it is refreshing to hear a man talk after listening to a pack of little boys." "Why do you listen to them?" "They amuse me for five minutes, and when I have tolerated them as long as that I cannot get rid of them. Then I begin to long for a little serious talk with a man like you--a man one can ask a question of with the hope of getting a reasonable answer." "You are very good to put it in that way," said Ghisleri. "Have you any particular question to ask me now? I will be as intensely reasonable as I can in my reply, on condition that it is a thing of which I know nothing whatever." "What an extraordinary restriction!" exclaimed Adele. "Not at all. If I should know anything about the matter in hand it would be sure to be so little that it would confuse me and hamper the free working of my imagination, which might otherwise produce interesting and even startling effects. You may have heard that a little knowledge is dangerous. That is the meaning of the proverb." "I knew I should get something original from you. You always say something which no one else would." "And you always discover in me some new and beautiful quality which had escaped my notice," answered Ghisleri. "Is it with a view to getting some particular sort of answer to the question you meditate, that you flatter me so nicely before asking it?" "Of course," laughed Adele. "What did you expect? But I do not think you would answer the question at all. You would give me a dissertation on something else and then go away and leave me to be torn to pieces by the little boys again." "What an awful death!" laughed Ghisleri. "I will not leave you. I will protect you against whole legions of little boys." "You look as if you could. You are quite as strong as ever now, are you not? You never feel any pain from your wound?" "Never," answered Pietro, indifferently. "Was that the grave question to which you wanted a serious and well-considered reply?" "Do not be absurd!" cried Adele, with a laugh. "One has to make civil inquiries of that kind sometimes. It is a social duty. Even if I hated you I should ask if you were well." "Of course. The old-fashioned poisoners in the middle ages did that. It was of no use to waste expensive poison on a man who was ill and might die without it. They practised economy." "What a horrible idea!" exclaimed Adele, shuddering. "Horrible ideas were the fashion then," pursued Ghisleri. "I have thought a great deal about those times since you showed me those interesting places at Gerano, nearly two years ago. The modern publisher of primers would have made his fortune under the Borgia domination. Fancy the titles: 'Every man his own executioner, a practical guide for headsmen, torturers and poisoners, by a member of the profession (diploma) with notes, diagrams, and a special table of measurements and instructions for using the patent German rack, etc.' Does not that sound wildly interesting? They would have had it on the drawing-room table in every castle. It would have been a splendid book for hawkers. Gerano made me think of it." Adele laughed in rather a forced way, and her eyes moved uneasily, glancing quickly in one direction and another. "You would have been a dreadful person in those times, I am quite sure," she said. "You would have been a monster of cruelty." "Of course I should. So should we all. But we manage those little things so easily now, and so much more tastefully." "Exactly," said Adele, who saw her chance and an opportunity of turning the conversation at the same time. "I would like your views upon modern social warfare. If you wished to ruin your enemy, how would you go about it?" "A man or a woman?" asked Ghisleri, calmly. "Oh, both. A man first. It is always harder to injure a man than a woman, is it not?" "So they say. Do you wish to kill the man or to ruin him altogether, or only to injure him in the eyes of the world?" "Take the three in the other order," suggested Adele. "A mere injury first--and the rest afterwards." "Very well. I have something very neat in the killing line--to use the shopkeeper style. I will keep it to the end. Let me see. You wish to do a man a great injury--enough, say, to make a woman who loves him turn upon him. Is that it?" "Yes, that would do very well," said Adele, as though she were discussing the fashion of a new frock. "If you happen to be a good hand at forgery," answered Ghisleri, with perfect equanimity, "write a number of letters purporting to be from him to another woman. Put anything you like into them, take them to the woman who loves him, and ask a large sum for them. She will probably pay it and leave him. You will accomplish your object and earn money at the same time. If you cannot forge his handwriting, forge that of an imaginary woman--that is easy enough--and follow the same course as before. It is almost sure to succeed." "What a surpassingly diabolical scheme!" exclaimed Adele, with a laugh. "Yes, I flatter myself it is not bad. Of course you can make the matter public if only you are sure of the forgery being good, or of an imaginary woman being forthcoming at the right moment. But, on the whole, the finest way of ruining a man before the world is to steal his money. No reputation can stand poverty and slander at the same time." "But it is not always easy to steal a man's money," objected Adele. "Oh, yes, unless a man is very rich. Bring a suit against his title, and if he fights it, the lawyers will eat up all he has. Then you can play the magnanimous part and say that you give up the suit out of pity for him. That is very pretty, too. But the prettiest of all is the new way of killing people, because nobody can possibly find you out." "What do you make them die of?" asked Adele nervously. "Cholera--typhus--fever, almost anything you please. It is a convenient way because the epidemic of the day is generally the most ready to hand. What did you say? I beg your pardon, I thought you spoke. Yes, it is delightful, and in most cases I believe it is almost sure to succeed. I dined with Gouache last night, and Professor Wüsterschinder, the great German authority on cutting up live rabbits, you know, was there. A charming man--speaks French like a human being, and understands Italian well. I liked him very much. The conversation turned upon murder. You know Gouache has a taste for horrors, being the gentlest and kindest of men. The professor told a long story of a doctor who murdered the father, mother, and aunt of a girl whom none of the three would let him marry. He did it in the course of medical treatment, with three different vegetable poisons--masterly, the professor said. There was an inquiry and they dug everybody up again, and all that sort of thing, but no one could positively prove anything and the doctor married the girl after all." "You seem full of horrors this evening," said Adele, moving one shoulder in a restless, jerking way which was becoming a habit. "I always am," answered Ghisleri, turning his cold blue eyes on her. "I know the most horrible things and am always just on the point of saying them." "Please do not!" exclaimed Adele, shrinking away from him into the corner of the sofa, almost in physical fear of him now. "I was telling you about the cholera trick, or I was going to tell you. The other story was only the prelude. After giving it to us with a number of details I have forgotten, Professor Wüsterschinder launched out about the wonders of science, as those men always do, and positively made me uncomfortable with the numbers of unfortunate rabbits and puppies he cut to shreds in his conversation. Then he came to the point and began to explain how easy it is to murder people by natural means like typhus. It is done by taking the--good Heavens, Donna Adele, what is the matter!" Adele had uttered a short, low cry, and her face had turned very white. Her lips were contorted in an expression of anguish such as Pietro had never seen, and her fingers were twisting together as though they would break. "Can I do anything?" he asked, anxiously. He feared she was going to be seized by some kind of convulsion, but the woman's strong will helped her even then. "Hold my fan before my arm," she managed to say, and she felt for something in her pocket with her right hand. In a moment she produced a tiny syringe with a point like a needle, and a little bottle. With incredible quickness and skill she filled the syringe, pricked the skin on her left arm, and ran the point into it, and then pressed the tiny piston slowly till it would go no further. In little more than one minute she had put everything into her pocket again, and taking her fan from Ghisleri's hand, leaned back in the corner of the sofa, with a sigh of relief. "I am afraid I made you nervous," he said, in a tone of apology. "Not at all," she answered. "I had forgotten to take my morphia before coming--that was all. I suffer terribly with pains in my head when I do not take it." "And is the pain gone already?" asked Ghisleri, in some surprise, and wondering how she would answer. "Oh, no! But it will be gone very soon. I am quieter when I know I have taken the morphia. Of course," she said, with a forced laugh, "you must not suppose that I take it often, not even every day. I believe it is very bad in large quantities." "Of course." Ghisleri could hardly help smiling at the poor attempt to disclaim any slavery to the fatal drug, contradicting, as it did, what she had said but a moment before. For the third time since Arden's death the conviction came upon him that Adele had been the responsible cause of it, and this time it was destined to be permanent. The theory of coincidence was exhausted, and he abandoned it. The stories he had told her about Professor Wüsterschinder, the great German authority, were quite true, and Ghisleri's eyes had been opened on the previous evening to the possibilities of evil disclosed by modern science. He was not yet sure of what Adele had done, but he was convinced that the general nature of the process she had employed to communicate the fever to Arden was similar to those which the professor had described, and that she must, in all probability, have got the necessary information from a scientific book or article on the subject, which she had either procured expressly, or which had perhaps fallen under her eyes by chance. She, on her part, had been desperately frightened, as she had good cause to be, for it was almost inconceivable to her that he could have accidentally gone so near the mark as he was going when her cry had stopped him. She felt that if he had pronounced the next half a dozen words, she must have gone mad there and then in the drawing-room where she sat, and she had instinctively prevented him proceeding any further. Then in the convulsion of terror she felt, she had resorted to her sole comforter, the morphia, and it had not played her false. In a short time its influence was at work and indeed the mere act of taking it was in itself soothing in the extreme. She felt herself growing calm again and more able to face the new difficulties and terrors that had arisen in her path. And they were many. She had no doubt now that Ghisleri had either read the lost confession or had spoken with some one who had. It was appalling to think that in that very room there might be a score of persons who knew what that letter contained as well as he. The morphia helped her wonderfully. But it was clear that Ghisleri had her in his power. An idea flashed across her mind. It was so simple that she wondered how she had not thought of it before. The letter had really fallen to the bottom of the shaft. Ghisleri, interested perhaps in the story of Paolo Braccio, had strolled down to the dungeon again by himself and had seen the paper lying there. In that case he alone knew of its existence or of its contents, besides herself and Lucia. The thought was so agreeable, compared with the alternative of supposing that all society knew the details of her evil deeds, that she clung to it. Then she looked at the man who, as she supposed, had power to dispose of her existence at his pleasure, and she wondered whether he had a price. All men had, she had heard. But as it seemed to her now, this particular man would not be like the generality, or else the price he would set on her letter would be of the kind which she could not possibly pay, because she would never be able to obtain for him what he might want. The feeling she had known in the first months of her torment returned upon her now, and very strongly--the awful feeling of degradation compared even with the worst of the people she knew. In her eyes, Ghisleri, with all his misdeeds, seemed a being of superior purity and goodness. He had never done what she had done, nor anything approaching to it in the most distant way. He had faced men in fair fight, and hurt them, and been almost mortally hurt himself, but he had never stabbed an enemy in the back nor dealt a blow in the dark. He had loved more than one woman, and had been loved in return, but no one had ever hinted that a woman's confidence had passed his lips, nor that he had ever spoken lightly of any woman's good name. If he had done evil, he had done it fairly, defiantly, above board, and in the light of day. Adele envied him with all her heart as he sat there beside her, confident in his own honourable reputation--as honour is reckoned in the world--and free to go and to come and to do what seemed good in his own eyes without a second thought of the consequences or the least fear of betraying himself. There was not at that moment one person in the room with whom she would not have been only too glad to exchange places, station, fortune, name, reputation--everything. And she fancied Ghisleri knew it, as indeed he almost did, and she feared to meet his eyes. The silence had lasted so long that it was fast becoming awkward. It was rarely indeed that Ghisleri forgot the social duty of destroying silence ruthlessly the moment it appears, with any weapon which comes to hand, from a feather to a bombshell. But on the present occasion his thoughts were so many and so complex as to fill his mind completely for a few minutes, so that all outward considerations sank into insignificance. The effort was made at last by Adele, the one of the two who had by far the most at stake in playing her part. "Are you aware," she began, with an attempt at playfulness which was almost weird, "that you have not spoken a single word during the last quarter of an hour? Have you quite forgotten my existence? My dear friend, you are growing almost rude in your old age!" "Good manners were never anything but an affectation with me," answered Ghisleri. "But you are quite right. There are little conventions of that sort which must be respected if society is to keep together and hold up its head--though why it should not lay down that same head and let itself go to pieces is beyond my comprehension. Present company is always excepted, you know--so you and I would survive as glorious and immortal relics of a by-gone civilisation." He hardly knew what he was saying, but he let the words run on with the easy habit of talking and saying nothing which sometimes saves critical situations for those who possess it and which can be acquired by almost any one who is not shy. The first step in studying that useful accomplishment is to talk when everybody else is talking, and not to pay the slightest attention to the sounds which pass one's lips. Any noise will do, bad or good--as the bearer of the good news to Aix put it--only, if possible, from the first let the noise take the shape of words. As every one else is talking, no one will hear you. Some of Mother Goose's rhymes are excellent for such practice, but those who prefer to recite the Eton grammar will obtain a result quite as satisfactory in the end. No one listens, and it makes no difference. You will then get a reputation for joining cheerfully in the talk of the day. But if you sit looking at your plate because you have nothing to say, the givers of dinner parties will curse you in their hearts, and will rarely ask you to eat their food, which treatment, though it will ultimately prolong your life, will not contribute to your social success. Gradually, if you practise the system assiduously, you will be able to walk alone, so to say. By attraction, your unconscious phrases will become exactly like those of your neighbours. You will then only need to open your mouth, stretch the vocal chords, and supply the necessary breath, and admirably constructed inanities will roll out, even when everybody is listening, and while you are gaining time to select in your mind a sufficiently cutting epithet with which to adorn your friend Smith Tompkins's name when it is mentioned, or while you are nicely calculating the exact amount of money you can ask the said Smith Tompkins to lend you the next time you have lost at baccarat. CHAPTER XXIII. The state of certainty in regard to Adele's doings, at which Ghisleri had now arrived, seemed to make any action in the matter useless if not practically impossible. He ascertained without difficulty the law concerning such attempts to do bodily injury as he was quite sure she had made. The crime was homicide when the attempt led to fatal results. There was no doubt of that. On the other hand, even if it should seem advisable to bring Adele to justice, and to involve both the Savelli and Gerano families in an affair which would socially ruin them for at least one whole generation, in case Adele were convicted, yet the positive proofs would be very hard to produce, and the ultimate good to be gained would be infinitesimally small compared with the injury done to innocent persons. The best course was to maintain the most absolute secrecy and to discourage as far as possible any allusions others might make to the mystery of the lost letter. Ghisleri, too, understood human nature far too well to suppose that Adele had in the first instance desired or expected to kill Herbert Arden. She had most probably only meant to cause Laura the greatest possible anxiety and trouble by bringing a dangerous illness upon her husband. Scarlet fever, as is well known, is not often fatal to adults in Italy, and such cases as Arden's in which death ensues within eight and forty hours, are so rare as to be phenomenal in any part of the world. But Ghisleri had found them described in the book he chanced to possess, under the head of "rudimentary cases ending fatally"--and it was there stated that they were the consequence of "a very violent infection." Adele, in practising some one of the methods of fever-poisoning which the great professor had described so vividly at Gouache's, had of course not known exactly what result she was about to produce. She had assuredly not foreseen that Arden would die, and had very probably not even believed that he would really take the fever at all. As for the wish to do harm, Pietro explained that naturally enough. He knew that the dinner of reconciliation must have been brought about by the Prince of Gerano, and he guessed that in the interview between the father and the daughter Adele had been deeply humiliated by being forced to yield and by the necessity of openly retracting what she had said of Arden and Laura. In a woman whose impulses were naturally bad, and whose mind had never been very well balanced, it was not very hard to explain how the idea had presented itself, if chance had at that moment thrown the necessary information into her way. The whole story was now sufficiently connected from first to last, and Ghisleri, as he thought over it, saw how all the details he remembered confirmed the theory. He recollected the doctor's remarks about the case, and how surprised he had been by its extraordinary violence. He recalled vividly all that he had heard of Adele's behaviour immediately after the dinner party, and his own impression of her appearance when he had met her in the street and had recommended her a soporific, was extremely distinct, as well as her behaviour whenever, in the course of the past two years, he had said anything intentionally, or not, which she could construe as referring to her crime. The chain was complete from the beginning to the end and her present dangerous state was the direct consequence of the very first slander she had cast on Laura Arden. What Ghisleri felt when he was fully persuaded that Adele Savelli had brought about the death of his best friend, is not easily described. In natures like his, the desire for vengeance is very strong--strongest when most justified. The instinct which demands life for life is always present somewhere in the natural human heart and, on the whole, the great body of human opinion has in most ages approved it and given it shape in law--or sanction, where laws have been or still are rudimentary. Ghisleri was not therefore either unusually cruel or bloodthirsty in wishing that Adele might expiate her crime to the full. But in this case, even if capital punishment had not been abolished in Italy, the law would not have applied it, and personal revenge without the law's assistance being out of the question in the nineteenth century, Pietro could hardly have invented a worse fate than actually awaited his friend's murderess. There was a grand logic, as it seemed to him, in the implacable retribution which was pursuing and must before long overtake Adele Savelli. He could enjoy the whole satisfaction of the most complete vengeance without so much as raising a finger to hasten it. That was the first result of his cogitations, and he was very well pleased with it. He bought books containing accounts of morphinism and calmly tried to calculate how long Adele had to live, what precise phenomena her end would exhibit, and to decide whether she would lose her mind altogether before the physical consumption of the tissues destroyed her body. But before long he became disgusted with himself, for he was not cruel by nature, though capable of doing very cruel things under the influence of passion. It was probably not from any inherent nobility of character, but rather out of the commonest pity combined with a rather uncommon though material refinement of taste, that he at last turned from his study and contemplation of Adele's sufferings and resolutely put her and them out of his mind. "Heaven can do with her what it pleases. I will think no more about it," he said to himself one day, and the saying was profoundly characteristic of the man. He had never been an unbeliever since the last years of his boyhood, when, like many boys in our times, he had already fancied himself a man, and had thought it manly to believe in nothing. But such a state of mind was not really natural to him, nor even possible for any length of time. Of his intimate convictions he never spoke, for they concerned no one, and no one had a right to judge him. But that he really had certain convictions no one who knew him well could doubt, and on certain occasions they undeniably guided his actions. Laura Arden had not heard even the faintest hint about the lost letter, and it became one of Ghisleri's principal occupations to keep the story from her. She was, of course, not in the way of hearing it unless some unusually indiscreet person should take pains to acquaint her with it; but such people are unfortunately not uncommon, and Pietro knew that at any moment Laura might hear something which would make her look at her husband's death in a new light. The shock would be terrible, he knew, and he did not like to think of it. He little suspected that when the story reached her ears it would be so distorted as to convey a very different meaning to her, nor did he guess the part he himself was to play in what followed. A month and more passed away without any incident of importance. He saw Laura constantly and met Adele occasionally in society. The latter always greeted him with a great affectation of cordiality, but evidently avoided conversing with him alone. Her expression when she looked at him was invariably smiling, but the eyes which had grown so strange under the daily influence of the poison had something in them on the rare occasions when they met his that might have warned him had he suspected danger. But he anticipated nothing of that sort for himself. He supposed rather that she felt herself to be in his power and feared him, so that she would carefully avoid doing anything which might provoke him. But in this he was very much mistaken. He neither knew that she believed her lost letter to be in a safe place, where no one could find it and where it must ultimately turn to dust, nor realised how far her mind was already unbalanced. Still less did he understand all the causes for which she so sincerely hated him. Even had he felt that she was an active adversary, he would have undervalued her power to do him harm. Adele meditated her last stroke a long time. Though Ghisleri had frightened her terribly during the conversation she had herself asked for on that memorable evening in Casa Montevarchi, he had also suggested the very idea of which she had long been in search. She turned it over, twisted it, so to say, into every possible shape, and at last reached a definite plan. There was already something of madness in the scheme she ultimately adopted, and which she carried out with an ingenuity and secrecy almost beyond belief. Laura Arden was surprised one morning by receiving a letter addressed to her in an unknown handwriting, which she at once judged to be that of a woman, though it was small, cramped, and irregular. "Madam," the letter began, "I apply to your well-known charitable heart in the greatest conceivable distress. My husband, who was for a long time in the service of one of the noblest Roman families as a clerk in the steward's office, lost his position in the ruin which has lately overtaken that most excellent house. He walks the streets from sunrise to sunset in search of employment, and returns at night to contemplate the spectacle of misery afforded him by his starving family. Misery is upon us, and there is no bread, nor even the commonest food, such as day labourers eat, with which to quiet the piteous cries of our children." There followed much more to the same effect. The style was quite that of a woman of the class to which the writer claimed to belong, and the appeal for help, though couched in rather flowery language, had a ring of truth in it which touched Laura's heart. It had, indeed, been copied, with a few alterations, from a genuine letter which Adele Savelli had chanced to receive. The concluding sentences stated that the applicant, "who had never known poverty before was ashamed, for her husband's sake, to give the name which had so long been respectable. If Lady Herbert Arden was moved to pity and would give anything--the very smallest charity--would she put it into an envelope and send it to 'Maria B.' addressed to the general post-office?" Laura hesitated a moment, and then slipped a five franc note with her card into an envelope and addressed it as requested in the letter. On the next day but one she received a second, full of gratitude, and expressing the most humble and sincere thanks for the money, but not asking for anything more. This also was copied from a genuine communication, and the style was unmistakably the same. Adele had answered the first by sending a larger sum than Laura had given, in order that the reply might be relatively effusive. A week passed, and Laura heard no more from Maria B., and had almost forgotten the incident when a third letter came, imploring further assistance. Laura was far from rich, and gave all she could in the way of charity to such poor people as she considered to have an especial claim upon her consideration. On this occasion, therefore, she made no reply. This was exactly what Adele expected, and suited her plan admirably. After a sufficient time had elapsed to make it quite plain that Laura did not intend to answer the second appeal, another communication came through the post. The tone this time, was, if possible, more humble and piteous than before. After enumerating and discanting upon the horrible sufferings the family underwent, and declaring that unless some charitable Christian would give assistance in some shape, even were it but a loaf of bread, the whole household must inevitably perish, and after adding that father, mother, and all four children--the latter of tender age--expected to be turned into the street by a hard-hearted landlord, Maria B. made a distinct proposition. Contemptible as it must appear in the eyes of a great and rich English lady to take advantage of having discovered a secret in order to beg a charity, necessity knows no law. The ex-clerk was in possession of certain letters written by a near connexion of Lady Herbert's to a person with whom the latter was intimately acquainted, and whom, it was commonly reported, she was about to marry. These letters, five in number, referred to a transaction of a very peculiar nature, which it would be advisable not to make public, for the sake of the persons concerned. It was very far from Maria B.'s thoughts to degrade herself by setting a price upon the documents. If Lady Herbert cared to possess them they should be hers, and any small reward she might be willing to give would be humbly and thankfully accepted. In order that she might judge of the nature of the letters in question, Maria B. enclosed a copy of the one last written before the transaction alluded to had been concluded. Lady Herbert would be able to understand the names from the initials used by the copyist. Laura, even then, did not suspect in the least what she was about to find. She unfolded the separate sheet which had dropped from the letter when she had opened it, and began to read with an expression of curiosity and some amusement. "MY DEAR G.:--Of course I understand your position perfectly and I have known you long enough to be sure that you will take every advantage of it, short of doing me an open injury, which would hardly be for your own good. I know perfectly well, also, where you found the paper at Gerano, for I went to the spot myself to look for it, and it was gone. You had been there before me--by chance, no doubt, since you could not possibly guess that there was anything there worth finding. It is quite clear that if you really circulate that letter among our mutual friends, you will subject me to the ridicule of all Rome and to an amount of humiliation which I am not prepared to endure. You see I am quite willing to come to terms. But I think your demand is really out of all proportion to the circumstances. A hundred thousand francs for a miserable scrap of paper! Absurd, my friend. You are not the accomplished scoundrel I took you for if you suppose that I will pay that. Fifty thousand is the most I can possibly offer you. If you are satisfied with that, wear a gardenia in your coat to-night at the Frangipani dance. As for my behaviour in public, you need not warn me. I can keep my countenance almost as well as you. A.S." The letter dropped from Laura's hands before she had read to the end. An instant later she took it up again and tore it to the smallest shreds. She had heard of cases of blackmail, but never of anything so infamous as this. She did not hesitate long, but wrote within the hour a few lines to Maria B. in which she warned the latter not to dare to proceed with her abominable fraud, and rather rashly threatened her with the law if she attempted anything further of the same kind. As for speaking to Ghisleri about it, the idea never crossed her thoughts. Again three days passed. Then, one morning, the post brought a large and rather bulky letter, registered and addressed in a round, ornate, clerk's hand. Adele had got the address written at the post-office on pretence that her own handwriting was not legible enough. Laura supposed that the missive contained a business communication from her banker, and opened it without the least suspicion. It contained three greyish-blue envelopes of the paper now very commonly used for daily correspondence. All three were opened in a peculiar way, and precisely as Laura had more than once seen Ghisleri open a letter in her presence. He had a habit of tearing off a very thin strip along one edge, with so much neatness as almost to give the paper the appearance of having been cut with a sharp instrument. All three were addressed to him, moreover, in Adele Savelli's handwriting, without any attempt at disguise. Laura held them in her hand, turned them over, and saw the tiny prince's coronet over a single initial which Adele had used for years. There was no mistaking the authenticity of everything about the envelopes. Laura's heart stood still. There was no word of explanation from her former correspondent, but Laura recollected that the latter had said that the letters were five in number, whereas these were only three. It was clear that the remaining two had been kept back as a tacit threat in case the request for money were not complied with. Laura's first impulse was to treat them as she had treated the copy Maria B. had at first sent her, and to tear them into minute shreds, without so much as glancing at the contents. But a moment's reflection made her change her mind. She slipped them all back into the large envelope and locked them up in the drawer of her writing-table, putting the key into her pocket. Then she wrote a note to Ghisleri, asking him to come and see her as soon as possible, and despatched Donald with it immediately. She sat down to wait, strangely affected by what had happened. It is hardly to be wondered at, if the whole thing seemed inexplicable. Even at first she could not suspect Pietro Ghisleri. She would hardly have believed him capable of such an action as he was accused of had she seen him write the letters to which these of Adele were supposed to be answers. And yet those answers were there in the drawer, within reach of her hand. She had not the slightest doubt but that the original of which she had already seen a copy was amongst them. She could take it out and read it if she pleased. It was damning evidence--but she would not have believed in Ghisleri's guilt for twice as much proof as that. The one thing she was forced to admit was that Adele had really written the letters, though when, or for what purpose, or in what connexion, she could not guess. The whole thing might turn out to be some Carnival jest carried on by correspondence, and of which she had never heard. That was the only explanation she could find, as she waited for Pietro Ghisleri. He came within the hour. "Has anything happened?" he asked, as he took her hand. "I thought there was something anxious about your note." "Something very strange has happened," she answered, looking into his bright blue eyes, and acknowledging for the hundredth time that she would believe him in spite of any testimony to the contrary. "Sit down," she said. "I have something to give you which seems to belong to you. I will tell you the story afterwards." She opened the drawer again and handed him the envelope. He looked at it in surprise. "Am I to read what is inside?" he asked. "See for yourself." He took out the letters and looked at them as he had first looked at the outer address. Then, realising that they were addressed to himself, his expression changed. He recollected Adele's handwriting though she had rarely written to him anything more than an invitation, and he knew the paper on which she wrote. But where or when he had received these particular ones, or how they had got into Laura's hands, was a mystery. "What are they?" he asked. "Are they old invitations? Why have they been sent to you?" "I believe them to be forgeries," said Laura, "or else that they refer to some standing jest you and she once may have kept up for a time. I have not read them, but I have read a copy of one of them which was sent me, and I know what they are about. I will tell you the whole story afterwards. See for yourself, as I said before." Ghisleri drew out the first sheet. "If they are forgeries, they are very cleverly done," he said, with a laugh. "The person has even imitated my way of opening a letter." His face grew very grave, as Laura watched it while he was reading, and his brow knit together angrily. He read the second and the third, and she could see his anger rising visibly in his eyes as he silently looked at her each time he had finished one of them. When he had reached the end of the last he did not speak for some moments. "Did you say that you knew what these letters were about?" he asked at length, in a steady, cold voice. "I think so. I read a copy of one of them almost without knowing what I was doing. Adele pretends that you are trying to get money from her for a letter of hers you found at Gerano." "Yes, that is what they are about. It is her doing, but it is my fault." "Your fault!" exclaimed Laura. "But surely there never even was such a letter as she refers to. Do you understand at all?" "Yes, I understand much too well. She has done this for a distinct purpose. Tell me in the first place one thing. Do you still trust me in the face of such evidence as this?" "I trust you as much as ever," answered Laura. "Thank you," he said simply, and he looked into her deep eyes a moment before he continued. "There are two stories to tell, yours and mine. Tell yours first. Tell me how you came by the copy you speak of. Who sent it to you, and when?" As briefly as she could, Laura gave him all the details she could remember from the day she had received the first request for help from Maria B. It was painful to her to repeat what she could of the substance of the copy sent her, but she went through with it to the end. "That letter is not among these," said Ghisleri, thoughtfully. "It is one of the two which have been kept back for future use. Now let me tell you what I can remember. Do not be surprised that I should never have told you the story before. Since you can trust me in such a matter as this, you will believe me when I say that there was a good reason for not telling you." He gave a concise account of the conversation which had taken place between himself and Adele at the Montevarchi's party, omitting only what referred to his own suspicions concerning the manner of Arden's death. If possible, he meant always to conceal that side of the question from Laura. But it was necessary to tell her something about the document constantly mentioned in the letters. "There is a story in circulation," he said, "to the effect that when Donna Adele was ill at Gerano nearly two years ago, she was unwilling to confess to the parish priest, and wrote a confession to be sent to her confessor in Rome. A servant stole it, says the story, and it is supposed to be in existence, passing from hand to hand in society. It is quite possible that she believes that I bought it of the thief. But I doubt even that. She has most probably regained possession of it before attempting this stroke. And this is almost what I suggested to her in a general way, and laughing, as one way of ruining a man. I remember my own words--an injury that would make a woman who loves a man turn upon him. Substitute friendship for love, and the case is almost identical." "Yes," Laura answered thoughtfully. "Substitute friendship for love." She hardly knew why she repeated the words, and a moment later a faint colour rose in her cheeks. "She has done this thing, therefore, with the deliberate intention of ruining me in your eyes," said Ghisleri. "And she has utterly failed to do so, or even to change my opinion of you a little. But it is very well done. There are people who would have been deceived. The idea of forging--it is not forging--of writing imaginary letters to you herself is masterly." "I do not think she is quite sane. The morphia she takes is beginning to affect her brain. She does not always know what she is doing." "You take far too merciful and charitable a view," answered Laura, with some scorn. "No, on the contrary, if she were quite what she used to be, she would be more dangerous--she would not make mistakes. Two or three years ago she would not have gratuitously thrown herself into danger as she has now. She would not have made such a failure as this." "And what a failure it is! Do you know? It was very puzzling at first. To know positively that you never could have received those letters, and yet to see that they are still in existence, addressed to you, and opened in your peculiar way. I felt as though I were in a dream." "I wonder you did not feel inclined to believe me guilty. The evidence was almost as strong as it could be. In your position I should have hesitated." "Would you have believed such a thing of me, if it had been just as it is, only if the letters had gone to you instead of to me?" asked Laura. "Certainly not!" exclaimed Ghisleri, with strong emphasis. "That would be quite another matter." "I do not see that it would. You would have been exactly in my position, as you hinted a moment ago." "I was not thinking of you. The day I do not believe in you I shall not believe in God. You are the last thing I have left to believe in--and the best, my dear friend." He was very much in earnest, as Laura knew from the tone of his voice. But she would not look at him just then, because she felt that he was looking at her, and she preferred that their eyes should not meet. "Will you do anything about this?" she asked, after a pause, and not referring to what he had last said. "Will you destroy those vile things?" "Since they are addressed to me, I suppose I have a right to do so," answered Ghisleri, and he began slowly to tear up the sheets of the first letter. "There can be no doubt about their being genuine?" asked Laura, with sudden emotion. "Not at all, I should say. But you are the best judge of that. You should know her handwriting better than I. If you like," he added, with a short laugh, "I will go and show them to her and ask her if she wrote them. Shall I?" "Oh, no! Do not do that!" exclaimed Laura, who knew that he was quite capable of following such a course as he suggested. There was apparently nothing to be done. Laura believed that any attempt to make use of the two remaining letters would be as abortive as the first, and there could certainly be no use in keeping those which had been sent. On the contrary, it was possible that if they were preserved, chance might throw them into hands in which they might become far more dangerous than they were. "Shall I write to Maria B., whoever she is?" asked Laura. "You might send her another five francs," answered Ghisleri, grimly. "It would show her how much you value the documents she has for sale." "I will," said Laura, with a laugh. "How furious she will be! Of course it is Adele who gets these things." "Of course. Five francs is quite enough." And Laura, little knowing or guessing how it would be used against her, sent a five-franc note with her card in an envelope and addressed it. On the card she had written in pencil, "For Maria B., with best thanks." "There is one other thing I would like to do," she said. "But I do not know whether you would approve. It would give me such satisfaction--you know I am only a woman, after all." "What is that?" asked Ghisleri, "and why should you need my approval?" "Only this. To-morrow, and perhaps the next day, when she is quite sure I must have received those letters, I would like to drive with you in an open carriage where we should be sure to meet Adele. I would give anything to see her face." Ghisleri laughed. The womanly side of Laura's nature was becoming more apparent of late, and its manifestations pleased and surprised him. He thought Laura would hardly have seemed human if she had not wished to let Adele see how completely the attempt had failed which she had so ingeniously planned and carried out. "If anything would make the town talk, that would," he answered. "The only way to manage it would be to get the Princess to go with you and then take me as--" He stopped short, rather awkwardly. "I should rather go without her," said Laura, turning her face away to hide her amusement at the slip of the tongue of which he had been guilty. In Rome, for Ghisleri to be seen driving with the Princess of Gerano and her daughter would have been almost equivalent to announcing his engagement to Laura. CHAPTER XXIV. Adele had not anticipated such complete failure in the first instance. The five-franc note with Laura Arden's card told her plainly enough what her step-sister thought of the matter, but she had no means of finding out whether Ghisleri had been informed of what she had done or not, and her efforts to extract information from him when she met him were not successful. His tone and his manner towards her were precisely the same as formerly, and he was as ready as ever to enter into desultory conversation with her; but if she ventured to lead the talk in such a direction as to find out what she wanted to know, he instantly met her with a counter-allusion to her doings which frightened her and silenced her effectually. So the months passed in a sort of petty skirmishing which led to no positive result, and she secretly planned some further step which should complete those she had already taken, reverse Laura's judgment, and completely ruin Pietro Ghisleri with her and before the world. The uneasy workings of her unsettled brain grew more and more tortuous every day, until at last she felt unable to reason the question out without the help of some experienced person. She felt quite sure that there must be some way out of all her difficulties, by a short cut to victory, and that a clever man, a good lawyer, for instance, if he could be deceived into believing the story she had concocted, would know how to make use of it against her enemies. The difficulty was two-fold. In the first place she must put together such a body of evidence as no experienced advocate could refuse as ground for an action at law, and, secondly, she must find the said advocate and explain the whole matter to him from her own point of view. The action would be brought in self-defence against Pietro Ghisleri, who would be accused of having systematically attempted to levy blackmail. That was the crude form in which the idea suggested itself to Adele when she set to work. Her conviction now was that Pietro was only partially aware of the substance of the lost confession, and that the letter containing it was still at Gerano. This being the case, she could freely speak of it to her lawyer and describe the contents in any way she pleased, so as to turn the existence of the document to her own advantage. In the letters she had sent Laura and in the other two which she kept by her for future use, she had been careful never to say anything conclusive. Maria B. had indeed spoken of the transaction as being ended, but that could be interpreted as the unfounded supposition of a person not fully acquainted with the facts, and desirous of making money out of them as far as possible. The hardest thing would probably be to produce the woman who was supposed to have written to Laura, in case she should be needed. Money well bestowed, however, would do much towards stimulating the memory of some indigent and unscrupulous person, and the part to be played would, after all, be a small and insignificant one. On the other hand, the weak point in the case would be that Adele, while able to produce an unlimited number of her own letters to Ghisleri, would not have a single line of his writing to show. She could, indeed, fall back upon her own natural sense of caution, and declare that she had destroyed all he had written, in the mistaken belief that it would be safer to do so, and her lawyer could taunt his opponent with his folly in not doing likewise; but that would, after all, be rather a poor expedient. Or it might be pretended that Pietro had invariably written to her in a feigned handwriting signing himself, perhaps, with a single initial, as a precaution in case his letters should fall into the wrong hands. In that case she could produce whatever she chose. The best possible plan would be to extract one or two short notes from him upon which an ambiguous construction might be put by the lawyers. All this, Adele reflected, would need considerable time, and several months must elapse before she could expect to be ready. Her mind, too, worked spasmodically, and she was subject to long fits of apathy and extreme depression in the intervals between her short hours of abnormal activity. She knew that this was the result of the morphia she took in such quantities, and she resolved to make a great effort to cure herself of the fatal habit, if it were not already too late. As has been said more than once, Adele Savelli had possessed a very determined will, and it had not yet been altogether destroyed. Having once made up her mind to free herself if she could, she made the attempt bravely and systematically. The result was that, in the course of several months, she had reduced the amount of her daily doses very considerably. The suffering was great, but the object to be gained was great also, and she steeled herself to endure all that a woman could. She was encouraged, also, by the fact that her mind began to act more regularly and seemed more reliable. Physically, she was growing very weak and was becoming almost emaciated. Francesco Savelli watched her narrowly, and it was his opinion that she could not last long. The Prince of Gerano was very anxious about her all through the spring which followed the events last described, and his wife, though she was far less fond of Adele than in former times, could not but feel a sorrowful regret as she saw the young life that had begun so brightly wearing itself away before her eyes. But the Princess had consolations in another direction. Laura Arden seemed to grow daily more lovely in her mature beauty, and Herbert was growing out of his babyhood into a sturdy little boy of phenomenal strength and of imperturbably good temper. Laura was headstrong where Ghisleri was concerned, but in all other respects she was herself still. The first consequence of Adele's attempt to break the strong friendship which united Laura and Pietro, was to draw them still more closely together, and to make Laura, at least, more defiant of the world's opinion than ever. As for Ghisleri, he almost forgot to ask himself questions. The time to separate for the summer was drawing near, and he knew, when he thought of it, what a different parting this one would be from the one which had preceded it a year earlier. But he tried to think of the present and not of the weary months of solitude he looked forward to between June and November or December. He remembered, in spite of himself, how he had more than once enjoyed the lonely life, even refusing invitations to pleasant places rather than lose a single week of an existence so full of charm. But another interest had been growing, slowly, deep-sown, spreading its roots in silence, and fastening itself about his heart while he had not even suspected that it was there at all. Little by little, without visible manifestation, the strong thing had drawn more strength from his own life, mysteriously absorbing into itself the springs of thought and the sources of emotion, unifying them and assimilating them all into something which was a part, and was soon to be the chief part, of his being. And now, above the harrowed surface of that inner ground on which such fierce battles had been fought throughout his years of storm, a soft shoot raised its delicate head, not timidly, but quietly and unobtrusively, to meet the warm sunshine of the happier days to come. He saw it, and knew it, and held his peace, dreading it and yet loving it, for it was love itself; but not knowing truly what the little blade would come to, whether it was to bloom all at once into a bright and poisonous flower of evil, bringing to him the death of all possible love for ever; or whether it would grow up slowly, calm and fair, from leaf to shrub, from shrub to sapling, from sapling at last to tree, straight, tall, and strong, able to face tempest and storm without bending its lofty head, rich to bear for him in the end the stately blossom and the heavenly fruit of passionate true love. For before the day of parting came Pietro Ghisleri knew that he loved Laura Arden. Ever since that moment when she had quietly given him Adele's letter and had told him that she would believe no evil of him, he had begun to suspect that she was no longer what she had been to him once and what she had remained so long, a friend, kind, almost affectionate, for whom he would give all he had, but only a friend after all. It was different now. The thought of bidding Laura good-bye, even for a few months, sent a thrill of pain through his heart which he had not expected to feel--the small, sharp pain which tells a man the truth about a woman and himself as nothing else can. The prospect of the lonely summer was dreary. Ghisleri was surprised, and almost startled. During nearly two years and a half he had honestly believed that he could never love again, and if a sincere wish, formulated in the shape he unconsciously chose, could be called a prayer, he earnestly prayed that so long as he lived he might not feel what he had felt very strongly twice, at least, since he had been a boy. But such a man could hardly expect that such a wish, or prayer, could be granted or heard, so long as he was spending many hours of each succeeding week in the company of Laura Arden. In the full strength of manhood, passionate, sensitive beneath a cold exterior, always attracted by women, and almost always repelled by men, Pietro Ghisleri could hardly expect that in one moment the capacity for loving should be wholly rooted out and destroyed by something like an act of will, and as the consequence of his being disappointed and disgusted by his own fickleness. The new passion might turn out to be greater or less than the two which had hitherto disturbed his existence, but it could hardly be greater than the first. It would necessarily be different from either, in that it would be hopeless from the beginning, as he thought. For where he was very sincere, he was rarely very confident in himself, if the stake was woman's love, a fact more common with men who are at once sensitive and strong than is generally known. But his first impulse was not to go away and escape from the temptation, as it would have been some time earlier. There was no reason for doing that, as he had reflected before, when he had considered the advisability of breaking off all intercourse with Laura for the sake of silencing the world's idle chatter. He was perfectly free to love her, and to tell her so, if he chose. No one could blame him for wishing to marry her; at most he might be thought foolish for desiring anything so very improbable as that she should accept him. But he was quite indifferent to what any one might think of him excepting Laura herself. One resolution only he made and did his best to keep, and it was a good one. He made up his mind that he would not make love to her, as he understood the meaning of the term. Possibly, as he told himself with a little scorn, this was no resolution at all, but only a way of expressing his conviction that he was quite unable to do what he so magnanimously refused to attempt. For his instinct told him that his love for Laura had already taken a shape which differed wholly from all former passions, one unfamiliar to him, one which would need a new expression if it continued to be sincere. But that he doubted. He was quite ready to admit that when Laura came back in the autumn, this early beginning of love would have disappeared again, and that the old strong friendship would be found in its place, solid, firmly based, and unchanged, a permanent happiness and a constant satisfaction. He was no longer a boy, to imagine that the first breath of love was the forerunner of an all-destroying storm in which he must perish, or of a clear, fair wind before which the ship of his life was to run her straight course to the haven of death's peace. He had seen too much fickleness in himself and in others to believe in any such thing; but if he had anticipated either it would have been the tempest. On the whole, he did the wisest thing he could. He changed nothing in his manner towards Laura and he waited as calmly as he was able, to see what the end would be. Once only before Laura went away the conversation turned upon love, and oddly enough it was Laura who brought up the subject. She had been talking about little Herbert, as she often did, planning out his future according to her own wishes and making it happy in her own way, even to sketching the wife he was to win some five and twenty years hence. "I should like her to be very fair," she said. "Herbert will be dark, as I am, and they say that contrasts attract each other most permanently. But of course, though she must be beautiful, she must have ever so many other good points besides. In the first place, she must be capable of loving him with all her heart and soul. I suppose that is really the hardest thing of all to find." "The 'one-great-passion' sort of person, you mean, I fancy," observed Ghisleri, with a smile. "A rare bird--I agree with you." "I doubt whether the individual exists," said Laura. "Except by accident, or when the course of true love runs so very smoothly that it would need superhuman ingenuity to fall off it." "You are a constant revelation to me!" Ghisleri laughed, and looked at her. "What is there surprising about what I said? You are not a believer in the universal stability of the human heart, are you?" "Hardly that! But women very often are--at first. And then, when they see that change is possible, they are apt to say that there is no such thing as true love at all, whereas we know that there is." "In other words, you think that I take the sensible view. After all, what is the use of expecting humanity to be superhuman?" "I always like the way in which you put things," said Ghisleri, thoughtfully. "That is exactly it. Homo sum. I am neither angel, nor ape, but man, and at present, I believe, no near relation of the seraph or the monkey." "And as a man, changeable. So am I, as a woman, I have no doubt. Every one must be, and I do not think it is fair to respect people who do not change at all because they never have the chance." "One cannot help it. Human nature instinctively places the man who has only loved once above the man who has shown that he can love often. It is connected with the idea of faith and loyalty." "Often--that is too much. There comes the question of the limit. How often can a man love sincerely?" "Three times--not more," answered Ghisleri, with conviction. "Why not two, or four? How can you lay down the law in that way?" "It is very simple. I think that no love is worth the name which does not influence a man strongly for at least ten years. Any really great passion will do that. But human life is short. Let a man fall in love at twenty, and three periods of ten years each will bring him to fifty. A man who falls in love after he is fifty is a rarity, and generally an object of ridicule. That seems to me a logical demonstration, and I do not see why it should not apply to a woman as well as to a man." "Yes, I think there is truth in that," said Laura. "At all events, it looks true. Besides, there is something quite reasonable in the idea that a man naturally has three stages, when he is twenty years old, thirty, and forty. I should imagine that the middle stage, while he is still developing, might be the shortest." It was impossible for Ghisleri to imagine that Laura was referring to his own life, but the remark was certainly very applicable to himself, so far. Would the third stage be permanent, if he really reached it? He was inclined to think that nothing about him had much stability, for within the last two years he had come to accept the fact as something which was part of his nature and from which there was no escape, despise the weakness and hate it as he would. It was a singular coincidence that since he had tormented himself less he had become really less changeable. A month later he parted from Laura, to all outward appearances as quietly and calmly as in the previous year. If there were any difference, it was in her manner rather than in his. She said almost sadly that she was sorry the time had come, and that she looked forward to the meeting in the autumn as to one of the pleasantest things in the future. The words she spoke were almost commonplace, though even if taken literally they conveyed more than she had ever said before. But it was quite clear that she meant more than she said. When she was gone Ghisleri felt more lonely than he had for years, and every interest seemed to have died out of his existence. He tried to laugh at himself for turning into a boy again, but even that diversion failed him. He could not even find the bitter words it had once amused him, in a grim way, to put together. Then he left Rome, weary of the sights and sounds of the streets, of the solitude of his rooms, of the effort to show some intelligence when he was obliged to talk with an acquaintance. He went to his own place in Tuscany and passed his time in trying to improve the condition of things. He knew something of practical architecture, and he rebuilt a staircase, and restored the vaulting in a part of the little castle to which he had never done anything before, and which had gone to ruin during the last hundred years or more, since it had last been inhabited. For he, his father, and his grandfather had been only sons, and his mother having died when he was a mere boy, his father had taken a dislike to Torre de' Ghisleri and had lived the remainder of his short life in Florence. Hence the general dilapidation of the old place which was not, however, without beauty. The occupation did him good, and the sight of the old familiar faces of his tenants and few retainers was pleasant, after facing the museum of society masks during seven months and more. But he felt that even here he could not stay any great length of time without a change, and as the summer advanced his restlessness became extreme. He came down to Rome for a week in August. The first person he met in the street was Francesco Savelli, who stopped to speak with him. Ghisleri never voluntarily stopped any one. "How is Donna Adele?" he asked, after they had exchanged the first greetings. "Very nervous," answered Savelli, shaking his head with the air of concern he thought it proper to affect whenever he spoke of his wife's illness. "The nerves are something which no one can understand. I can tell you a story, for instance, about something which happened the other day--to be accurate, in June, when we were at Gerano. Do you remember the oubliette between the guard-room and the tower? Yes--my wife said she showed it to you. We were all staying together--all the children, her father, and the Princess and two or three friends. One morning she said she was quite sure that if we took up that slab of stone and lowered a man into the shaft, we should find a skeleton hanging there--Heaven knows what she imagined! The Prince said he had looked into the shaft scores of times when the trap-door still existed and there was a bar across the passage to prevent any one from going near; that he himself had ordered the stone to be put where it was and knew all about the place. The only skeleton ever found in the castle had been discovered walled up in the thickness of the north tower, with a little window just opposite the face, so that the individual must have died looking at the hills. Nobody knew anything about it. But my wife insisted, and grew angry, and at last furious. It was of no use, of course. You know the old gentleman--he can be perfectly rigid. He answered that no one should touch the stone, that if she yielded to such ideas once, she would soon wish to pull Gerano to pieces to count the mice, and that if she could persuade my father to knock holes in the walls at Castel Savello, that was the affair of the Savelli, but that so long as he lived she should not make any experiments in excavation under his roof. If you will believe me, she had a fit of anger which brought on an attack of the nerves, and she never went out of her room for three days in consequence. Do you wonder that I am anxious?" "Certainly not. It would be amazing if you were indifferent. The story gives one the idea that she is subject to delusions. I am very sorry she is no better. Pray remember me to her." Thereupon Ghisleri passed on, inwardly wondering how long it would be before Adele became quite mad. Two days later he received a note from her. She had heard from her husband that he was in Rome, she said, and wrote to ask a great favour of him. He was doubtless aware of her father's passion for manuscripts, which was well known in Rome. It was reported that a certain dealer had bought Prince Montevarchi's library after the crash, and she very much wished to buy a very interesting manuscript of which she had often heard her father speak, and which contained an account of the famous, or infamous, Isabella Montevarchi's life, written with her own hand--a sort of confession, in fact. As she did not know the exact title of the document, if it had any, she would call it a confession, though, of course, in a strictly lay sense. Now, she inquired, would Ghisleri, for old friendship's sake, try to obtain it for her at a reasonable price? She knew, of course, that such an original would be expensive, but she was prepared to discuss the terms if not wholly beyond her means. She sent her note by the carrier, as that was generally quicker than writing by the post, she said. Would Ghisleri kindly answer by the same means? The man would call again on the next day but one. That would perhaps give time to make preliminary inquiries. With which observation, and with best thanks in anticipation of the service he was about to render, Adele called herself most sincerely his. Ghisleri was not an extremely suspicious man, but he would have given evidence of almost infantine simplicity if he had not seen that there was something wrong about Adele's note. It was certainly very well planned, and if Laura had never shown him the letters Adele had sent her, it might very possibly have succeeded. On ascertaining the price set by the dealer on the manuscript, he would probably have written a few words, stating in a business-like way the sum for which the so-called confession could be bought. In all likelihood, too, he would have only dated his note by the day of the week, omitting altogether the month and the year. He saw at a glance how easily a communication of that kind might have taken such a shape as to be very serviceable against him, and how hard it might have been to show that he was writing about a genuine transaction concerning a manuscript actually for sale. He determined to be very careful. His first step was to find out the name of the dealer who had bought the Montevarchi library. He next ascertained that what Adele wanted was still unsold, and that he must therefore necessarily enter into correspondence with her. After that he sought out a young lawyer whom he had employed once or twice within the last few years when he had needed legal advice in regard to some trifling point, and laid the whole matter before him. This young man, Ubaldini by name, had rapidly acquired a reputation as a criminal lawyer, and had successfully defended some remarkable cases, but, as he justly observed, acquitted prisoners of the classes in which crimes are common, pay very little, and condemned criminals pay nothing at all. He was therefore under the necessity of taking other kinds of business as a means of support. The last murderer who had escaped the law by Ubaldini's eloquence had sent him a bag of beans and a cream cheese, which was all the family could afford in the way of a fee, but upon which a barrister who had a taste for variety could not subsist any length of time. Ghisleri explained at considerable length the whole story, as far as it has been told in these pages, and expressed the belief that Donna Adele Savelli was intent upon ruining him for what, after all, seemed very insufficient reasons. "When a woman lives on morphia and the fear of discovery, instead of food and drink, I would not give much for the soundness of any of her reasons," said Ubaldini, with a laugh. "What shall we do with the Princess? Shall we convict her of homicide, or bring an action for defamation, which we are sure to win? I like this case. We shall amuse ourselves." "I do not wish to bring any accusation nor any action against Donna Adele Savelli," answered Ghisleri. "All I wish to do is to protect myself. Of course I should be curious to know what became of that written confession of hers, if it ever existed. But at present I wish you to have certified copies made of all my letters to her, and to keep the originals of those she writes me. If she makes such another attack on me as the last one, I will ask you, perhaps, to take the matter up. In the mean time, I only desire to keep on the safe side." "In a case like this," said the lawyer, "it is far safer to attack than to wait for the enemy. Be careful in what you write, at all events. It would be wiser to show me the letters before you send them. One never can tell at what point the error of omission or commission will be made, upon which everything will depend. As a bit of general advice, I should warn you always to date every sheet on which you write anything, always to mention the name of the dealer when you speak of him, and invariably to give in full the correct title by which the manuscript is known. If you do that, and take good care that the dealer knows you perfectly each time you see him, and remembers your visits, it will not be easy to manage. But Donna Adele Savelli is evidently a clever person, whether her reasons for hating you are good or bad. That little trick of sending her own letters to the other lady was masterly--absolutely diabolical. The reason she failed was that she struck too high. She over-reached herself. She accused you of too much. That shows that although her methods are clever her judgment is insufficient. The same is true of this last attempt. By the bye, have you ever mentioned me to her, so far as you can recollect?" "No, I believe not." "Then avoid doing so, if you please. It is always better to keep the opposite party in ignorance of one's lawyer's name until the last minute." "Very well." As soon as Ghisleri was gone Ubaldini wrote a draft of a letter to Adele, as follows: "EXCELLENCY:--At the decease of a client of humble station a number of papers have come under my notice and are now in my hands. One of them, of some length, has evidently gone astray, for it is written by your Excellency and apparently addressed to a member of the clergy, besides containing, as one glance told me, matter of a private nature. It is my wish to restore it immediately, and I therefore write to inquire whether I may entrust it to the post-office, or whether I shall hand it sealed to your Excellency's legal representative. I need not add the assurance that so far as I am concerned the matter is a strict secret, nor that I desire to restore the document as a duty of honour, and could not consider for a moment the question of any remuneration. "Deign, Excellency, to receive graciously the expression of profoundest respect with which I write myself, "Your Excellency's most humble, obedient servant, "RINALDO UBALDINI, _Advocate_." CHAPTER XXV. As Ghisleri had anticipated, Adele kept up a lively correspondence with him for some time. All her letters were duly filed by Ubaldini, who took certified copies of Pietro's replies, but did not mention what he himself had done in the matter. Adele bargained sharply until Ghisleri wrote to her as plainly as he well could that the manuscript was not to be had for less than the sum he had repeatedly named, and that he could do nothing more for her. Thereupon she answered that she would consider the matter, and did not write again. Pietro, after waiting several days, left Rome again, and returned to Torre de' Ghisleri, glad to be relieved at last from the irksome and dangerous task of writing concise and lawyer-like communications about a subject which did not interest him at all. Meanwhile Adele had been through a series of emotions of which Pietro knew nothing, and which very nearly drove her to increasing her daily doses of morphia again. On receiving Ubaldini's very respectful and straightforward letter, she had felt that she was saved at last, though it definitely destroyed the illusion by which she had so long persuaded herself that the confession was still in the oubliette at Gerano. Without much hesitation she wrote to Ubaldini, and laid a bank-note for five hundred francs in the folded sheet. She begged him to send a special messenger with the sealed packet to Castel Savello, and requested him, in spite of his protest, to accept the enclosed sum to cover expenses. During forty-eight hours she enjoyed to the full the anticipation of at last getting back the letter which had cost her such terrible anxiety at various times during the past two years and a half. Then came Ubaldini's answer, though when she opened it she had no idea that it was from him. He had made his clerk both write and sign the fair copy of the first letter, which had been written on paper not stamped with an address. He now wrote with his own hand upon the paper he kept for business correspondence upon which, of course, the address was printed. There was consequently not the slightest resemblance between the two letters. But Adele was not prepared for the contents. The first thing she noticed was her bank-note, carefully pinned inside the sheet. Even the form of addressing her was not the same, and the one now employed was the correct one, the Savelli being one of the families in which the title of Prince and Princess belongs indiscriminately to all the children, and consequently to the wives of all the sons. The letter was as follows: "SIGNORA PRINCIPESSA:--I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of a communication from your Excellency, in which you request me to send a certain sealed packet to Castel Savello by a special messenger, and enclosing a bank note for five hundred francs (Banca Romana S. 32/0945) which I return herewith. I take the occasion to say that I know nothing whatever of the sealed packet referred to, and I beg to suggest that your Excellency may have accidentally addressed the letter to me instead of to some other person, perhaps in using a directory. If, however, it was written in answer to one supposed to have been indited to you by me, the letter must have been composed and sent by some designing person in the hope of intercepting the reply and gaining possession of the money, which I am glad to be able to send back to its original owner. Believe me, Signora Principessa, "Your Excellency's most obedient, "RINALDO UBALDINI." The shock was almost more than Adele could bear, and the room reeled with her as she comprehended what had happened, so far as she was able to understand it all. The truth did not strike her, however. What she believed was what the lawyer suggested, that some person had played a trick on her, and had made use of Ubaldini's name and address in the hope of getting the money he or she naturally expected that she would send as compensation for such an important service. The hardest to endure was the disappointment of finding that she was not to have the confession after all. The point proved was that, whether it were still in the oubliette or had been found and carried off, there was in either case at least one person at large who knew it existed, and who knew that the contents would be greatly to her disadvantage if known. And if one person knew it, she argued, all Rome might be acquainted with the story, and probably was. But the comforting conviction that the letter was still safe at Gerano did not return. There was a tone about the first communication disclaimed by Ubaldini, which forced upon her the belief that the writer knew everything, and could ruin her at a moment's notice. What Ubaldini gained was the certainty that the story which Ghisleri described as current gossip was a fact, and a very serious one. He had played detective instead of lawyer, and he had been very successful. He knew also, that, as he had acted altogether in the interests of his client, Ghisleri, and had returned Adele's money, no objection could, strictly speaking, be made to the stratagem, however it might be looked upon by gentlemen and men of the world, like Ghisleri himself. But Ubaldini was a lawyer, and it was not his business to consider what the fine world would think of his doings. He filed Adele's letter with the copies of his own. In the course of a few days, Adele, who was all the time carrying on her correspondence with Pietro, gathered some hope from the latter's answers. She had a suspicion that he might keep all the notes he received from her, and after the first she was as careful never to mention the manuscript except as "the confession," as he, on his part, was always to write out its title in full. It struck her, however, that a man playing such a part as she wished to have it thought that he was playing, would naturally use some such means for making his letters seem commonplace if they should fall into the wrong hands, and it would be easy to persuade her friends that the autobiographic writings of Isabella Montevarchi meant Adele Savelli's confession, by common consent, though she herself had not taken the trouble to use such a long title more than once. The thought elated her, and comforted her in a measure for the disappointment she had suffered, and which had shaken her nerves severely. She now spent much time in going over the correspondence, weighing each word in the attempt to establish its exact value if regarded from the point of view of a systematic attempt to extort money. With a relative coolness which would not have disgraced a strong man, and which showed how far she had recovered control of herself by diminishing the doses of morphia, she set to work to put her case together on the supposition that she meant to lay it before her husband, for instance, or any other intelligent person, with a request for advice. And the case, as she put it, was better than might have been expected, though it depended ultimately, for its solidity, on the supposition that the confession could never be found. In the first place, she intended to admit that she had been jealous of Laura for years, and to own frankly that she had often said cruel and spiteful things of her, and of Arden, just as everybody she knew said spiteful things of somebody. She would even admit that she had first set afloat the rumour that Lord Herbert was intemperate, and that Laura had the evil eye. She could then point out that her conduct had suddenly changed in deference to her father's wishes, that there had been an open reconciliation, not very heartfelt on her part at first, but made sincere by the remorse she felt after Arden's death. For she meant to go even so far as to confess that Arden might have caught the scarlet fever in her house, seeing that her maid was only just recovering from it at the time. The woman's illness had been kept strictly secret, and she had been, from the first, taken to a distant part of the palace, so that Adele had not believed there could be any danger. Even her husband had not known what the maid's illness was, and poor Lucia had pleaded so hard not to be sent to the hospital that Adele had yielded. But to prove, she would say, how little fear of contagion she had, her own children had not been sent into the country. The Palazzo Savelli was big enough to have had a whole infirmary in one part of it, completely isolated from all the rest. Nevertheless, she had always felt that there was a possibility of Arden's last illness having been taken at that dinner-party, and her secret remorse had caused her the greatest suffering. Between that and a nervous disorder from which she had little hope of ever recovering, she had fallen very ill, and had gone to Gerano. While there, her conscience had so pricked her in the matter of her past unkindness to her step-sister and to Arden, that although she had been to confession at Easter, she wrote a long letter to her confessor in Rome, going again over the full details of the past winter. From that point she could tell the truth, without even sparing Lucia, until she came to the discovery that it was Ghisleri himself who had picked up the letter, or confession, under the shaft of the oubliette. And here she would lay great stress on Ghisleri's attachment to Laura, and consequent dislike of herself. The well-known fact that Pietro had fought a desperate duel merely because Campodonico said that Lady Herbert Arden might have the evil eye, sufficiently showed to what lengths he would go in her defence. Nothing more would really be needed. But there was plenty more. All Rome knew that he had broken with Maddalena dell' Armi for Laura's sake, and that he had exhibited the most untiring devotion ever afterwards. Never, since the death of the Princess Corleone, Adele would boldly assert, had he been faithful to any one woman for such a length of time. That was a strong point. The Princess of Gerano herself could testify to her own anxiety about Laura since Ghisleri had been so much with her. Laura herself had behaved in the most admirable manner ever since the reconciliation, but Ghisleri, in constituting himself her champion, had become, so to say, more royalist than the king, and more catholic than the pope. His dislike, if not his positive hatred, for Adele was apparent at every step in the story. He did not, it is true, speak of it to any one, but his reticence was a well-known peculiarity of his character. It was when he was alone in conversation with Adele that he showed what he felt. But his manner was always courteous and rather formal. It was by sarcastic hints that he conveyed his meaning. Nevertheless, Adele had maintained the outward forms of friendly acquaintance, and once, some six months after Arden's death, when matters had not been so bad as they now were, she had asked him to stay a few days at Gerano. Lucia could testify that he was there at the time when the confession disappeared, and Lucia, who had attempted to extort money for it, and would have succeeded if the document had been forthcoming, had naturally been as interested as any one to find it. Not until some time later had Adele suspected that it had been picked up by Ghisleri. The thing, of course, had not any very great value, but what woman, Adele would ask, could bear to think that the most private outpourings of her soul to her spiritual director were in the hands of a man who hated her, and who could, if he pleased, circulate them and make them the talk of the town? When Ghisleri, in the following winter, had begun to torment her systematically by quoting little phrases and expressions which she remembered to have written in the letter, she had at last boldly taxed him with having it in his possession, and he, with the unparalleled cynicism for which he was famous, had laughed at her and owned the truth. Every one would allow that this was very like him. She had threatened to complain to her husband, and he had expressed the utmost indifference. He was a known duelist and a dangerous adversary, and for her husband's sake she had held her tongue, while Ghisleri continued to make her life miserable with his witticisms. Then she had once asked him what he would consider an equivalent for the letter. He had laughed again, and had said that he would take a large sum of money in exchange for it, which, he added, he would devote to building a small hospital in the village of Torre de' Ghisleri, saying that it would be for the good of her soul to found a charity of that kind. She would not undertake to say whether he would have employed the money for that purpose or not, if she had given it to him. Possibly he would. But she had not been able to dispose of any such sum as he had then named. Under her marriage contract she controlled only her pin-money, and her father allowed her nothing out of the great fortune which would some day be hers. She and Ghisleri had corresponded about the matter in town, by notes sent backwards and forwards. She, on her part, had at that time thought she was doing wisely in burning his, but he had been less careful. He had, in fact, been so grossly negligent as to leave five of them at one time in the pocket of one of his coats. It was through his tailor to whom the coat had been sent for some alteration or repair that two of these notes had come back to Adele. A woman, apparently a seamstress, had come to her with them one day, and had offered them to her for sale, together with a card of Lady Herbert Arden's enclosed in an envelope addressed to "Maria B." at the general post-office. On the card were written the words: "For Maria B., with best thanks." The woman confessed that she was in great distress, that she had found the letters in a coat upon which she was working, had easily ascertained who Ghisleri was, and what his relations towards Lady Herbert were, and had appealed to the latter for help, offering the letters in exchange for any charity, and actually sending three of them when she had only received five francs. Lady Herbert had then sent her fifty francs more with the card in question, but the poor woman thought that very little. She bitterly repented not having brought them all at once to Donna Adele. Of course they belonged to her, and Donna Adele had a right to them all, without payment. But the woman was very poor. Adele had unhesitatingly given her a hundred francs and had kept the two notes and the card, which proved at least that even at that time she had been corresponding with Ghisleri and protesting her inability to pay the sum he demanded, and that Laura Arden was aware of the correspondence, and had been willing for Ghisleri's sake to pay money to obtain it. For a long time after this Adele had made no further attempt, but had avoided finding herself alone in conversation with Pietro, as many people had indeed noticed, because she could not bear to be perpetually annoyed by his reference to his power over her. Yet, out of fear lest some harm should befall her husband, she had still held her peace. Early in the preceding summer, shortly before leaving for her annual visit to Gerano, Ghisleri had managed to be alone with her, and had not lost the opportunity of inflicting another wound, which had revived all her old desire to obtain possession of the lost letter. He had, indeed, almost admitted that unless she would reconsider the matter he would send it to one of her friends to read. The Montevarchi library was then about to be sold, and many persons were talking of the famous confession of Isabella Montevarchi. By way of safety, Adele, in agreeing to think the whole thing over once more, had told him that when writing she should speak of her own letter as though it were this well-known manuscript. She had already some experience of his carelessness in regard to notes. Against his own statement, and against her own secret positive conviction, yet to give him one chance, as it were, she had made one desperate effort to have the oubliette opened and searched. Her father would remember how angry she had been, and, indeed, she had lost her temper, being always ill and nervous. He had positively refused. Then, in despair, she had reopened negotiations with Ghisleri, whose demands, though not so high as formerly, were still quite beyond her means. As a matter of fact, the dealer had asked an exorbitant price for the manuscript, being well aware of its historical importance, which was little less than that attaching to the famous manuscript account of the Cenci trial. Adele was in despair. She had no means of raising such a sum as Ghisleri required, except by selling her jewels, which she could not possibly do without exciting her husband's suspicions. She was powerless. Had any woman ever been placed in such a situation? Ghisleri's last letter distinctly stated that he could do nothing more for her if she refused to buy the confession of Isabella Montevarchi at the price he had last named. Those were his very words. They meant that unless she paid, he would make use of the letter he had. He even added, that in that case the manuscript would probably before long be disposed of elsewhere, as though to make his meaning clearer. Her position was very strong, Adele thought, as she reached the end of her statement as she first drew it up in her own mind. A clever lawyer could doubtless make it even stronger, for he would know how to take advantage of every point, and how to call attention to the strongest and pass smoothly over the weaker links in the chain. The real danger, and the only real danger, lay in the possibility that the confession itself might be found and might be produced, with all which she said it contained, and with the one central black statement of which she made no mention in working up the case. But who could produce it? If any one had it, that man was Ghisleri, who had more than once gone very near the truth in the hints he had thrown out. Say that he had it--suppose the hypothesis a fact. Its being in his possession would be the most ruining evidence of all. He would not dare to show it, for though it might ruin her, it would be far worse ruin to him, for it would of itself suffice to prove the truth of every word of her story, and he would not only incur the full penalty of the law for a most abominable attempt at levying blackmail, but his very memory would be blasted for ever as that of the most dastardly and cowardly villain ever sent to penal servitude. As for herself, she felt that she had not long to live, and if worse came to worst, a little over-dose of morphia would end it all. She would have had her triumph, and she would have seen Laura's face by that time. It did not occur to her to ask herself any question about the origin of a hatred so implacable as to make the sacrifice of life itself seem easy in the accomplishment of its end. She was not able to trace the history of her jealousy backwards by a firm concentration of memory, as she was able by the force of vivid imagination to construct the vengeance she anticipated in the future. That the most dire revenge should be contemplated, pursued, and ultimately executed for the sake of a wrong wholly imaginary in the first instance is not altogether novel in the history of humanity. There are minds which under certain conditions cannot judge of the past as they can of events present and to come. Adele's hatred of Laura Arden amounted almost to a fixed idea. It had begun in very small things. Its origin lay, perhaps, in the simple fact that Laura was beautiful whereas Adele had been barely pretty at her best, and its first great development had been the consequence of Francesco Savelli's undisguised preference for the step-sister of his future wife. All the young girl's jealousy and vain nature had been roused and wounded by the slight, and as years had gone by and Savelli showed no signs of forgetting his early attachment to Laura, the wound had grown more sore and more angry until it had poisoned Adele's character and heart to the very core. The worst deed she ever did had not perhaps been the worst in intention. She had not been at all sure that Arden would take the fever, and she had assuredly not meant nor ever expected that he should die. Chance had put the information into her hands at a moment when, through Laura, as it seemed to her, she was suffering the most cruel humiliation she had ever known. On that memorable evening when her father had forced her to submit to his will, and when she was looking forward with bitter loathing to what was very like a public reconciliation, she had been left alone. In attempting to control herself and to regain some outward calm, she had taken up a review and had forced herself to read the first article upon which she opened, and which happened to be a very dull one on the bacilli of various diseases. But one passage had struck her forcibly--the plain account of a case which had recently been observed, in which few medical terms occurred, and which a child could have understood. The extreme simplicity of the facts had startled her, and she had suddenly resolved that Laura and Arden should have cause to remember the reconciliation which would cost her vanity so dear. But she had no intention of doing murder. In her heart she had hardly believed that any result would follow, and remorse had taken hold of her almost at once, simultaneously with the horrible fear of discovery which has more than once driven men and women mad. But remorse is by no means repentance. With it comes often what has been called the impossibility of pardoning the person one has injured, and the insane desire to wreak vengeance upon that person for the acute sufferings endured in one's own conscience. Given the existence of this desire in a very violent degree, and admitting the inevitable disturbance of the faculties ensuing upon the long and vicious abuse of such a poison as morphia, Adele's ultimate state becomes comprehensible. She was, indeed, as Ghisleri had said to Laura, hardly sane, and her incipient madness having originally resulted from jealousy, the latter naturally remained the ruling influence in her unsettled brain, and attained proportions hardly credible to those who have not followed the steps by which the human intelligence passes from sanity to madness. And now that she had worked up her case against Ghisleri, as a lawyer would express it, and had convinced herself that she could tell a long and connected story in which almost every detail should give colour to her principal assertion, she hesitated as to the course she should pursue. It was not in her power to send for a lawyer and to bring an action at law against Pietro, without her husband's consent, and she knew how hard that would be to obtain. Francesco Savelli was by no means a cowardly man, and would, if necessary, have exposed his life in a duel with Ghisleri, not for his wife's sake, but for the sake of the family honour. But he had the true Roman's abhorrence of publicity and scandal, and would make great sacrifices to avoid anything of the kind. Her own father might be willing to take the matter up, but it was extremely hard to deceive him. She knew, however, that if he were once persuaded of the justice of her cause, he would go to any length in her defence and would prove an implacable enemy to the man who, as he would suppose, had injured her. The great difficulty lay in persuading him at the outset. But for the unfortunate fact that he had already once detected her in falsehood, the matter would have been far easier. It was true that she meant to admit all he had then forced her to own, and much more besides, in order to show how high a value Ghisleri set upon the confession which contained a concise account of her doings. But he would, in any case, be prejudiced against her from the first. One thing was in her favour, she thought. The Princess of Gerano did not like Ghisleri, and would in all likelihood be ready to believe evil of him, and to influence her husband, good and just woman though she was. There was one other person to whom Adele could apply--Prince Savelli himself. She thought of him last and wondered why she had not remembered him first. He was a man of singular energy, courage, and coolness, whose chief fault was a tendency to overestimate beyond all limits the importance of his family and the glory of his ancient name. She knew that he was abnormally sensitive on these points and that if she could rouse his ever ready pride, he would hesitate at nothing in order to bring retribution upon any one rash enough to insult or injure any member of his family. And he lived a life of his own and cared little for the world. His passion, strangely enough, was of a scientific kind. He was an astronomer, had built himself an observatory on the top of the massive old palace, and spent the greater part of his time there. Such existences, in the very heart of society, are not unknown in Rome. Prince Savelli had remained what he was by nature, a true student, and was perfectly happy in his own way, caring very little for the world and hardly ever showing himself in it. The Princess was a placid person, extremely devout, but also extremely selfish. It was from her that Francesco inherited his disposition and his yellow hair. It struck Adele that if she could win her father-in-law's sympathy and rouse him to action in her behalf, it would be far easier to persuade her own father that she was in the right. Gerano had a boundless respect for the elder Savelli's opinion, though if he had known him better, he would have discovered that his judgment was far too easily influenced where his exaggerated family pride was concerned. A long time passed before Adele finally made up her mind to the great attempt. Ghisleri had already returned to Rome and Laura Arden was expected in two or three weeks, according to news received by her mother. An incident, trivial in itself, at last decided her to act at once. She and Francesco were dining with the Prince and Princess of Gerano as they did regularly once a week. As a rule nobody was invited to these family meetings, but on that particular evening Gianforte Campodonico and Donna Christina had been asked. It was convenient to have them when Laura was not there, and they were much liked in Casa Gerano where, as has been said, Ghisleri was not a favourite. There was, moreover, a distant relationship between the families of Braccio and Campodonico of which, as they liked one another, both were fond of speaking. Adele looked very ill. By this time her complexion was of a pale yellow, and she was thin to absolute emaciation. In spite of her determined efforts to break the habit that was killing her, or perhaps as a first consequence of them, she was liable to moments of nervousness in which she could hardly control herself and in which she did not seem to remember what had happened a few minutes earlier. Her sufferings at such times were painful to see. She could hardly keep her hands from moving about in a helpless fashion, and her face was often slightly contorted. Very rarely, on fine days when she had been driving, a little colour came into her ghastly cheeks. It was easy to see that only her strong will supported her continually, and that women more weakly organized would long ago have succumbed to the effects of the poison. When she felt that she was liable to a crisis of the nerves she was careful to stay at home, but occasionally she was attacked unawares, more or less violently, when she had believed herself well enough to go out. When this happened she sat in silence while the suffering lasted, and did her best to keep her unruly hands clasped together. By a strong effort she sometimes succeeded in concealing from others what she felt, but the exertion of her will made her irritable to the last degree, if she was called upon to speak or forced to try and join in the conversation. CHAPTER XXVI. The dinner passed off quietly and pleasantly enough until towards the end, when the conversation turned upon the coming season, and all began to speculate as to whether it would be gay or dull, as people always do when they meet after the long separation in the summer. "There will be all the usual pleasant things," observed Francesco Savelli, who loved society as much as his wife did. "Let me see. There will be the evenings in Casa Frangipani, and they will give their two balls as usual at the end. The Marchesa di San Giacinto will do as she did last year--a dance and a ball alternately after the fifteenth of January. Of course Casa Montevarchi does not exist any more since the crash, but that is the only one. Then there are your evenings," he continued, turning to the mistress of the house, "and there are ours, of course, and I suppose Gouache and Donna Faustina will give something at the studio. Have you seen her this year, Adele?" He looked across the table at his wife, and saw that she was beginning to suffer from an unexpected attack. He knew the symptoms well, and was aware that there was nothing to be done but to leave her alone and take no notice of her. She merely nodded in answer to his question, and he went on speaking. "Gouache always does something original," he said. "Do you remember that supper on Shrove Tuesday years ago? It was the most successful thing of that season. By the bye, I saw Ghisleri yesterday. He has come back." It was rather tactless of him to drag Ghisleri's name into the conversation in the presence of Campodonico. But the Princess of Gerano was even more tactless than he. "That wild Ghisleri!" she immediately exclaimed, as she always did when Pietro was mentioned. "Ghisleri is no worse than the rest of us, I am sure," said Campodonico, anxious to show that he was not in the least annoyed. "He has as many good qualities as most men, and perhaps a few more." "It is generous of you to say that," observed Donna Christina, looking at her husband with loving admiration. "I do not see that there is much generosity about it, my dear," he answered warmly. "It would be very spiteful of me not to give him his due, that is all. He is brave and honourable, and that is something to say of any man. Besides, look at his friends--look at the people who like him, beginning with most of you here. That is a very good test of what a man is." He looked straight at Adele Savelli as he spoke, for no special reason except that he always looked straight at somebody when he was speaking. He was hot-tempered, passionate, generous, and truthful, and there was a great directness about everything he did and said. But at that moment Adele was in great pain and was doing her best to hide it. She fancied that Campodonico had noticed what was the matter. "Why do you look at me in that way?" she asked irritably, but with a nervous attempt at a laugh. "I do not know," answered Gianforte. "I suppose I expected you to agree with me. I know Ghisleri is a friend of yours." "How do you know that?" Adele's irritation increased rapidly. "Have you any reason to suppose that I am particularly fond of him? Have I ever done anything to show it?" "Why are you so much annoyed?" asked Savelli, who generally felt uncomfortable when his wife was in such moods, and feared that she would say something to make herself and him ridiculous. "You always liked him." Adele's hand twitched and moved on the table against her will, and she upset some salt. The little incident sufficed to make her lose her head completely. "If people knew what Pietro Ghisleri really is, there is not a house in Rome where he would be received," she said angrily. The dead silence which followed this categorical statement brought her to her senses too late. Campodonico was the first to speak. "I should find it very hard to believe that Ghisleri ever committed a dishonourable action," he said gravely. "That is a very serious statement, Donna Adele." "Yes, indeed," put in the Prince, turning to his daughter. "You should consider what you are saying, my dear, before going so far as that. I think you ought to explain yourself. We may not all like Ghisleri, and if we please we are at liberty to say so here, in the family; but it is quite another matter to say that he is not a fit person to associate with us. To say that, you must be quite sure that he has done something disgraceful, of which we are all in ignorance." "I quite agree with you," said Francesco Savelli. "You only make yourself ridiculous by saying such things," he added, looking coldly at his wife, for he was anxious that none of the ridicule should reflect upon himself, especially in Campodonico's presence. "I am sure, when I call Ghisleri wild," said the Princess, "I mean nothing more than that he is fast. But I am very sorry to have brought about such a discussion. Adele, my dear, what do you mean? Are you in earnest?" "One does not say such things for nothing," answered Adele, angrily. "Then I wonder that you receive him," said the Prince, coldly. "I hope you will explain to me by and by what you refer to." "I will, some day," said Adele, in a low voice. She felt that she had cast the die, and she hardly saw how she could draw back. "In that case, we will say no more about the matter at present," said the master of the house, in a tone of authority. "I had meant to ask you for news of your brother," he said, turning to Campodonico. "I was very sorry to hear that he had been ill. Is he better?" Gianforte answered, and every one made an effort to restore the outward calm which had been so disturbed by Adele's speech. Soon after dinner she went home, and instead of going to his club as usual Francesco got into the carriage with her. "I insist upon knowing what you meant by your accusation against Ghisleri," he said, as soon as they were driving away. "I will not tell you," Adele answered firmly. "You will find it out in time--quite soon enough, I daresay." "I have the right to know. In the world in which we live one makes oneself ridiculous by saying such things. Everybody will laugh at you, and then you will expect me to take your part." "I shall not expect anything of the sort, for I am not so foolish. You never had the slightest affection for me, and you have lost such little decent regard for me as you once felt, because I am always ill and it gives you trouble to be considerate. You would not raise a finger to help me or protect me unless you were afraid of the world's opinion. I have known that a long time, and now that I am in trouble I will not come to you. Why should I? You are only waiting for me to die, in order to ask Laura to marry you. It would annoy you extremely if I lived long enough to give her time to marry Ghisleri." "I think remarks of that sort are in the worst possible taste," answered Savelli, "besides being without the least foundation in truth. I will beg you not to make any more of them. As for what you say about Ghisleri, if you refuse to tell me what you know I shall ask advice of my father, as that is the only proper course I could follow under the circumstances." "For once we agree!" exclaimed Adele, with a scornful laugh. "That is precisely what I mean to do myself, and I will go to him to-morrow morning and tell him the whole story. But I will not tell it to you. He may, if he pleases, and thinks it best." "In that case I have nothing more to say," answered Francesco. "You could not select a more fit person than my father." "I am perfectly well aware of the fact." Adele, womanlike, was determined to have the last word, no matter how insignificant. Both were silent during the remainder of the drive home. At the foot of the grand staircase Francesco left his wife and got into the carriage to be driven to his club. He reflected on the truth of Adele's observation, when she had said that she might live until Laura and Ghisleri were married, and he was by no means pleased as he realised how probable that contingency was. Since she had become a slave to morphia he had, of course, been at some pains to ascertain the limits of the disease, and the possible duration of it, and he was aware that some persons lived for many years in spite of a constant and increasing abuse of the poison. Adele once more went over the whole story in her mind, preparing the details of it and polishing all the parts into a harmonious whole. In spite of what she had suffered that evening she would not increase her dose, though she knew that she must very probably spend a sleepless night. She profited by the hours to review the story she intended to tell her father-in-law. At eleven o'clock on the following morning she sent up to inquire whether he would see her, and he at once appeared in person at the door of her boudoir,--a tall, bearded man of fifty years or more, slightly stooping, not over-carefully dressed, wearing spectacles, and chiefly remarkable for his very beautifully shaped hands, with which he made energetic gestures at almost every minute, when speaking. Adele began in some trepidation to explain how, on the previous evening, she had lost her temper and had been betrayed into making a remark about Ghisleri of which her husband had demanded an explanation. She felt, she said, that the matter was so serious as to justify her in referring it at once to the head of the family, who might then act as he thought best with regard to keeping it a secret or informing his son of what had happened. She did not fail to add that one of her motives in refusing to tell what she knew to Francesco, was her anxiety for his safety, since the affair concerned herself and he would undoubtedly take it up as a personal matter and quarrel with the dangerous man who had so long been her enemy. The Prince approved this course with a grave nod, and waited for more. Then she told her story from beginning to end. She of course took advantage of the fact that her father-in-law was but slightly acquainted with Ghisleri to paint his character with the colours best suited to her purpose, while asserting nothing about him which could be in direct contradiction to the testimony of others. She spoke very lucidly and connectedly, for she knew the lesson well and she was conscious that her whole existence was at stake. One fault, one little error sufficient to cast suspicion on her veracity, might be enough to ruin her in the end. She concluded by a well-turned and pathetic allusion to her state of health, which indeed was pitiable enough. She knew that she was dying, but it would make death doubly painful to think that such an enemy as Ghisleri was left behind to blacken her memory and perhaps hereafter to poison the thought of her in her children's hearts. She also read extracts from Ghisleri's letters and showed Laura's card, before mentioned. As she proceeded she watched the Prince's face, and she saw that she had produced the right impression from the first. The plausibility of the tale, as she told it, was undeniable, and might have shaken the belief in Ghisleri's integrity in the minds of men who knew him far better than the elder Savelli. As she had anticipated, the latter took up the question as one deeply affecting the honour of his name. He was very angry in his calm way, and his blue eyes flashed through his great gold-rimmed spectacles, while his slender, energetic white hand clenched itself and opened frequently upon his knee. "You have done right in coming to me directly," he said, when she had finished and was wiping away the tears which, in her nervous state, she had found easy to bring to her eyes. "Francesco would not have known how to act. He would probably have done the villain the honour of fighting with him. But I will bring him to justice. The law provides very amply for crimes of this sort. I confess I am strongly tempted to go and speak to the man myself. Francesco could not resist the temptation, but he is almost a boy. The cowardly scoundrel of a Tuscan!" He thrust back his long, greyish-brown hair from his forehead with one hand, and shook the other in the air as though at a real adversary. When he did that he was always roused to real anger, as Adele knew. She feared lest he should do something more or less rash which would not ultimately be of any advantage to her. "Would it not be wise to speak to my father?" she asked. "He knows a great deal about the law, I believe." "Yes, perhaps so. Gerano is a very sensible man. As this affects you, besides Francesco and all of us, it might be as well to consult him, or at all events to put him in possession of all the facts. In the meanwhile, you know I am a methodical man. I must have proper notes to go upon from the first. If it does not pain you too much to go over the main points once more, I will write down what I need." "And I will hand you these papers to keep," said Adele, giving him the correspondence, which comprised the greater number of Ghisleri's letters, the two of her own which she had not sent to Laura, the two she had received from the lawyer Ubaldini, and Laura Arden's card in its envelope to "Maria B." With regard to Ubaldini, she told exactly what had happened, and what she had written, for that incident at least was still a mystery to her, and she thought it unwise to conceal what might subsequently come to light through other persons. "I have heard of this fellow," said the Prince, thoughtfully. "He is a very clever criminal lawyer. I should not wonder if Ghisleri had already consulted him. One may expect anything after what you have told me." Adele recapitulated the story with extraordinary exactness, stopping and repeating those portions of it which her father-in-law desired to note. "I have never seen a more complete chain of evidence," exclaimed the latter, when he had finished and was folding up the sheets neatly to match the size of the letters Adele had given him. "There is no court of justice in the world that would not convict a man of extortion on such testimony, and if there is one, I hope it is not in Rome." "I hope not," said Adele, who would have smiled had she been alone. "But you may find it harder to convince my father than a Roman jury. He is prejudiced in Ghisleri's favour--like most people who do not know him as I do." "He shall change his prejudices before long," answered Savelli, in a tone of certainty. "I will send word to him to expect me after breakfast, and I will explain the whole matter to him and show him the letters. If he does not at once understand, it would be better that we should both come to you together. You would make it clearer than I could, perhaps. But it seems clear enough to me. What an infamous affair--and how you must have suffered!" "It is killing me!" said Adele, in a low voice. Savelli left her with many expressions of kindly sympathy. He was not a good judge of human nature, for he lived too much in his studies and in the world of mathematics to understand or appreciate the motives of men and women. But he was kind of heart and affectionate by disposition. So far as he knew, Adele had been a good wife to his eldest son, and was the mother of strong, well-grown children who bore the ancient name in which he took such pride. Moreover, Adele had the honour of lending still greater lustre to the race by means of the great Braccio inheritance, which was all to come to the Savelli through her. She was, therefore, a very important personage, as well as a dutiful daughter-in-law and a good mother, in the eyes of the head of the house, and it would no more have crossed his mind that the story she had just told him was a fabrication, from first to last, than that the Greenwich Almanack for the year could be a fraud and a malicious misstatement of the movements of the heavenly bodies. Moreover, the evidence was, on the whole, such as would have staggered the faith of most of Ghisleri's acquaintances. The Prince lost no time in going to see Gerano, prepared at all points and armed with the papers Adele had given him. The interview lasted fully two hours, and when it was over, Adele's father was almost as thoroughly persuaded of Ghisleri's guilt as Savelli himself. His face was very grave and thoughtful as he leaned back in his easy-chair and looked into his old friend's clear blue eyes. "The man should be tried, convicted, and sent to the galleys," said Gerano. "There can be no doubt of the justice of that, if all this can be established in court. Remember I do not doubt my daughter's word, and it would be monstrous to suppose that she has invented this story. Whatever the truth about it may be, it must be thoroughly investigated. But there may be a good deal of exaggeration about it, for I have known Adele to over-state a case. There is a great difference between shutting one's door on a man, or turning him out of his club, and bringing an accusation against him which, if proved, will entail a term of penal servitude. You see that, I am sure. Do you not think that we ought to go and see Ghisleri together, tell him what we have learned, and ask him to justify himself if he can?" "I think it would be wiser to consult the lawyers first," answered Savelli. "If they are of opinion that he is a criminal, there is no reason why we should give him warning that he may defend himself, as though he were an honest man. If they believe that this is not a case for the law, there will always be time for us to go and see him, since no open steps will have been taken." Gerano was obliged to admit that there was truth in this, though his instinct told him that Ghisleri should be heard before being accused. He was one of those men whose faith being once shaken is not easily re-established, and he could not forget that his daughter had once deceived him, a fact with which Savelli was now also acquainted, since Adele had told him the whole truth about that part of the story, but to which he attached relatively little importance as compared with Ghisleri's villanous conduct in attempting to extort money from a member of the Savelli family. The two agreed upon the lawyer whom they would consult, and on the next day the first meeting took place at the Palazzo Braccio. The man they employed was elderly, steady, and experienced, and rather inclined to be over-cautious. He refused to give any decisive opinion on the case until he had studied it in all its bearings, thoroughly examined the letters, and ascertained the authenticity of the card on which Lady Herbert had written her thanks in pencil. This, of course, was the only one of the documents in evidence of which he could doubt the genuineness, since it was the only one which had not come direct from the hand of the writer. Oddly enough, the lawyer attached very great weight to it, for he said that it proved conclusively that Lady Herbert Arden had considered the matter as serious and had really paid money--whether a small or a large amount mattered little--in order to get possession of some of the letters which proved Ghisleri's guilt. It would be very useful if the woman "Maria B." could be traced and called as a witness, but even if she could not be found, Lady Herbert could not refuse her evidence and would not, upon her oath, deny having sent the money or having received Adele's letters in return for it. Considering the terms of intimacy on which she stood with Ghisleri, the point was a very strong one against the latter's innocence. The two princes were of the same opinion. Gerano was for asking Laura directly if she knew of the affair, but was overruled by Savelli and the lawyer, who objected that she might give Ghisleri warning. Gerano could not move in the matter without the consent of the other two, and resigned himself, though he looked upon the card as very doubtful evidence, and suggested that it might have been found accidentally by the woman who had come to Donna Adele, and used by her as an additional means of inducing the latter to give her money. But neither Prince Savelli nor the lawyer was inclined to believe in any accident which could weaken the chain of evidence they held. There was no further meeting for several days, during which time the lawyer was at work in examining every point which he considered vulnerable. Being himself a perfectly honest man and having received the information he was to make use of from the father and father-in-law of the lady concerned, it would have been very strange if he had entertained any doubts as to her veracity. Adele had thought of this herself and was satisfied that throughout all the preliminaries her position would be as strong as she could wish it to be. The struggle would begin when Ghisleri was warned of what was now being prepared against him, and began to defend himself. Of one thing she was persuaded. If he had the confession in his hands, he would not produce it. Nothing could prove her case so conclusively as his avowal that the letter was in his hands. If he could demonstrate that he had never seen it and was wholly ignorant of its contents, her own case would fall through. The action, however, if brought, would be a criminal one, and he would not be allowed to give his own evidence. It would be hard, indeed, to find any one who could swear to what would be necessary to clear him. The lawyer came back to his clients at last, and informed them that it was his opinion that there was sufficient evidence for obtaining a warrant of arrest against Pietro Ghisleri, and that in all probability the latter would be convicted, on his trial, of an infamous attempt to extort money from the Princess Adele Savelli, as he called her in his written notes. He warned them, however, that Ghisleri would almost undoubtedly be admitted to bail, that he was a man who had numerous and powerful friends in all parties, that he would doubtless be granted a first and second appeal, and that the publicity and scandal of the whole case would be enormous. On the whole, he advised his clients to settle the matter privately. He would, if they desired it, accompany them to Signor Ghisleri's lodgings, and state to him the legal point of view with all the clearness he had at his command. It was not impossible, it was even probable, that Ghisleri would quietly give up the document in question, and sign a paper binding himself never to refer to its existence again and acknowledging that he had made use of it to frighten the Princess Adele Savelli. The said document could then be returned to her and the affair might be considered as safely concluded. The lawyer did not believe that Signor Ghisleri would expose himself to certain arrest and probable conviction, when he had the means of escaping from both in his hands. Socially the two gentlemen could afterwards do what they pleased, and could of course force him to leave Rome with ignominy, never to show himself there again. Prince Savelli, on the whole, concurred in this view. The Prince of Gerano said that he had known Ghisleri long and well, and that the latter would probably surprise them by throwing quite a new light on the case, though he would not be able to clear himself altogether. He, Gerano, was therefore of the same opinion as the others, and he quietly reminded Savelli that he had been the first to propose visiting Ghisleri and demanding a personal explanation. On the same evening Pietro received a note. Prince Savelli and the Prince of Gerano presented their compliments to Signor Ghisleri, and begged to ask whether it would be convenient to him to receive them and their legal adviser on the following morning at half-past ten o'clock, to confer upon a question of grave importance. Ghisleri answered that he should be much honoured by the visit proposed, and he at once sent word to Ubaldini to come to him at eight o'clock, two hours and a half before he expected the others. He at once suspected mischief, though he had hardly been prepared to see it arrive in such a very solemn and dignified shape. He asked Ubaldini's opinion at once, when the latter came as requested. "It is impossible to say what that good lady has done," said the young lawyer after some moments of thoughtful consideration. "You may take it for granted, however, that both Prince Savelli and the Prince of Gerano believe that you are in possession of the lost letter, and that they will make an attempt to force you to give it up. You would do well not to speak of me, but you can say that you foresaw that Donna Adele intended to make use of your letters when she wrote the first one, asking you to purchase the manuscript for her, and that you have kept copies of your answers, as well as the originals of her communications. If we are quick about it, we can bring an action against her for defamation before she can do anything definite." "I will never consent to that," answered Ghisleri, smiling at Ubaldini's ideas of social honour. "Why not?" asked the lawyer, in some surprise. "You would very probably win it and cast her for heavy damages." "I would certainly never do such a thing," replied Pietro. "I should not think it honourable to bring any such action against a lady." Ubaldini shrugged his shoulders, being quite unable to comprehend his client's point of view. "I cannot do anything to help you, until we know what these gentlemen have to say," he observed. "If you wish it, I will be present at the interview, but it is as well that they should not find out who your lawyer is, until something definite is to be done." Ghisleri agreed, and Ubaldini went away, promising to hold himself at his client's disposal at a moment's notice. Pietro sat down to think over the situation. Danger of some sort was evidently imminent, but he could only form a very vague idea of its nature, and Ubaldini had certainly not helped him much, sharp-witted and keen as he was. Ghisleri, who, of course, could not see the case as Adele had stated it to her father-in-law, and as it was now to be stated to himself, could not conceive it possible that he could be indicted for extortion on such slender evidence as he supposed she had been able to fabricate. He imagined that she desired his social ruin, and above all, to make him for ever contemptible in the eyes of Laura Arden; and this he well knew, or thought that he knew, she could never accomplish. Laura had not yet returned, and he was glad, on the whole, that she was away. Matters were evidently coming to a crisis, and he believed that whatever was to happen would have long been over by the time she was in Rome again. If she had already arrived he would have found it hard not to tell her of what occurred from day to day, and, indeed, he would have felt almost obliged to do so for the sake of her opinion of him, seeing how frankly and loyally she had acted in the case of the letters she had received from the supposititious "Maria B." On the other hand, he longed to see her for her own sake. The summer months had been desperately long and lonely. He did not remember that he had ever found the time weigh so heavily on his hands as this year, both at Torre de' Ghisleri and in Rome. He forgot his present danger and the interview before him in thinking of Laura Arden, when Bonifazio threw open the door and announced Prince Savelli, the Prince of Gerano, and the Advocato Geronimo Grondona. CHAPTER XXVII. Ghisleri rose to meet his visitors, who greeted him gravely and sat down opposite him so that they could all look at his face while speaking. Prince Savelli naturally spoke first. "We have come to you," he said, "upon a very difficult and unpleasant affair. In the first place, I must beg you to listen to what I have to say as calmly as you can, remembering that we have not come here to quarrel with you, but to act on behalf of a lady. This being the case, we claim to be treated as ambassadors, to be heard and to be answered." "You speak as though you were about to make a very disagreeable communication," answered Ghisleri. "The presence of Signor Grondona either shows that you intend to make use of what I may say, or that your business is of a legal nature. If the latter supposition is the true one, it would be much better that we should leave the whole matter to our respective lawyers rather than run the risk of useless discussion. But if your lawyer is here to watch me and make notes, I would point out that I have a right to resent such observation, and to request you to find some other means of informing me of your meaning. As you tell me that you are acting for a lady, however, and claim personal immunity, so to say, for yourselves, I am willing to listen to you and to consider what you say as proceeding from her and not from you. But in no case have you any claim to be answered. That is the most I can do towards helping you with your errand. Judge for yourselves whether you will execute it or not." "I will certainly not go away without saying what I have come to say," replied Savelli, fixing his bright, spectacled eyes upon Ghisleri's face. "We are here to represent Donna Adele Savelli--let that be understood, if you please. She wishes you to hand over to us a certain letter, of the nature of a confession, which you found at Gerano about two years and a half ago, and which you still hold." Ghisleri was less surprised than might have been expected. His face grew slowly pale as he listened, steadily returning the speaker's gaze. "I promised you personal immunity from the consequences of what you were about to say," he answered slowly. "It was a rash promise, I find, but I will keep it. You may inform Donna Adele Savelli that although it is commonly said in the world that she has actually lost such a letter as you mention, I have never seen it, nor have I any knowledge of its contents. Further, I demand, as a right, to be told upon what imaginary evidence she ventures to bring such an outrageous accusation against me." The Advocato Grondona smiled, but the two noblemen preserved an unmoved manner. Of the two, Gerano was the more surprised by Ghisleri's answer. He had believed that a letter really existed, and was in the latter's hands, but that it would not prove to have the importance his daughter attached to it. Prince Savelli produced a bundle of papers from his pocket. "I am quite prepared," he said. "I will state my daughter-in-law's case as accurately as I can, and as nearly as possible in her own words, a great part of which I have here, in the form of notes." "It is understood that Donna Adele Savelli is speaking, gentlemen. On that understanding you have my permission to proceed. I will not interrupt you." Savelli began to speak, and, as he had promised, he stated the case as he had heard it from Adele and, on the whole, very much as she had summed it up in her own mind before going to him. Ghisleri sat with folded arms and bent brows, listening to the wonderfully connected chain of false testimony she brought against him, with all the courage and calmness he could command. "Have you done?" he inquired in a voice shaking with anger, when Savelli had finished. "Yes," answered the latter coolly. "I believe that is all." "Then I have to say that a more villanous calumny was never invented to ruin any man. Good morning, gentlemen." He rose, and the three others were obliged to rise also. "And so you positively refuse to give up the letter?" inquired Savelli; there was an angry light in his eyes, too. "I have given you my answer already. Be good enough to convey it to Donna Adele Savelli." "Are you aware, Signore," said the lawyer, stepping in front of his two clients, "that upon such evidence as we possess you are liable to be indicted for an attempt to extort money from the Princess Adele Savelli?" "You are not privileged, like these gentlemen," said Ghisleri, white to the lips. "If you venture to speak again, my servant will silence you. I have already hinted that this interview is ended," he added to Savelli and Gerano. The three went out in silence and left him alone. With characteristic coolness he sat down to recover from the violent shock he had sustained, and to reflect upon his future conduct, before sending for Ubaldini and consulting with him. He had almost expected the demand to restore a document he did not possess, but he was not prepared for the well-constructed story by which Savelli, Gerano, and their lawyer had been persuaded of his guilt. The lawyer's words had placed the whole affair in a light which showed how thoroughly convinced the three men were of the justice of their accusation, and Ghisleri understood well enough that Savelli intended to take legal steps. What those steps might be, Pietro had not the least idea. He rang for Bonifazio and sent him out to buy the Penal Code. It was probably the wisest thing he could do under the circumstances, as he did not even know whether, if he were arrested, he should be admitted to bail or not. He saw well enough that an order for his arrest might very possibly be issued. Grondona was far too grave and learned a lawyer to have uttered such a threat in vain, and was not the man to waste time or words when action was possible. If he had spoken as he had, he had done so for his clients' advantage, in the hope that Ghisleri might be frightened at the last minute into giving up the letter. In that way all publicity and scandal could have been avoided. But it was clear that the die was cast, and that war was declared. More than ever, he was glad that Laura Arden was not in Rome. The thought that if she were present she would necessarily have to follow the course of events little by little, as he must himself, and the certainty that she knew the truth and would feel the keenest sympathy for him, made him rejoice at her absence. When she learned what had taken place, she would know all the circumstances at once, including Ghisleri's proof of his innocence, which, as he felt sure, would be triumphant. In the meantime, she should be kept in ignorance of what was occurring. Having decided this point, he began to think of choosing some person to whom, if he were actually arrested, he might apply for assistance in the matter of obtaining bail. There was no time to be lost, as he was well aware. Since Savelli really believed him guilty of the abominable crime with which he was charged, it was not likely that time would be given him to leave the country, as his adversaries would naturally expect that he would attempt to do. They had probably gone straight from his lodging to the office of the chief of police,--the questore, as he is called in Italy,--and if they succeeded, as in all likelihood they would, in getting a warrant for his arrest, he might expect the warrant to be executed at any moment during the day. It was extremely important that he should be prepared for the worst. He thought of all the men he knew, and after a little hesitation he decided that he would write to San Giacinto. The latter had always been friendly to him, and Pietro remembered how he had spoken at the club, years ago, when Pietrasanta was gossiping about Arden's supposed intemperance. San Giacinto's very great moral weight in the world, due in different degrees to his character, his superior judgment, and his enormous wealth, made him the most desirable of allies. While he was waiting for Bonifazio's return, Ghisleri occupied himself in writing a note advising San Giacinto of the circumstances, and inquiring whether he might ask him for help. The servant returned as he finished, and handed his master the little yellow-covered volume with an expression of inquiry on his face. Ghisleri looked at him and hesitated, debating whether it would be wise to warn the man of what might take place at any moment. There was much friendliness in the relations between the two. Bonifazio had been with Pietro many years and perhaps understood the latter's character better than any one. The servant was almost as unlike other people, in his own way, as Ghisleri himself, and was in two respects a remarkable contrast to him. He was imperturbably good-tempered in the first place, and, in the second, he was extremely devout. But there were resemblances also, and it was for these that Ghisleri liked him. He was honest to a fault. He had more than once proved himself to be coolly courageous in some of his master's dangerous expeditions. Finally, he was discretion itself, and reticent in the highest degree. That such an otherwise perfect creature should have defects was only to be expected. Bonifazio was as obstinate as flint when he had made up his mind as to how any particular thing was to be done. He was silently officious, in his anxiety to be always ready to fulfil his master's wishes, and often annoyed him in small ways by thrusting services upon him which he did not require. On rare occasions he would insist upon giving very useless and uncalled-for advice. Faithful and devoted in every way, he wholly disapproved, on religious grounds, of Ghisleri's mode of life, even so far as he was acquainted with it. He considered that Pietro lived and had lived for many years in seven-fold deadly sin, and he daily offered up the most sincere prayers for Pietro's repentance and reformation. Twice a year, also, he privately presented the parish priest with a small charity out of his savings, requesting him to say a mass for Ghisleri's benefit. Obstinate in this as in everything else, he firmly believed that his master's soul might ultimately be saved by sheer prayer-power, so to say. These last facts, of course, did not come within Ghisleri's knowledge, for Bonifazio made no outward show of pious interest in Pietro's spiritual welfare, well knowing that he could not keep his situation an hour, if he were so unwise as to risk anything of the kind. But his silent disapproval showed itself in his mournful expression when Pietro had done anything which struck him as more than usually wicked and wild. The question of informing him that the police might be expected at any moment was not in itself a serious one. He would assuredly disbelieve the whole story, and vigorously deny the accusation when acquainted with both. Ghisleri determined to say nothing and immediately sent him out again with the note for San Giacinto. He then took up the Penal Code, and found the article referring to the misdeed of which he was accused. It read as follows: ART 409. Whosoever, by in any way inspiring fear of severe injury to the person, the honour, or the property of another, or by falsely representing the order of an Authority, constrains that other to send, deposit, or place at the disposal of the delinquent money, objects, or documents having any legal import whatsoever, is punished with imprisonment for a term of from two to ten years. The law was clear enough. With regard to bail, he discovered with some difficulty that in such cases it could be obtained immediately, either on depositing the sum of money considered requisite according to circumstances, or by the surety of one or more well-known persons. San Giacinto answered the note by appearing in person. When he undertook anything, he generally proceeded to the scene of action at once to ascertain for himself the true state of the case. Ghisleri explained matters as succinctly as possible. "You will hardly believe that such things can be done in our day," he said as he concluded. "I have seen enough in my time, and amongst my own near connexions, to know that almost anything conceivable may happen," answered the giant. "Meanwhile I shall not leave you until the police come, or until we know definitely that they are not coming. My carriage is below and has orders to wait all day and all night." "You do not mean to say you really intend to stay with me?" asked Ghisleri, who was not prepared for such a manifestation of friendship. "That is my intention," replied the other, calmly lighting a long black cigar. "If it lasts long, I will sleep on your sofa. If, however, you prefer that I should go to Savelli and make him tell me what he intends to do, I am quite ready. I think I could make him tell me." "I think you could," said Ghisleri, with a smile, as he looked at his friend. The huge, giant strength of the man was imposing in itself, apart from the terribly determined look of the iron features and deep-set eyes. Few men would have cared to find themselves opposed to San Giacinto even when he was perfectly calm, hardly any, perhaps, if his anger was roused. The last time he had been angry had been when he dragged the forger, Arnoldo Meschini, from the library to the study in Palazzo Montevarchi more than twenty years earlier. His hair was turning grey now, but there were no outward signs of any diminution in his powers, physical or mental. "In any case," he said, "some time must elapse. It will need the greater part of the day to get a warrant of arrest." Ghisleri would have been glad to end his suspense by allowing his friend to go directly to Savelli, as he had proposed to do. But considering what he had already shown himself ready to do, Pietro did not wish to involve him in the affair any further than necessary. "Is it of any use to send for my lawyer?" asked Ghisleri, well aware of San Giacinto's superior experience in all legal matters. "There is not the least hurry," answered the latter. "If the affair is brought to trial, there will be time enough and to spare. But if it amuses you, let us have the man here and ask his opinion. It can do no harm." Accordingly Ubaldini was sent for. He looked very grave when Ghisleri had repeated all that Savelli had told him. "But the mere fact that I consulted you when I did," said Ghisleri, "and had copies of my answers made, ought to prove at once that I knew even then what Donna Adele wished to attempt." But Ubaldini only shrugged his shoulders. "That will be against you," answered San Giacinto. "It will be said that you were well aware of what you were doing, and that you were taking precautions in case of exposure. Even if Lady Herbert were here to give evidence, it would not help you much. After all, Donna Adele's story about the seamstress is plausible, and Lady Herbert took your explanation on faith." "Lady Herbert shall not be called as a witness, if I can help it," said Ghisleri. "It is bad enough that her name should appear at all." "The difficulty," observed Ubaldini, "is that every point can be turned against you from first to last. I am afraid that even my little stratagem has done no good. I wished to find out whether the confession really existed, and I thought it best that you should be in ignorance of the steps I took and of the result I obtained, in case you should be called upon to swear to anything in a possible action brought by you for defamation. The less an innocent man knows of the facts of a case, when he is on his oath, the better it generally turns out for him. The first thing to be done is to find the dealer with whom you negotiated for the purchase of the manuscript. His evidence will be the strongest we can get. Of course, even to that they will answer that you would not be so foolish as to write what looked like an account of a genuine transaction without lending an air of truth to it, in case of necessity, by actually making inquiries about it. If it is found that the prices named in your letters agree with those asked by the dealer, they will say that you cleverly chose a very valuable work, and determined to be guided by the value of it, in appraising the letter you held. If the prices did not agree, they would say that even if the transaction were genuine, you had conducted it dishonestly; but then, as a matter of fact, the discovery was a good proof that it was a mere sham. Of course, too, you will have friends, like the Signor Marchese here present, who will swear to your previous character; but you must not forget that in a case like this the great body of educated public and social opinion is with the woman rather than the man." "In other words," said Ghisleri, with a laugh, "I am to stand my trial for extortion, and am very likely to be convicted. You are not very encouraging, Signor Ubaldini, but I suppose you will find a word to say in my defence before everything is over." "I will do my best," answered the young lawyer, thoughtfully. "I would like to know where this confession is. One thing is quite certain: if it had got into the hands of a dishonest person, Donna Adele would have heard of it before now, and would have tried to buy it, as she did try to get it from the maid Lucia, according to her own account, and from me. In the meanwhile, I will go and examine the dealer. Will you kindly give me his name and address." Ghisleri wrote both on a card and Ubaldini went away. Before Ghisleri and San Giacinto had been alone together half an hour, he came back, looking rather pale and excited. "It is most unfortunate," he exclaimed. "The devil is certainly in this business. The man was buried yesterday. He died of apoplexy two days ago." "Nothing surpasses the stupidity of that!" cried San Giacinto, angrily. "Why could not the idiot have lived a fortnight longer?" Ghisleri said nothing, but he saw what importance both his friend and the lawyer had attached to the dead man's testimony. There was little hope that his clerk would be able to say anything in Ghisleri's favour. He had of course only spoken with the dealer himself, generally in a private room and without witnesses. He began to fear that his case was even worse than he had at first supposed. "The best possible defence, in my opinion," said Ubaldini, "is to tell your own story and compare it, inch by inch, with theirs. I believe that, after all, yours will seem by far the more probable in the eyes of any court of justice. Then we will question Donna Adele's sanity, and bring a couple of celebrated authorities to prove that people who use morphia often go mad and have fixed ideas. Donna Adele's delusion is that you are the possessor of her confession. If we cannot prove that it has been all this time in the hands of some one else, we may at least be able to show that there is no particular reason why it should have been in yours, that you are certainly not in need of fifty thousand francs, and that, so far as any one knows, you are not the man to try and get it in this way if you were. We will do the best we can. I got a man off scot free the other day who had murdered his brother in the presence of three witnesses. I proved that one was half-witted, that the second was drunk, and that the third could not possibly have been present at all, because he ought to have been somewhere else. That was a much harder case than this. The jury shed tears of pity for my ill-used client." "I will do without the tears," said Ghisleri, with a smile, "provided they will see the truth this time." San Giacinto kept his word, and refused to leave Ghisleri's lodging that night, sending Bonifazio to his house for clothes and necessaries, and ordering fresh horses and another coachman and footman to replace those that had waited all day. He distinctly objected to cabs, he said, because they were always too small for him; and if Ghisleri was to be arrested, he intended to drive with him to the prison in order to give bail for him immediately. And so he did. On the following day Rome was surprised by a spectacle unique in the recollection of its inhabitants, high or low. The largest of the large open carriages belonging to Casa San Giacinto was seen rolling solemnly through the city, bearing Pietro Ghisleri, the Marchese di San Giacinto himself, and two policemen, who looked very uncomfortable as they sat, bolt upright, side by side, with their backs to the horses. A few hours later, the same carriage appeared again, Pietro and the giant being still in it, but without the officers of the law. San Giacinto insisted upon driving his friend six times round the Villa Borghese, six times round the Pincio, and four times the length of the Corso, before taking him back at last to his lodgings. "It will produce a good effect," he said; "most people are fools or cowards, or both, and imitation as a rule needs neither courage nor wisdom. Come and dine with us to-morrow night, and I will have a party ready for you who do not belong to the majority. I shall go to the club now and give an account of the day's doings." "Why not wait and let people find out for themselves what has happened?" asked Pietro. "Will it do any good to talk of it?" "Since people must talk or die," answered San Giacinto, "I am of opinion that they had better tell the truth than invent lies." When he was gone Ghisleri wondered what had impelled him to take so much trouble. It would have been quite enough if he had appeared at the right moment to give security for him, and that alone would have been a very valuable service. But San Giacinto had done much more, for his action had shown the world from the first that he intended to take Ghisleri's side. The latter, who was always surprised when any one showed anything approaching to friendship for him, was exceedingly grateful, and determined that he would not in future laugh at the idea of spontaneous human kindness without motive, as he had often laughed in the past. Meanwhile San Giacinto went to his club. A score of men were lounging in the rooms, and most of them had been talking of the new scandal, though in a rather guarded way, for no one wished to quarrel either with Ghisleri or his ally. On seeing the latter go to the smoking-room, almost every one in the club followed him, out of curiosity, in the hope that he would give some explanation of what had occurred. They were not disappointed. San Giacinto stood with his back to the fireplace, looking at each face that presented itself before him. "Gentlemen," he began: "I see that you expect me to say something. I will. I do not wish to offend any one; but, with the exception of all of ourselves here assembled, most people tell lies, consciously or unconsciously, when they do not know the truth, and sometimes when they do, which is worse. So I mean to tell you the truth about my driving with Ghisleri and two policemen to-day, and the reason why I have been driving with him all the afternoon. After that you may believe what you like about the matter. The facts are these. Yesterday Ghisleri wrote me a note telling me that he expected shortly to be arrested on a charge of extortion and asking if I would be bail for him. That is what I have done. The accusation comes from Casa Savelli, and declares that for two years and a half Ghisleri has had possession of that letter belonging to Donna Adele which she wrote to her confessor, which was lost on the way, and of which we have all heard vague hints for some time. Casa Savelli says that Ghisleri has been trying to make her pay money for it, and has otherwise made her life unbearable to her by means of it. There are letters of Ghisleri's referring to the manuscript of Isabella Montevarchi's confession which was for sale this autumn, and Casa Savelli says that this manuscript was spoken of in order to disguise the real transaction contemplated. Ghisleri says it is a plot to ruin him, and that he has been aware of it ever since last spring. Meanwhile he has actually been arrested and I have given bail for him. That is the story. I drove about with him this afternoon to show that I, for my part, take his side, and believe him to be perfectly innocent. That is what I had to say. I am obliged to you for having listened so patiently." As he turned to go away, not caring for any further discussion at the time, he was aware that a dark man of medium height, with very broad shoulders and fierce, black eyes, was standing beside him, facing the crowd. "I am entirely of San Giacinto's opinion," said Gianforte Campodonico, in clear tones. "I believe Ghisleri utterly incapable of any such baseness. Donna Adele Savelli is a relation of mine, but I will stand by Ghisleri in this, come what may. I hope that no one will have the audacity to propose any action of the club in the case, such as requesting him to withdraw, until after the trial." "But when a man is indicted for crime, and has been arrested--" began some one in the crowd. "I said," repeated Gianforte, interrupting the speaker in a hard and menacing voice, "that I hoped no one would have the audacity to propose that the club should take any action in the case. I hope I have made myself clearly understood." Such was the character and reputation of Campodonico that the man who had begun to speak did not attempt to proceed, not so much from timidity, perhaps, as because he felt that in the end two men like Gianforte and San Giacinto must carry public opinion with them. As they stood side by side before the fireplace, they were as strong and determined a pair of champions as any one could have wished to have. "You are quite right," said San Giacinto, in an approving tone. "Of course I have neither the power nor the right to prevent discussion. Every one will talk about this case and the trial, and as it is a public affair every one has a right to do so, I suppose. I only wish it to be known that I believe Ghisleri innocent, and I am glad to see that Campodonico, who knows him very well, is of my opinion." After this there was nothing more to be said, and the crowd dispersed, talking together in low tones. The two men who had undertaken Ghisleri's defence remained together. San Giacinto looked down at his young companion, and his stern face softened strangely. A certain kind of manly courage and generosity was the only thing that ever really touched him. "I am glad to see that there are still men in the world," he said. "Will you have a game of billiards?" The first result of this was that there was relatively very little talk about Ghisleri among the men when they were together. It is probable that both San Giacinto and Campodonico would have spoken precisely as they did, if all the assembled tribe of Savelli and Gerano had been present to hear them; and when the two families heard what had been said, they were very angry indeed. Unfortunately for them, nothing could be done. As San Giacinto had rightly put it, the trial was to be a public affair, and every one had a right to his own opinion. But there were not wanting those who sided with the Savelli, for though Ghisleri had few enemies, if any, besides Adele, yet there were many who were jealous of him for his social successes, and who disliked his calm air of superiority. The story became the constant topic of conversation in most of the Roman families, and many who had for years received Ghisleri immediately determined that they would be very cautious and cool until he should prove his innocence to the world. He himself, during the days which followed, saw much of San Giacinto, who told him what Campodonico had said at the club. CHAPTER XXVIII. When Laura Arden returned to Rome, she was met by her mother with a full account of what had taken place. Under any ordinary circumstances the Princess of Gerano would have been very merciful in her judgment and would assuredly not have hastened to give her daughter every detail of the last great scandal. But she had never liked Ghisleri, and she had feared that Laura was falling in love with him, and he with Laura. Moreover, neither her love for her own child nor Adele's shortcomings had destroyed all her affection for the latter, and under her husband's influence she had lately come to look upon Ghisleri as a monster of iniquity and on Adele as little less than a martyr. She spared Laura nothing as she told the story, and was unconsciously guilty of considerable exaggeration in explaining the view the world in general took of the case, though that was bad enough at best. Laura's dark eyes flashed with indignation as she listened. "I do not believe a word of this story, mother," she said. "As for the part I am supposed to have played in it, you had better know the truth at once. When I got those letters, I sent for Signor Ghisleri, and gave them to him. We knew at once that they came from Adele herself." She told her mother exactly what had occurred, and how she had believed in him then, and should believe in him still. The Princess sighed and shook her head. "There is very little left to believe in, my dear," she said, "trustful though you are, to a fault. I hope you will at all events not receive him until after the trial. Indeed, it will be quite impossible--I am sure you would not think of it. If he has any sense of decency left, he will not call." "I will not only receive him," answered Laura, without hesitation: "whenever he chooses to come, but if he does not come of his own accord, I will make him. What is the use of friendship, if it will not bear any test?" "I suppose it is of no use to discuss the matter," said the Princess, wearily. "You will do as you please. I do not recognise you any longer." As soon as her mother was gone, Laura wrote a note to Pietro, telling him that she had heard all the story, that she believed in him as firmly as ever, and begging him to come and see her on the following day at the usual hour. The last words dropped from her pen naturally. It seemed but yesterday that they had spoken of meeting "at the usual hour" on the morrow of the day after that. Ghisleri's heart beat faster as he broke the seal, and when he came to the words he was conscious that its beating annoyed him. He knew, now, that he loved her well, as he had loved but once before in his life. But he determined that he would not go and see her. He blessed her for believing in his innocence, but there were many strong reasons against his going to her house, or even seeing her. Merely on general grounds he would have kept away, while under the accusation which hung over him, as even the Princess of Gerano had anticipated that he would, and feeling as he did that he loved her in good earnest, it would have seemed absolutely dishonourable to renew their former relations until he had cleared himself. He wrote her a short note. "MY DEAR FRIEND:--I am deeply touched by your wishing to see me, and I am more than ever grateful for your friendship and for the faith you have in me. But I will not come to you at present. I am accused of a crime worse than most crimes, in my opinion, and the world is by no means altogether on my side. When I have cleared myself publicly, I will come and thank you--if I can find words for the thanks you deserve. "Most gratefully and faithfully, "PIETRO GHISLERI." He was not prepared for the answer which came within the hour in the shape of a second note, short, vigorous, and decisive. It seemed hard to realise that the sweet, dark woman with deep, holy eyes, as he had once described her, could be the writer of such determined words. "MY DEAR SIGNOR GHISLERI:--I care for the world and its opinion much less than you do for my sake, or than you suppose I do for myself. I mean to see you, and to have it known that I see you, and I will. If you are not here to-morrow at precisely one o'clock I will go to your lodgings and wait for you if you are out. People may say what they please. "Ever yours sincerely, "LAURA ARDEN." Ghisleri read the note over several times, to be quite sure that he had not misunderstood it, and then burned it, as he had always burned everything in the nature of writing until his last difficulties had begun. He saw that Laura had forced the situation, and he knew her well enough not to doubt that she would execute her threat to the letter, and wait for him, watch in hand, on the morrow. He hated himself for being glad, for he knew that the world she despised would give her little credit for her generous act. Yet, in spite of his self-contempt, he was happy. Five minutes before one o'clock on the next day he rang at her door. She had returned as usual to the small apartment she had occupied since leaving the Tempietto. He found her dressed for walking, all in black, and looking at the clock. As he entered she turned and laughed happily. There was a faint colour in her cheeks too. "I knew you would not let me ruin my reputation for the sake of your obstinacy," she said, as she came forward to meet him. "In four minutes I would have left the house." She grasped his hand warmly as she spoke. "No," he said, "I could not have done that. What ways you have of forcing people to obey you! But you are very wrong; I still maintain that." "Sit down," she said, "and let us talk of more interesting things. I must hear the whole story from your own lips, though I am sure my mother did her best to be quite truthful; but she does not understand you and never will, as I begin to think." "Tell me first how you are, and about Herbert," said Ghisleri. "You will hear quite enough of this miserable affair. It will keep a day or two." "It need not keep so long as that," answered Laura, "I can tell you the news in a few words. I am perfectly well. Herbert is perfectly well too, thank God, and has outgrown his clothes twice and his shoes four times since we have been away. Since I last wrote great things have happened. I have been in England again at last, and have stayed with the Lulworths. You see I am in mourning. Uncle Herbert died a month ago. I never saw the old gentleman but once, for he lived in the most extraordinary way, in complete isolation. You know that--well, he is dead, and he has left all the fortune to my Herbert, with a life interest in one-quarter of it for me, besides an enormous allowance for Herbert's education. That is all there is to tell." "It is good news indeed," said Ghisleri. "I am so glad. It will make an immense difference to you, though of course you have known of it a long time." "It will not make so much difference as you fancy. I shall go on living much as I do, for I have had almost all I wanted in these years. But I am glad for Herbert's sake, of course. And now begin, please, and do not stop until you have told me everything." "Needs must, when you will anything," Ghisleri answered, with a faint smile. So he told her the story, while she listened and watched him. She had developed in strength and decision during the last year, more rapidly than before, and he felt in speaking to her as though she had power to help him and would use it. He was grateful, and more than grateful. Within the last few weeks he had learned that the strongest and most determined men may sometimes need a friend. He had long had one in her, and he had found a new one in San Giacinto; but though the latter's imposing personality had more influence in the world than that of any man Ghisleri knew, there was that in Laura's sympathy which gave him a new strength of his own, and fresh courage to face the many troubles he expected to encounter before long. For man gets no such strength in life to do great deeds or to bear torments sudden and sharp or mean, little and harassing, as he gets from the woman he loves, even though he does not yet know that she loves him again. "I hope I do not take my own side too much," he said, as he ended the long tale, "though I suppose that when a man is perfectly innocent he has a right to say hard things of people who accuse him. For my own part, I believe that Donna Adele is mad. There is the ingenuity of madness in everything she does in this affair. No sane person could invent such a story almost out of nothing, and make half the world believe it." "She may be mad," Laura answered, "but she is bad, too. It will all come out at the trial, and she will get what she deserves." "I hope so. But do you know what I really expect? Unless it can be proved that the confession has been all the time in the safe keeping of some person who has not even read it, I shall be convicted and imprisoned. I am quite prepared for that. I suppose that will come to me by way of expiation for my sins." "Please do not talk like that," cried Laura. "It is absurd! There is no court in the world that would convict you--a perfectly innocent man. Besides I shall give my evidence about those letters. I shall insist upon it. That alone would be enough to clear you." "I am afraid not. Even my lawyer thinks that your testimony would not help me much. After all, you know what happened. I told you that I was innocent, and you believed me. Or, if you please, you believed me innocent before I said I was. There is only your belief or my word to fall back upon, and neither would prove anything in court. Ubaldini says so. I really expect to be convicted, and I will bear it as well as I can. I will certainly not do anything to escape from it all." He had hesitated as he reached the last words, but he saw that Laura understood. "You should not even think of such things," she said gravely. "You are far too brave a man to take your own life even if you were convicted, and you shall not be. I tell you that you shall not be!" she repeated, with sudden energy. "No one can tell. But I am inclined to think that if you were angry you might terrify judge and jury into doing whatever you pleased." He laughed a little. "You have grown so strong of late that I hardly recognise you. What has made the change?" "Something--I cannot explain it to you. Besides--was I ever a weak woman? Did I ever hesitate much?" "No, that is true. Perhaps I did not use the right word. You seem more active, more alive, more determined to influence other people." "Do I? It may be true. I fancy I am less saint-like in your opinion than I was. I am glad of it. You used to think me quite different from what I was. But I know that I have changed during this summer. I feel it now." "So have I. The change began before you went away." Ghisleri glanced at her, and then looked at the wall. A short silence followed. Both felt strangely conscious that their former relation had not been renewed exactly where it had been interrupted by their separation in the summer. But there was nothing awkward about the present break in the conversation. "In what way have you changed?" asked Laura at last. She had evidently been thinking of his words during the pause. "Indeed I should find it hard to tell you now," Ghisleri answered, with a smile at the thought uppermost in his mind. "I would rather not try." "Is it for the worse, then?" Laura's eyes sought his. "No. It is for the better. Perhaps, some day, if all this turns out less badly--" He stopped, angry with himself for having said even that much. "Shall you have more confidence in me when the trial is over?" asked Laura, leaning back and looking down. "Have I shown that I believe in you, or not, to-day?" Had she known what was so near his lips to say, she might not have spoken. "You have done what few women would have done. You know that I know it. If I will not say what I am thinking of, it is for that very reason." His fingers clasped each other and unclasped again with a sharp, nervous movement. "I am sorry you do not trust me altogether," said Laura. "Please do not say that. I do trust you altogether. But I respect you too. Will you forgive me if I go away rather suddenly?" He rose as he spoke and held out his hand. "You are not ill, are you?" Laura stood up, looking anxiously into his face. Unconsciously she had taken his hand in both of her own. "No--I am not ill. Good-bye!" "Come to-morrow, please. I want to see you often. Promise to come to-morrow." Her tone was imperative, and he knew that she had the power to force him to compliance. He yielded out of necessity, and left her. When he was in the street he stood still a few moments, leaning upon his stick as though he were exhausted. His face was white. Oddly enough, what he felt recalled an accident which had once happened to him. On a calm, hot day, several years earlier, he had been slowly sailing along a southern shore. The heat had been intense, and he had thrown himself into the water to get a little coolness, holding by a rope, and allowing himself to be towed along under the side of the boat. Then one of the men called to him loudly to come aboard as quickly as he could. As he reached the deck, the straight black fin of a big shark glided smoothly by. He could remember the shadow it cast on the bright blue water, and the sensation he experienced when he saw how near he had unconsciously been to a hideous death. Like many brave but very sensitive men, he had turned pale when the danger was quite past and had felt for one moment something like physical exhaustion. The same feeling overtook him now as he paused on the pavement before the house in which Laura Arden lived. An instant later he was walking rapidly homeward. At the corner of a street he came suddenly upon Gianforte Campodonico. Both men raised their hats almost at the same moment, for their relations were necessarily maintained upon rather formal terms. Ghisleri owed his old adversary a debt of gratitude for his conduct at the club, but a rather exaggerated sense of delicacy hindered Pietro from stopping and speaking with him in the street. Campodonico, however, would not let him pass on and stood still as Ghisleri came up to him. "I wish to thank you with all my heart for the generous way in which you have spoken of me," said Ghisleri, grasping the other's ready outstretched hand. "You have nothing to thank me for," replied Gianforte. "Knowing you to be a perfectly honourable and honest man, I should have been a coward if I had held my tongue. You have a good friend in San Giacinto, and I suppose I cannot be of much use to you. But if I can, send for me. I shall never like you perhaps, but I will stand by you, because I respect you as much as any man living." "I thank you sincerely," said Ghisleri, pressing his hand again. "You are very generous." "No, but I try to be just." They parted, and Ghisleri pursued his way, meditating on the contradictions of life, and wondering why at the most critical moment of his existence the one man who had come forward unasked and of his own free impulse to defend him publicly and to offer his help, should be his oldest and most implacable enemy. He was profoundly conscious of the man's generosity. The world, he said to himself, might not be such a bad place after all. But he did not guess how soon he was to need the assistance so freely proffered. He went home at once. Bonifazio closed the door behind him and followed him respectfully into the sitting-room. "I beg pardon, signore," he began, standing still as he waited for Ghisleri to turn and look at him. "Do you need money?" asked the latter carelessly. "No, signore. You have perhaps forgotten that you gave me money yesterday. It is something which I have had upon my conscience a long time, and now that you are falsely accused, signore, it is my duty to speak, if you permit me." "Tell me what it is." Ghisleri sat down at his writing-table, and lit a cigarette. "It is a very secret matter, signore. But if I keep it a secret any longer, I shall be doing wrong, though I also did wrong in coming by the information I have, though I did not know it. I have also been to a lawyer who understands these matters, and takes an interest in the case, and he has told me that unless some saint performs a miracle nothing can save you at the trial. So that I must give my evidence. But if I do, the Princess Adele will go to the galleys, and the house of Savelli will be quite ruined. For the Princess murdered Lord Herbert Arden, and tried to murder Donna Laura, as we call her. She invited them to dinner and gave them napkins which she with her own hand had poisoned with infection of the scarlet fever, her maid Lucia having had it at the time. And Lord Herbert died within three days, but Donna Laura did not catch it. And I have read how she did this, and many other wicked things, in a letter written with her own hand. For it was I who found the confession they speak of, when I went alone to look at the old prisons at Gerano, while you and the signori were out driving. And now I do not know what to do, but I had to speak in order to save you, and you must judge of the rest, signore, and pardon me if I have done wrong." Ghisleri knew the truth at last, and his lean, weather-beaten face expressed well enough the thirst for vengeance that burned him. He waited a few moments and then spoke calmly enough. "Have you got the confession here?" he asked. "If it is found in my house it will ruin me, though it may ruin Donna Adele too." "I understand, signore. Have no fear. I read it through, because I found it open and the leaves scattered as it must have fallen, though how it fell there I do not know. But it is still at Gerano. If you will allow me, I will explain what I did. When I had read it, I put it into my pocket, saying to myself that it was a difficult case for the conscience. And I thought about it for more than an hour while I walked about the castle. Then I went and got an envelope and I put the leaves into it thinking that perhaps it would be wrong to burn it. So I wrote on the outside: 'This was found in the prison of the castle of Gerano by Bonifazio di Rienzo,' and I also wrote the date in full. Then at the tobacconist's shop in the village I bought some wax, and took a seal I have, which is this one, signore. It has 'B.R.' on it. And I sealed the letter with much wax, so that the tobacconist laughed at me. But I did not let him see what was written on the envelope. Then I took it to the parish priest whose name is Don Tebaldo, and who seemed to me to be a very respectable and good man. I told him in confidence that I had found something which it was not possible for me to give to the rightful owner, but which I thought it would be wrong to destroy, because the rightful owner might some day make inquiry for it and wish to have it. He asked many questions, but I would not answer them all, and he did not know what the letter was about nor that it was a confession. So I begged him to put it into another envelope and to seal it again with his own seal, and I gave him what was left of the wax I had bought. Then he did as I asked him, and wrote on the back: 'This was brought to me to be kept, by one Bonifazio di Rienzo, until the owner claims it. But it is to be burned when I die.' And there it is to this day, for I have made inquiries and Don Tebaldo is alive and well, and God bless him! So I come to tell you all this, in order that you may act as you see fit, signore. For Don Tebaldo can swear that I gave him the letter on the day I found it and I can swear that you never knew anything of it." Ghisleri looked at his faithful old servant, whose round brown eyes met his so steadily and quietly. "I can never thank you enough, my dear Bonifazio," he said. "You have saved me. I will not forget it." "As for that, signore, I will not accept any present, and I humbly beg you not to offer me any, for it would be the price of blood, such as Judas Iscariot received, seeing that the Princess Adele will go to the galleys." "You need not be afraid of that, Bonifazio," answered Ghisleri. "Casa Savelli will easily prove that she was mad, as I believe she is, and she will end her life in a lunatic asylum. But you must not bring either Don Tebaldo or the letter here. Go at once to the Marchese di San Giacinto and tell him exactly what you have told me, and that I sent you. He will know what to do. Take money with you and execute his orders exactly without returning here, no matter what they are. I can do without you for a week if necessary, and I wish to know nothing of the matter until it is over." "Yes, signore," answered Bonifazio, and without more words he left the room and went directly to San Giacinto's house. The latter received him in his study, and listened to his story with calm attention. Then, without making any remark, he smoked nearly half a cigar, while Bonifazio stood motionless, respectfully watching him. Then he rang the bell, and gave the man who answered it instructions to order out a sort of mail-cart he used for driving himself, and the strongest horses in the stable. "You must come with me," he said to Bonifazio. "We can be back before midnight." Then he began to write rapidly. He wrote a note to his cousin, the Prince of Sant' Ilario, another to Gianforte Campodonico, and then a rather longer one to Savelli. In the last mentioned, he informed the Prince that he would appear on the morrow, with Campodonico and Sant' Ilario, and that he desired to be received by Savelli himself in the presence of Francesco and Adele, as he had a communication of the highest importance to make. In his usual hard way he managed to convey the impression that it would be decidedly the worse for the whole house of Savelli and for Adele in particular if his request were not complied with to the letter. By the time he had finished a servant announced that the carriage was waiting. San Giacinto thrust a handful of black cigars and a box of matches into his outer pocket. "Come," he said to Bonifazio, "I am ready. It is a long drive to Gerano." It was nearly three o'clock in the afternoon when they started, and the days were very short and the weather threatening. But the horses were splendid animals, and there were few roads between Rome and the Abbruzzi which San Giacinto did not know well. He was acting as he always did, swiftly, surely, and in person, trusting to no one, and making himself alone responsible for the result. Before one o'clock in the morning he was back, bringing with him a mild and timid old priest, muffled in a horse blanket against the bitter wind. But the sealed packet containing Adele Savelli's confession was in his own pocket. On his table he found three notes, which satisfied him that everything would take place as he had hastily planned it before his departure. Campodonico expressed his readiness to serve Ghisleri in any way, Sant' Ilario said that he was ready to support San Giacinto in anything he undertook, though he had never been intimate with Ghisleri, who was much younger than he. Savelli answered coldly that he would receive the three men as requested, adding that he hoped the communication would prove to be of such importance as to justify putting his daughter-in-law to the inconvenience which any prolonged interview caused her in her present state of ill-health. San Giacinto smiled rather grimly. He did not think that his visit to Casa Savelli need be a very long one. Before he went to bed, he debated whether he should send word to Gerano to be present also, but he ultimately decided not to do so. It seemed useless to make Adele's father witness his daughter's humiliation, though he meant not to spare either Savelli or his son. Towards Adele he was absolutely pitiless. It was his nature. If she had been dying, he would have found means to make her listen to what he had to say. If she had been at the very last gasp he would have forced his way to her bedside to say it. He was by no means a man without faults. Meanwhile Ghisleri was pacing his room in solitude, reflecting on the sudden change in all the prospects of the future, and wondering how matters would be managed, but feeling himself perfectly safe in San Giacinto's hands, and well understanding that he was not to be informed of what had happened until all was over. That San Giacinto would face all the assembled Savelli and force them then and there to withdraw all charges against Ghisleri, the latter was sure, and, on the whole, he was glad that he was not to witness their discomfiture. But it was not only of his being in one moment cleared of every accusation that he thought. The consequences to himself were enormous. He remembered the sickening horror he had felt that afternoon when he realised how nearly he had told Laura that he loved her. In four and twenty hours there would be nothing to hinder him from speaking out what filled his heart. If he chose to do so, he might even now write to her and tell her what he had struggled so hard to hide when they had been face to face. But he was not the man to write when there was a possibility of speaking, nor to trust to the black and white of ink and paper to say for him what he could say better for himself. Then the old doubt came back, and he spent a night of strange self-questioning and much useless moral torment. Was this the last, the very last of his loves? He remembered how a little less than three years earlier he had bid good-bye to Maddalena dell' Armi, saying to himself that he could never again feel his heart beat at a woman's voice, nor his face turn pale with passion for a woman's kiss. And now he loved again, perhaps with little hope of seeing his love returned, but with the mad desire to stake his fate upon one cast, and win or lose all for ever. He had never felt that irresistible longing before, not even when he had first loved Bianca Corleone in his early days. Then, it was true, he had been very young, and Bianca had not been like Laura. She had been young herself as he was, and had loved him from the first, almost without hiding it. There had been little need for words on either side, for love told his own tale plainly. Yet it seemed to him now that if he had then thought Bianca as cold as he had reason to believe that Laura was, he might have resigned himself to his fate at the beginning--he might not have found the strength he now had to risk such a defeat as perhaps waited him, to run any danger, now that he was free, rather than live in suspense another day. CHAPTER XXIX. Sant' Ilario and Gianforte Campodonico rang at San Giacinto's door half an hour before the time the latter had appointed for his descent upon Casa Savelli. He had not explained the situation in the hurried notes he had written them on the previous day, and they did not know what was to take place. "It is very simple," said San Giacinto, coolly. "The whole story was a lie from beginning to end, as I always believed. The confession was found at Gerano and deposited with the parish priest under seal on the same day. I went to Gerano and brought the priest and the letter back. Here it is, if you wish to see the outside of it, and the priest is waiting in the next room. This is the document which Donna Adele will have signed an hour hence." He produced a sheet of stamped paper from the drawer of his writing-table and read aloud what was written upon it, as follows: "I, the undersigned, being in full possession of my faculties, and free of my will, hereby publicly withdraw each and every one of the accusations I have made, publicly or privately, either in my own person or through my father, the Prince of Gerano, or my father-in-law, Prince Savelli, my husband, Francesco, Prince Savelli, or through any other persons purporting to represent me, against Pietro Nobile Ghisleri; and I declare upon my oath before God that there is not and never was any truth whatsoever in any one of the said accusations upon which the said Pietro Nobile Ghisleri was unjustly arrested and accused of extortion under Article 409 of the Penal Code. And I further declare that the letters of his which I hold do and did refer directly to the purchase of the manuscript writings of Donna Isabella Montevarchi which were at that time for sale, and to no other manuscript or writing whatsoever; and further, I declare that no such person as 'Maria B.' was ever known to me, but that I wrote the letters received from 'Maria B.' by Lady Herbert Arden, and that I withdrew her answers myself from the general post-office. And if I have done anything else to strengthen the false accusation against the said Pietro Nobile Ghisleri such as may hereafter come to light, this present retraction and denial shall be held to cover it by anticipation. And hereunto I set my hand and seal in the presence of Don Giovanni Saracinesca, Prince of Sant' Ilario, of Don Giovanni Saracinesca, Marchese di San Giacinto, and of Don Gianforte Campodonico di Norba, who in my presence and in the presence of each other are witnesses of this act." San Giacinto ceased reading, and looked at his two companions. Campodonico was grave, but Sant' Ilario smiled. "If you can make her sign that, you are stronger than I supposed, Giovanni," said the latter. "So it seems to me," said Gianforte. "I do not think she will offer much resistance," answered San Giacinto, quietly pocketing the confession and the document he had just read. "I suppose what I am going to do is unscrupulous, but I do not think that Donna Adele has shown any uncommon delicacy of feeling in this little affair. Let us go and see whether she has any objection to signing her name." Don Tebaldo, the priest, and Bonifazio followed the three gentlemen in a cab to the Palazzo Savelli, and all five went up the grand staircase together. Neither Don Tebaldo nor the servant had received any instructions beyond being told that if they were called into the room when the reading took place, they were to answer truthfully any questions which might be put to them. Prince Savelli met them all in an outer drawing-room, the same indeed in which poor Herbert Arden had talked with Francesco a few days before his death. He was coldly courteous to San Giacinto, but greeted the others somewhat more warmly. "May I ask what the nature of your communication is?" he inquired of the former. "I prefer to explain it in the presence of Donna Adele, as it concerns her directly," answered San Giacinto: "It is useless to tell a story twice." The extremely high and mighty head of all the Savelli stared up at the giant through his big spectacles. He was not at all used to being treated with so little consideration. But the other was a match for him, and stood carelessly waiting for the master of the house to lead the way. "Considering whom you represent," said the Prince, "your manner is somewhat imperative." San Giacinto's heavy brows bent in an ominous frown, and Savelli found it impossible to meet the gaze of the hard, deep-set eyes for more than a few seconds. "I represent an innocent man, whom you and yours are trying to ruin. As for my manners, they were learned in an inn and not in Casa Savelli. I shall be obliged if you will lead the way." Sant' Ilario suppressed a smile. He had seen his strong cousin in more than one such encounter, but he had never seen any one resist him long. Savelli did not reply, but turned and went before them and opened the door. They passed through another drawing-room and through a third, and then found themselves in Adele's boudoir. She was seated in a deep chair near the fire, warming her transparent hands at the flame. Her face was exactly of the colour of the yellow ashes of certain kinds of wood. It seemed impossible that any human being could be so thin as she seemed, and live. But there was yet some strength left, and her strong will, aided by the silent but insane satisfaction she felt in Ghisleri's ruin, kept her still in a sort of animation which was sometimes almost like her old activity. She had, of course, been warned of the impending interview, but she thought that San Giacinto had come to propose some compromise to the advantage of Ghisleri, and her father-in-law and husband were inclined to share her opinion; she meant to refuse everything, and to say that she would abide the judgment of the courts. She did not rise when the party entered, but held out her hand to each in succession. Francesco Savelli stood beside her, and also shook hands with each, but made no remark. "Sit down," said Prince Savelli, moving forward a chair. "Thank you," answered San Giacinto, "but it is useless. We shall stay only long enough for Donna Adele to sign a paper I have brought with me. We do not wish to disturb you further than necessary. With your permission I will read the document." And thereupon, standing before her, he read it slowly and distinctly. Prince Savelli gradually turned pale, for he knew the man, and guessed that he possessed some terribly sure means of enforcing his will. But Adele laughed scornfully and her husband followed her example. "Is there any reason why I should sign that very singular and untrue declaration?" she asked, with contempt. San Giacinto looked at her steadily for a moment, and without reasoning she began to feel afraid. "I have a strong argument in my pocket," he said. "For I have your confession here, and the priest with whom it has been deposited since the day it was found is waiting in the hall, if you wish to see him." Adele shook from head to foot, and her hands moved spasmodically. She made a great effort, however, and succeeded in speaking. "The fact that it has been in a place where Ghisleri knew how to find it is the last proof of his guilt we required," she said, mechanically repeating the words she had heard her father-in-law use more than once. "Ghisleri never saw it and never knew where it was until yesterday," answered San Giacinto. "If you will oblige me by signing this paper, I will not trouble you any further." "I will not sign it, nor anything of such a nature," said Adele, desperately. "You are perfectly free to do as you please," answered San Giacinto. "And so am I. Since you positively refuse, there is nothing left for me to do but to go away. But I forgot to tell you that the humble person who found it was able to read, and read it, before taking it to the priest, and that he has informed me most minutely of the contents. I see you are annoyed at that, and I am not surprised, for in half an hour it will be in the hands of the attorney-general. Good morning, Princess." In the dead silence that followed one might have heard a pin fall, or a feather. San Giacinto waited a few moments and then turned to go. Instantly Adele uttered a sharp cry and sprang to her feet. With a quickness of which no one present would have believed her capable, she was at his side, and holding him back by the arm. He turned again and looked calmly down at her. "You do not mean to do what you threaten?" she cried, in abject terror. "I mean to take this sealed document to the attorney-general without losing a moment," he answered. "You know very well what will happen if I do that." Both Savelli and his son came forward while he was speaking. "I will not allow you to hint in my house that anything in that confession could have any consequences to my daughter-in-law," said the Prince, in a loud voice. "You have no right to make any such assertions." "If Donna Adele wishes it, I will break the seal and read her own account," answered San Giacinto. He put his hand into the breast pocket of his coat and drew out the packet. Altogether losing control of herself, Adele tried to snatch it from his hand, but he held it high in air, and his vast figure towered above the rest of the group, still more colossal by the gesture of the upstretched arm. "You see for yourselves what importance Donna Adele attaches to this trifle," he said, in deep tones. "You would do well to persuade her to sign that paper. That is the only exchange I will take for what I hold. She knows that every word written there is true--as true as every word she has written here," he added, glancing up at the sealed letter. "I will wait one minute more by that clock, and then I will go." The two Savelli gazed at Adele in undisguised astonishment and horror. It was clear enough from her face and terrified manner that San Giacinto spoke the truth, and that the confession he held contained some awful secret of which they were wholly ignorant. "What is the meaning of all this, Adele?" asked the Prince, sternly. "What does that confession contain?" But she did not answer, as she sank into a chair before the table, and almost mechanically dipped a pen into the ink. San Giacinto laid the formal denial before her, holding the confession behind him, for he believed her capable of snatching it from him and tossing it into the fire at any moment. She signed painfully in large, sloping characters that decreased rapidly in size at the end of each of her two names. The pen fell from her hand as she finished, and San Giacinto quietly laid the sealed letter before her. If she had been on the point of fainting, the sight recalled her to herself. She seized it eagerly and broke the seals, one after the other. Then she went to the fire, assured herself that the sheets were all there, and were genuine, and thrust the whole into the flames, watching until the last shred was consumed. Meanwhile San Giacinto silently handed the pen to Sant' Ilario, who signed and passed it to Gianforte. He in his turn gave it to San Giacinto, and the transaction was concluded. The two cousins, as though by common instinct, glanced at the page on which was written twice "Giovanni Saracinesca," and each thought of all the pain and anxiety the coincidence had caused in days long gone by. The last time they had signed a document together had been in the study of the Palazzo Montevarchi more than twenty years earlier, when they were still young men. "You see for yourselves," said San Giacinto, turning to the two Savelli as he neatly folded the paper, "that Donna Adele desires no further explanation, and wishes the contents of the letter she has burned to remain a secret. So far as I am concerned I pledge my word never to divulge it, nor to hint at it, and I have reason to believe that those who are acquainted with it will do the same. So far as one man can answer for another, I will be responsible for them. With regard to the finding of the letter and to the manner of its being kept so long, I leave Don Tebaldo, the parish priest of Gerano, to explain that. You can question him at your leisure. Our mission is accomplished, and Pietro Ghisleri's innocence is established for ever. That is all I wished. Good morning." After burning the confession Adele had let herself fall into the deep chair in which she had been sitting when the three friends entered the room. Her head had fallen back, and her jaw dropped in a ghastly fashion. She looked as though she were dead; but her hands twitched convulsively, rising suddenly and falling again upon her knees. It was impossible to say whether she was conscious or not. The two Savelli, father and son, stood on the other side of the fireplace and looked at her, still speechless at her conduct, which they could only half understand, but which could mean nothing but disgrace to her and dishonour to them. The elder man seemed to suffer the more, and he leaned heavily against the chimney-piece, supporting his head with his hand. Neither the one nor the other paid any attention to the three men as they silently left the room. San Giacinto begged Don Tebaldo to wait a short time, and then to send a messenger inquiring whether the Prince wished to see him, and if not, to return at once to the palace in which San Giacinto lived. Then he took Bonifazio with him as well as Campodonico and Sant' Ilario, and went at once to Ghisleri's lodging. They found him breakfasting alone in a rather sketchy fashion, for Bonifazio had not been allowed by San Giacinto to return to his master until everything was accomplished. He showed some surprise when he opened the door himself, and found the three together on the landing. "Is anything the matter?" he inquired, as he ushered them into the sitting-room, where he had been taking his meal. "On the contrary," said San Giacinto, "we have come to tell you that nothing is the matter. This paper may amuse you; but it is worth keeping, as Campodonico and my cousin can testify, for their names appear in it as witnesses." Ghisleri read the contents carefully, and they could see how his brow cleared at every word. "You have been the best friend to me that any man ever had," he said, grasping San Giacinto's huge hand. "You could have done it quite as well yourself, only I knew you would not do it at all," answered the latter. "I have no scruples in dealing with such people, nor do I see why any one should have any. But you would have gone delicately and presented Donna Adele with the confession, and then when she had burned it before your eyes, you would have told her that you trusted to her sense of justice to right you in the opinion of the world." Ghisleri laughed. He was so happy that he would have laughed at anything. After giving him a short account of what had taken place, all three left him, going, as they said, to breakfast at the club, and inform the world of what had happened. And so they did. And before the clock struck eight that night, Bonifazio had received a hundred visiting cards, each with two words, "to congratulate," written upon it in pencil, and four invitations to dinner addressed to Pietro Ghisleri. For the world is unconsciously wise in its generation, and on the rare occasions when it has found out that it has made a mistake, its haste to do the civil thing is almost indecent. In eight and forty hours the whole Savelli family and the Prince and Princess of Gerano had left Rome, and Ghisleri found it hard to keep one evening a week free for himself. But in the afternoon of that day on which San Giacinto had so suddenly turned the tables upon Pietro's adversaries, Pietro went to see Laura Arden. She, of course, was in ignorance of what had occurred, and was amazed by the change she saw in his face when he entered. "Something good has happened, I am sure!" she exclaimed, as she came half-way across the room to meet him with outstretched hands. "Yes," he said, "something very unexpected has happened. The confession has been found, Donna Adele has admitted that the whole story was a fabrication, and she has signed a formal denial of every accusation, past, present, and to come. I am altogether cleared." "Thank God! Thank God!" Laura cried, wringing his two hands, and gazing into his eyes. "You are glad," he said. "I suppose I knew you would be, but I could not realise that it would make so much difference to you." "In one way it makes no difference," she said more quietly, as she sat down and pointed to his accustomed place. "I knew the truth from the beginning. But it is for you. I saw how unhappy you were yesterday. Now tell me all about it." He told her all that had taken place since he had left her on the previous day, as it has been told in these pages, and his heart beat fast as he saw in her eyes the constant and great interest she felt. "And so I am quite free of it all at last," he said, when he had finished. "And you will be happy now," answered Laura, softly. "You have been through almost everything, it seems to me. Do you realise how much I know of all your life? It is strange, is it not? You are not fond of making confidences, and you never made but one to me, when you could not help yourself. Yes; it is very strange that I should know so much about you." "And still be willing to call me your friend?" added Ghisleri. "I do not know how you can--and yet--" He stopped. "The reason is," he said suddenly, "that you have long been a part of my life--that is why you know me so well. I think that even long ago we were much more intimate than we knew or dreamed of. There were many reasons for that." "Yes," Laura answered. "And then, after all, I have known you ever since I first went out as a young girl. I did not like you at first, I remember, though I could never tell why. But as for your saying that you cannot see why I should still be your friend, I do not understand how you mean it. It seems to me that you have done much to get my friendship and to strengthen it, and nothing to lose it. Besides, you yourself know that you are not what you were. You have changed. You were saying so only yesterday, and you said the change was for the better." "Yes, I have changed," said Ghisleri. "It is of no use to deny it. I do not mean in everything, though I do not lead the life I did. Perhaps it all goes together after all." "That is not very clear," observed Laura, with a low laugh. Ghisleri was silent for a moment. "I do not think of you as I did," he said. "That is the greatest change of all." Laura did not answer. She leaned back in her seat, and looked across the room. "I never thought it would come," he said. "For years I honourably believed I could be your friend. I know, now, that I cannot. I love you far too deeply--with far too little right." Still Laura did not speak. But she turned her face from him, laying her cheek against the silken cushion behind her. "Perhaps I am doing very wrong in telling you this," said Ghisleri, trying to steady his voice. "But I made up my mind that it was better, and more honest. I do not believe that you love me, that you ever can love me in the most distant future of our lives. I am prepared for that. I will not trouble you with my love. I will never speak of it again--for I can never hope to win you. But at least you know the truth." Slowly Laura turned her face again and her eyes met his. There was a deep, warm light in them. She seemed to hesitate. Then the words came sharply, in a loud, clear voice, unlike her own, as though the great secret had burst every barrier and had broken out against her will by its own strength, sudden, startling, new to herself and to the man who heard it. "I love you now!" Ghisleri turned as deadly pale as when Gianforte's bullet had so nearly gone through his heart. The words rang out in the quiet room with an intensity and distinctness of tone not to be described. He had not even guessed that she might love him. For one moment they looked at one another, both white with passion, both trembling a little, the black eyes and the blue both gleaming darkly. Then Ghisleri took the two hands that were stretched out to meet his own, and each felt that the other's were very cold. As though by a common instinct they both rose, and stood a moment face to face. Then his arms went round her. He did not know until long afterwards that when he kissed her he lifted her from the ground. It had all been sudden, strange, and unlike anything in his whole life, unexpected beyond anything that had ever happened to him. Perhaps it was so with her, too. They remembered little of what they said in those first moments, but by and by, as they sat side by side on the sofa, words came again. "I knew it when you went away last summer," said Ghisleri. "And then I thought I should never tell you." "And I found it out when I left you," answered Laura. "I found that I could not live without you and be happy. Did you guess nothing when I made you come to me yesterday? Yesterday--only yesterday! It seems like last year. Did you think it was mere friendship?" "Yes, I thought it was that and nothing more--but such friendship as I had never dreamed of." "Nor any one else, perhaps," said Laura, with a happy smile. "For I would have come, you know, in spite of every one. What would you have done then, I wonder?" "Then? Do not speak of yesterday. What could I have done? Could I have told you that I loved you with such an accusation hanging over me? No, you know that. It was only yesterday that I asked you to let me leave you rather suddenly--did you not guess the reason?" "I thought you were ill--no--well, it crossed my mind that you might be a little, just a little, in love with me." She laughed. "I felt ill afterwards. I was horrified when I thought how nearly I had spoken." "And why should you not have spoken, if it was in your heart?" asked Laura, taking his hand again. "Why should you have thought, even for a moment, that I could care what people said. You are you, and I am I, whether the world is with us or against us. And I think, dear, that we shall need the world very little now. Perhaps it will change its mind and pretend it needs us." "There is no doubt of that. It always happens so. Why should we care?" He paused a moment, then, as his eyes met hers, the great dominating passion broke out again: "Ah--darling--heart's heart--beloved! There are not words to tell you how I love you and bless you, and worship you with all my soul. What can I say, what can I do, to make you understand?" "Love me, dear," she said, "and be faithful, as I will be." And their lips met again. They loved well and truly. Strange, some may say, that a love of that good kind should have begun in friendship on the one side, and indifference if not dislike on the other. But neither had understood the other at all in the beginning. The world-tired and world-weary man had not guessed at the real woman who lived so humanly, and could love so passionately, and whom nature had clothed with such saint-like, holy beauty as to make her seem a creature above all earthly feeling and all mortal weakness. Her eyes had seemed fixed on far-distant, heavenly sights, gazing upon the world only to wonder at its vanity and to loathe its uncleanness. Her best and her greatest thoughts had been, he fancied, of things altogether divine and supernatural, of love celestial, of beatific vision, of the waters of paradise, of goodness and of God. And something of all this there was in her, but there was room for more both in heart and soul, and more was there--the deep, human sympathy, the simple strength to love one man wholly, the singleness of thought and judgment to see the good in him and love it, and to understand and forgive the bad--and far down in the strong, quiet nature was hidden the passion but newly awakened whose irresistible force would have broken every barrier and despised every convention, respecting only its own purity in taking what it loved and desired, and would have at any cost, save the defilement of the soul it moved. Small wonder that when it awoke at last unresisted and meeting its like, it burst into sight with a sudden violence that startled the woman herself, and amazed the man who had not suspected its existence. But she, on her side, had learned to know him more slowly, not ever analysing him, nor trying to guess at his motives, but merely seeing little by little how great and wide was the discrepancy between the hard, sceptical, cynic thoughts he expressed so readily, and the constant, unchangingly brave effort of his heart to do in all cases what was honourable, just, and brave according to his light. She saw him ever striving, often failing, sometimes succeeding in the doing of good actions, and she saw the strange love of truth and simplicity which pervaded and primarily moved the most complicated character she had ever known. He who at first had seemed to her the most worldly of all worldly men, was in reality one whose whole life was lived in his own heart for the one, or two, or three beings who had known how to touch it. To all else he was absolutely and coldly indifferent. She had, indeed, as she said, guessed at last that he loved her a little and more than a little, and she had known for months before he spoke that he was really a part of her life and of all her thoughts and actions. But she had not asked herself what she would do or say when the great moment came, any more than she had accused herself of being unfaithful to the memory of the man whose dying words had bidden her to be happy, if she would have him rest in peace. And now that she loved again, so differently, so passionately, so much more humanly, she realised all the great unselfishness of him who was gone and who had not been willing to leave in her heart the least seed of future self-accusation or the least ground for refusing anything good which life might have in store for her. She saw that she could take what was offered her, freely, without one regret, without one prick of conscience, or one passing thought that Herbert Arden would have suffered an instant's pain could he have known what was passing in the existence of the woman who had loved him so well. Late on that afternoon, Ghisleri went to see Maddalena dell' Armi. There was a drop of bitterness in his cup yet, and something hard for him to do, but he would not let the woman who had sacrificed everything for him in days gone by learn the news from a stranger. "I have come to tell you that I am going to marry Lady Herbert Arden," he said gently, as he took her hand. She looked up quickly, and for a moment he felt a strange anxiety. "I knew that you would, long ago," she answered. "I am glad of it. No, do not think that is a phrase. I do not love you any more. Are you glad to know it? I wish I did. But I am far too fond of you not to wish you to be happy if you can. You are my dearest and best friend. It is strange, is it not? Think of me kindly sometimes, in your new life. And--and do not speak my name before her, if you can help it. She knows what we were to each other once, and it might hurt her." "How changed you are!" exclaimed Ghisleri. But he pressed the hand that lay near him. "I am trying to be a good woman," she answered simply. "If there were more like you, the world would be a better place," he said. CHAPTER XXX. "Just fancy, my dear," exclaimed Donna Maria Boccapaduli to the Marchesa di San Giacinto on the evening of the following day, "Pietro Ghisleri is going to marry Laura Arden, after all! That horrid, spiteful, wicked Adele will die of rage. And they say that the old uncle is dead and has left Laura one of those enormous English fortunes one reads about, and they are going to take the first floor of your brother's palace--your husband says he will buy it some day--I hope he will--and Laura is going to rebuild Ghisleri's queer little castle in Tuscany. What a delightful series of surprises! And two days ago every one believed he was on the point of being sent to prison for ever so many years. But I was always sure he was innocent, though of course one did not like to have him about while the thing was going on." "Giovanni said from the first that it was all an abominable lie," answered the Marchesa. "And Giovanni is generally right. What a charming house it will be! Of course they will give balls." "They say that in the confession there was a full account of the way in which she started the story of the evil eye--what nonsense it was! You have only to look into Laura Arden's eyes--do you think she is as beautiful as Corona Saracinesca ever could have been?" "No, no," exclaimed the Marchesa, who had known the Princess of Sant' Ilario more than twenty years earlier. "No one was ever so beautiful as Corona. Laura is much shorter, too, and that makes a difference. Laura reminds one of a saint, and Corona looked an empress--or what empresses are supposed to be like. But Laura is a beautiful woman. There is no one to compare with her now but Christina Campodonico, and she is too thin. What a good looking couple Ghisleri and his wife will make. He has grown younger during the last two years." "No wonder--when one thinks of the life he used to lead. Every time he quarrelled with Maddalena he used to get at least five pounds thinner. I wonder how she takes it." "She is far too clever a woman to show what she thinks. But I know she has not cared for him for a long time. They have not quarrelled for two years at least, so of course there cannot be any love left on either side. They still sit in corners occasionally. I suppose they like each other. It is very odd. But I shall never understand those things." The last remark was very true, for Flavia Saracinesca loved her giant husband with all her heart and always had, and she knew also that Maria Boccapaduli was the best of wives and mothers, if she was also the greatest of gossips. What the two ladies said to each other represented very well the world's opinion, hastily formed, on the spur of the moment, to meet the exigencies of the altered situation, but immutable now. It shrugged its shoulders as it referred to its past errors of judgment, and said that it could not have been expected to know that Adele Savelli was raving mad when she was allowed to go everywhere just like a sane being, although her eyes had undeniably had a wild look for some time, and she might have been taken for a galvanised corpse. For of course it was now quite certain that she had been out of her mind from the very beginning, seeing that she had concocted her dreadful plot without the slightest reason. As for the old story that Laura Arden loved Francesco, that was downright nonsense! It was another of Adele's scandalous falsehoods--or insane delusions, if you chose to be so good-natured as to use that expression. If anything, it was Francesco who loved Laura, and he ought to be ashamed of himself, considering what a fortune his wife had brought him. But human nature was very ungrateful, especially when it bore the name of Savelli. They did not seem at all thankful for that dear Ghisleri's forbearance. He could have brought an action against them for any number of things--defamation, false imprisonment--almost anything. But he had acted with his usual generosity, and told every one that he had always believed Adele to be insane, and bore no one the least ill-will, since he had been put to no inconvenience whatever, thanks to San Giacinto's timely action. And, said the world, when a man consistently behaved as Pietro Ghisleri had done, he was certain to get his reward. What could any man desire more than to have that dear, beautiful, good Laura Arden for his wife, especially since she was so immensely rich? Doubt the justice of Heaven after that, if you could! As for the world, it meant to tell them both how sorry it was that it had misunderstood them. Of course it would be sinful not to hope that Adele might some day get well, but she had her deserts, and if she ever came back to society, people would not care to meet her. She might go mad again at any moment and try to ruin some one else, and might succeed the next time, too. That was the way in which most people talked during the season, and the world acted up to its words as it generally does when there are balls and dinners to be got by merely being consistent. It was much more agreeable, too, to live on terms of pleasant intercourse with Laura and her betrothed, and much easier, because it is always tiresome to keep up a prejudice against really charming people. But Adele was not mad as people said, and as the two families gave out. There had undoubtedly been a strain of insanity through all her conduct, and that might, some day, develop into real madness. She was sane enough still, however, to suffer, and no such merciful termination to her sufferings as the loss of her reason would be seemed at all imminent. The strong will and acute intelligence had survived, for the poisonous drug she loved had attacked the body, which was the weaker portion of her being. Adele was hopelessly paralysed. The last great effort had been too much for the over-strung nerves. Her hands still moved convulsively, but she could not direct them at all. Her jaw had dropped, as it almost always does in advanced cases of morphinism, and her lower limbs were useless. Day after day she sat or lay before the fire in her room at Castel Savello, as she might remain for years, tended by paid nurses, and helpless to do the slightest thing for herself--through the short days and the long nights of winter, hardly cheered by the sunshine when spring came at last, longing for the end. It was indeed a dreadful existence. Nothing to do, nothing to think of but the terrible black past, nothing to occupy her, save the monotonous tracing back of her present state to her first misdeeds, step by step, inch by inch, in the cold light of an inexorable logic. It was hard to believe what her confessor told her, that she should be grateful for having time and reason left to repent of what she had done, and to expiate, in a measure, the evil of her life. As yet, that was the only comfort she got from any one. She had disgraced the name of Savelli, she was told, and no suffering could atone for that. She felt that she was hated and despised, and that although everything which money could do was done to prolong her wretched being, her death was anticipated as a relief from her detested presence in the household upon which she had brought such shame. It would be hard to conceive a more fearful punishment than she was made to undergo, forcibly kept alive by the constant care and forethought of the most experienced persons, and allowed only just so much of the morphia as was positively necessary. She had no longer the power to grasp the little instrument. If she had been able to do that, she would have found rest for ever, as she told herself. And they cruelly diminished the dose, though they would not tell her by how much. She would live longer, they said, if the quantity could be greatly reduced. She begged, implored, entreated them not to torture her. But they could hardly understand what she said, for the paralysis had made her speech indistinct, and even if they could have distinguished the meaning of all her words they would have paid no attention to them. The orders were strict and were rigidly obeyed in every particular. She was to be made to live as long as possible, and life meant torment, unceasing, passing words to describe. How long it might last she had no idea. She could only hope against hope that it might end soon. The news of Laura's engagement and approaching marriage had been kept from her for some time, it being feared that it might agitate her, but she was told at last, and the knowledge of her step-sister's happiness was an added bitterness in what remained to her of life. Vividly she saw them before her, Laura in her fresh beauty, Ghisleri in his strength, little Herbert with his father's eyes--the eyes that haunted Adele Savelli by night and gazed upon her by day out of the shadowy corners of her room. The three were ever before her moving, as she fancied, through a garden of exquisite flowers, in a clear, bright light. That was doubtless the way in which her diseased brain represented their happiness, for she had loved flowers in the old days, and had associated everything that was pleasant with them in her thoughts. But she hated them now, as she hated everything, even to her own children, whom she refused to see because they reminded her of better times, and her step-mother, whom she was obliged to receive because the good lady would take no denial. The Princess was, indeed, one of her most regular and kindly visitors. A very constant and good woman, she would not and could not turn upon Adele as all the rest had done, even to her own father, who in the bitterness of his heart, had said that he would never see his daughter again, alive or dead. But Adele hated her none the less, and dreaded her long homilies and exhortations to be penitent, and the little printed prayers and books of devotion she generally brought with her. For the Princess was deeply concerned for the welfare of Adele's soul, and being very much in earnest in the matter of religion, she did what she could to save it according to her own views. Possibly her sermons might hereafter bear fruit, but for the present the wretched woman who was forced to listen to them found them almost unbearable. And so her unhappy days dragged on without prospect of relief or termination, no longer in any real meaning of the word a life at all, but only a consequence, the result of what she had made herself when she had been really alive. The Princess of Gerano was the last person won over to a good opinion of Ghisleri, but before the wedding day she had formally avowed to Laura that she had been mistaken in him. She had been most of all impressed by his dignity during the very great difficulties in which he had been placed, and by his gentle forbearance when his innocence had been established and when no one would have blamed him if he had cursed the whole Savelli and Gerano tribe by every devil in Satan's calendar. Instead, he had uniformly said that he had believed Donna Adele to be mad, and that what had happened had therefore not come about by any one's fault. She told Laura that there must be more good than any one had dreamt of in a man who could act as Pietro did under the circumstances, and perhaps she was right. At all events, she was convinced and having once reached conviction she took him to her heart and found that he was a man much more to her taste, and much more worthy of Laura than she had supposed. For the rest, the match was an admirable one. Ghisleri was certainly very far from rich, but he was by no means a pauper, and what he possessed had been wisely administered. He was neither a prince, nor the son of a princely house, but there was many a prince of Europe, and more than one of the Holy Empire, too, whose forefathers had been trudging behind the plough long after the Nobili Ghisleri had built their tower and held their own in it for generations. Then, too, whatever the Princess might think of his past and of his reputation, he had rather a singular position in society, and was respected as many were not, who possessed ten times as many virtues as he. She admitted quite frankly that she had been wrong, and she made ample amends for her former cold treatment of him by the liking she now showed. "I shall never be able to think of you as a serious married man, my dear friend," said Gouache one day when Ghisleri was lounging in the studio with a cigarette, after they had breakfasted together. "I hope you will," was the laconic answer. "No, I never shall. I have always had a sort of artistic satisfaction in your character--for there was much that was really artistic about you, especially as regards your taste in sin, which was perfect and perhaps is still. But marriage is not at all artistic, my dear Ghisleri, until it becomes unhappy, and the husband goes about with a revolver in every pocket, and the wife with a scent bottle full of morphia in hers, and they treat each other with distant civility in private, and with effusive affection when a third person is present, especially the third person who has contributed the most to producing the artistic effect in question. Then the matter becomes interesting." "Like your own marriage," suggested Ghisleri, with a laugh. Gouache and Donna Faustina had not had an unkind thought for one another in nearly twenty years of cloudless happiness. "Ah, my friend, you must not take my case as an instance. There is something almost comic in being as happy as I am. We should never make a subject for a play writer, my wife and I, nor for a novelist either. No man would risk his reputation for truthfulness by describing our life as it is. But then, is there anything artistic about me? Nothing, except that I am an artist. If I had any money I should be called an amateur. To be an artist it is essential to starve--at one time or another. The public never believe that a man who has not been dangerously hungry can paint a picture, or play the fiddle, or write a book. If I had money I would still paint--subjects like Michael Angelo's Last Judgment with the souls of Donna Tullia, Del Ferice, and Donna Adele Savelli frying prominently on the left, and portraits of my wife and myself in the foreground on the right with perfectly new crowns of glory and beatific smiles from ear to ear. If you go on as you have been living since the reformation set in, you will have to bore yourself on our side too, with a little variation in your crown to show what a sinner you have been." "I am quite willing to be bored in your way," answered Ghisleri, laughing again. The marriage took place late in February, to the immense delight of the world, and with the unanimous applause of all society. The newspapers gave minute accounts of all the gowns, and of all the people who wore them, and surprised Ghisleri by informing him that his ancestors had been Guelphs, whereas he had some reason to believe that they had been Ghibellines, and by creating him a commander of the order of Saint Maurice and Saint Lazarus, whereas he was an hereditary Knight of Malta. The description of Laura was an extraordinary contribution to the literature of beauty, and left nothing to be desired except a positive or two to contrast with the endless string of superlatives. Ghisleri and Laura left Rome with a little caravan of servants. Neither the faithful Donald nor the equally faithful Bonifazio could be left behind, and there was Laura's maid, and little Herbert's nurse, both indispensable. The boy was overjoyed by the arrangement which gave him the advantage of Pietro's society "for every day," as he expressed it, and especially at the prospect of living all the summer in a real castle. He was three years old and talked fluently, when he talked at all--a strong, brave-looking little fellow, with clear brown eyes and a well-shaped head, set on a sturdy frame that promised well for his coming manhood. Ghisleri delighted in him, though he was not generally amused by very small children. But they always came to him of their own accord, which some people say is a sign of a good disposition in a man, for children and animals are rarely mistaken in their likes and dislikes. San Giacinto and Gianforte Campodonico went to the station to see them off after the wedding, and threw armfuls of roses and lilies of the valley into the carriage before the door was finally shut by the guard as the preliminary bell was sounded. "Without you two, we two should not be here," said Ghisleri, as he shook hands with them both. "No," added Laura happily. "But we should have been together, if it had been in prison. Good-bye, dear friends." The train moved away, and the two men were left on the platform, waving their hats to the last. "That is a good thing well done," said San Giacinto, lighting a cigar. "They will be happy together." "Yes," said Gianforte, thoughtfully. "I think they will. Women love that man, and he knows how to love them." San Giacinto looked down at him and said nothing. He knew something of Bianca Corleone's short, sad life, and of what had passed between her brother and Ghisleri. He liked them both more than almost any of the younger men he knew, and he honestly admired them for their behaviour towards each other. He guessed what thoughts were passing through Campodonico's mind as he looked after the train that was bearing away Pietro Ghisleri, a married man at last. For Gianforte was saying to himself that though he could neither wholly forget nor freely forgive the past, he could have loved him had fate been different. If ten years ago Ghisleri could have married Bianca, and if Bianca could have lived, the two would have been happy, for even Gianforte admitted that both had loved truly and well until the end. But that was a dream and reality had raised the impassable barrier between men who might have been firm friends. Their hands might stretch across it, and grasp one another from time to time, and their eyes might read good faith and the will to be generous each in the other's soul, but nearer than that they could never be, for the sake of the beautiful dead woman who would not be forgotten by either. One more picture and one word more, and the curtain must fall at last. In the early summer Laura and her husband were at Torre de' Ghisleri in the Tuscan hills. The small castle was very habitable as compared with its former condition, and small as it was by comparison with such fortresses as Gerano, was by no means the mere ruined tower which many people supposed it to be. The square grey keep from which it took its name was flanked by a mass of smaller buildings, irregular and of different epochs, all more or less covered with ivy or with creepers now in bloom. The wide castle yard, in the midst of which stood the ancient well with its wonderfully wrought yoke of iron, its heavy chain, and its two buckets, had been converted into a garden long ago for the bride of some Ghisleri of those days, and the plants and trees had run almost wild for a hundred years, irregularly, as some had survived and others had perished in the winter storms. Here a cypress, there an oak, further on again three laurels, of the Laura Regia kind, side by side in a row, then two cypresses again, growing up straight and slim and dark out of a plot of close-cut grass. And there were roses everywhere, and stiff camelia trees and feathery azaleas and all manner of bright, growing things without order or symmetry, beautiful in their wildness. But in and out there were narrow paths, in which two might walk together, and these were now swept and cared for as they had never been in Pietro's bachelor days. Other things were changed too, but not much, and for the better. A woman's hand had touched, had waked a sweet new life in the old place. The afternoon sun, still above the low surrounding hills, cast the shadow of the tower across the lawn and upon the flowers beyond. There were chairs before the arched doorway, and a garden table. Laura sat watching the swallows as they flew down from the keep to the garden and upwards again in their short, circling flight. A book she had not even thought of reading lay beside her. At her elbow sat Ghisleri in a white jacket, with a straw hat tilted over his eyes which little Herbert was trying to get at, as he rode on Pietro's knee. The man's face had changed wonderfully during the last six months. All the hardness was gone from it, and the contemptuous, discontented look that had once come so readily was never seen now. "You never told me it was so beautiful," said Laura, still watching the swallows and gazing at the flowers. "When we first came, and I looked out of the window in the morning, I thought I had never seen any place so lovely. You used to talk of it in such a careless way." "It is you who make it beautiful for me," answered Ghisleri. "A year ago it seemed dull and ugly enough, when I used to sit here and think of you." "I was not the first woman you had thought of, on this very spot, I daresay," said Laura, with a happy laugh. "No, dear, you were not." He smiled as he admitted the fact. "But you were the last, and unless you turn out to be as bad as you seem to be good, you will have no successor." "What's successor mean?" lisped Herbert, desisting from his attempt to get at the hat and listening. "Somebody who comes after another," answered Laura. "I will try to be good, dear," she said to Ghisleri, laughing again. "So'll I," exclaimed Herbert promptly, doubtless supposing that it was expected of him. "Yes," said Ghisleri, thoughtfully. "I have sat here many a time for hours, dreaming about you, and wishing for you, and trying to see you just as you are now, in a chair beside me. Yes, I have thought of other women here, but it is very long since I wished to see one there--if I ever did. I hardly ever came here when I was very young." There was a pause. His voice had a little sadness in it as he spoke the last words--not the sadness of regret, but of reverence. He was thinking of Bianca Corleone. Then Laura laid her hand upon his arm, and her eyes met his, for he turned as he felt her touch. "Dear, you would have been happy with her," she said very gravely. "But I will be all to you that woman can be to man, if I live to show you how I love you." "No woman ever was what you are to me already," he answered. "No woman, living or dead. You have done everything for me since I first knew you well, and you did much more than you know before I knew what you really were. There can be nothing in the world beyond what you have given, and give me." "I wish I were quite, quite sure of that," said Laura, still looking into his face. "You must be--you shall be!" he said, with sudden energy, and his glance lightened with passion. "You must. Words are not much, I know, nor oaths, nor anything of that sort. But I will tell you this--and by the light and goodness of God, it is true. If I could doubt for one moment that I love you beyond any love I have ever dreamed of, I would tear out my heart with my hands!" "What's love?" asked little Herbert timidly, for he was afraid that it must be something very dreadful as he watched Ghisleri's pale face and blazing eyes. But the lips that might have answered could not; they were sealing the truth they had spoken, upon others that had uttered a doubt for the last time. THE END. LIST OF WORKS BY MR. F. MARION CRAWFORD. IN THE PRESS. A NEW NOVEL. PIETRO GHISLERI. 12mo, cloth, $1.00. 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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Obvious typographical and printer errors have been corrected without comment. On page 324: There was no opening quote mark to match the closing quote at the end of the first paragraph on this page. The text does not clearly define where the opening quote mark should be, and so it has been added before the phrase: "who had never known...." On the first page of the Ads section, an asterism is represented in this plain-text version as *.* Other than the above, no effort has been made to standardize internal inconsistencies in spelling, capitalization, punctuation, grammar, etc. The author's usage is preserved as found in the original publication. 
46517	----	[Illustration: Decoration] THE CONQUEST OF ROME _By_ MATILDE SERAO AUTHOR OF "THE LAND OF COCKAYNE" "THE BALLET DANCER" ETC. [Illustration: Logo] HARPER & BROTHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON PUBLISHERS . . 1902 [Illustration: Decoration] Published October, 1902 PART I CHAPTER I The train stopped. 'Capua! Capua!' three or four voices cried monotonously into the night. A clanking of swords dragged on the ground was heard, and some lively muttering that passed between a Lombard and a Piedmontese. It came from a group of subaltern officers, who were ending their evening's amusement in coming to see the night train from Naples to Rome pass through. While the conductor chatted respectfully with the station-master, who gave him a commission for Caianello, and while the postman handed up a mail-sack full of letters to the clerk in the postal van, the officers, talking to each other and making their spurs ring (from habit), looked to see if anyone got in or out of the train, peeping through the doors which were open for the sight of a fair feminine face or that of a friend. But many of the doors were closed. Blue blinds were stretched over the panes, through which glimmered a faint lamplight, as if coming from a place where lay travellers overpowered by sleep. Bodies curled up in a dark tangle of coats, shawls, and sundry coverings, were dimly discernible. 'They are all asleep,' said one of the officers; 'let us go to bed.' 'This is probably a newly-married couple,' suggested another, reading over a door the word 'Reserved.' And since the blind was not drawn, the officer, aflame with youthful curiosity, jumped on the step and flattened his face against the window. But he came down at once, disappointed and shrugging his shoulders. 'It is a man, alone,' he said--'a deputy, no doubt; he is asleep, too.' But the solitary man was not asleep. He was stretched out at full length on the seat, an arm under his neck, and one hand in his hair; the other hand was lost in the bosom of his coat. His eyes were closed, but his face bore not the soft expression of repose, not the deep peace of human lineaments in sleep. Instead, the effort of thought was to be read in those contracted features. When the train had passed the bridge over the Volturno, and ran into the dark, deserted, open country, the man reopened his eyes, and tried another position more favourable to repose. But the monotonous, everlasting _grind, grind_ of the train racked his head. Now and then a farmhouse, a little villa, a rural cottage, stood out darkly from a dark background; a thin streak of light would ooze out through a crack; a lantern would throw a glimmering, dancing circle in the path of the speeding train. The cold prevented him from sleeping. Accustomed to the mild Southern nights, and not in the habit of travelling, he had set out with a simple light overcoat and neither rug nor shawl; he had a small handbag, and other luggage was following him on the train. Of importance to him were neither clothes, nor maps, nor books, nor linen--nothing but that little gold medal, that precious amulet suspended from his watch-chain. From the day it was his--it had been obtained for him by special request through the quæstor of the Chamber--his fingers were perpetually running over it with light touch, as if in a mechanical caress. At such times as he was alone he crushed it into the palm of his hand so hard that a red mark would remain on the skin. In order to have the compartment reserved, he had shown this to the station-master, lowering his eyes and compressing his lips to fight down a look of triumph and a smile of complacency. And since the beginning of the journey he held it in his hand, as though afraid to lose it, so infusing it with the warmth of the epiderm it was scorching. And so acute was the sensation of pleasure derived from the contact of that possession that he faintly felt every protuberance and every hollow in the face of the metal--_felt_ under his fingers the number and the words: '_XIV. Legislature._' On the reverse were a Christian name and a surname, indicative of the ownership: 'FRANCESCO SANGIORGIO.' His hands were hot, yet he shook with the cold. He rose and went to the door. The train was now running through open country, but its noise was subdued. It seemed as though the wheels were anointed with oil as they rolled noiselessly along the rails, accompanying the travellers' sleep without disturbing it. The luminous windows stamped themselves as they fled by on a high, black embankment. Not a shadow behind the panes. The great house of slumbers coursed through the night, driven, as it were, by an iron, fervent will, whirling away with it those wills inert in repose. 'Let us try to sleep,' thought the Honourable Sangiorgio. Stretching out once more, he attempted to do so. But the name of Sparanise, called out softly two or three times at a stoppage, reminded him of a small and obscure place in the Basilicata, whence he hailed, and which, together with twenty other wretched villages, had given all their votes to make him a deputy. The little spot, three or four hours distant from an unknown station on the Eboli-Reggio line, seemed very far oft to the Honourable Sangiorgio--far off in a swampy vale, among the noxious mists which in autumn emanate from the streams, whose dried-up beds are stony, arid, and yellow in summertime. On the way to the railway-station from that little lonely place in the dreary tracts of the Basilicata he had passed close to the cemetery--a large, square piece of ground, with black crosses standing up, and two tall, graceful pines. There lay, under the ground, under a single block of marble, his erstwhile opponent, the old deputy who had always been re-elected because of patriotic tradition, and whom he had always fought with the enthusiasm of an ambitious young man ignoring the existence of obstacles. Not once had he defeated him, had this presumptuous young fellow, who was born too late, as the other said, to do anything for his country. But Death, as a considerate ally, had secured him a sweeping and easy victory. His triumph was an act of homage to the old, departed patriot. But as he had passed the burial-ground he had felt in his heart neither reverence nor envy in respect to the tired old soldier who had gone down to the great, serene indolence of the tomb. All of this recurred to his mind, as well as the long, odious ten years of his life as a provincial advocate, with the mean, daily task common in the courts, and rare appearance at assizes. Perhaps a land litigation over an inheritance of three hundred lire, a mere spadeful of ground; a whole miniature world of sordid, paltry affairs, of peasants' rascalities, of complicated lies for a low object, in which the client would suspect his lawyer and try to cheat him, while the lawyer would look upon the client as an unarmed enemy. Amid such surroundings the young advocate had felt every instinct of ardour die in his soul; speech, too, had died in his throat. And since the cause he must defend was barren and trivial, and the men he must address listened with indifference, he at last took refuge in hastening through the defence in a few dry words; therefore his reputation as an advocate was not great. Now he was entirely bereft of the capacity to regret leaving his home and his old parents, who at seeing him go had wept like all old persons of advanced years when someone departs through that great selfishness which is a trait of old age. Many secret, furious tempests, smothered eruptions that could find no vent, had exhausted the well-springs of tenderness in his heart. Now, during this journey, he remembered it all quite clearly, but without emotion, like an impartial observer. He shut his eyes and attempted to sleep, but could not. In the train, however, everyone else appeared to be wrapped in deep slumber. Through the noise and the increased rocking the Honourable Sangiorgio seemed to hear a long, even respiration; he seemed almost to see a gigantic chest slowly rising and falling in the happy, mechanical process of breathing. At Cassino, where there was a stop of five minutes at one in the morning, no one got out. The waiter in the café was asleep under the petroleum lamp, motionless, his arms on the marble table and his head on his arms. The station men, huddled up in black capes, with hoods over their eyes and lantern in hand, went by, testing the journals, which gave forth the sound of a metal bell, clear, crystalline in tone. The whistle of the engine, as the train started, was gently shrill; the loud, strident voice was lowered as if by courtesy. Resuming the journey, the movement of the train became a soft rocking, without shocks, without grating, without unevenness, a rapid motion as on velvet, but with a dull rumble like the snoring of a giant in the heavy plenitude of his somnolence. Francesco Sangiorgio thought of all those people who were travelling with him: people in sorrow over their recent parting, or glad at nearing their new bourn; people loving without hope, loving tragically, or loving happily; people taken up with work, with business, with anxieties, with idleness; people oppressed by age, by illness, by youth, by felicity; people who knew they were journeying towards a dramatic destiny, and those who were going that way unconsciously. But they all, within half an hour, had one by one yielded to sleep, in full forgetfulness of body and soul. The gentle, pacific, healing balm of rest had come to still the unquiet spirits, had soothed them, had spread over those perturbed mortals, whether too happy or too unhappy, and they were all at ease in their sleep. Irritated nerves, anger, disdain, desires, sickness, cowardice, incurable grief--all the bestiality and grandeur of human nature travelling in that nocturnal train was lost in the great, calm embrace of sleep. The train was hastening to their fate--sad, lucky, or commonplace--those dreaming spirits and those prostrate shapes of beings who were tasting the profound delight of painless annihilation, leaving it to a power outside of themselves to bear them along. 'But why cannot I sleep also?' thought Francesco Sangiorgio. For a moment, as he stood in his solitary compartment under the wavering light of the oil-lamp, with the pitch-black earth scudding by past the windows, with the light vapour that clouded the glass, with the cold of the night that was growing more intense--for a moment he felt alone, irremediably lost and abandoned in the feebleness of his situation. He repented having so proudly asked for a reserved compartment, wished for the company of a human being, of anyone whomsoever, of anyone of his kind, even the very humblest. He was dismayed and terrified like a child, imprisoned in that cage out of which there was no escape, drawn along by a machine which he was powerless to stop in its course. Seized with unreasoning horror, with parched throat he dropped helplessly on the seat, from which, pricked by a latent reflection, he suddenly jumped up; he began to walk nervously back and forth. 'It is Rome, it is Rome,' he murmured. Yes, it was Rome. Those four letters, round, clear, and resonant as the bugles of a marching army, now rang through his imagination with the persistency of a fixed idea. The name was short and sweet, like one of those flexible, musical names of women which are one of the secrets of their seductions, and he twisted it about in his mind in queer patterns, in contorted curves. He was unable, he did not know how, to shape a notion of what those four letters, cut as it were in granite, actually represented. The fact that it was the name of a city, of a large agglomeration of houses and people, eluded him. He did not know what Rome was. Through want of the leisure and the money to go there, he, the obscure little advocate, the utterly insignificant, had never been to Rome. And never having seen it, he was unable to form any but an abstract conception of it: as a huge, strange vision, as a great fluctuating thing, as a fine thought, as an ideal apparition, as a vast shape with shadowy outlines. Thus all his thoughts about Rome were grand, but indefinite and vague--wild comparisons, fictions that developed into ideas, a tumult of fantasies, a crowded jumble of imaginations and conceits. Beneath the cold mask worn by the pensive son of the South burned an active imagination habituated to selfish and solitary meditations. And Rome threw that mind into furious commotion! Oh, he felt Rome--he felt it! He saw it, like a colossal human shade, stretching out immense maternal arms to clasp him in a strenuous embrace, as the earth did Antæus, who was thereby rejuvenated. He seemed to hear, through the night, a woman's voice uttering his name with irresistible tenderness, and a voluptuous shudder ran over him. The city was expecting him like a well-beloved son far from home, and magnetized him with the mother's desire for her child. How often, from the little overarched, embowered terrace in front of his house, in his Basilicata, had he stared out upon the horizon beyond the hill, thinking how, over there, over there under the bend of the sky, Rome was waiting for him! Like faithful, reverent lovers who have an adored one afar, and who are consumed with the desire to be at her side, he sorrowfully thought of the great distance separating him from Rome; and as in cases of crossed love, men, things, and events interposed between him and his adored. With what deep, self-avowed hatred, all asurge in his heart, did he detest those who put themselves in the way of himself and the city that was calling him! Like lovers, in their inmost thoughts, nothing was present to him but the rapturous vision of the being he loved and was loved by: all those black shadows eclipsing the brightness of his dream enraged him. Bitterness invaded him; rancour, anger, scorn, and desires accumulated in his mind--as with lovers. With Rome ever in his heart, the ten years' strife had changed him. A secret distrust of all others and a sovereign esteem of himself; continued and oft harmful introspection; the steady assumption of outward calm while his heart rioted within; a profound contempt for all human endeavours foreign to ambition; growing experience of the discrepancy between wish and fulfilment; the consequent delusions, kept private, but no less bitter for that; the love of success, success only, nothing else than success--all this had been born in his innermost soul. Yet sometimes, in the dark hours of despair, he was prostrated with unspeakable debility; humiliation drove out pride; he felt himself a poor, miserable, futile creature. Like lovers, when bad fortune overtakes them, he felt unworthy of Rome. Ah! he must possess himself in patience, fortify himself with persistence, temper his strength in adversity, purify his spirit in the cleansing fire, like a saint of old, in order to be worthy of Rome. Sacred as a priestess, mother, bride, Rome must have expiations and sacrifices, must have a heart unalloyed and a will of iron! 'Ceprano! Ceprano! Fifteen minutes' stop!' was being shouted outside. The Honourable Sangiorgio looked about him, listened as one dazed. He had been raving. * * * * * First a bar of pallid green; then a cold, livid lightness, creeping slowly upward until it reached the top of the heavens. In that chillness of expiring night opened the vast Roman Campagna. It was an ample plain, whose colour was as yet indistinct, but which here and there undulated like the dunes of the seashore. This Sangiorgio observed as he stood erect by the window. The dense shadows as yet unconquered by the encroaching whiteness gave the Campagna the aspect of a desert. Not a tree in sight. Only, from time to time, a tall thick hedge, that seemed to make a circular bow and run away. The stations now began to look gray, all wet still with the nocturnal dews, their windows barred and their green shutters closed, these taking on a reddish tint; the mean little oleanders, with their branches hanging down and their blossoms dropping on the ground, looked as though they were weeping; and there was the clock with large, white disc, splashed with moisture, the dark hands and the fat body likening it to a two-legged spider. The station-master, huddled up in his cloak, with a scarf wound about the lower part of his face, marched with lowered cape up and down among the porters. In the cold morning air an insidious, acrid smell of damp earth pierced to the brain. A large place high up on a hill, fortified by a surrounding wall and two towers, stood forth gray and ancient, with a medieval air: it was Velletri. The train seemed to be waking up. In the next compartment there was a scraping on the floor, and two people were talking. Out of a first-class window protruded the head of a Spanish priest, with hard, shaven cheeks of a bluish hue, who was lustily puffing at a cigar. And as the white, frosty dawn irradiated the whole sky, the nakedness of the Campagna appeared in all its grandeur. On those fields, stretching beyond sight and dimly lighted, grew a sparse, short grass of a soft, marshy green; here and there were yellowish stains, blotched with brown, of coarse, rude earth, stony, muddy, uncultivable. It was an imperial desert ungraced by any tree, undarkened by any shadow of man, untraversed by any flight of bird; it was desolation, enormous and solemn. In the contemplation of this landscape, which resembled nothing else whatever, Sangiorgio was seized by a growing surprise that absorbed all his individual dreams. He stood looking out, mute and motionless, from the corner of the coach trembling with cold, conscious that the beating of his temples was abating. Then by degrees his eyelids became heavy, a sensation of lassitude came over his whole body; he felt the full fatigue of his wakeful night. He would have liked to stretch himself out in the railway-carriage with a comfortable ray of sunshine streaming in through an open window, and to get an hour's sleep before reaching Rome; he was envious of the people who had spent the long hours of the night in getting renewed strength from sleep. The journey was now seeming intolerably long to Sangiorgio, and the spectacle of the Campagna in its majestic poverty was oppressive to him. Would it never end? Would he never be in Rome? He was worn out: a sensation of torpor was spreading from his neck through all his limbs, his mouth was pasty and sour, as if he were convalescing from an illness, and his impatience became painful, a sort of small torture; he began to pity himself, as though an injustice had been done him. The ordinary passenger trains were too slow; he had done wrong to come in this one, expecting to sleep during the night; this last hour had been unendurable. The reality of his dreams was upon him, close as close could be, and the proximity caused him a shock of gladness. He felt he was hastening towards Rome, like a lover to his lady; he strove to be calm, inwardly ashamed of himself. But the last twenty minutes were a veritable spasm. With his head out of the window, receiving the damp smoke of the engine in his face, without a further look at the Campagna, without a glance at the fine aqueducts running over the plain, he stared into the distance, believing and fearing that at every moment Rome would appear, and was depressed by a vague feeling of terror. The Campagna vanished behind him as if it were drowning, going down with the moist fields, the yellow aqueducts, and the little white road-labourers' houses. The locomotive seemed to be increasing its speed, and from time to time gave vent to a long, long, piercing whistle twice and thrice repeated. At nearly all the windows heads were peering out. Where was Rome, then? It was nowhere to be seen. So strong was his trepidation that when the train commenced to slacken the Honourable Sangiorgio sank down on the seat; his heart beat under his throat as though it filled up his whole chest. As he stepped down upon the platform from the footboard, the violent throbbing within him was answered by as many imaginary hammer-like blows upon the head. Yet all that the railway officials said was 'Rome.' But he was seized with a slight trembling in the legs; the crowd surrounded him, pushed him, jostled him, without paying any attention to him. He was between two currents of passengers, arrived simultaneously by two trains, from Naples and Florence. The Honourable Sangiorgio was bewildered among so many people; he leaned against the wall, his handbag at his feet, and his eyes wandered through the crowd as if in search of someone. The station was still quite damp and rather dark, smelling horribly, as usual, of coal, of oil, of wet steel, and was full of black waggons and high piles of accumulated luggage. All faces were tired, sleepy, ill-humoured, expanding into a yawn about the mouth; their sole expression was one of indifference, not hostile, but invincible. No one noticed the deputy, who had unfastened his overcoat with the childish motive of displaying his medal. Twice he called to a porter, who went off without listening to him. Instead, the employés of the railroad were gathering round a group of gentlemen in tall hats, with pale, bureaucratic countenances, who had on black tailcoats and white cravats under buttoned-up overcoats, their collars up, and their faces sallow from short sleep. They bore the aspect of persons of position accomplishing a high social formality. When from a coach in the Florence train a tall, slender, fashionable lady alighted they all uncovered. Then a thin old gentleman got out. The group closed in; the lean gentleman bowed, while the lady smilingly bent her head over a proffered bunch of flowers. From the now open coats shone an array of white shirtfronts; smiles flitted over the visages, which had quickly coloured. On some of the watchchains hung four or five medals. 'His Excellency!' was murmured roundabout. Then the whole group began to move, the fine lady giving her arm to the thin old man, the deputies and other high functionaries following. The Honourable Sangiorgio stayed behind mechanically, having remained alone. On the Piazza Margherita he saw the whole procession get into carriages between the rows of friends, who were lined up bowing. The lady put her head out at the door and smiled. He saw them all drive off after her, and was alone in the great square. On the ground lay moisture, as though it had been raining. All the windows of the Albergo Continentale were shut. To the left lay the Corso Margherita still building, heaped up with stones, beams, and rubbish. The hotel omnibuses turned, about to start. Three or four hackney-coaches remained behind through the laziness of the coachmen, who sat smoking and waiting. At the right was an empty tavern, closed up, and on a high stone wall a screeching advertisement of the _Popolo Romano_. Over all hung a thick, soggy atmosphere, an enveloping mist, a somewhat disagreeable odour. The nauseous sight was there of a city scarce awake in the limp heaviness of an autumn morning, with that fever-tainted breath which seems to be emitted by the houses. The Honourable Francesco Sangiorgio was exceedingly pale, and he was cold--in his heart. CHAPTER II That day he must resist and not go to Montecitorio. The rain had ceased, as if weary of a week's downpour; a suggestion of dampness still floated in the atmosphere, the streets were muddy, the sky was all white with clouds. Pale-faced people encased in overcoats, with trousers turned up at the ankle and with countenances distrustful of the weather, were walking the thoroughfares. From a window of the Albergo Milano the Honourable Sangiorgio was contemplating the Parliament House, painted light yellow, on which the autumnal rains had left large marks of a darker colour, and he was trying to strengthen himself in his resolve not to go in there that day. All through that rainy week he had stood there--morning, noon, and night. When he opened his window of a morning, through the steaming veil would he peer at the large pot-bellied structure, which appeared to like standing out in the wet. He dressed mechanically, his eyes fixed in its direction, while he made plans to go about Rome, to see the town, to look for furnished lodgings, since this life in an inn could not last. But as he opened his umbrella in the doorway of the hotel a sudden fit of indolence overcame him; the street which sloped to the Piazza Colonna looked slippery and dangerous; he gave his shoulders a shrug, and went straightway before the pursuing rain into the Montecitorio. He left again only for the purpose of taking breakfast at his inn, in the corner ground-floor room, with glass doors and mirrors; and while eating a veal stew, done in Roman style, he every now and then turned to see who entered the Parliament House. He ate rapidly, like one whose brain has no consideration for the benefit of his stomach. Everyone who went in there interested him. Now, he thought, this must be Sella, with his stout figure, rather square, as though carved with a hatchet, and his shaggy beard, of an opaque black, which was gradually speckling. Again, it looked as if this must be Crispi, with his large, white moustache and red face, more like a growling old general than a fiery debater. The Honourable Sangiorgio finished his meal hastily, inwardly gnawed with impatience to get a close view of these statesmen, these party leaders, and then once more made for Montecitorio. But there new delusions awaited him. He went about everywhere, looking for Sella and Crispi. But the hall was void and chill under the skylight, with the benches still in their summer linen covers, with the dust-coloured carpets bordered in blue, resembling a deep, dark well, with a light pouring in from on high, as if filtered through a net of water. Abstractedly he ascended the five steps leading to the Speaker's chair, where he stopped for a moment and looked at the benches, which, narrow below, widened as they rose towards the galleries. An infantile desire came over him to try the white buttons of the electric bells; in order not to yield, he walked down quickly on the other side, and quitted the hall, carrying away some of the oppression of that great inverted cone, pale and melancholy in its forsakenness. Neither Sella nor Crispi was anywhere to be found. They were not in the dark circular corridor of columns, which lend it the semblance of a porticoed crypt, nor in the other passage, long and straight, where the deputies have their lockers for bills and reports. Nor did he discover a politician in the refreshment-room, nor in the great room called the Lost Footsteps, nor in the office chambers facing the square. Silence and solitude everywhere; no one but a few ushers lolling about in uniform, without their badges, and bearing the listless air of people with nothing to do. Now and then Sangiorgio met the quæstor of the chamber, who had come to exchange with the other quæstor, a patrician who, during October, revelled in the luxury of his seigneurial villa on Lago Maggiore; and this other one, a Baron from the Abruzzi, with calm, aristocratic air, with a flowing, fair beard, with the mild, unsevere propriety of a gentleman attentive to his duties, went about vigilant yet apparently unconcerned. Whenever the baronial quæstor met the Honourable Sangiorgio, he gave him a little nod and murmured 'Honourable'; and, passing on, he said nothing more. The Honourable Sangiorgio felt embarrassed and shy in consequence of this continued politeness and this continued reserve; he would have preferred to be unsaluted, like a stranger, or spoken to, like a colleague. This correctness, polite though cold, disconcerted Sangiorgio to such a degree that after a week of this repeated bowing and no word passed, he blushed when he encountered the quæstor, as though caught in a mistake. Hereupon, doubting whether he would find what he was in search of, he took refuge in the reading-room, on the large oval table of which lay scattered the daily newspapers. There, at least, he found a pair of deputies--one a Socialist from Romagna, of light chestnut whiskers and mobile eyes behind glasses, writing letter after letter, at a tiny table--flaming addresses, perhaps; the other, an old Parliamentarian, with white beard and ruddy countenance, who was peacefully asleep in an armchair, his feet on another chair, his hands in his lap, and a newspaper overspreading his body. Francesco Sangiorgio, succumbing to the stillness of the place, to the warm air, to the softness of the great dark-blue easy-chair, leant his head upon one of his hands, though still holding up the number of the _Diritto_ or the _Opinione_ he was reading. A lethargy stole over all his being, which seemed to have relaxed in the warm and silent atmosphere; but in that lethargy, behind the hand covering his eyes, he was still alert. If the Socialist deputy turned over a page, if the old man made a spring in his chair creak, Sangiorgio started: the fear of being discovered asleep haunted him--unlike that aged deputy, who was not ashamed to exhibit his worn-out, useless senility in the reading-room, sleeping soundly, with the croaking respiration of a catarrhal old man. He then got up, and went across the room on tiptoe. The Socialist deputy raised his head, and scrutinized Sangiorgio with his cunning eyes, those of an overrascally apostle. Possibly he was seeking to discern the stuff of a disciple in that young novice of a deputy; but the cold glance, the low forehead, where the stiff hairs were planted as on a brush, the whole energetic physiognomy of Francesco pointed to a character already formed, unsusceptible to the sway of influences--one on whom social mysticism would have taken no hold. So that the Socialist, Lamarca, bent his head again to his writing. The Honourable Sangiorgio climbed to the third floor, to the library. In the bright corridor, which has its own windows beneath the skylight of the legislatorial hall, two or three clerks were at the high wooden desks, entering in large books the general catalogue of the works kept in the library; their occupation was continuous, unceasing; they wrote without stirring, without speaking. A short deputy, bald and red-nosed, was posted in front of a desk and turning over, always turning over, the leaves of one of those large books, as though hunting for some undiscoverable volume. Very small, standing on a footstool so as to reach the level of the desk, with a pair of short-sighted eyes that compelled him to put his nose down to the paper, he seemed to disappear behind the volume, and remained in concealment like a bookmark. In the series of rooms, all full of books, Sangiorgio found no one; the tables, covered with papers, with pens, with inkstands, with pencils, for the studious, were deserted. In a corner of one of the rooms, before a half-filled shelf, standing on a ladder, the learned librarian-deputy, the persevering Dantophile of the black eyebrows, looking as though they were put on with two heavy strokes of charcoal, was rummaging furiously among the books, with that passion for his library which he had derived from the chaos he had found it in. Nevertheless, he turned round, the honourable librarian-deputy, at Sangiorgio's cautious footstep; catching sight of him, he turned and scrutinized him with a pair of blackest, most vivacious eyes, all pregnant with the literary researches he had been making. Francesco Sangiorgio, embarrassed anew, as if he were an intruder admonished by the silence and the librarian's staring gaze, walked more softly, and in the last room of the library set to reading the titles of the new books, one by one, dizzy at all the lore relating to government, economics, and politics collected on those shelves, and for pretence he took down a volume of Buckle's 'History of Civilization'--the second--and began to read. Like lovers unable to tire of the lady of their heart, enchained by the sweet fascination, seeking the smallest pretext for remaining by her, so also did he linger in the corridors, looking at the maps on the walls; in the hall, studying the allotment of the seats; in the reading-room, perusing the newspapers; in the library, reading some books he cared little or nothing about. With the natural rusticity of his mind and his provincial shyness, he feared, in his heart, lest that quæstor who bowed to him so properly, but without ever speaking to him; lest those ushers who so indifferently saw him pass by; lest that librarian, so much in love with his library, might judge him for what he really was: a provincial, a novice, stunned with his first political success, who was afraid to take his comfort in the Parliamentary armchairs, and who could not tear himself away from the place. It seemed to him, as it does to lovers, that everyone must read his sole passion in his face. * * * * * That day he would not set foot there, at Montecitorio; he would not on any account think of the Parliamentary world; he must see Rome, must find a lodging. He looked out of the window, intending to start after breakfast. He had been awakened early by a hubbub of voices and laughter in the adjoining room. A sonorous, virile, resounding voice, with a very pronounced Neapolitan accent, and speaking in pure Neapolitan dialect, broken by rude laughter, was loudly arguing and declaiming. Two visitors came, who were then followed by two others; then there was a string of friends, of petitioners, who implored, boasted their claims, repeated their requests over and over again in Neapolitan dialect and with an obstinate rhetorical verbosity, to all of which the Honourable Bulgaro, Deputy for Chiaia, the second Naples district, replied with vigorous objections. He could be heard through the dividing doors, and the Honourable Sangiorgio involuntarily listened. No, he could not, he really could not, said the Honourable Bulgaro. Was he, perchance, the Eternal Father, that he could grant everything to everybody? Let them leave him in peace, once and for all! And he walked up and down the room with the cumbrous stride of a large man, grown loutish in civil life after losing the agility of the handsome young officer, who, in his palmy days, had won many a fair creature's heart. But those who came with a purpose insisted, begged, explained their family history, related their troubles, everlastingly repeating it all, so that the Honourable Bulgaro, with his easy Neapolitan good-nature, yielded after being worn out, and said: 'Very well! Very well! We'll see if something cannot be done!' They went away as well pleased as though they already had their desires, and the Honourable Bulgaro, left alone for a minute, puffed and swore: 'Lord! Lord! what jabbering!' The Honourable Sangiorgio was ashamed of having overheard so much, and went down to breakfast in a very pensive mood. He armed himself with courage to resist the seductions of Montecitorio. He reflected that perhaps many deputies had arrived, since but three weeks were wanting before the opening of the forty-fourth legislature. And he was already giving way to curiosity, as a pretext for his weakness, when a carriage, which chanced to be slowly passing by on the flooded paving-stones, obstructed his view of the main porch. With a decided gesture he hailed the carriage and jumped in. 'Where may it be your pleasure to go?' asked the coachman of his absent-minded patron, who had given him no directions. 'To--St. Peter's--yes, take me to St. Peter's!' answered Francesco Sangiorgio. The drive was long. The three consecutive streets--Fontanella di Borghese, Monte Brianzo, Tordinona--were choked with vehicles and foot-passengers; they were narrow and tortuous, with those dingy stationery and second-hand iron shops, all dirty and dusty, with those narrow front-doors, with those squalid blind alleys. At Castel Sant' Angelo there was breathing-space, but along the turbid and almost stagnant yellow stream was a succession of brown hovels, of gray tenements, with thousands of tiny windows, with damp stains of green on them, as though a loathsome disease had discoloured them, with filthy mildewed foundations disclosed by low-water: that angle of the river, near Trastevere, was vile. In the Via Borgo the deep ecclesiastical quiet began, with the silent, grayish palaces, with the shops for sacred articles, statuettes, images, oleographs, rosaries, crucifixes, where the pompous legend stood forth: 'OBJECTS OF ART.' In the great deserted square before the church two fountains which were playing looked like white plumes, and the obelisk in the middle like a walking-stick, and round about the ground was lightly bedewed with spray from the fountains standing there in the silence of an untenanted place. The carriage turned the obelisk, and stopped at the grand stairway. The Honourable Sangiorgio surveyed the front of St. Peter's, and it seemed to him very small and squat. 'Will you go into the church?' asked the coachman. 'Yes,' said the deputy, shaking himself out of his fit of abstraction. When he arrived at the threshold, he veered round and took a mechanical glance at the square. He had read that at that distance a man looked like an ant; but nobody appeared, and the huge, empty space, besprent with water under the gray sky, to his mind resembled the vast, naked Campagna. Inside the church he experienced no mysterious emotions: he was an indifferent as to religion, never speaking of it, discussing the Pope like an important political question, leaving religious faith and practice to women. The architecture of St. Peter's did not stir him. As he advanced he perceived that the church grew in size, but to him that deceptive harmony seemed purposeless, reprehensible. A few Germans were circulating, looking about with rather severe mien, as if their rigid Lutheranism disdained such Christian pomp. Not a chair, not a bench, not a priest, not a sacristan--the familiar spirit who extinguished the candles and replenished the holy water at the great pillars. The brown confessionals, on which might be read in gilt characters,'Pro Hispanica Lingua,' 'Pro Gallica Lingua,' 'Pro Germanica Lingua,' were empty. There was nothing to kneel on but the steps of the pulpit or of the main altar; else there was the cold pavement. Francesco Sangiorgio had no understanding for the monuments of the Popes: he examined them without appreciating either their beauty or their ugliness. His notions of art were vague and narrow. Canova's, with the sleeping lions, he thought mediocre; Rovere's Pope, all in bronze, he considered superb and handsome; Bernini's, with the figure of Death in gold, the drapery of red, veined marble, the Pope of white marble--this gave him no sensations, but was simply queer. He did not know whether the paintings over the altars were by great artists or not, whether they were copies or originals. He wandered about, killing time, as though performing a duty, abstracted and thinking of something else, not at all interested in that gigantic pile of stones, freezing and forsaken, where only a few shadows flitted. Finally, on the way out, the monument to the two last Stuarts impressed him as a poor thing. 'Drive to the Coliseum,' he said resolutely to the coachman, throwing himself back into the cushions. The coachman, in order to prolong the drive, since he was engaged by the hour, and so as to avoid the streets by which they had come, and which were ugly enough, went through the old, dark streets of the Borgo Santo Spirito and the Governo Vecchio, where the real Roman population lives, loath to abandon the ancient quarters and the small houses crawling with beetles. The coachman made his horse go at the slow gait of a tired animal, having cleverly secured a stranger with no ideas. At the Foro Traiano he still further slackened the horse's pace, and Sangiorgio pretended to admire that broad expanse below the level of the ground, where the mutilated pillars serve for tree-trunks, that great burial-place for dead cats, that great dwelling-place for stray cats, whom the charitable servants of the Via Magnanapoli and Macel de' Corvi bring the remains of their dinner. He could not see the Campidoglio, nor the Arch of Septimius Severus, nor the Grecostasi, nor the Temple of Peace, nor the whole great Roman Forum; because of the perpetual demolitions he could not pass by there, nor could he go on the Palatine Hill. This the coachman explained as he followed the Via Tor de' Conti. And soon the carriage was under the Coliseum, without the visitor having seen it from afar on the road which he had to take thither. The Honourable Sangiorgio felt obliged to alight, and went in under the arched entrance, sinking into the muddy soil. A large pool of rain-water, bordered by verdant vegetation, lay near the doorway of the Flavian Amphitheatre. In the hollows of the white stones scattered here and there, in the fluting of the stairs, and even in the hand of a broken statue, there was rain-water. Francesco, marvelling at the immensity of the walls, looked for points of identification; where, then, was the imperial box, the gallery for the vestals, and that for the priests? He stood in the centre, but did not realize the nature of that subterraneous structure. Yes, the Coliseum was grand, but the dirty light of a rainy day partially dimmed its majesty, and showed its decay and all the wear and tear of time. The country outside was green with the rich growth of moist fields; but there was not the song of a bird, not the voice of a beast, not the voice of a man. Under an archway a municipal guard appeared; he was leisurely and apathetic, taking no notice of the visitor. The Honourable Sangiorgio conscientiously went the round of the circular corridor, which was rather dark. He thought perhaps this Coliseum might be finer at night, under the moonlight, which gives ruins a romantic aspect, making them look larger and more mysterious. He had done wrong to come in the daytime to get his first impression. The Coliseum, he thought, was a great, useless thing, built by vain, foolish people. A gentleman and a lady--she being young and frail, he tall and robust--were also walking through the circular corridor, where the air is soft and cool, as in a cellar; they were walking slowly, without looking at one another, speaking in undertones, their fingers interlocked. She cast down her eyes at meeting Sangiorgio's, and the man gave him a surprised, resentful glance. 'Let us imagine what it looks like at night, with the moon,' said the Honourable Sangiorgio to himself. 'The old Romans built the Coliseum for modern lovers to walk in.' And he shrugged his shoulders, in expression of his secret contempt for love--the scorn of the provincial who has lacked time, opportunity, and inclination to love; the scorn of a man profoundly absorbed by another desire, which was not love. 'Shall we go to the Church of San Giovanni?' inquired the coachman, assuming the initiative. 'Very well, let us go.' And he conveyed him first to San Giovanni and then to Santa Maria Maggiore, depositing him conscientiously at the door. But these churches were smaller than St. Peter's. They failed to astonish him by their size; they were, perhaps, more inviting to worship, but his soul was closed to the sweet mysteries of religious belief; he walked to and fro aimlessly, like a somnambulist. Upon his coming out the coachman, without asking him anything, with a short trot of his nag, took him by the way traversed before, passing under the Titus Arch, to the stupendous Baths of Caracalla. The deputy, Sangiorgio, did not stop to inspect the photographs at the door; he entered quickly, as if seized with impatience. The walls stood up enormously high, covered with tufts of grass and prickly weeds, and had the solidity that is bestowed by centuries. In the midst of the huge compartments the flooring had given way, becoming concave, like a basin, and filling with a puddle of inky water. At the end of the hall for games and recreation was a sitting statue, headless, the statue of a woman decently attired--Hygeia, probably. Against the sad November sky was outlined a lofty reach of ragged wall, a hideous toothed cliff, that seemed to mount up and up into the region of the clouds. Down below in the plain stood a round temple, tiny and graceful--to Venus, perhaps. The Honourable Sangiorgio was ill at ease in that wide edifice; felt a chill in his marrow; was conscious of his smallness and insignificance. And anything that mortified or humiliated him made him suffer. 'No!' he said decisively to the coachman, who offered to show him the old Appian Way, 'we will go back to town!' As they returned to Rome he began to shiver. The mild autumn day was drawing to an end, and he seemed to be actually clothed in all its penetrating dampness, all the dirty white splotches, all the thin layers of mud. And he also seemed to bear within him all the gloom, all the solitude, all the melancholy, of those ruins, large or small, mean or splendid, all the void, the insensibility of those useless churches, of those great stone saints, that were hieratic figures without entrails, of those cold altars of precious marble. What did all those memories of the past matter to him, all those tiresome records? Who cared aught for the past? He belonged to the present, was a modern of moderns, in love with his age, in love with the life he was to lead and not with the days gone by, fit for the daily strife, fit for the stiffest endeavours to conquer the future. He was not a weakling who repined; he did not believe that things had once gone better; he loved his own day, and saw that it was great--richer in thought, in activity, in individuality. But in the twilight that darkened the cloud-covered heavens he felt belittled, tainted by the dangerous, enervating contemplation of the past; a heavy oppression sank down upon his breast, upon his soul: he must have taken a fever in the bogs of the Coliseum and the Baths, in the tepid humidity of the churches. The gas-jets on the Piazza Sciarra, however, brought him to. A newsboy was calling out the _Fanfulla_ and the _Bersagliere_ for sale. People were standing in groups on the pavement. The bustle of life once more stimulated his blood. A man talking in front of Ronzi and Singer's stated loudly that the opening of Parliament was fixed for November 20. The Fagiano and Colonne eating-houses, under the Veian Portico, were ablaze with light. Through the window of the Colonne the Honourable Sangiorgio thought to descry the Honourable Zanardelli, whose portrait he knew. He went in there instead of going on to the Albergo Milano, and took a seat at a table alone, near the honourable member from Brescia. And while he ate Sangiorgio examined that elongated, disjointed frame, that little nervous head, so full of indomitable will-power, those convulsive gestures, that essentially Southern pugnacity. The deputy from Brescia was dining with three other guests. In another corner dined more deputies, and the waiters busied themselves about those familiar customers, forgetting the solitary, unknown Sangiorgio. In that surcharged atmosphere he felt himself revive; he breathed anew; he took courage for the conflict. And when at an advanced hour he returned to the Piazza Montecitorio, in the presence of the Parliament House--mighty in the gloom--he felt shaken to the very foundations of his being. His heart was over there. CHAPTER III In the glove-shop of the Via di Pietra there was a great bustle. The handsome proprietress, fair and tall, a cheerful Milanese, and two lean girls with weary eyes, did nothing but perpetually turn round with outstretched arms to take down glove-boxes from the shelves. They bowed their heads while they felt for the required pair with long, nimble fingers. All customers who came in wearing a top-coat, under which it could be assumed was a dress-coat, whose collars were upturned, and who had shiny silk hats, asked for light gloves. A fine gentleman in a high hat, with a red and white ribbon at his throat--a commander, in fact--asked specifically for the colour he wanted, selecting pigeon gray. A lady from the provinces, attired in wine-coloured satin and a white hood, in which she was suffocating, was a long time choosing a pair of gloves, arguing and trying the patience of three or four customers waiting in a corner. She desired a tight glove that would not wrinkle, and then she complained of buttons loosely sewn on with a single thread, which came off immediately. When told the price, six lire, she became scandalized, put on an injured air, said that the material was very poor at such a high price, and went away gloveless, with pursed-up lips, carrying in her hand her invitation-card to one of the galleries in the Parliament. An honourable, a stout, dark young Southerner, with black moustache, was relating to a credulous constituent how at the last moment he had discovered he had no gloves, how those landlords threw away everything with the rubbish. And the poor constituent listened with a faint, confiding smile, having no gloves, not he, and probably no money to buy any. In the meantime another lady had come in who had stepped from a carriage. She was tall, with a fine face all painted crimson and white, with ruby lips, eyebrows so black that they looked blue, and exceedingly yellow hair. She was dressed entirely in white satin, had on a hat bedecked with white feathers, and carried a parasol bordered with cream lace. She asked for a pair of eighteen-buttoned black gloves; her bracelets tinkled as they slid up and down her bare arms; she exhaled a penetrating odour of white rose. A small deputy, short and fat, almost round, with a fringe of black beard and a pair of sparkling, tiny, bead-like eyes, scanned her up and down. He was pouring out his grievances to a colleague, a tall, handsome man, with flaxen moustache and the important demeanour of a ceremonious blockhead. He, a democratic deputy of the Extreme Left, always drew one of the lots conferring the duty of receiving the King and the Queen at the door of the Parliament. Yes, he, a democratic deputy, was obliged to bow and give his arm to a lady of the Court whom he did not know, who did not speak to one, to whom one had nothing to say. 'I like fashionable women,' murmured the other, with his stupid, self-satisfied expression. 'May be. But when one considers that their dresses are made with the money of one's constituents----' retorted the fat republican honourable. And then they left, eyeing the handsome painted female as she got into her carriage. Between the indentations of her lace wrap was visible a pink card; she was to sit in another gallery, was she, in a distinguished gallery. 'The revenge of the proletariat,' remarked the democratic deputy quite complacently. By this time people were treading on one another's heels in the glove-shop. There were faces of Government clerks, with freshly-shaven beard, white necktie ironed at home, pepper-and-salt overcoat, or cannon-smoke-coloured, or coal-dust-coloured, under which the black broadcloth trousers shone in perfect preservation; there were sallow faces of high officials, to which the green ribbon of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus imparted a still more cadaverous hue; there were all sorts of antiquated beaver hats, rejuvenated for the nonce by a hot iron. The fair, smiling proprietress never flagged, never lost her head, bowed amiably to everyone, always answered with the politeness of a well-bred Northern saleswoman. She had disposed of the whole supply of white cravats, and when the Honourable Di Santamarta arrived, a fair-haired Sicilian of Mephistophelian mien, and asked for a necktie, she expressed profound regrets, the Marquis being an all-the-year-round customer. That very moment the last of those white neckties had been sold, but Salvi, in the Piazza di Sciarra yonder, he surely would have some. The blond Marquis listened apathetically, with his feminine blue eyes turned down and his sceptical smile. 'Is the Signora Marchesa in Rome? Of course she is going to the opening of Parliament?' 'Yes, I believe so,' answered the Honourable Marquis. 'I think she will be going with her sister. I left my house in a hurry to buy this necktie. What a nuisance these performances are!' He went out wearily as if he had undergone some great fatigue, another just as onerous remaining. 'At Salvi's, you say?' he asked from the door in a drooping voice. 'Salvi, in the Piazza Sciarra.' For a moment the shop was empty. The two girls took a respite standing up; their faces were very pale. Before them on the counter lay open boxes and piles of gloves. Even the proprietress was seized with momentary lassitude, and also stood still, her hands leaning on the counter. She was reminded of one of those hot carnival nights, one of the last, when there are three fashionable balls in Rome, four public balls, and eight or nine receptions, and when there would be a concourse of young gallants in her shop, and milliners, servants, ladies' maids, desperate husbands, fretsome lovers. But now a family from Salerno came in, father, mother, and daughter--the father employed in the Interior Department--and wanted a pair of gloves for the girl. They explained at once that they were bound for the Chamber, that they had their tickets from several people. One was from Baron Nicotera, their deputy--the Baron, as the mother simply called him; another had been given them by Filippo Leale--the Honourable Leale, the gentleman with the black beard, who had been Secretary-General; the third ticket had been procured by an usher of Parliament from their own district, a good fellow with five medals. Oh, it was not so easy to get cards! They were in very great demand. A lady of their acquaintance, who was the aunt of a deputy, had been unable to get one. They were rather disturbed on account of the different colours of their cards, which meant three separate galleries; but--well, they would not lose their way in the Parliament. 'I think you will have to go in by three different ways,' placidly observed the proprietress in the midst of this flood of words, while she was battling to fit a glove on the girl's fat, red hand. The father of the family looked at his wife in dismay. The shop was filling with fidgety, nervous people, who could not wait, who stamped with impatience, who tore the gloves in trying them on too hurriedly. Before the counter was a double row of customers, treading on each other's heels; on the counter was a tangle of open boxes, a confused agglomeration of miscellaneous gloves; and there was an all-pervading odour of skin--that pungent, essentially feminine odour which intoxicates. * * * * * The gay autumn sun, on that most merry morning, sparkled on the housetops of the Via della Colonna, on the roofs of the Via degli Orfanelli, and threw its beams athwart the Piazza Colonna. The Antonine Column looked black and worn in the surrounding shaft of bright light, and stood out all wrinkled and hunchbacked against the red surface of the Piombino Palace. In the limpid air was a scintillation as of gilded atoms. Not a breath of wind stirred; streets and houses were steeped in a silent delight, in the joyful atmosphere of sunshine. Tricoloured banners were hung out; at the corner of the Palazzo Chigi, on the balcony of the Austrian Embassy, the two flags fraternally entwined. In the brilliant light, under which everything seemed to vibrate in the utmost precision and clearness of outline, the three vivid colours gave out a sharp, glad note. On the terrace of the Circolo Nazionale was a fluttering of parasols--red, white, blue--glistening in the sun. From both sides of the Corso, from the Via Cacciabove, from the Via della Missione, from the Via Bergamaschi, came a continual rush of people, in crowds and in groups, a flashing of black silk hats, a coruscation of gold epaulets, an undulating wave of white and pink feathers on the women's hats. By half-past nine the military cordon had stopped all issues, and, ascending towards Montecitorio, rounded the obelisk, and stretched to the Uffici del Vicario. At every break in the line there was perpetual haranguing between the officers and the people who tried to pass without tickets, each one of them looking for a deputy. Ah, there he was, under the Parliament porch! Now for making signs to him! But, heavens! he would not turn the right way! Behind the string of troops the multitudes of spectators formed a deep, dense hedge, iridescent in the morning sunlight; here and there a red gown, or a white one, made the effect of a blur. Between this line and the porch intervened a large empty space, strewn with gravel. Now and then some gentleman with overcoat unbuttoned, and some lady in fashionable morning attire, made their way across on foot, walking slowly so as to be seen better, and while conversing together enjoying the envy of those who had no cards. Near the four steps in the porch a group of three ladies halted for a moment. One, habited in black, sparkled all over in the sunlight by reason of the lustrous cuirass of black beads imprisoning the upper part of her body; the other, dressed in a delicate gray, had a white veil over her face; the third was dressed in the iron blue, called _electric_, then in fashion; and the three had all met in the doorway, and bowed to each other, showered compliments on one another, laughed, swayed to and fro on their tinsel-slippered feet, conscious of being stared at by the crowd, of being admired and envied. After prolonging this delightful moment, they disappeared, one by one, into Montecitorio. As the hour drew near, the crowd increased on every side, and, like the waves of the sea, ebbed from and flowed against the wall of the military cordon. All the windows of the Albergo Milano were crammed with heads; from the attics peered out the curly heads of men-servants and the white caps of maid-servants; the large bay-windows of the Pensione dell' Unione, the little squat windows of the Fanfulla, the windows of the Wedekind Palace, all had three or four rows of spectators, closely crowded; and in all the adjacent thoroughfares, in the Orfanelli square, the Guglia Lane, the Uffici del Vicario, the two branches of the Via della Missione, there was a host of people on balconies and doorsteps, and at windows. At Aragno's, the liquor-seller's, women had climbed upon the chairs and tables. Then, as the hour of the ceremonial opening drew near, a file of people--those invited--crossed the open space. Occasionally a row of medals gleamed under a buttonhole. The carriages left the Corso at a trot, without noise from the wheels, turned the obelisk in a graceful curve, and halted at the porch. They were carriages belonging to Cabinet Ministers, to senators, to members of the corps diplomatique; old men got out of them, supported by a servant or a secretary, a white or red uniform was visible for an instant, and then disappeared beneath the porch. On the small platform two journalists in dress-coats and soft hats were jotting down the names of the notabilities who passed by. One was short, with a pointed, light beard, mottled with gray; he wore gold eyeglasses and an impassive look. The other, too, was short, but of sturdy figure and deadly white complexion, with a schoolboy moustache and a smile denoting a fondness for satire. They were the managers of the two largest Roman newspapers, who were contributing in person to the columns of those important journals, and between themselves were amicably jesting about the queer specimens who passed. The sun spread over the corner of the Pensione dell' Unione, thus beginning the invasion of the Montecitorio square, and to this gradual encroachment corresponded a movement of the crowd, as if a feeling of contentment were stealing over them; here and there the smooth, round head of a parasol was raised. The procession of the ticket-holders continued across the open space, and they were now beginning to grow uneasy and impatient, and slightly excited, thinking they were too late to secure good places. The crowds in the streets, the alleys, the balconies, the windows, seemed at moments to have been suddenly stricken lifeless, as if petrified by magic, as if a huge, invisible photographic machine were photographing them; and one might have observed blank faces with staring eyes, children whom their nurses held by the collar, or a dozen people who had scaled a hackney-coach. Then the spell seemed to loosen; the crowds again showed some of the restlessness of people moving about and gaining no ground--a motion resembling the expansion and contraction of the rings of a worm. A little boy had climbed upon the pedestal of the obelisk, where, clinging to the great stone pillar, he amused himself with gymnastic feats. At length the sun reached the line of soldiers, falling obliquely upon them. First the white gaiters were illumined, then the blue capotes, then the black leather hats, and finally a bright streak ran along the barrels of the rifles. And from the distance came a low, brief rumble, the echo of a cannonade, upon which there passed from one to another of the whole mass of spectators, from balcony to window, from street to alley, a flutter and a sigh of immense relief: 'The procession! THE PROCESSION! THE PROCESSION!' exclaimed the crowd in an undertone, which grew to a clamour. In the hall, too, the rumble of the cannon was heard; for an instant absolute silence reigned there. Then a murmuring of voices began and grew loud, fans were once more set in motion, the insidious, penetrating female chatter, the footsteps of persons turning about in the aisles in vain search of seats, the rustle of silk gowns, fused and were confused. The hall was metamorphosed. Round about it the sections had been raised to the level of the galleries by means of scaffolding, a large supplementary gallery being thus created, containing four rows of spectators close upon the shoulders of the deputies on the last bench. On the two side-stairways, which the ushers know so well from a hundred ascents and descents every day of every session, were two tightly-packed files of people, two thick, solid stripes extending from the top of the galleries down to the bottom, the ladies sitting on the steps, the men who had gallantly surrendered their places leaning against the wall. All around the galleries were all filled to their utmost capacity. The press gallery, too--the best for hearing the speeches--had been given up to the public, the reporters being distributed over the best seats below. The ladies' gallery was quite full, but this seemed a piece of irony, and everyone laughed at there being a special little gallery for ladies when they had already invaded everything, were present everywhere, at the elbows of the deputies and almost on the floor of the House, all aglow with their imperishable women's curiosity. The officers' gallery was an effulgence of epaulettes and gold-braid; in the Speaker's gallery there was much craning of necks and great lamentation from disappointed and deluded people: both were situated over the royal canopy, which would conceal the King from view. And the two large galleries at the corners--the diplomats' and the senators'--were empty, deeply shaded by the dark-blue velvet draping their wooden walls. In the hemicycle the committee benches had disappeared; they had run parallel to the sections on the arc of a circle. Gone, too, was the long Ministerial bench, called by the most virulent among the Opposition the prisoners' bench. The small desk in the middle, where the stenographers wrote, and relieved one another at five-minute intervals, had been taken away. The whole Speaker's box had been removed. In its place a broad platform, accessible by four steps and covered with red carpeting, had been erected, and over it had been stretched an enormous red velvet canopy, fringed with gold and divided into three compartments. All this red looked very sombre under the expansive dome, and in the claustral dimness the gold on the royal armchair shone forth like a holy shrine. Somewhat lower down, outside the canopy, to the right and left, were two other armchairs for members of the Royal Family. The members were scattered about, standing on the steps of the sections and talking with the women. Some had gone up to the last row and turned their backs to the House, gossiping glibly with the women in the large wooden gallery, bowing to an acquaintance, smiling at a friend, familiarly nodding to a constituent for whom they had procured a ticket. Airy, frivolous conversations were spun between the women, who were surprised at everything and laughed at everything, and the deputies who tried to help them at it. A dark, well-dressed lady, wearing a hat cross-laced with gold, was having the deputies pointed out to her by the Honourable Rosolino Scalia, a grave Sicilian in correctly cut clothes, presenting the appearance of an officer in civilian garb, his buttonhole containing a minute daisy, and at the leisurely explanations of Scalia the lady bent forward, peered through her eyeglasses, and pointed her lips to a malicious smile. Ah, indeed, was that the Honourable Cavalieri, the Calabrian, the member who was so ingenuously Calabrian? A patriot, did he say? Yes, she understood that, and admitted he was famous, but he wore too many medals! That lean, fair man, with the gray eyes and the mop of hair brushed back, was that the Honourable Dalma, the literary deputy who talked about Ophelia in the House and about real estate assessment to the women? Why did they not make the Honourable Dalma a Minister? Did many of them want to be Minister? And was this really a serious thing with them, this passion for politics? So the Honourable Scalia, a trifle disgusted with her empty rattle, tried to prove to the lady that, although politics might seem a jest to those not taking them seriously, they nevertheless were a noble passion. But she shook her head, unconvinced, laughing again with her pretty, frivolous laugh, and the Honourable Scalia's face showed his increasing abstraction; he sought relief from her cackle in looking about the hall, politely pretending to be amused. The public was not impatient of the delay. The women were glad to be seated, to see and to be seen; they would have stayed there till evening, playing their fans, tossing their heads to make the jewels in their hats sparkle, levelling their opera-glasses. The men were inwardly congratulating themselves on the early toilet which had been necessary, and which lent them an air of gravity and elegance; some pretended it was all a great bother. But invitations to lunch were being passed about, and meetings were being arranged at cafés to discuss the ceremony. The crowd which peopled the hall and the galleries and the corridors, and every inch of space where a man might stand, was touched with nervous excitement, with a dash of intoxication. Many of these individuals had never visited Parliament, and feigned to take no interest in their surroundings, though in reality the atmosphere went to their heads. Meanwhile there was nothing gay about the Chamber itself, which kept its wonted appearance. The skylight windows had been washed, to be sure, but the light of that fair morning filtered through sadly, thinned like the cold, whitish, damp light that passes through an aquarium, and the wooden-coloured walls, with their streaks of dark blue, were well adapted to reflect no brightness whatever, to quench any cheerful gleam. That ugly colour absorbed and annulled all the others, condemned all the colours to a pale monotone. Such was the effect, from any gallery, of the optical phenomenon which is the first disillusionment of whoever visits the Italian Parliament: all faces were the same colour, melted into one another; no individuals could be distinguished; it was a monotonous whole, without design, without variety, from which one turned away disappointed. But this place, which equalized so many faces, so many sorts and conditions, so many kinds of clothes, this levelling to which the most rebellious must submit, this universal imprint which no one who came into the hall might escape--this produced a tremendous result. The hall seemed to be a huge sanctuary which swallowed up the individual, a holy precinct that subdued mind, will, and character, and where to stand up and be one the possession was needed of a profound, burning, mystic faith, or of the sacrilegious audacity that will overturn an altar. And the great royal canopy, all dark red, with the rigid, straight folds in the velvet, with the heavy gold fringe, and the golden eagle gathering up the folds under its claws, with the spacious armchair in the mysterious shadow, had an ecclesiastical aspect like a tabernacle--a shrine where an almighty power was abiding. Of a sudden all the deputies were in their places standing up, and a deep silence fell on the galleries, while outside the ringing bugles of the infantry sounded a flourish. Then a long round of applause burst forth--a dull, persistent applause from gloved hands. The ladies, who had risen, were applauding too, leaning on the shoulders of the deputies in order to see better. Standing in the diplomatic gallery and surrounded by her Ladies-in-Waiting, the Queen bowed in every direction, and the pearly whiteness of her face eclipsed the wooden background. She looked fresh and young and all serene under the brim of her yellow straw hat, adorned with a strawberry-coloured plume. And when the acclaim seemed at an end, and the Queen sat down rather above her ladies, the whole assembly was carried off by a wave of admiration for that poetic figure, and new applause, universal and deafening, again greeted the Queen. Excitement reigned everywhere. On the right aisle there were ladies distracted because they were under the diplomatic gallery and could not see the Queen. Those in the Speaker's gallery were happy; they could not see the King very well, to be sure, but they were within two paces of Her Majesty. To some of the spectators on the left aisle half of the performance was lost--the whole corps diplomatique in full uniform in the senators' gallery, with the wives of the Ambassadors and of the Italian Cabinet Ministers. From the central, the press, public, officers', and Government clerks' galleries, though far off, everything could be seen. There was a perpetual aiming of opera-glasses. The crowd, seized with nervousness, swayed and bent to right and left. Dialogues between reporters were overheard: Where was the German Ambassador? Ah, there he was, with his good-humoured face, his white moustache, and his soft eyes! That lady dressed in violet, with the large black eyes, behind Donna Vittoria Colonna, who could she be? Donna Lavinia Taverna, a Piombino. And all the women were in feverish agitation, names were whispered, scraps of comment on the gowns flew to and fro, whoever was most in evidence tried to be recognised by the Ministers' wives, by the Ambassadresses, by the Ladies-in-Waiting. An increasing murmur of questions and answers and subdued discussions rose in the air of the hall like the buzzing of a million flies. The King entered unexpectedly without the royal anthem being intoned. He appeared at the right-hand door in the midst of his household, of the Ministers, and of the ten deputies who had received him, and in three strides he was under the canopy. Two or three times he turned to the right and the left with the nervous abruptness of his quick, self-repressed nature. The members and the public hailed him, and he answered by motions of his gilded helmet, with its tall, waving white feather, while in his right hand he held a paper scroll. On the General's tunic which he wore were only his foreign military medals and the medal for bravery in the field. And in his close-fitting uniform, white collar, and tightest of trousers, as he stood under the overshadowing red dome with his helmet on his wrist in the attitude of a soldier at attention, he bore an unusually martial aspect, thin, brown, and strong, ever in readiness to mount on horseback, ever willing to sleep under a tent. He resembled one of those old pictures of a Commander-in-Chief, with proud, piercing eye and pale visage, clasping in one hand a rolled parchment on which the plan of a fortress is drawn. The old Prince of Savoia-Carignano, the King's uncle, fat and bald, placed himself at the right of the chair, on the arm of which he leant his flaccid and fatigued person, but he did not sit down from respect. The young Duke of Genoa, brother to the Queen and cousin to the King, took up his position at the Sovereign's left, while on the floor to the right was the group of Ministers and to the left the royal household. Out of the general silence rose the rather harsh voice of the King; and certainly the hearts of many of those politicians must have leapt at the recollection in that very assembly of another voice, slightly veiled, somewhat strident, a voice made for giving commands in battle, and that spoke the loyal words with which he sealed the national compact. And all the faces of the members had at once grown thoughtful; they remained motionless, with eyes fastened upon the King's. All of the women took to silence, as though struck by a sudden sense of reverence. In the deep quiet, in that stillness of a whole multitude, the respiration of the King was audible between one sentence and the next of the royal message. And the voice in which he spoke sounded like that paternal one; it had a certain explosiveness, certain peculiar accentuations, in its tone. The Queen listened intently without a smile from the diplomats' gallery, her handsome face bent downward and absorbed; the ladies were listening without the quiver of an eyelash; the whole Ambassadors' gallery had the smile that knows what is coming; the public galleries all round listened without losing a word; the deputies, standing up, listened, and every now and then something like a thrill of approval ran through the assembly. Twice the speech was interrupted by applause. At times a louder word seemed to wing its way, to soar up to the skylight: _peace_--_the administration of justice_--_financial retrenchment_. But suddenly the voice was lowered, as if the King disdained the final applause crowning his remarks, and he stopped short as if fatigued. The last words were muttered rather than spoken. He quickly took his helmet from the armchair where he had deposited it, while the audience shouted, 'Long live the King!' That rapt attention, however, had strained people's minds and imparted a sense of awe to them. The event of the day, which at first had seemed but a strange spectacle, now assumed larger proportions; the royal speech, on that sole occasion on which the constitutional Sovereign spoke in public declaring his will and intentions, became a solemn promise. A few of the most sensitive women had a little cold perspiration at the temples; others slapped their hands lightly with their fans, and with wandering eyes murmured, 'Beautiful, beautiful!' and the most romantic gazed fixedly at the Queen to observe her emotion. Then the swearing-in began. Old Depretis had advanced a few steps, and had read out the formula for the senators and deputies, scanning the words as if he wanted to imprint them on the minds of the listeners. The assembly of members and senators stood out in black and white from the bottom to the top of the sections, an assembly of energetic heads and puny heads, of scintillating eyes and eyes of dead fish, of bald, shining skulls, and of heavy, leonine manes. Narrow on the first bench, the gathering spread out to a wide semicircle on the last, and it seemed as though the space was all too small for the eruptive force of those wills and those brains. The King measured the nation's representatives with a glance. The first senator, the Duke of Genoa, took the oath in naval fashion in a vibrant tone, with a vigorous gesture; he was applauded. Then came eight new senators; there was a stir at the swearing of allegiance by the great Piedmontese Latinist, who was a clerical. What interested the audience most was the swearing-in of the deputies. Depretis said their name and surname and waited a brief moment, and from a bench a weak voice or a strong one would respond: 'I swear!' In that moment of expectation breathing was suspended; the King's eyes sought out him who was to swear and watched him take the oath. The patriot veterans swore in military style, laying their bare hand on their breast: their faith was proved. The lawyers took the oath in the high voice of persons wishing to attract attention. When he came to his own name, Depretis drew his right hand from his Ministerial uniform coat, and extended it as he took the oath; the assembly laughed at the astute old man who was its leader. The Minister continued to tell off the names, and agitated as well as tranquil answers were given, now as if issuing from the bowels of the earth, now as if descending from the skylight. The old Parliamentarians took the oath simply putting out a hand and repeating the words in an undertone; the radical deputies, who had long been preparing for the ordeal, swore in extreme haste, as if to get rid of a load. And the women listened, all excitement, all seized with unconquerable emotion, they, the inventors of all sorts of false vows, overcome with feeling in presence of those solemn promises made by five hundred men to one man and to the whole nation. But the most perturbed were the new members: this royal and Parliamentary pomp, this male and female public, this message of the King, the swearing-in of the other deputies--all this had shaken their nerves. And those who had come with the intention of behaving with spirit, of swearing as if it were nothing at all to them, trembled with impatience while waiting for their name, and then piped in a thin little note which made their neighbours smile, and which was inaudible to the crowd. Some played furiously with their watch-chain, and when they were called started up as if from a dream, ejaculated a choked and hurried _I swear!_ and fell back into their seat. Between the Honourable Salviati--a Florentine Duke--and the deputy Santini, the oath was taken, in a strangled voice that nobody heard, by the Honourable Francesco Sangiorgio. CHAPTER IV The door marked No. 50 in the Via Angelo Custode was situated two doors from a large, gray, dismal mansion, which was closed up. Francesco Sangiorgio hesitated a moment: there was no one to ask for information. One of the wings of the door was shut, the other ajar. The deputy entered a dingy passage-way, and advanced six or seven paces before reaching the stairs. He perceived that they were winding stairs, and in order not to risk breaking his neck he lit a match. But at the first floor there was rather more light, and at the second one might almost see. Upon the landing were three doors, and to that in the middle was attached by two bent pins a dirty visiting card bearing a forename and a surname: 'Alessandro Bertocchini.' Sangiorgio consulted the piece of paper given him by the house-agent. This was the name. He knocked. For some time no one came; he knocked again, timidly. Then was heard a great rattling of keys and chains, of bolts pushed and drawn, and at last the middle door was cautiously opened a few inches. A tall man with a red nose and two fair curls plastered against his temples appeared. The Honourable touched his hat, and asked if Signor Alessandro Bertocchini lived here. It was himself--the man of the ruddy nose and washed-out complexion. Was there not an apartment to let? Signor Alessandro examined Sangiorgio, ogled the gold medal all over, and said: 'Certainly, there is a furnished apartment to let; I will go for the keys.' And plunging his frosty fingers into his pockets, he left the deputy to wait on the landing. Through the open doorway a small anteroom was visible, with a table, a chair, and a lamp, and a breath of staleness, of ancient dust, assailed the lungs. 'Here it is,' twittered Signor Alessandro in his thin, high voice. He opened the door at the left. There was a dingy room with a chair, and then a long narrow room, looking out upon a balcony. Along one of the walls stood a sofa of crimson cloth, with the back and arms of painted and tarnished wood. At each end of the sofa was an easy-chair, upon which were pieces of lace crochet-work; in front was a threadbare carpet. Along the opposite wall ran a white marble mantelpiece, upon which stood two tall petroleum lamps, a clock that had stopped, and three photographs in their frames. On the wall hung a long, narrow mirror, somewhat greenish, in whose corners were stuck, for ornament, little red, yellow, and blue oleographs of the King, Queen, and heir to the throne. Near the mantle were two wooden chairs cushioned with crimson cloth. Close to the balcony was a writing-table, also with cloth cover, of crochet-work, with green, violet, scarlet, orange, and indigo stars, and in the centre stood a carved matchstand. Before the balcony hung two shabby lace curtains beneath a piece of red woollen drapery. Two more chairs of black wood completed the furniture. 'This is the parlour,' said Signor Alessandro, in his weak, drawling voice, looking into the air, his shivering hands stuck into the pockets of his jacket. Francesco Sangiorgio stepped to the balcony; it faced an inside courtyard, on which fronted many other windows, balconies, doors, and loggias. Above a housetop, the barren branch of a tree protruded. From the bottom of the yard rose a strong smell of kitchen, of slops, and dishwater. The landlord said nothing, and kept his air of indifference, allowing the deputy to investigate the apartment. The bedchamber adjoined the parlour, and was likewise long and narrow. The bed stood lengthwise, and beside it were a chair and the nightstand; before it lay a carpet like that in the parlour, and at the back was a blue cloth easy-chair, with a spot that had eaten into the colour. Against the other wall stood a chest of drawers whose wooden top was somewhat stained, with circles on it, as if wet glasses had been there; the two brass candlesticks were without candles. The toilet-table stood in a recess; here, too, lace curtains appeared beneath a piece of print, with dark background and large red and yellow roses. The splendours of this room consisted in a tobacco-coloured feather quilt on the bed, with many-hued woollen arabesques. Jug and basin were hidden in a corner, where stood the washstand, without towels and without water. 'The price?' inquired the Honourable Sangiorgio. 'Eighty lire a month--in advance,' whistled Signor Alessandro's plaintive organ. 'And what about the service?' 'There is a servant who makes the bed, sweeps, brushes the clothes and polishes the boots. Eighty lire a month--in advance.' And he sighed deeply, running his hand through his hair, which bore the aspect of varnished mahogany. 'Rather dear--eighty lire.' The Signor Alessandro preserved silence, since he perhaps could not muster enough breath for a discussion, and did not want to waste any. As they were about to leave the apartment, he added simply, with his nose in the air, like a donkey taking an anxious sniff: 'You are permitted free entrance.' The Honourable Sangiorgio went away, shrugging his shoulders. Perhaps he would come back. In the street, near the offices of the Minister of Agriculture, he met His Excellency's wife, the lady he had seen at the station. Tall, slender, habited in black, wearing a velvet cloak, she was quite fresh and young behind her black veil. She walked with rhythmical step, her gloved hands hidden in her muff, her eyes downcast, as though she were immersed in thought. And there was such dignity and sweetness in that female form that the Honourable Sangiorgio involuntarily bowed to her. But His Excellency's wife did not acknowledge his bow, and passed on, proceeding towards the Via Angelo Custode along the pavement. And in Francesco Sangiorgio arose a profound feeling of resentment, because of the rejected salute. He next walked to the Piazza del Pantheon, to the second address given him by the house-agent, and he passed along the streets with that everlasting symptom of moral oppression, a weight on his chest, on his shoulders, on his head, which he had been unable to shake off from the day of his arrival in Rome, and in the thoroughfares he met people who also wore the same expression of dejection. The house was midway between the Pantheon and the Piazza della Minerva, and next door to a bakery. From below were to be seen two windows, with white blinds stretched tight. It was on the first floor: three doors, all three bearing the names of women, one of them written in violet ink, and in a feminine hand, on a tiny bit of pink pasteboard. The right-hand door, marked 'Virginia Magnani,' was opened by an untidy maid-servant, who stared Sangiorgio in the face without speaking. But after a moment the landlady arrived, in a blue cashmere gown trimmed with white lace, her front locks in curl-papers. 'Has the gentleman come about the apartment? Run away, Nanna! Step in, step in--I am quite at your service! Pray excuse me for receiving you like this, but one never manages to finish dressing in the morning. I go to the theatre sometimes, with Toto, to hear Marini; it gets late, and then, of course, one is too tired to get up in the morning.' Sangiorgio listened, taken aback by the loquacity of this little woman with the powdered cheeks. 'Did Pochalsky send you here?' 'Yes, madam.' 'I thought so. Pochalsky knows that this house is for deputies. I take no others. But allow me: this is the waiting-room, and here is a table with writing materials for the voters who do not find their deputy at home. I had the Honourable Santinelli here. He was besieged from morning till night, never a minute's rest, so he always used to tell me when we chatted together a little--he was so civil, the Honourable Santinelli. "My dear Signora Virginia," he would say, "I can endure this life no longer!" This, as you see, is the parlour, neat and elegant. All these hangings are my own work; I made them when I was younger and had no troubles on my mind. No matter--we will not speak of that. Here is everything--carpet, cushions. The Deputy Gagliardi would never have gone away, he was so comfortable here, if the voters had not played him the trick of not re-electing him. But political life is full of these disappointments----' And the little woman put on a serious look, her lips pinched and her head down on one shoulder. This parlour was really not very different from that of the Via Angelo Custode: there was more faded drapery, a larger number of photographs, and an American rocking-chair. The gilded frame of the mirror had a green net covering, to preserve it from the flies. 'This,' continued the Signora Virginia in a strong Roman accent, 'is the bedroom. There is a little library, for books, as I have always had studious deputies. The Honourable Gotti was reading novels the whole time. Do you read novels?' 'No, madam, never.' 'That's a pity, because you might have lent me some. A clothes cupboard is wanting here, but I am waiting for a sale in the Via Viminale, where Muccioli, the auctioneer, has promised to keep a good wardrobe for me. However, you can let me take care of your clothes--your dress-suit, your overcoat, your pelisse--I will keep them in my own wardrobe, and they will be quite safe. Here is everything--basin, jug, slop-jar, bed with two good curtains, etcetera. Look at it--look at it all, and satisfy yourself. I am not boasting, but night and morning Toto gives thanks to God for having blessed him with a wife like Virginia. All this, Honourable----' 'Sangiorgio--Francesco Sangiorgio.' 'Deputy for----' 'Tito, Basilicata.' 'Honourable Sangiorgio, all this is to be had for a hundred and thirty lire a month, not a centesimo less, for I make nothing by it. If I had to live by letting rooms, I should be left out in the cold. In the anteroom there is a door communicating with my apartment; when it is locked you have your own apartment, with free entrance. You require free entrance, do you?' And she looked at him searchingly out of her light cat's eyes. Sangiorgio did not quite understand. 'I do not know--I do not know,' he said at haphazard. 'Because, if you wanted free entrance, of course you would pay twenty lire more per month--a hundred and fifty lire. But if you are married, and want other rooms for your lady, there is my sister, Restituta Coppi, on the same landing, who has rooms to dispose of. My sister's-in-law, on the second floor, I cannot recommend; she is not cleanly, poor creature! She belongs to the lower classes, like all of them in this region. It was a fatal mistake that poor George--my brother--made. Are you married, Honourable?' 'No, madam.' 'Very well, then. You had better enjoy your youth, too, because it's a horrible thing to marry too soon. I, praise God! cannot complain, for Tito is a flower of a man; but, still, liberty is best. I always said so to the Deputy Gotti, who was a bachelor, like yourself, Honourable Sangiorgio, and he would answer amiably--as, indeed, was his habit--"I should have to find another Signora Virginia before I married, but there are no more of them." Well, we were saying a hundred and thirty lire a month, which is really a low price, and ten lire a month for service to Nanna; and then there is the gas on the stairs until eleven o'clock--five lire. By-the-by, I can also have your washing attended to. I have an excellent laundress; she washes with March water and soap and no potash. In fact, there is everything you want, and if some day the Honourable should wish to dine at home, being sick of the pastry one eats at the cook-shops, there is Toto, my husband, who amuses himself with making and cooking dumplings. They are a joy! I never set foot in the kitchen myself; my health is too delicate----' They had gone back to the waiting-room, and Sangiorgio maintained the cold reserve of the taciturn towards the talkative. 'And--you will excuse me, sir,' suddenly said the Signora Virginia in a voice become hard because of Sangiorgio's long silence, 'but what do you propose to do? I have many inquiries, you will understand; an apartment like this is an opportunity not to be neglected.' 'Do not let me hinder your business, madam,' said the deputy, in whom the natural diffidence of the provincial asserted itself. 'In case I want the rooms I will let you know.' 'I may expect a letter, then? Am I to call and ask for it at the Parliament?' she asked in tones once more mellifluous. 'No, do not trouble; I will send word.' The Signora Virginia bowed and held out her hand like a great lady. As soon as he was on the stairs, he felt tired of all the jabber and quite bewildered, and it seemed to him as if he had already been to ten houses. He had two more addresses on his piece of paper, and his inclination to pursue the choice had greatly diminished. It was only by a revulsion that he was able to give orders to be driven to the Via del Gambero, No. 37, since he did not yet know the streets. The Via del Gambero had the atmosphere of mystery of the streets parallel to the Corso, affected by hurrying men and busy women. From the great Palazzo Raggi, with its courtyard like a square, with one entrance on the Corso and the other on the Via Gambero, every now and then someone would issue forth who was avoiding the crowd or in fear of dangerous encounters, and who hastened away without looking back. In the porch of No. 37, a decent-looking place, there was a wooden porter's box with a window-pane, deriving its light from the house. A little woman came out to meet the deputy. 'Have you not an apartment to let here on the third floor?' 'Yes, sir. Will you look at it?' 'I should like to see it.' The little woman went back into her box, picked out a key from a bunch, and set forth, blinking the red eyelids which belonged to a pair of gray eyes. She was evidently the porteress. She was dressed in green cloth, faded and worn out, and rather showily trimmed; she wore a chestnut wig, with a false plait at the neck and a fluffy fringe on the forehead. As she went upstairs her dirty, red silk stockings showed. As for the flaccid, wan cheeks, white and dotted with freckles, and the pale-violet, youthful mouth, one might guess that once this face had been round, rosy, and that it had collapsed suddenly like a doll's from which the sawdust has escaped through a little hole. The staircase was spacious, and had wide turnings, a rare circumstance in Roman houses; on every landing were three doors, uniformly situated. On the first floor, to the right, the Honourable Sangiorgio read: 'Barone di Sangarzia, Deputy to Parliament'; there was nothing on the middle door, and to the left was: 'Anna Scartozzi, Tailoress.' On the second floor, to the right, the door was marked: 'Marchese di Tuttavilla, Deputy to Parliament'; no name was on the door in the centre, and that on the left bore the inscription: 'Commission and General Agency.' 'Have these two deputies also furnished rooms?' 'No, sir, they furnish their own, but the apartment is the same,' replied the woman, inserting the key in the lock of the right-hand door of the third floor, where no name was on the middle door, and on the left: 'Paolo Galasso, Dentist.' The apartment facing the street was very light, and the furniture, which was almost new, had pretensions to elegance. A majolica flower-vase stood on a table, and there was a fireplace--a real fireplace--an extreme luxury in a Roman middle-class house. 'You can light a fire here, and after dinner, in winter, that is a pleasure,' observed the woman. 'There are fireplaces on each floor. The deputy on the first floor has his lighted in the morning; he has a blazing fire all day.' 'But does he not go to the Chamber?' asked Sangiorgio, yielding to inquisitiveness. 'Not always--not always,' answered the woman, with a malicious smile that spread all over her face. 'And what does one pay here?' Sangiorgio interrupted dryly. 'One hundred and eighty lire a month.' 'It seems dear.' 'No, sir; if you will inquire about prices, as you are a stranger, you will see it is not too high, in the middle of Rome, two steps from the Corso. I am not boasting, but the apartment is arranged in the best taste; I have always understood how to----' And the porteress brushed down the fringe of the wig over her forehead. The deputy shrugged his shoulders. 'It is dear,' he insisted. 'You are not obliged to take it, you know, but if you want a large apartment with a door on the landing, furnished and comfortable, with a fireplace, and everybody minding their own business, that is convenience you will find nowhere else, and if you want all this in the Via del Gambero for less than a hundred and eighty lire, my dear sir, I assure you the thing is impossible. The deputy on the first floor came here four years ago, and was so well suited that he has remained ever since; the deputy on the second story came on the recommendation of a friend, and has already stayed two years. No one ever leaves. The dressmaker on the first floor has ladies of the aristocracy for her customers; there is always a carriage before our door.' 'Yes, I understand, but these things do not interest me.' 'Quite so, sir! But you will come back, you will come back, for you will find nothing as good as this, I am sure; the place was positively made for you!' And as they went downstairs there ascended a lady wrapped in a fur cape, with a brown veil that went round her hat, head, neck, and chin, under which it was tied in a showy knot. She walked up slowly. 'There is one of the dressmaker's customers,' murmured the porteress. 'She is no doubt going to have a gown fitted.' But the bell of the dressmaking establishment was not heard to ring, and the Honourable Sangiorgio, casting his eyes upward, perceived that the disguised woman was quietly mounting to the second floor. In haste to have done with it, he ordered the coachman--for he was still driving--to go to the top of the Capo le Case, a bright, lively, sunny street cutting midway across the Via Due Macelli. An atmosphere of refinement, of aristocratic self-possession wafted thither from the neighbouring Piazza di Spagna, Via Sistina, Via Propaganda, and Via Condotti, the most fashionable part of Rome. No. 128 was situated opposite a shop where English biscuits were sold, and preserves, and liquors, and soaps, a _grocery_, as the English call it, whence streamed a strong and almost warm smell of spices. Next to it was a florist's shop, full of vases with bulrushes, of reeds, of tree-trunks, with winter roses in the window, a bunch of lilies of the valley in a jar, tender, early flowers. The stairs were marble, clean, and lit from above by a window in the roof. Three doors fronted on each landing; they were of light wood, of varnished maple, with shining brass knobs for knockers. A servant in undress livery opened the door immediately, and ushered the Honourable Sangiorgio into a dim parlour, saying that the lady of the house would join him in a moment. The Honourable felt a soft carpet under foot, and sat down, fingering the low, pliant lounge. In the half-darkness he distinguished a table covered with a gold plush cloth, on it a Japanese ash-tray and a vase of Venetian glass. But a light footfall was heard, and the woman of the house entered. She was tall, not stout, but with a full figure; with a head of chestnut hair neatly dressed, frizzed by curling-irons, and adorned by tortoiseshell combs; with a plain, black gown of a soft material, and a high, white linen collar buttoned by a gold horseshoe stud. 'Will you oblige me?' she said. They went out together upon the landing, and now he observed the opaque pallor of the ivory face of a woman in the thirties, and her fathomless, turbid, coal-black eyes, with something claustral in their depths. Her fair, plump hand closed caressingly on the key. The apartment was small, but bright and cheerful, as if it were in the sunlight of the open country. The parlour furniture was a gray and pink chintz, very agreeable to the eye; the mirror was oval, with a ledge of carved wood; a long, low sofa stood near the bay-window, hung with close, embroidered muslin curtains, which, draped in heavy folds and without cords, dragged on the floor. A great array of photographs were queerly disposed on the wall, as if they had been thrown at it at haphazard; on a tiny writing-desk stood a red plush photograph frame without a picture. The bedroom had pale-blue, satin-plush furniture, with a similar counterpane on the bed, which was spread with a wide lace coverlet; the toilet-table was fitted out in white fancy muslin, embellished with bows of blue ribbon; the wardrobe had a mirror door, and at the windows, besides the soft curtains dragging on the floor, were little screens behind the panes, of light-blue, wavy silk. 'There is a dressing-room, too,' murmured the lady, without smiling. 'No, I will not trouble you,' interposed the other. 'No, no, I want you to see it; it is important; it has a door opening on the stairs.' The mistress, with her rather fleshy, rather pasty face, resembling some of the old Roman heads, opened another door, which fronted on the landing; this was the third door, so that this apartment of two rooms and a half had two free entrances. 'It is a very convenient house,' she suggested demurely, inspecting a hand, and smoothing it to make it whiter. In her black dress, with its statuesque folds, and with the pale, calm Roman matron's countenance, she imposed respect. The Honourable Sangiorgio spoke to her as to a lady of high station. 'The apartment is rather too luxurious for me,' he said. 'I like it very much, but my requirements are very plain.' 'Indeed!' she remarked, as if she did not quite believe him, in a lightly courteous tone. 'Yes, I assure you I am something of a savage,' continued Sangiorgio frankly. 'I want a quiet place for my work, and nothing more. I spend much time at the Parliament. Here--it is a little feminine, it seems to me,' he added smilingly. 'Yes, there was a Russian lady here last year; she was called away, and had to leave.' And she stopped, without vouchsafing further explanations. 'And--the price?' asked the deputy, after a moment's hesitation. 'Two hundred and fifty lire a month,' replied the lady placidly, straightening the horseshoe collar-stud. 'Ah! And service and gas included?' the Honourable Sangiorgio inquired, with genteel curiosity. 'You would have to come to an understanding with Teresa, my maid.' 'To be sure--to be sure,' murmured the other, as if in apology. The pale-faced woman with the deep black eyes, which were so full of liquid, nun-like melancholy, accompanied the deputy back to the door, without even asking him whether he intended to engage the apartment, took leave of him with a smile--her first--and did not shake hands with him. He now felt exhausted, overcome with a deadly lassitude; the November sun stung him like the burning rays of August, and the air weighed heavily upon him. Surely there must have been some faint but effective perfume in that Capo le Case house, of the kind which first excites the nerves and then brings a state of languor. Perhaps the perfume had been worn by the lady who was so pallid, so severe, with the imposing claustral mien of a high-born Abbess, in her black gown and white collar. While idly walking along the Via Mercede, he drew a picture in his mind of the pink and gray parlour, so sweet in its simplicity, of the blue room all veiled with white, of the double curtains floating and billowy, with their suggestion of privacy, of the retreat ensconced high up, away from the world. All that furniture--the lounge upon which the Russian lady must have reposed, to dream the dreams of a whimsical foreigner; that minute table, on which she had written her letters; that dressing-table, before which she had bedecked herself--that whole female domain presented itself to him. But most of all was he interested in that red frame containing no portrait, as though it had been carried off in haste by a bustling traveller. He was unable to imagine this Russian lady's face, and in the empty place which his fancy failed to fill up he always would find the white oval, like an ivory carnation, of the other woman, with the gentle waves of chestnut hair surrounding her face. Unconsciously he had entered the Aragno café, and in the last, small, solitary room he had bespoken a glass of cognac, to relieve him of his depression. The Capo le Case lady again appeared to him, but in less precise shape; all the more clearly, on the other hand, did he picture the woman in the fur cloak whom he had met on the staircase in the Via del Gambero. He had observed her arched, alert foot, daintily poised on a step close to the iron railing, and he wanted to know where she had intended to go, because, startled at meeting him, she had pretended to knock at the tailoress's door, and had then proceeded further up, her head down, and the lower part of her face immersed in the heavy, brown veil. The porteress, certainly, must know her; yes, she must know her quite well, that porteress with the flaccid countenance and the hideous eyes; there was cunning in her insinuating language. Who knows? She must have been handsome, the porteress with the horrible wig--perhaps also genteel; she must have a curious history, and he had not given her time to talk, as she had desired to. Signora Virginia, however, had told him a considerable portion of her history, but what sort of wife was she who read novels while her husband cooked dumplings in the kitchen? And from his depression he gradually revived, harbouring a growing interest for all those feminine puzzles: the vision of the Russian lady, that mysterious person of the Via Capo le Case; the visitor of the Via del Gambero and her secret; the porteress's behaviour; the singular confusion manifested in Signora Virginia's verbosity. He would have liked to know, understand, appreciate all this furtive femininity, that eluded him, that was hid from his curiosity; and from this his detailed consideration, from this analytical review of women seen and women fancied, a desire arose which had up till then been latent: a certain figure displaced all the rest, excluded them, and appeared before him, tall, lithe, black-gowned, placid and pink behind a black veil, walking slowly, with measured step and steady gaze--the wife of His Excellency. Where might she have been going at that hour--where was His Excellency's wife going? Just then, outside in the street, the large, full-bodied Duke di Bonito was passing by, the popular Neapolitan deputy, his face slashed across with a sabre-cut; rolling upon his legs as he walked, he resembled a clumsy merchant vessel, one of those black, flat ships that run into the little ports of Torregreco and Granatello, and into Portici, to unload coal and take in cargoes of macaroni. Beside him was his faithful friend, the deputy Pietraroia, with a calm face and a violent disposition--a man of quiet voice and impassioned language, who for months and months would sit silent in the Chamber, and then, one day, would break out with Southern ardour, astonishing everybody. The Honourable Sangiorgio looked after them for a minute; they were returning from breakfast, and on the pavement they met the third of the Neapolitan trinity, the Honourable Piccirillo, with a fair, flowing beard, with small blue eyes, the lord of the turbulent popular district of Naples. And then a lively conversation ensued on the pavement. The Honourable Piccirillo narrated something important and authentic, gesticulating, making signs with his hand injured in a duel with the Honourable Dalma, tugging at an overcoat button of the Duke of Bonito, who giggled and sniggered incredulously, ironically, with the cold scepticism of a man who has seen life; and meanwhile the Honourable Pietraroia was listening composedly, as he daintily twisted his moustache. Opposite Sangiorgio, huddled up behind a small table, with his shrunken legs and his wizened baby-face, the Honourable Scabzi, the working-man delegate, the only one in Parliament, whom Milan had elected, was modestly breakfasting on a cup of coffee and a roll. Francesco Sangiorgio, once more in his usual sphere, and his thoughts running in a more serious channel of reflection, felt suddenly reinvigorate, as if free from the burden of indolence which had been weighing upon him that morning. All those women whom he had seen, with whom he had spoken, had infused a sort of debility into his veins, had debased his spirit to an inclination for triviality, and had upset his mind with absurd and futile dreams. By a natural reaction he recovered his balance, and with his normal sense came clear reasoning, discerning logic, which penetrated and explained what had been obscure before. He now understood what all these furnished houses were, these furnished apartments, these furnished rooms, which have their being and flourish all over Rome, vegetating almost abundantly enough to stifle it; and the meaning dawned upon him of all this strange mixture of middle-class females, of tailoresses, porteresses, servants, and shopkeepers, who find the letting of rooms the easiest and surest profit; and he saw 'twixt the seeker for rooms and all these women the compulsory association, the communication of doors open or closed, the half-cohabitation, the meetings in the morning, at night, at dangerous hours of the daytime--a female control beginning in the house, extending to the laundry, then to the clothes, then to the books, then to the letters of the tenants, and at length by devious ways reaching himself. He felt how much there was of the dramatic, of the comical, of passion, and of vice, in all this system of 'free entrance,' of apartments with two doors, of courtyards with two openings, of locks with double springs, in all this doubling, in this phantasmagoria of closed doors, of clashing bolts, of bells that did not ring, of female shoes that did not creak, of close women's veils and hermetically-sealed cloaks. And the great equivocacy of Roman life, so decorous and impassive in appearance, so restless, passionate, burning in reality, was now manifest to him--in one of its aspects. And in his vague, instinctive dread of this female omnipresence and omniprevalence, in his fierce thirst for solitude and independence, he took the lodgings in the Via Angelo Custode, where there were no women. CHAPTER V Another walk from the corner of the Piazza Sciarra to the Piazza San Carlo, all the way by the Corso--the Corso on a festal day, with all the shops shut and the street empty between the unfrequented hours of two and three, on a winter's afternoon. In the Piazza Colonna, Ronzi and Singer, pastrycooks, were open, but not a soul was in the shop. In the window but a few boxes of sweetmeats were left, and the glass showcases on the marble counter were depleted of pastry. The newspaper kiosk by the fountain was closed. From Montecitorio a broad ray of pale sunlight fell on the front of the Chigi Palace; an occasional hackney coach turned in from the Via Berghmaschi, grazed the dark Antonine Column, and slowly wandered into the Via di Cacciabove. Through its closed glass doors one might look into the Parliament café, low-vaulted and dingy, like a dark, shadowy crypt; there was no one inside. Opposite Morteo's, the liquor-seller's, two very young journalists were gossiping, their hands in their pockets, yawning, and bearing the expression of persons mortally bored. Four or five other youths were drinking vermouth behind the spacious windows of the Aragno café, and were reading a sheaf of pink papers--an obscure literary journal. And then there was the whole length of the Corso, with a few rare pedestrians and a few gentlemen, who, after issuing from their houses, immediately entered their closed carriages, which shot off like arrows. A mild winter sirocco tempered and enlanguored the air; on that Friday, on that Christmas Day, at that afternoon hour, the life of Rome seemed suddenly suspended. The whole of that central district of the city, that stretch of the Corso which is always feverishly astir, with its four squares, the Sciarra, the Montecitorio, the Colonna, and the San Carlo, with its overflowing cafés, its handsome shops, its crowded pavements--it all seemed plunged into a sudden stupor on that happy, holy day, in that balmy weather. In his contact with the feverish, workaday world, Sangiorgio felt the strange excitement of it without participating in its activity. And now this emptiness, this drowsiness, this peaceful Christmas--which in the smallest provincial village is celebrated with gleeful shouts and discharges of gunpowder--had filled him with amazement, as many things had in this wonderful Rome, always so new, always so surprising. He had been walking back and forth for an hour after his mid-day meal, subsequent to perusing the three or four newspapers published in the morning, which chiefly contained sentimental Christmas rhapsodies; he had met no one, not even a familiar face--for friends he had none--not even any of the faces he was wont to meet. Everyone who had been able to go away to celebrate Christmas in his part of the country, with his own family, had departed--deputies, senators, students, clerks, and officials. And all who had remained apathetically shut themselves up at home in their plebeian or aristocratic way, since the Roman neither seeks nor expects chances. Francesco Sangiorgio had foreseen that he would be very lonely, isolated, lost in the midst of a merry-making, giddy throng; instead, Rome, to his surprise, had the great solemn silence of a dead city. Turning about for the fourth time, as he was bitterly regretting that he had not gone to spend Christmas with his old parents in that poor, humble, and respectable Basilicata, he saw issuing from the Via Convertite, into the Corso, a body of forty or fifty men marching in procession, with a tricoloured banner at their head. In front went four or five men in overcoats and low-crowned hats; they walked along very gravely, and looked as though they were measuring their steps. The standard-bearer wore a leather belt over his outside coat, with a metal ring near the buckle to steady the flag, while a shining, tall silk hat was set rakishly over his ear. Then came a number of old men in soft felt hats and shaggy, worn overcoats quite out of date. Some had three medals, others four; a few stooped; one was lame, and dragged himself along laboriously with the aid of a stick. They were veterans who had survived the battles of 1848 and 1849. A few young men, much under thirty, had joined them. At the tail of the procession came two mock guards, of doubtful physiognomy, brown, shining skin, mottled moustaches, wearing jackets and low hats set on the side of the head, and walking in military style, with bamboo canes under their armpits. The waiters in the Aragno café paid no heed whatever to the procession, being accustomed to such sights; on the pavement a few people were standing still, in an absent-minded manner. The two journalists talked for a moment in front of Morteo's, and then one came to a decision, separated from the other, shrugged his shoulders, and went with the veterans and the rest, with the disdainful air of an idler. Francesco Sangiorgio did not fall in behind them, but followed the procession along the pavement, and kept pace with it. Some people joined it on the line of march, at the Orfanelli and the Pastini. At the Piazza Rotonda, opposite the Pantheon, where the great King lay at rest, the banner was lowered, the veterans baring their heads. The procession then wended its way through some of the obscure, narrow streets of old Rome, stringing, winding along those lanes where only four can walk abreast. And everywhere reigned the deep silence of closed shops, closed windows, deserted alleys, a great festal peace which left the streets empty, which kept all the Christmas rejoicings within the walls of the houses. Now and then the standard would waver, but quickly its bearer would adjust it in the ring with an energetic jerk. A brief halt was made at the Sistine Bridge. Here there was some slight stir; on both the broad pavements a number of people were standing, looking at the river, which was flaxen fair under the wan, wintry sky; carriages went by at a trot, drawing up sharply at the abrupt curve of the bridge. All about, at the beginning of the Via Giulia, towards the Piazza Farnese, and down below towards the Politeama, extensive building renovations were in progress--piles of stones, bricks, and masonry, walls of houses in course of demolition, little white lakes of hardened lime, masons' barrows handles up, high wooden scaffoldings on which advertisements were affixed; high and low, right and left, more demolition; and then there was part of a street already paved, and some of the work begun upon the embanking of the Tiber. The sirocco was driving the clouds in the direction of the Via Farnesina, and the yellow floods shimmered gaily. An immense black raft split the river in two; it was stationary, for the purpose of the work being done, and it looked like some engine of war. Here, too, peace prevailed, like a cessation of life, like a sleep in the mild winter afternoon. Sangiorgio went on with toilsome step, and, raising himself on his toes, saw the banner of the company emerge into Trastevere. Again began the silent threading of the lanes in that remote suburb; a few of the populace, in holiday clothes, swelled the procession, which now consisted of about a hundred persons. At the corner of a little street, suddenly, under an unforeseen burst of light, they found themselves in a broad avenue. At one hand, beyond a low parapet, lay Rome; on the other rose a green ridge--the Janiculum; halfway between the Academy of Spain was visible, about which wound the rising avenue. Three or four times the company was obliged to divide, to let a carriage pass that was trotting swiftly up the slope, noiselessly, on the sand; a female face would appear and vanish behind the panes. At a certain point in the bend of the road, near the Villa Sciarra, between two aristocratic lines of flourishing century plants and young poplars, a gentleman who was standing still called out: 'Honourable Sangiorgio!' Sangiorgio started, turned round, and perceived the Honourable Giustini, a Tuscan deputy, with whom he had spoken three or four times, as they were neighbours on the last bench of their section, in the Right Centre. He went up to him. 'Are you following the procession, colleague?' asked Giustini in a voice tinged with irony and weariness. 'Merely as an idler. And you?' 'I am watching it march, as a spectator. It is much the same thing.' The Tuscan pronounced the letter _c_ very hard, and spoke without looking his interlocutor in the face. He tossed his head once or twice, as if in contempt. They walked together by tacit accord. The Honourable Giustini was neither lame, nor hip-shot, nor deformed, but his legs draggled, one of his shoulders was higher than the other, his neck was shrunk, like a turtle's, his arms and hands dangled at his side as if he did not know what to do with them. He had an earthy face, a pair of light, pale eyes, and a thin, tawny beard, cleft at the chin. His make-up was that of a man completely worn out--one afflicted with physical and moral rickets. 'These processions,' said he, 'these promenades with flags, these wreaths laid down on stones--they are all the same. I have seen a thousand of them, and have taken part in some. When one has been young and has been a law student, how can one help having taken part in processions?' 'I did, too, at the University,' replied Sangiorgio. 'Who believes in such rubbish?' resumed the Honourable Giustini, with an energetic shrug of the shoulders. 'One must be twenty or sixty--the ages at which one is silly.' 'Do not speak against youth,' answered Sangiorgio, exhibiting a faint smile. 'Yes, yes--youth, love, death--the three things sung by Leopardi. He really only sang of two, but the other stands behind them. All Southerners are Leopardists, are they not? Well, and what a famous bore that Leopardi is! He had a hump, and he made it an excuse to write verses and tire people. I am half humpbacked, too, but I write no verses, by God! And neither do I bore my colleagues in the Chamber by making speeches.' 'True, you have not made a speech since the opening of the session.' 'And my colleagues have not the good grace to pay me back in the same coin. What a collection of hopeless babblers, what a lot of superfluous verbiage, what an amount of wasted breath!' His respiration came slowly; his dull glance filtered through half-closed lids. Sangiorgio listened and looked at him, allowing him to talk without arguing, continuing the silent study of men and things he had been pursuing in Rome for two months, which was to constitute so much of his strength. Walking leisurely, they had reached another corner of the avenue. At the square a great panorama was now offered--another view of Rome from a semicircular terrace. They were up near the Academy of Spain. Opposite the great gate several carriages were waiting, one of them a Cardinal's; the beardless groom, without a hair on his face, like a priest, dressed in black, was walking up and down. The procession went on upward towards the Acqua Paola--a noisy, singing fountain. The foot-passengers stopped to watch it pass. A tall, lean gentleman, with a fair, grizzled beard, standing by the hedge, exchanged greetings with the veterans as they marched by. 'That man would like to believe in the modern spirit, and cannot,' again began Giustini's ill-natured voice. 'He is a fine man, yes, he is, that man over there in the tall hat, Giorgio Serra. A handsome type, too--an apostle, a poet--but secretly, no doubt, he is full of disillusionment. He is a man of good faith, he is--one of the few democrats I like. Otherwise, in his artistic tastes he is an aristocrat; he loves the people because he has a good, affectionate heart, and cannot help loving somebody, although vulgarity he hates. You will see him go up to the Janiculum for the commemoration, but he will not give an address; he is as delicate as a woman in some things. We shall pass him in a moment; he will give me a cool bow, since he hates the Centre in the Chamber. And he is right: nothing is more hateful than the Centre, to which we have the honour of belonging, honourable colleague.' 'And why do you belong to it, Honourable Giustini?' 'Oh, I!' exclaimed the other, with a gesture denoting callous indifference. The water was falling noisily into the ample basin from three spouts; two maid-servants were sitting on the edge and talking; a German priest was looking at Castel Sant' Angelo from a terrace, and at the river, and at the straight Via Longara, down below in Trastevere, under the Villa Corsini. The procession was moving into the Via Garibaldi; at the rear went Giorgio Serra, surveying the Roman Campagna and landscape with amorous glances. The two deputies had hastened their gait, but were occasionally obliged to stand still because of the fashionable carriages. 'Are all these ladies going to the commemoration?' asked Sangiorgio. 'Yes, they are,' sneered Giustini. 'But they are not aware there is to be a commemoration. They are bound for the Villa Pamphily for a drive; it is Friday and the weather is fine, and then, one might add, there is the great Roman sirocco, which takes away the appetite, creates a desire for sleep, weakens the fibres, and undermines the will. And, by the way, the women know what to do then, they do.' 'Bah!' said Sangiorgio, with a gesture of contempt for the female sex. Giustini gave him a long look, as if to appraise him mentally, but asked him no questions. They passed the Porta San Pancrazio. The Via della Mura ran down, narrow and crooked, towards the Valle dell' Inferno and the Vatican on the right, and the Villa Pamphily on the left. Before a tavern stood erect and impassive two carabineers; then came a road with a hedge separating it, on the left, from the open country; at the right was a high, gray, crusty wall. At a salient spot was a little, worm-eaten, wooden gate, on which was inscribed the name of the farm and house behind the wall--'Il Vascello.' That glorious name was enough--superfluous was the monument on the wall, superfluous were the dry wreaths rotted by the rain--the name was enough. The procession had formed a group under the memorial-stone, leaving a free space for the carriages rolling towards the Villa Pamphily; the carabineers had drawn near. The old veterans were all gathered about the flag, and stood silent and thoughtful; the deputies held somewhat aloof, Giustini with a hideous grimace of boredom, Sangiorgio in an observing mood prompted by curiosity. A workman climbed up a ladder leaning against the wall, took the old wreaths, threw them away, brushed off the monument with his elbow, and hung the fresh wreath upon it: he was applauded from beneath. From the top of the wall a peasant, the guardian of the place, with one of the sallow, melancholy faces of the Roman peasantry, looked on indifferently. Then a man got up, for the purpose of making a speech, on the seat of a single-horsed hackney coach standing by the wall. The students greeted him with a cheer. He was a very fair, stout young man, with little, languid blue eyes, with a little, pointed moustache, with hands white and plump like a woman's, with long, pink nails and a diamond ring on his fourth finger. He was dressed in the dandified fashion of a hairdresser, had an open, fresh face, full of the joy of living, while his eyes rolled about with sheer happiness. He waited for the cheering to subside before he began to speak, and made a sign with his hand for it to cease. They all crowded about him to listen--veterans, students, workmen, carabineers, and guards. The young man, in a thin but well-modulated drawing-room tenor voice, with well-calculated pauses, turning about his head with the deliberation of a coquettish girl, explained with dignity why and wherefore, after the commemoration in April, another was taking place in December. And then he at once launched into a description of the siege of Rome, as though he had been present; the veterans bowed their heads before this elegant youth--they, who had been there. He had an easy but slow delivery; at one time he seemed to warm, and took a fling at the priesthood, at the Vatican, of which, as he leant against the wall to his left, he spoke with ambiguity, and in the manner of a young actor, rolling his _r's_. The few veterans, abstracted and preoccupied, were paying attention no longer, wrapped as they were in memories of the sacred hill where they had fought for their country's redemption, where their companions-in-arms had fallen with contorted faces and breasts pierced by the bullets of the Vincennes Sharpshooters. Now and then one of them would mumble a few words, as he called to mind some episode, his brow bent, his hands pressing on the pommel of his cane. 'During the night they heard the Frenchmen merrily chatting in their tents----' 'Do you remember Garibaldi's negro, who died after his shoulder was broken by a splinter from a French bomb?' 'How magnificent Colonel Manara was----' 'Handsome and brave----' The young man concluded by apostrophizing the Seven Hills of Rome, with Roman history interlarded. His friends, the students, crowded still more closely round the hackney carriage, shaking hands with him, applauding him with acclaim. And he bowed to them, all affability, all smiles, lavishing handshakes, intermittently applying to his white forehead a tiny cambric handkerchief, bordered with black, scented with hay. The working men and the common people remained unconvinced and unmoved, with that sarcastic Roman smile which few things can dislodge. A voice was heard: 'Serra! Serra! Where is Serra? Let Giorgio Serra speak!' But Serra did not answer. Mayhap he was hiding modestly in the crowd. And the crowd began to look about, as if making a choice. 'Serra! Serra!' was repeated, the name evoking the picture of that fine head of a poet and an artist. But Serra was not there. Possibly the gentle dreamer, whom all realities repelled, had made his way back to that Rome he loved so well, or, more likely, skirting the big hedge abloom with hawthorn and wild roses, had betaken himself to the broad, silent avenues of the Villa Pamphily, to resume his dear illusions amid the rural green, to quaff them again from the inspiring loveliness of Nature. 'I knew it,' whispered Giustini to Sangiorgio. 'I knew Serra would disappear. He hates oratory.' 'He is wrong; oratory is power,' replied Sangiorgio. A second time the Tuscan deputy scrutinized the deputy from the South, with slight surprise betokened in his face. These two were not mutually attracted by esteem, sympathy, or any other interest; there was nothing but the curiosity, the desire to know each other mixed with a sense of diffidence, of two adepts at fencing who place themselves in guard and are unwilling to hazard an open assault. All round them the crowd was slowly dispersing; the standard-bearer had departed, the veterans had disbanded, and were wending their downward way in groups of two and three, with stooping backs in rough overcoats, and legs somewhat uncertain. Occasionally one of them would stop to give a last look at the Vascello. The youthful orator had descended from the carriage with a jump, and had joined his student friends; he had picked a rose from the hedge, and put it in his buttonhole; starting towards Rome with four or five others in a row, he held his black whalebone stick under his arm, while he daintily drew on a glove. A number of the workmen had repaired to the tavern, and, seated about a rude table on a platform, were drinking that light, yellow wine which savours of sulphur. Ten minutes had elapsed, and not a soul remained under the monument to the victims of 1848; in its solitariness the Vascello preserved its appearance of a house dismantled with only its walls left standing. On the high wall enclosing the farm the peasant was left alone: with his head leaning on his closed fist he was impassively looking down. The two deputies had come down to the little open space near the great fountain of Paul III., and were progressing slowly. A suspicion of crepuscular dampness was filtering through the breeze, or rather the tepid breeze of daytime was changing into the moist breeze which invades the city at nightfall. The fashionable carriages were descending from the Villa Pamphily, and driving towards Rome. Leaning on the parapet of the terrace which overlooks the town, the two members of Parliament glanced at the passing carriages. Two or three times Giustini bowed abruptly and curtly, like a man little given to gallantry, and soon after said as if soliloquizing: 'The Baldassarri, a Bolognese Countess--handsome woman--wife of an old senator. She is a lunatic I no longer visit--has a mania for poets. She always has a varied collection of them, one a barbarian, another a sentimentalist, another a naturalist. Those who write sonnets for weddings are received with a certain degree of favour. She is the woman about whom the most verses and the most insinuations are made. Over there is the Gagliarda, a Baroness, stupid, commonplace, underhanded, and bad. She is always secretly planning to upset the Ministry. After it has fallen, through some other agency, she wears a triumphant look. She is so cruel that she visits the Ministers' wives the day their husbands have been defeated. Otherwise she pushes young deputies forward, or thinks she does. Deluded unfortunates pay court to her; she is an important woman. In her drawing-room the tea is insipid, but the gossip is spicy.' 'Do you go there?' 'No, not now. Do I look like a young deputy?--Ah, there is His Excellency's wife!' Both men bowed profoundly. The lady responded serenely and gently by an inclination of the head behind the carriage window. Sangiorgio said nothing, but with slight inward trepidation awaited and feared a sarcastic remark from Tullio Giustini. 'Fine woman, His Excellency's wife,' muttered the Tuscan deputy--'too beautiful and too young for him! Nevertheless, she is faithful to him; nobody knows why. Her women friends hate her cordially, but it is the fashion to be her admirer.' 'Do you go there?' asked Sangiorgio. 'No, I am too Ministerial.' 'What does that matter?' 'What should I be doing there? I am a convert, and none but the doubtful are noticed. And then I should join the Opposition if I frequented that house. It rouses my ire too much to see a lean, withered husband, cross-grained and irritable through his political life, appropriate a young wife; and then--and then--Donna Angelica is too kind: she would spoil me.' 'Donna Angelica?' repeated Sangiorgio beneath his breath. But Giustini did not hear him. He had taken his hat off again to a brougham that passed. This time the carriage stopped; a slender hand gloved in black let down the window, and beckoned to the Tuscan deputy. Sangiorgio remained alone in contemplation of his companion, who, with his body leaning against the door and his head inside the carriage, seemed to be indulging in a chat. In a little while Giustini came back to Sangiorgio, and said to him: 'Come, I will present you to the Countess Fiammanti.' Sangiorgio had no time to demur or even to reply; he at once found himself beside the carriage. 'Countess, the Honourable Sangiorgio, member for Tito, a Southerner and a newcomer.' The Countess's fine gray eyes lit up mischievously; her mobile mouth stretched to a smile. 'I asked Giustini to present you, after hearing you were from the South. How unpleasant Rome must seem to you, Honourable! Oh, Naples is so lovely, I adore it! My husband was a Neapolitan. From him I learned to love Naples and everything there. How smooth the speech is, and how agreeable compared to the ugly Tuscan accent, Giustini!' 'Is that the reason, Countess, that you never let me speak when I begin to----' 'Make love to me? No, my dear Giustini, I like you too well to let you. Love is an old, played-out farce, which nobody any longer laughs at. Honourable Sangiorgio, you must think we are very frivolous, do you not? We know how to be serious, for example, when Giustini tells me about politics. I am greatly interested in politics; they amuse me. And you?' 'They are the only thing that interest me,' said Sangiorgio rather rudely. 'Oh, they amuse me so much!' exclaimed the lady, without showing that she had noticed his discourtesy. 'To get amusement from a thing, one must not be too much in love with it,' murmured Sangiorgio, but with so much expression that the handsome Countess, who emitted a strong odour of violets, rested her eyes upon him for a moment. 'Well then, Giustini, in a few hours--is it agreed? Honourable Sangiorgio, I am at home every odd evening, the third, the fifth, the seventh, and so on. I will not force you to drink tea. I allow smoking. I sing passably. No other women come. _Au revoir_, gentlemen!' and hardly had they moved on when the carriage was speeding in the direction of Rome. 'Who is that lady?' Sangiorgio inquired. 'Why does that concern you? Do you not like her?' 'Yes, I like her.' 'Well--go there this evening; you will enjoy yourself. She is fascinating, not beautiful. Some evenings she is irresistible. She sings excellently. At times, though not often, she is witty. She talks too much. But she is a good girl.' 'What sort of woman is she?' persisted Sangiorgio. 'How can I tell?' And Giustini shrugged his shoulders. 'I have not succeeded in becoming her lover. Perhaps that might depend on one's accent.' 'And her name is----' 'Donna Elena Fiammanti.' They had arrived at the square in front of the Academy of Spain, deserted in the rapidly darkening winter's evening. 'Look at Rome!' said Giustini, now at the parapet of the terrace. 'Have you ever seen it all at once, like this?' 'No, never.' 'Rome is great, very great,' whispered the Tuscan deputy, with a strain of melancholy in his voice. 'It looks asleep,' rejoined Sangiorgio, also in a whisper, as though he were talking in a church. 'Asleep? Do not believe that. She is not asleep; she is only keeping silent, and watching, and thinking. Look down there, far in the distance, at that large, light dome against the sky. It is St. Peter's. Have you ever seen it? Very well--it is a huge, empty, useless church, is it not? About St. Peter's is a large cluster of buildings standing out from the green of the gardens. They seem small from here do those buildings, and wrapped in deep slumber. All that is the Vatican, and inside is the Pope. He is seventy years old, frail, an invalid. Death is at his pillow, but what does that matter? He is strong. How many believe in him, stretch out their hands to him, bow down before him, pray in his name, die in his name! We triumphantly count our array of atheists and sceptics. Who can count the believers? Are you a believer, Honourable?' 'No.' 'Nor I. But the Pope is strong. He has on his side the unfortunate, the weak, the humble, the young people, the women--the women who from mother to daughter transmit, not religion, but its forms. You think all is asleep down there by the river-bank, in the great palace painted by Michel Angelo? That is the Vatican; it is a vast idea, in whose service and under whose authority is a population of Cardinals, Bishops, parish-priests, curates, monks, friars, seminarists, and clericals who do not confine themselves to praying, holding services, and singing: they may be found in the houses, they reach the families, they teach in the schools--yes, and they love, hate, enjoy, live, for themselves and their own interests, for the Church and for the Pope. Who can measure their strength, their influence, their potency?' 'Rome does not believe,' interposed Sangiorgio. 'I am not talking of faith. Am I a glorifier of religion? The old fables are exploded, but the human interest survives and multiplies. We live near all this great ferment, and do not see it. We have our being in the presence of a gigantic mystery working in darkness, yet we do not suspect its existence.' Giustini ceased, again casting his eyes over the vast panorama of the city, which seemed drowned in the nebulous atmosphere of the sirocco. Sangiorgio listened in excitement, with a thrill of anxiety at his heart, as one might at the approach of danger, while Giustini continued: 'There is the Quirinal--the King, the Queen, the Court. Yes, down there, under that rosy light. Four balls, eight official receptions, forty gala dinners, twenty evenings at the theatre, four concerts, thirty inaugurations, four hundred presentations, diamonds at the throat, medals on the chest, plumes in the hat, naked shoulders, _pâté de foie gras_, quadrilles of honour--whoever thought it was anything else? But this beautiful Queen, who receives friend and foe, monarchist and republican, with the same cordiality, is also a woman who thinks, who feels, who knows, who listens. And this King, harassed by such a heavy burden, dutifully bound to perpetual obedience, is he not a man, has not he, too, a conscience, a mind, a will? And all these Court people, officers and secretaries, ladies-in-waiting and diplomats, major-domos and servants, do you think they do not worry, and struggle, and live? Do you suppose they do nothing but make bows? That they only know how to walk in front of the King in a room? Who can assert that? Do they not love and hate, and have furious passions and ambitions? Has not every one of those women a desire, some envy, bitter regrets?' The ruthless man was running his fingers nervously along the top of the parapet, where he found a large piece of dried lime. He broke off little pieces, and flipped them over the green bank. Francesco Sangiorgio followed with utmost attention the action of those thin, brown hands, with their heavy, swelled veins. 'You cannot see that cauldron of Montecitorio,' resumed the Tuscan in a harder tone of voice; 'it is lost among the houses; we are lost in it--a furnace of waste-paper, in which one is gradually burnt up by a desiccating heat--the temperature of an incubator, which lulls to sleep all audacities and quickens all timidities, which ends in scorching terribly all the waverers, and which awakens a few pseudo-ideas in the cranium of idiots. All the inmates of that cardboard drum excite themselves to shrieking, or remain utterly dumb, because of a law, or a regulation, or a railway, or a bridge; they clamour for more laws, weighty and trivial, more railways of all kinds, more bridges everywhere; they want to become Ministers, wear uniforms, be deafened by the national anthem wherever they arrive in the country, have as natural enemies their early friends, be branded thieves in the newspapers, know their private letters are opened by a too officious secretary--and other delights of the same kind. Some poor wretches want to be Secretary-General! I was one of them. Oh, the frightful furnace, that shrivels men like dry beans, men inflamed by furious desires and consumed in the emptiness of those desires!' The heavens, all white at their zenith, now assumed a delicate tint of gray on the circular hem of the horizon; like an ethereal veil the spirit of evening rose in the air above the city. Francesco Sangiorgio experienced a strange uneasiness; Tullio Giustini at that moment seemed to him more hideous than ever; as he laughed he displayed two rows of ugly yellow teeth. 'How quiet the city is!' he went on. 'It seems to be asleep, enjoying the Christmas festival. It seems to be, but is not. Up there, in the verdure of the Pincio and the Villa Medici, which extends down to the Via Babuino, the painters sing, laugh, discuss heresies as if they were theories of art, and produce pictures that seem great absurdities. But what do they care? To console themselves for their failure they have invented the word _Philistine_, which expresses their contempt for the public. In the whiteness over there, on the other side, are the _new quarters_. Have you ever been there? Seventy thousand people, in all sorts of employment, with their families, servants, dogs, and cats: a concourse of savages--unarmed, hungry savages--squatting up there, looking at Rome and hating it because they cannot understand it, and they find it exacting while their women make children and cook, women with pale faces, with flat breasts, and red hands. They have been celebrating Christmas in their prisons, venting their spleen against the Government, their servants, Rome, and the butcher, like real, miserable, stupid savages. And the Romans--the true Romans--of the Regola and the Popolo, of the Monti district and the Trevi district, who add the adjective _Roman_ to their name like a title of nobility, who eat dumplings on Thursdays, tripe on Sundays, and lamb at all times, who like white wine and the fireworks at Sant' Angelo, who are proud of their March water, and calmly allow the beetles to swarm in their old houses, the sceptical, clever, impassive, and industrious Romans, who are good husbands and kind lovers, they certainly are not asleep. And the women, Roman or Neapolitan, Italian or foreign, who go for walks, stand at the window, argue, laugh, kiss when they love, and are kissed when loved, they are not asleep--no, the women never sleep, not even at night. Oh, Rome is so alert, though it seems stagnant; it is so great, so complicated, so delicate in its mechanism, so powerful on its steel springs, that when I bend over to look at it, from up here, it frightens me, like an infernal machine.' In the spreading twilight Francesco Sangiorgio, deadly pale, bent down to look also, as though to discover the mysterious machinery of Rome. 'And what is the dream of those who come here?' continued Tullio Giustini, with a short, sardonic laugh. 'You believe that you are awaited with the amorous serenity of a great city, because you are young, and you have talents, and you wish to work, and not be unworthy of the noble city. I, too, came thus, and I thought the first Roman citizen must needs embrace me. Instead, after three or four years of fretting, of internal torments, and of huge delusions, I learned a few things: that I was too frank to succeed in politics, that I was too rough to please the women, that I was too sickly to do scientific work, that I was too brittle to succeed in diplomacy. This I learned, and from this, a fact as glaring as the sun, as terrible as truth itself--Rome gives herself up to no one!' 'And what must one do?' asked Francesco Sangiorgio, half trembling. 'Conquer her!' Tullio Giustini made a sweeping gesture towards the city with his skinny hand. 'Conquer her! Woe to the commonplace, woe to the cowards, woe to the weak, like myself! This city does not expect you, and does not fear you; it gives you no welcome, does not reject you; it does not oppose you, and disdains to accept a challenge. Its strength, its power, its loftiness, is lodged in an almost divine attribute--indifference. You may make a stir--howl, rave, set fire to your house and your books, and dance on the ruins--Rome will take no note of it. It is the city to which all have come, and where all have fallen: why should it be concerned with you, an infinitesimal atom, passing across the scene so quickly? It is indifferent; it is the great cosmopolitan city which has this universal character, which knows everything because it has seen everything. Indifference is the equivalent of the unchangeably serene, the deaf soul, _the woman who knows not how to love_. Indifference is the moral mid-winter sirocco, the tepid, uniform temperature which debilitates the nervous system, and saps the will-power, and causes tremendous internal revolutions and tremendous dejections. Yet someone must come to disturb that serenity, to vanquish that indifference. Someone must conquer Rome, whether for ten years, for one year, for one month; but he must conquer it, must capture it, must avenge all the dead, all the fallen, all the feeble who have touched its walls without being able to overcome it. But, ah! such a one must have a heart of brass, an inflexible, rigid will; he must be young, healthy, robust, and bold, without ties and without weaknesses; he must apply himself profoundly, intensely to that one idea of victory. But who is to conquer her, this proud Rome?' 'I will!' said Francesco Sangiorgio. PART II CHAPTER I The Minister had been speaking for an hour. He was no orator: he lacked fire and polish. Rather was he a modest speaker, one who did not strive after effects in political eloquence, and who said things concisely, in the logical, mathematical order in which they presented themselves to a square, solid brain. The discourse, as was natural, bristled with figures, was an interminable procession of numbers. He uttered them with a certain deliberation, as if he wanted them weighed by friends and foes. His voice was too gentle, too familiar, perhaps, but was plainly audible in the silence. He might have been taking part in a Cabinet Council; the Parliamentary pitch of voice was altogether absent. The Minister stopped occasionally to wipe his nose on a large silk handkerchief, checked in red and black. As a matter of fact, in that short, stout little person plainly dressed in black, in that placid face, shaved on the lips and chin, but flanked with whiskers at the side in English fashion, in those plump, white hands, in the whole atmosphere of repose and thoughtfulness which he exhaled, one might divine the indefatigable workman of the study, the man who spent twelve hours a day at the Ministerial offices, behind a desk covered with documents--writing, reading, verifying registers, advising with heads of departments, with general directors. Thus, the Minister, the man of meditation, seemed out of place in debate with the members; and in announcing the most important facts, in rendering matters exact and profound, he spoke with the easy simplicity of a scientist setting forth his vast learning in popular language. The Chamber sat still out of respect, but as a fact the members were inattentive. They were so sure of him and his adherents! He was strong, he was such an iron, massive, luminous tower of strength that the anger of political slander or debate left him unmoved. His very adversaries admitted his power, and thus contributed to render his triumphs all the more sweeping. By listening to him intently one might succeed in understanding how he stood outside the political passion, and was all absorbed in his love of finance. The atmosphere of the hall conduced to a certain vague, inactive contemplativeness. While out of doors--it being the middle of January--a dry, whistling, cutting north wind was blowing, as was wont to happen on one of the three cold days of a Roman winter, inside the hall the stoves sent out a perpetual stream of heat. Tightly closed, without windows, with gallery doors rarely opening--doors that shut quickly, noiselessly, as though hinged on velvet--with the matting that deadened every footstep, the hall suggested physical comfort. Nevertheless, the Speaker, a fine man of fifty, with swarthy face and hair still black as jet, had his legs covered with a blue velvet wrap lined with fur; and as he listened to the Minister, he would cast an occasional glance at the galleries, possibly seeking out someone. The secretaries sat motionless to his right and left. Falucci, the Abruzzan, tall and muscular, with a curly, slightly grizzled mane, was whispering frequent sentences to handsome Sangarzia, who nodded without answering, accustomed as he was to protracted, patient silence; Varrini, the agreeable and intelligent Calabrian, with the muzzle of a sagacious mouse, with the refinement of a young lady covering the power of a champion, was writing letters; and Bulgaro, the Neapolitan, was making the seat creak which bore his enormous frame, his embrowned visage showing traces of an almost childish fretfulness. There was not, as on other days of minor debates, a string of deputies coming to chat with the Speaker on his bench, exchanging jokes with the secretaries, and going down on the other side, after which there might be a stroll outside, a moment's prattle at intervals in the room of the Lost Footsteps, in which fashion the sitting went by. For to-day the Minister was expounding a very serious question; both Ministerialists and Opposition must listen. The Right, nearly all of them old members of eight Parliaments, heard without paying attention, knowing their opponent to be invincible, and thus they bore the air of veterans, faithful at their posts, neither suffering nor enjoying. The Extreme Left paid no heed whatever, but did not disturb the speech; that party disdained questions of the economic-administrative order, having made no study of finance, and now awaited some political argument, which would be an opportunity to stir up a little excitement. One of the small phalanx of Hubertists was asleep, his face politely covered by his hands; another deputy, Gagliardi, was sleeping without attempt at concealment. Only on one of the Centrist benches was any sincere attention paid, like that of eager scholars to their master's explanations. Of these deputies there were four--young, clever, and aspiring. Seymour, of English descent, dark, myopic, and well-mannered, was taking notes on paper; beside him was Marchetti, with the Nazarene beard; Gerini, a taciturn Florentine, with long, fair, flowing beard, was passing memoranda to Joanna, the Southerner of the handsome, thoughtful, studious head. But the whole Chamber, Speaker, secretaries, committee-men, members, were under the soft influence of that warm air, that closed place, that silence broken only by the tranquil voice of the Minister. The galleries were crowded--a strange circumstance on a day given up to financial discussion. But no doubt the cold had driven in from the streets those ladies sitting upstairs with their capes open, their hands stuffed into their muffs, their faces pink from the warmth of the hall. They were quite happy to remain there, though they understood not a word; the voice of the speaker fell on their ears like a hum, while they shivered at the thought of returning out of doors, where the north wind was blowing, making one's eyes water and one's nose turn red. The public gallery, too, was full of people: pale, jaded faces of do-nothings, wretched figures of petitioners who had spent the day in looking for a cousin of a deputy's friend, and who at last, demoralized and trembling with cold, had come to finish in the Chamber, in the public gallery, where they listened without a wink. The long press gallery was also more crowded than usual, and the occupants of the first row were pretending to write a summary of the proceedings. But one was inditing a letter, another a theatrical article, another was sketching a fantastic profile of Depretis, and another still was practising the art of calligraphy, writing his own name with large flourishes. The Opposition journalists had already prepared a mild, platonic attack, the Government writers having extolled the Minister's financial report for the last ten days; all of them were quite unruffled. Only Gennaro Casale, in the Government's employ, a violent Neapolitan journalist, and an enemy of all Governments whatsoever, grew excited, and exclaimed from the rear of the gallery: 'Gentlemen, this balancing is a Ministerial shuffle!' Up in the diplomatic gallery, leaning against the blue velvet balustrade, was to be seen the slender figure of the Countess Beatrice di Santaninfa, with the large, deep, soft eyes, who was not listening, but was absorbed in thought. When, at half-past four, the Minister had ended his speech, members old and young nodded their heads in a general rustle of approval and admiration. He restored his papers to his big portfolio without a tremor in his fingers, without a shade of colour changing in his countenance. Then a group of friends, ardent and lukewarm, gathered about him to shake hands with him and congratulate him. Even an ex-Minister of Finance came down from the benches of the Right to compliment the fat little Minister with the hard head. Some disorder occurred, and a little noise. Then the voice of the Speaker was heard, sonorous and distinct: 'Honourable colleagues, I beg for silence. The Honourable Sangiorgio has the floor.' 'Who? Who?' was the universal inquiry. And again the Speaker was heard: 'I beg for silence. The Honourable Sangiorgio has the privilege of speaking.' Hereupon the curious eyes of the members sought out that colleague of theirs, whom scarcely anyone knew. He was up there, on the last bench of a section, with the Right Centre. He was standing erect and calm, waiting for his turn to speak. And he stepped out halfway upon the stair so as to be seen better. He was not tall, but up there he looked tall, since his carriage was upright and he had a robust figure. Nor was he handsome, but his head bore all the characteristics of strength; his hair was planted rudely on a low brow, his nose was aquiline, his moustache was dark and dense, his chin was set hard and full of power. No one thought him insignificant. And then divers speculations grew rife in the Chamber. Would this new deputy speak for or against the Minister? Was he one of those flatterers who, scarcely arrived, hastened to make a show of loyalty to the Government? Or was he some little impudent nobody who would stammer through a feeble attack before the House, and be suppressed by the ironical murmurs of the assembly? He was a Southerner and a lawyer--only that was known about him. Therefore he would deliver an oration, the usual rhetoric which the Piedmontese detested, the Milanese derided, and the Tuscans despised. Instead, the Honourable Sangiorgio began to talk deliberately, but with such a resonant, commanding voice that it filled the hall and made the audience give a sigh of relief. The ladies, whom the warmth had half lulled to sleep, revived, and the press gallery, empty since the conclusion of the Minister's discourse, began to refill with reporters, returning to their places. The Honourable Sangiorgio opened with an exordium proclaiming respect for the illustrious person at the head of Italy's finances, and his eulogy nowise partook of vulgar adulation, but was tendered in a sober and restrained manner. The speaker alluded in passing to his own youth, to the obscurity of one who, tied down to provincial life, ever had his eyes turned towards Rome, where the noble war of politics was constantly being waged. He extolled politics, declaring them greater than the arts, greater than science: they embraced the whole history of human activity, and to him the statesman was the highest type of man, apostle and labourer, arm and head. A loud _Good!_ burst forth from the Right. The Honourable Sangiorgio paused for a short minute, but only for a short minute. His appeal to the sublimity of politics as a kind of high ideal, which was vulgarized in the hands of men, had evoked general approval, and had given several nonentities a sense of elation. The Minister, who from the beginning had raised his head, fixing his pale blue eyes firmly on the speaker, had now dropped it again upon overhearing remarks behind him from men who embarrassed and annoyed him. Sangiorgio went on to say that those youthful years in the provinces were, however, not without value to anyone who sought to know modern life in all its sufferings and in all its needs. The great cities were all-invading, all-devouring; they fed upon the existence of others; they exhausted vigour, and stifled complaint, and threw the man who lived there into such a fever that he forgot all other human interests. Who knew of the distress of the provinces? Who ever heard the echo of those dolorous, humble sighs, which never could reach Rome? True, that a few stout and good and brave men on occasion informed the Chamber of the grievances of all those fellow-Italians; but such voices were isolated, grew faint, and then were silent. Yet there must not be silence; the truth must be known. The House was now listening attentively in a less ironical, a kinder attitude of mind. It was a natural reaction from the strain, from the difficulty of comprehension which the preceding speech by the Minister had offered. After a painful tension of two hours and a half in following a fantastic whirl of figures, this easy eloquence relieved the oppressed spirits. And now, in that hour of dusk, so cold and dark outside, so gratefully warm and bright in the hall, the members yielded to a sentimental mood, to a feeling of sympathy and benevolence--what were these wrongs of the provinces, then? Sangiorgio continued, saying that all the sad experience of his youth among the peasants had rebelled at a seemingly innocent proposal of the Minister's. The Minister had stated that, being obliged to give his colleague of the War Department several millions, there was necessity for further economizing. Very good; economy was the strength of young nations. But instead the Minister had asked for a slight increase of the salt tax. Sangiorgio fully appreciated, he declared, the reasons of State which compelled the Minister to ask for that rise in taxation, but those few centesimi represented a promise of woe made worse, an aggravation of conditions of life already unendurable. And then he drew a vivid picture of peasant poverty, which was so much more distressingly and variously terrible than poverty in the towns, relating, with veridical details, with short, pathetic anecdotes, where the peasants lived, what they ate--that is to say, how hungry they always were--and how the tax-collector appeared in their eyes as the fearful spectre of starvation and death. He described the nakedness of that great Basilicata country, the landslides which rolled down bare mountains to bury meagre pastures, and he spoke of the distance of those wretched villages from the railway, whence the impossibility of paying industries, and he mentioned the unhealthy plains, where engineers, road-makers, and stationmasters contracted malarial fevers. While talking of his own country, so desolate and so unhappy, his voice had lowered, as though veiled with emotion. But he quickly recovered himself and came to the point. The duty on salt fell heavily on the lower classes--more so in the rural districts than in the urban. They already ate their broth with very little salt; now they would eat it entirely without salt. And the latest hygienic researches, unsparing but reliable, had established that to the insufficiency of salt were to be traced the dreadful diseases prevailing among the peasantry of Lombardy and Piedmont. A murmur of approval ran along some of the benches. The closest attention of all was paid where the four vigorous young Centrists were sitting, Seymour, Gerini, Joanna, and Marchetti, who nevertheless made no demonstrations, with that British impassiveness of the young economist deputies. 'In the small towns and boroughs and villages of the South of Italy,' Sangiorgio went on, 'the bakers always make two kinds of bread--tasteless and cheap for the poor people, and salted for the well-to-do. And to this second kind the bakers often give its flavour, not with salt, because it is too dear, but by passing a cloth steeped in sea-water over the fresh dough. In the houses of the poor a coarse, dark, heavy-grained salt is used, which ought only to be sold for cattle, but which human beings are obliged to buy for themselves. By increasing the duty the Government would condemn a whole class of taxpayers to intolerable privations, whose consequence would be ravage by sickness and yet deeper destitution. The millions spent on national defence, on the fortifications of the country, on the army, are wisely allotted, but is it necessary to be powerful when one is so poor? When the Minister of War calls the young men of the Basilicata to arms, and hopes to find a body of stalwart and valiant mountaineers, he will be disappointed at seeing a herd of creatures pale and emaciated from illness, weakness, and dejection. Or, rather, not even that, for the barren and unfruitful provinces are becoming more and more depopulated; the peasant, desperate over the sterility of the soil, harried by the fisc, abandoned by Nature, persecuted by man, prefers to turn his back upon the land of his birth and leave it for the remote shores of America. The peasant prefers a foreign people, a foreign clime, whence there is no return. When the war-trumpet shall call the Italian sons of the Basilicata there will be no answer. Driven by hunger and despair, they will have gone away to die in regions far from home!' The Honourable Francesco Sangiorgio stepped back to his bench and resumed his seat. Cheers and applause sounded upon his ears, but only vaguely. He was conscious of the buzz of discussion which follows upon every important speech. Immediately in front of him had collected a group of deputies who were arguing somewhat loudly, referring now and then to their honourable colleague, Sangiorgio, and half turning towards him, as if seeking endorsement from him. Remaining stolidly in his place, with eyes downcast, and without anyone coming to shake hands with him because he was unknown, Sangiorgio nevertheless felt the approbation of the whole House rise to him where he sat on the topmost bench. He had given satisfaction to the old party of the Right, whose political pride was flattered; to the Extreme Left, who thought to have discovered a Socialist in a deputy belonging to the Centre; to all the egoistic and sentimental members, ready to cry misfortune at all times without seeking for remedies; to all deputies with economist leanings and shadowy notions of agrarian Socialism. This speech, which on another occasion would have passed for some literary effusion, to-day bore a character of great importance. * * * * * Once a minute the glass door of the room on the ground-floor at No. 9, Via della Missione, opened to admit a newcomer. Those already in the room, seated on the little divans or standing about, would turn and eye such a one angrily; a cold blast of wind would come in with him. Whoever entered, shaking and shivering, made straight for the long desk dividing the room, took a small blank, and wrote on it his own name, as well as the deputy's he wished to see; and, like him, there were always five or six others writing on small blanks. On the other side of the desk the ushers, in uniform, with medals on their chest, with a tricoloured band on their arm, gray or bald-headed, were moving to and fro, taking away those blanks, half a dozen at a time, disappearing through a door opening upon corridors giving access to the hall. Satisfied with having despatched his request, its sender would begin to walk up and down, or, if he happened to have been standing, would take a seat, without impatience, even with a somewhat presumptuous air of certainty. The sacred door opened, and an usher reappeared with several blanks in hand; everybody looked up and lent ear. 'Who asked for the Honourable Parodi?' shouted the usher. 'I,' answered a voice from among the number of people waiting. 'He is not there.' 'Did you look carefully?' urgently asked the voice, belonging to an old man with a florid, red nose, with heavy, purple lips. 'The Honourable Parodi is not there,' repeated the usher civilly. 'Well, he ought to be,' muttered the other. 'Who wanted the Honourable Sambucetto?' 'I!' exclaimed a young fellow with a pale face and a threadbare overcoat, whose collar was turned up. 'He is there, but he is unable to come.' 'Why can he not come?' demanded the youngster in an insolent tone, his face now livid. 'He said nothing more. He cannot come.' The young man mingled with the people who filled the room, but he did not depart; he remained, angry, sullen, his cap pulled down over his eyes, in an altogether unpromising frame of mind. Moreover, all the faces of the people who hurried in and out of that room, or sat against the wall on the divans, all those faces wore an imprint of sadness, of weariness, of repressed suffering. It might have been the anteroom of a celebrated physician, where invalids came, one after another, waiting their turn, looking about with the indifferent gaze of people who have lost all interest in everything else, their thoughts for ever occupied with their malady. And as in such a lugubrious anteroom, which he who has once been there on his own behalf or for one dear to him can never forget, as in such a room are assembled people with all the infirmities that torment our poor, mortal body--the consumptive, with narrow, stooping shoulders, with lean neck, his eyes swimming with a noxious fluid; the victim of heart disease, with pallid face, large veins, yellowish, swollen hands; the anæmic, with violet lips and white gums; the neurotically affected, with protuberant jaws, bulging cheekbones, emaciated frame; and the sufferers from all other diseases, hideous or pitiful, which draw the lines of the face tight, which make the mouth twitch, and impart an unwelcome glow to the hand, that glow that terrifies the healthy--thus, in such a room, did the possessors of all the moral ills unite, oblivious of all complaints but their own. There was the youth who had taught in a school without a license, who has come to Rome to take any sort of employment, however mean, and who, after a month's half-hearted, vain search, has at last begged for a servant's place, which is denied him because he is not servile; the ex-clerk of the Bank of Naples or the Bank of Sicily, who was turned out for dishonesty twelve years ago, when the Left was in power, and wants to be reinstated by the Progressists, whom he has always served faithfully; the uncertain industrial speculator, who must pay a heavy fine into the Treasury Department because he has neglected to register a contract, and who hopes the Minister will graciously remit the penalty; the widow of a pensioner, accompanied by a child crying with the cold, who for ten months has been applying for a lottery office, and is willing to surrender the pension; the loafer, who knows how to do everything and is of no use for anything, who positively must have a place, of whatever description, on the ground that, since there are so many fools in the Chamber and the Government offices, he, too, is entitled to share in their paradise. The variety of their wishes and needs is infinite. Every one of those people has a grievance in his soul, an unfulfilled desire, an active, torturing delusion, a secret sorrow, a fierce ambition, a discontent. And in their faces may be seen a corresponding spasmodic twitching, a contraction of angry lips, a dilation of nostrils trembling with nervousness, a knitting of the brows which clouds the whole countenance, hands convulsively doubled in overcoat pockets, a melancholy furrow in the women's smile, which deepens with every new disillusion. But all of them are completely self-centred, entirely oblivious of foreign interests, indulging in a single thought, a fixed idea, because of which they watch, meet, and conflict with one another, although seeming neither to hear nor to see each other. The floor of the room is filthy, muddied by feet that have splashed through the puddles in the lanes, and spotted all over with the thick expectorations of people afflicted with a cold. 'Who asked for the Honourable Moraldi?' shouts the usher. 'I,' answers, with loud, imposing voice, a large, stout, red-throated man. 'Be kind enough to wait a little; the Minister is speaking.' The large man puffs himself out in his warm topcoat, which protuberates sensibly at the paunch. Someone looks at him enviously, because _his_ deputy has at least asked him to wait, while others allege absence or simply send word that they cannot come. Perhaps he is also envied his warm overcoat, since there are so many thin suits under a wretched threadbare overcoat, worn through autumn and winter with pretended resignation, so many pepper-and-salt trousers under a green overcoat, so many trousers of a dirty yellow under a cinnamon-coloured, ancient, worn-out overcoat. The coming and going continued. Those who had received a definite refusal remained rather undecided, a sullen look on their faces, glancing at the door as if they lacked courage to go out into the cold, and then they made up their minds to go, which they did with bowed shoulders, at a slow pace, without looking back. For one who went away, two or three came in: the room was as full as ever; the ushers came and went through the door, which suggested that of a sanctuary. It rained refusals. 'Who was wishing to see the Honourable Nicotera?' 'I,' answered a very tall, very thin man, with scrawny neck and the face of a skeleton, on which sprouted a few colourless hairs. 'He is there, but begs to be excused; he is not able to come.' The fantastically lean individual bent double, like a caterpillar, on a bench, filled out another blank, and consigned it to another usher, who returned exclaiming: 'Who asked for the Honourable Zanardelli?' 'I,' whispered a sibilant voice. 'He is there, but the Minister is speaking; he cannot come.' The spectre persistently went on writing. One deputy, however, more obliging, had come out upon the request of the person who wanted him, accosting him with a certain degree of nimble zeal, leading him into the next room, where the deputies interviewed their constituents. In this room were three or four ladies, sitting down, waiting, with their hands in their muffs. The deputy and his constituent walked up and down; the constituent spoke vivaciously, with gesticulations; the deputy listened attentively, with eyes downcast, now and then nodding his head in approval. In the waiting-room all the people were grown weary; a physical and moral lassitude weighed upon them: the new disillusion, that evenfall, sapped their strength; one of them was leaning against the wall; the child had gone to sleep on the widow's knee; total silence reigned. Real or fictitious misfortunes, desires of idle brains or worthy, fervent desires of persevering souls, necessities brought about by indulgence in vice or unmerited mishaps, extravagant ambitions, modest little ambitions, crazes due to overwrought nerves, the thirst for justice of obstinate monomaniacs--all this human suffering, endured in silence, was mixed with a sense of oppression, of sadness, of having been abandoned, a feeling of woeful disconsolateness at having once more come to knock at that door which would not open. The gas-jets were burning brightly, but their light fell on the mortified faces of people paralyzed and listless, as though they were dead. Three ushers came in through the door, one after the other. 'Who asked for the Honourable Sella?' 'Who asked for the Honourable Bomba?' 'Who asked for the Honourable Crispi?' 'I--I--I,' answered the thin little voice of the man-skeleton. 'The Honourable Sella cannot leave the hall.' 'The Honourable Bomba is busy in the hall.' 'The Honourable Crispi is with the Budget Committee.' Quietly the skeleton wrote on another blank, and handed it to an usher. 'Excuse me,' observed the usher, 'we are not allowed to call the Ministers, and especially the President of the Council.' 'And why?' asked the spectre in surprise. 'It is the rule.' But with unabated patience he wrote another name, and then began to walk to and fro, overtowering all the rest. One concluded to leave; his footstep dragged as he took away with him the humiliation of that long, useless wait; others, making a desperate resolve, went away to post themselves, in the chill of the evening, at the door of Montecitorio, to wait for the deputies coming out. Others, less venturesome, still lingered behind: the gas afforded a little warmth, and at the end of the sitting some deputy might appear. A brougham stopped before the door, remained closed, a footman jumped from the box, came in, gave a note to an usher, and stood waiting, with the impassive air of people used to receive orders. An usher shouted: 'Who wanted the Honourable Barbarulo? 'I,' said the ghost. 'He is not there.' 'Is he away for a holiday?' 'He has been dead four months.' This remark settled the living corpse. He reflected for an instant, but probably could think of no other names, and slowly took his departure. A moment after Francesco Sangiorgio crossed the room, spoke to the footman--only two words--and accompanied by him went out of doors and got into the carriage, all excitement still with his success. 'My sincere congratulations,' said Donna Elena Fiammanti, pressing his hand. The brougham drove off. In the waiting-room the going and coming had ceased; the child was crying, after being awakened by its mother; the tired ushers sat down for a minute; two deputies, one with three acquaintances and the other with two, were gossiping in the other room. * * * * * The flames were flickering in the fireplace; three logs forming a triangle were burning at their ends. Donna Elena gently stirred the hot ashes and the glowing embers; they gave forth a few sparks, and the three logs blazed up. Then she sat back in her chair and mechanically smoothed down her clinging, black silk skirt at the hips. 'Do you like a fire, Sangiorgio? It must be cold down there in the Basilicata.' 'Very cold,' said he, taking a seat in an easy-chair. 'We have no handsome fireplaces; there are large high stoves under whose arch a wooden bench is placed. The head of the family sits there in winter, with his children and relatives about him.' 'I am very fond of an open fire,' she said, with eyes half closed, as if they were heavy from fatigue, 'but only when someone is with me. I get melancholy alone.' She spoke with her two arms lying upon the arms of the chair, her head leaning against the back. The lamplight made the gold necklace sparkle on the high collar of her silk dress, and drew a flash from the gilt buckle on her black slipper. Her foot was forward; it was rather plump, although arched. 'You are never alone, I suppose?' 'No, never,' she replied frankly. 'I hate being alone.' 'No doubt,' he vaguely assented. 'No, no, do not agree with me from politeness! I know that you men, especially when you have a great ambition or are deeply in love, wish for solitude. But we women never do. We must have company. If a woman tells you she prefers solitude, do not believe her, Sangiorgio. She is deceiving you deliberately, or else wishes to avoid a discussion. They are all like myself, or, rather, I am a woman like the rest. Visitors amuse me. Fools interest me, too. To-day, in the Chamber, for instance----' 'For instance?' he asked with a faint smile. 'There was one behind me in the Speaker's gallery; he was talking nonsense to me for an hour.' 'And did he not bore you?' 'No, he prevented me from hearing the Minister's speech. Do you smoke?' 'Thank you.' She handed him the tobacco-box. Her hands were plump, with pink, polished nails. 'You made a remarkably fine speech to-day,' she resumed, lighting a yellow cigarette. Sangiorgio raised his eyes without answering. 'If you care to, buy the newspapers to-morrow; they will be full of you.' 'I think not; the Minister is a great favourite.' 'Nonsense! He is like Aristides: his fellow-citizens have become tired of hearing him called "The Just." Do not let the quotation alarm you, Sangiorgio; I know neither Greek nor Latin. It was merely a reminiscence of my youth, when I used to read.' 'You do not read now?' 'No; I am tired of books.' 'They are no use.' The man-servant came in with a small bamboo tray and the coffee; the cups, too, were Japanese, of a most delicate, blue porcelain. 'How many lumps?' she asked, holding up the silver sugar-tongs. 'Two.' While they were drinking the coffee Sangiorgio looked about the room. He had been there for a moment, before dinner, while the Countess had gone to change her dress. It was a little parlour, without brackets, without tables, without upholstered furniture, full of large and small easy-chairs, small divans, and stools; it was a little room without corners. The piano was also draped with a quantity of Turkish and Persian stuffs. On the wall hung a piece of an ecclesiastical vestment, red and embroidered with gold. 'You will see that to-morrow a number of deputies will ask to be presented to you. You will enjoy all the sweets of success.' 'Am I to believe in the admiration of my colleagues?' 'No, my dear friend, but you may take pleasure in it. Many beautiful and good things in life are false in their essence. It is wisdom to profit by them, to take them as they are, without asking any more.' And she cast at him a fugitive, rapid glance. He understood at once. In that little room the same perspicacity came to his aid which during the day had assisted him in his boldness before the Chamber. 'Love is like that, too,' he murmured. 'Particularly love,' remarked the Countess Elena Fiammanti, opening wide her large gray eyes, which that evening were tinted with blue. 'Have you ever been very much in love, Sangiorgio?' 'Never much, and besides----' 'Very well. When you do fall in love, remember what I say. Love is a great thing, but not the best. One must not ask more of it than it can give. But a man is exacting, a man is selfish, a man insists on being the object of a passion, and then--the woman lies. The sentiment of love is really an ordinary one; there are some stronger; love is an ephemeral thing, and often accomplishes nothing.' And while she uttered her romantic paradoxes with a slight touch of pedantry, her crimson lips gleamed in their humidity, her hand ruffled the natural curls over her forehead, she swung her plump little foot backward and forward, whose skin was visible through the black silk, perforated stocking. Sangiorgio, feeling very much at home, looked at her with a rather fatuous smile, which, being absorbed in her paradoxes, she probably did not notice. Throwing her cigarette into the fire, Elena continued: 'Women also want to be deluded. "Those traitors of men do not know how to love!" you hear them cry; and then they weep and wail. They must have faithfulness--a pretty story, good enough to be palmed off on children! As if they could be faithful! As if they had no fibres, blood, imagination--destructive, all of these, to constancy! A hundred thousand lire reward to anyone who will bring me a man and a woman who are truly faithful, absolutely faithful!' Francesco Sangiorgio had taken her uplifted hand in his. He toyed lightly with her fingers, with her diamond rings. He more than once playfully bent his head over the hand, and finally kissed it on the vein in the wrist. Donna Elena was no longer in the least formidable to him; he seemed to be quite intimate with her already; vulgar ideas began surging into his mind. What intoxication remained from the events of the day, aided by this feminine atmosphere all redolent with corylopsis, by this alluring woman, by her language become common by force of paradox, turned his head. To assert his new intimacy with Donna Elena, he would have liked to stretch himself out on a sofa, or fling himself on the carpet, or throw matches into the fire--in fact, to conduct himself as impertinently as an ill-bred boy. He resisted these temptations through an exertion of will; nevertheless, he was incited by the ironical smile which gave Donna Elena's nether lip a disdainful curve, the light tremor of the nostrils of that prominent aquiline nose, the combined refinement and coarseness of that face. Quite gently he took the rings off her left hand and dandled them in his own; and in the state of inebriation which had seized upon him his strongest wish was to slip off one of her shoes, to see her little foot bend bashfully in her stocking. 'To be sure, there are virtuous women,' she went on; 'who denies that? But with them the case is totally different. There are cold women; there are women who do not love. I know a few--not many, only a few. Under those circumstances it needs little strength to remain true. Donna Angelica, His Excellency's wife--there you have a virtuous woman! Do you know Donna Angelica, Sangiorgio?' 'H'm--yes--by sight,' he stammered. And then he became utterly embarrassed, with the rings in his hands, having not a notion what to do with them. At last he put them on a stool, not venturing to place them back upon the hand whence he had stripped them. Suddenly the cloud which had shadowed his mind was dissipated, and he felt ashamed of the childish tricks he had contemplated. He was very near to begging Donna Elena's pardon, but she, most likely, was unconcerned. All nervousness, with his hand he stroked and stroked the folds of his black cloth waistcoat, as though he wanted to make it immutably rigid. 'What do you think of my sermon?' 'I am an enthusiastic disciple. I do not grasp all your teachings, but I bow to them,' answered the deputy, having recovered enough presence of mind to be jocose. 'I will give you some music; you will understand that,' she said, getting up. 'You may smoke, read, or go to sleep. If you do not listen I shall not mind. I shall be playing as much for myself as for you.' In a moment a soft and sympathetic voice was singing the first notes of Tosti's 'Ave Maria.' Francesco started at those unexpected, unaccountable tones. Indeed, Donna Elena's voice was unlike herself, or, rather, it was hers in one respect, and by its other qualities it completed her. In singing she met with her own character. She sounded the key of the deep contralto which lacks in smoothness, and yet is rich and warm, and stirs the soul; which is full-toned and amorous; which conveys impassioned avowals and storms of jealousy. That side of Elena's voice resembled her. But there was also infinite sweetness; there was the purity of notes sung without a quaver; there was the liquid tenderness and innocence of an almost childish voice. And there was--which is a rare feature in singing--a sort of ideal sensuality, a harmonious transfiguration of it, a supremely poetical interpretation of it. In this way did her voice complete her. She had forgotten her hearer, and was singing with her head thrown back, and with such languorous eyes that the lashes cast a shadow on her cheeks. Her lips were lightly parted, and they scarcely moved. Her white throat was swelling under the black collar and the necklace on her dress, while her hands ran nimbly over the keys, fingering them as delicately as a caress. A serener, sweeter atmosphere seemed to be diffused in the little room, which until then had suggested hardness and effrontery. A suave light settled on the surroundings, on the furniture, and on all things inanimate, tempering their sharp, brazen expression. Donna Elena was singing a melancholy romance by Schumann, whose refrain seemed rather to add affliction than to console, so extremely mournful was the music: 'Va, prends courage, coeur souffrant.' And Sangiorgio, at the end of his day of triumph, listened pensively, invaded by an unfamiliar sensation of sadness. CHAPTER II It was the last public ball on the last Tuesday of the carnival, at the Costanzi Theatre. The small people whose only amusement during the whole carnival was one public ball; students who still had ten lire in their pocket; Government clerks who had a taste for mild debauches; shop assistants whose establishments would be closed the following day; fledgelings in law and beginners in medicine--all these and many more from ten o'clock forward filed in through the four red doors, which remained open all night. On the ground-floor the attendants in the cloakrooms lost their heads a little with the numbering of overcoats and capes, gathering up of sashes and veils, and putting together of walking-sticks and wraps. Crowds of people streamed continuously into the huge parterre, which never seemed to fill, in spite of the tremendous concourse of people, clad in bright colours that stood out against the sober background. They were indulging in the everlasting circular promenade which is a characteristic feature at a Roman public ball. Four-and-twenty pulcinellos--a merry company of young fellows holding on to one another's white blouses, one behind the other--careered across the floor laughing and shrieking, like a rushing avalanche. In the middle of the place a number of feminine masks had collected in a large circle. They wore short white jackets, very much like babies' shirts, tied under the chin with large red and blue bows, and had infants' curls on their heads and tinkling rattles in their hands--the inexpensive, pretty, and saucy costume of Donna Juanita in the act laid in Jamaica. Having come in good company, these fair masqueraders scarcely quitted their escorts. Hardly did the orchestra, in the stand erected on the proscenium near the great purling fountain, strike up a polka, when the couples began to turn in a curiously sedate manner, with steps carefully regular, avoiding collisions, dancing conscientiously. When the music ceased they halted abruptly, as if in surprise, the men offered their partners an arm, and without exchanging a word they began the circular promenade. At a fresh summons they once more went into the middle and danced again, with almost laborious persistency, while all round them stood admiring spectators three deep. Three girls dressed in black, with white aprons and enormous white muslin caps, were going about arm-in-arm, speaking in a high, piping voice, and making gestures with their hands gloved in black, puzzling half the assembly. In a box of the second tier a red satin, female domino, with a hood like a cock's comb, sat quite alone, her arm, which was red to the very gloves, lying on the edge of the box. Here and there other stylish and mysterious dominos were to be seen--one tall and slender, all in blue, with a big hat shaped like a closed conch; another in black satin, with face concealed behind black Venetian lace; an opulent mask exhibiting under an open domino of red and gold brocade a suit of cream-coloured brocade; and many more besides, all followed by young men trying to guess at their faces. But in the main the gathering was composed of plain, middle-class families--father and mother, sons and daughters, who had come to this ball as to an evening outdoor performance, in dark cloth dress, white neckerchief, and hat with black feathers; and as they met they stopped to exchange compliments and tittle-tattle, taking jokes from each other with the equanimity of the Roman middle class that is never upset. The throng was densest about the two barges (the small stage boxes), in one of which the members of the Hunt Club, in evening dress, with black necktie and gardenia at buttonhole, and in the other the cavalry officers, were leaning over to talk and laugh with their friends in the parterre. When Francesco Sangiorgio entered the vestibule and bought a ticket of admission, it was half-past eleven. A feminine shape, dressed in an embroidered Turkish costume, her head covered over, and her face concealed behind a white veil, came up to him, and said in a flutelike voice: 'Good-evening, dear Sangiorgio! Why so melancholy?' 'Because I have not yet found out who you are, sweetheart!' 'You do not know me, you must not know me, you never will know me! I can tell why you are melancholy, Sangiorgio. I will whisper it in your ear: you are in love!' 'Yes, with you, my dear!' 'How amusing you are! You are much too gallant. That's not the custom here. Be rude, I beg of you--your reputation is at stake! But listen--Ferrante is no longer a candidate for membership on the Budget Committee. You are being talked of; I warn you, be careful.' He stood dumfounded. The mask edged away into the crowd, and vanished. The news had greatly astonished him: he had not expected it. What had been the outcome of his great speech? A flattering interview with the leader of the Right, Don Mario Tasca, the cool speaker, moderate and accomplished, the mild Socialist, the politician who had lost his own party through the nebulosity of his views. And then there had been bows and introductions and handshakings. The Minister, in response, had rendered honour to his adversary, but had insisted on his motion, and the Chamber had voted the Budget by a large majority. Who was thinking of his speech any more? The Honourable Dalma had once said to him, with his poetical Parliamentary cynicism: 'In politics everything is forgotten.' In the vestibule, the couples were walking and talking, arm-in-arm; here groups of young bloods were discussing the financial situation, with a view to supper; here solitary dominos were wandering back and forth in expectation of someone who came not. Here Sangiorgio met the Honourable Gulli-Pausania. The Sicilian deputy was leaning against the wall, waiting like some of the others, stylish and handsome in evening costume, gallant Southerner that he was, with his pointed, chestnut beard, his greenish eyes travelling over the crowd, and his silk hat covering a premature baldness, because of which several women were in love with him. 'Oh, my dear Sangiorgio!' said Gulli, with a strong Sicilian accent, 'alone, all alone, at the ball?' 'Yes, alone. I expect nobody; nobody expects me, and I am sure my honourable colleague, Gulli-Pausania, is not following my example.' 'Well, what is to be done?' replied Gulli, smiling. 'We spend our lives waiting----' 'Not always for the same person, fortunately.' 'Oh no! that would be too desperate. Any political news?' 'None, my dear colleague. Hope you will enjoy yourself!' 'Thanks!' replied Gulli-Pausania, with his distinguished, sensual smile. Sangiorgio went into the auditorium. His lashes quivered over his down-looking eyes. The theatre, with its three rows of boxes, its galleries, and its stage, was brilliantly lighted, and the white background of the decorations enhanced the brightness. On the stage the stream of the tall fountain was tinted red by a ray of electric light. The place was full; people were still arriving from other entertainments, from cafés, from receptions, from balls; neither standing still nor fast walking was now any longer permitted. At first Sangiorgio saw nothing but the shoulders of a stalwart gentleman in front of him, at his right the red ear of a _cocotte_, whose mask was certainly fastened on too tight, to his left the sharp profile of a thin, elongated damsel, with melancholy eyes. The tall gentleman looked here, there, and everywhere among the boxes, jerking a head with a light mane, precisely parted in the middle. Once, when he stopped to look at a box in the first tier, full of black dominos, making neither sound nor motion, Sangiorgio found himself beside him. It was the Honourable Prince di Sirmio, who bore the title of Most Serene Highness, and was the richest nobleman in Rome. 'Good-evening, honourable colleague,' said the Prince in his slow, liquid tone, with the note of cold fatigue which was one of his personal peculiarities. 'I believe this is your first visit to one of these places of corruption, where everyone assumes strict virtue. Strict virtue, do you not think? You have no doubt been told that we people in the capital lead a wild life; instead of that, as you see, we walk very slowly round and round, _pour le bon motif_, looking for our wife, who must be in one of the boxes with her sister. Meanwhile, we mingle with the crowd, as you perceive, to listen and learn. They all tell me I am democratic--and I behave accordingly. Are you doing anything in politics, honourable colleague? _Ce n'est pas le bonheur_--however, I have had nothing to do with politics for an everlasting age. The head of my party is Don Emilio Castelar: I am a Spanish Republican. Are you surprised?' Francesco Sangiorgio smiled, but made no answer, which pleased the Prince, since he liked neither to be talked to nor interrupted. He had a smooth, flowing tongue, and interruption annoyed him. 'Ah, there is my wife,' continued Sirmio. 'Who is that in the box next to hers? I see--it is the Minister of Foreign Affairs with his two daughters, Grace and the other, whose name ought to be Justice, but who is called Eleonora. The quip is not mine; it is from a newspaper. Good-night, honourable colleague.' 'Good-night, Prince.' Sangiorgio, in lieu of walking the smaller circle on the floor, took the larger, and went up towards the stage, where along the wings were disposed tables and chairs, about which sat whole families of the middle classes, drinking aerated waters, or inseparable couples, tired of one another, but not daring to split, quaffing mugs of beer. He passed close to the fountain now tinged violet by the electric light--a most delicate shade--and he went by the basin and the great mirror at the back over to the musicians' stand. Over his head, they suddenly burst into the opening notes of the postilion mazurka from the ballet 'Excelsior,' which was highly popular that winter. A momentary movement took place from the stage to the parterre, a general undulation of heads in time with the lively measure, as it were; people crowded towards the parterre to see the dancing. At a table near the left wing, the Honourable Schuffer sat alone, drinking beer, reviewing the assembly through a pair of bright eyes behind spectacles, occasionally raising his pointed nose and sharp chin. 'Come, my dear colleague, and take a mug of beer with me,' said Schuffer, in his soft, Venetian accent. 'But being a Neapolitan, perhaps you do not like beer.' 'No, thank you, Honourable--no, thank you, I will not take any; I have just come in.' 'I came an hour ago, and in that hour goodness knows how many elbows have been dug into me, how many times I have been shoved, and how many feet have trodden on mine. I took refuge here to avoid it; you know I am unlucky in some things.' Sangiorgio smiled. The Honourable Schuffer, looking tousled and mischievous like a boy, with his curly head of hair, had already had four suits for defamation. The deputy, unfortunately, had seen fit to get at odds with a guard, a porter, a station-master, and a waiter in a café, and while the same thing happened to a hundred other deputies without serious consequences, as if on purpose the guard, the porter, the station-master, and the waiter, had severally brought action against him, so that every now and then the Chamber was called upon to authorize legal proceedings. 'I learnt to drink beer on my travels to Japan,' went on Schuffer. 'Great country that, honourable colleague! I never had a lawsuit there with anyone, I assure you. Honourable, you are Ministerial--shall you vote those millions for the Minister of War?' he added, as if struck by a sudden idea. 'What about yourself, Honourable Schuffer?' quickly threw in Sangiorgio. 'I? I?' said the other, nonplussed; 'I must think about it. We might discuss it, do you not think--and come to some understanding? It is a serious question; war swallows up every farthing in the country.' 'I ask for nothing better; certainly we will talk about it again. Good-night, Honourable Schuffer.' The postilion mazurka was now greatly enlivening the ball. There were three circles of dancers: near the entrance to the parterre, in the centre of the floor, and on the stage. A woman masquerader dressed as a Bersagliere officer, with plumed hat over one ear, bare arms coming out from beneath the gold fringes of her epaulets, and breeches fitting closely at the knee, was dancing with a girl disguised as a Satanic imp. Both were as serious as could be, repulsing everyone who wanted to separate them. The boxes, too, were now filled with ladies and gentlemen come from receptions and balls. The first and second tiers were entirely taken up. In the box next to the 'barge,' in the first tier, were to be seen the delicate and graceful Florentine beauty of Elsa Bellini, married to Novelli, and the blond opulence of Lalla Terziani. Both ladies had come from the Valle. With them were Rosolino Scalia, the Sicilian deputy of military carriage; the little Prince of Nerola, the new deputy from the Abruzzi; a young man of distinguished mien, with a small black moustache; Novelli and Terziani, the two husbands. 'Honourable Sangiorgio,' said the little Prince, leaning over the side of the box. 'Well, honourable colleague?' said the other, raising his head. 'If you see Sangarzia, will you be good enough to tell him I am here? Do you know who will be elected, the day after to-morrow, for the Budget Committee?' 'The Honourable Ferrante, of course.' 'I think not--I think not,' replied the Prince, smiling maliciously. As Sangiorgio went away he heard remarks from the box like 'Clever fellow!' and 'Gifted Southerner!' He looked at various boxes in search of Sangarzia. In one, of the first tier, were the two Neapolitan sisters Acquaviva, one of them married to the deputy Marquis di Santa Marta, the other to the deputy Count Lapucci. The Countess, dark and vivacious, with a thick-lipped, deep-hued mouth, with two flashing eyes, was the very opposite of her husband, a dark, slender, very taciturn, very pensive young man, said to be haughty, although he was a Socialist deputy. The Santa Marta pair was different. The wife, fair and curly-haired, had a childish face and a frank expression, and was very simply gowned; the husband was fair, with languid eyes and an indolent manner. The Countess Lapucci was laughing loudly; the Marchioness di Santa Marta was smiling. Count Lapucci was watching the crowd silently, his thumbs stuck in his waistcoat pockets; the Marquis di Santa Marta was chatting affably with the Honourable Melillo, the strong financial man from the Basilicata, with a heart too open to women, a confirmed celibate, which made him interesting in the eyes of unmarried girls, whom he did not care about. The Honourable Melillo answered Francesco Sangiorgio's bow with an elaborate salute and a patronizing wave of the hand, and Sangiorgio drew near the box while his name was being mentioned. The Honourable Melillo was no doubt speaking of the bright promise his fellow-countryman gave. The wife of the Secretary-General of Finance had arrived in the box near the door, after an evening party at the Quirinal. This graceful, slight Piedmontese, with the pale, interesting face of an invalid, wore a low-cut dress, was loaded with jewels, frequently coughed, continually carried her pocket-handkerchief to her rather bright lips, nervously pulled her chamois gloves up to her elbows. The Honourable Pasta, the Subalpine lawyer, with shaven chin and fair, grizzled whiskers, was saying something very witty to her, that made her laugh. The Honourable Cimbro, the Piedmontese journalist-deputy, staring through his glasses, his necktie having slipped up under his ears, was a man apparently embarrassed by his own presence, whereas the Secretary-General, rather bald, with a thick, stout moustache, sat in solemn silence, looking at the stage as if he did not notice it. When Sangiorgio passed, he made him a low bow, full of meaning, almost sentimental, the appreciative bow of a Secretary-General showing his gratitude to the man who has afforded him the pleasure of attacking his Minister. 'Where may Sangarzia be?' thought Francesco to himself, threading his way with difficulty through the ever-increasing crowd. The Baroness Noir was in her box, her serpentine form clad in a strange, close-fitting garment of shot silk, on which tulips and peacocks' feathers were embroidered, and she had gathered about her a little sub-Ministerial staff of foreign affairs. Her husband had, in fact, been Secretary-General. He was holding aloof, at the back of the box, like a diplomat awaiting appointment, but the Honourable di San Demetrio, a self-possessed Abruzzan, with an already whitening black beard, who had strong aspirations towards the Cabinet, was well in front, under the full light. Besides, there was the Honourable di Campofranco, a frigid Sicilian, the son of Italy's most prominent female politician, the Princess di Campofranco. The Honourable di San Demetrio was talking, explaining, mayhap, some section of the Budget Report, and the little Baroness was listening attentively, slapping her fingers with her fan. Hustled by the crowd, Sangiorgio stopped for a moment under her box; he felt fatigued from head to foot, the lights dazzled him, and the atmosphere, pregnant with acrid odours, stifled him. 'Sangiorgio!' exclaimed San Demetrio. He started, as if from a dream. 'Do you know if the Honourable Mascari has registered to speak on the other side in the debate on the Foreign Budget?' 'No, he has not registered.' 'Positively?' 'Positively.' 'Thank you; excuse the question.' And he went back to his place, happy in the knowledge that there was to be one opponent less. Sangiorgio stood straight and motionless against the wall, feeling at ease in that position and shutting his eyes against the light. Seymour and Marchetti came up to him, arm-in-arm. They presented a marked contrast, these two apostles of social science: Seymour, dark and severe, with the upward curving chin of a man of energy and a brush of black hair beginning to streak with white; Marchetti, with a frank, fresh face, a long chestnut beard, and the sparkling blue eyes of an enthusiast. They were both strolling about in morning coats, and therefore did not venture to speak to any of the ladies. 'Are you bored, Sangiorgio?' asked Seymour. 'A little. I am tired, too.' 'Were you at the office this evening?' inquired Marchetti. 'No. What was being done there?' 'Nothing very substantial yet--not much work,' remarked Seymour, adjusting his glasses on his nose. 'Why do you not have your speech printed, Sangiorgio?' 'What is the use?' he answered in a tone of sincere doubt. 'I shall return to the charge in a different way when the Agricultural Budget comes up,' he then went on, as if reanimated. The orchestra just then struck up Strauss' lively, inspiriting waltz, 'Freuet euch des Lebens,' a general movement took place, the circle spread outward, people were crowded back under the boxes, the deputies were separated, and Sangiorgio was left alone. The ladies in the boxes were gazing down enviously at the dancers enjoying themselves below; they were obliged to sit still, up there, while the music and the sight of the rest on the floor made them itch to join in the dancing. Three or four, who had come low-necked from a ball at the Huffer House, were exhibiting themselves in all the splendours of their dress. Little Prince Nerola was now in his cousin's box, the Countess di Genzano, the fascinating, Titianesque blonde. In the background was to be seen the sallow but still handsome face, almost noble in outline, of the Minister of Grace and Justice, the inflexible and gallant official, as unswerving in his inflexibility as he was in his gallantry. Sangiorgio roused himself from the state of torpor he had fallen into: he must find Sangarzia. Looking carefully, box for box, he at last succeeded in discovering him in the second tier, near the royal box. A domino in black silk, highly fashionable, with a tight, black veil covering her head and face, and wearing a large bunch of pinks, was sitting in a front chair; beside her was the Honourable Valitutti, a rich, olive-hued Calabrian, with a black beard and the face of a taciturn Arab; in the background sat the Honourable Fraccareta, one of the largest corn merchants in the Puglia country; in the middle was the Honourable Sangarzia, the sympathetic Sicilian, the formidable swordsman, the perfect gentleman, whom everybody loved. 'Who might the lady be?' wondered Sangiorgio, on his way up to the second floor. Some lady, put out at not being able to dance, was going home in ill-humour, letting her train drag, her mouth twisted as a woman's is who has been forbidden something. And behind her came husband and lover, with the thankful expression of men who have been bored, and who at last hope to get to bed. The five black dominos, who had been sitting the whole evening in a box without either moving or speaking, like so many conspirators, now came down on the arms of five youths; silent, lugubrious couples they were; they might have been bound for a funeral banquet. Just behind them the Honourable Carusio descended the stairs, a deputy with a head as bald as a billiard-ball, with an extravagantly long, pointed, Napoleonic beard, reaching to his stomach, and with the air of a timorous, anxious person, full of apprehensions and full of worries. 'My dear colleague,' began Carusio, suddenly stopping Sangiorgio on the first landing, 'excuse me if I stop you like this; you must pardon me--I am in great trouble. A relative of mine, from the provinces, who is visiting here, made me come to this affair, which he had never seen. Imagine what a dreadful nuisance! I can scarcely endure it. And so the Prime Minister is very ill?' 'No, not very--not very,' answered Sangiorgio, smiling. 'It is only the gout he is suffering from.' 'Are you quite sure, my dear colleague? Is your news at least accurate?' 'I went to find out in person.' 'Oh, thank you ever so much, my dear colleague! I am so glad I met you. You have relieved me from a great anxiety. If the Prime Minister were to become seriously ill, just think what confusion! If he were to die, what complications!' 'God forbid!' said Sangiorgio, still smiling. 'Yours to command, my dear colleague: I am delighted; I am infinitely obliged to you. You may count upon me at any time, I assure you; do not spare me. You could not have come to the rescue more opportunely. Good-night, good-night, honourable colleague!' 'Good-night! I hope you will sleep well. The Prime Minister will be better to-morrow.' 'Thank you again, thank you.' Sangiorgio knocked very gently at No. 15. Fraccareta's voice said 'Come in!' Sangiorgio half opened the door, and said: 'Excuse me, honourable colleagues: I am looking for the Honourable Sangarzia.' 'Here I am--here I am!' And they went outside together, the black domino with the pinks having scarcely turned her head. 'Nerola, the Prince, wants you, Honourable Sangarzia.' 'Oh, my dear Sangiorgio, Nerola and yourself could not have done me a greater service! I was at a loss how to get away from here. And where is the Prince?' 'He is in the first tier now, with the Countess Genzano.' 'Let us get there quickly.' He went back into the box, put on his long cape over his evening coat, bowed to the woman and his two colleagues, and descended the stairs with Sangiorgio. 'What a good service you have rendered me! The lady was getting tired of it--probably wanted to dance. Have you come from the Countess's?' 'I do not know her.' At this there issued forth from a box in the first tier a feminine figure strangely attired in a Turkish costume, with head and face hidden by a close white veil. 'Come with me,' she murmured with her soft voice to Sangiorgio. 'No need to wish you good luck, colleague,' whispered Sangarzia, taking leave of him. 'Come with me,' the woman repeated, bearing on his arm to draw him away. It was half-past two. People were hastening to the cloakrooms to go home, getting into their overcoats listlessly, wrapping up their heads in scarfs, like so many acrobats, who after performing in the street put on old, worn wraps over their tawdry, spangled finery. 'Come, come!' urged the woman, seized with impatience, while Sangiorgio was donning his great-coat. Outside she at once singled out her carriage, and got in eagerly, dragging Sangiorgio in after her. 'Home!' she said to the coachman. But once in the carriage, behind the drawn blinds, she quickly unwound the veil from her head and threw it on the opposite seat. She disencumbered herself of the Oriental garb, jerking out the pins and tearing at the embroidery. A cloak with a hood lay at the bottom of the carriage; this she put on. Sangiorgio silently assisted her. She looked out into the street for a moment. 'Ah, there is the moon!' she murmured with great tenderness. And she tapped on the pane to tell the coachman something. Immediately the carriage stopped, in the Piazza Barberini. She got out quickly, and pulled the hood on her cloak over her head. 'Drive home!' she ordered the coachman. 'Tell Carolina she may go to bed. I have the key.' They were left alone in the Piazza Barberini. The stream of the fountain, tall and translucent, shone brightly in the moonlight. 'Shall we walk a little?' she said. 'It was suffocating in the ballroom.' He offered her an arm, determined to show surprise at nothing. They went along the Via Sistina, the great thoroughfare which looks so aristocratic by day and so ghostly at night. She nestled up to him as though she was cold and fearsome, as if she pretended to be small and wanted his protection. Nevertheless, she was strong and tall in her black cloak, and under the hood where her eyes were sparkling. And that person and those eyes had the peculiar quality of magnetism--the violent fascination that stirs the senses. Again Francesco Sangiorgio felt as he had in her drawing-room, when she had so ruthlessly cast love into contempt. The sensation was profound and sharp, without any sweetness whatever--a revulsion, a storm, a sort of inebriation. 'How quiet it is!' she observed, in a voice slightly a-tremble, which shook every nerve in Sangiorgio's body. 'Say something else,' he whispered. 'What?' she asked, leaning against his shoulder. 'Anything, anything--I like your voice so much!' But the Countess Fiammanti made no answer. They had arrived at the little square of the Trinità dei Monti. The obelisk stood erect in the bright moonlight, and its tall, slender shadow was imprinted on the wall of the church. The rising road, leading to the Villa Medici and the Pincio, was quite lustrous. They bent over the high parapet of the square, whence so many melancholy visitors have gazed upon Rome in the hours of twilight. But Rome was very dimly visible, shrouded in a white, moon-washed vapour, which almost seemed a continuation of the sky, a slant of the horizon covering houses, bell-towers, and cupolas. 'One can see nothing. What a pity!' exclaimed Donna Elena. And, taking hold of Sangiorgio's arm rather forcibly, she led him to a narrow stair in front of the Trinità--not the stair with two balusters to the church, but the steps going up to the convent, where the monks and the children they are educating live together. This stairway has a little landing before the door, and a railing. Donna Elena made Sangiorgio go up there. 'Shall we knock at the convent?' she asked him, as if trying the iron chain. 'We are two frozen pilgrims begging for shelter!' She laughed, showing those resplendent white teeth that made her smile so irresistible. Only she never smiled, she always laughed. But neither was there any view from their elevated position, except that the diaphanous, whitish, milky ocean of mist looked larger yet. Straight in front were discernible the few lights, which still remained unextinguished at three o'clock in the morning, in the Via Condotti. Below, the Piazza di Spagna lay spread out, in its reposeful and magnificent architectural beauty, from the Via Propaganda Fide to the Via Babuino. 'Let us go away from here,' she said. He allowed himself to be taken in leading-strings; this, his first romantic adventure, gave him intense pleasure. This lady, for she was a lady in spite of the lightness and audacity of her conduct, aroused all the desires of a virile man, provincial, imaginative, and by nature sentimental. This was a real romance, and this fine lady, wrapped in her fur cloak, scented, wearing magnificent diamonds that glistened in the moonlight, who had sent her carriage away so as to walk with him here, at night, through the streets of Rome--this splendid creature seduced him by everything she was and everything she represented. He succumbed to her personal fascination, the stronger through the peculiarity of the circumstances. His wonted, ordinary scruples were overcome, and he yielded to this new triumph for his vanity, flattered, exultant, and delighted over his conquest. They went down the steps in the moonbeams that seemed to bathe the stones of old Rome. On the last step but two, Donna Elena withdrew her arm from Sangiorgio's and sat down. She now looked quite small and black, cowering down on the stair, with her head in her hands and her elbows on her knees, as she gazed at the lovely Bernini fountain, with its bowl overbrimming. Sangiorgio had not seated himself; he was standing upright by her side, eyeing her with a sense of masculine fatuity, which filtered through his submissiveness. The pretty woman seemed downcast, squatting on the ground like a beggar, a bundle of dark clothes, under which perhaps an anxious soul was alive in a throbbing heart. And it almost seemed to him as though he were her lord. 'Do you like the fountain?' she asked in her melodious voice, raising her head. 'It is rather handsome.' 'Yes, it is,' she agreed with a nod. 'Why do you not sit down?' And she appeared not to be addressing him, but speaking to the purling waters, which for ever fell back into the drowned bowl. He sat down on the step beside her. 'Have you no cigars? Will you not smoke a little?' 'I am sorry I have no cigarettes for you.' 'Never mind. But you smoke!' He lighted a cigar, and she inhaled its aroma. 'What brand is it?' 'A Minghetti.' 'Your Minghetti has a nice odour.' And she watched him smoke, following the thin, blue streak as it vanished into the air. A closed carriage emerged from the Via Due Macelli, passed them with extreme rapidity, and disappeared in the direction of the Via Babuino. 'They are coming from the ball,' he said. 'What a hideous affair that ball was!' whispered Donna Elena softly. 'Yes,' replied Sangiorgio to the harmonious voice by whose caress he felt his nerves excited to the point of painfulness. Suddenly she jumped to her feet, as if propelled by a spring. 'I am cold, I am cold; let us be off!' she exclaimed roughly. She folded her cloak more tightly about her than ever, pulled her hood further forward over her forehead, clung to his arm, and dragged him away, towards the Via Propaganda. He had thrown his cigar down, and all at once was conscious that this woman's mind was changing, and that he could not count on her at all. But he proudly kept his peace. Probably his vanity had been an empty fiction. Who could reckon on the caprice of a woman? He shrugged his shoulders, laughing at himself, who for a moment had believed he might master one of these frivolous creatures. She uttered not a word, hastening her pace along the Via Due Macelli, as though greatly affected by the cold and intending to overcome it by walking; she stared at the ground, without turning to her companion. Sangiorgio did not ask her whither they were bound in this fashion; he was resolved to stay with her till the end, despite the blow she was giving his pride. When they reached the corner of the Via Due Macelli, she turned abruptly into the Via Angelo Custode. 'I live here,' he observed, for the sake of saying something. 'Here?' she cried, stopping still for a moment. 'Where?' 'At No. 50--over there.' 'Do you live alone?' 'I do.' 'Let us go up,' she said, making a motion to cross the street. 'I will warm myself at your fire!' 'There is no fire.' 'No matter; I will warm myself playing the piano!' 'There is no piano,' he replied, determined to hear her out. 'I don't care!' was all she said. * * * * * Two days later Francesco Sangiorgio was elected a member of the Budget Committee. CHAPTER III Mild, genteel applause, coming from small, female, well-gloved, though rather listless hands, greeted the noisy conclusion of the pianist, an insignificant, meagre, dark little dot of a creature, who was invisible behind the piano. 'What feeling!' exclaimed the wife of a Puglian deputy, a stout woman with a torrent of black curls on her red, shining forehead. 'Splendid, splendid, delightful!' said Signora di Bertrand, the wife of a high functionary, a frail Piedmontese, with a Madonna face, wearing a brocaded cloak threaded with gold. And from one lady to another, from group to group, along sofas, from easy-chairs to small stools, under the palm branches in the pots, under the brackets bearing statuettes, from the pianoforte to the door, swiftly ran the current of feminine approval. Those standing on the threshold of the Ministerial drawing-room nodded two or three times, as if secretly wearied. Only His Highness, the Oriental Prince in exile, ponderously ensconced in an armchair, made no sign. With his bloated, sallow visage, grown here and there with patches of nondescript, speckling beard, with the contemplative apathy of a bulky Oriental, he remained quiet, thinking perhaps of the dramatic incantations of the Aidas who had been one of the boasts of his throne, as he sat with his big, round eyes half shut under the soft, red rim of his fez. But the female chatter reopened, and Donna Luisa Catalani, the Minister's wife, the mistress of the house, who had rested during the music, renewed her round of bows and compliments and smiles; and her white cashmere gown, her diamond rosettes, her small head, her provokingly pretty face, her somewhat peculiar headdress, were to be seen everywhere, as though there was not one Donna Luisa, but ten of her. 'How fatiguing these receptions are!' languidly said the Countess Schwarz, an extremely thin woman, with livid countenance, with fluffy fringe, in imitation, probably, of Sarah Bernhardt. Sunk in a comfortable easy-chair, and huddled in her furs like a sick, shivering bird, she merely moved her lips to sip her cup of tea. 'Donna Luisa is not tired; she is made of iron,' murmured Signora Gallenga, wife of the Secretary-General of Finance, coughing slightly and smoothing her pointed, Chinese eyebrows. 'It would be too much for me. I am glad my receptions are small. Were you at the Parliament to-day, Countess?' 'I never go.' The graceful Piedmontese saw the error of her question. Count Schwarz had succeeded in becoming a provincial councillor, but never a deputy. 'I was there,' interposed Signora Mattei, the wife of another Secretary-General, a Tuscan woman as brown as a peppercorn, with fiery eyes, a rapid tongue, and a black hat buried under poppies. 'It was an interesting meeting.' 'And not to have been there!' exclaimed Signora Gallenga. 'How unfortunate! And did Sangiorgio speak?' 'Yes, yes----' But a 'hush' now circulated through the room. A robust lady, with a mighty bosom tightly cuirassed in red satin, with a broad, good-natured face, sang a moving romance by Tosti. She had undone her pelisse, throwing it back on her shoulders, and with her hands in her muff, her veil down on her eyes, quite serenely, without a single quiver in a line of her face, she poured out her lamentations in the music of the Abruzzan master. Donna Luisa, standing in the middle of the drawing-room among fifty ladies seated, listened with the polite attention of a hostess; but she was assailed by an uneasy feeling, since she observed that in the two adjoining parlours there were people--ladies waiting to come in. It was the most important reception of the season; in the drawing-room reigned the quiet of a hothouse and the sweet, sugary smell of a place where there are many women. Standing along the wall, encased in severe frock-coats, was a row of commanders, bald and silent, who had left the Court of Accounts at half-past four, of officials from the Treasury, of men from other Government offices. But they preserved the statuesque immobility of the bureaucratic make-up, the unwearying patience, the endless, incalculably long expectation by dint of which they passed from one grade to another, until they had forty years of service behind them; to them this reception was an infinitesimal fraction of the forty years of service. A sigh of relief was audible; the romance was finished, and Luisa Catalani complimented the singer, who was smiling like the full moon. Then the hostess immediately left the room; there were seven or eight ladies in the next room. 'What was the Chamber like to-day?' asked a fair, pale-faced Minister's daughter, who had newly arrived. 'Very warm. I do not understand how our men keep from getting ill,' replied another, spreading out her fan by way of original illustration. 'Sangiorgio spoke very well,' murmured Signora Giroux, a little lady with white hair and a sweet smile--her ladyship of the Agricultural Department. 'He is from the South,' remarked Donna Luisa Catalani. 'Was there anyone in the diplomatic gallery?' 'Countess di Santaninfa and Countess di Malgra.' 'Fine hats?' 'Might pass,' answered the pallid blonde abstractedly. Over in a corner a group of girls was prattling in lively fashion, with their jackets unbuttoned because of the heat, and showing the fine texture of their dark cloth dresses. Enrichetta Serafini, daughter of the Minister of Public Works, a brunette in mourning, was talking for half a dozen, and gathered about her were the Camilly girl, an Italian born in Egypt; the Borla girl, a predestined old maid, condemned by the everlasting youth of her mother; the Fasulo girl, a lymphatic person, with large, meditative eyes, an accountant's niece; the Allievo girl, a nice, quiet thing; and the single aristocratic bud, all fair under the white plume in her hat--Donna Sofia di Maccarese. 'I prefer Tosti to all the rest,' maintained Enrichetta Serafini. 'He can make one weep.' 'Denza, too, makes one weep at times,' observed the Borla girl, who did not know how to sing, and was obliged to listen to her fifty-year-old mother. 'And you, Donna Sofia, which do you like best?' 'Schumann,' she murmured, without another word. The others stopped. They did not know his music. But the Serafini girl, nervous and vivacious, answered: 'But all that music must be sung well. Pardon me'--lowering her voice--'perhaps you like the lady who has just sung?' And the whole group giggled surreptitiously. 'The best singer in Rome is the Fiammanti,' added the young Camilly girl, with her round, white face, with her languid gaze--this Oriental transplanted to Italy. The other girls remained silent. The Borla pursed her lips in token of reproof; the Fasulo cast down her eyes; the Allievo blushed; only Donna Sofia di Maccarese did not change countenance, either not knowing or not caring about Countess Fiammanti. 'Is it true that she is to marry the deputy Sangiorgio?' asked the Serafini. 'No, no,' replied the Camilly, with a peculiar smile. This time the girls exchanged the mute, expressive looks into which society compels girls to condense their meaning. In the drawing-room a great concourse of ladies had gathered; the warm atmosphere of heavy clothes was spreading, and an odour of tea and opopanax, of beaver and marten. Nearly all of them were talking now, in couples, or in groups of three or four, with certain nods and certain subtle modulations of the voice, gossiping about the Chamber of Deputies, gravely discussing the Honourable Bomba's delivery, saying which gallery they liked best, commenting on the colour of the carpets, describing the flesh-coloured waistcoats of the Honourable Count Lapucci and the romantic face--like a pensive Christ's--of the Honourable Joanna. And Signora Gallenga, an authority on literature, announced the following: 'This year the Abruzzo is fashionable in literature and the Basilicata in politics.' So they thought they were doing politics in right earnest, elated by their own chatter, they, with their light little heads. But no other performer moved to the piano, and as the placid, middle-aged lady who had languished with Tosti was taking her third cup of tea, a hardly perceptible stir took place in the drawing-room, and Donna Angelica Vargas, tall and lovely, walked across the room with her rhythmic step, seeking out Donna Luisa Catalani. She was dressed in black, as usual, with an iridescence of some sort about her person and her hat. Donna Luisa ran towards her with her prettiest smile. They made low bows to each other, and a subdued colloquy began between them. The people in the room pretended not to hear, from politeness, but an embarrassing silence prevailed, as sometimes happens among a number of persons none of whom wants to speak first. His Highness Mehemet Pasha had opened his eyes wide, and ogled the beautiful Italian, so chaste in appearance, but whose large eyes reminded him of his Eastern women, for whom he perhaps was longing. Then those large, fine eyes, shining like the black pearls on her dress, cast an intelligent glance all round the room, and as Donna Luisa Catalani turned away, singly, by twos, by threes did the women come and surround Donna Angelica Vargas, to exchange amenities with her; and although her husband was not Prime Minister, although she was the wife of a Minister of Commerce holding a non-political portfolio, although in that drawing-room were three or four wives of political Ministers, important men, pillars of the Cabinet, yet she was the centre of all this adulation, and in the simplicity of her manner there lay something queenly. * * * * * To feel the cold less, while writing in that long, narrow parlour, without a fire, in the Via Angelo Custode, Sangiorgio had thrown an old coat over his legs. At eight the servant had brought him a cup of coffee, in bed, and while she was cleaning the chilly room he put on his clothes, so as to begin work. The girl did the other room quickly, and went away without a word, looking sullen and resentful, like all poor wretches who cannot reconcile themselves to penury and hard work. But the sweeping being done in haste, dirt remained in the corners of the floor. The window-curtains were yellow with dust, and a horrible smell of stale rubbish hung in both rooms. Barely had the servant vanished, trailing her feet in a pair of men's shoes, when Sangiorgio, without a look at that melancholy inner courtyard, with balconies full of old boxes and broken glass, and worm-eaten, filthy loggias, set to writing at a small student's table. He had settled down to work, among a lot of Parliamentary papers and a heap of letters from the Basilicata, on large, white sheets of commercial foolscap, dipping his pen into a wretched clay inkpot. Towards ten o'clock an intolerable sensation of cold had crept over his feet and legs; he still had three hours' work before him, and therefore went to his bedroom for an old overcoat, which he spread over his legs. He did this automatically, without taking his mind off the Parliamentary report which had absorbed him for a week. The fire that burned within him was manifest in the large, clear handwriting with which he covered the big sheets of paper; his preoccupation showed plainly in his face, in his--as it were--introspective glance, ignoring all things external. Sheets of paper were now heaping up at his left; he did not stop writing except to refer to Parliamentary Blue-books, or to consult a fat volume of agricultural reports, or a dirty, little, torn notebook. At eleven, as he was engrossed in his task, the slight grating of a key was heard, and a woman entered, closing the door noiselessly behind her. 'It is I,' she said softly, clasping a bunch of roses to her breast. He lifted his head, and stared at her with the bewildered eyes of one not yet sufficiently aroused from his employment to recognise a new-comer. 'Do I disturb you?' asked Elena, with her flutelike voice. 'Yes, yes, I am disturbing you! Go on with your writing--do your work. I will read a book.' 'There are no books here you would like,' he replied, not remembering to thank her for having come. She rummaged among the papers with her slender hands, gloved in black and hampered by the bunch of roses. Sangiorgio smiled at her complacently. She was always so fascinating, with those heavy lips of hers, red and moist, with those strange eyes of indefinable colour, with that graceful opulence of figure, that even to look at her, to have her present, here, in his own room, was always a new delight to him. 'There is nothing there!' she laughed. 'I could never read about the quantity of polenta the peasants of Lombardy eat, and how many potatoes the Southerners. That would make me too melancholy. Do your writing--do your writing, Franz; do not mind me.' And he got up, and went over to kiss her on the eyes, through her thin veil, as she liked it; she made a face like a greedy child receiving a sweetmeat. He returned to his writing. Elena walked up and down in the parlour, as if trying to get warm: in this room, on this bleak March day, it was freezing. 'Are you not cold, Franz?' asked Elena from the sofa, whence she was curiously eyeing the pictures on the hooks. 'A little,' he answered, without ceasing from his writing. She again reviewed the room in all its squalor, realized in what a state of decent poverty he existed, and watched him, writing so swiftly at that little table, where he was obliged to draw in his elbows so as not to brush the papers over the edge. And into the eyes of the woman watching the tireless worker came a new light of tenderness which he did not see. Now leaning against the mantelpiece, she reviewed her surroundings, first examining the three photographs of a corporal, a stout gentleman, and a boy belonging to the Nazzareno school, and then the three libellous oleographs representing the Royal Family. 'Franz, have you ever had your photograph taken?' she inquired, looking at herself in the mirror, and adjusting the bow on her hat. 'Yes, at Naples once, when I was a student,' he answered, turning over some Parliamentary records. 'And have you it now?' 'No, of course not.' 'If you had it, I should want it,' she insinuated in a voice like a child's. 'Is the original not enough for you?' 'No,' was Elena's reflective response. He got up again, came over and took her hands, and asked her: 'Then, you like me?' 'Yes--yes--yes,' she sang on three musical notes. Francesco returned to the table, where he resumed his work. She hazarded a step to the threshold of his bedroom, and cast a glance inside. 'Franz,' said she, 'you did not come to the Valle last night.' 'There was the Budget Committee up till eleven. Afterwards I was too tired.' 'A number of people came to see me in my box--Giustini, for instance. How do you come to be so intimate with him?' 'He is useful to me,' he answered simply, without looking up. 'He speaks ill of you.' 'I hope so.' 'To be sure, he never praises anyone but mediocrities. You will become a great statesman, Franz!' 'Oh, that will take a long time,' he replied tranquilly, noting down some figures on a small piece of paper. 'Gallenga and Oldofredi came, too. Oldofredi makes love to me.' 'Quite right of Oldofredi,' he murmured gallantly. She laughed, and vanished into the adjoining room. It was so cold and ugly that for a moment she shrank back in repulsion. She scanned the woollen arabesques on the bedquilt, which the servant had given a furious shaking. But it was the large grease-spot on the blue-cloth easy-chair which caused her to turn her head; her feminine instincts made her wince at that grease-spot. She walked about the room in search of an unavailable article: on the chest of drawers were only two candlesticks without candles and a clothes-brush, and nothing that would serve her purpose; on the toilet-table were only two combs and a broken bottle of Felsina water. The place was as bare as a hermit's cell. At last she descried, on the stand near the bed, a water-bottle and glass, and, beaming with pleasure, untied her bundle of roses, thrust three or four into the neck of the decanter, a few into the cup, dropped a handful on the coverlet at the foot of the bed, and then, being at a loss where to put any more, stuffed two under the pillow. Moving cautiously, she went back to the chest of drawers, and opened the top drawer, which contained neckties and gloves; here, too, she left some of her roses. A portrait lay thrown in there, still in its envelope. It was her own. A light shadow of displeasure flitted across her face, and quickly disappeared. In that miserable room, in that murky light that came from the courtyard, in that stench of kitchen slops, the roses gave out a vernal freshness, the essence of a garden, a remembrance of sunlight, an atom of fragrance. 'I have finished,' said Sangiorgio, appearing in the doorway. 'Let us go home to lunch.' 'Do you think we shall have done by half-past one?' 'Why?' 'I have an appointment with a constituent.' 'Well, I hope so, as I also have an appointment--at two.' 'With a constituent?' 'With Oldofredi.' 'Indeed,' he answered, putting on his overcoat. 'He is to tell me how he came to be unwilling to marry Angelica Vargas.' 'Was he intending to marry her?' 'Yes, and he did not want to. Perhaps, though, it was she who refused. Nearly everyone dislikes Oldofredi, especially in Parliament. Do you know him?' 'No; I am not interested in him.' 'You are quite pale; what is the matter?' 'I don't know; probably it is the cold.' 'Come, come away to my house; there is a fire there, and you can warm yourself!' He accompanied her, without saying a word about the roses. * * * * * The Honourable Oldofredi was not a particularly assiduous frequenter of the Parliamentary library. He occasionally went there to look for a friend, but did not read; he never asked for books or papers. Malicious tongues among the deputies, forsooth, had it that he did not know how to read. Now, as he entered the library that day, and found Sangiorgio seated in front of a veritable mountain of books, flying through statistical works, skimming over the pages of volumes of political economy, history, and social science with that impetuosity in research and preparation which characterizes the provincial Southerner, at the sight of this the fatuous Oldofredi smiled disdainfully. He had first put his head in at the door, to see if it was the colleague he was in search of; then, prompted by some new idea, he went in, although he had not seen his friend. He began to saunter idly up and down, blowing the remains of a cigarette out of a small amber mouthpiece. The Honourable Oldofredi, despite his reputation as a Don Juan and a swashbuckler, was neither a handsome nor a powerful man; he was a machine of bones and sinews badly put together, the whole of his elongated person had an unpleasant, battered appearance, his face was of a repulsively cadaverous hue; in his eyes lay vacant stupidity, and all his limbs were so disjointed as to make him look like a perambulating automaton. Sangiorgio, from the moment he rested his eyes on him, could not take them away again. A sort of irritating fascination drew the Basilicatan's attention from the statistics and the works on political economy, and attracted him to the deputy from the Marches, whom he detested and hated through some vague instinct of sectionalism, lover's jealousy, and ambition. While Oldofredi walked to and fro, he stared at him fixedly, holding his pen over the paper. This Don Quixote, disliked by the whole Chamber, hateful to all the women, ignorant, stupid, and devoid of ability, who with all these forbidden qualities had nevertheless always been successful in his re-election, in having himself talked about, and in holding a position of prominence in political and social life--this man weighed on Sangiorgio's stomach like some indigestible food to which repugnance is instinctive. Oldofredi was a political sword-swallower. His duels were no longer a topic of conversation, unless in a vague way, as if about something doubtful and distant, because it was so many years since anyone had ventured to challenge him. But no personal dispute could happen in which he was not concerned as second, or arbiter, or adviser, and neither inside the Chamber nor out of it was there a surer or readier authority on fighting. This endowed this coarse, commonplace individual with a halo of romance, and in the annals of gossip it was stated that women were prompt to lay their wavering virtue at the feet of this Orlando of the Marches, who in their eyes could be counted on as a formidable champion to cover their transgressions. 'Have you seen friend Bomba by chance, Honourable Sangiorgio?' queried Oldofredi, stopping opposite the writer. 'I? No,' replied the other curtly, raising his head. 'Where can he be hiding? He is not in the hall; that ass of a Borgonero was making a speech there about some foolery or other. I have been looking for Bomba everywhere. He can only be here, in the company of that idiot of a Giordano Bruno. Do you, Sangiorgio, believe Giordano Bruno existed?' 'I? yes,' he answered dryly. Sangiorgio gave Oldofredi a frigid stare, which would have baffled a less conceited talker. But he continued to walk up and down, with his nose in the air. He lighted another cigarette, making a noisy rustle with his long, ugly, ungainly person, which disturbed the quiet of that studious place. In the little adjoining room at the right the Honourable Gasperini, the white-bearded Tuscan with a subtle smile and a pair of sharp eyes behind his spectacles, had already looked up twice in the midst of his perusal of some financial thesis; he had shrugged his shoulders, annoyed at Oldofredi's obtrusiveness. Arrived at the other door, which opened into the room on the left, he stood still on the threshold, and leaned against the jamb, with his hands in his pockets. In this room the Honourable Giroux, a slow, grave old gentleman with half-closed lids and sleepy look, was reading in a large tome bound in parchment. Oldofredi smiled; then, returning to Sangiorgio's table, accosted him with another sneer: 'He is in there, you know, with Copernic.' 'Who?' asked the other, with the same studied coldness. 'Giroux. Not satisfied with bothering people about his own philosophical absurdities, he has invented some for Copernic. Who may this Copernic be? Pah! Giroux will swear he knew him in Turin, and that he was a _carbonaro_!' And Oldofredi burst out laughing. But he did not see the strong and set expression of displeasure in Sangiorgio's face; he did not observe the slight nervous tremble which made the pen dance between the Southern deputy's fingers. 'And over on the other side is Gasperini, the ex-secretary, who certainly is reading the proceedings of the British Parliament, so as to be able to argue against Giroux to-morrow. What do you think of it?' 'Nothing.' 'Well, I shall pick up Gasperini with two fingers, and put him into Giroux's arms; then their reconciliation will be accomplished, Copernic and Bentham will bless them, and Italian finance--and agriculture, too--will go on in the same way as before--that is to say, as badly as possible.' This he announced in a loud voice, not caring whether the others overheard him. Sangiorgio glanced at both doors, as though signifying his apprehension. 'No, they are not listening. When Giroux is with Copernic he hears nothing, and Gasperini is befogged in English finance. And what if they did hear!' He made his favourite motion of defiance with his shoulders, one of the gestures which had won him the reputation of being a brave man. 'They might answer you,' replied Sangiorgio in an equivocal tone. 'Oh no! they would not answer at all! More likely they would make a note of it, and remind me of it at a future time, in the hall, in a lobby, or in a newspaper. That's the way in politics. Or probably they would try to forget to do even that, as so many others have forgotten. You seem to be new here; you have a great deal left to learn. One thing, my dear sir, I can inform you of myself: in politics one must never reply immediately, to a man's face, directly. Either one forgets or one waits.' 'And supposing you should get an immediate answer?' rejoined Sangiorgio more glacially than ever. 'What! Imagine, my dear new deputy, that for five years in these precincts I have gone about saying the whole truth to everybody concerning facts, men, and events, at the top of my voice, merely to relieve my liver. Has anyone had the courage to defend himself, to answer me to my face? No one has--no one, my dear new deputy!' 'And how is that?' said Sangiorgio, his eyes rooted to the paper he had been writing upon, as if in reflection. 'Come, now! It is because the old ones have exhausted their whole supply of courage--if they ever had any--and the young ones have not yet begun to draw on theirs--if they ever do have any.' 'Do you think so, Oldofredi?' 'Great heavens! Do I think so! The Chamber is full of cowards!' 'It is not, Honourable Oldofredi.' 'Cowardice and Company, that is the name of the firm!' 'I assure you it is not, Oldofredi.' 'You are giving me the lie, it seems to me?' 'Certainly.' 'Do you give me the lie?' 'Yes--I do.' 'You want to prove to me that the Chamber is not cowardly?' 'Yes.' 'I live in the Via Frattina, No. 46, I dine at the Colonne, and I shall be at the Apollo this evening.' 'Very well.' 'Good-day.' 'Good-day.' Oldofredi shrugged his shoulders, flicked the ashes off his cigarette, and went out, shaking his loose limbs. Sangiorgio dipped his pen into the inkpot, and resumed his writing. The occupants of the next room had heard nothing, especially as the conversation had been carried on in an ordinary tone of voice. Gasperini was turning over the English financial reports, Giroux was immersed in Copernic, and Sangiorgio made notes from Tullio Martello's 'Storia dell' Internazionale.' CHAPTER IV When the Honourable Sangiorgio entered the Parliament café at seven to dine, when he went into that dark, oppressive vault, which was, as it were, in a state of fumigation, sundry heads were turned, and his name was whispered in well-bred undertones by the diners. Only two or three tables were vacant. After a moment of indecision, Sangiorgio sat down at one with three chairs unoccupied. At once, from the next table, the Honourable Correr, the young deputy of the Right, nodded to him amicably, and the Honourable Scalatelli, a Colonel of carabineers, with a peaked, grizzly beard and merry eyes, scrutinized him with interest. The other two, ex-deputies, the great Paulo, the big Paulo, the strong Paulo, continued to dispute with the little Paduan Mephistopheles, Berna, a queer spirit. 'Is it true, then, Sangiorgio, about the duel?' asked Correr in a subdued voice. 'It is true,' answered the other, looking over the bill of fare. 'Your first duel?' 'My first.' 'Have you ever taken fencing lessons?' 'A few.' 'You are rash. Oldofredi is a remarkable fencer.' 'A duel--a duel? Who is fighting?' exclaimed the bulky Paulo, having just administered 'donkey' to his friend Berna, who had treated him to 'idiot.' 'Here, the Honourable Sangiorgio with Oldofredi,' explained Correr. 'A fine opponent, by God! He is left-handed, is Oldofredi; you had better take that into consideration, Honourable Sangiorgio.' 'I was not aware of it, but I will consider it.' 'And the seconds--who are the seconds?' inquired the gigantic Paulo, the colossus, the molossus, whom every duel intoxicated. 'Count Castelforte and Rosolino Scalia; I am waiting for them to dine with me,' courteously replied Sangiorgio. 'Excellent! A good choice--seconds not given to mediation, will attempt no friendly settlement on the ground.' 'Was the duel unavoidable, Sangiorgio?' inquired Scalatelli. 'Unavoidable.' 'Oldofredi has good luck, Sangiorgio. I fought with him some years ago, and he cut my wrist,' calmly elucidated Scalatelli. At this, the Count di Castelforte and Rosolino Scalia came upon the scene, and singled out Sangiorgio. The Count preserved the aristocratic chill that emanated from his whole self, from his tall, lean person, from his long, black, whitening beard, from the half-inborn, half-literary composure of a nobleman and a writer. Rosolino Scalia comported himself like an officer in plain clothes, with flower at buttonhole and moustache scented; but he, too, was cool and serious. Castelforte engaged in conversation with Correr and Scalatelli, while Scalia removed his topcoat. 'Well,' asked Sangiorgio, 'what has happened?' 'Nothing as yet,' replied Scalia with reserve--'or very little.' Sangiorgio asked no further questions. The beginning of the dinner of the three men was marked by complete silence. Castelforte was, as usual, supercilious, Scalia grave, and Sangiorgio impassive. 'The seconds are Lapucci and Bomba,' said Scalia, helping himself to wine. 'We are to meet them at half-past nine. Have you provided for sabres, Sangiorgio?' 'Yes.' 'Very well,' said Castelforte. 'I hope you have had them sharpened; nothing is worse, in a duel, than blunt swords. The duel becomes too long, and the gashes are always ridiculously broad, indecently so.' 'I have had them ground by Spadini himself.' 'Well done,' commented Scalia. 'A protracted duel has all sorts of disadvantages; it smacks of the burlesque, for one. One thing I advise you, Sangiorgio: think of nothing, and worry about nothing, but at the first onset rush in; do not wait for your enemy, and make no calculations, simply go at him; for beginners this is the only chance of success.' 'On the other hand,' interjected Castelforte, 'as I was led to understand by Lapucci, the conditions will be of a most serious kind. But you are not in jest, Sangiorgio; it is natural that between two serious men these things should be taken seriously.' 'I have no intention of joking,' observed Sangiorgio, taking some salad. 'All the better. Have you a doctor?' 'No.' 'Let us take the usual doctor--Alberti,' said Scalia. 'I will attend to it this evening.' A small boy in livery, whose cap wore the inscription 'Caffè di Roma,' came into the place, looking about for someone. He had a note for the Honourable Sangiorgio. 'The Speaker of the Chamber has sent for me at the Roma café, where he will be until half-past nine.' 'And you will go,' said Castelforte. 'But stand your ground; do not allow your purpose to be changed.' 'Scalia! Scalia!' cried the mastiff Paulo from the other table, no longer capable of reticence, 'take care what place you choose for the duel! Let it be near a house, an inn, a farm--any sort of shelter. Since I once had to bring back poor Goffredi, wounded in the lungs, and gasping and spitting blood at every jolt of the carriage, over three miles of highroad all stones and ruts, I made a vow never to act as second again unless there was a bed ready within fifty yards.' 'Then it would be better to have it in a house,' suggested Correr. 'A house! Not at all!' exclaimed Scalia. 'It is unlucky in a house. All duels in houses end badly.' The seconds rose, and for five minutes more conversed with their principal, all standing up together. They were watched with curiosity from the other tables, but the three faces betrayed nothing. Then followed a great profusion of vigorous handshakes and of bows. Sangiorgio, left alone, settled the bill. The guests at the other tables also left, bidding Sangiorgio farewell. 'Good luck, colleague! Ram it down the wolf's jaws!' said Correr. 'I wish you a steady hand, Honourable Sangiorgio,' added Scalatelli. 'Do not look at him if you believe in the evil-eye,' advised Berna. But from the middle of the room the enormous Paula, with sudden familiarity, shouted out while he laughed: 'Good-bye, Sangiorgio, and I tell you what: aim at his face!' He understood that they all went away doubtful about the issue. He left two minutes later. At the door he met a reporter of a morning paper, who asked him for news. 'Nothing yet,' was his answer. 'In case--well, in case of--may I come to your house to-morrow for information?' persisted the beardless youth with the boyish manner. 'Angelo Custode, 50,' said the other, moving off. At the Caffè di Roma the Speaker was finishing dinner with his friend, Colonel Freitag, a large man of childish mien, of high-pitched, reedy voice. The Speaker had the worn-out appearance of an individual resting from some unprofitable labour. As soon as Sangiorgio accosted him he went straight to the point: 'Cannot this ugly business be mended, honourable colleague?' The Speaker repressed a nervous little gesture and bit his lips. 'I think not, sir.' 'Now, come, honourable colleague--has there not been some misunderstanding? A duel between two deputies is a grave matter; it ought not to occur without cause.' 'There was no misunderstanding, I assure you, Speaker.' 'I have experience in such things: Oldofredi is rather excitable, you are young, and some joke was taken the wrong way. One ought to be careful on these occasions, colleague; to-morrow the newspapers will talk, and then a scandal will arise.' 'I hope not. In any case, there is no remedy.' 'No one will make Oldofredi say that you, Sangiorgio, brought about this duel for notoriety's sake.' And the Speaker cast a narrowly scrutinizing glance at the Southern deputy's face, but read in it only indifference, impassivity, and he seemed to abandon his attempt at mediation. 'Have the seconds fixed upon the conditions?' he inquired. 'Not yet; I am to meet them at eleven.' And he rose to go. 'Take my advice--give no information to reporters; a Parliamentary duel is a godsend to them. Good luck, honourable colleague!' Sangiorgio departed, feeling that the Speaker's frigid speech and the Honourable Freitag's obdurate silence both meant the same thing. Out in the street, in the Corso, he stopped and hesitated. He had arranged to meet his seconds at the Aragno café, although he was now possessed of an invincible repugnance against his nocturnal vagabondage, this wandering from one café to another, against those artificial camping-grounds of deputies, journalists, and idlers without a home of their own, who, having no family, spent their evenings in those hot, smoke-laden places. An intense disgust was growing up in him for the people who came and asked questions, and wanted to know, and offered comments, and were for ever indifferent. He knew that Castelforte and Scalia must have come together with Lapucci and Bomba at the Uffici; he therefore preferred to walk slowly up towards Montecitorio, purchasing some newspapers at the kiosk in the Piazza Colonna, and reading them by lamplight under the Veian portico. Two or three evening papers announced the duel with some ceremony; one gave initials only, but alleged that attempts at conciliation had proved fruitless. He put them into his pocket, and, seized somewhat with impatience, began to pace up and down opposite the Parliament. The great windows of the offices were all alight; the clerks were still at work. But the square, the large square without shops, was deserted. He walked back and forth, round the obelisk from the Uffici del Vicario to the Via degli Orfanelli, and from the Via degli Orfanelli to the Via della Missione, his hands in his pockets, his head down, stepping out at a lively gait to combat the dampness that penetrated to the bone. The porch door of the Albergo Milano, which fronts upon the square, was closing after the arrival of the last omnibus from the station, and Sangiorgio's seconds had not yet appeared. He became irritated at being observed by the deputies who had passed the evening in the Chamber, and when anyone showed himself in the doorway Sangiorgio stopped, or else turned away fretting with vexation. At length Scalia and Castelforte came out upon the steps; the tall figure of the Lombard Count was outlined against the shorter but sturdier frame of the Sicilian deputy. They were talking eagerly at one another; then they ceased, and made their way down. Sangiorgio joined them at a run. 'I did not wish to wait for you at the café. It is full of people, and they all want to know about it, and I have no desire to look as if I were posing,' he explained to his seconds. 'You did well,' said Scalia. 'When one is to fight, it is best not to be seen, from motives of delicacy. That poser of an Oldofredi was declaiming the whole evening at the Colonne; he is at the theatre now, at the Apollo, for the purpose of being admired. Enough of that--everything seems to be in readiness.' 'The Acqua Acetosa, outside the Popolo gate, is a good place,' suggested Castelforte, 'because one can get there so quickly. We have fixed on the hour of ten, and shall call for you at half-past eight.' All three of them walked in the direction of Sangiorgio's house. He smoked in silence. 'Are you nervous, eh?' asked Scalia. 'Not in the least!' 'Well, then, try to get some sleep. Have you any brandy at home?' 'No.' 'Brandy is a good thing in case of a duel. I shall bring some on the ground to-morrow morning. But do you try to sleep.' 'Confound it! I shall sleep!' 'We have ruled out no strokes,' resumed Castelforte. 'That was what you wanted, I think.' 'Exactly so.' 'I have notified Dr. Alberti,' added Scalia; 'he is coming; his experience will be of great value. Do not trouble about a carriage; we shall bring a landau ourselves. Only be ready punctually, for we must arrive in good time.' 'How is it, Sangiorgio, that you have never fought a duel?' 'Oh, we in the Basilicata are very slow to wrath.' 'It would not seem so,' laughed Castelforte. Hereupon, as they went up through the Via Angelo Custode, they remained silent. Their three shadows were cast conspicuously on the empty street: Castelforte's, lean and almost ghostly; Scalia's, rigidly martial; Sangiorgio's, small but solid. * * * * * Alone at last. The tallow candle shed a dim light in the cold and barren parlour, whose stale air was mingled with the bad kitchen smells which came up from the inner courtyard. Alone at last--he was glad of it, with that savage desire for solitude which frequently invaded his being. On that afternoon and evening the strong sentiment in him of contempt for man, always latent in his breast, had grown apace; for seven hours he was passing through one of the great human trials which leave the soul embittered, disappointed, sickened. In the solitude of his little apartment, in the nocturnal lucidity of his brain, which no man, nor thing, nor circumstance had, up till then, been able to obscure, all the pettiness, the love of compromise, the coldness, the indifference, the stinted zeal of the people he had met with, now stood before him, arrayed, classified, definite. First, the difficulty of finding seconds against Oldofredi, who had a reputation for swordsmanship; then, the very limited enthusiasm of Scalia and Castelforte; all the advice, all the suggestions, all the inconsiderate sayings, all the melancholy forecasts, pitying inquiries, unmeaning, superficial compliments--all this multitude of words, of phrases, of unpleasant accents, disgusted him as they once more filed before his mind, reminding him again of men's meanness and smooth hypocrisy. He felt how everyone, acquaintances and strangers, friends and foes, admirers and detractors, far or near, entertained an adverse judgment of him because of his duel with Oldofredi. He was conscious of the offensive commiseration of some, of the ironical sneers of others, of the wrathful envy of others still, of the profound contempt of very many. He was aware that his audacious exploit of venturing to measure swords--he, the young, inexperienced novice--with a fire-eater whom no one any longer dared insult, and who was an old deputy, was bringing down upon him ridicule, pity, and disdain. In that hour he had the whole of public opinion against him, and felt overwhelmed by the injustice of humanity. It was bliss to him to be alone, to be able to shut himself up with his bitterness and his broken illusions. But he was not quite alone, no--something there was that lay shining on the sofa. And as he took the candle in hand in order to see better, a glistening streak glowed forth. In the watches of the night the sharp-edged swords watched too. They, at all events, did not lie. Stubborn was their strength in attack and defence; it was enough to smooth their sides for five minutes, and the power of good and evil was in them. They never dissembled, but were ready--loyally ready--to parry mortal strokes, to pierce, to cut, to kill; one in his hand, the other in his enemy's; blade against blade; edge against edge--those faithful swords! The word of man by its unkindness congeals the blood, or through its bitterness poisons the heart; a good blade does its work honestly, cuts straight and deep. The human tongue inflicts rending wounds; the sword scarcely gives pain, because of the rapid precision of the blow. Sangiorgio, irresistibly attracted by the sheen of the steel, went to sit on the sofa, and ran his finger along the keen edge of one of the sabres. What did seconds, deputies, friends, enemies, reporters, matter now? The whole affair depended on those two weapons; the end would be decided by a well-tempered, well-sharpened piece of steel. End? He looked about, as if looking for the person who had said the word. But he was alone; the swords lay by his side; his gaze was raptly fixed upon them. For others the night preceding a duel is a night of agitation, of nervousness, of walking the floor; others all have a woman to be reassured by airiness, a relative to whom a letter must be written, a friend entitled to a note, a servant to be charged with an important errand; others are not afraid, perhaps, but they all feel a little troubled, a trifle thoughtful, a particle of remorse; all others are either elated or try to forget, at the idea of the end; some great interest of the heart must suffer; the soul is exalted or cast down, thrilled or plunged in lethargy. Of all this there was no question with Sangiorgio; no woman, no parents, no friends, no servants; not a line to be written, not a word to be said, not an order to be given. In vain did Sangiorgio seek in his heart for the great interest to be hurt at the notion of the end. Whom would it grieve if to-morrow Oldofredi sent him home seriously wounded or dead? To what man or woman would this matter? No one would care--no one; he was alone, in face of the swords, in face of the end. And in that cool process of elimination, in that misanthropical method of selection of men and sentiments, he arrived at himself, at his grand, absorbing, selfish passion: political ambition. If he were wounded next day--badly or slightly would be equally significant of defeat--then the absolute end would come to his profound, intense, burning desire for fame and power. Wounded or dead, no tears of woman, no love of friend, no affectionate regrets, would be his portion; but he, Sangiorgio, would be the sole mourner of his own lost hopes of renown, his own dreams of ambition wrecked in the physical and moral shame of the disaster. The swordthrust which to-morrow pierced his flesh, cut through his muscles, sundered his veins, would find its way to his heart, that hard, fast-closed heart, where only one passion lived, and would give that passion a mortal wound. The slow, substantial task, at which he had been labouring so long with the diligence of an ant, with inflexible persistency, might crumble to nothing the next day. Then, of what account all the strength put forth, all those endeavours, privations, abstinences, all those pangs endured in silence? One stroke of a sword, and all this was vain. Thus, in the smoky light of the tallow candle, in the night, in the solitude, those naked sabres for one brief instant frightened him. At half-past eight precisely the seconds arrived. Sangiorgio, completely dressed, his overcoat buttoned and his lustrous, tall silk hat on a table, was rather pale, but quite composed; only by a scarcely perceptible tremble of one corner of his mouth did he show the least sign of agitation. 'Where are the sabres?' inquired Castelforte. 'Here.' Castelforte took them from their sheaths separately, touched their points, ran his finger along their edges, bent them backwards and forwards with the points stuck into the floor, and tried them again and again, making flourishes in the air. 'Have you a scarf or a silk handkerchief, to tie them together?' Sangiorgio had a scarf ready. Scalia put the sabres into a bag, about which he wound the neckcloth, took up the gauntlet lying on the lounge, and looked at Castelforte, saying: 'Shall we go?' 'Yes, let us go.' They descended the dark staircase. The coachman opened the door of the landau, Scalia threw the swords and the glove on one of the seats; then they all three jumped quickly into the carriage. They drove through the Via Due Macelli, where the florist was displaying a large show of roses, and thence into the Piazza di Spagna. From the woolly clouds gathering in the sky a few drops of wet fell upon the carriage windows. 'It is raining,' said Sangiorgio. 'That does not matter,' said Castelforte. 'A duel in the rain is more dramatic.' In the Via del Babuino demolitions were in progress. Heaps of ruins blocked the mouths of the side-streets; the beginning of the Via Vittoria was all topsy-turvy, since the drain-pipes were being mended. By the time they had reached the Piazza del Popolo, the rain was heavier, and was falling with as lively a patter as though it were hail. 'It will leave off,' said Scalia. 'The wind is changing.' Outside the gate the carriage stopped, to take up the doctor, who was waiting at the Caffè dei Tre Re. Under his arm he had a case of instruments and some lint. He took a seat opposite Sangiorgio, beside Castelforte. He was in cheerful humour, and told tales of other duels he had witnessed. And as the landau went at a gallop over the muddy stones of the Flaminian Way, the first Ponte Molle tram left the station, and rattled off half empty, bouncing and swaying on the rails. The carriage then passed the gasometer, and rapidly bent into the street leading to the Villa Glori. Under the Arco Oscuro the country loomed in sight; the first trees were visible beyond the walls. Then Sangiorgio, who up to that time had been sunk in a sort of mental and moral stupor, in a sort of weariness of brain and heart, roused himself in a state of reaction. Castelforte had lowered a window, and the fresh air came whistling in. As the road happened to be sloping upwards, the carriage was moving at a walk. Sangiorgio began to revive and to think. By degrees, during the approach to the appointed place, all his nervous force concentrated in his teeth, which he bit closer and closer together, minute by minute. He also seized one of the window-tassels in his hand, and closed his fingers upon it with more and more vigour. Under his eyes a streak of warm red appeared, which began to spread irregularly downward. But, as his fervour grew, all desire to show it outwardly diminished; he was slowly shutting himself up with himself, in a sort of romantic, idolatrous self-communion, and to the remarks of the doctor and his seconds he vouchsafed no other reply than a series of more than usually violent nods. The horses puffed hard on the inclining road; at last, at the Villa Glori, the descent began. Then the carriage started off again at a fast trot. There were no more walls; henceforth, to right and left, blooming hedges sped by the carriage windows. For a while it seemed to Sangiorgio as though girls were running along offering him bunches of hawthorn. Then the hedges ceased, and the carriage drove in between two rows of elms, whose tops quivered gently in the wind. A wild shudder ran through Sangiorgio's body, and the flush under his eyes was gone. They had arrived. He wanted to jump out at once; Castelforte held him back. 'Remain in the carriage with the doctor,' said he. 'The exact spot is not agreed upon yet. Wait a little.' The seconds got out. Sangiorgio stayed inside at the window. They were first on the ground. The cabin at the Acqua Acetosa was deserted. Doors and shutters were closed. There was not a vestige of life. The great plain stretched along the river, green, treeless, and without a human creature. Far away, in the direction of the Villa Ada, a long file of white sheep was distinguishable against the uniform green and ash-gray, and a hooded shepherd was standing there erect and motionless. Castelforte and Scalia walked out upon the plain, gesticulating. The weather was clearing a little, though there were still rumblings and threatening signs. The immense area, grown with useless herbage, was such a mournful and desolate wilderness that the shapes of the two well-dressed men moving among the blooming chicory created a curious dissonance in the scene. The Tiber, swollen and livid, was tossing in angry turbulence. Castelforte and Scalia turned back slowly, arguing the while. Sangiorgio was beginning to tremble with impatience. The carriage seemed suffocating to him, and he could barely breathe. The two seconds drew near again. Castelforte leaned in at the window. 'We have found a good place; it is a little soft, but not slippery. We must wait to see if the others are satisfied with it.' 'Here they come!' said Sangiorgio, whose senses had become excessively acute through the excitement. Indeed, the noise of a carriage was audible, and it rapidly grew more defined; the vehicle turned into the plain at a fast gallop, and drew up at a short distance from the hut, in the middle of the field. The door opened, and Oldofredi, Lapucci, and Bomba leaped down. These last advanced towards Castelforte and Scalia, who came to meet them; Sangiorgio's doctor and Oldofredi's kept aside, kneeling in the grass and opening out their cases, so as to have everything ready. Oldofredi remained near his carriage, with his topcoat on, smoking and playfully tapping the croup of one of the horses with his thin bamboo cane. Sangiorgio, his body half out of the door, was casting hesitating glances about. What enraged him was his inexperience, the newness of the thing, and his ignorance of the formalities. Was he to stay in the coach, or alight as his adversary had done? He looked at the seconds. Castelforte and Lapucci, bent low, were clearing the ground with their feet and drawing lines with their walking-sticks. Scalia came to the window. 'Be quick! Leave your topcoat and hat in the carriage.' He took the swords and gauntlet, and turned to the spot chosen for the encounter. Bomba also turned, with a pair of swords and another gauntlet. Sangiorgio, whose breast and temples were throbbing, shivered with expectancy and eagerness, threw aside his hat, tore off topcoat, coat, waistcoat, and necktie, and rushed impetuously towards the seconds. The sharp, hard ring of the swords cast on the grass by Scalia checked him. Castelforte shouted to him from the distance: 'Keep on your coat! It is cold!' Sangiorgio returned, fetched his great-coat, drew it over his shoulders, and joined the seconds. In the centre of the duelling-ground Castelforte and Lapucci were drawing lots for the choice of swords and the privilege of giving the words of command. Scalia and the doctor took Sangiorgio between them, and spoke to him quietly: 'Have you taken a mouthful of brandy?' 'No.' 'That's bad. One ought always to fortify one's self.' 'I shall not need it,' was Sangiorgio's mental retort. 'I am to give the words of command in the fight. You are to choose the swords,' said Castelforte. 'Do you wish to examine ours?' 'I choose our own,' answered Lapucci; 'here they are.' Oldofredi, who was in another part of the ground, considering the landscape with an anemone between his lips, veered to the right-about. Castelforte stepped up to Sangiorgio, put a sword into his grasp, tied its handle to his wrist, and accompanied him to his post. The doctors moved off twenty paces. Scalia stayed at Sangiorgio's left, and Bomba at Oldofredi's left. Lapucci and Castelforte took up their position in the middle, opposite one another, each with sword in hand. Oldofredi bore a more stupid and vacant expression than usual; certainly his mind was as yet unoccupied with what ought to have concerned him most. Castelforte, with his cavalry Captain's manner, looked imperiously at Sangiorgio and then at Oldofredi. 'Gentlemen----' he began in a singing tone. Sangiorgio, whose blood had run violently to his face, stared at him; Oldofredi spat out the anemone, and with an aristocratic gesture dropped his overcoat from his shoulders. 'Gentlemen, it would be an insult to admonish two men of your breeding to comport yourselves in perfectly chivalrous fashion. I will only remind you that you must immediately stop as soon as you hear the word "Halt!" and that you must not attack excepting at the command "Go!" Now let us begin.' He gave Lapucci a nod, who replied with another, and called out: 'Guard!' With a hardly noticeable movement Oldofredi advanced his right foot, bent his arm and sword to the proper angle, and planted himself firmly on his legs. Sangiorgio sprang to the attitude of guard with a bound, stretching out his right arm and sword in such a rigid straight line that he might have been of iron. 'Go!' commanded Castelforte. And they made a dash at one another. Oldofredi's sword struck Sangiorgio's, which was aimed at him in a thrust, warded it off, and slid down upon the padded glove. But Sangiorgio, raising arm and weapon with savage strength, beat back his enemy's blade, and all but broke his sword guard in the onslaught. 'Halt!' shouted Castelforte, interposing his own weapon. The two combatants obeyed, and resumed their places. Oldofredi, a little pale, was smiling; he had gauged his foe. Sangiorgio, however, in whose breast raged the fury of a bull that has seen red, kept his mouth shut, and breathed vehemently through his nose. 'Guard!' said Castelforte again. Sangiorgio, with his arm extended, and his steel's point directed at his adversary's face, glowered at him with such fierce, menacing eyes that Oldofredi took note of it. 'Go!' exclaimed Castelforte. This time Oldofredi attacked, making for his opponent's body; Sangiorgio, standing steady, his arm outstretched and his point at the enemy's eyes, did not parry. But as he saw the blade, with which a feint had been made at his stomach, flash by his eyes and about to reach his face, he met it with a grinding stroke, so sweeping and so determined that Oldofredi's sword fell from his hand, and remained suspended from the lash. 'Halt!' shouted Castelforte. Lapucci and Bomba hastened to refasten Oldofredi's weapon to his wrist. 'Good! Another score!' whispered Castelforte into his principal's ear. Sangiorgio was in a serener state of mind. An internal exultation of pride gratified expressed itself in his face. His teeth closed together. Oldofredi was back at his post, his sword in hand, but this time he was white with the pallor of rage. His teeth, too, were interlocked, and his brow was as dark as if ready to hurl thunderbolts. At the word of command he flew at his enemy at a bound, without a feint or any sort of artifice in fencing, intending to split his head open. But before his sword could reach its mark, the point of Sangiorgio's cut into his nether lip, and rent his whole cheek as far as the temple. The four seconds precipitated themselves on the duellists, and the doctors ran up. Oldofredi was dragged aside, and made to sit on a stretcher surrounded by the six men. Sangiorgio stood alone, sword in hand, half undressed, and dazed, under the leaden sky which once more sent down a muddy shower. * * * * * While the carriage was passing under the Porta del Popolo indistinctly he heard Castelforte ask the doctor: 'How many stitches will be required?' 'Ten.' 'How many days will he be laid up?' 'Twenty--unless a violent fever sets in.' 'By God, what a fine stroke!' interjected Scalia, gleefully pulling at his cigar. 'And then there is the scar,' added Castelforte, laughing. 'Oldofredi will not forget that stroke!' The doctor got out at the San Giacomo hospital, after making an appointment to sign the record of the duel. At the mention of this, Sangiorgio broke his silence. 'Are you hungry?' Scalia asked him. 'He ought to be; he certainly deserves an appetite,' said Castelforte. And they both smiled complacently. The seconds had not embraced their principal on the ground, so as not to be seen, but during the return, in the carriage, they gradually gave themselves up to affectionate demonstrations. Their coolness and stiffness were gone; they looked at Sangiorgio lovingly, with shining eyes, spoke of him proudly, tenderly, as of a good son who has passed an examination and carried off the highest number of marks. Castelforte actually tapped him two or three times on the shoulder--a very unusual piece of familiarity as coming from this grand gentleman. They caressed him with their eyes, with the tone of their voices, with flattering words, showing how they valued him and how well they were disposed towards him after the duel. He received this flood of new friendship very quietly; the tension of his nerves was relaxing more and more, giving room to a strong desire for physical life, in which he would not think, but would only eat, digesting the meal in a warm room, and then sleep soundly for several hours. He smiled at his seconds like a boy who has distinguished himself at his examinations, like a little girl after her first communion. The whole scene of the Acqua Acetosa, with that great, bleeding, streaming gash on his adversary's face, had now vanished; he felt nothing but the blissful happiness of triumphant rest. His features had expanded, his eyes had lost their feverish glitter, his jaws were loosely set: Francesco Sangiorgio looked like a dolt. * * * * * The luncheon at the Roma café was loud and lively. Once a minute Castelforte and Scalia filled Sangiorgio's glass. He ate and drank plentifully, happy in the doing of it, acknowledging by nods the amiable remarks of his two seconds, laughing when they spoke of Oldofredi's mortification, which hurt him far more than his wound. At dessert the genial humour increased. 'Because,' Scalia was continuing, 'because I have a great experience of duels, and I was anxious on your account, my dear Sangiorgio. Your opponent was strong and brave, and had fought twenty times. You were new at it, inexperienced--and so, of course--I was anxious----' 'Oldofredi was not!' interjected Castelforte. 'He seemed to be in a jocular mood on the ground,' remarked Sangiorgio. 'Oldofredi never makes a joke,' said Scalia sententiously. 'One need not believe in his posings. At the third attack, let me assure you, my dear colleagues, he was raving; he went at you, Sangiorgio, as if he wanted to cleave your skull. What a stroke, ye holy fiends!' 'What a stroke, by God!' chimed in Castelforte. And the same complimentary speeches began over again; they were rather monotonous, rather exaggerated, as though proffered by persons still under a recent vivid impression, who repeat the same story a hundred times, rocking themselves to the same tune and unable to think of anything else. Thus the tale was retold three or four times. The Honourable Melillo, who had been at lunch with the Honourable Cermigniani at the Colonne, and who was somewhat concerned about his Basilicatan colleague, had come down by way of the Corso to see if he might meet his carriage, and while he was jabbering politics, shouting, excitedly gesticulating, vociferating, quoting figures and demolishing calculations, he espied the group of three at table in the eating-house. So the Honourable Melillo, the blonde member with the red face and the white waistcoat, had joined them, in order to embrace Sangiorgio, and meantime Cermigniani, the deputy from the Abruzzi, stood by, listening to the account given by the seconds, tugging mechanically at his black beard, throwing in exclamations, and, seized with warlike ardour, planting himself in a sort of offensive attitude. Bencini, the old deputy of the Right, the clever old lukewarm Catholic, suspected of deriding God and the devil alike, was chatting and laughing in spirited fashion, at the other end of the room, with Gambara, the dean of the old Conservative party. Bencini, inquisitive and talkative as a woman, came to offer his congratulations, although he scarcely knew Sangiorgio. But the witty, paradox-loving Tuscan entertained a deep dislike for Oldofredi's vainglorious, swaggering stupidity. He chuckled as he thought of the fury of the deputy from the Marches. Quoth he: 'Oldofredi cannot consign this affair to oblivion; they have sewed it on his face! Fortunately, we are not in the dog-days at present, or he might try to bite.' And all of them, gathered about Sangiorgio, burst out laughing. Castelforte told Gambara, who had come up to him, the story over again, and Gambara smiled placidly as he looked at Sangiorgio with the eye of an old Parliamentarian fond of studious and brave young deputies. Cermigniani and Melillo were listening to the brilliant tittle-tattle of Bencini, with his cackling speech and his dry laugh. It was almost a procession that escorted Sangiorgio to the landau. The sun had come out, the top of the carriage had been lowered, and Melillo insisted on getting in with him. And all the way down the Corso there was shaking of hands, bows, nods, congratulations, gestures, and smiles, in lavish profusion. The street was full of deputies, journalists, business men, and reporters, standing about after lunch to enjoy a little sunshine before going to Montecitorio. The Honourable Chialamberto, the short Ligurian deputy, was having a discussion with Colonel Dicenzo, a lean Abruzzan of ascetic appearance; both bowed low to the four deputies as they passed, at the same time nudging one another. As for the deputy Carusio, in the Piazza Colonna he rushed to the carriage door, made the coachman stop, hugged and kissed Sangiorgio, shouting excitedly that he was on his way to the Prime Minister's, to inform him of the happy result of the duel. In the Chamber an ever-growing demonstration occurred, of which Sangiorgio was the centre. The Speaker maintained, as was his wont, his proper dignity, but in the smile with which he greeted Sangiorgio there was something cordial, something affable, a sort of kindly light. The Honourable Freitag, big and stout, with his head sunk between his shoulders, and in the habit of swinging his bulk up and down the dark corridors like an elephant, asked the Southern deputy, in his small, piping voice: 'In the face, was it not?' 'In the face.' The rest did nothing but stop and congratulate one another with hearty handshakes; they all wanted particulars of the duel. Scalia, Castelforte, and even Melillo, were all besieged; the tale went round of the three sundry attacks and the final stroke; the bellicose deputies listened with sparkling eyes and with occasional exclamations of praise; the pacific deputies listened silently and smiling, thinking of a tournament. A few--the cruellest--wanted to be told more, had the length and depth of Oldofredi's wound described to them, asked if he had bled much, if the wound would heal soon, if the scar would be very plain. But all over the House, by every one, even by the most cautious, even by those who ventured only a word and a bow, the profound antipathy was evinced which was entertained for Oldofredi by most of his fellow-members. In many of them lingered secret rancour because of a sentence, a glance, some trifling insult received and merely endured from forbearance, so as to avoid talk and scandal. A few rare friends of Oldofredi held aloof, satisfying themselves with offering Sangiorgio no felicitations. When Lapucci and Bomba entered the Chamber as if nothing had happened, at about four o'clock, inquiries were scarce, and were dictated by cold curiosity. The two seconds felt, in their turn, the isolation of their principal, who lay in bed, with face and head bandaged, in a state of violent fever. Few asked about him; they thought, one and all, that the wound was a well-merited punishment for his sovereign insolence, but that one ought to be charitable towards the vanquished. The enthusiasm for Sangiorgio continued until evening, waxing higher still at the dinner-hour. Overwhelmed and confused, but always preserving his external calm, which was now and then varied by a stolid smile, he let them say and do what they pleased, listening to everybody and everything, yielding to the enjoyment of this new popularity. He repaired to the Costanzi Theatre, where the 'Huguenots' was being performed, took an orchestra stall, and listened to the music, with which he was unfamiliar, in a half-imbecile state. Behind him, two young men were discussing the duel, pointing at him as the individual who had inflicted the sword-cut on Oldofredi; they spoke in a whisper, but he heard them very well, as he was giving but one ear to the music. After the first act he felt the glow of an ardent gaze upon his face: Donna Elena Fiammanti was looking at him from a box. He betook himself up there automatically. Opening the door, he stepped into the minute room separated from the box and the public by a red curtain. Two arms surrounded his neck, and an agitated voice spoke: 'Oh, Franz! oh, Franz! Why did you fight on my account? It was not worth while!' On their way downstairs, after the opera--in the course of which at least ten visits had been paid at the box--as Donna Elena leant upon his arm, her eyes moist with pleasure and pride, he saw, in the lobby, the monster Paulo putting on a huge overcoat. Of a sudden, the whole fog of vanity was dispelled, and Sangiorgio felt an impulse to throw himself on that gallant gentleman's broad breast. It was he, the mastiff, who had advised him to aim at the face. On the ground he had remembered nothing but that counsel. CHAPTER V The case had come up expectedly two days after a public holiday. In one of the Italian provinces, on that festal day of patriotic celebration, some of the municipal board and the communal council had made most overt manifestations of advanced republican sentiments. The royalist councillors had immediately resigned their seats; telegrams had been despatched to deputies, newspapers, men of influence; the question had all in a moment assumed a serious aspect. The summer season had arrived, and the sittings were dragging along in weary fashion; foreign politics had already sunk into their summer sleep; no important laws were being passed; the diversion came up unexpectedly, as a surprise, and was therefore welcome, and received general attention. The love-making between the Chamber and the Ministry had grown languid, like all passions meeting response and gratification; intimacy had brought disgust to those who had loved too warmly, and the commencement of the dispute, which grew more and more complicated, was the lash that stung the surfeited, apathetic lovers to activity. They had neither the inclination left, nor the strength, for fervent love. They now met to fight, to exchange insults, to wage a war of suspicion, political calumny, and private slander. The chief accused was the Minister of Home Affairs, who, obedient to his ideal worship of liberty, had not found it in his heart to cast off the aforesaid municipality. A man of profound thought, large ideas, fine character, accustomed to take a broader view of political questions than was tolerable to the petty spirit of other politicians, ever rising to a lofty conception of things, he stated that the liberty of political conscience must be respected. In private amused at the unwonted importance attached to the affair, he said there was 'no likelihood that these little aldermen would burn down the temple of our institutions.' He declared publicly that the matter was trifling; and to the anxious, deeply-concerned people who came to appeal to him he showed the calm front of the superior individual, which seemed a pretence, but actually was the security of a quiet mind. But all round him, surreptitiously and visibly, raged the desire for a crisis. All the malcontents, the ambitious, the mediocre, the envious incapables, the conceited fools, agitated, combined, held meetings, talked, harnessing mediocrity with envy, ambition with conceit, discontent with folly. They shouted in the cafés, made speeches at the eating-houses, arranged little sub-conspiracies in the parlours of the furnished houses where deputies had lodgings, behaved like arch-plotters at the tables set out in summer by Ronzi and Singer, the liquor-sellers, in the Piazza Colonna. All day, at all the railway-stations, from all parts of Italy, deputies were arriving with small hand-bags--the emergency-week bag, into which a careful wife packs four shirts, six pocket-handkerchiefs, a pair of slippers, a clothes-brush, and so on, against the possibility of sudden departure. There were already three hundred and fifty deputies in Rome, an unusual number, never mustered in the most active winter sessions. And probably every one of the three hundred and fifty was expecting, believing, wishing, hoping to become, was certain of becoming, a Minister after the crisis. The Minister--a strong, good, and wise man--either did not hear, or, if he did, ascribed no importance to the increasing clamour about the crisis. 'There will be no crisis,' he smilingly replied to those who asked him about it in friendly conversation. 'There will be no crisis,' he stated to those whom he assured of the fact with a preoccupied air of condescension. At bottom he knew the political world and the men composing it. He was fully aware that the Prime Minister was on his side, that the seven other Ministers were with him, that this powerful body of nine would not allow itself to be ousted for no earthly reason but the refusal of a Mayor to sign an address to the King and his raising the cross of the tricoloured banner. He knew the furious lust for power of his eight colleagues, the tenacity of those oysters sticking to the rock; to attain it they had gone through all kinds of political sufferings and agony, and now they would sooner die than let go their hold. He smiled as he thought of what strength proceeds from weakness; he smiled, and felt safe. But he passed on to a more moral flight of thought: his fine beliefs were still intact from scepticism, his faith in human conscience was yet unshaken. He felt that this supreme worship of liberty was rooted in every Italian heart and brain; he knew that mean interests might for a moment possess those hearts and brains; but that all would vanish in the presence of a great idea. Malicious whispers, misrepresentations, false or fabricated news which reached him, were without effect; in vain would some true friend caution him and counsel a pessimistic view. The Home Minister maintained his ideality, which was touched ever so little with bitterness: he was not subject to defeat; he felt morally and materially secure, united with his brother Ministers in a generous cause that itself was strength. He ignored the approach of a political crisis, this Minister; besides, in the political caldron all kinds of characters were cooking, and the traits of every section of Italy were represented. The Sicilians were conspicuous for their warm feeling, mixed with irony and common-sense; the Neapolitans shouted and waved their arms; the Romans waited patiently and temporized, but knew the moment for action; the Tuscans laughed behind their spectacles, smiled mockingly under their moustaches, Mephistophelian and ambitious as they were, and laughed at each other and all the rest; the Lombards, with their aristocratic tendencies, flocked together in a solitary group; the Piedmontese and the Ligurians came and went, and made a bustle without speaking, their communications with each other being through the eye. But the most fiery, the most rebellious and wild, were the members from the smaller provinces--the Abruzzi, the Marches, the Romagnas, the Campania, the Calabrias, the countrymen, the representatives of the provinces that give life and wealth to the great cities, the deputies who had a genuine love for politics, who believed in them, who thought politics were the greatest force in human life, who became drunk with them as with strong wine. But in the midst of all these latent elements of discord the men of the Basilicata never spoke, but coalesced, formed groups; frigid and impeccable, they asked no questions and gave no answers. The Minister, the stanch man and true, felt safe; he had never known fear at any juncture--and now he smiled. When the Minister of Home Affairs entered the hall, on the day when the question was to be brought up, a prolonged murmur ran along the benches. He did not fail to observe it, but, a strong man in great things and small, he had the good sense not to look about, nor to look up at the galleries. It at once occurred to him, however, that the matter was more serious than he at first had considered it. Indeed, on the first day he had said to the Prime Minister, in a tone of unconcern: 'There is a lot of talk about this municipal affair.' 'Heat-blossoms,' the Prime Minister had replied, with a smile. 'Do you agree with me?' 'Of course I agree with you,' answered the other, without, however, specifying upon what points. 'Do you think Don Mario Tasca's speech will be important?' 'One of the usual speeches.' And they talked of other things. His other colleagues in the Cabinet had shielded themselves behind a strict reserve. Vargas only, the Minister of Fine Arts, a lean, dried-up old man, consumed by devouring ambitions, had offered some uncertain resistance, which the Minister of Home Affairs had combated in an uncertain tone. In the Chamber, however, there was undeniable evidence of a prospectively hot debate. Turning over some of his papers with eyes lowered, the Home Minister became conscious, from the loud, Parliamentary buzz, that at least 400 members must be present. He glanced up at the diplomatic gallery, where the Countess di Santaninfa, lovely and pensive, and dressed in black, was scanning the hall with melancholy eyes, and where the Countess di Malgra, a pale, seductive blonde, who was that day wearing a yellow straw hat, never for an instant ceased from intently considering the assembly. The civil service gallery was full; in the press gallery a triple row of heads anxiously bent forward. 'They smell powder,' thought the Minister. And he looked at his two or three brother Ministers, as if he had something to tell them, but they wore such an indifferent air that he said nothing. He therefore merely glanced at the House. It had quieted down, but had a hard, solid appearance; it was a substantial body of 400 silent, expectant men. And in a quarter of an hour, at three o'clock, the orator of the Right, Don Mario Tasca, began his address from the top bench of the last section but one, in a stillness like that of an empty church. The Prime Minister had come softly into the hall, and had sat down at the end of the Cabinet bench. Don Mario Tasca was a white-haired old man, with pink skin, and a white beard for a collar. His style was elegant; it had rounded periods accompanied and completed by circular manual gestures, resembling the rotation of a small wheel. The speech flowed on and on, softly and gently, with never a failure of the voice, never a check, just like the song of a bird. The orator did not look at the Minister; he looked into the air, like an inspired genius. He never bent his head to refer to his notes, but was as one who knows his part by memory. But, under all this external suavity, his discourse yet sounded of rebuke; the speaker mentioned neither individuals nor facts, but, confining himself to terms somewhat vague, stated that certain institutions and certain ideas were being assailed which hitherto no one had ever thought of impugning. It was a speech that did not rail, and was rather nebulous, perhaps; still, it accused. It withheld names, but it scorched consciences. The Minister paid close attention, and from time to time glanced sideways at the Premier, who never once turned in his direction; the other Ministers also listened attentively to Don Mario Tasca, who continued in his beautiful, fluent prose. All the deputies were turned to the right and were lending ear; up above the whole public was leaning forward; the two Countesses--the dark and the fair--seemed to be drinking in Don Mario Tasca's words. He spoke for one hour, with never a halt, and scarcely a blunder, and without the least change in the colour of his vocal tone. He challenged the Minister, in his last sentences, which became briefer and ever more contracted, to answer whether he intended to persist in this criminal do-as-you-like, go-as-you-please system. A very, very long murmur of applause rewarded Don Mario Tasca. The Minister, before replying, tried to question his chief with his eyes, but the Prime Minister was writing, and this was therefore impossible. He then rose, and answered very placably, very judicially, reducing the question to its lowest terms, declaring it unimportant, planing and smoothing all the facts, having recourse to a number of highly-sensible arguments, foregoing expansion into fine language, which he believed inept. And as he spoke so calmly, he looked about, casting questioning glances at the deputies' faces, as if seeking their approval. But their faces did not light up, for they were displeased. The deputies were not mollified--no, not they; they had come here wrought up by a week of debate and anticipation, the matter was very serious, and the Minister had tried to deal them another hand by belittling the whole affair. Fruitlessly did he lavish the best of his cleverness and ingenuity, as well as striking sallies both lucid and logical; he continued in the wrong key, not having caught the spirit of the occasion, blind to the circumstance that good oratory was the thing on a day when a crisis threatened. He took note of the general dissatisfaction but without understanding its cause--he still thought he could win this battle with the plain weapons of reason. But glacial silence prevailed in the hall at the close of his defence. Niccolo Ferro, the Radical deputy, hereupon requested the floor. The Minister frowned; that moment foreboded peril. Niccolo Ferro, the best speaker of the Extreme Left, calm, lucid, imperturbable, strong in logic as in rhetoric, threw so clear a light on the situation that it was no longer subject to doubt. The action of that Mayor was held up in its real and great importance; it was a sign of the times; no one would venture to violate liberty of conscience so far as to prohibit or punish such manifestations. He treated of the historical traditions of the communes, of the long strife in Italy for the attainment of that state of freedom, which was yet in the bud, but which would soon blossom out. A Councillor is a man, he is a citizen, said the orator; he thinks according to his convictions, and acts as he thinks. Institutions are not destroyed by the hands of men, but fall because of their inherent corruption; not men strangle them, but new ideas are their ruin. They fatally rot through the germs of disease they contain; nothing can ever save them when decay has progressed so far. Fundamentally Niccolo Ferro was both pleased and displeased with the Minister, and he declared it openly. He was displeased because he, the champion of liberty, was attempting to throw ridicule on the courageous and bold conduct of this clear-sighted municipality; he was pleased because he knew that the old faith never changed in the hearts of upright men, despite the allurements of despotism to those in power; and he was convinced that never would a tyrannous act be done under instruction from that illustrious man. The illustrious man had absorbed the whole speech, while nervously twisting his gray moustache. He looked at Niccolo Ferro, his friend, very gently, quite unreprovingly. He felt crushed; he felt the amazement of the Chamber at this fresh piece of audacity from the Radical party; he felt that they all, friend and foe, wanted to force him into an equivocal position, from which there was no escape. He could neither declare himself out and out of Niccolo Ferro's opinion, nor oppose him. In that hour he was conscious of having indulged in a too loyal policy, founded on truth alone, inspired solely by lofty principles, independent of men and events, poetical almost and unreal--a policy so unpractical that it lent itself to ready defeat by both the Right and the Left at the same time. The illustrious man recognised all this, but could say nothing. Possibly, in this peril the old Prime Minister, by addressing the house in his kindly, easy way, might save the situation; he might put Don Mario Tasca's mystical, lyrical apprehensions, and Niccolo Ferro's uncalled-for petulance, in their proper places. But the old Premier was reading a letter, as though he were in the peace of his study instead of in the tumult of the hall. The floor was then given to the Honourable Sangiorgio, and immediately the assembly was hushed. The Prime Minister raised his hoary head, and looked at the Basilicatan deputy as piercingly as if he were trying to read his soul; the Home Minister breathed a sigh of relief, supposing that what himself and the Premier had omitted Sangiorgio would say. Sangiorgio was clever, and was friendly to the Ministry, so that he could not fail to set things right. Instead, in one first cruel sentence, the Honourable Sangiorgio fell fiercely and with concentrated wrath upon the Government's home policy. Don Mario Tasca and Niccolo Ferro had said too little, whether for or against. Things really bore a far graver aspect. For a year back the worst disorder had reigned in the management of internal affairs; there was no longer a guiding hand, no longer a bridle; the public officials performed their duties at haphazard, or did nothing at all, having no orders. The policy of the Home Department was founded on equivocation and culpable carelessness; these elastic theories of liberty were causing havoc. And this bitter, almost tragical vein of attack was readily guessed to correspond to the sentiment of the House, which murmured approval of each sentence. Sangiorgio cited facts. He enumerated the Republican associations, which in the course of a year had increased beyond measure; he declared that Republican committees were multiplying everywhere, and likewise rebellious acts, which were done not by that single Mayor, nor in that single place, but by other public officials elsewhere. He spoke of a Prefect who had consented to take part in a banquet where toasts to the King were prohibited, and said that the Minister of Home Affairs, although he knew of it, and in spite of the articles in the Royalist newspapers, had not reprimanded such Prefects, Commissioners, and delegates, all of whom were allowed the free scope of their own opinions and own will, committing deeds inexcusably arbitrary or weak. But the dominant note was their indolence, their shameful neglect. No energetic circular of instructions was ever sent from Rome. The reports of the most zealous functionaries always remained unanswered, or were replied to ambiguously; at Rome, a number of philosophical and sociological deductions were indulged in, but never was an energetic step taken. The Chamber applauded Sangiorgio so vociferously that the Speaker was obliged to call for order twice. Sangiorgio spoke with a peculiar hardness of voice, with such sharp accent and brevity of phrase, and with such bare simplicity, that the smallest points told. His facts were like so many blows from an unerring weapon, each striking the mark remorselessly. It was a document of impeachment, a summary compiled with the cold cruelty of a judge in vindication of law and ethics. Sangiorgio's face was set and severe, his features were rigid; he did not smile, did not gesticulate, nor had recourse to any of the common artifices of oratory; he seemed to be so sure of his cause, and so wrapt up in it, that he considered a cold, precise exposition sufficient. He supplied no comments, or very few, but enumerated facts, proceeding from one to another, with the occasional remark: 'But that is not all; there is more.' This sentence, repeated at intervals of three or four minutes with the regularity of a tragic refrain, made a deep impression; nervous tremors seem to run down the spinal column of that great body in the Chamber. The atmosphere of Parliament was laden with electricity. No one was writing, no one was reading--all were turned towards the speaker; groups of listeners had gathered near his section; some had even climbed the stairs, as if to drink in Sangiorgio's words, in their exaggerated attentiveness. Up above, in the diplomatic gallery, had appeared the ever-beautiful Countess Lalla d' Ariccia, who was the surest barometer of a crisis, for she never came excepting in electrical weather. Donna Luisa Catalani was leaning over, her little head tied about with a white veil, and beside her Donna Angelica Vargas looked down, her lovely face unveiled, quite pink at the temples, under the excitement of curiosity. The speaker recapitulated all he had said, using his synthesis upon the audience with the force of a hammer. And without adding any deductions, without challenging reply, without so much as expecting one, and in disdain of whatever argument from whatever opponent, he read out the following motion: 'That the Chamber, disapproving of the Ministry's home policy, now proceed with the business of the day. Francesco Sangiorgio.' Then there arose such a huge, irrepressible clamour that for five minutes the Speaker rang his bell in vain. Discussion rang all over the hall, on the steps, in the hemicycle, on the benches, in the galleries--everywhere. The ladies in the diplomatic gallery stared and stared, themselves, perhaps, also seized with nervous agitation. And the strong, honest man who was Minister of Home Affairs had, without budging, received the strokes of the Honourable Sangiorgio in his breast, half admiring his adversary's might. Only, towards the end, when the ultimate solution was becoming plain, a growing doubt assailed him. After that extremely vigorous attack, coming from the Centre, from a Ministerialist, from a man who had shown democratic leanings, the situation was so perilous that only the Prime Minister could relieve it. Defence now devolved upon the senior, the chief, the old Parliamentarian. A new and bitter suspicion sprang from the Minister's heart to his head, and in those five minutes of Parliamentary uproar, like certain poisonous plants indigenous to the tropics so this suspicion spread apace in his soul. He looked at the old Prime Minister as penetratingly as if he wanted to tear the truth from out of him, yet, fearing lest some emotion might cloak his voice, he said not a word to him, nor asked him a single question, but merely looked at him, expecting him to come out of his silence, to come to life, for that morning he might as well have been dead. The Prime Minister, however, remained speechless, and went on writing, stroking his beard with his other hand. And the Minister of Home Affairs suddenly composed himself inwardly, showing nothing outwardly but a slight pallor. Certainty was at hand, and it was irrefragable. He felt himself abandoned, felt himself betrayed. His colleagues and the Prime Minister had left him to fall alone. They had already separated from him, as though shunning a corpse because of its nauseous odour. Assuredly the betrayal was complete; they wanted to be rid of him, as of a diseased arm or a cancerous leg. The Chamber would have none of him henceforth--that he felt. When the Speaker gave him permission to answer in his own justification, in frank, calm tones the illustrious man was heard to say: 'I have no remarks to make; I accept the Sangiorgio motion.' At the division, a majority of thirty votes went against him. The Minister of Home Affairs had fallen. A week after the official Ministerial organ, all the other newspapers following suit, published this: 'It is now ascertained that, in the reconstruction of the Cabinet, Don Silvio Vargas will exchange from the Fine Arts to the Home Department. The Honourable Sangiorgio, in vain requested to join in the new combination, has persistently refused, and has left for the Basilicata.' PART III CHAPTER I A soft breath of lamentation; a dim light, which the blue flamelets cast against the massive granite walls in tedious pagan obsequies had never dispelled; a veiled light, which the yellow taper of Christian burial rites could not strengthen; a chill, sepulchral atmosphere; a frequent sob of music; a great, black mass of people, lost, as it were, in the funeral shadows; in the air, in the light, in the flames, in the music, tears shed and the desire to shed more, betokening irremediable woe. As for him, sitting in his place, and yielding to the state of melancholy contemplation which by infinite, perpetual gradations merged into grief, a secret tremor shook his fibres, and made his pulse throb fast; and by a natural impulse, conscious that he was trembling and pale, he turned round, searching for something in the faint light falling from the velarium. Beside him he saw that sweetest of women, Donna Angelica, of truly angelic mien. She was habited in black, in deep mourning, as was seemly in the Pantheon, sacred through the glory and the death of the Hero, and her sad eyes were fixed upon a candle that was consuming away. She saw nothing, and appeared to hear nothing, plunged in thoughts assuredly sorrowful, lost in her mournful dreams. Sitting next to a pillar, she had tried to read in her prayer-book the prayers beseeching peace, invoking rest for the departed; but soon the book had fallen into her lap half open, and her listless hands had not taken it up again. And to him that dearest of mourners, pale as a pearl under her black veil, her sweet lips still apart for the passage of her prayer, her gaze dissolved in sad religious meditation--to him she appeared as a divine shape. And everything, the fitful, blue glare of the lamps, the thin, streaming flames of the candles, the atmosphere of woe, the sorrowful music, the dire gloom that had overcast even the ancient, stolid walls of the Pantheon, the incurable malady of the spirit--to him it was all embodied in that female form sitting near him: she personified the whole of that tepid, damp winter's day, on which the sun was dead; she was the moral seat of the tears that welled from all things; she was the magnetic abyss of sorrow, which the sorrow of all things could never fill, and in the profound shock of his system, in the thrill of his entire being, of flesh, blood, nerves, muscle, in all the strong composition of a strong man, there was aroused, there started into life, grew, abounded, a sentiment of amorous compassion. She, all unwitting, gave herself up to her woman's fancies, which wandered among the tapers, the dark sacerdotal vestments glittering with gold, the tall, almost colossal, human cuirassier caryatides, among all the pale, dejected, sad, sorrowful, or indifferent faces. In spite of the immense throng of people surrounding the catafalque, in spite of the vague murmur detaching itself from them, in that hour of spiritual freedom she lost herself completely--in that brief restful hour, that hour of freedom in which private grief was renascent, and melted and flowed into the universal grief. Now and then, at a more lugubrious strain of music, at the voice of a singer bathed, as it were, in tears, at a sentence monotonously chanted in minor by the officiating priest, she would start, and her desolate dream would begin again, moving through other phases and other degrees, in other circles of melancholy; and in a new, intenser mood did she set out upon the path of pain that gentle souls all must travel. She did not weep, for the occasion was too big, too solemn; but he perceived how her delicate eyelids, as finely made as the petals of a flower, were shaded about with violet; there had tears been, there more would flow. And while he thus ardently gazed upon that sweetest of faces, to which the shadows of pain imparted a nobly ideal expression, and was thinking of naught but that white face, half impregnate, half saturate with tears, and had forgotten all else in his amorous contemplation of the lady, he felt a wonderful change within himself. The infinite grief by which she seemed oppressed he naturally and gradually absorbed into his own spirit; it was like penetration into her heart, slow, but infallibly sure. He asked not the meaning of it, but felt his whole self disappear, drown, perish in that woman; he was mastered, not by her, perhaps, but by what she felt. The whole vagueness, mysteriousness, and unfathomableness of a feminine grief, without lament and without tears, without foundation and without limit, which had appealed to his heart now seized upon his brain, invaded it and took possession, driving out all other ideas whatever. No, it was no longer compassion, the great, natural compassion of a man towards a suffering woman; compassion is, after all, a personal feeling; compassion is something egoistic; compassion is a cry from one's self. It was he, he who was suffering now, as if the torture of that female heart were his own torture and anguish; it was he who felt the sharp pricking of the unshed tears scorching his lids; it was he who was in the throes of altruistic sympathy, and seemed to be lost in anguish, in a great waste of anguish, as that woman seemed to be struggling in a void of suffering. And as the obsequial hour advanced, in the pagan temple where the Hero lay in state, a subtle odour of Christian incense went up; from altar to roof the smoke curled upward in graceful spiral shapes, which became more and more attenuated and ethereal until they vanished above, even like prayers ascending to the Most High. The incense, too, partook of the aromatic savour of tears, and the perfume of it, going through the nostrils to the brain, profoundly affected the nerves, caressing them into a state of voluptuous woe. In the half-light everything seemed to sway under that tragic, aromatic kiss; the women had all bent their brows to conceal the trembling of their lips, and the head of the woman he was watching was bowed down, as though her strength was gone. He sustained a shock, and made a motion as if to support her; but a sort of paralysis fell upon his limbs. The incense burned and burned in the silver censers, without flame, overcoming his last efforts of resistance. A bell rang faintly, but in the midst of such silence it sounded sonorous; Donna Angelica slid from her seat down upon the cold marble floor, covered her face with her hands, and was no more than a heap of black clothes on the ground, unseen, unseeing, forlorn. And he, without kneeling, without inclining his head, without praying, felt annihilated in the woman's annihilation; everything seemed at an end for him, as everything was for her. And at each sound of the bell, as she gave a start as though called by a distant voice, the same action was reflected in him; nothing that spiritually took rise in her but was expressed in him by reflection. A line of priests, with lighted tapers, drew up round the catafalque; a silver cross, on which hung the dying Saviour, stood fronting the bier. And through the music a strident, rending voice was heard--a voice that did not sing, but cried; a voice that did not ask, but implored: 'Libera, libera, libera me, Domine.' The Christian prayer, the painful cry begging salvation, made the sweet lady raise her eyes. And in her features, consuming away in their pallor like a fading flower, in her transfigured features, a true, intense aspiration was declared. Now, while the piercing, distressful voice of the singer sued to heaven for deliverance with religious fervour, Donna Angelica, after passing through all the stages of undefined grief, felt a distinct need form in her heart. She now spoke to God, her lips moving as she prayed for deliverance. What had been indefinite till then now was defined: it was deliverance--deliverance from all that had been, good or evil, happiness or wretchedness--'From all, even this, O Lord! From all, even what has been, merciful Lord! From all, even the dreadful past, O God of pity!' As for him who lay in the sepulchre, and whose funeral obsequies were being celebrated, deliverance had come to him at the glorious height to which he had risen; he had found deliverance, and perhaps special grace. The weight of a royal crown, the burden of a reign, the heavy responsibility of the law and of the majestic will, a load of thought and care--deliverance had come to lift all from his soul, now at rest in the ineffable peace. 'As the King sleeps, so let me sleep, O Lord!' she prayed. 'As Thou hast delivered the strong soul of the King, O Lord, so do Thou deliver my weak soul! Even if Death be the deliverer, let me die and be delivered, O Lord!' In this supreme moment the lovely, despairing creature stretched out her arms to heaven, and as she prayed the hot, rebellious tears, so long restrained, coursed down her cheeks. He had heard, in a mysterious way, what she besought of God. And that mourning petition, that last appeal of sorrow, gathered into a word, that agonized, Christian supplication, had also flowed from his own heart, amid the music, in the sensuous sadness of the incense, in the sepulchral glimmer of the candles, in the uncertain rocking of the light, under that blue-tinted circle of the velarium, which seemed to be alive. There sprang up in his virile heart, and flowed from it, the prayer of desolation she offered up; what she desired, he desired. An exalted satisfaction of the soul resulted from this feeling of a common desire; so sharp was the strain, so intensely was his will concentrated upon a single object, that his being seemed multiplied. And as he turned, and saw her feebly weeping, he yielded to the successive, softening emotions of great satisfaction and great sorrow, and bowed his proud head. In truth, he also was weeping--for very love. * * * * * Her face almost buried in a bunch of white roses, with which she was toying, and whose fresh, strong perfume coloured her cheeks, Donna Angelica Vargas was listening to a conversation between her husband and Francesco Sangiorgio. They had been talking politics for an hour, or, rather, Don Silvio Vargas had been talking, as he reclined in his easy-chair, smoking a pestilent Tuscan cigar, and gazing at the dainty flowers painted on the light gray ceiling of the room. He spoke in a dry, hissing voice, by fits and starts, and in abrupt phrases, between the puffs of smoke; every now and then he tugged at his spare moustache, which, despite his years, had remained as brown as his hair. Age did not show in that lean old man, excepting in the thin lines at the corners of the eyes, running fan-shaped to the temples; in the two deep furrows at the corners of the mouth, dug out by his smile; in the hardness of all his features, become almost rigid; in the fleshless neck, where the tendons stood out like the strings of a violin. But otherwise he was strong and robust in his leanness, and when he inserted the round, unframed eyeglass, suspended on a black cord, under his eyebrow, his features assumed a certain vivacity, became almost youthful. With Don Silvio Vargas this eyeglass was an infallible barometer: in his hours of rest the eyebrow scarcely retained it; in the hours of indifference it seemed dull and tarnished, the eye behind it being fixed, and closed or half closed; in the hours of utter weariness, of disgust, the lens loosened from its ring, fell upon his chest, wandered into the folds of his coat and waistcoat; in the hours of conflict, in skirmish, and in battle, the glass stood rigid in its place, clear and bright, and his eye was wide open and scintillant. Both enemies and friends, too much in earnest to be observers, never took note of these changes until later, until afterwards; they overlooked the political barometer; they felt the man's strength, or his weakness, but they did not see the symbols of either. When, after luncheon, Angelica heard Sangiorgio announced, she had risen to leave the room, but her husband, as he folded up a newspaper and opened another, curtly requested her to stay, as if he intended to be obeyed. She remained standing by a vase of cineraria, flourishing in spite of the severe winter weather. She bowed to the new arrival, and did not join in the conversation. Her slender, youthful figure--she had recently quitted her mourning--was clad in a soft gown of claustral colour, material, and style; a thick silk girdle encircled her waist, and her beautiful white hands were lost in the amplitude of the sleeves. From time to time she looked up; at a clever or spirited remark from her husband she would smile, to show that she was interested in the conversation--that she understood, that she approved. At a reply from Sangiorgio, at one of his objections or statements, she would cast a brief glance of appreciative intelligence at him. And meanwhile she tended her plants, lovingly, eyeing them with great solicitude, removing the dust with which their leaves were covered, breaking off the little dried branches and the decayed blossoms, which spoiled their beauty and freshness. She went to and fro among the quantity of green plants, which lent the little drawing-room the appearance of a vernal bower, her tiny white hands coming out of the wide, nunlike sleeves, her fingers pretty as a child's. As she bent over the plants, the white nape of her neck was visible, where her dark hair traced a thick wavy line. When she turned towards Don Silvio or Sangiorgio, it was seen that the violet shadows were absent from her sweet face, from the lids which had shed or suppressed so many tears; charming peace reigned there instead. At a certain moment she cast an inquiring glance at her husband's gloomy face; the bright eye behind the single glass told her to remain. Yet she had finished the daily visit to her plants. She took a bunch of roses from a vase, seated herself in an arm-chair near a bay-window, and inhaled the scent of the flowers, while a little colour strayed to her pale cheeks. On chairs, tables, and mantel lay piled a number of discarded and opened and uncut newspapers, smelling strongly of printer's ink; ragged packages of various colours were strewn on the floor, thrown down there hastily and carelessly. But Donna Angelica neither took up, nor touched, nor even looked at, any of the newspapers; her foot, as if instinct with neatness, pushed two or three of the packages aside. She was smelling the flowers. Sangiorgio had come to that house in the Piazza dell' Apollinare upon the invitation of Silvio Vargas. The Minister of Home Affairs had stopped him on the threshold of the Pantheon, had passed his arm into his, and had spoken to him in an undertone for several minutes. Then he had insisted upon his coming to his house, not to his office--yes, to his house, where they could talk after luncheon--and why the deuce was he never seen there! 'To-morrow, then?' asked Sangiorgio hesitatingly. 'What is the use of to-morrow? No! to-day--this very day!' said Vargas. He repeated that he must talk with him, and, leaving Sangiorgio's arm for his wife's, went off with her. Sangiorgio went to the Piazza Apollinare at one o'clock. Fearing he might be too early, he was seized with a fit of hesitation at the door. But once inside, he was quickly reassured by Don Silvio's cordial manner. Only, while the Minister talked, he listened to be sure, but followed Donna Angelica in each of her quiet, graceful movements. 'Smoke! Why don't you smoke?' Don Silvio urged him, offering him some cigars while he chewed the end of his Tuscan. Sangiorgio looked inquiringly in the lady's direction. 'My wife is accustomed to it; she does not object,' briefly commented the Minister. Sangiorgio did not smoke, however, Donna Angelica's engaging smile notwithstanding. Seated near a little round table, he listened rather than spoke, for Don Silvio liked to be listened to. The Minister, who adored politics with the fervour of a boy of twenty, was that day greatly wrought up on the subject. In the very abuse he levelled at politics, in the very deprecations he showered on them, in his now sarcastically, now angrily nervous speech, the flaming passion for politics was evident that burned in the breast of the old Parliamentarian. And from Don Silvio, Sangiorgio seemed to hear, as if in a dream, a portion of his own thought, an echo of his own aspiring ambition, whose fancies he had never confided to a living soul. He recognised the same fever which had internally consumed him for years, while in Don Silvio the spiritual fire found expression in ideas and words. The Minister was too old, and too passionate by nature, to hide his feelings; he no longer cared to dissemble them. That inner flame must have kept Don Silvio's enthusiasm aglow. Thus did Sangiorgio reason out the cause of such prolonged and lasting vigour. Occasionally, Don Silvio, as he looked at Sangiorgio, suppressed the sneer which deepened the furrows at the corners of his mouth, and smiled almost tenderly. Oh, he did not forget, not he, how his predecessor had fallen after a speech and a motion by Sangiorgio; he remembered Sangiorgio's brief refusal to enter the reorganized Cabinet. He had never been able to testify his gratitude, but ever since the opening of the new session had shown him his affection, had sought his company, consulted him, in a spirit of mingled deference and cordiality. 'But, at bottom, you are indifferent to power,' said Sangiorgio, after a pause in the conversation. 'No,' answered Vargas frankly, 'I am not indifferent to it; I like it; I wanted it. But the Opposition disgusts me. Sometimes it is stupid, sometimes false, sometimes brutal, and it always acts in bad faith. Where is our loyal, bold, cruel, implacable Opposition? Instead of open attack, they indulge in low pantry gossip; instead of fighting, they sneak in corners; instead of an open onslaught, it is trickery!' 'Man is a paltry creature,' observed Sangiorgio. 'He ought not to be, or ought not to appear so, if he is. By the Lord! have I not been in Opposition, too? You remember, Angelica, when I was in Opposition?' 'I remember,' she answered in the sweetest voice, raising her head. 'I was a devil. I took no rest, and gave my enemies none. Never a moment's truce! Now I am petrifying. I cannot make war now, I must wait for it; and this eternal brigandage makes my blood boil! How you fell upon the Minister that day, Sangiorgio! And you were Ministerial! Were you there that day, Angelica?' 'Yes, I was there.' 'And it is to you we owe it that I am Minister of Home Affairs,' said Vargas with emotion. 'Oh no!' murmured Sangiorgio, smiling. 'Yes, yes! The Prime Minister would never have had the courage to disavow his colleague openly. It surprises me, nevertheless, that he spoke of it to you; no one was aware of it--not even myself.' 'The Premier had told me nothing,' replied Sangiorgio deliberately. 'What! you knew nothing about it?' 'Nothing.' 'There was no understanding?' 'No.' 'By God!' exclaimed Vargas, 'you are wonderful!' And he admiringly looked Sangiorgio all over. The latter laughed formally, but immediately perceived that Angelica's face was losing its serenity, and was invaded by an air of fatigue. 'Come to the Chamber with me, Sangiorgio; it is two o'clock,' said Vargas, rising to take his departure. 'Shall you be back soon?' asked his wife, fighting down her appearance of lassitude. 'No; there is the Chamber first, and then the Senate, and afterwards I must go to my office, to arrange about a transfer of some Prefects.' 'Shall you be here at seven?' 'About eight or nine--I don't know.' 'Shall I call for you at the Chamber?' 'No, go for a walk to the Villa Borghese, or outside the Porta Pia--anywhere you like. It is no use coming to the Parliament! I shall dine after I have finished. This affair about the Prefects is very serious. I will tell you about it on the way, Sangiorgio. If any letters, or messages, or despatches arrive, let them be sent at once to wherever I am, in the Chamber, or the Senate, or my office. I am expecting important news. I am coming, Sangiorgio.' And orders were dealt out, short and concise, to his wife and to the secretary who had entered the room; they were delivered in a tone of military command. Don Silvio stood there firm, erect, and strong, like a young man. His feverish ardour was his support; his enthusiasm was his salvation. He went into his study, taking his secretary with him, speaking in low tones and very sharply. Francesco and Angelica remained alone, he standing upright, she with head bent as if in prayer, her fingers playing with the silk girdle about her waist. They did not speak, and the moments went by in the prolonged vibration of a musical beat. Suddenly she looked at him with saddened eyes, clasped her hands, and said: 'Why did you want us to have this Home Minister's place?' And her voice trembled with restrained feeling. Don Silvio returned with overcoat and hat, rolling the extinguished stump of his Tuscan cigar between his lips, his secretary following, with a portfolio full of papers. 'Would you like a rose?' said Angelica to her husband, on the spur of the moment, offering to put one in his buttonhole. 'What can you be thinking of!' he cried, repelling the white hand with a certain degree of roughness. 'Do you want the Opposition to quizz me? A Minister with a rose! I should become the subject of caricatures in the newspapers at once!' Donna Angelica timidly drew back, casting a furtive glance at Sangiorgio. But she did not give him the rose. * * * * * A low sky, with gray, leaden, heavy clouds, becoming black on the horizon, over the Tusculan hills, on Soratte, which itself might have been a great cloud settled down upon the earth; the Campagna bare and wan, undulating in places as though heaving up its inwards; two black hedges, two prickly scant hedges, without a sign of green, without a blossom; a tavern, with a rude depiction on the damp wall of three black decanters standing on a triangle and a girl drinking wine, but with doors and windows barred by decayed wooden shutters; the large gray building where the widow Mangani gives Roman summer and autumn holiday-makers tripe in sauce to eat on a terrace, in an arbour, or in a small yard, where there is room for a table and a pint of white wine; the curious ruin, alone in a field, which bears the semblance of a gigantic armchair with a chipped back, and which in fact is known as the Devil's Chair; a carter lying dozing, face down, on a load of volcano ashes he was bringing into Rome; an occasional fat drop of rain that fell upon the ground; this side St. Agnes' a Cardinal's carriage returning leisurely from the Catacombs, and a few priests walking on both sides of the road; immediately beyond St. Agnes' two carabineers sitting rigid on horseback, wrapped up in their dark cloaks; a gentle, mild breeze that swept the earth; a pungent smell, the peculiar smell of the Roman Campagna, which goes to the brain, and from the brain goes into the system like an insidious miasma; a strange dog, all muddy, that went sniffing along the hedges and looked at every wayfarer with sad, unhappy eyes--these were the things, people, animals, surroundings, seen by Francesco Sangiorgio, towards the close of a winter's day, in the Via Nomentana. And over all things, animals, houses, churches, hung the deep gloom of the imminent rainstorm, the tremendous gloom of a Roman sunset in the Campagna. 'Here is the Ponte Nomentana,' said the coachman, pointing to it with his whip. 'Stop; I wish to get out. And wait for me here,' said Sangiorgio. He walked up the little slope to the bridge, the strange walled bridge, whose broad, graceful arch curves over the gurgling waters of the Aniene, with two large casements facing up stream and down. Sangiorgio stood on the bridge, and, leaning on a ledge, looked into the distance whence the river came. It flowed with a narrow, but deep, winding and singularly rapid current, increased by winter rains; it flowed a dull, silvery, but cold white, without a shimmer and utterly glacial. A number of little whirlpools took shape, tiny circles with an interior mouth round which the water coursed in circular ripplets. On the bank was a little mould of lighter colour, but no vegetation, no gravel, no volcano ashes, and round about was the great desert of the Roman Campagna. It was not raining as yet, but the vapours from the river and the moist sirocco had imparted a certain dampness to the old bridge, and as he touched the wall at a casement where he was standing, Sangiorgio felt the trickling wet; the elbows of his coat were soaking and dirtied. He scanned the Campagna intently, but neither the poorest specimen of a tree nor the meanest specimen of a human being was in sight; the river, which at Tivoli is so magnificent, so gay, so clamorous, over there ran to a very mournful strain. He then posted himself at the casement on the left, and watched the water flow swiftly down to join the Tiber. From here the Via Nomentana was seen to continue over the plain, to make an angle and vanish. In the middle of a field stood a cottage, a tumbledown hovel, with two rooms and no ceiling, and walls like broken teeth; at the corner of the road was a tidy, white little cottage, the Huntsman's Inn, from which a fine meadow stretched down to the river. In the water stood willow bushes, with blackish, scrawny branches; on the banks were small willows, equally scrawny. A boat was held in the stream by means of a rope attached to a wooden post driven into the shore; the water broke gurgling against boat, willows, and rope. With the descending darkness, the sky, too, seemed to descend. Gazing with the strenuousness of an earnest searcher, Sangiorgio perceived a closed carriage to stop near the Huntsman's Inn, but it had halted in such a way that he could see neither horse nor coachman. And then, from afar, on the river's right bank, he saw a dark spot that grew and grew, and he recognised the sweet lady who had wept in church. Dressed in black, she wended her solitary way along the river, walking up-stream, pausing every now and then to look at the speeding current; she moved gently, very close to the water, sinking into the spongy soil, advancing with measured footsteps. When she had drawn nearer, he observed against the dark dress the bunch of white roses from the room at home full of green plants; she held them clasped to her waist with her hands. Two or three times she turned to the horizon, in admiration of the sad sky, which seemed about to smother the earth, and looked for the Tusculan hills already hidden by the approaching storm. Then she resumed her lonely walk with such lightness of action that she seemed barely to graze the earth. Not once did she raise her eyes to the walls of the bridge, to the wide casement where stood he who was watching her. Assuredly she believed herself in absolute solitude, in that vast bare Campagna, that threatening tempest, that last hour of daylight, that melancholy landscape, from which the vulgar would shrink; she believed herself alone, as if in church, praying to God, speaking to God. At fifty paces from the bridge, near the rotten post to which the boat's rope was tied, Donna Angelica stopped short. She looked as if she had been suddenly overtaken by fatigue, despite the slowness of her gait, or perhaps she had succumbed to the great fascination of running water that seizes upon the spirit of the beholder and keeps it under a spell. Indeed, leaning against the post, as if rooted to the river-bank, at one step from the coursing stream, which bent the dark boughs of the willows, Donna Angelica was entirely lost in contemplation of the river. An immense dark roof of clouds--a shroud forestalling night--now shut in the whole horizon round about, and the light seemed slowly perishing, as if being crushed between sky and earth. Sangiorgio was unconscious of everything save that female form, standing stark as a statue on the bank of the river. But a rumbling noise came from the Via Nomentana, a sound of wheels, of trotting horses; and in the gray light something red and bright flashed by. Under the lowered hood of a Daumont carriage something white passed by--a fugitive face, a royal face. The royal carriage crossed the bridge at a trot, the royal lady having responded to Sangiorgio's bow; and the whole brief, vivid, transient vision disappeared in the direction of Rome. Sangiorgio again turned to the river. The lady was unaware of all this. Lost in thought, the noise and the purple passage of the royal equipage--a sort of brilliant, gleaming comet, which for an instant had lit up the darkness of the cloud-ensombred twilight--had escaped her. She seemed to be unable to tear herself away from the sight of the austere Aniene, with its gelid waters. He saw her bend over several times, as if she were trying to mirror herself in the river, or to discern the bottom of it. Her fingers hereupon plucked a rose to pieces, and threw the white leaves into the hurrying flood, which carried them away; one after another she picked off all the leaves, throwing them adrift upon the current by handfuls. She did not angrily ravish the white leaves from their stem, but detached them lingeringly, as if everything in her soul were actually departing or dying with the departing, dying leaves. The hands relinquishing those floral lives had also known the desolation and death of other lives. The last leaf, indeed, faded between her fingers. He could not see all this from the distance, but he guessed it; and as the last leaf went, withered and crumpled, he felt a languor as of death overtake him. After a last look at the Aniene, the lady went back to the road without a backward glance, and got into her carriage. It passed over the bridge at high speed. Donna Angelica did not see Sangiorgio, but he saw very plainly how the pale creature was still pressing the stripped stems of the dead roses to her side. CHAPTER II From his Centrist bench, where he was pretending to write letters, but where he was in reality mechanically tracing her name twenty, thirty times on a sheet of paper, he distinctly saw Donna Angelica Vargas alone in the diplomatic gallery, leaning on its velvet edge. He had felt her presence suddenly, with a nervous shock; he had ventured to turn two or three times to bow to her. She had responded with a grave smile, but had immediately looked away. He knew no desire but to go up there and sit beside her, only he thought perhaps it would be improper to be seen by so many of his colleagues, to make an exhibition of himself. Later the desire became so strong that he rose from his seat, crossed the hall, and went out into the corridor, where he wandered about abstractedly, giving monosyllabic replies to all who spoke to him about the University Reform Law. Upon returning, he still lacked the courage to go up, and was ashamed of his own cowardice. When he was near the Ministerial Bench, Don Silvio Vargas called to him: 'Sangiorgio, listen----' And he told him something about the Communal and Provincial Law, which was then being discussed for the third time. Don Silvio's friendship for Sangiorgio had grown rapidly in a short period. Whenever he was in doubt as to some political or administrative question, he took him to his house, consulted him, or had long conversations with him at his office. This time he had another idea to submit to him. Sangiorgio gave him his opinion, and then added: 'Is Madame Vargas up there?' 'Oh yes,' said Vargas quite indifferently, without turning his head. 'Do you think these clauses will be debated on?' 'Yes, especially the fourth; the Extreme Left attaches great importance to it.' 'Shall you speak, Sangiorgio?' 'I hardly know----' 'You ought to speak. Listen: come to dinner at my house to-morrow; I want to explain some of my views to you.' 'I shall be there,' replied the other after a moment's hesitation. Hereupon he moved off, but the Minister whispered to him to come back. 'As you are going to sacrifice yourself to me, go up and keep my wife company for a little. She is bored to death, and I have not even time to nod to her.' 'She is bored, you say?' 'She loathes politics. Woman is selfish, my dear Sangiorgio,' answered Don Silvio philosophically, squeezing his glass in under his eyebrow. Sangiorgio gathered up his papers with ill-dissembled haste, thrust them into his locker, traversed the hall and corridors, and went up the stairs, curbing himself lest he should run. But Donna Angelica did not turn round upon hearing the door of the gallery open. 'Are you very tired?' he gently asked over her shoulder. 'Not more so than usual,' she responded, turning slightly and putting out her hand to him, without manifesting the least surprise. He sat down behind her. She spoke to him without looking at him, which she would also have done had he been beside her, for she was looking down into the hall. 'But you seem to come here often,' he urged. 'Yes, often. Even our dislikes become habits; and besides--Silvio is a Minister, and many people think I am an influential woman. At home there is a constant stream of them who want something.' 'One can close one's door.' 'Yes, if one happens to be an ordinary woman, but not if one is the wife of a politician, of a Minister. Don Silvio is always afraid I shall make him lose his popularity.' Her voice was choked with bitterness. 'No doubt you often must endure vulgar acquaintances?' he asked in a sympathetic tone that made her change colour. 'Yes, I am indulgent enough. It is natural to me to be indulgent. But vulgarity is offensive and painful to me.' 'You must keep your heart up.' 'My heart? The heart does not enter into the question at all! It is the moral being that suffers, and the nerves. So I prefer to come here; it is the lesser of two evils.' 'Do you hate politics so much?' he ventured. 'I do not hate them, and I cannot like them.' 'Nevertheless, it is a great and noble idea,' he hazarded again. 'So they say--but I do not believe it. I understand other ideas as being noble, good, great, generous, fruitful--not this one. I am too ignorant,' she added humbly. 'No, no,' he hastened to assure her. 'You are perhaps right!' 'I am unable to like this idea. To us women certain ideas, abstract ideas especially, convey nothing. We require something real, represented by something concrete--religion by the Church, the figure of the Holy Virgin, Christ; our country by lovely scenery, the sea, the mountains, the friends we love. But politics--a mere idea--what is there to stand for politics?' 'The politicians,' he murmured, after holding back a little. 'Oh yes!' she exclaimed with cold disdain. 'Do you hate them, too?' 'I pity them.' He felt no impulse to retort, but an expression of pain came over his face. 'Well, look at them all; look at them, Honourable! Look at the haggard, worn faces, yellow with bile, green with envy! Look at the fat, flaccid faces, pale and unhealthy! How worn out before their time are some of those men, and what nervousness in the gestures of others! They all seem afflicted with the same disease--a fatal malady which eats them up or swells them out. I imagine that gamblers in the gambling dens must be like them.' 'At least, politics are a great passion,' he timidly suggested. 'Great? Perhaps. So people say, but I do not believe it. When politics possess the soul, they fetter it with contemptible pride, paltry ambitions. Down there are three hundred people, who have minds, and who are educated, who have physical and moral courage, who have honest consciences and manly characters. Very well; those three hundred clever, brave men, those three hundred wills, those consciences, those intelligences--what do they all want, without exception, at any cost?' 'To be Minister.' 'Minister--at any cost whatever. And in that unrelenting pursuit, pray ask yourself, does not the mind ever go miserably to waste? Does not that mind, capable of creating wonders of beauty and utility, if it were applied to the arts and sciences, often accomplish nothing?' 'It is true,' he admitted. 'To invent a machine which will benefit mankind, morally or physically, is that not better than overthrowing a Ministry? Is it not better to carve a statue, paint a picture, or write a book?' 'It is true,' he averred. 'As for bravery, do you think its true impetuosity can be preserved, and its true dashing valour, here, where everything is summed up in a speech, where all worthy initiative is frittered away in twenty-five public sittings and fourteen discussions in committee? All words, all words!' 'But we fought when we were wanted.' 'Ah!' she said, suddenly become thoughtful, 'those were times! We women, you see, understand the heroism of the battlefield and of conspiracies, but Parliamentary heroism escapes us!' For a moment they maintained silence. Donna Angelica's cheeks were aflame, and her hot words, surging into Sangiorgio's soul, made their imprint there as if on soft wax. 'And then there is conscience,' she resumed, purposing to speak out her mind fully. 'Heavens! how can it remain clean among so many personal schemes, so many unavoidable bargains, so much equivocation? How can it be changeless and inflexible when the surest virtue leading to success is actually elasticity?' 'True, true,' he repeated. 'Some are mad over politics, I know very well,' she continued, looking down into the hall, her fingers playing on the velvet edge of the gallery. 'We all know that, we politicians wives. In the hearts of these men it is a passion which dries up all the others. If we live in the provinces, our husband leaves us for nine months in the year, without a thought of his wife's youth, beauty, or solitude. If we come to Rome, it is worse. The house becomes a small Parliament, where conspiracies are hatched if we are not in power, where methods of defence are planned if we belong to the Cabinet. No more friends. Confederates, clients, parasites, rivals, self-seekers--none but such. Their affection is not asked for, but their vote is. Who says "Yes" is a friend; who says "No" is a traitor. The privacy of the home disappears. It is invaded by a stream of strange people who sully it, who turn it into a vestibule, a courtyard, a street, a public square. Confidence vanishes. Our husband is worried and disturbed; we seek to know the reason, and he believes we cannot understand, for politicians despise the advice of women. At table the husband reads newspapers or answers telegrams. At balls he finds it difficult to escort us, yet he is obliged to go, so as to represent the Government, in order to meet influential deputies, to make his bow to the wives of the party leaders, to shake hands with the insignificant creatures who would not live if the great political passion did not. It is either a case of melancholy solitude in the country, like a poor abandoned thing, or else of being mobbed in town, without a breath of poetry, without a smile of the ideal. A great passion, to be sure, but so mad and absorbing and confining that it creates fears and disgust!' Another long silence. Don Silvio Vargas was speaking in the hall, with his strident voice, his hands in his pockets, his thin, spare body swaying slightly, looking at an interlocutor through his shining eyeglass, as if he were making game of him, with the mocking irony that irritated his opponents. 'A great passion, a great passion,' murmured Donna Angelica. 'Women understand only one.' 'Which is?' 'Love.' 'That is true,' answered Sangiorgio. * * * * * 'We dine alone to-day,' said Don Silvio, sitting down at table. 'Donna Angelica is in her room, dressing for the ball at the Quirinal.' The secretary sat down with them at the small family dinner-table; the fourth seat--that of the lady of the house--remained empty. In the middle of the table stood a slender-necked vase, containing red lilies, and Sangiorgio's eyes continually wandered from the vacant chair to the great red flowers. The two deputies--the Minister and the important politician--eagerly discussed politics, eating all the while, Don Silvio slashing his meat nervously while he waxed warm over the Communal and Provincial Law, Sangiorgio listening, answering, stating objections, forgetting to dine. But his thoughts were in a little room panelled with light wood, and cosily heated by a crackling grate fire--for thus he conceived of Donna Angelica's retreat. The secretary only bestowed any real thought on dining, and devoted his whole gastronomical energies to it. But he maintained a serious face; every now and then he seconded a remark from the Minister with a nod, with an air of restrained admiration; at Sangiorgio's sayings he would often knit his brows, as if a difficulty mentioned were apparent to him also. Thus the dinner went by, while two footmen brought in now a telegram, now letters, now a newspaper, or a new dish. Don Silvio at once tore open the despatches, opened and read the letters, cut the cover of the newspapers, and ran his eye down the columns; he would not taste the food, but looked at it with the abstracted gaze of a wandering mind. Beside him were an inkstand, a pen, telegraph-blanks, notepaper, and he would write answers then and there, after pushing his plate away from him. The newspapers he handed to his secretary, having first marked certain places with a red pencil; the secretary read the marked passages with the placidity of an old diplomat. In the meantime Sangiorgio was vainly listening for some feminine sound, vainly keeping on the alert for the least incident: not a maid came through, not a bell rang; nothing feminine happened; not a flower was wanted, not a candlestick was brought; there was no bustle of servants; nothing occurred--nothing whatever. In the privacy of her apartment Donna Angelica was in the throes of the romantic and feverish excitement of a woman dressing for a ball; and the great mystery of beauty adorning itself--amid lustre-imparting, perfumed liquids, loose hair, scattered flowers, billowy gauze, sparkling jewels, smooth silks, soft furs--modern woman's great mystery of Isis, was being accomplished as in a tabernacle. An evermore consuming desire to know or hear something assailed Sangiorgio in the dining-room during all the political discussion and writing; a desire caused by the vacant place at the table where the chair stood; a desire springing from the red lilies--the fiery St. Louis lilies--which seemed to combine purity and the heat of passion. If only she would come out for a moment, to greet her husband, to greet her guest! If she would but show herself, radiant in her youth and beauty! Each time a door opened, as the evening wore on, Sangiorgio started, shutting his eyes, seeming to see her appear in the splendour of her loveliness and her dress. But other telegrams, messages, and letters arrived; in one instance Don Silvio drew a cipher-book from his pocket to translate a political despatch. Where could Donna Angelica be? In what floods of perfume had she vanished? The time went by, and there was no sign of anything in the house reminiscent of ballroom gaiety; the house kept its busy atmosphere; the slamming of doors continued, the loud or low discussions, the coming and going of written and printed papers. It was like a public square, a stock exchange, a political institution, a camping-ground for all manner of intrigue, deceit, and turmoil. Perhaps in the sanctuary within, which harboured Donna Angelica's youth and beauty, there were signs of the female excitement that precedes a ball, and to which is always due a ravishing confusion of scattered linen, silk stockings hanging out of open drawers, unstoppered vials, corsets straggling over the floor. But of such feminine disarray, of such intoxicating disorder, so fascinating to a husband or a lover, no indication passed outside her apartment. Through the three or four doors separating him from the woman he loved Francesco Sangiorgio felt this new charm, which was quite earthly, and which captivated him in a new way, addressing itself to his instincts of sex. He felt the contrast between the weariness, the emptiness of Don Silvio's tumultuous life, and the poetical delicacy of that feminine toilet, and all the perturbation of heart and senses instilled by everything that comes into contact with a woman's body. At last, at ten o'clock, doors were opened and shut, and subdued voices heard; and Sangiorgio, choked by his one wish, shut his eyes to avoid the blinding spectacle of Donna Angelica's beauty. But no one appeared; a dull rumble of wheels was audible in the courtyard, and then in the Piazza dell' Apollinare. 'Donna Angelica has gone to the Quirinal,' said Don Silvio calmly, opening the _Riforma_, which had just been brought in. 'Shall you not be going, too, Sangiorgio?' 'Later on,' feebly answered Sangiorgio, who had turned deadly pale. * * * * * In the white electric light illuminating the grand staircase of the Quirinal the women were slowly making their way upward, touching the carpet only with the toes of their satin slippers. And with sweeping trains, with rich, soft, warm, white cloaks over their nude shoulders, with heads begemmed, befeathered, or beflowered, in their ascent they cast stray glances at the two great green shrubs, at the Muses among the broad, red-veined leaves, at the palms that stood darkly against the white stucco of the walls. The women went up slowly, so as not to become ruffled, and in order that the even pallor or the florid pink of their cheeks might not be disturbed. After all their nervous excitement, the calm self-possession of women determined to look handsome asserted itself. It was enough to see how composedly, in the great, chilly, tapestried place transformed into a cloak-room, they untied their bows, and undid their hoods or their cloaks, allowing them to slip gently from their shoulders, maintaining their likeness to beautiful, self-moving statues. It was enough to see the phlegmatic way in which they smoothed out the flexible Swedish gloves over their arms, while husband, brother, or father was impatiently waiting to escort an unconcerned charmer, who was quietly readjusting a shoulder-sleeve that had become displaced. The journey, too, through the other two rooms and a corridor with statues, was easy and silent; but when the ladies reached the warmer atmosphere spread around by the stoves, and began feeling gratified at their nearness to the scene of pleasure, their lips parted in elaborate ballroom smiles, of the sort which are diffused over the whole face, over the whole person. Near the door of the ballroom, the Chamberlain, offering them a programme, a bunch of flowers, and his arm to take them in, was privileged with the first smile, father, husband, or brother being abandoned without a bow, without a word. There was a vast glitter of jewellery. Upon three rows of red benches sat 300 women, jewels in their hair, on their ears, their bare necks, bosoms, and arms. From some headdresses more unpretentious than the rest shone forth a thin, piercing ray, but when some of the stately shoulders moved, or an arm, or feathered fan, there was a whole torrent of sparks, a brilliant flash of lightning. The women were crowded together, and one female costume counteracted and neutralized another, to be in its turn counteracted and neutralized; neither materials nor colours might be distinguished; only a glimpse could be obtained of a bodice or a bit of shoulder-sleeve sometimes concealed by a flower, a bow, or an ornament. And what eclipsed everything, soft billows of gauze, sheen of satin, intricacy of lace, heavy, dark hair, light, fair locks, the almost living skin of the gloves, the pink on necks, shoulders, arms, was the jewellery; more luminous, more vivid in colour, more iridescent than all, were the triumphant jewels. And under that triple splendour of scintillation, what was most conspicuous, most admirable, and all-dominating, was the infinitely varied loveliness of the unclad arms and shoulders. Here was a cold, anæmic white resembling glacial marble, which froze the glance that looked upon it; here was a pearly skin, polished and transparent, whose colour no shadow could ever change; then came a firm white, under which flowed the rich blood as red cloth appears under a thin white fabric; elsewhere, a smooth, even surface, indicative of a moderate temperament and a moderate temperature, which nothing could affect; elsewhere again, an opaque white, here and there marbled with slabs of pink; elsewhere still, a complexion neither dark nor fair, but cloudy, as though the blood rolled over a bed of black earth; yet again elsewhere, a bright, handsome, striking complexion, like a heavy, thick magnolia-leaf, like the well-nourished flesh of ripe fruit. All the moulded loveliness emerged from the bodices as though softly escaping from bondage; it flowered from the shoulder-sleeves and the billowing gauze as out of a calyx; in its luxuriance and spontaneousness it was like the richest out-blossoming of anything in the vegetable kingdom. Repeated in all tints three-hundred-fold, it assumed a character of general, complete loveliness, like that of a great forest; the individual disappeared, personality was absorbed. Nothing--it might be supposed--could have more enraptured the eye, nothing so effectively set the imagination rioting, with regard to individual charms; but, instead, there was sounded the grand note of the whole of woman's beauty, which the senses cannot grasp, but the spirit grasps, a united chorus blending all voices, white, pink and red, into a single voice. In vain did the dense black and white rows of men, under the band, behind the benches, in the doorways, strive to recognise a certain face or person, _the_ person, _the_ woman. They, the men, were able to see nothing but a great blaze of jewellery, which killed everything else; they merely saw the sex as a single woman with naked arms and shoulders, although they were in the presence of three hundred low-necked women together. But a sudden silence ensued: the three hundred women were struck stark, with unblinking eyes glued to the door at the back. The band intoned the beginning of a flourish, clear, loud, and martial, which was of singular effect in that silence, that essentially feminine display. The three hundred ladies rose as one, with a rustle of dresses; and then they stood waiting, one close against the other, all smiles, with shoulders so high that they seemed escaping from the sleeves, arms hanging listlessly down, faces beautifully and unalterably serene. Behind them, under the band, and in the doorways, the black and white masses of men swayed silently to and fro. The moment of anticipation seemed interminable. Then in the door at the back appeared something effulgent, a multiplied and concentrated effulgence, like the vision of a comet; and as the exalted, irradiant apparition made a bow of supremest grace, the glittering hedge of jewels, the close array of gems, the starry pageant, bowed low. To the eternally feminine in one was reverence paid by the eternally feminine in number. The men looked on in agitation. Standing on the tips of his toes, Francesco Sangiorgio was attempting to discover the sweetest of women. He was with a group of deputies. The Honourable Galvagna, a Colonel from the Irredentist part of the country, and the Honourable Sangarzia, were patiently waiting to reach the ladies. The Honourable San Demetrio was about to dispense gallantry in the diplomatic circle; but Sangiorgio was seeking out Angelica. All those women, standing in a row, with nosegay in hand, smiling as they watched the royal quadrille, confused Sangiorgio; he could distinguish none of their features, recognised not one of them. Never had he seen so many women in a body, so closely ranged together, in all the splendours of beauty and dress, in all the potency of their sex. Every now and then he shut his dazzled eyes; reopening them, he again attempted to seek out the most beautiful of them all, her who, to him, was the only woman. Of a sudden, while Her Majesty was gracefully dancing round the gray-headed, urbane German Ambassador, her long, regal, flame-coloured train flashing like the tail of a comet, and the royal diadem astrally akindle, Sangiorgio caught sight of Donna Angelica Vargas on the arm of a bronzed old gentleman with dyed moustache and bristles on his head that were a shade of black tending to red. Donna Angelica was figuring in the royal quadrille, opposite the very fair, very pale Hamlet-faced lady who was the Swedish Envoy's wife. Donna Angelica crossed the floor with the harmonious, almost musical glide that rendered her step one of her most potent charms; her white, brocaded train undulated gently behind her, as though it were aflow, and in it glittered streaks of silver worked into the brocade. Now and then, as the stately slow promenade, which constituted the royal quadrille, might permit, he saw Donna Angelica's nimble, youthful figure, and the white brocade bodice, modestly cut and topped with a hazy fluff of white gauze; on her white throat a necklace of pearls lay against a pearly skin, and a diamond cross hung luminous upon her breast. Donna Angelica, her chestnut-brown hair closely coiled round her head, was crowned with stars--brilliant stars of diamonds, studding the darkness of her locks, four in front, four at the back, set irregularly and without design, as stars actually appear in the obscurity of night on the dark, deep blue of the firmament of heaven. And the penetrating eye of her lover clearly distinguished on the gauze about the throat a tiny spray of lilies of the valley, without leaves, a scarce visible little spray of lilies of the valley, put there for the poetry and perfume of a flower's sake, put there for discovery by the eye of him who knew how to love. And amid such wealth of beauty, here mild and simple, there provokingly alluring, amid such an exuberance of beauty and seductions, Donna Angelica was beauty undefiled and pensive; beauty was in her melancholy, frank expression, in the peace of a soul that had won its battle. She was the picture of purity. Her dress was a rich, dull white of plain and unpretentious pattern. Between the seams ran silver threads here and there, like gentle thoughts, varying the sameness of such simplicity. The noble folds of her train had a classical aspect, such as the drapery of a chaste, antique statue. Her bodice was of exactly the right cut, in nothing diminishing the attractions of the woman, and being entirely to the credit of the modesty of the lady. About the shoulders the dress was heavy enough to conceal the enticing, almost sensual place where a woman's shoulder becomes her arm. She wore the lightest of cream-coloured gloves of the finest kind, which, covering her elbow and three inches besides, lay moulded to her arm without a wrinkle. She wore no bracelets, but had on plain diamond earrings. The whole impression was one of chastity. There was none of the vacant stupidity of a cross-grained girl, but all the innocence of thought and emotion of a pure woman. To Francesco Sangiorgio it seemed as if he were in the presence of purity personified. Her eyes shed a soft light, her eyelids moved slowly, dispassionately, without a shadow under them of sleeplessness or illness; she looked placidly at the persons and objects surrounding her; her temples were as clear as a child's, and the skin as transparent as the skin round an egg; seen in profile her face showed a delicate pink at the nostril; her sinuous red mouth was shut lightly, like the bud of a flower. And the whole expression of her peaceful countenance was that of a person cherishing neither hopes nor desires. An aureole of something more than human, of something entirely spiritual, seemed to transfigure her loveliness. At the sight of her, Francesco Sangiorgio felt the excruciating desire yield which had possessed him in the dining-room, where he had been on the rack of expectation concerning Angelica, who had left the house without showing herself. Little by little his nerves were quieted, his prickling senses went into a state of languid contemplation. That chastity and purity descended upon Sangiorgio like a refreshing breath, cooling the ardour of passion; affecting him like the beneficence of an innocent caress from the lips of a child, the hand of a sister, or a friend's embrace; invading him like a placid river, gently and silently overflowing its banks. His delirious pulse had abated; the veins in his temples throbbed less violently than before; his wrongful desires of lust had melted away. And while Donna Angelica was standing at rest in the quadrille, he felt her eyes upon him in an open, frank gaze, the which was a clear, steady light dimmed with tenderness. In truth, she was to him in that hour, and for ever, the divine Beatrice. Sitting in the large, royal armchair, the Queen bent over a little while talking with Donna Clara Tasca, who was beside her on a stool, which was her place as the wife of a Knight of the Annunciation. The ardent Sicilian, with bright, clever eyes, slightly grizzled hair, and mobile features, betraying a thoroughly restless mind, was answering the Queen with great rapidity, bending forward also, and showing respectful attention. The other ladies--of the aristocracy, of diplomacy, and of the political world--collected in groups, were conversing with one another and pretending to be interested, but kept every motion of the Queen assiduously in eye. And as yet they would not dance, refusing offers to do so, wrapt and engrossed as they were in the recollection of the words spoken to them by the Queen. Every woman in the place, whatever her wealth, rank, or beauty, whatever her charms of mind or body, coveted nothing beyond that moment's colloquy with the Queen, in the presence of two thousand people; they all forgot every other hope, wish, interest, or sentiment in the feminine ambition for that minute of conversation in public. The girls only, to whom this honour would not fall, who had come to exhibit their young fascinations, to be gay, to dance, to drown an innocent, romantic, amorous fancy--the girls, instead, were already dancing a waltz round a large circle in the room, amid a fluttering of white, pink, and blue muslin, and shyly kept at a distance from the royal chair. The men walked about, stood in groups, danced, chatted--no one paid any heed to them. After the royal quadrille, Francesco Sangiorgio had squeezed through the serried files of spectators, and had arrived within twenty feet of her when she was talking with the deputy, Count di Carimate, the Lombard nobleman, with a black beard and vague, Socialistic principles. But she, Donna Angelica, was somewhat absent-minded; her eyes were cast down, and occasionally they turned in the direction of the royal personage. And whenever that star revolved to right or left, whenever she gave the signal for rising, a prolonged thrill ran through the groups of women; they all turned their heads in the direction indicated, many continuing to chatter or to listen; but they stammered when they spoke, for their thoughts were elsewhere. The Queen had gone over to her Ladies-in-Waiting, and sat down in their midst, while they surrounded her standing. They comprised two Americans married to Roman Princes, one of them remarkably fair, and more English than American, the other slender, affable, and well dressed; Donna Vittoria Colonna, with black, diamond eyes; Donna Lavinia di Sora, with pearl-coloured face and pensive, leonine eyes; Countess Genzano, whose charms were artificial and whose hair was yellow; Princess Seraphita, of classically ideal features, robed in plain white, with a bunch of violets at her bosom; Princess Lalla, whose regular, cameo-lined face was still youthful, and whose shoulders were white and arched; and finally the Marchioness of Paola, the head Lady-in-Waiting, a happy mother with hair yet fair and wavy, whose sprightly daughters, both brunettes, were dancing in the ballroom. The women of the corps diplomatique were patiently smoothing their gloves on their arms, opening and closing their large, soft, feather fans, each for the hundredth time eagerly scanning her programme, as if she had never seen it before. By degrees Sangiorgio had reached Donna Angelica's side, where, after arriving, he whispered 'Good-evening.' 'Good-evening,' she murmured, with that depth of expression quite individual to herself. And she turned to him, asking him whether her husband had come, talking with half-closed lips, while he cast such enamored and admiring glances at her that a slight blush tinged her cheeks. The Queen was speaking in French to the French Ambassadress, a spare, ascetic woman with a long face; yonder the King was conversing with Donna Luigia Catalani, attired in bronze, a strange blue feather in her blonde locks; the vivacious, witty Sicilian was smiling maliciously. A new quadrille was beginning. 'You are not dancing,' observed Sangiorgio. 'No, I am not; the Government does not dance this time,' she replied calmly. 'Later on, if you like, we will take a turn.' 'Later on?' 'Yes, later on.' He did not understand at first. He had been too unobservant, his thoughts all centred on her he loved; he had been unwitting of the scene of feverish female ambition all round him. Yet he saw that something of supreme importance was happening in this essentially feminine festive affair; he saw that these women were completely given over to some idea which made them forget even their wish to look beautiful. The ballroom was now alive with dancers, and the rest of the men were moving towards the sitting, smoking, and refreshment rooms. On the right side of the ballroom the throng of expectant women was still increasing; they were crowded together closer than ever, and, while they still hoped their turn was coming, had no inclination to dance, since their hearts and minds were over in that corner of the room. The Queen, sitting in the recess of a balcony, with only her train and the lock of her necklace showing, was conversing with Donna Lidia, the Prime Minister's wife, a hearty, amiable little woman, who only left her quiet family home on the occasion of official routs. 'That is Donna Lidia--the Queen is talking to Donna Lidia!' the women and those of the girls who were well informed were whispering to each other. The interview had thus far lasted five minutes; the eyes of all the waiting ladies were, by an irresistible, magnetic force, drawn upon Donna Lidia and her Queen, whose movements were subject to general speculation: would she go to the right or the left when she got up to leave the alcove? In the ballroom the couples who had taken part in the quadrille were now promenading; engagements were being made for the polka; the young men were writing with pencils on the girls' programmes; the ladies who were strangers, or elderly, middle-aged, or old, sat on the last row of the red velvet benches with the formal air of people voluntarily bored, and were laden with jewels and splendid laces, and wore feathers in their hair. The women who had been honoured by a few words from royalty went about flushed and smiling and satisfied, with a happy light in their eyes, repeating to one another the gracious remarks that had been made to them; and they cared nothing for anything else, paid no heed to others who were still waiting with ill-concealed impatience. The King was talking to the large, handsome wife of Italy's prime patriot, a worthy lady, with dark skin and honest eyes, dressed all in blue. 'I had hoped to see you before, this evening,' said Sangiorgio, like a very schoolboy. 'Ah, indeed,' she vaguely replied. At that she turned her back upon him. A path had suddenly opened through the crowd, and between two rows of people the Queen was advancing, majestically and gracefully beautiful, in a tremulous, starry radiance. She was coming towards Donna Angelica, and Sangiorgio stepped back, abashed, recognising in that female couple--the simple, serene woman and the royal, smiling woman--the whole potency of the sex. Later on Francesco Sangiorgio and Donna Angelica were walking through the rooms together at a leisurely pace, wending their way through the maze of trains which formed little lanes on the floor, occasionally coming to a standstill when the flood of femininity barred their passage. In the great ballroom, the girls, the secretaries' wives, the ladies in love with balls, the women of the middle class, and all those who had no official position, gave themselves up entirely to the pleasures of dancing; the orchestra was playing lively tunes by Métra and Fahrbach; the animation of the affair was at its height. Others were meanwhile promenading, sitting on lounges in the parlours, holding receptions, and circulating everywhere. The British Ambassadress, with her beautiful and poetic daughter by her side, who resembled a Botticelli Madonna, was holding court in the blue-room to a circle of young diplomats. For two minutes these ladies spoke English with Donna Angelica; Sangiorgio listened without understanding, but what he heard sounded like delicious music to him. The Countess di Malgra, the sympathetic blonde of interesting pallor and bewitching eyes, was dispensing social paradoxes to three or four young Centrist deputies following in her train; Signorina Maria Gaston, a girl of gentle loveliness, the daughter of the Minister of Marine, a mundanely agreeable little angel, was not dancing, but was chatting at a window with three or four old Admirals; Signora Giulia Greuze, the Belgian with a sparkling wit and a beautiful young body, like a rose bursting from its bud, was laughing under a hanging basket of ivy, showing her frank teeth. Donna Angelica, on Sangiorgio's arm, went on, stopping a moment here and there, exchanging bows and smiles with the deputies' wives she met. The little Marchioness di Santa Marta, fair and fluffy, like a young bird, faithful to her taste for dark-red dresses, showing the prettiest little feet in the Italian political world; the Baroness Romito, a gorgeous, sedate Juno; the Countess di Trecastagne, a pale Frenchwoman, married to a Sicilian; the Baroness di Sparanise, the clever lady whose eyes were black as Egyptian night; the mild and affable Marchioness di Costanza, with her caressing voice and gentle footsteps; the two fair-haired daughters of the Minister of Grace and Justice, one blonde and slender, the other blonde and pensive--all these were walking about, without returning to the ballroom, occasionally gathering in groups, laughing together, telling little stories of the evening, looking one another all over with kind though searching smiles, correctly appraising one another's magnificence and beauty. Donna Clara Tasca had stayed half an hour, had chatted with some Ministers, politicians, and deputies, and had left abruptly, following Don Mario, whose political fortune she would certainly have made if he had been less nebulous, fantastic, and virtuous in his politics. Donna Angelica, on Sangiorgio's arm, spoke little, but he asked for nothing more, happy at feeling that modestly-gloved arm on his coat-sleeve, happy at being able to count the pearls in her necklace, happy in the sensation of his foot being grazed by the hem of her brocaded dress. She cast about for her husband, though very dispassionately, without urgency, and without making inquiries of anyone, exchanging but a few occasional phrases with her escort. At length Don Silvio, arm-in-arm with a deputy of the Opposition, appeared in a doorway, came up to her, and, scarcely looking at her, scarcely noticing in whose company she was, asked her curtly in an undertone: 'Her Majesty?' 'Most amiable,' she answered, casting her eyes down. 'More so than usual?' 'I do not know--I think----' 'Well, do you think, or are you sure?' he interrupted severely. 'I am sure--quite sure,' she hastened to say. He turned his back upon her; she was pale and agitated. 'Would you like to sit down, perhaps?' asked Sangiorgio reverently. 'No, no,' she said; 'let us walk--let us walk.' They went into a refreshment-room full of people nibbling or nipping at sweetmeats, ices, coffee, or tea, where the floor was strewn with little bags of sweets. Here, too, women abounded. Princess Valmy was sipping tea and arguing with a little man who was a renowned translator of Plato, a Parliamentary athlete, a Southerner of deep intellect, rather strident voice, and incisive, oft cutting, language. The Countess di Roccamorice was eating sugared chestnuts as she chatted with the Grand Master of the Order of St. Maurice, with his white beard and discreet Lombard smile. The Princess di Rocco, the handsomest woman in Rome, was reclining in an easy-chair, with the Honourable Melillo, the Honourable Marchetti, and the Honourable Sangarzia in attendance; she was consuming an ice, benevolent and placid as a goddess. The Baroness Noir, tiny and frail, in a dress of Japanese blue, with gorgeous jewels--large turquoises set in diamonds--was slapping her fingers with her fan, nervously listening to an argument between the Italian Minister at Brussels and the Italian Minister at Bucharest. 'I want nothing--I want nothing,' she murmured to Sangiorgio, who was conducting her towards the well-laden table. She was trying to overcome her agitation by degrees. She spoke for a moment with Signora Gasperini, the Secretary-General's wife, thus trying to recover her calm; but she was no more than half successful. Deep down in her soul she was still perturbed. 'Would you like to leave?' Sangiorgio asked her. 'Oh yes!' she exclaimed impulsively. They resumed their search for Don Silvio, traversed the red room, the blue room, the ballroom, and the corridor with the statues, where the cold made her naked shoulders shiver, and then passed through three or four empty apartments, arriving in the banqueting chamber, where folks were merrily chattering and glasses were clinking. They turned back, and finally, in the Don Quixote tapestry room, found Don Silvio in spirited debate with the British Ambassador. Donna Angelica was about to accost him, when, by a wink, her husband forbade her to do so, giving her to understand that she was to move on. Blushing, she inclined her head, and took Sangiorgio quickly away. 'Do you not dance?' she laughingly asked him. 'You are too serious! What is it you are so deep in thought about? Politics, I hope!' 'Oh no!' 'Well, on no account think of politics, I beg you!' she said, leaning more emphatically on his arm. 'You are not in love, are you, by any chance?' 'Yes,' he briefly replied. She stopped, put out of countenance, regretting she had said too much. And then she immediately turned to other subjects--the ball, the tapestries, Don Quixote, the heat of the rooms, and all manner of things, speaking in a voice that was somewhat veiled. By two o'clock in the morning the ball was at its height; in the ballroom some forty couples were waltzing, and in all the apartments, among hangings, flower-pots, embroidered curtains, white stucco, and gilt decorations, there was an abounding, a teeming, an overflowing of women, a glitter of starred headdresses, a heaving of lustrous female bosoms. Just then Vargas' secretary came up to her with his officious demeanour. 'His Excellency is obliged to go to his office at once because of an important telegram. He will not be able to take you home.' And deferentially he stood waiting, but as if conscious of being dispensable, to be asked to take her home. 'Very well,' she replied, dismissing him with a glance. Sangiorgio silently accompanied her to the waiting-room, where, under the white electric light, and in the presence of the stolid, almost automatic footmen, he assisted her in putting on her heavy, ermine-lined, white brocade cloak. Without explanations, without a word passing between them, she took his arm again, and calmly descended the staircase, the Vargas groom having preceded them to call the carriage. Arrived at the open door of the brougham, with a gentle, rapid motion she gathered up her train, and stepped into the carriage; she did not bow to Francesco, did not offer him her hand, and he stepped into the carriage after her--quite naturally. Not a word was spoken; but her white train covered Francesco Sangiorgio's feet and legs and the bottom of the small carriage with its rich folds; in that small space, a faint odour of lilies of the valley was noticeable. She had nothing over her hair, neither shawl nor hood nor lace wrapper; her bare head emerged freely from the white of the ermine, and in her dark locks sparkled the diamond stars. From the ample sleeves of the cloak her hands fell on her knees, one hand still in its light glove of Swedish kid; the other was gloveless, with a scintillant diamond ring on the third finger. In the semi-darkness of the carriage, which was making for old Rome from the Quirinal hill at a slow trot, Francesco Sangiorgio dwelt now on that sweet face, whose continued pallor rendered it more fascinating than ever, and now on that little hand, lying as listlessly in her lap as if she were overcome with mortal fatigue. In the long-awaited rapture of that moment, in the strange seclusion of the dark little blue nest, conveying the sweetest of her sex homeward, her lover was seized with not a single desire, with no care for the time which was speeding and bringing separation nearer. That supreme spiritual pleasure he was drinking in, that great happiness was quite without alloy. Motionless and mute he sat, with his eyes enchained, as it were by a spell, seeing nothing but that white face, and that small, soft white hand, which seemed asleep; he neither stirred nor spoke, a Buddhist of love, since there was naught to hinder the loftiest feelings. Never had he known his life to unfold and run its course so smoothly, like a broad, smiling river, flowing down to the sea through a beautiful green plain in the sunlight, barely rippling under the willows. Never had he felt himself thus enthralled by pure bliss, in which soul and senses were alike assuaged, to the delight of heart and emotion. He quaffed deeply and exhaustively that cup of joy in the quiescence and passivity of complete happiness. Donna Angelica from time to time gave him a lingering look. Nestling in her corner, but neither curled nor huddled up, with that beauty of shape and pose peculiar to her, her attitude was one of rest; it was not too loose and not too stiff. She was not asleep--oh no; her large, dark eyes were wide open, and every now and then fell quietly on him who loved her. But all the lines of her face had seemingly become softened and rounded in that state of repose. Like children, like some women whose features relax and grow young again in sleep, whose faces then seem innocent and artless once more, so, in that unruffled moment, she looked like a little girl, like an ingenuous young creature still growing up. She no longer appeared as a woman bedizened in ballroom finery; her cloak might have been a schoolgirl's frock, plain and unpretentious, shapeless and chaste, a maiden's mantle; and the gleam of the diamonds in her dark hair and on her little hand was like a ray of light, not the fulgurant opulence of jewellery. She was a young girl once more, in the pure, spiritual essence of beauty and grace, in a state of repose that was also a new birth. No flame lit up those lovely eyes, so full of peace, chiselled like a statue's. She, too, was very tranquil; her small hand was as wax against the white of her gown; her face was outlined like a luminous oval against the dark background of the carriage, and what she thought or felt was unrevealed. Beneath that external composure, beneath the repose of those lines, perhaps thought was astir, perhaps a heart was beating strongly, perhaps a great inner, intellectual and emotional life was going through all the stages of activity. Yet, perhaps, this calm and peace had reached her very spirit; perhaps within her she likened the depths of a fathomless, steely lake, which no tempest could ever disturb. Nothing was certain, however. She was, as always, enwrapped in the great mystery of her own serenity. Between them both, between the happy mortal who was suffering himself to be engulfed in the whelming flood of spiritual bliss that stole over him, and the young, chaste, placid, and serene being, sat a third--Love. CHAPTER III Scarcely had Francesco Sangiorgio emerged from the Via Babuino into the Piazza del Popolo than a handful of coriander seeds went down his neck, although he could not tell whence they came; a loose bunch of chicory-flowers then grazed his cheek, and in the rush of people he was borne away towards the obelisk. A black, noisy, shouting, whistling mob was surging round the fountain under a white shower of coriander seeds thrown by pedestrians, from carriages, and from the two great wooden stands which, as it were, formed a prolongation of the Corso to the fountain. This dark crowd, with its excited faces, was shone upon by the afternoon sunlight, which covered the square with a cheerful spring cape, and in the tepid air, in the mild February sirocco, the grains of pulverized coriander inflamed the throat and drew blood to the cheeks. Sangiorgio was obliged to use elbows and shoulders in pushing his way through the howling mob, which jerked and jostled him; he was seized with wrath against an amusement so brutal as to outdo the ferocity of animals at play. The crowd reached to the Pincio gates, obstructing them, barring them, clinging to the open railings, turning their backs upon both the avenues; but no one went in, no one thought of going up to the Pincio, all being impressed by the extraordinary spectacle which is always afforded by an unbridled human mob. Sangiorgio made his way energetically against the tide, putting a mighty restraint on himself not to distribute fisticuffs among those who hustled him. But the great difficulty for him was to get into the Pincio; the people who blocked the entrance would not let him pass--were afraid of losing their places, suspecting him of wanting to steal one, believing he wished to establish himself there, not for a moment imagining that he merely wanted to walk about inside. How could a man have the strange taste to walk in the deserted Pincio, on that holiday, at that warm afternoon hour, when everybody was mad with carnival mirth, from the Piazza Venezia to the Piazza del Popolo? The crowd was incredulous of such eccentricity, and refused to let Francesco Sangiorgio pass. Two or three times he shouted, his cheeks flushed with anger: 'I am going to the Pincio! I am going to the Pincio!' He went in. No sooner had he rounded the corner of the avenue than a great sigh of relief escaped his breast, and a sense of tranquillity settled upon his overwrought nerves. He was entering upon the green, sloping solitude of the broad avenue, under the soft shadows of the elms, budding out anew in the anticipation of spring. Not a soul was to be seen in the avenue, which in one direction went towards the Villa Medici and the Trinita dei Monti, and in the other up to the Pincio; there was not a single passer-by, not a woman, not a child. Everyone, everyone was in the Corso, in the street, doorways, balconies, loggias, on the improvised stands, on the pedestals of lamp-posts, on the backs of carriages; everyone, everyone was in the Corso, seized with carnival madness. Francesco Sangiorgio felt more and more at ease and peace, as he ascended to that place of rural solitude. Now and then a shred of an echo reached him, from the Piazza del Popolo, of shrill, piercing voices dampened by distance; but as he went further away the echoes diminished, became quite faint, and then died. To anyone skirting the wall that overlooks the Piazza del Popolo, down below there still was visible a great black, struggling mass, and a great, transparent, white haze, a white, low haze, such as might hover over a swamp. On the ample terrace, broad and cheerful, which is almost a plain, which commands a view of Rome, St. Peter's, the Vatican, Monte Mario, and all the Campagna adjacent to the Tiber, besides the Flaminian gate, a poorly-clad old man was sitting on a bench, under a tree. His walking-stick was left to itself between his legs, the sun was beating down on his face, and he had closed his eyes, succumbing to age, the warmth, and sleep. Leaning, or more properly lying, on the broad baluster of the terrace, a priest was looking at Rome, a little black spot in front of the large white spot that the city appeared, bathed in the mellow afternoon sunshine. Francesco Sangiorgio went up to the priest to see who he was; he found a pale, thin youth, with freckled face; but he was looking neither at Rome nor the indistinct, dark mass swaying in the Piazza del Popolo; he was reading his breviary, a stout book bound in black, with yellow leaves. Sangiorgio moved on quickly, feeling safer than ever. Indeed, in that whole garden, favoured by nurses, governesses, and maid-servants, and adored by children, reigned the stillness of a deserted park, from which every sound and every sign of life had disappeared. The large circular space where the band plays looked as if it had been unoccupied for years; the iron desks used for concerts were standing about in disorder and rusted, as if they had for an indefinite length of time been exposed to sun and rain, without ever being touched by the hand of man; the little stall belonging to the indiarubber ball, hoop, and skipping-rope vendor was untenanted, and the wares hung on a tree with no one to think of selling, buying, or stealing them; the merry-go-round was at a standstill, silent, deserted, with its hideous blue-and-red horses; the rope of the swing was dragging down as if weeping at being forsaken. On other days this juvenile playground was enlivened with childish shrieks, loud laughter, maternal calls, merry voices; now children and mothers and servants were down below there, lost in the great vortex of the carnival, seeming to have forgotten their delightful, verdant retreat, when the nascent spring-tide was calling everything into bloom. At the tiny lake, there was no one to throw bread-crumbs to the handsome white swan, which bent its neck so gracefully, like a drooping maiden, and swam so deliberately about its small stagnant pond; the swan looked worn and sad, as though it missed the gentle hands of the creatures wont to feed it. The water-dial, dirty and splashed, pointed to a quarter-past five--of what day, what year? One of the wheels was broken. No one at all was sitting in the shade of the Swiss cottage so much liked by the strange German seminarists who dress in red, and the pupils of the Nazzareno College; and from the railing separating the ground of the Villa Medici from the Pincio a long, dark, dank avenue was in sight. Under the plane-trees, the marble figures of Mercury, with cheeks rather washed out by the rains, with their curly locks blackened by the dampness, looked as if they had for centuries been tired of standing there. And Francesco Sangiorgio was glad of these solitary, rural surroundings, alive with new sap as befitted the soft season. The large garden, with its spacious walks, seemed entirely his own, left to him by the roistering multitude, apt for the concealment of his loves, the secluded nest of a pure, sentimental idyll. From afar, from the rear terrace, he had reviewed the immense green body of foliage of the Villa Borghese, where it would have been easy to hide; but she had declined, so as not to be obliged to cross the Piazza del Popolo on that horrible carnival day, although the Villa Borghese gardens--yet more than the Pincio--then resembled a huge natural park, untrodden by man, a vast lonely tract of virgin country. Passing the dividing line between the Pincio and the Villa Medici, Sangiorgio cast a regretful glance at the gloomy darkness of the dense alley of trees where his sweet idyll would have been safe from the bright, lavish sunlight, but she had refused, since a special permit would have been requisite for the Villa Medici. What disturbed Sangiorgio, in his walk round the big garden, was the part which faced Rome and the Piazza del Popolo, all that open side, that gigantic breach, whence at moments came a deep drone, the clamour of the crowd in its mirth or disappointment. Each time he turned towards the Villa Borghese, he seemed to be in peace, alone with his love, unmolested in the beneficent, rural solitude. Whenever he turned back towards Rome, the sudden view of the city and the drone and the whole of the unwelcome outer world spoiled all his dreams. That public, that crowd, meant to him obstacles, difficulties, pain. When she arrived, he had been awaiting her for an hour, but had not been impatient, being still unfamiliar with the torture of waiting in uncertainty, still a believer in woman's word. She came by the avenue leading to the Trinita dei Monti, having left her carriage in the Piazza di Spagna; she was dressed in dark-blue cloth, with a thin white veil over her face, which made her look younger; she walked softly, without any movement of her skirts, as though she were gliding over the ground, not coming but approaching. At a certain moment, both raised their eyes at once, and their glances met at a distance of thirty paces. She at once cast her eyes down, without hastening her step; he did not stir from the little buttress he had been leaning against, as he waited for her, watching her advance in her dark dress, in her youthful white veil. Surely she was a spring flower, a large human flower blooming for his special delight. When they met, they neither bowed nor put out their hands; her small fist clasped the handle of her sunshade, a miniature cock carved in wood, with a red comb; they did not speak as they walked together, without looking at one another. 'Thank you,' said he. 'No, no,' she answered quickly, and, looking round with a timid glance, she added: 'Everybody will see us here.' 'There is no one; do not be afraid.' 'No one?' 'No one--because of the carnival.' 'True, they are all in the Corso; I was to have gone, too.' And she stopped on the broad, sunny terrace, whence they could view the whole, great, riotous sea of the populace in the Piazza del Popolo. He felt a pang at his heart, as if the sight robbed him of a portion of his happiness. She laid her slender hand, gloved in chamois, on the parapet, and gazed upon the great, dark floods of people, from which a noise rose up as of a volcano. 'How they are enjoying themselves down there,' she murmured sadly. He waited behind her, seized with a fit of impatience. 'Come away, come away,' he urged. She turned her back to the city, and accompanied him to the large avenue at the left; she kept her eyes on the ground as if wrapt in thought. 'No, there is nobody about,' she said, as though in relief. 'It is fortunate that it is carnival time. The people are nearly mad. Would you not rather be down there?' 'How can you possibly believe----?' he began in an injured tone. 'There are many things I can no longer believe in,' she whispered, as though in self-communion. 'You are so kind; I do not know what to say; be merciful,' he begged, with the humility of a Christian before the Blessed Image. 'I have sad tidings to tell you, my friend,' she continued, with her beautiful, sympathetic voice. 'Not to-day, not to-day--to-morrow--another day----' 'Better to-day than to-morrow,' she interposed, settling her lovely, mild eyes upon the Villa Borghese gardens. 'You must have courage.' 'I have none, none at all----' 'You must,' she insisted, 'in order to be at peace with your conscience.' And with a shiver she wrapped her little fur pelisse about her, since they were passing close to the sombre, chilly region of the Villa Medici. 'Conscience, conscience!' he exclaimed rebelliously. 'And what of love?' 'We must not love,' she said sententiously. 'And why not?' 'Because they will not allow it.' 'Who will not allow it?' 'They.' And, pointing with her finger, she indicated Rome and the Piazza del Popolo, where the carnival fever was at its height. 'But you do not know who they are.' 'They are our conscience: I could never endure doing wrong for the sake of love.' 'You do not love,' he bitterly remarked. 'Perhaps,' she said, lost in contemplation of Monte Mario. 'Come away, come away,' he repeated, seized with a spasm of repentance, and desirous of drawing her away from the spectacle of the crowd. Indeed, as she turned her back upon the panorama of Rome, her face cleared, and her thoughts seemed to flow in a brighter channel. The great peace of the Pincian hill, the solitude, the first breath of spring, the sweet afternoon in the green, the tepid air, the looks of love and respect he bestowed upon her, the fidelity which he manifested, the amorous reverence with which he spoke to her, made her forget the tumult and the shouting of the carnival-smitten town, made her forget that another world existed besides the country, besides spring, besides love. He understood--oh yes--that a little of that soul was his, that it inclined towards him, in that deserted place, in the presence of the foliage, the falling waters of the fountain, the brazen, open horizon. But he divined that some of that feminine soul escaped him, that most of that heart was closed against him. In this solitude, amid the new budding of tree and flower, where Nature was so full of charm, she was kind, and sweet, and affectionately sympathetic. But at the sight of that hard, malignant city, that never forgives, she summoned up all her courage to maintain herself inflexible, stiffened in her purpose to demand and insure the sacrifice of love. For this reason he did his utmost not to let her return to the terrace and to the view upon the town, persuaded that the hour, weather, and place had a softening influence on her. 'One must not love too late,' she resumed, with melancholy infinitely sweet; 'it is useless and painful. Where were you five years ago?' 'Down there in the Basilicata,' he replied, with a vague gesture. 'And I was up there--up there in the mountains, among the snows. I believed in the snows of the glaciers, the invincible glaciers. I married Don Silvio; he was kind; I knew nothing of the sun. Now the sun has come to me too late.' 'Do not say so--do not say so!' he implored. 'We must not turn the snow into mud, my friend.' Then there was silence. He became extremely pale, as though he were dying. Her eyes were full of tears; and he gazed into the brimming orbs, trembling at the sight of those flowing tears, as distressed as if his last hour had come. But he did not tell her how he was suffering; he would not, could not complain; everything that came from her was good, was sweet. With the profound unselfishness of true, strong love, he forgot all his own griefs when he looked at those lovely, tearful eyes, saw the mournful droop of those lips. Her sorrow spurred him and lifted him up; he was carried away by a powerful, voluptuous thrill of sentiment. 'Life is very hard for me, I must tell you,' she continued faintly, as if her emotions had overpowered her. 'I have no children to keep my heart warm with a mother's love. I have an old man who is utterly cold towards me; he is entirely taken up with his passion for something else, for another idea. Oh, if you only knew, my friend, what this solitude means, this eternal silence!' 'But why do you submit?' 'Because I do,' she said, as if this were the inscrutable decree of fate. And she went on walking, speechless and still slower, as though succumbing to fatigue; he kept by her side, without seeing or hearing anything further, his mind and his senses a blank. The sun was setting behind St. Peter's, between the church and Monte Mario. 'It is over, my friend--all over. I almost feel as if I were dead. People see my placid face, my invariable calmness, and they must know nothing more; they must never guess the truth. But there is nothing left in here.' And she tapped her cloak over the place where her heart was. She was unaware what a cruel blow she had dealt the enamoured man in telling him she could never love him. At that hour and that spot she was yielding to one of the melancholy and egoistic outbursts of self-contained spirits; she had lost sight of her companion; she gave herself up to all the private woes of a disenchanted young soul. 'But,' he murmured, 'you have a disinterested, steadfast friend, whose devotion will stand any test; whatever you wish, he wishes; his desire to help you, humbly, secretly, knows no limit----' And he stopped short, because his voice quavered, because his words choked him, because this, his unspeakable love, threatened to overleap all bounds. 'Thank you--thank you,' she said, a sad smile lighting up her countenance; 'I know it.' 'You cannot--cannot know. I have never told you. I never shall tell you. I never could tell you. I only assure you that it is devotion of the deepest kind. Why reject it? How can you refuse it?' 'Because it is too much like love, my friend.' 'Love is not mentioned.' 'It can be inferred.' 'You must not understand it so; you must not infer thus. I am asking nothing; I want no more than to be allowed to give you this devotion.' 'So you say to-day; to-morrow love will demand love.' 'Who says so?' 'Ah me! Experience, my friend!' 'Experience lies!' exclaimed the other, with violence. 'My love is like no other.' Angelica bowed her head for a moment as if convinced, and Sangiorgio repented his violence. 'Forgive me,' he humbly said, 'but the idea of losing you is unendurable.' 'But we must part--better now than later. Later on we should suffer much more; I should be more in the wrong, and you would have a better right to accuse me. Habit aggravates and intensifies love. A day would come when we could not possibly separate--a day of exultation for you, of shame for me. Now--we are still free. What are we to each other? Nothing--and it is best so. We have seen one another four or five times----' 'I have always seen you.' 'In the midst of life's frivolities----' 'I wept with you when you wept in the Pantheon.' 'Among inquisitive, evil-minded people----' 'I watched you for an hour, that day, from the Ponte Nomentano, when you let the rose-leaves drift on the current of the Aniene. You were alone--we were alone----' 'Among the conventional formalities of political life----' 'How lovely you were that night at the Quirinal ball! I went away with you. You did not speak. You said nothing to me. How lovely you were!' 'It is a dream--it is a dream,' she returned, inspired to the sacrifice by his vibrant words of love. 'We must awake; we must part.' 'Then it is death.' 'Who is speaking of death?' He did not answer her question, but she understood his look of pain and reproach. The sun had set, and the great purple, crepuscular shrouds now rose from the earth to the white sky; a cold, noxious breeze sprang up; from the terrace the priest had vanished, the reader of the breviary; from the wooden bench the old man had vanished, the whole Pincian hill was becoming dark, and down below the crowd was howling louder than ever, excited at the coming of evening. She prepared to leave by the broad road to the Trinita dei Monti, but he went with her, as if bewitched, without a word, but intent upon going anywhere with her. At the stone buttress where she had met him, she turned, and put out her hand: 'Good-bye, my friend.' 'No, not good-bye!' 'It is late,' said the beloved voice in a measured tone. And Angelica was lost in the vapours of evenfall. * * * * * From the Piazza del Popolo to the Piazza di Venezia the little candles were now being lit. There were a myriad tiny points of fire, wandering flamelets, in the streets, on verandas, balconies, carts; tiny, nondescript, dirty bundles flew about; long-handled fans were active; handkerchiefs and rags were in motion; there was jumping about and puffing out of mouths--all manner of contrivances, all pranks, all sorts of violence and brutality were indulged in to extinguish the candles. And the shouts of resistance and attack sounded in the universal human echo: 'Candles, candles, candles!' Through all the lights, all the uproar, and all the tumultuous merry-making, a poor mortal was making his way, agonized with pain, unconsciously pushed about, shouldered, jostled. CHAPTER IV Three times they had met on the great road, lined with elms and plane-trees, which skirts the Tiber. She would leave her carriage before it reached the Milvio Bridge, and send her coachman back to wait for her in the Piazza San Pietro. She would cross the bridge on foot, looking about for him at the same time. To-day he had been waiting there for two hours, crazed with impatience and his intense desire of being in her company, walking to and fro opposite the Morteo Tavern, taking a turn in the Via di Tor di Quinto, going back as far as the bridge, reaching the point where the Flaminian Way begins, turning back again, casting restless glances all about, at the green willows bending over the river, at the blossoming almond-trees peering over the hedges of the Farnesina, in vain looking steadily in the direction of the Ponte Milvio, where she was to appear. And when he saw her in the distance, sudden blushes inflamed his pale cheeks; he would not go to meet her, but would wait where he stood, pretending absent-mindedness and unconcern. She always came after missing three or four appointments, was always an hour or an hour and a half late, never apologized, never even alleged the slightest feminine excuse. And he, who was in despair--who up to the last moment had inwardly been accusing her of coldness and indifference, while he stamped his feet in an irresistible fit of nervousness--when he saw her said not a word, but stared at her quite bewitched, compensated by that moment of intense joy for all the suffering endured. Their first moments together were always embarrassing; they knew not what to say to one another, and walked slowly beneath the trees, she with eyes downcast, her hands plunged in her muff, so as to have an excuse for not taking his arm, he twisting his extinguished cigar between his fingers, and in a blissful state despite Angelica's severity and melancholy. The Roman spring was gently pervading the atmosphere among the cypresses of the Monte Mario and the plantains of the Monte Parioli, and from the tall hedges by river-bank and countryside emanated a strong scent of white hawthorn. Angelica's first words usually denoted grief, regret, repentance; brief words they were, but earnest, all of them weighing like lead upon her lover's heart. He would remain humbly silent, at a loss what consolation to proffer to the virtuous and saintly lady, whose conscience was stricken with remorse on his account. She had never spoken of love to him, and never had he asked her for it. Timidity and shamefacedness perpetually restrained him. Perhaps he feared the answer, an answer that might be cruel in its frankness from a woman who was not in love, and whose deep religiosity would not allow her to lie. Thus it came to be naturally established, in their singular relationship, that Donna Angelica was to give nothing of her heart, and was not to be asked to give any of it; it was tacitly but plainly understood that she should accept, support, and endure his love without ever being under an obligation to return it. She was the blessed image that vouchsafed to lower gracious eyes upon the faithful one; and the faithful one worshipped her more and more, adored her, and spoke to her of his love. Under the big trees of the Via Angelica, along which wound the silvery stream, as they walked on the hard earth amid the odours of the country, and as the sad rocking of Donna Angelica's voice diminished, with bated breath did he speak to her of his love. First came incoherent sentences, broken up by passion, which hastily recorded his feelings and thoughts since he had last seen her, or those he had before been unable to utter in her presence; and while he ejaculated these jerky, almost violent sentences he looked at her with a madman's eyes, for an instant terrifying her. But at the sound of his own voice Sangiorgio took heart of grace; his speech flowed more smoothly, his ideas connected themselves in logical sequence, his love found expression in such plain and convincing eloquence of sentiment that Donna Angelica was reassured by his humble and pleasing language; her face grew red like a young girl's in the pure enjoyment of amorous homage. Meanwhile, she would be picking long green stalks, or a bunch of bright yellow swallow-wort, or clusters of the tiny white flowerets resembling lacework, or some of the poisonous red berries, so attractive to the eye; and he spoke of love, and she suddenly rejuvenated, picked flowers, and occasionally took a flower from her bunch to give to him. He would hold it in his hand, furiously desiring to bite it, and one day he wanted to eat the red berries, so vivid in hue and so alluring. 'Do you want to die?' she said jestingly, but trembling at the same time. And that apprehension of hers was one of the moral treasures Sangiorgio was gathering together. One day she stood on tip-toe by a short almond tree, and broke off a few sprigs, smelling them for a long time, with a happy smile on her face. Surely she was spring itself, fresh and lightsome! The almond blossom she gave him he added to a dried piece of lily of the valley, a fragment of cloth from a dress, begged and granted as a great favour, and a precious, invaluable object--a cambric pocket-handkerchief, received one evening when he had grown desperate, after three days of futile attempt, and asked for as something to comfort him. She knew this, and was glad in the knowledge. She looked long in the direction of Castel Sant' Angelo, towards the new carabineer barracks, towards old Rome, where the lights were beginning to be lit. But though she might be looking away, she listened to all the words that Sangiorgio spoke so softly, and she nodded her head, like a pleased child. Thus they reached the Porta Angelica, with minds soothed and at peace; he was to take the Via Reale, which leads to the Prati di Castello and the Ripetta, she was to go by the gate on the way to St. Peter's. But their farewell was long and full of tenderness. One day she arrived all a-tremble. She had met the Honourable Giustini, the half-deformed Tuscan cynic. Her carriage had passed him quickly, yet Giustini had had time to recognise her, and had bowed with an air of astonishment. So much had this unbalanced her that at every step she turned round, imagining every passing peasant to be the hump-backed deputy, and then gazed at her companion in utter fright. He in vain tried to reassure her, to persuade her that a pedestrian could not follow a fast-trotting carriage, that the Flaminian Way was a public thoroughfare, where there was nothing remarkable about meeting a lady driving. Nevertheless, himself was seized with the vague apprehension which attacks lovers in their fullest felicity, and spoils their most innocent joys. That meeting was therefore painful, and the two were unable to settle into their usually tranquil state, and Angelica summarized her fears in this sentence: 'Now Giustini is in the chamber, and is telling everyone, even my husband, that he met me on the Flaminian Way.' In this unpleasant hour Sangiorgio ventured to tell her that the public highways were no suitable place for their attachment, that it must be concealed in a house, between four walls, far from prying eyes and inquisitive idlers. He spoke with such respectful feeling, such deep deference, such honest candour, that, although she at once briefly answered 'No,' she did so in a quite unoffended tone. She replied 'No' to all the humble proposals he had to offer, saying it slowly and decisively, without anger or vacillation. At a certain point she said, as if vexed: 'Stop it!' He stopped. They separated without further conversation. But from the fatal hour that she had met Giustini, they felt the awkwardness of pursuing their love affair in public more and more, of trusting to chance, and taking no precautions although the danger was patent. It was a migratory, homeless affair, a vagabond affair that made the waiters lounging about the Morteo Café, at the Ponte Molle, smile ironically, a melancholy affair, whose tender adieus made the vulgar tax-officials at the Porta Angelica laugh. Two further meetings were very painful. Fear had now settled in Donna Angelica's heart, and made her shudder whenever a waggoner or a huntsman passed by; even the boats on the Tiber frightened her. She was always thinking the boatmen might recognise her, and might salute her by raising their oars. They no longer talked of love. That is to say, he no longer talked of love, since she would interrupt him incessantly, looking round, lowering her head when any carriage with strangers passed, blushing, paling, almost losing her breath. One day when they had an appointment, it rained hard for an hour before the time. He took shelter under the Morteo doorway, but, unable to control his impatience, went on towards the Ponte Molle, becoming utterly soaked, trying to descry someone through the veil of rain. He saw nobody. She could not possibly have come in such weather, yet he persistently waited, sustained by a vague hope. The rain continued, and, of course, she did not come; but he returned to Rome only at seven o'clock, wet to the skin, in an open tram, with his feet on the sodden floor of the last one from Ponte Molle to Rome, in a very downcast, desolate mood, almost ill. He could not tell her of it that evening, since she was surrounded with people, and so she knew nothing of the dismal hours he had spent in the rain of heaven and the mists of the river. But the next time he repeated his suggestion she still said 'No,' although unemphatically, as if she were rather answering herself than him. The hour was late and the weather freezing. It was one of those horrible January days transported into April; a lashing north wind was raging, the sky was murky, and the ground soaking and miry. She had on a little velvet cape, which barely protected her neck and shoulders, so that the cold penetrated her from top to toe; her head was bent, and she was holding her pocket-handkerchief to her mouth. Sangiorgio, too, was very cold, in his light spring overcoat, but he did not mention the fact, both of them being disappointed and depressed by the weather. At intervals he asked her: 'You are very cold, are you not?' 'Oh yes,' she replied gently. 'Oh, Lord!' he said, looking about, not knowing what to do to make her warm. They hastened their steps, but the mud was splashing Donna Angelica's boots and the bottom of her dress, and they could not run. As if accidentally, he brought up the subject of a warm room like his own, like that in the Piazza dell' Apollinare, where a fire was always burning in the hearth, a room where they would be alone. She made no answer. 'Where?' she finally asked, after a lengthy silence. He was about to tell her, but checked himself. 'Down there,' he then said, indefinitely pointing to Rome. Nothing more passed between them. The hour was getting late, and it was growing dark and cold in the deserted Campagna. She was so melancholy and frightened that, for the first time, she passed her arm under her friend's, who received this favour with due humility. Then for three mortal days he did not see her at all. Vargas told him at the Chamber that she was indisposed. The fourth evening he found her alone, for a minute, in a box at the Apollo Theatre; she was pale and looked ill. Behind her large feather fan she confided to him that on her way back from their last tryst she had seen the Honourable Oldofredi near St. Peter's, who had looked her all over and grinned maliciously. Oldofredi was known to be revengeful. Finally, blushing for shame, she expressed doubts about her coachman and maid; she was sure they were spying on her. And, seeing her friend dumfounded and hopeless, she added very quickly: 'I will go--I will go wherever you please.' CHAPTER V When he returned that night to his modest lodgings in the Via Angelo Custode, Francesco Sangiorgio was in an almost feverish state. Donna Angelica's promise scourged his blood, his head was all a-buzz and confused. And immediately upon entering his parlour, a chilly sensation, and the bad smell forever pervading the place, made him shudder and feel nauseated. In order not to see the bare, wretched room, he neither lighted the lamp nor even struck a match. He threw himself dressed on his bed, and thought of the sort of house in which he could receive Donna Angelica. His heated imagination, consumed with excitement and love, soared in visions. He conceived nothing definite, nothing exact. He saw before his open eyes a flight of warm, scented rooms, with heavy, triple curtains, with soft carpets deadening every sound, but did not know where they would be, these rooms. He could not determine in what part of Rome they could be found, now selecting the Janiculum, now the Piazza Navona, now the Via Sistina, now the Piazza di Spagna. And this uncertainty, this state of not knowing, racked him terribly; it was torture of the kind involved in a bad or unfinished dream, whose victim wants to walk and cannot stir, tries to scream and finds no voice. Where was the door to these rooms, where was the staircase, which way did the windows face? He would see in his mind's eye a blaze of colours, the red of a silk curtain reflected on the wall, the tawny flash of a plush lounge, the metallic glitter from a Damascus blade under a ray of light, the intricate design of some old, yellow lace. But all this presented itself to him hazily, without his having a notion as to the where, the how, the when, or as to anything. Where would Donna Angelica sit when she came to this house, where would she rest her tired little feet, where would she put her beautiful arm, and assume her usual, ravishing attitude? He then fancied that in this house there would be neither chairs, sofas, stools, nor tables; he fancied an empty, vast, limitless space, where he and Donna Angelica would be lost to the world. His imaginings made him writhe with anguish; a weight lay on his chest, his blood ran riot, his head was dizzy. Stretched out upon his bed, half awake and half asleep, alternately in dismay and bliss over his dreams, he did not budge for fear that the whole might vanish, and Donna Angelica's promise as well; and at every new quarter of an hour spent in mental contortion his dream changed, was transmuted, was strangely reversed, became fearful or comical. At one time it seemed to him that he had been waiting for Donna Angelica ever since his memory had begun, and that she never, never came. The white curtains became yellow, and then gray; the hangings were discoloured and ruined by moths, falling to pieces, falling into dust; the furniture was all filthy, tumble-down from age; at the bottom of the flower-stand was a small heap of pestilent refuse that once had been flowers; the very walls exhaled dampness and decay, and seemed quite rotten. And he, Sangiorgio, in his everlasting wait, seemed to have become a tottering old man, more than a hundred years old, slow, infirm, with long, white beard and wan face. Donna Angelica never, never came, and Sangiorgio continued to wait, patient and lovelorn. Then a great voice thundered thrice through the house: 'Donna Angelica is dead! Donna Angelica is dead! Donna Angelica is dead!' The first time, the furniture fell into bits; the second, the old man fell dead, face down and arms out; the third, the walls of the house crumbled, burying everything beneath them, making a tomb of the house Donna Angelica would not visit. His dream was perpetually changing. He thought that on the day of the first meeting in this house, he through some curious cause had forgotten the hour of the appointment, and was fretting his brain to recall whether it was for two o'clock or three, but was not sure, could not remember. Then he left Montecitorio at noon, so as to be in time, but in the corridor he met the old Prime Minister, who stopped him, and, while stroking his flowing white beard, talked to him about the Basilicata, salt, peasants, and things scarcely intelligible to Sangiorgio, so absent-minded did he seem. He contrived to escape from him, but on the threshold of the portico he met the Honourable Giustini, whose hump had become enormous, and whose venomous grin gave him a pain in the chest, as if a leech had been sucking his blood. Giustini barred his way, crossing his crooked legs, talking to him of Rome, Rome that pretended to be lazily asleep, but that was really very wide awake; and he clenched his arm, hurting him as he did so. Eventually Sangiorgio tore himself abruptly away from Giustini's grasp, and ran across the Piazza Colonna, where a female voice hailed him from a closed carriage. He did not want to stop, yet felt he was being drawn to the carriage against his will. A pair of black, sparkling eyes gazed upon him with love and desire; there were the luscious, alluring lips that had kissed him, and were ready to kiss him again; there were the soft, caressing hands; there was the strong, sweet odour of violets; there was Donna Elena Fiammanti, who had liked him, and liked him still, and who, without moving her lips, said to him: 'Come with me! come, remember it all! Remember when we met on Christmas Day at the Janiculum; remember the night of the ball, and the moon, and the Piazza di Spagna; remember the roses I left at your house that day; remember the kiss I gave you in the theatre after the duel; remember all my kisses, all my love; come with me--with me is joy, with me is pleasure, with me you shall not weep, with me you shall not suffer. So come, tell me what afflicts you, and I will comfort you; I will not tell you of my sorrows, me you shall have no need to comfort.' But he bent his head, stuffed up his ears, shut his eyes, in order not to hear that fascinating voice, in order not to see that face grow mournfully sad. He said a name to himself--'Angelica'--his talisman, and it seemed as if its echo struck Donna Elena in the heart, as if she threw herself back despairingly in the carriage, and ordered the coachman to drive quickly away. Sangiorgio ran on and on. All the carriages he met were full, all the friends he met tried to stop him, a crowd hedging him in on all sides prevented his progress. Dogs got in his way. He ran on and on, panting, panting. Now he could not be in time; it was too late. Donna Angelica would be there already. She would have gone; she would not have waited. What a long way to go, what obstacles, what hindrances! At last he had reached the place. Red in the face, out of breath, hopeless, he now stopped short. In front of the door walked the Honourable Oldofredi, sardonic, dangerous, grinning. The very wound in his face that Sangiorgio had inflicted grinned. He was walking back and forth on guard, hideous, hateful, vengeful, implacable. * * * * * The house was No. 62, Piazza di Spagna. At the door an itinerant flower-girl had set down her basket of spring flowers: pale, odorous Parma violets, double roses, sweet-smelling jonquils. The staircase was dark, and three doors opened upon the landing. Sangiorgio's card was affixed to the central door by two pins. In a small anteroom Noci had put a bridal coffer of handsomely carved oak, on which lay a cushion of red and yellow silk, and by its side stood three or four stools and a table. A bronze lamp was suspended from the ceiling. It was always burning, and created an illusion of night in the rather gloomy anteroom, whose ugly ceiling and whose walls were covered by painted canvas, which concealed some grotesque pictures and a large map of France. The sitting-room had a large window overlooking the square. It was a spacious, cheerful, sunny room. Damask curtains of old rose and pale green, falling over a widow-shade of yellow lace, softened the garish light of day. The walls were stretched with satin of a light nut colour, which disappeared beneath Persian rugs and squares of antique brocades, artistically draped, and held in place by a shining metal shield, by a silver scimitar, or by fan-shaped tufts of peacock's feathers. A sandalwood rosary, one of the long necklaces of perfumed beads which Turkish women are always running through their fingers to scent their hands, and to kill heavily hanging time by a monotonous pastime--such a Turkish rosary, not for praying, but for pleasure of touch and mind, a _comboloi_ hung upon one of the walls; from the other hung a great white veil with silver stars, the gear worn by Eastern women called _feredje_. But the strange, dominant feature was on the walls--a piece of antique, yellow brocade, something like an oriflamme, with a Latin cross, cut lengthwise and crosswise in black velvet, a cross that stood out strikingly amid all the quiet tints of hazelnut, dull brick, and pale pink which prevailed in the room. The place was extremely luxurious. There was not a single piece of bare wooden furniture, not a table or stool with sharp corners; everything was velvet, silk, and satin. In vases of opalescent glass were hyacinths, mauve lilac, white and blue; an orchid in a Japanese vase was languidly shedding its leaves. On an immense divan eiderdown cushions lay, heaped up in a corner, in fabrics of purple, scarlet, amaranth, light pink, in short every shade of red, from the faint blush in the heart of the white rose to the darkest wine colour; this might serve for a chair, a bed, or a throne. The two windows of the bedroom also fronted upon the Piazza di Spagna; it was a sort of second parlour, draped with dark blue velvet striped white and silver. There was no bed, but only a low divan, over which lay a blue and silver cover with a long, ornate 'A' worked in the middle. Overhead a tent, which was the colour of the nocturnal sky, and, like it, sprinkled with stars, threw down a discreet shadow. It formed a peculiar triangle, sustained by silver ropes and loops. A rosewood cupboard relieved this sombre tone, besides some of the small, dainty, coquettish furniture of the kind affected by the Pompadour. In a tall Japanese vase, big enough for a man to hide in, a paradise plant spread its opulent, richly-veined leaves. There was not another plant, not another flower. The little dressing-room adjoining was hung with creamy cashmere, and on a table all enveloped in snowy muslin was displayed a set of toilet articles in oxidized silver, between two enormous full-blown white azaleas. The place has been furnished in four days, in obedience to Sangiorgio's desperate haste. At first he had comported himself rationally, going there occasionally to superintend matters, but soon he became too impatient. Everything seemed too ugly for her; nothing could be done quickly enough. He went away, determined to come back only when the house should be finished, sleeping or dozing or dreaming the while in his cold, foul-smelling quarters in the Via Angelo Custode, pending the preparation of the lovers' nest in the Piazza di Spagna. He did not return until everything was ready, and then his emotions were at once joyous and sorrowful. What would she say to it? Was not the sitting-room too voluptuous for the fair, dignified creature, who never threw herself into an easy attitude in an armchair? Would not this Oriental savour be too sensual for the chaste mind of that gentlest of beings? Were not the hyacinths, those flowers without leaves, too carnal in their efflorescence? And those piled cushions, crimson and faint pink--did they not too directly invite to repose, the perfidious repose in which the soul surrenders? The bedroom he thought handsome in its severity, but never would the pure one enter it. He was satisfied and agitated. He had wished the apartment to be fitted out as a retreat for lovers, and this was accomplished. The secrecy and seclusion of the spot, the floral and exotic perfumes, now upset his ideal--or, rather, gave rise to a new ideal, more vital, more human. * * * * * Here, in his apartments warmed by the bright sun, which blazed upon the Piazza di Spagna from the dark Propaganda Fide to the cheerful Albergo di Londra, Francesco Sangiorgio was sitting opposite the open grate, where a fire of dry wood was always crackling and flaming, waiting for Donna Angelica. As soon as the apartment was completed, he had begun to repeat his persuasions whenever he found himself alone with her for a moment, at her house, at the theatre, in the diplomatic gallery, going from one door to another, in a corridor, on the threshold of her home, in any place where he could say a word or give a beseeching look without being seen or heard. This matter of meeting in the Piazza di Spagna house had become his mania; he neither spoke to her of, nor asked her for, anything else. She, repenting of having made the concession, and plunged into scruples, still refused to come, shaking her head, distrustful of him and of love, and apprehensive of being seen in the streets. She never mentioned her fears, her suspicions, but persisted in declining, always possessed by the indifference of a chaste woman, cured of ardent impulses, beyond any inclination to sin against religion. He became irritated and indignant at her suspicion, embittered through her resistance, the violence of his temperament and desires clashing against Donna Angelica's mildness, shattering against her refusal. Profound exasperation at himself and love began to take root in him, and he felt the injustice of such treatment from the woman he loved. One evening, overcome with resentment because of Donna Angelica's ingratitude, trembling with anger, he said to her: 'Well--tell me--why are you afraid--of what--of whom? Have I not always been obedient to your wishes? Do you not understand, Angelica, that you are in no danger whatever with me? Your strength is in yourself--you have no weaknesses--you never falter!' She raised her head, all blushing with pride and defiance. 'I will come,' she said, like a heroine sure of victory. 'When?' 'I do not know. One of these days. You know the hours at which I am free.' Further particulars she would not give. She felt no obligation to do so, believed he lived there in the Piazza di Spagna, and that it cost him nothing to wait for her. She believed in his devotion; like all women, she counted only her own sacrifice, and could not estimate that of the other side. And every day towards the end of a very beautiful April Sangiorgio spent several expectant hours in the little sitting-room of the Piazza di Spagna. He rose rather late in his wretched lodgings in the Via Angela Custode, and dressed leisurely while sipping a cup of atrocious coffee, brought in by the servant. He touched neither pen nor book in the morning, but left the reeking atmosphere of those rooms as soon as possible. From instinctive curiosity he went to Montecitorio for his letters, but set foot neither in the reading-rooms nor the lobbies. Some of his colleagues addressed him thus: 'What has become of you? We never see you nowadays. Why have you left off attending the sittings?' 'I have some work to do,' he would reply, passing a hand over his forehead. Or someone would inquire: 'I suppose you have been to the Basilicata, Sangiorgio? Is your agricultural report nearly ready?' 'Yes, yes, I have been in the Basilicata,' he would answer, very much embarrassed and very red, adding vaguely: 'Yes, the report will soon be finished; it is a tremendous piece of work.' He avoided being questioned, since he hated lies, and was not adept in the invention of them. He went away from Montecitorio, reading his letters without grasping their intent, uninterested in the requests of his constituents and of the officials in his district. Up to a month before he had been a model deputy, cool but courteous, answering all inquiries, frequently doing so on the day of receipt; not losing much time over unimportant people, wisely rendering services to influential constituents, and to everybody likely to be useful, satisfying one with a promise, or securing realization for another--in fact, offending no one. But now all this was distasteful to him; he could not endure the thought of it. His mind dwelt incessantly on the pretty little nest where his sweet lady would come to see him, and with a nervous gesture he would thrust his correspondence into his pockets, shrugging his shoulders, and would go straight to the Colonne, to breakfast there all alone, absorbed in his fancies, immersed in Buddhist-like meditations on love. He ate blindly, and when his conscience happened to prick him because of urgent letters to be answered, he would order paper, pens, and ink, and would write hurriedly, briefly, on a corner of his little table, leaving his beefsteak to get cold. But after a few letters disgust and impatience would overtake him; he would pay the bill and depart quickly. Sometimes the letters he had written remained in his pockets several days; he had forgotten them, and they were no longer any use. By one o'clock he was always in the Piazza di Spagna, buying flowers from all the flower-girls, loading himself with roses, hyacinths, and violets, hastening so as not to miss Angelica, who might, perhaps, be at his very door while the key was in his pocket. The quiet, luxurious, cheerful atmosphere of the apartment gave him a delightful sensation of contentment. Donna Angelica was certain to come; she had promised--yes, she was certain to come. And he would set himself to lighting the fire, squatting on the ground, like an eager husband much in love. He knew that he would be displeased if, when the wood was burning brightly, Donna Angelica did not express approval of the blaze which quickens the blood and warms the heart. Then he would wander about the apartment, putting flowers in the vases, throwing away those that were faded in the little empty kitchen; and sometimes he placed a jar of hyacinths differently, bunched roses and violets together, separated them again, never satisfied, pursuing this lover's task with great assiduity. He would wander about the apartment, and the bedroom, with the low soft divan, would always cause him a nervous thrill. He would go back into the sitting-room, to the fire--the chaste, comfortable fire, the purifying fire, the symbol of a noble soul. There he would wait. Fortunately, the contemplation of a fire is a great pleasure to thoughtful and intense souls, so that Francesco Sangiorgio was able to restrain, to rock, as it were, his impatience at Donna Angelica's absence. Though spending five or six hours a day alone by the grate in the little room without venturing to go away, he learnt to follow the whole life of the fire, from the small spark that grows and spreads to the big roaring flame, from the vigorous and powerful blaze to the spark that shrinks, dims, dies. His eye, on those long spring afternoons, mild to suffocation, followed the life, the glow, the death of each ember; and while his whole soul cried out and longed for Donna Angelica, consuming away for very desire, the fire was burning, like himself, with the same heat, the same flaring up, the same languid smouldering, that by degrees perished. The fire was at its brightest between four and six, the time during which Donna Angelica was most likely to come; at that time, in the heart of the man as well as in the grate, there was a mighty furnace, a temperature high enough to melt anything, courage or metal. Any moment she might come; perhaps even now she was on the stairs, was trembling and hesitating on the landing. He closed his eyes at the very idea, at the fierce, violent shock it gave him. Every day between four and six his nervous system underwent a double strain of excitement, and during those two hours the flames from the logs would lick the walls of the fireplace. Then came the twilight. Hope and desire declined within the bosom of the lover, who was sunk in lethargy; the fire declined in the grate, the light failed, the embers blackened, and the gray ashes of night descended upon the earth, upon love, upon the fire. At half-past seven each evening he would depart, in the chill of the evening and of the street, in the chill of his own disappointment. He would go away pale and stooping, his hands in his pockets and his head down on his chest, like a wretched victim to fever, whose system is pervaded with the disease, like a gambler who has lost his last game. And, like the gambler who every day is bowed down under his chagrin, but who every night finds fresh strength to hope and play more energetically and daringly, so did the discouraged lover in the evening, when he saw Donna Angelica, renew his faith in love. He then saw her only among other people, and could scarcely get a word with her, but her eyes said to him, exhorting him to patience, to fortitude: 'Wait for me; wait for me still! I am coming!' The next day, in spite of the voice of doubt in his soul, in spite of all past disappointments, he would once more hie to the little apartment in the Piazza di Spagna, and shut himself up there. It was folly to expect her before two o'clock, but, in his impatience, he came earlier every day, going at noon into the little sitting-room, where the bright April sun was shining, and leaving later than ever in the evening--at eight. At times, sitting by the waning fire, he would be overtaken by drowsiness, as fever patients often are; he would doze and dream, waking up with a start, thinking he heard a bell ring. But it was nothing; Donna Angelica did not come. And connected with this waiting was something vastly exasperating: before he was thus obliged to wait for Donna Angelica, silent and alone, before he had any notion of an apartment, he was at liberty to go out, upon the chance of finding her at a lecture, at a reception, at the Parliament, out walking--could even find an excuse to go to her house for a moment, could, failing anything better, talk about her for a minute with Don Silvio. But now it was different. While she went about, perhaps to the Villa Borghese, perhaps to a friend's for a visit, perhaps to a Parliamentary sitting; while she was shedding the light of her presence on women, fools, and callous people; while any silly fop could see her, make his bows to her, talk with her--he, who loved her, who wanted her, who lived for her alone, was condemned to inactivity, to impotence, alone, all alone between four walls, tormented by these two thoughts: 'Where is she? Will she come?' At first, before he had any notion of an apartment, he still was one of the human fraternity. He went about among people, under the sway, it is true, of a single idea, but at least showing all evidence of life. His colleagues met him, spoke to him, discussed with him; he listened mechanically and answered like a musician who plays by ear; he pretended interest in his former passion. That was at any rate a semblance of living. But now, betwixt him and politics, betwixt him and life, a great chasm existed. He would appear at Montecitorio for a moment merely, early in the morning from his habit of going there for letters; after which the apartment in the Piazza di Spagna swallowed all thought and action, took entire possession of Sangiorgio's activity and attention. At night, when he set forth in quest of Donna Angelica, he would come back to life like a somnambulist: he knew nothing, had heard and seen nothing, had spoken with no one, had read no newspaper, had a childish air. Meanwhile such opinions as these began to gain currency regarding him: 'That Sangiorgio! He seemed such a formidable fellow! What a pity!' 'Just like all Southerners! A blaze of straw that gives neither light nor heat.' 'Sangiorgio has had his day.' He felt this wall of ice building around him, this separation from everybody, this departure from public life. He was keenly conscious of the dissent between his spirit and politics; he realized that each day with his new, absorbing ideal removed him thousands of miles from his old ideals. All of this he plainly saw. He was not blind--oh no! not blind, but waking, and wanting to sacrifice himself. He was not a victim uttering words of despair, not a rebel reviling a tyrant, but a happy, contented martyr, blissfully watching his best blood flow from his veins. And the more his love carried him away, the greater did his enthusiasm grow, the greater his sacrifice, the greater his wish for sacrifice. Thus a sort of sombre, painful sense of pleasure would overcome him when, on sunny mornings, he left the streets, so full of people and business and the movement of life, to shut himself up in a little room and wait. Like a fanatical worshipper of Buddha, he went up and down the whole scale of annihilation, even to the utter abstraction of suffering, even to a Nirvana that was all pain. * * * * * It was the first morning of the month of May--a fair, sunny, fragrant morning, on which the bells of the Trinita dei Monti were chiming merrily. Sangiorgio had just arrived at his sanctuary laden with roses, but his face was pale and thin; the moist freshness of the flowers, their healthy, handsome colour, contrasted with the bearer, who was mournful and sickly as an October evening laden with noxious vapours. He was arranging the roses with the childish look of pain that inspires compassion, the more so because sincerely and uncomplaining. A light touch of the bell gave him a nervous thrill, made him blush, sent tears to his eyes. The roses fell on the carpet. 'It is I,' whispered Angelica Vargas, as she walked in. She did not look about, but hastened into the parlour, sat down in an armchair, and repeated, 'It is I.' He stood by her, gazing at her with his tearful eyes, not venturing a word, not even finding courage to thank her. She, sweet lady, had kept her promise; she could not lie. With fragrant May, the poetic month of roses, she had come--the divine one. Surely she was the Madonna to whom roses are offered. Without saying a word, upon an abrupt impulse, he went through the house collecting all the roses, whether on the ground or in the vases, and very gently, without remark, poured them into her lap, until her dress, which was of a light gray material, was covered with them. 'I have delayed coming very long,' she murmured, bending her head under the stream of flowers, 'but I could not help it.' And she made a vague gesture of female helplessness. With glance of eye and sign of hand he begged her to desist; her actions needed no justification in his sight. And so profound was the consolation of her presence in the house, so complete his heart's felicity, that he was loath to disturb it by any painful thoughts, any suggestion of reproach. The sweet lady, dressed in a delicate shade of gray, with an airy white feather in her hat, with a transparent, white veil over her eyes, which made her face look more youthful than ever, sat composedly in her chair, her knees covered with roses, one hand gloved in gray lying hidden among the roses in her lap, while the other ungloved hand hung out of her sleeve with open fingers, as though she had dropped something. He sat down beside her, gently raised her inert hand, carried it to his lips, breathed a kiss upon it. She appeared not to notice it. 'It is quite pretty here,' she tranquilly observed, after a lengthy pause, as if visiting a female friend in a new house. 'Yes, it is quite pretty.' 'I thought I had heard you say you liked the Piazza di Spagna,' he answered. 'It is the part of the town I like best. You have made a good choice. I have never been able to find an apartment here. Old Rome, where I live, is so very, very dismal; that is why I go out so much. Whenever I do, no matter what hurry I am in, I always pass through the Piazza di Spagna.' 'Come and stay in this room,' he said smilingly, as if in jest. 'I would come if I could,' she replied innocently, 'but I cannot. I must live down there, in the shade. How sunny it is here! And you have flowers for sale in the doorways; I saw some as I came in here. The houses seem to be full of them. I should think that all the homes in this square must be happy. So much sunlight, so much spring, so much loveliness! You are happy here, are you not, my friend?' 'Yes,' he said, with deep meaning. 'May God bless you,' she murmured, as though she were praying. Then she buried her face for several minutes in a rose. 'And then,' she resumed, 'by way of contrast to all the brightness, to the white palaces, and the fine art shops, how strange is that great, severe, gray edifice, with the inscription "Propaganda Fide." The spread of the faith! Do you not think those words have a grand and mysterious sound, that they must go to all the corners of the earth? I hope you are a believer, my friend?' 'If you believe, Angelica, I believe also.' 'It is so vulgar to be an atheist! Religion is so good and beautiful; it is worth more than most things the world cares for. Have you ever been in any of the churches in Rome?' 'I have looked into the basilicas from motives of artistic curiosity.' 'Oh yes, those are great empty churches that serve no purpose. You must see the little Roman chapels, that are meant to pray in. There is one up there, at the Trinita, where the young monks sing behind a railing on Sundays. What divine music that is! The monks are out of sight, and one would say they were souls chanting their sorrows and joys. Let us go and hear them together some day. Would you like to?' 'If you wish it, I will go.' 'I should like you to think as I do, my friend. I should like you to feel what I feel. Perhaps you can guess at it.' 'I am so fond of you--I shall guess,' he said, with the stifled voice in which he always spoke when alluding to his love. 'Sh! You promised to say nothing about that!' she murmured, blushing like a little girl. 'Sometimes it is too much for me. Let me tell you again, Angelica, you who are sweetness itself. I am so fond of you, so fond of you that it is killing me! I am all alone, I have no one in the whole world, I love no one else, can love no one else; I am very fond of you, Angelica.' And, observing that he was flushed with emotion, she said nothing more, but very lightly passed her hand over his face, as though it had been the wing of a bird or a leaf stirred by the breeze. He stopped, liked a shamefaced boy, brightening up a little, put out of countenance a little, feeling his face refreshed by the caress. She smiled with a tinge of playful malice before asking him the following question: 'Is it true that you were in love with Elena Fiammanti?' 'No; I never was.' 'Then she was in love with you?' 'I do not think she was.' 'You never lie, do you?' 'No; never.' 'I think she loved you, nevertheless. She seems to have a rather light, fickle nature, but no doubt she has a good, affectionate heart. I hardly ever see her; she prefers men's society to women's. Have you really never been fond of her?' 'I never have been fond of anyone but you, Angelica.' 'Let us not speak of love. You promised me. If I mention it again do not answer. Let me go on talking without interruption. I feel the need of thinking aloud in the presence of one who understands me, sympathizes with me, has some affection for me. Sympathy, that is all! You will give me sympathy, will you not, my friend?' 'Angelica, Angelica, do not talk like that!' 'Because, you see, I am like a child sometimes; I forget that I am a woman, a responsible person. I become timid again, and superstitious, and fearsome, full of juvenile extravagances, unaccountable caprices. Outwardly to society I seem calm--that is my duty; but at times, when I am upset, when I am in a melancholy mood which has no explanation, or when I am suddenly gay without reason, then I want someone to sympathize with me. Do you sympathize with me, my friend?' And, as if praying to him, she joined her hands, turning a pair of beseeching eyes upon him. He bent for a moment over her gentle white forehead, and kissed her there so lightly that it seemed a mere breath, and with such tender kindness, with affection so pure, that she was deeply moved, and began to shed silent tears. 'Do not weep, Angelica,' he soon said in a changed voice; 'do not weep.' 'Yes, let me--let me! I want to; at home I never can. Now--now I will stop; you shall see--it will be over directly.' He did not interrupt her, since it would have been like taking a comfort away from the poor soul. But the tears which flowed over her cheek caused him a deep pang; they were terribly painful and terribly seductive to him; they acted upon him with the irresistible voluptuousness of agony. While she was talking quietly and cheerfully, as though she were in her own drawing-room, or visiting a friend's, and not shut up surreptitiously in a house with a lover, where no disturbing spirit would ever come, he was able to control his masculine feelings enough not to ask anything of her, not to speak to her of love. But when, after telling him of her incurably broken heart, of her lost illusions, of the dreams of her youth, dead and gone for ever, when she wept and wept over their grave, when he knew her sobbing softly and steadily, like a suffering child--then it was all he could do to resist the temptation of clasping her in his arms, of holding her close to him for ever, to their last hour. Sangiorgio bent his head, so as not to see the face furrowed by tears, the bosom swelling and fluttering like a bird's. But, worn out at last, she gradually ceased, retaining the woebegone look of one who has been weeping, and the aroma of tears. She silently examined the lace on her soaked handkerchief. 'Your pardon, my friend,' she finally said, as if she just then remembered he was there. 'Do not speak of it; am I not your friend?' 'Ah me, I fear I am a dull friend!' she said with a faint smile. 'I certainly shall not bring much joy into your life. It would be better to lose me than to keep me, I assure you.' 'I like you as you are; I like you because you are as you are!' he declared passionately. She remained silent for an instant as her eyes rested on a ray of light which penetrated the yellow lace curtain, played upon the carpet, and lit up the heap of red cushions all ready for a tired lady. A sudden thought crossed her mind, and she rose abruptly. 'I must go.' 'No, no, no!' he pleaded in despair, as if such a thing was quite out of the question. 'I must go,' she repeated seriously. 'Why?' he asked in childish manner. 'Because----' she answered, smiling at his ingenuous question. 'Stay a little longer; you have only just come.' 'It is one o'clock. It is late. I must go!' 'A few minutes, a few minutes more,' he urged, in the boyishness of his love. 'I cannot possibly; I have already stayed too long.' 'What difference can a few more minutes make?' 'No difference, but what is the use? A minute more, or five minutes more--what can it matter to you?' 'Do not torture me, Angelica. Be kind; grant me another five minutes.' 'I will stay, but you are very exacting,' quoth she, shaking her head like a mother who is unwillingly surrendering a sweetmeat to her clamouring little boy. And then they remained standing opposite each other at the door, she as though annoyed and wishing to be gone, he as though embarrassed and sorry for having kept her back. Of a sudden Sangiorgio's face exhibited an anxious doubt. 'And shall you really never come back?' 'I will come back.' 'Oh yes, you say so, but you will not come!' he exclaimed in deep agitation, and totally carried away by this idea. 'Why deceive me? You are going away, and I shall never see you here again. I have a presentiment of it; I feel it in me!' 'I shall come back--I shall come back,' she assured him, with that gentle, firm voice that had the power of assuring him. And to reassure him she allowed the freshness of a smile to dwell on him for a moment, the serenity of her glance. This calmed and appeased him. 'Promise me, then, that you will come back. Will you promise?' 'I promise you.' 'For the sake of the thing or person interesting you most in the whole world?' 'For the sake of the thing or person interesting me most in the whole world, I promise you.' 'When will you come back?' 'That I cannot tell. My time is not my own. I will come back when I can.' 'You can come back soon if you want to, Angelica. Anyhow, can you not mention an hour or a day?' 'What for? Do you find waiting for me tiresome? Is this not your home?' 'Yes, but at least name a day----' 'Oh, then, you do not like waiting for me! You have more amusing things to do.' 'No, Angelica, nothing.' 'Well, then?' 'Well--if you only knew, Angelica, how sad I feel when I do not know the day or the hour that I am to see you again! This vague expectation is torture--it is a nightmare! You would be sorry for me, Angelica, if you knew how it makes my heart and my brain suffer. Even if you intend to delude me, or you cannot come, still, name a day.' 'To-day is Sunday,' she reflected. 'To-morrow I cannot come, nor the day after, nor Wednesday; all my time is taken up those days. Thursday--yes, you may count on seeing me on Thursday----' 'Not before?' 'How do I know? Possibly for a minute one of those three days. But I will come on Thursday for certain. Good-bye, my friend!' 'Oh, stay!' he cried, holding her back by the hand. 'How childish you are! Good-bye!' And she flitted down the stairs, as though she were making a fortunate escape. Immediately he felt as if life were ebbing from him; he felt as if all his blood was flowing away out of a deadly wound. He did not look back into the room where they had been together, nor at the place where they had sat side by side. He took his hat and darted off to find Angelica, in the wild hope of finding her. The square, so full of sunlight in the middle of the day, dazzled him, and instinctively he made for the Via Condotti. But nowhere did he descry the pretty gray dress and the white veil. Halfway up the street he retraced his steps, and hastened in the direction of the Via Propaganda Fide--a name fresh in his memory--wandered through the Via Sant' Andrea delle Fratte, the Via Mercede, and the Via San Silvestro, like one befogged, like someone eagerly looking for a thing he is sure of having lost. But the dear shape seemed to have melted into the sunshine, for, after searching all the streets in the neighbourhood of the Piazza di Spagna in hot haste, spurred by an invincible impulse, Sangiorgio had not succeeded in finding her. He then walked for another hour by the Via Babuino, the Via Due Macelli, and the Via Sistina, to the Villa Medici and the Pincio, prey to a nervous tension which prevented him from feeling fatigued, giving rein to the mad idea that Donna Angelica must have intended to take a walk at this time of the day. He arrived in the Piazza del Popolo, suddenly composed, with tired legs, with his brain all confused. It must be late, he thought, very late; he seemed to have spent a long, eventful day; he felt the moral and physical fatigue incident to the great days of a lifetime. He took out his watch. It was barely half-past one; the rest of the day was a blank to him. Mechanically and very, very slowly, in obedience to former habits, he wended his way down the Corso to the Chamber, with a disgusted expression, ignoring the handsome middle-class Roman women going home from Mass, recognising no one who bowed to him in the glad, bright beams of that May Sunday. He went to the Parliament, but did not know whether on a Sunday there would be a sitting. Nevertheless, he went to take refuge there, not knowing what to do with body or soul. The people he met all appeared new and foreign to him, and as he looked at them, surprised at so many strange faces, they, too, seemed to look at him in surprise and askance. At this hour the coming and going of deputies about Montecitorio was incessant; friends went up and down in couples, and also little groups of politicians, who had lunched together at the Colonne, the Parliamente, the Fagiano, or the Sorelle Venete. Sangiorgio acknowledged a bow now and then as if he was in a dream. He saw them debating, heard them arguing; passing close by them, he caught snatches of their discussions, but it all conveyed nothing to him. Luckily, there was a sitting that day. He took his usual seat, and from the force of physical habit put the papers in front of him in order, while hearing the small but penetrating voice of Sangarzia read out the schedule of proceedings. What was it all about? That voice was bewildering to his mind. Those words he seemed to have heard before--but when? It cost him a stupendous effort to pull himself together. He was like a man who, after experiencing a growing nervous exhilaration for a certain period, afterwards yields to utter lassitude, his strength being totally exhausted. He sat with his head between his hands, trying to grasp the sound and sense of all that was being said. But he was too weak. A torpor was creeping over him; he was afraid he might fall asleep! He went out upon the corridors to smoke a cigar. The Honourable di Carimate, the agreeable Lombard gentleman, chairman of an agrarian committee, accosted him: 'Well, Sangiorgio, what about that report?' 'The report? Yes, when was I to have given it to you?' 'Why, a week ago. We are very much behindhand. I tried to find you everywhere. Did you not receive my last two notes?' 'No, neither,' he answered, lying. 'And to think that yesterday we were attacked! I was obliged to answer, as chairman. Have you been ill?' 'Very ill.' 'You look it. I hope you will get better, Sangiorgio. Have you caught a fever by any chance?' 'I think so.' 'I hope you will get better. And when do you say we may be ready?' 'I can hardly tell. In a week, perhaps. I will let you know.' He returned to the hall, after shaking off the painful sensation of the lie. The Honourable Bonora was still speaking. An obscure, tedious newcomer, who would make a speech on every question, he was now boring the house. The Speaker, from his chair, made a friendly little sign to Sangiorgio, who went down and shook hands with him. 'Ill?' asked the Romagnan of the honest brown eyes. 'Slightly.' 'Why do you not apply for leave of absence?' 'I shall. I want it.' And he went back to his seat exhausted. A strong sense of irritation began to take root in him. It was five o'clock, and he seemed to have been in the Chamber for a century. San Demetrio, the Abruzzan deputy, and Scalia, the Sicilian, were talking in undertones about a duel between an editor and a deputy, and asked his opinion; he manifested obvious indifference. All these voices, high or deep, at length sickened him. He was hot all over; he felt ill in that atmosphere; he was suffering there, could scarcely breathe. He left hurriedly, took a cab, and drove straight to the quarters in the Piazza di Spagna. There he threw himself, with outstretched arms, into a large chair Angelica had occupied, rested his face where that dear head had rested, and wept long and bitterly. CHAPTER VI Angelica only kept her appointments with Sangiorgio by exception. Sometimes in the evening, when handing him a cup of tea, she would hastily whisper to him: 'To-morrow, at two o'clock.' 'Are you sure to come?' he would ask, since he had been disappointed several times. 'Quite sure.' Believing this promise, he lived upon it that night and the next morning. By two o'clock she would not have arrived. At first he would think she had been delayed, would take patience, and look out of the window for her. Then he would be seized with uncertainty, and finally, at dusk, in that sweet month of May, he would lose hope altogether, and give way to despondency. When he saw her again, in all her beauty and serenity and freshness, as frank as ever, and amiable towards everybody, he was invaded with mingled bitterness, tenderness, and regret. Never, never should she know the extent of his love and sufferings. She excused herself not at all, or else only vaguely, by some brief phrase interjected fugitively into an account she was giving someone else of the day's tiresome doings. It was always a concert, a lecture, a charity bazaar, some visits to a hospital, a public function, or else some other trivial or stupid affair, which had interfered. Thus Sangiorgio's despair increased, for he saw how little of that soul belonged to him. But the whole evening she would lavish on him the sweetness of her veiled glances, would hold him captive under the fascinating brightness of her smile, would ask him for a book, her fan, or her handkerchief in such dulcet tones, and, in fact, impressing him to such an extent as the type of beatific femininity, that by the end of the evening he would be conquered once more. In his weakness, he would mentally ask her pardon for having harboured resentment. From time to time, however, she remembered the poor recluse who was waiting for her, shut up indoors in the ripe springtide, so delightful to enjoy in the streets of Rome and among the villas and on the flowery hills. She would arrive in the Piazza di Spagna unexpectedly, at an unforeseen hour, at ten in the morning or at seven in the evening, just as he was about to go away disconsolate. Once she came during one of the long May rain-storms and the first flashes of summer lightning. These unexpected visits always gave Sangiorgio a violent moral shock; he could not accustom himself to them, occurring as they did when he had lost hope of receiving any more, when he was plunged in the depths of disappointment, or into the half-besotted state peculiar to persons given to a single idea. Never did satiety come to him, since each new appearance of Donna Angelica was a special grace to him, a jewel from her spiritual treasure-house. And when she came in the first consoling moment the wearing, terrible pain of hopeless waiting was miraculously healed; the afflicted, sick, suffering man was resurrected like Lazarus from the tomb. In the presence of the beloved reality he forgot everything he had endured in his visions of her, and when she was with him he could do nothing but worship her, kneel before her humbly, kiss her hands, thanking her for remembering him. And Donna Angelica maintained the place to which Sangiorgio's love had exalted her, which she was able to keep by force of her temperament and character, which was a high, solitary niche, unattainable, unassailable, a tabernacle of virtue and purity, whence she might deign to incline her eyes to him who loved her, might smile at him, stretch out a hand to him, allow the hem of her garment to be kissed, and this without any of her condescensions in the least dulling her aureole, without her divinity ever becoming humanized or femininized. Whenever she came to see him, it was an act of grace; her hands showered roses; she brought felicity with her. Her part was to do nothing but exist, appear, smile and vanish. And this she did. Sangiorgio's individuality was losing itself more and more. Never did Angelica concern herself about his thoughts, feelings, or tortures during her absence; never did she question him about his work, his ambitions, his aims; she seemed to have no curiosity to really know him. She called him Sangiorgio, simply because she thought his Christian name, Francesco, too commonplace and ugly. And he felt this commonplaceness and this ugliness, and regretted both, but did not dare to ask her to call him by his first name. Sitting beside him, looking at the large, black velvet cross on the yellow, brocaded cloth--a combination of vivid and sombre passional colours--she vouchsafed to talk to him at great length, observing with what ecstasy he listened. Angelica yielded to the everlasting need that women have of communicating their thoughts, on all matters, great or small, to the want of a vent that drives so many of them to the steps of the confessional, that gives rise to so many sham friendships with other women, that also makes them seek a confidant in a man, without a care for the effect of their confidences. How much she had to say--she, who was condemned to perpetual silence--of Don Silvio's political pursuits, his age, his sardonic disposition! How much she had to say--she, whose husband's position forbade her to enter upon friendship with any woman in her social circle! And here she had found a confidant, the best of confidants, ever happy to listen to her, ever ready to agree with her, ever prone to sympathize with her, ever prone to admire her, hearing from his tongue the echo in epigram of the plain meaning of her speech and thought. He interpreted them best, in the way that women like, being a man who wanted to know everything, whose curiosity was insatiable, who understood everything, was indulgent towards all small faults, magnified and glorified the smallest virtues, turned a word into a poem, a sentence into a sentiment, and a kindness into a heroic deed--this man in love. Sitting beside him, in the quiet of the room, the flower-scented room, among the soft-hued materials and the deep rich folds suggestive of intimacy, surrounded by all the queerly contrasting exotic articles, her eyes fixed on a glittering gold spot in some fabric, she would talk of herself, of the state of her heart, of the inexpressible sorrows no one should ever know of, but which he alone knew, of her small spiritual enjoyments, brief pleasures only confessed to one's self or one's closest friend. Angelica's disillusionment after marriage had not been abrupt, but gradual, continuous, increasing day by day, through a number of small griefs, until indifference and isolation had come. Her legitimate hopes of married happiness, of beautiful dreams, of a pure, tranquil love, and of faith in a loyal soul, had wretchedly gone shipwreck, and shattered against Don Silvio's great, burning, selfish passion--politics. It had not been the catastrophe of an instant, the huge, prostrating catastrophe, from which, however, recovery is possible through the natural workings of a strong soul; it was the daily drop, drop that hollows out, that ploughs furrows, that at last vanquishes even the hardness and coldness of stones. Donna Angelica had much to say in telling the tale of her moral widowhood, and she musically varied her infinite lamentations in every key of sadness. She made no open accusations, not she; not a harsh or reviling word crossed her lips. But everything was mournful, innocent complaint, was the story of how she had been gradually and cruelly crushed, narrated with a delicate choice of words, but with an irremediable sense of woe. Sangiorgio listened to it, and seeing her so wrapt up in her tale, so affected by what had been the slow stamping out of her heart, that he had no courage even to interrupt her, nor did he ever venture to tell her how he would have worshipped her, had fate blessed him with the supreme favour of giving her to him as his wife. With avidity he received, from the adored lips, the minutest details of those small, daily tribulations, shuddering at each one of them, feeling what she had felt. He saturated himself in her story, which by degrees became his own, in which his personality ever more surely dissolved; when she, agitated by her own recital, and observing the paleness and perturbation of her listener, gave vent to tears or forcibly restrained them, he, by reflection, experienced the same emotion. In one of her sentiments he went further than she did. Donna Angelica did not hate Don Silvio, not knowing how to hate, but he was shut out of her heart for evermore; she could not love him because he had neglected to love her; could not respect him because politics force a man into too much bargaining and baseness. But she did not hate him--oh no! he was merely indifferent to her. And she uttered her little assertions of indifference with such frigid precision, with such icy simplicity, that Sangiorgio shivered with the thought that these killing words might some day apply to him. But he went further than Angelica. He was a man, and he hated Don Silvio with a true lover's hatred. He hated him cordially, in every way, morally and materially, as an enemy and a wicked man, as a fortunate rival and a despicable creature; he hated him to the point of wishing him defeated, disgraced, defamed, dishonoured, dead. He had robbed him of Donna Angelica, barrened her soul, rendered her incapable of further illusions, made her unhappy and suspicious of happiness; he had never loved her and had destroyed her faculty of loving; he--yes, he--still had Angelica in his power. And Sangiorgio also hated Don Silvio--that husband--with the fury, the jealousy, and the injustice of a lover who loves truly. But this was not all that Donna Angelica related in her visits to the Piazza di Spagna. With the juvenile frankness of women who never do wrong, with the unobtrusive but dangerous sincerity which so closely resembles decoying and coquetry, she indulged in the circumstantial description of the feelings, habits, rules, tastes, which are the foundation of woman's life. Sangiorgio now knew in detail the whole of Donna Angelica's daily life. At any time, closing his eyes, he could imagine what she was doing, so often had she repeated her favourite pursuits to him. Although she went to bed late, she got up early in the morning, from an early Northern habit she had never been able to shake off. No one was allowed in her room, not even her maid. Angelica insisted that no one should intrude into the sacred nook of her nocturnal thoughts and dreams and slumbers. Did he, Sangiorgio, not think a bedroom was a sanctuary, to be free from profane intrusion? Yes, he thought so, she was quite right, he would reply, greatly agitated, with a fire burning his entrails. Donna Angelica only permitted her maid to do her hair and dress her when she went to balls; she detested the officious hands of servants about her body, their vulgar babble, the contact of their fingers with her hair, all of which shocked and disgusted her. Long ago, as a young girl, finding the length of her tresses annoying when she combed her hair, she had had it cut short, and had begun to wear the dark coiled headdress of an adult. One day, when she spoke of this in whispers, as in a dream, Sangiorgio humbly asked her to let her hair down, as he had never seen how long it was. She simply said no; that she would never have time to arrange it again; that it took an hour. He repeated the request in vain. She promised to do it some other day, when she would have more time with him. After her toilet, Donna Angelica spent a couple of hours in her little sitting-room next to her bedroom, reading, writing, dreaming, always alone. She answered the notes of her friends up there, and the people who sent her applications, and those who wanted recommendations. She wrote very fast, always using white paper, without crest, motto, or monogram; the like of these, to which other women were devoted, she considered cheap, vulgar. One day he asked her to write something on paper, a line merely, since he had never had a written word from her; and she would perhaps have done it, but Sangiorgio searched the apartment in vain, unable to lay his hands on either an inkstand, a pen, or a sheet of paper. In this house, intended for love, there were naturally lacking the things intended for study, for business, for everything that was not love. She remarked, with a smile, that he evidently never wrote. No, he never wrote, he said--he only loved; and Angelica, still smiling, signed to him to stop. She would not listen to any of this, would not come back if he continued. And the delightful, fascinating confidences would go on. At half-past eleven she usually met Don Silvio at lunch. She was always hungry in the morning, like all young and healthy people. She would like to be chatting and laughing with someone as young and lively as herself at that cheerful hour of the day, but Don Silvio was at that hour always bursting with anger or the morning's annoyances, was never hungry, because the disease of politics had ruined his liver and stomach; and all through the meal he read newspapers and letters, and wrote at the table, just as he did in his drawing-room at the Braschi mansion, in the Chamber, and everywhere. Ah! she preferred to the company of that lean, old, pertinacious devourer of newspapers, letters, and telegrams, who let his cutlet get cold on his plate, who forgot to eat his fruit, in his daily fit of bile--to this she preferred being alone, with the sun casting a long ray on the table, with the music of a piano near by, with the buzz of the noonday flies when the weather was warm. And, seized with one of the strange caprices that pure women have, she proposed to Sangiorgio to go into the country quite early some morning, to one of the little inns with terraces arboured by creeping vines, and to have a meal together, as truant schoolboys might. 'But why do you torture me? why do you tell me this?' he asked, gently reproachful. 'Do I torture you?' 'You would never go.' 'Yes, I shall--yes, I shall,' she murmured uncertainly, still amused at her juvenile idea. After lunch Donna Angelica began her duties as a Minister's wife, as a woman with public obligations. She also went shopping then. She liked plain dresses, and black was her favourite colour. And Sangiorgio--yes, she knew he, too, cared most for black; he had seen her in black the first time, at the station, the day he arrived in Rome. Then came all the feminine features of politics--calls to be made and returned, patronesses' committees, meetings of charitable associations, benefit concerts, diplomatic receptions, opening ceremonies, lectures, prize distributions--all those long, tedious affairs, for no object, for no sensible reason, a brilliant gloss over cardboard, all for the honour of His Excellency, nothing for its own sake, nothing spiritual. She loathed all that. Ah! how happy she might have been as the wife of a quiet, thoughtful man, who was not eaten with the fever of politics, who regarded political power as an ignominious farce, who estimated correctly what it was to be Minister--namely, to be the accused instead of the judge, to sit on the prisoner's bench. 'Your wife, Sangiorgio,' she added. 'Oh, Angelica!' he said, with a peculiar intonation. But she did not understand. She had revealed her whole life to him, had told him everything. Sangiorgio knew her, but she did not know Sangiorgio. * * * * * A change occurred in their relations. Angelica had become accustomed to these visits, and came often, showing the easiest manner, as if she expected to meet friends, exhibiting neither a trace of sentiment nor the slightest diffidence. Sangiorgio sometimes scanned her face in doubt: it was serene, unclouded by fear or shame. When she arrived she sat down as if she were in any other house, with not a quiver in her voice, not a tremor of her hand; nothing to suggest a woman doing a surreptitious thing, nothing to indicate consciousness of deceit. There now seemed to be no difficulty about coming; it was such a natural, simple thing. She would often come between two calls; she would leave the Chamber, and, on her way to the Russian Ambassadress, would see him for a moment--just a moment--before going on to the Embassy. She would come between two errands; after leaving her dressmaker's, who lived in the Piazza di Spagna, to go to Janetti's to buy some article, she would come and ask Sangiorgio's advice about a garment, or about a little Renaissance shrine. One day she cruelly said, as she entered: 'I happened to be passing by, and as I thought you might possibly be at home, I came up.' Another time, when he was looking out into the street through the window, which he did not dare to open for fear of being recognised, and was almost suffocated with the heat of the room, he saw her walking in the square with her rhythmical step, glancing at the shops and the people. He gave a start, and wanted to call out to her to make her come up, but he lacked the courage, and his voice failed him. She went on and on without looking back. At a certain moment something seemed to come into her mind. She turned round, threw up a glance at that first-story window, saw that eager pale face behind it, smiled, went back again and up to his apartment, as she might have called on a friend she had seen on a balcony. How cruelly she did this! And these meetings with a man who was in love with her, in a private place, in a room accessible to no one, aroused no sense of guilt or betrayal in her. In fact, the thing had become a habit. She shook hands with him as one does with friends in the street; she let him button her glove as if they were at a ball; she looked him as straight in the face, treated him as she did in her own drawing-room; she spoke of trivial or serious matters according to inclination; she gave him any letters to read that might be in her pocket; she consulted him on family affairs; she had adopted a familiar friendly tone, never speaking or thinking of love, being ingenuously and aggressively blunt and open. Not so Sangiorgio. This continued intimacy, these secret confidences, these sequestered chats, in a warm room, with the lady of his heart, the hand he was allowed to kiss, the arm that rested so softly on his, the wavy locks on her forehead, which she let him fondle--all this physical femininity excited his blood and his senses, stirring up manhood and youth in him anew. He was a man after all, and when that beloved face leaned very close to his in conversation, when he felt the odour of that hair going to his brain, when that supple form fell back in an armchair, shaken by a sob or in a burst of merry laughter, when that fair brow was bent in thought, at such moments he was on the verge of clasping Angelica in his arms, tenderly, passionately, in a lingering grasp. The divine image had become too kind, too familiar, and too friendly for him not to feel her sex, with all her charms, all her seductions; they were together too much, alone and safe, for him always to remain a calm, religious worshipper; his love was too great for him not to aim, ultimately, at the entire possession of this woman. In vain did he try to drive away temptation by recalling the sweet, pure beginning, when love floated on the wings of the ideal and the abstract; however hard it might once have been to relinquish her, now it was impossible to banish Angelica from his blood and his fibres. It was all in vain. The absolute, Buddhistic five months' concentration had brought with it the concentration of his mind upon a single desire. With his simple, sober, robust nature, he in vain tried to escape from this phase of contemplation, for he was unable to wish for anything else. He went through daily struggles not to let Angelica read the truth in his longing eyes, not to let her understand the trembling of his longing lips, to prevent his longing arms from snatching her in their embrace. He was a man after all, and he fought because of his promise, fought with inner desperation, with now victory, now defeat imminent. The sweet lady smiled at him, put her face near his, spoke to him in whispers, all unwitting, cruel and innocent. He choked, he shut his eyes, as if it were all over with him. He had promised, promised! But she--why did she not understand? She was a woman, surely! Then why did she play with this peril? He had promised, but he was a man; endure the struggle he could not. How was it that Donna Angelica did not understand? Had she never understood? How long was this martyrdom to last? No, the torture of it was surpassing his strength. To have her there with him, beautiful, young, beloved--to be alone with her in that silent place--yet no, he could not break his promise which he had given: he must spare her that cup, he must give her up, she must come no more! One day in June, while explaining a new way of doing her hair, she remembered her promise to take it down and let him see it. 'No, no,' he murmured. 'Why?' she asked innocently. 'I could not bear it.' 'Not bear it?' He did not answer. She took off her hat, laughing, snatched out three hairpins and a tortoiseshell comb, and shook out the dark tresses over her shoulders, still laughing like a child in fun. 'How lovely! how lovely!' he exclaimed in a stifled voice, seizing some of her locks and kissing them. 'May I go into your room to make myself tidy?' she asked, jumping to her feet, pink and fresh under this hood of hair. She had never been in there, nor had ever evinced any curiosity to go. And she did not now wait for Sangiorgio's sanction, but went in without further ado, quite at home, confiding, unsuspecting. First, she was taken aback at the blue striped with silver, at once so sober and so sensual. She mechanically passed the yellow comb into her hair, without looking into the Pompadour mirror. Sangiorgio, standing by her, said nothing. Then her eyes fell for a moment on the blue velvet coverlet. She saw the capital 'A' embroidered on it, saw that piece of audacity, and uttered a faint cry of pain. She looked into Sangiorgio's eyes, and the truth was plain to her. Speechless, she knotted her hair on her neck, left the room, put on her hat, took her gloves and went away, without looking back. CHAPTER VII Sangiorgio was idling under the porch at Montecitorio, while inside the ushers were nimbly extinguishing the gas in the library, reading and writing rooms, and offices. He was gazing at the starry summer sky and the square, being unable to make up his mind to go home. A tall, lean man, appearing from the Via Orfanelli, came up to him, cigar in mouth, with shoulders slightly bent. 'Good-evening, Sangiorgio,' he said. 'Are you at liberty?' 'Good-evening, Don Silvio. I am.' 'I have something to say to you.' 'Shall we go to your office, then?' 'No, no, not there.' 'To your house?' 'No, not to my house, either. I prefer to go to yours, Sangiorgio.' dryly answered the Minister, raising his head. 'As you please,' answered the deputy in the same tone, having understood what was coming. 'Come.' They went across the Piazza Colonna in silence, smoking their cigars, looking at their shadows against the ground in the moonlit night. At the corner of the Via Cacciabove Sangiorgio made motion to turn off. 'That way?' asked Vargas doubtfully. 'Certainly.' 'Do you not live at 62, Piazza di Spagna, Sangiorgio?' 'I admit it,' rejoined Sangiorgio frigidly. They continued along the Corso, both maintaining silence, meeting people who were coming out of the summer theatres, the Quirino, the Corea, the Alhambra, and who, recognising the Minister's tall figure in spite of the darkness, pointed him out to one another, and turned round to look at him, taking Sangiorgio for a secretary or clerk. The two walked very slowly. At the Via Condotti no more people were in sight; there was no one in the Piazza di Spagna. The front-door of No. 62 was closed, but Sangiorgio had a key, though he had never been there at night. He lit a match on the dark staircase, Don Silvio following, still smoking. In the anteroom the oil lamp, which was always burning, threw sombre shadows on the carved, wooden bridal coffer, on the high-backed chairs. In the sitting-room, where no lights had ever been used, Sangiorgio turned about in embarrassment, match in hand, at a loss how to obtain a light. At last he found a slender, bronze, Pompeian candlestick, with three pink candles, which he lit. He sat down opposite Don Silvio, who had already taken a seat. The Minister had thrown his cigar away on the landing, and left his hat in the anteroom; his head was lowered on his chest, and his eyeglass hanging down on his coat. Don Silvio was in one of his reflective moods. 'I am waiting, Don Silvio,' said Sangiorgio, with difficulty restraining himself from speaking impatiently. 'I was thinking, Sangiorgio,' quietly began the Minister, 'what a very strong desire you must have to kill me.' 'Very strong.' 'To-day, no doubt, it is irresistible.' 'Irresistible.' 'You are wrong, Sangiorgio,' Don Silvio went on, very gently. 'Why should you wish to kill me? I am old, quite old; what you do not do, death will soon do in its natural course.' 'Don Silvio!' cried the other, suddenly prostrated. 'It is true; I am seventy-two years old, but I have lived the lives of three men. I am, in reality, more exhausted and much weaker than anyone knows of. Some day I shall collapse in a single moment. You might be my son, Sangiorgio. You would surely not kill your father for the sake of the inheritance.' 'Don Silvio, Don Silvio, do not say such things!' 'Yes, let me speak. We will not fight about this, however strong my right to do so, and however great your desire. Besides, it would be ridiculous. I, so near the grave, assuming the heat and passion of youth; you, so young, confessing you could not wait. We must not make ourselves ridiculous. I understand such affairs, when they are a question of love and youth, as being tragical, not comical. Better dishonour than a farce, Sangiorgio.' 'True, quite true.' 'And then there is Angelica,' added her aged husband, pronouncing the name with infinite tenderness. A prolonged silence occurred in the little temple where the absent divinity still invisibly reigned. 'Angelica is good; she must not suffer. When she threw herself into my arms to-day, trembling with terror, beseeching me to save her--do not be jealous, Sangiorgio; she is a daughter to me--although I knew her secret, I let her speak, because her tears, her sobs, her despair, were the proof of her virtue: they showed her conscience rebelling against evil.' 'You knew her whole secret?' 'Yes, from the very first. She did not exactly remember whether she came here for the first time on the second or the third of May; but I knew very well it was on a Sunday, the first of May. She confessed to having been here about fifteen times, but I knew better--that she had come eighteen times. I am Minister of Home Affairs. But I do not reproach her, and I am not reproaching you; you are right to love each other.' Sangiorgio humbly raised his head to look the grief-smitten old husband in the eyes. 'Of course,' he resumed, 'Angelica being handsome and young and clever, she required some young person like herself, entirely devoted to her, who would appreciate all her good, lovely qualities, who would live the life of the spirit and the heart together with her. Instead, she has a withered, disbelieving, ruined old man, who has an old and greedy passion to feed--ambition, the exacting, absorbing, furious passion of men over forty. 'It is natural that Angelica should prefer you to me. As for you, who know how to love, and still want to, who have no ambition, who do not yet know that fever of the soul which never can be stilled, who have a heart full of trust and an imagination full of enthusiasm, you prefer the sweet intoxication of love to everything else. Who could possibly find fault with you? It is you who are the wiser; we are the fools. We deserve to be tricked and deceived; we are striving for a vulgar sham, you for a divine reality! I cannot blame you.' Sangiorgio listened, with his face buried in his hands, without proffering a word. 'Further than that,' Don Silvio went on, as if soliloquizing, 'that great thing called man, that power, that force, that combination of forces, is governed by a certain law which imposes a restriction upon his achievements. Do this, and nothing else, says this law, if you do not want to be feeble and insufficient in both. One single, strong, intense, profound passion you may entertain; one single, high, distant, unattainable ideal you may cherish; and your soul must be completely devoted to this sole passion, from which nothing must make you swerve, and your soul must be wholly bent upon that one ideal if you want to reach it. Love, art, politics, science, these great human activities, these highest forms of passion, and the ideal, all go their own separate roads; and so stupendous are they that the miserable mind of a man can scarcely get his grasp on one of them. A man cannot be a scientist and an artist, nor a politician and a lover, without failing in both the things he wants to do. We must take our choice; the great human interests of mind and heart are selfish, and demand heavy sacrifices.' 'What is Donna Angelica's wish?' asked Sangiorgio briefly, rousing himself from the long spell of meditation in which he had been immersed. 'That you leave Rome, Sangiorgio,' answered Don Silvio. 'I shall leave. For how long?' 'As long as possible.' 'I shall hand in my resignation. May I see her once more? I have not the shadow of an evil thought in making this request now.' 'She wishes not to see you.' 'Very well. May I at least write to her?' 'She begs that you will spare her. You will understand her reserve.' 'I understand. Now, tell me, Don Silvio, in this bitterest hour of my life, tell me before God, is it you who are compelling her to do all this, or is she doing it of her own free will?' 'I swear to you, my son,' said the old man gently, 'that it is all by her own free will, without any compulsion from me. You may see her if you like; I shall offer no opposition. But it will be better for you not to see her,' he added significantly. 'Is she suffering?' 'She has suffered.' 'What does she say about me?' 'She counts upon your love.' 'Very well. Tell her I am going away never to return. Good-bye, Don Silvio.' 'Good-bye, Sangiorgio.' And they took leave of one another at the street door, under the sky of night. 'Another word, Don Silvio. You knew I loved Donna Angelica, and that she came to see me. Had you no fears?' 'I know Donna Angelica,' answered Don Silvio, with an accent of profound conviction, and went away. Francesco Sangiorgio understood. Like Don Silvio, he now also saw what Donna Angelica was--the woman who knew not how to love. * * * * * He stole to the Speaker's rooms while the House was sitting, since he did not wish to be seen. From there he wrote a note, in which he asked to resign for reasons of health--a curt note, without any other particulars whatever. Upon handing the letter to the usher, his nerves underwent a violent shock; he seemed to be suffocated by a rush of blood. After seeing the man disappear through the door, he fell back into the yellow satin armchair, aged and weak, as if he were coming out of a ten years' sickness. He waited and waited, not daring to stir, not daring to go into the Chamber, whence that day he was voluntarily banishing himself. He was afraid to show himself, like a criminal; was afraid to give way to his feelings; was afraid to throw himself on the ground and weep over everything that was dying in him that day. The usher came back with a note from the Speaker. The Chamber, as was customary, granted him, on the request of the Honourable Melillo, a three months' leave of absence. Did they not understand, then, that he wanted to go? Was the agony to begin over again? He was obliged to write the Speaker another note; positively, he was ill, and could not act as deputy any more. Then he walked up and down in the Speaker's sitting-room, like a caged lion; and each time he was near the bedroom he became seized with a sense of envy. In there, on a bed to which he had been carried after taking a sudden fit during a speech he was making in the Chamber, a young and bold athlete of finance had breathed his last. He had known the supreme blessing of being able to die like a soldier on the battlefield, and Sangiorgio envied him his death. The usher came back. The House accepted the resignation, in view of the urgency of the case, the Speaker conveying besides a short message of regret, with wishes for his recovery. That was all, and it was the end of all. Sangiorgio mechanically felt for his medal, his pride, his amulet, and between his fingers it seemed eroded, thinned, as if it had been through fire. And slowly he went thence, resisting his strong desire to look once more at the lobbies, the corridors, the waiting-rooms, the library, the refreshment-rooms, the offices. But he went away without seeing them, since he was afraid of meeting too many deputies, to be obliged to give too many explanations, and shake too many hands; and he knew--yes, he knew that before anyone who should happen to be the first to bid him good-bye he would burst into tears, without shame, like a boy whose father has shut the door of his house against him. Better had he leave as though he cared not, like an unfaithful servant, who goes unthanked and without being bidden farewell; who wants to say no thanks, and offers no farewells. Suddenly, in the Montecitorio Square, he felt a great void within and all about him. He seemed to have nothing more to do, to have nowhere else to go to, to be excluded from seeing anyone; all things, people, and events became discoloured all at once. He wanted neither to walk, eat, talk, nor think; it all seemed useless--all. Instinctively he made for the Via Angelo Custode, to his old lodgings, where so much dust had accumulated in the summer, and where the disgusting smell of bugs was mixed with other horrible smells that came from the courtyard. There he threw himself on the bed, face downwards, buried in the cushions, hands lifeless, in mortal inanition. He had made no attempt to see Donna Angelica again; what use would it have been? Would there have been any change in her, or in his love, if he had seen her? It was all useless, all of it. He owed a large sum to an upholsterer, and another to a bank, the natural penalty of every honest but forbidden love. But what did it matter? He would pay, perhaps, when he was able, at some uncertain date; otherwise, if it meant ruin--well, so much the worse. Nothing could hurt him now; everything was useless, everything. He did not even want to see the apartment in the Piazza di Spagna again, all fragrant still, and warm with Angelica's late presence; he did not want to kiss the place where she had sat. These memories must be buried in the past; the evidence of the past must perish. Nor did he desire to take another walk through Rome, the city of his choice, the city of his dreams, which he was to quit in two hours. He was fit for nothing more, and all was useless--all. Now that all was over, better remain out of sight on that wretched bed in the furnished lodgings, with the filth and the vile smells, better see and hear nothing. Surely this was a sleep-walker, this man who was going to and fro in the waiting-room at the station, after taking a second-class ticket for an unheard-of little place in the Basilicata, since he had not enough money to buy a first-class ticket. He must be walking in his sleep, this man, who saw none of the passengers, but stumbled up against them, while waiting for the departure of the Naples train; who paid no attention either to his traps, or to the itinerant newsvendor offering him papers, or to the summer breeze that blew the gas about. This was a sleep-walker, surely, who was looking for a seat as he vacantly followed the voice of the guard. Ah, the long dream! With the first puffs of the departing train a severe shock at his heart awakens the pale sleep-walker. He moves to the window of the coach and sees Rome, black, towering, stupendous, on the seven hills flooded with light. And he draws back, and falls upon the seat as one dead, for in very truth Rome has conquered him. THE END BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD ADVERTISEMENTS THE LAND OF COCKAYNE BY MATILDE SERAO Some Press Opinions +The Pall Mall Gazette.+--'It is long since we have read--and, indeed, re-read--any book of modern fiction with so absorbing an interest as "The Land of Cockayne," the latest book by Matilde Serao, and surely as fine a piece of work as the genius of this writer has yet accomplished. It is splendid! Powers of the highest order, an intensity of feeling almost painful in its acuteness, a breathless vigour that carries the reader off his feet and away, like some turbulent mountain stream--these are but some of the qualities manifest in this astounding epic of superstition, sorrow, and shame.' +The Spectator.+--'An elaborate and ruthless study of the gambling instincts as developed by State lotteries in modern Italy. The tragic consequences of indulgence in the gambling mania are traced out with a wealth of convincing detail. "The Land of Cockayne" is a great novel, with a most laudable purpose, the lessons of which, _mutatis mutandis_, should not be thrown away on English readers. One can only regret that the theme has never been adequately treated by an English writer of equal genius to that of Madame Serao.' +The Speaker.+--'Matilde Serao has great gifts, perhaps the greatest: she is _simpatica_. To translate this quality into an English epithet baffles my vocabulary, but it amounts to this: that we like Matilde Serao in her writings.' +The Academy.+--'Matilde Serao has the direct, impersonal manner that belongs only to the efficient. In her books are no asides, no pauses, no extraneous interpolations. The story moves in the uninterrupted fashion of life. Having set out to deal with such and such a subject, Matilde Serao does that, and nothing else, the unwavering concentration of her methods rendering the average English novel, with its slipshod construction and frequent digressions, like so many 'prentice efforts by comparison.' +The Daily Chronicle.+--'This is an absorbing and, on the whole, a very persuasive book. Cockayne is Naples in these pages--Naples given over to the lottery, crazed, debauched and beggared by it. If the colouring is high, the outline is unmistakably true. Matilde Serao's fascinating book has, however, another side, and those who know anything at all of the city which it describes will delight in the countless incidental sketches of social life--high, middle, and low.' THE BALLET DANCER BY MATILDE SERAO Some Press Opinions +The Spectator.+--'These stories are at once beautiful and terrible. "The Ballet Dancer" is a cruel tragedy, but it is justified by its powerful truth and exquisite art. "On Guard" gives us a glimpse of convict life in Italy.... The whole situation, and every character in the story, stand out with a distinctness and vividness that is more than picturesque--it is sculpturesque.' +The Bookman.+--'The effects in these two stories are carefully arranged. No words are wasted. Scenes and circumstances, and atmosphere and narrative, are contrived in an admirable harmony in each of them. Yet we hardly pause to admire, for in all Matilde Serao's work the strongest flavour is always that of human sympathy, and we are borne on its quick wave to the end. In the two tales before us the sentiment is delicate, sincere, and robust. Madame Serao has worked successfully on larger canvases; but we are inclined to think the translator has shown us in these two stories the finest flowers of her art.' +The Pall Mall Gazette.+--'The appearance of a volume from Madame Serao's pen must now be reckoned as one of the treats of a publishing season. Few living writers have given us anything equal to her splendid story of the Neapolitan lotteries, "The Land of Cockayne," and it is much to say that those who were stirred to enthusiasm by that book will experience no reaction upon reading the two stories here bound together. It is easy enough to say that the intense directness of Madame Serao's work, or the completeness of vision and sympathy with which she sees her picture, is its secret; but genius is not too big a word for her, and genius has no communicable secret.' +The Sunday Special.+--'Tense, passionate, and dramatic, are terms one can apply without exaggeration to "The Ballet Dancer." +The Saturday Review.+--'The work of Madame Serao, a novelist with rare gifts of observation and faculties of execution, only needs a little more concentration on a central motive to rank among the finest of its kind--the short novels of realism. She curiously resembles Prosper Mérimée in her cold, impersonal treatment of her subject, without digression or comment, the drawing of clear outlines of action; the complete exposure of motive and inner workings of impulse; the inevitable developments of given temperament under given circumstances. She works with insight, with judgment, and with sincerity.' 
40135	----	Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME [Illustration: POPE GREGORY. _Frontispiece._] THE MAKERS OF MODERN ROME IN FOUR BOOKS I. HONOURABLE WOMEN NOT A FEW II. THE POPES WHO MADE THE PAPACY III. LO POPOLO: AND THE TRIBUNE OF THE PEOPLE IV. THE POPES WHO MADE THE CITY BY MRS. OLIPHANT AUTHOR OF "THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE" _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY HENRY P. RIVIERE, A.R.W.S. AND JOSEPH PENNELL_ New York MACMILLAN AND CO. AND LONDON 1896 _All rights reserved_ COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY MACMILLAN AND CO. Set up and electrotyped November, 1895. Reprinted January, 1896. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith. Norwood Mass. U.S.A. I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK WITH THE DEAR NAMES OF THOSE OF MINE WHO LIE UNDER THE WALLS OF ROME: AND OF HIM, THE LAST OF ALL, WHO WAS BORN IN THAT SAD CITY: ALL NOW AWAITING ME, AS I TRUST, WHERE GOD MAY PLEASE. F. W. O. M. W. O. F. R. O. PREFACE. Nobody will expect in this book, or from me, the results of original research, or a settlement--if any settlement is ever possible--of vexed questions which have occupied the gravest students. An individual glance at the aspect of these questions which most clearly presents itself to a mind a little exercised in the aspects of humanity, but not trained in the ways of learning, is all I attempt or desire. This humble endeavour has been conscientious at least. The work has been much interrupted by sorrow and suffering, on which account, for any slips of hers, the writer asks the indulgence of her unknown friends. CONTENTS. BOOK I. HONOURABLE WOMEN NOT A FEW. CHAPTER I. PAGE ROME IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 1 CHAPTER II. THE PALACE ON THE AVENTINE 14 CHAPTER III. MELANIA 29 CHAPTER IV. THE SOCIETY OF MARCELLA 43 CHAPTER V. PAULA 65 CHAPTER VI. THE MOTHER HOUSE 89 BOOK II. THE POPES WHO MADE THE PAPACY. CHAPTER I. GREGORY THE GREAT 119 CHAPTER II. THE MONK HILDEBRAND 181 CHAPTER III. THE POPE GREGORY VII 230 CHAPTER IV. INNOCENT III 307 BOOK III. LO POPOLO: AND THE TRIBUNE OF THE PEOPLE. CHAPTER I. ROME IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 381 CHAPTER II. THE DELIVERER 402 CHAPTER III. THE BUONO STATO 428 CHAPTER IV. DECLINE AND FALL 460 CHAPTER V. THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 486 CHAPTER VI. THE END OF THE TRAGEDY 493 BOOK IV. THE POPES WHO MADE THE CITY. CHAPTER I. MARTIN V.--EUGENIUS IV.--NICOLAS V. 513 CHAPTER II. CALIXTUS III.--PIUS II.--PAUL II.--SIXTUS IV. 552 CHAPTER III. JULIUS II.--LEO X. 581 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE POPE GREGORY _Frontispiece_ COLOSSEUM BY MOONLIGHT, _by H. P. Riviere_ 37 TEMPLE OF VENUS AND RIVER FROM THE COLOSSEUM (1860), _by H. P. Riviere_ 73 TEMPLE OF VESTA, _by H. P. Riviere_ 111 ARCH OF CONSTANTINE, _by H. P. Riviere_ 153 THE FORUM, _by H. P. Riviere_ 171 ARCH OF TITUS, _by H. P. Riviere_ 209 SANTA MARIA MAGGIORE, _by H. P. Riviere_ 247 ARCH OF DRUSUS (1860), _by H. P. Riviere_ 267 ISLAND ON TIBER, _by H. P. Riviere_ 287 THE CAPITOL, _by J. Pennell_ 317 PORTA MAGGIORE, _by H. P. Riviere_ 327 IN THE CAMPAGNA (1860), _by H. P. Riviere_ 347 ST. PETER'S AND THE CASTLE OF ST. ANGELO, _by H. P. Riviere_ 367 APPROACH TO THE CAPITOL (1860), _by H. P. Riviere_ 387 THEATRE OF MARCELLUS, _by J. Pennell_ 407 AQUA FELICE, _by H. P. Riviere_ 463 THE TARPEIAN ROCK, _by J. Pennell_ 481 ANCIENT, MEDIÆVAL, AND MODERN ROME, _by J. Pennell_ 503 MODERN ROME: SHELLEY'S TOMB, _by J. Pennell_ 519 FOUNTAIN OF TREVI, _by H. P. Riviere_ 527 SANTA MARIA DEL POPOLO, _by H. P. Riviere_ 547 PIAZZA COLONNA, _by J. Pennell_ 565 OLD ST. PETER'S, _from the engraving by Campini_ 585 MODERN ROME: THE GRAVE OF KEATS, _by J. Pennell_ 593 ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT. THE COLOSSEUM, _by J. Pennell_ 1 THE PALATINE, FROM THE AVENTINE, _by J. Pennell_ 13 THE RIPETTA, _by J. Pennell_ 14 ON THE PALATINE, _by J. Pennell_ 27 THE WALLS BY ST. JOHN LATERAN, _by J. Pennell_ 29 THE TEMPLE OF VESTA, _by J. Pennell_ 42 CHURCHES ON THE AVENTINE, _by J. Pennell_ 43 THE STEPS OF THE CAPITOL, _by J. Pennell_ 51 THE LATERAN FROM THE AVENTINE, _by J. Pennell_ 64 PORTICO OF OCTAVIA, _by J. Pennell_ 65 TRINITA DE' MONTI, _by J. Pennell_ 76 FROM THE AVENTINE, _by J. Pennell_ 87 THE CAPITOL FROM THE PALATINE, _by J. Pennell_ 89 SAN BARTOLOMMEO, _by J. Pennell_ 97 ST. PETER'S, FROM THE JANICULUM, _by J. Pennell_ 103 ST. PETER'S, FROM THE PINCIO, _by J. Pennell_ 107 PORTA SAN PAOLA, _by J. Pennell_ 115 THE STEPS OF SAN GREGORIO, _by J. Pennell_ 119 VILLA DE' MEDICI, _by J. Pennell_ 133 SAN GREGORIO MAGNO, AND ST. JOHN AND ST. PAUL, _by J. Pennell_ 145 THE PIAZZA DEL POPOLO, _by J. Pennell_ 157 MONTE PINCIO, FROM THE PIAZZA DEL POPOLO, _by J. Pennell_ 167 PONTE MOLLE, _by J. Pennell_ 180 THE PALATINE, _by J. Pennell_ 181 PYRAMID OF CAIUS CESTIUS, _by J. Pennell_ 197 TRINITA DE' MONTI, _by J. Pennell_ 207 THE VILLA BORGHESE, _by J. Pennell_ 220 WHERE THE GHETTO STOOD, _by J. Pennell_ 228 FROM SAN GREGORIO MAGNO, _by J. Pennell_ 230 IN THE VILLA BORGHESE, _by J. Pennell_ 306 THE FOUNTAIN OF THE TORTOISE, _by J. Pennell_ 307 ALL THAT IS LEFT OF THE GHETTO, _by J. Pennell_ 377 ON THE TIBER, _by J. Pennell_ 381 ON THE PINCIO, _by J. Pennell_ 402 THE LUNGARA, _by J. Pennell_ 428 PORTA DEL POPOLO (FLAMINIAN GATE), _by J. Pennell_ 459 THEATRE OF MARCELLUS, _by J. Pennell_ 460 THE BORGHESE GARDENS, _by J. Pennell_ 486 TOMB OF CECILIA METELLA, _by J. Pennell_ 493 LETTER WRITER, _by J. Pennell_ 510 PIAZZA DEL POPOLO, _by J. Pennell_ 513 ON THE PINCIO, _by J. Pennell_ 533 IN THE CORSO: CHURCH DOORS, _by J. Pennell_ 542 MODERN DEGRADATION OF A PALACE, _by J. Pennell_ 552 FOUNTAIN OF TREVI, _by J. Pennell_ 581 A BRIC-A-BRAC SHOP, _by J. Pennell_ 600 BOOK I. HONOURABLE WOMEN NOT A FEW. [Illustration: THE COLOSSEUM.] BOOK I. HONOURABLE WOMEN NOT A FEW. CHAPTER I. ROME IN THE FOURTH CENTURY. There is no place in the world of which it is less necessary to attempt description (or of which so many descriptions have been attempted) than the once capital of that world, the supreme and eternal city, the seat of empire, the home of the conqueror, the greatest human centre of power and influence which our race has ever known. Its history is unique and its position. Twice over in circumstances and by means as different as can be imagined it has conquered and held subject the world. All that was known to man in their age gave tribute and acknowledgment to the Cæsars; and an ever-widening circle, taking in countries and races unknown to the Cæsars, have looked to the spiritual sovereigns who succeeded them as to the first and highest of authorities on earth. The reader knows, or at least is assisted on all hands to have some idea and conception of the classical city--to be citizens of which was the aim of the whole world's ambition, and whose institutions and laws, and even its architecture and domestic customs, were the only rule of civilisation--with its noble and grandiose edifices, its splendid streets, the magnificence and largeness of its life; while on the other hand most people are able to form some idea of what was the Rome of the Popes, the superb yet squalid mediæval city with its great palaces and its dens of poverty, and that conjunction of exuberance and want which does not strike the eye while the bulk of a population remains in a state of slavery. But there is a period between, which has not attracted much attention from English writers, and which the reader passes by as a time in which there is little desirable to dwell upon, though it is in reality the moment of transition when the old is about to be replaced by the new, and when already the energy and enthusiasm of a new influence is making its appearance among the tragic dregs and abysses of the past. An ancient civilisation dying in the impotence of luxury and wealth from which all active power or influence over the world had departed, and a new and profound internal revolt, breaking up its false calm from within, before the raging forces of another rising power had yet begun to thunder at its gates without--form however a spectacle full of interest, especially when the scene of so many conflicts is traversed and lighted up by the most lifelike figures, and has left its record, both of good and evil, in authentic and detailed chronicles, full of individual character and life, in which the men and women of the age stand before us, occupied and surrounded by circumstances which are very different from our own, yet linked to us by that unfailing unity of human life and feeling which makes the farthest off foreigner a brother, and the most distant of our primeval predecessors like a neighbour of to-day. The circumstances of Rome in the middle and end of the fourth century were singular in every point of view. With all its prestige and all its memories, it was a city from which power and the dominant forces of life had faded. The body was there, the great town with its high places made to give law and judgment to the world, even the officials and executors of the codes which had dispensed justice throughout the universe; but the spirit of dominion and empire had passed away. A great aristocracy, accustomed to the first place everywhere, full of wealth, full of leisure, remained; but with nothing to do to justify this greatness, nothing but luxury, the prize and accompaniment of it, now turned into its sole object and meaning. The patrician class had grown by use, by the high capability to fill every post and lead every expedition which they had constantly shown, which was their original cause and the reason of their existence, into a position of unusual superiority and splendour. But that reason had died away, the empire had departed from them, the world had a new centre: and the sons of the men who had conducted all the immense enterprises of Rome were left behind with the burden of their great names, and the weight of their great wealth, and nothing to do but to enjoy and amuse themselves: no vocations to fulfil, no important public functions to occupy their time and their powers. Such a position is perhaps the most dreadful that can come to any class in the history of a nation. Great and irresponsible wealth, the supremacy of high place, without those bonds of practical affairs which, in the case of all rulers--even of estates or of factories--preserve the equilibrium of humanity, are instruments of degradation rather than of elevation. To have something to do for it, something to do with it, is the condition which alone makes boundless wealth wholesome. And this had altogether failed in the imperial city. Pleasure and display had taken the place of work and duty. Rome had no longer any imperial affairs in hand. Her day was over: the absence of a court and all its intrigues might have been little loss to any community--but that those threads of universal dominion which had hitherto occupied them had been transferred to other hands, and that all the struggles, the great questions, the causes, the pleas, the ordinances of the world were now decided and given forth at Constantinople, was ruin to the once masters of the world. It was worse than destruction, a more dreadful overthrow than anything that the Goths and barbarians could bring--not death which brings a satisfaction of all necessities in making an end of them--but that death in life which fills men's blood with cold. The pictures left us of this condition of affairs do indeed chill the blood. It is natural that there should be a certain amount of exaggeration in them. We read daily in our own contemporary annals, records of society of which we are perfectly competent to judge, that though true to fact in many points, they give a picture too dark in all its shadows, too garish in its lights, to afford a just view of the state of any existing condition of things. Contemporaries know how much to receive and how much to reject, and are apt to smile at the possibility of any permanent impression upon the face of history being made by lights and darks beyond the habit of nature. But yet when every allowance has been made, the contemporary pictures of Rome at this unhappy period leave an impression on the mind which is not contradicted but supported and enforced by the incidents of the time and the course of history. The populace, which had for ages been fed and nourished upon the bread of public doles and those entertainments of ferocious gaiety which deadened every higher sense, had sunk into complete debasement. Honest work and honest purpose, or any hope of improving their own position, elevating themselves or training their children, do not seem to have existed among them. A half-ludicrous detail, which reminds us that the true Roman had always a trifle of pedantry in his pride, is noted with disgust and disdain even by serious writers--which is that the common people bore no longer their proper names, but were known among each other by nicknames, such as those of Cabbage-eaters, Sausage-mongers, and other coarse familiar vulgarisms. This might be pardoned to the crowd which spent its idle days at the circus or spectacle, and its nights on the benches in the Colosseum or in the porch of a palace; but it is difficult to exaggerate the debasement of a populace which lived for amusement alone, picking up the miserable morsels which kept it alive from any chance or tainted source, without work to do or hope of amelioration. They formed the shouting, hoarse accompaniment of every pageant, they swarmed on the lower seats of every amphitheatre, howling much criticism as well as boisterous applause, and keeping in fear, and disgusted yet forced compliance with their coarse exactions, the players and showmen who supplied their lives with an object. According to all the representations that have reached us, nothing more degraded than this populace--encumbering every portico and marble stair, swarming over the benches of the Colosseum, basking in filth and idleness in the brilliant sun of Rome, or seeking, among the empty glories of a triumphal age gone by, a lazy shelter from it--has ever been known. The higher classes suffered in their way as profoundly, and with a deeper consciousness, from the same debasing influences of stagnation. The descriptions of their useless life of luxury are almost too extravagant to quote. "A loose silken robe," says the critic and historian of the time, Ammianus Marcellinus, speaking of a Roman noble,--"for a toga of the lightest tissue would have been too heavy for him--linen so transparent that the air blew through it, fans and parasols to protect him from the light, a troop of eunuchs always round him." This was the appearance and costume of a son of the great and famous senators of Rome. "When he was not at the bath, or at the circus to maintain the cause of some charioteer, or to inspect some new horses, he lay half asleep upon a luxurious couch in great rooms paved with marble, panelled with mosaic." The luxurious heat implied, which makes the freshness of the marble, the thinness of the linen, so desirable, as in a picture of Mr. Alma Tadema's, bids us at the same time pause in receiving the whole of this description as unquestionable; for Rome has its seasons in which vast chambers paved with marble are no longer agreeable, though the manners and utterances of the race still tend to a complete ignoring of this other side of the picture: but yet no doubt its general features are true. When this Sybarite went out it was upon a lofty chariot, where he reclined negligently, showing off himself, his curled and perfumed locks, his robes, with their wonderful embroideries and tissues of silk and gold, to the admiration of the world; his horses' harness were covered with ornaments of gold, his coachman armed with a golden wand instead of a whip, and the whole equipage followed by a procession of attendants, slaves, freedmen, eunuchs, down to the knaves of the kitchen, the hewers of wood and drawers of water, to give importance to the retinue, which pushed along through the streets with all the brutality which is the reverse side of senseless display, pushing citizens and passers-by out of the way. The dinner parties of the evening were equally childish in their extravagance: the tables covered with strange dishes, monsters of the sea and of the mountains, fishes and birds of unknown kinds and unequalled size. The latter seems to have been a special subject of pride, for we are told of the servants bringing scales to weigh them, and notaries crowding round with their tablets and styles to record the weight. After the feast came a "hydraulic organ," and other instruments of corresponding magnitude, to fill the great hall with resounding music, and pantomimical plays and dances to enliven the dulness of the luxurious spectators on their couches--"women with long hair, who might have married and given subjects to the state," were thus employed, to the indignation of the critic. This chronicler of folly and bad manners would not be human if he omitted the noble woman of Rome from his picture. Her rooms full of obsequious attendants, slaves, and eunuchs, half of her time was occupied by the monstrous toilette which annulled all natural charms to give to the Society beauty a fictitious and artificial display of red and white, of painted eyelids, tortured hair, and extravagant dress. An authority still more trenchant than the heathen historian, Jerome, describes even one of the noble ladies who headed the Christian society of Rome as spending most of the day before the mirror. Like the ladies of Venice in a later age, these women, laden with ornaments, attired in cloth of gold, and with shoes that crackled under their feet with the stiffness of metallic decorations, were almost incapacitated from walking, even with the support of their attendants; and a life so accoutred was naturally spent in the display of the charms and wealth thus painfully set forth. The fairer side of the picture, the revolt of the higher nature from such a life, brings us into the very heart of this society: and nothing can be more curious than the gradual penetration of a different and indeed sharply contrary sentiment, the impulse of asceticism and the rudest personal self-deprivation, amid a community spoilt by such a training, yet not incapable of disgust and impatience with the very luxury which had seemed essential to its being. The picturesqueness and attraction of the picture lies here, as in so many cases, chiefly on the women's side. It is necessary to note, however, the curious mixture which existed in this Roman society, where Christianity as a system was already strong, and the high officials of the Church were beginning to take gradually and by slow degrees the places abandoned by the functionaries of the empire. Though the hierarchy was already established, and the Bishop of Rome had assumed a special importance in the Church, Paganism still held in the high places that sway of the old economy giving place to the new, which is at once so desperate and so nerveless--impotence and bitterness mingling with the false tolerance of cynicism. The worship of the gods had dropped into a survival of certain habits of mind and life, to which some clung with the angry revulsion of terror against a new revolutionary power at first despised: and some held with the loose grasp of an imaginative and poetical system, and some with a sense of the intellectual superiority of art and philosophy over the arguments and motives that moved the crowd. Life had ebbed away from these religions of the past. The fictitious attempt of Julian to re-establish the worship of the gods, and bring new blood into the exhausted veins of the mythological system, had in reality given the last proof of its extinction as a power in the world: but still it remained lingering out its last, holding a place, sometimes dignified by a gleam of noble manners and the graces of intellectual life--and often, it must be allowed, justified by the failure of the Church to embody that purity and elevation which its doctrines, but scarcely its morals or life, professed. Thus the faith in Christ, often real, but very faulty--and the faith in Apollo, almost always fictitious, but sometimes dignified and superior--existed side by side. The father might hold the latter with a superb indifference to its rites, and a contemptuous tolerance for its opponents, while the mother held the first with occasional hot impulses of devotion, and performances of penance for the pardon of those worldly amusements and dissipations to which she returned with all the more zest when her vigils and prayers were over. This conjunction of two systems so opposite in every impulse, proceeding from foundations so absolutely contrary to each other, could not fail to have an extraordinary effect upon the minds of the generations moved by it, and affords, I think, an explanation of some events very difficult to explain on ordinary principles, and particularly the abandonment of what would appear the most unquestionable duties, by some of the personages, especially the women whose histories and manners fill this chapter of the great records of Rome. Some of them deserted their children to bury themselves in the deserts, to withdraw to the mountains, placing leagues of land and sea between themselves and their dearest duties--why? the reader asks. At the bidding of a priest, at the selfish impulse of that desire to save their own souls, which in our own day at least has come to mean a degrading motive--is the general answer. It would not be difficult, however, to paint on the other side a picture of the struggle with the authorities of her family for the training of a son, for the marriage of a daughter, from which a woman might shrink with a sense of impotence, knowing the prestige of the noble guardian against whom she would have to contend, and all the forces of family pride, of tradition and use and wont, that would be arrayed against her. Better perhaps, the mother might think, to abandon that warfare, to leave the conflict for which she was not strong enough, than to lose the love of her child as well, and become to him the emblem of an opposing faction attempting to turn him from those delights of youth which the hereditary authority of his house encouraged instead of opposing. It is difficult perhaps for the historians to take such motives into consideration, but I think the student of human nature may feel them to be worth a thought, and receive them as some justification, or at least apology, for the actions of some of the Roman women who fill the story of the time. Unfortunately it is not possible to leave out the Church in Rome when we collect the details of depravity and folly in Society. One cannot but feel how robust is the faith which goes back to these ages for guidance and example when one sees the image in St. Jerome's pages of a period so early in the history of Christianity. "Could ye not watch with me one hour?" our Lord said to the chosen disciples, His nearest friends and followers, in the moment of His own exceeding anguish, with a reproach so sorrowful, yet so conscious of the weakness of humanity, that it silences every excuse. We may say, for a poor four hundred years could not the Church keep the impress of His teaching, the reality of the faith of those who had themselves fallen and fainted, yet found grace to live and die for their Master? But four centuries are a long time, and men are but men even with the inheritance of Christians. They belonged to their race, their age, and the manifold influences which modify in the crowd everything it believes or wishes. And they were exposed to many temptations which were doubly strong in that world to which by birth and training they belonged. How is an ordinary man to despise wealth in the midst of a society corrupted by it, and in which it is supreme? how learn to be indifferent to rank and prestige in a city where without these every other claim was trampled under foot? "The virtues of the primitive Church," says Villemain of a still later period, "had been under the guard of poverty and persecution: they were weak in success and triumph. Enthusiasm became less pure, the rules of life less severe. In the always increasing crowd of proselytes were many unworthy persons, who turned to Christianity for reasons of ambition and self-interest, to make way at Court, to appear faithful to the emperor. The Church, enriched at once by the spoil of the temples and the offerings of the Christian crowd, began to clothe itself in profane magnificence." Those who attained the higher clerical honours were sure, according to the evidence of Ammianus, "of being enriched by the offerings of the Roman ladies, and drove forth like noblemen in lofty chariots, clothed magnificently, and sat down at tables worthy of kings." The Church, endowed in an earlier period by converts, who offered sometimes all their living for the sustenance of the community which gave them home and refuge, had continued to receive the gifts of the pious after the rules of ordinary life regained their force; and now when she had yielded to a great extent to the prevailing temptations of the age, found a large means of endowment in the gifts of deathbed repentance and the weakness of dying penitents, of which she was reputed to take large advantage: wealth grew within her borders, and luxury with it, according to the example of surrounding society. It is Jerome himself who reports the saying of one of the highest of Roman officials to Bishop Damasus. "If you will undertake to make me Bishop of Rome, I will be a Christian to-morrow." Not even the highest place in the Government was so valuable and so great. It is Jerome also who traces for us--the fierce indignation of his natural temper, mingling with an involuntary perception of the ludicrous side of the picture--a popular young priest of his time, whose greatest solicitude was to have perfumed robes, a well fitting shoe, hair beautifully curled, and fingers glittering with jewels, and who walked on tip-toe lest he should soil his feet. "What are these men? To those who see them pass they are more like bridegrooms than priests. Some among them devote their life and energies to the single object of knowing the names, the houses, the habits, the disposition of all the ladies in Rome. I will sketch for you, dear Eustochium, in a few lines, the day's work of one of them, great in the arts of which I speak, that by means of the master you may the more easily recognise his disciples. "Our hero rises with the sun: he regulates the order of his visits, studies the shortest ways, and arrives before he is wanted, almost before his friends are awake. If he perceives anything that strikes his fancy, a pretty piece of furniture or an elegant marble, he gazes at it, praises it, turns it over in his hands, and grieves that he has not one like it--thus extorting rather than obtaining the object of his desires; for what woman would not hesitate to offend the universal gossip of the town? Temperance, modesty (_castitas_), and fasting are his sworn enemies. He smells out a feast and loves savoury meats. "Wherever one goes one is sure to meet him; he is always there before you. He knows all the news, proclaims it in an authoritative tone, and is better informed than any one else can be. The horses which carry him to the four quarters of Rome in pursuit of this honest task are the finest you can see anywhere; you would say he was the brother of that King of Thrace known in story by the speed of his coursers. "This man," adds the implacable satirist in another letter, "was born in the deepest poverty, brought up under the thatch of a peasant's cottage, with scarcely enough of black bread and millet to satisfy the cravings of his appetite; yet now he is fastidious and hard to please, disdaining honey and the finest flour. An expert in the science of the table, he knows every kind of fish by name, and whence come the best oysters, and what district produces the birds of finest savour. He cares only for what is rare and unwholesome. In another kind of vice he is not less remarkable; his mania is to lie in wait for old men and women without children. He besieges their beds when they are ill, serves them in the most disgusting offices, more humble and servile than any nurse. When the doctor enters he trembles, asking with a faltering voice how the patient is, if there is any hope of saving him. If there is any hope, if the disease is cured, the priest disappears with regrets for his loss of time, cursing the wretched old man who insists on living to be as old as Methusalem." The last accusation, which has been the reproach of the Church in many different ages, had just been specially condemned by a law of the Emperor Valentinian I., declaring null and void all legacies made to priests, a law which called forth Jerome's furious denunciation, not of itself, but of the abuse which called it forth. This was a graver matter than the onslaught upon the curled darlings of the priesthood, more like bridegrooms than priests, who carried the news from boudoir to boudoir, and laid their entertainers under contribution for the bibelots and ancient bric-a-brac which their hearts desired. Thus wherever the eye turned there was nothing but luxury and the love of luxury, foolish display, extravagance and emulation in all the arts of prodigality, a life without gravity, without serious occupation, with nothing in it to justify the existence of those human creatures standing between earth and heaven, and capable of so many better things. The revulsion, a revulsion inspired by disgust and not without extravagance in its new way, was sure to come. [Illustration: THE PALATINE, FROM THE AVENTINE.] [Illustration: THE RIPETTA.] CHAPTER II. THE PALACE ON THE AVENTINE. The strong recoil of human nature from those fatal elements which time after time have threatened the destruction of all society is one of the noblest things in history, as it is one of the most divine in life. There are evidences that it exists even in the most wicked individuals, and it very evidently comes uppermost in every commonwealth from century to century to save again and again from utter debasement a community or a nation. When depravity becomes the rule instead of the exception, and sober principle appears on the point of yielding altogether to the whirl of folly or the thirst of self-indulgence, then it may always be expected that some ember of divine indignation, some thrill of high disgust with the miserable satisfactions of the world will kindle in one quarter or another and set light to a thousand smouldering tires over all the face of the earth. It is one of the highest evidences of that charter of our being which is our most precious possession, the reflection of that image of God which amid all degradations still holds its place in human nature, and will not be destroyed. We may mourn indeed that so short a span of centuries had so effaced the recollection of the brightest light that ever shone among men, as to make the extravagance of a human revulsion and revolution necessary in order to preserve and restore the better life of Christendom. At the same time it is our salvation as a race that such revolutions, however imperfect they may be in themselves, are sure to come. This revulsion from vice, degradation, and evil of every kind, public and personal, had already come with the utmost excess of self-punishment and austerity in the East, where already the deserts were mined with caverns and holes in the sand, to which hermits and coenobites, the one class scarcely less exalted in religious passion and suffering than the other, had escaped from the current of evil which they did not feel themselves capable of facing, and lived and starved and agonised for the salvation of their own souls and for a world lying in wickedness. The fame of the Thebaid and its saints and martyrs, slowly making itself known through the great distances and silences, had already breathed over the world, when Athanasius, driven by persecution from his see and his country, came to Rome, accompanied by two of the monks whose character was scarcely understood as yet in the West, and bringing with him his own book, the life of St. Antony of the desert, a work which had as great an effect in that time as the most popular of publications, spread over the world in thousands of copies, could have now. It puzzles the modern reader to think how a book should thus have moved the world and revolutionised hundreds of lives, while it existed only in manuscript and every example had to be carefully and tediously copied before it could touch even those who were wealthy enough to secure themselves such a luxury. What readings in common, what earnest circles of auditors, what rapt intense hanging upon the lips of the reader, there must have been before any work, even the most sacred, penetrated to the crowd!--but to us no doubt the process seems more slow and difficult than it really was when scribes were to be found everywhere, and manuscripts were treated with reverence and respect. When Athanasius found refuge in Rome, which was during the pontificate, or rather--for the full papal authority had as yet been claimed by no one--the primacy--of Liberius, and about the year 341, he was received by all that was best in Rome with great hospitality and sympathy. Rome so far as it was Christian was entirely orthodox, the Arian heresy having gained no part of the Christian society there--and a man of genius and imposing character, who brought into that stagnant atmosphere the breath of a larger world, who had shared the councils of the emperor and lived in the cells of Egypt--an orator, a traveller, an exile, with every kind of interest attaching to him, was such a visitor as seldom appeared in the city deserted by empire. Something like the man who nine centuries later went about the Italian streets with the signs upon him of one who had been through heaven and hell, the Eastern bishop must have appeared to the languid citizens, with the brown of the desert still on his cheeks, yet something of the air of a courtly prelate, a friend of princes; while his attendants, one with all the wildness of a hermit from the desert in his eyes and aspect, in the unfamiliar robe and cowl--and the other mild and young like the ideal youth, shy and simple as a girl--were wonderful apparitions in the fatigued and _blasé_ society, which longed above everything for something new, something real, among all the mocks and shows of their impotent life. One of the houses in which Athanasius and his monks were most welcome was the palace of a noble widow, Albina, who lived the large and luxurious life of her class in the perfect freedom of a Roman matron, Christian, yet with no idea in her mind of retirement from the world, or renunciation of its pleasures. A woman of a more or less instructive mind and lively intelligence, she received with the greatest interest and pleasure these strangers who had so much to tell, the great bishop flying from his enemies, the monks from the desert. That she and her circle gathered round him with that rapt and flattering attention which not the most abstracted saint any more than the sternest general can resist, is evident from the story, and it throws a gleam of softer light upon the impassioned theologian who stood fast, "I, Athanasius, against the world" for that mysterious splendour of the Trinity, against which the heretical East had risen. In the Roman lady's withdrawingroom, in his dark and flowing Eastern robes, we find him amid the eager questionings of the women, describing to them the strange life of the desert which it was such a wonder to hear of--the evensong that rose as from every crevice of the earth, while the Egyptian after-glow burned in one great circle of colour round the vast globe of sky, diffusing an illumination weird and mystic over the fantastic rocks and dark openings where the singers lived unseen. What a picture to be set before that soft, eager circle, half rising from silken couches, clothed with tissues of gold, blazing with jewels, their delicate cheeks glowing in artificial red and white, their crisped and curled tresses surmounted by the fantastic towering headdress which weighed them down! Among the ladies was the child of the house, the little girl who was her mother's excuse for retaining the freedom of her widowhood, Marcella: a thoughtful and pensive child, devouring all these wonderful tales, listening to everything and laying up a store of silent resolutions and fancies in her heart. Her elder sister Asella would seem to have already secluded herself in precocious devotion from the family, or at least is not referred to. The story which touched the general mind of the time with so strange and strong an enthusiasm, fell into the virgin soil of this young spirit like the seed of a new life. But the little Roman maiden was no ascetic. She had evidently no impulse, as some young devotees have had, to set out barefoot in search of suffering. When Athanasius left Rome, he left in the house which had received him so kindly his life of St. Antony, the first copy which had been seen in the Western world. This manuscript, written perhaps by the hand of one of those wonderful monks, the strangest figures in her luxurious world whom Marcella knew, became the treasure of her youth. Such a present, at such a time, was enough to occupy the visionary silence of a girl's life, often so full of dreams unknown and unsearchable even to her nearest surroundings. She went through however the usual routine of a young lady's life in Rome. Madame Albina the mother, though full of interest and curiosity in respect to all things intellectual and Christian, held still more dearly a mother's natural desire to see her only remaining child nobly married and established in the splendour and eminence to which she was born. We are told that Marcella grew up to be one of the beauties of Rome, but as this is an inalienable qualification of all these beautiful souls, it is not necessary to believe that the "insignem decorem corporis" meant any extraordinary distinction. She carried out at all events her natural fate and married a rich and noble husband, of whom however we know no details, except that he died some months after, leaving her without child or tie to the ordinary life of the world, in all the freedom of widowhood, at a very early age. Thus placed in full command of her fate, she never seems to have hesitated as to what she should do with herself. She was, as a matter of course, assailed by many new suitors, among whom her historian, who is no other than St. Jerome himself, makes special mention of the exceptionally wealthy Cerealis ("whose name is great among the consuls"), and who was so splendid a suitor that the fact that he was old scarcely seems to have told against him. Marcella's refusal of this great match and of all the others offered to her, offended and alienated her friends and even her mother, and there followed a moment of pain and perplexity in her life. She is said to have made a sacrifice of a part of her possessions to relatives to whom, failing herself, it fell to keep up the continuance of the family name, hoping thus to secure their tolerance. And she acquired the reputation of an eccentric, and probably of a _poseuse_, so general in all times when a young woman forsakes the beaten way, as she had done by giving up the ridiculous fashions and toilettes of the time, putting aside the rouge and antimony, the disabling splendour of cloth of gold, and assuming a simple dress of a dark colour, a thing which shocked her generation profoundly. The gossip rose and flew from mouth to mouth among the marble salons where the Roman ladies languished for a new subject, or in the ante-rooms, where young priests and deacons awaited or forestalled the awakening of their patronesses. It might be the Hôtel Rambouillet of which we are reading, and a fine lady taking refuge at Port Royal who was being discussed and torn to pieces in those antique palaces. What was the meaning that lay beneath that brown gown? Was it some unavowed disappointment, or, more exciting still, some secret intrigue, some low-placed love which she dared not acknowledge? Withdrawn into a villa had she, into the solitude of a suburban garden, hid from every eye? and who then was the companion of Marcella's solitude? The ladies who discussed her had small faith in austerities, nor in the desire of a young and attractive woman to live altogether alone. It is very likely that Marcella herself, as well as her critics, soon began to feel that the mock desert into which she had made the gardens of her villa was indeed a fictitious way of living the holy life, and the calumny was more ready and likely to take hold of this artificial retirement, than of a course of existence led within sight of the world. She finally took a wiser and more reasonable way. Her natural home was a palace upon the Aventine to which she returned, consecrating a portion of it to pious uses, a chapel for common worship and much accommodation for the friends of similar views and purposes who immediately began to gather about her. It is evident that there were already many of these women in the best society of Rome. A lively sentiment of feminine society, of the multiplied and endless talks, consultations, speculations, of a community of women, open to every pleasant curiosity and quick to every new interest, rises immediately before us in that first settlement of monasticism--or, as the ecclesiastical historians call it, the first convent of Rome, before our eyes. It was not a convent after all so much as a large and hospitable feminine house, possessing the great luxury of beautiful rooms and furniture, and the liberal ways of a large and wealthy family, with everything that was most elegant, most cultured, most elevated, as well as most devout and pious. The "Souls," to use our own jargon of the moment, would seem indeed to have been more truly represented there than the Sisters of our modern understanding, though we may acknowledge that there are few communities of Sisters in which this element does not more or less flourish. Christian ladies who were touched like herself with the desire of a truer and purer life, gathered about her, as did the French ladies about Port Royal, and women of the same class everywhere, wherever a woman of influential character leads the way. The character and position of these ladies was not perhaps so much different as we might suppose from those of the court of Louis XIV. or any other historical period in which great luxuries and much dissipation had sickened the heart of all that was good and noble. Yet there were very special characteristics in their lot. Some of them were the wives of pagan officials of the empire, holding a sometimes devious and always agitated course through the troubles of a divided household: and there were many young widows perplexed with projects of remarriage, of whom some would be tempted by the prospects of a triumphant re-entry into the full enjoyments of life, although a larger number were probably resistant and alarmed, anxious to retain their freedom, or to devote themselves as Marcella had done to a higher life. Women of fashion not unwilling to add a devotion _à la mode_ to their other distractions, women of intellectual aspirations, lovers of the higher education, seekers after a society altogether brilliant and new, without any special emotions of religious feeling, no doubt filled up the ranks. "A society," says Thierry, in his _Life of Jerome_, "of rich and influential women, belonging for the great part to patrician families, thus organised itself, and the oratory on the Aventine became a seat of lay influence and power which the clergy themselves were soon compelled to reckon with." The heads of the community bore the noblest names in Rome, which however at that period of universal deterioration was not always a guarantee of noble birth, since the greatest names were sometimes assumed with the slenderest of claims to their honours. Marcella's sister, Asella, older than the rest, and a sort of mother among them, had for a long time before "lived the life" in obscurity and humbleness, and several others not remarkable in the record, were prominent associates. The actual members of the community, however, are not so much remarked or dwelt upon as the visitors who came and went, not all of them of consistent religious character, ladies of the great world. One of these, Fabiola, affords an amusing episode in the graver tale, the contrast of a butterfly of society, a _grande dame_ of fascinating manners, airs, and graces, unfortunate in her husbands, of whom she had two, one of them divorced--and not quite unwilling to divorce the second and try her luck again. Another, one of the most important of all in family and pretensions, and by far the most important in history of these constant visitors, was Paula, a descendant (collateral, the link being of the lightest and easiest kind, as was characteristic of the time) of the great Æmilius Paulus, the daughter of a distinguished Greek who claimed to be descended from Agamemnon, and widow of another who claimed Æneas as his ancestor. These large claims apart, she was certainly a great lady in every sense of the word, delicate, luxurious, following all the fashions of the time. She too was a widow, with a family of young daughters, in that enviable state of freedom which the Roman ladies give every sign of having used and enjoyed to the utmost, the only condition in which they were quite at liberty to regulate their own fate. Paula is the most interesting of the community, as she is the one of whom we know the most. No fine lady more exquisite, more fastidious, more splendid than she. Not even her Christianity had beguiled her from the superlative finery of her Roman habits. She was one of the fine ladies who could not walk abroad without the support of her servants, nor scarcely cross the marble floor from one silken couch to another without tottering, as well she might, under the weight of the heavy tissues interwoven with gold, of which her robes were made. A widow at thirty-five, she was still in full possession of the charms of womanhood, and the sunshine of life (though we are told that her grief for her husband was profound and sincere)--with her young daughters growing up round her, more like her sisters than her children, and sharing every thought. Blæsilla, the eldest, a widow at twenty, was, like her mother, a Roman exquisite, loving everything that was beautiful and soft and luxurious. In the affectionate gibes of the family she is described as spending entire days before her mirror, giving herself up to all the extravagances of dress and personal decoration, the tower of curls upon her head, the touch of rouge on her cheeks. A second daughter, Paulina, was on the eve of marriage with a young patrician, as noble, as rich, and, as was afterwards proved, as devoutly Christian as the family into which he married. The third member of the family, Eustochium, a girl of sixteen, of a character contrasting strongly with those of her beautiful mother and sister, a saint from her birth, was the favourite, and almost the child, of Marcella, instructed by her from her earliest years, and had already fixed her choice upon a monastic life, and would seem to have been a resident in the Aventine palace to which the others were such frequent visitors. Of all this delightful and brilliant party she is the one born recluse, severe in youthful virtue, untouched by any of the fascinations of the world. The following very pretty and graphic story is told of her, in which we have a curious glimpse into the strangely mixed society of the time. The family of Paula though Christian, and full of religious fervour, or at least imbued with the new spirit of revolt against the corruption of the time, was closely connected with the still existing pagan society of Rome. Her sister-in-law, sister of her husband and aunt of her children, was a certain lady named Prætextata, the wife of Hymettius, a high official under the Emperor Julian the Apostate, both of them belonging, with something of the fictitious enthusiasm of their master, to the faith of the old gods. No doubt one of the severest critics of that society on the Aventine, Prætextata saw with impatience and wrath, what no doubt she considered the artificial gravity, inspired by her surroundings, of the young niece who had already announced her intention never to marry, and to withdraw altogether from the world. Such resolutions on the part of girls who know nothing of the world they abandon have exasperated the most devout of parents, and it was not wonderful if this pagan lady thought it preposterous. The little plot which she formed against the serious girl was, however, of the most good-natured and innocent kind. Finding that words had no effect upon her, the elder lady invited Eustochium to her house on a visit. The young vestal came all unsuspicious in her little brown gown, the costume of humility, but had scarcely entered her aunt's house when she was seized by the caressing and flattering hands of the attendants, interested in the plot as the favourite maids of such an establishment would be, who unloosed her long hair and twisted it into curls and plaits, took away her humble dress, clothed her in silk and cloth of gold, covered her with ornaments and led her before the mirror which reflected all these charms, to dazzle her eyes with the apparition of herself, so different from the schoolroom figure with which she was acquainted. The little plot was clever as well as innocent, and might, no doubt, have made a heart of sixteen beat high. But Eustochium with her Greek name, and her virgin heart, was the grave girl we all know, the one here and there among the garden of girls, born to a natural seriousness which is beyond such temptations. She let them turn her round and round, received sweetly in her gentle calm the applauses of the collected household, looked at her image in the mirror as at a picture--and went home again in her little brown gown with her story to tell, which, no doubt, was an endless amusement and triumph to the ladies on the Aventine, repeated to every new-comer with many a laugh at the foolishness of the clever aunt who had hoped by such means to seduce Eustochium--Eustochium, the most serious of them all! Such was the first religious community in Rome. It was the natural home of Marcella to which her friends gathered, without in most cases deserting their own palaces, or forsaking their own place in the world--a centre and home of the heart, where they met constantly, the residents ever ready to receive, not only their closer associates, but all the society of Roman ladies, who might be attracted by the higher aspirations of intellect and piety. Not a stone exists of that noble mansion now, but it is supposed to have stood close to the existing church of Sta. Sabina, an unrivalled mount of vision. From that mount now covered with so many ruins the ladies looked out upon the yet unbroken splendour of the city, Tiber far below sweeping round under the walls. Palatinus, with the "white roofs" of that home to which Horatius looked before he plunged into the yellow river, still stood intact at their right hand: and, older far, and longer surviving, the wealth of nature, the glory of the Roman sky and air, the white-blossomed daphne and the starry myrtle, and those roses which are as ancient inhabitants of the world as any we know flinging their glories about the marble balustrades and making the terraces sweet. There would they walk and talk, the recluses at ease and simple in their brown gowns, the great ladies uneasy under the weight of their toilettes, but all eager to hear, to tell, to read the last letter from the East, from the desert or the cloister, to exchange their experiences and plan their charities. There is nothing ascetic in the picture, which is a very different one from that of those austere solitudes of the desert, which had suggested and inspired it--the lady Paula tottering in, with a servant on either side to conduct her to the nearest couch, and young Blæsilla making a brilliant irruption in all her bravery, with her jewels sparkling and her transparent veil floating, and her golden heels tapping upon the marble floor. This is not how we understand the atmosphere of a convent; yet, if fact were taken into due consideration, the greatest convents have been very like it, in all ages--the finest ladies having always loved that intercourse and contrast, half envious of the peace of their cloistered sisters, half pleased to dazzle them with a splendour which never could be theirs. "No fixed rule," says Thierry, in his _Life of St. Jerome_, "existed in this assembly, where there was so much individuality, and where monastic life was not even attempted. They read the Holy Scriptures together, sang psalms, organised good works, discussed the condition of the Church, the progress of spiritual life in Italy and in the provinces, and kept up a correspondence with the brothers and sisters outside of a more strictly monastic character. Those of the associates who carried on the ordinary life of the world came from time to time to refresh their spirits in these holy meetings, then returned to their families. Those who were free gave themselves up to devotional exercises, according to their taste and inclination, and Marcella retired into her desert. In a short time these exercises were varied by the pursuit of knowledge. All Roman ladies of rank knew a little Greek, if only to be able to say to their favourites, according to the _mot_ of Juvenal, repeated by a father of the Church, [Greek: Zôê kai psuchê], my life and my soul: the Christian ladies studied it better and with a higher motive. Several later versions of the Old and New Testament were in general circulation in Italy, differing considerably from each other, and this very difference interested anxious minds in referring to the original Greek for the Gospels, and for the Hebrew books to the Greek of the Septuagint, the favourite guide of Western translators. The Christian ladies accordingly set themselves to perfect their knowledge of Greek, and many, among whom were Marcella and Paula, added the Hebrew language, in order that they might sing the psalms in the very words of the prophet-king. Marcella even became, by intelligent comparison of the texts, so strong in exegetical knowledge that she was often consulted by the priests themselves." It was about the year 380 that this establishment was formed. "The desert of Marcella" above referred to was, as the reader will remember, a great garden in a suburb of Rome, which she had pleased herself by allowing to run wild, and where occasionally this great Roman lady played at a hermit's life in solitude and abstinence. Paula's desert, perhaps not so easy a one, was in her own house, where, besides the three daughters already mentioned, she had a younger girl Rufina, not yet of an age to show any marked tendencies, and a small boy Toxotius, her only son, who was jealously looked after by his pagan relatives, to keep him from being swept away by this tide of Christianity. [Illustration: ON THE PALATINE.] Such was the condition of the circle on the Aventine, when a great event happened in Rome. Following many struggles and disasters in the East, chiefly the continually recurring misfortune of a breach of unity, a diocese here and there exhibiting its freedom by choosing two bishops representing different parties at the same time, and thus calling for the exercise of some central authority--Pope Damasus had called a council in Rome. He was so well qualified to be a judge in such cases that he had himself won his see at the point of the sword, after a stoutly contested fight in which much blood was shed, and the church of S. Lorenzo, the scene of the struggle, was besieged and taken like a castle. If he had hoped by this means to establish the universal authority of his see, a pretension as yet undeveloped, it was immediately forestalled by the Bishop of Constantinople, who at once called together a rival council in that place. The Council of Rome, however, is of so much more importance to us that it called into full light in the Western world the great and remarkable figure of Jerome: and still more to our record of the Roman ladies of the Aventine, since it suddenly introduced to them the man whose name is for ever connected with theirs, who is supposed erroneously, as the reader will see, to have been the founder of their community, but who henceforward became its most trusted leader and guide in the spiritual life. [Illustration: THE WALLS BY ST. JOHN LATERAN.] CHAPTER III. MELANIA. It may be well, however, before continuing this narrative to tell the story of another Roman lady, not of their band, nor in any harmony with them, which had already echoed through the Christian world, a wild romance of enthusiasm and adventure in which the breach of all the decorums of life was no less remarkable than the abandonment of its duties. Some ten years before the formation of Marcella's religious household (the dates are of the last uncertainty) a young lady of Rome, of Spanish origin, rich and noble and of the highest existing rank, found herself suddenly left in the beginning of a splendid and happy life, in desolation and bereavement. Her husband, whose name is unrecorded, died early leaving her with three little children, and shortly after, while yet unrecovered from this crushing blow, another came upon her in the death of her two eldest children, one following the other. The young woman, only twenty-three, thus terribly stricken, seems to have been roused into a fever of excitement and passion by a series of disasters enough to crush any spirit. It is recorded of her that she neither wept nor tore her hair, but advancing towards the crucifix with her arms extended, her head high, her eyes tearless, and something like a smile upon her lips, thanked God who had now delivered her from all ties and left her free to serve Himself. Whether she had previously entertained this desire, or whether it was only the despair of the distracted mother which expressed itself in such words, we are not told. In the haste and restlessness of her anguish she arranged everything for a great funeral, and placing the three corpses on one bier followed them to Rome to the family mausoleum alone, holding her infant son, the only thing left to her, in her arms. The populace of Rome, eager for any public show, had crowded upon the course of many a triumph, and watched many a high-placed Cæsar return in victory to the applauding city, but never had seen such a triumphal procession as this, Death the Conqueror leading his captives. We are not told whether it was attended by the overflowing charities, extravagant doles and offerings to the poor with which other mourners attempted to assuage their grief, or whether Melania's splendour and solitude of mourning was unsoftened by any ministrations of charity; but the latter is more in accordance with the extraordinary fury and passion of grief, as of a woman injured and outraged by heaven to which she thus called the attention of the spheres. The impression made by that funeral splendour and by the sight of the young woman following tearless and despairing with her one remaining infant in her arms, had not faded from the minds of the spectators when it was rumoured through Rome that Melania had abandoned her one remaining tie to life and gone forth into the outside world no one knew where, leaving her child so entirely without any arrangement for its welfare that the official charged with the care of orphans had to select a guardian for this son of senators and consuls as if he had been a nameless foundling. What bitterness of soul lay underneath such an incomprehensible desertion, who could say? It might be a sense of doom such as overwhelms some sensitive minds, as if everything belonging to them were fated and nothing left them but the tragic expedient of Hagar in the desert, "Let me not see the child die." Perhaps the courage of the heartbroken young woman sank before the struggle with pagan relations, who would leave no stone unturned to bring up this last scion of the family in the faith or no-faith of his ancestors; perhaps she was in reality devoid of those maternal instincts which make the child set upon the knee the best comforter of the woman to whom they have brought home her warrior dead. This was the explanation given by the world which tore the unhappy Melania to pieces and held her up to universal indignation. Not even the Christians already touched with the enthusiasm and passion of the pilgrim and ascetic could justify the sudden and mysterious disappearance of a woman who still had so strong a natural bond to keep her in her home. But whatever the character of Melania might be, whether destitute of tenderness, or only distracted by grief and bereavement, and hastening to take her fatal shadow away from the cradle of her child, she was at least invulnerable to any argument or persuasion. "God will take care of him better than I can," she said as she left the infant to his fate. It was probably a better one than had he been the charge of this apparently friendless young woman, with her pagan relations, her uncompromising enthusiasm and self-will, and with all the risks surrounding her feet which made the path of a young widow in Rome so full of danger; but it is fortunate for the world that few mothers are capable of counting those risks or of turning their backs upon a duty which is usually their best consolation. There is, however, an interest in the character and proceedings of such an exceptional woman which has always excited the world, and which the thoughtful spectator will scarcely dismiss with the common imputation of simple heartlessness and want of feeling. Melania was a proud patrician notwithstanding that she flung from her every trace of earthly rank or wealth, and a high-spirited, high-tempered individual notwithstanding her subsequent plunge into the most self-abasing ministrations of charity. And these features of character were not altered by her sudden renunciation of all things. She went forth a masterful personage determined, though no doubt unconsciously, to sway all circumstances to her will, though in the utmost self-denial and with all the appearances and surroundings of humility. This is a paradox which meets us on every side, in the records of such world-abandonment as are familiar in every history of the beginnings of the monastic system, in which continually both men and women give up all things while giving up nothing, and carry their individual will and way through circumstances which seem to preclude the exercise of either. The disappearance of Melania made a great sensation in Rome, and no doubt discouraged Christian zeal and woke doubts in many minds even while proving to others the height of sacrifice which could be made for the faith. On the other hand the adversary had boundless occasion to blaspheme and denounce the doctrines which, as he had some warrant for saying, thus struck at the very basis of society and weakened every bond of nature. What more dreadful influence could be than one which made a woman forsake her child, the infant whom she had carried in her arms to the great funeral, in the sight of all Rome, the son of her sorrow? Nobody except a hot-headed enthusiast could take her part even among her fellow-Christians, nor does it appear that she sought any support or made any apology for herself. Jerome, then a young student and scholar from the East, was in Rome, in obscurity, still a catechumen preparing for his baptism, at the time of Melania's flight; and though there is no proof that he was even known to her, and no probability that so unknown a person could have anything to do with her resolution, or could have influenced her mind, it was suggested in later times when he was well known, that probably he had much to do--who can tell if not the most powerful and guilty of motives?--in determining her flight. Such a vulgar explanation is always adapted to the humour of the crowd, and gives an easy solution of the problems which are otherwise so difficult to solve. As a matter of fact these two personages, not unlike each other in force and spirit, had much to do with each other, though mostly in a hostile sense, in the after part of their life. We find Melania again in Egypt, to which presumably she at once directed her flight as the headquarters of austere devotion and self-sacrifice, on leaving Rome--alone so far as appears. This was in the year 372 (nothing can be more delightful than to encounter from time to time a date, like an angel, in the vague wilderness of letters and narratives), when Athanasius the great Bishop was near his end. The young fugitive, whose arrival in Alexandria would not be attended by such mystery as shrouded her departure from Rome, was received kindly by the dying saint, to whom she had probably been known in her better days, and who in his enthusiasm for the life of monastic privation and sacrifice probably considered her flight and her resolution alike inspired by heaven. He gave her, let us hope, his blessing, and much good counsel--in addition to the sacred sheepskin which had formed the sole garment of the holy Macarius in his cell in the desert, which she carried away with her as her most valued possession. The great Roman lady then pursued her way into the wilderness, which was indeed a wilderness rather in name than in fact, being peopled on every side by communities both of men and women, while in every rocky fissure and cavern were hermits jealously shut each in his hole, the more inaccessible the better. Nothing can be more contradictory than the terms used. This desert of solitaries gave forth the evening hymn over all its extent as if the very sands and rocks sang, so many were the unseen worshippers. And the traveller went into the wilderness alone so to speak, in the utmost self-abnegation and humility, yet attended by an endless retinue of servants whose attendance was indispensable, if only to convey and protect the store of provisions and presents which she carried with her. The conception of a lonely figure on the edge of a trackless sandy waste facing all perils, and encountering perhaps after toilsome days of solitude a still more lonely anchorite in his cell, to give her the hospitality of a handful of peas, and a shrine of prayer, which is the natural picture which rises before us--changes greatly when the details are examined. Melania evidently travelled with a great caravanserai, with camels laden with grain and every kind of provision that was necessary to sustain life in those regions. The times were more troublous even than usual. The death of Athanasius was the signal for one of those outbursts of persecution which rent the Christian world in its very earliest ages, and which alas! the Church herself has never been slow to learn the use of. The underground or overground population of the Egyptian desert was orthodox; the powers that were, were Arian; and hermits and coenobites alike were hunted out of their refuges and dragged before tribunals, where their case was decided before it was heard and every ferocity used against them. In a country so rent by the most violent of agitations Melania passed like an angel of charity. She became the providence of the hunted and suffering monks. She is said for a short period to have provided for five thousand in Nitria, which proves that however secret her disappearance from Rome had been, her address as we should say must have been well known to her bankers, or their equivalent. Thus it is evident that a robe of sackcloth need not necessarily imply poverty, much less humility, and that a woman may ride about on the most sorry horse (chosen it would seem because it was a more abject thing than the well-conditioned ass of the East) and yet demean herself like a princess. There is one story told of this primitive Lady Bountiful by Palladius which if it did not recall the action of St. Paul in somewhat similar circumstances would be highly picturesque. The proconsul in Palestine, not at all aware who was the pestilent woman who persisted in supplying and defending the population of the religious which it was his mission to get rid of--even going so far as to visit and nourish them in his prisons--had her arrested to answer for her interference. There is nothing more likely than that Melania remembered the method adopted by St. Paul to bring his judges to his feet. She sent the consul a message in which a certain compassionate scorn mingles with pride. "You esteem me by my present dress," she said, "which it is quite in my power to change when I will. Take care lest you bring yourself into trouble by what you do in your ignorance." This incident happened at Cæsarea, the great city on the Mediterranean shore which Herod had built, and where the prodigious ruins still lie in sombre grandeur capable of restoration to the uses of life. The governor of the Syrian city trembled in his gilded chair. The names which Melania quoted were enough to unseat him half a dozen times over, though, truth to tell, they are not very clearly revealed to the distant student. He hastened to set free the sunburnt pilgrim in her brown gown, and leave her to her own devices. "One must answer a fool according to his folly," she said disdainfully, as she accepted her freedom. This lady's progress through the haunted deserts, her entrance into town after town, with the shield of rank ready for use in any emergency, attended by continual supplies from the stewards of her estates, and the power of shedding abundance round her wherever she went, could hardly be said to merit the rewards of privation and austerity even if her delicate feet were encased in rude sandals and the cloth of gold replaced by a tunic of rough wool. [Illustration: COLOSSEUM BY MOONLIGHT. _To face page 36._] Melania had been, presumably for some time before this incident, accompanied by a priest named Rufinus, a fellow-countryman, schoolfellow and dear friend of Jerome, the future Father of the Church, at this period a young religious adventurer if we may use the word:--which indeed seems the only description applicable to the bands of young, devout enthusiasts, who roamed about the world, not bound to any special duties, supporting themselves one knows not how, aiming at one knows not what, except some devotion of mystical religious life, or indefinite Christian service to the world. The object of saving their souls was perhaps for most the prevailing object, and the greater part of them had at least passed a year or two in those Eastern deserts where renunciation of the world had been pushed to its furthest possibilities. But they were also hungry for learning, for knowledge, for disciples, and full of that activity of youth which is bound to go everywhere and see everything whether with possible means and motives or not. Whatever they were, they were not so far as can be made out missionaries in any sense of the word. They were received wherever they went, in devout households here and there, in any of the early essays at monasteries which existed by bounty and Christian charity, among the abounding dependents of great houses, or by the bishop or other ecclesiastical functionary. They were this man's secretary, that man's tutor--seldom so far as we can see were they employed as chaplains. Rufinus indeed was a priest, but few of the others were so, Jerome himself only having consented to be ordained from courtesy, and in no way fulfilling the duties of the priesthood. There were, however, many offices no doubt appropriate to them in the household of a bishop, who was often the distributor of great charities and the administrator of great possessions. But it is evident that there were always a number of these scholar-student monks available to join any travelling party, to serve their patron with their knowledge of the desert and their general experience of the ways of the world. "To lead about a sister":--St. Paul perhaps had already in his time some knowledge of the usefulness of such a functionary, and of the perfectly legitimate character of his office. Rufinus joined Melania in this way, to all appearance as the other head of the expedition, on perfectly equal terms, though it was her purse which supplied everything necessary. Jerome himself (with a train of brethren behind him) travelled in the same way with Paula--Oceanus with Fabiola. Nothing could be more completely in accordance with the fashion of the time. Perhaps the young men provided for their own expenses as we say, but the caravan was the lady's and all the immense and indiscriminate charity which flowed from it. It is not necessary for us to follow the career of Rufinus any more than we intend to follow that of Jerome, into the violent controversy which is the chief link which connects their names, or indeed in any way except that of their association with the women of our tale. Rufinus was a Dalmatian from the shores of the Adriatic, learned enough according to the fashion of his time, though not such a scholar as Jerome, and apt to despise those elegances of literature which he was incapable of appreciating. He too, no doubt, like Jerome, had some following of other men like himself, ready for any adventure, and glad to make themselves the almoners of Melania and form a portion of her train. It is a strange conjunction according to our modern ideas, and no doubt there were vague and flying slanders, such as exist in all ages, accounting for anything that is unusual or mysterious by the worse reasons. But it must be remembered that such partnerships were habitual in those days, permitted by the usage of a time of which absolute purity was the craze and monomania, if we may so speak, as well as the ideal: and also that the solitude of those pilgrims was at all times that of a crowd--the supposed fugitive flying forth alone being in reality, as has been explained already, accompanied on every stage of the way by attendants enough to fill her ship and form her caravan wherever she went. From Cæsarea, where Melania discomfited the government by her high rank and connections, it is but a little way to Jerusalem, where the steps of the party were directed after their prolonged journey through the desert. It had already become the end of many pilgrimages, the one place in the world which most attracted the hearts and imaginations of the devout throughout all the world; and we can well realise the sensation of the wanderers when they came in sight of that green hill, dominating the scene of so many tragedies, the still half-ruined but immortal city of which the very dust was dear to the primitive Christians. Who that has come suddenly upon that scene in quiet, without offensive guidance or ciceroneship, has not named to himself the Mount of Olives with such a thrill of identification as would move him in scarcely any other landscape in the world? It was still comparatively virgin soil in the end of the fourth century. The Empress Helena had been there, making, as we all feel now, but too easy and too exact discoveries: but the country was unexplored by any vain searchings of curiosity, and the calm of solitude, as perfect and far sweeter than amid the sands of the deserts, was still to be found there. The pilgrims went no further. They chose each their site upon the soft slope of that hill of divine memories. Rufinus took up his abode in a rocky cell, Melania probably in some house in the city, while their monasteries were being built. The great Roman lady with her faithful stewards, always sending those ever valuable supplies, no doubt provided for the expenses of both: and soon two communities arose near each other preserving the fellowship of their founders, where after some years of travel and movement Melania, with strength and courage restored, took up her permanent abode. It is difficult to decide what is meant by sacrifice and self-abnegation in this world of human subterfuge and self-deception. It is very likely that Melania, like Paula after her, gave herself to the most humble menial offices, and did not scorn, great lady as she was, to bow the haughty head which had made the proconsul of Palestine tremble, to the modest necessities of primitive life. Perhaps she cooked the spare food, swept the bare cells with her own hands: undoubtedly she would superintend the flocks and herds and meagre fields which kept her community supplied. We know that she rode the sorriest horse, and wore the roughest gown. These things rank high in the catalogue of privations, as privations are calculated in the histories of the saints. And yet it is doubtful how far she is to be credited, if it were a merit, with any self-sacrifice. She had attained the full gratification of her own will and way, which is an advantage not easily or often computed. She had settled herself in the most interesting spot in the world, in the midst of a landscape which, notwithstanding all natural aridity and the depressing effects of ruin everywhere, is yet full of beauty as well as interest. Most of all perhaps she was in the way of the very best of company, receiving pilgrims of the highest eminence, bishops, scholars, princes, sometimes ladies of rank like herself, who were continually coming and going, bringing the great news of the world from every quarter to the recluses who thus commanded everything that wealth could supply. One may be sure that, as Jerome and Paula afterwards spent many a serene evening in Bethlehem under their trees, Melania and Rufinus would often sit under those hoary olives doubly grey with age, talking of all things in heaven and earth, looking across the little valley to the wall, all the more picturesque that it was broken, and lay here and there in heaps of ruin, of Jerusalem, and hearing, in the pauses of their conversation, the tinkling of that little brook which has seen so many sacred scenes and over which our Lord and His favourite disciples crossed to Gethsemane, on such a night as that on which His servants sat and talked of Him. It is true that the accursed Arians, and grave news of the fight going on between them and the Catholics, or perhaps the question of Origen's orthodoxy, or how the struggle was going between Paulinus and Meletius at Antioch, might occupy them more than those sacred memories. But it is much to be doubted whether any grandeur of Roman living would have been so much to Melania's mind as the convent on the Mount of Olives, the stream of distinguished pilgrims, and the society of her ever devoted companion and friend. [Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF VESTA.] [Illustration: CHURCHES ON THE AVENTINE.] CHAPTER IV. THE SOCIETY OF MARCELLA. The council which was held in Rome in 382 with the intention of deciding the cases of various contending bishops in distant sees, especially in Antioch where two had been elected for the same seat--a council scarcely acknowledged even by those on whose behalf it was held, and not at all by those opposed to them--was chiefly remarkable, as we have said, from the appearance for the first time, as a marked and notable personage, of one of the most important, picturesque, and influential figures of his time--Jerome: a scholar insatiable in intellectual zeal, who had sought everywhere the best schools of the time and was learned in all their science: and at the same time a monk and ascetic fresh from the austerities of the desert and one of those struggles with the flesh and the imagination which formed the epic of the solitary. It was not unnatural that the régime of extreme abstinence combined with utter want of occupation, and the concentration of all thought upon one's self and one's moods and conditions of mind, should have awakened all the subtleties of the imagination, and filled the brooding spirit with dreams of every wild and extravagant kind; but it would not occur to us now to represent the stormy passage into a life dedicated to religion as filled with dancing nymphs and visions of the grossest sensual enjoyment--above all in the case of such a man as Jerome, whose chief temptations one would have felt to be of quite another kind. This however was the fashion of the time, and belonged more or less to the monkish ideal, which exaggerated the force of all these lower fleshly impulses by way of enhancing the virtue of him who successfully overcame them. The early fathers all scourged themselves till they were in danger of their lives, rolled themselves in the snow, lay on the cold earth, and lived on a handful of dried grain, perhaps on the grass and wild herbs to be found in the crevices of the rocks, in order to get the body into subjection: which might have been more easily done, we should have supposed, by putting other more wholesome subjects in the place of these visionary temptations, or filling the vacancy of the hours with hard work. But the dulness of an English clown or athlete, in whom muscular exercise extinguishes all visions, would not have been at all to the mind of a monkish neophyte, to whom the sharpest stings of penitence and agonies of self-humiliation were necessary, whether he had done anything to call them forth or not. Jerome had gone through all these necessary sufferings without sparing himself a pang. His face pale with fasting, and his body so worn with penance and privation that it was almost dead, he had yet felt the fire of earthly passions burning in his soul after the truest orthodox model. "The sack with which I was covered," he says, "deformed my members; my skin and flesh were like those of an Ethiop. But in that vast solitude, burnt up by the blazing sun, all the delights of Rome appeared before my eyes. Scorpions and wild beasts were my companions, yet I seemed to hear the choruses of dancing girls." Finding no succour anywhere, I flung myself at the feet of Jesus, bathing them with tears, drying them with the hair of my head. I passed day and night beating my breast, I banished myself even from my cell, as if it were conscious of all my evil thoughts; and, rigid against myself, wandered further into the desert, seeking some deeper cave, some wilder mountain, some riven rock which I could make the prison of this miserable flesh, the place of my prayers. Sometimes he endeavoured to find refuge in his books, the precious parchments which he carried with him even in those unlikely regions: but here another temptation came in. "Unhappy that I am," he cries, "I fasted yet read Cicero. After spending nights of wakefulness and tears I found Plautus in my hands." To lay aside dramatist, orator, and poet, so well known and familiar, and plunge into the imperfectly known character of the Hebrew which he was learning, the uncomprehended mysteries and rude style of the prophets, was almost as terrible as to fling himself fasting on the cold earth and hear the bones rattle in the skin which barely held them together. Yet sometimes there were moments of deliverance: sometimes, when all the tears were shed, gazing up with dry exhausted eyes to the sky blazing with stars, "I felt myself transported to the midst of the angels, and full of confidence and joy, lifted up my voice and sang, 'Because of the savour of thy ointments we will run after thee.'" Thus both were reconciled, his imagination freed from temptation, and the poetry of the crabbed books, which were so different from Cicero, made suddenly clear to his troubled eyes. This was however but a small part of the training of Jerome. From his desert, as his spirit calmed, he carried on a great correspondence, and many of his letters became at once a portion of the literature of his time. One in particular, an eloquent and oratorical appeal to one of his friends, the Epistle to Heliodorus, with its elaborate description of the evils of the world and impassioned call to the peace of the desert, went through the religious circles of the time with that wonderful speed and facility of circulation which it is so difficult to understand, and was read in Marcella's palace on the Aventine and learnt by heart by some fervent listeners, so precious were its elaborate sentences held to be. This letter boldly proclaimed as the highest principle of life the extraordinary step which Melania, as well as so many other self-devoted persons, had taken--and called every Christian to the desert, whatever duties or enjoyments might stand in the way. Perhaps such exhortations are less dangerous than they seem to be, for the noble ladies who read and admired and learned by heart these moving appeals do not seem to have been otherwise affected by them. Like the song of the Ancient Mariner, they have to be addressed to the predestined, who alone have ears to hear. Heliodorus, upon whom all that eloquence was poured at first hand, turned a deaf ear, and lived and died in peace among his own people, among the lagoons where Venice as yet was not, notwithstanding all his friend could say. "What make you in your father's house, oh sluggish soldier?" cried that eager voice; "where are your ramparts and trenches, under what tent of skins have you passed the bitter winter? The trumpet of heaven sounds, and the great Leader comes upon the clouds to overcome the world. Let the little ones hang upon other necks; let your mother rend her hair and her garments; let your father stretch himself on the threshold to prevent you from passing: but arise, come thou! Are you not pledged to the sacrifice even of father and mother? If you believe in Christ, fight with me for His name and let the dead bury their dead." There were many who would dwell upon these entreaties as upon a noble song rousing the heart and charming the ear, but the balance of human nature is but rarely disturbed by any such appeal. Even in that early age we may in the greater number of cases permit it to move all hearers without any great fears for the issue. Jerome, however, did not himself remain very long in his desert; he was invaded in his very cell by the echoes of polemical warfare drifting in from the world he had left: and was called upon to pronounce himself for one side or the other, while yet, according to his own account, unaware what it was all about. He left his retirement unwillingly after some three years, quoting Virgil as to the barbarity of the race which refused him the hospitality of a little sand, and plunged into the fight at Antioch between contending bishops and parties, the heresy of Apollinaris, and all the rage of religious polemics. It was probably his intimate acquaintance with all the questions so strongly contested in the East, and his power of giving information on points which the Western Council could only know at second hand, which led him to Rome on the eve of the Council already referred to, called by Pope Damasus, in 382. The primary object of this Council was to settle matters of ecclesiastical polity, and especially the actual question as to which of the competitors was lawful bishop of Antioch, besides other questions concerning other important sees. It was no small assumption on the part of the bishops of the West, an assumption supported in those days by no dogma as to the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, to interfere in the affairs of the East to this extent. And it was at once crushed by the action of the Church in the East, which immediately held a council of its own at Constantinople, and authoritatively decided every practical question. Jerome was the friend of all those bishops whose causes would have been pleaded at Rome, had not their own section of the Church thus made short work with them: and this no doubt commended him to the special attention of Damasus, even after these practical questions were set aside, and the heresy of Apollinaris, which had been intended to be treated in the second place, was turned into the only subject before the house. Jerome was deeply learned on the subject of Apollinaris too. It was on account of this new heresy that his place in Egypt had become untenable. His knowledge could not but be of the utmost importance to the Western bishops, who were not as a rule scholars, nor given to the subtle reasoning of the East. He was very welcome therefore in Rome, especially after the illness of the great Ambrose had denuded that Council, shorn of so much of its prestige, of almost the only imposing name left to it. This was the opportunity of such a man as Jerome, in himself, as we have said, still not much different from the many young religious adventurers who scoured the world. He was already, however, a distinguished man of letters: he was known to Damasus, who had baptized him: he had learning enough to supplement the deficiencies of an entire Council, and for once these abilities were fully appreciated and found their right place. He had scarcely arrived in Rome when he was named Secretary of the Council--a temporary office which was afterwards prolonged and extended to that of Secretary to the Pope himself: thus the stranger became at once a functionary of the utmost importance in the proceedings of the See of Rome and in its development as a supreme power and authority in the Church. There is something strangely familiar and quaint in the appearance, so perfectly known to ourselves, of the gathering of a religious congress, convocation, or general assembly, when every considerable house and hospitable family is moved to receive some distinguished clerical visitor--which thus took place in Rome in the end of the fourth century, while still all was classic in the aspect of the Eternal City, and the altars of the gods were still standing. The bishops and their trains arrived, making a little stir, sometimes even at the marble porticoes of great mansions where the master or mistress still professed a languid devotion to Jove or Mercury. Jerome, burnt brown by Egyptian suns, meagre and sinewy in his worn robe, with a humble brother or two in his train, accepted, after a little modest difficulty, the invitation or the allotment which led him to the Aventine, to the palace of Marcella, where he was already well known, and where, though his eyes were downcast with a becoming reserve at the sight of all the ladies, he yet felt it right to follow the example of the Apostle and industriously overcome his own bashfulness. It was not perhaps a quality very strong in his nature, and very soon his new and splendid habitation became to the ascetic a home more dear than any he had yet known. It is curious to find how completely the principle of the association and friendship of a man and woman, failing closer ties, was adopted and recognised among these mystics and ascetics, without apparent fear of the comments of the world, or any of the self-consciousness which so often spoils such a relationship in ordinary society. Perhaps the gossips smiled even then upon the close alliance of Jerome with Paula, or Rufinus with Melania. There were calumnies abroad of the coarsest sort, as was inevitable; but neither monk nor lady seem to have been affected by them. It has constantly been so in the history of the Church, and it is interesting to collect such repeated testimony from the most unlikely quarter, to the advantage of this natural association. Women have had hard measure from Catholic doctors and saints. Their conventional position, so to speak, is that of the Seductress, always studying how to draw the thoughts of men away from higher things. The East and the West, though so much apart on other points, are at one in this. From the anguish of the fathers in the desert to the supposed difficulties of the humblest ordinary priest of modern times, the disturbing influence is always supposed to be that of the woman. Gruesome figure as he was for any such temptation, Antony of Egypt himself was driven to extremity by the mere thought of her: and it is she who figures as danger or as victim in every ultra-Protestant plaint over the condition of the priest (except in Ireland, wonderful island of contradictions! where priests and all men are more moved to fighting than to love). Yet notwithstanding there has been no founder of ecclesiastical institutions, no reformer, scarcely any saint, who has not been accompanied by the special friendship and affection of some woman. Jerome, who was so much the reverse, if we may venture to use these words, of a drawing-room hero, a man more used to vituperation than to gentleness of speech, often harsh as the desert from which he had come, was a notable example of this rule. From the time of his arrival on the Aventine to that of his death, his name was never dissociated from that of Paula, the pious lady _par excellence_ of the group, the exquisite and delicate patrician who could scarcely plant her golden shoe firmly on the floor, but came tottering into Marcella's great house with a slave on either side to support her, in all the languid grace which was the highest fashion of the time. That such an example of conventional delicacy and luxury should have become the humble friend and secretary of Jerome, and that he, the pious solitary, acrid with opposition and controversy, should have found in this fine flower of society his life-long companion, both in labour and life, is more astonishing than words can say. [Illustration: THE STEPS OF THE CAPITOL.] His arrival in Marcella's hospitable house, with its crowds of feminine visitors, was in every way a great event. It brought the ladies into the midst of all the ecclesiastical questions of the time: and one can imagine how they crowded round him when he returned from the sittings of the Council--perhaps in the stillness of the evening after the dangerous hour of sunset, when all Rome comes forth to breathe again--assembling upon the marble terrace, from which that magical scene was visible at their feet: the long withdrawing distance beyond the river, out of which some gleam might be apparent of the great church which already covered the tombs of the Apostles, and the white crest of the Capitol close at hand, and the lights of the town scattered dimly like glowworms among the wide openings and level lines of classical building which made the Rome of the time. The subjects discussed were not precisely those which the lighter conventional fancy, Boccaccio or Watteau, has associated with such groups, any more than the dark monk resembled the troubadour. But they were subjects which up to the present day have never lost their interest. The debates of the Council were chiefly taken up with an extremely abstruse heresy, concerning the humanity of our Lord, how far the nature of man existed in him in connection with the nature of God, and whether the Redeemer of mankind had taken upon himself a mere ethereal appearance of flesh, or an actual human body, tempted as we are and subject to all the influences which affect man. It is a question which has arisen again and again at various periods and in various manners, and the subtleties of such a controversy have proved of the profoundest interest to many minds. Jerome was not alone to report to those eager listeners the course of the debates, and to demolish over again the intricate arguments by which that assembly of divines wrought itself to fever heat. The great Bishop Epiphanius, the great heresy-hunter of his day--who had fathomed all the fallacious reasonings of all the schismatics, and could detect a theological error at the distance of a continent, in whatever garb it might shield itself--was the guest of Paula, and no doubt, along with his hostess, would often join these gatherings. The two doctors thus brought together would vie with each other in making the course of the controversy clear to the women, who hung upon their lips with keen apprehension of every phrase and the enthusiastic partisanship which inspires debate. There could be no better audience for the fine-drawn arguments which such a controversy demands. How strange to think that these hot discussions were going on, and the flower of the artificial society of Rome keenly occupied by such a question, while still the shadow of Jove lingered on the Capitol, and the Rome of the heathen emperors, the Rome of the great Republic, stood white and splendid, a shadow, yet a mighty one, upon the seven hills! Before his arrival in Rome, Jerome had been but little known to the general world. His name had been heard in connection with some eloquent letters which had flown about from hand to hand among the finest circles; but his true force and character were better known in the East than in the West, and it was in part this Council which gave him his due place in the ranks of the Church. He was no priest to be promoted to bishoprics or established in high places. He had indeed been consecrated against his will by an enthusiastic prelate, eager to secure his great services to the Church; but, monk and ascetic as he was, he had no inclination towards the sacerdotal character, and had said but one mass, immediately after his ordination, and no more. It was not therefore as spiritual director in the ordinary sense of the words that he found his place in Marcella's house, but at first at least as a visitor merely and probably for the time of the Council alone. But the man of the desert would seem to have been charmed out of himself by the unaccustomed sweetness of that gentle life. He would indeed have been hard to please if he had not felt the attraction of such a retreat, not out of, but on the edge of, the great world, with its excitements and warfare within reach, the distant murmur of the crowd, the prospect of the great city with its lights and rumours, yet sacred quiet and delightful sympathy within. The little community had given up the luxuries of the age, but they could not have given up the refinements of gentle breeding, the high-born manners and grace, the charm of educated voices and cultivated minds. And there was even more than these attractions to gratify the scholar. Not an allusion could be made to the studies of which he was most proud, the rugged Hebrew which he had painfully mastered, or ornate Greek, but some quick intelligence there would take it up; and the poets and sages of their native tongue, the Cicero and Virgil from whom he could not wean himself even in the desert, were their own literature, their valued inheritance. And not in the most devoted community of monks could the great orator have found such undivided attention and interest in his work as among the ladies of the Aventine, or secretaries so eager and ready to help, so proud to be associated with it. He was at the same time within reach of Bishop Damasus, a man of many experiences, who seems to have loved him as a son, and who not only made him his secretary, but his private counsellor in many difficulties and dangers: and Jerome soon became the centre also of a little band of chosen friends, distinguished personages in Roman society connected in faith and in blood with the sisterhood, whom he speaks of as Daniel, Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, some of whom were his own old companions and schoolfellows, all deeply attached to him and proud of his friendship. No more delightful position could have been imagined for the repose and strengthening of a man who had endured many hardships, and who had yet before him much more to bear. Jerome remained nearly three years in this happy retreat, and it was here that he executed the first portion of his great work, that first authoritative translation of the entire Canon of Scripture which still retains its place in the Church of Rome--the Vulgate, so named when the Latin of Jerome, which is by no means that of Cicero, was the language of the crowd. In every generation what is called the higher education of women is treated as a new and surprising thing by the age, as if it were the greatest novelty; but we doubt whether Girton itself could produce graduates as capable as Paula and Marcella of helping in this work, discussing the turning of a phrase or the meaning of an abstruse Hebrew word, and often holding their own opinion against that of the learned writer whose scribes they were so willing to be. This undertaking gave a double charm to the life, which went on with much variety and animation, with news from all quarters, with the constant excitement of a new charity established, a new community founded: and never without amusement either, much knowledge of the sayings and doings of society outside, visits from the finest persons, and a daily entertainment in the flutterings of young Blæsilla between the world and the convent, and her pretty ways, so true a woman of the world, yet all the same a predestined saint: and the doings of Fabiola, one day wholly absorbed in the foundation of her great hospital, the first in Rome, the next not so sure in her mind that love, even by means of a second divorce, might not win the day over devotion. Even Paula in these days was but half decided, and came, a dazzling vision in her jewels and her crown, to visit her friends, in all the pomp of autumnal beauty, among her daughters, of whom that serious little maiden Eustochium was the only one quite detached from the world. For was there not also going on under their eyes the gentle wooing of Pammachius and Paulina to make it apparent to the world that the ladies on the Aventine did not wholly discredit the ordinary ties of life, although they considered with St. Paul that the other was the better way? The lovers were as devout and as much given up to good works as any of them, yet, as even Jerome might pardon once in a way, preferred to the cloister the common happiness of life. These good works were the most wonderful part of all, for every member of the community was rich. Their fortunes were like the widow's cruse. One hears of great foundations like that of Fabiola's hospital and Melania's provision for the monks in Africa, for which everything was sacrificed; yet, next day, next year, renewed beneficences were forthcoming, and always a faithful intendant, a good steward, to continue the bountiful supplies. So wonderful indeed are these liberalities, and so extraordinary the details, that it is surprising to find that no learned German, or other savant, has, as yet, attempted to prove that the fierce and vivid Jerome never existed, that his letters were the work of half a dozen hands, and the subjects of his brilliant narrative altogether fictitious--Melania and Paula being but mythical repetitions of the same incident, wrapt in the colours of fable. This hypothesis might be made to seem very possible if it were not, perhaps, a little too late in the centuries for the operations of that high-handed criticism, and Jerome himself a very hard fact to encounter. But the great wealth of these ladies remains one of the most singular circumstances in the story. When they sell and sacrifice everything it is clear it must only be their floating possessions, leaving untouched the capital, as we should say, or the estates, perhaps, more justly, the wealthy source from which the continued stream flowed. This gave a splendour and a largeness of living to the home on the Aventine. There was no need to send any petitioner away empty, charity being the rule of life, and no thought having as yet entered the most elevated mind that to give to the poor was inexpedient for them, and apt to establish a pauper class, dependent and willing to be so. These ladies filled with an even and open hand every wallet and every mouth. They received orphans, they provided for widows, they filled the poor quarters below the hill--where all the working people about the Marmorata clustered near the river bank, in the garrets and courtyards of the old houses--with asylums and places of refuge. The miserable and idle populace of which the historian speaks so contemptuously, the fellows who hung about the circuses, and had no name but the nicknames of coarsest slang, the Cabbage-feeders, the Sausage-eaters, &c., the Porringers and Gluttons, were, no doubt, left all the more free to follow their own foul devices; but the poor women, who though perhaps far from blameless suffer most in the debasement of the population, and the unhappy little swarms of children, profited by this universal balm of charity, and let us hope grew up to something a little better than their sires. For however paganism might linger among the higher class, the multitudes were all nominally Christian. It was to the tombs of the Apostles that they made their pilgrimages, rather than to the four hundred temples of the gods. "For all its gilding the Capitol looks dingy," says Jerome himself in one of his letters; "every temple in Rome is covered with soot and cobwebs, and the people pour past those half-ruined shrines to visit the tombs of the apostles." The house of Marcella was in the condition we have attempted to describe when Jerome became its guest. It was in no way more rigid in its laws than at the beginning. The little _ecclesia domestica_, as he happily called it, seems to have been entirely without rule or conventual order. They sang psalms together (sometimes we are led to believe, in the original Hebrew learned for the purpose--but it must have been few who attained to this height), they read together, they held their little conferences on points of doctrine, with much consultation of learned texts; but there is no mention even of any regular religious service, much less of matins, and vespers, and nones and compline, and the other ritualistic divisions of a monastic day; for indeed no rule had been as yet invented for any coenobites of the West. We do not hear even of a daily mass. Often there were desertions from the ranks, sometimes a young maiden withdrawing from the social enclosure, sometimes a young widow drawn back into the vortex of the fashionable world. But on the whole the record of the little domestic church, with its bodyguard of faithful friends and servitors outside, and Jerome, its pride and crown of glory, within, is one of serene and happy life, dignified by everything that was best in the antique world. It was after the arrival of Jerome that the little tragedy of Blæsilla, the eldest daughter of Paula, occurred, rending their gentle hearts. "Our dear widow," as Jerome called her, had no idea of second marriage in her mind. The first, it would appear, had not been happy; and Blæsilla, fair and rich and young, had every mind to enjoy her freedom, her fine dresses, and all the pleasures of her youth. Safely lodged under her mother's wing, with those irreproachable friends 011 the Aventine about her, no gossip touched her gentle name. The community amused itself with her light-hearted ways. "Our widow loves to adorn herself. She is the whole day before her mirror," says Jerome, and there is no harsh tone in his voice. But in the midst of her gay and innocent life she fell ill of a fever, no unusual thing. It lingered, however, more than a month and took a dangerous form, so that the doctors began to despair. When things were at this point Blæsilla had a dream or vision, in her fever, in which the Saviour appeared to her and bade her arise as He had done to Lazarus. It was the crisis of the disease, and she immediately began to recover, with the deepest faith that she had been cured by a miracle. The butterfly was touched beyond measure by this divine interposition, as she believed, in her favour, and as soon as she was well, made up her mind to devote herself to God. "An extraordinary thing has happened," cries Jerome. "Blæsilla has put on a brown gown! What a scandal is this!" He launches forth thereupon into a diatribe upon the fashionable ladies, with faces of gypsum like idols, who dare not shed a tear lest they should spoil their painted cheeks, and who are the true scandal to Christianity: then narrates with growing tenderness the change that has taken place in the habits of the young penitent. She, whose innocent head was tortured with curls and plaits and crowned with the fashionable _mitella_, now finds a veil enough for her. She lies on the ground who found the softest cushions hard, and is up the first in the morning to sing Alleluia in her silvery voice. The conversion rang through Rome all the more that Blæsilla was known to have had no inclination toward austerity of life. Her relations, half pagan and altogether worldly, were hot against the fanatic monk, who according to the usual belief tyrannised over the whole house in which he had been so kindly received, and the weak-minded mother who had lent herself to his machinations. The question fired Rome, and became a matter of discussion under every portico and wherever men or women assembled. Was it lawful, had it any warrant in law or history, this new folly of opposing marriage and representing celibacy as a happier and holier state? It was against every tradition of the race; it tore families in pieces, abstracted from society its most brilliant members, alienated the patrimony of families, interfered with succession and every natural law. In the turmoil raised by this event, a noisy public controversy arose. Two assailants presented themselves, one a priest, who had been for a time a monk, and one a layman, to maintain the popular canon, the superiority of marriage and the natural life of the world. These arguments had a great effect upon the public mind, naturally prone to take fright at any interference with its natural laws. They had very serious results at a later period both in the life of Paula and that of Jerome, and they seem to have threatened for a time serious injury to the newly established convents which Marcella's community had planted everywhere, and from which half-hearted sisters took this opportunity of separating themselves. It is amusing to find that, by a curious and furious twist of the usual argument, Jerome in his indignant and not always temperate defence describes these deserters as old and ugly, and unable to find husbands notwithstanding the most desperate efforts. It has been very common to allege this as a reason for the self-dedication of nuns: and it is always a handy missile to throw. Jerome was not the man to let any such fine opening for a controversy pass. He burst forth upon his opponents, thundering from the heights of the Aventine, reducing the feeble writers who opposed him to powder. Helvidius, the layman above mentioned, had taken up the question--a question always offensive and injurious to natural sentiment and prejudice, exclusive even of religious feeling, and which, whatever opinions may prevail, it must always be profane to touch--of the Virgin Mary herself, and the existence of persons called brothers and sisters of our Lord. To him Jerome replied by a flood of angry eloquence, as well as some cogent argument--though argument, however strong, is insupportable on such a subject. And he launched forth upon the other, Jovinian, the false monk, that famous letter on Virginity, nominally addressed to Eustochium, in which one of the most trenchant pictures ever made of society, both lay and clerical--the habits, the ideas, the follies of debased and fallen Rome--is of far more force and importance than the argument, and furnishes us with such a spectacle as very few writers at any time or in any place are capable of placing before the eyes of the world. I have already quoted from this wonderful composition the portrait of the popular priest. The foolish virgin who puts on an appearance of indifference to worldly things, and "under the ensign of a holy profession draws towards her the regard of men," is treated with equal severity. We cast out and banish from our sight those virgins who only wish to seem to be so. Their robes have but a narrow stripe of purple, they let their hair hang about their shoulders, their sleeves are short and narrow, and they have cheap shoes upon their feet. This is all their sanctity. They make by these pretences a higher price for their innocence. Avoid, dear Eustochium, the secret thought that having ceased to court attention in cloth of gold you may begin to do so in mean attire. When you come into an assembly of the brothers and sisters do not, like some, choose the lowest seat or plead that you are unworthy of a footstool. Do not speak with a faltering voice as if worn out with fasting, or lean upon the shoulders of your neighbours as if fainting. There are some who thus disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to fast. As soon as they are seen, they begin to groan, they look down, they cover their faces, all but one eye. Their dress is sombre, their girdles are of sackcloth. Others assume the mien of men, blushing that they have been born women, who cut their hair short, and walk abroad with effrontery, confronting the world with the impudent faces of eunuchs.... I have seen, but will not name, one among the noblest of Rome who in the very basilica of the blessed Peter gave alms with her own hands at the head of her retinue of servants, but struck in the face a poor woman who had twice held out her hand. Flee also the men who wear an iron chain, who have long hair like women against the rule of the Apostle, a miserable black robe, who go barefooted in the cold, and have in appearance at least an air of sadness and anxiety. The following sketch of the married woman who thinks of the things of the world, how she may please her husband, while the unmarried are free to please God, has an interest long outliving the controversy, in the light it throws upon contemporary Roman life. Do you think there is no difference between one who spends her time in fastings, and humbles herself night and day in prayer--and her who must prepare her face for the coming of her husband, ornament herself, and put on airs of fascination? The first veils her beauty and the graces which she despises; the other paints herself before a mirror, to make herself more fair than God has made her. Then come the children, crying, rioting, hanging about her neck, waiting for her kiss. Expenses follow without end, her time is spent in making up her accounts, her purse always open in her hand. Here there is a troop of cooks, their garments girded like soldiers for the battle, hashing and steaming. Then the women spinning and babbling. Anon comes the husband, followed by his friends. The wife flies about like a swallow from one end of the house to the other, to see that all is right, the beds made, the marble floors shining, flowers in the vases, the dinner prepared. Is there in all that, I ask, a thought of God? Are these happy homes? No, the fear of God is absent there, where the drum is sounded, the lyre struck, where the flute breathes out and the cymbals clash. Then the parasite abandons shame and glories in it, if he amuses the host who has invited him. The victims of debauch have their place at these feasts; they appear half naked in transparent garments which unclean eyes see through. What part is there for the wife in these orgies? She must learn to take pleasure in such scenes, or else to bring discord into her house. He paints for us, in another letter, a companion picture of the widow remarried. Your contract of marriage will scarcely be written when you will be compelled to make your will. Your new husband pretends to be very ill, and makes a will in your favour, desiring you to do the same. But he lives, and it is you who die. And if it happens that you have sons by your second marriage, war blazes forth in your house, a domestic contest without term or conclusion. Those who owe life to you, you are not permitted to love equally, fully. The second envies the caress which you give to the son of the first. If, on the contrary, it is he who has children by another wife, although you may be the most loving of mothers, you are condemned as a stepmother by all the rhetoric of the comedies, the pantomimes, and orators. If your stepson has a headache you have poisoned him. If he eats nothing you starve him, if you serve him his food it is worse still. What compensation is there in a second marriage to make up for so many woes? This tremendous outburst and others of a similar kind raised up, as was natural, a strong feeling against Jerome. It was not likely that the originals of these trenchant sketches would forgive easily the man who put them up in effigy on the very walls of Rome. That the pictures were identified was clear from another letter, in which he asks whether he is never to speak of any vice or folly lest he should offend a certain Onasus, who took everything to himself. Little cared he whom he offended, or what galled jade might wince. But at last the remonstrances of his friends subdued his rage. "When you read this you will bend your brows and check my freedom, putting a finger on my mouth to stop me from speaking," he wrote to Marcella. It was full time that the prudent mistress of the house which contained such a champion should interfere. While still the conflict raged which had been roused by the retirement of Blæsilla from the world, and which had thus widened into the general question, far more important than any individual case, between the reforming party in the Church, the Puritans of the time--then specially represented by the new development of monasticism--and the world which it called all elevated souls to abandon: incidents were happening which plunged the cheerful home on the Aventine into sorrow and made another noble house in Rome desolate. The young convert in the bloom of her youthful devotion, who had been raised up miraculously as they all thought from her sick bed in order that she might devote her life to Christ, was again struck down by sickness, and this time without any intervention of a miracle. Blæsilla died in the fulness of her youth, scarcely twenty-two, praying only that she might be forgiven for not having been able to do what she had wished to do in the service of her Lord. She was a great lady, though she had put her natural splendour away from her, and it was with all the pomp of a patrician funeral that she was carried to her rest. It is again Jerome who makes visible to us the sad scene of this funeral, and the feeling of the multitude towards the austere reformers who had by their cruel exactions cut off this flower of Roman society before her time. Paula, the bereaved mother, followed, as was the custom, the bier of her daughter through the crowded streets of Rome, scarcely able in the depths of her grief to support herself, and at last fell fainting into the arms of the attendants and had to be carried home insensible. At this sight, which might have touched their hearts, the multitude with one voice cried out against the distracted mother. "She weeps, the daughter whom she has killed with fastings," they cried. "Why are not these detestable monks driven from the city? why are they not stoned or thrown into the river? It is they who have seduced this miserable woman to be herself a monk against her will--this is why she weeps for her child as no woman has ever wept before." Paula, let us hope, did not hear these cries of popular rage. The streets rung with them, the populace always ready for tumult, and the disgusted and angry nobles encouraging every impulse towards revolt. No doubt many of the higher classes had looked on with anxiety and alarm at the new movement which dissipated among the poor so many fine inheritances and threatened to carry off out of the world, of which they had been the ornaments, so many of the most distinguished women. Any sudden rising which might kill or banish the pestilent monk or disperse the troublesome community would naturally find favour in their eyes. [Illustration: THE LATERAN FROM THE AVENTINE.] [Illustration: PORTICO OF OCTAVIA.] CHAPTER V. PAULA. Paula was a woman of very different character from the passionate and austere Melania who preceded and resembled her in many details of her career. Full of tender and yet sprightly humour, of love and gentleness and human kindness, a true mother benign and gracious, yet with those individualities of lively intelligence, understanding, and sympathy which quicken that mild ideal and bring in all the elements of friendship and the social life--she was the most important of those visitors and associates who made the House on the Aventine the fashion, and filled it with all that was best in Rome. Though her pedigree seems a little delusive, her relationship to Æmilius Paulus resolving itself into a descent from his sister through her own mother, it is yet apparent that her claims of the highest birth and position were fully acknowledged, and that no Roman matron held a higher or more honourable place. She was rich as they all were, highly allied, the favourite of society, neglecting none of its laws, though always with a love of intellectual intercourse and a tendency to devotion. Which of these tendencies drew her first towards Marcella and her little society we cannot tell: but it is evident that both found satisfaction there, and were quickened by the strong impulse given by Jerome when he came out of the schools and out of the wilds, at once Scholar and Hermit, to this house of friendship, the Ecclesia Domestica of Rome. That all this rising tide of life, the books, the literary work, the ever-entertaining companionship, as well as the higher influence of a life of self-denial and renunciation, as understood in those days--should have at first added a charm even to that existence upon its border, the life in which every motive contradicted the new law, is very apparent. Many a great lady, deeply plunged in all the business of the world, has felt the same attraction, the intense pleasure of an escape from those gay commotions which in the light of the other life seem so insignificant and wearisome, the sensation of rest and tranquillity and something higher, purer, in the air--which yet perhaps at first gave a zest to the return into the world, in itself once more a relief from that higher tension and those deeper requirements. The process by which the attraction grew is very comprehensible also. Common pleasures and inane talk of society grow duller and duller in comparison with the conversation full of wonders and revelations which would keep every faculty in exercise, the mutual studies, the awe yet exhilaration of mutual prayers and psalms, the realisation of spiritual things. And no doubt the devout child's soul so early fixed, the little daughter who had thought of nothing from her cradle but the service of God, must have drawn the ever-tender, ever-sympathetic mother still nearer to the centre of all. The beautiful mother among her girls, one betrothed, one self-consecrated, one in all the gay emancipation of an early widowhood, affords the most charming picture among the graver women--women all so near to each other in nature,--mutually related, members of one community, linked by every bond of common association and tradition. When Blæsilla on her recovery from her illness threw off her gaieties and finery, put on the brown gown, and adopted all the rules of the community, the life of Paula, trembling between two spheres, was shaken by a stronger impulse than ever before. But how difficult was any decision in her circumstances! She had her boy and girl at home as yet undeveloped--her only boy, dragged as much as might be to the other side, persuaded to think his mother a fanatic and his sisters fools. Paula did all she could to combine the two lives, indulging perhaps in an excess of austerities under the cloth of gold and jewels which, as symbols of her state and rank, she could not yet put off. The death of Blæsilla was the shock which shattered her life to pieces. Even the coarse reproaches of the streets show us with what anguish of mourning this first breach in her family overwhelmed her. "This is why she weeps for her child as no woman has ever wept before," the crowd cried, turning her sorrow into an accusation, as if she had thus acknowledged her own fault in leaving Blæsilla to privations she was not able to endure. Did the cruel censure perhaps awake an echo in her heart, ready as all hearts are in that moment of prostration to blame themselves for something neglected, something done amiss? At least it would remind Paula that she herself had never made completely this sacrifice which her child had made with such fatal effect. She was altogether overcome by her sorrow: her sobs and cries rent the hearts of her friends. She refused all food, and when exhausted by the paroxysms of violent grief fell into a lethargy of despair more alarming still. When every one else had tried their best to draw her from this excess of affliction, the ladies had recourse to Jerome in their extremity: for it was clear that Paula must be roused from this collapse of all courage and hope, or she must die. Jerome did not refuse to answer the appeal: though helpless as even the most anxious affection is in face of this anguish of the mother which will not be comforted, he did what he could; he wrote to her from the house of their friends who shared yet could not still her sorrow, a letter full of grief and sympathy, in the forlorn hope of bringing her back to life. Such letters heaven knows are common enough. We have all written, and most of us have received them, and found in their tender arguments, in their assurances of final good and present fellow feeling, only fresh pangs and additional sickness of heart. Yet Jerome's letter was not of a common kind. No one could have touched the shrinking heart with a softer touch than this fierce controversialist, this fiery and remorseless champion: for he had yet a more effectual spell to move the mourner, in that he was himself a mourner, not much less deeply touched than she. "Who am I," he cries, "to forbid the tears of a mother who myself weep? This letter is written in tears. He is not the best consoler whom his own groans master, whose being is un-manned, whose broken words distil into tears. Yes, Paula, I call to witness Christ Jesus whom our Blæsilla now follows, and the angels who are now her companions, I, too, her father in the spirit, her foster-father in affection, could also say with you--Cursed be the day that I was born. Great waves of doubt surge over my soul as over yours. I, too, ask myself why so many old men live on, why the impious, the murderers, the sacrilegious, live and thrive before our eyes, while blooming youth and childhood without sin are cut off in their flower." It is not till after he has thus wept with her that he takes a severer tone. "You deny yourself food, not from desire of fasting, but of sorrow. If you believed your daughter to be alive, you would not thus mourn that she has migrated to a better world. Have you no fear lest the Saviour should say to you, 'Are you angry, Paula, that your daughter has become my daughter? Are you vexed at my decree, and do you with rebellious tears grudge me the possession of Blæsilla?' At the sound of your cries Jesus, all-clement, asks, 'Why do you weep? the damsel is not dead but sleepeth.' And when you stretch yourself despairing on the grave of your child, the angel who is there asks sternly, 'Why seek ye the living among the dead?'" In conclusion Jerome adds a wonderful vow: "So long as breath animates my body, so long as I continue in life, I engage, declare and promise that Blæsilla's name shall be for ever on my tongue, that my labours shall be dedicated to her honour, and my talents devoted to her praise." It was the last word which the enthusiasm of tenderness could say: and no doubt the fervour and warmth of the promise, better kept than such promises usually are, gave a little comfort to the sorrowful soul. When Paula came back to the charities and devotions of life after this terrible pause a bond of new friendship was formed between her and Jerome. They had wept together, they bore the reproach together, if perhaps their trembling hearts might feel there was any truth in it, of having possibly exposed the young creature they had lost to privations more than she could bear. But it is little likely that this modern refinement of feeling affected these devoted souls; for such privations were in their eyes the highest privileges of life, and in fasting man was promoted to eat the food of angels. At all events, the death of Blæsilla made a new bond between them, the bond of a mutual and most dear remembrance never to be forgotten. This natural consequence of a common sorrow inflamed the popular rage against Jerome to the wildest fury. Paula's relations and connections, half of them, as in most cases in the higher ranks of society, still pagan--who now saw before them the almost certain alienation to charitable and religious purposes of Paula's wealth, pursued him with calumny and outrage, and did not hesitate to accuse the lady and the monk of a shameful relationship and every crime. To make things worse, Damasus, whose friend and secretary, almost his son, Jerome had been, died a few months after Blæsilla, depriving him at once of that high place to which the Pope's favour naturally elevated him. He complains of the difference which his close connection with Paula's family had made on the general opinion of him. "All, almost without exception, thought me worthy of the highest sacerdotal position; there was but one word for me in the world. By the mouth of the blessed Damasus it was I who spoke. Men called me holy, humble, eloquent." But all this had changed since the recent events in Paula's house. She on her side, wounded to the heart by the reproaches poured upon her, and the shameful slanders of which she was the object, and which had no doubt stung her into renewed life and energy, resolved upon a step stronger than that of joining the community, and announced her intention of leaving Rome, seeking a refuge in the holy city of Jerusalem, and shaking the dust of her native country, where she had been so vilified, from her feet. This resolution was put to Jerome's account as might have been expected, and when his patron's death left him without protection every enemy he had ever made, and no doubt they were many, was let loose. He whom courtiers had sought, whose hands had been kissed and his favour implored by all who sought anything from the Pope, was now greeted when he appeared in the streets by fierce cries of "Greek," "Impostor," "Monk," and his presence became a danger for the peaceful house in which he had found a refuge. It is scarcely possible to be very sorry for Jerome. He had not minced his words; he had flung libels and satires about that must have stung and wounded many, and in such matters reprisals are inevitable. But Paula had done no harm. Even granting the case that Blæsilla's health had been ruined by fasting, the mother herself had gone through the same privations and exulted in them: and her only fault was to have followed and sympathised in, with enthusiasm, the new teaching and precepts of the divine life in the form which was most highly esteemed in her time. No cry from that silent woman comes into the old world, ringing with so many outcries, where the rude Roman crowd bellowed forth abuse, and the ladies on their silken couches whispered the scandal of Paula's liaison to each other, and the men scoffed and sneered over their banquets at the mere thought of such a friendship being innocent. Some one of their enemies ventured to speak or write publicly the vile accusation, and was instantly brought to book by Jerome, and publicly forswore the scandal he had spread. "But," as Jerome says, "a lie is hard to kill; the world loves to believe an evil story: it puts its faith in the lie, but not in the recantation." And the situation of affairs became such that he too saw no expedient possible but that of leaving Rome. He would seem to have been, or to have imagined himself, in danger of his life, and his presence was unquestionably a danger for his friends. A man of more patient temperament and quiet mind might have thought that Paula's resolution to go away was a reason for him to stay, and thus to bear the scandal and outrage alone, at least until she was safe out of its reach--giving no possible occasion for the adversary to blaspheme. But Jerome was evidently not disposed to any such self-abnegation, and indeed it is very likely that his position had become intolerable and that his only resource was departure. It was in the summer of 385, nearly three years after his arrival in Rome--in August, seven months after the death of Damasus, and not a year after that of Blæsilla, that he left "Babylon," as he called the tumultuous city, writing his farewell with tears of grief and wrath to the Lady Asella, now one of the eldest and most important members of the community, and thanking God that he was found worthy of the hatred of the world. We are apt to speak as if travelling were an invention of our time: but as a matter of fact facilities of travelling then existed little inferior to those we ourselves possessed thirty or forty years ago, and it was no strange or unusual journey from Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber, by the soft Mediterranean shores, past the vexed rocks of the Sirens in the blazing weather, to Cyprus that island of monasteries, and Antioch a vexed and heresy-tainted city yet full of friends and succour. Jerome had a cluster of faithful followers round him, and was escorted by a weeping crowd to the very point of his embarkation: but yet swept forth from Rome in a passion of indignation and distress. [Illustration: TEMPLE OF VENUS AND ROME FROM THE COLOSSEUM (1860). _To face page 72._] It was while waiting for the moment of departure in the ship that was to carry him far from his friends and the life he loved, that Jerome's letters to Asella were written. They were full of anger and sorrow, the utterance of a heart sore and wounded, of a man driven almost to despair. "I am said," he cries, "to be an infamous person, a deceiver full of guile, an impostor with all the arts of Satan at his fingers' ends.... These men have kissed my hands in public, and stung me in secret with a viper's tooth; they compassionate me with their lips and rejoice in their hearts. But the Lord saw them, and had them in derision, reserving them to appear with me, his unfortunate servant, at the last judgment. One of them ridicules my walk, and my laugh: another makes of my features a subject of accusation: to another the simplicity of my manners is the evil thing: and I have lived three years in the company of such men!" He continues his indignant self-defence as follows: "I have lived surrounded by virgins, and to some of them I explained as best I could the divine books. With study came an increased knowledge of each other, and with that knowledge mutual confidence. Let them say if they have ever found anything in my conduct unbecoming a Christian. Have I not refused all presents, great or small? Gold has never sounded in my palm. Have they heard from my lips any doubtful word, or seen in my eyes a bold or hazardous look? Never, and no one dares say so. The only objection to me is that I am a man: and that objection only appeared when Paula announced her intention of going to Jerusalem. They believed my accuser when he lied: why do they not believe him when he retracts? He is the same man now as then. He imputed false crimes to me, now he declares me innocent. What a man confesses under torture is more likely to be true than that which he gives forth in a moment of gaiety: but people are more prone to believe such a lie than the truth. "Of all the ladies in Rome Paula only, in her mourning and fasting, has touched my heart. Her songs were psalms, her conversations were of the Gospel, her delight was in purity, her life a long fast. But when I began to revere, respect, and venerate her, as her conspicuous virtue deserved, all my good qualities forsook me on the spot. "Had Paula and Melania rushed to the baths, taken advantage of their wealth and position to join, perfumed and adorned, in one worship God and their wealth, their freedom and pleasure, they would have been known as great and saintly ladies; but now it is said they seek to be admired in sackcloth and ashes, and go down to hell laden with fasting and mortifications: as if they could not as well have been damned along with the rest, amid the applauses of the crowd. If it were Pagans and Jews who condemned them, they would have had the consolation of being hated by those who hated Christ, but these are Christians, or men known by that name. "Lady Asella, I write these lines in haste, while the ship spreads its sails. I write them with sobs and tears, yet giving thanks to God to have been found worthy of the hatred of the world. Salute Paula and Eustochium, mine in Christ whether the world pleases or not, salute Albina your mother, Marcella your sister, Marcellina, Felicita: say to them that we shall meet again before the judgment seat of God, where the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed. Remember me, oh example of purity! and may thy prayers tranquillise before me the tumults of the sea!" [Illustration: TRINITA DE' MONTI.] The agitation with which the community of ladies must have received such a letter may easily be imagined. They were better able than any others to judge of the probity and honour of the writer who had lived among them so long: and no doubt all these storms raging about, the injurious and insulting imputations, all the evil tongues of Rome let loose upon the harmless house, their privacy invaded, their quiet disturbed, must, during the whole course of the deplorable incident, have been the cause of pain and trouble unspeakable to the gentle society on the Aventine. Marcella it is evident had done what she could to stop the mouth of Jerome when the trouble began; it is perhaps for this reason that the letter of farewell is addressed to the older Asella, perhaps a milder judge. Paula's preparations had begun before Jerome had as yet thought of his more abrupt departure. They were not so easily made as those of a solitary already detached from the world. She had all her family affairs to regulate, and, what was harder still, her children to part with, the most difficult of all, and the special point in her conduct with which it is impossible for us to sympathise. But it must be remembered that Paula, a spotless matron, had been branded with the most shameful of slanders, that she had been shrieked at by the crowd as the slayer of her daughter, and accused by society of having dishonoured her name. She had been the subject of a case of libel, as we should say, before the public courts, and though the slanderer had confessed his falsehood (under the influence of torture it would seem, according to the words of Jerome), the imputation, as in most cases, remained. Outraged and wounded to the quick, it is very possible that she may have thought that it was well for her younger children that she should leave them, that they might not remain under the wing of a mother whose name had been bandied about in the mouths of men. Her daughter Paulina was by this time married to the good and faithful Pammachius, whose protection might be of greater advantage to the younger girl and boy than her own. And Paula had full knowledge of the tender mercies of her pagan relations, and of the influence they were likely to exercise against her, even in her own house. The staid young Eustochium, grave and calm, clung to her mother's side, her youthful head already covered by the veil of the dedicated virgin, a serene and unfaltering figure in the midst of all the agitations of the parting. All Rome poured forth to accompany them to the port, brothers and sisters with their wives and husbands, relations less near, a crowd of friends. All the way along the winding banks of the Tiber they plied Paula with entreaties and reproaches and tears. She made them no reply. She was at all times slow to speak, as the tender chronicle reports. "She raised her eyes to heaven, pious towards her children but more pious to God." She retained her self-command until the vessel began to move from the shore, where little Toxotius, the boy of ten years old, stood stretching out his hands to her in a last appeal, his sister Rufina silent, with wistful eyes, by his side. Paula's heart was like to burst. She turned her eyes away unable to bear that cruel sight, while Eustochium, firm and steadfast, supported her weaker mother in her arms. Was it a cruel desertion, a heartless abandonment of duty? Who can tell? There are desertions, cruelties in this kind, which are the highest sacrifice, and sometimes the most bitter proof of self-devotion. Did Paula in her heart believe, most painful thought that can enter a mother's mind, that her boy would be better without her, brought up in peace among his uncles and guardians, who, had she been there, would have made his life a continual struggle between two sides? Was Rufina more likely to be happy in her gentle sister's charge, than with her mind disturbed, and perhaps her marriage spoiled, by her mother's religious vows, and all that was involved in them? She might be wrong in thinking so, as we are all wrong often in our best and most painfully pondered plans. But condemnation is very easy, and gives so little trouble--there is surely a word to be said on the other side of the question. When these pilgrims leave Rome they cease to have any part in the story of the great city with which we have to do. Yet their after-fate may be stated in a few words. No need to follow the great lady in her journey over land and sea to the Holy Land with all its associations, where Jerusalem out of her ruins, decked with a new classic name, was already rising again into the knowledge and the veneration of the world. These were not the days of excursion trains and steamers, it is true; but the number of pilgrims ever coming and going to those more than classic shores, those holy places, animated with every higher hope, was perhaps greater in proportion to the smaller size and less population of the known world than are our many pilgrimages now, though this seems so strange a thing to say. But is there not a Murray, a Baedeker, of the fourth century, still existent, the _Itinéraire de Bordeaux à Jerusalem_, unquestioned and authentic, containing the most careful account of inns and places of refuge and modes of travel for the pilgrims? It is possible that the lady Paula may have had that ancient roll in her satchel, or slung about the shoulders of her attendant for constant reference. Her ship was occupied by her own party alone, and conveyed, no doubt, much baggage and many provisions as an emigration for life would naturally do; and it was hindered by no storms, as far as we hear, but only by a great calm which delayed the vessel much and made the voyage tedious, necessitating the use of the galley's oars, which very likely the ladies would like best, though it kept them so many more days upon the sea. They reached Cyprus at last, that holy island now covered with monasteries, where Epiphanius, once Paula's guest in Rome, awaited and received her with every honour, and where there were many visits to be paid to monks and nuns in their new establishments, the favourite dissipation of the cloister. The ladies afterwards continued their voyage to Antioch, where they met Jerome; and proceeded on their journey, having probably had enough of the sea, along the coast by Tyre and Sidon, by Herod's splendid city of Cæsarea, and Joppa with its memories of the Apostles--not without a thought of Andromeda and her monster as they looked over the dark and dangerous reefs which still scare the traveller: for they loved literature, notwithstanding their separation from the world. They formed by this time a great caravanserai, not unlike, to tell the truth, one of those parties which we are so apt to despise, under charge of guides and attendants who wear the livery of Cook. But such an expedition was far more dignified and important in those distant days. Jerome and his monks made but one family of sisters and brothers with the Roman ladies and their followers, who endured so bravely all the fatigues and dangers of the way. Paula the pilgrim was no longer a tottering fine lady, but the most animated and interested of travellers, with no mere mission of hermit-hunting like Melania, but the truest human enthusiasm for all the storied scenes through which she passed. When they reached Jerusalem she went in a rapture of tears and exaltation from one to another of the sacred sites, kissing the broken stone which was supposed to have been that which was rolled against the door of the Holy Sepulchre, and following with pious awe and joy the steps of Helena into the cave where the True Cross was found. The legend was still fresh in those days, and doubts there were none. The enthusiasm of Paula, the rapture and exaltation, which found vent in torrents of tears, in ecstasies of sacred emotion, joy and prayer, moved all the city, thronged with pilgrims, devout and otherwise, to whom the great Roman lady was a wonder: the crowd followed her about from point to point, marvelling at her devotion and the warmth of natural feeling which in all circumstances distinguished her. The reader cannot but follow still with admiring interest a figure so fresh, so unconventional, so profoundly touched by all those holy and sacred associations. Amid so many who are represented as almost more abstracted among spiritual thoughts than nature permits, her frank emotion and tender, natural enthusiasm are always a refreshment and a charm. We come here upon a break in the hitherto redundant story. Melania and Rufinus were in possession of their convents, and fully established as residents on the Mount of Olives, when the other pilgrims arrived; and there can be but little doubt that every grace of hospitality was extended by the one Roman lady to the other, as well as by the old companions of Jerome to her friend. But in the course of the after-years these dear friends quarrelled bitterly, not on personal matters, so far as appears, but on points of doctrine, and fell into such prolonged warfare of angry and stinging words as hurt more than blows. By means of this very intimacy they knew everything that had ever been said or whispered of each other, and in the heat of conflict did not hesitate to use every old insinuation, every suggestion that could hurt or wound. The struggle ran so high that the after-peace of both parties was seriously affected by it; and one of its most significant results was that Jerome, a man great enough and little enough for anything, either in the way of spitefulness or magnanimity, cut off from his letters and annals all mention of this early period of peace, and all reference to Melania, whom he is supposed to have praised so highly in his first state of mind that it became impossible in his second to permit these expressions of amity to be connected with her name. This is a melancholy explanation of the silence which falls over the first period of Paula's residence in Palestine, but it is a very natural one: and both sides were equally guilty. The quarrel happened, however, years after the first visit, which we have every reason to believe was all friendliness and peace. After this first pause at Jerusalem, the caravanserai got under way again and set out on a long journey through all the scenes of the Old Testament, the storied deserts and ruins of Syria, not much less ancient to the view and much less articulate than now. This was in the year 387, two years after their departure from Rome. Even now, with all our increased facilities for travel--neutralised as they are by the fact that these wild and desert lands will probably never be adapted to modern methods--the journey would be a very long and fatiguing business. Jerome and his party "went everywhere," as we should say; they were daunted by no difficulties. No modern lady in deer-stalker's costume could have shrunk less from any dangerous road than the once fastidious Paula. They stopped everywhere, receiving the ready hospitality of the convents in every awful pass of the rocks and stony waste where such homes of penance were planted. Those wildernesses of ruin, from which our own explorers have picked carefully out some tradition of Gilgal or of Ziklag, some Philistine stronghold or Jewish city of refuge--were surveyed by these adventurers fourteen hundred years ago, when perhaps there was greater freshness of tradition, but none of the aids of science to decipher what would seem even more hoary with age to them than it does to us. How trifling in our pretences at exploration do the luxurious parties of the nineteenth century seem, abstracted from common life for a few months at the most, and with all the resources of civilisation to fall back upon, in comparison with that of these patient wanderers, eating the Arab bread and clotted milk, and such fare as was to be got at, finding shelter among the dark-skinned ascetics of the desert communities, taking refuge in the cave which some saint but a day or two before had inhabited, wandering everywhere, over primeval ruin and recent shrine! When they came back from these savage wildernesses to green Bethlehem standing up on its hillside over the pleasant fields, the calm and sweetness of the place went to their hearts. It was in this sacred spot that they decided to settle themselves, building their two convents, Jerome's upon the hill near the western gate, Paula's upon the smiling level below. He is said to have sold all that he had, some remains of personal property in Dalmatia belonging to himself and his brother, who was his faithful and constant companion, to provide for the expenses of the building, on his side; and no doubt the abundant wealth of Paula supplemented all that was wanting. Gradually a conventual settlement, such as was the ideal of the time, gathered in this spot. After her own convent was finished Paula built two others near it, which were soon filled with dedicated sisters. And she built a hospice for the reception of travellers, so that, as she said with tender smiles and tears, "If Joseph and Mary should return to Bethlehem, they might be sure of finding room for them in the inn." This soft speech shines like a gleam of tender light upon the little holy city with all its memories, showing us the great lady of old in her gracious kindness, full of noble natural kindness, and seeing in every poor pilgrim who passed that way some semblance of that simple pair, who carried the Light of the World to David's little town among the hills. All these homes of piety and charity are swept away, and no tradition even of their site is left; but there is one storied chamber that remains full of the warmest interest of all. It is the rocky room, in one of the half caves, half excavations close to that of the Nativity, and communicating with it by rudely hewn stairs and passages, in which Jerome established himself while his convent was building, which he called his Paradise, and which is for ever associated with the great work completed there. All other traditions and memories grow dim in the presence of the great and sacred interest of the place. Yet it will be impossible even there for the spectator who knows their story to stand unmoved in the scene, practically unaltered since their day, where Jerome laboured at his great translation, and Paula and Eustochium copied, compared, and criticised his daily labours. A great part of the Vulgate had been completed in Rome, but since leaving that city Jerome had much increased his knowledge of Hebrew, losing no opportunity, during his travels, of studying the language with every learned Rabbi he encountered, and acquiring much information in respect to the views and readings of the doctors in the law. He took the opportunity of his retirement at Bethlehem to revise what was already done and to finish the work. His two friends had both learned Hebrew in a greater or less degree before leaving Rome. They had no doubt shared his studies on the way. They read with him daily a portion of the Scriptures in the original; and it was at their entreaty and with their help that he began the translation of the Psalms, so deeply appropriate to this scene, in which the voice of the shepherd of Bethlehem could almost be heard, singing as he led his flock about the little hills. I quote from M. Amédée Thierry a sympathetic description of the method of this work as it was carried out in the rocky chamber at Bethlehem, or in the convent close by. His two friends charged themselves with the task of collecting all the materials, and this edition, prepared by their care, is that which remains in the Church under Jerome's name. We have his own instructions to them for this work, even to the lines traced for greater exactness, and the explanation of the signs which he had adopted in the collation of the different versions with his text, sometimes a line underscored, sometimes an obelisk or asterisk. A comma followed by two points indicated the cutting out of superfluous words coming from some paraphrase of the Septuagint; a star followed by two points showed, on the contrary, where passages had to be inserted from the Hebrew; another mark denoted passages borrowed from the translation of Theodosius, slightly different from the Septuagint as to the simplicity of the language. In reading these various symbols it is pleasant to think of the two noble Roman ladies seated before the vast desk upon which were spread the numerous manuscripts, Greek, Hebrew, and Latin--the Hebrew text of the Bible, the different editions of the Septuagint, the Hexapla of Origen, Theodosius, Symmachus, Aquila, and the Italian Vulgate--whilst they examined and compared, reducing to order under their hands, with piety and joy, that Psalter of St. Jerome which we still sing, at least the greater part of it, in the Latin Church at the present day. It is indeed a touching association with that portion of Scripture which next to the Gospel is most dear to the devout, that the translation still in daily use throughout the churches of Continental Europe, the sonorous and noble words which amid all the babble of different tongues still form a large universal language, of which all have at least a conventional understanding--should have been thus transcribed and perfected for the use of the generations. Jerome is no gentle hero, and, truth to tell, has never been much loved in the Church which yet owes so much to him. Yet there is no other work of the kind which carries with it so many soft and tender associations. The cave at Bethlehem is as little adapted as a scene for that domestic combination as Jerome is naturally adapted to be its centre. And no doubt there are unkindly critics who will describe this austere yet beautiful interior as the workshop of two poor female slaves dragged after him by the tyranny of their grim taskmaster to do his work for him. No such idea is consistent with the record. The gentle Paula was a woman of high spirit as well as of much grace and courtesy, steadfastness and humour, the last the most unusual quality of all. The imaginative devotion which had induced her to learn Hebrew in order to sing the Psalmist's songs in the original, among the little band of Souls, under Marcella's gilded roof, had its natural evolution in the gentle pressure laid upon Jerome to make of them an authoritative translation: and where could so fit a place for this work have been found as in the delightful rest after their travels were over, in the very scene where these sacred songs were first begun? It would be almost as impertinent and foolish to suppose that any modern doubt of their authenticity existed in Paula's mind as to suggest that these were forced and dreary labours to which she was driven by a spiritual tyrant. To our mind this mutual labour and study adds the last charm to their companionship. The sprightly, gentle woman who shed so much light over that curious self-denying yet self-indulgent life, and the grave young daughter who never left her side, whose gentle shadow is one with her, so that while Paula lived we cannot distinguish them apart--must have found a quiet happiness above all they had calculated on in this delightful intercourse and work. Their minds and thoughts occupied by the charm of noble poetry, by the puzzle of words to be cleared and combined aright, and by constant employment in a matter which interested them so deeply, which is perhaps the best of all--must have drawn closer and ever closer, mother to child, and child to mother, as well as both to the friend and father whom they delighted to serve, and whose large intellect and knowledge kept theirs going in constant sympathy--not unmingled with now and then a little opposition, and the pleasant stir of independent opinion. It is right to give Jerome himself, so fierce in quarrel and controversy, the advantage of this gentle lamp which burns for ever in his little Paradise. And can any one suppose that Paula, once so sensitive and exquisite, now strong and vigorous in the simplicity of that retirement, with her hands full and her mind, plenty to think of, plenty to do, had not her advantage also? The life would be ideal but for the thought that must have come over her by times, of the young ones left in Rome, and what was happening to them. She was indeed prostrated by grief again and again by the death of her daughters there, one after another, and mourned with a bitterness which makes us wonder whether that haunting doubt and self-censure, which perhaps gave an additional sting to her sorrow in the case of Blæsilla, may not have overwhelmed her heart again though on a contrary ground--the doubt whether perhaps the austerities she enjoined and shared had been fatal to one, the contradictory doubt whether to leave them to the usual course of life might not have been fatal to the others. Such a woman has none of the self-confidence which steels so many against fate--and, finding nothing effectual for the safety of those she loved, neither a sacred dedication nor that consent to commonplace happiness which is the ordinary ideal of a mother's duty, might well sometimes fall into despair--a despair silently shared by many a trembling heart in all ages, which finds its best-laid plans, though opposite to each other, fall equally into downfall and dismay. [Illustration: FROM THE AVENTINE.] But she had her compensations. She had her little glory, too, in the books which went forth from that seclusion in Bethlehem, bearing her name, inscribed to her and her child by the greatest writer of the time. "You, Paula and Eustochium, who have studied so deeply the books of the Hebrews, take it, this book of Esther, and test it word by word; you can tell whether anything is added, anything withdrawn: and can bear faithful witness whether I have rendered aright in Latin this Hebrew history." Few women would despise such a tribute, and fewer still the place of these two women in the Paradise of that laborious study, and at the doors of that beautiful Hospice on the Jerusalem road, where Joseph and Mary had they but come again would have run no risk of finding room! They died all three, one after another, and were laid to rest in the pure and wholesome rock near the sacred spot of the Nativity. There is a touching story told of how Eustochium, after her mother's death, when Jerome was overwhelmed with grief and unable to return to any of his former occupations, came to him with the book of Ruth still untranslated in her hand, at once a promise and an entreaty. "Where thou goest I will go. Where thou dwellest I will dwell"--and a continuation at the same time of the blessed work which kept their souls alive. [Illustration: THE CAPITOL FROM THE PALATINE.] CHAPTER VI. THE MOTHER HOUSE. Amid all these changes the house on the Aventine--the mother house as it would be called in modern parlance--went on in busy quiet, no longer visible in that fierce light which beats upon the path of such a man as Jerome, doing its quiet work steadily, having a hand in many things, most of them beneficent, which went on in Rome. Albina the mother of Marcella, and Asella her elder sister, died in peace: and younger souls, with more stirring episodes of life, disturbed and enlivened the peace of the cloister, which yet was no cloister but open to all the influences of life, maintaining a large correspondence and much and varied intercourse with the society of the times. In the first fervour of the settlement in Bethlehem both Paula and Jerome (she by his hand) wrote to Marcella urging her to join them, to forsake the world in a manner more complete than she had yet done. "... You were the first to kindle the fire in us" (the letter is nominally from Paula and Eustochium): "the first by precept and example to urge us to adopt our present life. As a hen gathers her chickens, who fear the hawk and tremble at every shadow of a bird, so did you take us under your wing. And will you now let us fly about at random with no mother near us?" This letter is full not only of affectionate entreaties but of delightful pictures of their own retired and peaceful life. "How shall I describe to you," the writer says, "the little cave of Christ, the hostel of Mary? Silence is more respectful than words, which are inadequate to speak its praise. There are no lines of noble colonnades, no walls decorated by the sweat of the poor and the labour of convicts, no gilded roofs to intercept the sky. Behold in this poor crevice of the earth, in a fissure of the rock, the builder of the firmament was born." She goes on with touching eloquence to put forth every argument to move her friend. Read the Apocalypse of St. John and see there what he says of the woman clothed in scarlet, on whose forehead is written blasphemy, and of her seven hills, and many waters, and the end of Babylon. "Come out of her, my people," the Lord says, "that ye be not partakers of her sins." There is indeed there a holy Church; there are the trophies of apostles and martyrs, the true confession of Christ, the faith preached by the apostles, and heathendom trampled under foot, and the name of Christian every day raising itself on high. But its ambition, its power, the greatness of the city, the need of seeing and being seen, of greeting and being greeted, of praising and detracting, hearing or talking, of seeing, even against one's will, all the crowds of the world--these things are alien to the monastic profession and they have spoiled Rome, they all oppose an insurmountable obstacle to the quiet of the true monk. People visit you: if you open your doors, farewell to silence: if you close them, you are proud and unfriendly. If you return their politeness, it is through proud portals, through a host of grumbling insolent lackeys. But in the cottage of Christ all is simple, all is rustic: except the Psalms, all is silence: no frivolous talk disturbs you, the ploughman sings Allelujah as he follows his plough, the reaper covered with sweat refreshes himself with chanting a psalm, and it is David who supplies with a song the vine dresser among his vineyards. These are the songs of the country, its ditties of love, played upon the shepherd's flute. Will the time never come when a breathless courier will bring us the good news, your Marcella has landed in Palestine? What a cry of joy among the choirs of the monks, among all the bands of the virgins! In our excitement we wait for no carriage but go on foot to meet you, to clasp your hand, to look upon your face. When will the day come when we shall enter together the birthplace of Christ: when, leaning over the divine sepulchre, we weep with a sister, a mother, when our lips touch together the sacred wood of the Cross: when on the Mount of Olives our hearts and souls rise together in the rising of our Lord? Would not you see Lazarus coming out of his tomb, bound in his shroud? and the waters of Jordan purified for the washing of the Lord? Then we shall hasten to the shepherds' folds, and pray at the tomb of David. Listen, it is the prophet Amos blowing his shepherd's horn from the height of his rock; we shall see the monuments of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the three famous women, and Samaria and Nazareth, the flower of Galilee, and Shiloh and Bethel and other holy places, accompanied by Christ, where churches rise everywhere like standards of the victories of Christ. And when we return to our cavern we will sing together always, and sometimes we shall weep; our hearts wounded with the arrow of the Lord, we will say one to another, "I have found Him whom my soul loveth; I will hold Him, and will not let Him go!" Similar words upon the happiness of rural life and retirement Jerome had addressed to Marcella before. He had warned her of the danger of the tumultuous sea of life, and how the frail bark, beaten by the waves, ought to seek the shelter of the port before the last hurricane breaks. The image was even more true than he imagined; but it was not of the perils of Rome in the dreadful time of war and siege which was approaching that he spoke, but of the usual dangers of common life to the piety of the recluse. "The port which we offer you, it is the solitude of the fields," he says: Brown bread, herbs watered by our own hands, and milk, the daintiest of the country, supply our rustic feasts. We have no fear of drowsiness in prayer or heaviness in our readings, on such fare. In summer we seek the shade of our trees; in autumn the mild weather and pure air invite us to rest on a bed of fallen leaves; in spring, when the fields are painted with flowers, we sing our psalms among the birds. When winter comes, with its chills and snows, the wood of the nearest forest supplies our fire. Let Rome keep her tumults, her cruel arena, her mad circus, her luxurious theatres; let the senate of matrons pay its daily visits. It is good for us to cleave to the Lord and to put all our hope in Him. But Marcella turned a deaf ear to these entreaties. Perhaps she still loved the senate of matrons, the meetings of the Souls, the irruption of gentle visitors, the murmur of all the stories of Rome, and the delicate difficulties of marriage and re-marriage brought to her for advice and guidance. The allusions in both these letters point to such a conclusion, and there is no reason why it should not have been so. The Superior of a convent has in this fashion in much later days fulfilled more important uses than the gentle nun of the fields. At all events this lady remained in her home, her natural place, and continued to pour forth her bounty upon the poor of her native city: which many would agree was perhaps the better, though it certainly was not the safer, way. The death of her mother, which made a change in her life, and might have justified a still greater breaking up of all old customs and ties, was perhaps the occasion of these affectionate arguments; but Marcella would herself be no longer young and in a position much resembling that of a mother in her own person, the trusted friend of many in Rome, and their closest tie to a more spiritual and better life. The light of such a guest as Jerome, attracting all eyes to the house and bringing it within the records of literary history, that sole mode of saving the daily life of a household from oblivion--had indeed died away, leaving life perhaps a little flat and blank, certainly much less agitated and visible to the outer world than when he was pouring forth fire and flame upon every adversary from within the shelter of its peaceful walls. But no other change had happened in the circumstances under which Marcella opened her palace to a few consecrated sisters, and made it a general oratory and place of pious counsel and retreat for the ladies of Rome. The same devout readings, the same singing of psalms (sometimes in the original), the same life of mingled piety and intellectualism must have gone on as before: and other fine ladies perhaps not less interesting than Paula must have sought with their confessions and confidences the ear of the experienced woman, who as Paula says in respect to herself and her daughters, "first carried the sparkle of light to our hearts, and collected us like chickens under your wing." She was the same, "our gentle, our sweet Marcella, sweeter than honey," open to every charity and kindness: not refusing, it would seem, to visit as well as to be visited, and willing to "live the life" without forsaking any ordinary bonds or traditions of existence. There is less to tell of her for this reason, but not perhaps less to praise. Marcella had her share no doubt in forming the minds of the two younger spirits, vowed from their cradle to the perfect life of virginhood, the second Paula, daughter of Toxotius and his Christian wife; and the younger Melania, daughter also of the son whom his mother had abandoned as an infant. It is a curious answer to the stern virtue which reproaches these two Roman ladies with the cruel desertion of their children, to find that both those children, grown men, permitted or encouraged the vocation of their daughters, and were proud of the saintly renown of the mothers who had left them to their fate. The consecrated daughters however leave only a faint trace as of two spotless catechumens in the story. Incidents of a more exciting character broke now and then the calm of life in the palace on the Aventine. M. Thierry in his life of Jerome gives us perhaps a sketch too entertaining of Fabiola, one of the ladies more or less associated with the house of Marcella, a constant visitor, a penitent by times, an enthusiast in charity, a woman bent on making, or so it seemed, the best of both worlds. She had made early what for want of a better expression we may call a love match, in which she had been bitterly disappointed. That a divorce should follow was both natural and lawful in the opinion of the time, and Fabiola had already formed a new attachment and made haste to marry again. But the second marriage was a disappointment even greater than the first, and this repeated failure seems to have confused and excited her mind to issues by no means clear at first, probably even to herself. She made in the distraction of her life a sudden and unannounced visit to Paula's convent at Bethlehem, where she was a welcome and delightful visitor, carrying with her all the personal news that cannot be put into writing, and the gracious ways of an accomplished woman of the world. She is supposed to have had a private object of her own under this visit of friendship, but the atmosphere and occupations of the place must have overawed Fabiola, and though her object was hidden in an artful web of fiction she was not bold enough to reveal it, either to the stern Jerome or the mild Paula. What she did was to make herself delightful to both in the little society upon which we have so many side-lights, and which doubtless, though so laborious and full of privations, was a very delightful society, none better, with such a man as Jerome, full of intellectual power, and human experience, at its head, and ladies of the highest breeding like Paula and her daughter to regulate its simple habits. We are told of one pretty scene where--amid the talk which no doubt ran upon the happiness of that peaceful life amid the pleasant fields where the favoured shepherds heard the angels' song--there suddenly rose the voice of the new-comer reciting with the most enchanting flattery a certain famous letter which Jerome long before had written to his friend Heliodorus and which had been read in all the convents and passed from hand to hand as a _chef d'oeuvre_ of literary beauty and sacred enthusiasm. Fabiola, quick and adroit and emotional, had learned it by heart, and Jerome would have been more than man had he not felt the charm of such flattery. For a moment the susceptible Roman seems to have felt that she had attained the haven of peace after her disturbed and agitated life. Her hand was full and her heart generous: she spread her charities far and wide among poor pilgrims and poor residents with that undoubting liberality which considered almsgiving as one of the first of Christian duties. But whether the little busy society palled after a time, or whether it was the great scare of the rumour that the Huns were coming that frightened Fabiola, we cannot tell, nor precisely how long her stay was. Her coming and going were at least within the space of two years. She was not made to settle down to the revision of manuscripts like her friends, though she had dipped like them into Hebrew and had a pretty show of knowledge. She would seem to have evidenced this however more by curious and somewhat frivolous questions than by any assistance given in the work which was going on. Nothing could be more kind, more paternal, than Jerome to the little band of women round him. He complains, it is true, that Fabiola sometimes propounded problems and did not wait for an answer, and that occasionally he had to reply that he did not know, when she puzzled him with this rapid stream of inquiry. But it is evident also that he did his best sincerely to satisfy her curiosity as if it had been the sincerest thing in the world. For instance, she was seized with a desire to know the symbolical meaning of the costume of the high priest among the Jews: and to gratify this desire Jerome occupied a whole night in dictating to one of his scribes a little treatise on the subject, which probably the fine lady scarcely took time to read. Nothing can be more characteristic than the indications of this bright and charming visitor, throwing out reflections of all that was going on round her, so brilliant that they seemed better than the reality, fluttering upon the surface of their lives, bringing all under her spell. There seems but little ground however for the supposition of M. Thierry that it was in the interest of Fabiola that Amandus, a priest in Rome, wrote a letter laying before Jerome a case of conscience, that of a woman who had divorced her husband and married again, and who now was troubled in her mind as to her duty; whether the second husband was wholly unlawful, and whether she could remain in full communion with the Church, having made this marriage? If she was the person referred to no one has been able to divulge what the question meant--whether she had a third marriage in her mind, or if a wholly unnecessary fit of compunction had seized her; for as a matter of fact she had never been subjected by the Church to any pains or penalties in consequence of her second marriage. Jerome however, as might have been expected of him, gave forth no uncertain sound in his reply. According to the Church, he said, there could be but one husband, the first. Whatever had been his unworthiness, to replace him by another was to live in sin. Whether it was this answer which decided her action, or whether she had been moved by the powerful fellowship of Bethlehem to renounce the more agitating course of worldly life, at least it is certain that Fabiola's career was changed from this time. Perhaps it was her desire to shake off the second husband which moved her. At all events on her return to Rome she announced to the bishop that she felt herself guilty of a great sin, and that she desired to make public penance for the same. [Illustration: SAN BARTOLOMMEO.] Accordingly on the eve of Easter, when the penitents assembled under the porch of the great Church of St. John Lateran, amid all the wild and haggard figures appearing there, murderers and criminals of all kinds, the delicate Fabiola, with her hair hanging about her shoulders, ashes on her head and on the dark robe that covered her, her face pale with fasting and tears, stood among them, a sight for the world. Under many aspects had all Rome seen this daughter of the great Fabian race, in the splendour of her worldly espousals, and at all the great spectacles and entertainments of a city given up to display and amusement. Her jewels, her splendid dresses, her fine equipages, were well known. With what curiosity would all her old admirers, her rivals in splendour, those who had envied her luxury and high place, gather to see her now in her voluntary humiliation, descending to the level of the very lowest as she had hitherto been on the very highest apex of society! All Rome we are told was there, gazing, wondering, tracing her movements under the portico, among these unaccustomed companions. Perhaps there might be a supreme fantastic satisfaction to the penitent--with that craving for sensation which the exhaustion of all kinds of triumphs and pleasures brings--in thus stepping from one extreme to the other, a gratification in the thought that Rome which had worshipped her beauty and splendour was now gazing aghast at her bare feet and dishevelled hair. One can have no doubt of the sensation experienced by the _Tota urbe spectante Romana_. It was worth while frequenting religious ceremonies when such a sight was possible! Fabiola,--once with mincing steps, and gorgeous liveried servants on either hand, descending languidly the great marble steps from her palace to the gilded carriage in which she sank fatigued when that brief course was over, the mitella blazing with gold upon her head, her robe woven with all the tints of the rainbow into metallic splendour of gold and silver threads. And now to see her amid that crowd of ruffians from the Campagna, and unhappy women from the purlieus of the city, her splendid head uncovered, her thin hands crossed in the rough sleeves of the penitent's gown! It might be to some perhaps a salutary sight--moving other great ladies with heavier sins on their heads than Fabiola's to feel the prickings of remorse; though no doubt it is equally possible that they might think they saw through her, and the new form of self-exhibition which attracted all the world to gaze. We are not told whether Fabiola found refuge in the house on the Aventine with Marcella, who had lit the fire of Christian faith in her heart as well as in that of Paula: or whether she remained, like Marcella, in her own house, making it another centre of good works. But at all events her life from this moment was entirely given up to charity and spiritual things. Her kinsfolk and noble neighbours still more or less Pagan, were filled with fury and indignation and that sharp disgust at the loss of so much good money to the world, which had so much to do in embittering opposition: but the Christians were deeply impressed, the homage of such a great lady to the faith, and her recantation of her errors affecting many as a true martyrdom. If it was really compunction for the sin of the second marriage which so moved her, her position would much resemble that of the _fine fleur_ of French society as at present constituted, in its tremendous opposition to the law of divorce, now lawful in France of the nineteenth century as it was in Rome of the fourth--but resisted with a splendid bigotry of feeling, altogether independent of morality or even of reason, by all that is noblest in the country. Fabiola's divorce had been perfectly lawful and according to all the teaching and traditions of her time. The Church had as yet uplifted no voice against it. She had not been shut out from the society even of the most pious, or condemned to any penance or deprivation. Not even Jerome (till forced to give a categorical answer), nor that purest circle of devout women at Bethlehem, had refused her any privilege. Her action was unique and unprecedented as a protest against the existing law of the land, as well as universal custom and tradition. We are not informed whether it had any lasting effect, or formed a precedent for other women. No doubt it encouraged the formation of the laws against divorce which originated in the Church itself but have held through the intervening ages a doubtful sway, broken on every side by Papal dispensations, until now that they have settled down into a bond of iron on the consciences of the devout--chiefly the women, more specially still the gentlewomen--of Catholic Europe, where as in Fabiola's time they are once more against the law of the land. The unworthy second husband we are informed had died even before Fabiola's public act of penitence; but no further movements towards the world, or the commoner ways of life reveal themselves in her future career. If she returned to life with the veiled head and bare feet of her penitence, or if she resumed, like Marcella, much of the ordinary traffic of society, we have no information. But she was the founder of the first public hospital in Rome, besides the usual monasteries, and built in concert with Pammachius a hospice at Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber, where strangers and travellers from all parts of the world were received, probably on the model of that hospice for pilgrims which Paula had established. And she was herself the foremost nurse in her own hospital, shrinking from no office of charity. The Church has always and in all circumstances encouraged such practical acts of self-devotion. The ladies of the Aventine and all the friends of Jerome had been disturbed a little before by the arrival of a stranger in Rome, also a pretended friend of Jerome, and at first very willing to shelter himself under that title, Rufinus, who brought with him--after a moment of delusive amiability during which he had almost deceived the very elect themselves--a blast of those wild gales of polemical warfare which had been echoing for some time with sacrilegious force and inappropriateness from the Mount of Olives itself. The excitement which he raised in Rome in respect to the doctrines of Origen caused much commotion in the community, which lived as much by news of the Church and reports of all that was going on in theology as by the daily bread of their charities and kindness. It was to Marcella that Jerome wrote, when, reports having been made to him of all that had happened, he exploded, with the flaming bomb of his furious rhetoric, the fictitious statements of Rufinus, by which he was made to appear a supporter of Origen. Into that hot and fierce controversy we have no need to enter. No one can study the life of Jerome without becoming acquainted with this episode and finding out how much the wrath of a Father of the Church is like the rage of other men, if not more violent; but happily as Rome was not the birthplace of this fierce quarrel it is quite immaterial to our subject or story. It filled the house of Marcella with trouble and doubt for a time, with indignation afterwards when the facts of the controversy were better known; but interesting as it must have been to the eager theologians there, filling their halls with endless discussions and alarms, lest this new agitation should interfere with the repose of their friend, it is no longer interesting except to the student now. Rufinus was finally unmasked, and condemned by the Bishop of Rome, chiefly by the exertions of Marcella, whom Oceanus, coming hot from the scene of the controversy, and Paulinian the brother of Jerome, had instructed in his true character. Events were many at this moment in that little Christian society. The tumult of controversy thus excited and all the heat and passion it brought with it had scarcely blown aside, when the ears of the Roman world were made to tingle with the wonderful story of Fabiola, and the crowd flew to behold in the portico of the Lateran her strange appearance as a penitent; and the commotion of that event had scarcely subsided when another wonderful incident appears in the contemporary history filling the house with lamentation and woe. The young Paulina, dear on all accounts to the ladies of the Aventine as her mother's daughter, and as her husband's wife (for Pammachius, the friend and schoolfellow of Jerome, was one of the fast friends and counsellors of the community), as well as for her own virtues, died in the flower of life and happiness, a rich and noble young matron exhibiting in her own home and amid the common duties of existence, all the noblest principles of the Christian faith. She had not chosen what these consecrated women considered as the better way: but in her own method, and amid a world lying in wickedness, had unfolded that white flower of a blameless life which even monks and nuns were thankful to acknowledge as capable of existing here and there in the midst of worldly splendours and occupations. She left no children behind her, so that her husband Pammachius was free of the anxieties and troubles, as well as of the joy and pride, of a family to regulate and provide for. His young wife left to him all her property on condition that it should be distributed among the poor, and when he had fulfilled this bequest the sorrowful husband himself retired from life, and entered a convent, in obedience to the strong impulse which swayed so many. Before this occurred however "all Rome" was roused by another great spectacle. The entire city was invited to the funeral of Paulina as if it had been to her marriage, though those who came were not the same wondering circles who crowded round the Lateran gate to see Fabiola in her humiliation. It was the poor of Rome who were called by sound of trumpet in every street, to assemble around the great Church of St. Peter, where were those tombs of the Apostles which every Christian visited as the most sacred of shrines, and where Paulina was laid forth upon her bier, the mistress of the feast. The custom was an old one, and chambers for these funeral repasts were attached to the great catacombs and all places of burial. The funeral feast of Paulina however meant more than ordinary celebrations of the kind, as the place in which it was held was more impressive and imposing than an ordinary sepulchre however splendid. She must have been carried through the streets in solemn procession, from the heights on which stood the palaces of her ancient race, across the bridge, and by the tomb of Hadrian to that great basilica where the Apostles lay, her husband and his friends following the bier: and in all likelihood Marcella and her train were also there, replacing the distant mother. St. Peter's it is unnecessary to say was not the St. Peter's we know; but it was even then a great basilica, with wide extending porticoes and squares, and lofty roof, though the building was scarcely quite detached from the rock out of which the back part of the cathedral had been hewn. [Illustration: ST. PETER'S, FROM THE JANICULUM.] Many strange sights have been seen in that spot which once was the centre of the civilised world, and this which seems to us one of the strangest was in no way unusual or against the traditions of the age in which it occurred. The church itself, and all its surroundings, nave and aisles and porticoes, and the square beyond, were filled with tables, and to these from all the four quarters of Rome, from the circus and the benches of the Colosseum, where the wretched slept and lurked, from the sunny pavements, and all the dens and haunts of the poor by the side of the Tiber, the crowds poured, in those unconceivable yet picturesque rags which clothe the wretchedness of the South. They were ushered solemnly to their seats, the awe of the place, let us hope, quieting the voices of a profane and degraded populace, and overpowering the whispering, rustling, many-coloured multitude. Outside the later comers would be more unrestrained, and the roar, even though subdued, of thronging humanity must have come in strangely to the silence of the great church, and of the mourners, bent upon doing Paulina honour in this curious way. Did she lie there uplifted on her high bier to receive her guests? Or was the heart-broken Pammachius the host, standing pale upon the steps, over the grave of the Apostles? When they were "saturated" with food and wine, the first assembly left their places and were succeeded by another, each as he went away receiving from the hands of Pammachius himself a sum of money and a new garment. "Happy giver, unwearied distributor!" says the record. The livelong day this process went on; a winter day in Rome, not always warm, not always genial, very cold outside in the square under the evening breeze, and no doubt growing more and more noisy as one band continued to succeed another, and the first fed lingered about comparing their gifts, and hoping perhaps for some remnants to be collected at the end from the abundant and oft-renewed meal. There were no doubts in anybody's mind, as we have said, about encouraging pauperism or demoralising the recipients of these gifts; perhaps it would have been difficult to demoralise further that mendicant crowd. But one cannot help wondering how the peace was kept, whether there were soldiers or some manner of classical police about to keep order, or if the disgusted Senators would have to bestir themselves to prevent this wild Christian carnival of sorrow and charity from becoming a danger to the public peace. We are told that it was the sale of Paulina's jewels, and her splendid toilettes which provided the cost of this extraordinary funeral feast. "The beautiful dresses woven with threads of gold were turned into warm robes of wool to cover the naked; the gems that adorned her neck and her hair filled the hungry with good things." Poor Paulina! She had worn her finery very modestly according to all reports; it had served no purposes of coquetry. The reader feels that something more congenial than that coarse and noisy crowd filling the church with its deformities and loathsomeness might have celebrated her burial. But not so was the feeling of the time; that they were more miserable than words could say, vile, noisome, and unclean, formed their claim of right to all these gifts--a claim from which their noisy and rude profanity, their hoarse blasphemy and ingratitude took nothing away. Charity was more robust in the early centuries than in our fastidious days. "If such had been all the feasts spread for thee by thy Senators," cried Bishop Paulinus, the historian of this episode, "oh Rome thou might'st have escaped the evils denounced against thee in the Apocalypse." We must remember that whatever might have been the opinion later, there was no doubt in any Christian mind in the fourth century that Rome was the Scarlet Woman of the Revelation of St. John, and that a dreadful fate was to overwhelm her luxury and pride. Pammachius, when he had fulfilled the wishes of his wife in this way, thrilling the hearts of the mourning mother and sister in Bethlehem with sad gratification, and edifying the anxious spectators on the Aventine, carried out her will to its final end by becoming a monk, but with the curious mixture of devotion and independence common at the time, retired to no cloister, but lived in his own house, fulfilling his duties, and appearing even in the Senate in the gown and cowl so unlike the splendid garb of the day. He was no doubt one of the members for the poor in that august but scarcely active assembly, and occupied henceforward all his leisure in works of charity and religious organisations, in building religious houses, and protecting Christians in every necessity of life. We have said that Rome in these days was as freely identified with the Scarlet Woman of the Apocalypse as ever was done by any Reformer or Puritan in later times. To Jerome she was as much Babylon, and as damnable and guilty in every way as if he had been an Orangeman or Covenanter. Mildness was not general either in speech or thought: it has seldom been so perhaps in religious controversy. It is curious indeed to mark how, so near the fount of Christianity, the Church had already come to rend itself with questions of doctrine, and expend on discussions of philosophical subtlety the force that was wanted for the moral advantage of the world. But that no doubt was one of the defects of the great principle of self-devotion which aimed at emptying the mind of everything worldly and practical, and fixing it entirely upon spiritual subjects, thus substituting them for the ruder obstacles which occupied in common life the ruder forces of nature. [Illustration: ST. PETER'S, FROM THE PINCIO.] All things however were now moving swiftly towards one of the great catastrophes of the ages. Though Christianity was young, the entire system of the world's government was old and drawing towards its fall. Rome was dead, or virtually so, and all the old prestige, the old pride and pretension of her race, were perishing miserably in those last vulgarities of luxury and display which were all that was left to her. It is no doubt true that the crumbling of all common ties which took place within her bosom, under the invasion of the monkish missionaries from the East, and the influence of Athanasius, Jerome, and others--had been for some time undermining her unity, and that the rent between that portion of the aristocracy of Rome which still held by the crumbling system of Paganism, and those who had adopted the new faith, was now complete. Rome which had been the seat of empire, the centre from which law and power had gone out over all the earth, the very impersonation of the highest forces of humanity, the pride of life, the eminence of family and blood--now saw her highest names subjected voluntarily to strange new laws of humiliation, whole households trooping silently away in the garb of servants to the desert somewhere, to the Holy Land on pilgrimages, or living a life of hardship and privation and detachment from all public interests, in the very palaces which had once been the seats of authority. Her patricians moved silent about the streets in the rude sandals and mean robes of the monk: her great ladies drove forth no longer resplendent as Venus on her car, but stood like penitent Magdalenes upon the steps of a church; and bridegroom and bride no longer linked with flowery garlands, but with the knotted cord of monastic rule, lived like vestals side by side. What was to come to a society so broken up and undermined, knowing no salvation save in its own complete undoing, preparing unconsciously for some convulsion at hand? The interpreter of the dark sayings of prophecy goes on through one lingering age after another, holding the threats of divine justice as still and always unfulfilled, and will never be content that it is any other than the present economy which is marked with the curse and threatened with the ruin of Apocalyptic denunciations. But no one could doubt that the wine was red in that cup of the wrath of God which the city of so many sins held in her hand. The voice that called "Come out of her, my people," had rung aloud in tones unmistakable, calling the best of her sons and daughters from her side; her natural weapons had fallen from her nerveless hands; she had no longer any heart even to defend herself, she who had once but to lift her hand and the air had tingled to the very boundaries of the known world as if a blazing sword had been drawn. It requires but little imagination to appropriate to the condition of Rome on the eve of the invasion of Alaric every strophe of the magnificent ode in the eighteenth chapter of Revelation. There are reminiscences in that great poem of another, of the rousing of Hell to meet the king of the former Babylon echoing out of the mists of antiquity from the lips of the Hebrew prophet. Once more that cry was in the air--once more the thrill of approaching destruction was like the quiver of heat in the great atmosphere of celestial blue which encircled the white roofs, the shining temples, the old forums as yet untouched, and the new basilicas as yet scarce completed, of Rome. The old order was about to change finally, giving place to the new. All becomes confused in the velocity and precipitation of descending ruin. We can trace the last hours of Paula dying safe and quiet in her retreat at Bethlehem, and even of the less gentle Melania; but when we attempt to follow the course of the events which overwhelmed the home of early faith on the Aventine, the confusion of storm and sack and horrible sufferings and terror fills the air with blackness. For years there had existed a constant succession of danger and reprieve, of threatening hosts (the so-called friends not much better than the enemies) around the walls of the doomed city, great figures of conquerors with their armies coming and going, now the barbarian, now the Roman general upon the height of the wave of battle, the city escaping by a hair's breadth, then plunged into terror again. And Marcella's house had suffered with the rest. No doubt much of the gaiety, the delightful intellectualism of that pleasant refuge, had departed with the altering time. Age had subdued the liveliness and brightness of a community still full of the correspondences, the much letter-writing which women love. Marcella's companions had died away from her side; life was more quickly exhausted in these days of agitation, and she herself, the young and brilliant founder of that community of Souls, must have been sixty or more when the terrible Alaric, a scourge of God like his predecessor Attila, approached Rome. What had become of the rest we are not told, or if the relics of the community, nameless in their age and lessened importance, were still there: the only one that is mentioned is a young sister called Principia, her adopted child and attendant. Nothing can be more likely than that the remainder of the community had fled, seeking safety, or more likely an unknown death, in less conspicuous quarters of the city than the great palace of the Aventine with its patrician air of wealth and possible treasure. In that great house, so far as appears, remained only its mistress, her soul wound up for any martyrdom, and the girl who clung to her. If they dared to look forth at all from the marble terrace where so often they must have gazed over Rome shining white in the sunshine in all her measured lines and great proportions, her columns and her domes, what a dread scene must have met their eyes, clouds of smoke and wild gleams of flame, and the roar of outcry and slaughter mounting up into the air, soiling the very sky. There the greatest ladies of Rome had come in their grandeur to enjoy the piquant contrast and the still more piquant talk, the philosophies which they loved to penetrate and understand, the learning which went over their heads. There Jerome, surrounded with soft flatteries and provocations, had talked his best, giving forth out of his stores the tales of wonder he had brought from Eastern cells and caves and all the knowledge of the schools, to dazzle the amateurs of the Roman gynæceum. What gay, what thrilling, what happy memories!--mingled with the sweetness of remembrance of gentle Paula who was dead, of Asella dead, of Fabiola in all her fascinations and caprices, dead too so far as appears--and no doubt in those thirty years since first Marcella opened her house to the special service of God, many more; till now that she was left alone, grey-headed, on that height whither the fierce Goths were coming, raging, flashing round them fire and flame, with the girl who would not leave her, the young maiden in her voiceless meekness whom we see only at this awful moment, she who might have a sharper agony than death before her, the most appalling of martyrdoms. One final triumph however remained for Marcella. By what wonderful means we know not, by her prayers and tears, by supplication on her knees, to the rude Goths who after their sort were Christians, and sometimes spared the helpless victims and sometimes listened to a woman's prayer, she succeeded in saving her young companion from outrage, and in dragging her somehow to the shelter of the nearest church, where they were safe. But she was herself in her age and weakness, tortured, flogged, and treated with the utmost cruelty, that she might disclose the hiding-place in which she had put her treasure. The treasure of the house of the Aventine was not there: it had fed the poor, and supplied the wants of the sick in all the most miserable corners of Rome. The kicks and blows of the baffled plunderers could not bring that long-expended gold and silver together again. But these sufferings were as nothing in comparison to the holy triumph of saving young Principia, which was the last and not the least wonderful work of her life. The very soldiers who had struck and beaten the mistress of the desolate house were overcome by her patience and valour, "Christ softened their hard hearts," says Jerome. "The barbarians conveyed both you and her to the basilica that you might find a place of safety or at least a tomb." Nothing can be more extraordinary in the midst of this awful scene of carnage and rapine than to know that the churches were sanctuaries upon which the rudest assailants dared not to lift a hand, and that the helpless women, half dead of fright and one of them bleeding and wounded with the cruel treatment she had received, were safe as soon as they had been dragged over the sacred threshold. [Illustration: TEMPLE OF VESTA. _To face page 110._] The church in which Marcella and her young companion found shelter was the great basilica of St. Paul _fuori le mura_, beyond the Ostian gate. They were conducted there by their captors themselves, some compassionate Gaul or Frank, whose rude chivalry of soul had been touched by the spectacle of the aged lady's struggle for her child. What a terrible flight through the darkness must that have been "in the lost battle borne down by the flying" amid the trains of trembling fugitives all bent on that one spot of safety, the gloom lighted up by the gleams of the burning city behind, the air full of shrieks and cries of the helpless, the Tiber rushing swift and strong by the path to swallow any helpless wayfarer pushed aside by stronger fugitives. The two ladies reached half-dead the great church on the edge of the Campagna, the last refuge of the miserable, into which were crowded the wrecks of Roman society, both Pagan and Christian, patrician and slave, hustled together in the equality of doom. A few days after, in the church itself, or some of its dependencies, Marcella died. Her palace in ruins, her companions dead or fled, she perished along with the old Rome against whose vices she had protested, but which she had loved and would not abandon: whose poor she had fed with her substance, whose society she had attempted to purify, and in which she had led so honourable and noble--may we not also believe amid all her austerities, in the brown gown which was almost a scandal, and the meagre meals that scarcely kept body and soul together?--so happy a life. There is no trace now of the noble mansion which she devoted to so high a purpose, and few of the many pilgrims who love to discover all that is interesting in the relics of Rome, have even heard the name of Marcella--"Illam mitem, illam suavem, illam omni melle et dulcedine dulciorem"--whose example "lured to higher worlds and led the way." But her pleasant memory lingers on the leafy crest of the Aventine where she lived, and where the church of Sta. Sabina now stands: and her mild shadow lies on that great church outside the gates, often destroyed, often restored, the shrine of Paul the Apostle, where, wounded and broken, but always faithful to her trust, she died. The history of the first dedicated household, the first convent, the _ecclesia domestica_, which was so bright a centre of life in the old Rome, not yet entirely Christian, is thus rounded into a perfect record. It began in 380 or thereabouts, it ended in 410. Its story is but an obscure chapter in the troubled chronicles of the time; but there is none more spotless, and scarcely any so serenely radiant and bright. Pammachius also died in the siege, whether among the defenders of the city or in the general carnage is not known, "with many other brothers and sisters whose death is announced to us" Jerome says, whom that dreadful news threw into a stupor of horror and misery, so that it was some time before he could understand the details or discover who was saved and who lost. The saved indeed were very few, and the losses many. Young Paula, the granddaughter of the first, the child of Toxotius, who also was happily dead before these horrors, had been for some years in Bethlehem peacefully learning how to take the elder Paula's place, and shedding sweetness into the life of the old prophet in his rocky chamber at Bethlehem, and of the grave Eustochium in her convent. Young Melania, standing in the same relationship to the heroine of that name, whose fame is less sweet, was out of harm's way too. They and many humbler members of the community had escaped by flight, among the agitated crowds which had long been pouring out of Italy towards the East, some from mere panic, some by the vows of self-dedication and retirement from the world. Many more as has been seen escaped in Rome itself, before its agony began, by the still more effectual way of death. Only Marcella, the first of all, the pupil of Athanasius, the mother and mistress of so many consecrated souls, fell on the outraged threshold of her own house, over which she had come and gone for thirty years, with those feet that are beautiful on the mountains, the feet of those who bring good tidings, and carry charity and loving kindness to every door. [Illustration: PORTA SAN PAOLO.] BOOK II. THE POPES WHO MADE THE PAPACY. [Illustration: THE STEPS OF SAN GREGORIO.] BOOK II. THE POPES WHO MADE THE PAPACY. CHAPTER I. GREGORY THE GREAT. When Rome had fallen into the last depths of decadence, luxury, weakness, and vice, the time of fierce and fiery trial came. The great city lay like a helpless woman at the mercy of her foes--or rather at the mercy of every new invader who chose to sack her palaces and throw down her walls, without even the pretext of any quarrel against the too wealthy and luxurious city, which had been for her last period at least nobody's enemy but her own. Alaric, who, not content with the heaviest ransom, returned to rage through her streets with all those horrors and cruelties which no advance in civilisation has ever yet entirely dissociated from the terrible name of siege: Attila, whose fear of his predecessor's fate and the common report of murders and portents, St. Peter with a sword of flame guarding his city, and other signs calculated to melt the hearts of the very Huns in their bosoms, kept at a distance: passed by without harming the prostrate city. But Genseric and his Vandals were kept back by no such terrors. The ancient Rome, with all her magnificent relics of the imperial age, fell into ruin and was trampled under foot by victor after victor in the fierce license of barbarous triumph. Her secret stores of treasure, her gold and silver, her magnificent robes, her treasures of art fell, like her beautiful buildings, into the rude hands which respected nothing, neither beauty nor the traditions of a glorious past. How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people! All the pathetic and wonderful plaints of the Hebrew prophet over a still holier and more ancient place, trodden under foot and turned into a desert, rise to the mind during this passion and agony of imperial Rome. But the mistress of the world had no such fierce band of patriots to fight inch by inch for her holy places as had the old Jerusalem. There were few to shed their blood for her in the way of defence. The blood that flowed was that of murdered weakness, not that freely shed of valiant men. During this terrible period of blood and outrage and passion and suffering, one institution alone stood firm amid the ruins, wringing even from the fiercest of the barbarians a certain homage, and establishing a sanctuary in the midst of sack and siege in which the miserable could find shelter. As every other public office and potency fell, the Church raised an undaunted front, and took the place at once of authority and of succour among the crushed and downtrodden people. It is common to speak of this as the beginning of that astute and politic wisdom of Rome which made the city in the middle ages almost a greater power than in her imperial days, and equally mistress of the world. But there is very little evidence that any great plan for the aggrandisement of the Church, or the establishment of her supremacy, had yet been formed, or that the early Popes had any larger purpose in their minds than to do their best in the position in which they stood, to avert disaster, to spread Christianity, and to shield as far as was possible the people committed to their care. No formal claim of supremacy over the rest of the Church had been as yet made: it was indeed formally repudiated by the great Gregory in the end of the sixth century as an unauthorised claim, attributed to the bishops of Rome only by their enemies, though still more indignantly to be denounced when put forth by any other ecclesiastical authority such as the patriarch of Constantinople. To Peter, he says in one of his epistles, was committed the charge of the whole Church, but his successors did not on that account call themselves rulers of the Church universal--how much less a bishropic of the East who had no such glorious antecedents! But if pretension to the primacy had not yet been put forth, there had arisen the practical situation, which called the bishops of Rome to a kind of sovereignty of the city. The officials of the empire, a distant exarch at Ravenna, a feeble prætor at Rome, had no power either to protect or to rescue. The bishop instinctively, almost involuntarily, whenever he was a man of strength or note, was put into the breach. Whatever could be done by negotiation, he, a man of peace, was naturally called to do. Innocent procured from Alaric the exemption of the churches from attack even in the first and most terrible siege; there wounded men and flying women found refuge in the hottest of the pillage, and Marcella struggling, praying for the deliverance of her young nun, through the brutal crowd which had invaded her house, was in safety with her charge, as we have seen, as soon as they could drag themselves within the sanctuary. This was already a great thing in that dread conflict of force with weakness--and it continued to be the case more or less in all the successive waves of fire and flame which passed over Rome. And when the terrible tide of devastation was over, one patriot Pope at least took the sacred vessels of gold and silver, which had been saved along with the people in their sanctuaries, and melted them down to procure bread for the remnant, thus doubly delivering the flock committed to his care. These facts worked silently, and there seems no reason to believe other than unconsciously at first, towards the formation of the great power which was once more to make Rome a centre of empire. The historian is too apt to perceive in every action an early-formed and long-concealed project tending towards one great end; and it is common to recognise, even in the missionary expeditions of the Church, as well as in the immediate protection exercised around her seat, this astute policy and ever-maturing, ever-growing scheme. But neither Leo nor Gregory require any such explanation of their motives; their duty was to protect, to deliver, to work day and night for the welfare of the people who had no other protectors: as it was their first duty to spread the Gospel, to teach all nations according to their Master's commission. It is hard to take from them the credit of those measures which were at once their natural duty and their delight, in order to make all their offices of mercy subservient to the establishment of a universal authority to which neither of them laid any claim. While Rome still lay helpless in the midst of successive invasions, now in one conqueror's hands, now in another, towards the middle of the sixth century a young man of noble race--whose father and mother were both Christians, the former occupying a high official position, as was also the case with the son, in his earlier years--became remarkable among his peers according to the only fashion which a high purpose and noble meaning seems to have been able to take at that period. Perhaps such a spirit as that of Gregory could never have been belligerent; yet it is curious to note that no patriotic saviour of his country, no defender of Rome, who might have called forth a spirit in the gilded youth, and raised up the ancient Roman strength for the deliverance of the city, seems to have been possible in that age of degeneration. No Maccabæus was to be found among the ashes of the race which once had ruled the world. Whatever excellence remained in it was given to the new passion of the cloister, the instinct of sacrifice and renunciation instead of resistance and defence. It may be said that the one way led equally with the other to that power which is always dear to the heart of man: yet it is extraordinary that amid all the glorious traditions of Rome,--notwithstanding the fame of great ancestors still hanging about every noble house, and the devotion which the city itself, then as now, excited among its children, a sentiment which has made many lesser places invulnerable, so long as there was a native arm to strike a blow for them, no single bold attempt was ever made, no individual stand, no popular frenzy of patriotism ever excited in defence of the old empress of the world. The populace perhaps was too completely degraded to make any such attempt possible, but the true hero when he appears does not calculate, and is able to carry out his glorious effort with sometimes the worst materials. However, it is needless to attempt to account for such an extraordinary failure in the very qualities which had made the Roman name illustrious. Despair must have seized upon the very heart of the race. That race itself had been vitiated and mingled with baser elements by ages of conquest, repeated captivities, and overthrows, and all the dreadful yet monotonous vicissitudes of disaster, one outrage following another, and the dreadful sense of impotence, which crushes the very being, growing with each new catastrophe. It must have appeared to the children of the ancient conquerors that there was no refuge or hope for them, save in that kingdom not of this world, which had risen while everything else crumbled under their feet, which had been growing in silence while the old economy fell into ashes, and which alone promised a resurrection and renewal worthy of the highest hopes. This ideal had been growing throughout the world, and had penetrated into almost every region of Christendom before the period of Gregory's birth. Nearly a hundred and fifty unhappy years had passed since Marcella ended her devout life amid the fire and flame of the first siege; but the times had so little changed that it was at first under the same aspect which attracted that Roman lady and so many of her contemporaries, that the monastic life recommended itself to the young patrician Gregorius, in the home of his parents, the Roman villa on the edge of that picturesque and splendid wood of great oak-trees which gave to the Coelian Hill its first title of Mons Querquetulanus. It had been from the beginning of his life a devout house, full of the presence and influence of three saintly women, all afterwards canonised, his mother Silvia and his father's sisters. That father himself was at least not uncongenial to his surroundings, though living the usual life, full of magnificence and display, of the noble Roman, filling in his turn great offices in the state, or at least the name and outward pomp of offices which had once been great. Some relics of ancient temples gleaming through the trees beyond the gardens of the villa must still have existed among the once sacred groves; and the vast buildings of the old economy, the Colosseum behind, the ruined and roofless palaces of the Palatine, would be visible from the terrace on which the meditative youth wandered, pondering over Rome at his feet and the great world lying beyond, in which there were endless marchings and countermarchings of barbarous armies, one called in to resist the other, Huns and Vandals from one quarter, irresistible Franks, alien races all given to war, while the secret and soul of peace lay in that troubled and isolated stronghold of Him whose kingdom was not of this world. Gregory musing can have had no thought, such as we should put instinctively into the mind of a noble young man in such circumstances, of dying upon the breached and crumbling walls for his country, or leading any forlorn hope; and if his fancy strayed instead far from those scenes of battle and trouble to the convent cells and silent brotherhoods, where men disgusted and sick of heart could enter and pray, it was as yet with no thought or intention of following their example. He tells us himself that he resisted as long as he could "the grace of conversion," and as a matter of fact entered into the public life such as it was, of the period, following in his father's footsteps, and was himself, like Gordianus, _prætor urbis_ in his day, when he had attained the early prime of manhood. The dates of his life are dubious until we come to his later years, but it is supposed that he was born about 540; and he was recommended for the Prætorship by the Emperor Julius, which must have been before 573, at which date he would have attained the age of thirty-three, that period so significant in the life of man, the limit, as is believed, of our Lord's existence on earth, and close to that _mezzo del cammin_ which the poet has celebrated as the turning-point of life. In his splendid robes, attended by his throng of servants, he must no doubt have ruffled it with the best among the officials of a state which had scarcely anything but lavish display and splendour to justify its pretence of government; but we hear nothing either of the early piety or early profanity which generally distinguish, one or the other, the beginning of a predestined saint. Neither prodigal nor devotee, the son of Gordianus and Silvia did credit to his upbringing, even if he did not adopt its austerer habits. But when his father died, the attraction which drew so many towards the cloister must have begun to operate upon Gregory. When all the wealth came into his hands, when his devout mother retired to her nun's cell on the Aventine, close to the old basilica of S. Sabba, giving up the world, and the young man was left in full possession of his inheritance and the dwelling of his fathers, he would seem to have come to a serious pause in his life. Did he give a large slice of his fortune to endow monasteries in distant Sicily, as far out of the way, one might say, as possible, by way of compromising with his conscience, and saving himself from the sweep of the current which had begun to catch his feet? Perhaps it was some family connection with Sicily--estates, situated there as some think, which prompted the appropriation of his gifts to that distant island; but this is mere speculation, and all that the authorities tell us is that he did establish and endow six monasteries in Sicily, without giving any reason for it. This was his first step towards the life to which later all his wishes and interests were devoted. It would seem, however, if there is any possible truth in the idea, that the Sicilian endowments were a sort of ransom for himself and the personal sacrifice of the world which his growing fervour demanded of him, that the expedient was not a successful one. He did not resist the grace of conversion very long; but it is curious to find him, so long after, adopting the same expedient as that which had formed a middle ground for his predecessors in an earlier age, by converting his father's house into a convent. St. Benedict, the first of monastic founders in Europe, was scarcely born when Marcella first called about her the few pious maidens and widows who formed her permanent household in Rome; but by the time of Gregory, the order of Benedict had become one of the great facts and institutions of the time--and his villa was soon filled with a regular community of black-robed monks with their abbot and other leaders. Remaining in the beloved shelter of his natural home, he became a member of this community. He did not even retain, as Marcella did, the government of the new establishment in his own hand, but served humbly, holding no office, as an undistinguished brother. It was not without difficulty that he made up his mind to this step. In the letter to Leander which forms the dedication of his commentary on Job, he gives a brief and vague account of his own hesitations and doubts. The love of things eternal, he says, had taken hold upon his mind while yet custom had so wound its chains round him that he could not make up his mind to change his outward garb. But the new influence was so strong that he engaged in the service of the world as it were in semblance only, his purpose and inclination turning more and more towards the cloister. When the current of feeling and spiritual excitement carried him beyond all these reluctances and hesitations, and he at last "sought the haven of the monastery," having, as he says, "left all that is of the world as at that time I vainly believed, I came out naked from the shipwreck of human life." His intention at this crisis was evidently not that of fitting himself for the great offices of the Church or entering what was indeed one of the greatest professions of the time, the priesthood, the one which, next to that of the soldier, was most apt for advancement. Like Jerome, Gregory's inclination was to be a monk and not a priest, and he expressly tells us that "the virtue of obedience was set against my own inclination to make me take the charge of ministering at the holy altar," which he was obliged to accept upon the ground that the Church had need of him. This disinclination to enter the priesthood is all the more remarkable that Gregory was evidently a preacher born, and seems early in his monastic life to have developed this gift. The elucidation of so difficult and mysterious a book as that of Job was asked of him by his brethren at an early period of his career. We have no guidance of dates to enable us to know how long a time he passed in the monastery, which was dedicated to St. Andrew, after he turned it from a palace-villa into monastic cells and cloisters; but the legend which comes in more or less to every saintly life here affords us one or two delightful vignettes to illustrate the history. His mother Silvia in her nun's cell, surrounded by its little garden, at S. Sabba, sent daily, the story goes--and there is no reason to doubt its truth--a mess of vegetables to her son upon the Coelian, prepared by her own tender hands. One can imagine some shockheaded Roman of a lay brother, old servant or retainer, tramping alone, day by day, over the stony ways, across the deep valley between the two hills, with the simple dish tied in its napkin, which perhaps had some savour of home and childhood, the mother's provision for her boy. Another story, less original, relates how having sold everything and given all his money to the poor, Gregory was beset by a shipwrecked sailor who came to him again and again in the cell where he sat writing, and to whom at last, having no money, he gave the only thing of value he had left, a silver dish given him by his mother--perhaps the very bowl in which day by day his dinner of herbs was sent to him. Needless to say that the mysterious sailor assumed afterwards a more glorious form, and Gregory found that he had given alms, if not as in most such cases to his Master, at least to a ministering angel. Then, too, in those quiet years arose other visionary legends, that of the dove who sat on his shoulder and breathed inspiration into his ear, and the Madonna who spoke to him as he sat musing--a Madonna painted by no mortal hands, but coming into being on the wall--a sweet and consoling vision in the light that never was by sea or shore. These are the necessary adjuncts of every saintly legend. It is not needful that we should insist upon them; but they help us to realise the aspect of the young Roman who had, at last, after some struggles attained that "grace of conversion" which makes the renunciation of every worldly advantage possible, but who still dwelt peacefully in his own house, and occupied the cell he had chosen for himself with something of the consciousness of the master of the house, although no superiority of rank among his brethren, finding no doubt a delightful new spring of life in the composition of his homilies, and the sense that a higher sphere of work and activity was thus opening before his feet. The cell of St. Gregory and his marble chair in which he worked and rested, are still shown for the admiration of the faithful on the right side of the church which bears his name: but neither church nor convent are of his building, though they occupy the sites consecrated by him to the service of God. "Here was the house of Gregory, converted by him into a monastery," says the inscription on the portico. And in one spot at least the steps of the Roman gentleman turned monk, may still be traced in the evening freshness and among the morning dews--in the garden, from which the neighbouring summits of the sun-crowned city still rise before the rapt spectator with all their memories and their ruins. There were greater ruins in Gregory's day, ruins still smoking from siege and fire, roofless palaces telling their stern lesson of the end of one great period of empire, of a mighty power overthrown, and new rude overwhelming forces, upon which no man could calculate, come in, in anarchy and bloodshed, to turn the world upside down. We all make our own somewhat conventional comparisons and reflections upon that striking scene, and moralise at our leisure over the Pagan and the Christian, and all that has been signified to the world in such an overthrow and transformation. But Gregory's thoughts as he paced his garden terrace must have been very different from ours. He no doubt felt a thrill of pleasure as he looked at the desecrated places over which Goth and Vandal had raged, in the thought that the peaceful roof of his father's house was safe, a refuge for the chosen souls who had abjured the world; and self-withdrawn from all those conflicts and miseries, mused in his heart over the new world which was dawning, under the tender care of the Church and the ministration of those monks denuded of all things, whose sole inspiration was to be the love of God and the succour of the human race. The world could not go on did not every new economy form to itself some such glorious dream of the final triumph of the good, the noble, and the true. Great Rome lay wrecked and ended in the sight of the patrician monk who had schooled himself out of all the bitterness of the vanquished in that new hope and new life of the cloister. Did he already see his brethren, the messengers of the faith, going forth to all the darkest corners of the unknown world with their gospel, and new skies and new lands turning to meet the shining of the new day?--or with thoughts more profound in awe, more sacred in mysterious joy, did he hold his breath to think what all these ragings of nations and overturning of powers might portend, the glorious era when all misery should be ended, and the Lord come in the clouds to judge the earth and vindicate His people? The monks have failed like the emperors since Gregory's day--the Popes have found no more certain solution for the problems of earth than did the philosophers. But it is perhaps more natural on one of those seven hills of Rome, to think of that last great event which shall fulfil all things, and finally unravel this mortal coil of human affairs, than it is on any other spot of earth except the mystic Mount of the Olives, from which rose the last visible steps of the Son of Man. We have no knowledge how long this quiet life lasted, or if he was long left to write his sermons in his cell, and muse in his garden, and receive his spare meal from his mother's hands, the mess of lentils, or beans, or artichokes, which would form his only fare; but it is evident that even in this seclusion he had given assurance of a man to the authorities of the Church and was looked upon as one of its hopes. He had no desire, as has been said, to become a priest, but rather felt an almost superstitious fear of being called upon to minister at the holy altar, a sentiment very usual in those days among men of the world converted to a love of the life of prayer and penitence, but not of the sacerdotal charge or profession. It is curious indeed how little the sacramental idea had then developed in the minds of the most pious. The rule of Benedict required the performance of the mass only on Sundays and festivals, and there is scarcely any mention of the more solemn offices of worship in the age of Jerome, who was a priest in spite of himself, and never said but one mass in his life. It was to "live the life," as in the case of a recent remarkable convert from earthly occupations to mystical religionism, that the late prætor, sick of worldly things, devoted himself: and not to enter into a new caste, against which the tradition that discredits all priesthoods and the unelevated character of many of its members, has always kept up a prejudice, which exists now as it existed then. But Gregory could not struggle against the fiat of his ecclesiastical superiors, and was almost compelled to receive the first orders. After much toiling and sifting of evidence the ever careful Bollandists have concluded that this event happened in 578 or 579--while Baronius, perhaps less bigoted in his accuracy, fixes it in 583. Nor was it without a distinct purpose that this step was taken; there was more to do in the world for this man than to preach homilies and expound Scripture in the little Roman churches. Some one was wanted to represent Pope Benedict the First in Constantinople, some one who knew the world and would not fear the face of any emperor; and it was evidently to enable him to hold the post of Apocrisarius or Nuncio, that Gregory was hastily invested with deacon's orders, and received the position later known as that of a Cardinal deacon. It is a little premature, and harmonises ill with the other features of the man, to describe him as a true mediæval Nuncio, with all the subtle powers and arrogant assumptions of the Rome of the middle ages. This however is Gibbon's description of him, a bold anachronism, antedating by several ages the pretensions which had by no means come to any such development in the sixth century. He describes the Apocrisarius of Pope Benedict as one "who boldly assumed in the name of St. Peter a tone of independent dignity which would have been criminal and dangerous in the most illustrious layman of the empire." There is little doubt that Gregory would be an original and remarkable figure among the sycophants of the imperial court, where the vices of the East mingled with those of the West, and everything was venal, corrupt, and debased. Gregory was the representative of a growing power, full of life and the prospects of a boundless future. There was neither popedom nor theories of universal primacy as yet, and he was confronted at Constantinople by ecclesiastical functionaries of as high pretensions as any he could put forth; but yet the Bishop of Rome had a unique position, and the care of the interests of the entire Western Church was not to be held otherwise than with dignity and a bold front whoever should oppose. [Illustration: VILLA DE' MEDICI.] There was however another side to the life of the Nuncio which is worthy of note and very characteristic of the man. He had been accompanied on his mission by a little train of monks; for these coenobites were nothing if not social, and their solitude was always tempered by the proverbial companion to whom they could say how delightful it was to be alone. This little private circle formed a home for the representative of St. Peter, to which he retired with delight from the wearisome audiences, intrigues, and ceremonies of the imperial court. Another envoy, Leander, a noble Spaniard, afterwards Bishop of Seville, and one of the favourite saints of Spain, was in Constantinople at the same time, charged with some high mission from Rome "touching the faith of the Visigoths," whose conversion from Arianism was chiefly the work of this apostolic labourer. And he too found refuge in the home of Gregory among the friends there gathered together, probably bringing with him his own little retinue in the same Benedictine habit. "To their society I fled," says Gregory, "as to the bosom of the nearest port from the rolling swell and waves of earthly occupation; and though that office which withdrew me from the monastery had with the point of its employments stabbed to death my former tranquillity of life, yet in their society I was reanimated." They read and prayed together, keeping up the beloved punctilios of the monastic rule, the brethren with uninterrupted attention, the Nuncio and the Bishop as much as was possible to them in the intervals of their public work. And in the cool atrio of some Eastern palace, with the tinkling fountain in the midst and the marble benches round, the little company with one breath besought their superior to exercise for them those gifts of exposition and elucidation of which he had already proved himself a master. "It was then that it seemed good to those brethren, you too adding your influence as you will remember, to oblige me by the importunity of their requests to set forth the book of the blessed Job--and so far as the Truth should inspire me, to lay open to them these mysteries." We cannot but think it was a curious choice for the brethren to make in the midst of that strange glittering world of Constantinople, where the ecclesiastical news would all be of persecuting Arians and perverse Eastern bishops, and where all kinds of subtle heresies, both doctrinal and personal, were in the air, fine hair-splitting arguments as to how much or how little of common humanity was in the sacred person of our Lord, as well as questions as to the precise day on which to keep Easter and other regulations of equal importance. But to none of these matters did the monks in exile turn their minds. "They made this too an additional burden which their petition laid upon me, that I would not only unravel the words of the history in allegorical senses, but that I would go on to give to the allegorical sense the turn of a moral exercise: with the addition of something yet harder, that I would fortify the different meanings with analogous passages, and that these, should they chance to be involved, should be disentangled by the aid of additional explanation." This abstruse piece of work was the recreation with which his brethren supplied the active mind of Gregory in the midst of his public employments and all the distractions of the imperial court. It need not be said that he did not approach the subject critically or with any of the lights of that late learning which has so much increased the difficulty of approaching any subject with simplicity. It is not supposed even that he had any knowledge of the original, or indeed any learning at all. The Nuncio and his monks were not disturbed by questions about that wonderful scene in which Satan stands before God. They accepted it with a calm which is as little concerned by its poetic grandeur as troubled by its strange suggestions. That extraordinary revelation of an antique world, so wonderfully removed from us, beyond all reach of history, was to them the simplest preface to a record of spiritual experience, full of instruction to themselves, lessons of patience and faith, and all the consolations of God. Nothing is more likely than that there were among the men who clustered about Gregory in his Eastern palace, some who like Job had seen everything that was dear to them perish, and had buried health and wealth and home and children under the ashes of sacked and burning Rome. We might imagine even that this was the reason why that mysterious poem with all its wonderful discoursings was chosen as the subject to be treated in so select an assembly. Few of these men if any would be peaceful sons of the cloister, bred up in the stillness of conventual life; neither is it likely that they would be scholars or divines. They were men rescued from a world more than usually terrible and destructive of individual happiness, saddened by loss, humiliated in every sensation either of family or national pride, the fallen sons of a great race, trying above all things to console themselves for the destruction of every human hope. And the exposition of Job is written with this end, with strange new glosses and interpretations from that New Testament which was not yet six hundred years old, and little account of any difference between: for were not both Holy Scripture intended for the consolation and instruction of mankind? and was not this the supreme object of all--not to raise antiquarian questions or exercise the mind on metaphysical arguments, but to gather a little balsam for the wounds, and form a little prop for the weakness of labouring and heavily laden men? _Moralia_: "The Book of the Morals of St. Gregory the Pope" is the title of the book--a collection of lessons how to endure and suffer, how to hope and believe, how to stand fast--in the certainty of a faith that overcomes all things, in the very face of fate. "Whosoever is speaking concerning God," says Gregory, "must be careful to search out thoroughly whatsoever furnishes moral instruction to his hearers; and should account that to be the right method of ordering his discourse which permits him when opportunity for edification requires it, to turn aside for a useful purpose from that which he had begun to speak of. He that treats of sacred writ should follow the way of a river: for if a river as it flows along its channel meets with open valleys on its side, into these it immediately turns the course of its current, and when they are copiously supplied presently it pours itself back into its bed. Thus unquestionably should it be with every one that treats the Divine word, so that if discussing any subject he chances to find at hand any occasion of seasonable edification he should as it were force the streams of discourse towards the adjacent valley, and when he has poured forth enough upon its level of instruction fall back into the channel of discourse which he had proposed to himself." We do not know what the reader may think of Gregory's geography; but certainly he carries out his discursive views to the full, and fills every valley he may chance to come to in his flowing, with pools and streams--no doubt waters of refreshing to the souls that surrounded him, ever eager to press him on. A commentary thus called forth by the necessities of the moment, spoken in the first place to anxious listeners who had with much pressure demanded it, and who nodded their heads over it with mingled approbation and criticism as half their own, has a distinctive character peculiar to itself, and requires little aid from science or learning. A large portion of it was written as it fell from his lips, without revision Gregory informs us, "because the brethren drawing me away to other things, would not leave time to correct this with any great degree of exactness." A gleam of humour comes across the picture as he describes his position among this band of dependent and applauding followers, who yet were more or less the masters of his leisure and private life. "Pursuing my object of obeying their instructions, _which I must confess were sufficiently numerous_, I have completed this work," he says. The humour is a little rueful, the situation full of force and nature. The little group of lesser men would no doubt have fully acknowledged themselves inferior to the eloquent brother, their founder, their instructor, so much greater a man in every way than themselves: but yet not able to get on without the hints of Brother John or Brother Paul, helped so much by that fine suggestion of the Cellarius, and the questions and sagacious remarks of the others. The instructions of the brethren! who does not recognise the scene, the nods aside, the objections, the volunteered information and directions how to say this or that, which he knew so much better how to say than any of them! while he sat listening all the time, attending to every criticism, taking up a hint here and there, with that curious alchemy of good humour and genius, turning the dull remarks to profit, yet always with a twinkle in his eye at those advices "sufficiently numerous" which aimed at teaching him how to teach them, a position which many an ecclesiastic and many an orator must have realised since then. Gregory reveals his consciousness of the state of affairs quite involuntarily, nothing being further from his mind than to betray to his reverend and saintly brother anything so human and faulty as a smile; and it is clear that he took the animadversions in good part with as much good nature as humour. To make out the features of the same man in Gibbon's picture of an arrogant priest assuming more than any layman durst assume, is very difficult. The historian evidently made his study from models a few hundred years further down in the record. Gregory seems to have held the place of Apocrisarius twice under two different Popes--Benedict I. and Pelagius II.; but whether he returned to Rome between the two is not clear. One part of his commission from Pelagius was to secure help from the Emperor against the Lombards who were threatening Rome. The Pope's letter with its lamentable account of the undefended and helpless condition of the city, and the urgency with which he entreats his representative to support the pleading of a special envoy sent for that purpose, is interesting. It is sent to Gregory by the hands of a certain Sebastian, "our brother and coadjutor," who has been in Ravenna with the general Decius, and therefore is able to describe at first hand the terrible state of affairs to the Emperor. "Such misfortunes and tribulations," says the Pope, "have been inflicted upon us by the perfidy of the Lombards contrary to their own oath as no one could describe. Therefore speak and act so as to relieve us speedily in our danger. For the state is so hemmed in, that unless God put it into the heart of our most pious prince to show pity to his servants, and to vouchsafe us a grant of money, and a commander and leader, we are left in the last extremity, all the districts round Rome being defenceless, and the Exarch unable to do anything to help us. Therefore may God persuade the Emperor to come quickly to our aid before the armies of that most accursed race have overrun our lands." What a strange overturn of all things is apparent when such a piteous appeal is conveyed to the Eastern empire already beginning to totter, from what was once imperial and triumphant Rome! It was in 586, four years before the end of the life of Pelagius, that Gregory returned home. The abbot of his convent, Maximianus, had been promoted to the see of Syracuse, though whether for independent reasons or to make room for Gregory in that congenial position we are not informed; and the Nuncio on his return succeeded naturally to the vacant place. If it was now or at an earlier period that he bestowed all his robes, jewels, etc., on the convent it is difficult to decide, for there seems always to have been some reserve of gifts to come out on a later occasion, after we have heard of an apparent sacrifice of all things for the endowment of one charity or another. At all events Gregory's charities were endless and continued as long as he lived. No retirement within the shadow of the convent was however possible now for the man who had taken so conspicuous a position in public life. He was appointed secretary to the Pope, combining that office with the duties of head of his convent, and would appear besides to have been the most popular preacher in Rome, followed from one church to another by admiring crowds, and moving the people with all the force of that religious oratory which is more powerful than any other description of eloquence: though to tell the truth we find but little trace of this irresistible force in his discourses as they have come down to us. Popular as he was he does not seem to have had any special reputation either for learning or for literary style. One of the best known of historical anecdotes is the story of Gregory's encounter with the group of English children brought to Rome as slaves, whom he saw accidentally, as we say, in one of his walks. It belongs in all probability to this period of his life, and no doubt formed an episode in his daily progress from St. Andrew's on its hill to the palace of the Bishop of Rome which was then attached to the great church of the Lateran gate. In this early home of the head of the Roman hierarchy there would no doubt be accommodation for pilgrims and strangers, in addition to the spare court of the primitive Pope, but probably little anticipation of the splendours of the Vatican, not yet dreamed of. Gregory was pursuing his musing way, a genial figure full of cheerful observation and interest in all around him, when he was suddenly attracted as he crossed some street or square, amid the crowd of dark heads and swarthy faces by a group, unlike the rest, of fair Saxon boys, long-limbed and slender, with their rose tints and golden locks. The great ecclesiastic appears to us here all at once in a new light, after all we have known of him among his monastic brethren. He would seem to have been one of those inveterate punsters who abound among ecclesiastics, as well as a tender-hearted man full of fatherly instincts. He stopped to look at the poor children so unlike anything he knew. Who were they? Angles. Nay, more like angels, he said in his kind tones, with no doubt a smile in return for the wondering looks suddenly raised upon him. And their country? Deiri. Ah, a happy sign! _de ira eruti_, destined to rise out of wrath into blessedness. And their king? the boys themselves might by this time be moved to answer the kind monk, who looked at them so tenderly. Ella--Alle, as it is reported in the Latin, softening the narrower vowel. And was it still all heathen that distant land, and unknown rude monarch, and the parents of these angelic children? Then might it soon be, good Lord, that Allelujah should sound wherever the barbarous Alle reigned! Perhaps he smiled at his own play upon words, as punsters are apt to do, as he strolled away, not we may be sure without a touch of benediction upon the shining tawny heads of the little Saxon lions. But smiling was not all it came to. The thought dwelt with him as he pursued his way, by the great round of the half-ruined Colosseum, more ruinous probably then than now, and down the long street to the Latin gate, where Pelagius and all the work of his secretaryship awaited him. The Pope was old and wanted cheering, especially in those dark days when the invader so often raged without, and Tiber was slowly swelling within, muttering wrath and disaster; while no force existed, to be brought against one enemy or another but the prayers of a few old men. Gregory told the story of his encounter, perhaps making the old Pope laugh at the wit so tempered with devotion, before he put forth his plea for a band of missionaries to be sent to those unknown regions to convert that beautiful and wonderful fair-haired race. Pelagius was very willing to give his consent; but where were men to be found to risk themselves and their lives on such a distant expedition among the savages of that unknown island? When it was found that nobody would undertake such a perilous mission, Gregory, who would naturally have become more determined in respect to it after every repulse, offered himself; and somehow managed to extort a consent from the Pope, of which he instantly took advantage, setting out at once with a band of faithful brethren, among whom no doubt must have been some of those who had accompanied him when he was Nuncio into scenes so different, and pressed him on with their advice and criticism while he opened to them the mysteries of Scripture. They might be tyrannical in their suggestions, but no doubt the impulse of the apostles--"let us die with him"--was strong in their hearts. No sooner was it known, however, in Rome that Gregory had left the city on so distant and perilous a mission than the people rose in a sudden tumult. They rushed together from all the quarters of the city in excited bands towards the Lateran, surrounding the Pope with angry cries and protests, demanding the recall of the preacher, whose eloquence as well as his great benefactions to the poor had made him to the masses the foremost figure in the Church. The Pope, frightened by this tumult, yielded to the demand, and sent off messengers in hot haste to bring the would-be missionary back. The picture which his biographers afford us is less known than the previous incidents, yet full of character and picturesque detail. The little band had got three days on in their journey--one wonders from what port they meant to embark, for Ostia, the natural way, was but a few hours from Rome--when they made their usual halt at noon for refreshment and rest "in the fields." Gregory had seated himself under the shade of a tree with a book to beguile the warm and lingering hours. And as he sat thus reading with all the bustle of the little encampment round him, men and horses in the outdoor freedom enjoying the pause, the shade, and needful food--a locust suddenly alighted upon his page, on the roll of parchment which was then the form of the latest editions. Such a visitor usually alights for a moment and no more; but Gregory was too gentle a spectator of all life to dash the insect off, and it remained there with a steadiness and "mansuetude" unlike the habits of the creature. The good monk began to be interested, to muse and pun, and finally to wonder. "Locusta," he said to himself, groping for a meaning, "loca sta." What could it signify but that in this place he would be made to stay? He called to his attendants to make ready with all speed and push on, eager to get beyond the reach of pursuit; but before the cumbrous train could be got under way again, the Pope's messengers arrived "bloody with spurring, fiery red with haste," and the missionaries were compelled to return to Rome. Thus his first attempt for the conversion of England was to have been made, could he have carried out his purpose, by himself. There is a curious story also related of Gregory in his walks through Rome, the issue of which, could an unbelieving age put faith in it, would be even more remarkable. One day as he passed by the Forum of Trajan--then no doubt a spot more wildly ruinous than now, though still with some of its great galleries and buildings standing among overthrown monuments and broken pillars--some one told him the story of Trajan and the widow, which must have greatly affected the mediæval imagination since Dante has introduced it in his great poem. The prayer addressed to the Emperor on his way to the wars was the same as that of the widow in the parable, "Avenge me of mine adversary." "I will do so when I return," the Emperor replied. "But who will assure me that you will ever return?" said the importunate widow; upon which the Emperor, recognising the justice of the objection, stopped his warlike progress until he had executed the vengeance required, upon one of his own officials (is it not said by one authority his own son?) who had wronged her. Gregory was as much impressed by this tale as Dante. He went on lamenting that such a man, so just, so tolerant of interruption, so ready to do what was right, should be cut off from the Divine mercy. He carried this regret with him all the way to the tomb of the apostles, where he threw himself on his knees and prayed with all his heart that the good Trajan, the man who did right according to the light that was in him, at all costs, should be saved. Some versions of the story add that he offered to bear any penance that might be put upon him for his presumption, and was ready to incur any penalty to secure this great boon. It can never be put to proof in this world whether Gregory's petition was heard or not, but his monks and biographers were sure of it, and some of them allege that his own bodily sufferings and weakness were the penalty which he accepted gladly for the salvation of that great soul. The story proves at least the intense humanity and yearning over the unhappy, which was in his heart. Whether he played and punned in tender humour with the objects of his sympathy, or so flung himself in profoundest compassion into the abyss of hopelessness with them, that he could wish himself like Paul accursed for his brethren's sake--Gregory's being was full of brotherly love and fervent feeling, a love which penetrated even beyond the limits of visible life. The four years that elapsed between his return to his convent and his election to the Popedom (or to speak more justly the bishopric of Rome) were years of trouble. In addition to the constant danger of invasion, the misery, even when that was escaped, of the tales brought to Rome by the fugitives who took refuge there from all the surrounding country, in every aggravation of poverty and wretchedness, and the efforts that had to be made for their succour--a great inundation of the Tiber, familiar yet terrible disaster from which Rome has not even now been able to secure herself, took place towards the end of the period, followed by a terrible pestilence, its natural result. Gregory was expounding the prophet Ezekiel in one of the Roman churches at the time of this visitation: but as the plague increased his sorrowful soul could not bear any bondage of words or thoughts apart from the awful needs of the moment, and closing the book, he poured forth his heart to the awed and trembling people, exhorting all to repent, and to fling themselves upon God's mercy that the pestilence might be stayed. In all such terrible emergencies it is the impulse of human nature to take refuge in something that can be done, and the impulse is no doubt itself of use to relieve the crushing weight of despair, whatever may be the form it takes. [Illustration: SAN GREGORIO MAGNO, AND ST. JOHN AND ST. PAUL.] We clean and scrub and whitewash in our day, and believe in these ways of arresting the demons; but in old Rome the call for help was more impressive at least, and probably braced the souls of the sufferers as even whitewash could not do. The manner in which Gregory essayed to turn the terrible tide was by a direct appeal to Heaven. He organised a great simultaneous procession from all the quarters of Rome to meet at "the Church of the Virgin"--we are not informed which--in one great united outcry to God for mercy. The septiform litany, as it was called, was chanted through the desolate streets by gradually approaching lines, the men married and unmarried, the priests and monks each approaching in a separate band; while proceeding from other churches came the women in all their subdivisions, the wives, the widows, the maidens, the dedicated virgins, Ancillæ Dei, each line converging towards the centre, each followed no doubt from windows within which the dying lay with tears and echoes of prayers. Many great sights there have been in old Rome, but few could have been more melancholy or impressive than this. We hear of no miraculous picture, no saintly idol as in later ceremonials, but only the seven processions with their long-drawn monotones of penitence, the men by themselves, the women by themselves, the widows in their mourning, the veiled nuns, the younger generation, boys and girls, most precious of all. That Gregory should have had the gift to see, or believe that he saw, a shining angel upon Hadrian's tomb, pausing and sheathing his sword as the long line of suppliants drew near, is very soothing and human to think of. Fresh from his studies of Ezekiel or Job, though too sick at heart with present trouble to continue them, why should he have doubted that the Hearer of Prayer might thus grant a visible sign of the acceptance which He had promised? We do not expect such visions nowadays, nor do we with such intense and united purpose seek them; but the same legend connects itself with many such periods of national extremity. So late as the Great Plague of London a similar great figure, radiant in celestial whiteness, was also reported to be seen as the pestilence abated, sheathing, in the same imagery, a blazing sword. The story of the septiform litany relates how here and there in the streets as they marched the dead and dying fell out of the very ranks of the suppliants. But yet the angel sheathed his sword. It is hard to recall the splendid monument of Hadrian with its gleaming marbles and statues as the pilgrim of to-day approaches the vast but truncated and heavy round of the Castle of St. Angelo; but it does not require so great an effort of the mind to recall that scene, when the great angel standing out against the sky existed but in Gregory's anxious eyes, and was reflected through the tears of thousands of despairing spectators, who stood trembling between the Omnipotence which could save in a moment and the terrible Death which seized and slew while they were looking on. No human heart can refuse to beat quicker at such a spectacle--the good man in his rapture of love and earnestness with his face turned to that radiant Roman sky, and all the dark lines of people arrested in their march gazing too, the chant dying from their lips, while the white angel paused for a moment and sheathed the sword of judgment over their heads. It was not till many centuries later, when every relic of the glories of the great Emperor's tomb had been torn from its walls, that the angel in marble, afterwards succeeded by the present angel in bronze, was erected on the summit of the Castle of St. Angelo, which derives from this incident its name--a name now laden with many other associations and familiar to us all. Pope Pelagius was one of the victims of this great plague; and it is evident from all the circumstances recorded that Gregory was already the most prominent figure in Rome, taking the chief place, not only in such matters as the public penitence, but in all the steps necessary to meet so great a calamity. Not only were his powers as an administrator very great, but he had the faculty of getting at those sacred hordes of ecclesiastical wealth, the Church's treasures of gold and silver plate, which a secular ruler could not have touched. Gregory's own liberality was the best of lessons, and though he had already sacrificed so much he had yet, it would appear, something of his own still to dispose of, as we have already found to be the case in so many instances, no doubt rents or produce of estates which could not be alienated, though everything they produced was freely given up. Already the wealth of the Church had been called into requisition to provide for the fugitives who had taken refuge from the Lombards in Rome. These riches, however, were now almost exhausted by the wants of the disorganised commonwealth, where every industry and occupation had been put out of gear, and nothing but want and misery, enfeebled bodies, and discouraged hearts remained. It was inevitable that at such a time Gregory should be the one man to whom every eye turned as the successor of Pelagius. The clergy, the nobles, and the populace, all accustomed to take a part in the choice of the bishop, pronounced for him with one voice. It is a kind of fashion among the saints that each one in his turn should resist and refuse the honours which it is wished to thrust upon him; but there was at least sufficient reason in Gregory's case for resistance. For the apostolical see, which was far from being a bed of roses at any time, was at that period of distress and danger one of the most onerous posts in the world. Pelagius died in January 590, but it was late in that year before his successor was forced into the vacant place. In the meantime Gregory had appealed to the Emperor, begging that he would oppose the election and support him in his resistance. This letter fell into the hands of the Præfect of Rome, who intercepted it, and wrote in his own name and that of the people a contrary prayer, begging the Emperor Maurice to sanction and give authority to their choice. It was only when the answer was received confirming the election, that Gregory became aware of the trick played upon him; and all his natural aversion strengthened by this deceitful proceeding, he withdrew secretly from the city, hiding himself, it is said, in a cave among the woods. Whether this means that he had made his way to the hills, and found this refuge among the ruins of Tusculum, or in some woodland grotto about Albano, or that some of the herdsmen's huts upon the Campagna amid the broken arches of the aqueducts received and concealed him, it is impossible to tell. It is said that the place of his retreat was made known by a light from heaven which made an illumination about him in his stony refuge, for the legend is unsparing in the breadth of its effects and easily appropriates the large miracle which in the Old Testament attends the passage of a whole nation to the service of an individual, without any of that sense of proportion which is to be found in older records. This light suggests somehow the wide breadth of the Campagna where its distant glow could be seen from afar, from the battlements of Rome herself, rather than the more distant hills. And we must hope that this direct betrayal by Heaven of his hiding-place showed Gregory that the appointment against which he struggled had in fact the sanction of the higher powers. He speaks, however, in many of his works of the great repugnance he felt to take the cares of such an office upon him. He had allowed himself to be ordained a deacon with reluctance, and only apparently on an understanding that when the emergency which called for his services was over he might be permitted to retire again to his cloister. His letter to Leander already referred to is full of the complaint that "when the ministry of the altar was so heavy a weight, the further burden of the pastoral charge was fastened on me, which I now find so much the more difficulty in bearing as I feel myself unequal to it, and cannot find consolation in any comfortable confidence in myself." To another correspondent he remonstrates against the censure he met with for having endeavoured to escape from so heavy a charge. These hesitations are not like those with which it is usual to find the great men of the Church refusing honours, since it is no profession of humility which moves Gregory, but his overwhelming sense of the difficulties and danger to which the chief pastor of the Church would necessarily be exposed. His idea of his position is indeed very different from that of those who consider him as one of the first to conceive the great plan of the papacy, and as working sedulously and with intention at the foundations of an institution which he expected to last for hundreds of years and to sway the fortunes of the world. He was on the contrary fully persuaded that all the signs of the times foretold instead, the end of the world and final winding up of human history. The apostles had believed so before him, and every succeeding age had felt the catastrophe to be only for a little while delayed. Nation was rising against nation under his very eyes, earthquakes destroying the cities of the earth, and pestilence their populations. There had been signs in heaven generally reported and believed, fiery ranks of combatants meeting in conflict in the very skies, and every token of judgment about to fall. Little thought was there in his mind of a triumphant and potent ecclesiastical economy which should dominate all things. "I being unworthy and weak have taken upon me the care of the old and battered vessel," he says in one of his epistles written soon after his election; "the waves make their way in on all sides, and the rotten planks, shattered by daily and violent storms, threaten imminent shipwreck." An old and battered vessel, it had borne the strain of six centuries--a long time to those who knew nothing of the ages to come: and now struggled on its way beaten by winds and waves, not knowing when the dreadful moment expected by so many generations might come, when the sun should be turned into darkness and the moon into blood--the only signs that were yet wanting of the approach of that great and terrible day. How different were these anticipations from any conscious plan of conquest or spiritual empire; and how much more fully justified by all that was happening around that broken, suffering, poor, breathless and hopeless capital of the world! Yet it is evident enough that this one resolute man, toiling in every possible way for the protection of the people round him, did put a certain heart in the city which had come through so many convulsions. Crowded with fugitives, decimated with pestilence, left for many months without any more able head than the half-hearted prætors and officials of the state and the distant exarch at Ravenna, with all of whom, according to Gregory's own witness, the exaction of taxes was the chief object--a strong and steadfast ruler in the midst of this distracted people changed in every way the disposition of affairs. For one thing he seems to have taken upon him from the beginning the care and nourishment of the poor. It had been the principle of the Church from her earliest days that almsgiving was one of the first of duties, and the care of the poor her inalienable right; but such a time of disaster made something more heroic needful than the usual doles and charities. A large proportion of the population of Rome came upon Gregory's hands to be fed and provided for. Lists of the destitute poor, of their houses and circumstances, were kept with the greatest care; and we are told that before the Pope sat down to any meal the tables for the poor outside were first supplied. How dreadful to any philanthropist now this straightforward and matter-of-fact feeding of the hungry! but it was the manner of Christianity, most understood and approved in the early ages, the one with which even the most enlightened of politicians had no fault to find. This was the first idea in every evangelical soul, but it was by no means the limit of Gregory's exertions. He had learned diplomacy as well as charity in the experiences of his past life, and every resource of his skill and knowledge were needed for the salvation of the otherwise hopeless city. In all the dignity of his spiritual office, yet with all the arts of a statesman, we can see him standing as it were before the gates of Rome, as Horatius stood on the banks of the Tiber. It is sometimes to Constantinople, sometimes to the host of the invaders, that he turns explaining, arguing, pleading on one side and another for the safety of his city and people. His letters to the Emperor and to the Empress on one hand, and those to Queen Theodolinda on the other hand, the wife of the invader--show with what persistency and earnestness he defended Rome and its people who were his special charge and flock, and who had neither ruler nor defender save himself. This was one of his ways of establishing the sway of the papacy, it is said; it was at the same time, and primarily, the stepping forth of the only man who could or would put himself at the head of a disorganised and trembling host without leader or defender. He, only he, stood fast to strike for them, to intercept destruction hanging over their heads, and it, would be a curious fact indeed in human nature if such a man performed his first duty for the sake of an unformed empire to come after hundreds of years had passed. He succeeded with the barbarians, preserving Rome from the attacks which were often threatened but never carried out; but he did little good with Maurice, who on his side had few troops to send and no general able to make a successful campaign against the Lombards. The officers and the armies of the empire were of use in exacting taxes for the imperial treasury, but not for opposing a vigorous invader or rescuing a defenceless people. It is never pretended by any of his biographers or admirers that Gregory was a man of learning, or even interested very much in the preservation of letters, or the progress of intellectual life. Learning and philosophy were the inheritance of the Greek Church, which was the very presumptuous and arrogant rival of Rome, and the cradle of most of the heresies and all the difficult and delicate questions which had troubled the peace of the Church. He is accused, though without sufficient evidence, of burning a library of Latin poets, a thing which he might well have done, according to his ideas, without much sense of guilt. There has never been an age in which certain books have not been liable to that reformation by fire, and the principle is quite as strong now as in the sixth century, so we need not take pains to exonerate Gregory from such an imputation. He did not, like Jerome, love the literature which was full of classical images and allusions. Neither Cicero nor Plato would have tempted him to occupy himself with vain studies. "The same mouth," he says, "should not pronounce the name of Jupiter and that of Christ;" yet at the same time he expresses strong regret that letters had died out of Rome, amid all the tumults through which she had passed. Amid the jargon of barbarians heard on every side, Greek, he complains, had fallen almost out of knowledge. There were few men learned enough to settle a question of doctrine by reference to the original text of Scripture. "Those we have are good for little but to translate word by word; they are unable to grasp the sense, and it is with difficulty that we understand their translations." He does not take any credit for his own style, which indeed is anything but Ciceronian. He complains with great simplicity, at the end of his dedication to Leander of his Moralia, of the "collisions of metacism," a difficulty about the letter _m_ which would seem to have been as troublesome as the letter _h_ in our own day; and anticipates criticism by confessing that he has neglected the "cases of prepositions." "For I account it far from meet," he says, taking as we should say in Scotland, "the first word of flyting," and with a high hand, "to submit the words of the Divine Oracle to the rules of (the grammarian) Donatus." As who should say Lindley Murray has nothing to do with the language of a sermon. This was a great deal for a man to say, one of whose early feats in life had been the conviction and conversion by argument of Eutychius, whose heresy in respect to the body of the resurrection (a sufficiently distant and far-off subject to disturb the Church about--but such twists of impossible doctrine have always affected some minds) survived himself--but who acknowledged with his dying breath that he was wrong and Gregory right. [Illustration: ARCH OF CONSTANTINE. _To face page 152._] Doctrine, however, was not the point on which Gregory was most strong--his Dialogues, written it is said for the edification and strengthening in the faith of the Empress Theodolinda, are nothing more than pious discussions and sanctions of the miracles performed by the saints, which we fear would have a very contrary effect if published in our day. His works upon the pastoral law and the discipline of the Church are the most valuable and important of his productions; though in these also his point of view is extraordinarily different from ours, and he advises a kind and degree of toleration which is somewhat appalling to hear of. For instance, in his instructions to Augustine and his band of missionaries Gregory instructs them to interfere as little as possible with the customs, especially in the matter of religious observances, of the people among whom they were sent. They were not to put down the familiar accompaniments of their converts' native rites and ceremonies. The old temples of Woden and Thor were not to be abandoned but turned to a new and better use; even the system of sacrifice to these gods was not to be altogether set aside. "Let there be no more victims to demons," he says with curious casuistry, "but let them kill and eat giving thanks to God; for you must leave them some material enjoyments that they may so much more easily enter into the delights of the soul." On the other hand, his instructions to a bishop of Sardinia bear a curiously different character. He recommended this prelate to put a pressure more or less gentle upon the peasants there who still remained pagan, in the form of an increased rent and taxes until such time as they should become Christian. "Though, conversion does not come by force," he says with sagacious cynicism, "yet the children of these mercenary converts will receive baptism in their innocence and will be better Christians than their fathers;" an argument which certainly embodies much economic truth if not exactly the spirit of the Gospel. [Illustration: THE PIAZZA DEL POPOLO.] Strangely different from these worldly-wise suggestions, however, are the detailed instructions for pastoral work, quoted by Bede, in Gregory's answer to the questions of Augustine, in which the artificial conscience of the confessional suddenly appears in full development, by the side of those strange counsels of a still semi-pagan age. Nothing can be more remarkable than this contrast, which exacts a more than Levitical punctilio of observance from the devout, while leaving open every door for the entrance of the profane. Though he entered with so much reluctance upon the pastoral care of the Church, no one has laid down more detailed directions for the cure of souls. It would seem to have been in reality one of the things which interested him most. His mind was in some respects that of a statesman full of the broadest sense of expediency and of the practicable, and of toleration and compromise carried to a length which fills us with dismay; while on the other it was that of a parish legislator, an investigator of personal details, to whom no trifle was unimportant, and the most fantastic stipulations of ritualistic purification of as great moment as morality itself. In contrast however with those letters which recommended what was little more than a forced conversion, and which have been frequently cited as examples of the unscrupulousness of the early missionaries, we must here quote some of Gregory's pastoral instructions in which the true spirit of a pastor shines forth. "Nothing," he says in one of his epistles to the bishops with whom he kept up constant communications, "is so heavy a burden upon a priest as so to bend the force of his own mind in sympathy, as _to change souls_ (_cum personis supervenientibus animam mutare_) with each new person who approaches him; yet this is very necessary." Nothing could be more happy in expression or fine in sentiment, and it shows how completely the monk-Pope, in cloister and on throne, understood the essential character of his great profession. Still more remarkable, as more involved in personal matters, is his advice to Augustine, who had consulted him as to the differences in worship between the Gallican churches and those of Rome. "You know, my brother, the custom of the Roman Church in which you were bred up. But it will please me if when you have found anything, either in the Roman or Gallican or any other Church, which may be more acceptable to Almighty God, you will carefully make choice of the same, and sedulously teach the Church of the English, which as yet is new in the faith, whatsoever good thing you can gather from the several Churches. For things are not to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things. Choose therefore from every Church those things that are pious, religious and upright, and when you have as it were made them into one system, let the minds of the English be accustomed thereto." This is surely the truest and highest toleration. The Papacy of Gregory began in trouble and distress; Rome was more disorganised, more miserable, more confused and helpless than almost ever before, although she had already passed through many a terrible crisis; and he had shrunk from the terrible task of setting her right. But when he had once undertaken that task there was neither weakness nor hesitation in the manner with which he carried it out. The public penance and humiliation to which he moved the people, the septiform litany with its chanting and weeping crowds, the ceaseless prayers and intercessions in the Church were not all, though no doubt the chief part to Gregory, of those methods by which he sustained the courage, or rather put a heart into, the broken-down population, so that for once a show of resistance was made when the Lombards threatened the city. And his anxious negotiations never ceased. The Emperor, far off and indifferent, not to say helpless, in Constantinople, had no rest from the constant remonstrances and appeals of the ever-watchful Bishop. Gregory complained and with reason that no efforts, or at least but fictitious ones, were made for the help of Rome, and that the indifference or hostility of the Emperor was more dangerous to her than the arms of the Lombards. On the other hand he addressed himself to the headquarters of the invaders, taking as his champion--as was his custom, as it has always been the custom of the Churchman--the Queen Theodolinda, who had become a Catholic and baptized her son in that faith, notwithstanding the opposition of her Arian husband, and was therefore a very fitting and natural intercessor. "What an overwhelming charge it is!" he cries to one of his correspondents, "to be at once weighted with the supervision of the bishops and clergy, of the monasteries and the entire people, and to remain all the time watchful to every undertaking of the enemy and on my guard against the robbery and injustice of our rulers." It was indeed a burden under which few men could have stood. Gregory appears to have neglected no movement of the foe, to have noted every exaction and treachery from Constantinople, to have remembered every bishop in the furthest-off regions, and to have directed to each in turn his expostulations, his entreaties, his reproofs. We have been told in our own day of the overwhelming weight of business (attributed to facilities of post and daily communications) which almost crushes an English archbishop, although that dignitary besides the care of the Church has but such an amount of concern in public matters as a conscientious adviser must have. But Gregory was responsible for everything, the lives and so far as was possible the liberties of his city and people, their daily bread, their safety, their very existence, besides that cure of souls which was his special occupation. The mass of correspondence, which beside all his other work he managed to get through, forgetting nothing, is enough to put any modern writer of hasty notes and curt business letters to shame. On this point there may be said a word of apology for the much-harassed Pope in respect to that one moment in his history, in which his conduct cannot be defended by his warmest admirer. His prayers and appeals were treated with contempt at Constantinople, a contempt involving not his own person alone, but Rome and the Church, for which the Emperor Maurice did not even pretend to care. And when that Emperor was suddenly swept away, it is natural enough that a sensation of relief, a touch of hope in the new man who, notwithstanding the treachery and cruelty of the first step in his career, might turn out better than his predecessor, should have gleamed across the mind of a distant, and perhaps at first imperfectly informed spectator, whose interests were so closely concerned. The complacency with which Gregory wrote to Phocas, the amazing terms he used to that murderer and tyrant, will always be the darkest stain on his reputation. Under Maurice the ministers of the empire had been more oppressive than the invaders. Perhaps under Phocas better things might be hoped for. It is all that can be said for this unfortunate moment of his career; but it is something nevertheless. It was not till 597, when he had occupied his bishopric for seven years, that Gregory succeeded in carrying out the long-cherished scheme of the mission to England, which had been for many years so near his heart. It is said that he himself had purchased some of the captive boys who caught his eye in the streets, and trained them in the Christian doctrine and faith, in order that they might act as interpreters and commend the missionaries to their people, an expedient which has been so largely followed (and of course boasted of as an original thought) in recent missions. These boys would by this time have attained the age of manhood, and perhaps this determined the moment at which Augustine and his companions were sent forth. They were solemnly consecrated in the chapel of the convent on the Coelian hill, Gregory's beloved home, to which he always returned with so much affection, and to which they also belonged, monks of the same house. Their names are inscribed in the porch of the present church after that of their master, with designations strangely familiar to our British ears--S. Augustine, Apostle of England; S. Lawrence, Archbishop of Canterbury; S. Mellitus, of London and Canterbury; S. Justus, of Rochester; S. Paulinus, of York, appear in the record, the first teachers and ecclesiastical dignitaries of Saxon England. The church in which this consecration took place exists no longer; the present building, its third or fourth successor, dates only from the eighteenth century, and is dedicated to S. Gregory himself; but the little piazza now visited by so many pilgrims is unchanged, and it was from this small square, so minute a point amid the historic places of Rome, that the missionary party set forth, Augustine and his brethren kneeling below, while the Pope, standing at the head of the steps, gave them his parting blessing. No doubt the young Angles, with their golden locks of childhood matured into russet tones, who had filled Gregory's mind with so many thoughts, were in the group, behind the black-robed Benedictine brothers whose guides and interpreters they were to be. This is an association full of interest for every Englishman, and has attracted many pilgrims from the nation whose faith has undergone so many vicissitudes, and in which the Pope's authority has been as vehemently decried in one age as strongly upheld in another; but whatever our opinions on that point may be, there can be nothing here but affectionate and grateful remembrance of the man of God who had so long cherished the scheme, which thus at length with fatherly benedictions and joy at heart, he was able to carry out. He himself would fain have gone on this mission many years before; but the care of all the Churches, and the tribulations of a distracted world, had made that for ever impossible, and he was now growing old, in feeble health, and with but a few years of work before him. The hearts of the missionaries were not so strong as that of this great Servant of the servants of God who sent them away with his blessing. Terrors of the sea and terrors of the wilds, the long journey and the savage tribes at the end of it, were in their hearts. When they had got nearly over their journey and were resting a little to recover their health among the Gauls,--fierce enough indeed, but still with sanctuaries of peace and holy brethren among them--before crossing the terrible channel, Augustine wrote beseeching letters, begging to be recalled. But let us hope that at the moment of dedication these terrors had scarcely yet got hold upon them. And to Gregory the occasion was one of unmingled satisfaction and joy. The Pope did not in those days wear the white robes which distinguish his dignity now. Gregory was presumably indifferent to such signs and tokens; for in the portrait of him which still exists in the description given of it by John the Deacon, he wears a dress scarcely distinguishable from the ordinary dress of a layman. But as he stood upon the steps in front of the church, separated from all the attendants, and raised his hands in blessing, the scene is one that any painter might covet, and which to many a visitor from these distant islands of the seas will make the little Piazza di San Gregorio more interesting in its simplicity than any other spot in storied Rome. It would occupy too much time to quote here his long and careful letters to the bishops of the West generally--from Sicily which always seems to have been the object of his special care, to those in Gaul and his missionaries in England. That he assumed an unquestioned authority over them is clear, an authority which had more or less been exercised by the Bishop of Rome for many generations before him: and that he was unfeignedly indignant at the pretensions of John of Constantinople to be called Universal Bishop is also certain. These facts however by no means prove that a great scheme of papal authority was the chief thing in his mind, underlying all his undertakings. When the historians speak of Gregory as spreading the supremacy of the Church of Rome by his missions, notably by that mission to England of which I have just spoken, they forget that the salvation of the souls lying in darkness is a motive which has moved men in every age to the greatest sacrifices, and that we have no reason in the world to believe that it was not the faith of Christ rather than the supremacy of Rome which was Gregory's object. The Apostles themselves might be said in the same way to have been spreading their own supremacy when they obeyed the injunction of their Master to go over the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature. The one sovereignty was actually implied in the other--but it requires a very robust faith in a preconceived dogma, and a very small understanding of human nature, to be able to believe that when the meditative monk paused in his walk, with compassion and interest, to look at the angelic boys, and punned tenderly with tears in his eyes over their names and nation and king, the idea immediately sprang up in his mind not that Allelujah should be sung in the dominions of King Alle, but that this wild country lost in the midst of the seas should be brought under a spiritual sceptre not yet designed. Gregory thought as the Apostles thought, that the days of the world were numbered, and that his own generation might see its records closed. That is an idea which never has stopped any worthy man in undertakings for the good of the world--but it was a belief better established, and much more according to all the theories and dogmas of the age, than a plan of universal dominion for the Church such as is attributed to him. He did his duty most energetically and strenuously in every direction--never afraid of being supposed to interfere, using the prestige of the Apostolical See freely for every ecclesiastical purpose. And he became prince in Rome, an absolute sovereign by stress of circumstance and because every other rule and authority had failed. Whether these practical necessities vaguely formed themselves into visions of spiritual empire before the end of his life it is impossible to tell: as it is equally impossible to tell what dreams of happiness or grandeur may enter into any poor man's brain. But so large and world-embracing a plan seldom springs fully formed into any mind, and in his words he never claimed, nay, vehemently denied and repudiated, any pretension of the kind. It is curious how difficult it is to get the world to believe that a man placed in a position of great responsibility, at the head of any institution, is first of all actuated by the desire of doing his work, whatever the ulterior results may be. Gregory's activity was boundless, though his health was weak, and his sufferings many. Fastings in his youth and neglect at all times told early upon his constitution. The dinner of herbs which his mother sent him daily, and which is sometimes described as uncooked--salad to wit, which enters so largely into the sustenance of the Italian poor--is a kind of fare which does not suit a delicate digestion; but he spared himself nothing on this account, though he had reached such a pitch of weakness that he was at last, as he bitterly laments, unable to fast at all, even on Easter Eve, when even little children abstain from food. Beside all the labours which I have already noted, there remains one detail which has done perhaps more to make the common world familiar with his name than all the rest; and that is the reformation in music which he accomplished among all his other labours. Church music is the only branch of the art of which we have any authentic record which dates so far back, and the Gregorian chant still exists among us, with that special tone of wailing mingled with its solemn measures which is characteristic of all primitive music. "Four scales," says Mr. Helmore in _The Dictionary of Music_, "traditionally ascribed to St. Ambrose, existed before the time of St. Gregory. These, known as the Authentic Modes, and since the thirteenth century named after the ancient Greek scales from which they were supposed to be derived, are as follows: 1, Dorian; 2, Phrygian; 3, Lydian; 4, Mixo-Lydian. To the four Authentic St. Gregory added four Plagal, _i.e._ collateral or relative Modes. Each is a fourth below its corresponding original, and is called by the same name with the prefix hypo ([Greek: hypo], below), as follows: 5, Hypo-Dorium; 6, Hypo-Phrygian; 7, Hypo-Lydian; 8, Hypo-Mixo-Lydian.... Handel's 'Hanover' among modern tunes, which ranges from F to F has its finale on B flat. 'Should auld acquaintance be forgot' is also a specimen of a tune in a Plagal Mode descending about a fourth below its final, and rising above it only six notes, closing upon the final of its tone." This may be a little too learned for the ordinary reader, but it is interesting to find how far the influence of the busy old Pope, who had a finger in every pie, could go. There is a very curious commentary by John the Deacon, Gregory's later biographer, upon this new musical system and its adoption throughout Europe, which makes a good pendant to the scientific description. The Italians seem then as now to have had a poor opinion of German modes of singing. "This music was learned easily by the Germans and Gauls, but they could not retain it because of making additions of their own, and also because of their barbarous nature. Their Alpine bodies resounding to their depths with the thunders of their voices, do not properly give forth the sweetness of the modulation, the savage roughness of their bibulous throat when it attempts to give forth a delicate strain, producing rather harsh sounds with a natural crash, as of waggons sounding confusedly over the scales." This is not flattering; but one can imagine something very like it coming from the lips of an Italian Maestro in our own day. The tradition goes that Gregory himself instructed the choristers, for whom he had established schools endowed each with its little property, one in the precincts of St. Peter's, the other in those of St. John Lateran, where his own residence was. And a couch is still shown on which he lay while giving or superintending their lessons, and even the whip with which he is said to have threatened the singers when they made false notes. The last is little in accord with the Pope's character, and we can scarcely imagine the twang through the air of any whip in Gregory's hand: but it is probably as true as other more agreeable circumstances of the legend. One can scarcely believe however that amid his multitudinous occupations he could have had time for more than a flying visit to the schools, however they might interest him. Nor did he limit his exertions on behalf of ritual to the arrangement of the music. We are told that the Missal of Pope Gelasius then used in the Church was revised by him, and that he took away much, altered some things and added a little, among other things a confession of faith or _Credo_ of his own writing, which is something between the Athanasian and Nicene Creeds. The Ordinary of the Mass remains now, another authority tells us, very much as it came from his hands. Thus his immediate authority and the impress of his mind remain on things which are still in daily use. [Illustration: MONTE PINCIO, FROM THE PIAZZA DEL POPOLO.] And there could be no more familiar or characteristic figure in Rome than that of this monk-Pope threading everywhere those familiar streets, in which there were more ruins, and those all fresh and terrible in their suggestions of life destroyed--than now: the gentle spectator full of meditation, who lingered among the group of slaves, and saw and loved and smiled at the Saxon boys: who passed by Trajan's Forum which we all know so well, that field of broken pillars, not then railed off and trim in all the orderliness of an outdoor museum, but wild in the neglect of nature: and heard the story of the Emperor, and loved him too, and poured out his soul to God for the great heathen, so that the gates of Hades were rolled back and the soul set free--strange parable of brotherly kindness as the dominant principle of heart and life. We can follow him through all the lists of the poor laid up in his Scrivii, like the catalogues of books enclosed in caskets, in an old-fashioned library--with careful enumeration of every half-ruined tenement and degraded palace where the miserable had found shelter: or passing among the crowds who received their portions before, not after, the Pope in the precincts of the great basilica; or "modulating," with a voice broken by age and weakness, the new tones of his music which the "bibulous throats" of the barbarian converts turned into thunder, and of which even his own choristers, careless as is their use, would make discords, till the whip of the Master trembled in the air, adding the sting of a sharper sound to the long-drawn notes of the monotone, and compelling every heedless tenor and frivolous soprano to attention. These are his simpler aspects, the lower life of the great Benedictine, the picture of the Pope as he endeared himself to the popular imagination, round which all manner of tender legends grew. His aspect is less familiar yet not less true as he sits at the head of affairs, dictating or writing with his own hand those innumerable letters which treat of every subject under heaven, from the safety of Rome to the cross which is to be hung round a royal infant's neck, or the amethyst ring for the finger of a little princess; from the pretensions of John of Constantinople, that would-be head of the Church, down to the ass sent by the blundering intendant from Sicily. Nothing was too great, nothing too little for his care. He had to manage the mint and cummin without leaving graver matters undone. And the reader who has leisure may follow him into the maze of those Dialogues in which Peter the Deacon serves as questioner, and the Pope discourses gently, to improve his ignorance, of all the wonderful things which the saints have done, chiefly in Italy, turning every law of nature upside down: or follow him through the minute and endless rules of his book of discipline, and note the fine-drawn scruples with which he has to deal, the strange cases of conscience for which he provides, the punctilio of extravagant penitence, so strangely contrasted with the other rough and ready modes of dealing with the unconverted, to which he gives the sanction of his recommendation. He was a man of his time, not of ours: he flattered Phocas while his hands were still wet with his predecessor's blood--though we may still hope that at such a distance Gregory did not know all that had happened or what a ruffian it was whom he thus addressed. He wrote affectionately and with devotion to Queen Brunhild without inquiring into that lady's character, which no doubt he knew perfectly. Where the good of Rome, either the city or the Church, was concerned, he stopped at nothing. I have no desire to represent him as faultless. But the men who are faultless, if any are to be found, leave but a limited record, and there is little more to say of perfection than that it is perfect. Gregory was not so. He got very angry sometimes, with bishops in Sicily, with stupid intendants, above all with that Eastern John--and sometimes, which is worse, he was submissive and compliant when he ought to have been angry and denounced a criminal. But on the other hand he was the first of the great ecclesiastical princes who have made Modern Rome illustrious--he was able, greatest of miracles, to put a heart into the miserable city which had allowed herself to be overrun by every savage: and stood between her and all creation, giving the whole world assurance of a man, and fighting for her with every weapon that came to his hand. Doing whatsoever he found to do thoroughly well, he laid the foundations of that great power which still extends over the whole world. I do not believe that he acted on any plan or had the supremacy of the Pontificate in his mind, or had conceived any idea of an ecclesiastical empire which should grasp the universe. To say, for instance, that the mission to England which he had cherished so long was undertaken with the idea of extending the sway of the Papacy seems one of those follies of the theorist which requires no answer. St. Paul might as well be accused of intending to spread a spiritual empire when he saw in his dream that man of Macedonia, and immediately directed his steps thither, obeying the vision. What Gregory hoped and prayed for was to bring in a new nation, as he judged a noble and vigorous race, to Christianity. And he succeeded in doing so: with such secondary consequences as the developments of time, and the laws of progress, and the course of Providence brought about. There is a certain humour in the indignation, which has been several times referred to, with which he turned against the Patriarch of Constantinople and his pretensions to a supremacy which naturally was in the last degree obnoxious to the Bishop of Rome. The Eastern and Western Churches had already diverged widely from each other, the one nourished and subdued under the shadow of a Court, in a leisure which left it open to every refinement and every temptation, whether of asceticism or heresy--both of which abounded: the other fighting hard for life amid the rudest and most practical dangers, obliged to work and fight like Nehemiah on the walls of Jerusalem with the tool in one hand and the sword in the other. John the Faster, so distinguished because of the voluntary privations which he imposed upon himself, forms one of the most startling contrasts of this age with Gregory, worn by work and warfare, whose spare and simple meal could not be omitted even on the eve of Easter. That he who, sitting in St. Peter's seat, with all the care of Church and country upon his shoulders, obeyed by half the world, yet putting forth in words no such pretension--should be aggrieved almost beyond endurance by the dignity conferred on, or assumed by, the other bishop, whose see was not apostolical but the mere creation of an emperor, and the claim put forth by him and the Council called by him for universal obedience, is very natural; yet Gregory's wrath has a fiercely human sense of injury in it, an aggrieved individuality to which we cannot deny our sympathy. "There is no doubt," he says with dignity, writing to the Emperor on the subject, "that the keys of heaven were given to Peter, the power of binding and loosing, and the care of the whole Church; and yet he is not called Universal Apostle. Nor does it detract from the honour of the See that the sins of Gregory are so great that he ought to suffer; for there are no sins of Peter that he should be treated thus. The honour of Peter is not to be brought low because of us who serve him unworthily." "Oh tempora, oh mores!" he exclaims; "Europe lies prostrate under the power of the barbarians. Its towns are destroyed, its fortresses thrown down, its provinces depopulated, the soil has no longer labourers to till it; and yet priests who ought to humble themselves with tears in the dust strive after vain honours and glorify themselves with titles new and profane!" To John himself he writes with more severity, reminding him of the vaunt of Lucifer in Isaiah, "I will exalt my throne above the stars of heaven." Now bishops, he says, are the stars of heaven, they shine over men; they are clouds (the metaphors are mixed) that rain words and are lighted up by the rays of good works. "What, then," he asks, "is the act of your paternity, in looking down upon them and pressing them into subjection, but following the example of the ancient enemy? When I see this I weep that the holy man, the Lord John, a man so renowned for self-sacrifice, should so act. Certainly Peter was first in the whole Church. Andrew, James, and the others were but heads of the people; yet all made up one body, and none were called Universal." [Illustration: THE FORUM. _To face page 170._] The argument with which Gregory replies to a letter from Eulogius, Bishop of Alexandria, who had wished him to assume himself a similar title, is curious. The Apostolical See, he says, consists of three bishoprics, all held by St. Peter, that of Antioch, that of Alexandria, and that of Rome, and the honour of the title is shared between them. "If you give me more than my due," he adds, "you rob yourself. If I am named Pope, you own yourself to be no pope. Let no such thing be named between us. My honour is the honour of the Universal Church. I am honoured in the honour paid to my brethren." Nothing could be more determined than this oft-repeated refusal. Yet he never fails to add that it was Peter's right. The Council of Chalcedon, he says, offered that supreme title to the Church of Rome, which refused it. How much greater then, was the guilt of John, to whom it was never offered, but who assumed it, injuring all priests by setting himself above them, and the Empire itself by a position superior to it? Such were the sentiments of Gregory, in which the wrath of a natural heir, thus supplanted by a usurper, gives fervour to every denunciation. The French historian Villemain points out, what will naturally occur to the reader, that many of these arguments were afterwards used with effect by Luther and his followers against the assumptions of the Church of Rome. It will also be remembered that Jerome put the case more strongly still, denouncing the Scarlet Woman with as much fervour as any No-Popery orator. But while he rejected all such titles and assumed for himself only that, conceived no doubt in all humility and sincere meaning, but afterwards worn with pride surpassing that of any earthly monarch, of Servus Servorum Dei, the servant of the servants of God, Gregory occupied himself, as has been said, with the care of all the churches in full exercise of the authority and jurisdiction of an overseer, at least over the western half of Christendom. Vain titles he would have none, and we cannot doubt his sincerity in rejecting them; but the reality of the pastoral supervision, never despotic, but continual, was clearly his idea of his own rights and duties. It has been seen what license he left to Augustine in the regulation of the new English Church. He acted with an equally judicious liberality in respect to the rich and vigorous Gallican bishops, never demanding too servile an obedience, but never intermitting his superintendence of all. But he does not seem to have put forth the smallest pretension to political independence, even when that was forced upon him by his isolated and independent position, and he found himself compelled to make his own terms with the Lombard invaders. At the moment of his election as Bishop of Rome, he appealed to the Emperor against the popular appointment, and only when the imperial decision was given against him allowed himself to be dragged from his solitude. And one of his accusations against John of Constantinople was that his assumption injured the very Empire itself in its supreme authority. Thus we may, and indeed I think must, conclude that Gregory's supposed theory of the universal papal power was as little real as are most such elaborate imputations of purpose conceived long before the event. He had no intention, so far as the evidence goes, of making himself an arbitrator between kings, and a judge of the world's actions and movements. He had enough and too much work of his own which it was his determination to do, as vigorously and with as much effect as possible--in the doing of which work it was necessary to influence, to conciliate, to appeal, as well as to command and persuade: to make terms with barbarians, to remonstrate with emperors, as well as to answer the most minute questions of the bishops, and lay out before them the proper course they were to pursue. There is nothing so easy as to attribute deep-laid plans to the great spirits among men. I do not think that Gregory had time for any such ambitious projects. He had to live for the people dependent upon him, who were a multitude, to defend, feed, guide and teach them. He had never an unoccupied moment, and he did in each moment work enough for half a dozen men. That it was his duty to superintend and guide everything that went on, so far as was wise or practicable, in the Church as well as in his immediate diocese, was clearly his conviction, and the reader may find it a little difficult to see why he should have guarded that power so jealously, yet rejected the name of it: but that is as far as any reasonable criticism can go. What would seem an ancient complaint against Gregory appears in the sketch of his life given by Platina, in his _Lives of the Popes_--who describes him as having been "censured by a few ignorant men as if the ancient stately buildings were demolished by his order, lest strangers coming out of devotion to Rome should less regard the consecrated places, and spend all their gaze upon triumphal arches and monuments of antiquity." This curious accusation is answered by the author in words which I quote from an almost contemporary translation very striking in its forcible English. "No such reproach," says Platina in the vigorous version of Sir Paul Rycant, Knight, "can justly be fastened on this great Bishop, especially considering that he was a native of the city, and one to whom, next after God, his country was most dear, even above his life. 'Tis certain that many of those ruined structures were devoured by time, and many might, as we daily see, be pulled down to build new houses; and for the rest 'tis probable that, for the sake of the brass used in the concavity of the arches and the conjunctures of the marble or other square stones, they might be battered or defaced not only by the barbarous nations but by the Romans too, if Epirotes, Dalmatians, Pannonians, and other sorry people who from all parts of the world resorted hither, may be called Romans." This is a specious argument which would not go far toward establishing Gregory's innocence were he seriously accused: but the accusation, like that of burning classical manuscripts, has no proof. Little explanation, however, is necessary to account for the ruins of a city which has undergone several sieges. That Gregory would have helped himself freely as everybody did, and has done in all ages, to the materials lying so conveniently at hand in the ruined palaces which nobody had any mission to restore, may be believed without doubt; for he was a man far too busy and preoccupied to concern himself with questions of Art, or set any great price upon the marble halls of patrician houses, however interesting might be their associations or beautiful their structure. But he built few new churches, we are expressly told, though he was careful every year to look into the condition of all existing ecclesiastical buildings and have them repaired. It seems probable that it might be a later Gregory however against whom this charge was made. In the time of Gregory the First these ruins were recent, and it was but too likely that at any moment a new horde of unscrupulous iconoclasts might sweep over them again. There came however a time when the Pope's suffering and emaciated body could bear no longer that charge which was so burdensome. He had been ill for many years, suffering from various ailments and especially from weakness of digestion, and he seems to have broken down altogether towards the year 601. Agelulphus thundering at his gates had completed what early fastings and the constant work of a laborious life had begun, and at sixty Gregory took to his bed, from which, as he complains in one of his letters, he was scarcely able to rise for three hours on the great festivals of the Church in order to celebrate Mass. He was obliged also to conclude abruptly that commentary on Ezekiel which had been so often interrupted, leaving the last vision of the prophet unexpounded, which he regretted the more that it was one of the most dark and difficult, and stood in great need of exposition. "But how," he says, "can a mind full of trouble clear up such dark meanings? The more the mind is engaged with worldly things the less is it qualified to expound the heavenly." It was from Ezekiel that Gregory was preaching when the pestilence which swept away his predecessor Pelagius was raging in Rome, and when, shutting the book which was no longer enough with its dark sayings to calm the troubles of the time, he had called out to the people, with a voice which was as that of their own hearts, to repent. All his life as Pope had been threaded through with the study of this prophet. He closed the book again and finally when all Rome believed that another invasion was imminent, and his courage failed in this last emergency. It is curious to associate the name of such a man, so full of natural life and affection, so humorous, so genial, so ready to take interest in everything that met his eyes, with these two saddest figures in all the round of sacred history, the tragic patriarch Job, and the exiled prophet, who was called upon to suffer every sorrow in order to be a sign to his people and generation. Was it that the very overflowing of life and sympathy in him made Gregory seek a balance to his own buoyant spirit in the plaints of those two melancholy voices? or was it the misfortunes of his time, so distracted and full of miserable agitation, which directed him at least to the latter, the prophet of a fallen nation, of disaster and exile and penitence? Thus he lay after his long activities, suffering sorely, and longing for the deliverance of death, though he was not more, it is supposed, than sixty-two when the end came. From his sick bed he wrote to many of his friends entreating that they would pray for him that his sufferings might be shortened and his sins forgiven. He died finally on the 12th of March, ever afterwards consecrated to his name, in the year 603. This event must have taken place in the palace at the Lateran, which was then the usual dwelling of the Popes. Here the sick and dying man could look out upon one of the finest scenes on earth, the noble line of the Alban Hills rising over the great plains of the Campagna, with all its broken lines of aqueduct and masses of ruin. The features of the landscape are the same, though every accessory is changed, and palace and basilica have both crumbled into the dust of ages, to be replaced by other and again other buildings, handing down the thread of historic continuity through all the generations. There are scarcely any remains of the palace of the Popes itself, save one famous mosaic, copied from a still earlier one, in which a recent learned critic sees the conquest of the world by papal Rome already clearly set forth. But we can scarcely hope that any thought of the first Gregory will follow the mind of the reader into the precincts of St. John of the Lateran Gate. His memory abides in another place, in the spot where stood his father's house, where he changed the lofty chambers of the Roman noble into Benedictine cells, and lived and wrote and mused in the humility of an obedient brother. But still more does it dwell in the little three-cornered piazza before the Church of St. Gregorio, from whence he sent forth the mission to England with issues which he could never have divined--for who could have told in those days that the savage Angles would have overrun the world further than ever Roman standard was carried? The shadow of the great Pope is upon those time-worn steps where he stood and blessed his brethren, with moisture in his eyes and joy in his heart, sending them forth upon the difficult and dangerous way which he had himself desired to tread, but from which their spirits shrank. We have all a sacred right to come back here, to share the blessing of the saint, to remember the constant affection he bore us, his dedication of himself had it been permitted, his never-ending thought of his angel boys which has come to such wonderful issues. He would have been a more attractive apostle than Augustine had he carried out his first intention; but still we find his image here, fatherly, full of natural tenderness, interest and sympathy, smiling back upon us over a dozen centuries which have changed everything--except the historical record of Pope Gregory's blessing and his strong desire and hope. He was buried in St. Peter's with his predecessors, but his tomb, like so many others, was destroyed at the rebuilding of the great church, and no memorial remains. [Illustration: PONTE MOLLE.] [Illustration: THE PALATINE.] CHAPTER II. THE MONK HILDEBRAND. It is a melancholy thing looking back through the long depths of history to find how slow the progress is, even if it can be traced at all, from one age to another, and how, though the dangers and the evils to which they are liable change in their character from time to time, their gravity, their hurtfulness, and their rebellion against all that is best in morals, and most advantageous to humanity, scarcely diminish, however completely altered the conditions may be. We might almost doubt whether the vast and as yet undetermined possibilities of the struggle which has begun in our days between what is called Capital and Labour, the theories held against all experience and reason of a rising Socialism, and the mad folly of Anarchism, which is their immediate climax--are not quite as dangerous to the peace of nations as were the tumults of an age when every man acted by the infallible rule that He should take who had the power And he should keep who can-- the principle being entirely the same, though the methods may be different. This strange duration of trouble, equal in intensity though different in form, is specially manifest in a history such as that which we take up from one age to another in so remarkable a development of life and government as Mediæval Rome. We leave the city relieved of some woes, soothed from some troubles, fed by much charity, and weeping apparently honest tears over Gregory the first of the name--although that great man was scarcely dead before the crowd was taught to believe that he had impoverished the city by feeding them, and were scarcely prevented from burning his library as a wise and fit revenge. Still it might have been expected that Rome and her people would have advanced a step upon the pedestal of such a life as that of Gregory: and in fact he left many evils redressed, the commonwealth safer, and the Church more pure. But when we turn the page and come, four hundred years later, to the life of another Gregory, upon what a tumultuous world do we open our eyes: what blood, what fire, what shouts and shrieks of conflict: what cruelty and shame have reigned between, and still remained, ever stronger than any influence of good men, or amelioration of knowledge! Heathenism, save that which is engrained in the heart of man, had passed away. There were no more struggles with the relics of the classical past: the barbarians who came down in their hordes to overturn civilisation had changed into settled nations, with all the paraphernalia of state and great imperial authority--shifting indeed from one race to another, but always upholding a central standard. All the known world was nominally Christian. It was full of monks dedicated to the service of God, of priests, the administrants of the sacraments, and of bishops as important as any secular nobles--yet what a scene is that upon which we look out through endless smoke of battle and clashing of swords! Rome, at whose gates Alaric and Attila once thundered, was almost less secure now, and less easily visited than when Huns and Goths overran the surrounding country. It was encircled by castles of robber nobles, who infested every road, sometimes seizing the pilgrims bound for Rome, with their offerings great and small, sometimes getting possession of these offerings in a more thorough way by the election of a subject Pope taken from one of their families, and always ready on every occasion to thrust their swords into the balance and crush everything like freedom or purity either in the Church or in the city. In the early part of the eleventh century there were two if not three Popes in Rome. "Benedict IX. officiated in the church of St. John Lateran, Sylvester III. in St. Peter's, and John XX. in the church of St. Mary," says Villemain in his life of Hildebrand: the name of the last does not appear in the lists of Platina, but the fact of this profane rivalry is beyond doubt. The conflict was brought to an end for the moment by a very curious transaction. A certain dignified ecclesiastic, Gratiano by name, the Cardinal-archdeacon of St. John Lateran, who happened to be rich, horrified by this struggle, and not sufficiently enlightened as to the folly and sin of doing evil that good might come--always, as all the chronicles seem to allow, with the best motives--bought out the two competitors, and procured his own election under the title of Gregory VI. But this mistaken though well-meant act had but brief success. For, on the arrival in 1046 of the Emperor Henry III. in Italy, at a council called together by his desire, Gregory was convicted of the strange bargain he had made, or according to Baronius of the violent means taken to enforce it, and was deposed accordingly, along with his two predecessors. It was this Pope, in his exile and deprivation, who first brought in sight of a universe which he was born to rule, a young monk of Cluny, Hildebrand--German by name, but Italian in heart and race--who had already moved much about the world with the extraordinary freedom and general access everywhere which we find common to monks however humble their origin. From his monastic home in Rome he had crossed the Alps more than once; he had been received and made himself known at the imperial court, and was on terms of kindness with many great personages, though himself but a humble brother of his convent. No youthful cleric in our modern world nowadays would find such access everywhere, though it is still possible that a young Jesuit for instance, noted by his superiors for ability or genius, might be handed on from one authority to another till he reached the highest circle. But it is surprising to see how free in their movements, how adventurous in their lives, the young members of a brotherhood bound under the most austere rule then found it possible to be. Hildebrand was, like so many other great Churchmen, a child of the people. He was the son of a carpenter in a Tuscan village, who, however, possessed one of those ties with the greater world which a clergy drawn from the people affords to the humblest, a brother or other near relation who was the superior of a monastery in Rome. There the little Tuscan peasant took his way in very early years to study letters, having already given proof of great intelligence such as impressed the village and called forth prophecies of the highest advancement to come. His early education brings us back to the holy mount of the Aventine, on which we have already seen so many interesting assemblies. The monastery of St. Mary has endured as little as the house of Marcella, though it is supposed that in the church of S. Maria Aventina there may still remain some portion of the original buildings. But the beautiful garden of the Priorato, so great a favourite with the lovers of the picturesque, guards for us, in that fidelity of nature which time cannot discompose, the very spot where that keen-eyed boy must have played, if he ever played, or at least must have dreamed the dreams of an ambitious young visionary, and perhaps, as he looked out musing to where the tombs of the Apostles gleamed afar on the other side of Tiber, have received the inheritance of that long hope and vision which had been slowly growing in the minds of Popes and priests--the hope of making the Church the mistress and arbiter of the nations, the supreme and active judge among all tumults of earthly politics and changes of power. He was nourished from his childhood in the house of St. Peter, says the biographer of the Acta Sanctorum. It would be more easy to realise the Apostle's sway, and that of his successors, on that mount of vision, where day and night, by sun and moon, the great temple of Christendom, the centre of spiritual life, shone before his eyes, than on any other spot. That wonderful visionary sovereignty, the great imagination of a central power raised above all the disturbances of worldly life, and judging austerely for right and against wrong all the world over--unbiassed, unaffected by meaner motives, the great tribunal from which justice and mercy should go forth over the whole earth--could there be a more splendid ideal to till the brain of an ardent boy? It is seldom that such an ideal is recognised, or such dreams as these believed in. We know how little the Papacy has carried it out, and how the faults and weaknesses even of great men have for many centuries taken all possibility from it. But it was while that wonderful institution was still fully possible, the devoutest of imaginations, a dream such as had never been surpassed in splendour and glory, that young Hildebrand looked out to Peter's prison on the Janiculum opposite, and from thence to Peter's tomb, and dreamt of Peter's white throne of justice dominating the darkness and the self-seeking of an uneasy world. The monastery of St. Mary, a Benedictine house, must have been noted in its time. Among the teachers who instructed its neophytes was that same Giovanni Gratiano of whom we have just spoken, the arch-priest who devoted his wealth to the not ignoble purpose of getting rid of two false and immoral Popes: though perhaps his motives would have been less misconstrued had he not been elected in their place. And there was also much fine company at the monastery in those days--bishops with their suites travelling from south and north, seeking the culture and piety of Rome after long banishment from intellectual life--and at least one great abbot, more important than a bishop, Odilon of Cluny, at the head of one of the greatest of monastic communities. All of these great men would notice, no doubt, the young nephew of the superior, the favourite of the cloister, upon whom many hopes were already beginning to be founded, and in whose education every one loved to have a hand. One of these bishops was said afterwards to have taught him magical arts, which proves at least that they took a share in the training of the child of the convent. At what age it was that he was transferred to Cluny it is impossible to tell. Dates do not exist in Hildebrand's history until he becomes visible in the greater traffic of the world. He was born between 1015 and 1020--this is the nearest that we can approach to accuracy. He appears in full light of history at the deposition of Gratiano (Gregory VI.) in 1045. In the meantime he passed through a great many developments. Probably the youth--eager to see the world, eager too to fulfil his vocation, to enter upon the mortifications and self-abasement of a monk's career, and to "subdue the flesh" in true monkish fashion, as well as by the fatigues of travel and the acquirement of learning--followed Odilon and his train across _i monti_, a favourite and familiar, when the abbot returned from Rome to Cluny. It could not be permitted in the monkish chronicles, even to a character like that of the austere Hildebrand all brain and spirit, that he had no flesh to subdue. And we are not informed whether it was at his early home on the Aventine or in the great French monastery that he took the vows. The rule of Cluny was specially severe. One poor half hour a day was all that was permitted to the brothers for rest and conversation. But this would not matter much, we should imagine, to young Hildebrand, all on fire for work, and full of a thousand thoughts. How a youth of his age got to court, and was heard and praised by the great Emperor Henry III., the head of Christendom, is not known. Perhaps he went in attendance on his abbot, perhaps as the humble clerk of some elder brethren bearing a complaint or an appeal; the legend goes that he became the tutor and playfellow of the little prince, Henry's son, until the Emperor had a dream in which he saw the stranger, with two horns on his head, with one of which he pushed his playfellow into the mud--significant and alarming vision which was a reasonable cause for the immediate banishment of Hildebrand. The dates, however, if nothing else, make this story impossible, for the fourth Henry was not born within the period named. At all events the young monk was sufficiently distinguished to be brought under the Emperor's notice and to preach before him, though we are not informed elsewhere that Hildebrand had any reputation as a preacher. He was no doubt full of earnestness and strong conviction, and that heat of youth which is often so attractive to the minds of sober men. Henry declared that he had heard no man who preached the word of God with so much faith: and the imperial opinion must have added much to his importance among his contemporaries. On the other hand, the great world of Germany and its conditions must have given the young man many and strange revelations. Nowhere were the prelates so great and powerful, nowhere was there so little distinction between the Church and the world. Many of the clergy were married, and left, sometimes their cures, often a fortune amassed by fees for spiritual offices, to their sons: and benefices were bought and sold like houses and lands, with as little disguise. A youth brought up in Rome would not be easily astonished by the lawlessness of the nobles and subject princes of the empire, but the importance of a central authority strong enough to restrain and influence so vast a sphere, and so many conflicting powers, must have impressed upon him still more forcibly the supreme ideal of a spiritual rule more powerful still, which should control the nations as a great Emperor controlled the electors who were all but kings. And we know that it was now that he was first moved to that great indignation, which never died in his mind, against simony and clerical license, which were universally tolerated, if not acknowledged as the ordinary rule of the age. It was high time that some reformer should arise. It was not, however, till the year 1046, on the occasion of the deposition of Gregory VI. for simony, that Hildebrand first came into the full light of day. Curiously enough, the first introduction of this great reformer of the Church, the sworn enemy of everything simoniacal, was in the suite of this Pope deposed for that sin. But in all probability the simony of Gregory VI. was an innocent error, and resulted rather from a want of perception than evil intention, of which evidently there was none in his mind. He made up to the rivals who held Rome in fee, for the dues and tributes and offerings which were all they cared for, by the sacrifice of his own fortune. If he had not profited by it himself, if some one else had been elected Pope, no stain would have been left upon his name: and he seems to have laid down his dignities without a murmur: but his heart was broken by the shame and bitter conviction that what he had meant for good was in reality the very evil he most condemned. Henry proceeded on his march to Rome after deposing the Pope, apparently taking Gregory with him: and there without any protest from the silenced and terrified people, nominated a German bishop of his own to the papal dignity, from whose hands he himself afterwards received the imperial crown. He then returned to Germany, sweeping along with him the deposed and the newly-elected Popes, the former attended in silence and sorrow by Hildebrand, who never lost faith in him, and to the end of his life spoke of him as his master. A stranger journey could scarcely have been. The triumphant German priests and prelates surrounding the new head of the Church, and the handful of crestfallen Italians following the fallen fortunes of the other, must have made a strange and not very peaceful conjunction. "Hildebrand desired to show reverence to his lord," says one of the chronicles. Thus his career began in the deepest mortification and humiliation, the forced subjection of the Church which it was his highest aim and hope to see triumphant, to the absolute force of the empire and the powers of this world. Pope Gregory reached his place of exile on the banks of the Rhine, with his melancholy train, in deep humility; but that exile was not destined to be long. He died there within a few months: and his successor soon followed him to the grave. For a short and disastrous period Rome seems to have been left out of the calculations altogether, and the Emperor named another German bishop, whom he sent to Rome under charge of the Marquis, or Margrave, or Duke of Tuscany--for he is called by all these titles. This Pope, however, was still more short-lived, and died in three weeks after his proclamation, by poison it was supposed. It is not to be wondered at if the bishops of Germany began to be frightened of this magnificent nomination. Whether it was the judgment of God which was most to be feared, or the poison of the subtle and scheming Romans, the prospect was not encouraging. The third choice of Henry fell upon Bruno, the bishop of Toul, a relative of his own, and a saintly person of commanding presence and noble manners. Bruno, as was natural, shrank from the office, but after days of prayer and fasting yielded, and was presented to the ambassadors from Rome as their new Pope. Thus the head of the Church was for the third time appointed by the Emperor, and the ancient privilege of his election by the Roman clergy and people swept away. But Henry was not now to meet with complete submission and compliance, as he had done before. The young Hildebrand had shown no rebellious feeling when his master was set aside: he must have, like Gregory, felt the decision to be just. And after faithful service till the death of the exile, he had retired to Cluny, to his convent, pondering many things. We are not told what it was that brought him back to Germany at this crisis of affairs, whether he were sent to watch the proceedings, or upon some humbler mission, or by the mere restlessness of an able young man thirsting to be employed, and the instinct of knowing when and where he was wanted. He reappeared, however, suddenly at the imperial court during these proceedings; and no doubt watched the summary appointment of the new Pope with indignation, injured in his patriotism and in his churchmanship alike, by an election in which Rome had no hand, though otherwise not dissatisfied with the Teutonic bishop, who was renowned both for piety and learning. The chronicler pauses to describe Hildebrand in this his sudden reintroduction to the great world. "He was a youth of noble disposition, clear mind, and a holy monk," we are told. It was while Bishop Bruno was still full of perplexities and doubts that this unexpected counsellor appeared, a man, though young, already well known, who had been trained in Rome, and was an authority upon the customs and precedents of the Holy See. He had been one of the closest attendants upon a Pope, and knew everything about that high office--there could be no better adviser. The anxious bishop sent for the young monk, and Hildebrand so impressed him with his clear mind and high conception of the papal duties, that Bruno begged him to accompany him to Rome. He answered boldly, "I cannot go with you." "Why?" said the Teuton prelate with amazement. "Because without canonical institution," said the daring monk, "by the sole power of the emperor, you are about to seize the Church of Rome." Bruno was greatly startled by this bold speech. It is possible that he, in his distant provincial bishopric, had no very clear knowledge of the canonical modes of appointing a Pope. There were many conferences between the monk and the Pope-elect, the young man who was not born to hesitate but saw clear before him what to do, and his elder and superior, who was neither so well informed nor so gifted. Bruno, however, if less able and resolute, must have been a man of a generous and candid mind, anxious to do his duty, and ready to accept instruction as to the best method of doing so, which was at the same time the noblest way of getting over his difficulties. He appeared before the great diet or council assembled in Worms, and announced his acceptance of the pontificate, but only if he were elected to it according to their ancient privileges by the clergy and people of Rome. It does not appear whether there was any resistance to this condition, but it cannot have been of a serious character, for shortly after, having taken farewell of his own episcopate and chapter, he set out for Rome. This is the account of the incident given by Hildebrand himself when he was the great Pope Gregory, towards the end of his career. It was his habit to tell his attendants the story of his life in all its varied scenes, during the troubled leisure of its end, as old men so often love to do. "Part I myself heard, and part of it was reported to me by many others," says one of the chroniclers. There is another account which has no such absolute authority, but is not unreasonable or unlikely, of the same episode, in which we are told that Bishop Bruno on his way to Rome turned aside to visit Cluny, of which Hildebrand was prior, and that the monk boldly assailed the Pope, upbraiding him with having accepted from the hand of a layman so great an office, and thus violently intruded into the government of the Church. In any case Hildebrand was the chief actor and inspirer of a course of conduct on the part of Bruno which was at once pious and politic. The papal robes which he had assumed at Worms on his first appointment were taken off, the humble dress of a pilgrim assumed, and with a reduced retinue and in modest guise the Pope-elect took his way to Rome. His episcopal council acquiesced in this change of demeanour, says another chronicler, which shows how general an impression Hildebrand's eloquence and the fervour of his convictions must have made. It was a slow journey across the mountains lasting nearly two months, with many lingerings on the way at hospitable monasteries, and towns where the Emperor's cousin could not but be a welcome guest. Hildebrand, who must have felt the great responsibility of the act which he had counselled, sent letter after letter, whenever they paused on their way, to Rome, describing, no doubt with all the skill at his command, how different was this German bishop from the others, how scrupulous he was that his election should be made freely if at all, in what humility he, a personage of so high a rank, and so many endowments, was approaching Rome, and how important it was that a proper reception should be given to a candidate so good, so learned, and so fit in every way for the papal throne. Meanwhile Bishop Bruno, anxious chiefly to conduct himself worthily, and to prepare for his great charge, beguiled the way with prayers and pious meditations, not without a certain timidity as it would appear about his reception. But this timidity turned out to be quite uncalled for. His humble aspect, joined to his high prestige as the kinsman of the emperor, and the anxious letters of Hildebrand had prepared everything for Bruno's reception. The population came out on all sides to greet his passage. Some of the Germans were perhaps a little indignant with this unnecessary humility, but the keen Benedictine pervaded and directed everything while the new Pope, as was befitting on the eve of assuming so great a responsibility, was absorbed in holy thought and prayer. The party had to wait on the further bank of the Tiber, which was in flood, for some days, a moment of anxious suspense in which the pilgrims watched the walls and towers of the great city in which lay their fate with impatience and not without alarm. But as soon as the water fell, which it did with miraculous rapidity, the whole town, with the clergy at its head, came out to meet the new-comers, and Leo IX., one of the finest names in the papal lists, entering barefooted and in all humility by the great doors of St. Peter's, was at once elected unanimously, and received the genuine homage of all Rome. One can imagine with what high satisfaction, yet with eyes ever turned to the future, content with no present achievement, Hildebrand must have watched the complete success of his plan. This event took place, Villemain tells us (the early chroniclers, as has been said, are most sparing of dates), in 1046, a year full of events. Muratori in his annals gives it as two years later. Hildebrand could not yet have attained his thirtieth year in either case. He was so high in favour with the new Pope, to whom he had been so wise a guide, that he was appointed at once to the office of Economico, a sort of Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Court of Rome, and at the same time was created Cardinal-archdeacon, and abbot of St. Paul's, the great monastery outside the walls. Platina tells us that he received this charge as if the Pope had "divided with him the care of the keys, the one ruling the church of St. Peter and the other that of St. Paul." That great church, though but a modern building now, after the fire which destroyed it seventy years ago, and standing on the edge of the desolate Campagna, is still a shrine universally visited. The Campagna was not desolate in Hildebrand's days, and the church was of the highest distinction, not only as built upon the spot of St. Paul's martyrdom, but for its own splendour and beauty. It is imposing still, though so modern, and with so few relics of the past. But the pilgrim of to-day, who may perhaps recollect that over its threshold Marcella dragged herself, already half dead, into that peace of God which the sanctuary afforded amid the sack and the tortures of Rome, may add another association if he is so minded in the thought of the great ecclesiastic who ruled here for many years, arriving, full of zeal and eager desire for universal reform, into the midst of an idle crew of depraved monks, who had allowed their noble church to fall into the state of a stable, while they themselves--a mysterious and awful description, yet not perhaps so alarming to us as to them--"were served in the refectory by women," the first and perhaps the only, instance of female servants in a monastery. Hildebrand made short work of these ministrants. He had a dream--which no doubt would have much effect on the monks, always overawed by spiritual intervention, however material they might be in mind or habits--in which St. Paul appeared to him, working hard to clear out and purify his desecrated church. The young abbot immediately set about the work indicated by the Apostle, "eliminating all uncleanness," says his chronicler: "and supplying a sufficient amount of temperate food, he gathered round him a multitude of honest monks faithful to their rule." Hildebrand's great business powers, as we should say, enabled him very soon to put the affairs of the convent in order. The position of the monastery outside the city gates and defences, and its thoroughly disordered condition, had left it open to all the raids and attacks of neighbouring nobles, who had found the corrupt and undisciplined monks an easy prey; but they soon discovered that they had in the new abbot a very different antagonist. In these occupations Hildebrand passed several years, establishing his monastery on the strongest foundations of discipline, purity, and faith. Reform was what the Church demanded in almost every detail of its work. Amid the agitation and constant disturbance outside, it had not been possible to keep order within, nor was an abbot who had bought his post likely to attempt it: and a great proportion of the abbots, bishops, and great functionaries of the Church had bought their posts. In the previous generation it had been the rule. It had become natural, and disturbed apparently no man's conscience. A conviction, however, had evidently arisen in the Church, working by what influences we know not, but springing into flame by the action of Hildebrand, and by his Pope Leo, that this state of affairs was monstrous and must come to an end. The same awakening has taken place again and again in the Church as the necessity has unfortunately arisen: and never had it been more necessary than now. Every kind of immorality had been concealed under the austere folds of the monk's robe; the parish priests, especially in Germany, lived with their wives in a calm contempt of all the Church's laws in that respect. This, which to us seems the least of their offences, was not so in the eyes of the new race of Church reformers. They thought it worse than ordinary immoral relations, as counterfeiting and claiming the title of a lawful union; and to the remedy of this great declension from the rule of the Church, and of the still greater scandal of simony, the new Pope's utmost energies were now directed. [Illustration: PYRAMID OF CAIUS CESTIUS.] A very remarkable raid of reformation, which really seems the most appropriate term which could be used, took place accordingly in the first year of Leo IX.'s reign. We do not find Hildebrand mentioned as accompanying him in his travels--probably he was already too deeply occupied with the cleansing out of St. Paul's physically and morally, to leave Rome, of which, besides, he had the care, in all its external as well as spiritual interests, during the Pope's absence: but no doubt he was the chief inspiration of the scheme, and had helped to organise all its details. Something even of the subtle snare in which his own patron Gregory had been caught was in the plan with which Hildebrand, thus gleaning wisdom from suffering, sent forth his Pope. After holding various smaller councils in Italy, Leo crossed the mountains to France, where against the wish of the Emperor, he held a great assembly at Rheims. The nominal occasion of the visit was the consecration of that church of St. Remy, then newly built, which is still one of the glories of a city so rich in architectural wealth. The body of St. Remy was carried, with many wonderful processions, from the monastery where it lay, going round and round the walls of the mediæval town and through its streets with chants and psalms, with banner and cross, until at last it was deposited solemnly on an altar in the new building, now so old and venerable. Half of France had poured into Rheims for this great festival, and followed the steps of the Pope and hampered his progress--for he was again and again unable to proceed from the great throngs that blocked every street. This, however, though a splendid ceremony, and one which evidently made much impression on the multitude, was but the preliminary chapter. After the consecration came a wholly unexpected visitation, the council of Rheims, which was not concerned like most other councils with questions of doctrine, but of justice and discipline. The throne for the Pope was erected in the middle of the nave of the cathedral--not, it need scarcely be said, the late but splendid cathedral now existing--and surrounded in a circle by the seats of the bishops and archbishops. When all were assembled the object of the council was stated--the abolition of simony, and of the usurpation of the priesthood and the altar by laymen, and the various immoral practices which had crept into the shadow of the Church and been tolerated or authorised there. The Pope in his opening address adjured his assembled counsellors to help him to root out those tares which choked the divine grain, and implored them, if any among them had been guilty of the sin of simony, either by sale or purchase of benefices, that he should make a public confession of his sin. Terrible moment for the bishops and other prelates, immersed in all the affairs of their times and no better than other men! The reader after all these centuries can scarcely fail to feel the thrill of alarm, or shame, or abject terror that must have run through that awful sitting as men looked into each other's faces and grew pale. The archbishop of Trèves got up first and declared his hands to be clean, so did the archbishop of Lyons and Besançon. Well for them! But he of Rheims in his own cathedral, he who must have been in the front of everything for these few triumphant days of festival, faltered when his turn came. He begged that the discussion might be adjourned till next day, and that he might be allowed to see the Pope in private before making his explanations. It must have been with a kind of grim benignancy, and awful toleration, that the delay was granted and the inquisition went on, while that great personage, one of the first magnates of the assembly, sat silent, pondering all there was against him and how little he had to say in his defence. The council became more lively after this with accusations and counter-accusations. The bishop of Langres procured the deposition of an abbot in his diocese for immoral conduct; but next day was assailed himself of simony, adultery, and the application of torture in order to extort money. After a day or two of discussion this prelate fled, and was finally excommunicated. Pope Leo was not a man to be trifled with. And so the long line of prelates was gone through with many disastrous consequences as the days ran on. It is less satisfactory to find him easily excommunicating rebels and opponents of the Emperor, whose arms were too successful or their antagonism too important. Even the best of priests and Popes err sometimes--and to have such a weapon as excommunication at hand like a thunderbolt must have been very tempting. Leo at the same time excommunicated also the people of Benevento, who had rebelled against the Emperor, and the archbishop of Ravenna, who was in rebellion against himself. The travels and activity of this Pope on his round of examination and punishment were extraordinary. He appears in one part of Italy after another: in the far south, in the midland plains, holding councils everywhere, deposing bishops, scourging the Church clean. Again he is over the hills in his own country, meeting the Emperor, as active as himself, and almost as earnest in his desire to cleanse the Church of simony--moving here and there, performing all kinds of sacred functions from the celebration of a feast to the excommunication of a city. His last, and as it proved fatal enterprise was an expedition against the Normans, who had got possession of a great part of Southern Italy, and against whom the Pope went, most inappropriately, at the head of an army, made up of the most heterogeneous elements, and which collapsed in face of the enemy. Leo himself either was made prisoner or took refuge in the town of Benevento, which had recently, by a bargain with the Emperor, become the property of the Holy See. Here he was detained for nearly a year, more or less voluntarily, and when, at length, he set out for Rome, with a strong escort of the Normans and every mark of honour, it was with broken health and failing strength. He died shortly after reaching his destination, in his own great church, having caused himself to be carried there as he grew worse; and nothing could be more imposing than the scene of his death, in St. Peter's, which was all hung with black and illuminated with thousands of funeral lights for this great and solemn event. All Rome witnessed his last hours and saw him die. He was one of the great Popes, though he did not fully succeed even in his own appropriate work of Church reform, and failed altogether when he took, unfortunately, sword in hand. Not a word, however, could be said against the purity of his life and motives, and these were universally acknowledged, especially among the Normans against whom he led his unfortunate army, and who worshipped, while probably holding captive, their rash invader. During the eight years of Leo's popedom Hildebrand had been at the head of affairs in Rome, where erring priests and simoniacal bishops had been not less severely brought to book than in other places. He does not seem to have accompanied the Pope on any of his many expeditions; but with the aid of a new brother-in-arms, scarcely less powerful and able than himself, Peter Damian, then abbot of Fontavellona and afterwards bishop of Ostia, did his best under Leo to sweep clean the ecclesiastical world in general as he had swept clean his own church of St. Paul. When Leo died, Hildebrand was one of the three legates sent to consult the Emperor as to the choice of another Pope. This was a long and difficult business, since the susceptibilities of the Romans, anxious to preserve their own real or apparent privilege of election, had to be reconciled with the claims of Henry, who had no idea of yielding them in any way, and who had the power on his side. The selection seems to have been finally made by Hildebrand rather than Henry, and was that of Gebehard, bishop of Aichstadt, another wealthy German prelate, also related to the Emperor. Why he should have consented to accept this mission, however, he who had so strongly declined to follow Leo as the nominee of the Emperor, and made it a condition of his service that the new Pope should go humbly to Rome as a pilgrim to be elected there, is unexplained by any of the historians. It was in the spring of 1055 that after long delays and much waiting, the Roman conclave came back, bringing their Pope with them. But Victor II. was like so many of his German predecessors, short-lived. His reign only lasted two years, the half of which he seems to have spent in Germany. "He was not one who loved the monks," and probably Hildebrand found that he would do but little with one whose heart would seem to have remained on the other side of _i monti_--as the Alps are continually called. No second ambassador was sent to the Imperial Court for a successor: for in the fateful year 1056 the Emperor also died, preceding Victor to the grave by a few months. Without pausing to consult the German Court, with a haste which proves their great anxiety to reassert themselves, the Roman clergy and people elected Frederick, abbot of Monte Cassino and brother of the existing prince of Tuscany--Gottfried of Lorraine, the second husband of Beatrice of Tuscany and step-father of Matilda the actual heir to that powerful duchy. Perhaps a certain desire to cling to the only power in Italy which could at all protect them against an irritated Imperial Court mingled with this choice: but it was a perfectly natural and worthy one. Frederick, unfortunately, lived but a few months, disappointing many hopes. He had sent Hildebrand to the Imperial Court to explain and justify his election, but when he found his health beginning to give way, a sort of panic seems to have seized him, and collecting round him all the representatives of priests and people who could be gathered together, he made them swear on pain of excommunication to elect no successor until the return of Hildebrand. He died at Florence shortly after. There is something monotonous in these brief records: a great turmoil almost reaching the length of a convulsion for the choice, and then a short and agitated span, a year or two, sometimes only a month or two, and all is over and the new Pope goes to rejoin the long line of his predecessors. It was not, either, that these were old men, such as have so often been chosen in later days, venerable fathers of the Church whose age brought them nearer to the grave than the throne:--they were all men in the flower of their age, likely according to all human probability to live long. It was not wonderful if the German bishops were afraid of that dangerous elevation which seemed to carry with it an unfailing fate. Hildebrand was at the German Court when this sad news reached him. He was in the position, fascinating to most men--and he was not superior to others in this respect--of confidant and counsellor to a princess in the interesting position of a young widow, with a child, upon whose head future empire had already thrown its shadow. The position of the Empress Agnes was, no doubt, one of the most difficult which a woman could be called on to occupy, surrounded by powerful princes scarcely to be kept in subjection by the Emperor, who was so little more than their equal, though their sovereign--and altogether indisposed to accept the supremacy of a woman. There is nothing in which women have done so well in the world as in the great art of government, but the Empress Agnes was not one of that kind. She had to fall back upon the support of the clergy in the midst of the rude circle of potentates with whom she had to contend, and the visit of Hildebrand with his lofty views, his great hopes, his impetuous determination to vanquish evil with good, though not perhaps in the way recommended by the Apostles, was no doubt a wonderful refreshment and interest to her in the midst of all her struggles. But it was like a thunderbolt bursting at their feet to hear of the death of Frederick--(among the Popes Stephen IX.): and the swiftly following outburst in Rome when, in a moment, in the absence of any spirit strong enough to control them, the old methods were put into operation, and certain of the Roman nobles ever ready to take advantage of an opportunity--with such supporters within the city as terror or bribes could secure them, taking the people by surprise--procured the hurried election of a Pope without any qualifications for the office. Nothing could be more dramatic than the entire episode. A young Count of Tusculum, a stronghold seated amid the ruins of the old Roman city, above Frascati, one of a family who then seem to have occupied the position afterwards held by the Orsinis and Colonnas, was the leader of this conspiracy and the candidate was a certain Mincio, Bishop of Velletri, a member of the same family. The description in Muratori's _Annals_ though brief is very characteristic. "Gregorio, son of Albanio Count Tusculano, of Frascati, along with some other powerful Romans, having gained by bribes a good part of the clergy and people, rushed by night, with a party of armed followers, into the Church of St. Peter, and there, with much tumult, elected Pope, Giovanni, Bishop of Velletri, afterwards called Mincio (a word perhaps drawn from the French _Mince_ and which probably was the original of the phrase now used _Minciono, Minchione_), who assumed the name of Benedict X. He was a man entirely devoid of letters." The sudden raid in the night, all Rome silent and asleep, except the disturbed and hastily awakened streets by which the party had entered from across the Campagna and their robber fortress among the ruins of the classic Tusculum, makes a most curious and dramatic picture. The conspirators had among them certain so-called representatives of the people, with a few abbots who felt their seats insecure under a reforming Pope, and a few priests very desirous of shutting out all new and disturbing authority. They gathered hastily in the church which suddenly shone out into the darkness with flare of torch and twinkle of taper, while the intruder, _Mincio_, a lean and fantastic bishop, with affectations of pose and attitude such as his nickname implies, was hurried to the altar by his rude patrons and attendants. He was consecrated by the terrified archpriest of Ostia, upon whom the Frascati party had somewhere laid violent hands, and who faltered through the office half stupefied by fear. It was the privilege of the Bishop of Ostia to be the officiating prelate at the great solemnity of a Pope's consecration. When he could not be had the careless and profane barons no doubt thought his subordinate would do very well instead. The news was received, however, though with horror, yet with a dignified self-restraint by the Imperial Court. Hildebrand set out at once for Florence to consult with the Sovereigns there, a royal family of great importance in the history of Italy, consisting of the widowed duchess Beatrice, her second husband Gottfried of Lorraine, and her young daughter Matilda, the actual heiress of the principality, all staunch supporters of the Church and friends of Hildebrand. That he should take the command of affairs at this sudden crisis seems to have been taken for granted on all sides. A council of many bishops "both German and Italian" was called together in Sienna, where it was met by a deputation from Rome, begging that fit steps might be taken to meet the emergency, and a legitimate Pope elected. The choice of this Council fell upon the Bishop of Florence, "who for wisdom and a good life was worthy of such a sublime dignity;" and the new Pope was escorted to Rome by a strong band of Tuscan soldiers powerful enough to put down all tumult or rebellion in the city. The expedition paused at Sutri, a little town, just within the bounds of the papal possessions, which had already on that account been the scene of the confusing and painful council which dethroned Gregory VI. to destroy the strongholds of the Counts of Tusculum near that spot, and make an end of their power. Mincio, however, poor fantastic shadow, had no heart to confront a duly elected Pope, or the keen eye of Hildebrand, and abdicated at once his ill-gotten power. His vague figure so sarcastically indicated has a certain half-comic, half-rueful effect, appearing amid all these more important forms and things, first in the dazzle of the midnight office, and afterwards in a hazy twilight of obscurity, stealing off, to be seen no more, except by the keen country folk and townsmen of his remote bishopric who, _burlando_--jesting as one is glad to hear they were able to do amid all their tumults and troubles--gave him his nickname, and thus sent down to posterity the fantastic vision of the momentary Pope with his mincing ways--no bad anti-pope though as Benedict X. he holds a faint footing in the papal roll--but a historical _burla_, a mediæval joke, not without its power to relieve the grave chronicle of the time. The tumultuous public of Rome, which did not care very much either way, yet felt this election of the Pope to be its one remaining claim to importance, murmured and grumbled its best about the interference of Tuscany, a neighbour more insulting, when taking upon herself airs of mastery, than a distant and vaguely magnificent Emperor; and there was an outcry against Hildebrand, who had erected "a new idol" in concert with Beatrice and without the consent of the Romans. But it was in reality Hildebrand himself who now came to reign under the shadow of another insignificant and short-lived Pope. Nicolas II. and Alexander II. who followed were but the formal possessors of power; the true sway was henceforth in the hands of the ever-watchful monk, Cardinal-archdeacon, deputy and representative of the Holy See. It is one of the few instances to be found in the records of the world of that elevation of the man who _can_--so strongly preached by Carlyle--to the position which is his natural right. While Hildebrand had been scouring the world, an adventurous young monk, passing _i monti_ recklessly as the young adventurer now crosses the Atlantic, more times than could be counted--while he was, with all the zeal of his first practical essay in reform, cleaning out his stable at St. Paul's, making his presence to be felt in the expenditure and revenues of Rome--there had been, as we have seen, Pope after Pope in the seat of the Apostle, most of them worthy enough, one at least, Leo IX., heroic in effort and devotion--but none of them born to guide the Church through a great crisis. The hour and the man had now come. It was not long before the presence of a new and great legislator became clearly visible. One of the first acts of Hildebrand, acting under Nicolas, was to hold a council in Rome in 1059, at which many things of importance were decided. The reader will want no argument to prove that there was urgent need of an established and certain rule for the election of the Popes, a necessity constantly recurring and giving rise to a continual struggle. It had been the privilege of the Roman clergy and people; it had become a prerogative of the Emperors; it was exercised by both together, the one satisfying itself with a fictitious co-operation and assent to what the other did, but neither contented, and every vacancy the cause of a bitter and often disgraceful struggle. The nominal election by the clergy and people was a rule impossible, and meant only the temporary triumph of the party which was strongest or wealthiest for the moment, and could best pay for the most sweet voices of the crowd, or best overawe and cow their opponents. On the other hand, the action of the secular power, the selection or at least nomination of a Pope--with armies behind, if necessary, to carry out his choice--by the Emperor across the Alps, was a transaction subject to those ordinary secular laws, which induce a superior in whatever region of affairs to choose the man who is likely to be most serviceable to himself and his interests--interests which were very different from those which are the objects of the Church. No man had seen the dangers and difficulties of this divided and inconsistent authority more than Hildebrand, and his determination to establish a steadfast and final method for the choice and election of the first great official of the Church was both wise and reasonable. Perhaps it was not without thought of the expediency of breaking away from all precedents, and thus preparing the way for a new method, that he had, apparently on his own authority, transferred in a manner, what we may call the patronage of the Holy See, to Tuscany. The moment was propitious for such a change, for there was no Emperor, the heir of Henry III. being still a child and his mother not powerful enough to interfere. [Illustration: TRINITA DE MONTI.] The new law introduced by Hildebrand and passed by the council was much the same in its general regulations as that which still exists. There was no solemn mysterious Conclave, and the details were more simple; but the rules of election were virtually the same. The Cardinal-bishops made their choice first, which they then submitted to the other Cardinals of lower rank. If both were agreed the name of the Pope-elect was submitted to the final judgment of the people, no doubt a mere formula. This, we believe, is nominally still the last step of the procedure. The name is submitted, _i.e._, announced to the eager crowd in St. Peter's who applaud, which is all that is required of them: and all is done. This decree was passed _salvo debito honore et reverentia delecti filii nostri Henrici_, a condition skilfully guarded by the promise to award the same honour (that is, of having a voice in the election) to those of his successors to whom the Holy See shall have personally accorded the same right. It was thus the Holy See which honoured the Emperors by according them a privilege, not the Emperors who had any right to nominate, much less elect, to the Holy See. Other measures of great importance for the purification and internal discipline of the Church were made law by this council, which was held in April 1059, the year of the accession of Nicolas II.; but none of such fundamental importance as this, or so bold in their claim of spiritual independence. Hildebrand must by this time have been in the very height of life, a man of forty or so, already matured by much experience and beginning to systematise and regulate the dreams and plans of his youth. He must have known by this time fully what he wanted and what was, or at least ought to be, his mission in the world. It is very doubtful, however, we think, whether that mission appeared to him what it has appeared to all the historians since--a deep-laid and all-overwhelming plan for the establishment of the Papacy on such a pinnacle as never crowned head had attained. His purposes as understood by himself were first the cleansing of the Church--the clearing out of all the fleshly filth which had accumulated in it, as in his own noble Basilica, rendering it useless, hiding its beauty: and second the destruction of that system of buying and selling which went on in the Holy Temple--worse than money-changing and selling of doves, the sale of the very altars to any unworthy person who could pay for them. These were his first and greatest purposes--to make the Church pure and to make her free, as perhaps she never has been, as perhaps, alas, she never will wholly be: but yet the highest aim for every true churchman to pursue. [Illustration: ARCH OF TITUS. _To face page 208._] These purposes were elevated and enlarged in his mind by the noble and beautiful thought of thus preparing and developing the one great disinterested power in the world, with nothing to gain, which should arbitrate in every quarrel, and adjust contending claims and bring peace on earth, instead of the clashing of swords; the true work of the successor of Peter, Christ's Vicar in the world. This was not a dream of Hildebrand alone. Three hundred years later the great soul of Dante still dreamt of that Papa Angelico, the hope of ages, who might one day arise and set all things right. Hildebrand was not of the Angelical type. He was not that high priest made of benign charity, and love for all men--of whom the mediæval sages mused. But who will say that his dream, too, was not of the noblest or his ideal less magnanimous and great? Such an arbiter was wanted--what words could say how much?--in all those troubled and tumultuous kingdoms which were struggling against each other, overcoming and being overcome, always in disorder, carrying out their human fate with a constant accompaniment of human groans and sufferings and tears--one who would set all things right, who would judge the cause of the poor and friendless, who would have power to pull down a tyrant and erect with blessing and honour a new throne of justice in his dishonoured place. Have we less need of a Papa Angelico now? But unfortunately,[1] we have lost faith in the possibility of him, which is a fate which befalls so many high ideals from age to age. Did Hildebrand, a proud man and strong, a man full of ambition, full of the consciousness of great powers--did he long to grasp the reins of the universe in his own hand? to drive the chariots of the sun, to direct everything, to rule everything, to be more than a king, and hold Emperors trembling before him? It is very possible: in every great spirit, until fully disenchanted, something of this desire must exist. But that it was not a plan of ambition only, but a great ideal which it seemed to him well worth a man's life to carry out, there can, we think, be no reasonable doubt. Thus he began his reign, in reality, though not by title, in Rome. The cloisters were cleansed and the integrity of the Church vindicated, though not by any permanent process, but one that had to be repeated again and again in every chapter of her history. The Popes were elected after a few stormy experiments in the manner he had decreed, and the liberty of election established and protected--even to some extent and by moments, his Papacy, that wonderful institution answered to his ideal, and promised to fulfil his dream: until the time came common to all men, when hope became failure, and he had to face the dust and mire of purpose overthrown. But in the meantime no such thoughts were in his mind as he laboured with all the exhilaration of capacity, and with immense zeal and pains, at his own affairs, which meant in those days to the Archdeacon of Rome the care of all the Churches. The letters of the Pope in Council which carried the addition of the name of that humblest of his sons and servants, Hildebrand, bore the commands of such a sovereign as Hildebrand dreamt of, to bishops and archbishops over all the world. Here is one of these epistles. Although several unfavourable reports have reached the Apostolic See in respect to your Fraternity which cannot be rejected without inquiry--as, for example, that you have favoured our enemies, and have neglected pontifical ordinances: yet as you have defended yourself from these accusations by the testimony of a witness of weight and have professed fidelity to St. Peter, we are disposed to pass over these reports and to hope that the testimony in your favour is true. Therefore take care in future so to live, that your enemies shall have no occasion to sadden us on your account. Exert yourself to fulfil the hopes which the Apostolical See has formed of you: reprimand, entreat and warn your glorious king that he may not be corrupted by the counsels of the wicked, who hope under cover of our own troubles to elude Apostolic condemnation. Let him take care how he resists the sacred canons, or rather St. Peter himself, thereby rousing our wrath against him, who rather desire to love him as the apple of our eye. These were high words to be said to a dubious, not well-assured archbishop, occupying a very high place in the Church and powerful for good or for evil: but Hildebrand did not mince matters, whatever he might have to say. Meanwhile the good Pope, Nicolas, went on with his charities while his Cardinal Archdeacon thundered in his name. He went, in the end of his life, with his court on a visit to the Normans, who had now, for some time--since they defeated Pope Leo before the gates of Benevento and came under the charm of papal influence, though in the person of their prisoner--become the most devout and generous servants of the Papacy: which indeed granted them titles to the sovereignty of any chance principality they might pick up--which was a good equivalent. When the troops of Guiscard escorted his Holiness back to Rome they were so obliging as to destroy a castle or two of those robber nobles who infested all the roads and robbed the pilgrims, and were, in the midst of all greater affairs, like a nest of venomous wasps about the ears of the Roman statesmen and legislators--especially those of the ever turbulent family of Tusculum, the Counts of Frascati, who kept watch afar upon the northern gates and every pilgrim path. This Pope died soon after in 1061 in Florence, his former episcopal see, which he often revisited and loved. And now came the opportunity for Hildebrand to carry out his own bold law, and elect at once, by the now legal methods, a new head to the Church. But his coadjutors probably had not his own courage: and though bold enough under his inspiration to pass that law, hesitated to carry it out. It is said, too, that in Rome itself there was the strong opposition of a German party really attached to the imperial order, or convinced that without the strong backing of the empire the Church could not stand. Reluctantly Hildebrand consented to send a messenger to consult the imperial court, where strong remonstrances and appeals were at once presented by the Germans and Lombards who were as little desirous of having an Italian Pope over them as the Romans were of a Teutonic one. The Empress Agnes had been alarmed probably by rumours in the air of her removal from the regency. She had been alienated from Hildebrand by the reports of his enemies, and no doubt made to believe that the rights of her son must suffer if any innovation was permitted. She forgot her usual piety in her panic, and would not so much as receive Hildebrand's messenger, who, alone of all the many deputations arriving on the same errand, was left five days (or seven) waiting at the gates of the Palace--"For seven days he waited in the antechamber of the king," says Muratori--while the others were admitted and listened to. This was too much for Hildebrand, to whom his envoy, Cardinal Stefano, returned full of exasperation, as was natural. The Cardinals with timidity, but sustained by Hildebrand's high courage and determination, then proceeded to the election, which was duly confirmed by the people assembled in St. Peter's, and therefore perfectly legal according to the latest law. We are told much, however, of the excited state of Rome during the election, and of the dislike of the people to the horde of monks, many of them mendicant, and even more or less vagabond, who were let loose upon the city, electioneering agents of the most violent kind, filling the streets and churches with clamour. This wild army, obnoxious to the citizens, was at Hildebrand's devotion, and prejudiced more than they promoted, his views among the crowd. "Here returned to the Romans," says Muratori, whose right to speak on such a subject will not be doubted, "complete freedom in the election of the Popes, with the addition of not even awaiting the consent of the Emperors for their consecration; an independence ever maintained since, down to our own days." This daring act made a wonderful revolution in the politics of Rome: it was the first erection of her standard of independence. The Church had neither troops nor vassals upon whom she could rely, and to defy thus openly the forces of the Empire was a tremendous step to take. Nor was it only from Germany that danger threatened. Lombardy and all the north of Italy was, with the exception of Tuscany, in arms against the audacious monk. Only those chivalrous savages of Normans, who, however, were as good soldiers as any Germans, could be calculated on as faithful to the Holy See: and Godfried of Tuscany stood between Rome and her enemies _fidelissimo_, ready to ward off any blow. The election passed over quietly, and Alexander II. (Anselm the Bishop of Lucca) took his place, every particular of his assumption of the new dignity being carefully carried through as though in times of deepest peace. In Germany, however, the news produced a great sensation and tumult. A Diet was held at Bâle, for the coronation in the first place of the young king Henry, now twelve years old--but still more for the immediate settlement of this unheard-of revolt. When that ceremonial was over the court proceeded to the choice of a Pope with a contemptuous indifference to the proceedings in Rome. This anti-pope has no respect from history. He is said by one authority to have been chosen because his evil life made him safe against any such fury of reform as that which made careless prelate and priest fall under the rod of Hildebrand on every side. Muratori, whose concise little sentences are always so refreshing after the redundancy of the monkish chronicles, is very contemptuous of this pretender, whose name was Cadalous or Cadulo, an undistinguished and ill-sounding name. "The anti-pope Cadaloo or Cadalo occupied himself all the winter of this year" (says Muratori) "in collecting troops and money, in order to proceed to Rome to drive out the legitimate successor of St. Peter and to have himself consecrated there. Some suppose that he had already been ordained Pope, and had assumed the name of Honorius II., but there is no proof of this. And if he did not change his name it is a sign that he had never been consecrated." Other authorities boldly give him the title of Honorius II.: but he is generally called the anti-pope Cadalous in history. A conflict immediately arose between the two parties. Cadalous, at the head of an army appeared before Rome, but not till after Hildebrand had placed his Pope, who was for the moment less strong than the Emperor's Pope, in Tuscany under the protection of Beatrice and her husband Godfried. Then followed a stormy time of marches and countermarches round and about the city, in which sometimes the invaders were successful and sometimes the defenders. At length the Tuscans came to the rescue with the two Countesses in their midst who were always so faithful in their devotion to Hildebrand, Beatrice in the maturity of her beauty and influence, and the young Matilda, the real sovereign of the Tuscan states, fifteen years old, radiant in hope and enthusiasm and stirring up the spirits of the Florentines and Tuscan men at arms. Cadalous withdrew from that encounter making such terms as he could with Godfried, with many prayers and large presents, so that he was allowed to escape to Parma his bishopric, _testa bassa_. Yet the records are not very clear on these points, Muratori tells us. Doubts are thrown on the loyalty of Duke Godfried. He is said to have invited the Normans to come to the help of the Pope, and then invaded their territories, which was not a very knightly proceeding: but there is no appearance at this particular moment of the Normans, or any force but that of the Tuscan army with young Countess Matilda and her mother flashing light and courage into the ranks. The anti-pope, if he deserved that title, did not trouble the legitimate authorities long. He was suddenly dropped by the Germans in the excitement of a revolution, originating in the theft of little Henry the boy-monarch, whom the Bishop of Cologne stole from his mother Agnes, as it became long afterwards a pleasant device of state to carry off from their mothers the young fatherless Jameses of Scots history. Young Henry was run away with in the same way, and Agnes humiliated and cast off by the Teutonic nobility, who forgot all about such a trifle as a Pope in the heat of their own affairs. It was only when this matter was settled that a council was held in Cologne by the archbishop who had been the chief agent in the abduction of Henry, and was now first in power. Of this council there seems no authoritative record. It is only by the answer to its deliberations published by Peter Damian in which, as is natural, that able controversialist has an easy victory over the other side--that anything is known of it. Whether Cadalous was formerly deposed by this council is not known: but he was dropped by the authorities of the Empire which had a similar result. Notwithstanding, this rash pretender made one other vain attempt to seize the papal throne, being encouraged by various partisans in Rome itself, by whose means he got possession of St. Peter's, where the unfortunate man remained for one troubled night, making such appeals to God and to his supporters as may be imagined, and furtively performing the various offices of the nocturnal service, perhaps not without a sense of profanation in the minds of those who had stolen into the great darkness and silence of the Basilica to meet him, with a political rather than a devotional intention. Next day all Rome heard the news, and rising seized its arms and drove his handful of defenders out of the city. Cadalous was taken by one of his supporters, Cencio or Vincencio "son of the præfect" to St. Angelo, where he held out against the Romans for the space of two years, suffering many privations; and thence escaping on pain of his life after other adventures, disappears into the darkness to be seen no more. This first distinct conflict between Rome and the Empire was the beginning of the long-continued struggle which tore Italy asunder for generations--the strife of the two parties called Guelfs and Ghibellines, the one for the Empire, the other for the Church, with all the ramifications of that great question. The year in which Cadalous first appeared in Rome, which was the year 1062, was also distinguished by a very different visitor. The Empress Agnes deprived of her son, shorn of her power, had nothing more to do among the subject princes who had turned against her. She determined, as dethroned monarchs are apt to do, to cast off the world which had rejected her, and came to Rome, to beg pardon of the Pope and find a refuge for herself out of the noise and tumult. She had been in Rome once before, a young wife in all the pomp and pride of empire, conducted through its streets in the midst of a splendid procession, with her husband to be crowned. The strongest contrasts pleased the fancy of these days. She entered Rome the second time as a penitent in a black robe, and mounted upon the sorriest horse--"it was not to call a horse, but like a beast of burden, a donkey, no bigger than an ass." It is a curious sign of humiliation and accompanying elevation of mind, but this is not the first time that we have heard of a pilgrim entering Rome on a miserable hack, as if that were the highest sign of humility. She was received with enthusiasm, notwithstanding her late actions of hostility, and soon the walls of many churches were radiant with the spoils of her imperial toilettes, brocades of gold and silver encrusted with jewels, and wonders of rich stuffs which even Peter Damian with his accomplished pen finds it difficult to describe. "She laid down everything, destroyed everything, in order to become, in her deprivation yet freedom, the bride of Christ." We are not told if Agnes entered a convent or only lived the life of a religious person in her own house; but she had the frequent company of Hildebrand and Peter Damian, and of the Bishop of Como, who seems to have been devoted to her service; and perhaps like other penitents was not so badly off in her humility, thus delivered out of all the tumults against which she had so vainly attempted to make head for years. [Illustration: THE VILLA BORGHESE.] While these smaller affairs--for even the anti-pope never seems to have been really dangerous to Rome notwithstanding his many efforts to disturb the peace of the Church--the world of Christendom which surrounded that one steady though constantly contested throne of the papacy, was in commotion everywhere. It seems strange to speak in one breath of Hildebrand's great and noble ideal of a throne always standing for righteousness, and of a sacred monarch supreme and high above all worldly motives, dispensing justice and peace: and in the next to confess his perfect acquiescence in, and indeed encouragement of, the undertaking of William the Conqueror, so manifest an act of tyranny and robbery, and interference with the rights of an independent nation, an undertaking only different from those of the brigands from Tusculum and other robber castles who swept the roads to Rome, by the fact of its much higher importance and its complete success. The Popes had sanctioned the raids of the Normans in Italy, and confirmed to them by legal title the possessions which they had taken by the strong hand: with perhaps a conviction that one strong rule was better than the perpetual bloodshed of the frays between the existing races--the duke here, the marquis there, all seeking their own, and no man thinking of his neighbour's or his people's advantage. But the internal discords of England were too far off to secure the observation of the Pope, and the mere fact of Harold's renunciation in favour of William, though it seems so specious a pretence to us, was to the eyes of the priests by far the most important incident in the matter, a vow taken at the altar and which therefore the servants of the altar were bound to see carried out. These two reasons however were precisely such as show the disadvantage of that grand papal ideal which was burning in Hildebrand's brain; for a Pope, with a sacred authority to set up and pull down, should never be too far off to understand the full rights of any question were it in the remotest parts of the earth: and should be far above the possibility of having his judgment confused by a foregone ecclesiastical prejudice in favour of an unjust vow. Hildebrand however not only gave William, in his great stroke for an empire, the tremendous support of the Pope's authority but backed him up in many of his most high-handed and arbitrary proceedings against the Saxon prelates and rich abbeys which the Conqueror spoiled at his pleasure. It must not be forgotten, in respect to these latter spoliations, that the internal war which was raging in the Church all over the world, between the new race of reformers and the mass of ordinary clergy--who had committed many ecclesiastical crimes, who sometimes even had married and were comfortable in the enjoyment of a sluggish toleration, or formed connections that were winked at by a contemptuously sympathetic world; or who had bought their benefices great and small, through an entangled system of gifts, graces, and indulgences, as well as by the boldest simony--made every kind of revolution within the Church possible, and produced endless depositions and substitutions on every side. When, as we have seen, the bishop of a great continental see in the centre of civilisation could be turned out remorselessly from his bishopric on conviction of any of these common crimes and forced into the Cloister to amend his ways and end his life, it is scarcely likely that more consideration would be shown for an unknown prelate far away across the Northern seas, though it would seem to be insubordination rather than any ecclesiastical vice with which the Saxon clergy were chiefly charged. This first instance however of the papal right to sanction revolution, and substitute one claimant for another as the selection of Heaven, is perhaps the strongest proof that could be found of the impossibility of that ideal, and of the tribunal thus set up over human thrones and human rights. The papal see was thus drawn in to approve and uphold one of the most bloody invasions and one of the most cruel conquests ever known--and did so with a confidence and certainty, in an ignorance, and with a bias, which makes an end of all those lofty pretensions to perfect impartiality and a judgment beyond all influences of passion which alone could justify its existence. A great change had come over the firmament since the days when Leo IX. cleansed the Church at Rheims, and held that wonderful Council which set down so many of the mighty from their seats. Henry III., the enemy of simony, was dead, and the world had changed. As we shall often have occasion to remark, the papal rule of justice and purity was strong and succeeded--so long as the forces of the secular powers agreed with it. But when, as time went on, the Church found itself in conflict with these secular powers, a very different state of affairs ensued. The action of Rome in opposition to the young Henry IV., was as legitimate as had been its general agreement with, and approval of, his predecessor. The youth of this monarch had developed into ways very different from those of his father, and under his long minority all the evils which Henry III. had honestly set his face against, reappeared in full force. Whether it was his removal from the natural and at least pure government of his mother, or from his native disposition which no authority or training had a chance in such circumstances of repressing, the young Henry grew up dissolute and vicious, and his court was the centre of a wild and disorganised society. Married at twenty, it was not very long before he tried by the most disreputable means to get rid of his young wife, and failing in that, called, or procured to be called by a complaisant archbishop, a council, in order to rid him of her. Rome lost no time in sending off to this council as legate, Peter Damian whose gift of speech was so unquestionable that he could even on occasion make the worse appear the better cause. But his cause in the present case was excellent, and his eloquence no less so, and he had all that was prudent as well as all that was wise and good in Germany on his side, notwithstanding the complaisance of the priests. The legate remonstrated, exhorted, threatened. The thing Henry desired was a thing unworthy of a Christian, it was a fatal example to the world; finally no power on earth would induce the Pope, whose hands alone could confer that consecration, to crown as Roman Emperor a man who had sinned so flagrantly against the laws of God. The great German nobles added practical arguments not less urgent in their way; and Henry surrounded on all sides with warnings was forced to give way. But this downfall for the moment had little effect on the behaviour of the young potentate, and his vices were such that his immediate vassals in his own country were on the point of universal rebellion, no man's castle or goods or wife or daughter being safe. The Church, which his father had given so much care and pains to cleanse and purify, sank again into the rankest simony, every stall in a cathedral, and cure in a bishopric selling like articles of merchandise. It was time in the natural course of affairs when the young monarch attained the full age of manhood that he should be promoted to the final dignity of emperor, and consecrated as such--a rite which only the Pope could perform: and no doubt it was with a full consciousness of the power thus resting with the Holy See, as well as in consequence of numerous informal but eager appeals to the Pope against the ever-increasing evils of his sway that Hildebrand proceeded to take such a step as had never been ventured on before by the boldest of Churchmen. He summoned Henry formally to appear before the papal court and defend himself against the accusations brought against him. "For the heresy of simony," says the papal letter, this being the great ecclesiastical crime which came immediately under the cognizance of the Pope. This citation addressed to the greatest monarch then existing, and by a power but barely escaped from his authority and still owing to him a certain allegiance, was enough to thrill the world from end to end. Such a thing had never happened in the knowledge of man. But before we begin so much as to hear of the effect produced, the Pope who had, nominally at least, issued the summons, the good and saintly Alexander II., after holding the papacy for twelve years, died on the 21st of April, 1073. His reign for that time had been to a great degree the reign of Hildebrand, the ever watchful, ever laborious archdeacon, who, let the Pope travel as he liked--and his expeditions through Italy were many--was always vigilant at his post, always in the centre of affairs, with eyes and ears open to everything, and a mind always intent on its purpose. Hildebrand's great idea of the position and duties of the Holy See had developed much in those twelve years. It had begun to appear a fact, in the eyes of those especially who had need of its support. The Normans everywhere believed and trusted in it, with good secular reason for so doing, and they were at the moment a great power in the earth, especially in Italy. If it had not already acquired an importance and force in the thoughts of men, more subtle and less easy to obtain than external power, it would have been impossible for the boldest to launch forth a summons to the greatest king of Christendom the future Emperor. Already the first step towards that great visionary sway, of which poets and sages, as well as ecclesiastics, so long had dreamed, had been made. Hildebrand had been virtually at the head of affairs since the year 1055, when he had brought across the Alps Victor II. chosen by himself, whose acts and policy were his. He might have attained the papacy in his own right on more than one occasion had he been so minded, but had persistently held back from the rank while keeping the power. But now humility would have been cowardice, and in the face of the tremendous contest which he had invited no other course was possible to him save to assume the full responsibility. Even before the ceremonies of the funeral of the Pope were completed, while Alexander lay in state, there was a rush of the people and priests to the church of the Lateran, where Hildebrand was watching by the bier, shouting "Hildebrand! The blessed St. Peter has elected Hildebrand." A strange scene of mingled enthusiasm and excitement broke the funereal silence in the great solemn church, amid its forest of columns all hung with black, and glittering with the silver ornaments which are appropriate to mourning, while still the catafalque upon which the dead Pope lay rose imposing before the altar. Hildebrand, startled, was about to ascend the pulpit to address the people, but was forestalled by an eager bishop who hurried into it before him, to make solemn announcement of the event. "The Archdeacon is the man who, since the time of the holy Pope Leo, has by his wisdom and experience contributed most to the exaltation of the Church, and has delivered this town from great danger," he cried. The people responded by shouts of "St. Peter has chosen Hildebrand!" We all know how entirely fallacious is this manner of testing the sentiment of a people; but yet it was the ancient way, the method adopted in those earlier times when every Christian was a tried and tested man, having himself gone through many sufferings for the faith. It appears that Hildebrand hesitated, which seems strange in such a man; one who, if ever man there was, had the courage of his opinions and was not likely to shrink from the position he himself had created; and it is almost incredible that he should have sent a sort of appeal, as Muratori states, to Henry himself--the very person whom he had so boldly summoned before the tribunal of the Church--requesting him to withhold his sanction from the election. Muratori considers the evidence dubious, we are glad to see, for this strange statement. At all events, after a momentary hesitation Hildebrand yielded to the entreaties of the people. The decree in which his election is recorded is absolutely simple in its narrative. "The day of the burial of our lord, the Pope Alexander II. (22nd April, 1073), we being assembled in the Basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli,[2] members of the holy Roman Church catholic and apostolic, cardinals, bishops, clerks, acolytes, sub-deacons, deacons, priests--in presence of the venerable bishops and abbots, by consent of the monks, and accompanied by the acclamations of a numerous crowd of both sexes and of divers orders, we elect as pastor and sovereign pontiff a man of religion, strong in the double knowledge of things human and divine, the love of justice and equity, brave in misfortune, moderate in good fortune, and following the words of the apostle, a good man, chaste, modest, temperate, hospitable, ruling well his own house, nobly trained and instructed from his childhood in the bosom of the Church, promoted by the merit of his life to the highest rank in the Church, the Archdeacon Hildebrand, whom, for the future and for ever, we choose; and we name him Gregory, Pope. Will you have him? Yes, we will have him. Do you approve our act? Yes, we approve." Nothing can be more graphic than this straightforward document, and nothing could give a clearer or more picturesque view of the primitive popular election. The wide-reaching crowd behind, women as well as men, a most remarkable detail, filled to its very doors the long length of the Basilica. The little group of cardinals and their followers made a glow of colour in the midst: the mass of clergy in the centre of the great nave lighted up by bishops and abbots in their distinctive dresses and darkening into the surrounding background of almost innumerable monks: while the whole assembly listened breathless to this simple yet stately declaration, few understanding the words, though all knew the meaning, the large Latin phrases rolling over their heads: until it came to that well-known name of Hildebrand--Ildebrando--which woke a sudden storm of shouts and outcries. Will you have this man? Yes, we will have him! Do you approve? _Approviamo! Approviamo!_ shouted and shrieked the crowd. So were the elections made in Venice long years after, under the dim arches of St. Marco; but Venice was still a straggling village, fringing a lagoon, when this great scene took place. [Illustration: WHERE THE GHETTO STOOD.] Hildebrand was at this time a man between fifty and sixty, having spent the last eighteen years of his life in the control and management of the affairs of Rome. He was a small, spare man of the most abstemious habits, allowing himself as few indulgences in the halls of the Lateran as in a monastic cell. His fare was vegetables, although he was no vegetarian in our modern sense of the word, but ate that food to mortify the flesh and for no better reason. Not long before he made the rueful, and to us comic, confession that he had "ended by giving up leeks and onions, having scruples on account of their flavour, which was agreeable to him." Scruple could scarcely go further in respect to the delights of this world. We are glad however that he who was now the great Pope Gregory denied himself that onion. It was a dignified act and sacrifice to the necessities of his great position. FOOTNOTES: [1] It is touching and pathetic to divine, in the present Pope, something of that visionary and disinterested ambition, that longing to bless and help the universe, which was in those dreams of the mediæval mind, prompted by a great pity, and a love that is half divine. Leo XIII. is too wise a man to dream of temporal power restored, though he is a martyr to the theory of it: but there would seem to be in his old age which makes it impossible if nothing else did, a trembling consciousness of capacity to be in himself a Papa Angelico, and gather us all under his wings. [2] It is supposed by some from this that the election took place in this church and not in the Lateran; but that is contradicted by Gregory himself, who says it took place in Ecclesia S. Salvatoris, a name frequently used for the Lateran. Bowden suggests that "at the close of the tumultuous proceedings in the Lateran the cardinal clergy" may have "adjourned to St. Peter ad Vincula formally to ratify and register the election." [Illustration: FROM SAN GREGORIO MAGNO.] CHAPTER III. THE POPE GREGORY VII. The career of Hildebrand up to the moment in which he ascended the papal throne could scarcely be called other than a successful one. He had attained many of his aims. He had awakened the better part of the Church to a sense of the vices that had grown up in her midst, purified in many quarters the lives of her priests, and elevated the mind and ideal of Christendom. But bad as the vices of the clergy were, the ruling curse of simony was worse, to a man whose prevailing dream and hope was that of a great power holding up over all the world the standards of truth and righteousness in the midst of the wrongs and contentions of men. A poor German priest holding fast in his distant corner by the humble wife or half-permitted female companion at whose presence law and charity winked, was indeed a dreadful thought, meaning dishonour and sacrilege to the austere monk; but the bishops and archbishops over him who were so little different from the fierce barons, their kin and compeers, who had procured their benefices by the same intrigues, the same tributes and subserviences, the same violence, by which these barons in many cases held their fiefs, how was it possible that such men could hold the balance of justice, and promote peace and purity and the reign of God over the world? That they should help in any way in that great mission which the new Pope felt himself to have received from the Head of the Church was almost beyond hope. They vexed his soul wherever he turned, men with no motive, no inspiration beyond that of their fellows, ready to scheme and struggle for the aggrandisement of the Church, if you will--for the increase of their own greatness and power and those of the corporations subject to them: but as little conscious of that other and holier ambition, that hope and dream of a reign of righteousness, as were their fellows and brethren, the dukes and counts, the fighting men, the ambitious princes of Germany and Lombardy. Until the order of chiefs and princes of the Church could be purified, Hildebrand had known, and Gregory felt to the bottom of his heart, that nothing effectual could be done. The Cardinal Archdeacon of Rome, under Popes less inspired than himself--who were, however, if not strong enough to originate, at least acquiescent, and willing to adopt and sanction what he did--had carried on a holy war against simony wherever found. He had condemned it by means of repeated councils, he had poured forth every kind of appeal to men's consciences, and exhortations to repentance, without making very much impression. The greatest offices were still sold in spite of him. They were given to tonsured ruffians and debauchees who had no claim but their wealth to ascend into the high places of the Church, and who, in short, were but secular nobles with a difference, and the fatal addition of a cynicism almost beyond belief, though singularly mingled at times with superstitious terrors. Hildebrand had struggled against these men and their influence desperately, by every means in his power: and Pope Gregory, with stronger methods at command, was bound, if possible, to extirpate the evil. This had raised him up a phalanx of enemies on every side, wherever there was a dignitary of the Church whose title was not clear, or a prince who derived a portion of his revenue from the traffic in ecclesiastical appointments. The degenerate young King not yet Emperor, who supported his every scheme of rapine and conquest by the gold of the ambitious priests whom he made into prelates at his will, was naturally the first of these enemies: Guibert of Ravenna, more near and readily offensive, one of the most powerful ecclesiastical nobles in Italy, sat watchful if he might catch the new Pope tripping, or find any opportunity of accusing him: Robert Guiscard, the greatest of the Normans, who had been so much the servant and partisan of the late Popes, remained sullen and apart, giving no allegiance to this: Rome itself was surrounded by a fierce and audacious nobility, who had always been the natural enemies of the Pope, unless when he happened to be their nominee, and more objectionable than themselves. Thus the world was full of dark and scowling faces. A circle of hostility both at his gates and in the distance frowned unkindly about him, when the age of Hildebrand was over, and that of Gregory began. All his great troubles and sufferings were in this latter part of his life. Nothing in the shape of failure had befallen him up to this point. He had met with great respect and honour, his merit and power had been recognised almost from his earliest years. Great princes and great men--Henry himself, the father of the present degenerate Henry, a noble Emperor, honouring the Church and eager for its purification--had felt themselves honoured by the friendship of the monk who had neither family nor wealth to recommend him. But when Pope Gregory issued from his long probation and took into his hand the papal sceptre, all these things had changed. Whether he was aware by any premonition of the darker days upon which he had now fallen who can say? It is certain that confronting them he bated no jot of heart or hope. He appears to us at first as very cautious, very desirous of giving the adversary no occasion to blaspheme. The summons issued in the name of the late Pope to Henry requiring him to appear and answer in Rome the charges made against him, seems to have been dropped at Alexander's death: and when his messengers came over the Alps demanding by what right a Pope had been consecrated without his consent, Gregory made mild reply that he was not consecrated, but was awaiting not the nomination but the consent of the Emperor, and that not till that had been received would he carry out the final rites. These were eventually performed with some sort of acquiescence from Henry, given through his wise and prudent ambassador, on the Feast of St. Peter, the 29th June, 1073. Gregory did what he could, as appears, to continue this mild treatment of Henry with all regard to his great position and power. He attempted to call together a very intimate council to discuss the state of affairs between the King and himself: a council of singular construction, which, but that the questions as to the influence and place of women are questions as old as history, and have been decided by every age according to no formal law but the character of the individuals before them, might be taken for an example of enlightenment before his time in Gregory's mind. He invited Duke Rudolf of Suabia, one of Henry's greatest subjects, a man of religious character and much reverence for the Holy See, to come to Rome, and in common with himself, the Empress Agnes, the two Countesses of Tuscany, the Bishop of Como (who was the confessor of Agnes), and other God-fearing persons, to consider the crisis at which the Church had arrived, and to hear and give advice upon the Pope's intentions and projects. The French historian Villemain throws discredit upon this projected consultation of "an ambitious vassal of the King of Germany and three women, one of whom had once been a prisoner in the camp of Henry III., the other had been brought up from infancy in the hate of the empire and the love of the Church, and the last was a fallen empress who was more the penitent of Rome than the mother of Henry." This seems, however, a futile enumeration. There could surely be no better defender found for a son accused than his mother, who we have no reason to suppose was ever estranged from him personally, and who shortly after went upon an embassy to him, and was received with every honour. Beatrice, on the other hand, had been the prisoner of his father the great Emperor, and not of young Henry of whom she was the relative and friend, and between whom and the Pope, as all good statesmen must have seen, it was of the greatest importance to Europe that there should be peace; while any strong personal feeling which might exist would be modified by Gregory himself, by Raymond of Como, and the wisest heads of Rome. But this board of advice and conciliation never sat, so we need not comment upon its possible concomitants. In every act of his first year, however, Gregory showed a desire to conciliate Henry rather than to defy him. The young king had his hands very full, and his great struggle with the Saxon nobles and people was not at the moment turning in his favour. And he had various natural defenders and partisans about the Roman Court. The Abbot Hugo of Cluny, who was one of Gregory's dearest friends, had been the young king's preceptor, and bore him a strong affection. We have no reason to believe that the influence of Agnes was not all on the side of her son, if not to support his acts, at least to palliate and excuse them. With one of these in his most intimate council, and one an anxious watcher outside, both in command of his ear and attention, it would have been strange if Gregory had been unwilling to hear anything that was in Henry's favour. And in fact something almost more than a full reconciliation seems to have been effected between the new Pope and the young king, so desirous of winning the imperial crown, and conscious that Gregory's help was of the utmost importance to him. Henry on his side wrote a letter to his "most loving lord and father," his "most desired lord," breathing such an exemplary mind, so much penitence and submission, that Gregory describes it as "full of sweetness and obedience:" while the Pope, if not altogether removing the sword that hung suspended over Henry's head, at least received his communications graciously, and gave him full time and encouragement to change his mind and become the most trusted lieutenant of the Holy See. The King was accordingly left free to pursue his own affairs and his great struggle with the Saxons without any further question of ecclesiastical interference: while Gregory spent the whole ensuing year in a visitation of Italy, and much correspondence and conference on the subject of simony and other abuses in the Church. When he returned to Rome he endeavoured, but in vain, to act as peacemaker between Henry and the Saxons. And it was not till June in the year 1074, when he called together the first of the Lateran Councils, an assembly afterwards renewed yearly, a sort of potential Convocation, that further steps were taken. With this the first note of the great warfare to follow was struck. The seriousness of the letters by which he summoned its members sufficiently shows the importance attached to it. "The princes and governors of this world, seeking their own interest and not that of Jesus Christ, trample under foot all the veneration they owe to the Church, and oppress her like a slave. The priests and those charged with the conduct of the Church sacrifice, the law of God, renounce their obligations towards God and their flocks, seeking in ecclesiastical dignities only the glory of this world, and consuming in pomp and pride what ought to serve for the salvation of many. The people, without prelates or sage counsellors to lead them in the way of virtue, and who are instructed by the example of their chiefs in all pernicious things, go astray into every evil way, and bear the name of Christian without its works, without even preserving the principle of the faith. For these reasons, confident in the mercies of God, we have resolved to assemble a Synod in order to seek with the aid of our brethren for a remedy to these evils, and that we may not see in our time the irreparable ruin and destruction of the Church. Wherefore we pray you as a brother, and warn you in the name of the blessed Peter, prince of apostles, to appear at the day fixed, convoking by this letter, and by your own, your suffragan bishops; for we can vindicate the freedom of religion and of ecclesiastical authority with much more surety and strength according as we find ourselves surrounded by the counsels of your prudence, and by the presence of our brethren." A few Italian princes, Gisulfo of Salerno, Azzo d'Este, Beatrice and Matilda of Tuscany, were convoked to the council and held seats in it. The measures passed were very explicit and clear. They condemned the simoniacal clergy in every rank, deposing them from their positions and commanding them to withdraw from the ministrations of the altar. The same judgment was passed upon those who lived with wives or concubines. Both classes were put beyond the pale of the Church, and the people were forbidden, on pain of sharing their doom, to receive the sacraments from them, or to yield them obedience. Nothing more thorough and far-reaching could be. Hitherto the Popes had proceeded by courts of investigation, by examination of individuals, in which the alternative of repentance and renunciation was always open to the prelate who had perhaps inadvertently fallen into these crimes. But such gentle dealings had been but very partially successful. Here and there an archbishop or great abbot had been convicted by his peers, and made to descend from his high estate--here and there a great personage had risen in his place and made confession. Some had retired to the cloister, putting all their pomps and glories aside, and made a good end. But as is usual after every religious revival, life had risen up again and gone upon its usual course, and the bishoprics thus vacated had probably been sold to the highest bidder or yielded to the most violent assailant, as if no such reformation had ever been. The matter had gone too far now for any such occasional alleviations; and Gregory struck at the whole body of proud prelates, lords of secular as well as ecclesiastical greatness, men whose position was as powerful in politics and the affairs of the empire as was that of the princes and margraves who were their kin, and whom they naturally supported--as the others had supported them by money and influence in their rise to power: but who had very little time for the affairs of the Church, and less still for the preservation of peace and the redress of wrong. The other measures passed at this council were more searching still; they were aimed against the disorders into which the clergy had fallen, and chiefly what was to Gregory and his followers the great criminality, of married priests, who abounded in the Church. In this the lower orders of the clergy were chiefly assailed, for the more important members of the hierarchy did not marry though they might be vicious otherwise. But the rural priests, the little-educated and but little-esteemed clerks who abounded in every town and village, were very generally affected by the vice--if vice it was--of marriage, which was half legal and widely tolerated: and their determination not to abandon it was furious. Meetings of the clergy to oppose this condemnation were held in all quarters, and often ended in riot, the priests declaring that none of the good things of the Church fell to their lot, but that rather than give up their wives, their sole compensation, they would die. This was not likely to make Gregory's proceedings less determined: but it may easily be imagined what a prodigious convulsion such an edict was likely to make in the ecclesiastical world. It is said by the later historians that the Empress Agnes was made use of, with her attendant bishop and confessor, to carry these decrees to Henry's court: though this does not seem to be sanctioned by the elder authorities, who place the mission of Agnes in the previous year, and reckon it altogether one of peace and conciliation. But Henry still continued in a conciliatory frame of mind. His own affairs were not going well, and he was anxious to retain the Pope's support in the midst of his conflicts with his subjects. Neither do the great dignitaries appear to have made any public protest or resistance: it was the poor priests upon whom individually this edict pressed heavily, who were roused almost to the point of insurrection. One of the most curious effects of the decree was the spirit roused among the laity thus encouraged to judge and even to refuse the ministrations of an unworthy priest. Not only was their immediate conduct affected to acts of spiritual insubordination, but a fundamental change seems to have taken place in their conception of the priest's character. No doubt Gregory's legislation must have originated that determined though illogical opposition to a married priesthood, and disgust with the idea, which has had so singular a sway in Catholic countries ever since, and which would at the present moment we believe make any change in the celibate character of the priesthood impossible even were all other difficulties overcome. We are not aware that it had existed in any force before. The thing had been almost too common for remark: and there seems to have been no fierce opposition to the principle. It arose now gradually yet with a force beyond control: there were many cases of laymen baptizing their children themselves, rather then give them into the hands of a polluted priest--until there arose almost a risk of general indifference to this sacrament because of the rising conviction that the hands which administered it were unworthy: and other religious observances were neglected in the same way, an effect which must have been the reverse of anything intended by the Pope. To this hour in all Catholic countries an inexpressible disgust with the thought, mingles even with the theory that perhaps society might be improved were the priest a married man, and so far forced to content himself with the affairs of his own house. Probably it was Gregory's strong denunciation, and his charge to the people not to reverence, not to obey men so soiled: as well as the conviction long cultivated by the Church, and by this time become a dogma, that the ascetic life was in all cases the holiest--which originated this powerful general sentiment, more potent in deciding the fact of a celibate clergy than all the ecclesiastical decrees in the world. In the second Lateran Council held in the next year, at the beginning of Lent, along with the reiteration of the laws in respect to simony and the priesthood, a solemn decree against lay investiture was passed by the Church. This law transferred the struggle to a higher ground. It was no longer bishops and prelates of all classes, no longer simple priests, but the greatest sovereigns, all of whom had as a matter of course given ecclesiastical benefices as they gave feudals fiefs, who were now involved. The law was as follows: "Whosoever shall receive from the hands of a layman a bishopric, or an abbey, shall not be counted among the bishops and abbots, nor share their privileges. We interdict him from entrance into the Church and from the grace of St. Peter until he shall have resigned the dignity thus acquired by ambition and disobedience, which are equal to idolatry. Also, if any emperor, duke, marquis, count, or other secular authority shall presume to give investiture of a bishopric or other dignity of the Church, let him understand that the same penalty shall be exacted from him." The position of affairs between Pope and Emperor was thus fundamentally altered. The father of Henry, a much more faithful son of the Church, had almost without opposition made Popes by his own will where now his son was interdicted from appointing a single bishop. The evil was great enough perhaps for this great remedy, and Gregory, who had gone so far, was restrained now by no prudent precautions from proceeding to the utmost length possible. The day of prudence was over; he had entered upon a path in which there was no drawing back. That it was not done lightly or without profound and painful thought, and a deep sense of danger and impending trouble, is apparent from the following letter in which the Pope unbosoms himself to the head of his former convent, the great Hugo of Cluny, his own warm friend, and at the same time Henry's tutor and constant defender. "I am overwhelmed (he writes) with great sorrow and trouble. Wherever I look, south, north, or west, I see not a single bishop whose promotion and conduct are legal, and who governs the Christian people for the love of Christ, and not by temporal ambition. As for secular princes, there is not one who prefers the glory of God to his own, or justice to interest. Those among whom I live--the Romans, the Lombards, the Normans--are, as I tell them to their faces, worse than Jews and Pagans. And when I return within myself, I am so overwhelmed by the weight of life that I feel no longer hope in anything but the mercy of Christ." Notwithstanding the supreme importance of this question, and Gregory's deep sense of the tremendous character of the struggle on which he had thus engaged, matters of public morality in other ways were not sacrificed to these great proceedings for the honour of the Church. He not only himself assumed, but pressed upon all spiritual authorities under him, the duty and need of prompt interference in the cause of justice and public honesty. The letters which follow were called forth by a remarkable breach of these laws of honesty and the protection due to strangers and travellers which are fundamental rules of society. This was the spoliation of certain merchants robbed in their passage through France, and from whom the Pope accuses the young King Philip I. to have taken, "like a brigand, an immense sum of money." Gregory addresses himself to the bishops of France in warning and entreaty as follows: "As it is not possible that such crimes should escape the sentence of the Supreme Judge, we pray you and we warn you with true charity to be careful and not to draw upon yourself the prophet's curse: 'Woe to him who turns back his sword from blood'--that is to say, as you well understand, who does not use the sword of the Word for the correction of worldly men; for you are in fault, my brethren, you who, instead of opposing these vile proceedings with all the rigour of the priesthood, encourage wickedness by your silence. It is useless to speak of fear. United and armed to defend the just, your force will be such that you will be able to quench evil passions in penitence. And even if there were danger, that is no reason for giving up the freedom of your priesthood. We pray you, then, and we warn you by the authority of the Apostles, to unite in the interest of your country, of your glory and salvation, in a common and unanimous counsel. Go to the king, tell him of his shame, of his danger and that of his kingdom. Show him to his face how criminal are his acts and motives, endeavour to move him by every inducement that he may undo the harm which he has done. "But if he will not listen to you, and if, scorning the wrath of God, and indifferent to his own royal dignity, to his own salvation and that of his people, he is obstinate in the hardness of his heart, let him hear as from our mouth that he cannot escape much longer the sword of apostolic punishment." These are not such words as Peter was ever commissioned in Holy Writ to give forth; but granting all the pretensions of Peter's successors, as so many good Christians do, it is no ignoble voice which thus raises itself in warning, which thus denounces the vengeance of the Church against the evil-doer, be he bishop, clown, or king. Gregory had neither armies nor great wealth to support his interference with the course of the world--he had only right and justice, and a profound faith in his mission. He risked everything--his life (so small a matter!), his position, even the safety of the Church itself, which these potentates could have crushed under their mailed shoes; but that there should be one voice which would not lie, one champion who would not be turned aside, one witness for good, always and everywhere, against evil, was surely as noble a pretension as ever was lifted under heaven. It was to extend the power of Rome, all the historians say; which no doubt he wished to do. But whether to extend the power of Rome was his first object, or to pursue guilt and cruelty and falsehood out of the very boundaries of the world if one man could drive them forth, God only can judge. When there are two evident motives, however, it is not always wise to believe that the worst is the one to choose. In most curious contrast to these great and daring utterances is the incident, quite temporary and of no real importance, in his life, which occurred to Pope Gregory at the very moment when he was thus threatening a world lying in wickedness with the thunderbolts of Rome. The city which had gone through so many convulsions, and was now the centre of the pilgrimages of the world, was still in its form and construction the ancient Rome, and more or less a city of ruins. The vast open spaces, forums, circuses, great squares, and amphitheatres, which made old Rome so spacious and magnificent, still existed as they still to a certain extent exist. But no great builder had as yet arisen among the Popes, no one wealthy enough or with leisure enough to order the city upon new lines, to give it a modern shape, or reduce it to the dimensions necessary for its limited population. It was still a great quarry for the world, full of treasures that could be carried away, a reservoir and storehouse of relics to which every man might help himself. Professor Lanciani, the accomplished and learned savant to whom we owe so much information concerning the ancient city, has shown us how much mediæval covetousness in this way had to do with the actual disappearance of ancient buildings, stone by stone. But this was not the only offence committed against the monuments of the past. The great edifices of the classic age were often turned, not without advantage in the sense of the picturesque, into strongholds of the nobles, sometimes almost as much isolated amid the great gaps of ruins as in the Campagna outside. The only buildings belonging to the time were monasteries, generally surrounded by strong walls, capable of affording protection to a powerful community, and in which the humble and poor could find refuge in time of trouble. These establishments, and the mediæval fortresses and towers built into the midst of the ruins, occupied with many wild spaces between, where the luxuriant herbage buried fallen pillars and broken foundations, the wastes of desolation which filled up half the area of the town. The population seems to have clustered about the eastern end of the city; all the life of which one reads, except an occasional tumult around St. Peter's and north of St. Angelo, seems to have passed on the slopes or under the shadow of the Aventine and Coelian hills, from thence to the Latin gate, and the Pope's palace there, the centre of government and state--and on the hill of the Capitol, where still the people gathered when there was a motive for a popular assembly. The ordinary populace must have swarmed in whatsoever half-ruined barracks of old palaces, or squalid huts of new erection hanging on to their skirts, might be attainable in these quarters, clustering together for warmth and safety, while the rest of the city lay waste, sprinkled with ruins and desolate paths, with great houses here and there in which the strangely mixed race bearing the names, often self-appropriated, of ancient Roman patrician families, lived and robbed and made petty war, and besieged each other within their strong walls. One of these fortified houses or towers, built at or on the bridge of St. Angelo--in which the noble owner sat like a spider, drawing in flies to his web, taking toll of every stranger who entered Rome by that way--belonged to a certain Cencio[3] or Cencius of the family of Tusculum, the son of the Præfect of Rome. The Præfect, unlike his family, was one of the most devoted adherents of the Popes; he is, indeed, in the curious glimpse afforded to us by history, one of the most singular figures that occur in that crowded foreground. A mediæval noble and high official, he was at the same time a lay-preacher, delighted to exercise his gift when the more legitimate sermon failed from any cause, and only too proud, it would appear, of hearing his own voice in the pulpit. That his son should be of a very different disposition was perhaps not to be wondered at. Cencius was as turbulent as his father was pious; but he must have been a soldier of some note, as he held the post of Captain of St. Angelo, and in that capacity had maintained during a long siege the anti-pope Cadalous, or Honorius II., from whom, brigand as he was, he exacted a heavy ransom before permitting the unfortunate and too ambitious prelate to steal away like a thief in the night when his chance was evidently over. Cencius would seem to have lost his post in St. Angelo, but he maintained his robber's tower on the other end of the bridge, and was one of the most dangerous and turbulent of these internal enemies of Rome. During an interval of banishment, following a more than usually cruel murder, he had visited Germany, and had met at young Henry's court with many people to whom Pope Gregory was obnoxious, from Gottfried the Hunchback, the husband of the Countess Matilda, to the young king himself. Whether what followed was the result of any conspiracy, however, or if it was an outburst of mad vengeance on the part of Cencius himself, or the mere calculating impulse of a freebooter to secure a good ransom, is not known. A conspiracy, with Godfrey at the head of it, not without support from Henry, and the knowledge at least of the Archbishop of Ravenna and Robert Guiscard, all deeply irritated by the Pope's recent proceedings, was of course the favourite idea at the time. But no clear explanation of motives has ever been attained, and only the facts are known. On Christmas-eve it was the habit of the Popes to celebrate a midnight mass in the great basilica of Sta. Maria Maggiore in what was then a lonely and dangerous neighbourhood, though not very far from the Lateran Church and palace. It was usually the occasion of a great concourse from all parts of the city, attracted by the always popular midnight celebration. But on Christmas-eve of the year 1076 (Muratori says 1075) a great storm burst over the city as the hour approached for the ceremony. Torrents of rain, almost tropical in violence, as rain so often is in Rome, poured down from the blackness of the skies, extinguishing even the torches by which the Pope and his diminished procession made their way to the great church, blazing out cheerfully with all its lighted windows into the night. Besides the priests only a very small number of the people followed, and there was no such murmur and rustle of sympathy and warmth of heart as such an assembly generally calls forth. But the great altar was decorated for Christmas, and the Pope attired in his robes, and everything shining with light and brightness within, though the storm raged without. The mass was almost over, Gregory and the priests had communicated, the faithful company assembled were receiving their humbler share of the sacred feast, and in a few minutes the office would have been completed, when suddenly the church was filled with noise and clamour and armed men. There was no one to defend the priests at the altar, even had it been possible in the suddenness of the assault to do so. Cencius's band was composed of ruffians from every region, united only in their lawlessness and crime; they seized the Pope at the altar, one of them wounding him slightly in the forehead. It is said that he neither asked for mercy nor uttered a complaint, nor even an expostulation, but permitted himself without a word to be dragged out of the church, stripped of his robes, placed on a horse behind one of the troopers, and carried off into the night not knowing where. All this happened before the terrified priests and people--many of the latter probably poor women from the hovels round about--recovered their surprise. The wild band, with the Pope in the midst, galloped out into the blackness and the rain, passing under garden walls and the towers of silent monasteries, where the monks, too much accustomed to such sounds to take much notice, would hear the rush of the horses and the rude voices in the night with thankfulness that no thundering at the convent gates called upon them to give the free lances shelter. It appears that it was not to Cencius's stronghold on the bridge but to the house of one of his retainers that this great prize was conveyed. Here Gregory, in the cassock which he had worn under his gorgeous papal dress, wet and bleeding from the wound in his forehead, was flung without ceremony into an empty room. The story is that some devout man in the crowd and a Roman lady, by some chance witnessing the arrival of the band, stole in with them, and found their way to the place in which the Pope lay, covering him with their own furs and mantles and attending to his wound. And thus passed the Christmas morning in the misery of that cruel cold which, though rare, is nowhere more bitter than in Rome. [Illustration: SANTA MARIA MAGGIORE. _To face page 246._] In the meantime the terrified congregation in Sta. Maria Maggiore had recovered its senses, and messengers hurried out in all directions to trace the way by which the freebooters had gone, and to spread the news of the Pope's abduction. The storm had by this time passed over, and the people were easily roused on the eve of the great festival. Torches began to gleam by all the darkling ways, and the population poured forth in the excitement of a great event. It would seem that in all the tumultuous and factious city there was but one thought of horror at the sacrilege, and determination to save the Pope if it were still possible. Gregory was not, like his great predecessor the first of that name, the idol of his people. He had not the wealth with which many great ecclesiastics had secured the homage of the often famished crowd; and a stern man, with no special geniality of nature, and views that went so far beyond the local interests of Rome, he does not seem the kind of ruler to have secured popular favour. Yet the city had never been more unanimous, more determined in its resolution. The tocsin was sounded in all the quarters of Rome during that night of excitement; every soldier was called forth, guards were set at all the gates, lest the Pope should be conveyed out of the city; and the agitated crowd flocked to the Capitol, the only one of the seven hills of Rome where some kind of repair and restoration had been attempted, to consult, rich and poor together, people and nobles, what was to be done. To this spot came the scouts sent out in search of information, to report their discoveries. They had found that the Pope was still in Rome, and where he was--a prisoner, but as yet unharmed. With one impulse the people of Rome, forming themselves into an undignified but enthusiastic army, rushed down from their place of meeting towards the robber's castle. We hear of engines of war, and all the cumbrous adjuncts of a siege and means of breaching the walls, as if those articles had been all ready in preparation for any emergency. The palace, though strong, could not stand the assault of the whole population, and soon it was necessary to bring the Pope from his prison and show him at a window to pacify the assailants. Cencius did all that a ruffian in such circumstances would naturally do. He first tried to extract money and lands from the Pope's terrors, and then flung himself on his knees before Gregory, imploring forgiveness and protection. The first attempt was useless, for Gregory was not afraid; the second was more successful, for remorseless to the criminals whose evil acts or example injured the Church, the Pope was merciful enough to ordinary sinners, and had never condemned any man to death. "What you have done to me I pardon you as a father; but what you have done against God and the Church must be atoned for," said Gregory, still at the mercy of any rude companion in that band of ruffians: and he commanded his captor to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to cleanse himself from this sin. The Pope was conveyed out of his prison by the excited and enthusiastic crowd, shouting and weeping, half for joy, and half at sight of the still bleeding scar on his forehead. But weak and exhausted as he was, without food, after a night and almost a day of such excitement, in which he had not known from one hour to another what might happen, helpless in the hands of his enemies, Gregory had but one thought--to conclude his mass which he had not finished when he was interrupted at the altar. He went back in his cassock, covered by the stranger's furred cloak, along the same wild way over which he had been hurried in the darkness; and followed by the entire population, which swarmed into every corner and blocked every entrance, returned to the great basilica, where he once more ascended the altar steps, completed the mass, offered his thanksgivings to God, and blessed and thanked his deliverers, before he sought in the quick falling twilight of the winter day the rest of his own house. It is common to increase the effect of this most picturesque scene by describing Gregory as an aged man, old and worn out, in the midst of his fierce foes; but he was barely sixty and still in the fulness of his strength, though spare and shrunken by many fasts and still more anxieties. That he had lost nothing of his vigour is evident, and in fact the incident, though never forgotten as a dramatic and telling episode by the historians, was a mere incident of no importance whatever in his life. In the meantime the Emperor Henry, who had been disposed to humility and penitence by the efforts of his mother, and by the distresses of his own position during a doubtful and dangerous intestine war, in which all at the time seemed to be going against him, had subdued the Saxons and recovered the upper hand: and, thus victorious in his own country, was no longer disposed to bow his neck under any spiritual yoke. He had paid no attention to Gregory's commands in respect to simony nor to the ordinance against lay investiture which had proceeded from the Council of 1075; but had, on the contrary, filled up several bishoprics in the old way, continued to receive the excommunicated nobles, and treated Gregory's decrees as if they had never been. His indignation at the Pope's interference--that indignation which every secular prince has always shown when interfered with by the Holy See, and which so easily translates the august titles of the successor of St. Peter, the Vicar of Christ, into a fierce denunciation of the "Italian priest" whom mediæval princes feared and hated--was only intensified by his supreme pretensions as Emperor, and grew in virulence as Gregory's undaunted front and continued exercise, so far as anathemas would do it, of the weapons of church discipline, stood steadily before him. It is very possible that the complete discomfiture of Cencius's attempt upon the Pope's liberty or life, to which Henry is believed to have been accessory, and the disgrace and ridicule of that failure, irritated and exasperated the young monarch, and that he felt henceforward that no terms could be kept with the man whom he had failed to destroy. Gregory, on the other hand, finding all his efforts unsuccessful to gain the submission of Henry, had again taken the strong step of summoning him to appear before the yearly council held in Rome at the beginning of Lent, there to answer for his indifference to its previous decisions. The following letter sent to Henry a short time after the attempt of Cencius, but in which not a word of that attempt is said, is a remarkable example of Gregory's dignified and unyielding attitude: "Gregory, servant of the servants of God. "To Henry, king, salutation and the blessing of the apostles, if he obeys the apostolic see, as becomes a Christian king. "Considering with anxiety, within ourselves, to what tribunal we have to give an account of the dispensation of the ministry which has been extended to us by the Prince of the apostles, we send you with doubt our apostolic blessing, since we are assured that you live in close union with men excommunicated by the judgment of the Apostolic See and the censure of the synod. If this is true, you will yourself perceive that you cannot receive the grace of blessing either divine or apostolic, until you have dismissed from your society these excommunicated persons, or in forcing them to express their repentance have yourself obtained absolution by penitence and expiation. We counsel your highness, if you are guilty in this respect, to have recourse, without delay, to the advice of some pious bishop, who, under our authority, will direct you what to do, and absolve you, informing us with your consent of your penitence." The Pope goes on to point out, recalling to Henry's mind the promises he had made, and the assurances given--how different his conduct has been from his professions. "In respect to the church of Milan, how you have kept the engagements made with your mother, and with the bishops our colleagues, and with what intention you made these promises, the event itself shows. And now to add wound to wound, you have disposed of the churches of Spoleto and of Fermo. Is it possible that a man dares to transfer or give a church to persons unknown to us, while the imposition of hands is not permitted, except on those who are well known and approved? Your own dignity demands, since you call yourself the son of the Church, that you should honour him who is at her head, that is the blessed Peter, the prince of the apostles, to whom, if you are of the flock of the Lord, you have been formally confided by the voice and authority of the Lord--him to whom Christ said 'Feed my sheep.' So long as we, sinful and unworthy as we are, hold his place in his seat and apostolical government, it is he who receives all that you address to us either by writing or speech; and while we read your letters or listen to your words, it is he who beholds with a penetrating eye what manner of heart it is from which they come." In this dignified and serious remonstrance there is not a word of the personal insult and injury which the Pope himself had suffered. He passes over Cencius and his foiled villainy as if it had never been; but while Gregory could forget, Henry could not: and historians have traced to the failure of this desperate attempt to subdue or extinguish the too daring, too steadfast Pontiff, the new spirit--the impulse of equally desperate rage and vengeance--which took possession of the monarch, finding, after all his victories, that here was one opponent whom he could not overcome, whose voice could reach over all Christendom, and who bore penalties in his unarmed hand at which no crowned head could afford to smile. To crush the audacious priest to the earth, if not by the base ministry of Roman bravos, then by the scarcely more clean hands of German barons and excommunicated bishops, was the impulse which now filled Henry's mind. He invoked a council in Worms, a month after the failure in Rome, which was attended by a large number, not only of the German nobility, but of the great ecclesiastics who nowhere had greater power, wealth, and influence than in Teutonic countries. Half of them had been condemned by Gregory for simony or other vices, many of them were aware that they were liable to similar penalties. The reformer Pope, who after the many tentatives and half-measures of his predecessors, was now supreme, and would shrink from nothing in his great mission of purifying the Church, was a constant danger and fear to these great mediæval nobles varnished over with the names of churchmen. One stroke had failed: but another was quite possible which great Henry the king, triumphant over all his enemies, might surely with their help and sanction bring to pass. The peers spiritual and temporal, the princes who scorned the interference of a priest, and the priests who feared the loss of all their honours and the disgrace and humiliation with which the Pope threatened them, came together in crowds to pull down their enemy from his throne. Nothing so bold had ever been attempted since Christendom had grown into the comity of nations it now was. Cencius had pulled the Pope from the altar steps in the night and dark: Henry and his court assembled in broad day, with every circumstance of pomp and publicity, to drag him from his spiritual throne. It would be difficult to say whether the palm of fierceness and brutality should be given to the brigand of the Tusculan hills, or to the great king, princes, archbishops, and bishops of the Teutonic empire. Cencius swore in his beard, unheard of after generations; the others, less fortunate, have left on record what were the manner of words they said. This is the solemn act signed by all the members of the assembly, by which the Pope was to learn his doom. It is a long and furious scold from beginning to end. "Hildebrand, taking the name of Gregory, is the first who, without our knowledge, against the will of the emperor chosen by God, contrary to the habit of our ancestors, contrary to the laws, has, by his ambition alone, invaded the papacy. He does whatever pleases him, right or wrong, good or evil. An apostate monk, he degrades theology by new doctrines and false interpretations, alters the holy books to suit his personal interests, mixes the sacred and profane, opens his ears to demons and to calumny, and makes himself at once judge, witness, accuser, and defender. He separates husbands from wives, prefers immodest women to chaste wives, and adulterous and debauched and incestuous connections to legitimate unions; he raises the people against their bishops and priests. He recognises those only as legally ordained who have begged the priesthood from his hands, or who have bought it from the instruments of his extortions; he deceives the vulgar by a feigned religion, fabricated in a womanish senate: it is there that he discusses the sacred mysteries of religion, ruins the papacy, and attacks at once the holy see and the empire. He is guilty of _lèse-majesté_ both divine and human, desiring to deprive of life and rank our consecrated emperor and gracious sovereign. "For these reasons, the emperor, the bishops, the senate, and the Christian people declare him deposed, and will no longer leave the sheep of Christ to the keeping of this devouring wolf." Among the papers sent to Rome this insolent act is repeated at greater length, accompanied by various addresses to the bishops and people, and two letters to the Pope himself, from one of which, the least insolent, we quote a few sentences. "Henry, king by the grace of God, to Hildebrand. "While I expected from you the treatment of a father, and deferred to you in everything, to the great indignation of my faithful subjects, I have experienced on your part in return the treatment which I might have looked for from the most pernicious enemy of my life and kingdom. "First having robbed me by an insolent procedure of the hereditary dignity which was my right in Rome, you have gone further--you have attempted by detestable artifices to alienate from me the kingdom of Italy. Not content with this, you have put forth your hand on venerable bishops who are united to me as the most precious members of my body, and have worn them out with affronts and injustice against all laws human and divine. Judging that this unheard-of insolence ought to be met by acts, not by words, I have called together a general assembly of all the greatest in my kingdom, at their own request, and when there had been publicly produced before them things hidden up to that moment, from fear or respect, their declarations have made manifest the impossibility of retaining you in the Holy See. Therefore adhering to their sentence, which seems to me just and praiseworthy before God and men, I forbid to you the jurisdiction of Pope which you have exercised, and I command you to come down from the Apostolic See of Rome, the superiority of which belongs to me by the gift of God, and the assent and oath of the Romans." The other letter ends with the following adjuration, which the king prefaces by quoting the words of St. Paul: "If an angel from heaven preach any other doctrine to you than that we have preached unto you, let him be accursed": "You who are struck by this curse and condemned by the judgment of the bishops and by our own, come down, leave the apostolic chair; let another assume the throne of St. Peter, not to cover violence with the mantle of religion, but to teach the doctrine of the blessed apostle. I, Henry, king by the grace of God, and all my bishops, we command you, come down, come down!" These letters were sent to Rome by Count Eberhard, the same who had come to inquire into the election of Gregory two years before, and had confirmed and consented to it in the name of his master. He was himself one of the excommunicated barons whom Gregory had struck for simoniacal grants of benefices; but he had not the courage to carry fire and flame into the very household of the Pope. He did, however, all the harm he could, publishing the contents of the letters he carried in the great Italian cities, where every guilty priest rejoiced to think that he had thus escaped the hands of the terrible Gregory. But when he came within reach of Rome the great German baron lost heart. He found a substitute in a priest of Parma, a hot-headed partisan, one of those instruments of malice who are insensible to the peril of burning fuse or sudden explosion. The conspirators calculated with a sense of the dramatic which could scarcely have been expected from their nationality, and which looks more like the inspiration of the Italian himself--that he should arrive in Rome on the eve of the yearly council held in the Lateran at the beginning of Lent. This yearly synod was a more than usually important one; for already the news of the decision at Worms was known in Italy, and a great number of the clergy, both small and great, had crowded to Rome. A hundred and ten prelates are reckoned as present, besides many other dignitaries. Among them sat, as usual on such occasions, Beatrice and Matilda of Tuscany, the only secular protectors of Gregory, the greatest and nearest of Italian sovereigns. It was their presence that was aimed at in the strangely abusive edict of Worms as making the Council a womanish senate: and it was also Matilda's case which was referred to in the accusation that the Pope separated husbands from their wives. The excitement of expectation was in the air as all the strangers in Rome, and the people, ever stirred like the Athenians by the desire to hear some new thing, thronged the corridors and ante-chapels of the Lateran, the great portico and square which were for the moment the centre of Rome. Again the vast basilica, the rustling mediæval crowd in all its glow of colour and picturesqueness of grouping, rises before us. Few scenes more startling and dramatic have ever occurred even in that place of many histories. The Pope had seated himself in the chair of St. Peter, the long half-circular line of the great prelates extending down the long basilica on either side, the princes in a tribune apart with their attendants, and the crowd of priests filling up every corner and crevice: the _Veni Creator_ had been sung: and the proceedings were about to begin--when Roland of Parma was introduced, no doubt with much courtesy and ceremony, as the bearer of letters from the Emperor. When these letters were taken from him, however, the envoy, instead of withdrawing, as became him, stood still at the foot of the Pope's chair, and to the consternation, as may be supposed, of the assembly, addressed Gregory. "The king, my master," he cried, "and all the bishops, foreign and Italian, command you to quit instantly the Church of Rome, and the chair of Peter." Then turning quickly to the astonished assembly, "My brethren," he cried, "you are hereby warned to appear at Pentecost in the presence of the king to receive your Pope from him; for this is no Pope but a devouring wolf." The intensity of the surprise alone can account for the possibility of the most rapid speaker delivering himself of so many words before the assembly rose upon him to shut his insolent mouth. The Bishop of Porto was the first to spring up, to cry "Seize him!" but no doubt a hundred hands were at his throat before the Prætorian guard, with their naked swords making a keen line of steel through the shadows of the crowded basilica, now full of shouts and tumult, came in from the gates. The wretch threw himself at the feet of the Pope whom he had that moment insulted, and who seems to have come down hurriedly to rescue him from the fury of the crowd: and was with difficulty placed under the protection of the soldiers. It is not difficult to imagine the supreme excitement which must have filled the church as they disappeared with their prisoner, and the agitated assembly turned again towards their head, the insulted pontiff. Gregory was not the man to fail in such an emergency. He entreated the assembly to retain its composure and calm. "My children," he said, "let not the peace of the Church be broken by you. Perilous times, the gospel itself tells us, shall come: times in which men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, disobedient to parents. It must needs be that offences come, and the Lord has sent us as sheep into the midst of wolves. We have long lived in peace, but it may be that God would now water his growing corn with the blood of martyrs. We behold the devil's force at length displaying itself against us in the open field. Now, therefore, as it behoves the disciples of Christ with hands trained to the war, let us meet him and bravely contend with him until the holy faith which through his practices appears to be throughout the world abandoned and despised shall, the Lord fighting through us, be restored." It seems a strange descent from the dignity of this address, that the Pope should have gone on to comment upon a marvellous egg which it was said had been found near the church of St. Peter, with a strange design raised upon its surface--a buckler with the figure of a serpent underneath, struggling with bent head and wriggling body to get free. This had seemed, however, a wonderful portent to all Rome, and though his modern historians censure Gregory for having no doubt prepared the prodigy and taken a despicable advantage of it, there does not seem the slightest reason to suppose either that Gregory was guilty of this, or that he was so little a man of his time as not to be himself as much impressed by it as any one else there. Appearances of the kind, which an age on the lookout for portents can define, and make others see, are not wanting in any period. The crowd responded with cries that it was he, the father of the Church, who was supreme, and that the blasphemer should be cut off from the Church and from his throne. The sensation was not lessened when the full text[4] of Henry's letters, parts of which we have already quoted, was read out to the reassembled council next day. The words which named their Pope--their head who had been the providence and the guide of Rome for so many years--with contemptuous abuse as "the monk Hildebrand," must have stirred that assembly to its depths. The council with one voice demanded from Gregory the excommunication of the Emperor, and of the impious bishops, false to every vow, who had ventured to launch an anathema against the lawful head of the Church. The solemn sentence of excommunication was accordingly pronounced against Henry: his subjects were freed from their oath of allegiance, and his soul cut off from the Church which he had attempted to rend in twain. Excommunications had become so common in these days that the awe of the extraordinary ceremonial was much lessened: but it was no mere spiritual deprivation, as all were aware, but the most tremendous sentence which could be launched against a man not yet assured in his victories over his own rebellious tributaries, and whose throne depended upon the fidelity of powerful vassals, many of whom were much more impressed by the attitude of the Pope than by that of the king. Thus after so many preliminaries, treaties of peace and declarations of war, the great conflict between Pope and Emperor, between the Church and the State, began. The long feud which ran into every local channel, and rent every mediæval town asunder with the struggles of Guelfs and Ghibellines, thus originated amid events that shook the world. The Synod of Worms and the Council of Rome, with their sudden and extraordinary climax in the conference of Canossa, formed the first act in a drama played upon a larger stage and with more remarkable accompaniments than almost any other in the world. The effect of Henry's excommunication was extraordinary. The world of Christendom, looking on beyond the sphere of Henry's immediate surroundings and partisans, evidently felt with an impulse almost unanimous that the anathema launched by a partly lay assembly and a secular King against a reigning Pope unassailable in virtue, a man of power and genius equal to his position, was a sort of grim jest, the issue of which was to be watched for with much excitement, but not much doubt as to the result, the horror of the profanity being the gravest point in the matter. But no one doubted the power of Gregory on his part, amid his lawful council, to excommunicate and cut off from the Church the offending king. Already, before the facts were known, many bishops and other ecclesiastics in Germany had sent timid protests against the act to which in some cases they had been forced to append their names: and the public opinion of the world, if such an expression can be used, was undoubtedly on Gregory's side. Henry's triumphant career came to a pause. Not only the judgment of the Church and the opinion of his peers, but the powers of Heaven seemed to be against him. One of his greatest allies and supporters, Gottfried, surnamed Il Gobbo, the son of that Gottfried of Lorraine who married Beatrice of Tuscany, and who had imposed his hunchback son as her husband upon the young Matilda, the daughter of Beatrice--was murdered immediately after. The Bishop of Utrecht, who had been one of the king's chief advisers and confidants in his war with Gregory, died in misery and despair, declaring with his last breath that he saw his bed surrounded by demons, and that it was useless to offer prayers for him. On the other hand, the great Dukes of Suabia, Bavaria, and Carinthia, all faithful to the Church, abandoned the excommunicated king. Some of the greater bishops, trembling before the just ire of the Pope whom they had bearded, took the same part. The half-assuaged rebellion of the Saxon provinces broke forth with greater force than ever. Henry had neither arms nor supporters left to secure further victories, and the very air of the empire was full of the letters of Gregory, in which all his attempts to win the young king to better ways, and all the insults which that king had poured forth against the Holy See, were set forth. The punishment, as it appeared on all sides, was prompt as thunderbolts from heaven to follow the offence. While Henry hesitated in dismay and alarm, not knowing what step to take, seeing his friends, both lay and clerical, abandon him on every side, consequences more decisive still followed. The great princes met together in an assembly of their own in Ulm without any reference to Henry, whom they named in their proceedings the ex-king, and decided upon another more formal meeting later to choose a new sovereign. These potentates became doubly religious, doubly Catholic, in their sudden revulsion. They surrounded Gregory's legates with reverence, they avoided all communion with simoniacal prelates, and even--carrying the Pope's new influence to the furthest extent--with the married priests against whom he had long fulminated in vain. A reformation of all evils seemed to be about to follow. They formally condemned the excommunicated Henry on every point moral and political, and though they hesitated over the great step of the threatened election of a king in his place, they announced to him that unless he could clear himself of the interdict before the beginning of the following year, when they had decided to call a diet in Augsburg to settle the question, his fall would be complete and without remedy. At the same time they formally and solemnly invited the presence of the Pope at Augsburg to preside over and confirm their conclusions. This invitation Gregory accepted at once, and Henry, with no alternative before him, consented also to appear before the tribunal of his subjects, and to receive from their hands, and those of the Pope whom he had so insulted and outraged, the sentence of his fate. His humiliation was complete. The assembly which was to make this tremendous decision was convoked for the 2nd February, 1077, the feast of the Purification, at Augsburg. Gregory had accepted the invitation of the German potentates without fear; but there was much alarm in Rome at the thought of such a journey--of the passage through rebellious Lombardy, of the terrible Alps and their dangers, and at the end of all the fierce German princes, who did not always keep faith, and whose minds before this time might have turned again towards their native prince. The Pope set out, however, under the guard of Matilda of Tuscany and her army, to meet the escort promised him from beyond the Alps. On the other hand, Henry was surrounded by dangers on every side. He had been compelled to give up his own special friends, excommunicated like himself; he had no arms, no troops, no money; the term which had been allowed him to make his peace with the Pope was fast passing, and the dreadful moment when it would be his fate to stand before his revolted subjects and learn their decision, appeared before him in all its humiliation and dishonour. Already various offenders had stolen across the mountains privately, to make their submission to Gregory. It seemed the only course for the desperate king to take. At length, after much wavering, he made up his mind, and escaping like a fugitive from the town of Spires to which he had retired, he made his way in the midst of a rigorous winter, and with incredible difficulty, across the Alps, with the help and under the guardianship of Adelaide of Susa, his mother-in-law, who, however, it is said, made him pay a high price for her help. He had begged of the Pope to give him audience at Rome, but this was refused: and in partial despair and confusion he set out to accomplish his hated mission somehow, he did not know where or by what means. A gleam of comfort, however, came to Henry on his travels. He was received with open arms in Lombardy where the revolted bishops eagerly welcomed him as their deliverer from Gregory and his austerities: but there was too much at stake for such an easy solution of the matter as this. In the meantime Gregory travelled northwards surrounded by all the strength of Tuscany, accompanied by the brilliant and devoted Matilda, a daughter in love and in years, the pupil and youthful friend, no doubt the favourite and beloved companion, of a man whose age and profession and character alike would seem to have made any other idea impossible even to the slanderers of the middle ages. Matilda of Tuscany has had a great fate: not only was she the idol of her own people and the admired of her own age--such an impossible and absurd piece of slander as that which linked the name of a beautiful young woman with that of the austere and aged Gregory being apparently the only one which had ever been breathed against her:--but the great poets of her country have placed her, one in the sweeter aspect of a ministering angel of heaven, the other in that of the most heroic of feminine warriors, on the heights of poetic fame. Matilda on the banks of that sacred river of Lethe where all that is unhappy is forgotten, who is but one degree less sacred to Dante than his own Beatrice in Paradise: and Clorinda, the warrior maiden of Tasso, have carried the image of this noble princess to the hearts of many an after age. The hunchback husband imposed upon her in her extreme youth, the close union between her and her mother Beatrice, the independent court held by these two ladies, their prominent place among all the great minds of their time--and not least the faithful friendship of both with the great Gregory, combine to make this young princess one of the most interesting figures of her day. The usual solaces of life had been cut off from her at the beginning by her loveless marriage. She had no children. She was at this period of her career alone in the world, her mother having recently died, following Il Gobbo very closely to the grave. Henceforward Matilda had more to do in the field and council chamber than with the ordinary delights of life. The Pope had left Rome with many anxieties on his mind, fully appreciating the dangers of the journey before him, and not knowing if he might ever see the beloved city again. While he was on the way the news reached him that Henry, whom he had refused to receive in Rome, was on his way across the Alps, and as probably the details of that painful journey were unknown, and the first idea would be that the king was coming with an army in full force--still greater anxieties, if not alarms, must have been awakened among the Pope's supporters. It was still more alarming to find that the German escort which was to have met him at Mantua had not been sent, the hearts of the princes having failed them, and their plans having fallen into confusion at the news of the king's escape. Henry had been received with enthusiasm in Lombardy, always rebellious, and might make his appearance any day to overpower the chivalry of Tuscany, and put the lives of both Pope and Princess in danger. They were on the road to Mantua when this news reached them, and in the anxious council of war immediately held, it was resolved that the strong castle of Canossa, supposed to be impregnable, should be, for the moment at least, the Pope's shelter and resting-place. One of the great strongholds of Italy, built like so many on a formidable point of rock, of itself almost inaccessible, and surrounded by three lines of fortified walls, among which no doubt clustered the rude little dwellings of a host of retainers--the situation of this formidable place was one which promised complete protection: and the name of the Tuscan castle has since become one of the best-known names in history, as the incident which followed contains some of the most picturesque and remarkable scenes on record. The castle had already a romantic story; it had sheltered many a fugitive; forlorn princesses had taken refuge within its walls from the pursuit of suitors or of enemies, the one as dangerous as the other. Painfully carried up in his litter by those steep and dangerous ways, from one narrow platform of the cliff to another, with the great stretch of the landscape ever widening as he gained a higher point, and the vast vault of heaven rounding to a vaster horizon, the Pope gained this eyrie of safety, this eagle's nest among the clouds. We hear of no luxuries, not even those of intellectual and spiritual discourse, which to many an ascetic have represented, and represented well, the happiness of life, in this retreat of Gregory with his beautiful hostess, amid his and her friends. By his side, indeed, was Hugo, Abbot of Cluny, one of his most cherished and life-long companions; but the Pope spent his days of seclusion in prayer and anxious thought. The great plain that lay at his feet, should it be deluged with Christian blood once more, should brother stand against brother in arms, and Italy be crushed under the remorseless foot which even the more patient Teuton had not been able to bear? Many melancholy thoughts were no doubt in Gregory's mind in that great fastness surrounded by all the ramparts of nature and of art. He had dreamed--before the name of Crusade had yet been heard or thought of--of an expedition to Jerusalem at the head of all who loved the Lord, himself in his age and weakness the leader of an army composed of valiant and generous hearts from every quarter of the world, to redeem the Sepulchre of the Lord, and crush the rising power of the Saracens. This had been the favourite imagination of his mind--though as yet it called forth little sympathy from those about him--for some years past. Instead of that noble expedition was it possible that, perhaps partly by his fault, Christians were about to fly at each other's throats and the world to be again torn asunder by intestine warfare? But such thoughts as these were not the thoughts of the eleventh century. Gregory might shed tears before his God at the thought of bloodshed: but that his position in the presence of the Highest was the only right one, and his opponent's that of the most dangerous wrong, was no doubt his assured conviction. He awaited the progress of events, knowing as little as the humblest man-at-arms what was going to happen, with a troubled heart. Nevertheless the retirement of these first days was broken by many hurried arrivals which were more or less of good omen. One by one the proud German bishops specially designated in Gregory's acts of excommunication, and nobles more haughty still, under the same burden, climbed the steep paths of Canossa, and penetrated from gate to gate, barefooted pilgrims denuding themselves of every vestige of power. "Cursed be he who turns back his sword from the blood," that is, who weakly pauses in the execution of a divine sentence--was one of Gregory's maxims. He received these successive suppliants with more sternness than sweetness. "Mercy," he said, "can never be refused to those who acknowledge and deplore their sins; but long disobedience, like rust on a sword, can be burned out only by the fire of a long repentance;" and he sent them one by one to solitary chambers in which, with the sparest of nourishment, they might reflect upon their sins. After a sufficient seclusion, however, they were liberated and sent away, reprimanded yet blessed--at least the laymen among them. It remained now to see what Henry would do. [Illustration: ARCH OF DRUSUS (1860). _To face page 266._] Henry was no longer at the lowest ebb of his fortunes. The princes of Germany had come to a pause: they had not sent the promised escort for the Pope; they were irresolute, not knowing what step to take next: and all Lombardy had risen to welcome the king; he had the support of every schismatic bishop, every censured priest, and of the excited people who were hostile to the pretensions of Rome, or rather to the severe purity of Gregory which was so uncompromising and determined. But by some unaccountable check upon his high spirit Henry, for the moment, was not moved to further rebellion either by the support of a Lombard army at his back, or by the hopes of his reviving followers at home. He was accompanied by his wife and by her mother, Adelaide of Susa, and perhaps the veneration of the women for the authority of the Church and dread of its penalties, affected him, although he had no love for the wife of whom he had tried so hard to get rid. Whatever was the explanation it is very evident, at least, that his spirit was cowed and that he saw nothing before him but submission. He went on probably to Parma, with a small and unarmed retinue, leaving his turbulent Lombard followers behind. On the way he sent various messengers before him, asking for an interview with Matilda, who was supposed likely to move the Pope in his favour. We are not told where the meeting took place, but probably it was in some wondering village at the foot of the hill, where the princely train from the castle, the great Contessa, the still greater abbot, Hugo of Cluny, and "many of the principal Italian princes," met the wandering pilgrim party, without sign or evidence of royalty--Henry and his Queen, the Marchesa Adelaide of Este, her son Amadeo, and other great persons in the same disguise of humility. The ladies on either side were related to each other, and all belonged to that close circle of the reigning class, in which every man calls his neighbour brother or cousin. Hugo of Cluny was the godfather of the king and loved him, and Adelaide, though on the side of her son-in-law, and now his eager champion, was a true and faithful daughter of the Church. Henry declared on the other side to his anxious friends that the accusations of the Germans were not true, that he was not as they had painted him: and implored their intercession with the Pope, not for any temporal advantage, but solely to be delivered from the anathema which weighed upon his soul. And Matilda and the others were but too anxious to make peace and put faith in all he said. It is very likely that Gregory believed none of these protestations, but now or never, certainly he was bound to fulfil his own maxim, and not to turn back his sword from the blood. All the arguments of Henry's friends could not induce him to grant an easy absolution at the king's first word. Finally he consented to receive him as a penitent, but in no other character. Probably it was while the prayers and entreaties of Matilda and of Abbot Hugo were still going on in the castle that Henry came day by day, barefooted, in a humble tunic of woollen cloth, and waited at the gates to know the result. It was "an atrocious winter," such as had never been seen before, with continual snowstorms, and the rugged paths and stairs up the cliff, never easy, were coated with frost. Twice over the king climbed with naked feet as far as the second circle of the walls, but only to be turned away. It seems little short of a miracle that such a man, in such circumstances, should have so persevered. On the third day the pleaders within had been successful, and Henry was admitted, on the generous guarantee of Matilda, who took upon her to answer for him that his repentance was genuine. At last the culprit was led into the Pope's presence. He was made to give various promises of amendment, which were accepted, not on his oath, a last and supreme humiliation, but on the undertaking of various of his friends who swore, rashly one cannot but think, on the relics of the saints that the king would keep his promises. This is the document to which these generous friends set their seals. "I, Henry, King, in respect to the complaints of the archbishops, bishops, dukes, counts and other princes of the Teutonic kingdom, and of all those who follow them, within the time fixed by the Lord Pope will do justice according to his sentence, or make peace according to his advice if no unavoidable hindrance occurs; and in that case, the moment the hindrance is taken away I will be ready to fulfil my promise. In addition, if the Lord Pope Gregory desires to cross the Alps, or go into other countries, he shall be held safe on my part, and on the part of those whom I command, from all danger of death, mutilation, or captivity, himself and those who form his escort, both during the journey, as long as he remains, and on the return; nothing shall be done by me contrary to his dignity, and if anything is done by others, I will lend him my help in good faith according to my power." This does not seem a very large bond. Next day, the 25th January, 1077, Henry came again in the same penitential dress, but this time according to formal appointment. He came into the room where the Pope awaited him, followed by all the excommunicated princes in his train, barefooted and half frozen with the painful climb up the rocky paths; and throwing himself on the floor before Gregory, asked his pardon, which Gregory gave, shedding many tears over the penitents. They were then received back into the Church with all the due ceremonials, the Pope in his vestments, the penitents naked to the waist, despoiled of all ornaments and dignities. In the castle church, of which now nothing but the foundations remain, Gregory solemnly absolved the miserable party, and offered them the Communion. At this act a very strange scene took place. The Pope, the great assailant of Simony, had himself been accused of it, ridiculous as was the accusation in a case like his, of which every circumstance was so perfectly known, and formally by Henry himself in the insolent command already quoted to abandon the papal see. At the moment of communion, in the most solemn part of the service, the Pope turned to Henry, standing before the altar, with the host in his hands. He appealed to God in the most impressive manner according to the usage of the time. "You have long and often accused me," said the Pope, "of having usurped the Apostolical chair by Simony.... I now hold the body of the Saviour in my hands, which I am about to take. Let Him be the witness of my innocence: let God Himself all powerful absolve me to-day of the crime imputed to me if I am innocent, or strike me with sudden death if I am guilty." Then after a solemn pause he added: "My son, do as I have done: if you are certain of your innocence, if your reputation is falsely attacked by the lies of your rivals, deliver the Church of God from a scandal and yourself from suspicion; take the body of Our Lord, that your innocence may have God for witness, that the mouth of your enemies may be stopped, and that I--henceforward, your advocate and the most faithful defender of your cause--may reconcile you with your nobles, give you back your kingdom, and that the tempest of civil war which has so long afflicted the State may henceforth be laid at rest." Would a guilty king in these unbelieving days venture upon such a pledge? Henry at least was incapable of it. He dared not call God to witness against the truth, and refused, trembling, murmuring confused excuses to take this supreme test. The mass was accomplished without the communion of the king; but not the less he was absolved and the anathema taken from his head. In a letter written immediately after, Gregory informed the German princes of what he had done, adding that he still desired to cross the Alps and assist them in the settlement of the great question remaining, Henry having been avowedly received by him as a penitent, but not in any way as a restored king. This great historical event, which has been the subject of so much commentary and discussion, and has been supposed to mark so great a step in the power and pretensions of the Popes, was in fact without any immediate effect in history. Henry went forth wroth and sore, humiliated but not humbled, and thinking of nothing so much as how to return to Gregory the shame he had himself suffered. And Gregory remained in his stronghold as little convinced of any advantage attained, as he had been of Henry's repentance. He is said to have answered the Saxon envoys who reproached him with his leniency, by a grim reassurance which is almost cynical. "He goes back worse than he came," said the Pope. It was indeed impossible that the eye of a man so conversant with men as Gregory should not have perceived how entirely his penitent's action was diplomatic and assumed for a purpose, and what a solemn farce Henry was playing as he stood barefooted in the snow, to obtain the absolution which was his only chance for Germany. It is perfectly permissible to believe that not only the determination not "to turn back his sword from the blood" or to fail in exacting every punctilio of penance, but a natural impulse of scorn for the histrionic exhibition made for the benefit of the great audience across the Alps, induced the Pope to keep the king dangling at those icy gates. That there should have been in Gregory's mind, along with this conviction, momentary relentings of hope that the penitent's heart might really be touched, was equally natural, and that it was one of these sudden impulses which moved him to the startling and solemn appeal to God over the sacramental host which formed so remarkable an incident in the ceremonial, may be taken for granted. In that age miracles were more than common, they were looked for and expected; and in all ages the miracle which we call conversion, the sudden and inexplainable movement of a heart, touched and turned in an instant from evil to good, has been known and proved. That a priest at the altar should hope that it might be his, by some burning word or act, to convey that inexpressible touch was a very human and natural hope: and yet Gregory knew well in his after survey of what had passed that the false penitent went away worse than he came. He wrote, however, an account of the matter to the German princes, who looked on trembling for the consequences, and probably blaming the Pope for an action that might destroy all their combinations--in which he described to them Henry's penitence and promise, without implying a doubt of the sincerity of either, but with a full statement of the fact that the absolution awarded to the man made no difference in respect to the king. "Things being thus arranged [writes the Pope] in order to secure, by the help of God, the peace of the Church and the union of the Kingdom, which we have so long desired, we are anxious to pursue our journey into your countries on the first occasion possible; for we desire you to know, as you may perceive from the written engagements, that everything is still in suspense, so that our arrival among you and the unanimity of your council is absolutely necessary to settle matters. Therefore be very attentive to continue as you have begun in faith and the love of justice, and understand that we have done nothing for the king, except to tell him that he might trust to us to help him in such things as may touch his salvation and his honour, with justice and with mercy, without putting our soul and his in peril." In the meantime Henry had enough to do in winning back again to his side the rebellious Lombards, who considered his submission to the Pope, however artificial, a desertion of their cause, and shut upon him the gates of their cities, which before his visit to Canossa had been thrown wide open. He had apparently, though only for a moment, lost them, while he had not regained the sympathies of Germany. There was nothing for it but a new apostasy, throwing over of his promises, and reassumption of the leadership of the schismatic party, which made the position of Gregory, surrounded by that angry sea of Lombard rebellion which beat against the base of his rocky stronghold, a very dangerous one. Through the whole spring of 1077 the Pope was more or less confined to the Castle of Canossa or other similar fortresses, under the vigilant care of Matilda; and it was from these strong places that he wrote a succession of remarkable letters to the nobles of Germany, who, strongly set upon the Diet in which the affairs of the kingdom were to be placed on a permanent footing, were proceeding to carry out their intention without waiting either for the presence of Gregory which they had invited, or Henry whose interests were at stake. Gregory did everything that was possible to delay the Diet until he could be present at it. He was anxious also to delay whatever great step might be in contemplation until the mind of the country was a little less anxious and disturbed: and he desired to be present, not only in the position of Arbitrator, but also to moderate with his counsels the excited spirits, and prevent if possible any great catastrophe. We may allow, as it is one of the conventionalities of history to assert, that Gregory's intention was to establish in such matters the jurisdiction of the Popes and make it apparent to the world that thrones and principalities were at the disposition of the Church. But at the same time Gregory was, like all men, chiefly moved by the immediate question before him, and he was a man sincerely occupied with what was best for both Church and State, fearing the rashness of an angry and excited assembly, and remembering his promise to do what he could for his most unworthy penitent; and we see no reason to believe that his purposes were not, according to his perception of his duty, honest and noble. He retained his hope of proceeding to Germany as long as that was possible, asking again and again for the guide and escort promised, even asking from Henry a safe conduct through the territory now held by him. Even after the election at Forchheim of Rudolf of Suabia as king in the place of Henry, he continued to urge upon the legates whom he had sent to that assembly the necessity for his presence. And he undoubtedly did this on the highest ground possible, putting forth his right to judge in the matter in the very clearest words. He bids his messengers in the name of St. Peter to summon the heads of both parties, Henry and Rudolf, to make his journey possible. "With the advice of the clergy and laymen fearing God, we desire to judge between the two kings, by the grace of God, and point out which of the two parties is most justly to be entrusted with the government of the State. You are aware that it is our duty, and that it appertains to the providential wisdom of the Apostolic See, to judge the governments of the great Christian kingdoms and to regulate them under the inspiration of justice. The question between these two princes is so grave, and the consequences may be so dangerous, that if it was for any reason neglected by us, it would bring not only upon us and upon them, but on the Church entire, great and lamentable misfortune. Therefore, if one or other of these kings refuses to yield to our decision and conform to our counsels, and if, lighting the torch of pride and human covetousness against the honour of God, he aspires in his fury to the desolation of the Roman Empire, resist him in every way, by every means, to the death if necessary, in our name and by the authority of the blessed Peter." The Pope in another letter makes his appeal no longer to the ruling class but to the entire people. He informs "all the faithful of Christ in the Teutonic empire" that he has sent his legates to both kings to demand of them both "either in their own persons or by sufficient messengers" to open the way for his journey to Germany in order with the help of God to judge the question between them. "Our heart is full of sadness and sorrow to think that for the pride of one man so many thousands of Christians may be delivered over to death both temporal and eternal, the Christian religion shaken to its foundations, and the Roman Empire precipitated into ruin. Both of these kings seek aid from us, or rather from the Apostolic See, which we occupy, though unworthy; and we, trusting in the mercy of Almighty God, and the help of the blessed Peter, with the aid of your advice, you who fear God and love the Church, are ready to examine with care the right on either side and to help him whom justice notoriously calls to the administration of the kingdom.... "You know, dear brethren, that since our departure from Rome we have lived in the midst of dangers among the enemies of the faith; but neither from fear nor from love have we promised any help, but justice to one or other of these kings. We prefer to die, if necessary, rather than to consent by our own will that the Church of God should be put from her place; for we know that we have been ordained and set upon the apostolic chair in order to seek in our life not our own interests but those of Christ, and to follow through a thousand labours in the steps of the fathers to the future and eternal repose, by the mercy of God." The reader must remember that Gregory had very good reason for all that he said, and that irrespective of the claims of the Church a wise and impartial umpire at such a moment might have been of the last importance to Germany; also that his services had been asked for in this capacity, and that therefore he had a right to insist upon being heard. The position which he claimed had been offered to him; and he was entitled to ask that such an important matter should not be settled in his absence. The remonstrances which the Pope continued to make by his own voice and those of his legates as long as any remonstrance was possible, were however regarded by neither party. Neither the authority of Rome nor the visible wisdom of settling a question which must convulse the world and tear Germany in pieces, peacefully and on the foundation of justice if that were possible, as urged by Gregory--could prevail, nor ever has prevailed on any similar occasion against the passions and ambitions of men. It was a devout imagination, appealing to certain minds here and there by the highest motives, and naturally by very different ones to all the interested souls likely to be advantaged by it, which always form the reverse of the medal; but men with arms in their hands and all the excitements of faction and party, of imperial loss and gain around them, were little like to await a severe and impartial judgment. The German bishops made a curious remonstrance in their turn against the reception by Gregory of Henry's professions of penitence, and on either side there was a band of ecclesiastics, presumably not all good or all bad perplexing every judgment. We have fortunately nothing to do with the bloody struggles of Rudolf and Henry. When the latter made his way again over the Alps, to defend his rights, carrying with him the Iron Crown which Gregory's refusal had prevented him from assuming--he carried it away however, though he did not dare to put it on, a curious mixture of timidity and furtive daring--the Pope, up to that moment virtually confined within the circle of the mountain strongholds of Tuscany, returned to Rome: where he continued to be assailed by constant and repeated entreaties to take up one or the other side, his own council of the Lateran inclining towards Henry. But nothing moved him from his determination that this question should be decided by a Diet under his own presidence, and by that alone. This question runs through the entire story of the period from year to year. No council--and in addition to the usual yearly council held always in the beginning of Lent, at the Lateran, there seem to have been various others between whiles, made compulsory by the agitation of the time--could take place without the arrival of the two bands of German ambassadors, one from Henry and the other from Rudolf, to plead the cause of their respective masters, both professing all obedience, and inviting a decision in their favour by every argument: but neither taking a single step to bring about the one thing which the Pope demanded--a lawful assembly to settle the question. There is no pretence that Gregory treated them with anything but the severest impartiality, or that he at any time departed from the condition he had proposed from the first--the only preference given to one above the other being that he is said to have sent his apostolical blessing to Rudolf, a virtuous prince and his friend, and not to Henry the apostate and false penitent, which is scarcely wonderful. But it is easy to understand the agitation in which the constant arrival of these ambassadors must have kept Rome, a city so prone to agitation, and with so many parties within its own walls, seditious nobles and undisciplined priests, and the ever-restless, ever-factious populace, struggling continually for some new thing. The envoys of Henry would seem to have had more or less the popular favour: they were probably a more showy band than the heavier Saxons: and Henry's name and the prestige of his great father, and all those royal shows which must still have been remembered in the city, the coronation of the former Henry in St. Peter's, and all its attendant ceremonials and expenses, must have attached a certain interest to his name. Agnes too, the empress, who had died so recently in the odour of sanctity among them, must have left behind her, whether she loved him or not, a certain prepossession in favour of her son. And the crowd took sides no doubt, and in its crushing and pressing to see the strangers, in the great Lateran square or by the gates of their lodging, formed itself into parties attracted by a glance or a smile, made into enemies by a hasty word, and preparing for the greater troubles and conflicts which were about to come. In the midst of these continual arrivals and departures and while the trumpets of the Saxon or the German party were still tingling in the air, and the velvet and jewels of the ambassadors had scarcely ceased to gleam among the dark robes of the clergy, there came up other matters of a nature more suitable to the sacred courts and the interests of the Church. Berengarius of Tours, a mild and speculative thinker, as often convincing himself that he was wrong as proving himself to be right, appeared before the council of 1079 to answer for certain heresies respecting the Eucharist, of which there had often already been question. His opinions were those of Luther, of whom he is constantly called the precursor: but there was little of Luther's strength in this gentle heretic, who had already recanted publicly, and then resumed his peculiar teachings, with a simplicity that for a time disarmed criticism. Gregory had always been his friend and protector, tolerating if not sharing his opinions, which were not such as moved or interested deeply the Church at the moment: for the age was not heretical, and the example of such a candid offender, who did not attempt to resist the arguments brought against him, was rather edifying than otherwise. At least there were no theological arguments of fire and sword, no rack or stake for the heretic in Gregory's day. The pressure of theological judgment, however, became too strong for the Pope to resist, preoccupied as he was with other matters, and Berengarius was once more compelled to recant, which he did cordially, with the same result as before. It was a more congenial occupation for the vigilant head of the Church to watch over the extension of the faith than to promote the internal discipline of the fold of Christ by prosecutions for heresy. His gaze penetrated the mists of the far north, and we find Gregory forestalling (as indeed his great predecessor the first Gregory had done before him) the missionaries of our own day in the expedient of training young natives to preach the faith among their countrymen, over which there was much modern rejoicing when it was first adopted in recent days, as an entirely new and altogether wise thing. Gregory the Great had already practised it with his Anglo-Saxon boys: and Gregory VII. recommended it to Olaf, king of Norway, to whom he wrote that he would fain have sent a sufficient number of priests to his distant country: "But as this is very difficult because of the great distance and difference of language, we pray you, as we have also asked from the king of Denmark, to send to our apostolical court some young nobles of your country in order that being nourished with care in divine knowledge under the wings of St. Peter and St. Paul, they may carry back to you the counsels of the Apostolical See, arriving among you, not as men unknown, but as brothers--and preaching to you the duties of Christianity, not as strangers and ignorant, but as men whose language is yours, and who are yet trained and powerful in knowledge and morals." Thus, while the toils were gathering round his feet at home, and the most ancient centre of Christianity was ready to cast him out as a fugitive, the great Pope was extending the invisible links of Christian fealty to the ends of the earth. It was in the year 1080, three years after the events of Canossa, that the next step was taken by Gregory. In that long interval he had never ceased to insist upon the only lawful mode of settling the quarrel, _i.e._, the assembly in Germany of all the persons most concerned, to take the whole matter into solemn consideration and come to a permanent conclusion upon grounds more solid than the appeal to arms which ravaged the empire, and which, constantly fluctuating, gave the temporary victory now to one side, now to the other. The age was far from being ripe for any such expedient as arbitration, and the ordeal of arms was its most natural method: yet the proposal had proceeded in the first place from the Teutonic princes themselves, and it was entirely in accordance with German laws and primitive procedure. And except the Pope, or some other great churchman, there was no possible president of such a Diet, or any one who could have had even a pretence of impartiality. He was the only man who could maintain the balance and see justice done, even in theory: for the awe of his presence and of his spiritual powers might have restrained these fierce princes and barons and made some sort of reasonable discussion possible. For all these reasons, and also no doubt to assert practically the claim he had made for himself and his successors to be the judges of the earth and settle all such disputes as representatives of God, he was very unwilling to give up the project. It had come to be evident, however, in the spring of 1080 when Lent began and the usual Council of the Lateran assembled, that Henry would never consent to this Diet, the very reason for which was the discussion of claims which he held as divine and infallible. Rudolf, his rival, was, or professed to be, as anxious for it as the Pope, though he never had taken any step to make Gregory's journey across the Alps possible. But at last it would seem that all parties gave up the thought of any such means of making peace. The state of affairs in Germany was daily becoming more serious, and when the envoys of Rudolf, after many fruitless visits to Rome, appeared at last with a sort of ultimatum, demanding that some decisive step should be taken to put an end to the suspense, there was no longer any possibility of further delay. Henry also sent ambassadors on the same occasion: but they came late, and were not received. The Council of the Lateran met, no doubt with many searchings of heart and a great excitement pervading the assembly where matters of such importance were about to be settled, and such a decision as had never been asked from any Pope before, was about to be given from the chair of St. Peter to a half-believing, half-rebellious world. Whether any one really believed that a question involving the succession to the empire could be solved in this way, it is impossible to tell: but the envoys of Rudolf, whose arms had been for the moment victorious, and who had just driven Henry a fugitive before him, made their appeal to the Pope with a vehemence almost tragic, as to one whose power and responsibility in the matter were beyond doubt. The statement of their case before the Council was as follows: "We delegates of our lord the King, Rudolf, and of the princes, we complain before God, and before St. Peter to you our father and this holy Council, that Henry, set aside by your Apostolic authority from the kingdom, has notwithstanding your prohibition invaded the said kingdom, and has devastated everything around by sword and fire and pillage; he has with impious cruelty, driven bishops and archbishops out of their sees, and has distributed their dignities as fiefs among his partisans. Werner of holy memory, archbishop of Magdeburg, has perished by his tyranny; Aldebert, bishop of Worms, is still held in prison contrary to the Apostolic order; many thousands of men have been slaughtered by his faction, many churches pillaged, burned and destroyed. The assaults of Henry upon our princes because they withdrew their obedience from him according to the command of the Apostolic See, are numberless. And the assembly which you have desired to call together, Holy Father, for the establishment of the truth and of peace, has not been held, solely by the fault of Henry and his adherents. For these reasons we supplicate your clemency in our own name and that of the Holy Church of God to do justice upon the sacrilegious violator of the Church." It will be remarked that the whole blame of the struggle is here thrown upon the Church:--as in the remonstrance of the Saxon bishops, who say not a word of their national grievances against Henry, which nevertheless were many and great, and the real foundation of the war--but entirely attribute it to the action of Gregory in excommunicating and authorising them to withdraw their homage from the king. Nobody, we think, can read the chaotic and perplexing history of the time without perceiving how mere a pretext this was, and how little in reality the grievances of the Church had to do with the internecine struggle. The curious thing however, is that Gregory, either in policy or self-deception, accepts the whole responsibility and is willing to be considered the cause and maker of these deadly wars, as if the struggle had been one between the Church and the King alone. A sense of responsibility was evidently strong in his mind as he rose from his presiding chair on this great occasion, in the breathless silence that followed the complaint and appeal of Rudolf's emissaries. Not a voice in defence of Henry had been raised in the Council, which, as many voices were in his favour in preceding assemblies, shows the consciousness of the conclave that another and more desperate phase of the quarrel had been reached. Gregory himself had sat silent for a moment, overwhelmed with the awe of the great crisis. When he rose it was with a breaking voice and tears in his eyes: and the form of the deliverance was as remarkable as its tenor. Gregory addressed--not the Council: but, with an extraordinary outburst of emotion, the Apostle in whose name he pronounced judgment and in whose chair he sat. Nothing could have been more impressive than this sudden and evidently spontaneous change from the speech expected from him by the awed and excited assembly, to the personal statement and explanation given forth in trembling accents but with uplifted head and eyes raised to the unseen, to the great potentate in heavenly places whose representative he believed himself to be. However vague might be the image of the apostle in other eyes, to Gregory St. Peter was his living captain, the superior officer of the Church, to whom his second in command had to render an account of his procedure in face of the enemy. The amazement of that great assembly, the awe suddenly imposed even on the great body of priests, too familiar perhaps with holy things to be easily impressed--much more on the startled laymen, Rudolf's envoys and their attendants, by this abstract address, suddenly rising out of the midst of the rapt assembly to a listener unseen, must have been extraordinary. It marked, as nothing else could have done, the realisation in Gregory's mind of a situation of extraordinary importance, such an emergency as since the Church came into being had seldom or never occurred in her history before. He stood before the trembling world, himself a solitary man shaken to the depths, calling upon his great predecessor to remember that it was not with his own will that he had ascended that throne or accepted that responsibility--that it was Peter, or rather the two great leaders of the Church together, Peter the Prince of the Apostles, Paul the Doctor and instructor of the nations, who had chosen him, not he who had thrust himself into their place. To these august listeners he recounted everything, the whole story of the struggle, the sins of Henry, his submission and absolution, his renewed rebellion, always against the Church, against the Apostles, against the Ecclesiastical authority: while the breathless assembly around, left out in this solemn colloquy, sat eager, drinking in every word, overcome by the wonder of the situation, the strange attitude of the shining figure in the midst, who was not even praying, but reporting, explaining every detail to his unseen general above. Henry had been a bad king, a cruel oppressor, an invader of every right: and it would have been the best policy of the Churchman to put forth these effective arguments for his overthrow. But of this there is not a word. He was a rebel against the Church, and by the hand of the Church it was just and right that he should fall. One cannot but feel a descent from this high and visionary ground in the diction of the sentence that followed, a sentence not now heard for the first time, and which perhaps no one there felt, tremendous as its utterance was, to be the last word in this great quarrel. "Therefore trusting to the judgment and to the mercy of God, and of the Holy Mother of God, and armed with your authority, I place under excommunication and I bind with the chains of anathema, Henry called King, and all his fellow sinners; and on the part of Almighty God, and of You, shutting him out henceforward from the kingdoms of Germany and of Italy, I take from him all royal power and dignity; I forbid any Christian to obey him as king; and I absolve from their sworn promises all those who have made, or may make, oaths of allegiance to him. May this Henry with his fellow sinners have no force in fight and obtain no victory in life!" Having with like solemnity bestowed upon Rudolf the kingdom of Germany (Italy is not named) with all royal rights, the Pope thus concludes his address to the spiritual Heads in heaven of the Church on earth: "Holy Fathers and Lords! let the whole world now know and understand that as you can bind and loose in heaven, you can also upon earth give and take away from each according to his merits, empires, kingdoms, principalities, duchies, marquisates, counties, and all possessions. You have often already taken from the perverse and the unworthy, patriarchal sees, primacies, archbishoprics, and bishoprics, in order to bestow them upon religious men. If you thus judge in things spiritual, with how much more power ought you not to do so in things secular! And if you judge the angels who are the masters of the proudest princes, what may you not do with the princes, their slaves! Let the kings and great ones of the earth know to-day how great you are, and what your power is; let them fear to neglect the ordinances of the Church! Accomplish quickly your judgment on Henry so that to the eyes of all it may be apparent that it falls upon him not by chance but by your power. Yet may his confusion turn to repentance, that his soul may be saved in the day of the Lord." Whether the ecstasy of his own rapt and abstract communion with the unseen, that subtle inspiration of an Invisible too clearly conceived for human weakness to sustain, had gone to Gregory's head and drawn him into fuller expression of this extraordinary assertion and claim beyond all reason: or whether the long-determined theory of his life thus found complete development it is difficult to tell. These assumptions were, indeed, the simple and practical outcome of claims already made and responsibilities assumed: claims which had been already put feebly into operation by other Popes before. But they had never before been put into words so living or so solemn. Gregory himself had, hitherto, claimed only the right to judge, to arbitrate at the head of a National Diet. He had not himself, so far as we can see, assumed up to this moment the supposed rights of Peter, alone and uncontrolled. He had given England to William, but only on the warrant of the bond of Harold solemnly sworn before the altar. He had made legitimate the claims already established by conquest of Robert Guiscard and others of the Norman conquerors. But the standard set up in the Lateran Council of 1080 was of a far more imperative kind, and asserted finally through Peter and Paul, his holy fathers and lords, an authority absolute and uncompromising such as made the brain reel. This extraordinary address must have sent a multitude, many of them no doubt ordinary men with no lofty ideal like his own, back to their bishoprics and charges, swelling with a sense of spiritual grandeur and power such as no promotion could give, an inspiration which if it made here and there a high spirit thrill to the necessities of a great position, was at least as likely to make petty tyrants and oppressors of meaner men. The only saving clause in a charge so full of the elements of mischief, is that to the majority of ordinary minds it would contain very little personal meaning at all. [Illustration: ISLAND ON TIBER. _To face page 286._] From this time nothing was possible but war to the death between Gregory and Henry, the deposed king, who was as little disposed to accept his deposition as any anathema was able to enforce it. We have already remarked on various occasions, and it is a dreadful coming down from the height of so striking a scene, and so many great words, to be obliged to repeat it: yet it is very evident that notwithstanding the terrible pictures we have had of the force of these anathemas, they made very little difference in the life of the world. There were always schismatic or rebellious priests enough to carry on, in defiance of the Pope, those visible ceremonies and offices of religion which are indispensable to the common order of life. There were, no doubt, great individual sufferings among the faithful, but the habits of ordinary existence could only have been interfered with had every bishop and every priest been loyal to the Pope, which was far from being the case. It was at the conclusion of this Council that Gregory is said to have sent to Rudolf the famous imperial crown bearing the inscription _Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rodolpho_, of which Villemain makes the shabby remark that, "After having held the balance as uncertain, and denied the share he had in the election of Rudolf, now that it was confirmed by success Gregory VII. claimed it for himself and the Church."--a conclusion neither in consonance with the facts nor with the character of the man. That Henry should receive this decision meekly was of course impossible. Once more he attempted to make reprisals in an assembly held at Brixen in the following June, when by means of the small number of thirty bishops, chiefly excommunicated persons, and, of course, in any case without any right to judge their superior, Gregory himself was once more deposed, excommunicated, and cut off from the communion of these ecclesiastics and their followings. In the sentence given by this paltry company, Gregory is accused of following the heresy of Berengarius, whose recantation had the year before been received at the Lateran: and also of being a necromancer and magician, and possessed by an evil spirit. These exquisite reasons are the chief of the allegations against him, and the principal ground upon which his deposition was justified. Guibert of Ravenna, long his enemy, and one of the excommunicated, was elected by the same incompetent tribunal as Pope in his place, naturally without any of the canonical requirements for such an election; though we are told that Henry laid violent hands on the bishop of Ostia whose privilege it was to officiate at the consecration of the Popes, and who was then in foreign parts acting as legate, in order to give some show of legality to the election. Guibert however, less scrupulous than the former intruder Cadalous, took at once the title of Clement III. The great advantage of such a step, beside the sweetness of revenge, no doubt was that it practically annulled the papal interdict so far as the knowledge of the vulgar was concerned: for so long as there were priests to officiate, a bishop to preside, and a Pope to bless and to curse, how should the uninstructed people know that their country was under any fatal ban? To make such a universal excommunication possible the whole priesthood must have been subject and faithful to the one sole authority in the Church. Unfortunately for the prestige of Gregory, Henry was much more successful in the following year in all his enterprises, and it was Rudolf, the friend and elected of the Pope, and not his adversary, who died after a battle which was not otherwise decisive. This event must have been a great blow and disappointment as well as an immediate and imminent danger. For some time, however, the ordinary course of life went on in Rome, and Gregory, by means of various negotiations, and also no doubt by reason of his own consciousness of the pressing need for a champion and supporter, made friends again with Robert Guiscard, exerting himself to settle the quarrels between him and his neighbours, and to win him thus by good offices to the papal side. To complete this renewal of friendship Gregory, though ailing, and amid all these tumults beginning to feel the weight of years, made a journey to Benevento, which belonged to the Holy See, and there met his former penitent and adversary, the brave and wily Norman. The interview between them took place in sight of a great crowd of the followers of both and the inhabitants of the whole region, assembled in mingled curiosity and reverence, to see so great a scene. The Norman, relieved of the excommunications under which he had lain for past offences, and endowed with the Pope's approval and blessing, swore fealty and obedience to Gregory, promising henceforward to be the champion of Holy Church, protecting her property and her servants, keeping her counsel and acknowledging her authority. "From this hour and for the future I will be faithful to the Holy Roman Church, and to the Apostolic See, and to you, my lord Gregory, the universal Pope. I will be your defender, and that of the Roman Church, aiding you according to my power to maintain, to occupy, and to defend the domains of St. Peter and his possessions, against all comers, reserving only the March of Fermo, of Salerno, and of Amalfi, concerning which no definite arrangement has yet been made." These last, and especially the town of Salerno, one of the cities _la piu bella e piu deliziosa_ of Italy, says old Muratori, had been recently taken by Guiscard from their Prince Gisolfo, a _protégé_ and friend of the Pope, who excepts them in the same cautious manner from the sanction given to Robert's other conquests. Gregory's act of investiture is altogether a very cautious document: I Gregory, Pope, invest you Duke Robert, with all the lands given you by my predecessors of holy memory, Nicolas and Alexander. As for the lands of Salerno, Amalfi and a portion of the March of Fermo, held by you unjustly, I suffer it patiently for the present, having confidence in God and in your honesty, and that you will conduct yourself in future for the honour of God and St. Peter in such a manner as becomes you, and as I may tolerate, without risking your soul or mine. It is not likely that Gregory hoped so much from Guiscard's probity as that he would give up that _citta deliziosa_, won by his bow and his spear. Nor was he then aware how his own name and all its associations would remain in Salerno, its chief distinction throughout all the ages to come. The life of Gregory had never been one of peace or tranquillity. He had been a fighting man all his days, but during a great part of them a successful one: the years which remained to him, however, were one long course of agitations, of turmoil, and of revolution. In 1081 Henry, scarcely successful by arms, but confident in the great discouragement of the rival party through the death of Rudolf, crossed the Alps again, and after defeating Matilda, ravaging her duchy and driving her to the shelter of Canossa, marched upon Rome. Guibert of Ravenna, the Anti-Pope, accompanied him with many bishops and priests of his party. On his first appearance before Rome, the energy of Gregory, and his expectation of some such event, had for once inspired the city to resistance, so that the royal army got no further than the "fields of Nero," outside the walls of the Leonine city to the north of St. Peter's, by which side they had approached Rome. Henry had himself crowned emperor by his anti-pope in his tent, an act performed by the advice of his schismatic bishops, and to the great wonder, excitement, and interest of the surrounding people, overawed by that great title which he had not as yet ventured to assume. This futile coronation was indeed an act with which he amused himself periodically during the following years from time to time. But the heats of summer and the fever of Rome soon drove the invaders back. In 1082 Henry returned to the attack, but still in vain. In 1083 he was more successful, and seized that portion of Rome called the Leonine city, which included St. Peter's and the tombs of the Apostles, the great shrine which gave sanctity to the whole. The Pope, up to this time free, though continually threatened by his enemies, and still carrying on as best he could the universal affairs of the Church, was now forced to retire to St. Angelo. He was at this moment without defender or champion on any side. The brave Matilda, ever faithful, was shut up in impregnable Canossa. Guiscard, after having secured all that he wanted from Gregory, had gone off upon his own concerns, and was now struggling to make for himself a footing in Greece, indifferent to the Pope's danger. The Romans, after the brief interval of inspiration which gave them courage to make a stand for the Pope and the integrity of their city, had fallen back into their usual weakness, dazzled by Henry's title of Emperor, and cowed by the presence of his Germans at their gates. They had never had any spirit of resistance, and it was scarcely to be expected of a corrupt and fickle population, accustomed for ages to be the toys of circumstance, that they should begin a nobler career now. And there the Pope remained, shut up in that lonely stronghold, overlooking the noisy and busy streets which overflowed with foreign soldiers and the noise of arms, while in the Church of St. Peter close by, Guibert the mock Pope assembled a mock council to absolve the new Emperor from all the anathemas that had followed one another upon his head. There was much discussion and debate in that strange assembly, in which every second man at least must have had in his secret heart a sense of sacrilege, over this subject. They did not apparently deny the legal weight of these anathemas, which they recognised as the root and origin of all the misfortunes that had followed; but they maintained a feeble contention that the proceedings of Gregory had been irregular, seeing that Henry had never had the opportunity of defending himself. Another of the pretensions attributed to the Roman Church by her enemies, and this time with truth, as it has indeed become part of her code--was, as appears, set up on this occasion for the first time, and by the schismatics. Gregory had forbidden the people to accept the sacraments from the hands of vicious or simoniacal priests. Guibert, called Clement III., and his fictitious council declared with many learned quotations that the sacraments in themselves were all in all, and the administrators nothing; and that though given by a drunkard, an adulterer, or a murderer, the rites of the Church were equally effectual. It was however still more strange that in this assembly, made up of schismatics, many of them guilty of these very practices, a timid remonstrance should have been made against the very sins which had separated them from the rest of the Church and which Gregory had spent his life in combating. The Pope had not been successful either in abolishing simony or in maintaining celibacy and continence among the clergy, but he had roused a universal public opinion, a sentiment stronger than himself, which found a place even in the mind of his antagonist and rival in arms. Thus the usurper timidly attacked with arguments either insignificant or morally dangerous the acts of the Pope--yet timidly echoed his doctrine: with the air throughout all of a pretender alarmed by the mere vicinity of an unfortunate but rightful monarch. Guibert had been bold enough before; he had the air now of a furtive intruder trembling lest in every chance sound he might hear the step of the true master returning to his desecrated house. The next event in this curious struggle is more extraordinary still. Henry himself, it is evident, must have been struck with the feeble character of this unauthorised assembly, notwithstanding that the new Pope was of his own making and the council held under his auspices; or perhaps he hoped to gain something by an appearance of candour and impartiality though so late in the day. At all events he proposed, immediately after the close of the fictitious council, to the citizens and officials who still held the other portions of the city, in the name of Gregory--to withdraw his troops, to leave all roads to Rome free, and to submit his cause to another council presided over by Gregory and to which, as in ordinary cases, all the higher ranks of the clergy should be invited. It is impossible to conceive a more extraordinary contradiction of all that had gone before. The proposal, however, strange as it seems, was accepted and carried out. In November, 1083, this assembly was called together. Henry withdrew with his army towards Lombardy, the peaceful roads were all reopened, and bishops and abbots from all parts of Christendom hastened, no doubt trembling, yet excited, to Rome. Henry, notwithstanding his liberality of kind offers, exercised a considerable supervision over these travellers, for we hear that he stopped the deputies whom the German princes had sent to represent them, and also many distinguished prelates, two of whom had been specially attached to his mother Agnes, along with one of the legates of the Pope. The attempt to pack the assembly, or at least to weed it of its most remarkable members in this way was not, however, successful, and a large number of ecclesiastics were got together notwithstanding all the perils of the journey. The meeting was a melancholy one, overshadowed by the hopelessness of a position in which all the right was on one side and all the power on the other. After three days' deliberation, which came to nothing, the Pope addressed--it was for the last time in Rome--his faithful counsellors. "He spoke with the tongue of an angel rather than of a man," bidding them to be firm and patient, to hold fast to the faith, and to quit themselves like men, however dark might be the days on which they had fallen. The entire convocation broke forth into tears as the old man concluded. But Gregory would not be moved to any clemency towards his persecutor. He yielded so far as not to repeat his anathema against him, excommunicating only those who by force or stratagem had turned back and detained any who were on their way to the Council. But he would not consent to crown Henry as emperor, which--notwithstanding his previous coronation in his tent by Guibert, and a still earlier one, it is said, at Brixen immediately after the appointment of the anti-pope--was what the rebellious monarch still desired; nor would he yield to the apparent compulsion of circumstances and make peace, without repentance on the part of Henry. No circumstances could coerce such a man. The fruitless council lasted but three days, and separated without making any change in the situation. The Romans, roused again perhaps by the brief snatch of freedom they had thus seemed to have, rose against Henry's garrison and regained possession of the Leonine city which he had held: and thus every particular of the struggle was begun and repeated over again. This extraordinary attempt, after all that had happened--after the council in which Henry had deposed Gregory, the council in St. Peter's itself, held by the anti-pope, and all the abuse he had poured upon "the monk Hildebrand," as he had again and again styled the Pope--by permitting an assembly in which the insulted pontiff should be restored to all his authority and honours, to move Gregory to accept and crown him, is one of the most wonderful things in history. But the attempt was the last he ever made, as it was the most futile. After the one flash of energy with which Rome renewed the struggle, and another period of renewed attacks and withdrawals, Henry became master of the city, though never of the castle of St. Angelo where Gregory sat indomitable, relaxing not a jot of his determination and strong as ever in his refusal to withdraw, unless after full repentance, his curse from Henry. Various castles and fortified places continued to be held in the name of the Pope, both within and without the walls of the city: which fact throws a curious light upon its existing aspect: but these remnants of defence had little power to restrain the conqueror and his great army. And then again Rome saw one of those sights which from age to age had become familiar to her, the triumph of arms and overwhelming force under the very eyes of the imprisoned ruler of the city. The Lateran Palace, so long deserted, awoke to receive a royal guest. The sober courts of the papal house blazed with splendid costumes and resounded with all the tumult of rejoicing and triumph. The first of the great ceremonies was the coronation of the Archbishop Guibert as Clement III., which took place in Passion Week in the year 1084. Four months before Gregory had descended from his stronghold to hold the council in which Henry had still hoped to persuade or force him to complaisance, flinging Guibert lightly away; but the king's hopes had failed and Guibert was again the temporary symbol of that spiritual power without which he could not maintain himself. On Easter Sunday following, three great processions again streamed over the bridge of St. Angelo under the eyes, it may be, of Gregory high on the battlements of his fortress, or at least penetrating to his seclusion with the shouts and cheers that marked their progress--the procession of the false Pope, that of the king, that of Bertha the king's wife, whom it had required all the efforts of Gregory and his faithful bishops to preserve from a cruel divorce: she who had set her maids with baton and staff to beat the life half out of that false spouse and caitiff knight in his attempt to betray her. The world had triumphed over the Church, the powers of darkness over those of light, a false and treacherous despot, whose word even his own followers held as nothing, over the steadfast, pure, and high-minded priest, who, whatever we may think of his motives--and no judgment upon Gregory can ever be unanimous--had devoted his life to one high purpose and held by it through triumph and humiliation, unmoved and immovable. Gregory was as certain of his great position now, the Vicar of Christ commissioned to bind and to loose, to judge with impartiality and justice all men's claims, to hold the balance of right and wrong all over the world, as he watched the gay processions pass, and heard the heralds sounding their trumpets and the anti-pope, the creature of Henry's will, passing by to give his master (for the third time) the much-longed-for imperial crown, as when he himself stood master within the battlements of Canossa and raised that suppliant king to the possibilities of empire from his feet. It is a curious detail adding a touch to the irony which mingles with so many human triumphs and downfalls, that the actual imperial crown seems at one time at least to have been in Gregory's keeping. During the abortive council, for which, for three days he had returned to the Lateran, he offered, though he refused to place it on his head, to give it up to Henry's hands, letting it down with a cord from a window of St. Angelo. This offer, which could scarcely be other than ironical, seems to have been refused; but whether Gregory retained it in St. Angelo, or left it to be found in the Lateran treasury by the returning king, there is no information. If it was a fictitious crown which was placed upon Henry's head by the fictitious Pope, the curious travesty would be complete. And history does not say even why the ceremony performed before by the same hands on the banks of the Tiber, should have dropped out of recollection as a thing that had not been. During all this time nothing had been heard of Robert Guiscard who had so solemnly taken upon him the office of champion of the Holy See and knight of St. Peter. He had been about his own business, pursuing his conquests, eager to carve out new kingdoms for himself and his sons: but at last the Pope's appeals became too strong to be resisted. Henry, whose armies had doubtless not improved in force during the desultory warfare which must have affected more or less the consciences of many, and the hot summers, unwholesome for northerners, did not await the coming of this new and formidable foe. Matilda's Tuscans were more easily overcome than Guiscard's veterans of northern race. He called in his men from all the petty sieges which were wearing them out, and from that wall which he had forced the Romans with their own pitiful hands to build as a base of attacks against St. Angelo, and withdrew in haste, leaving the terrified citizens whom he had won over to his party, as little apt to arms as their forefathers had been, and in the midst of a half-ruined city--the strong positions in which were still held by the friends of the Pope--to do what they could against the most dreaded troops of Christendom. The catastrophe was certain before it occurred. The resistance of the Romans to Robert Guiscard was little more than nominal, only enough to inflame the Normans and give the dreadful freedom of besiegers to their armed hordes. They delivered the Pontiff, but sacked the town which lay helpless in its ruins at their feet; not even the churches were spared, nor their right of sanctuary acknowledged as six hundred years before Attila had acknowledged it. And all the fault of the Pope, as who could wonder if the sufferers cried? It was he who had brought these savages upon them, as it was he who had exposed them before to the hostility of Henry. Gregory had scarcely come forth from his citadel and returned to his palace when Rome was filled with scenes of blood and carnage, such as recalled the invasions of Huns and Vandals. The flames of the burning city lighted up the skies as he came forth in sorrow, delivered from his bondage, but a sad and burdened man. The chroniclers tell us that he flung himself at the feet of Guiscard to beg him to spare the city, crying out that he was Pope for edification and not for ruin. And though his prayer was to some extent granted, there is little doubt that here at the last the heart of Gregory and his courage were broken, and that though his resolution was never shaken, his strength could bear little more. This was the greatest, as it was the most uncalled for, misfortune of his life. He held a strange council in desolate Rome in the few days that followed, in which he repeated his anathema against Henry, Guibert, and all the clergy who were living in rebellion or in sin. But it would seem that even at such a moment the council was not unanimous and that the spirit of his followers was broken and cowed, and few could follow him in the steadfastness of his own unchangeable mind. And when this tremulous and disturbed assembly was over, held in such extraordinary circumstances, fierce Normans, wild Saracens forming the guard of the Pontiff, fire and ruin, and the shrieks of victims still disturbing the once peaceful air--Gregory, sick at heart, turned his back upon the beloved city which he had laboured so hard to make once more mistress of the world. Perhaps he was not aware that he left Rome for ever; but the conditions of that last restoration had broken his heart. He to bring bloodshed and rapine! he who was Pope to build up and not to destroy! It was more than the man who had borne all things else could endure. No doubt it was a crowning triumph for Guiscard to lead away with him the rescued Pontiff, and pose before all the world as Gregory's deliverer. The journey itself, however, was not without perils. The Campagna and all the wilder country beyond, about the Pontine marshes, was full of freebooting bands, Henry's partisans, or calling themselves so, who harassed the march with guerilla attacks. In one such flying combat a monk of Gregory's own retinue was killed, and the Pope had to ride like the men-at-arms, now starting at daybreak, now travelling deep into the night. At Monte Cassino, in the great convent where his friend Desiderius, who was to be his successor reigned, there was a welcome pause, and he had time to refresh himself among his old friends, the true brethren and companions of his soul. The legends of the monks--or was it the pity of the ages beginning already to awaken and rising to a great height of human compunction by the time the early historians began to write his story?--accord to him here that compensation of divine acknowledgment which the heart recognises as the only healing for such wounds. Some one among the monks of Monte Cassino saw a dove hovering over his head as he said mass. Perhaps this was merely a confusion with the legend of Gregory the Great, his predecessor, to whom that attribute belongs; perhaps some gentle brother whose heart ached with sympathy for the suffering Pope had glamour in his eyes and saw. Gregory continued his journey, drawn along in the army of Robert Guiscard as in a chariot, which began now to be, as he reached the south Italian shores, a chariot of triumph. All the towns and villages on the way came out to greet the Pope, to ask his blessing. The bishop of Salerno, with his clergy, came forth in solemn procession with shining robes and sacred standards to meet him. Neither Pope nor prince could have found a more exquisite retreat from the troubles of an evil world. The beautiful little city, half Saracenic, in all the glory of its cathedral still new and white and blooming with colour like a flower, sat on the edge of that loveliest coast, the sea like sapphire surging up in many lines of foam, the waves clapping their hands as in the Psalms, and above, the olive-mantled hills rising soft towards the bluest sky, with on every point a white village, a little church tower, the convent walls shining in the sun. It is still a region as near Paradise as human imagination can grasp, more fair than any scene we know. One wonders if the Pope's heart had sufficient spring left in it to take some faint delight in that wonderful conjunction of earth and sea and sky. But such delights were not much thought of in his day, and it is very possible he might have felt it something like a sin to suffer his heart to go forth in any such carnal pleasure. But at least something of his old energy came back when he was settled in this wonderful place of exile. He sent out his legates to the world, charged with letters to the faithful everywhere, to explain the position of affairs and to assert, as if now with his last breath, that it was because of his determination to purify the Church that all these conspiracies had risen against him--which was indeed, notwithstanding all the developments taken by the question, the absolute truth. For it was Gregory's strongly conceived and faithfully held resolution to cleanse the Church from simony, to have its ministers and officers chosen for their worth and virtue, and power to guide and influence their flocks for good, and not because they had wealth to pay for their dignity and to maintain it, which was the beginning of the conflict. Henry who refused obedience and made a traffic of the holiest offices, and those degenerate and rebellious priests who continued to buy themselves into rich bishoprics and abbacies in defiance of every ecclesiastical law and penalty, were the original offenders, and ought before posterity at least to bear the brunt. It is perhaps indiscreet to speak of an event largely affecting modern life in such words, but there is a whimsical resemblance which is apt to call forth a smile between the action of a large portion of the Church of Scotland fifty years ago, and the life struggle of Gregory. In the former case it was the putting in of ministers to ecclesiastical benefices by lay authority, however veiled by supposed popular assent, which was believed to be an infringement of the divine rights of the Church, and of the headship of Christ, by a religious body perhaps more scornful and condemnatory than any other of everything connected with a Pope. It was not supposed in Scotland that the humble candidates for poor Scotch livings bought their advancement; but the principle was the same. In the case of Gregory the positions thus bought and sold were of very great secular importance, carrying with them much wealth, power, and outward importance, which was not the case in the other; but in neither case were the candidates chosen canonically or for their suitableness to the charge, but from extraneous motives and in spite of the decisions of the Church. This was to destroy the headship of Peter, the authority of his representative, the rights of the sacred Spouse of Christ. Both claims were perfectly honest and true. But Gregory, as in opposition to a far greater grievance, and one which overspread all Christendom, was by far the more distinguished confessor, as he was the greater martyr of the Holy Cause. For this was undoubtedly the first cause of all the sufferings of the Pontiff, the insults showered upon him, the wrongs he had to bear, the exile in which he died. The question has been settled against him, we believe, in every country, even the most deeply Christian. Scotland indeed has prevailed in having her own way, but that is because she has no important benefices, involving secular rank and privilege. No voice in England has ever been raised in defence of simony, but the _congé d'élire_ would have been as great an offence to Pope Gregory, and as much of a sin to Dr. Chalmers, as the purchase of an archbishopric in one case, or the placing of an unpopular preacher in another. The Pope's claim of authority over both Church and world, though originally and fundamentally based upon his rights as the successor of Peter, developed out of this as the fruit out of the flower. From a religious point of view, and if we could secure that all Popes, candidates for ecclesiastical offices, and electors to the same, should be wise and good men, the position would be unassailable; but as it is not so, the question seems scarcely worth risking a man's living for, much less his life. But perhaps no man since, if it were not his successors in the popedom, had such strenuous reasons to spend his life for it as Gregory, as none has ever had a severer struggle. This smaller question, however, though it is the fundamental one, has been almost forgotten in the struggle between the Pope and the Emperor--the sacred and the secular powers--which developed out of it. The claim to decide not only who was to be archbishop but who was to be king, rose into an importance which dwarfed every other. This was not originated by Gregory, but it was by his means that it became the great question of the age, and rent the world in twain. The two great institutions of the Papacy and the Empire had been or seemed to be an ideal method of governing the world, the one at the head of all spiritual concerns, the other commanding every secular power and all the progress of Christendom. Circumstances indeed, and the growth of independence and power in other nations, had circumscribed the sphere of the Empire, while the Papacy had grown in influence by the same means. But still the Empire was the head of the Christian world of nations, as the Pope was the head of those spiritual princedoms which had developed into so much importance. When the interests were so curiously mingled, it was certain that a collision must occur one time or another. There had been frequent jars, in days when the power of the Empire was too great for anything but a momentary resistance on the part of the Pope. But when the decisive moment came and the struggle became inevitable, Gregory--a man fully equal to the occasion--was there to meet it. His success, such as it was, was for later generations. To himself personally it brought the crown of tragedy only, without even any consciousness of victory gained. The Pope lived not quite a year in Salerno. He died in that world of delight in the sweetness of the May, when all is doubly sweet by those flowery hills and along that radiant shore. Among his last words were these:--"My brethren, I make no account of my good works: my only confidence is that I have always loved justice and hated iniquity:--and for that I die in exile," he added before his end. In the silence and the gathering gloom one of his attendants cried out, "How can you say in exile, my lord, you who, the Vicar of Christ and of the apostles, have received all the nations for your inheritance, and the world for your domain?" With these words in his ears the Pope departed to that country which is the hope of every soul, where iniquity is not and justice reigns. He died on the 25th May, 1085, not having yet attained his seventieth year. He had been Pope for twelve years only, and during that time had lived in continual danger, fighting always for the Church against the world. A suffering and a melancholy man, his life had none of those solaces which are given to the commonest and the poorest. His dearest friends were far from him: the hope of his life was lost: he thought no doubt that his standard fell with him, and that the labours of his life were lost also, and had come to nothing. But it was not so; Gregory VII. is still after these centuries one of the greatest Popes of Rome: and though time has wrought havoc with that great ideal of the Arbiter and universal Judge which never could have been made into practical reality, unless the world and the Church had been assured of a succession of the wisest and holiest of men--he yet secured for a time something like that tremendous position for a number of his successors, and created an opinion and sentiment throughout Christendom that the reforms on which he insisted ought to be, which is almost the nearest that humanity can come to universal reformation. The Church which he left seemed shattered into a hundred fragments, and he died exiled and powerless; but yet he opened the greatest era of her existence to what has always been one of the wisest, and still remains one of the strongest institutions in the world, against which, in spite of many errors and much tribulations, it has never been in the power of the gates of hell to prevail. [Illustration: IN THE VILLA BORGHESE.] FOOTNOTES: [3] This personage is always called Cencio in the Italian records. He is supposed by some to have been of the family of the Crescenzi, of which name, as well as of Vincenzo, this is the diminutive. [4] On this subject the records differ, some asserting these letters to have been read at once on Roland's removal, some that the sitting was adjourned after that wonderful incident. [Illustration: THE FOUNTAIN OF THE TORTOISE.] CHAPTER IV. INNOCENT III. It is not our object, the reader is aware, to give here a history of Rome, or of its pontiffs, or of the tumultuous world of the Middle Ages in which a few figures of Popes and Princes stand out upon the ever-crowded, ever-changing background, helping us to hear among the wild confusion of clanging swords and shattering lances, of war cries and shouts of rage and triumph--and to see amidst the mist and smoke, the fire and flame, the dust of breached walls and falling houses. Our intention is solely to indicate those among the chiefs of the Church who are of the most importance to the great city, which, ever rebelling against them, ever carrying on a scarcely broken line of opposition and resistance, was still passive in their hands so far as posterity is concerned, dragged into light, or left lying in darkness, according as its rulers were. It is usual to say that the great time of the Church, the age of its utmost ascendency, was during the period between Gregory VII. and Innocent III., the first of whom put forth its claim as Universal Arbiter and Judge as no one had ever done before, while the second carried that claim to its climax in his remarkable reign--a reign all-influencing, almost all-potent, something more like a universal supremacy and rule over the whole earth than has ever been known either before or since. The reader has seen what was the effect upon his world of the great Hildebrand: how he laboured, how he proclaimed his great mission, with what overwhelming faith he believed in it, and, it must be added, with how little success he was permitted to carry it out. This great Pope, asserting his right as the successor of Peter to something very like a universal dominion and the power of setting down and raising up all manner of thrones, principalities, and powers, lived fighting for the very ground he stood on, in an incessant struggle not only with the empire, but with every illiterate and ignoble petty court of his neighbourhood, with the robber barons of the surrounding hills, with the citizens in his streets, with the villagers on his land--and, after having had more than once his independent realm restricted to the strong walls of St. Angelo, had at last to abandon his city for mere safety's sake, and die in exile far from the Rome he loved. The life of the other we have now to trace, as far as it is possible to keep the thread of it amid the tremendous disorders, disastrous wars and commotions of his time, in all of which his name is so mingled that in order to distinguish his story the student must be prepared to struggle through what is really the history of the world, there being scarcely a corner of that world--none at least with which history was then acquainted--which was not pervaded by Innocent, although few we think in which his influence had any such power as is generally believed. This Pope was not like Hildebrand a man of the people. He had a surname and already a distinguished one. Lothario Conti, son of Trasimondo, lord of Ferentino, of the family of the Dukes of Spoleto, was born in the year 1161 in the little town of Anagni, where his family resided, a place always dear to him, and to which in the days of his greatness he loved to retire, to take refuge from the summer heats of Rome or other more tangible dangers. He was thus a member of the very nobility with which afterwards he had so much trouble, the unruly neighbours who made every road to Rome dangerous, and the suzerainty of the Pope in many cases a simple fiction. The young Lothario had three uncles in the Church in high places, all of them eventually Cardinals, and was destined to the ecclesiastical profession, in which he was so certain of advancement, from his birth; he was educated partly at Rome, at the school of St. John Lateran, specially destined for the training of the clergy, and therefore spent his boyhood under the shadow of the palace which was to be his home in later years. From Rome he went to the University of Paris, one of the greatest of existing schools, and studied canon law so as to make himself an authority on that subject, then one of the most engrossing and important branches of learning. He loved the "beneficial tasks," and perhaps also the freedom and freshness of university life, where probably the bonds of the clerical condition were less felt than in other places, though Innocent never seems to have required indulgence in that respect. Besides his readings in canon law, he studied with great devotion the Scriptures, and their interpretation, after the elaborate and highly artificial fashion of the day, dividing each text into a myriad of heads, and building up the most recondite argument on a single phrase with meanings spiritual, temporal, scholastic, and imaginary. There he made several warm friends, among others Robert Curzon, an Englishman who served him afterwards in various high offices, not so much to the credit of their honour in later times as of the faithfulness of their friendship. Young Conti proceeded afterwards to Bologna, then growing into great reputation as a centre of instruction. He had, in short, the best education that his age was acquainted with, and returned to his ecclesiastical home at Rome and the protection of his Cardinal-uncles a perfectly well-trained and able young man, learned in all the learning of his day, acquainted more or less with the world, and ready for any service which the Church to which he was wholly devoted might require of him. He was a young man certain of promotion in any case. He had no sooner taken the first orders than he was made a canon of St. Peter's, of itself an important position, and his name very soon appears as acting in various causes brought on appeal to Rome--claims of convents, complaints among others of the monks of Canterbury in some forgotten question, where he was the champion of the complainants who were afterwards to bring him into so much trouble. These appeals were constantly occurring, and occupied a great deal of the time and thoughts of that learned and busy court of Rome, the Consistory, which became afterwards, under Innocent himself, the one great court of appeal for the world. About a hundred years had passed between the death of the great Pope Gregory, the monk Hildebrand, and the entrance of Lothario Conti upon public life; but when the reader surveys the condition of that surging sea of society--the crowded, struggling, fighting, unresting world, which gives an impression of being more crowded, more teeming with wild life and force, with constant movement and turmoil, than in our calmer days, though no doubt the facts are quite the reverse--he will find but little change apparent in the tremendous scene. As Gregory left the nations in endless war and fighting, so his great successor found them--king warring against king, prince against prince, count against count, city against city, nay, village against village, with a wide margin of personal struggle around, and a general war with the Church maintained by all. A panorama of the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, could it have been furnished to any onlooker, would have showed its minutest lines of division by illuminations of devastating fire and flame, by the clangour of armies in collision, by wild freebooters in roaming bands, and little feudal wars in every district: every man in pursuit of something that was his neighbour's, perhaps only his life, a small affair--perhaps his wife, perhaps his lands, possibly the mere satisfaction of a feud which was always on hand to fill up the crevices of more important fighting. With more desperate hostility still the cities in pairs set themselves against each other, all flourishing, busy places, full of industry, full of invention, but fuller still of rage against the brother close by, of the same tongue and race, Milan against Parma, Pisa against Genoa, Florence against all comers. Bigger wars devastated other regions, Germany in particular in all its many subdivisions, where it seems impossible to believe there could ever be a loaf of bread or a cup of wine of native growth, so perpetually was every dukedom ravaged and every principality brought to ruin. Two Emperors claiming the allegiance of that vast impossible holy Empire which extended from the northern sea to the soft Sicilian shores, two Popes calling themselves heads of the Church, were matters of every day. The Emperors had generally each a show of right; but the anti-popes, though they had each a party, were altogether false functionaries with no show of law in their favour, generally mere creatures of the empire, though often triumphant for a moment. In Gregory's day Henry IV. and Rudolf were the contending Emperors. In those of Innocent they were Philip and Otho. There were no doubt different principles involved, but the effect was the same; in both cases the Popes were deeply concerned, each asserting a prerogative, a right to choose between the contending candidates and terminate the strife. That prerogative had been boldly claimed and asserted by Gregory; in the century that followed every Pope had reasserted and attempted with all his might to enforce it; but though Innocent is universally set forth as the greatest and most powerful of all who did so, and as in part responsible for almost every evil thing that resulted, I do not myself see that his interference was much more potential than that of Gregory, of which also so much is said, but which was so constantly baulked, thwarted, and contradicted in his day. So far as the Empire was concerned the Popes certainly possessed a right and privilege which gave a certain countenance to their claim, for until crowned by the ruling Pontiff no Emperor had full possession of his crown: but this did not affect the other Christian kingdoms over which Innocent claimed and attempted to exercise the same prerogative. The state of things, however, to the spectator is very much the same in the one century as the other. The age of storm and stress for the world of Christendom extended from one to another; no doubt progress was being made, foundations laid, and possibilities slowly coming into operation, of which the beginnings may be detected even among all the noise and dust of the wars; but outwardly the state of Europe was very much the same under Innocent as under Gregory: they had the same difficulties to encounter and the same ordeals to go through. Several short-lived Popes succeeded each other on the papal throne after Innocent began to ascend the steps of ecclesiastical dignity, which were so easy to the nephew of three Cardinals. He became a canon of St. Peter's while little more than twenty-one. Pope Lucius III. employed him about his court, Pope Gregory VIII. made him a sub-deacon of Rome. Pope Clement III. was his uncle Octavian, and made him Cardinal of "St. Sergius and St. Bacchus," a curious combination, and one which would better have become a more jovial priest. Then there came a faint and momentary chill over the prospects of the most rising and prosperous young ecclesiastic in Rome. His uncle was succeeded in the papal chair by a certain Cardinal, old and pious but little known to history, a member of the Orsini family and hostile to the Conti, so that our young Cardinal relapsed a little into the cold shade. It is supposed to be during this period that he turned his thoughts to literature, and wrote his first book, a singular one for his age and position--and yet perhaps not so unlike the utterance of triumphant youth under its first check as might be supposed--_De contemptu mundi, sive de miseriis humanæ conditionis_, is its title. It was indeed the view of the world which every superior mind was supposed to take in his time, as it has again become the last juvenile fashion in our own; but the young Cardinal Conti had greater justification than our young prophets of evil. His work is full, as it always continues to be in his matured years, of the artificial constructions which Paris and Bologna taught, and which characterise the age of the schoolmen: and it is not to be supposed that he had much that was new to say of that everlasting topic which was as hackneyed in the twelfth century as it is in the nineteenth. After he has explained that "every male child on his birth cries A and every female E; and when you say A with E it makes Eva, and what is Eva if not heu! ha!--alas!"--he adds a description of the troubles of life which is not quite so fanciful. "We enter life amid pains and cries, presenting no agreeable aspect, lower even than plants and vegetables, which give forth at least a pleasant odour. The duration of life becomes shorter every day; few men reach their fortieth year, a very small number attain the sixtieth.... And how painful is life! Death threatens us constantly, dreams frighten us, apparitions disturb us, we tremble for our friends, for our relations; before we are prepared for it misfortune has come: sickness surprises us, death cuts the thread of our life. All the centuries have not been enough to teach even to the science of medicine the different kind of sufferings to which man's fragility exposes him. Human nature is more corrupt from day to day; the world and our bodies grow old. Often the guilty is acquitted and the innocent is punished.... Every thought, every act, all the arts and devices are employed for no other end but to secure the glory and favour of men. To gain honour he uses flattery, he prays, he promises, he tries every underground way if he cannot get what he wants by direct measures; or he takes it by force if he can depend on the support of friends or of relations. And what a burden are those high dignities! When the ambitious man has attained the height of his desires his pride knows no bounds, his arrogance is without restraint; he believes himself so much a better man as he is more elevated in position; he disdains his friends, recognises no one, despises his oldest connections, walking proudly with his head high, insolent in words, the enemy of his superiors and the tyrant of his dependents." The young Cardinal spares no class in his animadversions, but the rich are held up as warnings rather than the poor, and the vainglory of the miserable sons of Adam is what disgusts him most. Here is a passage which carries us into the inner life of that much devastated, often ruined Rome, which nevertheless at its most distracted moment was never quite devoid of the splendours and luxuries it loved. "Has not the prophet declared his anathema against luxury in dress? Yet the face is coloured with artificial colours as if the art of man could improve the work of God. What can be more vain than to curl the hair, to paint the cheeks, to perfume the person? And what need is there for a table ornamented with a rich cover, and laid with knives mounted in ivory, and vases of gold and silver? What more vain again than to paint the rooms, to cover the doors with fine carvings, to lay down carpets in the ante-chambers, to repose one's self on a bed of down, covered with silken stuffs and surrounded with curtains?" Some historical commentators take exception to this picture as imaginary, and too luxurious for the age; but after all a man of the time must have known better than even Muratori our invaluable guide: and we find again and again in the descriptions of booty taken in the wars, accounts of the furniture of the tents of the conquered, silver and gold vases, and costly ornaments of the table which if carried about to embellish the wandering and brief life of a campaign would surely be more likely still to appear among the riches of a settled dwelling-place. Cardinal Lothario however did not confine himself altogether to things he had intimate knowledge of, for one of his illustrations is that of a discontented wife, a character of which he could have no personal experience: the picture is whimsically correct to conventional precedent; it is the established piece which we are so well acquainted with in every age. "She desires fine jewels and dresses, and beautiful furniture without regard to the means of her husband; if she does not get them she complains, she weeps, she grumbles and murmurs all night through. Then she says, 'So-and-so is much more expensive than I am, and everybody respects her; while I, because I am poor, they look at me disdainfully over their shoulders.' Nobody must be praised or loved but herself; if any other is beloved she thinks herself hated; if any one is praised she thinks herself injured. She insists that everybody should love what she loves, and hate what she hates; she will submit to nothing but dominates all; everything ought to be permitted to her, and nothing forbidden. And after all (adds the future pope) whatever she may be, ugly, sick, mad, imperious, ill-tempered, whatever may be her faults, she must be kept if she is not unchaste; and even then though the man may separate from her, he may not take another." This sounds as if the young Cardinal would have been less severe on the question of divorce than his clerical successors. The book however is quite conventional, and gives us little insight into the manner of man he was. Nevertheless there are some actual thoughts in the perennial and often repeated argument, as when he maintains the sombre doctrine of eternal punishment with the words: "Deliverance will not be possible in hell, for sin will remain as an inclination even when it cannot be carried out." He also wrote a book upon the Mass in the quiet of these early days; and was diligent in performing his duties and visiting the poor, to whom he was always full of charity. When the old Pope died, however, there seems not to have been a moment's doubt as to who should succeed him. The Cardinal Lothario was but thirty-seven, his ability and learning were known indeed, but had as yet produced no great result: his family was distinguished but not of force enough to overawe the Conclave, and nothing but the impression produced upon the minds of his contemporaries by his character and acquirements could account for his early advancement. Pope Celestine in dying had recommended with great insistence the Cardinal John Colonna as his successor; but this seems scarcely to have been taken into consideration by the electors, who now, according to Hildebrand's institution, somewhat modified by succeeding Popes, performed their office without any pretence of consulting either priests or people, and still less with any reference to the Emperor. The election was held, not in the usual place, but in a church now untraceable, "Ad Septa Solis," situated somewhere near the Colosseum. The object of the Cardinals in making the election there, was safety, the German troops of the Emperor being at the time in possession of the entire surrounding country up to the very gates of Rome, and quite capable of making a raid upon the Lateran to stop any proceedings which might be disagreeable to their master; for the imperial authorities on their part had never ceased to assert their right to be consulted in the election of a Pope. Lothario made the orthodox resistance without which perhaps no early Pope ever ascended the papal throne, protesting his own incapacity for so great an office; but the Cardinals insisted, not granting him even a day's delay to think over it. The first of the Cardinal-deacons, Gratiano, an old man, invested him with the pluvial and greeted him as Innocent, apparently leaving him no choice even as to his name. Thus the grave young man, so learned and so austere, in the fulness of his manhood ascended St. Peter's chair. There is no need to suppose that there was any hypocrisy in his momentary resistance; the papal crown was very far from being one of roses, and a young man, even if he had looked forward to that position and knew himself qualified for it, might well have a moment's hesitation when it was about to be placed on his head. [Illustration: THE CAPITOL. _To face page 316._] When the announcement of the election was made to the crowd outside, it was received with cries of joy: and the entire throng--consisting no doubt in a large degree of the clergy, mingled with the ever-abundant masses of the common people,--accompanied the Cardinals and the Pope-elect to the Lateran, though that church, one would suppose, must still have been occupied by the old Pope on his bier, and hung with the emblems of mourning: for it was on the very day of Celestine's death that the election took place. Muratori suggests a mistake of dates. "Either Pope Celestine must have died a day sooner, or Innocent have been elected a day later," he says. After the account, more full than usual, of the ceremonies of the election, the brilliant procession, and the rejoicing crowd, sweep away into the silence, and no more is heard of them for six weeks, during which time Lothario waited for the Rogation days, the proper time for ordinations; for though he had already risen so high in the Church, he was not yet a priest, but only in deacon's orders, which seems to have been the case in so many instances. The two ordinations took place on two successive days, the 22nd and 23rd of February, 1198. When he had received the final consecration, and had been invested with all the symbols of his high office--the highest in the world to his own profound consciousness, and to the belief of all who surrounded him--Pope Innocent III. rose from the papal chair, of which he had just taken possession, and addressed the immense assembly. Whether it had become the custom to do so we are not informed. Innocent, so far as can be made out from his writings, was no heaven-born preacher, yet he would seem to have been very ready to exercise his gift, such as it was; it appears to have been his habit to explain himself in all the most important steps in life, and there could be no greater occasion than this. He stood on the steps of his throne in all the glory of his shining robes, over the dark and eager crowd, and there addressed to them a discourse in which the highest pretensions, yet the most humble faith, are conjoined, and which shows very clearly with what intentions and ideas he took upon himself the charge of Christendom, and supreme authority not only in the Church but in the world. He had been deeply agitated during the ceremonies of his consecration, shedding many tears; but now he had recovered his composure and calm. There are four sermons existing among his works which bear the title _In consecratione Romani Pontificis_. Whether they were all written for this occasion, in repeated essays before he satisfied himself with what he had to say, is unknown. Perhaps some of them were used on the occasion of the consecration of other great dignitaries of the Church; but this is merely conjecture. We have at all events under his own hand the thoughts which arose in the mind of such a man at the moment of such an elevation: the conception of his new and great dignity which he had formed and held with the faith of absolute conviction: and the purposes with which he began his work. His text, if text was necessary for so personal a discourse, was the words of our Lord: "Who then is that faithful and wise steward whom his lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season?" We quote of course from our own authorised version: the words of the Vulgate, used by Innocent, do not put this sentence in the form of a question. His examination of the meaning of the word "house" is the first portion of the argument. "He has constituted in the fulness of his power the pre-eminence of the Holy See that no one may be so bold as to resist the order which He has established, as He has Himself said: 'Thou art Peter, and upon this stone I will build my Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.' For as it is He who has laid the foundations of the Church, and is himself that foundation, the gates of hell could in nothing prevail against it. And this foundation is immovable: as says the Apostle, no man can lay another foundation than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.... This is the building set upon a rock of which eternal truth has said: 'The rain fell and the wind blew and beat upon that house; but it stood fast, for it was built upon a rock,' that is to say, upon the rock of which the Apostle said: 'And this Rock was Christ.' It is evident that the Holy See, far from being weakened by adversity, is fortified by the divine promise, saying with the prophet: 'Thou hast led me by the way of affliction.' It throws itself with confidence on that promise which the Lord has made to the Apostles: 'Behold I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.' Yes, God is with us, who then can be against us? for this house is not of man but of God, and still more of God made man: the heretic and the dissident, the evil-minded wolf endeavours in vain to waste the vineyard, to tear the robe, to smother the lamp, to extinguish the light. But as was said by Gamaliel: 'If the work is of man it will come to naught; if it is of God ye cannot overthrow it: lest haply ye should find that you are fighting against God.' The Lord is my trust. I fear nothing that men can do to me. I am the servant whom God has placed over His house; may I be prudent and faithful so as to give the meat in due season!" He then goes on to describe the position of the faithful steward. "I am placed over this house. God grant that I were as eminent by my merit as by my position. But it is all the more to the honour of the mighty Lord when He fulfils His will by a feeble servant; for then all is to His glory, not by human strength but by force divine. Who am I, and what is my father's house, that I should be set over kings, that I should occupy the seat of honour? for it is of me that the prophet has said, 'I have set thee over people and kingdoms, to tear and to destroy, to build and to plant.' It is of me that the Apostle has said, 'I have given thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatsoever thou bindest on earth is bound in heaven.' And again it is to me (though it is said by the Lord to all the Apostles in common), 'The sins which you remit on earth shall be remitted; and those you retain shall be retained.' But speaking to Peter alone He said: 'That which thou bindest on earth shall be bound in heaven.' Peter may bind others but he cannot be bound himself. "You see now who is the servant placed over the house; it is no other than the Vicar of Jesus Christ, the Successor of Peter. He is the intermediary between God and men, beneath God, yet above men, much lower than God but more than men; he judges all but is judged by none as the Apostle says: 'It is God who is my judge.' But he who is raised to the highest degree of consideration is brought down again by the functions of a servant that the humble may be raised up and greatness may be humiliated--for God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. O greatest of wise counsels--the greater you are the more profoundly must you humble yourself before them all! You are there as a light on a candlestick that all in the house may see; when that light becomes dark, how thick then is the darkness? You are the salt of the earth: when that salt becomes without savour, with what will you be seasoned? It is good for nothing but to be thrown out and trodden under foot of men. For this reason much is demanded from him to whom much is given." Thus Innocent began his career, solemnly conscious of the greatness of his position. But the reader will perceive that nothing could be more evangelical than his doctrine. Exalting as he does the high claims of Peter, he never falls into the error of supposing him to be the Rock on which the foundations of the Church are laid. On the other hand his idea of the Pope as beneath God but above men, lower than God but greater than men, is startling. The angel who stopped St. John in his act of worship proclaiming himself one of the Apostles' brethren the prophets, made no such pretension. But Innocent was strong in the consciousness that he himself, the arbiter on earth of all reward and punishment, was the judge of angels as well as men, and held a higher position than any of them in the hierarchy of heaven. The first act of Innocent's papacy was the very legitimate attempt to establish his own authority and independence at home. The long subsistence of the idea that only a Pope-king with enough of secure temporal ascendency to keep him free at least from the influence of other sovereigns, could be safe in the exercise of his spiritual functions--is curious when we think of the always doubtful position of the Popes, who up to this time and indeed for long after retained the most unsteady footing in their own metropolis, the city which derived all its importance from them. The Roman citizens took many centuries to learn--if they were ever taught--that the seat of a great institution like the Church, the court of a monarch who claimed authority in every quarter of the world, was a much more important thing than a mere Italian city, however distinguished by the memories and relics of the past. We doubt much whether the great Innocent, the most powerful of the Popes, had more real control over the home and centre of his supposed dominions at the outset of his career than Pope Leo XIII., dispossessed and self-imprisoned, has now, or might have if he chose. No one can doubt that Innocent chose--and that with all the strength and will of an unusually powerful character--to be master in his own house: and he succeeded by times in the effort; but, like other Popes, he was at no time more than temporarily successful. Twice or oftener he was driven by the necessity of circumstances, if not by actual violence, out of the city: and though he never altogether lost his hold upon it, as several of his predecessors had done, it was at the cost of much trouble and exertion, and at the point of the sword, that he kept his place in Rome. He was, however, in the first flush of his power, almost triumphant. He succeeded in changing the fluctuating constitution of the Roman commonwealth, which had been hitherto presided over by a Præfect, responsible to the Emperor and bound to his service, along with a vague body of senators, sometimes larger, sometimes smaller in number, and swayed by every popular demonstration or riot--the very best machinery possible for the series of small revolutions and changes of policy in which Rome delighted. It was in every way the best thing for the interests of the city that it should have learnt to accept the distinction, all others having perished, of being the seat of the Church. For Rome was by this time, as may be said, the general court of appeal for Europe; every kind of cause was tried over again before the Consistory or its delegates; and a crowd of appellants, persons of all classes and countries, were always in Rome, many of them completely without acquaintance in the place, and dependent only upon such help and guidance as money could procure, money which has always been the great object of desire to most communities, the means of grandeur and greatness, if also of much degradation. It must not be supposed, however, that the Pope took advantage of any such mean motive to bind the city to himself. He guarded against the dangers of such a situation indeed by a strenuous endeavour to clear his court, his palace, his surroundings, of all that was superfluous in the way of luxury, all that was merely ostentatious in point of attendants and services, and all that was mercenary among the officials. When he succeeded in transferring the allegiance of the Præfect from the Emperor to himself, he made at the same time the most stringent laws against the reception of any present or fee by that Præfect and his subordinate officers, thus securing, so far as was possible, the integrity of the city and its rulers as well as their obedience. And whether in the surprise of the community to be so summarily dealt with, or in its satisfaction with the amount of the present, which Innocent, like all the other Popes, bestowed on the city on his consecration, he succeeded in carrying out these changes without opposition, and so secured before he went further a certain shelter and security within the walls of Rome. He then turned his eyes to the States of the Church, the famous patrimony of St. Peter, which at that period of history St. Peter was very far from possessing. Certain German adventurers, to whom the Emperor had granted the fiefs which Innocent claimed as belonging to the Holy See, were first summoned to do homage to the Pope as their suzerain, then threatened with excommunication, then laid under anathema: and finally--Markwald and the rest remaining unconvinced and unsubdued--were driven out of their ill-gotten lands by force of arms, which proved the most effectual way. The existence of these German lords was the strongest argument in favour of the Papal sway, and was efficacious everywhere. The towns little and great, scattered over the March of Ancona, the duchy of Spoleto, and the wealthy district of Umbria, received the Pope and his envoys as their deliverers. The Tedeschi were as fiercely hated in Italy in the twelfth century as they were in recent times; and with greater reason, for their cruelty and exactions were indescribable. And the civic spirit which in the absence of any larger patriotism kept the Italian race in energetic life, and produced in every little centre of existence a longing for at least municipal liberty and independence, hailed with acclamations the advent of the head of the Church, a suzerain at least more honourable and more splendid than the rude Teuton nobles who despised the race over which they ruled. That spirit had already risen very high in the more important cities of Northern Italy. The Lombard league had been already in existence for a number of years, and a similar league was now formed by the Tuscan towns which Innocent also claimed, in right of the legacy made to the Church more than a hundred years before by the great Countess Matilda, the friend of Hildebrand, but which had never yet been secured to the Holy See. The Tuscans had not been very obedient vassals to Matilda herself in her day; and they were not likely perhaps to have afforded much support to the Popes had the Church ever entered into full enjoyment of Matilda's splendid legacy. But in the common spirit of hatred against the Tedeschi, the cruel and fierce German chiefs to whom the Emperor had freely disposed of the great estates and castles and rich towns of that wonderful country, the supremacy of the Church was accepted joyfully for the moment, and all kinds of oaths taken and promises made of fidelity and support to the new Pope. When Innocent appeared, as in the duchy of Spoleto, in Perugia, and other great towns, he was received with joy as the saviour of the people. We are not told whether he visited Assisi, where at this period Francis of that city was drawing crowds of followers to his side, and the idea of a great monastic order was rising out of the little church, the Portiuncula, at the bottom of the hill: but wherever he went he was received with joy. At Perugia, when the papal procession streamed through the crowded gates, and reached the old palazzo appropriated for its lodging, there suddenly sprang up a well which had been greatly wanted in the place, a spring of fresh water henceforward and for ever known as the Fontana di Papa. These cities all joined the Tuscan league against the Germans with the exception of Pisa, always arrogant and self-willed, which stood for those same Germans perhaps because their rivals on every side were against them. It was at this period, some say, and that excellent authority Muratori among them, that the titles of Guelf and Ghibelline first came into common use, the party of the Pope being Guelf, and that of the empire Ghibelline--the one derived from the house of Este, which was descended from the old Teutonic race of Guelf on the female side, the other, Waiblingen, from that of Hohenstaufen, also descended by the female side from a traditionary German hero. It is curious that these distant ancestors should have been chosen as godfathers of a struggle with which they had nothing to do, and which arose so long after their time. [Illustration: PORTA MAGGIORE. _To face page 326._] Innocent, however, was not so good a Guelf as his party, for the Pope was the guardian and chief defender, during his troubled royal childhood, of Frederic of Sicily, afterwards the Emperor Frederic II., but at the beginning of Pope Innocent's reign a very helpless baby prince, fatherless, and soon, also, motherless, and surrounded by rapacious Germans, each man fighting for a scheme of his own, by which to transfer the insecure crown to his own head, or at least to rob it of both power and revenue. The Pope stood by his helpless ward with much steadfastness through the very brief years of his minority--for Frederic seems to have been a married man and ambitious autocrat at an age when ordinary boys are but beginning their studies--and had a large share eventually in his elevation to the imperial throne: notwithstanding that he belonged to the great house which had steadily opposed the claims of the Papacy for generations. It must be added, however, that the great enterprises of Innocent's first years could not have been taken up, or at least could not have been carried to so easy and summary a conclusion--whole countries recovered, the Emperor's nominees cast out, the cities leagued against their constant invaders and oppressors--had there been a fierce Emperor across _i monti_ ready to descend upon the always struggling, yet continually conquered, Italy. Henry VI., the son of Barbarossa, had died in the preceding year, 1198, in the flower of his age, leaving only the infant Frederic, heir to the kingdom of Sicily in right of his mother, behind him to succeed to his vast possessions. But the crown of Germany was, at least nominally, elective not hereditary; and notwithstanding that the Emperor had procured from his princes a delusive oath of allegiance to his child, that was a thing which in those days no one so much as thought of keeping. The inactivity of the forces of the Empire was thus accounted for; the holders of imperial fiefs in Italy were left to fight their own battles, and thus the Pope with very moderate forces, and the cities of Tuscany and Umbria, each for its own hand, were able to assert themselves, and drive out the oppressors. And there was a period of hopefulness and comparative peace. Innocent, however, who had the affairs of the world on his hands, and could not long confine himself to those of St. Peter's patrimony, was soon plunged into the midst of those ever-recurring struggles in Germany, too important in every way not to call for his closest attention. The situation was very much, the same as that in which Gregory VII. had found himself involved: with this great difference, however, that both competitors for the German crown were new men, and had neither any burden of crime against the Church nor previous excommunications on their head. Philip of Suabia, the brother of Henry VI., had been by him entrusted--with that curious confidence in the possibility of self-devotion on the part of others, which dying men, though never capable of it themselves, so often show--with the care and guardianship of his child and its interests, and the impossible task of establishing Frederic, as yet scarcely able to speak, upon a throne so important and so difficult. Philip did, it is said, his best to fulfil his trust and hurried from Sicily to the heart of Germany as soon as his brother was dead, with that object; but the princes of his party feared an infant monarch, and he was himself elected in the year 1199 to the vacant seat. There seems no criminality in this in the circumstances, for the little Frederic was in any case impossible; but Philip had inherited a hatred which he had not done anything personally to deserve. "So exasperated were the Italians against the Germans by the barbarous government of Frederic I. and Henry VI. his son, that wherever Philip passed, whether through Tuscany or any other district, he was ill-used and in danger of his life, and many of his companions were killed," says Muratori. He had thus a strong feeling against him in Italy independent of any demerit of his own. It is a little difficult, however, to understand why Pope Innocent, so careful of the interests of the little king in Sicily, should have so strongly and persistently opposed his uncle. Philip had been granted possession of the duchy of Tuscany, which the Pope claimed as his own, and some offence on this account, as well as the shadow of an anathema launched against him for the same reason by one of Innocent's predecessors, may have prepossessed the Pope against him; but it is scarcely possible to accept this as reason enough for his determined opposition. The rival emperor Otho, elected by the Guelf party, was the son of Henry the Lion, the nephew of Richard Plantagenet of England the Coeur de Lion of our national story, and of a family always devoted to the Church. The two men were both young and full of promise, equally noble and of great descent, related to each other in a distant degree, trained in a similar manner, each of them quite fit for the place which they were called to occupy. It seems to the spectator now as if there was scarcely a pin to choose between them. Nor was it any conflict of personal ambition which set them up against each other. They were the choice of their respective parties, and the question was as clearly one of faction against faction as in an Irish village fight. These were circumstances, above all others, in which the arbitration of such an impartial judge as a Pope might have been of the greatest advantage to the world. There never was perhaps such an ideal opportunity for testing the advantage and the possibility of the power claimed by the Papacy. Otho was a young gallant at Richard's court expecting nothing of the kind, open to all kinds of other promotions, Earl of Yorkshire, Count of Poitou--the first not successful because he could not conciliate the Yorkshiremen, perhaps difficult in that way then as now: but without, so far as appears, any thought of the empire in his mind. And Philip had the right of possession, and was the choice of the majority, and had done no harm in accepting his election, even if he had no right to it. The case was quite different from that of the similar struggle in which Gregory VII. took part. At the earlier period the whole world, that was not crushed under his iron foot, had risen against Henry IV. His falsehood, his cruelty, his vices, had alienated every one, and nobody believed his word or put the smallest faith even in his most solemn vows. The struggle between such an Emperor and the head of the Church was naturally a struggle to death. One might almost say they were the impersonations of good and evil, notwithstanding that the good might be often alloyed, and the evil perhaps by times showed gleams of better meaning. But the case of Philip and Otho was completely different. Neither of them were bad men nor gave any augury of evil. The one perhaps by training and inclination was slightly a better Churchman than the other at the beginning of his career; but, on the other hand, Philip had various practical advantages over Otho which could not be gainsaid. Had Pope Innocent been the wholly wise man and inspired judge he claimed by right of his office to be, without prejudice or bias, nobly impartial, holding the balance in a steady hand, was not this the very case to test his powers? Had he helped the establishment of Philip in the empire and deprecated the introduction of a rival, a great deal of bloodshed might have been avoided, and a satisfactory result, without any injustice, if not an ideal selection, might have been obtained. All this was problematical, and depended upon his power of getting himself obeyed, which, as it turned out, he did not possess. But in this way, in all human probability, he might have promoted peace and secured a peaceful decision; for Philip's election was a _fait accompli_, while Otho was not as yet more than a candidate. The men were so equal otherwise, and there was so little exclusive right on one side or the other, that such facts as these would naturally have been taken into the most serious consideration by the great, impartial, and unbiassed mind which alone could have justified the interference of the Pope, or qualified him to assume the part of arbitrator in such a quarrel. He did not attempt this, however, but took his place with his own faction as if he had been no heaven-sent arbiter at all, but a man like any other. He has himself set forth the motives and reasons for his interference, with the fulness of explanation which he loved. The bull in which he begins by setting aside the claims of his own infant ward, Frederic, to whom his father Henry had caused the German princes to swear fealty, as inadmissible--the said princes being freed of their oath by the death of the Emperor, a curious conclusion--is in great part an indictment of Philip, couched in the strongest and most energetic terms. In this document it is stated in the first place that Philip had been excommunicated by the previous Pope, as having occupied by violence the patrimony of St. Peter, an excommunication taken off by the legate, but not effectually; again he was involved in the excommunication of Markwald and the other invaders of Sicily whom he had upheld; in the next place he had been false to the little Frederic, whose right he had vowed to defend, and was thus perjured, though the princes who had sworn allegiance to the child were not so. Then follows a tremendous description of Philip's family and predecessors, of their dreadful acts against the Popes and Church, of the feuds of Barbarossa with the Holy See, of the insults and injuries of which all had been equally guilty. A persecutor himself and the son of persecutors, how could the Pope support the cause of Philip? The argument is full of force and strengthened by many illustrations, but it proves above all things that Innocent was no impartial judge, but a man holding almost with passion to his own side. The pleas in favour of Otho are much weaker. It is true, the Pope admits, that he had been elected by a minority, but then the number of notable and important electors were as great on his side as on Philip's: his house had a purer record than that of Philip: and finally he was weaker than Philip and more in need of support; therefore the Holy See threw all its influence upon his side. Nothing could be feebler than this conclusion after the force of the hostile judgments. We fear it must be allowed that Innocent being merely a man (which is the one unsurmountable argument against papal infallibility) went the way his prepossessions and inclinations--and also, we have no doubt, his conviction of what was best--led him, and was no more certain to be right in doing so than any other man. Having come to this conclusion, Innocent took his stand with all the power and influence he possessed upon Otho's side--a support which probably kept that prince afloat and made the long struggle possible, but was quite inadequate to set him effectually on the throne, or injure his rival in any serious way. In this partisan warfare, excommunication was the readiest of weapons; but excommunications, as we have already said, were very ineffectual in the greater number of cases; for Germany especially was full of great prelates as great as the princes, in most cases of as high race and as much territorial power, and they by no means always agreed with the Pope, and made no pretence of obeying him; and how was the people to find out that they lay under anathema when they saw the offices of the Church carried on with all the splendour of the highest ritual, its services unbroken, however the Pope might thunder behind? Some of these prelates--such as Leopold of Mainz, appointed by the Emperor, to whom Innocent refused his sanction, electing on his own part another archbishop, Siegfried, in his stead, who was not for many years permitted even to enter the diocese of which he was the titular head--maintained with Rome a struggle as obstinate as any secular prince. They were as powerful as the princes among whom they sat and reigned, and elected emperors. Most of the German bishops, we are told, were on Philip's side notwithstanding the decision of the Pope against him. In such circumstances the anathema was little more than a farce. The Archbishop of Mainz was excommunicated as much as the emperor, but being all the same in full possession of his see and its privileges, naturally acted as though nothing had happened, and found plenty of clergy to support him, who carried on the services of the Church as usual and administered the sacraments to Philip as much as if he had been in the full sunshine of Papal favour. Such a chance had surely never been foreseen when the expedient of excommunication was first thought of, for it is apt to turn every claim of authority into foolishness--threats which cannot be carried out being by their nature the most derogatory things possible to the person from whom they proceed. The great prelates of Germany were in their way as important as the Pope, their position was more steadily powerful than his, they had vassals and armies to defend them, and a strong and settled seat, from which it was as difficult, or indeed even dangerous, to displace them as to overthrow a throne. And what could the Pontiff do when they disobeyed and defied him? Nothing but excommunicate, excommunicate, for which they cared not a straw--or depose, which was equally unimportant, when, as happened in the case of Mainz, the burghers of the cathedral city vowed that the substituted bishop should never enter their gates. Thus the ten years' struggle produced nothing but humiliation for Innocent. The Pope did not relax in his determined opposition, nor cease to threaten penalties which he could not inflict until nearly the end of the struggle; and then when the logic of events began, it would appear, to have a little effect upon his mind, and he extended with reluctance a sort of feeble olive-branch towards the all-victorious Philip--a larger fate came in, and changed everything with the sweeping fulness of irresistible power. It is not said anywhere, so far as we know, that the overtures of Innocent brought the Emperor ill-luck; but it would certainly have been so said had such an accident occurred under Pio Nono, for example, who, it is well known, had the evil eye. For no sooner had Innocent taken this step than Philip's life came to a disastrous end. The Count Palatine of Wittelsbach, a great potentate of Germany, who had some personal grievance to avenge, demanded a private audience and murdered him in his temporary dwelling, in the moment of his highest prosperity. Thus in the twinkling of an eye everything was changed. The House of Hohenstaufen went down in a moment without an attempt made to prop it up. And Otho, who was at hand, already a crowned king, and demanding no further trouble, at once took the vacant place. This occurred in the year 1208--ten years after the beginning of the struggle. But in this extraordinary and sudden transformation of affairs Innocent counted for nothing; he had not done it nor even contributed to the doing of it: though he had kept the air thunderous with anathemas, and the roads dusty with the coming and going of his legates for all these unhappy years. Otho, however, did not at first forget the devotion which the Pope had shown him in his evil days, when triumph so unexpected and accidental (as it seemed) came to him. After taking full possession of the position which now there was no one to contest with him, he made a triumphal progress across the Alps, and was crowned Emperor at Rome, the last and crowning dignity which Philip had never been able to attain: where he behaved himself with much show of affection and humility to Innocent, whose stirrup he held like the most devoted son of the Church as he professed to be. There was much swearing of oaths at the same time. Otho vowed to preserve all the rights of the Church, and, with reservations, to restore the Tuscan fiefs of Matilda, and all the presents with which from time to time the former Emperors had endowed the Holy See, to the Pope's undisturbed possession. Rome was a scene of the utmost display and splendour during this imperial visit. Otho had come at the head of his army, and lay encamped at the foot of Monte Mario, where now the little group of pines stand up against the sky in the west, dark against the setting sun. It was October when all the summer glow and heat is mellowed by autumnal airs, and the white tents shone outside the city gates with every kind of splendid cognisance of princes and noble houses, and magnificence of mediæval luxury. The ancient St. Peter's, near the camp, was then planted, we are told, in the midst of a great number of convents, churches, and chapels, "Like a majestic mother surrounded by beautiful daughters"--though there was no Vatican as yet to add to its greatness: but the line of the walls on the opposite side of the river and the ancient splendour of Rome, more square and massive in its lingering classicism than the mediæval towns to which the German forces were more accustomed, shone in the mid-day sun: while towards the left the great round of St. Angelo dominated the bridge and the river, and all the crowds which poured forth towards the great church and shrine of the Apostles. There was, however, one shadow in this brilliant picture, and that was the fact that Rome within her gates lay not much unlike a couching lion, half terrified, half excited by the army outside, and not sure that the abhorred Tedeschi might not at any moment steal a march upon her, and show underneath those splendid velvet gloves, all heavy with embroideries of gold, the claws of that northern wolf which Italy had so often felt at her very heart. It is a curious sign of this state of agitated feeling that Otho published in Rome before his coronation a solemn engagement in his own name and that of his army that no harm should be done to the city, to the Pope and Cardinals, or to the people and their property, while he remained there. He had strong guards of honour at all the adjacent gates as a precautionary measure while the great ceremonies of his consecration went on. It was not the present St. Peter's, it need not be said, which, hung with splendid tapestries and lit with innumerable candles, glistening with precious marbles and gilding, and decorated with all the splendour of the church in silver and gold, received this great German potentate for that final act which was to make his authority sacred, and establish him beyond all question Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, a dignity which only the Pope could complete, which was nothing, bringing no additional dominion with it, yet of the utmost importance in the estimation of the world. It cannot but have been that a sense of elation, perhaps chequered with doubt, but certainly sanctioned by many noble feelings--convictions that God had favoured his side in the long run, and that a better age was about to begin--must have been in Innocent's mind as he went through the various ceremonies of the imposing ritual, and received the vows of the monarch and placed the imperial crown on his head. We are not told, however, whether there was any alarm in the air as the two gorgeous processions conjoined, sweeping forth from the gates of St. Peter's, and across the bridge and by all the crowded ways, to the other side of the city, to the Lateran palace, where the great banquet was held. Otho with his crown on his head held the stirrup of the Pope at the great steps of St. Peter's as Innocent mounted; and the two greatest potentates of earth, the head of the secular and the head of the spiritual, dividing, with the most confusing elasticity of boundary between them, the sway of the world, rode alone together, followed by all that was most magnificent in Germany and Italy, the great princes, the great prelates vying with each other in pomp and splendour. The air was full of the ringing of bells and the chanting of the priests; and as they went along through the dark masses of the people on every side, the officers of Otho scattered largesse through all the crowded streets, and everything was festivity and general joy. But when the great people disappeared into the papal palace, and the banquet was spread, the German men-at-arms began to swagger about the streets as if they were masters of all they surveyed. There is no difference of opinion as to the brutality and insolence of the German soldiers in those days, and the Romans were excited and in no humour to accept any insult at such a moment. How they came to blows at last was never discovered, but after the great spectacle was over, most probably when night was coming on, and the excitement of the day had risen to irritability and ready passion, a fray arose in the streets no one knowing how. The strangers had the worst of it, Muratori says. "Many of the Teutons were killed," says one of the older chronicles, "and eleven hundred horses;" which would seem to imply that the dregs of the procession had been vapouring about Rome on their charges, riding the inhabitants down. Nor was it only men-at-arms: for a number of Otho's more distinguished followers were killed in the streets. How long it was before it came to the ears of the Emperor we are not informed, nor whether the banquet was interrupted. Probably Otho had returned to his tent (Muratori says he did so at once, leaving out all mention of any banquet) before the "calda baruffa" broke out: but at all events it was a startling change of scene. The Emperor struck his tents next morning, and departed from the neighbourhood of Rome in great rage and indignation:--and this, so far as Pope Innocent was concerned, was the last good that was ever heard of Otho. He broke all his vows one by one, took back the Tuscan States, seized the duchy of Spoleto and every city he passed on his way, and defied the Pope, to whom he had been so servile, having now got all from him that Innocent could give. The plea by which Otho defended himself for his seizure of the States of Tuscany was worthy of that scholastic age. He had vowed, he said, it was true, to preserve St. Peter's patrimony and all the ecclesiastical possessions: but he had vowed at the same time to preserve and to recover all imperial rights and possessions, and it was in discharge of this obligation that he robbed the Pope. Thus ended Innocent's long and faithful support of Otho; he had pledged the faith of heaven for his success, which was assured only by accident and crime; but no sooner had that success been secured, than the Emperor deserted and betrayed the Pope who had so firmly stood by him. It is said that Innocent redoubled from that moment his care of the young Frederic, the King of Sicily, the head of the Hohenstaufen house and party, and prepared him to revenge Otho's broken oaths by a downfall as complete as his elevation had been; but this is an assumption which has no more proof than any other uncharitable judgment of motives unrevealed. At all events it is very apparent that in this long conflict, which occupied so much of his life, the Pope played no powerful or triumphant part. In France the action of Innocent was more successful. The story of Philip Augustus and his wives, which is full of romantic incidents, is better known to the general reader than the tragedy of the Emperors. Philip Augustus had married a wife, a Danish princess, who did not please him. Her story, in its first chapter at least, is like that of Anne of Cleves, the fortunate princess who had the good luck not to please Henry VIII. (or perhaps still more completely resembles a comparatively recent catastrophe in our own royal house, the relations of George IV. and his unlucky wife). But the French king did not treat Ingelburga with the same politeness which Henry Tudor exhibited, neither had she the discretion to hold her tongue like the lady of Flanders. The complaints of the injured queen filled the world, and she made a direct appeal to the Pope, who was not slow to reply. When Philip procured a divorce from his wife from the complacent bishops of his own kingdom on one of those absurd allegations of too close relationship (it might be that of third or fourth cousin), which were of so much use to discontented husbands of sufficient rank, and married the beautiful Agnes of Meran, with whom he was in love, Innocent at once interfered. He began by commands, by entreaties, by attempts at settling the question by legal measures, commissioning his legates to hold a solemn inquiry into the matter, examining into Ingelburga's complaints, and using every endeavour to bring the king back to a sense of his duty. There could be no doubt on which side justice lay, and the legates were not, as in the case of Henry and Catherine, on the side of the monarch. It was the rejected queen who had the Pope's protection and not her powerful husband. Philip Augustus, however, was summoned in vain to obey. The litigation and the appeals went on for a long time, and several years elapsed before Innocent, after much preparation and many warnings, determined not merely as on former occasions to excommunicate the offender, but to pronounce an interdict upon the kingdom. Perhaps Innocent had learned the lesson which had been taught him on such a great scale, that excommunication was not a fortunate weapon, and that only the perfect subordination of the higher clergy could make it successful at all. The interdict was a much greater and more dreadful thing; it was dependent not upon the obedience of a great prelate, but upon every priest who had taken the sacred vows. Had he excommunicated the king as on former occasions, no doubt there would always have been some lawless bishop in France who would have enabled his sovereign to laugh at the Pope and his sentence. But an interdict could not thus be evaded, the mass of the clergy being obedient to the Pope whatever important individual exceptions there might be. The interdict was proclaimed accordingly with all the accessories of ritualistic solemnity. After a Council which had lasted seven days, and which was attended by a great number of the clergy, the bells of the cathedral--it was that of Dijon--began to toll as for a dying man: and all the great bishops with their trains, and the legate at their head, went solemnly from their council chamber to the church. It was midnight, and the long procession went through the streets and into the great cathedral by the wavering and gloomy light of torches. For the last time divine service was celebrated, and the canons sang the _Kyrie Eleison_ amid the silence, faintly broken by sobs and sounds of weeping, of the immense crowds who had followed them. The images of Christ and the saints were covered with crape, the relics of the saints, worshipped in those days with such strange devotion, were solemnly taken away out of the shrines and consecrated places to vaults and crypts underground where they were deposited until better times; the remains of the consecrated bread which had sustained the miracle of transubstantiation were burned upon the altar. All these details of the awful act of cutting off France from the community of the faithful were performed before a trembling and dismayed crowd, which looked on with a sense of the seriousness of the proceedings which was overwhelming. "Then the legate, dressed in a violet stole, as on the day of the passion of our Lord, advanced to the altar steps, and in the name of Jesus Christ pronounced the interdict upon all the realm of France. Sobs and groans echoed through the great aisles of the cathedral; it was as if the day of judgment had come." Once more after this tremendous scene there was a breathing space, a place of repentance left for the royal sinner, and then through all the churches of France the midnight ceremonial was repeated. The voice of prayer was silenced in the land, no more was psalm sung or mass said; a few convents were permitted by special grace, in the night, with closed doors and whispering voices, to celebrate the holy mysteries. For all besides the public worship of God and all the consolations of religion were cut off. We have seen how lightly personal excommunication was treated in Germany; but before so terrible a chastisement as this no king could hold out. Neither was the cause one of disobedience to the Holy See, or usurpation of the Church's lands, or any other offence against ecclesiastical supremacy: it was one into which every peasant, every clown could enter, and which revolted the moral sense of the nation. Matrimonial infidelities of all kinds have always been winked at in a monarch, but the strong step of putting away a guiltless queen and setting another in her place is a different matter. The nation was on the side of the Church: the clergy, except in very rare cases, were unanimous: and for once Innocent in his severity and supremacy was successful. After seven months of this terrible _régime_ the king yielded. It had been a time of threatening rebellion, of feuds and dissensions of all kinds, of diminished revenues and failing prosperity. Philip Augustus could not stand against these consequences. He sent away the fictitious wife whom he loved--and who died, as the world, and even history at its sternest, loves to believe, of a broken heart, the one victim whom no one could save, a short time after--and the interdict was removed. One is almost glad to hear that even then the king would have none of Ingelburga, the woman who had filled the world with her cries and complaints, and brought this tremendous anathema on France. She continued to cry and appeal to the Pope that her captivity was unchanged or even made harder than ever, but Innocent was too wise to risk his great expedient a second time. He piously advised her to have recourse to prayer and to have confidence in God, and promised not to abandon her. But the poor lady gained little by all the misery that had been inflicted to right her wrongs. Many years after, when no one thought any more of Ingelburga, the king suddenly took her out of her prison and restored her to her share, such as it was, of the throne, for what reason no man can tell. This, however, was the only great success of Innocent in the exercise of his papal power. It was an honourable and a just employment of that power, very different from the claim to decide between contending Emperors, or to nominate to the imperial crown; but it was in reality, as we think, the only triumphant achievement of the Pope, in whom all the power and all the pretensions of the papacy are said to have culminated. He had his hand in every broil, and interfered with everything that was going on in every quarter. Space fails us to tell of his endless negotiations, censures, recommendations and commands, sent by legates continually in motion or by letters of endless frequency and force, to regions in which Christianity itself was as yet scarcely established. Every little kingdom from the utmost limits of the north to the east were under this constant supervision and interference: and no doubt there were instances, especially among the more recent converts of the Church, and in respect to ecclesiastical matters, in which it was highly important; but so far as concerned the general tenor of the world's history, it can never be said to have had any important result. In England, Innocent had the evil fortune to have to do with the worst of the Plantagenet kings, the false and cowardly John, who got himself a little miserable reputation for a time by the temporary determination of his resolve that "no Italian priest, should tithe or toll in our dominions," and who struggled fiercely against Innocent on the question of the Archbishopric of Canterbury and other great ecclesiastical offices, as well as in matters more personal, such as the dower of Berengaria, the widow of Coeur de Lion, which the Pope had called upon him to pay. John drove the greater part of the clergy out of England in his fury at the interdict which Innocent pronounced, and took possession, glad of an occasion of acquiring so much wealth, of the estates and properties of the Church throughout the realm. But the interdict which had been so efficacious in France failed altogether of its effect in England. It was too early for any Protestant sentiment, and it is extraordinary that a people by no means without piety should have shown so singular an indifference to the judgment of the Church. Perhaps the fact that so many of the superior clergy were of the conquering Norman race, and, therefore, still sullenly resisted by the passive obstinacy of the humiliated Saxons, had something to do with it: while at the same time the banishment of many prelates would probably leave a large portion of the humbler priests in comparative ignorance of the Pope's decree. But whatever were the operative causes this is plain, that whereas in France the effect of the interdict was tremendous in England it produced scarcely any result at all. The banished bishops and archbishops, and at their head Stephen Langton, the patriotic Englishman of whom the Pope had made wise choice for the Archbishopric of Canterbury, stood on the opposite shore in consternation, and watched the contempt of their flocks for this greatest exercise of the power of Rome; and with still greater amazement perceived the success that followed the king in his enterprises, and the obedience of the people, with whom he had never been so popular before. We are not told what Innocent felt at the sight of this unexpected failure. He proceeded to strike King John with special excommunication, going from the greater to the smaller curse, in a reversal of the usual method; but this being still ineffectual, Innocent turned to practical measures. He proceeded to free King John's subjects from their oath of allegiance and to depose the rebellious monarch; and not only so, for these ordinances would probably have been as little regarded as the other--but he gave permission and authority to the King of France, the ever-watchful enemy of the Plantagenets, to invade England and to place his son Louis upon the vacant throne. Great preparations were made in France for this congenial Crusade--for it was in their quality as Crusaders that the Pope authorised the invasion. Then and not till then John paused in his career. He had laughed at spiritual dangers, but he no longer laughed when the French king gathered his forces at Boulogne, and the banished and robbed bishops prepared to return, not penitent and humiliated, but surrounded by French spears. Then at last the terrified king submitted to the authority of the Pope; he received the legates of Innocent in a changed spirit, with the servility of a coward. He vowed with his hand on the Gospels to redress all ecclesiastical wrongs, to restore the bishops, and to submit in every way to the judgment of the Church. Then in his craven terror, without, it is said, any demand of the kind on the part of the ecclesiastical ambassadors, John took a step unparalleled in the annals of the nations. "In order to obtain the mercy of God for the sins we have done against His holy Church, and having nothing more precious to offer than our person and our kingdom, and in order to humiliate ourself before Him who humbled Himself for us even to death: by an inspiration of the Holy Spirit, neither formed by violence nor by fear, but in virtue of our own good and free will we give, with the consent of our barons, to God, to His holy apostles, Peter and Paul, to our mother the Holy Roman Church, to our Lord the Pope Innocent and to his Catholic successors, in expiation of our sins and those of our family, living and dead, our kingdoms of England and Ireland with all their accompaniments and rights, in order that we may receive them again in the quality of vassal of God and of Holy Church: in faith of which we take the oath of vassal, in the presence of Pandulphus, putting ourselves at the disposition of the Pope and his successors, as if we were actually in the presence of the Pope; and our heirs and successors shall be obliged to take the same oath." [Illustration: IN THE CAMPAGNA (1860) _To face page 346._] So John swore, but not because of the thunders and curses of Innocent--because of Philip Augustus of France hurrying on his preparations on the other side of the Channel, while angry barons and a people worn out with constant exactions gave him promise of but poor support at home. The Pope became now the only hope of the humiliated monarch. He had flouted the sentences and disdained the curses of the Holy See; but if there was any power in the world which could restore the fealty of his vassals, and stop the invader on his way, it was Innocent: or so at least in this last emergency it might be possible to hope. Innocent on his part did not despise the unworthy bargain. Notwithstanding his powerful intellect and just mind, and the perception he must have had of the miserable motives underneath, he did not hesitate. He received the oath, though he must have well known that it would be so much waste paper if John had ever power to cast it off. Of all men Innocent must have been most clearly aware what was the worth of the oaths of kings. He accepted it, however, apparently with a faith in the possibility of establishing the suzerainty thus bestowed upon him, which is as curious as any other of the facts of the case, whether flattered by this apparent triumph after his long unsuccess, or believing against all evidence--as men, even Popes, can always believe what they wish--that so shameful a surrender was genuine, and that here at last was a just acknowledgment of the rights of the Holy See. Henceforward the Pope put himself on John's side. He risked the alienation of the French king by forbidding the enterprise which had been undertaken at his command: he rejected the appeal of the barons, disapproved Magna Charta, transferred the excommunication to its authors with an ease which surely must have helped these unlikely penitents to despise both the anathema and its source. It is impossible either to explain or excuse this strange conduct. The easiest solution is that he did not fully understand either the facts or the characters of those with whom he had to deal: but how then could he be considered fit to judge and arbitrate between them? The death of John liberated the Pope from what might have been a deliberate breach of his recommendations on the part of France. And altogether in this part of his conduct the imaginary success of Innocent was worse than a defeat. It was a failure from the high dignity he claimed, more conspicuous even than that failure in Germany which had already proved the inefficacy of spiritual weapons to affect the business of the world: for not only had all his efforts failed of success, until the rude logic of a threatened invasion came in to convince the mind of John--but the Pope himself was led into unworthy acts by a bargain which was in every way ignoble and unworthy. If the Church was to be the high and generous umpire, the impartial judge of all imperial affairs which she claimed to be--and who can say that had mortal powers been able to carry it out, this was not a noble and splendid ideal?--it was not surely by becoming the last resort against just punishment of a traitor and caitiff, whose oath made one day was as easily revoked the next, as the putting on or pulling off of a glove. It is almost inconceivable that a man like Innocent should have received with joy and with a semblance of faith such a submission on the part of such a man as John. But it is evident that he did so, and that probably the Roman court and community took it as a great event and overwhelming proof of the progress of the authority of the Church. But perhaps an Italian and a Churchman in these days was the last person in the world to form a just idea of what we call patriotism, or to understand the principle of independence which made a nation, even when divided within itself, unite in fierce opposition to interference from without. Italy was not a country, but a number of constantly warring states and cities, and to Innocent the Church was the one sole institution in the world qualified and entitled to legislate for others. He accepted the gift of England almost with elation, notwithstanding all he had learned of that distant and strange country which cared not for an interdict, and if it could in any circumstances have loved its unworthy king, would have done so on account of his resistance to the Pope. And it would appear that the Pontiff believed in something serious coming of that suzerainty, all traditions and evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. Thus Innocent's part in the bloody and terrible drama that was then being played in England was neither noble nor dignified, but a poor part unworthy of his character and genius. His interference counted for nothing until France interfered with practical armies which had to be reckoned with--when the hand which had launched so many ineffectual thunderbolts was gripped at by an expedient of cowardly despair which in reality meant and produced nothing. Both sides were in their turn excommunicated, given over to every religious penalty; but unconcerned fought the matter out their own way and so settled it, unanimous only in resisting the jurisdiction of Rome. The vehement letters of the Pope as the struggle grew more and more bitter sound through the clang of arms like the impotent scoldings of a woman: "Let women ... war with words, With curses priests, but men with swords." Let Pope or prelate do what they might, the cold steel carried the day. Not less complete in failure, though with a flattering promise in it of prosperity and advantage, was the great crusade of Innocent's day--that which is called the Venetian Crusade, the immense expedition which seemed likely to produce such splendid results but ended so disastrously, and never set foot at all in the Holy Land which was its object. The Crusades were, of all other things, the dearest object to the hearts of the Popes, small and great. The first conception of them had risen, as the reader will remember, in the mind of Gregory VII., who would fain have set out himself at the head of the first, to recover out of the hands of the infidel the sacred soil which enshrined so many memories. The idea had been pursued by every worthy Pope between Hildebrand and Innocent, with fluctuations of success and failure--at first in noble and pious triumph, but latterly with all the dissensions, jealousies, and internal struggles, which armies, made up of many differing and antagonistic nationalities, could with difficulty avoid. Before Innocent's accession to the papacy there had been a great and terrible reverse, which was supposed to have broken the heart of the old Pope under whom it occurred, and which filled Christendom with horror, woe, and shame. The sacred territory for which so much blood had been shed fell again entirely into the hands of the Saracens. In consequence of this, one of the first acts of Innocent was to send out letters over all the world, calling for a new Crusade, exhorting princes and priests alike to use every means for the raising of a sufficient expedition, and promising every kind of spiritual advantage, indulgence, and remission to those who took the cross. The first result of these impassioned appeals was to fire the spirits of certain priests in France to preach the Crusade, with all the fiery enthusiasm which had first roused Christendom: and a very large expedition was got together, chiefly from France, whose preliminary negotiations with the doge and government of Venice to convey them to Palestine furnishes one of the most picturesque scenes in the history of that great and astute republic. It was in the beginning of the thirteenth century, the opening of the year 1201, when the bargain, which was a very hard one, was made: and in the following July the expedition was to set sail. But when the pilgrims assembled at Venice it was found that with all their exertions they had not more than half the sum agreed upon as passage money. Perhaps the Venetians had anticipated this and taken their measures accordingly. At all events, after much wrangling and many delays, they agreed to convey the Crusaders on condition only of obtaining their assistance to take the town of Zara on the Dalmatian coast, which had once been under Venetian rule, but which now belonged to the King of Hungary, and was a nest of pirates hampering the trade of Venice and holding her merchants and seamen in perpetual agitation. Whether Innocent had surmised that some such design was possible we are not told, but if not his instructions to the Crusaders were strangely prophetic. He besought them on no account whatever to go to war with any Christian people. If their passage were opposed by any, they were permitted to force their way through that like any other obstacle, but even in such a case were only to act with the sanction of the legate who accompanied them. The Pope added a word of sorrowful comment upon the "very different aims" which so often mingled in the minds of the Crusaders with that great and only one, the deliverance of the Holy Land, which was the true object of their expedition; and complained sadly that if the heads of the Christian Church had possessed as much power as they had goodwill, the power of Mahomet would have been long since broken, and much Christian blood remained unshed. He could not have spoken with more truth had he been prophetically aware of the issues to which that expedition was to come. The Crusaders set out, in 1202, covering the sea with their sails, dazzling every fishing boat and curious merchantman with reflections from their shining bucklers and shields, and met with such a course of adventure as never had befallen any pilgrims of the Cross before. The story is told in the most picturesque and dramatic pages of Gibbon; and many a historian more has repeated the tale. They took Zara, and embroiled themselves, as the Pope had feared, with the Hungarians, themselves a chivalrous nation full of enthusiasm for the Cross, but not likely to allow themselves to be invaded with impunity; then, professedly in the cause of the young Alexis, the boy-king of the Greek Empire, went to Constantinople--which they took after a wonderful siege, and in which they found such booty as turned the heads of the great penniless lords who had mortgaged every acre and spent every coin for the hire of the Venetian ships, and of the rude soldiers who followed them, who had never possessed a gold piece probably in their lives, and there found wealth undreamt of to be had for the taking. There is no need for us to enter into that extraordinary chapter in the history of the Greek Empire, of which these hordes of northern invaders, all Christian as they were, and with so different an object to start with, possessed themselves--with no less cruelty and as great rapacity as was shown by the barbarians of an elder age in the sack and destruction of Rome. Meantime the Pope did not cease to protest against this turning aside of the expedition from its lawful object. The legate had forbidden the assault of Zara, but in vain; the Pope forbade the attack upon Constantinople also in vain, and vainly pressed upon the Crusaders, by every argument, the necessity of proceeding to the Holy Land without delay. Innocent, it is true, did not refuse his share of the splendid stuffs and ornaments which fell into their hands, for ecclesiastical uses: and he was silenced by the fictitious submission of the Greek Church, and the supposed healing of the schism which had rent the East and the West from each other. Nevertheless he looked on upon the progress of affairs in Constantinople with unquiet eyes. But what could the Pope do in his distant seat, armed with those spiritual powers alone which even at home these fierce warriors held so lightly, against the rage of acquisition, the excitement of conquest, even the sweep and current of affairs, which carried the chiefs of the armies in the East so much further and in so changed a direction from that which even they themselves desired? He entreated, he commanded, he threatened: but when all was said he was but the Pope, far off and powerless, who could excommunicate indeed, but do no more. The only thing possible for Innocent was to look on, sometimes with a gleam of high hope as when the Greek Church came over to him, as appeared, to be received again into full communion with the rest of Christendom: sometimes with a half unwilling pleasure as when Baldwin's presents arrived, cloth of gold and wonderful embroideries to decorate the great arches of St. Peter's and the Lateran: and again with a more substantial confidence when Constantinople itself had become a Latin empire under the same Baldwin--that it might henceforward become a basis of operations in the holy war against the Saracens and promote the objects of the Crusade more effectually than could be done from a distance. Amid all his disappointments and the impatient sense of futility and helplessness which must have many a time invaded his soul, it is comfortable to know that Innocent died in this last belief, and never found out how equally futile it was. There was, however, one other great undertaking of his time in which it would seem that the Pontiff was more directly influential, even though, for any reader who respects the character and ideal of Innocent, it is sickening to the heart to realise what it was. It was that other Crusade, so miserable and so bloody, against the Albigenses, which was the only successful enterprise which with any show of justice could be set down to the account of the Church. Nobody seems even now to know very well what the heresies were, against which, in the failure of other schemes, the arms of the defenders of religion were directed. They were, as Dissent generally is, manifold, while the Church regarded them as one. Among them were humble little sects who desired only to lead a purer and truer life than the rude religionists among whom they dwelt; while there were also others who held in various strange formulas all kinds of wild doctrine: but between the Poor Men of Lyons, the Scripture-Readers whose aim was to serve God in humility, apart from all pomps of religion and splendour of hierarchies--and the strange Manichean sects with their elaborate and confused philosophical doctrine--the thirteenth century knew no difference. It ranked them all under the same name of heretic, and attributed to all of them the errors of the worst and smallest section. Even so late as the eighteenth century, Muratori, a scholar without prejudice, makes one sweeping assertion that they were Manicheans, without a doubt or question. It is needless to say that whatever they were, fire and sword was not the way to mend them of their errors; for that also was an idea wholly beyond the understanding of the time. When Innocent came first to the Papacy his keen perception of the many vices of the Church was increased by a conviction that error of doctrine accompanied in certain portions of Christendom the general corruption of life. In some of his letters he comments severely, always with a reference to the special evils against which he struggled, on the causes and widening propagation of heresy. "If the shepherd is a hireling," he says, "and thinks not of the flock, but solely of himself: if he cares only for the wool and the milk, without defending them from the wolves that attack them, or making himself a wall of defence against their enemies: and if he takes flight at the first sound of danger: the ruin and loss must be laid to his charge. The keeper of the sheep must not be like a dumb dog that cannot bark. When the priesthood show that they do not know how to separate holy things from common, they resemble those vile wine-sellers who mingle water with their wine. The name of God is blasphemed because of those who love money, who seek presents, who justify the wicked by allowing themselves to be corrupted by them. The vigilance of the ministers of religion can do much to arrest the progress of evil. The league of heretics should be dissolved by faithful instruction: for the Lord desires not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should be converted and live." It may be curious also to quote here the cautious utterance of Innocent upon the pretension of the more pious sectarians to found everything on Scripture and to make the study of the Bible their chief distinction. The same arguments are still used in the Catholic Church, sometimes even in the same terms. "The desire to know the Holy Scriptures and to profit by their teaching is praiseworthy, but this desire must not be satisfied in secret, nor should it degenerate into the wish to preach, or to despise the ministers of religion. It is not the will of God that His word should be proclaimed in secret places as is done by these heretics, but publicly in the Church. The mysteries of the faith cannot be explained by every comer, for not every intellect is capable of understanding them. The Holy Scriptures are so profound that not only the simple and ignorant but even intelligent and learned men are unqualified to interpret them." At no time however, though he spoke so mildly and so candidly, acknowledging that the best way to overcome the heretics was to convert and to convince them, did Innocent conceal his intention and desire to carry proceedings against them to the sternest of conclusions. If it were possible by any exertions to bring them back to the bosom of the Church, he charged all ecclesiastical authorities, all preachers, priests, and monastic establishments to do everything that was possible to accomplish this great work; but failing that, he called upon all princes, lords, and civil rulers to take stringent measures and cut them off from the land--recommendations that ended in the tremendous and appalling expedient of a new Crusade, a Crusade with no double motive, no object of restoration and deliverance combined with that of destruction, but bound to the sole agency of sheer massacre, bloodshed, and ruin, an internecine warfare of the most horrible kind. It must be added, however, that the preachers who at Innocent's command set out, more or less in state, high officials, ecclesiastics of name and rank, to convince the heretics, by their preaching and teaching, took the first part in the conflict. According to his lights he spared no pains to give the doomed sects the opportunity of conversion, though with very little success. Among his envoys were two Spaniards, one a bishop, one that great Dominic, the founder of the Dominican order, who filled so great a part in the history of his time. Amid the ineffectual legates these two were missionaries born: they represented to the other preachers that demonstrations against heresy in the cathedrals was no way of reaching the people, but that the true evangelists must go forth into the country, humble and poor as were the adversaries whom they had to overcome. They themselves set out on their mission barefoot, without scrip or purse, after the manner of the Apostles. Strange to think that it was in Provence, the country of the Troubadours, the land of song, where poetry and love were supreme according to all and every tradition of history, that the grimmest heresy abounded, and that this stern pair carried on their mission! but so it was. Toulouse, where Courts of Love sate yearly, and the trouvères held their tournaments of song, was the centre of the tragedy. But not even those devoted preachers, nor the crowd of eager priests and monks who followed in their steps, succeeded in their mission. The priesthood and the religion it taught had fallen very low in Provence, and no one heeded the new missionaries, neither the heretics nor the heedless population around. No doubt the Pope, the man of so many disappointments, had set his heart on this as a thing in which for once he must not fail, and watched with a sore and angry heart the unsuccess of all these legitimate efforts. But it was not until one of the legates, a man most trusted and honoured, Pierre de Castelnau, was treacherously killed in the midst of his mission, that Innocent was fully roused. Heretofore he had rained excommunications over all the world, and his curses had come back to him without avail. But on this occasion at least he had a sure weapon in hand. The Pope proclaimed a Crusade against the heretics. He proclaimed throughout Europe that whoever undertook this holy enterprise it should be counted to him as if he had fought for Jerusalem: all the indulgences, blessings, hopes for heaven and exemptions for earth, which had been promised to those who were to deliver the Holy Sepulchre, were equally bestowed on those who went no further than the south of France, one of the richest districts in Christendom, where fair lands and noble castles were to be had for the conquest without risking a stormy voyage or a dangerous climate. The goods of unrepentant heretics were confiscated, and every one was free to help himself as if they had been Turks and infidels. In none of his undertakings was the Pope so hotly in earnest. There is something of the shrillness of a man who has found himself impotent in many undertakings in the passion which Innocent throws into this. "Rise, soldier of Christ!" he cries to the king of France; "up, most Christian prince! The groans of the Church rise to your ears, the blood of the just cries out: up, then, and judge my cause: gird on your sword; think of the unity of the cross and the altar, that unity taught us by Moses, by Peter, by all the fathers. Let not the bark of the Church make shipwreck. Up, for her help! Strike strongly against the heretics, who are more dangerous than the Saracens!" The appeal came to a host of eager ears. Many good and true men were no doubt among the army which gathered upon the gentle hill of Hyères in the blazing midsummer of the year 1209, cross on breast and sword in hand, sworn to exterminate heresy, and bring back the country to the sway of the true religion; but an overwhelming number besides, who were hungry for booty however obtained, and eager to win advancement for themselves, filled up the ranks. Such motives were not absent even from the bosom of Simon de Montfort, their general, otherwise a good man and true. The sovereignty of Toulouse glimmered before him over seas of blood, which was as the blood of the Saracen, no better, though it flowed in the veins of Frenchmen; but the Provençaux could scarcely be called Frenchmen in those early days. They were no more beloved of their northern neighbours than the English were by the Scots, and the expedition against them was as much justified by distinctions of race as was the conflict of Bannockburn. The chapter of history that followed we would fain on all sides obliterate, if we could, from the records of humanity, and we doubt not that the strictest Catholic as much as the most indignant Protestant would share this wish; but that, alas, cannot be done. And no such feeling was in any mind of the time. The remedy was not thought to be too terrible for the disease, for centuries after: and the most Christian souls rejoiced in the victories of the Crusade, the towns destroyed, the nests of heretics broken up. The very heretics themselves, who suffered fiercely and made reprisals when they could, had no doctrine of toleration among themselves, and would have extirpated a wicked hierarchy, and put down the mass with a high hand, as four hundred years later their more enlightened successors did, when the power came to them. There are many shuddering spectators who now try to represent to themselves that Innocent so far off was but half, or not at all, acquainted with the atrocities committed in his name; that his legates over-stepped their authority, as frequently happened, and were carried away by the excitement of carnage and the terrible impulse of destruction common to wild beasts and men when that fatal passion is aroused; and that his generals soon converted their Crusade, as Crusades more or less were converted everywhere, into a raid of fierce acquisition, a war for booty and personal enrichment. And all this is true for as much as it is worth in reducing the guilt of Innocent; but that is not much, for he was a man very well acquainted with human nature, and knew that such things must be. As for Simon de Montfort and his noble companions, they were not, much less were the men-at-arms under their orders, superior to all that noble chivalry of France which had started from Venice with so fine a purpose, but had been drawn aside to crush and rob Constantinople on their way, only some seven years before. Baldwin of Flanders became Emperor of the great eastern city in 1204. Simon de Montfort named himself Count de Toulouse in 1215. Both had been sent forth with the Pope's blessing on quite a different mission, both had succumbed to the temptation of their own aggrandisement. But of the two, at the end Simon was the more faithful. If he committed or permitted to be committed the most abominable cruelties, he nevertheless did stamp out heresy. Provence regained her gaiety, her courts of love, her gift of song. Innocent, for once in his life, with all the dreadful drawbacks accompanying it, was successful in the object for which he had striven. It is a dreadful thing to have to say of the most powerful of Popes, in whose time the Papacy, we are told, reached its highest climax of power in the affairs of men: he was successful once: in devastating a country and slaughtering by thousands its inhabitants in the name of God and the Church. All his attempts to set right the affairs of the world failed. He neither nominated an emperor, nor saved a servile king from ruin, nor struck a generous blow for that object of the enthusiasm of his age, the deliverance of Jerusalem. All of these he attempted with the utmost strain and effort of his powers, and many more, but failed. Impossible to say that it was not truth and justice which he set before him at all times; he was an honest man and loved not bloodshed; he had a great intelligence, and there is no proof that his heart was cold or his sympathies dull. But his career, which is so often quoted as an example of the supremacy of the Papacy, seems to us the greatest and most perfect demonstration that such a supremacy was impossible. Could it have been done, Innocent would have done it; but it could not be done, and in the plenitude of his power he failed over and over again. What credit he might have had in promoting Otho to the empire fades away when we find that it was the accident of Philip's death and not the support of the Pope that did it. In England his assumed suzerainty was a farce, and all his efforts ineffectual to move one way or the other the destinies of the nation. At Constantinople his prayers and commands and entreaties had about as much power as the outcries of a woman upon his own special envoys and soldiers. In France he had one brief triumph indeed, and broke a poor woman's heart, a thing which is accomplished every day by much easier methods; though his action then was the only moral triumph of his reign, being at least in the cause of the weak against the strong. And he filled Provence with blood and misery, and if he crushed heresy, crushed along with it that noble and beautiful country, and its royal house, and its liberties. Did he ever feel the contrast between his attempts and his successes? Was he sore at heart with the long and terrible failure of his efforts? or was he comforted by such small consolations as fell to him, the final vindication of Ingelburga, the fictitious submission of the Greek Church, the murderous extinction of heresy? Was it worth while for a great man to have endured and struggled, to have lived sleepless, restless, ever vigilant, watching every corner of the earth, keeping up a thousand espionages and secret intelligences all for this, and nothing more? He was the greatest of the Popes and attained the climax of papal power. He carried out the principles which Hildebrand had established, and asserted to their fullest all the claims which that great Pontiff, also a deeply disappointed man, had made. Gregory and Innocent are the two most prominent names in the lists of the Papacy; they are the greatest generals of that army which, in its way, is an army invincible, against which the gates of hell cannot prevail. Let us hope that the merciful illusions which keep human nature going prevented them from seeing how little all their great claims had come to. Gregory indeed, dying sad and in exile, felt it more or less, but was able to set it down to the wickedness of the world in which truth and justice did not reign. And there is a profound sadness in the last discourse of Innocent; but perhaps they were neither of them aware what a deep stamp of failure remains, visible for all the world to see, upon those great undertakings of theirs which were not for the Church but for the world. God had not made them judges and dividers among men, though they believed so to the bottom of their hearts. It is perhaps overbold in a writer without authority to set forth an individual opinion in the face of much more powerful judgments. But this book pretends to nothing except, so far as it is possible to form it, a glance of individual opinion and impression in respect to matters which are otherwise too great for any but the most learned and weighty historian. The statement of Dean Milman that "He (Innocent) succeeded in imposing an Emperor on Germany" appears to us quite inconsistent with the facts of the case. But we would not for a moment pretend that Milman does not know a hundred times better than the present writer, whose rapid glance at the exterior aspects of history will naturally go for what it is worth and no more. The aspect of a pageant however to one who watches it go by from a window, is sometimes an entertaining variety upon its fullest authoritative description. It will be understood that we have no idea of representing the reign of these great Popes as without power in many other matters. They strengthened greatly the authority and control exercised by the Holy See over its special and legitimate empire, the Church. They drew to the court of Rome so many appeals and references of disputed cases in law and in morals as to shed an increased influence over the world like an unseen irrigation swelling through all the roots and veins of Christendom. They even gave so much additional prestige and importance to Church dignitaries as to increase the power which the great Prelates often exercised against themselves. But the highest pretensions of the Successors of Peter, the Vicars of God, to be judges and arbiters of the world, setters up and pullers down of thrones, came to no fulfilment. The Popes were flattered by appeals, by mock submissions on the weaker side, even by petitions for the ever ready interference which they seem to have attempted in good faith, always believing in their own authority. But in the end their decisions and decrees in Imperial questions were swept away like chaff before the strong wind of secular power and policy, and history cannot point to one important revolution[5] in the affairs of the world or any separate kingdom made by their unaided power. The last great act of Innocent's life was the council held in the year 1215 in Rome, known as the fourth Lateran Council. It was perhaps the greatest council that had ever been held there, not only because of the large number of ecclesiastics present, but because for the first time East and West sat together, the Patriarch of Constantinople (or rather two patriarchs, for the election was contested) taking their place in it, in subordination to the Pope, as if the great schism had never been. From all the corners of the earth came the bishops and archbishops, the not less important abbots, prelates who were nobles as well as priests, counting among them the greatest lords in their respective districts as well as the greatest ecclesiastics. Innocent himself was a man of fifty-five, of most temperate life, vigorous in mind and body, likely to survive for years, and to do better than he had ever yet done--and he was so far triumphant for the moment that all the kings of Christendom had envoys at this council, and everything united to make it magnificent and important. Why he should have taken for his text the ominous words he chose when addressing that great and splendid assembly in his own special church and temple, surrounded with all the emblems of power and supremacy, it is impossible to tell; and one can imagine the thrill of strange awe and astonishment which must have run through that vast synod, when the Pope rose, and from his regal chair pronounced these words, first uttered in the depths of the mysterious passion and anguish of the greatest sufferer on earth. "With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer." What was it that Innocent anticipated or feared? There was no suffering before him that any one knew, no trouble that could reach the chief of Christendom, heavy-hearted and depressed, amid all his guards, spiritual and temporal, as he may have been. What could they think, all those great prelates looking, no doubt, often askance at each other, brethren in the church, but enemies at home? Nor were the first words of his discourse less solemn. "As to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain, I should not refuse to drink the cup of suffering, were it presented to me, for the defence of the Catholic Church, for the deliverance of the Holy Land, or for the freedom of the Church, even although my desire had been to live in the flesh until the work that has been begun should be accomplished. Notwithstanding not my will, but the will of God be done! This is why I say, 'With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer.'" These words sound in our ears as if the preacher who uttered them was on the verge, if not of martyrdom, at least of death and the premature end of his work. And so he was: although there was as yet no sign in heaven or earth, or so far as appears in his own consciousness, that this end was near. The discourse which followed was remarkable in its way, the way of the schoolmen and dialecticians so far as its form went. He began by explaining the word Passover, which in Hebrew he said meant passage--in which sense of the word he declared himself to desire to celebrate a triple Passover, corporal, spiritual, and eternal, with the Church around him. "A corporal Passover, the passage from one place to another to deliver Jerusalem oppressed: a spiritual Passover, a passage from one situation to another for the sanctification of the universal Church; an eternal Passover, a passage from one life to another, to eternal glory." For the first, the deliverance of the Holy Land and the Holy Sepulchre, after a solemn description of the miseries of Jerusalem enslaved, he declares that he places himself in the hands of the brethren. "There can be no doubt that it ought to be the first object of the Church. What ought we now to do, dear brethren? I place myself in your hands. I open my heart entirely to you, I desire your advice. I am ready, if it seems good to you, to go forth on a personal mission to all the kings, princes, and peoples, or even to the Holy Land--and if I can to awaken them all with a strong voice that they may arise to fight the battle of the Lord, to avenge the insult done to Jesus Christ, who has been expelled by reason of our sins from the country and dwelling which He bought with His blood, and in which He accomplished all things necessary for our salvation. We, the priests of the Lord, ought to attach a special importance to the redemption of the Holy Land by our blood and our wealth; no one should draw back from such a great work. In former times the Lord seeing a similar humiliation of Israel saved it by means of the priests; for he delivered Jerusalem and the Temple from the infidels by Matthias the son of the priest Maccabæus." [Illustration: ST. PETER'S AND THE CASTLE OF ST. ANGELO. _To face page 366._] He goes on to describe the spiritual passage by the singular emblem to be found in the prophecies of Ezekiel, of the man clothed in white linen who inscribed a _Tau_ upon the foreheads of all those who mourned over the iniquities committed around them, the profanations of the temple and the universal idol worship--while the executors of God's will went after him, to slay the rest. There could be no doubt of the application of this image. It had already been seen in full fulfilment in the streets of Beziers, Carcassone, and Toulouse, and many of those present had taken part in the carnage. It is true that the rumour went that the men marked with a mark had not even been looked for, and one of the wonderful sayings which seem to spring up somehow in the air, at great moments, had been fathered upon a legate--_Tuez les tous_. _Dieu reconnaîtra les siens_--a phrase which, like the "Up, Guards, and at them!" of Waterloo, is said to have no historical foundation whatever. Innocent was, however, clear not only that every good Catholic should be marked with the _Tau_--but that the armed men whom he identifies with the priests, his own great army, seated there round him, men who had already seen the blood flow and the flames arise, should strike and spare not. "You are commanded then to go through the city; obey him who is your supreme Pontiff, as your guide and your master--and strike by interdict, by suspension, by excommunication, by deprivation, according to the weight of the fault. But do no harm to those who bear the mark, for the Lord says: 'Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, neither the trees till we have sealed on their foreheads the servants of God.' It is said in other places, 'Let your eye spare no man, and let there be no acceptance of persons among you,' and in another passage, 'Strike in order to heal, kill in order to give life.'" These were the Pope's sentiments, and they were those of his age; how many centuries it took to modify them we are all aware; four hundred years at least, to moderate the practical ardour of persecution--for the theory never dies. But there is at the same time something savage in the fervour of such an address to all these men of peace. It is perhaps a slight modification that like Ezekiel it is the priests themselves, the dwellers in the Temple, who fill it with false gods and abominations, that he specially threatens. There were, however, so far as appears, few priests among the slaughtered townsfolk of those unhappy cities of Provence. The Council responded to the uncompromising directions of their head by placing among the laws of the Church many stringent ordinances against heretics; their goods were to be confiscated, they were to be turned out of their houses and possessions; every prince who refused to act against them was to be excommunicated, his people freed from their vow of allegiance. If any one ventured to preach without the permission of the Pope he also was subject to excommunication. A great many laws for the better regulation of the Church itself followed, for Innocent had always acknowledged the fact that the worldliness of the Church, and the failure of the clergy to maintain a high ideal of Christian life, was the great cause of heresy. The Council was also very distinct in refusing temporal authority to the priests. The clergy had their sphere and laymen theirs; those spheres were separate, they were inviolable each by the other. It is true that this principle was established chiefly with the intention of freeing the clergy from the necessity of answering before civil tribunals; but logically it cuts both ways. The Jews, to whom Innocent had been just and even merciful, were also dealt with and placed under new and stringent disabilities, chiefly on account, it seems, of the extortions they practised on needy Crusaders, eager at any price to procure advances for their equipment. Various doctrinal points were also decided, as well as many questions of rank and precedence in the hierarchy, and the establishment of the two new monastic orders of St. Francis and of St. Dominic. It is needless to add a list of who was excommunicated and who censured throughout the world. Among the former were the barons of Magna Charta and Louis of France, the son of Philip Augustus, who had gone to England on their call and to their relief, a movement set on foot by Innocent himself before the submission of King John. As usual, neither of them took any notice of the anathema, though other combinations shortly arose which broke their alliance. The great event of the Council, however, was the appeal of the forfeited lords of Provence against the leaders of the late Crusade. Raymond of Toulouse, accompanied by the Counts of Foix and of Comminges, appeared before the Pontiff and the high court of the Church to make their plaint against Simon de Montfort, who had deprived all three of their lands and sovereignties. A great recrimination arose between the two sides, both so strongly represented. The dethroned princes accused their conquerors with all the vehemence of men wronged and robbed; and such a bloodstained prelate as Bishop Fulk of Toulouse was put forth as the advocate on the other side. "You are the cause of the death of a multitude of Catholic soldiers," cried the bishop, "six thousand of whom were killed at Montjoye alone." "Nay, rather," replied the Comte de Foix, "it is by your fault that Toulouse was sacked and 10,000 of the inhabitants slain." Such pleas are strange in any court of justice; they were altogether new in a Council of the Church. The princes themselves, who thus laid their wrongs before the Pope, were not proved to be heretics, or if they had ever wavered in the faith were now quite ready to obey; and Innocent himself was forced to allow that: "Since the Counts and their companions have promised at all times to submit to the Church, they cannot without injustice be despoiled of their principalities." But the utterance, it may well be understood, was weak, and choked by the impossibility of denouncing Simon de Montfort, the leader of a Crusade set on foot by the Church, the Captain of the Christian army. It might be that he had exceeded his commission, that the legates had misunderstood their instructions, and that all the leaders, both secular and spiritual, had been carried away by the horrible excitement and passion of bloodshed: but yet it was impossible to disown the Captain who had taken up this enterprise as a true son of the Church, although he had ended in the spirit (not unusual among sons of the Church) of an insatiable raider and conqueror. The love of gain had warped the noble aims even of the first Crusade: what wonder that it became a fiery thirst in the invaders of lands so rich and tempting as those of the fertile and sunny Provence. And the Pope could not pronounce against his own champion. He would fain have preserved Raymond of Toulouse and Simon de Montfort too--but that was impossible. And the Council decreed by a great majority that Raymond had been justly deprived of his lands, and that Simon, the new Count, was their rightful possessor. The defender of Innocent can only say that the Pope yielded to and sanctioned this judgment in order that the bishops of France might not be alienated and rendered indifferent to the great Crusade upon which his heart was set, which he would fain have led himself had Providence permitted it so to be. There is a most curious postscript to this bloody and terrible history. Young Raymond of Toulouse, whose fate seemed a sad one even to the members of the Council who finally confirmed his deprivation, attracted the special regard--it is not said how, probably by some youthful grace of simplicity or gallant mien--of Innocent, who bade him take heart, and promised to give him certain lands that he might still live as a prince. "If another council should be held," said the Pope with a curious casuistry, "the pleas against Montfort may be listened to." "Holy Father," said the youth, "bear me no malice if I can win back again my principalities from the Count de Montfort, or from those others who hold them." "Whatever thou dost," said the Pope piously, "may God give thee grace to begin it well, and to finish it still better." Innocent is scarcely a man to tolerate a smile. We dare not even imagine a touch of humour in that austere countenance; but the pious hope that this fair youth might perhaps overcome his conqueror, who was the very champion and captain of the army of the Lord as directed by the Pope, is remarkable indeed. The great event of the Council was over, the rumour of the new Crusade which the Pope desired to head himself, and for which in the meantime he was moving heaven and earth, began to stir Europe. If, perhaps, he had accomplished little hitherto of all that he had hoped, here remained a great thing which Innocent might still accomplish. He set out on a tour through the great Italian towns to rouse their enthusiasm, and, if possible, induce them, in the first place, to sacrifice their mutual animosities, and then to supply the necessary ships, and help with the necessary money for the great undertaking. The first check was received from Pisa, which would do whatever the Pope wished except forego its hatred against Genoa or give up its revenge. Innocent was in Perugia, on his way towards the north, when this news arrived to vex him: but it was not unexpected, nor was there anything in it to overwhelm his spirit. It was July, and he was safer and better on that hillside than he would have been in his house at the Lateran in the heats of summer: and an attack of fever at that season is a simple matter, which the ordinary Roman anticipates without any particular alarm. He had, we are told, a great love for oranges, and continued to eat them, notwithstanding his illness, though it is difficult to imagine what harm the oranges could do. However, the hour was come which Innocent had perhaps dimly foreseen when he rose up among all his bishops and princes in the great Lateran church, and, knowing nothing, gave forth from his high presiding chair the dying words of our Lord, "With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer." One wonders if his text came back to him, if he asked himself in his heart why his lips should have uttered those fateful words unawares, and if the bitterness of that withdrawal, while still full of force and life, from all the hopes and projects to which he had set his hand, was heavy upon him? He had proclaimed them in the hush and breathless silence of that splendid crowd in the ruddy days of the late autumn, St. Martin's festival at Rome: and the year had not gone its round when, in the summer weather at Perugia, he "suffered"--as he had--yet had not, perhaps foreseen. Thus ended a life of great effort and power, a life of disappointment and failure, full of toil, full of ambition, the highest aims, and the most consistent purpose--but ending in nothing, fulfilling no lofty aim, and, except in the horrible episode of bloodshed and destruction from which his name can never be dissociated, accomplishing no change in the world which he had attempted, in every quarter, to transform or to renew. Never was so much attempted with so little result. He claimed the power to bind and loose, to set up and to pull down, to decide every disputed cause and settle every controversy. But he succeeded in doing only one good deed, which was to force the king of France to retain an unloved wife, and one ill one, to print the name of Holy Church in blood across a ruined province, to the profit of many bloody partisans, but never to his own, nor to any cause which could be considered that of justice or truth. This, people say, was the age of history in which the power of the Church was highest, and Innocent was its strongest ruler; but this was all which, with his great powers, his unyielding character and all the forces at his command, he was able to achieve. He was in his way a great man, and his purpose was never ignoble; but this was all: and history does not contain a sadder page than that which records one of the greatest of all the pontificates, and the strongest Pope that history has known. During the whole of Innocent's Popedom he had been more or less at war with his citizens notwithstanding his success at first. Rome murmured round him never content, occasionally bursting out into fits of rage, which, if not absolute revolt, were so near it as to suggest the withdrawal of the Pope to his native place Anagni, or some other quiet residence, till the tumult calmed down. The greatest of these commotions occurred on the acquisition of certain properties in Rome, by the unpopular way of foreclosure on mortgages, by the Pope's brother Richard, against whom no doubt some story of usury or oppression was brought forth, either real or invented, to awaken the popular emotion: and in this case Innocent's withdrawal had very much the character of an escape. The Papa-Re was certainly not a popular institution in the thirteenth century. This same brother Richard had many gifts bestowed upon him to the great anger and suspicion of the people, and it was he who built, with money given him, it is said, from "the treasury of the Church," the great Torre dei Conti, which for many generations stood strong and sullen near the Baths of Titus, and within easy reach of the Lateran, "for the defence of the family," a defence for which it was not always adequate. Innocent afterwards granted a valuable fief in the Romagna to his brother, and he was generally far from unmindful of his kindred. All that his warmest defenders can say for him indeed in this respect is that he made up for his devotion to the interests of the Conti by great liberality towards Rome. On one occasion of distress and famine he fed eight thousand people daily, and at all times the poor had a right to the remnants left from his own table--which however was not perhaps any great thing as his living was of the simplest. What was still more important, he built or perhaps rather rebuilt and enlarged, the great hospital, still one of the greatest charitable institutions of the world, of the Santo Spirito, which had been first founded several centuries before by the English king Ina for the pilgrims of his country. The Ecclesia in Saxia, probably forsaken in these days when England had become Norman, formed the germ of the great building, afterwards enlarged by various succeeding Popes. It is said now to have 1,600 beds, and to be capable, on an emergency, of accommodating almost double that number of patients, and is, or was, a sort of providence for the poor population of Rome. It was Innocent also who began the construction, or rather reconstruction, for in that case too there was an ancient building, of the Vatican, now the seat and title of the papal court--thinking it expedient that there should be a house capable of receiving the Popes near the church of St. Peter and St. Paul the tomb and shrine of the Apostles. It is not supposed that the present building retains any of the work of that early time, but Innocent must have superintended both these great edifices, and in this way, as also by many churches which he built or rebuilt, and some which he decorated with paintings and architectural ornament, he had his part in the reconstruction and embellishment of that mediæval Rome which after long decay and much neglect, and the wholesale robbery of the very stones of the older city, was already beginning to lift up its head out of the ashes of antiquity. [Illustration: ALL THAT IS LEFT OF THE GHETTO.] Thus if he took with one hand--not dishonestly, in the interest of his family, appropriating fiefs and favours which probably could not have been better bestowed, for the safety at least of the reigning Pope--he gave liberally and intelligently with the other, consulting the needs of the people, and studying their best interests. Yet he would not seem ever to have been popular. His spirit probably lacked the bonhomie which conciliates the crowd: though we are told that he loved public celebrations, and did not frown upon private gaiety. His heart, it is evident, was touched for young Raymond of Toulouse, whom he was instrumental in despoiling of his lands, but whom he blessed in his effort to despoil in his turn the orthodox and righteous spoiler. He was neither unkind, nor niggardly, nor luxurious. "The glory of his actions filled the great city and the whole world," said his epitaph. At least he had the credit of being the greatest of all the Popes, and the one under whom, as is universally allowed, the papal power attained its climax. The reader must judge how far this climax of power justified what has been said. FOOTNOTE: [5] The Vice-Provost of Eton who has kindly read these pages in the gentle criticism which can say no harsh word, here remarks: "If success is measured less by immediate results than by guiding the way in which men think, I should say that Innocent was successful. 'What will the Pope say?' was the question asked in every corner of the world--though he was not always obeyed." BOOK III. LO POPOLO: AND THE TRIBUNE OF THE PEOPLE. [Illustration: ON THE TIBER.] BOOK III. LO POPOLO: AND THE TRIBUNE OF THE PEOPLE. CHAPTER I. ROME IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. When the Papal Seat was transferred to Avignon, and Rome was left to its own devices and that fluctuating popular government which meant little beyond a wavering balance of power between two great families, the state of the ancient imperial city became more disorderly, tumultuous and anarchical than that of almost any other town in Italy, which is saying much. All the others had at least the traditions of an established government, or a sturdy tyranny: Rome alone had never been at peace and scarcely knew how to compose herself under any sway. She had fought her Popes, sometimes desperately, sometimes only captiously with the half-subdued rebelliousness of ill-temper, almost from the beginning of their power; and her sons had long been divided into a multiplicity of parties, each holding by one of the nobles who built their fortresses among the classic ruins, and defied the world from within the indestructible remnants of walls built by the Cæsars. One great family after another entrenched itself within those monuments of the ancient ages. The Colosseum was at one time the stronghold of the great Colonna: Stefano, the head of that name, inhabited the great building known as the Theatre of Marcellus at another period, and filled with his retainers an entire quarter. The castle of St. Angelo, with various flanking towers, was the home of the Orsini; and these two houses more or less divided the power between them, the other nobles adhering to one or the other party. Even amid the tumults of Florence there was always a shadow of a principle, a supposed or real cause in the name of which one party drove another _fuori_, out of the city. But in Rome even the great quarrel of Guelf and Ghibelline took an almost entirely personal character to increase the perpetual tumult. The vassals of the Pope were not on the Pope's side nor were they against him, non furon rebelli Nè fur fedeli a Dio, mà per sé foro. The community was distracted by mere personal quarrels, by the feuds of the great houses who were their lords but only tore asunder, and neither protected nor promoted the prosperity of that greatest of Italian cities, which in its miserable incompetence and tumult was for a long time the least among them. The anonymous historian who has left to us the story of Cola di Rienzi affords us the most lively picture of the city in which, in his terse and vivid record, there is the perpetual sound of a rushing, half-armed crowd, of blows that seem to fall at random, and trumpets that sound, and bells that ring, calling out the People--a word so much misused--upon a hundred trifling occasions, with little bloodshed one would imagine but a continual rushing to and fro and disturbance of all the ordinary habits of life. We need not enter into any discussion of who this anonymous writer was. He is the only contemporary historian of Rienzi, and his narrative has every appearance of truth. He narrates the things he saw with a straightforwardness and simplicity which are very convincing. "I will begin," he says, "with the time when these two barons (the heads of the houses of Colonna and Orsini) were made knights by the people of Rome. Yet," he adds, with an afterthought, "I will not begin with an account of that, because I was then at too tender an age to have had clear knowledge of it." Thus our historian is nothing if not an eye-witness, very keenly aware of every incident, and viewing the events, and the streams of people as they pass, with the never-failing interest of a true chronicler. We may quote the incident with which he does begin as an example of his method: his language is the Italian of Rome, a local version, yet scarcely to be called a _patois_: it presents little difficulty after the first moment to the moderately instructed reader, who however, I trust, will kindly understand that the eccentricities are the chronicler's and not errors of the press. "With what new thing shall I begin? I will begin with the time of Jacopo di Saviello. Being made Senator solely by the authority of King Robert, he was driven out of the Capitol by the Syndics, who were Stefano de la Colonna, Lord of Palestrina, and Poncello, and Messer Orso, lord of the Castle of St. Angelo. These two went to the Aracoeli, and ringing the bell collected the people, half cavalry and half on foot. All Rome was under arms. I recollect it well as in a dream. I was in Sta. Maria del Popolo (di lo Piubbico). And I saw the line of horsemen passing, going towards the Capitol: strongly they went and proudly. Half of them were well mounted, half were on foot. The last of them (If I recollect rightly) wore a tunic of red silk, and a cap of yellow silk on his head, and carried a bunch of keys in his hand. They passed along the road by the well where dwell the Ferrari, at the corner of the house of Paolo Jovenale. The line was long. The bell was ringing and the people arming themselves. I was in Santa Maria di lo Piubbico. To these things I put my seal (as witness). Jacopo di Saviello, Senator, was in the Capitol. He was surrounded on all sides with fortifications: but it did him no good to entrench himself, for Stefano, his uncle, went up, and Poncello the Syndic of Rome, and took him gently by the hand and set him on his horse that there might be no risk to his person. There was one who thought and said, 'Stefano, how can you bring your nephew thus to shame?' The proud answer of Stefano was: 'For two pennyworth of wax I will set him free,--but the two pence were not forthcoming." Jacopo di Saviello, thus described as a nominee of the King of Naples, is a person without much importance, touching whose individuality it would take too much space to inquire. He appears afterwards as the right hand man of his cousin, Sciarra Colonna, and the incident has no doubt some connection with the story that follows: but we quote it merely as an illustration of the condition of Rome at the beginning of the fourteenth century. In the month of September in the year 1327 there occurred an episode in the history of the city which affords many notable scenes. The city of Rome had in one of its many caprices taken the part of Louis of Bavaria, who had been elected Emperor to the great displeasure of John XXII., the Pope then reigning in Avignon. According to the chronicler, though the fact is not mentioned in other histories, the Pope sent his legate to Rome, accompanied by the "Principe de la Morea" and a considerable army, in order to prevent the reception there of Il Bavaro as he is called, who was then making his way through Italy with much success and triumph. By this time there would seem to have been a complete revolution in the opinions of Rome, and the day when two-pennyworth of wax could not be got for the ransom of Saviello was forgotten under the temporary rule of Sciarra Colonna, the only one of his family who was a Ghibelline, and who held strongly for Louis of Bavaria, rejecting all the traditions of his house. Our chronicler, who is very impartial, and gives us no clue to his own opinions, by no means despised the party of the Pope. There arrived before Rome, he tells us, "seven hundred horsemen and foot soldiers without end. All the barons of the house of Orsini," and many other notable persons: and the whole army was _molto bella e bene acconcia_, well equipped and beautiful to behold. This force gained possession of the Leonine city, entering not by the gates which were guarded, but by the ruined wall: and occupied the space between that point and St. Peter's, making _granne festa_, and filling the air with the sound of their trumpets and all kinds of music. "But when Sciarra the bold captain (_franco Capitano_) heard of it, it troubled him not at all. Immediately he armed himself and caused the bell to be rung. It was midnight and men were in their first sleep. A messenger with a trumpet was sent through the town, proclaiming that every one should arm himself, that the enemy had entered the gates (_in Puortica_) and that all must assemble on the Capitol. The people who slept, quickly awakened, each took up his arms. Cossia was the name of the crier. The bell was ringing violently (_terribilmente_). The people went to the Capitol, both the barons and the populace: and the good Capitano addressed them and said that the enemy had come to outrage the women of Rome. The people were much excited. They were then divided into parties, of one of which he was captain himself. Jacopo Saviello was at the head of the other which was sent to the gate of San Giovanni, then called Puorta Maggiore. And this was done because they knew that the enemy was divided in two parties. But it did not happen so. When Jacopo reached the gate he found no one. On the other hand Sciarra rode with his barons. Great was the company of horsemen. Seven Rioni had risen to arms and innumerable were the people. They reached the gate of San Pietro. I remember that on that night a Roman knight who had ridden to the bridge heard a trumpet of the enemy, and desiring to fly jumped from his horse, and leaving it came on on foot. I know that there was no lack of fear (_non habe carestia di paura_). When the people reached the bridge it was already day, the dawn had come. Then Sciarra commanded that the gate should be opened. The crowd was great, and the enemy were much troubled to see on the bridge the number of pennons, for they knew that with each pennon there were twenty-five men. Then the gate was opened. The Rione of li Monti went first: the people filled the Piazza of the Castello: they were all ranged in order, both soldiers and people. "Now were seen the rushing of the horses, one on the top of another. One gave, another took (_che dao, che tolle_), great was the noise, great was the encounter. Trumpets sounded on this side and that. One gave, and another took. Sciarra and Messer Andrea di Campo di Fiore confronted each other and abused each other loudly. Then they broke their lances upon each other: then struck with their swords: neither would have less than the life of the other. Presently they separated and came back each to his people. There was great striking of swords and lances and some fell. It could be seen that it was a cruel fight. The people of Rome wavered back and forward like waves of the sea. But it was the enemy that gave way, the people gained the middle of the Piazza. Then was done a strange thing. One whose name was Giovanni Manno, of the Colonna, carried the banner of the people of Rome. When he came to the great well, which is in that Piazza, in front of the Incarcerate, where was the broken wall, he took the banner and threw it into the well. And this he did to discourage the people of Rome. The traitor well deserved to lose his life. The Romans however did not lose courage, and already the Prince of the Morea began to give way. He had either to fly or to be killed. Then Sciarra de la Colonna, like a good mother with her son, comforted the people and made everything go well, such great sense did he show. Also another novel thing was done. A great man of Rome (Cola de Madonna Martorni de li Anniballi was his name) was a very bold person and young. He was seized with desire to take prisoner the Prince himself. He spurred his horse, and breaking through the band of strong men who encircled the Prince put out his hand to take him. So he had hoped to do at least, but was not successful, for the Prince with an iron club wounded his horse. The strength of the Prince's charger was such that Cola was driven back: but the horse of Cola had not sufficient space to move, and its hind feet slipping, it fell into the ditch which is in front of the gate of the Hospital of Santo Spirito, to defend the garden. In the ditch both his horse and he, trying to escape, fell, pressed by the soldiers of the Prince: and there was he killed. Great was the mourning which Rome made over so distinguished a baron--and all the people were fired with indignation. "The Prince now retired, his troops yielded. They began to fly. The flight was great. Greater was the slaughter. They were killed like sheep. Much resistance was made, many people were killed, and the Romans gained much prey. Among those taken was Bertollo the chief of the Orsini, Captain of the army of the Church, and of the Guelf party: and if it had not been that Sciarra caught him up on the croup of his horse, he would have been murdered by the people." Then follows a horrible account of the number of dead who lay mutilated and naked on every roadside, and even among the vineyards: and the story ends with Sciarra's return to the Capitol with great triumph, and of a beautiful pallium which was sent to the Church of Sant'Angelo in Pescheria, along with a chalice, "in honour of this Roman victory." [Illustration: APPROACH TO THE CAPITOL (1860). _To face page 386._] Curiously enough our chronicler takes no notice of the episode of which this attack and repulse evidently form part, the reception of Il Bavaro in Rome, which is one of the unique incidents in Roman history. It took place in May of the following year, and afforded a very striking scene to the eager townsfolk, never quite sure that they could tolerate the Tedeschi, though pleased with them for a novelty and willing enough to fight their legitimate lord the Pope on behalf of the strangers. It was in January 1328 that Louis of Bavaria made his entrance into Rome--Sciarra Colonna above named being still Senator, head of the Ghibelline party, and the friend of the new-made Emperor. After being met at Viterbo by the Roman officials and questioned as to his intentions, Louis marched with his men into the Leonine city and established himself for some days in what is called the palace of St. Peter, the beginning of the Vatican, where, though there was still a party not much disposed to receive him, he was hailed with acclamations by the people, always eager for a new event, and not unmindful of the liberal largesse which an Emperor on his promotion, and especially when about to receive the much coveted coronation in St. Peter's, scattered around him. Louis proposed to restore the city to its ancient grandeur, and to promote its interests in every way, and flattered the people by receiving their vote of approval on the Capitol. "Going up to the Capitol," says Muratori, "he caused an oration to be made to the Roman people with many expressions of gratitude and praise, and with promises that Rome should be raised up to the stars." These honeyed words so pleased the people that he was declared Senator and Captain of Rome, and in a few days was crowned Emperor with every appearance of solemnity and grandeur. This would seem to be the first practical revival of the strange principle that Rome, as a city, not by its Emperor nor by its Pope, but in its own right, was the fountain of honour, the arbiter of the world--everything in short which in classical times its government was, and in the mediæval ages, the Papacy wished to be. It is curious to account for such an article of belief; for the populace of Rome had never in modern times possessed any of the characteristics of a great people, and was a mixed and debased race according to all authorities. This theory, however, was now for a time to affect the whole story of the city, and put a spasmodic life into her worn-out veins. It was the only thing which could have made such a story as that of Rienzi possible, and it was strongly upheld by Petrarch and other eager and philosophic observers. The Bavarian Louis was, however, the first who frankly sought the confirmation of his election from the hands of the Roman people. One cannot, however, but find certain features of a farce in this solemn ceremony. The coronation processions which passed through the streets from Sta. Maria Maggiore, according to Sismondi, to St. Peter's, were splendid, the barons and counsellors, or _buon-homini_ of Rome leading the _cortège_, and clothed in cloth of gold. "Behind the monarch marched four thousand men whom he had brought with him; all the streets which he traversed were hung with rich tapestries." He was accompanied by a lawyer eminent in his profession, to watch over the perfect legality of every point in the ceremonial. The well-known Castruccio Castracani, who had followed him to Rome, was appointed by the Emperor to be his deputy as Senator, and to watch over the city; and in this capacity he took his place in the procession in a tunic of crimson silk, embroidered with the words in gold on the breast, "He is what God wills"; on the back, "He will be what God pleases." There was no Pope, it need not be said, to consecrate the new Emperor. The Pope was in Avignon, and his bitter enemy. There was not even a Bishop of Ostia to present the great monarch before St. Peter and the powers of heaven. Nevertheless the Church was not left out, though it was placed in a secondary position. Some kind of ceremony was gone through by the Bishop of Venice, or rather of Castello, the old name of that restless diocese, and the Bishop of Alecia, both of them deposed and under excommunication at the moment: but it was Sciarra Colonna who put the crown on Louis's head. The whole ceremonial was secular, almost pagan in its meaning, if meaning at all further than a general throwing of dust in the eyes of the world it could be said to have. But there is a fictitious gravity in the proceedings which seems almost to infer a sense of the prodigious folly of the assumption that these quite incompetent persons were qualified to confer, without any warrant for their deed, the greatest honour in Christendom upon the Bavarian. John XXII. was not a very noble Pope, but his sanction was a very different matter from that of Sciarra Colonna. No doubt however the people of Rome--Lo Popolo, the blind mob so pulled about by its leaders, and made to assume one ridiculous attitude after another at their fancy--was flattered by the idea that it was from itself, as the imperial city, that the Emperor took the confirmation of his election and his crown. Immediately afterwards a still more unjustifiable act was performed by the Emperor thus settled in his imperial seat. Assisted by his excommunicated bishops and his rebellious laymen, Louis held, Muratori tells us, in the Piazza of St. Peter a _gran parlamento_, calling upon any one who would take upon him the defence of Jacques de Cahors, calling himself Pope John XXII., to appear and answer the accusations against him. "No one replied: and then there rose up the Syndic of that part of the Roman clergy who loved gold better than religion, and begged Louis to take proceedings against the said Jacques de Cahors. Various articles were then produced accusing the Pope of heresy and treason, and of having raised the cross (_i.e._ sent a crusade, probably the expedition of the Prince of the Morea in the chronicle) against the Romans. For which reasons the Bavarian declared Pope John to be deposed from the pontificate and to be guilty of heresy and treason, with various penalties which I leave without mention. On the 23rd of April, with the consent of the Roman people, a law was published that every Pope in the future ought to hold his court in Rome, and not to be absent more than three months in the year on pain of being deposed from the Papacy. Finally on the twelfth day of May, in the Piazza of San Pietro, Louis with his crown on his head, proposed to the multitude that they should elect a new Pope. Pietro de Corvara, a native of the Abbruzzi, of the order of the Friars Minor, a great hypocrite, was proposed: and the people, the greater part of whom hated Pope John because he was permanently on the other side of the Alps (_dè la dai monti_), accepted the nomination. He assumed the name of Nicolas V. Before his consecration there was a promotion of seven false cardinals: and on the 22nd of May he was consecrated bishop by one of these, and afterwards received the Papal crown from the hands of the said Louis, who caused himself to be once more crowned Emperor by this his idol. "The brutality of Louis the Bavarian in arrogating to himself (adds Muratori) the authority of deposing a Pope lawfully elected, who had never fallen into heresy as was pretended: and to elect another, contrary to the rites and canons of the Catholic Church, sickened all who had any conscience or light of reason, and pleased only the heretics and schismatics, both religious and secular, who filled the court of the Bavarian, and by whose counsels he was ruled. Monstrosity and impiety could not be better declared and detested. And this was the step which completed the ruin of his interests in Italy." The apparition of this German court in Rome, with its curious ceremonials following one upon another: the coronation in St. Peter's, so soon to be annulled by its repetition at the hands of the puppet Pope whom Louis had himself created, in the vain hope that a crown bestowed by hands nominally consecrated would be more real than that given by those of Sciarra Colonna--makes the most wonderful episode in the turbulent story. In the same way Henry IV. was crowned again and again--first in his tent, afterwards by his false Pope in St. Peter's, while Gregory VII. looked grimly on from St. Angelo, a besieged and helpless refugee, yet in the secret consciousness of all parties--the Emperor's supporters as well as his own--the only real fountain of honour, the sole man living from whom that crown could be received with full sanction of law and right. Perhaps when all is said, and we have fully acknowledged the failure of all the greater claims of the Papacy, we read its importance in these scenes more than in the loftiest pretensions of Gregory or of Innocent. Il Bavaro felt to the bottom of his heart that he was no Emperor without the touch of those consecrated hands. A fine bravado of triumphant citizens delighting to imagine that Rome could still confer all honours as the mother city of the world, was well enough for the populace, though even for them the excommunicated bishops had to be brought in to lend a show of authenticity to the unjustifiable proceedings; but the uneasy Teuton himself could not be contented even by this, and it is to be supposed felt that even an anti-pope was better than nothing. It is tempting to inquire how Sciarra Colonna felt when the crown he had put on with such pride and triumph was placed again by the Neapolitan monk, false Pope among false cardinals, _articles d'occasion_, as the French say--on the head of the Bavarian. One cannot but feel that it must have been a humiliation for Colonna and for the city at this summit of vainglory and temporary power. The rest of the story of Sciarra and his emperor is quickly told, so far as Rome is concerned. Louis of Bavaria left the city in August of the same year. He had entered Rome in January amid the acclamations of the populace: he left it seven months later amid the hisses and abusive cries of the same people, carrying with him his anti-pope and probably Sciarra, who at all events took flight, his day being over, and died shortly after. Next day Stefano della Colonna, the true head of the house, arrived in Rome with Bartoldo Orsini, and took possession in the name of Pope John, no doubt with equal applause from the crowd which so short a time before had witnessed breathless his deposition, and accepted the false Nicolas in his place. Such was popular government in those days. The legate so valiantly defeated by Sciarra, and driven out of the gates according to the chronicle, returned in state with eight hundred knights at his back. We do not attempt to follow the history further than in those scenes which show how Rome lived, struggled, followed the impulse of its masters, and was flung from one side to the other at their pleasure, during this period of its history. The wonderful episode in that history which was about to open is better understood by the light of the events which roused Lo Popolo into wild excitement at one moment, and plunged them into disgust and discouragement the next. The following scene, however, has nothing to do with tumults of arms. It is a mere vignette from the much illustrated story of the city. It relates the visit of what we should now call a Revivalist to Rome, a missionary friar, one of those startling preachers who abounded in the Middle Ages, and roused, as almost always in the history of human nature, tempests of short-lived penitence and reformation, with but little general effect even on the religious story of the time. Fra Venturino was a Dominican monk of Bergamo, who had already when he came to Rome the fame of a great preacher, and was attended by a multitude of his penitents, dressed in white with the sacred monogram I.H.S. on the red and white caps or hoods which they wore on their heads, and a dove with an olive branch on their breasts. They came chiefly from the north of Italy and were, according to the chronicle, honest and pious persons of good and gentle manners. They were well received in Florence, where many great families took them in, gave them good food, good beds, washed their feet, and showed them much charity. Then, with a still larger contingent of Florentines following his steps, the preacher came on to Rome. "It was said in Rome that he was coming to convert the Romans. When he arrived he was received in San Sisto. There he preached to his own people, of whom there were many orderly and good. In the evening they sang Lauds. They had a standard of silk which was afterwards given to La Minerva (Sta. Maria sopra Minerva). At the present day it may still be seen there in the Chapel of Messer Latino. It was of green silk, long and large. Upon it was painted the figure of Sta. Maria, with angels on each side, playing upon viols; and St. Dominic and St. Peter Martyr and other prophets. Afterwards he preached in the Capitol, and all Rome went to hear him. The Romans were very attentive to hear him, quiet, and following carefully if he went wrong in his bad Latin. Then he preached and said that they ought to take off their shoes, for the place on which they stood was holy ground. And he said that Rome was a place of much holiness from the bodies of the saints who lay there, but that the Romans were wicked people: at which the Romans laughed. Then he asked a favour and a gift from the Romans. Fra Venturino said, 'Sirs, you are going to have one of your holidays which costs much money. It is not either for God or the saints: therefore you celebrate this idolatry for the service of the Demon. Give the money to me. I will spend it for God to men in need, who cannot provide for themselves.' Then the Romans began to mock at him, and to say that he was mad: thus they said and that they would stay no longer: and rising up went away leaving him alone. Afterwards he preached in San Giovanni, but the Romans would not hear him, and would have driven him away. He then became angry and cursed them, and said that he had never seen people so perverse. He appeared no more, but departed secretly and went to Avignon, where the Pope forbade him to preach." We may conclude these scraps of familiar contemporary information with a companion picture which does not give a reassuring view of the state of the Church in Rome. It is the story of a priest elected to a great place and dignity who sought the confirmation of his election from the Pope at Avignon. "A monk of St. Paolo in Rome, Fra Monozello by name, who at the death of the Abbot had been elected to fill his place, appeared before Pope Benedict. This monk was a man who delighted in society, running about everywhere, seeing the dawn come in, playing the lute, a great musician and singer. He spent his life in a whirl, at the court, at all the weddings, and parties to the vineyards. So at least said the Romans. How sad it must have been for Pope Benedict to hear that a monk of his did nothing but sing and dance. When this man was chosen for Abbot, he appeared before the sanctity of the Pope and said, 'Holy Father, I have been elected to San Paolo in Rome.' The Pope, who knew the condition of all who came to him, said, 'Can you sing?' The Abbot-elect replied, 'I can sing.' The Pope, 'I mean songs' (_la cantilena_). The Abbot-elect answered, 'I know concerted songs' (_il canzone sacro_). The Pope asked again, 'Can you play instruments' (_sonare_)? He answered, 'I can.' The Pope, 'I ask can you play (_tonare_) the organ and the lute?' The other answered, 'Too well.' Then the Pope changed his tone and said, 'Do you think it is a suitable thing for the Abbot of the venerable monastery of San Paolo to be a buffoon? Go about your business.'" Thus it would appear that, careless as they might be and full of other thoughts, the Popes in Avignon still kept a watchful eye upon the Church at Rome. These are but anecdotes with which the historian of Rienzi prepares his tragic story. They throw a little familiar light, the lanthorn of a bystander, upon the town, so great yet so petty, always clinging to the pretensions of a greatness which it could not forget, but wholly unworthy of that place in the world which its remote fathers of antiquity had won, and incapable even when a momentary power fell into its hands of using it, or of perceiving in the midst of its greedy rush at temporary advantage what its true interests were--insubordinate, reckless, unthinking, ready to rush to arms when the great bell rang from the Capitol _a stuormo_, without pausing to ask which side they were on, with the Guelfs one day and the Ghibellines the next, shouting for the Emperor, yet terror-stricken at the name of the Pope--obeying with surly reluctance their masters the barons, but as ready as a handful of tow to take flame, and always rebellious whatever might be the occasion. This is how the Roman Popolo of the fourteenth century appear through the eyes of the spectators of its strange ways. Fierce to fight, but completely without object except a local one for their fighting, ready to rebel but always disgusted when made to obey, entertaining a wonderful idea of their own claims by right of their classic descent and connection with the great names of antiquity, while on the other hand they allowed the noblest relics of those times to crumble into irremediable ruin. The other Rome, the patrician side, with all its glitter and splendour of the picturesque, is on the surface a much finer picture. The romance of the time lay altogether with the noble houses which had grown up in mediæval Rome, sometimes seizing a dubious title from an ancient Roman potentate, but most often springing from some stronghold in the adjacent country or the mountains, races which had developed and grown upon highway robbery and the oppression of those weaker than themselves, yet always with a surface of chivalry which deceived the world. The family which was greatest and strongest is fortunately the one we know most about. The house of Colonna had the good luck to discover in his youth and extend a warm, if condescending, friendship to the poet Petrarch, who was on his side the most fortunate poet who has lived in modern ages among men. He was in the midst of everything that went on, to use our familiar phraseology, in his day: he was the friend and correspondent of every notable person from the Pope and the Emperor downward: only a poor ecclesiastic, but the best known and most celebrated man of his time. The very first of all his contemporaries to appreciate and divine what was in him was Giacomo Colonna, one of the sons of old Stefano, whom we have already seen in Rome. He was Bishop of Lombez in Gascony, and his elder brother Giovanni was a Cardinal. They were in the way of every preferment and advantage, as became the sons of so powerful a house, but no promotion they attained has done so much for them with posterity as their friendship with this smooth-faced young priest of Vaucluse, to whom they were the kindest patrons and most faithful friends. Petrarch was but twenty-two, a student at Bologna when young Colonna, a boy himself, took, as we say, a fancy for him, "not knowing who I was or whence I came, and only by my dress perceiving that what he was I also was, a scholar." It was in his old age that Petrarch gave to another friend a description of this early patron, younger apparently than himself, who opened to him the doors of that higher social life which were not always open to a poet, even in those days when the patronage of the great was everything. "I think there never was a man in the world greater than he or more gracious, more kind, more able, more wise, more good, more moderate in good fortune, more constant and strong against adversity," he writes in the calm of his age, some forty years after the beginning of this friendship and long after the death of Giacomo Colonna. When the young bishop first went to his diocese Petrarch accompanied him. "Oh flying time, oh hurrying life!" he cries. "Forty-four years have passed since then, but never have I spent so happy a summer." On his return from this visit the bishop made his friend acquainted with his brother Giovanni, the Cardinal, a man "good and innocent more than Cardinals are wont to be." "And the same may be said," Petrarch adds, "of the other brothers, and of the magnanimous Stefano, their father, of whom, as Crispus says of Carthage, it is better to be silent than to say little." This is a description too good, perhaps, to be true of an entire family, especially of Roman nobles and ecclesiastics in the middle of the fourteenth century, between the disorderly and oppressed city of Rome, and the corrupt court of Avignon: but at least it shows the other point of view, the different aspect which the same man bears in different eyes: though Petrarch's enthusiasm for his matchless friends is perhaps as much too exalted as the denunciations of the populace and the popular orator are excessive on the other side. It was under this distinguished patronage that Petrarch received the great honour of his life, the laurel crown of the Altissimo Poeta, and furnished another splendid scene to the many which had taken place in Rome in the midst of all her troubles and distractions. The offer of this honour came to him at the same time from Paris and Rome, and it was to Cardinal Giovanni that he referred the question which he should accept: and he was surrounded by the Colonnas when he appeared at the Capitol to receive his crown. The Senator of the year was Orso, Conte d'Anquillara, who was the son-in-law of old Stefano Colonna, the husband of his daughter Agnes. The ceremony took place on Easter Sunday in the year 1341, the last day of Anquillara's office, and so settled by him in order that he might himself have the privilege of placing the laurel on the poet's head. Petrarch gives an account of the ceremony to his other patron King Robert of Naples, attributing this honour to the approbation and friendship of that monarch--which perhaps is a thing necessary when any personage so great as a king interests himself in the glory of a poet. "Rome and the deserted palace of the Capitol were adorned with unusual delight," he says: "a small thing in itself one might say, but conspicuous by its novelty, and by the applause and pleasure of the Roman people, the custom of bestowing the laurel having not only been laid aside for many ages, but even forgotten, while the republic turned its thoughts to very different things--until now under thy auspices it was renewed in my person." "On the Capitol of Rome," the poet wrote to another correspondent, "with a great concourse of people and immense joy, that which the king in Naples had decreed for me was executed. Orso Count d'Anquillara, Senator, a person of the highest intelligence, decorated me with the laurel: all went better than could have been believed or hoped," he adds, notwithstanding the absence of the King and of various great persons named--though among these Petrarch, with a policy and knowledge of the world which never failed him, does not name to his Neapolitan friends Cardinal Giovanni and Bishop Giacomo, the dearest of his companions, and his first and most faithful patrons, neither of whom were able to be present. Their family, however, evidently took the lead on this great occasion. Their brother Stefano pronounced an oration in honour of the laureate: he was crowned by their brother-in-law: and the great celebration culminated in a banquet in the Colonna palace, at which, no doubt, the father of all presided, with Colonnas young and old filling every corner. For they were a most abundant family--sons and grandsons, Stefanos and Jannis without end, young ones of all the united families, enough to fill almost a whole quarter of Rome themselves and their retainers. "Their houses extended from the square of San Marcello to the Santi Apostoli," says Papencordt, the modern biographer of Rienzi. The ancient Mausoleum of Augustus, which has been put to so many uses, which was a theatre not very long ago, and is now, we believe a museum, was once the headquarters and stronghold of the house. This ceremonial of the crowning of the poet was conducted with immense joy of the people, endless applause, a great concourse, and every splendour that was possible. So was the reception of Il Bavaro a few years before; so were the other strange scenes about to come. The populace was always ready to form a great concourse, to shout and applaud, notwithstanding its own often miserable condition, exposed to every outrage, and finding justice nowhere. But the reverse of the medal was not so attractive. Petrarch himself, departing from Rome with still the intoxicating applause of the city ringing in his ears, was scarcely outside the walls before he and his party fell into the hands of armed robbers. It would be too long to tell, he says, how he got free; but he was driven back to Rome, whence he set out again next day, "surrounded by a good escort of armed men." The _ladroni armati_ who stopped the way might, for all one knows, wear the badge of the Colonnas somewhere under their armour, or at least find refuge in some of their strongholds. Such were the manners of the time, and such was specially the condition of Rome. It gave the crown of fame to the poet, but could not secure him a safe passage for a mile outside its gates. It still put forth pretensions, as on this, so in more important cases, to exercise an authority over all the nations, by which right it had pleased the city to give Louis of Bavaria the imperial crown; but no citizen was safe unless he could protect himself with his sword, and justice and the redress of wrong were things unknown. [Illustration: ON THE PINCIO.] CHAPTER II. THE DELIVERER. It was in this age of disorder and anarchy that a child was born, of the humblest parentage, on the bank of the Tiber, in an out-of-the-way suburb, who was destined to become the hero of one of the strangest episodes of modern history. His father kept a little tavern to which the Roman burghers, pushing their walk a little beyond the walls, would naturally resort; his mother, a laundress and water-carrier--one of those women who, with the port of a classical princess, balance on their heads in perfect poise and certainty the great copper vases which are still used for that purpose. It was the gossip of the time that Maddalena, the wife of Lorenzo, had not been without adventures in her youth. No less a person than Henry VII. had found shelter, it was said, in her little public-house when her husband was absent. He was in the dress of a pilgrim, but no doubt bore the mien of a gallant gentleman and dazzled the eyes of the young landlady, who had no one to protect her. When her son was a man it pleased him to suppose that from this meeting resulted the strange mixture of democratic enthusiasm and love of pomp and power which was in his own nature. It was not much to be proud of, and yet he was proud of it. For all the world he was the son of the poor innkeeper, but within himself he felt the blood of an Emperor in his veins. Maddalena died young, and when her son began to weave the visions which helped to shape his life, was no longer there to clear her own reputation or to confirm him in his dream. These poor people had not so much as a surname to distinguish them. The boy Niccola was Cola di Rienzo, Nicolas the son of Laurence, as he is called in the Latin chronicles, according to that simplest of all rules of nomenclature which has originated so many modern names. "He was from his youth nourished on the milk of eloquence; a good grammarian, a better rhetorician, a fine writer," says his biographer. "Heavens, what a rapid reader he was! He made great use of Livy, Seneca, Tully, and Valerius Maximus, and delighted much to tell forth the magnificence of Julius Cæsar. All day long he studied the sculptured marbles that lie around Rome. There was no one like him for reading the ancient inscriptions. All the ancient writings he put in choice Italian; the marbles he interpreted. How often did he cry out, 'Where are these good Romans? where is their high justice? might I but have been born in their time?' He was a handsome man, and he adopted the profession of a notary." We are not told how or where Cola attained this knowledge. His father was a vassal of the Colonna, and it is possible that some of the barons coming and going may have been struck by the brilliant, eager countenance of the innkeeper's son, and helped him to the not extravagant amount of learning thus recorded. His own character, and the energy and ambition so strangely mingled with imagination and the visionary temperament of a poet, would seem to have at once separated him from the humble world in which he was born. It is said by some that his youth was spent out of Rome, and that he only returned when about twenty, at the death of his father--a legend which would lend some show of evidence to the suggestion of his doubtful birth: but his biographer says nothing of this. It is also said that it was the death of his brother, killed in some scuffle between the ever-contending parties of Colonna and Orsini, which gave his mind the first impulse towards the revolution which he accomplished in so remarkable a way. "He pondered long," says his biographer, "of revenging the blood of his brother; and long he pondered over the ill-governed city of Rome, and how to set it right." But there is no definite record of his early life until it suddenly flashes into light in the public service of the city, and on an occasion of the greatest importance as well for himself as for Rome. This first public employment which discloses him at once to us was a mission from the thirteen _Buoni homini_, sometimes called _Caporoni_, the heads of the different districts of the city, to Pope Clement VI. at Avignon, on the occasion of one of those temporary overturns of government which occurred from time to time, always of the briefest duration, but carrying on the traditions of the power of the people from age to age. He was apparently what we should call the spokesman of the deputation sent to explain the matter to the Pope, and to secure, if possible, some attention on the part of the Curia to the condition of the abandoned city. "His eloquence was so great that Pope Clement was much attracted towards him: the Pope much admired the fine style of Cola, and desired to see him every day. Upon which Cola spoke very freely and said that the Barons of Rome were highway robbers, that they were consenting to murder, robbery, adultery, and every evil. He said that the city lay desolate, and the Pope began to entertain a very bad opinion of the Barons." "But," adds the chronicler, "by means of Messer Giovanni of the Colonna, Cardinal, great misfortunes happened to him, and he was reduced to such poverty and sickness that he might as well have been sent to the hospital. He lay like a snake in the sun. But he who had cast him down, the very same person raised him up again. Messer Giovanni brought him again before the Pope and had him restored to favour. And having thus been restored to grace he was made notary of the Cammora in Rome, so that he returned with great joy to the city." This succinct narrative will perhaps be a little more clear if slightly expanded: the chief object of the Roman envoy was to disclose the crimes of the "barons," whose true character Cola thus described to the Pope, on the part of the leaders of a sudden revolt, a sort of prophetical anticipation of his own, which had seized the power out of the hands of the two Senators and conferred it upon thirteen _Buoni homini_, heads of the people, who took the charge in the name of the Pope and professed, as was usual in its absence, an almost extravagant devotion to the Papal authority. The embassy was specially charged with the prayers and entreaties of the people that the Pope would return and resume the government of the city: and also that he would proclaim another jubilee--the great festival, accompanied by every kind of indulgence and pious promise to the pilgrims, attracted by it from all the ends of the earth to Rome--which had been first instituted by Pope Boniface VIII. in 1300 with the intention of being repeated once every century only. But a century is a long time; and the jubilee was most profitable, bringing much money and many gifts both to the State and the Church. The citizens were therefore very anxious to secure its repetition in 1350, and its future celebration every fifty years. The Pope graciously accorded the jubilee to the prayers of the Romans, and accepted their homage and desire for his return, promising vaguely that he would do so in the jubilee year if not before. So that whatever afterwards happened to the secretary or spokesman, the object of the mission was attained. Elated by this fulfilment of their wishes, and evidently at the moment of his highest favour with the Pope, Cola sent a letter announcing this success to the authorities in Rome, which is the first word we hear from his own mouth. It is dated from Avignon, in the year 1343. He was then about thirty, in the full ardour of young manhood, full of visionary hopes and schemes for the restoration of the glories of Rome. The style of the letter, which was so much admired in those days, is too florid and ornate for the taste of a severer period, notwithstanding that his composition received the applause of Petrarch, and was much admired by all his contemporaries. He begins by describing himself as the "consul of orphans, widows and the poor, and the humble messenger of the people." "Let your mountains tremble with happiness, let your hills clothe themselves with joy, and peace and gladness fill the valleys. Let the city arise from her long course of misfortunes, let her re-ascend the throne of her ancient magnificence, let her throw aside the weeds of widowhood and clothe herself with the garments of a bride. For the heavens have been opened to us and from the glory of the Heavenly Father has issued the light of Jesus Christ, from which shines forth that of the Holy Spirit. Now that the Lord has done this miracle, brethren beloved, see that you clear out of your city the thorns and the roots of vice, to receive with the perfume of new virtue the Bridegroom who is coming. We exhort you with burning tears, with tears of joy, to put aside the sword, to extinguish the flames of battle, to receive these divine gifts with a heart full of purity and gratitude, to glorify with songs and thanksgiving the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and also to give humble thanks to His Vicar, and to raise to that supreme Pontiff, in the Capitol or in the amphitheatre, a statue adorned with purple and gold that the joyous and glorious recollection may endure for ever. Who indeed has adorned his country with such glory among the Ciceros, the Cæsars, Metullus, or Fabius, who are celebrated as liberators in our old annals and whose statues we adorn with precious stones because of their virtues? These men have obtained passing triumphs by war, by the calamities of the world, by the shedding of blood: but he, by our prayers and for the life, the salvation and the joy of all, has won in our eyes and in those of posterity an immortal triumph." [Illustration: THEATRE OF MARCELLUS. _To face page 406._] It is like enough that these extravagant phrases expressed an exultation which was sufficiently genuine and sincere, for while he was absent the city of Rome desired and longed for its Pope, although when present it might do everything in its power to shake off his yoke. And Cola the ambassador, in whose mind as yet his own great scheme had not taken shape, might well believe that the gracious Pope who flattered him by such attention, who admitted him so freely to his august presence, and to whom he was as one who playeth very sweetly upon an instrument, was the man of all men to bring back again from anarchy and tumult the imperial city. He had even given up, it would seem, his enthusiasm for the classic heroes in this moment of hope from a more living and present source of help. This elation however did not last. The Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, son of old Stefano, the head of that great house, of whose magnificent old age Petrarch speaks with so much enthusiasm, himself a man of many accomplishments, a scholar and patron of the arts--and to crown all, as has been said, the dear friend and patron of the poet--was one of the most important members of the court at Avignon, when the deputation from Rome, with that eloquent young plebeian as its interpreter, appeared before the Pope. We may imagine that its first great success, and the pleasure which the Pope took in the conversation of Cola, must have happened during some temporary absence of the Cardinal, whose interest in the affairs of his native city would be undoubted. And it was natural that he should be a little scornful of the ambassadors of the people, and of the orator who was the son of Rienzo of the wine-shop, and very indignant at the account given by the advocate of lo Popolo, of the barons and their behaviour. The Colonna were, in fact, the least tyrannical of the tyrants; they were the noblest of all the Roman houses, and no doubt the public sentiment against the nobles in general might sometimes do a more enlightened family wrong. Certainly it is hard to reconcile the pictures of this house as given by Petrarch with the cruel tyranny of which all the nobles were accused. This no doubt was the reason why, after the triumph of that letter, the consent of the Pope to the prayer of the citizens, and his interest in Cola's tale and descriptions, the young orator fell under the shadow of courtly displeasure, and after that intoxication of victory suffered all those pangs of neglect which so often end the temporary triumph of a success at court. The story is all vague, and we have no explanation why he should have lingered on in Avignon, unless perhaps with hopes of advancement founded on that evanescent favour, or perhaps in consequence of his illness. There is a forlorn touch in the description of the chronicler that "he lay like a snake in the sun," which is full of suggestion. The reader seems to see him hanging about the precincts of the court under the stately walls of the vast Papal palace, which now stands in gloomy greatness, absorbing all the light out of the landscape. It was new then, and glorious like a heavenly palace; and sick and sad, disappointed and discouraged, the young envoy, lately so dazzled by the sunshine of favour, would no doubt haunt the great doorway, seeking a sunny spot to keep himself warm, and waiting upon Providence. Probably the Cardinal, sweeping out and in, in his state, might perceive the young Roman fallen from his temporary triumph, and be touched by pity for the orator who after all had done no harm with his pleading; for was not Stefano Colonna again, in spite of all, Senator of Rome? Let us hope that the companion at his elbow, the poet who formed part of his household, and who probably had heard, too, and admired, like Pope Clement, the _parole ornate_ of the speaker, who, though so foolish as to assail with his eloquent tongue the nobles of the land, need not after all be left to perish on that account--was the person who pointed out to his patron the poor fellow in his cloak, shivering in the mistral, that chill wind unknown in the midlands of Italy. It is certain that Petrarch here made Cola's acquaintance, and that Cardinal Colonna, remorseful to see the misery he had caused, took trouble to have his young countryman restored to favour, and procured him the appointment of Notary of the city, with which Cola returned to Rome--"_fra i denti minacciava_," says his biographer, swearing between his teeth. It was in 1344 that his promotion took place, and for some years after Cola performed the duties of his office _cortesemente_, with courtesy, the highest praise an Italian of his time could give. In this occupation he had boundless opportunities of studying more closely the system of government which had resumed its full sway under the old familiar succession of Senators, generally a Colonna and an Orsini. "He saw and knew," says the chronicler, himself growing vehement in the excitement of the subject, "the robbery of those dogs of the Capitol, the cruelty and injustice of those in power. In all the commune he did not find one good citizen who would render help." It would seem, though there is here little aid of dates, that he did not act precipitately, but, probably with the hope of being able himself to do something to remedy matters, kept silence while his heart burned, as long as silence was possible. But the moment came when he could do so no longer, and the little scene at the meeting of the Cammora, the City Council, stands out as clearly before us as if it had been a municipal assembly of the present day. We are not told what special question was before the meeting which proved the last straw of the burden of indignation and impatience which Cola at his table, writing with the silver pen which he thought more worthy than a goose quill for the dignity of his office, had to bear. (One wonders if he was the inventor, without knowing it, of that little instrument, the artificial pen of metal with which, chiefly, literature is manufactured in our days? But silver is too soft and ductile to have ever become popular, and though very suitable to pour forth those mellifluous sentences in which the young spokesman of the Romans wrote to his chiefs from Avignon, would scarcely answer for the sterner purposes of the council to inscribe punishments or calculate fines withal.) One day, however, sitting in his place, writing down the decrees for those fines and penalties, sudden wrath seized upon the young scribe who already had called himself the consul of widows and orphans, and of the poor. "One day during a discussion on the subject of the taxes of Rome, he rose to his feet among all the Councillors and said, 'You are not good citizens, you who suck the blood of the poor and will not give them any help.' Then he admonished the officials and the Rectors that they ought rather to provide for the good government, _lo buono stato_, of their city of Rome. When the impetuous address of Cola di Rienzi was ended, one of the Colonna, who was called Andreozzo di Normanno, the Camarlengo, got up and struck him a ringing blow on the cheek: and another who was the Secretary of the Senate, Tomma de Fortifiocca, mocked him with an insulting sign. This was the end of their talking." We hear of no more remonstrances in the council. It is said that Cola was not a brave man, though we have so many proofs of courage afterwards that it is difficult to believe him to have been lacking in this particular. At all events he went out from that selfish and mocking assembly with his cheek tingling from the blow, and his heart burning more and more, to ponder over other means of moving the community and helping Rome. The next incident opens up to us a curious world of surmise, and suggests to the imagination much that is unknown, in the lower regions of art, a crowd of secondary performers in that arena, the unknown painters, the half-workmen, half-artists, who form a background wherever a school of art exists. Cola perhaps may have had relations with some of these half-developed artists, not sufficiently advanced to paint an altar-piece, the scholars or lesser brethren of some local _bottega_. There was little native art at any time in Rome. The ancient and but dimly recorded work of the Cosimati, the only Roman school, is lost in the mists, and was over and ended in the fourteenth century. But there must have been some humble survival of trained workmen capable at least of mural decorations if no more. Pondering long how to reach the public, Cola seems to have bethought himself of this humble instrument of art. As we do not hear before of any such method of instructing the people, we may be allowed to suppose it was his invention as well as the silver pen. His active brain was buzzing with new things in every way, both great and small, and this was the first device he hit upon. Even the poorest art must have been of use in the absence of books for the illustration of sacred story and the instruction of the ignorant, and it was at this kind of instantaneous effect that Cola aimed. He had the confidence of the visionary that the evil state of affairs needed only to be known to produce instant reformation. The grievance over and over again insisted upon by his biographer, and which was the burden of his outburst in the council, was that "no one would help"--_non si trovava uno buon Cittatino, che lo volesse adjutare_. Did they but know, the common people, how they were oppressed, and the nobles what oppressors they were, it was surely certain that every one would help, and that all would go right, and the _buono stato_ be established once more. Here is the strange way in which Cola for the first time publicly "admonished the rectors and the people to do well, by a similitude." "A similitude," says his biographer, "which he caused to be painted on the palace of the Capitol in front of the market, on the wall above the Cammora (Council Chamber). Here was painted an allegory in the following form--namely, a great sea with horrible waves, and much disturbed. In the midst of this sea was a ship, almost wrecked, without helm or sails. In this ship, in great peril, was a woman, a widow, clothed in black, bound with a girdle of sadness, her face disfigured, her hair floating wildly, as if she would have wept. She was kneeling, her hands crossed, beating her breast and ready to perish. The superscription over her was _This is Rome_. Round this ship were four other ships wrecked: their sails torn away, their oars broken, their rudders lost. In each one was a woman smothered and dead. The first was called Babylon; the second Carthage; the third Troy; the fourth Jerusalem. Written above was: _These cities by injustice perished and came to nothing._ A label proceeding from the women dead bore the lines: 'Once were we raised o'er lords and rulers all, And now we wait, Oh Rome, to see thee fall.' "On the left hand were two islands: on one of these was a woman sitting shamefaced with an inscription over her _This is Italy_. And she spoke and said: 'Once had'st thou power o'er every land, I only now, thy sister, hold thy hand.' "On the other island were four women, with their hands at their throats, kneeling on their knees, in great sadness, and speaking thus: 'By many virtues once accompanied Thou on the sea goest now abandonëd.' "These were the four Cardinal virtues, Temperance, Justice, Prudence and Fortitude. On the other side was another little isle, and on this islet was a woman kneeling, her hands stretched out to heaven as if she prayed. She was clothed in white and her name was Christian Faith: and this is what her verse said: 'Oh noblest Father, lord and leader mine, Where shall I be if Rome sink and decline?' "Above on the right of the picture were four kinds of winged creatures who breathed and blew upon the sea, creating a storm and driving the sinking ship that it might perish. The first order were Lions, Wolves, and Bears, and were thus labelled: _These are the powerful Barons and the wicked Officials_. The second order were Dogs, Pigs, and Goats, and over them was written: _These are the evil counsellors, the followers of the nobles_. The third order were Sheep, Goats, and Foxes, and the label: _These are the false officials, Judges and Notaries_. The fourth order were Hares, Cats, and Monkeys, and their label: _These are the People, Thieves, Murderers, Adulterers, and Spoilers of Men_. Above was the sky: in the midst the Majesty Divine as though coming to Judgment, two swords coming from His mouth. On one side stood St. Peter, and on the other St. Paul praying. When the people saw this similitude with these figures every one marvelled." Who painted this strange allegory, and how the work could be done in secret, in such a public place, so as to be suddenly revealed as a surprise to the astonished crowd, we have no means of knowing. It would be, no doubt, of the rudest art, probably such a scroll as might be printed off in a hundred examples and pasted on the walls by our readier methods, not much above the original drawings of our pavements. We can imagine the simplicity of the symbolism, the agitated sea in curved lines, the galleys dropping out of the picture, the symbolical figures with their mottoes. The painting must have been executed by the light of early dawn, or under cover of some license to which Cola himself as an official had a right, perhaps behind the veil of a scaffolding--put up on some pretence of necessary repairs: and suddenly blazing forth upon the people in the brightness of the morning, when the early life of Rome began again, and suitors and litigants began to cluster on the great steps, each with his private grievance, his lawsuit or complaint. What a sensation must that have occasioned as gazer after gazer caught sight of the fresh colours glowing on what was a blank wall the day before! The strange inscriptions in their doggerel lines, mystic enough to pique every intelligence, simple enough to be comprehensible by the crowd, would be read by one and another to show their learning over the heads of the multitude. How strange a thing, catching every eye! No doubt the plan of it, so unusual an appeal to the popular understanding, was Cola's; but who could the artist be who painted that "similitude"? Not any one, we should suppose, who lived to make a name for himself--as indeed, so far as we know, there were none such in Rome. This pictorial instruction was for the poor: it placed before them Rome, their city, for love of which they were always capable of being roused to at least a temporary enthusiasm--struggling and unhappy, cheated by those she most trusted, ravaged by small and great, in danger of final and hopeless shipwreck. In all her ancient greatness, the peer and sister of the splendid cities of the antique world, and like them falling into a ruin which in her case might yet be avoided, the suggestion was one which was admirably fitted to stir and move the spectators, all of them proud of the name of Roman, and deeply conscious of ill-government and suffering. This, however, was but one side of the work which he had set himself to do. A short time after, when his picture had become the subject of all tongues in Rome, Cola the notary invited the nobles and notables of the city to meet in the Church of St. John Lateran to hear him expound a certain inscription there which had hitherto (we are told) baffled all interpreters. It must be supposed that he stood high in the favour of the Church, and of Raymond the Bishop of Orvieto, the Pope's representative, or he would scarcely have been permitted to use the great basilica for such a purpose. The Church of the Lateran, however, as we know from various sources, was in an almost ruined state, nearly roofless and probably, in consequence, open to invasions of such a kind. Cola must have already secured the attention of Rome in all circles, notwithstanding that box on the ear with which Andreozzo of the Colonna had tried to silence him. He was taken by some for a _burlatore_, a man who was a great jest and out of whom much amusement could be got; and this was the aspect in which he appeared to one portion of society, to the young barons and gilded youth of Rome--a delusion to which he would seem to have temporarily lent himself, in order to diffuse his doctrine; while the more serious part of the aristocracy seem to have become curious at least to hear what he had to say, and prescient of meanings in him which it would be well to keep in order by better means than the simple method of Andreozzo. The working of Cola's own mind it is less easy to trace. His picture had been such an allegory as the age loved, broad enough and simple enough at the same time to reach the common level of understanding. When he addressed himself to the higher class, it was with an instinctive sense of the difference, but without perhaps a very clear perception what that difference was, or how to bear himself before this novel audience. Perhaps he was right in believing that a striking spectacle was the best thing to startle the aristocrats into attention: perhaps he thought it well to take advantage of the notion that Cola of Rienzo was more or less a buffoon, and that a speech of his was likely to be amusing whatever else it might be. The dress which his biographer describes minutely, and which had evidently been very carefully prepared, seems to favour this idea. "Not much time passed (after the exhibition of the picture) before he admonished the people by a fine sermon in the vulgar tongue, which he made in St. John Lateran. On the wall behind the choir, he had fixed a great and magnificent plate of metal inscribed with ancient letters, which none could read or interpret except he alone. Round this tablet he had caused several figures to be painted which represented the Senate of Rome conceding the authority over the city to the Emperor Vespasian. In the midst of the Church was erected a platform (_un parlatorio_) with seats upon it, covered with carpets and curtains--and upon this were gathered many great personages, among whom were Stefano Colonna, and Giovanni Colonna his son, who were the greatest and most magnificent in the city. There were also many wise and learned men, Judges and Decretalists, and many persons of authority. Cola di Rienzo came upon the stage among these great people. He was dressed in a tunic and cape after the German fashion, with a hood up to his throat in fine white cloth, and a little white cap on his head. On the round of his cap were crowns of gold, the one in the front being divided by a sword made in silver, the point of which was stuck through the crown. He came out very boldly, and when silence was procured he made a fine sermon with many beautiful words, and said that Rome was beaten down and lay on the ground, and could not see where she lay, for her eyes were torn out of her head. Her eyes were the Pope and the Emperor, both of whom Rome had lost by the wickedness of her citizens. Then he said (pointing to the pictured figures), 'Behold, what was the magnificence of the Senate when it gave the authority to the Emperor.' He then read a paper in which was written the interpretation of the inscription, which was the act by which the imperial power was given by the people of Rome to Vespasian. Firstly that Vespasian should have the power to make good laws, and to make alliances with any whom he pleased, and that he should be entitled to increase or diminish the _garden of Rome_, that is Italy: and that he should give accounts less or more as he would. He might also raise men to be dukes and kings, put them up or pull them down, destroy or rebuild cities, divert rivers out of their beds to flow in another channel, put on taxes or abolish them at his pleasure. All these things the Romans gave to Vespasian according to their Charter to which Tiberius Cæsar consented. He then put aside that paper and said, 'Sirs, such was the majesty of the people of Rome that it was they who conferred this authority upon the Emperor. Now they have lost it altogether.' Then he entered more fully into the question and said, 'Romans, you do not live in peace: your lands are not cultivated. The Jubilee is approaching and you have no provision of grain or food for the people who are coming, who will find themselves unprovided for, and who will take up stones in the rage of their hunger: but neither will the stones be enough for such a multitude.' Then concluding he added: 'I pray you keep the peace.' Then he said this parable: 'Sirs, I know that many people make a mock at me for what I do and say. And why? For envy. But I thank God there are three things which consume the slanderers. The first luxury, the second jealousy, the third envy.' When he had ended the sermon and come down, he was much lauded by the people." The inscription thus set before the people was the bronze table, called the Lex Regia. Why it was that no one had been able to interpret it up to that moment we are not told. Learning was at a very low ebb, and the importance of such great documents whether in metal or parchment was as yet but little recognised. This was evidently one of the results of Cola's studies of the old inscriptions of which we are told in the earliest chapter of his career. It had formed part of an altar in the Lateran Church, being placed there as a handy thing for the purpose in apparent ignorance of any better use for it, by Pope Boniface VIII. when he restored the church. No doubt some of the feeble reparations that were going on had brought the storied stone under Cola's notice, and he had interest enough to have it removed from so inappropriate a place. It is now let into the wall in the Hall of the Faun on the Capitol. We have here an instance not only of the exaltation of Cola's mind and thoughts, imaginative and ardent, and his possession by the one idea of Roman greatness, but also of his privileges and power at this moment, before he had as yet struck a blow or made a step towards his future position. That he should have been allowed to displace the tablet from the altar (which however may have been done in the course of the repairs) to set it up in that conspicuous position, and to use the church, he a layman and a plebeian, for his own objects, testifies to very strong support and privilege. The influence of the Pope must have been at his back, and the resources of the Church thrown open to him. Neither his audacious speech nor his constant denunciation of barons and officials seem to have been attended by the risks we should have expected. Either the authorities must have been very magnanimous, or he was well protected by some power they did not choose to encounter. Some doubt as to his sanity or his seriousness seems to have existed among them. Giovanni Colonna, familiarly Janni, grandson of old Stefano, a brilliant young gallant likely to grow into a fine soldier, the hope of the house, invited him constantly to entertainments where all the gilded youth of Rome gathered as to a play to hear him talk. When he said, "I shall be a great lord, perhaps even emperor," the youths gave vent to shouts of laughter. "All the barons were full of it, some encouraging him, some disposed to cut off his head. But nothing was done to him. How many things he prophesied about the state of the city, and the generous rule it required!" Rome listened and was excited or amused according to its mood, but nothing was done either to conform that rule to his demands or to stop the bold reformer. By this time it had become the passion of his life, and the occupation of all his leisure. He could think of nothing but how to persuade the people, how to make their condition clear to them. Once more his painter friends, the journeymen of the _bottega_, whoever they were, came to his aid and painted him again a picture, this time on the wall of St. Angelo in Pescheria, which we may suppose to have been Cola's parish church, as it continually appears in the narrative--where once more they set forth in ever bolder symbolism the condition of Rome. Again she was represented as an aged woman, this time in the midst of a great conflagration, half consumed, but watched over by an angel in all the glories of white attire and flaming sword, ready to rescue her from the flames, under the superintendence of St. Peter and St. Paul who looked on from a tower, calling to the angel to "succour her who gave shelter to us"; while a white dove fluttered down from the skies with a crown of myrtle to be placed upon the head of the woman, and the legend bore "I see the time of the great justice--and thou, wait for it." Once more the crowd collected, the picture was discussed and what it meant questioned and expounded. There were some who shook their heads and said that more was wanted than pictures to amend the state of affairs; but it may easily be supposed that as these successive allegories were represented before them, in a language which every one could understand, the feeling grew, and that there would be little else talked about in Rome but those strange writings on the walls and what their meanings were. The picture given by Lord Lytton in his novel of _Rienzi_, of this agitated moment of history, is very faithful to the facts, and gives a most animated description of the scenes; though in the latter part of his story he prefers romance to history. All these incidents however open to our eyes side glimpses of the other Rome underneath the surface, which was occupied by contending nobles and magnificent houses, and all the little events and picturesque episodes with which a predominant aristocracy amused the world. If Mr. Browning had expounded Rome once more on a graver subject, as he did once in _The Ring and the Book_, what groups he might have set before us! The painters who had as yet produced no one known to fame, but who, always impressionable, would be agitated through all the depths of their workshops by the breath of revolution, the hope of something fine to come, would have taken up a portion of the foreground: for with the withdrawal of the Pope and the court, the occupation of a body of artist workmen, good for little more than decoration, ecclesiastical or domestic, must have suffered greatly: and none can be more easily touched by the agitation of new and aspiring thought than men whose very trade requires a certain touch of inspiration, a stimulus of fancy. No doubt in the studios there were many young men who had grown up with Cola, who had hung upon his impassioned talk before it was known to the world, and heard his vague and exalted schemes for Rome, for the renovation of all her ancient glories, not forgetting new magnificences of sculpture and of painting worthy of the renovated city, the mistress of the world. Their eager talk and discussions, their knowledge of his ways and thoughts, the old inscriptions he had shown them, the new hopes which he had described in his glowing language, must have filled with excitement all those _bottegas_, perched among the ruins, those workshops planned out of abandoned palaces, the haunt of the Roman youth who were not gentlemen but workmen, and to whom Janni Colonna and his laughing companions, who thought Cola so great a jest in his mad brilliancy, were magnificent young patrons half admired, half abhorred. How great a pride it must have been to be taken into Cola's confidence, to reduce to the laws of possible representation those "similitudes" of his, the stormy sea with its galleys and its islets, the blaze of the fatal fire: and to hurry out by dawn, a whole band of them, in all the delight of conspiracy, to dash forth the joint conception on the wall, and help him to read his lesson to the people! And Browning would have found another Rome still to illustrate in the priests, the humbler clergy, the curé of St. Angelo in the Fishmarket, and so many more, of the people yet over the people, the humble churchmen with their little learning, just enough to understand a classical name or allusion, some of whom must have helped Cola himself to his Latin, and pored with him over his inscriptions, and taken fire from his enthusiasm as a mind half trained, without the limitations that come with completer knowledge, is apt to do--feeling everything to be possible and ignoring the difficulties and inevitable disasters of revolution. The great ideal of the Church always hovering in the air before the visionary priest, and the evident and simple reason why it failed in this case from the absence of the Pope, and the widowhood of the city, must have so tempered the classical symbolism of the leader as to make his dreams seem possible to men so little knowing the reality of things, and so confident that with the strength of their devotion and the purity of their aims everything could be accomplished. To such minds the possible and impossible have no existence, the world itself is such a thing as dreams are made of, and the complete reformation of all things, the heavens and the earth in which shall dwell righteousness, are always attainable and near at hand, if only the effort to reach them were strong enough, and the minds of the oppressed properly enlightened. No one has sufficiently set forth, though many have essayed to do so, this loftiness of human futility, this wild faith of inexperience and partial ignorance, which indeed sometimes does for a moment at least carry everything before it in the frenzy of enthusiasm and faith. On the other side were Janni Colonna and his comrades, the young Savelli, Gaetani, all the gallant band, careless of all things, secure in their nobility, in that easy confidence of rank and birth which is perhaps the most picturesque of all circumstances, and one of the most exhilarating, making its possessor certain above all logic that for him the sun shines and the world goes round. There were all varieties among these young nobles as among other classes of men; some were _bons princes_, careless but not unthoughtful in any cruel way of others, if only they could be made to understand that their triumphant career was anyhow hurtful of others--a difficult thing always to realise. The Colonnas apart from their feuds and conflicts were generally _bons princes_. They were not a race of oppressors; they loved the arts and petted their special poet, who happened at that moment to be the great poet of Italy, and no doubt admired the eloquent Cola and were delighted with his discourses and sallies, though they might find a spice of ridicule in them, as when he said he was to be a great seigneur or even emperor. That was his jest, could not one see the twinkle in his eye? And probably old Stefano, the noble grandsire, would smile too as he heard the laughter of the boys, and think not unkindly of the mad notary with his enthusiasms, which would no doubt soon enough be quenched out of him, as was the case with most men when experience came with years to correct those not ungenerous follies of youth. The great churchmen would seem to have been still more tolerant to Cola--glad to find this unexpected auxiliary who helped to hold the balance in favour of the Pope, and keep the nobles in check. In the meantime Cola proceeded with his warnings, and by and by with more strenuous preparation. We come to a date fortunately when we read of a sudden issue of potent words which came forth like the handwriting on the wall one morning, on February 15th, 1347. "In a short time the Romans shall return to their ancient good government." _In brievo tempo_--the actual sonorous words sounding forth large and noble like flute and trumpet in our ear, are worth quoting for the sound if no more: _In brievo tempo I Romani tornaraco a lo loro antico buono stato_. What a thrill of excitement to turn round a sudden corner and find this facing you on the church wall, words that were not there yesterday! _Lo antico buono stato!_ the most skilful watchword, which thereafter became the special symbol of the new reformation. It is after this that we hear of the gathering of a little secret assembly in some quiet spot on the Aventine, "a secret place"--where on some privately arranged occasion there came serious men from all parts of the city, "many Romans of importance and _buoni homini_," which was the title, as we have seen, given to the popular leaders. "And among them were some of the gentry (_cavalerotti_) and rich merchants"--to consider what could be done to restore the good government (_lo buono stato_) of the city of Rome. "Among whom Cola rose to his feet, and narrated, weeping, the misery, servitude and peril in which lay the city. And also what once was the great and lordly state which the Romans were wont to enjoy. He also spoke of the loss of all the surrounding country which had once been in subjection to Rome. And all this he related with tears, the whole assembly weeping with him. Then he concluded and said that it behoved them to serve the cause of peace and justice, and consoled them adding: 'Be not afraid in respect to money, for the Roman Cammora has much and inestimable returns.' In the first place the fires: each smoke paying four soldi, from Cepranno to the Porta della Paglia. This amounts to a hundred thousand florins. From the salt tax a hundred thousand florins. Then come the gates of Rome and the castles, and the dues there amount to a hundred thousand florins which is sent to his Holiness the Pope, and that his Vicar knows. Then he said, 'Sirs, do not believe that it is by the consent or will of the Pope that so many of the citizens lay violent hands on the goods of the Church.' By these parables the souls of the assembly were kindled. And many other things he said weeping. Then they deliberated how to restore the Buono Stato. And every one swore this upon the Holy Gospels--(in the Italian 'in the letter,' by a recorded act)." It appears very probable by the allusion to the Pope's Vicar that he was present at this secret assembly. At all events he was informed of all that was done, and took part in the first overt act of the revolution. To give fuller warrant for these secret plans and conspiracies, the state of the city went on growing worse every day. The two parties, that of Colonna, and that of Orsini, so balanced each other, the one availing itself of every incident which could discredit and put at a disadvantage the other, that justice and law were brought to a standstill, every criminal finding a protector on one side or the other, and every kind of rapine and violence going unpunished. "The city was in great travail," our chronicler says, "it had no lord, murder and robbery went on on every side. Women were not safe either in convents or in their own houses. The labourer was robbed as he came back from his work, and even children were outraged; and all this within the gates of Rome. The pilgrims making their way to the shrines of the Apostles were robbed and often murdered. The priests themselves were ready for every evil. Every wickedness flourished: there was no justice, no restraint: and neither was there any remedy for this state of things. He only was in the right who could prove himself so with the sword." All that the unfortunate people could do was to band themselves together and fight, each for his own cause. In the month of April of the year 1347 this state of anarchy was at its height. Stefano Colonna had gone to Corneto for provisions, taking with him all the _milice_, the Garde Nationale or municipal police of Rome. Deprived even of this feeble support and without any means of keeping order, the Senators, Agapito Colonna and Robert Orsini, remained as helpless to subdue any rising as they were to regulate the internal affairs of the city. The conspirators naturally took advantage of this opportunity. They sent a town crier with sound of trumpet to call all men to prepare to come without arms to the Capitol, to the Buono Stato at the sound of the great bell. During the night Cola would seem to have kept vigil--it was the eve of Pentecost--in the Church of St. Angelo in Pescheria hearing "thirty masses of the Holy Ghost," says the chronicler, spending the night in devotion as we should say. At the hour of tierce, in the early morning, he came out of Church, having thus invoked with the greatest solemnity the aid of God. It was the 20th of May, a summer festival, when all Rome is glorious with sunshine, and the orange blossoms and the roses from every garden fill the air with sweetness. He was fully armed except his head, which was bare. A multitude of youths encircled him with sudden shouts and cheering, breaking the morning quiet, and startling the churchgoers hastening to an early mass, who must have stood gaping to see one banner after another roll out between them and the sky, issuing from the church doors. The first was red with letters of gold, painted with a figure of Rome seated on two lions, carrying an orb, and a palm in her hands--"un Mundo e una Palma"--signs of her universal sovereignty. "This was the Gonfalon of Liberty"--and it was carried by Cola Guallato distinguished as "Lo buon dicitore"--another orator like Rienzi himself. The second was white with an image of St. Paul, on the third was St. Peter and his keys. This last was carried by an old knight who, because he was a veteran, was conveyed in a carriage. By this time the great bell of the Capitol was ringing and the men who had been invited were hurrying there through all the streets. "Then Cola di Rienzo took all his courage, though not without fear, and went on alone with the Vicar of the Pope and went up to the Palace of the Capitol." There he addressed the crowd, making a _bellissima diceria_ upon the misery and anarchy in Rome, saying that he risked his life for the love of the Pope and the salvation of the people. The reader can almost hear the suppressed quiver of excitement "not without fear" in his voice. And then the rules of the Buono Stato were read. They were very simple but very thorough. The first was that whoever murdered a man should die for it, without any exception. The second that every case heard before the judges should be concluded within fifteen days; the third that no house should be destroyed for any reason, except by order of the authorities. The fourth that every _rione_ or district of the city should have its force of defenders, twenty-four horsemen and a hundred on foot, paid by and under the order of the State. Further, that a ship should be kept for the special protection of the merchants on the coast; that taxes were necessary and should be spent by the officers of the Buono Stato; that the bridges, castles, gates and fortresses should be held by no man except the rector of the people, and should never be allowed to pass into the hands of a baron: that the barons should be set to secure the safety of the roads to Rome and should not protect robbers, under a penalty of a thousand marks of silver:--that the Commune should give help in money to the convents; that each _rione_ should have its granary and provide a reserve there for evil times; that the kin of every man slain in battle in the cause of the Commune should have a recompense according to their degree:--that the ancient States subject to Rome should be restored; and that whoever brought an accusation against a man which could not be proved should suffer the penalty belonging to the offence if it had been proved. This and various other regulations which pleased the people much were read, and passed unanimously by a show of hands and great rejoicing. "And it was also ordained that Cola should remain there as lord, but in conjunction with the Vicar of the Pope. And authority was given to him to punish, slay, pardon, to make laws and alliances, determine boundaries; and full and free _imperia_, absolute power, was given him in everything that concerned the people of Rome." Thus was Cola's brag which so much amused the young lords made true over all their heads before many weeks were past. He had said that he would be a great lord, as powerful as an emperor. And so he was. [Illustration: THE LUNGARA.] CHAPTER III. THE BUONO STATO. The first incident in this new reign, so suddenly inaugurated, was a startling one. Stefano Colonna was the father of all the band--he of whom Petrarch speaks with such enthusiasm: "_Dio immortale!_ what majesty in his aspect, what a voice, what a look, what nobility in his air, what vigour of soul and body at that age of his! I seemed to stand before Julius Cæsar or Africanus, if not that he was older than either. Wonderful to say, this man never grows old, while Rome is older and older every day." He was absent from Rome, as has been said, on the occasion of the wonderful overthrow of all previous rule, and establishment of the Buono Stato; but as soon as he heard what had happened, he hastened back, with but few followers, never doubting that he would soon make an end of that mountebank revolution. Early in the following morning he received from Cola a copy of the edict made on the Capitol and an order to leave Rome at once. Stefano took the paper and tore it in a thousand pieces. "If this fool makes me angry," he said, "I will fling him from the windows of the Capitol." When this was reported to Cola, he caused the bell of the Capitol to be sounded _a stuormo_, and the people rushed from all quarters to the call. Everything went rapidly at this moment of fate, and even the brave Colonna seems to have changed his mind in the twinkling of an eye. The aspect of affairs was so threatening that Stefano took the better part of valour and rode off at once with a single attendant, stopping only at San Lorenzo to eat, and pushing on to Palestrina, which was his chief seat and possession. Cola took instant advantage of this occurrence: with the sanction of the excited people, he sent a similar order to that which Stefano had received, to all the other barons, ordering them to leave the city. Strange to say the order of the popular leader was at once obeyed. Perhaps no one ventured to stand after the head of the Roman chivalry had fled. These gallant cavaliers yielded to the _Pazzo_, the madman, with whom the head of the Colonnas had expected to make such short work, without striking a blow, in a panic sudden and complete. Next day all the bridges were given up and officials of the people set over them. "One was served in one way, another in another--these were banished and those had their heads cut off without mercy. The wicked were all judged cruelly." Afterwards another _Parlamento_ was held on the Capitol, and all that had been done approved and confirmed--and the people with one voice declared Cola, and with him the Pope's Vicar, who had a share in all these wonderful proceedings, Tribunes of the People and Liberators. There would seem after this alarmed dispersion of the nobles to have been some attempt on their part to regain the upper hand, which failed as they could not agree among themselves: upon which they received another call from Cola to appear in the Capitol and swear to uphold the Buono Stato. One by one the alarmed nobles came in. The first was Stefanello Colonna, the son of the old man, the first of his children after the two ecclesiastics, and heir of his influence and lands. Then came Ranello degli Orsini, then Janni Colonna, he who had invited Cola to dinner and laughed loud and long with his comrades over the buffoonery of the orator. What Cola said was no longer a merry jest. Then came Giordano of the same name, then Messer Stefano himself, the fine old man, the magnanimous--bewildered by his own unexpected submission yet perhaps touched with some sense of the justice there was in it, swearing upon the Evangels to be faithful to the Commune, and to busy himself with his own share of the work: how to clear the roads, and turn away the robbers, to protect the orphans and the poor. The nobles gazed around them at the gathering crowd; they were daunted by all they saw, and one by one they took the oaths. One of the last was Francesco Savelli, who was the proper lord of Cola di Rienzo, his master--yet took the oath of allegiance to him, his own retainer. It was such a wonder as had never been seen. But everything was wonderful--the determination of the people, the Pope's Vicar by the side of that mad Tribune, the authority in Cola's eyes, and in his eloquent voice. There must, however, have been a strong sense of the theatrical in the man. As he had at first appealed to the people by visible allegories, by pictures and similitudes, he kept up their interest now by continual spectacles. He studied his dress, as we have already seen, on all occasions, always aiming at something which would strike the eye. His robe of office was "of a fiery colour as if it had been scarlet." "His face and his aspect were terrible." He showed mercy to no criminal, but exercised freely his privilege of life and death without respect of persons. A monk of San Anastasio, who was a person of infamous conduct, was beheaded like any other offender; and a still greater, Martino di Porto, head of one of the great houses, met the same fate. Sometimes, his biographers allow, Cola was cruel. He would seem to have been a man of nervous courage "not without fear"; very keenly alive to the risk he was running and not incapable, as was afterwards proved, of a sudden panic, as quickly roused as his flash of excessive valour. In one mood he was pushed by the passion of the absolute to rash proceedings, sudden vengeance, which suited well enough with the instincts of his followers; in another his courage was apt to sink and his composure to fail at the first frown of fortune. The beginning of his career is like that of a man inspired--what he determined on was carried out as if by magic. He seemed to have only to ordain and it was accomplished. Within a very short time the courts of law, the markets, the public life in Rome were all transformed. The barons, unwilling as they were, must have done their appointed work, for the roads all at once became safe, and the disused processes of lawful life were resumed. "The woods rejoiced, for there were no longer robbers in them. The oxen began to plough. The pilgrims began again to make their circuits to the Sanctuaries, the merchants to come and go, to pursue their business. Fear and terror fell on the tyrants, and all good people, as freed from bondage, were full of joy." The bravos, the highwaymen, all the ill-doers who had kept the city and its environs in terror fled in their turn, finding no protectors, nor any shelter that could save them from the prompt and ready sword of justice. Refinements even of theoretical benevolence were in Cola's courts of law. There were Peacemakers to hear the pleas of men injured by their neighbours and bring them, if possible, into accord. Here is one very curious scene: the law of compensations, by which an injury done should be repaid in kind, being in full force. "It happened that one man had blinded the eye of another; the prosecutors came and their case was tried on the steps of the Capitol. The culprit was kneeling there, weeping, and praying God to forgive him when the injured person came forward. The malefactor then raised his face that his eye might be blinded, if so it was ordained. But the other was moved with pity, and would not touch his eye, but forgave him the injury." No doubt the ancient doctrine of an eye for an eye, has in all times been thus tempered with mercy. It would appear that Cola now lived in the Capitol as his palace; and he gradually began to surround himself with all the insignia of rank. This was part of his plan from the beginning, for, as has been said, he lost no opportunity of an effective appearance, either from a natural inclination that way, or from a wise appreciation of the tastes of the crowd, which he had such perfect acquaintance with. But there was nothing histrionic in the immediate results of his new reign. That he should have styled himself in all his public documents, letters and laws, "Nicholas, severe and clement, Tribune of peace, freedom, and justice, illustrious Liberator of the holy Roman Republic," may have too much resembled the braggadocio which is so displeasing to our colder temperaments; but Cola was no Englishman, neither was he of the nineteenth century: and there was something large and harmonious, a swing of words such as the Italian loves, a combination of the Brutus and the Christian, in the conjunction of these qualities which recommends itself to the imaginative ear. But however his scarlet robes and his inflated self-description may be objected to, nothing could mar the greatness of the moral revolution he effected in a city restored to peace and all the innocent habits of life, and a country tranquillised and made safe, where men came and went unmolested. Six years before, as we have noted, Petrarch, the hero of the moment, was stopped by robbers just outside the walls of Rome, and had to fly back to the city to get an armed escort before he could pursue his way. "The shepherd armed," he says, "watches his sheep, afraid of robbers more than of wolves; the ploughman wears a shirt of mail and goads his oxen with a lance. There is no safety, no peace, no humanity among the inhabitants, but only war, hate, and the work of devils." Such was the condition of affairs when Cola came to power. In a month or two after that sudden overturn his messengers, unarmed, clothed, some say, in white with the scarcella at their girdle embroidered with the arms of Rome, and bearing for all defence a white wand, travelled freely by all the roads from Rome, unmolested, received everywhere with joy. "I have carried this wand," says one of them, "over all the country and through the forests. Thousands have knelt before it and kissed it with tears of joy for the safety of the roads and the banishment of the robbers." The effect is still as picturesque as eye of artist could desire; the white figures with their wands of peace traversing everywhere those long levels of the Campagna, where every knot of brushwood, all the coverts of the _macchia_ and every fortification by the way, had swarmed with robber bands--unharmed, unafraid, like angels of safety in the perturbed country. But it was none the less real, an immense and extraordinary revolution. The Buono Stato was proclaimed on the day of Pentecost, Whit Sunday, May 20th, 1347: and in the month of June following, Cola was able to inform the world--that is to say, all Italy and the Pope and the Emperor--that the roads were safe and everything going well. Clement VI. received this report at Avignon and replied to it, giving his sanction to what had been done, "seeing that the new constitution had been established without violence or bloodshed," and confirming the authority of Cola and of his bishop and co-tribune, in letters dated the 27th of June. Nor was the change within the city less great. The dues levied by their previous holders on every bridge, on all merchandise and every passer-by, were either turned into a modest octroi, or abolished altogether; every man's goods were safe in his house; the women were free to go about their various occupations, the wife safe in the solitude of her home, in her husband's absence at his work, the girls at their sewing--in itself a revolution past counting. Rome began to breathe again and realise that her evil times were over, and that the Buono Stato meant comfort as well as justice. The new Tribune made glorious sights, too, for all bystanders in these June days. He rode to Church, for example, in state on the feast of Santo Janni di Jugnio, St. John the Baptist, the great Midsummer _festa_, a splendid sight to behold. "The first to come was a militia of armed men on horseback, well dressed and adorned, to make way before the Præfect. Then followed the officials, judges, notaries, peacemakers, syndics, and others; followed by the four marshals with their mounted escort. Then came Janni d'Allo carrying the cup of silver gilt in which was the offering, after the fashion of the Senators: who was followed by more soldiers on horseback and the trumpeters, sounding their silver trumpets, the silver mouths making an honest and magnificent sound. Then came the public criers. All these passed in silence. After came one man alone, bearing a naked sword in sign of justice. Baccio, the son of Jubileo, was he. Then followed a man scattering money on each side all along the way, according to the custom of the Emperors: Liello Magliari was his name--he was accompanied by two persons carrying a sack of money. After this came the Tribune, alone. He rode on a great charger, dressed in silk, that is velvet, half green and half yellow, furred with minever. In his right hand he carried a wand of steel, polished and shining, surmounted by an apple of silver gilt, and above the apple a cross of gold in which was a fragment of the Holy Cross. On one side of this were letters in enamel, 'Deus,' and on the other 'Spiritus Sanctus.' Immediately after him came Cecco di Alasso, carrying a banner after the mode of kings. The standard was white with a sun of gold set round with silver stars on a field of blue: and it was surmounted by a white dove, bearing in its beak a crown of olive. On the right and left came fifty vassals of Vetorchiano on foot with clubs in their hands, like bears clothed and armed. Then followed a crowd of people unarmed, the rich and the powerful, counsellors, and many honest people. With such triumph and glory came he to the bridge of San Pietro, where every one saluted, the gates were thrown wide, and the road left spacious and free. When he had reached the steps of San Pietro all the clergy came forth to meet him in their vestments and ornaments. With white robes, with crosses and with great order, they came chanting _Veni Creator Spiritus_, and so received him with much joy." This is how Cola rode from the Capitol to St. Peter's, traversing almost the whole of the existing city: his offering borne before him after the manner of the Senators: money scattered among the people after the manner of the Emperors: his banner carried as before kings: united every great rank in one. _Panem et circenses_ were all the old Roman populace had cared for. He gave them peace and safety and beautiful processions and allegories to their hearts' content. There were not signs wanting for those who divined them afterwards, that with all this triumph and glory the Tribune began a little to lose his self-restraint. He began to make feasts and great entertainments at the Capitol. The palaces of the forfeited nobles were emptied of their beautiful tapestries, and hangings, and furniture, to make the long disused rooms there splendid; and the nobles were fined a hundred florins each for repairs to this half-royal, half-ruinous abode, making it glorious once more. But in the meantime everything went well. One of the Colonnas, Pietro of Agapito[6]--who ought to have been Senator for the year--was taken and sent to prison, whether for that offence merely or some other we are not told; while the rest of the house, with old Stefano at their head, kept a stormy quiet at Palestrina, saying nothing as yet. Answers to Cola's letters came from all the states around, in congratulation and friendship, the Pope himself, as we have seen, at the head of all. "All Italy was roused," says Petrarch. "The terror of the Roman name extended even to countries far away. I was then in France and I know what was expressed in the words and on the faces of the most important personages there. Now that the needle has ceased to prick, they may deny it; but then all were full of alarm, so great still was the name of Rome. No one could tell how soon a movement so remarkable, taking place in the first city of the world, might penetrate into other places." The Soldan of Babylon himself, that great potentate, hearing that a man of great justice had arisen in Rome, called aloud upon Mahomet and Saint Elimason (whoever that might be) to help Jerusalem, meaning Saracinia, our chronicler tells us. Thus the sensation produced by Cola's revolution ran through the world: and if after a while his mind lost something of its balance, it is scarcely to be wondered at when we read the long and flattering letters, some of which have been preserved, which Petrarch talks of writing to him "every day": and in which he is proclaimed greater than Romulus, whose city was small and surrounded with stakes only, while that of Cola was great and defended by invincible walls: and than Brutus who withstood one tyrant only, while Cola overthrew many: and than Camillus, who repaired ruins still smoking and recent, while Cola restored those which were ancient and inveterate almost beyond hope. For one wonderful moment both friends and foes seem to have believed that Rome had at one step recovered the empire of the world. Cola had thus triumphed everywhere by peaceful methods, but he had yet to prove what he could do in arms; and the opportunity soon occurred. The only one of the nobles who had not yielded at least a pretence of submission was Giovanni di Vico, of the family of the Gaetani, who had held the office of Præfect of Rome, and was Lord of Viterbo. Against him the Tribune sent an expedition under one of the Orsini, which defeated and crushed the rebel, who, on hearing that Cola himself was coming to join his forces, gave himself up and was brought into Rome to make his submission: so that in this way also the triumph of the popular leader was complete. All the surrounding castles fell into his hands, Civita Vecchia on one hand and Viterbo on the other; and he employed a captain of one family against the rebels of another with such skill and force that all were kept within control. Up to the end of July this state of affairs continued unbroken; success on every side, and apparently a new hope for Italy, possibly deliverance for the world. The Tribune seemed safe as any monarch on his seat, and still bore himself with something of the simplicity and steadfastness of his beginning. But this began to modify by degrees. Especially after his easy victory over Giovanni di Vico, he seems to have treated the nobles whom he had crushed under his heel with contemptuous incivility, which is the less wonderful when we see how Petrarch, courtly as he was, speaks of the same class, acknowledging even his beloved Colonnas to be unworthy of the Roman name. The Tribune sat in his chair of state, while the barons were required to stand in his presence, with their arms folded on their breasts and their heads uncovered. His wife, who was beautiful and young, was escorted by a guard of honour wherever she went and attended by the noblest ladies of Rome. The old palace of the Campidoglio was gay with feasts; its dilapidated walls were adorned with the rich hangings taken from the confiscated houses of the _potenti_. And then the Tribune's poor relations began to be separated from the crowd, to ride about on fine horses and dwell in fine houses. And the sights and spectacles provided for the people, as well as the steps taken by Cola himself to enhance his dignity and to occupy the attention of everybody around, began to assume a fantastic character. An uneasy vainglory, a desire to be always executing some feat or developing some new pretension, a restless strain after the histrionic and dramatic began to show themselves in him--as if he felt that his tenure somehow demanded a continued supply of such amusements for the people, who rushed to gaze and admire whatever he did, and filled the air with _vivas_: yet began secretly in their hearts, as Lo Popolo always does, to comment upon the extravagance of the Tribune, and the elevation over their heads of Janni the barber, for instance, who now rode about so grandly with a train of attendants, as if, instead of being _popolo_ like themselves, he were one of the _potenti_ whom his nephew Cola had cast down from their seats. One of the first great acts which denotes this trembling of sound reason in the Tribune's soul was the fantastic ceremony by which he made himself a knight, to the wonder of all Rome. It was not, all the historians tell us, a strange or unheard-of thing that the City should create _cavalieri_ of its own. Florence had done it, and Rome also had done it--in the case of Stefano Colonna and some others very shortly before--but with at least the pretence of an honour conferred by the people on citizens selected by their fellow-citizens. Nothing of the kind was possible with Cola di Rienzi, and no illusion was attempted on the subject. He was supreme in all things, and it pleased him to take this dignity to himself. No doubt there was an ambitious purpose hidden under the external ceremony, which from the outside looked so much like a dramatic interlude to amuse the people, and a satisfaction of vanity on his own part. Both these things no doubt had their share, but they were not all. He made extraordinary preparations for the success and _éclat_, of what was in reality a _coup d'état_ of the most extraordinary kind. First of all he fortified himself by the verdict of all the learned lawyers in Rome, to whom he submitted the question whether the Roman people had the right to resume into their own hands, and exercise, the authority which had been used by tyrants in the name of the city--a question to which there could be but one answer, by acclamation. These rights had always been claimed as absolute and supreme by whatsoever leaders the people of Rome had permitted to speak for them, or whom, more truly, they had followed like sheep. Twenty years before, as we have seen, they had been by way of conferring the crown of the Empire upon Louis of Bavaria. It was a pretension usually crushed in its birth as even Il Bavaro did by receiving the same crown a second time from his anti-Pope; but it was one which had been obstinately held, especially in the disorderly ranks of Lo Popolo, and by visionaries of all kinds. The Popes had taken that control out of the hands of Rome and claimed it for the Church with such success as we have attempted to trace; but that in one form or another the reigning city of the world had always a right to this supremacy was held by all. In both cases it had been in a great degree a visionary and unreal claim, never practically accepted by the world, and the cause of endless futile struggles to overcome might with (hypothetical) right. Cola however, as we have seen, had as high a conception of those claims of Rome as Gregory had, or Innocent. He believed that in its own right the old Imperial race--which was as little Imperial by this time, as little assured in descent and as devoid of all royal qualities as any tribe of barbarians--retained still the sway over the world which had been enforced by the Imperial legions under the greatest generals in the world. The enthusiasts for this theory have been able to shut their eyes to all the laws of nature and government, and with the strangest superstition have clung to the ghost of what was real only by stress of superior power and force, when all force had departed out of the hands which were but as painted shadows of the past. It is strange to conceive by what possible reasoning a conflicting host of mediæval barons of the most mixed blood, this from the Rhine, that from the south of Italy, as Petrarch describes on more than one occasion, of no true patrician stock: and the remains of a constantly subject and enslaved people, never of any account except in moments of revolution--could be made to occupy the place in the world which Imperial Rome, the only conqueror, the sole autocrat of the world, had held. The Popes had another and more feasible claim. They were the heads of a spiritual Empire, standing by right of their office between God and the world, with a right (as they believed) to arbitrate and to ordain, as representatives of heaven; a perfectly legitimate right, if allowed by those subject to it, or proved by sufficient evidence. Cola, with a curious twist of intelligence and meaning, attempted to combine both claims. He was the messenger of the Holy Ghost as well as the Tribune of the City. Only by the immediate action of God, as he held, could such a sudden and complete revolution as that which had put the power into his hands have been accomplished: therefore he was appointed by God. But he was also the representative of the people, entrusted by Rome with complete power. The spheres of these two sublime influences were confused. Sometimes he acted as inspired by one, sometimes asserted himself as the impersonation of the other. Knight of the Holy Ghost, he was invested with the white robes of supernatural purity and right--Tribune of Rome, he held the mandate of the people and wielded the power which was its birthright. This was the dazzling, bewildering position and supremacy which he was now to claim before the world. He had invited all the States of Italy to send deputations of their citizens to Rome, and the invitation had been largely accepted. From Florence, Sienna, Perugia, and many other lesser cities, the representatives of the people came to swell his train. The kings of France and England made answer by letter in tones of amity; from Germany Louis of Bavaria hailed the Tribune in friendly terms, requesting his intercession with the Pope. The Venetians, and "Messer Luchino il granne tyranno de Milano" also sent letters; and ambassadors came from Sicily and from Hungary, both claiming the help of Rome. Everything was joy and triumph in the city. It was the 1st of August--a great festival, the day of the _Feriae Augusti_--Feragosto, according to the Roman _patois_--among the populace which no longer knew what that meant; but Cola, who was better instructed, had chosen it because of its significance. He rode to the Lateran in the afternoon in great splendour. It was in the Church's calendar the vigil of San Pietro in Vincoli, the anniversary of the chains of the Apostle, which the Empress Eudoxia had brought with great solemnity to Rome. "All Rome," says the chronicler, "men and women rushed to St. John Lateran, taking places under the portico to see the _festa_, and crowding the streets to behold this triumph. "Then came many cavaliers of all nations, barons and people, and _Foresi_ with breastplates of bells, clothed in samite, and with banners; they made great festivity, and there were games and rejoicings, jugglers and buffoons without end. There sounded the trumpets, here the bagpipes, and the cannon was fired. Then, accompanied with music, came the wife of Cola on foot with her mother, and attended by many ladies. Behind the ladies came young men finely dressed, carrying the bridle of a horse gilt and ornamented. There were silver trumpets without number, and you could see the trumpeters blow. Afterwards came a multitude of horsemen, the first of whom were from Perugia and Corneto. Twice they threw off their silver robes.[7] Then came the Tribune with the Pope's Vicar by his side. Before the Tribune was seen one who carried a naked sword, another carried a banner over his head. In his own hand he bore a steel wand. Many and many nobles were with him. He was clothed in a long white robe, worked with gold thread. Between day and night he came out into the Chapel of Pope Benedict to the _loggia_ and spoke to the people, saying, 'You know that this night I am to be made knight. When you come back you shall hear things which will be pleasing to God in heaven and to men on earth.' He spoke in such a way that in so great a multitude there was nothing but gladness, neither horror nor arms. Two men quarrelled and drew their swords, but were soon persuaded to return them to their scabbards.... When all had gone away the clergy celebrated a solemn service, and the Tribune entered into the Baptistery and bathed himself in the shell[8] of the Emperor Constantine which was of precious porphyry. Marvellous is this to say; and much was it talked of among the people. Then he slept upon a venerable bed, lying in that place called San Giovanni in Fonte within the circuit of the columns. There he passed the night, which was a great wonder. The bed and bedding were new, and as the Tribune got up from it some part of it fell to the ground in the silence of the night. In the morning he clothed himself in scarlet; the sword was girt upon him by Messer Vico degli Scotti, and the gold spurs of a knight. All Rome, and every knight among them, had come back to San Giovanni, also all the barons and strangers, to behold Messer Cola di Rienzi as a knight." The chronicle goes on to tell us after this, how Cola went forth upon the _loggia_ of Pope Benedict's Chapel, while a solemn mass was being performed, and addressed the people. "And with a great voice he cited, first, 'Messer Papa Chimente' to return to his See in Rome, and afterwards cited the College of the Cardinals. Then he cited the Bavarian. Then he cited the electors of the Empire in Germany saying, 'I would see what right they have to elect,' for it was written that after a certain time had elapsed the election fell to the Romans. When this citation was made, immediately there appeared letters and couriers to carry them, who were sent at once on their way. Then he took the sword and drew it from its scabbard, and waved it to the three quarters of the world saying, 'This is mine; and this is mine; and this is mine.' The Vicar of the Pope was present, who stood like a dumb man and an idiot stupefied by this new thing. He had his notary with him, who protested and said that these things were not done by his consent, and that he had neither any knowledge of them, nor sanction from the Pope. And he prayed the notary to draw out his protest publicly. While the notary made this protest crying out with a loud voice, Messer Cola commanded the trumpets and all the other instruments to play, that the voice of the notary might not be heard, the greater noise swallowing up the lesser." These were the news which Cola had promised to let the crowd know when they returned--news pleasing to God and to men. But there were no doubt many searchings of heart in the great crowd that filled the square of the Lateran, straining to hear his voice, as he claimed the dominion of the world, and called upon Pope and Emperor to appear before him. No wonder if the Pope's Vicar was "stupefied" and would take no part in these strange proceedings. It was probably the Notary of the Commune and not Cola himself who published the citations, and the authority for them, set forth at length, which were enough to blanch the cheeks of any Vicar of the Pope. "In the sanctuary, that is the Baptistery, of the holy prince Constantine of glorious memory, we have received the bath of chivalry; under the conduct of the Holy Spirit, whose unworthy servant and soldier we are, and for the glory of the Holy Church our mother, and our lord the Pope, and also for the happiness and advantage of the holy city of Rome, of holy Italy and of all Christendom, we, knight of the Holy Spirit, and as such clothed in white, Nicolas, severe and clement, liberator of the city, defender of Italy, friend of mankind, and august Tribune, we who wish and desire that the gift of the Holy Ghost should be received and should increase throughout Italy, and intend, as God enables us, to imitate the bounty and generosity of ancient princes, we make known: that when we accepted the dignity of Tribune the Roman people, according to the opinions of all the judges, lawyers, and learned authorities, recognised that they possessed still the same authority, power and jurisdiction over all the earth which belonged to them in primitive times, and at the period of their greatest splendour: and they have revoked formally all the privileges accorded to others against that same authority, power, and jurisdiction. Therefore in conformity with those ancient rights and the unlimited power which has been conferred upon us by the people in a general assembly, and also by our lord the Pope, as is proved by his bulls apostolical: and that we may not be ungrateful to the grace and gift of the Holy Spirit, or avaricious of this same grace and gift in respect to the Roman people and the peoples of Italy above mentioned: in order also that the rights and jurisdiction of the Roman people may not be lost: we resolve and announce, in virtue of the power and grace of the Holy Spirit, and in the form most feasible and just, that the holy city of Rome is the head of the world and the foundation of Christian faith: and we declare that all the cities of Italy are free, and we accord and have accorded to these cities an entire freedom, and from to-day constitute them Roman citizens, declaring, announcing, and ordaining that henceforward they should enjoy the privileges of Roman freedom. "In addition, and in virtue of the same puissance and grace of God, of the Holy Spirit, and of the Roman people, we assert, recognise and declare that the choice of the Roman Emperor, the jurisdiction and dominion over all the holy empire, belongs to the Holy City itself, and to holy Italy by several causes and reasons; and we make known by this decree to all prelates, elected emperors, and electors, to the kings, dukes, princes, counts, and margraves, to the people, to the corporations, and to all others who contradict this and exercise any supposed right in respect to the choice of the empire, that they are called to appear to explain their pretensions in the Church of the Lateran, before us and the other commissioners of our lord the Pope between this and Pentecost of next year, and that after that time we shall proceed according to our rights and the inspiration of the Holy Ghost." The instrument is very long drawn out and entangled in its sentences, but the claim set forth in it is very clear, and arrogant as that of any Forged Decretals or Papal Bull. Its tone makes every pretension of the Popes sound humble, and every assertion of their power reasonable. But there is no reason to doubt that it was perfectly sincere. Rome was a word which went to the heads of every one connected with that wonderful city. Nothing was too great for her; no exaltation too high. To transfer the election of the Emperor from the great German princes to the populace of Rome, fickle and ignorant, led by whoever came uppermost, was a fantastic imagination, which it is almost impossible to believe any sane man could entertain. Yet Cola thought it just and true, the only thing to be done in order to turn earth into a sort of heaven; and Petrarch, a more prudent man, thought the same. To the poet Cola's enterprise was the hope of Italy and of the world: and it was at this moment, when the Tribune was in the full flush of his triumph, that Petrarch addressed to him, besides a promise of a poem supposed to be fulfilled in the _Spirito Gentil_, a long letter, _Esortatoria_, in which he exhorts him to pursue the "happy success" of his "most glorious undertaking," by sobriety and modesty it is true, but also by gladness and triumph, in order that the city "chosen by all the world as the seat of empire," should not relapse into slavery. "Rome, queen of cities, lady of the world, head of the empire, seat of the great Pontiff," her claim to dominion was not doubted by those strange enthusiasts. She was an abstraction, an ideal wisdom and power personified--not even in a race, not in a great man or men, but in the city, and that ever wavering tumultuous voice of the populace, blown hither and thither by every wind. And Cola believed himself to hold in his hands the fortunes and interests of Christendom entire, the dominion of the whole world. No enthusiasm, no delusion, could be more extraordinary. The ceremonies of August did not finish with this. Another prodigious ceremonial was celebrated on the day of the Assumption of the Virgin, the fifteenth of that month, also a great Roman holiday. On this day there was once more a great function in the Church of the Lateran. The Pope's Vicar refused to preside, awaiting in the meantime orders from headquarters. But this did not arrest these curious proceedings. This time it was the coronation of the Tribune that was in question. He had made himself a knight, and even had invented an order for himself, the order of those "Clothed in White," the Knights of the Holy Spirit. Now he was to be crowned according to his fashion. The chronicler of the life of Cola, however, takes no notice of this ceremony. It was begun by the Prior of St. John Lateran, who advanced to the Tribune and gave him a crown of oak-leaves, with the words, "Take this oaken crown because thou hast delivered the citizens from death." After him came the Prior of St. Peter's with a crown of ivy, saying, "Take this ivy because thou hast loved religion." The Dean of St. Paul's came next with a crown of myrtle, "Because thou hast done thy duty and preserved justice, and hast hated bribes." The Prior of St. Lorenzo brought a crown of laurel, he of Sta. Maria Maggiore one of olive, with the not very suitable address, "Take this, man of humble mind, because in thee humility has overcome pride." Finally the Prior of the hospital of Santo Spirito presented Cola with a silver crown and a sceptre, saying, "Illustrious Tribune, receive this crown and sceptre, the gifts of the Holy Ghost, along with the spiritual crown." This, one would suppose, must have been an interpolation; for Goffredo degli Scotti, who had belted on his sword as a knight, was present with another silver crown, given by the people of Rome, which was surmounted by a cross, and which was presented to Cola with the words: "Illustrious Tribune, receive this: exercise justice, and give us freedom and peace." The reader will be tempted to imagine that Cola must have been weighed down by this pyramid of wreaths, like a French schoolboy in his moment of triumph. But in the midst of all these glorious surroundings his dramatic imagination had conceived a telling way of getting rid of them. By his side stood a man very poorly dressed and carrying a sword, with which he took off in succession every crown as it was placed upon the Tribune's head, "in sign of humility and because the Roman Emperors had to endure every incivility addressed to them in the day of their triumph." We find, however, the beggar man with all the crowns spitted upon his sword, a ridiculous rather than an expressive figure. The last of all, the silver crown, remained on the Tribune's brows, the Archbishop of Naples having the courtly inspiration of interposing when the ragged attendant would have taken it. All the different wreaths had classical or Scriptural meanings. They were made from the plants that grew wild about the Arch of Constantine; everything was symbolical, mystic--the seven gifts of the Spirit; and all pervaded by that fantastic mixture of the old and the new, of which the world was then full. After this final assertion of his greatness Cola made a speech to the people confirming the assertions and high-flown pretensions of his former proclamation, and forbidding any emperor, king, or prince whatsoever, to touch the sacred soil of Italy without the consent of the Pope and the Roman people. He seems to have concluded by forbidding the use of the names of Guelf and Ghibelline--an admirable rule could it have been carried out. While all Rome was thus swarming in the streets, filling up every available inch of space under the porticoes and in the square to see this great sight, a certain holy monk, much esteemed by the people, was found weeping and praying in one of the chapels of Sta. Maria Maggiore, while the Tribune in all his state was receiving crowns and homage. One of Cola's domestic priests, who officiated in the private chapel at the Capitol, asked Fra Guglielmo why in the midst of so much rejoicing he alone was sorrowful. "Thy master," said the monk, "has fallen from heaven to-day! Oh that such pride should have entered into his soul! With the help of the Holy Spirit he has driven the tyrants out of Rome without striking a blow, he has been raised to the dignity of a Tribune, and all the towns and all the lords of Italy have done him honour. Why is he so proud and so ungrateful towards the Most High, and why does he dare in an insolent address to compare himself to his Creator? Say to thy master that nothing will expiate such a crime but tears of penitence." Thus it will be seen that there were checks, very soon apparent, to the full flood of enthusiasm and faith with which the Tribune had been received. Meanwhile there remained, outside of all these triumphs and rejoicings and the immense self-assertion of the man who in the name of Rome claimed a sort of universal dominion--a strong band of nobles still in possession of their castles and strongholds round the city, grimly watching the progress of affairs, and no doubt waiting the moment when the upstart who thus had pranked himself in all the finery and the follies of royalty, should take that step too far which is always to be expected and which should decide his fate. No doubt to old Stefano Colonna, with all his knowledge of men, this end would seem coming on very surely when he heard of, or perhaps witnessed, the melodrama of the knighthood, the farce of the coronation. Cola had been forced to take advantage of the services of these barons, even though he hated them. He had put an Orsini at the head of his troops against the Præfect Giovanni di Vico. He appointed Janni Colonna, his former patron, who had laughed at him so heartily, to lead the expedition against the Gaetani. Nowhere, it would seem, among the men who were _popolari_, of the people, was the ghost of a general to be found. The nobles had been at first banished from Rome; but their good behaviour in that great matter of the safety of the roads, or else the difficulty of acting against them individually, and the advice of Petrarch and others who advised great caution, had no doubt tacitly broken this sentence, and permitted their return. Many of them were certainly in Rome, going and coming, though none held any office; and we are told that old Stefano was present at the great dinner after Cola made himself a knight. Perhaps comments were made upon those ceremonies which reached the ears of the Tribune; perhaps there were whispers of growing impatience in the other party, or hints of plots among them. Or perhaps Cola, having exhausted all other methods of giving to himself and Rome a new sensation, bethought himself of these enemies of the Republic, always no doubt desirous of acting against her, whether they did so openly or not. His proceedings had now become so histrionic that it is permissible to surmise a motive which otherwise would have been unworthy a man of his genius and natural power; and in face of the curious tragi-comedy which followed it is difficult not to suspect something of the kind. One day in September the Tribune invited a number of the nobles to a great dinner. The list given in the _Vita_ includes the noblest names in Rome. Stefano Colonna with three of his sons--Agapito and "the prosperous youth" Janni (grandson) and Stefanello, the eldest lay member of the family, along with a number of the Orsini, Luca de Savelli, the Conte di Vertolle, and several others. The feast would seem to have begun with apparent cordiality and that strained politeness and watchfulness on the part of the guests, which has distinguished many fatal banquets in which every man mistrusted his neighbour. Cola had done nothing as yet to warrant any downright suspicion of treachery, but most likely the barons had an evil conscience, and it might have been observed that the Tribune's courtesy also was strained. "Towards evening the _popolari_ who were among the guests began to talk of the defects of the nobles, and the goodness of the Tribune. Then Messer Stefano the elder began a question, which was best in a Ruler of the people, to be prodigal or economical? A great discussion arose upon this, and at the last Messer Stefano took up a corner of Cola's robe, and said, 'To thee, Tribune, it would be more suitable to wear an honest costume of cloth, than this pompous habit,' and saying this he showed the corner of the robe. When Cola heard this he was troubled. He called for the guard and had them all arrested. Messer Stefano the veteran was placed in an adjoining hall, where he remained all night without any bed, pacing about the room, and knocking at the door prayed the guards to free him; but the guards would not listen to him. Then daylight appeared. The Tribune deliberated whether he should not cut off their heads, in order to liberate completely the people of Rome. He gave orders that the _Parlatorio_ should be hung with red and white cloth, which was the signal of execution. Then the great bell was rung and the people gathered to the Capitol. He sent to each of the prisoners a confessor, one of the Minor friars, that they might rise up to repentance and receive the body of Christ. When the Barons became aware of all these preparations and heard the great bell ringing, they were so frozen with fear that they could not speak. Most of them humbled themselves and made their penitence, and received the communion. Messer Rainallo degli Orsini and some others, because they had in the morning eaten fresh figs, could not receive, and Messer Stefano Colonna would not confess, nor communicate, saying that he was not ready, and had not set his affairs in order. "In the meanwhile, several of the citizens, considering the judgment that was about to be made, used many arguments to prevent it in soothing and peaceful words. At last the Tribune rose from the council and broke up the debate. It was now the hour of Tierce. The Barons as condemned persons came down sadly into the _Parlatorio_. The trumpets sounded as if for their execution, and they were ranged in face of the people. Then the Tribune changed his purpose, ascended the platform, and made a beautiful sermon. He repeated the Pater Noster, that part which says 'Forgive us our debts.' Then he pardoned the Barons and said that he wished them to be in the service of the people, and made peace between them and the people. One by one they bowed their heads to the people. After this their offices were restored to them, and to each was given a beautiful robe trimmed with vair: and a new Gonfalon was made with wheatears in gold. Then he made them dine with him and afterwards rode through the city, leading them with him; and then let them go freely on their way. This that was done much displeased all discreet persons who said, 'He has lighted a fire and flame which he will not be able to put out.'" "And I," adds the chronicler, "said this proverb," which was by no means a decorous one: its meaning was that it was useless to make a smell of gunpowder and shoot no one. The Tribune's dramatic instincts had gone too far. He had indeed produced a thrilling sensation, a moment of extreme and terrible tragic apprehension; but he forgot that he was playing with men, not puppets, and that the mercy thus accorded after they had been brought through the bitterness of death, was not likely to be received as a generous boon by these shamed and outraged patricians, who were as much insulted by his mercy as they were injured by his fictitious condemnation. They must have followed him in that ride through Rome with hearts burning within them, the furred mantles which were his gifts like badges of shame upon their shoulders: and each made his way, as soon as they were free, outside the gates to their own castles, with fury in their hearts. These men were not of the kind upon whom so tragic a jest could be played. Old Stefano and his sons, having suffered the further indignity of being created by that rascal multitude patricians and consuls, went off to their impregnable Palestrina, and the Orsini to Marino, an equally strong place. Henceforward there was no peace possible between the Tribune and the nobles of Rome. "He drew back from the accomplishment of his treachery," says his modern biographer Papencordt. Did he ever intend to do more than was done? It seems to us very doubtful. He was a man of sensations, and loved a thrilling scene, which he certainly secured. He humiliated his foes to the very dust, and made a situation at which all Rome held its breath: the tribunal draped as for a sentence of death, the confessor at every man's elbow, the populace solemnly assembled to see the tyrants die, while all the while the robes with their border of royal minever were laid ready, and the banners worked with ears of wheat. There is a touch almost of the mountebank in those last details. Petrarch, it is curious to note, disapproved, not of the trap laid for the nobles, or the circumstances of the drama, but of the failure of Cola to take advantage of such an opportunity, "an occasion such as fortune never gave to an Emperor," when he might have cut off at a single blow the enemies of freedom. Perhaps the poet was right: but yet Cola in his folly would have been a worse man if he had been a wiser one. As it was his dramatic instinct was his ruin. The barons went off _fra denti minacciavano_, swearing through their teeth, and it was not long before the Orsini, who had been, up to that tragic banquet, his friends and supporters, had entrenched themselves in Marino, and were in full rebellion, resuming all the ancient customs of their race, and ravaging the Campagna to the very gates of Rome. It was the time of the vintage, which for once it had seemed likely would be made in peace that first year of the republic, if never before. But already the spell of the short-lived peace was broken, and once more the raiders were abroad, carrying terror and loss to all the surrounding country. "So great was the folly of the Tribune," his primitive biographer resumes, losing patience, that instead of following the rebels at once to their lair, he gave them time to fortify Marino and set everything in order for defence, so that it proved a hard task when at last he bestirred himself and went against the stronghold with an army of unusual strength, chiefly raised among the irritated Romans themselves, with which he spoiled all the surrounding country, took a smaller fortress belonging to the Orsini, and so alarmed them that they offered to surrender on condition of having their safety secured. Cola would make no conditions, but he did not succeed in taking Marino, being urgently called back to Rome to meet the Legate of the Pope, who had been sent to deal with him with the severest threats and reprimands. The Tribune upon this returned to the city, raising the siege of Marino; and instantly on his arrival gave orders for the destruction of the palace of the Orsini, near the Castle of St. Angelo. He then went on to St. Peter's, where with his usual love of costume, and in the strange vanity which more and more took possession of him, he took from the treasury of the Chief of the Apostles the dalmatic usually worn by the Emperors during the ceremonies of their coronation, a garment of great price, "all embroidered," says the chronicler, "with small pearls." This he put on over his armour, and so equipped, and with the silver crown on his head which was his distinction as Tribune, and the glittering steel sceptre in his hand, went to the Papal palace, where the Legate awaited him. "Terrible and fantastic was his appearance," says his biographer; and he was in no mood to receive the Legate as so high a functionary expected. "You have come to see us--what is your pleasure?" he said. The Legate replied: "I have much to say to you from the Pope." When the Tribune heard these words, he spoke out loudly in a high voice, "What have you to say?" but when the Legate heard this rampant reply, he stood astonished and was silent; then the Tribune turned his back upon him. _Rampagnosa_ indeed was his air and manner, touched with that madness which the gods send to those whom they would destroy; and _fantastico_ the appearance of the leader, unaccustomed to arms, with the Emperor's splendid mantle over the dust of the road, and the pacific simplicity of the little civic crown over his steel cap. Probably the stately Cardinal-Legate, accustomed to princes and statesmen, thought the Tribune mad; he must have been partially so at least, in the excitement of his first campaign, and the rising tide of his self-confidence, and the hurry and commotion of fate. In the meantime, however, Marino was not taken, and another fire of rebellion had broken out among the Colonnas, who were now known to be making great preparations for a descent upon Rome. The Legate had retired to Monte Fiascone, whence he opened a correspondence with both divisions of these rebel nobles; and a formidable party was thus organised, from one point to another, against Rome: while the city itself began to send forth secret messengers on all sides, the populace changing its mind as usual, while the wealthy citizens were alarmed by their isolation, or offended by the arrogance of their chief. Cola, too, by this time had begun, it would seem, to feel in his sensitive person the reaction of so much excitement and exaltation, and was for a short time ill and miserable, feeling the horror of the gathering tempest which began to rise round him on every side. But he was reinvigorated by various successes in Rome itself and by the still greater encouragement given by the arrival of the first rebel, the Lord of Viterbo, Giovanni di Vico, who came in the guise of friendship and with offers of aid, but at the same time with airs of importance and pretension which Cola did not approve. He was promptly secured by the usual but too easy method of an invitation to a banquet, a snare into which the Roman nobles seem to have fallen with much readiness, and was imprisoned. Then Cola, fully restored to himself, prepared to meet his foes. It was winter weather, a dark and cold November, when the rumour rose that the Colonna were approaching Rome. Cola called together his army, which had been increased by some bands of allies from neighbouring cities, and was headed by several Orsini of another branch of the house. He had already encouraged the people by public addresses, in which he related the appearance to him first of St. Martin, who told him to have no fear, and secondly of St. Boniface, who declared himself the enemy of the Colonna, who wronged the Church of God. Such visions show something of the disturbed condition of the Tribune's mind vainly trying to strengthen himself in a confidence which he did not feel. On the twentieth of November, in the gray of the morning, the great bell rang, and the trumpets sounded for the approach of the enemy: and with his forces divided into three bands, one under his own command, the others led by Cola and Giordano Orsini, he set forth to meet the rebels who by the gate of St. Lorenzo were drawing near to Rome. The enemy had no great mind for the battle. They had marched all night through the bitter rain and cold. Old Stefano had been attacked by fever and was trembling like a leaf. Agapito, his nephew, had had a bad dream in which he saw his wife a widow, weeping and tearing her hair. They arrived before the gate in indifferent heart and with divided counsels, though there had been information sent them of a conspiracy within, and that the gate would be opened to them without any struggle. Stefano Colonna the younger, who was general of the host, then rode up alone and demanded entrance. "I am a citizen of Rome. I wish to return to my house. I come in the name of the Buono Stato," he said. The Captain of the Gate replied with great simplicity. It is evident that Stefano had called some one by name, expecting admittance. "The guards to whom you call are not here. The guard has been changed. I have newly come with my men. You cannot by any means come in. The gate is locked. Do you not know in what anger the people are against you for having disturbed the Buono Stato? Do not you hear the great bell? I pray you for God's sake go away. I wish you no harm. To show you that you cannot enter here, I throw out the key." The key, which was useless on the outer side of the gate, fell into a pool made by the rain: but the noise of its fall startled the already troubled nerves of the leaders, and they held hasty counsel what to do. "They deliberated if they could retire with honour," says the chronicler. It is most curious to hear this parleying, and the murmur of the army, uneasy outside, not knowing what further step to take, in the miserable November dawn, after their night march. They had expected to be admitted by treachery, and evidently had not taken this _contretemps_ into their calculations. "They resolved to retire with honour," says Papencordt: and for this purpose troop by troop advanced to the gate, and then turned to retreat: perhaps in obedience to some punctilio of ancient warfare. The third battalion contained the pride of the army (_li pruodi, e le bene a cavallo, e tutta la fortezza_), young Janni Colonna, at its head. One portion of Cola's army had by this time reached the same spot inside, and were eager for a sortie, but could not open the gate in the usual manner, the key being lost; they therefore broke open one portion of it with great clamour and noise. The right side opened, the left remained closed. "Janni Colonna approached the gate, hearing the noise within, and considering that there had been no order to open it, he thought that his friends must have made that noise, and that they had broken the gate by force. Thus considering, Janni Colonna quickly crossed the threshold with his lance in rest, spurring his courser, riding boldly without precaution. He entered the gate of the city. _Deh_! how terrified were the people! Before him all the cavalry in Rome turned to fly. Likewise the Popolo retreated flying, for the space of half a turn. But not for this did his friends follow Janni, so that he remained alone there, as if he had been called to judgment. Then the Romans took courage, perceiving that he was alone: the greater was his misfortune. His horse caught its foot in an open cellar (_grotta_) which was by the left side of the gate, and threw him, trampling upon him. Janni perceiving his misfortune, called out to the people for quarter, adjuring them for God's sake not to strip him of his armour. How can it be said? He was stripped and struck by three blows and died. Fonneruglio de Trejo was the first to strike. He (Janni) was a young man of a good disposition. His fame was spread through every land. He lay there naked, wounded and dead, in a heap against the wall of the city within the gate, his hair all plastered with mud, scarcely to be recognised. Then was seen a great marvel. The pestilential and disturbed weather began to clear, the sun shone out, the sky from being dark and cloudy became serene and gay." This, however, was but the first chapter of this dreadful tragedy. And still greater misery was to come. "Stefano della Colonna, among the multitude outside in front of the gate, demanded anxiously where was his son Janni, and was answered: 'We know not what he has done or where he has gone.' Then Stefano began to suspect that he had gone in at the gate. He therefore spurred his horse and went on alone, and saw his son lying on the ground surrounded by many people, between the cellar and the pool of water. Seeing that, Stefano fearing for himself, turned back; he went out from the gate and his good sense abandoned him. He was confounded; the loss of his son overcame him. He said not a word, but turned back and again entered the gate, if by any means he might save his son. When he drew near he saw that his son was dead. The question now was to save his own life, and he turned back again sadly. As he went out of the gate, and was passing under the Tower, a great piece of stone struck him on the shoulder and his horse on the croup. Then followed lances, thrown from every side. The wounded horse threw out its heels, and the rider unable to keep his seat fell to the ground, when the Popolo rushed upon him in front of the gate, in that place where the image stands, in the middle of the road. There he lay naked in sight of the people and of every one who passed by. He had lost one foot and was wounded in many places, one terrible blow having struck him between the nose and the eyes. Janni was wounded only in the breast and in one of his feet. Then the people flung themselves forth from the gate furiously without order or leader, seeking merely whom to kill. They met the young Cavaliers, foremost of whom was Pietro of Agapito di Colonna who had been Præfect of Marseilles, and a priest. He had never used arms till that day. He fell from his horse and could not recover himself, the ground being so slippery, but fled into a vineyard close by. Bald he was, and old, praying for God's sake to be forgiven. But vain was his prayer. First his money was taken, then his arms, then his life. He lay in that vineyard naked, dead, bald, fat--not like a man of war. Near him lay another baron, Pandolfo of the lords of Belvedere. In a small space lay twelve of them; prostrate they lay. All the rest of the army, horsemen as well as footmen, flung their arms from them here and there, and without order, in great terror, turned their backs: and there was not one who struck a blow." Thus ended the first attack upon the Tribune--horribly, vilely, with panic on both sides, and the rage of wild beasts among the victorious people, not one on either side, except those two murdered Colonnas, bearing himself like a man. The record of the struggle, so intense in its brevity, so brutal and terrible, with its background of leaden skies and falling rain, and the muddy earth upon which both horses and men slipped and fell, is placed before us like a picture: and the sudden clearing of the weather, the sun breaking out suddenly upon those white prostrate figures, white and red with horrible wounds. There could not be a more appalling scene--amid all the records of internecine warfare one of the most squalid, unredeemed even by any feat of arms; for poor young Janni walked into the snare unconscious, and a blind chance, horrible and unpremeditated, seemed to reign over all--all but the father, heart-broken, retiring by instinct in the first discovery of danger, then turning back to save, if it were possible, his dying boy, who had been so brutally struck down and cut to pieces. The old father of all, the great Stefano, too old for war, and trembling with fever, was borne along in the crowd of the flying, to hide his bereaved head in his old fortress and sternly lament his children lost. Cola, the chronicle says, shared the consternation of the people when young Janni's noble figure appeared in the opening of the gate. The Tribune's banner was overturned in the backward rush of the people before that solitary invader: and he himself, raising his eyes to heaven, cried out no other word than this: "Ah, God, hast thou betrayed me?" But when the sudden rush of murder and pursuit was over he recovered all his dramatic instincts along with his courage. The silver trumpets were sounded, a wreath of olive was placed upon his head above the silver crown, he waved his steel wand in the now brilliant sunshine, and marched into Rome, triumphant--as indeed he had good reason to be--to the Church of the Ara Coeli, where he deposited the olive crown and the steel wand before the altar of the Virgin. "After this," says the indignant chronicler, "he never carried sceptre again, nor wore crown, nor had a banner borne over his head." Once more he addressed the people from the _Parlatorio_, with the intonation of victory in every word. Drawing his sword, he wiped it with his robe, and said: "I have cut off with this such a head as neither the Pope nor the Emperor could touch." Meanwhile the three dead Colonnas had been carried into Rome to the chapel of their house in the Ara Coeli. "The Contesse (the relations, wives and sisters) came, attended by many women tearing their hair, to wail (_ululare_) over the dead," but Cola had them driven away and forbade any funeral honours. "If they trouble me any more about these accursed corpses," he said, "I will have them thrown into a ditch. They were perjurers--they were not worthy to be buried." The three dead knights were carried secretly by night to the Church of San Silvestro, and buried by the monks _senza ululato_, without any lament made over them. Thus ended the noble Colonna, the hopes of the house--and with them, though he knew it not, the extravagant hopes and miraculous good fortune of Cola di Rienzi, which began to fall from that day. We have dwelt upon the details of this history, because there is scarcely any other which gives so clear a vision of the streets and palaces, the rushing of the Popolo, the uncertain counsels of the nobles, the mingled temerity and panic which prevailed among all on both sides. The confusion is extraordinary; the ignorant crowd with its enthusiast leader scarcely less ignorant of men and the just course of human affairs, who defied with a light heart the greatest powers in Christendom, and retreated before the terrific vision of one young warrior in the gate: the nobles with their army, which sought only how to get away again without disgrace when they found themselves in front of a defended gate, and fled before a rabble sortie, of men as much frightened as themselves, and brave only when pursuing another demoralised troop. Whether we look to one side or the other, the effect is equally vivid. The revelation, at first so romantic and splendid, if always fantastic and theatrical, falls now into a squalid horror and mad brag, and cowardice, and fury, in which the spectacle of the Tribune, wiping the sword guiltless of blood upon his mantle, reaches perhaps the highest point of tragic ridicule: while all the chivalry of Rome galloping along the muddy roads to their strongholds, flying before a civic mob, is its lowest point of humiliating misery. It seems almost impossible to believe that the best blood and highest names of Italy, as well as on the other side its most visionary aspirations, should come to such degrading confusion and downfall. [Illustration: PORTA DEL POPOLO (FLAMINIAN GATE).] FOOTNOTES: [6] A necessary distinction when there were so many of the same name--_i.e._, Pietro the son of Agapito, nephew of old Stefano. [7] Changed their dresses, throwing those which they took off among the people. [8] The bath, or baptismal vase of Constantine (so-called) here referred to, still stands in the Baptistery of the Lateran. [Illustration: THEATRE OF MARCELLUS.] CHAPTER IV. DECLINE AND FALL. After so strange and so complete a victory over one party, had the Tribune pushed his advantage, and gone against the other with all the prestige of his triumph, he would in all probability have ended the resistance of the nobles altogether. But he did not do this. He had no desire for any more fighting. It is supposed, with insufficient reason we think, that personally he was a coward. What is more likely is that so sensitive and nervous a man (to use the jargon of our own times) must have suffered, as any fine temperament would have done, from that scene at the gate of San Lorenzo, and poor young Janni Colonna lying in his blood; and that when he declared "he would draw his sword no more," he did so with a sincere disgust for all such brutal methods. His own ways of convincing people were by argument and elocution, and pictures on the walls, which, if they did not convince, did nobody any harm. The next scene, however, which he prepared for his audience does not look much like the horror for which we have given him credit. He had informed his followers before he first set out against the nobles that he was taking his son with him--something in the tone with which the presence of a Prince Imperial might be proclaimed to an army; and we now find the young Lorenzo placed still more in the foreground. The day after that dreadful victory Cola called together the militia of the city by the most touching argument. "Come with me," he said, "and afterwards you shall have your pay." They turned out accordingly to accompany him, wondering, but not knowing what he had in his mind. "The trumpets sounded at the place where the fight (_sconfitto_) had taken place. No one knew what was to be done there. He went with his son to the very spot where Stefano Colonna had died. There was still there a little pool of water. Cola made his son dismount and threw over him the water which was still tinged with the blood of Stefano, and said to him: 'Be thou a Knight of Victory.' All around wondered and were stupefied. Then he gave orders that all the commanders should strike his son on the shoulder with their swords. This done he returned to the Capitol, and said: 'Go your ways. We have done a common work. All our sires were Romans, the country expects that we should fight for her.' When this was said the minds of the people were much exercised, and some would never bear arms again. Then the Tribune began to be greatly hated, and people began to talk among themselves of his arrogance which was not small." This grotesque and horrible ceremony seems to have done Cola more harm than all that had gone before. The leader of a revolution should have no sons. The excellent instinct of providing for his family after him, and making himself a stepping stone for his children, though proceeding from "what is best within the soul," has spoiled many a history. Cola di Rienzi was a most conspicuous and might have been a great man: but Rienzo di Cola, which would have been his son's natural name, was nobody, and is never heard of after this terrible baptism of blood, so abhorrent to every natural and generous impulse. Did the gazers in the streets see the specks of red on young Lorenzo's dress as he rode along through the city from the Tiburtine gate, and through the Forum to the Capitol, where all the train was dismissed so summarily? As the Cavallerotti, the better part of the gathering, turned their horses and rode away offended, no doubt the news ran through quarter after quarter with them. The blood of Stefanello, the heir of great Colonna! And thoughts of the old man desolate, and of young Janni so brave and gay, would come into many a mind. They might be tyrants, but they were familiar Roman faces, known to all, and with some reason to be proud, if proud they were; not like this upstart, who called honest men away from their own concerns to do honour to his low-born son, and sent them packing about their business afterwards without so much as a dinner to celebrate the new knight! This was all in November, the 20th and 21st: and it was on the 20th of May that Cola had received his election upon the Capitol and been proclaimed master of the destinies of the universe, by inference, as master of Rome. Six months, no more, crammed full of gorgeous pageants and exciting events. Then, notwithstanding the extraordinary character of his revolution, he had been believed in, and encouraged by all around. He had received the sanction of the Pope, the friendly congratulations of the great Italian towns, and above all the applause, enthusiastic and overflowing, of Petrarch the greatest of living poets. By degrees all these sympathies and applauses had fallen from him. Florence and the other great cities had withdrawn their friendship, the Pope had cancelled his commission, the Pope's Vicar had left the Tribune's side. The more his vanity and self-admiration grew, the more his friends had fallen from him. That very day--the day after the defeat of the Colonna, before the news could have reached any one at a distance, Petrarch on his way to Italy, partly brought back thither by anxiety about his friend, received from another friend a copy of one of the arrogant and extraordinary letters which Cola was sending about the world, and read and re-read it and was stupefied. "What answer can be made to it? I know not," he cries. "I see that fate pursues the country, and on whatever side I turn, I find subjects of grief and trouble. If Rome is ruined what hope remains for Italy? and if Italy is degraded what will become of me? What can I offer but tears?" A few days later, arrived at Genoa, the poet wrote to Rienzi himself in reproof and sorrow: [Illustration: AQUA FELICE. _To face page_ 462.] "Often, I confess it, I have had occasion upon thy account to repeat with immense joy what Cicero puts in the mouth of Scipio Africanus:--'What is this great and delightful sound that comes to my ears?' And certainly nothing could be better applied to the splendour of thy name and to the frequent and joyful account of thy doings: and it was indeed good to my heart to speak to thee in that exhortation, full of thy praise and of encouragements to continue, which I sent thee. _Deh!_ do nothing, I conjure thee, to make me now ask, whence is this great and fatal rumour which strikes my ear so painfully? Take care, I beseech thee, not thyself to soil thine own splendid fame. No man in the world except thyself can shake the foundations of the edifice thou hast constructed; but that which thou hast founded thou canst ruin: for to destroy his own proper work no man is so able as the architect. You know the road by which you have risen to glory: if you turn back you shall soon find yourself in the lowest place; and going down is naturally the quicker.... I was hastening to you and with all my heart: but I turn upon the way. Other than what you were, I would not see you. Adieu, Rome, to thee also adieu, if that is true which I have heard. Rather than come to thee I would go to the Indies, to the end of the world.... Oh, how ill the beginning agrees with the end! Oh, miserable ears of mine that, accustomed to the sound of glory, do not know how to bear such announcements of shame! But may not these be lies and my words false? Oh that it might be so! How glad should I be to confess my error!... If thou art indeed so little careful of thy fame, think at least of mine. You well know by what tremendous tempest I am threatened, how many are the crowd of faultfinders ready to ruin me. While there is still time put your mind to it, be vigilant, look well to what you do, guide yourself continually by good counsel, consider with yourself, not deceiving yourself, what you are, what you were, from whence you have come, and to what point, without detriment to the public weal, you can attain: how to attire yourself, what name to assume, what hopes to awaken, and of what doctrine to make open confession; understanding always that not Lord, but solely Minister, you are of the Republic." The share which Petrarch thus takes to himself in Cola's fortunes may seem exaggerated; but it must be remembered that the Colonna were his chief patrons and friends, that it was under their protecting shadow that he had risen to fame, and that his warm friendship for Rienzi had already deeply affected the terms of his relationship with them. That relationship had come to a positive breach so far as his most powerful protector, the Cardinal Giovanni, was concerned, a breach of feeling on one side as well as of protection on the other. His letter to the Cardinal after this catastrophe, condoling with him upon the death of his brothers, is one of the coldest of compositions, very unlike the warm and eager affection of old, and consisting chiefly of elaborate apologies for not having written. The poet had completely committed himself in respect to the Tribune; he had hailed his advent in the most enthusiastic terms, he had proclaimed him the hope of Italy, he had staked his own reputation upon his friend's disinterestedness and patriotism; therefore this downfall with all its humiliating circumstances, the vanities and self-intoxication which had brought it about, were intolerable to Petrarch: his own credit as well as Cola's was concerned. He had been so rash as to answer for the Tribune in all quarters, to pledge his own judgment, his power of understanding men, almost his honour, on Cola's behalf; and to be proved so wrong, so little capable of estimating justly the man whom he believed himself to know so well, was bitterness unspeakable to him. The interest of his tragic disappointment and sorrow is at the same time enhanced by the fact, that the other party to this dreadful quarrel had been the constant objects of the poet's eulogies and enthusiasm. It is to Petrarch that we owe most of our knowledge of the Colonna family at this remarkable period of a long history which is filled with the oft-repeated incidents of an endless struggle for power, either with the rebellious Romans themselves, or with the other little less great family of the Orsini who, unfortunately for themselves, had no Petrarch to bring them fully into the light of day. The many allusions in Petrarch's letters, his reminiscences of the ample and gracious household, all so friendly, and caressing, all of one mind as to his own poetical qualities, and anxious to heap honours upon him, light up for us the face of the much complicated story, and give interest to many an elaborate poetical or philosophical disquisition. Especially the figure of the father, the old Stefano with his seven sons and the innumerable tribe of nephews and cousins, not to say grandsons, still more cherished, who surrounded him--rises clear, magnanimous, out of the disturbed and stormy landscape. His brief appearances in the chronicle which we have quoted, with a keen brief speech here and there, imperative, in strong accents of common sense as well as of power, add a touch of energetic life to the many anecdotes and descriptions of a more elaborate kind. And the poet would seem never to have failed in his admiration for the old Magnanimo. At an earlier period he had described in several letters to the son Giovanni, the Cardinal, the reception given to him at Rome, and conversations, some of them very remarkable. One scene above all, of which Petrarch reminds Stefano himself in his bereavement, gives us a most touching picture of the noble old man. "One day at sunset you and I alone were walking by that spacious way which leads from your house to the Capitol, when we paused at that point where it is crossed by the other road by which on one hand you ascend to the Arch of Camillus, and on the other go down to the Tiber: we paused there without interruption from any and talked together of the condition of your house and family, which, often assailed by the enmity of strangers, was at that time moved by grievous internal commotions:--when the discourse fell upon one of your sons with whom, more by the work of scandal-mongers than by paternal resentment, you were angry, and by your goodness it was given to me, what many others had not been able to obtain, to persuade you to receive him again to your good grace. After you had lamented his faults to me, changing your aspect all at once you said (I remember not only the substance of your discourse but the very words). 'This son of mine, thy friend, whom, thanks to thee, I will now receive again with paternal affection, has vomited forth words concerning my old age, of which it is best to be silent; but since I cannot refuse you, let us put a stone over the past and let a full amnesty, as people say, be conceded. From my lips I promise thee, not another word shall be heard. "'One thing I will tell you, that you may make perpetual remembrance of it. It is made a reproach to my old age that I am mixed up with warlike factions more than is becoming, and more than there is any occasion, and that thus I will leave to my sons an inheritance of peril and hate. But as God is true, I desire you to believe that for love of peace alone I allow myself to be drawn into war. Whether it be the effect of my extreme old age which chills and enfeebles the spirit in this already stony bosom, or whether it proceeds from my long observation of human affairs, it is certain that more than others I am greedy of repose and peace. But fixed and immovable as is my resolution never to shrink from trouble though I may prefer a settled and tranquil life, I find it better, since fate compels me, to go down to the sepulchre fighting, than to submit, old as I am, to servitude. And for what you say of my heirs I have but one thing to reply. Listen well, and fix my words in your mind. God grant that I may leave my inheritance to my sons. But all in opposition to my desires are the decrees of fate (the words were said with tears): contrary to the order of nature it is I who shall be the heir of all my sons.' And thus saying, your eyes swollen with tears, you turned away." At the corner where the Corso is crossed by the street which borders the Forum of Trajan, let whoso will pause amid the bustle of modern traffic and think for a moment of those two figures standing together talking, "without interruption from any one," in the middle of that open space, while the long level rays of the sunset streamed upon them from beyond the Flaminian gate. Was there some great popular meeting at the Capitol which had cleared the streets, the hum of voices rising on the height, but all quiet here at this dangerous, glorious hour, when fever is abroad and the women and children are all indoors? "I made light of it, I confess," says Petrarch, though he acknowledges that he told the story of this dreadful presentiment to the Cardinal, who, sighing, exclaimed, "Would to God that my father's prediction may not come true!" But old Stefano with his weight of years upon him, and his front like Jove, turned away sighing, stroking his venerable beard, unmoved by the poet's reassurances, with that terrible conviction in his heart. They were all young and he old: daring, careless young men, laughing at that same Cola of the little _albergo_, the son of the wine-shop, who said he was to be an emperor. But the shadow on the grandsire's heart was one of those which events cast before them. Young Janni was to go among the first, the brave boy who ought to have been heir of all. To him, too, his grandfather, the great Stefano, the head of the full house, was to be heir. The terrible event of the Porta di San Lorenzo shows in still darker colours when we look at it closer. Stefano, the son of Stefano, and Janni his son, are the two most conspicuous names: but there were more. Camillo, _figlio naturale, morto il 20 November 1347, all'assalto di Porta San Lorenzo_; Pietro, _figlio naturale, rimase occiso a Porta San Lorenzo_. Giovanni of Agapito, Pietro of Agapito, nephews of old Stefano, _morti nell'assalto di Porta San Lorenzo_. Seven in all were the scions of Colonna who ended their life that horrible November morning in the mud and rain; or more dreadful still under the morning sun which broke out so suddenly, showing those white dreadful forms all stripped and abandoned, upon the fatal way. It was little wonder if between the house of Colonna and the upstart Cola no peace should ever be possible after a lost battle so fatal and so humiliating to the race. Perhaps after the first moment of terrible joy and relief to find himself uninjured, and his enemies so deeply punished, compunction seized the sensitive mind of Cola: or perhaps he was alarmed by the displeasure of the Pope, his abandonment by all his friends, and the solemn adjuration of Petrarch. It is certain that after this he dropped many of his pretensions, subdued the fantastic arrogance of his titles and superscription, gave up his claim to elect emperors and preside over the fortunes of the world, and began to devote himself with humility to the government of the city which had fallen into something of its old disorderliness within the walls; while outside there was again, as of old, no security at all. The rebel barons had resumed their turbulent sway, the robbers reappeared in all their old coverts; and once again every road to Rome was as unsafe as that on which the traveller of old fell among thieves. Cola, Knight and Lieutenant of our Lord the Pope, now headed his proclamations, instead of Nicolas, severe and clement. His crown of silver and sceptre of steel, fantastic emblems, were hung up before the shrine of Our Lady in the Ara Coeli, and everything about him was toned down into gravity. By this means he kept up a semblance of peace, and replaced the Buono Stato in its visionary shrine. But Cola had gone too far, and lost the confidence of the people too completely to rise again. His very humility would no doubt be against him, showing the weakness which a man unsupported on any side should perhaps have been bold enough to defy, hardihood being now his only chance in face of so many assailants. Pope Clement thundered against him from Avignon; the nobles lay in Palestrina and Marino, and many a smaller fortress besides, irreconcilable, watching every opportunity of assailing him. The country was once more devastated all round Rome, provisions short, corn dear, and funds failing as well as authority and respect. And Cola's heart had failed him along with his prosperity. He had bad dreams; he himself tells the story of this moral downfall with a forlorn attempt to show that it was not, after all, his visible enemies, or the power of men, which had cast him down. "After my triumph over the Colonna," he writes, "just when my dominion seemed strongest, my stoutness of heart was taken from me, and I was seized by visionary terrors. Night after night awakened by visions and dreams I cried out, 'The Capitol is falling,' or 'The enemy comes!' For some time an owl alighted every night on the summit of the Capitol, and though chased away by my servants always came back again. For twelve nights this took my sleep and all quiet of mind from me. It was thus that dreams and nightbirds tormented one who had not been afraid of the fury of the Roman nobles, nor terrified by armies of armed men." The brag was a forlorn one, but it was all of which the fallen Tribune was now capable. Cola received back the Vicar of the Pope, who probably was not without some affection for his old triumphant colleague, with gladness and humility, and seated that representative of ecclesiastical authority beside himself in his chair of judgment, before which he no longer summoned the princes and great ones of the earth. The end came in an unexpected way, of which the writer of the _Vita_ gives the popular account: it is a little different from that of the graver history but only in details. A certain Pepino, Count Palatine of Altamura, a fugitive from Naples, whose object in Rome was to enlist soldiers for the service of Louis of Hungary, then eager to avenge the murder of his brother Andrew, the husband of Queen Joan of Naples--had taken up his abode in the city. He was in league with several of the nobles, and ready to lend a hand in any available way against the Tribune. Fearing to be brought before the tribunal of Cola, and to be obliged to explain the object of his residence in Rome, he shut himself up in his palace and made an effort to raise the city against its head. "Messer the Conte Paladino at this time threw a bar (barricade) across the street, under the Arch of Salvator (to defend his quarters apparently). A night and a day the bells of St. Angelo in Pescheria rang a _stuormo_, but no one attempted to break down the bar. The Tribune sent a party of horsemen against the bar, and an officer named Scarpetta, wounded by a lance, fell dead in the skirmish. When the Tribune heard that Scarpetta was dead and that the people were not affected by the sound of the tocsin, although the bell of St. Angelo continued to ring, he sighed deeply: chilled by alarm he wept: he knew not what to do. His heart was beaten down and brought low. He had not the courage of a child. Scarcely could he speak. He believed that ambushes were laid for him in the city, which was not true, for there was as yet no open rebellion: no one, as yet, had risen against the Tribune. But their zeal had become cold: and he believed that he would be killed. What can be said more? He knew he had not the courage to die in the service of the people as he had promised. Weeping and sighing, he addressed as many as were there, saying that he had done well, but that from envy the people were not content with him. 'Now in the seventh month am I driven from my dominion.' Having said these words weeping, he mounted his horse and sounded the silver trumpets, and bearing the imperial insignia, accompanied by armed men, he came down as in a triumph, and went to the Castle of St. Angelo, and there shut himself in. His wife, disguised in the habit of a monk, came from the Palazzo de Lalli. When the Tribune descended from his greatness the others also wept who were with him, and the miserable people wept. His chamber was found to be full of many beautiful things, and so many letters were found there that you would not believe it. The barons heard of this downfall, but three days passed before they returned to Rome because of their fear. Even when they had come back fear was in their hearts. They made a picture of the Tribune on the wall of the Capitol, as if he were riding, but with his head down and his feet above. They also painted Cecco Manneo, who was his Notary and Chancellor, and Conte, his nephew, who held the castle of Civita Vecchia. Then the Cardinal Legate entered into Rome, and proceeded against him and distributed the greater part of his goods, and proclaimed him to be a heretic." Thus suddenly Cola fell, as he had risen. His heart had failed him without reason or necessity, for the city had not shown any open signs of rebellion, and there seems to have been no reason why he should have fled to St. Angelo. The people, though they did not respond to his call to arms, took no more notice of the tocsin of his opponent or of his cry of Death to the Tribune. Rome lay silent pondering many things, caring little how the tide turned, perhaps, with the instinct of Lo Popolo everywhere, thinking that a change might be a good thing: but it was no overt act on the part of the populace which drove its idol away. The act was entirely his own--his heart had failed him. In these days we should say his nerves had broken down. The phraseology is different, but the things were the same. His downfall, however, was not perhaps quite so sudden in reality as it appears in the chronicle. It would seem that he endeavoured to escape to Civita Vecchia where his nephew was governor, but was not received there, and had to come back to Rome, and hide his head once more for a short time in St. Angelo. But it is certain that before the end of January, 1438, he had finally disappeared, a shamed and nameless man, his titles abolished, his property divided among his enemies. Never was a downfall more sudden or more complete. Stefano Colonna and his friends re-entered Rome with little appearance of triumph. The remembrance of the Porta San Lorenzo was too recent for rejoicings, and it must be put to the credit of the old chief, bereaved and sorrowful, that no reprisals were made, that a general amnesty was proclaimed, and the peace of the city preserved. Cola's family, at least for the time, remained peaceably at Rome, and met with no harm. We hear nothing of the unfortunate young Knight of Victory who had been sprinkled with the blood of the Colonnas. The Tribune went down like a stone, and for the moment, of him who had filled men's mouths and minds with so many strange tidings, there was no more to tell. Cola's absence from Rome lasted for seven years; of which time there is no mention whatever in the _Vita_, which concerns itself exclusively with things that happened in Rome; but his steps can be very clearly traced. We never again find our enthusiast, he who first ascended the Capitol in a passion of disinterested zeal and patriotism, approved by every honest visionary and every suffering citizen, a man chosen of God to deliver the city. That his motives were ever ill motives, or that he had begun to seek his own prosperity alone, it would be hard to say: but he appears to us henceforward in a changed aspect as the eager conspirator, the commonplace plotter and schemer, hungry for glory and plunder, and using every means, by hook or by crook, to recover what he has lost, which is a far more familiar figure than the ideal Reformer, the disinterested revolutionary. We meet with that vulgar hero a hundred times in the stormy record of Italian politics, a man without scruples, sticking at nothing. But Rienzi was of a different nature: he was at once a less and a greater sinner. It would be unjustifiable to say that he ever gave up the thought of the Buono Stato, or ceased to desire the welfare of Rome. But in the long interval of his disappearance from the scene, he not only plotted like the other, but used that higher motive, and the mystic elements that were in the air, and the tendency towards all that was occult, and much that was noble in the aspirations of the visionaries of his time, to further the one object, his return to power, to the Capitol, and to the dominion of Rome. A conspirator is the commonplace of Italian story, at every period: and the pretender, catching at every straw to get back to his unsteady throne, besieging every potentate that can help him, pleading every inducement from the highest to the lowest--self-interest, philanthropy, the service of God, the most generous and the meanest sentiments--is also a very well known figure; but it is rare to find a man truly affected by the most mystic teachings of religion, yet pressing them also into his service, and making use of what he conceives to be the impulses of the Holy Spirit for the furtherance of his private ends, without, nevertheless, so far as can be asserted, becoming a hypocrite or insincere in the faith which he professes. This was the strange development to which the Tribune came. After some vain attempts to awaken in the Roman territory friends who could help him, his heart broken by the fickleness and desertion of the Popolo in which he had trusted, he took refuge in the wild mountain country of the Apennines, where there existed a rude and strange religious party, aiming in the midst of the most austere devotion at a total overturn of society, and that return of a primeval age of innocence and bliss which is so seductive to the mystical mind. In the caves and dens of the earth and in the mountain villages and little convents, there dwelt a severe sect of the Franciscans, men whose love of Poverty, their founder's bride and choice, was almost stronger than their love of that founder himself. The Fraticelli were only heretics by dint of holding their Rule more strictly than the other religious of their order, and by indulging in ecstatic visions of a renovated state and a purified people--visions less personal though not less sincere or pious, than those which inflicted upon Francis himself the semblance of the wounds of the Redeemer, in that passion of pity and love which possessed his heart. The exile among them, who had himself been aroused out of the obscurity of ordinary life by a corresponding dream, found himself stimulated and inspired over again by the teaching of these visionaries. One of them, it is said, found him out in the refuge where he thought himself absolutely unknown, and, addressing him by name, told him that he had still a great career before him, and that it should be his to restore to Rome the double reign of universal dominion, to establish the Pope and the Empire in the imperial city, and reconcile for ever those two joint rulers appointed of God. It is curious to find that what is to some extent the existing state of affairs--the junction in one place of the two monarchs of the earth--should have been the dream and hope of religious visionaries in the middle of the fourteenth century. The Emperor to them was but a glorified King of Italy, with a vague and unknown world behind him; and they believed that the Millennium would come, when that supreme sovereign on the Capitol and the Holy Father from the seat of St. Peter should sway the world at their will. The same class, in the same order now--so much as confiscation after confiscation permits that order to exist--would fight to its last gasp against the forced conjunction, which its fathers before it thus thought of as the thing most to be prayed for, and schemed for, in the whole world. When others beside the Fraticelli discovered Rienzi's hiding-place, and he found himself, or imagined himself, in some danger, he went to Prague to seek shelter with the Emperor Charles IV., and a remarkable correspondence took place between that potentate on one side and the Archbishop of Prague, his counsellor, and Rienzi on the other, in which the exile promised many splendours to the monarch, and offered himself as his guide to Rome, and to lend him the weight of his influence there with the people over whom Rienzi believed that he would yet himself preside with greater power than ever. That Charles himself should reply to these letters, and reason the matter out with this forlorn wanderer, shows of itself what a power was in his words and in the fervour of his purpose. But it is ill talking between a great monarch and a penniless exile, and Charles seems to have felt no scruple in handing him over, after full exposition of his views, to the archbishop as a heretic. That prelate transferred him to the Pope, to be dealt with as a man already excommunicated under the ban of the Church, and now once more promulgating strange doctrines, ought to be; and thus his freedom, and his wandering, and the comparative safety of his life came to an end, and a second stage of strange development began. The fortunes of Rienzi were at a very low ebb when he reached Avignon and fell into the hands of his enemies, of those whom he had assailed and those whom he had disappointed, at that court where there was no one to say a good word for him, and where all that was best in him was even more greatly against him than that which was worst. In the dungeons of Avignon, in the stronghold of the Pope who had so much cause to regret having once sanctioned and patronised the Tribune, his cause had every appearance of being lost for ever. It was fortunate for him that there was no longer a Cardinal Colonna at that court; but there was, at the same time, no champion to take up his cause. Things indeed went so badly with him, that he was actually condemned to death as a heretic, himself allowing that he was guilty and worthy of death in some moment of profound depression, or perhaps with the hope of touching the hearts of his persecutors by humility as great as had been the pretensions of his brief and exciting reign. For poor Cola after all, if the affair at Porta San Lorenzo is left out--and that was no fault of his--had done nothing worthy of death. He had been carried away by the passion and madness of an almost impossible success; but he had scarcely ever been rebellious to the Church, and his vagaries of doctrine were rather due to the mingling together of the classical with the religious, and the inflation of certain not otherwise unorthodox ideas, than any real rebellion; but he carried his prevailing sentiment and character into everything, being lower than any in the depths of his downfall as he had been higher than any on the heights of his visionary pride and short-lived triumph. He was saved from this sentence in a manner as fantastical as himself. It may be believed that it was never intended to be carried out, and that, especially after his acknowledgment of the justice of his sentence, means would have been found of preserving him from its execution; very likely, indeed, the curious means which were found, originated in some charitable whisper that a plausible pretence of a reason for letting him off would not be disagreeable to the Pope. He was saved by the suggestion that he was a poet! We have the story in full detail from Petrarch himself, who is not without a perception of its absurdity, and begins his letter by an indignant description of the foolish and pretended zeal for poetry of which this was so strange an example. "Poetry," he says, "divine gift and vouchsafed by heaven to so few, I see it, friend, if not prostituted, at least made into a vulgar thing. "I feel my heart rise against this, and you, if I know you well, will not tolerate such an abuse for any consideration. Neither at Athens, nor at Rome, even in the lifetime of Horace, was there so much talk of poets and poetry as at the present day upon the banks of the Rhone--although there never was either time or place in which men understood it less. But now I will check your rising bile by laughter and show how a jest can come in the midst of melancholy. "There has lately come to this court--or rather has not come but has been brought--a prisoner, Niccola di Lorenzo, once the formidable Tribune of Rome, now of all the men the most unhappy--and what is more, not perhaps worthy of the compassion which the misery of his present state calls forth. He might have ended his days gloriously upon the Capitol, but brought himself down instead, to the great shame of the Republic and of the Roman name, into the condition of a prisoner, first in Bohemia and now here. Unfortunately, many more than I now like to think of are the praises and encouragements which I myself have written to him. Lover of virtue as I am, I could not do less than exalt and admire the generous undertaking of the strong man: and thankful on account of Italy, hoping to see the Empire of Rome arise again and secure the peace of the whole world, my heart was inundated by such joy, on account of so many fine events, that to contain myself was impossible; and it seemed to me that I almost took part in his glory by giving encouragement and comfort to his enterprise: by which as both his messengers and his letters showed, he was himself set on fire--and always more and more willingly I set myself to increase this stimulus with every argument I could think of, and to feed the flame of that ardent spirit, well knowing that every generous heart kindles at the fire of praise and glory. For this reason with an applause which to some seemed extravagant but to me very just, I exalted his every act, encouraging him to complete the magnanimous task which he had begun. The letters which I then wrote went through many hands: and since I am no prophet and still less was he ever a prophet I am not ashamed of what I wrote: for certainly what he did in those days and promised to do, not in my opinion alone but to the praise and admiration of the whole world, were very worthy, and I would not abolish the memory of these letters of mine from my memory solely because he prefers an ignoble life to a glorious death. But it is useless to discuss a thing which is impossible; and however much I might desire to destroy them I could not do it. As soon as they come into the hands of the public, the writer has no more power over them. Let us return to our story. "This man then, who had filled the wicked with terror, the good with expectation, and with joyful hope the universe, has come before this Court humiliated and abject; and he whom the people of Rome and all the cities of Italy exalted, was seen passing through our streets between two soldiers, affording a miserable spectacle to the rabble eager to see face to face one whose name they had heard to sound so high. He came from the King of Rome (a title of the Emperor) to the Roman Pontiff, oh marvellous commerce! As soon as he had arrived the Pope committed to three princes of the Church the charge of examining into his cause, and judging of what punishment he was guilty who had attempted to free the State." The letter is too long to quote entire, and Petrarch, though maintaining the cause of his former friend, is perhaps too anxious to make it clear that, had Rienzi given due attention to his own letters, this great reverse would never have happened to him; yet it is on the whole a noble plea for the Tribune. "In this man," the poet declares, "I had placed the last hope of Italian liberty, and, having long known and loved him from the moment when he put his hand to this great work, he seemed to me worthy of all veneration and honour. Whatever might be the end of the work I cannot cease to hold as magnificent its beginning:" and he regrets with great indignation that it was this beginning which was chiefly brought against him, and that his description of himself as Nicolas, severe and clement, had more weight with his judges than his good government or the happy change that took place in Rome during his sway. We must hasten, however, to the irony of the Tribune's deliverance. "In this miserable state (after so much that is sorrowful, here at last is something to laugh at), I learn from the letters of my friends that there is still a hope of saving him, and that because of a notion which has been spread abroad among the vulgar, that he is a famous poet.... What can we think of this? Truly I, more than I can say in words, comfort myself and rejoice in the thought that the Muses are so much honoured--and what is still more marvellous, among those who never knew anything about them--as to save from a fatal sentence a man who is shielded by their name. What greater sign of reverence could be given than that the name of Poetry should thus save from death a man who rightly or wrongly is abhorred by his judges, who has been convicted of the crime laid to his charge and has confessed it, and by the unanimous sentence of the tribunal has been found worthy of death? I rejoice, I repeat, I congratulate him and the Muses with him: that he should have such patrons, and they so unlooked-for an honour--nor would I to a man so unhappy, reduced to such an extreme of danger and of doubt, grudge the protecting name of poet. But if you would know what I think, I will say that Niccola di Lorenzo is a man of the greatest eloquence, most persuasive and ready of speech, a writer lucid and harmonious and of an elegant style. I do not remember any poet whom he has not read; but this no more makes him a poet than a man would be a weaver who clothed himself with garments woven by another hand. To merit the name of poet it is not enough to have made verses. But this man has never that I know written a single line." There is not a word of all this in the _Vita_. To the chronicler, Rienzi, from the moment when he turned his face again towards Rome, was never in any danger. As he came from Germany to Avignon all the people in the villages came out to greet him, and would have rescued him but for his continual explanation that he went to the Pope of his own will; nor does his biographer seem to be aware that the Tribune ran any risk of his life. He did escape, however, by a hair's breadth only, and, as Petrarch had perfect knowledge of what was going on, no doubt in the very way described by the poet. But he was not delivered from prison until Cardinal Albornoz set out for Rome with the Pope's orders to pacify and quiet the turbulent city. Many and great had been its troubles in those seven years. It had fallen back into the old hands--an Orsini and a Colonna, a Colonna and an Orsini. There had been a temporary lull in the year of the Jubilee (1350), when all the world flocked to Rome to obtain the Indulgence, and to have their sins washed away in the full stream of Papal forgiveness. It is said that Rienzi himself made his way stealthily back to share in that Indulgence, but without making himself known: and the interest of the citizens was so much involved in peace, and it was so essential to keep a certain rule of order and self-restraint on account of the many guests who brought money to the city, that there was a temporary lull of its troubles. The town was no more than a great inn from Easter to Christmas, and wealth, which has always a soothing and quieting influence, poured into the pockets of the citizens, fully occupied as they were by the care of their guests, and by the continual ceremonials and sacred functions of those busy days. The Jubilee brought not only masses of pious pilgrims from every part of the world, but innumerable lawsuits--cases of conscience and of secular disputes--to be settled by the busy Cardinal who sat instead of the Pope, hearing daily what every applicant might have to say. There had been a new temporary bridge built in order to provide for the pressure of the crowd, and avoid that block of the old bridge of St. Angelo which Dante describes in the _Inferno_, when the mass of pilgrims coming and going broke down one of the arches. Other large if hasty labours of preparation were also in hand. The Capitol had to be repaired, and old churches furbished up, and every scrap of drapery and tapestry which was to be had employed to make the city fine. So that for one year at least there had been no thought but to put the best possible face on things, to quench internal disorders for the moment, and make all kinds of temporary arrangements for comfort and accommodation, as is often done in a family when important visitors force a salutary self-denial upon all; so that there were a hundred inducements to preserve a front of good behaviour and fit decorum before the world. [Illustration: THE TARPEIAN ROCK. _To face page_ 480.] After the Jubilee however, things fell back once more into the old confusion: once more there was robbery and violence on every road to Rome; once more an Orsini and a Colonna balanced and struggled with each other as Senators, with no time to attend to anything but their personal interests, and no thought for the welfare of the people. In 1352, however, things had come to such a pass that a violent remedy had to be tried again, and the Romans once more took matters in their own hands and elected an official of their own, a certain Cerroni, in the place of the unworthy Senators. He however held the position a very short time, and being in his turn deserted by the people, gave up the thankless task. That year there was a riot in which the Orsini Senator was stoned to death at the foot of the stairs which lead to the Capitol, while his colleague Colonna, another Stefano, escaped by the other side. Then once more the expedient of a popular election was attempted and a certain Francesco Baroncelli was elected who styled himself the second Tribune of the people. The Pope had also attempted to do what he could, once by a committee of four Cardinals, constantly by Legates sent to guide and protect the ever-troubled city. The hopelessness of these repeated efforts was proved over and over again. Villani the historian writes with dismay that "the changes which took place in the ancient mother and mistress of the universe did not deserve to be recorded because of their frivolity and baseness." Baroncelli too fell after a short time, and it seemed that no government, and no reformation, could last. In the meantime Pope Clement VI. died at Avignon, and Innocent VI. reigned in his stead. At the beginning of this new reign a new attempt to pacificate Rome, and to restore it to order and peace, was made. As it was the general feeling that a stranger was the safest ruler in the midst of the network of private and family interests in which the city was bound, the new Pope with a sincere desire to ameliorate the situation sent the Spanish Cardinal Albornoz to the rescue of Rome. All this was in the year 1353 when Rienzi, his death sentence remitted because of the illusion that he was a poet, lay in prison in Avignon. His story was well known: and it was well known too, that the people of Rome, after having deserted him, were eager to have him back, and had to all appearance repented very bitterly their behaviour to him. The Pope adopted the strong and daring expedient of taking the old demagogue from his prison and giving him a place in the Legate's council. There was no intention of replacing him in his former position, but he was eager to accept the secondary place, and to give the benefit of his advice and guidance to the Legate. All appearance of his old ambition seemed indeed to have died out of him. He went simply in the train of Albornoz to Montefiascone,[9] which had long been the headquarters of the Papal representative, and from whence the Legate conducted a campaign against the towns of the "Patrimony," each of whom, like the mother city, occasionally secured a gleam of uncertain independence, or else--which was oftener the case--fell into the clutches of some one of the band of nobles who had so long held Rome in fee. It is very likely that Rienzi had no ambitious motive, nor thought of a new revolution when he set out. He took part like the rest of the Cardinal's following in several of the expeditions, especially against his old enemy Giovanni di Vico, still as masterful and as dangerous as ever, but attempted nothing more. FOOTNOTE: [9] An amusing story used to be told in Rome concerning this place, which no doubt sprang from the legend of that old ecclesiastical inhabitation. It was that a bishop, travelling across the country (it is always a bishop who is the _bon vivant_ of Italian story), sent a messenger before him with instructions to write on the wall of every town his opinion of the wine of the place, that his master might judge whether he should alight there or not. If it was good _Est_ was to be the word. When the courier came to Montefiascone he was so delighted with the vintage there that he emblazoned the gate with a triple legend of _Est_, _Est_, _Est_. The bishop arrived, alighted; and never left Montefiascone more. The wine in its native flasks is still distinguished by this inscription. [Illustration: THE BORGHESE GARDENS.] CHAPTER V. THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE. The short episode which here follows introduces an entirely new element into Rienzi's life. His nature was not that of a conspirator in the ordinary sense of the word; and though he had schemed and struggled much to return to Rome, it had lately been under the shield of Pope or Emperor, and never with any evident purpose of self-aggrandisement. But the wars which were continually raging in Italy, and in which every man's hand was against his neighbour's, had raised up a new agent in the much contested field, by whose aid, more than by that of either Pope or Emperor, principalities rose and fell, and great fortunes were made and lost. This was the singular institution of the Soldier of Fortune, the Free Lance, whose bands, without country, without object except pay and some vulgar version of fame, without creed or nationality or scruples of any kind, roamed over Europe, ready to adopt any cause or throw their weight on any side, and furnishing the very material that was necessary to carry on those perpetual struggles, which kept Italy in particular, and most other countries more or less, in constant commotion. These men took service with the utmost impartiality on whatever side was likely to give them the highest pay, or the best opportunity of acquiring wealth--their leaders occasionally possessing themselves of the lordship of a rich territory, the inferior captains falling into lesser fiefs and windfalls of all kinds, the merest man-at-arms apt to enrich himself, either by the terror he inspired, or the protection he could give. It was their existence indeed, it may almost be said, that made these endless wars, which were so generally without motive, demonstrations of vanity of one city against another, or attempts on the part of one to destroy the liberties and trade of another, which, had they been carried on by the citizens themselves, must have in the long run brought all human affairs to a deadlock, and become impossible: but which, when carried on through the agency of the mercenaries, were little more than an exciting game, more exciting than any _Kriegsspiel_ that has been invented since. The men were themselves moving castles, almost impregnable, more apt to be suffocated in their armour than killed in honest fight, and as a matter of fact their campaigns were singularly bloodless; but they were like the locusts, the scourge of the country, leaving nothing but destruction and rapine behind them wherever they moved. The dreadful army known as La Grande Compagnia, of which Fra Moreale (the Chevalier de Monreal, but always bearing this name in Italy) was the head, was at this time pervading Italy--everywhere feared, everywhere sought, the cruel and terrible chief being at the same time a romantic and high born personage, a Knight Hospitaller, the equal of the great Seigneurs whom he served, and ready to be himself some time a great Seigneur too, the head of the first principality which he should be strong enough to lay hold of, as the Sforza had done of Milan. The services of such a man were of course a never-failing resource and temptation to every adventurer or pretender who could afford to procure the money to pay for them. There is no proof that Rienzi had any plan of securing the dominion of Rome by such means; indeed his practice, as will be seen, leads to the contrary conclusion; but the transaction to which he became a party while he was in Perugia--under the orders of Cardinal Albornoz--shows that he was, for the moment at least, attracted by the strange possibilities put within his reach: as it also demonstrates the strangely business-like character and trade aspect of an agency so warlike and romantic. At Perugia and other towns through which he passed, the Tribune was recognised and everywhere followed by the Romans, who were to be found throughout the Patrimony, and who had but one entreaty to make to him. The chronicler recovers all his wonted energy when he resumes his narrative, leaving with delight the dull conflicts of the Roman nobles among themselves, and with the Legate vainly attempting to pacify and negotiate between them--for the living figure of the returned leader, and the eager populace who hailed him again, as their deliverer, as if it had been others and not themselves who had driven him away! Even in Montefiascone our biographer tells, there was such recourse of Romans to him that it was _stupore_, stupefying, to see them. "Every Roman turned to him, and multitudes visited him. A great tail of the populace followed him wherever he went. Everybody marvelled, including the Legate, to see how he was followed. After the destruction of Viterbo, when the army returned, many Romans who were in it, some of them important men, came to Rienzi. They said, 'Return to thy Rome, cure her of her sickness. Be her lord. We will give thee help, favour, and strength. Be in no doubt. Never were you so much desired or so much loved as at present.' These flatteries the Romans gave him, but they did not give him a penny of money: their words however moved Cola di Rienzi, and also the glory of it, for which he always thirsted by nature, and he began to think what he could do to make a foundation, and where he would find people and money to go to Rome. He talked of it with the Legate, but neither did he supply him with any money. It had been settled that the people of Perugia should make a provision for him, giving him enough to live upon honourably; but that was not sufficient for raising an army. And for this reason he went to Perugia and met the Counsellors there. He spoke well and promised better, and the Counsellors were very eager to hear the sweetness of his words, to which they lent an attentive ear. These they licked up like honey. But they were responsible for the goods of the commune, and not one penny (Cortonese) could he obtain from them. "At this time there were in Perugia two young gentlemen of Provence, Messer Arimbaldo, doctor of laws, and Messer Bettrom, the knight of Narba (Narbonne), in Provence, brothers; who were also the brothers of the famous Fra Moreale, who was at the head of La Grande Compagnia.... He had acquired much wealth by robbery and booty, and compelled the Commune of Perugia to provide for his brothers who were there. When Cola di Rienzi heard that Messer Arimbaldo of Narba, a young man who loved letters, was in Perugia, he invited him to visit him, and would have him dine at his hostel where he was. While they were at table Cola di Rienzi began to talk of the greatness of the Romans. He mingled stories of Titus Livius with things from the Bible. He opened the fountain of his knowledge. Deh! how he talked--all his strength he put into his reasoning; and so much to the point did he speak that every man was overwhelmed by such wonderful conversation; every one rose to his feet, put his hand to his ear, and listened in silence. Messer Arimbaldo was astonished by these fine speeches. He admired the greatness of the Romans. The warmth of the wine raised his spirit to the heights. The fantastic understand the fantastic. Messer Arimbaldo could not endure to be absent from Cola di Rienzi. He lived with him, he walked with him; one meal they shared, and slept in one bed. He dreamt of doing great things, of raising up Rome, of restoring its ancient state. To do this money was wanted--three thousand florins at least. He pledged himself to procure the three thousand florins, and it was promised to him that he should be made a citizen of Rome and captain, and be much honoured, all which was arranged to the great despite of his brother Messer Bettrom. Therefore, Arimbaldo took from the merchants of Perugia four thousand florins, to give them to Cola di Rienzi. But before Messer Arimbaldo could give this money to Cola, he had to ask leave of his elder brother, Fra Moreale, which he did, sending him a letter in these words: 'Honoured brother,--I have gained in one day more than you have done in all your life. I have acquired the lordship of Rome, which is promised to me by Messer Cola di Rienzi, Knight, Tribune, who is much visited by the Romans and called by the people. I believe that such a plan cannot fail. With the help of your genius nothing could injure such a great State; but money is wanted to begin with. If it pleases your brotherly kindness, I am taking four thousand florins from the bank, and with a strong armament am setting out for Rome.' Fra Moreale read this letter and replied to it as follows: "'I have thought much of this work which you intend to do. A great and weighty burden is this which you take upon you. I do not understand your intention; my mind does not go with it, my reason is against it. Nevertheless go on, and do it well. In the first place, take great care that the four thousand florins are not lost. If anything evil happen to you, write to me. I will come to your help with a thousand or two thousand men, and do the thing magnificently. Therefore do not fear. See that you and your brother love each other, honour each other, and make no quarrel between you.' "Messer Arimbaldo received this letter with much joy, and arranged with the Tribune to set out for Rome." Fra Moreale was a good brother and a far-seeing chief. He saw that the Signoria of Rome, if it could be attained, would be a good investment for his four thousand florins, and probably that Cola di Rienzi was an instrument which could easily be thrown away when it had fulfilled its end, so that it was worth while letting young Arimbaldo have his way. No prevision of the tragedy that was to come, troubled the spirit of the great brigand. He would no doubt have laughed at the suggestion, that his young brother's eloquent demagogue, the bel dicitore, a character always disdained of fighting men, could do him, with all his martial followers behind him, and his money in the bank, any harm. The first thing that Rienzi did we are told, was to clothe himself gloriously in scarlet, furred with minever and embroidered with gold, in which garb he appeared before the Legate who had heretofore known him only in a sober suit of ordinary cloth--accompanied by the two brothers of Moreale and a train of attendants. There had been a report of more disorder than usual in Rome, a condition of things with which a recently appointed Senator, appointed as a stranger to keep the factions in order, was quite unable to cope: and there was therefore a certain reason in the request, when the Tribune in all his new finery, came into the presence of the Legate, although he asked no less than to be made Senator, undertaking, at the same time, to secure the peace of the turbulent city. The biographer gives a vivid picture of Rienzi in his sudden revival. "Splendidly he displayed himself with his scarlet hood on his shoulders, and scarlet mantle adorned with various furs. He moved his head back and forward, raising himself on his toes, as who would say 'Who am I?--I, who may I be?'" The Legate as usual was "stupefied" by this splendid apparition, but gave serious ear to his request, no doubt knowing the reality of his pretensions so far as the Roman people were concerned. He finally agreed to do what was required of him, no doubt like Fra Moreale, confident that the instrument, especially being so vain and slight a man as this, could easily be got rid of when he had served his turn. Accordingly, with all the strength he could muster--a troop of 250 free lances, Germans and Burgundians, the same number of infantry from Tuscany, with fifty young men of good families in Perugia--a very tolerable army for the time--and the two young Provençals, along with other youths to whom he had promised various offices, the new Senator set out for Rome. He was now a legal official, with all the strength of the Pope and constituted authority behind him; not a penny of money it is true from the Legate, and only those four thousand florins in his treasury: but with all the taxes and offerings in Rome in front of him, and the highest promise of success. It was a very different beginning from that of seven years ago, when young, penniless, disinterested, with no grandeur to keep up, and no soldiers to pay, he had been borne by the shouting populace to the Capitol to an unlimited and impossible empire. He was now a sober man, experienced in the world, forty, and trained by the intercourse of courts, in other ways than those of his youth. He had now been taught how to scheme and plot, to cajole and flatter, to play one party against another, and change his plans to suit his circumstances. So far as we know, he had no motive that could be called bad, except that of achieving the splendour he loved, and surrounding himself with the paraphernalia of greatness. The devil surely never before used so small a bribe to corrupt a nature full of so many fine things. He meant to establish the Buono Stato, probably as sincerely as of old. He had learned that he could not put forth the same unlimited pretensions. The making of emperors and sway of the world had to be resigned; but there is no evidence that he did not mean to carry out in his new reign the high designs for his city, and for the peace and prosperity of the surrounding country, which he had so triumphantly succeeded in doing for that one happy and triumphant moment in his youth. [Illustration: TOMB OF CECILIA METELLA] CHAPTER VI. THE END OF THE TRAGEDY. It was in the beginning of August 1354 that Rienzi returned to Rome. Great preparations had been made for his reception. The municipal guards, with all the cavalry that were in Rome, went out as far as Monte Mario to meet him, with branches of olive in their hands, "in sign of victory and peace. The people were as joyful as if he had been Scipio Africanus," our biographer says. He came in by the gate of the Castello, near St. Angelo, and went thence direct to the centre of the city, through streets adorned with triumphal arches, hung with tapestry, resounding with acclamations. "Great was the delight and fervour of the people. With all these honours they led him to the Palazzo of the Capitol. There he made them a beautiful and eloquent speech, in which he said that for seven years he had been absent from his house, like Nebuchadnezzar; but by the power of God he had returned to his seat and was Senator by the appointment of the Pope. He added that he meant to rectify everything and raise up the condition of Rome. The rejoicing of the Romans was as great as was that of the Jews when Jesus Christ entered Jerusalem riding upon an ass. They all honoured him, hanging out draperies and olive branches, and singing 'Blessed is he that cometh.' When all was over they returned to their homes and left him alone with his followers in the Piazza. No one offered him so much as a poor repast. The following day Cola di Rienzi received several ambassadors from the surrounding country. Deh! how well he answered. He gave replies and promises on every side. The barons remained on the watch, taking no part. The tumult of the triumph was great. Never had there been so much pomp. The infantry lined the streets. It seemed as if he meant to govern in the way of the tyrants. Most of the goods he had forfeited were restored to him. He sent out letters to all the States to declare his happy return, and he desired that every one should prepare for the Buono Stato. This man was greatly changed from his former ways. It had been his habit to be sober, temperate, abstinent. Now he became an excessive drinker, and consumed much wine. And he became large and gross in his person. He had a paunch like a tun, triumphal, like an Abbate Asinico. He was full of flesh, red, with a long beard. His countenance was changed, his eyes were as if they were inflamed--sometimes they were red as blood." This uncompromising picture of a man whom adversity had not improved but deteriorated, is very broad and coarse with those personalities which the mob loves. Yet his biographer does not seem to have been hostile to Rienzi. He goes on to describe how the new senator on the fourth day after his arrival sent a summons to all the barons to present themselves before him, and among others he summoned Stefanello Colonna who had been a child at the time of the dreadful rout of San Lorenzo, but was now head of the house, his noble old heart-broken grandfather being by this time happily dead. It was scarcely likely that the third Stefano should receive that summons in friendship. He seized the two messengers and threw them into prison, then after a time had the teeth of one drawn, an insulting infliction, and despatched the other to Rome to demand a ransom for them: following this up by a great raid upon the surrounding country, in which his lightly armed and flying forces "lifted" the cattle of the Romans as might have been done by the emissaries of a Highland chief. Rienzi seems to have rushed to arms, collecting a great miscellaneous gathering, "some armed, some without arms, according as time permitted" to recover the cattle. But they were misled by an artifice of the most transparent description, and stumbled on as far as Tivoli without finding any opponent. Here he was stopped by the mercenaries clamouring for their pay, which he adroitly obtained from the two young commanders, Arimbaldo and Bettrom, by representing to them that when such a difficulty arose in classical times it was met by the chief citizens who immediately subscribed what was necessary. The apparently simple-minded young men (Bettrom or Bertram having apparently got over his ill-temper) gave him 500 florins each, and so the trouble was got over for the moment, and the march towards Palestrina was resumed. But the expedition was quite futile, neither Rienzi nor the young men whom he had placed at the head of affairs knowing much about the science of war. There were dissensions in the camp, the men of Velletri having a feud with those of Tivoli; and the picture which the biographer affords us of the leaders looking on, seeing a train of cattle and provision waggons entering the town which they were by way of besieging, and inquiring innocently what it was, gives the most vivid impression of the ignorance and helplessness which reigned in the attacking party: while Stefanello Colonna, to the manner born, surrounded by old warriors and fighting for his life, defended his old towers with skill as well as desperation. While the Romans thus lost their chances of victory and occupied themselves with that destruction of the surrounding country, which was the first word of warfare in those days--the peasants and the villages always suffering, whoever might escape--there was news brought to Rienzi's camp of the arrival in Rome of the terrible Fra Moreale himself, who had arrived in all confidence, with but a small party in his train, in the city for which his brothers were fighting and in which his money formed the only treasury of war. He was a bold man and used to danger; but it did not seem that any idea of danger had occurred to him. There had been whispers among the mercenaries that the great Captain entertained no amiable feelings towards the Senator who had beguiled his young brothers into this dubious warfare: and this report would seem to have come to Rienzi's ears: but that Fra Moreale stood in any danger from Rienzi does not seem to have occurred to any spectator. One pauses here with a wondering inquiry what were his motives at this crisis of his life. Were they simply those of the ordinary and vulgar villain, "Let us kill him that the inheritance may be ours"?--was he terrified by the prospect of the inquiries which the experienced man of war would certainly make as to the manner in which his brothers had been treated by the leader who had attained such absolute power over them? or is it possible that the patriotism, the enthusiasm for Italy, the high regard for the common weal which had once existed in the bosom of Cola di Rienzi flashed up now in his mind, in one last and tremendous flame of righteous wrath? No one perhaps so dangerous to the permanent freedom and well-being of Italy existed as this Provençal with his great army, which held allegiance to no leader but himself--without country, without creed or scruple--which he led about at his pleasure, flinging it now into one, now into the other scale. The Grande Compagnia was the terror of the whole Continent. Except that it was certain to bring disaster wherever it went, its movements were never to be calculated upon. Whatever fluctuations there might be in state or city, this roving army was always on the side of evil; it lived by fighting and disaster alone; and to drive it out of the country, out of the world if possible, would have been the most true and noble act of deliverance which could have been accomplished. Was this the purpose that flashed into Rienzi's eyes when he heard that the head of this terror, the great brigand chief and captain, had trusted himself within the walls of Rome? With the philosophy of compromise which rules among us, and which forbids us to allow an uncomplicated motive in any man, we dare hardly say or even surmise that this was so; but we may allow some room for the mingled motives which are the pet theory of our age, and yet believe that something perhaps of this nobler impulse was in the mind of the Roman Senator, who, notwithstanding his decadence and his downfall, was still the same man who by sheer enthusiasm and generous wrath, without a blow struck, had once driven its petty tyrants out of the city. Whatever may be the judgment of the reader in this respect, it is clear that Rienzi dropped the siege of Palestrina when he heard of Fra Moreale's arrival, as a dog drops a bone or an infant his toys, and hastened to Rome; while his army melted away as was usual in such wars, each band to its own country. Eight days had been passed before Palestrina, and the country round was completely devastated: but no effectual advantage had been gained when this sudden change of purpose took place. As soon as Rienzi arrived in Rome he caused Fra Moreale to be arrested, and placed him with his brothers in the prison of the Capitol, to the great astonishment of all; but especially to the surprise of the great Captain, who thought it at first a mere expedient for extorting money, and comforted by this explanation the unfortunate brothers for whose sake he had placed himself in the snare. "Do not trouble yourselves," he said, "let me manage this affair. He shall have ten thousand, twenty thousand florins, money and people as much as he pleases." Then answered the brothers, "Deh! do so, in the name of God." They perhaps knew their Rienzi by this time, young as they were, and foolish as they had been, better than their elder and superior. And no doubt Rienzi might have made excellent terms for himself, perhaps even for Rome; but he does not seem to have entertained such an idea for a moment. When the Tribune set his foot within the gates of the city the Condottiere's fate was sealed. The biographer gives us a most curious picture of the agitation and surprise of this man in face of his fate. When he was brought to the torture (_menato a lo tormento_) he cried out in a consternation which is wild with foregone conclusions. "I told you what your rustic villain was," he exclaimed, as if still carrying on that discussion with the foolish young brothers. "He is going to put me to the torment! Does he not know that I am a knight? Was there ever such a clown?" Thus storming, astonished, incredulous of such a possibility, yet eager to say that he had foreseen it, the dismayed Captain was _alzato_, pulled up presumably by his hands as was one manner of torture, all the time murmuring and crying in his beard, half-mad and incoherent in the unexpected catastrophe. "I am Captain of the Great Company," he cried; "and being a knight I ought to be honoured. I have put the cities of Tuscany to ransom. I have laid taxes on them. I have overthrown principalities and taken the people captive." While he babbled thus in his first agony of astonishment the shadow of death closed upon Moreale, and the character of his utterances changed. He began to perceive that it was all real, and that Rienzi had now gone too far to be won by money or promises. When he was taken back to the prison which his brothers shared he told them with more dignity, that he knew he was about to die. "Gentle brothers, be not afraid," he said. "You are young; you have not felt misfortune. You shall not die, but I shall die. My life has always been full of trouble." (He was a man of sentiment, and a poet in his way, as well as a soldier of fortune.) "It was a trouble to me to live, of death I have no fear. I am glad to die where died the blessed St. Peter and St. Paul. This misadventure is thy fault, Arimbaldo; it is you who have led me into this labyrinth; but do not blame yourself or mourn for me, for I die willingly. I am a man: I have been betrayed like other men. By heaven, I was deceived! But God will have mercy upon me, I have no doubt, because I came here with a good intention." These piteous words, full to the last of astonishment, form a sort of soliloquy which runs on, broken, to the very foot of the Lion upon the great stairs, where he was led to die, amid the stormy ringing of the great bell and rushing of the people, half exultant and half terrified, who came from all quarters to see this great and terrible act of that justice to which the city in her first fervour had pledged herself. "Oh, Romans, are ye consenting to my death?" he cried. "I never did you harm; but because of your poverty and my wealth I must die." The chronicler goes on reporting the last words with fascination, as if he could not refrain. There is a wildness in them, of wonder and amazement, to the last moment. "I am not well placed," he murmured, _non sto bene_, evidently meaning, I am not properly placed for the blow: as he seems to have changed his position several times, kneeling down and rising again. He then kissed the knife and said, "God save thee, holy justice," and making another round knelt down again. The narrative is full of life and pity; the great soldier all bewildered, his brain failing, overwhelmed with dolorous surprise, seeking the right spot to die in. "This excellent man (_honestis probisque viris_, in the Latin version), Fra Moreale, whose fame is in all Italy for strength and glory, was buried in the Church of the Ara Coeli," says our chronicler. His execution took place on the spot where the Lion still stands on the left hand of the great stairs. There Fra Moreale wandered in his distraction to find a comfortable place for the last blow. The association is grim enough, and others yet more appalling were soon to gather there. This perhaps was the only step of his life in which Rienzi had the approbation of all. The Pope displayed his approval in the most practical way by confiscating all Fra Moreale's wealth, of which 60,000 gold florins were distributed among those who had suffered by him. The funds which he had in various cities were also seized, though we are told that of those in Rome Rienzi had but a small part, a certain notary having managed, by what means we are not told, to secure the larger sum. By the interposition of the Legate, the foolish Arimbaldo, whom Rienzi's fair words had so bitterly deceived, was discharged from his prison and permitted to leave Rome, but the younger brother Bettrom, or Bertram, who, so far as we see, was never a partisan of Rienzi, was left behind; and though his presence is noted at another tragic moment, we do not hear what became of him eventually. With the money he received Rienzi made haste to pay his soldiers and to renew the war. He was so fortunate as to secure the services of a noble and valiant captain, of whom the free lances declared that they had never served under so brave a man: and whose name is recorded as Riccardo Imprennante degli Annibaldi--Richard the enterprising, perhaps--and the war was pursued with vigour under him. Within Rome things did not go quite so well. Rienzi had to explain his conduct in respect to Fra Moreale to his own councillors. "Sirs," he said, "do not be disturbed by the death of this man; he was the worst man in the world. He has robbed churches and towns; he has murdered both men and women; two thousand depraved women followed him about. He came to disturb our state, not to help it, meaning to make himself the lord of it. And this is why we have condemned that false man. His money, his horses, and his arms we shall take for our soldiers." We scarcely see the eloquence for which Rienzi was famed in these succinct and staccato sentences in which his biographer reports him; but this was our chronicler's own style, and they are at least vigorous and to the point. "By these words the Romans were partly quieted," we are told, and the course of the history went on. The siege of Palestrina went well, and garrisons were placed in several of the surrounding towns, while Rienzi held the control of everything in his hands. Some of his troops withdrew from his service, probably because of Fra Moreale; but others came--archers in great numbers, and three hundred horsemen. "He maintained his place at the Capitol in order to provide for everything. Many were the cares. He had to procure money to pay the soldiers. He restricted himself in every expense; every penny was for the army. Such a man was never seen; alone he bore the cares of all the Romans. He stood in the Capitol arranging that which the leaders in their places afterwards carried out. He gave the orders and settled everything, and it was done--the closing of the roads, the times of attack, the taking of men and spies. It was never ending. His officers were neither slow nor cold, but no one did much except the hero Riccardo, who night and day weakened the Colonnese. Stefanello and his Colonnas, and Palestrina consumed away. The war was coming to a good end." To do all this, however, the money of Moreale was not enough. Rienzi had to impose a tax upon wine, and to raise that upon salt, which the citizens resented. Everything was for the soldiers. His own expenses were much restricted, and he seemed to expect that the citizens would follow his example. One of them, a certain Pandolfuccio di Guido, Rienzi seized and beheaded without any apparent reason. He was said to have desired to make himself lord over the people, the chronicler says. This arbitrary step seems to have caused great alarm. "The Romans were like sheep, and they were afraid of the Tribune as of a demon." [Illustration: ANCIENT, MEDIÆVAL, AND MODERN ROME. _To face page_ 502.] By this time Rienzi once more began to show signs of that confusion of mind which we call losing the head--a confusion of irritation and changeableness, the resolution of to-day giving place to another to-morrow--and the giddiness of approaching downfall seized upon every faculty. As had happened on the former occasion, this dizziness of doom caught him when all was going well. He displaced his Captain, who was carrying on the siege of Palestrina with so much vigour and success, for no apparent reason, and appointed other leaders whose names even the biographer does not think it worth while to give. The National Guard--if we may so call them--fifty for each Rione--who were the sole guardians of Rome, were kept without pay, while every penny that could be squeezed from the people was sent to the army. These things raised each a new enemy to the Tribune, the Senator, once so beloved, who now for the second time, and more completely than before, had proved himself incapable of the task which he had taken upon him. It was on the 1st of August, 1354, that he had entered Rome with a rejoicing escort of all its cavalry and principal inhabitants--with waving flags and olive branches, and a throng that filled all the streets, the Popolo itself shouting and acclaiming--and had been led to the Piazza of the Ara Coeli, at the foot of the great stairs of the Capitol. On the last day of that month, a sinister and tragic assembly, gathered together by the sound of the great bell, thronged once more to the foot of these stairs, to see the great soldier, the robber knight, the terror of Italy, executed. And it was still only September, the _Vita_ says--though other accounts throw the catastrophe a month later--when the last day of Rienzi himself came. We know nothing of the immediate causes of the rising, nor who were its leaders. But Rome was in so parlous a state, seething with so many volcanic elements, that it must have been impossible to predict from morning to morning what might happen. What did happen looks like a sudden outburst, spontaneous and unpremeditated; but no doubt, from various circumstances which followed, the Colonna had a hand in it, who ever since the day of San Lorenzo had been Cola's bitterest enemies. This is how his biographer tells the tale: "It was the month of September, the eighth day. In the morning Cola di Rienzi lay in his bed, having washed his face with Greek wine (no doubt a reference to his supposed habits). Suddenly voices were heard shouting _Viva lo Popolo! Viva lo Popolo!_ At this sound the people in the streets began to run here and there. The sound increased, the crowd grew. At the cross in the market they were joined by armed men who came from St. Angelo and the Ripa, and from the Colonna quarter and the Trevi. As they joined, their cry was changed into this, Death to the traitor, Cola di Rienzi, death! Among them appeared the youths who had been put in his lists for the conscription. They rushed towards the palace of the Capitol with an innumerable throng of men, women and children, throwing stones, making a great clamour, encircling the palace on every side before and behind, and shouting, 'Death to the traitor who has inflicted the taxes! Death to him!' Terrible was the fury of them. The Tribune made no defence against them. He did not sound the tocsin. He said to himself, 'They cry _Viva lo Popolo_, and so do we. We are here to exalt the people. I have written to my soldiers. My letter of confirmation has come from the Pope. All that is wanted is to publish it in the Council.' But when he saw at the last that the thing was turning badly he began to be alarmed, especially as he perceived that he was abandoned by every living soul of those who usually occupied the Capitol. Judges, notaries, guards--all had fled to save their own skin. Only three persons remained with him--one of whom was Locciolo Pelliciaro, his kinsman." This was the terrible awaking of the doomed man--without preparation, without the sound of a bell, or any of the usual warnings, roused from his day-dream of idle thoughts, his Greek wine, the indulgences to which he had accustomed himself, in his vain self-confidence. He had no home on the heights of that Capitol to which he had returned with such triumph. If his son Lorenzo was dead or living we do not hear. His wife had entered one of the convents of the Poor Clares, when he was wandering in the Apennines, and was far from him. There is not a word of any one who loved him, unless it might chance to be the poor relation who stood by him, Locciolo, the furrier, perhaps kept about him to look after his robes of minever, the royal fur. The cry that now surged round the ill-secured and half-ruinous palace would seem to have been indistinguishable to him, even when the hoarse roar came so near, like the dashing of a horrible wave round the walls: _Viva lo Popolo!_ that was one thing. With his _belle parole_ he could have easily turned that to his advantage, shouting it too. What else was he there for but to glorify the people? But the terrible thunder of sound took another tone, a longer cry, requiring a deeper breath--_Death to the traitor_:--these are not words a man can long mistake. Something had to be done--he knew not what. In that equality of misery which makes a man acquainted with such strange bedfellows, the Senator turned to the three humble retainers who trembled round him, and asked their advice. "By my faith, the thing cannot go like this," he said. It would appear that some one advised him to face the crowd: for he dressed himself in his costume as a knight, took the banner of the people in his hand, and went out upon the balcony: "He extended his hand, making a sign that all were to be silent, and that he was about to speak. Without doubt if they had listened to him he would have broken their will and changed their opinion. But the Romans would not listen; they were as swine; they threw stones and aimed arrows at him, and some ran with fire to set light to the door. So many were the arrows shot at him that he could not remain on the balcony. Then he took the Gonfalone and spread out the standard, and with both his hands pointed to the letters of gold, the arms of the citizens of Rome--almost as if he said 'You will not let me speak; but I am a citizen and a man of the people like you. I love you; and if you kill me, you will kill yourselves who are Romans.' But he could not continue in this position, for the people, without intellect, grew worse and worse. 'Death to the traitor,' they cried." A great confusion was in the mind of the unfortunate Tribune. He could no longer keep his place in the balcony, and the rioters had set fire to the great door below, which began to burn. If he escaped into the room above, it was the prison of Bertram of Narbonne, the brother of Moreale, who would have killed him. In this dreadful strait Rienzi had himself let down by sheets knotted together into the court behind, encircled by the walls of the prison. Even here treachery pursued him, for Locciolo, his kinsman, ran out to the balcony, and with signs and cries informed the crowd that he had gone away behind, and was escaping by the other side. He it was, says the chronicler, who killed Rienzi; for he first aided him in his descent and then betrayed him. For one desperate moment of indecision the fallen Tribune held a last discussion with himself in the court of the prison. Should he still go forth in his knight's dress, armed and with his sword in his hand, and die there with dignity, "like a magnificent person," in the sight of all men? But life was still sweet. He threw off his surcoat, cut his beard and begrimed his face--then going into the porter's lodge, he found a peasant's coat which he put on, and seizing a covering from the bed, threw it over him, as if the pillage of the Palazzo had begun, and sallied forth. He struggled through the burning as best he could, and came through it untouched by the fire, speaking like a countryman, and crying "Up! Up! _a glui, traditore!_ As he passed the last door one of the crowd accosted him roughly, and pushed back the article on his head, which would seem to have been a _duvet_, or heavy quilt: upon which the splendour of the bracelet he wore on his wrist became visible, and he was recognised. He was immediately seized, not with any violence at first, and taken down the great stair to the foot of the Lion, where the sentences were usually read. When he reached that spot, "a silence was made" (_fo fatto uno silentio_). "No man," says the chronicler, "showed any desire to touch him. He stood there for about an hour, his beard cut, his face black like a furnace-man, in a tunic of green silk, and yellow hose like a baron." In the silence, as he stood there, during that awful hour, he turned his head from side to side, "looking here and there." He does not seem to have made any attempt to speak, but bewildered in the collapse of his being, pitifully contemplated the horrible crowd, glaring at him, no man daring to strike the first blow. At last a follower of his own, one of the leaders of the mob, made a thrust with his sword--and immediately a dozen others followed. He died at the first stroke, his biographer tells us, and felt no pain. The whole dreadful scene passed in silence--"not a word was said," the piteous, eager head, looking here and there, fell, and all was over. And the roar of the dreadful crowd burst forth again. The still more horrible details that follow need not be here given. The unfortunate had grown fat in the luxury of these latter days. _Grasso era horriblimente. Bianco come latte ensanguinato_, says the chronicler: and again he places before us, as at San Lorenzo seven years before, the white figure lying on the pavement, the red of the blood. It was dragged along the streets to the Colonna quarter; it was hung up to a balcony; finally the headless body, after all these dishonours, was taken to an open place before the Mausoleum of Augustus, and burned by the Jews. Why the Jews took this share of the carnival of blood we are not told. It had never been said that Rienzi was hard upon them; but no doubt at a period so penniless they must have had their full share of the taxes and payments exacted from all. There is no moral even, to this tale, except the well-worn moral of the fickleness of the populace who acclaim a leader one moment, and kill him the next; but that is a commonplace and a worn-out one. If there were ever many men likely to sin in that way, it might be a lesson to the enthusiast thrusting an inexperienced hand into the web of fate, to confuse the threads with which the destiny of a country is wrought, without knowing either the pattern or the meaning of the weaving. He began with what we have every reason for believing to have been a noble and generous impulse to save his people. But his soul was not capable of that high emprise. He had the greatest and most immediate success ever given to a popular leader. The power to change, to mend, to make over again, to vindicate and to carry out his ideal was given him in the fullest measure. For a time it seemed that there was nothing in the world that Cola di Rienzi, the son of the wine-shop, the child of the people, might not do. But then he fell; the promise faded into dead ashes, the impulse which was inspiration breathed out and died away. Inspiration was all he had, neither knowledge nor the noble sense and understanding which might have been a substitute for it; and when the thin fire blazed up like the crackling of thorns under a pot, it blazed away again and left nothing behind. Had he perished at the end of his first reign, had he been slain at the foot of the Capitol, as Petrarch would have had him, his story would have been a perfect tragedy, and we might have been permitted to make a hero of the young patriot, standing alone, in an age to which patriotism was unknown. But the postscript of his second effort destroys the epic. It is all miserable self-seeking, all squalid, the story of any beggar on horseback, any vulgar adventurer. Yet the silent hour when he stood at the foot of the great stairs, the horrible mob silent before him, bridled by that mute and awful despair, incapable of striking the final blow, is one of the most intense moments of human tragedy. A large overgrown man, with blackened face and the rough remnants of a beard, half dressed, speechless, his head turning here and there--And yet no one dared to take that step, to thrust that eager sword, for nearly an hour. Perhaps it was only a minute, which would be less unaccountable, feeling like an hour to every looker on who was there and stood by. No one in all the course of modern Roman history has so illustrated the streets and ways of Rome and set its excited throngs in evidence, and made the great bell sound in our very ears, a _stuormo_, and disclosed the noise of the rabble and the rule of the nobles, and the finery of the gallants, with so real and tangible an effect. The episode is a short one. The two periods of Rienzi's power put together scarcely amount to eight months; but there are few chapters in that history which is always so turbulent, yet lacks so much the charm of personal story and adventure, so picturesque and complete. [Illustration: LETTER WRITER.] BOOK IV. THE POPES WHO MADE THE CITY. [Illustration: PIAZZA DEL POPOLO.] BOOK IV. THE POPES WHO MADE THE CITY. CHAPTER I. MARTIN V.--EUGENIUS IV.--NICOLAS V. It is strange to leave the history of Rome at the climax to which the ablest and strongest of its modern masters had brought it, when it was the home of the highest ambition, and the loftiest claims in the world, the acknowledged head of one of the two powers which divided that world between them, and claiming a supreme visionary authority over the other also; and to take up that story again (after such a romantic episode as we have just discussed) when its rulers had become but the first among the fighting principalities of Italy, men of a hundred ambitions, not one of which was spiritual, carrying on their visionary sway as heads of the Church as a matter of routine merely, but reserving all their real life and energy for the perpetual internecine warfare that had been going on for generations, and the security of their personal possessions. From Innocent III. to such a man as Eugenius IV., still and always fighting, mixed up with all the struggles of the Continent, hiring Condottieri, marshalling troops, with his whole soul in the warfare, so continuous, so petty, even so bloodless so far as the actual armies were concerned--which never for a moment ceased in Italy: is a change incalculable. Let us judge the great Gregory and the great Innocent as we may, their aim and the purpose of their lives were among the greatest that have ever been conceived by man, perhaps the highest ideal ever formed, though like all high ideals impossible, so long as men are as we know them, and those who choose them are as helpless in the matter of selecting and securing the best as their forefathers were. But to set up that tribunal on earth--that shadow and representation of the great White Throne hereafter to be established in the skies--in order to judge righteous judgment, to redress wrongs, to neutralise the sway of might over right--let it fail ever so completely, is at least a great conception, the noblest plan at which human hands can work. We have endeavoured to show how little it succeeded even in the strongest hands; but the failure was a greater thing than any lesser success--certainly a much greater thing than the desire to be first in that shouting crowd of Italian princedoms and commonwealths, to pit Piccinino and Carmagnola against each other, to set your honour on the stake of an ironbound band of troopers deploying upon a harmless field, in wars which would have been not much more important than tournaments; if it had not been for the ruin and murder and devastation of the helpless peasants and the smitten country on either side. But the pettier rôle was one of which men tired, as much as they did of that perpetual strain of the greater which required an amount of strength and concentration of mind not given to many, such as could not (and this was the great defect of the plan) be secured for a line of Popes any more than for any other line of men. The Popes who would have ruled the world failed, and gave up that forlorn hope; they were opposed by all the powers of earth, they were worn out by fictions of anti-Popes, and by real and continual personal sufferings for their ideal:--and they did not even secure at any time the sympathy of the world. But when among the vain line of Pontiffs who not for infamy and not for glory, but _per se_ lived, and flitted, a wavering file of figures meaning little, across the surface of the world--there arose a Pope here and there, forming into a short succession as the purpose grew, who took up consciously the aim of making Rome--not Rome Imperial nor yet Rome Papal, which were each a natural power on the earth and Head of nations, but Rome the City--the home of art, the shrine of letters, in another way and with a smaller meaning, yet still meaning something, the centre of the world--their work and position have always attracted a great deal of sympathy, and gained at once the admiration of all men. English literature has not done much justice to the greater Popes. Mr. Bowden's life of Gregory VII. is the only work of any importance specially devoted to that great ruler. Gregory the Great to whom England owes so much, and Innocent III., who was also, though in no very favourable way, mixed up in her affairs, have tempted no English historian to the labours of a biography. But Leo X. has had a very different fate: and even the Borgias, the worst of Papal houses, have a complete literature of their own. The difference is curious. It is perhaps by this survival of the unfittest, so general in literature, that English distrust and prejudice have been so crystallised, and that to the humbler reader the word Pope remains the synonym of a proud and despotic priest, sometimes Inquisitor and sometimes Indulger--often corrupt, luxurious, or tyrannical--a ruler whose government is inevitably weak yet cruel. The reason of this strange preference must be that the love of art is more general and strong than the love of history; or rather that a decorative and tangible external object, something to see and to admire, is more than all theories of government or morals. The period of the Renaissance is full of horror and impurity, perhaps the least desirable of all ages on which to dwell. But art has given it an importance to which it has no other right. Curious it is also to find that of all the cities of Italy, Rome has the least native right to be considered in the history of art. No great painter or sculptor, architect or even decorator, has arisen among the Roman people. Ancient Rome took her art from Greece. Modern Rome has sought hers over all Italy--from Florence, from the hills and valleys of Umbria, everywhere but in her own bosom. She has crowned poets, but, since the days of Virgil and Horace, neither of whom were Romans born, though more hers than any since, has produced none. All her glories have been imported. This of course is often the case with her Popes also. Pope Martin V., to whom may be given the first credit of the policy of rebuilding the city, was a native-born Roman; but Pope Eugenius IV., who took up its embellishment still more seriously, was a Venetian, bringing with him from the sea-margin the love of glowing colour and that "labour of an age in pilëd stones" which was so dear to those who built their palaces upon the waters. Nicolas was a Pisan, Pope Leo, who advanced the work so greatly, was a Florentine. But their common ambition was to make Rome a wonder and a glory that all men might flock to see. The tombs of the Apostles interested them less perhaps than most of their predecessors: but they were as strongly bent as any upon drawing pilgrims from the ends of the earth to see what art could do to make those tombs gorgeous: and built their own to be glories too, admired of all the world. These men have had a fuller reward than their great predecessors. Insomuch as the aim was smaller, it was more perfectly carried out; for though it is a great work to hang a dome like that of St. Peter's in the air, it is easier than to hold the hearts of kings in your hand, and decide the destiny of nations. The Popes who made the city have had better luck in every way than those who made the Papacy. Neither of them secured either the gratitude or even the consent of Rome herself to what was done for her. But nevertheless almost all that has kept up her fame in the world for, let us say, the last four hundred years, was their work. This period of the history of the great city began when Pope Martin V. concluded what has been called the schism of the West, and brought back the seat of the Papacy from Avignon, where it had been exiled, to Rome. We have seen something of the moral and economical state of the city during that interregnum. Its physical condition was yet more desolate and terrible. The city itself was little more than a heap of ruins. The little cluster of the inhabited town was as a nest of life in the centre of a vast ancient mass of building, all fallen into confusion and decay. No one cared for the old Forums, the palaces ravaged by many an invasion, burned and beaten down, and quarried out, by generations of men to whom the meaning and the memory of their founders was as nothing, and themselves only so many waste places, or so much available material for the uses of the vulgar day. Some one suggests that the early Church took pleasure in showing how entirely shattered was the ancient framework, and how little the ancient gods had been able to do for the preservation of their temples; and with that intention gave them over to desolation and the careless hands of the spoiler. We think that men are much more often swayed by immediate necessities than by any elaborate motive of this description. The ruins were exceedingly handy--every nation in its turn has found such ruins to be so. To get the material for your wall, without paying anything for it, already at your hand, hewn and prepared as nobody then working could do it--what a wonderful simplification of labour! Everybody took advantage of it, small and great. Then, when you wanted to build a strong tower or fortress to intimidate your neighbours, what an admirable foundation were those old buildings, founded as on the very kernel and central rock of the earth! For many centuries no one attempted to fill up those great gaps within the city walls, in which vines flourished and gardens grew, none the worse for the underlying stones that covered themselves thickly with weeds and flowers by Nature's lavish assistance. Buildings of various kinds, adapted to the necessities of the moment, grew up by nature in all kinds of places, a church sometimes placed in the very lap of an ancient temple. Indeed the churches were everywhere, some of them humble enough, many of great antique dignity and beauty, almost all preserving the form of the basilica, the place of meeting where everything was open and clear for the holding of assemblies and delivery of addresses, not dim and mysterious as for sacrifices of faith. [Illustration: MODERN ROME: SHELLEY'S TOMB. _To face page_ 518.] So entirely was this state of affairs accepted, that there is more talk of repairing than of building in the chronicles; at all times of the Church, each pious Pope undertook some work of the kind, mending a decaying chapel or building up a broken wall; but we hear of few buildings of any importance, even when the era of the builders first began. Works of reparation must have been necessary to some extent after every burning or fight. Probably the scuffles in the streets did little harm, but when such a terrible inundation took place as that of the Normans, and still worse the Saracens, who followed Robert Guiscard in the time of Gregory VII., it must have been the work of a generation to patch up the remnants of the place so as to make it in the rudest way habitable again. It was no doubt in one of these great emergencies that the ancient palaces, most durable of all buildings, were seized by the people, and converted each into a species of rabbit-warren, foul and swarming. It does not appear however that any plan of restoring the city to its original grandeur, or indeed to any satisfactory reconstruction at all, was thought of for centuries. In the extreme commotion of affairs, and the long struggle of the Popes with the Emperors, there was neither leisure nor means for any great scheme of this kind, nor much thought of the material framework of the city, while every mind was bent upon establishing its moral position and lofty standing ground among the nations. As much as was indispensable would be done: but in these days the requirements of the people in respect to their lodging were few: as indeed they still are to an extraordinary extent in Italy, where life is so much carried on out of doors. It is evident, however, that Rome the city had never yet become the object of any man's life or ambition, or that a thought of anything beyond what was needful for actual use, for shelter or defence, had entered into the thoughts of its masters when the Papal Court returned from Avignon. The churches alone were cared for now and then, and decorated whenever possible with rich hangings, with marbles and ancient columns generally taken from classical buildings, sometimes even from churches of an older date; but even so late as the time of Petrarch so important a building as St. John Lateran, the Papal church _par excellence_, lay roofless and half ruined, in such a state that it was impossible to say mass in it. The poet describes Rome itself, when, after a long walk amid all the relics of the classical ages, his friend and he sat down to rest upon the ruined arches of the Baths of Diocletian, and gazed upon the city at their feet--"the spectacle of these grand ruins." "If she once began to recognise of herself the low estate in which she lies, Rome would make her own resurrection," he says with a confidence but poorly merited by the factious and restless city. But Rome, torn asunder by the feuds of Colonna and Orsini, seizing every occasion to do battle with her Pope, only faithful to him in his absence, of which she complained to heaven and earth--was little likely to exert herself to any such end. This was the unfortunate plight in which Rome lay when Martin V., a Roman of the house of Colonna, came back in the year 1421, with all the treasures of art acquired by the Popes during their stay in France, to the shrine of the Apostles. The historian Platina, whose records are so full of life when they approach the period of which he had the knowledge of a contemporary, gives a wonderful description of her. "He found Rome," says the biographer of the Popes, "in such ruin that it bore no longer the aspect of a city but rather of a desert. Everything was on the way to complete destruction. The churches were in ruins, the country abandoned, the streets in evil state, and an extreme penury reigned everywhere. In fact it had no appearance of a city or a sign of civilisation. The good Pontiff, moved by the sight of such calamity, gave his mind to the work of adorning and embellishing the city, and reforming the corrupt ways into which it had fallen, which in a short time were so improved by his care that not only Supreme Pontiff but father of his country he was called by all. He rebuilt the portico of St. Peter's which had been falling into ruins, and completed the mosaic work of the pavement of the Lateran which he covered with fine works, and began that beautiful picture which was made by Gentile, the excellent painter." He also repaired the palace of the twelve Apostles, so that it became habitable. The Cardinals in imitation of him executed similar works in the churches from which each took his title, and by this means the city began to recover decency and possible comfort at least, if as yet little of its ancient splendour. "As soon as Pope Martin arrived in Rome," says the chronicle, _Diarium Romanum_, of Infessura, "he began to administer justice, for Rome was very corrupt and full of thieves. He took thought for everything, and especially to those robbers who were outside the walls, and who robbed the poor pilgrims who came for the pardon of their sins to Rome." The painter above mentioned, and who suggests to us the name of a greater than he, would appear to have been Gentile da Fabriano, who seems to have been employed by the Pope at a regular yearly salary. These good deeds of Pope Martin are a little neutralised by the fact that he gave a formal permission to certain other of his workmen to take whatever marbles and stones might be wanted for the pavement of the Lateran, virtually wherever they happened to find them, but especially from ruined churches both within and outside of the city. Eugenius IV., who succeeded Pope Martin in the year 1431, was a man who loved above all things to "guerrare e murare"--to make war and to build--a splendid and noble Venetian, whose fine and commanding person fills one of his biographers, a certain Florentine bookseller and book-collector, called Vespasiano, with a rapture of admiration which becomes almost lyrical, in the midst of his simple and garrulous story. "He was tall in person, beautiful of countenance, slender and serious, and so venerable to behold that there was no one, by reason of the great authority that was in him, who could look him in the face. It happened one evening that an important personage went to speak with him, who stood with his head bowed, never raising his eyes, in such a way that the Pope perceived it and asked him why he so bowed his head. He answered quickly that the Pope had such an aspect by nature that none dared meet his eye. I myself recollect often to have seen the Pope with his Cardinals upon a balcony near the door of the cloisters of Sta Maria Novella (in Florence) when the Piazza de Sta Maria Novella was full of people, and not only the Piazza, but all the streets that led into it. And such was the devotion of the people that they stood entranced (_stupefatti_) to see him, not hearing any one who spoke, but turning every one towards the Pontiff: and when he began according to the custom of the Pope to say the _Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini_ the Piazza was full of weeping and cries, appealing to the mercy of God for the great devotion they bore towards his Holiness. It appeared indeed that this people saw in him not only the vicar of Christ on earth, but the reflection of His true Divinity. His Holiness showed such great devotion, and also all his Cardinals round him, who were all men of great authority, that veritably at that moment he appeared that which he represented." There is much refreshment to the soul in the biographies of Vespasiano, who was no more than a Florentine bookseller as we have said, greatly employed in collecting ancient manuscripts, which was the special taste of the time, with a hand in the formation of all the libraries then being established, and in consequence a considerable acquaintance with great personages, those at least who were patrons of the arts and had a literary turn. Pope Eugenius is not in ordinary history a highly attractive character, and the general records of the Papacy are not such as to allure the mind as with ready discovery of unknown friends. But the two Popes whom the old bookman chronicles, rise before us in the freshest colours, the first in stately serenity and austerity of mien, dazzling in his _aspetto di natura_, as Moses when he came from the presence of God--moving all hearts when he raised his voice in the prayers of the Church, every listener hanging on his breath, the crowd gazing at him overwhelmed as if upon Him whom the Pope represented, though no man dared face his penetrating eyes. It is a great thing for the most magnificent potentate to have such a biographer as our bookseller. Eugenius was as kind as he was splendid, according to Vespasiano. One day a poor gentleman reduced to want went to the Pope, appealing for charity "being in exile, poor, and _fuori della patria_," words which are more touching than their English synonyms, out of his country, banished from all his belongings: an evil which went to the very hearts of those who were themselves at any moment subject to that fate, and to whom _la patria_ meant an ungrateful fierce native city--never certain in its temper from one moment to another. The Pope sent for a purse full of florins, and bade the exile take from it as much as he wanted. "Felice, abashed, put in his hand timidly, when the Pope turned to him laughing and said, 'Put in your hand freely, I give it to you willingly.'" This being his disposition we need not wonder that Vespasian adds:--"He never had much supply of money in the house; according as he had it, quickly he expended it." Remembering what lies before us in history (but not in this broken record of men), soon to be filled with Borgias and such like, the reader would do well to sweeten his thoughts on the edge of the horrors of the Renaissance, with Vespasian's kind and humane tales. Platina takes up the story in a different tone. "Among other things Eugenius, in order that it might not seem that he thought of nothing but fighting (his wars were perpetual, _guerrare_ winning the day over _murare_; he built like Nehemiah with the sword in his other hand), canonized S. Nicola di Tolentino of the order of S. Augustine, who did many miracles. He built the portico which leads from the Church of the Lateran to the Sancta Sanctorum, and remade and enlarged the cloister inhabited by the priests, and completed the picture of the Church begun under Martin by Gentile. He was not easily moved by wrath, or personal offence, and never spoke evil of any man, neither by word of mouth nor hand of write. He was gracious to all the schools, specially to those of Rome, where he desired to see every kind of literature and doctrine flourish. He himself had little literature, but much knowledge, especially of history. He had a great love for monks, and was very generous to them, and was also a great lover of war, a thing which seems marvellous in a Pope. He was very faithful to the engagements he made--unless when he saw that it was more expedient to revoke a promise than to fulfil it." Martin and Eugenius were both busy and warlike men. They were involved in all the countless internal conflicts of Italy; they were confronted by many troubles in the Church, by the argumentative and persistent Council of Bâle, and an anti-Pope or two to increase their cares. The reign of Eugenius began by a flight from Rome with one attendant, from the mob who threatened his life. Nevertheless it was in these agitated days that the first thought of Rome rebuilt, as glorious as a bride, more beautiful than in her climax of classic splendour, began to enter into men's thoughts. [Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF TREVI. _To face page 526._] The reign of their immediate successor, the learned and magnificent Nicolas V., who was created Pope in 1447, was, however, the actual era of this new conception. It is not necessary, we are thankful to think, to enter here into any description of the Renaissance, that age so splendid in art, so horrible in history--when every vice seemed let loose on the earth, yet the evil demons so draped themselves in everything beautiful, that they often attained their most dangerous and terrible aspect, that of angels of light. The Renaissance has had more than its share in history; it has flooded the world with scandals of every kind, and such examples of depravity as are scarcely to be found in any other age; or perhaps it is that no other age has commanded the same contrasts and incongruities, the same picturesque accessories, the splendour and external grace, the swing of careless force and franchise, without restraint and without shame. To many minds these things themselves are enough to attract and to dazzle, and they have captivated many writers to whom the brilliant society, the triumphs of art, the ever shifting, ever glittering panorama with its startling succession of scenes, spectacles, splendours, and tragedies, have made the more serious and more worthy records of life appear sombre, and its nobler motives dull in comparison. When Thomas of Sarzana was born in Pisa--in a humble house of peasants who had no surname nor other distinction, but who managed to secure for him the education which was sufficiently easy in those days for boys destined to the priesthood--the age of the Renaissance was coming into full flower. Literature and learning, the pursuit of ancient manuscripts, the worship of Greece and the overwhelming influence of its language and masterpieces, were the inspiration of the age, so far as matters intellectual were concerned. To read and collate and copy was the special occupation of the literary class. If they attempted any original work, it was a commentary: and a Latin couplet, an epigram, was the highest effort of imagination which they permitted themselves. The day of Dante and Petrarch was over. No one cared to be _volgarizzato_--brought down in plain Italian to the knowledge of common men. The language of their literary traffic was Latin, the object of their adoration Greek. To read, and yet to read, and again to go on reading, was the occupation of every man who desired to make himself known in the narrow circles of literature; and a small attendant world of scribes was maintained in every learned household, and accompanied the path of every scholar. The world so far as its books went had gone back to a period in which gods and men were alike different from those of the existing generation; and the living age, disgusted with its own unsatisfactory conditions, attempted to gain dignity and beauty by pranking itself in the ill-adapted robes of a life totally different from its own. Between the classical ages and the Christian there must always be the great gulf fixed of this complete difference of sentiment and of atmosphere. And the wonderful contradiction was more marked than usual in Rome of a world devoted outside to the rites and ceremonies of religion, while dwelling in its intellectual sphere in the air of a region to which Christianity was unknown. The routine of devotion never relaxing--planned out for every hour of every day, calling for constant attention, constant performance, avowedly addressing itself not to the learned or wise, avowedly restricting itself in all those enjoyments of life which were the first and greatest of objects in the order of the ancient ages--yet carried on by votaries of the Muses, to whom Jove and Apollo were more attractive than any Christian ideal--must have made an unceasing and bewildering conflict in the minds of men. No doubt that conflict, and the evident certainty that one or the other must be wrong, along with the strong setting of that tide of fashion which is so hard to be resisted, towards the less exacting creed, had much to do with the fever of the time. Yet the curious equalising touch of common life, the established order whatever it may be, against which only one here and there ever successfully rebels, made the strange conjunction possible; and the final conflict abided its time. Such a man as Nicolas V. might indeed fill his palace with scholars and scribes, and put his greatest pride in his manuscripts: but the affairs of life around were too urgent to affect his own constitution as Pope and priest and man of his time. He bandied epigrams with his learned convives in his moments of leisure: but he had himself too much to do to fall into dilettante heathenism. Perhaps the manuscripts themselves, the glory of possessing them, the busy scribes all labouring for that high end of instructing the world: while courtiers never slow to catch the tone that pleased, celebrated their sovereign as the head of humane and liberal study as well as of the Church--may have been more to Nicolas than all his MSS. contained. He remained quite sincere in his mass, quite simple in his life, notwithstanding the influx of the heathen element: and most likely took no note in his much occupied career of the great distance that lay between. Nicolas V. was the first of those Pontiffs who are the pride of modern Rome--the men who, by a strange provision, or as it almost seems neglect of Providence, appear in the foremost places of the Church pre-occupied with secondary matters, when they ought to have been preparing for that great Revolution which, it was once fondly hoped, was to lay spiritual Rome in ruins, at the very moment when material Rome rose most gloriously from her ashes. But, notwithstanding that he was still troubled by that long-drawn-out Council of Bâle, it does not seem that any such shadow was in the mind of Nicolas. He stood calm in human unconsciousness between heathendom at his back, and the Reformation in front of him, going about his daily work thinking of nothing, as the majority of men even on the eve of the greatest of revolutions so constantly do. Nicolas was, like so many of the great Popes, a poor man's son, without a surname, Thomas of Sarzana taking his name from the village in which he was brought up. He had the good fortune, which in those days was so possible to a scholar, recommended originally by his learning alone, to rise from post to post in the household of bishop and Cardinal until he arrived at that of the Pope, where a man of real value was highly estimated, and where it was above all things important to have a steadfast and faithful envoy, one who could be trusted with the often delicate negotiations of the Holy See, and who would neither be daunted nor led astray by imperial caresses or the frowns of power. "He was very learned, _dottissimo_, in philosophy, and master of all the arts. There were few writers in Greek or in Latin of any kind that he had not read their works, and he had the whole of the Bible in his memory, and quoted from it continually. This intimate knowledge of the Holy Scriptures gave the greatest honour to his pontificate and the answers he was called upon to make." There were great hopes in those days of the reunion of the Greek Church with the Latin, an object much in the mind of all the greater Popes: to promote which happy possibility Pope Eugenius called a Council in Ferrara in 1438, which was also intended to confound the rebellious and heretical Council of Bâle, as well as to bring about, if possible, the desired union. The Emperor of the East was there in person, along with the patriarch and a large following; and it was in this assembly that Thomas of Sarzana, then secretary and counsellor of the Cardinal di Santa Croce--who had accompanied his Cardinal over _i monti_ on a mission to the King of France from which he had just returned--made himself known to Christendom as a fine debater and accomplished student. The question chiefly discussed in the Council of Ferrara was that which is formally called the Procession of the Holy Spirit, the doctrine which has always stood between the two Churches, and prevented mutual understanding. "In this council before the Pope, the Cardinals, and all the court of Rome, the Latins disputed daily with the Greeks against their error, which is that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father only not from the Son: the Latins, according to the true doctrine of the faith, maintaining that He proceeds from the Father and the Son. Every morning and every evening the most learned men in Italy took part in this discussion as well as many out of Italy, whom Pope Eugenius had called together. One in particular, from Negroponte, whose name was Niccolo Secondino: wonderful was it to hear what the said Niccolo did; for when the Greeks spoke and brought together arguments to prove their opinion, Niccolo Secondino explained everything in Latin _de verbo ad verbum_, so that it was a thing admirable to hear: and when the Latins spoke he expounded in Greek all that they answered to the arguments of the Greeks. In all these disputations Messer Tommaso held the part of the Latins, and was admired above all for his universal knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, and also of the doctors, ancient and modern, both Greek and Latin." [Illustration: ON THE PINCIO.] Messer Tommaso distinguished himself so much in this controversy that he was appointed by the Pope to confer with certain ambassadors from the unknown, Ethiopians, Indians, and "Jacobiti,"--were these the envoys of Prester John, that mysterious potentate? or were they Nestorians as some suggest? At all events they were Christians and persons of singularly austere life. The conference was carried on by means of an interpreter, "a certain Venetian who knew twenty languages." These three nations were so convinced by Tommaso, that they placed themselves under the authority of the Church, an incident which does not make any appearance in more dignified history. Even while these important matters of ecclesiastical business were going on, however, this rising churchman kept his eyes open as to every chance of a new, that is an old book, and would on various occasions turn away from his most distinguished visitors to talk apart with Messer Vespasiano, who once more is our best guide, about their mutual researches and good luck in the way of finding rare examples or making fine copies. "He never went out of Italy with his Cardinal on any mission that he did not bring back with him some new work not to be found in Italy." Indeed Messer Tommaso's knowledge was so well understood that there was no library formed on which his advice was not asked, and specially by Cosimo dei Medici, who begged his help as to what ought to be done for the formation of the Library of S. Marco in Florence--to which Tommaso responded by sending such instructions as never had been given before, how to make a library, and to keep it in the highest order, the regulations all written in his own hand. "Everything that he had," says Vespasian in the ardour of his admiration, "he spent on books. He used to say that if he had it in his power, the two things on which he would like to spend money would be in buying books and in building (_murare_); which things he did in his pontificate, both the one and the other." Alas! Messer Tommaso had not always money, which is a condition common to collectors; in which case Vespasian tells us (who approved of this mode of procedure as a bookseller, though perhaps it was a bad example to be set by the Head of the Church) he had "to buy books on credit and to borrow money in order to pay the scribes and miniaturists." The books, the reader will perceive, were curious manuscripts, illustrated by those schools of painters in little, whose undying pigments, fresh as when laid upon the vellum, smile almost as exquisitely to-day from the ancient page as in Messer Tommaso's time. There is an enthusiasm of the seller for the buyer in Vespasian's description of the dignified book-hunter which is very characteristic, but at the same time so natural that it places the very man before us, as he lived, a man full of humour, _facetissimo_, saying pleasant things to everybody, and making every one to whom he talked his partisan. "He was a man open, large and liberal, not knowing how to feign or dissimulate, and the enemy of all who feigned. He was also hostile to ceremony and adulation, treating all with the greatest friendliness. Great though he was as a bishop, as an ambassador, he honoured all who came to see him, and desired that whoever would speak with him should do so seated by his side, and with his head covered; and when one would not do so (out of modesty) he would take one by the arm and make one sit down, whether one liked or not." A delightful recollection of that flattering compulsion, the great man's touch upon his arm, the seat by his side, upon which Vespasian would scarcely be able to sit for pleasure, is in the bookseller's tone; and he has another pleasant story to tell of Giannozzo Manetti, who went to see their common patron when he was Cardinal and ambassador to France, and tried hard, in his sense of too much honour done him, to prevent the great man from accompanying him, not only to the door of the reception room, but down stairs. "He stood firm on the staircase to prevent him from coming further down: but Giannozzo was obliged to have patience, being in the Osteria del Lione, for not only would Messer Tommaso accompany him down stairs, but to the very door of the hotel, ambassador of Pope Eugenius as he was." We must not, however, allow ourselves to be seduced into prolixity by the old bookseller, whose account of his patron is so full of gratitude and feeling. As became a scholar and lover of the arts, Nicolas V. was a man of peace. Immediately after his elevation to the papacy, he declared his sentiments to Vespasian in the prettiest scene, which shines like one of the miniatures they loved, out of the sober page. "Not long after he was made Pope, I went to see him on Friday evening, when he gave audience publicly, as he did once every week. When I went into the hall in which he gave audience it was about one hour of the night (seven o'clock in the evening); he saw me at once, and called to me that I was welcome, and that if I would have patience a little he would talk to me alone. Not long after I was told to go to his Holiness. I went, and according to custom kissed his feet; afterwards he bade me rise, and rising himself from his seat, dismissed the court, saying that the audience was over. He then went to a private room where twenty candles were burning, near a door which opened into an orchard. He made a sign that they should be taken away, and when we were alone began to laugh, and to say 'Do the Florentines believe, Vespasiano, that it is for the confusion of the proud, that a priest only fit to ring the bell should have been made Supreme Pontiff?' I answered that the Florentines believed that his Holiness had attained that dignity by his worth, and that they rejoiced much, believing that he would give Italy peace. To this he answered and said: 'I pray God that He will give me grace to fulfil that which I desire to do, and to use no arms in my pontificate except that which God has given me for my defence, which is His cross, and which I shall employ as long as my day lasts.'" The cool darkness of the little chamber, near the door into the orchard, the blazing candles all sent away, the grateful freshness of the Roman night--come before us like a picture, with the Pope's splendid robes glimmering white, and the sober-suited citizen little seen in the quick-falling twilight. It must have been in the spring or early summer, the sweetest time in Rome. Pope Eugenius had died in the month of February, and it was on the 16th of March, 1447, that Nicolas was elected to the Holy See. A few years after came the jubilee, in the year 1450, as had now become the habit, and the influx of pilgrims was very great. It was a time of great profit not only to the Romans who turned the city into one vast inn to receive the visitors, but also to the Pope. "The people were like ants on the roads which led from Florence to Rome," we are told. The crowd was so immense crossing the bridge of St. Angelo, that there were some terrible accidents, and as many as two hundred people were killed on their way to the shrine of the Apostles. "There was not a great lord in all Christendom who did not come to this jubilee." "Much money came to the Apostolical See," continues the biographer, "and the Pope began to build in many places, and to send everywhere for Greek and Latin books wherever he could find them, without regard to the price. "He also had many scribes from every quarter to whom he gave constant employment; also many learned men both to compose new works, and to translate those which had not been translated, making great provision for them, both ordinary and extraordinary; and to those who translated books, when they were brought to him, he gave much money that they might go on willingly with that which they had to do. He collected a very great number of books on every subject, both in Greek and Latin, to the number of five thousand volumes. These at the end of his life were found in the catalogue which did not include the half of the copies of books he had on every subject; for if there was a book which could not be found, or which he could not have in any other way, he had it copied. The intention of Pope Nicolas was to make a library in St. Peter's for the use of the Court of Rome, which would have been a marvellous thing had it been carried out; but it was interrupted by death." Vespasian adds for his own part a list of these books, which occupies a whole column in one of Muratori's gigantic pages. Another anecdote we must add to show our Pope's quaint ways with his little court of literary men. "Pope Nicolas was the light and the ornament of literature, and of men of letters. If there had arisen another Pontiff after him who would have followed up his work, the state of letters would have been elevated to a worthy degree. But after him things went from bad to worse, and there were no prizes for virtue. The liberality of Pope Nicolas was such that many turned to him who would not otherwise have done so. In every place where he could do honour to men of letters, he did so, and left nobody out. When Messer Francesco Filelfo passed through Rome on his way to Naples without paying him a visit, the Pope, hearing of it, sent for him. Those who went to call him said to him, 'Messer Francesco, we are astonished that you should have passed through Rome without going to see him.' Messer Francesco replied that he was carrying some of his books to King Alfonso, but meant to see the Pope on his return. The Pope had a scarsella at his side in which were five hundred florins which he emptied out, saying to him, 'Take this money for your expenses on the way.' This is what one calls liberal! He had always a scarsella (pouch) at his side where were several hundreds of florins and gave them away for God's sake, and to worthy persons. He took them out of the scarsella by handfuls and gave to them. Liberality is natural to men, and does not come by nobility nor by gentry: for in every generation we see some who are very liberal and some who are equally avaricious." But the literary aspect of Pope Nicolas's character, however delightful, is not that with which we are chiefly concerned. He was the first Pope to conceive a systematic plan for the reconstruction and permanent restoration of Rome, a plan which it is needless to say his life was not long enough to carry out, but which yet formed the basis of all after-plans, and was eventually more or less accomplished by different hands. It was to the centre of ecclesiastical Rome, the shrine of the Apostles, the chief church of Christendom and its adjacent buildings that the care of the Builder-Pope was first directed. The Leonine city, or Borgo as it is more familiarly called, is that portion of Rome which lies on the left side of the Tiber, and which extends from the castle of St. Angelo to the boundary of the Vatican gardens--enclosing the church of St. Peter, the Vatican Palace with all its wealth, and the great Hospital of Santo Spirito, surrounded and intersected by many little streets, and joined to the other portions of the city by the bridge of St. Angelo. Behind the mass of picture galleries, museums, and collections of all kinds, which now fill up the endless halls and corridors of the Papal palace, comes a sweep of noble gardens full of shade and shelter from the Roman sun, such a resort for the "learnèd leisure Which in trim gardens takes its pleasure" as it would be difficult to surpass. In this fine extent of wood and verdure the Pope's villa or casino, now the only summer palace which the existing Pontiff chooses to permit himself, stands as in a domain, small yet perfect. Almost everything within these walls has been built or completely transformed since the days of Nicolas. But then as now, here was the heart and centre of Christendom, the supreme shrine of the Catholic faith, the home of the spiritual ruler whose sway reached over the whole earth. When Nicolas began his reign, the old church of St. Peter was the church of the Western world, then as now, classical in form, a stately basilica without the picturesqueness and romantic variety, and also, as we think, without the majesty and grandeur of a Gothic cathedral, yet more picturesque if less stupendous in size and construction than the present great edifice, so majestic in its own grave and splendid way, with which through all the agitations of the recent centuries, the name of St. Peter's has been identified. The earlier church was full of riches, and of great associations, to which the wonderful St. Peter's we all know can lay claim only as its successor and supplanter. With its flight of broad steps, its portico and colonnaded façade crowned with a great tower, it dominated the square, open and glowing in the sun without the shelter of the great existing colonnades or the sparkle of the fountains. Behind was the little palace begun by Innocent III. to afford a shelter for the Popes in dangerous times, or on occasion to receive the foreign guests whose object was to visit the Shrine of the Apostles. Almost all the buildings then standing have been replaced by greater, yet the position is the same, the shrine unchanged, though everything else then existing has faded away, except some portion of the old wall which enclosed this sacred place in a special sanctity and security, which was not, however, always respected. The Borgo was the holiest portion of all the sacred city. It was there that the blood of the martyrs had been shed, and where from the earliest age of Christianity their memory and tradition had been preserved. It is not necessary for us to enter into the question whether St. Peter ever was in Rome, which many writers have laboriously contested. So far as the record of the Acts of the Apostles is concerned, there is no evidence at all for or against, but tradition is all on the side of those who assert it. The position taken by Signor Lanciani on this point seems to us a very sensible one. "I write about the monuments of ancient Rome," he says, "from a strictly archæological point of view, avoiding questions which pertain, or are supposed to pertain, to religious controversy." "For the archæologist the presence and execution of SS. Peter and Paul in Rome are facts established beyond a shadow of doubt by purely monumental evidence. There was a time when persons belonging to different creeds made it almost a case of conscience to affirm or deny _a priori_ those facts, according to their acceptance or rejection of the tradition of any particular Church. This state of feeling is a matter of the past at least for those who have followed the progress of recent discoveries and of critical literature. There is no event of the Imperial age and of Imperial Rome which is attested by so many noble structures, all of which point to the same conclusion--the presence and execution of the Apostles in the capital of the empire. When Constantine raised the monumental basilicas over their tombs on the Via Cornelia and the Via Ostiensis: when Eudoxia built the Church ad Vincula: when Damasus put a memorial tablet in the Platonia ad Catacombos: when the houses of Pudens and Aquila and Prisca were turned into oratories: when the name of Nymphæ Sancti Petri was given to the springs in the catacombs of the Via Nomentana: when the 29th June was accepted as the anniversary of St. Peter's execution: when sculptors, painters, medallists, goldsmiths, workers in glass and enamel, and engravers of precious stones, all began to reproduce in Rome the likeness of the apostle at the beginning of the second century, and continued to do so till the fall of the Empire: must we consider them as labouring under a delusion, or conspiring in the commission of a gigantic fraud? Why were such proceedings accepted without protest from whatever city, whatever community--if there were any other--which claimed to own the genuine tombs of SS. Peter and Paul? These arguments gain more value from the fact that the evidence on the other side is purely negative." This is one of those practical arguments which are always more interesting than those which depend upon theories and opinions. However, there are many books on both sides of the question which may be consulted. We are content to follow Signor Lanciani. The special sanctity and importance of Il Borgo originated in this belief. The shrine of the Apostle was its centre and its glory. It was this that brought pilgrims from the far corners of the earth before there was any masterpiece of art to visit, or any of those priceless collections which now form the glory of the Vatican. The spot of the Apostle's execution was indicated "by immemorial tradition" as between the two goals (_inter duas metas_) of Nero's circus, which spot Signor Lanciani tells us is exactly the site of the obelisk now standing in the piazza of St. Peter. A little chapel, called the Chapel of the Crucifixion, stood there in the early ages, before any great basilica or splendid shrine was possible. This sacred spot, and the church built to commemorate it, were naturally the centre of all those religious traditions which separate Rome from every other city. It was to preserve them from assault, "in order that it should be less easy for the enemy to make depredations and burn the church of St. Peter, as they have heretofore done," that Leo IV., the first Pope, whom we find engaged in any real work of construction built a wall round the mount of the Vatican, the "Colle Vaticano"--little hill, not so high as the seven hills of Rome--where against the strong wall of Nero's circus Constantine had built his great basilica. At that period--in the middle of the ninth century--there was nothing but the church and shrine--no palace and no hospital. The existing houses were given to the Corsi, a family which had been driven out of their island, according to Platina, by the Saracens, who shortly before had made an incursion up to the very walls of Rome, whither the peoples of the coast (_luoghi maritimi del Mar Terreno_) from Naples northward had apparently pursued the Corsairs, and helped the Romans to beat them back. One other humble building of some sort, "called Burgus Saxonum, Vicus Saxonum, Schola Saxonum, and simply Saxia or Sassia," it is interesting to know, existed close to the sacred centre of the place, a lodging built for himself by Ina, King of Wessex, in 727. Thus we have a national association of our own with the central shrine of Christianity. "There was also a Schola Francorum in the Borgo." The pilgrims must have built their huts and set up some sort of little oratory--favoured, as was the case even in Pope Nicolas's day, by the excellent quarry of the circus close at hand--as near as possible to the great shrine and basilica which they had come so far to say their prayers in; and attracted too, no doubt, by the freedom of the lonely suburb between the green hill and the flowing river. Leo IV. built his wall round this little city, and fortified it by towers. "In every part he put sculptures of marble and wrote a prayer," says Platina. One of these gates led to St. Pellegrino, another was close to the castle of St. Angelo, and was "the gate by which one goes forth to the open country." The third led to the School of the Saxons; and over each was a prayer inscribed. These three prayers were all to the same effect--"that God would defend this new city which the Pope had enclosed with walls and called by his own name, the Leonine City, from all assaults of the enemy, either by fraud or by force." [Illustration: IN THE CORSO: CHURCH DOORS.] This was then from the beginning the citadel and innermost sanctuary of Rome. It was not till much later, under the reign of Innocent III., that the idea of building a house for the Pope within that enclosure originated. The same great Pope founded the vast hospital of the Santo Spirito--on the site of a previous hospice for the poor either within or close to its walls. Thus it came to be the lodging of the Sovereign Pontiff, and of the scarcely less sacred sick and suffering, as well as the most holy and chiefest of all Christian sanctuaries. Were we to be very minute, it might be easily proved that almost every Pope contributed something to the existence and decoration of the Leonine city, the _imperium in imperio_; and specially, as was natural, to the great basilica. The little Palazzo di San Pietro being close to St. Angelo, the stronghold and most safe resort in danger, was occupied by the court on its return from Avignon, and probably then became the official home of the Popes; though for some time there seems to have been a considerable latitude in that respect. Pope Martin afterwards removed to the Palace of the Apostles. Another of the Popes preferred to all others the great Palazzo Venezia, which he had built: but the name of the Vatican was henceforth received as the title of the Papal court. The enlargement and embellishment of this palace thus became naturally the great object of the Popes, and nothing was spared upon it. It is put first in every record of achievement even when there is other important work to describe. "Nicolas," says Platina, "builded magnificently both in the Vatican, and in the city. He rebuilt the churches of St. Stefano Rotondo and of St. Teodoro," the former most interesting church being built upon the foundations of a round building of classical times, supposed, Mr. Hare tells us, to have belonged to the ancient Fleshmarket, as we should say, the Macellum Magnum. S. Teodoro is also a _rotondo_. It would seem that there were different opinions as to the success of these restorations in the fifteenth century such as arise among ourselves in respect to almost every work of the same kind. A certain "celebrated architect," Francesco di Giorgio di Martino, of Sienna, was then about the world, a man who spoke his mind. "_Hedifitio ruinato_," he says of St. Stefano, with equal disregard to spelling and to manners. "Rebuilt," he adds, "by Pope Nichola; but much more spoilt:" which is such a thing as we now hear said of the once much-vaunted restorations of Sir Gilbert Scott. Our Pope also "made a leaden roof for Sta. Maria Rotonda in the middle of the city, built by M. Agrippa as a temple for all the gods and called the Pantheon." He must have been fond of this unusual form; but whether it was a mere whim of personal liking, or if there was any meaning in his construction of these round temples, we have no information. Perhaps Nicolas had a special admiration of the solemn and beautiful Pantheon, in which we completely sympathise. The question is too insignificant to be inquired into. Yet it is curious in its way. These were however, though specially distinguished by Platina, but a drop in the ocean to the numberless undertakings of Pope Nicolas throughout the city; and all these again were inferior in importance to the great works in St. Peter's and the Vatican, to which his predecessors had each put a hand so long as their time lasted. "In the Vatican," says Platina, "he built those apartments of the Pontiff, which are to be seen to this day: and he began the wall of the Vatican, great and high, with its incredible depth of foundation, and high towers, to hold the enemy at a distance, so that neither the church of St. Peter (as had already happened several times) nor the palace of the Pope should ever be sacked. He began also the tribune of the church of St. Peter, that the church might hold more people, and might be more magnificent. He also rebuilt the Ponte Molle, and erected near the baths of Viterbo a great palace. Having the aid of much money, he built many parts of the city, and cleansed all the streets." Great also in other ways were his gifts to his beloved church and city--"vases of gold and silver, crosses ornamented with gems, rich vestments and precious tapestry, woven with gold and silver, and the mitre of the Pontificate, which demonstrated his liberality." It was he who first placed a second crown on the mitre, which up to this time had borne one circlet alone. The complete tiara with the three crowns was adopted in a later reign. The two previous Popes, his predecessors, had been magnificent also in their acquisitions for the Church in this kind; both of them being curious in goldsmiths' work, then entering upon its most splendid development, and in their collections of precious stones. The valuable work of M. Muntz, _Les Arts à la cour des papes_, abounds in details of these splendid jewels. Indeed his sober records of daily work and its payment seem to transport us out of one busy scene into another as by the touch of a magician's wand, as if Rome the turbulent and idle, full of aimless popular rushes to and fro, had suddenly become a beehive full of energetic workers and the noise of cheerful labour, both out of doors in the sun, where the masons were loudly at work, and in many a workshop, where the most delicate and ingenious arts were being carried on. Roman artists at length began to appear amid the host of Florentines and the whole world seems to have turned into one great _bottega_ full of everything rich and rare. The greatest, however, of all the conceptions of Pope Nicolas, the very centre of his great plan, was the library of the Vatican, which he began to build and to which he left all the collections of his life. Vespasian gives us a list of the principal among those 5,000 volumes, the things which he prized most, which the Pope bequeathed to the Church and to Rome. These cherished rolls of parchment, many of them translations made under his own eyes, were enclosed in elaborate bindings ornamented with gold and silver. We are not, however, informed whether any of the great treasures of the Vatican library came from his hands--the good Vespasian taking more interest in the work of his scribes than in Codexes. He tells us of 500 scudi given to Lorenzo Valle with a pretty speech that the price was below his merits, but that eventually he should have more liberal pay; of 1,500 scudi given to Guerroni for a translation of the Iliad, and so forth. It is like a bookseller of the present day vaunting his new editions to a collector in search of the earliest known. But Pope Nicolas, like most other patrons of his time, knew no Greek, nor probably ever expected that it would become a usual subject of study, so that his translations were precious to him, the chief way of making his treasures of any practical use. [Illustration: SANTA MARIA DEL POPOLO. _To face page 546._] The greater part, alas! of all this splendour has passed away. One pure and perfect glory, the little chapel of San Lorenzo, painted by the tender hand of Fra Angelico, remains unharmed, the only work of that grand painter to be found in Rome. If one could have chosen a monument for the good Pope, the patron and friend of art in every form, there could not have been a better than this. Fra Angelico seems to have been brought to Rome by Pope Eugenius, but it was under Nicolas, in two or three years of gentle labour, that the work was done. It is, however, impossible to enumerate all the undertakings of Pope Nicolas. He did something to re-establish or decorate almost all of the great basilicas. It is feared--but here our later historians speak with bated breath, not liking to bring such an accusation against the kind Pope, who loved men of letters--that the destruction of St. Peter's, afterwards ruthlessly carried out by succeeding Popes was in his plan: on the pretext, so constantly employed, and possibly believed in, of the instability of the ancient building. But there is no absolute certainty of evidence, and at all events he might have repented, for he certainly did not do that deed. He began the tribune, however, in the ancient church, which may have been a preparation for the entire renewal of the edifice; and he did much towards the decoration of another round church, that of the Madonna delle Febbre, an ill-omened name, attached to the Vatican. He also built the Belvedere in the gardens, and surrounded the whole with strong walls and towers (round), one of which according to Nibby still remained fifty years ago; which very little of Nicolas's building has done. His great sin was one which he shared with all his brother-Popes, that he boldly treated the antique ruins of the city as quarries for his new buildings, not without protest and remonstrance from many, yet with the calm of a mind preoccupied and seeing nothing so great and important as the work upon which his own heart was set. This excellent Pope died in 1455, soon after having received the news of the downfall of Constantinople, which is said to have broken his heart. He had many ailments, and was always a small and spare man of little strength of constitution; but "nothing transfixed his heart so much as to hear that the Turk had taken Constantinople and killed the Europeans, with many thousands of Christians," among them that same "Imperadore de Gostantinopli" whom he had seen seated in state at the Council of Ferrara, listening to his own and other arguments, only a few years before--as well as the greater part, no doubt, of his own clerical opponents there. When he was dying "being not the less of a strong spirit," he called the Cardinals round his bed, and many prelates with them, and made them a last address. His pontificate had lasted a little more than eight years, and to have carried out so little of his great plan must have been heavy on his heart; but his dying words are those of one to whom the holiness and unity of the Church came before all. No doubt the fear that the victorious Turks might spread ruin over the whole of Christendom was first in his mind at that solemn hour. "'Knowing, my dearest brethren, that I am approaching the hour of my death, I would, for the greater dignity and authority of the Apostolic See, make a serious and important testament before you, not committed to the memory of letters, not written, neither on a tablet nor on parchment, but given by my living voice that it may have more authority. Listen, I pray you, while your little Pope Nicolas (papa Niccolajo) in the very instant of dying makes his last will before you. In the first place I render thanks to the Highest God for the measureless benefits which, beginning from the day of my birth until the present day, I have received of His infinite mercy. And now I recommend to you this beautiful spouse of Christ, whom, so far as I was able, I have exalted and magnified, as each of you is well aware; knowing this to be to the honour of God, for the great dignity that is in her, and the great privileges that she possesses, and so worthy, and formed by so worthy an Author, who is the Creator of the Universe. Being of sane mind and intellect, and having done that which every Christian is called to do, and specially the Pastor of the Church, I have received the most sacred body of Christ with penitence, taking from His table with my two hands, and praying the Omnipotent God that he would pardon my sins. Having had these sacraments I have also received the extreme unction which is the last sacrament for the redeeming of my soul. Again I recommend to you, as long as I am able, the Roman Church, notwithstanding that I have already done so; for this is the most important duty you have to fulfil in the sight of God and men. This is that true Spouse of Christ which He bought with his blood. This is that robe without seam, which the impious Jews would have torn but could not. This is that ship of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, agitated and tossed by varied fortunes of the winds, but sustained by the Omnipotent God, so that she can never be submerged or shipwrecked. With all the strength of your souls sustain her and rule her: she has need of your good works, and you should show a good example by your lives. If you with all your strength care for her and love her, God will reward you, both in this present life and in the future with life eternal; and to do this with all the strength we have, we pray you: do it diligently, dearest brethren.' "Having said this he raised his hands to heaven and said, 'Omnipotent God, grant to the Holy Church, and to these fathers, a pastor who will preserve her and increase her; give to them a good pastor who will rule and govern thy flock the most maturely that one can rule and govern. And I pray for you and comfort you as much as I know and can. Pray for me to God in your prayers.' When he had ended these words, he raised his right arm and, with a generous soul, gave the benediction--Benedicat vos Deus, Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus--speaking with a raised voice and solemnly, _in modo Pontificale_." These tremulous words, broken and confused by the weakness of his last hours, were taken down by the favourite scribe, Giannozzo Manetti, in the chamber of the dying Pope: with much more of the most serious matter to the Church and to Rome. His eager desire to soften all possible controversies and produce in the minds of the conclave about his bed, so full of ambition and the force of life, the softened heart which would dispose them to a peaceful and conscientious election of his successor, is very touching, coming out of the fogs and mists of approaching death. In the very age that produced the Borgias, and himself the head of that band of elegant scholars and connoisseurs, everything but Christian, to whom Rome owes so much of her external beauty and splendour, it is pathetic to stand by this kind and gentle spirit as he pauses on the threshold of a higher life, subduing the astute and worldly minded Churchmen round him with the tender appeal of the dying father, their Papa Niccolajo, familiar and persuasive--beseeching them to be of one accord without so much as saying it, turning his own weakness to account to touch their hearts, for the honour of the Church and the welfare of the flock. [Illustration: MODERN DEGRADATION OF A PALACE.] CHAPTER II. CALIXTUS III.--PIUS II.--PAUL II.--SIXTUS IV. It is not unusual even in the strictest of hereditary monarchies to find the policy of one ruler entirely contradicted and upset by his successor; and it is still more natural that such a thing should happen in a succession of men, unlike and unconnected with each other as were the Popes; but the difference was more than usually great between Nicolas and Calixtus III., the next occupant of the Holy See, elected 1455, died 1458, who was an old man and a Spaniard, and loved neither books nor pictures, nor any of the new arts which had bewitched (as many people believed) Pope Nicolas and seduced him into squandering the treasure of the Papacy upon unnecessary buildings, and still more unnecessary decorations. Calixtus was a Borgia, the first to introduce the horror of that name: but he was not in himself a harmful personage. "He spent little in building," says Platina, "for he lived but a short time, and saved all his money for the undertaking against the Turks," an enterprise which had become a very real and necessary one, now that Constantinople had fallen; but which had no longer the romance and sentiment of the Crusades to inspire it, though successive Pontiffs did their best to rouse Christendom on the subject. The aged Spanish Cardinal threw himself into it with all the fervour of his nature, which better than many others knew the mettle of the Moor. His short term of power was entirely occupied with this. A little building went on, which could not be helped: the walls had always to be looked to; but Pope Nicolas's army of scribes were all turned off summarily; the studios were closed, the artist people turned away about their business; all the great works put a stop to. Worse even than that--for Calixtus was a short-lived interruption, and perhaps might only have stopped the progress of events for some three years or so--Pope Nicolas's great plan, which was so complete, went out of sight, and was lost in the limbo of good intentions. His workmen were dispersed, and the fashion to which he had accustomed the world, changed. It was only resumed with earnestness after several generations, and never quite in the great lines which he had laid out. Neither did the new Pope get his Crusade, which might have been a better thing. Yet Calixtus was a person _assai generoso_, Platina tells us; in any case he occupied his great post for a very short time. His successor, Pius II., 1458, on the other hand, was such a man as might well have inherited the highest purpose. He is almost better known as Eneas Silvius, a famous traveller and writer--not the usual peasant monk without a surname as so many had been, but one of the Piccolomini of Sienna, a great house, though ruined or partially ruined in his day. He was a man who had travelled much, and was known at all the courts; at one time young, heretical, adventurous, and ready to pull down all authorities, the life and soul of that famous Council of Bâle which took upon itself to depose Pope Eugenius; but not long after that outburst of independent youthfulness and energy was over, we find him filling the highest offices, the Legate of Eugenius and a very rising yet always much-opposed Cardinal. He it was who travelled to a remote and obscure little country called Scotland, in the Pope's name, to arrange matters there; and found the people very savage, digging stones out of the earth to make fires of them: but having plenty of fish and flesh, and surprisingly comfortable on the whole. He was one of the ablest men who ever sat on the Papal throne, but too reasonable, too moderate, too natural for the position. He loved literature, or at least he loved books, which is not always the same thing, and himself wrote a great many on various subjects; and he was so fortunate as to have the historian of the Popes, Platina--our guide, who we would have wished might live for ever--for his librarian, who was worth all the marble tombs in the world and all the epitaphs to a man whom he liked, and worse than any heathen conqueror to the man who was unkind to him. Platina gives us a beautiful character of Pope Pius. He is very lenient to the faults of his youth, as indeed most historians are in respect to personages afterwards great, finding in their peccadilloes, we presume, a welcome and picturesque relief to the perfections that become a Pope. Yet Pius II. was never too perfect. He was a man who disliked the narrowness of a court, and loved the fresh air, and to give audience in his garden, and to eat his modest meal beside the tinkling of a fountain or under the shade of trees. He loved wit and a joke, and even gave ear to ridiculous things and to the excellent mimicry of a certain Florentine, who "took off" the courtiers and other absurd persons, and made his Holiness laugh. And he was hasty in temper, but bore no malice, and paid no attention to evil reports raised about himself. "He never punished those who spoke ill of him, saying that in a free city like Rome, every one should speak freely what he thought." He hated lying and story-tellers, and never made war unless he was forced to it. Whenever he was freed from the trials of business he took his pleasure in reading or in writing. "Books were more dear to him than sapphires or emeralds," says Platina, with a shrewd prick by the way at his successor, Paul, as we shall afterwards see, "and he was used to say that his chrysolites and other jewels were all enclosed in them." He never took a meal alone if he could help it, but loved a lively companion, and to make his little feasts in his garden as we have said, shocking much the scandalised courtiers, who declared that no other Pope had ever done such a thing; for which Pope Pius cared nothing at all. He wrote upon all kinds of subjects; from a grammar which he made for the little King of Hungary, to histories of various kingdoms, and philosophical disquisitions. Indeed the list of his subjects is like that of a series of popular lectures in our own day. "He wrote many books in dialogue--upon the power of the Council of Bâle, upon the sources of the Nile, upon hunting, upon Fate, upon the presence of God." If he had been a University Extension lecturer, he could scarcely have been more many-sided. And he wrote largely upon peace, no less than thirty-two orations "upon the peace of kings, the concord of princes, the tranquillity of nations, the defence of religion, and the quiet of the world." There was neither peace among kings, concord among princes, nor tranquillity among nations when Pope Pius delivered and collected his orations. They ought to have had all the greater effect; but we fear he was too wise a man to put much faith in any immediate result. His greatest work, however, was his _Commentaries_, an enlarged and philosophical study of his own times, which he did not live long enough to finish. This Pontiff carried on the work of his predecessor more or less, but without any great zeal for it. "He collected manuscripts, but with discretion; he built, but it was in moderation," Bishop Creighton says. Platina, with more warmth, tells us that "he took great delight in building," but he seems to have confined himself to his own immediate surroundings, working at the improvement of St. Peter's, building a chapel, putting up a statue, restoring the great flight of stairs which then as now led up to the portico which previous Popes had adorned; and adding a little to the defences and decoration of the Vatican. He is suspected of having had a guilty liking for the Gothic style in architecture which greatly shocked the Roman _dilettanti_; and certainly expressed his admiration for some of the great churches in Germany with enthusiasm. One great piece of architectural work he did, but it was not at Rome. It was in the headquarters of his family at Sienna, and specially in the little adjacent town of Corsignano, where he was born, one of those little fortified villages which add so much to the beauty of Italy. This little place he made glorious with beautiful buildings, forgetting his native wisdom and discretion in the foolishness of that narrow but intense patriotism which bound the Italian to his native town, and made it the joy of the whole earth to his eyes. It gives a charm the more to his interesting character that he should have been capable of such a folly; though not perhaps that he should have changed its name to Pienza, a reflection of his own pontifical name. With this, however, we have nothing to do, and not very much altogether with the great Piccolomini, though he is one of the most interesting and sympathetic figures which has ever sat upon the papal throne. His death was a strange and painful conclusion to a life full of work, full of admirable sense and intelligence without exaggeration or pretence. He followed the policy of his predecessors in desiring to institute a Crusade, one more strenuously called for perhaps than any which preceded it, since Constantinople had now fallen into the hands of the Turks, and Christendom was believed to be in danger. It is scarcely possible to imagine that his full and active life should have been much occupied by this endeavour: nor can we think that this great spectator and observer of human affairs was consumed with anxiety in respect to a danger about which the civilised world was so careless: but in the end of his life he seems to have taken it up with tragical earnestness, perhaps out of compunction for previous indifference. The impulse which once moved whole nations to take the cross had died out; and not even the sight of the beautiful metropolis of Eastern Christianity fallen into the hands of the infidel, and so splendid a Christian temple as St. Sophia turned into a mosque had power to rouse Europe. The King of Hungary was the only monarch who showed any real energy in the matter, feeling his own safety imperilled, and Venice, also for the same reason, was the only great city; and except in these quarters the remonstrances and entreaties of Pius had no success. In these circumstances the Pope called his court about him and announced to them the plan he had formed, a most unlikely plan for such a man, yet possible enough if there was any remorseful sense of carelessness in the past. The Duke of Burgundy had promised to go if another prince would join him. The Pope determined that in the absence of any other he himself would be that prince. Old as he was, and sick, and no warrior, and perhaps with but little of the zeal which makes such a self-devotion possible, he would himself go forth to repel the infidel. "We do not go to fight," he said, with faltering voice. "We will imitate those who, when Israel fought against Amalek, prayed on the mountain. We will stand on the prow of our ship or upon some hill, and with the holy Eucharist before our eyes, we will ask from our Lord victory for our soldiers." After a pause of alarm and astonishment the Cardinals consented, and such preparations as were possible were made. It was published throughout all Christendom that the Pope was to sail from Ancona at a certain date, and that every one who could provide for the expenses of the journey should meet him there. He invited the old Doge of Venice to join with himself and the Duke of Burgundy, also an old man. "We shall be three old men," he said, "and our trinity will be aided by the Trinity of Heaven." A kind of sublimity was in the suggestion, a sublimity almost trembling on the borders of the ridiculous; for the enterprise was no longer one which accorded with the spirit of the time, and all was hesitation and difficulty. A miscellaneous host crowded to Ancona, where the Pope, much suffering, was carried in his litter, quite unfit for a long journey; but the most of them had no money and had to be sent back; and the Venetian galleys engaged to transport those who were left did not arrive till the pilgrims had waited long, and were worn out with delay and confusion. They arrived at last a day or two before Pope Pius died, when he was no longer capable of moving--and with his death the ill-fated Crusade fell to pieces and was heard of no more. It was the most curious end, in an enthusiasm founded upon anxious calculation, of a man who was never an enthusiast, whose eyes were always too clear-sighted to permit him to be led away by feeling, a man of letters and of thought, rather than of romantic-solemn enterprises or the zeal of a martyr. That he was a kind of martyr to the strong conviction of a danger which threatened Christendom, and the forlorn hope of repelling it, there can be no doubt. Pius II. was succeeded in 1464 by Paul II., also in his way a man of more than usual ability and note. He was a Venetian, the nephew of the last Venetian Pope, Eugenius; and it was he who built, to begin with, the fine palace still called the Palazzo Venezia, with which all visitors to Rome are so well acquainted. It was built for his own residence during his Cardinalate, and remained his favourite dwelling, a habitation still very much more in the centre of everything, as we say, than the remote and stately Vatican. The reader will easily recall the imposing appearance of this fine building, placed at the end of the straight street--the chief in Rome--in which were run the many races which formed part of the carnival festivities, a recent institution in Pope Paul's day. The street was called the Corso in consequence; and it is not long since the last of these races, one of horses without riders, was abolished. The Palazzo Venezia commanded the long straight street from its windows, and all the humours and wonders of the town, in which the Pope took pleasure. It was Paul's fate to make himself an implacable enemy in the often contemned, but--as regards the place in history of either pope or king--all-important class of writers, which it must have seemed ridiculous indeed for a Sovereign Pontiff to have kept terms with, on account of any power in their hands. But this was a shortsighted conclusion, unworthy the wisdom of a Pope. And the result of the Pontiff's ill-treatment of the historian Platina, to whom we are so much indebted, especially for the lives of those Popes who were his contemporaries, has been a lasting stigma upon his character, which the researches of the impartial critics of a later age have shown to be partly without foundation, but which until quite recently was accepted by everybody. In this way a writer has a power which is almost absolute. We have seen in our own days a conspicuous instance of this in the treatment by Mr. Froude of the life of Thomas Carlyle. Numbers of Carlyle's friends made instant protest against the view taken by his biographer; but they did so in evanescent methods--in periodical literature, the nature of which is to die after it has had its day--while a book remains. Very likely many of Pope Paul's friends protested against the coolly ferocious account of his life given by the aggrieved and revengeful author; but it is only quite recently, in the calm of great distance, that people have come to think--charitably in respect to Pope Paul II.--that perhaps Platina's strictures might not be true. Platina, however, had great provocation. He was one of the disciples of the famous school of Humanists, the then new school of learning, literature, and criticism, which had arisen under the papacy and patronage of Pope Nicolas V., and had continued to exist, though with less encouragement, under his successors. Pius II. had not been their patron as Nicolas was, but he had not been hostile to them, and his tastes were all of a kind congenial to their work. But Paul looked coldly upon the group of contemptuous scholars who had made themselves into an academy, and vapoured much about classical examples and the superiority of ancient times. He had no quarrel with literature, but he persuaded himself to believe that the academy which talked and masqueraded under classic names, and played with dangerous theories of liberty, and criticism of public proceedings, was a nest of conspirators and heretics scheming against himself. There was no foundation whatever for his fears, but that mattered little in those arbitrary days. This is Platina's own account of the matter: "When Pius was dead and Paul created in his place, he had no sooner grasped the keys of Peter, than he proceeded--whether in consequence of a promise to do so, or because the decrees and proceedings of Pius were odious to him--to dismiss all the officials elected by Pius, on the ground that they were useless and ignorant (as he said): and deprived them of their dignity and revenues without permitting them to say a word in their own defence, though they were men who for their erudition and doctrine had been gathered together from all the ends of the world, and attracted to the court of Rome by the promise of great reward. The College was full of men of letters and virtuous persons learned in the law both divine and human. Among them were poets and orators who gave no less ornament to the court than they received from it. Paul sent them all away as incapable and as strangers, and deprived them of everything, although those who had bought their offices were allowed to retain them. Those who suffered most attempted to dissuade him from this intention, and I, who was one of them, begged earnestly that our cause might be committed to the judge of the Rota. Then he fixed on me his angry eyes. 'So,' he said, 'thou wouldst appeal to other judges against the decision we have made! Know ye not that all justice and law are in the casket of our bosom? Thus I will it to be. Begone, all of you! for, whatever you may wish I am Pope, and according to my pleasure can make and unmake.'" After hearing this determined assertion of right, the displaced scholars withdrew, but continued to plead their cause by urgent letters, which ended at last in an unwise threat to make the continental princes aware how they were treated, and to bring about the Pope's ears a Council, to which he would be obliged to give account. The word Council was to a Pope what the red flag is to a bull, and in a transport of rage Paul II. threw Platina into prison. He never in his life did a more foolish thing. The historian was kept in confinement for two years, and passed one long winter without fire, subjected to every hardship; but finally was set free by the intercession of Cardinal Gonzaga, and remained, by order of the Pope, under observation in Rome, where watching with a vigilant eye all that went on, he laid up his materials for that brief but scathing biography of Paul II. which forms one of the keenest effects in his work, and from which the Pope's memory has never recovered. It is a dangerous thing to provoke a man of letters who has a keen tongue and a gift of recollection, especially in those days when such men were not so many as now. Nevertheless Platina did a certain justice to his persecutor. "He built magnificently," he says, "splendidly in St. Marco, and in the Vatican." The Church of St. Marco is close to the Palazzo Venezia where Paul chiefly lived; he had taken his title as Cardinal from his native saint. Both in St. Peter's and in the Vatican he carried on the works begun by his predecessors, and though he was unkind to the scholars, he was not so in every case. "He expended his money liberally enough," says Platina, "giving freely to poor Cardinals and bishops, and to princes and persons of noble houses when cast out of their homes, and especially to poor women and widows, and the sick who had no one else to think of them. And he also took great trouble to secure that corn and other things necessary to life should be furnished in abundance, and at lower prices than had been known ever before." These were good and noble qualities which his enemy did not attempt to disguise. The special service done by Pope Paul to the city would seem, however, to have been the restoration of some of those ancient monuments which belonged to imperial Rome, of which none of his predecessors had made much account. If he still helped himself freely, like them, from the great reservoir of the Colosseum, he bestowed an attention and care, which they had not dreamed of, upon some of the great works of classic art, the arches of Titus and of Septimus Severus in particular, and the famous statue of Marcus Aurelius. M. Muntz comments with much spirit on the reason why this Pope's works of restoration have been so little celebrated. His taste was toward sculpture rather than painting. "To the eyes of the world," says the historian of the arts, "the smallest fresco is of more account than the finest monuments of architecture, or of sculpture. Nicolas V. did better for his fame in engaging Fra Angelico than in undertaking the reconstruction of St. Peter's. Pius II. owes a sort of posthumous celebrity to the paintings in the library of the cathedral of Sienna." The same classical tastes of which he thus gave token made Pope Paul a great collector of bronzes, cameos, medals, intaglios, the smaller precious objects of ancient art; the love of which he was the first to bring back as a special study and pursuit. His collection of these was wonderful for his time, and great for any time. All the other adornments of ancient art were dear to him, and his palace, which, after all, is his most complete memorial in Rome, was adorned like a bride with every kind of glory in carved and inlaid work, in vessels of gold and silver, embroideries and tapestries. He had the still more personal and individual characteristic of a love for fine clothes, which the gorgeous costumes of the popedom permitted him to indulge in to a large extent: and jewels, which he not only wore like an Eastern prince, but kept about him unset in drawers and cabinets for his private delight, playing with them, as Platina tells us, in the silent hours of the night. Some part at least of these magnificent tastes arose no doubt from the fact that he was himself a magnificent specimen of manhood, so distinguished in personal appearance that he had the naïve vanity of suggesting the name of Formosus for himself when elected Pope, though he yielded the point to the scandalised remonstrances of the Cardinals. This simplicity of self-admiration, so undoubting as to be almost a moral quality, no doubt gave meaning to the glorious mitres and tiara encrusted with the richest jewels, which it gave him so much pleasure to wear, and which take rank with the other great embellishments of Rome, though their object was more personal than official. The habits of his life were strange, for he slept during the day, and performed the duties of life during the night, the reason assigned for this being that he was tormented by a cough which prevented him from sleeping at the usual hours. "It was difficult to come to speech of him," Platina says, for this reason. "And when, after long waiting, he opened the door, you were obliged rather to listen than to speak; for he was very copious and long in speaking. In everything he desired to be thought astute, and therefore his conversation was in very intricate and ambiguous language He liked many sorts of viands on his table, all of the worst taste; and took much pleasure in eating melons, crawfish, pastry, fish, and salt pork, from which, I believe, came the apoplexy from which he died." Thus the prejudices of his enemy penetrated the most private details of the Pope's life. The venom of hatred defeats itself and becomes ridiculous when carried so far. His fine collection was seized by his successor and broken up, as is the fate of such treasures; and his works in St. Peter's, as we shall see, had much the same fate, along with the great works of his predecessor for the embellishment of the same building, all of which perished or were set aside in the fever of rebuilding which ensued. But there is still a sufficient memorial of him in the sombre magnificence of his Venetian palace, to recall to us the image of a true Renaissance Pope, mingling the most exquisite tastes with the rudest, the perfection of personal vanity--for he loved to see himself in a procession, head and shoulders over all the people--with the likings of a gondolier. Thus we see him in the records of his contemporaries, watching from his windows the strange sports in the long street newly named the Corso, races of men and of horses, and carnival processions accompanied by all the cumbrous and coarse humour of the period; or a stranger sight still, seated by night in his cabinet turning over his wealth of sparkling stones, enjoying the glow of light in them and twinkle of many colours, while the big candles flared, or a milder light shone from the beaks of the silver lamps. Notwithstanding which strange humours, tastes, and vanities, he remains in all these records a striking and remarkable figure, no intellectualist, but an effective and notable man. [Illustration: PIAZZA COLONNA. _To face page 564._] It is not the intention of these chapters to enter at all into the political life of the Popes of this period. They were still a power in Christendom, perhaps no less so that the Papacy had ceased to maintain those great pretensions of being the final arbiter in all disputes among the nations. But the papal negotiations, as always, came to very little when not aided by the events which are in no man's hand. Matthias of Hungary, though supported by all the influence and counsels of Pope Paul, made little head against the heretical George Podiebrad of Bohemia, until death suddenly overtook that prince, and left a troubled kingdom without a head, at the mercy of the invaders, an event such as constantly occurred to overturn all combinations and form the crises of history under a larger providence than that of human effort. And Paul no more than Pius could move Christendom against the Turk, or form again, when all its elements had crumbled, and the inspiration of enthusiasm was entirely gone, a new crusade. So far as our purpose goes, however, the Venetian Palace, the Church of St. Marco attached to it, and certain portions of the Vatican, better represent the life of this Pope, to whom the picturesque circumstances of his life and the rancour of a disappointed man of letters have given a special place of his own in the long line, than any summary we could give of the agitated sea of continental politics. The history of Rome was working up to that climax, odious, dazzling, and terrible, to which the age of the Renaissance, with all its luxury, its splendour, and its vice, brought the great city, and even the Church so irrevocably bound to it. Nicolas, Pius, and Paul at the beginning of that period, yet but little affected by its worst features, give us a pause of satisfaction before we get further. They were very different men. Pope Nicolas, with his crowd of copyists forming a ragged regiment after him, and the noise of all the workshops in his ears; and Paul, alone in his chamber pouring from one hand to another the stream of glowing and sparkling jewels which threw out radiance like the waterways of his own Venice under the light, afford images as unlike as it is possible to conceive; while the wise and thoughtful Pius, with those eyes "which had kept watch o'er man's mortality," stands over both, the perennial spectator and commentator of the world. They were all of one mind to glorify Rome, to make her a wonder in the whole earth, as Jerusalem had been, if not to pave her streets with gold, yet to line them with noble edifices more costly than gold, and to build and adorn the first of Christian churches, the shrine to which every Christian came. Alas! by that time it was beginning to be visible that all Christians would not long continue to come to the one shrine, that the pictorial age of symbols and representations was dying away, and that Rome had not learned at all how to meet that great revolution. It was not likely to be met by even the most splendid restoration of the fated city, any more than the necessities of the people were to be met by those other resurrections of institutions dead and gone, attempted by Rienzi, and his still less successful copyist Porcaro; but how were these men to know? They did their best, the worst of them not without some noble meaning, at least at the beginning of their several careers; but they are all reduced to their place, so much less important than they believed, by the large sweep of history, and the guidance of a higher hand. Paul II. died in August 1471. Another order of man now succeeded these remarkable personages, the first of the line of purely secular princes, men of the world, splendid, unprincipled, and more or less vicious, although in this case it is once more a peasant, without so much as a surname, Sixtus IV., who takes his place in the scene, and who has left his name more conspicuously than any of his predecessors upon the later records of Rome. So far as the reader is concerned, the inscription at the end of the life of Pope Paul is a more melancholy one than anything that concerns that Pope. "Fin qui, scrisse il Platina," says the legend. We miss in the after-records his individual touch, the hand of the contemporary, in which the frankness of the chronicler is modified by the experience and knowledge of an educated mind. The work of Panvinio, _scriba del Senato e popolo Romano_, who completes the record, is without the same charm. We have said that Pope Sixtus IV. was a man without a surname, Francesco of Savona, his native place furnishing his only patronymic: but there was soon found for him--probably for the satisfaction of the nephews who took so large a place in his life--a name which bore some credit, that of a family of gentry in which it is said the young monk had fulfilled the duties of tutor in the beginning of his career. By what imaginary pedigree this was brought about we are not told; but it is unlikely that the real della Roveres would reject the engrafting of a great Pope into their stock, and it soon became a name to conjure with throughout Italy. Although he also vaguely made proposals about a Crusade, and languidly desired to drive back the Turk, he was a man much more interested in the internal squabbles of Italy, and in his plans for endowing and establishing his nephews, than in any larger purpose. But he was also a man of boundless energy and power, cooped up for the greater part of his life, but now bursting forth like the strong current of a river. Whether it was from a natural inclination towards beauty and splendour, or because he saw it to be the best way in which to distinguish himself and make his own name as well as that of his city glorious, matters little to the result. He was, in the fullest sense of the words, one of the chiefest of the Popes who made the modern city of Rome, as still existing and glorious in the sight of all the world. It was still a confused and disorderly place, in which narrow streets and tortuous ways, full of irregularities and projections of all kinds, threaded through the large and pathetic desert of the ancient city, leaving a rim of ruin round the too-closely clustered centre of life where men crowded together for security and warmth after the custom of the mediæval age--when Sixtus began to reign; and this it was which specially impressed King Ferdinand of Naples when he paid his visit to the Pope in the year 1475, and had to be led about by Cardinals and other high officials, sometimes, it would appear, by his Holiness himself, to see the sights. The remarks he made upon the town were very useful if not quite civil to the seat of Roman influence and authority. Infessura gives this little incident vividly, so that we almost see the streets with their outer stairs crowded with bystanders, their balconies laden with bright tapestries and fair women, and every projecting gable and pillared doorway pushing out into the pavement at its own unfettered will. The course of sightseeing followed by the King, conducted by the Pope and Cardinals, is fully set forth in these quaint pages. King Ferrante came to make his devotions _allo perdono_, probably the Jubilee of 1475, and offered to each of the three churches of St. Peter, St. John Lateran, and St. Paul, a pallium of gold for each, besides many other gifts. "He went over all Rome to see the great buildings, and to Santa Maria Rotonda, and the columns of Antonius and of Trajan; and every man did him great honour. And when he had seen all these things he turned back to the palace, and talking to Pope Sixtus said that he (the Pope) could never be the lord of the place, nor ever truly reign over it, because of the porticoes and balconies which were in the streets; and that if it were ever necessary to put men at arms in possession of Rome the women in the balconies, with small bombs, could make them fly; and that nothing could be more easy than to make barricades in the narrow streets; and he advised him to clear away the balconies and the porticoes and to widen the streets, under pretence of improving and embellishing the city. The Pope took this advice, and as soon as it was possible cast down all those porticoes, and balconies, and widened the ways under pretence of improving them. And the said King remained there three days, and then went away." This story and the spirit in which the suggestion was made recall Napoleon's grim whiff of grapeshot, and the policy which has made the present Paris a city of straight lines which a battery of artillery could clear in a moment, instead of all the elbows and corners of the old picturesque streets. Pope Sixtus appreciated the suggestion, knowing how undisciplined a city he had to deal with, and what a good thing it might be to fill up those hornets' nests, with all their capabilities of offence. Probably a great many picturesque dwellings perished in the destruction of those centres of rebellion, which recall to us so vividly the scenes in which Rienzi the tribune fluttered through his little day, and which were continually filled with the rustle and tumult of an abounding populace. We cannot be so grateful to King Ferdinand, or so full of praise for this portion of the work of Pope Sixtus, as were his contemporaries, though no doubt it gave to us almost all the leading thoroughfares we know. It was reserved for his kinsman-Pope to strike Rome the severest stroke that was possible, and commit the worst of iconoclasms; but we do not doubt that the destruction of the porches, and stairheads, and balconies must have greatly diminished the old-world attraction of a city--in which, however, it was the mediæval with all its irregularities that was the intruder, while what was new in the hand of Sixtus and his architects linked itself in sympathy with the most ancient, the originator yet survivor of all. It was with the same purpose and intentions that the Pope built in place of the Ponte Rotto--which had lain long in ruins--a bridge over the Tiber, which he called by his own name, and which still remains, affording a second means of reaching the Borgo and the Sanctuaries, as a relief to the bridge of St. Angelo, upon which serious accidents were apt to happen by reason of the crowd. Both the chroniclers, Infessura and Panvinio, the continuator of Platina, describe the bridge as being a rebuilding of the actual Ponte Rotto itself. "It was his intention to mend this bridge," says the former authority, and he takes the opportunity to point out the presumptuous and proud attempt of Sixtus to preserve his own name and memory by it, a fault already committed by several of his predecessors; "he accordingly descended to the river and placed in the foundations by the said bridge a square stone on which was written: _Sixtus Quartus Pontifex Maximus fecit fieri sub Anno Domini 1473_. Behind this stone the Pope placed certain gold medals bearing his head, and afterwards built that bridge, which after this was no longer called _Ponte Rotto_, but _Ponte Sisto_, as is written on it." It is a wonderful point of view, commanding as it does both sides of the river, St. Peter's on one hand and the Palatine on the other, with all the mass of buildings which are Rome. The _Scritte_ on the Ponte Sisto begs the prayers of the passer-by for its founder, who certainly had need of them both for his achievements in life and in architecture. There is still, however, a Ponte Rotto further up the stream. Besides the work of widening the streets, which necessitated much pulling down and rebuilding of houses, and frequent encounters with the inhabitants, who naturally objected to proceedings so summary--and removing the excrescences, balconies, and porticoes, "which occupied, obscured, and made them ugly (_brutte_) and disorderly:" Pope Sixtus rebuilt the great Hospital of the Santo Spirito, which had fallen into disrepair, providing shelter in the meantime for the patients who had to be removed from it, and arranging for the future in the most grandfatherly way. This great infirmary is also a foundling hospital, and there was a large number of children to provide for. "Seeing that many children both male and female along with their nurses were thrown out on the world, he assigned them a place where they could live, and ordained that the marriageable girls should be portioned and honestly married, and that the others who would not marry should become the nurses of the sick. He also arranged that there should be (in the new hospital) more honourable rooms and better furnished for sick gentle-folks, so that they might be kept separate from the common people": an arrangement which is one of the things (like so many ancient expedients) on which we now pride ourselves as an invention of our own age, though the poor gentle-folks of Pope Sisto were not apparently made to pay for their privileges. This hospital in some of its details is considered the most meritorious of the Pope's architectural work. Sixtus IV. was a man of the most violent temper, which led him into some curious scenes which have become historical. When one of the unfortunate proprietors of a house which stood in the way of his improvements resisted the workmen, Sixtus had him cast into prison on the moment, and savagely stood by to see the house pulled down before he would leave the spot. He delighted, the chroniclers say, in the ruins he made. A more tragic instance of his rage was the judicial murder of the Protonotary Colonna, who paid with his life for crossing the will of the Pope. But this masterful will and impetuous temper secured an incredible swiftness in the execution of his work. The prudent suggestion of Ferdinand resulted in the clearance of those straight streets which led from the Flaminian Gate--now called the Porta del Popolo, which Sixtus built or restored, as well as the church of Sta. Maria del Popolo, which stands close by--to all the principal places in the city; the Corso being the way to the Capitol, the Ripetta to St. Angelo and the Borgo. He repaired once more the church and ancient palace of the Lateran, which had so long been the home of the Popes, and was still formally their diocesan church to which they went in state after their election. It is unnecessary, however, to give here a list of the many churches which he repaired or rebuilt. His work was Rome itself, and pervaded every part, from St. Peter's and the Vatican to the furthest corners of the city. The latter were, above all, the chief objects of his care, and he seems to have taken up with even a warmer ardour, if perhaps with a less cultivated intelligence, the plan of Nicolas V. in respect to the Palace at least. Like him he gathered a crowd of painters, chiefly strangers, around him, so that there is scarcely a great name of the time that does not appear in his lists; but he managed these great craftsmen personally like a slave-driver, pushing them on to a breathless speed of execution, so that the works produced for him are more memorable for their extent than for their perfection. The fame of a sanitary reformer before his time seems an unlikely one for Pope Sixtus, yet he seems to have had no inconsiderable right to it. _Nettare_ and _purgare_ are two words in constant use in the record of his life. He restored to efficient order the Cloaca Maxima. He brought in, a more beautiful office, the Acqua Vergine, a name of itself enough to glorify any master-builder, "remaking," says the chronicler, "the aqueducts, which were in ruins, from Monte Pincio to the fountain of Trevi." Here is perhaps a better reason for blessing Pope Sixtus than even his bridge, for those splendid and abundant waters which convey coolness and freshness and pleasant sound into the very heart of Rome were brought hither by his hand, a gift which may be received without criticism, for not upon his name lies the guilt of the prodigious construction, a creation of the eighteenth century, through which they now flow. The traveller from the ends of the earth who takes his draught of this wonderful unfailing fountain, rejoicing in the sparkle and the flow of water so crystal-clear and cold even in the height of summer, and hoping to secure as he does so his return to Rome, may well pour a libation to Papa Sisto, who, half pagan as they all were in those days, would probably have liked that form of recollection quite as much as the prayers he invokes according to the formal requirements of piety and the custom of the Church. However, they found it quite easy to combine the two during that strange age. The chief thing of all, however, which perpetuates the name of Sixtus is the famous Sistine chapel, although its chief attraction is not derived from anything ordained by him. Some of the greatest names in art were concerned in its earlier decorations--Perugino, Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, along with many others. Michael Angelo was not yet, neither had Raphael appeared from the Umbrian _bottega_ with his charm of grace and youth. But the Pope collected the greatest he could find, and set them to work upon his newly-built walls with a magnificence and liberality which deserved a more lasting issue. The reader will shiver, yet almost laugh with consternation and wonder, to hear that several great pictures of Perugino were destroyed on these walls by the orders of another Pope in order to make room for Michael Angelo. There could not be a more characteristic token of the course of events in the Papal succession, and of the wanton waste and destruction by one of the most cherished work of another. Sixtus was none the less a warlike prince, struggling in perpetual conflict with the princes of the other states, perhaps with even a fiercer strain of ambition, fighting for wealth and position with which to endow the young men who were as his sons--as worldly in his aims as any Malatesta or Sforza, as little scrupulous about his means of carrying them out, shedding blood or at least permitting it to be shed in his name, extorting money, selling offices, trampling upon the rights of other men. Yet amid all these distractions he pursued his nobler work, not without a wish for the good of his people as well as for his own ends, making his city more habitable, providing a lordly habitation for the sick, pouring floods of life-giving water into the hot and thirsty place. The glory of building may have many elements of vanity in it as well as the formation of galleries of art, and the employment of all the greatest art-workmen of their time. But ours is the advantage in these latter respects, so that we may well judge charitably a man who, in devising great works for his own honour and pleasure, has at the same time endowed us, and especially his country and people, with a lasting inheritance. Perhaps, even in competition with these, it is most to his credit that he fulfilled offices which did not so much recommend themselves to his generation, and cleansed and cleared out and let in air and light like any modern sanitary reformer. The Acqua Vergine and the Santo Spirito Hospital are as fine things as even a Botticelli for a great prince's fame. He may even be forgiven the destruction of the balconies and all the picturesque irregularities which form the charm of ancient streets, in consideration of the sewerage and the cleaning out. The pictures, the libraries, and all the more beautiful things of life, in which we of the distant lands and centuries have our share of benefit, are good deeds which are not likely to be forgotten. It is however naturally the beautiful things of which it is most pleasant to think. The chroniclers, whom we love to follow, curiously enough, have nothing to say about the pictures, perhaps because it was not an art favoured by the Romans, or which they themselves pursued, except in its lower branches. Infessura mentions a certain Antonazzo Pintore, who was the author of a Madonna, painted on the wall near the church of Sta. Maria, below the Capitol at the foot of the hill, which on the 26th of June, in the year 1470, began to do miracles, and was afterwards enshrined in a church dedicated to our Lady of Consolations. Antonazzo was a humble Roman artist, whose name is to be found among the workmen in the service of Pope Paul II., who was not much given to pictures. Perhaps he is mentioned because he was a Roman, more likely because he had the good luck to produce a miraculous Madonna. The same writer makes passing mention of I Fiorentini, under which generic name all the _bottegas_ were included. "He renewed the Palace of the Vatican, drawing it forth under great colonnades," says, picturesquely, the chronicler Panvinio, working probably from Platina's notes, "and making under his chapel a library": which was the finest thing of all, for he there reinstated Platina, who had been kept under so profound a shadow in the time of Paul II., and called back the learned men whom his predecessor had discouraged, sending far and near through all Europe for books, and thus enlarging the library begun by Pope Nicolas which is one of the most celebrated which the world possesses, and to which he secured a revenue, "enough to enable those who had the care of it to live, and even to buy more books." This provision still exists, though it is no longer sufficient for the purpose for which it was dedicated. The Cardinals emulated the Pope both in palace and church, each doing his best to leave behind him some building worthy of his name. Ornament abounded everywhere; sometimes rather of a showy than of a refined kind. There is a story in Vasari of how one of the painters employed on the Sistine, competing for a prize which the Pope had offered, piled on his colours beyond all laws of taste or harmony, and was laughed at by his fellows; but proved the correctness of his judgment by winning the prize, having gauged the knowledge and taste of Sixtus better than the others whose attempt had been to do their best--a height entirely beyond his grasp. All these buildings, however, were fatal to the remnants still existing of ancient Rome. The Colosseum and the other great relics of antiquity were still the quarries out of which the new erections were built. The Sistine Bridge was founded upon huge blocks of travertine brought directly from the ruins of the Colosseum. The buildings of the Imperial architects thus melted away as we are told now everything in the world does, our own bodies among the rest, into new combinations, under a law which if just and universal in nature is not willingly adopted in art. The wonder is how they should have supplied so many successive generations, and still remain even to the extent they still do. Every building in Rome owes something to the Colosseum--its stones were sold freely in earlier ages, and carried off to the ends of the earth; but it has remained like the widow's cruse, inexhaustible: which is almost more wonderful than the fact of its constant use. There is a picture in the Vatican gallery, which though not one of the highest merit is very interesting from a historical point of view. We quote the description of it from Bishop Creighton. "It represents Sixtus IV. founding the Vatican library. The Pope with a face characterised by mingled strength and coarseness, his hands grasping the arms of his chair, sits looking at Platina, who kneels before him, a man whose face is that of a scholar, with square jaw, thin lips, finely cut mouth, and keen glancing eye. Cardinal Giuliano stands like an official who is about to give a message to the Pope, by whose side is Pietro Riario with aquiline nose and sensual chin, red-cheeked and supercilious. Behind Platina is Count Girolamo with a shock of black hair falling over large black eyes, his look contemptuous and his mien imperious." These were the three men for whom the Pontiff fought and struggled and soiled his hands with blood, and sold his favour to the highest bidder. Giuliano della Rovere and Pietro Riario were Cardinals: Count Girolamo or Jeronimo was worse--he was of the rudest type of the predatory baron, working out a fortune for himself with the sword, the last man in the world to be the henchman of a Pope. They were but one step from the peasant race, without distinction or merit which had given them birth, and all three built upon that rude stock the dissolute character and grasping greed for money, acquired by every injustice, and expended on every folly, which was so common in their time. They were all young, intoxicated with their wonderful success and with every kind of extravagance to be provided for. They made Rome glitter and glow with pageants, always so congenial to the taste of the people, seizing every opportunity of display and magnificence. Infessura tells the story of one of these wonderful shows, with a mixture of admiration and horror. The Cardinal of San Sisto, he tells us, who was Pietro Riario, covered the whole of the Piazza of the Santi Apostoli, and hung it with cloth of arras, and above the portico of the church erected a fine _loggia_ with panels painted by the Florentines for the festa of San ... (the good Infessura forgets the name with a certain contempt one cannot but feel for the foreign painters and their works), and in front made two fountains which threw water very high, as high as the roof of the church. This wonderful arrangement was intended for the delectation of the royal guest Madonna Leonora, daughter of King Ferrante for whom he and his cousin Girolamo made a great feast. "After the above banquet was seen one of the finest things that were ever seen in Rome or out of Rome: for between the banquet and the festa, several thousands of ducats were spent. There was erected a buffet with so much silver upon it as you would never have believed the Church of God had so much, in addition to that which was used at table: and even the things to eat were gilt, and the sugar used to make them was without measure, more than could be believed. And the said Madonna Leonora was in the aforesaid house with many demoiselles and baronesses. And every one of these ladies had a washing basin of gold given her by the Cardinal. Oh guarda! in such things as these to spend the treasure of the Church!" Next year the Cardinal Riario died at twenty-eight, "poisoned," Infessura says: "and this was the end of all our fine festas." Another day it was the layman among the nephews who stirred all Rome, and the world beyond, with an immeasurable holiday. "On St. Mark's Day, 1746, the Count Jeronimo, son, or nephew of Pope Sixtus, held a solemn tournament in Navona, where were many valiant knights of Italy and much people, Catalans and Burgundians and other nations; and it was believed that at this festivity there were more than a hundred thousand people, and it lasted over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And there were three prizes, one of which was won by Juliano Matatino, and another by Lucio Poncello, and the third by a man of arms of the Kingdom (Naples, so called until very recent days), and they were of great value." The Piazza Navona, the scene of this tournament, was made by Pope Sixtus the market-place of Rome, where markets were held once a month, an institution which still continues. The noble Pantheon occupies the end of this great square, as when Count Jeronimo with his black brows, marshalled his knights within the long enclosure, so fit for such a sight. We have now come to a period of history in which all the localities are familiar, and where we can identify every house and church and tower. "Sixtus," says the chronicler, "left nothing undone which he saw to be for the ornament or comfort of the city. He defended intrepidly the cause of the Romans and the dignity of the Holy See." The first of these statements is more true perhaps than the last; and we may forgive him his shortcomings and his nephews on that great score. He ended his reign in August 1484, having held the Pontificate thirteen years. [Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF TREVI.] CHAPTER III. JULIUS II.--LEO X. It is happily possible to pass over the succeeding pontificates of Innocent VIII. and Alexander VI. These Popes did little for Rome except, especially the last of them, to associate the name of the central city of Christendom with every depravity. The charitable opinion of later historians who take that pleasure in upsetting all previous notions, which is one of the features of our time, has begun to whisper that even the Borgias were not so black as they were painted. But it will take a great deal of persuasion and of eloquence to convince the world that there is anything to be said for that name. Pope Innocent VIII. continued the embellishment of the Vatican, which was his own palace, and completed the Belvedere, and set Andrea Mantegna to paint its chambers; but this was not more than any Roman nobleman might have done for his palace if he had had money enough for decorations, which were by no means so costly in those days as they would be now, and probably indeed were much cheaper than the more magnificent kinds of arras or other decorative stuffs fit for a Pope's palace. Alexander, too, added a splendid apartment for himself, still known by his name; and provided for possible danger (which did not occur however in his day) by making and decorating another apartment in the castle of St. Angelo, whither he might have retired and still managed to enjoy himself, had Rome risen against him. But Rome, which often before had hunted its best Popes into the strait confinement of that stronghold, left the Borgia at peace. We are glad to pass on to the next Pope, whose footsteps, almost more than those of any other of her monarchs, are still to be seen and recognised through Rome. He gave more to the city than any one who had preceded him, and he destroyed more than any Pope before had permitted himself to do. Julius II., della Rovere, the nephew of Pope Sixtus, for whom and for his brother and cousin that Pope occupied so much of his busy life, was a violent man of war, whose whole life was occupied in fighting, and who neither had nor pretended to have any reputation for sanctity or devotion. But passionate and unsparing as he was, and fiercely bent on his own way, the aim of his perpetual conflicts was at all events a higher one than that of his uncle, in so far that it was to enrich the Church and not his own family that he toiled and fought. He was the centre of warlike combinations all his life--League of Cambrai, holy League, every kind of concerted fighting to crush those who opposed him and to divide their goods; but the portion of the goods which fell to the share of Pope Julius was for the Church and not for the endowment of a sister's son. He was not insensible altogether to the claims of sister's sons; but he preferred on the whole the patrimony of St. Peter, and fought for that with unfailing energy all round. There are many books in which the history of those wars and of the Renaissance Popes in general may be read in full, but the Julius II. in whom we are here interested is not one who ever led an army or signed an offensive league: it is the employer of Bramante and Michael Angelo and Raphael, the choleric patron who threatened to throw the painter of the Sistine chapel from his scaffolding, the dreadful iconoclast who pulled down St. Peter's and destroyed the tombs of the Popes, the magnificent prince who bound the greatest artists then existing in Italy, which was to say in the world, to his chariot wheels, and drove them about at his will. Most of these things were good things, and give a favourable conception of him; though not that which was the most important of all. How it was that he came to pull down St. Peter's nobody can say. He had of course the contempt which a man, carried on the highest tide of a new movement, has by nature for all previous waves of impulse. He thought of the ancient building so often restored, the object of so much loving care, with all the anxious expedients employed by past Popes to glorify and embellish the beloved interior, giving it the warmest and most varied historical interest--with much the same feeling as the respectable churchwarden in the eighteenth century looked upon the piece of old Gothic which had fallen into his hands. A church of the fourteenth century built for eternity has always looked to the churchwarden as if it would tumble about his ears--and his Herculean efforts to pull down an arch that without him would have stood till the end of time have always been interpreted as meaning that the ancient erection was about to fall. Julius II. in the same way announced St. Peter's to be in a bad way and greatly in need of repair, so as scarcely to be safe for the faithful; and Bramante was there all ready with the most beautiful plans, and the Pope was not a patient man who would wait, but one who insisted upon results at once. This church had been for many hundreds of years the most famous of Christian shrines; from the ends of the world pilgrims had sought its altars. The tomb of the Apostles was its central point, and many another saint and martyr inhabited its sacred places. It had seen the consecration of Emperors, it had held false Popes and true, and had witnessed the highest climax of triumph for some, and for some the last solemnity of death.[10] But Bramante saw in that venerable temple only the foundations for a new cathedral after the fashion of the great Duomo which was the pride of Florence; and his master beheld in imagination the columns rising, and the vast arches growing, of such an edifice as would be the brag of Christendom, and carry the glory of his own name to the furthest ends of the earth: a temple all-glorious in pagan pride, more classical than the classics, adorned with great statues and blank magnificence of pilasters and tombs rising up to the roof--one tomb at least, that of the della Roveres, of Sixtus IV. and Julius II., which should live as long as history, and which, if that proud and petulant fellow Buonarotti would but complete his work, would be one of the glories of the Eternal City. [Illustration: OLD ST. PETER'S. _To face page 584._] The ancient St. Peter's would not seem to have had anything of the poetic splendour and mystery of a Gothic building as understood in northern countries: the rounded arches of its façade did not spring upwards with the lofty lightness and soaring grace of the great cathedrals of France and Germany. But the irregular front was full of interest and life, picturesque if not splendid. It had character and meaning in every line, it was a series of erections, carrying the method of one century into another, with that art which makes one great building into an animated and varied history of the times and ages through which it has passed, taking something from each, and giving shelter and the sense of continuance to all. There is no such charm as this in the most perfect of architectural triumphs executed by a single impulse. But this was the last quality in the world likely to deter a magnificent Pope of the fifteenth century, to whom unity of conception and correctness of form were of much more concern than any such imaginative interest. However Julius II. must not have greater guilt laid upon him than was his due. His operations concerned only the eastern part of the great church: the façade, and the external effect of the building remained unchanged for more than a hundred years; while the plan as now believed, was that of Pope Nicolas V., only carried out by instalments by his successors, of whom Julius was one of the boldest. It is, however, in the fame of his three servants, sublime slaves, whose names are more potent still than those of any Pontiff, that this Pope has become chiefly illustrious. His triumphs of fighting are lost from memory in the pages of the historians, where we read and forget, the struggle he maintained in Italy, and the transformations through which that much troubled country passed under his sway--to change again the morrow after, as it had changed the day before the beginning of his career. To be sure it was he who finally identified and secured the Patrimony of St. Peter--so that the States of the Church were not henceforward lost and won by a natural succession of events once at least in the life of every Pope. But we forget that fact, and all that secured it, the tumultuous chaos of European affairs being as yet too dark to be penetrated by any certainty of consolidation. The course of events was in large what the history of the fortunes of St. John Lateran, for example, was in small. From the days of Pope Martin V. until those of Sixtus IV. a change of the clergy there was made in almost each pontificate. Eugenius IV. restored the canons regular, or monks: who were driven forth by Calixtus III., again restored by Paul II., and so forth, until at length Sixtus, bringing back the secular priests for the third time, satisfied the monks by the gift of his new church of Sta. Maria della Pace. The revolution of affairs in Italy was almost as regular, and it is only with an effort of the mind that the reader can follow the endless shifting of the scenes, the combinations that disperse and reassemble, the whirl of events for ever coming round again to the point from which they started. But when we put aside the Popes and the Princes and the stamping and tumult of mail-clad warriors--and the crowd opening on every side gives us to see a patient, yet high-tempered artisan mounting day by day his lofty platform, swung up close to the roof, where sometimes lying on his back, sometimes crouched upon his knees, he made roof and architrave eloquent with a vision which centuries cannot fade, nor any revolution, either of external affairs or of modes of thought, lessen in interest, a very different feeling fills the mind, and the thoughts, which were sick and weary with the purposeless and dizzy whirl of fact, come back relieved to the consoling permanence of art. The Pope who mounted imperious, a master of the world, on to those dizzy planks, admired, and blasphemed and threatened in a breath; but with no power to move the sturdy painter, who, it was well known, was a man impossible to replace. "When will you have done?" said the Pope. "When I can," replied the other. The Pontiff might rage and threaten, but the Florentine painted on steadily; and Pope Julius, on the tremulous scaffolding up against the roof of his uncle's chapel, is better known to the world by that scene than by all his victories. Uncle and nephew, both men of might, warlike souls and strong, that room in the Vatican has more share in their fame than anything else which they achieved in the world. Another and a gentler spirit comes in at the same time to glorify this fortunate Pope. His predecessors for some time back had each done something for the splendour of the dwelling which was their chief residence, even the least interested adding at least a _loggia_, a corridor, a villa in the garden, as has been seen, to make the Vatican glorious. Alexander VI. had been the last to embellish and extend the more than regal lodging of the Pontiffs; but Julius II. had a hatred of his predecessor which all honest men have a right to share, and would not live in the rooms upon which the Borgias had left the horror of their name. He went back to the cleaner if simpler apartments which Nicolas V. had built and decorated by the hands of the elder painters. Upon one of these he set young Raphael to work, a young man with whom there was likely to be no such trouble as that he had with the gnarled and crabbed Florentine, who was as wilful as himself. Almost as soon as the young painter had begun his gracious work the delighted Pope perceived what a treasury of glory he had got in this new servant. What matter that the new painter's master, Perugino, had been there before him with other men of the highest claims? The only thing to do was to break up these old-fashioned masters, to clear them away from the walls, to leave it all to Raphael. We shiver and wonder at such a proof of enthusiasm. Was the young man willing to get space for his smooth ethereal pictures with all their heavenly grace, at such a price? But if he made any remonstrance--which probably he did, for we see him afterwards in much trouble over St. Peter's, and the destruction carried on there--his imperious master took little notice. Julius was one of the men who had to be obeyed, and he was always as ready to pull down as to build up. The destruction of St. Peter's on one hand, and all those pictures on the other, prove the reckless and masterful nature of the man, standing at nothing in a matter on which he had set his heart. In later days the pictures of Perugino on the wall of the Sistine chapel were demolished, as has been said, to make place for the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo; but Pope Julius by that time had passed into another sphere. Most people will remember the famous portrait of this Pope by Raphael, one of the best known pictures in the world. He sits in his chair, an old man, his head slightly bowed, musing, in a pause of the endless occupations and energy which made his life so full. The portrait is quite simple, but full of dignity and a brooding power. We feel that it would not be well to rouse the old lion, though at the moment his repose is perfect. Raphael was at his ease in the peacefulness of his own soul to observe and to record the powerful master whose fame he was to have so great a share in making. It would have been curious to have had also the Julius whom Michael Angelo knew. He died in the midst of all this great work, while yet the dust of the downfall of St. Peter's was in the air. Had it been possible that he could have lived to see the new and splendid temple risen in its place, we could better understand the wonderful hardihood of the act; but it would be almost inconceivable how even the most impious of men could have executed such an impulse, leaving nothing but a partial ruin behind him of the great Shrine of Christendom, did we not know that a whole line of able rulers had carried on the plan to gradual completion. It was not till a hundred and fifty years later that the new St. Peter's in its present form, vast and splendid, but apparently framed to look, to the first glance, as little so as possible, stood complete, to the admiration of the world. In the violence of destruction a great number of the tombs of the Popes perished, by means of that cynical carelessness and profanity which is more cruel than any hostile impulse. Julius preserved the grave of his uncle Sixtus, where he was himself afterwards laid, not in his own splendid tomb which had been in the making for many years, and which is now to be seen in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli from which he took his Cardinal's title. He had therefore little good of that work of art as he well deserved, and it was itself sadly diminished, cut down, and completed by various secondary hands; but it is kept within the ken of the spectator by Michael Angelo's Moses and some other portions of his original work, though it neither enshrines the body nor marks the resting place of its imperious master. Julius died in 1513, "more illustrious in military glory than a Pope ought to be." Panvinio says: "He was of great soul and constancy, and a powerful defender of all ecclesiastical things: he would not suffer any offence, and was implacable with rebels and contumacious persons. He was such a one as could not but be praised for having with so much strength and fidelity preserved and increased the possessions of the Church, although there are a few to whom it appears that he was more given to arms than was becoming a holy Pope." "On the 21st of February 1513, died Pope Julius, at nine hours of the night," says another chronicler, Sebastiano Branca; "he held the papacy nine years, three months, and twenty-five days. He was from Savona: he acquired many lands for the Church: no Pope had ever done what Pope Julius did. The first was Faenza, the others Forli, Cervia, Ravenna, Rimini, Parma, Piacenza, and Arezzo. He gained them all for the Church, nor ever thought of giving them to his own family. Pesaro he gave to the Duke of Urbino, his nephew, but no other. Thirty-three cardinals died in his time. And he caused the death in war of more than a hundred thousand people." There could not be a more grim summary. It is curious to remark that the men who originated the splendour of modern Rome, who built its noblest churches and palaces, and emblazoned its walls with the noblest works of art, and filled its libraries with the highest luxury of books, were men of the humblest race, of peasant origin, born to poverty and toil. Thomas of Sarzana, Pope Nicolas V., Francesco and Giuliano of Savona, Popes Sixtus IV. and Julius II.: these men were born without even the distinction of a surname, in the huts where poor men lie, or more humbly still in some room hung high against the rocky foundations of a village, perched upon a cliff, after the fashion of Italy. It was they who set the fashion of a magnificence beyond the dreams of the greatest princes of their time. It was not so, however, with the successor of Julius II., the Pope in whose name all the grandeur and magnificence of Rome is concentrated, and of whom we think most immediately when the golden age of ecclesiastical luxury and the splendour of art is named. Leo X. was as true a son of luxury as they were of the soil. The race of Medici has always been fortunate in its records. The greatest painters of the world have been at its feet, encouraged and cherished and tyrannised over. Literature such as was in the highest esteem in those days flattered and caressed and fawned upon them. Lorenzo, somewhat foolishly styled in history the Magnificent,--in forgetfulness of the fact that il Magnifico was the common title of a Florentine official,--is by many supposed to be the most conspicuous and splendid character in the history of Florence. And Leo X. bears the same renown in the records of Papal Rome. We will not say that he was a modern Nero fiddling while Rome was burning, for he showed himself in many ways an unusually astute politician, and as little disposed to let slip any temporal advantage as his fighting predecessors--but the spectacle is still a curious one of a man expending his life and his wealth (or that of other people) in what was even the most exquisite and splendid of decorations, such wonders of ornamentation as Raphael's frescoes--while the Papacy itself was being assailed by the greatest rebellion ever raised against it. To go on painting the walls while the foundations of the building are being ruined under your feet and at any moment may fall about your ears, reducing your splendid ornaments to powder, is a thing which gives the most curious sensation to the looker on. The world did not know in those days that even to an institution so corrupt superficially as the Church of Rome the ancient promise stood fast, and not only the gates of hell, but those more like of heaven, should not prevail against her. Out of Italy it was believed that the Church which had but lately been ruled over by a Borgia, and which was admittedly full of wickedness in high places, must go down altogether under the tremendous blow. A great part of the world indeed went on believing so for a century or two. But in the midst of that almost universal conviction nothing can be more curious than to see the life of Papal Rome going on as if nothing had happened, and young Raphael and all his disciples coming and going, cheerful as the day, about the great empty chambers which they were making into a wonder of the earth. Michael Angelo, it is true, in grim discontent hewed at those huge slaves of his in Florence, working wonderful thoughts into their great limbs; but all that Roman world flowed on in brightness and in glory under skies untouched by any threatening of catastrophe. [Illustration: MODERN ROME: THE GRAVE OF KEATS. _To face page 592._] The Italian chroniclers scarcely so much as mention the beginnings of the Reformation. "At that time in the furthest part of Germany the abominable and infamous name of Martin Luther began to be heard," says one. The elephant which Emmanuel of Portugal sent to his Holiness, and which was supposed to be a thousand years old, takes up as much space. The sun shone on in Rome. The painters sang and whistled at their work, and their sublime patron went and came, and capped verses with Venetian Bembo, and the unique Aretino. They were not, it would seem, in the least afraid of Luther, nor even cognisant of him except in a faint and far-off way. He was so absurd as to object to the sale of indulgences. Now the sale of indulgences was not to be defended in theory, as all these philosophers knew. But to buy off the penances which otherwise they would at all events have been obliged to pretend to do, was a relief grateful to many persons who were not bad Christians, besides being good Catholics. Perhaps, indeed, in the gross popular imagination these indulgences might have come to look like permissions to sin, as that monster in Germany asserted them to be; but this did not really alter their true character, any more than other popular mistakes affected doctrine generally. And how to get on with that huge building of St. Peter's, at which innumerable workmen were labouring year after year, and which was the most terrible burden upon the Papal funds, without that method of wringing stone and mortar and gilding and mosaic out of the common people? Pope Leo took it very easily. Notwithstanding the acquisitions of Pope Julius, and the certainty with which the historians assure us that from his time the Patrimony of St. Peter was well established in the possession of Rome, some portion of it had been lost again, and had again to be recovered in the days of his successor. That was doubtless more important than the name, _nefando_, _execrabile_ of the German monk. And so the wars went on, though not with the spirit and relish which Julius II. had brought into them. Leo X. had no desire to kill anybody. When he was compelled to do it he did it quite calmly and inexorably as became a Medici; but he took no pleasure in the act. If Luther had fallen into his hands the Curia would no doubt have found some means of letting the pestilent fellow off. A walk round the _loggie_ or the _stanze_ where the painters were so busy, and where Raphael, a born gentleman, would not grumble as that savage Buonarotti did, at being interrupted, but would pause and smile and explain, put the thought of all troublesome Germans easily out of the genial potentate's head. It was the Golden Age; and Rome was the centre of the world as was meet, and genius toiled untiringly for the embellishment of everything; and such clever remarks had never been made in any court, such witty suggestions, such fine language used and subtle arguments held, as those of all the scholars and all the wits who vied with each other for the ear and the glance of Pope Leo. The calm enjoyment of life over a volcano was never exhibited in such perfection before. We need not pause here to enumerate or describe those works which every visitor to Rome hastens to see, in which the benign and lovely art of Raphael has lighted up the splendid rooms of the Vatican with something of the light that never was on sea or shore. We confess that for ourselves one little picture from the same hand, to be met with here and there, and often far from the spot where it was painted, outvalues all those works of art; but no one can dispute their beauty or importance. Pope Leo did not by so much as the touch of a pencil contribute to their perfection, yet they are the chief glory of his time, and the chief element in his fame. He made them in so far that he provided the means, the noble situation as well as the more vulgar provision which was quite as necessary, and he has therefore a right to his share of the applause--by which he is well rewarded for all he did; for doubtless the payment of the moment, the pleasure which he sincerely took in them, and the pride of so nobly taking his share in the lasting illumination of Rome were a very great recompense in themselves, without the harvest he has since reaped in the applause of posterity. Nowadays we do not perhaps so honour the patron of art as people were apt to do in the last century. And there are, no doubt, many now who worship Raphael in the Vatican without a thought of Leo. Still he is worthy to be honoured. He gave the young painter a free hand, believing in his genius and probably attracted by his more genial nature, while holding Michael Angelo, for whom he seems always to have felt a certain repugnance, at arm's length. We will not attempt to point out in Raphael's great mural paintings the flattering allusions to Leo's history and triumph which critics find there, nor yet the high purpose with which others hold the painter to have been moved in those great works. Bishop Creighton finds a lesson in them, which is highly edifying, but rather beyond what we should be disposed to look for. "The life of Raphael," he says, "expresses the best quality of the spirit of the Italian Renaissance, its belief in the power of culture to restore unity to life and implant serenity in the soul. It is clear that Raphael did not live for mere enjoyment, but that his time was spent in ceaseless activity animated by high hopes for the future." How this may be we do not know: but lean rather to the opinion that Raphael, like other men of great and spontaneous genius, did what was in him and did his best, with little ulterior purpose and small thought about the power of culture. It was his, we think, to show how art might best illustrate and with the most perfect effect the space given him to beautify, with a meaning not unworthy of the gracious work, but no didactic impulse. It was his to make these fine rooms, and the airy lightness of the brilliant _loggie_ beautiful, with triumphant exposition of a theme full of pictorial possibilities. But what it should have to do with Luther, or how the one should counterbalance the other, it is difficult to perceive. Goethe on the other hand declares that going to Raphael's _loggie_ from the Sistine chapel "we could scarcely bear to look at them. The eye was so educated and enlarged by those grand forms and the glorious completeness of all the parts that it could take no pleasure" in works so much less important. Such are the differences of opinion in all ages. It is the glory of this period of Roman history that at a time when the Apostolic See had lost so much, and when all its great purposes, its noble ideals, its reign of holiness and inspired wisdom had perished like the flower of the fields--when all that Gregory and Innocent had struggled their lives long to attain had dissolved like a bubble: when the Popes were no longer holy men, nor distinguished by any great and universal aim, but Italian princes like others, worse rather than better in some cases: there should have arisen, with a mantle of glory to hide the failure and the horror and the scorn, these two great brethren of Art--the one rugged, mournful, self-conscious, bowed down by the evil of the time, the other all sweetness and gladness, an angel of light, divining in his gracious simplicity the secrets of the skies. Leo the Pope was no such noble soul. He was only an urbane and skilful Medici, great to take every advantage of the divine slaves that were ready for his service--using them not badly, encouraging them to do their best, if not for higher motives yet to please him, the Sommo Pontefice, surely the best thing that they could hope for; and to win such share of the ducats which came to him from the sale of the offices of the Vatican, the cardinals' hats, the papal knighthoods, and other trumpery, as might suffice for all their wants. He sold these and other things, indulgences for instance, sown broadcast over the face of the earth and raising crops of a quite different kind. But on the other hand he never sold a benefice. He remitted the tax on salt; and he gave liberally to whoever asked him, and enjoyed life with all his heart, in itself no bad quality. [Illustration: A BRIC-A-BRAC SHOP.] "The pontificate of Leo was the most gay and the most happy that Rome ever saw," says the chronicler. "Being much enamoured of building he took up with a great soul the making of San Pietro, which Julius, with marvellous art, had begun. He ennobled the palace of the Vatican with triple porticoes, ample and long, of the most beautiful fabrication, with gilded roofs and ornamented by excellent pictures. He rebuilt almost from the foundations the church of our Lady of the Monte Coelio, from which he had his title as cardinal, and adorned it with mosaics. Finally there was nothing which during all his life he had more at heart or more ardently desired than the excellent name of liberal, although it was the wont ordinarily of all the others to turn their backs upon that virtue of liberality, and to keep far from it. He judged those unworthy of high station who did not with large and benign hand disperse the gifts of fortune, and above all those which were acquired by little or no fatigue. But while he in this guise governed Rome, and all Italy enjoyed a gladsome peace, he was by a too early death taken from this world although still in the flower and height of his years." He died forty-five years old on December 1, 1521. The great works which one and another of the Popes thus left half done were completed--St. Peter's by Sixtus V. 1590, and Paul V. 1615. The Last Judgment completing the Sistine chapel was finished by Michael Angelo in 1541 under Clement VII. and Paul III. And thus the Rome of our days--the Rome which not as pilgrims, but as persons living according to the fashion of our own times, which compels us to go to and fro over all the earth and see whatever is to be seen, we visit every year in large numbers--was left more or less as it is now, for the admiration of the world. Much has been done since, and is doing still every day to make more intelligible and more evident the memorials of an inexhaustible antiquity--but in the Rome of the Popes, the Rome of Christendom, History has had but little and Art not another word to say. FOOTNOTE: [10] See the death of Pope Leo IX., p. 199. THE END. INDEX. INDEX. Adelaide of Susa, 262, 269. Agnes, Empress, 217, 233, 237, 279; Hildebrand becomes adviser to, 202; alienated from Hildebrand, 214; renounces the world, 219. Alaric, 108, 119, 121. Albigenses, many sects among, 355; Pope Innocent's attitude towards, 357; missionaries sent to, _ib._; crusade against them, 359-361. Albina, 17, 18, 89. Albornoz, Cardinal, 480, 488. Alexander II., 205, 215, 224. Alexander VI., 581, 582, 589. Allegories, Rienzi's painted, 413-416, 419. Ambrose, 48. Angelico, Fra, 546, 549. Angelo, Michael, 588, 595, 598. Apollinaris, the heresy of, 47, 48. Aqueducts restored by Sixtus IV., 574. Arimbaldo, 500; joins Rienzi in his enterprise, 489. Aristocracy, Roman, its position at the end of the 4th century, 3, 4, 5; luxuriousness of the nobles, 5, 6, 7; and of the women, 7, 8; its characteristics in the 14th century, 396, 397. _See_ Nobles. Art, the Popes as patrons of, 515; that of Rome imported from abroad, 516; art workshops in Rome, 546. Artists, Roman, 412, 413, 420; employed upon the Sistine chapel, 575; Julius II. as a patron of, 482, 583, 589. Asella, 18, 21, 89; Jerome's letters to, 72, 75, 76. Athanasius, his life of St. Antony of the desert, 15; his reception at Rome, 16; and in the household of Albina, 17; Melania's visit to, 33. Attila, 120. Augsburg, Council of, 261; German nobles impatient to open, 274, 275. Augustine, Gregory's instructions to, for the making of converts, 156; and for pastoral work, _ib._, 157, 158; sent on his mission to England, 161, 162. Bäle, Council of, 525, 531. Bavaria, Duke of, 260. Beatrice of Tuscany, 204, 216, 234, 256. Benedict, Pope, and Fra Monozello, 395. Benedict, order of, 126, 131. Benedict I., 138. Benedict X. _See_ Mincio, Bishop. Berengarius of Tours, his heresy, 279, 290. Bethlehem, convents founded at, by Jerome and Paula, 82. Bible, Innocent III., on the interpretation of, by sectaries, 357. Blæsilla, 23, 55, 67; her conversion, 58; her death and funeral, 63. Bollandists, 131. Book collector, Thomas (Nicolas V.) as, 529, 534. Borgias, 515, 581. Borgo, 538; sanctity of the spot, 539, 540; wall built to enclose, 541; buildings erected afterwards within the enclosure, _ib._ Botticelli, 575. Bowden, Mr., his life of Gregory VII., 515. Bramante, 584. Browning, Robert, 420, 421. Brunhild, Queen, 169. Bruno, Bishop, appointed Pope, 190; acts on Hildebrand's advice, 191, 192; his triumphant election at Rome, 193. _See_ Leo IX. Buildings, ancient, Gregory accused of destroying, 176, 177; regarded as stone-quarries, 242, 517, 577; restoration of, Book IV., _passim_. Buono Stato, secret society formed for the establishment of, 423, 424; demonstration by the conspirators, 425, 426; its rules, 426, 427. _See_ Rienzi. Cadalous, anti-Pope, 216-218. Cæsarea, Melania arrested at, 35. Calixtus III., 552, 553. Cammora (City Council), Rienzi protests against the rapacity of, 411. Canossa, Pope Gregory sheltered in the castle of, 264. Carinthia, Duke of, 260. Castracani, 390. Celestine, Pope, 316. Celibacy, Jerome and the controversy regarding, 59-62; of the clergy, _see_ Marriage of priests. Cencius, the Roman bandit, 243, 244; abducts Pope Gregory, 245. Cerealis, 19. Charities of the Roman ladies, 55, 56. Charles IV. and Rienzi, 476. Christianity, its conjunction with Paganism in Roman society, 7-10; nominally embraced by the common people, 57; again conjoined with Paganism during the Renaissance, 529. Church, the, corruption of, 10, 11; Jerome on the daily life of a Roman priest, 11, 12; fierceness of controversy in, 105; her position during the barbarian conquests of Rome, 120, 121; beginning of her sovereignty, 121, 122; best of the Roman youth absorbed by, 123; made no claim to universal authority in the 6th century, 121, 132, 168; wealth of, used for public purposes, 147; almsgiving a principle of, 151; Gregory's achievements for, 170; pretensions to supremacy made by John of Constantinople, 170, 173; Gregory's tolerant supervision of, 174; state of, in Germany, 188; reforms urgently necessary in, 195; effort of Leo IX. for reform in, 196-199; a new law for the election of the Popes, 208; Hildebrand's ambition of making her a great arbitrating power, 211, 212; how she secured independence in the election of the Popes, 214, 215; first conflict between the Empire and, 215-219; decrees of the Lateran Council against simony and marriage of priests, 235-239; decree against lay investiture, 239; real opening of her struggle with the Empire, 259; her position in Gregory's time, and that of the Scottish Church before the Disruption, compared, 302; her conflict with the Empire inevitable, 304, 305; period of her greatest power, 308; her relations with the Empire in the time of Innocent III., 311, 312. _See_ Gregory the Great, Hildebrand _and_ Innocent III. Cities, Italian, hostility between, 311. Clement III., appointed by the Emperor, 290; calls a council in Rome, 294; his coronation, 297. _See_ Guibert of Ravenna. Clement VI., Rienzi's mission to, 404, 405; confirms Rienzi's authority, 434. Cluny, the monastery of, 186, 190. Colonna family, patronise Petrarch, 397-400; Petrarch's estimate of, 398, 467; character of, 423; rebels against Rienzi, 453; their expedition against Rome, 453-457, 469. Colonna, Agapito, 425, 448. Colonna, Giordano, 430. Colonna, Giovanni, 397, 466; his dealings with Rienzi, 405, 409, 411. Colonna, Giacomo, his friendship with Petrarch, 397. Colonna, Janni, 419, 421, 422, 430, 448, 455, 456. Colonna, Sciarra, 384, 393; drives out the Papal troops from Rome, 384-389; crowns Louis of Bavaria, 391. Colonna, Stefano della, 393, 397, 425, 448, 449; Petrarch's description of, 428; forced to leave Rome, 429; swears loyalty to the Buono Stato, 430; Petrarch's account of his talk with, 467, 468. Colonna, Stefanello, 430, 448; and his son, 494, 495. Colosseum, as the stone-quarry of the ages, 577. Como, Bishop of, 219, 233. Constantinople, downfall of, 549. Corsignano, buildings erected in, by Pius II., 556. Council of Constantinople, 28, 47. Council of Rome, Jerome and, 27, 28, 43, 47. Creighton, Bishop, quoted, 556, 578; on Raphael's artistic aims, 598. Crown, the imperial, 249, 289, 298. Crusade, Gregory VII.'s dream of a, 265, 351, 352; encouraged by successive Popes, 352; an expedition organised, _ib._; how it was diverted from its purpose, 353-356; against the Albigenses, 298-301; Innocent rouses the Italian towns to aid in, 373; against the Turks, 553, 557, 558. Crusaders, Innocent's instructions to his, 353; their bargain with Venice, _ib._; capture Constantinople, _ib._, 354. Curzon, Robert, 310. Damasus, Bishop, 27, 48, 70; Jerome becomes a counsellor of, 54. Damian, Peter, 200, 218, 219, 223. Dante, 211, 263. Desiderius, 301. Dinner-parties, Roman, 6. Dominic, 358. Eberhard, Count, 255. Election of the Popes, interference of Tuscany in, 203, 204, 208; the rival authorities in, 206-208; Hildebrand's new law for, 207; first election under the new law, 214, 215; Rome secures complete freedom in, 215. Emperors, the rival, Henry IV. and Rudolf, Gregory's letters regarding their claims, 275, 276; treated by the Pope with severe impartiality, 278; attitude of the Roman populace towards their envoys, _ib._; Gregory insists upon holding a council to choose between, 281; this plan abandoned, _ib._, 282; Rudolf's case stated before the Lateran Council, 282; Gregory pronounces his decision, 283-285. _See_ Henry IV. _and_ Rudolf. Emperors, the rival, Philip and Otho, nothing to choose between them, 331, 332; Innocent's attitude towards, 332, 333; end of their ten years' struggle, 335. _See_ Philip _and_ Otho. Empire and Church, first conflict between, 214-218; real opening of the struggle, 259; inevitableness of the struggle, 304, 305; in the time of Innocent III., 311, 312. _See_ Henry IV., Emperor, _and_ Gregory VII. England, the Pope's interdict upon, disregarded, 345. Epiphanius, Bishop, 52, 79. Eugenius IV., 514, 516; his aspect and character, 523-525; Council of Ferrara called by, 531. Eulogius, Gregory's letter to, 173. Europe, state of, in the time of Innocent III., 310-312. Eustochium, 23, 55, 78, 83, 87; plot against, 24. Eutychius, 155. Excommunication often ineffectual, 289, 290, 334. Ezekiel, Gregory's exposition of, 144, 177, 178. Fabiola, 22, 37, 55; her matrimonial troubles, 93; her visit to the convent at Bethlehem, _ib._, 94; does public penance in Rome, 95-99; founds the first public hospital in Rome, 99. Fabriano, Gentile da, 523. Ferdinand of Naples, his advice regarding the streets and balconies of Rome, 570, 571. Ferrara, Council of, 531. France, interdict pronounced upon, 341, 343; alarmed by the revival of Rome, 436. Francis of Assisi, 326. Fraticelli, Rienzi takes refuge among, 474, 475. Frederic II., Emperor, Innocent acts as guardian of, 326, 327. Frederick, Abbot, elected Pope, 201. Funeral feast, a Roman, 102-104. Gebehard, Bishop, chosen as Pope Victor II., 200. Genseric, 120. German prelates, almost independent of the Pope, 334. Germany, state of the Church in, 188; an anti-Pope chosen by the Church in, 216. Ghirlandajo, 575. Gibbon quoted, 132. Goethe quoted on Raphael's _loggie_, 599. Gordianus, 125. Gottfried the Hunchback, 244, 260. Gottfried of Lorraine, 204. Gratiano. _See_ Gregory VI. Greek Church, 354. Gregorio, Count, 203. Gregory the Great, his home and early life, 124, 125; enters public life, 125; first result of his religious impulse, 126; becomes a monk, 127; describes his doubts and his intentions, _ib._; legends regarding his monastic life, 128; his musings in his garden, 129, 130; had no ecclesiastical ambitions, 131; receives the first orders of the Church, _ib._; appointed a cardinal deacon, _ib._; Gibbon's description of him as a nuncio, _ib._; his position in the Court at Constantinople, 132; in the society of his monks, 132-138; his commentary on Job, 134, 135; its moral discursiveness, 136, 137; how he was assisted in it by the monks, 137; his liberality, 139, 147; promotion, and popularity as a preacher, 139; his encounter with the English slave-children, _ib._, 140; sets out on his mission to Britain, 141; compelled to return, 142; effect upon him of the story of Trajan and the widow, _ib._, 143; organises processions of penitents during the plague, 144, 145; his vision of the angel, 146, 147; elected Bishop of Rome, 148; attempts to escape from this responsibility, _ib._; his repugnance to the cares of office, 149; his conviction that the end of the world was near, _ib._, 150; feeds the starving poor of Rome, 151; preserves Rome from attacks by the barbarians, 152; was not a learned man, _ib._, 153; his instructions to missionaries for the making of converts, 156, 157; and for pastoral work, _ib._; his intercessions and negotiations for the safety of Rome, 158, 159; amount of his work and responsibility, 159, 160; welcomes the usurping Emperor Phocas, 160; sends forth Augustine on his mission to England, 161-163; no reason for attributing to him a great scheme of papal supremacy, 163, 164, 175, 176; his reformation in music, 165, 166; introduces changes in the ritual, 166; his daily surroundings and occupations, 167, 168; his rules of religious discipline, 168; not a faultless character, 169; his achievements for Rome and for the Church, _ib._; his indignation at the assumption of supremacy by John of Constantinople, 170; his letters on this subject to the Emperor and to the Eastern Bishop, _ib._, 173; his letter to Eulogius, 173; tolerant in the supervision of his bishops, 175; had no desire for political independence, _ib._; accused of causing the destruction of ancient buildings, 176, 177; his last illness, 177; his commentaries on Ezekiel and Job, _ib._; his death, _ib._; spots connected with his memory, 179. Gregory VI., 186, 188; how he secured his election, 183; deposition of, _ib._, 189. Gregory, VII., (_see_ Hildebrand), his dream of elevating the Church, 231; hopelessness of his instruments, _ib._; his reforms, and the enemies they raised up against him, _ib._, 232; sufferings of his later years, 232; council for the discussion of questions between Henry IV. and, 233; reconciliation between Henry and, 235; his letter summoning the first Lateran Council, _ib._; his decree against lay investiture, 239, 240; unbosoms himself in a letter to Hugo, 240; his care for the cause of justice and public honesty, 240-242; abduction of, by Cencius, 245; rescued by the populace, 249, 250; summons Henry to appear before the papal court, 251; his letter of remonstrance to the Emperor, 252; council convoked by Henry for the overthrow of, 253, 254; acts and addresses against, issued by this council, 254, 255; his reception of the Emperor's letters, 257-259; excommunicates the Emperor, 259; effect of this step, 259-261; agrees to preside over the Council of Augsburg, 261; sets out for Augsburg, _ib._; takes refuge in the Castle of Canossa, 264-266; German bishops make their submission to, 266; accepts Henry's promises of amendment, 270; receives him again into the church, _ib._, 271; his attitude towards Henry, 273; his letter to the German princes, 274; shut up in Canossa Castle, _ib._; anxious to take part in the settlement of the Empire, 275; his letters on the rivalry of the two kings, _ib._, 276; sends legates to both kings demanding a safe-conduct, 276; his authority disregarded by the rival parties, _ib._, 277; treats both impartially, 278; and the heresy of Berengarius, 279; and the Norwegian king's request for missionaries, _ib._, 280; insists upon a council to choose between the rival kings, 281; his reception of the statement of Rudolf's envoys, 283; appeals to St. Peter to judge of his dealings with Henry, 284, 285; asserts his claim to universal authority, 286; sends the imperial crown to Rudolf, 289; Henry's council for the deposition of, _ib._; his reconciliation with Guiscard, 291, 292; council convoked by the anti-Pope to reverse his anathemas, 293; Henry submits his cause to a council convoked by, 295; refuses to make peace with Henry, 296; confined to the Castle of St. Angelo, 297; his faith in his mission, 298; brings down the Normans upon Rome, 299; his spirit broken by the sack of Rome, 300; his journey to Salerno, _ib._, 301; revival of his former energy, 302; the abuses he opposed, and those in the Church of Scotland before the Disruption, compared, _ib._, 303; a martyr to his hatred of simony, 303, 304; his death, 305; his life and achievements, 306, 308, 363, 514. Guelf and Ghibelline, when these titles were first used, 326. Guglielmo, Fra, 447. Guibert of Ravenna, 232, 244, 292; elected Pope by the Emperor's supporters, 290. _See_ Clement III. Guiscard, Robert, 232, 244; Gregory's reconciliation with, 291; leaves the Pope to his fate, 293; rescues the Pope and sacks Rome, 299; conducts Gregory to Salerno, 300, 301. Helena, Empress, 40. Heliodorus, Jerome's epistle to, 46. Helvidius, 60. Henry III., Emperor, 183; patronises Hildebrand, 187; appoints three successive Popes, 189. Henry IV., Emperor, his vicious character, 223, 224; summoned before the Papal court, 224; council for the discussion of questions between Gregory and, 233; reconciliation between Gregory and, 235; rebels against the decrees of the Lateran Council, 251; Gregory's letter of remonstrance to, 252; summons a council for the overthrow of the Pope, 253, 254; acts and addresses issued by the council, 254, 255; excommunication of, 259; abandoned by his friends and supporters, 260, 261; his princes threaten to elect a king in his place, 261; determines to make his submission to Gregory, _ib._; his fortunes begin to revive, 266; his arrival at the Castle of Canossa, _ib._, 269; his penances, 270; his bond of repentance accepted by Gregory, _ib._; received again into the Church, _ib._, 271; his attitude towards Gregory, 272; refuses his consent to the council of arbitration, 281; Gregory appeals to St. Peter to judge of his dealings with, 282-285; again excommunicated and dethroned, 285; his council for the deposition of Gregory, 289, 290; chooses an anti-Pope, 290; success of his enterprises, _ib._; crowned Emperor by his anti-Pope, 292; seizes the Leonine city, 293; submits his cause to a council convoked by Gregory, 295; this council proves fruitless, 296; becomes master of Rome, _ib._, 297; evacuates the city, 299-300. _See_ Emperors, the rival. Henry VI., Emperor, 327, 328. Henry VII., 402. Heresy, the, of the Albigenses, 355,356; Innocent's letter on, 356; ordinances against, 370. Hermits, Egyptian desert peopled by, 34; Melania supports and protects fugitive, 35; self-chastisements of, 43, 44. _See_ Monks. Hildebrand, his wanderings about the world, 184; surroundings of his early life, _ib._, 185; at the monastery of Cluny, 186; patronised by the Emperor, Henry III., _ib._, 187; influence of his experience of the Church in Germany upon, 188; beginning of his public life, _ib._; follows the deposed Gregory VI. into exile, 189; in Germany again, 190; becomes a counsellor of Bruno, 191; his plan for Bruno's conduct successful, 193; offices conferred upon, by Leo IX., _ib._; sets in order the monastery of St. Paul, 195; his work in Rome under Leo, 200; selects a German prelate as Pope, _ib._; becomes adviser to the Empress Agnes, 202; solicits the intervention of Tuscany in the election of the Popes, 204, 207; the actual possessor of the power of two weak Popes, 205, 206; holds a council in Rome, 206; his new law for the election of the Popes, 207, 208; his aims and purposes, 208, 211; his dream of the Church as disinterested arbitrator in all quarrels, 211, 212; did he desire universal authority? 212; begins his reign under Nicolas II., _ib._; his letter to a powerful archbishop, 213; secures for Rome complete independence in the choice of Popes, 215; his sanction of the invasion of England by the Normans, 221; supports the Conqueror's spoliation of Saxon abbeys, _ib._; summons Henry IV. to appear before the papal court, 224; development of his ideal of the Church's sovereignty, _ib._, 225; chosen and elected Pope, 225-227; his abstemious habits, 297. _See_ Gregory VII. Historian of Rienzi, 382, 383. Hospital founded by Fabiola, 99. Hospital Santo Spirito rebuilt by Innocent, 376; and again by Sixtus IV., 572, 573. Hugo of Cluny, 234, 265, 269; Gregory's letter to, 240. Humanists, school of, 560, 561. Ingelburga, 340, 343. Innocent III., his wide-spread activity, 308; his family, _ib._, 309; his education, 309; becomes a canon of St. Peter's, 310; appointed Cardinal, 313; his book on the vanity of life, 313-315; elected Pope, 316; his address to the assembly after his consecration, 319-322; endeavours to strengthen his hold upon Rome, 322-324; changes the constitution of the city, 323; regains possession of the Papal States, 325, 326; acts as guardian to Frederic of Sicily, 326; profits by the inactivity of the Empire, _ib._; sides against Philip, 332, 333; supports Otho, 333; unable to enforce his authority over the German prelates, 334; excommunicates Philip, _ib._; his part in the ten years' struggle between Philip and Otho, 335; crowns Otho as Emperor, 338; Otho breaks faith with, 339, 340; his dealings with Philip Augustus, 340-343; pronounces interdict upon France, 341, 342; his activity, 344; pronounces interdict upon England, 345; excommunicates King John, _ib._; his acceptance of John's oath, 349; his dealings with John unworthy of his character, _ib._, 350; his instructions to the Crusaders, 353; protests against the use made of the expedition, 354; his letter on heresy, 356; on the interpretation of the Bible by sectarians, _ib._; his attitude towards the Albigenses, 357, 358; sends missionaries to them, 358; proclaims a crusade against them, 359; his career a failure, 361-363; strengthened Papal authority over the Church, 364; his address to the fourth Lateran Council, 365-369; and the appeal of the Provençal nobles, 371; befriends Raymond of Toulouse, 372; rouses the Italian towns to aid in a crusade, 373; his death, 374; small result of his activities, _ib._; Roman populace at enmity with, 375; his gifts to his brother Richard, _ib._; buildings erected by, 376; his character, _ib._; the greatness of his ideals, 514. Innocent VI., 484. Innocent VIII., 581, 582. Jerome, 28, 37, 42, 43, 66, 77; quoted, 7, 19, 57, 58, 63, 69, 70, 110, 114; on the daily life of a Roman priest, 11, 12; accused of being concerned in Melania's disappearance, 33; his life in the desert, 44, 45; his Epistle to Heliodorus, 45, 46; enters into religious controversy, 46, 47; his usefulness recognised by the Church in Rome, 48; lodged in Marcella's palace, 49; his friendship with Paula, _ib._, 69; his life among the Roman ladies, 50-54; his position in Roman society, 54; begins his translation of Scripture, _ib._; popular resentment against, 59, 62, 63, 69, 70; engages in the controversy regarding celibacy, 60; his letter on virginity quoted, _ib._, 61; his letter to Paula on her daughter's death, 68, 69; forced to retire from Rome, 72; his letters to Asella, 72-76; joins Paula's caravanserai, 79; founds a convent at Bethlehem, 82; how his translation of the Scriptures was finished, 84-88; entreats Marcella to abandon the world, 91; puzzled by Fabiola's curiosity, 95; his judgment in the case of a divorced woman, 96; his controversy with Rufinus, 100, 101. Jeronimo, Count, 580. Jerusalem, 40, 41. Jews, 370. Job, Gregory undertakes a commentary on, at the request of his monks, 134-138. John XXII., 384; deposed by the Emperor Louis, 392; his supporters regain possession of Rome, 393. John of Constantinople, his pretensions to supremacy over the Church, 170, 174; Gregory's letter to, 173. John, King of England, and the Pope's interdict, 344, 345; excommunicated and deposed, 345; swears fealty as a vassal of the Pope, _ib._, 346. Jovinian, 60. Jubilee, papal, 429, 480, 483, 536. Julian, Emperor, 8. Julius II., a fighting Pope, 582; a patron of artists, 583, 589; pulls down the ancient St. Peter's, _ib._, 587, 591; secures the States of the Church, 587; employs Raphael, 589, 590; his portrait by Raphael, 590; his death and career, 590-592. Ladies. _See_ Women. Lanciani, Professor, 242, 539, 540. Langton, Stephen, 287. Lateran Council, the first, Gregory's letter convoking, 235; its decrees against simony and marriage of priests, 236-238; lay investiture prohibited by the second Council, 239; reception of the Emperor's letters by Gregory in, 256-259; demands the excommunication of Henry, 259; decides the case of the rival emperors, 281-285; the fourth, Pope Innocent's address to, 365-369; ordinances passed by, 370, 371; gives judgment for de Montfort against the Provençal nobles, 371, 372. Lay investiture, decree against, 239. Leander, 133; Gregory's letter to, 127, 149. Learning, how pursued during the Renaissance, 529; Nicolas V. as a patron of, 537. Legacies to priests declared illegal, 12. Leo IV., the Leonine city enclosed by, 541-543. Leo IX., confers offices upon Hildebrand, 193; his tour of reformation, 195-199; at the Council of Rheims, 198; his use of the power of excommunication, 199; his last enterprise and his death, _ib._, 200. _See_ Bruno, Bishop. Leo X., 515, 516; little troubled by the rebellion against the Papacy, 592, 595; his attitude towards Luther, 596, 597; obliged to fight for the Patrimony, _ib._; amuses himself with his painters and his court, _ib._, 598; his patronage of Raphael the chief element in his fame, 598; his career, 599. Leo XIII., as Papa Angelico, 212 _n._ Leonine city. _See_ Borgo. Leopold of Mainz, 334. Lombard League, 325. Lorenzo, Cola's son, his baptism of blood, 461. Louis of Bavaria, 384; his reception in Rome, 320, 321; his coronation, 390, 391; declares Pope John deposed, 392; elects a new Pope, _ib._; recrowned by his anti-Pope, _ib._, 393; his departure from Rome, 393. Luther, Martin, 595; Pope Leo's attitude towards, 596. Lytton, Lord, his novel _Rienzi_, 420. Maddalena, Rienzi's mother, 402. Manno, Giovanni, 386. Mantegna, Andrea, 582. Marcella, early life and marriage of, 17, 18; becomes a widow, 18; her reputation for eccentricity, _ib._, 19; forms her community of Christian women, 20; her zeal for knowledge, 26; entreated by Paula and Jerome to abandon the world, 89-91; prefers her useful life in Rome, 92, 93; saves Principia from the Goths, 110; tortured by them, _ib._; her death, 113. _See_ Marcella, the Society of. Marcella, the Society of, founded, 20; character and position of the members, 21; some associates of, 22-24; a religious and intellectual meeting-place, 25; daily life of the members, 26; Thierry quoted on their occupations, _ib._; Jerome becomes the guest of, 49, 54; wealth and liberality of, 55, 56; unrestricted life of, 57; shares in the popular resentment against Jerome, 77; last days of, 108-110. Marcellinus, Ammianus, quoted, 5, 6, 11. Marriage of priests, decree of the first Lateran Council against, 235, 238; priests rebel against this measure, 237; effects of the decree on the minds of the laity, 238, 239. Martin V., 516, 517, 525; begins the reconstruction and adornment of Rome, 523; administers justice _ib._ Martino, F. di, 544. Matilda of Tuscany, 204, 217, 233, 256, 262, 269, 270, 292, 325; her character, etc., 263. Maurice, Emperor, 148, 152, 160 Maximianus, 139. Medici, Cosimo dei, 534. Melania, her bereavement, 30; abandons her son, _ib._, 31; sensation caused in Rome by her disappearance, 32; in the Egyptian deserts, 33; provides for and protects hunted monks, 35; her encounter with the proconsul in Palestine, _ib._; accompanied by Rufinus, 36, 39; founds a monastery at Jerusalem, 41; the nature of her self-sacrifice, _ib._; her quarrel with Paula, 81. Mercenaries. _See_ Soldiers of Fortune. Milman, Dean, 363. Mincio, Bishop, how he was elected Pope, 203; his abdication, 204. Missionaries, Gregory's instructions to, for the making of converts, 156; and for pastoral work, _ib._, 157. Monks, wandering, 36, 37, 184; resentment of the Roman populace against, 63; Gregory's following of, 132-138. Monozello, Fra, and Pope Benedict, 395. Montefiascone, the wine of, 485 _n._ Montfort, Simon de, 360, 361, 371, 372. Monuments, ancient, restored by Paul II., 562. Moreale, Fra, 487; agrees to assist in Rienzi's undertaking, 489, 490; arrives in Rome, 496; his arrest and execution, 497-500. Muntz, M., quoted, 562. Music, Gregory's reformation in, 165, 166; a commentary on his system, as adopted by the Germans and Gauls, 166. Nicolas II., 205, 213. Nicolas V., 392, 516, 562, 567; as a lover of literature, 530; unconscious of the coming revolution, _ib._; his origin, 531; his learning, _ib._; makes his reputation, 532; as a book collector, 534; his character, 535; a lover of peace, _ib._; his dealings with his literary men, 537; churches rebuilt by, 544; his additions to the Vatican and to St. Peter's, 545; founds the Vatican library, 546; his work as a builder-Pope, 549; his death-bed counsel to his cardinals, 550, 551. Nobles, Roman, strongholds of, in Rome, 382; use made of, by Rienzi, 447, 448; arrested at Rienzi's banquet, and afterwards discharged, 449; effect of this treatment upon, 450; rebellion of the Orsini, 451; and of the Colonnas, 453-456; their return to the city, 472, 473. _See_ Aristocracy. Normans of Southern Italy, 199, 200, 213, 225; Rome sacked by, 299. Nuncio, Gregory as a, 132, 138. Oceanus, 37, 101. Odilon of Cluny, 186. Olaf, King of Norway, 280. Origen, 100. Orsini family, 424, 436, 448, 454, 467; rebel against Rienzi, 451. Orsini, Bartoldo, 393. Orsini, Ranello, 430. Orsini, Robert, 425. Otho, Philip's rival in the Empire, 331; supported by the Pope, 333; becomes Emperor, 336; his coronation in Rome, 336-338; breaks faith with the Pope, 339, 340. _See_ Emperors, the rival. Paganism, its conjunction with the Christian religion in Roman society, 8, 9; this conjunction occurs again at the Renaissance, 530. Palazzo Venezia, 559. Pammachius, 55, 77, 99, 101, 114. Papencordt quoted, 450. Pastoral work, Gregory's instructions regarding, 156-158. Paul II. builds the Palazzo Venezia, 559; Platina's strictures upon, _ib._, 560; dismisses the learned men patronised by Pius, 560, 561; imprisons Platina, 561; his liberality, 562; restores ancient monuments, _ib._; his magnificent tastes, _ib._, 563; Platina on his private life, 563; his humours and vanities, 564; his death, 568. Paula, 37, 63; and her family, 22-25, 26; her friendship with Jerome, 49, 69; her character and position, 65, 66; how she was attracted to the Marcellan Society, 66; Jerome's letter to, on Blæsilla's death, 68, 69; her abandonment of her home and children, 77, 78; her journey to Jerusalem, 79, 80; her quarrel with Melania, 81; travels through Syria, _ib._; builds convents and a hospice, 82, 83; assists Jerome in the translation of the Scriptures, 83-88; entreats Marcella to join her in Bethlehem, 90, 91. Paulina, 23, 55, 77; her death, 101; the funeral feast, 102-104. Paulinian, 101. Paulinus, Bishop, quoted, 105. Peacemakers, 431. Pelagius II., 141, 147; his letter on the defenceless state of Rome, 138. Pen, silver, used by Rienzi, 411. Pepino, Count, 471. Perugino, 575, 590. Petrarch, 390, 411, 437; his friendship with the Colonna family, 397; crowned Altissimo Poeta, 398, 399; quoted, 433, 435, 450, 465, 466, 522; his letters to Rienzi, 361, 369, 386; his faith in Rienzi shaken, 387; his letter describing his talk with Stefano, 467, 468; letter on Rienzi's career and downfall, 478, 479; describes how Rienzi's condemnation was reversed, 479, 480. Philip Augustus of France and his wives, 340-343; his threatened invasion of England, 345. Philip of Swabia elected Emperor, 330; Innocent's denunciation of, 333; his success, 335; his death, 336. Phocas, Emperor, 160, 169. Pintore, Antonazzo, 576. Pius II., 562, 567; his early career, 553, 554; his character, 554; his writings, 555; as a builder, 556; his enthusiasm for the crusade against the Turk, 557, 558. Plague in Rome, and the processions of penitents, 144-146. Platina, his biased account of Paul II., 559, 560; protests against Paul's dismissal of the learned men, 560; imprisoned, 561; reinstated, 577. Poor, the destitute, Gregory feeds and cares for, 151. Popes, three rival, in Rome, 183; how their conflict was ended, _ib._; three successive, appointed by the Emperor Henry III., 189,190; become fighting princes, 513, 514; ideals of the greatest, 514; art-patrons among, 515; how treated by English writers, _ib._; success of the builder-Popes, 516, 517; their power and influence in the times of Pius II. and Paul II., 564, 567. _See_ Gregory the Great, Hildebrand, Innocent III., Election of the Popes, _et passim_. Populace, Roman, degraded state of, in the 4th century, 4, 5; all nominally Christian, 57; their resentment against the monks, 63; compel Gregory to abandon his mission to Britain, 141, 142; Gregory feeds the destitute poor, 151; fight between Papal troops and, 385-389; their reception of Louis of Bavaria, 389-391; reception of Fra Venturino by, 394, 395; unruliness and recklessness of, 395; enthusiastic over the crowning of Petrarch, 399, 400; Rienzi as an ambassador of, to Clement VI., 404-409; give absolute power to Rienzi, 427; begin to criticise Rienzi, 438; their conflict with the Colonna, 454-457; resent Rienzi's baptism of his son, 461, 462; had no active share in Rienzi's downfall, 472; invite him to reassume the government of the city, 489; their reception of Rienzi, 494; their rising against him, 502-508. _See_ Rome. Prætextata, 23, 24. Priests, Roman, Jerome quoted on, 11, 12. Principia, 100, 110. Provence, Innocent's missionaries in, 358, 359; appeal of the forfeited lords of, against de Montfort, 371. Raphael, 595, 597; employed by Julius II., 589, 590; his portrait of Julius, 590; Pope Leo's patronage of, 598; Bishop Creighton on his artistic aims, _ib._; had no didactic purposes, _ib._ Raymond, Bishop, the Pope's Vicar, 416, 424, 427, 429; protests against Rienzi's pretensions, 442; reconciled to Rienzi, 471. Raymond of Toulouse, 371, 372. "Religious adventures," 36, 37. Renaissance, 526, 529; conjunction of Christianity and Paganism during, 530. Rheims, Council of, the Pope's opening address, 197; speeches of the bishops, 198. Riario, Pietro, 578, 579. Riccardo Imprennante, 500. Richard, brother of Pope Innocent, 575. Rienzi, Cola di, his historian, 382, 384; his parentage, 403, 404; his love for the ancient writers, 403; his early life, _ib._, 404; sent on a mission to Clement VI., 404; appointed notary to the City Council of Rome, 405; success of the mission, 406; letter announcing his success, _ib._; disgrace and return to favour, 410, 411; protests against the rapacity of the City Council, 412; his painted allegories, 413, 415, 419; attitude of the patricians towards, 416, 419, 423; his address to the Roman notables, 417, 418; his power and privileges, 418; and the secret society, 423,424; the conspiracy carried out, 425; addresses the people on the Capitol, 426; absolute power given to, by the people, 427; drives all the nobles out of Rome, 429; compels the nobles to swear loyalty to the Buono Stato, _ib._, 430; his character, 431; justice and public safety in Rome secured by, 431-434; his braggadocio, 432; secures the safety of travellers on the roads, _ib._, 433; his authority confirmed by the Pope, 434; his procession to St. Peter's, _ib._, 435; his love of magnificence, 435; Petrarch's letters to, 436; success of his warlike expeditions, _ib._, 437; beginning of his indiscretions, 437, 438; makes himself a knight, 438; claims to hold his authority from God and from the people, 440; friendly messages from European monarchs to, 441; ceremonials of his knighthood, _ib._, 442; the Pope's Vicar protests against his pretensions, 443; claims universal dominion in the name of the Roman people, _ib._, 444; sincerity of his claim, 444, 445; crowning of, 445, 446; Fra Guglielmo's grief for, 447; makes use of the nobles, _ib._, 448; gives a banquet to the nobles, 448; arrests and discharges them, 449; his expedition against the Orsini, 451; his meeting with the Pope's legate, 452; a powerful party organised against, 453; apprehensive of danger, _ib._; celebrates his victory over the Colonna, 457; fails to take advantage of his success, 460; his son's baptism of blood, 461; his friends begin to desert him, 462; Petrarch's letter of reproof to, 465; Petrarch's faith in him shaken, 466; moderates his magnificence and his arrogance, 470; sees visions of disaster, 471; his downfall, 471-473; develops the character of a conspirator, 473, 474; takes refuge among the Fraticelli, 474, 475; his correspondence with Charles IV., 476; handed over to the Pope, _ib._; condemned to death, 477; how he was saved, _ib._, 479; his career and downfall, Petrarch's letter on, 478; returns with the Pope's legate to Rome, 484, 485; welcomed in the towns of the Patrimony, 488; his enterprise assisted by Moreale and his mercenaries, 490; obtains the countenance of the Pope's legate, _ib._, 491; his expedition sets out, 491; his hopes and aims, 492; his reception by the Roman populace, 493, 494; change in his outward man, 494; his expedition against Stefanello, _ib._, 495; his motives for executing Moreale, 496; imprisons and executes Moreale, 497-500; this act generally approved, 500; but questioned by his councillors, _ib._; how he raised money to pay the mercenaries, 501; becomes irresolute, 502; his final downfall and death, 502-509; estimate of his career, 508, 509. Roads made safe for travellers, 434. Robert, King of Naples, 399. Roland of Parma presents Henry's letters to Pope Gregory, 257. Roman society, state of, at the end of the 4th century, 3 _et seq._; irresponsible wealth of the patrician class, 3, 4; debased state of the populace, 4, 5; luxurious habits of the nobles, 5, 6; and of the women, 7; conjunction of the old and new religions in, 8-10; relations of the Church with, 10-12; Jerome's picture of, quoted, 60, 61; undermined by the ascetic ideals, 106-108. _See_ Aristocracy _and_ Populace. Rome, her two conquests of the world, 1, 2; transitional period in her history, 2; her position at the end of the 4th century, 3; believed in the 4th century to be the Scarlet Woman of Revelation, 105; sacked by the Goths, 108, 109; successive sieges of, 119, 120; no patriot aroused to the defence of, 123; defenceless state of, 138; distress and pestilence in, 144-147, 150, 151; preserved by Gregory from barbarian attacks, 151; heartened by Gregory's energy, 159; Gregory's achievements for, 169, 182; Gregory accused of destroying ancient buildings in, 176; state of, in the 11th century, 182, 183; its outward aspect in the time of Gregory VII., 242, 243; a portion of, seized by Emperor Henry IV., 293; Henry withdraws his troops from, 295; and again occupies the city, 296, 297; sacked by Guiscard and the Normans, 299; Innocent III. endeavours to strengthen his hold upon, 322, 323; her constitution changed by Gregory, 323; populace of, at enmity with Innocent III., 375; buildings erected in, by Innocent, 376; disorderly state of, in the 14th century, 381-383; strongholds of the great nobles in, 382; fight between Papal troops and the people of, 384-386; reception of Louis of Bavaria in, 389; as arbiter of the world, 390; how Fra Venturino was received in, 394, 395; public safety and justice unknown in, 401, 424, 425; establishment of the Buono Stato in, 425-427; public safety secured in, by Rienzi, 432, 434; apprehensions aroused in foreign countries by the revival of, 435, 436; her claim to universal dominion, 439; assertion of the claim by Rienzi, 442-444; expedition of the Colonna against, 453-457; dream of a double reign of universal dominion in, 475; celebration of the Jubilee in, 480, 481; anarchy in, after Rienzi's fall, 483, 484; possessed no native art, 516; external state of, at Pope Martin's entry, 517-522; restoration and adornment of, begun, 522, 523, 525; restoration and adornment of buildings in, by Nicolas V., 544, 549; art workshops in, 545, 546; ancient monuments restored by Paul II., 562; still disorderly, 569; King Ferdinand's advice regarding the balconies and tortuous streets, 570; his suggestion adopted by Sixtus, 571. _See_ Borgo. Rudolf, Duke of Suabia, 233, 290; elected king, 275; anxious for the council of arbitration, 281; his case stated before the Lateran Council, 282; declared King of Germany by the Pope, 285; Gregory sends the imperial crown to, 289; his death, 290. _See_ Emperors, the two rival. Rufinus travels with Melania, 36, 37; arrives in Rome, 100; his controversy with Jerome, _ib._ St. Benedict. _See_ Benedict, order of. St. Jerome. _See_ Jerome. St. John Lateran, the church of, 521, 573; internal revolution in, 588. St. Mary, the monastery of, 186. St. Paul, the monastery of, Hildebrand's reforms in, 194. St. Peter, evidence for his presence and execution in Rome, 540. St. Peter's, the old and the modern church, 539, 541; additions made to, by Nicolas, 545; pulled down by Julius II., 583, 584; architecture of the ancient church, 584; completion of the present church, 600. St. Remy, consecration of the church of, 196. St. Stefano Rotondo, church of, rebuilt, 544. St. Teodoro, church of, rebuilt, 544. Salerno, Gregory's arrival at, 301. San Lorenzo, chapel of, 546. Savelli, Francesco, 430. Savelli, Luca de, 448. Saviello, Jacopo di, 384, 385. Scotland, Church of, its position before the Disruption, and that of the Church in Gregory's time, compared, 302, 303. Secret society, the, and Rienzi's address to, 423, 424; the conspiracy carried out, 425-427. Silvia, 124, 128. Simony, 188, 224, 230; crusade of Leo IX. against, 196-199; Hildebrand's hatred of, 211, 232; condemned by the first Lateran Council, 236; Gregory VII. a martyr to his hatred of, 303, 304. Sismondi quoted, 390. Sistine chapel, 575; completion of, 601. Sixtus IV., his pedigree, 569; his purposes and achievements, _ib._, 570; rebuilds the narrow and tortuous streets, 570; builds a bridge over the Tiber, 571; reconstructs the hospital Santo Spirito, 572, 573; his violent temper, 573; all Rome pervaded by his work, _ib._, 574; restores the aqueducts, 574; painters employed by, for the Sistine chapel, 575; his varied aims and activities, 575-577; reinstates Platina and his fellow-scholars, 577; enlarges the Vatican library, _ib._; his taste in art, _ib._; his favourites, 578-580. Soldiers of Fortune, 487; Rienzi procures the services of, 489; how he raised money to pay them, 501. States of the Church, Innocent III. regains possession of, 324, 325; secured by Julius II., 587; part of them lost again, 596. Stefano, Cardinal, 215. Tasso, 263. Taxes imposed by Rienzi, 501. Tedeschi, the, 325, 389. Thebaid, the, 15. Theodolinda, Queen, 151, 156, 159. Thierry, quoted, 21, 26, 84, 93, 96. Thomas of Sarzana. _See_ Nicolas V. Toulouse, 358. Trajan and the widow, effect of the story upon Gregory, 143. Tuscan League, 325, 326. Tuscany, interference of, in the election of the Popes, 203, 204, 216, 217. Utrecht, Bishop of, 260. Vatican, its reconstruction begun by Innocent, 376; enlarged and adorned by the Popes, 544; additions built to, by Nicolas, 545; library of, founded by Nicolas, 546; and enlarged by Sixtus, 577. Venice, drives a bargain with the Crusaders, 353. Venturino, Fra, his reception in Rome, 394, 395. Vertolle, Conte di, 448. Vespasiano the bookseller, 523, 524. Vico, Giovanni di, 436, 437, 453. William the Conqueror, his invasion of England sanctioned by Hildebrand, 221, 222. Women, friendships between religious zealots and, 49, 50; harshly spoken of by Catholic teachers, 49; their success in the art of government, 202; take part in the election of a Pope, 227; form part of a council called by Gregory VII., 233, 234. Women, Roman, their artificial life, 7; influence of the conflicting religions upon their actions, 9, 10; Jerome's description of different types of, 60-62. _See_ Marcella, the Society of. Worms, Council of, 190, 253-255. Zara, capture of, by the Crusaders, 353. 
37953	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 37953-h.htm or 37953-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37953/37953-h/37953-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37953/37953-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Small capitals have been replaced by all capitals. In Part II (page 303) "I^{er}" represents "I" followed by superscripted "er". ITALIAN LETTERS OF A DIPLOMAT'S WIFE * * * * * 7th EDITION LETTERS OF A DIPLOMAT'S WIFE By MARY KING WADDINGTON "A most interesting book of gossip, which, considered from the point of view of the general public, contains not a dull line from the first to the last. The letters have all the freshness of the best class of feminine correspondence." --_London Athenæum_. Illustrated. 8vo. $2.50 Net CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS * * * * * [Illustration: Elena, Queen of Italy.] ITALIAN LETTERS OF A DIPLOMAT'S WIFE January-May, 1880 February-April, 1904 by MARY KING WADDINGTON Illustrated from Drawings and Photographs Charles Scribner's Sons New York :: :: :: :: :: :: 1905 Copyright, 1905, by Charles Scribner's Sons Published, March, 1905 Trow Directory Printing and Bookbinding Company New York NOTE In December, 1879, M. William Henry Waddington resigned the Premiership of France, and the following month, accompanied by his wife, left Paris for a winter of rest and recreation in Italy, chiefly in Rome. The letters from Madame Waddington to her mother and sister, which constitute "Part I" of this volume, describe this journey and residence. Those forming "Part II" relate the incidents of a similar Roman sojourn some twenty years later, M. Waddington having died in the meantime. The two series together compose a picture of life and society in the Italian capital with a wide range of contrast and comparison, corresponding with those of London and Moscow in the well-known "Letters of a Diplomat's Wife" by the same writer. ILLUSTRATIONS ELENA, QUEEN OF ITALY _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE MRS. CHARLES KING 12 PRESIDENT CHARLES KING OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE, NEW YORK CITY 30 THE SPANISH STEPS 52 _In the Piazza di Spagna, Rome._ POPE LEO XIII. 60 KING HUMBERT OF ITALY 66 QUEEN MARGHERITA OF ITALY 76 QUEEN MARGHERITA AND KING HUMBERT 84 QUEEN MARGHERITA AND THE PRINCE OF NAPLES (PRESENT KING OF ITALY) IN 1880 94 VICTORIA, CROWN PRINCESS OF GERMANY 104 GARDENS OF THE VILLA TORLONIS, FORMERLY VILLA CONTI, FRASCATI, OPPOSITE THE VILLA MARCONI, WHERE WE SPENT THE SUMMER OF 1867 108 TOMB OF VINICIANO, BETWEEN FRASCATI AND TUSCULUM 112 GROUNDS OF THE VILLA DORIA-PAMPHILI, ROME 116 _From an unpublished photograph taken about 1869._ POPE PIUS IX. 145 LAST BENEDICTION OF POPE PIUS IX. FROM THE BALCONY OF ST. PETER'S 158 ST. PETER'S FROM THE PINCIO 172 THE BARBERINI PALACE 238 _The residence of the Storys_ VICTOR EMANUEL III., KING OF ITALY 244 POPE PIUS X. 250 GREAT NEW BRIDGE FROM ALBANO TO ARICCIA 264 _Built by Pope Pius IX_. ROMAN HUNTSMEN ON THE CAMPAGNA 266 _Ancient Roman aqueduct in the background_ WAITING FOR THE HOUNDS 268 CARDINAL ANTONELLI 288 _From a portrait painted for the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar. From a photograph given to Madame Waddington by the Hereditary Grand Duchess of Saxe-Weimar at Rome._ THE DINING-ROOM IN THE BRANCACCIO PALACE 304 ITALIAN LETTERS OF A DIPLOMAT'S WIFE PART I ITALY IN THE EIGHTIES _To G. K. S._[1] 31, RUE DUMONT D'URVILLE, PARIS, January 10, 1880. Well, dear, here I am back again in my little hotel, and very small and uncomfortable it looks--like a doll's house after the enormous rooms of the Quai d'Orsay--however I am very glad to be a _private_ individual once more (no longer a "femme publique" as our friend used to say). Our departure was hurried, as once W.[2] had made up his mind and resigned he wanted to get away at once. We got off in two days, which I thought quite wonderful. Of course ever since the opening of the session in November it was evident that he couldn't stay. He and his Ministers were hardly ever agreed on any point, and it wasn't worth while for him to spend his energy and intelligence in trying to carry out a policy which neither the Chamber nor the country apparently desired. There were endless conferences all through December, but it was clear that it was time for him to go. [1] Mrs. Eugene Schuyler, née King. [2] W. here and throughout these letters refers to M. William Henry Waddington, Madame Waddington's husband. The weather was something awful--bitterly cold--the Seine frozen tight, booths and games established, and everybody sliding about and trying to skate--but that was under difficulties as the ice was rough and uneven. I walked over with Francis,[3] that he might say he had walked across the Seine. We had great difficulty in warming the house--many trains with wood and coal were blocked just outside Paris, and nothing could get in. I don't know what we should have done, but happily the Ministre de la Guerre gave us an order to take some wood from some dépôt in Paris where they had a provision; so for the two days before we moved in great fires were going in the calorifère. I really think the only person who hated to leave the Quai d'Orsay was Francis. He was furious at seeing all his things packed up, and was carried out to the carriage kicking and screaming--"veux pas quitter ma maison--veux pas aller vilaine petite maison." The huissiers (6, all standing solemnly in a row to say good-bye) were much impressed, and the old grey-headed Pierson who has been there for years and seen many Ministers depart, remarked--"au moins Monsieur Francis est désolé de partir." It seemed funny to drive out of the big gates for the last time. I wonder if I shall ever go through them again. Things go so quickly in France now. [3] Francis, son of M. and Madame Waddington. You can't conceive anything more uncomfortable than this house to-day--no carpets down nor curtains up; all the furniture, books, rugs, dumped in the middle of the rooms, and the hall and corridors full of trunks and boxes. W. has had a steady stream of people ever since we arrived--some to condole--some (old friends) to congratulate him upon no longer serving such an infecte government--some a little embarrassed to explain that, though they regret him extremely, still ... they must serve their country, and hope he won't take it amiss if they make up to the rising sun (in the shape of Freycinet, who has taken W.'s place). I expect we shall have some curious experiences. When one is no longer in power it is surprising how things change their aspect. I had to settle the salons as soon as I could as I had invited a big party for Francis's Christmas Tree, thinking it would be at the Quai d'Orsay. I didn't want to put the people off--particularly the diplomatists who have all been most civil and proper--so after a consultation with Kruft--(chef du matériel at the Quai d'Orsay) who had already begun to make his preparations, I decided to have it here, and Kruft and one of his men came and helped dress it. Of course the tree had to be cut at the top--our rooms are fairly high, but nothing like the Quai d'Orsay naturally--but it looked rather prettier, quite covered with toys and shiny ornaments. Francis had beautiful presents--a hand-organ with a monkey on top from Madame Sibbern, the wife of the Swedish Minister, from which he can't be extracted. He can't turn it alone, but some of the bigger children helped him, and we had the "Cloches de Corneville" and "Niniche" almost all the afternoon. There were about 100 people, children and parents, and the rooms looked pretty. All the people and lights warmed them too--it wasn't quite so Siberian. We couldn't attempt cooking of any kind as the kitchen range was out of order, and besides we hadn't fuel enough--l'Oncle Alphonse[4] who lives next door feeds us. W. and I go to him for breakfast and dinner, and his chef (a very distinguished artist and well dressed gentleman--quite a superior person--Monsieur Double) submits Francis's menu every morning to Nounou, as he says he has no experience with children. [4] M. Alphonse Sutteroth, ancien diplomatist under Louis Philippe. We have decided to go to Italy for two or three months, and shall make Rome our headquarters. W. has never been there, and says it wouldn't be worth while going for less than three months. What fun it will be to be there together--I can hardly believe it is true. I am sure we are wise to get away. There must always be little jarring things when one has been in office some time--and it would be rather a bore to W. to take his place as senator and be in opposition to the present Ministry. If he stayed in Paris he would have to take part in all the discussions, and would certainly be interviewed by all sorts of people to whom he would say nothing (he never does--he hates newspaper people) but they would say he did all the same, and so many people believe implicitly whatever they see in a paper. The Minister has offered W. the London Embassy, but he won't take it, doesn't wish to have any function of any kind at present. He is looking forward to long, happy hours in Rome, deciphering all the old inscriptions, and going over the old city with Lanciani[5] and some of his literary friends. [5] Director of Excavations in Rome under Rossi. January 12, 1880. After all I have been back to the Quai d'Orsay. W. said I must go and make a formal visit to Madame de Freycinet (who is a very nice woman--a Protestant, and has one daughter--a charming intelligent girl). Henrietta and I went together, taking Francis with us, who was delighted as soon as he got to the Place de la Concorde and crossed the bridge--"C'est Paris--C'est Paris." Poor little boy--the rue Dumont d'Urville is so quiet, nothing passing and nothing to see when he looks out of the window. He was always at the window at the Quai d'Orsay looking at the boats, the soldiers, and the general liveliness of a great thoroughfare. It was a funny sensation to go and pay a visit to Madame de Freycinet in the little blue salon where I had received her so often, and to be announced by my own pet huissier, Gérard, who spent his life all the time I was at the Quai d'Orsay sitting outside the door of any room I happened to be in. He knew all my visitors--those I wanted to see and those I didn't--kept all the cards, and books, and remembered every quête I had given to--and the bills that had been paid. I don't remember that he ever occupied himself with my garments, but I am sure that he could have found anything that I asked for. The house is gradually getting warm and comfortable, and the furniture settling into its place; but I have a curious feeling of smallness--as if I hadn't room to turn. We hope to get off in three or four days. We leave Francis of course, but Nounou and Hubert will look after him, and he will go to breakfast every day with Mother, where of course he will be well spoiled and have everything he asks for. _To G. K. S._ January 18, 1880. I hope we shall get off now in a day or two--W. really needs the rest, which he never will get here as all day long people come to see him and suggest various plans. We have written to the Hôtel de Londres. You or Eugene might go there some day and see the rooms they propose. It will be nice to be back in our old quarters Piazza di Spagna. We had a pleasant small dinner last night at the British Embassy--Lord Lyons is always so nice and cordial. He was a little surprised and not _quite_ pleased that W. hadn't accepted the London Embassy, he would have been so entirely a "persona grata" with his English education, connections, etc. All the Diplomates seem to regret us (but I think they will like the Freycinets just as much) and really here, where Ministers are such passing figures in the political world, they would have a hard time if they set their affections on any particular man. I am becoming very philosophical--though the attitude of some of my friends has rather surprised me (not W.; he is never surprised at anything). L'Oncle Alphonse keeps us well informed of what is said on the other side. He is quite a Royalist, a great friend of the Orléans Princes, and a great deal at the club where they always call him "l'oncle du gouvernement"--and when the "gouvernement makes a 'bêtise'" (which sometimes happens) they criticize freely, and he tells it all to us. I fancy he always defends W. in public--but of course in private pitches into him well. I rather miss the big life--seeing so many people, and being as it were behind the scenes--also our conversations at night when W. had finished his signatures, and Pontécoulant[6] came up from his quarters with the report of the day, and got his instructions for the next morning. W. is not at all "matinal" and hates doing any kind of business early--must always have his ride first. We used to sit in W.'s cabinet until two in the morning sometimes, telling our experiences--some of mine were funny. I hated an official reception day, but the gentlemen of the protocol department thought it absolutely necessary, so I was obliged to give in--and certainly nothing I did tired me so much as those long Fridays in the big yellow drawing-room. From 3 to 6 streams of people--women mostly--of all nationalities--and of course no conversation possible--however it wasn't always banal, as you will see. [6] Comte de Pontécoulant, chef de Cabinet. Our last Friday one of my friends had been in, very much taken up with the journey to Rome--her clothes, the climate, which hotel was the best, etc. When she went out in a whirl of talk and excitement I turned to one of the 14 women who were seated in a semicircle on each side of me, and by way of continuing the conversation said: "Il me semble qu'on serait très bien à l'Hôtel de Londres à Rome en plein soleil," to which she replied haughtily "Je n'en sais rien, Madame, je n'ai jamais quitté Paris, et je m'en vante." W. wouldn't believe it, but as I told him I couldn't have invented it. I was rather sorry I hadn't pursued the conversation, and asked her why she was so proud of that particular phase of her life. I suppose she must have had a reason, which naturally I couldn't understand, having begun my career so very far away from either Rome or Paris. It is a real pleasure though to be back in my own salon, and have my nice little tea-table, and three or four of my friends, and talk about anything and everything, and even do a little music occasionally. January 20, 1880. I didn't find my tea quite so pleasant the other day. I was sitting in the little salon talking to one or two ladies, and receiving their congratulations at being no longer of the official world, and obliged to associate with the Government people, when the footman appeared with his eyes round, to announce that "La Présidente" (Madame Grévy) was coming upstairs to pay Madame a visit. I flew to the door and the top of the stairs (I couldn't get any further) and received "ma Présidente" in proper style. I ushered her into the salon where I had left my friends (mad Royalists both). They were much disgusted--however they were too well-bred to make things disagreeable for me in my own house--and rose when we came in. I named Madame Grévy--and as soon as she had taken her seat, and declined a cup of tea, they went away. Of course they _hated_ getting up for Madame Grévy, but there was nothing else to be done as she and I were both standing. Happily no one else came in but Prince Orloff, Russian Ambassador, who of course knew Madame Grévy and talked easily enough. She didn't stay long--it was the classic "visite de condoléance" to the wife of the ex-Minister (if she only knew how glad this _Ex_ was to return to private life and her own house, and to be no longer "logée par le gouvernement"). This is the second visit of condoléance I have had. When Marshal MacMahon dismissed (suddenly) all his cabinet presided by Jules Simon, 16th of May, 1877, Madame de MacMahon came also to see me--and at the same time--5 o'clock on my reception day--so I knew precisely what the conversation would be--and Madame Grévy and I both said exactly the same things that the Maréchale and I had said two or three years ago. I suppose everybody does say the same thing on certain occasions. After she had gone Orloff asked me if I remembered those two ladies meeting (for the first time in their lives) at the Quai d'Orsay on one of my Fridays. Just after the Marshal resigned Madame de MacMahon came to see me. She was announced by all the servants and I had plenty of time to get to the door of the first drawing-room, not quite to the anteroom, to receive her. When her husband was President she was received always like Royalty--at the door of the apartment. She was very simple and easy, quite pleased evidently at still having all her honours. Prince Orloff came in to pay a visit, and we were having a very pleasant talk, when I heard quick footsteps in the second salon, and again appeared my faithful Gérard (I had also visions of numberless doors being opened all down the enfilade of salons) announcing Madame Grévy. I was embarrassed for a moment as I didn't like to leave the Maréchale, and yet I knew I must go and meet Madame Grévy--all the ceremony of course was for the official position, and one Présidente was just the same as the other. Madame de MacMahon was most amiable--said at once--"Je vous en prie, Madame, ne pensez pas à moi"--and "au fond" was rather curious to see her successor. I went as quickly as I could (Orloff giving me a funny little smile, _almost_ a wink, as I passed him) and got my other Présidente just at the door. She was rather astounded I think at her reception--she hadn't been long in her exalted position. We proceeded majestically through three or four salons, and when we arrived at my drawing-room Madame de MacMahon got up at once, saying quite simply "Voulez-vous me présenter, Madame, à Madame Grévy?" She was quite at her ease--Madame Grévy rather shy and embarrassed--however Madame de MacMahon talked at once about some of the great charities, artists, etc., and it really wasn't too stiff--Orloff of course always helping and making jokes with the two ladies. One or two visitors came in and gasped when they saw the situation--also one of the young men of the Cabinet, who instantly disappeared. I always thought he went to tell W. what was happening upstairs so that he might come to the rescue in case I wasn't up to the mark ... but he swears he didn't. When the Maréchale got up to go there was again a complication as I wanted to accompany her to the door, and I didn't like to leave Madame Grévy. She wouldn't hear of my going through all the salons--took leave of me at the door--and then Orloff came to the rescue--gave her his arm and took her to her carriage. It was a curious meeting, and, as Orloff said just now, "je lui devais une fameuse chandelle."[7] [7] French idiom difficult to translate, meaning "I ought to be very grateful to him." February 6, 1880. We are starting to-night, straight for Florence, where we shall stay a week or ten days with the Bunsens before going on to Rome. W. is much pleased at the Roman prospect--and I can hardly believe that I am going to see Rome again. We have our lit-salon straight through to Florence, and I hope we shall be warm enough. It is bitterly cold to-day--even walking I was glad to have my sealskin coat. Nounou is rather tearful at being left in sole charge of Francis, but as that young gentleman is perfectly well, in roaring spirits, and will be given everything his heart desires by his Grandmother and Aunts, I don't feel very unhappy about him. It seems incredible that we should be going to meet soon. How we will prowl about Rome. I suppose I shall find it absolutely changed--so many more people--not our dear old dead Rome. [Illustration: Mrs. Charles King.] _To H. L. K._[8] FLORENCE, VIA ROMANA, VILLA MCDONNELL, February 8, 1880. We arrived quite comfortably, dear mother, but almost frozen, particularly W. He has not been extracted from the fire since we got here. Henrietta will have told you of our start. Pontécoulant and one or two men were at the station to see us off--also the Chef de Gare, most civil, and saying we should not be disturbed at the frontier--and that our coupé-lit would take us straight through to Florence. We had a perfectly easy journey, and I slept quite peacefully--waking up merely when we passed through the tunnel, as the guard came in to shut all the windows. It was a beautiful, cold, starlight winter night. The great mountains covered with snow looked gigantic as we approached--"sinistres" as Madame Hubert[9] said. She was much impressed and rather nervous. There were very few people in the train. When we arrived at Modane the Chef de Gare was waiting for us--he had been telegraphed from Paris to expect us. We had breakfast in the private room, and a nice woman was waiting for us upstairs in the ladies' room with hot water, towels, etc. I made quite a toilet--she carried off my dress and jacket to brush--and then we went down to a nice little breakfast which tasted very good, as I hadn't had anything since our 7 o'clock dinner. They offered us coffee somewhere--Dijon I think--but I didn't want anything then. All the first part of the road--in fact all the road to Turin was lovely. It was a bright, cold morning, and the snow mountains looked beautiful. It was such a pleasure to hear Italian once more--even the names at the stations "capo stazione"--"grande velocità"--"uscita," etc., also the shrill "partenza" when we started. The last time I crossed the Mont Cenis was by the Fell railway when we all started together from Aix. That was certainly very beautiful--but rather terrifying--particularly as we neared the top and looked at the steep places and the various zigzags we were to follow going down. One couldn't help feeling that if a brake or chain broke there would be a terrible catastrophe. I remember so well some of the women who were quite sea-sick--the swaying motion, I suppose, as we rounded the curves, of which there were many. I can see one now stretched out on the floor on a rug in the small salle d'attente at Susa, quite exhausted and absolutely indifferent to the outside world. [8] Mrs. Charles King, mother of Madame Waddington. [9] Madame Waddington's maid. We had quite a wait at Turin. Our coupé was detached and put on the Florence express. They locked the doors, and we left all our things--books, shawls, bags, etc.--and had a very fair dinner at the buffet. We had so much time that Madame Hubert and I went for a little walk. There was not much to see close to the gare--but it was delightful to me to hear Italian again, and to see the idle, placid crowd standing about--nobody in a hurry apparently, and nobody jostling and pushing through, though there were trains starting or coming in all the time. W. was too cold to move--he really should have had a fur coat--which he utterly despises--says that will do when he is 70, and can't walk any more. It was warm and fairly light in the buffet so he established himself there with a paper and was quite happy. We got here about 6.30--Charles de Bunsen was at the station with a carriage--so we came off at once, leaving Madame Hubert and Francesco with the trunks. How she will get on in Italian I don't know, but she is very active and débrouillarde, and generally makes herself understood. Mary[10] was waiting for us with tea and those crisp little grissini[11] we always used to have in Casa Guadagni. They have a charming "villino"--part of the McDonnell villa. One goes in by a small door (in one of the narrow grey streets of old Florence, with high walls on each side--Via Romana) and straight up a fine broad staircase to a good palier with large high rooms opening out on it. All the bed-rooms and small salon open on a loggia overlooking the garden--a real old Italian garden. I shall never be dressed in time for anything in the morning, as I am always on the loggia. The flowers are all coming out--the birds singing--the sky bright, deep blue--and the whole atmosphere so soft and clear--and in fact Italian--different from everything else. [10] Madame de Bunsen, née Waddington. [11] Long crisp breads one has in Italy. Mary has arranged the small salon (which they always sit in) most prettily and comfortably--with bibelots and quantities of books about in all languages--there are usually four going in the establishment--Charles and his daughter speak always German to each other--the rest of us either French or English--it depends rather upon what we are talking about--and always an undercurrent of Italian with the servants and "parlatrice" (such a sweet, refined looking girl who comes every day to read and speak Italian with my belle-mère). Mrs. Waddington strikes at the mixture at meals and insists upon one language, either English or French. There is also a charming German girl here, Mlle. de Sternberg, a niece of Charles de Bunsen--so we are a most cosmopolitan household. The life is utterly different from the one I have been leading for the last two years. _To H. L. K._ February 10, 1880. I try and write every day, but am so much taken up and so tired when I come in that I don't always find the moment. W. is all right again. He really got quite a chill from the cold night journey--and for two or three days sat _in_ the fire. Francesco, the Italian servant, took excellent care of him--was so sympathetic the night we had some music and W. couldn't appear. It was a pleasant evening--a Russian Prince (I forget his name, and couldn't probably spell it if I remembered), a great friend of Mary's, an excellent musician and a great Wagnerian offered to come and play some of the Nibelungen. I was delighted as I only know Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. I remember now your sigh of relief when Seilern and I finished playing à 4 mains the Walpurgis Night years ago in the Champs Elysées. I daresay it was trying for the public--but we enjoyed ourselves immensely. The big drawing-room looked very pretty, with plenty of flowers, and I think there were about 50 people--almost all (except Lottie and Madame de Tchiatcheff) ardent admirers of the great man. One lady appeared in a sort of loose, red gown (it seems red is the only colour Wagner admits), her hair, very pretty, blonde, hanging down her back, just tied with a ribbon--and carrying two partitions. Mary said, "Wouldn't you like to sit by her, and she will explain it all to you?"--but I said there was nothing I would like so little. I knew enough of the legend to be able to follow, and moreover I had always heard that Wagner's descriptive music was so wonderful that one understood everything without any text, etc. The great man appeared--the grand piano was opened all over to give as much sound as possible--and he requested absolute silence. He played beautifully--it was enchanting--one quite heard the little waves in which the Rhein-Töchter were disporting themselves. It was wonderfully melodious and delicate--I should have liked it to go on forever. He played for about three-quarters of an hour--all Rheingold--then suddenly pushed back his chair, and rushed to the anteroom, exclaiming "de l'air--de l'air," followed by all the red and musical ladies. It is a pity there must always be such a pose with Wagner--for really the music was a joy. I met of course quantities of old friends, and agreed to go to Lottie Van Schaick's ball. February 12, 1880. W. and I had a lovely long flânerie this morning. He is quite well again, and the sun was tempting. It seems quite a different Florence living over here, and I must say much more old-world and Italian than the Lungarno, with all the modern hotels and apartments, and evident signs of forestieri[12] everywhere. As soon as we cross the bridge it is quite different--a gay, bustling, northern city. W. was so much amused the other day--we were in a fiacre and the driver put on the brake to go down the almost imperceptible descent on the other side of the bridge. We went straight across to the Piazza del Duomo to-day, where the market was held, and wandered in and out among the stalls. It was all so familiar--little green cucumbers, almonds, and strings of fried fish, with a good healthy smell of "frittura." The people were all most smiling, and so pleased when I spoke Italian to them, and said I was so happy to be back in their country again. W. has no opinion of my Italian. He came to my room this morning followed by the Italian servant to tell _me_ to tell him that his razor must be sharpened. I began, and came to a dead halt--hadn't the slightest idea what razor was in Italian. W. was much disgusted, but I explained that when I was living in Italy before as a girl, I hadn't often had occasion to ask for razors--all the same he has evidently lost confidence, and thinks my reputation as a linguist "surfaite." [12] Foreigners. This afternoon we had a lovely drive up the Fiesole hill with Mary and Beatrice. Their man, who goes on the carriage, is called "Bacco" and is so Italian and sympathetic--takes a lively interest in all our proceedings--knows everybody we meet, and talks cheerfully with any of his friends we happen to cross. The view from Fiesole was divine--the long slopes of cyprus and olive trees--with Florence at the bottom of the valley, and the Arno just visible--a streak of light. I am so fond of the grey green of the olives. It all looked so soft and delicate in the sunset light. February 13, 1880. We are getting dreadfully mondain. The other night we had a pretty, typical Florentine party at Edith Peruzzi's.[13] We went a little after ten and thought we would be among the first, but the rooms were already full--quantities of people (not many of my old friends) and splendid jewels. It was much more real Florentine society than the people we used to see when we lived in Casa Guadagni. _They_ were generally the young, sporting, pleasure-loving set, with a good dash of foreigners, artists, diplomatists, etc. These were the real polite, stiff Italians of the old régime. Many people were introduced to us, and W. enjoyed his evening immensely--found many interesting people to talk to. He was delighted to meet Bentivoglio again, and they immediately retired into a corner, and plunged into Asia Minor and coins. Edith looked very well, did the honours simply and graciously; and Peruzzi really not changed--always the same tall, handsome, aristocratic type. [13] Née Story, daughter of W. W. Story, the sculptor. Last night was Lottie Van Schaick's ball, very gay and handsome. Mary wouldn't go--so I chaperoned the two girls--Beatrice and Rosa Sternberg. They made a very pretty contrast--Rosa von Sternberg is fair and slight, a pretty, graceful figure. Beatrice on rather a larger scale, with a very white skin, and beautiful dark eyes. W. and Charles Bunsen came too, but didn't stay very long. We went late as the Florence balls always last so long. I met quantities of old friends, and made a tour de valse with Carlo Alessandri for the sake of old times. W. was much amused to see all the older men still dancing. At the Paris balls the danseurs are all so young--few of the married men dance--only the very young ones. I didn't wait for the cotillon--it hadn't begun at 3.30. The supper is always before the cotillon which of course prolongs the festivity. I was lazy this morning, as we came in so late last night, so W. and I only went for a turn in the Boboli Gardens. The shade was so thick it was almost black--but it was resting to the eyes. There are very few flowers, one had a general impression of green. This afternoon we have been driving about leaving cards, and ending with a turn in the Cascine. There everything seemed exactly the same as when we lived there ten years ago. The same people driving about in the same carriages, and everybody drawing up on the Piazza, and talking to their neighbours. It amused me to drive down the Lungarno to our bridge. There were quantities of carriages and people lounging on the pavement, and looking at the river. The instant one crosses the bridge it is perfectly different--narrow streets, high walls, few carriages, no loiterers. Our garden was beautiful to-night--a splendid moon just rising over the black trees, and a soft delicious air. We have had a quiet evening, talking and reading in the small salon. Charles was very interesting, talking about old Italy and their beginnings in Turin. It seems the etiquette of that Court was something awful. Mary told us that she was talking one day to the Marchesa S. (a lively little old lady who took snuff) who had been in her time a famous wit and beauty, dame d'honneur to the wife of Carlo Alberto. Mary was rather complaining of the inconvenience of going to the winter reception of the Duchess of Genoa (she had only one in the year) where all the ladies of the Corps Diplomatique were obliged to go in full dress décolletée at about 4 in the afternoon. "Ah, ma chère," said the old Marchesa, "what would you have said in our time?" She told her that when the Queen-Mother was ill in the winter at the Château of Stupinigi, some miles from Turin, all her ladies had to go and inquire for her in full dress and manteaux de cour, and that when they knew she was in bed, and could see no one. Mary has splendid Italian lace which she bought from one of the ladies of the old Queen after her death. It would cost a fortune now, and in fact could not be had unless some private individual in reduced circumstances was obliged to sell. I had a nice visit from Alberti to-day--just the same--gay, impossible, saying the most risqué things in a perfectly natural way, so that you can hardly realize the enormities you are listening to. They don't sound so bad in Italian--I think the language veils and poetizes everything. He is very anxious we should go out and spend the day at Signa--his most lovely place--and I wish we could, I should like W. to see it--so much natural beauty--and, with our northern ideas, so absolutely neglected--splendid rooms, painted ceilings--no practical furniture of any kind, and a garden that was a dream of wild beauty--flowers everywhere, climbing up over the roof, around bits of grey wall, long grass that almost twisted around one's feet, and such a view from the terrace. I told W. afterward of our great day there long ago, when we started at 10 in the morning and got back at 2 A.M. I wonder if you remember the day? We were a large party--Van Schaicks, Maquays, Coxes, and others whose names I forget and pretty much every man in Florence (of all nationalities). We started by rail--the women all in light muslin dresses and hats. We were met by carriages of all kinds--Alberti's own little pony-trap--and a collection of remarkable vehicles from all the neighbouring villages. The drive was short, but straight up a steep hill--the villa most beautifully situated at the top, with a background of green hills. Two or three rooms had been arranged for us--so we took off cloaks--a nice, sympathetic Italian woman brushed off the dust--and we went at once to breakfast in the state dining-room--the big doors on the terrace open. Some of the men had their breakfast out there. After breakfast we all wandered about the garden--such thick shade that it was quite comfortable. It was pretty to see the white figures flitting in and out among the trees. About 3 I got into a riding skirt and loose jacket, and went for a ride with Alberti and a Frenchman, Brinquant, a friend of Alberti--very gay, and entrain, and perfectly amused at the entertainment--so sans façon and original. We had a lovely ride--through such narrow roads--branches of the orange trees and roses nearly coming into our faces as we cantered along the little steep paths. I had a pretty little mare--perfectly sure-footed, which was an absolute necessity as the hill paths were very steep, with many curves, and full of rolling stones. We pottered about for an hour, and when we got home I thought I would retire to one of the rooms and rest for half an hour before I got back into my afternoon dress, but that was a delusion. They all came clamouring at the door, and insisted upon my coming out at once, as the whole party were to be photographed. As I was perfectly confident that they would all come in if I didn't come out, there was nothing to be done, and I joined the group. It was rather a long affair, but at the end seemed satisfactory. Then we had tea on the terrace, and sat there watching the sun go down behind the Signa hills, leaving that beautiful afterglow which one only sees in Italy--the green tints particularly. Three or four men came out for dinner who hadn't been able to get off early (diplomates, I fancy, for they were certainly the only men in this gay city who had any occupation), also a tapeur[14] and little objets for the cotillon. We did have about an hour before dinner to rest and make ourselves look as nice as we could--but naturally a long, hot day wandering about in a garden, and sitting on half-ruined crumbling stone walls doesn't improve muslin dresses. The dinner was very gay and good, and the hour on the terrace afterward with coffee, enchanting. One or two of the men had brought guitars, and there were scraps of songs, choruses, "stornelli," going on all the time. One man, with a lovely tenor voice, sat on the lower step singing anything--everything--the rest of us joining in when we knew the song. The terrace was quite dark--the house brilliantly lighted standing out well; and every now and then the Italian servants would appear at the door with their smiling faces--black eyes and white teeth--evidently restraining themselves with difficulty from joining in the choruses. I really don't think Mary's "Bacco" could have resisted. I always hear him and Francesco singing merrily over their work in the morning. They certainly are an easy-going, light-hearted race, these modern Florentines. One can hardly believe that they are the descendants of the fierce old Medici who sit up so proud and cold on their marble tombs at San Lorenzo. [14] Man to play on the piano. We began the cotillon about 10, and it lasted an hour and a half. There were 10 couples, plenty of flowers and ribbons, and, needless to say, an extraordinary "entrain." We ended, of course, with the "Quadrille infernal" (which Alberti always leads with the greatest spirit), made a long chain all through the house down the terrace steps (such a scramble) and finally dispersed in the garden. I shouldn't like to say what the light dresses looked like after that. We started back to Florence about midnight in two coaches--such a beautiful drive. The coming out of the gates, and down the steep hill with a bad road and a narrow turn was rather nervous work--but we finally emerged on the broad high-road looking like a long silver ribbon in the moonlight winding down the valley. We had the road quite to ourselves--it was too late for revellers, and too early for market people, so we could go a good pace, and galloped up and down the hills, some of them decidedly steep. It was a splendid night--that warm southern moon (so unlike our cold white moonlight) throwing out every line sharply. It was just 3 o'clock when we drew up at Casa Guadagni. I didn't intend to write so much about Signa, but I had just been telling it all to W., and I think it will amuse the family in America. _To H. L. K._ VILLA MCDONNELL, February 15, 1880. I try and write every day, but it is not easy. We are out all the time. The weather is divine, and it seems wicked to stay indoors. W. and I go out every morning, and we do a good deal of sight-seeing in a pleasant, idle way. I go sometimes to the Boboli Gardens and wait for him there when he has letters to write. It is all so unlike our Florence of ten years ago; I love the quiet grey streets. The gardens are delicious; dark and cool; you see no one, hear nothing but the splash of the fountains, and the modern busy world doesn't exist. I am becoming quite intimate with the custode--he is most friendly--smiles all over when W. appears--and remarked the other day casually when he was late and I was waiting at the gate, "Il marito si fa aspettare." This morning we pottered about the Ponte Vecchio, where all the shops look exactly the same, and apparently the same old wrinkled men bending over their pearls and turquoises. So many foreigners have bought pearls that the prices have all gone up. There has been a great influx of strangers these last days as Easter is early, and we hear English on all sides. Two pretty fair-haired English girls were loitering about the bridge and shops, attracting much attention and admiration, quite freely expressed, from some of the numerous young men who are always lounging about; but the admiration is so genuine and so open that no one could be angry or consider it an impertinence. Do you remember one of my first Italian experiences in crossing the Piazza di Spagna one afternoon with my white kitten on my shoulder, and one of the group of "paini"[15] standing at the door of the bank remarked smilingly, "Che gatto fortunato!" I was rather taken aback but pleased certainly. At Doney's in the Via Tornabuoni, there is always the same group of men on the pavement about tea-time, when every one goes in for a cup of tea or chocolate--all much interested in the pretty girls who go in and out--also the society men standing at the door of the Club making remarks and criticising, with rather more reserve perhaps. [15] Young bourgeois. We took a fiacre when we had crossed the bridge and drove to Santa Maria Novella. The black and white façade looked like an old friend, also the spezeria where we used to buy the sachets of iris powder in the old days. We wandered all over the church, looked at the frescoes and the wonderful Cimabue Madonna, and then through the cloisters. A monk (one of the few left) in the long white robe of the Dominicans was working in the garden. He looked very picturesque in the little square of green, and was apparently engrossed in his work as he didn't even turn his head to look at us. He wasn't at all an old man as we saw when he raised himself--was tall and broad-shouldered. What a life it must be for a man in the full force of strength and health. One can understand it in the old days before books and printing, when the Dominicans and Benedictines were students and their parchments made history, but now when everybody reads and discusses everything it seems incredible that a man should condemn himself to such an existence. We dined at the Tchiatcheffs, and on our way home crossed a procession of "la Misericordia"; all the men with long cloaks and cowls drawn tight over their faces, with slits for the eyes. One could see nothing but bright, keen eyes, impossible to recognise any one. I believe men of all classes belong to the society, and we had probably various friends among them. I suppose they were going to get a corpse (which is always done at night in Florence, or, in fact, everywhere in Italy) and their low, melancholy chant rather haunted me. They say they do a great deal of good when there is an accident or a case of malignant fever, in transporting the patient to a hospital; but it was an uncanny sight. They tell me they went to get a young Englishman the other day who had fever, and was to be moved from the hotel to a private hospital. It was the doctor's suggestion, and I am sure they carried him quite well and gently, but it seems his poor wife went nearly mad when the procession arrived, and she saw all those black eyes gleaming from behind the cowls. We have been this afternoon to tea at "Camerata," the Halls' Villa. The drive out was charming, the day beautiful and bright, flowers everywhere. Quantities of peasant children ran alongside the carriage as we toiled up the hills, chattering volubly (many _Inglesi_ thrown in) and holding out little brown hands filled with yellow flowers. The Camerata garden and terrace were lovely. It was still a little cool to sit out, so we had tea inside. The lawn was blue with violets, and there were quantities of yellow flowers, crocuses, narcissi everywhere, roses just beginning. We met various old friends there--principally English--among others Miss Arbuthnot, looking quite the same; and the two Misses Forbes who have a charming apartment in Florence--we went there to tea the other day. Our friend and compatriot, Mrs. K., was also there; very dressy and very foolish; poor dear she never was wise. She was glad to see me, was sure I was enjoying the change and rest after my "full life"; then "Did you live in Paris?" I felt like saying, "No, French Cabinet Ministers usually live in Yokohama," but I desisted from that plaisanterie as I was sure she would go away under the impression that W. had been a member of the Japanese Cabinet. W. doesn't like my jokes--thinks they are frivolous. February 17, 1880. Our Talleyrand dinner last night was handsome and pleasant. He was for years French Ambassador at Petersburg (Baron Charles de Talleyrand-Périgord), and is the type of the clever, old-fashioned French gentleman and diplomatist. He married a Russian, Mlle. Bernadaky. She is very amiable, has a beautiful voice and beautiful jewels. I had Carlo Alessandri next to me, and we plunged into old times. After dinner Talleyrand and W. talked politics in the fumoir. He is of course quite "d'un autre bord" and thinks Republican France "grotesque," but W. said he was so moderate and sensible, not at all narrow-minded, understanding that a different opinion was quite possible, that it was interesting to discuss with him. Talleyrand confided to Mary afterward that he couldn't understand a man of her brother's intelligence and education being a Republican. Madame de Talleyrand didn't sing, had a cold. I was very sorry as I told her I should have liked to hear her sing again "Divinité du Styx." It will be always associated in my mind with the French-German war when we were all at Ouchy together hearing fresh disasters every day. This afternoon we went to have tea with "Ouida"[16] at her villa outside Florence. She was most anxious W. should come to her--which he agreed to do--though afternoon visits are not much in his line. As we were rather a large party we went out in detachments, and Madame de Tchiatcheff drove me. We arrived before the Bunsens and W. Ouida came to the gate to meet us, and Madame Tchiatcheff named me. She was civil, but before I had time to say that M. Waddington was coming in another carriage, she looked past me, saying, "Et Monsieur Waddington--il ne vient donc pas," with such evident disappointment and utter indifference to the presence of _Madame_ Waddington that I was rather taken aback; but I suppose geniuses must not be judged like other people. I was rather disappointed in her appearance. I expected to see her dressed either in "primrose satin with trails of white lace," or as an Italian peasant, and she really looked like any one else--her hair cut short and a most intelligent face. She was interesting when she talked about Italy and the absolute poverty of the people. She spoke either French or English, both equally well. When the visit had been talked of at home we had told W. he must read, or at any rate look over one of her books. I didn't think he could undertake one of her long novels, "Idalia" for instance, where the heroine wanders for days through wood and dale attired in a white satin dress, and arrives at her destination looking like "a tall, beautiful, pure lily"; but I think he might like one of her short Italian stories, which are charming, such beautiful descriptions. I always remember one of her sentences, "There is nothing in the world so beautiful as the smile of Italy to the awakening Spring." One felt that to-day in the garden, every bud was bursting, everything looked green and fresh and young. [16] Mlle. de la Ramée. Our dinner at home to-night was most agreeable. We had Mlle. de Weling, a great friend of the Bunsens, a clever, interesting woman whose girlhood was passed at the old Nassau castle at Bieberich on the Rhine. Her mother was one of the Duchess's ladies. I know the place well, and used often to walk through the beautiful park to the Rhine when I was staying with Mary. It is quite shut up and deserted now. The old Duke held out against United Imperial Germany, and never lived in his Schloss after Nassau was annexed. It is a grand old house with all its great windows and balconies facing the Rhine. One could quite imagine an animated court life (small court) there, with music, and riding, and excursions on the river. It is rather melancholy to see such a fine old place deserted. We had, too, Comandi, an Italian who occupies himself with orphan boys, and has a home for them near here somewhere in the country which we are going to see some day. Anna de Weling, too, has founded one or two small homes in different parts of Germany. She read us a letter the other day from one of her boys, quite grown up now, whom she had placed. It began "Wir brauchen Beinkleider" (we need trousers)--so naïf. The conversation was almost entirely in Italian as Comandi speaks no other language. All the Bunsens speak of course perfectly--they lived in Italy for so many years at the beginning of their diplomatic career. Mrs. Waddington is quite wonderful, speaks and reads it perfectly. Her nice little parlatrice is devoted to her. February 19, 1880. We have had two nice days. Yesterday we walked straight across the bridge to the Piazza del Duomo--walked about the Cathedral and the Baptistery trying to make out the Saints' processions, and figures on the marvellous bronze doors--but it would take weeks of study to understand them. I was tired, and sat (very uncomfortably) on a sort of pointed stone near the gates while W. examined them. I really think I like the Piazza and the open air and the street life as much as anything else. There was so much movement, flower stalls, fruit, cakes, those extraordinary little straw bottles of wine, children playing and tumbling all over the place (evidently compulsory education doesn't bother them much), and always quantities of men standing about doing nothing, wrapped up in their long cloaks, but what a wonderful cadre for it all. The Duomo, Palazzo Vecchio, Loggia, etc.--one can't imagine now the horrors that have been perpetrated in that very square. I told the family the other day I wanted to read "Nicolo dei Lapi" over again, and they all jeered at me; but I must get it somewhere; it will take me straight back to Frascati and the long hot days of the cholera summer when I was reading it, and trying so hard with my imperfect and school-girl translation to make you understand the beauty and horrors of the book. I was telling Mrs. Waddington the other day of our life at Frascati--the great cholera year at Albano (1869), when so many people died--the Dowager Queen of Naples, Princess Colonna, and Cardinal Altieri, who came straight out to his villa as soon as the cholera broke out (which it did quite suddenly). He was wonderful--went about everywhere in all the poor little houses, relieving and encouraging the sick and dying, holding up the cross to the poor dim eyes when life was too nearly gone for any words to avail; and finally was struck down himself and died in two days. How terribly lonely and cut off we felt--Dr. Valery was the only person we saw. He was allowed to come out every day from Rome, but was fumigated at the station at Frascati, and again in Rome when he got back, obliged to change his clothes outside the gate before coming into the city. We were never at all nervous about the cholera. I don't think there was one case at Frascati, and of course all our thoughts were centred in that great big room with its pink walls and mosaic floor where father[17] lay desperately ill. It seems like a dream now, those hot summer nights, when we used to go out on the terrace (upon which his room opened) to get bouillon, ice, etc., and we fancied we could see the cloud of disease hovering over the Campagna. [17] Charles King, President of Columbia College, father of Madame Waddington. [Illustration: President Charles King of Columbia College, New York City.] When it was moonlight, and such moonlight, that beautiful golden, southern moon, we saw a long white line in the distance--the sea. Circulation was very difficult, all the roads leading to Albano were barred, and guarded by zouaves; and of course we heard tales of horror from the Italian servants, always most talkative and graphic in their descriptions. However on the whole they behaved well. We used to ride every day, and always passed a little chapel on the way to Castel Gandolfo, which was filled with people kneeling and praying--a long line stretching out quite across the road to a little shrine just opposite. They used to make way for us to pass without getting off their knees, only stretching out their hands for anything the Principesse americane would give them. Some of the women were quite absorbed, looking hard at the Madonna in her shrine as if they expected some visible sign of pity, or promise of help. I rather envied them their simple faith; it must help them through many moments of trial and discouragement. As usual I seem to have wandered from my original subject, but Italy is so full of memories. We were too tired to walk home, besides were a little late, so we took a fiacre with a most friendly coachman, who saw at once that we were strangers, pointed out all the places of interest, and said it would be a delightful afternoon for Fiesole, and he would come and get us if we would name the hour. We found lots of letters and papers at the house, and W. plunged into Paris and politics after breakfast. I went for a drive with Mary and Beatrice to the Villa Careggi. The house is nothing remarkable--a large square building with enormous rooms, deep fireplaces, and very high ceilings. Some good frescoes on the walls. The garden and terraces were enchanting--the sun really too warm on the terrace--always a divine view; blue-purple hills rolling away in the distance, and funny, crooked little roads shut in between high walls, with every now and then a gap, or a gate, which gave one glimpses of straggling, unkempt gardens, with a wealth of flowers and vines. We had a quiet dinner and evening, which we all enjoyed. W. smoked and talked a great deal of the past year and the last days at the Quai d'Orsay. He doesn't miss the life in the least, which rather surprises me; I thought he would be so bored with suddenly nothing to do, and no part to play in the world's history; but I see that the absolute rest and being with all his family is doing him so much good. It is extraordinary how soon one forgets, and takes up a quiet life again. Already the whirl and fatigues of the Exhibition year seem so far away I feel as if somebody else had lived that life. I cannot imagine myself now dining out (and not ordinary dinners, official banquets) 19 nights in succession, but I suppose I should begin again quite naturally if we returned to public life. Did you see the article in the "Français" saying "M. Waddington will now have all the rest of his life before him to consecrate to his studies"? I wonder! This morning we had our usual walk--as W. was ready at ten o'clock I didn't make my regular station in the Boboli Gardens. We went to Vieusseux about a book W. wanted, and then into the bank to pay George Maquay a visit. He was most cheerful, and showed us a nice article in the "Times" regretting very much W.'s departure from the Foreign Office, "one of the few men who could look ahead a little, and who was independent, not limited in his views by what the Chamber of Deputies would think." I was rather pleased, but W. is very calm about all newspaper articles. He always has a "mauvaise presse" as we don't _soigner_ any paper. I fancy, though, Henrietta is right when she says the next time he takes office she means to buy one--so many people believe implicitly all they see in a paper, especially when it says what you want to believe. We did a little shopping, I wanted some veils, and W. remained outside looking at the grim old Strozzi Palace, standing like a great fortress with its huge stones and heavy doors in the middle of all the busy, bustling life of the Tornabuoni. I think it is the one street in Florence where people move about quickly, and as if they were going somewhere. Everywhere else there are crowds of people, men especially, doing nothing but sitting all day in the sun looking at the passers-by. We hadn't time to walk over to San Lorenzo, so hailed a fiacre, and wandered about there for some time. I was delighted to see the Medici Chapel again and the famous monument of Lorenzo. He does look as if he were thinking out some great problem--I wonder what he would think of our go-ahead, unartistic world, and of our politicians, so timorous and afraid of responsibility--at least the men of that race were strong for good or for evil. When they wanted anything they did all they could to get it. I don't know that the women were behindhand either in energy when one thinks of Queen Catherine and of all the Huguenots she disposed of one summer evening in Paris. Do you remember our friend Mrs. A., a converted Catholic, whom we overheard one night at the Opera when they were shooting all the Huguenots in the last act, telling her daughter (remained a Protestant) that the Saint Bartholomew had nothing to do with Catholics and Protestants; was entirely a political move. We have had a long drive this afternoon with Mary and Charles, up the Poggio Imperiale--a stiff climb but such a beautiful road--villas, cypresses, olive trees, and roses everywhere. We went up to the Certosa, where a nice old monk, in his white dress, showed us the church and monastery. It was dark and rather cold in the church, and nothing particular to see--good frescoes and many coloured marbles--but the terrace outside was delightful. There were not too many beggars on the road considering that it is the favourite drive in Florence, and of course the carriage people are at a disadvantage as they must go slowly up the hill, and are escorted by a long troop of children singing, dancing with a sort of tambourine, turning somersaults, and enjoying life generally, whether they get a few pennies or not. It is very difficult to resist the children with their smiling faces and evident desire to amuse the "forestieri." We went to Casa Guadagni before we came home, and paid a visit to the Marchesa, who was at home. The same old porter was at the door, and greeted me most warmly, much pleased to see W. "bel uomo, il marito"--had I any children, and where were all the rest of the family?--that simple, natural Italian manner, without a thought of familiarity. W. was delighted with Madame Guadagni. She talked about everything and really didn't look any older. I asked about our old apartment (piano nobile--first floor); she said it was always let--generally to foreigners. I _didn't_ ask if she had made any modern improvements since we lived there. Shall you ever forget that cold winter with the doors that wouldn't open, and the windows that wouldn't shut, and the chimneys that always smoked, and the calorifère, which John never would light, as he was afraid it would warm the Guadagni rooms below? I should have liked to go over the apartment and see the rooms again--the big ball-room where we danced so often and had so much music. We wound up with a turn in the Cascine, drawing up in the Piazza alongside of Lottie's carriage, which was of course surrounded by all the gilded youth of Florence. Maquay came to talk to us, Carlo Alessandri and Serristori, whom I hadn't yet seen. He was just the same (laughing and criticising) as in the old days when some of the swells appeared in so-called Worth garments, which he said were all made in a little room over his stables, by the wife and daughters of one of his men. I was glad to get in and have a quiet hour to write before dinner. I am at my table close up to the open window. The air is soft and delicious--the garden just beginning to look dark and mysterious in the waning light. The group of cypresses (I don't know how to write that in the plural, it looks funny) always black. I was called off various times, and must finish now as we are going to dine at the Maquays--we being ourselves, Mary, and Charles. We generally go about a family party. Sunday, February 21, 1880. We are making our pacquets as we have decided to leave for Rome on Monday (22). The Schuylers are clamouring for us, and though I hate to leave here I really think we ought to go. As W. has never seen Rome two months will not be too much. We shan't have much more as he wants to get home for the Conseil Général. The Schuylers want to have a big reception for us, and would like next Sunday week, so I think we really shall get off this time. The longer we stay the more invitations we have. It has been all quite charming. Our Maquay dinner was very easy and pleasant; the Tchiatcheffs, Lottie, Alessandri, Talleyrands, Mrs. Fuller, and one or two stray men. The house looked so natural--of course the ball-room wasn't open as we were a small party, but they lighted it after dinner. I wanted W. to see how pretty it was and how light--white with red seats all around. How it took me back to old times? I seemed to see everybody settling for the cotillon--the stairs too, where we all used to sit waiting for the cotillon to begin. How we amused ourselves that winter in Florence, and how scattered all that little band is now. The Florentines amuse themselves still--there must be something in the air which makes people light-hearted--one can't imagine a serious, studious life in Florence. We spent two hours in the Uffizi yesterday looking at all the old friends again. I was delighted to see the dear little "St. John in the Wilderness" hanging just where it did before, on one side of the door in the Tribuna; also the Peruginos--I like them so much--his Madonnas with their wooden faces, but a pure, unearthly expression all the same, and the curious green colour one sees in all his pictures. We saw as much as we could in the two hours, but as it was the second visit we found our way about better. I never rested until I found the corridor with Niobe and all her children--it used to fascinate me in the old days. One realized perfectly all those big sons and daughters, so terrified, and the last little one clinging to his mother's skirts. We went to tea, Mary and I, with Edith Peruzzi--quite quietly--as she wanted to show me her children--and fine specimens they are; a duck of a boy, quite sociable and smiling. Nina and Louisa Maquay came in--Louisa looked lovely. This morning I went to the English church with Mary and Beatrice. We didn't go out again till late--after tea--as we had various visitors, among others Schuyler Crosby, who had asked us to dine but we had no evening left. I saw him riding the other day in the Cascine, and recognised him some way off by his seat. I don't know what it is, but whatever the Americans do, whether riding, dancing, or tennis, they do it differently from any one else. I was talking about it the other day to an Englishman who had seen some of the Anglo-American boat races, and he quite agreed with me, said their rowing was very good, but quite another thing from the English sport. We drove out again Fiesole way. It was enchanting--more roses come out every day. There was a perfect fringe of pink roses hanging over some of the old grey walls. As it was Sunday, and a lovely day, there were quantities of people about. There are scarcely any costumes left, but all Italians like bright colours, and the red and green fichus and aprons looked pretty and gay as the various groups passed us. Some of the old women were terribly bent, with such brown, wrinkled faces--one could quite see that they had toiled up and down hills under the Italian scorching sun all their lives, with baskets and bundles of fagots on their backs--but the old eyes were keen and smiling. They don't look so utterly starved and wretched as Ouida (and others) say they are. I suppose they live on nothing, and go on quite simply, leading the same lives that their fathers and mothers did before them, without knowing of anything better. Tell Henrietta I haven't made much progress in the travelling work she presented me with. I did take it out into the drawing-room one evening, but the immediate result of that was disastrous. I took it out of the bag proudly, to show that I had silk, embroidery, scissors, needles, etc., like everybody else, but left it on the table. Somebody wanted a book or a newspaper also on the table; turned everything upside down, and the work, silk, needles, thimble, etc., went rolling all over the floor. When you think of the crevasses of an old parquet floor in an Italian Palace, you can imagine how difficult it was to find anything again. The two girls were hours on their knees looking for my thimble which never turned up--however, that will be an excellent reason for buying a pretty little gold thimble with a row of turquoises that I saw the other day in a shop on the Ponte Vecchio. There is evidently a fate against my becoming an accomplished needlewoman, and I am afraid the "clumsy little fingers," which used to worry you so in the old days of music lessons, have not improved with advancing years. Perhaps I shall take to work in my old age. Isn't it George Sand who says (and I don't believe she ever took a needle in her hand), "Don't despise our less ambitious sisters who work. Many great resolutions and silent abnegations have been woven into the bright flowers and delicate tracings of the embroidery in the long hours spent over the frame." Monday Night, February 22, 1880. We really are starting to-morrow morning--trunks are packed, compartment engaged, and we have said good-bye to everybody. I made a last little turn this morning in the Boboli Gardens. I didn't see the custode--I wanted to say good-bye to him. Then we went to the Pitti gallery, W. wanted to see one particular Botticelli, "la bella Simonetta" I think, which he and Mary had been talking about, and which we had missed the other day. It is quite impossible to see everything. I had remembered pretty well the principal pictures. Then we took a fiacre and went out to San Marco to see the Fra Angelicos and Savonarola's cell. We had never once got there, there is always so much to do. We walked through the cloisters first--the frescoes are perfectly well preserved--some of Fra Angelico's and others less interesting. I wanted to see the cells, and was quite pleased to recognise the "Coronation of the Virgin" and the "Madonna and Child" surrounded by angels, all in their long green-blue robes with wings and musical instruments of all kinds. As usual people were copying them, and I will try and find a pretty one and bring it back. I want the one in a sort of light green dress blowing a trumpet. The faces are quite beautiful, so pure. He must have had a wonderful imagination--I wonder if he believed angels look like that? Somehow or other I always think of an angel in a white robe. We saw of course Savonarola's cell, and they showed us his rosary, and a piece of wood which is supposed to have been taken from his funeral pile. It all looked so peaceful and smiling to-day, one could hardly realize the long hours of doubt and self-torture passed in these solitary cells. There is a fine description in one of the numerous books the Bunsens have on Florence, of Savonarola's preaching--all the people congregated in the great square before the church, when there was no longer any room inside, leaving their shops and their work to come and listen to him. That is one of the delightful things in this household, you can always find a book in almost any language about any subject that interests you, religion, music, politics, everything. Beatrice has a delightful German magazine, "Monatsheft," very well illustrated, with all the modern German literature, stories, essays, criticisms, etc. One could almost wish for a rainy day or a quiet evening to read a little. W. went off by himself the other night and had a very pleasant evening. First to the Piccolellis' where he found a small party and his old friend Bentivoglio, with whom he had travelled in the East. Of course they instantly got into a corner and talked shop (medals). Then to Lottie Van Schaick who had a few friends, where he amused himself very much. Gertrude writes that our rooms are very nice, and the man at the hotel delighted to have us. I wonder what Rome will be like. It will seem funny to be back there again, a respectable middle-aged lady. I think one should always be young and gay to live in Italy. We had a fine musical evening Saturday with the Landi family--five; mother, father, daughter, son, and grandfather. Madame Landi sang anything, everything, delightfully. Some of the stornelli and peasant songs, those particularly of the Abruzzi mountains, were charming. I wonder what Italians have got in their "gosier" that we haven't, that gives such a charm to their simplest song. I sang once or twice in French, and then Madame Landi and I did some duos in Italian which went very well. She was very complimentary over my Italian (I told it triumphantly to W., but he remains under the impression of the razor), said it was evident I had learnt in Rome; the language is so much softer, or rather the pronunciation "Lingua toscana in bocca romana." The old father was killing, knew everything, was wildly interested, and criticised freely. I think the daughter will have a very pretty voice, like her mother's, a rich, low mezzo. I was called off by some visits, and will finish now. My letter will go to-morrow morning. We don't start very early--9.30--but I shall not have time to write anything more. _To H. L. K._ HÔTEL DE LONDRES, ROME, February 24, 1880. We arrived last evening for dinner, dear mother, and are most comfortably settled. We have a nice apartment on the second floor--a large bright salon with a good bed-room on either side of it for me and W., and a very fair anteroom where Madame Hubert has just had another wardrobe put up. She interviewed the gérant and made it clear to him that it was impossible for her to unpack her mistress's dresses until she had something suitable to put them in. We found flowers and papers on the table from the Schuylers, Mrs. Bruce, and the proprietor of the hotel. I thought we should never get away from Florence. We were so happy there with the Bunsens and Mrs. Waddington, and every day there was something to see or do. The weather was divine the last days--the hills were quite a pink-purple sometimes as we drove home after sunset, and quantities of roses climbing up all the old grey walls. We had a very easy journey--they had reserved a carriage for us, which was a good precaution, as the train was crowded. We got to Rome about six. W. was quite excited as we approached (it is too funny to think that he had never been here), and very anxious for the first glimpse of St. Peter's. I can't say we saw the dome from a great distance--I fancy it depends upon which way you enter Rome. We found the Schuylers at the station with a carriage, and drove at once to the hotel, where Gert had ordered tea and a pannettone. If I hadn't known I was coming to Rome I should never have believed it on arriving at the station. It was so unlike the little old Termine of our Roman days--the funny little station so far away, with few porters or cabs, and comparatively few voyageurs. I was quite bewildered with the rush into this great, modern station, with porters and officials of all kinds, and all the bustle of a great city. I looked in vain for some familiar landmarks as we came along. Nothing. The new streets, Via Garibaldi and Nazionale--an abomination, tall ugly maisons de location and official buildings so new and regular--awful! It wasn't until we got into the town and near the Piazza di Spagna that I really felt that I was back in Rome; that of course was unchanged. It brought back such a flood of memories as we passed 20, and all the first happy days in Rome came back to me, before father's illness, when he enjoyed everything so much, and wrote to Uncle John that "the hours were golden." The "barca" looked just the same, with boys and women leaning up against the stones, flower-girls on the Spanish Steps, and even old Nazzari's low, dark shop opposite looked picturesque. W. was quite surprised to see me so sentimental, though I had warned him that for me there was no place in the world like Rome. The Schuylers stayed talking some little while, then had to go, as they were dining out, but promised to come in after dinner. W. asked me if I was too tired to go for a little stroll (the tea had refreshed us), so we started up the Spanish Steps to the Villa Medici, where we had that beautiful view of Rome. I showed him the stone pines of the Doria-Pamphili, which stood out splendidly against the last bright clouds of the sunset--it was quite lovely. We stayed out quite late, and were received with respectful, but decidedly disapproving greetings from the gérant when we came in. It was not at all prudent for "Eccellenza" and Madame to remain out late, particularly as they must be very tired after a long journey. We dined downstairs in the big dining-room. There was a long table d'hôte full--people about half through their dinner--and at the extreme end of the room five or six small tables, one of which had been reserved for us. I didn't see any one I knew, but two men got up and bowed as we passed. The dinner was good--the head waiter hovering about us all the time, and of course always addressing W. as "Eccellenza." We had coffee upstairs. W. smoked and I read the paper and one or two notes. About ten the Schuylers appeared, very cheerful and full of propositions of all kinds. They have got a big reception for us on Sunday night--Roman and diplomatic--and we agreed to breakfast with them to-day. Gert looked very well in blue, with her diamond necklace and feathers. They don't seem very pleased with Marsh--our Minister. Always the same old story and jealousy--the ministers consider themselves so far above a consul. But really when the Consul-General happens to be Schuyler and his wife King, one would think these two names would speak for themselves--for Americans, at any rate. We told Schuyler how many compliments we had had both in Paris and Florence for his "Peter the Great"--so much in it, and yet the subject one that had been written about so often. They went off about eleven, and I was glad to go to bed; could hardly believe I was sleeping again in the Piazza di Spagna. I certainly never imagined when I left Rome tearfully so many years ago that I would come back as the wife of a French statesman. I was busy all the morning unpacking and settling myself, and of course looking out of the window. It is all so delightfully familiar--all the botte standing in the middle of the street, and the coachman trying so hard to understand when some English or American tourists give them some impossible address in Italian--you know the kind of people I mean, conscientious tourists who think they must always speak the language of the country they are in, learned out of a phrase-book. We have various invitations, from our two Embassies, Quirinal and Vatican, also the Teanos, and W. had a nice visit from Lanciani, who wants to show him all Rome. We took a botta to go to the Schuylers. It isn't far, but I wasn't quite sure of finding my way the first time. They have a charming apartment in Palazzo Altemps, near the Piazza Navona, not at all far really from our hotel, and now that I know the way I can often walk over in the mornings when W. is off sight-seeing seriously with some of his learned friends. It is a fine old palace with a large open court and broad stone staircase. San Carlo Borromeo is supposed to have lived there. Their apartment belongs to Mrs. Terry, wife of the artist, who had arranged it very comfortably, and the Schuylers have put in all their Turkish rugs, carpets, and bibelots, so it really looks very pretty. There are quantities of green plants and flowers about (they are both fond of flowers and are always making experiments and trying something new) and of course books, papers, reviews, and a piano. I told Gert I thought I would write to Vera and have some singing lessons--I have done so little singing since I have been married. Eugene is a charming host, and he and W. had plenty to talk about. I inspected Gert's wardrobe while they were smoking. Her dresses are all right, and I think her maid is good. I wrote all this after I came in. The man of the hotel had engaged a carriage for us--a nice little victoria with a pair of greys. It comes from Tomba's stables--do you remember the name? The same loueur we had when we lived here. The coachman said he remembered me perfectly, had often driven the "signorine" to the meets, and hoped la maman was well. We were lucky to get such a nice little carriage. The d'Aubignys, a French couple, had just given it up, as they were leaving the Embassy here for Berlin. We drove about a little--left cards for the Noailles, Desprez, Cairolis, and wound up in the Villa Borghese, which was again quite changed--such quantities of carriages and people walking, also Italian officers riding, and soldiers, bersaglieri, etc., about. We crossed the Wimpffens, looking very smiling, and saw in the distance, as we were coming out, the royal red liveries, but the carriage was too far off to see who was in it. Now we are going to dinner, and I shall be glad to get to bed early. I think I am more tired than yesterday. HÔTEL DE LONDRES, February 26, 1880. I will begin again this afternoon, as I have a little time before dinner. The weather is divine, quite the same deep-blue sky and bright sun of our first Roman winter. We have had an enchanting drive out of Porta San Sebastiano and along the Via Appia as far as Cecilia Metella--everything exactly the same as when we were there so many years ago. The same peasant carts blocking up the narrow gateway, everybody talking at once, white teeth gleaming, and quantities of little brown children with black eyes and jet black hair tumbling down over their eyes and outstretched hands for anything the forestieri would put into them. W. was a little disappointed at first. The road is narrow, an atrocious pavement, and high walls almost shutting out the view. However, as we got farther out there came gaps in the walls through which one saw the whole stretch of the Campagna with the Claudian Aqueduct on one side, and when we finally emerged into the open fields, he was delighted. How extraordinary all these old tombs and pyramids are, most of them falling in ruins, with roses and creepers of all kinds holding them together. On one of the largest round tombs there was a peasant house with a garden and vines, and smoke coming out of the chimney, perched quite on the top, with a steep, stony path winding down, where the coachman told me the donkey went up and down, as he too lived in the house with the family. Some of the tombs are very high--real towers. There is hardly a trace of marble or inscription left, but the original building so strong that the walls remain. The queer old tombs, towers, and bits of ruins all along the road interested W. immensely; though he has never been here he knows them all from photographs and reproductions, and could tell me a great deal more than I could tell him. We went as far as the round tomb of Cecilia Metella, and then got out and walked a little. I wanted to show him the low wall which we used to jump always when the meet was at Cecilia Metella. Do you remember the first time you came out to see us jump, not at a hunt but one afternoon with Dyer practising to see what the horses and riders would do? You saw us start at a canter for the wall, and then shut your eyes tight until we called out to you from the other side. This morning W. and I had our first regular turn at sight-seeing. We took a nice little botta on the Piazza, had our Baedeker--a red one, like all the tourists--and were quite happy. Some of the old colleagues were highly entertained seeing us driving about with our Baedeker; said it was W. under a wholly different aspect. We wandered about the Vatican for two hours, seeing quantities of things--Sistine Chapel, Stanze Raphael, Apollo Belvedere, etc., and always a beautiful view over the gardens. Later, he says, he must do it all regularly and intelligently with one of his men friends, as I naturally could not stand for hours recognising and deciphering an old inscription. I left him from time to time, sat down on one of the stone benches, talked to the custode, looked at the other people, and gave them any information I could. It interested me to see the different nationalities--almost entirely English, American, German, very few Italian, and no French--yes, one artist, a rather nice looking young fellow who was copying something on the ceiling of one of the "Stanze," rather a difficult process apparently. There were many more women than men--groups of English spinsters doing their sights most thoroughly--the Americans more casual. The Apollo looked splendid, so young and spirited. We walked some little distance, coming home before we could get a fiacre, and I had forgotten how cruel that Roman pavement was. I don't believe any of my boots will stand it; I shall have to get somewhere here a pair of thick-soled walking shoes. We had a quiet hour after breakfast. I have arranged a ladies' corner in the drawing-room. I was in despair the first two days over the room. I had never lived in small hotel quarters with a man, and I had no idea how disorderly they are. The table was covered with pens, papers--piles of them, three or four days old, thick with dust--cigars, cigar ashes over everything, two or three large, bulky black portfolios, very often a pot hat, etc. So we compromised; W. took one end of the room and I the other. I obtained from the gérant (thanks to Madame Hubert, who is very pretty and on the best of terms with him) a small table, large china vase for a plant, a nice arm-chair, and a cushion for the sofa, borrowed a table-cloth from Gert, also some small things for my table, and my end looked quite respectable and feminine. The room is large, so we can really get on very well. We had a pleasant visit from the Marquis de Noailles, French Ambassador to the Quirinal, before we went out. He has a charming, easy manner. We are to breakfast at the Embassy, Palazzo Farnese, to-morrow for me to make Madame de Noailles's acquaintance. I wonder what I shall think of her? The men all say she is a charmeuse. She is Polish born, was a beautiful woman--I think all Poles have a great charm of manner. Trocchi came in, too--so pleased to see me again and to make W.'s acquaintance. The two senators talked politics, and Noailles put me a little au courant of Roman society and the two camps black and white. We went out at 3.30, as I said before, to Cecilia Metella, and stopped at Gert's for tea. W. walked home, and I stayed a little while with her talking over the arrangements for their reception on Sunday. Every one--Romans, diplomats, and Americans--they have asked has accepted; but their rooms are fairly large and I don't think they will be crowded. HÔTEL DE LONDRES, Monday, February 29, 1880. I am still tired from the quantity of people we saw last night at the Schuylers. Their reception was most brilliant; all the world----However, I will begin at the beginning. We went to church on Sunday, as Dr. Nevin came to see us Saturday afternoon and said he hoped we would not fail to come. W. found him clever and interesting. He said he thought I should hardly recognise him in his new church. It is very pretty--English style, built by an English architect (Street) in the new quarter, Via Nazionale, utterly unlike the bare little room outside the Porta del Popolo, where we used to go and do the music. It makes me laugh now when I think of the congregation all embarked on a well-known hymn, when suddenly Henrietta would lower the tune one note--if I was tired, as often happened, as one of the gayest balls in Rome was Princess Sciarra's on Saturday night. When I had danced until four o'clock in the morning (the test of the ball was how late it lasted) it was rather an effort to be at church at 10.30 Sunday morning and sing straight through the service. Henrietta had the harmonium and I led the singing. I will say that the effect of the sudden change was disastrous from a musical point of view. However, we did our best. I am afraid Henrietta was not always faithful to Bach and Beethoven in her voluntaries. We had no music, and she played whatever she could remember, and occasionally there were strains of "Araby's Daughter" or "When the Swallows Homeward Fly," which were quite perceptible even through the minor chords. I liked doing it all the same, and like it still. I am so fond of the old hymns we used to sing as children, and should like to hear "Shout the Glad Tidings" every Christmas. I never have since we left America and Oyster Bay, where also we did the music, and where, when we were late sometimes for church, Faust, the big black Newfoundland dog would come and bark when the bell had stopped, telling us quite plainly we were late--he knew all about it. We made the regular Sunday turn in the afternoon--Villa Borghese and Pincio--sent the carriage away and walked home by the Villa Medici. W. loves the view from the terrace. We met Mrs. Bruce, also looking at the view, and walked home together. She told W. Cardinal Howard wanted to see him, had known him in England in the old days, also a young English monsignore--called _English_ oddly enough. She will ask us all to dine together some night next week. I asked her if she remembered her famous dinner long ago with Cardinal Howard and Dean Stanley. The two divines were very anxious to cross swords. They were such a contrast. Dean Stanley, small, slight, nervous, bright eyes, charming manners, and a keen debater. The Cardinal, tall, large, slow, but very earnest, absolutely convinced. The conversation was most interesting--very animated--but never personal nor even vehement, though their views and judgments were absolutely different on all points. However, both were gentlemen and both large-minded. W. was much interested, as he knew Dean Stanley and his wife Lady Augusta well; they came often to Paris, and were habitués of Madame Mohl's famous salon, where the literary men of all creeds and countries used to meet. It was there, too, that Dean Stanley and Renan used to meet and talk, the two great intellects finding points in common. I was taken there once or twice after I was first married. It was a curious interior; Madame Mohl, a little old lady, always dressed in white, with a group of men standing around her chair--many more men than women, and never more than twenty or thirty people. I suppose it was the type of the old French literary salon where people went to talk. I naturally listened in those days, not being sufficiently up in all the political and literary questions, and not pinning my faith absolutely on the "Revue des Deux Mondes." Mrs. Bruce, too, was often at Madame Mohl's. We stopped in a few minutes at the Trinità de' Monti, where there was a service of some kind going on. The nuns were singing a low, monotonous chant behind their grating; the church was quite dark, lights only on the altar, a few women kneeling and absorbed, and a few irreverent forestieri looking about and talking in whispers. We came down the Spanish Steps, which were quite deserted at that hour--models, beggars, flâneurs, all resting from their labours. I was glad to rest a little before dinner, and only dressed afterward, as I couldn't well go down to the public dining-room in a low red satin dress and diamonds. We went rather early--ten o'clock--to Palazzo Altemps, but found many people already there. The apartment looked very pretty, quantities of flowers and plants wherever they could be put. Gert looked very well in yellow satin, and Eugene is always at his best in his own house--very courteous and receiving people as if it were a pleasure to him (which I think it is). We found quantities of old friends--Pallavicinis, Teanos, Lovatellis, Calabrinis, Bandini, Pagets, Mrs. Bruce, Hooker, Grants, etc., and quantities of people we didn't know, and whose acquaintance we made of course--Mesdames Minghetti, Cairoli, Despretis, and almost the whole of the Corps Diplomatique. W. enjoyed it very much, did his manners very well, and never looked stiff or bored. I was delighted to see the familiar faces once more. I almost felt as if we had never been away. Madame de Noailles was astounded at the number of people I knew--I think she hadn't realized how long I had lived in Rome as a girl. She had heard W. say it was his first visit to Rome, and thought I, too, was here for the first time, and she was naturally surprised to hear me talking to Calabrini about the hunts, cotillons, his coach, and tempi passati generally. I have accepted so many invitations that I never can remember them, but the ladies promised to send a card. Aunt Mary Gracie was rather put out with me because I wore no necklace (which couldn't be said of the Roman ladies, who all wore splendid jewels), but I told her it was the last chic in Paris to wear your necklace on your bodice, not on your neck. We stayed on after all the beau monde had gone with Aunt Mary, Hooker, a Russian friend of Schuyler's, and Count Palfy, had a nice little supper, champagne and sandwiches, and talked over the party, saying of course (as they say we Kings always do) how pleasant our party was. W. was much interested in the various talks he had. He found Minghetti charming--so intelligent and well up in everything. Cairoli, too, he had been anxious to see; also Visconti Venosta. He was naturally (like all the men) charmed with Madame Minghetti. She must have been beautiful, and has an extraordinary charm of manner. The Cairolis are a very big couple. He is tall and broad, fine eyes--she, too, on a large scale, but handsome. Of course there were many inquiries from all the old friends for la maman and the family generally. Mrs. Bruce says she never drives in the Doria-Pamphili without thinking of you driving about in your plain black dress and bonnet, with two or three daughters (not quite so plainly dressed) in the carriage, and all always talking and laughing, and enjoying life together. I told her about Florence, where the King of Italy always bowed to you in the Cascine, evidently taking you for the superior of some religious order (he must have thought the novices were lively), and the children in the street used to run up to you and kiss your hand. "He was quite right, to bow to you," she said, "my grand old Republican." [Illustration: The Spanish Steps. In the Piazza di Spagna, Rome.] March 4, 1880. Yesterday we went again to the Vatican. W. is quite happy, I thought I should never get him away. It is most amusing to walk about old Rome with him, for suddenly over a gateway or at the bottom of an ordinary little court he discovers an inscription or a slab, or an old stone which he knows all about, and we stop. He reads, and recognises, and translates to me, and is wildly interested. It is all so good for him, and puts politics and little annoyances out of his head. It is quite new for me to see Rome from a classical point de vue, but I suppose one enjoys things differently as one grows older. I certainly enjoyed the mad gallops over the Campagna in the old days; do you remember Mrs. S. who was so severe with us--first because we were Americans (she was English) and then because we knew everybody and enjoyed ourselves?--"when she was young people came to Rome to educate themselves and enjoy the pictures, museums, historical associations, etc. _Now_ one saw nothing but American girls racing over the Campagna with a troop of Roman princes at their heels." Poor dear, she really thought it was a calamity not to be born under the British flag. I suppose that makes the great strength of the English, their absolute conviction that England is the only country in the world. They are funny, though--I was discussing something one day with Lady S., and we didn't quite agree; upon which she remarked she supposed I couldn't understand her ideas--she came from a big country where one took broad views of things. I said I thought I did too, but perhaps it is a matter of appreciation--I think, though, I have got geography on my side. After breakfast we drove about paying visits. We found Princess Teano (who has asked us to dine on Wednesday) and she showed us her boys--the eldest one a beauty. She looked very handsome with her pure Madonna face. She told us her beau-père (the blind Duke of Sermoneta) had been so pleased to meet W. in Florence. They had a long talk somewhere, and W. was so amused with the Duke's politics and liberalism--all so easy-going, half chaffing, but very decided too, no sounding phrases nor profession de foi; simply accepting (what he couldn't really like very much) the inevitable, de bonne grâce; and seizing and ridiculing all the weak points. In France they are frightfully logical, must always argue and discuss everything--I think they are born debaters. We left cards on various people, Princess Bandini, Cenci, Countess Lovatelli, and then went for a little turn out of the San Lorenzo gate, but not far, as we wanted to go to Princess Pallavicini, who received that afternoon. W. was much struck with the apartment--so many rooms, all very high ceilings, that we passed through before getting to the boudoir where the Princess was sitting. It all looked so natural, I remembered the hangings--bright flowers on a light satin ground--as soon as I got into the room, and some of the pictures. She was very cordial and friendly, told W. how long she had known me, and recalled some of our rides at Frascati with her and Del Monte. She asked us to come on Friday evenings, she was always at home. No one else was there but a Princesse de Thurn and Taxis (née Hohenlohe) who was introduced to us, and the talk was pleasant enough. She was quite interested in our two audiences--Pope and Quirinal--but we told her we had heard nothing from either court yet. W. walked home, and I went on to Gert as it was her reception day. She gave me a cup of tea, and I found various friends there, including Father Smith who was quite pleased to see me again. He doesn't look any older, and is apparently quite as energetic as ever. He told me he had enjoyed his talk with W. very much, and they had made a rendezvous for two days--the Catacombs and San Clemente. He remarked casually that W. wasn't at all what he expected to find him; not at all his idea of a "French Republican." I wonder what sort of trade-mark he expected to see? If he had pictured W. as a slight, nervous, black-eyed, voluble Frenchman, he must naturally have been surprised. We have heard people discussing us sometimes in English as we pass down the long dining-room to our table--"There goes Waddington, the late French Premier." "Never--that man is an Englishman." "I have seen pictures of Waddington--he doesn't look at all like that, etc." The head waiter always points us out as distinguished strangers. I found quantities of cards when I came home--one from Lily San Vito with a nice little message of welcome. (We crossed her in the Corso the other day and she looked lovely.) Also Valerys, Middletons, Pantaleones, etc. After I had gone to my room to dress W. had a visit from Desprez, the French Ambassador to the Vatican. He has just arrived, his wife not yet come, and he feels a little strange in this very divided society. We are going to meet him at dinner at the Portuguese Embassy. He told W. there would be several Cardinals at the dinner--a regular black assemblage. It will be a funny experience for W. March 6, 1880. I will finish this long letter to night. We have just come in from the Teano dinner, which was pleasant. Teano looked quite the same (I hadn't seen him for years) with his tall, slight figure and white lock. (I forgot to look if the boy had it.) She looked very handsome. We had the Minghettis, a Polish Countess--sister-in-law of the Duc de Sermoneta, the Calabrinis, and M. Heding, a German savant. Minghetti was delightful, telling us his early experiences with the old Pope, Pio Nono. He was killing over the entente between the government and the monks for the suppression of the monasteries. The gendarmes arrived, found barred doors and resistance. There was a sort of halt and parley--one father came out, then another--a little livret of the Caisse d'Epargne was put into their hands, and all went off as quietly as possible. Heding seemed to think things wouldn't go so easily in Germany, and they certainly wouldn't in France. Madame Minghetti and I talked for a long time after dinner exchanging our experiences of the official world, which I fancy is always the same in all countries. Calabrini was of course his same courteous self--so absolutely free from pose of any kind--rather unusual in a man who has always had such a success. This morning we went to Trajan's Forum, walked, W. as usual quite at home, everywhere recognising old friends at every step. We looked at all manner of inscriptions and basso-rilievos, and enjoyed ourselves very much. This afternoon W. and Schuyler went off together to see some churches and the Palazzo dei Cesari. I backed out, as I can't stand two sight-seeings the same day with a dinner in prospect in the evening. I went over to get Gert, and we drove about together, winding up at the Comtesse Wimpffens, Austrian Ambassadress, who has a charming apartment in the Palazzo Chigi (where Odo Russell used to live when we were in Rome). There were various ladies there, the Marquise de Noailles, French Ambassadress (who immediately asked me who made my dress, the blue velvet that did all my visits the last year of the Quai d'Orsay), Lady Paget, Madame Minghetti, and a sprinkling of secretaries and attachés. Comtesse d'Aulnay, looking very pretty, very well dressed, came in just as we were leaving. We wound up with a turn in the Villa Borghese. There were grooms waiting at the gate with saddle horses, just as our old Carmine used to wait for us. It is all so curiously familiar and yet changed. I can't get accustomed to the quantities of people in the streets where there never used to be any one--occasionally a priest, or a few beggars, or a water-carrier. Now there are soldiers, people carrying parcels, small employees, workmen, carts, carriages, life in fact. There were quantities of people in the Villa Borghese. Some of the carriages very well turned out, again very different from our days when we knew every carriage, and when a new equipage or a new face made a sensation. W. has had a delightful afternoon looking at some of the very old churches with Eugene. He had, too, a note from Desprez saying our audience from the Pope would be to-morrow at one o'clock, and giving me the necessary instructions for my veil, long black dress, etc. To-morrow night we dine at the Noailles. The breakfast there the other day was pleasant--no one but ourselves and Ripalda. Of course it is a magnificent Embassy--the Farnese Palace--and they do it very well, but it would take an army of servants to "garnish" these long anterooms and passages, in fact ordinary servants are quite lost there; there ought to be Swiss guards or halberdiers with steel cuirasses and lances which would stand out splendidly from the old grey walls. One could quite imagine an Ambassador of Louis XIV arriving with 100 gentlemen and armed retainers in his suite. The famous room with the Caracci frescoes must be beautiful at night. Ripalda asked us to come to tea one afternoon at his palace on the Tiber, the "Farnesina." Marquise de Noailles was charming. Now I will say good-night, dear, for I am tired, and we have a busy day to-morrow. I wonder if Leo XIII. will impress me as much as Pio Nono did. _To H. L. K._ ROME, HÔTEL DE LONDRES, Thursday, March 8, 1880. The Piazza is delightful this morning, dear mother; it is bright and warm, and there are lots of people starting for excursions with guide-books, white umbrellas, and every variety of wrap. The coachmen of the little botte look so smiling and interested, so anxious to make things easy and comfortable. Vera came to see us yesterday, and told me he was hailed by one of the coachmen from the top of his box, just as he was crossing the Piazza, who said to him: "Sai Maestro, una di quelle signorine King è tornata col marito?" (Do you know, master, one of those King young ladies has come back with her husband?) He was much amused--told him he was quite right, and that he was going to see that same signorina. I dare say he had driven us often to one of the gates to meet the saddle horses. Yesterday was our udienza particolare (special audience), and most interesting it was. Madame Hubert was madly excited dressing me. I wore my black satin, long, with the Spanish lace veil I had brought in case I should be received by his Holiness, and of course no gloves, though I had a pair with me and left them in the carriage. We started at 12.30, as our audience was at one, and got there quickly enough. I had forgotten all the queer little courts and turns at the back of the Vatican. Everything was ready for us; we were received really in royal state--Swiss Guard, with their extraordinary striped yellow uniform (designed, some one told us the other day, by Michelangelo), tall footmen attired in red damask, Guardia Nobile, chamberlains, and two monsignori. The garde noble de service was Felice Malatesta. He really seemed much pleased to see me again, and to make W.'s acquaintance--swore he would have known me at once, I was so little changed; but I rather suspect if he hadn't known we were coming he wouldn't have recognised me. We had a nice talk the few minutes we stood waiting in the room adjoining the one where the Pope received us, and he gave me news of all his family--Emilio (still unmarried), Francesco, etc.; then a door was opened, a monsignore came out, bowed, and said his Holiness was ready to receive us. We went in at once, the monsignore closing the door behind us and leaving us alone with the Pope, who came almost to the door to receive us, so that the three regulation curtseys were impossible. There were three red and gold arm-chairs at one end of the room, with a thick, handsome carpet in front of them. The Pope sat on the one in the middle, put me on his right and W. on his left. He is a very striking figure; tall, slight, a fine intellectual brow and wonderfully bright eyes--absolutely unlike Pio Nono, the only Pope I had ever approached. He was most gracious, spoke to me always in Italian, said he knew I was an old Roman, and that we had lived many years in Rome; spoke French to W., who, though he knows Italian fairly, prefers speaking French. He asked W. all sorts of questions about home politics and the attitude of the clergy, saying that as a Protestant his opinion would be impartial (he was well up in French politics, and knew that there were three Protestants in W.'s ministry: himself, Léon Say, and Freycinet). W. was rather guarded at first (decidedly "banale," I told him afterward), but the Pope looked straight at him with his keen, bright eyes, saying: "Je vous en prie, M. Waddington, parlez sons réserves." We stayed about three-quarters of an hour, and the talk was most interesting. The Pope is very anxious to bring about a better state of feeling between the clergy and the people in France, and tries so hard to understand why the priests are so unpopular; asked about the country curate, who baptizes the children and buries the old people--surely there must be a feeling of respect for him; said, too, that everywhere in town or country the priests do so much for the sick and poor. W. told him the women _all_ went to church and sent their children to the catechism, but the men are indifferent, if not hostile, and once the boys have made their first communion they never put their foot in a church. "What will keep them straight and make good men of them, if they grow up without any religious education?" The answer was difficult--example and home teaching, _when_ they get it. Evidently he had been curious to see W., and I think he was pleased. It was quite a picture to see the two men--the Pope dressed all in white, sitting very straight in his arm-chair with his two hands resting on the arms of the chair, his head a little bent forward, and listening attentively to every word that W. said. W. drew his chair a little forward, spoke very quietly, as he always does, and said all he wanted to say with just the same steady look in his blue eyes. [Illustration: Pope Leo XIII.] From time to time the Pope turned to me and asked me (always in Italian) if politics interested me--he believed all French women were keen politicians; also if I had found many old friends in Rome. I told him I was so pleased to see Felice Malatesta as we came in, and that we were going to meet Cardinal Howard one day at breakfast. I shouldn't think he took as much interest in the social life of Rome as Pio Nono did. They used always to say he knew everything about everybody, and that there was nothing he enjoyed so much as a visit from Odo Russell, who used to tell him all sorts of "petites histoires" when their official business was over. He also talked a good deal to W. about his uncle, Evelyn Waddington, who lived in Perugia, where he was "sindaco" (mayor) for years. He married an Italian lady, and was more than half Italian--curious for a man called Evelyn Waddington. The Pope had known him well when he was Bishop of Perugia. We both kissed his hand when we took leave, and he said again to W. how much he had been interested in all he told him. We lingered a few minutes in the anteroom, as there was some idea Cardinal Nina would receive us, but it had not been arranged. It seemed strange to be in those high, bare rooms again, and reminded me of our visit to Cardinal Antonelli years ago with father, when he showed us his collection of gems. I remember so well his answer to Bessie Curtis (now Marquise de Talleyrand-Périgord), who was looking out of the window, and said it was such an enchanting view, would help one in "des moments de découragement." "On n'est jamais découragé, mademoiselle." I imagine Leo XIII has very difficult moments sometimes. W. wouldn't come out again as he had letters to write, so I stopped for Gert, and we had a lovely turn in the Villa Pamphili. Quantities of people--it looked very gay. We got home about six, and had visits until it was time to dress for our dinner at the Wimpffens. D'Aulnay came first, very anxious to hear about our audience at the Vatican; and Tagliani, the auditeur of the old "nonce"; also Dr. Nevin. Our dinner at the Wimpffens was very pleasant. Their apartment looks very handsome lighted. There was a fine, pompous old porter at the door downstairs, and plenty of servants and a "chasseur" upstairs. We had all the personnel of the Embassy, the Calabrinis, Bibra (Bavarian Minister), Van Loo (Belgian), and an Austrian whose name I didn't master, who had been a minister in Andrassy's Cabinet. After dinner we all adjourned to the smoking-room, which is very large and comfortable, lots of low arm-chairs. The Austrian ladies smoked, and I talked to Bibra and Van Loo, who told me all the diplomats had been rather struck with the cordiality of our reception--that in general the Romans troubled themselves very little about strangers. W. talked to Wimpffen and his Austrian friend, who was much interested in hearing about our audience with the Pope, and a little surprised that W. should have talked to him so freely, both of them saying that his being a Protestant made things much easier. The Romans went off early, so W. went to Geoffroy (director of the École de Rome--French Archæological Society), who receives Thursday evenings at the Farnese Palace. He has an apartment quite up at the top of the palace over the Noailles, and I went to Gert, who also received Thursday. I found a good many people there--principally Americans, and some young diplomats. So many people were introduced to me that I was quite exhausted, and went and sat down by Aunt Mary, who looked very handsome. Sunday, March 10, 1880. I shall not go out this morning. It is a little foggy--the first time since we came here--and I was also lazy. We are going so perpetually. Yesterday W. was off at nine in the morning with Geoffroy and Lanciani for a classic tournée. I wrote one or two letters, and then Madame Hubert and I walked over to Gert's and breakfasted. After breakfast Monsignor English came in and had much to say about the Pope, and the impression W. had made which he had heard from high personages of the Vatican. I told him all about the interview, and he was much surprised when I said we all sat down. W. came while he was still there, and of course he wanted to hear his account, and was so pleased with all W. said about the Pope, his marvellous intelligence and comprehension of the present very difficult state of affairs in France. English also said the Pope had been pleased with me (I did nothing but listen) so I plucked up my courage, and asked him if he thought his Holiness would give me a photograph _signed_--I should like so much to have one. He said it would be difficult, as the Pope never _signed_ a photo--but perhaps----. I should like one so much--I hope he will make an exception for this heretic. W. and I walked home, and then I dressed, and we started again for some visits. We found Princess Bandini, who was most amiable--very pleased to make W.'s acquaintance, also rather curious about the Vatican visit. There were quantities of people there, principally diplomats and English. W. thought the apartment very handsome. We tried to find Madame Calabrini, but she was not receiving. We dined at the Noailles. I wore my blue satin and all the diamonds I possess. The apartment looked very ambassadorial--the great gallery lighted, superb. The dinner was handsome--Wimpffens, Pagets, Uxkulls (Russian Ambassador, you will remember him in Florence the year we were there), Cairolis, Geoffroys, Schuylers, and various young men. Maffei, the Under-Secretary of State, took me in, and I had Cairoli on the other side. I didn't find him very easy to talk to. He doesn't speak French very well, so I changed into Italian (which I am gradually getting back) and then we got on better. I shouldn't think he was much of a ladies' man, and never a brilliant talker. Maffei is very clever and amusing. Gert sat just opposite, looking very well in yellow. During the dinner Maffei called my attention to the menu "Cotelettes à la Waddington," and asked me if W. was as much of an authority in cooks as he was in coins. I disclaimed any such knowledge for him, and was rather curious to see what the "cotelettes" would prove to be. They were a sort of chaud-froid, with a thick, white envelope, on which was a large W. in truffles. The whole table was rather amused, and Madame de Noailles gave us the explanation. Her chef had been some time with us at the Quai d'Orsay, and when he heard W. was coming to dinner was much excited, and anxious to do honour to his old master--so he consulted Madame de Noailles, and that was the result. I will keep the menu for you. After dinner we adjourned to the beautiful Carracci gallery, and there I was presented to various ladies--Madame d'Uxkull (ci-devant Madame Gheka), very handsome; and Madame Visconti Venosta, an attractive looking woman with charming manners. I had quite a talk with Lady Paget, who looks always very distinguished with her beautiful figure. She told me Mrs. Edwards's baby had arrived--a little girl--to be called "Gay" after her daughter.[18] I hope she will grow up as pretty as her mother. I talked some time to Madame Cairoli who was very amiable and expansive, called me always "Madame la Comtesse"; and offered me anything I wanted from cards for the Chamber to a presentation to the Queen. [18] Now the Hon. Sylvia Edwards, Maid of Honour to Queen Alexandra. There was quite a reception in the evening--not many of the Roman ladies. Marc Antonio Colonna came up--recalled himself, and introduced me to his wife--very pretty, with splendid jewels. She is the daughter of the Duke of Sant-Arpino, a very handsome man. Her mother, the Duchess, an English woman, also very handsome, so she comes fairly by her beauty. I walked about the rooms with Wimpffen, and he showed me all the notabilities in the parliamentary world. Lady Paget asked us to go to her on Sunday afternoon, and I promised Nevin we would go to his church, but we didn't. W. has just received an intimation that King Humbert will receive him to-morrow at one o'clock, and I have told Madame Hubert to get out his Italian decorations, as he always forgets to put them on, and it seems in all courts they attach much importance to these matters. We are starting now for a drive; first to the Villa Wolkonsky--I want to show it to W., and we shall probably go in late to the British Embassy. Monday, March 11, 1880. The King gave W. his audience to-day at one. He went off most properly attired, _with_ his Italian ribbon. He generally forgets to put on his orders, and was decidedly put out one day in Paris when he arrived at a royal reception _without_ the decoration the sovereign had just sent him. The explanation was difficult--he could hardly tell the King he had forgotten. W. got back again a little after two, and said the interview was pleasant enough--the King very gracious, and he supposed, for him, talkative; though there were long pauses in the conversation--he leaning on his sword, with his hands crossed on the hilt as his father always did--spoke about the Queen, said she was in Rome, and he believed Madame Waddington had known her when she was Princess de Piedmont. I never was presented to her--saw her only from a distance at some of the balls. I remember her quite well at a ball at the Teanos in a blue dress, with her beautiful pearls. I hope she will receive us. He talked less politics than the Pope; said France and Italy, the two great Latin races, ought to be friends, and deplored the extreme liberty of the press; knew also that W. was in Rome for the first time, and hoped he would have fine weather. He did not ask him anything about his interview with the Pope. W. said the reception was quite simple--nothing like the state and show of the Vatican. There was a big porter at the door of the palace, two or three servants on the stairs, and two officers, aides-de-camp, in the small salon opening into the King's cabinet. Soon after he came in we had visits--Hooker, Monsignor English, a French priest, head of St. Louis des Français, and Del Monte, whom I hadn't yet seen. He was so nice and friendly--doesn't look really much older, though he says he feels so. I told him it seemed unnatural not to have a piano. He would have brought his cello, and we could have plunged into music and quite forgotten how many years had passed since we first played and sang the "Stella Confidente." [Illustration: King Humbert of Italy.] After they had all gone we started out to the "Tre Fontane," taking Gert with us to see the establishment of the French Trappists who are trying to "assainir" the Campagna by planting eucalyptus trees. It is an interesting experiment, but rather a dangerous one, as several of the fathers have died. The summer here, with that deadly mist that rises from the Campagna, must be fatal, and the two monks we saw looked yellow and shrivelled with fever. However, they will persevere, with that extraordinary tenacity and devotion of the Catholic priests when they undertake anything of that kind. I carried off a bottle of Elixir of Eucalpytus, for I am sorry to say these last bright days have given me an unpleasant souvenir in the shape of a cold chill every now and then between the shoulders, and evidently there is still truth in the Roman proverb "Cuore di donna, onde di mare, sole di Marzo, non ti fidare." (Don't trust a woman's heart, the waves of the sea, nor the March sun.) We got home about half-past six, had tea and more visits--Calabrini, Vitelleschi, and Princess Pallavicini, who was most animated, and talked politics hard with W. We dined at home and had a little talk, just as we were finishing dinner, with Menabrea, who was dining at a table next ours. They say he will go to the Paris Embassy in Cialdini's place. W. wouldn't go out again, so I went alone to Gert's, who had a few people--Mrs. Van Rensselaer, clever and original; Countess Calice, an American; her husband, a cousin of the Malatestas; Vera; young Malatesta, a son of Francesco; a Russian secretary, and one or two others. It was rather a pleasant evening. They had tea in the dining-room--everybody walked about, and the men smoked. Tuesday, March 13, 1880. Yesterday morning W. and I had a good outing, wandering about the Capitol. First we walked around Marcus Aurelius, then up the old worn stone steps to the Ara Coeli. I told W. how we used to go there always on Christmas Eve to see the Crèche and the Bambino. It was very well done, and most effective. The stable, beasts, shepherds, and kings (one quite black with a fine crown). There were always children singing the "storia di Gesù" and babies in arms stretching out their hands to the lights. Yesterday the church was quite empty, as there is not much to attract the ordinary tourist. We made our way slowly, W. stopping every moment before an inscription, or a sarcophagus, or a fresco, to the room of the "Dying Gladiator," which he found magnificent--was not at all disappointed; afterward the faun--and then sauntered though all the rooms. I had forgotten the two skeletons in one of the sarcophagi--the woman's with rings on her fingers, most ghastly. After lunch Countess Wimpffen came in to know if I would drive with her to the Villa Borghese, and do two teas afterwards--Madame Cairoli and Madame Westenberg (wife of the Dutch Minister, an American and a great friend of Gert's); but I couldn't arrange it, as W. wanted to come with me to the Affaires Etrangères--so we agreed to go another day. I always liked both Wimpffens so much when they were in Paris that it is a great pleasure to find them here. Wimpffen likes to get hold of W. and talk about France and French politics. Our dinner at Mrs. Bruce's was very gay. I told her I didn't find her salon much prettier than in our days when we lived on the first floor of Perret's house (she on the second), and she always said we made Perret send up to her all the ugly furniture we wouldn't have. What we kept was so bad, that I think the "rebut" must have been something awful. We had the Minghettis, Vitelleschis, Wurts, Wilbrahams, Schuylers, and one or two stray Englishmen. Vitelleschi took me in, and I had Minghetti on the other side, so I was very well placed. It is killing to hear them talk politics--discussing all the most burning questions with a sort of easy persiflage and "esprit de conciliation" that would astound our "grands politiques" at home. Minghetti said the most absolutely liberal man he had ever known was Pio Nono--but what could he do, once he was Pope. It was really a charming dinner--Mrs. Bruce is an ideal hostess. She likes to hear the clever men discuss, and always manages to put them on their mettle. We all came away about the same time, and W. and I went on to the opera "Tor di None." Bibra had invited us to come to his box. The house was much less "élégante" than the Paris house--hardly any one in a low dress, no tiaras, and few jewels. The Royal box empty. Princess Bandini was in the next box with Del Monte and Trochi. The Minghettis opposite with the Wimpffens. The "salle" was badly lighted--one could hardly make the people out. W. had rather a shock--we had scarcely got in--(Bibra not yet come) when the door opened and in came Maurizio Cavaletti--enchanted to see me--seizing both my hands--"Maria mia adorata--cara regazza, etc.," utterly oblivious of "cara Maria's" husband, who stood stiff and cold (an icicle) in the background, with Anglo-Saxon written all over him; waiting for the exuberant demonstration to finish, and a presentation to be made. As soon as I could I presented Monsieur le Marquis in proper form, and explained that we were very old friends, had not met for years, etc., but W. hardly thawed all the evening. When he went out of the box to pay a visit to our neighbours I remonstrated vigorously with Maurizio, but he was so unfeignedly astonished at being taken to task for greeting a very old friend warmly, that I didn't make much impression. The ballet was pretty, and of course there was an influx of young men as soon as it began--a handsome, rather stout "ballerina" being evidently a favourite. To-day we breakfasted with the Schuylers to meet Mrs. Bruce and Cardinal Howard--no one else. We had a pretty little breakfast, most lively. I didn't find the Cardinal much changed, a little stouter perhaps. He was quite surprised at W.'s English; knew of course that he had been educated at Rugby and Cambridge, and had the Chancellor's medal, but thought he would have lost it a little having lived so many years in France, and having made all his political career in French. I asked him if he was as particular as ever about his horses. He always had such splendid black horses when we lived in Rome, but he said, rather sadly, that times were changed. W. and he talked a long time after breakfast. He was very anxious to know whether _all_ the religious orders were threatened in France or merely the Jesuits. Comte Palfy (Austrian) came in just as we were leaving. He is so attractive--a great friend of l'Oncle Alphonse--knows everybody here and loves Rome. W. and I went off to the Villa Albani--out of Porta Salara. We walked through the rooms--there are principally busts, statues, bas-reliefs, etc.--and then loitered about the gardens which are fine. Fountains, vases, and statues in every direction, and always that beautiful view of the hills in the soft afternoon light. I will finish when I come home from our _Black_ dinner. We are asked for seven, so of course will get back early, as we do not go anywhere afterward. I shall wear black, as I hear so many Princes of the church are to be there. Madame Hubert is very sorry I can't wear the long black veil that I did for the Pope--she found that most becoming. Tuesday, March 12, 1880, 10.30 P.M. We are just home from our dinner at the Portuguese Embassy, so I have got out of my gauds and into my tea-gown, and will finish this long letter. It was most interesting--a great deal of couleur locale. We arrived very punctually--three or four carriages driving up at the same time. There was of course a magnificent porter downstairs, and quantities of servants in handsome liveries; a good deal of red and powder. Two giants at the foot of the staircase, with the enormous tall candles which are de rigueur at a Black embassy when cardinals or ambassadors dine. They were just preparing to escort some swell up the staircase as we arrived; there was a moment's halt, and the swell turned out to be M. Desprez, the new French Ambassador to the Vatican (replacing the Marquis de Cabriac). He was half embarrassed when he recognised us; W. had so lately been his chef that he couldn't quite make up his mind to pass before him--especially under such novel and rather trying conditions. However, there was nothing to be done, and he started up the great staircase between the tall candles, W. and I followed modestly in his wake. We found several people, including two or three cardinals, already there. The apartment is very handsome. The Ambassador (Thomar) looked very well--"très grand seigneur"--standing at the door of the first salon, and one saw quite a vista of large, brilliantly lighted rooms beyond. All the guests arrived very quickly--we had hardly time to exchange a word with any one. I saw the Sulmonas come in. I recognised her instantly, though I hadn't seen her for years. She was born Apponyi, and they were married when we were living in Rome. Also Marc Antonio Colonna and the d'Aulnays. Almost immediately dinner was announced. Sulmona took me in and I had a cardinal (Portuguese) on the other side. I didn't say much to the cardinal at first. He talked to his neighbour, and Sulmona and I plunged, of course, into old Roman days. He was much amused at the composition of the dinner, and wondered if it would interest W. He asked me if I remembered the fancy ball at the Palazzo Borghese. He had still the album with all the photos, and remembered me perfectly as "Folie" with short skirts, bells, mirror, etc. I remember it, of course, quite well. Some of the costumes were beautiful, particularly those copied from portraits. After a little while the cardinal turned his attention to me. He was a nice old man, speaking either French or Italian (both with a strong accent), and much interested in the guests. He asked me if I belonged to the corps diplomatique. I said no--we were merely strangers spending the winter in Rome. He thought there were a good many strangers at table--he didn't know half the people, not having been long in Rome; but he knew that there was one man dining whom he had a great desire to see, Waddington, the late French Premier; perhaps I knew him, and could point him out. He had always followed his career with great interest, but there were some things he couldn't understand, "par exemple son attitude dans la question--" Then as I didn't know what he might be going to say, I interrupted, and said no one could point out that gentleman as well as I, as I was Madame Waddington. He looked a little uncomfortable, so I remarked, "Il diavolo non è tanto nero quant è dipinto" (The devil is not so black as he is painted), to which he replied, "Eh, no punto diavolo" (no devil)--was rather amused, and asked me if I would introduce him to W. after dinner. We then, of course, talked a little about France, and how very difficult the religious question was. He asked me where I had learned Italian, so I told him how many years we had lived in Rome when my brother was the last Minister from the United States to the Vatican. Sulmona joined in the talk, and we rather amused ourselves. Sulmona, of course, knew everybody, and explained some of the people, including members of his own (Borghese) family, who were very Black and uncompromising. Still, as I told him, the younger generation is less narrow-minded, more modern. I don't think they mean to cut themselves off from all participation in the nation's history. After all, they are all Italians as well as Romans. The foreign marriages, too, make a difference. I don't think the sons of English and American mothers could settle down to that life of inaction and living on the past which the Black Party means in Rome. As soon as I could after dinner I got hold of W. (which was difficult, as he was decidedly surrounded) and introduced him to my cardinal, whose name I never got, and I went to recall myself to Princess Sulmona. We had a nice talk first about her people--her father, Count Apponyi, was Austrian Ambassador in Paris when Marshal MacMahon was President, and their salon was very brilliant, everybody going to them; the official world and the Faubourg St. Germain meeting, but not mingling. Then we talked a little about Rome, and the future of the young generation just growing up. Of course it is awfully difficult for families like Borghese and Colonna who have been bound up in the old papal world, and given popes to Italy, to break away from the traditions of centuries and go in frankly for "Italia Unita." Do you remember what they used to tell us of Prince Massimo? When some inquisitive woman asked if they really called themselves Fabius Maximus, he replied that it had been a family name for 1,400 years. The present Prince Massimo is one of the most zealous supporters of the Pope. The great doors of his gloomy old palace have never been opened since the King of Italy came to Rome. One can't help admiring such absolute conviction and loyalty; but one wants more than that in these days of progress to keep a country alive. The evening wasn't long; the cardinals never stay late, and every one went away at the same time. We again assisted at the ceremony of the big candles, as of course every cardinal and the Ambassador had to be conducted downstairs with the same form. It was altogether a very interesting evening and quite different from any dinner we had ever been at. I don't think the French cardinals ever dine out in France; I don't remember ever meeting one. Of course the "nunzio" went everywhere and always had the "pas"--but one looks upon him more as a diplomatist than a priest. W. enjoyed his evening very much. He is now settled in his arm-chair with his very disreputable pipe, and has been telling me his experiences. He found my old cardinal very intelligent, and very well up in French politics, and life generally. He liked Sulmona, too, very much; made her acquaintance, but didn't have a chance to talk much to her, as so many people were introduced to him. There is certainly a great curiosity to see him--I wonder what people expected to find? He looks very well, and is enjoying himself very much. I am so glad we did not stay in Paris; he would have had all sorts of small annoyances, and as it is, his friends write and want him to come back. He is quite conscious of the sort of feeling there is about him. First his appearance--a great many people refuse to believe that he is a Frenchman; he certainly is not at all the usual French type, with his fair hair, blue eyes, and broad shoulders; and when they realize that it is he the cautious, doubtful way in which the clericals begin a conversation with him, as if they expected red-hot anarchist declarations to fall from his lips, is most amusing. Cardinal Howard always seeks him out for a talk--but then he doesn't mince matters--goes straight to the subject he wants to discuss, and told him the other day he couldn't understand how a man of his English habits and education should ever have dropped (he didn't say degenerated, but I think he thought it) into a French republican government. W. is very pleased to see the cordial way in which everybody meets me, and I must say I am rather touched by it myself. I have never had a moment's disappointment, and I was a little afraid, coming back in such changed circumstances after so many years. Everybody asks after you, and some one the other day--Countess Malatesta, I think--asked if you still wore in Paris your plain black dress and bonnet. I suppose she thought that even you couldn't have resisted the Paris modiste. It would seem strange to see you in a hat and feathers. Good-night, dearest; W.'s pipe is out, and we are going to bed. HÔTEL DE LONDRES, March 14, 1880. Cannons are firing, drums beating, flags flying in all directions to-day, dear mother. It is King Humbert's birthday and there is to be a great revue on the Piazza dell' Indipendenza. We are invited to go and see it by Turkam Pacha, Turkish Minister, who has an apartment on the Piazza; but as he told us that we should meet Ismail Pacha (the ex-Khedive) we thought we had better remain at home. I hardly think it would be a pleasure to Ismail to meet the man who was one of the chief instruments in his downfall. My sympathies were rather with the Khedive--I never quite understood why France and England should have politely but forcibly insisted upon his leaving his throne and country--but whenever I raised the question I had always that inert force the "raison d'état" opposed to me. We crossed him the other day driving. The carriage full of red-fezzed men attracted my attention, and our Giuseppe told us who they were. He looked very fat and smiling, evidently was not rongé by his disasters. Turkam suggested that I should come alone, but that of course I could not do. Mrs. Bailey, who has also an apartment on the Piazza, has asked us to come to her, but I think I shall stay quietly at home and look out of the window. I see lots of officers and functionaries, in uniform, passing in fiacres and riding, and a general migration of the whole city including the beggars and flower girls of the Spanish Steps toward the Piazza. W. says he will smoke his cigar walking about in the crowd, and will see very well. [Illustration: Queen Margherita of Italy.] I was interrupted by a message from Gert begging me to come to her at once. Her maid was in such an extraordinary state of violence she thought she was crazy--and as Eugene was away for a day or two she was really afraid. I questioned the little footman who brought the note but he was very non-committal. W. was already off to see the review and I left him a note explaining where I was and asking him if I didn't get back to breakfast to come and get me at Gert's. I then started off with the little footman who had a fiacre waiting. As I entered the court of the Palazzo Altemps a glimpse of a white, frightened face at the window told me what Gert's state was. Poor dear, she was terribly upset, and Eugene's being away is a complication. Her two men-servants are very devoted, but they evidently feel uncomfortable. She asked me if I would go with her and see the woman. We found her sitting in a chair in Gert's dressing-room looking certainly most unpleasant, sullen, and an ugly look in her eyes. She is a great big Southern woman (French), could throw Gert out of the window if she wanted to. Gert spoke to her very gently, saying I had come to see her as I had heard she was not well. She didn't answer nor move but gave Gert a nasty look--she evidently has got something against her. I looked at her very steadily--said we were very sorry she was suffering, which was most evident, and that the best thing for her would be to rest, attempt no service of any kind and go to her own room--that we had sent for Dr. Valery who would certainly be able to relieve her. She didn't answer at first, and looked as if she would like to spring upon us both, then burst into screams of abuse--"She would go to her room of course--would leave the house at once and never come back, etc." I told her I should certainly advise Mrs. Schuyler to send her away--that evidently the climate did not suit her, and she would be happier in France. She didn't answer, relapsed into her sullen silence, and almost immediately Valery appeared. He insisted very quietly that she should go to her own room (at the other end of the apartment), and she went off with him, giving an ugly look at Gert as she passed. It seems she already had had such an attack, less violent, when they were at Birmingham, but once it was over went on quite peaceably and didn't seem to realize how ill she had been. Valery came back to tell us the result of his examination--said she had already calmed down and was anxious to beg her mistress's pardon, but that she was of a nervous, dangerous temperament, and at any moment might have a relapse. Of course she must go, but it is very uncomfortable. I took Gert out for a drive. W. sent me a line to say he was busy all the afternoon and would not come unless I wanted him. I think the air and distraction did her good. The streets had a decidedly festive appearance. There were a good many flags everywhere, and soldiers still passing on their way back to their various barracks. We were kept some time in the Corso seeing a battalion of "bersaglieri" pass. They had good music and looked very spirited as they moved along with all their feathers flying. They were rather small, but well set up, and marched in beautiful time with a light, quick step. We saw some cavalry too, but I didn't care so much for them. I thought the men looked too tall for the horses--their legs too near the ground. We went to Nazzari's for tea, and the man was so smiling and pleased to see me that I asked him if he knew me--"Ma sì, certamente, la Signorina King"--had seen me various times in the Piazza or driving, and hoped I would come in some day for tea. I went upstairs with Gert when I took her home, and left every possible instruction with the maître d'hôtel to look after her, and above all to look after Louise, and not let her leave her room. The cook's wife will help her dress, as the poor thing has a dinner. We have dined quietly at home. W. was tired, having been out all day. There is a reception at the French Embassy, but we shan't go. I told W. about the maid and the exciting morning we had had. He said of course the woman must go at once--that she had evidently a grudge of some kind against Gert, and might do her some injury. He had had rather a pleasant day. He walked about in the crowd seeing everything very well. He was rather favourably impressed with the Italian soldiers--said they were small as a rule, but light and active--marched very well. The King looked well, and was very well received. He thought him a striking figure on horseback in uniform, that curious type of all the Savoy Princes. They don't look modern at all, but as if they belonged to another century. I don't know exactly what it is--one sees the same sort of face so often in old Spanish and Italian portraits. He had breakfasted alone, as I was over with Gert, and then started off with Monsignor English to meet Father Smith at the Catacombs, where they had a long delightful afternoon. He says Father Smith is a charming guide, knows and loves every corner of the Catacombs. His brogue, too, is attractive, sounds so out of place in that atmosphere of Latin and old-world tombs and inscriptions. He also told me what pleased me very much, that the Pope will give me his photograph, signed. Monsignor English told him to tell me, and he will come and see us to-morrow. Among our cards was one from the Cardinal Di Pietro--Doyen of the College of Cardinals--coming first to see W. What would the Protocole say? March 16, 1880. Schuyler has got back, and the maid is a lamb, but is going all the same. The doctor and the other servants advise it strongly, and I am sure Gert will find a nice Italian maid here to replace her. W. and I have done a fair amount of sight-seeing these days, and yesterday he paid a long visit to Cardinal Nina--Secretary of Foreign Affairs for the Vatican. He found him reasonable and interesting. I tell him he is getting quite a "papalino"--he finds the Cardinals so pleasant. He came and got me after his visit and we went off to the Chambre des Députés. Visconti Venosta was going to make a great speech attacking the Ministry on their foreign policy, and they thought there would be a lively séance. We were in the Diplomatic box--all the Ambassadors were there, and he had just got up to speak as we got there. They don't speak from the tribune, as in France. Every man speaks from his own place--and as he had his back to us we didn't hear very well. He spoke very easily, and was very well listened to. Occasionally there would be a sort of growl of disapproval, but on the whole the house was much quieter than ours. Cairoli looked quite composed when Visconti was pitching into him, smiling even when he remarked he didn't understand the Italian character, nor how to use the great powers his position gave him, etc. Various people came up and spoke to me, among others Countess Celleri, who seems to be taking up politics now. She has grown a little older, but is very handsome still, and was evidently a great attraction to all the young diplomatists who were in the box. W. admired her appearance and manner very much. We stayed there till 5.30 hoping that Cairoli would answer, but he didn't, the discussion rather trailed on, so we went for a turn in the Villa Borghese to get a little air before our dinner at the British Embassy. It was very crowded, all the swells driving--King, Queen, and Khedive all in separate carriages. The King in a small victoria with one aide-de-camp--the Queen in her big landau with one lady and the red royal liveries; the Khedive in an ordinary carriage, but conspicuous, as he and his gentlemen all wore the red fez. Our Paget dinner was pleasant. They have got a big villa in the Venti Settembre out toward Porta Pia. There is a large garden with fine trees, and the entrance and staircase are handsome. We were 36--Italians chiefly--but a few Diplomatists. I knew almost every one, Calabrinis, Minghettis, Somaglias (you will remember her name, she was Gwendoline Doria, and married when we lived in Rome), Serristori, Castagneta and some Deputies and gentlemen of the Palace who, of course, were strangers to me. The dining-room is large with a quite round table which must be very difficult to cover, there were such spaces. I think there must have been hundreds of roses on the table. The Marquis de Villamarina, head of the Queen's household, took me in, and I had Uxkull on the other side, Lady Paget next to him. We all talked together, and I complimented Lady Paget on the quickness of the service. It was always one of our preoccupations at the Quai d'Orsay to get through these long official dinners as soon as possible. W. took in Madame Visconti Venosta, and they seemed to be getting on swimmingly. After dinner I talked some time to Countess Somaglia, and asked to be introduced to the Marquise Villamarina. She told me the Queen would certainly receive us, but couldn't quite fix the day yet as she had many official rendezvous these days. When the men came in from smoking I had a few words with Calabrini, and one or two Deputies were presented, Sella, Lanza, etc., but I really only _talked_ to Sir Augustus Paget. He said they were going to have a small ball after Easter, and hoped we should still be here. I hope we shall, I should like to see the ball-room--they say all the decoration, painting, flowers, cupids, etc., has been done by Lady Paget herself. The party broke up early, no one stays late at dinner. There is always a reception somewhere to which everybody goes. We came home as I get tired at night. We begin our day early, and are never in the house. This morning Gert and I went out shopping in the Piazza della Minerva and Campo Marzo--it was most amusing. We got two dresses for her--one of that coarse Roman linen, and a very pretty Roman silk from Bianchi, the same man who existed in our days. He looked most smiling and evidently recognised the familiar faces, though he could not put a name to them. We got the linen in a funny little old shop, low, and as dark as pitch. I never should have dreamed of going there for anything, but some one told us it was _the_ place for linen, and we found at once what we wanted. I bought two Roman sashes--one for Alice and a ribbon for Nounou. We pottered about for some time looking at the bits of old brocade and embroidery, some pieces stretched out on the pavement with a stone at each end to hold them down. There were two pieces of old rose brocade which looked very tempting, but when I took them up I saw there were thin places in the silk, and spots--so I resisted these "occasions." The woman was amusing, tried to make us buy, but knew quite well her silk was not first-rate. She evidently attached no importance to the spots (è vecchia), but allowed that the frayed bits were not encouraging. This afternoon we have been again to the Chambre des Députés--Cairoli was speaking. He has a good voice, we heard him much better than Visconti Venosta. _I_ didn't find his speech very interesting. There were all sorts of details and references to despatches and blue books which were Greek to me, but of course W. liked it and knew the question thoroughly so he said he would stay and I had much better go and get some fresh air. The heat was something awful and the box full, so I took myself off. One of the Austrian secretaries came down with me to look for the carriage and I started for a solitary turn in the Villa Borghese. I hadn't gone very far when I met Comtesse Wimpffen alone in her carriage. We drew up for a little talk, and she proposed I should send my carriage away and come into hers, which I was delighted to do. We went for a little walk, and met various friends--Marchesa Theoduli[19] looking lovely. She was very amusing over the divided state of society--says she is not allowed to bow to the Queen, and as they meet almost every day driving and neither of them can pass inaperçue it is rather awkward. Mrs. Lorillard Spencer came up too, she was walking with her daughter, Princess Vicovaro, whose husband was "le beau Cenci" of our days. It was delicious lounging about on the grass under the trees, after the heat of the Chamber. We stopped at Nazzari's for tea, met Bibra at the door and invited him to come with us--also Cornélie Zuylen,[20] who had seen us from the street and rushed in to have a little talk. She is in Rome for a few days--sight-seeing hard. We had tea and very good cakes--and I was glad to have a few minutes before dressing for the Calabrini dinner. [19] Née Lily Conrad. [20] Now Madame Scheidecker. We started off again at 8, and had really a very pleasant evening at Calabrini's. Their house is not large--they can't dine easily more than 10 people. I was the only lady--the men were Vitelleschi, Sella (their rising political man) whom W. was delighted to see, a Ruspoli whom I had never seen before, a brother of the late Prince; and Alphonso Doria who looks like a tall English boy. Stella is clever enough, decidedly un homme sérieux, and Calabrini was much pleased to have him for my homme sérieux. He told us all sorts of stories about "Italia Unita" and Cavour, and his profound distrust of Louis Napoleon; how, until the very last moment when the French troops were really at the gates, he was afraid they wouldn't come. We stayed fairly late, as the talk was interesting. I don't think there is much real sympathy between the French and Italians. They are very unlike though they are of the same race. The Italians seem very excitable when they talk fast and gesticulate and their eyes flash, but au fond they are calmer than our people--at least the upper classes; I don't know about the bas peuple. They say knives play a part in their discussions. Certainly in France there are always rows when the Italian workmen arrive. They are generally terrassiers and come in bands when railroads or bridges are being made. One recognises them at once with their black eyes, white teeth, red sashes and slouched hats. There is usually a coup de couteau before the season ends. They work well enough, are light and active, but always stop to talk--don't keep up a sort of desultory talk over their work as our men do. [Illustration: Queen Margherita and King Humbert.] March 18, 1880. Last night we went to the Wimpffens' grand official "ricevimento." All the street in front of the house was crowded just as it used to be in the old days--people coming close up to the carriages (going of course at a foot's pace) and peering in to see the diamonds. There was nothing like the display of carriages, diamonds, and liveries there used to be--many fiacres, and many uniforms. Countess Wimpffen looked very well in white satin, pearls, and diamond tiara, Wimpffen of course in uniform and his broad ribbon, Cenci (now Prince de Vicovaro) attached to the Court, was standing at one side of the Ambassadress presenting all the Court people. The Princess, his wife, stood near by looking very well, beautifully dressed, with diamonds and large pearl pendants. She was wearing for the first time her decoration of dame de palais. All the "White" Roman ladies were there. I saw quantities of people whom I knew. W. also begins to know the people. He thought the Roman women very distinguished looking, and the jewels splendid, particularly the pearls. We stayed quite late, and decidedly amused ourselves. I was rather interested in seeing when Madame de Wimpffen shook hands and when she merely bowed. When W. was at the Foreign Office and we had big receptions I was puzzled sometimes. My impulse was not to shake hands with the men. W. and Richard thought I ought to shake hands with all the Deputies, but that seemed a great undertaking and would, I think, have surprised them, as Frenchmen as a rule are formal, don't shake hands usually with ladies, but make rather a stiff bow, so I compromised by shaking hands only with those I knew. This afternoon W. and I went out together. We left several cards and wound up in the Villa Borghese, where we walked about for some time. It was lovely under the cypress trees, long dark avenues with a fountain at one end--large vases--bits of half-ruined gateways, columns, and unexpectedly a sort of rond or opening with fountains, statues, big stones, all in a heap, and then long stretches of lawn with anemones, violets, and a pretty little yellow flower I didn't know, all perfectly neglected and growing wild, but with a wonderful charm. Such a contrast when we emerged again into the regular promenade and the gay modern life of Rome of to-day. There were quantities of carriages, three or four four-in-hands with women in light dresses on the tops of the coaches; men, principally officers, riding (in uniform, which always makes a gay note), lots of victorias and open carriages. The Prince of Naples (with the Royal red liveries) driving with one gentleman. He was dressed in sailor dress, looked smiling and interested, and bowed all the time. Three or four carriages filled with pretty girls--English or American--looking hard at everything, and always bands of black-robed students, seminarists from the various colleges which abound in Rome. It is a curious motley crowd--I don't think one would see it anywhere else. The clerical element is always well to the fore, and in spite of the changes the Monarchy established, with all the train of courtiers, deputies, soldiers, and endless functionaries that it brings, one feels that it is the great centre of Catholicism, and that the long arm of the Church still retains her hold on her children scattered all over the world. I will finish now as we have come home fairly early from the Pallavicini reception. We dined at home and started off about 10. We went to get Gert, and on arriving about 10.30 found ourselves almost the first people. Felice Malatesta was there, also Del Monte. Both being "Gardes-Nobles" they can only come early and not run the risk of meeting any of the Court people nor diplomatists to the Quirinal. Princess Pallavicini is one of the Queen's ladies, but she is such an old friend of both gentlemen that they always go to her. Among the first arrivals was Massari. He and W. and Prince Pallavicini had a nice talk, and it amused me to see the people come in. There were about 30 (I knew a good many of the Romans, but of course the Court people and Deputies were strangers to me), Wimpffens, Noailles, St. Asilea, Somaglias, and a sprinkling of young diplomatists. As soon as the White diplomatists began to appear Del Monte and Malatesta departed. I had a talk with Villamarina who is very musical, also with Vitelleschi. The party broke up early--there was no music nor dancing (not even the little informal "tour de valse" there used to be in our days) and we were home before 12 o'clock. W. enjoyed his evening--talked principally to the men. Saturday, March 20, 1880. W. is off this morning with Father Smith to San Clemente. I was lazy as I was out all day yesterday. In the morning W. and I walked to the Palazzo dei Cesari, and stayed there two hours walking about and sitting down in the nice sunny places. It was beautifully bright, a splendid blue sky, but cold, a sharp wind, very unusual they say for the end of March. One gets a very fair walk on the Palatine Hill. There is so much to see, and the little irregular paths running up and down from the various temples and ruined buildings of all kinds give one plenty of exercise. It needs a good deal of imagination to reconstruct all the temples, tribunes, porticoes, and palaces which existed in the days of Imperial Rome, but there are still bits of coloured marble, faded frescoes, mosaics, tops of columns and broken statues in every direction. W. was quite happy--he had already spent a morning there with Lanciani, and so could show me what was still well enough preserved for me to understand. The view from the terrace over Rome and the Campagna was beautiful--the mountains seemed so near. We didn't walk home as we found a botta which had just brought up a party of forestieri--French this time, with a young priest, who was evidently the guide. Sunday, March 21, 1880. We went to the American church this morning as Nevin was so anxious we should see it. There is no very interesting French church--a sort of Vaudois chapel--so we preferred the Capella Americana. It is a pretty little church, very full--I should think a good many English as well as Americans--very good singing and a good sermon, not too long. We had visitors after lunch, and about 4 started for a drive out to Ponte Nomentano. We got out and walked about the Campagna for some time. The view was divine--Frascati and Rocca di Papa on one side, Tivoli on the other. W. thought the old bridge most picturesque. He recognised it instantly from the aquarelle that is in the dining-room at home. As it was Sunday all the country people were out; carts filled with women and children, boys on donkeys, sitting well back, almost on the tails of the animals, and all the little courts in front of the various osterias quite full. There were not exactly costumes, but there was a general impression of colour. The men had bright coloured sashes and shirts--the women nearly all red and blue skirts striped, and a coloured handkerchief on their heads--almost all with long gold ear-rings (some of the men too had ear-rings--large gold hoops) and a string of coloured beads around their necks. Everybody talking, laughing, and enjoying themselves. We stopped at the British Embassy for tea. Lady Paget receives always Sunday afternoon. There were various carriages at the door, and the villa looked pretty. The tea-table was on a broad palier at the head of the stairs. It was very well arranged with screens "cassoni," plants, arm-chairs--very original and attractive. I went in first to the drawing-room and had a talk with Lady Paget, then adjourned to the palier with Princess Sciarra and Countess Wimpffen, and we had a very pleasant hour. It was amusing to see all the people coming up the broad staircase. There were of course a great many I didn't know, as besides all the Court set and political people there were many English, all arriving for Holy Week. Mrs. Bruce, Madame Visconti Venosta, Gert, Marquise Chigi came and joined us. I was quite horrified when I found how late it was. We had just time to dress and go and dine with the Geoffroys at the Palazzo Farnese. The evening was very pleasant; decidedly archeological and scientific, but the men were all clever and talked so well that they would have made any subject interesting. We had Visconti, de Rossi, Lanciani, and some of the young men of the École Française. They all love Rome and know every stone. W. was quite in his element, talked a great deal himself, and was much interested in their excavations and all the curious things they are finding all the time. I meant to leave early and go to Gert who had a few people at dinner, but it was eleven o'clock before any one moved, and we went quietly home. Good Friday, March 26, 1880. I was too tired to-day to do anything, as yesterday we were out all day. W. and I walked about in the morning, going into all sorts of churches whenever we saw one open. There were always people, and in the smaller churches they looked devout and absorbed, but the crowd of strangers in the large, better known basilicas took away any religious feeling. It all seemed a great show, which is practically what Holy Week is in Rome. They say they have not had so many foreigners in years. Last night the "gérant" begged us not to come downstairs until 8 o'clock, or even a quarter past, as they needed all the small tables for the table-d'hôte. It was not so very crowded this morning as we breakfast at 12.30, much earlier than the foreigners, who are usually English and come in for luncheon at 1.30. Yesterday afternoon we went to St. Peter's and found ourselves in a long file of carriages going the same way; also all kinds of pedestrians, priests, nuns, soldiers, artists, Cook's tourists, etc. W. was rather horrified at the crowd in the church, and the regular "bousculade" at the big doors. There was to be very good singing at one of the small chapels, but it was already so full that we couldn't get in, though we had cards from one of the Monsignori. We tried to make our way in but it was utterly impossible, and then stood outside, thinking we might hear; but the people all talked so much that we heard nothing except every now and then a few notes in that curious, high, unnatural voice of the Papal Choir. Two young German priests, with keen intelligent faces, were so put out--begged the people near not to talk--"in zehn Minuten ist alles vorüber" (in ten minutes it will be all over). All Rome was walking about the church, talking and looking about as if they were in a great hall of some kind--a crowd of strangers pushing, jostling, and trying to get up to the High Altar, or the statue of St. Peter where all the faithful were kissing the toe. It was certainly not solemn nor edifying, except when we came upon a quiet corner, with some old chapel filled with tombs of dead Romans, Popes or Princes, who had played a great part in their day. That took us back into the past, and we could realize that we were really in St. Peter's. I tried to show W. the part that was shut off for the great Ecumenical Council under Pio Nono, but I couldn't remember exactly. We shall come back another day with Father Smith who will know all about it. I did find the Stuart monument with the busts of Charles Edward and Cardinal York. People kept pouring into the church, but it is so enormous that, except at certain places, it was quite easy to circulate. All the women (except a few stray tourists) were in black, and every now and then one saw a long file of séminaristes, also in black, but with a coloured sash to mark their nationality. I think the Americans wear blue--the French are quite black--no colour. We talked to quantities of people--it was like an enormous reception. I was very tired when we finally came out, as of course we were walking and standing about all the time. There is no aisle with regular seats as in most churches--merely a few prie-Dieu inside the side chapels. The drive home was lovely--we went at a walk almost all the time, there were so many carriages. I went out after all this afternoon with W. and Monsignor English to St. John Lateran, where they were singing a Miserere of Cappoci's. It is most strange, weird music, and the voices of the men are so unlike anything one hears elsewhere. There was always the same crowd. I will say Cook does his business thoroughly--wherever there is anything to see or hear he pilots all his band. After the Miserere was over we stood some time at the foot of the Scala Santa. It was black with people going up on their knees, saying a prayer at each step (I think there are 30) and some of them did look serious and absorbed. They were principally peasants--every now and then some well-dressed bourgeois. Monsignor English told us we would be surprised at the class of people (society) who come early, before the great crowd of sight-seers. We went back to the Palazzo Altemps, picking up Count Palfy on the way, where Gert had promised us tea and hot cross buns from Spillman's (very good they were). We found a note from the Quirinal when we came home saying the Queen would receive us to-morrow at 2.30. Desprez came and sat some time. He told W. all that was going on in Paris--the Ministry as usual struggling against the Radicals who are always wanting to suppress the French Embassy at the Vatican. It doesn't make the position of the Ambassador very pleasant, but Desprez is very wise, has had long training at the Foreign Office, and will certainly do all he can to conciliate and keep things straight. _To H. L. K._ Saturday, March 27, 1880. It was raining this morning, and I was very glad. The dust was getting most disagreeable in one's eyes and throat, and covering everything. I am glad, too, that it is cool, decidedly, as I wanted to wear my blue velvet. If it had been a bright warm day it would have looked dark and heavy. It is four o'clock--we have just come in from our audience, and I will write at once while the impression is fresh. W. has a "rendezvous" with some of the French Institute people, and I shall not see him again until dinner time. We got to the palace (a great ugly yellow building, standing high) quickly enough, as there was no one in the streets at that hour, and drove into the court-yard to a handsome entrance and staircase. There were a few soldiers about, but not much movement. A carriage came in behind us, and just as we were going upstairs some one called my name. It was Bessie Brancaccio,[21] who had also an audience with the Queen. She had come to thank her for her appointment as dame de palais. I was glad to have just that glimpse of her, as they are not in Rome this winter. Their beautiful house is not ready for them, so they have been spending the winter in Nice. We walked through a large anteroom where there were three or four servants and an "écuyer," and in the first salon we were received by the Comtesse Marcello, one of the Queen's ladies, a Venetian and a great friend of Mary's, and the gentleman-in-waiting, whose name I didn't master. We talked for a few minutes--she said a lady was with the Queen. The room was handsome, prettily furnished and opened into another--three or four, in fact, all communicating. After about ten minutes we saw a lady come out of the end room, the door of which was open, so Comtesse Marcello ushered us through the suite. We went to the corner room, quite at the end, where the Queen was waiting standing. We went through the usual ceremony. The Comtesse Marcello made a low curtsey on the threshold, saying, "I have the honour to present his Excellency, M. Waddington and Madame Waddington," and instantly retired. The Queen was standing quite at the end of the room (a lovely, bright corner room, with lots of windows and a magnificent view over Rome--even on a dull day it looked cheerful and spacious). I had ample time for my three curtseys. She let us come quite close up to her, and then shook hands with us both and made us sit down--I next to her on the sofa, W. in an arm-chair in front. I found her rather changed since I had seen her. She has lost the girlish appearance she had so long, and her manner was nervous, particularly at first. When she began to talk and was interested and animated she was more like what I remembered her as Princess Marguerite. She was dressed in bronze satin, with a flowered brocade "casaque," and one string of splendid pearls. She told W. she was very pleased to see him, remembered that I had lived in Rome before my marriage, and asked if I still sang, Vera had talked so much about the music in Casa Pierret, and the trios we used to sing there with Lovatelli and Malatesta. The talk was most easy, about everything, generally in French, but occasionally breaking into English, which she speaks quite well. W. was delighted with her--found her most interesting and "très instruite"--not at all the banal talk one expects to have with sovereigns--in fact, I quite forgot we were having a royal audience. It was a very pleasant visit to a charming woman, in a pretty room with all sorts of beautiful pictures and "bibelots" about. While we were still there the Prince of Naples[22] came in. We both got up; she told him to shake hands with W. and to kiss me, and to ask me how old my little boy was, which he did quite simply and naturally. He told his mother he was going to ride. I asked him if he had a nice pony, to which he replied in English, "Oh, yes, jolly," and asked if my little boy rode. I said not yet; he was only two years old. The child looked intelligent, but delicate. They say his mother makes him work too much, is so ambitious for him; and he has rather that look. The Princes of Savoy have always been soldiers rather than scholars, but I suppose one could combine the two. The Queen also spoke about the Bunsens, and "little Beatrice";[23] said she was very fond of Mary. I was very sorry when the audience was over and she dismissed me, saying she had people waiting. [21] Princess Brancaccio, born Field. [22] The present King. [23] Now Mrs. Charles Loftus Townshend, of Castle Townshend, Ireland. [Illustration: Queen Margherita and the Prince of Naples (Present King of Italy) in 1880.] We found Bessie and one or two other ladies in the first salon when we came out, waiting their turn. Comtesse Marcello was delighted with all W. said about the Queen. He was very enthusiastic, for him, as he is not generally gushing. I told her she had remembered that I had lived some years in Rome as Mary King, and she said: "Oh, yes, she remembered you and all your family perfectly, and knew that you had married M. Waddington." Tuesday, March 30, 1880. It is much pleasanter to-day--quite Spring-like, and the Piazza is full of people. I have drawn my little writing table close up to the window, and I am afraid my correspondence will suffer, as there is always so much to see. Almost all the little botte have departed, in fact W., who has just started off with Visconti for the Vatican to look at the coins, took the last one. Cook's two big omnibuses have also just started for Tivoli--crammed. Some of the people dashed into Nazzari's, and reappeared with little paper bags, filled evidently with goodies. Yesterday W. and I breakfasted again at the Noailles', and they took us over the palace (Farnese) which is quite splendid, such enormous rooms and high ceilings. The great gallery with the famous Carracci frescoes looked beautiful in the daylight, and we saw them much better. The colours are still quite wonderful, hardly faded, some of the figures so graceful and life-like. Madame de Noailles' bed-room and dressing-room are huge. The enormous bedstead hardly took up any room at all. She said it took her some little time to accustom herself to such very spacious apartments, she almost had the impression of sleeping in the streets. We went for a drive afterward out of Porta Maggiore to look at the Baker's tomb--do you remember it, a great square tomb with rows of little cells? We wandered about on foot for some time, looked at the bits that remain of the old Roman road, and then drove out some distance toward the arches of the Claudian Viaduct. It is the road we shall take when we go to Tivoli. It was not quite clear, so the hills hadn't the beautiful colour they have when the sun is on them--but the grey atmosphere seems to suit the Campagna, which is after all a long stretch of barren, desolate country broken at intervals by the long lines of aqueducts--every now and then a square tower standing out straight and solitary against the sky, and hardly visible until one comes close upon it, and a few shepherds' huts, sometimes with a thatched roof, sometimes what remains of an old tomb, with a dried-up old woman apparently as old as the tomb spinning in the doorway. We met very few vehicles of any description. We dined at the Palazzo della Consultà where Cairoli, Foreign Minister, lives. There were not many women--Madame de Noailles, Gert, Madame de Sant' Onofrio (wife of one of Cairoli's secretaries), and quantities of men. They divided the honours--Cairoli took in Madame de Noailles--Madame Cairoli, W. The Préfet of Rome, Gravina, took me and put me on Cairoli's left. We all talked Italian, and I rather enjoyed myself. I told Gravina how much I preferred "Roma com' era," that the new buildings and the boulevards and the bustle and the quantities of people had spoiled the dear, dead, old Rome of our days--to which he replied "but you, Madame, are an American born, you surely can't be against progress." Oh, no, I like progress in my own country, but certainly not here. Rome was never intended to be modern and go-ahead--it didn't go with the monuments and the ruins and the traditions of old Rome. However he answered me quite seriously that not only every country, but every individual, must "marcher," or else they would "dépérir." Cairoli joined in the conversation, others too, and there was rather an interesting discussion as to how much could be left to sentiment, association of the past, etc., when an old historic city was being transformed into a busy, modern, political centre. After dinner Madame Cairoli came and sat down by me, and was pleasant enough. She looked handsome--very wide awake--still continues to call me Madame la Comtesse, so I have given up correcting her. She is well up on all subjects, particularly art, music, pictures, etc. She was rather amusing over the state of society and all the great Roman ladies whom she didn't know (there is such a division between the Government people and the old Romans) but said she had a very pleasant entourage with all the diplomatists and the distinguished strangers (with a little bow to me) and really didn't notice the absence of the grandes dames. She asked me about my audience with the Queen--had we been able to talk to her at all. She had been so tired lately and nervous that any attempt at conversation was an effort. I told her that on the contrary she talked a great deal, and that I didn't find her changed. Maffei came up and talked--asked me if I really liked Rome better as it used to be--I must surely prefer life to stagnation. He speaks English well, and likes to speak. They tell me that all the present generation of Romans speak English perfectly--much better than French. There was a small reception after dinner, some of the young diplomatists and political men. We came away early--10.30, and plunged into our Paris letters, of which we found quantities. Friday, April 2, 1880. It is raining quite hard this morning, so I will write and not go out until after breakfast. Yesterday was beautiful, and we had a charming day at the races. I drove out with Madame de Wimpffen in her victoria--W. and Wimpffen together. I wore my brown cloth with the coat trimmed with gold braid and a great bunch of yellow roses on my hat, but I was sorry I hadn't sent for something lighter, as almost all the women were in white. I had thought of having two dresses sent by the "valise" (I hadn't time to have them sent by ordinary express). I consulted Noailles, who was very amiable, and said he would do what he could, but that the rules were very strict now for the "valise," as there had been such abuse. I rather protested, so he remarked with a twinkle in his eye that I had better speak to my husband, as he was the Minister who had insisted on a reform being made--he added that it was Princess Lise Troubetzkoi who made the final scandal--that when St. Vallier was French Ambassador to Berlin she was always sending things to Petersburg, via Berlin, by the "valise." When the "petit paquet" she had spoken of turned out to be a grand piano there was a row, and W., who was then Foreign Minister, decreed that henceforth no "paquets" of any kind that were not on official business could be sent by the "valise." I suppose a pink tulle ball dress would hardly come under that head. The Queen was there looking very well and bright, dressed in light grey with a big black hat--very becoming. There were a great many pretty women. We came away before the end and drew up a little distance from the gate where a long string of carriages was waiting to see the Queen pass. The cortège was simple--first two dragoons, then a "piqueur" and her carriage with four horses, postillion and two servants behind in the scarlet liveries. The Countess Marcello was seated alongside of the Queen--two gentlemen (I couldn't make out who they were) facing her; a second carriage with two horses with two gentlemen in it followed, all very well turned out. The scarlet liveries make a great effect, one sees them from such a distance. The crowd was very respectful--not particularly enthusiastic. The Queen bowed right and left very prettily. I talked to lots of people at the races--among others to Madame Alphonse Rothschild who is here for a few days, and to Mesdames Somaglia, Rignano, Celleri, etc. I walked about a little with Sant' Asilea, but it was not easy to move--most of the ladies stayed quietly in the tribunes. We stopped at Nazzari's coming back and W. treated us all to tea--then we sent our carriage away as we wanted it at night for the Teano ball, and we walked about in the Corso, looking at all the turn-outs. The Teano four-in-hand was very handsome, and there were one or two others we couldn't make out which were very well turned out--some of the victorias, too, very smart, with handsome stepping horses. The Corso was full of people waiting to see the "retour"--it looked so gay. About eleven we went off to the Teano ball, which was most brilliant--all the société there. Again I was sorry I hadn't sent for another dress as my red satin looked heavy and wintry. Princess Teano in white, with a diamond tiara, looked charming. Of course all the young generation who were dancing were strangers to me, but I met many old friends. I had quite a talk with Doria who wanted to be introduced to W. whom he had not yet seen. We stayed until 1.30, and when we came away they were just beginning the cotillon. In the old days we used to arrive at the balls about 12.30 or 1 o'clock just so as to have one waltz before the cotillon which was usually the best of the evening, as all the serious people had gone, and the mammas were at supper fortifying themselves for the long hours before them, so the ball-room was comparatively empty and one could get a good turn. Saturday, April 3, 1880. It is a beautiful morning, so was yesterday, an ideal Roman day--the sky so blue and just a soft little air that makes the awnings over the shops opposite flap lazily and indisposes one to any exertion. We walked about a little before breakfast, inspected the Fountain of Trevi where Neptune sits in state, looking at the rush of water falling over the rocks and splashing into the great marble basin. The water is beautifully clear, and sparkled and glistened in the sunlight. There were a good many people about--girls with pitchers on their heads, old men and women with pails and cans, all after water. The Trevi water is considered the best in Rome and is in great demand. We loitered about in the small narrow streets that branch off in every direction, always seeing something interesting. I think we lost our way as we found ourselves down by Trajan's Column and Forum, but we managed to get back to the Piazza di Spagna in good time for breakfast. We started again in the afternoon for tea at the Farnesina Palace with the Duke di Ripalda. We stopped at the Farnese Palace to pick up Madame de Noailles, who was coming too, and we had a charming afternoon. Ripalda took us all over the Palace, and W. was delighted with the frescoes, particularly Sodoma's. The garden was lovely, though they have cut off a great piece for their quays and works along the river. They are enlarging the Tiber, making great walls, etc. The City of Rome gave Ripalda a large sum of money, but he is much disgusted as it had taken a good bit off his garden. More people came in--the wife of the Peruvian Minister, a very pretty woman, and one or two men. We had tea in the long gallery with all Raphael's and Carracci's beautiful gods and cupids over our heads. How many different scenes they must have looked down on--not always so peaceful as this quiet party. Saturday evening, April 3, 1880, 10 P.M. We went to the German Embassy on our way home to write ourselves down for the German Crown Princess, who had just arrived there for a short stay. I hope I shall see her--W. admires her so much. He saw her often when he was in Berlin for the Congress, and found her most sympathetic and charming. Turkam Bey came in just before dinner and had a great deal to say about the Khedive, and what France would have done if he had resisted, retired up the country, and obliged the French and English to depose him by force. It was evident that the suite had been talking to him, and talking very big--he was very anxious to have a categorical answer. W. said very quietly they had never considered that emergency, as it was quite evident from the beginning that the Khedive had no intention of resisting. "Cependant, monsieur, s'il avait voulu," etc., so W. could only repeat the same thing--that they had never been anxious on that point. We dined quietly at home, and in the course of the evening there came a note from Keudell, the German Ambassador (whom we don't either of us know), saying that "par ordre de Son Altesse Impériale la Princesse Héréditaire d'Allemagne" he had the honour to ask M. and Madame Waddington to dine to-day at 7.30 at the Embassy "en petit comité." We should find a small party--the Wimpffens and Pagets. The Princess only arrived on Thursday, and W. is much pleased that she should have thought of us at once. Keudell has been ill with gout ever since we have been here. We have never once seen him, but various people told W. he regretted so much not seeing him, that the other day we tried to find him, but the porter said he was still in his room. Sunday, April 4, 1880. Our dinner was charming. I was not a bit disappointed in the Princess. W. had talked so much about her that I had rather made up my mind I should find her very formal and German--and she isn't either one or the other. We left a little after seven (I wearing black satin). I am so bored with always wearing the same dresses. If I had had any idea we should go out every night I should have brought much more, but W. spoke of "a nice quiet month in Rome, sight-seeing and resting." We were the first to arrive. Keudell was at the door, introduced himself, and took us into the large salon, where Madame Keudell was waiting. She looked slight and rather delicate, and he really ill, so very white. He said he had had a long, sharp attack of gout--had not been out for some time, and was in the salon for the first time the day the Princess arrived. While we were waiting for the others to come he showed us the rooms and pictures. I recognised at once one of those pretty child's heads by Otto Brandt like the one we have. He was much interested in knowing that we had bought one so long ago, he thought Brandt had so much talent. There was a grand piano, of course, as he is a fine musician. The Pagets and Wimpffens came together almost, and as soon as they were there the Princess came in. She had one lady with her and a "chambellan"--Count Seckendorff. She was dressed in black, with a handsome string of pearls. She is short, and rather stout, carries herself very well and moves gracefully. We all made low curtseys--the men kissed her hand, Sir Augustus Paget just touching the floor with his knee, the first time I had seen a man kneel to any one in a salon. She received W. most charmingly, and was very gracious to me--asked me at once why I didn't accompany my husband to Berlin. I said, "Principally because he didn't want me," which was perfectly true. He said when he was named Plenipotentiary that it was all new ground to him, that he would have plenty to do, and didn't want to have a woman to look after. He rather protests now, but that is really what he said, and I certainly didn't go. The dinner was pleasant enough. The Princess talked a great deal, and as the party was small, general conversation was quite easy. The talk was all in French, which really was very amiable for us--we were the only foreigners present, and naturally if we hadn't been there every one would have spoken German. After dinner she made a short "cercle," standing in the middle of the room, all of us around her, then made a sign to W. to come and talk to her, sat down on the big sofa, he on a chair next, and they talked for about half an hour. We all remained standing. I asked Keudell about his piano. He told me that he liked the Erard grand very much, but that they didn't stand travelling well. In a few moments the Princess told us all to sit down, particularly Keudell, who looked quite white and exhausted. I sat by Madame Keudell, and as she is very fond of Italy, and Rome in particular, we got on very well. When the Princess had finished her talk with W. she came over and sat down by me--was most charming and easy. She has the Queen's beautiful smile, and such an expressive face. We spoke English; she asked me if I had become very French (I wonder?)--that she had always heard American women were so adaptable, taking at once their husband's nationality when they married foreigners. She had always remained very fond of England and English ways--the etiquette and formality of the German Court had tried her at first. She asked me, of course, how many children I had--said one was not enough. "If anything should happen to him, what would your life be?" and then spoke a great deal about the son she lost last summer by diphtheria, said he was the most promising of all her children, and she sometimes thought she never could be resigned. I said that her life was necessarily so full, she had so many obligations of all kinds, had so many to think about, that she would be taken out of herself. "Ah, yes, there is much to do, and one can't sit down with one's sorrow, but the mother who has lost her child carries a heavy heart all her life." It was all so simply said--so womanly. She said she was very glad to meet W. again, thought he looked very well--was sure the change and rest were doing him good. She regretted his departure from the Quai d'Orsay and public life generally. I told her he was still a Senator, and always interested in politics. I didn't think a few months' absence at this time would affect his political career much, and that he found so much to interest him that he really didn't miss the busy, agitated life he had been leading for so long. She said she intended to spend a quiet fortnight here as a tourist, seeing all she could. She then talked to all the other ladies, and about ten said she was tired and would go to her own rooms. She shook hands with the ladies, the men kissed her hand, and when she got to the door she turned and made a very pretty curtsey to us all. We stayed on about a quarter of an hour. [Illustration: Victoria, Crown Princess of Germany.] The Wimpffens have arranged a dinner for her on Thursday (to which she said she would like to have us invited), just the same party with the addition of the Minghettis. As we were going on to Madame Minghetti's reception, Countess Wimpffen asked us to tell them to keep themselves disengaged for Thursday, as she wanted them for dinner to meet the Princess--she would write, of course, but sent the message to gain time. They brought in tea and orangeade, and I talked a little to Count Seckendorff--he speaks English as well as I do. He told me the Princess was quite pleased when she heard W. was here, and hoped to see him often. We hadn't the courage to stay any longer--poor Keudell looked ready to drop--and started off to the Minghettis'. It was a beautiful, bright night, and the Capitol and all its surroundings looked gigantic, Marcus Aurelius on his big bronze horse standing out splendidly. We found a large party at Madame Minghetti's--principally political--not many women, but I should think every man in Rome. Alfieri, Visconti Venosta, Massari, Bonghi, Sella, Teano, etc. It was evidently a "centre" for the intelligent, serious men of all parties. There was quite a buzz, almost a noise, of talking as we came in--rather curious, every one seemed to be talking hard, almost like a meeting of some kind. They were all talking about the English elections, which apparently are going dead against the Ministry. Minghetti said it was quite their own fault--a cabinet that couldn't control the elections was not fit to live. Of course their time was over--there was no use in even attempting a fight--they had quite lost their hold on the country. Madame Minghetti seems as keen about politics as her husband. She has many friends in England. I told her about the Wimpffen dinner--they will go, of course. She asked a great deal about the Princess--said she was very glad she had decided to come to Rome, that she couldn't help being interested and distracted here, which she needed, as she was so upset by her son's death. We talked music--she sings very well--and we agreed to sing together some afternoon, perhaps at the German Embassy, as Keudell is a beautiful musician and loves to accompany. Mrs. Bruce was there and I sat down by her a little while, looking at the people. She pointed out various political swells, and a nice young Englishman (whose name I didn't catch) joined us, saying he wished he understood Italian, as it was evident the group of men around Minghetti was discussing English politics, and he would so like to know what they were saying. Mrs. Bruce told him it was just as well he didn't understand, as, from the echoes that came to her, she didn't believe it was altogether complimentary to John Bull. I don't believe political men of any nationality ever approve any ministry. It seems to me that as soon as a man becomes a cabinet minister, or prominent in any way, he is instantly attacked on all sides. We didn't stay very long, as we had promised to go for a few moments to the Farnese Palace, where the Noailles had also a reception. I had some difficulty in extracting W. from the group of men. He naturally was much interested in all the talk, and as almost all the men were, or had been ministers, their criticisms were most lively. They appealed to him every now and then, he having been so lately in the fray himself, and he was a funny contrast with his quiet voice and manner to the animated group of Italians, all talking at once, and as much with their hands as with their tongues. It was very late--after eleven--but we thought we would try for the Noailles, and there were still many carriages at the door when we drove up. We met so many people coming away, on the stairs and in the long anteroom, that it didn't seem possible there could be any one left, but the rooms were quite full still. The palace looked regal--all lighted--and there were enough people to take away the bare look that the rooms usually have. They are very large, very high, and scarcely any furniture (being only used for big receptions), so unless there are a great many people there is a look of emptiness, which would be difficult to prevent. Madame de Noailles was no longer at the door, but I found her seated in the end room with a little group of ladies, all smoking cigarettes, and we had an agreeable half hour. Madame Visconti Venosta was there, and another lady who was presented to me--Madame Pannissera, wife of one of the "grand-maîtres de cérémonie" at court. W. was at once absorbed into the circle of men, also talking politics, English elections, etc., but he was ready to come away when I made the move. Noailles insisted upon taking me to the buffet, though I told him I had done nothing but eat and drink since 7.30 (with a little conversation thrown in). It was rather amusing walking through the rooms and seeing all the people, but at 12.30 I struck. I really was incapable of another remark of any kind. I will finish this very long letter to-day. I wonder if you will ever have patience to read it. I am sure I shouldn't if it were written to me. I hope I shall remember all the things I want to tell when we get back--so much that one can't write. My black satin was right--the Princess was in mourning, the other ladies equally in black. W. wants me to be photographed in the black dress and long veil I wore at the Pope's audience. He found it very becoming, and thinks Francis ought to have one; but it is so difficult to find time for anything. Saturday, April 10, 1880. We had a nice musical evening the other night at Gert's. All the vieille garde turned up, Vera, Malatesta, Del Monte (with his violoncello), and Grant. We sang all the evening, and enjoyed ourselves immensely. I was sorry Edith Peruzzi couldn't come, as she sings so well, and it would have been nice to have another lady. She has been nursing her mother, who has been ill (so ill that they sent for Edith to come from Florence), but she is getting all right now, and I don't think Edith will stay much longer. Charles de Bunsen has arrived for a few days. We took for him a room at our hotel, and we have been doing all manner of sight-seeing. Thursday morning we went to the Accademia of San Luca, where we had not yet been. It was rather interesting, but there is much less to see than in the other galleries. There are some good busts and modern pictures--a pretty Greuze. [Illustration: Gardens of the Villa Torlonia, Formerly Villa Conti, Frascati, Opposite the Villa Marconi, Where we Spent the Summer of 1867.] Our dinner at the Wimpffens' was very pleasant. We arrived very punctually at 7.20 and found the Keudells already there. He told us the Princess was very tired, she had been all day in the galleries standing, looking at pictures, and he didn't think she would stay late. He still looked very tired and pale, but said he was much better and that the royal visit did not tire him at all. The Princess was very considerate and went about quite simply with her lady and Count Seckendorff. The other guests arrived almost immediately--the Pagets, Minghettis, Gosselins of the British Embassy, and Maffei, Under-Secretary of the Foreign Office. About a quarter to eight the Princess arrived with her lady and chamberlain, she was dressed in black, with a long string of pearls. We went at once to dinner (which was announced as she entered the room), Wimpffen of course taking the Princess, who had Minghetti on her other side. Sir Augustus Paget took me, and I had Gosselin on the other side. W. sat next Countess Wimpffen. The talk was easy and animated, quite like the other day at the Palazzo Caffarelli (German Embassy). The Princess talked a great deal to Minghetti, principally art, old Rome, pictures, etc.--she herself draws and paints very well. After dinner she sat down at once (said she didn't usually mind standing, but the long days in the galleries tried her), made us all sit down, and for about half an hour she was most charming, talking about all sorts of things, and keeping the conversation general. When she had had enough of _female_ conversation she said something in a low tone to Lady Paget, who got up, crossed the room to where W. was standing, and told him the Princess wished to speak to him. He came at once, of course--she made him sit down, and they talked for a long time. She is naturally a Protestant, but very liberal, and quite open to new ideas. She was much interested in French Protestants--had always heard they were very strict, very narrow-minded, in fact, rather Calvinistic. She kept W. until she went away, early--about ten--as she was tired. She has an extraordinary charm of manner. Her way of taking leave of us was so pretty and gracious. She dines quietly at the British Embassy to-morrow night, and when Lady Paget asked her who she would have, said: "Cardinal Howard and Mr. Story." She wants to see all manner of men. Yesterday we made our first excursion to Frascati, and most unpleasant it was. We had chosen our day so as to have Charles Bunsen with us, and one also when we had nothing in the evening, as one is so tired after being out all day. We started about 9--in the carriage--W. and I, Gert and Charles. It looked grey (was perfectly mild) and rather threatening, but the hotel man and coachman assured us we should have no rain--merely a covered day which would be more agreeable than the bright sun. Schuyler promised to come out by train for breakfast. The drive out was delicious, out of the Porta San Giovanni, the whole road lined with tombs, arches, ruined villas, always the aqueducts on one side, and the blue hills directly in front of us. The sun came out occasionally through little bits of white clouds, and the Campagna looked enchanting, almost alive. We passed close to the Osteria del Pino--where the meet used to be often in old hunting days. It was so familiar as we drove up the steep hill and recognised all the well-known places--the Pallavicini villa at the side of the road, half-way up the hill; the Torlonia gardens, and the gateway of the funny little town. We went straight to the hotel, the same one as in our day, Albergo di Londra (that shows what a haunt of "forestieri" it is), ordered breakfast, and then sallied out for a walk. The little piazza before the hotel was filled with donkeys and boys, all clamouring to us to have a ride, expatiating on the merits of their beasts, and making a perfect uproar. We explained to the porter that we wanted beasts of some description to go up to Tusculum, and he said he would arrange it for us. However, the boys pursued us to the gate, dragging their donkeys after them. We went first to the Palazzo Marconi, which is just outside the gates opposite the Torlonia villa. I wanted so much to see the old house again, it was inhabited by a Russian family, and at first there seemed some little difficulty about getting in, but W. sent in his card, and after a little parley a servant appeared and took us all over the house, except the dining-room where the family were breakfasting. It looks exactly the same--only much more neglected and uninhabited. The broken steps were more broken, the bright paint more faded, and the look of discomfort much accentuated. I showed W. the room where father died. It looked much more bare and empty, but the pink walls were still there, and the door open giving on the terrace. How it brought back those long, hot nights when we tried to hope--knowing quite well there was no chance--but never daring to put the fear into words. W. was much struck by the lonely, desolate look of the whole place. The little salon which we had made so comfortable with tables, rugs, and arm-chairs brought from Rome, looked perfectly bare--no furniture except one or two red velvet benches close to the wall, and rather an ugly marble table with nothing on it. The big round salon with its colossal statues in their marble niches and the marble benches, was exactly the same--only no piano. We went through the bed-rooms at the other end (our three), the marble bath still in the middle one, which used to be Henrietta's, but there was no trace of occupation, neither beds, washing apparatus, tables, nor chairs. I suppose the "locataires" live in the two rooms at the other end. There wasn't much furniture there, but I did see some beds. We went out into the little raised garden behind the big statue, but it was a wild waste of straggling vines and weeds. It was rather sad--nothing changed and yet so different. I explained our life to W.--our morning or evening rides, our music, which was enchanting in the big salon--so mysterious, just a little glow of light around the piano and other instruments, and the rest of the great room almost dark, the white statues looking so huge and grim in the half light. I was rather nervous the first nights out here when I had to cross that room to go to mine with a very small Roman lamp in my hand--but I soon got accustomed to my surroundings, and it seemed quite natural to live our daily, modern life in that milieu of frescoes, marble statues, hanging gardens, and strangers. I tried to find some little flower in the mass of weeds in the garden, but there wasn't one, so I send these periwinkles and anemones picked in the Villa Torlonia, where we walked about for some time under the splendid old ilex trees. [Illustration: Tomb of Viniciano, Between Frascati and Tusculum.] Breakfast, a fairly good one, was ready when we got back to the hotel, but no Schuyler. I think he was a wise man and foresaw what was going to happen. Quite a number of strangers had come out by train--all English and American, no one we knew--and the table-d'hôte was quite full. As soon as the gentlemen had had their coffee, about 1.30, we started for Tusculum, Gert and I on donkeys with two pretty, chattering Italian boys at their heads--Bunsen on a stout little mountain pony, and W. on foot. He wouldn't hear of a donkey, and preferred to walk with the guide. We climbed up the steep little path, between high walls at first, then opening out on the hillside to the amphitheatre, which we saw quite well. The arena and seats are very well preserved. There are still rows of steps, slippery and green with moss. We went on again toward Cicero's Villa, and for a moment the clouds cleared a little, and we saw what the view might be straight over the Campagna to Rome (the dome of St. Peter's just standing out--on one side the hills with the little villages where we have ridden so often, Monte Compatri, Monte Porzio, the Campi d'Annibale and Monastery of Monte Cave in the distance). I wonder if the old monk would tell us to-day what one did years ago, when we were standing on the terrace looking at the magnificent view: "Quando fa bel tempo si può vedere le montagne d'America" (When it is fine one can see the mountains of America). I thought it was rather pretty, his eagerness to make us understand what an extended view one had from his mountain top, and he probably didn't know where America was. However, our little gleam of sunlight didn't last--first came big drops, then a regular downpour, and in a few minutes a thick white mist closed around us, shutting out everything. We took refuge for a few moments under a sort of ruined portico, but the rain came down harder, and we decided to give up Cicero's Villa, and turn our faces homeward. The descent was neither easy nor pleasant--a steep little path with the donkeys slipping and stumbling, and the rain falling in buckets. I was wet through in ten minutes, as I was very lightly dressed in a white shirt and foulard skirt (having stupidly left my jacket at the hotel as it was very warm when we started). Gert was better off, as she had her tweed dress. I shan't soon forget that descent, and as we passed Mondragone--the Borghese Palace--we had thunder and lightning, which didn't add to my comfort--however, the donkeys didn't mind. I was wet to the skin when we arrived at the hotel, and had to undress entirely and go to bed wrapped up in a blanket. The chambermaid lighted a fire in the room, and she and Gert dried my clothes as well as they could, and I had a cup of hot tea. About 5 my things were fairly dry--Gert went shopping in the town, and bought me a piece of flannel which I put on under my corsage which was still damp. It rained a little when we started home, but cleared about half-way, and we had the most glorious sunset. It was too bad to have fallen upon such a day, and I am afraid we shan't have time to attempt it again. I was half tempted to stay at Frascati all night and try again the next morning, but the others thought it better to come home. I went to bed immediately after dinner, and feel quite well to-day--only a little stiff--the combined effect of the donkey and the damp. April 11, 1880. Yesterday it rained hard all day, there was quite a little stream of water in the Piazza coming down from the Pincio. Certainly Rome needs sunshine, everything looked forlorn and colourless and everybody so depressed. The Spanish Steps were quite deserted, no models nor children galloping up and down. The coachmen of the fiacre-stand on the Piazza dripping and dejected on their boxes--nobody wanting carriages and very few people about. I really believe the Romans stay in when it rains. We didn't, of course, as our time is getting short, and the galleries are always a resource. We went off about 10 to the Vatican and spent two hours there. Charles de Bunsen was very glad to see it all again. We went first to the Cappella Paolina where there was not much to see--some frescoes of Michelangelo's, not very well preserved. It used to be so beautiful, Holy Week in Rome, when we were here before, brilliantly lighted for a silent adoration and filled with people kneeling and motionless. Then we went on to the Cappella Sistina where there were a good many people taking advantage of a rainy day to do the Vatican. It wasn't at all dark--I don't know exactly why, for the rain was pouring straight down. The Last Judgment is an awful picture. I had forgotten Charon and his boat and the agonized faces of the people whom he is knocking back with his oar. Some of the faces were too terrible, such despair and suffering. I can't think why any artist ever chooses such subjects, one would think they would be haunted by their own conceptions. We walked through the Stanze, I wanted to see the Deliverance of St. Peter; I remember so well the engraving that was in the dining-room at Bond Street, which I have sat opposite to so often. I used to be fascinated as a child with the Roman soldiers, particularly the one with a torch. We sauntered through the picture gallery looking at the beautiful Foligno Madonna, Communion of St. Jerome, and of course the Marriage of St. Catherine, and really my copy by the young German is good as I see the original again. We finished in the Galerie des Inscriptions where W. always finds odd bits of inscriptions which are wildly interesting to him. I think for the moment yellow-books and interpellations and the "peuple souverain" generally as represented in the Chambre des Députés are out of his head. The sun came out bright and warm in the afternoon and we drove to the Villa Pamphili. We stopped at San Pietro in Montorio on our way. It is there that St. Peter is said to have been crucified. The view from the terrace is very fine--the whole of Rome at our feet stretching out over the Campagna to the Alban Hills. It was too early really for the view, as one ought to see it at sunset, when the hills take most beautiful rose blue tints and the Campagna looks vague and mysterious, not the long barren stretch of waste uncultivated land it is in the daylight. We stopped again at the Fontana Paolina, looked at the rush of water that tumbles into the stone basin, and climbed up the Janiculum, every turn of the road giving the most enchanting view, out of the Porta San Pancrazio to the Villa Pamphili--all Rome apparently was doing the same thing; there were quantities of carriages. It was charming in the Villa--many people had got out of their carriages and were walking about in the shady alleys. It was a relief to get out of the sun. The stone pines of course are magnificent, but I think I like them best from a distance--from the terrace of the Villa Medici for instance they stand out splendidly. What is grand is the view of St. Peter's. It seems to stand alone as if there were no Rome anywhere near it. The dome rises straight up above the green of Monte Mario, and looks enormous. We walked about the gardens with the queer, old-fashioned flower-beds and the little lake with a mosaic pattern at the bottom, and talked to quantities of people. The drive down was enchanting; the sun setting, clouds of every colour imaginable and a sort of soft "brume" that made every dirty little street (and there are many in Rome) look picturesque. We went to the ball at the British Embassy in the evening, taking Charles de Bunsen, who protested at first he didn't go to balls any more, etc., but he found plenty of old friends and was very glad he had gone. The house looked very handsome--the ball-room with its decoration of flowers, cupids, etc., had a decidedly festive appearance. I danced two quadrilles--one with Count d'Aulnay and the other with the Duke of Leuchtenberg who was here with his wife, Comtesse de Beauharnais. As it is a morganatic marriage (he is a Royal Prince) she can't take his name and title. She was beautifully dressed, had splendid jewels--pearls as big as eggs. [Illustration: Grounds of the Villa Doria-Pamphili, Rome. From an unpublished photograph taken about 1869.] The ball was very gay, lots of people. We stayed quite late; went to supper, which W. generally refuses with scorn, and only left at 1.30. They were preparing for the cotillon, but were going to dance a "tempête" (whatever that may be) first. I hear they danced until 4 o'clock. Thursday, 12th. We had a nice dinner at the Villa Medici Tuesday night. The Director M. Cabat, his wife and daughter, M. and Madame Geoffroy and 5 or 6 of the young men. They all love Rome and say it is a paradise for an artist. Such beautiful models of all kinds in the old pictures and statues. I ventured to say that I thought one or two of the modern Roman things--fountains and statues--were pretty, but I was instantly sat upon by the whole party--"no originality; no strength, weak imitations of great conceptions, etc." I suppose one's taste and judgment do get formed looking at splendid models all the time; still the world of art must go on and there is no reason why the present generation shouldn't have graceful fancies, and power to carry out their dreams. We didn't stay very late and went on to Countess Somaglia, who was receiving. There were only two or three ladies. Her younger sister, Olympia Doria, married to a Colonna, the Marquise Sant' Asilea and two others I didn't know. Quantities of men came in and out, Calabrini, Vitelleschi, Minghetti. The "maître de maison" was not there. I was sorry, as I had never seen him. Lucchesi-Palli came up and claimed acquaintance--said he had danced at Casa Pierret in the old days. I introduced him to W. who was rather interested at meeting a half brother of the Comte de Chambord. He is much astonished at the quantity of people I know, but I told him one couldn't live years in Rome without seeing almost every one worth knowing, as everybody comes to Rome. Yesterday Gert and I went out together. W. had an expedition of some kind with de Rossi, and gave a dinner at the Falcone to Charles and some of his men friends. The Roman menu didn't tempt me. I heard them talking about porcupines and peacocks. I preferred dining with Gert--she asked Mrs. Van Rensselaer, and we had a pleasant evening. Mrs. V. R. is clever and original, very amusing over her Italian and the extraordinary mistakes that she knows she makes, but she keeps on talking all the same. It is curious how much colder Gert's apartment is than our rooms at the hotel--I suppose no sun ever gets into that narrow street, and one is quite struck with the cold the minute one gets into the palace and on the stone staircase. We had a little fire and it wasn't at all too much--of course in the Piazza di Spagna the sun streams into the rooms all day. I came home early--about 10--and found the two gentlemen, Charles and W., settled very comfortably each in a large arm-chair with pipe and newspaper (you can imagine the atmosphere in a small hotel sitting-room). They said their dinner was very good, even the ordinary Roman wine, but they both agreed they wouldn't care to have that menu every day. The talk was very interesting; some of the men had been in Italy years ago, before the days of railways or modern conveniences of any kind, and their experiences in some of the little towns near Rome were most amusing--most of the peasants so mistrustful of the artist baggage, white umbrella, camp-stool, etc., and so anxious, when they finally understood no harm was intended, that they should sketch a nice new house or a bit of wall freshly plastered instead of old gateways and tumble-down palaces. Charles is going back to Florence to-morrow; I think he has enjoyed his visit very much, it brought back so many recollections (he was born in Rome and spent all his early childhood there).[24] [24] His father, Baron de Bunsen, was for years Prussian Minister at Rome, a most intellectual, distinguished man; after Rome he was for many years Minister in England, and their house in Carlton Terrace was the rendezvous of all that was most brilliant and cosmopolitan in London. He married Miss Waddington, and his son Charles also married Miss Waddington, sister of William Waddington. I wish they would settle in Rome instead of Florence, the life is so much more interesting here. Florence is charming, but asleep--here there is life, and the contrast between the old patrician city full of old-world memories and prejudices, and the political, financial atmosphere of this 19th century is most striking. W. has decided to go to Naples for four or five days. I shan't go with him. He will be all day in the museums, as there is a great deal to see, and I should bore myself sitting alone in the hotel. If we could stay long enough to make some excursions--see Sorrento, Capri, and Ischia, I would not hesitate, I should love to see it all again. They say Vesuvius is giving signs of a disturbance. As we were talking about Capri and Vesuvius I told them my experience there so many years ago, and both gentlemen told me I ought to write it while it was still fresh in my memory, so here it is and you will send the letter to the family in America. We went to Naples in October, 1867. Father died at Frascati the 27th of September, and we all needed change after the long nursing and watching. All our friends in Rome were most anxious we should get off; affairs were rapidly coming to a crisis in Italy and it was evident that the days of the temporal power of the Pope were numbered. At any moment the Italians under Garibaldi might appear at the gates of Rome and it was not considered safe for women and foreigners to remain there. No one thought or talked of anything else, and though we were absorbed by father's illness and the numerous duties that a sick room entails we were quite as excited as all our friends. Of course we heard the two sides--the liberals who had high hopes of liberty and "Italia Unita" and the "papalini" who were convinced that the Italians would only enter Rome over the bodies of the faithful. Our young imaginations pictured anything, everything; the Garibaldians penetrating quite to the Court of the Vatican, the Swiss Guard, Charette and his Zouaves, massacred; priests flying in every direction pursued by a crowd of soldiers and infuriated populace. Good old Dr. Valery, who knew his countrymen better than we did, assured us there was no danger. When resistance was perfectly useless it would be wicked to shed blood, and Pio Nono himself would be the first to advise submission to the inevitable. We couldn't believe that such a tremendous change and uprooting of the traditions of centuries could be accomplished so quietly. We stayed two days only in Rome after leaving Frascati. We laid father at rest in the little English churchyard just by the San Paolo gate. There was a mortuary chapel where he could stay till he was taken home to the old family churchyard at Jamaica where Grandpapa King and a long line of children and grandchildren are buried. We had to see about our mourning and were finally hustled out of Rome the third day, Mr. Hooker (the American banker), our great friend, fairly standing over us while the trunks were being packed. He was quite right. We took the last train that went through to Naples, carrying with us a number of letters which our liberal friends had asked us to mail as soon as we crossed the frontier,--they naturally being unwilling to trust them to the Roman post-office. Rome looked deserted, very few people about, some of the shops and hotels still closed, but one felt a suppressed excitement in the air. Some of our friends, jubilant, came to see us off at "Termine" and promised to send us a telegram at Naples if anything happened. Mr. Hooker was rather anxious. He too thought the Papal court wouldn't make any resistance if the Italians came, or rather when the Italians came, as they were marching on Rome; but he thought there might be trouble in the streets. He had his large American flag ready to protect the bank. We of course made our journey very quietly and comfortably, as Garibaldi and his men were not on that road. I was rather disappointed, I should have liked to have had a glimpse of the famous revolutionary leader in his classic red shirt. We found Naples just the same, very full, people everywhere, in the Via Toledo, on the quays, etc. There wasn't much apparent excitement, all the red-capped, bare-legged fishermen were lounging about on the quays or in the numberless little boats of all descriptions flying about in every direction. The same songs, "Julia Gentil," "La Luissella," "La Bella Sorrentina," were sung under our windows every night with an accompaniment of mandolins and a sort of tambourine. From time to time the voices would cease and then there would be a most lively dance--tarantella, saltarella--all the dancers moving lightly and quickly and always in perfect time. The nights were beautiful--warm and clear--the whole population lived in the streets and we were always on the balcony. The islands, Ischia and Capri, took such beautiful colours, at sunset; seemed almost like painted islands rising straight up out of a perfectly blue sea. Vesuvius, too, was most interesting. Savants were prophesying an eruption and every now and then faint, very faint curls of smoke came out of the crater. We knew nothing of what was going on; had no communication with Rome, and were entirely dependent for news on the landlord, whose information was certainly fantastic; also the little Naples paper, the "Pungolo," which made marvellous statements every morning--the streets of Rome running with blood, etc. Finally came the first news--the battle of "Monte Rotondo," Garibaldi and his men victorious. From Paris we heard that the French troops had started and were at Cività Vecchia, but there were so many conflicting stories that we really didn't know how much to believe. Then came Mentana--the Garibaldians driven back by the Papal and French troops; the Pope still supreme in Rome. We had a telegram from one of our liberal friends, "Le malade va bien," which meant that the Pope had conquered, and Rome was not yet the capital of "Italia Unita." There was no fighting at all in the streets of Rome; a great deal of patriotic talk among the young liberals, but I don't think any of them absolutely enrolled themselves in Garibaldi's band. It wouldn't have made any difference--they could do nothing against the combined Papal and French troops--but it might have been a personal satisfaction to have struck a blow for the liberal cause. There again the common sense of the Italians showed itself--there was no resisting "le fait accompli," they had only to bide their time. We had lovely days at Naples, making all sorts of excursions--Posilippo, Capo di Monte, Camaldoli, etc. Every morning we went to the Museum; I was madly interested in the Pompeian relics, particularly the mummies. It seemed impossible to believe that those little black bundles had once been human beings feeling and living as keenly as we do now. We always kept our eyes on Vesuvius as it really did seem as if something was going on. The column of smoke looked thicker and we could quite well see little jets of sand or small stones thrown up from the crater. One afternoon when we came in from driving everybody in the street was looking hard at the mountain and the padrone informed us that the eruption had begun. We didn't see anything, but after dinner when we were standing on the balcony suddenly we saw a great tongue of flame leap out from the crater and a stream of fire running down the side of the mountain. The flame disappeared almost immediately; came back three or four times in the course of the evening, but didn't gain very much in height or intensity. The next day, however, it had increased considerably and was a fine sight at dark, every few moments a great tongue of fire with quantities of stones and gravel thrown high in the air. We almost fancied we heard the noise of thunder, but I don't think we did. People were flocking into Naples, and we of course, like all the rest, were most anxious to make the ascent. The landlord told us there was no danger; that the authorities never permitted an ascent if there was danger, and no guides would go, as they are very prudent. One would go up on one side (the only thing to avoid was the stream of red-hot lava). Mother was rather unwilling, particularly as we were to go at night (and at night from our balcony the mountain did look rather a formidable thing to tackle). We waited still another day and then when we had seen some English people--two ladies and a youth who had made the excursion and said it was not at all alarming and most interesting--she agreed to let us go. Anne stayed with her, she doesn't like donkey riding under any circumstances, and a donkey at night on the slopes of Vesuvius in eruption, with a stream of red-hot lava running alongside, didn't strike her absolutely as a pleasant performance. We started about 7 o'clock, William, Henrietta, Gertrude, and I. The drive out all the way to Resina was most amusing. Quantities of people, the famous Naples "cariole" crammed with peasants and children, and all eyes turned to the mountain. Our landlord had made all the arrangements for us, secured the best guides, donkeys, etc., and we were in great spirits. The mountain looked forbidding; as we came nearer we heard the noise, rumbling and thunder--the thunder always preceding a great burst of flames and showers of stones thrown up very high and falling one didn't know exactly where. I didn't say anything as I was very anxious to make the ascent, but I did wonder where these red stones fell and how one could know exactly beforehand. We drove as far as we could and then arrived at the Hermitage and Observatory, where there was a very primitive sort of wooden house, half tavern, half inn. Here donkeys and guides (very voluble) were waiting, and we started. It had begun to rain a little, but the guides assured us that it would not last and we should soon be above the clouds. It was almost dark--not quite--and everything looked weird, even the faces of the guides seemed to me to have a curious expression; they looked fierce and wild. We went on quietly at first though the rumblings under our feet and sudden light as the flames burst out were unpleasant. When we began the last steep ascent I had got very nervous. I was the last of the party, and when the donkey-boy (an infant) took a short cut, when the path was steep, calling out cheerfully "Coraggio Signorina," and left me and the donkey alone to clamber over the great slippery blocks of lava, I was frightened and felt I should never get up to the top. It was really terrifying--the rain and mist had increased very much, it was pitch dark, rumbling and thunder all the time, and such noises under our feet that I was sure a great hole would open and we should all be swallowed up. I didn't like the dark, but I certainly didn't like the light either, when a great tongue of flame would spring out of the crater spreading out like a fan and throwing a mass of stones and gravel high in the air which all fell somewhere on the mountain. The red stream of lava looked wider and seemed to me to be coming nearer. I called out to William, who was far ahead and looked gigantic in the mist where he was crossing some great rocks of lava (quite black and shiny when they are old), and told him I was too frightened, that I should go back to the Hermitage and wait there. He was much disgusted--said there was no possible danger. All the guides and donkey-boys repeated the same thing, but it was no use, I was thoroughly unnerved and couldn't make up my mind to go on. We had a consultation with the guides as he didn't like the idea of my going back alone to the inn, but they told him it was all right, that the padrone was a "brav'uomo" and would take care of me until they came back; so most reluctantly they went on, and I turned my face homeward, always with my minute attendant whom I would gladly have shaken as he was laughing and chattering and repeating twenty times, "non c'è pericolo." I think the going down was rather worse; I had the rain in my face, heard all the same unearthly noises around me, and from time to time had glimpses of the whole country-side--Naples, the little villages, the islands, the bay standing out well in the red light thrown on them by the flames from the crater; then absolute darkness and stillness, nothing apparently on the mountain but me and the donkey scrambling and stumbling over the wet, slippery stones. How we ever got down to the inn I don't know, but both boy and donkey seemed to know the road. I was thankful when we emerged on a sort of terrace and saw a faint light, which meant the little inn. The boy helped me off (it was pouring), called out something at the door, told me to go in and go upstairs, then disappeared around the corner with the donkey. I called--no one answered--so I went upstairs, just seeing my way by the light of a little dull, smoky lamp put in a niche of the wall. I saw two doors when I got up to the top of the stairs, both shut, so I called again, knocked; a man's voice said something which I supposed to be "entrate" and I walked in. I found myself in a big room hardly lighted--a small lamp on a table, a fire of a sort of peat and wood, a bed in one corner on which was stretched a big man with a black beard and red shirt; another man not quite so big, but also in a red shirt and a hat on his head, got up when I came in, from a chair where he had been sitting by the fire. He said something I couldn't understand, first to me and then to his companion on the bed, who answered I thought rather gruffly (they both spoke Neapolitan "patois" which I couldn't understand at first). I didn't feel very comfortable (still I liked even that room with those two brigand-looking men better than the mountain-side with the flames and the lava), but I tried to explain, took off my wet cloak which spoke for itself, and went toward the fire. My friend with the hat always keeping up a running conversation with the man on the bed, brought up a chair, then a sort of stand over which he hung my cloak, and proceeded to take a bottle out of a cupboard which I supposed was their famous wine (lacrima Christi) which one always drinks at Naples. However that I declined and established myself on the chair by the fire. He took the other one, and when I looked at him I saw that he had rather a nice face; so I took courage. He pointed to my shoes, which were wet as we had walked a little, and wanted to talk. After a little while I began to understand him, and he me; and we had quite a friendly conversation. He looked at my shoes, asked me where they were made, and when I said in Rome was madly interested; he had a brother in Rome, a shoemaker, perhaps I knew him "Giuseppe Ricci," he might have made those very shoes--instantly confided that interesting piece of information to the gentleman on the bed. He told me they were three brothers, the eldest was the shoemaker, then came he the padrone of the osteria, and the other one "there on the bed" had vines and made very good wine. He asked me if I had ever seen the Pope, or Garibaldi (there was a picture of Garibaldi framed on the wall), and when I said I had often seen the former, and that he had a good, kind face, he again conversed amicably with the gentleman on the bed, who first raised himself into a sitting posture, and finally got up altogether and came over to the fire, evidently rather anxious to take part in the conversation. He was an enormous man and didn't look as nice as the "padrone." He rather startled me when he bent down, took my foot in his hand and inspected the shoe which he pronounced well made. We must have sat there fully half an hour talking--they were perfectly easy, but not familiar, and wanted to hear anything I would tell them about Rome. Every now and then they dropped off into some side talk in their "patois," and I looked at the fire and thought what an extraordinary experience it was, sitting alone with such odd-looking companions in that big, bare room on the top of Mount Vesuvius. The fire had almost died out, the miserable little lamp gave a faint flickering light that only made everything look more uncanny, and every now and then the whole room would be flooded with a red lurid light (heralded always by a violent explosion which made the crazy little house shake) which threw out the figures of the two men sitting with their long legs stretched out to the fire, and keeping up a steady talk in a low voice. Still I wasn't afraid; I was quite sure they would be respectful, and do all they could to help me. They had a sort of native politeness, too, for they stopped their talk occasionally and made conversation for me; one looked out of the window and said the rain had stopped, but that the night was "brutta" and they referred to other eruptions and told me stories of accidents that had happened to people--two young men, "Inglesi," who were killed because they would go on their own way and not listen to the guides, consequently were knocked on the head by some huge stones; always assuring me that this eruption was nothing. However I was getting tired, and found the time long, when suddenly we heard the noise of a party arriving, and for a moment I thought it was my people; but no, they were coming the other way, up the mountain. There was a great commotion and talking, lanterns flashing backward and forward, donkeys being led out and all preparations made for the ascent--but there seemed a hitch of some kind and I heard a woman's voice speaking English. The "padrone" had rushed downstairs as soon as he heard the party arriving, and presently he reappeared talking very hard to a lady and two gentlemen who were coming upstairs behind him and evidently wanting something which they couldn't make him understand. He was telling them to have patience, that there was an "Inglese" upstairs who would talk to them. They were so astounded when they saw me that they were speechless--il y avait de quoi--seeing a girl established there in rather a dishevelled condition, her hat off, wet cloak hanging over the chair, and entirely alone with those "Neapolitan brigands"--but one man ventured to ask timidly "did I speak English." Oh yes--Italian, too--what could I do for them. They explained that the lady was tired, cold and wet (she looked miserable, poor thing) and wanted a hot drink--brandy, anything she could get. She didn't look as if she could go on, but she said she would be all right if she could have something hot, and that nothing would induce her to give up the excursion, having come so far; so a fresh piece of wood, or peat rather of some kind (it looked quite black), was put on the fire, also water in a most primitive pot. I suggested that she should take off her cloak and let it dry a little. The men brought in some more chairs and then the new comers began to wonder who I was and what I was doing there alone at that hour of the night. They were Americans, told me their name, but I have forgotten it, it is so long ago. I told them my experience--that I was absolutely unnerved, in a dead funk, and would have done anything rather than go on toward that horrible crater. They couldn't understand that I wasn't much more afraid of spending two hours in that lonely little house in such company, and begged me to try again--there was really no danger, people were going up all the time, etc. The older man was very earnest--said they couldn't leave a compatriot in such straits--he would give me his donkey if another one couldn't be procured and would walk--how could my brother have permitted me to come back alone, etc. However I reassured him as well as I could--told them I was perfectly accustomed to Italians and knew the language well (which was a great help to me, I don't know what I should have done if I hadn't been able to talk and understand them). They stayed about 20 minutes--the lady said her drink was very nasty, but hot, and she looked better for the rest and partial drying. She wasn't as wet as I was, the rain had stopped when they were half-way up. I told them who I was and begged them to say, if they met my people coming down, a gentleman and two ladies, that they had seen me, and that I was quite dry and comfortable. They went away most reluctantly, were half inclined to stay until the others should come back, but the guides were anxious to be off. Even at the last moment when they had got downstairs, the older man came back and begged me to come with them--"I assure you, my dear young lady, you don't know in what a dangerous position you are; if I had any authority over you I should insist, etc." He was very nice, and left all sorts of recommendations in English and a very good fee to the padrone, who of course didn't understand a word of what he was saying, but seemed to divine in some mysterious way. He looked smilingly at me, told me to cheer up ("Coraggio" is their way of saying it) and told the American, in Italian, that he would take good care of me. He was very sorry to go and leave me, said he had never done anything he liked so little. As soon as the excitement of their departure was over the two men came back. The "vigneron" went back to his bed, from where he conversed with us occasionally, and the other one settled down in his chair, and seemed half asleep. It wasn't very long before my party came back. The men heard them before I did, and told me they were arriving. I must say I was glad to see them. They had had a splendid time, seen everything beautifully, gone quite up to the stream of red-hot lava, put umbrellas and canes into it (the ends were quite black and burnt)--they were not in the least nervous, and jibed well at me. William said he had rather an uncomfortable feeling at first when he saw me and my very small attendant depart, but he forgot it in the excitement and novelty of their excursion. He thanked the padrone for taking such good care of me, proposed a hot drink (very bad it was) all round, and we took quite a friendly leave of the two gentlemen. I promised to try and find the brother shoemaker. They had crossed my American friends on the way back--William said they were just starting down when they saw another party appearing and he heard a gentleman say, "I think this must be Mr. King." He was very much surprised to hear his name, but rode up to the speaker, to see who he was, and then the gentleman told him of his amazement at meeting his sister in that wretched little shanty and how miserable he had felt at leaving me there alone, with two Neapolitan brigands, but that I had assured him I was quite safe and not at all afraid of the two black giants--but he begged William to hurry on, as it was not really the place to leave a girl--even an American who would know how to take care of herself. We made our journey down quite easily. It was still pitch dark, except when the fire of the mountain lighted up everything, but there was neither rain nor wind, the air was soft, and the little outlying villages looked quite quiet and peaceable, as if no great mountain was throwing up masses of ashes and stones just over their heads, which might after all destroy them entirely. There must always be a beginning, and I suppose in the old days of Pompeii and Herculaneum the beginning was just what we have seen--first columns of smoke, then the lava stream and showers of red-hot stones, and none of the people frightened at first. We found Mother and Anne waiting for us with supper. They had been a little anxious, particularly as the weather was so bad, and they evidently had had more of a tempest than we had. They were of course madly interested in our expedition and were astounded that I was the coward. They wouldn't have been at all surprised if it had been Gert. It is true she is nearly always timid, and we used to play all sorts of tricks on her when we were children at Cherry Lawn, beguile her up into the big cherry tree, then take the ladder away and tell her to climb down; or take the peg out of the boat, let in a little water and pretend it was sinking--so she was triumphant this time. I can't understand why I was so frightened. I am not usually afraid of anything, but that time no reasoning would have been of the least use, and nothing would have made me go on to the crater. Mother was rather like the American--she wouldn't have liked the flames and the awful rumbling noises any more than I did, but she would have been much more afraid of the lonely house and long wait on the mountain in that wretched little inn with those two big, black-bearded Neapolitans. Le monde est petit--years afterward my brother William was travelling in America, and in the smoking-room all the men were telling their experiences either at home or abroad--many strange adventures. One gentleman said he had never forgotten a curious scene on the top of Mount Vesuvius in eruption, when he had met an American girl, quite alone, at night, in the dark and rain, in a miserable little shanty with two great, big Neapolitans "looking like brigands" (he evidently always retained that first impression of my companions). He told all the story, giving my name, which excited much comment; some of the listeners evidently thought it was a traveller's tale, arranged on some slight foundation of truth--however, when he had finished William said: "That story is perfectly true. The young lady is my sister, and I am the Mr. King to whom you spoke that night on the mountain, in the dark, begging me to hurry down, and not leave my sister any longer alone in such company." They naturally didn't recognise each other, having merely met for a moment in the dark, both wrapped up in cloaks and under umbrellas. They had quite a talk, and the gentleman was very anxious to know how they found me--whether I wasn't really more uncomfortable than I allowed, and what had become of me. We decided to move on to Sorrento and settle ourselves there for some time. We also wanted to go to Capri, but the steamers had stopped running, and we could only get over in a sailboat. The man of the hotel advised us to go from Sorrento, it was shorter and a charming sail on a bright day. The drive from Castellamare was beautiful; divine views of the sea all the time and equally lovely when we came down upon Sorrento, which seemed to stand in the midst of orange groves and vineyards. The Hôtel Sirena is perched on the top of a high cliff rising up straight from the sea. We had charming rooms with a nice broad balcony, and at our feet a little sheltered cove and beach of golden sand. There were very few people in the hotel--the one or two English spinsters of a certain age whom one always meets travelling, and two artists. We were only about twelve people at table-d'hôte; and as we were six that didn't leave many outsiders. It was before the days of restaurants and small tables. There was one long, narrow table--the padrone carved himself at a smaller one, and talked to us occasionally. There was too much wind the first days to think of attempting Capri, so we drove all over the country, walked about in the orange groves and up and down the steep hills, through lovely little paths that wound in and out of olive woods along the side of the mountain, sometimes clambering up a bit of straight rock, that seemed a wall impossible to get over--when it was too stiff there would be steps cut out in the earth on one side, half hidden by the long grass and weeds. Henrietta and I had discovered a pony trap with a pair of sturdy little mountain ponies, quite black, and we drove ourselves all over. Mother wouldn't let us go alone, so the stableman sent his son with us, aged 12 years. He wasn't much of a protector! but he knew the ponies, and the country, and everybody we met. He was a pretty little fellow--not at all the dark Italian type, rather fair, with blue eyes, but always the olive skin of the South. He invariably got off the little seat behind and took a short cut up the hills when the road was very steep, though I don't think his weight made any perceptible difference. The evenings were delicious. We sat almost always on the balcony--sometimes with a light wrap when the breeze from the sea freshened about 9 o'clock. How beautiful it was; the sea deep blue, the islands changing from pink to purple, and as soon as it was dark Vesuvius sending up its pyramid of fire. It looked magnificent, but very formidable. Almost every morning we saw a party come and bathe in the little cove at the foot of the cliff--a pretty little boat came around the point with a family party on board--two ladies, one man and three children. I think they were English, their installation was so practical. They had a small tent, camp-stools, and table, also two toy sailboats which were a source of much pleasure and tribulation, as they frequently got jammed in between the rocks, or caught in the thick seaweed, and there was great excitement until they were started afresh. We made great friends with the sister of the man at the hotel. She was a nun, such a gentle, good face--she came every morning to get flowers for the little chapel of Maria--Stella del Mare--which was near the house, standing high on the hill and easily seen from the sea. One day she seemed very busy and anxious about her flowers, so we asked what was happening, and she said it was their great fête, and they were going to decorate the chapel and dress the Virgin--"should we like to see it?" The Virgin had a beautiful dress--white satin with silver embroidery and some fine jewels which some rich forestieri had given. We were delighted to go, and went with her to the little chapel, which looked very pretty filled with flowers and greens, one beautiful dark, shiny leaf which made much effect. The Virgin was removed from her niche--her vestments brought in with great care, wrapped in soft paper, and the good sister most reverently and happily began the toilet. The dress was very elaborate, had been the wedding dress of an Italian Principessa, and there were some handsome pins and rings--a gold chain on her neck with a pearl ornament. She was rather lamenting over the cessation of gifts--when I suddenly remembered my ring--quite a plain gold one with the cross (pax) one always sees in Rome, which had been blessed by the Pope. I put it on with three or four other little ornaments one day when we had an audience. I took it off, explained to her what it was, that it had been blessed by the Saint Père and that I should like very much to give it to the Virgin, if she wasn't afraid of accepting anything from a heretic. She was a little doubtful, but the fact of its having had the Pope's blessing outweighed other considerations, and the ring was instantly put on the Virgin's hand. She told us afterward that she had told it to the priest, and he said she was quite right to accept it, it might be the means of bringing me to the "true church." We grew really quite fond of her. It was such a simple, childish faith, her whole life was given up to her little chapel, cleaning and decorating it on feast days. All the children in the country brought flowers and leaves, one little boy came once, she told us, with a dead bird with bright feathers that he found, quite beautiful. We made friends with the people at the table-d'hôte and they were very anxious we should come down to the reading-room at night and make music--but our mourning of course prevented that. We used to hear the piano sometimes and a man's voice singing, not too badly. At last the wind seemed to have blown itself out, and our landlord said we could get easily to Capri. He could recommend an excellent boatman who had a large, safe boat and who was most prudent, as well as his son. With a fair wind we ought to go over in two hours. We wanted to stay over one night, and he arranged everything. The boat would wait and bring us back the next evening. We started early--about 9 o'clock--so as to get over for breakfast. The boat was most comfortable, a big broad tub, with rather a small sail, plenty of room for all our bags, wraps, etc. The sea was divine, blue and dancing, but there was not much wind. We progressed rather slowly, the breeze was mild, the boat heavy and the sail small, but nobody minded. It was delicious drifting along on that summer sea--just enough ripple to make little waves that tumbled up against the side of the boat, and a slight rocking motion that was delightful--couldn't have suggested sea-sickness or nervousness to the most timid sailor. There were plenty of boats about (mostly fishermen) of all sizes, some of them with the dark red sail that is so effective, and several pleasure boats and small yachts. _They_ were almost as broad and solid as our boat; hadn't at all the graceful outlines and large sails that we are accustomed to. We were exactly three hours going over though the breeze freshened a little as we got near Capri. We were quite excited when we made out the landing-place ("Marina grande") and the long, steep flight of steps leading up to the town. The last time we were there we went by the regular tourist steamer from Naples. There were quantities of people and a perfect rush for donkeys and guides as soon as we arrived; also the whole population of Capri on the shore chattering, offering donkeys, flowers, funny little bottles of wine, and a troop of children running up the steps alongside of the donkeys and clamouring for "un piccolo soldo." This time there was no one at the landing-place, but the man of the hotel with a sedan chair for mother, donkeys for us if we wanted them (we didn't--preferred walking) and a wheelbarrow or hand cart of some kind for the luggage, which was slight--merely bags and wraps. There were a good many steps, but they were broad, we didn't mind. We found a very nice little hotel, kept by an English couple. The woman had been for years maid in the Sheridan family. She told us there was no one in the hotel but one Englishman--in fact no foreigners in the island. We had a very good breakfast in a nice, fairly large room with views of the sea in all directions, and started off immediately afterward to see as much as we could. Mother had her chair, but didn't go all the way with us. We passed through narrow, badly paved little streets with low, pink houses, lots of people, women and children, standing in the doorways--no men, I suppose they were all fishing--and then climbed up to the Villa Tiberius--a steep climb at the end, but such a view. Before we got quite to the top we stopped at the "Salto di Tiberio," a rock high up over the water from which the guide told us that monarch had his victims precipitated into the sea. We dropped down stones (I remember quite well doing the same thing when we were there before) to see how long it was before they touched the water, which showed at what a height one was. The palace is too much in ruins to be very interesting, but there was enough to show how large it must have been, and bits of wall and arches still standing. We went on to the chapel, drank some rather bad wine which the hermit offered us, bought some paper weights and crosses made out of bits of coloured marble which had been found in the ruins, and wrote our names in his book. We looked back in the book to see if there were any interesting signatures, but there was nothing remarkable--a great many Germans. We came home by another path, winding down through small gardens, vineyards, and occasionally along the steep side of the mountain, all stones and ragged rocks, with the sea far down at our feet. There were a good many houses scattered about, one or two quite isolated near the top. We had a running escort of little black-eyed brown children all talking and offering little bunches of mountain flowers. The guides remonstrated vigorously occasionally and they would disappear, but were immediately replaced by another band from the next group of houses we passed. We were rather tired when we got back to the hotel as the climbing was stiff in some parts, and glad to rest a little before dinner. The padrona came in and talked to us. It seemed funny to see an English woman in that milieu with her brown hair quite smooth and plain and a clean print dress. She said she liked her life, and the people of the island. They were industrious, simple and easy-going. She talked a great deal about the Sheridans, for whom she had of course the greatest admiration, said one of the sons came often to Capri, and that his cousin Norton had married a Capri fisher-girl. We had heard the story, of course, and were much interested in all she told us. She said the girl was lovely, an absolute peasant, had walked about with bare feet like all the rest, but that she had been over to England, was taught there all they could get into her head, and was quite changed, had two children. I remember their telling us in Rome what a difficult process that education was. She was willing and anxious to learn to read and write, but her ambition and her capability of receiving instruction stopped there--when they wanted to teach her a little history (not very far back either) and the glories of the Sheridan name she was recalcitrant, couldn't interest herself and dismissed the subject saying, "ma sono morti tutti" (they are all dead). She always kept her little house at Capri, in fact was there now, perhaps we should like to see her. We said we should very much. We had nice, clean comfortable rooms and made out our plan for the next day. We didn't care about the Blue Grotto--we had seen it before, and besides they told us that at this season of the year it would be almost impossible, one must have a perfectly still sea as the entrance is not easy--very low--and a big wave would swamp the boat. We heard the wind getting up a little in the night and we woke the next morning to see a grey, cloudy sky, little showers falling occasionally, and a fine gale, sea rough, no little boats out, one or two fishing boats racing along under well-reefed sails, anything but tempting for a three hours' sail in an open boat. Mother looked decidedly nervous; however the matter was taken out of our hands, for the boatmen appeared saying they would not go out, which was rather a relief; we didn't mind staying. There was a fair library in the house, books that visitors had left, so we hunted up a history of Capri (Baedeker was soon exhausted), and got through our morning pretty well, some reading aloud, the others knitting or working. We had all taken some sort of work in our bags, various experiences of small hotels on rainy days having taught us to provide our own amusement. It cleared in the afternoon though the wind was still very high and we set off--on donkeys this time--and mother in her chair, to the other side of the island. Two or three girls, handsome enough in their bright skirts, bare brown legs and thick braids of hair, came with us to take charge of the donkeys. As we were going up a steep flight of steps (which the donkeys did very well and deliberately) they began to tell us about Mrs. Norton and said we should pass her house. It was amusing to hear them talk of her wonderful luck in being married to this "bel Inglese"; "adesso fa la signora sta in camera tutto il giorno--colle mani bianche" ("Now she does the lady, sits in her room all day with white hands"). We passed several houses rather better than the ordinary fisherman's cottage and then came upon a nice little white house, standing rather high, with a garden and gate, which they told us was Mrs. Norton's. We stopped a moment at the gate, looking at the garden; mother's bearers put her chair down and gave themselves a rest, and we saw a lady appear very simply dressed in something dark, who came to the gate and asked us in very nice English with a pretty accent if we would come in and rest, as the day was hot and we had had a steep climb. We heard all the fisher-girls giggling and saying "Eccola la Signora." We were half ashamed to have been seen gaping in at her garden, but the invitation was simply and cordially given, and we accepted. Her manner to mother was quite pretty, respectful to the older lady. We went into a pretty little sitting-room quite simply furnished, with books and photographs about. She showed us pictures of all her family, her husband (regretting extremely that he was not there), her mother-in-law, Mrs. Norton, and her children. She seemed very proud of her son, said he was at school in England and didn't care very much for Capri. I asked her if she liked England, and though she said "very much," I thought I detected a regret for her old home, though not perhaps her old life. Her face quite lighted up when we said how much we admired her island with its high cliffs and beautiful blue sea. I didn't find her as handsome as I expected, but the eyes were fine and her smile charming. Her manner was perfectly natural, she showed us very simply all she had, and was not in the least curious about us--asked us no questions, was evidently accustomed to seeing foreigners and tourists at Capri. We stayed about half an hour, and then went on our way. She shook hands with us all, and looked most smilingly at mother; couldn't quite understand her black dress and white cap--said we mustn't let her do too much, "she is not so young as you, la mamma." Of course the fisher-girls were in a wild state of excitement when we came out--all talked at once, stopping in the middle of the path, the donkeys, too; when they had much to say, and telling the whole story over again. I said to one of them, "Should you like to marry a 'bel Inglese' and go and live in another country far away from Capri with no sun nor blue sky?" She thought a moment, looking straight at me with her big, black eyes and then answered, sensibly enough, my rather foolish question--she had never thought about it--was quite happy where she was. It was a curious meeting. When we got back to the hotel we asked our padrona about Mrs. Norton and the life she led. She told us Mrs. Norton mère[25] had been in despair when her son married the fisher-girl--he was very good-looking and her favourite, and it was a great blow to her, but that she had been very good to her and was fond of the boy. She didn't seem to think the young woman had had a very happy life, but that she was always delighted to get back to Capri. "Did she see any of her old friends?" "Not much--that was difficult--she only came in the summer, the children generally with her, and they fished and sailed and made their own life apart." [25] The well-known poetess and beauty, née Sheridan. We got back to Sorrento the next morning--the sea beautifully smooth and calm--no trace of the great waves that had roared all night into the numerous caves, throwing up showers of foam. My dear, I seem to have prosed on for pages about Naples, but once started I couldn't stop. Tell Henrietta I feel rather like her when we used to call her Mrs. Nickleby, because she never could keep to any one subject, but always made long, foolish digressions. Monday, April 13th. Last night we had a pleasant dinner at Mr. Hooker's, the American banker. He still lives in one end of his apartment in the Palazzo Bonaparte, but has rented the greater part to the Suzannets.[26] We were a small party--ourselves, Schuylers, Ristori (Marchesa Caprannica), and her charming daughter. Ristori is very striking looking--very large, but dignified and easy in her movements, and a wonderfully expressive face. The girl, Bianca Caprannica, is charming, tall, fair, graceful. Ristori talked a great deal, speaks French, of course, perfectly. [26] Comte de Suzannet, Secretary of the French Embassy. She admires the French stage, and we discussed various actors and actresses. I should love to see her act once, her voice is so full and beautiful. Such a characteristic scene took place after coffee. We were still sitting in the dining-room when we heard a carriage come in, and instantly there was a great sound of stamping horses, angry coachman, whip freely applied, etc. It really made a great noise and disturbance. Ristori listened for a moment, then rushed to the window (very high up--we were on the top story), exclaiming it was her man, opened it, and proceeded to expostulate with the irate coachman in very energetic Italian--"Che diavolo!" were these her horses or his, was he a Christian man to treat poor brutes like that, etc.--a stream of angry remonstrance in her deep, tragic voice. There was a cessation of noise in the court-yard--her voice dominated everything--and then I suppose the coachman explained and excused himself, but we were so high up and inside that we couldn't hear. She didn't listen, but continued to abuse him until at length Hooker went to the window and suggested that she might cease scolding and come back into the room, which she did quite smilingly--the storm had passed. This morning we have been to the Doria Gallery. The palace is enormous, a great court and staircase and some fine pictures. We liked a portrait by Velasquez of a Pope--Innocent X, I think--and some of the Claude Lorraines, with their curious blue-green color. We walked home by the Corso. It was rather warm, but shady always on one side of the street. After breakfast Cardinal Bibra, the Bishop of Frascati, came to see us. He was much disappointed that we had had such a horrid day for our Frascati and Tusculum expedition, and wants us to go again, but we haven't time. We want to go to Ostia and Albano if it is possible. He and W. plunged into ecclesiastical affairs. It is curious what an importance they all attach to W.'s being a Protestant; seem to think his judgment must be fairer. He also knew about Uncle Evelyn having married and settled in Perugia, and had heard the Pope speak about him. He spoke about the Marquis de Gabriac (Desprez's predecessor) and regretted his departure very much. I think he had not yet seen the new Ambassador. W. told him Desprez would do all he could to make things go smoothly, that his whole career had been made at the Quai d'Orsay, where every important question for years had been discussed with him. Tuesday, April 14th. We dined last night at the Black Spanish Embassy with the Cardenas. It was very pleasant. We had two cardinals--Bibra and a Spanish cardinal whose name I didn't catch; he had a striking face, keen and stern, didn't talk much at dinner--Desprez and his son, the Sulmonas, Bandinis, Primolis (she is née Bonaparte), d'Aulnays, all the personnel of the French Embassy, and one or two young men from the other embassies; quite a small dinner. W. took in Princess Sulmona and enjoyed it very much. Primoli took me, and I had Prince Bandini on the other side. Both men were pleasant enough. All the women except me were in high dresses, and Primoli asked me how I had the conscience to appear "décolletée" and show bare shoulders to cardinals. I told him we weren't told that we should meet any cardinals, and that in these troubled days I thought a woman in full dress was such a minor evil that I didn't believe they would even notice what one had on; but he seemed to think they were observant, says all churchmen of any denomination are. Their life is so inactive that they get their experience from what they see and hear. I talked a few minutes to Princess Bandini after dinner, but she went away almost immediately, as she had music (Tosti) at home. We promised to go to her later--I wanted very much to hear Tosti. The evening was short. The cardinals always go away early--at 9.30 (we dined at 7.30, and every one was punctual). As long as they stayed the men made a circle around them. They are treated with much deference (we women were left to our own devices). W. said the conversation was not very interesting, they talk with so much reserve always. He said the Spaniard hardly spoke, and Cardinal Bibra talked antiquities, the excavations still to be made in Tusculum, etc. I think they go out very little now, only occasionally to Black embassies. Their position is of course much changed since the Italians are in Rome. They live much more quietly; never receive, their carriages are much simpler, no more red trappings, nothing to attract attention--so different from our day. When Pio Nono went out it was a real royal progress. First came the "batta strada" or "piqueur" on a good horse, stopping all the carriages and traffic; then the Pope in his handsome coach, one or two ecclesiastics with him, followed by several cardinals in their carriages, minor prelates, members of the household and the escort of "gardes nobles." All the gentlemen got out of their carriages, knelt or bowed very low; the ladies stood in theirs, making low curtseys, and many people knelt in the street. One saw the old man quite distinctly, dressed all in white; leaning forward a little and blessing the crowd with a large sweeping movement of his hand. He rarely walked in the streets of Rome, but often in the villas--Pamphili or Borghese. There almost all the people he met knelt; children kissed his hand, and he would sometimes pat their little black heads. We crossed him one day in the Villa Pamphili. We were a band of youngsters--Roman and foreigners--and all knelt. The old man looked quite pleased at the group of young people--stopped a moment and gave his blessing with a pretty smile. Some of our compatriots were rather horrified at seeing us kneel with all the rest--Protestants doing homage to the head of the Roman Catholic Church--and expressed their opinion to father: it would certainly be a very bad note for my brother.[27] However, father didn't think the United States Government would attach much importance to our papal demonstration, and we continued to kneel and ask his blessing whenever we met His Holiness. He had a kind, gentle face (a twinkle, too, in his eyes), and was always so fond of children and young people. The contrast between him and his successor is most striking. Leo XIII is tall, slight, hardly anything earthly about him--the type of the intellectual, ascetic priest--all his will and energy shining out of his eyes, which are extraordinarily bright and keen for a man of his age. [27] General Rufus King, last United States Minister to the Vatican. [Illustration: Pope Pius IX.] We didn't stay very long after the cardinals left, as I was anxious to get off to Princess Bandini. We found a great many people, and music going on. Some woman had been singing--a foreigner, either English or American--and Tosti was just settled at the piano. He is quite charming; has very little voice, but says his things delightfully, accompanying himself with a light, soft touch. He sang five or six times, principally his own songs, with much expression; also a French song extremely well. His diction is perfect, his style simple and easy. One wonders why every one doesn't sing in the same way. They don't, as we perceived when a man with a big voice, high barytone, came forward, and sang two songs, Italian and German. The voice was fine, and the man sang well, but didn't give half the pleasure that Tosti did with his "voix de compositeur" and wonderful expression. He was introduced to me, and we had a pleasant talk. He loves England, and goes there every season. A good many people came in after us. I wanted to introduce W. to some one and couldn't find him, thought he must have gone, and was just going to say good-night to Princess Bandini when her husband came up, saying, "You mustn't go yet--your husband is deep in a talk with Cardinal Howard," and took me to one of the small salons, where I saw the two gentlemen sitting, talking hard. The Cardinal was just going when we came in, so he intercepted W. and carried him off to this quiet corner where they would be undisturbed. They must have been there quite three-quarters of an hour, for I went back into the music-room, and it was some little time before W. found me there. Every one had gone, but we stayed on a little while, talking to the two Bandinis. It is a funny change for W. to plunge into all this clerical society of Rome; but he says he understands their point de vue much better, now that he sees them here, particularly when both parties can talk quite frankly. It would be almost impossible to have such a talk in France--each side begins with such an evident prejudice. The honest clerical really believes that the liberal is a man absolutely devoid of religious feeling of any kind--a dangerous character, incapable of real patriotic feeling, and doing great harm to his country. The liberal is not quite so narrow-minded; but he, too, in his heart holds the clergy responsible for the want of progress, the narrow grooves they would like the young generation to move in, and the influence they try to exercise in families through the women (who all go to church and confession). With the pitiless logic of the French character every disputed point stands out clear and sharp, and discussion is very difficult. Here they are more supple--leave a larger part to human weaknesses. Thursday, April 16th. We have finally had our day at Albano, and delightful it was. W. and I went alone, as Gert was not very well, and afraid of the long day in the sun. We started early--at 8.30--though we had been rather late the night before as Count Coello, Spanish Ambassador,[28] sent us his box for the opera. It was Lohengrin--well enough given, orchestra and chorus good, but the soloists rather weak. _Elsa_, a very stout Italian woman of mature years, did not give one just the idea of the fair patrician maiden one imagines her to be. The Italian sounded very funny after hearing it always in German, and "Cigno gentil" didn't at all convey the same idea as "Lieber Schwan." The tenor had a pretty, sympathetic voice and looked his part well (rather more like _Elsa's_ son than her lover), but one mustn't be too particular. The house was fairly brilliant--much fuller than the last time we were there--and quantities of people we knew. Hardly any one in full dress, which is a pity, as it makes the salle look dull. One or two women in white (one very handsome with diamond stars in her hair, whom nobody knew) stood out very well against the dark red of the boxes. Del Monte came in and sat some time with us. He is quite mad about Wagner--rare for an Italian. They generally like more melody and less science. We invited him to come to Albano with us and show us everything, and I think he was half inclined to accept, but he was de service that day and it was too late to find any one to replace him. [28] To the Quirinal. We finally decided to drive out after various consultations as to hours, routes, etc. It is quicker by the railway and we should perhaps have rather more time, but we both of us love the drive on the Campagna, and W. was very keen to take the old Via Appia again and realize more completely the street of tombs. It was a lovely morning and every minute of the drive interesting, even when we were almost shut in between the high grey walls which stretch out some little distance at first leaving the Porta San Sebastiano. They were covered with creepers, pink roses starting apparently out of all the crevices; pretty, dirty little children tumbling over the broken bits into the road almost under the horses' feet; every now and then a donkey's head emerging from an opening, or a wrinkled old woman appearing at some open door smiling and nodding a cheerful "Buon giorno!" to the passers-by. There was a long string of carts with nothing apparently in them. They didn't take much trouble about getting a little to one side to let the carriage pass; and their drivers--some of them stretched out on their backs in the carts, the reins hanging loosely over the seat--didn't at all mind the invectives our coachman hurled at them, "pigs, lazy dogs, etc." Of course we passed again Cecilia Metella, also two tombs said to be the Horatii and Curatii; and the Casale Rotondo with a house and olive trees on the top, but I cannot remember half the names, nor places. We were armed with our Baedeker, but it goes into such details of all the supposed tombs and monuments that one gets rather lost. I don't know that it adds very much to the interest to know the names and dates of all the tombs. One feels in such an old-world atmosphere they speak for themselves. The colours were beautiful to-day--the old stones had a soft, grey tint. It is a desolate bit of road all the same--so little life or movement of any kind. As we got further out we came upon the long line of aqueducts, but there were apparently miles of plain with nothing in sight--occasionally a flock of sheep in the distance, the shepherd riding a rough, unkempt little pony, and looking a half-wild creature himself--some boys on donkeys, and the shepherds' dogs, which came barking and jumping over the plain toward the strangers. They are sometimes very fierce. Years ago in Rome when we used to make long excursions riding to Vei or Ostia, the gentlemen of the party always carried good big whips to keep them off. They have been known to spring on the horses, who are afraid of them. One sprang on Gert once, when we were cantering over the Campagna, and almost tore her habit off. We didn't meet any cart or vehicle of any description. I wondered where all these were going that we passed on the road, and asked our Giuseppe, but he merely shrugged his shoulders and said they were "robaccia" (trash). We stopped a few minutes at the Osteria della Frattocchie--the man watered his horses (had a drink himself, too) and was very anxious we should try some of the "vino del paese." We tasted it--a sour, white wine, very like all the cheap Italian wines. The view from the Osteria looking back toward Rome was very striking. Long lines of ruined, crumbling tombs and arches--great blocks of stone, heads of columns, mounds, wide ditches choked up with weeds, broken walls--all the dead past of the great city. The sun was bright, but there were plenty of little clouds, and the changing lights and shades on the great expanse of the Campagna were beautiful. The hills seemed now so near that we almost felt like getting out and walking, but the man assured us we had still three or four miles before us, and a steep hill to climb--Albano on the top. The road was shady--between two lines of trees. As we got near the city we saw Pompey's tomb--a high tower with bits of marble still on the walls. W. is rather sceptical about all the tombs; would like to have time enough to investigate himself and make out all the inscriptions, but it would take a life-time. We went at once to the hotel to order breakfast, and then strolled about in the streets until it was ready. It looked more changed to me than Frascati--more modern. They tell me many people go out there now for their summer "villegiatura," principally English and Americans, bankers, doctors, artists, etc., who are obliged to spend their summer in or near Rome. There were many new houses, and in all the old palaces apartments to rent. There were a few tourists walking about, but happily no Cook's this time. When we went back to the hotel we told the landlord what we wanted to see--Ariccia, Genzano and Nemi. He suggested donkeys, but that we both declined, so he said he had a good little carriage which could take us easily. The breakfast was good, we were both hungry, and after coffee we walked about in the Villa Doria under the ilex trees. W. smoked and was quite happy, and I wasn't sorry to walk a little after having been so long in the carriage. We went to the gardens of the Villa Altieri. It was there the Cardinal died in the cholera summer of '69 when we were at Frascati. We could almost have walked to Ariccia, it is so near, and such a lovely road, all ilex trees and great rocks, winding along the side of the hill. The church and old Chigi Palace look very grand and imposing as one gets near the gates of the little town. We walked about the streets and went into the church, but there was not much to see, and I thought it less effective seen near; then on to the gardens of the Capuchin Convent, from where there are splendid views in every direction, and always the thick shade of the ilex. We couldn't loiter very much as we had the drive to Genzano before us. The road was quite beautiful all the way; every turn familiar (how many times we have ridden over it), and Genzano with its little, old streets straggling up the hill looked exactly the same. I had forgotten the great viaduct which one sees all the time on that road, it is splendid. We again got out of the carriage and walked up a steep little path to have a view of Lake Nemi. It lay far down at our feet--a little green pond (yet high too), they say it was a volcanic crater. The water was perfectly still--not even a shimmer of light or movement. Every way we turned the view was beautiful--either down the valley where the colours were changing all the time, sometimes quite grey, when the sun was under a cloud (one almost felt a chill), and then every leaf and flower sparkling in the sunlight--or toward the hills where the little towns Rocca di Papa and Monte Cavo seemed hanging on the side of the mountain. The drive back to Albano by the "Galleria di Sotto" under the enormous ilex trees was simply enchanting, the afternoon sun throwing beautiful streaks of yellow light through the thick shade, and the road most animated--groups of peasants coming in from their work in the fields; old women tottering along, almost disappearing beneath the great bundles of fagots they carried on their heads; girls with jet-black hair and eyes, in bright-coloured skirts, and little handkerchiefs pinned over their shoulders, laughing and singing and chaffing the drivers of the wine carts, who usually got down and walked along with them, leaving their horses, who followed quietly, the men turning around occasionally and talking to them. In the fields alongside there were teams of the splendid white oxen and quantities of children tumbling up and down the banks and racing after the carriage. They spot the foreigner at once. I had talked so much to W. about the beauty of the road, the Galleria in particular, that I was afraid he would be disappointed; but he wasn't, was quite as enthusiastic as I was. When we got back to Albano I tried to find some of the little cakes (ciambelle) we used to buy when we rode over from Frascati; the little package wrapped up in greasy brown paper and tied to the pommel of the saddle; but the woman at the very nice baker's or confectioner's shop we went into hadn't any, but said she could make a "plome cheke" (she showed us the ticket with the name on it with pride), which was what all the "Inglesi" took. The drive home was lovely--just enough of the beautiful sunset clouds to give colour to everything; the air soft and the world so still that a dog barking in one of the little old farms or shepherds' huts made quite a disturbance. As the evening closed in we heard the "grilli" (alas, no nightingales; it is still too early) and the bushes along the road were bright with fire-flies. The road seemed much less lonely going back to Rome; so many peasants were coming back from the fields, also boys on donkeys with empty sacks--had evidently taken olives, cheese, or dried herbs into the city--and always bands of girls laughing and singing. It was an ideal day, and after dinner we were just tired enough to settle in our respective arm-chairs and say how glad we were we had decided to come and spend these months in Italy. The Schuylers came in for a cup of tea and Gert was rather sorry she hadn't come, as her headache wasn't very serious. I think they will take themselves out to Albano for a little stay as soon as the heat begins. Friday, April 17th. This morning we went for a last turn in the Vatican. That is what W. likes best. There is so much to see in that marvellous collection. He wanted to copy one or two inscriptions, so I wandered about alone and talked to the custode, who has become an intimate friend of ours. He hovers about W. when he is taking notes or examining things closely, and is evidently much gratified at the interest he takes in everything--quite like a collector showing off his antiquities. We saw a little commotion at one end of the long gallery, and he came running up to say "His Holiness" was walking in the garden, and if we would come with him he would take us to a window from where we could see him quite distinctly. This of course we were delighted to do, as one never sees the present Pope, except in some great ceremony when he is carried in the "sedia gestatoria," but so high over the heads of the people that one can hardly distinguish his features. We walked down the gallery, through two or three passages, up a flight of stairs, and came upon a window looking down directly on the gardens. They are beautiful, more like a park than a garden, and one can quite understand that the Pope can get a very good drive there, the days he doesn't walk. The custode says he only walks when it is quite fine, is afraid of the damp or wind, but that he goes out every day. There is a wood, flowers, long alleys stretching far away bordered with box and quite wide enough for a carriage, various buildings, a casino, tower, observatory, etc., also fountains and a lake (I didn't see a boat upon it). In the middle of one of the alleys a little group was walking slowly in our direction--about 10 people I should think. The Pope, dressed always in white, seemed to walk easily enough. He carried himself very straight, and was talking with a certain animation to the two ecclesiastics who walked on each side of him. He stopped every now and then, going on with his conversation and using his hands freely. He was talking all the time, the others listening with much deference. The suite seemed to consist of three or four priests and two servants. I didn't see either a Suisse or Garde-Noble, but they may have been following at a distance. Our glimpse of him was fleeting, as he turned into a side alley before he got up to our window--still it was enough to realize his life--think of never going outside those walls, walking day after day in those same alleys, cut off from all the outside world and living his life in the stillness and monotony of the Vatican. However it certainly doesn't react in any way upon his intellect. They say he is just as keen and well up in everything as when he was Bishop of Perugia, and that his indomitable will will carry him through. We thanked our old custode very warmly (and in many ways) for having brought us to the window, and also said good-bye to him, as this of course was our last visit to the Vatican. He begged us to come back, but it must be soon, or _he_ wouldn't be there, as he was as old as the Pope. When we got to the hotel we found Monsignor English in the salon with the Pope's photograph, very well framed with a gilt shield with the Papal arms on the top. It is exactly like him, sitting very straight in his chair, his hand lifted a little just as if he were speaking, and the other hand and arm resting on the arm of the chair. He is dressed in his white robes, red cape and embroidered stole, just as we saw him; and his little white cap on his head. He has written himself a few words in Latin, of which this is a free translation: "The woman who fears God, makes her own reputation. Her husband was celebrated in his country when he sat with the Senators of the land." I am so pleased to have the photograph--so many people told me I should never get it, that the Pope rarely gave his picture to anybody and never signed one. Monsignor English, too, was much pleased, as he had undertaken the whole thing. He said again that the Pope was glad to have seen W., found him so moderate, and yet very decided, too, about what the church mustn't do. Leo XIII. has an awfully difficult part to play--the ultra-Catholics disapprove absolutely his line--can't understand any concession or compromise with Republican France, and yet there are very good religious people on the liberal side, and he, as Head of the Church, must think about all his children, and try to conciliate, not alienate. It is wonderful that that old man sitting up there by himself at the top of the Vatican can think out all those perplexed questions and arrive at a solution. They say he works it all out himself--rarely asks advice. I daresay it wouldn't help him if he did, for of course there are divisions, too, in the clerical party of Rome, even among the Cardinals, where the difference of nationalities must have a very great influence. I should think there was almost as much difference between an American and an Italian Cardinal as between Protestants and Catholics. The American must look at things from a different point of view. Monsignor English quite understood that--said Americans were more independent--still when a great question came they must submit like all the rest. We then had a most animated discussion as to how far it was possible for an intelligent man (or woman) to abdicate entirely his own judgment, and to accept a thing which he was not quite sure of because the church decided it must be. I think we should have gone on indefinitely with that conversation, never arriving at any solution, so it was just as well that breakfast put a stop to it. We went for a lovely drive in the afternoon, out of the Porta del Popolo, across Ponte Molle, and then along the river until we came to that rough country road, or lane, leading across the fields where we have gone in so many times on horseback, to the Villa Madama. We drove as far as we could (almost to the gate) and then walked up the hill to the Villa itself. There everything was quite unchanged--the garden neglected, full of weeds, and grass growing high. The oval stone basin was there still, the sides covered with moss, and a few flowers coming quite promiscuously out of walls, stones, etc. We went into the loggia to see the paintings and frescoes, all in good condition, and then sat some time on the terrace looking at the view, which was divine--everything so soft in the distance, even the yellow Tiber looked silvery--at least I saw it so; I don't know that W. did. He generally finds it sluggish and muddy. We came home by the Porta Angelica and drove through the Square of St. Peter's. There are always people on the steps, not a crowd of course as on fête days, but enough to give animation, priests, beggars, and the people lounging and looking at whatever passes in the Square. It is so enormous, the Piazza, when one sees it empty, one can hardly realize what it used to be in the old days for the great Easter ceremony when the Pope gave his blessing from the balcony of St. Peter's. I can see it now, packed black with people, the French soldiers with their red caps and trousers making great patches of colour, and Montebello (who commanded the French Armée d'Occupation in Rome) with a brilliant staff in the centre of the Square--he and his black charger so absolutely motionless one might have thought both horse and rider were cast in bronze. There were all sorts of jokes and chattering in the crowd until the first glimpse of the waving peacock plumes, and banners, passing high, high up, and just visible through the arches, showed that the Pope's procession was arriving on the balcony; and when at last one saw distinctly the white figure as the old man was raised high in his chair there was an absolute stillness in all that great mass; every one knelt to receive the blessing, and the Pope's voice rang out clear and strong (one could hear every word). As soon as it was over cannon fired, bells rang, and there fluttered down over the crowd a quantity of little white papers (indulgences) which every one tried to grasp. It was a magnificent cadre for such a ceremony--the dome of St. Peter's towering above us straight up into the blue sky, the steps crowded with people, the red umbrellas of the peasants making a great show, and women of all conditions and all nationalities dressed in bright, gay colours; uniforms of all kinds, monks and priests of every order; the black of the priests rather lost in all the colour of uniforms, costumes, etc. The getting away was long--we might have had our carriage with the American cockade in one of the back courts of the Vatican, but we wanted to see everything and come home by the Ponte St. Angelo. It was a great show all the way--the long line of carriages and pedestrians streaming back to Rome, cut every now and then by a detachment of troops. Everybody was cheered, from Charette and his Zouaves to Montebello and his staff. The crowd was in a good humour--it was a splendid day, they had had a fine show, and politics and "foreign mercenaries" were forgotten for the moment. Everybody had a flower of some kind--the boys and young men in their hats, the girls in their hair. One heard on all sides "buona festa," "buona Pasqua." How we enjoyed it all, particularly the first time, when we were fresh from America and our principal idea of a fête was the 4th of July. That seemed a magnificent thing in our childish days, when we had friends on the lawn at Cherry Lawn, a torch-light procession with a band (such a band) from the town, and father's speech, standing at the top of the steps and telling the boys that if they worked hard and studied well, any one of them might become President of the United States, which statement of course was always received with roars of applause. [Illustration: Last Benediction of Pope Pius IX. from the Balcony of St. Peter's.] We went back to the Piazza always at night to see the "Girandola" fireworks, and there was almost the same crowd waiting for the first silvery light to appear on the façade of St. Peter's. It was marvellous to see the lines of light spread all over the enormous mass of stone, running around all the cupolas and statues like a trail of silver, in such quantities that the stone almost disappeared, and the church seemed made of light--quite beautiful. The illumination lasted a long time--gold light came after the silver, and I think it was perhaps more striking when they began to go out one by one, leaving great spaces in darkness--then one saw what an enormous edifice it was. I have written you a volume--but every turn here recalls old, happy days--"Roma com'era"--and I must come back to the present and our farewell dinner at the Noailles'. We were a small party--all the French Embassy, the Duc de Ripalda, the Chilian Minister and his wife, Maffel, Visconti Venosta, and Lanciani. W. and Noailles retired to the fumoir and talked politics hard. We shall soon be back in the thick of it now, and W. will take his place again in the Senate. It will seem funny to be quietly settled in the rue Dumont d'Urville--riding in the Bois in the morning and driving over to the Senate in the afternoon, with the boy, to get W. Ripalda and I had a long talk. He tells me he still holds the same opinion about American women--they are the prettiest and most attractive in the world. There is something--he doesn't know what--that makes them different from all the others. I asked him if he remembered Antoinette Polk; to which he promptly replied, "Ah, qu'elle était belle--une déesse." I must tell her how she lives in his old memory. I always find Noailles pleasant--so grand seigneur. We found all sorts of cards and invitations when we came in, and a surprise for me from Father Smith which pleased me greatly, a silver medal of Leo XIII. in a case. It is about the size of a five-franc piece--rather larger if anything, and so like, the small head, and fine, sharply cut features, such a nice note, too, from Father Smith; he was very glad to be able to offer me something which he knew I would prize, and that it wasn't necessary to be of the same religion to admire and appreciate a great intellect and a good man. I am very proud of my two pictures, and shall show them triumphantly to some of my Catholic friends and relations who can't understand a Protestant and a heretic caring for such souvenirs. We can't accept any more dinners as we leave on Monday, W. for Naples and I for Florence. I wanted very much to go to Ostia, I should like W. to see that desolate, sandy shore with the pines coming down almost to the water's edge, and the old castle rising up in the distance; but it is an all-day excursion and we haven't time. We will try and do Vei, which is an easy afternoon's drive. I must stop now--W. is deep in Baedeker, looking out Ostia and Vei, and must also write a note to Geoffroy about something they want to see to-morrow. I shall go and see something with Gert. Sunday, April 19, 1880. Yesterday we had an enchanting day at Tivoli, W., Gert and I. Schuyler was detained in Rome, much to his disgust, on business. He loves a day in the country and is most amusing to go about with. He talks to everybody, priests, peasants, soldiers, and always gets odd bits of information about old customs, legends, family histories--all that makes the story of a nation. Tomba gave us a light carriage and a pair of strong horses (our little ones were not up to the long day). We started at 8 in the morning and didn't get back until 8.30. There is a steam tram now all the way out but we preferred driving, as we wanted to stop at Hadrian's Villa. We went out by Porta San Lorenzo, crossed the Arno (the river which makes the falls of Tivoli) at Ponte Mammolo, and had a good two hours' drive (rather more, in fact) to Hadrian's Villa. I didn't find that part of the Campagna very interesting (it was much finer after one left the Villa). We left the carriage at the entrance of a sort of lane (one doesn't see much before getting actually inside) between high banks covered with every description of vine and creepers; and wild flowers and weeds in a tangle at our feet (it was really difficult walking sometimes), and found ourselves in an open space, with ruins in every direction--a half-crumbling wall, weeds choking it up; part of a theatre with broken columns and steps, a few bits of mosaic but not much colour of any kind; some bas-reliefs very well preserved; but one felt that everything of value had been taken away, and what was left was so hidden in long grass and weeds that it was difficult to understand all the former magnificence of the famous Villa. The custode was most conscientious, explained everything--the arena, theatre, baths, temples, etc., but my impression was a mass of grey, broken bits of stones and columns. There were one or two splendid stone pines standing up straight and tall, looking like guardians of past splendour, and in every direction the crooked little grey-green olive trees and fields full of flowers. Gert and I sat on the wall in a shady corner, while W. and the custode went off some little distance to look at a fountain, and we were not sorry to have the rest. The last part of the drive, winding up the hill to Tivoli, was beautiful--such splendid views all the time, either toward Rome (St. Peter's standing out, a faint blue dome at the end of the long, flat plains of the Campagna; or on the other side the Sabine Hills, Soracte, Frascati, etc.). We went straight to the little old hotel of the Sybilla, which looks exactly the same as in our day, and ordered breakfast. We were quite ready for it, having had our "petit déjeuner" at 7.30. The padrone said he wanted half an hour to prepare it, as the regular table-d'hôte was over. Of course the railway tourists got out much quicker than we did and we met them all over the place, when we went out to see the famous Temple of Vesta. It is perched on the top of the cliff, looking as if it would take very little to precipitate it into the mass of rushing, leaping water tumbling itself over the rocks far below at our feet. We had a very good breakfast, capital trout for which Tivoli is famous, and a most talkative landlord who came to superintend the meal and give us any information we wanted. He said we must have donkeys to make the "giro," which would take us about two hours, and we could finish at the Villa d'Este, where the carriage would come and get us. We walked about a little in the town after breakfast through narrow, dirty streets with curious old bits of architecture, and into the church, or cathedral as they grandly call it, of San Francesco; but there was really nothing to see; and at two we started for our tournée to the grottoes of Neptune and the Sirena. We all walked at first, two donkeys with the usual pretty little black-eyed boys at their heads following (W. of course wouldn't have a donkey but took a cane which the padrone of the Sybilla strongly recommended as the steps going down to the grotto were steep and slippery). I wondered how the donkeys would get on, but made no remarks as I knew I could always get off. We walked through the little town under a nice old arch and up a path which was pleasant enough at first, but when we wound round the side of the hill Gert and I were glad to mount our beasts as the sun was very hot and there wasn't an atom of shade. It was a beautiful excursion, always something to see--ruins of old castles, temples, gateways--so much really that one couldn't take in details. From certain "points de vue" the Temple of Vesta seemed almost standing on air--one lost the cliff, which disappeared in a sort of mist. As soon as we began to go down the noise of the rushing water was quite overpowering; we couldn't hear ourselves speak, and the glimpses we had of the quantities of little falls leaping over big rocks and stones were quite enchanting. Our little donkeys were perfectly sure-footed and the path good though steep. We dismounted before getting quite down to the grottoes and the steps certainly were rough and slippery. The guide took charge of Gert, and I followed in W.'s wake very carefully. It was icy cold when we got all the way down. I am generally impervious to that sort of thing, but I felt the cold strike me and didn't stay long. The chill passed entirely as soon as we came out and began the ascent, leaving the dark, deep pool behind us. The road back was, if possible, more beautiful; great ravines with olive trees half way down their sides, mountain streams in every direction making countless little cataracts, all dancing and sparkling in the sun--rocks covered with bright green moss, and fields carpeted with wild flowers. The guide pointed out various ruins--the Villa of Mæcenas--a great square mass on the top of a hill--but we didn't care to make a long détour to go up to it. We were quite satisfied with all the natural beauty we saw around us--one old bridge, the arches covered with moss and flowers, and every now and then through the olive trees one had glimpses of arches, columns, temples--quite beautiful. The only drawback was the Cook's tourists who were riding and walking and talking all over the place, making jokes with the guides and speaking the most execrable Italian. However they had already _done_ the Villa d'Este, so we lost them there, which was a relief. The Villa was enchanting after the heat and glare of the road, and at first we sat quite quietly on a grassy bank and enjoyed the thick shade of the enormous cypresses. The custode was very anxious we should make the classic tour with him but we told him we knew the place--it was by no means our first visit. I explained to him in Italian that I was a "vecchia Romana" (old Roman), to which he replied with true Italian gallantry, "non tanto vecchia--son to vecchio" (no, not at all old--I am old), and old he was, his face all yellow and wrinkled like the peasants who live on the Campagna and are poisoned with malaria. I should think, though, the Villa d'Este was healthy, it stands so high. It is almost uninhabited, belongs now to Cardinal Hohenlohe, but they tell me he never lives there, never sleeps--comes out for the day from Rome and goes back at night. It is sometimes let to foreigners. The garden is quite beautiful, perfectly wild and neglected but a wealth of trees, fountains, statues, terraces--it might be made a paradise with a little care. There are few flowers (like most Italian gardens) except those that grow quite wild. There is still the same great arch at one end of the terrace which just frames a stretch of Campagna, making a beautiful picture. We had a delicious hour wandering about, stopping to rest every now and then, and sitting on some old bit of wall or column--no one there but ourselves and not a sound except the splashing water of the fountains. W. was delighted, and we were very sorry to leave. The afternoon light was so beautiful, penetrating through the black cypress avenue, however, we had a long drive back, longer even than coming, as we wanted to make a détour to look at the sulphur lakes. Our coachman was evidently anxious to leave. We heard an animated parley at the gate of the Villa, and the custode appeared to say the carriage was there and the coachman said it was time to start if we wanted to get back to Rome before nightfall. I think _he_ didn't want to be too late on the road. It was still warm when we started back, but we hadn't gone very far when it changed completely and I was very glad to put on my jacket and a shawl over it. It is a long, barren stretch of Campagna toward the sulphur lakes; one smelt the sulphur some time before arriving. They were not particularly interesting, looked like big, stagnant ponds, with rather yellowish water. Our man was decidedly uncomfortable. The road was absolutely lonely--not a person nor a vehicle of any kind in sight, the long straight road before us, and the desolate plains of the Campagna on each side. He fidgeted on his box, looked nervously from side to side, whipped up his horses, until at last W. asked him what was the matter, what was he afraid of. "Nothing, nothing, but it was late. We were strangers and one never could be quite sure what one would meet." It was not very reassuring, and when we saw once or twice a figure looming up in the distance, a man or two men on horseback, who might be shepherds or who might be bandits, we were not very comfortable either; we seemed to feel suddenly that it was getting dark, that we were alone in a very lonely road in a strange country, and we didn't mind at all when the coachman urged his horses to a quick gallop, and got over the ground as fast as he could. We didn't say much until the little twinkling lights of the first "osterias" began to show themselves, and as we got nearer Rome and met the long lines of carts and peasants, some walking, some riding, we felt better and agreed that it wasn't pleasant to feel afraid, particularly a vague fear that didn't take shape. When we drew up at the door of the hotel, after having deposited Gert at her Palazzo, we asked the coachman what he had been afraid of--was there any danger; to which he (safe on his box in the Piazza di Spagna) replied with a magnificent gesture that a Roman didn't know what fear meant, but he saw the ladies were nervous. It seems absurd now this morning, sitting at the window with the Piazza full of people, that we should have felt so uncomfortable. I asked W. if he was nervous. He said rather, for from the moment of starting he saw the coachman didn't want to take the side-road to the sulphur lakes, which was certainly wild and lonely, also that he was most anxious to get on. If the carriage had been merely stopped to rob us it would have been very disagreeable as we had no means of defence, nothing but our parasols, and of course nobody near to come to our rescue. I don't think our Giuseppe would have made a very vigorous resistance. After all, adventures do happen, and it would have been unpleasant to return to Paris minus one ear or one finger or any other souvenir of a sojourn in a bandit camp. As we didn't get home until nearly nine I proposed no dinner, but "high tea" upstairs in our salon. W. demurred at first, like all men he loathes that meal dear to the female mind, but upon reflection thought it would be best. The gérant came up to speak about some boxes we want to send to Paris direct from here, and we told him of our return and the coachman's evident terror. He said he could quite understand it, that it was a very lonely, unfrequented bit of road leading to the sulphur lakes, and that we had chosen our time badly; all the tourists went first to the lakes before going to Tivoli, and it would have been a temptation to some of the wild shepherds and Campagna peasants to stop the carriage and insist upon having money or jewels. He didn't think there was any danger to our lives, nor even to our ears. They wouldn't have made much of a haul--I had no jewels of any kind, except my big pearl earrings--and W. very little money--three or four hundred francs. It was a disagreeable experience, all the same. I don't like being afraid, and I was. We went a swinging pace for about three-quarters of an hour--the horses on a good quick gallop. I went to church this morning. It is a nice walk from here and the day is enchanting--warm, but just air enough to make exercise pleasant. W. was off early with Geoffroy. They put off yesterday's excursion until to-day, as W. was very anxious to see Tivoli. The trunks are being packed, the gérant apparently superintending operations, as I hear a great deal of conversation in the anteroom. Madame Hubert has an extraordinary faculty for getting all she wants--an excellent quality in a travelling maid. As you know she is very pretty, which again carries out my favourite theory that beauty is the most important gift for a woman. I daresay it won't bear discussion, and I ought to say "goodness," but my experience points the other way. I have so often heard father quote Madame de Staël (who was very kind to him when he was a young man in Paris) who, at the very height of her triumph as the great woman's intelligence of her time, said to him one evening at a big party in Paris, looking at Madame Récamier, who was beautiful, and surrounded by all that was most distinguished and brilliant in the room, "Je donnerai toute mon intelligence pour avoir sa beauté." I am so sorry to go--though of course I shall be glad to see you all, but we have enjoyed ourselves so much. I wonder when I shall see it all again, and I also wonder what makes the great charm of Rome. It appeals to so many people of perfectly different tastes. W. has been perfectly happy and interested (and in many things, not only in inscriptions and antiquities) and I am sure such an absolute change of life and scenes was the best rest he could have after the very fatiguing life of the last two years. Sunday, April 19, 1880, 10 o'clock. We have just come in from our farewell dinner with Gert, our last in Rome, or rather my last. I go to Florence to-morrow morning, but W. stays on till Tuesday. He is going to dine at the Wimpffens to-morrow night with some colleagues and political people. He has stopped downstairs to finish his cigar and give directions about some books he wants sent to Paris, and I will finish this letter. I have nothing to do--the trunks are all packed, some already downstairs, and the salon looks quite bare and uncomfortable, notwithstanding some flowers which Mrs. Bruce and Trocchi have sent for good-bye. Gert and I had a nice afternoon. It was so beautiful that we went for a last drive in the country, and I shall carry away a last summer impression almost, all blue sky, bright flowers, deep shadows, and a warm light over everything. It is wonderful how the Campagna changes--almost from day to day (not only with the change of seasons), quite like the ocean. To-day, for instance, was enchanting, the air soft and mild, a smell of fresh earth and flowers everywhere, the old towers and tombs standing well out, rising out of a mass of high grass and wild flowers, and taking a soft pink colour in the warm sunlight--so clear that one could see a great distance--and all the little villages made white spots on the hills. It is quite different from the winter Campagna, which stretches away--miles of barren, desolate plains; the rocks look quite bare, the hills are shrouded in mist, and one has a feeling of solitude and of dead nature which is curious. I suppose history and all the old legends work upon the imagination and incline us to idealize the most ordinary surroundings; but there are always the long lines of ruined aqueducts, the square, massive towers, and great memorial stones that one comes upon in most unexpected places; and an extraordinary feeling of a great dead past which I don't think one has anywhere else. We passed through the Piazza Montanara, and by the old theatre of Marcellus on our way out. I wanted to see the little, dark, dirty corner I was always so fond of. The fruit-stall was still there, jammed up against the wall, half hidden by the great stones, remains of balconies, and arched windows that jut out from the great black mass--all that remains of the once famous theatre. The piazza was very full--peasants, donkeys, boys selling fruit and drinks, and in one corner the "scrivano" (public letter-writer) with his rickety little old table, pen, paper, and ink, waiting for any one who needed his services. Thirty years ago, it seems, he did a flourishing trade, Sundays particularly, and there would be a long string of people patiently waiting their turn. Much chaffing and commenting when some pretty girl appeared, smiling and blushing, wanting to have a letter written to her sweetheart away with his regiment in foreign parts or high up on some of the hills with his sheep or cattle. To-day there was hardly any one--a wrinkled old woman dictating something about a soldier and apparently not making it very clear, as the writer (not the classic old man with a long beard, but a youth) seemed decidedly impatient. We had quite time to take it all in, as the people (donkeys too) were all standing in the middle of the street and didn't hurry themselves at all to move apart and let the carriage pass. We were evidently near the "Ghetto," as we saw some fine types of Jewish women, tall, handsome creatures, carrying themselves very well; quite unlike the men, who were a dirty, hard-featured lot, creeping along with that cringing, deprecatory manner which seems inherent in the race. We crossed the bridge and drove through part of the Trastevere, which certainly looked remarkably dark and uninviting on this lovely summer afternoon. There are of course fine buildings, churches, and old palaces, some half tumbling down, and all black with dirt and age. The streets were dirty, the children (quantities of them playing in the streets) dirty and unkempt; clothes of all kinds were hanging out of the windows, falling over sculptured balconies and broken statues, in what had been stately palaces--every now and then flowers in a broken vase. There were some fine old arched gateways with a rope across on which clothes and rags were drying, and dreadful old men and women sitting under them on dirty benches and broken chairs. There was a smell (not to use a stronger word) of dirt and stale things, fruit and vegetables, also a little "frittura," which one always perceives in the people's quarter in Rome. I had forgotten how wretched it all was, and we were glad to get away from the smells and the dirt and find ourselves on the road along the river which leads to Ponte Molle. It was too late to think of Vei, but we drove some distance along the road. The Campagna looked quite beautiful, and every group we passed a picture in the soft evening light. Sometimes a woman with a baby on her shoulder (the child with a red cap) standing well out against the sky--sometimes one or two shepherds on their shaggy mountain ponies seeming quite close to us, but really far away on the plains (always wrapped in their long cloaks, though it was a summer evening). Every now and then a merry band of girls and soldiers. The "bersaglieri" with their long feathers and the girls with bright, striped skirts swinging along at a great pace, always singing and laughing; of course the inevitable old woman carrying a heavy load of fagots or dried grass on her poor bent back; and equally of course the man with her lounging along, a cigar in his mouth and hands in his pockets, evidently thinking that to carry a heavy burden was "lavoro di donna." Poor old women! I daresay they hardly remember that they were once straight, active girls, singing and dancing in the sunlight with no thought of old age nor fears for the future. As soon as we crossed the bridge going back there were many more people on the road. There are "osterias," gardens, and small vineyards on each side of the road almost up to the Porta del Popolo, and as it was Sunday, the whole population was abroad. Many of the women carry their babies perched on their shoulders (not in their arms) and steady them with one hand. The little creatures, their black heads just showing out of the sort of bag or tight bands they are wrapped in, look quite contented--some of them asleep. [Illustration: St. Peter's from the Pincio.] We went up to the Pincio, to have a last look at St. Peter's and the Doria pines before the sun went down. There were few people; it was late, and we had the terrace to ourselves. The dome stood out, quite purple, against a clear blue sky, and seemed almost resting on the clouds. There was a slight mist, which detached it from the mass of buildings. Rome hardly existed--we only saw the dome. I was sorry W. was not there to have that last beautiful picture in his mind. Del Monte, who was also lingering on the terrace, joined us and said he would walk back with me along the terrace of the Villa Medici, so I sent Gert back to her palazzo in the carriage and he and I strolled along and talked over old times; so many recollections of things done together--rides on the Campagna, hours of music of all kinds, particularly at the Villa Marconi at Frascati. I asked him if he had ever gone back there since we left. The villa was often let to forestieri. One year there was an English family there, father, mother, _one_ son, and _eight_ daughters. They used to go about always in three carriages. He said he had never known any one there since us. He remembered so well all the music we did in the big room. When it was a fine night all the mezzo ceto (petite bourgeoisie) who were in "villegiatura" at Frascati would congregate under our windows, whenever we were singing and playing. If they liked our music they applauded; if they didn't (which happened sometimes, when the strains were not melodious enough) they were too polite to express disapproval, and would remain perfectly silent. We used to hear them singing and whistling our songs when they went home. We amused ourselves often trying them with music they couldn't possibly know--plantation songs or amateur music which had never been published. We would sing them one evening; the next they would come back and sing all our songs perfectly well (no words, of course). They had an extraordinary musical facility. Often when we stopped, or on some of the rare occasions when we didn't do any music, they would sing some of their songs--many of them ending on a long, sustained note quite charming. It was pleasant to recall all the "tempi passati." We lingered a few moments at the top of the Spanish Steps, quite deserted at this hour of the evening, and when he left me at the door of the hotel I had barely time to talk a little to W. before dressing for dinner. He was rather wondering what had become of me. He had had a delightful afternoon with his friends. They had walked along the banks of the Tiber on the way to Ostia. He says there are all sorts of interesting things to be found there--tombs, bits of Roman wall and pavements, traces of old quays, and subterraneous passages all mixed up with modern improvements. The City of Rome is spending a great deal of money in building new quays, bridges, etc., on a most elaborate and expensive scale. I should think the sluggish old Tiber would hardly know itself flowing between such energetic, busy banks. They drove out for some distance on the road to Ostia, but only got as far as the Monte di San Paolo (I think), from where they had a fine view of the sea, and the pine forests. I am sorry they hadn't time to go on, but we must leave something for the next time. I wonder when it will be. Gert's dinner was pleasant--Mrs. Bruce, Comte Palfy, Father Smith, and Mr. Hooker. They all talked hard. Mr. Hooker has lived so many years in Rome that he has seen all its transformations; says the present busy, brilliant capital is so unlike the old Rome of his days that he can hardly believe it is the same place. It is incredible that a whole city should have lived so many years in such absolute submission to the Papal Government. In those days there were only two newspapers, each revised at the Vatican and nothing allowed to appear in either that wasn't authorized by the papal court; also the government exercised a paternal right over the jeunesse dorée, and when certain fair ladies with yellow hair and elaborate costumes appeared in the Villa Borghese, or on the Pincio, exciting great admiration in all the young men of the place (and filling the mammas and wives with horror), it was merely necessary to make a statement to the Vatican. The dangerous stranger was instantly warned that she must cross the frontier. Palfy, too, remembered Rome in the old days, when the long drive along the Riviera in an old-fashioned travelling carriage (before railways were known in these parts) was a thing planned and arranged months beforehand--one such journey was made in a life-time. He said the little villages where they stopped were something awful; not the slightest idea of modern comfort or cleanliness. The ladies travelled with a retinue of servants, taking with them sheets, mattresses, washing materials (there was a large heavy silver basin and jug which always travelled with his family) and batterie de cuisine; also very often a doctor, as one was afraid of fever or a bad chill, as of course any heating apparatus was most primitive. The Italians sat in the sun all day and went to bed when it was dark and cold. One saw the country and the people much better in that way. Now we fly through at night in an express train, and the Rome we see to-day might be Paris, Vienna, or any modern capital. I mean, of course, inside the walls. As soon as one gets out of the gates and on the Campagna one feels as if by instinct all the dead past of the great city. I told them that in our time, when we lived one summer in the Villa Marconi at Frascati, the arrangements were most primitive. The palace was supposed to be furnished, but as the furniture consisted chiefly of marble statues, benches, and baths--also a raised garden on a level with the upper rooms, opening out of the music-room, the door behind an enormous white marble statue of some mythological celebrity--it didn't seem very habitable to our practical American minds. There were beds and one or two wash-stands, also curtains in one room, but as for certain intimate domestic arrangements they didn't exist; and when we ventured to suggest that they were indispensable to our comfort we were told, "I principi romani non domandono altro" (Roman princes don't ask for anything more). Heavens, how funny all the pourparlers were. Fanny[29] did all the talking, as we were still too new to the language to embark upon a business conversation. Her mother, who was an excellent maîtresse de maison, gave all the directions, which were most particular and detailed, as she was very anxious we should be comfortable, and very doubtful as to the resources of the establishment. The agent was visibly agacé and impatient. Fanny had on a pair of tortoise-shell star ear-rings, and the man told one of our friends afterward that "quella piccola colle stellette" (the young girl with the little stars) was a real "diavolo." It was funny to hear her beginning every sentence "Dice la signora" (madame says), and saying exactly what her mother told her; the mother, standing near, understanding every word, though she couldn't say anything, and looking hard at the agent. He understood her, too. However, we didn't get any more than the Roman princes had, and made our own arrangements as well as we could, having out a large van of furniture of all kinds from Rome. [29] Miss Fanny King, daughter of General Rufus King, United States Minister to the Vatican, now Mrs. Edward Ward. Hooker remembered it all well, as he found the house for us and had many misgivings as to how we should get along. He was always keeping us straight in a financial point of view, as even then, before the days of the enormous American fortunes, Americans were careless about money, and didn't mind paying, and paying well, for what they wanted. In those days, too, it was rather cheap living in Italy, and we were so surprised often by the prices of the mere necessaries of life that we couldn't help expressing our astonishment freely. Poor Hooker was much disgusted. "You might as well ask them to cheat you." We learned better, however, later, particularly after several visits to Naples, where the first price asked for anything was about five times as much as the vender expected to get. "Le tout c'est de savoir." Father Smith and W. got on swimmingly. It is too funny to see them together. The father's brogue is delightful and comes out strong whenever he talks about anything that interests him. He has such a nice twinkle, too, in his eye when he tells an Irish story or makes a little joke. I must say I am very sorry to go. It has been a real pleasure to be back again in Rome and to take up so many threads of my old life. I find Italians delightful to live with; they are so absolutely natural and unsnobbish--no pose of any kind; not that they under-rate themselves and their great historic names, but they are so simple and sure of themselves that a pose would never occur to them. Father Smith asked us a great deal about the German Crown Princess. He had never seen her, but had the greatest admiration for her character and intelligence--"a worthy daughter of her great mother"--thought it a pity that such a woman couldn't have remained in her own country, though he didn't see very well how it could have been managed. He doesn't at all approve of royal princesses marrying subjects. I think he is right--certainly democratic princes are a mistake. There should always be an idea of state--ermine and royal purple--connected with royalties. I remember quite well my disappointment at the first sovereign I saw. It was the Emperor of Austria coming out of his palace at Vienna. We had been loitering about, sight-seeing, and as we passed the Hof-Burg evident tourists, some friendly passers-by told us to stop a moment and we would see the Emperor, who was just driving out of the gates. When I saw a victoria with a pair of horses drive out with two gentlemen in very simple uniform, one bowing mechanically to the few people who were waiting, I was distinctly disappointed. I don't suppose I expected to see a monarch arrayed in ermine robes, with a crown on his head and a sceptre in his hand, but all the same it was a disillusion. Of course when one sees them at court, or at some great function, with brilliant uniforms, grand cordon, and diamond stars, they are more imposing. I don't know, though, whether that does make a difference. Do you remember one of A.'s stories? He was secretary to the British Embassy at Washington, and at one of the receptions at the White House (which are open receptions--all the world can go) all the corps diplomatique were present in the full glory of ribbons and plaques. He heard some one in the crowd saying, "What are all these men dressed up in gold lace and coloured ribbons?" The answer came after a moment's reflection, "I guess it's the band." I don't think I can write any more to-night. I seem to be rambling on without anything much to say. If I could tell you all I am doing it would be much pleasanter. A pen seems to paralyze me and I feel a mantle of dulness settle down on me as soon as I take one in my hand. You will have to let me talk hard the first three or four days after I get home, and be the good listener you always are to your children. It is a beautiful bright night, the sky almost as blue as in the day, and myriads of stars. The piazza is quite deserted. It is early, not yet 10.40, but the season is over, all the forestieri gone, and Rome is sinking back into its normal state of sleepiness and calm. How many times I have looked out on the piazza on just such a night (from Casa Pierret, our old house just next door)! It is the one place that hasn't changed in Rome. I almost feel as if I must go to bed at once, so as to be up early and in my habit for a meet at Cecilia Metella to-morrow morning. I do start to-morrow, but not very early--at ten. I have a line from Mary Bunsen this evening saying they will meet me at the station in Florence to-morrow. I shall arrive for dinner. I am half sorry now I didn't decide to go to Naples, after all. The weather is divine, and I should have liked to have another look at that beautiful bay, with its blue dancing water, and Capri and Ischia in the distance. We had had visions of Sicily, prolonging our stay another fortnight, but W. is rather worrying now to get home. He had a letter from Richard yesterday, telling him to be sure and come back for the Conseil Général. There were two amusing articles in the papers the other day, one saying M. Waddington had been charged by the French Government with a delicate and confidential mission to the Pope; two days after, in another paper, a denial and most vicious attack on W., saying M. Waddington had evidently inspired the first article himself, that he had been charged with no mission of any kind, and they knew from private sources that he would not even be received by the Pope. I daresay a great many people believe both. W. naturally doesn't care--doesn't pay the least attention to what any paper says. I am getting hardened, too, though the process has been longer with me. I don't mind a good vicious article from an opposition paper--that is "de bonne guerre"--but the little perfidious insinuations of the so-called friendly sheets which one can't notice (and which always leave a trace) are very irritating. W. has just come up. He lingered talking in the smoking-room with two Englishmen who have just arrived from Brindisi, and were full of India and all "the muddles _our_ government is making," asking him if he wasn't disgusted as an Englishman at all the mistakes and stupidities they were making out there. They were so surprised when he said that he wasn't an Englishman that it was funny; and when he added that he was a Frenchman they really didn't know what he meant. He didn't explain his personality (I suppose the man of the hotel enlightened them afterward), but stayed on talking, as the men were clever and had seen a great deal. They had made a long tour in India, and said the country was most interesting. The ruins--also modern palaces--on such a gigantic scale. Well, dear, I really must finish now. My next letter will be from Florence. We shall stop at Milan and Turin, but not very long, I fancy, unless W. finds marvels in the way of coins at Milan. I am quite sad to think I shan't look out on the piazza to-morrow night. I think after all these years I still hold to my original opinion that the Corso is the finest street and the Tiber the finest river in the world. _To H. L. K._ MILAN, HÔTEL DE VILLE, Thursday, May 6, 1880. Here we are, dearest mother, almost home--only 26 hours from Paris--so if we are suddenly called back (and I earnestly hope we shan't be) we can start at once. We made our journey most comfortably yesterday, though it was long. We left Florence at 9 in the morning and didn't get here until nearly 8. The Bunsens came with us to the station. I begged them not to at such an early hour but they didn't mind. It would have been nice to stay longer. They have just taken their villa on for another month. Their gardener at Meìngenügen wrote them that it was snowing and a cold wind--horrid weather; so they instantly decided to stay on another month. My belle-mère is delicate and never could have stood a cold, northern spring after this beautiful month of April here. They tried to tempt us with all sorts of excursions--Vallombrosa, Pisa (which I should like to see again, I have such a vivid recollection of the Campo Santo and some of the extraordinary tombs, wide square courts and painted windows). I don't remember if it was there or at Genoa, where we saw such elaborate modern monuments; the marble carved and draped in the most curious manner--a widow kneeling at her husband's tomb, her skirts all embroidered and carved so finely, like lace, and a lace veil--really extraordinary. We found a long train at the station--the night express from Rome. The préfet had kept a compartment for us, and Ubaldino Peruzzi, the former sindaco, a great friend of W.'s, went with us as far as Pistoja. Minghetti was on the train, and he came into our compartment for about an hour, but then adjourned to his own carriage as he was composing a great political speech he makes at Bologna to-night. They are all much excited over the elections, which take place Sunday week, so their time is short. Minghetti has lived and fought through so many phases of Italian history that he is most interesting. They say his memory is extraordinary--so accurate. He never forgets a face or a speech. He says whenever he has an important speech to make he goes for a drive or a long walk--the movement helps him. W. is just the contrary. His great speeches (and they were not many) have always been composed sitting in his big arm-chair smoking the beloved old cherry-wood pipe Ségur brought him from Jersey. When he had got his speech quite in his head, he wrote it, and then it went straight on--never a correction or an erasure. I asked Minghetti if he was nervous. He said not in the least--he was always ready for the fray, and the more he was interrupted the better he spoke, as that proved they were listening to him. I remember so well one of the first days I went to the Assemblée Nationale years ago. Somebody was speaking--apparently well--on some question of the day, and nobody was listening. The deputies were walking about, talking, writing letters, just as if there was nothing going on. I looked down to see if W. was listening, but he was talking cheerfully to Léon Say. It seemed to me incredible that the orator could continue under such circumstances, but W. explained it to me. He was speaking for his electors in the country and for the "Journal Officiel," which would publish his speech _in extenso_ the next day. It was most interesting making the journey with these gentlemen as they had their history at their finger ends. All that part of the country had been so fought over--oceans of blood shed in the fierce struggle against Austrian tyranny--particularly as we got near Milan. It seems incredible what a hard iron rule theirs was--especially if one knows Austria and the Austrians a little. They seem such an easy-going, happy people. All their little villages look clean and prosperous, the peasants cheerful and singing and civil to all strangers and travellers. The country we passed through to-day looked green and smiling, but their idea of work is still primitive, even in Northern Italy. Wherever we passed the people in the fields all stopped and looked at the train--many came running up the bank. If they do that for every train they must lose a considerable amount of time. We were very sorry when our companions departed, but at every station almost Minghetti met friends, and it was evident that he had his head full of politics. It is a long time since I have met any one so interesting. It is such a quick intelligence and he touches every subject so lightly, apparently, only one feels he knows all about it. We made a fair stop at the Bologna station and had a very good breakfast. It recalled so vividly old times and our first journeys to Rome. Even the buffet looked exactly the same. I could have sworn there was the same "fricandeau de veau." The buffet was crowded--it seems there were a lot of Indian officers arriving with their families from Brindisi, with dark turbaned servants and ayahs always in white. However the Indian nurses didn't look so miserable as they used to in winter when we first made the journey down. They were rather bewildered all the same in such a jostling, hurrying crowd. It is funny to see how they cling to their charges, holding the babies tight with one hand and guiding one or two others half hidden in their long white draperies, with the other. I am sure they are excellent, faithful nurses. Our last days in Florence were very full. Tuesday was the day of the races--bright, beautiful weather--and we drove out to see the retour, stationing ourselves at the entrance of the Cascine until 7 o'clock. There was not much to see in the way of equipages--nothing like the Roman turn-outs--but there were some pretty women. The Comtesse Mirafiori (née Larderel), I daresay you will remember the name, was about the prettiest. Her victoria was very well appointed, handsome horses stepping perfectly; and she looked a picture, all in white with a big hat turned up with dark blue and long blue and yellow feathers. I think a woman never looks better than in a victoria--it shows off the dress and figure so well. Lottie, too, looked very well, but she passed so quickly I couldn't see what she had on. I had an impression of white with some pink in her hat. Almost all the women were in white. Of course the Lungarno was crowded--all the loungers taking the most lively interest in the carriages; and when there was a stop criticising freely--but I must say with their natural Italian politeness, confining themselves to expressions of admiration more or less pronounced--never anything disagreeable. We had a mild reception in the evening. Various friends came to say good-bye--Maquays, Peruzzis, Miss Forbes and one or two men. A scientific German--I forget his name--who told W. it would take weeks to see all the coins and interesting things of all kinds at the Milan Museum. We are very comfortable here; the hotel is old-fashioned with a nice open court, and the rooms good. We have a pretty apartment on the front, and as it is on the main thoroughfare, Corso Vittorio Emanuele, we see all that goes on. There is a church opposite--San Carlo, I believe--and we are not far from the Piazza del Duomo. We went for a little stroll last night after dinner, just for W. to smoke his cigar. The Cathedral looked splendid--a gigantic white mass in the midst of the busy square, quantities of people in the streets and sitting at all the cafes, of which there are hundreds--quite like the Paris boulevards on a summer night--everybody talking and laughing and a cheerful sound of clinking glasses. I think they were almost all drinking beer--a great many uniforms--I suppose there is a large garrison. There seemed very few foreigners--we heard nothing but Italian spoken--so unlike Rome and even Florence where one heard always so much English in the streets and the shops. They told me in Florence that there was a large English colony there, living quite apart from the fashionable world--children learning music, or some of the family delicate, needing a mild climate and sunshine--more perhaps in the villas close to the gates than in the town itself. I should think the cutting wind that sweeps the Lungarno would be mortal to weak chests; but up in the hills sheltered by the high walls and olive groves one would be quite protected. Certainly the other day on the terrace of Castello the sun was divine and the air soft and balmy, not a sign of chill or damp--but it was the month of May--the month for Florence. This morning I have been unpacking--or rather Madame Hubert has--and settling myself in my salon, making the two corners--feminine and masculine--as I did in Rome. I have no convenient Palazzo Altemps to help me out with cushions, screens, etc., but I found lovely flowers which the landlord (who received us in dress clothes and his hat in his hand) put there, and as he was very civil and pleased to have the "Excellenza" and hoped I would ask for anything I wanted, I have asked for and obtained an arm-chair, and suggested he should give me a simple table-cover instead of the beautiful green velvet one, embroidered with pink roses, which now ornaments my salon. With my careless way of writing and facility for putting ink all over myself, even in my hair, I am afraid that work of art would be seriously deteriorated. He sent up this morning to know if I wanted my breakfast upstairs--if I would come down he would reserve me a small table in the window. I shall go down--I hate meals in a sitting-room and I should like to see what sort of people there are in the hotel. 10 o'clock. I will go on to-night while W. is putting his papers in order. I breakfasted alone downstairs about 12. The dining-room is a large, handsome room across the court. There were very few people--not more than four tables occupied--a large English family with troops of fair-haired children--girls in white frocks and long black stockings and boys in Eton coats. They all looked about the same age, but I suppose they weren't. They were very quiet and well-behaved, quite unlike any of our small relations. I have vivid recollections of travelling with some of them--all talking at once at the top of their lungs, "Pa, give me a penny," "Pa, give me a cake," "Pa, what's that for?" etc. The reading-room opened out of the dining-room, so I went in to have a look at the papers--found a "Débats" and the "Times," and read up all that was going on in the fashionable and political world. W. came in about 4--he had ordered a carriage for 4.30, and as it was a lovely afternoon we thought we would drive about the streets a little and out into the country. He had had a delightful morning--says the Museum is most interesting--the cabinet de médailles a marvel. He has arranged to go there every day at 10 o'clock--will work there until 3, then come back for me and we shall have our afternoon. He is much pleased with this arrangement but he doesn't think the employees of the cabinet de médailles will find it quite so satisfactory, as some one must always be with him. They never leave any one alone in these rooms. He thinks there are only two people for this service, and they will naturally hate spending a long day doing nothing while he studies and copies. The Directeur received him to-day most enthusiastically--knew all about his collection of coins. We started out about 5 and went first to have a cup of tea at the café the padrone recommended--Cova, I think--and then told the man to drive about the streets and pass the principal buildings. We saw the Duomo again, the Scala (theatre)--if it is open we shall go one night; the great Galerie Victor Emmanuel, full of shops; and quantities of churches, Santa Maria delle Grazie, of course, where is the famous "Cenacolo" of Leonardo da Vinci, but the outside merely. The fresco is only visible until 4--so we shall see the inside of the church another day. We made a turn in the public gardens or promenade where there were quite a number of handsome carriages and saddle horses--many officers riding. It was rather late to attempt a country drive (we had said we would dine downstairs at 7.30), for the turning and twisting about in the streets and stopping every now and then had taken up a good deal of time. We had a nice little victoria with a pair of horses, not unlike the carriage Tomba gave us in Rome. We went down about a quarter to eight. The padrone in his dress clothes was waiting at the foot of the stairs and conducted us with much pomp into the dining-room, where we found a nice round table in the window. The room was quite full--many more people than in the morning, and I should think almost all Italians. They looked at us naturally with much curiosity, as such a fuss was made with us. W. smoked a cigar in the court after dinner and talked to the man of the house who told him about all the distinguished people he had had in his hotel. I found papers and a "Graphic" in the reading-room and was quite surprised when they said it was 10 o'clock. May 7th. It has been pouring all day--straight down. I think it has stopped a little since dinner. We didn't stay long in the reading-room as W. is fairly launched in his coins now and puts his notes in order in the evening. I prowled this morning with Madame Hubert. Before breakfast we went to the Brera. It was almost empty but we found a nice guide, a youngish man, speaking such beautiful Italian that it was a pleasure to hear him, and well up on all the pictures. There are beautiful things, certainly. I was so glad to see some old friends. I was always so fond of the "Amanti Veneziani" of Paris Bordone. The "sposo" looks so young and straight and proud, and the girl's attitude is charming, her brown-gold head drooping on her lover's shoulder as she holds out her hand for the ring he is putting on her finger. Even the inferior pictures of the Paul Veronese school are fine--there is such an intensity of colour. The whole room seemed filled with light and warmth. I think I like the backgrounds and accessories almost as much as the figures. The draperies are so wonderfully done, one can almost touch the gorgeous stuffs, heavy with gold and silver embroidery; and there are one or two high-backed, carved arm-chairs which are a marvel. The beautiful fair women with strings of pearls in their golden hair, and white satin dresses, sitting up straight and slight in the dark wooden chairs, are fascinating; and there are quantities, for Paul Veronese and all his pupils have always so many people in their pictures. We saw of course the "Sposalizia" in a small room quite by itself. The Virgin is a beautifully slight ethereal figure with the marvellous pure face that all Raphael's Madonnas have; but the St. Joseph looks younger than in most other pictures. Our guide was most enthusiastic over the picture. It was a treat to hear him say--"morbidezza" and "dolcissimo." We were there about an hour and a half, and that was quite long enough. One's eyes get tired. We saw splendid portraits of princes and warriors as we passed through the rooms--Moretto, Leonardo da Vinci and others. It was still raining when we came out so we thought we wouldn't attempt any more sight-seeing, and walked up to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele where we were under cover. The Cathedral looked splendid--all the white pinnacles and statues standing out from the dark grey sky. We looked in at all the shop windows, but didn't see anything particularly striking or local except the black lace veils which so many women (not the upper classes) wear here. Madame Hubert being young and pretty was most anxious to adopt that fashion--thought it would be more suitable for Madame as all the suivantes here wore the veil--she would be less remarked going about with Madame--but Madame decidedly preferred the plain little black bonnet of the Parisian femme de chambre. It seems there is a swell Italian woman in the hotel--a Princess--whose maid always wears a veil when she accompanies her mistress in her walks abroad. I was decidedly damp when I got back to the hotel. I breakfasted alone at my little table, and in fact was almost alone in the dining-room--there were only two other tables occupied. The head waiter was very sympathetic about the weather--they always had sun in Milan, just a mauvaise chance to-day. I had the reading-room also to myself, and found plenty of papers in all languages. I have rather a weakness for the "Kölnische Zeitung" (Gazette de Cologne). It is very anti-French, or I might really say anti-everything, as it is always pitching into somebody, but there is a good deal of general information in it. W. came in about 3.30, having worked steadily since 9. It was getting too dark to see much more and his attendant beamed when he saw him putting up his papers and preparing to leave. He says the man is bored to death--wants to talk at first and explain things to him, but he soon realizes that W. is bent on serious work, so he desists and reads a paper and walks about the room and fidgets generally. We waited until 4.30 hoping the rain would stop. It didn't, but the clouds lightened a little and we thought we would go and see the Duomo. I had forgotten how beautiful it is--those great wide aisles quite bare--no chairs, nothing to break the line until quite at the high altar, and the light from the old glass windows coming from so high over our heads it seemed straight from heaven. We sat some little time in one of the side chapels. It looked vast and mysterious--one had such an impression of space and height. Various guides came up and supposed we would not care to go up on the roof on such an afternoon. We told them we would come back the next day if it was fine. They looked so disappointed at having nothing that we finally went down into the crypt to see the tomb and body of San Carlo Borromeo. We had both seen it before but I didn't mind reviving my souvenirs. We had tapers of course as it was quite dark, but we saw quite well the coloured marbles and precious stones of the little chapel--also the body of the Saint, marvellously preserved. It looked very small--hardly the size of a grown man. The guide of course wanted to show us all sorts of relics, and the trésor of the Cathedral, but we preferred going up again to the church, and wandered about looking at the marble tombs and monuments--there are not many, and they are quite lost in the enormous building. Quite down at the bottom of the church, near the door under a baldaquin, is a font in porphyry, said to be the sarcophagus of some saint. The church looked immense as it grew darker and the light gradually faded, leaving deep shadows everywhere. When we turned back, just as we were going out, to have a last glimpse, the high altar seemed far away, and the tall candles looked like twinkling lights seen through a mist or veil. We walked about a little under the arcades. W. wanted some cigars and I an Italian book Minghetti had recommended to me, "Sketches of Life in Milan and Venice under the Austrian Occupation." I have been reading it a little to-night--what an awful life for Italians--a despotic, iron rule, police and spies everywhere, women even making their way into the great Italian houses and reporting everything to the police--the children's games and little songs, the books and papers the family read, the visits they received. The most arbitrary measures prevailed--no young man allowed to leave the city--no papers nor books allowed that were not authorized by the government--and when arrests were made, the prisoners, men or women, treated most cruelly. The Austrians must have felt the hatred and thirst for vengeance that was smouldering in all these young hearts. It seems all the girls and young women, even of the poorest classes, made themselves flags (tricolour) out of bits of anything (paper when they couldn't get anything better) and gave them to all the men, preparing for the "Cinque giorni" when many of them went down under the Austrian bayonets, giving their lives cheerfully and proudly for their country. Radetzsky must have been a monster of cruelty. How they must hate the white uniform and the black and yellow flag. The city is quiet enough to-night. I suppose it is not an opera night. It is only half-past ten and we are on one of the principal thoroughfares, but nothing is passing in the street. The hotel, too, is quiet, one doesn't hear a sound. I fancy most travellers go to the new hotel--the Cavour. We are quite satisfied here, and are most comfortable--the landlord very attentive. He and W. are becoming great friends--they talk politics (Italian) every night while W. smokes. Friday 7th. I see I shall always write at night. After coffee and half an hour in the reading-room (I always go and have a look at the papers while W. smokes) we come upstairs. W. plunges at once into his notes, and I read and write. It has been lovely to-day and we have had a nice afternoon. W. came home to breakfast at 1, as he wanted to see the Brera and "Cenacolo" once again; and it is of course too late when we start for our afternoon drive at 4.30. We walked to the Brera--it isn't far--and were there a long time. We made a long stop in the vestibule looking at the Luini frescoes--all scenes in the Virgin's life--Madonnas, angels, saints--quantities of figures, and colours and accessories of all kinds--wonderful trees and buildings and clouds with angels and seraphim rising out of them. They must have had marvellous imaginations, those early Italian painters. They never saw anything to suggest such pictures to them, and of course never read anything--there were no books to read--merely written manuscripts difficult enough for scholars to decipher. All the wonderful scenes--Nativity, Coronation, etc.--evoked out of their own brains. I think I like the Annunciation the best of all the scenes of the Virgin's life. There is a beautiful one in the Pitti--I forget now by whom--the Virgin just risen from her chair with a half-dazed, half-triumphant look, and the angel kneeling before her with his lily. I like some of the German ones, too, but they are much more elaborate--the Virgin often standing in a wide arch--a portico--more figures in the background--and the Virgin herself quite a German girl--not at all the lovely, spiritual head of the Italian masters. We walked through all the rooms. The Venetian pictures (Paul Veronese school) looked beautiful. W., too, was struck with the splendid colouring. Some of the names quite unknown, and if one looked too closely there were perhaps faults of drawing and exaggeration of colour, but the effect was extraordinary. He admired the men's portraits excessively, by Titian, Tintoretto, Moroni, etc. They are very fine--sometimes a soldier with keen, hard eyes, clad in complete armour--often a noble, some grand seigneur of his time, in black velvet and fur with jewelled cap and chain, a fine patrician head and thoughtful face. We didn't see the young guide who went about with me--I was rather sorry--I wanted W. to hear his beautiful Italian. We stayed so long looking at everything (Luini's pictures are most interesting, too--he must have had an extraordinary capacity for work) that we had just time to get a cab and drive over to Santa Maria delle Grazie to see the "Cenacolo" as it shuts at 4. The Saviour's head, St. John, and some of the other faces are beautiful--but it is so faded (and on the other hand has been touched up a little) that I was disappointed. It was a beautiful bright afternoon and we saw as well as possible, but really "decay's effacing fingers" have been allowed too much sway. They told us it was impossible to guard against the damp, and that eventually the whole thing would be blotted out. However, it has stood the test pretty well through all these years. We went into the church, which was quite empty, except one figure in black, absorbed and motionless, kneeling on the stone pavement. Poor woman, I hope she got what she was praying for so earnestly. From there we went to the church of St. Ambrogio, which is a fine old building--the frescoes and inscriptions much faded. The iron crown used to be kept there (they told us the Kings and Emperors came there to be crowned) but it is now at Monza. I declined any more churches and regular sight-seeing after that--so we went back to the hotel where the carriage was to meet us, went for our cup of tea to Cova's, and then started for a drive. The country quite around the city is not particularly interesting--much cultivated, but flat--vineyards, corn and rice fields all intersected with numberless little canals. Though it was late, 6 o'clock, people were still working in the fields and seemed to keep to their work much more steadily than the peasants about Rome and Florence who were always stopping to talk or look at whatever was passing. We met bands of them trooping along the road--they were generally tall, broad-shouldered, strong men--quite the northern type. We crossed some soldiers, too--cavalry and infantry--quite a big detachment--all had their kits, and baggage wagons following. They were evidently changing garrison. I didn't think the troops looked very smart. The horses were small and very thin, and the men (infantry particularly) dragged along and were rather dirty. Just as they passed us the music struck up a sort of quick march, and it was curious to see the instantaneous effect. The men straightened themselves up, moved more quickly and lightly--it was quite different. I hoped we should get a view of the mountains, but the sunset, though beautiful, was rather misty--however the coachman told us that meant fine weather for to-morrow which will be nice as we are going up on the top of the Cathedral. I was glad to have a little rest before dinner. I plunged again into my book, which is madly interesting--but such horrors--a long imprisonment like Silvio Pellico's was merciful compared to some of the tortures and cruelties--and it seems the Emperor himself was the hardest of all--never forgetting nor pardoning nor listening to any petition or prayer for mercy--no wonder the people were infuriated--mad with rage--women and children working at the barricades during the "five days"; and the old ones, too infirm to take an active part, at the windows pouring down boiling water and oil on the Austrian soldiers. However, I suppose it is the history of all street fighting. I remember the hideous tales they told us of the Paris Commune, when we went back there after the war--how maddened the Versaillais were at the shots, missiles and boiling water which came from all the windows upon them. The reprisals were terrible when the regular troops finally got the upper hand--and I suppose no one will ever know how many innocent people were shot in the first flush of success. I read out bits of my book to W. He said he didn't think the account exaggerated--of course they had chosen all the worst cases. He was at Versailles during the Commune, and saw the first batches of prisoners brought in--such awful looking people--many young, very young men, with wild reckless faces. They probably didn't know, half of them, what they had been fighting for--a vague idea of patrie and liberty, and the natural love of the Parisian gamin for a row and a barricade. _To H. L. K._ MILAN, HÔTEL DE VILLE, May 9, 1880. We have had an awful day, dear mother, pouring steady rain since early morning--clouds grey and low shutting out the city entirely; really so dark I could hardly see to dress--and the streets apparently deserted. W. didn't mind, and was off as usual to his coins at 9 o'clock. He did have a remords de conscience at leaving me all alone all day shut up in a little hotel salon, and said if I would come and get him about 3 we would try and see something. I wrote two letters which will rather amuse the family as they say I only write when I am boring myself in the country or having a series of rainy days--Janet always calls them my rain letters. However, when I had written two my energy in that line was exhausted, and I felt I couldn't sit another moment in that dark salon, so I summoned Madame Hubert (I don't generally care to have a maid for a companion but I didn't like to walk about the streets of a foreign city alone) and we started off with short skirts and umbrellas. The gérant nearly fell off his high stool in the bureau when he saw me preparing to go out--wanted to send for a carriage, a fiacre, anything--but I told him I really wanted to walk, which filled him with amazement. Italians as a rule don't like walking at all, and he thought I was quite mad to go out deliberately, and for my pleasure, on such a day. It wasn't very pleasant in the streets--everybody's umbrella ran into me, and the pavements were wet and slippery. We finally took refuge under the arcades, but there we got quite as much jostled, for everybody who was out, was there; and the sudden gusts of wind and rain around the corners and through the arches were anything but pleasant. I wasn't at all happy, but I liked it better than sitting in the room at the hotel. I was so draggled and my boots so covered with mud that I was rather ashamed to cross the big hall of the hotel when I came in. I found a letter from Gert saying she was so glad we had such delightful weather for Milan. I wish she could look out of my window at this moment. She wouldn't know if she were in Milan or Elizabethtown. The clouds are very low on the roofs of the houses--the city has disappeared in a mist, I can just see across the street. The pavements are swimming--quite rushing torrents in the gutters, and I look down upon a sea of umbrellas. I started out again about 3--in a carriage this time--and went to get W.--extract him from his coins if I could. There was no one, apparently, in the Museum, but a smiling concierge took me to the antiquity and coin rooms where I found W. very busy and happy; quite insensible to rain or any outside considerations. He said the light wasn't very good. A musty old savant with a long ragged beard and very bright black eyes was keeping him company. _He_ was delighted to see me, for he knew that meant stopping work for that afternoon. I talked to him a little while W. was putting his papers in order, and it was evident he had never seen any one with such a capacity for steady work. He encouraged us very much to go and see something (anything that would take us out of the coin room) but we really didn't know what to do with ourselves--a country drive wasn't inviting and it was too dark and late for pictures--all the galleries close at 4. The padrone had recommended the flower show to us in the public gardens, so we thought we would try that. The flowers were all under glass and tents, so we were dry overhead, but the ground was wet and muddy--a general damp, chilly feeling everywhere. I am sure the place is lovely on a bright summer day. There are fine trees, splendid horse chestnuts, pretty paths and little bosquets. The poor flowers looked faded and drooping, even under cover. The roses were splendid--such enormous ones with quantities of leaves, very full. The finest were "Reine Marguerite," "Marguerite de Savoie," "Princess de Piémont." I asked one of the gardeners if the Queen was very fond of flowers--the "Marguerite de Savoie" was a beautiful white rose. "Oh, yes," he said, enthusiastically, "the Queen loves flowers and everything that is beautiful." I thought it such a pretty answer. He showed us, with great pride, a green rose. I can't say I admired it, but it is so difficult and so expensive to produce that I don't think we shall see many. We walked about and looked at all the flowers. Some of the variegated leaves were very handsome. There was a pink broad leaf with a dull green border and an impossible name I should have liked to take away, but the man said it was an extremely delicate plant raised under glass--wouldn't live long in a room (which was what I wanted it for). We thought we would go back and have tea in a new place under the arcades--in the Galleria. The tea was bad--had certainly never seen China--as grown, I daresay, in the rice fields near the city, so we declined that and ordered chocolate, which was very good, and panettoni. W. was rather glad to have something to eat after his early breakfast. It was pouring, but we were quite sheltered in the corner of the veranda; so he smoked and we looked at the people passing and sitting near us. They were certainly not a very distinguished collection--a good many officers (in uniform), loungers who might be anything--small functionaries, I should think--few women of any description, and no pretty ones. The peasant woman coming out of the fields was much better-looking than any we saw to-day. W. had had visitors in the coin room this morning. The Director, who came, he thinks, out of sheer curiosity to see how any one, for his pleasure, could work five or six hours at a time. He brought with him a Greek savant--a most intelligent young man who apparently knew W.'s collection almost as well as he did--and all the famous collections of Europe. They had a most interesting talk and discussion about certain doubtful coins of which 3 Museums--London, Petersburg and Milan--claim to have the only originals. We talked over our plans, but I think we have still two or three more days here. We want to go to Monza. They say the old town and church are most interesting, as well as the Royal Villa. It was rather amusing in the reading-room after dinner. There were many more people--women principally, and English. Some of them had been buying things at the two famous bric-à-brac shops, and they were very much afraid they had paid too much, and been imposed upon. They finally appealed to me (we had exchanged papers and spoken a few words to each other) but I told them I was no good, nothing of a connoisseur for bric-à-brac, and particularly ignorant about lace. They showed it to me, and it looked very handsome--old Venetian, the man had told them. They had also some silver which they had bought at one of the little shops in the Piazza dei Mercanti. I think I will go and see what I can find there. I found W. deep in his Paris courrier when I got upstairs. There was a heap of letters and papers, also Daudet's book "Souvenirs de la Présidence du Maréchal de MacMahon" which l'Oncle Alphonse had sent us, said everybody was reading it at the clubs. W. figures in it considerably, not always in a very favourable light, as judged by Monsieur Daudet; but facts speak for themselves, even when the criticism is not quite fair. I suppose it is absolutely impossible for a Royalist to judge a moderate Republican impartially. I think they understand the out-and-out Radical better. The book is clever. I read out bits to W. (which, by the way, he hates--loathes being read to). It was interesting to read the life we had just been leading described by an outsider. I think W. will give himself a holiday to-morrow if it is fine (at the present moment, with the wind and rain beating against the windows, that seems a remote possibility). He will come back to breakfast and we will have our afternoon at Monza. I have finished my book of the Austrian rule, and I am really glad--the horrors quite haunted me. It seems incredible that in our days one Christian nation should have been allowed to treat another one so barbarously. I should like to go back to my childish days and read "Le mie Prigioni," but I found a life of Cavour downstairs in the hotel library, so I think I shall take that. May 10th. It is lovely this morning (though when the weather changed I don't know, as it seemed to me I heard a steady downpour every time I woke in the night), however, at 9 o'clock it was an ideal summer day, warm, a bright blue sky, no grey clouds or mist, one could hardly believe it was the same city. The atmosphere is so clear that the snow mountains seem almost at the bottom of the street. I went for a walk with Madame Hubert through the old parts of the city--such curious, narrow, twisting little streets. We went into the Duomo for a moment, it looked enormous--cool and dark except where a bright ray of sunshine came through the painted windows, but so subdued that it didn't seem real sunlight seen through all the marvellous coloured glass. There were a few people walking about in little groups, but they were lost in the great space. One didn't hear a sound--the silence was striking--there wasn't even the usual murmur of priest or chorister at the altar as there was no mass going on. We asked the way to the Piazza dei Mercanti on the other side of the Duomo. It is a curious old square--a very bad pavement, grass growing in places between the stones, and all sorts of queer, irregular buildings all around it--churches, palaces, porticos, gateways--a remnant of old Milan. At each end there were little low shops where many people were congregated. I don't know if they were buying--I should think not as they seemed all rather seedy, impecunious individuals judging by their shabby, not to say worn-out garments--all Italians--I think we were the only foreigners in the Piazza (yet it is one of the sights of Milan, mentioned in the guide books). We went, too, and looked at some of the things spread out for sale--many old engravings, carved wooden frames, gold and silver ornaments, and some handsome cups and flagons very elaborately worked--also some bits of old stuff, brocade, and a curious faded red velvet worked in gold, but all in very bad condition. I couldn't find a good piece large enough to make an ordinary cushion. In one corner, squatting in the sun, were two big, dark men with scarlet caps on their heads (they looked like Tunisians). They had muslins, spangled with gold and silver, crêpe de Chine, and nondescript embroidered squares of white, soft silk with wonderful bright embroidery and designs--moons, and ships and trees. We spoke to them in French, but they didn't understand, and answered us in some unintelligible jargon--half Italian, with a few English words thrown in. Some of the old palaces are fine, one in particular which seems to be a sort of bourse now. The portico was crowded with men, all talking at the top of their voices. We had glimpses through the crowd of a fine collection of broken columns, statues, tablets and bas-reliefs inside, but we didn't attempt to get in; though a friendly workman in the street, seeing us stopping and looking, evident strangers, told us we ought to go in and see "le bellezze" (the beautiful things). There is an equestrian statue on one side of the palace--I couldn't quite make out the name, but the inscription says that among other great deeds he "burnt many heretics." I don't suppose they gave him his statue exclusively on that account, but the fact was carefully mentioned. We wandered about rather aimlessly, leaving the Piazza, and finally found ourselves in a wide, handsome street--large palaces on one side and the canal running through the middle. The canal is really very picturesque--the water fairly clear, reflecting the curious, high, carved balconies and loggias (some of them covered with creepers and bright coloured flowers) that hang over the canal. They seemed all large houses, with the back giving on the canal; some of the low doors opening straight out on the water were quite a reminder of Venice; and when there was a terrace with white marble balustrade and benches one could quite imagine some of Paul Veronese's beautiful, fair-haired women with their pearls and gorgeous red and gold garments disporting themselves there in the summer evenings. The palaces on the other side of the street are fine, stately mansions--large doors open, showing great square courts, sometimes two or three stretching far back--sometimes a fountain and grass plot in the middle--sometimes arcades running all around the court, with balconies and small pointed windows--coats-of-arms up over the big doors, but no signs of life--no magnificent porters such as one sees in Rome in all the great houses. They all looked in perfectly good condition and well cared for. I wonder who lives in them. We came out at the Place Cavour and had a look at the statue, which is good--in bronze--an energetic standing figure with a fine head, very like--one would have recognised it anywhere from all the pictures one has always seen of Cavour. There is no group--he standing alone on a granite pedestal--a woman (Fame) kneeling, and writing his name on a scroll. I liked it very much--it is so simple, and we have seen so many allegorical groups and gods and goddesses lately that it was rather a relief to see anything quite plain and intelligible. I wasn't sorry to get back to the hotel and rest a little before starting again this afternoon. I liked walking through the little old crooked streets--they were not empty, there were people in all of them, but decidedly of the poorer classes. They are a naturally polite, sympathetic race--always smiling if you ask anything and always moving to one side to let you pass--unlike the stolid German who calmly and massively takes the middle of the pavement and never dreams of moving to one side, or considering anybody else. I have just been jostled by two stout specimens of the touring Vaterland--they are anything but good types. If they didn't understand the language in which Madame Hubert expressed her opinion I think the tone said something to them, for one man muttered a sort of excuse. If I can keep my eyes open long enough I will finish this letter to-night. We have had a lovely afternoon--didn't get back until 8.30 and have only just come upstairs from dinner. We started a little after three, in a light victoria and a capital pair of small strong post-horses who went at a good, steady, quick trot. The drive is a short hour and a half--not very interesting country--flat rice fields and the same numerous little canals one sees all over Lombardy. Monza is quite a large town--looks very old and Italian. The Cathedral was begun in the sixth century, but rebuilt in the fourteenth. There are all sorts of curious frescoes and relics. We saw, of course, the iron crown which all Austrian Emperors are supposed to wear at their coronation. The last two to wear it were Napoleon and Ferdinand I. It is really a large gold circle with a smaller iron one inside, and studded with precious stones--very heavy. It was shown to us with much pomp, lighted tapers, and a priest in his vestments. He told us the iron band inside was made out of a nail that had been taken from the Saviour's cross. He handled it very reverently, and would hardly let me lift it to see how heavy it was. He showed us many curious things, among others a fan of Queen Theodolinda's, made in the 6th century. It was small, made in leather, and really not too faded, though one had to look closely and with the eyes of faith to see the roses the old priest pointed out. While we were looking at the relics a French pèlerinage came up--quite a long procession; many very nice-looking women. They were all dressed in black, and most of them wore bonnets--some few had black veils--priests of course, and a fair amount of men of all ages. They passed in procession up the aisle, chanting a psalm, which sounded very well, full and solemn. One or two stragglers, two young men and a woman stopped to see what we were looking at, and we had a little talk. They had just arrived over the St. Gothard, hadn't much time, and were very keen to see everything. They said it was very cold crossing the mountain--the heavy rain we had had at Milan had been deep snow on the pass. We went to look at Queen Theodolinda's tomb in one of the side chapels, and then started for the "Casa Reale" as they call the Royal Villa. It has no pretensions to architecture; is a large square building with long, rambling wings. We could only see the great hall and some of the reception rooms downstairs, as they were painting and cleaning upstairs. The rooms had no particular style--large, high ceilings, great windows looking on the park; just what one sees in all Royal Palaces. All the furniture was covered with housses--the gardien took one off an arm-chair to show us the red velvet. The lustres also were covered--the mirrors were handsome. The park is delightful--quantities of trees of all kinds, lovely shady walks, and bosquets. There seemed to be a great deal of game--deer and pheasants walking about quite tame and undisturbed in all directions. The communs and dépendances are enormous, quite a little colony of houses scattered about--régisseur, head-keeper, head-gardener, all with good gardens. We had a nice talk with a half-gardener half-guide who went about with us and showed us all the beauties. The place is low--I should think would be very warm in summer, for even to-day the shade was pleasant and the low afternoon sun in our faces rather trying. There were splendid views every now and then of the distant Alps. The gardener, like every one else who has ever been thrown with her, apparently adored the Queen--said she knew all about the place, and trees, and flowers, and was so beloved in the town. I remember Peruzzi telling me how fond she was of Monza--happier there than anywhere. They certainly love their "Margherita di Savoia." There are pictures of her everywhere, and some one told us that all the girls in Monza are called Margherita. When we were starting back we met the pilgrims again, still walking and chanting on their way to the station. They had a white banner with them, but I couldn't see what the inscription was. The drive home was lovely, even along the long straight road bordered with poplars (quite like a French country road). The evening was delicious, a little cool driving, as we went a very good pace. I was glad to put a light wrap over my shoulders. The sunset clouds were gorgeous, and every now and then glimpses of the snow mountains. I love to see them--those beautiful white peaks, half clouds, half snow--they seem so mysterious, so far away from our every-day life and world. The road was dull, very little passing until we got near Milan. There we met bands of peasants coming in from their work in the fields, and country carts loaded with people--all the young ones singing and talking, and the wrinkled old women looking on smiling. We noticed again what a fine, strong race they are--both men and women--such broad shoulders, and holding themselves so straight. They must have been nasty adversaries when their time came and they shook off the hated Austrian yoke; but they were not cruel victors (so says my book), the wives and daughters of men who had fallen under Austrian cannon nursing and tending their sick and wounded enemies. We met three or four handsome private carriages, also a young man driving a phaeton with a pair of handsome steppers. Our coachman pointed him out proudly to us as the Marchese ----, some name I didn't catch, but he was evidently a swell. I suppose there are villas in the neighborhood, but we didn't see any, nothing but trees, rice fields and little canals and ditches. I think we shall get off the day after to-morrow. W. thinks one more morning with the coins will be enough for him, he wants now to get back. I think he is homesick for the Senate and politics generally, but he won't allow it. We had thought of going to Como for two days, it is so easy from here, but he wants to stop at Turin, so we must give it up. I suppose it won't be as cold at Turin now as we always used to find it crossing in winter. Do you remember one of the first years, coming over the Mount Cenis, how bitterly cold it was, and how we shivered in the big, high rooms of the hotel--a mosaic pavement, bits of thin carpet on the floor, and a fire of shavings in the chimney. We will write and telegraph, of course, from there. I don't think we shall stay more than one night. May 11th. We are really leaving to-morrow morning, get to Turin for dinner. As we telegraphed yesterday the address I hope we shall find letters. It has been lovely again all day, so our last impressions are good. I have quite forgotten the rain and dark of the other day. The padrone has just informed us, with much pride, that the Crown Princess of Germany arrives to-night in this hotel from Vienna. I wish she had come yesterday--I should have liked to see her again. I have been out shopping this morning, but it is difficult; there is not much to buy, at least not in the nice big shops of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, and I am a little afraid of the antiquities--I know so little about bric-à-brac (au fond like modern things just as well, but other people don't, and would much rather have a really ugly, queer-shaped old cup or glass than the most graceful modern creation). The padrone gave me the address of a good antiquity shop, and said I could be perfectly sure in taking anything they said was old, and I need only say he had recommended me to go there. I found beautiful things, but all large, cassoni, high-backed, carved arm-chairs and Venetian mirrors, but the prices were awful and the things much too big. I wanted something smaller that I could put into my trunk. We went back to the Piazza dei Mercanti and, after looking about at many of the little shops, I did find some rather curious silver spoons and boxes. The spoons have quaint, long handles ending in a head, not apostles, but soldiers and women with veils and crowns. The boxes are most elaborately carved--on the cover of one there are 21 figures--a sort of vintage with bunches of grapes. As usual there were many people lounging about and stopping at all the shops--some of them wildly interested in my purchases. One funny little old man with a yellow face and bright eyes was apparently much pleased with the box I chose--nodded and smiled at me, saying: "Una bellezza questa" (this is a beauty). On our way back we went into the great court-yard of the Ospedale Maggiore, an enormous brick building with fine façade and high pointed windows; the walls covered with medallions and ornaments in terra-cotta. I believe it is one of the largest hospitals that exist and certainly once inside those great courts one would feel absolutely cut off from the outside world. There seemed to be gardens and good trees at the back--we saw the green through the cloisters, and there was a fine loggia overlooking the court. It was as sleepy and quiet as possible to-day--no sign of life, no concierge nor porter, nor patient of any kind visible. If we had had time and wanted to go over the hospital I don't know whom we could have applied to. It was very warm walking home. Happily our way lay through narrow streets, with high houses on each side, so we had shade. I found cards and a note from the Murrays (English friends we had met in Rome). They are staying at the Cavour, but will come and dine at our hotel to-night. They are off to the Lakes to-morrow, and as we leave too early it will be our only chance of meeting. It will seem quite strange to see any one we know--we have lived so entirely alone these few days in Milan. I told W. last night I found him a most agreeable companion. We haven't talked so much to each other for years. He is always so busy all day in Paris that except for the ride in the morning, I don't see much of him--and of course in Rome and Florence we were never alone. It is rather late but I will write a few lines and send them off to-morrow morning. W. came home about 4, fussed a little over trunks and interviewed the porter about our tickets, places, etc., and then we started off for the Duomo. There was a party going up just as we got to the door, so we joined forces--about 8 people. The ascent was very fatiguing, quite 500 steps, I should think, mostly inside the tower, with openings giving fine views over the city and Lombard plains. We all halted every now and then--I was the only lady. There were two Englishmen with whom we fraternized. They were making a walking tour through the North of Italy--Piedmont and Lombardy. They addressed W. by name, which surprised him extremely, so much so that he said: "I don't remember, but I suppose we must have met before." "Not at all," they said, "we recognised you from all the pictures we had seen of you in the illustrated papers." What it is to be a celebrity! We did finally, with many stops, get up on the roof, and were well repaid, for the view was enchanting--Milan so far below us we could hardly believe it was a big city, but the mountains quite beautiful. There was a man with a telescope on top, and he pointed out the principal peaks. Monte Rosa was magnificent--stood out splendidly, a round snow peak; Mt. Cervin, Mt. Cenis, the Bernese far away, disappearing in the clouds; and various others whose names I forget, nearer. I couldn't see the Chartreuse of Pavia, though they said it was quite visible, and just the Superga of Turin. Nearer these were various churches and monasteries standing high on hills nearer the town, but I couldn't look at anything but the snow mountains. You can't imagine how divine they were, with the beautiful, soft afternoon sun on them. One couldn't really tell which was cloud and which was mountain--they seemed to be part of the sky. I found the going down more disagreeable than coming up. It was darker, the steps were a little broken at the edge and decidedly slippery; however, we arrived without any adventures. Just as we got to the hotel we saw three or four carriages drive up, and as we went in the porter told us the German Crown Princess with her daughters and a large suite was arriving. We stood in the court to see them pass--but the Princess was not there, only her daughters (3). They were tall, fair, very German-looking, each one with a large bouquet. There seemed any number of ladies and gentlemen in attendance, and a great deal of bowing and deferential manners. We went downstairs about a quarter to eight. We had given the Murrays rendezvous in the reading-room, but they came in just as we crossed the court, and we went straight to the dining-room. They told us the Crown Princess only comes to-morrow. They had gone to the station to meet her (they had seen her in Venice), but there were only the young Princesses. We had a pleasant dinner. They are a nice couple (Scotch). He is very clever, a literary man, rather delicate, can't stand the English winter, and always comes abroad. He knows Italy well and is mad about Venice. She is clever, too, but is rather silent--however, we didn't either of us have a chance to-night, for the two gentlemen talked hard, politics, which Mr. Murray was very keen about. He had a decided thirst for information, and asked W. so many questions about France, the state of politics, the influence of the clergy, etc., that I was rather anxious, as in general there is nothing W. hates like being questioned. However, he was very gracious to-night, and disposed to talk. When he doesn't feel like it wild horses couldn't drag anything out of him. They stayed till ten o'clock, and now I have been putting the last things in my small trunk. The big trunks go straight through from here, and we will pick them up at the Gare de Lyon. The padrone has just been up to ask if we were satisfied with the hotel, and would we recommend him. _To G. W. S._ TURIN, HÔTEL DE L'EUROPE, May 13, 1880. This will be my last letter from Italy, dear. I am sorry to think I am turning my back on this enchanting country. To-day has been perfect; everything, sky, sun, mountains, ugly yellow palaces, grim, frowning buildings, look beautiful--a perfect glow of light and colour. I can scarcely believe it is the same city we used to freeze in, when we passed through it often in old times going down to Rome. Heavens--how cold it was everywhere--a wind that seemed to come straight from the glaciers cutting one in two when there was a great square to be crossed, or whistling through the arcades when we wished to loiter a little and see the shops and curiosities. I can't remember if we stayed at this hotel--I don't think so, as it is very comfortable and that was by no means my recollection of the one we always went to on our way down so many years ago. The rooms are high--we have a nice apartment on the first floor, well furnished--quite modern. We got here yesterday quite early in the afternoon. It is only about 4 or 5 hours by train. We had a most festive "send-off" from Milan. I was well "bunched" as some of our compatriots would say. The padrone gave me a beautiful bouquet of roses when we came downstairs to the carriage, also a nice little basket of fruit which he thought might be acceptable on our journey. He had seen about our carriage--so that was all right--and we found the Director of the Museum, and the Greek friend at the station--also with a bouquet. All our bags and wraps were stowed away in the carriage, and the Director of the Museum (I have never known his name) had also put papers--some illustrated ones--on the seats. I felt rather like a bride starting on her wedding journey. The road wasn't very interesting. We had glimpses of the Alps occasionally, and the day was beautiful, making everything look picturesque and charming. It was rather a relief to get out of the rice fields and little canals. We stopped some little time at Novara--where we had a good cup of coffee. As we got near Turin everything looked very green. There seemed to be more trees and little woods than in the neighbourhood of Milan. The hotel porter was waiting for us at the station with a carriage--so we drove straight off, leaving Madame Hubert in charge of the porter, who spoke French perfectly, to follow with the trunks. The hotel is on the great Place du Château, faces the Palazzo Madama. They have given us a nice apartment, with windows and a good balcony looking out on the Place. We went upstairs immediately to inspect the rooms--the padrone himself conducting us. There were flowers on the table, nice lounging chairs on the balcony. It looked charming. He wanted to send us tea or coffee--but we really couldn't take anything as it wasn't more than two hours since we had had a very fair little goûter at Novara. We said we would dine in the restaurant about 8. He was rather anxious we should have our dinner in the anteroom which was large and light--often used for a dining-room--but we told him we much preferred dining downstairs and seeing the people. We brushed off a little dust--it wasn't a very dirty journey--and started off for a stroll across the Piazza Castello. It is a fine large square, high buildings all around it, and the great mediæval pile Palazzo Madama facing us as we went in. It looked more like a fortress than a palace, but there is a fine double staircase and façade with marble columns and statues--white, I suppose, originally, but now rather mellowed with years and exposure and taking a soft pink tint in the waning sunlight. It was inhabited by the mother of one of the kings, "Madama Reale," hence its name. There is a monument to the Sardinian army in front of the palace with very elaborate bas-reliefs. They told us there was nothing to see inside, so we merely walked all around it, and then went over to the Palazzo Reale, which is a large brick building, with no pretensions to architecture. They say it is very handsome inside--large, high rooms, very luxuriously furnished. Somehow or other luxuriously furnished apartments don't seem to go with Princes of the House of Savoy. One can't imagine them reclining in ladies' boudoirs on satin cushions, with silk and damask hangings. They seem always to have been simple, hardy soldiers, more at home on a battle-field than in a drawing-room. We asked at the entrance if the Duc d'Aoste was here. He told us when he was in Paris that if ever we came to Turin we must let him know--that he always received twice a week in the evening when he was at home and that he would be delighted to see us (I had put an evening dress in my trunk in case we should be invited anywhere)--however he isn't here, away in the country for three or four days on some inspection--so we wrote ourselves down in the book that he might see that we intended to pay our respects. We walked through some of the squares--Piazza Carignano, with the great palace Carignano which also looks grim and frowning, more like a prison than a stately princely residence. I wonder if there are any what we should call comfortable rooms in those gaunt old palaces. I have visions of barred windows, very small panes of glass, brick floors, frescoed ceilings black with age and smoke, and straight-backed, narrow carved wooden chairs. However a fine race of sturdy, fighting men were brought up within those old walls--perhaps Italy would not have been "unita" so soon if the pioneers of freedom had been accustomed to all the luxury and gaiety of the present generation. We wandered back through more squares and saw numberless statues of Princes and Dukes of Savoy--almost all equestrian--the Princes in armour, and generally a drawn sword in their hand--one feels that they were a fighting race. The hills all around the city are charming, beautifully green, with hundreds of villas (generally white) in all directions; some so high up one wonders how the inhabitants ever get up there. In the distance always the beautiful snow mountains. The town doesn't look either very Italian or very Southern. I suppose the Piedmontese are a type apart. We had a table to ourselves in the dining-room, which was almost empty--evidently people dine earlier than we do--and yet it is tempting to stay out on a lovely summer evening. There were several officers in uniform at one table--evidently a sort of mess--about 10. They were rather noisy, making all sorts of jokes with the waiters, but they had nearly finished when we came in and soon departed with a great clatter of spurs and swords. We went for a few moments into the reading-room, which was also quite deserted--only two couples, an English clergyman and his wife both buried in their papers--and a German ménage discussing routes and guides and prices for some excursion they wanted to make. I had kept on my hat as we thought we would go out, take a turn in the arcades and have a "granita." The padrone told us of a famous café where the "granita" was very good, also very good music. W. is becoming such a flâneur, and so imbued with the dolce far niente of this enchanting country that I am rather anxious about him. I think he will want to go every evening to the "Ambassadeurs" when we get back to Paris. We strolled about for some time. It was cool and there were not too many people. Everybody sitting out, smoking and drinking. We got a nice little table--each took an ice (they were very good--not too sweet), and the music was really charming--quite a large orchestra, all guitars and mandolins. Whenever they played a well-known air--song or waltz--the whole company joined in. It sounded very pretty--they didn't sing too loud, and enjoyed themselves extremely. We stayed some time. I am writing as usual, late, while W. is putting his notes in order. He found a note, when he came in, from the Director of the Museum, saying he would be delighted to see W. at the Museum to-morrow morning at 9 o'clock, and would do the honours of the cabinet de médailles--also the card of a Mr. Hoffman who wants very much to see W. and renew his acquaintance with him after many years. He is in this hotel and will come and see us to-morrow. W. has no idea who he is, but of course there are many Hoffmans in the world. I suppose the gentleman will explain himself. If it is fine we shall drive to the Superga to-morrow afternoon, and start for Paris the next evening. W. says three séances (and his are long) will be all he wants in the Museum. May 14th. It has been again a lovely summer day--not too hot, and a delicious breeze as we drove home from La Superga. I have been out all day. W. was off at 9 to meet his Director, and I started at 10 with Madame Hubert to flâner a little. We went first to the arcades where are all the best shops, but I can't say I was tempted. There was really nothing to buy--some nice blankets, half silk, half wool--not striped like the Como blankets, a plain centre, red or blue, with a bright border--but it was not a day to buy blankets, with the sun bright and strong over our heads. There was a good deal of iron work, rather nice. I didn't care for the jewellery. I didn't see myself with a wrought-iron chain and cross, but I did get a large ring--strong and prettily worked, which the man said many people bought to put in a hall and hang keys on. There were plenty of people about. I didn't think the peasants were any particular type--the men looked smaller than those about Milan--slight, wiry figures. A good many were evidently guides, with axes and coils of rope strapped on their backs. They told us in one of the shops (where as a true American I was asking questions, eager for information) that there were several interesting excursions to be made in the neighbourhood. We went again to the Piazzo Castello which is so large that it is a very fair walk to go all around the square--and went into the hall to see the statue (equestrian of course) of Victor Amadeus the First. The horse is curious, in marble. Then we went to the Cathedral, which is not very interesting. The sacristan showed us a collection of small, dark pictures over the altar which he said were by Albert Dürer; but they were so black and confused I couldn't see anything--a little glimpse of gilding every now and then that might be a halo around a saint's head. What was interesting was the "Cappella del S. S. Sudario," where the linen cloth is kept which is said to have enveloped the body of our Saviour. It is kept in an urn, and only shown by special permission. This, however, the sacristan obtained for us. He disappeared into the sacristy and soon returned bringing with him a nice fat old priest in full canonicals and very conversationally disposed. He lifted off the top of the urn and drew out the linen cloth most carefully. It is very fine linen, quite yellow and worn--almost in holes in some parts. He spread it out most reverently on a marble slab, and showed us the outlines of a man's figure. Marks there were certainly. I thought I saw the head distinctly, but of course the imagination is a powerful factor on these occasions. The chapel was dimly lighted, a few tapers burning, and the old priest was so convinced and reverent that it was catching. I suppose it might be possible--certainly all these traditions and relics were an enormous strength to the Catholic Church in the early days when there were no books and little learning, and people believed more easily and simply than they do now. The chapel is a rather ugly, round building, almost black, and with a quantity of statues (white) which stand out well. It is the burial chapel of the House of Savoy, and there are statues apparently to every Emmanuel or Amadeus that ever existed--also a large marble monument to the late Queen of Sardinia. Do you remember when Prince Massimo, in Rome, always spoke of Victor Emmanuel, when he was King of Italy, and holding his court in Florence, as the King of Sardinia? We had walked about longer than we thought, but everything is close together, and it was time to get back to the hotel for breakfast. I had the dining-room almost to myself--my table was drawn up close to the open window, a vase of roses upon it, and one or two papers--English, Italian, and the "Figaro." Paris seems to be amusing itself. Henrietta writes that the Champs Elysées are enchanting--all the horse chestnuts in full bloom. Here there is abundance of flowers--one gets glimpses of pretty gardens through open gates and openings in railings and walls. There are plenty of street stalls, too, with fruits and flowers, but one doesn't see the wealth of roses and wistaria climbing over every bit of wall and up the sides of houses as in Florence. The city is perfectly busy and prosperous, but has none of the delightful look of laziness and enjoyment of life and the blue sky and the sunshine that one feels in Rome and Florence. W. came in about 3, having had a delightful morning in the cabinet des médailles. The Director, a most learned, courteous old gentleman, was waiting for him, and though he knew W. and his collection by reputation, he was quite surprised to find that W. knew quite as much about his coins and treasures as he did himself. He hadn't supposed it possible that a statesman with so many interests and calls upon his time could have kept up his scientific work. We shall leave to-morrow night, and before we started for our drive we sent off letters and telegrams to Paris. I can hardly believe it possible that Friday morning I shall be breakfasting in Paris, going to mother to tea in the afternoon, and taking up my ordinary life. Henrietta writes that she has told Francis we are coming home, but frankness compels her to say that he has received that piece of information with absolute indifference. He has been as happy as a king all the months we have been away--spoiled to his heart's content and everybody in the two establishments his abject slaves. We started about 4 for La Superga in a nice light basket carriage and pair of strong little horses. It was rather interesting driving all through the town, which is comparatively small--one is soon out of it. The streets are narrow, once one is out of the great thoroughfares, with high houses on each side. Every now and then an interesting cornice with a curious round tower and some funny old-fashioned houses with high pointed roofs and iron balconies running quite around the house, but on the whole it is much less picturesque and colder looking than the other Italian cities. The road was not very animated--few vehicles of any description, a few fiacres evidently bound for the Superga like us. There were not many carts nor many people about. What _was_ lovely was the crown of green hills with little chestnut groves--some of the little woods we drove through were quite charming, with the long slanting rays of the afternoon sun shining through the branches--just as I remember the Galleria di Sotto at Albano--the chestnuts grow high on all the hillsides. We had quite a stiff mount before we got to the church (but the little horses trotted up very fairly) and a good climb after we left the carriage. One sees the church from a long distance. It has a fine colonnade and a high dome which lifts itself well up into the clouds. We followed a pretty steep, winding path up to the top, quantities of wild roses, a delicate pink, like our eglantine at home, twisting themselves around the bushes. There is nothing particularly interesting in the church. It is the burial place of the Kings of Savoy, and their vault is in the crypt. The last one buried there was Charles Albert. Victor Emmanuel is buried in the Pantheon in Rome. We found a nice old sacristan who took us about and explained various statues to us--also all the glories of the Casa di Savoia, winding up with an enthusiastic eulogy of Queen Margherita--but never as Queen of Italy, "nostra Principessa." She has certainly made herself a splendid place in the hearts of the people--they all adore her. We climbed up to the roof, and what a view we had, all Turin at our feet with its domes and high, pointed roofs, standing in the midst of the green plain dotted all over with villas, farms, gardens, little groves of chestnuts, the river meandering along through the meadows carpeted with flowers, and looking in the sunlight like a gold zig-zag with its numerous turns--always the beautiful crown of hills, and in the background the snow peaks of the Alps. It was very clear--they looked so near, as if one could throw a stone across. Our old man pointed out all the well-known peaks--Monte Rosa, Mont Cenis, and many others whose names I didn't catch. He said he had rarely seen the whole chain so distinct. It reminded me of the view we had of the Bernese Oberland so many years ago--the first time we had seen snow mountains. On arriving at Berne we were hurried out on the terrace by the padrone of the hotel as he said we might never again see all the chain of the Alps so distinctly. Beautiful it was--all the snow mountains rolling away in the distance; some of them straight up into the sunset clouds, others with little wreaths of white soft clouds half way up their summits, and clouds and snow so mingled that one could hardly distinguish which was snow. I thought they were all clouds--beautiful, airy intangible shapes. We loitered about some time on the terrace after we came down, watching the lights fade and finally disappear--the mountains looking like great grey giants frowning down on the city. The air was decidedly cooler as we drove home, but it was a perfect summer evening. There were more people out as we got near Turin--all the workers getting a little breath of air after the toil of the day. May 15th. I will send this very long letter off this evening. Our trunks are packed and downstairs, and I will finish this while we are waiting for dinner. We have had a nice day. Madame Hubert and I strolled about this morning and went to see the house where Cavour was born, and also to the Giardino Pubblico. The grounds are handsome, but not particularly interesting at that hour in the morning, and there wasn't a creature there but ourselves. There are various monuments--one of Manin with a fine figure of the Republic of Venice. I breakfasted as usual alone, and at 3 W. came in, having quite finished his work at the Museum. He had given rendezvous to Mr. Hoffman for 3.30, and while we were sitting talking waiting for him the padrone came up and said an officer "de la part du Duc d'Aoste" wanted to see us. We begged him of course to send him up, and in a few minutes a very good-looking young officer in uniform made his appearance. He named himself--Count Colobiano I think--but we didn't catch the name very distinctly; said he had had the honour of dining with us at the Quai d'Orsay with his Prince, and that the Prince was "désolé" not to be in Turin these days and had sent him to put himself at our disposition. He proposed all sorts of things--the opera, a drive (or a ride if we preferred) to a sort of parade ground just outside the gates where we would see some cavalry manoeuvres. He knew I rode, and could give me a capital lady's hack. I was rather sorry he hadn't come before--it would have amused us to see the manoeuvres, and also to ride--but that would have been difficult as I had no habit with me. However, as we are leaving this evening there was nothing to be done. He was very civil and I think rather sorry not to do us the honours of his city. He said there were beautiful excursions to be made from Turin, and asked us if we had seen anything. We said only the Superga which he evidently didn't consider very interesting. He said the Duke was very sorry to have missed us, and that he thought I would have enjoyed an evening at the Palace, as the receptions were very gay and informal. I cannot imagine (I didn't tell him that) anything gay with the Duc d'Aoste. He is very sympathetic to me, but a type apart. A stern, almost ascetic appearance, very silent and shy, but a beautiful smile. He looks exactly as one would imagine a Prince of the House of Savoy would. We saw him often in Paris, and his face always interested me--so grave, and as if he were miles away from the ordinary modern world. It was just after he had given up his Spanish throne, and although I didn't think that crown weighed very heavily on his brow he must have had some curious experiences and seen human nature in perhaps not its best form. The young aide-de-camp paid us quite a visit, and we made him promise to come and see us if ever he came to Paris. We sent all sorts of messages and regrets to the Duke. Just as he was going out Mr. Hoffman appeared and he sat an hour with us. He was delightful, has lived almost all his life in and near Turin, and had all the history of Piedmont at his fingers' ends. He seems to have met W. years ago at a dinner in London and has always followed his career with much interest. It was most interesting to hear him talk. He admires Cavour immensely--said his death was a great calamity for Italy--that he hadn't given half of what he could, and that every year he lived he grew in intellect and knowledge of people. He also said (as they all do) that he mistrusted Louis Napoleon so intensely, and through all their negotiations and discussions as to Italy's future he was pursued by the idea that the Emperor would go back upon his word. He said the Piedmontese were a race apart--hardly considered themselves Italian, and that even now in the little hamlets in the mountains the peasants had vague ideas of nationality, and never spoke of themselves as Italians, or identified themselves with Italian interests and history--that in the upper classes traces of French occupation and education, superstition and priestly rule were just getting effaced. For years in the beginning of the century the priests (Jesuits) had it all their own way in Turin. The teaching in the schools was entirely in their hands, and most elementary; and numerous convents and monasteries were built. Cavour as a very young man soon emancipated himself from all those ideas, and if he had lived, Hoffman thinks, much trouble would have been averted, and that he would certainly have found some means of coming to a better understanding with the Vatican, "the most brilliant and far-seeing intellect I have ever met." He wanted to take us to some palace where there are some very curious and inédites letters of Cavour's to the owner, who was one of his friends, and always on very confidential terms with him; but of course we couldn't do that as we are off in a few hours. Hoffman would never have gone, I think, if the padrone hadn't appeared to say dinner was ready. I left him and W. talking while I went to give some last instructions to the maid, and when I got back to the salon they had drifted away from Cavour and Piedmont and were discussing French politics, the attitude of Germany and the anti-religious feeling in France. I shall miss all the talk about Italy and her first struggles for independence when I get home. French people, as a rule, care so little for outside things. They travel very little, don't read much foreign literature, and are quite absorbed in their own interests and surroundings. Of course they are passing through a curious phase--so many old things passing away--habits and traditions of years upset, and the new régime not yet sufficiently established nor supported by all that is best in the country. I think W. has been impressed and rather surprised at the very easy way in which all religious questions are disposed of in Italy, and yet the people are certainly superstitious and have a sort of religious feeling. The churches are all full on great feast days, and one sees great big young peasants kneeling and kissing relics when they are exposed; and several times even here about Turin we have seen men and women kneeling at some of the crosses along the road. I have rarely seen that in France--but then the Italians are a more emotional race. They are difficult problems--a country can't live without a religion. RUE DUMONT D'URVILLE. We got back yesterday morning early. Hubert and the big mare were waiting for us, and we were whirled up to the house in a very un-Italian manner (for the horses in Italy are just as easy-going as the people and never hurry themselves nor display any undue energy). Francis and "nounou" were waiting at the door--he really quite excited and pleased to see us--and the sisters appeared about 11. We talked a little and they helped me unpack; and I went to see mother directly after breakfast and stayed there all the afternoon. This morning I am writing as usual at the window and hearing all the familiar Paris sounds. The goat-boy has just passed with his 6 goats and curious reed pipe, the marchande de cressons with her peculiar cry advertising her merchandise, and ending "pour la santé du corps" on a long shrill note--the man who sits on the pavement and mends china. He is just at our door, and has a collection of broken plates and cups around him. I suppose some are ours. The "light lady" next door is standing at her door in her riding habit, the skirt already very short and held well up over her arm displaying a fair amount of trousers and high boots. She is haranguing in very forcible language the groom who is cantering the horse up and down the street, and of course even in our quiet street there are always badauds who stop and ask questions, and hang around the porte-cochères to see all that is going on. W. has just started on horseback and that is a most interesting moment for the street, for his big black "Paddy" has a most uncomfortable trick. From the moment he takes the bridle in his hand and prepares to mount, the horse snorts, and stamps and backs, making such a noise in the little court-yard you would think he was kicking everything to pieces. As soon as the big doors are opened and he can get out he is as quiet as a lamb. It is a beautiful morning and Paris looks its best--all the horse-chestnuts in full bloom, the sky a bright blue, and quantities of equipages and riders streaming out to the Bois. I suppose I shall ride too in a day or so, and by the end of the week Italy will be a thing of the past, and I shall be leading my ordinary Paris life. There was a procession of people here all the afternoon yesterday to see W., and now he is quite au courant of all that has taken place in his absence, and I think in his heart he is delighted to be back and in the thick of the fight again. He is going to the Senate this afternoon. We had a most comfortable journey from Turin--a lit-salon to ourselves, the maid just behind us. All the first hours were charming as long as we could see as all the country about Turin is so lovely. We passed Moncalieri which stands high on the hills--a long low building, and one or two other fine old castles, all perched high on the slope of the mountains. I always sleep so well in a train that I was hardly awake when we passed at Modane, though I was dimly conscious of the stop, the lanterns flashing along the train and a great deal of conversation. Nobody disturbed us as we had given our "laissez-passer" to the garde, but I fancy we made a long halt there as the train was very crowded. We had our coffee at Dijon very early in the morning. It was quite pleasant to see the regular little French brioche again. I went to tea with Mother and afterward we went for a turn in the Bois, which looked beautiful--so green--all the horse-chestnuts out (the road from Auteuil to Boulogne with the rows of red horse-chestnuts on each side quite enchanting); the hills, St. Cloud and Mont Valérien blue and standing out sharply against the sky, but I missed the delicious soft atmosphere of Italy and the haze that always hung around the hills and softened all the outlines. The Seine looked quite animated. There really were one or two small boats out, and near Puteaux (the club) some women rowing, and of course the little river steamers flying up and down, crowded. We are dining with l'Oncle Alphonse who will give us all the news of the day, and the opinion of the "Union." PART II ITALY REVISITED _To H. L. K._ ROME, Friday, February 12, 1904. It seems so strange to be back here, dear, after twenty-four years, and to find Rome so changed, so unchanged. The new quarter, an absolutely new modern city, might be Wiesbaden, or Neuilly, or any cheerful resort of retired business men who build hideous villas with all sorts of excrescences--busts, vases, and plaques of bright-coloured majolica--and the old city with the dirty little winding streets going toward St. Peter's exactly the same; almost the same little ragged, black-eyed children playing in the gutters. We had a most comfortable journey down. Hardly any one in the sleeping-car but ourselves, so we all had plenty of room. It was a bright, beautiful morning when we got to Modane--the mountains covered with snow, and the fresh keen wind blowing straight from the glaciers was enchanting after a night in the sleeping-car. They are frightfully overheated. I had some difficulty in persuading the attendant to open my window for the night; however, as I was alone in my compartment, he finally agreed, merely saying he would come and shut it when we passed through the great tunnel. We dined at the buffet at Genoa, and it didn't seem natural not to ask for the Alassio train. The station was crowded, the Roman train too--they put on extra carriages. We got to Rome about 9.30. I had been ready since 6.30, eagerly watching to get a glimpse of St. Peter's. I had visions of Cività Vecchia and running along by the sea in the early morning. I was quite awake, but I didn't see St. Peter's until we were quite near Rome. We ran through long, level stretches of Campagna, with every now and then a great square building that had been probably a mediæval castle, but was now a farm--sheep and cattle wandering out of the old gateway, and those splendid big white oxen that one sees all over the Campagna--some shepherds' huts with their pointed thatched roofs dotted about, but nothing very picturesque or striking. We passed close to San Paolo Fuori le Mura, with the Testaccio quite near. We paid ourselves compliments when we arrived at the station for having made our long journey so easily and pleasantly. No one was tired and no one was bored. Between us all (we were four women) we had plenty of provisions and Bessie[30] and Mme. de Bailleul were most successful with their afternoon tea, with delicious American cake, that Bessie had brought over in the steamer. [30] Marquise de Talleyrand-Périgord, née Curtis. After all, Josephine[31] finds she has room for me and my maid, which of course is infinitely pleasanter for me than being at the hotel. Her house is charming--not one of the old palaces, but plenty of room and thoroughly Italian. The large red salon I delight in; it couldn't exist anywhere else but in Rome, with its red silk walls, heavy gilt furniture, pictures, and curious bits of old carving and majolica. It opens into a delightful music-room with fine frescoes on the walls (a beautiful bit of colour), and beyond that there is a small salon where we usually sit. [31] Princess di Poggio-Suasa, née Curtis. She has a picture there of her husband, Don Emanuele Ruspoli (late syndic of Rome), which has rather taken possession of me. It is such a handsome, spirited face, energetic and rather imperious--he looks a born ruler of men, and I believe he was. They say Rome was never so well governed as in his time. He was one of the first of the young Roman nobles who emancipated themselves from the papal rule. As quite a youth he ran away from college and entered the Italian army as a simple soldier, winning his grade as captain on the battle-field. He was a loyal and devoted servant of the House of Savoy, and took a prominent part in all the events which ended in proclaiming Victor Emanuel King of Italy, with Rome his capital. This quarter, Piazza Barberini, is quite new to me. It used to seem rather far off in the old days when we came to see the Storys in the Barberini Palace, but now it is quite central. The great new street--Via Veneto--runs straight away from the Piazza, past the Church of the Cappucini--you will remember the vaults with all the dead monks standing about--the Palace of the Queen Mother, and various large hotels, to Porta Pinciana. Just the other side of the road is the new gate opening into the Villa Borghese. I rather lost myself there the first day I prowled about alone. It was raining, but I wanted some air, and turned into the Via Veneto, which is broad and clean. I walked quite to the end, and then came to the Porta Pinciana, crossed the road, and found myself in a beautiful villa. I didn't come upon any special landmark until I got near the Museum, which, of course, looked quite familiar. However, I was bewildered and hailed a passing groom to inquire where I was, and even when he told me could scarcely believe it. I had never gone into the Villa Borghese except by the Piazza del Popolo. They have made extraordinary changes since the Government has bought it--opened out new roads and paths, planted quantities of trees and flowers, and cleaned up and trimmed in every direction. It will be a splendid promenade in the heart of the city, but no longer the old Villa Borghese we used to know, with ragged, unkempt corners, and little paths in out-of-the-way places, so choked up with weeds and long grass that one could hardly get through. I haven't quite got my bearings yet, and for the first three or four mornings I took myself down to the Piazza di Spagna, and started from there. There, too, there are changes--new houses and shops (I was glad to see old Spithoever in the same place) and a decided look of business and modern life. There were not nearly so many people doing nothing, lounging about, leaning on the "barca," or playing mora on the Spanish Steps. All the botte were still standing in the middle of the street, the coachmen smiling, cracking their whips, and making frantic little dashes across the piazza whenever they saw an unwary stranger who might want a cab. The Spanish Steps looked beautiful, glowing with colour--pink, yellow, and that soft grey tint that the Roman stones take in the sunlight. All the lower steps are covered with flower stalls (they are not allowed any longer scattered all over the piazza), and most picturesque they looked--daffodils, mimosa, and great bunches of peach-blossoms which were very effective. There were very few models in costume sitting about; a few children playing some sort of game with stones, which they interrupted to run after the forestieri and ask for a "piccolo soldo" (a penny), and one or two old men with long white beards--might have done for models of the apostles or Joseph in the flight into Egypt--wrapped in their wonderful long green cloaks, sitting in the sun. There is one novelty--an "ascenseur." I haven't been in it yet, but I shall try it some day. One must get accustomed to many changes in the Rome of to-day. I recognised some of the houses at the top of the steps--the corner one between Vias Sistina and Gregoriana, where the Rodmans used to live one year, and where we have dined so often, sitting on the round balcony and seeing the moon rise over the Pincio. I walked home the other day by the Via Sistina to the Piazza Barberini, and that part seemed to me absolutely unchanged. The same little open mosaic shops, with the workmen dressed in white working at the door--almost in the street. In one shop they were just finishing a table, putting in countless bits of coloured marble (some of them very small). It was exactly like the one we brought from Rome many years ago, which stands now in Francis's smoking-room. There was of course the inevitable jeweller's shop, with crosses and brooches of dull yellow Roman gold and mosaic, and silk shops with Roman silk scarfs, and a sort of coarse lace which I have seen everywhere. In the middle of the street a miserable wrinkled old woman, her face mahogany colour, attired in a red skirt with a green handkerchief on her head, was skirmishing with a band of dirty little children, who had apparently upset her basket of roast chestnuts, and were making off with as many as they could find, pursued by her shrill cries and "maledizioni." We went out in the open carriage yesterday, and drove all around Rome leaving cards--finished with a turn in the Villa Borghese and Pincio. It was too late for the Villa--almost every one had gone, and one felt the chill strike one on going into the thick shade after coming out of the bright sun in the Piazza del Popolo. We crossed Queen Margherita at the gate. She looked so handsome--the black is very becoming and threw out well her fair hair and skin. She was driving in a handsome carriage--the servants in mourning. One lady was with her--another carriage and two cyclists following. All the people bowed and looked so pleased to see her, and her bow and smile of acknowledgment were charming. We made a short turn in the Villa and then went on to the Pincio, which was crowded. There were some very handsome, stately Roman equipages, plenty of light victorias, a few men driving themselves in very high phaetons, and the inevitable botta with often three youths on the one seat. The carriages didn't draw up--the ladies holding a sort of reception as in our days, when all the "gilded youth" used to sit on the steps of the victorias and surround the carriages of the pretty women. They tell me the present generation comes much less to the Villa Borghese and Pincio. They are much more sporting--ride, drive automobiles and play golf. There are two golf clubs now--one at Villa Pamphili Doria, the other at Aqua Santa. Every time we go out on the Campagna we meet men with golf clubs and rackets. Monday I prowled about in the morning, always making the same round--Via Sistina and the Spanish Steps. The lame man at the top of the steps knows me well now, and we always exchange a cheerful good morning. Sometimes I give him some pennies and sometimes I don't, but he is always just as smiling when I don't give him anything. In the afternoon Madame de B. and I went for a drive and a little sight-seeing. She wanted a bottle of eucalyptus from the monks at Tre Fontane, so we took in San Paolo Fuori le Mura on our way. The drive out is charming--a few dirty little streets at first--past the Theatre of Marcellus, which looks blacker and grimmer, if possible, than when I last saw it--and then some distance along the river. There are great changes---high buildings, quays, boats, carts with heavy stones and quantities of workmen--really quite an air of a busy port--busy of course in a modified sense, as no Roman ever looks as if he were working hard, and there are always two or three looking on, and talking, for every one who works--however, there is certainly much more life in the streets and the city looks prosperous. The great new Benedictine Monastery of Sant' Anselmo stands splendidly on the heights (Aventine) to the left, also the walls and garden of the Knights of Malta. The garden, with its long shady walks, between rows of tall cypress trees, looked most inviting. We left the Testaccio and Protestant Cemetery on our right and followed a long file of carriages evidently going, too, to San Paolo. That of course looked exactly the same--an enormous modern building with a wealth of splendid marble columns inside. The proportions and great spaces are very fine, and there was a brilliant effect of light and colour (as every column is different). Some of the red-pink was quite beautiful, but it is not in the least like a church--not at all devotional. One can't imagine any poor weary souls kneeling on that slippery, shining marble pavement and pouring out their hearts in prayer. It is more like a great hall or academy. We went out into the quiet of the cloisters, which are interesting, some curious old tombs and statues, but small for such a huge basilica--always the square green plot in the centre with a well. We had some difficulty in making our way to the carriage through a perfect army of boys and men selling photographs, postal cards, mosaic pins with views of the church, etc., also bits of marble, giallo antico, porphyry and a piece of dark marble, almost black, which had come from the Marmorata close by. We went on to the Tre Fontane, about half an hour's drive--real country, quite charming. We didn't see the churches until we were quite close to them--they are almost hidden by the trees. I never should have recognised the place. The eucalyptus trees which the monks were just beginning to plant when we were here before have grown up into a fine avenue. They were cutting and trimming them, and the ground was covered with great branches making a beautiful green carpet with a strong perfume. Various people were looking on and almost every one carried off a branch of eucalyptus. We did too, and one is now hanging over the bed in my room. It is supposed to be very healthy. It has a very strong odour--to me very agreeable. A service was going on in one of the churches, the monks singing a low monotonous chant, and everything was so still; one was so shut in by the trees that the outside world, Rome and the Corso might have been miles away. We went into the church to see the three fountains built into the wall. Tradition says that when St. Paul was executed his head bounded three times and at each place a fountain sprang up. A tall young monk was going about with some seminarists explaining the legend to them. They were listening with rapt attention and drinking reverently at each fountain. We went into the little farmacia and found there a German monk who was much pleased when he found we could speak German. He told us there were 90 monks there, and that the place was perfectly healthy--not as when they began their work, when many died of fever. We each bought a bottle of eucalyptus, and were sorry to come away. The light was fading--the eucalyptus avenue looked dark and mysterious, and the low chant of the monks was still going on. We went to a beautiful ball in the evening at the Brancaccios'. They built their palace--which is enormous--has a fine marble staircase (which showed off the women's long trailing skirts splendidly) and quantities of rooms filled with beautiful things. I didn't take them all in as I was so much interested in the people, but Bessie has promised to take me all over the palace some morning. To-day we have been to the Brancaccio garden. It was a beautiful bright morning, so Bessie Talleyrand proposed we should drive up and stroll about there. We telephoned to Brancaccio, who said he would meet us in the garden. You can't imagine anything more enchanting than that beautiful southern garden in the heart of Rome. We drove through the court-yard and straight up the hill to a little bridge that connects the garden with Mrs. Field's old apartment. Mrs. Field really made the garden (and loved it always). When they bought the ground it was simply an "orto" or field, and now it is a paradise filled with every possible variety of trees and flowers. It seems that wherever she saw a beautiful tree she immediately asked what it was and where it came from, and then had some sent to her from no matter where. Of course hundreds were lost--the journey, change of soil, transplanting them, etc., but hundreds remain and the effect is marvellous. Splendid tall palms from Bordighera, little delicate shrubs from America and Canada all growing and thriving side by side in the beautiful Roman garden. There is a fine broad allée which goes straight down from the winter garden to the end of the grounds with the Colosseum as background. It is planted on each side with green oaks, and between them rows of orange and mandarin trees--the branches heavy with the fruit. We picked delicious, ripe, warm mandarins from the trees, and eat them as we were strolling along. It was too early for the roses, of which there are thousands in the season--one saw the plants twining around all the trees. There are all sorts of ruins and old walls in the garden, baths of Titus, Sette Celle, and one comes unexpectedly, in odd corners, upon fine old bits of carving and wall which have no name now, but which certainly have had a history. The sky was a deep blue over our heads, and the trees so thick, that the ugly new buildings which skirt one side of the garden are almost completely hidden. It was a pleasure just to sit on a bench and live--the air was so soft, and the garden smell so delicious. [Illustration: The Barberini Palace. The residence of the Storys.] After breakfast I went out early with Josephine--leaving of course some cards first--after that we took a turn on the Pincio, which was basking in the sunshine (but quite deserted at that hour except by nurses and children), and then drove out toward the Villa Pamphili. The road was so familiar, and yet so different. The same steep ascent to the Janiculum with the beggars and cripples of all ages running alongside the carriage and holding out withered arms and maimed limbs--awful to see. The road is much wider--more of a promenade, trees and flowers planted all along. The fountains of San Pietro in Montorio looked beautiful--such a rush of bright, dancing water. We drove through the Villa Corsini--quite new since my time--a beautiful drive, and drew up on the terrace just under the equestrian statue of Garibaldi from where there is a splendid view--the whole city of Rome at our feet, seen through a warm, grey mist that made even the ugly staring white and yellow houses of the new quarter look picturesque. They lost themselves in a charming ensemble. St. Peter's looked very near but always a little veiled by the haze which made the great mass more imposing. We looked straight across the city to the Campagna--all the well-known monuments--Cecilia Metella, aqueducts and the various tombs scattered along the Via Appia were quite distinct. The statue of the great revolutionary leader seemed curiously out of place. I should have preferred almost the traditional wolf with the two little boys sucking in her milk. We couldn't stay very long as we had a tea at home. We met many people and carriages going up as we came down, as it was the day for the Villa Pamphili, which is open to the public twice a week. We went to a ball at the Storys' in the evening, and as we went up the great staircase of the Barberini Palace (the steps so broad and shallow that one could drive up in a light carriage) finishing with the steep little flight quite at the top which leads directly to the Story apartment, I could hardly realize how many years had passed since I had first danced in these same rooms, and that I shouldn't find the charming, genial maître de maison of my youth who made his house such an interesting centre. I think one of Mr. Story's greatest charms was his absolute simplicity, his keen interest in everything and his sympathy with younger men who were still fighting the great battle of life which he had brought to such a triumphant close. His son, Waldo Story,[32] who has inherited his father's talent, keeps up the hospitable traditions of the house. [32] The well-known sculptor. The ball was very animated--all the young dancing Rome was there. Monday, February 15th. I am alone this morning--the others have gone to the meet at Cecchignola fuori Porta San Sebastiano. I should have liked to go for the sake of old times, but I was rather tired, and have the court ball to-night. Last night I had a pleasant dinner at Count Vitali's. He has bought the Bandini palace, and made it, of course, most comfortable and modern. The rooms are beautiful--the splendid proportions and great space one only sees now in Rome in the old palaces. The dinner was for M. Nisard (French Ambassador to the Vatican), but it wasn't altogether Black. There were one of the Queen's ladies and one or two secretaries from the Quirinal embassies. The line between the two parties is not nearly so sharply drawn as when I was here so many years ago. A few people came in the evening. Among the first to appear was Cardinal Vincenzo Vannutelli, whom I was delighted to see again. It is long since I have seen a cardinal in all the bravery of his red robes and large jewelled cross, and for the first time I felt as if I were back in old Rome. We had a nice talk and plunged into Moscow and all the coronation festivities. I told him I was very anxious to see the Pope, which he said could easily be arranged. Nisard, too, was charming--said I should have an audience spéciale as ancienne ambassadrice. I waited to see the cardinal go with all the usual ceremonies for a prince of the Church. Two big footmen with flambeaux and tall candles escorted him to his carriage. The cardinal came alone, which surprised me. I thought they always had an attendant--a sort of ecclesiastical aide-de-camp. Saturday Marquise de Bailleul and I were received by the Queen. Our audience was at four. I went for her a little before. We drove straight to the Quirinal, the great entrance on the piazza. Two swell porters were at the door, but no guards nor soldiers visible anywhere. We went up the grand staircase, where there was a red carpet and plenty of flowers, but no servants on the steps. The doors of a large anteroom at the top of the stairs were open, and there were four footmen in powder, culottes, and royal red liveries, and three or four men in black. We left our wraps. I wore my grey velvet and Marquise de Bailleul was in black with a handsome sable cape (which she was much disgusted at leaving). We went at once into a large room, where the dame de palais de service was waiting for us. She had a list in her hand, came forward at once and named herself, Duchesse d'Arscoli, said she supposed I was Madame Waddington. I introduced Marquise de Bailleul. The gentleman also came up and said a few words. There were one or two other ladies in the room, evidently waiting their turn. In a few minutes the door into the next room opened and two ladies came out. The duchess went in, remained a second, then coming back, waved us in. She didn't come in herself, didn't announce us, and shut the door behind us. We found ourselves in a large, rather bare room, with no trace of habitation--I fancy it is only used for official receptions. The Queen was standing at a table about the middle of the room. She is tall, dark, with fine eyes and a pretty smile. We made our two curtseys--hadn't time for the third, as she advanced a step, shook hands, and made us sit down. The visit didn't last very long. I fancy she was rather tired, as evidently she had been receiving a good many people, and was probably bored at having to make phrases to utter strangers she might never see again. We had the usual royal questions as to our children. As I only had _one_ child my conversation on that subject soon came to an end, but Marquise de Bailleul has three small ones, so she got on swimmingly. The Queen talked very prettily and simply about her own children, and the difficulty of keeping them natural and unspoiled; said people gave them such beautiful presents--all sorts of wonderful mechanical toys which they couldn't appreciate. One thing she said was rather funny--that the present they liked best was a rag doll the American Ambassadress had brought them from America. As soon as we came out other people went in. I fancy all the strangers asked to the ball had to be presented first to the Queen. I think the London rule was rather simpler. There the strangers were always presented at supper, when the Princess of Wales made her "cercle." We went to a ball in the evening at Baron Pasetti's (Austrian Ambassador to the Quirinal). They have a fine apartment in the Palazzo Chigi. I remembered the rooms quite well, just as they were in the old days when Wimpffen was Ambassador. The hall was most brilliant--all Rome there. The Pasettis are going away, and will be much regretted. I think he is rather delicate and has had enough of public life. I hadn't seen him since Florence, when we were all young, and life was then a succession of summer days--long afternoons in the villas, with roses hanging over the walls, and evenings on the balcony, with nightingales singing in the garden and the scent of flowers in the air, "der goldener Zeit der jungen Liebe" (the golden days of young love). Sunday Bessie and I went to the American church. Dr. Nevin is still away. The church is large, but was quite full--there are evidently many Americans in Rome. The great mosaics over the altar were given by Mrs. Field. Wednesday, February 17th. Monday night we went to the court ball. It was very amusing, but extraordinarily simple, not to say democratic. Bessie and I went together early, so as to get good seats. If I hadn't known we were going to the palace I should have thought we had made a mistake in the house. The square of the Quirinal was so quiet, almost deserted--no troops nor music, nor crowd of people looking on and peering into the carriages to see the dresses and jewels--no soldiers nor officials of any kind on the grand staircase. Some tall cuirassiers and footmen in the anteroom--no chamberlains nor pages--nothing like the glittering crowd of gold lace and uniforms one usually sees in the anteroom of a palace. We walked through two or three handsome rooms to the ball-room, where there were already a great many people. The room is large, high, but rather too narrow, with seats all round. There was no raised platform for the court--merely a carpet and two large gilt arm-chairs for the King and Queen and a smaller one for the Comte de Turin. It was amusing to see all the people coming in, the different uniforms and jewels of the women giving at once an air of court. The entrance of the royal cortège was quite simple. They played the "Marcia Reale," which I don't at all care for. It is a frivolous, jumpy little tune, not at all the grave, dignified measure one would expect on such an occasion. There were no chamberlains walking backward with their great wands of office in their hands. The master of ceremonies, Count Gianotti, looking very well in his uniform and broad green ribbon, came first, and almost immediately behind him the King and Queen, arm in arm, the Count of Turin, and a small procession of court functionaries. The Queen looked very well in yellow, with a splendid tiara. She took her seat at once; the King and Comte de Turin remained standing. What was charming was the group of young court ladies who followed the Queen--tall, handsome women, very well dressed. There was no "quadrille d'honneur," none of the royalties danced. The dancing began as soon as the court was seated--any little couple, a young lieutenant, an American, any one, dancing under the nose of the sovereigns. The Queen remained sitting quite alone, hardly speaking to any one, through three or four dances; then there was a move, and she made her "cercle," going straight around the room, and speaking to almost every one. The King made no "cercle," remained standing near the "corps diplomatique," who were all massed on one side of the thrones (or arm-chairs). He talked to the ambassadors and étrangers de distinction (men--they say he rarely speaks to a woman). We all moved about a little after the Queen had passed, and I found plenty of old friends and colleagues to talk to. Neither the Russian Ambassador, Prince Ourousoff, nor any of his staff were present, on account of the war. Tuesday it poured all the morning, so I didn't get my usual walk, and I tried to put some sort of order in our cards, which are in a hopeless confusion. The unfortunate porter is almost crazy. There are four of us here (as Madame de Bailleul's cards and invitations also come here), all with different names, and it must be impossible not to mix them. [Illustration: Victor Emanuel III., King of Italy.] It stopped raining in the afternoon and Josephine and I walked up to Palazzo Brancaccio after tea, to ask about Bessie, who has been ill ever since her ball. The streets were full of people, a few masks (as it was Mardi Gras), but quite in the lower classes. I should think the Carnival was dead, as far as Society is concerned. We got very little information about Bessie--the porter would not let us go upstairs, said the Princess was in the country, or perhaps in Paris. It seems he is quite a character, well known in Rome. When Mr. Field was ill, dying, of course everybody went to inquire, which seemed to exasperate him, as he finally replied, "ma sì, è malato, va morire, ma lasciarlo in pace--perchè venir seccar la gente?" (yes, yes, he is ill, dying, but leave him in peace--why do you come and bore people?). We stepped in at a little church on our way back, where a benediction was going on. It was brilliantly lighted, and filled with people almost all kneeling--princesses and peasants--on the stone floor. It was a curious contrast to the motley, masquerading crowd just outside. Thursday, 18th. It is still showery and the streets very muddy to-day. This morning I made a solitary expedition to St. Peter's--armed with an Italian guide-book M. Virgo lent me (it was red, like Baedeker, so I looked quite the tourist). I went by tram--M. Virgo and the children escorted me to the bottom of the Via Tritone, and started me. The tramway is most convenient. We went through the Piazza di Spagna, across the Piazza del Popolo, and turned off short to the left. It was all quite different from what I remembered--a fine broad road (Lungo Tevere) (along the Tiber) with quantities of high, ugly modern buildings, "maisons de location," villas, and an enormous Ministère, I forget which one, Public Works, I think, which could accommodate a village. Some of the villas are too awful--fancy white stucco buildings ornamented with cheap statues and plaques of majolica and coloured marble. The tram stopped at the end of the piazza facing the church, but one loses the sense of immensity being so near. I saw merely the façade and the great stone perron. I wandered about for an hour finding my way everywhere, and recognising all the old monuments--Christina of Sweden, the Stuart monuments, the Cappella Julia, etc. There were quite a number of people walking about and sitting on the benches, or in the stalls of the little side chapels, reading their Baedekers. I came home in a botta for the sum of one franc. I wanted to cross the St. Angelo Bridge and see the crooked dirty little streets and low dark shops I remembered so well--and which will all disappear one day--with new quarters and all the old buildings pulled down. They were all there quite unchanged, only a little dirtier--the same heaps of decayed vegetables lying about in the corners, girls and women in bright red skirts and yellow fichus on their heads, long gold earrings, and gold pins in their hair, standing talking in the doorways, children playing in the gutter, a general smell of frittura everywhere. The little dark shops have no windows, only a low, narrow door, and the people sit in the doorway to get all the light they can for their work. We paid some visits in the afternoon, winding up with Princess Pallavicini. Her beautiful apartment looked just the same (only there, too, is an ascenseur) with the enormous anteroom and suites of salons before reaching the boudoir, where she gave us tea. I remembered everything, even the flowered Pompadour satin on the walls, just as I had always seen it. Saturday, February 20th. These last two days have been beautiful--real Roman days, bright blue sky, warm sun, and just air enough to be pleasant. Yesterday I trammed over again to the Vatican (a trolley car is an abomination in Rome, but so convenient). I wanted to see the statues and my favourite Apollo Belvedere, who hasn't grown any older in 24 years--the same beautiful, spirited young god. As I was coming downstairs I saw some people going into the garden from a side door, so I stepped up to the gardien, and said I wanted to go too. He said it was quite impossible without a permesso signed by one of the officers of the Pope's household. I assured him in my best Italian that I could have all the permessi I wanted, that I knew a great many people, was only here de passage and might not be able to come back another day, and that as I was alone he really might let me pass--so after a little conversation he chose a time when no one was passing, opened the door as little as he could and let me through. There were two or three parties being conducted about by guides, but no one took any notice of me, and I wandered about for some time quite happy. It is a splendid garden--really a park. I seemed to have got out on a sort of terrace (the carriage road below me). There were some lovely walks, with cypress and ilex making thick shade, and hundreds of camellias--great trees. The view toward Monte Mario was divine--everything so clear, hardly any of the blue mist that one almost always sees on the Campagna near Rome. The sun was too hot when I had to cross an open space, and I was glad to get back to the dark cypress walks. It was enchanting, but I think the most beautiful nature would pall upon me if I knew I must always do the same thing. I am sure Léon XIII. must have pined often for the green plains and lovely valleys around Perugia, and I don't believe the most beautiful views of the Alban hills tipped with snow, and pink in the sunset hues, will make up to the present Pope for the Lagoons of Venice and the long sweep of the Grand Canal to the sea. Tuesday, 23d. Yesterday Josephine and I drove out to the meet at Acqua Santa, out of Porta San Giovanni. There were quantities of carriages and led horses going out, as it is one of the favourite meets--you get out so soon into the open country. There was such a crowd as we got near that we got out and walked, scrambling over and through fences. It was a much larger field than I had ever seen in Rome--many officers (all in uniform) riding, and many women. The hounds broke away from a pretty little olive wood on a height, and stretched away across a field to two stone walls, which almost every one jumped. There were one or two falls, but nothing serious. They were soon out of sight, but we loitered on the Campagna, sitting on the stone walls, and talking to belated hunters who came galloping up, eager to know which way the hunt had gone. Sunday we had a party and music at the French Embassy (Vatican). Diemor played beautifully, so did Teresina Tua. When they played together Griegg's sonata for piano and violin it was enchanting. All the Black world was there, and a good many strangers. Thursday, February 25th. We dined last night at the Wurts', who have a charming apartment in one of the finest old palaces (Anticci Mattei) in Rome. The staircase beautiful, most elaborately carved, really reminded me of Mont St. Michel. Their rooms are filled with all sorts of interesting things, the collection of years. The dinner was very pleasant--half Italian, half diplomatic. I have just come in from my audience with the Pope. I found the convocation when I got home last night. Bessie was rather disgusted at not having received hers, as we had planned to go together; but she said she would come with me. She would dress herself in regulation attire--long black dress and black veil--and take the chance. We had a mild humiliation as we got to the inner Court. The sentries would not let us pass. We had the small coupé, with one horse, and it seems one-horse vehicles are not allowed to enter these sacred precincts. We protested, saying we had a special audience, and that we couldn't get out on the muddy pavement, but it was no use; they wouldn't hear of our modest equipage going in, so we had to cross the court--quite a large one, and decidedly muddy--on foot, holding up our long dresses as well as we could. It seemed so natural to go up the great stone staircase, with a few Swiss guards in their striped red and yellow uniform standing about. We spoke to one man in Italian, asking him the way, and he replied in German. I fancy very few of them speak Italian. We passed through a good many rooms filled with all sorts of people: priests, officers, gardes nobles, women in black, evidently waiting for an audience, valets de chambre dressed in red damask, camerieri segreti in black velvet doublets, ruffs and gold chains and cross--a most picturesque and polyglot assemblage; one heard every language under the sun. We were passed on from one room to another, and finally came to a halt in a large square room, where there were more priests, one or two monsignori, in their violet robes, and two officers. I showed my paper, one of the monsignori, Bicletis (maestro di Casa di Sua Santità), came forward and said the Pope was expecting me; so then I presented Bessie, explained that her name had been sent in at the same time with mine, and that if she could be admitted (without the convocation) it would be a great pleasure to both of us to be received together. He said there would be no difficulty in that. While we were talking to him the door into the audience chamber was opened, and a large party came out--the Comte and Comtesse d'Eu and their sons, with a numerous suite. We had barely time to exchange a few remarks, as Monsignor Bicletis was waiting for us to advance. We found the Pope standing in the centre of rather a small room. The walls were hung with red damask, the carpet also was red, and at one end were three gold chairs. We made low curtseys--didn't kneel nor kiss his hands, being Protestants. He advanced a few steps, shook hands, and made us sit down, one on each side of him. He was dressed, of course, entirely in white. He spoke only Italian--said he understood French, but didn't speak it easily. He has a beautiful face--so earnest, with a fine upward look in his eyes; not at all the intellectual, ascetic appearance of Léo XIII., nor the half-malicious, kindly smile of Pius IX., but a face one would remember. I asked him if he was less tired than when he was first named Pope. He said, oh, yes, but that the first days were very trying--the great heat, the change of habits and climate, and the change of food (so funny, one would think there needn't be any great change between Rome and Venice--less fish, perhaps). He talked a little--only a little--about France, and the difficult times we were passing through; knew that I was a Protestant and an "old Roman"; asked how many years since I had been back; said: "You won't find the old Rome you used to know; there are many, many changes." [Illustration: Pope Pius X.] He was much interested in all Bessie told him about America and the Catholic religion in the States--was rather amused when she suggested that another American cardinal might perhaps be a good thing. He asked us if we knew Venice, and his face quite lighted up when we spoke of all the familiar scenes where he had spent so many happy years. He was much beloved in Venice. He gave me the impression of a man who was still feeling his way, but who, when he had found it, would go straight on to what he considered his duty. But I must say that is not the general impression; most people think he will be absolutely guided by his "entourage," who will never leave him any initiative. As we were leaving I said I had something to ask. "Dica, dica, La prego" (Please speak), so I explained that I was a Protestant, my son also, but that he had married a Catholic, and I would like his blessing for my daughter. He made me a sign to kneel and touched my head with his hand, saying the words in Latin, and adding, "E per Lei et tutta la sua famiglia" (for you and all your family). He turned his back slightly when we went out, so we were not obliged to back out altogether. We talked a few moments in the anteroom with Monsignor Bicletis, but he was very busy, other people going in to the Pope, so we didn't stay and went down to Cardinal Mery del Val's apartment. He receives in the beautiful Borgia rooms, with Pinturicchio's marvellous frescoes (there was such a lovely Madonna over one of the doors, a young pure face against that curious light-green background one sees so often in the early Italian masters). The apartment was comparatively modern--calorifère, electric light, bells, etc. While we were waiting the Comte and Comtesse d'Eu and their party passed through. The Cardinal received us standing, but made us sit down at once. He is a tall, handsome homme du monde, rather English looking, very young. He told us he was not yet forty years old. He speaks English as well as I do (his mother was English), and, they tell me, every other language equally well. He seemed to have read everything and to be au courant of all that was said and thought all over the world. He talked a little more politics than the Pope--deplored what was going on in France, was interested in all Bessie told him about America and Catholicism over there. They must be struck with the American priests and bishops whom they see in Europe, not only their conception, but their practice of their religion is so different. I had such an example of that one day when we asked a friend of ours, a most intelligent, highly educated _modern_ priest, to meet Monsignor Ireland. He was charmed with him--listened most intently to all he said, particularly when he was speaking of the wild life out West, near California, and the difficulty of getting any hold over the miners. (He started a music hall, among other things, to have some place where the men could go in the evenings, and get out of the saloons and low drinking-shops.) Our friend perfectly appreciated the practical energy of the monsignor, but said such a line would be impossible in France. No priest, no matter how high his rank, would be allowed such initiative, and the people would not understand. He didn't keep us very long, had evidently other audiences, and not time to talk to everybody. I am very glad to have seen him. He is quite unlike any cardinal I have ever met--perhaps because he is so much younger than most of them, perhaps because he seemed more homme du monde than ecclesiastic; but I daresay that type is changing, too, with everything else in Rome. We had a most interesting afternoon. After all, Rome and the Vatican are unique of their kind. Friday, February 26th. I had my audience from Queen Margherita alone this afternoon. Bessie and Josephine have already been. Her palace is in the Veneto (our quarter) and very near. It is a large, fine building, but I should have liked it better standing back in a garden, not directly on the street. However, the Romans don't think so. There are always people standing about waiting to see her carriage or auto pass out--they wait hours for a smile from their beloved Regina Margherita. I went up in an ascenseur--three or four footmen (in black) and a groom of the chambers at the top. I was ushered down a fine long gallery with handsome furniture and pictures to a large room almost at the end, where I found the Marquise Villa Marina (who is always with the Queen), the Duchesse Sforza Cesarini (lady in waiting), and one gentleman. There were three or four people in the room, waiting also to be received. Almost immediately the door into the next room opened, and the Duchesse Sforza waved me in (didn't come in herself). I had at once the impression of a charming drawing-room, with flowers, pictures, books, bibelots--not in the least like the ordinary bare official reception room where Queen Elena received us. The Queen, dressed in black, was sitting on a sofa about the middle of the room, and really not much changed since I had seen her twenty-four years ago at the Quirinal, when the present King was a little boy, dressed in a blue sailor suit. She is a little stouter, but her blonde hair and colouring just the same, and si grand air. She was most charming, talked in French and English, about anything, everything--asked about my sister-in-law, Madame de Bunsen, and her daughter Beatrice, whom she had known as a little girl in Florence. She is very fond of automobiling, so we had at once one great point of sympathy. She had read "The Lightning Conductor" and was much amused with it. We talked a little about the great changes in Rome. I told her about our visit to the Pope, and the impression of simplicity and extreme goodness he had made upon us. I can't remember all we talked about. I had the same impression that I had twenty-four years ago--a visit to a charming, sympathetic woman, very large-minded, to whom one could talk of anything. Sunday, 28th. It has poured all day, but held up a little in the afternoon, so we went (all four) to see Cardinal Mathieu, who lives in the Villa Wolkonsky. He had asked us to come and walk in his beautiful garden (with such a view of the Aqueducts) but that was of course out of the question. He is very clever and genial, and was rather amused at the account we gave him of our discussions. We are two Catholics and two Protestants, and argue from morning till night--naturally neither party convincing the other. He told us we should go to the Vatican to-morrow--there was a large French pèlerinage which he presented. We would certainly see the Pope and perhaps hear him speak. Monday. We had a pleasant breakfast this morning with Bebella d'Arsoli,[33] in their beautiful apartment in his father's (Prince Massimo's) palace. The palace looks so black and melancholy outside, with its heavy portico of columns (and always beggars sitting on the stone benches under the portico) that it was a surprise to get into their beautiful rooms--with splendid pictures and tapestries. The corner drawing-room, where she received us, flooded with light, showing off the old red damask of the walls and the splendid ceiling. We went to see the Chapel after breakfast, where there are wonderful relics, and a famous pavement in majolica. [33] Princess d'Arsoli, née Bella Brancaccio, granddaughter of Hickson Field. About 3 we started off for St. Peter's. We had all brought our veils with us, and retired to Bebella's dressing-room where her maid arranged our heads. We left a pile of hats which Bebella promised to send home for us, and took ourselves off to the Vatican, taking little Victoria Ruspoli with us, who looked quite sweet in her white dress and veil--her great dark eyes bright with excitement. We found many carriages in the court, as we got to the Vatican, and many more soldiers on the stairs, and about in the passages. The rooms and long gallery were crowded--all sorts of people, priests, women, young men, children (some very nice-looking people) all speaking French. We went at first into the gallery, but there was such a crowd and such a smell of people closely packed that we couldn't stay, and just as we were wondering what to do, Monsignor Bicletis came through and at once told us to come with him. He took us through several rooms, one large one filled with people waiting for their audience, into the one next the Pope's, who he said was with Cardinal Mathieu, and would soon pass. We were quite alone in that room, except for three or four priests. In a few moments the Pope appeared with Cardinal Mathieu and quite a large suite. The Cardinal, who had promised to present Madame de B. (there had been some delay about her convocation), came up to us at once. We all knelt as the Pope came near, and he named Madame de B. and little Victoria, who asked for his blessing for her brothers. He recognised me and Bessie, and said we were welcome always at the Vatican. He only said a few words to Madame de B. as he had a long afternoon before him. Cardinal Mathieu told us to follow them, so we closed up behind the suite, and followed the Pope's procession. There must have been over a hundred people waiting in the next room, and it was an impressive sight to see them all--men, women, and children--kneel as the Pope appeared. Some of the children were quite sweet, holding out their little hands full of medals and rosaries to be blessed--almost all the girls in white, with white veils, like the little first communiantes in France. The Pope made his "cercle," speaking to almost every one--sometimes only a word, sometimes quite a little talk. We followed him through one or two rooms to the open loggia, which was crowded. We were very hot, but he sent for his cloak and hat. We waited some little time but the crowd was so dense--he would have spoken from the other end of the loggia--and we couldn't possibly have got through--so we came away, having had again a very interesting afternoon. It is most picturesque driving around the back of St. Peter's and the Vatican. There are such countless turns and courts and long stretches of high walls with little narrow windows quite up at the top. Always people coming and going--cardinals' carriages with their black horses, fiacres with tourists looking eagerly about them and speaking every possible language, priests, women in black with black veils, little squads of Papal troops marching across the squares--and Italian soldiers keeping order in the great piazza. A curious little old world in the midst of the cosmopolitan town Rome has become. ROME, March 2d. Yesterday Madame de B. and I made an expedition to the Catacombs of San Calisto fuori Porta San Sebastiano. It was decidedly cold and we were very glad we hadn't taken the open carriage. The drive out was charming--first inside the gates, passing the Colosseum, the two great arches of Constantine and Titus, and directly under the Palatine Hill and Baths of Caracalla, and then going out through the narrow little gateway, and for some little distance through high stone walls, we came upon the countless towers, tombs and columns standing alone in the middle of the fields, having no particular connection with anything, that mark the Appian Way, and make it so extraordinarily interesting and unlike any other drive in the world. I was delighted when we came upon that funny little stone house, built on the top of a high circular tomb--I remembered it perfectly. The Catacombs stand in a sort of garden or vineyard. There were people already there, and a party just preparing to go down as we appeared. They had asked for a guide who spoke French, as they knew no Italian, and a nice-looking, intelligent young monk was marshalling his party and lighting the tapers. I thought _they_ were rather short (I am rather nervous about subterraneous expeditions and one has heard gruesome tales of people lost in the Catacombs, not so very long ago) but they lasted quite well. It was curious to see all the old symbols again--the fish, the pax (cross) and to think what they represented to the early bands of Christians, when the mere fact of being a Christian meant persecution, suffering, and often a terrible death in the arena of the Colosseum. Some of the frescoes are wonderfully preserved--we saw quite well the heads of saints, martyrs, and decorations of wreaths of flowers or a delicate arabesque tracery; the most favourite subjects were Jonah and the whale, a shepherd with a lamb on his shoulders, and kneeling women's figures. The ladies in our party were wildly interested in the mummies (terrible looking things), particularly one with the hair quite visible. We saw of course the niche where the body of Ste. Cecilia was found--but the body is now removed to the church of Ste. Cecilia in the Trastevere. They have put, however, a model of the body, representing it exactly, in the niche, so the illusion is quite possible. We walked about for an hour, following quantities of narrow passages, coming suddenly into small round rooms, which had been chapels, and still seeing in some of the stone coffins bits of bones, and inscriptions on the walls. It was rather weird to see the procession moving along, Indian file, holding their tapers, which gave a faint, flickering light. The guide had rather a bigger one--on the end of a long stick. We stopped at San Clemente on our way back, hoping to see the underground church, but it was too late. The sacristan said we should have come yesterday--there was a fête, and the two churches were illuminated. Friday, 4th. It has been another beautiful day. I trammed over to the Vatican to see the Sistine Chapel this time and the Stanze and Loggie of Raphael. It is a good pull up to the Sistine Chapel, by a rather dark staircase, but the day was so bright I saw everything very well when I once got there. The Vatican was very full--people in every direction--almost all English and German--I didn't hear a word of French or Italian. Two young men were stretched out flat on their backs on one of the benches, trying to get a good look at the ceiling through their glasses. I was delighted to see the Stanze again with many old friends. Do you remember the "Poesia" on the ceiling of one of the rooms--a lovely figure clad in light blue draperies, with a young, pure face? I wandered up and down the Loggie, but I think I was more interested looking down into the Court of San Damaso, filled with carriages, priests, women in black with black veils coming and going (I should think the Pope would be exhausted with all the people he sees) and the general little clerical bustle. The striped Swiss guard were lounging about in the gateway, and a fine stately porter in cocked hat and long red cloak at each door. Josephine had a dinner in the evening--Cardinal Mathieu, the Austrian Ambassador to the Vatican and his wife, and other notabilities. There was quite a large reception after dinner, among others the Grand Duchess of Saxe-Weimar, who is very easy, charming--likes to see everybody. When I came downstairs to dinner I found all the ladies with lace fichus or boas on their shoulders, and I was told that I was quite incorrect--that one couldn't appear décolletée in a cardinal's presence. I could find nothing in my hurry when I went back to my room, but a little (very little) ermine cravat, but still even that modified my low body somewhat, and at least showed that my intentions were good. The big red salon looks charming in the evening and is a most becoming room--the dark red silk walls show off the dresses so well. The cardinal had his whist, or rather his bridge, after dinner, for even the Church has succumbed to the universal craze--one sees all the ecclesiastics in Black circles just as intent upon their game and criticising their partner's play quite as keenly as the most ardent clubmen. I suppose bridge is a pleasure to those who play, but they don't look as though they were enjoying themselves--their faces so set and drawn, any interruption a catastrophe, and nobody ever satisfied with his partner's play. We had very good music. An American protégé of Josephine's with a good high barytone voice sang very well, and the young French trio (all élèves du Conservatoire de Paris) really played extremely well. The piano in one of Mendelssohn's trios was quite charming--so sure and delicate. It was a pleasure to see the young, refined, intelligent faces so absorbed in their music, quite indifferent to the gallery. The young violinist played a romance (I forget what--Rubinstein, I think) with so much sentiment that I said to him "Vous êtes trop jeune pour jouer avec tant d'âme," to which he replied proudly, "Madame, j'ai vingt ans." C'est beau d'avoir vingt ans. I wonder how many of us at fifty remember how we thought and felt at twenty. Perhaps there would be fewer heart-burnings in the world if we older ones did remember sometimes our own youth. Sunday, March 6th. Yesterday I walked up to Santa Maria Maggiore and San Giovanni in Laterano. I took the Scala Santa on my way to San Giovanni. Several people were going up--some priests, Italian soldiers, two or three peasants and two ladies--mother and daughter, I should think, their long black cloth dresses very much in their way evidently. I watched them for some time. I wonder what it means to them, and if they really believe that they are the steps from Jerusalem which our Saviour came down. I stayed some little time in San Giovanni. It is magnificent certainly, but there is too much gilding and mosaic and modern decoration. The view from the steps was enchanting when I came out; the air was delicious, the sun bright in a bright blue sky, and the mountains soft and purple in the distance. We had an interesting breakfast--two Benedictine monks from the great abbaye of Solesmes. They talked very moderately about their expulsion, and the wrench it was to leave the old monastery and begin life again in new surroundings. The older man especially seemed to feel it very much. I suppose he had spent all his life inside those old grey walls--reading and meditating and bound up in the interests and routine of his order. They had come to Rome to see the Pope, and consult with him about suppressing secular music in the churches, and substituting the Gregorian chants everywhere. It is a very difficult question; of course some of the music they have now in the churches is impossible. When you hear the "Méditation de Thaïs" played at some ceremony, and you think what Thaïs was, it is out of the question to admit such music in a church--on the other hand the strict Gregorian chant is very severe, particularly sung without any organ. I daresay educated musicians would prefer it, but to the ordinary assemblage, accustomed to the great peal of the organ with occasionally, in the country for instance at some festa, the national anthem or some well-known military march being played, the monotonous, old-world chant would say nothing. We shall hear them at the great festival at St. Peter's for San Gregorio. Thursday, 10th. It was warm and lovely Tuesday. Bessie, Josephine and I walked down to J.'s work-room in the Convent of St. Euphemia, somewhere beyond Trajan's Forum, before breakfast. It was too warm walking along the broad street by the Quirinal. We were thankful to take little dark narrow side streets. The "ouvroir" (work-room) was interesting--quantities of women and girls working--some of the work, fine lingerie, lace-mending, embroidery beautifully done. It is managed by sisters, under Josephine's direction, who gives a great deal of time and thought to her work. They take in any child or girl from the street, feed them and have them taught whatever they can do. It was pretty to see the little smiling faces and bright eyes as Josephine passed through the rooms. We went to a pleasant tea in the afternoon at Countess Gianotti's (wife of Count Gianotti, Master of Ceremonies to the King). There were quite a number of people--a very cosmopolitan society (she herself is an American) and she gave us excellent waffles. Yesterday we had a delightful excursion with Countess de Bertheny in her automobile. She came to get me and Bessie about 11. We picked up two young men and started for Nemi and the Castelli Romani. We drove straight out from Porta San Giovanni to Albano. It was quite lovely all the way, particularly when we began the steep ascent of Albano, and looked back--the Campagna a beautiful stretch of purple, the aqueducts standing well out all around us, and the statues of San Giovanni just visible and looking enormous, in the mist that always hangs over Rome, St. Peter's a great white spot with the sun full upon it. We rattled through Albano. The streets looked animated, full of people, all getting out of our way as fast as they could. The door into the Doria Villa was open; we just had a glimpse of the garden which looked cool and green, with a perspective of long walks, ending in a sort of bosquet, but we passed so quickly that it was merely a fleeting impression. We drove through Ariccia to Gensano--a beautiful road, splendid trees, making a perfect shade, the great Chigi Palace looking just the same, a huge grim pile--quite the old château fort, built at the entrance of the little village to protect it from invading enemies. If stones could speak I wonder what they would say to modern inventions, automobiles, huge monsters certainly, but peaceful ones, rushing past, trains puffing and smoking along the Campagna, great carts drawn by fine white oxen going lazily along, the driver generally asleep under his funny little tent of red or blue linen, and nobody thinking of harm. We drove through Gensano, then turned off sharp to the left to Nemi--a fairly good road. We soon came in sight of the lake, which looked exactly as I remembered it--a lifeless blue, like a deep cup surrounded by green hills. They used to tell us, I remember, that there were no fish, no living thing in the lake, but Ruspoli says there are plenty now--very good ones. We followed a beautiful winding road up to Nemi, which is a compact little village on the top of a hill--the great castle standing out well. It has just been bought by Don Enrico Ruspoli, and he and his charming American wife are making it most picturesque and livable. We breakfasted at the little Hôtel de Nemi--not at all bad--the dining-room opening on a terrace with such a view--at our feet the Campagna rolling away its great waves of blue purple to a bright dazzling white streak, the sea--on one side a stretch of green valley leading to all the different little villages; on the other the lake with its crown of olive-covered hills. Just as we were finishing breakfast Ruspoli appeared to ask us if we would come and see the castle. We entered directly from the little square of the town--the big doors face the church. There is a fine stone staircase, and halls and rooms innumerable. They have only just begun to work on it--have made new floors (a sort of mosaic, small stones, just as I remember them at Frascati in Villa Marconi) and put water everywhere, but there is still a great deal to do. The proportions of the rooms are beautiful, and the view divine. As in all old Italian castles some of the village houses were built directly into the wall of the castle. They have already bought and knocked down many of these (giving the inhabitants instead comfortable, clean, modern houses which they probably won't like nearly as well) and are arranging a beautiful garden in their place. They have also a terrace planted with trees about half-way down the slope to the lake, which would be a divine place to read or dream away a long summer's day. I don't think there are ten yards of level ground on the place. [Illustration: Great New Bridge from Albano to Ariccia. Built by Pope Pius IX.] We couldn't stay very long as we were going on to Frascati and Castle Gondolfo. They gave us tea, and when we came out on the piazza we found the whole village congregated around the automobiles (another had arrived from Rome--I am so cross I didn't bring mine with Strutz, it would have been so convenient for all the excursions). It is a wild beautiful spot, but I should think lonely. We went back to Albano, saw the great bridge built by Pio Nono, with its three tiers of arches, the famous tombs--Horatii, Curiatii and Pompey, and then drove along the beautiful "galeria di sotto" to Castle Gondolfo, the old crooked ilex trees nearly meeting over our heads, and the Campagna with lovely lights and shades flitting over it, far down at our feet. There everything looked exactly as I remembered it. It seemed to me the same priests were walking about under the trees, the same men riding minute donkeys, with their legs nearly touching the ground; the same great carts, lumbering peacefully along, the driver usually asleep until the horn of the automobile close behind him roused him into frantic energy; however they were all most smiling, evidently don't hate the auto as they do in some parts of France. We stopped at the Villa Barberini at Castle Gondolfo--such a beautiful garden, but so neglected--great long dark walks, trees like high black walls on each side, and big bushes of white and red camellias almost as tall as the trees, roses just beginning. In every direction broken columns, vases, statues (minus arms and legs) carved benches, all falling to pieces. We went into the Villa which is usually let to strangers, but it was most primitive--brick floors everywhere (except in the salons, where there was always the mosaic pavement), and the simplest description of furniture--ordinary iron bed-steads, and iron trépieds in the master's bed-rooms, but a magnificent view of sea and Campagna from the balcony, and a beautiful cool, bracing air. We drove on through Marino and Frascati. We passed the little chapel on the road where we used to see all the people praying the great cholera year. It was open, and one or two women were kneeling just inside. The atmosphere was so transparent that Rocca di Papa and Monte Cavo seemed quite near. The Piazza of Frascati was just the same, the Palazzo Marconi at one side with the great Aldobrandini Villa overtopping it and the Villa Torlonia opposite. We didn't go into the town, but took the steep road down by the railway station. There everything is changed--it didn't seem at all the Frascati we had once lived in--quantities of new, ugly villas, and an enormous modern Grand Hotel. We got home about 6.30--the Campagna quite beautiful and quiet in the soft evening light. There were very few people on the road, every now and then a shepherd in his long sheepskin cloak, staff and broad-brimmed hat appearing on the top of one of the many little mounds which are dotted all over the Campagna, and occasionally in the distance a dog barking. March 17th. Bessie and I have just come in from the last meet of the season at Cecilia Metella. It is such a favourite rendezvous that there is always a great crowd, almost as many people walking about on the Campagna as riding. It was a very pretty sight. There were quantities of handsome horses, but I don't know that it was quite comfortable walking when the hunt moved off. Some of the young men--principally officers--were taking preliminary gallops in every direction, and jumping backward and forward over a large ditch. One of them knocked down an Englishwoman--at least I don't think he really knocked her, but he alighted so near her that she was frightened, and slipped getting out of his way. We stopped to speak to her, but she said she wasn't at all hurt, and had friends with her. The master of the hounds--Marchese Roccagiovine--didn't look very pleased, and I should think a large, motley field, with a good many women and careless riders, would be most trying to a real sportsman, such as he is. Giovanni Borghese told me there were two hundred people riding, and I can quite believe it. [Illustration: Roman Huntsmen on the Campagna. Ancient Roman aqueduct in the background.] We had a delightful day yesterday, but rather a fatiguing one--I am still tired. We made an excursion (a family party--Bessie, Josephine, her two children, Mr. Virgo and two of his friends--a Catholic priest and a student preparing for orders--all Englishmen). We went by train to Frascati, and from there to Tusculum, carrying our breakfast with us. We passed the little Campagna station (Ciampino) where we have stopped so often. Do you remember the old crazy-looking station, and the station-master, yellow and shivering, and burned up with fever. Now it is quite a busy little place, people getting on and off the trains and one or two brisk porters. The arrival at Frascati was a sight. We were instantly surrounded by a crowd of donkey-boys and carriages--nice little victorias with red flowers in the horses' heads and feathers in the coachmen's hats--all talking at the top of their voices; but between Mr. Virgo and Pietro, Josephine's Italian footman, who had charge of the valise with the luncheon, we soon came to terms, and declined all carriages, taking three or four donkeys. It isn't a long walk to Tusculum, and Josephine and I both preferred walking--besides I don't think I should have had the courage to mount in the piazza with all the crowd looking on and making comments; however, Bessie did, and she sat her donkey very lightly and gracefully, making a great effect with her red hat and red parasol. Perhaps the most interesting show was Pietro. He was so well dressed in a light grey country suit that I hardly recognised him. He stoutly refused to be separated from his valise, put it in front of him on the donkey, sat well back himself and beamed at the whole party. He is a typical Italian servant--perfectly intelligent, perfectly devoted (can neither read nor write), madly interested in everybody, but never familiar nor wanting in respect. I ask him for everything I want. He does it, or has it done at once, better and cheaper than I could, and I am quite satisfied when I hear his delightful phrase "Ci penso io"--I am sure it will be done. We went up through the Aldobrandini garden. It looked rather deserted; no one ever lives there now, but it is let occasionally to strangers. Men were working in the garden; there were plenty of violets and a few roses--it is still early in the season for them. In a basin of one of the fountains a pink water-lily--only one--quite beautiful. The fountains were lovely--sparkling, splashing, living--everything else seemed so dead. As we wound up the steep paths we had enchanting views of the Campagna, looking like a great blue sea, at our feet, and Rome seemed a long, low line of sunlight, with the dome of St. Peter's hanging above it in the clouds. The road was very steep, and decidedly sunny, so I mounted my donkey, Father Evans walking alongside. Monte Cavo, Rocca di Papa, the Madonna del Tufo, all seemed very near, it was so clear and the air was delicious as we got higher. I recognised all the well-known places, the beginning of the Roman pavement, the Columbarium, Cicero's house, etc. We were quite ready for breakfast when we got to Tusculum, and looked about for a shady spot under the trees. There are two great stones, almost tables, in the middle of the "amfiteatro," where people usually spread out their food, but the sun was shining straight down on them; we didn't think we could stand that. We found a nice bit of grass under the trees and established ourselves there. It was quite a summer's day, and the rest and quiet after toiling up the steep paths was delightful. [Illustration: Waiting for the Hounds.] After breakfast Josephine and I walked quite up to the top of the hill, the trees making a perfect dome of verdure over our heads. There was no sound except our own voices, and the distant thud of horses' feet cantering in a meadow alongside, an absolute stillness everywhere. Such a view! Snow on the Sabine Mountains, sun on the Alban Hills, the Campagna on either side blue and broken like waves, and quite distinct, a long white line, the sea. While we were walking about we noticed two carabinieri, very well mounted, who seemed to be always hovering near us, so we asked them what they were doing up there. They promptly replied, taking care of the "società." We could hardly believe we heard rightly; but it was quite true, they were there for us. They told us that when it was known that a number of people were coming up to Tusculum (there were two other parties besides us) they had orders to come up, keep us always in sight, and stay as long as we did. We gave them some wine and sandwiches, and they became quite communicative--told us there were brigands and "cattiva gente" (wicked people) about; that at Rocca di Papa, one of the little mountain villages quite near, there were 500 inhabitants, 450 of whom had been in prison for various crimes, and that people were constantly robbed in these parts. I wouldn't have believed it if any one had told us, but they always kept us in sight. We decided to go home through the Villa Ruffinella. Donkeys are not allowed inside, and we thought probably not horses either, but the carabinieri came in and showed us the way down. The grounds are splendid--we walked first down through a beautiful green allée, then up, a good climb. The villa is enormous--uninhabited and uncared for--a charming garden and great terrace with stone benches before the house looking toward Rome. The garden, of course, wild and ragged, but with splendid possibilities. Just outside the gate we came upon a little church. Three or four girls and women with bright-coloured skirts and fichus and quantities of coarse jet-black hair were sitting on the steps working at what looked like coarse crochet work and talking hard. The carabinieri were always near, opened two or three gates for us, and only left us when we were quite close to the town, well past the gates of the Aldobrandini Villa. As we had some little time before the train started, I went off with Bessie to have a look at Palazzo Marconi. It is now occupied by the municipio and quite changed. We found a youth downstairs who couldn't imagine what we wanted and why we wanted to go up; however, I explained that I had lived there many years ago, so finally he agreed to go up with us. The steps looked more worn and dirty--quite broken in some places--and the frescoes on the walls, which were bright blue and green in our time, are almost effaced. It was all so familiar and yet so changed. I went into father's room and opened the window on the terrace, where we had stood so often those hot August nights, watching the mist rise over the Campagna and the moon over the sea. There was very little furniture anywhere--a few chairs and couches in the small salon that we had made comfortable enough with our own furniture from Rome. The great round room with the marble statues has been turned into a salle de conseil, with a big writing-table in the middle, and chairs ranged in a semicircle around the room. There was nothing at all in our old bed-rooms--piles of cartons in one corner. The marble bath-tub was black and grimy. We couldn't see the dining-room, people were in it, but we went out to the hanging-garden--all weeds, and clothes hanging out to dry. The fountain was going at the back of the court, but covered with moss, and bits of stone were dropping off. It all looked very miserable--I don't think I shall ever care to go back. There seemed just the same groups of idle men standing about as in our time--dozens of them doing nothing, hanging over the wall looking at the people come up from the railway station. They tell me they never work; even when they own little lots of land or vignas they don't work themselves--the peasants from the Abruzzi come down at stated seasons, dig and plant and do all the work. One can't understand it, for they look a tall, fine race, all these peasants of the Castelli Romani, strong, well-fed, broad-shouldered. I suppose there must be a strong touch of indolence in all the Latin races. It was after six when we got back to Rome. We had just time to rush home, get clean gloves and long skirts, and start for the Massimo Palace to see the great fête. Once a year the palace is opened to the general public, and the whole of Rome goes upstairs and into the chapel. It is on St. Philippe's day, when a miracle was performed in the Massimo family, a dead boy resuscitated in 1651. There was a crowd assembled as we drove up, tramways stopped, and the getting across the pavement was rather difficult. The walls of the palace and portico were hung with red and gold draperies, the porter and footman in gala liveries, the old beggars squatted about inside the portico, the gardes municipaux keeping order, and a motley crowd struggling up the grand staircase--priests, women, children, femmes du monde, peasants, policemen, forestieri, two cooks in their white vestons, nuns, Cappucini--all striving and jostling to get along. We stopped at Bebella's apartment, who gave us tea. She had been receiving all day, but almost every one had gone. We talked to her a few moments, and then d'Arsoli took us upstairs to the chapel (by no means an easy performance, as there were two currents going up and coming down). The chapel was brilliantly lighted, and crowded; a benedizione was going on, with very good music from the Pope's chapel--those curious, high, unnatural voices. All the relics were exposed, and Prince Massimo, in dress clothes and white cravat, was standing at the door. It was a most curious sight. D'Arsoli told us that people had begun to come at seven in the morning. When we went home there was still a crowd on the staircase, stretching out into the street, and a long line of tram-cars stopped. Friday, March 18th. It rained rather hard this morning, but we three got ourselves into the small carriage and went down to the Accademia di Santa Cecilia to hear the Benedictine monk Don Guery try the Gregorian chants with the big organ. The organ is a fine one, made at Nuremberg. An organist arrived from St. Anselmo to accompany the chants. They sounded very fine, but I thought rather too melodious and even modern, but Don Guery assured me that the one I particularly noticed was of the eleventh century. Tuesday, 22d. We seem always to be doing something, but have had two quiet evenings this week. Friday night we went to the Valle to see Marchesa Rudini's Fête de Bienfaisance. The heat was something awful, as the house was packed, and as at all amateur performances they were unpunctual, and there were terribly long intervals. The comédie was well acted, a little long, but the clou of the evening was the ballet-pantomime, danced by all the prettiest women in Rome. The young Marchesa Rudini (née Labouchère) looked charming as a white and silver butterfly, and danced beautifully, such pretty style, not a gesture nor a pas that any one could object to. The rest of the troop too were quite charming, coming in by couples--the Princess Teano and Thérèse Pécoul a picture--both tall, one dark, one fair, and making a lovely contrast. I should think they must have made a lot of money. Saturday I had a pleasant afternoon at the Palazzo dei Cesari with Mr. and Mrs. Seth Low. He is an excellent guide, had already been all over the palace with Boni and knew exactly what to show us. It was a beautiful afternoon and the view over Rome, the seven hills, and the Forum was divine. These first Roman Emperors certainly knew where to pitch their tents--what a magnificent scale they built upon in those days. The old Augustus must have seen wonderful sights in the Forum from the heights of the Palatine. Josephine had a large dinner in the evening for the Grand Duchess and Cardinal Vannutelli. It was very easy and pleasant, and we all wore our little fichus most correctly as long as the Cardinal was there (they never stay very long), but were glad to let them slip off as soon as he went away, for we had a great many people in the evening and the rooms were warm. I had rather an interesting talk with an old Italian friend (not a Roman) over the tremendous influx of strangers and Italians from all parts of Italy to Rome. He says au fond the Romans hate it--they liked the old life very much better--they were of much more importance; it meant something then to be a Roman prince. Now, with all the Northern Italians, Court people and double Diplomatic Corps Rome has become too cosmopolitan. People amuse themselves, and dance and hunt, and give dinners at the Grand Hotel and trouble themselves very little about the old Roman families (particularly those who have lost money and don't receive any more). The Romans have a feeling of being put aside in their own place. It was beautiful this morning, so I took my convenient tram again and went over to see the pictures of the Vatican. Such a typical peasant couple were in the tram, evidently just down from the mountains, as they were looking about at everything, and were rather nervous when the tram made a sudden stop. The woman (young and rather pretty) had on a bright blue skirt, a white shirt with a red corset over it, a pink flowered apron, green fichu on her head, and long gold ear-rings with a coral centre. The man, a big broad-shouldered fellow, had the long cloak with the cape lined with green that the men all wear here, and a slouched hat drawn low down over his brows. They got out at St. Peter's and went into the church. I went around by the Colonnade as I was going to the pictures. There were lots of people on the stairs. It certainly is a good stiff pull up. I stayed about an hour looking at the pictures--all hanging exactly where I had always seen them, except the Sposalizio of St. Catherine, which was on an easel near the window; some one evidently copying it. I was quite horrified coming back through the Stanze by some English people--three women--who were calmly lunching in one corner of the room. They were all seated, eating sandwiches out of a paper bag, and drinking out of a large green bottle. Everybody stopped and looked at them, and they didn't mind at all. The gardien was looking on like all the rest. I was so astounded at his making no remarks that I said to him, surely such a thing is forbidden; to which he replied smilingly: "No--no, non fanno male a nessnno--non fanno niente d'indecente" (No, they are doing no harm to any one, they are doing nothing indecent). That evidently was quite true; but I must say I think it required a certain courage to continue their repast with all the public looking on, giggling and criticising freely. I dined this evening with Malcolm Kahn--Persian Minister--and an old colleague of ours in London. It was very pleasant--General Brusatti, one of the King's Aides-de-Camp, took me in, and I had Comte Greppi, ancien Ambassadeur, on the other side. Greppi is marvellous--really a very old man, but as straight as an arrow, and remembering everybody. Tittone, Minister of Foreign Affairs, was there, but I wasn't near him at table, which I regretted, as I should have liked to talk to him. Palm Sunday, March 27th. Bessie and I went to the American church this morning, and afterward to the Grand Hotel to breakfast with some friends. The restaurant was crowded, so many people have arrived for Easter, and it was decidedly amusing--a great many pretty women and pretty dresses. It poured when we came away. We had all promised to go to an amateur performance of the Stabat Mater at the old Doria Palace in Piazza Navona. It was rather damp, with draughts in every direction, so Mrs. Law and I decided we would not stay to the end, but would go for a drive until it was time to go back to tea at the Grand Hotel (it is rather funny, the first month I was here I never put my foot in the Grand Hotel, and I was rather disappointed, as tea there in the Palm Garden with Tziganes playing, is one of the great features of modern Rome, and now I am there nearly every day). It was coming down in torrents when we came out of the concert, and a drive seemed insane, so I suggested a turn in St. Peter's (which is always a resource on a rainy day in Rome). That seemed difficult to accomplish, though, when we arrived at the steps--we couldn't have gone up those steps and across the wide space at the top without getting completely soaked. However I remembered old times, and told the man to drive around to the Sagrestia. He protested, so did all the beggars around the steps, who wanted to open the door of the carriage. We couldn't get in--the door was shut, etc., but I thought we would try, so accordingly we drove straight to the Sagrestia. The door was open--a man standing there who opened the carriage door and told the coachman where to stand. I don't think I ever saw rain come down so hard, and so straight. It was very interesting walking through all the passages at the back of St. Peter's, and into the church through the sacristy, where priests and children were robing and just starting for some service with tapers and palms in their hands. We followed the procession, and found ourselves just about in the middle of the church. There were still draperies hanging on the columns and seats marked off. There had been a ceremony of some kind in the morning, and a great many people were walking about. We stopped some little time at the great bronze statue of St. Peter. I was astounded at the quantity and quality of people who came up and kissed the toe of the Saint. Priests and nuns of course, and old people, both men and women, but it seemed extraordinary to me to see young men, tall, good-looking fellows, bend down quite as reverently as the others and kiss the toe. They were singing in one of the side chapels--we listened for a little while--and all over the church everywhere people kneeling on the pavement. We went back to the Grand Hotel for tea, and dined with the young Ruspolis, who have a handsome apartment in the Colonna Palace. The dinner was for the Grand Duchess, and was pleasant enough. There was a small reception in the evening, and almost every one went afterward to Princesse Pallavicini's who receives on Sunday evening. I like the informal evening receptions here very much. It is a pleasant way of finishing the evening after a dinner, and so much more agreeable than the day receptions--at least you do see a few men in the evening--whereas they all fly from afternoons and teas. As every one receives there is always some house to go to. Monday, March 28th. I have had a nice solitary morning in the Forum, with my beloved Italian guide book, a little English brochure with a map of the principal sights, and occasional conversations with the workmen, of whom there are many, as they are excavating in every direction, and German tourists. The Germans, I must say, are always extremely well up in antiquities, and quite ready to impart their information to others. They are a little long sometimes, but one usually finds that they know what they are talking about. There are of course great changes since I have seen the Forum. They are excavating and working here all the time. The King takes a great interest in all that sort of work, and often appears, it seems, early in the morning and unexpectedly, when anything important is going on. The Basilica Julia (enormous) has been quite opened out since my day; and another large temple opposite is most interesting, with splendid bits left of marble pavement--some quite large squares of pink marble that were beautiful; and in various places quantities of coins melted and incrusted in the marble which looks as if the temple had been destroyed by a fire. There was little shade anywhere. I hadn't the courage to walk in the sun as far as the Vestals' house, which is really most interesting. The recent excavations have brought to light so many rooms, passages, frescoes, etc., that the ordinary, every-day life of the Vestal Virgins has been quite reconstructed. One could follow them in their daily avocations. From where I was sitting I could see some of the great statues--some of the figures in quite good preservation, two of them holding their lamps. I found a nice square stone, and sat there lazily taking in the enchanting views on all sides--the Palatine Hill behind me, the Capitol on one side, on the other the three enormous arches of the Temple of Constantine; at my feet the Via Sacra running straight away to the Colosseum, the sky a deep, soft blue throwing out every line and bit of sculpture on the countless pillars, temples and arches that spring up on all sides. From a height, the Palatine Hill, for instance, the Forum always looks to me like an enormous cemetery--one loses the impression of each separate building or ruin. It might be a street of tombs rather than the busy centre of a great city. There were plenty of people going about--bands of Cook's tourists being personally conducted and instructed. If the gentleman who explains Roman history gives the same loose rein to his imagination as the one we used to hear in Versailles conducting the British public through the Historical Portrait Gallery, the present generation will have curious ideas as to the deeds of daring and wonderful rule of all the Augustuses and Vespasians who have made the Palace of the Cæsars the keystone of magnificent and Imperial Rome; and again "unwritten history" will be responsible for many wonderful statements. However, I wasn't near enough to hear the explanations. People were still coming in when I left, and all the way home I met carriages filled with strangers. We went out again rather late. I went for tea to Marchesa Vitelleschi, and before I came away Vitelleschi came in. I wanted to see him to thank him for sending me his book, a Roman novel, "Roma che se ne va."[34] It is very cleverly written, and an excellent picture of the Rome of 35 years ago, as we first knew it. I should think it would interest English and Americans very much, I wonder he hasn't translated it. [34] Rome which is disappearing. I found quite a party assembled in the little green salon when I got back--Don Guery, the Benedictine monk, who wishes to arrange a concert with Josephine for her charities, and M. Alphonse Mustel, who has just come from Paris with his beautiful organ. He arrived this morning early and hadn't yet found a room anywhere--all the hotels crowded. They say that for years they haven't had so many strangers for Holy Week. He is coming to play here Thursday afternoon. We had a quiet evening, and after dinner Mr. Virgo read to us the book I am so mad about, "The Call of the Wild." He read extremely well, and I liked the book even better hearing it read. It is a marvellous description of that wild life in the Klondyke, and a beautiful poetical strain all through. The children listened attentively, were wildly interested, particularly when poor Buck was made to drag the sledge so heavily loaded, for his master to win his bet. We also want to read Cardinal Mathieu's article in the "Revue des Deux Mondes," "Les derniers jours de Léon XIII."; but we have so rarely a quiet evening, and in the daytime every one is out in the beautiful Roman sunshine. We have all come upstairs early (ten o'clock) so I am profiting of a quiet hour to write, as I can't go to bed so early. This street is rather noisy. It is on the way to the station and some of the big hotels. Cabs and big omnibuses go through it all day and all night. I don't mind the noise. I rather like the roar of a big city--it means life. Thursday, March 31st. It is pouring to-day, and we have been out all day. I went to church this morning, but didn't get too wet with a thick serge dress and umbrella; then to breakfast at the Grand Hotel with some friends, and an excursion to the Palace of the Cæsars in prospect, under the guidance of Mr. Baddeley, who is an authority on all Roman antiquities and a great friend of Boni's. It rained so hard when we were sitting in the Palm Garden for coffee, that it seemed impossible the drops shouldn't come through, and we looked to see if little puddles were not forming themselves on the floor under our chairs, but no, it was quite dry. We started in shut carriages, thinking we would try for the Palace of the Cæsars, where we could get refuge, but it was shut, so we went on to San Giovanni in Laterano, and had an interesting hour wandering about the church. Our guide had old artistic Rome at his fingers' ends, and it certainly makes all the difference in seeing the curious old tombs and monuments when one has some idea as to who the people were, and what sort of lives they led. Mr. Baddeley said, like all the people who really live in Italy, that the summer was the time to see Rome; that no one could imagine what a Roman "festa" was unless he had seen one in the height of summer, when the whole population was out and in the streets all day and all night, in a frenzy of amusement. No priests were in the streets; a sort of tacit concession, or tolerance for just one or two occasions. We came back here for tea, as M. Mustel had promised to play for us this afternoon, and Josephine had asked some of her friends. The organ sounded splendidly in her big music-room, where there is little furniture and no draperies to deaden the sound. He played of course extremely well, and brought out every sound of his instrument. Two preludes of Bach were quite beautiful; also the prelude of "Parsifal"--so much sound at times that it seemed an orchestra, and then again beautifully soft. We were all delighted with it. People stayed rather late, but Bessie and I and Sir Donald Wallace, who had come to tea, started off to St. Peter's. It is the tradition in Rome to go to St. Peter's on Holy Thursday. In our time the whole city went--it was quite a promenade de société. I believe they do still, but we were rather late. The church looked quite beautiful as we drove up--brilliantly lighted, the big doors open, quantities of people going up the steps and through a double line of _Italian_ soldiers into the church. The "Miserere" was over, but the chapel was still lighted, a good many people kneeling at the altar. The church was crowded, and every one pushing toward the grand altar, which was being washed. They were also exposing the relics from the two high balconies on each side of the altar. Many people were kneeling, and every now and then a procession came through the crowd of priests and choir-boys with banners, all chanting, and kneeling when they came near the altar--of course there was the usual collection of gaping, irreverent tourists, commenting audibly, and wondering if anybody really believed those were the actual nails that came out of the cross, or the thorn out of the Crown of Thorns, etc., etc., also "why are they making such a fuss washing their altar--why couldn't they do it this morning when no one was in the church." We had some little difficulty in getting away, as the crowd was awful--getting worse every moment. It was beautiful when we did get out--the great Piazza quite black, a steady stream still pouring into the church. The lights from inside threw little bright spots on the gun-barrels and belts of the soldiers--the great mass of the Vatican quite black, with little lights twinkling high up in some of the windows. I am decidedly tired and stiff--I think being rained upon all day and standing on damp pavements and in windy corners is rather a trial to any one with rheumatic tendencies--but I have enjoyed my day thoroughly, particularly the end at St. Peter's. It so reminded me of old times when we used to go to all the ceremonies, beginning with the "Pastorale" at Christmas time and finishing with the Easter Benediction and "Girandola." We finished "The Call of the Wild" this evening, and now we must take something else. I should like the "Figlia di Jorio" of d'Annunzio. They say the Italian is quite beautiful, but the morals, I am afraid, are not of the same high order. I shall try and see it. ROME, Saturday, April 2, 1904. It was bright yesterday, but cold. The snow was quite thick on the Sabine Hills--they looked beautiful as we drove out into the country through Porta San Giovanni before going to the church of Santa Croce in Jerusalemme, where Prince Colonna had asked us to come and see a curious ceremony--he himself carrying a cross at the head of a procession. Bessie and I with the two children and the dog (we would have left him in the carriage) tried to see some of the churches and hear some music, but there were such crowds everywhere that we couldn't get in, so we took a drive instead. There was such a crowd at Santa Croce that we couldn't have got anywhere near the altar if we hadn't had a card from Colonna; that took us into the Sagrestia where they gave us chairs, and we sat there some little time watching all the "neri" (Blacks) assemble. They proposed to show us the relics to while away the time, so we were taken up a very steep staircase, along a narrow short passage to a small room where they are kept. The priest lighted tapers, made his little prayer, and then unveiled his treasures. There were pieces of the Cross, a nail, St. Thomas's unbelieving finger, and the inscription on a piece of wood that was over the Cross, "Jesus King of the Jews." It was an old, blackened, almost rotten square, with the inscription in Latin, hardly legible, but the priest showed us some letters and numbers that were quite distinct. When we got back again to the sacristy the procession was forming--a number of gentlemen dressed in black, with gold chains and crosses around their necks, and a long procession of monks, priests, and choristers. Colonna himself at the head, carrying quite simply a rather large wooden cross; all with tapers and all chanting. As soon as they had filed out of the sacristy we went upstairs again to a high balcony, from which we had a fine view of the church. It was packed with people, the crowd just opening enough to allow the procession to pass, which looked like a line of fire winding in and out. There was a short, simple service, and then all turned toward the balcony from where the relics were shown, every one in the church kneeling, as far as I could see. We came away before the end, and had great difficulty in getting through the crowd to our carriages. This morning it was beautiful so we all started off early to the Wurts' Villa (old Sciarra Villa) on the Janiculum. Just as we crossed the bridge the bells rang out the Hallelujah (the first time they had rung since Wednesday). They sounded beautiful, so joyous, a real Easter peal. We had a delightful hour in the garden of the Villa. There were armies of workmen in every direction, and the place will be a perfect Paradise. There are fine trees in the garden, masses of rhododendrons, every description of palm, and of course flowers everywhere. The views were divine to-day--the Sabine Mountains with a great deal of snow, Soracte blue and solitary rising straight out of the Campagna, and the Abruzzi snow-topped in the distance. Mr. and Mrs. Wurts were there and showed us all the improvements they intend making. After breakfast I walked about in the Via Sistina looking for some photographs. I wanted to find some of old Rome (at least Rome of 24 years ago) but that seemed hopeless. My artist friend had promised to look in some of his father's old portfolios and see what he could find, but he was not in a business frame of mind this afternoon. He was eating his dinner at his counter, his slouched hat on his head, which he didn't remove while I was talking to him. A young woman with her face tied up in a red fichu was stretched out on the floor behind the counter, sound asleep, her head on a pile of books; another over at the other end of the shop, her chair tilted back, talking sometimes to him and sometimes to people in the street. I suppose my eyes wandered to the one who was asleep, for he instantly said, "She is ill, tired, don't disturb her." He said he hadn't found any old photographs, only one rather bad and half-effaced of Pio IX. I said I wanted one of Antonelli. "E morto lui." I said I knew that, but he _had_ lived however once, and not so very long ago, and had been a person of some importance. He evidently didn't think it worth while to continue that conversation, and had certainly no intention of looking for any photographs for me that day. It was "festa"--Easter Eve--and work was over for him until Monday morning, so I was really obliged to go, he wishing me "buon giorno" and "buona Pasqua" quite cheerfully, without getting up or taking off his hat. I came in to tea, as Mustel was to play. We had about 40 people, and he was much pleased at the way in which every one listened, and appreciated his instrument. Of course he plays it divinely and brings out every sound. Josephine had asked the Marquise Villa Marina to come and hear him. He naturally wants very much to play for Queen Margherita (who is a very good musician and plays the organ herself), and if the Marquise makes a good report the Queen will perhaps send for him to play for her. Easter Sunday, April 3d. It has been a beautiful day. Bessie and I went to the English church, which was crowded. We could only find seats quite at the bottom of the church, and those were chairs which had been brought in at the last moment. We went afterward to breakfast with the Wurts in their beautiful apartment. They had flowers everywhere (from their villa) and the rooms looked like a garden. We were quite a party--16--and stayed there talking and looking at everything until after three. Then we started for a drive. I wanted to go to the Protestant Cemetery and see the little mortuary chapel we built after father's death. Some one told me it was utterly uncared for, going to ruin. The gates were open as we drove up, a good many carriages waiting, and plenty of people walking about inside. It is a lovely, peaceful spot, so green and still, many fine trees, quantities of camellias, and violets on almost every grave. The chapel stood just as I remembered it--in the middle of the cemetery. It is in perfectly good order, and had evidently been used quite lately as there were wooden trestles to support a coffin, and bits of wreaths and stalks of flowers lying about. The two inscriptions, Latin on one side and English on the other, are both quite well preserved and legible. I wanted very much to see a guardian or director of the cemetery, but there was only a woman at the gate, who knew nothing, hadn't been there very long, in fact she knew nothing about the chapel, and showed me a room opening into the old cemetery (where Keats is buried) which looked more like a lumber room than anything else. There are some interesting monuments, one to Mrs. Story, quite simple and beautiful, an angel kneeling with folded wings. It was done by her husband, the last thing he did, his son told me. The old cemetery looks quite deserted, close under the great pyramid of Caius Cestius, the few graves quite uncared for, a general air of neglect, a fitting resting-place for the poor young poet whose profound discouragement will go down to posterity. Every one goes to the grave and reads the melancholy inscription, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." It was such a lovely afternoon that we drove on to Tre Fontane. There, too, there were people. The churches were open, but there was no service going on; however the place has always a great charm. The tops of the eucalyptus trees were swaying in a little breeze, and the smell was stronger and more aromatic than when we were there the other day. We have had a quiet evening, all of us, children and grown-ups, Protestants and Catholics, singing the English Easter Hymns. Josephine, who is a very strict Catholic, loves the English hymns, and certainly we can all sing "Christ the Lord is Risen To-day," for Easter is a fête for all the world. I am sorry I didn't go to St. Peter's this morning. I don't know that there was any special ceremony, but for the sake of old times I should have liked to have had my Easter and Hallelujah there. I am writing rather under difficulties as the telephone is ringing furiously (it goes all day, as every one in the house uses it for everything). At the present moment Josephine seems conversing with "all manner of men"--the Marquise Villa Marina from the Queen's Palace, the padrone of the hotel where Mustel is staying, and one or two others. It seems Queen Margherita would like to have Mustel and his organ to-morrow night at the Palace; and has asked us three, Bessie, Josephine and me, to come. I am very glad for Mustel who wants so much to be heard by the Queen. He hopes to sell some of his organs here. They are not expensive, but so few people care about an organ of their own. Wednesday, April 6th. We had an interesting evening at the palace on Monday. I couldn't get there for the beginning, as I had a big dinner, and a very pleasant one, at the Iddings'. When I arrived I heard the music going on, but the Marquise de Villa Marina came to meet me in the corridor, and we walked up and down talking until the piece was over. I found a small party--the Queen, her mother, the Duchess of Genoa, and about fifteen or twenty people. The Queen was in black, with beautiful pearl necklace. She received me charmingly and was most kind and gracious to Mustel, saying she was so pleased to see a French artist, and taking great interest in his instrument. He played several times: Handel's grand aria, Bach, and the Marche des Pèlerins from "Tannhäuser," which sounded magnificent--quite an effect of orchestra. About 11.30 there was a pause. The Duchess of Genoa came over and talked to me a little, saying she had known my husband and followed his career with great interest, his English origin and education making him quite different from the usual run of French statesmen. She also spoke of my sister-in-law, Madame de Bunsen, whom she had known formerly in Florence. She exchanged a few words with the other ladies, and then withdrew, the Queen and her ladies accompanying her to her apartments. We remained talking with the other guests until Queen Margherita came back. She asked Mustel to play once more--and then we had orangeade, ices, and cakes. There was a small buffet at one end of the drawing-room. It was quite half-past twelve when the Queen dismissed us. We had a real musical evening, pleasant and easy. [Illustration: Cardinal Antonelli. From a picture painted for the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar. From a photograph given to Madame Waddington by the Hereditary Grand Duchess of Saxe-Weimar at Rome.] It was beautiful this morning, so I went for a turn in the Villa Borghese, which is a paradise these lovely spring days; only the getting to it is disagreeable. It is a hot, glaring walk up the Via Veneto, not an atom of shade anywhere until one gets well inside the grounds. I was walking about on the grass quite leisurely, and very distraite, not noticing any one, when I heard my name. I turned and saw two ladies making signs to me from the other side of the road, so I squeezed through a very narrow opening in the fence, and found myself with the grand duchess and her lady-in-waiting, who were taking their morning walk. We strolled on together. She asked me if I always came to the villa in the morning. I said "No," I often went shopping in the morning, and told her about my photographer of the Via Sistina and the difficulty of getting a photograph of Antonelli. She instantly said: "Oh, but I can help you there, if you really would like a photograph of Antonelli. I have a fine portrait of him that was painted for my beau-père. It is in the palace at Weimar, and I will give orders at once for the court photographer to go and copy it." I was much pleased, as I _do_ want the photograph and was rather in despair at not having found one. It seemed incredible to me, until I had asked a little, that there should be nothing of Antonelli. After all, it isn't very long since he played a great part here, so it was a most fortunate rencontre for me this morning. We parted at the gate--I walked home and she got into her carriage. Friday, April 7th. We made a pleasant excursion yesterday to San Gregorio, the Brancaccios' fine place beyond Tivoli. The day unluckily was grey, looked as if it would pour every minute, we had none of the lovely lights and shades that make the Campagna and the hills so beautiful. We went out in Camillo Ruspoli's automobile, a Fiat, Italian make, strong and fast. The road is not particularly interesting until one begins the steep ascent to Tivoli; then looking back the view of course was beautiful. We didn't have much time to admire it, for the auto galloped up the steep hill as if it were nothing. After Tivoli the road goes straight up into the Sabine hills, winding and narrow, with very sharp corners, which we swung round quite easily certainly, as Ruspoli managed his carriage perfectly--but still the road _was_ narrow and steep--hills rolling away on one side, a precipice and deep valley on the other, no wall nor parapet of any description, and it was absolutely lonely. If anything had broken, or an animal crossed our road suddenly, and made us swerve, I don't think anything could have saved us. The castle looked very imposing as we came up to it, an enormous mass, the village built into the castle walls, standing high on the top of a hill. The flag was flying, all the population, wildly excited (another automobile had arrived before us), were massed at the gates, the drawbridge down, and Bessie and her husband waiting for us, also the Bishops who had come in their auto. We took off some of our coats, but not all, as the rooms are so enormous that it was cold, notwithstanding a great fire in the big hall. We had an hour before breakfast, so they showed us the house which is magnificent, with the most divine views on all sides from all the balconies, corner windows, etc. It is beautifully furnished, perfectly comfortable. I couldn't begin to describe it--one couldn't take it all in in a flying visit. There are several complete apartments with dressing-rooms, bath-rooms, etc., so curious to see so much modern comfort and luxury inside this grim old castle on the top of a rock far back in the Sabine hills. It was very cold--I kept on my thick coat. There are balconies and little bridges connecting towers, high terraces, staircases in every direction--quite bewildering. We breakfasted in the large dining hall, and it was pleasant to see the enormous logs, and to hear the crackling and spluttering of a big fire. There are some fine Brancaccio portraits, in the curious old-world court dress of the Neapolitan ladies of the last century. They gave us an excellent breakfast, with a turkey bred and fattened at the olive farm (it seems these olive-fed turkeys are their specialty). We did some more sight-seeing after breakfast, bachelor apartments principally, such curious old niches and steep, narrow little staircases (we could only pass single file) cut in the thick walls, and then started off to drive and walk in the park. They had two nice little two-wheeled carts, with stout ponies, just the thing for rough wood driving. The park is charming--long green alleys with beautiful views--the country all around rather stony and barren, no shade as there are few trees. We hadn't time to go to the olive farm, which I was sorry for, as the people were all working there picking the olives. I should have liked to see the women with their bright skirts and corsets making a warm bit of colour in the midst of the grey-green olive groves. We started home rather sooner than we had intended, as the sky was getting blacker, and a few drops already falling. We were in an open automobile, and should have been half drowned going home if it had begun to rain hard. We went back at a frightful pace. If I found the coming up terrifying you can imagine what the descent was, flying around the corners, and seeing the steep road zigzagging far down below us. I heard smothered exclamations ("Oh, mon petit Camillo, pas si vite") occasionally from Bessie, and I think Josephine was saying her prayers--however we did get home without any accident or "panne" of any kind, and Ruspoli assured us he had _crawled_ out of consideration for us. This morning Josephine and I have been out to the new Benedictine Monastery of St. Anselmo, which stands high on a hill overlooking the Tiber. She had business with the Director, so I went into the chapel which is fine (quite modern with splendid marbles) and walked about a little in the garden (they wouldn't let me go far). We went afterward into the Villa Malta. There is an extraordinary view through the key-hole of the door--one looks straight down a long, narrow avenue with high trees on each side, to St. Peter's--a great blue dome at the end. We couldn't make out at first what the old woman meant who opened the door for us, she wouldn't let us come in, but pointed to the key-hole, mumbling something we couldn't understand. At last we heard "veduta" (view), and divined what she wanted us to do. It was most curious. The gardens are lovely still, green, cool. We went over the house, but there is nothing particularly interesting--portraits of all the "Grands Maîtres de l'Ordre de Malte." It was so lovely that we didn't want to come home, so we drove out as far at St. Paul's Fuori le Mura, and walked around the church to the front where they are making a splendid portico--all marble and mosaic. I should have liked it better without the mosaic--merely the fine granite and marble columns. Tuesday, April 12th. Yesterday we had a splendid ceremony at St. Peter's, the 13th anniversary of Pope Gregorio Magno. We started early, Josephine and I leaving the house together at 8, dressed in the regulation black dress and veil. I had on a short cloth skirt, which I regretted afterward, but as we had asked for no particular places, and were going to take our chance in the church with all the ordinary sight-seers, I hadn't made a very élégante toilette. We got along pretty well, though there were streams of carriages and people all going in the same direction, until we got near the St. Angelo bridge--there we took the file, hardly advanced at all, and met quantities of empty carriages coming back. I fancy most people started much earlier than we did. The piazza was fairly crowded (but not the compact mass we used to see in the old days when the Pope gave the Easter blessing from the balcony), all the Colonnade guarded by Italian troops, carabinieri and bersaglieri. We went round to the Sagrestia, and found our way easily into the church, and into our Tribune A, but we might just as well have remained at home, if we had wanted to see anything. We were far back, low, and could have just seen perhaps the top of the Pope's tiara when he was carried in his high chair in procession--however it was our own fault, as we had asked too late for our tickets. I was interested all the same seeing the different people come in (the church was very full). We sat there some little time, rather disgusted au fond at having such bad places, particularly when we saw some people we knew being escorted with much pomp past our obscure little tribune, toward the centre of the church. Finally one of the camerieri segreti in his uniform--black velvet, ruff and chain--recognised Josephine, and insisted that she should come with him and he would give her a proper place. She rather demurred at leaving me, but I urged her going, as I was sure she would find a seat for me somewhere. In a few minutes the gentleman returned, and put me first in the same tribune with her, a little farther back, but eventually conducted me to the Diplomatic Tribune, d'Antas, the Doyen, Portuguese Ambassador to the Quirinal, and an old colleague of ours in London, having said he would gladly give a place in their box to an ancienne collègue. That was the moment in which I regretted my short skirt. I had to cross the red carpet between rows of gardes-nobles and gala uniforms of all kinds and colours, and I was quite conscious that my dress was not up to the mark, a sentiment which gathered strength as I got to the Diplomatic Tribune, and saw all the ladies beautifully dressed, with long lace and satin dresses, pearl necklaces, and their veils fastened with diamond stars. However, it was a momentary ennui, and I could only hope nobody looked at me. Wasn't it silly of me to wear a plain little skirt--I can't think why I did it. Almost all the bishops and sommités of the clerical world were already assembled and walking about in the great space at the back of the altar. Just opposite us was the Tribune of the patriciat Romain. All the tribunes and columns were covered with red and gold draperies. A detachment of gardes-nobles, splendid in their red coats, white culottes and white plumes, surrounded the altar. There were two silver thrones for the Pope, one at one side of the church where he sat first, directly opposite to us, another quite at the end of the long nave behind the high altar. The entrance of the cardinals was very effective. They all wore white cloaks trimmed with silver, and silver mitres, each one accompanied by an attendant priest, who helped them take off and put on their mitres, which they did several times during the ceremony. The costumes were splendid, some high prelates, I suppose, in red skirts with splendid old lace; some in white and gold brocaded cloaks, also grey fur cloaks; and an Eastern bishop with a long beard, in purple flowered robes, a pink sash worn like a grand cordon over his shoulder, and purple mitre. It was a gorgeous effect of colour, showing all the more between the rows of tribunes where every one was in black. We divined (as we were too far back to see) when the Pope's cortège entered the church. There was no sound--a curious silence--except the trumpets which preceded the cortège (they played a "Marcia pontificale," they told me). At last we saw the "sedia gestatoria" with the peacock fans appearing, and the Pope himself held high over the heads of the crowd (it seems he hates the sedia and hoped until the last moment not to be obliged to use it, but it is the tradition of St. Peter's, and really the only way for the people to see him). We saw him quite distinctly. He looked pale certainly, and a little tired, even before the ceremony began, but that may have been the effect of the swaying motion of the chair. There was the same silence when he was taken out of his chair and walked to the throne, not even the subdued hum of a great crowd. There was a little group of officiating priests and cardinals on the dais surrounding the throne. The Pope wore a long soutane of fine white cloth, white shoes, a splendid mantle of white and gold brocade, and a gold mitre with precious stones, principally pearls. He began his mass at once, a bishop holding the big book open before him, a priest on each side with a lighted taper. His voice sounded strong and clear, but I don't think it would carry very far. I was disappointed in the Gregorian chants. There were 1,500 voices, but they sounded meagre in that enormous space. The ceremony was very long. I couldn't follow it all, and at intervals couldn't see anything, as the priests stood often directly in front of the Pope. It was interesting to make out the various cardinals--Cardinal Vincenzo Vannutelli sat almost directly opposite to us, his tall figure standing out well. His brother Cardinal Serafino was always close to the Pope. I asked d'Antas to show me Cardinal Rampolla, who has a fine head and dignified carriage, rather a sad face. It was very impressive when the Pope left his throne by the altar and walked across the great space to the other one at the end of the nave. Every one knelt as he passed, the cardinals, bishops, gardes-nobles, everybody in the tribunes (at least everybody in the front row, I won't answer for the young ones behind, but they stood if they didn't kneel). There again the ceremonies were very long. When the Pope had taken his seat, many of the cardinals sat too on the steps of the dais. It was very picturesque, and the Eastern prelate stood out well from the group of white-robed Cardinals in his bright flowered garments. The Evangile was read in Latin and in Greek--a great many things and people were blessed, every one kneeling at the foot of the dais, and again when they got close up to the Pope; some quite prostrated themselves and kissed his slipper (a very nice white one) which they say he hates. Prince Orsini, premier assistant of the Saint Siège, officiated, and looked his part to perfection. He is tall, with a long white beard, and his short black velvet cloak, with a long white and silver mantle over it, was most effective. I don't know exactly what he did, but he appeared various times at the foot of the dais, knelt, and sometimes presented something on a platter. He was always accompanied (as were all who took any prominent part in the ceremony) by two priests, one on each side of him; sort of masters of ceremony who told him when to kneel, when to stand, etc. On the whole all the music disappointed me. The Gregorian chants were too thin; the Sistine choir didn't seem as full and fine as it used to be, and the silver trumpets absolutely trivial. It was most impressive at the moment of the elevation, almost the whole assembly in that enormous church kneeling, and not a sound except the silver trumpets, which had seemed so divinely inspired to me in the old days. I remember quite well seeing Gounod on his knees, with tears streaming down his face, and we were quite enchanted, lifted out of ourselves and our every-day surroundings. This time I was perfectly conscious of a great spectacle of the Catholic Church with its magnificent "mise-en-scène," but nothing devotional or appealing to one's religious feelings. I should have liked to hear a great solemn choral of Bach, not an ordinary melodious little tune; and yet for years after those first days in Rome I never could play or hear the music of the silver trumpets without being strangely moved. I thought the Pope looked very pale and tired as he passed down the long nave the last time and was finally carried off in his chair with his peacock fans waving, and a stately procession of cardinals and prelates following. I think he regrets Venice and the simple life there as pastor of his people. We saw plenty of people we knew as we were making our way through the crowd to the carriage. Some of the ladies told us they had left their hotel at 5.30 in the morning, they were so anxious to get a good place. I told d'Antas I was very grateful to him, for I saw everything of course perfectly, and took in many little details which I never could have seen if we hadn't been so near. I also apologized to Madame d'Antas for my modest, not to say mesquin attire; but she said as long as I was all black, and had the black veil, it was of no consequence. There were two or three ladies in the Royal Tribune--Grand Duchess of Saxe-Weimar and Duchess Paul of Mecklenburg. We were a long time getting home, but it was an interesting progress; all Rome out, a good many handsome carriages, and I should think people from every part of the world, Rome is so full of strangers. Thursday, April 14th. I never had a moment yesterday as it was the children's ball, and we were all taken up with the preparations. It went off very well, and was one of the prettiest sights I ever saw. The children danced extremely well, though even at the last repetition things didn't go perfectly; but evidently at all ages there is a sort of amour propre that carries one through, when there is a gallery. The dresses were Louis XVI., paniers and powder for the girls (and sweet they looked--Victoria quite a picture with her large dark eyes and bright colour), embroidered coats, long gilets, tricorne hats and swords for the boys. There were eight couples, and very good music--4 violins playing Boccherini's minuet. Bessie had arranged a very pretty "rampe" with white azaleas and pink and yellow ribbons, separating the upper part of the ball-room, and the space for the dancers was kept by 4 tall footmen in yellow gala liveries and powder, who stood at each corner of the square, in their hands tall gilt canes held together by bands of pink ribbon. It made a charming "cadre"--you can't imagine how pretty the little procession looked as they all filed in, the small ones first. I think perhaps the quite small ones were the best; they were so important, took much trouble and weren't as distracted by the spectators as the bigger ones. They were much applauded, and were obliged to repeat the minuet after a little rest. In an incredibly short time all the seats and various accessories were taken away, and the ball began, ending with a very spirited cotillon led by the son of the house, Don Camillo Ruspoli, and one of his friends, the Marquis Guglielmi. They kept it up until dinner time, when the various mammas, quite exhausted with the heat and the emotion of seeing their children perform in public, carried them off; but the children (ours certainly) were not at all tired. Saturday, April 16th. It is real summer weather--too hot to walk in the morning, particularly from here, where we have to cross the open piazza before we can get anywhere. Thursday we went to the races with the Brancaccios, on their coach. It was most amusing, the road very animated all the way out from Porta San Giovanni to Campanelle; every one making way for the coach as they do in England. There was every description of vehicle, and quantities of police and soldiers--the road very strictly guarded, as the King and Queen were coming. It looked very pretty to see a patrol of cuirassiers suddenly appearing from under an old archway, or behind a bit of ruined wall, or from time to time one solitary soldier standing on the top of a high mound. It was very hot, the sun too strong on our heads, but we didn't go very fast; couldn't, in such a crowd, so we were able to hold our parasols. The course and all the tribunes were crowded; the women almost all in white or light dresses. The King and Queen came in an open carriage with four horses--no escort. We had a pleasant day, meeting quantities of people we knew. We had rather a struggle for tea; there were not nearly enough tables and chairs for so many people; but we finally got some under difficulties, two of us sitting on the same chair and thankful to get it. The drive home was lovely, cool, and very little dust. Rome looked soft and warm in the sunset light as we got near, and the statues on San Giovanni Laterano almost golden as the light struck them. It was interminable when we got into the file, and Brancaccio had some difficulty in turning into his court-yard. Monday, April 18th. It is enchanting summer weather, but too hot for walking. I have had two charming auto expeditions with Mr. and Mrs. Bishop. Saturday we started after breakfast to Cività Vecchia. The country is not very interesting near Rome, but it was delightful running along by the sea--the road low and so close to the water that the little waves came nearly up to the wheels. Cività Vecchia looked quite picturesque, rising up out of the sea. We didn't stop there, merely drove through the town, and came home another way inland, through the hills, quite beautiful, but _such_ sharp turns and steep bits. We climbed straight up a high hill (2,000 feet) soon after leaving Cività Vecchia, and had for some time a divine view of sea and coast; then plunged at once into the mountains, great barren, stony peaks with little old grey villages on top; hills rolling away on each side, a wild, desolate country. The road was very lonely, we met only a few carts; the peasants frantic with terror as the big auto dashed by. We passed Bracciano, the great feudal castle of the Odescalchi, with the beautiful little blue lake at the bottom of the hill. It is a fine old pile, square and grey, with battlements running all around it--more imposing than attractive. After leaving Bracciano we flew--the road was straight and level--and got back to Rome by Ponte Molle and Porta del Popolo. Sunday we made a longer expedition to the Falls of Terni. There were three autos--quite a party. The road was very different, but quite beautiful, green fields and olive woods, and lovely effects of light and shade on the Campagna. The day was grey, the sun appearing every now and then from behind a cloud, at first; later, when we stopped on the high road, with not a vestige of tree or bit of wall to give us shade, we longed for the clouds. We soon began to climb, then down a long, winding hill to Cività Castellana, an old fortified town, walls all around. We drove in through the gate, and along a narrow steep street filled with people, as it was Sunday, and asked if they had seen another auto. They told us yes, in the piazza, so we went on, making our way with difficulty through the crowded streets; every one taking a lively interest in the auto. The square, too, was crowded, all the women in bright skirts and fichus, and a fair sprinkling of uniforms; little carts with fruit and vegetables, and two or three men with mandolins or violins (a mild little music) but no signs of an auto. A splendid gentleman in uniform with waving plumes and a sword (mayor, I suppose) came up and interviewed us, and told us an auto had been there, coming from Rome, but had left about ten minutes before; so we started off again, and had a beautiful drive to Terni. We passed Narni, which stands very well on the top of a rock, high above the little river which runs there through a narrow gorge to the Tiber. We crossed a fine large bridge, then down a hill to Terni, where we breakfasted. After breakfast we started for the Falls, about four miles further on, and quite beautiful they are, a great rush of sparkling water falling from a height and breaking into countless little falls over the green moss-covered rocks below. It was delicious to hear the sound of running water, and to feel the spray on our faces after our hot ride. We didn't get out. We shouldn't have seen the Falls any better, and would have had to scramble over wet, slippery stones. There was the usual collection of guides, beggars, etc., offering us pieces of petrified stone, and of course post-cards of the Falls. Just around Terni the hills are very green, the slopes covered with olive trees, and quantities of white villas scattered about on the hillside, little groups of people loitering about, women and girls making pretty bits of colour as they strolled along. They love bright colours, and generally have on two or three, red or blue skirts, yellow fichus on their heads, or over their shoulders, coloured beads or gold pins. Some of them carried such heavy loads on their heads or backs, great bundles of fagots, or sacks of olives, old women generally. They are given that work as a rest when they are too old to do anything in the fields. We came home by another road, always the same wild mountain scenery, always also the same sharp curves and steep descents. It is certainly lovely country, green hills breaking away in every direction. As we got higher, great stony, barren peaks, torrents rushing along at our feet, and always on the top of a rock, rising straight up out of the hills, a little old grey village (with usually a steeple and sometimes an old square castle). Some of the villages were stretched along the mountain-side about half-way up. They all looked perfectly lonely and inaccessible, but I suppose life goes on there with just as much interest to them, as in ours in the busy world beneath. We raced up and down the hills, through beautiful country, scarcely slackening when we passed through some little walled towns (hardly more than one long crooked street), in at one gate and out at the other, people all crowding into the piazza, smiling and taking off their hats. Once or twice one heard them say "la Regina" evidently thinking it was Queen Margherita, who loves her auto, and makes long country excursions in it. It was a curious, fantastic progress, but enchanting. The other autos had started some time ahead of us. We saw an object (stationary) as we were speeding down a steep hill, which proved, as we got near, to be one of them, stuck in a little stream, quite firmly embedded in the sand, and looking as if nothing would ever get it out. About 15 or 20 men were pulling and hauling, but it seemed quite hopeless. It wasn't a very pleasant prospect for us either, as our auto, too, was big and heavy, and we had to get across. It would have been too far to go back all the way round. However, Mr. Bishop's chauffeur was not in the least concerned, said he would certainly take _his_ carriage over, and he did, Mrs. Bishop and me in it. We waited to see the other one emerge from its bed of sand. The men pulled well, and talked as hard as they pulled, and finally the great heavy machine was landed on the other side. We had a long level stretch, about 20 kilometres, before we got into Rome, and we raced the train, all the passengers wildly excited. It is curious to see how one gets accustomed to the speed when the carriage rolls smoothly. It seemed quite natural to me to fly past everything, and yet when Strutz has occasionally whirled us in to La Ferté to catch the express I haven't been comfortable at all. April 22, 1904. Yesterday afternoon Bessie and I went to the reception at the Villa Médicis, which was pleasant. We liked the music of the I^{er} Prix de Rome, and it was interesting to see the pictures and sculpture. I think the faces of the young men interested me, perhaps, more than their work--they looked so young and intelligent and hopeful, so eager for the battle of life; and yet so many find it such a struggle. There is so much concurrence in everything, and an artist's life is precarious. The very qualities which make their genius unfit them so for all the cares and worries of a career which must always have ups and downs. We went late for a drive in the Corso and Via Nazionale to see all the preparations for Loubet's arrival. They are certainly taking no end of trouble--flags, draperies, and festoons of flowers, in all the principal streets. The garden they are making in Piazza Colonna is quite wonderful--quite tall trees, little green lawns, and the statue of a Roman emperor. Quantities of people looking on at the workmen and walking about in the piazza. The Via Nazionale, too, is gorgeous with draperies, shields, and large medallions with French and Italian colours entwined. This afternoon I went off alone and did some sight-seeing. We shall go in a few days, and I haven't seen half I wanted to. I went straight over to the Trastevere; first to Santa Maria, with its queer old mosaic façade, looking more Byzantine than Italian; then on to Santa Cecilia, where a nice old sacristan took me all over, showed me the chapel supposed to be directly over Santa Cecilia's bath-room (the church is said to be built on the very spot where her house stood), and of course the tomb of the saint. Then, as I had nothing particular to do, I drove out toward Monte Mario, which is a lovely drive in the afternoon, the view of Rome looking back is so beautiful. It is a long steep hill, with many turns, so one gets the view on all sides. The Cork Valley was green and lovely, and the road was unusually quiet. I think everybody is on the Corso looking at the festal preparations. I went back to the house to get Bessie, and we went to tea with the Waldo Storys, in his studio. He has some beautiful things--two fountains in particular are quite charming. We all dined out, Bessie and Josephine with Cardinal Mathieu, I at the American Embassy with the Meyers. We had a pleasant dinner--four or five small tables. They have Mrs. Field's apartment in the Brancaccio Palace--entertain a great deal, and are much liked in Rome. [Illustration: The Dining-room in the Brancaccio Palace.] We came home early, and I am finishing this letter to-night. It is very warm, the windows open, and the street sounds very gay. To say that we have heard the Marseillaise these last days but faintly expresses how we have been pursued by the well-known air. Everybody sings or whistles it, all the street musicians, hand-organs, guitars, accordions, and brass bands play it all day and all night; and we hear the music of a neighbouring barrack working at it every morning. At this present moment a band of youths are howling it under the window. I think they are getting ready to amuse themselves when the President arrives. It was most amusing in the streets this morning, flags flying, draperies being put up everywhere, troops marching across the Piazza di Spagna, musique en tête, to exercise a little on the review ground before the great day--quantities of people everywhere. They say all the hotels will be crowded to-morrow, and with French people, which rather surprises me, but they tell me there are deputations from Avignon, Marseilles, and various other southern towns. They are beginning to arrange the Spanish Steps quite charmingly--a perfect carpet of flowers (if only it doesn't rain). Saturday, April 23d. It poured this morning, and all night I heard the rain beating against the window every time I woke. The clouds are breaking a little now, at three o'clock, so perhaps it has rained itself out, and the President may have the "Queen's weather" to-morrow. Our Loubet invitations are beginning to come--a soirée at the Capitol; great ricevimento, all the statues illuminated with pink lights; a gala at the opera; another great reception at the French Embassy (Quirinal); and the review. Josephine and I have been dining with the grand duchess at her hotel. We were a small party, and it was pleasant enough. She talks easily about everything, and loves Rome. The evening was not long. We all sat in a semicircle around her sofa after dinner. Every one smoked (but me), and she retired about ten. We have been talking over plans since we got back. Bessie will start to-morrow night. She is not keen naturally about the Loubet fêtes, and Palma[35] wants her to stay over two or three days with her in the country somewhere near Ancona. She will meet me in Turin, and we will come on together from there. It is still raining--I hope it will stop. [35] Princesse di Poggio Suasa, née Talleyrand-Périgord. Tuesday, April 26th. I had no time to write Sunday, as we were going all day. Bessie and I went to church in the morning, and then I left some P. P. C. cards on Cardinals Vannutelli, Mathieu, etc., also a note to the grand duchess to thank her for the photographs of Antonelli which she sent me last night--two very good ones, with a nice little note, saying she thought I would perhaps keep the big one for myself "as a souvenir of old times and new friends." The Corso looked quite brilliant as we drove through--the bright sun seemed to have completely dried the flags and festoons and the streets were full of people, all gaping and smiling, and in high good-humour. The Spanish Steps were charming, the great middle flight entirely covered with flowers, looking like an enormous bright carpet. We had some visits after breakfast, and started about three to the Countess Bruschi's, who has an apartment with windows looking directly over to the "Esedra di Termine," where the syndic, Prince Prosper Colonna, was to receive the President. There was such a crowd, and there were so many people going to the same place, that we thought that would be hopeless, so we returned and made our way with difficulty, as the streets were crowded, to the Via Nazionale, where a friend of Josephine's had asked us to come. She established us on a balcony, and there we saw splendidly. The street is rather narrow, and the balcony not high. The crowd was most amusing, perfectly good-natured, even at times when a band of roughs would try to break the lines, pushing through the rows of screaming, struggling women and children, and apparently coming to a hand-to-hand fight with the policemen; but as soon as the soldiers charged into them--which they did repeatedly during the afternoon--they dispersed; nobody was hurt (I never can imagine why not, when the horses all backed down on them), nobody protested violently, and the crowd cheered impartially both sides. These little skirmishes went on the whole afternoon until we heard the Marcia Reale, and saw the escort appearing. A troop of cuirassiers opened the march. The royal carriages with the red Savoie liveries were very handsome--all the uniforms making a great effect--the King and President together, both looking very happy, the King in uniform, the President in plain black with a high hat, returning all the salutations most smilingly. He was enthusiastically received, certainly--there were roars of applause, which became frantic when some of the military bands played the Marseillaise. As soon as the cortège had passed the crowd broke up, quantities of people following the carriage to the Quirinal, where the great square was crowded. There, too, they were so enthusiastic that the President had to appear on the balcony between the King and Queen. We started out again after dinner, and wanted to see the torch-light procession, but didn't, as our movements were a little complicated. We took Bessie to the station, and waited to see her start. When we came out the procession had passed, but the streets were still brilliantly lighted and very gay, quantities of people about. Yesterday we had a delightful expedition to Porta d'Anzio and Nettuno--two autos--and some of the party by train. We were really glad to get out of the streets and the crowd of sight-seers. Quantities of people have come from all parts of Italy to see the show, and are standing about all day in compact little groups, gaping at the festoons and decorations. It is frightful to think of the microbes that are flying about. We started early, at 9.30, went straight out toward Albano, to the foot of the hill, then turned off sharp to the right, taking a most lovely road, chestnut trees on each side, and hedges white and fragrant with hawthorn. As we got near Porta d'Anzio we had a beautiful view of a bright blue summer sea. The first arrivals had ordered breakfast in quite a clean hotel, evidently other people had thought too that it would be pleasant to get out of Rome to-day, as there were several parties in the dining-room, which was large and bright, but no view of the sea. After breakfast we all wandered out to the shore, and walked about a little, but the sun was hot and the glare very trying--the sea like a painted ocean, all the sails of the little pleasure boats, and even fishing boats further out, hanging in folds, the boats just drifting with the tide. The place is enchanting, and the little point of Nettuno quite white in the sun, stretching out into the blue sea, was fairy-like--the colours almost too vivid. The various boatmen lounging about in bright coloured shirts and sashes were very anxious we should sail or row to Nettuno, but the sea, though beautiful, looked hot, and we were rather sceptical about the breeze which they assured us always got up after 12. We went off in the auto to the Villa Borghese, about half-way between Porta d'Anzio and Nettuno, which is a Paradise. It stands high, in a lovely green park and looks straight out to sea. The drive through the park by the galleria, trees meeting over our heads, and the road winding up and down through the little wood was delightful, so shady and resting to the eyes after the glare and sun of the beach. All the way to Nettuno there are quantities of villas, fronting the sea, some very high with terraces sloping down to the water, all with gardens. Nettuno itself is an interesting little place with a fine old feudal castle. Some of the party had chosen to sail from Porta d'Anzio to Nettuno, and we saw their boat, full of children, just moving along close to the shore. We had tea on the shore, made in Countess Frankenstein's tea-basket, and it was delicious sitting there, seeing the little blue waves break at our feet, and the beautiful clear atmosphere making everything look so soft and near. The coming home was enchanting, very few people on the road, so we could come quickly, and the flying through the air was delightful after the heat and fatigue of the day. The Campagna is beautiful at the end of the day; so quiet, long stretches of green just broken here and there by the shepherds' huts, and the long lines of aqueducts, curiously lonely so close to a great city. We had just time to dress and dine, and start for the gala at the opera. The theatre (Argentina) is small, and stands in a narrow street. There was a long file of carriages, and so little space in front, that there could be no display of troops, music, etc., as one has always in Paris for a gala night at the Opera. Inside, too, all is small, the entrance, corridor, staircase, etc. Once we had got to our box the coup d'oeil was charming. The whole house is boxes, tier upon tier, all dark red inside, which threw out the women's dresses and jewels splendidly. They were almost all in white with handsome tiaras, the men in uniform, at least the diplomatists and officers. The peuple souverain, senators, deputies, etc., in the parterre were in black. The heat was something awful. The Court came very punctually--the Queen looked handsome with her beautiful tiara, the King of course in uniform, the President between them in black with no decoration. The house went mad (every one standing of course) when they played the Marseillaise, all the parterre cheering and waving hats and handkerchiefs; equally mad when they stopped that and played the Marcia Reale. The King, who is generally quite impassive, looked pleased. The performance, like all gala performances, was long, but the Royal party didn't look bored, and seemed to talk to each other, and to Loubet quite a good deal. The King has a serious, almost stern face, with a keen, steady look in the eye. I should think he saw everything. The end of the ballet was a fine potpourri of French and Italian flags, Marseillaise and Marcia Reale, and the Court left in a roar of cheers. The Queen bowed very graciously and prettily right and left as she turned to go. The getting away was difficult and disagreeable, the narrow street was crowded with royal carriages, all the horses prancing and backing, and no one paying attention to anything else. However, it was a fine, dry night, and once we had got across the street we found our carriage (guided by the faithful Pietro) without any trouble. This morning the Piazza is most interesting. Evidently the King and President pass at the foot of the square, as there are troops everywhere, and a double line of soldiers stretching across the top of the Tritone. Every description of vehicle, omnibuses, fiacres, peasants' carts, people on horseback, all ranged close up behind the soldiers; groups of carabinieri with their red plumets are scattered about the Piazza; a long line of red-coated German seminarists crossing at one end, two or three Cappucini with their sandals, bare feet, and ropes at their waists, coming out of their church, but not stopping to see the show. I am writing as usual at the window, and a fine smell of frittura comes up from the shop underneath. A most animated discussion is going on just under the window between a peasant, sitting well back on his donkey's tail, two baskets slung over his saddle, strawberries in one, nespoli (medlars) in the other, and a group of ragged, black-eyed little imps to whom some young Englishmen have just given some pennies. They all talk, and every now and then some enterprising boy makes a dive at the baskets, whereupon the man makes his donkey kick, and the children scatter. All the people in the street, and the coachmen of the little botte (there is a station in the Piazza Barberini) take a lively interest in the discussion; so do I from the window, but the police are arriving and the man will be obliged to come to terms. The coachmen of the botte are a feature of Rome, they spot the foreigner at once, and always try to get the better of him. I took a carriage the other day to go and breakfast with Mrs. Cameron in the Piazza di Spagna, about two minutes' drive, and asked our porter what I must give the coachman. He said one lira (franc). When we arrived I gave my franc, which he promptly refused to receive; however I told him I knew that was the tariff and I wouldn't give any more. He protested energetically, giving every possible reason why I should give more--his carriage was the best in the piazza, the road (Via Tritone) was very bad, down hill and slippery, he had waited some time in the piazza for me, etc.; however I was firm and said I would only give him one franc. Two other coachmen who were standing near joined in the discussion and told him he was quite wrong, that a franc was all he was entitled to. He instantly plunged into an angry dispute with them, and in the meantime Mrs. Cameron's door opened, so I put the franc on the cushion of the carriage, he in a frenzy, telling me he wouldn't go away, but would stay there with his carriage until I came out. That I told him he was at perfect liberty to do, and went into the house. He and the others then proceeded to abuse each other and make such a row that when I got up to Mrs. Cameron's rooms she said she couldn't think what was going on in the street, there was such a noise and violent quarrelling--so I told her it was all me and my botta. Thursday, April 28th. Well, dear, the fêtes are over, the President has departed, and the Piazza Barberini has at once resumed its ordinary aspect; no more carabinieri, nor police, nor carriages full of people, waiting all day in the square in the hope of seeing King or President pass. I wonder what the old Triton sitting on his shell with his dolphins around him thinks of this last show. He has sat there for centuries, throwing his jet of water high in the air, and seeing many wonderful sights. The reception at the Farnese Palace was most brilliant last night. We got there too late to see the King and Queen and President receiving; there was such a crowd in the streets, which were all illuminated, that we couldn't get across the Corso, and were obliged to make a long détour. The Farnese Palace looked beautiful as we came up, the rows of lights throwing out the splendid façade, the big doors open, quantities of handsome carriages, people in uniform and ladies in full dress and jewels who had got out of their carriages, crowding into the grand old court. The royal carriages were all drawn up inside the court, and the group of footmen in their bright red liveries made a fine effect of colour at the foot of the stairs. It was an interesting assemblage, all Rome (White) there, and all most curious to see the President. I didn't see either King or Queen. They were already making their progress through the rooms, which were so crowded that it was impossible to pass. The famous Carracci Gallery looked magnificent lighted. The Ambassador and Madame Barrère received their numerous guests most courteously, and didn't look tired, but I fancy it was a relief to them when the fêtes and their responsibility were over. We have had to put off our journey until Saturday. They wouldn't undertake to keep us reserved compartments, not even sleeping, until Saturday, there would be such a crowd. I don't exactly know why, for the President left this morning, going south, and we, of course, are coming north, but every one told me not to go, so we have telegraphed to the Ruspolis to say we would go out and breakfast with them at Nemi. There were quantities of affiches posted everywhere this morning which I shouldn't think would please either the King of Italy or the French President: "Viva Loubet--Viva Combes--Viva la France anticléricale." Josephine and I went for a drive. It had rained all the morning, and was grey and damp, but we didn't mind. We both of us love the Campagna in all its varying aspects. We walked about for some time, but had difficulty in choosing our ground, on account of the shepherds' dogs, which are very fierce sometimes, and the troops of buffaloes. Josephine had a disagreeable experience one day with the buffaloes. She was walking on the Campagna with her small children and her Italian footman, when suddenly a troop of these wild creatures charged down upon her at a headlong pace. There was no refuge of any kind near; the footman, frightened to death, promptly ran away. She was terrified, but didn't lose her head. She stood quite still, the children clinging to her skirts, and the herd divided, passing by on either side; but she might have been trampled to death. Naturally she has given them a wide berth since. Friday, April 29th. I will finish to-night dear, as we have come upstairs early after a long day in the country. The trunks are all ready, some of them downstairs, and we start early to-morrow morning. They say the confusion yesterday at the station, when the President departed, was awful, people--ladies--rushing about distractedly trying to find places, no footmen allowed inside, not enough porters to carry the heavy dressing-bags and rouleaux. Some people couldn't get any places, could only start last night. We had a pleasant day at Nemi. We went out by train. There were a good many people, evidently starting for the regular round of Castelli Romani, principally English and Americans, and principally women, very few men, but large parties, six and seven, of women and girls. It is a pretty road across the Campagna and up the steep hill to Albano, and as our speed was not terrifying we had ample time to see everything. The Ruspoli carriage was waiting for us, and we had a beautiful drive to Nemi. It is really a lovely little place--the deep blue lake at the foot of the hills, and all the country about us green. Our hosts were waiting for us in one of the numerous salons, and we had time to go over the castle a little before breakfast, which we had in a charming old-fashioned room, with wonderful frescoes on the walls. They have already done wonders in the old feudal castle, and I should think it would be a charming summer residence, as no heat could penetrate these thick walls. The view from the balcony was divine, over green slopes and little woods to the lake. We missed our train at Albano, so drove on to Castel Gandolfo and waited there for the next one. We had goûter in a lovely little pergola overlooking the lake of Albano, with the great papal villa opposite. It is not very interesting as to architecture, a large square pile. No Pope has lived there since Pio Nono. I believe some French nuns are settled there now. It was very warm walking about the little old town, which looked as if it had been asleep for years--no one in the streets, no beggars even, no movement of any kind. Just as we were starting for the station three or four carriages filled with tourists rattled through. It is curious to see how life seems to go on in just the same grooves in all these little towns. Rome has so changed--changes so all the time--is getting cosmopolitan, a great capital; but all these little mountain villages seem quite the same as in the old days of Savellis, Colonnas, and Orsinis, when most of the great feudal chiefs were at daggers drawn and all the country fought over, and changing hands after each fierce encounter. The few people one meets look peaceful enough, but on the smallest provocation eyes flash, tones and gestures get loud and threatening, but apparently they calm down at once and are on the whole, I fancy, a lazy, peaceable population. It is warm to-night, the windows are open and the Marseillaise still has the honours of the night--one hears it everywhere. INDEX Albano, 30 Alberti, 20-21 Alfieri, 105 Allessandri, Carlo, 27, 35 Altieri, Cardinal, death of, 30 Angelico, Fra, 39 Antonelli, Cardinal, 61, 284, 288, 306 d'Aosta, Duke, 223 Apponyi, Count, 73 Arbuthnot, Miss, 26 d'Asoli, 271 d'Asoli, Princess, 254 d'Aubigny, M. and Madame, 45 d'Aulnay, 62, 116 d'Aulnay, Comtesse, 57 Austria, Emperor of, 177 d'Autas, 295 Baddeley, Mr., 280 Bailey, Mrs., 76 Bailleul, Madame de, 230; received by the Queen, 240, 244, 257 Bandini, Prince, 144 Bandini, Princess, 51, 54, 63, 69, 145; gives musicale, 146 Beauharnais, Comtesse de, 116 Bertheny, Countess de, 262 Bibra, 62, 69, 143, 145 Bicletis, Monsignor, 249, 250, 251, 255 Bishop, Mr. and Mrs., 299 Bonghi, 105 Borghese, Giovanni, 266 Brancaccio, Princess, 93 Brandt, Otto, 102 Brinquant, 21 Bruce, Mrs., 41, 50, 51; gives dinner, 68-69, 89, 106, 169, 174 Brusatti, General, 275 Bruschi, Countess, 306 Bunsen, Charles de, 14, 34; arrives at Rome, 108, 110, 114, 118; returns to Florence, 119, 180 Bunsen, Madame de, 14, 15, 34, 179, 180, 254, 288 Cabat, M., 117 Cabriac, Marquis de, 71 Cairoli, 45, 52, 64, 80; speaks in Chamber, 83; gives dinner, 96-98 Cairoli, Madame, 45, 51, 64, 68; gives dinner, 96-98 Calabrini, 51, 56, 62, 63, 67, 81 Calice, Countess, 67 Cameron, Mrs., 311 Caprannica, Bianca, 142 Caprannica, Marchesa, 142 Cardenas, the, give dinner, 144 Cavaletti, Maurizio, 69 Cavour, 84, 223, 224 Celleri, Countess, 80, 99 Cenci, 54 Cesarini, Marquise Villa, 253 Chambord, Comte de, 117 Charles Albert, King of Savoy, 220 Charette, 120 Chigi, Marquise, 89 Cialdini, 67 Coello, Count, 148 Colobiano, Count, 222 Colonna, Prince, 282, 283, 306 Colonna, Princess, death of, 30 Comandi, 29 Cook, 91, 95 Crosby, Schuyler, 37 Curtis, Bessie, 61, 230 Daudet, M., 200 Del Monte, 108, 148; walk with, 172 Despretis, Madame, 51 Desprez, 45, 55, 57, 71, 92, 144 Diemor, 248 Director of Museum at Milan, 186, 199, 212, 216 Doria, 100 Doria, Gwendoline, 81 Edwards, Mrs., 65 Edwards, Hon. Sylvia, 65 Elena, Queen of Italy, gives audience, 240-242; at the court ball, 243, 253, 299; at the opera, 310; gives reception in honour of President Loubet, 312 English, Monsignor, 63, 66, 79; brings Pope's photograph, 155 d'Eu, Comte and Comtesse, 250 Evans, Father, 268 Field, Mr., 245 Field, Mrs., 237, 305 Forbes, Misses, 26, 184 Frankenstein, Countess, 309 Freycinet, 5, 60 Freycinet, Madame de, 6 Fua, Teresina, 248 Gabriac, Marquis de, 144 Garibaldi, 120, 122 Genoa, Duchess of, 287, 288 Geoffroy, 62, 63, 64, 89, 117, 168 Geoffroy, Madame, 117 Germany, Crown Princess of, 101, 104, 108, 109, 207; daughters of, 210 Gianotti, Count, 243, 262 Gianotti, Countess, gives afternoon tea, 262 Gittone, 275 Gosselins, 108, 109 Gounod, 296 Grants, 51 Gravina, 96 Greppi, Comte, 275 Grévy, Madame, 9, 11 Guadagni, Madame, 34 Guery, Don, 272, 279 Guglielmi, Marquis, 298 Helena, Queen of Italy, see Elena Hoffman, Mr., 216, 222, 223 Hohenlohe, Cardinal, 165 Hooker Mr., 51, 66, 120; gives dinner, 142, 174; recollections, 176 Howard, Cardinal, 50, 61, 70, 75, 109, 147 Hubert, 225 Hubert, Madame, 13, 47, 58, 63, 71, 168, 185, 188, 196, 200, 203, 216, 221 Humbert, King of Italy, 65, 66; birthday, 76, 79, 91 Ireland, Monsignor, 23 Ismail, Pasha, ex-Khedive of Egypt, 76 Kahn, Malcolm, 275 Keats, John, 286 Keudell, 101-103, 106, 108 Keudell, Madame, 102, 103, 108 King, Charles, 30; death of, 119-120 King, Fanny, 176 King, Henrietta, 124, 134, 218 King, Mrs., 123, 132, 134, 137, 139 King, William, 124, 132 Kruft, 5 Lanciani, 44, 63, 88, 89, 159 Landi, Madame, 40 Law, Mrs., 275 Leuchtenberg, Duke of, 116 Loubet, President, 305; reception of, 306-307; at the opera, 309-310; at the reception at the Farnese Palace, 312, 314 Lovatellis, 51, 94 Low, Mr. and Mrs. Seth, 273 Lucchesi-Palli, 117 Lyons, Lord, 7 MacMahon, Madame de, 10, 11 MacMahon, Marshal, 10, 73 Maffei, 64, 97, 108, 159 Malatesta, Felice, 59, 61, 86, 94, 108 Malatesta, Countess, 75 Maquay, George, 32, 35, 184 Maquay, Louisa, 36, 184 Maquay, Nina, 36, 184 Marcello, Comtesse, 93, 95, 98 Margherita, Queen of Italy, 220, 234; gives audience, 253, 285, 287 Marina, Marquise Villa, 253, 285, 287 Massari, 87, 105 Massimo, Prince, 74, 218, 255, 272 Mathieu, Cardinal, 254, 255, 304, 306 Medici, Catherine de', 33 Menabrea, 67 Meyers, the, give dinner, 304 Michelangelo, 59 Minghetti, 52, 56, 69, 81, 105, 181-183 Minghetti, Madame, 51, 52, 56, 57, 69, 81; receives, 105, 108 Mirafiori, Comtesse, 183 Mohl, Madame, 50 Murrays, 209, 210-211 Mustel, M. Alphonse, 279, 280, 285; plays before Queen Margherita, 287 Naples, Prince of, 86, 94 Napoleon, Louis, 84, 223 Nassau, Duke of, 28 Nevin, Dr., 48, 88, 242 Nina, Cardinal, 61, 80 Nisard, M., 240 Noailles, Marquis de, 45, 48, 87, 98 Noailles, Marquise de, 48, 51, 56, 57; gives dinner, 64, 87, 96, 100; receives, 107, 108; gives farewell dinner to the Waddingtons, 159 Norton, Mrs., 139-142 Orloff, Prince, 10 Orsini, Prince, 295 "Ouida," 27; description of, 28 Ouronsoff, Prince, 244 Paget, Sir Augustus, 51, 64, 82, 102, 109 Paget, Lady, 51, 57, 64; receives, 89, 102, 109 Palfy, Count, 52, 70, 92; conversation with, 174 Pallavicini, Princess, 51, 54, 67; gives reception, 86-87, 246; receives, 277 Pannissera, Madame, 107 Pasetti, Baron, 242 Paul, Duchess of Mecklenburg, 297 Pécoul, Thérèse, 273 Perret, 68 Peruzzi, Edith, 18, 36, 108, 184 Peruzzi, Ubaldino, 181, 206 Pierson, 4 Pietro, 267, 310 Pietro, Cardinal di, 79 Poggio-Suasa, Princess di (née Curtis), 230, 238, 244, 248; gives dinner, 259, 262, 266; gives dinner, 273, 285, 286, 291, 292, 294, 304, 305, 313 Poggio-Suasa, Princess di (née Talleyrand-Périgord), 305 Polk, Antoinette, 160 Pontécoulant, Comte de, 8, 12 Pope Leo XIII, 58; audience with, 59; described, 59, 60, 71, 146; in his garden, 155, 156, 250 Pope Pius IX, 56, 58, 59, 69; how he was received in the streets when he rode out, 146; description of the blessing from the balcony of St. Peter's, 157-158, 250, 264, 315 Pope Pius X, audience with, 249-251; description of, 250 Primoli, 144 Queen of Naples, Dowager, death of, 30 Ramée, Mlle. de la, 27 Rampolla, Cardinal, 295 Récamier, Madame, 168 Rignano, Madame, 99 Ripaldi, Duke di, 57, 100, 159 Ristori, Madame, 142 Roccagiovine, Marchese, 266 Rodmans, 233 Rossi, de, 89 Rothschild, Madame Alphonse, 99 Rudini, Marchesa, gives fête, 272 Ruspoli, Camillo, 289, 291, 298 Ruspoli, Don Emanuele, 231, 263 Ruspoli, Victoria, 255; gives dinner, 276, 315 St. Asilea, 87, 98 Sand, George, 38 Sant' Onofrio, Madame de, 96 Savonarola, 39 Savoy, Princes of, 94 Saxe-Weimar, Grand Duchess, 259, 297 Say, Léon, 60 Schuyler, Eugene, 35, 41, 42, 44, 56, 69, 77, 110, 112, 142 Schuyler, Mrs. Eugene ("Gert"), 35, 41, 42, 44, 61, 62, 63, 64, 67, 69; trouble with maid, 76-78, 79, 80, 82, 89, 92, 108, 110, 113, 118, 124, 132, 142; at Tivoli, 161; gives farewell dinner, 174, 197 Sciarra, Princess, 49, 89 Seckendorff, Count, 103, 105, 108 Sella, 81, 84, 105 Sermoneta, Duke of, 54 Serristori, 35 Sibbern, Madame, 5 Smith, Father, 55, 79, 87, 91; presents a medal, 160, 174; conversations with, 177 Somaglia, Countess, 81, 87, 98, 117; her daughters, 117 Spencer, Mrs. Lorillard, 83 Staël, Madame de, 168 Stanley, Dean, 50 Stanley, Lady Augusta, 50 Sternberg, Mlle. de, 15, 18 Story, Mrs., 286 Story, Waldo, 239, 304 Story, W. W., 18, 109, 239 Sulmona, 72-73 Sulmona, Princess, 73, 87, 144 Sutteroth, M. Alphonse, 5, 8, 200, 227 Talleyrand-Périgord, Charles de, 26 Talleyrand-Périgord, Madame de, 27, 61 Talleyrand-Périgord, Marquise de (née Curtis), 230, 237, 242, 244; audience with the Pope, 249-251, 262, 266, 267, 275, 285, 290, 302, 304; leaves Rome, 307 Tchaitcheff, Madame de, 16, 25 Teano, Prince, 51, 54, 56, 105 Teano, Princess, gives ball, 99, 272 Theoduli, Marchesa, 83 Thomar, 71 Thurn, Princess de, 54 Tosti, 145; described and criticised, 147 Townshend, Mrs. Charles L., 95 Trocchi, 48; sends flowers, 169 Troubetzkoi, Princess Lise, 98 Turin, Comte de, 243 Turkam, Pasha, 76, 101 Uffizi, 36 Uxkull, 64, 81 Val, Cardinal Mery del, audience with, 251-252 Valery, Dr., 30, 77, 120 Van Loo, 62 Vannutelli, Cardinal Serafino, 295 Vannutelli, Cardinal Vincenzo, 240; dinner given for, 273, 295, 306 Van Rensselaer, Mrs., 67, 118 Van Schaick, Lottie, 16, 17, 35, 40, 184 Venosta, Visconti, 52; speaks in Chamber, 80, 83, 105, 159 Venosta, Madame Visconti, 64, 81, 89, 107 Vera, 108 Vicovaro, Princess, 83, 85 Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy, 218, 220, 231 Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy, at the court ball, 243, 277, 299; receives President Loubet, 306-307; at the Opera, 310; gives reception in honour of President Loubet, 312 Villamarina, Marquis de, 81, 87 Virgo, M., 245, 266, 279 Visconti, 89 Vitali, Count, gives dinner for French Ambassador, 240 Vitelleschi, 67, 69, 87, 279 Vitelleschi, Marchesa, gives tea, 278 Waddington, Evelyn, 61 Waddington, Francis, has Christmas tree, 5; left in Paris, 12, 108, 225, 251 WADDINGTON, Madame, leaves Quai d'Orsay, 3-4; calls on Madame de Freycinet, 6; formal receptions, 8; receives Mesdames Grévy and MacMahon, 11; arrives at Florence, 12; arrives at M. de Bunsen's, 14; atypical Florentine party, 18; a visit from Alberti, 20; recalls picnic at Segna, 20-22; visits the Ponte Vecchio, 24; drives to Santa Maria Novella, 25; tea at Camerata, 26; dines with Talleyrand-Périgord, 26; takes tea with "Ouida," 27; impressions of "Ouida," 28; drives to Villa Careggi, 31; drives to the Certosa and Casa Guadagni, 34; decides to go to Rome, 35; Maquay dinner, 35; drives out Fiesole way, 37; visits Fra Angelico's and Savonarola's cells at San Marco, 39; musical evening with the Landis, 40; arrives at Rome, 41; her father's illness, 42; calls on Eugene Schuyler, 44; invitations from Embassies, 44; drives along the Via Appia, 45; visit to the Vatican, 47; visit from the Marquis de Noailles, 48; Princess Sciarra's ball, 49; recollections of Dean Stanley and Cardinal Howard, 50; reception at the Schuylers', 51; reception at Princess Pallavicini's, 54; pointed out as distinguished strangers, 55; dinner at the Teanos', 56; breakfast at the Noailles', 57; audience with the Pope, 58-60; dinner at the of, 63; dinner at the Noailles', 64; attends the opera, 69; dines at the Portuguese Embassy, 71-74; dines with the Pagets, 81; dinner at the Calabrinis', 84; attends American Church, 88; walk on Good Friday, 90; service at St. Peter's, 90; service at St. John Lateran, 91; note from the Quirinal, 92; audience with the Queen of Italy, 92-95; meets the Prince of Naples, 94; breakfast with the Noailles, 95; sees Farnese Palace, 95; visits the Bakers' tomb, 96; dines with the Cairoli, 96-98; day at the races, 98-99; protests against "valise" regulations, 98; attends Teano ball, 99; visits the Trevi Fountain, 100; tea with the Duke di Ripaldo, 100; dines at German Embassy and meets German Crown Princess, 102-105; attends reception at the Noailles', 107; musical evening at the Schuylers', 108; dinner with the Wimpffens, 108; meets Crown Princess again, 109; excursion to Frascati, 110; fails to visit Tusculum, 112, 113; trip to the Vatican, 114-115; ball at the British Embassy, 116; dinner at Villa Medici, 117; recollections of 1867, 119; goes to Naples, 119; sees Vesuvius in eruption, 123; ascends Mt. Vesuvius, 124-125; a long wait at an inn, 126-130; fête at the Stella del Mare, 135; the nun, 135; sail to Capri, 136; Capri, 137; a Capri fisher-girl, 139-141; dinner at Mr. Hooker's, 142; visit to the Doria Gallery, 143; dines at the Spanish Embassy, 144; musicale at Princess Bandini's, 146; hears Lohengrin in Italian, 148; drives to Albano, 149-153; last turn in the Vatican, 154; receives the Pope's photograph, 155; drives to the Villa Madama, 157; farewell dinner at the Noailles', 159; a day at Tivoli, 161-165; a lonely road, 167; last drive in the country, 169; walk with Del Monte, 173; arrives at Milan, 180; attends the races, 183; holds small reception, 184; a drive about Milan, 187; a visit to the Brera, 188-189; visit to the Duomo, 190; a second visit to the Brera, 192-193; describes the Piazza dei Mercanti, 201, 202; an afternoon at Monza, 204-206; leaves Milan and arrives at Turin, 211; trip to La Superga, 219-221; returns to Paris, 225; Rome revisited, 229; attends a ball at the Storys', 239; dinner at Count Vitali's, 240; received by the Queen, 240-242; attends the court ball, 243-244; in the garden of the Vatican, 247; music at the French Embassy, 248; audience with the Pope, 249-251; audience with Cardinal Mery del Val, 251-252; audience with Queen Margherita, 253; breakfast with Princess d'Arsoli, 254; at the Pope's audience, 255-256; an expedition to the Catacombs, 257; dines with Princess Poggio-Suasa, 259; automobile excursion with Countess de Bertheny, 262-265; trip to Tusculum, 267; special guards, 269; fête at the Massimo Palace, 271; fête given by Marchesa Rudini, 272; dines with Malcolm Kahn, 275; dines with the Ruspolis, 276; Holy Thursday at St. Peter's, 281; visits her father's grave, 285; a musical evening at the Palace, 287-288; excursion to San Gregorio, 289-291; attends ceremony at St. Peter's, the 13th anniversary of Pope Gregorio Magno, 292-296; children's ball, 297-298; auto trips with the Bishops, 299-301; reception at the Villa Médicis, 303; dines with the Meyers, 304; dines with the Grand Duchess, 305; reception of President Loubet, 306-307; attends gala night at the opera, 309-310; reception at the Farnese Palace, 312-313 _Waddington_, M. William H., resigns as Premier, 3; refuses London Embassy, 6; leaves Paris and arrives at Florence, 12; arrives at M. de Bunsen's, 14; attends the Peruzzis' party and meets Bentivoglio, 18; dines with Talleyrand-Périgord, 26; calls on Madame Guadagni, 34; arrival at Rome, 41; talks with Eugene Schuyler, 44; various invitations from Embassies, 44; visit to the Vatican, 47; visit from Marquis de Noailles, 48; reception in his honour at the Schuylers', 51; pointed out as a celebrated man, 55; has audience with the Pope and converses about politics, 50-60; the Pope's opinion of him, 63; dinner at the Noailles', "Cotelettes à la Waddington," 64; has audience with King Humbert, 65-66; meets Cardinal Howard, 70; curiosity to meet him, 75; attends the Chambre des Députés, 80; second visit to the Chambre des Députés, 83; goes to San Clemente, 87; walk on the Campagna, 88; audience with the Queen of Italy, 92-95; insists on "valise" reform, 98; delighted with di Ripalda's frescoes, etc., 101; conversation with Turkam Bey, 101; received by the German Crown Princess, 103; dines with de Rossi, 118; change of mental atmosphere, 147; trip to Albano, 149-153; last visit to the Vatican, 154; conversation with Father Smith, 177; speech-making, 181; visits the cabinet de médailles at Milan, 186; a visit to the Brera, 192-193; receives Mr. Hoffman, 223-224; arrives in Paris, 225 Wales, Princess of, 242 Wallace, Sir Donald, 281 Weling, Mlle. de, 28 Westenberg, Madame, 68 Wilbrahams, the, 69 Wimpffen, Count, 64, 81, 89, 107, 242 Wimpffen, Comtesse, 56; gives dinner, 62, 64, 68, 83; gives reception, 84-87, 89, 98, 105; dinner to German Crown Princess, 108-109 Wurts, Mr. and Mrs., 69; give dinner, 248, 284, 285 Zuylen, Cornélie, 83 * * * * * Transcriber's note: Spelling has been made consistent throughout but reflects the author's preference. Hyphenation has been made consistent.